Title: South Coast
Author: Nathan Lowell
Series: A Shaman’s Tale from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper 1
Audiobook: 15h 45m  - 21 episodes of 45 minutes
Publisher: Durandus 2007
Genre: Science Fiction Fantasy
Free Online: podiobooks.com | iTunes

[goodreads' description] Otto is Richard Krugg’s only son and heir to the Shaman’s gift. The only problem is Otto doesn’t want it. He wants to be a fisherman. When company policies force unwelcome changes onto his life and threaten even the security of the village, Otto discovers that being a shaman isn’t optional.

Jimmy Pirano is caught between the devil and the deep green sea when new production quotas are handed down from corporate headquarters. Locked into a century of existing practice, Jimmy is forced to find new ways to fish and new places to do it in or face the very real possibility that Pirano Fisheries will lose the St. Cloud franchise.

Join Otto, Richard, and Rachel Krugg as they struggle with what it means to be the son of a shaman. Cast off with Jimmy, Tony, and Casey as they navigate the shoals and shallows of corporate fishery along the South Coast.

The Author

[wikia] Dr. Nathan Lowell holds a Ph.D. in Educational Technology with specializations in Distance Education and Instructional Design. He also holds an M.A. in Educational Technology and a BS in Business Administration. He grew up on the south coast of Maine and is strongly rooted in the maritime heritage of the sea-farer. He served in the USCG from 1970 to 1975, seeing duty aboard a cutter on hurricane patrol in the North Atlantic and at a communications station in Kodiak, AK. His shipboard experiences serve as inspiration for much of the shipboard life on the Lois McKendrick.

He currently lives far from the sea in the plains east of the Rocky Mountains with wife and two daughters.

Information

South Coast is the first book in a series. Book two is still in the works. South Coast is a spin-off to the Share series (my reviews of them ), set in the same universe but focused on St Cloud, a single fishing planet and the coming of age of Otto Krugg, the only son of Richard Krugg and heir to the Shaman’s Gift.

In Cape Grace,  the planned second book of Shaman’s Tales, we’ll meet Otto’s daughter Sarah Krugg and see what happens when the Shaman’s Gift takes an unexpected direction.

World Building

A fascinating part of the Share books was the Whelkies and their shaman origin and here we learn about them and the Golden Age version of shamanism as Otto learns from his father and nature. According to the author Whelkies are based on the idea of the Native American Zuni fetishes. He liked the idea of having a similar kind of idea based on the wood and shell available on the beaches along the South Coast of St. Cloud. They are a very neat story telling tool both in the Share books and here as the protagonist get to give the important people in their lives the appropriate Whelkie that ‘represents’ their inner self.

I like the way this book takes us to a company owned planet and we get to experience firsthand how it is. In the Share books we saw the trade-between-the-stars part; here we get to see the ‘production line’.

Plot

This is a very character driven story, Otto’s coming-of-age story is central to the book but the obvious obstacle is the mysterious quota changes made by the Company. They set impossible quotas to fill and the local company representatives and everyone involved has to figure out ways to solve the problem. Otto’s mother gets to go back to the sea she loves but his father also has to go as they stretch every resource available to fill the quota.

Characterization

As usual the characters Nathan Lowell creates are easy to relate to and central to the narration. Characters and his narrative voice is Lowell’s greatest strengths. You’ll notice that he is a people person and that working with people with special needs shines through in his stories. Nathan’s books give me a warm feeling because of the positive attitude and the down to earth narration. His people feels real; like he is telling a friend about another real living person he meet. That includes most of the characters in the book.

I love coming of age stories and Otto’s journey to become a shaman is a good one. I especially liked the way his gift started to present itself and his inner dialog.

My View

Another great ‘working-stiffs’ science fiction by Nathan Lowell with wonderful characters and a beautiful coming of age story that expands the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper universe. Good composition of music and narration and told in Nathan Lowell’s own captivating voice. South Coast is a standalone novel and an excellent start if you want to start with Nathan Lowell. It is not a book for the action craving but if you like a strong character driven tale it is a book for you.

As Jaine says on her website: While I was away a somewhat atypical story of mine, ‘A Mirror to Life’ has been posted up at ‘DayBreak’ magazine, the online story website for the recently released and already much acclaimed ‘Shine’ anthology of near-future optimistic SF. Yes, I know, I don’t usually write near-future optimistic SF; like I say, a somewhat atypical story.

DayBreak Magazine is the online fiction part of the Shine anthology. It will features a story every second Friday until the print Shine anthology appears and a bit beyond (it is out now).

Please note that that the stories featured in DayBreak Magazine are not appearing in the print anthology: these are different stories. They were also submitted to Shine, and while the editor couldn’t include them in the print anthology, he liked them so much that he is featuring them on Daybreak.

