Blaine Lee Pardoe's Splashdown

I'm never going near water again and you can't make me.  Nope. You can sandblast me when I start to stink, but I'm done with anything clear and liquid looking. Seriously. Who  knows what lives in that stuff?  It could be aliens. Wait. I hear you laughing. There can't be aliens in the water, right? Well, actually, yes there can and all it took was Blaine Lee Pardoe to point it out. Splashdown is not his newest novel, he has a few others already published in his Land & Sea series (and I'm already about one hundred and fifty pages through the second one) but I just got around to reading it because I'm, like, a lazy nerd or sumfin'.

Probably. I mean maybe. Then again how many of you nerds have published over three hundred posts promoting the genre? So maybe I'm just goofy instead of lazy. I'm definitely something though.

Ok, so maybe I'll just say I should've read the book sooner.

At any rate, anything I had read by Pardoe previous to this (besides his interview here.) was in the Battletech Universe, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I did know that I've always loved both Pardoe's writing and his BT Mercenary unit, the Northwind Highlanders, but I had never read anything where he created his own setting before. I was a bit concerned, but I shouldn't have been. Splashdown is the best thing I've read by Pardoe and that, my friends, is a serious compliment indeed. 

As a kid my first love reading-wise was mysteries. I grew up not knowing much about the world of Speculative Fiction because my parents were mundanes. I was reading the Hardy Boys by the end of first grade. Of course, I later moved on to Speculative Fiction, but that love will always be there. I mention that because Splashdown, at least in part, reads like a mystery. It's a good one, too.

See, weird things start happening. A plane disappears. It is later found reassembled, on the sea floor under a whole bunch of water. (I'm not going to look up the exact depth. Let's just say it's diver squish deep.)  Some people disappear near the water. A ship goes to see and contact is lost. It's never seen again. And no one knows why.Well, except Pardoe and his readers, but that's the fun part. 

I know I mentioned that Splashdown reads like a mystery in parts, but it doesn't have the crusty old police detective you may be expecting at that point.   Nor is it truly a cozy. The investigators, rather than being a random housewife or crossing guard, are professionals of a different type. We have the military intelligence community, an investigative reporter, and a billionaire looking to profit off of the crisis doing the legwork. Well, sort of. The billionaire actually pays people to do the legwork, but you get the idea. 

And even once the humans find out that there is an alien presence, there's more of a mystery as well. Splashdown takes place in the year 2039, so the tech is a little more advanced than ours, but not by a whole lot.  Humanity doesn't really know what it's up against. These are not your standard Trek/Wars type "funny looking human" type aliens. These are actually aquatic species. Their armor and armament appear to be part of their bodies, but they're not the Borg. The weapons grow as a natural part of their anatomy. And what's worse, they don't work the way our weapons do, so defending against them, or defeating their armor, isn't as easy as it should be. 

That's not to say that Splashdown is only a mystery book. There is plenty of good, old-fashioned, ass-kickery to go around here. I'm just not going to tell you who it is that gets their asses kicked. Let's just say that the fights are well written, suspenseful, somewhat gory, and don't always go the way I want it to. Earth is hurting. Things are looking grim.

And of course, what's a Blaine Lee Pardoe book without robots? This time around they're known as ASHURs: Augmented Soft/Hard Unconvention Combat Rigs. These things are impressive. They come in various sizes and loadouts, but by and large, other than some specialized recon models, they pack about the same punch as a light or medium 'Mech in Battletech but are closer in size to the mecha that appear in Matrix Revolutions, or at least that's the impression I got of them. ASHURs are super cool and function almost as part of the infantry. I've been a fan of mecha since the early 80s and Robotech so seeing them so well done was a real treat.

The world Pardoe sets up in Splashdown is so intense and topsy-turvy that the government is actually forced to act in an intelligent manner. As hard as that would be in real life, Pardoe makes it work, in fiction at least, by putting the right person in charge and feeding him the people he needs. I love it. I'd like to see such an approach implemented here in the real world, but I probably never will. It reads like a common-sense loving person's dream though. 

