The Rods and the Axe: two reviews

DB is the first to review Tom Kratman's THE RODS AND THE AXE.

This is the latest book in the 'Carrera' series by Tom Kratman. The story covers the activities leading up to and the beginning salvos of the second stage of the war between the Tauran Union (the EU) and Balboa (Panama). Now for those of you who wonder how the hell Panama could be in a war with the EU much less how it could manage to be kicking the EU's sclerotic, bureaucratic ass you really have to read the 'What has gone before' section. Trust me when I say it is necessary there's a lot that has happened to get the action to this point and a whole mess of characters that are important to the plot. When reading Tom Kratman you never know who is going to be an important character and who is going to wind up killed so you better pay attention.

So to the story itself. It is a good military adventure yarn. That should be no surprise by now, Kratman writes military adventure and whatever he does he does well. It is just barely science fiction. Yes it is set on a different planet, yes there is marginally advanced technology, but this series is really just an alternate history of what could have been done following September 11th. It could just as easily been set on Earth beginning Sept 11, 2001.

The story is well written and for me the easiest of the series to read and follow. I was never left wondering 'who is this and what are they doing'. The action is realistic and of course plenty gritty. The characters were as usual interesting and drawn just as finely as they needed to be for the part they played in the story. Most of the book is taken up with behind the scenes type of political wrangling and espionage but there still are big meaty chunks of combat and conflict.

The Good: "The Rods and the Axe" is well written, the prose is clear and clean without anything extraneous getting into the way. The people, places, and activities on 'Terra Nova' are presented in well crafted brush strokes. Even the characters that are seen once and will never be seen again were easy to envision. Some would say Kratman makes good use of stereotype but I prefer to think of his bright-line characterization of minor characters as solid use of easily understood motifs.

The characters are easy to connect to and visualize. Motivations fit the characters and the actions they take except for one really jarring scene (more about that later), are never forced. The actions feel like they are the real actions of the characters and not something that Kratman has decreed for the characters to do everything feels very organic. One thing that Kratman is very good at is people and he easily acknowledges that every side can have heroes. The enemies can be just as well intentioned, heroic as Carrera and his Legion and are certainly as well written.

The organizations of Terra Nova are realistic and Kratman does a good job of describing them. Of course, that is not a huge stretch because Terra Nova is really just 'Earth'. Every nation and organization has its counterpart on Terra Nova.

Not much to say about Kratman's gift for writing military action that has not already been said. The action whether it is a bar fight with broken bottles or a naval gunnery barrage with 150mm guns is all well written. The pacing of the action is particularly good and will keep you reading (I read the book in one sitting). Kratman is a master of his craft and belongs with Drake or Pournelle when discussing good military science fiction.

One thing and perhaps this is just a matter of personal taste but I like that while Kratman's characters are fully adult and human and have sex the sex is all 'off screen' and fade to black type of activities. I find that refreshing.

The Bad: Here's the good news; nothing 'bad' about this novel. The story is first rate, the characters are well written and interesting and the action is realistic and visceral. But there is that one scene I mentioned earlier and that's ugly.

The Ugly: First let me say that I know Kratman is one sneaky bastard (I mean that as a compliment) and that he knows where his stories are going a long way a head, however, Carrera makes a really jarring bonehead move that stood out like a green stick fracture. At one point he has Carrera going into a major conflict zone for (at this point in the story) no damn good reason. It is such a bad decision that I had a hard time getting past that. It was like Ike landing with the grunts at Utah Beach. I know Kratman is probably just setting us up for something that requires Carrera to be where he is but the action itself was double-stupid and his aides should have sat on him until he regained his senses. I won't say anything more about that because that would give away too much of the plot.

All in all I cannot recommend this book enough. If you at all like military fiction you'll like this book and if you do like military fiction and haven't found this series yet you are in for a treat. Kratman has stepped up his game with this book and is now firmly in the top tier of military fiction not just military science fiction.

And JW has already read it and finished his review as well. The speed with which these gentlemen blew through the book should also tell you something about whether Tom Kratman's latest is worthwhile for fans of military science fiction.

Tom Kratman has out his sixth novel in the Carrera series, and it's a worthy addition indeed. The Legion del Cid, with Patricio Carrera in command, has kicked the Tauran Union forces occupying the Balboa transitway out, in bloody fighting. In Book 6 they are concerned with the final preparation for the invasion of the Taurans and their Zhong allies, and, then the beginning of an epic battle for the tiny country of Balboa.  The Taurans are providing air cover and a blocking force in the neighboring country of Santa Josefina and  the Zhong providing the landing force attempting to take the Isla Real, the immense and heavily fortified island commanding the transitway. There are time references both backward looking and forward, starting with the Amazon Legion, continuing in the fifth novel Come and Take Them. I would highly recommend reading the whole series. It's more than worth it.

Many of the characters from the previous novels are here with some added fleshing out particularly concerning the High Admiral Wallenstein and her latest relationship and some truly funny plot elements revolving around Carrera's son Hamilcar and his domestic difficulties. Lesson there: you don't really need twelve wives, lad.

There are new characters, of course, notably among the Zhong Imperial Marines and their bloody sacrifices on the beaches of Isla Real. The battle action starts about 45 percent into the book with an interesting taste of things to come in the Prologue, and continues until the book ends with a not-so-subtle cliff hanger pointing to Book 7. Personally, I can't wait until the Legion takes on the UEPF, the United Earth Peace Fleet, in orbit around the planet and providing from orbit intelligence gathering for the Tauran forces.

I can't give you metrics of prose competence, plot flow, etc. All I can do is tell you this a real page turner and a long awaited addition to the series. I loved it. Enjoy!

If you enjoy keeping up on the latest in SF/F, I would encourage you to begin following the Castalia House blog on a daily basis, where our SEVEN bloggers are now posting regular reviews of both conventional and independently published SF/F books. Mascaro has posted a review of AS I WALK THESE BROKEN ROADS by DMJ Aurini and Jeff's review of SHADOW OF THE STORM by Martin J. Dougherty is a must-read for any TRAVELLER aficionado, as it sounds like Marc Miller has found himself a good writer who is respectful of the game canon.

And don't miss Daniel's intriguing take on the Tesla-Edison divide among science fiction writers.

Lions Den X: Tom Kratman

The Taurans had dedicated three hundred sorties to a pre-landing preparation of the island.  That was not small change, those roughly two thousand tons.  But, it was generally agreed, the Taurans had to do their business and leave before the Zhong reached within two kilometers of the beaches.  Otherwise, the world, fate, God, Murphy (who, it was well known, had emigrated to Terra Nova in the first wave), or the Emperor Mong, whom the Zhong and Anglians both disowned, would fuck somebody.
 
With the ovals and circles at sea straightening now into deadly arrows, pointed not-quite-straight at the beaches, the Taurans half darkened the sky.  They lashed down not only at the landing beaches, but at half a dozen others as heavily, and eleven more a bit more lightly, for the deception value.  Known, or believed to be known, artillery positions got a special pasting. 

Generally speaking, Wallenstein was surprised at the fury of the Tauran assault.

My cousins have apparently got a few grudges from the five minute bomber raids.

The Zhong and Taurans had, if anything, been overly cautious about the use of the latters’ airpower in proximity to the formers’ unarmored Marines.  While the first wave of landing craft were eight hundred meters offshore, the last of the Tauran strikers was flying east toward their bases in Santa Josefina.

To smoke was now added a considerable cloud of dust raised by the bombs.  Most of the island could not be seen with the naked eye or unaided camera.

“Switching to thermal imaging,” Khan announced.  The screen went blank, then red, then to a mix of stark black and red.  It took a bit of time for both mind and eyes to adjust. 

“Narrow focus on the island and the leading wave,” Wallenstein commanded.  “Order Harmony to bring the skimmer in lower, and have them prep another in case we lose this one.”

“Aye, aye, High Admiral,” said one of the communications boffins.  Communication was nearly instantaneous, while the skimmer was close in any case.  The focus of the crew and their commander narrowed considerably as the first waves of the Zhong Marines splashed ashore

 “What’s that?” Wallenstein asked, as the skimmer approached a tilted triple turret.

“We’ve got lasing!” a petty officer announced.  “Lasing from the whole northern coast.  Lasing from the balloons.  Lasing from Hill 287.  Lasing…”

The room shook with an inarticulate cry of despair from the Zhong Empress.  She saw what Khan saw, and had divined the meaning just as quickly

“It’s a gun; I’d guess an eighteen centimeter gun,” Khan said, his voice heavy with defeat.  “On a railway carriage.  It came from one of the ammunition bunkers we didn’t attack.  I think…I think there are going to be a lot of them.  And they’re not lasing for its own sake.”

Tonelessly, hopelessly, he added, “Empress, you should tell the Zhong Fleet to retreat… High Admiral, tell her.”  Khan’s chin sank onto his chest.  “But, of course, it’s too late for that, isn’t it?”

