More Books than Time

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

Painted Pathways – Fantasy with an Artistic Flair

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Painted Pathways by Melinda VanLone and Sonja Field is an intriguing fantasy with a different feel to it.  Lark Previn is an artist who moved to New York from a small rural town and like most artists, she is broke and worried.  She’s not able to recapture the free spirited art she did as a child and her work is not good enough to keep her scholarship.

Things change when she receives a mystery gift in the mail, a set of brushes and paints.  With those she is transfixed, completely taken over by the need to paint.  Several days later when she wakes up she finds she has recreated the carnival she had envisioned as a child.  But these paintings are magic.  They have real paths to the carnival and someone threatening wants them.  And her.

The story flows well although the plot is somewhat confusing.  People die.  Or do they?  She meets a hawk who is a man, and a man who is a type of vampire.  Lark wants to understand the paintings and how she makes them but is terrified of losing more days in a fugue, forgetting to eat, to drink, to feed her cat.

Overall this is an intriguing novel; in fact I looked at more by Melinda VanLone.  The plot could use a bit more clarity and the character is somewhat flat.  We never learn why Lark is connected to the carnival, why she continues to see and paint it.  She learns to paint stories as they occur, or do the stories happen because she paints them?  This isn’t a great novel, still a pleasant read.

3 Stars

I’m not including links because this is not available currently on Amazon.

 

Recursion: Book One of the Recursion Event Saga. OK Time Travel Novel

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Recursion by Brian J Walton starts with a bang as Molly, narrator and main character, slides out of the time travel tunnel into 1950s Paris and a burning hotel.  The tunnel station in 1950s Paris is in a hotel basement and the entire building is on fire.  More, Interlopers – other time travelers from unsanctioned groups – are present and shooting to kill.

I thought this might be one of the time travel series where bad guys are trying to change history and the Time Patrol (or whatever name the author chooses) try to keep history on the straight and narrow.  Books with this time travel plot can be a lot of fun and it’s always interesting to see how the author will spin the inevitable paradoxes.  Will the time travelers even be able to change history?  Will changes spawn new parallel worlds?  Will the resulting paradox cause total collapse?

Unfortunately Walters’ novel started to flag a bit as we got deeper into the story.  I kept waiting for Molly to ask some obvious questions, such as the one prompted by her mentor, Helen’s comment, “that’s what the ISD pretends to do.”  C’mon.  Who wouldn’t follow up on a lead in like that?

The paradoxes were left as paradoxes.  Molly had multiple memory sets of different pasts, married, not married, and the Interlopers were able to change events by having someone and their time traveler duplicate get close.   Walters kept using the phrase “own timeline” to describe going back or forwards in time during one’s own lifetime.

I finished the entire novel but was not intrigued enough to look for its sequels.  Molly as a character didn’t have a lot of depth, although in fairness it is hard to be deep when you are running for your life.  The back story looked interesting but the villain and his almost-magical powers seemed ridiculous.  If I were the bad guy in this story I’d be doing a lot different things than chasing Molly to find out what her Dad was up to.  The bad guy was cardboard, a stock villain character.

The writing was uneven.  The last third of the novel seemed disjointed and didn’t make a lot of sense while the first third was good.

Overall I’d give this 3 stars.  Keep in mind Walters is a fairly new author and may improve in future books.

I received a free copy via Instafreebie and the links here are referral links to Amazon.

Mini Reviews: Five Fantasy and Science Fiction Novellas to Miss

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These short reviews cover books that I want to remember not to try again.  Several were free from Instafreebie, meaning the authors are likely new and may improve in their later books.

A Magical Reckoning: Magic and Mischief Book 1

This is a set of 6 novellas about supernatural betrayal.  I only got partway through the first story because the back story is all about people who have [insert animal here] genes and thus have [insert favorite power] here.  The lead character has skunk genes that give her fatty glands in her back that secrete thiol, which can be either really really good stuff or not.  Unscrupulous evil people are dragooning skunk/people and forcibly draining their thiol.