My one complaint is that we don't know enough about the aliens and why they're here. That's tempered by the fact that we need to not know everything yet. The air of mystery I mentioned earlier is important to the story. I still want to know what these things are, where they came from and why they want to conquer my planet. Then again, this is book one of a series and I have faith that we'll learn more in the future. If I'd have picked this series up earlier, there's a good chance I would know what was going on. 

For right now, though, I'm just going to keep reading. I can't wait to see what comes next. There is some stuff going on that looks promising. There's more stuff going on that looks troublesome. I need to know how this all gets resolved. That's why I'm already about a third of the way through Riptides, the second book in the Land & Sea series. 

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Bouncing Alien Sand Fleas

Splashdown
Blaine Lee Pardoe
Wargate Nova, 2023

Splashdown is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you. 

Phantoms of Ruthaer: Chronicles of Damage, Inc. by Jason MacDonald and Stormy McDonald

 

Did you love Scooby Doo as a kid? I loved Scooby Doo as a kid. I loved the gang coming into town, finding something they didn’t expect and figuring out what it was. I loved the running, the hiding, the constant threat of danger.  I loved the risks. I loved the danger. But then I grew up a bit and realized that, while the concept of the Scoobster was, and always will be, awesome, the danger needed to be a bit more real and simply removing a mask wasn’t always enough to solve a problem. I wanted MORE danger. I wanted some fighting. I wanted…

Something I thought I was never going to get.

Enter Stormy and Jason MacDonald and their new book Phantoms of Ruthaer. Ok, so PoR isn’t quite as goofy as Scooby was. That’s okay. I’m not as goofy as I was as a nine year old either. I think. Well, probably. Maybe? I mean…

Uhhh…

Look, I’m just the reviewer. This isn’t about me, okay? STOP LAUGHING!!!

Or sumfin’...

All goofiness aside, Phantoms is an intense ride. There is a lot of action here and the one time it really lets up I found myself swept into laughing hysterically, and I mean that literally. Have you ever had that moment when everything around you was terrifying and then something that’s really only a little bit funny happens and you’re laughing so hard that you almost give yourself a concussion? Yeah, that was me. I didn’t know a book could do that to you. I got a similar feeling while watching Saving Private Ryan at the theater. That was sights and sounds and a book is just words and imagination. Well, maybe not JUST but you get what I’m saying…

Yeah, I’m going with “totally immersive experience” because I read that in an interview with a game developer once and, not only is it an accurate description, it sounds cool too. So now you can officially say you read something cool on my blog. Hold on…

You are reading this… Right? Anyway…

There was something in the acknowledgements (I think) about how Phantoms started out as a ghost story set in a fantasy setting. I think I screwed that quote up, but that was the jist of it. The point is that it’s easy to see in retrospect. The fog, the mysterious disappearances, it just makes sense that it started out as a ghost story. The thing is it’s so much more than that. 

Phantoms is a story that just keeps on giving. There is a lot going on. The backstories of the characters are well thought out and actually apply to what is going on in the story. Seriously, one of my pet peeves is when an author goes into a character’s backstory and it has nothing to do with what I’m witnessing happening in the book. That’s not the case here. Everything has relevance to the story we’re reading and helps to move it forward.

The thing that makes Phantoms better than Scooby Doo is that the action sequences are far more intense and the consequences of them are real. This is a story that you can feel in your gut. When the blood starts to fly and things start to do, you’ll say my my,

Or sumfin’.

I’ve reviewed books by McDonald and McDonald before, and they've always given me epic battle scenes. They always hit the mark between too technical (seriously, read <i>The Chronicles of Amber</i> if you’ve never fenced and tell me how easy it is to follow the sword fights) and some of the no-detail stuff I have read in other places. They give you enough details to be able to follow along and make it easy enough to be exciting. That’s what makes it fun to read.

