New Book Review 37: Deep Space Accountant

My next indie book review is for the sci-fi novel Deep Space Accountant, by Mjke (yes, that’s the correct spelling) Wood, the first book in the Sphere of Influence series. This novel starts out with strong comedic overtones, but as it develops the story becomes closer more like a thriller. The novel is set in the 23^rd century, in which humans have abandoned the scoured and polluted ruins of Earth and spread throughout the universe. The sum area of human habitation is known as the Sphere of Influence, but most of Earth’s biodiversity perished with Earth, including all trees and most animals. Lightspeed travel, teleportation, vat-grown meat, and a sentient AI companion called an imentor (using the pronouns Jim or Kim, depending on the gender of the user) are regular parts of life in the 23^rd century.

The protagonist, the Deep Space Accountant in question, is Elton D. Philpotts, an everyman nobody sort of character who works a mediocre job as an ordinary ground-bound accountant but aspires to the lofty and glorious position of a deep space accountant. Not being an expert in Relativistic Accountancy (that is, assessing costs involved with lightspeed travel, the wear and tear on spaceships, and so forth), he is utterly unqualified and can only dream. It’s notable that since genetic modification of embryos is a regular part of the future, a botched attempt at making him a superior human left him with the ability to memorize any number he sees. This is useful for his job, but no replacement for Relativistic Accounting experience.

Despite his lack of qualifications, Elton lands an interview with Space Corps for a deep space accountant position, and despite the comical awfulness of the interview, he gets the job, boards a shuttle which promptly explodes, and finds himself fleeing for his life from a sinister corporation which had meant to use him as a scapegoat and pawn in their wicked schemes for…well, if you want to know what the schemes are you’ll have to read the book, because I’d hate to give further spoilers.

The writing is smooth, without the nagging little errors I’ve come to expect from so many indie novels. The humor does fade as the story progresses, but it’s good where it is. Elton, a mediocre accountant who is forced to be a hero, is an entertaining character. With his ticks and quirks and so on, I can imagine him being a character in a Wes Anderson film, which was endearing for me. The secondary characters weren’t all quite as strong, some of them kind of blended together for me, but that’s not so bad. There is a romantic arc to the story which was a little improbable, but it’s a genre of improbable things, so that’s not so bad either. Elton really does have “plot armor”, consistently surviving shootings and crashes and explosions and so forth because the story needs him alive, but being a comedy, this sort of thing is expected. There was one weakness to the story, in my opinion. The main antagonist, a Space Corps bigwig named Martin Levinson, is a pretty clichéd character. He’s a bad guy in a business suit, driven by greed and sociopathy without any meaningful complexity behind him, and characters exactly like him have been oozing their way through the offices of sci-fi in various media for decades.

All in all, the story was a good one. I enjoyed it, and I’d recommend it for fans of comedy (specifically off-beat comedy) and sci-fi (including hard sci-fi, which we so rarely see). I’d especially recommend it for sci-fi fans who are looking for something fresh and different.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 36: Demorn: Soul Fighter

demorn 3 The next indie book review I’m doing is for David Finn’s sci-fi fantasy space opera all-around actionfest, Demorn: Soul Fighter. This is the third book of the Demorn series, and I reviewed the first and second of them last year. Those reviews can be found here and here.

As a quick refresher on the premise, Demorn, the Wandering Princess of Swords, is a witty (and sometimes nihilistic) young woman who has time-travelled, space-travelled, and dimension-travelled throughout a multiverse that’s crumbling under the weight of imminent cosmic calamity. She is an extraordinary fighter, making use of guns, fists, a supernatural flaming katana, and a variety of magical objects gifted to her by gods and other entities in her wide and varied travels. She has been a priestess, arena fighter, and presently a mercenary. She also really loves comic books, and is good friends with Frank Sinatra, who happens to be a leader in a resistance against cosmic baddies.

