Science Fiction Reviews - More Books than Time

Classic Fantasy in Alternate History – The High Crusade by Poul Anderson

April 13, 2015 by Kathy Leave a Comment

I read The High Crusade about 50 years ago and again recently. Nothing changed. I still love it!

It’s a testimony to the enduring fun and seriously interesting The High Crusade is that it is still available on Amazon, and is one of the better selling science fiction/fantasy novels.

Synopsis

The basic story is fun: Alien Wersgorix come to earth in 1345 intending to set up a base to exploit the planet and run into Englishmen led by Sir Roger Baron de Tourneville. Sir Roger is on his way to the French wars under Edward III, so more than ready to fight. Luckily he has his wife and family and the families of many others with him. The Wersgorix never knew what hit them.

Of course Sir Roger then leads his merry band of knights and fighting men to take over the rest of the Wersgorix, starting by liberating unhappy vassal planets and making allies with the other servant races.

Sir Roger’s once loyal knight, Sir Owain, sees a great chance to take the Wergorix advanced weapons back to conquer the Earth (or at least Europe) himself. During the fracas Sir Roger’s wife Catherine shoots Owain and the records he holds of how to go back home. Sir Roger and Catherine win through but at the cost of not knowing how to get back to Earth.

The very last chapter jumps forward 800 years or so. The English spread over many systems, establishing Christianity and modernized feudalism and English customs and ceremonies and attracting other peoples -even Wersgor – to their banners. Finally Earth expedition travels far enough to find the thriving, English-speaking empire.

Characters and Back Story

Poul Anderson wrote fun, fast-reading novels that all had interesting premises and characters lurking behind the sparkling plots. Sir Roger and his side kick Brother Parvus are shrewd and smart, first defeating the Wersgorix then the traitorous Sir Owain all while retaining their honor and Christian principles. Wersgor Branithar is a worthy villain, plotting to give the English their comeuppance

The people are set up so well that the story is believable.

The back story is sketched in as a basic fact and we don’t have our noses rubbed in any political diatribes. However the premises are that the Wersgorix are weakened by their extreme dispersal and lack of any unifying factors. The other vassal people are perfectly happy getting the Wersgorix off their backs and (at first) don’t care what the English do. The final chapter alludes to some of the other ex-vassals realizing too late that Sir Roger outwitted them. They weren’t required to become vassals of the English, but they found their power and influence and ability to thrive and grow severely curtailed by Sir Roger’s vibrant civilization.

All in all I recommend The High Crusade to adults and teens. It’s a fun book that you’ll likely want to read again.

Real? Or Imitation Human?

March 7, 2014 by Kathy Leave a Comment

Too often to review a book I have to get it back open, just to look up the title. Not so with The Socket Greeny Saga by author Tony Bertauski. Mr. Bertauski told me Socket Greeny was his first fiction work, and it is excellent. I have him noted as an author to follow.

The main character is seventeen but this is not YA fiction. Bertauski grabs your heart and does not let go. You care about Socket Greeny. Socket finds everything and loses it: his family, his place in the world, his friends, his identity. At the end you still wonder what happened and what will happen next. The book ends but the story does not, yet there is no cliff hanger, no obvious sequel. Instead the ending brings the loose threads together and leaves us Socket.

The Socket Greeny Saga is a trilogy that flows seamlessly from one book to the next. In fact my Nook version had no separation between the books, other than a periodic “Discovery” or “Training” or “Legend” interspersed in the text there was no way to know which book was which.

The plot is interesting, especially the first book of the trilogy, Discovery. Socket Greeny and his two friends Chute and Streeter go into Virtualmode during study hall and get into trouble. Socket inadvertently triggered a time slip that causes his Mom to pick him up from school and take him to the secret training facility for the Paladins. Paladins are humans with improved abilities, especially mental abilities, who are sworn to protect humanity.

In Books one and two Socket has to come to terms with his new abilities, learn and grow and develop mental powers. Socket’s recurring enemies, duplicated humans that look and act just like real people, attack. Socket is able to stop the duplicates, first with his friends and then by himself.

Book three starts with Socket, now a full Paladin, taking a wormhole trip to a remote outpost. Somehow he is kidnapped on the return trip and attacked by the real, ravenous enemy that the Paladins know nothing about.
Now Socket realizes that not only must he save the Earth and all his friends and family, he must save the universe.

The book could have gotten a bit ridiculous at this point. A seventeen year old universe saver? A ravenous enemy that kills all worlds? That can come to live with one cell? Instead the book turns inward, where we see Socket’s emotional depth when he realizes he has been betrayed and nothing is what he believed.

I loved the characters, especially Socket and the grimmets. Tony Bertauski did what too-few authors do when writing YA science fiction, and explored the inner depths of people and how they reacted to the events and threats. The story was well written, interesting and fast moving. It seems authors tend to skimp on plot or character or setting or good dialogue and writing style, but The Socket Greeny Saga had all four.

Just a few minor complaints.
The ending was ambiguous. What happens next? Socket is awake now, does he stay awake? Does he drift off again?
What about the grimmets? Did they die at the end? Or did they, and their world, survive?
Why did Socket stay sane and human when others just like him did not?
The hallucinogenic sequences during the testing and training were a bit much.

But overall, this was excellent. Tony has a generous offer in the end of the Nook version to request any free E book from him. After reading The Socket Greeny Saga you can bet I quickly took him up on his offer!

One-Eyed Man: A Fugue with Winds and Accompaniment L E Modesitt Science Fiction

September 28, 2013 by Kathy Leave a Comment

I stayed up till midnight to finish The One-Eyed Man: A Fugue, With Winds and Accompaniment, the latest novel by my favorite author L. E. Modesitt. The book had some problems but I enjoyed it overall. In fact I will re-read it, as I do most of his books, to catch the nuances.

The hero, Paulo Verano an ecologist from the world Bachman, is sent to evaluate the ecological impact and risks that humans may have to the world Stittara. The book mentions several times that Stittara would be abandoned were it not for it being the source of anagathics, drugs that enable people to maintain their looks and health nearly to the end of their lives.

Paulo knows he is getting into a risky area. The anagathics are enormously profitable and no one would want to abandon the planet. Yet there are some strange phenomena, including sky tubes, never fully defined but apparently long structures that float in the sky. No one has ever been able to sample a sky tube and there has been speculation they may be alive, similar to jelly fish. Paulo is well aware that the government that hired him hopes he comes back with a nice, safe, sanitized study that shows no ill effects to the environment from humans.

It’s clear that the Unity government cares deeply about the environment and forbids damage to alien life. There are (of course) opposition parties and it is due to pressure from one of these parties, the Deniers, that Paulo is hired to conduct his study. It’s not at all clear what the issue is that the study is supposed to appease, but it isn’t germane to the story.

There are subplots but they are sketched. There is tension between the outlanders and the city folks; between the corporations doing research on the Stittaran natural anagathics and the Service, between the planetary council and the Unity Survey Service, and more. For some reason Modesitt sketches these but does not explore them. We see characters from each of these groups but their motivations are unclear and the reasons behind the tensions are not revealed.

Modesitt showed the political wrangling by letting us eavesdrop on bits of conversations between plotting members of the groups. These conversations were never complete, never enough to tell you what the characters wanted or feared. I felt like the subplots were dangled in front of us, then whisked behind a curtain just as we got close enough to see the rationale.

There were some annoyances. Modesitt again made spelling changes, duhlars for dollars, that were silly. We got a little economic diatribe about taxation. Interesting, yes, I always find Modesitt’s ideas worth consideration, but it did nothing for the story.

Several of the characters made no sense at all. They were not cardboard cutouts, but their motivation and exactly who they were and why they mattered wasn’t at all clear. The Syntex succession shenanigans added a plot twist and motivation, but hardly deserved the pages Modesitt spent.

I felt as if I were Paulo, muddling through the tensions and people, all with different objectives that none ever wanted to state and with ecological impacts that he could almost see but never measure. Those parts were frustrating.

The actual environmental sampling and trips were dull. Paulo found nothing, yet he knew there was something. We could tell there was something with the sky tubes and the ever-present purple and gray grass that had not changed in millions of years. One of the corporations planned a deep drilling test that would touch the planet’s core. Paulo found that horrifying. Yes, it seems like a very bad idea to drill a hole down to the molten planetary core, but this was somehow connected with organisms like the sky tubes and space. I re-read this part and still didn’t quite get it.

The ending was solid in that Paulo shares his thinking with us as the sky tubes, drilling, alien predecessors from 150 million years ago. But it felt so rushed. And it was incomplete. We didn’t get real answers about the sky tubes, or any more insight into Stittara.

As usual Modesitt built in a love story with a strong female character. This part reminded me of the The Ecologic Envoy, where the two are afraid to love, haven’t spent much time together, yet feel a sense of connection. The other parallel is that the characters must leave and go elsehwere.

The Unity government didn’t make sense. It’s mentioned that Stittara is over 73 light-years from Bachman and it takes about 75 years to reach, although far less for the traveler due to relativity. The fastest way to send a message is by physically taking it. If one can only communicate at the speed of light, then star systems must be close together. Characters mentioned the time delay several times, noting that after 150 years no one at Bachman will care about Paulo’s study. Given the delays, how does one have a central government with Unity-wide elections.

I always enjoy Modesitt’s novels with their strong sense of morality, multiple layers, challenging plots and characters. I didn’t like this as well as some others but it was still worth reading. Did I mention staying up till midnight to finish?

Short Stories from Intergalactic Crime to Cat Rescues Novellas Kira Bacal

August 9, 2013 by Kathy Leave a Comment

I love trying new authors and one of the best ways is to browse the free or cheap books for my Nook. Kira Bacal is a doctor who worked at NASA and the Senate before moving to New Zealand. She published seven free Nook novellas, all enjoyable, easy reads. I’ll cover three in this post.

All I Need to Know about the Earth, I Learned in Kindergarten

What do you do when you’re an intergalactic criminal and need a safe, quiet hideaway? Why come to Earth and teach kindergarten of course. “Miss Buttercup” is leading her classroom out to catch their buses home when one of the kids steps into the road, right in front of a car. Miss Buttercup can move much faster than humans and rescues the child, however there is a witness: Mrs. Weinbaum, an 80 year old crossing guard.

Mrs. Weinbaum asks Miss Buttercup to come to her home where they agree to a mutually advantageous outcome.

This story is not deep but it is well-written and entertaining. I enjoyed Miss Buttercup and her penchant for helping her human students and would love to read a longer story with her as a main character.

Look What the Cat Dragged In

Would you answer the door during a howling blizzard if you live alone in a remote cabin? Our main character does and lets in a young kitten she names Amber. Amber has deformed front legs that don’t let her walk normally and our heroine is mildly curious how she managed to make it to her doorstep before freezing in the snow.

A few weeks later she learns the answer when Amber’s real people show up…

I liked the characters in this one too, but especially enjoyed the ambiguity around the pronouns “She is protecting it”. Who is the “she” and who is the “it”? This was a fun fast read, possibly the weakest of the stories yet well worth the time.

The Ananaki

This one was different from the others. Still had a science fiction background, but the main character is a fishing captain on a backward planet. Some unscrupulous folks convinced the locals they were “gods”, “Ananaki” and provided an amulet and altar for communication and punishment.

Luckily for our hero his latest passenger, a rescued young man, does not believe in the Ananaki and damages the altar. That damages causes the amulet to instead contact a military or police vessel (we never learn who) that manages to disabuse the natives of the Ananaki’s perfection and removes the Ananaki from the planet.

I enjoyed the dialogue and the style of this one very much. The story was good and we learned just enough of the people to see there was trouble afoot. The “gods” were mean and greedy, not the sort anyone wants around. The middle of the novella dragged just a bit when the captain and his rescued atheist argue but the rest was very good.

All told I’d give these 4 to 5 stars. Excellent, fun reads, perfect to spend a few minutes enjoyably.

Note to readers: For some reason the spell checker in Word Press isn’t working very well – or else I”m not making any typos or misspellings. Ha, not too likely!

Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel, K A Holt, Funny YA Science Fiction, Space Travel

July 21, 2013 by Kathy Leave a Comment

Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel could have been boring. Our hero is 14 year old Mike Stellar whose biggest concern is keeping out of the detention clutches of teacher Mrs. Halebopp – right until he hears at dinnertime his family is moving to Mars. Tomorrow.

Sound like something you have read before? Do you think the author must have ordered stock characters A, B, N and Q, settings C and D, plots 1 and 6? A 2013 novel version of The Jetsons? Instead of being a rehash of sad old plots and characters this was fast, fun and interesting.

Characters

The kids in Mike Stellar are Mike and Larc with Mike’s best friend Stinky mostly a voice at the end of the forbidden phone. Mike is smart, gets into trouble and is terribly afraid that his parents have sabotaged the ship.

Larc turns out to be a most unusual girl and makes friends with Mike. Together they foil the bad guys, rescue the previous expedition and uncover the real guilty people.

Don’t these sound like the stock characters in any teen aged science fiction story? True, they are not unique but the way they work together and how the characters handle conflict and fear make them three-dimensional and a lot of fun.

The adults are shown from Mike’s viewpoint and are not as well-developed as the kids, but we still get enough to see them as people instead of characters you can order off the menu. The creepy Leslie Sugahbert (aka Sugar Bear) is one of those ever-smiling get-you-later types that Mike instantly distrusts. He is proven right when Leslie (a guy by the way) turns out to be spying on Mike’s Mom.

Plot

The plot is a little more complicated than some YA novels, with terraforming gone amok, a missing expedition that isn’t missing, just shoved aside, corporate politics (thankfully in the background), multiple sides and goals, and e e cummings poetry.

Overall it is a lot of fun, even for adults. There are the usual “a miracle occurs here” moments that would be more noticeable in an adult novel. For example, it’s incredible that a robot would have a critical power connector that could be shorted out by contact with a sweaty hand. And it’s even stranger that we’d be terraforming planets in other solar systems before we visit Mars. These are small things though.

What I was glad to NOT see were kids acting like wise grown ups. Kids acting like kids are a lot more fun to read about than kids that act more adult than any adults I know.

Summary

Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel is anything but boring. There is a little coming-of-age going on (he is 14 after all) but mostly the story moves. It is a fun read. I looked for more by the author but found only a zombie novel in Haiku. It might be good too, who knows.

4 Stars

The 5th Wave Rick Yancey Dark YA Science Fiction Alien Invasion

June 21, 2013 by Kathy Leave a Comment

What do you think of when you think “alien invasion”? Independence Day? Ender’s Game? The 5th Wave will remind you of all these yet it is unique.

Alien horrors intent on destroying humanity? Check.
Young people fighting to save the earth? Check.
Now take this, multiply the drive to kill off humanity ten fold and throw in an ill-fated romance. Unique, yes?

Really Rotten Aliens

What makes this book so good is the sheer viciousness of the alien plans and the preview we see of what the aliens will face when (if) they finally exterminate humans. The extermination plans are diabolical. First an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that wipes out all electric signals. That weakens earth’s nations and hobbles the armed forces. Then a giant tsunami that floods everywhere. That kills about 3 billion people. Then a plague to kill 97% of the rest.

That still leaves about 100 million human beings. The aliens, the Others, don’t want to hurt the planet, so they can’t drop an asteroid or set off nuclear weapons. As the book begins the Others are killing off the remnant off one by one with the fourth wave and are preparing for the fifth wave.

Spoiler Alert!!

The most evil of all their plans is their death camps. They bring in busloads of kids, reassure them, kill off about half immediately, then train the remaining half to do the killing. This is the fifth wave. This is the part that doesn’t make much sense; I can’t see why they would use kids and I sure didn’t understand why they blew up their own main base.

Puzzling Future Problems

The aliens will have a problem and we see glimpses of it in the main male character, Evan. You see, the aliens have no bodies. They gave their physical forms up when they left their home planet 10,000 years ago. They downloaded themselves into human minds to complete their work. Evan is one such human / alien meld and he finds being human all too tempting. He tells Cassie that most of the Others feel being human would be beneath them. Yet they must take on bodies to affect the physical world and finish the extermination.

I kept wondering what the aliens will do. If they have no bodies and they don’t want to be human, then do they continue to download themselves into human infants? Aliens die when their host body dies. How will they reproduce? If they intend to stay pure mind and not take on bodies, then why do they need to kill of humans? What use would they have for trees or animals or food?

The other point that puzzled me was the purpose of the fifth wave, human kids killing off humans. The fourth wave, Silencers or Others who look and act like humans, were effective killers. Why enlist little kids? Unless the Others were so twisted that it pleased them, I didn’t see a reason to switch from using Silencers to using fully human kids.

5 Stars but With a Catch

Overall I liked this book and look forward to a sequel. Yancey is an excellent writer who knows how to tell a story and enlist us in his characters’ lives. I felt like I was Cassie, alone, cold, frightened, driven to survive. I didn’t feel so much empathy for the second male character, Ben Parish who was at the boot camp learning to kill people. The whole boot camp section just didn’t make a lot of sense to me. In fact I put the book down for an evening because I got a little tired of it, a few too many cliches.

The first half with Cassie was excellent, 5 stars without a doubt. The second half with Ben was weaker and we had a bit too much of a miracle ending. So give that second half 3 stars for the Ben sections and 5 for Cassie.

Truly YA Fiction

Many of the YA fantasy fiction novels are classified as YA only because the characters are young. The 5th Wave is written for older teens. Adults will enjoy it as I did, but we’re more likely to look askew at the basic premise of aliens becoming human to kill off humans and we’ll be skeptical of the whole boot camp section.

If you can put aside your natural skepticism and take the book’s premise as valid you will enjoy this.

Infinity Ring – A Mutiny In Time – Clever Game and Story YA Science Fiction

February 17, 2013 by Kathy Leave a Comment

Infinity Ring Book 1: A Mutiny in Time by James Dashner is the clever first book in the Infinity Ring series. Two friends, Dak and Sera, live in an alternate history under dire threat by SQ. Dak’s parents invented a device to travel in time that Sera was able to complete. The two friends and Dak’s parents go back in time but his parents are stranded when Dak and Sera return.

A group called the Hystorians (spelled with a Y) are convinced that history has gone off course and have spent centuries watching for time travel to become real. Now that the Infinity Ring is ready the two groups, Hystorians and SQ, will face off. Dak and Sera are tasked with returning to the points in history that Hystorians believe are “break points”, times when the wrong outcome threw the train of history off its tracks.

It’s puzzling how in stories like this the kids are the ones who do the work, but that’s the beauty of young adult fiction. Dak and Sera are like real kids, smarter and less socially adept than some, but you could imagine having them in a class or seeing them at the mall. Parents be warned, these characters are bratty, disrespectful know-it-alls.

The gimmick in this series is the Hystorians planted clues. You have to wonder why the clues are so mysterious since it’s unlikely someone will actually show up from the future to deal with them, but that’s the plot. The bound book includes a front section to fold back that will let the reader explore Revolutionary France in 1792 with links the the Infinity Ring website. That’s a nice way to get younger kids interested in history!

The book is very fast paced and a fun read. I was puzzled by why it would have mattered whether Christopher Columbus led the expedition to America or whether his lieutenants mutinied and completed the trip. The book never hinted why it would matter who discovered America. It’s also far fetched to think two societies, SQ and Hystorians, could maintain successful organizations for centuries on the off chance that someone might show up someday from the future. These points are minor, but the sort of thing that bother adults and might not occur to younger readers.

Many YA novels are classified as Young Adult Fiction because they feature young protagonists but the books have adult themes and conflicts that make them suitable for adults. Abhorsen by Garth Nix is a good example. The Infinity Ring series features kids and the writing, themes and plot are aimed squarely at the middle school readers. I doubt I’ll read any more in the series since it truly is written for young people, plus I don’t care for books about brats.

Infinity Ring Book 1: A Mutiny in Time is available at Amazon and probably at your library or school library

Unusual Blend Science Fiction & Fantasy – The Galactic Mage by John Daulton

December 30, 2012 by Kathy Leave a Comment

This was an unusual read! John Daulton combines science fiction, fantasy with a love story and comes out with an enjoyable, fast read. The Galactic Mage alternates the story from the viewpoints of mage Altin and Ensign Orli of the Earth expedition to learn what happened to the people of Andalia.

Altin is a “Six” meaning a mage with six of the possible eight talents. All previous Sixes have over-reached their magical potential and died, some spectacularly. Altin is determined to avoid this and sets himself the goal to reach his planet’s moon Luria by teleporting rocks and enchanted Seeing Stones. Once he reaches Luria he decides to explore the rest of his solar system, then goes toward the closest star. This is where he encounters hostile Coconuts, which hurl rocky spears at his tower.

He fights the Coconuts off, then sees curious flashes of light. Of course the flashes of light are from the Earth expedition’s fight with the same Coconuts, which Altin joins. Some of the plot is a little predictable after this, yet still fun.

The Hostiles (or “Coconuts” as Altin calls them) seem determined to kill anyone they find in space. It’s never clear whether the Hostiles are alive or why they attack humanity, leaving unanswered questions for future books.

Overall this was fun, different from the usual science fiction or fantasy, meant for adults and squeaky clean. The magic Altin uses is well thought-out, requiring hard work to master.

On the downside, when I was done reading I still had no idea who or what the Hostiles are, why Orli and Altin are so drawn to each other, whether any Earth humans also have magic, or the significance of the small weed Orli finds during the fleet’s time on Andalia. The character of Altin is more developed than Orli. We know little of Orli beyond that she is miserable on ship and in the military. These are small weaknesses and didn’t bother my enjoyment of The Galactic Mage.

I read this as a Nook book. I could not find it in my library nor any of the libraries in the state of Michigan (which has a great statewide sharing system) so you may need to purchase The Galactic Mage.