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All posts for the month December, 2013

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey

Posted by tjhapney on December 28, 2013
Posted in: Fantasy. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

KushielDescription/Blurb Excerpt:

A nation born of angels, vast and intricate and surrounded by danger… a woman born to servitude, unknowingly given access to the secrets of the realm…

Born with a scarlet mote in her left eye, Phédre nó Delaunay is sold into indentured servitude as a child. When her bond is purchased by an enigmatic nobleman, she is trained in history, theology, politics, foreign languages, the arts of pleasure. And above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Exquisite courtesan, talented spy… and unlikely heroine. But when Phédre stumbles upon a plot that threatens her homeland, Terre d’Ange, she has no choice.

Review 4 of 5 Stars
It took me a while to get around to reading Kushiel’s Dart as it comes in at over 900 pages and I needed some time away from my hectic real life to sit down and enjoy it.  Phédre nó Delaunay is a courtesan in service to the god Kushiel in a culture where courtesans are a normal part of courtly life .
Her guardian, Delauney, buys her marque (indentured servitude) from the Night Court and takes her into his house to be raised as a member of his family.  He teaches her languages, critical thinking and a host of other skills to enable her to be a spy as well as a courtesan so that she might gain important tidbits of information that affect the realm from the lips of her benefactors.  This is a fantasy story in that it is set in a fantasy realm with seers and gods that are at least somewhat active in the affairs of their subjects, but it is filled with court intrigues, a kingdom under attack, treachery, and a courtly love story that reaches across the sea to a far off kingdom rather than great feats of magic though there are some mystical happenings along the way.
Phédre is an anquisette, a courtesan that enjoys pain, and has her own encounters and loves and dependencies along the way as well as her struggle to become more than she believes she is in order to save Terre d’Ange.  In my mind I see Mata Hari in the fantasy world, but much darker. With her fiercely loyal Cassiline companion (warrior priest) she is captured and enslaved by a fierce barbarian tribe.  Using the lessons learned from Delauney she sets out to escape and save her nation.
To tell any more than this might ruin the story for any that would care to read it.  It is a very involved story, with multiple sub-plots and an erotic overtone.  Though Phédre’s nature is an important part of the story I was well pleased to find such detail inner workings and intrigue after the story got started.  When the book began I was thinking it was going to be basically an erotica type story, but it was really so much more.  The author’s careful plotting, character development and care with intrigue made this a truly enjoyable story.  Phédre is an unlikely heroine, but one I was truly pulling for by the end.

Firebird (An Alex Benedict Novel) by Jack McDevitt

Posted by tjhapney on December 17, 2013
Posted in: Mysteries and Thrillers, Science Fiction. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

FirebirdDescription/Book Blurb:  Forty-one years ago, the renowned physicist Dr. Christopher Robin vanished. Before his disappearance, his fringe science theories about the existence of endless alternate universes had earned him both admirers and enemies.

Now his widow has died and Alex Benedict has been asked to handle the auction of the physicist’s artifacts—leading the public to once again speculate on the mystery surrounding Robin’s disappearance. Did he finally find the door between parallel universes that he had long sought?

Intrigued, Benedict and Chase Kolpath embark on their own investigation as they follow the missing man’s trail into the unknown to uncover the truth—a truth people are willing to kill to protect…

Review 5 of 5 Stars

Firebird was a really good mystery/thriller science fiction time travel story.  This is a smart story that doesn’t depend on jaunting through time to give you a great time travel story.  In fact, aside from one poor soul who accidentally ends up there, the focus of the story is not about the actual experience of traveling through time but how to save those who are stuck traveling in time and the science of how those people became stuck in time.  Those who read my reviews know I have a soft spot for time travel pieces, but I believe this one is smart enough and slick enough to interest regular science fiction readers as well and perhaps even those who don’t generally enjoy time travel stories.  This is a story about the science of how the universe is made up and some of the possibilities that might be encountered by a society that travels freely through the stars.  I don’t know if these things are possible or will be in the future, but it certainly is interesting to think and dream about such interesting and frightening possibilities.

It’s probably pretty obvious at this point that I’m on a Jack McDevitt kick as I just discovered his books recently and have been enjoying the chance to discover a new writer’s voice, characters and stories.  I really enjoyed this book and have to say that of the books I’ve read from Jack McDevitt that my favorites are fast becoming the Alex Benedict books.  For an antiquarian this character sure finds himself at the middle of a lot of things, but that’s where a good sense of curiosity takes you.

Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDevitt

Posted by tjhapney on December 11, 2013
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

TimeTravelersDescription/Book Blurb:

When physicist Michael Shelborne mysteriously vanishes, his son Shel discovers that he had constructed a time travel device. Following his father’s trail through history-from the enlightenment of Renaissance Italy through the American Wild West to the civil-right upheavals of the 20th century-Shel makes a devastating discovery that sends him feeling back through the ages, and changes his life forever.

Review:  4 of 5 Stars

Some of this is going to sound contradictory since I have to say I waffled between 3 and 4 stars, but I’ll explain that along the way.

Personally, I really enjoyed this book.  It was a great trip through history.  A veritable what-if traveling list for time travel adventurers.  I fully admit that I have a weakness for both time travel stories and history.  Thus my first dilemma when rating this book as I would be the first in line if they were offering time travel cruises and I feel it may bias my views on this type of story.

