We've seen the other two sides of this game, let's look in on the third side... ----- Chapter 3. Shagrath: You have still not located him. The thought was a statement, not a question; Shagrath knew that his allies would have told him instantly had they even a guess where Varan was. The point was to drive home the fact that though many things were going according to plan, there was still a dangerous random factor going unchecked. Not located. Departed for unknown destination, galaxy is wide, wide, and none of [ Continue reading... ]
Demons of the Past: REVOLUTION, Chapter 2
August 31, 2018 By Leave a Comment
So, Varan was on his way in The Eonwyl's ship... ------- Chapter 2 Varan: "You're good at that." I glanced toward my feet and a little outward – carefully, to keep from bashing my head against the access hatch – to see the Eönwyl looking up at me. "I've seen a fair amount of action out on the border, and a lot of it before I was commanding. Replacing shield coils and crystal matrices gets to be pretty much a habit." That won a quick, bright smile from her. "A duty, but one that a lot of people aren't [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon
May 29, 2018 By 3 Comments
Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon make up the Great Migration dualogy, a pair of books unique in the Liaden canon by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller in that they take place entirely before all of the other books – in fact, before Liad existed. Because the "Great Migration" was a far greater, and stranger, migration than has ever been seen before. Cantra yos'Phelium is a trader – a hard-bitten independent trader who plays in the gray-to-even-black market, because she has a number of secrets in her past that she really doesn't want looked into. [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Mick Oberon
May 8, 2018 By Leave a Comment
The Mick Oberon series by Ari Marmell is a common recommendation to those who enjoyed Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. And there are certainly a lot of similarities. The following description applies, more or less, to both: A wisecracking PI who happens to use magic as well as more traditional methods keeps getting mixed up in magical hijinks out of his league in his home town of Chicago. His magic, unfortunately, conflicts with the newer gadgetry of the modern world, and he often tries to avoid having to use said gadgets. He may be considered [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Legend of Korra
May 3, 2018 By Leave a Comment
Earth. Fire. Air. Water. Only the Avatar can master all four elements and bring balance to the world. I hadn't ever watched much of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I knew it had been a successful series which spawned a well-thought-of sequel series. As I've been deliberately looking for things to show my daughters that star women heroes, and they like animated shows, The Legend of Korra looked like a good bet. It was. As stated in the quote above, while there are four elements that have their own "benders" – earthbenders, [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Martian
May 1, 2018 By 2 Comments
The Martian by Andy Weir almost managed to lose me in the first few pages. Now, that's not so bad as it sounds. As an author who's written a hard-SF novel focused on Mars (Boundary), I came to The Martian with a terrible handicap: I know a lot more about this than probably 99.9% of readers. And one thing that I know very well – that is, in fact, made explicitly clear in one of the scenes of Boundary, in which our intrepid adventurers end up going through a Martian tornado/dust devil which happens to be going at about 180km/hr, faster than [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Ready Player One
April 19, 2018 By Leave a Comment
I'd heard of this book (by Earnest Cline) off and on for years, but seeing a movie released caused me to actually pick it up and read it. Wade Watts, AKA Parzival, lives in the culmination, or perhaps nadir, of development of the trailer park – the "stacks", where trailers have been literally stacked to heights of twenty or more, sheltering the desperate and displaced in a world where a combination of climate change and energy depletion has caused the collapse of American society and most of the rest of the world. It is a dystopian, [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Aeronaut’s Windlass
April 12, 2018 By Leave a Comment
I've previously reviewed the Dresden Files and the first couple of volumes of Jim Butcher's Codex Alera (both of which I enjoyed a lot). The Aeronaut's Windlass begins a new series, The Cinder Spires. This may be Jim Butcher's most ambitious series. Dresden's adventures take place in a world that looks very much like ours, and the basic setup is easily understood, even if the supernatural underbelly of the world is complicated and often obscured to the reader. Codex Alera takes place on a world that is at least generally Earthlike and with a [ Continue reading... ]
French Roast Apocalypse: Chapter 19
April 10, 2018 By 1 Comment
We learned a bit more about why the Blackwells are hated... in this chapter, we get to meet another one... ----- Chapter 19. New York City, 1980 “Congratulations, Dyl, you passed your second history exam,” Tina said, leaning against the Muffin House display case. “There actually is a brain in that head of yours.” She smiled and tapped her temple with a thin finger. In her other hand, she held out the purple-dittoed test sheet. A red-ink "85%" was circled at the top. On the table behind her was a stack of books and a binder. For [ Continue reading... ]
Demons of the Past:Revelation, Chapter 30
April 9, 2018 By 9 Comments
And we conclude our snippets of this volume of Demons with an extremely important chapter! ----- Chapter 30. Varan: Torline's Swords, it's been a long day. I thought. Now I get to rest. I headed wearily for my cabin. My Captain's cabin. That did manage to bring a faint smile to my lips still. Other things… I was still awfully conflicted. The depression at my loss wasn't going to go any time soon, that was for sure. I wondered if I'd managed to hide that from Taelin. It wasn't something I could talk about, so I had to hope so. [ Continue reading... ]
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