DT Read's Echoes of Issel The Sergey Chronicles: Book Two

 

I remember seeing something D. T. Read had written about one of her Seventh Shaman novels. She thought a lot of fans might not like it because it was less action oriented.  I can't remember which one it was (And this is a common failing of mine. ) but it focused on Ku, the main character of that series, and his coming terms with being a husband and a father during some leave time during a war. I kind of wonder if she thinks the same thing about Echoes of Issel. I hope not. Seriously, not all of Science Fiction has to be space battles and explosions. Echoes of Issel has both of those, but this is a really phenomenal character driven drama.

Some of you missed the first book in The Sergey Chronicles, Ganwold's Child. You should be ashamed of yourselves. That much having been said, Tristan, the main character of both books, kills his first person in combat at the end of Ganwold's Child. If you've done the reading (and I have)  a lot of combat vets suffer from PTSD not from the horror and fear of combat, but because of what they were forced to do. A lot of Echoes is Tristan trying to recover from his PTSD related to that kill, and it makes sense.

A lot of Echoes of Issel is also Tristan and the rest of his nuclear family, his father Lujan and mother Darcie, as they try to become a family again after years of separation. As well as Read writes her action sequences, her forte really seems to be family interactions and bonding. She knocked it out of the park here. She obviously put some study in for this one. Some of what her psychologist character says sounds like it comes almost straight out of a textbook. I'm guessing it might. Seeing that study put into use as she takes us through Tristan's actions toward his father especially was amazing. Then add in a dash of a stranger in a new land (Darcie raised Tris among aliens) and things get really complicated. Read works through things with her typical aplomb and if I may have felt a desire to get in Tristan's face a couple of times that just means that:

A.) I'm a crusty old dude who doesn't deal with teenagers being teenagers any better than the crusty old man who raised me.

and 

B.) Read got an emotional reaction out of her reader. Emotional response being the goal of any smart artist, that translates into "job well done."

None of that is to say that Echoes of Issel is all talk and no action. The second half of the book, following a training interlude, is almost a straight Military Science Fiction action novel. Tristan remains a civilian but goes to war as a civilian scout attached to a Special Operations unit. Things get hectic.

In fact, Echoes of Issel  was part thriller, part medical drama and part Mil-SF. There is a lot here and it's actually impressive to see all of that in one book and have it work. 

Totally non-spoilery hint:

Don't mess with that Sergey kid.

Anyway...

I had gone into Echoes of Issel with full knowledge of the fact that Tris would be joining a SpecOps unit, but I don't think I was totally prepared for it. Most of the combat in Read's books, at least the ones I've read, have been mainly space battles. Fighter versus fighter, ship versus ship, etc. The combat in Echoes is much more up close and personal. Tris is fighting on foot with a rifle for the combat sequences. I should have expected that, but for some reason it caught me by surprise.

Huh?

Goofball? Me? You're just noticing that? Seriously? 

Your powers of observation are weak. 

Continuing on...

Read, being a retired Lieutenant Colonel, has a ton of knowledge and experience with things military and it shows. She has the military feel down. I expected that. What I didn't expect as much of was how well she integrated a young man with no real military experience into a military unit and made it feel real and make sense. I would expect members of a SpecOps unit to have reservations about having a civilian into their ranks and they do. But Tris, being an intelligent young man, earns his place in the unit and it feels organic. I could actually believe it happened as I read it. It felt right. I don't know how else to put it.

And Read's background as an intelligence officer shows through. She not only displays knowledge of how to conduct a debriefing, she also shows how that intelligence is put into use. There's a bit of ops planning revealed here, and I'd be willing to bet she sat in as a consultant during her military career as well. Echoes of Issel was not just well conceived. It was well executed.

The best Military Science Fiction always includes some political intrigue. Wars are, after all, an extension of policy using other means. The most talented authors not only acknowledge this basic truth, they use it as a tool to move their stories along. Echoes gives us just enough of the political end of things to move the story along without becoming overwhelming and bogging things down. I won't say precisely why, but I have a feeling that there is a political angle coming up in the next book, which I'm totally looking forward to.

I'm going to admit to being a bit miffed at myself here as well. I, was aware that Read was going to attempt to sell this series to Chris Kennedy Publishing (Theogony Books being their MilSF imprint) and I didn't get this book before CKP did the smart thing and bought it. It was totally for sale months ago. I had read the first one. I could have just flopped down the cash for Echoes of Issel and the next book (the title of which escapes me) months ago and I didn't. That was a mistake of titanic proportions. I’m kicking myself about it, if only because I still don’t have the last one in my greedy little hands. This is a problem which will, of course, be solved in due time but which was totally preventable. I'm looking forward to finally putting that problem to bed.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Borbiks

Echoes of Issel
D.T. Read
Theogony Books, 2023

Echoes of Issel 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.

The Backbone of Surprise by C.S. Ferguson and Greg Ferguson

So I, being me, picked up my copy (metaphorically. I read the e-book.) of The Backbone of Surprise by C.S. Ferguson and Greg Ferguson wide-eyed with curiosity and not knowing what to expect precisely. I knew I was getting a work of Military Science Fiction, but I didn't know much else besides that. The Amazon blurb gave me a bit more of a clue, but not much of one. It opens with a battle and that's always a good thing. I went from zero to "Let's find out what these heroes are made of," in nothing flat. And trust me. These heroes are no slouches.

But then things take a turn for the worse and something weird happens. For me, it started with "WTF?!?!?" proceeded to "OOOOUCH!!!" and then "NO REALLY, WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!!" I mean, yeah. That was rough. It was awesome, but I'm still in pain just thinking about reading that. Of course, our hero, Digger Stewart, had to find out what had just happened, too. And that's when you truly wander down the rabbit hole. And please believe me when I tell you that Alice ain't got nothin' on this book. It gets really weird, really quickly.

