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Ell Donsaii #8
Allotropes
“Allotropes" is the eighth in a series of near future SciFi/Thrillers whose young heroine Ell Donsaii has a nerve mutation which has made her a genius as well as an athletic phenomenon.
In “Allotropes,” she finds even more uses for the quantum entangled wormholes that she discovered. These wormholes aren’t big enough to send people through, yet they make possible technologies that create huge changes in our world. She installs some ports in her own body that she is able to use as weapons, delivering darts and drugs to stop her adversaries.
Having earned gold medals in gymnastics in previous Olympics, she is challenged to enter track meets by world record holding sprinter Michael Fentis who’s angry that some have said she can run faster than he can.
Meanwhile, one of her waldoes is exploring the ringworld she discovered at Sigma Draconis. The aliens there are doing surprising things with carbon allotropes! Can we learn to do the same?
In “Allotropes,” she finds even more uses for the quantum entangled wormholes that she discovered. These wormholes aren’t big enough to send people through, yet they make possible technologies that create huge changes in our world. She installs some ports in her own body that she is able to use as weapons, delivering darts and drugs to stop her adversaries.
Having earned gold medals in gymnastics in previous Olympics, she is challenged to enter track meets by world record holding sprinter Michael Fentis who’s angry that some have said she can run faster than he can.
Meanwhile, one of her waldoes is exploring the ringworld she discovered at Sigma Draconis. The aliens there are doing surprising things with carbon allotropes! Can we learn to do the same?
250 pages, Paperback
First published August 25, 2013
441 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
About the author
Laurence E. Dahners
62 books676 followersI was born on the island of Cyprus where my dad was employed as a mining engineer. We moved to the Philippines (more mining) when I was three and then to Arizona when I was 9. I went to med school at the University of Arizona and did a residency in Orthopaedics at the University of Kansas. I taught Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill until I retired in 2017.
I've always loved science fiction and it's been great fun getting to write some. I also like music and have a little home recording studio. You can read more, listen to some music and look at some of my art, at http://laury.dahners.com/ if you like.
If you want to contact me, or be put on my email list to be notified when new books come out, just email me at ldahners@gmail.com
Laury Dahners
I've always loved science fiction and it's been great fun getting to write some. I also like music and have a little home recording studio. You can read more, listen to some music and look at some of my art, at http://laury.dahners.com/ if you like.
If you want to contact me, or be put on my email list to be notified when new books come out, just email me at ldahners@gmail.com
Laury Dahners
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
February 25, 2024
Really good!!
June 2, 2020
Plausible Impossible
The fun part of this and all of the Ell Dansaii stories that I have read is that they are close enough to current technology to be plausible. I believe that young women may like that here is a beautiful young woman who can actually defend herself against men twice her size. Most women cannot and many live in fear. I'm a slightly built male and I can't either, so in that way I identify. Men who do not behave themselves with women should be ashamed of themselves. I don't like the built-in weapons idea. She doesn't need it and it is much like concealed carry of weapons, which cause problems of their own. (If I were her husband I'd be afraid to lie next to her!) 😂 Also, the extensive focus on port technology is beginning to wear thin. Dahners realizes this and is extending to other tech. All-in-all the story is fun, quite original, and a great distraction from national riots occurring right now (and Netflix crashes).
The fun part of this and all of the Ell Dansaii stories that I have read is that they are close enough to current technology to be plausible. I believe that young women may like that here is a beautiful young woman who can actually defend herself against men twice her size. Most women cannot and many live in fear. I'm a slightly built male and I can't either, so in that way I identify. Men who do not behave themselves with women should be ashamed of themselves. I don't like the built-in weapons idea. She doesn't need it and it is much like concealed carry of weapons, which cause problems of their own. (If I were her husband I'd be afraid to lie next to her!) 😂 Also, the extensive focus on port technology is beginning to wear thin. Dahners realizes this and is extending to other tech. All-in-all the story is fun, quite original, and a great distraction from national riots occurring right now (and Netflix crashes).
