Violence of Action (Forgotten Ruin #3) ★★★☆☆

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Violence of Action
Series: Forgotten Ruin #3
Author: Jason Anspach & Nick Cole
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Military Fantasy
Pages: 249
Words: 85K

Hey, would you look at that? There’s an actual story in this book! AND. I only counted 2 instances of Anspach and Cole (the authors) rimming the rangers. Talk about a relief.

So the rangers have to take down Smog the evil green dragon who is in an alliance with other evil powers that menace the kingdom of men. They take him out and rescue a bunch of captive elves and find the King of the Elves, who Last of Autumn is betrothed to. So no more googly eyes for the narrator at his elven lady love. Awww, so sad. Honestly, I was expecting her to die a horrible death, so at least this way she stays alive. Hard core military types are married to the Service and a wife comes in a distant second. Very few relationships can survive that.

This was the kind of story I was waiting for since the very beginning. Special Forces setting themselves an objective and then killing everything that stands in the way of them accomplishing that objective. I am definitely going to keep reading the series now but I simply can’t recommend it to anyone else. The first 2 books just destroy any chance of that. I’ve never been in this situation before, where the first couple of books are absolutely terrible and then improve dramatically. Usually I’m done with a series before that point (or it never does improve, which is what usually ends up happening).

I also can’t recommend starting here because then you’d be lost. Why is the Ranger Captain a were-tiger? Who is Last of Autumn and why is it so shattering to the narrator that they rescue her betrothed? Who is this evil Vampire SEAL? All of the big points get covered, so in that regards you could start here, but all those little things like what I mention, well, good luck. I guess this is for super-hard-core Anspach & Cole fans OR super duper military types who like annoying narrators. I’m glad I stuck through to this point but it pretty much ate up all the goodwill A&C have built up with me. They don’t get any more chances from me.

After the main story is a small “prequel” story that starts to introduce why everything in the Ruin is so Dungeons and Dragons. Long and short, a crazy genius woman, whose only good memories were of a summer when she got to play some D&D with other normal kids, goes off the rails completely and uses nanotech to start changing the world. It was complete “scyenze” but it sounded cool and was good enough for me. And since this is pure fiction and not “A Message From They Who Know Better Than Poor Plebian Me” masquerading as a story, I have no problem with said scyenze being used.

★★★☆☆

• All My “Forgotten Ruin” Reviews

When Worlds Collide (Bronson Beta #1) ★★★★★

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: When Worlds Collide
Series: Bronson Beta #1
Authors: Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 225
Words: 83.5K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia.org

Sven Bronson, a Swedish astronomer working at an observatory in South Africa, discovers a pair of rogue planets, Bronson Alpha and Bronson Beta, which will soon enter the Solar System. In eight months, they will pass close enough to cause catastrophic damage to the Earth. Sixteen months later, after swinging around the Sun, Bronson Alpha (a gas giant) will return to pulverize the Earth and leave. It is hoped that Bronson Beta (discovered to be Earth-like and potentially habitable) will remain and assume a stable orbit.

Scientists led by Cole Hendron work desperately to build an atomic rocket to transport enough people, animals and equipment to Bronson Beta in an attempt to save the human race. Various countries do the same. The United States evacuates coastal regions in preparation for the first encounter. As the planets approach, observers see through their telescopes cities on Bronson Beta. Tidal waves sweep inland at a height of 750 feet (230 m), volcanic eruptions and earthquakes add to the deadly toll, and the weather runs wild for more than two days. As a token of things to come, Bronson Alpha grazes and destroys the Moon.

Three men take a floatplane to check out conditions across the United States and meet with the President in Hutchinson, Kansas, the temporary capital of the United States. It is discovered that the entire Southeast region flooded, the Great Lakes rose and emptied into the Saint Lawrence region, and Connecticut has become an island archipelago. All three are wounded fighting off a mob at their last stop, but manage to return with a precious sample of an extremely heat-resistant metal one of them had noticed. This solves the last remaining engineering obstacle, as no material had been found before to make rocket tubes capable of withstanding the heat of the atomic exhaust for very long.

Five months before the end, desperate mobs attack the camp, killing over half of Hendron's people before they are defeated. With the rocket tube breakthrough, the survivors are able to build a second, larger ship that can carry everyone left alive (instead of only 100 of the roughly thousand people Hendron had recruited). The two American ships take off, but lose contact with each other. Other ships are seen launching from Europe; the French ship's tubes melt, causing it to explode in the upper atmosphere. The original American ship makes a successful landing, but it is unknown if anyone else made it. The survivors find that Bronson Beta is habitable. They also find a road.

My Thoughts:

This is the 3^rd “Official” time that I've read this book but I know I read it at least once in Bibleschool and two or three times in highschool, so we're talking at least six times. And I realized that I enjoyed it just as much this time as I have in the past, so its rating got bumped up to 5stars.

This is completely a comfort read. It has the 1930's American mindset, so not only is Scyenze going to save humanity, but humanity is going to save itself. And they do a fine strapping job of it, with brawn, panache and manly friendship overcoming even jealous love interests. You don't get stuff like this anymore. I know because of the review for a book that is coming up for Wednesday :-/

Everyone involved is a paragon of virtue. Even when they struggle with wanting to do the wrong thing, they realize it is wrong and fight and overcome it. Scientists are pure of motive and have no underlying idealogy outside of Truth Seeking, just like how we want them to be even today. The men are brawnly and smart, the women kind and gentle.

The disaster is fantastic, I have to admit. When Bronson Alpha passes Earth for the first time and destroys the moon and causes complete havoc on earth, the authors do a fantastic job of describing the cataclysmic occurrences in such an understated manner that it's not horrifying until after you've read it and think about what just occurred. It's described in a macro enough scale that as long as you have a rough idea of world geography (in terms of land masses and bodies of water) then you too can join in on the horrifying fun of it all.

Of course, the absolute nonsense about Bronson Beta having a breathable atmosphere and even having cities that survived is just something you have to put up. Hence the “scyenze” tag. But it's no more fantastic than John Carter waking up on Mars and marrying a Pod Woman Princess.

★★★★★

• When Worlds Collide (2009 Review)

• When Worlds Collide (2005 Review)

Quarantine ★★☆☆☆

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Quarantine
Series: ----------
Author: Greg Egan
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 224
Words: 80K

Synopsis:

Mr Detective-san gets hired to find out why someone kidnapped a woman from an insane asylum. She's practically a vegetable with no rich relatives, so the police have let it slide.

This all takes place X number of years after a barrier went up in space cutting humanity off from ever reaching the stars. No one knows how or why the barrier exists but it is enough that it does.

In the process of finding Vegetable Girl, Detective-san falls in with a bunch of scyenzetists who believe that aliens put up the barrier to keep the Human Gaze from making the universe into one universe instead of a multiverse where anything is possible.

Detective-san has to do something or other, as to the infinite multitude of Detective-san's and he gets it done. Only he's not sure if he got it done or not. But it doesn't matter because if there really are infinite hims, then at least one of them did it and so the Universe is saved the from the evil Human Gaze (no kidding).

My Thoughts:

First off, despite my snarky “Synopis”, this was not badly written or even thought out. The problem I had with it was just how juvenile it was. By that I mean this is the kind of story that I and my friends would have batted around as teenagers. Nothing wrong with that at all, except that I'm not a teenager now and Egan wasn't a teenager when he wrote this.

The story ends up ultimately being pointless and whole basic premise rests on there being no God. The whole IDEA that humanity locks reality into one path as they view it but that other beings might not view things the same way, at its core denies that there is a God who views everything and that reality springs from God Himself.

The other issue was how “serious” Egan treats the idea of the multi-verse. I think the multi-verse is a great idea and should be played around with. What I don't think is that it should be given serious consideration.

Overall, I just didn't want to like this book and Egan didn't do one thing to change my mind about it. This is the first Egan book I've read and it will definitely be the last. If you've read him before and like him, have at him. If you're into trying out some older but not classic SF, this might fit the bill. Written in the 90's, it would fit right in with such tv shows as the X-Files and Sliders. At least I enjoyed those.

I chose this cover from Librarything because all of the other ones were piss-poor pathetic stinkos. Even free Gutenberg books have better covers than most of the ones I saw in English.

★★☆☆☆

Warlock ★★★☆☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Warlock
Series: ----------
Author: Dean Koontz
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 221
Format: Digital Scan

Synopsis:

The Darklands, a loose coalition of city states presided over by General Dark, have been at war with the Orogonians, led by the tyrant Justin Matabain. There have been credible reports that the Orogonians have breached the Mountains and found the fabled land filled with technology left over before The Blank, a time of crisis 1,000 years ago.

General Dark sends a small detachment led by his most trusted Captain to Shaker Sandow. Shakers are powerful men with powers beyond the normal. They need the Shaker and his 2 apprentices to help them find this Orogonian outpost and take it for themselves, or at worst, deny it to both sides. Before the expedition even starts out though, 20 men are murdered in their beds and the 3 Shakers are set upon. Thus they all realize that the Orogonians have some spies within their midsts.

On their journey to cross the mountains and find the fabled city of treasures, the spies kill almost half the group before being revealed themselves. But they aren't human. They are wire worm things inhabiting the bodies of their hosts and taking over. They are dealt with and killed.

Once over the mountains, the Darklanders must deal with Orogonians who have made use of such technology as airplanes and guns. Shaker Sandow uses his powers to find an unused entrance into the city where the remaining Darklanders fall victim to the descendants of genetically modified humans inhabiting the bodies of massive blue apes.

Turns out the apes were just incapacitating them all to be on the safe side, since the Orogonians had been treacherous and tried to kill all the apes. They all team up, wipe out the Orogonians in the city, take a super-submarine back to their land and wipe out most of the Tyrant's stores of technology and his castle where he lived, thus hopefully wiping him out.

Shaker Sandow and his apprentices realize they have brought the potential for unending war back to life and envision a time when all the Shakers can come together and lead the world into a utopia of peace and knowledge.

My Thoughts:

This was written in 1972. It reminded me a LOT of John Christopher's middle grade series The Sword of the Spirits trilogy that was released in 1970. Post-apocalyptic Earth with humanity rising again. Koontz is a bit more on the positive side though, with his ending foreseeing a return to the stars and a Utopia established. I did have to roll my eyes because the idea is predicated on the “fact” that knowledge alone will temper humanities' worst impulses. Koontz has definitely bought into the Religion of Scyenze in this book. Sadly, Hitler, an extremely educated man, really taught that Generation nothing.

A decent story with some action but I didn't feel any of the tension that I think Koontz meant to inhabit the pages. Part of that is I'm a widely read reader so nothing of this is new any more and I've read enough Koontz to know what he likes to write about. He likes to write about new flesh that is super in some way and while not an exact replication of that idea, the wire worms taking over the bodies were as close as could be gotten.

In regards to that “widely read reader”, there was a small section of the story where the darklanders came across an oasis of jungle land that was converted all to crystals of various kinds, ie, rubies, diamonds, sapphires, etc. Plants, animals, all turned to jewels. It immediately made me think of JG Ballard's short story, The Illuminated Man from his Complete Short Stories Collection. That was published at least in 1964 and I'm sure Koontz “used” the idea because he thought it was cool. However, as a reader, it came across as”I don't have enough of my own ideas so I'll use somebody else's to pad my own story”. That can be a fine line. Sometimes it is cool to see an idea recycled from one author to another and sometimes it really isn't cool.

Overall, I'd call this a decent story. While it lacked the pizzazz and tension I prefer, it also didn't end on a “pull it out of a hat” ending that I've experienced with some of Koontz's other stories.

★★★☆☆

The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions ★★★★☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions
Series: ----------
Author: David Berlinski
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 258
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

The title really does sum this up. Written as a foil to Dawkin's The God Delusion, Berlinski, a non-practicing Jew, shows just how shaky the ground is, philosophically AND scientifically, that many out-spoken atheists stand on.

Using humor, sarcasm and other rather ham handed approaches, Berlinski pokes the High Priests of Scyenze and lets the hot air out of them, much like a balloon. He doesn't approach things form an angle of “They are wrong and I'm right” but more of a “their attitude is untenable given their arrogant, boasting statements about Faith and Religion”.

My Thoughts:

I had a hard time with this. Even while I agreed with much of what Berlinski wrote, I am not a fan of the style he uses, ie, poking the bear with a stick. The problem is, people like Hawkings, Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc, NEED to be poked. They are arrogant, proud, boastful and self-centered and all of their might and effort is put forth proving that God doesn't exist just so that they don't have to kneel before Him. Reading this was like getting a splinter removed with a needle. It was necessary and good but you don't like the process.

I was high lighting sentences left and right on my kindle but I don't care enough to type them all out. Honestly, I don't know if I was the target audience for this or not. Berlinski is an Evolutionist but realizes that the pat “We Have All the Answers” attitude put out by the scientific community as a whole is a bunch of bologna. He pokes and pokes and shows that no, they don't have all the answers. In fact, some of the contortions they must go through make the planetary epicycles of Ptolemy look positively straight!

The biggest thing I got was that most of the people he mentions by name are arrogant blowhards and that Pride shapes how they think and how they approach existence itself. Pride is what led to Satan's fall from grace and Berlinski shows how Pride is still blinding people today, even people of great intellect.

Recommended as a Counter Cultural Argument against the monolithic religion of our day, Scyenze.

★★★★☆

The Engineer Reconditioned (Polity #13) ★★★★☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Engineer Reconditioned
Series: Polity #13
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 260
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

A collection of short stories from Asher's Polity Universe, his Owner universe and some general SF shorts.

My Thoughts:

Really, my previous review still stands. Asher just unloads several times on anything “religious” and even in one of his intro's to a story admits that's exactly what he is doing. Makes me wonder why the vitriol. His wife hadn't died yet, so it wasn't like he was blaming God for that. In fact, now that his wife has passed on, I've noticed LESS bashing of religion in his books. Thankfully, I knew this was an element in this book so it didn't shock me like it did the first time around. Scyenze is Asher's god, he just won't admit it.

I enjoyed the Owner stories a lot this time around as I now had the Owner trilogy under my literary belt. Did make me want to add them to my tbr. Once I finish up my Polity re-read, I'll probably re-read the Owner books to tide me over until Asher's Jain trilogy wraps up.

There was a story about the Hive (turns out Wasps are sentient creatures) and I have to admit I would like a trilogy about them at some point. I doubt it will happen and I'd be ok with just some more short stories, but since I'm wishing, a trilogy is what I want.

★★★★☆

• The Engineer Reconditioned (2012 Review)
• Previous "Polity" Reviews

Seize the Night (Moonlight Bay #2) ★★★☆½

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Seize the Night
Series: Moonlight Bay #2
Author: Dean Koontz
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Paranormal/Thriller
Pages: 482
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

It has been a month since the events in Fear Nothing. Chris Snow is just chilling in Moonlight Bay, waiting to see if the end of the world will come quickly or slowly. He's out bicycling one night when he meets an old flame. She lost her husband 2 years ago and that very night her 6 year old boy has gone missing. Chris begins to track down the kidnapper and ends up at the Wyvern Base. He has a run in a psycho who tries to kill him and then in the process of leaving, has another encounter with the Troop. Also, Orson the dog has gone missing during the initial attack on Chris. While hiding from the Troop, he's rescued by his surfer friend and they continue the hunt for Jimmy. They find a room that appears to take them somewhere else and they appear to see things that have happened in the past. They barely escape with their lives when some kind of monster infects a past researcher and they're stuck with him. Thankfully, the “time machine” brings them back before they get axed.

Once home, before daybreak, Chris and Bobbie are confronted by the police and told to ignore everything, as “Higher Ups” are taking care of it. Considering the past track record of these “Higher Ups”, Chris and Bobby decide to ignore the cops and keep on looking for little Jimmy once night falls. They are told that the retrovirus burns itself out as the victims implode psychologically (ie, suicide) and that there are humans with natural immunity. Humanity is saved from the devastation Chris's mom let loose. Hurray. They still have to find Jimmy and some other children who have gone missing.

Chris, Bobby, Sasha (Chris's girlfriend), Mungojerrie (an intelligence enhanced cat) and some others all had to Wyvern to rescue Jimmy and the other missing children. Mungojerrie detects that the kids are beneath the time machine room and the machine is running while they make their rescue. Bobby is killed by security from the past and everyone sees into another dimension and a being comes through. It turns out that a murderous psycho who has been groups of children over the last 2 years is the head of the Mystery Train project and he wants to go to the other world so he can kill to his hearts content. It would appear though that he has tried to open a door to hell and something gets through. The group meets themselves on the elevator and Chris grabs Bobby and takes him with them. They escape and the time machine goes nuts. They watch it un-make itself, thus undoing the whole project but they still remember it.

Turns out the murderous psycho is still alive but now working on another project. Chris vows to stop him again and they all live happily ever after.

My Thoughts:

This was much more paranormal than the previous book. That just had a retrovirus turning everyone into bestial creatures who were just slathering to kill, pillage and rape. Here, the Mystery Train is a time machine only it turns out to “sidewise” in time and bad things have happened, hence why the project was shut down.

This book was only 48hrs and my goodness did Koontz pack in the thrills and chills. He's very descriptive and I have to admit I wanted to skip it all but his descriptions really set the mood. Very atmospheric writing and downright creepy in place. I really liked it.

I also liked how Koontz unabashedly talks about the spiritual and how it is just as real as anything “scyenze” today can try to explain. In one paragraph Chris the main character is talking to his friend Bobby and Bobby says:

“That doesn't bother you like it does me, 'cause you've got God

and an afterlife and choirs of angels and palaces of gold

in the sky but all I've got is broccoli.”

It is kind of silly but it really got across the hope I have as a Christian. It's refreshing and encouraging.

I think the only thing I didn't really care for was how open ended the book was. Yes, the Mystery Train project is revealed, the retrovirus appears to be either burning itself out or a cure quickly on the way but with the whole Tornado Alley project throwaway line and the revelation that the murderous child burning psycho is still alive and working, well, it came across as Koontz leaving the door open for more books if he needed it. He didn't have a definite “This Is the End” like he did for Odd Thomas.

And that reminds me of the only other nitpicky thing I can blab about. The recycling of ideas. Depending on how things continue in this vein, I might end up having to read these books a bit further apart than I have been. Time machines, evil materialized, calm and rational head character, creepy and spooky looks into a horrible dimension or the future, it all is extremely familiar. Now, Koontz does a fantastic job of not making the stories (so far) clones of each other but I'm leery of the same ideas being used in different ways. We'll see what the future holds.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased and the taut thrill of reading this was just what my brain needed.

★★★☆½

• Fear Nothing (Book 1)

Fear Nothing (Moonlight Bay #1) ★★★☆½

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Fear Nothing
Series: Moonlight Bay #1
Author: Dean Koontz
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 450
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Christopher Snow was born afflicted with (insert really long medically sounding name), otherwise known as XP. His body can't heal from UV damage and something like a flashlight can take years off his life or make him go blind in months. He is now 28 and his parents have sacrificed a lot to give him as much freedom as possible. He roams the night, writes successful novels and surfs.

Several months ago his mother died in a car accident. The book opens with his father expiring from cancer in the local hospital. Everything Chris ever starts to go sidewise as he sees the local mortician replace his father's body with some hitchhiker's. His father's body is loaded into a van and taken away to Wyvern, a supposedly closed military base.

During the next 2 days Chris uncovers a lot of secrets hiding in Moonlight Bay. His mother was involved in genetic experimentation with the aim of helping cure Chris's XP. Chris's father's cancer might have been caused by a rogue genetic experiment gone awry. Chris finds out that the experiments have been successful, but not in the way his mother intended. The politicians and top army brass have used it to enhance intelligence in animals and to transfer animal characteristics to humans. Unfortunately, the carrier evolved and people began becoming infected unknowingly and spreading it even outside of Moonlight Bay.

Several of the solid citizens of Moonlight Bay have already fallen to the gene therapy. The Chief of Police dreams of raping and killing little girls. He tries to kill Christopher to keep his secret but dies in the attempt. A troup of bloody thirsty enhanced monkey's attack Chris, his girlfriend and his beach bum friend one night. The troup is led by a court-martialed sociopath who has been hiding his own “becoming” from all his superiors.

To top it all off, it turns out that Chris's own dog, Orson, is the product of the tests and is just as intelligent as a human. Orson, however, shows no sign of the psychopathic murderous tendencies exhibited in almost all the other patients that Chris has seen.

The book ends with Chris realizing that he simply can't fight this end of the world as we know it.

My Thoughts:

I actually read the sequel to this 18 years ago. I wasn't reviewing per se, so I didn't remember any details and so nothing was spoiled for this book. Just an anecdote, that is all.

In the character of Chris Snow are the seeds that will, 5 years later, turn into Odd Thomas and that much more successful series.

I found the scene between Chris and the Chief of Police to be as horrific as Koontz intended without it being offensive. There is nothing graphic in what Koontz writes and yet when the Chief is talking to Chris about his nightmares and his plans and his descent into animal savagery, I was horrified. It walked the line of talking about something absolutely evil without crossing that line into being voyeuristic about it. More authors should take note, as it takes real skill to write that way.

I enjoyed this but once again, like his Frankenstein series, Koontz is actually only telling one story and splitting it up into “books” to satisfy publishing demands. This book ends with Chris and Co surviving the attacks by various infected creatures, human or otherwise but the threat is so big that it IS the end of the world as humans know it. If I hadn't known there was another book, I would have assumed this was a standalone with the Big Ending (ie, the end of the world) left up in the air for the readers to imagine.

Considering how proto-Odd Thomas Chris Snow is, I was figuring that Snow's girlfriend was going to die the whole book. Color me pleasantly surprised when she made it through almost unscathed. That'll teach me to be cynical.

The other thing I'm learning about Koontz seems to be that he likes to write about short time periods. The first ¾'s of the book only took 12hrs and the final ¼ was the next 24. Thirty-six hours for a 450 page book. I'll have to remember that so I don't expect dramas drawn out over the years.

★★★☆½