The Short Victorious War by David Weber
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A Short Victorious War (#3 Honor Harrington) by David Weber
While I do love my kindle and I sometimes seem to read much more smoothly with it, when it's a book I already have on my shelf its difficult to justify paying more for the kindle version than I did for the paperback on my shelf. And who can deny the thrill of coming away from the book with ink smudge thumbs.
Back around 98 I bought these four at once and I'm no longer certain if I ever read these in the correct order the first time because the Flag in Exile is missing from the receipts.
A Short Victorious War
Field of Dishonor
Honor Among Enemies
In Enemy Hands
In my effort to recapture the experience I'm trying to go through them in order.
I've also tried to pay attention to something purely out of the fact that I purchased these solely on the strength of the character herself-Honor Harrington. So just as an observation I found that out of 360 page there are roughly 180 pages that actually center upon the part of the story that I came into this for. That's pretty good because 180 pages is okay for a novel. So what's in the rest?
That's actually a good question because I've come to see Honor's novels as being multi-plot and multi-story novels. Of the first three I felt this was the most diverse in the number of plots or plot threads that were running through it. I'm not even certain if I could easily qualify what the main plot and story is. Instead I'll begin by highlighting the main part that was of interest to me.
One major Storyline and plot/theme that runs through these novels is the notion that Honor Harrington is constantly trying to prove herself. This is mostly her trying to prove herself to herself because as the reader progresses through the stories its easy to see there are three kinds of people around Honor. There are those who see her as already proven and those who have mostly preconceived or prejudicial views who have to be won over. And there are those who outright hate her and don't care that she has proven herself. In honesty there might be some shades in there but its mostly that. What's prevalent is that though she needs to prove herself to some she never goes out of the way to do so in fact sometimes she goes counter to that and it becomes more evident that she mostly needs to prove herself to herself. I'm not sure if she ever realizes this although people keep dropping hints.
Another plot/theme story is that there are a number of people who would like to see her fail and the plot involves how they move to help that along intentionally or accidentally. These range from severe hatred such as Paval Young to people working out of ignorance such as Admiral Park. And of course her enemies among the Havenites who just would rather win than lose to her.
In the previous two novels her brilliant decisions have made many friends and enemies alike and have helped her come through the battle nearly unscathed. But many around her have fallen and this novel does touch some on the impact that has upon her personally. When all is said and done Honor works like a well oiled machine despite all the odds that stack against her when it comes to her duty and command. In this particular novel she gets to see a bit of romance which was nice to see and it in no way interferes with the performance of her duties. So in a way this is the story of Honor's healing process both physically and emotionally with the plot that helps show how this occurs.
What David Weber does in these novels is keep a thread of plot about the various political and military factions of both sides of the conflict. In this particular novel it seemed that we got a large portion of this. I'm not sure how necessary they are to this story but they do seem to track toward being necessary to the series as a whole. There's a story about Hamish Alexander and those around him figure prominently within this story I'm not yet sure there is a plot to that story. This book contains two heavy stories about the Haven side. One is the attempt for a short victorious war hopes and the other is the shift in the political power brought on by coup. Those both seem well plotted.
So there are a handful of stories with just as many plots that all converge into one story, which perhaps could perhaps be the story of the horror's of war that inevitably culminates in the major loss of life and limb for honor and duty. It would be easier to say that this has one story with about six major plots, but it's hard in many cases to see those plots until you put all the books together so they become more like threads stories that are told through several other stories which are the novels.
Once again this is great SFF for those who don't mind some hand-waving and love to trace the internal logic of strategy and battle that are woven into the story. There's even a section in back for those who haven't gotten enough techno-speak from the internal parts of the story.
After reading this three times now I still rate it high for it's entertainment value although it still contains sections that almost beg to be scanned by some readers.(Including myself sometimes.)
J.L. Dobias
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Memoria. A Corporation of Lies by Alex Bobl
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Memoria By Alex Bobl (They control your memories - They tell you how to live.)
This was one of those few that took my interest by the book cover. It's cover reminded me of Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep in its incantation as Blade Runner (the movie) and the tag line and it's title reminded me of Philip K Dick's We Can Remember it For You Wholesale aka Total Recall. But in reading it I couldn't help but be reminded of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The story sucked me in and caught my interest and eventually the closest it ever came was mostly to the movie versions of the Philip K Dick Stories which include all the dynamic twist and turns of plot while mayhem and carnage reigned supreme.
While little that's published today seems to ever reach that same literary level that the Huxley parody of other utopian works has reached it is of note that there are some interesting similarities in this story that plot-wise bring it close only toward being like examining Brave New World in a distorted fun-house mirror that populates today's writing styles.
I love a good suspense novel. I confess that I could never read them at any sustained level. I like mine in small doses. This is the second one this year and both have contained a theme that borders onto paranoid conspiracy theories and the possibility of mass mind control. They both have high body counts also.
As the story goes; Frank Shelby is an attorney coming back to the city from a non-productive meeting and is looking forward to connecting with his girl friend Kathleen whom he believes he wants to take the next step with despite the fact that he doesn't know that much about her, including her last name. His troubles start when a pushy cabbie tries to pick him up, he doesn't know it yet but that's his first clue things will go south. When he arrives at his apartment where Kathleen is waiting, because he gave her a key, he finds her dead and ends up embroiled in...well a conspiracy of a sort.
Frank becomes a fugitive and as the bodies begin to pile up it's clear that giving himself up is no option. The problem is that he lives in a world where everything and everyone is controlled by Memoria tech that monitor everyone all the time and everyone is expected to periodically show up at Memoria to have their brains cleaned. They have their thoughts scanned and have bad memories removed. This of course leads to something similar to PKD's Minority Report where criminals might be caught by their thoughts. The bracelets they wear and the procedure they undergo are similar to the notion of Soma in BNW. But soon we will see that things might go further with the Memoria tech and skills might be transferable which is similar to what goes on in PKD's We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (Total Recall).
The group Frank is helping to negotiate with are the people who don't have bracelets and are on a sort of reservation away from the rest. These are like the savages in Huxley's BNW. Because the Memoria tech has been weakening the will of the people they have come to rely on much of their food and energy coming from the reservation. The powers that be are looking toward changing that.
If the author Alex Bobl tried to tell me he'd never read Philip K Dick he'd be hard pressed to convince me although it's possible since Aldous Huxley did claim he'd not read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin prior to writing Brave New World.
Anyone that loves Suspense Novels and lots of action and body counts should find this enjoyable. And for those who have read the other books mentioned it will be an added treat. For anyone who hasn't read those books I'd suggest reading a few them to make the comparison and because i feel they are superior.
As always I warn there were a few grammatical stumbles with word choices that seemed odd and sentence structure that had me reading a few times to figure something out and the use of things like 151th that just seemed like it would sound better as 151st although it looks just as bad that way. As a total less than a handful of serious road-stops so not so bad.
J.L.Dobias
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Window in Time - A Time-Travel Fantasy by Charlotte A. Banchi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Window In Time A Time-Travel Fantasy by Charlotte A Banchi
I enjoyed this book a lot. There are a few speed-bumps (mostly of my own making; I believe) along the way that could have gotten in the way but I think the Charlotte Banchi does a great job of keeping the pace going and keeping the readers interest up and it makes this a very good read. I did have some reservations about another wizard school story-a certain British wizard uprooted and dropped in Oregon. The time travel aspect added a nice spicy flavor but that too has it drawbacks in that it reminded me of a device similar to the parallel universes of Star Trek where the main cast get to alternately play some evil part. And as far as time travel goes I love all kinds and really enjoy the ones with a lot of history showing up in the pages. I don't think I got much history in here. But internally and just trying to keep up with the lives of the main characters I think there was enough going on to say that historic accuracy could have just been too much distraction.
I've read a few Mage novels in the science fiction category so I'm only a bit more schooled about magick's than I'd be if it were only the HP novels. Still it took a few pages to get past that feeling that this is written around that set of novels before accepting it for itself. Wands, spells and spell-books, grimoire's and evil creatures from other dimensions and the dark evil that brings out the worst in everyone all almost smelled like fan fiction. There are a lot of similarities and so we have to go for what stands out and that's that this is a time travel novel.
Sentinel Sebastian Darkus already has problems, with his marriage, and he's trying to figure out just what went wrong between him and Kenna when the Dark Magick Warlock Hunter Sloane decides to wage war on Merlyn Academy killing adults and students alike. Being left in charge of several orphans and with the help of his twin sister Celeste they are waiting for the other shoe to drop while Sebastian is still struggling with the notion that everyone saw his Kenna helping Hunter Sloane kill the other witches and wizards. Knowing that this has something to do with the great dark magickal Obsidian Star, Sebastian decides he should address the question of where the Star is by going to the source in the past. He starts in the immediate past because his father in-law Bill Abbott has laid claim that he held the Star in his bookshop just only a few years earlier.
