The third anthology in the Black Tide Rising universe. As with the previous two, there’s good and there’s bland. Fun if you’re a fan of the universe.
We Shall Rise (Black Tide Rising IX) – by John Ringo & Gary Poole G(Ed.)
Time Trials – M.A. Rothman & D.J. Butler
Linguist and Egyptologist Marty Cohen has been pushed out of academia for spurious reasons and now runs a custom furniture store. An old colleague begs him to come to a new dig in Egypt where very curious writing has been found. At the dig, Marty and a few of the team are transported back to pre-dynastic Egypt. But things take an even stranger turn as mythical creatures turn out to exist, at least in this version of the past.
The novel is a serviceable and enjoyable Alternate History adventure, especially if you have some interest in Ancient Egypt history. It never becomes really epic, focusing instead on the dynamics of the small group of time travelers.
Into the Real (TransDimensional Hunter I) – John Ringo and Lydia Sherrer
Lynn Raven is a rather reclusive high schooler in a society that encourages virtual interaction. She is overweight and has self-esteem issues. She is also secretly “Larry Coughlin,” one of the top players of Warmonger, an online first-person shooting game, and makes good money playing it. She is contacted by Warmonger’s developers to be part of testing for a new augmented reality (AR) game called TransDimentional Hunter. But this would require her to get out there “in the real”, since the game is played in real locales using virtual reality technology. For Lynn, being visible at all causes anxiety. Things get worse when she has to become part of a team.
This is not a typical John Ringo book, as it is firmly seated in the Young Adult arena. An entertaining romp and coming of age story, with a darker and deeper background story, no doubt to be explored in future installments, being strongly hinted at.
Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs Of Legendary Ace Robin Olds – Robin Olds, with Christina Olds and Ed Rasimus
Robin Olds was the consummate fighter pilot. Bold, brave, decisive, inspiring, and impatient with bureaucracy. His career began in World War Two, flying Lightings and Mustangs, and was capped off with a legendary tour in Vietnam, flying Phantoms.
The events recounted are historically very interesting, especially the Vietnam War narrative. Unfortunately, though, Mr. Olds and his co-authors are not very inspiring writers. It is all quite plain, gruff and direct, probably much like the man himself. There is also a lot of fighter pilot jargon that goes largely unexplained, making many passages difficult to decipher. This book could have used an editor, or a helpful collaborating ghostwriter, to make the prose and structure more interesting. It turned into a slog of a read despite content that should have been riveting.
Grunt – The Curious Science of Humans at War – Mary Roach
Exploring such varied subjects as developing crash test dummies for IED simulation, stomach upsets in a war zone, sleep deprivation, and submarine rescue, this is a fascinating and oftentimes hilarious book.
Ms. Roach’s signature dry humour is very much on display as she asks pointed questions that unravel the ostensibly serious subject matter. Interesting whether the reader is into military science or not.
Inhibitor Phase (Revelation Space IV)
Along with a few thousand other refugees from the Wolves, or Inhibitors, Miguel de Ruyter has quite literally carved out a life on the airless world of Sun Hollow. Humanity’s starfaring civilisation is lost, and the remains hide in the shadows, hoping not to be noticed. Sun Hollow’s inhabitants do not really have a plan beyond surviving the morrow; this is a bleak and rough existence. A ship has entered the system, and Miguel must intercept and destroy it at great risk to himself, for even potentially friendly humans may be Wolves in disguise. Out of this encounter emerges Glass, a mysterious woman who steals Miguel away to a reckoning with a past he has purposefully forgotten, and with humanity’s only hope of escaping extinction.
Published almost two decades after the Revelation Space trilogy, this serves as something of an epilogue. Human civilisation has waned into blackness, and there is an accepting despair about things. Not even the Ultras travel between stars anymore, because even small emissions could lead the Wolves to the door, and there is no weapon that can combat them.
The concepts of Miguel and his past self reintegrating, and of Glass herself and her connection, are superbly intriguing. Unfortunately though, the novel is far too long. Many pages are spent on meandering explorations of the sense of self, or the sense of other-self. While the quest for a weapon to fight back against the Wolves is interesting in itself, this excessive length detracted very much from my interest, and I struggled to finish the book.
Absolution Gap (Revelation Space III) – Alastair Reynolds
In the last book of the Revelation Space trilogy, humanity is in disarray as the Inhibitors ravage space. But there is a glimmer of hope, a young child named Aura seems to have a connection with entities that can help. As the story unfolds on the refugee world of Ararat, and the religious pilgrimage destination Moon of Hela, tired remnants of humanity must make fateful decisions about how to approach the resources presented to them. Who can be trusted?
