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

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

Survival is the first novel by Ben Bova that I have finished. Our library had Survival in the new book section, I was looking for something different and decided to try Bova again.  I’m glad I did because Survival is a decent read.

Characters

I liked the main character, Alexander Ignatiev.  He is a crotchety older man we meet first on a short trip to a close-by star.  He discovers their ship will not be able to gather enough hydrogen to power the life support systems and manages to mousetrap the AI running the ship into changing course.  We meet Ignatiev again in the main story when he leads a group of 2000 scientists on a mission to save a machine civilization 2000 light years away.

Ignatiev is interesting and likable, with a quick sense of humor and a bit of cynicism.  The other characters are sketchier and the machine civilization is flat, without personality.

I got very tired reading how dedicated the scientists are to their research, to the point where they are perfectly happy being fobbed off with a well-equipped lab when they could be digging into the intricacies of the machine civilization.  This felt off, even allowing for the single-mindedness one needs to be a world class researcher.

Plot and Story Telling

The first part of the novel, the trip to Gliese 581, doesn’t do anything except set up Ignatiev as the man to watch.  It doesn’t fit into the rest of the story and feels like a novella the author decided to graft onto his main narrative.

The other part that I find extraordinarily jarring, unbelievable, is the machine civilization’s response to the human mission.  Initially the machines intend to trap the people on their planet, then let them die in the death wave, but somehow at the end, Ignatiev manages to convince them that it would be more fruitful, more interesting, to cooperate with humans and the Predecessors to save and unite as many civilizations as possible.

We are supposed to believe that the machines, initially ambivalent about the humans, then became implacable, only to then decide, oh yeah, let’s band together.  Sorry, I don’t believe it.

I don’t believe in the whole machine civilization, sentient artificial intelligence world building either, but Bova tells the story well enough that I could nod and go on.

Writing Style

Bova writes quite well and puts in enough in-fighting and political jockeying to give the story some meat and make the people more believable.  He uses dialogue and introspection to advance the story and keep the pace moving.

Overall

Jack McDevitt wrote several novels using the theme of galactic omega clouds (death weapons or art objects, depending on your point of view) that threaten all civilizations.  In his novels the weapons are attracted to straight lines and right angles and ruthlessly attack any they come upon.  Bova’s gamma death wave reminded me of McDevitt’s omega clouds – and reminded me how much I liked McDevitt’s novels.

Survival is a decent read albeit a fast read.  If you have a spare evening give it a shot.

3 Stars

I’m going to do what I hate doing, write a negative review on a book that the author labored to create.  I dislike writing stinky reviews even more than reading the book that spawned the dislike.

Deadly Cargo (Jake Mudd Adventures Book 1) features small-time cargo ship owner, Jake Mudd, and his adventures trying to deliver a million-credit package.  Of course the delivery goes wrong, he meets a girl, he saves the planet and he escapes just ahead of a deadly enemy.  Good authors can make Space ship owners who live on the fringe or the underside of society into enjoyable stories and I hoped to get that with the Jake Mudd book.

The author, Hal Archer, writes such a good newsletter that I bumped Jake up to the top of my overflowing to-read pile.  The novel is also fairly well written, in the sense of good use of language, good sentence structure.  What I didn’t care for in the story were a few too many plot holes, an overall ridiculous plot, and a dearth of characterization.

One plot hole is that Jake needs the million credit chip the villain has, but shoves the villain into a pot of bio goop.  I doubt it would have taken more than a few seconds to pull the now-dead villain out and retrieve the chip, but Jake doesn’t.  He knows an old enemy is coming for him, thus his ostensible reason to skedaddle but I don’t buy it.  Not for someone as desperate for cash as he.

Another hole in the plot and setting is that Archer repeatedly tells us the landscape is barren, as in no vegetation.  None.  Plus the daily storms are strong enough to wipe out almost any plants if there were some.  Yet the planet has large predators.  (This is the same puzzle as with the ice planet of Hoth that just so happened to have large animals.)

The book has some good points.  There is no swearing or foul language and no sex scene.  It is a fast read.  The relationship between Jake and his AI star ship, Sarah, seems interesting and likely explored more in sequels.

Reviewers on Amazon liked the book more than I, with average 4 stars, most complimenting the plot and fast, entertaining readability.  I didn’t like it very much at all and am rating it 2 stars since I managed to finish but didn’t enjoy and do not intend to read any sequels.

2 Stars

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We are Legion (We are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) is a lot of fun but read the caveats before you buy.

Plot and World Building

Bob sells his software company and signs up to be frozen for eventual resuscitation just before he dies in a traffic accident.  He wakes up about 100 years later, this time as a “replicant”, a personality and mind uploaded into a computer program.  He learns he has zero rights and has the opportunity to become an interstellar probe pilot – or be turned off.  To add challenge, there are 5 other replicants who have the same opportunity.

Bob’s a competitive guy and decides to win.

Bob’s new world is grimmer than ours.  The US no longer exists and is now a theocracy centered in the Pacific Northwest.  Brazil among other countries is also building probes using artificially recreated personalities and the world is in an arms race.  Bob manages to get off the planet and launch towards Epsilon Eridanni just ahead of Brazil’s attack.

Here’s where Bob’s software background gets handy.  Bob is able to weed through his programming and remove several backdoor control points and rebuild himself as autonomous.  He decides to go ahead with the mission anyway.

Bob gets to his target system and explores a bit, encounters the murderous Brazilian probe, fights the Brazilian off.  Bob clones himself and puts his copies – who are also autonomous individuals – into their own spaceships.  Howard and Will return to Earth.  Good thing too, because one of the Brazilian software clones is slinging asteroids – big ones, planet killer types – at Earth.  Over 95% of humanity has died off from the prior wars and now the Brazilian’s asteroid attack will kill everyone left.

Much of the plot after this point turns on how to rescue the remaining people on Earth:  Where to move them to, how to get them there, who first, so on.

Parallel plots center around Bob and the main clone characters.

Characters

Bob is the main character in this novel of course, but he also clones himself and makes Bill and Homer, then many more generations.  Each has slightly different interests but all are quirky, nerdy types, the ones you figure will keep their teen senses of humor forever.

Bob discovers the Deltans, a race of primitive folks just beginning their stone age and is fascinated with the culture.

Will aka Riker (one of too many Star Trek jokes) and Howard  go back to Earth and spend their time helping the folks left, and eventually to evacuate them.

Bill is actually a more interesting character than Bob.  Bill tinkers and explores and develops faster-than-light communication in this first book and later develops other neat whiz-bang things.  Bill also acts as the hub for the Bobiverse as it grows to include about 100 Bobs.

Dennis Taylor does a decent job showing us the different Bob variants although he also does a fair amount of telling.  It seemed like he created so many variants mostly to have a lot of names around; we have 3 or 4 main Bobs in this first book and a few more in each of the sequels that play noticeable roles.

I suspect it’s kind of hard to have a lot of character development when your character is a computer program.  The basic premise is that the program is scanned from Bob’s brain and contains his personality along with generic computer capabilities and this personality can adapt and change.  Still, character development is somewhat thin in this and successive books in the series.

Caveat

As I said in the title of this post, We are Legion (We are Bob) and its sequels are a lot of fun.  The Bobs explore our tiny neighborhood in the galaxy; they meet new civilizations and peoples; they rescue humanity from death.  The book is fast-paced and overall most enjoyable.

However.  The author apparently believes that religious belief is ridiculous and that there are enough Christian nutcases to go create a theocracy.  It reminded me of some of the more fervid nightmares people foamed about during Bush’s presidency. Taylor inserts Trump into the story a bit too.

I don’t know whether the author is an atheist; to me this attitude was just a backdrop for the story.

There is also a lot of gee-whiz going on.  Bob tells us that the basic prerequisites for interstellar work are the 3-D printer and intelligent software.

The 3-D printer is souped up version, able to layer individual atoms to build anything from elaborate computer cores sufficient to hold a Bob clone, to new spacecraft, to bombs.  About the only thing it can’t print is something alive or food.  (I think its problem with food may be more because it would be grossly inefficient rather than technically impossible.)  Now years ago I was a research chemist.  Just because you stick two atoms next to each other, even if aligned just exactly right, Mother Nature is stubborn and you might not get the chemical reaction you want.  I don’t see how a 3-D printer could assemble atoms into plastic, for example.  (Today’s printers today use plastic as raw material.)

Even if you believe the 3-D printer could assemble mining robots, etc., etc., to go build a new spacecraft with computer core, I think the timescale is off.  In the book Bob/Bill/Howard are independent within a few years.   That brings me to the final point, the idea of copying someone into a computer.  Frankly I don’t believe it.  Perhaps it might be possible to load memories into non-brain storage, but I don’t see how copying memories will create a personality, one that is inherently a person, not a program.

If you can ignore the gosh-darn technological wonder doings and don’t take the idiotic anti-Christian backdrop personally then it’s a blast.  Don’t look for outstanding writing or subtle character building; this isn’t literature.  Instead enjoy for what this novel is, entertainment.

5 Stars for entertainment.

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Prominence: A Space Opera Adventure (Blackstar Command Book 1) by A. C. Hadfield.

When I think “space opera” I think of grand vistas and complicated plots, books that are uplifting, showing human endeavor amid deadly danger.   The original Foundation trilogy is perfect example.

Prominence lacks the feel of grandeur.  Instead it feels like YA fiction where things just happen, and teen heroes save the day. For instance, our protagonist, Kai, is able to contact not one but two military leaders – admirals and equivalent – in a war zone, insult one and make demands on the other, and both admirals take his call and listen.  Further the military leadership sends Kai to find his missing father and retrieve a rumored piece of very high tech left behind by the mysterious Navigator aliens.  How realistic is this?

The blurb indicates the Coalition is fighting for its life against the Host, that the Host seeks its annihilation. Yet we learn near the end that both groups include aliens and some humans, that the main difference is the Host values life above all while the Coalition is “more pragmatic”.  That does not jibe with the annihilation bit.

I managed to finish it although the last third was difficult.  Hadfield had a reasonable story in the first third or so, then it got unbelievable and boring.  The characters are stock folks from the shelf.  Pacing and style are OK.

Overall 2 Stars

Fringe Runner (Fringe Series, #1) by Rachel Aukes

Fringe Runner is better than Prominence.  The novel’s main problems are uneven pacing and a thin plot with too many people acting far too gullible.  It wasn’t boring exactly but I never felt connected to the characters and the backstory was far fetched.

The two main planets in the Collective are Alluvia and Myr, both originally colonized by Earth, and a few smaller colonies called the Fringe  Earth allowed Alluvia and Myr their independence immediately but the two did not treat their colonies with the same pragmatic respect..  Alluvia and Myr keep the Fringe worlds and their people in tight control and treat them as little more than cheap forced labor or cannon fodder.

What I kept wondering:  Where is Earth?  If Earth colonized Alluvia and Myr, then it presumably is still around.  Why does Earth have no role or voice in the Collective?  No ambassador, no trade, nothing.  That doesn’t make sense.

Characters were a notch above cardboard but they didn’t feel real to me.  Main character Aramis Reyne should be fun to read about.  He’s older, arthritic, tired of living on the edge of bankruptcy, tired of his former friends think him a traitor.  Somehow I just couldn’t get interested in him.  In the last third of the novel Reyne is extraordinarily gullible, first falling for the old “my friend told me” and then following a complete unknown to a set up ambush.  Nope.  Sorry, but if Reyne is that stupid then he wouldn’t have lived past the earlier uprising.

The backstory was a touch unbelievable too.  Sure, I can see Myr and Alluvia acting like overlords and treating the Fringe like serfs, but I can’t see the Fringe members of the Collective military going along with it, or at least not making some trouble along the way.  The political situation described is too fragile to last as long as it supposedly has.

Writing style was OK.  Dialogue and pacing were problematic but again the biggest issue is sheer lack of compelling interest.  I kept putting the story down and having a hard time remembering who was who and what was happening even just a day later.  I won’t pursue the series.

3 Stars

I received both books for free through Instafreebie