Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 73

March to Other Worlds Day 6: Fierce Girls at War by Mike Adams

Day 6 Fierce Girls at War by Mike Adams

Marching to Other Worlds naturally brings military-themed fiction to mind and Mike Adams’ Fierce Girls at War is one of the best military SF series I’ve ever read. It holds its own with top series like David Weber’s Honor Harrington and John Ringo’s Troy Rising. Stylistically, it’s a mix of serious infantry action and behind the behind the scenes know how of a W.E.B. Griffin novel. The result is an often gritty, always fascinating, exploration of earth’s first colony and its run in with a peculiar alien species called the Rift.

 

In addition to the tight military action, politics plays a very important role in this series, but not the traditional high level presidential-style politics. In the Earth of the future, terrorism continues to be a significant problem and much of the anger of the terrorists is focused on the growing interstellar economy. Adams deftly uses this movement not only to establish the foundation of his series, but to add plausible tension at every level of the interstellar enterprise.

 

Another of the strengths of the series is the multiple points of views from which the reader gets to explore Earth’s first interstellar colony. Not only are their multiple POVs in the colony of New Hope, but Adams gets the reader into the nitty-gritty of life on a starship as the great ships transit the vastness of space. There is also usually a couple of chapters in each book grounded in the cast members still located on earth.

 

The cast is the greatest strength of the novel. Adams opens the series by introducing three generations of the O’Brien family. The matriarch, Kelly O’Brien, is in charge of firearms training for the NYC Police Department. Her children are almost preternaturally gifted marksmen, the beneficiaries of a training technique invented by their deceased father. Rick O’Brien and Sergeant Molly Bennett quickly run afoul of the Hassan Gul terrorist organization by killing several of the chief terrorist’s sons and are eventually forced to leave the planet to keep from being assassinated. From this very exciting beginning the whole series unfolds.

 

At New Hope Colony, Rick and Molly carve out a place of influence for themselves in the colonial logistics office while the alien Rift begin taking covert steps to reclaim the planet they feel the humans have stolen from them. The Rift are an advanced, economically focused, alien species with very little experience of war. They do their fighting with primitive mercenaries who are physically durable and are indiscriminate carnivores. Over the early books of the series, the reader watches the colony and an approaching starship begin to pick up hints that something is wrong, but not quite putting the facts together before the invasion begins in earnest.

 

From this moment forward, the series moves into overdrive, as the invasion advances, the colony struggles to respond, and Rick and Molly, together with a group of some fifty high school girls, find themselves marooned in the dangerous back country of New Hope Colony, hundreds of miles from civilization and unable to contact the colonial authorities for help. With their communications satellites rendered inoperative, the colony can’t even communicate with the starships slowly making their way into system. The already high tension continues to ratchet up as the war continues.

 

If you’re looking for a well-thought-out military sf series with plenty of action, you should take a look at Fierce Girls at War.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 5: Cade Reardon Thrillers by J.K. Franks

Day 5 State of Chaos and the Midnight Zone by J.K. Franks

On the fifth day of the March to Other Worlds we’re going to turn to a science fiction world not too distant from our own earth and the Cade Reardon thrillers of J.K. Franks. At least, I hope they’re science fiction because truth-to-tell, they’re so well written and researched that they feel like they could be happening right now.

 

The series starts with everything a good thriller needs and just gets better from there. Franks gives us a war between two rival AIs, first contact with an alien species, and an insidious plot to create a coup within the U.S. government which will have the unavoidable side effect of killing many millions of people. And if that isn’t enough, the second novel brings Cthulhu into the mix. I mean, seriously, how does it get better than that? But it does because, unfair as it seems to other authors out there, in addition to building a fabulous totally credible world, Franks also crafts absolutely wonderful characters with all the strengths and flaws, ideals and insecurities, and basic human frailties of real people.

 

Oh, and in case you couldn’t tell, it’s also an amazing page turner, so make sure you carve out a block of time before you start it because you’re not going to want to put it down.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 4 Legionnaire by Gilbert M. Stack

Day 4 Legionnaire by Gilbert M. Stack

For Day 4 of the March to Other Worlds we’re going to turn to the fantasy series that inspired the original March back in 2020, my very own, Legionnaire. The series focuses on Patrician Marcus Venandus, a loyal and solid son of the powerful Republic of Aquila, and follows his efforts to protect the homeland he loves far better than it loves him. Aquila takes its inspiration from Rome in the two generations preceding the birth of the empire, but there is magic in this world and the legions have had to incorporate it to maintain their edge in these very dangerous times.

 

Most of the series occurs in The Jeweled Hills, border lands north of the Republic which have attracted the interest of the dreaded Qing Empire. With Aquila distracted by its internal political problems, Marcus finds himself having to build a defense of these important territories practically by himself. Yet the Jeweled Hills doesn’t recognize the external threat of the Qing either. It is too deeply riven by its own internal disputes as its ruling class fights among itself and its subject peoples seethe with rebellion.

 

If you enjoy solid military action built on rational political problems that intelligently result from the plots and biases of believable people and cultures, you’re going to love this series which just launched its twelfth book (plus a prequel novel about Marcus’ first command).

 

March to Other Worlds Day 3: The Heisenberg Corollary by C.H. Duryea

Day 3 The Heisenberg Corollary by C. H. Duryea

For Day 3 of the March to Other Worlds, I’m going to take you on a light-hearted romp through the multiverse with author C.H. Duryea. The book is packed with action and plenty of movie and roleplaying game references and feels like hard sf without actually having to get bogged down in the math and incomprehensible theories. In short, The Heisenberg Corollary is an amazingly fun sf adventure which finds a simple solution to permitting the cast of heroes to discover just about anything you can imagine in the multiverse.

 

The plot revolves around Zeke Travers and his fellow scientists who accidentally trigger an interdimensional chase when they test out Zeke’s life’s work—a device that permits travel to other universes. The problem—something follows the device back to earth and begins ripping through the multiverse in its efforts to catch Zeke and his device. Most of the rest of the novel is built around Zeke and his friends’ attempts to first escape and then stop the aliens who are pursuing them. The plot gets rather fanciful as it proceeds, but the fun never lets up and the pace never slackens.

 

Narrator Will Hahn pulled out all the stops with this one. In addition to rip-roaring, highly distinctive voices for the entire cast, he threw in enough sound effects to make this nearly a fully dramatized experience. Not enough narrators are able to bring that higher level of stagecraft to a novel, and not many authors have created an experience that lends itself so well to such dramatic audio creations.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 2: The Valley of Despair by Chris L. Adams

Day 2 The Valley of Despair by Chris L. Adams

For the second day of the March to Other Worlds we turn to author and painter, Chris L. Adams. Adams is an expert on the pulp era of science fiction and you can see the influence of those masters in his writings. The Valley of Despair would fit well in a collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs stories. It only takes one short chapter to convince you you’re in for a thrill ride.

 

German WWI pilot Erik von Mendelsohn has crashed in the jungle and is trying to survive a group of apes that have taken the wrong kind of interest in him. Desperate to escape, he reaches the edge of the jungle near a high cliff face and the apes who are in hot pursuit…refuse to follow him past the tree line. It’s a simple idea very subtly conveyed in the story, but it set all the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. These totally aggressive and fearsome animals won’t follow our hero as he attempts to climb the cliff face to get away from them. It’s difficult not to ask yourself—what are the apes afraid of? What the heck is Erik getting himself into? And the tension just keeps ratcheting higher from this point forward.

 

Erik is a well thought out character—he’s smart, a bit impulsive, and a little too curious for his own good. The supporting cast is equally interesting. I don’t want to give away the plot, but the people Erik finds and gets into trouble with are equally brave and capable—and the problem they have to confront is better thought out than a lot of “lost world” adventure-style stories I’ve encountered. In short if you want a fast-paced well-developed adventure story with great characters, you should give Valley of Despair a try.

 

 

March to Other Worlds Day 1: Gotrek and Felix by William King and Nathan Long

Day 1 Gotrek and Felix by William King and Nathan Long

Welcome to the March to Other Worlds 2021. To start us off I’ve chosen a fantasy series from the Black Library—which chronicles stories based in the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 gaming universe. I’ve been rereading these books while housebound during the COVID-19 pandemic and think they’re worth bringing to people’s attention.

 

So for the first day of the March, I’ve chosen a pair of heroes who walk back and forth across their world seeking adventure…

 

Gotrek and Felix are a legendary fantasy duo who could take their place beside Conan the Barbarian as they tackle the greatest monsters of the Warhammer universe. Gotrek is a dwarf who committed a crime so grievous that he was driven to swear an oath to seek his doom by seeking out the most horrible monsters and (hopefully) dying in battle against it. Felix is the poor human poet who made the mistake of swearing a drunken oath to follow Gotrek and chronicle his doom. There are no shortage of horrific monsters to fight in the Warhammer universe and each book’s title foreshadows the major trial of the novel—Trollslayer, Dragonslayer, Daemonslayer, and so forth.

 

These are modern day sword and sorcery novels that would have fit well in the pulp era. You can read my reviews of the series here: https://www.gilbertstack.com/warhammer

 

Review: Three Hour Tour by L.P. Snyder

Three Hour Tour by L.P. Snyder

I got this book for one simple reason—it really amused me to think of someone writing a darker take on Gilligan’s Island. And this is darker! Everyone does not come together in a happy spirit of cooperation to make life a paradise on the isolated island. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

 

Three Hour Tour starts slow as the fairly large cast is introduced, but then picks up speed and charges away toward the last page once Snyder finally reaches the spot where he gets to turn his tourists into castaways. Once on the island, things fall apart quickly. The “important man” (think Thurston Hall with bodyguards and even less morals) takes over in what initially appears to be a reasonably democratic way but quickly becomes rule by force when people begin to disagree with him.

 

Our hero is something of a loner and slips away early on to explore the island and avoid the “bad guy”. To do this, he leaves his friends behind, but he doesn’t forget them. The island is beautifully drawn with waterfalls, caves, a lookout peak, and other exciting and totally believable features. There’s also two surprises on the island which leads to this reading a lot more like Treasure Island than Lord of the Flies.

 

The tension in the book boils down to a conflict between Dee (our hero) and the bad guy and his guards. Dee is not a violent sort of person, so his efforts are largely devoted to helping people who want to escape the bad guy do so, while trying to figure out how to help those who choose to stay behind.

 

Then the pirates arrive—yes, colorful pirates—and things turn much darker and more violent. By this point, Dee and his friends have also figured out that they must be very far off the normal sea lanes so these pirates also might represent their only hope of escape. The tension here is very real and the solution works pretty well.

 

My biggest problem in the book is with the circumstances leading to our castaways being stranded on the island. Snyder spends a lot of time building up a connection between the big bad guy and the captain of the cruise ship. I believed there to be some sort of corrupt deal there. This feeling was reinforced when the ship acts strange coming out of port and the crew starts lying to the passengers. Then there are mechanical difficulties which Dee convincingly points out can’t be what the passengers are being told they are. Then the passengers are put on small boats to be moved to another vessel (the three-hour tour of the title) where there are yet more mechanical problems which open them up to a rogue wave and storm. Snyder never explains what was really going on with the cruise ship and for me it was a major disappointment in the story. If there wasn’t something nefarious happening, he should have stuck with a simple, believable, mechanical problem. Since he didn’t do that, I feel like we were never given the full story.

 

 

Review: Survive by Richard Dee

Survive by Richard Dee

Part of the genius of Richard Dee is that you’re never really certain what tale he is setting out to tell you. On the surface this is an amazing story of the physical survival of a cameraman and his wife who have the misfortune to sign on to work for a megalomaniac news personality whose arrogance and paranoia endangers his entire crew. And let’s be clear, that story is outstanding and well worth the price of the novel. But it’s not the only story, and therein lies Dee’s brilliance. Because simultaneous to telling us of the disastrous expedition, Dee is also telling the tale of how the survivors attempted to tell people what happened to them—and they find that there are a great many people who will stop at nothing to keep the truth from getting out. Whether he’s depicting a classic struggle for survival on an unexplored planet or the intrigues of supposedly civilized society on earth, Richard Dee has written another intense adventure that will grip you with both hands and not let go until you finish.

 

Review: Legend by David Gemmell

Legend by David Gemmell

David Gemmell, may he rest in peace, was one of the great fantasy writers of our time and this is the book that launched his career. Gemmell had been diagnosed with cancer and says that he started this book to occupy his mind while he was in treatment. It’s unlike anything in the genre that I had ever read. A sixty-year-old legendary warrior comes out of a very short retirement to fight in one last helpless cause to try and save the Drenai people. Druss has been in every major battle for the past forty years, but none of the lost causes he turned around ever looked as bad as this one.

 

Gemmell gets inside the skull of his heroes, none of whom—not even Druss—are without serious flaws. This book will tap every emotion you have. There’s plenty of excitement, but there’s also outrage, and respect, and trepidation, and grief, and wonder, and horror as men and women struggle to find it in themselves to hold on one more hour so that millions of people they will never know have a chance to go on living.

 

This would be a remarkable novel for any writer to produce—but as a first novel it will just knock your socks off. And it’s only Gemmell’s first novel. He fought the cancer off long enough to give us at least a score more books and make a legend of his very own.

 

Review: The Mote in Andrea's Eye by David Niall Wilson

The Mote in Andrea’s Eye by David Niall Wilson

Andrea has been obsessed with hurricanes since her father was killed in one while trying to help a neighbor. Where most people would express their obsession by frantically tracking storms on the news, and a few would go on to become full-fledged meteorologists, Andrea takes it a step further. She’d determined to figure out how to end hurricanes—to de-fang them, so to speak, and she’s got the brains that just might be able to find a way to do it.

 

The novel tracks her through decades, struggling to discover ways to steal the energy out of hurricanes and turn them into normal storms. In the course of her work, an unexplained event adds dramatically to the personal cost. Her husband, and the entire storm he’s flying through, abruptly disappear in the Devil’s Triangle. It’s bizarrely unexplained, but only serves to make Andrea push harder. Decades later she’s still at it when her husband—and the storm—abruptly reappear threatening the U.S. coast without warning.

 

This novel is powerfully built to tap your emotions and is truly exciting as Andrea and her team struggle to save lives. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. The way that Andrea’s husband—decades out of time—was handled is sweet and unexpected. But it needs to be said that the big question—why that storm disappeared and reappeared and why her husband returns in the state he and his plane are in is never explained—although there is a hint when radio signals from a decades-lost ship are momentarily heard from the heart of the Devil’s Triangle.