But, let's face it: We're science fiction fans. At least I am, and I'm not sure why you'd be here if you weren't. Weird is what we do. It's our main thing. Who else dresses up and goes to conventions? If you can do the Vulcan Hand Salute, the whole world thinks you're crazy. Drop a Star Wars quote, even an obvious one, and people think you're out of your mind. Well, trust me on this one. Digger ends up with so much weird in so little time, all while under fire, that he feels like a normie in the middle of a meeting of the 501st Division. 

And things just keeping going farther into the strange. Digger feels a little overwhelmed at first, then he has to get involved in the crazy (kinda the way you wished that one girl you dated in high school would have) and that's when things get interesting. He ends up in a military unit that he never knew existed (and doesn't exist on paper) doing things he never knew was possible and in parts it almost feels like there are two separate Science Fiction universes mixed here. It's a transportation thing, and it's just kinda...

Weird.

I love it. And it's not really a concept I haven't seen before, it's just that when it's mixed with another form of FTL travel that it has nothing in common with...

Yeah, that's not how us weirdos usually work. It's cool though and it makes some things possible...

Meanwhile, other things are happening and the enemy is bigger and more organized than the heroes know...

And that's where things got a little strange for even me. Don't get me wrong, it was an awesome kind of weird, but we're doing some things here that hit some hot buttons for a guy like me. 

The Backbone of Surprise is the first book in a series entitled The Transhuman War. Transhumanism is something that pushes a few buttons for me, and some of them are flat out contradictory. Since it's my blog, let's explore this for a second.

There are ethical concerns with transhumanism. The Holocaust (yep, Jimbo just Godwinned his own blog) was more about eugenics than it was about hatred. I know that's not how it's taught now, and believe me racism and hatred were a big part of it, but Hitler was breeding the Meister-Reiss and the people he had murdered were slaughtered because they didn't fit his definition of the perfect human. Whether it was for racial and ethnic reasons, because of congenital deformities, mental challenges, or sexual orientation, the Nazi movement was bent on engineering all of that out of the human genome. They decided to achieve their goals though mass slaughter and that taints everything that comes after.

There is also a religious angle with transhumanism and it's one I'm not fully qualified to discuss. (Jimbo spends too much time on SF/F to read theology too.) My ex-GF would get all fired up about this, but she's no longer with us. Suffice it to say that some people see it as a violation of God's plan for the human body. There may be Bible verses to back that, there may not. I haven't studied it.

And yet...

There are no death camps in The Backbone of Surprise. There are no persecuted minorities, although there are hints that the bio-engineered are leaning toward hating on normal humans, there doesn't seem to be a whole that they can do at the time of the book on a wide scale. And then there's this...

If I'm reading the backstory on this correctly, and I wasn't exactly taking notes, cybernetics in particular were outlawed because they were used in a war. There are a couple of different aspects of this that bother me:

1.) Wars aren't between people. They're between governments. People just get stuck doing the dirty work. Denying a person the ability to do something because some government official gave the wrong orders rankles me. 

2.) Government over-regulation makes me angry. Making yourself think quicker or run faster does nothing to harm another person. From my point of view most things that don't cause physical harm should be legal. And no, I'm not worried about your feelings. Those are a separate issue.

And our heroes are fighting for the government against people who make cybernetics and bionics. It's like gun control writ large. And, since I already Godwinned the post, it's worth mentioning that the first industrialized country to introduce nation wide gun control was Nazi Germany. And, let's face it, 

I'm a big fan of the people doing things that only governments used to be able to do, because that dilutes government power. Of course, when people want to use that same technology to build their own power base, results are mixed. And a lot of what Biofate, the bad guys in the book, are doing is geared toward an eventual takeover as well.

There's a lot to The Backbone of Surprise that I don't necessarily know how to classify in a real world sense, and I think it's good to have this discussion because a lot of the tech in the book will probably be available in the not-too distant future. It's better to have a plan, I guess. I just don't know what an intelligent plan looks like and how, or really even if, fairness plays into it.

Of course, none of that has anything to do with the entertainment value of The Backbone of Surprise and entertainment value is what I usually review based on. The Fergusons have given us the gift of a rollicking good time, fun characters, political intrigue and intense combat. I can't wait to get more of this series and I'll be checking the rest of the trilogy out soon. Even if it does make me think too much.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Broken Laws

The Backbone of Surprise
C.S. Ferguson and Greg Ferguson
Theogony Books, 2023

The Backbone of Surprise 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.

D.T. Read's Apprentice to the Gods The Seventh Shaman, Book Four

 (Author's note: D.T Read will still be getting her review as part of my Memorial Day Event. I know that I had originally promised it would be this book but I got excited and jumped the gun. She has another series out, The Sergey Chronicles, and I'll be reviewing book one from that series instead. Oops.)

So I'm totally going to review D.T. Read's Apprentice to the Gods without every third word being a spoiler.

Totes.

Watch me go.

I'm all over this.

Well, at least "all over." 

Seriously, this is a REALLY good book but how do you not spoil too much?

Okay so I've reviewed the first three books. For purposes of this review, I'm going to assume you've read the first three. If you haven't. hie thee off to the two links listed above and then go read the books. I'll wait.

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

Okay. ARE YOU DONE YET? Sheesh. I gave you at least five seconds there.

And I never, and I mean ever, put this this early in the review but don't read Apprentice to the Gods as a standalone. This book is part of a series and it really only works that way. That's not to say it's not a good book, because it's amazeballs,  It is to say that ATTG is awesome in large part because of how well it connects with what has come before. It also works (at least it feels like it does) as a bridge to the rest of the series.

