The first Self-Published Science Fiction Contest (SPSFC) has finished, but I’m still finishing reading and reviewing all of the semi-finalists! Check out my SPSFC Hub for all my posts and reviews for the contest.
Hugh Hammond awakens, ostensibly injured and with memory loss. He’s an agent for MI6, and the world suddenly feels… wrong. But are his memories false, or is the world, or is something else happening?
Readers follow Hammond and a few other characters through the course of the novel, ultimately seeing the story across the course of years and unveiling more and more of the truth behind the events occurring therein.
My biggest problems with the novel are that it seems to be far too soft on Fascism and has some scenes that set off my “yuck” factor regarding men and women. In one of the latter, a man and wife are reunited after the wife was off at an SS convention–yes, that SS. Anyway, the husband thinks it’s time to get it on, but she doesn’t. He bitterly imagines all the SS agents chasing his wife the whole time she was there because she was on birth control and therefore apparently more desirable than their own spouses or other women. He gets angry at his wife for this imagined scenario. It’s a pretty gross scene, in my opinion, and not the only one that took me out of the story in that fashion.
The plot itself has some delightfully funny moments, with Hammond’s spy exploits often showing him as a kind of hapless Indiana Jones or James Bond. the way the ultimate reveals are slowly rationed out makes it interesting to keep finding those nuggets of information, but I’d have liked to have them feel more impactful than they initially do.
The Hammond Conjecturewas not my favorite read. I think a lot of the style struck me the wrong way, but I could see where it might find an audience. Fans of alternate history and humor might want to check it out.
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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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.
Far in the future, humanity largely lives in a single Kingdom with totalitarian rule. Catherine, Thom, and Nate struggle with the strictures of the society. Then, a latent disease is awakened.
I admit I found this one a bit difficult to get into. The characters were fine, but with little explanation for why the world got to where it did 1000 years from now or what remnants were left behind, I struggled to understand why the world was constructed as it was. It could just as easily have been a world completely different from our own rather than being in the future. Indeed, that might have made it even more interesting, because the way the world is revealed so far in this book, there’s little doubt about where latent disease may have come from, even if it’s not fully revealed here.
Catherine and Nate spend much of the novel arguing about what to do next and the implications of what they’ve run into. I actually didn’t mind this aspect of their characters. While it’s a bit trope-y, it’s a comfortable trope for me that I actually enjoy. Indeed, the characters were the most interesting aspect of the book.
A major problem I had with the book is a lack of clarity regarding the major questions about what’s going on. The “who/what/where/when/why” questions about what happened to the world are left extraordinarily vague. Meanwhile, events needed to keep the plot going seemingly drop out of the sky. Modern (read: stuff that would exist in 2022) things just pop up whenever needed. But at other times it reads like a weirdly Medieval feel. The tone is all over the place, making it a confusing read.
A Touch of Deathwill have readers wanting more. It left this reader wondering if there was enough there to tantalize me into reading the next book. It certainly left enough questions packed into it to sustain a longer series.
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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I’m on a quest to re-read all of my favorite (or least favorite that I kept for whatever reason) Star Wars novels in the Expanded Universe and beyond. Come along for the ride and check out my Star Wars Hub for more. There will be SPOILERS for the book discussed.
Coruscant has fallen, but the battle is far from over. Tycho Celchu is put on trial for treason, having allegedly set up Rogue Squadron for defeat. Meanwhile, terrorists start attacking key targets on Coruscant, hoping to drive the Rebellion off. Corran Horn has to escape from Ysanne Isard and vindicate Rogue Squadron before it’s too late.
There are several different major plot threads happening here, and some of them are more interesting than others. They trial of Tycho Celchu is interesting, in part because with it not being a major character there’s a real chance things could go poorly for him. Borsk Fey’lya, who is largely annoying as hell in just about every appearance, is a somewhat interesting antagonist here. I don’t know if it’s because I’m reading about him when I’m older, but the nuance and complexity of his motivations seems much more three dimensional than it did when I was a kid. I guess that part of it is that I now understand there really are people who might mean their best while also trying to control political power and manipulate events to their own desires. Growing old makes one more cynical, perhaps, to the point that one can relate to Fey’lya. Oh no.
Another major thread is Imperial-sympathetic terrorists. Though this has a couple interesting scenes, the motivations are almost entirely “I hate Rebels so I kill them,” which is fine, but paper-thin. Corran Horn’s scenes with Isard are another major thread, and they have some of the more interesting scenes but also some of the least impactful ones.
The main problem here is that a huge amount of the book feels like setup for more plot. Sure, the trial of Celchu is wrapped up, but even that reads like it’s just there to nudge characters towards plots that are yet to come. The result is that the whole book has a lingering feeling of being filler more than anything else. That said, Stackpole consistently delivers good action scenes, which help move the story along more quickly than it otherwise would have felt.
The Krytos Trapis another good entry in the X-Wing series. It didn’t blow me away, but I was entertained all the way through.
The Good
+Great action sequences +Continues to feature non-main Star Wars characters +Borsk Fey’lya is interesting as an antagonist
The Bad
-Drags at times
Cover Score: 4/10 Pretty generic and the scale is kinda warped.
Grade [measured against my super objective* Star Wars enjoyment factor]: C+ It’s not boring, but it feels like a middle book in a series, with some of the problems that accompany that.
*Not super objective and in fact wholly based on my feeling at the time of this review. Not measured against any other sci-fi works or really any other literature. This score is purely because I like giving scores to things.
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Star Wars Hub– All of my Star Wars-related posts can be found here. These include posts about more expanded universe books, the movies, and new canon novels.
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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!
There are other posts on science fiction books to be found! Read them here.
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.
Drake is an artist on a ragtag ship full of strange personalities as they fly through a warzone from the now ended human-Gra’al war. When they discover a package on a Gra’al ship that contains a baby, the crap hits the fan as they have to go on the run for a Gra’al Warlord bent on reigniting war between species.
Reading that summary, many sci-fi readers will immediately think a kind of Firefly or Becky Chambers-esque found family crew with a heart, and they wouldn’t be too far off from the feel of the novel. If that’s your jam, I can almost guarantee you’ll find Broken Ascension a read worth checking out. It’s definitely my kind of novel, with plenty of action to go along with a plot that keeps everything moving along at a good clip.
One typical thing about books in this subgenre is having that ragtag crew of adventurers feel unique and over-the-top without really being too over-the-top (“I don’t know… fly casual!”). One twist in this one is that apart from the found family vibes here, Drake’s dad is also on the ship. The crew is full of personalities, but some of those personalities fade into the background of the adventures of Drake and the Gra’al babe, Bruce (it makes sense as a name in the book). That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it keeps the plot tightly focused, but it did make me want more from some of the other characters, a few of whom we only get glimpses here and there of what their personalities might be like or why they’re along for the ride.
The adventure itself is worth taking, with questions about war, justice, and xenophobia abounding. What would it take to heal scars of war, particularly in the immediate aftermath? While these questions never take over the plot, they’re welcome additions to supplement the story’s frenetic pace with some thoughtful moments. Another notable thing I appreciated was the treatment of religious questions. Walsh takes an even-keeled approach, neither heavily favoring nor strongly condemning religion generally but rather presenting it as a fact of life and reality for many people and species. It’s a good approach that makes it feel more realistic.
Broken Ascensionis great for readers who enjoy space adventures. It’s got plenty of edge-of-your-seat action, but also has deeper characterization, for some, than might be expected.
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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I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites. I have included a brief reflection on the year’s Hugos at the end. I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees.
The Fountains of Paradiseby Arthur C. Clarke (Winner)- Grade: D The Fountains of Paradise is dull almost beyond words. It’s served with a heaping helping of ‘religious people are stupid’ on top. Hey, maybe you think religious people are stupid, but if you do, can you at least acknowledge that some of them are thoughtful instead of making them all into cardboard caricatures? There’s a decent premise, I guess. Let’s build an elevator to the stars. Of course, only one place on Earth is suitable for some extremely dense hard sci-fi reason. I love science fiction. And I have enjoyed books by Clarke, but this one was aggravating and boring. That’s an accomplishment. Clarke has done much better.
Titan by John Varley- Grade: D Titan is a combination of some hard science fiction themes along with some fantasy elements. It’s a recipe for something that I love, but when you add something awful into the mix, it all goes sideways. Here, that something awful is a heaping dose of misogynist sexual fantasies. The amount of ink spilled upon how women look and just how good they might be because of a shapely thigh or somesuch is just… so over the top. It was distracting all the way through to the extent that it, along with the assumptions about how men and women in general would act, detracted entirely from my enjoyment of the novel. But then I started to notice some of the other issues with it–some big plot holes, somewhat annoying characters, and nonsensical twists. I’ll be reading the next book, entirely because it also got an award nomination, so I’m hoping that I like it more.
