Good Bat-Guide, 24 Jul 2008
I'd expected this to be a cheesy text-only (in huge type) Dark Knight cash-in guide with precious little information and stock images. I was delighted to discover, then, that is was in-depth, well-written guide to the Dark Knight Detective's comics career. I only received it yesterday and have hardly put it down since. Highly recommended.

Good Bat-Guide, 24 Jul 2008
I'd expected this to be a cheesy text-only (in huge type) Dark Knight cash-in guide with precious little information and stock images. I was delighted to discover, then, that is was in-depth, well-written guide to the Dark Knight Detective's comics career. I only received it yesterday and have hardly put it down since. Highly recommended.

A great one for the fans, 25 Oct 2007
It's a tricky business to capture the appeal of a movie franchise in a book, and the previous Predator Novel (Forever Midnight) was a prime example of how not to do so.

By contrast, Flesh and Blood is a good, entertaining pulp SF book which perfectly captures the monstrous charm of its alien protagonists. Friedman and Greenberger effectively get inside the mindsets of their monsters without making them too sympathetic or human. By contrast, many of the human characters to appear to be cyphers, but in large measure this is due to the story's casualty rate. Critically, though, this is a book which captures the feel of the movies for better and for worse.

In summary, if you enjoyed the two Predator films, this will be a fun read. Non-fans can at least expect a pleasant diversion.

Good Bat-Guide, 24 Jul 2008
I'd expected this to be a cheesy text-only (in huge type) Dark Knight cash-in guide with precious little information and stock images. I was delighted to discover, then, that is was in-depth, well-written guide to the Dark Knight Detective's comics career. I only received it yesterday and have hardly put it down since. Highly recommended.

A great one for the fans, 25 Oct 2007
It's a tricky business to capture the appeal of a movie franchise in a book, and the previous Predator Novel (Forever Midnight) was a prime example of how not to do so.

By contrast, Flesh and Blood is a good, entertaining pulp SF book which perfectly captures the monstrous charm of its alien protagonists. Friedman and Greenberger effectively get inside the mindsets of their monsters without making them too sympathetic or human. By contrast, many of the human characters to appear to be cyphers, but in large measure this is due to the story's casualty rate. Critically, though, this is a book which captures the feel of the movies for better and for worse.

In summary, if you enjoyed the two Predator films, this will be a fun read. Non-fans can at least expect a pleasant diversion.

The man from hell is back!, 25 Aug 2008
Hellboy, the heroic devil-man is back again and now has to save the world from a new Apocalypse created when hell breaks loose.
And the happens when an ancient agreement between two worlds is broken and poor old Hellboy has to cope with the loss of his father, his pregnant girlfriend and now a Golden army of spooky creatures.

Get ready for the adventure of a life time!

NOT A GRAPHIC NOVEL!!, 23 Jul 2008
JUST TO LET ANYONE ELSE OUT THERE WHO GOES SEARCHING FOR HELLBOY GRAPHIC NOVELS, THAT THIS IS LISTED ON AMAZON UNDER GRAPHIC NOVELS, BUT IS NOT ONE!!!

Good Bat-Guide, 24 Jul 2008
I'd expected this to be a cheesy text-only (in huge type) Dark Knight cash-in guide with precious little information and stock images. I was delighted to discover, then, that is was in-depth, well-written guide to the Dark Knight Detective's comics career. I only received it yesterday and have hardly put it down since. Highly recommended.

A great one for the fans, 25 Oct 2007
It's a tricky business to capture the appeal of a movie franchise in a book, and the previous Predator Novel (Forever Midnight) was a prime example of how not to do so.

By contrast, Flesh and Blood is a good, entertaining pulp SF book which perfectly captures the monstrous charm of its alien protagonists. Friedman and Greenberger effectively get inside the mindsets of their monsters without making them too sympathetic or human. By contrast, many of the human characters to appear to be cyphers, but in large measure this is due to the story's casualty rate. Critically, though, this is a book which captures the feel of the movies for better and for worse.

In summary, if you enjoyed the two Predator films, this will be a fun read. Non-fans can at least expect a pleasant diversion.

The man from hell is back!, 25 Aug 2008
Hellboy, the heroic devil-man is back again and now has to save the world from a new Apocalypse created when hell breaks loose.
And the happens when an ancient agreement between two worlds is broken and poor old Hellboy has to cope with the loss of his father, his pregnant girlfriend and now a Golden army of spooky creatures.

Get ready for the adventure of a life time!

NOT A GRAPHIC NOVEL!!, 23 Jul 2008
JUST TO LET ANYONE ELSE OUT THERE WHO GOES SEARCHING FOR HELLBOY GRAPHIC NOVELS, THAT THIS IS LISTED ON AMAZON UNDER GRAPHIC NOVELS, BUT IS NOT ONE!!!

Superb addition to the series, 15 Sep 2008
Book one ends on a cliffhanger, and this picks up straight away. Although the story concerns the USS Defiant (later shown in Enteprise to be in the Mirror Universe), the door is left open to tie that back into canon. Which is a testament to how good the writing in this book is.

The book continues to evolve and deepen the characters, without revealing all their secrets in one go. And the way the relationships are handled is quite good, as with each new story, a little bit more is thrown into the mix - akin to the development shown on DS9 when it took on a more serial feel.

All the stories in this collection are good, with a story filling in the gap between Avatar and Abyss in the DS9 relaunch, and an extra long story devoted to Sonya Gomez, interestingly from a first person/log entry perspective.

Excellent continuation of the series.

More great S.C.E. stories that move beyond technobabble, 11 Feb 2008
The second compilation of the Star Trek: S.C.E. (Starfleet Corps of Engineers) e-books, called Miracle Workers, collects books 5-8 of the continuing series, and they continue the stellar work that Keith R.A. DeCandido has done editing the series as well as great work from the authors. While I read mine in an e-book version, this is also available in paperback. As the series begins to move forward, we find out even more about some of characters, as well as getting some exciting action as well.

In fact, Miracle Workers demonstrates even further that you can get a bunch of Starfleet engineers together and tell interesting stories with them without all of the technobabble Trek is known for. Sure, there's always going to be some, but no more so than any other Trek book. Instead, we have stories such as First Officer Sonya Gomez going through a huge trial by fire that will change her life, or a straight adventure story about salvaging a space station while dealing with a scavenger race that will gladly kill anybody who gets in their way. The writing is excellent, and the stories are only getting better and better. Let's hope that continues to be the case as I move on to the next compilation.

Yes, there are a couple of weaknesses ("Cold Fusion" has a couple of problems as well as being very straightforward compared to the books around it, for example), but overall this is a strong compilation. The writing is uniformly excellent (of course, it's full of some Trek staples, though this was actually David Mack's first prose fiction) and the characters are a lot of fun to read about. Don't let the "engineer" part fool you; this series is about the characters, and they're well-done characters too. Give it a try.

David Roy