I just finished “The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam“, by Simon Webb. Absolutely great book. It actually covers a lot more of the history of slavery than JUST white Islamic slaves, because there are several closely related parts of the slave-trade that all need to be spelled out to make the whole picture make sense. It doesn’t cover Native American slavery, south or east Asia slavery, but most of the rest of it gets hit. Continue reading Book review, “The Forgotten Slave Trade”
Category Archives: Reviews
Ebook discount at Amazon
One of my commenters reported that Amazon is running a deal between now and Dec 4th, where if you buy $20 of ebooks you get a $5 credit for more. If you’ve been waiting for a good time to buy some (even mine!), now might be a good time.
Interesting Heretics review
Heretics of St. Possenti just acquired a new review. The first two-star. To say that it’s, er, “interesting” is an understatement. Have a look.
Not a verified purchase. Nothing specific. Pretentious, self-important phrasing. Appears to equate “Christian” with “white,” in spite of some of the characters quite explicitly being of non-white ethnicity, like the Aziz, the Coptic Egyptian, and Master Wang. Quite likely more than a bit of projection. Seems to have misunderstood… well, nearly the whole thing. But then, it wasn’t aimed at fools, morons, or females, so I guess that is not unexpected from someone who is a major contributor to comments and reviews in the “makeup” category on Amazon. Makeup – the very definition of “false face.”
Another review
Another review up at Men of the West. Very kind words. Be really funny if it got me nominated for a “inspirational/spiritual writing” award that I’d come in dead last for : – )
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Reviews are interesting. The CH review had a funny line: it said there was a lot of “logistics porn” typical of “post-apocalyptic” novels. Indeed, it said, that HosP was a post-apocalyptic novel, but one where the blasted and desolate landscape was not the physical one, but the spiritual one. I’d never thought of it that way, but… yeah. That’s a reader who gets it, and phrases it in a way that I’d never have thought of, but is very apt, almost poetic, in its eloquence. That’s one of the fun things about reviews – the can give insight and perspective on how others see what you said in ways that are helpful.
Interview
I had an email interview with the Official Horde Librarian (from the Ace of Spades HQ Sunday book thread). Results are here. For those that haven’t met me, I look like that in real life. I live in an older, low-res, 8-bit color part of The Matrix.
1+1 Sale, Today Only (now expired)
A shameless plug of self-promotion post. Today only (14 Dec).
Castalia House is running a 1+1 Christmas sale: buy one physical book (hardbound or paperback) and get one free Castalia House e-book (details at the link). In fact if you want to buy more than one physical book, you can get an equal number of e-books without limit (well, other than the number of titles they have out, of course). Since Back From The Dead (the first half of The Stars Came Back) is now out in print it’s an eligible item. So if you are a reader, or know readers and are looking for a gift, here’s an opportunity.
A good-sized list of books, and I have yet to read a bad Castalia House product.
Trendsetter
Never really thought of myself as a trend-setter. I took a look at JK Rowling’s latest book, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child the other day.
It’s in a modified screenplay format. Wow. How exciting! Daring, even! Who’d ever think a book like that could sell? And to think that nearly all the one and two-star reviews of my book were because of the format.
🙂
GoodReads
GoodReads is a book review site that was bought by Amazon a while back. It claims to be the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. It’s also rather interesting in that they do not require a person to have actually read a book to review it, and they do not appear to have any consistency of policy at all WRT the enforcement of their own rules as to what posts or comments are considered acceptable.
I received an email that said: Continue reading GoodReads
Cool Header
I received a cool new graphic in email. The quote is from this review on Amazon.
It is currently being used as the header for Castalia House’s Twitter feed.
I can live with a readership and comparisons like that 🙂
The Great 68!
Whoo-hoo! I placed last by a LOOOONGGGG shot!
Wes Chu won the Campbell Award with 2655 votes. “No Award” took a distant second with a mere 529. The next three were (I think worthy) of doing better than below “no award” with ESR at 489, Kary English with 427, Jason Cordova at 220, and yours truly waaaayy back at… 68. Continue reading The Great 68!