This eventually leads to the necessity to go all the way back to the real source, the time when the Star dropped into our dimension and Sebastian has mostly only tales and myth to guide him, but he eventually visits Merlyn in the 16thcentury past.
I've recently read a number of time travel novels (One that hasn't yet been published -ARC) and there is always that place where the author has to decide what to do with the altered time lines. In this case Charlotte double duties it as I mentioned by using it as a device to pass the evil ball from character to character, which was rather interesting.
There are a couple errors that slipped past the editing process but really not that much. A few times I was befuddled by the way a sentence was stacked. And there's a reference to Anne Frank that still has me scratching my head, but I'll get over that.
This is for fantasy lovers who are not obsessed with historic accuracy or being transported visually into a stunning rendition of the past. Time Travel afficionados should enjoy it as a light read.
This story keeps the reader moving along and guessing at where and what the grimoire is and reads well enough to finish in one read.
J.L. Dobias
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STEM by Christopher Blankley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Zombpunk(book 1) Stem by Christopher Blankley
First of all; this was a thoroughly enjoyable read despite what some people see as catastrophic failure and I only see as mild speed bumps. I like the way that this started because you have this impression that there will be zombies you also get this confusion because the alleged zombies are neat, fit and civilized while the non-zombies are dirty, wretched hungry creatures who are what you mostly expect zombie's to be.
The bottom line to that is it's difficult to really see at first who is going to turn out to be the evil in this book.
Now it does seem that someone might be trying to make some new genre here- calling it ZombPunk in sync with Steam-Punk of course without steam technology and I somehow think it would have been more appropriate to call this Stem-Punk but then the whole idea of a potential for horror would be left out. As it is I'd much rather go for the title of 'The Night of Bread and Fish' although if it's going to be more than one type of fish it should be 'The Night of Bread and Fishes'
There really are no redeemable characters in this story. You have the terrorists against the pod people. I say pod people because at first they seem more like the pod people from the Body Snatchers than anything else. In fact this seemed like a quiet rework of the body snatchers with a twist that the people left are not so much pursued by the pod people as they are phased out by the lack of processed food.(Somehow they all have forgotten how to hunt and then again we don't see much in the line of repopulating the wildlife and such; so maybe that is a factor.) Anyway the Pod People do have that pod people attitude that says we're superior and if you understood that you wouldn't resist.
The book starts out reading as a comedy of errors where things snowball by little misunderstandings until you have the non-stem group becoming terrorists because they feel so threatened and you have at least one of the Stem group thinking they are targeting him because of a coincidental incident. And then you finally have the group targeting him just because.
I read this straight through in one sit and enjoyed it.
Now for the caveat. This book has a few grammar errors. My copy didn't seem to have as many as some readers have claimed. And by way of search I'm fairly confident that this copy has been corrected since those claims. There are still some problems, but it is hard even with professional editing to get them all unless your professional editor has more than two sets of eyes looking at the manuscript and even then it depends on their ability to catch everything. So there are still some errors but nothing distracting. There might still be some style choices that are suspect, but overall this copy is pretty solid.
I think that this qualifies more as good SFF for those types of fans and only the ending comes off a bit zombie-ish. Even then it still seems more pod people especially in some scenes where the pack sniffs out the normals. Overall this is great entertainment.
J.L. Dobias
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![The Honor of the Queen (Honor Harrington, #2)]()
The Honor of the Queen by David Weber
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Honor of the Queen(Honor Harrington) by David Weber
Once more I'm reading the next Honor Harrington novel to try to understand why I like them so much. One might ask why( I'm doing this) and this came about because in trying to read the newest of the series I found myself making constant starts and stops and wondering what has changed. Obviously the most changed factor would seem to be me. (Since some of these books are twenty years old it is that long ago that I first read them.)
I really love this book the first three times I read it and I still do but this time I tried to pay particular attention to why. And I discovered first that the style of writing is one that I would describe for myself as a reader as the writing that reads like a bad LP plays on a player. There are passages that are like a scratch on a record and you suddenly find yourself at the bottom of the page wondering how you managed to skip those last three paragraphs. I realize that in the best description I can give I have been scanning large portions of this book to get to the parts I like.
This in fact is caused by the massive walls of techo-babel that seem so important to the tactics of battle that will play out later. It's quite interesting because it does add some element of depth to that part of the story and it suddenly made me realize that the main character in this story often seems to be the techno-babel. That's not necessarily a bad thing but it can be annoying to some readers. There is still a lot of world building going on here and David has a lot to tell us about this new system where Grayson is. There is a lot of political and religious background that goes into the telling of this story. In fact it all might be considered Techno-Politico-Religio-babel. That's a trifecta destined to either awe or bore.
What I love about these novels is the character of Honor Harrington. She's one of the best female protagonists in this type of science fiction and yet she is in some ways the worst. I say this because David Weber seems to have difficulty in directly accessing the true emotions of Honor Harrington. I believe that its an effort to make her some uber war strategist that might impair this process. Most, not all, of her emotions are throttled until something within the context of her general macho nature goes beyond the pale. Let's translate that to the type of character Clint Eastwood plays so well. The kind that shows few emotions until he's pushed beyond some limit. That means most of the time we see Honor as a dispassionate soldier. Oh sure she has her opinions of politics and other such things but they are all driven and focused into her military career. This is probably quite accurate for what David is going for here, but it creates that sort on one dimensional character that people can't peer around without loosing sight of since the other side of the page is blank.
What David does do is give insight into much of Honor's character through how other characters see her. The problem with that is is that it's no holds barred in the field because it ranges from everyone from close friend to worst foe. Mostly this ends up creating caricature's of these other characters who are being judged by how they perceive the protagonist and that perception is colored by the reader's own opinion of what Honor is (as they see her). The largest window into Honor is in chapter Twenty Six and her reaction to the way the prisoners of war were treated. Unfortunately the focus on the treatment of the women in particular causes the rest to pale, but the overall reaction in Honor is again a good indication of what this woman soldier is all about. Sad to say that's a small portion of this long book.
The interesting part of all of this one dimensional nature of Honor is that in a way David Weber is leaving it open for the reader to fill in a lot of the blanks based on the information and misinformation traveling through the thoughts of others. This is actually normally a good trick in writing-not telling the reader everything and letting them think for themselves. It obviously works quite well here because more people like these books than those who don't. The caveat here is that those who don't can't grasp the fundamental to why they don't like it other than that the characters are all flat.
David has an interesting opinion and take on the directions that politics, religion, and technology might shape the future and unfortunately the reader gets a lot of this in long bouts of telling that leave little to the imagination though sometime it left me scratching my head. The biggest stumbling block for Honor this time might be this sexist thing with the Graysons and its in Chapter Twenty that we see Honor putting the nails to that coffin by her selfless act (which she later tries to minimize by stating she was only protecting herself.)
And just like many of those protagonists of the great movies everyone around Honor gets killed and injured while she walks away with all the guilt and the rewards. Once again the most heroic people are those who have cleaved to this their leader and have marched off to their deaths in defense of honor and country (world).
This is a great read for SFF fans who like a lot of techno-babel and somewhat authentic sounding space battles and strategy.
Once again I loved this story, but I'm not sure if I see the same Honor Harrington that David wrote about by the time I reach the end, and I don't think that that is such a bad thing.
J.L. Dobias
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The Adventures of Miss Mind Shift by Jayme Beddingfield
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Adventures of Miss Mind Shift(Emerald City Nights)Volume 1 by Jayme Beddingfield
I came really close to putting this book down after the first dozen or so pages. I have to admit that I'm glad I forged past that rough patch to watch the rest of the story unfold.
This story is told in first person present tense and I don't have to be reminded how difficult this can be sometimes. Add to that some other writing style decisions and it really was a struggle reading through those first dozen pages to get the pace of things.
The first most difficult thing about first person is trying to avoid sounding like a shopping list with starting every sentence with I. But this is told from the protagonist's point of view and Ruby has already told us how bored she is with her life of crime so it becomes difficult to determine if some of that style was intentional in order to reinforce the mundane quality of her life.
I should warn anyone who is inclined to bleed from the eyes with all the grammar and punctuation anomalies that this has some suspect word choices, some missing words, and probably a bit of excess in punctuation. Combined with the-as many as ten to twelve sentences beginning with-I plus a verb-in a lot of paragraphs it can get distracting. But once you get to the important stuff and get into the story the distraction seems to go away. (Maybe depending on your level of exactitude; I suppose.)
