REVIEW: Three Great Lies

Title: Three Great Lies
Author: Vanessa MacLellan
Genre: archaeological fiction
Price: $5.99 (ebook) $16 (trade paperback)
Publisher: Hadley Rille Books
ISBN 978-0989263146
Point of Sale: Amazon 
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

In the tradition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court comes the debut novel of author Vanessa MacLellan, Three Great Lies.  At the start of the story, American tourist Jeannette Walker, traveling in Egypt, decides to go off the beaten path to see a newly-discovered and thus unspoiled ancient tomb.  Thanks to unknown powers, Jeannette is transported to a time when the tomb was fairly new, that of Old Kingdom Egypt.  Fortunately, the same powers that transport Jeannette allow her to understand and speak the local language.

But that’s about the only good thing going for Jeannette.  The tomb’s occupant, a mummy, wants her to find his ba or soul.  There’s a cat-headed girl, freshly booted out of her litter, sent to “help” Jeannette, and Jeannette’s managed to come afoul of the Slave Master of Thebes.  She scoots out of town and heads upriver (which in Egypt is south) and tries to get her bearings.

MacLellan spent a lot of time researching ancient Egypt, and it shows.  The everyday lives and wardrobe (or lack of same) of the locals is painted in great detail.  We discover that beer was very important to Egyptians, and at the time they made beer by fermenting bread in water, which means you needed a straw to drink your beer!

In Mark Twain’s book, the title character used his knowledge of science to get out of trouble.  Here, Jeannette’s modern knowledge is of little help.  What is of help is her persistence and willingness to adapt to local customs.  Jeannette’s curiosity helps, as it allows her to solve a local mystery and get right with the Slave Master, who is what passes for law in Thebes.

I found Three Great Lies a fascinating book, and well worth the reading.

REVIEW: Tin Star

Title: Tin Star
Author: Cecil Castellucci
Publisher: Square Fish
Genre: Science Fiction / Young Adult
Price: $9.99 (paperback) $7.09 (ebook)
Point of Purchase: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

I think I found out about Cecil Castellucci's novel Tin Star from John Scalzi's The Big Idea section of his blog.  I find that part of his blog dangerous for my wallet - I keep buying books from it!

In any event, what caused me to buy the book was the premise.  Humanity has made contact with other alien species, but we are very much a Minor Species in the grand scheme of things.  Since, when the story starts, the galaxy is more-or-less at peace, that's not the worst place for humanity to land.  Our heroine and narrator, 14-year-old Tula, is traveling on a human ship to found a new colony when she gets abandoned on an alien space station.  As the only human and member of a Minor Species, she's very much on her own.

As it turns out, the galaxy is changing, in unpleasant ways, and Tula's somewhat precarious position on the station will have to change as well.  Tin Star, although quite readable for adults, is aimed at age 12-17, and so has a discussion section after the book.  In it, Castellucci calls the book "Casablanca in Space" after the 1942 film.  I saw the parallels as I was reading it, but since I enjoyed the movie I went along.

Our lead character, Tula, progresses very believably from scared 14-year-old to confident semi-adult, which was quite enjoyable.  As a semi-adult, Tula is forced to make some difficult decisions, and the final part of the book goes from just Tula's problems to issues that cover all of humanity.  In short, I found Tin Star very enjoyable indeed.

REVIEW: Justice Calling: The 20-Sided Sorceress Book 1

Title: Justice Calling: The 20-Sided Sorceress Book 1
Author: Annie Bellet
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Price: $0.99 (ebook) / $8.99 (paperback)
Publisher: Doomed Muse Press
ISBN:  978-1500629724
Point of Sale: various via author’s website
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

I first heard of Annie Bellet via this year’s Hugo brouhaha.  Ms. Bellet had a short story nominated, but, in her words, tired of being “both a conscripted player and also a ball” she withdrew from consideration.  Out of frankly appreciation, I bought Book 1 of her 20-sides Sorceress series.  It’s a good book.

Jade Crow, narrator, heroine and sorceress of the title, is enjoying a quiet life in (fictional) Wylde, Idaho, gateway to “The Frank” (Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness).  Jade, who’s of Indian descent, runs a game shop there, serving the local population of fae and college kids who populate the town.  She’s also hiding out from her ex-lover, a man who personally saw Julius Ceasar get stabbed, and who wants to kill her and eat her heart.  (That’s how sorcerers get more magic.)

Then a hunky blonde man walks in and says Jade is a murderer.  Oh, and he’s a Justice – the fae’s police, judge and executioner all in one.  Thus ends Chapter 1, and starts a very entertaining if alas too-brief romp in Bellet’s entertaining world.  Jade finds herself forced to make a decision – stay and help or run – and do so quickly.

