*NEW RELEASE SPECIAL* Review of NETGALLEY arc The Frequency of Aliens Book 2 of the Sorrow Falls series by Gene Doucette

I really liked the cool cover and the blurb which sounds sharp and funny, if a tad chatty. I’ve only included part of it…

Becoming an overnight celebrity at age sixteen should have been a lot more fun. Yes, there were times when it was extremely cool, but when the newness of it all wore off, Annie Collins was left with a permanent security detail and the kind of constant scrutiny that makes the college experience especially awkward. Not helping matters: she’s the only kid in school with her own pet spaceship.

I found this one difficult to put down once I got used to the narrative. The story is pacey and due to the humour, feels quite different from, say, Fade Out, which I have also recently read and reviewed. This could so easily have been a grim tale of humanity facing a possible apocalyptic threat and while events are stacking up and there is a definite sense of unease, at no stage did the tone alter. I found it quite refreshing.

However, the catch with using any form of omniscient viewpoint – where the narrator is driving the story forward instead of the main characters – is the narrative can tip into being a mouthpiece for the author. So as I read on, I became aware that Doucette isn’t a fan of the military mindset, while feeling protectively admiring of isolated, rural settlements like Sorrow Falls.
Is this a major problem? It certainly wasn’t for hundreds of years, or for the likes of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. However the current fashion is for our protagonists to tell the story from their viewpoints within the story, on the grounds that no one has an overarching, ultimate view of what is happening – and that is exactly what is going on throughout this book. If Doucette wasn’t so deft with his humour, I think I would have had more of a problem with the viewpoint but because his wry irreverence permeates the story, he manages to pull this one off.

Other than that, the writing is slick and effective, while he keeps the pace rolling forward. All the main characters were reasonably appealing, although I did find the bloodthirsty survivalists a little unnerving and wondered if Doucette is playing too much with stereotypes in his characterisations. However, the denouement and ending was well handled and I enjoyed reading this sufficiently that I will be looking out for the first book in the series, The Space Ship Next Door.

8/10

 

ANNDDD…

Just Books features an extract from Dying for Space as well as an article by yours truly about a very awkward conversation I had that led to my changing the setting of the Sunblinded trilogy just days before I released Running Out of Space.

Hywela Lyn features another excerpt from Dying for Space in which Elizabeth is on the wrong side of Sarge. Again…

Comfy Chair Books has posted another slice of Dying for Space in which Elizabeth is finding herself right out of her comfort zone at one of her father’s fancy banquets. In addition, there is an article about how I used food and dining as part of the worldbuilding in this book.

Teaser Tuesday – 5th December, 2017

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by The Purple Booker.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This is my choice of the day:

Fade Out by Patrick Tilley
56% When Connors arrived at the operations room, Allbright was already sitting in front of the double bank of screens. On the top left-hand screen was the picture of Friday looking at himself.
Connor sat down. “I wonder what he’s thinking.”
“Yes,” said Allbright. “This could be the first time Friday has seen himself. He may not know what he looks like – or even that he exists. I wonder how his data circuits will handle that discovery.”
“if he blew a fuse, it would save us a lot of trouble,” said Connors.

BLURB: Patrick Tilley’s brilliant bestselling thriller of humanity’s first contact with advanced alien intelligence is a high-tension tour-de-force that will leave you thinking long after you have turned the last page.

This is science fiction book was first published back in 1975 and is being rereleased. I am really enjoying it. It’s definitely one for those of you who enjoy hard sci fi – and it’s brought home to me how things have changed as no one in the team is female or ethnically diverse. However, the pacing and progression have me gripped and I’ve no idea exactly where this is going – or what is going to happen when it gets there…

Friday Faceoff – Burning my bridges…

This meme was started by Books by Proxy, whose fabulous idea was to compare UK and US book covers and decide which is we prefer. This week the theme is bridges, I’ve chosen The Bridge by Janine Ellen Young.

 

This cover, produced by Aspect in September 2000 is rather gloomy, with its sepia tones and rather hefty medieval styling – which is odd, given this is supposed to be a bridge through space. Frankly, I think this one is underwhelming – even the font is boring. And it’s a real shame, because the book isn’t anything of the sort.

 

This UK edition, produced by the now defunct Earthlight, has a far better cover in every way. The bridge is a wonderful construction that also closely resembles our DNA, which is a clever double reference to the plague that sweeps through humanity in this apocalyptic science fiction adventure. Even the font pops and fizzles. Needless to say, this one is my favourite. What about you – which one do you like?

Review of Solar Express by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

A book that displays both a spacescape and the name of a favourite author isn’t going to be left on the library shelves for long. I scooped this one up, despite the huge pile of books stacking up on my TBR pile. Would it prove to be a good choice?

You can’t militarize space. This one rule has led to decades of peaceful development of space programs worldwide. However, increasing resource scarcity and a changing climate on Earth’s surface is causing some interested parties to militarize, namely India, the North American Union, and the Sinese Federation. The discovery of a strange artifact by Dr. Alayna Wong precipitates a crisis. What appears to be a hitherto undiscovered comet is soon revealed to be an alien structure on a cometary trajectory toward the sun. Now there is a race between countries to see who can study and control the artifact dubbed the “Solar Express” before it perhaps destroys itself.

That is some of the rather chatty blurb. What it doesn’t convey is the steady, unhurried pace of this hard sci fi adventure, which bristles with acronyms and technical details for those of us who like plenty of science alongside their fiction. Though it did mean that I wasn’t romping through this one at any speed – I don’t have a scientific background, so I need to pay attention when reading books long on technical detail.

However, that doesn’t mean plodding or remotely boring. Modesitt sets up the premise and world and then steadily ramps up the stakes as this mysterious artefact speeds ever closer to the sun. The two characters that bring this adventure to life is Alayna Wong and Chris Tavoian. Wong is on Daedalus Base, observing the sun for her own study on the granulations on its surface when she spots an anomalous object. Chris is a pilot she meets on the outward journey, who becomes a firm friend as they continue to exchange messages to each other. But when he agrees to take the mission to man the ship sent out to explore this artefact, Alayna Wong has a unique view of the drama that plays out at the site. Meanwhile Chris grapples with the unknown material of the artefact as the situation goes on getting ever more dangerous.

I love the way Modesitt adds all sorts of everyday details – we get to know what the protagonists are eating, how they spend their spare time and who they care and worry about. This means that when the stakes are heightened, I care and fully identify with them. What Modesitt doesn’t do, is ramp up the pace to some breathless, foot-to-the floor tempo, so as the crisis intensifies there is time to appreciate all the ramifications. I really enjoyed this one.
8/10

Teaser Tuesday – 19th July, 2016

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books and a Beat.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This is my choice of the day:
Solar Express by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
p. 106: Unlike on transport flights, he was wearing a skintight pressure suit, with his helmet secured under the couch. He had his doubts about the usefulness of the suit. While it would allow him to survive decompression and would provide insulation for several hours, and oxygen for roughly the same time, its usefulness was limited to instants where damage to the burner did not affect the drives, since if he could not return somewhere quickly, he doubted that anyone could rescue him in that time – or would be terribly interested in doing so.

BLURB: You can’t militarize space. This one rule has led to decades of peaceful development of space programs worldwide. However, increasing resource scarcity and a changing climate on Earth’s surface is causing some interested parties to militarize, namely India, the North American Union, and the Sinese Federation.

The discovery of a strange artifact by Dr. Alayna Wong precipitates a crisis. What appears to be a hitherto undiscovered comet is soon revealed to be an alien structure on a cometary trajectory toward the sun. Now there is a race between countries to see who can study and control the artifact dubbed the “Solar Express” before it perhaps destroys itself.

This is hard science fiction with emphasis on the ‘hard’. Modesitt’s writing is dense, scattered with acronyms and allusions to space stuff, without stopping to explain much along the way. That’s okay. I don’t have a problem with that, so long as the protagonists are three-dimensional and believable. So far, so good – although this isn’t a book I’ll be whizzing through. Still… it’s good to let out my inner geek every so often.