Sarah Chorn's Blog, page 38

Change Agent – Daniel Suarez

About the Book

On a crowded train platform, Interpol agent Kenneth Durand feels the sting of a needle— and his transformation begins. . . . 

In 2045 Kenneth Durand leads Interpol’s most effective team against genetic crime, hunting down black market labs that perform “vanity edits” on human embryos for a price. These illegal procedures augment embryos in ways that are rapidly accelerating human evolution—preying on human-trafficking victims to experiment and advance their technology.

With the worlds of genetic crime and human trafficking converging, Durand and his fellow Interpol agents discover that one figure looms behind it all: Marcus Demang Wyckes, leader of a powerful and sophisticated cartel known as the Huli jing.

But the Huli jing have identified Durand, too. After being forcibly dosed with a radical new change agent, Durand wakes from a coma weeks later to find he’s been genetically transformed into someone else—his most wanted suspect: Wyckes.

Now a fugitive, pursued through the genetic underworld by his former colleagues and the police, Durand is determined to restore his original DNA by locating the source of the mysterious—and highly valuable—change agent. But Durand hasn’t anticipated just how difficult locating his enemy will be. With the technology to genetically edit the living, Wyckes and his Huli jing could be anyone and everyone—and they have plans to undermine identity itself.

416 pages (hardcover)

Published on April 18, 2017

Published by Dutton Books

Author’s website

Buy the book

—

It’s no secret that I’ve been in a bit of a reading funk recently. I’ve been reading a bit of this and that, but man has it been hard to find a book that I really, really find appealing.

The other day I went to the library and saw Change Agent sitting on the shelf. I picked it up and read the inside cover and figured that this was probably the exact thing I’ve been looking for. It’s a near future SciFi, sort of down the rabbit hole type mystery and I was instantly engrossed.

I’ve never read anything by Daniel Suarez before, and I think I waited too long to introduce myself to his work. I love this kind of stuff. Suarez envisions a near future world, and he sets his books in them. I really enjoy books that deal with how the future could end up, how our technology grows and evolves, and the like. This book dealt heavily with technology, massive migrations, global warming is addressed a bit, and so much more. The scary thing is, the way that Suarez portrays all of these events is totally believable.

This is a mystery, and while I didn’t think the root mystery (a man waking up essentially in another body) was too terribly unique, the execution was very well done, and the story quickly veered into uncharted territory, the characters taking readers on a rather unexpected romp through this near-future world.

The world was just as textured as the future that Suarez dreamed up. This is a place where technology rules, and genetic modifications are everywhere. Suarez doesn’t skimp on the implications, either, from the annoyance of advertisements, the marketplace, how various law enforcement organizations operate in the face of all of these advances.

The story of a man who is basically robbed of his own body is an interesting one, and as things expand and the mystery really gets rolling, all sorts of implications hit readers, from the politics of this futuristic world, to the personal plight of one Kenneth Durand, who has to not only find the people (organization) who did this to him, but also figure out who he is, when everything about him is fundamentally changed.

This is a rip-roaring adventure through almost surreal and diverse countries, and plenty of underground organizations, people, and situations. This is the world that Kenneth Durnad lives in, once the above-board world has turned its back on him. He is a man who has lost everything in a few seconds, and now he has to work to clear his name and find who did this to him. It is nothing short of riveting.

Hard science fiction may or may not be your bag, but if you’re one of those readers who wants to read a book that is not only engrossing, but absolutely thought provoking with a hook that hits you from the first page, then this is the book you want. It is absolutely perfectly paced, wonderfully planned out, and fantastically well written. Change Agent is a book really hit it out of the park for me, and that’s during a time when pretty much nothing was doing that. It’s subversive, thought provoking, and completely mentally engaging. Change Agent is everything I wanted to see in my science fiction.

 

5/5 stars

ANNOUNCING | FACES OF IMPACT – An Online Grassroots Activism Campaign

You guys, I just launched this thing and I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY want it to take off.

PLEASE check it out. PLEASE participate, and for the love of God, PLEASE PARTICIPATE.

PLEASE.

CLICK THIS LINK

 

Please participate, and if you are one of those people who has a voice that has some stretch and can spread the world, PLEASE contact me. I will need some help giving this project wings.

An Open Letter From A Disabled American

An open letter to the Republican Party.