Justice Calling is really a novella – only 121 pages – but terribly entertaining.  Jade Crow is very modern, and speaks fluent Geek, as do her characters.  I found Jade’s predicament believable, as were both her and the other characters responses to same.  Jade has some very useful magical powers, but she’s not invincible, and neither is anybody else.  This was really an entertaining romp, and at least in the paper edition, there are two chapters from Book 2 of the series – which I ordered immediately.

Wednesday Review: A Sword Into Darkness

Title: A Sword Into Darkness
Author: Thomas A. Mays
Genre: Military SF
Price: $3.99 (ebook) $14.39 (paperback)
Publisher: Amazon
ISBN 978-1939398086
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

There’s an ongoing debate in Science Fiction at the moment.  One very loud faction says people are abandoning SF because all our stories are “social justice novels” and we’re handing out awards not for good work but to hit a racial / ethnic / gender checklist.  Since I vote on one of the awards (the Hugos) I found that argument rather unconvincing. 

One of the gentlemen on the other side, I discovered, had penned an SF novel entitled A Sword Into Darkness. The ebook price was right, so I bought it and read it.

Overall, it's a pretty good book - I'd give it three stars. The action is engaging, the science is solid, and his invading aliens have unique motivations and modes of travel. (It's important to figure out why they are moving so slowly.)

But it's not a 4 or 5 star book.

Sword is in many ways old-fashioned. Chapter 1 is a temper tantrum thrown when a wealthy alt-space guy can't convince NASA with five (5) (five!!!!!) months of telescopic data that the aliens are coming. After five months, with dozens of telescopes and hundreds of astronomers looking, everybody would know the aliens are coming. Yet NASA somehow keeps the lid on the invasion for decades.

So, in Chapter 3, wealthy industrialist decides to invest his billions in developing and building the type of tech we'd need to defeat the invasion. This goes surprisingly smoothly, despite government interference (of course the government interferes - ignore the fact that they're paying SpaceX and others) and has few technical glitches. (It's only rocket science, after all.) 

Oh, and there's a hijacking of a ship that I saw coming for a while. And the US Secretary of Defense has to be fired in order to put a stop to his obstructionism. (It's only an alien invasion.)  Meanwhile, the lead female character, a quirky and tattooed scientist who invents the Magic Drive that runs the ship is romancing the square-jawed ex-USN captain of Humanity's Only Hope.

Now, despite all of this I did find the story entertaining. Also, the aliens were unique, so it's not all recycled material. But there's a lot of recycling going on. It was enjoyable, but cotton candy for the mind.  It will not be on my Hugo list.

REVIEW: Karen Memory

Title: Karen Memory
Author: Elizabeth Bear
Genre: fantasy, steampunk
Price: $12.99 (ebook) $19.43 (hardcover)
Publisher: Tor
ISBN 978-0765375247
Point of Sale: Amazon 
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

I bought Karen Memory based on having heard the first chapter read aloud by the author at Windycon.  It was a hell of a first chapter, and to my delight, the rest of the book delivered on the promise.

Karen, the narrator and title character, works as a prostitute in a high-class bordello in “Rapid City” which is a mashup of Portland Oregon and Seattle Washington of the 1880s.  We’re in steampunk, so Mad Scientists are running around and (at least in theory) getting licensed, and dirigibles fill the sky.  Oh, and one Peter Bantle, pimp and all-around sleezeball, has a mind-control device.  (He uses it on Karen in Chapter 1, so that’s not much of a spoiler.)

Now, steampunk is an interesting genre, and Elizabeth Bear, the author, has decided to graft non-existent and futuristic technology on real people of the era.  I do mean real – Bass Reeves, the first black US Marshal, is a supporting character.  Bear also has realistic people, including blacks “passing” as white, gays and cross-dressers – all of the people you’d expect to find in a real bordello of the time.  Importantly, bordellos in the 19th Century were like gas stations today: ubiquitous and catering to every socio-economic group in society.

At any rate, our entertaining story is of Karen Memory, resident of Madame Damnable’s bordello (Madam is based on a real person who died as one of the wealthiest people in Seattle) who is thrust into the role of helping Priya, an Indian girl (from India, not Native American) sold into sex slavery.  Oh, and Karen would really like to get into Priya’s knickers.  Bantle is the main obstacle to progress, although we find during the story that the stakes aren’t just one girl, but rather the whole Alaska territory.

Steampunk is by definition interjecting non-real technology into a “real” setting.  That’s done here, although surprisingly sparingly.  Where non-real tech is used, it’s done in a restrained manner, which allows real characters to shine through.  In short, Karen Memory is highly recommended.

REVIEW: The Three Body Problem

Title: The Three Body Problem
Author: Cixin Liu translated by Ken Liu
Genre: SF
Price: $25.99 (hardcover, list)
Publisher: Tor
ISBN 978-0-7653-7707-7
Point of Sale: Amazon 
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

The Three Body Problem is a best-selling novel in China, and now that Ken Liu has translated it into English, I fully expect it to hit the best-seller lists here.  It’s really good.

Three Body opens during “the madness years” of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.  Ye Wenjie’s father is being beaten by his former students, now Red Guard members, because he won’t renounce Einstein.  Things go from bad to worse, and Wenjie (Chinese names are written family name first) ends up in a logging camp.  Then she gets commandeered as a low-level worker in a Chinese SETI program (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence).  Alas for humanity, the search succeeds, but the information never gets up the political chain and is lost when the radio station is shut down.

Part Two of the book opens up in the present, a few years from today.  Wang Miao is visited by the police.  He is taken to a “War Command Center” where they appear to be investigating the suicides of several notable physicists.  Over the weekend, Miao indulges his hobby of photography, using an old and completely mechanical camera, yet every picture he takes has a weird, and impossible, countdown on it.  This leads him to a computer game, Three Body, which was being played by some of the suicides.  Then the universe “blinks” at Wang and things get really interesting.

There’s a lot of crossover between readers of mystery and science fiction, largely because both types of fiction are puzzles.  Three Body is unique in that it is a science fiction mystery, with possibly the survival of the human race at stake.  Ken Liu, a great writer in English, does a wonderful job translating the book.

The world of Three Body is fascinating.  It’s our world, except as seen through Chinese eyes, and an alien world presented for us in allegory to allow us to understand their reality.  Cixin Liu has thought long and deeply about aliens and technology, as well as taken a harsh look at his own country’s recent history.  The book appears to end on a down note, but thanks to a secondary character we get hope for the future.

I for one also hope to see the sequels!

REVIEW: Death Stalks Door County

Title: Death Stalks Door County
Author: Patricia Skalka
Genre: mystery
Price: $26.95 (hardcover) $10.49 (ebook)
Publisher: Terrace Books (University of Wisconsin Press)
ISBN 978-0299299408
Point of Sale: various, listed at author's site
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

My local library held a local authors’ fair in January.  I attended the event, sold a couple of books, and of course bought a couple.  One of the books I bought was Death Stalks Door County by Patricia Skalka.  It’s a contemporary mystery, but I firmly believe one should vary what genres one reads.  It helps that Death Stalks is a very good book.

Death Stalks is Patricia Skalka’s first novel, although the author enjoyed a long career in non-fiction writing.  It’s set in Door County, Wisconsin, which is a peninsula that juts into Lake Michigan.  For reasons cultural and geographic, when Chicagoans are looking for a weekend getaway, they go north to Wisconsin, and Door County is a heavy recipient of that traffic.

The protagonist is Dave Cubiak, a newly-minted state park ranger and former Chicago cop.  His wife and child were killed by a drunk driver, and Dave crawled into a bottle.  In an attempt to help him get out of said bottle, his buddies set him up with the job in Door County.  It wasn’t helping.  Then, the brother of the man who killed Dave’s wife takes a fatal fall (or was he pushed?) from the top of the park’s observation tower, and Dave discovers the body.  Thus ends Chapter 1.

This is the first of a number of suspicious deaths, all of them occurring just as the county is getting ready for their annual “start of the tourist season” festival.  The big wheels in the county, thinking tourists are coming to escape big-city violence not get dead in it, want these murders to stop and things kept quiet.  It turns out that there are other plans afoot, some of which are even more threatening to Door County.

It’s hard to write a review of a mystery without giving it away.  All I can say is, everybody is a suspect, and Skalka plays fair with her clues.  When the final reveal happens, it’s fair and I could mentally go back through the book and lay out the clues I had missed.  There’s an especially subtle touch towards the end with an Indian feather head-dress worn during a parade.

All I can say is, read this book.

REVIEW: Time Heist

Title:   Time Heist (Firstborn Saga) Volume 1
Author: Anthony Vicino
Genre: SF
Price: $3.99 (ebook) $10.73 (paperback)
Publisher: One Lazy Robot
ISBN:  978-0692336991
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

Anthony Vicino, the author of Time Heist, contacted me directly via email with what proved to be a compelling pitch to review his first novel.  I agreed, and was pleased with my decision.

Time Heist starts out as a futuristic hard-boiled mystery.  Our first-person narrator, Tom Mandel, is an ex-cop with less than a day to live.  He knows this because everybody is implanted with a Life Tracker.  This device counts down your allocated 70 years of life, and when it hits zero, it kills you.  Although Mandel has been abusing drugs for the past nine years since his wife was killed, nanotech means he’s fairly healthy.

 Also, Mandel is an “Intuit” – somebody who can intuitively navigate the all-pervasive cyberspace.  As I mentioned, the story starts out as a hard-boiled noir, with tired and world-weary detective doing one last job for the good guys.  Perhaps fortunately, Mandel’s last assignment, to find Malcom Wolfe, escaped prisoner and killer of Mandel’s wife, proves to be much more high-stakes, involving no less than the fate of all humanity.

Alas, I found the story curiously slow to get started.  Don’t get me wrong – there’s a lot of action from Chapter 2 thru to the end.  But for the longest time we don’t find out what’s at stake.  Malcom Wolfe, for example, killed nine million people!  He did this by hacking their Life Trackers, taking them instantly to ten minutes left.  Yet we don’t find this out until a good halfway into the book.  The world in general is so radically different as to leave me in doubt as to whether or not it was Earth, but again, that detail isn't provided until quite late in the book. 

The other thing I found problematic was the action.  I felt like I was in a first-person-shooter video game.  Mandel and other named characters shot their way through guards and police like they were shooting zombies.  The named characters did get hurt and complained of pain, but thanks to nanotech they were literally up and running in no time.  The entire novel takes place in just over 24 hours.

Having said all of that, I found Time Heist an interesting and enjoyable read.  Vicino’s writing is gripping, and his characters are sympathetic.  Although I would have handled some things differently, Time Heist was a good read.

Review: The Immortality Game

Title: The Immortality Game 

Author: Ted Cross

Genre: SF

Price: $3.99 (ebook) / $12.59 (paperback)

Publisher: Breakwater Harbor Books  

ISBN:  978-0990987710

Point of Sale: Amazon  

Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

I was attracted to this book by two things.  First, Ted Cross, the author, has spent serious time in Moscow, where the story is set, and currently resides in lovely Baku, Azerbaijan.  Second, just look at that cover!  It’s from Stephan Martiniere, one of the premier SF illustrators.

Fortunately, The Immortality Game lives up to its cover.  Set primarily in Moscow in the summer of 2138, the book is the story of Zoya and Marcus.  Zoya is a Russian teenager, who by accident comes in possession of some military cyber-ware.  Marcus is a twenty-something American and former addict of “The Mesh,” an all-consuming virtual reality place. 

Marcus is also being led around by his “dad” – or rather an AI construct that has his dad’s memories and personalities.  Marcus’s dad thinks that Zoya’s cyber-ware, or rather the folks that made it, can be used to download him into a real body.  Alas, said Russian cyber-tech is valuable, and the Russian mob wants it.  Also, the world of 2138 is a radically different place, with what’s left of America being ruled by the Mormon Church. 

This basic setup leads to an action-packed series of events, as the two young people struggle to survive.  Also struggling are the Russian scientists who invented the tech, and pretty much all of the good guys are way out of their depth.  While all of this action is going on, the author doesn’t skimp on character-building.  Everybody, from our leads to the Russian hit men and their bosses, has at least some character arc and development. 

I have to say I also liked the ending.  The author has a chance to go with the conventional “happy ever after” ending but he doesn’t, subverting it while not being a complete downer.  Zoya, Marcus and his “dad” all have more substantial development, which leads them to some interesting places.  I also liked Mr. Cross’s eye for detail.  For example, his Moscow is full of poplar seeds floating like snowflakes in the summer breeze.   

If you can’t tell, I really enjoyed reading The Immortality Game.

Special Review: Rise of the Spider Goddess

Title: Rise of the Spider Goddess
Author: Jim C. Hines
Genre: Fantasy, humor
Price: $3.99 (ebook) $9.89 (paperback)
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 978-1502451903
Point of Sale: Amazon  
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib


Friend-of-the-blog and generally good egg Jim Hines is a writing machine, having released 10 quite enjoyable novels over the past eight years.  But he wasn’t born such a writing machine – like most “overnight successes” he spent a long time toiling in the trenches.  Jim’s also a giving fellow, and in the spirit of the season he’s decided to give us a special work.

Jim’s latest novel, out today, is called The Prosekiller Chronicles: Rise of the Spider Goddess.  Although it’s new to readers, it’s old hat to Jim.  Spider Goddess is Jim’s very first novel-length piece of prose, written back when Jim had hair in 1995.

I called Spider Goddess a novel-length piece of prose because it’s truly bad.  Our hero, Nakor the Purple, likes to hang around watching over-described sunsets while getting into truly unbelievable combat with unknown (and not very competent) foes.  The book also stars an angst-y vampire, an owl (or maybe a falcon, depending on the chapter) and the most cardboard world ever bound between cardboard covers.

