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.

Art Spiegelman's Maus I: My Father Bleeds History and Maus II: A Survivors Tale: And Here My Troubles Began

So, I picked up copies of Art Spiegleman's Maus and Maus II. I've been meaning to read both for years and I finally got around to it. It was weird though, because I went to my Local Comic Shop to get a copy of Maus right when the controversy hit and the owner of the place had never heard of it. Barnes and Noble, however, was more than willing to provide me with a copy of the first graphic novel and The Zekleman Holocaust Center was more than happy to sell me one from their souvenir store. From here on in, I'll be referring to both collectively as simply Maus.

On an entertainment level, I was impressed. Spiegleman had my attention for the entire time I was reading it. Dude can seriously tell a story. He also told the story of not just the his father surviving through the Holocaust, but of both his and his father's lives as they were working through the writing of the tale. It was masterfully done. Flashback is definitely a strong suit for Spiegleman.

The art was also well done. I'm not usually a big fan of black and white art in comic books/graphic novels in general, but Maus is not exactly your everyday comic fare. The Holocaust itself was both dark and gritty. The art matches it perfectly. Or maybe that's just me.

When I did my Capstone Paper at Oakland University I wrote about the involvement of the Heer, the German Army, in the Holocaust. Over the course of a semesters worth of research, I saw a lot of pictures of the carnage, all of them in black and white. All of those pictures were in black and white and some still haunt me. Either way though, the art in Maus matches with my impressions of the events themselves. 

Speigleman's father definitely went through many things that no human being should ever have to endure. Maus is a testament both to the cruelty and depravity of the Germans and to the strength and stamina of those who survived. Vladek Spiegelman is hard core. I don't know if I could survive what he went through but he did. 

I can't imagine what it must have been like for Art Spiegleman to have conducted those interviews or for Vladek to have went through them. Once, when I was really young, I asked my great-uncle why his eye didn't move. It turns out that his eye was made of glass and had been forced upon him by an unfriendly member of the Japanese military while he was fighting in the Pacific. I'll never forget the way everyone present looked at me, or the way my Aunt Maisie, who had been married to him for literal decades at that point said that she had never heard him talk about the war before. It was years before I realized how terrible the memories that I had dredged up were.

Art Spiegleman found a way to milk memories that were just as bad or worse from his father. I don't know what it took to get it out of the old man, but it must've been near impossible just to get him to open up. Whatever it was, or whatever it took, Art Spiegleman did it. I've got a lot of respect for that because I know it wasn't easy. What Vladek went through reliving all of that was probably even worse, so props to both of them for getting through what they had to get through. The University of Michigan has a program for people to testify to what they lived through and saw during the Holocaust as well. 

Maus is a truly realistic look at what happened during the Holocaust. Vladek Spiegleman was a man who did whatever he could do to get through the Holocaust. It didn't matter what it was. It didn't matter what the rules said. He was going to make it if it was at all possible and he was determined not to die trying. I've got more respect for Vladek Spiegleman than probably any other purely human being in history but what he did was frequently against the rules. Granted, they were rules made by the Nazis, but any one of the violations that saved his life could have killed him. That's courage right there, folks and he had it in spades. 

I'm glad something like Maus came along. It's important to show the world what happened, how it happened and what it took to survive the Holocaust. I've also reviewed Marvel's X-Men: Magneto: Testament. Of course, I'm aware that many people have also seen Schindler's List. I know I've seen it many times. And, while Schindler's List may be the one exception of the three to what I'm about to say, these works should not be in classrooms to students who do not already have an education in the Holocaust.

That's not to say that Maus does not have literary value, because it has immense literary value. A lot of other books do too, and most of them aren't about the Holocaust. I've heard people talk about/ seen people write about the importance of Maus and its position as the only way to truly understand the emotional impact of the Holocaust on its victims. With respect, those people need to do more reading. There are many books available that have been written by Holocaust victims, not the least of which is Primo Levi's Survival In Auschwitz.