Hi, my name is Sarah. I am in my mid-thirties, I have two kids. I love photography, reading, writing, cooking and traveling. I think Utah is a weird place to live, but it’s also stunningly beautiful, and I want to explore every inch of it. I want to grow old, and watch my kids grow up and become powerful adults. I love life, and I want to live it to its fullest.

I’m pretty much your average American. Nothing too exciting or outrageous.

The difference is, I have a chronic (incurable), degenerative illness, and I’m also fighting cancer, and have been since 2010. The Republican Party just decided in one swooping vote, that my life, and the 24 million lives that I represent, aren’t worth the trouble. Our lives have been weighed and measured, and we have been found wanting by our lawmakers. It has been decided that our right to have any quality of life is not as important as a tax cut, or politicians’ egos.

Let me be clear: This vote will result in the death of innocents, of the loss of quality of life for many, and a permanent impact to more families and social groups than we can really put into numbers. It is a ripple effect from hell. The vote has been cast, now we, the disabled, the poor, the freelancers, those with preexisting conditions, get to pay the price. We exist, therefore we are damned.

We have been reduced to numbers on charts, positives and negatives, graphs and important words. We have been reduced from people and turned into business projections. Our humanity has been erased, and in its place are a bunch of numbers.

That’s the basics of what happened in Washington DC today.

This is a new experience for me. I live in a very red state, and I’m a very blue woman. Not agreeing with politicians is nothing new for me. It kind of comes with the territory. I have never, however, felt like I’m not a human, that the government has decided that I don’t deserve to live, that I don’t deserve to have access to life saving healthcare because perhaps my personal healthcare needs are a little more demanding than most. I have never felt like I’m subhuman until right now, when my politicians, instead of speaking up for me and my fundamental right to life, decided to turn their back and shove me and so many others into a group of the damned and doomed.

We exist, and by this simple act of existing, we failed our politicians’ personal litmus test.

Twenty-four million Americans will probably lose their healthcare. Even more will face penalties for having the audacity of having a pre-existing condition. The government took almost no time actually studying their proposed healthcare changes. There weren’t, to my knowledge, any proper and extensive studies done on the impacts these changes would make. The Republicans had eight years to think up something, but instead they took about two weeks to pound out a bill that requires those who have nothing to give, to give all they have, plus some.

We suffer, while the rich eat their cake.

This country has the potential to be a great one. For the most part, I love living here, but I’ve also never felt like I’m subhuman simply because I was born with faulty DNA and my cells keep spewing out cancer. I can’t help either of those things. I didn’t ask for my health problems, and I sure as hell don’t enjoy them, but now I feel like I’m being punished for them, for things that are outside of my control, and so are twenty-four million others. We are an army of the inconvenient, and so we are made to pay the price for the sin of our birth, economic class, freelancing, illness, etc.

Fundamentally, America cannot be a great nation until it sees all people as equal, and treats them as such. We cannot be the great nation we think we are until all people have access to those things that allow them a chance at living the best life they can live. This includes healthcare.

Those aren’t hard words to read or say, but apparently they are hard words for our lawmakers to understand.

We are human beings. We are human beings regardless of our health issues, our race, the amount of money we make, our religious affiliation, our sexual and gender identities and whatever else. WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS and no one, not a government in Washington DC passing these kneejerk bills, not my neighbor, not my boss at work, has a right to take that away from any of us, and that’s what I fundamentally feel happened today.

We have been robbed. We have been robbed of our healthcare and our right to life. We have been robbed of our personhood.

Republican Party, you just voted that 24 million + people don’t deserve the right to healthcare, while you get to keep yours. You just voted that 24 million + people, citizens of this country that you think you represent, don’t deserve an equal chance at life. These are disabled individuals, people with chronic conditions, people within certain income brackets, freelancers, and much more. So much more. You have signed your names in the blood of those who will suffer for your faulty cause.

And I guess I’m over here, just another inconvenient, expensive, expendable disabled American with numerous preexisting conditions, wanting to make that incredibly clear. You’ve shut me out of your pool party. You’ve turned your back on me and mine. You don’t represent me. We are not secondary citizens. We do not deserve to be shut out. We do not deserve to pay the price in our lives, our health, so you get to keep your tax cuts, and your fragile egos intact.

Republican party, the fundamental truth is, you cannot judge a person’s worth or their right to life. You do not have that power. You do not get to pass sweeping bills that will condemn many people to an early grave simply for your own gains. You don’t get to define and demand impossible things of your constituents for your own egos, convenience, or to settle an old score. You absolutely don’t get to pretend that you did the right, moral, praiseworthy thing because you haven’t, and society will inevitably let you know.

Fundamentally, we are human beings. You don’t have the right to take our right to life (which is what healthcare is to many of us) away simply because we have inconvenient health issues, or fall on the wrong side of the income gap. You don’t get to turn us into business projections and numbers, and erase our humanity. You don’t have the right to turn me, and those like me, into secondary citizens. We don’t deserve to be pushed to the side and made to suffer for your greed while we watch from the sidelines as you have access to all the things we need so desperately just to live. To survive. Your vote told us in no uncertain terms that life is something that you don’t actually care about. You are a party of death, drinking a Kool-Aid of lies. You don’t believe in equality. You made that perfectly clear today.

We are human beings.

We are not going away.

We will not be silent.

Power is given to you by the people, and the people can take it away.

2018 is coming, and it’s coming fast.

– Sarah

Guest Post | Elizabeth Vaughan Gives Advice for Aspiring Writers

About the Author

Elizabeth A. Vaughan is the author of the Chronicles of the Warlands, a fantasy romance trilogy from Tor Books: Warprize (her first novel), Warsworn, and Warlord..

She’s always loved fantasy and science fiction, and has been a fantasy role-player since 1981. By day, Beth’s secret identity is that of a lawyer, practicing in the area of bankruptcy and financial matters, a role she has maintained since 1985.

Beth is owned by three cats, and lives in the Northwest Territory, on the outskirts of the Black Swamp, along Mad Anthony’s Trail on the banks of the Maumee River.

Her latest novel, WarDance, was released on April 11, 2017. Click here to buy the book.

—

So when aspiring authors talk to me, they will often talk about the pain and uncertainty of writing.  ‘I worry that I am not good enough, creative enough, smart enough.  Trying to find the time to write, and then trying to find the right words, the right story, the right plot, it’s so hard.’

I then say ‘welcome to my world’.

And they look at me in disbelief.  ‘But you have written books and short stories and you are published and it’s easy for you, right?’

Oh, hell no.

I am here to tell you that the niggling little voice of self-doubt goes off in my head every time I sit down to write.  I face the same blank page.  I deal with the same doubts and fears and frustrations.  The only difference is that I know, through experience, that if I force myself past those doubts, fears and frustrations, I will get there.

Eventually.

And how do you gain experience, you might ask.

By writing.  By doing the work.

I have to go through this process ever single dang time, and that in itself is a source of frustration.  You’d think I’d learn, but the creative process doesn’t work that way, at least, not for me.

So, how do I deal with it?

1.  I have really good friends.  We go to dinner and I confess the truth.  I suck as a writer.  I tell them every flaw, every fear.  I tell them my pain.  They express sympathy and give me encouragement.  Well, they did for the first few books.  Now they don’t even look up from the plate.  ‘Yeah, yeah.’  They say.  ‘That’s what you said last time.  Keep writing.’  Still supportive, mind.  But they know I need to vent and get back to work.

2.  I isolate myself.  Anton Strout, author of the Spellmason Chronicles series, once told me and a roomful of writers “Your brain hates you and it doesn’t want you to write.”  I thought he was nuts, but it is so true.  Your brain wants entertainment.  If you allow it to consume other stories it won’t work on yours.

Sometimes I have to lock myself away for a while.  No TV, no radio, no music, no fiction, no movies.  Friends call and I decline their invitations.  I force my brain to entertain itself with my characters and world.  My brain gets grumpy, and I can only do this for so long, but I get the story down on the page. [Yes, I am aware that talking about my brain like this makes me as crazy as Anton Strout.]

3.  I walk away from the writing.  It’s not working, the words aren’t coming, I need to get up and do something.  I clean closets.  I scrub litter boxes.  I work on my taxes.  But as soon as I get a glimmer of an idea, I am back at the keyboard.  Or legal pad.

