Slow Paced Military Sci-Fi And Lizard Wars Author: Tanya Huff In a far distant future, the Star Trek like idiom of discovering new life forms has come full circle and humans are hardly the oldest or wisest entities to populate the far flung stars. Indeed, humans are one of the few species underdeveloped enough to still fight, and, for that reason, they are still needed. The Confederation is a coalition of sentient species across the universe who cohabitate and work with one another, and they are threatened by another federation, ominously known as the Others who seek nothing but destruction and war (think of Klingons and Romulans). The outcome is uncertain, the two factions seemingly equally weighted and equally weaponized. Enter the hostile little planet of Silsvah, home of a warrior lizard people (the Silsviss). Their entry on either side could make the ultimate difference. And so military might and show is of the upmost importance. The Confederation sends their best, the recently beleaguered and battle wearied Sh’quo company under a brand new, very politically minded (if untried) second lieutenant to oversee what is supposedly just a diplomatic expedition. Throw in some fancy military parades and this is an easy assignment and a bizarre one for some of the Confederation’s finest warriors. Warriors who haven’t even recovered from their last showdown and all the losses that followed. Staff Sargent Torin Kerr thinks something is strange about this babysitting mission and her hardened marines are hardly fit company for the dainty diplomats with their anti-violence and their elegant dictums. But an order is an order. All she has to do is keep an eye on her people, keep them from getting too bored, and help subtly mold this new second lieutenant, the stunning but completely untried Jarrat. Add to this the daunting prospect that the day before he was made into her new boss she had a one-night stand with him, and the memory of that just may mar the life and death professional relationship they will have to establish to keep the company safe. I first encountered Tanya Huff in my teenage years while working my way through the completely underrated Ravenloft dark fantasy series. Huff wrote Scholar of Decay , a book that combined wererats and a falling apart Venice-like town with one man’s unbearable grief and search for answers. To this day, Scholar of Decay remains one of my favorite books and ten plus years later I still remember a lot of the story and even more importantly the feeling of reading and experiencing it. Valor’s Choice was my first encounter of Huff in my adulthood and a sadly dismal experience. Military sci-fi isn’t my normal choice but I do adore anything and everything Doom (I’m talking about the video game which originally came out as The Ultimate Doom in 1995 and has since spawned three sequels, various books, and two movies). Taking my love of Doom to mean that I would like military sci-fi, even if the horror element isn’t there, I was surprised to find myself intensely bored. First, the pacing. Valor’s Choice , from its back cover blurb to the hundreds of glowing online reviews, is touted as being fast paced. But it really isn’t. The wearying nature of a diplomatic mission that is all spit and polish and no excitement is captured far too well. For the first third of the book the reader is stuck in between incomprehensible side conversations and babble as Torrin’s company bemoans their assignment. As these conversations, all intended, no doubt, to capture the easy vulgarity of military buddy talk and showcase inside relationships, served to add even more confusion as an uncountable array of characters is introduced, rapid-fire as it were. Readers already feel as though the series is three books in, although this is in actuality the first book, and so the banter that is meant to instantly include us leaves us confused and bored. Leading to the “I guess I started too far in” feeling, the different species are introduced as though we already know them, yet I couldn’t even visualize what any of them looked like. There is no real description. This, of course, makes sense in one way. A book, especially sci-fi, that spends all its time explaining and world building breaks the very world it is trying to make real. Valor’s Choice , though, goes too far the other way. And so, for the first two thirds of the book I just forced myself through, mostly out of stubbornness. The characters were too many and too rapidly presented for me to feel close to them (or even keep it straight who was who.) Torrin – the POV character and the only one we really get to know – is too perfect and all-knowing to be empathetic in her own right. The potential awkwardness of her new relationship with Jarrat is easily overcome by both of them. The diplomats, namely Strength of Arm, are occasionally interesting, even amusing, and the oversexed di’Taykan infrequently comical albeit massively overdone. It’s hardly enough. When the true action finally begins as the diplomatic mission spirals out of control when the ship is (purposefully?) shot down over a swamp filled with hundreds of angry Silsviss, the story does get better. It’s still hardly fast paced (there is a lot of waiting for attack, a lot of retreating, a lot of talking about strategic points to fire guns – or their futuristic equivalent – etc.) Unlike most future focused sci-fi stories, the weapons remain primitive and the combat mostly hand-to-hand, and Huff does a good job of actually explaining why and making this work. I never got excited during the grueling battle, but I did hate the book slightly less towards the end. Overall though, the pacing was just too slow for enjoyment and Valor’s Choice , unlike my beloved Doom franchise, doesn’t have anything that makes it special or different. The characterization is not capitalized upon (fair point, it certainly isn’t in Doom ) but the action and adventure are also remiss. In the end, it’s a ho-hum sort of tale that ardent sci-fi lovers will get through and forget, perhaps even find mildly enjoyable, and the rest of us will just hate. – Frances Carden Follow my reviews on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/xombie_mistress Follow my reviews on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/FrancesReviews [AMAZONPRODUCTS asin="B00DD77OH4"]

A Classic Story of Broken Innocence and Forbidden Love Author: Colleen McCullough The Thorn Birds , known to many from the epic mini-series of the early 80s, is a story of forbidden romance, heartrending choices, love verses duty, spiritual love vs earthly love, and the rugged splendor of Australia. It begins with the Clearys, a poor family living in New Zealand, barely keeping ends together as progressively more children are added to the brood (we count seven at the high point). This is not a childhood of playing and school, but one of instant labor and chores. Among these children there is only one girl, the fiery haired Meggie, least loved by her stoic mother. The family has more problems than their lack of means. Something happened long ago to Meggie’s mother, Fee, once an aristocratic lady, now little more than a dutiful drudge for a farm laborer. Meggie’s father, Paddy, is a cheerful sort but between him and his oldest son something old and hateful brews, threatening to split the family. And yet, this is simply life and the way things are. When a telegram arrives from Mary Carson, Paddy’s sister and only living relative, the family suddenly sees that a life of hope, maybe even one of plenty, is possible. Mary is old and very wealthy, running a multi-million dollar empire and successful sheep farm named Drogheda in Australia. And she wants Paddy and his family to come and help. It seems the set-up for a new life, for a potential inheritance, for an escape. Never mind if Mary Carson is cruel. Never mind if she is playing her own games. Once arrived in a new world and way of life, Drogheda’s deposed priest, the ambitious Father Ralph de Bricassart, takes an interest in Meggie, one born mostly of pity but with something indefinable, something he denies himself, sleeping just underneath the surface. And so begins a lifetime of pain, in the kind actions of a priest who has spent his own lifetime lying about his motives, translating love of power into love of God. As Meggie grows into a young woman under his wing, something grows along with her naïve love and Mary Carson, never willing to be sidelined and always desiring to destroy the haughty, handsome priest, hatches her final plan. McCullough’s drama reminds me quite a lot of The Poisonwood Bible in that it is a story encapsulated in a harsh place that looks at a family, growing older and more jaded as the years come and go. There is also that bittersweet, critical look at faith and God, perhaps not as harsh as Kingsolver’s, and an inspection of the human heart and its sometimes hidden, sometimes bare motives. Drogheda, the sheep farm that becomes more than Meggie’s escape, takes on a shape and meaning for us just as powerful as Tara from Gone with the Wind . Around Drogheda everything else moves as the book journeys outwards, even does some serious globetrotting towards the end. It’s here though, on this ranch, that the genesis really exists and here that the characters are invariably pulled as they rotate around their own desires. The thirsty lizards, the dusts and the droughts and the storms, the rampaging rabbits, the cowboy-like lifestyle of the herders and caretakers, it all paints a portrait that like Kingsolver’s portrait of the Congo makes us love a place we certainly don’t want to live. The beauty is in the ferocious, untamable wildness and that very ferocity fascinates readers and keeps them glad of their cozy beds. Meggie’s story, starting with her girlhood, takes us through her life and even into her children’s lives. It’s the building romance, the possibility of the consummation of something so forbidden yet evidently right, that keeps readers hooked into the tale. The romance, however, is not the only thing. We have Mary Carson’s scheme, for one, Farther Ralph’s spiral in power, the various natural disasters that hit Drogheda, the continuing internal Clearly family drama (what is wrong with Fee, why does Paddy hate his oldest son, etc.), and eventually we have WWI. Ralph and Meggie, though, and their slow dance of lust is at center stage, especially as Meggie seeks to escape the man she loves and cannot have in a marriage that yields surprising torment (and produces some of the most poignant and memorable moments in the narrative). Where the magic begins to fail is after the central point of the romance. The author lets the story go into a slow decline and Ralph and Meggie, ever our stars, recede to non-existence as Meggie’s two children, Dane (likable) and Justine (a truly irritating character) take center stage. From here the story becomes a weird mélange of these two characters’ lives. Dane pursues the priesthood in a way and with a purity that Father Ralph, in his world-weary, cynical ways could never do. This in and off itself kind of fits. It’s Justine though and her attempts as an actress and on-again-off-again romance that swallows the later fourth of the book and makes it into something amorphous and even a little dull. The conclusion attempts to come back around, but by then Ralph and Meggie are shadows of their passionate, troubled selves. Loose emotional threads are only vaguely gathered and we are left at the end without ever really seeing our central character’s reactions to the long reaching repercussions of their ill-fated decisions or even to the aging aspects and betrayals of each other. After having shared such a journey, this bland ending of two lovers growing apart, bitter but no longer really passionate about it, leaves us cold after so much sweltering Australian warmth and so much turmoil. Still, The Thorn Birds is such a powerful drama with so many epic moments that readers chose to forget the last fourth and leave remembering Meggie and Ralph at the height of their passion when choices, however terrible, could still have gone either way. – Frances Carden Follow my reviews on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/xombie_mistress Follow my reviews on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/FrancesReviews [AMAZONPRODUCTS asin="9780380018178"]