There are certain moments in certain series where the entire story turns on that one moment. The death of Sturm Brightblade in The Dragonlance Chronicles comes to mind. So does "No Luke, I am your father." for the original Star Wars trilogy. Apprentice to the Gods contains that moment for this series, I think. I mean, the last three (at least! WHO ELSE IS EXCITED?!?!?!?!?!??) books of the Seventh Shaman haven't come out yet and I could be dead wrong, but it was definitely _a_ turning point even if it wasn't _the_ turning point.

Something big happens though, and it changes the trajectory of Ku's life. Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse, but it'll never be the same. It's definitely not all bad though. Ku is a man with a destiny and he knows it. Ku needs training outside of what he received from the military and he gets it but I'm damn sure that not everything he needed to know and learned can be termed as "training."

Ku, like many other men throughout history, became a father for the first time while serving a combat deployment. He ends up at home for his first extended period of time since that happen in Apprentice to the Gods. He honestly hadn't been married for all that long before he deployed either. What this translates into is a man who needs to learn how to live in a family as a husband and father. And the military, or so I've been told, doesn't do much to prepare its troops to deal with these kinds of tasks. He does about as well with his first diaper as I did though. I'll give him that much. Then again, there's a reason why my oldest daughter had the nicknames Stink and Poops while she was a baby.

She'll kill me if she reads that. 

Pray for me.

For what it's worth though, Ku is a good dad and does as much of the stuff that I've been told multiple times that men don't do as I did when I was married and lived with my kids. Well, except that we had disposable diapers. Thankfully, I didn't have to deal with THAT.

Things are going well for Ku in the sense of his immediate family, but not on the macro scale. There is a lot going on that may very well end up requiring his military skills. I'm only seventy percent sure of that at this point, but I'd be shocked if I'm wrong. There is a fight brewing and I'm not sure how big it's going to be, but I'm guessing somewhere between huge and gigundus. And yes, gingundus is a word. I just made it up.

And it's serious because Ku has some serious religious obligations coming up too, and they're likely to require a whole bunch of his family and military skills. There are shades of prophecy involved here and it's not always clear what is literal and what isn't. Ku has a lot riding on his shoulders. I don't think I'd want some of his responsibilities. I'm not sure he does. What he does have though is guts and to spare. He's a man that is stuck in a situation he can't get out of and does what is required of him BECAUSE it is required of him. That's all anyone can ask I guess, and I find it utterly realistic and understandable.

I'm thinking his religious training benefits from his military training in ways that may not be apparent until you think about it, but it makes sense. As a matter of fact, I think it might be the only way to make some of it make sense. Military training is conducted at a high rate of speed and things are condensed into the smallest amount of time they can take up and still be useful. Ku, and his wife Derry, get a lot of that in Apprentice to the Gods. That makes sense because she's military too, but they have to learn a lot in a short amount of time. Anyone who has been through Basic Training knows how that feels. 

And Ku also ends up being an imperfect human being. He makes one very serious mistake in the book that almost costs him one of the most important things in his life and it hurts him. It hurts him bad and it makes him do what he should have done previously. He learns from it though, and I'm thinking that will stand him as well in books to come as it does in this one. 

If you're annoyed by the fact that I keep bringing up future boks in The Seventh Shaman just know that it doesn't annoy me at all. That's because I'm geeked up on this series and can't wait to find out what's next. Unfortunately, I may have to wait longer for the next one as I'm told that it may be up to a year before it's out.

Don't worry about me though. I won't cry about it.

Much.

Probably.

Or at least not in public.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Chants

Apprentice to the Gods The Seventh Shaman, Book Four

D.T. Read

Theogony Press, 2023

Apprentice to the Gods The Seventh Shaman, Book Four is available 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.

D.T. Read's Mountains of the Gods and Crucible of the Gods (The Seventh Shaman Books Two and Three)

Listen folks, go read these books!

REVIEW WRITTEN! PUT IT IN THE CAN!

*Takes celebratory gulp of Coca-Cola Classic*

Sorry to those who are disappointed by that statement but I don't really drink and Mountain Dew is the Hard Stuff, so...

Yeah.

Okay, so I'm not that lazy. Usually. That's not the whole review. Probably. 

Being dead serious though, D.T. Read has outdone herself with Mountain of the Gods and Crucible of the Gods. These books kick so much afterburner that I had to congratulate her on her Facebook page before I had finished Crucible.It and Mountains are that good. I thought Running from the Gods,  the first book, was amazeballs (and it is) but these two kick it up a notch. I guess I kind of expected that, but I didn't really expect that.

 I mean, the first book in a series like this is usually world-building and moves a bit slowly. This is especially true when the first book is basic military and Military Occupational Specialty training. Things take a minute to build to where they really take off. Starting with Mountains that's not really the case anymore.

Mountains of the Gods is the story of a young pilot's introduction to real-world combat. He serves in a military that is currently losing a war and needs him out and doing his job. He does his best to do it, too. Don't get me wrong Akuleh Masou (AKA Ku) is a terrific pilot and he's game for the fight, but things seem not to go the way he wants them to at times. The historian in me believes that this just might be because the other side gets a say in what happens, but it hurts Ku just the same.

And that is something that is missing in a lot of military fiction. I just had this conversation with a friend of mine on Sunday night while I was out with some friends from a fan organization that I'm part of. The author of the series is amazing and writes truly awesome books (that's why I joined the organization) but I hadn't really thought about that until recently and I wonder if it's his background as a history student that causes that. Historians, after all focus mostly on the Butcher's Bill and not as much on individual stories, unless they're talking about some general somewhere.

Ku faces war and all of its ugliness head on. I don't want to spoil too much here, but he faces the psychic shock of the experience in a very visceral way. Ku is not the hero of a World War II movie that was made during the 1950s. He goes through a lot and it beats him up sometimes. He has to deal with the flashbacks afterward. More than anything else I've read, with the possible exception of J.A. Sutherland's Alexis Carew series, Ku has to deal with the things they don't show on the recruiting poster. 

It almost feels paradoxical to say this, since military fiction is a lot older than I am and leaving that part out has always been part of a working formula that sells, but it adds a lot to the story. I've read a lot of heroes of a lot of works that don't seem as real as Ku and his friends do and it's because they deal with the parts that people don't want to talk about. Seriously. I'm a huge Mel Gibson fan and Hal Moore didn't feel this real in We Were Soldiers  and Hal Moore was a real guy who really did what they show on the screen. 

I guess that's what really drew me into these books. Ku acts like he would act in real life. He deals with problems as they come up, just like he would in real life. He struggles with a lot. I've been there. I haven't had the same problems, never having been anywhere near a combat environment, but struggling is a feeling that I'm a lot more familiar with than I wish I was.

Let me put this out there, too. It's spoiling but I can't help it. Ku has to seek out help for his mental issues at one point. His PTSD hits him hard and he find someone to lead him through it. Again, mine wasn't combat related but I've had to do the same. It wasn't easy for me. It wasn't easy for Ku. There probably aren't many people on the planet who find it easy to ask for help with mental issues. But he did it. I did it and so have many others. But we've endured and so has Ku. He also has a tendency to bounce back from physical trauma that is truly impressive. I'm wondering if a particular injury he suffers wasn't stolen from something that happened in the real world, because it feels realistic but has just a bit of "I don't think you could make that up" to it. 

Maybe I'm spending too much time on the protagonist and maybe I don't care. Ku is on my Top Ten List of Fictional Characters to Have a Drink With Someday, Except never, because he doesn't really exist, but you get the idea. It's not all just about what he does while in uniform either. I really have to tighten the snerk collar here, but Ku does things in an honorable manner in his personal life when it is very obviously hard for him to do it. He's a solid dude, the guy you want at your back when things go awry.

*SIGH*

Yes I'll have his babies, but only if he asks politely.

Something else I've noticed that I don't always see in Science Fiction: Read treats matters of faith with respect and reverence. It has happened elsewhere. I've reviewed Declan Finn's work here a lot and he's a man whose faith comes out in his work. J. Michael Strac, Straz, Stratz...

The guy who wrote Babylon 5, who I believe is an atheist, was also very respectful of religious beliefs but that's not always the case. Asimov wrote a planned future of the human race with no mention of religion or religious movements. Suzanne Collins never put so much as an "Oh God" in The Hunger Games. The organizers of David Weber's own con wouldn't let him hold a prayer meeting on a Sunday even though he's an actual deacon in his church. Seventh Shaman is so named because it involves a lot of religion which, in its own way, is closer to something you'd see in Dungeons and Dragons than what you'd get in a JMS work but I say that lovingly. I've been a D&D guy since Second Edition. I'm still trying to roll the stats to get a paladin. It's not just the way the religion feels either. It's the effects granted by its chanters which are considerable.

Speaking of religion, there are parts of what Ku deals with that remind me of things I've read in the Old Testament. I won't say what and I won't say how, but I have a feeling that Read may have done a bit of study in her time. I just get that feeling based on things. I don't want to reveal too much here so I'll move on. If you're familiar with the Old Testament though, I dare you to read Crucible and tell me I'm wrong. 

Ku, of course, is not the only character in the book. People like Hanuk, Gram, Derry, Kimmie, etc..

They make sense too. Pretty much anyone Ku comes in contact with has motivations and takes actions that make sense in their own mind. That doesn't mean that everyone is friendly or that it's all hunky-dory, but once you're immersed in Read's work you'll stay that way until your dispatcher calls and sends you on another call...

Oh, sorry. That's more of a 'me' thing I guess.

The action in both books is realistic and engaging. Things go bang and boom when they should and the actions taken by Ku and his fellow pilots are both realistic and believable. At times it almost feels like you're in the cockpit. As mentioned previously, the other side gets a vote in ways that matter and that makes the lives of Ku and his fellow pilots interesting in ways that they probably wished that it wouldn't but that's how it would work in the real world. 

There is a lot of foreshadowing going on here. In some ways it feels like the prophecy in Harry Potter. It's not quite the same though and the outcome doesn't seem quite as obvious. I'm pretty sure I know what's coming but not exactly when or how or what it will mean once it happens and I'm not sure the characters in the books do either. I'm okay with that because it adds a little more intrigue to an already tense series and I can't wait to see it resolved.

I got into this series too early. It's not done yet and I need to know where it's going. I know the fourth book will be out soon. I'm thinking there might be one or two more after that, but I'm not making any promises. I can hope though, right? It's not like I'm losing it or anything.

Probably?

Maybe?

Well, let's just say that shaving my head keeps me from pulling my hair out.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Missiles Fired

Mountains of the Gods

D.T. Read
Theogony Books, 2022

Crucible of the Gods

D.T. Read
Theogony Books, 2022

Mountains of the Gods and Crucible of the Gods are available for purchase at the following links. If you click one of the links and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

D.T. Read's Running From the Gods

 

So, listen: There are two types of geeks in the world: Pendantic Science Fantasy haters and super cool  Star Wars fans. I know which camp I fall into. I, therefore, was really excited when I picked up my copy of D.T. Read's Running From the Gods. Seriously, look at that cover and there had to be some fantasy in the work based on the title. Not only was I in no way disappointed, Running From the Gods exceeded my expectations. Seriously, I had a good time with this one. There's a bit of Space Opera here too. It's like a giant smorgasbord of Speculative Fiction Awesomeness.

Our main character, Ku, comes from an abusive background. He lost his father as a youngster and hasn't been fully trained as a chanter, which reads as kind of a priest cum physician with a dash of summoner added...

Yeah. I kind of got the feeling that there is a lot more potential than what we get to see in the first book. That's okay though, because it's clearly labeled as first in a series and it's best for an author not to show us everything in the first installment. I find myself already wondering where and how he's going to get his chanter training given the fact that he's a member of a military that's currently at war with a foreign power and apparently losing. I'm guessing he's got a lot on his plate with just that.

Running From the Gods is very much a Hero's Journey kind of book. More than that, it feels like the whole Seventh Shaman series is going to be a Hero's Journey. I like that. People have been telling stories in his vein for literal millennia because it's a good format. It's entertaining, it's easy to follow and the familiarity provides comfort to counter the anxiety when the main character runs into problem after problem. I'm starting to detect a bit of The Chosen One trope as well, but I'm not sure. Ku himself doesn't know what the future holds for him although, because of a ceremony shortly after he was born, the rest of his tribe seems to. Ku is worried that he might be a powerful force for evil. I'm not sold on that, but how would I know? Read hasn't seen fit to tell us and I gave up trying to predict this type of thing a long time ago. I mean, I write fiction and I'm a pantser. If I was the author here, there's at least a fifty percent chance that I wouldn't know. 

Most of Running From the Gods takes place at pilot training. Ku is a bush pilot who joins the military while still underage and snags himself a pilots slot in training. Whether he manages to complete his training and earn his wings is anyone's guess though, as he is immune to neither failure nor demerits.

There is a hint of politics here as well, and I look forward to seeing more in coming volumes. Things are just kind of setting up right now, but that's good. As an Honor Harrington fan, I've seen how this kind of thing can grow and it's just starting to set up nicely. I can't wait to see where Read can take it from here. What's clear is that he's thought this out and that there is more coming. I'm sure he'll let us all know soon enough.

The relationships in Running From the Gods can be a bit complicated at times, and that's a good thing as well. I don't know much about D.T. Read as a person, but I'm willing to bet he's spent some time in some kind of military training, because he gets the way things work. The trainers aren't always nice but they can't be. Ku's fellow recruits aren't always his best buddies either, and that sucks because they kind of need to be. The way Ku relates to his family is sometimes complicated as well, and well...

Nevermind, that would be spoiling.

There is a lot of action here. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly things went south for Ku, in what way and what the outcome was. Once I found out that Running From the Gods took place mostly in a training environment, I figured there wouldn't be much life and death action. I was wrong. Things start out in a life and death crisis in the first few pages, followed by another one and then on and on...

Yeah, there is a lot of action to help move the plot along and keep people interested. It's well done, tightly paced and fun. Some of it is based on external threats, some on internal. What I don't see is anything that gets wasted. When Read wrote Running From the Gods, he very clearly had an idea of what he was trying to portray and how to use the events of his novel to accomplish that. I wouldn't mind sitting down with Read at some point and having a conversation with him. I'm guessing I could learn a thing or two and I'm working on a somewhat similar-ish story. 

I don't want to go too far down this road, but I feel like Running From the Gods did a really good job at two very closely related, but oddly opposite things: It gave us enough of a story to satisfy, but left a whole bunch of loose ends for the next however many books to tie up. I like that about it. I finished reading the book and wanted to download the next one.  I couldn't because it's not out yet, but that's hardly my fault. 

At the end of the day, and the book, Ku is a young guy with a promising future ahead of him. Read has been nice enough to invite all of us along for the ride, and I plan on fanboi'ing this entire series (yep, totes a word. I just made it up.) It's got a solid first book going for it and room for growth like you would not believe. Running From the Gods is the literary equivalent to a professional athlete who has just completed an awesome rookie season but still has plenty of upside.

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Merits

Running From the Gods (The Seventh Shaman Book One)

D.T. Read

Theogony Books, 2022

Running From the Gods (The Seventh Shaman 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.

P.A. Piatt's Cherry Drop

So I was kind of reluctant to read Cherry Drop. See, I had read and reviewed P.A. Piatt's Redcaps Rising and, while it was a very good book, it was very humorous. I was kind of concerned that Cherry Drop was some kind of weird allusion to a cold medication and that this was going to be some weird, humorous craziness. I mean, I like humor in my Urban Fantasy but well-written Military Science Fiction has this sort of feeling to this that the type of humorous atmosphere in Redcaps Rising is just not conducive to. I wasn't going to read it. It wasn't going to happen. Then one of my friends, who I don't believe has ever read Redcaps Rising, but reads lots of MilSF,  said something nice about it. I trust my buddy's judgment, so I thought I'd try it. 

I'm glad I did. Cherry Drop is every bit as well-written as Redcaps Rising, but it doesn't have that comedic feel. It has the military feel that it needs. I'm extremely happy to report that it works. I felt like I was there with these guys. Now, part of that may very well be that it's been hotter than the inside of Satan's armpit here in Michigan, but whatever works. They were in the jungle. I was baking my behind off in a cab in a hot, humid place. It just felt right. I will grant you that there were no crazed aliens trying to eat me, but I can feel comfortable thanking God for small favors there.

The story begins with our hero, one Second Lieutenant Abner Fortis, about to make his first drop into combat IE his Cherry Drop. He's been sent to lead a short platoon whose last platoon leader is no longer available for duty. His men don't trust him. His platoon sergeant is a corporal. Yes, you read that right. His troops are kind of cranky...

And they send him on a mission to a planet where he has no way to contact higher. So he's on his own, with a little help from a non-promotable subordinate and a mess lands in his lap. Granted, this SHOULD have been a milk run but it turns out that it wasn't. Fortis watches everything drop in the pot when he should have spent his deployment napping and waiting for his ride home to show.

There are a lot of action sequences in Cherry Drop and they are all well done. Piatt has a knack for keeping things moving and unpredictable. Fortis, being a cherry, has a tendency to do the dumb thing every once in awhile but that actually fits. There is a reason so few second lieutenants make it back from their first combat assignment in the real world. The fact remains that Fortis has just enough luck, enough brains and enough support from his NCOs that he makes it through and actually manages to get some stuff right. 

The initial enemy Fortis and his troops face is not all that creative or dangerous. I mean, the bugs can kill you but they rely on numbers and ferocity as opposed to tactics and strategy. The troops are missing a key piece of intel on them and they still manage to win some battles before they figure it out. 

Fortis's Marines face a situation that would not be familiar to many United States Marines in that they get hung out on a branch with no help and a jacked up situation. Fortunately for them they, also like real world Marines, manage to bring themselves through somehow. No matter what the odds, they seem to at least keep their integrity intact. 

Of course, every Corps has its traditions and the ISMC is no exception. Whether it's using slang terms (like DINLI, which stands for Do It, Not Like It and is a term I'd actually like to see pass into general usage because it works so well.) or brewing homemade hooch in violation of regulations (which, oddly enough, is called DINLI) the ISMC has things that need to happen and they do. I love that aspect of the story because it's part of what make the book work. Every military force has its own idiosyncrasies and that is one major part of what makes Cherry Drop work.

The enemy is not who it initially appears to be. This is a good thing, because it makes things more interesting. The reason I never liked Pern (and yes, I know that's heresy) is because thread sucks as an enemy. It is mindless, falls in sheets and has no real ability to fight smart or use tactics. I can't deal with that kind of an enemy. After awhile, we see someone new enter the fight, and they have a lot more intelligence and adaptability. Of course, none of that means that their superiors are going to see eye to eye with their decisions or that they're going to be exceedingly popular with the public afterward, but c'est la vie, right?

I like reading newer MilSF because the tech makes sense. There's so much that the modern military has that a writer forty years ago could never have imagined that it boggles the mind. Still, when I see troops in a far future story they should be using things like unmanned drones with webcams. It makes no sense if they're not. Now, maybe I'm wrong and at some point in the future we'll invent something that's man portable and works better. I'm not counting on it though, and until a better idea crops up, they need to be there. A lot of really well written older science fiction is missing concepts that your average Joe would come up with now simply because no one had thought of it then. I'm not blaming the authors. I get why it's not there. I'm just saying that as a fan reading a story now, some things need to be there and Piatt includes them. 

All in all, this one's a keeper. Also, I'm kind of bitter that I didn't realize that I could nominate it for a Dragon Award until it was too late.

Bottom Line: 4.5 out of 5 Lost Troopers

Cherry Drop: Book One of Abner Fortis, ISMC
P.A. Piatt
Theogony Books, 2021

Cherry Drop: Book One of Abner Fortis, ISMC 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.

Jason Cordova's Wraithkin

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So what has eugenics, mecha, aliens, space travel and lots of cool fights? If you answered Wraithkin by Jason Cordova you'd be right. If you answered something else let me know. I love this stuff!

I came at Wraithkin cold. I think I've read a short or two by Mr. Cordova but I seem to have managed to avoid his novels up to this point. That stops now. Wraithkin was a thouroughly entertaining read of the you-can't-make-me-stop-reading-and-go-do-something-productive-if-I-don't-wanna sort. Except maybe I did do some stuff that I had to do, but it was under protest. No system is perfect, I guess.

Speaking of Imperfect...

The society in Wraithkin is divided between Perfects, who have had all susceptibilty to all  diseases bred out of them, and Imperfects  who have a genetic susceptibilty to one or more diseases. The differences in how society treats the two different groups is huge and really forms the basis of the book.  At the end of the day though, that's not all Wraithkin is about.

Our hero is a man named Gabriel Espinoza and he goes through a lot. I don't want to spoil too much here, but let's just say his life is turned upside down in one day and it just gets worse from there. He goes from an idyllic life to the furnace of combat and not all of the transformation is intentional on his part. This is a guy I really like because he takes it on the chin repeatedly and just keeps fighting.

I mean seriously, I remember many moons ago when I was taught the tenets of Tae Kwon Do in a  class I took after school. One of them was indomitable will. Espinoza has that in spades. Not all of what he does is, strictly speaking, intelligent or sane, but it's all in service of a goal and he refuses to give up. In the face of some of the worst adversity I've ever seen a character go through (and I've read a Song of Ice and Fire) he perserveres. Espinoza is the man.

Espinoza is a man who has understandable motivations. I'm not saying that everything he does is governed strictly by logic. Gabriel is neither Spock nor Data. He is a complicated man of emotion. The fact remains that you can understand why he is doing what he is doing. That's a big thing for me. I like being able to follow characters as they go through their lives and find myself nodding. The love of a woman is a powerful thing and has inspired many men to do things they maybe shouldn't have. Gabriel is no exception and I get that. I even admire it. He makes the sacrifices that come with the territory in full knowledge of what the consequences are going to be. He inspires his men to follow him with them knowing what they're going to face not just if they fail, but also of they succeed.

His friends are just as crazy as he is. It seems that the Wraith corps, from which Wraithkin takes its name, is made up of people who are more than just a little off. They recruit insane individuals on purpose. The reasons for doing so are fairly obvious once you've read the book. Crazy is not just an attitude, it's a mission profile. Wraiths are people that don't matter. No one cares if they get killed. It allows the use of tactics that no real world military would even think of attempting. Seriously, if you could find a lunch table full of ten year old boys they couldn't come up with stuff this whacky. Yeah, I said it. It's to Cordova's credit that he makes it believable and engaging.

Also, I have to take a second out to talk about the Wraiths themselves. No, not the soldiers. The Wraiths pilot mecha called, well, Wraiths. I want one. Actually, I take that back. I want several. These things are fast, maneuverable, well armed and extremely heavily armored. They have manipulator arms and can handle things. I want to take a ride in one and blow some stuff up. I may be a bit too sane, but hey, that's life, right?

Cordova is a veteran and it shows in his work. Wraithkin is above all a work of Military Science Fiction. The atmosphere in the book has a strong military flavor as modifed for a total lack of sanity. Discipline is maintained while banter is conducted. The chain of command exists and has to be modified at times due to combat losses. The tactics used make sense. In this sense, it doesn't feel like a table full of ten years olds. Well, with the possible exception of one particular landing. I'll leave that to it's place in the book though.

Of course, with all of this military stuff going on, I have to mention the action and combat sequences. I loved it. There is plenty of blowuptuation to go around. The enemy is scary enough to be believable and appears to be up to more than what we're told up front. I like that. And Cordova seems to remember a saying I've heard reported often. “If you're short of everything except the enemy, you're in combat.” Seriously, it can get annoying when authors ignore that every weapon requires ammunition. And, if you've ever read anything about military planning, you're always advised to assume that your enemy is at least as smart as you are. Cordova gets that as well.

Wraithkin is the first book in a series and I can't wait to get to the rest of it. There are obvious lead-ins to what comes next. There is a mystery here. The war is still ongoing. There is something I'm not talking about. In short, there is more to come and I want to know what it is. There is literally no higher compliment I can give an author. I consumed what he had to give me and I want more. I'll be looking for it.

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Imperfect Genes

Wraithkin
Jason Cordova
Theogony Books, 2017

Wraithkin is available for purchase at the following link. If you click it and buy literally anything, I get a small percentage.

Kacey Ezells' The World Asunder (The Psyche of War Book II)

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Dammit Kacey Ezell! I didn't want to like this chick. I mean I really, really, didn't want to like this chick. They thought she was dead in the first book. I thought she was dead in the first book. I was HAPPY about that fact. But not only did Adalina Sucherin survive in Minds of Men, she is the main character of Ezell's newest work, The World Asunder. I knew that going in and it almost made me not buy the book. Why? BECAUSE I HATED THAT BITCH! Of course, I'm a member of the CKP Facebook Group, and I mentioned this there and was reassured by none other than the factory boss himself.

Apparently, I'm even more forgiving than even I thought I was because I honestly did end up liking this chick. Of course, it helps that the only thing worse than a Nazi is a Communist and chick starts out the story being oppressed by Communists. Enemy of my enemy and all that. Oh, and she's helping to take care of a family of innocents caught in the aftermath of World War II. I guess that makes up for a lot, especially since there were a bunch of daughters. I have daughters, so I therefore have a soft spot FOR daughters.

Okay, so maybe there was more to Lina than I saw the first time around. Maybe, just possibly, she wasn't the ginormous [redacted] I thought she was. I mean, I could have missed something. Things happen and sometimes I don't reach my normal heights of absolute brilliance. I guess.

I'll say this much though: Having read her story, which starts in East Berlin during the Berlin Airlift, I am actually a big fan of one Miss Sucherin. It took her a bit to win me over, but that's not surprising. I wasn't ready to give this character the benefit of the doubt. What I'm going on about here is that Mrs, Ezell has done one hell of a job building a very flawed and believable character and making her believable. Seriously. Lord knows if she were my girlfriend I'd never allow her around a body of water bigger than a Dixie cup.

Lina is also a woman who has been through a lot. That makes sense. If anyone knows what the Soviet troops did in Berlin after they conquered it that makes sense. Any conquered city is going to suffer, but Berlin had one of the worst fates of any city in modern warfare and it's women suffered worse that its men. Russians raped every woman they could get their hands on and were perfectly happy to rape young girls if they couldn't find a woman. (Seriously, if you don't believe me, read A Woman in Berlin. )


Of course, Sucherin is not the only character in the book. This is a good thing. Characters grow a lot more when they have other characters to interact with. A lot changes for Lina throughout The World Asunder. It's actually pretty amazing how much she remains herself after all of the changes. Lina is a strong woman and that hits home for me. When my daughters were little, I used to ask them what kind of person they were. I made them tell me that they were Proud, Strong, Smart, Tough, and Brave. I wouldn't leave them alone until they did. Lina is all of the above and that makes her the kind of woman I really respect.

I want to be careful here. There is a family that Lina is staying with at the beginning of The World Asunder. They are totally believable. There are a lot of other characters too, but I don't want to go too far into them because the way this thing is laid out, I'd have to reveal the plot to show where everyone fits in. Suffice it to say that  they all make sense in context. Even when someone  did something I did't want them to do, I knew why they did it. I like characters whose actions make sense according to their own motivations. Ezell apparently gets human nature. And actually, the girls in that family have all of the traits I taught my girls to have too. Maybe that's why I liked them so much.

Speaking as a historian with a fancy sheepskin, I'd like to compliment the author on her historical research. The backdrop of this story is about as perfect as you're going to get from a work of fiction. There were many things that went on after the Second World War that the average American doesn't know much about. Many of them are things that I find regrettable. In The World Asunder, Ezell features some of them. The United States really did bring people into the country who were complicit in some of the Nazi atrocities perpetrated during the war. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't right. I happened though, because it was necessary. Ezell gives about as balanced a portrayal of these actions as I've ever read. Kudos to her.

I will, however, stress that you should not go into a novel like The World Asunder thinking you already know what's going to happen. As a matter of fact, a smart reader will keep their head on a swivel because you never know what's coming next. I'm not saying that the book takes a lot of weird jumps. It's written in a logical manner, but there are surprises aplenty if you're paying attention.

Paying attention....

Hmm...

Not going to spoil anything.

It's possible that I missed something somewhere though. This is actually a good thing for the author. It's good for The World Asunder as a work of literature. I'm just saying that it might be possible that one of the surprises would have been a little bit less surprising if I hadn't had my cranium inserted into my third point of contact. Then again, since I am a member of the Facebook group, I've seen other people post vaguely, and have reason to believe that they missed the same things. It was a lot of fun once I figured it out, and someone out there is the note-taking type who is going to figure it out early, but if you're not that one percent of all nerds supernerd, it will come as a shock and it's more fun that way.


So, I enjoyed The World Asunder so much that I'm afraid I'm going to be forced to nominate it for the Dragon Award for Alternate History. I'm afraid that I have not consulted Mrs. Ezell to find out if she has room for one on her mantle, but that is quite frankly not my problem. If she doesn't have room, I guess I'll just store it for her. Or sumfin.

Seriously. Buy it. Read it. Nominate it. Thank me later.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Boiling Beakers

The World Asunder (The Psyche of War Book II)
Kacey Ezell
Theogony Books, 2019

The World Asunder (The Psyche of War Book II) is available for purchase at the following link:



Oh, and I meant it when I recommended A Woman in Berlin. You can pick up a copy of that here:

Kevin Steverson's Salvage Title

If you're a graduate of the military academy who was placed in the inactive reserve despite awesome grades what would you do? If you were Harmon Tomeral you would get a job scrapping derelicts from old battles and build yourself a mech to enter into the tournament that the Marine Corps held every year because winning could give you enough money to buy ship. Would it work? If you buy a copy of Kevin Steverson's Salvage Title you can find out.

I like Tomeral. If you haven't figured it out just from the paragraph above, his defining characteristic is that he doesn't give up. I can almost hear Tomeral saying, "Never tell me the odds" in Han Solo's voice. This guy just does not know when to leave well enough alone and, in a lot of ways, Salvage Title is based on his total defiance of the odds and willingness to bend the rules to suit his situation. Everyone should have a friend like Harmon because sometimes it's necessary to view things from a slightly different angle in order to figure them out. I once again find myself frustrated by the fact that fictional characters are, well, fictional because I want to have a drink with this guy.

That's not to say that Tomeral is all being and all knowing. In many ways, he's a brand new second lieutenant. He has a lot of knowledge of things military but not necessarily the experience needed to make full use of them. Steverson is, himself a veteran, although I have been unable to find anything stating what rank he attained while in. One suspects that if he wasn't a 2LT at some point in his life, he may have run into one at some point. It's interesting though, because while 2LTs can be the butt of jokes, Tomeral isn't that guy. He just hasn't done it for long enough to have grasped all the nuances that weren't covered in training. I short, he's a believable character that makes sense and that goes a long way toward making Salvage Title such an enjoyable read.

Salvage Title  does start a bit slower than I would usually prefer but it picks up nicely. It is also the first in a series (the sequel is entitled Salvage Fleet and is already live on Amazon) and sometimes it takes a minute to set up a series. The book does pick up nicely and by the time I hit the midpoint I couldn't stop reading. This is an action packed book full of fight scenes and awesomeness and, if some dark corner of my mind couldn't help but wonder if he was doing all of this fighting just to have stuff to scrap later, at least it doesn't appear that way in the work itself. I seriously doubt that he's NOT going to salvage some of the mess though. I said he was inexperienced. I never said he was dumb.

 Of course, to a guy who grew up on Star Trek, Star Wars  and Green Lantern there is very little more entertaining than an environment filled with all kinds of aliens and Steverson definitely delivers there. He's got tinkerer aliens and capitalist aliens and extinct aliens and all kinds of stuff. Tomeral's home planet of Joth is packed with all kinds of alien species in addition to humanity. I just eat this stuff up. What SF fan doesn't like weird looking, gift having aliens? I know the existence of aliens is a trope but became a trope because it's cool. I really enjoyed that aspect of the book. I hope we'll see more varieties in the sequel.

We don't necessarily get to see a lot of Tomeral's home planet Joth, but what I see I do like. It's an egalitarian society with easy access to weapons. This is not a planet where weaponry is reserved for only the elites and those who serve them and it shows in all aspects (that we can see, anyway) of their society. An armed society is not just a polite society. It is a society which is forced to accept the input of all because the consequences of ignoring those out of power has the potential to be truly horrifying.

It's not just that though. Joth is totally the "wrong side of the tracks." As a guy from greater Detroit, it's good to see a guy from the hated area succeed. Seriously. Tomeral gets denied a spot that he has earned because he's from Joth. He is denied a vehicle registration because he's from Joth. Everything bad that happens to him happens because he's from Joth. And he manages to shrug it all off and get 'er done anyway. I like this guy. I like the fact that he grew up somewhere hated. I really like the fact that he doesn't give up when it would be easy to do so. After all, who ever expected a kid from Joth to do anything good?

There are a lot of things left unanswered at the end of Salvage Title and, given the fact that it's a series starter, I really like that aspect of it. Steverson was clearly smart enough to know that you can't continue a series if you tie up all of the loose ends. There are the obvious ones that you'll come across simply by reading the book and at least one mass version of never found the body that leaves me unconvinced that one problem is as solved as we're led to believe it is. Time (and probably the sequel) will tell whether I'm right or not, but I'm a suspicious bastard on my best day, so I could be wrong here. Of course, the sun COULD rise in the west tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that it's likely.

Ignorance of any earlier work and a lack of desire to search Amazon to find out if I'm wrong lead me to believe that this is Steverson's freshman effort. While it kinda bums me out that I don't have a catalogue of Steverson works to catch up on, I'll get over it since I can claim to have been on board since almost the beginning after he publishes a bunch more books. I mean, let's face it. Being able to talk about how you've "been a fan since day one" is only half a step away from Nerdvana. In case you missed it, this means that I'll be picking up a copy of Salvage Fleet. This is also a note to Kevin Steverson (who may never read this) that you need to WRITE MOAR BOOKS!!!!! I can't brag about being down since the beginning if you only have two.

Bottom Line: 4.5 out of 5 Wrecked Ships

Salvage Title
Kevin Steverson
Theogony Books, 2018

Salvage Title and Salvage Fleet are available at the links below: