Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 71
March 26, 2021
March to Other Worlds Day 26 Time Travelin??? Gunslingers by Philip James
Day 26 Time Travelin’ Gunslingers by Philip James
Time travel has always been an important part of science fiction and Philip James does a good job with it. In fact, he does a good job with everything in this novel. I picked up the book because I liked the idea of a western lawman suddenly finding himself facing down dinosaurs—and I got that—but I also found a fairly sophisticated plot involving an obsessed wizard, reincarnation, and the intense power of love.
At its heart, this is a novel about a rivalry between two men—US Marshal Dare Shine and outlaw Race Brody. They both wanted the same woman once upon a time and while Dare ended up winning her heart, Brody never lost his torch for her. By unfortunate coincidence, this woman is also the object of obsession of a millennium old wizard who is suffering under a curse which prevents him from directly interacting with people. He’s watched the woman live her life dozens of times and is determined to find a way to have her. So, he’s developed a fairly complex plan involving portals that move people through space and time and tries to manipulate Dare and Race into unwittingly giving him what he wants.
It’s a very good plot made even more interesting by Dare and Race’s reactions to showing up in such disparate places as modern day Las Vegas, a battlefield in World War I, and the Jurassic Era. There’s plenty of action to keep things hopping, but the center of the tale keeps coming back to Dare and Race’s interest in the same woman—who suddenly exists in multiple incarnations.
March 25, 2021
March to Other Worlds Day 25: The Valens Legacy by Jan Stryvant
Day 25: The Valens Legacy by Jan Stryvant
As the March to Other Worlds enters its final week this year, I want to turn our attention back into the realm of urban fantasy and The Valens Legacy. At its heart, The Valens Legacy is about a poor college student who discovers rather painfully that his dead father was a powerful enchanter and that wizards and lycanthropes are real. Suddenly transformed into a werelion, Sean must uncover the secret work that got his father killed or face a similar fate. But his father wasn’t just an enchanter, he was a revolutionary trying to figure out how to end the enslavement of lycanthropes by wizards and Sean finds that he must pick up both his father’s life work as both a crusade and a necessity for survival.
These books are a lot of fun. Their plots are decently well thought out and there is plenty of action. It takes a few books, but the magical system finally begins to make enough sense to carry the series, and if at times it seems as if Sean became werelion just so that Stryvant could “justify” him sleeping with a large number of women who all marry him and never suffer a moment of jealousy toward each other, the plot is generally strong enough to push us past these moments.
Unfortunately, that isn’t the only reason Sean became a werelion. Lions are the gods of the lycanthrope community and Sean is almost a messiah for them, taking on the role of liberator. The storyline is great, but it involves a very large number and type of lycanthropes filling the pages of the story and it slowly dawned on me that all of the lycanthropes felt exactly the same. In fact, become a werecreature starts to feel more like putting on a shirt than changing painfully into a beast whenever the full moon is out or a character’s emotions get the best of them. Great urban fantasies have humans cursed with lycanthropy struggle with their beasts. They aren’t truly human anymore. And that struggle is an important part of the genre that is totally lacking in this series and it annoys me on some level each time I read one of the 17 volumes. It’s not a series breaker, but I do think it keeps the books from becoming one of the great urban fantasy series. That’s a real shame because Stryvant has some very good ideas that he plays within in these pages.
March 24, 2021
March to Other Worlds Day 24: I, Cunningham by Benoit Goudreault-Emond
Day 24: I, Cunningham by Benoit Goudreault-Emond
Gordon Cunningham died in a climbing accident in the twenty-second century, so he’s quite surprised to wake up five hundred years later in a robot body in a struggling colony in a distant solar system—only struggling is far too kind a word to describe the problems Gordon finds. The station AI and the station government are engaged in a sort of cold war with each other. At least two factions of the station population hate each other’s guts. There are intense frictions between basic humans and a genetically modified group. Oh, and the colony on the planet doesn’t get along with the station either. And that’s before you get into the rebels, religious cults, and illegal settlements that make Gordon’s new life even more complicated—because each faction wants to manipulate him into helping to bring about their personal vision of the perfect future for the colony. And if that isn’t bad enough, if Gordon can’t figure out what’s really going on, human life may die out in this future colony.
This is an impressive first novel with a couple of nicely interwoven mysteries fueling the action, but don’t stop when you finish the story. There’s a very nice afterword in which Goudreault-Emond discusses the influences that led him to write the book. It’s enjoyable all around.
March 23, 2021
March to Other Worlds Day 23: A Gathering of Heroes by Paul Edwin Zimmer
Day 23: A Gathering of Heroes by Paul Edwin Zimmer
As we approach the final week of the March, we return to classic fantasy—but classic fantasy with a definite twist as I doubt there is any other novel truly like A Gathering of Heroes. The plot revolves around a group of heroes called together to defend a critical fortress against an army made of evil creatures. The heroes are mostly from a highlands-style culture. Each is known for his great deeds, jealous of his reputation, and caught up in a web of politics that makes it very hard for the good guys to stay united to try and save the day.
