About

Welcome to Professor Morbius’s Book Review Blog.

Here, I write reviews of books I’ve read. Due to my tastes, these tend to be mostly science fiction and fantasy; but really, anything that catches my eye enough for me to pick it up might end up getting a write-up here.

I rank books on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. One Star is offensively awful; Two Stars is bad to mediocre, or a mixed bag; Three Stars is basically decent, or good but unexceptional; Four Stars is great; and Five Stars is excellent. Books which are simply too incomprehensible for me to understand get Square Root of Two Stars. Books which I cannot give a final rating because they are incomplete get Forever Unknown.

Needless to say, all reviews express solely my own opinion, and you are welcome to disagree.

In addition to the rating and series name (if applicable), there are some special tags I use to mark certain reviews:

• “Dead Lesbian Penalty” marks books which introduce a lesbian character for the sole purpose of killing her off. That’s a pet peeve of mine, and such books receive a one star penalty to their final score.
• “Ellen Ripley Syndrome” marks books where the strong female protagonist shows off her maternal side by adopting an adorable orphan child.
• “Golden Age of Detective Fiction” marks a series of reviews where I look at mystery novels from the golden age of detective fiction.
• “Goodreads Giveaway” marks a review of a book I won a free copy of through a Goodreads giveaway (I promise not to let that fact influence my scoring).
• “Hunt for Halloween Horror” marks a series of reviews where I look at horror stories for Halloween.
• “Know the Novelization” marks reviews of the book adaptations of stories that first appeared in film form.
• “Reader Request” marks reviews where I look at books specifically requested by readers of this blog.
• “Recommended by Dragon” marks a series of reviews where I look at books which I learned about from reviews in Dragon magazine which were discussed in RPGnet “Let’s Read” threads (first one here)
• “Recommended by Good Show Sir” marks a series of reviews where I look at books which I learned about from the website Good Show Sir.
• “Recommended by the Hugos” marks a series of reviews where I look at books which won or were nominated for Hugo awards.
• “Secretly a Sequel” marks books which, though they don’t advertise the fact and may even declare themselves first in a series, are actually continuations of previously published books.
• “Sharp Knife of a Short Life” marks book series which were never completed, due to cancellation or the death of the author.

If you’re interested in what else I do, you can find my archive of fanfiction at https://www.fanfiction.net/~profmorbius and my Tumblr blog at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/profmorbius. And, if you really like my work and want to support me, you can support me on my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ProfMorbius. For a pledge of just $1, you can gain access to my “Professor Morbius’s Lab” posts, where I talk about my fanfiction writing.

Thank you for visiting, and I hope you enjoy the blog!