Brand New Cherry Flavor

Rating:
Summary: Not like anything or anyone else
Review: Grimson likes to create a milieu in which there are multiple allusions and injokes; if you don't get them I suppose that after a while you know something's flying past you but you don't know what it is. But if you get the jokes you're presented with a very dense, actionpacked text. He obviously grew up watching bad movies and yet -- his secret weapon -- the pain actually hurts. He makes the incredible credible. Philip K. Dick, Nightmare on Elm Street, James Ellroy, Mary Gaitskill, Irvine Welsh and such off-the-wall influences as Georges Bataille all seem combined in a blender that serves up something entirely unique. Wicked smart.

Rating:
Summary: Its a super-sexy uber-cool non-stop action filled utopia.
Review: I don't know where to begin in saying that I loved this book. It doesn't stop, or slow down. I wanted to call in sick so I could stay home reading in bed, finishing it. This book does in 35 pages what it took "Silk" the whole thing to not quite do. The thing I thought would finish left it with fifty pages. I can't wait to read it again.

Rating:
Summary: screenplay?
Review: The first few chapters were enthralling. Lisa Nova wasn't the most sympathetic or well-sketched character, but her interactions with Boro, the implications of the tattoos, made me want to keep reading. Once Lisa leaves town, I lost interest completely. Way too many characters were introduced and I had no interest in any of them. Many relationships were presented but not deeply explored--- the "love of [her] life" Lisa meets in Brazil, her rivalry with her siblings, her best friend's feelings toward her. Meanwhile there is no sense that Lisa has any feelings about the "gift" she has been given--- she makes little attempt to enjoy her newfound powers, but she also doesn't recoil from them in horror and try to unmake the chaos. She has no real reaction and by the end of the book she is a vague shadow with no real meaning. The author gives more attention to how characters are dressed than what they're feeling and thinking, and they have no discernible motivation for their actions. The book seemed like a screenplay stretched into a novel. Maybe it would play better as a movie.

Rating:
Summary: horrible!
Review: This is one of the most bland books I've ever read. Lisa Nova is a spineless moron who wants to get ahead in the film game, does something stupid and gets her butt handed to her, so she decides revenge is the only policy, but she can't do it on her own, even she seems to think she is (that is how deluded she is), but when it gets out of her realm of control, she runs away to her rich Daddy. I do not think men who write in 1st or 3rd person using a female as the protagonist do very convincing jobs of it -- you need to UNDERSTAND your subject matter. He obviously wrote this book just for the sex scenes, and even those are yawn-inducing. This is cliched tripe from Los Angeles and nothing but.

Rating:
Summary: Traditional Grimson, Slack Storyline
Review: Unfortunately, when I purchased this book, I was hoping that it would be another "Stainless". In my opinion, that was Grimson's best work ever. Moving on, the story itself was interesting, but tended to be a little lackadaisical and confusing at times. I caught a slight echo of "Stainless" through the characters Freak, Code, and Lisa -- they all seemed the "lost, neurotic, Hollywood" types. Still, the book was fine...as long as one isn't perturbed by weird voodoo rituals.

Rating:
Summary: Not like anything or anyone else
Review: Unfortunately, when I purchased this book, I was hoping that it would be another "Stainless". In my opinion, that was Grimson's best work ever. Moving on, the story itself was interesting, but tended to be a little lackadaisical and confusing at times. I caught a slight echo of "Stainless" through the characters Freak, Code, and Lisa -- they all seemed the "lost, neurotic, Hollywood" types. Still, the book was fine...as long as one isn't perturbed by weird voodoo rituals.