Author D. Nolan Clark combines circumstances and antagonists that were refreshingly unusual to write a novel of old fashioned science fiction with plenty of imaginative concepts.  Forsaken Skies uses a political back structure that has Earth as an economic and military force playing balance of power against immense interstellar corporations.  It’s an interesting concept that Clark mentions only in passing, something that explains the predicament and fleshes out the constraints.

Forsaken Skies is entertaining and introduces several characters and fascinating plot elements.

Plot Synopsis

Just before the book opens an unknown force – assumed to be a rival corporation – has attacked small, inhospitable colony world Niraya inhabited by several peaceful quasi-religious groups plus some corporate mining employees.  Both the corporation and Earth decline to aid the colony because the world is barely profitable as-is but a conniving naval office, Auster Maggs, says he can personally assist them for a very large fee.  The colony sends two people to negotiate with Maggs, paying him the equivalent of two years’ terraforming fees for his non-existent help.

Former naval hero Aleister Lanoe and traffic controller Tannis Valk, who had fought against Lanoe in an earlier war, get mixed up with the Nirayans when they overhear the situation and realize Maggs is a con man.  Lanoe recruits a few of his former squadron to come and assist the colony.

Pace and Characters

Once the group arrives at Niraya the plot gets interesting but the pace is uneven.  We have way too many pages where the two young characters indulge in the usual teen angst and self-doubt, rebel against authority and build relationships.  Those sections dragged on.  In between we have Lanoe and his team working hard to first find out who the heck is attacking Niraya and why, and second, to build a defense against what appears to be an unstoppable force.

During this phase we learn more about Lanoe and Valk and get to know them. Forsaken Skies does a reasonable job building characters although I wouldn’t give it top marks for realistic, interesting people.

The author needed to build up Maggs in order to make the ending believable but the sections with him plod along.  Maggs remains a bit of a cipher, a cardboard cutout instead of a real person.  I think author Clark could have done more with him.

Clark could have done more with Niraya itself as it clearly has a wide variety of people, anywhere from seekers of peace and piety to miners. There were a few boring pages where Elder MacRae does a Yoda imitation but the part where she is the primary viewpoint in the battle on the moon is well done.

First in a Series

Forsaken Skies stands on its own.  It has a beginning, a middle and an end and the ending nicely finishes the story arc.  Nonetheless it leaves room for a sequel, where Lanoe and/or the Earth navy tracks down the source of the attacks and gets them to stop.  I suspect a second book will be more interesting, with fewer segues into teen troubles (I hope), and a fascinating diversion into a completely different, alien culture. (Incidentally the aliens here reminded me a bit of the Star Trek episode with a doomsday machine that ate planets and ships but Clark did a much better job building a realistic and vivid threat.)

Overall

I read Forsaken Skies in a couple evenings and enjoyed it.  It is not top caliber science fiction mainly due to pacing problems and the two boring teen characters.  The aliens are very well done, unique and fascinating.  4 stars.

I received a complementary copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Terms of Enlistment kept popping up in my reading recommendations and I kept pushing it off for a couple months.  I’m not a big fan of military science fiction where the emphasis is on weapons and gee-whiz technology, but the genre has a few happy exceptions that feature people.  (Think Star Wars, which for all its special effects did not spend time obsessing about stuff, it was about people.  And we loved those movies.)

I finally borrowed Terms of Enlistment from the library and was hooked by the first page.  Our protagonist, Andrew Grayson, is a welfare rat, living in government housing, 30 floor concrete buildings all crowded together in a Public Residence Cluster.  Welfare recipients get flavored soy meals in Basic Nutritional Allowance adding to 2000 calories per day.  Apparently Andrew has no chance of getting a job despite a public college education.  His only way out of the welfare hole is to enlist and stay for at least 5 years.

Other authors have used this theme – join up to get out of the ghetto – notably Charles Sheffield and Jerry Pournelle in Higher Education.  It’s plausible and easy to see how we could get to this point in a few decades.

Author Marko Kloos uses Andrew’s first assignments, evacuate embassy staff and quelling a riot in Detroit, to show the social background before Andrew moves to the navy and the real action that defines this series begins.  Andrew’s first extra-solar trip to a new colony turns into a fight for the crew’s (and eventually humanity’s) lives as they are attacked by giant aliens.  This clearly sets the stage for subsequent novels as the Earth forces move to counter the aliens and defend our planet.

No Extraordinary Heroics

One aspect that stands out for me is that Andrew is an ordinary guy.  Smart, brave, resourceful, lucky, but he does not do incredible deeds of derring-do.  Recall the early Honor Harrington novels where she heroically saves her ship or extricates half a million prisoners of war.  Those books are fun – once – but they don’t feel real.  It is difficult to identify with someone larger than life and frankly the story line gets tiresome. I look for realistic characters with flaws and strengths, and Kloos delivers this with Andrew and his friends.

Summary

There are now five novels in the Frontlines series of which Terms of Enlistment is the first.  Kloos does a good job setting up the conflict between humans and the far more capable aliens and the book reads like a stand alone novel, not like an extended set up.  That’s commendable in series fiction these days!

Overall this is a fine piece of science fiction, with people and interesting settings, set in a plausible future.  I’m not sure how plausible war with 85 feet tall aliens will be in the subsequent novels, but this first novel is a winner.

4 Stars

People in the Future Act Like People Today

Becky Chambers imagines the future full of whiz bang technology and the same old people we have today, even though some folks are human, some humanoid lizards, others reminiscent of mollusks.  Some seek to dominate, others want to be left alone, while others try to thread a narrow path through ties of friendship and loyalty, economics and ambition.  The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is an engaging story full of interesting people and challenges.

Chambers focuses on characters in turn, but primarily tells her story through Ashby the captain and owner of the tunneler ship Wayfarer and Rosemary, the ship’s new clerk late of Mars.  Ashby is in love with Pei, a non-human captain of a merchant ship that supplies one side of a long interstellar war.  He is also torn between his ambition to make his ship and crew better equipped to handle difficult jobs and his desire for a peaceful, happy life.

Rosemary is hiding from her father’s crimes under an assumed name.  Her family had been rich, having settled on Mars when Earth was dying and before most of its inhabitants either died or migrated en mass to other worlds via the Exodus.  The Exodans nearly died until rescued by the Aeluons and Aandrisks and given access to other planets.  The Martians and Exodans are only now beginning to talk to each other.

Sissix, the Aandrisk pilot, Dr Chef the doctor and chef, Kizzy and Jenks the technicians who each get a cameo role or two plus short feature chapters, and the two other crew and assorted friends and enemies make the rest of the story move along.  We see a bit of the fascinating Aandrisk culture, one where individuals come together for families to bond in friendship, then later join other families to raise hatchlings.

By the end of the novel I felt as if I knew Ashby, Rosemary and Sissix and we were friends already.

Excellent People-Centric Novel Set in Space

My favorite science fiction stories use space or the future as the setting and feature people.  I enjoy books that bring in a touch of the old romance we love in the best space operas without overwhelming the story about people.  The best use the future/space/science fiction to create challenges that the characters must beat, without focusing too much on the technology behind or the whiz-bang spaceship stuff.

Military science fiction can be wonderful when it keeps away from “gee gosh, let’s talk about that nifty laser thingy”.  Exploration stories can be fun when they keep the explorers front and center.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet proves even a long journey is engaging when we enjoy our traveling companions.

Angry Planet

Author Chambers asks a similar question as we confront today:  What do you do when you encounter people who instantly and savagely want to kill you?  The angry planet in the title is located near the galactic core, and is the centerpiece of a strange race’s incessant wars.

The Toremi culture believes in complete unity and consensus.  If you disagree you either leave or fight.  The Galactic Commons, which unifies many races including Aeluons and Aandrisks and humans, wants to trade with the Toremi and believe they have an agreement to do so.

The GC contracts the Wayfarer to punch a new tunnel from the Toremi world Hedra Ka back to GC space, to cut the journey time from months to hours.  Unfortunately when the Wayfarer crew attends a gathering of GC diplomatic staff, the Toremi gate crash and overhear an innocent conversation that crystallizes the urge to kill the GC folks and attack the Wayfarer.

If this novel is made into a movie no doubt the angry planet and GC/Toremi relationsihp will be the featured points.  The attack and subsequent actions are the climax to the novel’s plot; however, they are not the climax to the crew relationships or the story itself.

Summary

I thoroughly enjoyed The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.  Author Chambers set up a realistic, interesting world with complex and believable people.  She could easily add sequels or other stories set in the same universe, whether featuring same or new characters.  I will watch out for any follow ups and recommend you do the same if you enjoy people-centric science fiction.

I did wonder, though, whether aliens would not be, well, more alien to us.  These aliens were all more or less recognizable human.  At one point the characters themselves discuss this as a fact that had puzzled the different species for centuries with no answer.

4 Stars

Note:  A second book is due October 2016.

Do you expect to read about the zombie apocalypse when you start a science fiction story.  No?  Me neither.  Nor do I expect to see alien spacecraft left parked in a small town doing nothing, nor a 16 year old girl main character who doesn’t fall in love nor a town where the factory owner rebuilds the factory after a fire instead of shipping everything off to China.  Gene Doucette’s The Spaceship Next Door is original, interesting and fun and even the zombies are believable.

The plot revolves around the spaceship that landed in Sorrow Falls, rural northwestern Massachusetts 3 years ago and since then has done…nothing.  At least nothing that anyone can see.  There is a full contingent of UFO tin hat types, all camped across the road, all with homemade instruments looking for radiation? color? sound? anything?  And more to the point, an army base with plenty of real instruments that feed data to a board of Nobel prize-winning scientists all looking and waiting for the ship to do…something.

Characters

Annie is 16, pretty used to taking care of herself because her father’s gone all the time and her mother has cancer and can’t handle normal parent/adult responsibilities.  Annie is extraordinarily outgoing and friendly and knows just about everybody in town.  She works part time at the local diner/conversation hub and the library and visits the tin hat camper contingent every day and she’s smart, a little bit like Anne of Green Gables.

Annie is the only character that Doucette develops thoroughly, and through her we meet Ed, the government agent who investigates an anomaly from the spaceship, plus Violet, Doug, Rick and four of the nutty campers.

Ed is a bit of a cipher.  He is responsible, warm and friendly to Annie, in fact he agrees to act as her guardian while her mom is hospitalized out of town.  Yet he is also the author of the plan to bomb the town with nuclear weapons if necessary.  It felt to me as if he wore his analyst hat at work and didn’t think about what it was he was analyzing, that it was people.

Annie’s best friend Violet is a placeholder with little personality, in fact it’s a running joke with Annie and Violet that no one remembers Violet after meeting her.  Of course there is a reason for that!

No Romance

It was so refreshing to read a novel featuring a 16 year old girl who did not have a romance with a vampire/werewolf/demigod/demon/alien/super hero or even with a normal guy.  Annie likes guys just fine and she’s attracted to Sam, an army corporal, and good friends with her neighbor Doug.

Pacing and Ending

Several reviewers on Amazon felt The Spaceship Next Door was slow, but I didn’t feel that.  The plot takes a while to kick off while we get to know Annie and meet the camper folks, her friends, Ed and the army guys.  This is not a high octane action story.

The ending was a bit unsatisfying.  We don’t know what comes next with the aliens, the spaceship or the ex-zombies.  We get hints that Annie will go blithely on to her future but that doesn’t seem likely given she got the brain dump from a multi-zillion year old alien.  We get the obligatory threats from an evil government guy but Annie doesn’t waste time feeling threatened.

YA or Adult?

Despite Annie’s age The Spaceship Next Door is not listed as nor marketed as YA fiction (maybe because there are no nonsense love stories with vampires or demons).  Teens would like it but the book is primarily an adult, straightforward science fiction story about first contact with a twist.

Summary

The Spaceship Next Door was a happy find.  I was glad to have it on my Nook list and glad I read it.  It is not so compelling to warrant 5 stars, but an excellent read, most enjoyable.

4 Stars

I was excited when the publisher approved me for a NetGalley copy of Home World by Bonnie Milani.  The book sounded great.  Earth is in bad shape after centuries of war, the heir apparent to the Earth Protectorship, Jezekiah, negotiated a trade treaty with their former deadly enemies the Lupans and hopes to position his younger sister as the heir by marrying her off to the Lupan warlord prince.   Not to mention the book is set in Hawaii with a cast of interesting characters, all with their own plans and secrets.

The first few pages were boring as Jezekiah leaves a merchant ship incognito to escape his sister’s assassin, then it got a little interesting for a few more pages.  It was as though the author couldn’t make up her mind whether she was telling a story about people, or about a society or about technology or about plots and secrets.  It alternated between pretty good and poor, interesting and boring, plausible and ridiculous, sane and nasty violent.

The author does not explain the backstory and we’re confused for about a third of the book with few clues.  I don’t mind books where the backstory is murky or explained in dribbles throughout the story, but Home World had a complex backstory that was critical to the novel.

Technology or Miracles

I don’t usually care what technology gee-whiz things science fiction authors come up with as usually the people are the interesting part of the book.  However there were two technologies that were the book’s foundation so let’s talk about them.