Jem by Frederik Pohl- Grade: D I did not like this book very much. A planet is discovered and humans want to peacefully colonize it as a kind of idyllic vision. Back on Earth, things go south and the new colony turns into a kind of last hope for humanity. On the colony, the alien races there are more (or less, in some ways?) than they appear. Honestly, the last 5% or so of the novel was good–it shows the consequences of even well-intentioned colonialism. Everything else was a slog. The first 80 pages or so seem to be half tribute to Pohl contemporaries, half boring meetings of people talking about or seducing each other as they try to figure out colonizing. The whole thing just ends up feeling extremely boring and even chore-like to read, though the bit of payoff at the end made me less upset about paying the fee to interlibrary loan it.
On Wings of Songby Thomas Disch- Grade: D+ How do you grade books that clearly demonstrate talent while also being nearly unreadable because they feel caught in the past with ideas that are sometimes cringe and sometimes just silly? I don’t know, but here’s where I settled on this frustrating, strange book. The premise is that the United States has turned, in parts, into ultra-conservative dystopias while at the coasts there exist some kind of hippy-ville that also has its share of problems. Someone has developed a way to have astral projection and trigger spiritual experiences, and Daniel Weinreb, our protagonist, has no small amount of trouble because of this “flying.” Ultimately, the book climaxes in a kind of revelation of the capacity to fully leave the body with the mind even as many conservatives and non-flyers reject the reality. It seems to clearly be a parable of a kind, but one that is so hidden behind layers that it’s difficult as to what Disch is trying to get at. Is he warning of the dangers of ultra-conservativism? Probably? Is it a broadside against religion? Perhaps? Is astral projection via machine a metaphor for drugs? I don’t know? It’s such a strange read set in sometimes strong prose that makes it all the more frustrating. I didn’t like it, but I understand why many might.
Harpist in the Wind by Patricia McKillip (My Winner)- Grade: B Harpist in the Wind is the third and concluding volume in the Riddle-Master trilogy by McKillip. Like the other books in the series, the focus is pretty narrow, largely following a group of characters on an adventure as they quest to discover the mysteries behind some shape-shifters that have been dogging them, along with the mystery of the Kingdom in which they travel. There are moments of great revelations, especially when the magic is revealed in various parts. There are also moments of tenderness that are surprisingly strong in characterization. I have to express some disappointment, though, in that despite the massive focus on riddles as ways to control and even do battle with others, there is very little by way of actual riddles in the novels themselves.
1980- Uffda. This was a rough year for the Hugos. Several familiar names headline these nominations, but none of them delivered the goods, imo. McKillip’s novel is a worthy choice for a nominee, but would not win a stronger year. The winner chosen at the actual ceremony–Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise–is a tedious slog. The other books don’t fare much better. It’s almost like the voters just nominated favorite authors for the sake of seeing their names yet again on the ballot. One of the worst years, in my opinion.
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Wildermyth is a video game in which you take a band of characters and go to explore a larger world that has called you to find out what’s happening. As you play, you not only explore the region around you, but you also find stories in abundance. These stories shape your characters, sometimes literally as they get new hair colors, are imbued with magic that shows through their skin, or get merged with beasts. Battles can take their toll as well, leading to characters with eye patches or other physical impacts that appear going forward.
At its core, Wildermyth is a storytelling system that throws a bunch of mini-tales at you, lets you make choices within them, and then plays out consequences of those choices. Battles are also a major part of the gameplay loop. They play out in grid-based sequences that have you interacting with the environments using your spell-casters and moving your characters around to most effectively impact the battles in your favor. They can be quite challenging, and a few wrong moves could mean you lose a character–sometimes permanently, depending upon the choices you make. The environments are hugely important, as you can start fires, watch them spread, or thwart them in order to push your own ends and bonuses. Pets, spirit creatures, weapon types, preparing ambushes, and more are all elements in the strategy. I’m certain I haven’t even encountered all the ways to fight battles in the game yet. There are so many, and a lot of them are based upon how you level up your characters.
Battles are strategic affairs in which nearly everything in the environment can have an impact upon the way they play out.
Examples may be the only way to really make clear how epic and beautiful the stories are that you help create. These stories are epic in ways that are small and beautiful. One example is I had a character who contracted an illness. We went seeking a cure for the illness after persuading the sage who was helping treat her to tell us where to find it. We had to persuade the sage because her brother had sought it and never returned, and she didn’t want us to also never come back. She came with us, much older than she’d been then. We found the cure, and I got the choice to either cure my character whom I’d developed across the land or turn the sage’s brother back from stone (we’d found him along the way). It was a brutal decision, and it had long term consequences when I chose to bring the brother back. It made the character who sacrificed some of the years of her life for another’s life into an epic hero. These kinds of small vignettes with heart-rending choices and long term impacts are found throughout the game.
Choices abound in the game, and some can have long-term impacts on how your characters interrelate.
It is true, as some reviews have pointed out, that there is an overall limit on just how many shorter stories exist in the game. This limit seems to be quite massive, though. I’ve only run into one repeat so far at 8 hours in. The repeat didn’t even feel repetitive, though, because of the way the storytelling works. It’s so dynamic that it made sense in-universe for these other characters to encounter a similar circumstance.
Each time I play Wildermyth, it feels in a way like coming home to a lengthy adventure novel that I helped forge by the choices I made. The legacy system means that characters you have fallen in love with in earlier campaigns can make appearances later, possibly as a mythic figure to look up to. It’s amazing how invested the game gets you to become in your characters after a few short hours with each of them. They will fall in love, marry, have children, grow old, watch their children become adventurers alongside them, retire, die. Some will die too young. Some will be forced to retire by disease. Each has the chance to become a legend, and each will likely find their place in your heart.
You can change equipment and upgrade it between chapters. Characters can grow old and that is shown in their appearance and some choices that open or close for them.
This game has become for me one of those that I had only dreamed of when I was younger. It’s a game in which it truly feels as though you’re playing a legacy. While it’s not open ended in the sense of “do anything,” the way the stories are presented makes it not matter. You, the player, are guiding the story, dynamically reacting in the moment to how your characters act. Do you want to risk their lives for a potential gain? Are you willing to sacrifice one to save another? How about those lovebirds over there? You didn’t ever think the children of your characters may find their own lives, but they do. It’s an absolutely incredible experience.
The presentation also has its own beauty. The characters are kind of papercraft, and their equipment, battle scars, and sometimes even basic decisions show up on their person. Maybe you chose to touch that well of magic, and something happened to you. Perhaps a beast offered a chance to forge a new path? Did you feed a small creature you found in a cave? You’ve got a pet now. The possibilities and choices are massive, and they show directly upon your characters. The music is on another level, as well. While I’d say the track selection is a bit limited, the score is epic and beautiful, full of stringed instruments that rise and swell at the appropriate times.
I can’t really recommend Wildermyth highly enough. It’s an experience that anyone with a love of stories ought to at least give a try. I adore it. It’s clearly been a labor of love for the developers, and I can tell you it’s worth every penny.
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Video Games– Check out all my posts on video games here.
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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!
parallel SPFBO (Self Published Fantasy Blog-Off) contest happening. I always love finding some new indie authors and books, so I decided to read through the finalists of that contest and review them on my site. As always, let me know your own thoughts in the comments.
In this grimdark gaslight fantasy, readers follow John Vanguard, a kind of mercenary, through the streets of a city where corruption is rampant. Vanguard runs into a would-be assassin and the plot takes off from there.
The story follows Vanguard fairly closely, as he takes on some morally rough tasks. I can’t say I ever really got into Vanguard as a character. I don’t dislike the trope of following someone who’s morally gray or even bad (one series I enjoy follows a Hitman who likes stamp collecting, for example), but there has to be some kind of hook. Vanguard reads to me as a kind of milquetoast down-on-his-luck guy who doesn’t necessarily want to be doing what he does even though he does a lot of it anyway. And because of that, readers are supposed to be empathetic towards his plight or something. I just couldn’t buy into it as much as I’d have liked to.
There are some neat moments of critique of the world, such as the way cities are run and how difficult it is to get in. I thought it was both an interesting piece of worldbuilding and a kind of oblique critique of stratification and wealth-hording. Indeed, the world-building was the highlight of the book.
Overall, though, I couldn’t help but feel that the idea felt a bit stale. That’s not really the fault of this specific book, I guess. At this point in my reading for the SPFBO contest, 3/5 books have been grimdark mystery-esque books in grimy or morally opaque worlds.
Gray morality is the theme of the book, which made it hard for me to really root for anyone specifically. Characters hook up, kill, fight, and more, but sometimes their motivations are unclear for why they act the way they do. There is no small amount of political intrigue, as well, but with those characters also embroiled in the same broad wash of colorless morals, it becomes difficult to truly decide who to root for.
Overall, I thought this novel was a tad more generic in its characters, which made it difficult for me to get into. On the flip side, the many reviews on Goodreads almost all lean towards glowing, so I might just be the minority here. We Men of Ash and Shadowsis a morally tenuous fantasy story in a dark world filled with violence. If that speaks to you, give it a shot.
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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.
S.M. Stirling is a well-known name in speculative fiction, largely due to his alternate history Draka novels. I’ve not read those books, as I’ve long been intimidated by finding a random one on a library or bookstore shelf, cracking the cover, and seeing a lengthy list of books I ought to read first. Betrayals shows me Stirling is capable of weaving an intriguing yarn, but it doesn’t really capture the feel of Babylon 5.
The main story centers around two primary points of conflict: the first is a gathering of Centauri and Narn diplomats on Babylon 5; the second is the revelation of a pair of T’ll, apparently long-time enemies of the Narn. The Narn, apparently, are the occupying forces on the planet T’ll, and this leads to a deep and abiding enmity between their peoples. With these stages set for conflict, the novel had a feeling that it should have huge implications, but the plot ultimately plays out at too small a scale for it to fully sell its premise.
One reason I say this is that the T’ll-Narn conflict is, to my knowledge, entirely contained within this novel. I looked up “T’ll” in the Babylon 5 Encyclopediaand came up empty, unless I was looking the wrong places. With that in mind, it makes it difficult to fathom how an apparently generations-spanning hatred and conflict can fit into this novel. That question is made especially difficult when it gets boiled down to such a microcosm of conflict that we’re simultaneously supposed to believe has much wider implications. I like the idea of this as a central conflict. The Narn occupying a planet and on a small scale and being devastated by the Centauri in a broader scale, upscaled conflict that is similar makes for quite the potential for a parable or deeper meaning somewhere. That never seems to happen, and we never really get the payoff that such a premise promises as a possibility.
Centering this planetary conflict in the midst of the wider Centauri-Narn conflict, again, hints at a broader possibility here, but because this is set in the Babylon 5 universe, and not in an abstract, standalone science fiction novel, we have to deal with it not making much sense of how many characters act. There are a few fun moments with Mollari, but G’Kar seems out of sorts the whole time, seeming out of character nearly every time he appears on the page.
All of this is unfortunate, because there are other cool scenes set within this novel, such as the smuggling of the T’llin twins in as statues. It doesn’t make a ton of sense and requires a little more science = magic than we’re used to in Babylon 5, but it’s a great idea nonetheless. Garibaldi has some okay character moments, but they are few and far between. Much of the rest of the main cast seems shadows in the background. Again, this would be a fine decision if the rest of the story managed to maintain a sense of well, making sense in Babylon 5’s established operating grounds.
Betrayalshints at great ideas and broader conflicts than it manages to deliver. It ends up reading more like a Babylon 5-themed plot in a kind of alternate universe. As a standalone novel, it has some good ideas, but it feels displaced in the universe in which it’s set. It’s an okay read, but ultimately frustrating in its delivery.
Links
Babylon 5 Hub– Find all my Babylon 5-related posts and content here.
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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 am a Hugo voter this year (you can be, too, by paying the fee) and I have set off to try to read everything that was nominated in the awards so that I can more fairly vote for what I believe are the best works of the year. The Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book is not technically a Hugo Award, but it is awarded at the same time for the best YA novel of the year in the genres of science fiction or fantasy. I have read all the nominees for this year and given them reviews and scores below. Please let me know what you think, too!
Chaos on Catnetby Naomi Kritzer- Grade: B+ I was blindsided by the first Catnet book, Catfishing on Catnet, which I did not know anything about going in. I read it because it was picked for a group read in the Sci Fi and Fantasy Book Club on Goodreads. It was awesome. A YA adventure that touched on religion, LGBTQ+ questions, online forums, and more. It felt like something I could have lived as a young adult on forums and stuff a decade or so before I read it. The second book picks up where the previous one left off, with the questions of AI and religion looming large. There’s not a lot I can say without spoiling things, but Kritzer once more delivers the goods. It’s a solid read front-to-back and while I didn’t find it quite as transcendently great as the first one, I had a good time reading it.
Victories Greater Than Deathby Charlie Jane Anders- Grade: C I am not sure what I expected going in to this story. The blurb makes it sound like a kind of weird coming-of-age story and I guess that would be a pretty accurate way to describe it. It’s a fun enough plot, but everything feels sort of light and cheery and… saccharine. Even though the main baddies are pretty bad… it all feels so airy that it’s difficult to take seriously. The ending didn’t really do it for me, either, to the point where I found the whole story forgettable.
The Last Graduateby Naomi Novik- Grade: B- The second book in a magical school series from Novik continues to demonstrate her excellent grasp of writing deep characters. Unfortunately, it also has the main flaw I found from the first book–which is that I don’t find myself really liking any of them. I ultimately found this to be a book I wanted to love more than I did. Credit to Novik for a compelling world, plot, and characters, though.
Redemptorby Jordan Ifueko- Grade: A Jordan Ifueko closes out a duology that features African mythology, religion, magic, and love. Ifueko’s prose is strong, and her narrative voice is utterly compelling. Tarisai is a wonderful protagonist and the challenges she faces as she seeks to find her own space in a world in which everyone is trying to pull her in different directions makes for compulsive reading. Will she be able to bring justice to a world that has so often lacked for it? Read the duology to find out.
A Snake Falls to Earthby Darcie Little Badger- Grade: B+ Somehow both haunting and cute, this story of a Lipan Apache girl, Nina, and a (literal) snake-kid, Oli looks like an easy read. Then, you get to some of the content and it’s like hold up, this is going to be a ride. Whether it’s a story about breaking free of one’s made up bonds are living into one’s destiny, Darcie Little Badger delivers strong themes that will leave readers thinking long after finishing the book.
The Iron Widowby Xiran Jay Zhao- Grade: A I don’t know if there’s anything not to love in this wildly creative, angry book. It’s in-your-face attack on misogyny and other ills could be incredibly off-putting if it wasn’t balanced with an excellent plot, strong main character, and intriguing world. There are alien threats, mechs, attacks on cultural norms, and other great scenes in abundance here. Somehow the churning broth of this concoction all comes together and works and it does it so well. My only complaint here is that while the mechs are super cool, I wanted them to be even more fully realized and utilized. More mech action, please! Anyway, do yourself a favor and read this one. It’ll punch you in the gut and you’ll like it.
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Links
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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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.
A café in Denver is suddenly ripped from the pavement and dropped into the Cretaceous period in the same place, along with several diners. The people inside have to figure out what happened, avoid the dangerous dinos, and see if they can get back home.
The action gets going basically immediately, as the characters encounter a small array of dinosaurs and dinosaur-adjacent wildlife. As anyone who is even vaguely aware of how massive dinosaurs are and how deadly even small ones appear to have been, the implications should be quite ominous. What made the book the most fun for me is how it’s a kind of inverted Jurassic Park. Instead of humans bringing dinosaurs to life and dealing with the implications, here it’s humans going back in time (accidentally) and being trapped in a world with dinosaurs. Survival is not guaranteed.
The plot moves on at a good clip, and Jones introduces one element that basically slaps a timer on the events happening. I thought that was a good move because it added a sense of urgency to the story which was already fast paced. This turned up the action to frenetic in the best possible way. I found myself burning through the book quickly because I wanted to know what would happen next.
One of the characters seemed especially gross to me. There was latent and overt misogyny coming through that character’s viewpoint, to the extent that at first I almost wondered if it was narrative voice. Suffice to say that is not the case. The incel vibes are intentional, but they’re part of a building plot throughout the book that came to a satisfying end. I only point this out specifically because it was initially very off-putting for me, personally, and wanted other readers to know to persevere.
The Dinosaur Fouris a hugely enjoyable romp. It’s the kind of read that’s excellent while enjoying the weather outside or flying on an airplane. It’s not going to make you think too hard. Instead, there are dinosaurs, there is action, and it’s fun to read. Recommended.
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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Eclectic Theist 