Declan Finn's White Ops

What do you get when you mix Star Wars, James Bond, The Hardy Boys, Chuck Norris and The Manchurian Candidate? Honestly, I get excited, but if you’re Declan Finn and you mix all of those things you get White Ops.  What a thrill ride. Seriously, this was a really good time but it’s really hard to classify outside of being a Science Fiction novel. There is a lot here though.

Sean P Ryan (descendant of Sean AP Ryan from Finn’s Pius Trilogy) is the baddass’s badass and the main character of White Ops. Not only does he come from a long line of “Rangers” in the space sense but he is pretty much unbeatable in hand to hand and small unit combat. He has a reputation and people (not all of them human by any stretch of the imagination) like to test him, but it goes further than that. Ryan has a tendency to find himself at the heart of trouble. And when he finds himself looking for something that he just knows has to be there…

Yup. The fecal matter hits the rotary air impeller at a high rate of speed. The mess gets all over everything. Ryan doesn’t seem to care though. He finds himself just as worried about what it takes to get the job done as Captain Benjamin Cisco does in ST:DS9 Episode “In the Pale Moonlight.” Which is to say, not at all. You could say he just doesn’t give a…

Nevermind. This is a family blog. I won’t go there. Let’s just say that fornication is not high on Ryan’s list of priorities while considering the costs paid by those who have crossed him. As such, he shall distribute zero coituses.

Or sumfin’

Wait…

Did that make any sense? Probably not. Too bad. I’m leaving it in.

So anyway…

Listen

You need to check White Ops out. I was kind of surprised actually. See, even if I have read a lot of an author (and both of my long time fans will be aware that I’ve read and reviewed a ton of Finn’s stuff for this blog) it can be kind of hard for me to get into a new series with all new characters. Seriously, I often struggle through the first probably one to two hundred pages of the average new series while I try to figure out what’s going on, who all of these people are, why any of this matters and where any of this is going, but for whatever reason, I was into this thing from the second it started. Seriously, it took me the better part of a night to read the first, like, fifty pages of David Weber’s On Basilisk Station and about half an hour to read the first hundred pages of White Ops. I’m not sure how Finn did that, but he did.

Speaking of White Ops (which are actually Black Ops, but done for the purpose of good) I have to wonder about something. See, I’ve got a degree in history and the universe that White Ops is set in obviously has a lot of history to it. So, like, who wants to team up, raid Finn’s house and steal all of his notes? I’ll let you read them after I get done. I mean, this is a well crafted story and there’s enough backstory listed to make things make sense but I need more. I know this is going to be a trilogy and we’ll probably get more later but it’s not later yet and I’m like that spoiled little girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I don’t care how. I want it now.

This is definitely a departure from some of Finn’s earlier work. Ryan is most definitely not a saint. He was raised by a Catholic order and educated accordingly, but there is no prayer in the books that I remember. I will give Ryan this much though; As Father Mulcahey once said, his “Heart was in the right place, even if his hands weren’t.” I’m all for supporting the church but I’m not at all certain that’s how God told us to do it. I must’ve missed that day of Sunday School. I think. Or maybe…

Yeah, nobody’s perfect and that’s a pretty good system if you subtract the laws of God and man, I guess. It certainly works. `At any rate, if you’re here looking for Tommy Nolan, you’re not going to find him. You won’t even find Marco Catalano. Sean P Ryan is his own man and he stands out well. 

Of course, I haven’t said a word about all of the different types of aliens in White Ops. There are oodles and bunches of them, each with their own culture, history, temperament and physical appearance. They’re well thought out. Finn has obviously studied some real world cultures. He includes bits and pieces here and there and that helps the stuff he created kind of stick together.

The technology in White Ops is pretty awesome as well. Some of it is familiar. A lot of it is not. At least one tech is new to me as a science fiction reader. I’m pretty excited about that. I’ve been reading SF since the Eighties and I know all the tropes. I like seeing something that’s fun, but doesn't quite fit with anything I’ve seen before. I also like a bit of fantasy with my SF, so it works that Finn throws in a bit of psychic activity as well.

Finn himself has stated that this was the first novel he wrote. That does make sense because I can see a lot of the enthusiasm of the newbie in his writing here. That much having been said, I’m glad he waited to publish it because I don’t think he could have told the story this well as a newbie. This one took some panache to pull off. I’m guessing he’s edited this thing approximately 0876876897689768768769876986897689698768769869868967 times. As quickly as he writes, it’s not like it took him that long to get it on paper. It all works and it makes too much sense to be something that was written by someone their first time out. He definitely rocked it out here.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Mystery Aliens

White Ops

Declan Finn

Tuscan Bay Books, 2022

White Ops 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.

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:

Hank Quense's Contact: Book One of the Zaftan Troubles

What do you get when you cross ugly, smelly, dirty aliens in control of both spacefaring technology and magic with dwarves who own battleaxes and can toss spells of their own? No, not Spelljammer, as much as I enjoyed that. You get Hank Quense's Contact: Book One of the Zaftan Troubles. You also get a rocking good time.

One thing that has always driven me slightly bonkers in fantasy fiction, going back to Tolkein, is that dwarven society is often ignored. I mean, sure Gimli played a major role in The Lord of the Rings but  at no point do you really get to see him in his home setting. He is clearly excited to get to the Mines of Moria but, by the time the Fellowship gets there, everything is gone. Everyone is dead. There are no dwarves left to interact with.

Quense takes care of that problem right off the bat. His story is set in a dwarven society. In Contact we see the problems and advantages of a dwarven society. Dating is apparently even more of a problem than in human societies. Property rights are a big thing. Hard work is valued. Those who don't work don't get a whole lot of respect. It's the kind of society I would love to live in.

And make no mistake about it: Dwarves are, in my humble opinion, the greatest thing that ever happened to fantasy literature. I don't mean just Gimli, son of Gloin. Bruenor Battlehammer and Flint Fireforge are age old favorites. The Dwarven Nations Trilogy is one of a very few good series about dwarves being dwarves. Another good one is the series by Markus Heitz. Quense has a ways to go before I can add him to that list, but he's certainly taken a step in the right direction.

It also seems to say a lot about Mr. Quense's politics. His government is dominated by people looking out only for their own best interests. The local governor is a product of a political dynasty. Taxes are not necessarily seen as a good thing. The needs and wants of the people are viewed mainly as a way of getting re-elected. Just as I was about to label Contact a conservative work though, I get an eyeful of "pipe-weed" use and a hatred of corporations that wouldn't fit a classic conservative. Therefore, Contact must be a work that is Libertarian in nature.

This is a good thing.There is way too much leftist drivel on the market these days. It's good to see someone with some good old-fashioned values and not a bunch of preachy, incoherent, identity politics fueled crap being fed into my Kindle. The best part about it is that Quense shows instead of tells and I, for one, was not able to find anything that looked like a sermon. Quense did a good job here.

The Zaftan themselves, are vicious corporate industrialists. They either conquer places or use corporations to undermine their societies. I kind of don't like these guys, but then again I'm not supposed to. They're the evil foreign invaders out to take everything of value. In a way, they're almost a caricature of the great colonizers from history, to include Romans, Japanese, Ottomans, Mongols, the Moors and lots of others. In a way they're not though. Very rarely in history has a conqueror come to help the people they're conquering. The might makes right theory of conquest has historically been very popular because it works. When the Zaftan don't recognize property rights in the sequels (this is planned as a seven book series) it's going to get ugly. I'm sharpening my axe in anticipation.

The Zaftan are not exactly the universe's most lovable people otherwise either.  Some are cranky. Others are lazy. One may very well be the death of his crew in a most literal sense. They're all focused on personal advancement at the cost of everyone and everything other than themselves. These guys are less trustworthy than my ex-wife. The captain is a woman with an attitude problem, although she may very well have an excuse.

They also appear to be very hard to kill. I'm thinking of my Dungeons and Dragons party from the late Nineties and our first encounter with a troll. Fortunately, my DM allowed me to get away with some meta-gaming and our party didn't wipe, but I'm guessing that the characters in Contact won't be as lucky. The next book looks like it might just get ugly for our dwarves.

I don't do spoilers but I'm looking forward to the sequel (which I have already downloaded) for another very important reason as well. I'm not going to say what it is, but it's a reflection of something that either reflects pop culture or is made fun of by pop culture, depending on your point of view. I want to see how this turns out or if it changes over time. I have a sneaking suspicion it just might because reasons.

Contact is a work of humor but sometimes it can be hard to tell when Quense is being funny and when he's actually making a point. That's actually a good thing though, as it keeps things from getting too preachy and we all love to laugh, right? I mean, that's a great thing. There was a lot here story-wise but it's always good to have a good time.

My only complaint about Contact, if you haven't guessed it already, is that it's not as long as I'd like it to be. I get that many authors are starting to come out with books more quickly now. And with a price point of ninety-nine cents I've got no complaints there, but it seems to be over awfully quickly. It takes a bit of time to get started as well and by the time things start moving we're already a third of the way through the book. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just wish it was a bit longer. Then again, a good author leaves their audience wanting more.  I'm really looking forward to reading the sequel because the first one was so good. I just wish I hadn't gotten there so quickly.

Bottom Line: 4.5 out of 5 Braided Beards

Contact: Book One of the Zaftan Troubles
Hank Quense
Strange Worlds Publishing, 2018

Contact: Book One of the Zaftan Troubles is available for purchase at the following link:

Ryn Lilley's Underground Episode One: Lost Beginnings

Sometimes I read a story and think that the author must have spent a lot of time watching television and/or movies. Often, this is for a bad reason but it doesn't have to be. I watch a lot of television too and if I tell the story about Return of the Jedi being the first movie I ever saw at the theater one more time I may be murdered. I've loved going to movies ever since and now I've got Netflix. I mention this because Underground Episode One: Lost Beginnings has a television style feel to it. I really did feel more like I was watching this on television than reading it at times. It has similar pacing and dramatic draws as a full hour episode of something fun minus the commercials. Come to think about it, Ryn Lilley seems to be encouraging my Netflix addiction without trying to. That's okay because I enjoyed the book.

The first three books in the series are known as Season One, so I'm thinking that this is intentional. As a matter of fact, I actually went looking to see if there was a television series of the same name. I couldn't find one on the American version of Amazon, but this book was sent in by Dave Freer. He lives in Australia so maybe it is a show there. Then again, maybe not too. I've never been to Australia so I'm not going to claim to know anything about their television shows.

Part of the reason I say that this feels like a TV show is because of the way it starts. In a way it feels almost like an episode of Doogie Howser. Seriously. The book starts with a series of emails going back and forth to set the scene. We get to know the characters a bit and then it all drops in the pot and things go from scary to bad to worse in something like two minutes of camera time. The acceleration curve is steep.

This book, like many others admittedly, has a tendency to flash back and forth between point of view characters rather quickly. I'm a big fan of this kind of thing. George RR Martin and Harry Turtledove both come to mind. Lilley uses the technique effectively, yet I can't quite get over the fact that it feels like there is a director outside switching scenes and soundstages. I kept waiting for jump cuts. It was a lot of fun and kind of took me back to a class I took called Intro to Film. I kept trying to picture the camera angles.

The main character is a teenage boy who owns a computer/Artificial Intelligence with a nagging problem. He needs to get his homework done and the thing will not leave him alone. It's just as he gets it done and decides to head off to the other side of the asteroid that he lives on that things get interesting... and he ends up waking up somewhere he'd rather not be. The inhabitants of his new planet aren't human and their medical technology is not up to snuff and it just gets crazier from there. I really started to feel for the kid.

At one point the book cuts to either another planet or another part of the same planet. Things got a little hazy for me here. Here we meet a gladiator, imprisoned for a crime and forced to fight for his life. Things don't work out for his captors as he fights better than he is supposed to. He eventually manages to get himself freed but only because there is a war coming and his descendants will prove useful to the war effort. Apparently he has strong genes and is therefore useful as breeding stock. He is given a leadership position and then... the book ends. Left unclear is whether the war will be against humanity, or the planet where our heroes are, or somewhere else. Also unclear is how the humans in the book relate to this whole thing.

This is where the sensation of watching a TV show gets even stronger. Lost Beginnings has a lot of similarities to the first episode of Farscape, including the part where nothing is resolved and we're left with more questions than answers. There is a sequel out so I guess we'll get some there. Of course, that has the potential to lead to more questions, which will lead to another sequel... Yeah, that seems to be the way good SF is trending right now. I won't complain.

Lost Beginnings could have been longer. Things move really quickly and it would have been beneficial to see some more details added. I didn't count the words in this one, but I read it on my phone and I went through it in no time. It wasn't very long at all. What was there was definitely enjoyable, but I really wish there was more. Answering a few more of the questions brought up by the story would have been helpful as well.

It did take a little longer for this book to really get started than I wanted it to. The emails, the typical disagreements with parents were useful as lead in material, but I prefer an opening that just explodes from the page. We've all seen the opening to Episode IV right? The one where the Star Destroyer comes out of nowhere and starts firing on the Rebel ship? That type of opening is missing here and I would have preferred to see something in that vein rather than dragging the beginning out. Those are  minor things though and other than that the book was really good. I would seriously like to see this on my TV at some point. I think it has that kind of potential.

Bottom Line: 4.25 out of 5 alien artifacts.

Underground Episode One: Lost Beginnings
Ryn Lilley
Snapping Turtle, 2014

Underground Episode One: Lost Beginnings is available for purchase here:



The Entire First Season of Underground is also available here:

Mark Terence Chapman's Aliens Versus Zombies

Remember when you were a kid and you used to have all kinds of silly arguments about who would win in a fight? Would Superman win a fight against Green Lantern? Could an alligator eat a bear or would the bear eat the alligator? What would happen if an elephant fought a tiger? I don't know that I ever argued about aliens and zombies, but those arguments are the first thing that I came to mind when I read the title to this book. I was happy too, because we actually do get to see the aliens and zombies duke it out. It was a childhood dream come true. And yes, Zombies Versus Aliens really does deliver. It's a rock-em sock-em gorefest and it doesn't let up.

I'll be honest in stating that the thing that I love about this book will leave some readers cold. ZVA is a book about an alien invasion done right. It is a rollicking good time. Translated into English for the awareness impaired: If you're looking for weepy literary message fic with the proper message and no plot look somewhere else. If you want a story where the good guys are the good guys and they use guns look here. This is a story about people doing their best to survive in a jacked up situation that gets even worse when the aliens show up. They travel around doing everything themselves and improving their situation however they can. These people work hard. They literally go to war.

Chapman very obviously comes from the George RR Martin school of character development. I'd also be willing to bet that he's watched more than one episode of The Living Dead. He has added what I view as a necessary element of pretty much any zombie story: He will let you get close to a character and then kill them. He has no problem doing so. Given the type of story this is, he needs to. I've always been a big fan of that kind of gritty writing. That kind of story development builds suspense. When I'm not sure if the point of view character that I'm currently reading about; is going to be alive on the next page I get into the story more. I can't help turning the page to find out how things turned out and where the author is taking me next. Chapman delivered a story that kept me engaged and wanting more.

The characters in the book are in some ways more accurately portrayed than what I'm used to and that's a good thing. These are not all-knowing supermen. They are living in a zombie apocalypse at the beginning of the book. They fight, they travel and they loot. It makes sense. They don't necessarily know how to do everything right. When they find a horse most of them don't know how to care for it. They're not expert riders their first day. It drives me crazy when you see a city boy (no offense, I am one.) just jump up on horse and start growing things out of nowhere. When they find an alien gun, they can't figure out how to use it because it doesn't work like a gun that humans would build. They eventually do figure out how to drive an alien vehicle but they get spotted because they suck at it. When they try to blow up an electrical tower it doesn't work at first and they have to try again, etc. They know enough to survive but not much more. I enjoyed that.

Chapman's characters are believable in another respect: They react the way that they should. When two sixteen year old boys go off to fight the aliens they're excited. The veteran in the group tries to calm them down. They fall in love with people of inappropriate ages. They bicker among themselves. Things are never perfect.

Chapman has joined a group of zombie writers that I have seen emerge recently and I really like: His zombies are not some mystical, magical creation. They have become zombies through an airborne contagion that damaged their brain. There is no doubt that a headshot would drop one, but headshots are not necessary. Shot to the torso will kill them and a hit on an arm or a leg leaves them wounded. They're also smarter than zombies in many other stories and learn to use weapons and true ambush tactics. This makes them not only more credible opponents in a fight but also more fun to read about. When the zombies go at it with the aliens it makes sense that they could take a few down. Chapman's zombies move quickly and they can -somewhat- think. It takes a bit of getting used to but it adds a dimension to the story that most other zombie stores miss.

The aliens in the book are believable as well. They're not just cardboard cutouts, but "real" people with real motivations who make mistakes. One of their mistakes comes back to bite them in a major way. They have a lot of advantages but they're not unbeatable even if it takes awhile for them to realize it. They do have the advantages of technology and numbers (remember, humanity has been nearly wiped out by a zombie plague) but they pay the price when they screw up. They get cocky. They fail to do the one thing that would have ended the book in the first chapter but they have a good reason for doing so. They really work.

I'll say this about the book as well: It includes a prologue that I enjoyed and that is also relevant to the later story. Chapman names it "Chapter 0" but a prologue is what it clearly is. It is entertaining, relevant and short all things that a prologue should be. I wasn't happy when realized it had a prologue (I'm not generally a fan) but after I read it I realized that it needed to be there.

My one complaint about this book is the ending. I won't spoil it, but suffice it to say that I had seen it before. I knew exactly where too and one of the characters in the book points it out. I was a bit disappointed by that. It was well foreshadowed and it fit with the story but it left me a little empty. Once for that ending was enough. It almost felt like a cop-out. That much being said, it was still a really fun story.

Bottom Line: 4.5 out of 5 Exploding Alien Heads

Aliens versus Zombies
Mark Terrence Chapman (http://MarkTerenceChapman-Author.com)
Empty Sea Intergalactic Enterprises, 2015

Aliens Versus Zombies is available here: