Now I'm gonna start the following:
I've only read a couple of Duane Swierczynski novels, The Wheel Man and Severance Package, but I enjoyed them both quite a bit. I'd like to hear what you thought of Point and Shoot when you're done. Or,
since Wikipedia tells me it's part of a trilogy, how you liked Fun and Games and/or Hell and Gone.
I wrapped up
Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard by Kim Newman just before Halloween and, as expected, thought it was great. As I mentioned last month, the catch here is that Dracula popularized vampirism on a widespread scale during the Victorian era and the series looks at the effects of mainstream vampires on society over the course of different eras, all with fictional and historical characters completely intertwined into the plot. With Johnny Alucard we get to see vampires becoming increasingly active in America from 1976 through 1991, kicking off with Francis Ford Copolla's production of Dracula, ending with a huge Hollywood blockbuster, and exploring a variety of cultural touchstones in between.
I didn't realize until after I'd finished the book that it was a fix-up of several earlier short stories and novellas, but it all comes together to work as a novel very nicely: it's great fun seeing what he chooses to explore with the timeline and each section furthers the plot very nicely. More importantly, the time period lets Newman unleash his encyclopedic knowledge of film by incorporating a dizzying number of characters from film, television, novels, and comics. Thankfully,
the internet came through with annotations that I could turn to when I'd finished the book, though it was always more fun when I could pick up on the references myself; I think my favorite moment of recognition was when I realized
Ms. 45 would be making an appearance. All of this is to say that Johnny Alucard was a terrific read and that I'd recommend it and the Anno Dracula series to anyone with an interest in vampires, horror cinema, or the sort of fiction that borrows other characters, such as the Flashman novels or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
I'm currently reading
The Last President by John Barnes, the third novel in his Daybreak series. This was originally going to be the third novel in his Daybreak trilogy, but apparently it's going to be open to self-published sequels going forward, so we'll see how that turns out. The concept here is that radical eco-terrorists unleashed a nanotechnological plague that was tailor made to destroy modern civilization by attacking plastic, rubber, petroleum products, and conductors for electricity. Cue things becoming apocalyptic in a hurry, civilization trying to re-build, and things becoming increasingly complicated in ways that I probably shouldn't spoil here. This is a somewhat cozy apocalypse, where you get to wonder how screwed you would be if things abruptly reverted to a mid-19th Century tech level, while Barnes shows different factions trying to rebuild the United States of America. I liked the first two novels just fine as light post-apocalyptic fiction and am enjoying the third book so far, though I'm busy trying to remember who's who among all the characters we're being introduced to. Hopefully I'll be up to speed shortly and can tear through this fairly quickly.
FnordChan
