Warren Rochelle's Blog, page 13

Some Thoughts on Finders, by Melissa Scott

a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4..." style="float: left; padding-right: 20px">Finders by Melissa Scott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Ancestors--who can only be described as gods--lived in great sky palaces--until finally, after almost losing the AI Wars, they fell, or were abandoned. Then, the Sucessors, Now, the humans, scattered on dozens of worlds, some of whom make it their business to salvage the ruins of the great ones, seeking Ancestor artifacts, treasures, lost technological wonders, powerful medicines. Three such salvors are Dai, Ashe, and Cassilde, reunited after the Trouble. While investigating what seems to a rich Claim, they find one of the legendary Ancestor Gifts.

Cassilde's pernicious disease is cured. She has never felt so good before--which doesn't do how she feels justice. But others hear it, and complications ensue--complications that could lead to the return of the banished AIs who almost destroyed everything.

Another amazing tour de force of world-building by Melissa Scott--detailed, rich, a universe with a history that is active in the present. Dai, Ashe, and Cassilde's triad relationship is the heart of this tale. At times, I got a little lost in the technological details--but they are needed, I think. The mythic underpinning--Pandora, Prometheus, the Titans--only adds to the richness of this adventure.

Well done, recommended.



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Interviewed by Meaww.com

I was interviewed by Pooja for meaww.com about adapting books to television:

https://meaww.com/literary-book-adapt...

Visiited Andrew Q. Gordon's Blog

Paid a visit to Andrew Q. Gordon's Blog and shared some thoughts on writing. Check it out!

http://www.andrewqgordon.com/2019/05/...

A Short Review of Five Planes: The Rule of Five Season 1, by Melissa Scott and Don Sakers

Five Planes: The Rule of Five Season 1 by Melissa Scott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I want to read the next installment! Pirates. Judges and a judiciary who can call in military support. Really weird physics. Refugees. A pocket universe with five dimensional planes with travel between. Missing persons. Conspiracy and intrigue. A ghost ship. A thoroughly engaging cast of characters inhabiting intersecting well-constructed plot lines, so well constructed that the size of the cast isn't a problem, nor are the different, yet connected crises. World-building at its best.

Melissa Scott fans, take note. Don Sakers fan, likewise. Fans of space opera, start reading. Stay tuned, more is coming.



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A Short Review of Across the Great Lake, by Lee Zacharias

Across the Great Lake by Lee Zacharias

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I came across a review of this beautiful novel that described the novel as "haunted." Yes. Fern Halvorsen, the 85-year-old narrator is haunted by the past and "a childhood journey across Lake Michigan and the secret she has kept since that ill-fated voyage" (Goodreads). She is haunted by the mother who was dying when her father, Henrik Halvorsen took her on this trip in the frigid winter of 1936, on the ship he captained, the Manitou, a huge ship ferrying railroad cars across the lake.

Fern loved the shop, the journey: "It was a huge and powerful ship with a tall, handsome pilothouse and big smoking stacks, no place for a girl, though I loved it, I cannot tell you how much I loved it."
She befriends a stray cat and Alv, a young deckhand befriends her--and they, too, come to haunt her.

But even as she revels in the voyage and its freedom, there are warnings. When a ghost ship is seen, the crew knows danger is coming.

Now Fern, an old woman, remembers.

Beautifully written and painstakingly researched, Across the Great Lake is an experience that will come to haunt the reader. At least this haunting is a good thing.

Across the Great Lake has been named a 2019 Notable Michigan Book and a Finalist for the 2018 Foreword Indies Book of the Year in Literary Fiction.

Recommended.



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Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Ursula K. Le Guin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A book of last interviews, and the last one, THE last one, in the summer of 2017, before Le Guin's death in 2018: yes, please read,

As I write this, I am thinking this was one last time to listen in on the ruminations of one amazing and wonderful and creative mind, as she pondered questions about her work, her thoughts on the craft of writing, on her fictional universes, and I wish I could do so again.

Reading her work, studying her fiction, changed my life.

I am so lucky to have met Ursula K. Le Guin and told her just that.

Highly recommended.

Bonus: a footnote telling the reader that one last Earthsea story, "Firelight," was published in the Summer 2018 Paris Review, 6 months after Le Guin's death. David Streitfeld, the editor of The Last Interview, and the man who interviewed the last time, says "Firelight" is "a moving account of of Ged's dying, with Tenar by his side" (161). I can't wait to read it--and am thinking: her last published story, about the death of one her most famous and beloved characters, written close to her own death, published not long after: life, poetry, art, the story, farewell.



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Seven Summer Nights, by Harper Fox

Seven Summer Nights by Harper Fox

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Rufus Denby, archaeologist for the Royal Museum, is digging on Sabros, a tiny island in the Mediterranean and he has a flashback to the war, and attacks a colleague, and his career goes down in flames. Where to? He is sent to "investigate an ancient church in the sleepy village of Droyton Parva," and this is his "only means left to him of scraping a living" (back cover).

In 1946, shellshock, or what we might label PTSD, is barely recognized as legitimate, if at all. And that isn't enough, Rufus hides another secret: he is a homosexual in a homophobic culture. Just maybe, maybe, in this sleepy village, in a golden English summer on the South Downs, Rufus can somehow put his life back together.

Enter: the Reverend Archie Thorne, a man of a great heart, and has also been in "action as a motorcycle-riding army chaplain and is struggling to readjust to the little world around him." Sparks fly, long-suppressed desires surface, love....

Complications ensue: betrayal, dark, dark memories, rank bigotry that could leave to death, and magic (it all works!).... and how do Rufus and Archie manage a love affair.

Most satisfying.




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Cold Fusion, by Harper Fox

Cold Fusion by Harper Fox

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Once upon a time, there was a prince who lived alone in a small village by the sea in Scotland. He was not well but he kept working on his great project. All his energy went into his work, as he knew his time was limited. And he knew, as h e was different and many thought him strange, that it was best he was alone.

Then, a traveler came his way. The traveler had made a terrible mistake and people had died and now, no one wanted him around. He was on the "run from whole life" (back cover).

Neither the traveler or the prince knew what to do with each other. To the traveler's great surprise, he fell in love with this odd man. Others learned of the prince's work--and decided he and his work was too dangerous--cold fusion, an energy source that would change the world. And put Big Oil otu of business.

The two men were soon on the run.

Cold Fusion is a fairy tale. It is a love story between two "wildly mismatched" men. On one hand, there is Vivian, who is "brilliant, but completely unworldly," and autistic, and dying. On the other, Mallory, a former environmental activist, whose work has "cost the lives of his colleagues," and the survivor of an abusive childhood, and a poet. "[Attraction] springs up between them like fire" (back cover). Will they survive those who stop Viv? Viv's disease? That they are so different? Is there a fairy tale ending?

Harper Fox fans, take note. I enjoyed this novel very much.



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Kip's Monster, by Harper Fox

a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4..." style="float: left; padding-right: 20px">Kip's Monster by Harper Fox

My rating: 4 of 5 stars






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A Short Review of The Lost Christmas Gift, by Andrew Beckham

a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..." style="float: left; padding-right: 20px">The Lost Christmas Gift by Andrew Beckham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A package arrives at Christmas time, sent by a father to his son, sent by the father while he was away in Europe during the war, lost for decades. The son, now a man, with his own children, opens the "lost parcel meant for [him] as a boy" (7). The father had found the time to make a "small book recounting [their] trip... [their] adventure" at Christmas the year before. The father made the book to "remind [his son] of [their] together," with the hope the gift will "help [the boy] feel a little closer to [his father] this Christmas when [the father is] so far away} (8).

The tale that follows is a simple one of a journey to find a tree, that becomes a dangerous one when the father and son are lost in the snow. Told simply and with beautiful illustrations, the story becomes one of a miracle and redemption.

A sweet Christmas tale of faith and belief and love, that, as the dear friend who gave the book to me says, is "a beautiful book that gets at the wonder and mystery so much a part of this place, this life."

Highly recommended. If you liked The Polar Express, and the Griffin and Sabine stories, to name just two books that this one reminded me of, you will love this book.



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