Each of the Demorn books has had a common difficulty. In their freneticism and dimension-jumping and panache, they are confusing as hell. They’re all packed with action which is so well-written and so detailed that it’s a beauty to read, but keeping track of the plot is always challenging. In Soul Fighter, a catastrophe called the Fracture Event has torn apart the multiverse, erasing past timelines and sending beings from one dimension into another, wreaking all kinds of havoc. Members of a cultish organization called the Triton Corporation initiated the Fracture Event for diabolical purposes involving wicked cosmic gods (fans of H.P. Lovecraft will recognize the concept). Demorn starts in a Las Vegas-like metropolis called Bay City, where she competes in Soul Fight tournaments. Each fighter carries several mystical skulls which contain a soul, enabling them to fight and die multiple times. The loser of a fight has their soul-skulls taken away by a Death Banker, shadowing persons with their own motives and allegiances. From this setting, Demorn turns from gladiator to assassin to hunt down one Death Banker who means to release a cross-dimensional plague on the city. This sets her on a path to encounter an old friend and sometimes enemy, Iverson, an operative and detective-like character with whom she embarks on a quest to find the Reset Pyramid, which will enable them to reset time and avert the Fracture Event. Along the way they encounter former friends and rivals and lovers (Demorn, I nearly forgot to mention, is a lesbian), including Demorn’s brother Smile, her former co-priestess Toxis, her former lover Winter, the powerful warriors Wolf and Wrecking Ball, and the white-collar foes within the Triton Corporation. This book also has a brief appendix to help keep track of all the characters, factions, and magical items in the series.

I can’t stress enough that despite how confusing these books are, I love them. Each of them has been an incredibly fun read, and I’d highly recommend them for fans of sci-fi and fantasy. Reflecting on the way the stories work, I see a lot of influence from comic books especially. With the variety of worlds and scenarios and the vivid descriptions, I’ve wondered if the books might be enriched if they were in fact graphic novels instead of prose novels. If the author ever does make a graphic novel of the series, I would be excited to read it, and I certainly look forward to the release of the fourth book in the series, titled Demorn: Ultimate Fate.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 35: Across the Realm: Life Always Finds A Way

Across the realm 1 Again, I’ve gotten off track with these reviews, but again I’m trying to keep at it. This time, I’m reviewing Isobel Mitton’s novel Across the Realm: Life Always Finds A Way. This is the first of the space opera series ‘Across the Realm’, which includes a sequel titled Across the Realm: When Two Tribes Go to War.

When I was asked to read and review this book, I must admit to the cardinal sin of judging a book by its cover. The cover of the first edition looks unfortunately amateurish, and on the basis of that I assumed that I’d read the first twenty percent of this book and conclude that it wasn’t worth my time, as I’ve done for several other indie books. But, this book surprised me. The prose had some rocky points but overall was pretty good, there were relatively few editing errors, and the premise, while certainly out-there, caught and kept my interest. It’s also noteworthy that more recent edition have a new and more professional cover, which I am including in this post.

The book is set in the year 2699. A cultural and physical divide has split the Earth into a northern “realm” and a southern “realm”, which have been at war for centuries. In the north humans live under strict racial segregation. Apart from space travel, they haven’t had a great many scientific breakthroughs since the 21^st century, and their understanding of science, specifically biology, is distorted by their racial ideals. In the south, humans have radically altered into cybernetically enhanced telepathic superhumans who breathe argon and whose bodies are in some way composed of mystic energy. They are racially integrated and mixed, they live for centuries because disease has been eradicated, they have eliminated reproduction by growing embryos in tanks, and they worship their ancestors and Mother Earth, the source of their energy. Water is absolutely poisonous to them. A force field separates the north from the south and both sides seek to break through the force field and conquer the other side of it.

((((((((((((((((SPOILERS HERE IN THIS PARAGRAPH))))))))))))))))A convoluted Romeo-and-Juliet sort of situation develops between Greg, a man and high-ranking soldier from the north, and Naledi, a woman and elite warrior of the south when the two crash onto a planet together after a space battle. Prior to this Naledi received a vision in which she was instructed by her ancestors to restore the humanity of the South, which had deviated too far from natural humanity. Along with Greg and Naledi’s storyline, there are numerous other characters, fighters and spies and priestesses and scientists and so forth, all influencing the direction of the war. The book ends on a cliffhanger, with an enormous battle between the two sides about to begin.

As I said earlier, the premise is out there. Obviously the world and setting are not realistic. The science presented in the work is all nonsense, which we generally accept and overlook in space operas (midichlorians, anyone?). That being said, the story was so committed to its world and so detailed and specific in what it’s like and how it came to be that way that I couldn’t help but be impressed. Some of the character motivations were murky and strained credibility at times, but the main story arcs where engaging and intriguing, and I’m pleased to say that I quite enjoyed the book.

