Review: Still Falling

Still Falling by Martin Wilsey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The First Part of a Larger Story
Book: **
Performance: ****

The best I can say about this book is that I didn’t hate it. As stories go it was ok despite a general lacking of craft (the MC was pretty over the top with a lot of exposition slowing everything down). Fortunately I rather liked the MC and the narration made it fun to listen to. Each chapter begins with an unexplained extract from what appears to be some form of inquest … that hits at some form of disaster that the MC, and his trust AI sidekick, were involved in … then it jumps into the fantastic tale of Barcus (the MC) who is the “sole” survivor of an ambush of his survey ship by unknown planetary defenses who crash lands on the planet and has to hide from the native humans hunting him in sky ships that seem to just be transports for mercs on horseback Fortunately Barcus has a super, if mysterious, AI (that is pretty sketch … echos of HAL here) and two huge, advanced robotic machines that make him pretty much invincible (when he is riding in them at least). This of course allows him to pontificate at length about the bad guys … who were truly bad … and I am sure there is a reason, but it is not really explored here. Mostly this all allows him to add to his graphic, and rather gratuitous, body count (‘cause that is what you do with bad guys). There is also the expected love interest taken from the natives and a whole mess of anger and navel gazing that was mildly entertaining most of the time. So … basically you get a survival story that is entirely predictable that brings right up to where you might expect some conflict resolution … and then stops (with a whole bunch of questions waiting for the sequel).

In addition to the decent narration, the only thing that saved the story here was the world building … it was actually interesting if not well presented or explained. There is an apparent social hierarchy that resembles feudalism with “keepers” at the top and ignorant quasi-slaves (or serfs if you will) at the bottom and very little mobility … or recourse for abuse by those in the higher cast. It can be presumed that the keepers are the ones using (and perhaps trying to maintain) what technology remains on the planet, but it is pretty much a mystery how they tie into the planetary defenses that took out the scout ship (and the 2000 souls onboard) so quickly. All in all … this has the feel of being just the setup to a larger story that might be interesting enough to continue just to find out some of the answers … may be.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: Hayden's World: Volume 2

Hayden's World: Volume 2 by S.D. Falchetti
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Janus 2: ***
Bernard’s Promise: ****

This is the second collection of of hard science shorts in the James Hayden Universe and it looks at First Contact. Over all it was better than Vol 1 with each story having more room to develop and become interesting (both novellas were slow starting up). It is obvious that a lot of thought went into the science for these stories and for the most part the author came across as knowledgable … but that also means that some of the extensive descriptions and explanations slowed down the narrative a bit and I am sure that experts in these science and tech fields could find plenty wrong with the details, but for the casual reader it was an entertaining mind exercise that I enjoyed.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: Relics of Tomorrow

Relics of Tomorrow by Brandon Cleland
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Book: ***
Performance: **

A Very Simple Trope filled Dystopian Story

It is a basic coming of age story in a dystopian world that is divided into levels according to net worth. A young, orphaned thief, dreams of making it to a level above the smog where he can ditch the O2 mask and see the sun. Of course … there is something special about the young hooligan … who eventually teams up it a shape changing alien who becomes something of a mentor for the “big league” of possession liberation. There is a little force humor between the pair as they have encounter a few mishaps in each caper/heist, but nothing too unbelievable (and or unexpected). The story does come across as something of a “paint-by-the-numbers” piece all the way to the end (which was a tad on the rabbit/hat or comic book style). Overall it was entertaining, but fairly forgettable.

The Narration was pretty basic. The reader struggled to differentiate character voices, especially for women, and there was something off that made the delivery feel awkward and unnatural to me. It was not so bad that I couldn’t tolerate it, but it did highlight the rather formulaic nature of the story to the point of amusement.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: Homecoming

Homecoming by Jude Austin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Book: **
Performance: ****

The Cleanup from Book One

We get a little bit more world-building … which is basically just a SciFi veneer over today, with such weirdness as parking-lot asteroids and cryo-sleep for a three (3) day trip. Generally it is more of the same with Kata and Tau now on the run where they encounter more bad guys that want to take advantage of their unique abilities (mostly Kata). There is less violence, but impact of that experience lingers throughout the story here and gets a little long in the tooth towards the end (and less interesting as it devolves into a pseudo courtroom drama). The biggest issue was that it moved sooo slowly that it was hard to stay focused.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: Project Tau

