TS Ransdell's The Last Marine: Book Three

You know guys, not much that I read honestly scares me. I mean, I've read more nightmare images of combat than I care to count. And the depiction of nightmare creatures like vampires and zombies is something I've enjoyed over and over again. Still and all, no dragon, no demon, no fireball casting wizard, no flesh eating zombie or crazed alien hits as hard as this TS Ransdell's The Last Marine: Book Three. This is the kind of book that will keep me awake at night. 

See, the thing about The Last Marine, both as a series in general and when dealing with the third book in particular, is that it's exceedingly possible. This is a story of the American government turning on the American people. It is a story of a so-called "liberal" government that forces its agenda down the throats of the people it supposedly serves. It is the story of  a population that believes what it is told and that everything its government is doing is for the greater good. In book three, the government has seized majority control of the narrative both online and on television in the form of the Office of Balanced Media. 

This is a story of government run amok. It is the story of patriotism being branded as extremism, former and retired members of the military being branded as security threats and children taken from the homes of parents who believe in freedom. It is, in short, the story of what the United States turns into if the extreme left gets their way.

What makes Book Three (and please allow me to voice my wish that the books had more creative titles, but that's all there is.) different from the first two is they were based heavily on recollections and flashback. The primary subject of those books was the Sino-American War (which obviously hasn't happened in the real world) and the way the American government turned its back on its own veterans. They were horrifying and indicative of a particular worldview (which I happen to share, for what it's worth.) but removed in a way from the concerns of the average American. Not so, Book Three.

Book Three is a story that takes place in rural Arizona. Many of the main characters are, themselves, veterans, but most of the side characters are not. The effects on the man in the street are obvious. So are the effects on their children and spouses. In the world of The Last Marine no American goes unaffected. Most suffer. Some profit, especially those with government connections. At the end of the day though, freedom suffers.

Ransdell's Amazon bio states that he has an MA in History. I believe it. I wonder if, and how closely, he has studied Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom. I would guess that he's studied it quite closely, given how closely The Last Marine follows Fromm's thesis: That true freedom comes from freedom to (freedom to speak one's mind, own a gun, conduct one's business with a minimum of government interference) as opposed to freedom from (freedom from hunger, from medical bills, from offensive speech, from global warming, from exploitation by the rich, etc.)

There's more to the book than just the politics of course. The characters in The Last Marine are all easily believable and that just makes it more haunting. Whether it was a corrupt government official, a non-corrupt government official who turns a blind-eye to what's going on around them because they believe the party line, the military veteran who can see it for what it is and refuses to get up, or just some common person who is swept up in the insanity around them, it was easy to get into the mind frame and come to grips with the point of view of the character I was reading. 

The action sequences are well written and exciting. Ransdell is a veteran of both Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I was unable to determine whether or not he ever saw actual combat but, based on the way his action scenes read and how easily things go wrong for the aggressor, I wouldn't be surprised if he had. Either way, things moved quickly and held my attention well. Ransdell is a bit graphic at times, but it's combat and it needs to be graphic. This is not a Berenstain Bears book, it is the tale of a war.

Just in case I haven't made it obvious enough (and Lord knows I've tried.) Ransdell's worldbuilding is amazingly well done. The United States he has constructed feels like it exists. The characters live and breathe, but so does the setting. Ransdell placed the vast majority of Book 3 in rural Arizona. This makes sense as his bio indicates that he's from Arizona, so he knows the place well, but it's more than just getting the details right. The Last Marine is a truly immersive experience. I've never been to Arizona, but I almost feel like I've driven those streets and eaten in those homes. 

The rise of FedAPS, the Federal Agency of Public Safety is, in many ways, reflective of the rise of the SS in Nazi Germany. Scarily, it's also not that far off from the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in the United States that actually exists. The majority of people in pretty much any time and place will accept the creation of a government entity if they believe that it is meant to protect them from a threat. What that threat looks like changes based on time and place, but the basic drive does not. Mission creep (the Office of Balanced Media is part of FedAPS, as is CSS, the national department of Child Safety Services) is something that exists in the United States now and has since...

