I know I’m late to the party, but I finally decided to start reading the “Horus Heresy,” a huge series of novels set in the universe of Warhammer 40,000 (though it is set much earlier than the year 40,000). I thought it would be awesome to blog the series as I go. With more than 50 novels and many, many short stories, there will be a lot of posts in this series (I doubt I’ll get to all the short stories). I’m reading the series in publication order unless otherwise noted. There will be SPOILERS from the books discussed as well as previous books in the series. Please DO NOT SPOIL later books in the series.
Dan Abnett wrote a little bit after the end of the book in the edition I have. Basically, he says that after some reader complaints about Prospero Burns, he felt cathartic burning everything in Know No Fear with an epic slugfest of battle that is largely unrelenting through the whole book. I mean, yes, this is exactly it. My problems with Prospero Burns wasn’t that it didn’t have enough action; rather, as I point out in my review, it’s that the book is advertised as something it manifestly is not. Anyway, all of that said, it was actually quite nice to read Know No Fear, which is basically a lengthy, massive battle with pieces of plot intermixed in it.
Here we have the Ultramarines caught unaware. They don’t know about the heresy spreading across various parts of the Empire, and the Word Bearers launch an unprovoked pre-emptive attack on Calth, one of the worlds of the Ultramarines. The scenes are utter chaos start to finish, with massive spaceships blasting apart, daemons being fought in corridors, brother turning against brother, and almost relentless destruction being waged across the planet and above it.
The novel does have character development and plot throughout the story. Whether it’s from members of the Ultramarines bonding as they fight daemonic forces or looks into the Word Bearers’ side of the conflict, there is quite a bit going on here. Ultimately, though, the draw of the novel is to read about some serious, powerful fighting between space marines and heretics.
The battles are truly epic to behold. Whether it’s visions of massive spaceships slugging it out and being boarded or action on the ground, each scene is pulse-thumping action throughout. Abnett is masterful and writing these kinds of scenes and it’s nice to see him apply himself with such vigor to it.
Know No Fearis an action-packed entry in the Horus Heresy that moves the story forward in impactful ways.
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Horus Heresy and Warhammer/40K Hub– Links to all of my Warhammer-related reviews and writings, including those on the Horus Heresy, 40K, and Warhammer Fantasy (pending) can be found here.
J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!
Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!
I’m a judge for the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest (SPSFC), and wanted to spotlight some of the authors in the contest! Steven Healt wrote Along the Perimeter, a book I quite enjoyed early in the contest. Check out my review.
Steven Healt Interview
How did you get into speculative fiction?
My interest in speculative fiction started with Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. I watched Empire Strikes Back countless times as a kid, especially the Hoth scenes. I saw the Lord of the Rings in the theater and read the Hobbit in middle school. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time was the thing that made me take my writing seriously and then eventually begin down the path of self-publishing.
Star Wars definitely started my own journey for science fiction, too! The first time I saw any of it was walking in on Return of the Jedi partway through at my uncle’s house, and seeing Jabba’s palace with Boba Fett. I was obsessed. It’s interesting you mention Wheel of Time. I thought your first book, “Along the Perimeter” has that kind of epic feel of “Eye of the World”–a lived-in universe with secrets all over.
“Along the Perimeter” has a kind of sneakily science fantasy feel to it. The world feels like this big epic fantasy world, but it’s almost all contained within the Perimeter, other than those who live out in the Haze. How did you come up with your worldbuilding ideas?
The foundational idea for the Amboy Series came to me while I was driving back to college after visiting my parents. There’s dozens of small, single stop light sort of towns along the way and one time I was thinking what if the area that this town took up was the only habitable place on the planet? From there I started asking the why’s, how’s and who’s of it all.
I love how small towns were the inspiration for what reads as a pretty expansive world! What made you decide to integrate that with science fiction elements like aliens and give it a fantasy feel?
The combination of aliens and fantasy actually came from pieces of another story idea I had floating around in my head. It was about this village who had to give natural resources as offerings to a shrine, which turns out to be a delivery system that provides for an advanced civilization that had used up all of their homeworld’s resources.