What this story has going for it is a very strong character in Ruby. Ruby has super human abilities but she is fraught with a lot of flaws that get in the way. It's Ruby's struggle with the flaws and her awakening to the destructive path she on that creates a somewhat complex character. She's the kind of person who makes you want to slap her up the side of the head, if you weren't afraid she'd kill you.
Left to her own devices when she was thirteen Ruby was taken in by a family of a sort who also have special powers. They befriended her and taught her how to deal with and use those powers. The problem is that they taught her to become a criminal. Not just a thief but also a murderer. This is part of what has gotten her stuck in her situation with no easy way out. And she's beginning to want out.
The person who saved her (Tristan) and introduced her to this family of criminals is someone she fell in love with. But now Tristan has become an addict to the drug (rift) and has changed. Ruby knows she will never get the old Tristan back but she keeps hanging in there, that's just one of her flaws. In the same way she stays with the gang even as she begins to detest what she has to do. She's never really known any other life and it's difficult for her to cut the cords and start anew.
When she's ordered by Madison, her boss, to kill the street waif, Darcy, Ruby rebels and spares the young girl who reminds her of herself when she was alone and on the street. This and all of her other soul searching lead her to wonder what would have happened if she'd not fallen in with this gang and wondering how she can get out of these destructive relationships. It also compels her to want to protect Darcy from entering into a life like Ruby's.
Because of the more than a handful of grammar and punctuation problems I would downgrade this to a 4.5 but there was so much depth in Ruby's character that I'm going with the 5. As for the style choices made in the way the story was told, I'm leaning toward some of it being a deliberate though dangerous experiment with creating a bit of the atmosphere. I think in order to make their own judgement someone has to read this all the way through.
This is a good SFF and maybe I could list it potentially as Young Adult(mature).
It's not often lately that I find interesting quotes to take from my reading. I, for some reason, found this one compelling.
" Trying not to smoke is like attempting to avoid staring at a person without legs. "
Beddingfield, Jayme (2013-11-08). The Adventures of Miss Mind Shift (Emerald City Nights) (Kindle Location 1151). Sky Portal Publishing. Kindle Edition.
J.L. Dobias
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![Death Whispers (Death, #1)]()
Death Whispers by Tamara Rose Blodgett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Death Whispers(The Death Series,#1) by Tamara Rose Blodgett
I wasn't sure how much I'd like this. Paranormal Young Adult with some romance. It starts out slow and with the protagonist being somewhere between 13 and 14 that's understandable because we're going to see a lot of school time. The young age and the school setting and a lot of the dialogue, not to mention some unusual narrative make this a teen novel teetering on the edge of young adult. But as it goes along it sustains my interest and it makes for an entertaining first novel for a series. Being a grandfather I winced at the too soon early age falling in love thing.
It has a prologue which I think was unnecessary it just needed to be an extra chapter. If there were an epilogue and they stood like book ends or sentries on each end, I might let it slide, but it reads like just another chapter and I'm not sure why a prologue was decide. It doesn't hurt the book because it's just another part so it's not bad; like the one that seem to have marginal content to help move the story.
Caleb Hart is just an average teen, with a lot of growing up to do. He acts and sounds like a teen and that is expected. He hangs with teens and they all act like typical teens and that's expected again. But they live in a world that has moved the bar on the teens and now everyone gets a shot that will tweak their DNA and somewhere around their 14 the birthday many will start manifesting their paranormal gifts. And for Hart its going to be AFTD (Affinity for the Dead) one of the most prized and least sought after gifts. There are levels; five of them, and if Hart were lucky he'd only score a two or three. But Hart is not lucky and he knows he has a five. Hart also has a father who is famous for his research in this area and dad can find something to tone his talent down a bit before he gets tested because if he tests out to a five he'll be like Jeffrey Parker.( and he sort of vanished in the system because of what a level 5 AFTD can do. )For Caleb it starts out simple, he hears dead frogs and a few other unfortunate creatures. Then to prove to his buddies that its AFTD and not queasiness that makes him shun his work in biology he accidentally raises the dead and nearly can't put the poor fellow back in the ground. So of course his parents do what any parent should do and they test his abilities by heading out to raise grandma. That of course could only go bad and it gets worse when some people from school happen by and everyone freaks out while granny is punching a few of the kids around.
Before they put granny back to sleep she tells Caleb that a girl with the name of a stone is going to be his greatest ally and that he needs to protect her, which is great because Caleb has a girl friend he likes named Jade (who test out for Empathy.) In the meantime while trying to keep it all low key Caleb brings a dog back to life before it's life force gets away and he has a new friend in the dog. His mother names the dog Onyx even after having heard what grandma said so I'm not sure what kind of message she's trying to send. Being slightly irresponsible as are many teens Caleb and his group have a devil of a time keeping his talent a secret and they will soon find out there is a secret government project inside the government project that means to take Caleb who may turn out to be even more than what Jeffrey Parker was.
Caleb puts together his team (think scoobies.) They even have a dog. They hunt ghosts and raise the dead and fight the evil and eat lots of cookies, pizza and ice-cream.
This book kept me entertained and I look forward to more, but now for the caveats. This book is not for the faint of heart grammarian. Those who are picky and pernickety should steer clear for a number of reason. There are missing words and the wrong words used in several occasions. There are times when the dialogue is missing a quote mark and I don't mean dialogue that spans paragraphs I mean dialogue that goes right on into or comes right out of narrative with no quote mark and such rapidity that it make the head spin.
This book also has some different style choices. Such as breaking up works or sentences with periods almost like web addresses.
Sunday. At. The. Cemetery.
un.bear.a.ble.”
Blodgett, Tamara Rose (2011-03-30). Death Whispers (The Death Series, #1) (p. 116).(p. 118). . Kindle Edition.
There are several expressions I'm unfamiliar with but I'll let that pass since its been a long time since I was a teen and teen speak is probably different. Punctuation sometimes seems a bit odd, but that's my weak suit also.
All in all there are enough road bumps to make this four star instead of five.
A little editing could have gone a long way. And possibly some of us writers would benefit by not trying to give English lessons within the text of our novels until we get our own grammar sorted out. Some of it was enlightening, but there were suspicious elements in there.
The part with the dog's thoughts were a bit of a different style choice that I'll for the time chalk up to that funny name Onyx.
Overall this is a pretty good Teen Tween Young Adult Paranormal and Occult. Not much for SFF and Dystopia, but one might argue that there are thin weaves of the two in the text. Good plot, good story line, great pacing. I read straight through and cruised past all those road bumps. And I'm looking forward to reading the next two.
J.L. Dobias
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American Goddesses by Gary R. Henry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
American Goddesses by Gary Henry
I enjoyed this story, but for me there were moments when it seemed to be extremely campy.
It's well written although it is of an unusual style which is something it shares with some few other novels I've recently read. There's an excessive amount of dialogue and it's often difficult to give the reader a full depth of the characters from that and that alone. It takes some skill to keep the readers attention with only dialogue. Although this does keep my attention I think it might also account for the feeling that there is a comedy built into this.
I have an old favorite movie called His Girl Friday, which comes from a popular play. It has a lot of banter back and forth that is quick fire and almost leaves the audience breathless at times and I think that's what this reminds me of. The story is written in enough dialogue form that it looks like a screen play and reads a bit like a comedy.
The premise is fresh on the one hand yet overused on another. We have a great amount of female protagonists lately that are endowed with fantastic powers that make them indestructible and I'm not sure if that's all that helpful in trying to portray women with any measure of extra depth. It is nice to see that these women have their weaknesses even when they are powerful but the examination of those weaknesses such as when Megan finds her husband with the other woman are not so much unbelievable as swept under the rug too quickly. In fact her husbands easy conversion almost makes one wonder if her psychic powers were used to sway his mind a bit.
And then I'm not even all that sure how well someone might be reliant upon powers that might be reduced to nothing by their present state of mind.(Although the mind rape might make some argument for those circumstance.)
But this did entertain me and kept me reading all the way to the end so there is a lot to say to that.
This would have made a great young adult story because it really does read that way and it has the feel of having had adult situations and language inserted just to throw people off from making that assessment.
The prologue ( which is more distraction than helping the story along since we don't really see these people again) and the subsequent portrayal of evil organizations of men seem a bit on the excess of trying to villain - ize men in general not to mention a whole diatribe of anti-male sentiment with a contrast that if everything is run by women it will be suddenly all that much better. It's interesting, but the use of all those visuals includes specific elements in the plot that never get resolved they merely stand as 'oh these are horrible things perpetrated by horrible men' and now we have these super women who can fix everything. We do not see our hero's solve but only the tip of the iceberg; while being unaware that there is something massively dangerous underneath.
The only character with enough power to hurt them is another woman and though she makes a thoroughly good villain she's a woman and her existence stands in the way of one prevalent theme in the novel. But she's necessary otherwise there is no conflict, just the hero's squashing the bad guys.
While there were strong women abounding throughout this story I really didn't see any strong characters that really put me into this story to care about them. So though I love to give everyone high marks for their effort I think there was a story in between the dialogue that didn't make it to the paper. This novel could have been longer and much better.
This is a fairly good light read for someone who's looking for that certain something different in their SFF and doesn't take their science too serious.
J.L. Dobias
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On Basilisk Station by David Weber
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
On Baslisk Station by David Weber (Honor Harrington)
I've read this four times and each time I've left enough time-span between to be certain I've forgotten enough that it will grab my attention anew. This time I have it in e-book form, which is just great because I can make notes as I read. Knowing that the three previous times I've read this I still enjoyed it I wanted to figure out just what it is that makes this book so compelling to me.
It has a prologue and these days on-line writer groups will most times try to talk a writer out of doing a prologue. I can see why. This prologue does nothing for me. There is some interesting banter amongst the political heads but they seem to me more like a business meeting discussing the next year sales strategy. But that could be because I'd know business meetings much better than political or military strategy meeting.
So for me the real story begins in chapter one.(Well, I do have to read the prologue because its the setup for what happens at the Baslisk Station.) And this is where the writer groups on-line will tell you to put your hook. (For many of those groups it seems to mean you need some sort of high action dramatic scene that sucks the reader in.--I'm not sure what kind of reader they're trying to suck in though.)
We start with the introduction of Honor Harrington and Nimitz her treecat companion. We get a rather lengthy description of Nimitz first and for me the impression I had was possibly a wolverine mixed with a house cat that's a carnivore except for the occasions it can lay its paws on some celery.(Nimitz as with several other characters have integral parts and these descriptions are useful for later more than they are for now.) After Nimitz's introduction we move to Harrington who we discover is the senior aboard the shuttle that is arriving at the Station Hephaestus where she'll be taking command of her first cruiser,HMS Fearless. Fearless is at Hephaestus for a refit. While Honor mentally reminisces about her academy years and her tour of duty and promotions we also learn a bit about treecats and their relationship to the humans they attach themselves to and why they're allowed aboard vessels. All this information leads to the first mystery which is why her mentor Admiral Courvosier was so vague about the refit that was being effected on her new command.
Most of this might seem pretty bland in its individual pieces, but it's the whole of it that brings me into the story. We next see Honor through the eyes of Lieutenant Commander McKeon, her new exec, who we also find was hoping to draw command of Fearless. He's not happy.
[quote]
Not only was she a full commander, not only did the breast of her tunic bear the embroidered gold star denoting a previous hyper-capable command, but she looked young enough to be his daughter. Well, no, not that young, perhaps, but she could have been his niece. Of course, she was third-generation prolong. He'd checked the open portion of her record closely enough to know that, and the anti-aging treatments seemed to be proving even more effective for second- and third-generation recipients. Other parts of her record—like her penchant for unorthodox tactical maneuvers, and the CGM and Monarch's Thanks she'd earned saving lives when HMS Manticore's forward power room exploded—soothed his resentment a bit, but neither they nor knowing why she seemed so youthful could lessen the emotional impact of finding the slot he'd longed for so hopelessly filled by an officer who not only oozed the effortless magnetism he'd always envied in others but also looked as if she'd graduated from the Academy last year. Nor did the bright, unwavering regard the treecat bent upon him make him feel any better.[/quote]
David Weber. On Basilisk Station (Kindle Locations 263-268). Baen Books.
When McKeon reveals that are they're refitting with a new Grav lance and they've gutted a few of their tried and true armament, Honor shows her knowledge and perhaps a bit more.
[quote]
He watched her closely, and she didn't—quite—wince. Which, he reflected, spoke well for her self-control. Energy torpedoes were quick-firing, destructive, very difficult for point defense to stop. . . and completely ineffectual against a target protected by a military-grade sidewall. That, obviously, was the reason for the grav lance, yet if a grav lance could (usually) burn out its target's sidewall generators, it was slow-firing and had a very short maximum effective range. But if Captain Harrington was aware of that, she allowed no trace of it to color her voice.[/quote]
David Weber. On Basilisk Station (Kindle Locations 323-327). Baen Books.
Everything we've learned about Honor and the description of the universe (the shuttle; the station; the ship) in which she lives has been peppered into the first chapter to lead up to the basic realization that her new command is going to be much more of a challenge than she'd have expected and that there will be personal conflicts of which she's yet to become aware. And that's the hook.
It has taken us over 15 pages and 5000 words into the story until I am fully cemented in to where I want to invest in the rest of the book. So its all those baby steps from the start of chapter one to the end that entice me into going on.
In the next chapters I find out what kind of stuff Honor Harrington is made of because things get better for a bit and then they get worse until someone decides to bury her and her crew on a dead-end assignment at Baslisk station placing Honor under the command of a man she has some bad history with. Then while doing her job she uncovers a plot and some criminal negligence.
Honor carries this novel, but the people around her, how they react to her when she comes on board, how they begin to rally around her as thing get tough and she begins to prove herself, are all integral to how we perceive Honor's growth.
That sums up what I like about the book there are a multitude of other facets that I'll leave to other people since I've never been in a space battle and have no idea how realistic the ones in here are.
That said I'll add my usual warning to people. For those who are pick or pernickety. There were some grammatical errors usually missing words. Had those missing words been in dialogue or in character's thoughts I might let them pass. To some there may be a lot or even too much exposition because there is a lot to cover in creating this world. I think because David Weber was leading to a dramatic battle at the end there was an over emphasis on the machinery that would be used. Possibly the politics and art of war in space might be drawn out a bit. Again it's all a necessary part of building the world or universe in which Honor's stories take place.
--------------------------------
There are some areas some readers might find questionable such as the narrative in two instances below, which stand as counterpoint to one another, but don't readily seem to serve as much a purpose in moving the story forward than to tell us a bit of dimensional information about Hamish Alexander.
Alexander plays a much smaller role in this novel than in some.
------
[quote]
He turned away from the window, folding his hands behind him, and surveyed the office of the First Space Lord. The room was paneled in light-toned native woods, not the extravagance it would have been on one of the inner-worlds, and there was a fireplace in one corner. It was functional, not merely ornamental, and that, Alexander thought, was an extravagance. The Admiralty Building was over a Manticoran century-and-a-half old and little more than a hundred stories tall, a modest little structure for a counter-gravity civilization, but that fireplace's chimney bored up through thirty-odd stories of air shafts and ventilation ducting. He could only marvel at the stubborn insistence of whoever had designed the building, especially in a climate which required air-conditioning far more often than heating.[/quote]
David Weber. On Basilisk Station (Kindle Locations 2035-2040). Baen Books.
Fat flakes of snow fell like silent, feathery ghosts in the windless sub-arctic night beyond the window. Hamish Alexander stood watching them through the thick, double-paned plastic and felt the welcome heat of the fire against his back. His study was in the oldest part of White Haven, the sprawling Alexander family seat, and the walls of native stone were over two meters thick. Unlike some commodities, rock had been plentiful when White Haven was first built, and enough of it worked just as well as more esoteric off-world insulation would have.
He turned back to the huge fireplace and added another log. He adjusted it with the poker, settling the native hemlock (which, in fact, bore very little resemblance to the Old Earth tree of the same name) into the bed of coals, then straightened and replaced the poker in its stand as he checked the wall clock again. It was twelve past comp, well into the twenty-seven-minute midnight "hour" officially called Compensate that adjusted Manticore's 22.45-hour day to permit use of Standard Reckoning time units, and his eyebrow rose again. Even allowing for the time zone difference, it was unusual for his brother to screen him this late—and even more unusual for him to specify the exact time at which he would call.
David Weber. On Basilisk Station (Kindle Locations 3724-3733). Baen Books.
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There are other style issues that don't always agree with on-line writer forums and on-line writer groups. So if a reader subscribes heavily into those, this novel might disappoint them. On the other hand for those who want to examine what a traditional publisher publishes then this would be a good book to start with when looking at Baen publishing.
