Showing posts with label sci-fi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sci-fi. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Transhuman by Ben Bova


Rating: WARTY!

As a sci-fi fan, I'm familiar with Ben Bova's name and his status in the sci-fi world, but I've never read anything by him. After this, I doubt I ever will again. This was an audio book, and the reader's voice was awful. Stefan Rudnicki reminded me of the kid in the Home Alone movie trilogy who records his own voice on a tape recorder, then slows the tape down to make it sound adult. This reader sounded exactly like that and it was really hard to ignore that and focus on the story, especially since the story itself was utterly ludicrous and boring to boot. Audio books often cost a fortune, and I can't help but believe that one of the major factors in that is paying for a celebrity or a 'professional' to read it. They need to get people who can read and who are amateurs, so they can pay them well, but not exorbitantly, and get a good reader rather than some name or voice actor who are typically awful at this. In this way we would have listenable audio books at reasonable prices.

With a title like Transhuman (not to be confused with Transhuman by Jonathan Hickman or Transhuman by Mark vn Name, I expected something mutational and genetic to come out of this, perhaps along the lines of Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio, but it certainly didn't look like it was going anywhere near there - or anywhere at all by the time I quit listening about half way through the story). I was already skimming by then because quite literally nothing was happening. Not that the term 'transhuman' accurately describes Bear's novel either, BTW, but I don't think Ben Bova really understands what 'transhuman' means.

The basic plot is that this guy kidnaps his own granddaughter from the hospital where she's being treated for, and dying from a glioblastoma. She apparently only has months to live. Grandfather wants to try an experimental treatment that he has developed, but it is a long way from human trials and was not developed for this, so quite understandably no one in authority will countenance it. His daughter and her husband don't trust him enough to go for it either, so he charges ahead by himself. This instantly made me dislike him. I might have reconsidered if the novel had been better written and I'd seen something happen in the first half of the story to make it worth listening to, but literally nothing happened other than the kidnapping and rounds of treatment.

Plus the story had all the hallmarks of fan-fiction, it was so badly written. The child's own attending physician abandons her job and takes off with this guy, which is utterly ridiculous. I've worked in hospitals and they are far more protective of children than this. Even if her grandfather was legally entitled to remove her from the hospital, he was not the child's legal guardian, and I can't believe someone would not have called the parents to check with them if this was OK. I've worked in pediatric wards, and I know for a fact that pediatric nurses are devoted to their charges. Not one of them would let this happen without notifying mom and dad.

In the end, I couldn't help but see this as nothing but a wish fulfillment story, given that the author was pretty much the same age as the protagonist when this novel was written. All the female characters love him and want to help him! No one sees him as a creepy kidnapper. No. Just no. I refuse to even remotely recommend something as poor as this.


Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: Castaways by David McDonald


Rating: WARTY!

I was interested to read this novel from Net Galley based on Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy graphic novel series. This was a prose book, however, not a graphic novel, and although (judged by the cover illustration) it seeks to align itself closely on the characters from the movie, it fell far, far short of that movie I'm sad to report. It was a really fast read, fortunately, otherwise I would have quit reading it and relegated it to the DNF pile a lot sooner than I did.

I'm not a huge consumer of comics and graphic novels although I do peruse a few here and there, so I'd never heard of Guardians of the Galaxy before I got a chance for a sneak preview of the movie before it was released, and I was in awe of that. It was the best Marvel movie I'd seen to that point and I look forward eagerly to the sequel, so I thought in the meantime that it might be fun to read a novel about these characters. The problem was that this novel in no way captured the people I'd seen in the movie at all. It failed to add anything to that and unlike the movie, it was bizarrely humorless. It felt like a backward step for me in more ways than one, so this was a no, I have to say.

People who are familiar with the comic book characters might have a different take on this - perhaps the characters in the comics are different from the one sin the movie, but the stellar movie versions were all I had for comparison and the novel did not compare at all well. All of the characters except for Quill were put in the back seat for one thing, so there was pretty much none of the team interaction which the movie exploited and highlighted so very well.

This story was pretty much all about Quill and he was, contrary to the movie version, rendered completely unlikable for me. He was portrayed as a smooth-talking and rather callous womanizer, and this felt so unlike the movie character that it was honestly nauseating. Yes, in the movie he was a smooth talker and evidenced a strong hint of womanizing, but as the movie got into gear, he was all about the job and he had great depth. The character here in the novel was about as shallow and uninteresting as you can get. Does the public really want to read about yet another "heroic stud" who consumes women like so many hamburgers? I sure don't. One Captain Kirk is more than enough!

The movie was about dangerous misfits who paradoxically learned to become a family, yet here it was the precise opposite: a family who broke up, became completely domesticated, and disappeared almost entirely into the background scenery! Hi-tech was abandoned wholesale as the team landed on a planet, arguing with each other, and were hit by an EMP bomb which disabled their spacecraft. So, they left it behind and went their separate ways! It made no sense that the ship would not be shielded from EMP.

This planet had apparently become locked in medieval times, so instead of the Guardians of the Galaxy I was expecting, I got Star-Lord of the Rings - complete with giant flying animals, castles, and pitched battles. All the medieval people spoke like modern Americans, which unleashed a very effective bomb itself, one which disabled my suspension of disbelief. I don't expect Shakespearean English in a novel like this, but neither do I like stories where no matter how far into space we go, every habitable planet is populated with people who think, speak, and behave like Americans!

Perhaps the worst thing was that there was zero humor here. This was another thing which the movie did brilliantly. It was completely absent from this novel which was quite evidently far more intent upon exhibiting brawn and brutality than ever it was in showing off brains, bravery, and ingenuity. Given that, it was paradoxical that Drax was all but absent. Gamora was effectively reduced to being a school teacher. Rocket and Groot were as invisible as Drax.

As I said, it was all about the Peter, and for me, he raised far more disgust than interest. Rather than spend his time trying to figure out a way to fix his ship, he uncharacteristically retired from life and became a hanger-on at the court of some Duke, posing as the Duke's champion. This made no sense to me. What happened to the guy who was focused on his ship to the point, almost, of obsession? He was AWOL in this story, and I felt that this betrayed his character completely.

I made it to just past page two hundred in this 240-some page novel, and I quit because I was so tired of the lack of an engaging story, and the seemingly endless fighting. I cannot understand why the Guardians were hobbled and suffocated like this, and I cannot recommend a novel that offers them as little air as deep space.


Monday, April 18, 2016

City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau


Rating: WARTY!

I got this audiobook from the library, and having seen the movie a while ago thought it might be interesting to read - or listen to - the book. It wasn't. The movie wasn't that great, but I don't recall it being entirely without merit. This audiobook failed to grab my attention. It's the start of a successful series, but it's for younger children and it failed to move me. I'm not a fan of series, but I'm willing to make an exception for something exceptional, which this wasn't.

It's about an artificial city wherein live people who know nothing about the artifice, but the city is coming to the end of its life. No good reason is given why it has a lifespan. This is quite a short novel, but instead of getting into it, the story rambles and meanders and wanders around, and I had zero interest in following this drunken walk. if it had been an interesting or funny ramble, I might have meandered along with it, but no. I couldn't. I can't recommend this, but I experience very little of it, Your mileage on your drunken walk may differ!


Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Golem by LRNZ aka Lorenzo Ceccotti


Rating: WORTHY!

This graphic novel, which is an advance review copy that I was very grateful to have had the chance to read, started out quite stunningly. After a brief message from the president of Italy, proudly listing the advances technology has brought to the Italian people - advances which, which superficially wonderful, nevertheless carried with them a vague undercurrent of threat - the scene changed to the countryside and the artwork was stunning. Truly captivating. This imagery comes in the dreams of Steno Critone, the young main character who has slept badly. He wakes after another first person PoV dream of this man being shot. His day begins with a commercial bombardment where some sort of AI, watching his every move, can remind him he's low on toothpaste and push a new toothbrush on him. The news greets him with more acts of terrorism. Wait, terrorism? In this ideal society? What's gone wrong? I'm sure we're about to find out!

The truly scary thing is that this society is exactly where ours is heading, even to the detail of too many personal vehicles on the streets causing bumper to bumper traffic. Not that vehicles even have bumpers any more. Table tops show video, Amazonian reminders that you're out of product A or low on item B, pop up routinely. Information overload is dire. I loved the detail of the ambulance personal saying, "You can't die here sir," and no one even pays any attention.

One thing which hasn't changed is bullying. The trope of Steno being bullied in the classroom and no one doing anything about it is a tired one. Luckily for Steno, his friend Rosabella Filagone speaks up for him. Shortly after this is when it all goes to hell. The terrorists kidnap Rosabella and her father and Steno is pulled along with them, but are they terrorists, or are they simply a group of people who have realized that society is out of control and the wrong people are in charge? Steno joins with them, but shows a surprising lack of concern over the fate and welfare of his mother, Edea. This group behaves as though they've rejected technology yet they use it more, and in more advanced versions, than people back in society do. This is where the story became very confusing!

I felt it lost a little from the middle towards the end. It wasn't quite as engrossing, and a bit confusing at times, but the overall story came through and made sense. I can see this kind of thing happening - not quite as fantastical as is illustrated here, but definitely down that same slippery slope in many ways. I felt that the last half of the story expended an awful lot of pages saying very little - a lot of minimalist pages, and black pages. I feel for the trees! But that said, I enjoyed this romp and found it to be a worthy read. The artwork especially was captivating, and I recommend it.


Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Paper Girls Vol 1 Brian K Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, Matt Wilson


Rating: WORTHY!

Well this was a fun romp and definitely something I'd like to continue reading. It proves you can write a story with the word 'paper' in the title and not make a complete johngreen of yourself. I can't say much about the art because this was an advance review copy and it looked like the artwork had been 'de-rezzed' to make the file size smaller. This made for quick page turning, but it was hard to see exactly how the final art will look. In very general terms, it looked fine, though. It was reminiscent of older comics, not in the fact that it was pointillist (it wasn't, thankfully!), but in the general style, and this was fine because this was set in the late eighties, and there are a lot of eighties references, be warned.

It has four intriguing, amusing, and interesting female teens all of whom deliver newspapers in the neighborhood. Three of them hang out together and the fourth joins them and gets to know them over the course of the early morning delivery, but there's a heck of a lot more going on here than delivering papers.

It's the morning after Halloween, so there are some costumed people still around (although why they would still be around at that hour of the morning is a bit of a mystery). The girls have a run-in with some of them - in fact that's how they all meet - and then they split-up to finish their rounds quickly. This is when trouble starts as one pair contacts the other pair over a walkie-talkie (no cell phones back then, remember!), and when they meet up, it turns out some weird dudes in ninja costumes have stolen their other walkie-talkie.

The feistiest of the girls, Mackenzie, aka Mac, vows to take it back. Tiffany and KJ are on-board immediately, and the new girl, Erin, follows along. They end up in a basement where there is a machine which Mac erroneously compares with an Apollo space capsule. It's actually more like a Mercury capsule, but she doesn't know enough to know that. Some sort of power or force comes out of the capsule and the girls immediately beat a retreat.

Here's where it goes to hell. Now there are pterosaurs flying around, which I note some reviewers misidentified as dinosaurs. They're not. They were no more dinosaurs than the aquatic reptiles from that era were dinosaurs). The thing is that these pterosaurs were carrying armored "pilots" who seemed to be zapping everyone they found with sticks reminiscent of the weapons from the Stargate movie. With so many disappearing, people think it's the rapture! The new guys in the armor seem to be at war with the ninja dudes and the girls are, in the words of Stealers Wheel, "Stuck in the middle with news." (That might not be what they sang!).

And that's all the spoilers you're going to get! Yeah, I know, I'm a mean old cuss, but I loved this story! There's feistiness, weirdness, time-travel, maybe parallel worlds, and it all starts with some girls delivering newspapers. I love that it's so different and, within context, believable. These girls don't do out of character stuff, and they don't act completely at random. They're totally believable in everything they do and say, and the story flows so naturally. My only complaint about this story is that, in the words of Queen, "I want it all and I want it now!" When's the next volume due out?! Sadly Queen doesn't get a mention in this graphic novel - and neither do any other bands, which is a bit odd, but no worries! I hold out hopes for some musical references in later volumes, and in the meantime, I recommend this as a worthy read!


Monday, April 11, 2016

Orphan Black: Helsinki by Graeme Manson, John Fawcett, Heli Kennedy, Denton J Tipton


Rating: WORTHY!

I loved the TV show, so I was interested when it became possible to see an advance review copy of a graphic novel version. This is not a clone (yes, I went there!) of the TV series. It's a different perspective, set in Europe in 2001, which I appreciate very much. US readers in particular need to understand that there is actually a world outside the US border which is at least as important as what's inside - for example, Canada, where this entire series originated! And Europe, where this comic is set, but which doesn't feel like Europe - more on this anon. This focus on the US (or in this case what the creators took to calling "Generica") doesn't help a series supposedly set in Europe.

