Into the Black: Odyssey One Review

And we're back. Things have been slow, but we forge ahead with another review (and one in the pipeline). For now, let's talk about Into the Black: Odyssey One by Evan C. Currie, shall we?

The book takes place roughly a hundred years in the future (or so, it's never precisely stated). We follow our hero, Captain Eric Weston of the NAC Odyssey on its maiden voyage, a mission that sends humanity outside of our own solar system for the first time. Exploration is the goal, but because of the recent end to the war, they go armed with some of the latest weapons and defenses, and crewed by hardened warriors who had no place in the uneasy peace on Earth.

I must say, I really wasn't expecting much from this. It starts off slow, and almost too cheesily for my tastes. Don't get me wrong, I love cheese. Love it. But if it's not entertaining cheese, then I won't give it the time to grow into something more entertaining.

Fortunately for me, Into the Black became extremely entertaining cheese. I don't want to spoil too much, but I will say that the story continues with the Odyssey discovering an alien race under attack by something that just about every military SF book encounters: bugs. There is a lot of homage going on here, so much that there are a few characters that even point out how it seems like they're in an old SF novel.

Currie completely won me over when the phrase for marines on the move is "on the bounce!", something that none of them know where it orginates, only that it has something to do with the fact that they're wearing powered armor, and supposedly there was a book about powered armor way back when where the soldiers would say that. The Heinlein-homages are plentiful, and welcome.

The book also revels in the "humans are born killers" trope common in military-SF, most notable in the Man-Kzinn Wars books. In Into the Black, humans are less advanced technologically in most aspects. Our laser weapons barely rate above a comm-system compared to the aliens, but in the crucible of several World Wars, we've learned how to use what we have, and use that ability to great effect.

Honestly, I liked this book way, way more than I thought I would. Will it make any top 10 lists for me? Probably not, but I will highly recommend it for some light, fun reading that you can sit back and just soak in.

Rating: 8/10

Audible Edition Rating: 8/10

The Automatic Detective: Review

This is what I've been looking for. Good pulpy detective fiction with a main character who's a robot built to take over the world and his pal a talking Gorilla? How the hell could I not love this?

The Automatic Detective follows the story of our hero, Mack Megaton (again, look at this name! Genius!), an eight-foot tall sapient robot who has developed a glitch in his programming, and instead of taking over the world for his creator, the evil and insane Professor Megalith, he rebelled, and applied for citizenship in the home of the weird, Empire City.

Empire City is every 1950s futurist's dream come to life. Cars are no more, replaced with helo-cars, walking cars, jumping cars, basically you name a method of locomotion that doesn't evolve four-wheeled travel then Empire City uses it. Science reigns supreme, with the Learned Council overseeing the regulation of it and the rest of the laws in the city. Weird science abounds, radiation is so prevalent that mutations are just something you deal with, and robots are a part of everyday life.

Which is why Mack wants to make an honest go of it. So the Council gives him the benefit of the doubt, and he is put on close watch until he demonstrates that he's not going to go crazy and try to bring mankind to its knees. So he gets a job to pay for his electric bill as a taxi driver, and every day he goes next door to his neighbor's apartment so they can tie his bowtie for him (which is apparently something he wasn't really designed for).

Which is when things get messy. The family is kidnapped, and he's taken it upon himself to find them no matter the cost.

This book is pretty fantastic. It has all the conventions of classic noir-detective stories, with a femme fatale, mouthy sidekick, and hero-detective with a devil may care attitude and nothing left to lose. Martinez even nails the style:

She had long legs that went on forever, circling the curve of space and meeting themselves back at the end of eternity. And her face: it belonged in movies. Monster movies. The kind where some thing with six eyes and a lamprey mouth sucks teenagers' brains.

A. Lee Martinez did a really great job with the story, crafting a mystery that kept you wondering but was also fast paced and filled with robot-pounding-action, The Automatic Detective is an instant recommendation for anyone who thinks that Dashiell Hammet, Terry Pratchett and Isaac Asimov could combine to form some sort of Voltron-esque story of pulpy fun and just pure awesomeness.

My only complaint with the book is that it's perfectly set up for a sequel, or even a series, but so far there has been no word of any. Please, Mr. Martinez, please return to the world of Mac Megaton and Empire City and show us what happens next. I'd be forever in your debt.

Rating: 9/10

Bitter Seeds (Milkweed Triptych #1): Review

Gasp! What is this, another blog entry? Could it be?

Yes, I know, it's been a long time since the last post, which had been an even longer time since the one before that. Apologies, gentle readers (imaginary though you may be), but I have been busy preparing for April's Scriptfrenzy challenge (a widget for which can be found on the far right sidebar), which began yesterday. I'll post more of that, with possible excerpts from my work in progress later. For now though, let's review Bitter Seeds. Join me, won't you?

Bitter Seeds, by Ian Tregillis, is an alternate-history story set in World War II, in a world that the supernatural really does exist in. The Nazis have put together a team of super-soldiers, each with a different ability. Think of it as a dieselpunk Nazi X-Men. One man has the power of flight, another pyrokinesis, and a third the ability to walk through walls. Then there is the girl who can become invisible, and most important of all, the young woman that can see the future. These abilities are not free to use though, instead they have wires implanted into their skulls which pump electricity straight into their brains from a battery they must wear on their belts.

Thanks to this, the course of the war is changed. I won't go into how it is, suffice to say that in this altered timeline, the Nazis are taking Europe by storm, and the only nation willing to fight them is Great Britain, itself battered and almost crippled. So they seek out their own weapon of unnatural means: a secret order of Warlocks who commune with the very forces of Reality.

They don't perform magic, per se. Instead they communicate and make deals with a race of "aliens" (or extradimensional beings, whatever) who are able to shape the fabric of reality at their will. For a price. And this price is always, always in blood.

Bitter Seeds is not a lighthearted read. The reader is treated to sections from both sides point of view, a tactic which humanizes both, treating both the British protagonists and the Nazi antagonists as humans, characters that are introduced as children who are moulded to fit a life by the men who raised them. None of the main characters are good, nor are they evil really. They walk a fine line in a world shaded by grays, and must deal with the consequences of their actions.

I really enjoyed Bitter Seeds, and while it was not perfect, Ian Tregillis crafted an excellent first novel, the first in a trilogy. Do I want to see what happens next? Absolutely. But I think I might need a break from the bleakness of this new world, and seek entertainment elsewhere before continuing on in the sequel, the Coldest War.

If you are interested in alternate-histories of World War II (and beyond), enjoy a supernaturally charged book that feels almost too real to actually be dubbed as true "dieselpunk" or urban fantasy of any sort, then I would highly recommend this debut novel.

Rating: 7/10

Note on Edition: I listened to the edition produced by Audible Frontiers, narrated by Kevin Pariseau. A quick word on this edition; when I first began to listen to Mr. Pariseau's narration, I really did not enjoy it. But as soon as we got into the real dialogue, and the meat of the story, that turned around. His accents, while a little colorful for the German characters, were nonetheless interesting and well done. He impressed me with his range, and if you are a big audio book person (like I am), then you will enjoy his rendition.

Narration: 8/10

Thirteen: Review

Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan Audible Edition Narrated by Simon Vance

Cover of Thirteen

One hundred years from now, the world has changed. The United States is no more, Mars has been colonized, and China is the preeminent super power. Genetic enhancement is the cutting edge tech of the day, and the Variant Thirteen is the ultimate in enhanced soldier. But they're nothing new, no, they're the complete opposite. They're men with genes that have been reverse engineered to be more like humans were twenty-thousand years ago. Back when they ruled by sheer, individual power. They're the men who refused to settle and become farmers; they're the men who roamed the world and slew and savaged their way to glory and gold.

But then the rest of humanity decided there was more profit in an agrarian lifestyle, that cities and civilization were more important. So these men of power were bred out of the population. Then Genetic Variant Thirteen is created, bred and raised to be the best soldier there could be, the last cry of patriarchal society before it is ground to dust by the wave of "feminization" that is sweeping the world.

The story follows Carl Marsalis, by and large, a British black Thirteen(as the UK edition is named) who somehow made it back from Mars and became a bounty hunter, making money off of hunting his fellow thirteens, who have been exiled to prison camps after being deemed too dangerous to live freely in human society.

If you've never read Richard K. Morgan, then you may not be prepared for some of the savagery that is on display in Thirteen. His style is a hardboiled neo-noir, through and through, and he does not shy away from the rough stuff. Explicit sex scenes, gruesome gun battles, men who don't give a damn about the moral implications of an action and women who can't give it away fast enough are all par for the course for Morgan. Generally, it's pretty entertaining.

I really like noir, and I really, really like science fiction. So when the two overlap, I'm more than eager to read it. Thirteen wasn't the first book of Morgan's that I've read. Before that was the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, beginning with Altered Carbon (which is fantastic). So when I started this, I knew that it would be slow going at first, and I was absolutely right on that count. The first dozen chapters (give or take) are a bit of a slog to get through, but once you're done and the mystery actually gets going you're in for a treat.

Morgan is absolutely not for everyone, and Thirteen isn't his best work, though that is a matter of opinion (as one longtime friend vehemently disagrees with me on). It's absolutely worth reading if you like the style, or if you were a fan of his Kovacs books, which it could be argued this is a precursor to. If you're at all squeamish, by violence, rough language, or sexual depictions (which are the most graphic, I think), then Morgan and Thirteen are not for you.

Rating: 7/10

Audio Edition Rating: 5/10

Note on Edition: I listened to this after purchasing it on Audible.com, as I'm a pretty avid listener to audio books. This was a huge mistake, as this book is a little more complex than I generally like my audio books, and the narrator (Simon Vance), while excellent at his role, was too similar to other audio books of the same genre that kept making them blend together in my head as I listened. If you hadn't listened to other Simon Vance narrations, then this might be better for you. Personally, this seems like a book that is better read than listened to.