Project Tau by Jude Austin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book: ***
Performance: ****

An Interesting Clone Story

The world building in this story was interesting if a bit simplistic and anachronistic at times. The primary theme revolves around human cloning … called Projects … that are grown and used in place of humans in dangerous environments (mines) and experiments that have apparently greatly benefited humanity in general, but these clones are always property, treated more or less like animals. But they are hugely expensive and the labs that grow them operate on a very slim margin … so when the opportunity to pass off a human as a project lands in front of the lab executives, they just can’t pass that up … and Kalin becomes project Kata … with skills and abilities no Project has ever had before if only they can “break” his independent streak. And that is where the story turns very dark, especially for a YA genre.

When Project Kata is thrown in with Project Tau (an actual, advanced human clone), the interactions provide a backdrop to explore what is means to be human … and what it means for a human to be reduced to mere property (think chattel slavery). There is also a dimension of human psychology with respect to how these projects are trained (aka broken) that provides an opportunity to highlight the effects of abuse and violence, both physical and mental, that was designed to dehumanize the subjects (not human and clone) and how those in authority can justify their inhuman behavior. It all seemed plausible given my understanding of human history and psychology; although to be honest, I found the focus here a little difficult to take at times, but the protagonists were very sympathetic characters and I was pulling for them the entire time while anticipating a better situation at the end …

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: The God Protocol: Dragon

The God Protocol: Dragon by D.L. Wilburn Jr.
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Book: **
Performance: **

A Simple, Tropey Alien Conspiracy Story

It was an interesting premise … a fringe podcaster seeking the truth behind all those alien/government conspiracies only to find out that some of them are actually true. Unfortunately … it was poorly executed. To begin with, there was absolutely no character development (or even differentiation) anywhere. Then the MC podcast dialog seemed to take up way too much of the story … the silliness would have been bearable if it didn’t take itself so seriously (either I didn’t get the humor or there just wasn’t any). Then there was the typical freshman pitfalls such as info-dumps and an incessant focus on trivial details that added absolutely nothing to the story. There is enough tech to call it SciFi … and the author gets most of it right, but it does go off the rails enough that I am pretty sure it is just a bunch of tropes stitched together without much understanding of the actual tech/science behind it. Must of this would have been fixed with a good editor … all of this was exacerbated by a narration that didn’t differential the voices well and delivered the excessive dialog just enough off to seem unnatural … taken all together, it was so boring that I almost DNF.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: Spawn

Spawn by Donald F. Glut
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Book: **
Performance: ***

Pocahontas in Space … With Dinos

This is the third book in the Don Glut’s Pulp series; I have not read the first two of the series, but this installment does stand well on its own. That said, the story feels like is a nod to the 1960’s pulp sub-genre of SciFi (which should come as no surprise) … most especially with its overtly man’s man hero coming to the rescue of the helpless, and very beautiful, woman. From an art perspective I can appreciate the effort even as I have a hard time truly enjoying the cringe here. The basic idea is that, in a world where nobody ever watched any of the Jurassic Park movies, the people of earth want a Dinosaur park, and rather than just cloning DinoDNA, send a spaceship to a planet that has what they are looking for. While there, they rescue a sexy native woman from the jaws of death on two feet and hitch her to the expedition captain for a little play on the side.

So with a little bit of egg napping, the people get what they want … and more. There is actually a pretty interesting twist woven into he plot line that was fun to think about and probably would have worked better with a different first contact story, but it was still entertaining. At times there was a little too much focus on details (so if you are a dino loving geek add back a star).

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: Nanoverse

Nanoverse by Theophilus Monroe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Story: ***
Performance: ***

Fantasy with a SciFi Facade ...

This is a collection of four(4) quick (3+ hours ea) fantasy stories set in a fantasy world wearing the skin of a cyberpunk genre … because it’s all about uses the new buzzword nano as much as possible without any real knowledge of what they are are how they would actually work. Maybe that is just my inner geek chanting that is not how that works in my head for almost the entire book (IOW I know too much about the tech and had a hard time letting go). Regardless … while the story doesn’t work well within the generally accepted norms of SciFi, it was a fairly typical Fantasy that is build to leverage a virtual (fantasy) world concept along the lines of the matrix, upload or free guy where the bad guy mysteriously works toward the total destruction of the real world. It’s not a bad plot … however, it has been done much better else where.

The story begins with an example of unintended consequences despite good intentions when a vaccine is developed to introduce nanites into the human body that would be tasked with healing wounds and preventing disease. Patient Zero is a badly wounded soldier who would probably have died otherwise, so with that success story behind the program, the government mandates nanovax for everybody … and hidden within those nanites is the ability to network into the public cloud to spy on the host AND take over the human conscious … a la mind control (maybe I am reading the tealeaves wrong here, but this part of the story starts to read like covid antivax conspiracies that didn’t help with the whole suspension of disbelief needed to fully enjoy the story).

That is where the algorithm comes in … which works sorta like minority report in that it predicts aberrant behavior ahead of time and reports it to the authorities who controls the nanites which can then control the host. Of course, in this paranoid fantasy, our hero is a threat to the system because his PTSD has change his mind enough that he can’t be controlled and that makes him a terrorist … only before the government can take him out back and shoot him, he is rescued by the resistance so that he can eventually defeat the algorithm.

Of course that is not the end … in part 2 the nanites can now swarm (in say 500 in each cloud) externally and possess others in the physical world … and apparently host an uploaded consciousness and associated memories all in readable code with individual global network addresses … so the resistance moves from minority report into the matrix here … again with a lot less finesse. We also begin to see the hero’s daughter make her debut as the bad guys cats paw … something that didn’t really work for me. This actually becomes a central theme in Post Human as the action moves almost entirely into the virtual world and a race to avoid an apocalypse in the real world. This part of the story calls to mind elements of the bobiverse with all the consciousness cloning. It all wraps up with a redemption arc in the final installment, which for better or for worse can actually stand on its own with no significant inspiration from other stories, but which does get a little preachy with a hint of Judeo-Christian theology … for me, this was actually the best of the four (4)

Book 1: Algorithm (3:56)
Book 2: Nanoswarm (3:43)
Book 3: Posthuman (3:15)
Book 4: Nanowar (2:32)

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: MAIDEN

MAIDEN by Charles Brass
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Book: **
Performance: ***

Great Concept, Weak Execution

The premise is good if well worn. A post conflict dystopia where a group of scrappy exiles hold out against the collective/empire (aka The Brethren) where everyone mysteriously fights with archaic close combat melee weapons (aka swords/blades and electroprods) despite being part of an interstellar civilization. Enter the Last Jedi … er … Maiden who was specifically created to battle the evil Sith … er Brethren. So much potential that just didn’t hit home for me. To start, the world building was so extremely loose and haphazard that I still don’t know how it all holds together. Most confusing is how slip rings (star gates) appear to come if two sizes (person transporters and ship transit points). Then is is how the Brethren are actually organized and who (or what) is a Master, a Knight, a Drone, or a Minion. I think I figured it out towards the end, but it was pretty confusing until then. More problematic is the interaction between each estate was full of overly aggressive bluster and all around idiocy that they worn thin long before the end.

The quasi-good guys (aka Exiles) are even worse, with an irritating display of imperial arrogance and pod measuring in virtually every scene (at least among the leadership). I absolutely hated ever part they were in. Fortunately the main characters, Crystal Maiden (The title character), Builder Scrounger (who is somehow related to the Brethren) and the Smart Ship (AI) are refreshingly innocent (read juvenile) and somewhat likable. However, even that didn’t make up for the slow pacing and buildup (all the interesting action is almost at the end of the book). Unfortunately there was way too much incessant dialogue and unnecessary detail that the lack of action made the first half of the story painfully boring (where my difficulty concentrating on what was happening might be the reason I didn’t follow the world building very well). In addition, the narration, while featuring very good accents and character voices, only reinforced the issues that I had with the aggressive interactions of both the Brethren and Exiles (in most cases it felt unnatural and way over the top).

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: The Foundry: A Hard-Science Fiction Space Opera

The Foundry: A Hard-Science Fiction Space Opera by J. Fitzpatrick Mauldin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Book: **** (3 1/2)
Performance: ***

A Typical Space Opera

This book was billed as a Hard SciFi Space Opera … which for most people would be an oxymoron … and in this specific case holds true; although there is an inconsistent attempt to keep the science good, the primary focus is on the drama at the expense of the science. Fortunately the story is still entertaining, once you get beyond the extremely boring and frustrating prospect of a very young child (age 5ish) stuck on a 40 year deep space mission (presumably because the original crew might not make it the whole way). Unfortunately … that takes up a good portion of the beginning of the book.

