More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

Duty Honor Planet – Intriguing Twist on Interstellar Invasion

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Duty, Honor, Planet is the first novel in the 3-book series by Rick Partlow and takes a different twist on the alien invasion theme and is a pretty entertaining read.  Officers Jason McKay and Shannon Stark are assigned to the new Intelligence arm of the Republic space navy, with the intention to form a special forces unit.  Their first assignment is not glamorous, to guard a high profile Senator’s daughter on a tour of various colony hot spots.

They run into some very odd alien invaders:    Blue, large humanoids who are looting the colony planet of all its resources.  Oddly, the humanoids have human DNA and appear to be sub-sentient creatures created soldiers.  The attack on the colony doesn’t make much sense – until McKay figures out that the attack is likely a dry run for an invasion of Earth.  Further, they determine the attackers are from a Russian force rumored to have survived the last war and escaped somewhere.

The rest of the novel proceeds much as we expect with plenty of action and good dialogue and even reasonable character development.  The characters never quite come alive for me, but it’s close.  There is romance which is also a near miss; our main character sleeps with two ladies and has intense relationships with both – within a day of each other.

Overall this is well-written and well-edited.  Pacing is good and the author doesn’t skimp on creating interesting settings and conversational dialogue.  I’m not sure I’ll read the sequels.

3 Stars

Trust A Few: Haruspex Trilogy: Part One by E.M. Swift-Hook Space Opera

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Trust A Few: Haruspex Trilogy: Part One by E.M. Swift-Hook is a good book, with well-drawn characters, action and plenty of moral dilemmas.  So why did I keep leaving it to play a game on my tablet?  I’m not sure, but the story became less compelling about two thirds of the way through.  It may have been me or maybe it was the fact that all the characters enmeshed themselves in the criminal underworld – not appealing – or that the true villain in the story appeared only a few times.

We have four main characters with a few others adding conflicts and challenges.  Durban Chola sees Jaz as little more than a thug, a hard mercenary, a man who survived the worst military setting imaginable, but I see Jaz as the central character, the glue that holds everyone together.  Jaz would say Avilon is the keystone, and the action revolves around Avilon, but it is Jaz who has the most complex character and is the engine.  I kept hoping Jaz would find a way back to Vel’s cousin and her little girl, the two people he planned to make his permanent family until Durban yanked him away.

The setting is the underworld of an enormous city, in a world ruled by the Coalition and its CSF security forces.  We know from the beginning that the security force wants something from Avilon but we haven’t seen what it is yet.

In fact it isn’t at all clear why the group doesn’t just leave.  Jaz claims to be working on setting himself up to do just that, and Avilon will stay as long as Jaz, but it’s hard to believe they are both willing to kill people and do other evil just to build a stash.  Durban will stay close to Avilon, but Charity has little reason to do so.

Trust A Few is hard to rate.  I liked it enough to finish, but it did bog down for me and I’m not likely to seek out the sequels because I don’t care enough about any of the characters to see how they play out.

3 Stars

Vesta Exiled: Vesta Colony Book One by Sterling R. Walker – Science Fiction

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Vesta Exiled: Vesta Colony Book One by Sterling R. Walker takes us to the space colony Vesta, where some of the third and now their children display new mental talents.  The people affected, called Strays, had their DNA modified when treated as infants for a deadly plague.

Earth cut off the colony when they reported the plague, and now the 12,000 or so people on Vesta must develop their own way to survive and thrive in a world with threatening animals and incredible storms.  We would expect the colony would value people who communicate telepathically now that the communication devices have worn out, but such is not the case.  Some fear or despise the Strays, and the leader of this faction decides it’s time to intern all Strays in a separate prison.

This is the backdrop for the human story of five young adults, 4 Strays and 1 Normal, who find out about the plot and decide to fight back.  The novel is pleasantly matter-of-fact about the reaction of most Normals:  Most think it wrong or silly to intern the Strays but enough go along with it that the corrupt mayor is able to imprison almost everyone.  The Strays themselves cooperate after the mayor shoots one Stray with Downs Syndrome.

Sterling Walker gives us a story about people, with enough detail in the setting that we can appreciate the struggle the colony has now and will have even more in the future.  The colony is at a crisis point and I can foresee three broad paths:  1)  Treat the Strays as low caste workers, slaves, 2) Abandon the segregation effort and live together as they have until now or 3) Strays leave and form their own community which would eventually conflict with the rest.

Walker tells the story through the five young adults, yet I wouldn’t consider this a YA novel.  The author fleshes out events and people are realistic about feelings and each other and the romance is understated.  Overall Vesta Exiled is an excellent story, well presented with engaging characters and realistic conflicts.

Vesta Exiled ends on a cliffhanger.

4 Stars

The Stars Now Unclaimed by Drew Williams – Space Opera or One Fight Scene Too Many

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Publisher Tor graciously provided a review copy through NetGalley for The Stars Now Unclaimed by new author Drew Williams.  The book blurb describes it as space opera with a strong female lead, Jane.

The novel has potential as Williams creates a far future galaxy devastated first by endless war among tens of thousands of sects comprised of 17 space-faring races including humans, followed by the Pulse, radiation that reduced most planets to pre-technological levels.  The Pulse effects were random, leaving some worlds almost untouched, others back to steam and others back to horse, spears and clubs.  This backdrop has excellent story potential but it needs strong characters to engross us readers.

Williams brings us Jane, the narrator (we don’t learn her name until about 80% through), who works for the Justified, the group who created the Pulse and now seeks to minimize its damage the next time it flows through.  Jane is responsible to collect kids with unique mental talents but her primary skill is fighting.

That brings us to the problem.  The novel is one fight scene after another, with very little time for character development and not much setting.  It is as though the author creates this great world, then figures it is good enough and we can fill in the blanks.

Even though Jane is in the entire novel we don’t really get to know her other than she likes to fight and she is a tenacious friend and worse enemy.  The other characters also have little personality and we see them primarily as foils for Jane.  The character with the most personality is her ship, Scheherazade.

Jane and friends swear a lot, mostly F-bombs as general purpose filler words, but there is no blasphemy.

Overall The Stars Now Unclaimed is a decent read.  I couldn’t get too involved with it given the lack of full-bodied people, but the author writes reasonably well and has created a complex world.  I wish him well in future novels in this series, although I’m not likely to seek the next books.

3 Stars

Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series – Great Fun by Terry Mancour

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Like all Mancour’s Spellmonger novels, Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series by Terry Mancour  is entertaining, engaging, lots of fun with a fast moving plot, complex villains and earnest heroes.  This time we join journeymen Tyndal and Rondal who decide to pursue their knightly quest to rid the world of the Rat Brotherhood thieves, extortionists, slavers, kidnappers, murderers, etc., etc., etc.  The Rats aren’t too keen on being done away with and are highly decentralized, making it difficult to do more than annoy them with any one assault.

Of course Tyndal and Rondal find a way, along with helping Alshar’s Orphan Duke Anguin, make lots of money and yes, kill a dragon.  The book ends with us once more reintroduced to the real villains in the Spellmonger’s world, the fanatical followers of Sheol and Korbol, the undead, necromantic folk who hate humans.

The two young knights are interesting characters who feel somewhat real – albeit a little too good to be true at surviving impossible odds – and we meet a couple new characters, noble sibling shadowmages Atopol and Gatina.  Gatina adds a sour note to the story.  She is 14 and looking for a husband.  Per her family’s rules she must find someone as perfect and as daring as possible and she settles on Rondal.  Rondal isn’t too sure he wants to be settled on and finds Gatina’s remorseless hunt a bit unsettling, but like most teenage boys he’s also not going to look too askew at a pretty girl.

Even allowing for the medieval backdrop of the story I found it jarring to read about a 14 year old seriously contemplating marriage.  Today we call someone like that jail bait and her father would have more than a warning!  I found her too obsessive to be real, plus far too good at sneaking around and stealing stuff and predict she will cause problems in the future for the Spellmonger gang, much like Isily.