Fans of sci-fi and space opera and readers looking for something original and unique are likely to also enjoy this book.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 34: Shiva XIV

The next book review on this site is Lyra Shanti’s science fiction/space opera novel Shiva XIV, first of the Shiva XIV series, which currently includes three novels and one short story. The series is set in what seems to be a distant future, where humans have established civilizations on several different planets throughout the universe.

The protagonist of the novel is Ayn, the son of the queen of the planet Deius. All of the people on Deius follow a strict religious doctrine, and Ayn is declared at birth to be the fourteenth incarnation of Shiva (a god from real-world Hinduism, although I wasn’t sure if he is meant to be the same god in this novel) and the second incarnation of the spacefaring historical figure The Great Adin, and is consequently given the messianic title Bodanya. As the Bodanya, Ayn is expected to fulfill an ancient prophecy and lead his people into a new age by solving the Great Paradox, a sort of theological issue for the people of Deius. Ayn also happens to be born intersex, with both male and female genitalia. The story follows him from his time as an infant to his early adolescence.

In this future universe, there are ideological divisions among the planets between those who follow religious doctrines and those who strictly follow science. The planets Kri and Ohr are two planets whose people follow science, and as such they are sometime rivals and sometime allies of Deius. The novel’s plot gets going when a meeting of the leaders of these three planets meet, and anti-religious Deiusian extremists attempt to murder Ayn. Ayn escapes with the help of the Ohrian prince, Zin, and adventures and conflict ensue.

The novel’s premise is dynamite. When I started reading it, I immediately began comparing it with Frank Herbert’s Dune for its concept of how religion and cultural divides could continue to shape society even when humanity expands beyond the constraints of our solar system. The beginning of the novel, in my opinion, was its strongest point. Later on though, I thought the novel weakened in some ways. One of Ayn’s mentors is a priest named Pei, and after Ayn and Zin leave Deius he has both a romantic arc and a warrior-training arc, and neither story arc seemed very believable to me based on what the character is like. The friendship between Ayn and Zin also stretched credibility for me. Some aspects of the prose irked as well, specifically use of exclamation points from a third-person omniscient narrator.

But, the novel had its strengths as well. The various settings and otherworldly cultural aspects were described quite well, and with its twists and intrigues and surprises, I wasn’t ever bored with the story. There’s a lot of potential here, not all of which was realized in the first book (which, if I’m not mistaken, was the author’s debut novel), and that gives me hope that the others in the series may expand the novel’s universe and achieve more of its potential while avoiding some of the pitfalls that this novel fell into. With that in mind, I think I will most likely continue with the series and read its second book, The Veil of Truth.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 29: SciFan Magazine January 2017

scifan The next book review I’m doing is a little different than the previous ones. I’m reviewing the January 2017 edition of SciFan Magazine, a monthly digital magazine designed to showcase current and upcoming independent authors. The editor is Richard M. Mulder, whose work I hope to review at a later date. There were thirteen stories/excerpts in the magazine, and I will address each of them here.

The first, ‘Octov’s Rise to Ainoren’ by Dawn Chapman, is an excerpt from the novel The Secret King: Lethao, which I reviewed on this blog here. Chapman’s work is excellently written, with strong detail and description and otherworldly characters who are familiar enough for the reader to empathize, yet whose otherworldly attributes and powers create a sense of wonder while reading. This particular excerpt is full of action and intrigue, and I liked it.

The second, ‘Séance on Death Row’ by Douglas Kolacki, is a short horror story in which a group of people, including a murderer, hold a séance to speak with the murderer’s victim. It was an older style of horror, relying heavily on implication and imagination, with dread permeating the story and with the horror stemming from forces beyond the grave which may be seen but not fully understood. It reminded me of Edgar Alan Poe’s work. I liked it.

The third, ‘The Tot of Wonder’ by John Taloni, is a much more lighthearted and goofy tale of a superhero father who lives with his non-super wife and his super-powered toddler son. There’s not a whole lot to it, but I think it’s geared more toward a young audience. It felt a little out of place in this magazine, but as a work for children I suppose it’s fine.

The fourth, ‘Miss Soames’ by Kyle Hemmings, was an odd one. I can’t say much about it without completely spoiling the story, but I didn’t like it very much. The prose was okay, but the plot was kind of nonsensical, a sort of bait-and-switch horror story that was so busy trying to surprise the reader that it forgot to be scary.

The fifth, ‘Orlok’s Song’ by David Castlewitz, was my favorite in the magazine. In this short story, there is a sentient species called the Peet (animal-like beings) who have been driven from their forest homes by human enterprise. Orlok is the father of a family that tries to survive in the new concrete forest of city slums. The writing in it was beautiful, and the story was brief but excellent in its narrative and conclusion. I’d definitely recommend this one.