The Intentions of the Past Author: Chanelle Benz Billie Jean has a lifetime of secrets, and on this sultry Mississippi night, transformed from city girl to a desolate young woman in a falling down shack, she contemplates them and what answers her past and this weird inheritance have for her. Her father, famous black poet Clifton James, mysteriously died in his prime, back in 1972, after returning from the city to his Mississippi roots. Her white mother, James’ much neglected wife, died many years later in a fading battle with cancer. Neither parent left answers for their strange union, for its end, for the sudden flight after James’ death or for the stagnate activism that only shows now in a few of his old poems. Billie herself doesn’t even know she is looking for answers. But here she is, with $5,000, her childhood home (i.e. her father’s shack), and a dog named Rufus in a delta that remembers and yet has no love for her. Benz begins her narrative with a startling sense of geographic place. The heat soaked days with blooming sweat and the smell of old cars baking in the sun is visceral. Something those of us who grew up in the Deep South (Tennessee for yours truly) remember with half shudder and half fondness – this jungle climate with its oddly calm nights and purgatorial days. We feel set down here, the kudzu growing as Billie’s dog romps through grasses no doubt containing copperheads and cottonmouths and plumes of kamikaze mosquitoes. The long nights of the cicadas chorusing the stillness. The confusion of heat and the surreal slowness of life. What stands out as strange against this almost loving sense of place is the starkness of the characters. They never come alive, moving like ghosts against a world that is vivid and green. Billie is rudderless, directionless, and that’s the point. But we, as readers, need something of her to moor ourselves to. We need to care. To feel what losing her father did. To wonder what it is she saw that night when she was four years old. To feel the earth move beneath her feet as the secrets, ugly and cancerous, unwind. To feel from her love or hate of her father – perhaps some reaction to how he treated her mother. Something. Without this, her movements and her forcing of the puzzle pieces, her continual seeking, seem more like a plot device than a haunted human with whom we can empathize and connect. Other characters soon appear. There is a selfish biographer of Clifton James who is more interested in his dubious scholarly renowned than what his revelations do to the family. And then there is Uncle Dee, who knows something but isn’t telling. The nearby white landowners, weird in their friendliness with Billie and her family who, way back when, were slaves to the land. Billie’s white boyfriend who is meant to have his own sort of dilemma yet doesn’t – he merely acts as expected. Indeed, this is the problem with all of these characters. They act and move as expected, symbols of something greater than themselves, an old and throbbing hurt, but not actually emotional in and of themselves. They stand for something, and as such are ghosts that fail to get the full impact of their message across. And so these ghost people move and interact, often without logic. Billie, aware that she is stirring up town resentment and even the KKK, takes her dog for walks in isolated places. She continues to live and do her research in a faraway shack, known to all the good ‘ole boys, without a phone. She never approaches the destruction of this town’s heinous backstory in a self-protective way, which simply doesn’t fit with her nearly emotionless maneuvers. Why not do all this from safety? Why not suss out these secrets and spill them in a manner that guarantees revenge, justice, and the protection of her own life? Like so many horror movies, Billie choses the greatest, riskiest way and divorces readers from the realism of the narrative. A real person with Billie’s intelligence and determination would go about this in a much better, less cavalier way. In the end, at least, we sort of get an answer although the details are still fuzzy, the players all painted as though they are emotional when in reality they seem to feel nothing, good or bad (and this includes Uncle Dee). Billie even gets her confrontation – way too easily I might add. The resolution the novel wants to end with, the calling the bad guys to atonement, feels just as forced as the oddly stilted, colloquial writing, and we feel that nothing is resolved. This muddy backwater continues to fester in its own evil and Billie herself, has she healed? Not really. Has she found a meaning and a purpose, a demon to destroy? Not really. Has the confrontation left her with any of the answers? No. The obvious point of the narrative is that society has a far way to go, and it takes the individuals to fight the good fight and start to get us there, dismantling one un-justice at a time. While this moral holds true and strong though, the delivery of the story and the characters hardly supports it. In the end we walk away with a cloying sense of heat and a shadowy recollection that people must have moved through it. – Frances Carden Follow my reviews on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/xombie_mistress Follow my reviews on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/FrancesReviews [AMAZONPRODUCTS asin="0062490737"]

book reviews | Readers Lane

Valor’s Choice

Slow Paced Military Sci-Fi And Lizard Wars Author: Tanya Huff In a far distant future, the Star Trek like idiom of discovering new life forms has come full circle and humans are hardly the oldest or wisest entities to populate the far flung stars. Indeed, humans are one of the few species underdeveloped enough to still fight, and, for that reason, they are still needed. The Confederation is a coalition of sentient species across the universe who cohabitate and work with one another, and they are threatened by another federation, ominously known as the Others who seek nothing but destruction and [...]

Frances Carden2020-02-17T15:19:17-07:00February 17th, 2020|Tags: book reviews|

Thorn Birds, The

A Classic Story of Broken Innocence and Forbidden Love Author: Colleen McCullough The Thorn Birds, known to many from the epic mini-series of the early 80s, is a story of forbidden romance, heartrending choices, love verses duty, spiritual love vs earthly love, and the rugged splendor of Australia. It begins with the Clearys, a poor family living in New Zealand, barely keeping ends together as progressively more children are added to the brood (we count seven at the high point). This is not a childhood of playing and school, but one of instant labor and chores. Among these children there [...]

Frances Carden2020-02-15T17:20:12-07:00February 15th, 2020|Tags: book reviews|

Gone Dead, The

The Intentions of the Past Author: Chanelle Benz Billie Jean has a lifetime of secrets, and on this sultry Mississippi night, transformed from city girl to a desolate young woman in a falling down shack, she contemplates them and what answers her past and this weird inheritance have for her. Her father, famous black poet Clifton James, mysteriously died in his prime, back in 1972, after returning from the city to his Mississippi roots. Her white mother, James’ much neglected wife, died many years later in a fading battle with cancer. Neither parent left answers for their strange union, for [...]

Frances Carden2020-02-10T18:28:39-07:00February 10th, 2020|Tags: book reviews|