By now, I expect you know the drill. I have three review copies of Tom Kratman's The Rods and the Axe to send out to the first three readers willing to read it, then write a review and send it to me before June 25th. If you're interested, send me an email with AXE in the subject. We have the necessary reviewers now, thank you.

Lion's Den: Witchfinder 2

RW provides a second review of WITCHFINDER, by Sarah Hoyt:

3 parts Fantasy
2 parts Fairy Tale
1 splash of Science Fiction
1 dash of Mythology

Mix ingredients thoroughly with magic. Garnish with a slice of Romance.

Sarah A. Hoyt has ambitiously attempted to tie together fantasy, fairy tale, and a bit of romance; and for the most part she pulls it off brilliantly.  It is a difficult work to review without being a spoiler since part of the enjoyment of reading this book is watching how she develops the worlds in the multi-verse and how she incorporates many elements from well-known stories from fairy tales and mythology, with an occasional nod to religion, into a coherent whole.

CHARACTERS: Hoyt does an exceptional job bringing her characters to life.  She uses a formulaic approach to how most of them are developed throughout the story, where she describes them in three stages of growth.  The first stage is she portrays them as they seem to be to others or how they believe that they have to act.  The second stage occurs as they interact with each other and start to learn each other’s secrets and true selves.  For the final stage Hoyt shows the characters starting to understand what they really need to be in order to fulfill their destiny.  In lesser hands this template approach would seem two-dimensional, but Hoyt uses this approach to good effect aligning the character development within the scope of the overall story. (8/10)

PROSE: Hoyt’s prose is hard to describe; in some places it is fluid and conversational, but in other places it borders on being poetic.  Her ability to create word pictures aids in her development of new worlds as she masterfully describes exotic places, Fairyland in particular.  She mentioned in her write-up that the story was written as blog postings over many months, and there is a slow evolution in the use of punctuation and grammar as the story progresses.  Similarly, there were quite a few typos, but she has already claimed these too. (7/10)

PLOT: [Warning: this section contains a few spoilers, so if you plan on reading the book I suggest skipping down to the IDEAS paragraph.] The general structure holds nicely as she develops a modern-day fairy tale of a young lady coming to terms with the fact that she is a princess in another world.  Simultaneously Hoyt creates a concurrent plot about a family of world-jumping witches, closer to the fantasy genre.  The stories intertwine early, with heavy doses of mystery and suspense as the Duke of Darkwater realizes that he is being targeted; and all of the characters begin to question the motives of each other, even their closest family members.

However, there are a few items that weaken the story in my opinion.  The first is relatively minor: the character of the matriarch, the dowager duchess Ainsling, is very interesting and plays a large role in the early part of the story, but then she disappears for most of the second half, making a brief cameo at the end.   The second is that the novel’s climatic showdowns don’t quite live up to the promise of the escalation of the conflicts.  The third issue might be related to Hoyt’s stated goal that she was writing more of a romantic work to lure female fantasy readers. The issue I had is that there are discussions of cross-species relationships, necrophilia, child prostitution, and a heavy dose of homosexuality.  The cross-species relationships is understandable given that the book is somewhere between fantasy and fairytale, but the other items seemed somewhat forced.  My reason for bringing this up is that with the exception of these items, along with maybe two or three unnecessary expletives, I would have liked to pass the book along to my young adolescent daughter to read, as I’m sure she would enjoy the story.  If the author feels that the homosexual relationship is integral to the story, then I’d suggest that she continue to use vague references and hints, as she used earlier in the book where she was modeling it after Regency romances. (6/10)

IDEAS: I thought that the most creative aspect of Hoyt’s universe is that all of the worlds have their own versions of legends and fairytales based on actual happenings, mainly in either Avalon or Fairyland.  As with any fairytale, there are a couple of morals to conclude the story: lead when called upon, and be a servant-leader, not a tyrant. (5/10)

TOTAL: (6.5/10)  In truth I liked Witchfinder better than that score indicates, mainly because it equally weighs all four of the elements above.  This book is the first of Hoyt’s works that I have read, and I found it enjoyable enough that I expect that I’ll soon be reading other books from her.  Men concerned about the “romance” label need not be scared away since the love story is in the background through most of the book.  If Hoyt were to address the issues mentioned above, then I would give this book a high recommendation to young readers as well.

Lions Den: Witchfinder

The Bandit reviews Sarah Hoyt's WITCHFINDER for the Lion's Den. And speaking of book reviews, Toni Mascaro has activated the Castalia House blog with a review of The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell.

Like the title character, I didn't quite realize what I had first stumbled into when I offered to review WITCHFINDER, written by Sarah A. Hoyt. The blurb gave me the impression of multiverse derring-do -- sort of a magical fantasy version of Star Gate. Although I've enjoyed a rant or seven on her blog, I had yet to read any of Sarah Hoyt's published writing, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to introduce myself to her work. It was only afterward that I learned two additional facts:  (1) it had been written to appeal to romance readers, and (2) the book originated as a semi-serious chapter-a-week project on the author's blog.

Now, being a horridly privileged cismale, I am not sure I am qualified to judge a romance's quality. The elements that I've come to associate with fantasy romance are definitely all there:  ongoing "tension" in the form of repeatedly noting attraction but ignoring it for the nonce, sexually aberrant secondary characters, wereseals (in effect), inter-species love, and a proliferation of the subsequent half-breed spawn. I cannot tell you how effectively these might have been wielded in order to turn on the intended audience, but I can say that, surprisingly, I wasn't turned off. I suppose I should clarify that there's no steamy sex scenes, nor is any of this treated in a way I'd be uncomfortable to allowing my own young adult to read it. (Caveat: there's a lot of buggery afoot.)

Prose (4/10): Here the novel suffers because of its origin. Written as a weekly blog post, the standard of writing is about as one would expect for a blog post. Presumably written with a quick once-over before hitting "submit," some sentences end up convoluted and confusing not for any imitation of the stilted regency style (the style itself is very modern in its simplicity) but for the need of some additional drafting. The effect of its origin also goes beyond the occasional typos and broken sentences that have slipped through to jar the reader:  the overall pacing and structure also stutters a bit. This means some chapters feel just a bit too rushed, and one or two were clearly a week in which the author didn't have much time but had to get something up. A stronger edit could have really tightened this novel and make it run at a good clip, in my opinion. For all this, it is not all so bad to be very bothersome, and I might have given the prose a higher score if it were not for all the darn telling (as opposed to showing) that occurs, particularly when it came to the operation of magic and the abilities of the title character.

Plot (7/10): The plot is amazingly coherent for a story put together piecemeal over a couple of years. It has depth and goes in completely unforeseen directions without feeling disjointed. The predictable reveals set the reader up for the true twists and unexpected reveals further down the line. The reader clearly recognizes that the kingdom is at stake long before the characters catch up, but then the author surprises the reader with the actual purpose of the conspiracy. All loose ends then tie up rather nicely.

Characters (8/10): Unsurprisingly, according to its genre (as per our host's explanation), the novel's strongest element is its characters. One of the book's reviewers on Amazon notes that the characters start as stereotypes of regency fiction and then flesh out into new directions, and I agree with that assessment. Hoyt's talent really shines in the way that she allows the reader to get to know the characters slowly, presenting false impressions and misconceptions, and then turning them on their head to show the human underneath. In fact, it is the humanity of the characters that really impresses -- they all have believable flaws and struggles -- particularly since not all of them are completely human. I enjoyed watching Hoyt lift the veil on this or that character's actions to reveal the understandable motivations beneath.

Ideas (6/10): Three ideas are at work here:  the multiverse, fairy tale magic, and duty. Hoyt ably uses the multiverse concept to suit her purposes, and she also takes the opportunity to make some historical reference jokes. The take on magic is a bit foggy; I personally prefer to understand the rules of magic within a given universe, but these are never clearly explained. A recurring motif in describing the working of magic is the manipulation of the threads that make the tapestry of reality. The ultimate result is that, instead of taking the fantastic and making it seem believable, Hoyt takes the believable (characters) and then dumps it into a tableau of the fantastic. I assume, given the fairy tale theme, that this was intentional; it ends up feeling very much like the magic in fairy tales. Finally, the theme of duty resonates throughout, and the way the author uses the theme to mold the character's decisions struck me enough to bump up this category's score. Instead of denigrating duty as just oppressive and foolish, the burden and sometimes-tragedy of duty is acknowledged while still emphasizing and respecting its importance. This treatment of duty has become rare enough that it's slightly jarring in the same way that the novel's reasonable and respectful treatment of the sexes and regency customs (in a romance!) also feels slightly odd, but refreshing.



Overall (6/10): I enjoyed reading WITCHFINDER, and might give it to a female friend who likes regency or fantasy romance, but probably would not buy it for myself.