March 2, 2021
I haven’t come up with a better term so I will call these books “competency porn” (think Sherlock Holmes and James Bond). I LOVE competency porn so I blew through all the Ell Donsaii books in about two weeks. As a result I’m giving books 1-16 the same review. While these books largely hit my sweet spot, I recognized several imperfection but, before listing those, I want to first say I greatly enjoyed these books and so I encourage anyone who enjoys “competency porn” (I really hate that term) to give them a try.
The first problem is actually kind of a small, yet somewhat annoying: I had read the author’s Vaz series (alos recommended competency porn) immediately before this one. In fact the Ell Donsaii blurb did not make the book sound appealing to me and so I only gave them a try because I liked the Vaz series so much. Unfortunately this resulted in realizing the author re-used story lines. While this is disappointing it only slightly diminished my enjoyment and the Ell series, with its 16 books to Vaz’s 4, quickly moves beyond this issue.
The second problem is the author writes by recipe and that recipe is: Have multiple secondary story lines that remain unresolved at the end of the book to make the reader buy the next book. An example would be a main story line about terraforming Mars accompanied by a side story line about a vaccine. The Mars story will be resolved by the end of the book but the author will also have spent pages setting up a will he/won’t he for a character to secretly try the vaccine. While the author almost universally handles multiple story lines well, in the end I found this approach truly unfortunate as this author is good enough to keep readers coming back without this manipulation. In short, this author’s books would have been much better if treated as stand alones rather than installments.
Finally, from my point of view, the books are short. The three samples I took from the series were: 217, 210 and 210 pages. I view anything under 300 pages as short and prefer books 350 pages or longer. I must admit, however, that I got all of these books for $4 off Amazon so I don’t really feel shorted. Had I seen these books on a shelf in a book store I likely wouldn’t even have picked them up based on how thin they are.
Bottom line: While not perfect, these books are pretty easily worth the read for any lovers of competency porn.
The first problem is actually kind of a small, yet somewhat annoying: I had read the author’s Vaz series (alos recommended competency porn) immediately before this one. In fact the Ell Donsaii blurb did not make the book sound appealing to me and so I only gave them a try because I liked the Vaz series so much. Unfortunately this resulted in realizing the author re-used story lines. While this is disappointing it only slightly diminished my enjoyment and the Ell series, with its 16 books to Vaz’s 4, quickly moves beyond this issue.
The second problem is the author writes by recipe and that recipe is: Have multiple secondary story lines that remain unresolved at the end of the book to make the reader buy the next book. An example would be a main story line about terraforming Mars accompanied by a side story line about a vaccine. The Mars story will be resolved by the end of the book but the author will also have spent pages setting up a will he/won’t he for a character to secretly try the vaccine. While the author almost universally handles multiple story lines well, in the end I found this approach truly unfortunate as this author is good enough to keep readers coming back without this manipulation. In short, this author’s books would have been much better if treated as stand alones rather than installments.
Finally, from my point of view, the books are short. The three samples I took from the series were: 217, 210 and 210 pages. I view anything under 300 pages as short and prefer books 350 pages or longer. I must admit, however, that I got all of these books for $4 off Amazon so I don’t really feel shorted. Had I seen these books on a shelf in a book store I likely wouldn’t even have picked them up based on how thin they are.
Bottom line: While not perfect, these books are pretty easily worth the read for any lovers of competency porn.
December 3, 2024
Where in the fuck did Laurence E. Dahners research about India? Temple of Doom?
What the hell did he represent Delhi with? Rapists? Does buses in Chapel Hill is full of men prepared to molest if not rape every single girl boarding the bus? I know there have been cases in and near Delhi about women abuse, but isn't that so in any metropolitan city in America? But it's not in Delhi, or any other city in India, the way it is described in this book. I bet you based this Indian stereotyping based on the Nirbhaya case that happened probably while you were writing this book. But get this, that girl was not raped in a working bus. She was abducted and put in that bus after hours while it was not in service and the driver who had the possession of the bus was one of the culprits. Do better research.
