The Self-Published Science Fiction Contest (“SPACEFIC”) is underway, and my group is going through one of my favorite parts of the contest: sorting through a slush pile. Basically, we get a stack of books and need to sample them all to narrow down our selections for quarter- and semi-finalists. Here, I’ll be going over my first impressions of some of these books. Please note my “Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe” vote is only indicative of my opinion and may not reflect the opinion of our whole group. Since we advance books as a group, it’s possible a “Yes” from me may end up a “No” overall and vice versa. Let me know what you think of the books in the comments!
Fid is a supervillain. But he’s got deeper motivations, it seems, than the superheroes. I was a huge fan of the sardonic self-commentary from Fid, and I also just inherently love superhero-type stories. The wrinkles in this one include our villain being, apparently (at 10% in) the actual hero of the story, and other subversions of the superhero tropes. Honestly, this reminded me quite a bit of Brandon Sanderson’s Firefight in tone and theme. To be fair, I’m only a little ways in, but it’s safe to say that I am all in on this one. It’s a yes.
Wow. Sometimes you open a sci-fi novel and you’re so buffeted by strangeness and otherness that it just makes you want to keep going. There Are No Countries did that to me. It has that otherworldliness that so characterizes some of my favorite sci-fi. The main character is not great, but is compelling. The plot is engrossing. The asides at the beginning of the chapters are confusing, but in that ineffable way that makes you want to figure out what’s actually going on. It’s just… quite well done. I don’t know how to categorize it–is it a first contact novel? Is there even first contact really happening? What, exactly, even is happening in general? I’m so intrigued that this has to be a yes for me. I’ll probably read it even if it doesn’t make our final quarterfinalist selections.
I love the idea of an undersea world. It reminds me of watching seaQuest DSV and loving the submarine sci-fi storyline. The first 10% or so of this book reads almost entirely like setup for more. Jacob Stone is setting up for an adventure, he’s got to haul some cargo he doesn’t especially want. It’s a down-on-his-luck scenario. I kept thinking I wanted me from the world and the world-building. It’s underwater! There’s gotta be an impact on everything. Where’s all the cool tech? Where are the problems that might spring up from the locale? It read, instead, like a kind of standard “throw a crew together on a smuggling run” type story. It’s a no, but I like the world idea.
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The inaugural Self-Published Science Fiction Contest is over, but I am reading and reviewing every single semifinalist! Follow along to see what I think of the judges choices for the top 30 out of 300 books!
Crucial Larson has been summoned to the elitist utopia on Mars to solve a missing persons case. The missing person is his sister, and her capture somehow evaded the all-seeing, all-knowing-ish AI known as Halo. Halo starts interrogating Crucial after he also manages to get off the grid for a little bit on Mars, desperate to know what happened to defeat its monitoring systems. That’s where the story begins in this hard-hitting mystery.
The plot hook is fantastic. I was all in on the story of Gates of Mars from the get-go. Of course, a hook isn’t all that makes a good story, so the question that lingered in my mind was whether it would be able to maintain my interest throughout its 350-ish page length. McFall and Hays add wrinkles throughout the book to keep it going. Many of these are highly successful–such as the lingering thread about what happened with some giraffes on Mars (truly!). Others sometimes read as a bit deus ex machina. The most egregious of these were some of the ways Halo’s detection was avoided, which started to make it feel as if it were the simplest thing rather than an insanely stunning achievement.
When the plot trajectory changes around the 55-65% mark, there are some bigger highs and lows. I found some of it a bit long–possibly in need of editing down. However, at that point my investment in the characters was strong enough to sustain me even in the parts I thought might drag a bit. The conclusion was satisfying, bringing the story to a conclusion that felt like a natural end point despite clearly being ready for the rest of a series.
Gates of Marsis a great noir-sci-fi combination that I would highly recommend to fans of that genre mashup. I found it nearly un-put-down-able at times. The narrative voice, characters, and worldbuilding are quite strong.
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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Robert Silverberg is a favorite of mine, but I have to acknowledge frustrations with his corpus. The Son of Man is a novel on the verge of greatness, though it is marred by some significant flaws.
