A Better Life

Three years ago, I supported a Kickstarter project for a book by Chris Johnson called A Better Life: 100 Atheists Speak Out on Joy & Meaning in a World Without God.

Johnson did a great job with it, though I must admit that I didn't read the whole thing. It's a large coffee-table book, so I just browsed it, looking at all of the pictures and reading about the atheists I recognized (from the Internet; I've never met any of them in person), and some I didn't.

After that, he decided to make a movie, which I also backed on Kickstarter, and it's just been released. This is the trailer for A Better Life: An Exploration of Joy & Meaning in a World Without God.

I just watched it yesterday, and it's superb. It was a smaller project than the book, since he only interviews about a dozen atheists, but they're a good cross-section of people - all rather photogenic and at ease in front of the camera, but of different ages and backgrounds.

The film combats claims that atheists are necessarily unhappy without a god and demonstrates that atheist lives are at least as filled with joy and meaning as those of religious believers. It's an hour and a half long, which is just about perfect, I'd say. And it's really beautiful.

What it's not is an argument against theism. This isn't about debates, and it's not even about in depth interviews. It just lets you see and hear from a dozen happy, well-adjusted atheists from different walks of life.

There's humor, too. If you do rent the film, make sure you watch till the very end. He's got some bloopers included with the credits.

"New Dawn" by Chris Hechtl

(cover image from Amazon.com)

As I noted awhile back, I'm not even attempting to keep up with this blog, except as I encounter interesting content that's very easy to post (mostly video clips). In particular, I haven't been posting any book reviews lately - and I've been reading some very good books, too. Oh, well.

However, I just have to talk about New Dawn by Chris Hechtl. It's a self-published science fiction novel available for download at Amazon.com, the first in his Wandering Engineer series.

I stumbled across it at Amazon.com - at this point, I'm not sure how - and read the beginning free, on-line. It was such a train wreck that I just had to buy it (only $2.99) to see how bad it could really be. And I ended up reading the whole thing in one day. Heck, I might even buy the sequel, although this might be the worst book I've ever read. (I'll explain that in a minute.)

At the start of the book, a fleet admiral in the Federation navy - an engineer par excellence - has been in stasis for more than 700 years, when a ship finally discovers his escape pod and takes him aboard (shades of The Lost Fleet, although this is quite a different book).

The Federation has been obliterated, but so has their enemy, apparently. Both sides started out destroying inhabited planets and ended with causing stars to go nova, wiping out entire star systems (including Sol system, but many others as well). Now, 700 years later, there are people still alive on some planets and on a space station or two, but in most cases (on the planets, at least) they've lost their advanced technology.

The ship which picks him up was originally a Federation fleet repair and supply ship (ideal for an engineer, of course) which struck a mine during the war, then was holed by enemy action, abandoned by the crew (who destroyed the computer, per Federation rules), drifted as a derelict for 700 years while being struck by asteroids, and then was reclaimed as salvage by the woman who's now captain. She and the rest of the women on board use it as a trading vessel, flying between isolated star systems. (Somehow, after all that, it's still a working starship.)

Yes, I said women, because the crew are all women (except for the male doctor they kidnapped from one of the planets) - all young women, except for the elderly captain - all young women wearing sleazy outfits they got from a whorehouse (literally; their clothing was salvaged from a whorehouse) - most of them just... incredibly ignorant. None of them even know what a computer virus is, for example, and some can't even read.

Yet, somehow, these astoundingly ignorant young women are flying this salvaged bucket of holes from star system to star system as traders. The whole thing is a complete wreck, inside and out, and when the engineer is picked up (that's what they call him much of the time, just "the engineer"), they've taken fresh damage from a pirate - damage to their hyperdrive system, so they can't escape. (The first thing he does is fix that. No problem, right?)

Most of these women act like teenagers from a bad 1950's sitcom. Yeah, they wear porn outfits, but they giggle and blush at everything. I'm not kidding. They blush when talking about taking farm animals to another colony for genetic reasons - and it doesn't get any more specific than that, either. Just the phrase "limited gene pool" - in regards to livestock - makes them blush. Heck, they blush when they flush a toilet, too - not when they've been using it, but just to test that it's working again after repair! It's like a parody of a bad 1950's sitcom.

Even the man is like that, often enough. For example, when explaining how a straightjacket is worn, he hesitates before mentioning that one strap goes between a woman's... legs. (I was surprised he didn't say "limbs" instead of "legs," like a proper Victorian.) But the women are the worst. They giggle and blush whenever he's around - except for the few who want to kill him. It's just the dumbest thing.

I might point out, as a reviewer at Amazon.com did, that these people seem to use the equivalent of Windows XP in their advanced starships in the distant future. And with a screwdriver and a wrench, a good engineer can fix anything. (OK, admittedly, he's got replicators, once he fixes them.) But it's the ship full of young women in sleazy outfits, sighing over the wonderful man who knows everything (would you believe that he's also a black belt in martial arts? yeah, you expected that, huh?), that's really bizarre.

I had to buy this book just to find out if he was going to make himself king, with his own ready-made harem. But in fact, the book is much too prudish for that. There's no explicit, or even implicit, sex, except for some implied lesbian relationships. In fact, the heroic man seems to be made of stone, with all these giggling girls flirting with him. He's a young man, too - very young for an admiral, certainly. But he barely even notices their revealing mini-skirts, skimpy halter tops, and French maid outfits. For the most part, the sexual tension - such as it is - is entirely a matter of giggles and blushes (of which there are far too many).

But there's more. I would swear that no one actually read this book before putting it up for sale at Amazon.com. No one. Certainly no editor. But it wouldn't have required a professional editor to improve things, because I'm convinced that no English speaker could read this book without becoming exasperated at the abundant spelling errors in it.

For example, there's a morale officer on the ship, and frequent talk about the morale of the crew. But almost always, it's spelled "moral." (After awhile, that was like fingers on a blackboard for me.) "Quite" is invariably spelled "quiet." He uses "to" for "too" - and vice versa! He uses "their," "there," or "they're" just... randomly, it seems.

Those are just a few examples, because those kinds of errors are on every page of the book. Heck, I noticed more than one per sentence, sometimes. It's like the author dictated this to a speech-to-text converter but then never bothered to actually read it afterwards. And clearly, no one else did, either. Now, I don't mind occasional errors, especially in a self-published book. We all make mistakes, after all. But this could well be a parody of self-published books. It's pretty much all error.

The paragraph divisions seem to be made randomly, too - at least, during conversations. Frankly, it's a very good thing that the hero is pretty much the only man on the ship, because it would be even harder to know which person was talking without knowing who "he" had to mean. Honestly, it's just ridiculous. I've never seen a book so desperately in need of editing.

There are other problems, too, but they're hardly worth mentioning, given all this. I mean, yeah, the women are mostly indistinguishable - except for the elderly captain and the woman who wants to kill him, at least. All of the other young girls whom he trains to become skilled engineers just kind of blend together. You don't really need to keep their names straight (luckily for me), because it doesn't matter in the slightest.