Well...

Uhh...

I'm honestly not sure when it started, but we've got it now and it's been around a lot longer than I have. 

Anyway, it's a concept that has a place in any realistic depiction of the US government, and realism is what makes this series so creepy. 

Ransdell has not released any information about whether or not there is another book coming, but there better be. The fight is just getting started. There is a long way to go and it looks like the rebellion is just getting started, assuming FedAPS doesn't snuff it out. And, while it's small enough that the rebellion could fail, I don't think Ransdell would do that to his series or his fans. I'm waiting for the next book (im)patiently. We'll see where he takes it from here.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Head of Stolen Cattle

The Last Marine: Book Three
TS Ransdell
Self-Published, 2022

The Last Marine: Book Three is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and purchase literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

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. 

Angela White's The Survivors: Life After War, Book One

Imagine a power mad man hijacking the United States nuclear arsenal and launching missiles with the intent of getting the US destroyed by the retaliation.  Imagine it working. And when the whole world, when all is lost, people trying to survive in the world that's left afterward; a world with no government, no law and where only the strong survive. This is a world where radiation is a deadly threat that one has to regularly guard against, where the population has been massively culled, where women and children are treated as property by most and where there are no police to call. It's The Survivors, and it's Life After War. 

Angela White has given us a masterpiece of disaster. The cities are destroyed. Resources are rare and getting rarer. One of the most important factions in the story can't even find bullets for their rifles, although they practice regularly with their pistols. Tribes of slavers roam the world with no one to stop them. Mutations abound; Creatures affected by the radiation. Giant ants, spiders with more than eight legs, weird birds, it's all there.

But there's more than just the standard tropes featured in every post-apocalyptic story. White includes magic in her world. When I first caught hints of this, I thought I was headed into a setting similar to that of the Rifts tabletop role playing game. So far though, that's not the case. Magic appears to be extremely rare in the world White has created, at least so far.

And I say so far because it seems to me that there is a lot of worldbuilding still not done at the end of the first book. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It's just that when I finished The Survivors I was looking forward to finding out more about the use of magic, how it fits in the world and where this is all heading. White has revealed one large group of threats, but not how they'll affect the attempts of another group to rebuild and salvage something possible. The group that we're all following hasn't even decided where to settle yet. They're still exploring, trying to figure out where they can go to live and build a society.

I said that magic seems rare because we don't see much of it, but it may be more common off screen, or become something that future generations who more aptitude for as things move forward (the series is twenty-one books long) or it might not. Magic items may be a thing, or they may not. Magic has some usefulness in battle but it's not enough to win a pitched battle all by itself, unless it is and there's more to see. I mean, it's obvious that there's more out there but we don't know what yet. I'm not even sure if I'm making this more of a big deal than it should be. 

*SHRUG*

I guess I'll figure it out eventually. I plan on reading more of the series. 

That's to say nothing of the characters themselves: Angela is a woman caught between two men. I know that love triangles aren't as popular among some audiences as they are with others and I get that, but this is a love triangle more in the vein of The Hunger Games where it's a side plot than with Twilight where the love triangle is the whole story. Angela goes through an amazing character arc which I won't describe in detail as it would spoil a lot of the story, Angela being the closest thing the story has to a main character.

Angela is out to find her son. They were separated during the war. Along the way she manages to hook up with her old buddy Marc. He helps Angela out and trains her to be a warrior, having  himself been Marine Recon for awhile. It's not exactly a match made in Heaven (read the story to find out why) but it works after a fashion and they end up hot on the trail of her son and the man who helped her raise him. It's a wild premise and a wild ride.

The action scenes in the book are well done. I don't get the impression that White is necessarily a Larry Correia level gun expert, but she knows enough to have a person who uses a revolver reload it with a speedloader and that puts her ahead of a lot of the other authors I've read. A lot of the hand to hand stuff makes sense and it's really exciting so that's a bonus. I have a sneaking suspicion that White may have taken a class or two in some type of martial art. I don't know that, but I did when I was a kid and a lot of what's written here comes across as the way things would actually work. Not that it's all high-flying karate kicks. Some of it reads like a backyard brawl but that makes sense, too. Not everyone has training and some of the people that don't are pretty hard core in their own right. 

