In the Court of the Crimson Kings by S.M. Stirling

This is Decembers book group selection, and I may be jumping the gun a bit by posting my review (we don't meet until the 29th).

From Goodreads.com: In a stand-alone adventure set in this world’s 2000 AD, Jeremy Wainman is an archaeologist who has achieved a lifelong dream; to travel to Mars and explore the dead cities of the Deep Beyond, searching for the secrets of the Kings Beneath the Mountain and the fallen empire they ruled.

Teyud Zha-Zhalt is the Martian mercenary the Terrans hire as guide and captain of the landship Intrepid Traveller. A secret links her to the deadly intrigues of Dvor il-Adazar, the City That Is A Mountain, where the last aging descendant of the Tollamune Emperors clings to the remnants of his power…and secrets that may trace their origin to the enigmatic Ancients, the Lords of Creation who reshaped the Solar System in the time of the dinosaurs.

When these three meet, the foundations of reality will be shaken—from the lost city of Rema-Dza to the courts of the Crimson Kings.


This was a fun little read. It was interesting to set a book in our "past" and it gave it a 1950's feel but more modern, if that makes any sense. The Martians play a game similar to chess, but they take the principles and apply them to real life. I also found the Martian society interesting and would have liked a bit more explanation and depth to that.

Criticism's include a darn romance. I just don't care for romance in my sf novels. Still, it was tolerable and didn't detract too much from the story. I had trouble swallowing it's probability - the world was set up where Martian's don't particularly like Terrans and here a tough mercenary woman falls in love with the archaeologist she's supposed to be protecting. And yes, if you are thinking Indiana Jones it was mentioned several times in the book as well.

Still the book was pleasant and I would consider reading S.M Stirling again.

The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman

This selection is for November's book group. The meeting is next Monday so hopefully I'm not posting too soon. We've already read Forever War, Camouflage, and Old Twentieth.

This was an okay selection, a quick read (I finished it in a day), and definitely not one of Haldemans stronger books.

The premise is Matt Fuller is an underemployed research assistant at MIT, part time druggie and has recently been dumped by his girlfriend when he discovers a piece of equipment that "disappears". He sets up a series of experiments in his apartment that results in him eventually taking a three month trip through time. Each successive push of the button on the time machine sends him farther into the future, but he quickly finds out it's a one way trip. There is no going back...


This book reminded me of H.G. Wells Time Machine, and of another selection I've read but cannot recall. Where each stop is a snapshot in time but with the decline of humanity rather than the rise. We have the religious conversion stop, we have the dinosaurs stop we have the artificial intelligence stop, you get the idea. On the other hand, the ending has a nice twist that I appreciated - it rather made up for the rest of it. If you need something while you wait at the airport, this would be a good pick.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

This was October's book group selection. Over the last 10 years we seem to have developed some habits as a group: we *always* read the Nebula awards when they are published in May; we like to read a Halloween styled book in October, and we like aliens.

So this year we voted on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories, with introduction and notes by Jenny Davidson.

I am fond of the classics and this one didn't disappoint. I will say, however, that I found the other stories a bit more engaging than that of Dr. Jekyll. Perhaps it was because I knew the basic premise of the story long before I read it - this was my first time reading it - so I knew what to expect. And because it is part of our culture, I won't review it again.

I would like however, to touch on the additional stories which included:
Lodging for the Night
The Suicide Club
Thrawn Janet
The Body-Snatcher
and
Markheim

If you haven't had a chance, do read some of these. In particular, I really enjoyed the Suicide Club. On some levels, I found it more engaging and interesting than Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. Lodging for the Night just amused me, but honestly, they all amused me. I recommend this one as a good Halloween read.

A Mote In God's Eye by Niven and Pournelle

This is September's book group selection. I read it years ago and had it on the shelf. In the past, I haven't re-read books, but I've been finding that if I haven't read it in the last year, I don't remember the particulars well enough to participate in a lively discussion.

So I re-read this one. And liked it the second time as well.

Here is the standard published book blurb: In the year 3016, the Second Empire of Man spans hundreds of star systems, thanks to the faster-than-light Alderson Drive. No other intelligent beings have ever been encountered, not until a light sail probe enters a human system carrying a dead alien. The probe is traced to the Mote, an isolated star in a thick dust cloud, and an expedition is dispatched.
In the Mote the humans find an ancient civilization--at least one million years old--that has always been bottled up in their cloistered solar system for lack of a star drive. The Moties are welcoming and kind, yet rather evasive about certain aspects of their society. It seems the Moties have a dark problem, one they've been unable to solve in over a million years.

Captain Rod Blaine has been given his first star fleet command, the ship MacArthur to boldly go where no one has gone before and meet an unidentified object coming from the mysterious Mote. They find a cylinder with an alien. And yea, Capt. Rod Blaine is commanded to further go where no one has gone before (or at least for a very very long time) and find the home world of this mysterious alien. The starship Lenin is to follow, with the strictest command to blow the MacArthur to oblivion if the aliens attempt to learn any star fleet secrets.

Blaine sets forth with a ship full of scientists, a crew eerily similar to that of Captain Kirks, all under the watchful eye of the Lenin. What they learn...well, I leave that part up to you to find out. Aren't I a stinker? ;)

The first half of this book is pretty darn good. The second half drags. I did feel that this book was a flushed out Star Trek episode, complete with Scotty in the engine room. For a first contact, it was decent, each side trying to hide its secrets from the other. Each side dying to dissect a sample of the other. It was an interesting look at humanity (albeit from the 70's) and how we might approach an alien race that wants to know just as much as we do.

Endymion by Dan Simmons

This is my science fiction book group selection for August. I actually read it back in 2000 after I read Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, which still rank in my top 10 best science fiction books.

Because I'm posting this before our meeting, I won't give anything away and to simplify matters further, I've copied the blurb from the back of the book:

Endymion, onetime shepherd and convicted murderer, is chosen as a pawn in a cosmic game whose outcome will determine the fate of humanity. Selected as a bodyguard to the next messiah, Endymion will cross time, space, and the very fabric of reality as her protector, lover, and finally disciple. At the same time, the enigmatic Shrike - part monster, part killing machine, part avenging angel - has also followed the girl into the 32nd century. Yet it is Endymion who has been chosen to rescue Aenea, against all odds. How will her message change the universe - if she is willing to speak it...and if humankind is prepared to hear it?

What the blurb doesn't mention is the presence of the Church, who is desperate to catch and destroy young Aenea. Captian-Father De Soya is chosen to seek out and detain at first, then later to destroy Aenea. It is against this huge galactic organization that Raul must protect his young charge.

This book was just as good as the first time I read it...though it probably helped that I had forgotten most of it so it was almost like reading it as new. Highly recommended.

Nebula Awards 2009 ed. Ellen Datrow

For the last, oh, eight? years now when this comes out in May, my science fiction book group reads it. We don't even have to vote on the selection. As soon as it hits the table we KNOW what we are going to read for the month of June.

Nebula Awards 2009 was an excellent selection of shorts, excerpts and essays. What was interesting, I thought, was each member of book group had one story they intensely disliked, but no one person had picked the same story. It made for an interesting discussion.

I won’t review every story, but included in the 2009 edition(which represents 2007 winners) are:

(From 2007)
Best Novel: The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
Best Novella: Fountain of Age by Nancy Kress
Best Novelette: The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang
Best Short Story: Always by Karen Joy Fowler

I don’t have my book in front of me and Amazon.com didn’t have “look inside” on this one so I can’t tell you what the other four stories were. You’ll have to take my word for it that they were good. Except the one I didn’t like...but I won’t tell you what that one was either because everyone else at book group liked it.

This was worth reading.

State of the Art by Iain M. Banks

I forgot to review April's SciFi book selection which I suppose demonstrates how underwhelmed I was with this book. I think it was mostly because I just wasn't in the mood for short stories. I'm a novel person and often find shorts dissatisfying.

As described from Goodreads.com:

The State of the Art is the first collection from the author of The Algebraist and Use of Weapons. It features two stories set in his "Culture" universe plus six other stories and an essay.

Contents:
Road of Skulls
A Gift From the Culture
Odd Attachment
Descendant
Cleaning Up
Piece
The State of the Art
Scratch
A Few Notes on the Culture

Nova Swing by M. John Harrison

I'm not sure how to describe or review this book and do it justice.

Set in the same timeline as Light, Nova Swing follows an assortment of characters who have come to settle in Saudade (still not sure if this is the planet or the city or the Event Site...): Fat Antoyne and Liv Hula used to fly spaceships, Edith and Emil used to be part of a traveling show, Irene the Mona came from farther up the tract. Now they live in on a backwater world where they can hop in a tank and be whoever or wherever they want to be or go to a gene tailor and create a new persona. But our cast of characters doesn't seem interested in what they can do to themselves, they're interested who they are and who they could have been. They are a group of dreamers.

This is complicated by the Event Site, a place where part of the Kefahuchi Tract fell to ground and warped the way time and space behave. Several of the characters are drawn to it and some are ambivalent, but the Event Site seems to dictate who will do what. Will Fat Antoyne go in? Will Vic ever come out? And what's the deal with the armpit-tattooing serial killer who did in Lens Ashemmans wife?

There are moments of pure brilliance in this book, with great insightful turns of phrases. And there are moments of sheer head-scratchers. I don't care to read a novel and have to sit and decipher what I just read. A good example of this is the blurb on the back of the book just doesn't match what's going on the inside. And I really felt there were too many threads that didn't get resolved. That almost bothers me more than questioning what I just read every couple of chapters.

Still, if you enjoyed Light, you'll probably like this one as well.

Company by Max Barry

This is March's Book Group selection. We didn't even have to vote on it! It was unanimous (it helped that there were only three of us at the meeting that month...).

Max Barry also wrote Jennifer Government, which ended up on every one's top 10 list (except for Steve's, the lone dissenter, had to be different...).

From the jacket blurb: Stephen Jones is a shiny new hire at Zephyr Holdings. From the outside, Zephyr is just another bland corporate monolith, but behind its glass doors business is far from usual: the beautiful receptionist is paid twice as much as anybody else to do nothing, the sales reps use self help books as manuals, no one has seen the CEO, no one knows exactly what they are selling, and missing donuts are the cause of office intrigue. While Jones originally wanted to climb the corporate ladder, he now finds himself descending deeper into the irrational rationality of company policy. What he finds is hilarious, shocking, and utterly telling.

This book is a lot like the Dilbert cartoon put into novel form. It hits a nerve - business is a lot like this. You go to work, you are with your co-workers for over 8 hours a day yet really have no idea what they do beyond cubicle land then you go home to your alternate personality. It was also a lot like watching a National Geographic episode on the African Serengeti - where the unsuspecting but vaguely uncomfortable are gathered around the water cooler while the hyenas and lions are gathering in the boardroom.

A quick read (I finished it in a couple of days), that is indeed, humorous, shocking and utterly revealing.

PS - It's not science fiction, but it's darn close...

Axis by Robert Charles Wilson

I noticed this book received very mixed reviews, most of them not very complimentary. I’ve read most of Robert Charles Wilson’s books, and enjoyed them to one degree or another, so it was with a bit of trepidation that I started this one.
I found I enjoyed this one as much as I liked the others. To quote the blurb at the back of the book, the premise of the story is in the post-Spin world, the planet “next door” was engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life, and connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian Ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world--and, predictably, fiercely exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent Equatoria.

Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father's disappearance ten years earlier. Turk Findley is an ex-sailor and sometimes-drifter. They come together when an infall of cometary dust seeds the planet with tiny remnant Hypothetical machines.

Now Lise, Turk, a Martian woman, and a boy who has been engineered to communicate with the Hypotheticals, are drawn to a place in the desert where this seemingly hospitable world has become suddenly very alien indeed - and the nature of time is being once again twisted by entities unknown.

I don’t know why I like Wilson’s books, I just do. They often deal with “the Big Unknown” - not necessarily the Big Black Object in Space and frequently there isn’t a resolution or answer per-se. Maybe that’s why, not everything CAN be answered. So I conclude by saying, I liked this and I look forward to his next book.

Dragons Nine Son's by Chris Robeson

This is February's book group selection and may contain spoliers...

In this alternate history, China and the Aztec Nation have become the predominant countries. They have been fighting on Earth for a long time and now they have taken this war to the Fire Star (aka, Mars). Here in space around the semi populated planet, where nine Chinese military criminals destined for death are brought together for a suicide mission to a secret hidden Aztec asteroid base.

The two main characters are Yao and Zhaun, a bannerman soldier and a captain of the naval fleet. Each betrayed direct orders which have landed them in this current predicament. The other seven are a motley crew of murders and petty thieves - the "red shirts" if one is to reference Star Trek. The mission is simple: to destroy the asteroid by sneaking in a very large bomb on a stolen Aztec ship while pretending to be Aztecs.

I unfortunately found this book lacking. The premise of the alternate reality was promising but it fell short from the beginning. It was little things that kept jarring me out of the story; here we have two terraforming, space adapted nationalities, but yet in a briefing the agent used a telescoping pointer. The Aztecs are still a blood-thirsty race that use human sacrifices to start their space ships - they had alters on the bridge with hemoglobin sensors and would slash their victims. Both races still used cudgels, truncheons and swords in combat, along with your standard projectile weapons.

The plot also trudged along; once the mission was spaceborne, each of the nine slowly (and I do mean slowly) revealed why they were on this suicide mission. Two disobeyed direct orders. Three were in for murder. One in for petty theft. One was a dope smuggler and I forget what the last two were incarcerated for - it wasn't interesting. I found Robeson's foreshadowing glaringly obvious and that also detracted from the overall story.

I was looking forward to reading this one as it's come to the bookgroup table more than once but never made it through our convoluted voting process. The last time it came to the table we begged and pleaded with Tess to not boot it out. She kindly agreed and it was a disappointment.

The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfield

I really enjoyed this book and I think that was because my last couple of books have been just sort of eh. At least the last one in particular (Children of Huirn by Tolkien). I was craving a true scifi book (read space opera, space ships, aliens, and galaxies far, far, away) and The Risen Empire was exactly what I wanted.

Premise of the book is the Risen Empire is ruled by the Emperor, who is 1500 years old (give or take a bit). He discovered how to defeat death and the reason was his younger sister, known as the Empress of the Risen Empire or, The Reason. She is held in a hostage situation by the Rix, an human-alien race who infect planets with the compound minds they worship. The rescue goes very badly for Laurent Zai, and he is obligated to commit suicide, but decides not to - an action tantamount to being a traitor to the Emperor.

The book isn't divided into neat and tidy chapters per see, but each "chapter" is a characters POV. The book didn't feel choppy - with the exception of a couple-three flashbacks - but rather I felt compelled to keep reading. The author touches on nanotechnology, alien races, AI's (I particularly liked one Senator's "House Mind") and the division of humanity. The Empire is divided between the Greys, who accept eternal life as the living dead; and the Pinks, who feel the dead should stay dead because it's preventing the living from getting on with things. I'm simplifying a bit...no, quite a bit actually. Anyway, it's a very quick read and I polished it off in a couple of days.

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on book II.