I was watching The Curse of Oak Island: Digging Deeper recently and they interviewed Kevin Burns, the creator of the show and he said something that was both profound and totally unsurprising: Any story is about the people in it, the FAMILY in it. That’s really the feeling you get from the Damage, Inc. crew. There are no blood ties between them, but they’re closer than a lot of blood families are. These are people who have been through the ringer together and they’re ready to go again. They want to go again. It’s the feeling you get at a gaming table with your buddies. Everyone wants to do their part. Everyone expects everyone else to do their parts. But it’s not just that. It’s that you knew everyone else WILL do their part.

And that’s what makes a story like Phantoms work. This is a family and they’re here to take things apart if that’s what they need to do to accomplish their mission. Damage, Inc. is a good name for them. It’s not like they MEAN to damage things, it’s just that sometimes a character’s gotta do what a character’s gotta do. 

Of course it wouldn’t be a good Scooby Doo story if there wasn’t a hidden villain. It’s not really a spoiler to say that there is one here because it’s obvious from the beginning that the team isn’t sure who or what they’re fighting. All they know is that something is killing people and there is fog. Lots and lots of fog that only comes at night. It’s spooky and scary and part of that immersive experience that I wrote about earlier. There’s actually a bit of overlap here, as I wouldn’t be surprised to see Phantoms reviewed on a horror blog.

Being the nice guy that I am, I’m not going to mention the fact that my boy Jasper wasn’t in this book. That would be a low blow, especially as this is an awesome book without him. I’m not in the least bitter or pouty at all. Really, I’m not. I’m totally over it.

Bottom Line 4.95 out of 5 Fog Banks It would be five, but they left Jasper out.

Phantoms of Ruthaer: Chronicles of Damage, Inc.

Jason MacDonald and Stormy McDonald

Parlatheas Press, 2021

Phantoms of Ruthaer: Chronicles of Damage, Inc. is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no cost to you.

Phantoms of Ruthaer: Chronicles of Damage, Inc

Denver Moon: The Minds of Mars by Warren Hammond and Joshua Viola

(First off, I'd like to again thank Warren Hammond, co-author of this Denver Moon:The Minds of Mars for his guest post. You rock Warren! Also, there is a review of the Denver Moon trade paperback coming, but I'm waiting until I get the third comic as I plan to review the whole thing at once. Also, the ARC of the novel that I received came with a copy of the short story that got turned into the TPB, I'm holding off on reviewing that until I can review the TPB itself.I did enjoy it. It's just not time to review it yet.)

I grew up on far-future science fiction. Humanity had colonized the stars. Whether it was (ironically) long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away or the final frontier, humanity had spread far beyond the limits of the Solar System and into the far reaches of space. What humanity found among the stars varied widely of course. Usually it was aliens but not always. Always though, we were outside of our Solar System and among the stars. It wasn't until I got older that I experienced SF and the struggle to make things much closer to home work. What I've found though, is that I've thoroughly enjoyed the battles that I first became aware of as a result of reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. It's not all that surprising that I thought of that either, given the fact that I'm reviewing Warren Hammond and Joshua Viola's Denver Moon: The Minds of Mars. This book has all of the fun of near future SF and some unique twists as well. I had fun with this one.

Denver Moon is our title character and she is a bit unusual. For one, she's a colorblind private eye. This makes things a bit unusual. I was skeptical that this would work when I first realized it, but as I was reading it didn't  harm the story at all. As a matter of fact, Denver actually needed to be a monochrome because of some later parts of the story.

As befits a story about a detective, DM:TMOM is a mystery. The great thing about this being a mystery is that it's an EPIC mystery. I recently reviewed Ready Player One and this Denver Moon is out to solve a mystery that is every bit as big and as important as the mystery in RPO but even more important... even if our heroine doesn't realize that at first.

