Blogcritics Author: Mel Odom

Graphic Novel Review: Criminal: Coward by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Mel Odom — Fri, 4 Jul 2008 10:49:45 EDT

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips carve a dark, ugly road of betrayal and greed in this landmark crime series.
Ed Brubaker is an award-winning comic scripter who has written about superheroes and superheroines. However, the man has a heart carved from the deepest, darkest noir. His criminals and anti-heroes sing with muscle, malice, and desperation, lifting from the pages to hold readers hostage to their own need to know what's going to happen next.My...

Book Review: Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

Mel Odom — Fri, 4 Jul 2008 09:00:24 EDT

Part wizard and part private eye, this animated skeleton has a bone to pick with evil-doers.
Another fantasy series geared for the 9-12 crowd (and suitable for adults!) arrived on the shelves last year. I bought Skulduggery Pleasant last year and misplaced it in the jumble of books I constantly cycle through. It wasn’t until I saw (and purchased) the second novel, Playing With Fire, that I remembered the first book in the...

Movie Review: Get Smart

Mel Odom — Thu, 3 Jul 2008 20:34:09 EDT

CONTROL Agent Maxwell Smart is back saving the world from KAOS in this bellybuster featuring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway.
I wasn’t a big fan of Get Smart when Don Adams starred as Maxwell Smart in the television series. I enjoyed it a lot, but I was more into serious spying, as with James Bond and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. Mel Brooks and Buck Henry enjoyed their take on spydom and the recent big-screen treatment takes a lot from that treatment.I also have to...

Book Review: From Crime to Crime: Mind-Boggling Tales of Mystery and Murder by Dennis Palumbo

Mel Odom — Thu, 3 Jul 2008 19:08:41 EDT

The Smart Guys Marching Society solves a relatively bloodless collection of puzzles that armchair detectives will relish.
Dennis Palumbo absolutely fascinated me with his new book From Crime to Crime: Mind-Boggling Tales of Mystery and Murder. In nine tales about his Smart Guys Marching Society, he delivers traditional locked room puzzles, red herrings, and clues aplenty for armchair detectives everywhere. But the world he represents in his writing is our present and...

Book Review: The Last Oracle by James Rollins

Mel Odom — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:24:40 EDT

Sigma Force, that secret branch of scientific commandos, tracks down the secrets of the Oracle of Delphi.
The first James Rollins book I ever read was Subterranean. It was a "lost world" adventure, about an underground world that spawned the marsupial creatures that inhabit Australia. The book was a blistering good read and I read it -- held completely in thrall -- in a single sitting. Not many 400-page novels can do that to me these days.Rollins is...

Movie Review: Wall-E

Mel Odom — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:50:08 EDT

Robots in love! And in between getting to know each other, Wall-E and Eve have to save the world!
Wall-E hit theaters today and packed the seats a noon at my local movie house. I've enjoyed every Pixar movie that's come out, and this one is no exception. However, I have to admit that after the deluge of trailers that have haunted the television set later I was expecting to be blown away.I wasn't blown away, but don't misunderstand. The movie...

Book Review: A Soldier's Homecoming by Rachel Lee

Mel Odom — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:09:03 EDT

Romance novelist Rachel Lee returns to her beloved Conard County with this suspenseful page-turner.
Rachel Lee returns to writing romance novels about her beloved Conard County in A Soldier's Homecoming and is going to wow her fans who have been awaiting more stories. The title is a bit misleading because the story isn't so much about Ethan Parish and Connie Halloran being brought together.Ethan is just back from Iraq after spending months...

Book Review: Hit And Run by Lawrence Block

Mel Odom — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:10:18 EDT

Keller, one of the best of the professional hit men, is on the run for his life.
Keller is a professional hit man. He specializes in paid-to-order death that looks like an accident and has always gotten away without being caught. However, Keller is also a man with a conscience. Not about the people he kills, because that would get in the way of him doing his job. But he dwells on how he spends his life, the people he spends...

Graphic Novel Review: All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

Mel Odom — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:32:13 EDT

Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely bring back the gentler years of Superman with a soft science fiction touch.
I still have images of Superman comic books stuck in my head from when I was growing up in the 1960s. They were fantastic, a mixture of superhero and science fiction, two of my greatest loves ever at that age. I loved the stories of Lex Luthor (in his traditional gray prison uniform) teaming up with Brainiac (in a pink shirt and shorty-shorts). ...

Book Review: Into the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst

Mel Odom — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:04:23 EDT

Julie Marchen ventures into the Enchanted Woods (the Wild) to save her mother and the world she knows.
Twelve-year-old Julie Marchen isn’t a normal girl. She knew that from the beginning, when she found out her brother was a five hundred-year-old cat called Puss ‘n Boots. Her mother is called Zel, which is short for Rapunzel, and her grandmother is a wicked witch named Gothel. Not only that, but her weird family has been placed in charge...