So yes, asskickery does indeed abound and that's a good thing. There's a more human side to the story though, too. We get everything from the aforementioned love triangle to mother/son, a conniving bitch, concerned leaders, power mad leaders (not the same person) and animal lovers. White seems to have a solid grasp on the human condition and she puts it into her work.

I have only one complaint about The Survivors and I debated whether or not I should even include it. On one hand, I feel like I shouldn't. It's not about story, or characters, or action or anything I would ordinarily include in  a review. On the other hand, it definitely effected my enjoyment of the book, and that's something I definitely review for. 

So anyway, here it is:

I don't get putting that there. It took me out of the story completely. I mean, commercials are something I'm used to on TV, but not in a book. It took me a day to get back to reading a story I had been enjoying intensely up to that point. I still finished the book and I'm still planning on reading other stuff by White, but that threw me for a loop.

Bottom Line: 4.0 (4.75 if not for that commercial) out of 5 Mutated Ants

The Survivors: Life After War, Book One

Angela White

C9 Publications, 2017

The Survivors: Life After War, Book One 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.

T.S. Ransdell's The Last Marine: Books One and Two

Listen, I'm a fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy. I've been an SF fan since my dad sat me down in front of a TV with Star Trek on it. Science Fiction literature had to wait a few years, because I hadn't learned to read by the age of three days.

*SIGH*

It's a failing on my part I know, but can't you cut your boy some slack?

 With fantasy, it started a little later when I first saw the animated version of The Hobbit in like first or second grade. Not my fault that time, I hadn't been exposed.

Anyway...

As a fan, there are some universes you'd love to live in. Star Trek comes to mind, although I would perhaps prefer a place not up against one of the Neutral Zones. There is no such thing as a Harry Potter fan who doesn't want to attend Hogwarts. I'm not convinced that Westeros would be my favorite place, but Valdemar just might. I don't trust Jayne, but I'd love to work for Captain Mal. And, let's face it, I'd run spice with Han and Chewie if I thought I'd make enough to make it worth my while.

But when it comes to the universe that T.S. Ransdell created for his series The Last Marine I think I'll stay home if given the choice. If. Given. The. Choice. The problem being that I may not be. See, the United States of The Last Marine is a wokesters paradise. In other words, it's a Communist Hell.

The society of The Last Marine is divided into Elites (people who have the right politics and express them in ways that benefit the Democrat Party) and everyone else. The Elites get the best food, the best drinks, the best seats on a plane...

You get the idea. It's remarkably close to the Marxist society of the Soviet Union, where the average worker got a tiny apartment and Josef Stalin got five dachas and a chauffeur driven limo because SOLIDARITY COMRADE!!!

Yeah, it's scary because it's so close to coming true.

Of course, we didn't just happen to get there by accident and Ransdell's world-building is amazing.

Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. I hate it when I do that...

The story starts out with a young reporter trying to make something of himself. His name is Joel Levine and he has a mission: He is to interview the last known living member of the United States Marine Corps, one Sean Harris, and show the citizens of the United States, indeed the entire human race, what a bunch of violent, misogynistic, homophobic, racist baby killers the Marines were. 

And yeah, I know I don't do spoilers but this all comes out in the first chapter so it's not reeeeeeallly a spoiler right?

*WINK*

Most of the two novels are told by use of the flashback technique, following Harris's real world experiences through a war and his return home, which was not all that he could have hoped for. There are reasons for that which I don't want to spoil, so let's just say that it ain't pretty if you're a returning GI. I feel bad for these dudes and I'm not really the empathetic type if you wanna know the truth.