One of Silverberg’s strengths is making characters whose viewpoints force the reader to consider life from a different–and often uncomfortable–perspective. This novel is replete with examples of that, as Clay, a man from the 20th century, is thrust forward in time billions (??) of years and encounters the future of humanity. The future humans are familiar, yet alien, tantalizing, yet appalling. Questions about the nature of humanity and its future are found in abundance, with very little by way of answers. What is humanity if all its heroes are forgotten? What kind of continuity is there between Clay and these telepathic, self-changing, apparently immortal beings?
Clay lustfully mates in almost every combination possible–something that seems often par for the course in a Silverberg novel. Along the way, questions about sexuality are approached in ways that seem surprisingly blunt. The future humans can change their bodies at will, oscillating between male and female and even in new combinations of the two. Silverberg, through Clay, seems frustratingly stuck in binaries of gender, though the writing and characters themselves almost force him to go beyond and outside of those same binaries. Is the work a kind of trans-friendly reading of future humanity? I don’t know if I’m qualified to answer that–but it does ask intriguing questions that seem forward thinking for 1971, when the novel was published. At the same time, Silverberg’s obsession with sex soaks the novel, with Clay’s lust being almost insatiable, while also often appearing along rigid and nearly misogynistic levels of thinking about male and female. Such thinking is challenged by the intersex/sexless/transitive nature of sexuality among the future-humans, but these challenges are only vaguely acknowledged in-text, leaving the reader to draw conclusions that likely go beyond Silverberg’s basic points.
What is man, that you are mindful of him? The novel has a few allusions to the term and theme of “son of man,” though these are barely touched upon and only vaguely thematically related to the content. It is a missed opportunity that this theme wasn’t more fully expressed, as it could have elevated the content.
The plot itself is non-existent. Clay goes into the future and has a bunch of vaguely framed interactions with future humans, most of which end in sexual encounters or thinking about sexual encounters of various styles. The novel is ultimately forced to rely entirely on the strength of those themes discussed above, leaving characterization and plot by the wayside.
Son of Manwas an interesting, if sometimes frustrating, read. It showcases some of Silverberg’s best and worst aspects. I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to Silverberg, but for fans of the author–or people who are interested in New Wave science fiction, it is worth checking out.
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Links
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The Self-Published Science Fiction Contest (“SPACEFIC”) is underway, and my group is going through one of my favorite parts of the contest: sorting through a slush pile. Basically, we get a stack of books and need to sample them all to narrow down our selections for quarter- and semi-finalists. Here, I’ll be going over my first impressions of some of these books. Please note my “Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe” vote is only indicative of my opinion and may not reflect the opinion of our whole group. Since we advance books as a group, it’s possible a “Yes” from me may end up a “No” overall and vice versa. Let me know what you think of the books in the comments!
The first 10% of Intelligence Block is largely made up of a tech wizard at a birthday party. It’s silly, delightful, and charming. It’s got shades of LitRPG and cyberpunk. I was a fan of the main character, the Wizard Joontal. It’s possible that his introspective narrative style and lofty self-opinion may become grating, but for now I found it genuinely endearing. I’m on board to see what happens with Joontal, what kind of wrinkles Falbo might introduce to the world, and what’s going on with the tech/magic. It’s a yes.
An explorer finds a high-tech artifact but doesn’t realize just how important it is. I am all about future archaeology. It’s honestly one of my favorite things in sci-fi. Here, I was excited to see a favorite trope utilized. I didn’t find the way information kept getting fed to the reader to be the way I’d prefer. It felt more like several info dumps than like a naturally evolving story. The world itself has a lot going for it, and it feels like there’s potential for a huge story building behind the scenes. There just wasn’t enough in the nuts and bolts for me to advance this one on my list. It’s a no.
I read 15% of this and honestly I’m very confused. What, exactly, is it? Characters are introduced as they show up with comic book-like pictures and quick description placards. The first portion of the novel reads like it’s all set up for those very cards. It’s a jarring way of presenting the story. And what’s there so far doesn’t grab me like I’d hope it would. I think the book has potential as a kind of comic book presentation of a big story, but I didn’t find the substance behind the style enough to grab me. It’s a no.