The mission is a response to an ET message saying come find us … so the earth, in a desperate attempt to find help that might save humanity from its poor stewardship of the earth, sends out a handful of ships (redundant missions show how desperate the situation is). There is a lot of juvenile drama on the trip out until the finally get to The Foundry … and everything falls apart. Not only are we not alone, there is a veritable menagerie of aliens and they are not all friendly. One one side are competing philosophies on how to protect ALL life and a few trippy parts exploring post humanism and genetic manipulation (just a little). It does get a little over the top and preachy at times … but you should expect that with a space opera … so set phasers to max and just bring it … and have a little fun.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: Battleborn Omnibus: Books 1-3: A Military SciFi Adventure!

Battleborn Omnibus: Books 1-3: A Military SciFi Adventure! by Andrew Beery
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book: ***
Performance: *****

More Silly Fun in Space

In the Boneyard Dog trilogy, the original Ryker was sent off into the Black to ensure the survival of the human species … eventually establishing three (3) human colonies, each with their own unique struggle to survive. Each book is pretty much dedicated to one of the three colonies … with the prequels detailing the founding of the colony covered in that book and the main event dealing with some form of galactic level [alien] extinction threat that must be stopped here if anybody is to survive. This trilogy takes place several centuries after that when another Ryker seeks to reconnect and save those lost colonies … starting with his own - Azul … where powerful and corrupt corporations maneuver against a benevolent and enlightened monarchy to keep the bulk of humanity enslaved. In fact, Ryker is a Battleborn which are actually permanently indentured soldiers (because debt has and servitude is inheritable) … sort of like the Janissaries of the early Ottoman Empire … and he is not happy about it. Because he is the spitting image of his amazingly near perfect great grand pappy several generations back (complete with the same sense of humor), Ryker soon find himself in a position to do something about it … which of course leads to a ship and then a fleet (how else does a drunken reprobate get promoted to Admiral).

As I said … this is basically the same story as the previous trilogy with a few new interesting details … so the rating here reflects my thorough enjoyment of the previous adventure with only a minor mark down for redundant plot (it still works, so why change it I guess). The main characters are still pretty much Mary Sues, but they are generally easy to like and the snarky comments nearly always draw a smile (if not an out right chuckle). The tech is almost deus ex machina level … but the science was good enough that it didn’t feel ridiculous (which is always a risk when an author goes into this much detail about this stuff … but I am a geek at heart, so I found it interesting). The military tropes were descent… just a tad better than a typical Trek episode (which I am usually am with). The prose is pretty basic without much nuance … so a fair amount of time it was just mindless listening for the fun of it. Over all the series is Much Better

Prequel 1: Chp 0-4 (0:46)
Book 1: Battleborn (4:34)
Prequel 2: Chp 29-36 (1:23)
Book 2: Battleborn 2 - Paradise (4:46)
Prequel 3: Chp 61-68 (1:15)
Book 3: Battleborn 3 - (5:26)

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: Boneyard Dog Omnibus

Boneyard Dog Omnibus by Andrew Beery
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book: ****
Performance: ****

A Fun Space Opera

This is a basic space opera in the same vein as what you might expect from Star Trek … in fact the debt owed here is visible from the frequent references to ST lore (and other 20th century anachronisms design to support the author’s sardonic sense of humor). Over all, you get a fair amount of the typical sci-fi tropes and campy style to be entertaining without going too far. In fact, there are clear cut good guys and bad guys, so character development is pretty shallow, so if you don’t like the humor, this book is not for you. They world building is also not very extensive; however, the science is done well enough that the various detailed info dumps that regularly apparent are actually interesting as speculative fiction (author has done his homework here) and the military structure and interactions is “close enough” not to be totally irritating.

The primary character (Ryker … perhaps another nod to TNG) is an officer of an earth space force that is recruited to head up a battle between heretofore unknown alien races (and various AIs) after a battle crippled ship limps into the Sol system. There are several stereo typical supporting characters, including one Mr Murphy who seems to have a knack for showing up when over our team starts winning; however, the also provides an opportunity for the MC to spout various snarky witticisms and creativity as he works through each setback … in fact, that is really the major part of the fun in this story. There is a bit of a Christian flare to some of the MC interactions and internal monologging, bit it has a light enough touch that it should be fine … although if you are within that tradition, there are element of the story that you might pick up on that others will miss (such as what appears to be a celestial or heavenly civil war between two “ancestor races” (maybe angels) with the bad guys being known as the defilers … doesn’t really impact the story … but is fun to think about.