There are two things that save Spider Goddess.  First, it’s an object reminder that even good writers started somewhere. More importantly, Jim has a sense of humor, so he’s liberally sprinkled snarky and humorous comments in the book, making fun of his younger self’s (lack of) writing skills.  Think Mystery Science Theater 3000 meets Lord of the Rings.

So, if you’re looking for a humorous diversion, go sneak a copy of Volume 1 (and done) of The Prosekiller Chronicles: Rise of the Spider Goddess.

REVIEW: No Earthly Shore

Title: No Earthly Shore

Author: Jilly Paddock

Genre: SF

Price: $1.99 (ebook)

Publisher: Cathaven Press

ISBN B006XCVC1A

Point of Sale: Amazon

Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

I frankly don’t remember how I found out about Jilly Paddock’s novella No Earthly Shore, but I did, and I’m glad of it.  Set in a far-future universe, this gentle story is that of Dr. Zuzana Aaron-Jones, Zuzu to her friends, and Boadicea Nantucket, Boodie to her friends. 

Boodie is a young teenager on the human-colonized world Yemitzov Five, and she claims that the squilts – masses of gray tissue that float in the local oceans – saved her from drowning.  More importantly, she claims the squilts are sentient, which could force the human colonists to pack up and leave.  Dr. Zuzu and a team arrive from Earth, and quickly start to investigate.  While they are investigating, romance blooms. 

I found this novella near perfect.  There’s conflict, both between the Earth team members and internally (Zuzu doesn’t want the humans to have to pack up and leave) but no great violence.  The characters are well-rounded, and although the colony bears a striking resemblance to an English seacoast village, the setting worked.  I found myself at the end of the work wishing for more.

Review: A Crack In Everything

Title: A Crack in Everything
Author: Ruth Frances Long
Genre: fantasy
Price: $8.97 (ebook) / $8.55 (paperback)
Publisher: The O’Brien Press
ISBN:  978-1-84717-635-6
Point of Sale: publisher’s website Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

I recently attended Shamrokon, the 2014 European SF convention, held in Dublin Ireland.  While I was there, Ruth Frances Long held a launch party for her novel A Crack in Everything.  Unfortunately for her, most people attending were just interested in the cupcakes, but she did sell me a copy of her book.  I’ve finished that book and greatly enjoyed it.

Isabel “Izzy” Gregory is a typical Irish teenager, living in Dundrum, a southern suburb of Dublin.  She does have a minor problem with electronics – it’s not infrequent that she touches an electronic device and it explodes – but other than that she’s solidly normal.  Or so she thinks.  While out and about in downtown Dublin, Izzy comes across an angel, a fae, and discovers that there’s a whole other city – Dubh Linn –interweaved into the city that humans see.  Izzy also discovers that some of the stories she was told as a child are real, and other concepts, such as angels being good, are not entirely accurate.

The story then becomes one of Izzy trying to figure out how to survive and use powers she didn’t know she had, while the fae Jinx, a werewolf-like being, has to figure out how to deal with Izzy and the various backroom deals and double-crosses of his world.  I have to admit I had a problem keeping all the various non-humans straight, which I think was in part intentional.

Dublin, the real city, plays a key supporting role in the story, and at several points I found myself digging out my tourist map of the city to see where the events were happening.  Having seen the city and then reading the book greatly improved my overall experience, but I think it would be enjoyable even if you never get to Dublin.

I highly recommend A Crack in Everything.  O’Brien is an Irish publisher, so my best recommendation for US purchasers is to buy direct from the publisher.  It appears to be the only way to get the ebook, while Amazon can get you the paperback.

REVIEW: Memento Mori

Title: Memento Mori
Author: Katy O’Dowd
Genre: steampunk
Price: $3.99 (ebook) / $11.69 (paperback)
Publisher: Untold Press
ISBN:  978-0692022351
Point of Sale: Amazon  
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

The back-cover blurb for this book talks about taking a walk with the Victorian English Mafia.  I have to say, I wish I had read that first, because I found myself wasting sympathy on the death of an English crime lord in Chapter 1.  I eventually caught on, although in fairness to the author, I was supposed to find Mr. Lamb sympathetic.

Memento Mori is a difficult book to categorize.  I’ve ended up listing it as “steampunk” but even that’s a bit unfair.  There’s nothing in the book that’s not solidly within Victorian technologies.  However, its sensibilities are distinctly non-Victorian, featuring a female Irish assassin, O’Murtagh, working on behalf of a young woman, Carmine Fox.  O’Murtagh is given a list of enemies to kill by Fox, and she goes to work, rather gleefully (and fairly realistically) killing a collection of Victorian stuffed shirts – all affiliated with the Lamb family.  The Lambs prove ill-named, being more wolves than sheep.

Various bloody complications ensue, including a convenient discovery by O’Murtagh, and an extended visit to London’s famous Bedlam mental hospital.  (Your Reviewer recently visited there, as it is now the site of the Imperial War Museum.  Any irony on putting a war museum on the grounds of a lunatic asylum is purely intentional.)

I found the story and writing well-done, and the characters well-realized.  I did have a bit of an issue – too much of the plot hinges on the idea that when Victorians engaged in mourning, they did not manage their businesses for a year and a day.  Although that may be true, I found that hard to swallow, especially for a crime family that may not be fully “respectable.”

At any rate, I quite enjoyed Memento Mori.

REVIEW: Raygun Chronicles

Title: Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera for a New Age
Editor: Bryan Thomas Schmidt
Genre: science fiction / space opera
Price: $29.95 (hardcover) $17.95 (trade paperback) $6.99 (ebook)
Publisher: Every Day Publications
ISBN: 978-0-9881257-5-9
Point of Sale: various retailers via publisher's website
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib


I have to admit, when I was handed a copy of Raygun Chronicles, I was a bit daunted.  At 360 pages, the book would appear to make a fine doorstop.  Usually in such a broad anthology, I only end up finishing half the stories.  Not so with Raygun – I finished and enjoyed every single one!

Raygun Chronicles is the brainchild of Bryan Thomas Schmidt, and is an outgrowth of his now-defunct webzine Raygun Revival.  Basically, the book is a “best of” anthology with a few original stories added.  Since I hadn’t heard of Raygun Revival, everything in the book was new to me, and as I said above, really very good.

In general, what I liked about the stories was the characters.  In the serious stories (the bulk of the book) the characters were realistic and I found myself caring about them.  In the four humorous stories, the characters were just enough “off” to be believable in the context of the story.  Some specific stories that stood out for me:

Frontier ABCs: The Life and times of Charity Smith, Schoolteacher by Seanan McGuire: The lead-off story, this is a Firefly-inspired tale of a schoolteacher one should not trifle with.  It’s set in our Solar System, with the bulk of the action taking place on a terraformed Ganymede.

Rick the Robber Baron by Kristine Kathryn Rusch:  This was an interesting story in which the female lead starts by being tied to a wooden post on her own ship.  To make matters worse, the person who did the tying was somebody who had had a fling with our heroine.  It’s complicated, to say the least, but enjoyable.

Sword of Saladin by Michael S. Roberts:  In this tale an enemy tells the captain of the Earth battlecruiser Himalaya that she should have sex with herself.  She thinks that’s a fine idea – on the bridge of his ship!

Holly Defiant by Brenda Cooper:  The titular character is one heck of a singer.  She also appears to be the target of some evil men, and our narrator decides to help.  There are several turns in this tale, none of which I saw coming.

The Slavers of Ruhn by Rob Mancebo:  This is another Firefly-inspired story, in which a woman’s dress proves critical to saving the day.

The Heiress of Air by Allen M. Steele: A rich young woman is kidnapped, and our daring band goes forth to save her.  Again, things are not what they seem.

REVIEW: Lex Talionis

Title: Lex Talionis
Author: R. S. A. Garcia
Genre: science fiction / space opera
Price: $6.95 (ebook) / $14.35 (paperback)
Publisher: Dragonwell Publications
ISBN: 978-1940076126
Point of Sale: Amazon | publishers website
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib


One of the authors I follow, Tobias Buckell, recommended Lex Talionis on his blog.  The author, R. S. A. Garcia, is, like Buckell, from the Caribbean.  In her case, she still lives in the region on the island of Trinidad.  I decided to take Toby’s recommendation, and I’m glad I did.  The book opens on a spaceship where a badly wounded man is desperately trying to get to the bridge, and has to avoid the thing that’s killed all of his fellow crewmembers.  We then cut to an alien city where a human merchant discovers another human in the gutter being attacked by a local alien.

The story then races off from there, and becomes a mystery.  The human in the gutter is a woman, a soldier, genetically engineered and suffering from amnesia.  The man on the spaceship reveals his secrets more slowly, but he proves to be less than sympathetic.  The world created by Garcia is less than friendly, and has many problems.  It’s also a place where humans are by no means the top species in the universe.

I have to say I found Lex Talionis an engrossing read.  Figuring out who did what and why was interesting.  I found the characters well-developed and believable.  I did have a bit of a problem with the structure of the novel, in that there were multiple flashbacks and other jumps in time, but I was able to sort out where and when with no real problem.  In short, I highly recommend Lex Talionis.

WEDNESDAY REVIEW: Shattered

Title: Shattered
Author: Shelby K. Morrison
Genre: science fiction, thriller
Price: $3.99 (ebook) / $10.82 (paperback)
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
ISBN: B00K2ME7RS
Point of Sale: various retailer via author’s site
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

In chapter 1 of Shelby K. Morrison’s new book Shattered, Alexandria Bowen knifed a man while attempting to stop him from an armed robbery.  She survives, but the cashier at the convenience store catches a stray bullet and dies.  Alex, a woman just out of college, is distraught at what happens, not without reason.  While in this distraught phase, Alex throws a potted plant at a mirror in her apartment.  The plant goes through the mirror and reveals a hidden observatory.  Things proceed to get weirder from there, involving private islands and people who disappeared without a trace.

I found Shattered an interesting read, and Alexandria Bowen a believable character.  Alex is no superwoman, and her lack of experience, super-strength and just general humanity cause many a believable problem.  I also liked Alex’s realistic emotional responses to the things she end up doing.

Having said that, I found many a nit to pick with Morrison’s plot.  Islands just can’t be made to disappear (ships tend to run into them if nothing else) and I found some of the decisions made by the Big Bad to be questionable.  I also felt that the ending was a bit too pat.  But these are quibbles – in general Shattered is a fun read.

Wednesday Review: Invisible, edited by Jim C. Hines

Title: Invisible
Editor: Jim C. Hines
Genre: science fiction commentary
Price: $2.99 (ebook)
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
ISBN: B00JND5RBW
Point of Sale: Amazon / B &N / Smashwords
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

A few months back, Alex Dally MacFarlane wrote an article suggesting that science fiction writers might want to include more than just Straight White Males in their stories.  What should have been as controversial as “you should bathe regularly” created an amazing swirl of controversy on the Internet.  Invisible is a response to that controversy.

Blogger, author and (full disclosure) personal friend Jim C. Hines is a Mark 1 Straight White Male.  However, he offered his blog to various people who wrote moving essays about being other than Straight White Male, and what it meant to them to read (or not read) of people who were more like them.  Jim then collected 13 of those essays into this slim ebook.

The essays are all exceptionally well-written, and speak powerfully to the experience of being Other, as well as the help one can get by reading the right book at the right age.  Writers varied from an albino (have you ever seen a not-evil albino in fiction?) to people of various genders, orientations and races.

As an author, I want to entertain people.  I want to affect them in some positive way.  Reading the essays in Invisible helped me better understand how to do that.  As a businessman, (and all writers should be people of business) Invisible pointed out that non-Straight White Males have money and are interested in science fiction.  Providing them characters they can identify with can be profitable.  As an artist who happens to be a Straight White Male, part of being a good artist is an ability to populate your book with other than clones of yourself.  Invisible gave me some thoughts on how to do just that.

If you want to be a writer, you should do yourself a favor and read Invisible.

REVIEW: Non-Compliance: The Sector

Title: Non-Compliance: The Sector

Author: Paige Daniels

Genre: SF

Price: $4.99 (ebook) $12.99 (paperback)

Publisher: Kristell Ink

ISBN: 978-1909845039

Point of Sale: Amazon  

Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

It’s amazing how time flies when you’re having fun.  Apparently I’m having a lot of fun, as now it’s time for my second guest review here at Heroines of Fantasy.  (My first review, of  The Shifter’s Trail, was back in February.)

Today’s victim book is Non-Compliance: The Sector by Paige Daniels.  It’s the first of a two-book series starring Shea Kelly.  The book is set in an America that rather narrowly won a war with undefined enemies.  The price of winning was that all Americans have to get government-issued chips implanted in them, which act like aircraft transponders.  Those that don’t are “non-compliant” and have to live in special sectors AKA ghettos set aside for them.  As suggested by the title, Shea Kelly is non-compliant.

She’s also a physically tough cookie and a computer geek, although not as good a geek as Wynne, her part-time stripper buddy.  The two of them are running a side gig to smuggle in good supplies to the sector, which brings them to the attention of the local criminal mastermind, the Boss, and his criminal rival, Danny Rose.  Problems ensue.

Although it seems like there’s a glut of dystopias on the SF market nowadays, I have to say I found Daniels’ take on a future America scared of its own shadow a tad too close to reality to dismiss.  We are, after all, living in a world in which we asked the NSA to please spy on us.  The idea of identity chips implanted for our own good seems possible.

Having found the world believable, I found Shea a realistic narrator.  Yes she’s tough, but she still also calls her dad (outside the Sector) at least every week.  She’s also not superhuman tough, and so occasionally loses a fight.  The other characters rang true, although hard-bitten, as one would expect of exiles.

Hard-bitten is pretty much the definition of much of the story, but Daniels also weaves in a budding romance between Shea and Quinn, the Boss’s main man.  The only thing I found disappointing in the book was the ending, which I felt was a dues ex machina.  Other than that minor issue, I enjoyed Non-Compliance: The Sector.

Review: Three Days of Night

Title: Three Days of Night

Author: Wren Roberts

Genre: science fiction (novella)

Price: $2.99

Publisher: KYSO Books

ISBN:  B00IJPHJV6

Point of Sale: Amazon

Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

First, full disclosure:  Wren Roberts is a member of my writers group.  Having said that, if I didn’t like her novella Three Days of Night, I wouldn’t be writing a review of it. 

The novella is set on the world of Nibiru, which orbits the double star Sotiras and Oligos.  The world spins much slower than ours, resulting in a night that’s 72 hours long.  Unfortunately for Farina, our teenage girl narrator, the Anunnaki have taken over on Nibiru.  They are human, and bear more than a passing resemblance to our modern-day Taliban.  Farina, as a girl and not Anunnaki, is doubly vexed by the Anunnaki.  One of that religion’s tenants is that women can’t be out after sundown.

Farina, of the first generation born of Nibiru, dreams of fleeing her oppressive existence and going to Earth.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the Anunnaki are not letting women leave, so Farina has to attempt to sneak out.  At the end of the first day of night, Farina makes her break.  Things don’t go to plan, in part due to surprising betrayals. 

I found the story very gripping emotionally.  I am not a fan of the Taliban, and the Anunnaki are entirely too Taliban-ish for me to like, but at the same time they're not cartoon villians.  I also found Farina very realistic.  She’s a teenager in action and words.  Her circumstances are forcing her to grow up, but perhaps she’s not making the transition fast enough.

I found the ending unexpected and ambiguous.  I am frankly not clear if what being described is real or a hallucination.  To a certain extent, this confusion is an artifact of the first-person narration, but to a certain extent it’s a deliberate choice on Wren’s part.  All I can say is that the ending worked for me.  Well, actually the whole piece worked for me, and I highly recommend it.

Wednesday Review - The Shifter's Trail

Title: The Shifter’s Trail

Author: Adam Alexander

Genre: science fiction / YA

Price: $6.99 (ebook) / $12.95 (paperback)

Publisher: Outskirts Press

ISBN: 9781478700845

Point of Sale: Amazon Barnes & Noble

Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

Hi y'all!  I'm Chris Gerrib, author of  Pirates of Mars and one of the newer reviewers here on Heroines.  The good folks here gave me the keys to post Wednesday reviews, so you'll be reading me on the second Wednesday of even months.  Now that introductions are done, let's get right to it.

Adam Alexanders’ novel The Shifter’s Trail asks a very good question, namely, “if an alien passed you on the street, would you know? Are you sure?”  Based on that question, I requested the book and I am glad I did.

The book is largely narrated by Andromeda Brown, a sixth-grade girl attending the Newton Math and Science Academy in Chicago.  As one could deduce from the age of the narrator, it’s YA and set in Chicago, my home base.  The story starts engagingly enough, with Chapter 0.0 being the crash of a spaceship, and Chapter 1.0 being the arrival in Chicago of a large meteor – large enough that the sonic boom breaks windows.  Chapter 1 ends with the sinking of the Brown family sailboat, Schroedinger’s Cat.  This event ends up plunging Andromeda and two of her friends into a search for a shape-shifting alien.  To make matters worse, the shape-shifter is being pursued by a third group of hostile aliens that have a sizeable lead on our heroine.

All of the above sounds complicated, and it is, but the puts and takes are very well explained.  This explaining is done engagingly, without stopping the plot – in fact part of the plot, like many good SF novels, is taken up with figuring out what’s going on.  We’re told Andromeda is very good with math, and the story stops at several points for Andromeda to solve a math problem.  I suspect that YA readers will roll their eyes a bit at this, but the math is cleverly worked in and not too obtrusive.

I have to say that this novel hits on several classic points of science fiction that I have been exploring.  For example, the hostile aliens would like to take over the Earth.  But they know that, even with really advanced technology, one ship against a planet is a bad gamble.  So they are using stealth to even the odds.  Alexander has restricted all of his space-travelers to travel at the speed of light, so there will be no sudden arrival of the intergalactic cavalry. 

I also like Andromeda as a protagonist.  She is a kid who acts like one.  The stakes are high and people are killed, which frankly scares all of the characters, even the aliens.  Nobody’s running around Chicago with a blaster in each hand in this book, even though humanity’s very existence is at stake.  Oh, and the aliens are always sufficiently alien, even when they are trying not to be alien.  In short, I highly enjoyed The Shifter’s Trail.