Conclusion
This is an intriguing batch of books. Each has a lot of potential. Unfortunately, it’s the nature of this contest that not every book can make it and even some good books may not make it farther. Both books I said “no” to had aspects that made me think about continuing, but neither had enough in the portion we sampled to make me want to definitively say yes and potentially kick off another book I’ve said “yes” to. Readers looking for indie books should check out any of these three, though!
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I’m a judge for the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest (SPSFC), and I’m reading and reviewing a bunch of books besides the semi-finalists and finalists! Check out my SPSFC 2021 Hub for all my posts and reviews for the contest.
I saw copies of Bloodlines on multiple bookshelves in booktube-type videos or pictures of favorite books on a shelf and felt a distinct sense of FOMO. While the book wasn’t in my group’s reading, I threw it on my list of books to read because I wanted to be sure I got around to it. I’m glad I did. Bloodlines merges genres deftly, borrowing inspirations from Blade Runner and Jim Butcher’s “Dresden Files” while carving out its own space in a somewhat crowded cyberpunk field.
Bloodlines follows Tom “Doc” Holliday (love the Wild West reference) as he gets a chance to be part of a secret detective unit dealing with crimes that appear to be impossible based on mundane reality. It quickly appears the first murder he needs to solve may have been from a vampire. But these vampires and the setting of the book push the boundaries of science fiction and fantasy, meshing them together in some surprising ways.
There are a good number of characters here, and the chase to find a mysterious killer gets more exciting as the novel goes on. While there possibly are a few twists and turns too many–the novel could have used a bit of thinning down–the story remains satisfying and has enough action to sustain the reader throughout. Characters are interesting, and while many only get a surface-level outline, others grow and develop throughout the story.
I realized at one point deep into the novel that I genuinely had little idea of “Whodunit.” It wasn’t that the novel wasn’t well written enough to give hints; instead, it’s well written enough to conceal the big reveals quite well–basically until Hartog is ready for the reader to know. It makes the mystery that much more satisfying and certainly delivers a solid ending.
The setting is done well, with a kind of inter-dimensionality setting up the possibility of seemingly magical creatures showing up in our own reality. This leads to, among other things, the possibility for near-humans from alternate timelines and realities to show up–one of whom ends up as a kind of partner for Holliday. I quite enjoyed the worldbuilding, even though it is admittedly a bit hand-wavey about some of the details. You aren’t reading this book for comprehensive scientific accuracy, though, you’re reading it for fun; and Hartog provides fun in droves.
Bloodlinesis a great read that fans of the inspirations and subgenres it emulates should go run and grab as soon as possible. I found it to be a fun read, and I’ll definitely be grabbing the next book in the series. 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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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.
Personal Agendas takes place just before the story of “Falling Toward Apotheosis” from the TV series (Season 4, Episode 4). The placement here on the timeline means that it has a somewhat stronger connection to the show than some of the other novels so far.
The story centers around 5 main threads. The first is a group of Narn lead by L’Kan trying to infiltrate the Centauri homeworld to liberate G’Kar. The second features G’Kar and Londo Mollari plotting to save Narn and Centauri together. Third, Sheridan and Delenn attempt to thwart some arms dealers. Fourth, a group from Babylon 5 are also attempting to rescue G’Kar. Finally, fifth, Vir is fending off an upcoming wedding with a Centauri woman who hates the Narn.
There’s a lot going on in this 212 page novel, in other words. And, the good news is that most of it works pretty well. The Sheridan/Delenn plot is, in my opinion, the weakest by far part of the novel. It has almost no connection to anything else going on and doesn’t really do much for the characters, either. It seems to have been thrown in so two more main characters could make an appearance. Vir’s interactions with Lyndisty are a nice diversion thrown in between what otherwise amounts to a bunch of action and nefarious plotting. G’Kar and Mollari’s voices show up loud and clear throughout the novel; I found their interactions entirely believable.
The main problem with the story is that it doesn’t make a lot of sense as a tag on to the episode it’s supposed to precede. Almost none of the plot points tie into that episode, and if pushed too far, the book would seem to undermine some of the dramatic tension we get in the TV series. That said, if one reads it as what it largely is: a fun romp featuring the main characters that could have happened even if it wouldn’t make much sense for it to have happened (there’s a mouthful), it is pretty enjoyable. Several characters are depicted spot on. Even Garibaldi gets some classic one-liners. It’s a well-paced novel, so even though readers know basically none of it matters to the series it maintains interest all the way through.
Personal Agendasis one of the stronger Babylon 5 novels in the original Warner Brothers run. The characters actually feel like they do in the show and the plot, while essentially a throw-away, ties in to the series in believable ways. Recommended for Babylon 5 fans.
Links
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!
The Self-Published Science Fiction Contest (“SPACEFIC”) is underway, and my group is going through one of my favorite parts of the contest: sorting through a slush pile. Basically, we get a stack of books and need to sample them all to narrow down our selections for quarter- and semi-finalists. Here, I’ll be going over my first impressions of some of these books. Please note my “Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe” vote is only indicative of my opinion and may not reflect the opinion of our whole group. Since we advance books as a group, it’s possible a “Yes” from me may end up a “No” overall and vice versa. Let me know what you think of the books in the comments!
A foster child whose best friend is an illegally upgraded AI robot deals with… a lot in this intriguing novel by Brian Terenna. I kept thinking I’d settled in and figured out what the novel would ultimately be about and then a major twist or shift of the rails would hit and I’d find myself wanting to push forward to find out what would happen next. Fae Luna, our hacker-teenager extraordinaire, lives in a New America with a new set of heroes, new constitution, and newly found freedoms. So they say, anyway. What feels like a clear setup for a YA dystopia isn’t that. Or it’s not only that. Or… well, there’s so much more going on here than one would think. Even the first 5-10% hits with some super unexpected vibes. Terenna constantly subverts expectations, but doesn’t ever make the reader feel cheated for having done so. I ended up finishing the book. It’s a yes.
On Venus, if you believe lies, you’re subject to be an underclass. Here, we have two main characters–Hix, who has risen from the underbelly of Venus to become a star, and Neeva, whose fate seems destined for greatness. I was into the vibes at the beginning of this one, but also was hoping for more than a kind of generic-feeling space opera. So far, it didn’t hit me hard on either the action or plot, but I am intrigued enough by the setting and characters to want more. I’m putting it down as a tentative maybe, and I’ll need to circle back to it to read more.
I’m not sure what to make of this one at 20% in. It’s got a well-developed, real-feeling world. It has quite a bit of political court intrigue. There are vibes of stories I’ve enjoyed quite a bit. So far, though, it reads like a fantasy court drama, not like anything set on another planet. If I could describe it at this point, I’d say it’s like a story of Anastasia, but with a few twists. I am intrigued enough to want to keep going, but confused enough to not say a firm “yes” quite yet. I have it on my “maybe” stack to circle back to when I have time for final determination.
Conclusion
Another 3 books, and no firm “no” in the bunch. I am excited that our slush pile is so strong. Have you read any of these, or did these reviews make you want to check them out? Let me know in the comments.
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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.
Otpor is a city that seems ripe for rebellion. The execution of a rebel leader some time ago lingers over the city, and people are starting to question the Orthodoxy. The Orthodoxy is the teaching that all humans reflect an elemental core.
Readers follow some of these elementals as they deal with some of the day-to-day goings on in Otpor, including tracing and putting down Heterodoxy, any beliefs and actions that go against the seemingly harmonious existence in the society. Indeed, much of the central plot here isn’t about some oppressive government that the young and likely good-looking main characters must take down. Instead, it’s about interpersonal conflicts and how the beliefs we have about others and ourselves can divide us.
I thought that the idea of humans reflecting elements was awesome. It had a kind of Divergent series set up in that regard, but with a wider focus and seemingly more possibilities. Indeed, in the sense of world-building, this book goes beyond some other YA dystopias in having what’s clearly a deep lore and backstory from which readers get tantalizing glimpses throughout the book.
That said, the downside here is that readers only get those tantalizing glimpses and not much more in this first entry of the series. It’s like there’s a huge amount of questions and you know there are answers there, but the answers are horded rather than being doled out in satisfying portions. Only near the end of the book do we finally start to see the world with more open eyes, but at that point it reads as a bit too little, too late.
Resistanceis an intriguing first entry in a series. It plays on the dystopia genre in different ways than I’ve seen before. That said, it doesn’t resolve enough of the plot tension or give enough a view of the world to make it feel the payoff is all there.
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 Great Honor Harrington Read Along is a read along led by me with critical analysis and SPOILER FILLED looks at the Honor Harrington series and related works by David Weber and collaborators. I’ve read the whole main series and the overwhelming majority of the offshoots, but some of these will still be first time reads. However, spoilers will be abundant throughout these posts, including for much later books in the series.
I need to get this out of the way at the start. This may be my all-time favorite novel. I’m not saying it’s the best literarily or anything. It’s just probably my favorite. Part of that is because it’s just a fun read with any number of highly satisfying moments. But a bigger part of it is that I read this novel in the midst of a faith crisis in which I was, in a way, like the Graysons. I was struggling with my conservative upbringing teaching that women couldn’t be pastors, and that it was largely preferable to have women at home. There were just some things women couldn’t do as women. I was in the midst of throwing off that belief when I read this book, with Honor Harrington serving as the shining example of why women could be exactly what Graysons believed they couldn’t be. Yet the Grayson people had their faith taken seriously, even if it was seen as an aberration. It was hugely important and healing in a number of ways, and so this novel occupies that space in my heart (I wrote more about that here). Later, I’d get the book signed by Weber and tell him about its import on my own life and how I was now married to a pastor. He wrote, “Keep up the Good Work” with his dedication.
Okay, let’s dive in!
We get a little glimpse at Honor’s mother, which turns out to be a hugely important character detail later. Pretty sure this is all we see of her the whole novel, though. I wonder if this was an intentional character detail to be built on or just an incidental piece that Weber decided to use later. The chapter also gives us an introduction to Yeltsin’s Star, the strategic situation there, the Church of Humanity Unchained, and Honor’s alleged ineptness with diplomacy. We find out that even on Grayson, the lest strict sect of the Church of Humanity Unchained, women aren’t allowed to serve in basically any position of power. The Masadans also lopped off the New Testament from their Bibles after a conflict with Grayson, because they felt Jesus couldn’t be the Messiah due to technology still existing on Old Earth and women not being in their proper place.
There is a potential difficulty here–the implication seeming to be that if you just had the Old Testament, that is, the Hebrew Scriptures, you’d have oppression of women and anti-technology sentiment. No mention is made here of Jews, but it could be perceived as a kind of writing off of their faith. In-universe, however, it becomes clear the Masadans are not supposed to be an analogue for the Jews (who still exist in the Honor Harrington universe in various branches). Instead, they are an extremist cultic group that was an offshoot of Christianity. Weber gives a solid insight into the headspace of fundamentalism later, in chapter 4: “There could be no compromise with those who rejected one’s own beliefs, for compromise and coexistence only opened the door to schism. A people or a faith divided against itself became the sum of its weaknesses, not its strengths, and anyone who didn’t know that was doomed” (49). When I read these lines so many years ago within a faith tradition that largely thought that way, it was a bit shocking. It was one of the first times I actually realized how insular and borderline insane that sounded.
The first chapter also has a pretty insightful comment from Weber in the mouth of Courvosier: “Extremists tend to grow more extreme… as problems get closer to solutions” (15). Chapter 2 features James MacGuiness. [I edited here due to the comments from an insightful reader pointing out I missed MacGuiness in the previous book.] Having read the whole series, it’s kind of shocking to see him essentially sidelined here to such a minor role, as he was in the first book. His role, like Honor’s mother, is quite minimal. They’ll feature much larger later in the series.
Meeting and learning more about Yanakov is important, as he as a character shows the possibility of developing within the Grayson religious system into the realization that what they believed and did regarding their women actually limited women rather than cared for them (see his comments on chapter 5 vs. chapter 8). Weber does a simply fantastic job of showing how religious extremists work and think while also showing that those on the borders of extremism are capable of being challenged and going either more towards extremism or reasoning their way out of it.
Chapter 11 shows Houseman continuing to try to push for a non-military solution, and his efforts in that regard and utter disdain for Honor and others is finally, in chapter 18, literally smacked down. He’s a classic example of a person who thinks that wealth makes one smarter or better than everyone else. It turns out people who have tons of wealth can be just as foolish and reckless as anyone else. Having lots of money doesn’t mean you’re right about anything.