But do you know what the biggest tragedy of this book is? It's a good story. The idea behind it caught my interest right away (of course, I always did like classic SF with an engineering outlook), and the story is actually entertaining. I wouldn't have read the whole thing, otherwise. Indeed, as I say, I'm tempted to buy the sequel, just to see what happens next.

That's why I said that this is the worst book I've ever read, because I did read it. If it hadn't been entertaining, I would have stopped long before finishing it. I've certainly done that with other books.

But this is also a story where I was either cringing or groaning or rolling my eyes at... well, everything. You can't read even one page without being completely exasperated at how juvenile it is or how poorly it's constructed. There's a very entertaining book in here - somewhere - but you pretty well have to imagine it yourself, because the author certainly hasn't given us that book.

I said that this was a train wreck, and that's exactly what if feels like. Reading it, I felt rather ghoulish, like I was an eager spectator at a train wreck, both fascinated and repelled at the same time. This is the most... astonishing book I've read in years, maybe ever. But it's not astonishing in a good way, unless you consider it to be astonishing that there's an entertaining story hidden in this mess, disguised almost beyond recognition.

As you can probably tell, I'm still astonished by the thing. This author seems to be a natural storyteller, but his book-writing skills are severely lacking. I hope he never reads this review - I'm not that cruel - but if he does, I want to encourage him to keep writing. Seriously. He's got talent. He just doesn't have an editor. And he desperately, desperately needs one.

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Note: My other book reviews, such as they are, can be found here.

An atheist reads "The Purpose of Christmas"

Steve Shives does a great job with these videos. I always enjoy them. Unlike the other books in this series, he covers the whole thing - which isn't very long, apparently - in one video.

"Portal" by Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor

(cover image from Amazon.com)

Portal (2013) is the third, and presumably final, volume of a SF trilogy by Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor. (The other two books in the series are Boundary and Threshold.)

In my review of the latter book, I noted that I enjoyed both volumes, but I kept thinking I should have liked them better. The story was great, but I found the characters less than completely appealing. And that's probably why it's taken me awhile to get around to reading this one.

But Portal is the best of the three, and a fine conclusion to the story. Partly, that's because it's not really character-based (so the characters aren't especially important in this one), and partly, it's because it starts in desperate circumstances, with a dozen characters marooned on Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter.

I thought the first two books started slowly - mostly because the characters never really grabbed me. But in this case, we already know the characters, and the focus of the book is on survival. Right from the start, they're in a great deal of danger, stuck with a wrecked ship on a hostile moon.

Another reason why I liked the book is because it reminded me - in a good way - of the classic science fiction of decades ago. The survivors are mostly scientists, and they have that same "can do" attitude of capable engineers which I always enjoyed in classic science fiction.

If there's a problem, you know they're going to find a solution. They're all very capable, they use their training and their minds, and they never give up. I like that!

No, I never object to capable characters. I like capable characters. My problem with the first two books was that they didn't seem particularly appealing - all being super-achievers without any significant problems at all. Indeed, they were so perfect at everything, they were almost supermen. (Why couldn't a superior engineer be a bad cook? Joking about the food would have at least made them seem human. But no, they're gourmet cooks, too.)

But that doesn't come up so much in this book. After all, we already know the characters. (Admittedly, I had a little trouble remember who was who, since it's been three and a half years since I read Threshold, but that wasn't particularly important.) And the fact that they're very capable at their jobs just makes sense. In fact, it would have been hard to believe if they hadn't been superbly capable in their own specialties.

And the characters were appealing in this book not just because of their "can do" attitude, but because, as scientists, they never stopped doing science. Even in desperate circumstances, they couldn't all stay busy all the time. And they were stranded in a location where no human being had ever been before.

So of course they're going to want to investigate. Scientists want to learn. They were all smart enough to understand priorities, but while working on the solutions to their immediate problems, they still wanted to do scientific research. That kind of attitude did make them appealing.

Madeline, the intelligence agent, was still pretty much an unbelievable super-hero, but I could shrug that off. And of course they're going to succeed, they're going to survive - most of them, certainly. That was never in doubt. It is fiction, after all.

But it was great fun watching them do it. Furthermore, the book - indeed, the whole trilogy - was fundamentally optimistic. This isn't just a survival story, but a story of discovery, too. Could our solar system have such wonderful surprises waiting to be discovered?

Well,... probably not. But the possibility is always there. And with science, with new technologies, and with determination, we could find out. The journey will be valuable enough in itself, whatever we discover.

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Note: My other book reviews are here.

"The Sea of Time" by P. C. Hodgell

(cover image from Amazon.com)

The Sea of Time (2014) by P. C. Hodgell is the seventh in her Godstalker series (or Chronicles of the Kencyrath, as it's also known), which began 32 years ago with God Stalk (1982).

That was long before I started blogging, but I described the whole series - and my long wait for sequels - in my review of Bound in Blood (2010), here.

As I noted then, and in my review of the following book, the series has always seemed wildly imaginative, and I've certainly been entertained by it. But the story didn't advance much in the last two books. In a series with imagination in spades, staying in the same setting (the randon college at Tentir) for three books has been a bit frustrating.

But that's over now. This book begins with Jame's arrival in Kothifir, the southern city that hires her people as mercenaries, and ends with her being summoned back to Gothregor. In the meantime, we get to see another weird city and learn more about the past.

After 32 years, the whole thing is starting to make sense. I think. :)

The Kencyrath people hate their Three-Faced God and despise their priests. But there's real power there. The temples - which were built before their people had even arrived on this world, 3,000 years ago - tend to be unstable. And in this case, the instability creates... temporary gods from the Kothifir townspeople.

It's funny, but we've been hearing about Kothifir for a long time, but it's only now that we hear the details about what happened there. Mostly, that's because Jame dreams about what happened to her twin, Tori, years ago. (Her twin is ten years older than she is. Yeah, don't ask.)

I have to say that I'm impressed that it all hangs together so well - especially given the long times between books. Has Hodgell had the whole thing planned out?

It does jump around a bit. Mostly, things are seen from Jame's perspective, but sometimes from Tori's. And both of them dream about the past - about the past of the other twin, too - and there's often no clear divide between past and present. It can be a bit confusing.

It's also a little hard keeping track of characters, especially since they don't all appear in every book. There's a list of characters - four pages long! - at the back of the book, but the descriptions are so brief they're pretty much useless. (And those are only the characters in this book.)

I didn't find that any of that a real problem, though. In most cases, it doesn't matter much if you can't remember the details from previous books - or even earlier in this one. It's still lots of fun.

I didn't intend to read this book - not when I did read it, I mean. I bought the book, and I certainly planned to read it, eventually. But I made the mistake of picking it up and reading the first few pages of the prologue. That was it. I just couldn't put it down.

I love the whole series, though I was getting impatient for progress in the last two books. In this one,... well, I can't say there's much progress. But it's a new setting, and apparently just for this book. That's good enough for me.

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Note: My other book reviews are here.

Two by Kate Griffin

(cover image from Amazon.com)

These are two books by Kate Griffin I read a few weeks ago. Yes, I'm that far behind in posts here. So I'll make this quick.*

The Neon Court (2011) is the third in her Matthew Swift series of the sorcerer who returned from death, thanks to the blue electric angels of the telephone wires who now inhabit his body. (See my reviews of her earlier books - and books by other authors - here.)

As of the previous book in the series, he's also the Midnight Mayor of London. Now he gets summoned - literally - to a blood-drenched, burning office tower, which leads to a war between two magical factions and a night that might never end.

Like the previous books, this is very entertaining,... and also quite dark. Indeed, it's even darker than the previous two books. Oddly enough - because that's not my style - I still enjoyed it.

OK, time for an extended digression:

There's a big difference between science fiction and fantasy which is abundantly clear in this book - and it's one big reason why I prefer the former.

Science fiction doesn't have to be optimistic, but there's usually a sense that progress is at least possible. After all, technology is democratic. You don't have to be anyone special, because nearly everyone has the capability to use, create, and even invent technology.

Science and technology are connected to the past by a long line of discoveries and advances. All you have to do is look back to see how far we've come, and it's pretty easy to expect that trend to continue in the future, as we continue to educate human beings and learn more about our universe.

Of course, there may be setbacks. Dystopias frequently demonstrate what can go wrong. But we readers, at the very least, can certainly see that progress is possible. Indeed, dystopias are usually just cautionary tales from people who do expect progress, or at least hope for it.

Fantasy tends to be very different. For one thing, it's usually aristocratic, rather than democratic. Magic is normally something you're born with. You're either a Muggle or you're not. If you don't have any magical power, there's nothing you can do about it.

You can be trained if you've got the innate ability, and training does help a great deal. But only if you're already magical to begin with. And even then, different people have different degrees of magical power,... innately. This, too, tends to run in families, but even when it doesn't, you're still stuck with what you're born with.

Furthermore - and I'm talking about this fantasy series in particular now, though it might apply more generally than that - there's no sense of progress. Good people can fight evil, but evil will always exist. Whether you're talking about evil people being born with powerful magical abilities or about evil existing as an inherent part of life, as in The Neon Court, the best you can do is just fight it when you can.

After you're gone, things will be no better. Of course, if evil wins, things will be a lot worse. It's commonly a given in fantasy that losing will be absolutely catastrophic. But winning just means that you and your society live to fight the next battle. In this book, and others, there's no sense that progress is even possible.

I don't know if these are two separate things - democratic vs aristocratic and the whole idea of progress - or not. Technology has had a democratic influence in human societies, especially after peasants could be handed a musket and be trained as soldiers in a matter of months (instead of the born warriors who dominated previously).

And social progress tends to follow technological progress. Maybe it's not inevitable, but I doubt if you can have one without the other.

Well, I've gotten completely off the subject, haven't I? Let me just say that The Neon Court is dark, not just because of what happens in the book, but also because it's clear than progress isn't possible in that world. The dangers are always going to be there, and there's really nothing anyone can do about it.

(cover image from Amazon.com)

Since the Matthew Swift series is so dark, it seems rather surprising to me that Griffin has created a humorous offshoot of it, her Magicals Anonymous series which starts with the book, Stray Souls (2012).

Don't get me wrong, Stray Souls is fairly dark, too. But it also tries very hard to be funny (too hard, really).

Sharon Li is an untrained shaman with a messed-up life who creates a Facebook page for magical misfits and then gets involved in fighting a deadly danger to all of London. (Matthew Swift is a minor character in this book.) Of course, her diverse group of weird characters are the key to saving the city.

OK, the book was fun enough, but Griffin really seemed to be trying too hard. Whether it's the failed druid with psychosomatic asthma attacks or the vampire germaphobe or the troll gourmet, it's as if she made a list of the weirdest characters she could think of.

Many of them are more pathetic than funny, really, and that includes Sharon, herself. Plus, with people being killed in disgusting ways, this series is also surprisingly dark. It's a weird combination.

Maybe this was meant to be a young adult book. That wouldn't surprise me. And it's not that I didn't find it entertaining,... but I doubt if I'll continue with the series. It just didn't work for me. I love humorous fiction, and even humor in serious fiction, but the author just seemed to be trying too hard in this one.

I might continue with the Matthew Swift series, but I'm not sure. My big problem is that it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Swift doesn't seem to have a personal life - not with anyone who isn't quickly killed. OK, his apprentice is a possible exception to that, but...

My big problem is still the lack of progress. In this case, it's that Swift's life doesn't seem to progress, but the overall situation doesn't progress, either. Nothing changes, so every book is much like the others. Is the overall story going somewhere? Not that I can see. And that's a problem for me in a series like this.

Matthew Swift doesn't have enough of a personal life for me to remain interested in his own story. And nothing else seems likely to change much, either. For the first two books, I was OK with that. But by the time we get to the third, I guess I expect to see progress of some kind.

*PS. You didn't actually believe that, did you?
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Note: My other book reviews are here.

The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast by Jack Campbell

(cover image from Amazon.com)

I've really been enjoying the Lost Fleet series (including the sequel and the Lost Stars offshoot) by Jack Campbell (the pen name of John G. Hemry), but I still wasn't expecting much from this book.

Well, from the description, it seemed like a bunch of odds and ends - filler, basically, until Campbell could think of a new direction for the story (the fleet, after all, having returned home long since). It starts on Earth, where the last book ended, and then there's a new assignment immediately when he returns - nothing important, just a way to keep John "Black Jack" Geary out of everybody's hair.

But it didn't read like that. The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast (2014) was just as interesting as all the other books. That includes the first 150 pages of the book, which is just them trying to leave Sol system, and it includes the minor task of repatriating Syndic refugees he's given next.

Of course, there's more to that than it seems, but any reader would expect that. No, what was particularly interesting was that it was a different problem. Campbell is still coming up with new situations, even after all of the previous books.

This is a middle book, though, ending with the discovery of a hugely dangerous situation which will undoubtedly be the focus of the next book in the series. I don't mind that, but I have to say that the situation was no surprise at all, really.

My only complaint about the book is that I figured out what was going on long before Admiral Geary did. After all, the whole book pointed in that direction. Of course, that's because it is a book. If it didn't give us some clues, if these things came completely out of the blue, that wouldn't seem right, either.

So I can't complain too much. It's still a very entertaining book. Just don't expect the revelation at the end to take you by surprise. :)

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Note: My other book reviews can be found here.

JAG in Space, continued

(cover image from Amazon.com)

I've continued my reading of John G. Hemry's JAG in Space series with the third and fourth (and, so far, final) volumes, Rule of Evidence (2005) and Against All Enemies (2006).

These follow the same pattern I described in my review of the first two books, and that might be a problem. Oh, I enjoyed both books, but whoever named this series "JAG in Space" might have done the author a disservice.

The characters are still great, and life aboard a military spaceship seems both interesting and very realistic. But unlike similar books, these end in a courtroom trial, rather than a battle, and I wonder how many of those can really make sense.

After all, Paul Sinclair is a line officer, not a lawyer. I would love to continue following his career, but I wonder if "JAG in Space" hasn't boxed the author into a situation which simply won't work for long. Is that why there hasn't been a new volume in this series for eight years? Certainly, the fourth book doesn't read like a conclusion.