The story is told from the point of view of an outsider—Istvan the Archer, perhaps the greatest swordsman currently alive. He’s very different than the highlanders in that he comes from a culture much more akin to the Italian City States and he is the commander of a mercenary company (not with him for this adventure) which means that he is used to fighting a more orderly and disciplined war than these highlanders do. The reader gets to learn about the situation even as Istvan does.
And then there are the heroes among the bad guys—notable villains who are every bit as talented and fearsome as the heroes defending the fortress. And that’s really what makes this novel work so well—watching the heroes among the bad guys face off against those among the good guys and often win the day (which is obviously bad for the forces of good). It’s a remarkable novel with many memorable scenes and an ending that will test the metal of even the bravest hero.
March 22, 2021
March to Other Worlds Day 22: Goldenshield by J. R. Andrews
Day 22: Goldenshield by J.R. Andrews
For Day 22 we are coming back to the growing body of LitRPG novels and the book I think breaks the LitRPG mold. The heroes aren’t playing a game. Gerald is a deputy sheriff responding to a disturbance in a store when he encounters a strange old man who hits him and his friend with a staff. Both young men then wake up elsewhere—a world that is similar to their gaming universe with a few small but important differences. Gerald’s friend, Zeke, is excited by the new world, but Gerald just wants to get back home. He doesn’t think that things in the “game” universe are important and he certainly doesn’t want to take any responsibility for what is happening around them.
As Gerald fights against accepting his new reality, he and Zeke learn they aren’t the only earth-people trapped here in the game-verse. And they learn that one really important game function doesn’t work in this universe. There is no resurrection or respawning. This solidifies Gerald’s commitment to get back to reality, but unfortunately for him there are lots of more immediate problems in his way—local bandits, an invading army, and an usurper king.
J. R. Andrews has put together a very nice story here with lots of action, strong worldbuilding, and credible character growth. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to the sequel.
March 21, 2021
March to Other Worlds Day 21: The Prison Stone by J.R. Mabry and Mickey Asteriou
Day 21: The Prison Stone by J. R. Mabry and Mickey Asteriou
Mabry and Asteriou’s series has one of the most unique settings I have ever encountered in fantasy literature. It’s a galaxy worth of worlds—each with their dwarves and elves and humans—but despite the essentially medieval level technology they are reached by dwarven built spaceships. I suspect that it is magic powering those ships, but they are spaceships nonetheless and that makes for a very distinctive mix of high tech and low tech interactions that gives this series a wonderful flavor.
The plot revolves around a totally evil big bad guy who destroyed entire worlds a millennium earlier before the good guys managed to trap him in the prison stone. That’s just long enough ago that even the long-lived dwarves think of these events as stories rather than history (many elves actually remember the big bad) so when the stone is rediscovered (and one does wonder how you lose something that important) it isn’t given the proper respect it deserves. In a decision that must go down as one of the worst ever made in all of fantasy literature, a dwarf king decides to transport the stone by humble courier instead of by armed battalion. This being an epic fantasy series, no one will be surprised when that decision goes bad and the fate of worlds is once again endangered.
There are a lot of great characters in this story but none so endearing as Ellis, the haffolk. I admit I initially rolled my eyes when I saw the race. Hobbits or halflings are a staple of fantasy literature—gentle, inoffensive, and often loved by all. But here again, Mabry and Asteriou have taken their own route. The haffolk are still basically gentle, but they are not a race. They are instead mules—the infertile product of a dwarf and human mating who are despised by just about everyone—and it quickly becomes apparent that that is going to have major implications for the development of this story.
This is a great beginning to an intriguing fantasy series.
March 20, 2021
March to Other Worlds Day 20: Chronicle of Dragon by Craig Halloran
Day 20 Chronicle of Dragon by Craig Halloran
The Hero, the Sword, and the Dragon is the first book in a fantasy series by the author of the superb Supernatural Bounty Hunter series (which I spotlighted in Occultober 2020). While it’s my understanding that dragons are becoming increasingly common figures in urban fantasy romances, in classical fantasy they are usually the bad guys, so I was interested in seeing how Halloran would handle building a series around one.
First up, the dragon of the title is the hero—not the anti-hero—and he’s not quite a dragon yet. He’s descended from one, but whatever makes dragons grow their scales hasn’t happened to our hero yet. He’s stronger and faster and hardier than normal humans, but he’s not a fire-breathing lizard yet or even close to becoming one.