Probably the best part about this book is all of the twists and turns that it takes. Every time you think the mystery is solved it gets deeper. I've read mysteries since my days as a fan of the Hardy Boys and you don't see this in a lot of places. Lots of mysteries are murder mysteries (ala just about every police procedural on TV) and once you know whodunit the story is over. Not so much here. It actually reaches the point where the solution to the initial mystery just introduces the next one, which morphs into another one you didn't even know existed. This thing doesn't stop and it doesn't rest.

Things are not always as they appear here either. The people you think are your friends may not be. The people you believe are the villains might just be heroes. You'll know who is who by the end of the book (at least I think I do now) but it's not until the last few pages that everything sorts itself out... probably.  I think. Unless I'm wrong. Which I may be, but there's a sequel coming and once I read that... Well, who knows. This thing has a bunch of twists and it's intended as a series so there could be a bunch more coming. I'm not making any guarantees here, except to buy the next one. Oh, and I also promise to stay

Speaking as a man who fired his first BB gun at the age of five and his first rifle at the age of eight, I have to give props to Hammond and Viola for placing Moon's person AI in his pistol. Smith, as the AI is known is a mix between a high powered computer, a best friend and a tactical advising/targeting system. Oh, and toss in a smartgun feature ala the first (and possible later) edition(s) of Shadowrun. Smith is freaking awesome. I want like six of these things. It doesn't get any better than this. Putting an AI in a private eye's gun makes every bit as much sense as giving Tony Stark access to Jarvis in his Iron Man suit. Both AIs are integral parts of the characters they partner with as well as being characters in their own right.

One of the key aspects of the mysteries that Moon tries to solve is "The Feve". The feve is a disease that effects the brain and causes extreme violence. No one is sure what causes it. Everyone knows that only monochromatic individuals are immune to it, but no one is sure why. It could be because so much of Mars is red or it may not be. All that they know for sure about the feve is that it comes randomly and without warning. People are scared and they should be.

Hammond and Viola manage to avoid two of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to mysteries: They don't bring in a solution out of nowhere that makes no sense. They didn't telegraph the eventual ending of the book in the first then pages. Those two facts combine to make this mystery worth reading. I want a mystery that keeps me wondering and DM:TMOM definitely does. I could read this all day long. Actually, I did read most of it during a slow shift at work. Thank God for cellphones and their lit up faces. I drive a cab on the midnight shift and this book gave me something to focus on and stay awake. It kept me interested when I got fatigued. That's about the biggest compliment I know how to give to a book.

Now, I don't do spoilers, so I'll just leave this here and let the reader figure out if they can figure out why I wrote it. Ready? I have a very strong and visceral dislike for cliffhanger endings, especially in books when you don't know when the sequel is coming. I get the fact that they're somewhat entertaining as well as a good business move. I just don't like them. That much being said, this is still a really good book. I can't wait to read the next one.

Bottom Line: 4.5 out of 5 Martian Rocks

Denver Moon: The Minds of Mars
Warren Hammond and Joshua Viola
Hex Publishers, 2018

Denver Moon: The Minds of Mars is available for purchase at the link below:

Ernest Cline's Ready Player One

(Author's note: I am honor bound to pre-acknowledge the fact that none of what I'm about to reference in the following paragraph has any historical value whatsoever. Ok, with the possible exceptions of two WW II Flicks, those being Tora, Tora, Tora and Midway.)  

I never thought we'd reach this point. I grew up watching movies and TV shows set in the past. You may think you know a fan of westerns but until you've met my grandpa and my dad, you really haven't met one. You may think you know someone who likes World War II flicks but until you've sat down on a weekend with myself, my father and some popcorn popped in a pan on the stove, you really don't. I'm still wondering why guys like my Uncle Bob who served in Korea never got their movies, but different blog/different day. Later came the Vietnam flicks. For some reason though, I never though my generation would get their chance. I thought that 80s nostalgia would never happen. Well, I guess I need to apologize. Ernest Cline's Ready Player One had me soaking in my childhood. It felt great.

Something I've noticed a lot of lately is the inclusion of the internet in stories. I'm a big fan of this. I don't mean just for googling or checking Facebook. I mean epic battles online, like in Nick Coles CTRL, ALT, Revolt! reviewed here,(and I really need to review Soda Pop Soldier too.) or in Cline's Ready Player One. Not only is it entertaining as all get out, but it makes business sense too. There are legions of gamers out there and this is something that's perfect for them. Seriously. I'm neither a fan nor a supporter of identity politics but I can't deny that it's cool to read a story about someone like me. I'm a gamer. When I read about other gamers, it makes me happy. It entertains me. That's the whole point of escapism right?

The kids in the book are after a prize; the world's most immense forturn.  The greatest game designer in history (James Halliday) has designed an alternative environment online, the Oasis. He charges only a quarter to buy into the environment and does not charge a subscription fee. He does, however charge for certain things online (online goods and space for people who want to create separate environments within his environment for example). When he passes due to old age, he leaves his fortune including control of his shares in the company that controls the Oasis to the person who can solve his puzzle and complete the accompanying requirements. It's not easy but many people become enthralled with the search. 

The Oasis eventually takes more and more of the time of the world to the point that many people only participate in society through the Oasis. Some (but not all) schools are conducted there. There are stores and a currency, which is listed as being the most stable currency in use. It goes so far that our hero, Wade Watts votes in the elections in the Oasis, but skips voting on real world politicians because the real world politics don't effect his life as much as the representatives that are in charge of the Oasis. In the context of the story that actually makes sense.

The part about this book that really makes it fun is the nostalgia though. Ready Player One is a celebration of all of the stuff I remember from when I was a kid. The early video games are here. (Ok, maybe just maybe it would have been more fun with more Intellivision because that's what I owned but  I didn't write it so it makes sense that it wasn't going to be perfect for me personally) Eighties music is here. Eighties movies are here. I don't want to reveal too much because a lot of the nostalgia is essential to the plot but dude.. it's everywhere. The kids in the book (and this is a Young Adult novel) are experts in Eighties culture because they have to be. The clues left to solving the mystery are based on Halliday's 80s pop culture obsession. A lot of the time in the book is kids discussing the same stuff I grew up loving. They're honestly better than me at most of the games I grew up playing, but then again nobody ever gave me a fortune for my performance either.

Ultra sensitive right wing readers may not enjoy this book. The Big Bad is a corporation bent on taking over the Oasis and increasing their profits. There is a surprise gender/race bend at one point in the book. It makes sense in a way, but if you're a right winger that is as easy to offend as the average social justice bully, you're going to get all butthurt over this one. I personally won't feel any sympathy for you, especially since the socjus entry in the book makes sense in context, adds to the story and isn't overly preachy. Your mileage may vary but don't come whining to me if it does. This is a good story with a lot of action and entertaining characters. What little bit of leftism is included in the book does nothing to diminish it to anyone other than the whiner type.

Ready Player One is a celebration. It is a celebration of the Eighties. It is a celebration of gaming. It is a celebration of the courage of a small group of people set against a huge opponent. It is a celebration of the indomitable human spirit. It is a celebration of people who are willing to come together to fight the establishment. It is a celebration of asskickery. That is fitting because Ready Player One kicks ass.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Stars

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline

Dark All Day, Inc, 2011

Ready Player One is available for purchase at the following link:

Deidre Gould's After the Cure

Imagine, if you will, a world. A world filled with people who have been cured of a virus that turned them into a zombie. A world where the Immune (who never suffered the disease) are living alongside the Cured (who were zombies not all that long ago). Imagine a world where a greater disease may be lurking hidden.. Imagine, in short the world of Deidre Gould's After the Cure. It is a well conceived world which contains enough plausibility that it actually seems possible. It's a world that I'll never forget. It's also a world that gives me nightmares.