4.  I journal.  Fine, I suck as a writer.  I won’t work on the book then.  I will journal, and write down all the reasons I should stop writing.  Time.  Effort.  Stress. Work. Fear.  Fear of failure.  Fear of rejection.  Fear of humiliation. Write it all down, cry and pound the arm of my chair.  Then dry my tears, open the manuscript and keep writing.

5.  I avoid critics.  I do not avoid criticism because that is important to the writing process.  No, I avoid negative people with critical comments that do not add to my efforts.  This includes friends and family members that mean well, but will attempt to discourage you in pursuit of your dreams.

So, to quote Nike, just do it.  Do it tired.  Do it scared. Do it old. Do it [insert excuse here].

Write.

A Closed and Common Orbit – Becky Chambers

About the Book

Lovelace was once merely a ship’s artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has no memory of what came before. As Lovelace learns to negotiate the universe and discover who she is, she makes friends with Pepper, an excitable engineer, who’s determined to help her learn and grow.

Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that no matter how vast space is, two people can fill it together.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet introduced readers to the incredible world of Rosemary Harper, a young woman with a restless soul and secrets to keep. When she joined the crew of the Wayfarer, an intergalactic ship, she got more than she bargained for – and learned to live with, and love, her rag-tag collection of crewmates.

A Closed and Common Orbit is the stand-alone sequel to Becky Chambers’ beloved debut novel The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and is perfect for fans of Firefly, Joss Whedon, Mass Effect and Star Wars.

365 pages (hardcover)

Published on October 20, 2016

Published by Harper Voyager

Author’s webpage

Buy the book

—

I read (erm, listened) to this book a ridiculous amount of time ago. However, these previous few weeks have been absolute hell. I basically stopped reviewing and had just one continual nervous breakdown for the entire month of April. It was so hard, and it still is so hard, but I’ve spaced things out in my medical life (and I’m waiting on my new cancer doctor so we can continue testing for cancer v. 4.0). This is allowing me some time/desire to read, and some time/desire to review again.

Which is why I finished listening to this book a long time ago, and I’m just now getting around to reviewing it.

I loved A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. It was one of those books that hit the ball so far out of the park. Everything about it thrilled me. This book, the second in the series, takes on a bit of a different tone. For one thing, we are following Lovelace, who has been given a body and has left the ship to go discover who she is outside of being a ship’s AI.

Due to that, this book felt incredibly intimate. Now, the previous book in the series was intimate as well, but this one mostly focuses on this one person, and on her experience(s) of discovering who she is and how she fits into the world she is suddenly part of. Mixed into her story are some interesting side characters, unique cultures, some happenings and mishaps that make things interesting, and all sorts of other things.

But the real meat of this story is Lovelace, and her personal evolution.

As with the previous novel, the writing is tight, and the plot pace is smooth and effortless. Nothing felt rushed or hurried. It all felt very natural. Now, where some people might complain is the fact that this book is more personal, with personal discoveries, private thoughts, an evolution of one. New scenes, cultures, and peoples are introduced, but in this respect it’s a quieter book than the previous one. Most of the action involves Lovelace, and her journey to discover who she is. It’s exciting, but it’s a different kind of excitement – often a quieter excitement.

The writing is really where this novel soars, and I just love how much thought Chambers put into every aspect of this book. She carefully, and gently explores issues of race and gender equality, personal beliefs and stigmas, and how cultures can both clash, and improve each other through shared experiences and information, as well as disabilities and even different abilities (some species can’t walk, and require carts to move around, for example). I never once felt like Chambers was hitting me over the head with any of her personal beliefs and insights. Rather, these were messages and thoughtful asides that were woven so flawlessly into the tapestry of the book that they didn’t really stand apart from the story, but were cornerstones keeping the story afloat, and remarkable in its own right. She handles these sensitive topics with a poise and precision that I think deserves a mention all on its own.

This book is nominated for a Hugo, and I think it completely deserves that honor. There are very few books out there that address such a wide swath of important issues in such gentle, careful, poignant ways. Not only that, but the story itself is riveting, it’s a sort of birds-eye-view into someone’s birth (or rebirth, perhaps would be a better word), and that intimate journey is nothing short of captivating. You really feel for Lovelace, and for her conflicted thoughts, her personal experiences, and seeing how someone with such innocent eyes sees the world she’s thrust into is rather illuminating as I look at my own world.

There’s a magic that Becky Chambers welds whenever she writes, and it literally stops me in my tracks. She’s an instant-buy author, and one of those writers that is not only making waves, but raising awareness as she does so, and I can do nothing but tip my hat at her. She’s an essential voice in the speculative fiction genre, and currently, in my estimation, one of the most important voices out there.

 

5/5 stars

P.S. I currently refuse to read these books because the audio version(s) are SO GOOD.

Guest Post | Annette Marie on Book Trailers and Freezing to Death in the Name of Art

About the Author

Annette Marie is the author of the Amazon best-selling Steel & Stone series, which includes Goodreads Choice Award nominee Yield the Night, and fantasy trilogy Red Winter. Her first love is fantasy, but fast-paced urban fantasy and tantalizing forbidden romances are her guilty pleasures. She lives in the frozen winter wasteland of Alberta, Canada (okay, it’s not quite that bad) with her comparatively sensible husband and their furry minion of darkness—sorry, cat—Caesar. When not writing, she can be found elbow-deep in one art project or another while blissfully ignoring all adult responsibilities.

Find Annette Marie:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon | Goodreads

(Note: I owe a massive apology to this author. I should have posted this about a month ago, at least, but my life has been hell with medical drama so it got pushed to the back burner while I focused on surviving the month of April.)

 

When I first heard of book trailers, I kind of thought they were silly. Why make a cinematic trailer for a decidedly not cinematic book? Then I watched a few really great book trailers—and immediately went and bought the books. How could I not? If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a book trailer is worth even more in showing exactly why the viewer should absolutely want to read this book.

So then came the question: Could I do a book trailer for one of my books? The answer was yes … if I was willing to suffer for it.

While the production company Cave Puppet Films set about finding an actress, my big job was the costume. Emi, the heroine, wears the traditional uniform of a Japanese miko—a shrine maiden—and I couldn’t just order one from Amazon. I had to make it myself. I’m not exactly a seamstress, so I recruited my properly skilled mother to help.

Eleven yards of fabric (if that doesn’t sound like a lot, imagine enough fabric to carpet a large room), many weekends, a lot of trial and error, and a horrifying moment where I accidentally stabbed myself with a pin and bled on the white kimono we’d just finished, but eventually we had a costume.

Cave Puppet Films had found the perfect actress, assembled a crew, and we were ready except for one thing—a location. Though we had originally wanted a mountain site, that just wasn’t going to work. Instead, we scouted some semi-local spots, but it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. Imagine snow, cold, and steep terrain. I may have slid down the side of a ravine on my butt at one point. But locations were chosen and we were ready to film!

Shoot day dawned overcast—great conditions for shooting—but more than a little chilly at -16°C (3°F). Once the actress was ready, she and the five-person crew had to trek twenty minutes into the woods. And, of course, I was tagging along, determined not to miss out.

Then came four hours of trying to stand still and be quiet so my chattering teeth didn’t ruin a shot.

But cold or not, watching the filming process one of the coolest things I’ve seen. The best part, by far, was seeing the lovely and talented actress Seraphin in full costume in the snowy woods—my character, in the flesh, right in front of me, as though the book was coming to life before my eyes. It’s definitely an experience I will never forget, and yep, almost freezing to death was completely worth it.

Check out the Red Winter book trailer here: https://youtu.be/dqOJIzLihXc

 

COVER REVEAL | The Infernal Battalion – Django Wexler

Dear readers,

I am incredibly excited to delight you with a cover reveal. Django Wexler is an author who, in my mind, has revitalized epic fantasy. He’s blazed his own trail with a series that is long, detailed, and surprising. I’ve recently been rereading the whole thing, and I have fallen in love with it all over again. You can, I’m guessing, understand why I was so excited to be the host of this cover reveal. Wexler is a hell of a guy, with some incredible talent, and I’m thrilled to see that his series is as respected and enjoyed as it is.

I also think that he has some of the best covers in the business, and this one is no different.

If you haven’t read this series yet, what are you waiting for? Seriously. It’s that good.

If you want any author details, here you go:

Author’s website

Author’s Twitter

Buy the books

Now, onto the cover reveal. Check this glorious thing out!

About the book

Military might and arcane power clash in Django Wexler’s thrilling new Shadow Campaigns novel.

The Beast, the ancient demon imprisoned beneath the fortress-city of Elysium for a thousand years, has been loosed on the world. It absorbs mind after mind, spreading like a plague through the north. The fell army it has raised threatens the heart of Vordan, and it is under the command of the Beast’s greatest prize: the legendary general Janus bet Valnich.

As Queen Raesinia Orboan and soldiers Marcus D’Ivoire and Winter Ihernglass grapple with the aftermath of a hard fought military campaign, they soon discover a betrayal they could never have foreseen. The news arrives like a thunderbolt: Janus has declared himself the rightful Emperor of Vordan. Chaos grips the city as officers and regiments are forced to declare for Queen or Emperor.

Raesinia must struggle to keep her country under control, and risks becoming everything she fought against. Marcus must take the field against his old commander, a man who has seemed an unbeatable strategist.

And as Winter recovers from her injuries and mourns her losses, she knows the demon she carries inside her may be the only thing standing between the Beast and the destruction of everything in its path…

April has sucked.

I’ve really had one hell of a month.

Things started out well enough. I met with a pain management doctor who not only is very reluctant to prescribe medication (which is why I was really afraid to go to a pain management clinic. I was afraid they’d throw Percocet down my throat until I was higher than a kite and then consider my pain managed. I don’t want to live like that.). He is also incredibly well versed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Anyone with EDS will understand how rare that is. I feel like erecting a statue of him in a town square because, wow. It’s just nice.

So anyway, Pain Management dude is going to implant electrodes in my spine to keep my brain from getting the OH MY GOD NERVE PAIN HOLY SHIT signals that it gets all the time. This is very, very, very exciting to me, as someone who is apparently under the “failed back surgery” umbrella. (I had three spine surgeries which in essence got me walking again, albeit with a limp and no feeling in my right leg, but my nerves are permanently impacted and constantly bringing me horrible pain.) The idea that I might be able to decrease my pain, even a little bit, has me over the moon with happiness. After my MRI, the results were in and I am a perfect candidate for a spinal implant. Yay!

In that regard, April has been a month of hope.

Then I got a call from my cancer doctor’s office. “Hey Sarah, your cancer doctor is retiring at the end of April and he wants to see you ASAP for your yearly checkup.” No big deal, I thought. Last summer began my first official year in remission after a five year battle. I expected to go in and have the ultrasound done and leave thinking, “BAM. YEAR TWO IN REMISSION! HERE I AM!” I think expecting that glorious end result made the eventual fall so much more dramatic and painful. I was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, and I’ve been fighting it every damn year up to 2016.

Of course that couldn’t be the case. He kept going to this one spot on my neck with his ultrasound wand thing and asking questions, “When was your last mammogram? Have you ever had chest x-rays?” and I just knew something was very wrong. Long story short, I left that appointment in tears, listening to the sound of my soul shatter, and clutching a chest x-ray request, a mammogram request, and a list of blood work as long as my arm that needed to be done. I’m still waiting on most results, my doctor has been happy with some of them, he’s been worried about others. Now I’m being funneled to another cancer specialist, AND my primary care doctor, who is supposed to investigate some of my worrying blood work and send me to ANOTHER specialist to see what the hell is wrong with me.

I’ve been a mess from all of this.

A. HUGE. MESS.

Today I went to my shoulder doctor, who took some x-rays and looked at my shoulders. He found bone spurs in both shoulders which are shredding some of my inner soft tissue to shreds. That’s wonderful, so today I booked my 17th (yes SEVENTEENTH) surgery. If all goes as it looks like it’s going to go, this year I will have FOUR SURGERIES. FOUR. F-O-U-R.

I am so tired. So very, very tired.

Friday I go to my knee guy to find out if there’s anything we can do to keep my stupid patella from moving all the time. He’s been pushing surgery as well, so we shall see on that front.

So that’s basically been my month. It has been very, very hard on me physically and mentally. Mixed into that is my kid biting through her tongue, my house being flooded with natural gas, and more exciting things of that nature. My brain has been mush. My head hurts. My heart hurts. My soul aches.

Chronic illness sucks, people. There is such a thing as appointment fatigue, and I’m suffering from it in a massive way right now. I’m just completely worn out, absolutely exhausted and just… hurting in ways that I can’t really put into words.

And, the great thing is, all of this comes with medical bills. In that regard, if anyone knows of anyone who needs/wants a developmental editor, please let me know. 

That’s been my month. I hope next month is better, and if it is, I’ll hopefully free up some brainspace for reviewing. Right now I’ve just been holding on by my fingernails and hoping I stay put while my health just spins out of control all around me.

SPFBO | The Grey Bastards – Jonathan French

About the Book

LIVE IN THE SADDLE. DIE ON THE HOG.

Such is the creed of the half-orcs dwelling in the Lot Lands. Sworn to hardened brotherhoods known as hoofs, these former slaves patrol their unforgiving country astride massive swine bred for war. They are all that stand between the decadent heart of noble Hispartha and marauding bands of full-blood orcs.

Jackal rides with the Grey Bastards, one of eight hoofs that have survived the harsh embrace of the Lots. Young, cunning and ambitious, he schemes to unseat the increasingly tyrannical founder of the Bastards, a plague-ridden warlord called the Claymaster. Supporting Jackal’s dangerous bid for leadership are Oats, a hulking mongrel with more orc than human blood, and Fetching, the only female rider in all the hoofs.

When the troubling appearance of a foreign sorcerer comes upon the heels of a faceless betrayal, Jackal’s plans are thrown into turmoil. He finds himself saddled with a captive elf girl whose very presence begins to unravel his alliances. With the anarchic blood rite of the Betrayer Moon close at hand, Jackal must decide where his loyalties truly lie, and carve out his place in a world that rewards only the vicious.

529 pages (kindle)

Published on November 16, 2015

Author’s webpage

Buy the book



This book was sent as part of the SPFBO.

—

Recently I’ve been a bit sick of grimdark. I haven’t really written the (sub)genre off, but it’s been a category of books that I’ve been avoiding. That being said, I’ve also been sitting around waiting for that one grimdark book to miraculously appear that would revive my passion for the genre as a whole. I wanted to find that book that reminded me about why I enjoy the genre in the first place.

I got this book a few months ago, and I read it way back when, but cancer treatments have kind of fried my memory in some senses, so before I wrote my review of this book I decided to give it a whirl again, just to refresh my memory. Well, days after I started my second read of this book, I learned that my cancer is back (again) and I spent a few days crying and feeling terrible, and then a few days wanting to read a book where a lot of people die in very creative ways.

So, The Grey Bastards kind of hit me right at a point where I was wanting to read something different, something set in a vivid, sprawling world, with a plot that makes sense, and characters that are unique but capable of bleeding lots of blood and throwing the word “fuck” around. Basically, I plowed through this book a second time in about a day. I was reading it while I was getting just about every drop of blood drained from my body so the doctors could analyze all of my something-something-somethings which have something to do with cancer. I was angry and I was depressed and sometimes when those two feelings clash, you just need a book where people bleed.

The Grey Bastards is really a marvel. The characters, half-orcs, ride war-trained boars into battle, and we can really just stop right there and appreciate how freaking amazing that is. Honestly, that fact alone pretty much sealed the deal of my love of this book. The other things which got me almost instantly was how masterfully French worked the plot. It started out small, and through relentless forward motion it turned into something huge, growing on itself until it just became something you never really expected it to become.

Mixed into this are a ton of left turns where I expected things to turn right, a lot of surprises, and things happening that I didn’t expect to happen. This book is also quite visceral and raw at some points. French isn’t afraid to make his characters struggle and suffer. Blood spills, and people curse, and things are dark and grim (hence “grimdark”) but I never really felt like this book crossed the line from necessary to gratuitous, like some grimdark books do.

I enjoyed the relationships and friendships that peppered the book, and how realistic they were to real relationships, reflecting both ups and downs, and how personal growth and development can pull people together, or push them apart. I also enjoyed how French continuously developed his characters throughout the novel, and never really deviated from the central seed of who they were. It was quite brilliantly done.

As for world building, I feel like I need to really tip a hat at French here. He never really made a production out of his world building. Instead he sort of inserted details and development into his story as he went, and never really fell into the infodump that I was so worried about. Like the books I enjoy reading the most, this one kept his world developing as the story unfolded. It was complex, with all those details that I just love, unique, and absolutely engrossing.

The Grey Bastards, as you can tell, is a book that I just absolutely fell in love with. It’s dark and brutal, but it is also unapologetically its own animal. This is unlike any other grimdark books I’ve read recently, and because of that, because of this author’s unique vision and his incredible talent, this one left a mark on me. I want more.

 

5/5 stars

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich – Norman Ohler

About the Book

A fast-paced narrative that discovers a surprising perspective on World War II: Nazi Germany’s all-consuming reliance on drugs.

The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. But as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping new history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs. On the eve of World War II, Germany was a pharmaceutical powerhouse, and companies such as Merck and Bayer cooked up cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, to be consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to millions of German soldiers. In fact, troops regularly took rations of a form of crystal meth—the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to explain certain German military victories.

Drugs seeped all the way up to the Nazi high command and, especially, to Hitler himself. Over the course of the war, Hitler became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs—including a form of heroin—administered by his personal doctor. While drugs alone cannot explain the Nazis’ toxic racial theories or the events of World War II, Ohler’s investigation makes an overwhelming case that, if drugs are not taken into account, our understanding of the Third Reich is fundamentally incomplete.

Carefully researched and rivetingly readable, Blitzed throws surprising light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows.

304 pages (hardcover)

Published on March 7, 2017 (in the USA)

Buy the book

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Alright, so the rest of this week is going to be dedicated toward the last of my SPFBO books, but I just had to review this book this week because, really, how could I not? It was incredible.

Basically, I can sum up this book as follows: This book was absolutely perfect.

Blitzed is one of those books that really rocked in just about every possible way. There are a ton of books about World War II, and even more about Hitler, who was one of the most notorious historical figures in human history. He’s interesting to read about, and it’s also heartbreaking because of everything he did to so many people who didn’t deserve any of it.

Blitzed is book about Hitler, and about World War II, that is different from most other books on this subject. This book focuses directly on drugs, and how drugs impacted World War II.

There is a brief chapter at the start of the book which gives some historical context, Germany after World War I, and how and why these drugs were created by pharmacies, how the drug culture really began in Germany, and why these substances were so popular. It gives the perfect backdrop, and sets the stage with just enough depth and detail so readers will easily understand how and why methamphetamine, for example, was so popular among German soldiers.

After that chapter, the book delves into how methamphetamines were used amongst German soldiers, and how it impacted the Blitzkrieg. Basically, the Blitzkreig wouldn’t have been as successful as it was without the drugs used by the soldiers. He delves into how this stuff was made, how it was distributed, gives historical information, quotes from letters written by people at the time, in those battles, and so much more. It absolutely blew my mind to see just how this drug was used, and how pervasive it was at the time.

Now, the other side of me was reading all of this and realizing that, while this is all mind boggling, the people at the time really had no idea about negative side effects, and the negative impacts of using these drugs, though occasionally people would drop dead from heart attacks, the lines of cause and effect weren’t really drawn.

From drugs being used by soldiers, we move to Hitler, and his relationship with his personal physician, which is… wow. A lot of blanks were filled in regarding Hitler and how he changed throughout the war. Hitler’s physician kept him pumped full of roughly 80 different kinds of drugs, many of them impacted his mental facilities and his perception of reality, which became more and more obvious as the war progressed. Beyond that, the book delves a little bit into concentration camps, where some of the prisoners were forced to test these super drugs toward the end of the war.

The writing style was plain enough that these topics were easy to understand and absorb, and this book was absolutely captivating. I honestly couldn’t put it down. It’s not incredibly long, but it’s just about as long as it should be. The author makes a point in saying that this drug usage doesn’t excuse Hitler in the least, but rather makes the whole thing a bit more grotesque in my estimation. It’s hard to picture someone as lost in his own head as he was, but still ruthless enough to kill millions of innocents.

Blitzed is a book that has stuck with me, and filled in so many blanks in my mind regarding Hitler and World War II. So much more that I had known about, I now understand the “whys” behind. For example, Hitler’s Parkinson’s Disease. Just how the German troops managed to move across countries like France so incredibly quickly, and so much more. This book was a gigantic “ah ha” moment for me. I burned through it so quickly, and with good reason. There wasn’t one page in this novel that wasn’t interesting.

So, Blitzed is one of the best books I’ve read in a long, long time, and I don’t say that lightly. It’s grim, and macabre, but it’s also an important World War II story that should be told, by an author who seems like he was born to write this specific book.

Basically, just read the damn thing.

 

5/5 stars