Sample text: “Now, Duke,” Gabriel Penn said, very mildly, but in a tone of worried distraction. He made as though to take a step sideways to pull his companion [Marlon] out of the dirt, or perhaps to succor him, but Seraphim [the Duke] held him fast.

“No, don’t you go trying to cajole me. You know what coils this creature embroiled you in, and you know he can only bring you dishonor and grief. Even if he captured you by dishonorable means, you should know–”

Gabriel Penn’s eyes flashed with a look not unlike Seraphim’s own when animated with near-uncontrollable fury, and for a moment he showed his teeth, pressed close together. Nell thought he was about to slug the Duke, and for just a second, without thinking, moved to step between them. Then she checked herself. Even on Earth, stepping between two men about to engage in a slugging match was perfectly stupid. But, stepping between two men from Britannia about to engage in a slugging match might be crazier. Not only would they slug it out around or over her, but they would also hold each other responsible for causing her to step in. Their rules of chivalry were complicated, but that one was obvious.

As she paused, Gabriel reached out and got hold of both of the duke’s arms above the elbow, “Your Grace, you bonehead, listen to me: Marlon Elfborn did not capture me. I went to him to ask for help when I had nowhere else to go.”

“Well,” Seraphim said, struggling to pull his arms away from his brother’s gripping fingers. “that only proves you’re not competent to run your own affairs. Furthermore–”

“Yes, I know, furthermore, he interrupted my education, raised the dead and deflowered the family goat. Give over Seraphim, you fool, do. Stop your vendetta and listen to me.”

“He deflowered what?” Seraphim said, stopping mid-shout and frowning.

A dark-red blush climbed Gabriel’s cheeks. His eyes darted at Nell, and he actually attempted to bow, which went to show that the training of Britannia men was quite past rationality or sanity even. “I beg your pardon Miss Felix..."

Lion's Den IX: Sarah Hoyt

Sarah Hoyt is dipping her toe into the cold, but liberating waters of independent publishing with her book WITCHFINDER. She describes it thusly:

In Avalon, where the world runs on magic, the king of Britannia appoints a witchfinder to rescue unfortunates with magical power from lands where magic is a capital crime. Or he did. But after the royal princess was kidnapped from her cradle twenty years ago, all travel to other universes has been forbidden, and the position of witchfinder abolished. Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, son of the last witchfinder, breaks the edict. He can't simply let people die for lack of rescue. His stubborn compassion will bring him trouble and disgrace, turmoil and danger -- and maybe, just maybe, the greatest reward of all.

Sarah adds: This book was very strange. First, it started as an almost joke.  A friend suggested we collaborate on it because, hey, people liked regency fantasies, and we wrote a proposal (which was nothing like this.  For one, it was for a much shorter book) and we sent it to my agent.  My agent first balked at sending it out because "you have a woman from present-day Earth and someone in the regency.  No one will know what to do with it."  (Apparently she never read things like Diana Wynne Jones Chrestomanci series or the ton of time travel romance books that were so popular in the eighties.  Okay, truth be told, I never read those either, but I DID hear of them.  Impossible not to.)  Then she sent it out under pressure (or at least she said she had) and the rejections agreed with her opinion. So, this book went in the drawer with about fifteen others that never sold in proposal.

Two and a half years ago when I started blogging every day (and wasn't out politically yet) my biggest issue was what to blog about.  (It still is, because there isn't something that fascinating to me every day.)  So I decided to make Fridays easier by posting a chapter of a novel every Friday.  Why Witchfinder?  No idea.  I think it more or less was the first one to come up.  Also, it was definitely not a Baen novel, so no problems with upsetting my publisher.

I wrote to my friend, asked her if she'd send me a quit-claim on the novel. She did.  I started posting it.  I thought it would be a shortish novel and never come out officially, but I gave people the option of donating $6 and when it was done, I'd edit it and send them an ebook.  I made $5k.  While it's not the advance I normally get for science fiction and fantasy, it was the advance I got from Prime Crime for mystery.  (SF/F pay me better.) Also, when I sent it out to be edited, my three editors who are two trusted friends and my husband (yes, I know typos escaped.  Part of it was the way it was written.  You should have seen it before) all thought I should publish it.  Which led to my publishing it.

But structure/plot/possibly typo-ing it all feels very odd to me.  If you'd asked me if I could write a novel a chapter a week over two years, I'd have said you were nuts.  And yet, when I read it (other than continuity typos, like people changing name, which I was still fixing at the last minute) it read as well (or as badly, depending on your opinion!) as any other of my works. Except perhaps the world building got WAY more convoluted than it normally does, because I world build in sudden fits of brilliance and a year and a half is a lot of time for such fits. So, in a way this novel is a first two ways: it's my first slow-written novel, and my first indie novel.


VD: If you're interested in reading WITCHFINDER, writing a review, and sending it to me for posting here, please send me an email with WITCHFINDER in the subject. And if you have any questions for Sarah about her book, please post them in the comments here.

I'm also looking for 10 launch reviewers for both a)  AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LANDS and b) TRANSHUMAN OR SUBHUMAN. For the former, you'll need to be able to read it and post a review on Amazon over the coming weekend. Email me with either AWAKE or TRANSHUMAN in the subject, but not both, please.

Book Review: Escape from Tekmar II

Jill reviewed Kiti Lappi's Escape from Tekmar:

I'm technically a bi-lingual person. However, I would never have the confidence to pull off a book-length manuscript in my second language. For that reason, I applaud Kiti Lappi, the author of Escape From Tekmar, whose native language is Finnish. She rose to a challenge and actually met that challenge. Undoubtedly, she improved her skills in English by doing so. That being said, while her book is readable in English, the level of readability is extraordinarily low. The sentences are wordy and awkward, and she often uses words improperly. For example, she repeatedly confuses “commend” and “recommend”. While these words are similar, they have subtle distinctions in usage. In addition, there are many unclear run-on sentences, and I'm not sure if this is owing to her limited knowledge of English, or simple bad editing. Completing a cohesive thought in sentence-form is a matter of logic, as far as I'm concerned.

Despite all that, the manuscript is not irredeemable. I would highly recommend (that is, advocate) that she pull this book off the market and choose one of two options: hire a native English speaker to help her with language edits; or write the book in Finnish and hire an English translator. Left as is, the author risks giving herself an unnecessarily bad reputation as a self-publisher of junk, which is a shame.

And to be fair, the story isn't junk. The elements of a well-told story are there, albeit lost in the awkward language. The plot, itself, is a simple sci-fi adventure story about the space travelers, Rahan and Ryn, who find themselves unwittingly involved in another world's revolution. The author uses many sci-fi tropes to give the basic plot color: genetic modification, space travel, invasive spy technology that is too expansive for upkeep, etc. Some of it is quite interesting and imaginative, such as the “silver” that repairs the genetically-engineered Shemasharras and gives them their distinctive silver eye color.

The characterization is decent, especially when the author depicts the relationship between Rahan and Ryn. Their relationship shines through enough that I'm not left reeling when the author reveals their true relationship near the end of the book. Although the female protagonist, Lida, isn't as fleshed out, I find it believable that she, as an idealist, has become embroiled in a revolution that isn't about the good of the people. On the other hand, I never get much sense of Ryn's character, except that he feels duty bound to always protect Rahan. Ryn is a genetically-engineered human, yet he fills the ubiquitous sci-fi role of the almost-human robot. Sadly, there are many sci-fi robots out there with more personality than the genetically-engineered Ryn. Ryn is too good, too intelligent, too strong to be entirely relatable.

Along the same lines, the main character, Rahan, has a strong character arc, from childish dependency on Ryn's saving him from disaster (as shown in the first scene), to fighting his own battles and becoming the rescuer of Ryn. Likewise, the main female character, Lida, also transforms throughout the story, beginning with reluctant compliance and ending with defiance. Ryn, as befitting his flat character, doesn't change much; however, the author allows him to be possessing of weaknesses, as he is able to be captured at a crucial moment.

The scene-setting is also quite well done for an author who has a limited vocabulary in English. I've read that there are literally no cognates between Finnish and English, which further gives me admiration for the author's skills. That's obviously beside the point, as I get a general sense of a planet that had one time been decked-out with better technology, but has devolved into an economic and social decline. The scene-setting works, even if it's not extensive. For the record, I prefer books with extensive scene descriptions, almost to the point of travelogue, but I certainly don't expect that from modern authors.

If I have any banal writer-workshop type recommendations for the authors, they are these: she needs to learn how to write without giving info dumps. Info must be told in order to ground the reader, but it needs to be accomplished a little at a time through the scene itself (showing vs telling), or through natural dialogue, or through SHORT pieces of exposition. I don't really give a shit about the absurd convention of excessive showing in fiction—the pretense that fiction should be written as though it were a film—but the author needs to work on her art of subtlety. Storytelling is an art, in which scene and exposition are woven smoothly together, and the author needs to work on this.

As an extension of show-vs-tell, the facts the author presents in the story often don't sound planned. I found myself wondering if the author made things up as she went along. For example, Rahan will suddenly be possessing of useful items in his backpack, when he had a moment before been deficient in useful items, which left me thinking, “How convenient for him!” This credulity could easily have been avoided if the character had been shown finding whatever-useful-item in real scene time.

As a last word, the beginning scene is necessary, and a great way to demonstrate the relationship of Rahan and Ryn, but it's too long. The author spends an inordinate amount of time describing a world that the characters are just passing through before landing on the planet where they will spend the next 250 or so pages.

To reiterate, Escape From Tekmar has merit. It's a story that would be worth more of the author's time and attention, as well as the money it would cost for an English-speaking editor to clean it up. As it is, though, I can't rate it well. In fact, I would probably give it 1 or 2 stars out of 5 due to the sheer difficulty in reading the language.

Lions Den VIII: Jonathan Moeller

The Pulp Writer throws Frostborn: The First Quest into the Den and takes a decidedly different approach in introducing it to everyone here. If you're interested in being one of the book's three reviewers, shoot me an email. You may also be interested in noting that both his Demonsouled and Child of the Ghosts are free downloads today.

Today I am going to tell you a story about the dangers of opening doors.

Long ago, before humans ever came to my world, before humans even existed, the high elves ruled this world. We believed that God had put us here to care and maintain this world, for God had indeed created it for a purpose. A great darkness had been imprisoned within the skin of the world, inside a place the humans would one day call the Black Mountain. Our responsibility was to guard the prison and serve as the world’s caretakers.

And so we did.

For spans of time so vast that no human tongue has the vocabulary to describe them, the high elves kept watch over this world, dwelling in great bliss and splendor as they went about their task.

But for some of us, that was not enough.

Those of us with wisdom and courage, those of us with the strength to cast aside old ideas and grow beyond our purpose, used our spells to examine the Black Mountain, to consider the darkness sealed within as a bored child might pick at a scab. In time the darkness spoke to us. At first we spurned it, but we came to see that it spoke wisdom, words of strength and power.

And the darkness reached out and possessed one of us, and we fell to our knees and worshipped him as our new god, the bearer of shadow, the teacher of new ways.

The high elves turned against us, the shortsighted fools. They called us the dark elves, but we were the true elves, the stronger elves, for we alone had been brave enough to cast off our shackles and make ourselves more.

They made war upon us for millennia, and we laid the world waste. Spells beyond the capacity of the human mind to understand shattered the land, and mountains crumbled and deserts froze and forests burned. Yet for all our power, the high elves had the mastery, and drove us back mile by mile.

But the bearer of shadow walked among us, whispering his secrets into our ears. He taught us spells of necromancy, of shaping flesh and bone into weapons of death. And he taught us the secret of opening doors between the worlds. For there are as many worlds as there are stars in the night skies, and as many kindreds that live upon them. Our wizards opened the doors between the worlds, and brought forth new kindreds to serve us as slaves and soldiers.

The orcs were the first. They made superb slave soldiers for our armies, and we brought hundreds of thousands of them through the gates. Then came the beastmen and the manetaurs. They were harder to control, but served well as shock troops. Halflings were too weak for battle, but made useful slaves. The dwarves proved impossible to control, and soon rebelled and sided against us, but they were a rare error

And one day, we found the urdmordar.

We had never seen anything like them. They wore the form of spiders, yet wielded great dark magic. They disdained the use of tools and weapons, yet had intellects of genius, and dominated lesser creatures with ease. They feasted upon living flesh like any rude predator, but were so cunning and so clever that they remained hidden and their victims rarely knew their true foes.

What slaves they would make! With their power, we could at last crush the high elves.

And so we opened the door to their world and brought the urdmordar to ours.

Fools, fools, fools.

For the urdmordar were too powerful to control.

They swarmed the gate, and devoured the wizards that sought to bind them. We were the rightful masters of this world, mighty in sorcery and wisdom without peer, but the urdmordar saw us as only one thing.

Food.

Within five years the dark elven kingdoms had been enslaved and forced to serve the urdmordar. Our armies of slaves transferred their allegiance readily enough. The high elves briefly rejoiced, thinking they had found an ally, but the hunger of the urdmordar was insatiable.

One by one the high elven kingdoms fell, until only Cathair Solas remained.

And then the urdmordar met a new kindred coming up from the south.

The humans, the exiles of Old Earth, the heirs of Arthur Pendragon, fleeing through a magical gate from the fall of their realm. Heedless of the ancient conflicts of their new world, they blundered into the path of the urdmordar.

There is danger in opening doors...but there is also opportunity.

For in the humans, after long millennia, I see the key to my freedom.

- The Warden of Urd Morlemoch

Book Review: Escape from Tekmar I

HC provides the first review of Kiti Lappi's Escape from Tekmar, the seventh book to be presented in the Lions Den series.

Rahan and Ryn are partners on assignment for an interstellar agency that monitors the health of ecosystems on terraformed planets. In any other circumstance, one might consider Rahan a badass. Unfortunately, his superior officer, Ryn, is one of the genetically engineered Shemasharra. He’s stronger, faster, smarter, and better looking. He’s also a near mind-reading Boy Scout: honest, fair, ready to help old ladies and inferior men alike to cross dangerous intersections, neither asking nor accepting any reward. Little wonder Rahan finds him so irritating.

The two men are forced to make an unscheduled stop for repairs on Tekmar, a financially and technologically poor world with a paranoid police state and a xenophobic populace. To minimize the potential for conflict, Ryn remains on board the ship, while Rahan deals with the locals. While absorbing a little local culture, he meets a girl named Lida, and they spend several days together sight-seeing. Of course, Lida has an ulterior motive: she’s a member of a revolutionary group that wants to destroy Tekmar’s rigid feudalism. The organization is in desperate need of cash, and there are people who will pay a high price for a live Shemasharra. Rahan and Ryn are kidnapped by a faction of the revolutionaries led by a man named Kerrin who intends to sell them to a mysterious group of off-worlders. Fisticuffs, cyborgs, shootouts, dogfights, and races against time follow.

The Good: Escape from Tekmar is a good adventure story with a suspenseful plot and several secondaries involving the relationships of Rahan with Ryn, Rahan with Lida, and Lida with Kerrin. Lappi portrayed some aspects of those relationships well. For example, Rahan resents Ryn for being superior and for being patient and patronizing. Rahan comes across like a spoiled teenager acting out in passive aggressive rebellion, and I think that’s precisely what Lappi intended the reader to see.

There are several exciting and suspenseful sequences. One of the best scenes is a fight between Rahan and Kerrin, whose cybernetically enhanced skeleton and musculature can’t quite make up for his lack of imagination. Later, Rahan pilots an aged sports flyer and has to outwit surveillance drones and police cruisers.

On the more cerebral side, the author indulges in some interesting speculation on space travel and colonization, genetic engineering, terraforming, politics, and more. Most of that is interesting and worth discussing over a few beers.

The Bad: Tekmar is a good concept piece and rough first draft, but it’s a long way from publication readiness. Almost all of the flaws can be traced to two insufficiencies with which I’m reasonably sure the author will agree:

Lack of depth in the English language

Before I say anything else, Lappi’s native language is Finnish, and I have nothing but respect for someone who attempts to write fiction in a foreign language. Especially in English, the linguistic Borg. I once possessed a familiarity with conversational Russian, but I couldn’t keep up with her alcohol consumption. She left me for a more attentive linguist. I’ve also picked up bits and pieces of half a dozen other languages over the years. Here’s what I finally learned: Effective communication in a foreign tongue is very difficult. Ms. Lappi has that down. Artistic communication, on the other hand, is virtually impossible for most people as they can’t even hope to accomplish it in their own language.

Ms. Lappi’s vocabulary is very simple, but that is only a problem if her target audience is adults. It’s spot on for a mid-grade audience. If she wants to write for adults, I recommend she starts reading Ursula LeGuin, Walter Miller Jr., or Dan Simmons with a dictionary at her side, looking up every interesting or unfamiliar word. (A related word of advice for all writers: Ignore readability tests. Any test that tells you Ray Bradbury wrote at a fifth grade level is worthless.)

Tekmar also has a significant number of punctuation errors, run-on sentences, double words, and awkward constructions, probably cultural and linguistic artifacts. (Let me know if you want specific examples.) Another odd thing: every instance of the character string “aining”, such as in “training” and “raining,” seems to have been replaced by “Amarng,” which looks oddly like a problem with optical character recognition software. On the plus side, there are very few spelling errors compared to most self-published work.

Lack of discipline in storytelling.

The greatest flaw in Tekmar is excessive exposition. The opening scene is fatally interrupted by pages of rambling history, disrupting the flow and dramatic tension. Many readers won’t get past the third or fourth page. Throughout the story, Ms. Lappi commits the cardinal literary sin of “telling, not showing” with abandon.

The characters are shallow. It seemed to me that Rahan and Ryn behave more like women in the secretarial pool than masculine adventurers. The Shemasharra are too perfect. That helped me sympathize with Rahan at the start, but before long I found myself hoping Ms. Lappi would kill Ryn off early. On the other hand, Kerrin was too despicable. Every bad guy needs to be admirable in some way, but he was just a low-IQ strong man with a jealous, vindictive streak. His only positive quality was surgically implanted and admittedly third rate technology. I kept looking for the mysterious slave traders to take over his role.

Finally, I was mildly annoyed with some of the technological anachronisms. For example, how can an organization that possesses artificial intelligence capable of infiltrating an entire planet’s police and military networks not have the data processing capacity to handle the incoming data from its scattered survey missions? They can build FTL starships, but they can't make a hideable security camera? I can believe this is possible, but I’d like some kind of explanation. (But show me. Don’t tell me.) This is a very common problem in science fiction, and only the best writers are able to overcome it in a way that satisfies me.

Kiti Lappi has written a fun, middle-grade adventure story, but it needs to be tightened up. If she chooses to rework it, the next draft will likely take much more time and effort than she has spent to date. The challenges aren’t insurmountable, but they are significant.

Lions Den VII: Kiti Lappi

In addition to providing attention to standout authors who are already established writers, it has always been my objective for Lions Den to give a modicum of exposure to independent authors, particularly those who read this blog and are willing to avail themselves of the chance to have their books criticized by impartial reviewers.  So, I'd encourage you to get involved in reviewing the new authors as well, and to be very blunt and forthright with your criticism so they can learn how to improve their writing. Don't be cruel or seek to provide amusement at their expense, nor handle them with kid gloves to spare their feelings. And whether you are praising them or slamming them, also show them an amount of respect for being willing to take the heat in a public manner.

Thanks, we now have the requisite three reviewers for Escape From Tekmar.

First, I want to thank Vox for giving me this opportunity. Maybe it's an opportunity to hang myself, who knows, but I'm grateful anyway.

Maybe I ought to tell a bit about myself first. I'm, in some ways, pretty much like one of the caricatures for a liberal woman - fat middle aged nerdy spinster who keeps cats and never found a man to have children with, and people usually seem to automatically put me in that box, somebody who donates to Greenpeace and marches for gay rights (okay, that I might do if it was in support of, say, Iranian gays). But I'd prefer being free even if I'm not quite sure whether I would be able to handle it, I haven't done exactly well with my life as things are (I have lived my whole life in Finland. This country tilts pretty far left, and I have to admit I don't know what actual freedom might be like. We are either somewhat coddled or somewhat smothered here, take your pick. Or maybe take both.).

I enjoy creating stories, it's something I have been doing my whole life, so whether I can turn writing into a source of income or not doesn't really matter that much on one level, I will keep on writing anyway. But when I finally caught on about the ebook revolution it made sense to see if they might even sell. On the other hand, if I am good enough that I might get where I could live on it, especially if it might turn into something I could make a good enough a living with that I'd be able to move somewhere with more sun, well, time (seasonal affective disorder, I belong to the small percentage who does get it bad so I could definitely use more sun, problem with moving: SAD also derailed all my attempts to study when I was younger, and while young manual laborers can get work aging ones are not in great demand anywhere).

I am somewhat past 50 already, and it would really suck if I actually happened to be good enough to become popular only for that to happen around the time when I need a wheelchair to go around. So in spite of being a coward I figured it might be time to start taking some chances in hopes I might speed things up a bit. Including this one.

I know this may have been an idiotic thing to do since I don't know, not really, how well I write, and the end result could be getting this novel eviscerated. The eviscerations I have read on Vox's blog have been enjoyable but I guess I would not like having one of my stories being the subject of one. But the one thing I'm sure of is that I will not have any success with anything which would require a sustained effort throughout the year. Not this far north. Believe me, I have tried. And I hate the idea of spending my entire life as a total loser. So what the hell, might as well try. I don't have that much to lose. Some pride, maybe, but not much else.

The novel is a pretty simple story, an adventure in which a young man finds himself solely responsible for something important for the first time in his life. There is a girl who is perhaps not telling him everything, and a world which is not very nice.

I have had these characters for a long time, and have some half planned stories of when the main character in this is a full adult, but I felt I wanted to start with a few of how he became that man. As said, no real idea of the quality, during the last weeks I have gone from 'ohmygod it's awful' to 'hey, it's pretty good' and back already. Can be damn hard to judge your own work.

It's science fiction, but more of the space opera kind, meaning what 'science' there may be is at best rather fluffy. But we do have starships, colony worlds which have been created by terraforming, and genetically engineered humans, so I guess the genre is science fiction.

This is the first time I have dared to try a male main protagonist. I have written two novels with female main characters before (they can be found on Amazon if you look for Kiti Lappi in Kindle books, along with a few short stories). Frankly, I'm not sure how well I get men, while I have worked in a mostly male work environments and have had a couple of friends I have never had any really close ones in my life.

Breaking expectations is one thing I like as a reader, so I have attempted to do that a bit with the universe of this story, if not so much with the plot or the characters. No idea if I have succeeded, especially since this is just a first small slice of something bigger. I have every intention of exploring this universe more.

Well, if you read the story and think I'm the next coming of Bulwer-Lytton just go ahead and say so, if I am I need to know (should perhaps adjust my strategy of how to try selling my stories). But if so I would of course appreciate if you say it politely, after all I'm not claiming to be anything I'm not. But it won't make me stop writing, telling stories is a compulsion I have never been able to get rid of (I have tried). And besides, you'll never know. After all, good old Bulwer-Lytton was a bestseller once. 

Book Review: Come and Take Them II

CK is the second to review Come and Take Them, by Tom Kratman.

Tom Kratman's Come and Take Them is an exciting continuation of his Carreraverse series, and lays some interesting foundations for future series developments. While it is possible to enjoy CATT on it's own merits, I recommend that readers read the rest of the series first, as I will explain further into the review.

Prose: 7/10  Competently done, describes the action clearly concisely and with verisimilitude. There are no particular passages that stand out as literary masterpieces. I believe that this is a deliberate stylistic choice as the main concern of the novel is to tell the story, and especially with this series, convey the ideas therein. Since this novel is as much a polemic as a story, and the author personally hates too clever by half literary pretension, the prose is deliberately stripped down. Of particular value is the description of combat, and it's vagaries. Our society has fewer and fewer people familiar with just how dangerous modern combat can be, and far too many x box warriors who think a SEAL team can kill anything. In it's own way, the stripped down, economical use of language portrays the difficulties combat more effectively by focusing on the essentials. 

Plot: 6/10  Above average, especially for military technothriller/ military scifi. Things go wrong, the Good Guys are not infallible, and the Bad Guys aren't totally incompetent. Mistakes are made on both sides, for understandable reasons. The Balboans fail to anticipate an obvious antagonists' attempt to seize power, starting the war they wished to avoid. While things go generally the way they want, serious errors are made that could have disastrous repercussions. The Taurans, despite being arrogant, vain, and encumbered by a sclerotic bureaucracy, are brave, tough and competent. and are able to inflict serious damage on their adversaries. The twists and somewhat telegraphed, and there are no major surprises, but it doesn't bog down anywhere, and enjoyable throughout.

Characters 8/10  Perhaps the author's strongest suit as a writer is the ability to create believable, fallible characters. Every major character is complex, with understandable motivations, emotions, and actions that flow logically from those motivations. Each character also has strengths as well as flaws. For instance, Raul Parilla the President of Balboa, is personally brave, honest, and loyal, yet can be indecisive and overly cautious. Admiral Wallenstein is sexually perverse, vain, and yet determined, capable and politically savvy. No one side has a lock on virtue, or on vice, and the conflict is heightened by the wholly believable goals and motivations of the characters.

Ideas 7/10  Perhaps the least ideological book the author has published, the Ideas developed earlier in the series are worked out here in a more straight forward action oriented manner. For instance the heavily ideological Amazon Legion was nearly all polemic, and the action covered there in brief is treated with more detail in this book. This however is still a Kratman book, and ideas are always behind the scenes somewhere. Readers of VP do not need to be told that our elites are perverse, vain, totalitarian, and humorless, but others might yet have faith in them. Come and Take Them demolishes that Faith rather effectively. The individual soldiers of Taurus are portrayed in an almost wholly favorable light, brave, resourceful, and tough. The leadership of Taurus, The Federated States, the Old Earth Peace Fleet, and Balboas neighbors have none of the virtues associated with maintaining civilization. This I think is the key to understanding the whole series, and why I believe that this book and the associated series are must reads for anyone interested in preserving civilization.

I rated the novel as 28/40, very good, but not a Great Book. Why do I believe this series is a must read for all civilized people? Simple, Tom Kratman is not primarily a novelist, he is a pro civilizational polemicist whose chosen medium is novels. After all Heinlein and Rand did more for libertarianism than any economics text by Rothbard, despite Rothbard's superior intellectual rigor. Stories are the best way to reach the average person, and are far more enjoyable than political tracts to read, so Tom tells stories.

Tom predicted US losses in the Middle East years ago, because we refused to recognize the nature of our enemy and act accordingly. In A Desert Called Peace and Carnifex, Tom show what an actual winning strategy would look like, and shows further why our present elite are unable to execute such a strategy for purely ideological reasons. In addition, the decadence, sexual perversion, disloyalty, and arrogance of our bankster-political elite are on display throughout the series. Tom shows some familiarity with taboo topics such as HBD and the SMP which is refreshing.  

I don't know if Tom is familiar with the Anon Conservative, but these books are a textbook of how to perform an amygdala hijack of leftist rabbits. Read negative Amazon reviews of Amazon Legion or Watch on the Rhine. Leftists literally can't comprehend the book, engage with the ideas, or even begin to refute them. For instance through the whole series, some opposition soldiers are portrayed as brave, loyal and deserving of respect, even if their leaders aren't. The Iraqi and Jihadis analogues are treated with more respect than the liberal progressive in the analogous US and EU, and they deserve it. 

This of course terrifies rabbits because they themselves are neither brave or loyal, and if the wolves they depend upon to protect them, feed them, keep them warm and make thier stuff ever have enough, they are going to die, and they know it. Note that competence while desired, is not necessarily required to be worthy of in group loyalty. For instance, the legion takes care of the totally disabled and their families, at considerable expense, because they are members of the legion. The purely transactional relationships of the elite are shown to be ultimately hollow and worthless, as are our current rabbits promises and relationships. If you value civilization and want to preserve it, you can do yourself a favor and read the Carrera Series, or anything else by Tom Kratman.

Book Review: Come and Take Them I

FP is the first to review Come and Take Them, by Tom Kratman.

Tom Kratman is one of today's premier practitioners of military-oriented fiction. His "CarreraVerse" SF series and his "Countdown" just-barely-future series both display his talents in that genre. Come And Take Them is the latest entry in the "CarreraVerse" line, wherein retired soldier Patrick Hennesey di Carrera returns to the colors in service to his adopted home of Balboa on Terra Nova, against all enemies foreign and domestic, and in so doing reshapes the politics of his world.

Terra Nova is a designed world. The hypothesized race that designed it, conventionally called the Noahs, appear to have intended it for eventual human occupancy. Whether they knew that Man would bring his legacy of strife along with him, no one can say. In any case, the inter-religious and international animosities that gave rise to so much warfare on Old Earth have found their way to the new world, and Carrera has been in the thick of them for five volumes with more to come.

The Timocratic Republic of Balboa owes its current political structure and much else to Carrera and President Raul Parilla. That structure depends heavily on the Legion del Cid, created by Carrera and Parilla to provide Balboa with a military of high quality. It has also been an instrument for the transformation of their nation, as readers of the first three books -- A Desert Called Peace, Carnifex, and The Lotus Eaters -- will already be aware.

The other nations of Terra Nova are not happy about Balboa's acquisition of such a powerful, politically dominant fighting force. To Balboa's west, the Tauran Union, a multinational alliance in the style of today's European Union but with many more soldiers and guns, seeks to impose its will on the small republic. It's an effort in which the Taurans have the support of the orbiting "Peace Fleet" from Old Earth. Nominally there only to suppress warfare below, the Peace Fleet has the additional mission of preventing Terra Nova or any of its nations from becoming capable of threatening the corrupt hereditary oligarchy that bestrides the mother world. To that end, its masters would dearly love to see the threat of Balboa put down for good.

Come And Take Them concerns itself with events before and during the Tauran Union's attempt to evict the Carrera-designed government of Balboa, and to install a puppet regime biddable by the TU's masters. Its timespan is roughly coextensive with that from the end of The Lotus Eaters through the events of The Amazon Legion. As one might expect of a novel from a specialist in military fiction, much of the book is concerned with war and the preparations for it. However, Kratman has another mission alongside that one: to depict the swelling of regret within Carrera himself over having militarized his nation, thus exposing it to the enmity of the Taurans and others.

Carrera has sickened of bloodshed, and is particularly contrite about the all but certain high price his nation will pay when it faces off against the Taurans, as he believes, correctly, it must. However, he's a soldier, bound to his profession as much by its ethic as by his aptitudes and experience. Despite the certainty of mass death, he contrives a plan by which his tiny republic can defeat the far larger Tauran Union, and in so doing create a continent-sized political upheaval that might result in a new birth of freedom for millions beyond Balboa's borders.

Come And Take Them is a big book, replete with plot subthreads and secondary adventures in which Supporting Cast characters rise to local prominence, whether they live and triumph or fail and die. There are splashes of highly colored drama throughout the action. The reader is advised to give it his full attention, perhaps with the aid of a large map of Balboa and a lot of little counters to represent the units fighting over it. A dramatis personae annotated with character sketches and timelines might also be advisable. Though it must be read slowly and with concentration to get the maximum enjoyment from its richness, the effort is amply repaid.

There will be more segments in the "CarreraVerse" series. The best way to prepare for them is to absorb this one in all its bright and gory spectacle, and to reflect on the questions that forever hang over all tests of arms: How high a price ought one to be willing to pay for one's objectives? At what point must a man, a commander, or a nation say, "Enough," and act accordingly?

The thrust of the question may change according to whether the lead is or is not already flying, but its urgency does not. From the vengeance and bloodshed of A Desert Called Peace and the steady army and nation-building of Carnifex and The Lotus Eaters, Come And Take Them continues the completion of a portrait of patriotism, heroism, and the ultimate price that must be paid in their service. Highly recommended.

Lions Den VI: Tom Kratman

As his fans already know, Tom Kratman has another volume out in his popular the Carerra military science fiction series that started with A Desert Called Peace. One can't help but like the timely name of Book Five, Come and Take Them, which many readers will recognize as the English translation of the defiant Spartan phrase "Molon Labe". As usual, if you would like to be one of the three book reviewers, please send me an email and I will send you a PDF for your review.

It is also worth mentioning that two of Tom's books are free on Kindle Select today, including the first in the Carrera series: A Desert Called Peace and Caliphate

No sense in talking about Vol. V in a series without talking about the series.

Caveat: If you're a staunch liblepr (liberal-leftist-progressive-red) the odds of you're getting through the series without suffering a fatal case of exploding brain pan are, at best, fifty-fifty.  This is hilarious, too, because the main character, in the course of creating a one export economy for a small country - the export being highly trained formations of military auxiliaries - finds that he had inadvertently done what most single export economies end up doing, creating a partial "socialist workers paradise." Nonetheless, every time someone buys one of my books a liberal, somewhere, cries or screams.  And remember: Every time a liberal cries or screams, an angel gets his wings.

I wrote the series to discuss a large number of different things and I wrote it to work at different levels, for different readings, by different people, at different times.  At one level, the first two volumes concerned how the current campaigns should have been fought and why everything has gone to shit.  Note that I predicted that before it happened, well before.  These were also books on revenge and on how one tends to become much like ones enemies.  They also discussed, incidentally, with the Cheng Ho disaster, the failed first attempt at colonization, the likelihood or lack thereof of a colonization attempt that mixed culturally incompatible peoples.

The next volume, The Lotus Eaters, was transitional and political, with a heavy dose of coup d'etat and drug war, the latter of which is a commentary on the silliness and moral cowardice of blaming impoverished Colombians and Mexicans for our societal weakness and idiocy.  The fourth concerned how to turn women into infantry, and get military use out of gays, the old-fashioned way.

Here's a very brief excerpt: 

“Gather ’round, girls,” Franco ordered. The women, all of them still in something like shock, clustered in a circle. “Sit down.”

He began to pass out red felt-tip markers. When everyone had received one, Franco began to speak.

“Okay. I want you to take your markers and I want you to draw a dotted line just like the one I am drawing on my wrist.”

Franco drew a six inch long series of red dots lengthwise down his left wrist. “Everyone done with that? Good. Now draw another one on the other wrist . . . Done? Good. Let me see. Very good. Now there’s no excuse.

“You see, women threaten suicide and even act it out rather frequently, but you fail so often to carry through that I am forced to question your sincerity and competence as a sex. Therefore . . .”

Franco turned toward the door. He tossed a package of razor blades to the floor on his way out.

“Trujillo!” he called over one shoulder. “Collect up the markers in that box and put them by my office door. Anybody who wants a razor blade, just help yourself.  ‘Cut along dotted line.’”

At still another level - and it's a shame, you'll agree, that "literary fiction" is invariable concerned with mere style and never with sophisticated thought - we have something very like the world of today - called with deliberate lack of imagination, "Terra Nova" - engaged in war against the world of tomorrow, Old Earth, a hellish nightmare of UN, EU, NGO, and Quango dominated oligarchy, to prevent that kind of oligarchy from arising on the new world.  At yet another level, it's about demographic change, and what that does to societies, not merely as a result of who comes in, but also about who leaves.

This volume is about that war or, rather, it's beginnings.  You'll have to either take my word for it or read the previous four volumes, there's no Deus ex Machina in there nor in the next one.  Everything - I mean every goddamned thing - was presaged in the previous books. I doubt there has ever been a novel or series about war on the grand scale as thoroughly staffed as these.

There is one jarring - albeit quite deliberate - thing in there, the degree to which the new world resembles the old, physically and politically.  As said, it's deliberate and by no means thoughtless or lazy; it was harder to do this than to set up a completely new scheme.  Here's an edited/redacted version of something I wrote to someone on that:

"[The planet is] a game preserve / wildlife refuge... Again, I would have thought that would be obvious but…well…maybe not so much as I’d thought.

Now if a group has the power to link galaxies (as far as we know), and intends to (as far as we can tell), and intends to set up a wildlife preserve, going so far as to genengineer plant life to poison intelligent life (as far as we know), one would expect them to want the wildlife to prosper, no? That requires similar weather, yes? And so what is surprising about people who can link galaxies also lifting up land masses to get the right kind of weather?

That actually wasn’t going to be the case, but someone pointed me to an article – the title was something to the effect of “We’re all Panamanians” - that made the case that it was changes in weather patterns arising from the rise of the Isthmus of Panama that led to the evolution of, among other life forms, us. Once I started thinking about that, I realized that, yes, if you’ve got godlike power and you intend to set up a wildlife preserve on another planet, you’re going to have to do something about the weather, which will require changing the terrain.

As far as similar names, do you really think that's unrealistic? I mean, I thought I was born in Boston, named for Boston, England, in New England, named for England, next to New York, named for York, which had once had a city named New Amsterdam, named for....oh, well, maybe I was born and raised somewhere else and it's all an illusion and people never, never – what never? No, never! – never name a new settlement for home... ;)

The nations didn't just happen to be settled. If you read with some care, you can see that there was a deliberate movement to get all the old fashioned nationalist types off of Earth. What's hard about that? They did, of course, try to set up a monocultural planet, but that failed with the Cheng Ho disaster. (Funny how people miss that no one ever answered Rodney King’s question.) Why? Because I would (and did) expect it to fail.

Let me turn that around; given the Cheng Ho disaster, why would they group themselves differently than on old Earth? Why would anyone risk their lives by mixing? Given the desire of sundry transnationalists to get the old fashioned types off of Earth, why wouldn’t they learn from the Cheng Ho disaster and accommodate emigrants’ desire to be with others like themselves? I think the burden’s on you, or anyone, who objects to the scheme to answer those questions.

Besides, the easy sci fi assumption of monocultural planets may come to pass when there are enough planets discovered to give one to everybody. But when it’s only one? No, it’s going to be partitioned, sort of like the Pope partitioned what we call Latin America.

What point to doing it the way I did? Because I wanted the reader to be able to read the book / series at several different levels, one of which was commentary on the here and now. I said that pretty much expressly in that opening blurb, “Unless you want to.” (In other words, “Yes, go right ahead.”) "

And that's enough about that.  Read.  Criticize.  If you bitch about typos, this being a galley proof not a final edited copy, you can run but you can't hide.

Book review: Lights in the Deep

LD provides a second look at Brad Torgersen's Lights in the Deep:

I went into this with two disadvantages: I wasn't at all familiar with the author, and I haven't regularly read short form science fiction for many, many years. I ended up enjoying this collection nonetheless.

Diving into these stories quickly reminded me why I'm not as big a fan of short stories as I used to be--the limitations in form itself. As a young man I would devour short stories, but just about any author, but particularly Larry Niven, Heinlein, Zelazy, Keith Laumer, Robert Sheckley, and other similar authors. Back then, quick dips into short stories appealed to me, but now that I'm an old man, I find my tastes trending toward larger sized (huge) Space Operas from Peter F. Hamilton, Neal Asher, Alastair Reynolds, etc.

The only recent short story collections I had read were by Hamilton, and those were related for the most part to the various novels he's written, so this was my first dive into a collection like this in years.

I'll make quick comments about each entry in the collection and then give my summary.

The Three Introductions - I read them, but I couldn't tell you a thing about them now. They were nice, but didn't contain anything memorable. Neither a plus, nor a minus to the whole.

Outbound - Quite a good story, one that I would have been happy to see expanded to novel length. For me the downsides were the brevity of this story... I wanted more detail about this setting.

Gemini 17 - A nice exploration of a *slightly* alternate history. Fun story with a good, humorous ending.

Influences: Allan Cole and Chris Bunch - I'm not familiar with either author, but it's always nice to see the influences in an author's background.

The Bullfrog Radio Astronomy Project - Be careful what you transmit or the Men in Black (or are they) will come for you. It brought back memories of laughing at the Art Bell show.

Exiles of Eden - Another nice story. I figured out what was happening before the characters did. It's an interesting concept that you'll be familiar with if you've read Alastair Reynolds "Revelation Space" novels.

Writer Dad: Mike Resnick - More background on the author.

Footprints - A character piece. Perhaps a bit too "literary" for my tastes.

The Exchange Officers - This excellent story is the polar opposite of most of the previous stories. It has action, combat, technology, and less emphasis on memories, and feelings. Perhaps my second favorite story in the collection.

Essay: On the Growth of Fantasy and the Waning of Science Fiction - An excellent subject to discuss that's quite relevant to my own thoughts and tastes. I'm NOT a fantasy fan. I've read Lord of the Rings once, and that was quite enough for me thank you. I enjoy the Game of Thrones TV show, but my attempt to start reading the first novel resulted in boredom and sleepytime. I'm a HARD SF kinda guy, and this essay covers some of the things that bug me with current SF/Fantasy--I hate Star Wars, especially the second trilogy, I only liked the original Star Trek, anyone who likes Avatar is an Ava-tard in my book. My opinion is that the growth of fantasy reflects the decline of STEM in modern American society. Fantasy is perfect for those with less than a firm grasp on science.

The Chaplain's Assistant - A return to a "character-based" story. Interesting, but ultimately boring to me. I was not enthused to find out that the next long story in this collection was a sequel to this.

The Chaplain's Legacy - My lack of enthusiasm for the previous story caused me to put the entire collection down for a few days, but I had volunteered to review this book for Vox, so I did my duty and read the story. The good news is that I liked this much more than the previous short, though in my opinion the size could have been condensed.

The Hero's Tongue: Larry Niven - Of all of the essays in the book, this one was the most enjoyable for me because of my own fondness for Niven.

Exanastasis - Interesting, enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable.

Ray of Light - The final story of the collection and probably my favorite. There were points in this story where I thought it was going to break badly, but the story didn't go in the direction I thought it would end up, and I enjoyed it a lot.

The last story really brought my opinion of the whole collection back up from a low spot. I enjoy Torgerson's writing style, and I will look up some of his longer work, but probably not the forthcoming "Chaplain" story.

I'd give this collection a solid 3 out of 5 stars.

Book Review: Tour of Duty II

BW reviews Michael Z. Williamson's Tour of Duty.

Tour of Duty is a pretty decent collection of short stories by Michael Z. Williamson. I enjoyed it. The sci-fi was detailed and exciting. The short stories set in hell didn’t fail to drag out a chuckle or two. Crazy Einar was a particular favorite. If I was a more barbarous man I’d take his advice, find the perfect ax for a large Germanic man’s rampage and enjoy ‘spoils’.

I hadn’t heard of Michael Z. Williamson and his Freehold except in passing, nor, sad as it may be, the Valdemar universe. This likely wasn’t the best introduction to either. There is a lack of context in my mind. I know that there’s some sci-fi things happening, and the hints of the people and events outside the small viewpoint are tantalizing. I wanted more.

His skill seems to be in the military recounting and strong realism. There’s strong organization in the tales. His past in the military comes out in the many science fiction short stories and personal tales. Military people writing fiction about military things adds a feeling that isn’t in non-military writers. Each story has precision to it, no word wasted or gained, which I favor.

As the other reviewer mentioned, this is a difficult book to review, so I’ll focus on my two favorites.

I mentioned the ‘Lawyers in Hell’ before, but I thought that ‘A Hard Day At The Office’ was superior. Hellfrica seems a terrible place, yet appropriate. Anyone can make a story about lawyers in hell, it takes a lot more effort to kill Theodore Roosevelt. Death had to take him in his sleep, after all, and being crushed by a giant hellefino is not exactly a worse fate.

The reason I enjoyed this story was not Teddy Roosevelt, it was the underlying humor of it all. Lawyers on pogo sticks are funny. The hopelessness of always losing your employers to the crazy hell-versions of animals has depth to it. And you’ve got to admit, having to face down something called a hellephant with a pea-shooter has a certain appeal. The best portion of the story are the hunters themselves. Each one somehow aware, or not caring, that they will die. Each one with motivations beyond simply surviving in Hell, making them larger than life, and maybe even more complex characters than the protagonist himself. At the end of the story the protagonist learns little and is no better off than he was before. Perhaps, that is hell.

The second story I felt worth mentioning is the first fiction. For a while I was confused as to the main character’s species and other facets of the story. But as it evolved, I got to see the motivations of the character. I got to look into an alien mind. Usually, those peeks are just giant ‘humans are bad’ or ‘different’ stories with the aliens having human tendencies and feelings. It’s similar to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s The Mote in God’s Eye, with the aliens being nearly without human traits and needing to imitate us, rather than develop new concepts on shared culture, to interact.

The main characters concepts of ‘duty’ and hunting spoke to me, in a way. It’s a theme of the universe, society cannot survive without those who do their duty. At the same time, it cannot have a hope to achieve victory without those willing to make the sacrifice. The terror of the soldiers was palpable, and the militaristic approach they attempted struck me as very realistic, but I did expect even one of them to survive. All in all, it was a great experience.

I got to admit that while I usually had very little of the overall contexts of the universes he wrote in and for, I did enjoy what little I saw. While I won’t recommend it to anybody. To the fans of Micheal Z. Williamson, go for it you bold beautiful bastards. If you’re not, this won’t be more than an enjoyable sightseeing tour. I’m not going to rate it with a number because of that reason. A couple short stories are a good 5/5, but not all of them.

Book Review: Lights in the Deep I

CL provides the initial take on Brad Torgersen's anthology, Lights in the Deep:

The SF/F genre is one I’ve enjoyed for years and am a fan of Larry Niven.  Stories like ‘Ringworld’ and ‘Neutron Star’ captured my imagination.  So, after reading Torgersen’s self-described style being like Niven’s, and the hope of finding a great-read in a genre I enjoy, I took the plunge and volunteered to provide a review.

Lights in the Deep is a compilation of 10 short stories, all previously published.  It begins with 3 glowing reviews of Torgersen’s writing and story telling ability by veteran publishers/editors he has worked with.  After reading these introductory reviews, my hopes for an enjoyable experience were raised even further.

What could there be not to like?  Niven-type Sci-Fi.  Praise from veteran Sci-Fi publishers and editors.  Short stories, which make for quick reading and lots of variety.  Sounds like the perfect setup for either the discovery of a new treasure or deep disappointment.

It is with sadness that the verdict is ‘deep disappointment’. The disappointment stems from three issues and one ironic observation.  The issues: pointless stories, the inclusion of ‘the story behind the story’ after each tale, and rampant political correctness.  The ironic observation will be summarized later.

Having reviewed the disappointments, it must be noted there are positive aspects of the book.  Torgersen writes very well.  Story pace, literary elements and vocabulary are all really superb.  I kept thinking, “This guy writes well.  Maybe the next story will have a message, meaning, challenge, etc.”  But the next story failed to deliver and then it was on to the next.

Of the 10 tales, there are a couple stories that are somewhat engaging.  The issue of “pointless stories” infected every tale.  Whether the story is pure Sci-Fi or alternate history, there is not an underlying moral challenge, message, belief explosion or anything that made me sit back and ponder or question or exclaim.  Each telling concludes and its just over.  No surprises, no deus ex machina, no anger or relief, just an end to the words.

Unfortunately, the words didn’t really end.  After each tale, Torgersen then tells another tale about how the story came to be and who published it.  This was like rubbing salt in the wound.  As I was scratching my head asking why I spent 30-60 minutes reading the just concluded story, I then had to endure the history of how the story came to be.

The ‘story behind the story’ can be interesting, if the story itself leaves one: moved, pondering, angry, motivated, enlightened, etc.  But here, I left with the same feeling one gets after watching the vacation slide show of a family you don’t know, “That must have been nice for you, but I don’t really care.”

Next was the rampant Political Correctness.  These ranged from Black-American male and a Soviet-Jewish woman astronauts in the ‘60’s, to female commanders, a female President of the U.S., female battle marines, Asian business owners, etc., etc., etc.  I can take the occasional challenge to stereotypes, especially when it is backed with an underlying purpose, but when most characters are an anti-stereotype it seems to be attacking your basic perception of things as racist or bigoted, for no reason at all.

This feeling arose because there never was a reason why each person had to be identified in the anti-stereotypical way.  There was no background, benefit or reason why the heroine in the first story or the astronaut in the second had to be black.  Why a Jewish woman astronaut in the ‘60’s? How did knowing the businessman was Asian in a later story add anything?  Why a female base-commander?  Because these are short stories, the addition of the anti-stereotypical characteristics seemed forced in simply for the purpose of being P.C. not because they were relevant to conveying a point.

I was left with the impression that either Torgersen majored in women’s studies or feels anti-stereotypes are necessary in order to be published by today’s liberal publishing houses.  Either way, too much PC in any story, but especially in a short story, makes it seem silly.  In one very short story we have a female president, female base commander and female marine.  Rather than Sci-Fi, it felt like Fem-Fi instead.

This brings us to the final point, the ironic observation.  In the middle of the book, Torgersen writes an essay on why he believes Sci-Fi readership is dwindling, even as Fantasy readership remains strong.  He cites two reasons: our technological advances make Sci-Fi less ‘fantastic’ and the secularization of Sci-Fi has resulted in most Sci-Fi lacking an underlying morality or purpose for the story.

What makes this ironic is the lack of an underlying purpose or morality in the stories contained in this book!  There are several attempts to mention God, but they seemed thrown in, rather than meaningful additions to the plot.  So, Torgersen is correct.  One reason Sci-Fi is dying is because many formerly avid readers are longing for purpose and meaning to be conveyed in a story.

However, Torgersen missed another major reason for the failure of modern Sci-Fi.  Namely, Political Correctness, of which these stories are supporting evidence.  Too often today, Sci-Fi authors are constrained by PC to take the story to its logical PC conclusion.  Their worlds are turned upside down, where warriors are women, back-stabbing politicians are women, the random support character has to be gay or a kid with a middle-eastern mother and a Polish father.  The fact the author has to add these character descriptions are proof they are forced.

I submit the real reason Sci-Fi is dying on the vine, is because Sci-Fi has become the realm in which the liberal vision of how humanity ‘should be’ is presented to the public and the public rejects it.  Based on these stories Torgersen has fallen into the same PC failure trap.  If he can escape, and then add the purpose and meaning he notes is missing from Sci-Fi today, then he definitely has the literary prowess to become an excellent author.

Lions Den V: Brad Torgersen

Brad Torgersen is an award-winning author who was nominated for the Campbell, Hugo, and Nebula awards in 2012.  Due to his failure to be sufficiently vibrant, irreligious, or other adjective indicative of the Left's various totems, he found himself the subject of an SFWA hate campaign to deny him the awards which bore certain similarities to my own experience with that organization. Review volunteers are now in, thank you.

Lights in the Deep is the product of three years of effort, plus one long summer of editing, proofing, packaging, and wrap-up.  It contains ten different pieces of short science fiction, all previously published in either Analog magazine, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show magazine, or L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers and Illustrators of the Future, vol. XXVI. This collection is my first “best of” album, and features my Writers of the Future award winner, my Analog readers’ choice award winner, and my Hugo and Nebula nominee.

I believe my job is to entertain the reader, and provide the reader with a worthwhile, uplifting experience.  I don’t write stories to shock, challenge, make the reader squirm, or (Lord help us) raise awareness.  I do write stories with the idea that “scientifiction” is about the science as much as it is about the fiction.  Since Larry Niven was perhaps my most influential template in this regard, I try to tell interesting stories featuring engaging characters, set in universes which are plausibly founded on science as we know it.  And if I stray from science as we know it, I work hard to keep my extrapolations consistent, and only bend the rules if it makes sense for them to be bent.

In related news, Larry Correia is lighting a fuse for a book bomb on Mr. Torgersen's behalf. He explains:

"Why does Brad deserve a Book Bomb?

"First off, he’s actually an extremely good writer. Brad is the guy who was nominated for the Hugo, Campbell, and Nebula award, all at the same time, and who was then swiftly attacked, maligned, and sabotaged by the inner clique of literati douchebags because he was 1. Military. 2. An outspoken conservative. 3. Openly religious. 4. White and thus incapable of being a ”real” writer."