I like “A Mirror of Life”, it got a good narration of a clone in gravity for the very first time and the benevolent dictatorship of the machines is an interesting theme. Guardians of Paradise the third book in Jaine’s Hidden Empire Series is coming out later this year. You can read my reviews of Principles of Angels and Consorts of Heaven-

Read the story

This is my third post of formidable females in SF and after last weeks boost in suggestions from the nice folks at reddit.com I got at least nine more posts. Don’t let that stop you from suggesting other FFPs here in a comment. I love new books to read and write about. The last FFP every week is one I haven’t read but that has been suggested to me by nice people.

This week’s FFPinSF:

1. Heris Serrano – Civilian Warrior (Elizabeth Moon)
2. An – Transcending Egghead (Emily Devenport)
3. Adele Mundy – Sharpshooting Librarian (David Drake)
4. Michelle Henke – Unpolitical Stateswoman (David Weber)
5. Lenie Clarke – Meltdown Madonna (Peter Watts)

Heris Serrano – Civilian Warrior

Books: Hunting Party (1993), Sporting Chance (1994), Winning Colors (1995), Against the Odds (2000)
Series: Serrano Legacy (Book 1-3,7)| Familias Regnant Universe
Author: Elizabeth Moon
Publisher: Baen (US) | Orbit (UK)
Genre: Military Science Fiction

This is one of my favorite characters by one of my favorite authors, Heris Serrano is of an old navy family and when she is forced to resign she thinks her life is over but she will find other places she fit in even if the navy is her first choice. She has a commanding presence but an open personality. The conflicts here might seem straight forward but there is much behind them that get their explanation later on in the series. I haven’t included book 4-6 because they are mainly about other formidable females (on the list for later FFPinSF). A honorary mention of Lady Cecelia de Marktos a truly formidable old lady featured in most of the books.

Hunting Party

Heris Serrano was an officer born of a long line of officers, and a life serving in the ranks of the Regular Space Service was all she had ever known and all she ever wanted – until a treacherous superior officer forced her to resign her commission. This was not just the end of a career path; it was the end of everything that gave her life meaning.

But even ex-Fleet captains have to eat, and Heris finds employment as ‘Captain’ of an interstellar luxury yacht, working for the eccentric Lady Cecelia de Marktos. Being a rich old lady’s chauffeur isn’t quite the same as captaining a Fleet cruiser, but nothing Heris will ever do again will compare with that. Or so she thinks . . .

For all is not as it seems aboard the Sweet Delight. The smuggling ring is only the start of it. For on a visit to a seemingly innocuous pleasure planet, Heris stumbles across a very sinister hunting club and finds herself fighting for her life – and for the lives of friends she thought she’d never see again.

Sporting Chance

When a treacherous superior officer forced Heris Serrano to resign her commission in the Regular Space Service, she thought she would simply be marking time captaining a rich lady’s interstellar yacht. But things seem to happen when Heris is around. During Lady Cecelia’s most recent pleasure cruise, Heris exposed a sinister ‘hunting club’ which used humans as prey, and in the process rescued some former Fleet friends and colleagues betrayed by the same senior officer who engineered her own resignation from Fleet.

All well and good, but one of the hunters had been none other than Cecelia’s nephew Prince Gerel – first in line to the throne. In an attempt to avoid a royal scandal, Lady Cecelia volunteers herself and her yacht to take the Prince home. Cecelia remembers her nephew as a rather bright young man. So what possessed him to become involved with the ‘hunting club’? As the voyage proceeds, and the Prince becomes less and less like himself, Cecelia begins to suspect foul play. Someone is poisoning the heir to the throne, and once again Heris’s skills are called upon to solve the deadly mystery.

Winning Coulors

Heris Serrano thought her life was over when a treacherous superior officer forced her to resign from the Regular Space Service – the only life she had ever known, or ever wanted. But captaining a rich old lady’s interstellar yacht has proved more exciting – and fulfilling – than she could ever have imagined.

Having rescued some former Fleet friends and colleagues betrayed by the same officer who forced her resignation, and foiled a plot to poison the heir to the throne, Heris has at last been offered a chance for vindication and reinstatement in her beloved Fleet – and reconciliation with the family she thought had abandoned her. But it means standing alone against the military might of the Benignity, an interstellar criminal cartel more colloquially known as the Compassionate Hand. With only a few small ships and the space yacht Sweet Delight she must stop an invading fleet dead in its tracks . . .

Against the Odds

The worst has happened: Fleet is tearing itself apart. Some of the mutineers see injustice in the unequal spread of the rejuvenation drugs that offer virtual immortality to the rich; others are simply thirsty for power, or for blood. The Loyalists, meanwhile, fight desperately to preserve the rule of law in Familias Regnant space.

But when Esmay Suiza-Serrano is unceremoniously booted out of Fleet, the apparent victim of Family politics, she has no idea of the whirlwind of conflict into which she is about to be drawn . . .