The second interesting twist that Halloran has put on the series is that classic fantasy activity—heroes slaying monsters and bad guys—threatens to get our hero into trouble. Blood lust is bad for dragons—although we’re not told why at the beginning of the book. This means that our hero has to find a non-hack-and-slash way of winning the day—or else. Now before you start thinking of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (“Violence is not the answer!”), let me assure you that there is a ton of action in this opening book. It’s just that there is also a ton of consequence that is clearly going to fuel the entire series. I’m anxious to see where it takes him.
March 19, 2021
March to Other Worlds Day 16: Gaunt's Ghosts by Dan Abnett
Day 16 Gaunt’s Ghosts by Dan Abnett
In 2002, I was looking for a new military sf series and discovered Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. I had never played any of the Warhammer roleplaying games, but I had bought the miniatures and many of the Warhammer fantasy supplements for use in other games. Looking back, it seems to me that the series didn’t really take off until book three, Necropolis, when it became one of my favorites and encouraged me to read a lot of other books in both the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer universes.
Warhammer 40,000 is a bleak place to live. What I’m about to describe comes from my impressions after reading dozens of books set in the universe. It appears to me that when humanity discovered faster-than-light travel, they inadvertently exposed themselves to the mutating and corrupting forces of chaos which existed in the warp. This force began to drive people insane and it spread among humanity as a sort of contagion. It activated psychic powers in many people and triggered a civil strife that seems to have essentially overthrown what we would think of as a scientific age.
Civilization survived by moving into a state of permanent warfare against the forces of chaos and by rejecting the advanced science that had led them to discover the corruption. Yet, they needed the things that science produced, so science was turned into a religion and scientific knowledge was turned into a catechism of secret knowledge guarded by various guilds. A political officer class, called commissars, was created to guard against the corruption of chaos and cowardice in the ranks and for tens of thousands of years the war has continued.
Gaunt’s Ghosts occurs within a multi-decade effort to liberate the Sabaat Worlds, a cluster of nearly a hundred star systems, from Chaos. Excerpts from historical chronicles that start each book help us to understand the context of the current fight and make it clear how important the crusade was and of the special role that Gaunt’s Ghosts played in winning it.
The series is packed with great military action, superb characters, and men and women who find it within themselves to soldier on when there is no hope that they will ever be ultimately victorious. The Ghosts are “ghosts” because their home world was destroyed before the series began. They are the “First and Only” regiment that will ever be raised from the planet Tanith to serve the Emperor. If you’re looking for a good military sf series that focuses on the infantry, you should give this one a try.
March to Other Worlds Day 17: The Dispatcher by John Scalzi
Day 17 The Dispatcher by John Scalzi
Science fiction is at its best when it makes you think and John Scalzi’s, The Dispatcher, will make your brain work overtime. In the future, the bodies of people who are murdered disappear from the crime scene and reappear—fully alive—in their homes. This outstanding novella explores the implications of this bizarre new fact of life.
One of those implications is the development of a new profession. Dispatchers are government licensed persons whose job it is to kill individuals just before they would die a “natural” death so that they have a second shot at living. So dispatchers are now required by insurance companies to be present in many surgeries in case things go wrong. If the patient dies on the operating table they are dead, but if the dispatcher kills them a few moments earlier they disappear and wake up at home with their body in a state before the surgery began. Similarly, in a car accident. If a dispatcher happens to be nearby you can instantly recover without your injuries.
These are examples of benign legitimate efforts to take advantage of this new reality, but Scalzi also digs into the dark side—the many ways in which criminals and other people can take advantage of the new situation. Much of this is very troubling, but totally credible given the new rules of reality. It’s a fascinating, thought-provoking, series.
March to Other Worlds Day 18: Spellmonger by Terry Mancour
Day 18 Spellmonger by Terry Mancour
Spellmonger is a great fantasy novel set in a very complex world of magic at a medieval level technology. Armies have learned to incorporate mages into their military units. Our hero, Minalan, is a veteran of these magical wars who, at the ancient age of twenty-five-ish has decided to retire from the army and set up shop as a village spellmonger, selling his skills to the locals. He thought he was setting himself up for a simple life without a lot of stress. Then a major goblin invasion begins and his life is turned upside down as the world he knows may well be coming to an end.
There is a tremendous amount to like about this book. The world has been carefully developed with a lot of depth and breadth. The main character is very likeable as are many of the supporting cast. The bad guys are happily irritating. The battles are good. The magical system is interesting. The overall threat keeps developing into a more and more apocalyptic peril and I didn’t see any way for them to ultimately escape – and since Minalan is narrating the novel, it was clear that he had to survive.
On the downside, each chapter includes a flashback to show how Minalan got to where he is and this structure got old fast. It also pretty much precluded any real character growth occurring in the novel. I think it would have been far wiser for Mancour to tell the story in much more chronological fashion and let us watch Minalan become the man he is at the beginning of the story. I also think that this would have added significant drama to the tale.
