Monster Hunters International by Larry Corriea

Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

My rating: 4 of 5 stars




Jacket Blurb:  Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a fourteenth story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer.

It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Officially secret, some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. On the other side are the people who kill monsters for a living. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit.

It's actually a pretty sweet gig, except for one little problem. An ancient entity known as the Cursed One has returned to settle a centuries old vendetta. Should the Cursed One succeed, it means the end of the world, and MHI is the only thing standing in his way. With the clock ticking towards Armageddon, Owen finds himself trapped between legions of undead minions, belligerent federal agents, a cryptic ghost who has taken up residence inside his head, and the cursed family of the woman he loves.

Business is good . . .Welcome to Monster Hunter International

Book 1 in the series.  Read for December 2013 book group.

This was a totally implausible, rock'm sock'm, fantasy action and love story that I loved from page one.  Owen Pitt is an accountant who tosses his boss out of a fourteen story window - in Owen's defense his boss was a werewolf trying to kill him.  Owen wakes up in the hospital to find the Fed's pointing a gun at his head, he's been fired from his job and some nutcase wants to recruit him to fight monsters.   Then he meets Julie, a raven haired beauty with guns.  Owen loves guns, he loves unattainable Julie.  Owen will go to Hell and back to win her love and kick some monster ass along the way.  Lots of monster ass.

Of course I'm greatly simplifying - there is an awesome cast of supporting characters including a teacher, a stripper, a librarian, a former Navy Seal, and some very angry Feds.  The monsters are nasty, the vampires nastier, and the Feds are the nastiest of all.

I will say right up front, this is not a book to be taken seriously, it is meant to entertain and only entertain, and that it does extremely well. Recommended.



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Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Jacket Blurb:  In America's Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota--and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it's worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life...

I read The Windup Girl several years ago and was entranced with the world and characters Bacigalupi created.  Ship Breaker was just as interesting and I had a hard time putting the book down.

Set in the Gulf of Mexico, somewhere along the the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama, a small group of people struggle to survive by disassembling old oil tankers and ocean going ships for scrap and, if they are lucky, oil.  They live in fear of hurricanes, specifically "City Killers",  a new category of storm that destroys everything in its path. 

Life is a struggle for the folks on the Beach.  Laboring on the ships is hard work and your size and ability dictate what you can and cannot do.  Survival depends up on meeting quotas, and in Nailer's case, also avoiding his abusive father.  A storm changes everything when it washes a "Swanks" clipper ship onto the shoals of a submerged city.  Nailer and his friend Pima rescue "Lucky Girl" and the subsequent journey to reunite her with her father shows Nailer that there is more to family than blood.

Written as a YA book, I couldn't help but reflect that our young protagonist grew up long before the story even started, so less a coming of age story than a journey of self discovery.  I would have like more back ground on the half-men, the genetically modified laborers; I think "Lucky Girl" could have had more depth to her character - she felt very superficial to me; and more information on the power struggle in Lucky Girls life to justify reuniting her with her father.  

But, overall, minor complaints.  This really was a well written story and I highly recommended it.



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Rule 34 by Charles Stross

Rule 34 by Charles Stross

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

 Jacket Blurb:  DI Liz Kavanaugh: You realise policing internet porn is your life and your career went down the pan five years ago. But when a fetishist dies on your watch, the Rule 34 Squad moves from low priority to worryingly high profile. Anwar: As an ex-con, you'd like to think your identity fraud days are over. Especially as you've landed a legit job (through a shady mate). Although now that you're Consul for a shiny new Eastern European Republic, you've no idea what comes next. The Toymaker: Your meds are wearing off and people are stalking you through Edinburgh's undergrowth. But that's ok, because as a distraction, you're project manager of a sophisticated criminal operation. But who's killing off potential recruits? So how do bizarre domestic fatalities, dodgy downloads and a European spamming network fit together? The more DI Kavanaugh learns, the less she wants to find out


This was a Arthur C. Clarke award nominee for 2012 and missed the final Hugo Nominee ballot by one vote for 2012.

Rule 34 is a fascinating blend of murder mystery and police procedural under a veneer of science fiction that was a little too close to reality to make the concepts entirely comfortable. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the purpose was to make the reader a tich uneasy.  Everyone is directly linked into the web through their glasses (Google anyone?), the police have special software they can lay over the city and pick up on who's done what and when, and surveillance is everywhere.  Sound familiar?

It took me a while to get into the book despite being trapped in a car for two days for 13 hours each day.  The second person narrative was a detraction - I found it difficult to sink my teeth into the story when the narrative kept referring to "you".  You did this and you did that and "You" are all the characters, not just one main one.   Once I could settle in and get into the cadence of the plot, I didn't want to put it down.

Each chapter is devoted to the POV of one character, the main three being the police detective Liz Cavannaugh, the Toymaker who works for the Organization, and Anwar who is a luckless chap because Lady Luck has walked out on him.  Occasionally we are given a secondary or tertiary character to get a feel for the behind the scenes action that is driving the plot. 

My main complaint with the plot was the expository explanations that seemed to go on and on.  By the end I was skimming those to get to what I considered the "meat" of the book, that being how our heroine, Liz, was going to connect the dots solve the mystery.

This is touted as being sequel to Halting State, which I read in 2008 and really enjoyed.  It might have been helpful to have remembered or recently read book one, but I don't feel it was necessary. I don't think Rule 34 was as strong as Halting State, but still a very enjoyable book and I regret not seeing this on the final Hugo ballot for 2012.  Recommended. 



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This was a Arthur C. Clarke award nominee for 2012 and missed the final Hugo Nominee ballot by one vote for 2012. 

Rule 34 is a fascinating blend of murder mystery and police procedural under a veneer of science fiction that was a little too close to reality to make the concepts entirely comfortable. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the purpose was to make the reader a tich uneasy.  Everyone is directly linked into the web through their glasses (Google anyone?), the police have special software they can lay over the city and pick up on who's done what and when, and surveillance is everywhere.  Sound familiar? 

It took me a while to get into the book despite being trapped in a car for two days for 13 hours each day.  The second person narrative was a detraction - I found it difficult to sink my teeth into the story when the narrative kept referring to "you".  You did this and you did that and "You" are all the characters, not just one main one.   Once I could settle in and get into the cadence of the plot, I didn't want to put it down.

Each chapter is devoted to the POV of one character, the main three being the police detective Liz Cavannaugh, the Toymaker who works for the Organization, and Anwar who is a luckless chap because Lady Luck has walked out on him.  Occasionally we are given a secondary or tertiary character to get a feel for the behind the scenes action that is driving the plot.

My main complaint with the plot was the expository explanations that seemed to go on and on.  By the end I was skimming those to get to what I considered the "meat" of the book, that being how our heroine, Liz, was going to connect the dots solve the mystery. 

This is touted as being sequel to Halting State, which I read in 2008 and really enjoyed.  It might have been helpful to have remembered or recently read book one, but I don't feel it was necessary. I don't think Rule 34 was as strong as Halting State, but still a very enjoyable book.  Recommended. 



 

On Basilisk Station by David Weber

On Basilisk Station by David Weber

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Jacket Blurb:  Honor Harrington in trouble: Having made him look the fool, she's been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her. Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station. The aborigines of the system's only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens. Parliament isn't sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling, the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering, so-called "Republic" of Haven is Up to Something; and Honor Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn't work to police the entire star system. But the people out to get her have made one mistake. They've made her mad.

This was July's bookgroup selection and my second time reading it.

The question that begs to be asked is, Did Star Trek ruin "battle" scenes?  Can one have a scifi battle scene on a ship that does not involve the Captain calling the engine room and asking for a status on the failing engines and having the person in said engine room, respond back, "She's giving everything she's got!"  and the Captian demanding "Dammit! I need more power!" and the poor engineer going, "Okay! I'll do what I can!"  as the ship lurches and shakes from the impact of being hit?

Okay, rant aside, this was a decent "intro" book.  By intro book I am referring to a book that sets up the universe and as I have recently learned, this has become a very established .  As I noted, this was my second time reading this and I might be looking at this a bit more critically than I would a first read.

I felt the character building was pretty good.  Our heroine, Honor, is slowly climbing the ranks in the Navy, has a back bone, and yet you see glimpses of doubt and fear.  We are given to understand she is not one of the "privileged" lord-lings automatically given rank.

I thought the premise of the book, the point that instigated the plot, was rather weak.  Honor is assigned to the HMS Fearless, a ship that has been refitted with some alternate weaponry not appropriate to the size and class of ship, and then participates in battle training exercises.  Her ship fails miserably and she is banished to the outskirts of the system with a crew that now despises her for their when they all knew it was the new weaponry.

Right.  A bit implausible that the Captain would be thrown under the proverbial train for a weapon's system that everyone knew would fail anyway.

My other criticism of the book was the overly long expository explanations.  The "world building" aspect so to speak.  If the author knew at the time that this was more than a single book, he could have spread out the descriptive narrative.  I found my self skipping pages to get back to the meat of the book.

Overall, a well written military science fiction book.  Recommended.





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Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks

The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jacket Blurb:  They are, truly, provably, End Days for the Gzilt civilization.  An ancient people, they helped set up the Culture ten thousand years earlier & were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they've made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilizations; they are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new & almost infinitely more rich & complex existence.

Amidst preparations though, the Regimental High Command is destroyed. Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont appears to have been involved, & she is now wanted--dead, not alive. Aided only by an ancient, reconditioned android & a suspicious Culture avatar, Cossont must complete her last mission given to her by the High Command--find the oldest person in the Culture, a man over 9000 years old, who might have some idea what really happened all that time ago. Cossont must discover the truth before she's exiled from her people & her civilization forever--or just plain killed.



June's Bookgoup book, selected after the announcement that Mr. Banks had terminal brain cancer.  Finished in the month he passed.

This Culture book had me at page one and I had a very hard time putting it down.  The story spans an incredible history of the Culture - predates the Culture even - while focusing on a civilization that is moving into the future via the Sublime - an act of moving one's consciousness into a collective wholeness that part of an even greater wholeness, but doesn't reside in this plane of existence.

The plot has planetary and galactic intrigue, a missing person's hunt, ships running hither and tither, and more eccentric humanoids and Minds than one can throw an asteroid at.  It it wonderfully woven, the humor is both subtle and in your face, and the sarcasm witty. 

The book is aptly named, tho to describe why would take far more time than I care to type and probably more than you want to read as a review. 

Best to say to say, go read it!  By far my favorite Culture book.



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The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook

The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jacket Blurb:  For four thousand years, the Guardships have ruled Canon Space - immortal ships with an immortal crew, dealing swiftly and harshly with any mercantile houses or alien races that threaten the status quo. But now the House Tregesser has an edge: a force from outside Canon Space offers them the resources to throw off Guardship rule. This precipitates an avalanche of unexpected outcomes, including the emergence of Kez Maefele, one of the few remaining generals of the Ku Warrior race-the only race to ever seriously threaten Guardship hegemony. Kez Maefele and a motley group of aliens, biological constructs, an scheming aristocrats find themselves at the center of the conflict. Maefele must chose which side he will support: the Guardships, who defeated and destroyed his race, or the unknown forces outside Canon Space that promise more death and destruction.


May 2013 bookgroup selection.

This was a difficult plot to get into.  An overly complex ship naming convention, a political hierarchy that was not immediately clear, planetary systems with long names that began with letters and ended with numbers, cities that I couldn't figure out if they were cities or planets,  a cast of characters scattered across a substantial universe, and that same cast of characters who had cloned themselves so more than one copy is running about.  Toss in 'artifacts', lost races, aliens, and Guardships, and it was almost enough to stop reading right there.

IF...if you can get past the first 100 pages, then it starts to make sense, and by about page 150 the plot is rolling along quite nicely.  But I felt that first 150 pages was a flat out slog and if I may infer from the comments my Dad was dropping, he felt the same.  Not the best way to start a book in my opinion.

But, after page 150 the family intrigue, the political intrigue, the humor - starts to pull the reader along and it becomes a grandiose space opera and I found the pages turning more quickly.  The author did tie up all the lose ends to my knowledge, though in the complexity of the subplots, I may have overlooked something.  Now whether those subplots were resolved satisfactorily, will be up to the reader ascertain, but I was satisfied.

Recommended with reservations.



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Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder (Virga #1)

Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

 Jacket Blurb:  It is the distant future. The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and "towns" that are in the shape of enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for gravity.

Young, fit, bitter, and friendless, Hayden Griffin is a very dangerous man. He's come to the city of Rush in the nation of Slipstream with one thing in mind: to take murderous revenge for the deaths of his parents six years ago. His target is Admiral Chaison Fanning, head of the fleet of Slipstream, which conquered Hayden's nation of Aerie years ago. And the fact that Hayden's spent his adolescence living with pirates doesn't bode well for Fanning's chances . . .


Normally, by the time I finish a book I have an idea of what I want to say.  Or I've made a few notes along the way to help facilitate my final thoughts and opinions.  With Sun of Sun's I find I'm struggling with what to say, so I'm going to be a bit more methodical in my review. 

World setting - Virga is an absolutely fascinating setting.  A "planet" of air, with a central mechanical "sun" called Candence.  Smaller cities can build their own suns and live out in "winter", which are areas far enough away from Candence as to need their own light and power source.  There appears to be one entry and exit in and out of this self contained bubble that most people are unaware of.  People flit about via air bikes, feet fins, and larger motorized vessels.  Cities are strung together by rope and wood.  Water droplets can condense into balls the size of boulders and larger and pose a serious threat to the cities and other structures.  This whole thing is just cool.  A unique take on the steampunk genre.

My issues - There seems to be a significant amount of wood, and I was struggling to figure out how this much wood can be grown in this environment when water and air is governed by air currents.   And the air - how do they manage to keep the oxygen from being depleted?  Where does the moisture come from?  I can totally understand plants can be grown by hydroponics, but to be self sufficient when everything is just sort of floating around in this massive bubble took a leap of believability that I just couldn't manage.

The Hero - Hayden Griffon watched his mother and the rebels of the city Aerie prematurely light a sun and blow themselves up instead of being captured by the forces of Slipstream.  Hayden has nursed his grudge against Chaning for 8 (?) years and is now within reach of killing the man who killed his mother.

My issues - I couldn't empathize with our young hero.  He is a young, ignorant, backwater plebe who finds out the world is bigger than his grudge. 

The Plot - Our young Hero is swept up into a series of events from which he manages to miraculously escape against improbable odds.

My issues -  Our young Hero is swept up into a series of events from which he manages to miraculously escape against improbable odds and in the end, well, it was mostly predictable.

So there were aspects I liked - the world setting, a touch of steampunk, pirates (oh yes! pirates!) and space battles that felt like a scene out of Master and Commander.  And aspects I didn't - the main character and his motivations. 

Recommended with reservations.



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Time's Eye by Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke

Time's Eye by Arthur C. Clarke

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Jacket Blurb: 1885, the North West Frontier. Rudyard Kipling is witness to a British army action to repress a local uprising. And to a terrifying intervention by a squadron of tanks from 2137. Before the full impact of this extraordinary event has even begun to sink in Kipling, his friends and the tanks are, themselves flung back to the 4th century and the midst of Alexander the Great's army. Mankind's time odyssey has begun. It is a journey that will see Alexander avoid his premature death and carve out an Empire that expands from Carthage to China. And it will present mankind with two devastating truths. Aliens are amongst us and have been manipulating our past and our future. And that future extends only as far as 2137 for that is the date Earth will be destroyed. This is SF that spans countless centuries and carries cutting edge ideas on time travel and alien intervention. It shows two of the genre's masters at their groundbreaking best.




March's book group selection.

I’m usually not enthusiastic about alternate history type books - I did not finish Dies the Fire by SM Sterling, but I did greatly enjoy To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis.  I won’t read Blackout/All Clear however.  Absolutely, totally, utterly no interest.


Time’s Eye pulled me in from page one.  I think the initial interest was because I recently watched the History of India (PBS special) and the significance of the Khyber Pass between India, Afghanistan and Pakistan was explained from a historical perspective.  And partly because I’m already fascinated with this corner of the world and some of the great accomplishments that came out of various periods of history.

What was different about Time’s Eye was that it really wasn’t an alternate history – it was more a speculative look at what would happen if you took some of the greatest armies in mankind’s history, caused a massive worldwide Time Discontinuity, and pitted those armies against one another.  Add in a couple of modern people (but not too futuristic!) on each side just to level the playing field and put the battlefield in the ancient city of Babylon.

Yup, a historians wet dream and where I began to loose interest.

It was like the authors had this great Discontinuity idea to account for the backdrop but when story started moving into implausibility with one subplot - with our Mongolians and our female character who managed to get into the good graces of Genghis Khan - I was kicked out of the story.  Given the historical parameters the author set up, it seemed too farfetched to even be remotely plausible. The author acknowledges the lack of hygiene, people getting sick from dysentery, poor eating habits (spitting gristle back into the common stew pot) and here we have a 21st Century woman who allows herself to get banged by a aged Mongolian and then becomes one of his advisers.  Right.


But it wasn't just that.  There was a time span from the beginning of the Discontinuity to about 6 years toward the end of the story.  Most of the electronics from the modern's helicopter that crashed continued to work despite being left in the acid rain. One characters 'smartphone' batteries lasted 6 years.  The British kept a pre-human alive in simple netted cage for 6 years. Food seemed rather easy to come by.  I could go on, but there were so many of these little and not so little 'hiccups' that left me shaking my head in disbelief.   If I can't believe in the parameters of the story, I can't believe the story itself.

So the book started with promise and ended flat.



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Redshirts by John Scalzi

Redshirts by John Scalzi

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


From Goodreads:  Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s Xenobiology laboratory.

Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.

Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expendedon avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.

Bookgroup selection for January 2013.

I liked Old Man's War and Ghost Brigades; was so-so on Last Colony, and bounced off of Zoe's Tale.  Thus I wasn't sure what to expect of Redshirts.

I expected too much, it seems.

I prefer my books to entertain, not annoy.  Even understanding the premise of the book: the not so subtle jabs at Star Trek, the reference to Stranger than Fiction (one of my favorite movies), and the overall whole situation - that an alternate reality can affect your reality if the the two timelines intersect - I was ultimately disappointed.

It read like teenage Fan-fiction; from someone who wrote Old Man's War, I expected a slightly higher caliber of writing.

The use of three characters who's last names start with "D" and two characters who's last name starts with "H".   Nope.  Doesn't work.  I spent more time trying to keep who was who straight that if there was any character development, I missed it.

The "Three Codas" ending was reminiscent of the conclusion of the Lord of the Rings movie, where the endings just. kept. coming.  I will grant a concession to the use of "First Person POV", "Second Person POV", "Third Person POV" and a different character for each was interesting enough - almost more interesting than the main story itself, but it wasn't enough to overcome my overall disappointment.


Recommended if you are a Scalzi fan. Recommended with reservations if you are not. 



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