Dialogue in On Baslisk Station often seems to make everyone sound the same (That's not so much a complaint of mine as it is one of a friend. I concur but it's not an issue with me.) This one tone dialogue tends to artificially flatten out all the characters. Most of the characters in this novel gain their depth more in how other characters see them. (This occurs sometimes with inner thoughts and might look more like telling than showing.) Once again this was not an issue to me and probably why I did not perceive the characters as one dimensional.
Lovers of Sci-Fi SFF and are not picky about some issues should love this book.
This time around I gained a better appreciation of the other characters around Honor and found that they seemed to be more heroic than she in that they followed her into combat supporting her one hundred percent. There were times when David Weber's depiction of command reminded me of fast food management, except when I sent someone grudgingly off to take care of the fry station they generally didn't die. Though I did have one pass out on me.
J.L. Dobias
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The Sixth Line of Defense by Shiva Winters
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Sixth Line of Defense by Shiva Winters
Shiva does it again.
Shiva Winters has a style a draws me right into the character right in the beginning. In this case she sounds like your average troubled teen who has to deal with a lot of intercity thugs at school. Only Shiva (this is also the name of the protagonist) has been bounced from school to school because she has a specific boiling point where she can no longer container herself in the face of adversity. She's proactive and she's tough and she doesn't back down and rarely loses the fight. She's been shifted from one bad school to another because of this.
Shiva is a special case as we soon find out both through her and through her handler Devon who has something in common with Shiva. Both are genetic soldier of a bygone era that were created to win the war and save the day. Except Shiva is from the 6th generation of these soldiers. Devon is from the 3rd gen and gens 4 and 5 were so horrible that the ones that didn't get put down are on ice. That means that everyone expects Shiva from gen 6 to be the worst.
That's pretty much the set-up for this story.
This book also contains a theme common to Shiva Winter's other writing. That theme is that there is a special bond between people that goes beyond friendship, sex, and even sometimes love. It knows no bounds when it happens and it's a profound experience and in some case as with the Salak'patan Series it can be deadly to both parties when on member of the bond dies.
This book also contains a heavy lesbian theme which is introduced fairly soon in the novel. Shiva and Vala meet at a special school (one that Devon has found for Shiva) and they bond and become very close in a short time, since that is the nature of the bond it makes the quick romance become somewhat believable.
Besides the bond itself we find that Vala has some special significance in the plot of the story.
Ultimately because of the failure to integrate the 4s and the 5s into society the military has been reluctant about the 6s and have only tried to integrate a handful of which all have failed except Shiva and as we mentioned Shiva has problems. Part of the plot is that someone wants them to have problems because they want to bury them deep. It eventually comes out that it's all part of a plot that hinges on eliminating the 6s who in part were created in-case the enemy was ever able to compromise the 4s and 5s and turn them against the military.
As the blurb mentions this story is about what it means to be human and that is definitely examined in a number of ways throughout the Narrative.
And that brings us to Shiva's style of writing. Her narrative is rich and sometimes her sentences are long and descriptive. And these are all things I enjoy about her writing. I will caution those who are severe about grammar spelling and general editing that this once again is not the book for you. Of those I took time to mark there are over 30 missing words or double words or things like than instead of then and in some cases ambiguous statements that sound wrong in context which might be more missing words or misspelled.
This is a good SFF for Young Adults and it contains some reasonable lesbian romance.
J.L. Dobias
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Ill-Timed Entanglements by Kassandra Lamb
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Ill-Timed Entanglements (The Kate Huntington Mystery Series #2 )by Kassandra Lamb
I loved this Kate Huntington mystery. I'm not even certain how I obtained this book. It might have been recommended from reading another mystery. I do like mysteries. I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle and many of Agatha Christie's and Rex Stout's Nero Wolf even Poe's Auguste Dupin. I also enjoy those popular television mysteries such as Columbo, Hart to Hart, Murder She Wrote, Munk, and even Psych. I recall many of these from a time when I'd sit with friends and we'd actively help solve the crime before the intrepid detectives.
It was hard to refrain from trying to solve the mystery so much that within the first 10 percent of the novel I was certain I had the answer. Betty Franklin is an elderly writer who is living in a retirement home and making a modest living off current best sellers when her agent, Sara Burnett calls with the exciting news that her latest book the publisher is picking up was so well received that they want two more and are offering a large advance. But then a woman in Betty's writers group, Doris Blackwell, accuses Betty of stealing her work and putting it into that latest novel and Betty has to call Sara and delay things until the legalities are all covered. Doris ends up murdered and Betty become s the prime suspect.
[spoiler]So I have this all figured out because Sara has a lot on the line here and we know how ruthless agents can be.[not really spoiler]
So that was too easy and Kassandra Lamb proceeds to show me how far off that might be. There are a thousand suspect, well more than a handful and then some.
I've not read the previous book but this book stands well alone and I think I got the gist of some of what happened in the first book, but if you are someone who can't stand having things spoiled and you haven't read the first book you probably should. As for me I'll be looking for the first book because I enjoyed these characters so much and would like to see how well they were 'drawn' in the previous book.
The mystery is the focus and there is more than one murder so plenty to go around with all the suspects. And we thought elderly communities were boring, bingo bazaars. Kate Huntington is a psychotherapist getting ready to return to work after maternity leave. -real spoiler- she is returning after being widowed and becoming a single mother to her daughter Eddie (named after her father).
As the story picks up Kate is enlisted by her friend Bob Franklin to travel to New York with his aunt Betty to iron out the wrinkle. Of course they never make it to New York because Betty is a suspect in a murder case. Within a short time the cast of detectives begin to assemble as the team begins to form with the purpose of quickly laying to rest any doubt of Betty's innocence. And the reader soon finds out that that is not happening soon and the body count is going to start going up.
This book contains some pop references and some are presented in a sort of tongue in cheek humorous fashion. They come close to cliche but mostly pop references. One in particular is to Perry Mason and this book does bring to mind the team of Perry Mason, Paul Drake, and Della Street. Only in this case Della (Kate) is going to have a large part in solving the case. With all these references I was almost not sure when one of the characters calls out "Oh Rob!" and if you don't understand that one then you are too young.
A few times a character makes up his own words and is called on the carpet for it.(Is this a writer-reader-writer group dig? I'm not sure.)
This book has a lot of characters, but they are not that difficult to keep track of.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention there are a few mistakes in the editing of the book nothing glaring just wrong words, I think. And for those who are sensitive to head hopping there were a few times I had to stop and think. In some instances it's limited to two characters ping ponging back and forth and Kassandra does do a lot of character thoughts . I have no problem with two characters and sometimes in romance it almost becomes appropriate but might work better if they were more well defined with pseudo scene breaks. There were times where a scene had the thoughts of at least three characters and those were the ones that might have given me pause. So yes beware of that. Most of the time it was quite smoothly done and had it been confined mostly between Skip and Kate I might not have even noticed. As it is Kassandra handles it quite well overall.
Good Mystery for those who like the who dun its and a healthy dose of romance to go along.
J.L. Dobias
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The Object: Book One by Winston Emerson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Object: Book One (Object Series) by Winston Emerson
I really enjoyed this novel although I'm not that attached the the horror mayhem type of stories like this. This draws some similarities to H.G. Wells War of the Worlds, which again is a good novel just not my favorite. This novel takes place in Louisville instead of England and also has some similarities to the novel series The Beginning of the End by Michael Edward.
Winston Emerson creates some strong and believable characters and the writing is similar to that high literary style where the characters are drawn out well with all the flaws and foibles attached. We could have used a better balance of characters to offset the horror that was soon to ensue. There are several characters that stand out as potential for the reader to sympathize with, but a majority are pretty flawed and broken and though there might be opportunities to draw sympathy most of those characters become repulsive. There are a few of the gritty that redeem themselves, but in this type of fiction many of these characters die just as or just before you get to really know them.
There's a sense of plot somewhere in the background but because this has been published in the manner that it has been written within a blog-sphere the plot is mostly hanging rather loosely and this would be best read in its entirety, which at the moment is going to be difficult because not much more has been written and published yet.
I would give this five stars, but there are road-bumps that I couldn't get past. There are two characters that I would chose as the outstanding protagonists and they would be Lillia and Hayden. But those two characters take a dramatic turn in their life that may or may not have changed them entirely into unknown and unknowable characters. Because things are left pretty much hanging as in not explained and these are the two characters a reader might hang onto it becomes a sticky point among several sticky points.
The next sticky point is the mystery about the object. From front to back the reader doesn't get much of an advance in understanding to the tune that it's still not certain whether it has good or bad or indifference in its intent.
