Dan Gilman > Recent Status Updates

Surprisingly good start to this, started reading this thinking it was a different novel, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised here so far!

This was just a random pull but it's turned out to be REALLY good so far!

So, I dig the heck out of this book... But I swear if I have to read one more paragraph describing the fog one more time, I'm gonna throw my Kindle.

I don't think I've ever read such a claustrophobic book before in my whole life, but then the main character is a spelunking on another planet with only a one operator assistance "team".

I had my doubts about this being worthy of a full 400+ page novel but I'm 263 pages in and its simultaneously a fast paced page turner and a hell of a slow burn for the horror aspect and I absolute love it so far!

This book just throws you in without any warning... And for the first bit it's more than a bit confusing. But about halfway through I started to really enjoy reading this. Now almost threw quarters through I find myself putting it down to reflect on what I just read. As in... I don't want it to end!

This book is nailing weird west for me, it's a super niche genre to be sure but it's got ultra violence, some genuine good horror elements and good (read: really terrible) characters (doing pretty atrocious stuff)!

Make Me No Grave by Hayley Stone was the last weird west book I read (in early 2022) and was excellent. But this is more of "Eli Roth's Hostel" sort of weird western. Splatterpunk, and I love it!

Really loving this, and I it reads like a gritty weird western horror book should! Though that's a genre I have to be in-the-mood for and that genre takes you on a thrill ride and doesn't ask a lot out of you as a reader.

I really thought I'd finish this book before 2022 ended, but life has a way of veering you off in weird and wonderful ways. Also it doesn't help that this cycles around storyline sub plots a bit repetitively.

It's not bad by any means, but it really only gets to the horror a little less than halfway through.

It doesn't help that John Langan did such a good job with The Fisherman. Coming from a highly suspenseful, cosmic horror novel... to a splatterpunk horror western jumpscare type book didn't help.

I am enjoying the hicketty-heck out of the splatterpunk aspect of this. This entire series is right up my alley for weird western/horror. I kind of want to read something more thoughtful... (I don't want to read one of the two Laird Barron Old Leech books I have left because I tore through four of his books this year! Need to pace myself.)

Going to switch to The Hollows by Daniel Church tonight.

I read my first DragonLance novel when I was 13 years old, 33 years later it genuinely feels like I'm revisiting the world of Krynn... I kept up with the books here and there, but after Weis and Hickman there were few that captured my attention, this has been a slow start, but it's absolutely thrown me back all those years!

I specifically wanted to read this book first, one of the reviews from another site highly suggested it... but I got warded off by the negative reviews. All of the negative reviews were from people who hadn't read Laird Barron's short stories first, and all the positive reviews were from people who damn near literally begged folks to read those collections first.

Fun read so far, some of the interactions seem really odd. But I'm enjoying it so far and I'm halfway through.

I have been playing Cyberpunk 2077 and literally couldn't stop thinking about it TR Napper's 36 Streets. To the point where at times I really wanted to revisit that book, but found out that this is on Kindle Unlimited and I've been absolutely loving this book.

*Snap* And just like that, Mysterium Tremendum was Laird Barron at his best and all is right with the miasma of neon bile and inky black, galactic algae that churns on the environs of my vision! It's so maddening that I despised the previous story so much I wanted to throw my Kindle into a fire, and this one so good I want an autographed copy of this book for my birthday.

Sweet Jesus I love Laird Barron but The Lagerstätte novella was... Horrible. Not horror? It was so horribly disjointed and I struggled to read it FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK of hour here and ten minutes there that when I made it through to the other side I seriously wanted to flush my Kindle. What hit hard was that even the most basic of his stories had some really good "I adore this part!" and hooboy that one was a chore...

Some of these stories are brilliantly done and stick with me. A few of them made me angry I wasted my time. I always thought short stories anthologies were that way because of the writers (when you'd have a book of 10 short stories by different authors and hated like a few of them, a few were so-so, and two or three were absolute perfection) apparently it's just a law of averages.

I started reading The Corning by Laird Barron and saw my favorite Booktuber give it a so-so rating, and almost every single response was that his short stories are pretty much required reading to really enjoy his first full length novel. So I backed out of The Corning and started with this. Some of the stories have been EPIC, one of them bored the absolute shit out of me. But even the boring one was creeptastic!

I played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl relentlessly when it came out in 2007, it was difficult, intelligent, and weird as fuck. The book, isn't as difficult... But it's for the weird AF and intelligent. Makes me want to revisit these pc games now that I'm getting more world building and less "What in tarnation!?" trial and error!

I was skeptical going into this book, especially after the excellent ride that 36 Streets was! But Gunpowder Moon was drier than Ben Shapiro's wife at a game of BINGO. So I switched to catching up on season 4 of Stranger Things and someone told me there's a pretty good Stranger Things novel... There are times with this where I forget it's a Stranger Things tie-in and I just really like the writing and pace so far!

It's not bad by any means but the internal demons of the main character are annoying as shit.

The meandering slow start built into great characters and a fantastically woven story... It's at a can't/won't-put-down spot right now.

This was a slow start, but it's turning into a solid cyberpunk detective noir!

Enjoying the heck out of this so far. More than halfway done! Coming off of The Shadow Glass it's a bit jarring going from '80s nostalgia fantasy to science fiction, but I really liked the premise of this book. Haunted spaceship? Heck yisss!

JFC Death Troopers left such a sour impression its taking longer to actually read this than it should.

So after the dumpster spaghetti that was Death Troopers, I was hesitant about getting into another Star Wars novel, especially a trilogy... But I kinda *wanted* to read a good Star Wars book. This seems to be fulfilling that role! I'm on page 75 and it's been a really good Star Wars story so far!