RaveThe Denver PostInherent Vice is a mix of The Big Lebowski, the noirish novels of Ross MacDonald and/or Raymond Chandler and a whole lot of kitchen-sink, pop culture references thrown in for good measure … As with all of Pynchon’s fiction, an undeniable sense of the absurd is always present. But with Inherent Vice, the loony-tunes outlook on life seems to have been turned up half a notch. The author even lets his penchant for zaniness run rampant through the lowest forms of ’60s pop culture … Nevertheless, the dark fog that hovers over the author’s comical mystery (musings about the end of national innocence) as well as the wordplay so relentlessly present in any of his books, keep Pynchon’s Inherent Vice from being just another thriller — and ensure it is never less than entertaining.
Stephen King
RaveThe Denver PostFull Dark, No Stars, King’s latest foray into literary third-world territory, finds the august writer back at the top of his game. While the stories aren’t as varied as Kings 1982 collection, they are as tightly wound and as sharply honed ... King throws in lots of supernatural gruesomeness, by mixing a bit of Poe and EC-comics-style horror... King is the perfect amanuensis of our particularly twisted zeitgeist. And Full Dark, No Stars is his latest, perfectly chilling, perfectly thrilling and decidedly unsettling report from the trenches.
Justin Cronin
RaveThe Denver PostAlthough The Passage is the first of three books, Cronin gets everything right the first time out: suspenseful pacing, using third-person viewpoints that alternate throughout his massive tome (766 pages, 2.4 pounds), interesting, semi-formulaic characters with all-too human flaws (from a pedophile laborer and a misunderstood prisoner, to a motherly African nun and an FBI agent with a powerful paternal instinct), and just enough verisimilitude in his SF-cum-horror plot to have readers believing the fictional apocalypse in his story just might be plausible … It’s not giving anything away to say that plans go awry, subjects escape and infect others, and soon an end-of-the-world scenario is playing out as those who are infected — called virals — hunt down those who are not … While Cronin is sure- handed in the chapters that delve into each character’s motivations and background, he is equally masterful in the action set-pieces, keeping the narrative speeding forward like a runaway train.