This is a long and sprawling book, and it feels rather ponderous. Mr. Reynolds’s prose is as engaging as ever, but many digressions, tangents, and diversions are overlong. The obsession with Scorpio’s mortality, the machinations of the Quaicheist church, the extensive details on the madness of Quaiche himself, to name a few things, are explored somewhat excessively at the expense of moving the story forward. For much of the novel, it feels as if nothing is really moving, or perhaps things are moving as slowly as one of the cathedrals on Hela. The Inhibitors themselves seem like a distant threat, so it is hard to work up a real sense of dread for them, even if the survival of humanity itself is at stake. As a conclusion to the trilogy, it is somewhat unsatisfying, even if the personal journeys of the characters come to a conclusion.
At the End of the Journey (Black Tide Rising VIII) – Charles E. Gannon
Following the events in At the End of the World, Alvaro and the now augmented group continue towards their mission, penetrating the Guiana Space Centre launch facility at Kourou in French Guiana in order to prevent the rapid deterioration of GPS. There’s just one catch, Kourou is overrun with infected.
Like the first book in the couplet, this provides decent action without much originality or depth. It is easy to root for the protagonists and to mourn their losses. A quick and easy read if you enjoyed the rest of the series.
At the End of the World (Black Tide Rising VII) – Charles E. Gannon
Geeky late teenager Alvaro is sent off on a long sailboat cruise, more akin to a youth camp. He joins a motley group of peers on the Crosscurrent Voyager, an oceangoing ketch. The captain is an enigmatic and dour Englishman, with a past in the special forces. The group is mid-journey in the Southeastern Pacific at the time of The Fall. As the world descends into zombie-fed apocalypse, the captain decides to press past Cape Horn to South Georgia Island, hoping for a temporary respite.
While the novel is reasonably entertaining if you enjoyed the previous books in the series, there is not much originality on display. The concept of teens left alone in a crisis is well utilised. However, these youngsters seem unusually rational and insightful for their age. A fun diversion with some action thrown in.
Factfulness – Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think – Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund
Factfulness was written by a team of Swedish researchers at the Gapminder Foundation. Its aim is to use data to explain the world, and why most people have very skewed impressions about it. By asking targeted questions about infant mortality, education levels, disease, and so forth, the authors open up to discussions about what the world is really like, and where it is going. They also analyze and explain why our instincts often lead us in the wrong direction. A toolkit of sorts is laid out to help the reader be more “factful”.
The late Dr. Rosling first rose to fame with a Ted talk in which he challenged the preconceptions of the audience, using unambiguous and clear data presented in an engaging manner. His infectious enthusiastic manner shines through in the writing. The subject matter is ostensibly rather dry, but the authors make it fun, using interesting anecdotes from aid work around the world to raise questions. The chapters are short and punchy, ensuring the reader doesn’t lose interest.
A book which I would recommend to anyone, as everyone can use some Factfulness in their life.
Deep Navigation – Alastair Reynolds
A collection of Alastair Reynolds novelettes and short stories, a few of which also feature in Beyond the Aquila Rift. The anthology is a mix of everything from post-apocalyptic tales to deep deep future wonders.
As ever, Reynolds impresses with his mastery of the short fiction genre. The often mind bending concepts are always refined into their significance on people. This makes them resonate strongly with the reader.
Century Rain – Alastair Reynolds
In Paris in 1959, private investigator Wendell Floyd is retained to look into the mysterious death of an American woman. In a parallel story thread set hundreds of years in the future, archeologist Verity Auger comes upon a strange map of twentieth-century Paris, with missing details. Is this the same Paris as the one in her history?
The parts of the story set in 1959 Paris, clearly inspired by Casablanca, read somewhat like the plot of a classic detective noir film. The old flame. The gumshoe detective. The uncomfortable relationship with the police. The rain. It is utterly charming and nostalgic. The parts of the story set in the future are pure Reynolds. Unfortunately, they don’t always mesh well. Mr. Reynolds has come up with a fantastic premise, but perhaps due to the setup, the conclusion feels somewhat forced, though the actual ending is quite satisfying. I felt as if the book was perhaps overlong, and some plot aspects which were not revealed until the last third, seemed overly complex.
Nevertheless, Mr. Reynolds’s marvelous prose and rich, three-dimensional characters are always enjoyable.
Aurora – Kim Stanley Robinson
Over a hundred and fifty years into their voyage, the inhabitants of a generation starship are only a decade out from the Tau Ceti star system. Despite the massive size of the ship, delicate ecological cycles have been slowly deteriorating over the decades. After arrival, more serious problems crop up with the colonisation effort. The issues are so severe that the colonists are faced with deciding whether to stay, or attempt a return to Earth. Both options are fraught with risk.
While the novel ostensibly chronicles the life of a single inhabitant, Freya, it is also fair to say that the AI running the ship is as much a protagonist. Ship, as it prefers to call itself (or is it themselves) develops over time under the ministrations of Freya’s mother Devi, and much of the novel deals with the emergence of its consciousness. Indeed, many pages are spent debating the nature of consciousness and sentience. Is Ship truly sentient? Can a purportedly sentient being even know if it is sentient?
A lot of time is also spent on the suitability attempting to colonise other star systems, or even other planets in the Solar System. Mr. Robinson’s ultimate answer to this question is rather surprising, but hopeful in its own way.
The narrative feels somewhat impersonal, as if the reader is kept at a distance from the protagonist and even the action. This seems to be a conscious choice on the part of Mr. Robinson, given that the story is told in the voice of Ship itself, even as Ship’s understanding of language and humans develops. An interesting narrative device, and finely implemented.
River of Night (Black Tide Rising VI) – John Ringo & Mike Massa
The sequel to The Valley of Shadows follows Tom Smith, Risky, Astroga and the rest after their escape from New York. The plan is to establish a settlement with adequate defenses, and also very importantly electrical power. However, a band calling itself Gleaners, set up by a scruple-deprived man called Harlan Green, has similar plans. And they lack the morals of Tom’s group.
The zombies are still around in this installment, but they act more like nuisance monsters than a major threat. Fittingly, the biggest danger to humans is other humans. There is some fine action as always, with a major set piece battle capping the book.
The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians I) – Rick Riordan
Twelve-year old Perseus “Percy” Jackson goes to a boarding school because of learning difficulties. And odd stuff keeps happening, such as when he accidentally vaporises one of his teachers while on a field trip. As it turns out, Percy is a demi-god, and soon finds himself in all sorts of trouble with the ancient Greek Pantheon.
The story is clever, and the writing snappy. For a young adult reader, the protagonist is readily identifiable. The idea of using Greek Mythology and applying it to the modern day is inspired. I enjoyed the story, but did find myself annoyed at the sometimes excessive pandering to younger readers and their (perceived) tastes.
Voices of the Fall (Black Tide Rising V½) – by John Ringo & Gary Poole (ed.)
A collection of short stories set in the Black Tide Rising universe. As with the first collection, the quality is mixed, but as a whole the book is entertaining for fans of the series.
Permafrost – Alastair Reynolds
In the not too distant future, a cascading ecological apocalypse has ended all food production. Humanity is down to stored rations, and there is no future. Mathematician Valentina Lidova is recruited to a remote research facility, where scientists are attempting practical time travel into the past, with a twist.
Mr. Reynolds’s fluid style makes the narrative of this bleak novella shine despite the grim setting and themes. The concept of inertia as history is changed, as well as the fact that characters’ memories are altered mid-paragraph due to chances, makes things potentially quite confusing for the reader, but that is not a problem here.
Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds – Alastair Reynolds
This massive collection contains most of
As ever with this author, the prose is polished, the characters are deep and interesting, and the concepts are often awe-inspiring. A nice read in parts and as a whole.
The Valley of Shadows (Black Tide Rising V) – John Ringo & Mike Massa
In Under a Graveyard Sky, Faith and Sophia spend some time on Manhattan helping out their uncle Tom Smith. This book is the full story of how Tom and his security team at a major Wall Street bank handled the zombie apocalypse, from the first reports to the total collapse of civilisation.
Far from just filling out the story of a side character, Mr. Ringo and Mr. Massa tell a compelling story, firmly establishing Tom Smith as a major protagonist in his own right. While he naturally shares character traits with his brother Steve, he is not a carbon copy.
The story takes place against the backdrop of Wall Street, and the authors have really captured the feeling of the environment. Investment bankers tend to be smart, driven, and analytical. The response to a zombie apocalypse is rational, but also mired in internal politics. Inevitably, the situation devolves, meaning more action and less analysis, but that is not a bad thing. The action scenes are excellent and some of the ZAMMIEs (Zombie Apocalypse Moments) are hilarious.