Book 1: War Dog (5:25)
Book 2: Mad Dog (5:30)
Book 3: Hunting Dog (5:21)

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: Host: Systemic - Book 2

Host: Systemic - Book 2 by Chris Lodwig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book: ****
Performance: ****

A Solid Second Act to Systemic

This book is the sequel to Systemic, previously reviewed here; which, although Host can stand alone, you will get more out of it is you read Systemic first.

It picks up the story some 300 years after Systemic, when the Global AI that controlled humanity went silent … known within the story as the Great Calming. The process by which the AI had been governed in how it “guided” and protected humanity was preserved in enduring printouts documenting how decisions should be approached … and the “System” has been preserved by academics dedicated to that purpose and teaching it to the folks in the outlying villages (aka nodes). As time passes, the new wetware system has degraded, but questions (heretics) about the process as not tolerated (Bridgers). Strangely, for a world that seems to have its initial foundation in tech, it appears to be stuck in an almost Luddite stasis, unable to advance or otherwise change despite its evident on going decline. 

Into this world, we get our main PoV, a young neurodivergent and naive girl (Reyan) who questions everything. This allows a slow reveal/world-building as Reyan struggles to make sense of her world and what her place in it should be … and it helps that she is presented in such a way that it is very hard not to like her. Did I mention this was a slow start? Despite my own fascination with the apparent convergence of IT lingo/slang and structure (I am an IT profession, so that was an easy sale), it is still very slow going at first and relatively easy to put down and come back later until we get past the halfway mark. At that point the action picks up and pulls you through he rest of the story until the end (which I did NOT see coming).

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: Forsaken Commander

Forsaken Commander by G.J. Ogden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Book: **
Performance: ***

The [Force of] Non-belief is Strong In This One

It’s a Space Opera … so a certain level of silliness is expected … however, there is a point of diminishing returns and that point is in the rear view for this story. The classic elements (tropes) of a good story are there but are so mechanically stitched together that it never really takes on a life of its own. So we get a human stellar union (republic) that comes under threat from mysterious (Aternien) super-humans, aka post-humans (Sith anybody?). Their only hope is a couple of augmented humans (Jedi) wielding plasma swords (light sabers), their AI gopher bots (droids) and their former weapons platform (aka long sword spaceship) that was scuttled and abandoned (but apparently just needs a few patches and an OS to be good to go) after the previous war ended in an armistice (that being the perfect time to forget how to actually fight a stellar war). The one (damsel) human intelligence officer on the team is apparently there to serve as a foil to show just how much the augmented humans are over the top “Mary Sue(s)” … a fact that the reader is constantly reminded of ad nauseam … oh and the obvious shipping potential. So we have a team of three (3) good guys vs a handful of Uber bad guys in which was intended to be an Epic story, but there is not a single minion or supporting character in sight … and that is as good as it gets.

The character voices are pretty good and captured the witty banter well; however, the (overly dramatic) narrative text between that didn’t work for me. Still … it was good enough to improve my enjoyment of the story (at least a little) and enabled me to ignore some of the over explanation of the obvious as well as basic errors that would otherwise make no sense … such as a statement that ballistic rounds were unable to penetrate skin that was as solid as lead (which actually can be cut with a butter knife) … of shattered glass from a space shuttle cockpit … directing a massive warship (that maneuvers like a craft with a fraction of its mass) in a space battle with just three people … a rank of Major in a space Admiralty … nanites are basically magic plot armor … et al.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: METAL

METAL by J.F. Lawrence
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Book: **
Performance: ****

An Apocalyptic Military Fantasy

What happens if 7 of the most critical metals suddenly “rust” into nothing but “ash?” It was an interesting premise and the author infers that the story is based upon actual science … so let get this out of the way up front. The science doesn’t work like that; but it is the details of the science that trip up the plot, so it was relatively easy to give it a pass. What remains is a fairly decent military fantasy as the MC drives the almost non-stop action toward overcoming the contagion unleashed by a bioterrorist looking to “reset” humanity. The the primary plot is to figure out what the disease actually are (with a few head fakes thrown in) and then engineer a solution to save a world that has already burned down around them? Don't think about that too hard, you'll get a cramp. There is of course the requisite “hot” female spec ops character that drives this rather typical male fantasy, along with a few supporting characters to make this a character driven story … which also means we get a fair amount of navel gazing by the MC … but not enough to actually derail the fun. Unfortunately for me the low brow humor and 'good ole boy' euphemisms does get a bit old by the end. Still, with 14 hours of near nonstop action it’s worth a listen.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: Day After Infinity

