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