In Rule of Evidence, Sinclair's fiance is charged with sabotage and the deliberate murder of 61 of her fellow shipmates. Clearly, he has a strong interest in this court martial. And I loved her reaction to confinement. Hemry is just exceptional in his characterizations.

The book was great, but the trial itself was a bit weak. Well, the case was certainly weak, though it appeared to be enough to convict her. They didn't have any evidence against her at all, except the fact that she'd survived the explosion. Was that really enough for a court martial?

And the solution was rather weak, too. Oh, it was quite reasonable. I had no trouble buying it. But I could see it coming from a mile away, and the actual mechanics of the discovery seemed too simple, too easy, too neat.

(cover image from Amazon.com)

Against All Enemies ends in a court martial for treason. This time, the trial was rather straightforward, and Paul Sinclair didn't have much riding on the outcome. So as a trial, it was the least interesting of the four in this series. (And I read these two books out of order, so it wasn't just that I was getting tired of the concept.)

Make no mistake, I enjoyed both of these books. I've enjoyed the whole series. But that "JAG in Space" idea seems to be locking the author into a pattern that's working less and less well with each succeeding book.

Paul Sinclair isn't a lawyer and has no intention of becoming a lawyer. In the first two books of this series, he risked his career - at the very beginning of it - to do the right thing. That worked great.

But there's a lot more to this series - and to this character - than legal issues. Unfortunately, it's JAG in Space, right? So how could Hemry write a sequel without a court martial? I did like the idea behind this, but I think he backed himself into a corner.

Of course, Hemry now writes the hugely successful Lost Fleet series under the name Jack Campbell. That's how I discovered his writing. And the Lost Fleet universe gives him a lot wider canvas than this one does.

From the beginning, the setting of JAG in Space seemed as unique as the idea behind it,... but also rather hard to imagine. Hemry kept the focus on shipboard routine, and that was great. But I had to wonder if he was also forced into that small canvas because he couldn't make the rest of his universe seem plausible.

If Against All Enemies is the last of this series, as it seems right now, that wouldn't be too surprising. There's certainly a lot to like in these books, but maybe not as much room to grow. If you're already familiar with Jack Campbell, you'll probably want to give JAG in Space a try. If not, definitely get your hands on The Lost Fleet: Dauntless.

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Note: The rest of my book reviews are here.

JAG in Space

(cover image from Amazon.com)

John G. Hemry also writes under the pen name Jack Campbell, and I've been enjoying his Lost Fleet series - and the sequels - so much that I wanted to try the books published under his real name. His very first series, starting with Stark's War (2000), didn't sound appealing, so I went with JAG in Space.

Yeah, the series title is terrible, and it's not even particularly accurate. But I'll get to that in a minute. This is military science fiction with significant differences from what you might expect. Indeed, it's quite unusual, and if I wonder about the setting - which I do - I can't complain about the results.

I've enjoyed both of the books I've read so far. In A Just Determination (2003), we're introduced to Paul Sinclair just before he boards the USS Michaelson. He's a grass-green ensign on his very first deployment after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy

In the second, Burden of Proof (2004), Sinclair has just been promoted to lieutenant jg, but he still functions as the ship's collateral duty legal officer, thanks to a one-month course he was assigned just to fill in a gap in his schedule.

Sinclair is a line officer in the U.S. space navy. He's not a lawyer and has no desire to be a lawyer. But in each book, he gets involved in a court martial proceeding against a fellow officer from his own ship. Thus the "JAG in Space," I guess.

(cover image from Amazon.com)

For science fiction - certainly for military science fiction - this is set in a very odd time. Sinclair is an officer in the U.S. Navy, and their ships patrol some undefined part of the solar system which is claimed by the United States of America.

There doesn't seem to be anything there, not anything worth the claiming. They're just patrolling in order to maintain their claim to that particular part of space. Why they'd even want it? Who knows?

This doesn't seem to be too far in the future, and it's never explained why America spends that much money for no apparent reason. There's no hint of FTL flight, nor even of colonizing other planets within our own solar system. (Then again, we learn almost nothing of civilian society and see nothing but the inside of a space ship and a tiny bit of a naval space station.)

All in all, the setting doesn't seem to make much sense. America isn't even at war - this is a peacetime navy - although there's apparently the potential for a violent confrontation with the South Asian Alliance. But it's certainly unique, at least in my experience. After all, there's plenty of military science fiction set aboard starships in the far distant future.

Most of those seem to follow the pattern of Horatio Hornblower, C. S. Forester's great series set during the Napoleonic Wars. In that pattern - copied by countless authors since, both those writing military fiction set on Earth and science fiction authors, too - you follow the officers and crew of a military ship, getting to know them, until finishing with a climactic battle against overwhelming odds.

These two books do the first part of that - indeed, Hemry makes military life aboard a space ship seem very realistic - but they end, not with a battle, but with a trial. It's still a desperate situation for the accused, I guess, but the real drama is more about the courage of Paul Sinclair in risking his career to see justice done.

It's unusual, but it works. And it probably works mostly because Hemry's characters are superb. We like Sinclair right from the start, and most of the other characters are appealing, too. But all of the characters seem realistic, and they're all individuals.

This is character-based fiction which presents an interesting and very plausible view of both military law and life on board a military ship in space. It's a combination I've never seen before (a blurb on the back cover of A Just Determination calls it "The Caine Mutiny in space"), but it's as entertaining as it is unusual.

There are two more books in the series, and I've already got them on order. So far, the series has stuck to a very distinct path, and I just don't know if it stays that way in the next two books or not. I'd like to learn more about their society in general, but I have real doubts that he could make it seem plausible.

So maybe he'd be wise to stick with "The Caine Mutiny in space" for every book? I really don't know. Again, the characters are great, so at this point, I'm pretty confident that I'll enjoy the rest of the series, anyway.

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Note: All of my book reviews can be found here.

The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Invincible & The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

(cover image from Amazon.com)

I know, I know. I'm reading these books faster than I can write reviews of them. What can I say?

Well, I suppose I can say that I'm almost done now - not because I'm enjoying Jack Campbell's books any less, but because I'm running out of books which have already been published. (Luckily, there's still one in this series that was published just this month.)

The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Invincible (2012) and The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Guardian (2013) are the second and third volumes in Jack Campbell's second series about John "Black Jack" Geary, continuing the story from the first Lost Fleet series.

These are all one story. Indeed, as I say, the story in the original Lost Fleet series just continues in this one. However, there are natural stopping places, and oddly enough (since a fourth book has already been published), the end of Guardian is one of them. If I hadn't known better, I probably wouldn't  have expected another volume after that.

Anyway, this series started with The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught, with Admiral Geary sent to investigate their mysterious alien enemies, without even much of a chance to rest or repair his worn-out fleet.

This is military science fiction, so there are lots of space battles, but there's also more than that. Now that the war is over, politics seems to be the biggest danger to the Alliance. As time goes on, it seems more and more likely that some people in the Alliance government sent them on this mission in the hope of getting rid of Geary and his fleet, both.

(Note that they weren't entirely foolish to worry about a legendary war hero and his devoted space navy. We readers know enough about John Geary to recognize that those fears aren't justified, in this particular case, but they wouldn't. Of course, there are different people with different motives involved in every decision. Not all of them are admirable.)

(cover image from Amazon.com)

At the end of Dreadnaught, Admiral Geary's fleet had gone entirely through the enigma race's territory, only to stumble upon an even more hostile alien race. Of course, it's no surprise to learn that they don't get trapped there. In fact, they discover yet a third alien species - this one, friendly.

The fleet makes it back home in Guardian - again, no surprise - but it turns out that the aliens want to go to Earth, now a neutral planet, demilitarized, rarely visited (and then just for ceremonial purposes).

In fact, they want to go to Kansas, which I have to say is poor taste on their part, especially when Nebraska is just one state north. :)

Frankly, I'm enjoying this series more than I thought I would. I wasn't sure how much more Jack Campbell would really have to say about the same characters and the same fleet we've seen since the start of The Lost Fleet: Dauntless.

And I'm still not sure how well the series will hang together as a series. If there's an overall plot here, I'm not seeing it. But I like the aliens - all three species - and I'm still enjoying each book.

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Note: The rest of my book reviews, such as they are, are here.

"The Lost Stars: Perilous Shield" by Jack Campbell

(cover image by Amazon.com)

The Lost Stars: Perilous Shield (2013) is the second volume in Jack Campbell's third series of military science fiction/space opera.

My review of the first book in the series is here. As I said then, it was a brilliant move to switch the point of view to the Syndicate Worlds' - former Syndicate Worlds' - side. And we see things through the eyes of two co-equal characters here. Indeed, this series is as much space opera as it is military SF.

The previous book ended in a cliff-hanger. However, if you've been reading Campbell's second series about John "Black Jack" Geary and the 'Lost Fleet,' you'll already know how that turned out. That's not a problem, really, but just note that, whichever series you read first, there will be spoilers for the other one.

"Black Jack" Geary is very important even in this series, though we don't see very much of him. Don't worry, these are different people with their own concerns. But the two series - The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier and The Lost Stars - do intersect. If I'd read the former series first, the cliffhanger in the first volume of this one wouldn't really have been a cliffhanger. :)

Just for the record, I would recommend reading all of these books in the order of initial publication. But as long as you get the order right within each series, I wouldn't worry too much about which series you read first. (But, obviously, read The Lost Fleet before you read The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier.)

So what happens in this book? Well, Gwen Iceni and Artur Drakon are still struggling to keep their people alive, despite attacks by the Syndic and aliens alike. To do that, they need more ships and more trained people. (And they need to stay alive, themselves.)

Luckily, the Alliance - Admiral Geary, at least - has good reason to want them to succeed, but the Alliance has plenty enough problems of its own - and little reason to trust former Syndics.

For that matter, President Iceni and General Drakon continue to have trouble trusting each other, though that's getting easier for both of them. Unfortunately, their closest associates all seem to have schemes of their own.

If you've read The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Invincible and Guardian, you'll know much of what happens in this book, but you'll see it from a different perspective - different perspectives, I should say. The details are new, as well, and it's still very entertaining.

I read this one first, and I can't say that it spoiled the other two books for me. It's not just the different perspective, but different characters and different concerns. I must say that I'm very impressed at how Campbell has kept things fresh.

Unfortunately, the next book in this series won't be published until the end of September. It's not going to be easy to wait.

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Note: My other book reviews are here.

"The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught" by Jack Campbell

(cover image from Amazon.com)

The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught (2011) is the first book in Jack Campbell's second series about John "Black Jack" Geary, the legendary ship captain lost for a century in suspended animation, who returned to lead the Alliance to victory over the Syndicate Worlds.

It's only been a month since that victory, but Geary and the fleet are given no time to rest. Instead, they're sent to investigate the hostile aliens on the other side of Syndic space, in an apparent attempt to get rid of Geary and his loyal fleet of ships, both.

Of course, that's not going to happen. As in the first series, it seems pretty obvious that Admiral Geary will find a way not just to survive, but to return covered in even more glory than before. Yes, this is military SF, but it's intelligent military SF, and I greatly enjoyed it.

On the downside, it's pretty much the same characters and the same ships fighting similar battles to those we saw in the six volumes of the first series (similar battles, but always unique). Of course, that was a hugely entertaining series, but I wonder how long this can continue to entertain.

On the upside, though, the aliens are very weird. I don't know if we'll ever find out much about them, but I really hope so. So far, they don't make much sense. Yes, I know that they're alien, but I hope they eventually seem plausible. At any rate, that's certainly something new, with the potential to be really fascinating.

This book starts in Alliance space, and there's more politics than space battles, at least at first. But it's intelligent politics. True, their democracy doesn't seem to function as well as it appeared at first, and their politicians aren't all especially admirable. But they're not all corrupt, stupid, and/or vile, either. (And their military is far from perfect, too, of course.)

And there are also perceptive observations in this series, just as in the first:

"The government." Rione breathed a single, soft laugh though her expression didn't change. "You speak of 'the government' as if it were a single, monolithic beast of huge proportions, with countless hands but only a single brain controlling them. Turn that vision around, Admiral. Perhaps you should consider how things would be if the government was in fact a mammoth creature with a single tremendous hand but many brains trying to direct that hand in its powerful but clumsy efforts to do something, anything. You've seen the grand council at work. Which image seems more appropriate to you?"

Don't worry. Campbell doesn't get bogged down in politics, though it does take 140 pages before the fleet is on its way again. But then, that's not so bad, either. After all, we've seen plenty of space battles in earlier books. And the battles here - at least a couple with marine landings - aren't just copies of what we'd already seen previously.

I think I like the idea behind Campbell's third series better (see my review of The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight), because it's fresher, with all new characters in a new setting, and because it's not so much military SF as a combination of military SF and space opera.

But I can't complain about this series, either, not so far. I have to be careful when I pick these up, because once I start reading, I can't seem to stop.

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Note: All of my other book reviews are available here.

"The Midnight Mayor" by Kate Griffin

(cover image from Amazon.com)

The Midnight Mayor (2010) by Kate Griffin is the second book in her fantasy series about Matthew Swift, urban sorcerer and host to the blue electric angels.

Like the first, this is a big book - 467 pages - and lush with descriptive language. It also begins in a somewhat similar fashion, with Swift badly injured and under attack, struggling to understand what has happened to him.

In fact, that's my only real problem with the book, that it's so much like the previous volume. The plot is different, though he's again fighting a terribly powerful foe, this time bent on the complete destruction of London. But even the minor characters are much the same.

Oh, I enjoyed it, and I'm sure I'll continue to read the series. But one of the reasons I liked the first book is because it was so imaginative. Well, this time we already know about Matthew Swift and the blue electric angels, and we already know about sorcerers in general. So it really doesn't have the same impact as the first.

In fact, I must admit that I just skimmed through some of the detailed descriptions this time. There's still a reason for such detail, I suppose - Swift is still a sorcerer, after all - but not such a good reason as last time, when he was recently resurrected and everything was brand-new to... them.

