Review of Jump Twist Gate – a Jon and Lobo duology by Mark L. Van Name

This duology of the first two books, One Jump Ahead and Slanted Jack, in the popular Jon and Lobo series was released by Baen in a smart marketing move a couple of years ago.

Jon Moore: A nanotech enhanced wanderer who wants nothing more than a quiet life and a way back to his strange home world. Lobo: An incredibly intelligent machine equipped for any environment from the sea to interstellar space. Two battle-scarred veterans unwilling to tolerate injustice. Together in a jam-packed collection that not only includes the two novels, but also two short stories giving some of the backstory to the two protagonists and an interestingly frank foreword and afterword by the author.  I read the third book in the series last year, Overthrowing Heaven, and was very impressed – so when I got the opportunity to grab a copy of this duology off the shelves, I took it. Did it live up to my expectations?

This series falls into the adventure/military science fiction sub-genre. Sort of. Because although Jon is an ex-mercenary who offers his services for hire – including his lethally effective battleship – he is also allergic to killing anyone. Indeed, he goes to great lengths to try and avoid using lethal force and if someone does die, Jon treats it as a very big deal. I have to say that I find this approach to the inevitable violence very refreshing and a lot more thought provoking than those shoot-em-ups where bodies are constantly being blown up or ripped apart in a variety of gory ways.

I also very much enjoyed the unfolding relationship between Jon and Lobo. In One Jump Ahead, Jon meets Lobo for the first time and they work together. Jon’s enhancements have forced him to be constantly careful how he interacts with other people, as his greatest fear is finding himself locked up by some large corporation and treated like a labrat as they discover exactly how he came by his unique abilities. One of the consequences of these enhancements is his ability to communicate directly with the machines around him – including, of course, Lobo, his intelligent battleship. Lobo’s constant frustration with Jon’s micro-managing temperament creates a nicely sharp relationship between the two of them, which gradually deepens into trust and genuine affection – from Jon’s side, anyway. We can only guess at what Lobo really thinks…

However, Lobo isn’t the only machine that Jon can communicate with – he is also able to chat and eavesdrop on drinks dispensers and toasters, which produces some amusing interludes. I really enjoy this world – the inevitable mcguffin that allows humanity to zip around the universe in next to no time are a series jump gates, apparently left or seeded by another species. All very convenient – but there are also a number of interesting aspects to these gates that have a bearing on the plot, in addition to creating extra layers to the story and giving faster-than-light travel extra zip, something that this author is adept at doing.

In a sub-genre where a number of effective world-building writers manage to create their particular brand of magic at the expense of characterisation, Van Name’s characters are believable and suitably complex, allowing him to weave engrossing and complicated plots in first person viewpoint. Indeed, approaching the climax in Slanted Jack, I actually felt physically nervous… If you enjoy fast paced, lively space opera featuring interesting characters then this is a must-read – even if you don’t generally dip your toe into science fiction on the grounds that all that nerdy, techie stuff gets in the way of a good story, you owe it to yourself to track down this book. It’s worth it.
10/10

Review of Age of Aztec – Book 4 in the Pantheon series by James Lovegrove

The date is 4 Jaguar 1 Monday 1 House; November 25th 2012 by the old reckoning. The Aztec Empire rules the world, in the name of Quetzalcoatl – the Feathered Serpent – and her brother gods. The Aztec reign is one of cruel and ruthless oppression, fuelled by regular human sacrifice. In the jungle-infested city of London, one man defies them: the masked vigilante known as the Conquistador.  Mal Vaughan, one of the Jaguar Warriors, who police affairs in London, is determined to track down and put a stop to the Conquistador – a determination honed by the knowledge that if she doesn’t deliver, her life will be forfeit…

This is the fourth offering in Lovegrove’s wonderful series that has humans locked in a struggle with various unreasonable deities from different periods in history. As one review commented, Lovegrove is vigorously carving out a godpunk subgenre. So, the question has to be, does Age of Aztec live up to the high standard set by previous offerings in the series?

We follow the exploits of the Conquistador as he rebels against the might of the Aztec Empire for his own reasons – a personal tragedy that sums up, for him, all that is wrong with the current regime. Britain had been one of the last countries on the planet to fall under Aztec domination and as a patriot, the Conquistador – or Stuart Reston, to use his everyday identity – yearns for the country’s lost freedom. But as the chase between Stuart and Mal intensifies, the unique twists that Lovegrove has made his own in this series transform this book into something far cleverer and more memorable.

Readable and engrossing, this page-turner has its own share of dark humour as well as well-rounded protagonists that we care about. Lovegrove’s smart intellect shines through his prose and shows in the pin-sharp perfection of his pacing and plot structure. The startling backdrop – London simmers in equatorial heat as monkeys and creepers infest the streets with ziggurats littering the landscape – is well described without holding up the action. Which is just as well, because this book starts with a bang and doesn’t let up till the final, shocking climax.

As you may have gathered, I really enjoyed this book – it’s one of my outstanding reads of the year, so far. But don’t take my word for it – grab a copy and allow yourself to be whisked up by the adventure. You’ll be thanking me if you do…
10/10

Review of EBOOK Atlantis by Greg Donegan

What if the Shadow that destroyed Atlantis 10,000 years ago, comes back to threaten our present world? A war beyond time. An enemy beyond space. A thriller beyond your wildest dreams. Three areas on the Earth’s surface defy explanation: the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil’s Sea of Japan, and a small region of Cambodia. Inside these realms, planes have disappeared, ships have vanished, and, in Cambodia, an entire civilization has been lost leaving behind Angkor Wat.

In 1945, Training Flight 19 disappears in the Bermuda Triangle. In 1963, the USS Thresher, a nuclear submarine, is lost under unusual circumstances, part of a secret government investigation into mysterious gates.

Near the end of the Vietnam War, Green Beret Eric Dane led a team of operatives deep into Cambodia and encountered a strange fog near the legendary city of Angkor Kol Ker. His entire team disappears, attacked by strange creatures out of the fog. Only Dane survives to return. Now a plane goes down. In the same area Dane lost his team. He’s called back. To find out who is the darkness behind these gates to our planet. What does this Shadow force want? It is a threat that will take on the world’s greatest military forces and defeat them. A power that will overwhelm our science and technology. A merciless enemy that will lead Dane—and the whole planet—into the final desperate battle for survival.

And there you have the blurb of this military science fiction thriller – although it reads far too much like a synopsis to me… It took me a while to get into this story, which has a really old fashioned feel – omniscient viewpoint isn’t my favourite narrative as I feel that the characterisation tends to suffer. In addition at the start, we kept dotting around all over the place as Donegan’s initial info-dump seemed to stretch on forever.

However, once we finally got to the meat of the story, I found it an enjoyable concept and an intriguing take on both the Bermuda Triangle and Chernobyl. Dane was the stand-out character and I felt that if Donegan had pared back some of the other bods that occasionally popped up, the storyline would have been tauter. There were a number of scenes that I felt silted up the narrative flow, rather than driving the plot forward. Having said that, the Cambodian adventure worked very well and the passages in the crashed aircraft as the tension rose were also effective. Once the story finally picked up pace, I began to see why Donegan is a popular author as he certainly cranked up the tension and produced a satisfying conclusion to this particular story arc, while leading onto the next book in this series.

However, a much bigger problem was the number of editing mistakes, including misspelled words, punctuation errors and odd line breaks in places. While I’m aware that the Kindle edition of this book was very cheap, the error-riddled text has contributed to my decision not to go browsing again in the ‘Special Offer’ section. If you can zone out the bloopers, then by all means go for it – however, I can’t. I spend far too much of my life poring over texts looking for such mistakes and to keep tripping over them in a published book was annoyingly distracting and certainly prevented me from completely bonding with the story. Which was a shame, because Donegan’s concept of an alien threat to humankind nested within our far history, while not totally original, deserves better than the sloppy edit it has received.
6/10

Review of Overthrowing Heaven – Book 3 of the Jon and Lobo series by Mark L. Van Name

This is another excellent offering from Baen – which immediately tells those of you in the know that this is adventure space opera, with something of a military edge. There is plenty of action, with plot twists aplenty and two strong protagonists who fully engaged my sympathies and drew me into the world.

Jon Moore grew up on an island of outcasts and in a prison laboratory. When he escaped, memories of the things he’d done still haunted him and he often helped those in need. This particular adventure began as a favour to a woman trying to get away from an abusive household. However, his kindnesses frequently didn’t work out well. This one really didn’t work out well.

It hurled John and Lobo, the intelligent assault vehicle and Jon’s only friend, down an accelerating, dangerous spiral involving: private armies and government covert ops teams; a courtesan who always seems a step ahead of him; rival superpowers that define ethics as whatever doesn’t get in their way; and a brilliant, amoral scientist to whom human beings are just more experimental animals – and who might be Lobo’s creator.

I have to say that the book is better than it sounds on the blurb – I’m not convinced that their back-of-the book summaries are one of Baen’s strengths. However, there is nothing wrong with the quality of their current stable of authors – I’ve recently read a batch of Baen books which have all impressed me and Van Name is one more to add to the list.

His characterisation of Jon is extremely deftly done in first person viewpoint – we get a real sense of how damaged and closed off he is because of his horrific childhood. At times, this is played for laughs – Jon’s complete cluelessness with women and Lobo’s merciless teasing creates some welcome humour in amongst the ever-tightening tension. There are also times when Jon’s essential loneliness creates a real sense of poignancy. I also very much liked the fact that despite their formidable strengths, Lobo and Jon are not depicted as invincible. They are up against a major organisation and there is a realistic appreciation of just what a difficult business it is for an outsider to gain access to Wei, the unscrupulous scientist, whom Jon and Lobo are contracted to extract. The other aspect to this book, which is a recurring theme throughout, is that Jon is determined that no one should die unnecessarily. He constantly wants to use trank weapons and is concerned that injuries he inflicts on his opponents aren’t life threatening. In a genre where violence is a staple and bloodstained bodies are part of the landscape, I found this preoccupation both enjoyable and a refreshing change. Jon is very aware that it is only his moral compass that sets him apart from a monstrous killing machine – and doesn’t let the reader forget it, yet manages to avoid any kind of preaching. It’s a clever trick to pull off.

Van Name’s pacing is faultless. It zips along at an appreciable rate so that a 541 page book didn’t seem long, yet at no time what I ever left in any doubt exactly what was happening in any of the action scenes. He also manages to effectively provide the whole unfolding plotline from a single viewpoint without sliding into omniscient viewpoint or holding up the action with a lot of description – an achievement which is a great deal harder than Van Name makes it look. He also earns a gold star from me by managing to make a third book in a series sufficiently stand alone, that I didn’t feel I was missing anything by not having read the two earlier books, One Jump Ahead and Slanted Jack. Having said that, I’m definitely going to try and get hold of them – Van Name is a great storyteller whose world is worth another visit.

10/10

Review of Twisted Metal by Tony Ballantyne

This is a story all about robots, living in a robot world. But before you embark on this novel– know that the grim cover is far closer to the tone and style of this book than any cosy childhood memories you might harbour of Metal Mickey…

Penrose: A world of intelligent robots who have forgotten their own distant past. A world where all metal, even that of their own wire-based minds, is fought over – a valuable resource to be reused and recycled.  Now full-scale war looms, as the soldiers of Artemis sweep across the continent of Shull, killing or converting every robot to their stark philosophy. Only the robots of Turing City stand in their way. Robots who believe that they are something more than metal. Karel is one such robot. Or is he?

Ballantyne has pulled off a nifty trick, here. He has produced a credible world of metal beings who are gendered – the male robots provide the wire that the females can twist and weave into a mind that powers the average robot for somewhere between thirty to forty years. However, females in Artemis no longer take time to think and decide exactly what traits they are going to include into their children’s minds – they are indoctrinated into the ethos of Nyros, that all minds are only metal, so each robot’s needs and wishes is subordinate to the State. I’m sure this is starting to ring bells amongst the non-robots amongst you… While the action scenes and carnage surround the war are depicted with clarity and power, this book is so much more than a military shoot ‘em up romp.

As we are pulled into the action through the varying viewpoints of Ballantyne’s cast of metal characters, we are confronted with some familiar themes and ideas set in a novel background. It works extremely well in giving a fresh spin on the themes of the rights of the individual, opposed to that of the State… the rise of myths in the need to create stories that make sense of our beginnings and our role within our landscape… the sheer brutality of war… And if you don’t believe that metal creatures who can replace severed limbs with a couple of clicks are able to be tortured, Ballantyne gives a disturbingly visceral plausibility to their ability to inflict all sorts of suffering on each other…

This is an engrossing, well-told story about an intriguing world and I’m currently halfway through the sequel, Blood and Iron, in which humankind puts in an appearance and it is every bit as good as the first book. I highly recommend this thought-provoking read that will be lingering in my mind long after I’ve finished with the series…

10/10

Review of The Cobra Trilogy by Timothy Zahn

In a very smart marketing move back in 2004, Baen gathered together this fine series of books and put them into an omnibus edition. This is the first time I’ve actually encountered Timothy Zahn’s writing – although I’d heard plenty about him, but hadn’t been in any real hurry to pick up one of his books as I have only limited enthusiasm for shoot ‘em up military action science fiction. However I now realise that I was seriously selling Zahn short – his work is far more than that…

The colony worlds Adirondack and Silvern fell to the Troft forces almost without a struggle. Outnumbered and on the defensive, Earth made a desperate decision. It would attack the aliens not from space, but on the ground – with forces the Trofts did not even suspect. Thus were created the Cobras, a guerrilla force whose weapons were surgically implanted, invisible to the unsuspecting eye, yet undeniably deadly. But power brings temptation… and not all the Cobras could be trusted to fight for Earth alone. Jonny Moreau would learn the uses – and abuses – of his special abilities, and what it truly meant to be a Cobra.

It sounds like just one more super-soldier adventure with warfare the staple and the protagonist spending his days dealing with a deadly enemy and corrupt officialdom on his own side… But it isn’t. Oh, there’s plenty of action, alright. Written with verve and tension – but the book quickly shoots off into another direction, exploring the far more intriguing political and social aspects of having a bunch of surgically enhanced fighters within a community. While they may be capable of saving a planet from a deadly alien invasion – what happens when the threat goes away and the majority of your force has survived the war?

This is just one of the questions Zahn’s enjoyable action-filled series raises – and for my money this is science fiction at its best. Layered in amongst the various adventures are a number of gnarly issues for readers to consider if they wish. Issues such as right versus might; at what stage does one society with superior technology intervene in the affairs of another planet to prevent a perceived threat? How far should a soldier follow orders?

Baen were spot-on in republishing this series, as Zahn’s writing style and general tone hasn’t dated although this series was originally released back in the 1980’s. His unfussy style manages to keep the action rolling forward through multiple viewpoints, avoiding the chunks of info-dumping so often prevalent with this sub-genre. It takes a lot of skill to set a storyline spanning several worlds while following a family down three generations as they grapple with another Cobra-related problem, without resorting to pages of background information in omniscient viewpoint. Some of my favourite authors can’t do it – but Zahn can.

I now realise why Timothy Zahn’s name still regularly comes up when fans discuss their favourite all-time reads – and I’ll be looking out for more of his work. While I don’t generally subscribe to the view that the golden age of science fiction writing occurred during the last century – there are too many fine contemporary authors producing excellent work for me to get dewy-eyed about past glories – I’m perfectly willing to add a few books from times past to the pile of books-to-read teetering beside my bed and this trilogy is certainly up there as one of my favourite reads of the year, so far…

10/10

Review of Age of Ra by James Lovegrove

As the cover denotes, this is a military science fiction adventure – but being James Lovegrove, it isn’t quite that straightforward…

David Westwynter, previous CEO of the famous Senet boardgame company, is a special operations officer in His Pharaonic Majesty’s Service on a covert mission in Arabia that goes wrong. Captured and narrowly escaping being blown to pieces, he is presumed dead by his own side and decides against escaping from his beautiful captor, when she leads him to The Lightbringer. This masked stranger has achieved the impossible – in the space of a few short years, he has managed to unite the warlords of Freegypt. This one part of the world has escaped being under the control of any of the destructive and uncaring Egyptian Pantheon, whose family feuds and squabbles have plunged Earth into habitual war for the past century. The Lightbringer promises to rid the world of these gods…

It is a fascinating premise. Lovegrove, being the writer he is, doesn’t spend much time filling in his complex world. In between skirmishes, we readers are expected to keep up, given the info-nuggets dropped by David and his comrades in arms. So this is a more demanding read than your average shoot ‘em up. However, despite the background complexity, there is plenty of action for the war-minded and I think this book would make a wonderful film.

I thoroughly enjoyed some delicious scenes featuring the gods themselves – who manage to make your average dysfunctional family appearing on the Gerry Springer Show look like the Waltons. Lovegrove’s depiction of the weary, well-meaning patriarch, Ra, is particularly smart and witty.

There are some interesting twists throughout the book – especially when it comes to revealing who the Lightbringer is. I initially was a bit uneasy at the choice, concerned that there were some colonial/right-wing views seeping into the story. Let’s face it, some military science fiction tends to be somewhat conservative in its political outlook. But Lovegrove is too sophisticated for that – and by the end, wraps everything up extremely well. To the extent that he has given an opening for the next two books, The Age of Odin and The Age of Zeus, which I shall definitely make an effort to read.
8/10

Review of The Last Colony – Book 3 of the Old Man’s War series

If you enjoy military sci-fi with an intriguing world, lots of action and a protagonist whose bone-dry humour makes you grin even as blood and bullets are flying – then Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series should be on your ‘Must-read’ list. Not least, because Scalzi’s fascinating angle makes these books interesting even if you aren’t a major fan of the sub-genre. That said, I wouldn’t advise starting with The Last Colony as there are several major plot twists in each book to keep the narrative tension humming. Although if you do decide to dive in at Book Three, Scalzi has incorporated a masterly summary of ‘the story so far’, which I wish other authors of multi-book series would emulate.

A citizen of Earth, seventy-year-old John Perry, enlists as a Colonial Union soldier after the death of his wife. As promised, his consciousness is uploaded into a highly efficient body in the peak of condition. However, there is a catch to this renewed youthfulness. Perry discovers that out in space, Humanity is surrounded by a variety of other intelligent beings all wanting to colonise the same limited number of suitable planets. The result is bloody warfare. After serving his allotted time, Perry, his wife and adopted daughter finally settle down to live peacefully as administrators and farmers. Until the Colonial Union ask Perry and Jane to head up a new colony.
But en route to their destination, Perry realises that things don’t add up. The Colonial Union have provided more food than is usual for a seed colony and there is a hold full of obsolete equipment. When they arrive to discover that the planet filling their viewscreens isn’t the one they had planned on settling, it starts to become apparent that the Colonial Union are playing a dangerous game of hide and seek with the newly formed alien alliance – and their little colony is the playing piece…

Perry is definitely a cut above the average protagonist. His sharp humour and intelligently drawn character pulls the reader in – and compares favourably with Robert Buettner’s Jason Wander series, which by the fourth book seems to have run out of impetus. This is partly because Scalzi’s series doesn’t merely offer the reader more of the same in each book. The issues surrounding uploading human consciousness into a new body are thoroughly explored in the previous two books, while this tale examines the political situation that Scalzi has created.
In most military sci-fi, politics and politicians are only a micron further up the villainy scale from whatever alien foe our valiant forces are fighting. And this series is no exception. If anything, Scalzi is even more grittily cynical about the casual manner in which the Colonial Union sacrifice their troops.

I very much like his world, where Earth is allowed to stagnate in a relative backwater, producing cannon fodder for the battles raging around the surrounding universe in cloned bodies equipped with progressively more sophisticated survival traits. While the action and frantic tempo required in this sub-genre never falters, Scalzi nevertheless manages to raise some issues regarding the morality of using human beings – and some aliens – in such a cold-blooded manner. It’s a neat trick to pull off and I am now looking out for his other books.
8/10

Review of Peacekeeper by Laura E. Reeve

Military science fiction fans might find the cover of this debut novel from Reeve somewhat misleading, as it isn’t merely some high-octane, shoot-‘em-up kill fest. Not that I’ve got anything against such books – they’re great escapist blasts. But Peacekeeper is something more.
Fifteen years ago, Ariane Kedros piloted a ship on a mission that obliterated an entire solar system. Branded a war criminal, she was given a new identity and had to forge a new life. In return, as a Reservist, she regularly goes on undercover missions where she does her duty – and someone else’s dirty work. But now twelve of Ariane’s wartime colleagues and friends are dead – assassinated by someone who has discovered their true identities. And her superiors have placed her directly in the assassin’s line of fire on a peacekeeping mission that will decide the fate of all humanity…
Apparently, as an Air Force officer, Reeve participated in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and she has put those experiences to good use in Peacekeeper. In the world she has constructed, the Terran Expansion League and the Consortium of Autonomous Worlds still regard each other with suspicion and dislike years after the war between them has ended – and it falls to the enigmatic alien race, the Minoans, to broker and keep the peace between them.
This adventure story is set in a complex, multi-layered world, with the mandatory tough-yet-vulnerable female protagonist. But what sets it apart for me are the themes explored within all the non-stop action. The guilt Ariane Kedros feels over her part in the obliteration of the Ura-Guinn system is doubtless a useful plot twist to give the character extra depth and interest – but it also raises the issue of when a serving soldier should turn around and say ‘no’. None of the Kedros’ team did so – and they all pay a high price. Can remorse redeem such a terrible act? One of the characters is convinced it can…
Reeve also explores the idea of revenge and at what point it stops being a natural reaction to a terrible wrong and becomes something a lot darker – or maybe that’s what it always is. And before you go away with the impression that this book is full of declamatory rambles about these ideas (let’s face it – we’ve all read ‘em…), I’d like to reassure you that Reeve manages to embed her themes within the story such that neither the pace or narrative tension lets up for a nanosec to accommodate them.
All in all, this is a cracking, enjoyable read that manages to raise some interesting issues along the way, making it a cut above much of this sub-genre. I’ve already gone out and bought the sequel…
9/10