Magnificent Devices 4-book Bundle by Shelley Adina I initially obtained the first book Lady of Devices free and thoroughly enjoyed the story and the characters to the point of not being able to pass up the great bargain of the 4 book bundle. I thought if they were even only half as well done as the first I couldn't go wrong. I set them aside for a bit before getting to them, but when I started I couldn't put the whole group down until I finished. Lady Claire or Claire Trevelyan daughter of Viscount St. Ives is one of the most remarkable female protagonists to come along. At the age of 17 she has been brought up proper to become a lady who will soon be offering her hand to the most eligible gentleman she can snare. The problem for Lady Claire is that despite all the efforts to cow and mold her into a pleasant perfect petticoat-ed proper lady she has other plans that can't include that gentlemen under her societies present circumstances. She wants to go to college to obtain a degree in engineering so that she can continue to pursue the passion she already has for designing and improving upon the steam driven technology that are emerging into the present era. Of course her goals are simply absurd in her day and age and she has an uphill battle, although the hill looks more like a cliff. A dreadful event changes her life and perhaps is what catapults her into having to use her wits to survive. Her father fails in a desperate gamble with combustion engines and ruins not only himself but a large number of investors. His subsequent suicide leaves his family trying to scramble up from the ashes to avoid poverty. Despite her mothers protests and preaching Lady Claire manages to free herself from tradition long enough to attempt to find a temporary job that will help her put herself through college. Because everything that Claire proposes to do is against the grain of societies rules she has a hard battle before her. Early on we discover one of Lady Claire's most prized possessions is her father's steam landau, which she uses to get around the city. It is through the theft of the landau, while she's wandered into an unsavory part of the city, that she begins to really show her mettle. Not knowing what she is facing she attempts to recover her landau from the thieves. This leads to the discovery that the thieves are mostly children. Perhaps it's a bit of that ingrained mother instinct that ultimately leads to Lady Claire taking over the 'gang'. The gang has since passed her landau off to another more dangerous gang and in exchange for Lady Claire teaching them how to make gaseous explosive devices they promise to help her gain back the landau. In the end Lady Claire ends up killing a man (Lightning Jackson) and beginning her life of crime. Lady Claire continues to search for a job while she rides herd over the gang of youths and spends her free time teaching them mathematics, chemistry, reading, writing, mechanical engineering, various poker hands and all the essentials including bomb building. Her search for a job intersects with an old family friend James Selwyn who has a business colleague Andrew Malvern who is designing a new way to make coal more efficient. James Selwyn immediately comes off as a bit of a stuffy self-involved character who has only one vision of what a woman's place in society is. This is so narrow that it precludes the probability that his efforts will damage his chances of completing the project of creating Hyper-efficient coal. Despite James effort Claire and Andrew must work around James to succeed. Eventually Lady Claire will find herself torn between the professed affections of these two men. The second book has a spot that I found to be a point of epiphany for Claire. Claire knows that if she wanted to make many things in her life easier she could Marry James as he keeps insisting he wants her to do. James has gone as far as to manipulate things in his favor despite his seeming distaste for most of what Claire represents. Because of James's cruel and insensitive nature she know that his final goal is to separate her from her life goals and from her new found family of the children she has been sheltering. She has made the children a promise and James intends on forcing her to break that promise and at this point of the book Lady Claire has a moment of clarity where she realizes that her first commitment is to the children, her new family, and that anyone who comes into her life has to be able to accept them. Clearly the children are as important to her as her goal to go to a university and become an engineer. Lady Claire seems to be more than willing and capable of handling the requirements of the average woman while still striving to obtain something that far surpasses every woman. Lady Claire is the Lady of Devices but more appropriately she is later described as the Lady of Resources which defines her much better. Lady Claire does have a mind and a inclination for devices but she seems less the inventor and more the innovator of other inventions. She surrounds herself with others with valuable skills and has set herself up as a leader of a small army that includes several other ladies of resources. James can't tolerate this and Andrew can only marvel at it all (and they only know the half of it). That does not mean that these two men are weak or less than men. James typifies everything that Lady Claire had to fight and overcome while Andrew is more tolerant and finds himself puzzling over the old paradigm of social order and this new vision that he sees working not only with Lady Claire but in the children she has in her charge. Even Lady Claire struggles with the whole new paradigm when she finds herself stifling the twins more often than not. It is hard to let go and realize that these young girls and all of her children are no longer ordinary. A majority of the successes of Lady Claire and her charges stems from not weak and inept male characters, but more so from a real existing mental attitude ingrained in the minds of those men. I've met many that exist today that have this same blind spot when trying to judge the capability of some women. It's such a powerful influence that they teach their own wives to live within the same blind spot; helping to affirm and fulfill their own skewed expectation of woman's abilities. James is a strong male character on one side of the blind spot and Andrew is a strong male character on the other side. Andrew's strength only becomes less evident to anyone looking at him from that blind spot, which is going to include a majority of those typical strong male types. Make no mistake; I loved this series of books and will be looking into the 5th book soon. I love Ms. Adina's writing style and suspect I will be tempted into reaching out of my genre preferences once again to peruse a few more of her works. Anyone who loves SteamPunk or even SFF (and is not ultra picky about the science or strict adherence to history) should love these books. For those who are picky I'd like to point out the disclaimer at the beginning which includes. [Quote] This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.[/Quote] J.L. Dobias

Magnificent Devices 4-book Bundle by Shelley Adina I initially obtained the first book Lady of Devices free and thoroughly enjoyed the story and the characters to the point of not being able to pass up the great bargain of the 4 book bundle. I thought if they were even only half as well done as the first I couldn't go wrong. I set them aside for a bit before getting to them, but when I started I couldn't put the whole group down until I finished. Lady Claire or Claire Trevelyan daughter of Viscount St. Ives is one of the most remarkable female protagonists to come along. At the age of 17 she has been brought up proper to become a lady who will soon be offering her hand to the most eligible gentleman she can snare. The problem for Lady Claire is that despite all the efforts to cow and mold her into a pleasant perfect petticoat-ed proper lady she has other plans that can't include that gentlemen under her societies present circumstances. She wants to go to college to obtain a degree in engineering so that she can continue to pursue the passion she already has for designing and improving upon the steam driven technology that are emerging into the present era. Of course her goals are simply absurd in her day and age and she has an uphill battle, although the hill looks more like a cliff. A dreadful event changes her life and perhaps is what catapults her into having to use her wits to survive. Her father fails in a desperate gamble with combustion engines and ruins not only himself but a large number of investors. His subsequent suicide leaves his family trying to scramble up from the ashes to avoid poverty. Despite her mothers protests and preaching Lady Claire manages to free herself from tradition long enough to attempt to find a temporary job that will help her put herself through college. Because everything that Claire proposes to do is against the grain of societies rules she has a hard battle before her. Early on we discover one of Lady Claire's most prized possessions is her father's steam landau, which she uses to get around the city. It is through the theft of the landau, while she's wandered into an unsavory part of the city, that she begins to really show her mettle. Not knowing what she is facing she attempts to recover her landau from the thieves. This leads to the discovery that the thieves are mostly children. Perhaps it's a bit of that ingrained mother instinct that ultimately leads to Lady Claire taking over the 'gang'. The gang has since passed her landau off to another more dangerous gang and in exchange for Lady Claire teaching them how to make gaseous explosive devices they promise to help her gain back the landau. In the end Lady Claire ends up killing a man (Lightning Jackson) and beginning her life of crime. Lady Claire continues to search for a job while she rides herd over the gang of youths and spends her free time teaching them mathematics, chemistry, reading, writing, mechanical engineering, various poker hands and all the essentials including bomb building. Her search for a job intersects with an old family friend James Selwyn who has a business colleague Andrew Malvern who is designing a new way to make coal more efficient. James Selwyn immediately comes off as a bit of a stuffy self-involved character who has only one vision of what a woman's place in society is. This is so narrow that it precludes the probability that his efforts will damage his chances of completing the project of creating Hyper-efficient coal. Despite James effort Claire and Andrew must work around James to succeed. Eventually Lady Claire will find herself torn between the professed affections of these two men. The second book has a spot that I found to be a point of epiphany for Claire. Claire knows that if she wanted to make many things in her life easier she could Marry James as he keeps insisting he wants her to do. James has gone as far as to manipulate things in his favor despite his seeming distaste for most of what Claire represents. Because of James's cruel and insensitive nature she know that his final goal is to separate her from her life goals and from her new found family of the children she has been sheltering. She has made the children a promise and James intends on forcing her to break that promise and at this point of the book Lady Claire has a moment of clarity where she realizes that her first commitment is to the children, her new family, and that anyone who comes into her life has to be able to accept them. Clearly the children are as important to her as her goal to go to a university and become an engineer. Lady Claire seems to be more than willing and capable of handling the requirements of the average woman while still striving to obtain something that far surpasses every woman. Lady Claire is the Lady of Devices but more appropriately she is later described as the Lady of Resources which defines her much better. Lady Claire does have a mind and a inclination for devices but she seems less the inventor and more the innovator of other inventions. She surrounds herself with others with valuable skills and has set herself up as a leader of a small army that includes several other ladies of resources. James can't tolerate this and Andrew can only marvel at it all (and they only know the half of it). That does not mean that these two men are weak or less than men. James typifies everything that Lady Claire had to fight and overcome while Andrew is more tolerant and finds himself puzzling over the old paradigm of social order and this new vision that he sees working not only with Lady Claire but in the children she has in her charge. Even Lady Claire struggles with the whole new paradigm when she finds herself stifling the twins more often than not. It is hard to let go and realize that these young girls and all of her children are no longer ordinary. A majority of the successes of Lady Claire and her charges stems from not weak and inept male characters, but more so from a real existing mental attitude ingrained in the minds of those men. I've met many that exist today that have this same blind spot when trying to judge the capability of some women. It's such a powerful influence that they teach their own wives to live within the same blind spot; helping to affirm and fulfill their own skewed expectation of woman's abilities. James is a strong male character on one side of the blind spot and Andrew is a strong male character on the other side. Andrew's strength only becomes less evident to anyone looking at him from that blind spot, which is going to include a majority of those typical strong male types. Make no mistake; I loved this series of books and will be looking into the 5th book soon. I love Ms. Adina's writing style and suspect I will be tempted into reaching out of my genre preferences once again to peruse a few more of her works. Anyone who loves SteamPunk or even SFF (and is not ultra picky about the science or strict adherence to history) should love these books. For those who are picky I'd like to point out the disclaimer at the beginning which includes. [Quote] This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.[/Quote] J.L. Dobias

Magnificent Devices 4-book Bundle by Shelley Adina I initially obtained the first book Lady of Devices free and thoroughly enjoyed the story and the characters to the point of not being able to pass up the great bargain of the 4 book bundle. I thought if they were even only half as well done as the first I couldn't go wrong. I set them aside for a bit before getting to them, but when I started I couldn't put the whole group down until I finished. Lady Claire or Claire Trevelyan daughter of Viscount St. Ives is one of the most remarkable female protagonists to come along. At the age of 17 she has been brought up proper to become a lady who will soon be offering her hand to the most eligible gentleman she can snare. The problem for Lady Claire is that despite all the efforts to cow and mold her into a pleasant perfect petticoat-ed proper lady she has other plans that can't include that gentlemen under her societies present circumstances. She wants to go to college to obtain a degree in engineering so that she can continue to pursue the passion she already has for designing and improving upon the steam driven technology that are emerging into the present era. Of course her goals are simply absurd in her day and age and she has an uphill battle, although the hill looks more like a cliff. A dreadful event changes her life and perhaps is what catapults her into having to use her wits to survive. Her father fails in a desperate gamble with combustion engines and ruins not only himself but a large number of investors. His subsequent suicide leaves his family trying to scramble up from the ashes to avoid poverty. Despite her mothers protests and preaching Lady Claire manages to free herself from tradition long enough to attempt to find a temporary job that will help her put herself through college. Because everything that Claire proposes to do is against the grain of societies rules she has a hard battle before her. Early on we discover one of Lady Claire's most prized possessions is her father's steam landau, which she uses to get around the city. It is through the theft of the landau, while she's wandered into an unsavory part of the city, that she begins to really show her mettle. Not knowing what she is facing she attempts to recover her landau from the thieves. This leads to the discovery that the thieves are mostly children. Perhaps it's a bit of that ingrained mother instinct that ultimately leads to Lady Claire taking over the 'gang'. The gang has since passed her landau off to another more dangerous gang and in exchange for Lady Claire teaching them how to make gaseous explosive devices they promise to help her gain back the landau. In the end Lady Claire ends up killing a man (Lightning Jackson) and beginning her life of crime. Lady Claire continues to search for a job while she rides herd over the gang of youths and spends her free time teaching them mathematics, chemistry, reading, writing, mechanical engineering, various poker hands and all the essentials including bomb building. Her search for a job intersects with an old family friend James Selwyn who has a business colleague Andrew Malvern who is designing a new way to make coal more efficient. James Selwyn immediately comes off as a bit of a stuffy self-involved character who has only one vision of what a woman's place in society is. This is so narrow that it precludes the probability that his efforts will damage his chances of completing the project of creating Hyper-efficient coal. Despite James effort Claire and Andrew must work around James to succeed. Eventually Lady Claire will find herself torn between the professed affections of these two men. The second book has a spot that I found to be a point of epiphany for Claire. Claire knows that if she wanted to make many things in her life easier she could Marry James as he keeps insisting he wants her to do. James has gone as far as to manipulate things in his favor despite his seeming distaste for most of what Claire represents. Because of James's cruel and insensitive nature she know that his final goal is to separate her from her life goals and from her new found family of the children she has been sheltering. She has made the children a promise and James intends on forcing her to break that promise and at this point of the book Lady Claire has a moment of clarity where she realizes that her first commitment is to the children, her new family, and that anyone who comes into her life has to be able to accept them. Clearly the children are as important to her as her goal to go to a university and become an engineer. Lady Claire seems to be more than willing and capable of handling the requirements of the average woman while still striving to obtain something that far surpasses every woman. Lady Claire is the Lady of Devices but more appropriately she is later described as the Lady of Resources which defines her much better. Lady Claire does have a mind and a inclination for devices but she seems less the inventor and more the innovator of other inventions. She surrounds herself with others with valuable skills and has set herself up as a leader of a small army that includes several other ladies of resources. James can't tolerate this and Andrew can only marvel at it all (and they only know the half of it). That does not mean that these two men are weak or less than men. James typifies everything that Lady Claire had to fight and overcome while Andrew is more tolerant and finds himself puzzling over the old paradigm of social order and this new vision that he sees working not only with Lady Claire but in the children she has in her charge. Even Lady Claire struggles with the whole new paradigm when she finds herself stifling the twins more often than not. It is hard to let go and realize that these young girls and all of her children are no longer ordinary. A majority of the successes of Lady Claire and her charges stems from not weak and inept male characters, but more so from a real existing mental attitude ingrained in the minds of those men. I've met many that exist today that have this same blind spot when trying to judge the capability of some women. It's such a powerful influence that they teach their own wives to live within the same blind spot; helping to affirm and fulfill their own skewed expectation of woman's abilities. James is a strong male character on one side of the blind spot and Andrew is a strong male character on the other side. Andrew's strength only becomes less evident to anyone looking at him from that blind spot, which is going to include a majority of those typical strong male types. And now for quibbles. Shelley Adina writes well and is a magnificent story teller and as always I tend not to downgrade the work for common errors in the understanding that I have my own problems ferreting out all the straggling errors that hide amongst my own writing. I am not one who thinks that every published manuscript must be totally error free or it becomes invalid. It is insanity for authors to attempt to edit their own work especially when there is proof that even many so called professional editors have left enough errors intact for the author too find, forcing the author to attempt the insane. Errors happen. My present quibble is not addressed directly at Ms. Adina as it is at a number of authors who seem to find the use of a particular somewhat poetic word necessary at least once within their work. I'm referring to that beautiful word susurrus. In this instance it shows up as susurration. I just want to point out that susurrus is spelled S-U-S-U-R-R-U-S note two r's together not two s's. I'm beginning to love/hate this word. It's pronunciation is almost a clear clue to it definition and I am certain that at the very least in literary circles (particularly poetic) it is a well known word. But if I were to include it within my own narrative I would suspect that in my venue it might not be so well known, so I would be extra careful to be sure I was spelling it correctly. Of the last four times I've seen this in someones work it has shown up as sussurus and in this instance as sussuration. Those two words as they are spelled don't exist and anyone looking them up or using the dictionary within kindle is going to be disappointed. On a side note; had it not been for the few authors who have used and so often misspelled this word I would likely have lived the rest of my life without being acquainted with it. Make no mistake; I loved this series of books and will be looking into the 5th book soon. I love Ms. Adina's writing style and suspect I will be tempted into reaching out of my genre preferences once again to peruse a few more of her works. Anyone who loves SteamPunk or even SFF (and is not ultra picky about the science or strict adherence to history) should love these books. For those who are picky I'd like to point out the disclaimer at the beginning which includes. [Quote] This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.[/Quote] J.L. Dobias

Magnificent Devices 4-book Bundle by Shelley Adina I initially obtained the first book Lady of Devices free and thoroughly enjoyed the story and the characters to the point of not being able to pass up the great bargain of the 4 book bundle. I thought if they were even only half as well done as the first I couldn't go wrong. I set them aside for a bit before getting to them, but when I started I couldn't put the whole group down until I finished. Lady Claire or Claire Trevelyan daughter of Viscount St. Ives is one of the most remarkable female protagonists to come along. At the age of 17 she has been brought up proper to become a lady who will soon be offering her hand to the most eligible gentleman she can snare. The problem for Lady Claire is that despite all the efforts to cow and mold her into a pleasant perfect petticoat-ed proper lady she has other plans that can't include that gentlemen under her societies present circumstances. She wants to go to college to obtain a degree in engineering so that she can continue to pursue the passion she already has for designing and improving upon the steam driven technology that are emerging into the present era. Of course her goals are simply absurd in her day and age and she has an uphill battle, although the hill looks more like a cliff. A dreadful event changes her life and perhaps is what catapults her into having to use her wits to survive. Her father fails in a desperate gamble with combustion engines and ruins not only himself but a large number of investors. His subsequent suicide leaves his family trying to scramble up from the ashes to avoid poverty. Despite her mothers protests and preaching Lady Claire manages to free herself from tradition long enough to attempt to find a temporary job that will help her put herself through college. Because everything that Claire proposes to do is against the grain of societies rules she has a hard battle before her. Early on we discover one of Lady Claire's most prized possessions is her father's steam landau, which she uses to get around the city. It is through the theft of the landau, while she's wandered into an unsavory part of the city, that she begins to really show her mettle. Not knowing what she is facing she attempts to recover her landau from the thieves. This leads to the discovery that the thieves are mostly children. Perhaps it's a bit of that ingrained mother instinct that ultimately leads to Lady Claire taking over the 'gang'. The gang has since passed her landau off to another more dangerous gang and in exchange for Lady Claire teaching them how to make gaseous explosive devices they promise to help her gain back the landau. In the end Lady Claire ends up killing a man (Lightning Jackson) and beginning her life of crime. Lady Claire continues to search for a job while she rides herd over the gang of youths and spends her free time teaching them mathematics, chemistry, reading, writing, mechanical engineering, various poker hands and all the essentials including bomb building. Her search for a job intersects with an old family friend James Selwyn who has a business colleague Andrew Malvern who is designing a new way to make coal more efficient. James Selwyn immediately comes off as a bit of a stuffy self-involved character who has only one vision of what a woman's place in society is. This is so narrow that it precludes the probability that his efforts will damage his chances of completing the project of creating Hyper-efficient coal. Despite James effort Claire and Andrew must work around James to succeed. Eventually Lady Claire will find herself torn between the professed affections of these two men. The second book has a spot that I found to be a point of epiphany for Claire. Claire knows that if she wanted to make many things in her life easier she could Marry James as he keeps insisting he wants her to do. James has gone as far as to manipulate things in his favor despite his seeming distaste for most of what Claire represents. Because of James's cruel and insensitive nature she know that his final goal is to separate her from her life goals and from her new found family of the children she has been sheltering. She has made the children a promise and James intends on forcing her to break that promise and at this point of the book Lady Claire has a moment of clarity where she realizes that her first commitment is to the children, her new family, and that anyone who comes into her life has to be able to accept them. Clearly the children are as important to her as her goal to go to a university and become an engineer. Lady Claire seems to be more than willing and capable of handling the requirements of the average woman while still striving to obtain something that far surpasses every woman. Lady Claire is the Lady of Devices but more appropriately she is later described as the Lady of Resources which defines her much better. Lady Claire does have a mind and a inclination for devices but she seems less the inventor and more the innovator of other inventions. She surrounds herself with others with valuable skills and has set herself up as a leader of a small army that includes several other ladies of resources. James can't tolerate this and Andrew can only marvel at it all (and they only know the half of it). That does not mean that these two men are weak or less than men. James typifies everything that Lady Claire had to fight and overcome while Andrew is more tolerant and finds himself puzzling over the old paradigm of social order and this new vision that he sees working not only with Lady Claire but in the children she has in her charge. Even Lady Claire struggles with the whole new paradigm when she finds herself stifling the twins more often than not. It is hard to let go and realize that these young girls and all of her children are no longer ordinary. A majority of the successes of Lady Claire and her charges stems from not weak and inept male characters, but more so from a real existing mental attitude ingrained in the minds of those men. I've met many that exist today that have this same blind spot when trying to judge the capability of some women. It's such a powerful influence that they teach their own wives to live within the same blind spot; helping to affirm and fulfill their own skewed expectation of woman's abilities. James is a strong male character on one side of the blind spot and Andrew is a strong male character on the other side. Andrew's strength only becomes less evident to anyone looking at him from that blind spot, which is going to include a majority of those typical strong male types. Make no mistake; I loved this series of books and will be looking into the 5th book soon. I love Ms. Adina's writing style and suspect I will be tempted into reaching out of my genre preferences once again to peruse a few more of her works. Anyone who loves SteamPunk or even SFF (and is not ultra picky about the science or strict adherence to history) should love these books. For those who are picky I'd like to point out the disclaimer at the beginning which includes. [Quote] This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.[/Quote] J.L. Dobias