I love post-apocalyptic fiction. I always have. Usually though, there's enough distance between the real world and what I'm reading that it doesn't really soak in past my defenses. I read it, enjoy it and then move on. This one got into my mind and soul hardcore. The premise is that a virus was released accidentally by a scientist who broke protocol and spread before it could be detected. Everything in the ATC universe springs from that one action. What made this one scary to me is that it seems way too possible.

I recently reviewed The Wasteland Chronicles Omnibus by Kyle West. I love it. The difference here though is in real world possibility. The Wasteland Chronicles twisted the Sweet Meteor of Death with an alien invasion. I was well able to suspend disbelief while I was reading the books but once I put it down it didn't really haunt me. After the Cure isn't like that. I'm not against genetic engineering at all. Every fruit known to humanity, including so-called "organic" fruit, has had it's genetics altered through selective breeding for at least centuries if not millennia. The fact remains that protocols exist for a reason and it's way too easy to believe that a scientist would break them because they were overzealous. It hits really close to home.

Gould's characters come to life as well. Our heroine is Nella Rider, an Immune psychiatrist who has been hired to interview two of the scientists who were on the team that invented the virus that destroyed the world. She ends up being a lot more intrepid and resourceful than I would expect out of a big city doctor stuck in a fallen world but that's a good thing. She would not have made it otherwise. I teach my daughters to be strong, proud, tough, smart and brave. Nella is the type of woman I have in mind when I teach the girls that. She is someone I admire and what I want my daughters to be. If there is a higher compliment, I don't know what it is.

Her partner throughout the book is Frank, the defense lawyer. He is a member of the Cured. The book goes through some of the things he experienced while infected (which I won't spoil) and it's not pretty. He is still capable of great acts of intelligence and bravery but his memories are just plain disgusting. What amazes me about this character is how well Gould manages to keep us sympathetic to him while still revealing some of the revolting things that he has done. It helps that he contracted the disease by trying to be a nice guy but I'll be reading this one and trying to extract some techniques for my own writing. Gould really impressed me with this character.

The rest of the cast is impressive as well, both as zombies and just normal people. Something a lot of post apocalyptic fiction forgets is that a lot of the world after an apocalypse would still be just trying to get along. I loved, Mad Max but even in that type of a setting not everyone would be a bad ass. Gould remembers that. There are certainly brave good guys clearing out/ curing the infected and bad guy looters who would probably be good with a gun, but there are also neighborhoods full of people who just want to make a living in their new reality. I like that. I love heroic fiction but it's good to remember that not everyone is a super hero.

Gould also makes the Cured react with revulsion to what they've done. She mentions repeatedly a high suicide rate among those who have survived because of their memories. This is horrifying but it's true to life. Anyone who had been through what these people have gone through would have been damaged by it and they have. It just makes sense. It also adds to the believability of the story. I get the feeling she may have studied some psychology while writing this or before. It shows. She has thought through the consequences of her world and it works.

Speaking of the consequences of the world, Gould does a really good job in other areas as well. There is a clear divide between the some of the Cured and some of the Immune based on attitude. A lot of Immune can't forgive the Cured for what they've done while they were out of their minds and sick. A lot of the Cured can't forgive the Immune for killing infected individuals to protect themselves when the infected could have been cured. There are the predictable shortages that would occur in a fallen world. Perhaps most importantly for the book, all of the above happen to the main characters. This is a way a Chosen One (actually, probably Chosen Two) story, but that status doesn't prevent them from dealing with the same problems everyone else has to.

Somehow I've managed to avoid the fact that this is really a mystery novel with a SF background. That's what makes it great. I don't want to reveal too much and spoil the story. I will say that solving the mystery is not just a personal goal. It has ramifications for literally the entire world. So what we've got here is a cross between SF (zombies) a mystery (the whole plot) and my favorite thing about epic fantasy (literal world ending consequences). It's no wonder I enjoyed it.