The question you have to ask, when something like this happens (extras for a movie, a prequel or a fractional sequel (1.5 or something) for a novel series, a graphic novel addition to a successful TV series) is: what's the point? What was it that you forgot to put into your grand opus which requires you to cobble on bits and pieces, Heath Robinson style, to make it what it ought to have been when you first released it? This is why I don't, for the most part, like novel series. This is particularly the case with young-adult trilogies, because every volume is an admission that the author is running off at the mouth and larding up their story by including every note they took, and piece of research they did, rather than cutting to the chase and getting a tight story told. They're great for Big Publishing™ though, aren't they? You have my word that I will never write a YA dystopian trilogy!

Back on topic! There are now two comic book series (and note that Orphan Black was created by screenwriter Graeme Manson and John Fawcett, so these people have been in on it from the start). The first of these is The Clone Club, which I have not read. It had five issues covering the main characters in order: Sarah, Helena, Alison, Cosima, Rachel. The one under review is the second series, Helsinki. There was no cover or contributor information in my ARC, and the first section had no title, but the others were subtitled: Three by the Sea, Clones Anonymous, and Like Rats in a Cage. The fiery finale was the next section, but it wasn't included in the ARC I read.

In this particular case, the assumption is that the TV show is the whole story, so where is the need for an "extra"? Well obviously, it's in the fact that the cloning in Orphan Black was not solely a US phenomenon - it was much wider than that. This was evident from the TV show, but the entire focus there, pretty much, was on what went down in the US. We saw very little of what was happening elsewhere in the world. This is where this series is supposed to step up, which begs the question: does it?

I'm not convinced that it does, but I became convinced that it was a worthy read. Call me an addict if you like, but I love the TV series and so I have to confess a bias towards the conics. As other reviewers have pointed out though, it does try to do too much too quickly and ends up not really doing very much.

Unlike in the TV show, we never really get to know any of these characters in the comic. They come at us thick and fast and start multiplying like Harry Potters at the start of volume seven, until we have a plethora of them without knowing really anything about any one of the new girls. Set before the TV series begins, the story follows one of these young clones as she begins uncovering several others, and then they're in complete disarray about what to do next. It's not pretty. In fact, it's a mess, and sometimes hard to follow.

I think the TV series would have been better served had this graphic series devoted each issue to following important players from the TV series, but confined to those outside the US. If Veera is important, let's have a comic about her. So far so good, since the first section was glued to her. The problem is that when she starts contacting others, we haven't really been introduced to them, and so we don't bond with them as we did with her. They're not really people; they're cookie cutters which move back and forth in front of the light casting shadows with little or no substance.

Other than Rachel (and one other!), none of the main characters: Sarah Manning, Elizabeth Childs, Alison Hendrix, Cosima Niehaus, Katja Obinger, or even Felix Dawkins appears in this graphic novel. The other one who does, Helena, is, along with Felix and Alison, one of my three most favored characters in this show, but we see her only fleetingly and disturbingly here. There are several European clones mentioned in the show, but we meet very few of them on TV. This comic introduces many of those , which was a highlight for me despite the sketchiness of the introductions: Veera Suominen, the main subject of this series, Niki Lintula, Justyna Buzek, Sofia Jensen, Faye and Femke ("twins"!), Jade, and Ania Kaminska are all featured in comic series 2. Others, such as Danielle Fournier, Aryanna Giordano, and Janika Zingler are not here.

The artwork was so-so, I'm sorry to report. There was no cover on my copy, but the cover I've seen advertising this novel was gorgeous. The interior artwork? Not so much! It's fine in a workmanlike style, but nothing to write home about. All-too-often, it's patchy: in some images, the characters looked very much like Tatiana Maslany, the central actor in the TV show. I was particularly impressed by Rachel Duncan, who was very much the one from TV, which I loved, but the others seemed to vary even within the same character. In some frames they looked just like the TV version, in others quite different. The characters here were younger, of course: they were of high school age and just beginning to learn of their peculiar place in the world, but the representations of them we saw in the art was not the best it could have been. It was okay and that's it.

I guess what bothered me most about this story was the feeling of hopelessness which pervaded it. Yes, these were teens and dis-empowered accordingly, but they were hi-tech savvy, and mobile. They had no problem taking the reins when they needed to, so it felt like a betrayal of the story when we got to the point where they had ample evidence of the cloning, but never went public with it. The excuse we're given is the September, 2001 terrorist attack on New York City - that this so preoccupied the news that their own story would have been buried. This is where my comment above - about "The US" not being the same set as "The World" - is relevant.

Yes, 9/11 made a massive impact on the world, but not everywhere is as self-obsessed as is the US. It happened in the US, not in Europe and while there was concern, even horror, and sympathy and focus on it everywhere, to suggest that it obliterated everything else and became the sole preoccupation of the Europeans in the same way as it did the US, to the point where this cloning issue would have been completely buried, is grossly unfair to Europeans, and in particular to European teen women who are startling in their ability to demonstrate and draw attention to a cause.

Take, Femen, for example, or Free The Nipple and the related Les TumulTueuses, or Pussy Riot. Even the Russians are not shy about it! 'Europeans' does not equate to 'Euro Peons' and more than it equates to 'Euro Paens'! This is a locale where we have seen teen girls make spectacular protests which have received wide publicity (maybe not in the US!). To suggest that they couldn't get this publicized is really an insult. Obviously if you need to keep it secret, as a writer, then you need a better excuse!

All that said, I'm still going to rate this a worthy read because I really liked finding out more. In general terms, I enjoyed it even as threadbare as it was. What Helsinki really needs is a novel, not a graphic novel, to put some real meat on the bones of this story. But until then, and if you love Orphan Black as I do, I think this worth your time.


Saturday, April 2, 2016

Awaken Me Darkly by Gena Showalter


Rating: WARTY!

I have no idea what that title means. It's nonsensical. Wake me without turning on the light? Wake me with a shocking revelation? That's what the blurb promises, but the blurbs always promise that, and it never is. Blurb writers are morons. This audiobook was read in the kind of purring chocolate voice that sounds intriguing to begin with, but runs a severe risk of becoming cloying, irritating, even nauseating with too much exposure. And it did.

Listening to an audiobook isn't like meeting someone at a function or a party, where you have a conversation with them and can move on at any time. In an audiobook, you're stuck with them for the duration! There is no conversation. You're lectured and expected to like it. The reading in this case was done by Justine Eyre. I had no idea who she was, and the impression I got was that she was a lot older than the character. Since this is told in first person, this seemed wrong to me. Later I learned that she is, very roughly, the same age as the character, but she still seems wrong for this voice. She eyred! The voice sounds too old and nowhere near appropriate to the character as depicted in the novel. It's not enough street for my taste, so the character, as read by Eyre, came off as inauthentic to me.

When you're reading a novel for yourself, you have the choice to picture the characters however you want, but when this is taken from you by a reader in an audio book, it can be a spark of life or a kiss of death. In this case I tried not to be lured to either extreme and just let this voice go by me. It wasn't easy! I am no fan of first person PoV and I cannot understand why so many authors are so compulsively addicted to it. Some writers can make it work in some cases, but for me it's too much "me" from the character: "Hey, lookit me! Look, I'm looking in a mirror and describing myself for you! Aren't I wonderful? Lookit what I'm doing now. Pay attention only to meeeeee! I own you!" Yuk!

Anyway, let's look at the plot, which makes little sense, but this is what we have to work with. At some point in the near future, interplanetary portals appear on Earth for no evident reason, allowing through several varieties of alien, all of which seem to be superior to humans. Feeling threatened, the humans fought back - literally - and were pretty much losing when a treaty was struck and an organization to police the aliens was formed. The main character, Mia Snow works for the New Chicago Police Department as an 'alien huntress'. I don't get why it's New Chicago, but this is sci-fi so you have to have the city renamed with the new prefix, right? It's the law! Why she's a 'huntress' rather than a 'hunter' I don't get either. Do women need to be especially labeled to pigeon-hole them as women rather than as people? Gena Showalter seems to think so. Why is she a 'huntress' at all? Why not a detective - or a detectivess in this case? LOL!

The story starts with an alien serial killer. The evidence points to a female Arcadian. Why the alien race is named after residents of the highlands in the middle of the Peloponnese in ancient Greece, I have no idea. I'm guessing Showalter doesn't either. The name just sounds cool, right? The body is a muscular male with dark hair. He's found naked and posed and tied with ribbons - which is why the idiot detectives insist it had to have been a female who did it. No male would ever use a ribbon, right? Genderism and pigeon-holing seems to be the order of the day in this future. "She" is identified as Arcadian by the fact that Arcadians have three hairs to each root as opposed to the single hair per follicle every other species evidently has. Et in Arcadia ego grew three hairs, apparently.

None of this could have been possibly, planted, could it? I'm sorry, but this story started out stupid and got worse. I ditched it DNF and moved on to something much better written and far more entertaining. I cannot recommend this one, and I'm done with this author!


The Giver by Lois Lowry


Rating: WARTY!

I should have known I would not like this book, but when I requested the audio book from the library, I didn't know it was a Newbery winner or I wouldn't have bothered. Medal-winning novels have been very nearly a consistent waste of time for me. I deliberately put them back on the shelf if they have some medal listed on the cover. This one turned out to be no different from nearly all of my previous experiences!

The biggest problem with dystopian novels is the utter lack of rational explanation as to how the world actually became dystopian in the first place. Most dystopian novels simply take it as a given - this is how the world is, and vaguely wave their hand at some tragic past, such as nuclear war, or disease pandemic, but this fails for me because while it explains that the world changed dramatically, it fails to explain why it changed in the way the author depicts it did. The author of the Divergent disaster, for example (who evidently borrowed heavily from this novel), simply took the brain-dead position that "Hey, it's perfectly natural that people would automatically migrate, like sheep, into one of five ridiculous factions, and we're expected to accept that all humans are alike, all conform readily, there's only one rebel, and no one else ever questions anything. That's major BS right there. Humans are not like that and it's an insult to the human race to suggest that everyone is.

In this novel, which is part of a connected series I'm sorry to say, everyone lives in supposed communist conformity, and children are assigned at age twelve into one of a limited number of assignments which last a lifetime. No one complains, no one rebels, and those who feel they don't fit will request to be forced into "release" - which is that they're murdered. Sorry but this won't work. It doesn't even make any sense.

In this world, all pain and hunger and suffering are taken away, but the "price" for this is the loss of music, art, and other human expressions of joy, such as love? Nonsense! They can't even see - or at least don't even know - what colors are? Seriously? It doesn't work in such a literal black and white manner, and it's not so much naïve to believe it would, as it's profoundly ignorant on the part of an author to even think that it does and that we as readers, would swallow this crap.

Perhaps a better writer might have made this work, but this author fails because the writing is utterly boring. It's so boring in fact that the audio book creators felt the dire need to inject irritating, jarring, monotonous musical interludes randomly into the text. Where those in the original novel? Did you open page 55 and suddenly a piano trilled forth? I seriously doubt it. So what is on the unimaginative brains of these imbeciles that - in a story where music is banned - a mind-numbingly mediocre musical measure or two are injected over the narration? You can't get that dumb naturally. You actually have to really want it and fight for it, to get it as chronic as these guys had it.

But even without that pain in the eardrum, even had I been reading it, I would have found myself skipping over paragraph after paragraph because it wasn't remotely interesting. Did I really want to listen to, in the space of four short paragraphs:

And today, now that the new Elevens had been advanced this morning, there were two Eleven-nineteens...Very soon he would not be an Eleven but a Twelve...Asher was a four, and sat now in the row ahead of Jonas. He would receive his Assignment fourth....Fiona, Eighteen, was on his left; on his other side sat Twenty...

I'd rather listen to paint drying. It's much more restful. I'm sorry but I can't get into a novel that plods the way this one does, with nothing happening save for one long info-dump of a set-up which occupied over half the story. Yes the novel - novella, whatever - is short, but it's still way too long for my taste. Any hopeful young writer who came out with this garbage as a first effort today would rightly have it rejected, yet it won a medal? For what?! The music?! It just goes to show how utterly worthless a Newbery is. I can't recommend it based on what I listened to, which was far too much. A real dystopian society would make you listen to books like this.


Magisterium by Jeff Hirsch


Rating: WARTY!

This audio book, poorly read by Julia Whelan, failed to get my attention despite my twice trying to get with it. It simply wasn't interesting, and the story made no sense. It wasn't even that original - it's another we v. they story, in this case scientists (The Colloquium) v. magicians (The unoriginally named 'Magisterium'), but the scientists, as represented by main female character, 16-year-old Glenn Morgan were so caricatured that they weren't even remotely realistic. The author would have us swallow the idiotic creationist position that science is blind and dogmatic and interested only in preserving the status quo, whereas the Magisterium is open to intuitive learning, which is nonsensical in real life. You can't "know" anything - not in any meaningful sense - without a scientific approach. You can blindly believe, and you can think you know, and you can fool yourself into 'knowing', but you can't really know.

In any story where magic is permitted, you're automatically throwing out the rulebook, which is why writers of such stories have to come up with rather arbitrary rules which the magicians have to follow, and unless they're done well, it fails. Usually there is no cost attached to performing magic in these stories, but then again it's magic, so why would there be? On the other hand, if there's no cost, then anyone can do anything and your story lacks any imperative, risk, or danger. There was no magic performed in the portion of the story to which I listened, so I can't speak to that here. I can only say it was boring to me, so I DNF'd it and moved onto something which turned out to be much more entertaining. Life's too short, y'know?!


The Obsidian Blade by Pete Hautman


Rating: WARTY!

Read by Joshua Swanson, who doesn't do a bad job, this library audio book started out very intriguingly. I found myself wondering how useful obsidian would be for a blade. It's a material rather like glass, and so is readily shattered, but there are finds of obsidian being used historically for arrow heads. It can be chipped to a very sharp edge, so maybe an obsidian blade isn't such a stretch.

I have to say that the story caught my interest right off the bat. This kid Tucker is out in the yard and his father, who is a man of the church, is on the roof fixing a broken shingle. When Tucker hears a cry, he runs out thinking his dad fell off the roof, but dad is nowhere to be seen. What Tucker does see is what appears to be a shimmering disk hovering at the edge of the roof. Hmm!

His dad shows up later with a young girl in tow, whom he says he found in town. He denies all Tucker's suggestions that he fell off the roof, which is odd to Tucker, who is used to telling lies to get himself out of trouble, but who isn't used to his dad doing the same thing. Dad says that the girl, Lahlia is in need of adoption, but she seems rather strange and doesn't talk other than to say Tucker's name. His dad has also bizarrely lost his faith, now no longer believing there is a God. It turns out that Tucker's mom was also adopted, and it seems pretty obvious from the start that that both she and Lahlia, the new girl, come from a parallel dimension, which means that Tucker is half from this dimension and half from the other. Okay, I'm hooked!

So far so good, but the novel began to go downhill, and I had a few questions. Take the girl's name, for example. If she isn't talking, then how does anyone know her name, much less the spelling of it? I actually didn't know the spelling myself, which is one problem with audio books, but why is it Lahlia, instead of say, Laleah? Did she write it down for them?! The way the reader pronounces it makes it seem much more like the latter than the former to me. Obviously it's that way because the author chose it to be that way, but this is a writing issue worthy of some consideration for budding authors. To me, names are important in fiction.

Talking of writing issues, there was another curious one. When Tucker's parents disappear with an oddly uninformative note (obviously they've gone back to the other parallel world from which Tucker's mom hailed, but he doesn't know this and takes a tedious amount of time to figure out), Tucker learns that his uncle, who is known as Kosh, will take care of him in their absence. Shortly after they meet, I read this sentence: "He walked towards Tucker, stopped about eight feet away, and peered at him closely." I am trying to figure out how you peer at someone closely from eight feet away. I think I know what the writer was trying to convey, but to me he did it in a poor way. Just a thought from a writing perspective! Plus this 'initial' meeting makes little sense given what's coming later.

That "peering" reminded me of a character from the TV show, Heroes and the subsequent miniseries, which evidently failed to launch successfully. Character Matt Parkman can read minds, but the actor's portrayal of this made me laugh. When he was trying to catch someone's thoughts, he would frown and cock his head and push his head forwards, and it just looked ridiculous to me - as ridiculous as the head twist the 'wesen' characters do when changing faces in the TV show Grimm, which I think looks equally ridiculous, although I love that show. I call it the Sergeant Wu show because he's the most entertaining character in it, talking of facial expressions. But I digress! I imagined this Matt Parkman act when I read that sentence about Kosh, so it made me laugh too. This was probably not the effect the author was seeking!

These shimmering disks or lenses of air show up wherever Tucker goes, which seems to me to be too much unless he is somehow causing, triggering, or attracting them. That was a possibility, so I let that ride, but the first time Tucker travels through one, he ends up atop one of the twin towers in New York city right before the first jetliner hits. What are the odds of that? I have to say I have little time for uninventive time-travel stories which have their characters arrive at critical points in history (typically US history for US stories, and so on) or have them meet famous and influential characters. What are the odds of that? It seems to me to be a lazy way to write such a novels - picking an easy target rather than doing the work of writing a more realistic and more creative story with unknowns from history.

Worse than this though was how Tucker came to be there. How did the wormhole (or whatever it is), link the top of his uncle's barn to the top of the WTC? He was nowhere near NYC geographically, and nowhere near the elevation of the towers vertically, so how did this work? And why were the disks always up in the air - and conveniently next to a roof? Why were the spiritual beings known as Klaatu? Was that short for Klaatu barada nikto?! Maybe an explanation would be forthcoming. I had to keep on listening to find out, but I soon grew tired of unanswered questions and nonsensical rambling about the Klaatu and the wormholes. The story made less sense as it went on, rather than more sense, and I ditched it after a while as a DNF because I couldn't stand to listen to any more. I can't recommend this one. And I never did find out what the obsidian blade had to do with anything - doubtlessly because I dropped this one. Worse, though, is that this is a series, and I'm not a fan of series, especially not ones which start out so badly!


Monday, March 14, 2016

Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan


Rating: WARTY!

This is book one of the 'Sky Chasers' series (sky chasers? Seriously? Could you be any more pretentious?!), and it's one I will definitely not be following. It's not just because of the reading by Ilyana Kadushin and Matthew Brown, it's the story itself which was far too juvenile and trope for my taste. Admittedly it was not aimed at me, but I can't imagine my kids finding this entertaining either, and they're within its age range.

The first sickening problem is that there's a love triangle of the most clichéd kind: one girl, two guys, one of whom is an old, trusted friend, the other of whom is a bad boy. How utterly pathetic this is. Seriously. Any girl who ditches a trusted love for an unknown jerk without having an extremely good reason is a moron, and I have no interest in reading about her in even one volume, let alone the trope three volume deal for which I blame others as much as I blame money-grubbing Big Publishing™. We're explicitly told that Kieran is everything Waverly could ever want in a husband. Yet we're evidently lied to about that.

Worse than this, though, is that this is all that's on the girl's mind. It's like she cannot entertain a single thought without it being about her man. I have no interest in any female character who has no interest in anything but male characters. They're shallow and boring. The female in question is 15-year-old Waverly, who is traveling on a generation ship along with a sister ship to colonize a new planet. No explanation is given for the journey - not in the portion to which I listened, which was about 25%. What is wrong with Earth? Why is this solution considered better than, say, terraforming and colonizing Mars or Venus? Who knows. It just is.