Time Change Book Two:B2 by Alex Myers Book one of this set has the most infuriating beginning and ending. The beginning is like a preface or such called Before and the last chapter 54 could as well be called after. Those two are tidbits of tantalizing information that really don\'t play much part in the rest of book one. They don\'t really seem to figure into book two either. Since there will likely be a book three it seems that those two will be the most infuriating part of book 2 also. Perhaps we\'ll see some closure in book 3. The only thing I\'m willing to bet at this point is that at least two players in this story-probably 3 play somewhere in those parts and play parts within the whole. To figure this out you\'ll have to read these. Presently this set of books is going to standout next to To say nothing of the dog by Connie Willis as my favorite of time travel novels. Jack Riggs is somewhat a ladies man or maybe Lothario, a playboy. In a seeming fluke of fate, while arguing with his latest soon to be ex-girlfriend, Jack is sent back in time. There is a tremendous storm that causes a horrible vehicle crash. Jack wakes up somewhere beyond a hundred and fifty years in the past- well before the civil war takes place. After some few misadventure Jack comes to the conclusion that he was sent back to stop the civil war. To do so he begins to re-design history by trying to bring technology closer to all of the technology that he now misses so greatly. Using the resources in his telephone-before it dies- he begins that task. In book one we saw a lot of history as it was and met a few of the more influential people of the time. In book two we will see the permutation of the past that will create a new future. So far that future hasn\'t solved the civil war problem. In some ways it almost seems there are other forces out there that may also be taking advantage not just of him but of time travel- though this is mostly my guess at this point. As it goes- Jack is fighting mostly an organization which is dedicated to arming the south with some much advanced war technologies. Frances Sanger-the love of Jacks new life- Samuel Clemens and their friend Kazmar Sevenski have been kidnapped and it will take all of Jack\'s knowledge and connections and a bit of bravery to save the day. When Kady Barnett,the daughter of one of Jacks rivals, Ken Barnett, gets into the picture; will Jack fall into his old habits despite his avowed love for Frances? Is Frances truly being held by her evil ex-husband,Abner Adkins, or has she gone back to him? This has all the earmarks of a romance except that there is way more strife than happily ever after. The good news is there will be a book three some time. Maybe there is hope for the romance. Jack, in book one, tried to save the life of one well known person and found it difficult to achieve since the man died of other causes in about the same time. This time we see some die before their time. The changes he makes are affecting the future, but will they be enough to stop the war? This novel quickly has us wondering; is this a story about changing the past and future or about changing Jack. If you like Time Travel stories with a bit of tampering in the past to create a better future and a wide mystery that has yet to be solved you will love this book. Recommended to Sci-Fi Fantasy Steam-Punk Alternate future-past-histories. We\'re probably going to have to keep a watch out so that some of this altered history doesn\'t leak accidentally into the Wiki-sphere. J.L. Dobias

Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace (The Bern Saga Book 4) by Hugh Howey I\'ve said it before and I\'ll say it again I love the Molly Fyde series. The books just keep getting better. They also keep demanding more attention to the details. We\'ve been watching Molly Fyde grow throughout the series. We\'re learning more about her family-some we seem to be left to guess at, If I have one complaint about this the fourth book, it would be that there were a lot of things I\'d have liked to know that there just wasn\'t time for This time the format is done somewhat differently- we have the story developing with interspersed backstory. I think that some people found this to be a difficult book because of that. There have been some suggestions that they were unnecessary. I didn\'t feel that way and I\'ll tell you why. The first three novels contain a lot of very good world building. Up to this point the worlds have been used as the means to establish part of each character\'s motivations. This time we dig deeper into the lives of some of these characters so that we can better decide if we should empathize with them or be happy to leave them to their fate. This results in making this a long novel and where some might suggest it should be shorter with less backstory I beg to differ because I can think of at least one more backstory I\'d love to have heard and I can\'t think of any that I\'d give up to hear it. I have to say that I was disappointed that there was no backstory for Cat. Cat is such a complex multifaceted character that I would have loved to see deeper into her inner motivation to understand what makes her work and made her decide the path she took. As I\'ve mentioned I wouldn\'t give up any of the space used for the other characters so I\'ll have to be happy with what we have. When we left the characters in book three Cole was trying to save Molly\'s father, Molly was planning a multilayer invasion plan to steal ships for her small mixed force. Anlyn and Edison have inadvertently joined the Hyperspace team that are overtaking the Bern ships one by one. Walter is making secret deals for untold fortune not realizing that he\'s jeopardizing everyone and the entire combat plan. Anlyn is going to have to spearhead the space conflict. Walter is going to have to make several critical decisions that are going to be fatal for someone. Cat is going to come through in heroic fashion despite herself. Nothing goes quite as planned. Dr Ryke and Molly\'s mother-the ship- must attempt to return to the rift inside of Hyperspace and try to undo what was done so long ago. The Wadi once again plays a major part. Most importantly there\'s a lot of previously unknown threads and revelations that come out of the backstory that explain much of what has happened that its vitally important to read it all carefully, No scanning allowed. We even get to find out who the Bern Seer is but you are going to have to read this to find this all out. Once again I recommend this to all those people who love Military SF Tense Thrillers Sci-Fi Fantasy Speculative Science notions. Thank Hugh Howey for a world full of entertainment and a job well done. J.L. Dobias

Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions(The Bern Saga Book 3) by Hugh Howey When I choose a book I don\'t choose by cover- although the covers sometimes are pretty to the eye. I rarely choose by the blurb or any small amount torn out for advertisement purposes. I chose often by reading whatever samples I can get. Usually while in a book store I can get as many pages in as I have time to loiter. On line I can get what they offer. I detest when they drop pages from that sample-I\'ve no idea what that accomplishes. That\'s equivalent to scanning the book, so whatever first pages they give me are all I take and I stop at the first break. Thankfully this book offered a fair amount of contiguous storyline. I\'ve lately gotten into reading the reviews first- particularly the low star ones. Those are generally short and never sweet and sometimes I get a good laugh. On occasion they do make me pause and with this book there were two items that stood out. One was that there was a lot of gratuitous violence. The other is that it seemed like a different writer wrote this book. If the first two books had not been so flaming good I might have paused before spending more hard earned money for the last two. But, through reading the sample I was at least assured that it had to have been the same author.(Not that I had that much doubt.) That\'s all the assurance I needed. The problem with a majority of the objections to there being too much gratuitous violence was that it was preceded by or followed by the line \'I scanned through those sections\'. When an author puts overt violence into the story it takes most people from their comfort zone and I can understand that much. The biggest difficulty in edging comfort zones is that this practice lends itself to scanning. Scanning ruins a book. Whether you are bored or upset or maybe even lost, scanning opens the door for the next comment: The flow of the book was all over the place and hard to follow. Well, yeah, you\'ve been scanning again. If you scan and don\'t correct the problem you will likely have trouble following the plot. I\'ll touch on the gratuitous violence later. This book is by far the hardest to read of the three. There are those scenes which might jar some or even all. And there is a lot of Speculative Science in here pertaining to the beginning and the end of the universe, not to mention the shape and other characteristics. There are a huge number of stumbling blocks for any and all readers. One of my meters as to rough content is, if it gets bad enough that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth I won\'t finish it. And if it gets on a bit much expository with the geeky science stuff I\'ll know when I reach the end of the page and look at the last sentence with no recall of what is on the rest of the page. (Then I have to go back and actually read it.) With The Blood of Billions I\'m happy to say that neither of those happened. There were moments when I began to wonder while in hyperspace, if this might be gratuitous violence. Gore for the sake of shock value. After having read the first two novels I was willing to forge ahead and give Hugh reasonable doubt. I was not disappointed. Molly Fyde is, in my opinion, a familiar yet unique character. She\'s familiar in that she is strong willed and independent and sometimes focused while living a world that has suppressed her to perhaps a 70\'s or 80\'s woman. A woman who wants her independence but wants that man to lean on. That man is Cole but in this story Cole is way off the map clear into hyperspace, in fact, and basically lost. The good news is he\'s in the same place that Molly\'s father is and so there\'s a chance for him to meet her dad. Edison and Anlyn are on a mission for the Drenard that takes them to the rift where they defend against the Bern incursion. Things are not going well and soon they will find themselves on the other side of the rift trying to act as ambassadors while the rest of the Drenards have begun an invasion of human space. It may prove that the Bern are a bit absent also. Molly has returned to her home world, the world of her birth and like many of the backwater planets in these stories this is out the back and yonder somewhere. Molly is Molly and we\'ve already established that she\'s her own worst enemy. (Sometimes Molly\'s actions are just downright frustrating.)Thankfully she has her mother the ship and Walter to look after her. But, this is voting time Lok and the pollsters are about to bleed Molly dry. Walter seems to be less help to her than the Wadi that she\'s befriended. And she\'s naively walking into danger once again. Although she knows this she doesn\'t seem to be able to control herself. Also it may be that Walter is the reason that Cole is way off into Hyperspace. Molly\'s only regret, sometimes, seems to be that she doesn\'t have Cole to lean on while she endangers herself and everyone around her. She is getting better though. And as usual she seems to always come up with a plan that in the end saves more lives than not. There are some rough spots and so there should be caution about reading this novel. The first is in Hyperspace with Cole and his friend Riggs. There are some bad graphic scenes, but I think these were meant to affect Coles character in a specific way and it also leads to some awesome upgrades for Cole. These upgrades remind me of the last few steam-punk novels I\'ve read. Unfortunately dismemberment is involved in qualifying for these upgrades. Cole also gets to be elevated to a high position of importance as a character in this novel. Whether that will hold true we shall see, but it seems more likely as certain sights of the seer prove out. Every time I think I know where this story is headed I get derailed. There are some grisly things ahead for Molly-perhaps its to cure her of her Molly-anna attitude. Mild optimism peppered in moments of uncertainty punctuated by careless moments of walking into trouble. And there is the crash of many star-ships onto a planet and the description of the rescue mission. All of which entail most of the violence and gore in the story. I think that they are all well intended have a purpose and are also well paced so they are not stacked one on the other. Unless one starts skimming and then the lines start to blur and it could seem like there\'s a book full of gore. Not for the faint of heart this SF Military Speculative Universe is great for those who like the SF-Military Political novels. Scan this novel at your own risk. Speed reading is fine though. I don\'t do speed read that well so it takes me a bit longer to read this type of novel. All told it is well worth reading. J.L. Dobias

Red Planet Run (A Star Svensdotter Adventure) I loved this story much more than the two previous. I felt the two previous were doing quite well at paying homage to Robert Heinlein. There is nothing wrong with that but for some reason I felt I was seeing more of the true Dana Stabenow throughout this book. I can\'t really say that with utmost authority since I\'ve not read any of her other books than this series. The story picks up where we left Star in the previous. She is on the verge of finishing the grand project of creating the first of her small world. Helen, the devil in the details in this story, thinks its time for Star to move on. She wants Star to help map out Mars and find more possible evidence of the Prometheans whose relics have been found in the asteroid belt. With Helen one never know how much of the information she gives out is true. Star resists but then seems to have a change of heart while deciding that she needs a change of scenery for her children, who seem to be getting out of hand. Brother Moses is at it again and he\'s bringing a mob against Star; and her children have found a way to change him and his followers skin color to green. They don\'t have a sense of humor about this. This story often seems to plod along but I attribute that mostly to the need to explain much of the science and politics of the time. It\'s also important to take note that we now should consider these stories to be alternate universe stories because they were designed to take place within decades of the year they were written that they have become somewhat outdated. Unless we landed on Mars already and I\'ve just been out of touch. With that in mind though, the arrival on Mars and their adventures in a balloon almost smack of steam-punk which adds to the now alternate history. Either way it doesn\'t really take away from the story. In this story Star is still being dogged by her past. William Kwan, ex space patrol now killer, and friend of her ex friend/arch enemy Greys has been striking out against the asteroid miners. Star has a close call with the man. When Helen suggests that there might be evidence of an alien weapon pointing at where the planet now asteroid belt Prometheus and Star decides she and her children need a change, Star thinks she\'s gotten rid of her troubles with Kwan. Unfortunately trouble follows Star. It is good to see that in the adventures on Mars in the balloon Star is forced, by her children, to become more humanized in regards to their fathers death. They rightfully feel she doesn\'t talk about their father at all. They also seem to want to try to give her religion but that doesn\'t quite work out so well. The storyknife ceremonies were a nice touch and fit in quite well with that brief moment of grief and acceptance of hope for what may come. I was not convinced that Star was convinced yet of an afterlife- she\'s a hard sell. Even though these are now a bit dated and as I mentioned an alternate history I\'d love to see more. Though Star has some problems with her own self induced dehumanized condition she\'s a strong and independent character whose life indicates that there might be some sacrifices to maintaining her sense of self as it is while showing us that it\'s all worth it in the long run. And though there is a moment when we might have seen some foreshadow that Elizabeth might have tried to communicate with them. There really is not enough to whet the appetite for some of us who want to know more about what happened to her. We could use some more Star Svendotter books. J.L. Dobias

Molly Fyde and the Land of Light(The Bern Saga Book 2) by Hugh Howey I can\'t say enough about how good this book is. Each world is richly drawn out it such a fashion that it helps explain the motivations of many of the important characters- from within the context of their cultures. The cultures are often derived around the worlds themselves and sometimes out of misconceptions or at least faulty conclusions as regards how the races perceive their world and their place in the universe. Molly Fyde comes from a universe that has taken several steps back for some unexplained reason as regards the attitude towards women. Many of her action seem to be driven by this and it become easy to see how she finds herself so enamored to Cole who so desperately wants to protect her from everything. He first has to figure out a way to protect her from herself and with Molly that\'s just not going to happen. It\'s enough to process that she still trusts him after he killed her uncle, but then her uncle was trying to kill her. Walter also would like to protect Molly and that makes him dangerous. In these books I notice a lot of similarities in the worlds and characters and themes to what I\'ve seen in recent years among the popular Science Fiction and Sci-fi. For instance, there are ceremonies in here that kept bringing to mind the Mimbari of Babylon 5. There are features of the visit to Dakura that reminded me of Vanilla Sky. These are not bad things- they are handled well and move the story. This story has a lot to tell and it can almost become confusingly overwhelming. As usual there are few if any places our heroes might go where they will be safe from the fate that is creeping up on them. It is threatening to suck them in like the black-holes around them. Molly\'s goal is to find her father, but the path is never quite clear. Her mother, who seems now to reside in the ships computer is cryptic at best with her help. Molly is not even sure how much she can trust this person inside her ship. They have had to detour first and take Anlyn to Drenard. Getting out of there alive will be murder. Even then they will leave some of the crew behind. The next stop is Dakura where Molly finds that she is expected to destroy her mother\'s body so that someone named Byrne can\'t access her memories. There are so many things about Molly that seem to piece together like a fractured jigsaw puzzle that make the reader wonder what she is. Byrne thinks that she is important enough to try to snatch her. If I piece together her ability to do very fast calculations that most people rely on ship computers to do, and that she seems to always do the right thing even when she\'s not putting a lot of thought behind what she\'s doing, it makes me wonder. When she discovers that a race know as Bern are trying to open a gateway to our space in order to lay waste to humanity will she be able to stop them with her innate skill and luck? The stakes are getting higher and the threat is getting real. This is a great read for anyone who likes Sci-Fi or Science Fiction and fantasy and adventure and all the military political stuff of SF Military novels. J.L. Dobias

Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue (The Bern Saga Book 1)by Hugh Howey It takes a fairly riveting book to keep me up past bedtime. That Molly Fyde did so is not that hard to understand when looking at the whole. Everyone loves those stories where the female protagonist is strong willed well balanced and determined. I think in this case the strong willed is the only thing that stands out in the opening scenes. The story starts with Molly on a flight as navigator to Cole Mendonca on a mission for the (space) Navy. The first interesting phase of this story is a revelation of the possibility the crew is out so long on duty that members are allowed to sleep at the helm. Molly- an orphan- is having a dream about her parents leaving her. Cole wakes her up to have her check out some readings from their system update logs. Molly tries to shrug it off but Cole, who seems to be a paranoid conspiracy type, thinks something is up. Now, some background: Molly is one of few if any female\'s who have registered with the navy to train at the academy to be a pilot and her skill are up there with the rest but for some reason this world took a huge backward step and is not very gender friendly in the military. So, Molly is navigating when she should be piloting.(At least that\'s the impression Molly gives us.) While they discuss the discrepancy they also discover that the enemy force they are going up against is far greater than they expect. Molly shows her strength by issuing recommendation for their assault that turn out to be quite sound. No one takes her serious so only her team begin that maneuver. But, someone has sabotaged their armament and nothing will deploy properly. All of this reinforces Cole\'s misgivings over the update. At the onset of the battle Cole is out and unable to help her and she has to take control; while the rest of her team is taken out. The other flights out there will be overwhelmed so Molly begins to do what she does best. Thinking outside the box. Knowing that what she\'s doing is suicide the reader get to see the side of Molly Fyde that might result in her own undoing. In a brave act she avoids the enemy long enough to turn their own weapons upon them causing some damage, though it in no way will save the rest. She somehow survives this and you will have to read to find out. The important thing here is that whatever sabotage happened to her ship- has not been recorded so everything she did makes her look like an incompetent loose cannon and forces her to be relieved of duty. Her uncle-an admiral-who has supported her through all of this can do nothing to help. Molly opts to go to normal school to finish her education, which looks as though she\'s admitting complete defeat. So we have Molly Fyde the strong willed not so balanced -out of the box loose cannon- who all of a sudden seems less than determined. Perhaps it\'s that she realizes she can\'t fight the system, maybe it\'s because she doesn\'t want to. Though she has a severe failing in lack of determination. Molly in some ways reminds me of Honor Harrington, David Weber\'s character. Then in other ways she reminds me of Ky Vatta, Elizabeth Moons character in the Vatta\'s War. In fact a lot of the beginning is like the Vatta stories. Molly seems to be missing the drive that makes those other characters and it\'s difficult to determine, in this story, whether that\'s considered a critical weakness. It certainly might be a contributing factor towards her getting into so much trouble. When her uncle, the admiral, comes to her with the revelation that her father\'s ship, which was lost, has been located she jumps at the chance to volunteer to pilot it back. Her uncle attempts to dissuade her but not much. At this point as a reader I was already a bit suspicious of this. Next her old friend and secret love Cole is enlisted to help. Add to that the whole affair becomes shrouded in mystery when they have to do all of the trip to the ship in secrecy. Cole is already suspicious and when the contact they are to meet in this backwater pirate planet is acting strangely and things begin to unravel the paranoia sinks its teeth in hard. The ships name is Parsona -as is Molly\'s mother\'s name. It\'s her heirloom and in order for her to claim it she\'s going to have to think way out of the box and she and Cole will become fugitives running from the Navy that sent them there. This book is one misadventure after another and the only thing the reader can be sure of is that each time the crew of Parsona go into a situation they think is going to be fine- it\'s not. Pretty soon Molly picks up the most unlikely crew of dangerous misfits for her ship. All things considered the most passive yet dangerous is Molly who is in charge most of the time. The only thing standing between her and fate is the dangerous allies she\'s collecting. Quickly we discover nothing that Molly trusts can truly be trusted and it all has something to do with the ship Parsona. Will Molly be able to stay alive to get all the answers? You will have to read to find out. Not everything is answered, but the ending is quite satisfactory for the beginning of a series. Anyone who loves those tactical space novels of Elizabeth Moon and David Weber should love Molly Fyde. Lovers of Science Fiction and Fantasy should love the story. There are several different worlds built here in this story and in many such novels, usually by the third world built it gets old. Hugh Howey does a fair job of keeping them all interesting. Each world story seems to add up to the motivation for each of the alien crew of Molly\'s ship. We\'ll have to see how well he keeps up with himself in the future novels. Your Usual Sci-Fi Military Heroine who\'s been slightly Mollyfyde. J.L. Dobias

A Handful of Stars(Star Svensdotter #2)by Dana Stabenow Entering the world of Star Svendotter is like entering the Worlds of Heinlein. There are so many elements of Dana Stabenow\'s world building that remind me of what I\'ve seen in Heinlein\'s worlds. There is definitely an emphasis on Scientific Detail. I love both elements here and then the fact that the gutsy hero is a woman who would do Hazel Stone proud. Hazel stone of The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein is also known as Hazel Meade and later as Gwen Novak (in Multiverse novels). Both are cantankerous and have a fierce passion for protecting their family. In Star\'s case her family seem to include everyone who works around her in her various habitats. Star seems to have a slight detachment along with this that serves to help her dispense justice-most of the time. I\'m not so sure how I felt about that after she had children, but there is at least one time where we get to see her pushed to the point that she truly loses it and for good reasons. I like that she stays consistent but felt she lacked some normal emotions sometimes. There are a couple of issues that come up that are interesting that would have been nice things to address further in this novel. We can hope there might be more about them in the next. The first is that at the moment she goes into labor she is confronted with the realization that she has a child she didn\'t know about. What? You heard it. This is a favorite joke around here- about how a woman can\'t have a child she\'s unaware of. In this context there are reasonable explanations. Star seems to have a reaction about this that we see her teetering on the edge of the thought that there might be some prejudice in her towards test tube babies. This is later brought to the fore again when they discover a ship full of fools who have apparently been cloning themselves into a thin and weak genetic community. She and her new son Leif keep skirting this issue and never have a really good discussion. I understand that in a way it is part of Star\'s nature to avoid this particular conflict. The bottom line was that we have the impression Star has some prejudice but no actual admission of such from her. All of this happens as Star and her husband Caleb O\'Hara arrive at the asteroid belt. Their mission to mine the belt, set forth in Second Star, has come to fruition and Star immediately is forced to take the bull by the horns when she discovers there is a crisis and a plague in the mining community that she\'s expected to solve. The next event of note is major and yet somehow after Star\'s main blowup- just seems to sort of slide behind her mask judicial fortitude. She really doesn\'t get a chance to deal with it and it didn\'t seem fair for her to me. Somehow I\'m not sure why she wouldn\'t and didn\'t seem to complain that much. Science wise Star embarks on world creating of her own when they decide they can hollow out asteroids and create livable space. This leads to a discovery that could change the whole landscape of things and then leads to the tragedy. From there things almost become mundane until the climatic end. The universe that Dana builds here is quite believable and almost sometimes painfully so. It would have been nice to hear something from and of her niece who ran off with the Galactic Librarians, but perhaps that\'s slated for some future story. At this point I\'d be hard pressed to say if this is shaping up to be a long series of books or a trilogy. I only know that as long as the pace keeps up I\'ll be interested in following Star , Leif, Paddy and Sean wherever they go. If you are a fan of Heinlein and love Science Fiction and other such science these stories should be just what the doctor ordered. J.L. Dobias

Murder on the Pier by Jere Myles I love a good mystery and have often reread Sherlock Holmes. I thrive on good drama; who didn\'t enjoy watching Bogart in Maltese Falcon. The best old movies were well acted dramas taken from stage productions and put onto film. None of those high energy special effects. Just high adrenaline dramatic dialogue and narrative. In Murder on the Pier Jere Myles has woven a drama entwined in a mystery that is more evident to the readers than to the players. For the players it\'s the story of their search for love and affirmation in a world that seems to have gone mad. Though the world would argue the players are the ones gone mad. The nature of their lives as it all unfolds is at the very least thought provoking. Jere Myles handles the plight of the outcasts, the gay, in a mature and believable manner. He treats everyone the same in as much as they have the same abilities and stumbling blocks. \"The biggest hurdle we have to leap in this world is the one we place in front of ourselves. No one cares whether you live or die unless you care.\" -Dr. Mieko Mitchell This is life seen from a place many people I\'m acquainted with don\'t often want to go. And yet in this place I found many words and ideals I\'ve often tried to express, put on a page in such an eloquent way it drew me into this enchanting world. Mieko is a remarkable man, a psychiatrist, who is loved by many and his death brings these people closer together as they try to continue their lives and find out what really happened to him. His death is listed by the police as a suicide but there is nothing other than outdated prejudice of other people that would indicate a reason for these people to believe that. Jon and Eileen begin a road down memory lane recalling when they first met and how Eileen introduced Jon to Meiko. They both are hurt and have only each other to turn to. We begin to see a true picture of the Meiko they remember and the one that was. We know that there was no way suicide should ever have been considered. This part of the mystery unfolds as a tense suspense filled drama for the reader who knows that there are still killers out there and that those killers don\'t seem to be finished with their job. This becomes increasingly evident when Jon begins to champion the causes that Mieko began and runs afoul of the unknown. He and Eileen will be in great danger. It will take a lot to find anyone who will believe them and when they do it might be too late. There\'s more murder ahead. The game is afoot. And I\'m surprised this novel has not gained more awards and accolades than it has. J.L. Dobias

Hindsight by A.A. Bell I read Diamond Eyes- the first of the trilogy of this story and fell in love with Mira and all her quirky ways. So naturally its inevitable that I read Hindsight. The intensity of this novel just blew me away. Granted I\'m not one to read a whole lot of suspense thrillers. I\'ve enjoyed such greats as Six Days of the Condor by James Grady. Shimbumi by Trevanian and many but not all of Ludlum\'s Jason Bourne novels. I\'m not a great fan of novels that use violence as a sort of jar mechanism to pull people out of their comfort zone although it\'s really difficult to write good thrillers without that element. What I appreciate is the artist who paints the characters successfully around that element. You could say that this series is Science Fiction but I think that\'s a very small portion of the mix of genre\'s we have here. Mira\'s story reads almost like paranormal romance although the science is well woven into the story to give it less of the mystical feel. Her story is also one intense ride into suspense and mystery. Now after admitting that I\'m not the expert on suspense and thrillers I have to say that A.A. Bell does a magnificent job of using the violence in the story to weave in the hints for the various motivations of many of the characters. For Mira everyone is suspect in their motives and allegiances and I felt that even in the grisly elements portrayed that there were insights that logically lead up to each successive revelation as the story built to its climax. Taking up from Diamond Eyes Mira Chambers is still institutionalized at Serenity and living with the memories that keep reminding her of her part in Ben\'s (Bennet Chiron) suffering. Ben is recuperating and attempting to gain freedom for Mira by becoming her guardian. The catch is that his past life and prison time make that nearly impossible. Through some tenuous arraignment Ben seems to achieve that with the help of the institutions matron Madonna Sanchez. The story opens with a murder one that Mira comes across while jogging- one that she can\'t easily share with anyone because it happened days ago because Mira sees things that are in the past because of her Diamond Eyes that are sensitive to slow light. I must confess that when I picked up Diamond Eyes I was thinking oh great a suspense thriller mystery with a blind sleuth that can see into the past. She has a side-kick Ben who has saved her from the institute and now works with her to solve cases. That\'s not what I got- but I\'m not disappointed; I really do love these books the way they are. Mira is about to be thrust back into the world of intrigue this time dredging up Ben\'s past and the reason he went to prison. She\'s going to have to undergo the changes that will occur while she detoxes from the chemicals that the institute has used to control her; and, she has to deal with her feeling for Ben and her fear that she will cause him harm again. She\'ll also have to deal with her nemesis Colonel Kitching who wants to have her Diamond Eyes and the ever invasive General Garland who also would like to use Mira\'s talent and her eyes. Not to mention her-Moriarty like rival- the elderly Fredarick \'Leopard\' who can hear voices from the future and is also a client at Serenity who is in love with Madonna Sanchez and views Mira\'s existence as a threat to Madonna. Fredarick is also related to Colonel Kitching. This doesn\'t even cover having to deal with Ben\'s overbearing mother Mel and a few ex-girlfriends. Then add in an over protective lance corporal Lockman who seems to be anything from a bodyguard to a black ops both frightening and somehow appealing to Mira and you have an extra blend to an already troubled romance. Mira herself is an intriguing character who has spent over 10 years in an institution and has to deal with assimilating a lot of technical advances while she herself is a biological wonder that sometimes surpasses all of that development. There are many gems of narrative that come out of this and her perception of her talent. [quote]`I was thinking about time,\' she confessed, `... about how pointless it is trying to fight it or change to suit it, because we\'re already caught up in it, like a tide, and we\'re just the fish. Close your eyes and you might even feel it, the breeze traveling through time like a current, taking our scents and memories with it.\'[/quote] Bell, A A (2011-06-01). Hindsight (Kindle Locations 1714-1717). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition. And a lot of humor such as the time Mel fixes Ben and Mira a romantic dinner that seems a bit over spiced. [quote]At least she still had fond memories of the meal before she\'d taken her first bite; so romantic on the beachside patio.[/quote] Bell, A A (2011-06-01). Hindsight (Kindle Locations 2397-2398). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition. This story has several onion like layers to the plot. There are all sorts of twists and turns that once it gets going roll the story down a long and almost endless hill of action, suspense and gore that makes this \'not for the faint of heart\'; though I was surprised that it never left that bad taste that always begs the question \"why is that even there?\" Everything is well placed and timed in this story and even if the reader doesn\'t feel they need a score card to keep track of all the threads; its a marvel to watch A.A. Bell unfold all of them. I recommend this to any fans of suspense and mystery -most Science fiction lovers should find something to take away and even Para normal Romance lovers will find a spot for Mira and her Diamond Eyes. Definitely read Diamond Eyes before Hindsight if you haven\'t because after you do you\'ll have to buy the rest of the trilogy to finish the rest of Mira\'s story. Each book gets better. The next book is Leopard Dreaming and I\'ve already put it in my kindle. J.L. Dobias

A Shattered Memory by Alan Halsey. A twisting suspenseful edge of your seat thrill ride! I picked up this book because someone gave it a bad review. There\'s a bit more to it then just that but that should sound intriguing enough. This story starts out a bit strange and I might compare it to a Philip K Dick novel-for anyone not acquainted with him he did the original book the Blade Runner movie is based on. He did a lot of novels that played on themes about the mind and consciousness. The second chapter of Alan\'s novel takes us into the life of Carolyn. And I confess at this point I almost put the book down. I\'m glad I didn\'t. There was something about the pace of the first two chapters that bothered me but they are important to the story. And once I read the third chapter I was hooked. From here on its almost like reading two books waiting for the moment that they both hit the supper highway and collide head on. The story of Carolyn , Jerry, Samantha, Bill, Ley, and Derick is a carefully crafted tale that needs special attention to the details. As it evolves it is reminiscent of the Suspenseful mysteries of Robert Ludlum and Trevanian. The reader quickly gets the impression that there are more to these characters than meets the eyes. As the bits and pieces evolve before their eyes they can only be drawn further into the story. As I mentioned there were speed bumps on my road to this good read. And I would warn that there is what I consider rough content that you have to read through because there is important exposition and foreshadowing within those pages. But, I have this to confess. I know that the author spent a considerable time writing this novel- years- and I shamelessly devoured it in less than half a day because I couldn\'t put it down. For all you suspense and mystery readers this is a must. You won\'t be disappointed. Do not scan read this or you will miss too much and get lost. J.L. Dobias

The Kingdom of Malinas is a remarkable book. E.J.Tett\'s first effort at writing is by far one of the best first efforts I have read in quite some time. She puts together all the elements of story with her own style and class that have not been matched by her peers. She has tremendous characterizations, conflict, plot and theme nailed down. This is a well thought out effort for a first book. And it says a lot that although I venture into the fantasy genre now and then my favorite is Science Fiction. This does give me an advantage and disadvantage in that I have little to compare it to. The only reason I picked up this novel was because I\'d been snooping around the SSFchronicle writers forum and noticed that several people there have published various works in various fashion from traditional to self and I have to say that I\'ve up to this point been disappointed with the ones I have tried out. I came in not expecting much after three other disappointments , one of those is a traditional published author. I\'m happy to say that this one surprised me. It starts out slow and I suppose that it could be argued that its a bit rough around the edges because it\'s a first effort and its self published. And I suppose that if I were coming from the place of being in a forum of writers I might tend to try to be hyper critical. Fortunately I come from being a reader of fiction with a 50 plus year background and I have to say that I found the author\'s style of writing to be be fresh, entertaining, and quite tightly woven. She can only improve from there. The story begins slowly with our main protagonist Sorrel who is a very strong female character- there are many of those in this story. Her father was a warrior and her brother is one and she wants to follow in their footsteps. Despite the families efforts she will if it kills her and as the tale unfolds it seems that fate is on her side. There is enough in the development of characters to keep me in the story. Her plot seems quite original though I admit that I lack enough exposure to this type of fantasy to truly judge. And then: It\'s at chapter 12 she grabs me- one quarter the way through the book. I found the hook that kept me reading this in one sitting. I think its safe for her to say to her friends at SSFchronicles that it does not take a major hook at the beginning of every story too keep your readers happy. She feeds the line out carefully and then hooks you into the story so deep you can\'t get out until you are finished. What\'s really great about this novel is that it\'s full of characters that can hook any reader. There are almost too may to chose from and yet she pulls it off and this is a first novel; as long as she keeps her present voice she can\'t go wrong. What I have a hard time understanding is why there are no reviews here from her fellow SFFchronicle pals there are thousands of people in that forum. Don\'t they have anything to say? And I won\'t accept the lame excuse that they could be accused of being partial or having a conflict of interests. Ms. Tett I think you could teach some of those people in the forum a few things. J.L. Dobias

Valens Rise Book1(The Valens of Legacy) by Sherrel Lee This book took me by surprise. It was one of my first forays into the world of self published novels. The main character was someone who I found so engaging I could relate to her immediately. And the story is peopled with a magnificent supporting cast. Bravo on a first novel. Looking forward to the next. Jemma Nix -an orphan- discovers that she had a sister, Larinda, who has died and left her an inheritance. She has mixed emotions wondering if she should be excited to finally reconnect with her family or be angry that she\'s lost the real connection now that Larinda is dead. She gets the message while she\'s at the place she\'s volunteered to help in the study of Precognition. She has to ask Dr. Horace Gruen, if she can take the day off. He\'s not happy since Jemma Is the only person they have to help find legitimate candidates for their tests. Dr. Gruen\'s assistant Astrid Van Horn had saved Jemma from the seeming endless string of foster homes and given her this opportunity; so Jemma feels guilty about leaving but this is important if it\'s true. Jemma meets with the lawyer Jonathan Grey. Though it takes a while for things to sink in; Jemma begins to see undeniable truth that she\'s the one and she\'s inherited the family business, Legacy. She agrees to go to the estate and at least give things a try. Grey schedules a meeting with a Griffin Hawke. Jemma suffers strange muscle cramps that are later tied to her future but at the beginning she has no explanations. The increasing episodes are not making any of the upcoming stress any easier to handle. The story moves a bit slow at the beginning as the reader is introduced into the perceived life of Jemma and her sister Larinda with Griffin Hawke as the guide to Larinda\'s life. The reader finds out in a hurry that there\'s a lot more to Jemma in what and who she is, but for her there are many steps that must take place for her to be ready to fully realize this. Because of her troubled life it takes Jemma a while to warm up to the people of Legacy, but she\'ll need to do so quickly because the people she\'s trusted have been taking advantage of her. When she learns that she\'s a Valen and that the Legacy needs her, that\'s when the training begins. The first thing she needs to do though is to learn to trust herself to rise to the occasion. There are elements to the style of writing in this book that are sometimes a bit loose sometimes unorthodox, but the overall story tracks well and follows a progression that leads to the place where things start to really move as the pace picks. Jemma will rightfully go through a phase where she isn\'t sure who to trust both because of her past and the fact that the people of Legacy are often treating her with kid gloves. This book the first book spends some time building the world that Jemma lives in. A world of changelings mystical Manticores and Griffins and Phoenix. Add in a few mad scientists abominations. Even though Jemma is one of them she\'s unsure she is up to the task ahead. This is a good Sci-Fi Fantasy with some neat ideas about the various creatures that live in this world. It brings some myths to life in our time. J.L. Dobias

G\'s Future (A Novella)by Don Viecelli I love this story, but at times it was a trying experience. This book reminds me a lot of that movie Making Mr. Right. It stared John Malkovich and Ann Magnuson and was about an android made for the purpose of exploring space. It was also one of those movies that had a somewhat strong female character - though she still had some of those foibles that might brand her as a bit less than the quintessential future of woman. This novel has those same elements. The android designed to go into space that is. Sorry no strong female roles. I call this a novel because it lists at 160 pages I don\'t have the word count but I think 160 is good for a novel. This story starts out with and revolves around the character Timothy. Almost a leave it to beaver household. Tim is 12 so this is very much at the beginning a juvenile science fiction story. It could easily be a YA but what drags it down is the style the author took in writing. I\'ve been blasted before about this but I will say it again. Sometimes when we concentrate really hard on making our science good enough to be the hard stuff; we forget to put effort into the difficulty of developing good narrative. The writing reads like it is intended for the 8 to 15 year bracket and maybe even a bit earlier. It took a long time and a lot of patience to get to the good stuff. Part of the trouble for me was that there were lots of scenes with many people but scant dialogue for quite a way through. This tends to lead to a lot of expository paragraphs. It did not destroy the story it just pushed it back a few grade levels for me. But that might be just me. It\'s about the time we meet the android that the characters start to take on some life. Maybe this is planned- we could always hope that. The story starts with the simple life of Timothy and his sister Kate his mother Susan his father Charles his best friend Johnny and Johnny\'s sister Amy (Timothy\'s crush). All getting ready for summer vacation, which this time includes an invitation from Timothy\'s grandfather Julian to spend two weeks helping with a science project. Timothy is not sure since he\'d rather spend time with Amy er I mean Johnny. Of course, when they go to visit Julian they meet G the android- the science project. Timothy is to be there for two weeks providing a sort of companionship to the Android in order to prepare it for the up coming Turing Test, which could net them one million dollars and public acclaim. Now we have plenty of moral issues that arise with the danger of being exposed to people who might find the android threatening and we have a sort of I Robot thing starting here. Timothy proceeds to become really good friends with G and they get along famously and G just seems like a regular guy. Who doesn\'t have to eat or sleep and who has more knowledge than the average genius. What doesn\'t seem to get covered is whether self awareness comes close to equating to sentience and perhaps that could be covered in another story. There\'s lots of excitement and chances for G to prove himself and there is even another secret project going on, which seems predictable but in a way that doesn\'t really spoil the story. There is still the eventual training at NASA and lots of other good stuff ahead. I really did enjoy the moral examination though I felt that because this seems more of a story about an idea and ideals and some of the moral ramifications that there was a bit less involvement of character development than what I like. But that\'s because I\'m a fan of character driven stories. This is really a good book for all ages. It maintains purity as a youthful juvenile fiction with enough elements for the YA and the adult crowd. It may be that not everyone will have the trouble I had getting through the first part, but if they do they only have to tough it out for a bit before it gets interesting. What\'s really neat is there are so many interesting threads touched upon in this story that there\'s room for some really exciting ideas and fiction to come. J.L. Dobias

The Beginning Of The End:Book One by Michael Edward I strongly suggest first reading a bit about the author here and perhaps check the author information at Amazon.[...] [...] :: That\'s just to prepare you for his style. I liked the story. I love science fiction and it had some elements of that. It did have a bit of horror, which I\'m not so much a fan of. Redeeming quality here being that the Draken Sword leaves a mark and drains life but doesn\'t make a mess. The story starts-possibly somewhere far in the future. Heather has no memory and someone is trying to help her as she struggles. The help is in the form of Mind Traveling to the past. We\'re not told how this is done. She Mind Travels to Seaborn where it gets a little disorienting as we get acquainted with somewhere close to a dozen people and then quickly Mind Travel through Dasha. Dasha has learned Mind travel from Ikron, a being who seems to be in her mind or something, and now we learn that it\'s accomplished using another person, Perry\'s, memories. This takes us way into the past to visit the birth of Dasha\'s Grandfather, Jason Writer. There\'s a bit of a scary scene where it almost sounds like his mother thinks she\'s giving birth to the anti-christ. As it turns out she and another person die that night and she has left instruction for her son. For some reason Jason\'s dad waits until he\'s eighteen before giving him these.(and never reads it himself.) The same night 5 dark energy forces have been brought to Earth, these seem to be Ethin\'s warriors or some such. We leap forward again to Jason as a teenager. It takes a while to build up some steam from here. We have to get acquainted with everyone. Mostly because a lot of people will die. This is one of those slaughter fest type stories, which is where the horror part of the story is. There\'s a back story-or another story within the story within the story that talks about another world or universe where Ethin was a great warrior who was defeated by an army of people in some sort of betrayal. Feeling a need for revenge Ethin has a plan that involves coming into our world and preparing his new army. There\'s some sort of restriction to what he can do here and there is a time limit so things start to move quickly as our heroes try to stop him. In this first time limit segment Ethan is limited to the specific area with a specific body count to generate the next phase. Jason is integral to the task of stopping Ethin. There were rough spots here for me because there was a lot of jumping around from person to person. The point of view seemed to go beyond being in Perry\'s memories. This seems to be so that we get to know someone up until they are ended. And that\'s a bit of an oddity in this book- the word kill seems to have been replaced with end. I\'ve no idea why- maybe this is something to do with this genre. Of course there are several books to this so not everything gets resolves, but its filled with some interesting ideas and strange world building. It doesn\'t always command my attention though I will want to finish the saga-it might take me a while to get to it. But, part of that is because I have a lot of unread stuff in my kindle. J.L. Dobias

Yellow Horizon War of the Auras Book Two by Jessica Acosta This is a beautiful middle book to a trilogy. We have gotten to watch Jamie grow from an organized yet unfocused almost wandering spirit into someone who has found a purpose in life. Then almost at the height of that she discovers a great deception that could easily rip the heart out of the hardest of soldiers. Now we\'re about to witness the downward spiral of a soul who\'s reached a point of trying to reconcile her past and present. It\'s almost like having an elephant try to actualize that he\'s an eagle- or vice-versa. It seems absurd but, because of the human element, that possibility of attempt at actualization exists. Jamie is trying to look at her heritage and reconcile that with what she seems to have actualized and has suddenly made that realization of the ridiculous nature of an elephant trying to be an eagle. It\'s going to take a lot of push to bring her out of the spiral. It\'s going to take the discovery that her heritage is not quite what she has been led to believe. And even when that is said and done there are so many other obstacles and decision that stand before her that she\'ll be tested to the brink of death and beyond. There are so many images in this story that are bits of symbolism possibly derived from myths- I honestly have not tried to research any of it yet. There are rich descriptions of worlds that might exist only in someones dreams. I do know that the author, Jessica Acosta, is studying Anthropology and I would have to suspect that she\'s putting what she\'s learning to good use. If you like mythology, if you like the study of human behavior and development and if you like fantasy and science fiction you\'ll be delighted by these books. Despite my own urgency to read the third book, which is a work in progress, I will urge Jessica to take her time and the third will be the best one yet. J.L. Dobias

Lodestone Book One: Sea of Storms by Mark Whiteway This book peaked my interest right away. It has a prologue-I\'m not sure it needs one- the author gave it one so I guess that\'s that. This is the story of Shann - a young girl with a history that puts her at odds with the prophet and his religious order. As it turns out a lot of people don\'t like them, but she in particular has lost her parents to them. She lives with her relatives and helps them with their Inn. As the story opens we find Lyall trying to free the slaves being taken from Shann\'s village. Lyall is posing as a Keltar- one of the prophets enforcer guards. Lyall fights another Keltar and almost loses his life- Shann helps him to recover and escape. This makes Shann a fugitive who will be pursued by many Keltar including Keris who throughout seems to be questioning what she and the other Keltar are doing for the prophet. Eventually Keris will join with Shann, Lyall and Alondo in the fight against oppression. Keris will have to first meet Boxx, a Chandara(bug like being about the size of a child), who will have the evidence she needs to persuade her to go against her beliefs and join the rebellion. From here the five of them are on the run from the Keltar while trying to reach a tower that has a transporter that will take them to the other side of the Sea of Storms. Throughout we learn of how the lodestones are used to help the Keltar fight and to fly. Shann is trained to fight as a Keltar and though Lyall doesn\'t at first think he needs to learn he learns to fight better than he has in the past. Alondo has a neat deadly musical instrument which seems to almost come out of one of those MMORPGs that are so popular these days. There\'s an ancient communicator that talks to the past.There are plenty of conflicts on the way to make things interesting. Eventually thing go such that there is a need to make a voyage across the Sea of Storms. Many aspects of the world-building seemed to be sketchy. The lodestones take the forefront. What\'s missing is how the three suns sustain a world with life and whether the planet rotates on its axis and if not how that might effect the atmosphere which protects the planet\'s life from radiation.(ie; there might not be a field that blocks the solar radiation that would burn most the planet life away.)Those are not showstoppers for me but some people need to know these things. Also more emphasis on the fact that the Kalanni have tails might have been in order since it seems to be important to the story. Sometimes they all seemed just too human; though it\'s easy to see they are not on earth and the indigenous life is all quite new and strange. The story is well told though sometimes there are terms that leak in from British English and take a moment to think about. There are some words who\'s usage might be indicative of the same situation, but struck me as a sort of word of the day - use this word in a sentence- type of usage. It seems almost to be a signature trait.If the whole novel had been filled with colorful and flowery language these few gems, which are now among common stones might have been less noticed. There are more novel\'s to this series but it was quite satisfactory in itself, though somewhat cliffhanger -ish. If you like fantasy with some heavy world building and science fiction with a bit less world building and romance and mystery and adventure, this series has a great start with a lot of potential. J.L. Dobias

I borrowed Ordinary (The Anything But Series Book 1)by Lindy Zart from a friend. So I don\'t own it. I don\'t usually read zombie stories. So, it\'s a good thing this isn\'t really a zombie story. In this world where Honor is there are the UD\'s and the UDK\'s. They are both the product of a virus that\'s been accidentally let loose on the world years ago .(I take it from the story that Accidentally is a debatable term.) It has manifested itself in two forms, those who are the undead(UD\'s) and those who can control, contain and eliminate the undead(UDK\'s). Or is that true? It\'s no wonder Honor has doubts and the inability to trust anyone when she\'s lived a life that\'s been a completed lie. It becomes even worse when discovering that her mother has been in on the lie all this time. It will be no help that there are a lot more revelations coming her way that she most likely will find hard to swallow. Honor is an ordinary teen with the usual friends and a few undesirables around her. It turns out that the undesirables, Ryder and Natasha, are part of the UDK\'s and are there to help integrate her into thier ranks so that she can help control the UD\'s. The problem with that is that one of the UD\'s is someone she knows and though not well acquainted with, she likes. Christian is her age and in her class and he\'s just manifest his active virus at the same time that Honor has. It\'s in part, because she saw him undergoing the affects that she was noticed by the other UDK\'s, though she\'s apparently already on the watch list. Drawn into the whole mess against her will she attempts to maintain her own code of moral conduct despite the pressure that\'s being applied by those who are attempting to paint the UD\'s as something horrible and mindless. Despite the dangers involved she\'ll have to make a stand and do what she thinks is right. The story seems a bit weak on demonstrating where the character is now and what needs to be done to reach where she\'ll be at the end. But, that\'s because it\'s more a story of how despite the evidence and the odds she attempts to maintain who she is throughout. I like Ordinary and am looking forward to hearing the rest of the story. There are at least four characters dealing with conflicted lives. It will be interesting to see which ones work it all out and make it to the end. J.L. Dobias

Powerless: The Submersion This book is number four in the series and its one of those series that you can love and hate. The reason for this is that the pace is one that keeps building the adrenaline pump, only bringing you half way down before the next pump and it can almost get tiring. Couple that with all the tension and wonder about how the hero\'s are going to solve all the problems and then add some -old serial novel traits- and it can almost become daunting. I remember reading some of those Edgar Rice Burroughs novels and getting near the last pages trying to figure out when all the plot twists are going to even out only to discover that it\'s not happening in this episode. This means that many people who drop out, from exhaustion, at the third novel are going to miss out on the whole tie-up of loose ends. By the time I reached the end of the third book I felt about the same as I did near the middle of the Deathstalker series. You almost need a set of file cards to keep track of all the action and deception and intrigue. There\'s also a match with all of the paranoid schizoid traits of half the cast. It\'s funny that some people often complain that the characters in a book seem one dimensional and unrealistic. I think it\'s safe to say in this book that you\'ll be happy for the one or two of those that show up.The characters in this story are pretty multifaceted and when they appear to deviate from what I expect I find myself reflecting back to see why they did that bit of surprise and find that it makes sense. Mira has been jumping around like the needle on a compass in the hands of feeble trembling old man. She\'s naive by nature but has throughout the series undergone some changes- some for the worse at times. Some times it almost seems the naivete is cured then it starts to rear its head again. We pick up the characters in Submersion with everyone captured and subdued by the evil Warlord. Even Mira\'s sister, Clara, is being held captive. The main group have been split up and everyone who survived the battle is suffering under the thumb of the warlord while building a ship, which will take him off to expand his kingdom. There are two groups; the Sunfighters who are under the Warlords coercive control and the others who have eluded that influence but are prisoners of the Warlord and his sunfighters. None of these people are being treated well or fed and cared for well and my one quibble is that based on the chancy nature of how people are fed there should be a huge number of casualties of hunger and famine and disease and just plain loss of spirit. Since this is a prisoner of war type novel this time through it could be rather trying if not for the constant build up and sometimes partial setbacks in the various plots to subvert the authorities. There\'s a lot going on in a small space so this book really keeps the reader pumped up all the way to the end. Much similar to the third book Stasis. Thankfully the reader will be delighted with a bit more resolution to some of the conflicts that have run throughout the other three books. There are a lot of elements revealed in this book that help drive into the last book, which is the fifth one named Carafe. Make no mistake; despite some of the mentions above I loved this story/ series and I very much appreciate the pace that it\'s had to sustain. For those who love a good fantasy with lots of conflict and interesting characters those are all here and there\'s light at the end of the tunnel in knowing that it will wrap up beautifully in the final book. J.L. Dobias

The Chaos Chronicles(1-3) by Jeffery A. Carver I\'ve got to admit that I really enjoyed the first book of this trilogy Neptune Crossing which I received free from the author\'s website. So I purchased the Trilogy and it did not disappoint me. In the first book the reader is introduced to John Bandicut who is some sort of Neuro-link jockey who controls ships and other devices through a direct link to his brain. We discover as it goes that his link was damaged and then further damaged by faulty nano-surgery and he now can no longer link and suffers from occasional withdrawal bouts that he refers to as silence fugue. He\'s been relegated to part of a survey team on the moon Triton. His employer is searching for alien artifacts which have been detected and not yet located. Because of his fugue he is being watched and considered somewhat unreliable by some of the staff. We also learn that John\'s motivation for being where he is; is in part due to his using a portion of his income to help support his orphaned niece,Dakota. As we come into the story we find John wandering away from his designated search area and stumbling across an alien artifact after falling through thin ice. Almost trapped below the ice he finds a device called the Translator and he\'s somehow been inflicted with the presence of an alien called the Quarx who seems to have taken up residence in his head. He also discovers he may not have wandered as much as the artifact called him through the broken link. Johns life is just starting to get interesting. Through these two alien influence he learns of the Chaos theory and how a somewhat nondescript alien race has sent the Translator out to assist sentient beings who they feel are in danger of extinction by way of the culmination of random chaotic events- which they\'ve somehow been able to determine. They\'ve enlisted John to help prevent the possible destruction of Earth and all of mankind. The problem is that they don\'t want John to tell anyone because there is not enough time for people to examine John to determine he\'s not gone crazy. And they also don\'t want the Translator left in the hands of the other humans. Throughout the story John has to deal with the higher ups who feel he may be unreliable since the accident with his link. He also has a number of friends who help him out. One friend Georgia, introduces him to Julie whom he would really like to get to know better. This becomes difficult because Julie is with exoarch and would really love to know about the alien artifact he\'s hiding. John would really love to use that to help get closer to her too. The alien in his head , Quarx is another troubling matter. It seems this alien has a limited life span but manages to spawn an offspring or replacement after dying. Each Quarx is a different personality and almost comes off as some multiple personality disorder more than new creations. Either way they stick with John and some are helpful others grudgingly helpful and others downright xenophobic, while some border on being voyeuristic. John must in the end chose to go on his secret mission alone but with the assistance of the daughter-stones that come out of the Translator. There are three stones each with a special function meant to be useful in completing the mission. In the long run John becomes a fugitive from justice suspected of having gone mad while he at best will become an unsung hero if he in fact saves the entire race and planet Earth. All of this while trying to get the girl. All of this is at risk because the Chaos analysis might prove to not be quite so accurate and there might not even be a threat. This story does have the usual hard science element that Jeffery Carvers other novels have, it also include those element with the alien artifact and the Quarx and the stones that all seem more close to magic. But, these are there to help build the world that will continue into the other two books. As they stand they follow a close set of rules that help keep the story driving along and make them believable for the story. I\'d recommend these stories to everyone who like any type of science fiction with the caveat that this is a series of books and that means that not all of the plot elements are totally resolved because it\'s meant to keep you interested in finding out what will happen next. That\'s why I recommend the trilogy because you will want to know what is going to happen next and get some more reveal about the aliens who sent out the Translator. J.L. Dobias

Atlantida by Pierre Benoit Even though this is a bit of a classic I enjoyed reading it. It reminded me of those old Tarzan movies. What it is though is more of an example of the old Trope about the beautiful, seductive, feminine character whom the protagonists all fall in love with. It seems there was once some argument that Pierre plagiarized this from H.R. Haggard\'s SHE. Though it does use the same template for lost world and has Africa as a setting and a lovely irresistible woman as the centerpiece the similarities end there. Where She, Alesha, the centerpiece of H.R. Haggards story is an almost tragic woman trapped in her own tragic love story, the centerpiece of Alantida, Antinea, is more of a sinister siren that would be a complete opposite to Alesha. Alantida seems in many ways much more short on being an examination of morals and ethics as She is. It\'s still an interesting read but as I mentioned it reads more like some of the movies I have seen long ago where the players are under the influence of an obvious though hideously seductive evil. I would recommend this to anyone who has read SHE and I\'d recommend to anyone who reads this and hasn\'t read SHE to do so. J.L. Dobias

Nine Inch Bride (Conundrum)by Anonym Can be just that at times, a Conundrum. There are some high points and it certainly is entertaining. The value of that entertainment might easily be measured by the fact that I finished it. There is a serious amount of exposition here and I hope that the sequel helps justify the need for it. The Story begins with Ken our protagonist a wall street wizard of sorts who finds himself swept up with all the rest during a recent crash that has cost him his meager fortune and his job. The first half of the book brings him from his prideful beginnings to his darkest depths of despair. He loses his respect his girl and almost his life. In steps Sahar through a bit of serendipity coincidence she comes into his life to save him from-- himself. She has a lot more faith in Ken then even the reader does at this point. What holds the readers attention up to this point is a strange patchwork of Purplish prose that on the literary end might mirror some things I\'ve seen in Ken Kesey and Thomas Wolf. We receive a rather colorful view of the big city, the workings of wall-street, and this near future world that the author builds around the narrative of the collapsing ego of Ken. Sahar brings him back to life and into the readers head with a rather lengthy exposition about her rise to obscure fame and riches that will inevitably be able to help him regain himself. The exposition all took several re-reads to fully grasp what she was saying. Yep she often bordered on going way over my head. It is all intriguing. I\'m anxiously awaiting the sequel.

She By Henry Rider Haggard. I suppose were I a scholar of those languages the formatting might be a problem. This is a great book and a great classic and I suppose if I understood even a shred of Egyptian, Greek or Latin then I might be just as incensed as some others about the butchery of those parts of the book. As it is I thoroughly enjoyed the story and hope that there are not any plot points that are of great import in all that hashed up gobble-de-gook. I read She because I had read Atlantida by Pierre Benoit which someone had said was a major rip from She. So to begin I would like to say that Atlantida doesn\'t come anywhere close to being the intense classic that She is and to make such a claim actually denigrates the work of Henry Ride Haggard. Whatever Atlantida is it is considerably different and so much less in content that any notion that its a copy deserves only a shrug. She,Ayesha, is liken to an old Trope in history and mythology and literature. Amongst Aphrodite, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, and Nefertiti-She takes her place. Women known for great beauty and seductive nature whom men will throw down kingdoms and fortunes to their very deaths, to stand beside. It would seem to some that She of H.R.Haggard is considered the template for further lost world sub-genre. It may be so, although I would argue that it was a new template using an ancient trope. What\'s interesting about She is that there are mountains of exposition from one central character, Ayesha, that not only tell the story of her long life but give insight into her philosophy and her ideals about religion. Not only do her arguments twist and sway the narrator but he is also enthralled by her beauty and presence and has perhaps lost a portion of his ability to argue rationally. The narrator Holly is not a handsome man. He in fact is liken to a Baboon. But the orphan whom he has raised from childhood, Leo, perhaps has a handsomeness that could almost rival the beauty of She. Of course this wouldn\'t be a story without the back-story of the family line of Leo. A back-story that may fatefully link Leo to Ayesha. The story is written in that high and almost florid manner of it\'s time and might weigh heavy on the readers of this age but I think it still stands well through time with a multilevel examination of several moral and ethical dilemma. Though it often seems that the narrator goes purple the writing is strong and indicative of the writing of the time and the story does not suffer. J.L. Dobias

Second Star (Star Svensdotter Book 1) By Dana Stabenow Perhaps the title of this comes from everyone\'s favorite quote from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie. \"Second to the right,\" said Peter, \"and then straight on till morning.\" And then; perhaps making use of the often added Star. \"Second Star to the right, and straight on till morning.\" Stronger evidence; is that this quote shows up in the book. I\'ve always loved Robert A. Heinlein all the way from his juvenile series of space novels to his controversial Stranger in a Strange Land. And his somewhat more speculative later years of connecting his alternate universe into a whole. In her introduction Dana mentions his juvenile books as being an inspiration- and I\'ve no doubt that they are. But this story really reads more closely to his Man Who Sold the Moon. One thing that this story has over the old Heinlein stories is that the Female protagonist is very strong and independent. Esther Natasha Svensdotter or Star as she likes to be called- takes no crap from anyone.(Although it is interesting that in Heinlein\'s Glory Road there\'s a Star who turns out to be Empress of many worlds. She is a strong willed woman but we see her mostly through Oscar Gordon\'s viewpoint.) Part of reason for Star to be the way she is may have to do with the environment of the space station and her own insistence on having no weapons on board. She\'s appointed herself the judge, jury and in some instances the executioner. Swift punishment, which we are graphically shown at the beginning, to those who endanger the rest of the residents. This type of character is very typical of many of those aboard ships, stations and colonies in Heinlein\'s work. This type of discipline shows up in many science fiction novels and seems to carry over from the romantic notions of how early sea faring shipboard discipline was handled.Though it seems efficient and swift and can be justified it still can have it\'s tole on the conscience and it is handled well in Star\'s own reactions after the fact. This story begins with Star returning from a visit to Earth. She definitely hates getting her land legs and is happy to be returning to her domain. This trip back to the Lagrange Point Five or Ellfive is a neat way of introduction to the level of technology involved in this universe. There\'s a lot of information here for someone who claims to not be all that scientifically inclined and this is all coming from first person report from Star who has to be knowledgeable to all of this jargon. This seems sometimes to be a bit much but really it\'s just the world building to bring us up to speed to Star\'s universe and the various players in the universe. What I enjoyed is the between the lines build up of Star\'s character. She\'s all woman, but she\'s not your woman of the bygone ages and maybe even a few clicks above the women of the time that this story was written. She\'s earned her place and for that she has a loyal team on Ellfive who would march through hell for her. It\'s the whys- for why Ellfive is up there that reminds me of The Man Who Sold the Moon. Even down to the why Star is there on Ellfive. Star is almost like Harriman of TMWSTM. He wanted to own the moon and would do anything to get there. He\'s ruthless and devious and almost a bit dishonest. Star thankfully diverges from this in that her motivations always seem genuine and honest. Although, how she got up there seems to have shades of the same type of deception involved in TMWSTM only in this case the more egregious parts of Harriman\'s character have been portioned out to secondary characters associated with Star. Another divergent element would be that Harriman- despite his successes- was never able to -hands on- do what he wanted to do, which is go to the moon himself.(His board of directors thought he was too valuable by that time.) Star is out there living the dream. Of course her dream is not all glamor, which is well displayed in the description of the mundane everyday workings of things aboard Ellfive. This might be a problem for some readers who don\'t recognize that when dealing with stories that are attempting to portray real Science in the fiction there are often a lot of mundane things that are done to help keep everyone alive. It also helps portray the fragility of the relationship of man to the environment of space. This novel has a very good balance of those elements to help drive the story. This apparent lengthy narrative path also helps introduce all the characters and their dependent relationship to each other. And, it ultimately helps introduce the conflicts that exist, which will eventually be the threat that drives the plot. Star has several contentious groups she has to deal with - one is the Space Patrol who seem to be acquiring bases and equipment floating in space in the name of national security. Star has some past with Gray, the head of the patrol. It seems that part of that has to do with is his trying to acquire Ellfive as one of his bases. Then there\'s a strong element of politics on earth, the Alliance Congress, which are often a driving force that might be influence by the Patrols past successes in obtaining strategic targets in space. And, there\'s the fringe element of the Luddites who hate technology. As we come into the story Star has recently lost her head of security- a man who was causing more trouble than good and seems to have vanished mysteriously. A replacement,Caleb O\'hara, has been sent to her but not soon enough to assist in an initial crisis from a Luddite who intended to blow something up. Star is forced to take care of that situation and a portion of the rest of the next few chapters is getting the new man up to speed. Along with some few problems being caused by the space patrol causing station docking schedules to bottleneck she has to deal with issues the patrol are causing with the local merchants and longshoremen. And her station\'s master computer Archy -created and maintained by Stars brother-inlaw Simon- is showing signs of possibly getting out of hand. (Reminiscent of some of the AI\'s in Heinlein\'s work) Archy may be exhibiting signs that he\'s going a step above the simple AI he is supposed to be. Added to this mix now will be some supply problems that are occurring between the Lunar facility and Ellfive. Someone may have their hand in that and it might turn out that there are things afoot that Star is unaware of.(All part of a big plot.) As if that might not be enough there\'s another thread in the story that again parallels The Man Who Sold the Moon. Just as Harriman sent diamonds aboard the ship to the moon-as an experiment(while hoping to have people mistakenly believe he found them on the moon and is trying to hide the fact.) It would seem that the reason that Ellfive was created was in response to a signal that came from Betelgeuse intimating that there are aliens out there. Everyone had gotten into the mad rush to get out in space to meet the aliens. But the question is what really was that message and why haven\'t they heard any more. Might the message be a red herring. And then just as in TMWSTM when the ship came back it had more diamonds than Harriman sent. While everything is creating a turmoil on Ellfive what\'s to be made of the newest message from Betelgeuse? To go any further would really be giving spoilers. But, for me it\'s never so much the science or the plot as it is the characters. I always loved Heinlein\'s characters- in spite of some of their outdated 50\'s mentality. And that\'s where this story grabbed me. Star is a standout protagonist with her flawed group of Ellfivers behind her all the way. They really drove this story for me much more than the various elements of the plot. If you love Science Fiction or you\'re just looking for strong characters to relate to; this is a good novel for that. It delivers a good plot with some interesting themes; though because it was published back in 1991 and in the story the message from Betelgeuse arrives in 1992 it\'s a bit dated and now seems to fall into the category of alternate universe. It\'s a good beginning to Star\'s story and I\'m glad there is more story to tell. Dana Stabenow is not Robert Heinlein (I say that meaning it to be a plus)- don\'t expect her to be (no one is) and you will be happy with this book. J.L. Dobias

Shadow of the Sun(Book One of the Timeless Series) by Laura Kreitzer Let me say that I loved-hated this book at the very beginning. As I got past that I could hardly put it down. For some reason the whole beginning sort of read like a paranormal Dragnet episode. Dialogue mostly devoid of emotions. It went on for about the first 15% of the book. It was at about chapter seven that things finally took off. ( I was either growing used to the character- some explanations were now forthcoming that explained her- or it was just time to take that left turn into the supper highway of who Gabriella Noelle Moretti really is. Gabriella of course is adopted which puts her into a common situation these days in fiction. She\'s also lost memory of her early years in life. At least the first five- which didn\'t seem too remarkable to me since I don\'t remember much of my first five years. But Gabriella is a rather gifted young lady who started college classes at age 12. Needless-to say-this is a fair explanation for why she might be just a bit different from many other people. Her intellect capacity is high but she\'s rather immature and has always been misplaced from her age group so that she\'s always the fish out of water wherever she\'s been. So, though she copes well enough to do well in her studies and that has lead to being the authority in Supernatural Specialist, she would agree that it hasn\'t helped her to develop much of an endearing personality. The story opens with Gabriella being rather snarky to her equally snarky assistant, Sally. Apparently Gabriella\'s immature character has not learned the value of having an assistant to the point that she mostly takes advantage of Sally while giving her annoying things to do. Although the sense is that she does this to Sally a lot-as if Sally deserves it-at the moment it is in part that Gabriella has too much on her mind and has not had enough sleep. At age 19 Gabriella had fallen into this job with the paranormal as supernatural specialist for the Zelco Corp. She now is 25 but with perhaps the social skills of a 15 year old. And the reason she took this job seems to be somewhat suspect. Her adoptive sister,Jenna, sums it up. Gabriella is hoping this job will help her find her parents.And, solve the mystery of why they left her when she was so young. Of course Jenna thinks Gabriella is nuts and that her job was not going to help her do any of the things she hopes. Up until this day its been a pretty mundane job, with occasional moments of excitement when the FBI shows up and drags away what little they do find that is inexplicable. This time she\'s received three corpses from a dig in Italy, which don\'t seem to match what she should have been sent. The corpses were supposed to be hundreds of years old or more; where they looked to be newly dead within days and they don\'t match the photo of what she was sent. This has spooked her and one would start to get the feeling she wasn\'t cut out for this job. She next receives a package with a box that contains two items that look like relics but turn out to be keys. When she starts to open the box she\'s attacked by a dark entity with fiery eyes, who warns her not to awaken the angels. The FBI show up to take this away and they make an unusual offer- they want Gabriella to go with them. One agent, Jeff, acts a bit strange about Gabriella touching the evidence, while a second agent, Karen, comes to Gabriella\'s defense. Eventually Karen reveals to Gabriella that these three corpses are the bodies of angels. Karen is also an angel-Gabriella\'s Guardian. On the trip to Washington DC with the corps and Sally and the FBI; the pilots inexplicably take the plane into a storm where there\'s a lightning strike upon the craft and it crashes. This should have killed everyone but the Angels have wakened-We later discover it is because Gabriella was in danger that they awakened. The angels in this story are not your typical christian angels. They are not particularly even remotely related to the fallen angels. They are more like the Hollywood-ized angels made from humans who were once mortal and now can bleed golden blood and cry golden tears. They do fight beings of darkness who seem to be of the shadow of the sun. In a nutshell it turns out that Gabriella is the Darkness Illuminator- the fulfillment of a prophesy; and that these angels are here to guard her. This sounds like more than enough to drive the plot of this story but there is much more which is both exciting and a bit daunting. Yes there are spelling errors and some grammar points, though mostly points of rule and not of law so, those are minor. I think that it\'s this extra more stuff that causes many people to become confused and it took me a while to sort out a few problems. One entire plot point is about the prophesy and how it has been altered by someone to hide the truth. Another plot point is that these angels-who are somewhat magical- have the capability of having their memories tampered with through magic and that has happened to a large degree. So, whenever a character spouts on about the prophesy it is unreliable information. The problem with this is that as this unfolds it often seems like we are getting redundant information and that the consistency of the story is all messed up. In fact, the consistency is okay and the reason for the redundancy is to highlight the discrepancies in various character\'s understanding of past events and the prophesy. This shifting plot line is a difficult and dangerous task to put to some reader\'s minds. There are elements of massive confusion when Gabriella starts having dreams created by someone else memories and those memories include the death of angels who are walking around. It might even become annoying to some people that certain characters can be killed and come back. There is more to the story though and some of these speed bumps are smoothed out while some go unexplained. Thankfully there are more books and hopefully that means those things will be explained later. Not so thankfully this appears to be one of those series that goes on for quite a while and it takes a great amount of talent to extend a readers interest beyond a trilogy. So, we\'ll have to read some more to find out how well Laura does with that. Carefully peeking ahead I\'ve been unable to ascertain that there will be resolution of all major plot points in the next two books. I\'m a fan of series, but I can see that Laura had a lot to say in this book and that there may be a lot more coming, which may indicate that it may take all of those volumes of books to get all plot points resolved. This is a great story for lovers of Paranormal Romance and Apocryphal Angels (not to be confused with a pocketful of angels). J.L. Dobias

Once Upon Another World (Book One of the Salak\'patan Series) by Shiva Winters The title and the cover almost had me thinking \'fairy tale\'. Once I dove in feet first it was more like Zelazny\'s Amber series and Farmers Tier series rolled together and given a special Shiva Winters touch. Raven Sinclair is a powerful character well matched by his counterpart LeShana, who is not only lovely but also as powerful and kick-ass as Raven. Suffice it to say, I loved this book, It\'s a five star novel with a few hick-ups. Depending on the copy you have there could be a large number of grammatical errors. There has since the first print date been an edit that fixes many of those. I can live with some of this in dialogue- no one speaks perfectly all the time. This book is offered free, but it\'s nice to see that even with the free there is an effort by the author to improve. The story starts with Raven on Earth trying to keep his group of special people safe from those who might exploit them. Enter LeShana and possibly more people who want to take advantage. It takes a while for Raven to trust these people, but it\'s important not only to him but to them because he has a past with them that he\'s not aware of. The overall story- the plot the theme and the character development are all pretty solid. And though it seems this might be the least favorite of the Authors choices of her own work I think it\'s a great starting point to begin the series. As it stands Once Upon Another World is a well packed novel with a fairly tight plot that has plenty of twists to keep the reader guessing. It also demonstrates some skill in world making that Shiva should be proud of. She has a writing style that I was comfortable with, it seems to be consistent and improves as the series progresses. This is an awesome first novel and a fantastic series of books.(Although I believe it\'s a first for the author only in this genre.) If you like the Zelazny novels or the Farmer series you should enjoy this series. J.L. Dobias

Zendyne by Han Li Thorn Aka Better Than Real by Huw Lyan Thomas I\'m not even certain where I acquired the original. There were formatting problems and that might have been why I didn\'t get to it right away. That was in June of 2012. Here it is ten months later and I\'m just getting to it. This time I started reading despite the formatting problems. I should have done that the first time around. The good news is that I believe those problems went away with the new edition Better Than Real Huw Lyan Thomas. The plot relies on a theme that shows up often lately. The characters live in a digitized world where the person\'s DNA and memories can be stored easily making death only an issue if you can\'t afford the backups. I\'ve seen this recently in a few novels -Charles Stoss Accelerando (Singularity) and Walter Jon Williams Implied Spaces(Singularity) Those both involved matrioshka computer arrays and lots of cyberspace inferences. The cyberspace of course covers just about anything by William Gibson. There are no evident matrioshka computer arrays here, but there are plenty of the other elements. And the major AI character in those other two is the self aware cat where this one is a self aware android that happens to look female. My first real love in the area of cyberspace is Philip K. Dick and I think that this novel by whatever name will smell the same. This novel brings back to my mind the authenticity of the characters in most of the novels PK Dick wrote. I think that may be the idea that the characters stay as the focus no matter how interesting the technology gets. Sure there\'s some fun with the techno-speak of Charles Stross and there\'s always something stimulating with William Gibson\'s in-depth notion of how the digital world works or how the use of nano technology looks up close and personal in Walter Jon Williams. Sometimes these novels border on the dystopic myopia of the digital age gone wild. Zendyne- Better Than real does not suffer from this shortsightedness that constantly make the characters second to the technology that drive them to the ultimate conclusion. Make no mistake these things are all there and they try to manipulate the protagonists in the story. If I have one quibble with these stories - it would be that while swapping around consciousness and bodies there is never any time dwelt upon the notion of a soul and what makes up a soul and whether it might be digitized. The bottom line is that even if you could back yourself up what guarantee is there that the soul the you that makes you you is still going to be there. In this novel it seems implied that if you have the same body - coded DNA- and the digitized memory that you have everything you need. Someone might lose only what they experienced the last few cycles since the last backup taken. As we come come up into this story Li Jia Wei or Lee as he is known arrives at the scene of a crime- only for him its the scene of an incident that could make things bad for the company he works for. The crime is that in this world he and the company are going to try to cover it up by whatever means- which involves recruiting anyone at the scene who might let the story leak. The Problem is that one of their pleasure android models has somehow gone haywire and killed a client. Not good PR to have that get out to other clients and potential clients. When Lee arrives he find Lilith of the Aphrodite 9400 series waiting. His job is simple; he uses his disruptor to disable her so the cleanup crew can clean the mess. Lilith pleads with him not to do that and in a very short conversation he discovers that she is somehow become self aware. This fascinates him, partially because he\'s the major designer of this model and he knows that it couldn\'t just become self aware on its own. He would like some answers both professionally and partly for his own self profit. This leads to his downloading the mind of the android prior to the shutdown. The android has already told him that when he shuts it down the self aware entity in her will be destroyed. Down loading the mind, to preserve it and allow him to question it about who is responsible for its existence Lee returns to the office to find that someone has leaked the story and that his job and position with Zendyne has been cancels. What he is not aware of is that there is another organization which cleans things up in a much more terminal way and that he\'s become marked. Unsure what to do next he manages to purchase the previous model android with the notion that he can download the mind of Lilith and question her about her creators with a hope that Lee may profit from this. Enter the Stranger- an operative for the Back Office whose job is to find the rogue AI and retrieve it and kill anyone who gets in the way. Even though in this world people can be brought back the Back Office has the power to subvert that if necessary. The Stranger is meant to act quickly enough that anyone brought back would have no memory of anything related to the AI. This is when things get interesting. We start to get an up close look at the high and low ends of the economic scale and how these have an affect on the whole system of extended life through digital reproduction. There are some interesting spots where the characters try to subvert the system because they realize that there is a potential for them to lose control of who they are by letting their backups fall into the wrong hands. I loved this story-even with the older versions formatting issues. This book is for lovers of Science Fiction, Cyberspace cyberpunk, Robotics and mayhem, AI and self aware computers, and the future general of computers and the digital age in general. It\'s well worth the price; with plenty of action, suspense and twists. J.L. Dobias

Spots the Space Marine by M.C.A. Hogarth Is a delicious science fiction tale. Written in a somewhat play or screen play style that can put off many an average reader. For those who can tough it through, its beyond well worth reading. Though the story is told mostly through dialogue M.C.A has a way of crafting her characters through that dialogue. It\'s a bit more work for the reader and seemed to slow my usual pace down quite a bit, but it\'s worth the effort. I would not have looked at this book had there not been controversy about it. It seems the use of Space Marines is being sanctioned by another party. I find it hard to believe when I see the following information show up. [...] :: has an interesting chart showing the dates and types of usage of space marines dating as far back as 1932 \"Misfit by Robert A. Heinlein 1939 (uses term Space Marines) Lensman series by E. E. Smith\'s 1938-1940(uses term Space Marines) Captain Brink of the Space Marines by Bob Olsen 1936 amazing stories Waitabits by E.F.Russel in astonishing sf 1955 (uses term Space Marines) Space Marines (Space Opera RPG) by A. Mark Ratner (1980) In movies as early as 1973(use term Space Marines) In games as early as 1977 (use term Space Marines) The United States Space Marine Corps by Eugene R. Hudson. 2011 This book is not a game or not about games nor related to said game and even if said game has an armload of novels at a certain bookseller, that still shouldn\'t give them the right to contest two words that show up in a cover that has more than those two words. That much said:: Spots aka Magda Guitart is the seemingly unlikely hero of the story. As it unfolds we find that she\'s a wife and mother who has been at a desk job for a number of years. When she\'s deployed into a conflict zone, this doesn\'t sound good or hold well with her unit members and just about all except for Claws aka Travis Walker treat her with a measure of contempt. She comes off in initial description as someone who might be a little soft in the middle. The reader begins to wonder how she managed to get shipped out to a remote asteroid where there\'s a deadly game being played with the enemy. As the reader learns more about the enemy through the dialogue and stage directions and the ensuing battles the stories of the characters are also quite cleverly played out. This seems to me a difficult task using mostly dialogue but M.C.A. pulls it off in what might seem like an effortless fashion. The reader soon learns more of Spots as they are drawn into her character with a lot of respect for her. The reader soon begins to wonder when Spots unit team-members will start to see the light. There\'s a lot more to this kick-ass woman than meets the eyes. This is all cleverly played out as the reader gets the impression that everything the higher ups do lately has been nothing but trouble and disaster for the unit. It\'s not that difficult to see that they can\'t recognize that somehow someone has put the right person in the right place. This is not just a story of how Spots grows and hardens up, it\'s also the story of how the team grows. There\'s a lot to get over and to get through including xenophobia towards their alien adviser. And there will be casualties. This story is so rich with character development and intriguing plot that it\'s enough to keep you riveted to the seat for a while. I\'m sure that it\'s for the most part my own reading habits that made this such a long read. For me every sentence of dialogue counted and had to be digested carefully. Even after a longer than normal time reading I was left hungry for more of Spot\'s, Sam\'s and Claw\'s stories. I found this to be much better than Starship Troopers. Spots is an excellent, strong and well developed female character. J.L. Dobias

Oxygen(Oxygen Series,Book One)By John B. Olsen and Randy Ingermanson I purchased the book Oxygen for two reasons one of those being to read the bit at the end with tips for Authors. I\'ve no idea if the copy other people get will have the same. I want to thank the authors for a very good read. I read the story first knowing the part at the end could have some spoilers. This book is good science fiction and there has been at least some attempt at rising above the usual level that (hard) science (fiction) goes to. What I mean by that is that the science becomes the driving force of some of these types of novels and the characters become cardboard entities that point and explain the science. Of course with today\'s sometimes bad press with the public lives of the people in the space program it\'s not too far fetched to see that this novel is peopled with a few gems and then some. We have everything from the paranoid to glory seeker to the super secretive. One would almost expect with all that against us we would have trouble getting things off the ground. Still this is life and so it might figure into a good Science Fiction novel, though some might argue that in some respects the writers should shun certain attempts a making their characters that real. After all we need the heroes and the ones we can look up to. Though sometimes the author\'s tend to go overboard with the paranoid and over-dramatic I believe they try to keep it balanced and it\'s much better than trying to believe the space travelers are all going to be flesh and blood robots. The story begins with Valkerie- working too close to an active volcano- trying to get research data at the risk to her life.The we switch to Bob Kaganovski working with NASA and a few friends-getting ready to man a flight to Mars. Something is going down and Bob\'s almost certain he\'s being replaced on the project. Meanwhile Valkerie is saved by Steve Perez and Roger Abrams-she later learns they are from NASA. Eventually she\'ll learn that she\'s someones replacement. That\'s already a formula for suspicion and paranoia and its only the beginning. For the most part the various people in the story are believable. Even most of the situations that occurs through misinformation or lack of information seem plausible. One would like to think the people at these agencies are just a bit more together than that. Truth has proven that there are still glitches on the human side so the are not all robots in many of those places. The writing seems solid and though I didn\'t check all the facts the science is believable. On thing I noticed. And, I suppose that this could be coincidental, though it would mean that neither author has read a lot of Robert Heinlein\'s stuff, there is a plot point that drives this story. This could be a spoiler so just be aware; A major plot point is very similar to what was used in The Man Who Sold the Moon by Robert Heinlein. After reading this book check it out and see. Oxygen is pretty good stuff. A pleasure to read for Science Fiction and Fantasy lovers with a little for anyone who is interested in the science parts. J.L. Dobias

Fizz nothing is as it seems by Zvi Schreiber: Is the thoroughly enjoyable story of a young girl coming of age in a community that shuns technology blaming it for everything from war to global warming. This is a great novel for anyone who loves physics and anyone who thinks they cant understand it. And maybe even a few who hate physics. It\'s also a great novel for anyone who loves historic novels. Though In both these cases I\'m not sure I\'m the best qualified to attest to the veracity of the content. We pick up Fizz in her life when she is given a possible choice to leave her protective community and mingle with the evils of the outer world while making an informed decision about where to spend the rest of her life. Unlike some other communities that shun the modern world that have sprung up throughout the ages this one doesn\'t seem to have any firm roots in religious beliefs in a god and creator. It does have strong opinions about and against the study of science. Fizz finds herself questioning many things around her which she is expected to take at face value. So,though it is common for most who reach her age to take a pass on this option to strike out into the world, she is strongly considering it because of her inquisitive mind. Add to this the notion that her father (who has already left the community before she was born) has spearheaded the construction of a time machine and you have the beginnings of an odd but engaging experiment. This novel takes the reader and Fizz on a historic journey back through time to begin the study of physics on a quest to answer a few simple questions that Fizz is certain will be solved in one simple visit with one of the great minds of the past. As the story builds we not only get a glimpse of Fizz but we get a glimpse of what must be a universal principle that the more you know the more you need to know. We get to see Fizz grow and the reader perhaps begins to question the wisdom of a community that has stifled someone with such a brilliant intellect and thirst for knowledge. And somewhere in all of her quest for knowledge she might begin to see the work of a creator. J.L. Dobias

The Ghost of Josiah Grimshaw (The Morgan Sisters)by Suzy Turner I was not sure how much I would appreciate this one. I got acquainted by reading the story about Daisy Madigan. I really enjoyed Daisy\'s character and the story sort of reminded me of Ghost Whisperer and then there were elements that were like Scooby Do and the Scooby gang except that the entire Scooby gang might have Paranormal powers. I wasn\'t sure I\'d like the Morgan Sister\'s since it was likely that Daisy wouldn\'t be a main character. I\'ve always been a fan of horror and paranormal films but my real love is Science Fiction. My daughter did manage to get me hooked on Buffy - probably revenge for my having hooked her on Science Fiction. I\'ve in the past enjoyed Mary Shelly\'s Frankenstien, Bram Stokers Dracula and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu\'s Camilla which might be considered darker than this novel. I\'ve also been a fan of Thorne Smith whose Topper was pretty hilarious. I think that if you look at a lot of his work you can see his influence in the Paranormal literature of today. Anyway, The Ghost of Josiah Grimshaw carried on with the tone of Daisy\'s story so it was very entertaining. I\'m particularly intrigued by this notion of a tattoo that grows it self. With the inscription it seems to embody the whole of the classic eye symbol and a popular trend toward the winged eye. It\'s neat though, how it seems to have a life of it\'s own until it finally finds it resting spot on the body. Usually it seems to be in the same place. That it\'s a marker for the watchers- who may or may not by tradition be related to the Nephilim- is interesting. Considering the powers of these people it\'s interesting to connect them to the theory that the watcher angels are the ones who took the sons and daughters of man and had offspring.(The term Nephilim does not show up in this book and is not discussed as such.) Another interesting concept in the story is the unreasonable fears that the sisters have. Emma\'s fear of water and Lana\'s fear of heights. Mostly interesting in that the power they acquire after the tattoo marks them is related to their old fear, which goes away. It\'s predictable that everyone with these tattoos has a prior unreasonable fear related to their skill. They all have one parent who was an angel who did not stay to raise them. And many are orphans raised by other people. At the beginning Lana and Emma -orphans adopted by the Morgans- are thrust into the mystery of Josiah Grimshaw who nearly drowns along with a mysterious young stranger who also nearly drowns (the both eventually die from nearly drowning). Both men mistake Emma for someone named Emilia. Both girls have reach the age of 16 and the tattoo shows up -days apart from each other coincidental to their true birthdays. Through a friend of their parents they are introduced to Eleanor Hyden-Jones of the Fourth House of Praxos - a secret society of Angel offspring who work to fight for justice. Eleanor is a true fallen angel who choose to stay on earth with her mate. She\'s forever cursed to live her life half the day old and half the day young and has reduced powers. There is a counter organization known as the Skulls who are evil offspring of Angels or Paranormal-s. The girls will discover more about their past and parents and they will train to become proficient at their natural skills and at fighting evil. And their first assignment will be to help Josiah cross over. That means that they need to find out what is keeping him here- the problem is for some reason he\'s lost his memories. Anyone who like mysteries suspense and thrilling horror and paranormal romance should love this book. The coming series promises to be very entertaining. J.L. Dobias

The Lost Soul (The Raven Saga)by Suzy Turner Finally! The third and final installment of the Raven Saga. Lilly is growing in power. December is discovering more of her abilities. Both seem to be falling in love. And there\'s a lost soul crying out for help.Lilly\'s father is still missing. Tiffanimelicomelea the displaced Faerie is lost from her faerie community while living with them in Powell River community. And it just might be that Powell River is sitting smack-dab in the center of all the answers. This trilogy has delivered much more than lions and tigers and bears but sometimes it seems like it has a shred or two of oz built into it. Both the books and the movie. But there\'s so much more - pretty much any paranormal being you can imagine might show up here. The last of the story now is where most everything shall be uncovered and is by far no less than the rest of the series. And, Yes. There shall be Nephilim. Somewhere in the reader\'s journey to the center of the earth to Argentumalea - the land of Tiffani\'s kingdom of Malean Faeries they must pass through the kingdom of the Nephilim. It\'s almost like the underworld - hell. Nephilim- who have variously been defined as anything from fallen angels who mingled with the children of man to the offspring hybrid of such a union. Whatever they are they are giants-they are dangerous-they have been banished to the bowels of earth. The people of Powell River are about to find out that some of them may have escaped. There might be some plan to let even more of them out of their prison. Suzy Turners world is definitely taking a turn for the dark and its going to challenge the dynamic duo of Lilly and December and their league of friends. The council is going to have it\'s work cut out for them. And Powell River may never be the same. If You enjoy Paranormal Romance if you love suspense and horror if you like Science Fiction and most of all if you have read the other two books -you will want to devour this one. Pick a time when you can quietly read the whole thing all at once. Send for delivery- pizza or your favorite restaurant. Lots of coffee tea or soda and dig into the trenches and get this epic ending started. J.L. Dobias

Perfection Unleashed- A Double Helix Novel by Jade Kerrion. Might be considered YA and Science Fiction- It\'s also pretty good story telling. I recently started twittering- the doctor said that if I ignore it it will go away. It was to trace some specific activities and I hadn\'t thought to get too involved. What I did do was I started getting some interesting leads into reading material. Mostly in the form of- gentle- spam. What that yielded was a pretty good read. The story starts with Zara and this line: [quote] On another Friday night, she might have been out at a Georgetown bar, accepting drinks from attractive men and allowing them to delude themselves into imagining that they might be the lucky one to take her home.[/quote] Kerrion, Jade (2012-06-23). Perfection Unleashed (Book 1 of the Double Helix series) (p. 1). . Kindle Edition. I know, gag me. I somehow think this line is meant to mislead- don\'t let it put you off. This does not even begin to describe Zara. Zara is a mercenary and we find her working with two colleagues, a clone named Xin and a fellow mercenary named Carlos breaking into a lab where some seedy scientist, Rolland and Michael, are keeping an experiment they call Galahad--The perfect human. Zara\'s goal is to obtain some genetic matter from the experiment. Things don\'t go quite as planned and Zara ends up taking the largest sample available--Galahad himself. This snowballs into a number of events that introduce us to a whole slew of other character that for me were just a bit hard to keep up with at first. There\'s plenty of good world building inserted in the narrative to help sort things out. The world is one where there are clones and mutants- both considered sub human. Galahad seems to fall somewhere in between all this. There are even Pro humanist extremest. Zara is not fond of mutants because of tele-paths and em-paths and its no help for her that her friend Lucian Winter brings in his own em-path, Danyael, to help them when everything goes wrong. There are other surprisinge complications to this, but you\'ll have to read it to find out. The list of important characters in this story keeps building, but it all works out quite well, though at the beginning there were some moments when I lost track of whose POV I was in. The POV thing may have just been me and I got used to it quick enough that it became a non-issue. I found a lot of familiar elements in this story. Lucian reminded me of the rich and discerning quietly helpful protagonist that always showed up in Robert Heinlein\'s work. The relationship between the Pro human movement and the scientist had shades of twelve monkey\'s written all all over it. The mutant and clone situation was reminiscent of X-men and other comic fiction, which may help account for the cast of thousands and many protagonists throughout. I found many of the plot elements to be predictable while at the same time there were moments of wow when Jade takes us in another direction than expected. The overall story is well paced and well told and even though it requires more reading in the series to resolve some of the plot issues it sticks together well into itself to satisfy. Perfection Unleashed: Is a great read to anyone who likes a good thriller and interesting diverse characters, lots of Science Fiction and plenty of thought provoking ethical issues. A great beginning to a promising series of books. J.L. Dobias

