David Weber's A Beautiful Friendship

The best way to follow up a super serious post about a graphic novel covering an important subject is by reviewing a Science Fiction novel about treecats.

Or sumfin'

Listen, this blog is a work in progress and sometimes it gets messy.

All of this to say that I recently read David Weber's novel A Beautiful Friendship. You purists out there may be tempted to point out that I did it because I was going to a meet up with a couple local chapters of The Royal Manticoran Navy: The Official Honor Harrington Fan Association. You may even be right. The fact remains that I helped plan the outing and I picked out the book (along with my buddy/Commanding Officer David) so neener, neener, neener. I read it. I loved it. And, put bluntly, who needs purists anyway?

So, right, the book...

This is the third time I've read the thing, and the first time I've reviewed it. My excuse is because this book is so old that I read it twice before I started my blog in 2015. No system's perfect, right. Better late that never?

I mean...

Yeah, the book.

A Beautiful Friendship is part of the Star Kingdom series which is in and of itself a part of the Honor Harrington universe aka the Honorverse. I've been following these books for about twenty-ish years now, going back to right around the time I met my ex-wife and before I had kids. My oldest is eighteen now. Suffice it to say that I'm a huge fan.

A Beautiful Friendship is a prequel leading back to the origins of the Star Kingdom (later Star Empire) of Manticore and also of the Harrington clan's beginnings as citizens therein. Stephanie Harrington, our heroine and all around likeable young girl, is on a quest to find something to do. Her family has recently immigrated to the SKM after living on a much older, more settled planet with a larger population, more forms of entertainment and people her age who aren't boring. The planet Sphinx is largely still wild with a small contingent of humanity on the planet, trying to make their way and build something.

Enter Stephanie who, quite frankly, is everything I taught my daughters to be; strong, smart, proud, tough and brave. She has a bit of that teenage brashness about her as well but that makes sense because she's a teenager. So when human settlers start reporting that celery is being burgled from their greenhouses (Sphinxian winters last a long time) she is intrigued. When celery starts disappearing from the Harrington greenhouse, she sets out to find out who or what is doing it. And what she catches on camera...

Fans of the mainline Honorverse books all knew what I was when they read the word "celery." What she discovers is the first treecat known to humanity. And when she finds out it has and uses a net made of local fibers, things start to get interesting. Treecats aren't the first sentient species known to humans, but there haven't been many and she's a kid. She's also afraid her parents will find out that she snuck out after dark, in the rain...

As adults we sometimes forget how badly it sucked to have to listen to parental instructions about everything. As parents, we know why they were necessary but that doesn't change the fact that we hated it. Weber does an awesome job of putting us back in that teenage mindset, wanting to do more than we're allowed to and frustrated because we can't. Of course, Stephanie is a Harrington and doesn't lack for personal initiative. She's also quite a bit less disciplined than her more famous descendant and finds ways around rules. 

Seriously, I had to pull out my copy of Better to Beg Forgiveness and make sure that it was indeed written by Michael Z. Williamson and not David Weber, because little Ms. Harrington lives that philosophy to its fullest. And, if it gets her in trouble from time to time, that just makes the whole experience more fun. Every story needs conflict after all.

I don't want to spoil too much of the book, but this isn't just a book about Man(girl) vs. Nature or Man vs. Parents. There is some serious villainy here and some more subtle danger emanating from pretty much everywhere around Harrington. She deals with it with equanimity for the most part. Stephanie Harrington is a girl who can keep her cool during a crisis. She's the kind of person I'd want along with me if I were doing something requiring guts and a calm mind, even if I might wish for a person with a bit more life experience.

There is a lot of really cool stuff here about the first few humans who bond with treecats, becoming almost the equivalent of a Treecat and their spouse. It's pretty cool if you've been following the series for a long time and maybe even cooler if you haven't. Those of us who are familiar with Honor and her treecat Nimitz take certain things for granted. Having read the later books, I know how smart treecats are. I'm used to the fact that they can bond with people and some very clear indications of the psychic abilities of treecats and their utility are listed in the later works. 

If you haven't read those books though, a lot of it will come as a surprise. It's a voyage of discovery for Stepanie, her treecat Lionheart and indeed the entire human and treecat species. No one had a way to anticipate what was possible before Lionheart accidentally bonded with Stephanie, and the world takes a weird turn afterward because neither one of them know what to expect, either. As experienced readers we know some of what's coming, but even then, not all of it and the human element in the book leads places I never expected it to go.

A Beautiful Friendship was one of the first books I managed to get my hands on and read after my divorce in 2012. Times were rough then, and it helped me get through a pretty rough time. It's a lot easier to enjoy it this time and I'm glad I took the time to reread it. The writing hasn't changed but I have. This is exactly the right type of book to read if you need a quick distraction from life to make you feel better. People are surprised when they find out that I didn't turn to drinking or drugs when my depression got bad. It's thanks to writers like David Weber and books like ABF that I'm not stuck in lifelong drug/alcohol rehab. If a pick me up is what you need, hie thee off to the bookstore and pick yourself up a copy. If not, buy one anyway. It's a good book regardless.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Carry Nets

A Beautiful Friendship
David Weber
Baen Books, 2013

A Beautiful Friendship 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.

A Beautiful Friendship

Happy Golden Anniversary Dungeons and Dragons

Once upon a time, long ago, a cousin of mine who probably wouldn't admit it anymore introduced me to a game called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, a game which was then in it Second Edition. It was a game that had everything a young man could ever want: Dragons, Dungeons, Gold, Fighting, Dice...

It was an adventure that never had to end because, once you were done with the current adventure, you could queue another one up. When I got tired of my dwarven fighter/mage/thief I could switch to playing my elven bard or my human paladin (which I _on no level_ fudged the rolls to make, unless you count reality) and off I would go in pursuit of more treasure, or that one annoying twit that kept arresting people and wanted to know what happened to the magistrate's amulet and why someone said they thought they saw me wearing it. (And that NEVER HAPPENED. Now, had someone said they saw it in my backpack, that may have been a different story.)

Now, if you were in the  mood to be pedantic (and if you're reading this, you're most likely a geek, a nerd, or both) you may be tempted to point out that my introduction to the game Dungeons and Dragons wasn't really my introduction to D&D overall. I had loved the cartoon when it was on Saturday mornings, even if I thought the Dungeon Master was a little creepy. But honestly, who wouldn't? I kind of still do.

And it didn't stop there. I discovered the various game world box sets: First Greyhawk, then Spelljammer, Forgotten Realms...

I could go on. The really important part is that the box sets led to books. I was introduced to The Dragonlance Chronicles by my friend Jeff Cauldwell, and I fell in love with the world of Krynn and fantasy literature in general (IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT, JEFF!!). My sister grabbed me one of the Greyhawk novels for Christmas one year. The Dark Sun novels were freaking painfully amazing and gave me flashbacks to the Thomas Covenant novels. Then came Spelljammer and it's take on space travel. OMG DUDE!!! Trek/Wars in D&D. I was in love.

And then came the Dwarven Nations trilogy. I have a serious love for the dwarven folk and, while I enjoyed Flint Fireforge (and named both D&D and Everquest characters after him) the reason I'm writing a dwarf centered novel, the reason I'm reading an unrelated series about dwarves now, and the reason I started the last campaign I DM'ed in a dwarven town was really The Dwarven Nations Trilogy. I love the little buggers. Hardworking, no-nonsense taking, and yes, I am one of THOSE McCoys (if you don't believe me ask a Hatfield) never giving up, stubborn asshole, and orc skull splitting dwarves are the most bestest things about fantasy fiction. 

Wait what?

You disagree? You're wrong. Dwarves are objectively the best thing that ever happened to fantasy anything. There is no counter argument. 

But I digress.

As usual.

Digression is, however, my strongest skill as a blogger.

Anyone who reads fantasy fiction and hasn't read R.A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms novels needs to have their head examined while they're wandering off to the bookstore to grab copies. Start with Drizzt Do'Urden and then head over toward Cadderly the cleric afterward. I haven't reviewed the books here because it's been a long time since I read one, but they are magnificent. What's more, the Forgotten Realms are extremely popular in not just Salvatore's novels, but in pretty much everything D&D that takes place in digital form: Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, even Tiny D&D Adventures the old Facebook app before the Google Play store was a thing. And, of course, for pretty much all of the D&D movies. 

I know I'm in the minority in that I loved all four of the movies. I know that most of you would disagree. I know that the first three movies basically felt like bad B movies. I've also sat at more than one gaming table and I have to say that most of those tables couldn't even aspire to be B movies. 

And the thing with D&D is that it doesn't even matter which form you prefer. Someone else out there loves it as much as you do and they'll be happy to discuss it with you. I've seen it happen. Two geeks sitting next to each other not knowing each other and all of a sudden someone mentions painting minis or playing video games and two hours later they're best friends talking about stuff they've done in the game. I have personally walked up to someone reading a copy of a D&D novel at the library and started a conversation. She was cute, too, only I was married at the time. (But if you're reading this, I'm divorced now!) It happens.

And listen...

I'm not here for the Edition Wars. I've never played Basic D&D regardless of what color the box was. I started with Second Edition, but my buddy Pat (RIP, brother. I told you that shit was bad for you.) had a first edition copy of Unearthed Arcana and it never really occurred to us to convert anything. I've played Third Edition, missed Fourth, and have played and DM'ed 5e. It's time for the proverbial "every edition has its strengths and weaknesses" routine, only I'm not going to bother. Play what you like. Leave others alone and, if you're not a dick, you can sit at my table.

The crazy part is that D&D is not just a game either. It's a creative outlet. The first worlds I created, I created for D&D and for the Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game (First Edition). If you can read through all of the various subclasses and/or kits and can't come up with a new twist on an old trope (even if it's just by tweaking something there) then I can't help you. It's all there. And if it's not there, you can create it.

That is why, in my opinion, the greatest of all forms of D&D is the homebrew edition. Why? Because it's all about a DM, their players, and what works for them. I've never seen the sheer volume of homebrew that I see in D&D anywhere else. Even if you play modules, I can pretty much guarantee your group is home ruling SOMETHING at your table. The Rules at Written have been trampled over so many times that it's laughable. I LOVE THAT ABOUT THEM.

Oh, right. Podcasts. I forgot the podcasts. That's probably because I don't listen to them because I suck and you should hate me. Or sumfin'. If my cousin Hallie finds out I haven't watched/listened to Critical Role she's probably gonna kick my ass. I'll get around to it at some point. Probably. I should probably watch/review a season of something at some point. Someday. When I get the time. But never mind me. I know a lot of people love them and that's what matters.

Oh crap, I forgot the art. I love the art. Larry Elmore is basically the greatest artist ever to pick up a paint brush but there have been a whole bunch of amazeballs fantasy artists and a lot of them have made D&D related artwork. And then there are the magazines...

Listen, I've gotta work in the morning. I need to end this here.

And yes, I know the whole gaming license thing made some people mad. Wizards retracted all the crap and fixed the problem. Everyone is back to making their money again. It's all good. Let's all move on. 

Roll those dice. Have fun storming the castle. Kill the dragon. Loot the horde. Whine to your DM because you can't afford full plate at first level. But fire it up folks and let's lay some D&D. Thank you, Mr Gygax for the endless hours of fun and fellowship your creation has provided. Here's to hoping it lasts at least another fifty years.

Some Dungeons & Dragons related merchandise is available for purchase at the links below. If you click the links and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

Player's Handbook

Dungeon Master's Guide

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.

Declan Finn's Politics Kills

Oops. I almost started this review with a quote from The Godfather. It would have fit, but I don't wanna get sued. It should be noted however, that The Godfather 1-3 (and yes, I included number three in there. I love it and all who disagree with me are wrong.) is one of my favorite movie series and I probably thought of it because White Ops is becoming one of my favorite book series. 

