More Books than Time

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

A Trail Through Time – Max Runs for Her Life, Saves the Day and Grows Up Jodi Taylor

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Last we saw Madeline Maxwell, historian at the St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, she was sprawled on the carpet, bleeding from a should-have-been fatal sword thrust through her heart, courtesy of Agincourt.  A Trail Through Time picks up directly after A Second Chance, with Max solidly in a parallel world, one where she had died and Leon lived, one with virtually the same people, with similar personalities as she knew.

Leon Farrell owns the carpet Max just bled all over and he isn’t sure what to think.  Sure, he’s delighted to have Max – any Max – back, but he knows darn well that his Max is dead from carbon monoxide and cremated.  Nonetheless Leon jumps to save this new Max when mysterious men in black arrive at his home in Rushford, and he whirls her off in his own personal time pod.

Thus begins a wild ride through time as Max and Leon desperately search for a place where they can relax, get to know each other and Max can heal her chest wound.  Unfortunately the men in black are the Time Police, a group that Max’s original world never had, and they are after Leon.  Max and Leon escape by a whisker in ancient Greece, in frozen London, in ancient Thebes, and finally realize that the Time Police find them so easily because Max has a tag in her arm.  Max comes up with a brilliant plan to take care of this problem (which doesn’t work) and finally Leon brings her to St. Mary’s for medical care.

At St. Mary’s we learn the real problem is that the original Max, now dead, brought Helios back from Troy and someone ratted her out to the Time Police.  Bringing someone from their time is a capital offense and the Police are determined to see the leadership of this St. Mary’s executed and replaced by a more amenable team lead by none other than our old friend Isabella Barclay.

Plot Holes

Just like all the other St. Mary’s novels A Trail Through Time moves so quickly that we run right by most plot holes.  Just ignore these when you see them and you can enjoy the story!

First, Max finds that B**hFace Barclay is still around and had supposedly been the original Max’s good friend.  We get hints from several of the more astute St. Mary’s people that Miss Barclay is maybe not so liked and trusted as she thinks, but the woman is still there while in Max’s original world Miss Barclay was kicked out when she marooned people back with the dinosaurs and tried to usurp the directorship.  Max comments a couple times about the dinosaur rescue in later novels, so we know people were marooned in this world too.  How is Miss Barclay not tainted by her role?  We don’t know.

In Max’s original world Leon had rescued Helios, bringing him to the future St. Mary’s where he grew up, then later to our time where Helios runs an inn.  In this alternate world Max did the rescue and only a few years have passed, yet Helios is grown up.

Characters

Max is growing up!  (Finally.)  She tells Leon that nothing, absolutely nothing, can be as terrible as seeing him dead.  Leon feels the same about her.  This grief and miraculous do-over help Max max mature.  She is hurt and upset that the St. Mary’s people don’t accept her at first, although this is understandable given they all grieved for the original Max.  Max knows this in her head but her heart suffers.

Max still doesn’t trust people easily and accuses Dr. Bairstow and Tim Peterson of wanting to maroon her in the 14th century, and accuses Mrs. Partridge (aka Kleio the Muse of History) of sacrificing Max to the Time Police in order to allow the others to go free.  Neither suspicion makes much sense (especially the second one) but that’s Max.

A few of the other characters take on more life in A Trail Through Time.  Professor Rapson and Dr. Dowson emerge from their stereotype caricatures to be real people, friends and colleagues to each other and the first to welcome Max as herself, not as a sort-of substitute.

Overall

A Trail Through Time is the story of Max rebuilding her life in this new world, creating friends and establishing herself as a person.  In the sense of a new beginning it has echoes of Book 1, Just One Damned Thing After Another, but with more terror, more threats, much more to lose.  In Book 1 Max could lose herself and her life.  Now she could lose her life and those of people she loves, Major Guthrie, Dr. Bairstow, Tim Peterson and Leon, and see St. Mary’s destroyed.  That makes the story more believable as it heightens the suspense and the conflicts.

I am glad to see the characters develop and adding the Time Police adds more opportunity for conflict and threat.  Clive Ronan is a serious opponent but he is a fraction of the problem the Time Police could be. Overall this is an excellent addition to an already good series.