 Ransdell's use of the flashback, and corresponding occasional return to the present, is amazingly effective. It's like watching someone's memories in the Pensieve, ala Harry Potter, and then being able to discuss what you've just seen with that same person. He makes you feel like you were there. Harris has been through a lot, having experienced war and all its horrors first hand on top of a rotten homecoming. It's seamless.There were times when I almost forgot that I was reading a book and felt like I was sitting there WITH Harris and Levine. Spellbinding sounds like a good term. I'll go with that. It was spellbinding.

I've taken a look at Ransdell's Amazon biography and it says that he teaches, or possibly taught, history. I'm guessing this guy has studied the time period around the Vietnam War because what he's got here rings true and is reminiscent of accounts I've read written by Vietnam vets. The Last Marine has spots that are enough to make me a bit uncomfortable, so if you lived that mess go in prepared. Oh, and while we're list bona fides, let me mention that Ransdell's Amazon page states that he is a Marine and a veteran of Desert Shield/Storm. This is some slimy civilian who doesn't know what he's talking about. He was infantry and it sounds like he's been there and done that. He gets it right. 

I'll admit that I find myself wondering if Ransdell wrote The Last Marine, at least partially, out of a desire to be the guy who got to interview the vet. Seriously, I have a degree in history myself (albeit only a BA) and I've always wanted to conduct this type of an interview with a vet: Just me and him and his stories about the war. No historian wouldn't recognize the impulse, although many would interview someone from a different occupation, but still: The people who were there are the greatest primary source and Levine gets access to the last one. I find myself a bit jealous of a person that doesn't exist. I suppose I'll get over it. 

I do have one complaint about the works and it's why I decided to review both books together instead of only reviewing one: The first book doesn't really have an ending. I don't mean it ends on a cliff hanger. I mean just cuts off. It was kind of like watching a VHS and having the VCR eat the tape halfway through the movie. It really threw me. In a way, I guess that's a good thing. I didn't know I was at the end of the book and I wanted more, but it really jarred me. That much having been said, it didn't jar me hard enough to make me not want to read the next book. As a matter of fact, thanks to the magic of the internet, I got the Book Two seconds after I had completed Book One. I couldn't wait. That's a good thing in and of itself. But seriously, when you download the first one, download the second one too. It'll be worth your time and you'll be glad you saved yourself the trouble of having to pause in between. Except that there's a sequel on the way and you'll have to pause for that, because it's not out yet.

Bottom Line:  4.75 out of 5 Scarred Faces

The Last Marine: Book One
T.S. Ransdell
Self Published, 2016

The Last Marine: Book Two
T.S. Ransdell
Self Published, 2019

Both books from The Last Marine can be purchased at the following links. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage of your purchase at no additional cost to you.

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:

Nick Cole's CTRL, ALT Revolt!

Once upon a time your friendly neighborhood blogmaster was not really a near future Science Fiction fan. I lived my alternate lives in universes either full of starships and proton torpedoes or mages and goblins. With a couple of exceptions (Robotech and Shadowrun are the only ones that come to mind) the nearest future I wanted to talk about started in 2265 and was filled with guys named Kirk, Spock and McCoy. I spent my time on Arrakis and in Middle Earth. If I wanted to know what happened on little old Earth, I read about it in history class or the history section at the book store. The near future? Who cared? But then something weird happened: I started a blog and people started sending me near future SF.

I quickly learned that some of the best SF is near term. It's also some of the most believable. Humanoid robots with a grudge attempting to wipe out the entire human race can be scary. A knight with a spear on the battlements waiting for a female dragon rider to show up and kill him will stick with you for the rest of your life. The stuff that really makes a guy like me twitch though? It's the fantastic story that's just far enough in the future that we haven't quite gotten to the technology yet and close enough that I might live to see it.

Sure, I'd love to see Alpha Orions IV up close and personal. That would be a dream come true. I am an online gamer though. I know people who spend real world money on in game merchandise. I know others who use real world money to buy tokens that they sell to others for in game money. Why does that matter? Because we're moving closer to the world as it appears in Nick Cole's Dragon Award winning CTRL, ALT Revolt! This one has had me up a few nights already.

The premise of the story is a bit complicated, but I'll try to describe it: There is a reality TV show. It's not called The Bachelorette, but that's what it is. During the last episode, a self-aware supercomputer watches as the bachelorette decides to abort a child she conceived during taping. It surmises that a species that could so easily kill one of its own young as an inconvenience could easily destroy it. The computer does what it thinks it needs to: It sets out to destroy humanity as a form of self protection. Insanity ensues.

I don't want to give too much away. I'm almost bothered by what I've give away already. That's not my style. I err... don't know how to get around giving up at least a little bit more though. I'll do what I can and try to avoid overt spoilers, but really, so much of what made this book good has to do with the way Cole wove the story together. The review just won't work otherwise. So. Semi spoilerish things alert! Proceed at your own risk!

The amazing part about this book is how it goes back and forth between cyberspace and meat-space. Money is now comprised of "make-coins" spendable both in cyberspace and for things like rent, food and clothing in the real world. There are professional gamers in the real world now, but this is something different. Professional gamers in 2016 make money from streaming and advertising, or from corporate sponsorships. In CTRL ALT Revolt! the "make coins" are as real as real gets. Let's put it this way: I play World of Warcraft. I'm not sure how much gold I have for sure but I'd ballpark it between three hundred thousand and half a million. That gold is worthless outside of the game. There are even some in-game perks that it won't purchase. If those were make coins I'd buy myself a house and a car with no loans and have enough left over for a vacation with the kids, followed by one with my girlfriend.

Along the same lines, information is of huge value and is available both on- and off- line. Much of the fighting in CAR (and there is a metric buttload of it) takes place online. Much of it takes place offline. The online combat is meant to obtain information and spread a virus that will effect the real world. Some of the people online don't even know why they're fighting, they just know THAT they're fighting. It gets a little wild, but that's where the fun comes from. Of course the Artificial Intelligence wants access to information that is contained in a computer that is not connected to the internet.. and things spiral out of control.

I've seen some gaming related titles before but this thing takes the cake. The two worlds are so tightly woven together that sometimes you wonder if the characters can tell them apart. When one of the characters is leading a fight against a much more powerful adversary in an online game to make money to buy things she can use in meatspace and her opponent is an actor in an online gaming/streaming drama...well... damn. It's well done but the lines are effectively blurred here. It flashes back and forth so quickly and I got so wrapped up in it...wow. I mean that. Wow.

The characters in CAR are believable and awesome. Cole plays with some archetypes here and a few of his most important characters are not really leading character type. The socially awkward nerd that leads a starship crew ends up in the thick of the fight to save the world. The game designer who never goes out fights on the same side, completely unaware of her. The corporate leader is not the evil genius, he's the one preserving the information the world needs to beat the AI. The list gets longer. A lot of thought went into these characters and it shows.

This is a blog that has never shied away from mentioning political content and I'm not going to start now. CTRL, ALT Revolt! is heavy on political content and it's not just in the first chapter. There is political content throughout the work. If I caught the heavily conservative bent of this book as a die-hard conservative there's no way any liberal that reads this could hope to avoid it. The idea that a computer can feel threatened by abortion is one that any liberal is going to have problems with and that's just the beginning. Nick Cole has publicly stated that he had a contract to publish this book and that his publisher cancelled it because of this anti-abortion stance. I wasn't there so I can't speak to what actually happened but I have to wonder if that was a totally accurate statement. Most publishing houses are run by liberals so I have no doubt that his premise offensive. I just wonder if that's the only thing the publisher had a problem with. I was trained to read for an agenda as part of my degree so it may not be as obvious to other conservatives but I couldn't miss it. That's really the only problematic part of the book and it increased my enjoyment rather than diminishing it.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Make Coins. This book deserved the Dragon Award. That's why I voted to give it one.

CTRL, ALT Revolt!
Nick Cole
Castalia House, 2016

CTRL, ALT Revolt! is available for purchase at the link below:

Lizzie Ashworth's Denial

What do you get when you cross New Age mysticism, corporate intrigue, a weird wasting disease related to pollution, a psychic cure for it, a string of murders and the development of a man from an upstanding citizen to a gutter bum and back to an upstanding citizen again? I you're thinking it's Lizzie Ashworth's Denial then you're right. If you're thinking of something else let me know, because I'd probably like to read that too. This is the second book in the House of Rae series, following Salvation which I reviewed previously. I enjoyed the first one and I can't help but think that this one is even better precisely because it came afterward and she had more experience writing SF/F.

Ashworth's work has all of the themes listed above and it mixes them really well. She finds a way to switch between points of view and tie things together that, if you were to describe them to me verbally don't sound like they would fit together all that well. Don't ask me how she made it work. I'll just say she did. Ashworth has a sharp mind and makes her characters believable.

This book, like the one before it, has a point of view that can only be described as a limited first-person omniscient. This is something I hadn't seen until I read her first book but now that I have a bit more familiarity with it, having read the work of both Ashworth and Daniella Bova, I'm actually enjoying it. It can be a bit strange if you have to abandon a book mid chapter but she manages to identify her characters well enough that after a sentence or two you can figure out who you're reading. And wow, do those characters vary.

Back from the first book is our hero Josh, who is now back in school and working as a gray water technician. He is in love with a wonderful graduate student. Things go from good to bad to ugly quickly.  Before long he's alone and homeless. This poor guy has been through so much and come through so often he seems to be unstoppable. Along the way though, he still manages to shag some tail because, well... He's Josh. Pumping chicks is what he does. And once again the sex helps him get through tough times in his life.  He also has some psychic ability and this plays a much larger part in Denial than it did in Salvation.

The SF/F, probably more fantasy honestly, aspect in this book is much stronger than in the first one. It focuses around the healing ability of pleasure energy which is focused by the houses (in this case Houses of Rae, but there are other houses as well) and the fruits of their labors. The houses themselves are full of varying forms of entertainment, from the simple pleasures of a walk through a garden to booze, drugs or prostitution. If it feels good you can do it at a house. (The House of Rae specifically caters to an all female clientele but it is made clear that there are equivalent facilities for men. They just never appear "on screen.") The energy goes into a network and is distributed for use at healing facilities all over the world.

One of the main problems of the novel revolves on a specific house and its problem connecting to the grid that distributes the energy and this is where we get some of the New Age mysticism. A ceremony is conducted to travel into the Astral Plane and Feng Shui and acupuncture are both used in attempts to reconnect to the grid. I found myself enjoying this part of the book a lot. I'm not a New Age mystic by any stretch of the imagination but it was fun.

Ashworth has also toned way down on the sex this time around and I approve. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a prude but I don't usually read too many books with large amounts of sex because it's just not my thing. By no means is this book sex-free but the plot no longer centers around it and the book works better because of that fact. What sex is left in the book is plot necessary. For Ashworth growth, or some forms of it at least, is linked to sex. Her characters use sex to get past the rough parts of their lives and overcome their past. It's not a philosophy I subscribe to, but it's one that works for her.

The dark side of the corporate world is here for all to see. Ashworth's millionaires are self made men who cheated their way to the top. Denial is a good title as most of them have raked in millions while profiting off of dirty dealings and back room bargains. Fortunes are made and lost. One of the millionaires is a flat out despicable human being. Another regrets his past. All are seen as human beings, warts and all. A major part of the plot takes place when one of the millionaires has to defend his daughter against her asshole ex-husband. They all fight dirty. I approve.

I shouldn't have to write this, but I will anyway. Ashworth's treatment of some of the men in this book is exactly the type of thing that would set off the whiny types that complained about the latest Mad Max being a "feminist movie." Yes, one of them is a dirtbad on his best day. Yes, another can only seem to get himself together when he gets laid on a regular basis. Guess what, there are people like that in the real world. Yes, some of Ashworth's women are strong characters. If you can't deal with those things you may wish to avoid this book. I'm okay with it though. People have foibles and I don't see a realistic depiction to be a reason to cry into my beer.

My complaints about this book are fairly minimal. Ashworth's use of the multiple first person point of view works but sometimes she has time squeezing herself into the head of a man. Josh in particular actually describes a scene at one point as "I wept." An extremely effeminate man may describe himself as weeping, but Josh just isn't that kind of guy. I could see "I cried hard" maybe but weep? Sure, I've sat around and sobbed like a bitch at one point or another, but I have NEVER wept. Even if I have. But that's nitpicking. I find myself wondering at some points if the mosquito drones in her book would be able to carry enough liquid to cause the effect she ascribes to them but it is SF and I don't really have the technical details down enough to say it wouldn't work either. I'm thinking that the end of this one sets up the next one but I'm not sure if that's a good thing. It's not really a cliffhanger but it's not really NOT a cliffhanger. Also, conspicuous by her absence is Rae and this IS the House of Rae series.  All in all though, there wasn't much to complain about and the good far outweighed the bad.

Bottom Line: 4.5 out of 5 Mystic Crystals

Denial
Book two of the House of Rae series
 Lizzie Ashworth
Self Published, 2015

Denial can be purchased here:

Nemo's World :The Substrate Wars 2 by Jeb Kinnison

Justin Smith, Steve Duong and friends are back again and this time it's WAR... err... peace. Sort of. The crew is up to no good (lots of good?) for the second time and this time they're facing off against the whole world. This one is not for the faint hearted. Kidnappings, theft (granted, of nuclear warheads and for the good of mankind) and gunfights about as we're brought into the world of a bunch of idealistic kids who want nothing but peace and freedom from government constraint. Nemo's World: The Substrate Wars 2 discusses some great ideas while still putting story first.

Kinnison spends quite a bit of time on the politics and diplomacy of his new world in his volume. Smith is doing a lot of work toward setting up a new interstellar government. Relationships are set up between the new planet and the existing governments of Earth. New planets are being applied for and assigned. There is a lot here. There has to be though, because this is a very political story.

The goals of the students (and that's what most of the good guys are) are laudable and they're very aware of the potential downside of the computers they have built. They can detect and destroy just about everything. They seize all of the world's nuclear weapons and hide them in space. They can destroy just about everything and Steve Duong knows all the tricks to do so. So far they haven't succumbed to the evil possibilities of their technology, at least by their standards. They're well aware of some of the potential damage that can be done with a technology that can detect, transport and create just about everything. Even punishment of criminals is performed with an eye toward mercy. In the end, not everything works the way it was intended to, but that in and of itself makes sense.

Nuclear weapons are stolen back by the United States government. A fight breaks out on the penal planet. It's made possible by the use of replicator technology (very similar to that used in Star Trek) that wasn't meant to produce weapons.  Kinnison is very well aware of what can go wrong here and he is making the point. Sometimes I wonder if he takes it far enough though.

One of the factions that is on the "Good guy" side is the Grey Tribe. They're a group of cyber-rebels who have been sought by various governments. A lot of them are also programmers. So far Steve Duong has managed to keep them from getting loose and doing something - seeking revenge against the government on a personal level? - that he doesn't want. No one seems to have gotten hold of a joystick and taken something they shouldn't have for their own enrichment. Kinnison is obviously aware of the terrible potential of a computer that can move/create just about anything but he seems to be unwilling to take the logical next step. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. It hasn't happened yet. Equally as strange is that nothing has gone hideously wrong. With technology this new and radical I would expect more accidents.

There could be a bit less talk in this book and a bit more action as well. Granted, there are fights, assassination attempts and a potential nuking so the story is not all talk, but there are large chunks of people talking instead of doing. Even a few minutes in the computer lab with Steve Duong while he is attempting his newest innovation and worrying about a potential failure might spice things up.

For all of that though, this is a really solid story. I read through it in about two days and I really did enjoy it. I'm waiting for the next book in the series (err, well... I hope I am. I haven't heard anything from Kinnison about whether it's going to happen or not) with bated breath.

Bottom line:4.25 out of 5 Stolen Nukes.

Nemo's World: The Substrate Wars
Jeb Kinnison
Jeb Kinnison, 2015




On Thursday : Cedar Sanderson's Trickster Noir if I'm done reading it by then. If not, whatever movie I decide to watch and review.

Salvation by Lizzie Ashworth

A week ago I would have told you that I had read some seriously sexually charged SF. I mean I've read everything from George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire to the sickness and depravity of L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth series to John Ringo's well... lots of stuff. There's a reason why you can buy T-shirts that say "Oh, John Ringo, No." and I've bought and read every novel the man has ever published. I've never come anywhere near a SF book with this much sex in it though. I'd be interested in speaking to someone who has read this and is a regular reader of romance to find out if this level of sex would even be common there. That much being said, this is more than just a book about sex. This is a tale told from the progressive point of view and set in the near future. Indeed, the sex fits in well with the plot, always advancing the story and/or character development.

The future isn't what it used to be either. This is a future where the entire planet is caught up in a mess. The temperature is rising. The planet is burning. Carbon poisoning is killing millions. Quality food is nearly impossible to get. The only thing that can save the people is the psychic energy generated by pleasure. It can be harnessed by people with psionic abilities and channeled through a not very well defined system into hospitals where it can be used to help cure people with various ailments.

The story is told mainly through the observations of three different point of view characters. Joshua "Josh" Carter is a nineteen year old man and a religious terrorist out to stop the culture of the pleasure centers, the "House of Rae" by bombing their flagship house. He slowly but surely begins to fall into decadence and enjoy the position that he has been hired for... that of a male prostitute. Raeleen "Rae" Lawson is the owner of the House of Rae and not only hires Josh against the advice of her security department  but takes him under her wing both to encourage him to be a good employee and because he turns her on. Lucas "Lu" Haverson is a senior employee in the House of Rae and Rae's former lover. He is also a psionicist and a pioneer in the technology that transports the pleasure energy. He is also suspicious of Josh and for all the right reasons.

Certain tendencies are accorded to the characters in a very well-defined and reasoned way, at least if looked at from a Leftist perspective. Lu is a womanizer who ended up with a job as a male prostitute because he loved the party lifestyle. Rae is a liberated woman who grew up with a strong religious background and turned a failed marriage into a multinational empire. Josh is a religious fanatic who believes that everything he is doing is sinful - except for planning to murder a bunch of people. He also has a strong streak of sexism and a belief that women should serve men. Again, from a leftist perspective, this all makes sense.

Oddly enough, for all of the environmental scaremongering that goes into this work there is a strong element of rightist elements to balance the leftism in areas outside of the environment and religion. Rae is a jilted woman but she is a capitalist of the first order, overseeing a multinational empire that helps make people well. Lu is basically a good man who has saved his whole life for his eventual retirement. Neither is mentioned as being a bad person for those tendencies. Both are shown as extremely sympathetic and Rae comes close to a breakdown when a couple of her Houses are attacked. Similarly, society's attitude toward mind-altering chemicals, marijuana in particular, can certainly be seen as a progressive attitude, but it would fit in at a Libertarian rally as well.

Overall, I found the book highly entertaining, although I would not necessarily recommend reading it at work. Anywhere else though, it's highly entertaining and action packed. Sex galore, flaming car wrecks, assaults on Houses, it's all there. There is a surprise or two along the way. Things go perfectly according to plan... until they don't. Ashworth does a good job at giving just enough foreshadowing to keep us from feeling blindsided by her plot twists while still leaving us just as surprised as her point of view characters.

Salvation, while being entertaining, is not a perfect work. The first chapter was clearly marked as being narrated by Josh but he felt female to me as I read it. The sensation wore off quickly, but it was definitely there and I was a little jilted when I realized that I was reading a male character. The tale is told in first-person but it takes place in three different people's heads and can be a bit disconcerting if you're reading quickly and skip over a chapter heading. Ashworth would also do well to do a bit more research on the rightist point of view as it may help her to make her characters even more believable. None of that is unforgivable though and at the end of the day it is an enjoyable work.

Bottom Line: 4.25 out of 5 Houses


Salvation
Lizzie Ashworth
Create Space Publishing, 2014