OK, I'm sure I sound much more negative than I feel. I enjoyed the book, and you will, too, I'm sure, if you enjoyed the first one. It's very similar.

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Note: The rest of my book reviews are here.

The Lost Fleet: Relentless, Victorious

(cover image from Amazon.com)

The final two books in Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series - Relentless (2009) and Victorious (2010) - finally arrived yesterday, and I immediately sat down and read them both. Yeah, I just couldn't resist.

Note that the series is all one story. Indeed, the story continues, even after this series ends, with The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught (2011). But the story does come to a satisfying conclusion in this series.

As I explained in my review of the first Lost Fleet book, John "Black Jack" Geary has been in suspended animation for a century, one of the first victims of the war between the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds.

When finally recovered, he learns that the Alliance has turned him into a legendary hero and that the war has been draining - and changing - both societies for the past century. Almost immediately, he's forced to take command of a starship fleet trapped behind enemy lines, horribly outnumbered, after a devastating defeat.

Of course, there's never any doubt that the fleet will make it home. This isn't a Greek tragedy, where everyone dies. Equally, there's never any doubt that some ships and some people won't make it home. To that extent, this is typical military science fiction (though far better than most).

What can I say that I haven't already said in previous reviews? Well, not much, I guess. Geary continues to handle the fleet superbly (not so much his personal life, though). Each battle is different enough to be entertaining, even after several volumes. And there's more going on than just space battles, with unexpected enemies both inside and outside the fleet.

(cover image from Amazon.com)

The fleet finally makes it home in the fifth volume of the series, Relentless (as I say, that's no spoiler, because it was obviously going to happen, right from the beginning), then heads back out to finish the war in Victorious. (Do you really have to be told how that turns out?)

I had a great time with it, and there's more to come. I already posted a review of The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight - the first in a new series which focuses on former Syndics, after the Syndicate Worlds empire begins to break up. I'm especially enthusiastic about that.

But John Geary continues, with pretty much the same fleet and the same people, in The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught, too. I wonder a little more about that, since it seems so similar to the first series. But there are some pretty interesting aliens involved, so we'll just have to see.

I'm certainly very pleased to have discovered this author. If you like military science fiction, you don't want to miss The Lost Fleet. And even if you don't, you still might want to give it a try. It's done very well here.

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Note: You can find all of my book reviews here.

"The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight" by Jack Campbell

(cover image from Amazon.com)

The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight (2012) by Jack Campbell is the first book in a new series in his Lost Fleet universe. It begins just after the Lost Fleet series - and at the same time as the first book in his second series, The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught - but the characters are from the Syndicate Worlds.

In many ways, this turns the first series on its head. The war is over, and the Syndics have lost. (Note that I have yet to read the last two books of The Lost Fleet series - this one arrived first :) - but that's not really a spoiler. There was never any doubt that the fleet would make it back home, and that 'Black Jack' Geary would kick Syndic butt on the way.)

But the Syndic systems are crumbling, often into civil war and anarchy. As the government loses its grip, Syndic CEOs Artur Drakon and Gwen Iceni take advantage of the opportunity to take over the Midway star system, proclaiming its independence. But they've got a real shortage of military ships to back that up - and an even greater shortage of trust.

The Lost Fleet series showed everything from John Geary's point of view. This book - and presumably this series - alternates between Drakon and Iceni. Both are products of the cynical, cut-throat, dictatorial Syndicate Worlds society. Both rose through the ranks in that society, though missteps left them stuck at Midway.

Neither trusts the other. Each expects an assassination attempt from the other, and each has plans to kill the other CEO first, if - when - that becomes necessary. But both characters are very sympathetic.

They're both better than they think they are, but they've never known another way of life. They recognize many of the failures of the Syndic system, but they've never known any other way of doing things. And imitating the Alliance is out, because the Alliance has been their worst enemy for a century (and an enemy which, during the long war, became just as atrocity-prone as the Syndics).

Drakon and Iceni both sneer at the idea of altruism. Even when they do something altruistic, themselves, they rationalize it as being to their own self-interest. They're cynical, because anyone who wasn't cynical simply wouldn't have survived in the Syndicate Worlds. But now what?

By and large, they are decent people, but they're people who grew up in a society which had no use for decent people. Now they're trying to work together - despite a complete lack of trust - to defend the Midway star system and create a new society there. But the only model they have is the Syndic system which has just failed so dramatically.

Honestly, so far, this is even better than The Lost Fleet series. The characters are fascinating, and so is the situation. (In a way, it reminds me of the computer games I play - like Civilization or Distant Worlds. If they can't defend their people, then nothing else matters. But survival, especially over the long term, takes a lot more than just military power.)

Drakon and Iceni struggle to find a new way, without a pattern. They can't trust each other, but they can't afford not to, either. They're ruthless, because that's all they know, and they're determined to stay in power. At one point, they agree not to conduct any government executions without notifying the other first. But each understands the loophole: that secret assassinations aren't, technically-speaking, government executions.

They're wary of allowing any democracy, even elections for local positions, because they don't want the people to get the idea that they've got any right to make decisions. But if they do allow some democracy - for tactical reasons - they're going to manipulate the results to make sure they stay in power.

What the reader understands, but they don't, is that they'd win any election in a landslide, anyway. But they have no experience with democracies. The only way they know to maintain power is through intimidation, a powerful military, and a secret police.

As I say, they're both decent people at heart, and they're even sympathetic. But their views were formed in a ruthlessly authoritarian society. Still, they're smart enough to consider new ways of thinking, even when it takes them by surprise:

"Do you believe that the justice system that we have inherited from the Syndicate Worlds needs to be fixed, Madam President?"

"Offhand, no," Iceni said. "It delivers punishment quickly and surely. The guilty do not escape. What would I fix?"

"The purpose of a justice system isn't to punish the guilty, Madam President. Punishment is easily administered. The reason a justice system exists is to protect the innocent."

Iceni stared at Marphissa in astonishment. "Where did you learn that?"

I really enjoyed The Lost Fleet - well, the first four books that I've read so far, at least. But - so far - this series is even better. (Tarnished Knight ends on a cliffhanger. It's not a standalone book, but the first of a series. Note that you don't have to read the Lost Fleet series first, though I'd still recommend that.)

The two main characters are great, and the situation really appeals to me. There are also some puzzles when it comes to other characters in the book. (Keep in mind that every character in the book was raised in the Syndicate Worlds society. Who can you trust, when no one trusts?)

This is space opera/military SF that will make you think. It's superbly entertaining, but thought-provoking, too. It's even better than The Lost Fleet,... so far.

Campbell has also followed his Lost Fleet series with a new Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier series, which continues the story of John Geary. I'll be reading that, too. But changing characters in this series - changing sides, basically - was brilliant.

I just hope he can keep the quality this high in the rest of the series. (I've already got the next volume - The Lost Stars: Perilous Shield - on order, but the third won't be published until October.)

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Note: The rest of my book reviews, including those of Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series, are here.

"In the Company of Others" by Julie E. Czerneda

(cover image from Amazon.com)

Julie E. Czerneda is one of my favorite authors, and Amazon.com shows that I bought In the Company of Others in 2001, shortly after it was first published. But somehow, it must have gotten lost in the shuffle, because I never read it.

I noticed the book on my shelf the other day and thought it was odd that I couldn't remember it. Well, it turned out that I'd never read it. It's a big book (562 pages), like most of her science fiction, so maybe I just never mustered the ambition to start it, I don't know. Certainly, the story grabbed my attention right from the beginning when I did start to read it.

Mankind had succeeded in terraforming multiple planets, and had just started to open them up to the teeming hordes of Earth, when everyone on those planets dropped dead. It was the Quill, apparently - an alien lifeform used by spacers as little more than decoration.

Desperate to avoid contamination, Earth refused to let people return to the home planet. Shiploads of eager colonists were stuck on space stations never designed to support that many people. Most died. Those few stations which still supported life were horribly overcrowded - kept fed by the Earth, but barely, and only with a complete prohibition on reproduction (drugs in the food).

That's been the situation for two decades or more, when an Earth scientist arrives on Thromberg Station looking for one of the residents there. She wants to study the Quill and has an idea of how that might be done. (Any human landing on those planets immediately dies, but robotic probes find no trace of the Quill.)

But the space station is a power-keg already, and her arrival has the potential to light the fuse.

The really neat thing about this story is that there are no villains. It's funny, but even the people you might expect to be at least petty villains aren't. There's plenty of conflict, and even some violence, throughout the book, but every character in the story is a pretty decent person. It's just that the situation is impossible.

Hal Clement was famous for saying that he didn't usually have villains in his stories, because the universe made a "perfectly adequate villain." [He also said, "Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science." That has nothing to do with this book, admittedly. It's just one of my favorite quotes. :) ]

Well, this is similar to that. It's hard to point fault, but the situation is still terribly dangerous. Everyone is doing his best, but people are still going to die. And when there's this much fear, it's almost impossible to trust people you don't know, because other people have different priorities than you do.

The other thing I loved about the book was the cultural differences among human beings stressed nearly to the breaking point. The aliens are almost an afterthought. Sure, they're the reason for everything, but for most of the book we know nothing about them. Indeed, that's why this research is so important.

But on the space station, things look very different. They're surviving, but barely, and not without cost. Again, the people are all pretty decent - surprisingly decent, you might say. (A lesser author would have gone with the cliches. Not Czerneda.) But there are reasons why they do things the way they do.

I loved this, and I really enjoyed the book as a whole. I must admit that I found the solution to the alien threat implausible. And the romance was rather implausible - certainly, too sudden - I thought, too. But those were minor issues. The strengths of this story far outweigh its weaknesses.

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Note: My other book reviews are here.

The Lost Fleet: Fearless, Courageous, Valiant

(cover image from SFReviews.net)

I'm reviewing The Lost Fleet: Fearless (2007), Courageous (2008), and Valiant (2008) by Jack Campbell at the same time, because I read them at the same time. Unfortunately, I have a hard time putting down a book once it grabs me, and this is all one story.

I enjoyed the first book so much that I immediately ordered the next three, and once I started reading, I couldn't stop. Well, I did have enough willpower to save the last volume for the next day, but that was about it.

As I say, this is all one story - 6 volumes in total. (I've got the final two on order now.) In the first book, John "Black Jack" Geary takes command of a fleet of starships in desperate circumstances, after having been in suspended animation for a century. The rest of the story is pretty much one battle after another, as they try to make it back home through enemy territory, badly outnumbered.

If you like military science fiction, you'll like this series. But there's actually more to the plot than just space battles. I noted in my review of Dauntless that the book was thought-provoking. But as the series continues, it turns out that there's more to the plot, too.

They discover that it's not just the corporate dictatorship they're fighting which is behind the war. There's a third party involved which seems to pose a threat not just to their own Alliance, but to the entire human species.

Meanwhile - people being people - they're struggling to get along among themselves. Many of Geary's enemies in the fleet won't change their mind no matter what the evidence indicates. (Yeah, this series seems very relevant to today.) Others pretty well worship Geary as a hero sent by their dead ancestors (though that doesn't necessarily keep them from wanting to use him for their own purposes).

(cover image from Amazon.com)

And then there are the romantic entanglements, which apparently don't hurt any less when death appears likely. No, this isn't a romance, but the characters, though intelligent and dedicated, are fully human. Admittedly, as in the first book, we see people entirely through Geary's eyes, and he only gets to know a couple of them very well at all.

So I really have to wonder how this works in the rest of the fleet. You've got young men and women - in roughly equal numbers apparently (not to mention the openly gay) - who are expecting to die anytime. Many of them do die. Even under ordinary circumstances, they might struggle to keep things professional...

Well, as I say, we don't learn much about the rest of the people in the fleet - and then only from Geary's perspective. Of course, that's not the focus of the series, anyway.

You know the fleet is going to get home. That's obvious. But we don't know how many will make it. They lose ships and they lose people in every battle, even when they're overwhelmingly successful.

It's great stuff, at least if you like this kind of thing. Still, if it were just space battles, the series might get old after awhile. Luckily, as I say, there are other dangers - worse dangers - which they discover along the way (some opportunities, as well). And Geary continues to struggle with being the legendary hero come back to life, when he knows he's only human.

I can't wait for the final two volumes to get here. :)

(cover image from Amazon.com)

PS. I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I must say that the cover art on these paperbacks is terrible - terribly misleading, at least. I assume that the person on the cover is supposed to be John Geary - who else could it be? - but if so, that's pretty ridiculous.

Geary is the acting fleet commander. He hasn't left the flagship, not once, in four books. He's never landed on a planet, and he's never even picked up a weapon. Well, why should he? He's not a marine. (There are marines in the fleet, but their colonel - and the only one we ever see - is a woman.)

I have a feeling that the misleading cover art was one of the reasons I hadn't tried this series previously. But maybe that's a good thing. I would have hated to wait for months between books to continue with the story. At least this way I can read the whole thing at once. (Although maybe that isn't such a good thing. LOL)

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Note: My other book reviews are here.

"A Madness of Angels" by Kate Griffin

(cover image from Amazon.com)

I've been reading a lot of urban fantasy lately - Ben Aaronovitch, Benedict Jacka, Jim Butcher, among others. But A Madness of Angels (2009) by Kate Griffin (the pen name of Catherine Webb, who writes young adult fantasies under her real name) still managed to be quite unique.

Partly, that's due to the lush, descriptive language of the book. 450 pages long, this is a lot more detailed than most of the urban fantasies I've read. There's a good reason for that - it actually fits with the story - and the book kept my interest very well. What can I say? It works.

I wasn't too surprised. I picked up this book because of a review by a friend of mine, Tony Williams. An author himself - and a good one - he almost always favors shorter books, quicker reads. So when he liked it, despite its length, I had to take notice.

But the plot is different enough, too, from the usual. (One of my pet peeves with fantasy is the widespread lack of imagination among fantasy authors.) Two years after his murder - by magic - sorcerer Matthew Swift has returned to life. But he's not alone in his body.

"Life is magic." The idea here is that life itself creates magic, just by living. Swift is an urban sorcerer, someone who can get so caught up in the rhythms of the city that he risks getting lost in it. Yes, this is another fantasy set in London, and by another author who seems to love the city.

Who killed Matthew Swift, and who killed so many others in the two years he's been dead? And who brought him back? In a sense, this isn't just a fantasy, but a mystery, too.

I loved it, and since it's the first of a series, I've already ordered the sequel. I must admit to being skeptical that the sequels can be as good as this book - the whole idea won't be new anymore - but I'm anxious to find out.

Thanks, Tony, for the recommendation!

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Note: My other book reviews are here.

"The Lost Fleet: Dauntless" by Jack Campbell

(cover image from Amazon.com)

The Lost Fleet: Dauntless (2006) by Jack Campbell is the first in his Lost Fleet series, and I'm not sure how I've missed it until now. I've certainly seen it often enough, but I guess it just didn't sound appealing until a trusted friend recommended it.

But I'm not sure why that is. A quote on the cover says, "A rousing adventure. . . the kind of hero Hornblower fans will love!" And I'm a huge fan of Horatio Hornblower.

I'm a fan of military science fiction, too. At least,... it's kind of a guilty pleasure, admittedly, since I rarely take it seriously, but I still find it fun. This is a little different from the typical military SF I read, though.

First, the story: John "Black Jack" Geary had become the great hero of his people in the century since he'd lost his life early in the war in a heroic rear-guard action. Only, it turned out he wasn't dead, just in suspended animation until their fleet stumbled upon his survival pod.

When the book begins, that fleet has suffered a crushing defeat, and Geary ends up in command of the remnants, facing a surrender-or-die ultimatum. Of course, you know that neither of those things is going to happen, but escape is the only chance they have. And they're far from home, deep in enemy territory.

At first, I wasn't sure if I was going to like this book, mostly because it's all told from Geary's point of view. The other characters are minor, at best. Typically, I like military fiction with lots of appealing characters - well, I like fiction in general with lots of appealing characters - so this was a bit different.

Geary faces not just opposition within the fleet, but his own doubts, as well. Some of his people think that he's the legend come back to life, destined to pull off miracle after miracle, but others doubt that he's even qualified to lead (most of his service life has been spent in suspended animation) or that there's anywhere to lead the fleet. And at least one of them fears that he's the legend - or that he thinks he is.

All this was interesting, but it took awhile before the book really grabbed me. But grab me it did, and I've already ordered the sequels. Still, there's another way that this book is atypical for military SF, and that's that it actually has something to say. It's actually thought-provoking.

Geary's service was pre-war and at the very beginning of the war. But the century of brutal war since then has changed his people and the fleet itself. No one else in his command really recognizes this, because they've grown up in it. And it takes awhile for Geary to recognize the changes, too.

These days, in a time when many politicians envisage a never-ending 'war on terror,' when we're told that torturing prisoners of war is just how we 'baptize terrorists,' when people who won't be doing the fighting and dying themselves can't wait to start the next war, this is a worthwhile theme to explore in science fiction, don't you think?

Also, most military science fiction seems to disparage democracy, apparently preferring a hereditary aristocracy, instead. That's how it seems to me, at least. Now, maybe an authoritarian outlook should be expected in people who write military fiction, I don't know. Certainly, the military itself isn't a democracy, and can't be.

But Geary's society does seem to be a democracy, and not a hopelessly inept or corrupt one. (Admittedly, we don't learn that much about it.) And the only civilian politician in the fleet isn't a fool or a coward. She doesn't like Geary much, but she's got good reason to distrust him. A legendary hero come back to life, if he could pull off another miracle, would have the kind of influence on a war-weary population that could indeed endanger their democracy.

So, although this book didn't immediately grab me, it was certainly interesting enough to keep reading. And as I did, I became more and more impressed as well as being increasingly entertained. I don't know how I missed this series previously, but I really hope the next books are as good as this one was.

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Note: My other book reviews are here.

"Spheres of Influence" by Ryk E. Spoor

(cover image from Amazon.com)

Spheres of Influence (2013) by Ryk E. Spoor is the sequel, though definitely not the conclusion, to his Grand Central Arena. I enjoyed the first book, though I had some problems with it, and I enjoyed this one even more.

Mostly, I think, that's because I knew what to expect this time. I mean, I already knew - and accepted - that the book wouldn't be entirely to my taste in fiction. So I wasn't disappointed. I knew what I was getting, so... I guess I felt free to enjoy the parts I did like.

Fiction, after all, is inherently subjective. My taste in fiction isn't necessarily yours, and I can't expect every author to write to my tastes. So, can I criticize a book for not being exactly what I want in fiction? Well,... what else is there? Besides, the parts I liked were very much to my taste. That's probably why I enjoyed the book, don't you think?

Grand Central Arena introduced us to an incredible artifact where every technological species in the galaxy - once it has discovered FTL flight - ends up. "Arena" is the right word for it, because species compete for influence, prestige, and power, and humanity is very much the new kid on the block and a huge underdog.

Now, I'm a sucker for aliens - the more the better - and I love the idea behind this series. It's ridiculously implausible, sure, but so what? I can accept pretty much anything as the premise in a science fiction novel, though I insist that the story follow along plausibly from there. If you can't, what are you doing reading science fiction? :)

Furthermore, I love seeing human beings standing up for other underdogs - alien underdogs - making friends where that's possible, and then kicking butt where arrogant butts really need to be kicked. It's great fun. Fantasy, sure. But it's still lots of fun.

Those things are very definitely to my taste. Superheroes are not, and neither are super-villains. (I never liked comic books much, even as a kid.) I criticized the characterization in the first book, and this one doubles-down on that. But it's probably more fair to say that it's just a matter of taste.

Spheres of Influence introduces a new character who's even more of a superhero than those in the first book. And it seems to introduce one or two new super-villains, too. Now, we see almost nothing of the latter characters, so I can't say much about them, so far. I'm not entirely happy at where that seems to be going. But we'll see.

The superheroes? Well, that's definitely not to my taste. But, as I say, I knew what I was getting into this time. So it didn't bother me. I just enjoyed the story (and I did enjoy the story).

Let me just add that I find it wildly implausible that people could create what are basically superheroes in the first place, but if we could do that, why couldn't alien species which are far, far more advanced than human beings?

And that point in the book where human politics took center stage? I would have been on the other side in that debate. It's not just that I don't want to read about superheroes, but I don't want even a superhero deciding everything for the human race, either. So in some respects, this book rubbed me the wrong way.

The remarkable thing is probably that I enjoyed it as much as I did. I didn't really take it seriously (but you don't take comic books seriously, either, do you?) and just had fun. I knew that parts of the book weren't going to be to my taste, so I didn't let it bother me.

Hmm,... I said I didn't take it seriously, but there is one theme in the book which has the potential to be thought-provoking, and that's the whole issue of living with AI. Can AI be people? And whatever your answer to that, can we live together in peace?

Maybe we'll see more of that in the next book, and maybe not. I wouldn't expect much but entertainment from this series. But it is entertaining, and I'll definitely be continuing with the story whenever the next volume is published.

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Note: My other book reviews are here.