The Strain

I'm a fan of Gillarmo del Torro's movies, so I had high hopes for his first book. I was not disappointed. The writing is excellent, the characters are generally compelling, and the plot is tight.
The book pays homage to the traditions of the genre. It has the hero scientist with family problems, a mysterious powerful business man who doesn't care about the consequences of his actions, feckless government officials, an extintion level pandemic, and a remorseless and unstoppable villian. It has all of the elements of a romping ScyFy movie.
While it hews to the traditions of the genre, The Strain takes the Vampire mythology in an interesting direction. I like the way the book updates the mythology to play on our modern fear of pandemics. Like the newer takes on zombies, del Toro brings vampires into the 21st century.
He does it without making them sensitive emo-wienies. These vampires are truly horrible. There evolution is as scary as there final form is awsome.

Shadow Command

I got this out of the library to tide me over while I waited for "The Strain" to be available. I figured it would be a quick and moderately interesting read. It was a quick read. The plot was ridiculous and packed full of cold war stereotypes, the dialog tritely predictable, and the ending implausible.
If you are a fan of the genre it is probably decent. But despite the cool space planes, it is not for sci-fi fans.

Heat Wave

I love the ABC show "Castle". When I saw that ABC had commissioned a real book to match the one written in the season one story arc of the show, I felt compelled to read it. Fortunately, it was available from the Boston Public Library as an e-book, so it didn't cost me more than a little computer time. I'm not sure I would have felt good about spending money for "Heat Wave", but I probably would have done it anyway.
I don't have a lot (or any) experience with the modern detective genre, so I was not sure what to expect. I hoped that the sexual tension and goofy humor from the TV show would carry through to the book. What I found was that it was a tightly written mystery that made for a quick, enjoyable read.
The sexual tension was there, but almost laid on too thick. The humor was there as well, but it wasn't quite as goofy. One thing that I like about books is that it lets you go deeper into the character's heads, but in this case I found it distracting. The slight differences between the books protagonists, Nikki Heat and Jameason Rook, and the TV show protagonists, Castle and Beckett, was unsettling. Castle is more goofy than Rook and Beckett is less serious than Heat.
Aside from the tension between the characters I know and the ones on the page, the book was good. The plot moved pretty quickly. The mystery was complex without being crazy. The dialog was a little stinted, but I imagine that is par for the genre.
Overall, it was a fun read. Since I got it for free, I have no guilt. Since it was e-book, the only evidence that I read it is this blog entry. My bookshelf at home stays pretentiously highbrow and sci-fi heavy.

Breathers: A Zombies Lament

It is pretty obvious that I'm a zombie fan, so this book piqued my interest when I saw it was available at the library. I was also a little afraid because it looked like it would be one of those social commentary, woe is me, weepy sort of books. It was that, but done in such a way to make it a fun zombie book as well.
S. G. Browne does an excellent job of making his zombie characters fully fleshed out. The narrator is just a regular guy who happens to have reanimated after his death. You can really feel the torment he goes through having lost his place in the world, but the narrative never slips into melodrama. Browne keeps things moving with snappy dialog and clever use of zombie folklore.
Using zombies also takes a little of the edge off of the truly terrible things that happen to the zombie cast. There is something funny about a zombie putting on make-up to fit in, or a zombie wearing a sign protesting that zombies are people too.
I hear they are making a movie out of the book. That usually scares me since it is hard to make most good books into films, but I think "Breathers" has a good shot of surviving the translation. The book is dialog and character driven, so a good scriptwriter should be able to make it work. The danger is having the movie slip off into camp or horror. "Breathers" is not horror.
I highly recommend this to both zombie and non-zombie fans. It has something for everyone.