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Ann – Transcending Egghead

Books: Egghead (1996), Godheads (1998)
Series: Heads
Author: Emily Devenport
Publisher: Roc Penguin US
Genre: Science Fiction

An(n) is resourceful and able to take care of herself. The story is also a bit saucy even with aliens. It was quite some time since I read these but the big idea behind it is quite something.

Eggheads

Jo and Ann are Eggheads, explorers specially equipped with an RNA drip that will enable them to decode the mysterious glyphs left in the ruins of an ancient civilization. But alien explorers seek the same information, and when Ann’s RNA drip begins to break down, it becomes a deadly race to solve the riddle of the glyphs before she loses her mind–permanently.

Godheads

Frozen in stasis for 1,000 years, with her memory erased as punishment for a long-forgotten crime, Edna has been reborn as the chosen ambassador to an incredible new world. Now on a perilous mission–to infiltrate the vast communications monopoly of the GodWorld Net–visions of her past begin to surface, and her allies become her deadliest enemies. Now there is only one way to save her own life and find her way back to Earth: to find the missing pieces of her life before her future is destroyed forever.

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Adele Mundy – Sharpshooting Librarian

Books: With the Lightnings (1999), Lt. Leary, Commanding (2000), The Far Side of the Stars (2004), The Way to Glory (2007) Some Golden Harbor(2008), When the Tide Rises (2008), In the Stormy Red Sky (2009), What Distant Deeps (2010)
Series: RCN | Royal Cinnabar Navy | Lt. Leary Series
Author: David Drake
Publisher: Baen
Genre: Military Science Fiction

Adele is a really cool character with an interesting background, her whole family was persecuted and killed for treason and she is the lone surviver, now a scholar with spectacular information handling skills and uncanny shooting skills. She becomes the unlikely best friend of Daniel Leary. David Drake uses historical events, mostly battles as a basis for his stories in a clever and imaginative way I have enjoyed the last ten years. A new RCN book will be out later this year What Distant Deeps.

With the Lightnings

Daniel Leary is a lieutenant in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy with no money and no prospects since he quarreled with his ruthless, politically powerful father. Adele Mundy is a scholar with no money and no prospects since her family was massacred for conspiring against the Government of Cinnabar. Kostroma is a wealthy planet which depends on diplomacy to stay independent in a galaxy whose two great powers, Cinnabar and the Alliance, battle for supremacy. In a few hours, diplomacy is going to fail Kostroma. Daniel, Adele, and the scratch crew they gather aren’t much to stand in the way of a powerful invasion fleet, but just possibly they’re enough.

Lt. Leary, Commanding

Lieutenant Daniel Leary of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy commands the corvette Princess Cecile; his friend Signals Officer Adele Mundy has the latest in spy apparatus and the skill to prowl the most tightly guarded database. All they lack are enemies, and fate is about to supply that in abundance!

• A pirate chief joins in a cutthroat battle with a rival—and the Princess Cecile is a pawn!
• A hostage uses the Princess Cecile to regain his freedom—and his throne!
• An ally intrigues with enemies of Cinnabar—knowing the plot can only be safeguarded by destroying the Princess Cecile!

Daniel, Adele, and their crack crew must battle bureaucrats and traitors, the winds of a barren desert and the strains of a voyage never before attempted. If they succeed at every stage, their reward will be the chance to fight another enemy: one which can blow them and a hundred ships like theirs to vapor!

The Far Side of the Stars

While the Republic of Cinnabar is at peace with the Alliance, warriors like Lt. Daniel Leary and Signals Officer Adele Mundy must find other work—like escorting a pair of wealthy nobles on an expedition to the back of beyond! The Princess Cecile, the corvette in which they carved their reputations in letters of fire, has been sold as a private yacht, but she still has her guns, her missiles, and her veteran crew. Daniel and Adele will need all of those things as they face winged dragons, an Alliance auxiliary cruiser, jealous lovers, and a mysterious oracle which really does foresee the future. That won’t be enough, though, when they penetrate a secret Alliance base and find a hostile fleet ready for a war that will sweep Cinnabar out of a strategically crucial arm of the galaxy. Preventing that will involve skill, courage, and more luck than a sane man could even pray for; and it will require a space battle on a scale that a tiny corvette like the Princess Cecile has no business being involved in. But she’ll be in the middle of it anyway, because Daniel, Adele, and their Cinnabar crew would never turn their backs on a fight!

The Way to Glory

Violence racks Cinnabar. The fleets of the tyrannical Alliance are on the move, and at home class riots threaten to rip apart not only society but the Republic of Cinnabar Navy. Lt. Daniel Leary has earned promotion, but the needs of the Republic and the RCN require that he serve under an officer whose paranoia has already led him to execute crewmen out of hand. Signals Officer Adele Mundy has repeatedly proved her skills and loyalty as Cinnabar’s most accomplished intelligence agent, but now elements within the Republic want to draw her into a conspiracy like the one that led to her parent’s massacre. Leary and Mundy battle their way from riot-torn streets to spies in an outlying base and an anarchic planet where violence is the only law, but if they succeed at every stage, one test still remains: a space battle against an overwhelming Alliance force. Even for Daniel Leary it will be a difficult fight to win¿and almost impossible to survive.

Some Golden Harbor

The tyrannical Alliance continues its war against the Republic of Cinnabar, and Daniel Leary, newly promoted to Commander, and his crew have a new mission: Stop Dunbar’s World from falling to an invasion by the planet Pellegrino. Nataniel Arruns, son of the dictator of Pellegrino, has landed with a large contingent, intending to set himself up as the ruling warlord, with the planet’s population becoming workers—serfs—of the Pellegrinian overlords. And Dunbar’s world has no more than their local police force to oppose him.

But Leary again has the help of Signals Officer Adele Mundy, who can make computer networks do the apparently impossible. Leary, Mundy and the crew of the Princess Cecile have gone up against impossible odds before . . . and their opponents in those victorious missions are still wondering just what hit them.

Leary again commands the corvette Princess Cecile, but on this mission her missile tubes are empty. Only one man is in a position to aid Leary, but the rich and powerful would rather see him fail than succeed in stopping the invasion. Leary must somehow overcome a large entrenched force on an island defended by powerful plasma cannon and shipkilling missiles and backed up by a heavily armed warship in orbit, all while commanding only a small and virtually unarmed spacecraft.

When the Tide Rises

When the Republic of Cinnabar doesn’t have enough battleships to deal with all the crises in its war with the Alliance, it sends the next best thing: Commander Daniel Leary and his friend, the spy Adele Mundy. This time they’re off to help the Bagarian cluster in its rebellion against the Alliance, but they’ll quickly find that the worst threats to the rebels are the treacherous politicians

Leary and Mundy use electronic espionage, sub-machine guns, and shipkilling missiles to outwit political rivals, put down mutiny, and capture an Alliance fortress. When all else fails, they’ll strike for the heart of the Alliance—and then throw their tiny corvette into a major fleet action.

In the Stormy Red Sky

DANIEL LEARY IS CINNABAR’S MOST SUCCESSFUL SPACE CAPTAIN; HIS FRIEND, LADY ADELE MUNDY, IS ITS MOST EFFICIENT SPY—BUT THEY’VE GOT THEIR HANDS FULL THIS TIME AS THEY FACE:

• A Cinnabar Senator furious at losing an election—and still powerful enough to make her anger deadly.
• The boy ruler of a star cluster who thinks he’s a god—and who can sign the death warrants of even Cinnabar officials if a mad whimsy tells him to.
• A world of slaves and escaped slaves, where the most savage beasts in the jungle used to be human.
• An enemy base that could shrug off attack by powerful battlefleets—but which must fall to a single cruiser if Cinnabar is to survive.

From palace to reeking jungle, from gunfights in grimy hangars to the flagship’s bridge during a sprawling space battle, Leary and Mundy are in the thick of it again. Watch the galaxy explode—IN THE STORMY RED SKY

What Distant Deeps

Captain Daniel Leary and his friend, the spy Adele Mundy, have been in the front lines of Cinnabar’s struggle against the totalitarian Alliance. Now these galactic superpowers have signed a peace of mutual exhaustion… but the jackals are moving in! The Republic of Cinnabar was on the verge of collapse under the weight of taxes, casualties, and war’s disruption of trade. That the Alliance of Free Stars was in even worse condition helped only because it has made peace possible. Years of war have been hard on Daniel and harder still on Adele, whose life outside information-gathering is a tightrope between despair and deadly violence. Their masters in the RCN and the Republic’s intelligence service have sent them to the fringes of human space to relax away from danger. But the barbarians of the outer reaches have their own plans, plans which will bring down both Cinnabar and the Alliance. Unless Daniel, Adele, and their unlikely allies succeed, galactic civilization will disintegrate into blood and chaos. So they will succeed – or they’ll die trying

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Michelle Henke – Unpolitical Stateswoman

Book: Storm from the Shadows (2009)
Series: Saganami Series 2
Author: David Weber
Publisher: Baen
Genre: Military Science Fiction

Mike Henke is Honor Harrington’s best friend and here she finally gets her own story. She is a prisoner of War, paroled and put in command of 106th Battlecrusier Squadron(10th Fleet-Designate) sent to secure the Talbot cluster only to confront a sinister conspiracy by Mesa/Manpower and the very real threat of a war with the immense Solarian League.

Rear Admiral Michelle Henke was commanding one of the ships in a force ledy by Honor Harrington in all-out space battle. The odds were against the Star Kingdom forces, and they had to run. But Michelle’s ship was crippled, and had to be destroyed to prevent superior Manticoran technology from falling into Havenite hands, and she and her surviving crew were taken prisoner. Much to her surprise, she was repatriated to Manticore, carrying a request for a summit conference between the leaders of the two sides which might end the war. But a condition of her return was that she gave her parole not to fight against the forces of the Republic of Haven until she had been offically exchanged for a Havenite prisoner of war, so she was given a command far away from the war’s battle lines. What she didn’t realize was that she would find herself on a collison course, not with a hostile government, but with the interstellar syndicate of criminals known as Manpower. And Manpower had its own plans for elimating Manticore as a possible threat to its lucrative slave trade, deadly plans which remain hidden in the shadows.

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Lenie Clarke – Meltdown Madonna

Books: Starfish (1999), Maelstrom (2001), Behemoth: ß-Max (2004), Behemoth: Seppuku (2005)
Series: Rifter Trilogy
Author: Peter Watts
Publisher: Tor
Genre: Science Fiction
Homepage: www.rifters.com
Free Online Book: Starfish | Maelstrom | Behemoth

Peter Watts’ Lenie Clarke is a very different darker kind of formidable. Almost nuked and betrayed she sets out on a course for revenge that ends with redemption of sorts. Both Peter Watts and Lennie Clarke are new to me and I look forward to read them, especially as I can get them free online.

Starfish

Civilization rests on the backs of its outcasts.

So when civilization needs someone to run generating stations three kilometers below the surface of the Pacific, it seeks out a special sort of person for its Rifters program. It recruits those whose histories have preadapted them to dangerous environments, people so used to broken bodies and chronic stress that life on the edge of an undersea volcano would actually be a step up. Nobody worries too much about job satisfaction; if you haven’t spent a lifetime learning the futility of fighting back, you wouldn’t be a rifter in the first place. It’s a small price to keep the lights going, back on shore.

But there are things among the cliffs and trenches of the Juan de Fuca Ridge that no one expected to find, and enough pressure can forge the most obedient career-victim into something made of iron. At first, not even the rifters know what they have in them—and by the time anyone else finds out, the outcast and the downtrodden have their hands on a kill switch for the whole damn planet…

Maelstrom

An enormous tidal wave on the West Coast of North America has just killed thousands. Lenie Clarke, in a black wetsuit, walks out of the ocean onto a Pacific Northwest beach filled with the oppressed and drugged homeless of the Asian world who have gotten only this far in their attempt to reach America. Is she a monster or a goddess? One thing is for sure: all hell is breaking loose. This dark, fast-paced, hard SF novel returns to the story begun in Starfish: all human life is threatened by a disease (actually a primeval form of life) from the distant prehuman past. It survived only in the deep ocean rift where Clarke and her companions were stationed before the corporation that employed them tried to sterilize the threat with a secret underwater nuclear strike. But Clarke was far enough away that she was able to survive and tough enough to walk home, three hundred miles across the ocean floor. She arrives carrying with her the potential death of the human race, and possessed by a desire for revenge. Maelstrom is a terrifying explosion of cyberpunk noir by a writer whose narrative, says Robert Sheckley (on goodreads)

Behemoth: B-Max

Starfish lit the fuse. Maelstrom was the explosion. But five years into the aftermath, things aren’t quite so simple as they once seemed…

Lenie Clarke-rifter, avenger, amphibious deep-sea cyborg-has destroyed the world. Once exploited for her psychological addiction to dangerous environments, she emerged in the wake of a nuclear blast to serve up vendetta from the ocean floor. The horror she unleashed-an ancient, apocalyptic microbe called ßehemoth- has been free in the world for half a decade now, devouring the biosphere from the bottom up. North America lies in ruins beneath the thumb of an omnipotent psychopath. Digital monsters have taken Clarke’s name, wreaking havoc throughout the decimated remnants of something that was once called Internet. Governments have fallen across the globe; warlords and suicide cults rise from the ashes, pledging fealty to the Meltdown Madonna. All because five years ago, Lenie Clarke had a score to settle.

But she has learned something in the meantime: she destroyed the world for a fallacy.

Now, cowering at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, rifters and the technoindustrial “corpses” who created them hide from a world in its death throes. But they cannot hide forever: something is tracking them, down amongst the lightless cliffs and trenches of the Midatlantic Ridge. The consequences of past acts reach inexorably towards the very bottom of the world, and Lenie Clarke must finally confront the mess she made.

Redemption doesn’t come easy with the blood of a world on your hands. But even after five years in purgatory, Lenie Clarke is still Lenie Clarke. There will be consequences for anyonewho gets in her way-and worse ones, perhaps, if she succeeds. . . .

Behemoth: Seppuku

Lenie Clarke-amphibious cyborg, Meltdown Madonna, agent of the Apocalypse-has grown sick to death of her own cowardice.

For five years (since the events recounted in Maelstrom0, she and her bionic brethren (modified to work in the rift valleys of the ocean floor) have hidden in the mountains of the deep Atlantic. The facility they commandeered was more than a secret station on the ocean floor. Atlantis was an exit strategy for the corporate elite, a place where the world’s Movers and Shakers had hidden from the doomsday microbe ßehemoth-and from the hordes of the moved and the shaken left behind. For five years “rifters” and “corpses” have lived in a state of uneasy truce, united by fear of the outside world.

But now that world closes in. An unknown enemy hunts them through the crushing darkness of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. ßehemoth- twisted, mutated, more virulent than ever-has found them already. The fragile armistice between the rifters and their one-time masters has exploded into all-out war, and not even the legendary Lenie Clarke can take back the body count.

Billions have died since she loosed ßehemoth upon the world. Billions more are bound to. The whole biosphere came apart at the seams while Lenie Clarke hid at the bottom of the sea and did nothing. But now there is no place left to hide. The consequences of past acts reach inexorably to the very floor of the world, and Lenie Clarke must return to confront the mess she made.

Redemption doesn’t come easy with the blood of a world on your hands. But even after five years in pitch-black purgatory, Lenie Clarke is still Lenie Clarke. There will be consequences for anyone whogets in her way-and worse ones, perhaps, if she succeeds…

ßehemoth: Seppuku concludes the final act (begun in ßehemoth: ß-Max) of Peter Watts’s chilling and powerful Rifters series.

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Read Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | index | afterword

Title: Double Share
Author: Nathan Lowell
Voice: Nathan Lowell
Series: Golden Age of the Solar Clipper 4
Genre: Mercantile Science Fiction
Publisher: Podiobooks.com, July 2008
Audiobook: Free Online | iTunes
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 3.0 United States License

When he graduates from the Academy at Port Newmar, Ishmael Horatio Wang reports for duty in his first assignment as an officer. When he gets to his new ship, he finds things are not exactly the way he’d learned in school. The coffee tastes like used engine oil, the ship has no heart, and the nearest decent tailor is two quadrants away. What’s a new Third Mate to do? Will he be able to trust Billy?

Ishmael Wong signed up on the merchant ship Lois McKendrick when his mother died in a flier crash and found a second family there. The ‘Share’ part of the title refers to what part of the ship’s profit a crewman receives at different levels. Four years have passed since Ishmael left the Mack for the Academy.

Ishmael graduates from the Academy and gets assigned to a ship that is quite the opposite to the Mack. The Billy is a deeply dysfunctional ship run by a sadistic first mate and a paranoid captain with little or no interest in running the ship. It is also one of the ships that takes ‘bunk mates’ further than appropriate. The crew has no coercion. This is what Ishmael has to face straight out school. Ishmael approach it with the ordinary Wang charm and starts to stir things up.

Double share is even better than the books before, and they where good to start with. This is more of a traditional story with a protagonist and an obvious antagonist in the first mate.

An even stronger recommendation than the previous books.

Title: Full Share
Author: Nathan Lowell
Voices: Nathan Lowell
Series: Golden Age of the Solar Clipper 3
Genre: Mercantile Science Fiction
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Audiobook: Free Online | iTunes
Homepage: Trader’s Diary
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 3.0 United States License

The Lois McKendrick runs headlong into trouble when a routine in-system transit goes bad. Ishmael and the rest of the crew must scramble to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it in order to keep the ship alive. Learn more about the officers and crew as they struggle to keep their ship and discover how Ishmael finds out how wrong he’s been about what it means to be a spacer in this latest Trader’s Tale.

As you might remember Ishmael loves the Deep Dark and he decided to learn all four spacer specialties so that he always would be able to take a new job offer in case he got stranded. That never happened so far as the Mack crew have become more like his extended family, and you don’t fire family. In this installment he continues to learn, taking more exams.

When the ship run into a energy field on a routine jump to Betrus something unexpected happens with the ships system and most of the book is about finding out why it happened and prevent it from ever happing again. Ish saves the ship in a rather spectacular way but it is downplayed so he doesn’t notice it himself until much later in the novel. Charmingly done by Nathan.

Corporate assigns an environment tech with seniority to environmental leaving Ish without a job, but don’t worry the Mack takes care of its own. The new tech is sloppy and act as if he is entitled, this is dealt with as a workplace problem in a rather mature way. But when CC the new guy doesn’t listen to reason Ish finds another way. That is one amusing story.

From the first chapters people tell Ishmael that he should apply to the Academy to become an officer, because he obviously have a knack for it. It is all a bit bitter sweet, because Ishmael would have to leave the Mack to go and probably never come back.

As with any young man, a fair bit of the book is about his relations with girls. Full Share is PG-13 at least towards the end.

The world outside trade never felt important and are not explained much. We get to know more about the independent traders though. Life in a Free Trader Family opens Ishmael’s eyes. One thing I like about the share books is how natural the narration feels, its like the characters live in the world and they don’t think so much about everyday knowledge that doesn’t concern them, the focus lies on their everyday problems and how they deal with them.

