Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road: November 2018

Friday, November 30, 2018

Ties of Power (Trade Pact #2) ★★★☆☆

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Title: Ties of Power
Series: Trade Pact #2
Author: Julie Czerneda
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 499
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Sira and Jason Morgan are living safe from the Clan. Jason has been growing in power under Sira's tutelage. Things start to go sideways though when Sira's cousin, now also exiled, shows up on their doorstep. It would appear that there is another splinter group of the Clan opposed to the Council but who want Jason just as dead and Sira under their control. The Council itself hasn't stopped playing games either.

This leads to Sira being abducted and her reproductive organs stolen. Morgan rescues her and then she compels him to go after those who did this to her. Meanwhile, she gets sidetracked into attending a ceremony on an alien world where the aliens apparently know about the M'hir, the energy space the Clan uses. Sira learns that the M'hir is a whole other ecosystem and not some creation of the Clan.

Kidnappings, murders and mystery abound. Everyone comes together and Sira deals with those who have crossed her. Her own father tries to murder Morgan in an attempt to kill her but thanks to Sira's training Morgan not only survives but fights back. This allows Sira, as the most powerful of the Clan, to wipe her father from existence.

The Clan is invited into the Trade Pact and the Council has voted to join. Cooperation, good cheer and hope are everywhere. And Sira has her naughty bits back so she and Morgan can consumate their Joining.

My Thoughts:

Yeah, not nearly so enthralling as the first book. Way, way, way further down the romance road.

Most of my problem stemmed from the fact that if Jason and Sira had taken a straight line from point A to point B, they could have solved their problems with power and force and violence. Instead, because of “feelingz”, they continually get hurt and so can't fully use their power together. This leads to an elliptical storyline where they keep going in circles while edging extremely slowly to that mythical point B.

A bloody ship with some big guns and a fully healthy Sira with her powers could have wiped her father and co-conspirators from the face of the universe in about 1 month. But my goodness, where would the “feelingz” be then? There would have been at least half the collateral damage if Jason Morgan had been a bloody man and just killed the people who were threatening him and his wife. Running away and wishing that things will get better don't solve problems.

This crossed the line from the kind of romance that I do like into the kind that I really don't like.

Up until the very end, Sira just gets hammered and reacts, every single time. It frustrated me because I could see how easy it would have been for the Morgan's to have planned differently and have everything turn out better. The story was interesting and everything we learn is cool but it came at the cost of Jason Morgan acting like a pussy and Sira a fainting maid instead of the extremely powerful and talented powerhouses they are.

Czerneda is now on probation and depending on how the next book turns out will decide if I continue with her or not.

★★★☆☆

A Thousand Words for Stranger (Book 1)

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Pawn (Chronicle of the Sibyl's War #1) ★★★☆☆

Title: Pawn
Series: Chronicle of the Sibyl's War #1
Author: Timothy Zahn
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 350
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

19 year old alcoholic Nicole is on her own, living on the streets, moving from one gang to another to survive. Her latest leader, Bungie shows up one morning shot and he forces Nicole to take him to the nearest VA hospital where he kidnaps a doctor in the parking lot. Suddenly, all 3 are approached by tall silvery beings and fall into unconsciousness.

Nicole wakes up and finds out they have been kidnapped by aliens. They all have jobs at keeping the ship repaired but not all is as it seems. Bungie wants off the ship and runs away. Nicole finds an Arena where other species are fighting each other for food while the humans have more than enough. The beings instigating the fighting are the apparent rulers of the ship, but as more is revealed, Nicole realizes that absolutely nothing is what it appears to be.

The ship is a sentient being and something caused it to split into multiple personalities long ago. The humans repair is aimed at restoring unity while the “ship masters” are controlled by another segment of the ship.

Nicole is a Sibyl, one that can talk with the ship through the use of drugs. The drugs have the side affect of reducing her life span to about a year though. Nicole defies the ship masters and brings what peace she can between the species in the Arena. This gets her an audience with the ship itself and the book ends with Nicole planning out how she can restore the ship to its full mind.

My Thoughts:

This was a decent read but no more. Nicole had been so beaten down by life and by her extremely bad choices that she just wants to put her head down and survive. This was a coming of responsibility story instead of a story about an already responsible person. I always have a hard time with those kind of stories.

The next book in this series comes out in 2019 and I highly doubt I'll read it. Nothing about this book gave me that zing, that pizazz that I had with Zahn's books back in the day. I think that it is more about me changing than Zahn as an author. I am done with Star Wars so his SW books don't tempt me and his last couple of non-SW books have been ok but nothing special. This leads me to conclude that I am pretty much done with Zahn and that just saddens me.

From the age of 16-21 I almost literally ate his books. They were the guiding lights by which I judged all others. He was the gold standard. And now? My tastes have changed; gold isn't so attractive, I want juicy fruit and seared steaks. Now I'm sad :-(

★★★☆☆

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Semper Fi (The Empire's Corps #4) ★★★☆½

Title: Semper Fi
Series: The Empire's Corps #4
Author: Christopher Nuttall
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 446
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Commodore Singh has taken advantage of the retreat of the Empire's forces to carve out her own little empire. Ruling through fear and setting her underlyings against each other, Singh has a sizeable fleet and a highly developed tech world at her disposal. Captain Stalker and the forces of Avalon and the ConFed are growing and they know at some point they will come to Singh's attention. Unable to beat her through pure force, the ConFed's must do what they can to destabilize her power base.

Lt. Jasmine is chosen to lead the small force of marines and support staff to infilitrate Singh's power base and topple her regime. Starting up insurgency groups, infiltrating the intelligence community and trying to implement a plan that will destroy Singh's power, Jasmine is in way over her head.

Once she gets captured and tortured, things are looking bad. Thankfully, her marines are loyal and rescue her and in that process capture the head of the Intelligence group and pump him for all he is worth. This also allows Jasmine to blackmail the next Intelligence leader and get key people onto the space stations.

The revolution happens, the world is nominally freed and Singh flees with a much smaller group of ships to plan her revenge. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of her.

My Thoughts:

First, this was almost ALL groundpounder action. I love Military SF that has that as its primary core. I'm not a huge fan of spaceship battles.

The focus this time was on Lt. Jasmine and her squad instead of on Captain Stalker and the marines as a whole. It worked very well to limit the main characters to less than 10 even while using side and minor characters to flesh out the action. The villains were well done as well. The security guy was a sick and disgusting pedo and abuser and Nuttall did a great job of showing just how filthy he was without going into details or making it graphic for the reader. He walked that line perfectly. Singh wasn't quite so well done, as I found her descent from sidelined but talented in the Empire to In Charge and ruling through Fear a little difficult.

I think my main issue with this book was Stalker's attitude. Since he doesn't have access to the Marine Boot Camp world he is always lamenting how they can't have any more “Marines”. It seems rather defeatist and not like him at all. I would think that he'd start trying to re-create the marine training program so that even if they can't have all the implants that the regular marines have, he (Stalker) would have access to highly trained troops in about 2 years instead of just having regular soldiers. I'm hoping another character will come along in a book or two and kick the idea around and make it happen. It NEEDS to happen if he's to keep his edge.

I didn't notice, or remember is probably more likely, any egregrious grammar or spelling errors, so that was definitely worth a half-star bump up.

Fun and enjoyable book in a series that is staying the course. I'm satisfied so far.

★★★☆½

All The Empire's Corps Reviews

Monday, November 26, 2018

Alphabet of Thorn ★★★★½

Title: Alphabet of Thorn
Series: ----------
Author: Patricia McKillip
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 300
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

A foundling, named Nepenthe, is working at the royal library. She has a talent for interpreting odd languages. She meets a young mage-in-training named Bourne and gets a book written in an Alphabet of Thorns. She begins to translate the book and it appears to be the story of Axis and Kane, a king and wizard from so long ago that they are only myth.

The more Nepenthe translates, the more confused she becomes. Kane records Axis conquering kingdoms that don't exist, yet. Nepenthe and Bourne figure out that Kane has figured out how to move through time. And next on the agenda, is the Kingdom that Nepenthe lives in.

During all of this, Bourne's uncle has risen in insurrection against the new Queen. The Queen, a mousy recluse, must master her own unknown powers while the old Magician who runs the school that Bourne attends, must keep the kingdom from falling apart.

In the end, it is revealed that Nepenthe is the daughter of Axis and Kane but she forces her mother Kane to choose between her and Axis. A life of conquering all in her path or a life of peace. Kane chooses her daughter.

My Thoughts:

This was one of those tough reads. I wanted to shake Nepenthe so much, even knowing she was under the spell of the Alphabet. It was rough watching her keep secrets knowing that if she could only tell someone things would be better.

But other than that, this was another fantastic book. It had the taste of a fairytale with the story of Axis and Kane but it was the old school kind of fairytale, the one with that darker edge. It was mysterious as we the reader didn't know what was going on or how everything was going to tie together.

Some books you can just rush through and let the story kind of overwhelm you, like eating 5 hamburgers at a picnic. This was not that kind of book. None of McKillips' books are though.This was a smooth vanilla icecream with a peanutbutter ribbon running through the whole thing. The sweet smoothness of the icecream is offset by the rough saltiness of the peanutbutter. It just doesn't get any better! Well, chocolate icecream makes it better.

★★★★½

Friday, November 23, 2018

Escape from Oz (Falken Chronicles #1) ★★★☆☆

Title: Escape from Oz
Series: Falken Chronicles #1
Author: Piers Platt
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 253
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis: SPOILER

Sirio Falken, a mixed martial arts fighter, has fallen on hard times when the World Council banned MMA. He has taken to giving lessons and participating in underground fights. When he finds out that his girlfriend has cheated on him, he beats the other man to death. He is sentenced to a prison planet where he can be rehabilitated.

Unfortunately, Falken finds out that almost everything about the presentation of the prison world was a lie. The space elevator lies in ruins, there is no prison facility, there are no guards and there is no way to contact his lawyer. Prisoners are parachuted down to the planet in wooden crates, which the survivors salvage as best they can.

Falken falls in with a former prison guard, Archos, who rules the small island through a series of fights. Archos regularly raids a non-violent set of prisoners who are just trying to live. Falken escapes Archos and joins up with the Community. There he comes under the care of a former biologist and learns lots of things. Everyone's dream is to contact Earth and let the right people know what is going on. Falken also meets Weaver, a man falsely convicted of murdering his wife and children.

Falken and Weaver end up finding a buried spaceship from the original space surveyors and it has one pod capable of making it back to Earth. They just need to excavate it and get enough electronics working to push the pod into space.

Oz, the name of the planet, holds a secret though. With 6 moons, there are no tides. Except for every 40 or so year when they all line up perfectly. This is such a time. The island is in danger of being inundated and there are monsters in the water, eating everything. Archos also discovers what they are up and wants to return to Earth himself. So Falken must fight nature and man to survive. Falken ends up knocking Weaver out and putting him in the pod and blasting it off since he's an innocent and not a prisoner.

Then Falken is woken up and finds out everything was a computer simulation. His choices prove that he has been rehabilitated and he now has a chance at becoming a space surveyor.

My Thoughts:

Oh for fracks sake.

That cover is so misleading. I was expecting spaceship fights and wicked cool stuff. Nope, what I got was some Mass-hole's idea that all prisoners are really just misunderstood poor blighters who really, really, really actually do want to be good little boys but just can't “quite” make it. Even if they murder people by punching them to death. Poor little misunderstood MMA character. Look at me cry.

Prisons are meant as punishment. First Degree Murderers should be killed by the State. Rehabilitation is a pipe dream. If anyone think otherwise, they are as much part of the problem as Charles Manson and Ted Bundy and at the Final Judgement they will be held just as culpable.

Ahem.

The story was pretty good. I was really enjoying everything right up until the reveal about it all being a rehab computer sim. I liked just about everything up to that point and this was bordering between 3.5 and 4, as a prison break from a dangerous world is just plain awesome as a storyline. A MMA character made for some good fights and the voracious eel monsters were cool too. Archos was a great villain too.

Definitely going to be reading the next book. I just hope Platt doesn't pull that kind of ridiculous plot twist stunt again. I felt like it ruined the whole book that I had been enjoying so much.

★★★☆☆

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

The Darkside War (Icarus Corps #1) ★★☆☆½

Title: The Darkside War
Series: Icarus Corps #1
Author: Zachary Brown
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: YA SF
Pages: 241
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

The aliens have conquered us. They destroyed Washington, DC, made examples of other capitals of the world and now occupy Earth. And they are the good aliens.

Devlin's parents are the leaders of the Protest Movement. After millions died in violent protest, it was thought that only non-violent protesting was the way to go. Unfortunately for humanity, “protesting” is a 4 letter word for the aliens. Devlin is caught in a sweep and unless he joins the aliens new hybrid armed forces, his parents will be executed on world wide television.

Devlin goes to military academy on the darkside of the moon. The bad aliens make a sneak attack and it is up to the recruits to get a message to Earth to warn them. They succeed but find out that there are what appear to be humans working for the bad aliens and that the bad aliens have blockaded Earth's system and we're on our own.

The book ends with Humanity swinging into a full time war footing alongside the good aliens instead of under their boot.

My Thoughts:

This was everything I was afraid Red Rising was going to be. (RR turned into a good, fun book thankfully). Imagine that the Millennials now run the world and aliens invade.

I just kept shaking my head in disgust at what was being written. This was deliberately Young Adult (but with a boatload of profanity) in tone but even still, the whole mindset of the characters were so “today” that it hurt. I was thinking, Robert Heinlein wrote a lot of juvenile books with young protaganists but they were still competent human beings. These kids in this book? Bunch of special snowflakes. I mean, the main character punches a girl while wearing power armor because she steps between him and another guy who hate each other. I don't care what anyone says, unless your life is in danger, you don't hit women, period. A man is so much physically stronger and as such needs to keep himself under control. The profanity level is also another indicator of just how out of control these characters are. If you as an author are going to write simplified SF, then that type of language has no place in it. These weren't military recruits swearing because that was the mythos but because they were selfish, stupid kids who couldn't control themselves for 1 minute.

Then the whole “Peaceful Protest” thing. This assumes that the people/aliens you are protesting against actually care about what you think. Once again, it is a completely modern YA idea that everybody cares about ME because I'm so special, blah, blah, blah. I realize that Earth was completely bent over by the aliens and that millions died in the occupation, but my goodness, where is the Underground military? You'd think they'd have their young people infiltrate the alien/human army and learn about the aliens and their weaponry, etc. But nooooooooo.

The final issue I had was how much Devlin simply “changes”. He's a spoiled kid at the beginning and now is some sort of leader in the new army at the end. He goes through a LOT during the bad aliens attack and in warning the Earth has chances to really grow up, but it wasn't written in such a way that I believed he did grow up.

The idea for this book is great. Even when I was done reading, I was really tempted to keep on going with the series. ( Reading Over The Shoulder reviewed this last year but never reviewed the later books. Considering they haven't posted since September, I'm also wondering if they're just done with blogging.) After writing the above though, I realized this is a book that simply contains too many things that rub me the wrong way.

Not recommended and I won't be reading any more by “Zachary Brown”, whoever that cowardly piece of excrement is. If you're going to use a fake name, don't bloody advertise that you're using a fake name and that you're actually a really good writer with awards under your belt. Especially if you're going to write such a sub-par piece of simplified puff.

★★☆☆½

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

The Vindication of Man (Count to the Eschaton Sequence #5) ★★★☆☆

Title: The Vindication of Man
Series: Count to the Eschaton Sequence #5
Author: John Wright
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 450
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Rania returns! And she is carrying new Monument coding from M3 that will bring peace to all of humanity in all its forms. Problem is, she's a false Rania and the coding will turn humanity into docile sheep who demand a ruling hand.

Montrose runs away and ends up fighting Blackie, again. They are forced to make peace as they want to go to M3 and find out what happened to the real Rania.

Blackie pulls a fast one and forces a duel, the apparent Final Duel, between them. Which they both want. However, Blackie has rigged the game and leaves Montrose in a dead ship with no energy while he continues on to M3 and Rania. The book ends with Montrose's intelligence shutting down to keep its coherence.

My Thoughts:

Unfortunately, this book was just plain boring. Wright delves deeply into philosophical and science fictional asides and the plot has barely advanced from the previous book.

By the halfway mark I could tell when it was safe to skip a page or two of SF-babble. When he does decide to actually plot, it is good. Montrose and Blackie are awesome characters, when they're actually DOING something. But my goodness there is so much talking about energy and various types of future technology that it became pointless. Nano-technology leads to pico-technology which leads to phenitol-technology which leads to fermo-technology which leads to poop-technology which leads to..., and on you go.

Thankfully, there is only 1 more book in this series and while I'm ok with reading it, I'm not “excited” to read it.

I follow Mr Wright on his blog, one of the extremely few authors I feel comfortable doing so. Once I'm done with this series he has a couple of others that I do plan on checking out.

★★★☆☆

Monday, November 19, 2018

The Road to the Tao Stronghold (Shaman King #8) ★★★☆½

Title: The Road to the Tao Stronghold
Series: Shaman King #8
Author: Hiroyuki Takei
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 192
Format: Digital Copy

Synopsis:

Yoh and Ren conclude their fight to a draw. The Great Spirit declares they both get to advance and Tao joins the group that has coalesced around Yoh. Now that the prelims are over, the real tournament will begin in a month.

Yoh is confronted by BoZ the Rocking Monks, who are acting as lackeys for someone named Hao. Ryu appears and saves Yoh and cuts their hearse in half. Ryu is also a contestant in the Shaman Fight and now a shaman in his own right.

Ren heads home to confront his father. Jun had already done so during Ren's fight with Yoh and the father Yuan, put her into his dungeons. Ren cuts through his father's forces only to be crushed by one blow by Yuan and put into the same place as his sister.

Bason, Ren's spirit cohort, escapes and begs Yoh and Co to come rescue Ren and Jun. Manta arranges transport and the gang all head to the ancestral home of the Tao's. Horohoro and Ryu tell the others to go on while they take care of Yuan Tao's special goon squad, a set of 5 suped up dead bodies, each a fusion of human and something else.

My Thoughts:

Ok, I felt cheated. While I figured out that Ren and Yoh would end up as friends, the “Great Spirit” declaring the draw as a win for both of them just felt like the manga-ka was taking the easy way out since he couldn't figure out a way to reconcile Ren's animosity with the need to make Ren and Yoh friends. Eh, whatever.

I find all the setup in this book pretty impressive. Yuan Tao is dang impressive, both physically (he “accidentally” crushes a panda bear he is petting) and psychically (not even Ren could have created the special hybrid creatures). Of course, it's all overshadowed by this “Hao” character, whoever he is.

I like the group dynamic. Horoho with his enthusiasm coupled with Ryu's humorous machismo works perfectly. I am really looking forward to their battle in the next book. Ren is going to make a great backbone to Yoh's laidback stoner approach to life.

★★★☆½

Friday, November 16, 2018

Galloway (Sacketts #14) ★★★☆½

Title: Galloway
Series: Sacketts #14
Author: Louis L'Amour
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Western
Pages: 152
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Flagan and Galloway Sackett are ambushed by renegade Indians and Flagan is captured. He makes an escape and heads naked and unarmed into the mountains. He has a runin with with some local tough and ends up being rescued by Galloway.

The brothers make it to town and decide that they want to settle down there. Unfortunately, the same local tough who gave Flagan a hard time is the son of the local cattle rustler who wants to settle down and rule the town. But when the Sacketts are in trouble, the whole gang comes piling in.

The Sacketts take out a sniper, beat the snot out of the cattle rustler and make a good place for themselves.

My Thoughts:

This was more about Flagan Sackett than Galloway. And really, Flagan already had his story in a previous book, The Skyliners. To add to my confusion, in that book, it ends up with Flagan seeming like he's all set to marry a girl named Judith and take over a ranch from her father. So how does this fit in? In many ways this was the same story as the Skyliners but almost presented as an alternate history version.

I enjoyed the story a lot and really wasn't thinking much about the above until I went through to my previous Sacketts reviews to write this one. I did some “indepth investigation” and apparently everyone else who has read this book has the same issues. Thinking about it, I'm wondering if Lamour had a scheduling deadline and needed to churn out a “story” quick with not even minimal work? I believe it was originally published in 1970 and it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case. Because its that or Lamour was going full on alzheimers and since he was still writing in the 90's, weeeeeeeeeellllll.....

So a good fun standalone story as long as you don't try to fit it into the overall Sacketts narrative.

★★★☆½

Previous Sacketts Reviews

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

The Old Curiosity Shop ★★★★☆

Title: The Old Curiosity Shop
Series: ----------
Author: Charles Dickens
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Classic
Pages: 632
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Little Nell's Grandfather runs a Curiosity Shop and everyone, including her older brother and a money lending dwarf, think he is rich as Croessus. Unfortunately, he's also a secret gambler and ends up spending every penny they have on gaming, trying to win big so Nell can live in luxury for the rest of her life.

The help, a young man by the name of Kit, is dismissed, the brother plots to marry Nell to his friend because he is still convinced the Grandfather is rich (just miserly) and the dwarf causes trouble because of his evil nature.

Nell and Grandfather take to the road and meet various characters, some good, some bad and are saved from privation and death by working at a little church in some tiny town. The Grandfather's younger brother returns from faraway parts, very well off and begins searching for his brother and Grand-niece.

The dwarf plots rot and ruin for everyone and Kit finds a kindly couple to work for and settles down pretty well. Everyone caroums off of each other and does the thing called life and at the end Nell dies, Kit marries happily, Nell's brother is killed in France by bad company and the dwarf drowns and his poor wife finally marries happily.

My Thoughts:

This felt like Dickens used Nell as the white ball in a game of billiards. It is the focus of each player but what it does is defined by how it interacts with all the other billiards. Nobody cares about the white ball very much. In the same way Nell 's importance to this story was more how she drove interactions with the other characters.

I liked all the various stories. They were great Dickens' stories but the ties that bound everything together felt a bit weak. I almost wished that there had been more of the Marchioness (another young girl who ends up marrying and helping reform another side character) and not so much Nell. Nell was not a strong person and as such didn't have the personality to drive this story forward.

Don't get me wrong, this was still a good, fun, interesting story. But it didn't have quite that “pop” that I found in some of my other reads by Dickens. Could also be that coming after the Pickwick Papers didn't do this any favors for me either.

Overall, I enjoyed this but didn't find much to say about it and nothing made me sit up and go “Awesomesauce”. Definitely on the lower end of the Dickens Ladder.

★★★★☆

Sentenced to Prism (2000 Review)

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Clash at Mata Cemetery (Shaman King #7) ★★★☆½

Title: Clash at Mata Cemetery
Series: Shaman King #7
Author: Hiroyuki Takei
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 192
Format: Digital Copy

Synopsis:

Yoh and Ren begin their fight and Ren comes out very strong. Yoh evades but eventually Ren gets serious and pulls out a second ghost that integrates with Bason. Yoh learns a couple of things as Ren rants and rants and the book ends with Ren about to unleash everything he has onto Yoh.

A couple of side vignettes break up the fight,thankfully. Ren's older sister Jun is talking to their father and begs him to release Ren from the course of becoming Shaman King. The Tao's have a history of violent bloodshed and it is killing Ren inside to particpate in such a family tradition. He is coming to hate all Life and should he become Shaman King, he plans on wiping out humanity in a global apocalypse.

My Thoughts:

We now fully move on to the Super Special Named Power Moves!!!! Oh my goodness. Eye rolling. Its fun as long as you read through it fast enough. One page spreads of physical manifestations of powering up don't quite have the same affect on me as they might on a teenage boy.

The one thing I really did enjoy about this volume was the almost continual references to Ren's pointy hair. During one of the powerup times I think Manta makes a comment like “Look! He's gotten even pointy'er!” It was a good light moment. I missed having Ryu involved, as he really brings the comedy.

Since this fight ends right in the middle, I'm diving into volume 8 right away. Hopefully that review will go up this week too.

★★★☆½

Monday, November 12, 2018

The Technician (Polity #12) ★★★★☆

Title: The Technician
Series: Polity #12
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 512
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

We the readers are returned to the world of Masada, introduced in the Agent Cormac books. Now that the Polity has “been invited in”, things are changing. One of the few surviving Proctors from the old regime was attacked by a hooder but not killed. This Hooder, known as the Technician, left something in the proctors head and the Polity wants to know what. The proctor goes on a crazy trip for about 20 years where he just sits as an invalid on a prison island until an AI decides that it has had enough. Things are orchestrated to start a chain of events to give the proctor back his memories and for the Polity to find out what was in his head.

The gabbleducks, the native life of Masada, are shown to be the devolved descendants of the space faring race the Atheter that went extinct millions of years ago. They commited race extinction after being exposed to Jain tech and left behind a machine whose sole job was to prevent them from ever regaining sapience again.

Now that the Polity has an Atheter AI, the gabbleducks and some unknown something inside the proctors head, all on the same planet, this machine awakens. There is a climactic showdown between it and the Technician and some top of the line Polity vessels. The proctor transfers his memories (or, the last living Atheter's) memories to a gabbleduck and the AI wakes up. The Atheter appear to be on the rise.

We are also introduced to Penny Royal, a black AI. It was split into 8 parts and the 8^th was excised, as it contained the psychotic bits. However, the AI Amistad kept that 8^th part for study and during all of this Penny Royal gets its hands on the 8^th part. It apparently destroys it.

My Thoughts:

I somehow messed up and read this before reading The Gabble and Other Stories, which introduces how the Polity found the Atheter AI and does a bit of setup for this book. However, Asher does enough fill in for the reader that it isn't strictly necessary to have read that book first. It just would have been nicer.

Ok, first. Asher is in fine form with his bashing of religion and returning to the world of Masada allows him free reign to setup strawmen that he not only knocks down, but pretty much uses a flamethrower on. I've stated it before, but Asher's god is Scyenze and he's as vitriolic and mocking as any old high priest you could think of. That was pretty much why this stayed at a 4star rating like the last time I read it. If it wasn't for that, this would have been approaching 5star easily.

This was AWESOME. Splatterpunk space opera at its finest. The proctor gets his face eaten off by the Technician and then gets a prosthetic from the Polity medical team later. On his journey he CUTS HIS OWN FACE OFF AGAIN because he hates the Polity so much. I'm sorry, but how can you not love that?!?

The introduction of Penny Royal was good on this re-read. It is a side character and so when I read this the first time it didn't even register when Asher ended up writing a whole trilogy about it. Now that I've read that trilogy, seeing its introduction is pretty cool.

The human side was done just as well. The proctor, with his mix of literary attendants both for and against, makes for a great survival story. Between the planet and the wildlife and the Tidy Squad (a group that hunts down the former regime) and then the Polity forces, you get a full range of interaction.

Asher does good work on single novels. I won't call this a standalone because knowledge of the Polity and Masada is pretty vital to really understand it but I think someone “could” read this and figure out what they needed. I'm pretty pleased with this read through.

★★★★☆

Friday, November 09, 2018

A Rare Benedictine (Brother Cadfael #21) ★★★☆☆

Title: A Rare Benedictine
Series: Brother Cadfael #21
Author: Ellis Peters
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Medieval Mystery
Pages: 130
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

3 short stories. One about how Cadfael chose to become a monk and then 2 that were referenced in other books but never fleshed out.

My Thoughts:

Apparently, the previous book, Brother Cadfael's Penance, was the “real” final book in the series. I kind of wish I had known that going in to this book so I wasn't constantly looking for a series wrapup.

This was just a series of short stories about Cadfael. Beyond the first one where we find out just how Cadfael becomes a monk, the other stories felt extremely familiar, almost like re-treads. Nothing bad but nothing really good either. Decent reads is what I'd qualify it as.

I felt very “whatever” at the end of the book and am glad I'm done with Cadfael. Between this and the bomb that P.D. James turned out to be, I think I'm done with any sort of “mystery” genre or sub-genre for quite some time.

★★★☆☆

Previous Brother Cadfael Reviews