And no, I'm not saying we should ban Maus. I own copies of both books, and I've actually purchased both for my oldest daughter, Riley. The important here being that when I bought her Maus,  I also bought her books about the Holocaust in general and Terezin and Ravensbruck. I made sure she had the education to go along with the entertainment because I don't want her to think that the Holocaust is just some bullshit from a fucking comic book.

Students in North America and Europe have both been polled and it has been found that large percentages of young people believe that the Holocaust is either a myth or has been exaggerated. My own niece once asked me why people believe that it happened. I've had conversations with people who believe this way. And, while I will go to my death (hopefully many years from now) confident in my belief that this is the opposite of what Art Spiegleman intended, I believe that Maus, Testament, and other, similar works are a large part of the reason why.

Listen folks, everyone knows that comic books are not factually true. Yes, even those of us who read them for pleasure acknowledge the fact that fiction is fiction. That is precisely why choosing to teach history using graphic novels is the wrong thing to do. If the lessons of the Holocaust are forgotten teaching Maus in classrooms may well be one of the reasons that it does so. I get the fact that it won't be the only reason. Neo-nazis and other Anti-Semites have their own agenda and love using Holocaust denial as a possible reason to massacre the Jews in Israel now and I get that, but there's no reason to help the enemy.

For the record though, my objection has nothing to do with Southern people and their problem with mouse tiddies. That I don't have a problem with. 

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Celebrated Survivors

Maus I, Maus II and a couple of works of Holocaust history are available at the links below. If you click the links and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage of your purchase at no additional cost to you.

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

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

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

Totes.

Watch me go.

I'm all over this.

Well, at least "all over." 

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

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

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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.

Science Fiction, Fantasy and Gateways

I started into the world of Science Fiction early, with Star Trek  and Star Wars. (For the record, I eschew the whole Trek vs. Wars debate. They're both amazingly awesome and that's the end of that.) My first four friends, and I believe I've mentioned this here before, were named James T. Kirk, Leonard McCoy, Spock and Mike Boldt. He lived around the block from me.

My first experience with Star Trek was when my mom took me to the movies to see Return of the Jedi. She knew I'd love it. I was six and it was great. Green dudes, guys in funky robes, giant ugly worm, things, and a woman in a really sexy outfit that I was too young to properly enjoy made my day. As I got older, I watched the first two, then got them on VHS, then went to see the Specials Editions...

Yeah I was hooked. I actually got into Star Trek at an even earlier age.

I watched my first episode of Star Trek the day my parents brought me home from the hospital, or so my old man used to say. I have no clear recollection having been a couple of days old at the time, but that's what I was told. Watching that set me on an adventure at the library: I searched for works of Science Fiction. I checked all of the old log books out of the library and started looking for other stuff. 

It wasn't long before the librarian at the local public library handed me a copy of Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. I spent the next twenty-five years trying to find that book and remember what the name of the author was. By the time I wandered on to the old Baen's Bar forum site, I figured I'd be lucky if anyone even recognized it. Oops. Way to go, Jimbo. That book is an SF classic. But how did I know that? I was just a kid when I read it, and neither of parents read SF, so they couldn't help.

You all get to listen to me blather on about my love of Science Fiction literature because that came from watching TV and the movies. One day Star Trek, the next day Heinlein and then some Asimove (I picked Robots and Empire up at a used book table at a rummage sale.) and then just random stuff until I happened upon a Catherine Asaro novel and started following her. (It occurs to me that she deserves a review here. I don't think I've done one. Oops.) And then, one day, someone came along and mentioned this Weber guy and his Honor Harrington series and there was Baen..

Yeah, it was fate.

And yes, I get that Star Wars is Science Fantasy NOW. I didn't then. See the next paragraph.

With fantasy, it was a little different. I didn't really know there was such a thing as a fantasy genre. See, I'm a certified fogey and borderline curmudgeon. When I was a kid, Fantasy books were shelved separate from SF and the library, as it still does, shelved fiction alphabetically by author. I had no clue there was such a thing as fantasy. No one talked about it, really. Remember, this was before the internet went big time and there were no websites, no Jimbo's no IO9, nothing. You learned about things through word of mouth and/or accidental exposure.

