Mil-SF with Mecha!

Some recent acquisitions that I acquired. The Partlow books are highly recommended as being for being so very moreish. The stories grip you by the throat and won't let go.

Splashdown is the first novel for the Land & Sea series, which is a new mecha based tabletop wargame coming soon. More info here, miniatures and more are coming too.

Pardoe starts the story very much in the style of Tom Clancy. Then about halfway into the first book he takes the story up to the next level, making you feel the hurt and pain that the characters are going through.

Book three, chapter twenty-eight really moved me. I'll say no more. I will leave reviews when I have time on Amazon and Goodreads. Again, recommended.

Slow Horses: Strange Game - Mick Jagger

I've read the first six books, and I'm now looking forward to the opportunity to watch the TV series. Of course, that means signing up for Apple TV, but they also have a couple of other shows we'd both like to watch, so it will happen some time soon.

For soon that is defined as in the near future.

Worth watching just for the Mick Jagger theme song. The humour is very British, but that's a good thing, and then there's Gary Oldman, and he's well worth watching too.

New Books Splurge

 

Have recently blitzed through Kristine Kathryn Rusch's The Diving Universe, after being compelled to buy all the books in this series, which should tell you everything you need to know about how much we enjoyed reading them.

An author who I highly recommended, so much so that we've started on her Retrieval Artist series, and today the next two books came in our Amazon delivery.

Along with more books to go on my to be read pile, including Myke Cole's latest. So this should keep us busy during the lockdown.

Summer Reading Fun: Part 3

 

My sudden spurt of reading has been driven by seeing the size of my unread book pile.  My original count was 38 novels sitting around, gathering dust, and generally sniggering at me while lowering property values.

That's a joke for those with no sense of humour.

This motivated me to dive into my unread pile, but I have to confess that I have recently bought some new books.  The new arrivals include the William C. Deitz's novel Into the Guns, which is the first in a new series; Tanya Huff's new Confederation novel A Piece Divided; and Larry Correia's Monster Hunter Siege, which I bought in hardback because I couldn't wait despite knowing I won't read it immediately I had to have it.

Colour me a fan of the Monster Hunter series.

So my unread novels currently stands at 30 books: made up of 16 new books, and 14 old books to be re-read.

I've known about William C. Dietz's work for a while, but like all things, it can take me a while to get around to reading an author.  He's known for his Legion of the Damned series, but I didn't start there, but rather with his prequels series that begins with Andromeda's Fall.

I found this an enjoyable read.  

The heroine, who starts from a place of comfort,  has to escape assassination when the new Empress takes to the throne and decides it is a necessary thing to kill all the supporters and relatives of the old emperor.  It's a reversal of the rags-to-riches plot with added murder, death, and intrigue set against the French Foreign Legion in space!  And by this I mean Dietz uses the heritage of French Foreign Legion as the framework for a future version as the setting of his story.

It works for me, it may not work for people who are not interested in or who abhor military history being seen as something other than a blot upon humanities record as a species.  

I breezed through the series, made easier by the fact that each book starts where the other finishes.  So, this is truly a trilogy, and not a series of three books set in the same universe.  The ending is clearly delineated, and though I've not read the main series, it serves the purpose of being a prequel for the Legion of the Damned, and is a good introduction to Dietz's Legion setting.

The fact that I bought a copy of the first book of his new series tells you all you need to know.

United States of Japan

They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but when I saw the book United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas I just had to buy it.  The question though is the story as good as the cover promises? 

Unfortunately, I can't tell you because I got to page 143 and had to stop.  I read the end and that was even less convincing so I put the book down unfinished.  Ultimately, it came down to various things within the novel that threw me out of the narrative and by page 143 I was fed up with reading the book.  I've thought about saying a lot more things about why, but decided that muzukashi desu neh – it is difficult – sums up my position.  So, in short, not my cup of tea, it may be yours.

Sorry to be so negative, but look at that cover.  Isn't it awesome.

You can now read an article of mine on Galactic Journey.  I'm very pleased to have been invited to write for Tak Hallus's blog and you can expect to see more from me.  I imagine once a month but could be wrong.

Writing wise, I been working through Ghost Dog doing an out loud read through, which is harder than it sounds.  I only managed to edit 15,429 words this week because of the day job, which is going OK and makes me think about stuff that I may even get around to writing about at some point.  So that's it for another week, see you all on the bounce.

NB: This review is a learning experience, in that it made me realize I don't have to write reviews of things I don't like. After all, my opinion is no more valuable than anyone else's.

Another Late WIP Update 16th Apr 2015

Oh my, running late because I again forgot to post yesterday.  

Been a bit lost in diving back into my writing.  Currently editing my third novel, working title Ghost Dog , which is currently running at 98,752 words, with the first 41,648 words processed in what I'm calling the first revision.  It's mostly correcting the little things like punctuation, sentence length, while marking passages that suck badly for further editing the next time round.  

My plan being just to knock the text into rough shape, while re-reading the  story to make sure it works; as in it the plot makes sense.

On other things to come, I'm working on my Dysprosium review.  Delayed in part because of pictures from my beloved, who still hasn't sent them to me yet.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll post the first of three posts.

Reading wise I've finished Equoid by Charlie Stross, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but it has a very British sensibility about it.  My pitch line for it is My Little Pony meets Cthulhu with a shout out to Cold Comfort Farm.  

Therefore it may not be to everyone's taste, but as I like my humour black, unsweetened, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  Also, it has the decided plus point of not being overly long, which in today's market is very refreshing.

We also went into town (as in the centre of London), and visited both Orcs Nest and Forbidden Planet.  

The former is my dealer of choice for my gaming needs, the latter is where I buy most of my novels.  A long time ago, when I use to live in Brighton, I worked for the local Forbidden Planet franchise holder as a book buyer, which would entail me making trips up to London to visit the warehouse to select the books to be sent to Brighton.  

Some nice memories, and it has left with me with a certain fondness for shopping with them.

We bought half a dozen novels while we were there: The Rhesus Chart by Charlie Stross, Feed by Mira Grant aka Seanan McGuire, Storm Front (Book 1 of The Dresden files) by Jim Butcher, The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell, Monster Hunter Nemesis by Larry Correia, and Alternate Realities (a compilation of three short novels – Port Eternity, Wave Without a Shore & Voyager in the Night) by C. J. Cherryh.  It may take some time to read them all, especially given how hard I've found it of late to read fiction.

So that's it for this week's update.