Can we say “yuck”?

The writing wasn’t too bad.  N. R. Hariston, the author had a big backstory to tell and crammed as much as she could in the first few pages.  We know about the skunks, the evil dragoons, the dragon/people, the fact our lead is in some vigilante or police force.  What we don’t have is a reason to care about the character.  I decided supernatural betrayal is probably not a good sub-sub genre to pursue.

Warning!  Do Not Read this Story

Somehow I managed to finish this longish short story by Robert Jeschonek but it was a close one.  It isn’t very good.

Moon Men:  A Science Fiction Comedy

Author Chris Lowry describes this as extremely funny.  Not particularly.  It’s science fiction, sort of, given the aliens want to talk to our hero on the moon and he’s having a hard time getting there.  On the other hand, you can’t just point a rocket at the moon and expect to get exactly where you need to be.
I did finish it, mostly because I wanted to see what the aliens had to say but the story ended before our hero actually arrives.

Xander  An Incandescent Short Story

I didn’t get past the first page.  Main character is a teen boy with hormone issues.

Complicated Blue:  The Extraordinary Adventures of the Good Witch Anais Blue

This was boring and I quit almost immediately.
I don’t recommend any of these.

A Thousand Nights by E. K. Johnson, Subtle Magic, Quiet Fantasy

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A Thousand Nights.  Doesn’t that sound like Scheherazade with the king who lets his wife live another night as long as she spins a tale he wants to hear?  E. K. Johnson’s A Thousand Nights is closer in spirit to Naomi Novik’s Uprooted than to the original Arabian Nights.

As in Uprooted girls are seized and taken from their homes, but unlike Novik’s tale the women are to marry the king and die after one night.  Our heroine – who is never named – knows that the king’s servants will choose her beautiful sister and instead puts herself forward to go in her place.  The wife doesn’t know what will happen or why the king takes his wives.  The other similarities lie in the grudging romance, the constant threat in the background of an otherwise placid country, fear, and sheer bloody mindedness that the heroine uses to keep her life and her wits.

I particularly liked the subtle magic and the nuances the wife must thread.  For example, she decides to stay with the king because she can survive but realizes no other lady could.  She gets a chance to kill her husband, but she knows a kingdom without an heir is a kingdom in chaos when contenders tear the country apart to grab the throne.  She realizes the kingdom tolerates the king because he is a just ruler who brings prosperity and peace despite sacrificing a young lady every month or two, so decides to conquer the demon…somehow.

Be warned that the story is slow in the beginning.  The wife does not know she will survive and she views everything she sees as the last time she sees it.  We go along with her as she wanders her palace suite, as she remembers her family’s tales, as she lets her husband hold her hands to eat her life.

A Thousand Nights is not for action junkies.  Don’t read this expecting fierce sword fights or blasts of magic.  Our heroine develops her magic as her sister builds her a memory shrine, in effect making her a small god while alive.  Her magic works from visions, where she is able to weave a fabric by imagining it, where she finds the metal that demons cannot tolerate by a waking dream.

Instead of action we have a bit of mystery, well-developed settings and emotion. A Thousand Nights delivers simple magic and understated romance, duty and emotional appeal.  And like Uprooted this is listed as YA, older teens but adults will enjoy it too; in fact it is likely more appealing to adults than to teens.

Overall this is an excellent novel.

4 Stars

 

A Couple of So-So Novels – Devan Chronicles and Jyra

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The God Decrees: Devan Chronicles Book 1 by Mark E. Cooper is classical epic fantasy set in a quasi-medieval world.  Cooper writes well and tries a few twists on some standard fantasy elements.  Lord Keverin’s best friend and most capable wizard gives his life to bring a strong wizard from a distant world into Keverin’s castle to help defend and defeat invaders.  The twist is the champion turns out to be Julia, a dedicated gymnast practicing for the Olympic games.  Julia does not want to be in Keverin’s world and certainly does not want to defeat the oncoming army by killing them with magic.

Add to the mix the normal me-Tarzan you-Jane nonsense, feuding and treacherous neighbors, an archbishop who accuses Julia of witchcraft and heresy and you have the first novel, The God Decrees.  Somehow the mix just didn’t work for me and I abandoned the book about 3/4 through the first book in the 4-book series.  It felt trite and not compelling enough to read; I couldn’t care about the characters.

2 Stars

I read Jyra because author Blake B. Rivers sent a request to join his advanced readers group; the email was friendly and short so I moved Jyra up and read it the other evening.

Rivers noted Jyra is his first ever novel.  Unfortunately main character Jyra is dry and factual, who knowingly struggles with social clues, sarcasm, nuances in conversation and motives.  I’m not sure why he chose such a challenging heroine because the story itself is actually quite good and would have been enjoyable with a more interesting character.

Jyra’s story is about parallel or nested worlds all under attack from Something.  Jyra knows this Something is real because she has seen it.  I would like to see Rivers explore the seeming contradiction between the dry, factual Jyra and her readiness to believe in and act upon what almost anyone else would believe a dream.

Overall the story is decent.  Rivers has the germ of a good plot here and I hope he develops it, perhaps along with developing Jyra into a real person instead of a facsimile.

3 Stars

 

Wreckers Gate – Classic Epic Fantasy From a New Author

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Wreckers Gate intrigued me with its cover and blurb.  General Wulf Rome is too successful, too charismatic, too uncouth for his king and the nobles.  The king sends him on a should-be suicide mission that ended up with Rome and his friend Quyloc finding a strange ax in the desert that enables Rome to usurp the throne.  The ax somehow links to the imprisoned god Melekath and when Rome takes the ax it allows Melekath’s primary servants to escape and prepare for Melekath’s eventual full release.

Wreckers Gate reminded me of David Eddings’ multi-volume works.  Way back in the distant past goddess Xochitl imprisoned Melekath. Xochitl’s primary servant Lowellin comes to Rome and Quyloc to warn them of the upcoming apocalyptic battle, and tells Quyloc to visit the frightening other world Pente Akka for a weapon that will battle Melekath.  Lowellin also visits the Tenders, the now-disgraced sisterhood who served goddess Xochitl until they allowed themselves to be corrupted.

Writing Style

The plot is similar to Eddings’ and other authors’, with the humans fighting for one god against another and with deep-seated evil rolling over the lands.  I am not an Eddings fan but his best books grab my interest and I care about the characters.  I was able to stay aloof from the characters and events in Wreckers Gate; it was interesting and I was moderately curious, but ultimately it remained only story, it did not feel personal.

Wreckers Gate is author Eric T. Knight’s first novel and it is pretty good considering.  He creates an interesting back story that may come out more in the sequels.  We can feel the underlying tension between the nobility and their new ruler Rome, among the Tenders, between Quyloc and Lowellin.  There are hints that there is more to the Xochitl-Melkath story that will come out in sequels.

Knight is at his best describing the settings.  The city had smells and noise; the desert had wind and scorching heat and bitter cold; the Tenders’ home was shabby and poor.

The overall writing quality was good.  The story was clear even when switching among viewpoints and Knight sketches in the back story without spending undue time rehashing the forgotten past.  Pacing was pretty good although I thought it bogged down a bit when we were with the Tenders.

First in a Series

Wreckers Gate is the first in a series of five books.  With long series like this we always have the problem of losing continuity, forgetting what happened in earlier books, or the writer himself may take some odd shortcuts. All five books are out now available on Amazon as a boxed set here.

Also the story is pretty easy to follow because it has one main theme:  Melkath is escaping.  We need to remember who is on whose side, but there are not that many individual characters who play large roles so it’s easy to keep track.  I put the novel down several times to read other books that were more compelling and never had a problem picking back up or remembering who is who.

If you like epic fantasy and don’t mind long book series you will likely enjoy Wreckers Gate.  It’s well-written with reasonably interesting back story, plot and characters.

That said, I’m not sure I want to read 5 books in this series (I don’t much like epic fantasy series).  I will read the second book and see whether it’s compelling enough to continue.

3 Stars

Review: Under New Leadership – Intriguing Novella about an IRS Agent (Really)

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Writing coaches and English teachers all say to write what you know about.  New author Shawn Robert Smith is an accountant so he wrote about…yes, an IRS agent on jury duty.  If this sounds weird for a science fiction plot, then know his short story, Under New Leadership, works.

Smith built an intriguing back story that makes me want to learn more.  Why are there 10 new alien species all in the United States?  How come one (or more) are IRS agents?  How does that work?  I’m trying to visualize people from really far away and really strange backgrounds learning double entry bookkeeping, auditing, and taxation and coming up a bit short.

I took accounting classes years ago (so as to pass the CPA exam just in case I needed a career change) and can say that one must put a different hat on in order to think in accountant-ese.  Accountants measure stuff and record stuff and the biggest conflicts are on how to do it, not whether the thing being measured is worth doing in the first place.  Now we’ve aliens who fled to Earth and the US’s welcome worrying whether to double discount depreciation?  This is one new back story and it’s lots of fun.

Main character Jrulnik is blessed with super hearing and discovers a plot by criminal masterminds to pool their efforts for greater profit and less bloodshed.  He shows up for jury duty but gets bundled into a closet while the supposed jurors agree on new leadership for their cabal before freeing Jrulnik and blithely finding the defendant guilty.  All the way through Jrulnik wants to be a good citizen, worries about maintaining the honor of the IRS by performing his juror role with care.

We have lots of mysteries.  Who is the girl with purple eyes really?  Where did she come from?  How did we get 10 alien species all fleeing to Earth?  What are they fleeing from and did anyone nefarious follow them?  And last, how did the IRS survive and thrive in a world with aliens?  (Or is that another way of saying that death and taxes will be with us always?)

Such a simple plot.  And so much back story!  I look forward to reading the novels Smith will write set in this same world. Right now this story is free on Amazon and I recommend it.

4+ Stars

Mini Reviews: Paradigm, 1799 Planetfall, Lake of Sins Escape

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These three books from Instafreebie are by new authors who want to establish themselves by gaining an audience.  I respect and commend their dedication to writing and to the very difficult process of writing fantasy/science fiction for adults.

Paradigm, Three Shots of Science Fiction by Killian C Carter

Paradigm is a set of three stories; Exhibit X and Half and Half are short stories and Into Infinity is longer, more a novella. Author Carter writes reasonably well, with a good sense of pacing and delivers decent characterization and setting in these short pieces.  Exhibit X and Half and Half both suffer from endings that are predictable when they are meant to be surprise twists.

Exhibit X takes a class on a field trip to the Smithsonian sometime after an apocolypse that killed most animals and people. The story does a good job with the teacher, Mrs. Zilmore, whom we all can identify with.  She’s a stereotype but a nice one.

Half and Half takes to to a different dystopian future where people are now cyborgs.  It’s not clear why the cyborgs want to eradicate the normal humans.  This story is the weakest of the three.

Carter builds an interesting world in the novella Into Infinity.  It’s an alien world with a mysterious lake, threatening wildlife and an annoying journalist.  It’s my favorite of the three, quite well done.

Overall the collection is 3 stars.

1799 Planetfall by Chogan Swan

1799 Planetfall asks what would happen if an alien were marooned on earth back in 1799, on a mission to stop invading creatures from acting like locusts.  The premise is great.  The writing is mediocre and the plot has plenty of smut.  I didn’t finish.

1 star

Lake of Sins – Escape by L. S. O’Dea

I’m not sure what to say about Escape.  It’s the first novel in a series, dystopian with some funny moments, many twisted moments and some disgusting moments.  I believe author O’Dea intends us to ask “what makes someone a people?”. According to the blurb the world is populated by normal humans and human/animal hybrids, although it’s not clear in the novel that the different groups are animal hybrids.  The only wildlife are small, rabbits and squirrels.

Lead character Trinity is the child of a Producer/House Servant union, a forbidden union.  Producers are normally huge, males 8 feet or more tall and almost as wide, docile; they farm and produce the food.   House Servants are smaller and have fangs and retractable claws.  Poor Trinity is supposed to all Producer and is small with fangs and claws she tries to hide.

This first novel mostly builds the world where the Almightys (normal humans) control Producers and House Servants and Guards, with everyone knowing their place.  Trinity is desperate to discover what happens to the Producers who are Listed, removed from their compound.  Do they go elsewhere to farm or do other tasks?  It isn’t a huge surprise when we learn that Listed Producers get fattened up and slaughtered for food.

The novel sets up a conflict to come when Trinity meets and becomes friendly with Almightys Kim and Jethro.  Kim is old enough to know what happens to Producers, and while she apparently doesn’t approve she also isn’t doing anything about it.  Jethro is too young and hasn’t yet been told.

Escape grabs one’s attention but the overall premise is so dark and unpleasant that I’m none t sure I want to read the sequels.  On the one hand we have people who cook and work and call their parents Mom and Dad but who are raised for food, on the other we have humans who bake cookies and work and also call their parents Mom and Dad and who eat the food.

How do you talk to someone, work with someone one day and eat them the next?  At some point anyone would have to ask “Why?  What makes this group People and that group livestock?” but apparently no one has.  Yet.

The novel flows easily and has good pacing.  Trinity is the main character but is actually not that well developed  The most interesting person was Lead Producer Troy who is assigned Tina as his mate but is actually gay and will do anything to keep his lover Remy safe.  Troy schemes to frame the people he most dislikes and to keep Remy from being retired along with Millie, Trinity’s mother and Remy’s assigned mate.

3+ Stars

General’s Legacy: Part Two, The Whiteland King Outstanding Fantasy from Indie Author Adrian Hilder

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It’s always delightful to find a new author to love, books to buy then snuggle up to read.  It doesn’t happen often enough.

Recently Adrian Hilder’s fantasy novel Inheritance, part 1 of The General’s Legacy made its way into my Kindle book pile.  I got it along with a hundred others via Instafreebie, most listed with only the cover so every pick was a guess and golly.

Authors’ newsletters clued me for which novels to read first.  All the shape shifter and vampire, YA romance went to the back of the pile, along with any promoted by newsletters that were incoherent, full of swear words or boring.  Hilder’s newsletter caught my eye because he sounded down to earth, authentic, humble yet confident that his work of love, Inheritance, is worth reading.

I agree. Inheritance is outstanding, especially for a newbie author.  Book 2, The Whiteland King, nearly matches it for quality and compelling reading.

Plot

The Whiteland King picks up immediately after Inheritance, with Valendo’s forces divided in two.  The larger group stays to defend the country from the undead army and ends up besieged in Dendra castle.  Prince Cory leads a tiny group into Nearhon to end the war.

The story moves fast. The plot is exciting enough to keep our interest and we aren’t sure how Cory will triumph or who will survive, or who will end the problem how with Nearhon’s lead mage, Magnar.

Whiteland King missed a couple opportunities to make more of the Dendra defenders under siege.  For example, the men fear the undead necromancer will re-animate any creature that dies, yet one horse dies and is not re-animated.  Despite the defenders being curious nothing happens about the horse.  I thought the author could have developed that into a little vignette, either explaining that the horse’s rider somehow left it immune to the necromancer, or that it indicated the sorcerer was absent.

The defenders’ situation was grim after a week or so, with their food stores destroyed, no feed for the horses, unable to sortie, unable to receive reinforcements or materiel from the outside.  The Cory narrative continues for about 10 days after this, so presumably the defenders had no relief.  I wondered a few times how they were doing, how they continued to survive the necromantic attacks.

Writing Style

The author develops three main points of view, the besieged defenders, Prince Cory’s band, and the Nearhon group of King Klonag, Magnar, Julia, Commander Brocksheer, easy to follow with smooth transitions.  We never wonder where we are as Hilder breaks the point of view changes into chapters and orients each one, e.g., “Resting his face against Sunny’s warm neck Cory…” followed next chapter by “King Sebastian watched…”

I admire Hilder’s ability to add small details into the main narrative flow.  He doesn’t sidetrack us with abrupt segues to tell us about the scenery or expand the minor characters; instead uses a phrase or two to show us.  This keeps the novel flowing.

For example, minor character Toldroy acts as a guide for about 3 pages.  We learn more about Toldroy when we find that “he kept some of the steps in the staircase loose so they creaked ensuring no visitor could arrive unannounced.”  That tells us about Toldroy:  He is more than he pretends, and he has good reason to be afraid, and we can feel the dark staircase and hear the creaks.

Whiteland King is the second book in The General’s Legacy and it combines with Inheritance to tell a complete story.  The two together have a beginning, middle and end.  The Afterword mentions a third book but I expect it is set later and has different challenges.

Characters

Julie shines in Whiteland King.  She shows courage, resourcefulness, dedication, honor, honesty, family devotion. Julia introduces us to a new character, Lyam Brocksheer, equally honorable and dedicated.  Neither is perfect so you know they could be real people.  Julie is impetuous; Lyam is willing to deceive his king when Klonag expects repugnant action.

We get a glimpse of Cory as a child and see a little why the General chose him and we see him grow as he faces what must be done.  Cory’s brother, King Sebastian, also sees what he must do, takes a deep breath and does it.

One of my favorite characters is Zeivite, Arch Mage of Valendo.  Through him we meet his daughter Petra who plays a major role in the plot but doesn’t take up a lot of room on the stage.  I expect we’ll see more of Petra in subsequent novels.

Just as with Inheritance the novel starts with a vignette that is incidental to the plot.  We meet Flynn, merchant and orphanage master, whom I hope to see again.  Flynn is interesting!

Petra’s reminiscences in the early vignette hint at another mage, a mysterious bald man who is an instructor at Petra’s school.  He’s another one that is likely to show up in later books.

It was refreshing that neither Inheritance nor Whiteland King used swearing or blasphemy and most of the older characters are married and happy about it.  I’m always glad to find a book with decent moral attitudes, sadly harder to find now.  Hilder is matter of fact about God and heaven and hell; he doesn’t preach, it’s just assumed that of course God exists.  I liked that.

Setting

Inheritance moved slower in the beginning, with people going about their daily life, romance and courtship, government, family worries.  Hilder spent a little of the slow period lovingly showing us Valendo; we got to know its green hills and waterfalls, the towns and castles.

Hilder took a different approach with Whiteland King.  He bundles the setting description into the narrative.  It doesn’t work quite as well as a method to show us the landscape, but it also allows setting to get out of the way and let plot and character run the show.  Part of Cory’s mission trudges through a high plateau in a winter blizzard.  Hilder could have bored us to tears with the snow, or spent a paragraph or so to help us feel the cold.  What he actually did was to skip right by the winter scene; we read once that Cory was miserably cold and uncomfortable huddling in a yurt.  That felt rushed.

Setting helps us feel and experience alongside the characters.  Too much description and we’re bored and too little and the story loses some of its emotional impact.

Emotion

Whiteland King has a tiny bit less emotional punch than Inheritance.  We feel tension, worry, love, concern, fear, all tempered by the fact that the Valendo people have no choice.  They either move forward or they die.  The do-or-die nature actually calms the heart, allowing the characters to still feel – and us along with them – but also to shove their feelings to the back and get on with the task.

Summary

I rated Inheritance a solid 5 stars, and would give Whiteland King the same.  I thought Whiteland King was just a hair less polished than Inheritance, as it felt a bit rushed and I would have liked to see more of the Dendra Castle group, but overall it is excellent, well written, with solid plot and people.  The setting and emotion were less solid or intense, still very very good.

Sometimes new authors put their heart into their first novel and don’t have much left for the second.  Hilder delivers outstanding fantasy in both novels in the series and I look forward to reading the third one when it comes out.

5 Stars

More Instafreebie Mini Reviews: Zero Flux and Soldier of Charity

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Recently I got several dozen science fiction and fantasy novels for free from Instafreebie.  Getting the books meant getting their authors’ newsletters too.  I unsubscribed immediately from newsletters that were all fluff, or talked about angels, demons, shape shifters, mermaids, steampunk, vampires, werewolves, alpha mates, alien romances or featured bare chested men or barely dressed women, were aimed at YA audiences or were incoherent; no point in wasting the writers’ email quotas or my time.  I’ve been going through the rest and reading the books which have interesting titles or covers (yes, it is hard to judge a book by its cover), or the author sounds like someone who has a story to tell.

So far I’ve found some real winners, the Excalibur Rising series and the General’s Legacy series are excellent.  A few have been so bad I deleted them immediately and most have been so-so.  This post reviews two in the so-so bunch.

Zero Flux by Carol Van Natta has a super cover.  What’s not to like with a flyer in a cave and the subtitle about the Central Galactic Concordance?  The novella builds on the cover with an interesting premise and setting but fails to deliver any sense of danger or tension.  Things just happen.

Luka Foxe’s old mentor Einer asks Luka and Mairwen to help him investigate two people found murdered in an ice cave on Luka’s very cold home planet.  Luka, Mairwen and Einer nearly die when the ice cave partially collapses and survive by taking refuge in an abandoned lab facility.  Unfortunately the facility alarm alerts the murderer who shows up and starts hunting all three.

This sounds exciting but it’s not.  Events happen with no sense of dread or tension from the danger, even when Luka realizes Einer has hidden much.  Author Van Natta tells us that Luka fears for Mairwen’s safety and his own, but we don’t feel it.  It’s flat.

The characters don’t have personalities.  Luka and Mairwen have unusual powers that don’t add much to the story.  The setting, an ice cave, should have felt cold.  It didn’t.  I couldn’t visualize much nor was it interesting.

Cold Flux is a novella in a larger series that has quite a few higher ratings on Amazon.  I finished the novella so am rating it 2 stars.  I kept reading expecting it to get better, it just never did.  There were hints of an interesting backstory and the writing wasn’t bad.

Soldier of Charity by Luke R. Mitchell is a prequel to his post apocalyptic Harvesters series.  Mitchell writes well and his main character Jarek is sympathetic, about 18 years old, idealistic and owns a protective high-tech exo suit with its own AI.

I mostly liked Soldier of Charity and wanted to like it more, but the novel was limited by its protagonist’s youth and lack of wisdom.  Several times I wanted to shake some sense into that kid.  For example, he joins a paramilitary group that protects outlying farms in exchange for some of their produce.  Now this is either the beginnings of feudalism or a classic shake down racket, but Jarek falls for the idea and joins the group enthusiastically.

Pryce, one of the men who recruits Jarek, is ambiguous.  He tells Jarek that the boss will never ask him to do something he doesn’t believe in, yet slowly leads Jarek into all sorts of grey areas.   Jarek starts to question these but continues to believe Pryce.  The ending with Pryce is a bit unbelievable as I doubt the character would have acted as he did.

Overall the novel is well done with solid writing, an intriguing idea and fairly well-done characters.  Ultimately my rating of 3 stars reflects that it is YA fiction and I didn’t enjoy it enough to check out the next books from this author.  Older teens would like this.