What's more Viveka is not a girl's name, Momin is a Muslim name and Viveka is Hindu name, how the hell can they be related? You have no idea how scholarships work at IITD do you? It is one of the top engineering colleges in the whole world. Students who receive scholarships there, do not have to struggle for survival like students in America do. Education loan is an American problem, not Indian. What's more, the students who don't get some kind of scholarship or other, get other means for income from the institute itself, such as research assistance etc. Almost everyone lives in the institute hostels. Boarding and food is extremely cheap in IIT hostels. I did my post grad at IIT few years before the time in this story, and everyone in my batch were financially secured.
You love stereotyping, don't you Dahners? Indian men are molesters, Italian men are petty thieves. And worst an American man can be is being an asshole! Let me return the favaour. You must be a MAGA supporter!
Also, there NEVER were a 1000 rupees currency notes in India in last fifty years!!! Do you even do research Dahners? I had seen flaws in Dahners' research before, but this is unacceptable. At least he got some things right about Arya Vaii and her family in the Stasis series. For that matters Vaii is not Indian name as well. I loved all your serieses so far; in spite of the similarity in the plot. However, I've started losing respect for you fast with this book.
What the hell did he represent Delhi with? Rapists? Does buses in Chapel Hill is full of men prepared to molest if not rape every single girl boarding the bus? I know there have been cases in and near Delhi about women abuse, but isn't that so in any metropolitan city in America? But it's not in Delhi, or any other city in India, the way it is described in this book. I bet you based this Indian stereotyping based on the Nirbhaya case that happened probably while you were writing this book. But get this, that girl was not raped in a working bus. She was abducted and put in that bus after hours while it was not in service and the driver who had the possession of the bus was one of the culprits. Do better research.
What's more Viveka is not a girl's name, Momin is a Muslim name and Viveka is Hindu name, how the hell can they be related? You have no idea how scholarships work at IITD do you? It is one of the top engineering colleges in the whole world. Students who receive scholarships there, do not have to struggle for survival like students in America do. Education loan is an American problem, not Indian. What's more, the students who don't get some kind of scholarship or other, get other means for income from the institute itself, such as research assistance etc. Almost everyone lives in the institute hostels. Boarding and food is extremely cheap in IIT hostels. I did my post grad at IIT few years before the time in this story, and everyone in my batch were financially secured.
You love stereotyping, don't you Dahners? Indian men are molesters, Italian men are petty thieves. And worst an American man can be is being an asshole! Let me return the favaour. You must be a MAGA supporter!
Also, there NEVER were a 1000 rupees currency notes in India in last fifty years!!! Do you even do research Dahners? I had seen flaws in Dahners' research before, but this is unacceptable. At least he got some things right about Arya Vaii and her family in the Stasis series. For that matters Vaii is not Indian name as well. I loved all your serieses so far; in spite of the similarity in the plot. However, I've started losing respect for you fast with this book.
September 20, 2023
Whatever else you might say about Laurence Dahners, he is consistent in his methods. He extrapolates from a couple of what-if premises without straying far from contemporary science and gives you characters who remain stable, novel after novel. In Allotropes, the eighth book in the Ell Donsaii series, he postulates some developments in using new allotropes of carbon. Along the way, he corrects some of Larry Niven’s Ringworld speculations and continues the saga of his heroine’s double life.
May 14, 2019
Book 8 - Better than Yay!
My favorite so far. Lots of stuff that'd have you clapping and cheering if you were watching a movie. 🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆 Definitely a best time.
A Donsaii spoilers emoji: 🙌. Should oughtta trademark a Donsaii specific one. With a math/physics nuance? I'd want the t-shirt!
Amazon reviews = author perks.
This book deserves a veritable perks cascade.
My favorite so far. Lots of stuff that'd have you clapping and cheering if you were watching a movie. 🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆 Definitely a best time.
A Donsaii spoilers emoji: 🙌. Should oughtta trademark a Donsaii specific one. With a math/physics nuance? I'd want the t-shirt!
Amazon reviews = author perks.
This book deserves a veritable perks cascade.
December 4, 2019
Amazing author!
I am absolutely delighted to have come upon this extraordinary writer. Dahners is obviously a genius in his own right, and that he's written these wonderful series of novels for our edification and enjoyment is a sheer joy for anyone who enjoys great stories and writing, not just sci-fi fans...
Hats off to an exceptional mind and person! Don't miss these series;)
I am absolutely delighted to have come upon this extraordinary writer. Dahners is obviously a genius in his own right, and that he's written these wonderful series of novels for our edification and enjoyment is a sheer joy for anyone who enjoys great stories and writing, not just sci-fi fans...
Hats off to an exceptional mind and person! Don't miss these series;)
March 27, 2024
An absolutely fun book to read!!!!!!
Congratulations to Lawrence Dahners for this amazing series. It’s hard to find such an interesting and exciting author who not only writes intelligently but also provides top rated plots, characters and excitement in the stories. I’m really looking forward to the next book.
Congratulations to Lawrence Dahners for this amazing series. It’s hard to find such an interesting and exciting author who not only writes intelligently but also provides top rated plots, characters and excitement in the stories. I’m really looking forward to the next book.
October 5, 2020
Damn good episode
A very good episode, the MC finally stopped being so ridiculously shy and antsy about being so good at athletic stuff . There's also some excitement in the extra solar theater, though that part is particularly stupid and ridiculous.
A very good episode, the MC finally stopped being so ridiculously shy and antsy about being so good at athletic stuff . There's also some excitement in the extra solar theater, though that part is particularly stupid and ridiculous.
February 20, 2022
Highlyy Enjoyable
Another excellent and highly enjoyable addition to the series, with a really interesting outlook and investigation into another species. I think any reader who enjoyed the previous novels would enjoy this one.
Another excellent and highly enjoyable addition to the series, with a really interesting outlook and investigation into another species. I think any reader who enjoyed the previous novels would enjoy this one.
March 15, 2018
Yet another great story
I love this series and Mr Dahners has not let us down. We get to see how Ell's life is evolving and see great new ideas. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
I love this series and Mr Dahners has not let us down. We get to see how Ell's life is evolving and see great new ideas. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
July 5, 2020
Great light reading for summer fun.
September 7, 2020
A good book within the series. I especially enjoyed the novel perspective here on possible alien contact :)
Read
January 19, 2021Another excellent!
Good story, good scenes about the Olympics. Wouldn't it be the fox in the chicken coop if someone like her did do that?
Good story, good scenes about the Olympics. Wouldn't it be the fox in the chicken coop if someone like her did do that?
February 2, 2021
Another triumph
Following the adventures of All Domestic is quite interesting and intriguing I plan to follow the stories to see how this all resolves...
Following the adventures of All Domestic is quite interesting and intriguing I plan to follow the stories to see how this all resolves...
April 25, 2022
More light fun
Read
June 16, 2024Read Kindle book using Alexa audio asset. borrowed this edition on June 15, 2024. Kindle Unlimited Books. Aggressive aliens and human males dominate in this sequel.
June 27, 2025
Contact with a different world.
February 4, 2026
Another Great novel
Very good book.l enjoyed it as it was quite entertaining and both in the series dovetailed well. Kudos to the author.
Very good book.l enjoyed it as it was quite entertaining and both in the series dovetailed well. Kudos to the author.
September 9, 2013
Let's face it - if you're a fan of Ell Donsaii, you're probably going to read the book no matter what, and if you're not a fan you'll either start with "Quicker" or you won't care.