The next sticky point is the invasion of the body snatchers nature that the story is taking and the fact that it has the appearance that there is a contest or animosity between the snatched and it's difficult to tell if this is a side effect to the personality of the abducted body or if there are two different types of aliens or if in fact it's some sort of game or field exercise.
Once again as with this type of novel; the many well drawn characters are slowly being killed off as they meet together for some unknown purpose. It would almost seem at this point that most of the deaths are not directly perpetrated by the aliens unless we count in the panic and fear much the same as was caused by the Orson Wells radio broadcast. (Again many similarities here.)
This is a good story for the gritty characterizations and the portrayal of people caught in specific self destructive social structures within the big city. It has a good number of shock factors built into the narrative.
I think it would be best served whole though rather than piecemeal with the cliffhanger. Perhaps as the series plays out all of the mysteries that are brought before the reader will be answered eventually.
Of course the way that it is played out here might well be correct for the Genre it is trying to target.
J.L. Dobias
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The Emperor's Edge by Lindsay Buroker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Emperor's Edge by Lindsay Buroker
I had this one in my kindle and of course one reason was that it is free. I decided that since I'd delved into steam-punk that I'd take a look see and decide if I should read it. The first thing I noticed was the humor- I'm going out on a limb here because humor is so subjective and at the risk of offending Lindsay Buroker I'm going to say I saw some definite humor in the text and subtext. I kept notes if anyone is interested in what I found so humorous. I kept getting this feeling that Lindsay may have spent a few hours somewhere in the past watching a lot of Rocky and Bullwinkle. This was not a bad thing-at least not for me.
So partway into the story I realized I hadn't done my usual thing, which is to look at the one and two star reviews. As usual many of those go on a bit about how they can't for the life of them fathom why there are so many 4 and 5 star reviews and how they felt cheated and wanted to warn people off. I love a challenge and so I jumped back into the fray and now I'm going to explain why I feel free to give this a 5 star rating.
It must be that like humor some forms of entertainment are also subjective.
Corporal Amaranthe Lokdon is and Enforcer for the Turgonian Empire, she's the only female enforcer so she has a lot to live up to and lot to of resistance to handle. She also has a slacker partner, Corporal Wholt, who has pretty much left her out in the cold having to explain his absence to her superiors. This is particularly distressing to her since her partner is up for a promotion that she clearly thinks she deserves.
When they reach the scene of the crime and she begins to hone her detective skills she is confronted with more disillusionment from her fellow officers when they decide she'd best be suited for cleanup detail. Admittedly though, Amaranthe is her own worst enemy in this respect because she seems to suffer an OCD compulsion to clean and straighten things. This is one of the most humorous aspects of her character and it makes one wonder is this OCD or just social training that keeps kicking in. She even finds she has to stifle the urge to clean in order to ensure she doesn't contaminate the scene of the crime by overt cleanliness.
While foiling a robbery Amaranthe meets the Emperor Sespian Savarsin who may have happened in just to observe her at work, however it is he seems to become enamored with her without her knowledge. It is in part this seeming chance meeting that begins the downward path of Amaranthe from Enforcer to fugitive. But not before she is given the assignment of her career, she's to assassinate the deadly assassin Sicarius and this could be the means to the promotion she's been looking for. The assignment comes from the Emperor's own Commander of the Armies Hollowcrest and during that interview Amaranthe once again falls into the sphere of the Emperor and has a few interesting revelations that will eventually help her better understand why her luck seems to travel south so quickly.
Amaranthe finds herself on the Enforcer's most wanted list and from there she embarks on life of crime with an unlikely array of allies. What's entirely entertaining about her cohorts is that each has their own social standing and quirks that make them only mildly suited for her plan and create an interesting and complex interaction. The Emperors life is in danger and the only people who know are a band of criminals under Amaranthe's direction and a conspiracy of criminals who want to see the Emperor assassinated, the Empire destroyed or at least a puppet empire set up.
Amaranthe's intel has unveiled the existence of some criminals who seem to have an agenda that is economically motivated so her plot is to threaten to disrupt the economy so that she can draw these criminals out into the open to reveal them in time to save the Emperor.
This is really a well crafted story that only errs in that humor is subjective and to some people may run flat or even go above and beyond them and distract from the story. Even so, cutting through all that the astute reader should have no problem seeing the development of the plot and enjoy the development of the characters. This is part of a series of books but has a satisfactory ending that makes it complete within itself.
Now I could be facetious and say this book was so good that I can't understand why it has any bad reviews, but really each to his own. It's often a matter of perception and whether someone dismisses the book for perceived problems and scans through the rest or simply doesn't finish it. I've always said if someone says something won't work or isn't any good they should never be put in charge of any phase of it because they will be out to make sure it doesn't succeed.
That much said: I'll offer my usual warning that this book does contain some errors, not nearly as many as I've seen in others but they are there. Sometimes its words missing spaces between them other times words are missing. Does it look like the author was spelunking into the thesaurus to find words, maybe, but maybe she was just following those ridiculous online 'writers' groups that insist that you should never use the same word twice within a certain distance to each other. Or possibly, since I never found any word that didn't mean what it said within the context, just possibly she chose to use those words with a purpose. Lindsay Buroker does seem to have a slight different style to her writing that shows up enough to stand out sometimes, but it is a good and refreshing style that is refreshing because it's different from the usual cookie cutter writing coming out of some of these online 'writer' forums. Could she use some more editing, couldn't we all, but I didn't find anything that distracted me from enjoying the story or following the well written plot-line. Would I read more?
Yes.
This is a good story for SFF fans, Mostly fantasy and not for the people who need a lot of solid science. It does qualify for steam-punk as there are enough elements of steam driven technology evident although it is not the main driving force of the story and I'm not so sure about Victorian dress. It has elements of magic, but it is not the only steam-punk I've read that uses elements of magic. It's a good Young Adult Adventure story and even has an element of mystery with well defined characters to drive the story.
Thanks Lindsay for a good entertaining read.
J.L. Dobias
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![The Sixth Discipline (Haven #1)]()
The Sixth Discipline by Carmen Webster Buxton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Sixth Discipline (Haven) by Carmen Webster Buxton
I really liked this story and found myself immersed from the first page and onward.
The Sixth Discipline is yet one more of those kidnapped novels that seem so popular out there. What makes this one different for me was the way it grabbed my interest from the start and kept it. It was not the intense action and a massive seat of the pants type of hook that every other author seems to think the reader needs. It was more a subtle gentle drawing into the mystery that surrounds the story. It kept me reading it almost straight through.(I did have to stop to sleep and then go to work.)
The story starts with Ran-Del a simple hunter of the Sansoussy people of the Falling Water Clan. Only we quickly find that there is nothing simple about the Sansoussy people. Right away we are acquainted with the Disciplines as Ran-Del uses them to calm himself after being shot with some sort of paralyzing agent. The people who capture him are from the city and seem to know a lot about his people. Once they realize their massive dose has failed to render him unconscious (via the disciplines) they give him something more to make him collapse into darkness.
I found that even though the excitement in most of the scenes seemed a bit muted when compared with many action yarns, Carmen Webster Buxton knows how to tell a good story well; blending mystery and intrigue and romance. Ran-Del's character is interesting and I quite agree with his attitude toward being kidnapped. And though his primary kidnapper seems to have a good self justifiable reason for this crime Baron Stefan Haydon could seriously work on his methods. It could almost be comical when his daughter, Francesca seems to alternately go along almost complacently sometimes and other times is on the verge of rebellion against her father's strange plan. Either way kidnapping is kidnapping and that's really no way to find your daughter a good mate or to make friends.
Partly by plan and part by accident or perhaps part by way of the Psy/Precog nature of the Falling Water Clan Stefan's plans go just a bit south when the tables get turned. His daughter gets a chance to experience this whole thing from the other side and the reader gets to find that the Falling Water Clan is almost as bat crazy as Francesca's father in the form of Ran-Del's Great grandfather a shaman who is a seer who has a vision about Ran-del and Francesca.
Stefan Hayden wants to preserve his family line and fortune and ensure his daughter's safety in a city that is full of rich families that truck in plots and intrigue and his worries will prove to be well founded. His solution is to bring in an outsider (Ran-Del) who has special empathic abilities that will help his daughter survive especially if something happens to Stefan.
Ran-Del's clan is all about family and continuing the family line. But the shaman (his great grandfather) seems to have that handled even if he must give up his family's youngest male in the line, Ran-Del.
So the question becomes can larceny and destiny lead to true love? There is certainly a lot to love about these two potential lovers.