The sixth, ‘Voices Beneath the Ice’ by Matthew McKiernan, is a sci-fi story with horror elements involving a trio of astronauts who land on Europa (a moon of Jupiter) and begin to find strange reasons to hate each other. I liked the concept a lot, but some of the prose needed work. I think this story has a lot of potential, and could be really great if some more time was given to it.

The seventh in the magazine is an excerpt from the book Secret of the Old Ones by Blaise Corvin. Its genre is given as LitRPG Sci-Fan™, in which the real world and the world of gaming are both important to the narrative. The only issue I have with the excerpt is that the character never seemed to really be in danger, but since it’s just an excerpt of a larger work, I’m sure there will be more conflict and excitement later in the story. I really liked this excerpt, and I’ll probably read the book at some point.

The eight is also an excerpt, titled ‘The Stirring’ by Jaren Fleming. It was something like Christian creationist science fiction, about a planet that serves God (here called The Father) at war with gooey alien beings that serve Satan. The whole excerpt was nothing but combat, and the writing was good, but I hope there is character development and more fleshing-out of the story in the larger work. I wasn’t a huge fan of the premise, but I can imagine other people liking it quite a lot.

The ninth was ‘Stormguard: The Invisible War’ by Tom Fallwell. It was another case of Christian-themed action sci-fi. I can’t say much about it without spoiling the whole story, but it starts with a man waking up in a crater with no memory of who he is or where he came from. The writing was okay, but I thought the premise was kind of a cliché. This was an excerpt of a larger work as well, but I probably won’t seek out the larger work.

The tenth, ‘Spacejacking’ by Russell Hemmell, seems like it may be an excerpt from a larger work, but it was unclear to me. It’s a futuristic tale of an alien abduction during space exploration, and the subsequent consequences. Again, I can’t say a lot without giving away the entire story, but I liked this one. It had some interesting and unusual ideas in it, and if it is part of a larger work I’d like to see where the story goes.

The eleventh story, ‘The Brat and the Other Country’ by David Perlmutter, was a real oddball. The premise was similar to the film ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’, if that film was a story about superheroes rather than a detective story. In the story, the cartoon characters of Earth actually live on another planet, and the main character is a superhero human who works alongside superhero cartoon characters. I can imagine other people really loving the premise, but it was just a bit too much of a stretch for me.

The twelfth story, ‘In the Hot Mists’ by John A. Frochio, is a steampunk tale about an airship race in which one airship has an unfair advantage because it’s crewed by extraterrestrials. Strange as this premise is, I liked it. The writing was good, it put a new spin on a familiar story, and I think lots of other people would enjoy the story too.

The last story (good job for sticking with me this long!) is ‘The Keystone Islands: Portals of the Grave’ by Lander Allen. It’s the first three chapters of a larger work, a soft sci-fi work set in a universe where Earth is a cultural center resented by the other planets. The tetrapath infection turning its victims into horrific monsters, and the protagonists have come from who-knows-where and are trying to figure out their past in the midst of this plague. It’s well-written and very intriguing, and I’d like to see where the story goes.

So, those are the thirteen stories from the January 2017 edition. I expect to review later editions of the magazine in this blog as well, as it seems like a great way to see at a glance what’s going on in the indie fantasy and sci-fi community.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 22: Stupid Humans

stupid-humans-cover The next indie novel I’m reviewing here is Stupid Humans, by Vivian Cummings (using the pen name V.R. Craft). This is primarily a science fiction novel with strong overtones of satire and social critique. The setting is sometime hundreds or thousands of years in the future, on a space station on the opposite side of a wormhole that has opened hear Earth. Despite the exotic location, the author carefully and cleverly included many familiar aspect of the real and present world, with a focus on the more obnoxious and, well, stupid aspects.

In this book’s backstory, the most intelligent humans on Earth fled the planet millennia ago in an event the rest of the world knew as the sinking of Atlantis. They established a spacefaring civilization and named themselves the People, in contrast to the stupid Humans who they left behind on Earth. The passage of time led to somewhat divergent evolution between the People and the Humans (for example, the People developed tails), and the People saw themselves as in every way superior to the Humans they’d left behind. The novel kicks off some years after a wormhole opens between Earth and the space station Five Alpha, where several thousand People live. The unexpected first contact leads to distrust, fear, political wrangling, business opportunities, and a war which the People’s public relations officials struggle to avoid calling a war. In this conflict we have doctors and politicians and beer moguls and regular Joes of both the Humans and the People all trying to find an unlikely stability.