I like to equate the Ell Donsaii series with a narcotic - they get into your bloodstream and you can't wait for the next fix. Which is slightly stronger than when I equate another of my favorite series as candy: tasty, fills a craving, but isn't very filling. Dahners created a narcotic in the Ell Donsaii series, and somehow manages to keep the the series going. Really - after the first five books you have to start wondering HOW he will continue to keep the series interesting and engaging. Oddly, of the topics since book five, "Allotropes" is perhaps one of the more compelling books despite the dull-sounding name.
"Allotropes" in some ways brings the series full circle - it's been eight years since the first book started and ultimately feels like the series could wrap here. Not that I WANT to see the saga end, but again - I can't imagine WHAT Dahners can throw at Ell next.
Without spoilers, I will say that the series revisits some of the popular recurring themes, including one particular arrogant former Olympian who seems to have gone off his rocker a bit after eight years of hearing Ell's name. There's also another young woman introduced who has origins not dissimilar to Ell's own unfortunate beginnings and who share's Ell's intellect and ambition, albeit in a different field. Not to mention a certain admiration for the exceptionally successful woman.
Overall, the book may not have quite the same level of raw action of the earlier books, but is engaging in a similar way despite the lack of action.
I like to equate the Ell Donsaii series with a narcotic - they get into your bloodstream and you can't wait for the next fix. Which is slightly stronger than when I equate another of my favorite series as candy: tasty, fills a craving, but isn't very filling. Dahners created a narcotic in the Ell Donsaii series, and somehow manages to keep the the series going. Really - after the first five books you have to start wondering HOW he will continue to keep the series interesting and engaging. Oddly, of the topics since book five, "Allotropes" is perhaps one of the more compelling books despite the dull-sounding name.
"Allotropes" in some ways brings the series full circle - it's been eight years since the first book started and ultimately feels like the series could wrap here. Not that I WANT to see the saga end, but again - I can't imagine WHAT Dahners can throw at Ell next.
Without spoilers, I will say that the series revisits some of the popular recurring themes, including one particular arrogant former Olympian who seems to have gone off his rocker a bit after eight years of hearing Ell's name. There's also another young woman introduced who has origins not dissimilar to Ell's own unfortunate beginnings and who share's Ell's intellect and ambition, albeit in a different field. Not to mention a certain admiration for the exceptionally successful woman.
Overall, the book may not have quite the same level of raw action of the earlier books, but is engaging in a similar way despite the lack of action.
February 17, 2017
This serie is an interesting project. It starts with a question "what would happen if ..." and the books try to answer it.
It is a light, quick and easily readable set of books. Well written and enjoyable.
It is a light, quick and easily readable set of books. Well written and enjoyable.
July 30, 2016
Enjoyable next installment of the Ell Donsaii stories.
My daughter really seems to enjoy the repartee between Ell & Shan.
We get to see the interesting new aliens on the ringworld.
I like the new character. Are the men in India really that way to women in public?
Is Ell competing in the Olympics again?
My daughter really seems to enjoy the repartee between Ell & Shan.
We get to see the interesting new aliens on the ringworld.
I like the new character. Are the men in India really that way to women in public?
Is Ell competing in the Olympics again?
September 8, 2013
This story, while short, does a fine job of moving the larger plot along. It does well standing on its own but I think if it were combined with Habitats (Ell Donsaii #7) both would be improved. Actually if you skipped #7 and went right into Allotropes (#8) not much would be missed.
Read
February 10, 2014Tanzania does it again
Ell does in this story what many of us dream we could do and does it with class. I'm hoping she will finally get Michael's autograph. ha ha. The amazing Ell does it again.
Ell does in this story what many of us dream we could do and does it with class. I'm hoping she will finally get Michael's autograph. ha ha. The amazing Ell does it again.
September 6, 2013
YES, more!!!
September 24, 2013
Short & okay. Seemed more like an installment than a stand-alone, but got some decent progress on the character. Hopefully the next one has more/better action.
August 14, 2024
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