Of course, After the Cure suffers from the same problem just about every other novel of this type does. Her virus affects the brain and produces a zombie like brain disability. I guess maybe it's just the nerd in me, but I'd like to see something about how it happens in the book and I don't. There is a characters whose brain is eaten by the virus but that doesn't make much sense either. I could be wrong here, and if so I apologize, but I don't think viruses act like that. If someone's body parts are eaten by a microscopic organism it's generally bacteria and not a virus, but then I don't claim to be a biologist or a doctor so I could be wrong here. Then again, even if I'm right the problem is well within the author's rights to adapt reality to the necessity of story. It's a lot less egregious than what Hollywood commonly does with history on a regular basis. These are all minor gripes though and I intend to hie me off to Barnes and Noble to purchase the rest of the series on payday. The first one was that good.

Bottom Line: 4.5 out of 5 Missing Bacteria Cultures

After the Cure can be purchased at the link below:

Carol Van Natta's Overload Flux

Sometimes I read books and get way too excited about them. Sometimes, I hear a concept that just sounds way too cool and I can't wait to find out where it leads. So when I got a book about an interstellar battle against a greedy corporation that was cheating people and killing them in the process I was ready for some real excitement. I downloaded my copy of Overload Flux and I just couldn't wait to read a rip-roaring yarn about genetically engineered good guys against evil money-grubbing corporate types. I went into this expecting sheer awesome, but I was sadly disappointed.

Don't get me wrong. There were good parts to the story. Van Natta very obviously put in a ton of time planning this out. The two point of view characters have powers that play off of each other very well. The concept, as I stated above, is excellent. Add in a main character with a deadbeat boss and a past that could kill her just adds to it. There is a lot of potential here.

There is a love story that works and moves the plot along nicely. The main character development arc centers around it. Our heroine, Mairwen, is convinced that she in not truly human and is incapable of feeling emotion. By the end of the book she is in love and having trouble processing all of the good feelings from the emotions themselves and also from the type of physical contact that comes along with them. She comes a long way in under three hundred pages.

There was a truly entertaining firefight near the middle of the work as well. Things cooked. People acted quickly and consequences followed actions. The characters were truly spontaneous and did what they needed to do without meditating on it. The unexpected happened and was dealt with. It was by far the best written part of the book and was as good as passages I've read from authors who have sold millions of copies.

Unfortunately, Overload Flux suffers from a lot of deficiencies. Primary among them is a decided lack of action. Mairwen spends more time thinking than she does doing. The book plods along with a think, describe, think, describe pattern. Very little physical action takes place. Even in a sequence near the end of the tome where Mairwen is wounded and travelling around the inside of a ship desperate to evade detection we get little to no action and pages and pages of her thinking about what is going on around her and the probable consequences when she should have been acting. This thing just drags.

The love story in the book is a bit too overshadowed and predictable. I'm a stereotypical male. I miss romantic things all the time simply because I don't pay attention to those types of things and even I thought that it was beaten to death. It's a time-worn trope because it works and I get that, but when things get to the point that even I notice that it's overdone, well, it's overdone. I will admit though that it did add up to a payoff at the end when the two point of view characters managed to actually get together but they just spent too much time thinking about wanting to be together for it to really be worth it.

Another thing this book suffers from is it's lack of a definable villain. The enemy is a big pharma company. In and of itself, that's not a problem and could probably be considered a strength, Big business in general, and pharmaceutical companies in general are hated by many and could constitute a major draw. The issue is that there is no individual person or group of people to focus our anger on. This book needs a recurring character in it somewhere that is highly placed and benefiting from what the company is doing. A CEO or major stockholder (or two or three or six) would add a lot. The Star Wars trilogy was made several times better because we all hated Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine. Overload Flux doesn't have that. I hate to put it this way, but this story needs an irredeemable bastard.

All in all, Overload Flux is a book that needs a major rewrite. The concept was awesome but it was poorly executed. There is a lot here but there just needs to be more happening and less internalizing. This book needs help.

Bottom Line: 2.5 out of 5 Defective Vaccines

Overload Flux
Carol Van Natta
Chavanch Press, 2014

Overload Flux is available for purchase here: