More Books than Time

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

Crimson Tempest (Survival Wars Book 1) by Anthony James

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Crimson Tempest is the first novel in the Survival Wars series by Anthony James, and good news, you can read and enjoy this as a stand-alone novel or continue on to the six books that follow. Crimson Tempest is worthy military science fiction with developed characters and backstory.

I’m always leery of books billed as military science fiction. Many are so very bad, filled with pages describing esoteric weapons or space ships. Yet the good old-fashioned theme of aliens bent on destroying humanity remains a wonderful canvas to write a story, provided the story is about people, not machines or weapons. Kudos to author James for developing a real story about people using war as the backdrop to add tesnsion.

Captain James Duggan unfortunately has run afoul of the ranking fleet admiral and is shunted off to lead small, almost expendable ships. He is ordered to take his crew, which includes a small infantry force, to retrieve a forgotten 50-year old experimental spacecraft, the Crimson. Naturally he wonders why the Space Corps is so desperate to get back an old ship while fighting the fast-advancing Ghasts, enemy aliens who have destroyed entire human planets.

The book moves very fast. Duggan and his crew fight their way to the Crimson then outwit the attacking Ghasts to get the ship back to bare working order and escape the planet where it has been hiding for 50 years. The basic plot is easy enough to follow, and James does not clutter the book with boring passages explaining his fictional weapons or ships. He does a very good job sliding in enough background that we know the ships can travel faster than light, can somehow protect people inside from inertia changes (referred to as life support, a wise description!), depend on extremely thick, dense metal hulls, and do not have any sort of shield. Thankfully he doesn’t explain how any of this works, simply presents it in passing and goes on with the story.

One aspect of the ships is very important. They use sophisticated AI computers, referred to as “cores” to run everything. The faster and more powerful the core, the better, faster and meaner the ship can perform. Duggan quickly finds out why Space Corps wants the Crimson back: It has a unique, very powerful core.

The genius of Crimson Tempest is that James tells a story about the people. We get to know John Duggan and his crew, McGlashan, Breeze and Chains, and infantry leader Ortiz. We can see that Duggan is extremely competent, driven, cares about his people, cares about the human Confederation he has sworn to serve.

James uses the ships and an inhospitable planet for the setting. He makes the planet’s icy caves feel real and we can almost see ourselves hiking up boulders heaped between the Crimson and the exit. I’ve often thought that the better science fiction writers use the space and alien aspects as settings; this is especially true with war/invasion themes. When the war or space are the setting we can focus on the people and the author can tell us about them and not bore us by imagining that impersonal machines are the story.

I enjoyed Crimson Tempest very much. My one complaint is that the books in the series are rather short. I read Crimson Tempest on Sunday and finished book 7 Thursday, only about 22 hours reading total; I purchased each one in turn as soon as I finished the one before. The whole series was good albeit a couple of them were heavy on plot and a bit light on character development. This first novel, Crimson Tempest, is highly readable and I recommend it. You can enjoy it by itself, or do as I did and read each of the remaining series.

5 Stars

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The Warehouse by Rob Hart – Totalitarian Retail Juggernaut

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What happens when the quest for ever-cheaper products, delivered ever faster, completes the takeover of American business?  The Warehouse.  The Cloud company.

Cloud is to Amazon what the Black Death is to a cold.  Cloud takes everything down to the cheapest possible solution, whether it is products, delivery, employees, vendors, customers or government.

Amazon today hosts “camperforces”, RV parks to house their seasonal workforce, who migrate around the country seeking work.  Cloud builds huge dormitories housing tens of thousands who must wear ID trackers to access their rooms, the trams, the work space, the bathrooms.  Employees work 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, with nominal breaks.  Warehouses cover hundreds of acres, too large to see from one end to the other; with few bathrooms and break rooms scattered inadequately.  Cloud pays in script and charges hefty fees to convert between script and dollars.  It’s the company town and company store on steroids.

Cloud’s founder Gibson Wells believes the market should dictate everything, that customers only value low prices and convenience, and he has Cloud work aggressively to swipe ideas and push vendors into bankruptcy in order to cut prices ever lower.

He tells us about his triumph with Cloud Pickles.  He liked a brand of $5 pickles and wanted the company to sell them for $2, but the company could not.  So Cloud came up with their own almost-as-good product and drove the original pickle company out of business.

Cloud privatized the FAA in order to deliver via millions of drones and expects to privatize the rest of the government.  Wells never considers the long term end state because the ends – cheap products and services – justify the means.  

This is not libertarian economics run amok, it is totalitarian rule with a bit of bread and circuses thrown in.

Morality Play

One way to read The Warehouse is as dystopian economics.  What happens when one company dominates everything, from transport to food to retail to government services?  What happens when that company is just about the only employer left?

How do the people running this behemoth justify their predatory behavior?  How do their employees, their vendors respond to the never-ending push push push for more for less? 

When people forget the basic rules of decency and morality, stop following the Golden Rule, they become monsters.  That’s what is happening in Cloud.  Gibson Wells sees employees and vendors, even the country, as giant sponges to be wrung dry, turnips to suck to dust.  He justifies everything by his goal for cheap products and services, ignoring the cost to everyone else.

Paxton and Zinnia, two new employees at a Cloud warehouse, also have decisions to make.  Paxton had invented a gadget to cook the perfect boiled egg and his company did quite well, for a while.  Then Cloud demanded to purchase at below Paxton’s costs and put him out of business.  Now Paxton is a reluctant security guard at the warehouse.  Zinnia is a corporate spy hired to find out how Cloud is powering this enormous facility.

Paxton is more reactive while Zinnia takes action on her own.  Zinnia discovers a creepy pervert supervisor and tries to protect others from him; Paxton later discovers the man was never fired, just reassigned.  (The security lead says it’s quieter and easier to move someone than to fire one, although Cloud routinely axes their lowest performing decile every quarter.)   

Characters

Gibson Wells is the most interesting character.  He narrates his story now as he is dying, and manages to justify the destruction Cloud has done by remembering the good he has done.  Or thinks he has done.  It’s very difficult to justify putting millions out of work and treating employees like dirt just to cut a buck off the price of some gadget.  

One lesson I learned very early in purchasing for my small business was that deals need to be good for everyone.  You have to be willing to leave money, not on the table, but in the pockets of your supplier.  Otherwise you won’t have a supplier.  Apparently Gibson Wells never learned this.  He thinks it’s great if he’s the only supplier.

Zinnia is fascinating too.  She has zero intention of falling in love, or even caring about anyone at Cloud.  She’s there to do her job, get the information she came for, and get out successfully.  Instead she gets pulled into an affair with Paxton that may cost her life.

Paxton is there mainly as a foil, to move the story along and to show us a bit more about Cloud and the misery it causes.

There are a few minor characters, also well drawn and believable.  The other security people are willing to ignore cruelty in order to keep Cloud running smoothly, while dealing harshly with small infractions.  They see their job as keeping the place running the best it can for everyone, making mediocre omelettes while breaking more than a few eggs.

Overall

5 Stars

I received The Warehouse via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Under Darkness by Jasper Scott – Alien Invasion and Mind Control in Tropical Paradise

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Under Darkness is short, easy reading, fast-paced, and offers fun twists on the ever-popular alien invasion theme.  Our novel stars Bill Steele, new owner of a not-quite profitable hotel in Hawaii, who sees the sun covered, the stars come out and meteors fall in the middle of the day.  Pretty soon the screams start.

Jasper Scott writes a plot that combines all our favorite thriller/horror/science fiction themes:  Under Darkness has aliens with mind control, aliens who kill and eat almost everyone, international intrigue and nuclear attack, plus a giant tsunami.  The characters are decent, with enough heroism offset with normal fear and deception, to make the story feel real.

Scott has written several series (20 books altogether) that are popular and successful.  He promotes Under Darkness as a stand-alone, meaning no sequels, a refreshing change from some of the endless narratives out there in alien invasion series.  He writes well, with a beginning, a middle and an end and the end neatly wraps the story up, leaving a few interpersonal loose strings but no plot heartburn.

3 Stars

Dial G for Gravity (The Brent Bolster Mysteries Book 1) by Michael Campling

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Dial G for Gravity by Michael Campling, subtitled The Brent Bolster Mysteries Book 1, has great sounding plot and back story, but the writing and characterization don’t live up to the promise.  Let’s go to the good part first.

The plot idea is terrific:  Aliens are here peacefully.  The  Gloabons are die-hard bureaucrats (apparently the national mania) as well as die-hard anal probers.  It’s a little suspect whether they really are peaceful because their technology has pretty well wiped out ours and now we’re pretty dependent on them.  Plus there is yet another alien group with a taste for live humans – for supper.  There is plenty of serious stuff going on in the background.

The execution against this backdrop disappointed me.  The characters are mediocre, with hero Brent, a Galactic Investigator PI, a meld of all the PI tropes you’ve ever read.  The best character is the alien Rawlgeeb, a bureaucrat through and through, but good-hearted once the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed.  He is the first clue that the supposedly benign Gloabons may be anything but; he greatly fears for his life when he makes a mistake abducting Brent for “sampling”, aka Probing.  Apparently Gloabons that make too many mistakes end up dead or exiled to nasty places.

The writing is supposed to be humorous, and had it been the book would have been more enjoyable.  A lot of other readers apparently liked this much more than I as several Amazon reviewers found the book funny and the characters well done.

The book had a great cover and this nifty of a plot background that kept me reading, thinking it would get better.  Unfortunately Dial G for Gravity never lived up to its premise.

2 Stars

Earth Warden by Tony James Slater – Great Blurb, Boring Book

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Earth Warden: A Sci Fi Adventure, book 1 of The Ancient Guardians series by Tony James Slater should be excellent.  The plot has everything one could want in a science fiction story:  suspense, intrigue, a fascinating universe and back story.  Unfortunately the writing is flat, making the novel more of a chore than a delight to read.

The characters also should capture our interest and liking.  Young Tristan lives alone in Bristol, supporting himself by small time thieving after his father disappears.  He is more-or-less kidnapped by Kreon, a mysterious Warden, and taken off into interstellar space to become Kreon’s apprentice.  Along the way we have lots of battles and characters that show up and then fade away, and hints of overwhelming danger to Earth.

Tristan simply does not act the way any normal older teen would when confronted with a galactic civilization – comprised of humans biologically identical to us Earth folks – and off hand comments about Wardens and danger and existential threats and eons of unknown history.  He never once asks how come everyone he meets is a human?  Why is Earth protected?  Why do the Wardens exist and what are they warding?  Never.  Not one peep of intelligent questioning.

The story and the characters never came to life.  I forced myself to slog through on the vague chance that the book would improve, or that the author would show flashes of skill that might make subsequent novels worth reading.  No.  In fact the only reason I’m giving this 2 stars and not 1 is that I did in fact finish reading.

2 Stars

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

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

The Alien Diaries by Glenn Devlin – The Revolutionary War, Aliens, Modern Suspense

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The Alien Diaries takes a refreshingly different look at alien contact with a story that jumps seamlessly from today back to 1781, during the tail end of the Revolutionary War in Virginia.  Asher hires widower bookseller Colin to catalog the collection in the Dibble estate that date back to the late 1700s, and sends him a couple first editions and a few pages of a diary to whet his appetite for the work.  Colin realizes the assignment is odd – for one thing Asher paid off the mortgages on his home and business as a gift – but does not realize exactly how odd, or how dangerous.

Asher insists that Colin and his nominal supervisor Maddy wear 18th century clothing at all times and hide any evidence of modern equipment.  They are both intrigued by the anomalies on the estate:  Running water, electric lights, rudimentary air conditioning and central heating, indoor plumbing, refrigeration, but Maddy acts the hard-nosed supervisor and forbids from exploring and investigating until he finishes cataloging the book collection.

The diary from Kate Dibble, Mary and Dibble’s adopted daughter, gives the framework for the 1781 story.  An enslaved alien sought refuge with the Dibbles, his owners hunted him down.  Now, in 2018, the owners have returned and still hunt their escapee.  Colin and Maddy face terrifying events; they are unable to leave the estate and no one can see or hear them.

Good Points

Plot is intriguing, unusual and the story is self-contained, with a beginning, middle and solid end.

Characters are well done, especially those from 1781.  The modern pair of are somewhat less developed but we see enough to like.  We suspect the two will end up together but the romance is secondary.

Author Glenn Devlin does an excellent job moving between times.  We are not confused as to which group we are with and the events of the past clearly define the events today.

So-So Points

There are plot holes.  Couple examples:

  • How does James communicate with the aliens in our modern time to arrange the 2018 events?
  • Why have the winged aliens not attacked Earth?  We would be pushovers and clearly they have known about us for at least 2500 years.

There are editing problems, missing words, so on.  Also, does not anyone use the irregular past tense anymore for shine/shone or dive/dove?

The biggest problem with the novel is it bogs down about the 40% mark.  I kept reading because I was curious what was going on with the mysterious Dibbles, but the book itself crept along.  There is a comment on Amazon that Alien Diaries “was a finalist during Amazon’s monthly screenwriting competition” so perhaps what felt like doldrums in a novel would be more lively in a movie.

Overall

I liked the novel and read to the end and appreciated the skill with which author Devlin mixed the 1780s into 2018.  It’s not quite 4 stars, perhaps 3 1/2.

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The Galactic Peace Committee – Great Fun Read, Humor, Science Fiction

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I love this book.  I read it a few months ago and needed to re-read to write this review and once more loved the zany, off-the-wall plot and back story.  It probably says something about my low brow tastes, but I’m giving this 5 stars, just because it was much fun to read the third time as the second and the first.

The Galactic Peace Committee of the title is a cross between a bad joke, a con job and a deadly necessity.  You see, there are thousands of races throughout the galaxy, most love war and fighting far more than we humans do, and most will gladly go slaughter another race for the horrible crime of insulting their hats or preferring pizza to pancakes.   The Committee exists to keep the peace, more or less, or at least keep someone from engulfing the entire galaxy in war or, worst of all, annoying the Ancient Ones.

Ah yes, the Ancient Ones.  One race of Ancient Ones looks like cuddly teddy bears.  The space teddy bears were the first alien race to contact us when Earth developed faster than light travel, and the bears kindly put Pluto and a minor Saturn moon back together, then helped us get over the hump on a few technological travails.

Then the space teddy bears pulled the ultimate con.  They convinced a gullible humanity to accept the immense honor to run the Galactic Peace Committee, while they and the other Ancient Ones, extend their holidays on their favorite beach worlds and enjoyed more drinks with umbrellas in them.  We’re a bunch of optimists with good opinions of ourselves so it tkes a while for humanity to realize they had been had.  No one wants to be in charge of Galactic Peace!

That’s the back story.  Our hero, Jake, is a mid level diplomat on a space station who would like to be successful enough to survive until he can retire on a pension that is very generous, mostly because the Committee rarely has to pay them out.  Jake needs to keep the peace and uses every skill he has and all his patience to stop two interstellar wars.  How Jake works these miracles is the crux of the novel.

The Galactic Peace Committee pulls off the hat trick:  humor, plot with enough science-fiction-y events to feel like we’re reading space opera without all the operatic trappings, intriguing characters, and did I mention humor?  Unlike several wanna-be humorous novels this one uses the ridiculous specifics to contrast with the generally serious back story to make a very good, fun novel.

There are a few minor problems.

  • Jake has a few woe-is-me moments in the beginning that stopped just before they got tiresome.
  • The Galactic Peace Committee is more a novella than a novel.
  • Not sure I like the super robot idea.  In this novel author L. G. Estrella avoids relying on the robots to make everything magically work out (these are military/assassin/bodyguard robots), but he must feel the temptation to have Jake narrowly escape because his bodyguard saves him.

The only one of these problems is number 2.  I want more Galactic Peace!

5 Stars