The writing is very good, the pacing was good, and I thought the story overall was very clever and original. It had many familiar elements to it (in some ways it seemed to take the concept behind the movie Idiocracy and invert the premise) but was very fresh as an independent sci-fi work. There were some small typos throughout the story, but they weren’t concentrated anywhere and they weren’t enough to be distracting. The characters were complex, the dialogue and interactions were quite believable, and there were several legitimately funny bits of comedy throughout the novel.

There was one area where the book had some weakness though. It had quite a lot of characters who were difficult to keep track of, and the character who fell into the protagonist’s role is deliberately mysterious about her motives and backstory. I’m referring to Samantha, a Human bartender and reporter who ends up on Five Alpha and is subject to scrutiny by People who are suspicious of her desire to stay on the station. The question of her motive isn’t answered until the very end of the book, and this crucial aspect of Samantha’s personality prevents the reader from developing a very strong connection with the character.

That being said, Stupid Humans is an intelligent and high-quality work of science fiction, a caliber above many other sci-fi novels that I’ve read. I would definitely recommend it to fans of the genre, and to fans of humor and satire.

Now as always, my bit of promo. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here: New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8–New Book Review 9 –New Book Review 10–New Book Review 11–New Book Review 12–New Book Review 13–New Book Review 14–New Book Review 15–New Book Review 16–New Book Review 17—New Book Review 18–New Book Review 19–New Book Review 20–New Book Review 21

If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

This post was originally featured on cwbookclub.com.

New Book Review 9: Letháo: The Secret King

The ninth book I am reviewing is Letháo: The Secret King, an excellent science fiction novel by Dawn Chapman. It’s a space opera, within the same genre as books, films, and television shows like Star Trek, the Star Wars saga, Dune, and Battlestar Galactica. In some of the Amazon reviews for the book I saw claims that The Secret King follows a plot very similar to Battlestar Galactica. I’ve never seen the show so I couldn’t say. The Secret King was originally conceived as a thirteen-episode TV series (doing some research on it, I get the impression that a show might be coming in the future), and this comes across in the writing. Chapters feel episodic, so the book contains multiple small situations of conflict and resolution within the framework of a large conflict.

The overall story is this: the population of the planet Letháo must evacuate their world. These refugees are led by Kendro and his wife Mika, the king and queen of their world. The monarchs are supported by the captains of the ships and by Kendro’s trusted second-in-command or Ainoren, Octav. These people, a race called the Aonise, are mostly humanoid but have limited abilities involving telepathy and a physical mechanism called ‘croex’. This is a soul-like energy which can allow one Aonise to share strength or the burden of intense pain with other Aonise, among other functions. Some Aonise also have visions of the future. As the refugees seek a new safe haven, they are plagued by attacks from aliens called the Zefron, schemes and power plays from the captains, and human drama around relationships between crew members. Each of these conflicts influences the other conflicts and leads to shifts within the power dynamics of the ship. With the book’s primary focus on the personal interactions rather than the spectacle of the alien attacks, I can certainly see this book working as a character-driven TV series.

The writing was very good. At spots the sentences were rather choppy and there were spots where I noticed misplaced punctuation marks or sentence fragments, but none of it was enough to pull me out of the story. None of it was enough to cringe over. And I promise, I have read books with errors that made me cringe. I don’t like cringing while reading, especially not when the author didn’t mean for the reader to cringe. Not once did I cringe over Dawn Chapman’s work, instead I spent a lot of time genuinely marveling over the quality of the dialogue, setting, and pacing. If she is reading this, then I say to her, nicely done. Very nicely done.

For all its good qualities, there were also a few points of contention I had with it. The timing of events was difficult to follow, because there weren’t many indicators of how many days or weeks passed between events. There were also some events that really strained credibility, particularly regarding the way visions operated in the story. I won’t go too much into that though, as I’d prefer order to avoid spoilers. The way the book ended, it seems that there will certainly be a sequel, so the questions of credibility may be answered in the future. If there is a sequel forthcoming , I look forward to it.

So, to wrap this up, I highly recommend this book for sci-fi and space opera fans. It’s a strong addition to the genre, and I’m really excited to see where else the story may lead.

Now, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8

If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.