Day After Infinity by J.F. Lawrence
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Book: ***
Performance: ****

Welcome to the Ryanverse

By the author’s own admission, this story was inspired by Taylor’s Bobiverse series … in fact, it was perhaps too derivative to stand on its own merits. Instead of a human consciousness downloaded into a virtual environment … the author keeps the meat sack and adds a rather irritating AI whose sarcastic humor was generally hit or miss for me. Add in a few nanites and the ability to clone so that you can ignore the inherent human frailties and you are ready to pilot your very own von Neumann probe that gives us our very own Theseus Boat debate … which seems silly when you consider how often cells replicate and die within the human body.

Regardless, the story opens in a quasi-dystopian future after an apocalyptic AI war where the MC (Ryan) basically sells himself to one of three (3) interstellar colony projects headed to Tau Ceti. Apparently, as a result of his previous stint as a medical experimental subject perfecting the cryofreeze tech, his nanites (controlled by his secondhand AI riding shotgun in his head) are super effective in regenerating damaged tissue (aka regeneration factor), making him a near perfect candidate to be a “failsafe” or backup crew member, despite his lowly status, young age and humble beginnings (because picking on the underdog is a tried and true method of building an empathic connection to the MC). What follows is a virtual torture fantasy i(aka training simulations) that is primary designed to show how tough Ryan is (and slowly “upgrade” his human parts until he becomes the Borg and foreshadow his future) making the first half a very slow start.

We come back to the Bobiverse plot in the second half and Murphy makes sure Ryan must pick up his role as a failsafe … and some of the science inconsistencies become more obvious … but as the action ramps if it is also easier to ignore them. This is also where we reintroduce the bad guy … a rogue/insane AI (come on … you had to see this coming right? ref the Ai war and the Bobiverse? There are a few interesting twists as the story follows what by now should be a fairly predictable plot so it was the narration that actually kept it entertaining (and where the frat boy AI … called AL … calmed down enough to be less aggravating). Of course … the emotional drama ramps up as well in order to make the finale pull on heartstrings … and hide the plot holes that would otherwise had be large enough to drive a truck through. For those who miss the Bobiverse, this is a fun diversion.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Review: THE MAN WHO SAVED THE UNIVERSE [THE ADVENTURES OF JOHNNY MAYHEM #1]

THE MAN WHO SAVED THE UNIVERSE [THE ADVENTURES OF JOHNNY MAYHEM #1] by C.H. Thames
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Performance: ***

My Name is Mayhem: * (78m)
They Sent a Boy: *** (56m)
The Burning Man: *** (53m)

Here we get the first three (3) short stories from the Johnny Mayhem pulp sci-fi sage originally published in Amazing Stories in the mid 1950s. As might be expected, the science has not aged well and the short story format doesn’t allow for much world building and/or character development … so the focus of the first story is basically our introduction to who is Johnny Mayhem … and after listening, I find it almost impossible to see how such an inept operative ever became a “legend.” Sure … there is the obvious mystery of a body hopping assassin (a la quantum leap) working to bring law and order to galactic chaos, all while fighting against a mysterious mind controlling alien (and yes … I see the oxymoronic plot here and yes, I understand this is pulp fiction, so it is supposed to be ridiculous). As a fan of old radio theatre broadcasts … there was so much nostalgia potential here that I jumped at the opportunity to preview the audible ...

I was disappointed. While the narration was decent/okay, it was not anywhere close to the quality of the old-timey radio shows; which quite frankly is the primary reason to listen to them. Missing that, the problems with the stories themselves were often difficult to overlook. After the first story … this was almost a DNF. Fortunately the new story was much better and more inline with what I was expecting when Mayhem jumps into the body of a young boy (complicating his assignment). The final short takes Mayhem into a prison on Mercury and was also fun and taken with the second, saved this book.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#TheManWhoSavedTheUniverse #TheAdventuresOfJohnnyMayhem #AudibleGiveawaysGoodRdsGrp

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Review: The Complete Dead Planet Series

The Complete Dead Planet Series by Drew Avera
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Exodus: ***
Verity: **
Endgame: **

Performance: ****

A Very Simple Dystopian SciFi

Simple World-building … Mars have been colonized for nearly 4000 years and it is ruled by corporate elites known as the Syndicate who are fairly stock bad guys of questionable morals and an apparent sadistic streak to make them truly and unquestionably evil. This authoritarian style government uses a “pontiff” puppet as governor and brainwashed assassins, euphemistically called “policemen” and who answer to a shell organization known as The Agency. Policemen are armed with laser gauntlets with neural links that pretty much do anything the author needs them to do. Outside of that and a reference to an artificial magnetic field that keeps mars habitable, the world is basically a dystopian America.

Simple Characters … bad guys bad … good guys good … and never the twain shall meet. Syndicate players really have no redeeming characteristics and, although paying some lip service to a profit moments, really are just addicted to power and the free exercise there if to teach the uppity masses a thing or two. The MC is a “policeman” assassin whose brainwashing didn’t completely take and “breaks” programming when he learns of a hit on his sister. You could perhaps forgive the somewhat stunted emotional capacity of Serus, except the supporting characters don’t do much better (making it seem like this story seem like it was targeting a much younger audience … say middle school). After overcoming his initial programming, Serus doesn’t really grow much … which makes it incessant navel gazing a minor irritation such that if it were not for the string of incredibly poor choices by pretty much everybody in the book would have been more of a factor in the rating. As it is, he miraculous seems to survive the consequences said bad decisions while absorbing enough damage to stop a charging Rhino and still somehow function (mostly because the villains are also incredibly stupid as well). Finally … toward the end we see a mild christian evangelization as the MC contemplate God and the Bible and his life choices.

Simple Plot … bad guys abandon Mars to its fate as the artificial magnetic field is failing (to eventually become The Dead Planet … maybe). Good guys are SJW that don’t think that’s fair and seem to focus on making the elites pay for abandoning them … lead of course by a reformed bad guy. It is remarkable (and saddening) how corrosive the violent revenge motif here is. Once the action gets back to Earth … we see pretty much the same strongman polities simplistically boiled down to only two (relatively small) actual communities. The broad strokes here are completely predictable and it is the narration that helps keep it all interesting.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#TheCompleteDeadPlanetSeries #StoryOrigin

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Review: Alien Clay

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With this work, I must admit that I have become a fan of the author and the distinctive, almost surreal style of prose that he uses to tell his stories. Alien Clay continues in that vein, if a touch darker. There is a certain feel to the world-building, supported by hard science details, that makes it all almost believable before it stretches it all into fantasy where it is easier to see how the characters themselves are driving the plot. Here we start with an academic that gets swept up in the political purges on earth and then shuttled out to the prison planet Kiln … with no hope of returning.

The story is then divided into three parts … a sort of introduction section where we get to know all of the players and the brutality of prison existence where the tiny human outpost seems to be under siege by the very nature of the planet … and we get a brief though experiment into the idea of macro-species where instead of specialized body cells we have specialized body parts that can apparently disburse and recombine into new organisms in something like a high speed evolution. Part 2 takes up that last idea and runs with it, giving the reader just a little bit more on the struggle between the planet to subdue its alien (human) parasites and those same human organisms trying to maintenance the own independence. It all builds up to an interesting, if somewhat predictable, and even in some respects dissatisfying, conclusion … which is the only reason this book doesn’t take top marks.

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#AlienClay #NetGalley

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Review: Inversions

Inversions by M.V. Melcer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second book in the The Guardian Cycle Series
Previous Review of Refractions

This story picks up after the big reveal at the end of the first book … when the corporation responsible for attempt to enslave/control the human race through the ubiquitous mind link devices has gone into hiding and the surviving corporations evolved into something that seems even more sinister. The picture painted here is an earth on the verge of collapse and the uneasy, and at times, exploitive alliance between the “elites” who have escaped to high earth orbit and those still stuck on the ground. It is an incredibly dark future that captures the self destructive nature of man fairly well, making it a hard story to read at times … made even more difficult with the slow, quasi-realistic pacing. As with he previous installment, even the science is generally in the realm of the possible with a little imagination, making the world building outstanding.

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#Inversions #TheGuardianCycle #NetGalley #KindleUnlimited

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