5 Stars

Time Travel for Historians 2 – A Symphony of Echoes – Jodi Taylor Chronicles of St. Mary’s

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Jodi Taylor continues her frantic race up and down Time while Max struggles with an emotional seesaw in her second book, A Symphony of Echoes, in her Chronicles of St. Mary’s.  We start off with Max and best friend Kal jaunting off to late Victorian London to see Jack the Ripper.  Unfortunately they find Jack.  And worse, bring it back with them.

Plot

Max deals with Jack for the first quarter of the novel, followed immediately by: Max rescues Leon from dastards who kidnap and bring him to a future St. Mary’s where they also take over and kill most of the personnel (reason hinted at but not really explained), then Max takes over as temporary director of this future unit, visits Mauritius to abscond with some dodos as a works outing, returns home, witnesses Thomas Beckett’s assassination, gets incandescently angry with Leon, wrecks his car and drives it into the lake (necessitating tens of thousands worth of repairs),  gets stranded in Nineveh, gets rescued, reconciles with Leon, shoves Mary Queen of Scots into a locked room with Bothwell, and ends with her learning the next mission is to Troy.

Yes, the plot truly is this busy.  The emotional highs and lows go along in parallel with the action as Taylor shows us what Max is doing and we see how she reacts to and feels about Leon and her friends.  This is a book you read for the plot more than for the people.

There are plot weak spots.  For example, why would someone select Jack the Ripper/Victorian London when they can choose any time or place?

And why would Ronan and accomplices want to capture Max so badly that they first kidnap Leon and leave coordinates on the mirror in the men’s room?  I understand one villain hates Max but really, there should be easier ways to get her alone and vulnerable than to go through the fuss of getting Leon.

Max speculates the villains want to control a St. Mary’s point in time in order to have a base of operations; that makes sense but also invalidates kidnapping Leon.  They would have to know that the original St. Mary’s wouldn’t abandon Leon without a fight.

Characters

While Taylor shows us Max as a person with emotional depth she leaves most of the other characters less finished.  She tells us that Tim Peterson is calm and solid, warm and caring, but we see Tim in relationship to Max, through Max’s eyes.  We don’t get to know Tim.  We get more acquainted with Leon, but he too remains a bit vague.  Taylor concentrates on her plot and Max and everyone else is something more than backdrop and less than a full person.

Max’s reaction when Leon spurns her is overwrought.  Max and Leon have gone through some rough spots before but this time she goes up like a rocket and simply cannot stop being angry.  Max gives in to temper and severs relations with Leon in the first three books in the series and I think it’s flaw that the author corrects in the later novels.  I get tired of Max acting like a kid.

Overall

A Symphony of Echoes is very good, enjoyable, and a very fast read.  Don’t budget more than an evening for this despite the length.  The story moves so fast that I got caught up in the plot and, to some extent, the characters.  The book is plot-heavy, not so much driven by characters as it drives the characters and us readers.

I’ve read all of Jodi Taylor’s novels and this is one of the weaker ones, plot heavy and character light.  Mind you I still loved it despite the flaws.

4 Stars (3 Stars if it weren’t so entertaining)

 

 

 

Time Travel for Historians – Just One Damned Thing After Another – Jodi Taylor

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Just One Damned Thing After Another is a lot of fun wrapped around people and history, full of quirky humor and an incitement to delve into Wikipedia.  (I only thought I knew some of these events!)  It is the first of several books featuring Max, a historian working at St. Mary’s Institute for Historical Research which “investigate major historical events in contemporary time”, i.e., sends historians back in time to observe and record what really happened.

Max is a complex character who tries desperately to be one-dimensional, hard-drinking, loud, incorrigibly curious, uncaring, but her bursts of common sense and exposure to death and misery make her far more than the cardboard cutout she wants to be.  Max prides herself on her attitude and her “we can do this” approach, but gets sidetracked by the people around her and the human misery she views as part of her job.

Overall the book is reasonably well-written, although it jumps around a lot and we often lose the sense of time passing.  Everyone around Max is gung-ho dedicated to history (or to historically-inspired R&D) to the point where it seems almost a caricature.  Would you really be that thrilled to go witness a hospital blowing up after The Battle of the Somme?

These events take a toll on Max and the others.  She and a few others compartmentalize, separate their feelings from their experiences.  Some leave St. Mary’s.  Some act stupid.  To me the biggest weakness of this first novel and all the others is how poorly the characters face and deal with the emotional toll from seeing other people die, including all too often, their friends and colleagues.

I loved the plausible historical accuracy – of course the author is guessing for meat to add to history’s bones – and the novel inspired me to check references to learn more about the background and key players in these scenarios.

This first novel takes Max and colleagues back to Edward the Confessor’s coronation, World War 1 and the Cretaceous, back to the Cretaceous twice (one an unauthorized rescue), on to the burning Library of Alexandria to rescue scrolls. That’s quite a range although Max manages to get injured in two of the events and wet on by colleague and friend Peterson in the other.  History, you see, is jealous of herself and barely tolerates historians observing.  She does not tolerate even tiny interference, such as warning a mugging victim.

The plot is full and busy and moves at lightening speed.

There are plot holes.  For example, why does Thirsk University fund St. Mary’s?  How on earth can it justify the enormous expense for historical research?  (We learn in a later novella that St. Mary’s founder actually captures British government support and patronage which filters through Thrisk.)  Even so it is hard to imagine the funding nightmares.

There is one serious sex scene in this first novel that I did not see as necessary.  Just One Damned Thing After Another has the usual vulgarities and a couple blasphemies against the name of the Lord.  I didn’t like either the smutty scenes or the blasphemy, but I’ve learned to read past them.

The biggest flaw from a narrative / literature perspective is the constant harping on historians being disaster magnets.  They apparently have the attention span of a fly and can’t stop themselves from acting stupid.  Jodi Taylor uses this as a convenient catch-all to explain any inconsistencies or flights of fancy that creep in.  I understand someone not wanting to stop a good thing (like watching dinosaurs) to deal with housekeeping, but the characters do this all the time and it gets a little annoying.

Overall this is a very enjoyable start to a very enjoyable series.  I would not recommend reading all the books immediately after one another because some of the flaws become obnoxious with repititon.  I do recommend that you read the first three books close together, Just One Damned Thing After Another, A Symphony of Echoes, and A Second Chance because these flow one after the other.

4 Stars – Almost 5

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Survival: A Novel (Star Quest Trilogy) by Ben Bova

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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

Retrograde – Group Survival on Mars by Peter Cawdron

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Retrograde starts with 120 people from all over the world living as a science colony on Mars.  The four national groups live in separate habitats formed out of underground lava tubes and all four group habitats connect to a large hub full of growing plants and animals.  The teams are happy, doing research on Martian conditions, living, joking, playing games, eating and loving when suddenly they learn that over twenty large cities have been destroyed in nuclear attacks.  It’s not clear who is fighting whom, or why, and although indications are the US started it, nothing makes sense.

Plot Synopsis

Liz, the US scientist who narrates the novel, urges the national team leaders to not fight, to cooperate, to share the limited resources, to live and not to die.  Survival is complicated and challenging because the resupply mission apparently missed Mars and is zooming off into space.

Several of the team get suspicious that the whole story doesn’t make any sense.  There is no reason for war on Earth, no reason for the supply ship to go astray, and some see evidence that the supply ship in fact landed quite close by.  Liz goes out to one of the outposts to look for the ship, falls and is badly hurt, almost dies.  She is rescued and brought back for treatment by the Chinese doctor Jianyu who is her lover.

Some of the facility sections lose oxygen and many die, including Jianyu, although Liz survives.  This is one more oddity that makes several team member suspect the culprit is not a person at all, but an AI.

The rest of the novel focuses on how the teams come together to fight off the AI, and with a few snippets about parallel happenings on Earth.  Luckily enough people realized the attacks were fishy that the military and political leaders around the globe did not call in massive retaliation strikes.  In fact, although millions were killed, many survive even around the destroyed cities.

There are parallels to Andy Weir’s Martian, in that people must survive, must use their wits to figure out and overcome challenges that will otherwise kill them.  The difference is Retrograde looks at groups of people, individuals working with a few other individuals, although the challenges are in fact far greater.  (The AI could kill off everyone on Mars and go back to Earth and destroy even more.)

Characters

Retrograde is about people, but it is not a character novel, it’s more of a story about people facing a very bad situation.  It reminds me of some war movies that focus one one person after another, leaving each when they die or go offstage.  Dialogue is OK, but in general the characters are just so-so.  There wasn’t anyone I want to get to know better.

Overall

I mostly enjoyed reading Retrograde.  It is always refreshing to find well-written science fiction that has believable people, although the main plot twist was unbelievable.   The pacing is uneven and to be blunt, I got a little tired of the story.

So many new authors try to write military science fiction, or novels about small traders, smugglers, folks living on the edge,, and so few do it well.  Too often the basic approach is to take a story that could be set on Earth just fine and dump it into outer space and call it science fiction.  Sometimes the only way we can tell it’s outer space and meant to be science fiction is that the character will mention their ship or their trips to other star systems.  Retrograde is real science fiction; Cawdron takes a semi-plausible scenario, and uses real science as the story backdrop.

3 Stars

Disappointing Novel – Deadly Cargo Jake Mudd Adventures Book 1 by Hal Archer

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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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The Terran Consensus by Scott Washburn: With Friends Like This…

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Here’s a dilemma for you:

Some folks that you really don’t like, who manipulated and conned you for years, had a fight in your back yard.  Problem is, the guys they fought are nosing around, suspicious and convinced you are buddies with the first group, since after all, they were camped out in your yard and left their stuff all around your place.  In fact you are pretty sure group 2 believes in shooting first, questions later.  What do you do?

A.  Ally with group 1, the con men, and defend against group 2.
or
B.  Kick out group 1, dump everything they ever gave you – and hope you didn’t miss any of it – plead innocence with group 2 and hope they buy it.  If they don’t believe you, well, say good-bye to human civilization.

Bad choices, eh?  That’s the set up with The Terran Consensus.

Group 1, the Somerans, have been watching and manipulating us for the last 200 years.  In fact they insinuated their technology into ours, their beliefs into our popular entertainment and have even taken humans away to live on their planet.  Now it’s time for them to take a more active role in our governments.  They bring a new ship with several humans they have trained to become leaders in our world, all behind the scenes and in secret.

Their goal is to develop us as allies in their centuries long war with the Brak-Shar and they weren’t fussy how they do it or who they maneuver into power, i.e., Hitler was one of their little projects.  Several times the expedition leader observes that there is no morality or immorality associated with their human involvement since morality is exclusive to one’s own species.   (Not so and I don’t think too many humans would agree with this boundary.  We see morality dealing with animals.)

On the other hand, Group 2, the Brak-Shar, are not so good either.  They assumed the humans in the earth space station were with the Somerans, despite no evidence, and killed as many as they could.  When the Somerans tell us that the Brak-Shar are coming and that they will without a doubt disbelieve we are nothing more than trading partners, we are in deep trouble.

We take our best shot at protecting our planet and people and I’m not going to spoil by telling you what Earth chooses.

Summary

The plot is good, a little more believable and complex than many first contact stories and Washburn uses it to show us the characters.  I especially liked his portrayal of the Someran leader, Keeradoth.  We see him question his own people’s methods and goals and see him become more human over time, more aligned to us.  Keeradoth contemplates packing up and high tailing it for home, leaving Earth to work out what they can with the Brak-Shar.  But he decides that he owes us some help after manipulating us into the predicament.

The writing style is good too, with enjoyable dialogue and a reasonably fast pace.  Part of the ending is a bit over the top, but perfectly fine given the overall story.

I enjoyed The Terran Consensus and found it easy to follow, with interesting characters and conflicts.  Technology and gee-whiz space shenanigans are low key and only there to provide setting, not to detract from people

4 Stars

 

 

Well That Was Fun… We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1)

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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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Two New Science Fiction Novels: Prominence by A. C. Hadfield and Fringe Runner by Rachel Aukes

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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

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.