True story time: Once, when I was a wee little Jimbo attending Anchor Bay Elementary School (I think. I went to four different elementary schools.) we had a movie day and they played an animated movie named The Hobbit. No, not the Peter Jackson hackjob that took place a decade or so ago, a honest to goodness cartoon. I watched it, and I walked around singing this song for the next six months at least: 

Here's the thing though: At no point did I associate the movie with a genre or even a book. It wasn't until I hit high school and went for a stroll through the stacks looking from something readable (because the crap they give us in class wasn't, at least no voluntarily) and I came across a copy of the book that I knew it existed. Even then, it took the little star on the front with the words "Now an animated feature film." or something written on the front to assure me that I had the right book.

So I read the thing. It was *GASP* better than the movie. I went back to the library and asked the librarian, whose name I have forgotten because I suck, if she had anything else written by the same author. 

She looked like I had slapped her. "Haven't you read the Lord of the Rings?"

"The what?"

For the first of at least two times in my life, I was led by hand to the book I needed on the shelf and handed all three books. She said "I know you. Take all three. That way I won't see you for a few days."

So I did. And, like a lot of other nerds I was known to carry a novel around with me in case class got boring. My buddy Jeff saw me reading one of them one day (No, I don't remember which one. It's been over thirty years. Your bad.) and asked if I liked fantasy. My response was, "Like what?" And then he asked me if I like stuff like LoTR. Of course I did. That's why I was reading it. So he handed me a copy of Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. It was the first book in the Dragonlance Chronicles. Somewhere in there I went from liking to loving. Probably about the time THOSE DIRTY STURM KILLERS KILLED STURM. Don't worry. I'll get over it.Probably. I mean maybe. 

I think that must be when I realized that I had meant it when I said I had to be a writer. It's something I had wanted before but in the way every kid talks about what they want to be when the grew up.

You see, that death messed with me on a couple of levels. I was about a year away from losing the first person I was close to and Sturm's death hit me almost like the death of someone I actually knew. but there was something else: I had labeled those books "Sooooo predictable." because it was obvious that the good guys were going to win, and they did, and that Sturm would be the big hero and lead the parade in front of the Knights of Solamnia and gain all the laurels...

And now he was dead. They had written in wrong. I think I was probably as offended as I was dismayed. And listen folks, there has never been anyone in the world who was as convinced as I was that I had the story right. I had to write something that made sense.

Of course, I finished writing that in a bit two hours and it was no where near as long involved or well written as what the actual people who really got paid to write the story. Go figure. It's almost like I, with the hubris of a know it all teenager, wasn't as good at it as someone who actually knew what they were doing. Of course, that's thirty-plus years of hindsight later. At the time, I was wrong, they were right and the fact that they had written what would still be my favorite fantasy trilogy all these years later had nothing to do with anything.

I guess my point here is this: We need to make sure we're showing these things to those who come after us if we want to preserve our hobby. It's easier now than I ever dreamed of it being when I was a kid, too. Seriously, they make comic book movies now. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a powerful tool of geek creation if used correctly. Kindle Unlimited makes the literary side of things easier as well. Of course, all of those Wars and Trek movies are still out there and they're making more now! I haven't seen this much new Trek  available ever! It's an exciting time. 

And none of that covers my love of gaming, but that's a different story for a different day. That's a pretty awesome part of geekdom as well. 

Seriously folks, kids, grandkids, your friend at work who isn't into the Kardashians and needs some real entertainment, they need this kind of thing. It's weird that geeky things are popular now, but it's good. Our hobby has always been the place where the people who didn't fit, fit. We need to keep it alive for future generations of misfits. Geekdom won't be popular forever. Those kids are going to need somewhere to retreat to and we need to make sure we've saved that space.

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

Listen folks, go read these books!

REVIEW WRITTEN! PUT IT IN THE CAN!

*Takes celebratory gulp of Coca-Cola Classic*

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

Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*SIGH*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Probably?

Maybe?

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

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Missiles Fired

Mountains of the Gods

D.T. Read
Theogony Books, 2022

Crucible of the Gods

D.T. Read
Theogony Books, 2022

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

Richard Weyand's Eve of War (Agency Book One)

The Agency doesn't exist. I know it. You know it. I bet even he knows it. But somebody forgot to tell Bert Magnum and he works for the Agency. I know, I know. I mean, I get it. If it doesn't exist then how can he work for it? Listen, I'm a book reviewer. If you wanted a sense maker, you came to the wrong blog. That's not my thing. But you can read Richard Weyand's Eve of War and then we can not make sense together. Togetherness is a good thing, right?

This is actually a really entertaining story. A detractor might be tempted to say that it's pretty much James Bond INNN SPAAAAAACE, but honestly, I thinks it's totally James Bond IIIIIIINN SPAAAAACE! and I love it. Listen, folks. Things work because they work and James Bond works. There's a reason that James Bond has like 87689768976876876868688969869876868968976 movies and they all sell like a billion tickets each, then live forever on rentals/streaming. And trust me, it's not just the martinis.

What could possibly be better than a super-cool secret agent with lots of neat toys who gets the girl and does the super-spy stuff and tries to save the day? I'll tell you what. It's the super-cool secret agent with lots of neat toys who gets the girl and does the super-spy stuff and tries to save the day who has an alien companion. I mean, the fact that it basically lives in the shower IS a bit weird but, I mean, it's an alien. It's SUPPOSED TO BE WEIRD.

There should be a song about how aliens are supposed to be strange. Maybe we could set it to the tune of someone else's song. Does anybody have Weird Al's number? Seriously guys, you don't want me to sing it. You just don't.

Anyway...

There are widgets and gizmos and superdrugs and hot chicks and guns and bombs and mishaps in cars and maybe some other stuff...

To go with allergies. Seriously, that was a shocker. What secret agent has allergies?

And yes, we get to find out how the alien got there EVENTUALLY. I won't tell you how but it works and it's interesting and yes, it's weird but we just had that conversation.

There's a lot of good stuff here, and the even better news is that there is more coming. It seems that Eve of War is the first book in a series called The Agency, which apparently DOES exist. The books, not the Agency. The actual Agency is basically just like Area 51 and Delta Force. It doesn't exist, never will and does all kinds of stuff that never happened. Actually, I know a couple of guys who served on submarines. Maybe they can tell me how things that never happened in places they never were worked. Uhh...

Nevermind.

You know, the whole Science Fiction thing doesn't mix very often with the whole Super Spy thing, except in cases where the spy has nifty tools that don't exist in the real world. Eve of War is a legit Science Fiction story complete with star nations and interstellar travel. Humanity is still humanity, but they're out there.

Eve of War takes place in a corner of human space and the rest of humanity is only mentioned passingly. There are definitely strong hints of something out there though, and I kind of get the feeling that the playing field is going to expand in future volumes of the series. I haven't read any of the follow on books yet (and I think only one exists at the moment) but there's a hint, a possible hit of foreshadowing I detected...

Yup, you're right. I'm more Inspector Gadget than James Bond, despite the similar first names. Go, go Gadget review!

Didn't work, still writing.

So yeah, I think there's more coming, similar to how David Weber started his Honorverse in one corner of the universe and then made it bigger, or how I started my Dungeons and Dragons campaign with one town and expanded it. This is an approach that a lot of writers use because it makes sense and it works. Try to cram too much in too quickly and you get the Green Lantern movie. It's better this way.

I'm really looking forward to where this universe can go. It's kind of refreshing to read some SF that's not the same old SF and Weyand has achieved that here. I love starships and big, stompy robots and weird unobtainium power sources, etc but there's more to the genre than that and it's nice to see someone step outside of the standard tropes and give us something new and, this is key, do it in its own universe.

Seriously, those of you have read John Ringo's Human-Posleen War/Legacy of the Aldenata series may remember The Weapon and the trilogy of books centered around Cally. Those were good books, well written and action packed with believable characters but I think they lost something because they didn't fit in with the rest of the universe. For me, at least, the LOTA universe is, and always has been, about mass combat and asskickery. There may have been a bit of "Uh oh, here they come" at the beginning of Gust Front,  but the story is supposed to take place on the front lines. 

For Weyand, that's not an issue. He didn't pull the bait and switch with this story. This is a spy-centered story and that's what he's given us. I hope he keeps it that way. The day may come when mass space battles are part of the story of Bert Magnum and The Agency, but I hope they either happen "off-screen" or as a small point of the larger story rather than a focal point. Magnum is the kind of guy who risks his life for his star-nation, but in a different way. Don't get me wrong: I'm excited for more of this series but I want it to stay like it is. Here's hoping, anyway.

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Doses of Com-Ply

Eve of War (Agency Book One)

Richard Weyand
Weyand Associates, Inc, 2022

Eve of War (Agency 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.

The Ten Most Badass Men in Science Fiction and Fantasy

(Before you even go there; I already did my list of SF/F's Ten Most Badass Women. You can find it here.)

The Speculative Fiction genre encompasses all types of things, but one thing that really pushes a Science Fiction or Fantasy story along is a true bad ass. Seriously, fans of works like Battletech, Honor Harrington, or even to a certain extent Star Wars are well versed in political wheeling and dealing. It goes on all the time. But the thing that really pushes a story along is a dude (or chick, if you prefer. The link to that list is above.) that does what he has to do to get things done. The man who, alone or with allies, has the can-do attitude and achieves results. To a badass, nothing matters so much as getting the job done, whatever that job happens to be. What follows is a list of the Ten Most Badass Men in Science Fiction and Fantasy. 

I'm going to catch some heat for this one. I'm okay with that. I've gotten some grief over my list of Badass Women. It's all good. I know nerd-rage, having experienced it from both sides. My only word of advice is that it you're going to flame me, do it here in the comments section and not on Facebook. A couple of people got in trouble with some mods last time. If you say something here, you won't catch crap from me. Your call.

At any rate, here we go...

Number Ten: Tony Stark (Iron Man)

"Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist."

What could possibly be more badass than taking shrapnel to the chest, hooking yourself up to a car battery and killing the people who took you prisoner, only to walk away? How about building a suit around a new power source and using it to fight evil? How about having it all and knowingly giving up your life anyway? Or building a suit for your little buddy to take him safe, just because you can?

Yeah, Tony Stark is a true badass. Whether in Civil War, protecting the rights of persons with super powers or fighting the bad guys in Central Park, Tony Stark is among the baddest of the bad.

Number Nine: Gotrek Gurnisson (Gotrek and Felix)

"No slayer has anything to be proud of."

Gotrek Gurnisson is a Slayer: His job is to seek out and destroy the enemies of dwarves and kill them while, and yes you're reading this right, dying in the process. A Slayer has been disgraced, his name placed in some clan's Book of Grudges and the only way to atone for what he's done is to die in honorable combat. A Slayer will, in all cases, seek out the biggest, baddest, most evil opponent and kill it or, even better, die trying.

The problems for Gotrek is that he's a little too good at the slaying part and not so good at dying. He is the star of a series of books by the Black Library in which he kills all kinds of big bads and, at least to the point I've read to (I kind of lost the thread after my divorce) managing to somehow not end up dead. If you see Gotrek coming for you, run. He is a dwarf after all. They can't keep up. And, let's face it, you have to be alive for it to matter that he just called you a coward. 

His buddy Felix follows him around chronicling his adventures and that just adds to the fun. One often wonders why Gortrek allows it since he has no reason for pride, and his axe would surely put an end to this silly human following him, but he does. I'm usually more of a fan of dwarves with hammers than with axes, but for Gotrek I'll make an exception. He's way too good with the thing to argue with him.

Number Eight: Inigo Montoya (The Princess Bride)

"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

One of the defining traits of any badass is persistence, right? Doing something easy doesn't make you a badass and the hard stuff you have to gut your way through. Of course, having a sword and being prepared to use it doesn't hurt and neither does having the guts to make your father's killer beg for his life before you stab him in his guts. 

And let's not forget loyalty. Who was it who took Westley to see Miracle Max? It would have been pretty easy to give up on a guy who was, admittedly, dead and move on after possibly shedding a single, manly tear. Montoya didn't. He didn't give up on his quest. He didn't give up on his friends. And, at the end of the day, he accomplished his mission. 

Above all though, he was a man of honor. Montoya did what he needed to do in a manner befitting his quest. Climbing ropes, fighting left handed until he realized that he had a worthy opponent and seeing the error of his ways and joining with his erstwhile (TWO POINTS FOR USING ERSTWHILE IN A SENTENCE! MY ENGLISH TEACHER WOULD BE SO PROUD!!!) enemy all mark Inigo Montoya as not just a man of action, but of thought and total badassery.

Number Seven: Jean Luc Picard (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

"You may test that assumption at your convenience."

Jean Luc Picard stopped at nothing to do what was necessary. He would hem, he would haw and he would consider the ramifications of his actions, and then he'd do it anyway. This is a man who faced down Q on multiple occasions. Picard faced the Borg and became one of them before returning to his normal self. Most of what Picard did was unpredictable because he was, in many ways, the wise Old Man that everyone wishes he could serve under. Picard lost subordinates (not the least of which was Tasha Yar) but he never did so cavalierly or unnecessarily and he always made their deaths mean something.

And who gets a knife through his back and out his front, passing directly through his heart, and goes on to serve in deep space duty anyway? That Nausicaan must have assumed that Picard was dead, only he wasn't. 

Picard was also a man who understood obligation. When his friend passed in the service, Picard took his wife and son aboard The Enterprise to make sure that both of them prospered. He got his friends' kid into Starfleet Academy with real world experience. A true badass looks after his own.

And yes, although I know he belongs nowhere near a list like this, I am a Wesley Crusher fan. Wil Wheaton is four years older than me, so Wesley was like the cool big brother that gets to do all the stuff that you don't. Bring the hate if you need to, but understand that I've heard worse and didn't care about it then, either.

Number Six: Westley (The Princess Bride)

“To the pain means this: if we duel and you win, death for me. If we duel and I win, life for you. But life on my terms. The first thing you lose will be your feet. Below the ankle. You will have stumps available to use within six months. Then your hands, at the wrists. They heal somewhat quicker. Five months is a fair average. Next your nose. No smell of dawn for you. Followed by your tongue. Deeply cut away. Not even a stump left. And then your left eye—" 

 "And then my right eye, and then my ears, and shall we get on with it?" the Prince said. 

 "Wrong!" Westley’s voice rang across the room. "Your ears you keep, so that every shriek of every child shall be yours to cherish—every babe that weeps in fear at your approach, every woman that cries 'Dear God, what is that thing?' will reverberate forever with your perfect ears.” 

So, you leave home. Then you're threatened with death every day. Then the guy who was threatening you retires and leaves you his way of making money. Somewhere along the way you learn to swordfight like there's no tomorrow. Then of course, you take on a prince and all of his followers after having been mostly dead all day.

Yep, you're a badass. 

We'll leave out the Rodents of Unusual Size and taking down a giant in a fight, but drinking a poisoned goblet on purpose is something we have to bring up. Oh, and threatening an armed man when Westley was too weak to stand was unbelievably badass.

I spoke earlier of persistence and coming back from the dead is probably the best example of persistence in the history of literature. The only better example may be Orpheus, but even he faltered at the end. Westley never did. And he got to call someone a "warthog faced buffoon" which is something none of use will ever do.

That's the first half. Ready for the top half?

Number Five: Aragorn (Lord of the Rings)

"If, by my life or death, I can protect you, I will."

I said before that a true badass does what needs to be done to accomplish the goal, and it doesn't really matter what the goal is. I meant it. Aragorn is the heir to a throne. He could easily waltz in and demand what was rightfully his, disrupting the war effort and probably handing the war to Sauron. A lesser man would have done precisely that. He had reforged Narsil, the Sword that Was Broken and had all the proof he needed had he put his needs above those of the people he should have been serving as king.

Instead he followed a hobbit and a wizard, rescued a couple of more hobbits and rallied some ghosts to his side. 

And listen folks, I love the fact that Peter Jackson left Tom Bombadil and the Cleansing of the Shire out as they add nothing to the story but the fact that we had to wait for the Director's Cut to see Aragorn recruit and then release The Army of the Dead was complete horse poop.

Anyway...

Aragorn could kill orcs like they weren't even there. He managed to rescue Merrie and Pippen and fight at the Battle of Helm's Deep. And at the end of it all, he did the most badass thing ever: He knelt to someone far beneath his station in respect for his accomplishments, one badass to another.

Number Four: Frodo Baggins (Lord of the Rings)

"I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way."

Some badasses start out with all of the advantages: A gun, or a big ship with a big gun, training, resources to draw on and the knowledge they need to use all of it. Of course, having a huge organization at their back, think Starfleet, the Rebel Alliance, The Royal Manticoran Navy or even The Agency (let's see how many get that one) at your back helps and gives them advantages that they would never possess on their own. It doesn't mean that they're not badasses. Intelligence is a trait that is common among badasses and utilizing every advantage available is the intelligent thing to do.

The fact remains that when Frodo Baggins gets into that canoe and begins to paddle across the river, he is leaving what backup he has behind. Of course, Sam eventually joins him, but Frodo doesn't know that Sam will follow him and actively tries to avoid it because he knows he can't trust those who are closest to him with the One Ring and he sets off with what he can carry and, having nothing but some pluck and a sword he doesn't know how to use, he sets off for the heart of the enemy's kingdom hoping not to get detected. Of course, the Ring itself is the thing most likely to get him noticed...

And he does it. I already mentioned persistence. How does one persist when they are starving and surrounded. When their best helper is likely to choke them to death and rob them how do they keep going? How can you make it to the center of the enemy's power and destroy the thing that is most precious to him knowing what it will cost you to do so?

Frodo almost doesn't. He almost keeps the ring. It takes the loss of a finger for Frodo to rid himself, and Middle Earth, of the ring. But he does it. Then he makes it out. Frodo has the courage of ten men packed into a body smaller than the average seventh grader and he's too badass to let it stop him.

Number Three: Tyrion Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones)

"Every time we deal with an enemy, we make two more."

Tyrion did what was necessary. He didn't always do what was popular. He sought power for himself, but then he used it to do what was right, or at least right-ish. I mean, assassinating a king is a big deal, but Joffrey kinda had it coming, right? There may have been worse tyrants, but that just means that he wasn't the only one who deserved it.

Tyrion spent the entire series trying to find someone who deserved his loyalty. His father didn't. His brother didn't. Cersei damn sure didn't. He thought Daenerys did, but she went off her rocker with like an hour left in a multi season show.

And seriously, whoever wrote that ending to the series is the worst thing that ever happened to script writing. A three year old could have written a better script in crayon.

But I digress...

Tyrion took his tiny little behind out to fight at the Battle of King's Landing and let's not forget that while he was a dwarf in a fantasy story, he wasn't a true fantasy dwarf: He didn't have the mass, the strength or the constitution. Come to think of it, he didn't have the super-long beard either, but maybe that is a little less important. Here's the thing though: He led his side to victory.

Tyrion gave good counsel to whoever asked for it. He survived a duel to the death and, even if it took a champion to win the fight for him, surviving is all that matters. 

Tyrion was a weird dude because his morals were probably closer to those of Tony Soprano or Vito Corleone than Superman but he stuck to them as well as he could. And maybe that's what makes Tyrion the badass that he truly is: He has money and to spare but, like Frodo, he doesn't have the size or physical gifts that many others do and he gets things done anyway. The ability to get 'er done despite the odds is the badass's defining trait.

Oh, and bonus points because he looks like Sir Hung the Magnificent, the biggest badass in The Knights of Badassdom.

Number Two: Severus Snape (Harry Potter)

"Has it ever occurred to your brilliant mind that I don't want to do this anymore?"

I can hear the whining already: "Snape bullied twelve year-olds." Yeah, maybe he did. The thing about bullies is that they were almost always bullied themselves, and that Snape survived James Potter bullying him. That doesn't excuse it, but it does explain it. And, when you get down to brass tacks, just about every real world hero has some character flaw or some act in his past that they don't want to acknowledge because it makes them look bad. Human beings are that way.

What Snape did right is to try to save the woman he loved using the only method available to him. What Snape did right was protecting her child from real, physical harm from the Dark Lord that he purportedly served. Read that again. Snape protected the child of the woman he loved and ANOTHER MAN. What Snape did right was protecting the students of Hogwarts as best he could because he knew if he didn't follow orders, one of the Carrows would take over and it would be even worse.

Yeah, Snape killed Dumbledore, but he did it at Dumbledore's request. Snape had taken the Unbreakable Vow assuming that he wouldn't do it and would die. Snape was the man who saved Draco's life after Harry almost killed him. Snape was the guy who fought through the pain of dying after being attacked by a snake to show Harry what he had to do. Snape was the guy who fought off the world's greatest mind-reading Legilimens and got that mind reader to trust him anyway.

I may be a bit biased here, since Snape is my favorite character of all time, second only to Raistlin Majere of Dragonlance fame, but he is an amazingly badass dude.

It's time for the single greatest Baddest Man in Science Fiction and Fantasy history. Are you read to see who it is? Too bad. It's...

Benjamin Sisko (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

So... I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But the most damning thing of all... I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again, I would. Garak was right about one thing, a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it..."

Benjamin Sisko was a Starfleet commander turned Captain. Benjamin Sisko was a Commanding Officer who did his best to complete his mission while doing his best to take care of his people. Benjamin Sisko was a loving father and a dutiful son and a widowed husband who remembered what he had lost till his dying day. Benjamin Sisko was a political figure and a religious icon. Benjamin Sisko was the man who defied the Prophets and got remarried anyway.  But, above all, Benjamin Sisko was the guy you weren't quite comfortable having on your side but that you did not want to see on the other side under any circumstances whatsoever.

The writers of "Emissary", the first episode of ST:DS9 took a big chance when they had their new main character get in Jean-Luc Picard's face. Picard was, by that time, an immensely popular character and here's this newbie (to the audience anyway) pushing back against Picard HARD. I get that Sisko was upset. He and Picard had fought on opposite sides at the Battle of Wolf 359 and Sisko's wife was killed. It made sense, but...

HE WAS CAPTAIN PICARD!!!!

It worked though and Sisko was established as the take-no-crap type right off the bat. And then a couple of episodes later he rocked Q's world in a boxing ring. 

Right off the bat, anyone who was paying attention knew that Sisko was not a man to be trifled with. Sure, he had lost his ship at Wolf 359 to a technologically superior enemy that wiped out nearly the entire fleet. That wasn't his fault. But when you went to war against Sisko, he went to war against you.

Sisko has been my favorite Starfleet captain for a couple of decades now because he did what was needed unflinchingly. I was awfully young when the series first started and patience was not something I was known for. When he punched Q, he became my favorite because Q was annoying on his best day. But it was later on that we learned what he was capable of.

Sisko's decisions to deceive the Romulans into joining the alliance against the Dominion, later leading to the deaths of an entire ship's complement of Romulans and the ambassador they were carrying and to poison an entire planet to drive the humans who lived on it illegally were morally ambiguous at best, but they were effective. His dressing down of Worf for acting to save Jadzia's life at the cost of their mission was almost as cruel as it was necessary. 

At the end of the day though, Sisko was not to be denied. He always won, whatever it took. He took the rap when he needed to, but he won the war and brought most of his people through it. For that alone, he is a badass. When you add everything he did up he, alone, is the Most Badass Man in Science Fiction history.

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