Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 85

Review: Silver Bullet by J. M. Thomas

Silver Bullet by J M. Thomas

Most vampire stories written these days fall under either the urban fantasy or horror genres and take place in either the twentieth or twenty-first centuries. Thomas puts a nice twist on the genre by placing his story in the Old West and postulating that a war is going on between vampires trying to expand their numbers and lycanthropes striving to destroying them.

 

Pete is a lawman who finds himself turned, but not yet lost to the pure evil and bloodlust of full-on vampirism. He gets captured by a tribe of were-coyotes who give him a chance to prove that despite his new condition, he remains on the side of the angels. It’s a great way to introduce a new series, because Pete doesn’t know anything about the supernatural world he now inhabits and his painful lessons educate the reader as well.

 

Vampires prey on each other as much as people, running fight clubs in which they square off against each other as gladiators. Pete has to find a way to survive the club without completing his turn, while simultaneously figuring out a way to destroy the vampires abusing him. It’s a great first book to a promising new series.

 

I received this book free from Audiobook Boom in exchange for an honest review.

 

Review: A Witch Called Red by Sami Valentine

A Witch Called Red by Sami Valentine

Valentine has set up an interesting backdrop to this novel that was probably inspired by the vampire character, Angel, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Angel killed a gypsy, her father cursed him by restoring his soul so that he could feel the guilt of decades of his horrific actions. In A Witch Called Red, the man who restored the vampires’ souls publicized how to do it so that now, a significant percentage of vampires are “handicapped” with genuine human emotions. It’s a fascinating, and as far as I know unique, setting.

 

The witch of the title is an amnesiac who is found by a vampire hunter after apparently surviving a vampire attack. Discovering her past is a significant motivating factor for Red that is made more complicated by her strong resemblance to a woman many of the vampires in the story knew a century earlier. We don’t get total satisfaction here as the mystery of Red’s past is something clearly intended to be further explored in the next novel but many of these tantalizing clues captured my interest and made me eager to learn more.

 

The actual plot of this book is a murder mystery that quickly becomes enmeshed in complex vampire politics. I love well done politics and vampires with their centuries-long grudges really enrich a good political mystery. Valentine takes full advantage of these possibilities and it’s a major strength of the novel.

 

So this is a strong book with lots of actions and a good mystery forming its core, but I do have two complaints to register. First, the novel is at least twenty percent too long mostly because of endlessly chatty dialogue that didn’t do much to advance the plot. Second, there is a really unfortunate break with basic physics toward the end of the book—melting a bullet in flight doesn’t cause the molten metal to lose its forward momentum and drop straight to the ground. Other than these two things, A Witch Called Red, is a great opening to a new series and promises more excitement to come.

 

I received this book free from Voracious Readers Only in exchange for an honest review.

 

Review: Fid's Crusade by David Reiss

Fid’s Crusade by David Reiss

This book just landed on the list of my top ten superhero books of all time. Ever since the creation of Marvel’s Wolverine, it’s been popular to depict heroes who often cross the line. Then there are villains like Cat Woman who sometimes find themselves playing the role of hero. Fid’s Crusade is the story of how the world’s most notorious super villain finds himself putting it all on the line to save the world—which would be awesome in and of itself even if the novel didn’t give you one heck of a lot more.

 

First, let’s be clear, Fid is not a particularly sane human. When his younger brother dies because a so-called “hero” puts protecting his secret identify over saving a child’s life, Fid goes off the deep end and determines to prove how fundamentally selfish and unheroic most heroes are. So Fid sets out on a lifetime mission to expose to the public how unheroic their heroes truly are, and in doing so because one of the baddest of the bad. The villain no hero can beat—even when they manage to cut his arm off in the middle of a battle. He’s tough, he’s smart, and not a single one of the heroes or the media who love to cover them, have any idea what Fid is really all about.

 

Nor do they have any idea that he’s been changing over time—not losing his need to expose heroic hypocrisy, but evolving to understand that monstrous violence might not be the best way to obtain his ends. This sort of evolution is a tremendously difficult task for an author to take on—especially in a single novel—but Reiss handles it brilliantly. Can Fid change despite the heroes lined up against him? And can he save the world despite the best efforts of the men and women who have sworn to protect it? This is a wonderful novel. I can’t wait to read the next one.

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Review: The Noise of War by Vincent B. Davis

The Noise of War by Vincent B. Davis

The Noise of War is a very realistic portrayal of a dark time in Roman history when the Germanic Cimbri had just inflicted upon Rome one of the most significant defeats the Republic ever suffered—the loss of 90,000 legionnaires. Davis does an excellent job of portraying the fear this loss generates and the personal scorn that the survivors suffer for the loss. He also succeeds in creating a genuine sense of what makes the barbarians so distinctive.

 

It takes a long time to get to the battles in this novel and I wish I knew more about the accounts of the actual war because a couple of the “tricks” that are used didn’t feel credible to me. For example, if the legionnaires can stand on a hilltop looking down at barbarians relaxing in the river, you would think the barbarians could see them as well and might start scrambling to arm and armor themselves while Marius makes his speech. The cavalry trick also seemed unlikely to me, but the strange thing about reality is that sometimes it is the most unlikely tricks that win the day. The novel was obviously thoroughly researched, so on balance I tend to credit the author’s portrayal over my skepticism.

 

And that really is the great strength of this book. This novel is so well researched that it makes you feel like you are walking the streets of Rome 2100 years ago, and that really is an amazing accomplishment.

 

I received this book free from Audiobook Boom in exchange for an honest review.

 

 

Pre-Order Flood of War for 25% Off

There's just a little more than one day left to preorder Legionnaire 9 Flood of War for 25% off. Here's the blurb: 

Days of rain force sane armies to hunker down to wait for dry weather. Yet, no one in the Jeweled Hills would accuse Prefect Marcus Venandus of being sane. Not only has he united the bickering Qing, Gente and Gota in his Black Hat Legion, he rarely embraces conventional military tactics. With three days of drenching weather turning roads to mud, flooding creeks, and bogging down his enemies’ carts and wagons, Marcus seizes the initiative and leads one thousand of his Black Hats on their most daring campaign yet. Can he use the Flood of War to sink the treacherous Thegn of Granate? Or will the rains wash away any chance he has of winning this war?

Review: Nomad by Jamie Nash

Nomad by Jamie Nash

Nomad is a creepy horror story set on a spaceship far from earth. The heroine wakes in some sort of cryogenic chamber feeling like she’s suffocating while a man tries to break her out of the tube. She escapes into chaos with no idea where she is or who she is. The chamber where hundreds of these tubes are stored is blowing up and only the heroine and three people manage to get to relative safety—two of those three are dying from wounds they suffered getting out.

 

What follows is a rather involved mystery. Where are they? How did they get there? Who are they? And why is someone trying to kill them? This is a good mystery with a great science fiction solution, but it’s also an adventure tale. The physical threats are very real and no one can really be trusted. But be forewarned, the violence and suffering in this novel is extremely graphic and it was hard to listen to.

 

So if you like stories with a lot of tension and an excellent creep factor, you should give Nomad a try.

 

I received this book free from Audiobook Boom in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: Flying Mutant Zombie Rats by Kat de Falla

Flying Mutant Zombie Rats by Kat de Falla

Pea O’Neil and his middle schooler friends accidentally open a portal to another world while riding their BMX bikes at a local track. The result is an incursion by the flying mutant zombie rats of the title. The rats are not only hungry, they are infectious, and the boys take it on themselves to try and save Milwaukee from becoming zombie central. Fortunately, they have the assistance of an other-dimensional talking cat.

 

Let me say right up front that this is a fastmoving novel that is loads of fun. The characters are colorful and the plot hangs together well enough to keep the story pedaling furiously forward. So yes, it seems peculiar that a couple of dads would give their sons a crash course in fighting without asking pesky little questions like who do they plan to wage war against, but it all fits the good fun tone of the novel right up to the climatic ending.

 

If you like remembering the heroic fantasies you had when you were twelve, this is a great story. If you are twelve, this is the sort of tale that can inspire your own dreams. In short, there’s a lot of fun between these pages and I’d like to see what trouble these friends and their cat will get into next.

 

I received this book free from Audio Book Boom in exchange for an honest review.

 

Review: GEO by Kevin Miller

GEO by Kevin Miller

Earth’s new space elevator has hit a snag on its very first trip to orbit. The elevator is stuck 22,000 miles up and no one can figure out how to get it down—and that’s just the beginning of the planet’s problems. With the CEO of the company trapped in the elevator, his number two man is forced to bring in Clarence Ackerman to help them trouble shoot the problem and get the elevator moving again. One problem, Ackerman designed the space elevator and the CEO stole it from him. Motivation might be a problem here.

 

GEO is a tightly plotted short story about betrayal, pain and vengeance. It’s fast paced and totally enthralling. It works really well as a short story, but I have to admit that there are a lot of avenues for expansion that I’d like to see Kevin Miller incorporate into a full-length novel.

 

I received this story free from Voracious Readers Only in exchange for an honest review.

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March to Other Worlds Day 31: Winterhaven by Gilbert M. Stack

Day 31 Winterhaven by Gilbert M Stack

March has come and gone amazingly quickly and as I began with one of my fantasy series, I thought I’d end the journey with the other. Winterhaven has been a labor of love for me going back to my senior year in college. After about six years of tinkering with it, I finally wrote the first draft while I was researching my dissertation in England. That draft led to many more and more than twenty years later I finally finished it and wrote two sequels that have been my honor to share with all of you.

 

In its largest sense, Winterhaven is the story of the last outpost of the Ardenesse who rallied to the call of their God, Vapin, and left their world to wage The War of Night in their current land. They have had their share of victories, defeats and betrayals, but now, centuries later the descendants of those original men and women think that the great deeds of their world are confined to the long past Age of Heroes. In Winterhaven, they begin to find out that they are very wrong and if my heroes and heroines survive the struggles of the first few books they will realize that the fate of many worlds will ultimately depend on the strength and courage of the last descendants of the Ardenesse and their Duchy of Winterhaven.

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March to Other Worlds Day 30: Judgement's Tale: The Complete Omnibus by William L. Hahn

Day 30: Judgement’s Tale: The Complete Omnibus

William L. Hahn sets all of his novels in his Lands of Hope, a fascinating collection of countries that are defined mostly by their respect for a set of nearly deific heroes who drove off the forces of Despair three thousand years earlier. That Despair still exists is a matter of faith for most, but in practice, as in modern life, many do not behave as if they believe that Despair could ever truly threaten them again. As everyone reading this will suspect, they are about to discover that they are wrong.

 

Judgement’s Tale is a towering work of fiction that reads much better as a complete work than it does in smaller installments. The story is built upon the consummate outsider, Solemn Judgement, a fascinating young man of deep convictions who may be the only person in the Lands of Hope who comes from outside both Hope and Despair. This unique status permits him to see the weaknesses in the lands around him that its long-term inhabitants are blind to. That blindness is the crack that the forces of Despair intend to exploit to reignite the millennia-old war and Solemn Judgement is the best “hope” to stop that from happening. Yet Solemn has major flaws that greatly hinder his efforts to awaken the population of Hope and that makes his tale endlessly fascinating.

 

I first encountered Solemn Judgement in Hahn’s Shards of Light series and absolutely loved the enigmatic character. But there are many more intriguing characters in this story—a prince struggling to keep to the path of honor and avoid a senseless war, a band of adventurers seeking their fortune through the extermination of evil, and an intriguing knight whose religious devotions mask a serious problem in the city of Conar. This is an impressive work of fantasy that deserves to be taken alongside the great tales of Donaldson and Jordan. You won’t regret reading it.

 

You can read my individual reviews of the novels that make up this omnibus here: https://www.gilbertstack.com/william-...

 

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