The actual shell story wasn’t very important to my overall enjoyment of the book and it really wasn’t all that memorable for me aside from a few pieces.  This was my second consideration and what almost made me give it a 3.  However, what I found interesting was the time spent in the past, the discussions about who to go visit and why, and seeing historic people at historic events which was well done and entertaining.  Mostly what I found appealing about this particular book was the opportunity for just a moment to transport yourself to those far away times and places to catch a glimpse of that time if even just through a fictional account.  That pretty much sums up why I love time travel stories. I would have loved to have gone along on the adventure.  For that moment of daydreaming I’m willing to overlook a lot as I don’t expect that these gentlemen will show up on my front porch with a spare device and an invitation for me to come along.

It’s nice when they try to explain how you get there and whatever the paradox theory is for a particular book.  In this one it’s the cardiac effect, which basically means if you mess up the timeline in some way that you aren’t supposed to that you’ll have a heart attack and die.  There’s one event of sorts, some later discussion about it, and then it’s brought back up a few times in the story.  Overall though not much time is spent worrying about it by the characters so as a reader I didn’t either.  They kind of say that something could be a problem and then go off on their adventures despite it.  As a reader I followed suit and was swept away without much worry for the cardiac effect.

So I settled on a 4 because I love traveling through the ages.  If you also enjoy visiting long ago people and places in this manner and don’t care to spend too much time on how the time travel actually works then I think you’ll enjoy this story vacation as much as I did.  If you’re looking for something with hard scientific data to get you down the time tunnel you might want to look elsewhere.  It was highly readable and I breezed right through it feeling refreshed from the adventure.

Ancient Shores by Jack McDevitt

Posted by tjhapney on December 8, 2013
Posted in: Science Fiction. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Ancient ShoresDescription:

It turned up in a North Dakota wheat field: a triangle, like a shark’s fin, sticking up from the black loam. Tom Lasker did what any farmer would have done. He dug it up. And discovered a boat, made of a fiberglass-like material with an utterly impossible atomic number. What it was doing buried under a dozen feet of prairie soil two thousand miles from any ocean, no one knew. True, Tom Lasker’s wheat field had once been on the shoreline of a great inland sea, but that was a long time ago — ten thousand years ago.

Review 4 of 5 Stars

I feel I have to give this book at least 4 stars even though it was a little slow for my taste at times.  I say this because it prompted me to head back to the book store the following week to see what else Mr. McDevitt had written as I liked the overall flavor of the storytelling.  Any book that leads you to buy another just to see what the author’s work is about has done it’s job and at least deserves 4 stars.

In this story what initially begins as a strange discovery turns into an all out archaeological project that results in an interesting form of access to other places.  The story moved a bit slow for me at times and I wanted him to get on with it, but I really enjoyed the flavor of the characters and the tale being told.  Perhaps part of my problem was the lack of patience as I waited for the story to unfold.  I think perhaps I wouldn’t have been good at the dig site in this story and would have been the one beating my head against the structure in frustration while the others scientifically and methodically continued.

As stated above this book led me to pick up some more of Mr. McDevitt’s books and I have very much enjoyed several of them.  McDevitt is a writer that makes you think about things along the way and I appreciate that in a story.  This story was pretty well thought out for the most part.  It had a few flaws, but nothing big enough to really mention.  Additionally, I liked the characters though sometimes they seemed a bit reckless as they barreled ahead at unexpected times.  So in the end it wasn’t a great book, but it was a good enough story that I enjoyed the adventure and hope to travel on others with this author.

Dust by Hugh Howey

Posted by tjhapney on December 8, 2013
Posted in: Science Fiction. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

dustDescription/Book Blurb:

WOOL introduced the silo and its inhabitants.

SHIFT told the story of their making.

DUST will chronicle their undoing.

Welcome to the underground.

 

Review:  4 of 5 Stars

I have really enjoyed the Wool series and I have now read Dust twice.  I originally read it fresh off the pre-order, but then life got in the way and I didn’t review it right away.  So I thought it would only be fair to re-read a few passages or so to get back the feel of it, which ended up with me re-reading the entire book.  I did enjoy the book and I still think Juliette is a great character though she does get incredibly lucky pretty regularly considering the odds she is up against, etc.  I’m not saying nothing bad ever happens to her.  Lots of bad things happen to Juliette.  In fact, sometimes it seems that there is someone following her around with a bag of ‘bad things about to happen’.  Nevertheless, in the overall scheme of things she comes out of it pretty well.

There didn’t seem to be as much tension to this story and I wasn’t as thoroughly engaged even the first time around.  It was still a good story, but it just didn’t grip me the way the original story did when I read it in the omnibus.  I think part of that is due to this being kind of a wrap-up of the story.  An example might be that I love a good mystery thriller; however, when everything has been revealed sometimes I feel a little let down not because it wasn’t a good story, but because the adventure and mystery are over.   It’s kind of like that slump after an adrenaline high.  I got the same feeling at the end of the book Perfume by Patrick Suskind.  The tension held in the dark, drab, conspiracy controlled world of the silo is hard to keep alive when you move on.  Since I do not have any suggestions on how to make the story itself better or end it differently, I definitely see the predicament of trying to wrap it all up.  I don’t know if there was a better way to end it or if a different way would have been better.  This ending seems to be what might be the best we could hope for were we stuck in one of these silos and trying to save the lives of our friends and families.

So in the end Dust is 4 out of 5 stars for me.  I really liked it and enjoyed the read, but it wasn’t quite as powerful for me as the original.  Just because you don’t love the final book of a series as much as you did the previous ones does not mean it isn’t a good book or series.  It’s just that some portions of the story were more powerful than others or at least that’s my opinion.  Overall, it was a good read both times.  I am very excited to see what Ridley Scott does with the movie version as he is one of my favorite directors and I feel he might bring the correct degree of ‘dark’ to the movie.  Keeping my fingers crossed and waiting to see what happens.