Full Share ends the Lois McKendrick Trilogy part of the story, it is bittersweet and empowering. Young man finds a new family, grows up and leaves family, family is proud to see him grow. It is the natural order of things. All the Share books have a message about non-violent solutions that is a fresh contrast to most science fiction. Everyone interested in science fiction should listen to the Share books because it’s a different perspective, the working stiff’s SF.

Title: Quarter Share
Author: Nathan Lowell
Genre: Mercantile Science Fiction
Audiobook: Podiobook (Free Online Audio Book) | iTunes
Paperback: 282 pages
Publisher: Ridan Publishing, 1 edition (April 10, 2010)
Order: Amazon US

The Golden Age of Sail has Returned — in the Year 2352

When his mother dies in a flitter crash, eighteen-year-old Ishmael Horatio Wang must find a job with the planet company or leave the system–and NerisCo isn’t hiring. With credits running low, and prospects limited, he has just one hope… to enlist for two years with a deep space commercial freighter. Ishmael, who only rarely visited the Neris Orbital, and has never been off-planet alone before, finds himself part of an eclectic crew sailing a deep space leviathan between the stars.

Join the crew of the SC Lois McKendrick, a Manchester built clipper as she sets solar sails in search of profit for her company and a crew each entitled to a share equal to their rating.

This is a marvelous story, I like coming of age stories and this is a mesmerizing one. It is also a nice change to have an everyday story about a young boy learning the ropes in the mercantile fleet in the 24th century during the golden age of the solar clippers. It’s a workplace tale where Ishmael plunge into a world he doesn’t know anything about and he has to learn it from the bottom as a quarter share mess boy. But he is not without talent and he finds he loves it there out in the deep dark. His way to assure he can stay there is endearing and ambitious.

The characters is at the center in story, they are detailed, warm and easy to love. I wouldn’t mind at all working on the SC McKendrick it seems a nice place to be in much like the company I work at myself.

World building is not very extensive outside the ship and the trade but it isn’t any problem, you feel that the important part is the enclosed ship society, everything outside change as the ship moves and are not really important to the story.

Quarter Share is available for download now (Podiobook). And I am happy it is a series so I can enjoy it long time (I am listening to chapter 4 of Half Share book two of the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper). As of today you can also get it as a paper back.

Quarter Share is a mesmerizing tale of a young man coming of age and finding his place as a crewman aboard a solar clipper. Call me Ishmael works real well and makes me smile every time Nathan says it. Make sure you have free time and download the book is my recommendation.

The series:

1. Quarter Share
2. Half Share
3. Full Share
4. Double Share
5. Captain’s Share
6. Owner’s Share

A supernatural thriller with action and suspense, podcast weekly and read by the author Jeff Lane. Jim Hunt, is an average 18 year old college student…

or he would like to be. He dreams of a door

This is a free podcast you can download from the authors homepage. Each episode is followed by a commentary by Jeff where he discuss the comments from the listeners.

The protagonist of this story is Jim Hunt a college student. He starts to have strange dreams about a door locked with many locks, a door he is not sure he wants to open. There is memories he can’t remember from his childhood. After a fight outside a bar the dreams start to get more menacing and he is not sure he can confine in his roommate Eric. Maybe he should talk to Parks, his neighbor back home.

Then he goes home over Christmas meets a girl and have a talk with Parks. Here its get a bit tricky, I don’t want to spoil the secret. But Jim learns what he is and is given a list of contacts and helpers to learn by heart and destroy before leaving home.

A little warning for chapter 4 the warnings in the beginning of each episode is mostly about this chapter. We get an example of the fight going on concerning saving a little girl that is being tortured.

Jim’s list get stolen and to Jim’s horror it’s used to kill and murder the people on the list. Parks is kidnapped and Jim has to save him.

The characters use inner dialogs a lot which helps to get to know what motivates them. The story has a good pace and the buildup to the end is great with lots of action and resolution.

I was surprised with the good quality of the podcasts not that I know things like that but I felt the music was added really professional and Jeff Lane has a good voice and story telling ability that adds positively to the story.

This Paper World is a free online supernatural thriller about the fight between good and evil and about a young boy coming of age to participate. I would recommend it to anyone who like  supernatural action.

From their mission statement. Speculative fiction is any fiction which asks, at its core, “What if?” Speculative fiction encompasses science fiction (SF), fantasy, horror, slipstream, and other speculative genres.

The mission of this webzine is to increase diversity in the field of speculative fiction, both in the authors who contribute and in the perspectives presented. We feature speculative fiction stories and artwork, as well as essays about speculative fiction and fandom from diverse points of view.