Castles: A Fictional Memoir of a girl with Scissors by Benjamin X Wretlind. I received this book through Amazon- free after having read a rant by the author. I enjoyed his words so well that even though this is out of my usual genre I decided to give it a try. I admit to being somewhat squeamish sometimes- more so with movies than books. Often enough I\'ve seen movies that have made me shut them off part way through wondering why I endured it that long. This book made me squeamish that way sometimes, but I had decided that I wanted to see it through. As a horror novel it\'s quite balanced and sustains just the right element throughout to make it top notch. A problem though, with part of the squeamishness, is that I kept seeing this less as a horror and more as literary fiction. It reminded me of Ken Kesey\'s One Flew Over the Cuckoo\'s nest mixed with Richard Farina\'s Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me. Maggie tells us her story in a simple almost innocent honest fashion. Not apologetic or deflective, but earnest description of the things that have happened and are happening in her life. This is realistic story of abuse from her mother\'s boyfriends and even her own mother sometimes. Both physical and mental in the way that more often than not reduces the abused person to a point where they have no self worth. The result is that Maggie is distanced from most other children her age and is more often than not picked on by them. She takes it all in stride; possibly because of her experience at home she might view it as natural. It is easy to empathize with this child as she attempts to grow up. Her only port in the storm is her grandmother. Maggie\'s grandmother is the person who has raised Maggie and she protects her when she can from both the myriad of boyfriends who are in and out; and her mother\'s wrath. It\'s ironic that grandma might figure more than anyone in Maggie\'s descent into madness. Maggie is afraid of storms- particularly the dust storms that seem to plague them and they often leave her with a mess of sand and broken glass that she\'s expected to clean. Grandma tries to help Maggie with this fear, often through telling a sort of tale of castles in the sky. I somehow read between the lines that there is some sort of indictment here against telling children certain fairy tales and fanciful stories. In particular in this instance because there seems to be a thread running though the generations of this family that involves abusive relationships and often what take the form of anti-male sentiment. Always the abuse from the men seem to overshadow those of Maggie\'s mother. The notion that the bricks used to build the castle in the sky are used by girls to make castles for girls. There is another realistic thread in this novel that has to do with Maggie\'s apparent descent into madness. This is played out well, as the reader comes to understand that Maggie has no real grasp on how far she might be slipping. When Maggie\'s only defender, her grandmother, dies; Maggie must take care of herself. And when grandma\'s ghost visits her constantly along with the discovery of strange sand eels, it become increasingly difficult to tell if this is a descent into madness or if it\'s a page out of something akin to a Stephen King horror and suspense. I\'ll admit that there\'s a point half way through this that my sympathy for Maggie sort of dies. In a twisted way though it\'s like watching a loved one you\'ve tried to help, who is in a bad relationship and can\'t seem to fight their way out. You don\'t want to give up on them but there\'s a point where they could drag you down with them if you\'re not careful. In Maggie\'s case at the beginning she has less control over her destiny because she\'s a child. There are no other characters in the story that I felt sympathy for. They get their just deserts. This is not their story. It\'s a study in abuse and how some people handle that abuse and about how rebelling against that abuse can easily take someone down the wrong road for all the right reasons. This book is well written literature and though I\'m not sure how soon I want to venture into any more of Benjamin X Wretlind\'s worlds, I recommend this read as; Something great for a good thought provoking jarring of our regular everyday complacency. J.L.Dobias

Powerless Series (Omnibus 1-3)by Jason Letts I first tested the single first book(Synthesis) for free- I believe it is still offered as free. I would recommend that someone start with that and decide if they like it enough to try the rest then I\'d recommend the omnibus because it will save a little money. I really liked the first book for getting the reader started into this world. It at first reminded me of Anne of Green Gables meets Harry Potter. It quickly shifted into Harry Potter meets Genius Girl. And that\'s all good. I would class this as a Young Adult fantasy though it might easily fit into some steam-punk category. The one problem was that I couldn\'t readily place it into any particular era or time frame. It might be alternate earth or it could somehow be ins some sort of quasi-dystopic future. It just doesn\'t conform to any particular framework though it does use the Earth as a reference. Certain elements of the world building seemed to be skipped over, though that did not impede the overall development of the storyline. I enjoyed the development of the characters and though the first book almost start out a bit like juvenile fiction it segued into Young Adult much as it started to look a bit like Genius Girl. There are a number of good characters in the story and several of them undergo changes as the story develops. The story begins with Mira Ipswich who lives a sheltered life at age fifteen. She is being home-schooled by her parents Kevin and Jeana and has no idea that there is a whole world out there. There are reasons for all of this, which will come out later in the story. It\'s almost an unbelievable situation and I think that that\'s one thing that gives this book initially a feel of being juvenile fiction. It doesn\'t last long because Mira is about to discover the real world that\'s out there and she\'ll be thrust into it quite abruptly. In this world everyone has some sort of power - except Mira. This will make life difficult for Mira, but she wants to live out there in the real world and her parents home schooling has prepared her for it as much as possible. Mira will join the academy and meet the people who shall become her worst enemies and best friends. The twist here is that she may well be thrust into the thick of life in the next year. Some of these friends are Aoi and Vern,Mary and Rowland, Roselyn and Kurt, Jeremy and Chucky and many more. There is a thread that runs in this that is reminiscent of Lord of the Flies in that it has rather young people having to deal with the horror of war early in life. That\'s not to say that there are not young people out there who do have to deal with this it\'s just not normal fare for me in my fiction. These are fifteen year-olds just edging into sixteen who are going to -at the age of 16 begin training for war. One almost disturbing element in the story is that the youths seem to handle the situation as though this is some sort of mmorpg instead of real life. Also the adults seem to encourage this. There is a heavy element of competition and in a short time the reader finds that people can be hurt during the competition. They will all be vying for the position of leader -not just of the class but of the unit when they eventually go to war. They seem to have somehow been encouraged to make this an every man for himself competition. There are elements of this that lend to the thought- yes we need to teach them the seriousness of the war they will have to face- yet we must ask - should we kill them before they reach the field. Mira will have to join in this competition without a special gift or power and having to use her one most powerful resource- her mind. She\'s not to be deterred and gets right into the spirit of the whole thing. At the same time she understands the need to bring in teamwork- which is going to be a daunting task. There are so many characters with so many attributes and so much depth and Jason does a fantastic job of introducing them and keeping them all in order so its not difficult to keep track. These characters are youths that are growing and developing and I think the author does a good job here though it might put off many readers because they seem to often shift around and change more than what many readers are comfortable with. It\'s been said that Mira is a very conflicted character and I agree- but in truth many of the characters in the story are conflicted for different reasons. I think the author lays the seeds for this well, but has taken on an awesome task with perhaps too many characters spreading his talent a bit thin at times. Thankfully he tells a story well and keeps track of his characters as he goes. In the first book - eventually the group is all going to be confronted with a first hand look of the horror of war and they will have to learn to work as a unit. The next two stories The Shadowing and Stasis continue bringing our ersatz heroes into the thick of the war. The first half of Shadowing is about the shadowing, which is how each person learns to use their skill from someone who has mastered a like skill. This reads a bit like Karate Kid with all sorts of instruction that almost makes no sense to our somewhat anxious trainees. Most will learn once they come to an understanding , but for some their choice of masters to shadow may come close to fatal conclusions. This is all leading to another challenge for leadership, which may, in itself, prove fatal for some. This all leads to the war in the Stasis where the reader can\'t help but feel sympathy for these youths who will have to grow up early. The war is so wide spread that it seems that not only do most youth end up in it, but most don\'t return. This third book reminded me a lot of The Death Stalker series by Simon R. Green and I\'m not sure I\'d recommend it as a young adult book. That\'s just me though. There\'s two more books and if you make it this far you will want to read those. My one quibble would be that once you get this far and with the way it abruptly comes to its conclusion it leaves you thinking,\"oh, he should have put the forth one in this set.\" I recommend this Omnibus for anyone who likes dystopic steam-punk,mmorpg\'s, magic and wizards, and seat of your pants conflicts. Something for everyone and sometimes not for the faint of heart. J.L.Dobias

Wisdom(Blue Moon Rising Trilogy) by Bonnie Watson This is one of those free books that have a bit of extra hook. The free book was the next one and I just couldn\'t see reading the free one without first reading this one. So I purchased Wisdom and it\'s a wise choice-I think. There are so many things to love about this book it makes it worth the struggle. When I say struggle I don\'t mean that as a bad thing. What I mean is that this is a story told in the high form of such classics as the Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo. Add to that some interesting world building and it comes close to the classic nature of The Lord of the Rings. If there is any problem with this book, it\'s that there are at least three threads being told in parallel which eventually bend into each other by the force of powerful singularity which is the creative nature of the the author, Bonnie Watson. This book demands special care and attention to details to understand how these story lines fit together. If I were to split types of readers I would call them the slow reader (me) the scanners (me some of the time) the speed reader (Not me, but I know a few). This book is suited to the speed reader. The slow reader may muddle along and take extra time or be tempted to scan and then get lost. It\'s best to take the extra time and not miss any of the precious details. As to the story of Wisdom (who starts the story as Keith Larson). The reader is introduced to Keith as a child with loving parents- that is soon a condition that will change through treachery of someone close to the family. This creates an element close to the wonderful story of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. And later when he joins a guild of thieves it becomes a mirror of Oliver Twist. By the time Keith reaches the point of becoming a slave we would almost suspect that he\'d have a thirst for revenge and be close to the Count of Monte Cristo. But the real parts that remind me of Dumas are all the bits and pieces in the building of the tale that speak of treachery and intrigue and the length it takes to build to the connection to all of these. This is really another story of a youth who\'s life has been a fiction until they are thrust into reality and forced to discover what they truly are. And that perhaps explains why even as a child Keith possesses a certain quality that sets him apart from normal. Usually I can finish these off in one or two days but this one took me three. It was well worth the time. Scanning through this book would leave me mostly wondering a variety of thing about what was going on. Going through it carefully was like savoring the flavor of a well prepared feast. That all said there were a few choices of words that threw me off occasionally and two in particular stood out and I\'d love to have someone explain what I might have missed. The first is this one: \"Indeed.\" Jenario stood with an heir of newfound dignity. Watson, Bonnie (2010-10-05). Wisdom (Blue Moon Rising Trilogy) (p. 227). Foreseer Productions. Kindle Edition. Now I could be all wet here, by waving one foot over the rail precariously. But in this instance it would seem more appropriate to say Jenario stood with an air of new-found dignity. That\'s not to say that he couldn\'t do the above. For lets suppose he\'d just had a child and in his society that that very fact gave him a newfound dignity. This could all be eloquently summed up with that one statement. Since the child would be his heir. Then he might well stand with an heir of new-found dignity. Unfortunately he didn\'t just have a child. As it stands in context it confused me though it\'s not to say that it won\'t make sense to someone more acquainted with using nouns in this manor. The next was this one: Already, many young females had taken an interest in him, to Chronicles\' discretion. Watson, Bonnie (2010-10-05). Wisdom (Blue Moon Rising Trilogy) (p. 238). Foreseer Productions. Kindle Edition. See to me this says to Chronicles good judgment which seems to jar with the way Chronicles seems to come off so far. Much the same as to say Chronicles was encouraging the females towards Keith; while I\'m certain he would be doing the opposite. So, this one baffles me. These were not show stoppers and I think I understood what was going on and even if I got it a bit wrong I don\'t think it spoiled the story. Please read this book and then anyone who would like to enlighten me on these two can feel free to in the comments. This is great writing from a highly talented person and it was a pleasure to read. I recommend it to just about anyone who loves reading. J.L. Dobias

Time Change Book One: The Jump by Alex Myers I loved this book. Not only was it entertaining it was educational. There are a lot of historical characters here that I might never have met without this book. It\'s amazing how many inventors there are that are not household names. On the other hand there a quite a few household names in the book also. I usually call this name-dropping because an author often does not do much related with that character that seems to be totally in character when they map out stories like this. This is not that kind of story- these characters show up for a reason. This book starts out like a historical novel and then sort of morphs itself-understandably-into a sort of steam punk with just a bit less steam in it. Instead of being an alternate universe which developed differently this is more like a time travel universe with the same potential as ours where the main character- familiar with today\'s technology- attempts to bring his new-old world up to date. This has a great storyline with a great main character. Jack Riggs-maybe later we might consider him the Jack of all trades- has a vast amount of knowledge that he seems mostly to be wasting. Jack is a womanizer. He hasn\'t found the woman he loves- ie; one he respects long enough to actually be in a serious relationship with. This is what gets Jack into trouble and it\'s something he\'ll find himself working on in spite of himself. Jack is teaching- which means he is using some of that knowledge. and he is presently toying with a relationship with Ashley who seems to be quite intelligent and driven and possibly a bit anal- at least from Jacks point of view. Jack has also been toying at work. He must be teaching seniors because the girl he\'s been cheating with, Shalah is possibly eighteen-making her somewhat legal. But, let\'s face it; Jack! what are you thinking. Jack has all sorts of good reasons for what he\'s been thinking of doing and all sorts of denial that he did that much. It seems that Shalah has thrown herself at him. This is natural since Jack is just one of those guys that women throw themselves at. The trouble this leads to is everything beyond expected when Jack is being questioned at the police station for possible terrorism. Shalah shows up with a bomb at school-one which her terrorist boyfriend made- based on knowledge that Jack was freely tossing around. This leads to a disclosure of a relationship with Shalah that seems to be trumped up by pictures Shalah had taken after breaking into Jacks apartment. Jack naturally calls Ashley to pick him up where she proceeds to break up with him in a high speed drive away from the police station and into the center of a super storm. This is when things get really strange. At the moment when Jack might be seeing his life flash before him. Surprise Ashley loses control of the care and the slide into an eventual accident. At the moment of Impact the super storm lightning strikes and some great vortex like force takes Jack back to the 1850\'s and some time just prior to the civil war. Now I\'ll stop for my quibble with this book. There is a side story that figures heavily in this novel and probably makes more sense in the next novel. It shows up as a preface or prologue or such called Before. I won\'t say much about it because it confused me mostly and I\'m not sure it\'s necessary. But, I didn\'t write this novel and I don\'t intend on rewriting it so it\'s there and it stands. I have the same feeling about the last chapter which is a chapter and could have been the epilogue. Either way I don\'t think they added to the story and could have been inserted somewhere in the second book if they are necessary, which I think they are and it might be that the author doesn\'t want to make it look like he thought of this at the last minute and inserted it into the second story. So, bottom line is the objection is just me- it probably is a good thing the two sections are there. There are more breadcrumbs related to them inside the story. Anyway, Jack becomes a great facilitator of inventors. He needs to eventually create most of the things he thinks he needs to stop the civil war from happening. I\'m not going to name drop all the inventors involved. I think the best way to read this is to have a paper handy and write names down and later check their credentials on line. You\'ll be surprised at what information is there and how well the characters fit into the world that Jack is building. There\'s an evil group of southerners who are copying peoples patented technologies who will notice Jack and realize they need to get him on their team- not realizing that Jack is never going to be on their side. This creates the conflict. And, the woman of his dreams, Dreams Jack never knew he had, creates the pathway towards rehabilitating the womanizer. But, not before he takes an initial sampling of what\'s available in the past. This is a great novel for anyone who loves historical romances and it\'s coming real close to the strange technology anachronism of all good Steam-punk novels. It has time travel and even some strange-mysterious group(possibly time travelers). So any one who loves Science Fiction or Speculative Fiction and those other aspects should love this novel. I\'m definitely reading the next few to get the rest of the story. J.L. Dobias

I acquired this e-book free from amazon and I can emphatically say that it was a delightful surprised wrapped in the fresh voice of a new talent. Let me first warn that this book is best enjoyed on a kindle or in a kindle for PC app and not quite so friendly in the Chrome-book app that they have for it. I was test driving the chrome at the time and endured the jagged right margin with no indents and no spaces between paragraphs and there was often some confusion about where paragraphs ended. I checked later on my other two appliances and found it to be an affectation of the poorly written kindle program for the chrome. Let me also say that this should in no way reflect poorly on the author- in fact- it says a lot that I couldn\'t put this book down even with those problems on the chrome. This is a sort of coming of age story. Jamie and her brother Brandon have recently left home and are trying to find their nitch in life. Brandon has his band and his band buddies, Jamie is not so fortunate as she only has the band by association. She\'s well organized but not yet focused on what she wants to do. So she helps out where she can with all the guys in the band and she is falling for one of them. Kyle is someone that she and her brother have known for a long time and she\'s becoming certain that she\'d be comfortable with more than that as long as it doesn\'t mess with current friendships. This story is a lot more than that though. It\'s a story of changes and coming to understand ones own potential. It\'s a story of love, heart break, betrayal and growth. It\'s also a story of strange creatures and mystery. It starts out a bit slow, but that won\'t put you off. It\'s a slowly peculating mystery where Jessica keeps the reader wondering just what\'s happening. Brandon and Jamie start the story on a camping trip in the desert that goes just a bit awry when they wander into a deep cave where they both are injured and attacked by an unseen and deadly creature. Strange things begin to happen to them and it\'s only at about one third the way into the story that we discover a bit of what is going on. Trust me you won\'t want to put it down at least until you find out what that is. Then when you do, you\'ll have to finish it because things get really interesting. One of the amazing things about The Foretelling is how well the characters are portrayed. Not only did I easily identify with Jamie and Brandon and immediately feel a connection, but even some of the less likeable characters are still endearing enough to care about. The story is a well woven and nicely paced tale that takes you from beginning to end and leaves you wanting to pick up the next book as soon as possible to find out what is going to happen. Anyone who likes Anne McCaffery\'s Dragon stories will love this tale. I love mostly science fiction but the explanation and detail along with great narrative style were enough to keep me happy throughout. I really can\'t express how much I love the world you\'re building here Jessica. J.L. Dobias

December Moon(The Raven Saga)book 2 by Suzy Turner I had just finished Raven by Suzy Turner and knew that I\'d have to eventually revisit the world of Lilly Taylor aka Lillian Tulugaq. A universe where all imagined fantasy characters might exist- and possibly do. We certainly meet quite a variety. The next day after I completed Raven I came home and my wife Virginia mentioned being three quarters of the way through a really interesting book. Of course it was Raven and I knew right away that I\'d have to get the other two book. I did that immediately. Then the race was on. Virginia loves romance novels I am more partial to Science Fiction though I\'ve been known to read the occasional fantasy. So that was one reason I had picked up Raven which turned out to be a fantasy - paranormal romance novel. Sometimes we find something which crosses both our paths and this series is one of those. Being a slightly slower reader than Virginia I attempted to get that extra quarter of the novel lead on her. I knew it was fruitless but it was fun and though she finished the second book a bit sooner than I I think we both thoroughly enjoyed it. December Moon starts out with the beginning of a reveal about its namesake. Up until now December has been Lilly\'s normal best friend whom she\'s had to hid her secrets from despite their closeness. Of Course in the world that Suzy Turner has made that\'s a condition that is about to change. In this universe the special people have to hide the secret from the normals to protect themselves and possibly even protect the normals. Lilly is still trying to come to terms with her new life as a changeling or shape-changer. She\'s dealing with the loss of her boyfriend because of the necessity to keep secrets and other complications. She\'s still searching for her father who vanished last year. But, she does have her new-found family and she is in constant contact with her friend in England, December. She just has to angst about not being able to tell December anything about the truth of her family. December has had a few strange things happen around her and is thinking she might be losing it a bit. She\'s just turning 15 and I\'m not sure is that\'s a major mile-stone in England, but she\'s about to discover that her father has left her an inheritance and that she\'s now free to decide where she wants to live. She finds out the mother who abandoned her -didn\'t really abandon- and that she lives near Seattle Washington in the USA. And December and her faithful servant Monty are about to embark on an adventure to the Americas where she\'ll be a hop skip and jump from her best friend near Vancouver. December is about to discover that she comes from a family of Witches. Her mother, grandmother and great-grand and so on have all been witches and December may likely end up being a powerful witch some day. But, she has to keep it a secret and that means she needs to keep it from her ordinary friend Lilly. This begins the narrative dance which Suzy is so good at. The reader gets a lot of reveals before the characters do so its fun to watch as they unnecessarily avoid issues because they think each other to be normal. It\'s all about to change because a dangerous Vampire has been stalking the community that Lilly lives in and they have been calling in outside help. The witches of the Seattle are are about to be called in, which both thrills and mortifies December since her friend Lilly is there and she might be in danger and if she sees Lilly she won\'t be able to tell her the real reason she\'s there. These books are all about the interconnection of this diverse group of paranormal people. The mess they get into while trying to blend in as normal and the dangers they face constantly when they have to face the evil half of their own people. The excitement and tension and danger ramp up a bit more than the last book. There is still plenty of paranormal romance to go around with the cast of the original novel and a whole couple handful of new players. This has a few threads carried over from the previous novel and some that will carry into the next. The story is well rounded and ends with the definite indication that there is at least one more book to follow. Once again this is for lovers of Horror-Paranormal Romance and fantasy books. Now quickly onto The Lost Soul -final novel of Raven Saga Trilogy. The race is not yet finished. J.L. Dobias

The Raven Sage: Part 1 Raven by Suzy Turner This is one of those plots that sort of creeps along and holds you there for quite a while. Once you get to about 25% of the book it nails you. This does not have one of those page turner openings with the heart-pumping heart stopping hook. But Suzy Turner proves that you don\'t need that to make good stories work. When we first meet Lilly Taylor- we don\'t know her name. In fact for all we know it might be eat- that\'s what her mother seems to say just as shes addressing her in the few times we witness any exchanges between them. I think this is to help jar the reader into understanding that Lilly\'s home life is nothing near normal. And, just when she thought things would continue in their horribly boring way her parents disappear. For Lilly this is equally as distressing as it should be for any young girl of thirteen years and yet it\'s somehow less so because she has a very strange relationship with her parents. The one thing about Lilly is that she\'s always had this life and knows no other and she has had few friends up until December Moon, her newest classmate, shows up. Unfortunately due to circumstances Lilly will have to move away from December and from England to live with her grandfather in Canada until her parents are found. Though the disappearance of her father and mother has some strangeness attached to it, Lilly doesn\'t know strange until she reaches Canada and her extended family in British Columbia near Vancouver. Lilly goes from a life of seeming imprisonment to a wide open wonderful colorful world that seems to have a magic to it that not only touches her heart but pulls her deep into it\'s mystique. What she doesn\'t realize is that she has a special connection. Her grandfather Gabriel tries to slowly and carefully break some of the family secrets to her. Lilly is anxious and almost demands to know and soon she\'ll discover the deceptions that have been perpetrated on her and her world will be turned upside down. She\'s also destined to -at the age of fourteen- have her first true love. Unfortunately the family secrets and new revelations about her life will begin to interfere with that part of her new-found happiness. It seems that Lillian\'s true surname is Tulugaq-not Taylor-and Tulugaq means Raven. Her family carry a gene for shape-shifting into Ravens. What\'s more her mother-that she grew up with-is not her mother at all. But the woman Vivian is a witch who has enchanted her father somehow and stolen both of them away from the family after her sister and mother died.(All of this occurred right after her birth.) Lilly has the potential to shape-shift into one of two creatures. A raven or a cat (of some sort-usually determined by the persons character-I think). Lilly\'s true mother\'s family are cat shifters. Lilly is about to be be thrust into a secret world of vampires, werewolf, witches, shape-shifters and more. You\'ll have to read to find out what Lilly might become. Suzy Turner does an excellent job of creating her world where there is a special council of elders who make rules to govern all of these strange creatures. It turns out that more people than just Lilly have been victims of Vivian. And Lilly must come to terms with what she is so that she can begin to help in the search for her father who was being slowly brought to the brink of death by Vivian who uses certain special types of people to help extend her life ( at their expense). This is a great story that proves once again that your hook can actually be your great ability to tell a great story and doesn\'t have to include a thrill ride introduction with several paced mind numbing thrills and terrors through out. There are plenty of conflicts and things to stimulate the readers imagination throughout this and Lilly is a truly engaging character from which we are introduced to the wonders of British Columbia and the rich world building of Suzy Turner. This is definitely a great story for Young Adults and Mature Adults. I usually read science fiction but this fantasy with a small edge into the world of horror and the magical with potential for paranormal romance is quite a draw. It reads as though Lilly is growing up as the story begins to unfold and flower to maturity. I enjoyed it so much-when the last page arrived I was a bit heartbroken. It\'s a good thing there are two more books. I got this one free as you may also be able to do and I\'ll definitely be purchasing the others. J.L. Dobias

Diamond Eyes By A A Bell I honestly didn\'t know what to expect from this novel. I had made it to the author\'s web page and looked at the covers, which were intriguing. I really did not read the blurbs. I was, in fact, taking a break from another tedious novel that I felt lacked some bit of style to keep me interested. So I decided to go ahead and try the bit of sample the author is offering. It\'s about one hundred pages. I usually don\'t put a lot of stock in the cover or the blurb, but prefer to read at least ten or more pages when possible. And I will say this-about Diamond Eyes- read those pages and then try to act like you\'re not interested in reading the rest of the book. I was immediately drawn into the book by the engaging narrative. This is not one of the usual action packed, heart pumping, seat of your pants hooks. This is more a carefully crafted lure that is placed gently and casually entices the reader into the world of Mira Chambers and her heart rending story. Ben-recently released from prison for something he had nothing to do with- thought that he\'d just been through the worst he could ever see and was looking forward to getting back into the life he had to so abruptly leave behind. He\'s just taken a job with Serenity-better known as Libica Isle Benevolent Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Not the best assignment but he\'s now an ex-con. He\'ll be working with youths and young adults, but is primarily here to help with Mira\'s case. If he thought he had it bad he\'s about to discover a whole new meaning of bad. Not the way that the story initially misleads the reader, though. He\'s about to see how much of a hell that Mira has had to confront and slowly he begins to realize that it may all be even more of an injustice than his own incarceration. Mira is blind- that\'s the least of her problems. She\'s not much hindered by her blindness and she is in no way to be considered helpless. Her real problem is that because her hold on reality seems so tenuous and her nature is to strike out at everyone, she is kept mollified through heavy medication. She has no friends in the staff and the one friend she has among the patients has recently sewn here eye lid shut. There\'s a lot of mystery just in this first bit of getting acquainted with these characters. And sometimes this reads like a paranormal story and for some it might not get to the action as quick as they desire. This is a suspense thriller that build slowly one brick at a time and it kept me interested all the way through. There may have been some predictable elements in the narrative but I think that helped the pacing of the story if anything. There are often novels, which I\'ve read, that resonate with me in such a way that they really touch me and this novel had several moments. There were times when the struggles and decisions of Mira seemed so real that I could cheer when it appears that Ben has somehow connected and goes way above and beyond to help her. In the same token when Ben suffers for both his past and those decisions to help that put him a odds with the system I found myself sympathizing and trying to figure out how things were ever going to work out for him. It seem for every breakthrough in Mira\'s condition they run into another setback for which either one of them might be responsible and until the two researchers come into the story there seems to be little hope in a total understanding of what is going on. But, with the possibility of answers for both Mira and Ben there comes a new set of risks and dangers that begin to make everything else they have experienced so far look like a walk in the park. I\'m not sure how anyone could put this book down after starting. I want the answers to the burning questions about Mira\'s condition. There were several times that I had to look up some of the stuff mentioned in Diamond Eyes and I\'d say the A.A. Bell did the research necessary to bring as much realism into this novel as possible. If you like psychological thrillers, a bit of the paranormal, and some weird time travel like stuff you\'ll love this book. All this, and it could very well be considered a literary masterpiece. It\'s well told, clear and understandable as the author builds- each step of the way- the explanation of what the Diamond Eyes mean to Mira.(To say nothing of the Poet Trees.) Well Woven Psychological Suspense Mystery Thriller J.L. Dobias

Weeping for Raven by Mel Kinder This book is a real surprise. I\'ve been avoiding this one hoping Mel would put it on sale or maybe offer it free. Not that it\'s all that expensive; it\'s just a bit more than I pay for new author e-books. Plus I wasn\'t absolutely certain about the genre. And, I have all these other books here in my kindle that I haven\'t read yet. After reading a number of reviews- they all are pretty favorable- some are rather short and not real helpful- but the ones that took time to demonstrate they read the book left some great impressions to entice me. I wasn\'t disappointed. We start out with a bit of mystery with someone in a garden of flowers and trees who is wondering how they got there. The last they knew they were asleep in bed. So this could be a dream or she could be sleepwalking. The dream theory is enhanced by the fact that her hair is the wrong color. Then we move to a normal setting and for a while it\'s a question of; is this just another teen angst story. It takes only a few pages to get past and thankfully the author gets us into the real story. There is a great need for background though, I think. That\'s my theory. Gwen Penn lives with her grandparents. She\'s getting ready to chose a college. She\'s limiting herself because she is certain her grandparents need her near. During the admission process she meets Mick whose nickname is Mimic-because of a stutter problem. Gwen feels a slight connection to Mimic but because she has kept to herself recently she tries to keep it out of her mind. She is affected enough to design her class schedule around his. Gwen\'s mother has been institutionalized because she\'s not all there. This is something we learn as things go. I must confess I honestly can\'t remember what happened with her father if it was mentioned. I\'ll have to read this again soon. She has lost her best friend, Baylee in an accident. All of this is important because Gwen\'s about to question her sanity soon. And, I can\'t help but wonder about what might really be afflicting her mother. This ordinary life is created to contrast the world where the story will really take place. Rook Dresden- through a twist of fate- will happen across a young woman collapsed in a garden. This is Gwen who will find that she\'s not only in someone else body but she\'s in some rather strange world. Rook has a lot of strange similarities in his life. He\'s lost his mother in an accident and his sister Raven is in a coma and his father is institutionalized because he blames himself for his wife\'s and daughter\'s condition. Despite herself Gwen has an immediate and intense connection to Rook; her initial thoughts are [quote]...cute is trouble. Cute got people into trouble. Partly to blame for over occupancy at the animal shelters. It weakened good judgement. [/quote]In this world Gwens senses seem to be heightened and with the relentless nature of Rook; she won\'t be able to rely on her good judgement. While trying to pretend nothing is wrong with her Gwen slowly learns that this world is very different from hers. People are nocturnal. Cars don\'t have wheels because they fly. There are no restaurants and no banks. They don\'t eat but feed off the energy of a dark sun. They have magical abilities. And, partially because of the heightened sense, Gwen thinks its a paradise. Strangely one constant in both worlds is her cat-the one in the new world looks just like her\'s - it has a different name while her\'s was called Whinny this one is Chester. This is something she finds out at the same time as she finds out that its Alex Murdock whose body she inhabits. This story is like sliders with a quantum leap twist. This is when things get really interesting-like that old curse. Cat, a friend of Alexa\'s, shows up to inform Gwen that she knows about her and that Alexa had been experimenting with a drug to induce a condition they refer to as a Wardlow. Wardlows are a supposed epidemic that wipes away a persons soul replacing it with a beast. Alexa was trying to prove that that theory was wrong by inducing the condition. The big problem is that Cat was supposed to have been there to prevent Gwen from interfacing with anyone. Gwen was never meant to meet Rook. And there are people who hunt Wardlows -the hunters from the world of the unseen- and beings who detect them, the TAS the all seeing. When the all seeing find a wardlow they send the hunters to hunt them and because there is no cure for their condition they are executed. Okay, so I might be going too far here and I don\'t mean to spoil things so I better stop. There are still a lot of layers to this story I haven\'t touched anyway. Gwen who has otherwise isolated herself from friendship is the type of person who can\'t easily lie to others and now she finds herself in a position where she needs to lie to keep alive. Just when she thought she could make friends she finds that she can\'t trust anyone. And, she has no idea what Alexa might be doing with her own real life back in her world. This is an exciting almost paranormal romance blended with science fiction and some elements of fantasy with the potential to throw in a bit of horror. Even Gwen thinks jokingly over the curiosity of what genre she would be; when Rook compares her to an interesting book. She wonders if it would be Horror? or Science Fiction. No mater what of the many genre above if you like any of those you\'ll love this. And even though it promises to be a serial of some sort the ending is satisfying enough to make you yearn for the next book. J.L. Dobias

Accelerando by Charles Stross The last thing this book needs is another review. It seems to run the whole gamut of stars in the system. It\'s that type of book that has a love hate relationship. There seem to be a lot of complaints about the overflow of cyber geek talk which doesn\'t surprise me. What did surprise me is that I went right through this book with only a couple pauses to look up words. It seems I cut right through the geek talk without flinching. Maybe I should say blissfully through. Since it might be argued that I was bliss-ed just enough to remain unaffected. What some of the longest -geek-speak passages reminded me of was some stuff I\'d recently tried to digest at the Depau science fiction studies site.:: http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/81/fernbach81art.htm ::this one in particular was what kept coming to mind every time we took a trip down through all the buzzwords and slang from every notion of cyber punk and the socioeconomic of the net. There were complaints that this is not how they will be talking in the distant future. Get real people if you can pick out the slang I will give you that but buzzwords are forever they just shift around in meaning through the years. I suppose if you can read the articles for the science fiction studies without much pause then Accelerando shouldn\'t affect you. There is something to say about the characters being a bit distanced and dysfunctional enough that you don\'t seem to feel for them. I have a feeling that Charles Stross may have been going for that. Another thing that Charles did was he put together a tough combination of things that would drive any writers forum crazy. Much of this book is written in first person and present tense. Other part seem to be third person- close- and present tense. These alone are not easy tasks to pull off. Then there are those long and greatly punctuated sentences that would grind on the nerves of the OCD driven punctuation people at a certain forum I will leave unnamed here. Charles pulls this all off well. I would almost guess he might be thumbing his nose at these forums that are trying to spit out cookie cutter writers. All of them clones of the churlish administrator who is still learning to write. And this is where I can see that a few people might not like this book. Not because it is not written well or that it is full of geek-speak but because it doesn\'t conform to what the majority of books are that are spit out by the presses of the large publishing houses. Sure there might be some Science in this story that is suspect. It is after all science fiction and the best of them that have started from the most solid what-if have all digressed a bit and wandered off the path. I again think that Charles has done well. Of course there is the notion that these separate stories do not quite congeal together well even though they are about the members of the same dysfunctional family. To that I say we missed a larger point. These are not just the story of Manfred Macx and his wives and children and grandchildren. This is the story of the birth of an AI (catlike) and its growth into something that transcends its creator. *Possible spoiler------------------------------------------------- This is Aineko\'s story- Aineko is there all the way through the whole story. Right to the end. And I\'ll admit that its hard to empathize with Aineko but that might be because it\'s not really human. J.L. Dobias

The Convent of the Pure by Sara M. Harvey is listed as a Steampunk novel. I\'m not a fan of Steampunk though I have enjoyed the Girl Genius and I must admit that this novel as well as some others gave me good reason to look up the definition of Steampunk. Since I\'m giving this one the possibility of a read that makes defining it almost paramount. I have been willing in the past to nod to aspects of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells that would easily slide into the Steampunk genre. There have been some aspects of the horror or shock fiction which I\'ve struggled with. Such as Mary Shelly\'s Frankenstein. All and all I think I came to an agreeable understanding that the Convent of the Pure qualified. It also opened the avenue to look to some of my other old authors and to see how easily Edgar Rice Burroughs could fall in this category. In fact the description of some of the scenes in the macabre lab reminded me of the Master Mind of Mars. Even the subsequent \'surgery\' kept taking me back to that old novel. The narrative itself without the aspects of Genre was more than enough to sustain my attention most of the way through. There may have been two or three places where I caught myself skipping ahead. If I were of the ilk of those in some forums I would write a two page analysis of what was wrong with one paragraph or sentence. It would be more likely that the fault lie in the reader who may have been trying to get an advanced look at where things were going. It did not hurt that I\'m a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that I kept trying to draw parallels to Portia and Buffy. But, this story has its own unique elements. I enjoyed the take on the Nephilim - the children of the sons of god and daughters of man. That they survived the flood and were hiding while assigning themselves as watchers over man. Elements of this part of the story bordered on a dystopic life for these watchers and once again - not a fan of dystopia novels. But it was Portia and her relationship to the ever present spirit of her lost love Imogen that catapulted me past those parts. Being new to the genre I hesitate to say that the first half of the novel does or doesn\'t seem to contain much that is new and unique. It was a good and sustainable read and when I reached the second half which I\'ll refer to as that more grisly half I think the style and voice of the author, Sara, comes shining through. We see her show us Portia at her most vulnerable moments having to grow and learn to trust that the strength and determination she\'s been trying to build within herself is not as distant from her as she thinks. Overall for me Sara M. Harvey may have tipped the scale that\'s been balancing me away from getting immersed in Steampunk. Way to go; as if I don\'t have enough to read already. J.L. Dobias

Space Captain Smith by Toby Frost. I always like to say something good about a book before I point out the negative. It has a nice cover and I was able to read more than a full chapter for free. Being not entirely impressed I was hoping for more than that in the rest of the book Toby should look at the small piece where he introduced Paul Devrin there are a number of paragraphs where he develops this character that almost hooked me. If only he had done this with the main characters or any number of his sidekicks. Sadly he did not and it digressed quickly even with this more evil sounding character, Paul. There are few books that I don\'t finish. I must admit that I haven\'t gotten much farther than the available free part so I won\'t belabor any points. I can\'t give away plot points because there was only one that I sort of noticed here. I\'m one of those people who do not judge a book by its cover or the blurb on the back. Rarely do I read the blurb that might be in the front. What I do; is read the first chapter and if it doesn\'t grab me I don\'t take it home. I tried to give this the benefit of the doubt but perhaps the humor has missed me and perhaps the development of the characters is tied to that humor. Either way even had I think its a bit over priced for the e-book I put it down after the end of the third chapter. It\'s likely just me but this just didn\'t do it for me. The three stars if for that one bright light in the dark character of Paul Devrin. J.L. Dobias

Touchstone Trilogy by Andrea K Host. I purchased this book after reading a sample of Andrea K Host\'s -And all the Stars-. I had already put the three books in my wish list prior to that. But after reading that sample I had a feeling I should just buy the whole and totally unrelated trilogy. I read through them in three days. People have told me that writing in first person is hard to do. They have given various reasons why it does not work and sometimes those reasons are conflicted. Some even suggest that it\'s this decades fad to write in first person. Because this is written as a diary it\'s naturally in first person. Andrea nails first person right on the head, and right out of the box. Cass is such an engaging character in Stray that she sucks you right into her story at the beginning. There is not doubt of Andrea\'s world building abilities and her strong characterization. But what really got me in this story is in the chapter February when Cass\'s birthday arrives. And I\'m not giving anything away, other than to honestly say I was so into Cass by then that I nearly cried. It\'s not often a book does that. And then there was Lab Rat One. And by now this series is peopled with a couple of handfuls of characters that you would think you\'d need a score card but there are more to come and Cass has a way of making sure we don\'t lose track of who is who. Or maybe I should say that Andrea does. It doesn\'t take long before Andrea does it to me again. Even though Cass sometimes begins to sound a bit whinny I just get so into her whole dilemma that I can\'t help but feel what she must be feeling. So by Caszandra the third installment, you would think I was steeled and ready to handle it. But, Andrea through Cass has a way of now drawing you into her life and the extended family of people around her. This series of books is one powerhouse. Well told tightly packed. Emotionally charged. But what really got me was how it all touched me. I would need more stars if I gave a star for every time I was greatly affected by this story. J.L. Dobias

\'m a fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy. So, stepping into Steampunk can be both easy and trying. Fortunately I\'m not so tied up with the harder form of science fiction. I think some contemporary authors of Hard Science Fiction take the hard part to heart and make it as hard as they can. Still, I wanted to do some research before I started into the Bookman Histories by Lavie Tidhar. First, though, I must admit that I read the sample of the first book on Amazon and was intrigued to say the least. With a character using the name Gilgamesh I was assuming that someone might lose something valuable and someone would have to go through hell to get it back. And it looked in this case that the protagonist, Orphan, was to lose the love of his life, Lucy. I wanted to know how that was going to work out. Since the price of the three volumes together as an e-book was the same as each individual I saw no way to lose by purchasing the Bookman Histories. I was not disappointed. In my search to help define Steampunk I was led to one place where there was a notion that such authors as Jules Verne,H.G.Wells and even Mary Shelley could be considered to be influences of Steampunk. Those were good influences and I\'m fairly certain that they all figure nicely into the Bookman Histories. I also found mention of the movie - Metropolis- which was intriguing. I don\'t have a copy of the movie but I do have one of the novel by Thea Von Harbou which is quite a bit different from the movie. It\'s been suggested the book was made from the film but there is not enough evidence to substantiate that and its just as likely the book was made to be a film and the screenplay was adapted from the book. It\'s not so much different though, to make it unqualified as an influence. In fact I found some interesting parallels with the book Metropolis and the first book of the Bookman Histories. Both Protagonists Freder in Metropolis and Orphan in Bookman have lost their mother. Both Protagonists fall in love at first sight. Freder with Maria and Orphan with Lucy. Both become driven by their love and passion, as their motivation throughout the story. Both are destined to be catalysts for change, even though they would deny it. Of Metropolis Thea Von Harbou spoke of it being a moral - that the mediator between brain and muscle must be the heart. The first book of the Histories seems to be the same since it is Orphan who seems to be the heart. His love for Lucy (his heart) is his motivation for moving forward into things he barely understands. He soldier\'s on in his devotion to the belief he\'s doing this to help him regain that lost love, Lucy. It becomes an inner conflict between his selfless devotion to undo an enormous wrong while trying at all times to do what, in his heart, is right. I first read Metropolis when I was around sixteen years of age. It was a difficult read. When I reread it for this I thought it would be less difficult. But, it\'s written as are many books of its time a bit florid and in a time when purple prose wasn\'t a nasty thing. Although it\'s entertaining; it\'s difficult. Thankfully the reader of the Bookman Histories will not find this book difficult. The entire three volumes are quite easy to read. Not only a pleasure; but, in some cases a wonder. There is an enormous amount of name dropping in these books. They are almost a who\'s who of famous people not only out of history but characters from the fiction of those times. We have elements of Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G Wells, Lord Byron and many more. If not in their actual appearance,then in the appearance of characters they created. Often they are anachronistically portrayed. In some ways these books remind me of the RiverWorld series by Philip Jose Farmer. And in other ways they remind me of the later work of Robert Heinlein where there was an alternate world where many of his favorite characters were resurrected. An interesting side note is that in a scene in the first book, Bookman; Orphan is going through a pile of books and they are named to a tune of around 39 various titles that are all fictitious books written by fictitious characters. These books show up in a variety of real books and are out of the imaginations of the authors of those books. I have no idea if Lavie Tidhar is suggesting that he\'s read all the books that those come out of; or if he did an extensive search for books and authors that don\'t exist. In that list there is one news article mentioned that may have some basis in reality.(It might be a foreshadow of the last book also.) And of course there is Rime of the Ancient Mariner which is quoted throughout. There are some parts of this trilogy that get a bit gruesome and remind me of the Deathstalker series by Simon R. Greene. Elements reminiscent of the surgeries of Dr. Frankenstein in Frankenstein by Mary Shelly Or Ras Thavas in Edgar Rice Burroughs Master Mind of Mars. The fun fantastic part is that Lavie Tidhar puts it all together with such wonderful prose and a tight plot that it all works. All I have to say is, \"I want more.\" There are plenty of threads left-for more. Save time and money and buy the whole History its well worth it for the first story, Bookman. The rest is like icing on the cake. J.L.Dobias

\'m a fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy. So, stepping into Steampunk can be both easy and trying. Fortunately I\'m not so tied up with the harder form of science fiction. I think some contemporary authors of Hard Science Fiction take the hard part to heart and make it as hard as they can. Still, I wanted to do some research before I started into the Bookman Histories by Lavie Tidhar. First, though, I must admit that I read the sample of the first book on Amazon and was intrigued to say the least. With a character using the name Gilgamesh I was assuming that someone might lose something valuable and someone would have to go through hell to get it back. And it looked in this case that the protagonist, Orphan, was to lose the love of his life, Lucy. I wanted to know how that was going to work out. Since the price of the three volumes together as an e-book was the same as each individual I saw no way to lose by purchasing the Bookman Histories. I was not disappointed. In my search to help define Steampunk I was led to one place where there was a notion that such authors as Jules Verne,H.G.Wells and even Mary Shelley could be considered to be influences of Steampunk. Those were good influences and I\'m fairly certain that they all figure nicely into the Bookman Histories. I also found mention of the movie - Metropolis- which was intriguing. I don\'t have a copy of the movie but I do have one of the novel by Thea Von Harbou which is quite a bit different from the movie. It\'s been suggested the book was made from the film but there is not enough evidence to substantiate that and its just as likely the book was made to be a film and the screenplay was adapted from the book. It\'s not so much different though, to make it unqualified as an influence. In fact I found some interesting parallels with the book Metropolis and the first book of the Bookman Histories. Both Protagonists Freder in Metropolis and Orphan in Bookman have lost their mother. Both Protagonists fall in love at first sight. Freder with Maria and Orphan with Lucy. Both become driven by their love and passion, as their motivation throughout the story. Both are destined to be catalysts for change, even though they would deny it. Of Metropolis Thea Von Harbou spoke of it being a moral - that the mediator between brain and muscle must be the heart. The first book of the Histories seems to be the same since it is Orphan who seems to be the heart. His love for Lucy (his heart) is his motivation for moving forward into things he barely understands. He soldier\'s on in his devotion to the belief he\'s doing this to help him regain that lost love, Lucy. It becomes an inner conflict between his selfless devotion to undo an enormous wrong while trying at all times to do what, in his heart, is right. I first read Metropolis when I was around sixteen years of age. It was a difficult read. When I reread it for this I thought it would be less difficult. But, it\'s written as are many books of its time a bit florid and in a time when purple prose wasn\'t a nasty thing. Although it\'s entertaining; it\'s difficult. Thankfully the reader of the Bookman Histories will not find this book difficult. The entire three volumes are quite easy to read. Not only a pleasure; but, in some cases a wonder. There is an enormous amount of name dropping in these books. They are almost a who\'s who of famous people not only out of history but characters from the fiction of those times. We have elements of Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G Wells, Lord Byron and many more. If not in their actual appearance,then in the appearance of characters they created. Often they are anachronistically portrayed. In some ways these books remind me of the RiverWorld series by Philip Jose Farmer. And in other ways they remind me of the later work of Robert Heinlein where there was an alternate world where many of his favorite characters were resurrected. An interesting side note is that in a scene in the first book, Bookman; Orphan is going through a pile of books and they are named to a tune of around 39 various titles that are all fictitious books written by fictitious characters. These books show up in a variety of real books and are out of the imaginations of the authors of those books. I have no idea if Lavie Tidhar is suggesting that he\'s read all the books that those come out of; or if he did an extensive search for books and authors that don\'t exist. In that list there is one news article mentioned that may have some basis in reality.(It might be a foreshadow of the last book also.) And of course there is Rime of the Ancient Mariner which is quoted throughout. There are some parts of this trilogy that get a bit gruesome and remind me of the Deathstalker series by Simon R. Greene. Elements reminiscent of the surgeries of Dr. Frankenstein in Frankenstein by Mary Shelly Or Ras Thavas in Edgar Rice Burroughs Master Mind of Mars. The fun fantastic part is that Lavie Tidhar puts it all together with such wonderful prose and a tight plot that it all works. All I have to say is, \"I want more.\" There are plenty of threads left-for more. Save time and money and buy the whole History its well worth it for the first story, Bookman. The rest is like icing on the cake. J.L.Dobias

\'m a fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy. So, stepping into Steampunk can be both easy and trying. Fortunately I\'m not so tied up with the harder form of science fiction. I think some contemporary authors of Hard Science Fiction take the hard part to heart and make it as hard as they can. Still, I wanted to do some research before I started into the Bookman Histories by Lavie Tidhar. First, though, I must admit that I read the sample of the first book on Amazon and was intrigued to say the least. With a character using the name Gilgamesh I was assuming that someone might lose something valuable and someone would have to go through hell to get it back. And it looked in this case that the protagonist, Orphan, was to lose the love of his life, Lucy. I wanted to know how that was going to work out. Since the price of the three volumes together as an e-book was the same as each individual I saw no way to lose by purchasing the Bookman Histories. I was not disappointed. In my search to help define Steampunk I was led to one place where there was a notion that such authors as Jules Verne,H.G.Wells and even Mary Shelley could be considered to be influences of Steampunk. Those were good influences and I\'m fairly certain that they all figure nicely into the Bookman Histories. I also found mention of the movie - Metropolis- which was intriguing. I don\'t have a copy of the movie but I do have one of the novel by Thea Von Harbou which is quite a bit different from the movie. It\'s been suggested the book was made from the film but there is not enough evidence to substantiate that and its just as likely the book was made to be a film and the screenplay was adapted from the book. It\'s not so much different though, to make it unqualified as an influence. In fact I found some interesting parallels with the book Metropolis and the first book of the Bookman Histories. Both Protagonists Freder in Metropolis and Orphan in Bookman have lost their mother. Both Protagonists fall in love at first sight. Freder with Maria and Orphan with Lucy. Both become driven by their love and passion, as their motivation throughout the story. Both are destined to be catalysts for change, even though they would deny it. Of Metropolis Thea Von Harbou spoke of it being a moral - that the mediator between brain and muscle must be the heart. The first book of the Histories seems to be the same since it is Orphan who seems to be the heart. His love for Lucy (his heart) is his motivation for moving forward into things he barely understands. He soldier\'s on in his devotion to the belief he\'s doing this to help him regain that lost love, Lucy. It becomes an inner conflict between his selfless devotion to undo an enormous wrong while trying at all times to do what, in his heart, is right. I first read Metropolis when I was around sixteen years of age. It was a difficult read. When I reread it for this I thought it would be less difficult. But, it\'s written as are many books of its time a bit florid and in a time when purple prose wasn\'t a nasty thing. Although it\'s entertaining; it\'s difficult. Thankfully the reader of the Bookman Histories will not find this book difficult. The entire three volumes are quite easy to read. Not only a pleasure; but, in some cases a wonder. There is an enormous amount of name dropping in these books. They are almost a who\'s who of famous people not only out of history but characters from the fiction of those times. We have elements of Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G Wells, Lord Byron and many more. If not in their actual appearance,then in the appearance of characters they created. Often they are anachronistically portrayed. In some ways these books remind me of the RiverWorld series by Philip Jose Farmer. And in other ways they remind me of the later work of Robert Heinlein where there was an alternate world where many of his favorite characters were resurrected. An interesting side note is that in a scene in the first book, Bookman; Orphan is going through a pile of books and they are named to a tune of around 39 various titles that are all fictitious books written by fictitious characters. These books show up in a variety of real books and are out of the imaginations of the authors of those books. I have no idea if Lavie Tidhar is suggesting that he\'s read all the books that those come out of; or if he did an extensive search for books and authors that don\'t exist. In that list there is one news article mentioned that may have some basis in reality.(It might be a foreshadow of the last book also.) And of course there is Rime of the Ancient Mariner which is quoted throughout. There are some parts of this trilogy that get a bit gruesome and remind me of the Deathstalker series by Simon R. Greene. Elements reminiscent of the surgeries of Dr. Frankenstein in Frankenstein by Mary Shelly Or Ras Thavas in Edgar Rice Burroughs Master Mind of Mars. The fun fantastic part is that Lavie Tidhar puts it all together with such wonderful prose and a tight plot that it all works. All I have to say is, \"I want more.\" There are plenty of threads left-for more. Save time and money and buy the whole History its well worth it for the first story, Bookman. The rest is like icing on the cake. J.L.Dobias

Silversands by Gareth L. Powell is one of those delightful surprises that you run across while searching the internet for something else. I was searching for another author and stumbled upon a link to Silversands. The story started out slow for me but by the end of the sample I was hooked and had to download the rest. This is the story of Avril Bradley a young woman who has been orphaned and is looking for her father. A man she only knows from a photograph and her mother\'s memories. To quirk up the equation, her search has taken her aboard a star ship that travels through a wormhole that has so many random destinations that it\'s improbable that she\'ll succeed. After many jumps and a cargo full of refugees from a failed settlement on another star system they seem to have lucked into finding the ship that her father was supposed to have been aboard. In a strange turn of events something causes a malfunction in their ship, when they attempt to communicate with the other ship. Suspicious and unsure what caused their problem, they are forced to seek help from the settlers on the planet below the ships as their cargo begin to awaken from a long sleep. This is where the story begins to weave into a convoluted set of political plots and strange events that point to Avril and her quest. This has some excellent world building that helps drive the plot. Though I found some of the plot to be predictable it did not interfere with my enjoyment of the story.(I can\'t really mention more about it without spoiling things) There were plenty of ways for the whole plot to play out and Gareth gives us plenty of surprises. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys Science Fiction and is looking for some fresh new ideas and Characters. There\'s plenty of room for more stories in this universe. J.L.Dobias

And All the Stars by Andrea K Host. I first had a taste of this novel in a sample; before discovering that it hadn\'t been released. In the bit of the beginning that I was able to read, I was hooked. I don\'t read a lot of apocalyptic novels or dystopian novels. I can\'t say with great knowledge that this contains no dystopia, but in my meager knowledge it didn\'t seem so much. I was drawn into the story by the great writing and story telling. It certainly wasn\'t the claustrophobic description or the ever-present feeling of being choked by some strange and possibly alien dust.The slow but persistent buildup of the character, Madeleine\'s, suspicion that she\'s at ground zero of a possible bio weapon. The eventual realization that she\'s all alone and that those around her who aren\'t dead are locked up in any type of safe containment that they could find. No one is going to offer to let her, and the strange dust that\'s choking her, into their safety. Some of the earlier pages are difficult to get through for some people-someone I know put it down very early and it\'s too bad they did. There are some very important plot points in those pages. So, it\'s important and it does help drive the story and the character. Madeleine has survived the worst of the catastrophe with some injury and is confused and afraid. Madeleine is your average rebellious teen who seems to be a bit of a loner. She\'s immersed herself in her art and wants to gain honor in that field at a young age. To that end she\'s skipped school and gone into the big city for a chance to paint a portrait of her famous cousin Tyler. Now she\'s face to face with that very place that parents always warn their teens about and it could be her most fatal move in her rebellion. In her early wandering she contacts her parents and continues to lie about where she is to keep them from worrying. There is a great sense that Madeleine is already dead. She\'s just been given a temporary reprieve and it\'s not yet clear if that\'s a good thing or a bad thing. Madeleine eventually makes it to her cousins apartment. Her cousin is gone and she\'s able to get in. She cleans up and while trying to avoid facing the inevitability of her death, she decides that her last act should be the portrait of her cousin even though it won\'t be possible to have him pose live. For me this was a very interesting type of character development. The author,Andrea, builds a believable portrait of how an artist feels and sees things while choosing what eventually ends up on the canvas. We see this development quite a number of times throughout the story. Enough for the reader to wonder if Andrea is applying how she writes to how an artist might be inspired or if, in fact, it\'s from her own experience with sketching and painting. Eventually our Character, Madeleine, starts experiencing the side effects of the dust. They are both strange and unsettling, and there is always the fear that she might die. All the time she\'s monitoring broadcasts about others who are affected, and many of those have died. I found no problem with the notion that much of technology was still active; even after establishing that this is an invasion. In fact it made sense that since this was happening everywhere that it would be more demoralizing to have a constant feed of information telling everyone how bleak things were. Eventually the side affect that causes Madeleine to have an insatiable appetite is what brings her out to brave the city and seek sustenance. This is when she begins to meet more people and make friends in a way she would never have done if things were normal. This is when the story really takes off. I found the pacing in this novel to be quite tight. I\'m not a fan of seat of your pants action from cover to cover and there were plenty of well place lulls in the narrative that make perfect sense as far as plot and character development. It did seem a bit longer than 205 pages in the e-book, but when I love the characters I love more pages because I usually don\'t want to say goodbye so quickly once I get to know them. As has been noted by other reviewers; there are plenty of plot twists in the story to keep the reader guessing. I often catch these in most novels, usually before they are -on the next page. There is one in here though that caught me unaware- the twist makes perfect sense- and you want to kick yourself and few other people when it happens. Young, old- whatever genre- I think everyone will love this book.(Except perhaps those who are genuinely claustrophobic; as is someone I know.) Trust me. Once you get past that first bit of suffocating but possibly accurate description (I\'ve never been in that situation so I don\'t know.) things will be easier to take. J.L. Dobias

The Colors of Space By Marion Zimmer Bradley I remember reading this a long time ago. Some time after the 1963 edition was published. I decided to read it again and see if it still stood well against time. Bart Steele is a young Vegan who has come to Earth to study at the academy. He is a product of a human and Mentorian pair, although he lost his mother, the Mentorian, early in his life. His father owns a space shipping business that struggles as it must against the monopoly that the Lhari race has over interstellar flight. The Lhari have made it clear that only Lhari can survive while the warp-drive is active and that all other races must go into cold-sleep. This monopoly causes Bart and many others to have a prejudice against the Lhari. On graduation Bart is to meet his father at the Lhari spaceport where he will return home. Bart will never see his father again and will be catapulted into a universe of danger and intrigue. He discovers that his father and several others have died while trying to obtain the secrets of the Lhari and of the warp-drive. Bart is thrust into his father\'s world while he\'s become a fugitive from Lhari authorities. The Lhari are not able to perceive colors the way humans and Mentorians do and this becomes a major plot device or I should say part of several plot devices. This is the only part that my more mature insight has quibbles about during this read. There are some big things that are hinged on this color disability that might not work quite as well as I once believed. One major one is that the Lhari could not tell something was red hot because they couldn\'t see the red. Since often survival hinges on such things there would likely have been another way for them to discern that a surface they were working on in their ship might be hot. Most everything else in the story seems to stand the test of time and still seems to work quite well to move the plot along. Since not enough is revealed about how a specific disguise is worked out, it might seem a bit thin but it still works here. The story itself beyond being science fiction seems to contain a mix of moral elements as regards prejudices and race hate. It becomes a story of a young mans journey to grow to maturity in his thinking and his beliefs. J.L.Dobias

Containment by Christian Cantrell I loved this book and the character of Arik and it would be nice to give it five stars, but that would be lacking honesty. This is good hard science fiction about a group of settlers on the planet Venus. As such, it is necessary to draw the proper picture of why we are there and how we got there and how we survive there so much of this hard science has to be there to support that. Some of the science seems questionable to me but that\'s only because I didn\'t stop to look things up to verify them and I\'m just not an expert in many of those fields. Often the hard science of Containment seems to come at the reader from a distance with detachment. Other times there are moments when Arik resonates with the science. There are long paragraphs about the harshness of the planet and life in the biosphere that contrast to the Arik\'s feelings because he expresses a few times how he\'s comfortable within the biosphere that he must live. The exposition often draws on the harshness of the planet almost as though we are portraying the planet as another character, and that didn\'t work that well with me because I didn\'t see the plot developing in that direction. There also seems to be two stories happening. The present and some flashbacks. Again it\'s necessary, but at times it\'s confusing. I had this one curious problem, Containment caused what I refer to in my antiquated thinking as the vinyl record skip syndrome. It\'s like having that scratch on the record where the needle skips and you have no idea how much you just missed. That\'s where I\'m reading along and stumble into exposition and then suddenly reach the bottom of a page that I can\'t remember reading. It\'s a bad habit of mine and I believe many other readers might have something similar. I know to catch it because, as is the case with Containment, the parts I nearly napped through have some plot points that I need to know. Containment qualifies as a hard science science fiction. The problem with that is that in trying so hard to do this many times hard science becomes hard to read. If the goal is to deliberately alienate readers who hate walls of exposition then it\'s likely to be successful at that. Most readers will accept a few of those when they clearly drive the plot. But, when a few of them seem to be there just to increase the hard science quotient, some readers end up skipping the important ones later. And, although I can point out many occasions where the exposition does drive the plot forward; for each of those there always two that are questionable. I would never ask a writer to give up their babies, especially when they are doing hard science because it does tend to create some lovely images. The problem is that they often serve as a match for the dreaded purple prose that other creative writers get noted for. Neither of these are bad, But out of necessity they should drive the plot or character development and serve a purpose that the reader can identify. Over all Containment is one of those curious books that everyone who loves science fiction might like, but it will always have a variety of reactions from love to mild acceptance to confusion. Obviously many people do love it, and although it\'s possible one more good edit might have made those numbers rise, it\'s just as likely to make it worse. By the numbers (reader response) I can\'t say that the author made any large mistake in leaving it as it is. It might be a tough read for one out of four readers, but overall it\'s a tightly written and entertaining read. J.L.Dobias

The Door Through Space by Marion Zimmer Bradley I read this; because it was there. Well, it\'s written by Marion Zimmer Bradley and its one of the first novels of her\'s that was published. I loved The Colors of Space but honestly did not read much more than that because her stories seemed predominantly fantasy and at the time I was reading science fiction. I\'m almost sorry I haven\'t read more of her\'s- the good thing is that enough is out there I might still have time. The Door Through Space demonstrates that she had a lot of talent coming out of the gate. The story starts on the planet known as Wolf. The reader is introduced to Race Cargill former intelligence agent of the Terran Secret Service. He\'s at the spaceport in Kharsa and in the first chapter we are introduced to the natives much of the political situation and some of the back-story of Cargill all through the movement of a mob chasing a dwarf who appears to be peddling toys. And the reader is introduced to a mystery when the dwarf disappears while Cargill is trying to calm the natives, using his skill at speaking in their language. All of this is in the first short chapter. Cargill is intent on leaving Wolf on the next Star-ship. He\'s ready to go and on the ship waiting when he\'s pulled off by his employer who has one more job for him. This job involves a traitor named Rakhal. Rakhal had been a fellow agent. When he turned native he left with Race\'s sister Juli and he disfigured Race\'s face. Race has since been at a desk job and he has no desire or ambition to seek after Rakhal or to kill his own brother in law. The problem is that Juli has come back and she\'s desperate to have Race find Rakhal and bring back her own daughter to her. If that\'s not enough Race finds out that Rakhal has been pursuing the possibility that someone on Wolf might possess a matter transmitter. If that\'s true then Terran Intelligence needs to be on top of it. One more time Race Cargill must go undercover to find his niece and try to secure the matter transmitter. This is a tightly written tale that has survived the test of time and still stands as an intriguing story that keeps the reader on their toes and involved to the very end. I sure hope Amazon has that download fixed. If not Guttenburg has this in kindle format and its easy to upload it from a pc into your que- I believe that\'s how I did it. J.L. Dobias

I don\'t care what everyone else says-I enjoyed this book Sunrise Alley by Catherine Asaro I picked this book up in the kindle version- probably from the publisher-I don\'t see it here on Amazon. I\'m familiar with Catherine Asaro and had not yet read any of her novels. This novel reminded me of some of Heinlein\'s middle years - you know after the juvenile and after stranger in a strange and before the really wild stuff he wrote near the end. This is more on par with Friday. Except that the female character in Sunrise Alley has more depth. Samantha Bryton is a rich intelligent woman who, after having suffered the loss of her father and her husband, has become a bit of a recluse. In the year 2033 where everyone is connected by what they refer to as the local mesh, Sam is trying to shed most of technology. This is a difficult thing for her since she\'s a leading figure in the development of EI Intelligence and EI Psychology. To say nothing of the basement lab she has in her seclude home. We find Sam on a secluded beach near her home after a storm jogging and checking out storm damage while remaining as disconnected as she can from the mesh. She discovers first a shipwreck and then the man who calls himself Turner. It takes Sam a while and much conversation before she discovers that Turner is and EI - sentient machine that\'s been hybrid into a deceased human. One quibble right away might be that this story early on takes the shape of a slightly contrived plot. Here we have Turner an EI who, though he died and someone named Charon has altered his brain with an EI, claims he is still Turner Pascal the human. Since Sam has been a staunch supporter of the notion that EI intelligent machines are sentient and should be accorded the same rights as people this seems all too convenient. But the contrived nature of this story is also a plot point so it works as it is. There are a number of twists and turns in the plot and plenty of thrills and danger to match many Hitchcock suspense films. There are some places where are hero\'s get into tight spots and squeak out of them rather conveniently - again a plot device and that becomes clear soon enough. What isn\'t clear is the why and that keeps the story going. The evil character of Charon is shrouded in mystery and there are some twists and turns here but there are plenty of clues about this to make any final reveals work well. It was an easy read for me-one sitting- and anyone who enjoys science fiction, suspense and even romance will find plenty to keep them involved. J.L. Dobias

The Planet Savers, by Marion Zimmer Bradley The copy I have of this is from the Gutenberg project. It is taken from the pages of amazing stories. And I want to share the little quote at the beginning. [Quote] Marion Zimmer Bradley has written some of the finest science fiction in print. She has been away from our pages too long. So this story is in the nature of a triumphant return. It could well be her best to date. Marion Zimmer Bradley. The Planet Savers (Kindle Locations 16-17). [/Quote] I had not read this prior and it\'s fairly old. It\'s from Bradley\'s Darkover world and I think it\'s a masterpiece. Even after all this time it still holds together well as a relevant and well told tale. This short novel easily demonstrates the author\'s massive ability at world creation and her skill in writing that makes this not only a marvelous work of Science Fiction but a literary masterpiece. This is the story of Jay/Jason. A highly intelligent and driven doctor who is respected on one hand and despised on the other. He\'s aloof most of the time and has nothing but prejudice against most of the inhabitants of the Darkover world especially the trailmen whom he considers to be low life beasts. Ironically Jason is also the man who as a child was rescued and raised by the trailmen in their remote mountain village. They raise him until they decide he\'s old enough that he needs to be returned to his kind. It might be that this young man felt abandoned by them as he may have felt abandoned when his father died. Whatever the reason, he\'s pulled off a sort of Jekyl-Hyde or Sybil turn in his life where he has segmented the old Jason from the new Jay. Now, at the time of the reawakening of a cyclical pandemic fever he is forced to bring out the Jason- trailman- side of his personality. The Trailmen are immune to the illness because they suffer a milder form of it when they are young. The notion is that they might be able to make a serum from the trailmen blood. The problem is the trailmen never come down from their mountain. Jay even has to agree that this trip out to the trailmen is necessary because his greater understanding of medicine can see the value. They need Jason to help insure its success. Submitting to a procedure that will bring forth this other personality he becomes Jason- a somewhat genial and reckless young man. The transformation he undertakes affects even his physical characteristics to a point that colleagues who have known him for years don\'t recognize him. All this takes place in a matter of few pages all packed in expertly with the added bonus of creating the affect that the reader comes to identify and love Jason, while loathing and despising Jay. There\'s a lot more to come in this story as they make the dangerous trek into the wild and up through treacherous mountains that tax even the local Darkovans. Will they survive, will they find a vaccine, how did Jason get so messed up. All these and more will eventually come out in this gem of a short. The skill with which Marion Zimmer Bradley weaves and fills this novel and the fact that it stands the test of time make it easy to see how she became such a respected author and remains that to this very day. This book is a good read for anyone who wants to become acquainted with the author and her Darkover series. And for those already acquainted who may have missed this one, they should pick it up and give it a go. There is no way for you to be disappointed. J.L. Dobias