House of Suns – Alastair Reynolds
Six
Purslane and Campion are two
The premise is interesting, tackling the tricky concept of deep time and societal survival. Is it possible for a planet-bound civilisation, or even an interstellar empire, to sustain its own existence beyond a few tens of thousands of years? And what of consciousness, machine or biological. How can these handle intervals of millions of years, even if many are spent in suspended animation?
Unfortunately, too much of the story depends on reactions to events that happened previously, which are revealed piecemeal in massive and awkward infodumps. The plot will grind to a halt as a character expounds for pages and pages on events of five
Saints (Monster Hunter Memoirs III) – Larry Correia & John Ringo
In the third and final (?) Monster Hunter Memoirs book, Chad finds a great evil lurking under New Orleans, which might explain the unusual density of supernatural events in the city. He suspects this might be why Saint Peter sent him back to Earth after his death. A showdown approaches.
Saints wraps up the series, but the teasing final sentence opens up to more adventures in perhaps not a direct sequel but another spin-off. While there are some rambling tangents, Ringo’s prose is as always filled with great action scenes and bone-dry humour.
Elysium Fire (Prefect Dreyfus Emergency II) – Alastair Reynolds
Some time after the events in The Prefect/Aurora Rising, a new crisis is brewing in the Glitter Band. Random citizens are having their brains “fried” by their electronic implants. As Dreyfus and the other Panoply operatives investigate the links between victims, they find links to an old and very distinguished Yellowstone family.
While a solid and enjoyable novel, this one lacks the panache of “The Prefect”. The mystery feels contrived and doesn’t lead to any sort of even half-epic conclusion. That being said, Mr. Reynolds’s prose is a pleasure to read as usual, and the characters are interesting and engaging.
The Prefect AKA Aurora Rising (Prefect Dreyfus Emergency I) – Alastair Reynolds
The Prefect was republished as Aurora Rising in order to identify it more as the beginning of its own series than as tied to the Revelation Space series. The series do share the same Universe, though this book is set in a much earlier era.
The setting is the Glitter Band, a swarm of thousands of orbital habitats around the planet Yellowstone. Tom Dreyfus is a prefect for Panoply, a police force tasked with ensuring voting rights are respected, including investigating and punishing voting fraud. The habitats of the Glitter Band are as varied as they are many, from tyrannies to utopias to all manner of strange types of government. An investigation into voting fraud leads Dreyfus and his small team to a flaw in the voting system, and then all hell breaks loose.
While the setting is hard science fiction, the plot is in large part police procedural, and the characters could have been picked from any group of archetypal police investigators and functionaries. Dreyfus himself is the stereotypical dedicated detective with a tragic past. His assistants Thalia and Sparver are, respectively, the spunky and energetic young tech whiz and the stoic, solid sidekick. His boss Aumonier is the classic experienced police chief. The trope works very well for the novel, allowing the reader to immediately grasp relationships while navigating a completely new and strange world. The plot starts as a relatively simple police mystery, but as events unfold, the magnitude of the crisis becomes vast, encompassing the entire system. The ghosts from Dreyfus’s past, and indeed society’s past, come back to haunt the present, with some clever twists.
The vignette Open and Shut, available for free on the publisher’s website, serves as an epilogue for the novel.
Sleepover – Alastair Reynolds
Sixty-year old Gaunt, a billionaire in his previous life, is woken up from the hibernation he entered in order to sleep his way to a future where medical technology would have evolved towards clinical immortaliy. But the future is not what he expected. He finds himself on a massive platform in the Southern Atlantic Ocean, as part of a caretaker crew for billions of sleeping humans.
This short story started as notes for a novel, and has a very interesting premise. As post-apocalyptic scenarios go, it is certainly one of the most original I have read. Mr. Reynolds’s masterful prose makes the whole thing flow smoothly.
The Gods of Sagittarius – Eric Flint & Mike Resnick
In the future, humanity is part of an interstellar society. A security expert is tasked to escort a scientist as he investigates a murder with seemingly paranormal aspects. Meanwhile, an alien seeks vengeance for the extermination of her religious sect. Unlike the science-rooted humans, the alien knows that magic is real.
The novel is space opera with a large degree of comedy. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the overwrought dialogue and interactions very funny. The story isn’t very entertaining either.
