Craig Shaw Gardner

This is a first. I've subjected myself to some shit books in my time, but I generally try to go by the 10% rule--that is, if the author hasn't grabbed me in the first ten percent of the book, usually twenty to thirty-odd pages, then I'm out.

It's saved me a whole lotta wasted time.

But this one? It's weird, because I know I've read far, far worse writing. But just four pages in, by the end of the very first scene, I closed the cover and put the thing down. I will never pick it up again.

So I'm declining to even rate a book I finished something like a paltry 2% of.

What was so offensive, or so off-putting about these few pages? It comes down to a few things. I knew going in this would not be a fantastic book, but I had hoped for some chuckles, some unselfconscious turns to the reader and winking, whatever. Instead, in the first four pages, I had a guy holding a gun to another guy. That was it. He showed up, held the gun, told the guy not to talk and not to move, then after four pages of navel-gazing by both characters, all of which did its level best to be wry and sardonic but came across flat and unamusing, the gun holder disappeared.

Technically, I guess it set up a story question, but it was one that I simply didn't give a shit about, and the thoughts of another 200 pages of flat, unamusing pseudo-sardonic, faux-wry writing for a story that I already know wasn't going to be stellar? Nope.

I didn't come for the story. I came for some fun. And those first four pages were the opposite of fun.… (more)

Craig Shaw Gardner’s Battlestar Galactica: The Cylon’s Secret takes place prior to the events of the 2003-2009 re-imagined series, beginning with the Cylons actions in the First Cylon War before moving forward twenty years where Captain Saul Tigh and Executive Officer William Adama aboard the Battlestar Galactica encounter scavengers picking over the war debris in space. Tom Zarek, one of the scavengers, leads his crew aboard the Lightning near the armistice line with the Cylons and encounters a research station with Cylon staff who did not rebel in the original war. The story is entertaining and this was a fun book to read back in 2006, though events of the later BSG seasons as well as Caprica and Blood & Chrome contradicted many of the details from this book.… (more)