The sacrifice of the Manticorans, including Courvosier, is a hugely emotional moment in chapter 14 as they put their lives up to save Matthews. That, plus the assassination attempt in chapter 20 and Nimitz’s swift reaction time along with Honor’s fighting to her potential death turns the Grayson public opinion in favor of Manticore. Weber deftly shows that often, when strongly held beliefs are confronted by facts and reality that contradict them, people are capable of change. More recent years seem to prove this wrong, but there still are stories of people changing their minds. I love the scene of Honor discovering that her resistance against the assassins has been playing on the news in Grayson continuously for hours and hours. Mayhew says, after Harrington sees the news story, “And after seeing it, no one on this planet–including Admiral Garret–will ever dare to question your fitness as an officer again, now will they?” (252). Of course, this isn’t entirely true, but the for the sake of plot, it is nice to have this as a possibility for Weber to change Grayson public opinion so massively in favor of Harrington and Manticore.
Chapter 26 reveals the horrible depravity of war and the misogyny inherent not just in the Masadans, but also as is often found in warfare generally. We also get a glimpse of the fiery steel that Honor demonstrates throughout the series as she comes within inches of killing a Masadan directly after seeing what they’ve done to her people. These horrific scenes are followed by some of the more lighthearted scenes in the book as Truman jokes with her engineer and, later, Hamish Alexander about taking the safeties off the engines on her ship so they can cut hours off when reinforcements will arrive at Yeltsin. Even these funny lines, though, are found in the midst of the most desperate scenes.
The final battle between Fearless and Thunder is yet another example of Weber writing fantastic military action. It’s even better when Alexander shows up with reinforcements only to find that they thought they were in time–but weren’t. It’s a deus ex machina that gets turned on its head, only to essentially turn around and save the day after all. Frankly, it’s just a well executed sequence of events that makes it all more believable and satisfying. We also get a quick notion that “Horrible Hemphill” can think of smart ideas after all–a story that lurks in the background of both of these books and will be hugely important later in the series.
The final scenes of the novel are wonderful, as Harrington receives the highest possible honors from both Grayson and Manticore (and a reprimand for smacking Houseman). Mayhew says it well, “You see, we need you” (419). Grayson needs an example like Honor to show them what women can and should do, along with introducing them to a broader world of possibilities. The book ends on a hopeful note for future collaboration, even with the clear notion that a bigger war is coming.
How about you? What did you think of the book? What were your highlights? Leave a comment and let’s discuss it more!
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Humanity has colonized the stars to the point that there are even backwater planets that most humans ignore. Those planets include people who are just trying to stay out of the way and be left alone. C’dar is one such planet, and the Caldwell family is one such people.
The setting for this one reminded me vividly of being in Tennessee near the Smoky Mountains. Even the description of how the Caldwell family (and others) had kind of spread across the foothills of the landscape is strongly similar to the Smokies. Munden does a great job place-setting here, as the world itself feels lived-in and real. The Caldwell family is a group of mutants, complete with nicknames like “Appetite,” “Kindle,” and “Drifter.” Indeed, the combination of setting, Southern flair, and mutants makes it read like a cross between Firefly and X-Men, a descriptor I saw more than one review use. I’d say that’s pretty accurate, and if that elevator pitch appeals to you, you ought to run to read the book.
The story is fairly basic: the Caldwell family is trying to live largely in peace, but finds themselves up against an infringing civilization that isn’t interested in just letting them live their lives. There’s a bit of a slow burn here as characters are developed and connections made. Then, the last third or so of the book is an almost non-stop series of conflicts showing off the mutant powers of the Caldwells vs. the more conventional weapons of others. Munden gets enough of a buy-in at the early stages of the book to sell the characters on the middle section. That part is a rather lengthy action-packed fight/chase/etc. scene that manages to continue to develop characters.
The book is, at its most simply put, a page-turner. It’s got enough plotting to get you invested, characters to sell you on it, and the action is intense enough to sustain the story. I found myself reading late into the night. The real story is less the conflict than it is the connections the Caldwells make with each other and others in their homeland.
Dusk Mountain Bluesis a solid read with a great setting and good characters. I enjoyed it quite a bit and would certainly recommend it to sci-fi fans looking to scratch that “Firefly” itch.
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 