Reviews :: Book Genre :: Science Fiction :: Page 22

Conrad Nomikos is not what he first appears. On the outside he seems to be in his thirties, walks with a limp, one side of his face is disfigured, and he has a government job working with Earth’s antiquities. Dig a little deeper and you learn that he’s been working that job at least twenty years, he knows the most powerful and influential people on a first-name basis, and he talks about historical events in a more intimate way than most.
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Where are the great Science Fiction series? It seems like there are dozens of fantasy series out there. A new fantasy book doesn’t come out that isn’t part of a series. It’s actually getting the fantasy authors to finish their series that’s the problem now a days. But Science Fiction? Where are the series? You could make a case for a few. John Scalzi has written at least four books in his Old Man’s War universe–depending on how you count THE SAGAN DIARY (Amazon) and QUESTIONS FOR A SOLDIER (Amazon). Robert Charles Wilson just last year wrote the last book in his Spin “trilogy”. But neither of them was a series. A book would come out and it would be a self-contained story written in the same universe. Neither were set up from the beginning to be a small part of something larger.

Good thing we have The Expanse.
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DOLPHINS IN SPACE!

Doesn’t that sound exciting? Don’t you want to read that book right now?
OK I jest, but in all honesty if you have a problem with Dolphins crewing a starship and getting stranded on an alien planet than this book isn’t for you.
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Once upon a time I read OLD MAN’S WAR by John Scalzi (Amazon) and it became my favorite book of all time. That said, REDSHIRTS (Amazon) has much more in common with Scalzi’s ANDROID’S DREAM (Amazon) than it does OLD MAN’S WAR. Sometimes a book is worth losing sleep over. Some books are basically begging to be read in one sitting. REDSHIRTS is one of these books.

Andrew Dahl, Ensign of the Universal Union, has a problem. He has been assigned to the capital ship Intrepid, a ship with an alarmingly high casualty rate for low ranking crew members. Recognizing a terrifying trend relating to away missions, Dahl and his friends seek to discover the origin of the trouble plaguing Intrepid. As death draws ever nearer, Dahl must race against fate to save himself and his friends from a most assuredly gruesome demise.
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In a perfect world reviewers would read books with no biases at all and based the work completely on its own merits and not compare it to other books, or other works of the same author.  No prejudices would sway the reviewer for good ill.  Wake up.  We don’t live in that world and perfect as we Elitists are, we still have our biases.  That being said I’m going to give you a review of SHADOWS IN FLIGHT (Amazon) the latest work in the Enderverse by Orson Scott Card.  Firstly let me lay my biases out for you so you can know understand where this review is coming from.
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Occasionally I read the back of a book and an idea grabs me.  Honestly that’s what I love about SFF books.  There are tons of great ideas out there and I love when an author plays with one and lets me tag along for the ride.  The idea of personal incorporation in the Unincorporated Series was one such idea.  China Miéville’s works are so jam-packed with ideas that he often tosses a few of them out on a single page just to toy with your mind.  I read the back cover of THE NIGHT SESSIONS by Ken MacLeod (Amazon) and the only thing I remembered from it was “What if robots found religion?”

Holy Crap! Wow! What an idea! What a great, big, wonderful, let’s explore this and all of its ramifications, kind of idea!  I was hooked.  I needed to read this book right away.
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If you know me then you know I absolutely hate short stories. If you don’t know me: Hello, nice to meet you, I hate short stories. I hate all short fiction really, novellas and poems and such. I took a fiction writing course and it was all about writing short fiction. I hated that too. But! If there was ever an anthology I was ever going to enjoy it had to be ARMORED, edited by John Joseph Adams and published by Baen. A whole collection of stories solely based around my favorite science fiction concept – power armor. With a foreword by Orson Scott Card and an unbeatable roster of authors from Dan Abnett to Brandon Sanderson to Tobias Buckell, ARMORED (Amazon) could be the military SF Promised Land. So how did it fare? Read on.Read the rest of this review »

When I heard that Paolo Bacigalupi was going to follow up his award-winning debut novel, THE WINDUP GIRL (EBR Review), with a smaller YA book, I was a little disappointed. I loved THE WINDUP GIRL. It was rich and intense. It was complicated and diverse. It was gritty and cruel and I thought it was great. How on earth could Bacigalupi… wow this review is going to be hard to write if I keep having to write his last name. Let’s go with Paolo from now on shall we? Anyway, how was Paolo going to match those strengths in a YA novel? Turns out I needn’t have worried.
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Continuing in the tradition of James Lovegrove‘s exceptional Pantheon series comes the e-novella AGE OF ANANSI (Amazon). This is a story that breaks away from the Military SF nature of the previous novels, though it does remain true to the thematic roots.

Dion Yeboah is a successful criminal defendant, a man with the keen ability to bend the law in his client’s favor but never break it. One day, however, the trickster god Anansi pays Dion a visit and offers him a deal he cannot refuse. At Anansi’s behest, Dion travels across the Atlantic to participate in a multi-pantheon trickster god free for all in the United States. The competition is stiff and if Dion wants to keep his head he will have to rely on his precision honed wits to overcome the likes of Loki, Set, and even the infamous Coyote.
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AGE OF AZTEC (Amazon) is the fourth entry in James Lovegrove‘s excellent Pantheon series. Don’t worry if you have yet to read any of the other Pantheon novels because each book is a standalone adventure. Lovegrove has successfully carved out his own unique niche, a fusion of near-future Military Science Fiction and Alternate Historical Fiction based around the pantheons of the ancient world.
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