LAKES OF MARS – Merritt Graves

Posted by Daniel on May 21, 2020
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Aaron Sheridan is angry and upset.  A shuttle that he was piloting crashed and everyone in his family (except him) died.  Now with a death wish, he signs up for Fleet service, expecting to be shipped off to the front line of the Rim War.  Instead, he is sent to Corinth Station on Mars – an elite command school.  He immediately stands up for a poor kid who is being picked on by one of the most feared cadets in the school, Caelus Erik, which immediately puts a target on his own back by Erik and his goons. But Sheridan is not the push-over that so many of the other young recruits are.

Aaron isn’t too happy with the way things are run and are or are not being monitored by the administrators.  Are the inmates running this asylum? But with each passing day he learns new things and he just doesn’t know who to trust or what action to take.  But when a discovery is made that suggests he’s unwittingly a part of a devious plot, he knows it’s time to take action.

This is a quite dense book. Nearly 500 pages with a lot of information being presented.  Much of this reminded me of when I read Pierce Brown’s Red Rising. We have the reluctant hero stepping up and pulling people together.  We have an authoritative over-seeing body that is present mostly theoretically at this time, though when it does step in, it asserts its hand.  We even have a caste system recognized often by color (here it is uniform color).

What we don’t have is a cohesive story.

I felt like 90% of this book was character set-up.  We go back and forth – who do we trust, who do we not trust, who do we trust. And who is really in charge here and are they controlling as much as the cadets think, or do they have more ‘free will’ than they suspect?

There’s plenty of action, as Aaron steps up and proves himself over and over, in combat and in skills tests, but the plot action only comes at the very end of the book and I wondered … where did this come from?  It was frustrating to change stories at the end of the book (which is what it felt like, even if the story at the end was hinted at earlier, it was never very present).

I actually really liked the characters and the development of the characters and that really kept me reading.  But the major plot twist, which ends in a cliff-hanger (to sell the next book) just comes out of left field and didn’t feel connected to the rest of the book, so it ended as a real let-down.

Looking for a good book? Lakes of Mars by Merritt Graves has some nice character development but lacks a tight story that would want me to read more.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Lakes of Mars

author: Merritt Graves

publisher: Merritt Graves

ISBN: 194927201X

paperback, 494 pages

CREEPING JENNY – Jeff Noon

Posted by Daniel on May 19, 2020
Posted in: MYSTERY, SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Kafka in Wonderland.  That’s what I kept imagining as I read through this fantastic book.

Detective John Nyquist is getting clues about his father who disappeared over 20 years ago. He goes to visit the quaint but odd little village of Hoxley-on-Hale. Here the villagers honor 360 different saints, 360 days a year. For five days the villagers arefree to celebrate how they choose.  These celebrations are extreme and the villagers follow them, er, religiously.  On one day they may all wear masks, on another day they don’t speak, and still another they complete only half of EVERYthing (speech, actions, etc), and another still where everyone is addressed as either Alice or Edward. For a visitor looking for information, as Nyquist is, this is all very confusing and confounding. One might think that on one of those five ‘free’ days, it might be easier to commune with the villagers, but the citizens generally feel lost and uncertain on those days.

Nyquist has a very challenging time just trying to uncover who has been sending him messages about his father and what might have happened to his father and it only gets more complicated as there are some unusual murders occurring and he is clearly the most capable of detectives to look into this.

Really, all I can say to this is: Wow.

Jeff Noon is so incredibly creative.  He writes some of the most amazing speculative fiction I have ever read. The story here is truly awesome, but it’s the journey, it’s Jeff Noon’s writing that transforms this from a simple good book to an experience.

It’s not just the wildly unusual/creative world surrounding Nyquist that is so wonderful here, it’s following Nyquist, seeing this world through his eyes, and trying to make some sense of what is happening.  This series really is like Alice wandering through Wonderland.  We have the one person with whom we identify – someone more-or-less like us, thrown into extremely unsettling situations and trying to navigate through it, with a goal in mind.

Looking for a good book? Creeping Jenny by Jeff Noon is the third book in the John Nyquist series and is astoundingly good. If you are extremely adverse to feeling disoriented, you might want to avoid this book. But if you enjoy wading through a Wonderland, or the varied realities in a Philip K. Dick novel, then settle yourself in and open this book.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Creeping Jenny

author: Jeff Noon

series: John Nyquist #3

publisher: Angry Robot

ISBN: 0857668404

paperback, 400 pages

THAT AIN’T WITCHCRAFT – Seanan McGuire

Posted by Daniel on May 18, 2020
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Well, yes. If it’s written by Seanan McGuire (or her pseudonym Mira Grant), I’m going to read it, and most likely, I’m going to like it.

Antimony (Annie) Price is part of the eccentric cryptozoologist Price family who work to protect the creatures of the magical world as they live secretly among humans. She’s always had family to support her, but now she is running for her life (litrally) and calling upon acquaintances and associates whom she has met through her travels. She manages to pull together a small squad: a jink, a fūri, a ghost, and a sylph, and she holes up in a small community in rural Maine.

The Covenant of Saint George is a world-wide organization set to hunt and kill those creatures which the Price family are trying to protect, and so the threat of their finding Antimony s always present. But Antimony has a bigger problem – the Crossroads wants to claim its fee from the bargain it struck. The Crossroads wants Annie to kill James Smith because she owes the Crossroads a favor.

I really enjoy this InCryptid series. The world that McGuire has imagined and created is immense and reasonable and filled with so many wonderful, unique characters. According to a note from McGuire in the book, this is the last Antimony Price novel, but there will be more InCryptid books (in fact, as I write this, I believe I have the next one on my Kindle).

I believe that Seanan McGuire is one of the finest urban fantasy writers currently publishing.  She knows how to build a story with plenty of action and intrigue, with plot points unfolding as you read.  Her characters are really fun to read and even her minor characters pop off the page as real. Even though we’re in a magical world it feels as though we’re peeking in on a real event.

If you are new to the series, you really should go back and read the books from the start to get a better understanding of the characters and the world. Plus, once you read this, you’ll want to go back and read them all anyway, so you might as well start from there.

There is a short story at the end of the book, “The Measure of a Monster,” which is really quite excellent.

Looking for a good book? That Ain’t Witchcraft by Seanan McGuire is the 8th book in the InCryptid series, and is a heck of a fun read.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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That Ain’t Witchcraft

author: Seanan McGuire

series: InCryptid #8

publisher: DAW Books

ISBN: 0756411793

paperback, 435 pages

SHAKE DOWN – Kendel Lynn

Posted by Daniel on May 15, 2020
Posted in: MYSTERY. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

As my book review blog is now seven years old I have become much more selective in the books I request. Shake Down by Kendel Lynn was not something on my watch list, but as I’ve been enjoying a number of different mystery series’ published by Henery Press, I thought I’d give this one a try as well.

Eli Lisbon is working on becoming a private detective.  She also happens to be the director of the Ballantyne Foundation. It is just one week before the annual Beach Ball at the foundation and she’s on the committee to secure the dessert centerpieces.  A piece of cake, right? (Pun intended.)  But the head baker goes missing.  When Eli looks into the situation she learns that the baker is supposed to be the maid of honor at a wedding the following week, and that the maid of honor and bride-to-be had previously been rivals on a reality television show.

No one seems to know if there’s still bad blood between bride and maid. Did something happen to the baker or did she leave the cozy beach resort on her own? And more importantly, who’s going to make the cake centerpieces for the Ball?

This is the fifth book in a series, but it is the first book I’ve read. I don’t think that I was missing anything too important about Eli – I felt like anything I needed to know what presented to me. The story is classic cozy mystery – we don’t get any overt violence, just the hint of something possibly having been done.

I am typically not a fan of cozy mysteries, though there are a few that I’ve really liked.  This particular book never really caught my attention. I felt it moved along much too slowly (a problem I find with most cozy mysteries) and Eli didn’t strike me as very remarkable or exciting.

For the most part, this was just a very average read.  Fans of cozies would probably really like this, but it didn’t quite work for me.

Looking for a good book? Shake Down by Kendel Lynn is cozy mystery, the fifth book in a series, and is generally an average read.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

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Shake Down

author: Kendel Lynn

series: Elliott Lisbon Mystery #5

publisher: Henery Press

ISBN13: 9781635115871

paperback, 240 pages

ALMOST INFAMOUS – Matt Carter

Posted by Daniel on May 13, 2020
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized, YA. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

AhhhhhhhhhhhIiiiiiiiii…I don’t know quite what to make of this.

Aidan Salt is an 18 year old boy with super powers. Powers can come about in different ways, and they can be really good (flight, strength, speed, etc) or they can be kind of useless and uninspiring (the ability to soak up water, for instance). Aidan has some pretty awesome power, but he’s not sure what he wants to do with it.  Well … he is sure … he wants to use his power so that girls, one in particular, will adore him and have sex with him.

Aidan lives in a time when super villainy has been abolished.  The super heroes have managed to keep the villains completely in check.  Anyone trying to become a super villain is dealt with swiftly and thoroughly.  And yet, Aidan would kind of like to go the villain route.  He puts together a pretty cool costume, comes up with a cool name (Apex Strike), and most importantly, comes up with a cool catch phrase.  And so off he goes to rob a simple store, just to test out how the villainy idea goes.  But he doesn’t strike fear into the employees – in fact, they fight back – and when a D-list superhero shows up, Aidan begs for leniency. Unfortunately, the superhero has a bit of a sadistic streak and won’t stop punishing Aidan, so Aidan fights back. Hard. And the superhero is turned inside out.

Aidan tries to lay low and hide out, terrified that a squad of superheroes will come and blow him to smithereens.  They do come, but not to destroy him, but to enlist him. The superheroes want to form a villain squad that will terrorize the people (but not too much) and fight the superheroes in scripted battles.  Sometimes the villains will win, but mostly the heroes will win.  Why? The people and the government who funds the heroes have forgotten what it really means to have heroic protectors. Once villainy was eradicated, complacency set in.

Apex Strike may become the most feared villain in the entire world, but Aidan Salt will pal around with the world’s greatest superhero, sharing drinks, sharing drugs, sharing women. It’s the best possible scenario Aidan could ask for.

Author Matt Carter really has a talent for building a story.  The world-building here is fun.  We get some of the history of super heroes and the history of the great super villains of the past.  We also get a really wild, fun story with exciting characters, a well-built plot, and some fantastic action. This was easily a 4.5 or a 5.0 book.

Except…!

To much of the book devolves into teen-boy sex fantasy. Seriously too much. Aidan’s entire motivation for 90% of the book is to get laid. Early on Aidan describes his motive:

Villainy, however, wasn’t my first idea.

At first, like every kid, I wanted to be a superhero. They got all the money and endorsements, and had their faces smeared across numerous posters (yeah, I had posters of El Capitan and The Gamemaster on my walls, so what?), and pussy . . . lots of it. If I was ever going to stand a chance at fame, fortune, and pussy, becoming a superhero was my best bet.

I was willing to overlook this as he went on and the story developed, but just when I thought this was completely behind us, we spend way too much time with Aidan the virgin having sex for the first time.  And just like a teen boy’s fantasy, the girl initiates everything and he worries about everything (size, stamina, pleasing her) and of course he’s pretty much above perfect in every way. And later on, he’s sexually satisfying the hottest supermodels on the planet during his ‘off’ hours.

I really liked so much of this book.  The plot twists were well done, the overall story arc was really fun to ride with, and most of the characters were pretty interesting and well fleshed out. But just a I would settle in to the book, Matt Carter would remind me that I wasn’t supposed to enjoy it too much, and he’d throw in some main character sex-obsessed fan-boy moment to bring the enjoyment level down a notch or two.

I really don’t know how to rate this book.  The driving force of the main character to ‘get some pussy’ (his words, not mine) easily makes this a one star book.  But take out the main character (and really, you could) and you have a fantastic world, plot, and exciting cast of characters that could easily make this a five star book. So sadly, it falls somewhere in between, where it will languish in obscurity. Which is probably where it belongs because really you can’t recommend this book and tell the reader to ignore a few moments. You have to ignore the main character to enjoy this book.

Looking for a good book? I really wish I could recommend Almost Infamous by Matt Carter, but I can’t. On one hand, a 2.5 star rating doesn’t reflect so much of the book, but on the other hand, 2.5 stars is very generous.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

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Almost Infamous

author: Matt Carter

publisher: Talos

ISBN: 1940456509

paperback, 328 pages

NO TRAVELLER RETURNS – Loius L’Amour and Beau L’Amour

Posted by Daniel on May 11, 2020
Posted in: OTHER. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

The SS Lichenfield is carrying a cargo of highly explosive naphtha across the Pacific.  Every crewman knows how dangerous such a cargo is, and that one accidental spark could kill them all. Travelling with such cargo has each crew member reflecting on what’s important in their lives. Some have family that they don’t see enough. Some are running away from a past, and others are running toward something still unseen.

This novel is an early, and unfinished work by master storyteller, Louis L’Amour.  It has been completed by his son, Beau, who maintains the Louis L’Amour estate and has been editing and publishing much of Louis’ unfinished works as a “Lost Treasures” series. Not too long ago I read and reviewed Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures Volume 2 which I enjoyed. Seeing the rough starts and rewrites, and notes on characters is a really interesting peek inside the methods of a popular writer. This book, being a completed novel, doesn’t have that same appeal and really must be read and reviewed as a completed novel. And in that sense, this just doesn’t work.

We can see that this is an early attempt, and a rather clumsy one at that.

This is sort of a “Love Boat” for the working class.  We get to know many of the ship’s workers. We get a glimpse of the diaries and a glimpse of their off-ship lives, and maybe, if we’re lucky, their path will cross one another off ship, but for the most part, we get separate stories which are weakly tied together in an attempt to make it a cohesive story. But the characters are too many to follow each of them satisfactorily. Just as we get in to one man’s story, we turn and get in to another man’s story.  And then another’s, and possibly more, before we get back to the first story. I felt I was constantly being pulled away from the story rather than being brought into more story and the effect for me was that it was taking too long without getting results.

As a character study, this is quite fascinating.  We get a good glimpse at some character traits that L’Amour used over and over again – the tough guy who would walk through steam to save a soul – but I found myself more interested in a character type that I don’t remember seeing often in L’Amour’s books (and I haven’t read them all, so perhaps this character is present in the L’Amour canon) – the dedicated and respected worker who, because of an ‘obvious flaw’ (in this case, a stutter) doesn’t fit in with the rest of the macho men, but still manages to be necessary and come through in a pinch. I’d definitely like to see more of this type of character in L’Amour.

Looking for a good book? No Traveller Returns by Louis’ L’Amour is an interesting read from the perspective of this being an early work (in a different genre) of a literary icon, but is not worthy of recommending to those not already familiar with or fans of Louis L’Amour’s work.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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No Traveller Returns

author: Louis L’Amour and Beau L’Amour

publisher: Bantam

ISBN: 0425284441

hardcover, 256 pages

DAUGHTERS OF FORGOTTEN LIGHT – Sean Grigsby

Posted by Daniel on May 8, 2020
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

If you know the term ‘grindhouse’ – often associated with a style of film – then think of this as grindhouse fiction.

Oubliette is a floating prison colony.  It is not just that the worst prisoners are sent there – and they are – but due to massive poverty, parents will sometimes send their children to Oubliette to have one less child to be responsible for. The prison colony is run by gangs of tough, brutal prisoners.  There is currently a very tenuous truce among the gangs so that when a shipment of  the meager food and supplies arrives the gangs get their cut without fighting. Oubliette is an all-female colony enclosed in a glass-like dome. (Male prisoners and cast-off family members are sent to a military complex.)

One of the gangs on Oubliette is the Daughters of Forgotten Light, led by Lena “Horror” Horowitz. They ride around Oubliette on their motorcycles in some semblance of order, intimidating loners and lesser gangs. Occasionally they’ll lose a member in a fight, but there’s always new blood being sent to the colony.

In the latest shipment, however, there are two surprises for the gangs. A drone. And a baby.

A Senator has sent the drone, hoping to get enough video evidence of the lawlessness – the violence and the cannibalism – occurring, that she will get approval to destroy the colony and everyone in it.  Her problem … the baby now on Oubliette may be hers.

Despite the dark themes and the grindhouse sense of storytelling, this was a fast and light read. It’s not a huge cast of characters with a lot of subplot going on. It’s straightforward, and rough, with just enough plot to take you from page to page.

I find it quite interesting that author Sean Grigsby writes a novel of almost entirely female characters.  While I am enjoying his “Smoke Eaters” series, the one issue I have with the books I’ve read there, are: misogyny and male pubescent fantasy toward the female characters.  I don’t feel a whole lot better about the characters here.  Even realizing that these gang members are tough killers, I didn’t always feel like their dialog was natural.  It sometimes felt he was trying too hard to sound female, but he didn’t. And honestly, I’m not sure what the point was to have this group be all female.

This was a fun read, though not necessarily a memorable one. It was a fun way to pass some time. If you like this kind of slaughterhouse fiction, consider this for your next beach read.

Looking for a good book? Daughters of Forgotten Light by Sean Grigsby is the literary equivalent to a grindhouse film – skimpy on plot, heavy on the tough-taking, tough-acting women, with plenty of violence.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Daughters of Forgotten Light

author: Sean Grigsby

publisher: Angry Robot

ISBN: 0857667955

paperback, 352 pages