Mr. Burke's Reading List

Dragon Precinct , Keith R.A. DeCandido (2004) I've seen Keith R. A. DeCandido at science fiction conventions, particularly the possibly-defunct Lunacon and the newly-christened Heliosphere . He's had a long career and yet I don't think I've read any of his work before. Maybe a short story in an anthology? Thankfully, I'm remedying this! I've never read any police procedural novels before that I remember. Mysteries, sure. Stories with cops, sure. But the written equivalent to Law & Order or C.S.I. , no. (And for all I know, a different show might be a better analogy.) This was a fun book to read, with one little caveat. The Prologue introduced a host of characters, one of which, Gan Brightblade, we know will be dead before Chapter 1 even begins. The prologue gave quite a bit of background and introduced a cast of characters of some renown: Gan, the great human fighter; Olthar, the elven wizard who betrayed the Elf Queen; Urbarlig, the dwarf fi...

Doctor Who: The Writers Tale -- The Final Chapter , Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook (2010) The second part of the ebook continues the correspondence between Davies and Cook past "The Journey's End" and through "The End of Time". For the uninitiated, that would be the last episode of Series 4 of Doctor Who through the last of the specials that followed that series, in place of a fifth series. Once more you see the trials and tribulations of trying to run such a massive series. Lots of trivia, quite a few setbacks. Plenty of talk about Davies' old work, the search for a new Doctor, and the final shots of David Tennant as the Doctor. And, of course, working with lots of secrecy, much of which gets blown one way or another (such as the careless reveal of Timothy Dalton in costume , leaving little wiggle room for whom he could be playing or what was coming back.) Enjoyable to read, although I did want to skip to the end of some of the longer e...