Genetic Engineering.  Home World envisions multiple planets where the residents are genetically altered for survival on inhospitable worlds.  Other people are altered to a Type, trending to certain skills.  Some are Sprites, meant to be joy toys, sex objects.  Some are Aryans, blond and nasty.  There are a few natural humans even on Earth and none elsewhere.

Lupans were genetically engineered with genes contributed from wolves or tigers, with genes from hawks and eagles for eyesight.  The resulting people look human but have fangs and other special characteristics.  For example the men must Impress upon a female at some point and mate with her or die.  Oddly the women may have 4 husbands while the men have one wife.

Aside from the ethical lapses, the genetic engineering is plausible.  Author Milani hints at the cultural results but sort of sweeps them under the rug with the rest of the back story.

Real Time Communication Over Light Years.  This one was ridiculous.  The Van Buren ruling family met real time via hologram across 60-100 light years.  In fact the connections were so instantaneous that Letticia was able to make Jezekiah’s hologram respond so the other person actually “felt” his touch.

Overall computer/web/sync forms a huge part of the novel, the bedrock for some plot devices, Lettica’s addiction, the reason why some people can sneak through secure gates.  When a technology gizmo is this important to the novel it must make sense or the book falls apart.

Characters

I didn’t like any of the characters.  We’re meant to like Jezekiah; he is fighting the good fight, looking for a way to help Earth, avert a war with Den Lupan, looking for love, looking for a way to slide out of his heir status.  Instead he is 2 dimensional and boring.  Plus he’s a bit whiny and unwilling to commit to either his own wishes or his duty.

Strongarm, the Lupan prince and intended bridegroom didn’t have much personality.  His brother-in-law was the most interesting character of them all.

Keiko, whom both Jezekiah and Strongarm desire, seems to flip flop and float from one allegiance to another, just as she is able to slip in and out of the Van Buren manor, and flit between her father’s home and her grandfather’s.  Realize her father and grandfather are mortal enemies and you see the problem.  She is either incredibly naive or over-confident, accepting Tong star weapons from her grandfather even though they are illegal even to possess and sets up meetings between her grandfather and Strongarm and grandfather and Jezekiah, never thinking those meetings make ideal ambushes.

Letticia is frightened near to death, suspecting everyone of trying to kill her, addicted to Sync, addicted to power games, crude and rude and nasty.  Given an advanced society it’s hard to believe no one would have recognized the problem and gotten Letticia mental health care.

Author Milani would have a better story with more likable or interesting characters.  Given this is her first novel she may develop her character skills.

Plot and Scenes

Book includes a gang rape scene, a description of how Lupan males kill their families when exposed to the vile sex drug Venus Seed, several violent deaths, a seduction (same female, same day as the gang rape), murders, execution threats, annihilation threats, way too many plots and counter plots.

No one has a moral compass.  Strongarm and his brother-in-law casually plan to destroy Earth, render it uninhabitable if they don’t get their treaty sealed with a marriage; Keiko’s father tries to kill her as part of her Samurai trial; Keiko’s gangster grandfather casts her off until she shoots Strongarm.

Then a miracle occurs and Strongarm isn’t dead, Keiko turns out to be an acceptable bride, war is averted, treason accusations rescinded.  I really don’t like “a miracle occurs here” plot devices.

Summary

Home World is a good first start for new author Bonnie Milani but I didn’t enjoy most of it.  Nonetheless I stayed up till midnight yesterday to finish, partly because I wanted to get the book done, write the review and move on to something better but another reason was I wanted to know the ending.

I didn’t like the characters, unexplained backstory, the fact we’re plopped down in the middle of several high stakes situations without a map, the irritating pidgin, ridiculous technology, lack of morals, chimera species, overly convenient endings.

I did like the sense of excitement in about half the book (did I mention it alternates between boring and good?) and the writing style was reasonably good.  I think if the author keeps writing she will become quite good.  But please, skip the rapes, pidgin, miracle endings.

3 Stars

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

NetGalley is a great way to find new authors and books, most of which I never see in our library.  The premise is simple exchange:  I get access to advance electronic copies of books and promise to review each one.  Since I got my tablet with Kindle application it’s easy to access and read the books (easier than with my Nook) and I’ve been able to meet my commitment.

This is a two-sided bargain.  I must actually read and finish the book to review it.  And books from NetGalley are just like ones from the library; some are excellent, most are OK and a few are stinkers.

Galactic Legend of Life and Death uses a huge backstory, the very nature of life and death, and the long term survival of the human race.  The world building premise was grand:  Humans are invited to join the Alliance of Intelligent Clusters, but there is a catch  We have only so long to prove we are intelligent and the proof must come from a demonstrable contribution to the overall universe knowledge. You can see this could be an exciting idea for a novel!

Unfortunately authors Boian and Dora Alexandrov added in multitudes of ideas: Black holes that survive from one Big Bang to another, the endless search for immortality or the cessation of life altogether, the fight for survival on a strange world, a galactic lab where every species has its own planet and access to develop ideas and gain its intelligence license, beings comprised of pure energy, beings that live in stars, a nearly omnipresent intelligence/artificer called Cor, Wandering Dowgens who are reborn after each Big Bang and seek out intelligence, instantaneous travel, ability to ask to Cor to make any food, build any structure, alter the world, to…  You get the idea.  It is overwhelming.  I felt bludgeoned.

I would like to reread this novel after a seriously empowered editor honed it to one story, or even a novel with three or four stories.  This book has so many excellent ideas it’s as if the authors couldn’t decide which to use, so threw the all into the pot and we ended up with a book that zooms from idea to idea, plot to plot, strange planet to far galaxy to different universes and in the process forgot about people.

Boian and Dora Alexandrov did not develop the characters well.  I believe they could have done a better job on the people, made the settings even better had they selected just one main plot with a (small) subplot or two.  As it was we had so many words and ideas and quests and desires that it was a giant stew.

I read this on the Kindle app which had about 800 screen/pages and each page was around 400 words.  That’s 320,000, far too many.  Until Fanagor got to the lab and found out about the license imperative, I thought a good editor would cross out every other sentence, then cut out two thirds of the adjectives and we’d have a good story. But a better idea would be to slim the novel down to a manageable number of ideas and make each one live.

The Alliance of Intelligent Clusters, the Lab, the three Cluster types, the need for an intelligence license are great ideas that could make a wonderful science fiction novel.  Save the Tillda black hole, Tillda’s “children”, the book containing the Galactic Legend of Life and Death and the Wandering Dowgens for other novels.

Overall, had I not gotten this through NetGalley and owed a read and review, I’d have stopped about page 20.  At that point the sheer number of words and absence of any use for those words felt exhausting.  The novel got much better and more interesting further on but I cannot give it more than 3 stars.

A couple weeks ago Penguin Books sent me a hard back copy of Impulse: Lightship Chronicles, Book One; it arrived in the mailbox with no note so I guess I must have won a giveaway but who knows.  I took it with me on a flight to San Antonio, read it, moderately enjoyed it, packed it back to take home.  A week later I could not remember anything about the story other than it was OK but had a lot of holes.  I had to open it back up to recall anything about the plot or characters.

Once recalled I did remember the book, which is an amazing medley of good and awful.  On the good side the back story is intriguing and author Dave Bara could do a lot of stories set there.  We have the successors to two sides in an interstellar civil war who are now on the same side, cooperating and looking for more planets to bring back into the fold, the Earth Historians who are Yoda-like characters except with their own infighting and factions, the Sri, who combine Dark Lord of the Sith qualities with scientific brilliance, the remnants of the old Corporate Empire and allusions to mysterious Forerunners.  Right there we have the nucleus for many fine story telling opportunities.

The plot moves pretty fast with protagonist Peter serving on Impulse, a joint operation from Quantar (Peter’s home) and Carinthia to understand the attack on the ship Impulse and to seek other groups that survived the war.  Peter does all sorts of heroic deeds and gains a nifty Forerunner artifact (of unknown capability) plus ends up engaged to the princess of a different planet.  All in a days work for our hero!

The main problems with the book are the contradictions and ridiculous actions.  For example:

Peter is on his first assignment after the military college, yet is promoted to lieutenant commander and is the third senior officer on the ship.  True, he is the son of the soon-to-be planetary director but I had a hard time believing that any amount of nepotism would propel someone this high, especially when serving under a captain from Carinthia.

The Impulse captain and executive officer both leave the ship on shuttles to recreate an attack that nearly wiped out a different ship.  They left fully expecting to be attacked, and left Peter in charge.  Even to this non military expert that seems like dereliction of duty.  Surely there is another way to diagnose an attack than by recreating it with crewed shuttles, and no captain and first officer simultaneously would jaunt off leaving college boy in charge.  To top it off, Peter then delegates command to the non naval Historian, someone definitely not in the chain of command; that’s illegal.

Then when they are attacked Peter has to rescue them from a “hydrazine fire”.  My memories from chemistry class are dim, but hydrazine is a nifty rocket fuel that would burn mighty hot and mighty quick.

Right after Peter joins the Impulse the crew pressures him to wear the Carinthian uniform, not the Unified Space nor Quantar uniform.  He refuses, then the captain suddenly acts like it was all a big joke, hazing.  It didn’t read like a joke and I don’t think it added anything to the story.  Even my zero military knowledge says that’s not good manners or smart practice.  Nor does it make any sense that a navy lieutenant commander would outrank a marine colonel.  These are small errors that shake the reader out of book trance.

There is another scene where the executive officer is setting explosive charges but doesn’t know how and is unwilling to have Peter (who is expert) do it.  Hmm.  Again, this doesn’t seem like good military practice; certainly in the corporate world we expect senior management to delegate to the person best able to do a task.

The biggest sour note was the relationship and dialogue with Levant, a third planet ruled by a prince.  During a social reception the prince first twists Peter’s arm to marry his sister, then demands full access to the Unified Quantar/Carinthia/Earth technology – and gets both.  The prince has the repulsive habit of demanding something, hearing he can have it in 10 days and demanding it in 5.  (I used to hate this behavior.  It is disrespectful and in practice yields really bad results since everyone will sandbag whatever they say.)  Peter and the rest don’t seem to mind and give in to every demand and speed up.

The book has several goofy scientific problems, such as a geosynchronous orbit only 300 miles up, but overall I can ignore science errors when the story moves along and the characters are interesting.  With Impulse we have the outline of a good story universe, potentially interesting characters and problems, but we don’t have a finished novel.  Impulse is Dave Bara’s first novel and I hope and expect he will improve his craftsmanship – and if writing science fiction or stories with military landscapes that he learns the basics.

Overall I’d give this 2 or 3 stars.  I won’t look for book 2 in the series, Starbound: Volume Two of the Lightship Chronicles, which is out.  The fact I couldn’t recall anything about Impulse a week after reading says it all.

The Galaxy Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) is a collection of science fiction short stories by several newer authors. The stories have a contemporary feeling to them, with characters that behave much as Americans do today, and with themes that we can extrapolate.

As with any anthology there were stories I like better than others.

Enjoyable Winners

Keep Off The Grass by Felix R. Savage has a young Catholic man of Japanese ancestry mining (aka poaching) on a water-bearing comet.  His primary, exterior missiion is to bring the Gospel to the solar system, but desperate to bring water to his home on a Venus Trojan where the water recycling unit has broken, he lands on a comet and begins to gather water.  The other group on the comet is an apocalyptic bunch who expects to reach the Oort cloud eventually.

The story moves along and the characters are interesting and well done.

Earth Fall by Raymond L. Weill is the only story in the bunch where I had previous experience with the author.  I enjoy just about all Mr. Weill’s books as he tells a great story, moves it along, has fun and interesting characters and settings.  My quibble is that dialogue sequences with aliens tend to be wooden and good guy/bad guy straightforward.

I hope he develops this into a full novel or series.

Ser Pan Comido by Matthew Alan Thyer is very different from the usual sci-fi adventure.  The main characters are a trio of poor street kids on a planet ruled by despotic oligarchs, the secret police captain and the pilot attached to/time locked into star ship.

Pretty Good

The Stars that Bind by Nick Webb is set in the far, far future where man has spread to thousands of galaxies that are united and whole.  It’s so far in the future that the universe expansion is causing pieces to fall off, too far to reach.  The idea is intriguing.

Multiply by Nicolas Wilson also has an intriguing story line.  Comet and Walter are AIs charged with preparing a base for their humans.  Sent off from the main ship they crash land on an asteroid and must build from scratch.  I liked the characters.

The Imortals:  Kronis Valley by David Adams has a terribly wounded military man nearly disintegrate upon return home.  The author did a fine job with characters.

The Rest

All the stories were readable with interesting characters or ideas.  They didn’t catch my imagination as did the ones mentioned.  I am not fond of stories that turn assassins into heroes, which is why a couple of them dropped down here.

Summary

If you enjoy science fiction and like to discover new(er) authors then I highly recommend The Galaxy Chronicles (The Future Chronicles).  Right now it’s available only as an E book ($1.99 Kindle).