I took that idea of the power dynamic of a group of defied individuals ruling over a larger population, and combined it with the idea of the small habitable zone surrounded by a hostile environment. That’s how many of my stories come about: I have a few pieces of something floating around in my mind and eventually they coalesce into something greater.
The Amboy series is at 2 books currently, with a third on the way. How many books do you have planned in the series, and when can readers expect the next? Do you have any other projects planned?
I’ve actually just locked in time with my editor to look over the manuscript for the third installment of the series. I haven’t settled on a firm date yet, but I’m expecting to release book three later this year. I’ve got three more books outlined and unless I get carried away I see the series wrapping up with book six.
As for future projects, I’ve been working on a fantasy series for about a year or so. I’ll be focusing on once I’ve finished the Amboy Series. I’m really looking forward to getting that out to readers.
I know I am looking forward to book three! For our readers, where can you be found/what links do you want to share/etc.?
I’m working on finalizing an author website where readers will be able to stay up to date with my works in progress and book related things. For the time being you can follow me on my Instagram page, I post fairly often about writing and what I’ve been up to in general. I can also be found on Twitter.
Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!
Kael is a mercenary with little to look forward to in life. His biological augmentations turned off his ability to desire, and his lifelong sentence to a life as a door guard seems a dead end. Ryu is the commander of the starship Audacity and needs to complete her life’s mission of stopping rogue biotech scientists from ruining people’s lives. They get thrown together when Kael is captured(ish) by Ryu on one of her missions. Unbeknownst to her–or Kael–he’s got a capsule with a scientific surprise that could be world-shattering.
The plot has a great setup and solid characters. Kael and Ryu are the stars, but even side characters like the AI, other members of the Audacity, and baddies get time to show off some interesting moments. The book has action scenes punctuated throughout, but at its core feels more a story of Kael and Ryu finding themselves than anything else. Of course, that capsule has some deep import throughout and it drives the plot, at least in part.
I appreciated how Thorne developed Kael’s backstory, his struggling with biotech, and his own power. Ryu also is interesting enough as she tries to balance her total commitment to her mission with the fact that she’s human after all.
There’s so much sexual tension in the story. I get that the characters don’t necessarily make sense for immediately falling in love and getting together, but there are perhaps a few too many scenes in each individual’s head that are basically “Did she/he mean that they might like me?” Like, just kiss and stop second guessing the kiss! You’re clearly smitten! I’m glad Thorne didn’t go for a cheap gimme at the end of the novel to make up for this, but that also means the tension might be dragged out for another book (or more?).
The action scenes that are interspersed throughout the book are well-done, but I think may not have been as frequent or lengthy as I’d have liked. I should note this is a rare complaint for me, because I like to get to the meat of the plot, but there were a couple times when I thought it would have been nice to have more description of how exactly a firefight was playing out or what, exactly made someone’s armor so expensive and powerful. The plot and budding romance, in other words, dominates the book far more than the sci-fi and action elements. I think I’d have liked it to be more balanced, with a little bit less sexual tension and more action and adventure. That said, I enjoyed the book front to back, never really feeling like it slowed down too much or felt rudderless.
One of the final reveals can’t really be explored without major spoilers, but I appreciated that the motivations behind some of the major players in the book weren’t as conventional as they almost seemed to be. Thorne does a great job setting up the story for the next book without it feeling like a total cliffhanger that leaves readers hanging.
I was given an audio version of the book, and the narrator does a pretty fabulous job. I tend to listen to books at a very fast speed, and the narrator came through clearly all the way through the book. I didn’t run into any sound balancing issues, either, and individual characters were distinctive in flavor. I recommend the audio version if you like those.
The Empress Capsuleis a fun space adventure with several intriguing characters, some solid action scenes, and a lurking romance. It reminded me of some of my favorite science fiction. I’m excited to see where the series goes next.
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I was provided a review copy of the book by the author
Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.
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Having finally watched Babylon 5 for the first time (check out my posts for that series at my Babylon 5 Hub), I decided to dive into the novels. I’ll be reading them largely in publication order and reviewing them individually as we go along. Please do not spoil later books for me. There will be SPOILERS for the book reviewed going forward.