There's a whole lot of interesting world-building as we learn both about the city people and the Sansoussy people along with the estranged couple as they each try to cope within the others world. At some point midst the alternating kidnappings the reluctant couple find themselves being thrust into a sort of arranged deranged engagement.
Carmen Webster Buxton has a style of writing that is easy flowing and if there are any sentence structure problems they somehow got past me as I whipped through the pages. I did find a few problems of missing words, but over all I'd say less than a handful of nitpicks, although for those sensitive to those issues you may see a few.
This is good SFF Young Adult Romance Adventure and though usually the kidnap/love stories make me cringe because of the improbability of seriously falling in love with your kidnapper, this one at least balances the tables on the players and manages to deliver some good character interaction.
J.L. Dobias
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![Astra: Synchronicity]()
Astra: Synchronicity by Lisa Eskra
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Astra: Synchronicity By Lisa Eskra
I enjoyed reading this one. It's a bit of a light in most ways though Lisa Eskra took on an ambitious task and approached it from a slightly different angle than I've seen in the past. For a first effort I think she did fairly well, but the most important part is that it gained my interest and kept it throughout the book. There was a slight shock factor when getting to the end and realizing it's the end and wanting to have more story. But this is a trilogy and there will be more. This; at the very least and best is not like those serialized snippets I've too often seen here.(The ones that are 16 to 30 some pages and barely have time to introduce the characters.) This is a full fledged 200 some page book that to my estimation qualifies as a novel and even though some points are left unresolved the reader is left at a place that is in no way less than where some of the John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs novels often left the reader.
Synchronicity takes on the question of psions in a world that hates people with psychic abilities. This is reminiscent of the book Slan by A.E. VanVogt. But Lisa Eskra takes her own slant on the issue.
In the Astra universe Earth has been ruined and is no longer habitable the process that caused this has possibly created a whole new branch in the tree of mankind that have psionic abilities. In a sort of dystopic way, but in this treatment it takes a back seat to the story, the Psion's have to renew their energy by sucking the life out of normals(Mind Rape, which is fatal).(Although they can also suck the life out of each other if it comes to that.) What they suck is the Gamma-mine, a neurotransmitter that regulates the psionic potential. Mankind has left earth and colonized other worlds and have split into three main factions the PAU, AF and UE. None of the faction have any affection for the psions and they each have their different degree of tolerance towards them. In most cases they try in some way to regulate them when they are not trying to kill them.
Magnius Zoleki one of the main protagonists is a psion who has been hiding his abilities. He's even successfully hidden them from his present wife, Lyneea. That wife hates psions because they murdered her parents so it's understandable that when she discovers the secret she files for divorce. This whole scenerio puts Magnius in danger because his secret is likely to come out to the whole of Astra. Magnius has many more secrets including that hes running from the Psion's; in specific the leader Aliane and her consort Zingeri who send an assassin named Tiyuri to capture Magnius.
Amii Martin has amnesia, with a condition described by one character as a fugue state though it might be a specific type with selective amnesia because she has not created a whole new identity and she has clear memories that allow her to function on a high level with many complex tasks. She finds out she is the alleged daughter and assistant of Dr. Xander Adams who is attempting to create a functional android or robot. The Dr. is on the run and being pursued because he has stolen valuable equipment to continue his work. Dr. Xander claims that Amii Martin was struck on the head which is not a consistent factor with fugues so we'll have to wait and see how that works out.
Through some quirk Magnius and Amii are brought together along with the crews of two ships, the Kearsarg and the Schenectady(captained by Lyneea's sister Ardi.) And they are introduced to Nadine Taylor who is a well know psion married to a politician of the AF.
If that's not enough, there has been a first contact situation involving Schenectady and the aliens known as Xurianian's.
Honestly speaking with so much going on; 260 pages was really not enough to do total justice to the story.
This results in a slight disjointedness as we seem to fast-forward through and past some important elements such as the actual point of contact in the first contact. So if I had any nitpicks it would be that there needed to be about a hundred more pages of narrative.
Lastly I can't go without mentioning the grammar errors. Because I try not to include them in the star score I try to be sure to mention them for the picky reader. There are a larger number than normal (for some people zero is normal but for my taste I can abide a handful.) Probably the only one that sticks out in my mind is the recurrence of the word lied where lay belongs, which is almost understandable since lay normally takes an object such as 'lay the book down' and lie does not have the object such as 'I lie down' and the problem comes when the past form of lie is lay and not lied. Anything else in the grammar and sentence structure that created problems were mostly transparent where the lied just stuck out like fingernail on chalkboard.
I think this is a good light read for people who like SFF for young adults with less emphasis on the Science part of the science fiction. There were enough interesting mysteries in this one to make me interested in following up with the rest of the series to see how those resolve.
J.L. Dobias
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A Desert Called Peace by Tom Kratman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A Desert Called Peace by Tom Kratman. (Cerrera)
I've let this one sit in my kindle for quite a while before I finally decided to read it. Obviously one reason for downloading it was that it's free. It's also long. I enjoyed it and there are a few friends I have to whom I would recommend it because they love these kinds of novels. This is science fiction mostly because it takes place on another planet known as Terra Nova. The bulk of the story could well have taken place on Earth in some strange dystopia or parallel universe.
A Desert Called Peace (ADCP) is similar to Robert Heinlein's Starships Troopers (ST) minus the bug war. Some people might take that poorly, those who don't like ST, I mean it as a sort of complement but mostly just a simple comparison and my own reaction to what ADCP reminded me of. The book is like a recruitment poster and or propaganda campaign much as ST was. I will admit as far as readability ADCP seemed better. But for myself there were large portions of the narrative I could have done without to the tune that I had to watch myself every time I was tempted to scan past those places where the author described the weaponry and munitions and the alternatives and viability of each specific tool of warfare. As I mentioned I have some friends who really eat that stuff up, not so much myself.
The author has the credentials and seems to know his stuff and wants to let the reader know. Once again I'm not a fan of five hundred pages of deadly boot-camp to be followed by 50 pages of real combat. The thing is that the book, although heavy in the description of the armament and gear and the trials and tribulations of training, is about how the main character starting out in a simple life of retirement from service and building to become almost a mirror of his enemies. This aspect reminded me of some of the suspense thrillers (Shibumi by Trevanian) I've read where the secret agent or mercenary is trying to retire and gets thrust back into the game by someone attacking his loved ones.(The single weakness they have.) This story is no different in that respect, because Cerrera,Patrico Hennessey de Cerrera known as Patrick Hennessey and later as the Blue Jinn, loses his wife to the actions of some terrorist whose act almost parallels the twin towers destruction.
(There also is a sub plot in inter-rum chapters that runs parallel describing a past Cerrera who also was drawn into war despite himself)
Cerrera grieves a short time and then decides on revenging his family. One irony built into this story is that to become like his enemy and better understand his enemy he has to understand that the enemy is motivated highly by family, protecting the family and revenging the family. For some reason he doesn't understand that for a long time and he fails to see it even when many of his new found allies have the same value system. Basically he is blind to the fact that right from the start he has had a jump-start at becoming like his enemy. Needless it is this revenge that fuels him that makes him more dangerous than he would be normally. Cerrera is dangerous in his own right because he is a student of war. At the time of the atrocity he is collecting data from former enemies about the final battle, in which he'd conquered them while he was working for the FSC.
Now he will use those contacts to create a school for his army of revenge.
This is where we have a slight questionable wrinkle in the continuum. The story is confusing with a lot of jumping back and forth between timelines because we do need some history and world building to take place. Roughly we're about 450 years in the future and women are still treated mostly the same as they are today and are not allowed into combat. This is the world as Tom Kratman builds it so it stands as is and it's just curious to me that they might have even gone backwards by that point in time. Although to be fair the people who colonized the planet contained enough elements to support that possibility.
At some point along the way the story seems to do an insidious turn on the reader. Perhaps it's amid all the gleaming armor and new toys that are so eloquently placed as distractions. Up to that point Patrico Cerrera is the protagonist we sympathize with, who has just cause to seek his revenge. But he begins to cross the hazy line that pushes back any sympathy or empathy and the remainder of the book seems to have few if any redeeming characters for the reader to latch onto and even those few are minor characters at best.
Perhaps this is planned to show a part of the horror of war or perhaps the Desert Called Peace(ADCP) is more similar to The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslev Hasek(TGSS) than anything else. TGSS is a dark comedy about the first world war. The only real difference between these two is that in TGSS everyone was incompetent whereas in ADCP Cerrera's forces at the least are portrayed as competent. It would seem in ADCP the incompetent might have been removed by attrition where in TGSS it appeared the competent are the ones eliminated by attrition. Also Cerrera's philosophy seemed unique to this book in that he expected every man of any rank to come back from maneuvers with dirty hands and sweaty brow or they'd answer to him .
When we reach the point of real battle the reader is introduced to the law of war concept. Basically the civil code that combatants should follow during war. This is introduced for a dual effect of giving the protagonist back and edge of humanity in trying to abide by these rules and showing how the enemy abuses them and uses them to their advantage. It also shows the supposed cunning intellect of Cerrera as he stays within the law most of the time and continues to hold control of the situation. The LoW that we see are a somewhat abbreviated edition if my feeble attempts to research were entirely fruitful. I'm sure that the author has a much better grasp of the entirety of the law to justify the brevity he has handed the reader. Trying to keep up with it can be quite complex and probably does lend to some bit of variety in interpretation.
I'm not all that certain how torturing prisoners while interrogating them actually falls in all of the laws of war. I take it from the context of the book that it must be frowned upon. The torture is only one of several different elements that show up in the book that might cause some readers to leave their comfort zone. There are atrocities preformed against women and children most often designed to make the bad guys look worse. There is at least one questionable spot, where someone is killing women who have been allowing themselves to be used by the bad guys to be kidnapped to obtain ransom, that might implicate the good guys in murder as a reprisal. But by that time the good guys and the bad guys just aren't that far away from each other.
This is a book I could easily love/hate with so many elements I don't agree with. But with good writing it is often the emotional response that tells me if the piece is good. I don't have to agree with it or like the characters or even feel comfortable with the plot for it to be well written. If it evokes a strong emotion, even if it might not be the emotion that the author expects, it can still stand as a good work.
This is a good book for people who like War stories with lots of descriptive elements about the styles of weapons and combat. Even those enthusiastic about war strategy might find this of interest. The Science Fiction is incidental.
J.L. Dobias
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Magnificent Devices by Shelley Adina
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Magnificent Devices 4-book Bundle by Shelley Adina
I initially obtained the first book Lady of Devices free and thoroughly enjoyed the story and the characters to the point of not being able to pass up the great bargain of the 4 book bundle. I thought if they were even only half as well done as the first I couldn't go wrong. I set them aside for a bit before getting to them, but when I started I couldn't put the whole group down until I finished.
Lady Claire or Claire Trevelyan daughter of Viscount St. Ives is one of the most remarkable female protagonists to come along. At the age of 17 she has been brought up proper to become a lady who will soon be offering her hand to the most eligible gentleman she can snare. The problem for Lady Claire is that despite all the efforts to cow and mold her into a pleasant perfect petticoat-ed proper lady she has other plans that can't include that gentlemen under her societies present circumstances. She wants to go to college to obtain a degree in engineering so that she can continue to pursue the passion she already has for designing and improving upon the steam driven technology that are emerging into the present era. Of course her goals are simply absurd in her day and age and she has an uphill battle, although the hill looks more like a cliff.
A dreadful event changes her life and perhaps is what catapults her into having to use her wits to survive. Her father fails in a desperate gamble with combustion engines and ruins not only himself but a large number of investors. His subsequent suicide leaves his family trying to scramble up from the ashes to avoid poverty. Despite her mothers protests and preaching Lady Claire manages to free herself from tradition long enough to attempt to find a temporary job that will help her put herself through college. Because everything that Claire proposes to do is against the grain of societies rules she has a hard battle before her.
Early on we discover one of Lady Claire's most prized possessions is her father's steam landau, which she uses to get around the city. It is through the theft of the landau, while she's wandered into an unsavory part of the city, that she begins to really show her mettle. Not knowing what she is facing she attempts to recover her landau from the thieves. This leads to the discovery that the thieves are mostly children. Perhaps it's a bit of that ingrained mother instinct that ultimately leads to Lady Claire taking over the 'gang'. The gang has since passed her landau off to another more dangerous gang and in exchange for Lady Claire teaching them how to make gaseous explosive devices they promise to help her gain back the landau. In the end Lady Claire ends up killing a man (Lightning Jackson) and beginning her life of crime.
Lady Claire continues to search for a job while she rides herd over the gang of youths and spends her free time teaching them mathematics, chemistry, reading, writing, mechanical engineering, various poker hands and all the essentials including bomb building. Her search for a job intersects with an old family friend James Selwyn who has a business colleague Andrew Malvern who is designing a new way to make coal more efficient. James Selwyn immediately comes off as a bit of a stuffy self-involved character who has only one vision of what a woman's place in society is. This is so narrow that it precludes the probability that his efforts will damage his chances of completing the project of creating Hyper-efficient coal. Despite James effort Claire and Andrew must work around James to succeed.
Eventually Lady Claire will find herself torn between the professed affections of these two men.
The second book has a spot that I found to be a point of epiphany for Claire. Claire knows that if she wanted to make many things in her life easier she could Marry James as he keeps insisting he wants her to do. James has gone as far as to manipulate things in his favor despite his seeming distaste for most of what Claire represents. Because of James's cruel and insensitive nature she know that his final goal is to separate her from her life goals and from her new found family of the children she has been sheltering. She has made the children a promise and James intends on forcing her to break that promise and at this point of the book Lady Claire has a moment of clarity where she realizes that her first commitment is to the children, her new family, and that anyone who comes into her life has to be able to accept them. Clearly the children are as important to her as her goal to go to a university and become an engineer. Lady Claire seems to be more than willing and capable of handling the requirements of the average woman while still striving to obtain something that far surpasses every woman.
Lady Claire is the Lady of Devices but more appropriately she is later described as the Lady of Resources which defines her much better. Lady Claire does have a mind and a inclination for devices but she seems less the inventor and more the innovator of other inventions. She surrounds herself with others with valuable skills and has set herself up as a leader of a small army that includes several other ladies of resources. James can't tolerate this and Andrew can only marvel at it all (and they only know the half of it). That does not mean that these two men are weak or less than men. James typifies everything that Lady Claire had to fight and overcome while Andrew is more tolerant and finds himself puzzling over the old paradigm of social order and this new vision that he sees working not only with Lady Claire but in the children she has in her charge. Even Lady Claire struggles with the whole new paradigm when she finds herself stifling the twins more often than not. It is hard to let go and realize that these young girls and all of her children are no longer ordinary.
A majority of the successes of Lady Claire and her charges stems from not weak and inept male characters, but more so from a real existing mental attitude ingrained in the minds of those men. I've met many that exist today that have this same blind spot when trying to judge the capability of some women. It's such a powerful influence that they teach their own wives to live within the same blind spot; helping to affirm and fulfill their own skewed expectation of woman's abilities. James is a strong male character on one side of the blind spot and Andrew is a strong male character on the other side. Andrew's strength only becomes less evident to anyone looking at him from that blind spot, which is going to include a majority of those typical strong male types.
And now for quibbles. Shelley Adina writes well and is a magnificent story teller and as always I tend not to downgrade the work for common errors in the understanding that I have my own problems ferreting out all the straggling errors that hide amongst my own writing. I am not one who thinks that every published manuscript must be totally error free or it becomes invalid. It is insanity for authors to attempt to edit their own work especially when there is proof that even many so called professional editors have left enough errors intact for the author too find, forcing the author to attempt the insane. Errors happen. My present quibble is not addressed directly at Ms. Adina as it is at a number of authors who seem to find the use of a particular somewhat poetic word necessary at least once within their work. I'm referring to that beautiful word susurrus. In this instance it shows up as susurration. I just want to point out that susurrus is spelled S-U-S-U-R-R-U-S note two r's together not two s's. I'm beginning to love/hate this word. It's pronunciation is almost a clear clue to it definition and I am certain that at the very least in literary circles (particularly poetic) it is a well known word. But if I were to include it within my own narrative I would suspect that in my venue it might not be so well known, so I would be extra careful to be sure I was spelling it correctly. Of the last four times I've seen this in someones work it has shown up as sussurus and in this instance as sussuration. Those two words as they are spelled don't exist and anyone looking them up or using the dictionary within kindle is going to be disappointed.
On a side note; had it not been for the few authors who have used and so often misspelled this word I would likely have lived the rest of my life without being acquainted with it.
Make no mistake; I loved this series of books and will be looking into the 5th book soon. I love Ms. Adina's writing style and suspect I will be tempted into reaching out of my genre preferences once again to peruse a few more of her works.
Anyone who loves SteamPunk or even SFF (and is not ultra picky about the science or strict adherence to history) should love these books.
For those who are picky I'd like to point out the disclaimer at the beginning which includes.
[Quote] This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.[/Quote]
J.L. Dobias
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