I'd grant the author the smarts to see that this is the only kind of deep space journey that makes sense - sending two ships - but the only reason she has two ships featured in the story apparently, is to have one go rogue. On one of the ships, the 'generation' part of 'generation ship'; evidently fails - meaning that for some reason, the sister ship, The New Horizon, has been unable to conceive any children, and they are now demanding females from the Empyrean so they can breed new crew to continue the journey. There's no reason given as to why they feel this needs to be done immediately as opposed to the Empyrean, say, sending over a few young adults to help out. Instead it evidently leads to civil war. The story was pathetic and made no sense, and I couldn't stand to listen to any more of it, so I quit. Life is too short to waste it on bad novels!


Saturday, March 12, 2016

The Beauty Volume 1 by Jeremy Haun, Jason A Hurley


Rating: WORTHY!

This volume (an advance review copy for which I am grateful!), collects the first six individual issues and seems like it could have been made for me, someone who rails against the obsession humans have, particularly in this media-soaked age, with physical beauty and who cares what lies beneath - with the emphasis on lies. I wish I had thought of this idea!

Yet another sexual disease gets loose in the world, but in this case, people actively try to get infected, because what it does is confer beauty upon those infected - youthful good looks, taut, fresh healthy skin, lush hair. In short, everything TV, movies, and magazines look for in actors and models. Very soon, this disease is no longer considered a disease. It's called simply 'The Beauty' and it has spread to almost every adult on the planet as this story begins, in a world where there are very few people of color, curiously enough. That was my only problem with this story.

Detectives Vaughn and Foster, one of whom is infected, the other not, are called to an apparent incident of self-immolation on a subway train. The curious thing is that it looks like the passenger burned from the inside out. Soon more and more of these victims are found, and they were all infected with The Beauty. This disease, it seems, has a long-term consequence, and now if a cure is not found, the world is going to burn.

The story is by Jeremy Haun and Jason Hurley, and is tight and paced, moving things along at a very readable clip. The art is by Haun and is excellent, although be warned it is adult in nature, with nudity and graphic violence. I recommend this as an entertainingly worthy read.


Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Back To The Future: Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines by Bob Gale, John Barber, Erik Burnham


Rating: WORTHY!

This is a graphic novel, created by Bob Gale, John Barber, Erik Burnham. Gale co-wrote the Back to the Future movie (and the two sequels) with director Robert Zemeckis, and he also produced the movies. Barber is a webcomic writer and artist with whom I am not familiar. Erik Burnham is a writer who's been associated with Ghostbusters and TMNT comic book, including this one that I favorably reviewed back in February 2015, even though I am not a TMNT fan.

This collaboration worked well. The book is filled with issues one through five of the individual comics, offering a handful of short stories linked by a narration from Doc as he modifies the steam engine which he will convert into another time-travel machine. We get to see how Marty and Doc first met, how Doc became involved in the Manhattan Project, how Marty had to deal with yet another school bully in his own school when he was younger, how his parents came very close to breaking up after Marty had gone back to the future, and so on.

The dialog is just like the movie, and Doc Brown and Marty come off exactly like they did in the movie. The artwork is excellent and very colorful. The stories are entertaining, funny and well done, and the overall graphic novel is wonderful. I recommend this one.


Kris Longknife: Audacious by Mike Shepherd aka Mike Moscoe


Rating: WORTHY!

Another close-run thing, but hopefully this now will all change from here on out. Princess Lieutenant Kris Longknife continues on her usual trajectory, inexplicably and unexpectedly (believe it or not) getting shot at, fawning over the navy and the marines, and venerating certain old people as though each is some sort of a magical sensei, but it's entertaining and perversely addictive. I guess that's how most series suck people in.

In this episode, for the fourth time, she's sent to the middle of nowhere with no instructions and has an almost impossible conundrum to solve while running for her life. she's dispatched to planet Eden, which has strict gun control laws - purportedly - where she's promptly shot at, and almost blown up by a bomb which wasn't even meant for her. The news outlets are so controlled that they don't even report these things. It's like they never happened. It's 1984 meets the Soviet Union, with Kris Longknife emulating James Bond charging in there to inevitably and successfully sort them all out.

She was told this would be an easy job, in a quiet backwater, which would keep her out of trouble and out of the headlines. Given that this is the fourth time she's been dispatched to a backwater like this, you'd think by now she would not be so naïve. Indeed, you'd think that she would be angry as hell at this point, but inexplicably, she isn't! Not until the entire novel is over. This is more of the same and it was becoming rather tiresome even for me. There were enough differences, however, and I did check my brain at the door as I advise you to do, and this will make it a simple and easy summer read. Not that it's summer yet but it sure feels like it here. Hopefully with the changes Kris demands at the end of this one (she's not too quick on the uptake at times) things will improve in the next volume, which I've read before, but can scarcely remember a thing about. That should tell me something, huh?!


Kris Longknife: Resolute by Mike Shepherd aka Mike Moscoe


Rating: WORTHY!

This one just made it under the wire into worthy, but check your brain at the door - it's mindless entertainment. Yet again Kris is shipped off to the butt-end of nowhere where she's dumped into a complete mess, gets no support, is threatened and shot at and/or starts a space battle with interloping rivals, wins it on a shoestring and heads home. I don't know why this series is so addictive, because I find plot holes and problems galore with it, but I still keep reading it. Normally I would never do this, but I guess we all have to have a guilty pleasure hidden away somewhere, and I suppose this particular one, sad as it is, is mine.

Despite having proven herself a capable commander, Kris is still stuck as a lieutenant, yet even so, she's put in command of a space station orbiting an unaligned planet which would just as rather not have the station there as have it. The problem is that the station is shut down, and Kris has to reboot it. The totally odd thing is that she makes no effort whatsoever to report this status to base, and no effort to request personnel to run the station. She simply tries to make do with volunteers from the planet below. No idea why. I guess she's a really poor administrator.

This struck me as utterly absurd, but nowhere near as absurd as a space station which makes no sense. It costs a fortune to run, supply, and to maintain, yet here they are up-keeping it when it serves absolutely no practical purpose at all. There's literally nothing it does that cannot be done by shuttles or robots. In four hundred years, the entire human race seems to have forgotten about drones and robots despite having AIs with human-level intelligence and far faster processing speed. I think the Longknifes have far more to worry about than evil humans. They just don't know it yet! The previous commander got pissed off with the navy and abandoned the station without telling anyone and without waiting for Kris to arrive to hand it over to her. Yet he goes unpunished for this. No wonder Kris loves the Navy - you can get away with anything as she herself has proved on several occasions!

The planet is named Hicksville - not really, but that's how it comes across - and the mayor of course has the hots for Kris. She spreads her money around and makes all kinds of friends, so that when Hank Smythe-Peterwald, sometime beau and now arch-enema, arrives with six cruisers in tow, obviously intent upon taking over yet another planet for his father. Instead of calling immediately for help, Kris takes him on with brown paper and glue, and lollipop sticks, and in a repeat performance of her destruction of the Peterwald Stealth navy attack on War(d)haven, her home planet, kicks Hanks ass predictably.

Hank was becoming boring and the romance with Kris was going nowhere, so the author disposes of him by having him become insane and having some anonymous person sabotage his escape pod, where he suffocates. This is so he can introduced the non-existent Vicki Peterwald (yes, she's female but she's still a Peterwald, not a Petrawald, a Pipkinwald). At least she was non-existent until he realized Hank was going nowhere, so she materializes out of nowhere in the next volume and changes the dynamic. And also provides for the start a side series featuring her rampant exploits.

All in all a blustery light-weight beach read, but not bad if, as I advise, you check your brain at the door. On that basis and that basis alone, I recommend it as a worthy sci-fi read.


Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline


Rating: WARTY!

This audiobook, read decently by Will Wheaton, has a really cool title, but it also has far too many pop-culture geek references which not only seriously pigeon-hole (if not date) it, and it thereby misses the chance to be as good as it could have been. The author seems to take a conceited pride in how many references to obscure antique video games or movies or magazines he can make, but these are references which no one really cares about any more unless they're unhealthily addicted to the past.

I started out liking the story, which is set in 2044, and is about geek teenager Wade Watts aka Parsival, an addict of OASIS, who embarks upon a virtual quest, but I soon grew tired of these endless references which contributed nothing to moving the story. I think this serves potential writers well as a warning though: just because you're an addict of a given topic doesn't mean your readers will welcome being hammered with endless harping on it when there's (we hope!) a story to tell.

This book would also have been a lot tighter and moved better had the author not bloated it with ridiculous juvenile arguments between people about Ewoks and Ladyhawke and on and on. Seriously. A reference here and there is fine, but let's not write paragraphs of exposition about these things. It bogs down the story, turns a large number of potential readers off, and delivers you nothing but shallow street cred from a handful of fellow geeks.

The story itself promised to be good. A multi-billionaire game developer dies and leaves a video will offering his riches and a controlling interest in his game business to whoever can discover the 'Easter egg' he had left in his highly popular MMPORG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). He offers one clue in the video, and the rest you have to find in the game.

Naturally this sparks huge interest, but little progress as the months and then years go by. Instead of having the opportunity to go into the game and follow clues, the first portion of the novel is taken up with pointless and meandering narration in first person. 1PoV isn't my favorite voice by any means. Here it's not too bad to begin with, but over time it starts to grate, as nothing happens and the disingenuous narrator, while claiming on the one hand to be an Über-Geek devotee of the game developer, seems to spend all his time in juvenile chat rooms dissing other people and indulging in bromance instead of playing the game in search of the Easter egg.

We learn of his passion for a female blogger, Artemis, who is also engaged in the hunt and has a three somewhere in her maim which is completely lost on the audio listener, and we read about her purportedly witty and entertaining blogs, but we never get to read one. In short, it's all tell and no show, the no-show being entertainment value, and it gets tiresome in short order. I can't recommend it.


The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey


Rating: WARTY!

I came to this by way of the movie, which despite some large plot holes, I really enjoyed for a dumb action movie. The novel I liked less and less the more I listened to the audio book version which has not one, but two narrators one for the female 1PoV and one for the male. First person is bad enough when only one person is doing it, but you multiply the mistake when you admit to its weakness and have to add a second, third, fourth, whatever, PoV. I do not know why authors are so addicted to it. I can only ascribe it to chronic laziness and lack of imagination.

Here's the major flaw: 16-year-old Cassiopeia Marie Sullivan is shot in the thigh by a sniper. She's bleeding out and lying under a car trying to stanch (not staunch, but stanch, authors please note) the blood flow with a tourniquet (if you apply a tourniquet BTW, please realize that you are acknowledging the loss of the limb on the distal side of it). Despite her panic, her loss of blood, and her fear, this youngster calmly observes and analyzes every single thing in detail. No, I'm sorry, but you just kissed off realism, credibility, and my faith in your ability as a writer. We're told to write what we know, but that's bullshit. No one really does, nor should they - or us.

Personally I don't require that an author be shot in the thigh in order to write about it, but I do require that they use some thought and imagination. There was none in evidence here. This was YA at its dumbest, and this is where I started thinking I did not want to listen to any more of this. What convinced me was reading some reviews from people I follow, and their take on what was coming next is what persuaded me to say-onara...! Apparently this is really just a rip-off of Stephenie Meyer's The Host, and I have zero desire to read anything Stephenie Meyer ever writes, even if it's written by Rick Yancey instead.

The main character is known as Cassie. How many times has this name been over-used for a main female character? I'm starting to feel as nauseated by it as I am by 'Jack'. I refuse to read any novel which has a main character named Jack precisely because it is so prevalent and as to be in need of the urgent attention of epidemiologists. The story is the usual 'aliens are inevitably evil and despite there being literally billions of planets in this galaxy alone, Earth is the only one worth stealing'. These aliens are as retarded as you can get. They have been surveilling us for six thousand years, yet only now, when in all of those six thousand years we are best able to defend ourselves, do they decide to start a war with us?

For reasons unknown, instead of starting with the third wave and severely depleting our numbers with a deadly plague, they start out with an EMP even though such a thing is not guaranteed to completely disrupt society and even though critical military targets and matériel are EMP defended - which they ought to have known after 6K yrs of watching! I guess they're not so smart after all, but it's easy to see why a 16 year old American, raised on a diet of dumb-ass YA romance novels, would not have the intellectual wherewithal to understand this much.

So the EMP purportedly destroys all things electrical and electronic. The second wave is purportedly perpetrated by dropping metal rods, twice as heavy as the Empire State building on cities. Such a weight has fallen on Earth many times. Not in modern times, but the Barringer crater - the mile-wide one in Arizona, USA - was made by such a weight hitting the Earth. A metal rod would burn-up significantly, and break up in the atmosphere - something Yancey apparently forgets, and a metal rod dropped form the ionosphere carries nowhere near the kinetic energy as a meteor coming in from deep space.

A single such rod would, though, still make a significant impact, and destroy a city, but it would not wipe out the planet. A host of them hitting every major city begs two questions: where are they getting all this metal, and why are they taking an action which would effectively destroy not just humanity, but the entire planet if enough of these were dropped, making it entirely uninhabitable? And why go to the trouble of manufacturing neat two-thousand foot long metal bars rather than simply attach mass drivers to asteroids and direct those at Earth? None of this makes sense. But they are alien, Maybe they're imbeciles? Maybe they're merely teenage hooligan aliens out having a joyride? Whatever they are, they're in no way smart.

This is Yancey's biggest failure. What is the end-game here? Do they simply want to destroy a planet? Why? Do they merely want to wipe out humans? Why? And if so, why not do it with disease, leaving the infrastructure intact and the planet still habitable? If they hate us so badly, why let us develop for six thousand years before starting in on us? None of this makes any sense whatsoever. This is the start of a series - one more YA series I will not be following, but if they're such advanced engineers and technologists, why not bio-engineer Venus or Mars, both of which would be more habitable than Earth after they're done spreading disease and dropping steel dowels on us!

After the Pointless EMP and the tsunamis induced by the dread 'turds of rebar', we get the disease, which doesn't even get a scientific name. It's the bird poop disease! LOL! Yes, this is what the author wants us to believe: Ebola, engineered to be airborne, and delivered via bird poop, ravages the entire population, killing 97% of us. No, even Ebola isn't that efficient, especially not delivered in bird poop. Why not simply aerosolize it and spray the planet from orbit? None of this makes any sense. Either that or the aliens are, once again, morons.

Next, the aliens inhabit humans! If they can do this, why did they not simply do it from the beginning before they rendered the planet uninhabitable by disrupting nature, and causing a firestorm and dust cloud which would have brought on a "nuclear" winter and killed off pretty much everything that lives? So we have:

  1. EMPeeing
  2. Rebar none
  3. turds of birds
  4. alientrusion (aka silence is the new human)
What was that fifth wave again?

Watch the movie instead. It's still dumb in places, but it's a lot tighter and better written. You can tell it's a decent movie because critics almost universally panned it. That's how I know it's worth a look - movie critics are elitist morons! Ringer/Marika is the best character in the movie. The book is a waste of trees. Maybe it was written by evil aliens....


Monday, February 15, 2016

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch


Rating: WARTY!

Note to authors - Dark Matter is a title which is way-the-hell over-used. You might want to find something new and original for your own novel rather than jump on this over-laden band wagon.

I became interested in reading something by Blake Crouch after watching the TV show, Wayward Pines. When I saw this one pop up on Net Galley I jumped at the chance of an advance review copy because it gave me just that opportunity. Not that this is connected with Wayward Pines, but it was a golden chance to read something by this author. The problem was that this novel started out at such an achingly slow pace that I simply could not get into it. I became bored waiting for something interesting and new to happen. This story needed to get up and running fast, but it stumbled and dragged, weighed down by too much exposition.

A guy leaves his wife and son one evening to stop briefly at a bar where a friend of his is celebrating, and despite the fact that the guy takes a different route home from his usual one, he is nevertheless stalked and kidnapped by a man with a gun. When he wakes up later, several months of his life are missing. Sounds interesting, right? It wasn't. Maybe it had the opportunity to be interesting, but it moved at such a glacial pace that I ceased caring what had happened to this guy and gave up on finding out. Every time I thought something was going to break loose, out came more exposition, and meandering, and self-examination, and on and on. Really, I cannot honestly recommend this novel.


Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Kris Longknife: Defiant by Mike Shepherd aka Mike Moscoe


Rating: WORTHY!

It's at this point - volume three - where you fully realize how formulaic this series is, and you have to decide decide whether to keep going. I obviously kept going, but please be warned that there are several stock elements in this series which, if you don't like them, or worse, start to hate them, will drive you nuts, and they're all overdone here, having only been half-baked in volume one.

The first is Kris's non-existent relationship with Jack, her bodyguard. He continues to snipe at Kris's disregard for safety and she continues to ignore him. This goes on in every volume. It's boring. Largely absent and not really missed in this volume is Abby, Kris's ridiculously home-spun and sassy 'body maid' who showed up in volume two. There's nothing for her to do besides be a repository for weapons and armor, and she's not needed at all in this volume which - be warned - is almost entirely concerned with the overly long preparation for - and then the speedy execution of - a one-sided space battle. In that regard, it's different from most of the other volumes in the series.

Penny and Tom get married, and then it's all up to space to defend Wardhaven against six anonymous battleships which have entered Wardhaven space, are headed directly for the planet, and are refusing to identify themselves. Despite them being identified early on as representatives of the Peterwald business enemies of the Longknifes, the Longknifes - supposedly the essence of bravado - are too chickenshit to call out Peterwald on it, and worse than this, they fail to take any precautions, thereby putting Kris into deep jeopardy again in the succeeding volume. The Longknifes are morons, let's face it!

One final problem: any modern planet with the apparently endless resources available to the Longknifes, would have an array of space drones which would take out any line-of-battle ship on short order. That's why we no longer have battleships in the real navy. The last one was built over seventy years ago. Evidently authors like Mike Shepherd and David Weber simply don't get it. Neither do film makers like George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry!

So after a condescending sojourn on a planet modeled after Hawaii (seriously? 200-some nations on Earth, six hundred planets in space in this novel, and yet every single one of them is influenced and informed solely by by the US culture?), Kris returns to Wardhaven just in time to be the only one who can save the day! As per usual. She takes command - not as a naval officer, but as a princess! - and cobbles together an assortment of space yachts and LACs, and repels the battleships miraculously and pretty much effortlessly. Yet despite this tour de farce no one ever learns from it, ditches the navy, and starts building thousands of cheap, human-free drones for defense. Go figure!

That said, this was an entertaining romp if you check you brain at the cover and don't put it back on until the last page is done. On that basis and that one alone, I recommend this as part of a complete series that's light, fun, mostly fast-moving, and a worthy read. Think of it as a TV series like Charlie's Angels rather than a series of novels, and you'll be able to better judge whether you can stand to read it or not.


Friday, February 5, 2016

VALIS by Philip K Dick


Rating: WARTY!

I guess I'm done reading Philip Dick novels at this point. I've enjoyed movies and TV shows based on his works, but I can't seem to find much in his novels that I like, except for a graphic version of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Even when I've liked the movie or TV show, I tend to find the novel uninteresting. VALIS (an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System) was volume one in a planned trilogy which was never completed due to the author not being smart enough to go to the ER when his doctor advised him to do so.

I could not stand this novel. It began promisingly enough, but then became bogged down under Dick's juvenile rants about religion and philosophy and there was no story being told. I quit about twenty percent in, and I cannot recommend this dreary and pretentious book of boredom based on the portion I endured. Tom Weiner's droll voice didn't help with the narration, either.