I haven’t written a tie-in novel, but I’m going to guess that one of the biggest pitfalls of doing so is that you have an idea for a story on one hand, and that you’ve also got the universe in which you’re writing on the other. Sometimes, those two meet nicely, and sometimes, they don’t. Sometimes, you write and it’s like you’re forcing an idea into the universe in which it doesn’t quite fit. At that point, what do you do? I suspect you keep going because there’s a deadline and you don’t want to miss it. Clark’s Lawby Jim Mortimore reads like this is exactly what happened. Mortimore had an idea (what if there were some controversy over the death penalty in a sci-fi setting) and a setting (Babylon 5) and then pushed them together. This novel is the result.
It doesn’t work, which is unfortunate because the central ideas are there and the prose is stronger than you might think (see below). You’ve got Clark, an ambitious, ruthless man who wants to make defining decisions for humanity as a nefarious bad guy. It fits well with the rest of the TV show at this point. There’s also an alien race, the Tuchanq, with a twist that makes them more interesting than generic aliens–their Song of Being is tied up in their sense of self, such that interrupting it requires ceremonial resurrection, in a sense. It’s kind of a cool thread. These collide as one of the Tuchanq, D’arc, thinks she’s mad and so kills a human on Babylon 5 to attempt to regain a Song of Being. Clark wants to execute this alien, having one eponymous law for all beings that includes the death penalty in the case of murder. There’s questions about the death penalty, innocence, fascinating discussion of aliens, and more here.
One thing that makes it not work is that none of the characters or even the setting feels very much like Babylon 5 as established in the show. Setting aside the simple factual errors, such as names being wrong between the book and show or Jeffrey Sinclair turning into Geoffrey Sinclair, the characters don’t all act in ways that seem genuine to them. Now, maybe I’m overselling this feeling. I know I’ve mentioned it before in my reviews of the novels. Perhaps I’m the one whose feel for the show is off. I’ve only seen it all the way through once so far, after all. That may be true, but I see on various reviews basically every other fan of B5 is saying the same thing. Something just seems off for just about every major character. Sheridan’s not as forceful or decisive as he should be, though he ultimately finds a creative way out G’Kar and Mollari are at it again, but it reads much more artificially than it should. Garibaldi is, well, he’s there but doesn’t do as much as he probably should be in a novel like this. The payoff of a tie-in novel just isn’t there. It doesn’t read like a Babylon 5 book.
Clark’s Law is almost relentlessly dark. I tend to read tie-in novels hoping for some escapism–a brush with favorite characters that reminds me of whatever medium they came from originally. Here, Mortimore assaults readers with ambiguity and darkness everywhere. From the beginning, a series of lies is told, and at the end a few truths are told. It’s a great framing mechanism and shows a surprising command of prose for a novel that apparently had a deadline of just several weeks to be written and submitted (according to The Babylon File Volume I by Andy Lane). There’s depth here that goes far beyond the pages. That’s a good thing, but it also makes the novel strangely harder to get into because if you’ve seen the show, you know the repercussions that should ripple out from the main thrust of the story just don’t really happen. Yes, Clark is bad, but something like this should have had much wider consequences. It creates a weird sense of both feeling in Babylon 5 while also making it obvious the events can’t really have taken place because they’d have been of much more note than they are.
Clark’s Lawis a good enough science fiction novel with a surprising command of structure and prose. However, as a Babylon 5 novel it has to be rated as merely okay–it grasps at things larger than it manages to deliver, while also failing to get into the feel of the show. Recommended if you’re wanting a vaguely Babylon 5-esque sci-fi novel that will make you think.
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Babylon 5 Hub– Find all my Babylon 5-related posts and content here.
J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!
Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!
I’m a judge for the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest (SPSFC), and have been delighted to see the wide range of offerings authors have shared with us. Check out all my posts on the SPSFC here.
What happens when you’ve got a bunch of smart kids locked on a space station with a derelict spaceship and not enough to occupy their time? Basically, you get the plot of Derelict, a coming-of-age/hard sci-fi mashup.
The plot centers around that eponymous derelict ship as several characters find themselves in life-or-death situations struggling to figure out how to survive when they accidentally launch the ship. There are enough of these situations to draw comparisons to The Martian with its constant “what goes wrong next?” chorus, but the way the characters move through the challenges feels a bit more realistic even as the focus is less on the science here.
What’s especially impressive is how very real each of the characters feel. Even when I wasn’t sure I liked some of them, it was hard to deny that their motivations and concerns made sense in the moment, and that they were clearly learning and changing over the course of the novel. I also enjoyed that physical pain and injuries had more of an impact on the story than they often do. Too many times, I’ve seen characters in novels suffer debilitating injuries only to be fine a chapter or two later. It doesn’t happen here.
My main complaint with the novel is that it can seem to drag through some sections as characters face a challenge, defeat it, and then have something else go wrong that makes it feel like the original challenge wasn’t really resolved. Honestly, this is pretty realistic, but at times I just wanted the magic plot wand to get waved and for things to get settled down a bit. The combination of so many Things Going Wrong with the occasional slice of life narrative made a few chapters slow to a crawl.
I do want to note one other thing I enjoyed, which was the way antagonists were developed here. I can’t say too much without spoiling anything, but every time I thought I figured out why a certain character and another had so many issues, Cohen introduced a new thread that made their relationship even more interesting. It’s quite well done.
I listened to the audiobook of this one, and it was read well. It would be a good way to experience the novel.
Derelictis an entertaining read that ends with a flourish. Fans of coming-of-age stories and hard sci-fi should give it a try.
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I was provided with a copy of the audiobook for review
Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.
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Iron Kingdoms is a campaign setting from Privateer Press that has enthralled me for almost two decades with its fantastical steampunk world and deep national histories. I spent hours upon hours poring over sourcebooks and thinking of all the stories that could take place in the setting, but still haven’t found a group that wants to play in it (alas). It was to my great delight, then, that I discovered there were novels in the setting that I had never heard of. I was surprised that they’d gone under my radar because I thought I’d been following Privateer Press fairly closely. When I saw Flashpointby Aeryn Rudel at a bookstore, I grabbed it without any further deliberation. It was enough to know it was a novel in a setting that I’d been in love with for years. I was deeply gratified as I read the novel, though, because it cashed in on that setting in ways that I knew were possible.
Flashpoint starts off with a bang as we follow a desperate, undercover noble trying to escape from an assassination attempt. From there, we get kicked into a setup for a diplomatic showdown between the Empire of Khador (a kind of play on Imperial Russia, but with magic and steam-powered mechs) and Cygnar, a powerful Kingdom that has too many enemies. Rudel introduces readers to a cast of characters including Lord General Coleman Stryker of Cygnar, a warcaster who commands a mech in battle, Asheth Magnus, another mage-like character who is willing to do whatever he thinks it takes to win the day, Maddox, Beth Maddox, a warcaster just doing her duty, and more. The cast is full of strong enough characters to carry the plot, which is itself full of political intrigue and, eventually, squad and battle level combat.
I hugely enjoyed the mix of politicking, character interactions, and combat Rudel uses throughout the novel. It reads like a truly excellent campaign, with battles interspersed at somewhat predictable intervals as action to break up the story exposition. There’s enough conflict here to make things interesting, and both sides of the conflict have sympathetic characters. It’s a great fantasy read, and for readers who enjoy steampunk, there are new wonders in abundance.
It’d be remiss of me to not mention that there are several editing errors in the book. On at least 3 separate occasions, I ran into a sentence that very clearly had a word missing. In two cases, I was able to easily supply the word because it was a common phrase. In the third, the sentence was left somewhat ambiguous by the missing piece. These errors didn’t destroy my enjoyment of the novel, but they did take away from my immersion at points.
Overall, Flashpoint was a delight to read. I loved seeing the Iron Kingdoms come to life. I hadn’t read much from my campaign settings books in a while, and was gratified to see that I could have easily dived into the novel with no prior knowledge of the setting. I recommend the novel to those interested in a fascinating steampunk world.
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Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!
I’m a judge for the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest (SPSFC), and wanted to spotlight some of the authors in the contest! KT Belt is now one of the finalists for the contest.
How did you get into speculative fiction? What made you decide to write it?
Like most authors I read a lot growing up. But unlike most authors, I suspect, what led me into science fiction were non-fiction books. My first love is aviation and I’m also interested in cars and history. I spent countless hours reading how the machines worked both in broad and specific detail. As example, I remember when I was at a summer camp and rather than play in the pool with everyone else I was reading turn performance charts for an F/A-18C [an American strike fighter].
If you’re curious they look like this:
One of the camp counselors (highschooler) saw me and asked in amazement if I could actually read that. Never thought what I was doing was strange until then. It wasn’t much of a leap for me to go from studying cars and airplanes to studying future vehicles, then far future vehicles, then vehicles that don’t or can’t exist. My bookshelf was filled with science fiction before I knew it.
As for the second part of your question, I love telling stories and I find the craft and mechanics of storytelling endlessly fascinating. However, what drove me in a lot of ways to write was dissatisfaction in the stories I read and watched. It wasn’t, “I can do this better” it was more, “what if you did it this way.” In many cases the key elements for me was/is intensity, deep character focus, personal in lieu of societal or civilizational threats, and world building that doesn’t require the story to stop to be explained. Everyone has their own personal preferences, for me the four pillars I mentioned are what I specialize in as a writer.
Wow! I have never even seen a chart like that. It’s fascinating how people come to speculative fiction from all kinds of different experiences. As I recall, vehicles don’t really feature much in “Monster of the Dark.” What inspired you to write that novel, with its visceral, psychological feel?
You are quite right. The traditional elements of science fiction such as technology, otherworldly settings, aliens, etc are present in the next books in the series, but not “Monster of the Dark.” When I conceived “Monster of the Dark” (more than ten years ago) I made a very deliberate choice to eschew fantastical technologies or settings to instead keep an extremely tight focus on character. There are hints of it in the background, but I didn’t want any distractions from the central focus.
I was very interested in the tools and methods of social/individual control at the time I was working out the major beats of the story. You, me, everybody has been programmed from the moment we were born to think and act in a certain manner. That can be positive, though there are countless examples where it has been to an individual person’s or people’s detriment.
The main character of the story and the series, Carmen, is unique in that she ages from six to nineteen years old over the course of the story. That she is manipulated and some of the techniques used to do so are obvious, but there are many which are quite subtle. What is also subtle, and in fact was technically difficult to write, were the changes in personality as she matures. A lot of research went into childhood development, abuse victims, and responses to trauma. As Carmen ages I wanted the reader to see who she was turned into, what she could have been turned into, while seeing hints of what she was supposed to but can never be. The tight focus on character is what creates the visceral psychological feel. The reader is with Carmen every step of the way and is in her head as she feels and experiences everything. My intent was to have the reader empathize with Carmen to the point that it feels like they are going through the same trials she is. And while there are moments in the story that are genuinely funny or light-hearted, no punches are pulled.
The long preamble of the past few paragraphs was required for me to answer the question, “what inspired me to write the novel?” I’m an unabashed optimist. It is interesting to see how people fall, there is an entire genre dedicated to it (tragedy). I personally am more interested in how people rise. As I mentioned in the previous question, I like to try to do things differently. The conventions of storytelling have existed for thousands of years for a reason. I don’t wish to shatter those conventions, but to bend or warp them with a purpose and in a way that is meant to enlighten. As prime example, Carmen is written as an inverted power fantasy.
In the typical power fantasy, the character starts very weak then grows, usually in self-knowledge. The climax of the story is the character using the mastery of self (usually represented as martial skill) to overcome their obstacles which are usually an individual (i.e. the villain). Carmen wields extreme personal power even as a six-year-old. She is intelligent (though not knowledgeable), has extreme martial skill, and is described as physically beautiful. Her growth in the mastery of self is not expressed in martial skill but in the wisdom to know WHEN and even IF to use martial skill, as well as her other talents. With that in mind what “inspired” me to write “Monster of the Dark” was the hope it could inspire people to realize that in matters of the spirit, no matter their circumstances and no matter how impossible it might appear to be, they already have everything they need to succeed.
You’ve definitely given readers, including myself, something to look forward to! I was a big fan of the intensely focused narrative of the first novel. I like the notion that it is pushing back against some of the trope-flipping that is common in some corners of sci-fi. Now that you’ve whetted our appetites for the rest of the series, let’s talk about it a bit more. I had book 3 preordered, and it just released. Is the series a trilogy, or are there more books planned? If there are more, how long is the series planned to be? Do you have other writing projects coming up, too?
Thank you for preordering “Cause of Death,” I hope you enjoy it. The Mirrors in the Dark series is planned to be five books long. I’m working on book four (untitled) and it is coming along slowly but steadily. It is a very complicated story for reasons I’d love to say, but can’t mention without spoiling anything. It should be done in early to mid 2023. After this series is done I’ll probably write an epic fantasy trilogy. A lot of lessons learned from the Mirrors in the Dark books have gone into its conception and I very much look forward to writing it. After that I have a near future standalone that is basically a love letter to the pleasure of driving. I also have another standalone, this time dystopian sci-fi. Lastly, I have another sci-fi trilogy set in the Mirrors in the Dark universe but set several hundred years before “Monster of the Dark” takes place. It is about decadence and the fall of societies.
Those are the firm books that are plotted and read to go. All of them are character stories. Character-driven speculative fiction is my lane and no matter what changes with regards to setting, plot, or theme the central focus will remain the same. I don’t know how many stories I have in me, everytime I think I’ve run out of ideas something new pops in my head. For that I’m thankful. Writing books is fun!
Thanks so much for sharing some ideas for upcoming series! I’m sure my readers will be excited to see more. Where can they follow you to keep updated?
Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!
We’re now in the round of semi-finalists for the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest (SPSFC), and I’m reading and reviewing all of the semi-finalists! Check out my SPSFC Hub for all my posts and reviews for the contest.
Carmen is starting a new job and just trying to make things work when she gets a message from her mom. The only problem is her mom was on a space mission and died. Almost immediately after this, Carmen is visited by government agents, which in this near-future setting include some kind of theocratic peace patrol type folks. Carmen is eventually captured by a weird alien spider thing and the plot gets going from there as she discovers what happened to her mother, and what else is going on in the universe.
I’ve got to say it, I thought this book was very strange. At times, I wasn’t sure if it was trying to be a lighthearted space adventure, a sci-fi horror story, or a kind of extended coming-of-age metaphor. Something just felt kind of off throughout the book. Is it supposed to be a comedic romp? Or am I supposed to be horrified by some of the really weird stuff happening? It was kind of disorienting. (SPOILERS the rest of this paragraph) One scene, in particular, stood out to me: Carmen and her mother are talking with each other shortly after Carmen has had her consciousness transferred to one of the spindly spider robots with TV heads, and I just sat there as a reader thinking “What the heck is going on?” At this point, I think the goal was to grab readers with a very odd, body horror-inspired mystery that would keep them going but it felt so off from the feel of the story to that point that I was just confused. (/SPOILERS)
There are significant elements of first contact here, as well. Adler does a fine job subverting some of the themes of alien contact and certainly making it feel more baffling and off-putting than many authors have done. There are almost elements of cosmic horror mixed in here, but going into that might be too spoiler-y. Suffice to say, these are some of the strongest elements in the book, but they come a bit too late into the story.
The questions about what’s going on back and Earth were the most interesting to me, but very little by way of answers were provided. Why are things so different when the tech base seems not that much into the future? What’s going on with the nigh-theocratic “police force”? Maybe this is just my own reflected biases in what I find interesting, but on the flip side I like first contact novels. It’s just that the introduction to the book (the first 10% or so) felt like there was some huge Earthside mystery happening, and then we completely leave that for the overwhelming majority of the novel. It made it feel a bit of whiplash about where the plot was going.
Shadow of Marsis the first in a series, and it feels like its just getting its legs under it by the end. Resolutions aren’t really provided here, as readers must wait for later books in the series to find out what is going on.
Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.
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The only reason I read The Quiet Poolsis because it was a Hugo Award nominee. I love lists, and I’ve been reading through every Hugo nominee and winner. I tried to track down a copy of this book through the library system, after discovering it wasn’t available as an e-book (at least not anywhere I knew to look). The library system, even through interlibrary loan, took a while to track it down. I was surprised at its apparent scarcity, given it was a Hugo nominee and also a fairly recent (1991) novel. Then I read it, and was thrilled. It’s books like The Quiet Pools that make me want to read lists like I do–they help me discover reads that I enjoy immensely that I’d never have encountered otherwise.
Kube-McDowell has crafted a surprising look at the launch of a generation ship. Many novels set around the same idea focus either on the generation ship’s flight or on the apocalypse that leads to its launch. Here, though, the entire book is around the leadup to the launch of the second generation ship to leave Earth. The first one was met with adulation, but this one is seen by some as stealing the best and brightest from Earth for chasing a forlorn and possibly heretical dream in the stars.
What surprised me most, though, is that the part of the book I was most interested in was following the imagined family dynamics of the future as Kube-McDowell explores the concept of a “Trine” (family group with three adults married) or other groups with more people through the lens, primarily, of the male partner of three. Initially, Christopher comes off as foolish and jealous, but the way the group gets developed is fascinating, as is the look at counseling for Christopher. It’s a familiar idea with new developments , and it gives a strong basis for character development that actually goes somewhere in the midst of this novel with bigger ideas. In a way, the whole book reads like a kind of slice-of-life novel set around a major world event, and the main thrust of the novel–the launch of the generation ship–can almost fade into the background at times as we see not just Christopher but several other characters living their lives. Yes, these lives are centered around the ship in many ways, but they also are lives lived, full of flaws and tragedy and hope and development.
There are also scenes centered around the selection process for who goes on the ship and who stays. There are some action scenes around terrorist-fueled attempts to stop the launch or disrupt the selection process. There is tragedy and loss, and triumph. It’s all written in a rather quiet way. I saw the reviews on Goodreads/Amazon placing it squarely in the 3/5 camp on average, and that doesn’t surprise me. One almost has to be in the right mood for this book. It’s an exploration of humanity, but not one that is as wide and vaunted as a space opera, nor one as hyper-focused as some hard sci-fi thriller. And it hit me at the right time, in the right way.
The Quiet Pools holds up well. Kube-McDowell doesn’t try to predict the future, but simply reports a version of it as he imagines it. And it’s believable, almost to the point of being humdrum. It just feels like it could be the near future, especially the near future as viewed from the early 90s, when the novel was written. I’m not saying that it is dated–and it probably is, in some ways–I’m saying that it is the kind of book that gives insight into the view of the world at the time in which it was written. I mean this in a good way.
The Quiet Poolsought to be considered a classic of science fiction. It’s a subtle story that reflects upon human nature in the midst of greater events. And it deserves a wider readership.
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I’m a judge for the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest, and while the semi-finalists are out, I’ve been circling back and reading through books from other groups that looked intriguing.
Zoya is working prepping corpses when her brother convinces her to bring him a package. When things go south as she goes to deliver the package, she discovers that she has been handed potentially world-changing technology–and that people are willing to kill to get it from her. The action in The Immortality Game starts off fast and very rarely lets the foot off the gas even a little bit. Front-to-back, action moves quickly, bullets are flying, and revelations come fast and hard.
What I found interesting was that the bad guys’ stories were the ones that slowed the pace down at all. Indeed, I’d say it’s arguably true that the villains got more development than Zoya through the course of the novel. I’m not saying that as a complaint. It’s rare that I actually am looking forward to seeing what the villains are up to. Cross makes at least some of the villains into interesting characters in their own right, and I thought it was an interesting move to have the protagonist be basically straight action scenes with the villains having explanations for their motivations and why they’re chasing her and fighting in the background.
Cross also uses the premise of the novel to raise a bunch of interesting questions. It’s got a lot of cyberpunk tech, but the kind that feels more possibly real than not. With that kind of tech, some of the questions are typical to this subgenre, but occasionally I was surprised by how Cross approached the questions from a different angle. Instead of having brains wired for receiving chips as a voluntary thing, something only the rich or privileged get, or some other twist, in this world it’s become compulsory. A few subtle turns of the formula make the book more interesting than it otherwise would have been.
As an aside for those who like audiobooks- I listened to a copy of the book on Audible. I thought the reader did a good job with different voices and cadence throughout the novel.
The Immortality Gameis an action-packed cyberpunk thriller. While Cross never had me rooting for the bad guys, he did make them into more interesting characters than they typically are. I would recommend this book to fans of cyberpunk and fast-moving sci-fi.
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Eclectic Theist 