Mancour creates an unusual world with plenty of magic, good guys and villains, political intrigue and interpersonal problems.  The world in Shadowmage was slightly less detailed and the action a little harder to follow.  Mancour includes maps but they are hard to read in the E format and I wasn’t able to ground myself in the territory.  His characters jump all over the place, which adds speed to their actions and to the plot – and avoids describing endless marches – and that jumping actually made it a little easier.  I just didn’t worry about where the different towns were.

I was wondering how well I’d recall the characters and plot of the prior novels because it’s been a couple of years.  It’s a tribute to Mancour’s vivid world and people that I had very little problem keeping people straight.  The novel runs in parallel with books seven and eight.

Spellmonger Minalan plays a small role in Shadowmage, which I missed.  He is by far my favorite character in the series, resourceful, smart, not overly greedy or too ambitious and wary as heck of the Castalan spy queen!  I hope he has a larger part in book 10.

Overall the story is very good.  The medieval-style drawings of cats and rats and nobles and dragons are charming and add a piquant note.  I enlarged each one to take a good look.  Unfortunately the copy editor needs to learn something about homonyms, spelling, grammar, copy/pasting.  The Amazon credits mention the editor, but all I can say is the book must have been a muddy mess originally if it is still this bad after editing.  Some of the other Spellmonger novels are so poorly edited they are hard to follow; Shadowmage is not that bad although a few places we readers have to assume the author simply forgot words “not” or “no”.

Shadowmage was one of the 500+ books I lost (along with the first eight Spellmonger novels) when I sold my business.  I was glad to use my Kindle Unlimited account to borrow instead of buy this time.

4 Stars

Temping Fate by Esther Friesner, Cute Fantasy, Bridezilla and Summer Jobs

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Ilana needs a summer job.  Now.  If she doesn’t find one her parents will find her all sorts of things to do, starting with music camp.  Of course Ilana must take care that her job will not interfere with endless fittings for her bridesmaid dress so she can be her sister Dyllin’s maid of honor.  Dyllin has transmogrified into Bridezilla, scourge of caterers, florists and sisters everywhere.

Ilana gets a summer job as a temp at the Divine Relief Temp agency, assigned to the three Fates, one of whom is having a severe attack of Mommy-itis.  Ilana isn’t too sure about the work but she sure loves the paycheck!  Plus she meets some cute guys who also temp, albeit with heroes and other assorted demigods.

Temping Fate is light summer reading and most teens would enjoy it as would many adults.  Dylin’s panic attacks (NO!  The wrong color of ribbons!!!  The Horror!) add comedy offset by some real sisterly moments.  Ilana grows up somewhat, but don’t expect a serious coming-of-age novel as this is lighthearted fun.

3 Stars

The Lakes of Mars by Merritt Graves – Science Fiction, War School, Too Much Blasphemy

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The Lakes of Mars doesn’t know what it wants to be.  On the surface it tells about Aaron Sheridan, 17, a rich kid from Mars, drowning in guilt about his terrible accident that killed his parents and sister.  Aaron enlists in the Fleet, hoping to go to the Rim where everyone dies, but is instead sent to Corinth Station where the Fleet trains its officers-to-be.

Corinth is the oddest officer training school, full of bullies, sadistic instructors, top scientists, and virtually no rules.  In fact it’s obvious to Aaron that the school really doesn’t care if the students kill each other or even if they learn anything.  What Aaron can’t figure out is why the school exists, who are the good guys (more or less) and who are the villains, what the scientists are really doing and why no one seems to care about the students’ drug addiction.

There are jarring moments in the story.  The students tie in to Fleet members’ actual experiences, live and fully real.  What we see are near mutinies among the grunts, drinking and despair among officers, and universal, painful death.  The rest of the novel has plenty of violence, too much really.

The characters are not well developed.  Aaron is in a fog much of the novel, and his fog prevents us from knowing him because he doesn’t know himself.  The most interesting character is the maybe-villainous Caelus Erik, top student officer, who is maybe trying to kill Aaron, maybe not.  I would have liked to see the story from Caelus’ point of view as he was more interesting and on top of things than Aaron.

Several reviews on NetGalley compare this to Ender’s Game with little reason other than the superficial similarity of being on a space station/military school.  Ender’s Game keeps us engaged throughout while Lakes of Mars moves in fits and starts.

The plot is full of holes which we can gloss over during the fast paced sections.  For instance, does anyone really think that a powerful space fleet wouldn’t simply evacuate everybody and quarantine the planet with the Verex?  Or nuke it?  The planet is supposed to have valuable minerals but if you add up the financial cost (to say nothing of moral costs, the waste of of lives) to constantly fight as the Fleet does, how can it make economic sense?  It doesn’t but we need that constant violent background to give credence to the story.

By far the most objectionable part of the novel is the cursing and blasphemy.  I get it that these are kids, desperately tired and frightened and they will swear.  I expect the F-bombs and the rest, but there is zero excuse for taking the Lord’s name in vain, which the author does, page after page after page.

Overall I finished the novel – which yes, ends on a cliffhanger with temporary (?) truce and danger staring down at Aaron and the rest.  It’s fairly fast read, reasonably easy to follow although the student interactions are convoluted and messy.  The romance under story is unresolved.

2 Stars.

I received an advance copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Battersea Barricades – Chronicles of St. Mary’s by Jodi Taylor Short Story

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Mrs. Mack, Mrs. Enderby, and Mrs. Shaw are all minor characters in the mainline St. Mary’s book, and here they tell the story that we roughly know from The Very First Damned Thing.  The Battersea Barricades starts with Mrs. Enderby and Mrs. Shaw describing how they wanted to get involved with an low-key rebellion, “where they threw the Fascists out of Cardiff” and met Mrs. Mack.  They jump right into the story without giving a lot of rationale for why the Fascists were in power in the first place – they describe it as more creeping Fascism that seems innocuous at first, then later shows its ugly head.

Overall this is a decent short story if you care about the characters, but it is far outside the mainstream St. Mary’s novel.  There is no time jump, no Mr. Markham, no Chief Ferrel, no Tim Peterson.  The narrative is somewhat jumbled, as fits the characters’ feelings and actions at the time, but we don’t see an overview as to the rest of England.

The ending was weird and felt pushed together.  Mrs. Mack, Mrs. Enderby and Mrs. Shaw stopped the slow-motion civil war by jumping on a crashed bus and standing with the Union Jack in front of a very menacing gun helicopter.  It reminds me of the Tienanmen Square picture with the one man facing down a line of tanks.  We always salute the courage of the man who faced the tanks, but we need to remember there are two heroes in that picture – with the second one being the man commanding that first tank.  It took moral courage for him to stand down, to say no.  And just the same way it takes courage for the helicopter pilot to back off.

Now in the ending the helicopter comes back without guns – same pilot?  who knows? and salutes the ladies.  Very nice but not very satisfying.  It felt as if Jodi Taylor needed to bring the story to a graceful end so she used that method.

The ladies were young in The Battersea Barricades and show determination and grit, but not the skill and ability to navigate through the St. Mary’s world that we see them display in all the books, especially A Trail Through Time, an Argumentation of Historians.  It is as if Mrs. Enderby and Mrs. Shaw are playing Max’s role, that of the serious disaster magnet.  It doesn’t quite work.

I’m giving this 4 stars; I’ll re-read it (as I do every St. Mary’s book, multiple times) but it just isn’t quite the same caliber as the rest of the short stories or novels in the series.

The Steam Pump Jump – Chronicles of St. Mary’s by Jodi Taylor Short Featuring Markham and Romance

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Last we visited St. Mary’s, grieving Dr. Peterson had his head and heart brutally ripped by by treachery.  Miss Dottle, who despite her crush on Tim Peterson, proved herself red-handed in league with Clive Ronan, responsible for spying on Max, that led Helen’s murder and Max and Matthew’s abductions.  Poor Tim.  He is heartbroken, barely functioning on autopilot.

Max has a wonderful idea to give him someone new, possibly leading to romance, possibly only to friendship.  Max recruits Markham to somehow shove Peterson and Miss Lingoss together while on their next jump, back to 1600s and the first steam pump in a castle, before Cromwell’s revolution.  What could possibly go wrong?

Of course Miss Sykes and Miss North come too – and get into a fierce argument in public and in the past – and Markham needs to sort them out, give Peterson and Lingoss time to talk, and yes, eat the entire picnic meant for six.

Once more we have the incredibly fun, zany adventures of the St. Mary’s gang, this time with Markham the central character and narrator.  Markham likes to pretend he’s stoic, unaffected by much, but we see the truth.  He cares deeply about Max, Tim, Leon (and Hunter), and is glad to take on Max’s subversive assignment.

Jodi Taylor creates such characters, alive, vivid, fascinating, full and completely human.  Add in a fun plot, good dialogue and the usual historical nuggets (that cause me to visit Wikipedia more than a few times) and we have another winner in this St. Mary’s short story.

You should not try to read The Steam Pump Jump without being somewhat familiar with the St. Mary’s crew and events so far.  At a minimum it would help to have read And the Rest Is History and  An Argumentation of Historians, Books 8 and 9 in the series.  Both books are excellent although more serious and a bit darker than the rest of the series.  The Steam Pump Jump brings us readers back to lighthearted fun and is a worthy addition to the series and the lore of St. Mary’s.

5 Stars

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Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett, Excellent Fantasy in an Unreal World

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Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett is excellent, well written with a unique magic system and world building, interesting characters, lots of action, and feels-real conflict.

Characters

Good fantasy needs good characters, people we get to know, people we want to succeed, people we believe could be real.  The best character  is Orso, the inventive genius behind much of his city’s and his employer’s success.  Orso is funny yet determined.  He’s loyal up to a point, and that point changes from time to time.  He turned his back on his first employer (for good reasons) then we watch him working to help his current employer, the Dandalo merchant house, finally to leave Dandalo to form his own house to save his life and that of dozens of others.

Sancia, the main character and heroine, is a little too successful and survives far too much danger to be believable.  She is a thief, extremely talented in part because she can touch a building and learn everything about it and who is inside.

Sancia loathes this ability because it comes from a horrific ritual that put a metal plate inside her head.  Sanchia escaped the island where she was enslaved, and came to Tevanne where she survives by stealing and by her wits and strength.  She is a little over the top, for instance she survives dangers that would instantly kill anyone else.  She changes from solely worried about survival to worried about other people, about the rest of the world and the dangers that she and Orso and the others are trying to head off.

Magic System

The magic users in Tevanne use commands, written in a language they do not really understand, to alter reality.  They create self-propelled carriages by convincing the wheels that they are going down a hill or support buildings by convincing rotten timber that it is foundation stone, dug deeply into the earth.

I’ve not seen this approach before; it is somewhat like artificial intelligence because it uses language to create the outcome in the real world.  People in Tevanne create a complete society based on this magic and the “Foundry” part of the title refers to the merchant houses using foundries to produce these magic items.

World Building

The world itself is presented as-described, but it is a world that could not possibly exist.  Sancia shows us campios – the protected, secure enclosed cities where the merchant houses live and operate – and the Commons where everyone else lives.  Yet the merchant houses apparently buy and sell their production to someone.  But who is there to buy?

A city or a world must have people produce food, others produce tables and chairs and houses and clothes, others entertain and others operate stores.  Yet we don’t hear about any of this.  Sancia would not herself be interested in these enterprises (other than to steal from them) which excuses the books blank spots on where the food comes from and who are the customers who are not themselves in Campios yet able to purchase goods from them.

(I always wonder about the economics and commercial underpinnings of imaginary worlds.  The best imaginary worlds make and inspire a sense of awe.)

Writing

Bennet writes well with good pacing and he provides anchors to the scene when he switches point of view.  We know we are with Orso or with Sancia or any of the other point of view characters because he shows us that right at the beginning of each scene.  This shows real talent because he does not use the “Well Bob,….” dialogue technique where the narrator clues us in but shows clues with the setting.

There will be sequels.  The book ends without a cliffhanger but with many loose ends and open problems that must be fixed.

Overall

I’m not sure whether to give Foundryside 4 stars or 5.  I certainly enjoyed it and the story is novel, interesting, the characters good except that Sancia is a little too over the top.  Oh, let’s be generous and go with a 5!

I got an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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