Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 34

Bits and Pieces

Today's post is just a bit of quick catching-up to share some news regarding my writing that I've been late in sharing.

A few weeks ago, I was a guest of Adrian Shotbolt's Behind The Book Storytellers: Episode 13, discussing Revolver. You can also check out Adrian's review of Revolver.

Bonus points: Adrian also reviewed my Extinction Cycle novella, From the Ashes. This novella was my first time writing in another author's world, and my first experience with Kindle Worlds. I was a bit nervous stepping into the fandom surrounding the USA Best-selling author that is Nicholas Sansbury Smith. Thankfully, his fans have been pretty kind and appear to be enjoying my story, with the majority of reviewers rewarding it with four and five stars, with lots of praise going toward the action and rapid-fire pacing. Here's a small sampling of what readers have been saying:

"I have read the Extinction Cycle series and this is an exciting..nay, outstanding...addition. The hope is palpable, as is the sense of devastation and at times I felt like crying as I read. The characters are top notch, the action is thrilling and the descriptions are stomach-turning. Great attention to detail too.
It's a darn good author who can enter another's world and the reader forgets that it's a different writer." - PJ Leah

"Holy wowzers.

I started reading Nicholas Sansbury Smith's Extinction Cycle series, when he was putting out book #3, Extinction Age. Nick's writing just grabbed me and sucked me in. While reading this story by Michael Patrick Hicks, I kept forgetting who I was reading! Michael does an outstanding job of placing us right back into the fray, and drawing you into the story with the action. And just like Nick, Michael doesn't pull any punches, he gives it to us real and gritty. Michael is an author to watch, and I look forward to seeing what will come next!" - A.Meyers

Also on the review front is some fresh praise for my short horror story, Consumption. I originally published this story back in 2014, but it's recently gotten a fresh lease on life thanks to Daniel Arthur Smith and his Tales from the Canyons of the Damned series. Daniel reprinted Consumption for his Halloween issue, and recently collected it in the second omnibus edition. Hot off the presses comes this review of the omnibus from Chris Fried, writing for The Leighgendarium, noting:

This tale revels in its gustatory sensations that are a feast for readers and their five senses. It also has a central mystery that suspensefully builds the tension and culminates into a shocking and disturbing conclusion that dropped my jaw in awe at its majesty and power.

Fine words, indeed.

You can find all these titles at Amazon.

SF Month Read & Reviewed Round-Up: November 2016

November was Sci-Fi Month, and, accordingly, my reading focus was nothing but science fiction. It was a month of big genre staples, with both Star Trek and Star Wars popping up in my TBR queue, time travel, futuristic cyberpunk action, giant space operas, and robot detectives. Some of these I liked more than others, frankly, but overall it was pretty satisfying experience.

This was easily the most deliberate, prolonged, and focused exploration I've made of some recent sci-fi titles, but there were also many that I had wanted to get to but couldn't due to time constraints. The good news is, I have plenty more books to dive into come 2017 and a few that will definitely be making their way to the top of my to-read pile for next year's month-long celebration. In the meantime, here's the skinny on what I read and reviewed for November's 2016 Sci-Fi Month.

The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman [audiobook]Revenger by Alastair ReynoldsBrisk Money by Adam ChristopherMade to Kill by Adam ChristopherNecrotech by K.C. AlexanderThe Burning Light by Bradley P. Beaulieu and Rob ZieglerThe Forever Endeavor by Chuck WendigStar Wars: Catalyst (A Rogue One Novel) by James Luceno

Review: Star Wars: Catalyst (A Rogue One Novel) by James Luceno

Catalyst (Star Wars): A Rogue One Story by James Luceno

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Catalyst, a prequel novel to the upcoming Star Wars: Rogue One film, is a tightly-focused character piece revolving around the dreaded Empire's initial steps in constructing the moon-sized weapons platform, the Death Star (Note: that's no moon!).

James Luceno focuses his narrative on the Erso family and the Empire's engineer Orson Krennic. After Galen Erso and his wife, Lyra (pregnant with their baby girl, Jyn, who will be the all-grown-up lead heroine in Rogue One), are jailed, Krennic begins a long-game of strategy and manipulation to bring Galen, an energy systems researcher and pacifist, into the Empire's employ.

While the Erso's are a sympathetic bunch, this is really Krennic's book, in my opinion, and he's the most interesting and dynamic figure in the novel. Luceno draws on various characters from the Clone Wars animated series and prequel trilogy, with this book overlapping Episodes II and III, some of whom I had to Google to figure out why they were important. Not having seeing any of Clones Wars and having blanked out most of the prequel stuff, I had to do a little bit of research while reading to sate my curiosity, but it's hardly mandatory. But, again, Krennic is really star of the show, here.

Krennic is a classic Empire villain through-and-through. He's a bold chessman, duping and moving those unfortunate enough to orbit him into executing his larger plans, oftentimes unknowingly, and I really appreciated the level of subterfuge and guile this dude's capable of. He's cold, cunning, and calculating, and demonstrates exactly why the Empire is a supreme power to be feared and fought. Using the on-going battles against Separatist forces, Krennic all but gaslights Galen into working for the side of evil, and Catalyst demonstrates how easy it could be for otherwise good men to be swayed into the employ of fascism through domineering propaganda and the normalization of hate and corruption.

Star Wars has always been political, but to read this book so soon after the Electoral College appointed Donald Trump - a man who campaigned on a platform of racism and fear, and who lost the popular vote by at least 2 million ballots at the time of this writing - President of the United States hit a few still-raw nerves for me, but Catalyst is certainly a timely read given all that. Set firmly within the burgeoning fascistic Empire, the manipulation of good by evil, and the various degrees of in-fighting within the Empire, make for nicely dark subject matter, but Luceno keeps things light enough to prevent his story from being overwhelmingly dark. There's room for hope, particularly as Lyra scrappily fights to save her marriage and family. As Jyn states in the Rogue One trailer, rebellions are built on hope, and, frankly, I'm with her.



View all my reviews

Buy Star Wars: Catalyst At Amazon

Review: The Forever Endeavor by Chuck Wendig

The Forever Endeavor by Chuck Wendig

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Magic boxes never bode well for those who find them in fiction. More often than not, they're just a big damn recipe for disaster. While the Cochineal Box in Chuck Wendig's The Forever Endeavor is certainly a far cry from Lemarchand's Box, it is still quite a square little hell raiser in its own right.

While cutting through an alley one December eve, pill addict Dale stumbles across the grisly scene of two homeless men locked by death in an eternal struggle over a strange object. Dale's curiosity gets the better of him, and quickly enough he learns that this item now in his possession can, with the push a button, send him back in time ten minutes. However, this creates the paradox of appearing next to his earlier incarnation. This usually does not bode well for said earlier incarnations, as Detective Bard learns when a mass grave site is uncovered in a pumpkin patch with twenty-some highly irregular victims.

Chuck Wendig is one of my new favorite authors, thanks largely in part to his Miriam Black series, which placed him in my auto-buy column of writers. This decision was reinforced by his Heartland Trilogy and Atlanta Burns books, and Mookie Pearl, and Star Wars tie-in novels. Although those have received some measure of derision from certain corners, I still enjoyed Aftermath and have the second queued up on my Kindle for sometime soon. So yeah, look, I'm a fan. I love Wendig's blog, and I love his books. I follow him on Twitter and Facebook, and I just think he's a cool dude and a terrific storyteller.

Perhaps the one thing I appreciate most about his work is the measure of variation he brings to the table. Some writers are content to produce the same book over and over again and just slap a different title on it. But Wendig does different things with each book he writes. Invasive was a semi-sequel to Zeroes, but they couldn't be more different. Miriam Black and Atlanta Burns are both tough, foul, sorta mean heroines, but their similarities are fewer than their differences.

The Forever Endeavor is certainly a Chuck Wendig Book, but it's also pretty wildly different than what he's done previously. The time travel device is a well-trod staple in science fiction/fantasy, but Wendig puts a nice spin on it by presenting a temporal limitation, which puts Dale in particularly interesting situations. His relationship with his ex is a nice touch, and the nature of the Dale's character gives this a nicely dark twist on the trope of dude who goes back in time to salvage his relationship. Things get bleak, fast.

About the only thing that didn't work for me here was a minor subplot involving a pair of gods and their gambling over Dale's will-he or -won't-he succeed. I didn't think it added much to the proceedings, and they're so peripheral to Dale and Bard's plight that they do little to raise the stakes. They're an interesting diversion, but they never struck me as being wholly additive to the plot. If their scenes were removed, it wouldn't noticeably change the overall story being told. However, if their scenes and involvement had been beefed up, it could have been a really cool bit of added fantasy. As it stands, I'm kinda meh to this particular story thread, but it is such a small addition to the story that it fails to impact the book one way or the other.

Needless to say, I enjoyed The Forever Endeavor. It's tightly written, and I really dug the fractured nature to the story's presentation. Wendig skips back and forth in time between Dale's and Bard's stories, but it's still easy to track and keep up with, and watching their alternating threads finally wind together is a thrill. This is a quick read, and a really fun time travel romp with a bit of a twist.



View all my reviews

Buy The Forever Endeavor At Amazon

Review: The Burning Light by Bradley P. Beaulieu and Rob Ziegler

The Burning Light by Bradley P. Beaulieu

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The Burning Light has a fair amount of stuff working in its favor, but also one element - the nature of the Light itself - that never quite gelled for me.

Authors Bradley P. Beaulieu and Rob Ziegler give us a wonderfully dystopic (one might even say apocalyptic) setting in the flooded, sweltering ruins of future New York. I really liked the diversity and culture baked into the altered landscape, and the way the authors presented humanity's adaptation to the new normal brought about by the disastrous effects of climate change, even if much of it is downright criminal. The waterways are patrolled by pirates and slavers, and a rag-tag team of military soldiers hunting down mediums for the Light and the junkies obsessed with it.

So, what is the Light? Frankly, I have no idea. It's analogous to a drug, given that those who interface with it are referred to as junkies. It's dangerous and can kill entire swaths of a population. Beyond that, the authors refuse to elaborate on the nature of their MacGuffin, despite it being very, very important to the characters themselves. Personally, being stuck in the dark as to the Light's nature made it difficult for me to care about it as a plot device. It was a little to fantastical and metaphysical for me to appreciate.

The characters, though, at least have reason to care, even if I ultimately didn't. Chu, our military squad leader tearing through New York to kill Light junkies at every turn, has a slick motivation and a wonderful, edgy darkness about her given her own personal history with the Light. She's on the warpath, hunting for Zola, a medium for the Light. Zola's connection to the Light, though, ain't what it used to be. Their history and cat-and-mouse conflict gives the story plenty of meat, but the resolution to their story wasn't as satisfying as it should have been, and much of that is due to the ambiguous nature of the Light.

The Burning Light has some terrific Big Ideas, but they could have used more time and room for development. It's a smart piece of work in need of deeper elaboration, at least for me. If you don't mind unexplained, inexplicable irregularities like the Light, and can just go with the flow, you may have an easier time of things.



View all my reviews

Buy The Burning Light At Amazon

Review: Necrotech by K.C. Alexander

Necrotech by K.C. Alexander

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Necrotech is one of those titles that left me feeling particularly divisive. K.C. Alexander included a great number of things that I enjoyed, but there were also just enough missteps to disappoint.

Perhaps my greatest problem with this book was going into it without the explicit understanding that this is the first book in a series with an overarching plot line. Alexander presents a story where the lead character, Riko, is on a mission to discover what happened to her and her girlfriend during a period of several months that she cannot recall. In the book's opening moments, Riko wakes up in a lab in time to discover her cybernetically augmented girlfriend going haywire and turning into a savage monster on a bloody tear. The mystery behind what these two women are doing in this lab, and why they were even there in the first place, becomes the crux of Riko's motivation. Unfortunately, by the time we reach the end of the book's 400+ pages there's been zero resolution. Riko does get moved into a new and interesting place, which is a plus, but the story itself lacks any sense of closure. The characters, and readers, are left in largely the same place they found themselves at the outset, with the central mystery unresolved. We had some neat developments and a few interesting scenarios along the way, but the trip itself ultimately felt largely pointless and this left me disappointed.

On the bright side, Riko is a cool heroine, and I have a soft-spot for foul-mouthed, temperamental, tough women. Riko is a particular type of mercenary known as a splatter specialist, and with her gruff, violent, no-prisoners attitude, and big bionic arm heroines don't get much tougher.

Necrotech is a violent book, with nearly non-stop action. At a certain point, though, the action does get to be a bit too much and a bit too tedious. Alexander doesn't slow down enough to really allow her character much in the way of introspection or growth, although there are some nice moments between Riko and the other characters. Her flirtatious side carries a definite charm, which made virtually any scene between her and a corporate secretary named Hope fun and engaging. I could have gone for a few more of those moments, and Riko becomes much more interesting when she's placed in situations far removed from her usual elements.

Make no mistake, Riko's usual elements are gritty and violent. Alexander does a great job building the world her characters inhabit, and I liked the concept of 'necrotech,' a computer virus that hijacks people's implants and turns them into the cyberpunk equivalent of a zombie, quite a lot. It's a scary, gruesome, and highly intriguing idea, and one that I look forward to seeing the author develop in future books.

While Necrotech was not the stand-alone title I was hoping for, and leaves far too many plot threads dangling and unresolved to placate me, I am still invested enough in this world, and in K.C. Alexander as a storyteller, to see what comes up next.

[Note: I received an advanced review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



View all my reviews

Buy Necrotech At Amazon

A Sci-Fi November Prep List For A Trump Presidency

Since it's Sci-Fi November, and we in the States just elected a radioactive septic tumor and his religious zealot nutbag of a running mate to the highest office in our nation, I thought a list of books to help us prepare for the future may be helpful. You may want to keep these titles handy in order to properly plan and prepare for what's in store for us moving forward.

The Dead Zone by Stephen King.

When Johnny Smith was six-years-old, head trauma caused by a bad ice-skating accident left him with a nasty bruise on his forehead and, from time to time, those hunches...infrequent but accurate snippets of things to come. But it isn't until Johnny's a grown man—now having survived a horrifying auto injury that plunged him into a coma lasting four-and-a-half years—that his special abilities reallypush to the force. Johnny Smith comes back from the void with an extraordinary gift that becomes his life's curse...presenting visions of what was and what will be for the innocent and guilty alike. But when he encounters a ruthlessly ambitious and amoral man who promises a terrifying fate for all humanity, Johnny must find a way to prevent a harrowing predestination from becoming reality. [Amazon]

The Acolyte by Nick Cutter

Jonah Murtag is an Acolyte on the New Bethlehem police force. His job: eradicate all heretical religious faiths, their practitioners, and artefacts. Murtag’s got problems—one of his partners is a zealot, and he’s in love with the other one. Trouble at work, trouble at home. Murtag realizes that you can rob a citizenry of almost anything, but you can’t take away its faith. When a string of bombings paralyzes the city, religious fanatics are initially suspected, but startling clues point to a far more ominous perpetrator. If Murtag doesn’t get things sorted out, the Divine Council will dispatch The Quints, aka: Heaven’s Own Bagmen. The clock is ticking towards doomsday for the Chosen of New Bethlehem. And Jonah Murtag’s got another problem. The biggest and most worrisome . . . Jonah isn’t a believer anymore. [Amazon] [My review]

Christian Nation by Frederic C. Rich

“They said what they would do, and we did not listen. Then they did what they said they would do.”

So ends the first chapter of this brilliantly readable counterfactual novel, reminding us that America’s Christian fundamentalists have been consistently clear about their vision for a "Christian Nation" and dead serious about acquiring the political power to achieve it. When President McCain dies and Sarah Palin becomes president, the reader, along with the nation, stumbles down a terrifyingly credible path toward theocracy, realizing too late that the Christian right meant precisely what it said.

In the spirit of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, one of America’s foremost lawyers lays out in chilling detail what such a future might look like: constitutional protections dismantled; all aspects of life dominated by an authoritarian law called “The Blessing,” enforced by a totally integrated digital world known as the "Purity Web." Readers will find themselves haunted by the questions the narrator struggles to answer in this fictional memoir: "What happened, why did it happen, how could it have happened?" [Amazon]

Mad Max: Fury Road (Black and Chrome Edition)

Years after the collapse of civilization, the tyrannical Immortan Joe enslaves apocalypse survivors inside the desert fortress the Citadel. When the warrior Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) leads the despot's five wives in a daring escape, she forges an alliance with Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), a loner and former captive. Fortified in the massive, armored truck the War Rig, they try to outrun the ruthless warlord and his henchmen in a deadly high-speed chase through the Wasteland. [Amazon]

Hate Won

source: https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/79...

I've kept this blog relatively free of politics, but in the wake of last night's disastrous election results I feel the need to write. I have to at least try and expel some of the uneasiness and disquiet I'm feeling.

After making history and electing our first Black president in Barack Obama, America was poised to again make history. And we did. Just not the way I had hoped. As a nation, we decided to follow-up Obama's legacy by electing the Number One candidate of Neo-Nazi's and Ku Klux Klansmen everywhere. We decided that a calm, rational, level-headed, cool voice must be replaced with a moronic, obnoxious, easily offended and loudly offensive braggart, and that a man-child who cannot even be trusted with a Twitter account should now possess nuclear launch codes.

Hate won.

Americans just let the world know what this country is really like and what we're really about as a nation.

We're cowards. We're racists, xenophobes, misogynists, sexists, narcissists, bigots, and fear-mongers. 

I live and work in a multi-cultural cross-section of America. I work in a city that is home to the largest population of Arab-Americans in the US. I live next door to Black neighbors, in a neighborhood that has whites, Indians, Asians, Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs. I know and work alongside immigrants who have, for the past year, been vilified by an orange, thin-skinned, small-handed fascist purely because of their countries of origin. 

For the next four years (oh, please, sweet Jibbers Crabst, let it only be four years), I will likely be safe and secure in the privilege of being a white cis male. My neighbors, my co-workers, my friends - I worry about them. I worry for them. For their safety, their security, and their future in this country. 

Now comes the hard part, for all of us. Because hate won.

source: https://oregonhistoryproject.org/medi...

Review: Made to Kill by Adam Christopher

Made to Kill by Adam Christopher

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Unfortunately, Made to Kill is another book that I have to file as one I wanted to like way more than I actually did. It's not a bad book, per se, and the premise is great, but it did fail to live up to my expectations.

It's the 1960s, and PI Raymond Electromatic is the last robot. I'm all for an alt-history trip about a robot detective, and Adam Christopher has the hard-boiled noir patois down solid in this ode to Raymond Chandler. There's enough retro sci-fi to satisfy and a Red Scare menace that shines brightly, but Christopher doesn't take his ideas far enough to really work for me.

Take our centerpiece of this story, Raymond Electromatic himself. He's limited by 1960s computer-era technology, which means he has a limited battery-life and his memory is short-term, stored on tape that has to be backed-up nightly and wiped for fresh recording. Aside from his operating system, Raymond is basically a blank shell, a robotic man without a history, and since he is a robot, without any feelings and a quaint acceptance of his programmatic limitations, his existential crises are cleanly averted. This feels like a cop-out, and Raymond's lack of long-term memory really has very little repercussions on his investigative capabilities. He doesn't remember meeting people that he just saw the day before, but this has no impact on his proceedings in the case or in his relations to them, which makes the story progression artificially neat and tidy when it should be way more complicated and erratic.

As a character, Raymond is also about as interesting as the invulnerable steel he is made out. An unfeeling dude without a past doesn't make for an electrifying read, and the situations Raymond finds himself in are far more interesting than the character itself. He's a window into Christopher's sci-fi noir world, but little else. There's not enough crags and edges to hold onto, and, frankly, he's a dull narrator. Which is a shame, particularly since there's plenty of built-in conflict, or should be, between he and his AI handler, Ada...but again, this comes down to information that the reader is more privy to (particularly if you've read the prequel story, Brisk Money than the character. But Raymond's approach to this conflict is too blasé to care, and if it doesn't matter to him, maybe it shouldn't matter to me.

I still sense a missed opportunity, and that's my basic reaction to this book as a whole. It's rife with potential and intriguing concepts and ideas, but the execution is not nearly as exciting as the possibilities it presents.

[Note: I received a review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



View all my reviews

Buy Made to Kill At Amazon

Review: Brisk Money by Adam Christopher

Brisk Money by Adam Christopher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


As part of Sci-Fi Month 2016, I'd made plans to read Adam Christopher's Made to Kill, but since this is a short prequel story it made sense to knock this one out of the way first. It's a quick read, roughly 30-odd pages, and provides a nice little introduction for what's ahead as Christopher's series get properly underway. Unfortunately, it's also a bit underwhelming and I'm not quite sure yet just how indispensable a read it may be.

What I did like was the small bit of world building that went into this short story. This is LA, circa 1962. Robots are a thing, and most of them have come and gone. Raymond Electromatic is one of the last ones, and he was built to carry a badge. He's a PI, but since he's been built with 60s era technology, his memory capacity is rather limited, which requires him to upload his memories every day to a 100-pound tape reel and scrub blank the tape already in his head while he recharges. And if this sounds somewhat problematic, well, you ain't no dummy then.

There's a minor mystery at work here, some murder, but mostly Brisk Money feels like a warm-up act for Made To Kill. It's a bit thin on story, with the focus primarily on the characters of Ray and his secretary, Ada. The ending provides a nice little twist, and this story ultimately succeeds for me because I'm even more intrigued by these character dynamics and the promise they show as I prepare to dive into the first book of the LA Trilogy next.



View all my reviews

Buy Brisk Money At Amazon