Of course, this is Book Two. Politics Kills is perhaps the most appropriately titled book I've ever read in my life. Being the guy with a degree in history and an interest in both Military and Political history, I can assure you that there are no two human endeavors as closely linked as politics and war. Wars are, of course, fought by killing people. Sean P Ryan, leader of a group of Rangers, which is also a business venture owned by his family, is no stranger to wiping out enemy forces when he needs to. And his need is frequent. Dude basically goes through a battle a day, or at least it feels like it. 

Something you don't really get a great feel for with a lot of Finn's writing is the passage of time. There's usually so much going on that you don't have time to get bored and start wondering how long it's been since the last thing happened. The next thing is already happening, so why worry about it? I actually enjoy that aspect of it. Unless you're writing historical fiction and I'm picking it apart (and I'm not even one of the bad ones. I once had to read a thirty plus page paper about the historical inaccuracies in The Last Samurai for a Japanese history class) I don't really need to know what the date is. Just tell me what's going on and I'll take it from there.

I also like the fact that we get to see Ryan's shell crack just a bit. He's always (through the one whole book that came before this in the series) had this kind of unreachable quality to him. He was fiercely loyal, but there were times when it felt like his reaction to pretty much anything were either anger or loyalty. We get to see a lot of both in Politics Kills, but we get to see a softer side of the man himself and it's something that he has to come to grips with. The fact that he manages to do it adds a lot to his character.

It's kind of mentioning this, but it kind of stuck out at me. Most of Finn's characters are intensely Catholic. His long, and so far best, series is of course the Saint Tommy, NYPD series and if a man is going to be a Catholic saint, the intense Catholicism is necessarily part of the character's personality. The first book in his Love at First Bite series is entitled Honor at Stake: A Catholic Action Horror Novel. Sean Ryan is definitely a Catholic character, but White Ops is not as heavily Catholic as his other work. It didn't really matter to the quality of the story. I'm not Catholic myself so it's not like it had to be there for me to enjoy the book, but it's definitely something different. 

I also kind of figured I'd mention that for those of you who may have avoided Finn's earlier work because of its heavy emphasis on religion. I know some people don't care for that overly religious reading and so I thought I'd let everyone know that if that's how you feel (and you have every right to) that this is a good chance to try an awesome author without the overtones that you don't care for. 

One wonders if parts of Politics Kills are based on Finn's opinion of the United Nations. There is a governmental body with a similar function and it is indeed called the United Planets. I find myself underwhelmed by both the intelligence and competence levels of the members of the UP council. They waste time like champions, but forget about getting stuff done. Of course, that may be because of an undet...

Nevermind, that would've been a spoiler. We have a very strong policy against spoilers at Jimbo's and sometimes we even follow it. Like now. And maybe tomorrow. Probably.

Of course, as in any Declan Finn novel, we have both heroes and villains. This is not some boring halfway crap where everything is in shades of gray. The good guys are good. The bad guys are bad. We have someone to root for. We have someone to root against. The reasons for our rooting interests are sound. In short, this is entertainment with stakes. I love it when I can get behind the hero because he wants to defeat the villain.

Of course, that's why I never cared for Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels (I much prefer her Brainship series). Thread is just dumb and there's really no rooting interest. It's mindless. It falls from the sky. It has no motivation. It just exists. Give me a power seeking, money-grabbing antagonist every time and I'm happy. Finn is good at that. 

It'll be interesting to see where Finn takes this series next (there are three more currently out and I'm not sure if that's the whole series or if there are more coming. I'm a horrible fan, I guess) because most, if not all, of the horrible, terrible, not good, very bad people we've been rooting against are no longer threats. Of  course, there could be someone ever worst waiting in the wings. I guess I'll have to see.

I'm like that though. I made my daughter hate Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince because she fell asleep watching it (which was my plan all along) and I wouldn't tell her who the Half Blood Prince was. I told her to watch the movie.I guess I'm telling myself to read the book now. That's fine though. I plan to. 

But heed my warning: Beware the earworm. A force like that is hard to stop.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Nuclear Space Mines

Politics Kills
Declan Finn
Tuscany Bay Books, 2022

Politics Kills 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.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Hive, Story by Brannon Braga Art by Joe Corroney

 

So, I found this while I was looking for things to link with my Wesley Crusher post and I figured I'd check Star Trek:The Next Generation: Hive out. I'm glad I did, too, because it was a lot of fun. I mean, I've loved ST:TNG since "Encounter at Farpoint" (Yeah, I know the first couple of seasons were slow. Ten year old me was so excited to see Trek episodes that he and his father hadn't seen that he didn't give a rip.) and it looked like something I might be interested in, too.

And I mean it was totally original too, because Trek had never done anything with time tra...

Errrrr...

There was this new species called the Bor....

Uhh...

Okay, so the story was new but the plot elements were familiar. I'm okay with that though. It's like there's a reason that they use this stuff. It must work or sumfin'.

I mean, who hasn't watched "The Best of Both Worlds" and loved it? If you're a Trek fan, I mean. My daughters don't like Trek (Not my fault. I tried) so they probably haven't seen it, but like, non-Trekkies (Trekkers if you prefer, I guess. I grew up using the older term.) wouldn't even know what I was talking about. And, of course, everybody's favorite Trek movie is ST4: The Voyage Home and that's all about time travel and whales and "nuclear wessels" and the Dark Ages, and...

Look, it's been a minute, okay? Let's just say that with Trek you can pretty much throw in time travel and either the Borg or Klingons and it's all good. And Hive was good. The story is all about Picard, and Data and Seven and how they have to save the galaxy from being overrun by the Borg. And yes, there is some time travel involved because Locutus/Picard has to travel back in time to prevent himself from doing something that ruined the whole freaking timeline.  Somebody take his cookie away.

The story is engaging and moves well. It probably comes closer to the TNG movies than the series, but that's true of a lot of the new stuff.  It's an action story and it works. I read the whole thing in about ten minutes using a Kindle app on a cell phone. No, that's not my favorite way to read a comic book/graphic novel but I've got KU so I did it that way to save eight bucks. Although, honestly, if you use the clicky feature that they've created for comics, it does work pretty well. The app automatically pops a window describing how to use it if you're not familiar.

The artwork is magnificent. The Borg are wonderfully rendered. We can recognize the familiar faces that we should be able to recognize. But more importantly, there are big space battles and they look really cool. Yeah, I know I'm supposed to use big technical terms and talk about sight-lines and whatever, but I'm an SF/F geek, not an art geek. You'll have to get your technical lessons from someone else. Seriously. I can barely remember which end of the pen goes on the paper. What I do know is what looks good from a layman's perspective and Hive is beautiful.

I could just page through this thing and look at the pictures and be happy. That's weird for me, because I'm  more of a story guy, but I really did enjoy the art. It was well drawn but it felt familiar. I could look at the pictures of Locutus/Picard (depending on the point in the story) and hear the words spoke in Sir Patrick Stewart's voice, not just because I was a fan but because it looked so much like him and that's kind of a thing for me.

See, when I was a wee little Jimbo and was first getting into comics, I got confused sometimes reading comics with the same characters but different artists. I get that different artists have a different take and that's one of the things I love about comics. It's a lot easier to recognize a variation on a look at forty-six than it was at six, too. The fact remains that we need to know who we're looking at and Corroney gives us characters that have his take on them but are alike enough in appearance to the actors to make things feel comfortable.  And look, I'm not here to debate who drew the definitive Silver Surfer, I'm just saying that familiarity is a good thing, especially when you're dealing with some of Trek's most beloved characters. 

And speaking of Trek's most beloved characters...

The plot of Hive makes an immense amount of sense when viewed through the lens of what one would expect of the characters involved. Some harsh actions are taken but they make sense in context of the people we're dealing with. Say what you want about Picard, he never shied away from doing what he had to when it came right down to it. He'd hem. He'd haw. Then he'd do exactly what he was hesitating about. It more or less works that way here. He does what he has to do because he has to do it.

I've always had a fascination with the Seven character as well and she really shines here. Her actions show an empathy and a humanity, mixed with a bit of Borg and their obsession with perfection. Hive gives her a really well written arc, a mission that only she can accomplish and a believable reaction to the way things go. I really liked the fact that Braga seems to have considered her dual nature and done right by her.

There really aren't a lot of appearances by other members of the various shows. I'm okay with that. They wouldn't have added much to the story anyway. I remember reading something by Leonard Nimoy talking about how he didn't do Star Trek: Generations because his character would have served no purpose. Braga was smart in following a similar principle and not throwing characters in just to say he did.

Bottom Line: 4.5 out of 5 Vulcan Artifacts

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Hive
Brannon Braga, Joe Corroney
IDW, 2013

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Hive 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 Ganwold's Child The Sergey Chronicles: Book One

(Author's Note: So I know I reviewed this previously, but a new edition just hit the 'Zon yesterday and I had to let everyone know.  Read had these self-published and resold the series to Chris Kennedy Publishing/ Theogony books. And yes, I've read the new edition. I got an Advance Review Copy awhile back. As much as I enjoyed it before, and I gave it five stars last time, it's better this time. The story is largely the same, but some of the language has been cleaned up and Ganwold's Child reads like it was written by a more experienced writer. If you've followed any writer for long enough, you either know what I mean, or you need to go back and read their first published book and their latest and tell me there's no difference. I'll wait....

Thank you for admitting that I'm right. Now, go read this book. And keep your eyes peeled, because books two and three of The Sergey Chronicles will be along here shortly.

I haven't changed much of the review below, except to update the cover (and OMG is that an awesome cover) buy links and bibliographical data, but it's a good review. Read it again. I would.)

(Welcome to the Third Day of Jimbo's Memorial Day Weekend Extravaganza! Yeah, I know I'm two weeks  late, but like Papa Heinlein once said, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by." Yeah, I suck. I know. My apologies to both remaining authors. 

Anyway...

Today, we're honoring Lieutenant Colonel Diann Thornley Read, an Air Force Veteran with twenty-three years of service. She was an intelligence analyst, providing briefings to officers with much higher rank than hers. She served in Korea, Bosnia, Iraq, and Italy. She was awarded a Joint Service Medal Commendation and told that she "was the only American the multi-national coalition could understand."She says that, given the chance, she'd do it all again, too.

She states that she used a couple of locations where she was stationed for inspiration for her stories. I think that's probably where that air of authenticity comes from.)

Ganwold's Child by Diann Thornley Read (who can totally feel free to confuse with DT Read that I've reviewed previously, because they're the same person. You'd have to ask her why she uses both. Any confusion you may be feeling regarding that is totally my fault though, because Jimbo.) started off just a wee bit confusing for me. We're introduced to an alien race with its own language and idioms right off the top and I found myself scratching my head. It only lasted a few pages though, and then things got really, really good. 

Our main character is a guy named Tristan Sergey and he loves his mama. She's sick, the aliens he lives with don't have the tech to help her (based on symptoms, I'm guessing cancer but if the disease is ever mentioned by name, I missed it.) and so he sets off to save her due to a sense of Jwa'lai or duty to his mother. I find this concept fascinating, because it makes so much sense. One should always do as much as one can for his mother. On the other hand, although Read does a good job explaining what it is, I feel like I'm missing some kind of deeper cultural thing. If you've ever taken Anthropology, you know what I mean. That's really impressive. It hits just the right note. So off he goes to meet his father, who he can't remember because he's been stranded on this planet without contact with other humans since he was in diapers. He hopes that dad will help him - assuming Tristan can find the man in the first place.

Tristan is one impressive dude, too. The tech level he starts off at is basically stone age or a bit higher, and by the end of the first book (this is part of a trilogy) he's flying space fighters. He can also take a beating better than just about any other character I've read, and I loved Ben Raines from The Ashes series by William W. Johnstone. This is one bad dude. I don't want to give too much away, but don't give up on this kid. And a kid, by the standards of my forty-six year old self at least, he very much is. This works to his advantage at times. Young people recover from physical trauma more quickly. It can also sometimes work against him.

When Tristan finds his way (along with his friend/brother Pulou) from the alien village he was born in to the technologically superior human settlement nearby, he finds out how little he knows the hard way. He has not sense of history and knows nothing about politics. This is a dangerous situation for anyone, but even worse for him for reasons that would be spoilers. You'll have to trust me when I say it's not a good look for him, at least until you buy the book, which you should do immediately. I'll wait. 

...

...

...

...

Are you back yet? Good!

The political intrigue in Ganwold's Child is well done, layered and hints at a much bigger conflict than what we're shown here. I'm waiting to find out what's still out there, but I won't be waiting long. I'm going to buy the next book.

See how that works? SUPPORT YOUR AUTHORS PEOPLE!!

Anyway...

Tristan's quest starts off bad, gets worse and then, well..

Read the book.

Read has built an entire universe here and it kind of makes me sad that she's only written three books in it. Her worldbuilding is excellent. There are some things going on here that make sense in context and you learn a lot going through the book, but you hardly notice what's going on. I love that about it. Tristan is not stupid, but he is inexperienced and naive, and I learned a lot along with him. What I got ahead of time was necessary for the story and kept the intrigue level high.

And I guess that's the thing about Ganwold's Child. There is a lot of physical action. If you like fist fights, shooting, dog fights and, of course, splody stuff this is definitely a good book for you. The cool thing about Read though, is that she included all of that without turning it into a Michael Bay-esque disasterpiece with special effects and no story. When something happens in Ganwold's Child it matters. The reader cares, and not just because they have to, but because the characters get our attention and hold it.

Let's face it. Read knows more about building up a babyface than the WWE ever will. The other characters drew me in almost as much, though. Ganwold's Child is full of both heroes and villains. Some of the heroes are a little more likely than others, but they all deserve the title. And the main protagonist, the wolf in sheep's clothing, is very easy to hate. Read did a good job with him though. He thinks he's a hero and that everything he does is warranted.  

It's worth mentioning that I was a bit concerned about Ganwold's Child. I write a bit of fiction myself here and there and my older stuff is not as good as my newer stuff. That makes sense. Writing is like anything else. You get better at it with experience. This is Read's first (published) novel, and I was kind of thinking...

Yeah, nevermind. 

My mama told me I shouldn't think because thinking always gets me in trouble. She would've been right here, too, because Ganwold's Child is a damn good book. If I were to go searching for differences between GC and her Seventh Shaman series, I would only say that the language in the newer series feels a little more relaxed and, honestly, who gives a rip? A good book is a good book. 

I'll let you all know when I've gotten to the next two in the Sergey Chronicles, but I will be getting to them. I need to find out how this ends. The first hit may not have been free, but it got me hooked. Read is an author worth following and I'm glad I got on the bus early in her career. Let's see where she goes from here.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Peimu

Ganwold's Child
D.T. Read
Theogony Books, 2023

Ganwold's Child 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.

William S. Frisbee Jr.'s The Return: The Conglomerate Trilogy, Book One

(Author's Note: Welcome once again to Jimbo's Memorial Day Event,  where I publish four reviews of four science fiction or fantasy books written by veterans in four days, all over Memorial Day Weekend. It's my way of saying thank you to the people who risked their lives to protect mine. And yes, I get that Memorial Day is actually about those who fell in the line of service but I can't find an author who fits that description. 

Today'author is  William S. Frisbee. Corporal Frisbee served four years as Rifleman in the Marines. He says he got to play with ALL THE GUNS, including the M19, by which I think he means the Mk 19, a grenade machine gun. 

After growing up in Europe and living just two hours from the Soviet Union he was deployed to the Middle  East for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Okinawa, South Korea and the Philippines, earning the Kuwait Liberation Medal, the Sea Service Deployment Ribbon and Southwest Asia Service Medal. Frisbee states that he got out of the military "Because he was stupid." Of course, being the nerd who stay in the barracks studying the tactics and techniques of other militaries on Friday nights.

Now-a-days he has a wife, a daughter, two dogs and a ferret. He also runs the website MilSF.com which you should totally check out. I'm disappointed that I didn't know about it sooner, but it's all about writing military science fiction and it's pretty awesome.) 

Somewhere out there, in the nerdiverse, there is a beginning more heartbreaking and poignant than a married couple on patrol in deep space that spots a task force that promises to end both of their lives and the lives of the people they're out there protecting. Somewhere out there is a story with a couple that is more endearing than a wife who won't swear, her husband who will and their absolute and utter dedication to each other and their cause. Somewhere out there, is an author who can make my heart bleed worse than William S. Frisbee did in the first couple chapters of The Return. I mean, I'm not sure who that person is, but they're almost certainly an asshole if they'd do that to their audience. I'll give Frisbee a pass just this once because The Return kicks ass, but the opening to this one hits pretty hard.

And it keeps rocking along. The Return is not for the faint of heart. The action is intense. It seems like there's always something happening. It could be human/alien, it could be human/human, I think at least once it was alien/alien, and well...

Whatever. Just know that boredom will not be a problem while reading The Return. Even down time can be exciting, because you never know what is going to happen when or from where. Or to whom for that matter. Seriously, keep your head on a swivel, because a feeling of safety is often misleading, especially in the beginning of the story, when you haven't really learned the rules yet.

Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure The Return is set in a new universe and I love that about it. We get to learn the rules and the characters as we go. And it's really cool because there is a lot here, and not a lot of bottom dragging while the author tries to make us understand his creation. Don't get me wrong, we learn a lot as we go along, but Frisbee does a damn good job of Heinleining in the details instead of navel gazing. 

Our hero is a guy named Luke, and he has been through some things. He fights for humanity in a part of the universe where there aren't many of us. He has a tactical style similar to that of Will Riker and the bedside manner of Dr. Gregory House. His ship is crewed by robots because he doesn't like having people around. Actually, that's not fair. His robots, some of them anyway, are people.

I'm guessing Frisbee read some Asimov at some point, because the robots in The Return are a lot like the robots in the Robots series, only without the Three Laws of Robotics and like ten thousand times the personality. Seriously, Daneel and Giskard were both brilliant and dynamic, but Frisbee's robots have pizzazz. Think HAL except not murderous, at least to humanity. Seriously, watch out for that martial arts instructor.

Of course, Luke is inevitably forced to work with fellow human beings and he does not like that turn of events at all. Apparently, emotions are hard for him to deal with and he's got heartbreak issues...

Yeah, he's in need of some counselling, I mean, I feel him. I've been there. I didn't get it when I needed it either.  And he ends up not really knowing how to deal with what he's got to deal with because he hasn't. Fortunately, things go a bit better for him than they did for me. 

It's when Luke and his group of human people encounter other human people that shouldn't be there (IE they're from Earth, which is on the other side of a wormhole) that things really start to pick up. It seems that bad things have happened back home, and if things don't go right humanity could end up being wiped out to the last person. So it's once more unto the breach with some people that he doesn't know all that well and doesn't want there and, oh yeah, his robot buddies. 

And Luke goes through a bit of a character arc. Training new subordinates, feelings starting to function again, he's caught off guard by all of it. It's like he's been on his own fighting for decades (and, since the world has an aging treatment similar in effect to prolong in The Honorverse, he has) and not dealing with human beings has stunted his emotional growth and made him unused to feeling much. It's almost like losing someone important and shutting out the rest of the world had a poor effect on him personally, even if it work for his career. Who woulda thunk it?

So he ends up taking on the real challenge: Fighting is easy. Emoting is not. Granted, I've never been a deep space warrior intent on saving the human race, but I did take karate as a kid and I've had to deal with feelings and, well...

Kicking something in the face is really a lot easier than dealing with a lot of what Luke has to deal with. I'm pretty sure he'd agree with that. Or course his workouts are a lot more intense than mine were, but he has better medical facilities than I did. I mean, humanity has colonized the Solar System and moved out into space through a wormhole, so obviously they have better medical tech than we had thirty years ago. This leads to him getting fixed up after some pretty serious hand to hand training sessions, which ends up putting him out in harm's way much faster.

Of course, this leads to more conflict, which leads to more action, which leads to...

The end of the book.

I wasn't ready for that. I mean, why didn't someone warn me that it was coming? I didn't want the book to be over. 

I was really kind of upset that there was no more to read. The good news is that there are two more books after this one. I can't wait to get to them, and I wouldn't have...

Except, yeah, Memorial Day. Three more veterans/authors to go!

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Rag Dolls

The Return: The Conglomerate Trilogy, Book One
William S. Frisbee, Jr
Chakram Publishing, 2014

The Return: The Conglomerate Trilogy, 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,

Miles Rozak's Starship Found, Child Missing

One of the best pieces of advice I can offer to anyone is to never mess with a Marine. They're generally in pretty good shape, they have combat training and they've been taught to be aggressive in all things. The Marine way of making war is to charge straight at their objective and take it by whatever means necessary. The government issues them firearms and explosives for a reason. Here's an even better piece of advice though: Don't ever mess with a Marine's kid. They've still got all of the aforementioned skills and abilities and they're even angrier. Seriously.

In Miles Rozak's Starship Found, Child Missing someone is just beginning to learn both of these lessons. It's going to suck to be him once our main character, Tyson Gage, catches up to him. Gage is every bit as interested in taking the subtle route as you would expect a devil dog to be, and he's not really into promoting the general health and well being of those who get in his way.  He seems a bit cranky at times and for good reason. Someone snookered him, then stole his kid and now he's a bunch of centuries in the future and his planet has been destroyed. I think I'd be in a bad mood, too.

Starship Found, Child Missing is clearly marked as the first in the series and this a good thing for a couple of reasons: One is that Rozak's universe is build sandbox style and there is a lot of it we have yet to see. He's done a great job of giving the reader enough to keep them interested without getting excessively bogged down in worldbuilding. While good in and of itself, this left me wanting more, and I'm confident that I'll get that in future books. We'll chalk that one up as a win.  Also, there is a lot more story left to tell at the end of the first book and I'm looking forward to see what happens to our faithful friends as things move on. I don't want to spoil too much, but it almost feels like the end of SF,CM is the beginning of the story in a way. I mean, if the Alien Ship for Sale series were a three act play, this would make a good first act. We've got a bunch of the main actors on the stage now, and it's time to see how bad things get before they get better. 

Gage is my favorite kind of protagonist: He has a clear goal that I can agree with. He has a strong moral code. He doesn't give up just because things look bad. He can come up with a good plan when he needs one and is resourceful enough to improvise when things go south on him. In short, he's not just a hero, he's a heroic hero. This guy is in some ways the antithesis of Thomas Covenant: He's on a mission that he cares about and he wants to see it through. If he has to hurt someone to accomplish him mission that's on them, but honestly at that point they deserve it. He builds a team of deserving individuals and he shows them the respect that they deserve, at least after he removes his cranium from his rectal cavity. Then again, it's natural to worry about people you care about and that's why his head is lodged in an unnatural position. I love heroes I can cheer for and Tyson Gage is that guy. 

Of course, having a villain that kidnaps kids and uses people as human shields is a good thing too. Seeing the good guy win is even better when I can see the bad guy lose. And while I believe there is quite a while left for the ultimate resolution, I'm willing to wait and savor the journey because it will be epic when it hits. 

There is a lot of backstory here, at least as far as Tyson goes, and we're just beginning to get a look at what makes him him. He's a man who has been through some things and they effect him in ways that he probably doesn't realize. As a matter of fact, I don't know much about Rozak as a person, but I'm guessing that either he has some training in psychology or that he's done some independent research because there is a bit of psychoanalysis that goes on at one point and it makes sense to someone who has a very little formal training in Psych (I took the freshman level intro in college and I aced it, but that's the extent of my training) but has done some independent reading here and there. Also, I'm watching the Sopranos and at least one conversation sounds like it could have happened between Tony and Dr. Melfi and that's a good thing. Whatever big time Hollywood writers wrote that knew what they were doing. 

That's not to say that Starship Found, Child Missing bogs down in psychological minutiae. There is enough action here to keep even a vicarious adrenaline junkie like me happy. You've got everything from gunplay, to fist-fighting, a couple of fights that could be either described as lightsaber duels or kendo depending on preference, a mecha battle and some deep space fighting. At some point even Gage's dog gets involved, and he has Marine training too. They served together. Don't blink, because you'll miss something.

To say that Starship Found, Child Missing held my attention would be a massive understatement. I read just under three hundred pages of this thing in three hours. I haven't done that in years. I couldn't put the thing down. It seems like something totally different is happening on every other page. Seriously, buckle up before you crack this thing open because it's a wild ride and you're going to want to forget about life for awhile. Then again, that's kind of the point, right?

All in all, I'm really excited for the next one. I'll be downloading it soon. I can't wait to see where Gage and his intrepid group of friends end up. 

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Opening Gambits

Starship Found, Child Missing (Alien Ship for Sale, Book One)
Miles Rozak
Megaulcite Press, 2023

Starship Found, Child Missing (Alien Ship for Sale, 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.

Star Trek: Generations and Changing Characters Fundamentally

(Authors Note: The following post contains spoilers. It discusses major plot points of Star Trek: Generations, which came out in 1994. If that bothers you, I'm sorry, but you've had twenty-nine years to see it before I spoiled it and I kinda think that's enough lead time. You have been warned.)

Once upon a time, when I was a wee little Jimbo, I used to be (and really, still am) a huge nerd. I got picked on a lot at school. It hurt. I mean, of course it did. I was a kid and while I gave back as well as I got, and got suspended for fighting a couple of times (I'm a McCoy. Ask a Hatfield what it's like to try and pick on one of us. Better yet, ask my father what he thought about it and what my reaction should be.) but it still sucked. I know a lot of my readers can relate, because I was a long way from the only one who went through this.

Still and all, though, I got through it, using a mixture of grit, hatred, adrenaline and grudge-carrying (I'm working of forgiveness as a Christian, but if God hadn't commanded it, I wouldn't be bothering.) and I'm a stronger person because of it, I think. The fact remains that I needed an escape, a way out. I was too young to even think about substance abuse (My parents would have lost their ever-loving minds if I had gone that route at that age-justifiably so) and I needed a way out. My way out was geekery, which in some ways made it worse, but it worked too, and no system is perfect.

To this day, my way of escaping my problems is to disappear into my books and my games, my TV shows and movies and forget about it all. It's cheaper than drugs, doesn't cause the problems that other coping methods do (Seriously, you can't overdose on Star Wars. A person who does too much heroin dies. A person who binges too many Mandalorian episodes needs a shower and possibly a meal, if they didn't order something by delivery.) And that's why my most favoritest character of any series or story was Spock.

Spock, you see, was Vulcan. They couldn't feel emotions. So, naturally, if someone said something mean to Spock it wouldn't matter. I didn't get the whole half-human thing till later. I don't remember not being a Star Trek fan and nuance is simply lost on a four year old. It wasn't my fault.

It wasn't until later that I got to start checking books out of the big kid part of the library that I happened upon the Log books and found out that Spock could feel emotions and that he had been devastated as a  child when he was picked on, it tore me up. Not just because I could identify with what he was going through, although believe me I could, but because he was my hero precisely because that crap didn't matter to him. And it sucked because I had always idolized the guy, to the point of pretending to be Spock when people would talk trash, thinking that he wouldn't feel the pain. My one get out of "jail" free card was gone. I don't know who, if anyone, shares this experience but it was a terrible feeling for me. Here I was getting my one chance at being "represented" as an outcast and it killed me.

Enter Star Trek: The Next Generation and Lieutenant Data. Data was what I always wanted to be for real. He was an android, a machine. He was literally incapable of feeling emotions. Even when he was threatened with being dismantled and studied in "The Measure of a Man" , he didn't freak out, didn't cry, didn't wail emotionally about the unfairness of it all. He did - and very well should have - object to it, but he didn't emote about it. He handled the situation in a logical manner, did the right thing, accomplished his goal and moved on with his life.  "The Measure of a Man" is and always will be one of my favorite Trek episodes for precisely that reason.  He stayed that way through the entire ST:TNG TV series. But then came Star Trek: Generations.

I love the movie, although I know that not everyone would agree. Generations catches crap from Trek fans and actors both. Leonard Nimoy, who not only played Spock in both TOS and TNG refused to have anything to do with the movie because he thought it sucked and there are those fans that would agree with him, but I liked it. In a way, it was more Trek than any of the TNG movies actually attempted to be. Seriously, watch Star Trek: Insurrection sometime. It's a good Space Opera popcorn flick with plenty of action, but it's not really Trek. It's got the window dressing but not the feel.

But I digress.

So today, I decided to watch a movie and, seeing as I couldn't find anything else I felt like watching I went with Star Trek Generations. For those that aren't familiar, which probably doesn't include most of the followers of this blog, in Generations Data gets an emotion chip. It allows him to feel emotions. Almost immediately, he heads to Ten Forward (that's the bar, for those that missed it) and has a drink which he totally HATES. He's oddly happy about hating it and it's one of the funniest moments in all of Trek. But then later, things get a little less funny.

When Data is cornered and under fire, he should have done the logical thing, although at considerable risk to himself, and went and saved his buddy Geordi. He didn't because he was scared. 

*SIGH*

Listen, I'm not debating about risks versus reward in the real world with actual lives on the line. I'm not trying to criticize any real world people or say that I wouldn't have acted the same while being shot at. I've never been shot at, so I have no way to compare my behavior to his. I'm just saying this:

Data failed to rescue Geordi, not because of any type of tactical analysis, but because he was scared. They had killed the essence of the character at that point. And yes, watching him say "Oh SHIT" as the ship was about to crash at the end was every bit as funny as watching him find his cat in the debris of the wreck was touching. None of that matters though, because they took my Data away from me.

Now, the totally logical, totally able to function character that I loved was ripped away. He could feel stuff again. I had to go from loving Data to loving pre-emotion chip Data. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming Brent Spiner. That dude can act. I'm just saying that they changed the character in a very fundamental way and I hated it. I felt disrepected. This isn't the character I had grown up loving (and I was not quite eleven when ST:TNG debuted in 1987. It was a major part of my childhood.) I still like the rest of the movie, but...

Yeah

The Data I knew was deader than disco, doornails, Dracula and Sturm Brightblade all rolled into one. They took him away from me and gave him back broken. Fans of The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever know what I mean. It still irritates me.

And that, my friends, is why I don't like race/gender/orientation swaps in my fiction. Now I'm not saying that minorities shouldn't be represented. I mean, yeah, I grew up on James T. Kirk and Jean-luc Picard, but I also grew up on Nyota Uhura, Hikaru Sulu, Geordi Laforge and Worf, Son of Mogh. I loved both shows. I'm just saying to leave existing characters alone.

If you want a character that is black/Latino/gay/bi/transgender/whatever else you can come up with, that's fine. Make a new character and make them matter to the story. Frankly, if you can't come up with a reason for the representative character to matter to the story, you're patronizing the group you're representing anyway and stating flat out that they don't matter, but their money does. You're looking for ticket sales, not showing respect. 

And, by handing the fans who have supported your product with their time, money and yes, emotions for years or maybe decades something broken you are pissing in their face. At that point, they have no reason to continue to support your product. And yes, this means that if there is a Next Gen reboot with a new cast, that Geordi and Worf should both be black. But it also means that if you want to add a LGBT representative/couple/  you need to come up with (a) new character(s) and create something. (If you still can't figure this out. Gay Riker = lose. New bridge officer who is gay = win.)

No one freaked out when Jadzia Dax was bi because she was a new character who didn't have a history of heterosexualness (probably the wrong word. Work with me.) and so you weren't slapping your fans in the face by tearing one of their favorite characters apart. Stop talking about how "Audiences weren't ready for..." and include people in a way that WILL work. The audiences ARE ready if you do it right. And, given the fact that you're in the business of making money off of an established property, you might want to do right by the fans. They're where your profits come from.

Some Star Trek related products are available for purchase at the links below. If you click a link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional expense to you.

A New Take On A Well Established Premise

Listen folks, I know some of you are going to point fingers and scream about the physical impossibility of real world Faster Than Light travel. I'm not convinced that you're right, because, although science says it can't be done, science screws up all the time. Seriously, it was scientifically proven that woman couldn't travel on trains because their wombs would come flying out of their body and that no human being could travel faster than the speed of sound without suffocating. 

And anyway, who cares, we're talking about Science Fiction here! FTL travel happens all the time!

So listen, here's what I'm thinking:

Yes, Star Trek has Warp Drive. Yes, Star Wars has Lightspeed. Honor Harrington has hyper. I'm told that Warhammer 40K burns psychics, but I haven't read the books. I need to start. Event Horizon had that spiky, ball thing. Stargate has the star gate. Battlestar Galactica has a jump drive, as does Battletech. The Four Horsemen Universe has a pretty unique take on both gate technology, similar to the gates in Babylon 5, and hyperspace that has to be seen to be believed. 

I could go on for days. Honestly, I'm still debating whether Stargate really counts or not, too but that's not the point.

The point is that we need one concrete thing we can ask about. One all-powerful, overarching concept that can get us into the nitty-gritty of what we love. Because, honestly, if all we wanted was action and cool characters we'd be reading Tom Clancy instead of David Weber. (That's not a slam against Tom Clancy. Dude can flat out write. I'm just saying that he doesn't have the fancy window dressing we're used to as fans of SF/F.) What we need is the Fwoosh button.

Yep, I said it. The Fwoosh button.

Think about it this way:

When Sulu, takes the ship to warp, he's pressing the Fwoosh Button. When Ivanova orders the White Star Fleet through a gate, she's pushing the Fwoosh Button. When Jim Carthwright takes the Cavaliers through the gate and into hyperspace, he's pressing the Fwoosh Button. When Han Solo takes the Millennium Falcon to Lightspeed, he's hitting the Fwoosh Button, Well, probably. I mean, it's the Falcon and it kinda only works when it wants to, but you know what I mean. Actually, he's hitting the Fwoosh Button either way. Sometimes it just doesn't work. The bottom line here is that when your favorite character does whatever they do to get things moving quickly, they're hitting the Fwoosh Button. 

Instead of referring to FTL travel as FTL travel, and having to ask, "How do they do Faster Than Light?" every time somebody tells you about a new series, you just say, "How does the Fwoosh button work?" or "Describe the Fwoosh Button."

Your life will thus have been greatly enhanced and simplified by the saving of several seconds that you would otherwise have spent speaking a longer phrase that you no longer need to speak because I have provided you with a way to shorten your sentences, save your breath and eschew obsfucation by using a singularly concise term with which I have provided you free of charge and with no hope of recompense simply out of my magnanimity as a human being and through my deep and abiding care for the well-being of all around me combined with my confirmed affection for brevity and all of its benefits.

Seriously folks, keep it short if you can. It is of utmost importance to express your meaning in as few words as possible as this will allow your audience to understand the maximum amount of words that you have spoken because you have refused to confuse them with an overabundance of verbiage. This is desirable for many reasons.

So...

The Fwoosh Button is important. It will save you time.

I like this concept, because, at least among stories that involve faster than light travel, it's all encompassing. When you're describing a new book/show/movie/series to a friend you can just say, "Then he hit the Fwoosh Button" when describing what happened in the book instead of trying to walk some goofball through the 9780768768687687968976789689768968976789698768969876986987696 steps behind engaging a Warshawski Sail and setting off into hyper. There will also be no need to explain military compensators, Alpha nodes, Beta nodes, hyperspace bands, hyper limits...

Yeah, Fwoosh button that stuff and you're good. 

Okay, so Honorverse fans are either laughing or offended right now. The rest of you are confused. I'm trying to help avoid all of  the confusion by moving everything forward in a conversation using the Fwoosh Button. Seriously. Try it.

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.