More Books than Time

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

Archangel Down – Solid Start to…? Alien Invasion Maybe? by C. Gockel

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Archangel Down starts a new series by C. Gockel that uses some of the same world and characters as her short story “Carl Sagan’s Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe”.  I liked the short story and was glad to see Noa Sato taking the lead in this novel.

The premise and world building are excellent.  The colonists on Luddeccea distrust technology in general and believe their time gate, which allows interstellar travel, has been invaded by non-corporeal aliens who can control people through their augments.  No one outside of the Luddecceans believes this story.

The story opens with Noa in a re-education camp with her ethernet port blocked, half starved and frozen, surrounded by others who have had artificial limbs torn away.  Noa escapes and meets James Sinclair, a professor who comes to Luddeccea for a vacation.  Sinclair is highly augmented and Noa knows the authorities will kill him if they can.

Noa hatches a plan to escape the planet and bring warning to the rest of the human worlds, to bring the navy to Luddeccea to stop the murders and rescue the people in the camps.

Weaker Points:  Pace and Character

The plot is choppy.  Noa and James must run and stay ahead of the authorities and the novel spends quite a bit of time on this, making for inconsistent pacing.  It also is a little unbelievable.  Noa has escaped from a concentration camp, is woefully malnourished, and gets a serious fungal lung infection.  Yet she is able to stay several steps ahead of the manhunt even while contacting others she believes can help.

The other point that hurts pacing is the author brings in some 20th century jokes, mostly allusions to Star Trek and Star Wars, plus some racial observations.  The jokes aren’t funny and the race stuff doesn’t add anything to the story.  (In Noa’s world most people are medium tan while she is dark and James is white and blond.)  These slow down the story and feel a little forced.

Noa is a strong character, albeit secondary, in the short story and provides the main point of view and lead.  We see she is loyal to a fault, strong-willed, serious, willing to trust people she knows, ready to love and support her friends.  She is also ruthless, smart, bold.  By the end of Archangel Down we feel like Noa is a real person, not necessarily a realistic one, but someone we want to read about.

James Sinclair provides point of view part of the novel but is more sketchy.  Sinclair realizes he cannot remember anything prior to a serious accident that resulted in him getting so many augments, but he worries that he may not be himself.  This helps explain the paucity of character development, but it left me feeling like he needs more work.

My favorite character is Carl Sagan, currently inhabiting a wherfle on the Ark with Noa.  The short story hints that The One, the individual minds that can inhabit wherfles or other semi-intelligent creatures, know about the dangerous aliens that are in the Time Gate.  I do hope that Noa and James figure out that Carl Sagan is a lot more than a cute pet who keeps the rats down.

Overall

Archangel Down opens a lot of plot strings and leaves us with lots of questions.  It is fairly well-written and interesting, with a good plot and interesting characters.  I intend to read the next book in the Archangel Project series, Noa’s Ark: Archangel Project. Book Two.  I debate between 3 and 4 stars because yes, I liked the book, yes I intend to read more, but it just isn’t quite as compelling as most 4 star novels.

3+ Stars

Liquid Gambit by Bonnie Milani, Good World Building in a Novella

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Bonnie Milani offered her novella Liquid Gambit as a novella via a give away and it sounded interesting enough to try. In fact it is well-written, with interesting characters and back story.

We meet Rick, a Lupan, tending his bar in the down-and-out section of the next-to-the-bottom deck of space station Bogue Dast, aptly named “Hell” because it’s a short walk to the Void.  Most of Rick’s customers are seedy types with young pickpocket and con man Snicket standing out only because of his extreme Mohawk.  Rick hates slavers and kills them when he can, so far without being caught, although cop leader Bayliss is itching to get him for murder.

Rick decides to leave Bogue Dast while he can but needs a lot of money to pay off all the bribes to stations and polities who want him dead or alive.  He gets his chance when Snicket leaves a vial of Earth water – that he stole from the Mayor – under a bar stool for his mother to find and use to ransom his sister who is held by a slaver and destined for the Mayor.

The action proceeds as we can expect given the characters and the world-building.  The plot is good enough to carry the action and show us the people and setting.

Characters

The characters are the best part of the story.  Rick is the consummate hero, willing to help others even at the cost of his life and livelihood.  Policeman Bayliss is interesting, not completely a villain but definitely not a clean cop either.

Rick is the narrator and main character and Milani shows us inside his head and his personality by actions, words plus his memories and thoughts.  She does a good job letting us get to know Rick, what drives him.  Rick could have been just a stock character until Milani brings to life with her writing.

Overall

I liked the novella. I was surprised to see Bonnie Milani authored Home World, which I didn’t care for; she has written other novels and stories in the same universe.  Liquid Gambit shows people as people in difficult circumstances, all doing what they can to survive while acting with honor and morals, a satisfying foundation for story.

3-4 Stars

The Enemy of an Enemy (Lost Tales of Power #1) by Vincent Trigili, Science Fantasy Fiction

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I like science fiction and I like fantasy and The Enemy of an Enemy combines the two.  Should be good, yes?  Unfortunately the book is very uneven, with a few good spots and a lot of mediocre story telling.  The story suffers from some complacent “of course everyone will agree” thinking and far too many “a miracle happens here” events.

For example, lead character Vydor is the intelligence officer on an enormous military space ship in an empire that prizes obedience and mindless order-following.  Vydor is able to convince the ship captain and later the emperor to allow him to form a separate country, made up of seven people who have mental powers.  The first fifth of the book sets the stage for an empire that does not embrace creativity or independence, then the middle section has Vydor able to get every concession he wants with almost no effort or conflict.

It was as though we are all driving on the interstate to Florida when suddenly we are in a plane landing in Denver and everyone is just fine with the change.

The “miracle happens” events are all through the story.  Vydor and his team of 6 others gets a box of books on magic and are instantly able to learn and apply the skills listed.  In fact each individual is able to study one discipline, then effortless share with the others so everyone learns seven times as fast.  The group of seven then defeat the strongest sorcerers who have spent eons learning their trade.

Overall The Enemy of an Enemy is entertaining but silly.  I finished it but won’t read more in the series.

2 Stars

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Book Six – Not the Best

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I’ve read and enjoyed every book Jodi Taylor wrote because they are fun, with great characters, lively plots, plenty of humor under laid by serious conflicts.  What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Book Six is not a weak book.  We again have Max doing Max things, this time training new historian wannabes, with all the usual adventures and danger.  Yet I didn’t like What Could Possibly Go Wrong? anywhere near as much as the other books in the series.

Why, oh why, would anyone want to observe Joan of Arc’s execution?  Max justifies her decision to use this horrific event as her make-or-break/witness-gore-and-death training moment by saying that Joan would burn whether they observe or not.  That is true, but there is something wrong with using someone’s agonizing, tortured death to educate.  It is using another person’s suffering and even though Max’s reason is virtuous, the act is not.

The scene with the mammoth hunt is great and Mary the Mammoth is a fantastic addition to St. Mary’s lore.  I always enjoy Taylor’s detailed descriptions of the history and this view of Neanderthals and modern humans living together and hunting mammoths is superb as always.

Max allows one of her trainees to hijack the pod and visit Bosworth Field, which sets her feet on the wrong side of the line and leads to her actions in the next book, Lies, Damned Lies and History.

Overall my distaste for the Joan of Arc scene tramples the otherwise excellent What Could Possibly Go Wrong?   I find myself disinclined to re-read it (I’ve re-read all the other books multiple times) although others apparently liked it very well.  What Could Possibly Go Wrong?  has the highest Amazon rating of all the St. Mary’s books, with no 2 or 1 star reviews and a handful of 3 stars.

3 Stars

An Altercation on Rykkamon and Misguided Knight of the Onyx Order (Ancient Realms, #1) A.J. Flowers, Two Disappointing Novellas

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Independent authors give away short stories, as teasers to intrigue readers, provide an enticing story that makes one want more.  An Altercation on Rykkamon and Misguided Knight of the Onyx Order are both parts of larger series.  The authors must give us something to hook us in:  interesting and vivid characters or a blindingly fast and fun plot or a compelling back story or possibly a unique setting, as otherwise we readers yawn and move on, never purchasing another.

An Altercation on Rykkamon by Robert Scanlon is science fiction, featuring a brother sister duo who are on the fringe, possibly smugglers, who fight off a rival/enemy.  This trope – a fringe/smuggler/PI/small trader operating in space – may be easy to sketch out but it must be very difficult to pull off as a solid story.  I’ve read very few stories in this motif that are any good and it must be especially hard to do in a short story where the authors have little time to develop a back story or characters.

An Altercation on Rykkamon has a strong female lead that feels flat.  The back story, why the duo is hunting clues to their father’s death, why and how they ended up with his weapon, isn’t compelling, and to top it off, we have too many cutesy words like commPanel and laserSword.  Overall the story is just OK.

Misguided Knight of the Onyx Order by A. J. Flowers s fantasy with an unexplained world where the kings and queens apparently have magic and fight continually.  The plot and characters are wooden and left me feeling disinclined to look into the back story.

2 Stars Misguided Knight of the Onyx Order

2-3 Stars for An Altercation on Rykkamon

 

Blood Crossed: A Piper & Payne Supernatural Novel, #1 (Netherworld Paranormal Police Department)

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Blood Crossed: A Piper & Payne Supernatural Novel, #1 (Netherworld Paranormal Police Department) has great reviews on Amazon, enough that I paid $2.99 to read it.  That was a mistake.

Blood Crossed uses the trope of a police department dedicated to protecting us from vampires, werewolves and assorted supernatural evil villains.  The main character is Piper, a young woman, supposedly immortal (we don’t know how), who with her new partner Reaper Payne (also immortal and not human), goes out to capture vampire Gallien Cross who escaped from secure confinement.  So far so good.

Unfortunately neither Piper nor Payne nor the two wanna-be Retrievers that Piper is to evaluate are particularly interesting.  The world building could be good but authors Logsdon and Young race us through the back story without taking time to let the set up take shape.  The writing isn’t bad, and the dialogue is reasonably decent at moving the story along, but the lack of character depth an superficial world building leave me cold.

The authors have a sequel with even better reviews and ratings, but I shall pass.

2 Stars

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No Time Like the Past: The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Book Five – Breakneck Pace

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Wow.  No Time Like the Past has plot, plot and plot.  Our fearless Max does:

  • Travels back to St. Mary’s during the Cromwell revolt, saves 3 people and discovers why Markham sees a ghost;
  • Rescues people from the fire at St. Paul’s cathedral and nearly ends up dead;
  • Organizes Open Day with plenty of excitement and nearly ends up dead;
  • Re-structures the entire training program and enjoys the kind Mrs. Shaw as her temporary PA;
  • Travels back to rescue Botticelli paintings and nearly ends up dead
  • Witnesses the Spartans holding off the Persians at Thermopylae and gets wet on by one of the Spartans
  • Makes her first ever serious emotional commitment (and does not end up dead).

In addition we have the usual explosions and faux pas and near-catastrophes.

No Time Like the Past is fun to read and reread, and I guarantee each time you read it you’ll find something new to laugh at.  Author Jodi Taylor has a gift for vivid descriptions that make us feel like we are perched above the Spartans holding the Hot Gates, feeling the terror of a cathedral exploding in flames.  She brings the vivid imagery to life with wit and wry observations that make us feel like we are inside Max’s head.  The novel is successful at making history come alive.

There is character development in the sense that we get to know Peterson and Markham and Helen Foster better.  It is as though these are acquaintances whom we now are traveling with, learning about, becoming friends.  None of the characters undergoes any Eureka moments or has major emotional growth, but that’s not the point.  Taylor makes us feel like we work at St. Mary’s and all these people are real colleagues and friends.

My only real complaint with No Time Like the Past is that it is very hard to recall all Max’s adventures and accurately assign them to the right novel.  Since the books move one to the next, and all at the speed of light, the whole great cacophony gets bundled up my mind and the individual novels blur.  It makes it hard to write reviews!

4 Stars

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Wrath of the Fury Blade – An Elven Police Procedural with Racial Overtones

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Wrath of the Fury Blade tries to be several things:  It is a police procedural, a commentary on Nazism, a semi-romance and a fantasy.  The story itself is engaging, with police elf Reva Lunaria untangling the mysterious murder of the First Magistrate, a murder where the victim is cut completely in half, in his own home, with no witnesses.  A second murder, this time of the kingdom’s finance minister, soon follows, then more attacks and murders.

Elvish Nazis

It’s clear that someone has a vendetta against a group of people, but what ties the group together?  Reva’s only clue is the pin that each victim wears, from a club dedicated to elven racial purity; the victims’ pins all have one black star, possibly indicating a secret sub group.

Here’s where the Nazi problem comes in.  The king promulgated Purity Laws three times, each one decades apart, and each one increasingly strict.  Now a person with a great grandparent who was not elvish is no longer an elf and cannot own property nor be married to an elf.  (The authors say this is Fascism, but Fascists revere the State, not the blood.  Nazis revere “pure” blood.)

This Nazi/Jim Crow/Apartheid nasty mess is a backdrop that doesn’t add much to the story.  It explains a little why some of the secret society is so careful to hide their Dark Elf ancestry, but we didn’t need the entire Jim Crow racial nonsense to make that point work.  The authors brought in a few incidents with the now-denigrated non-elves that felt pasted on, as if they initially intended to make those incidents a big part of the story, then changed their mind and left the stubs.

The primary story, Revi and her new partner Ansee, unraveling the murders and finding the culprit, is good.  It moves fast and is engaging.  The secondary story, with the Gestapo-like Sucra working hand-in-hand with the new police commissioner, is also quite well done.

This secondary story is terrifying all by itself as we see the Sucra’s Senior Inquisitor Malvaceä torturing, imprisoning without cause, extorting, killing and setting up false trails.  I’d like to see the authors further develop the primary story against the backdrop of this secret police threat to the king and kingdom.

Overall

Wrath of the Fury Blade is readable and I mostly enjoyed it.  There were a few spots that are far-fetched, for example, when Revi’s long time information source not only recognizes the pins but knows there is a centuries-long plot against the king that ties into the pins.

The characters were fairly interesting but not well developed enough to carry the novel without the fast plot.  Revi felt too much like a composite police/dectective/good guy crime fighter and the authors dropped a few clues that she may have more going on than the stock character they present.

Wrath of the Fury Blade leaves us ready for a sequel.  I think we’ll have more Revi/Ansee interactions, possibly more about Revi’s family and murdered father and we’ll see why Ansee and his sister do not get along. I’m hoping the authors build onto the Sucra threat.  I also hope the authors write a little less of a multi-genre mash up and concentrate on the characters and pick one or two main stories.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in expectation of an honest review.

3 Stars

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Shi: A Dark Adventure into Living Forever (Immortality Interrupted Book 1) C. F. Villon

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Shi: A Dark Adventure into Living Forever (Immortality Interrupted Book 1) has its good points and its bad.  On the good side the story moves along and kept my attention as I wondered what Eliza would do, the group she served, and how she would extricate herself.  On the bad side the story is ridiculous and the character left me cold.

Eliza made a very bad bargain 80 years ago.  On the one hand she escapes murder charges and now gets to live “forever”.  On the other hand her “forever” is contingent upon her always doing what her unknown bosses tell her to do, enforced by a drug, Shi, that confers youth and life, if she gets a dose every day.  Dose Denial is a death sentence because this drug withdrawal is a killer.

Characters

Author Villon presents Eliza to us as a normal soccer mom, aside from her assassin skills, secret hideout and drug problem of course.  Consistent with her “normal mom” persona, Eliza feels emotionally invested with her ex husband’s grandchildren, even though she knows none of them and detested her ex for dumping her.

Eliza is a murderer, a true villain, yet we somehow see her as likable and root for her to find a way to ditch the organization.  She shows her selfish side when she idly makes a crack to her drug administrator about him skimming – despite knowing that such actions will cause the organization to kill him.  She also will not give up the imitation immortality, and it appears she wouldn’t give up the Shi even if she could do so safely without dying 24 hours later.

Her character is inconsistent.  Eliza has no reason to trust anyone associated with the organization but follows Asher.

Overall

I didn’t like the premise or the characters but must admit I finished Shi and enjoyed parts of it.  I don’t intend to read the sequels.  I’m curious how it ends but do not care what happens to the characters.

3 Stars

 

A Trail Through Time – Max Runs for Her Life, Saves the Day and Grows Up Jodi Taylor

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Last we saw Madeline Maxwell, historian at the St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, she was sprawled on the carpet, bleeding from a should-have-been fatal sword thrust through her heart, courtesy of Agincourt.  A Trail Through Time picks up directly after A Second Chance, with Max solidly in a parallel world, one where she had died and Leon lived, one with virtually the same people, with similar personalities as she knew.

Leon Farrell owns the carpet Max just bled all over and he isn’t sure what to think.  Sure, he’s delighted to have Max – any Max – back, but he knows darn well that his Max is dead from carbon monoxide and cremated.  Nonetheless Leon jumps to save this new Max when mysterious men in black arrive at his home in Rushford, and he whirls her off in his own personal time pod.

Thus begins a wild ride through time as Max and Leon desperately search for a place where they can relax, get to know each other and Max can heal her chest wound.  Unfortunately the men in black are the Time Police, a group that Max’s original world never had, and they are after Leon.  Max and Leon escape by a whisker in ancient Greece, in frozen London, in ancient Thebes, and finally realize that the Time Police find them so easily because Max has a tag in her arm.  Max comes up with a brilliant plan to take care of this problem (which doesn’t work) and finally Leon brings her to St. Mary’s for medical care.

At St. Mary’s we learn the real problem is that the original Max, now dead, brought Helios back from Troy and someone ratted her out to the Time Police.  Bringing someone from their time is a capital offense and the Police are determined to see the leadership of this St. Mary’s executed and replaced by a more amenable team lead by none other than our old friend Isabella Barclay.

Plot Holes

Just like all the other St. Mary’s novels A Trail Through Time moves so quickly that we run right by most plot holes.  Just ignore these when you see them and you can enjoy the story!

First, Max finds that B**hFace Barclay is still around and had supposedly been the original Max’s good friend.  We get hints from several of the more astute St. Mary’s people that Miss Barclay is maybe not so liked and trusted as she thinks, but the woman is still there while in Max’s original world Miss Barclay was kicked out when she marooned people back with the dinosaurs and tried to usurp the directorship.  Max comments a couple times about the dinosaur rescue in later novels, so we know people were marooned in this world too.  How is Miss Barclay not tainted by her role?  We don’t know.

In Max’s original world Leon had rescued Helios, bringing him to the future St. Mary’s where he grew up, then later to our time where Helios runs an inn.  In this alternate world Max did the rescue and only a few years have passed, yet Helios is grown up.

Characters

Max is growing up!  (Finally.)  She tells Leon that nothing, absolutely nothing, can be as terrible as seeing him dead.  Leon feels the same about her.  This grief and miraculous do-over help Max max mature.  She is hurt and upset that the St. Mary’s people don’t accept her at first, although this is understandable given they all grieved for the original Max.  Max knows this in her head but her heart suffers.

Max still doesn’t trust people easily and accuses Dr. Bairstow and Tim Peterson of wanting to maroon her in the 14th century, and accuses Mrs. Partridge (aka Kleio the Muse of History) of sacrificing Max to the Time Police in order to allow the others to go free.  Neither suspicion makes much sense (especially the second one) but that’s Max.

A few of the other characters take on more life in A Trail Through Time.  Professor Rapson and Dr. Dowson emerge from their stereotype caricatures to be real people, friends and colleagues to each other and the first to welcome Max as herself, not as a sort-of substitute.

Overall

A Trail Through Time is the story of Max rebuilding her life in this new world, creating friends and establishing herself as a person.  In the sense of a new beginning it has echoes of Book 1, Just One Damned Thing After Another, but with more terror, more threats, much more to lose.  In Book 1 Max could lose herself and her life.  Now she could lose her life and those of people she loves, Major Guthrie, Dr. Bairstow, Tim Peterson and Leon, and see St. Mary’s destroyed.  That makes the story more believable as it heightens the suspense and the conflicts.

I am glad to see the characters develop and adding the Time Police adds more opportunity for conflict and threat.  Clive Ronan is a serious opponent but he is a fraction of the problem the Time Police could be. Overall this is an excellent addition to an already good series.

5 Stars