This issue contains

• Urban Phantoms by Anne Abad
  The story blends mythos, fantasy and social fiction with the merciless wrath of nature for our thoughtless and unstopped pollution. It starts high and ends low. A strong story.
• Miss Lonelyhearts by Georgina Bruce
  It is a Zombie story with a real feminine twist. I liked it, it got spunk and action.
• Silver Veins by Michele Lee
  Science fiction horror about an alienated woman on a quest for peace.
• Thrilling Wonder Stories #52: The Invasion of the Zog by Lavie Tidhar
  A story about a very mysterious alien invasion by the Zog. Very open ended.
• Distant Deeps or Skies by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
  A socialy oppressed girl talks poetry with a homunculi. He is more human than the men around her.
• Bijou LaVoix and the Coal Dust Faery by Malon Edwards
  An entertaining steampunk-fantasy about doing the right thing. Remained me a little of Mark Twains writing.
• The Wedding Runner by Mint Kang
  Someone made a wedding pledge to the underworld and the underworld listened. Definite a horror story.
• Jaded by Daniel Gene Barkley
  A very strong emotional story about a jaded woman. I liked the twist, very surprising.

Excellent issue with new authors I will have to take a closer look at. Don’t miss the biographies at the end.

Read it at ExpandedHorizons.net

(from suduvu.com/freelibrary/) Welcome to the Suvudu Free Book Library. We know it can be hard to navigate the countless fantasy and science fiction series out there and figure out which ones are right for you. Well, we’re here to make those tough decisions a bit easier on you. With the Suvudu Free Book Library, you can read the first book in some of our most acclaimed series absolutely free!

His transport to prison is intercepted  by a Bane Sidhe strike team lead by his daughter Cally, who he thinks dead. They bring Mike to earth without showing Cally.

The news of what happened leads to mutiny on the Moonbase and Fleet and they are just about to start fighting when neither side can fire their weapons.  The human mentats tell of a new enemy, more fierce and technological advanced than the Posleen.

The Darhels and the alliance depends on humans to fight their wars, and there is only one leader that can save their bacon  this time, General Mike O’Neal. But after what they did to him, his family and humanity it’s not going to  be  easy to get him to help. This time there will be change, a lot of change, with Mike O’Neal in charge of the war.

The Hedren Tyranny has invaded and they have mental powers they use for war. Michele and the other mentats have been trained in the Way that forbid violence but now they have to face the ‘Dark side’.

John Ringo is fantastic at portraing life in the military even when they are not fighting and making it  interesting to the reader. Even appointing officers and NCOs interests as much as a battle (almost). 

But there is more going on in this book, it hints of bigger powers behind the scene and the ending is a total cliffhanger. Now I have to wait for the resolution (Probably 2 more books). I was a bit disappointed by John Ringo’s homepage, there was no information on the series there, not even on this book.

Eye of the Storm (Free Online Book) was a hard book to put down, John Ringo at his best, a superb military science fiction. I recommend it.

Read the story online (Story)

The story is about Cassandra Reis, she is undercover, on a mission of sabotage against Babylon Seacity, the city that forced her to run after spilling the beans about the chairman’s affairs to the world press. She had only been lured back to the pleasure-and-crime paradise that was Babylon Seacity by the bait of an Olympus Resident Visa. There was still people here that would like to kill her if they recognised her.

Laying in the dark, she hears someone at the door, she isn’t expecting anyone, could they have discovered her? Read it.

I liked the story and Sarah’s style, I think I got to buy Darkship Thieves, it sounded good before, now I am convinced. You can find it here

Edit: After reading Sarah’s guest rant, Blame It on the Girls, in the same journal, I strongly suspect I have found another favorite author.

It also had this beautiful illustration, Windy City, by Paul Davies. Visit his homepage, this guy is brilliant. He makes awesome pictures.

It is primarily his military science fiction I have read and like. This is a collection of articles I have written on this blog (Cybermage.se) and some random thoughts. If you are looking for a more in-depth and complete page about David Weber you have to go to Wikipedia or such, see the Links section at the end of this.

Series

Honor Harrington

Honor Harrington is also one of my favorites. I resisted starting the series for a long time before I read On Basilisk Station and was hooked.

1. On Basilisk Station (Free Online at Baen)
2. The Honor of the Queen (Free Online at Baen)
3. The Short Victorious War
4. Field of Dishonor
5. Flag in Exile
6. Honor Among Enemies
7. In Enemy Hands
8. Echoes of Honor
9. Ashes of Victory
10. War of Honor
11. At All Costs
12. Mission of Honor

Torch/Wages of Sin (Honorverse subseries with Eric Flint)

Cloak and Daggery, Genetic slavery and the Aligment(Mesa/Manpower) conspiracy is the focus of this Honorverse subseries.

1. Crown of Slaves (Free Online at Baen)
2. Torch of Freedom

Saganami (Honorverse subseries)

The series so far has been mainly about Michelle Henke

1. The Shadow of Saganami (Free Online at Baen)
2. Storm from the Shadows

Safehold

The kill-all-competition-specie Gaba have exterminated most of the human race. The last chance for humanity lies in hiding. So they flee and hide on a planet they call Safehold and create a rigid society that prohibits all technology more advanced than water and muscles. But something goes wrong part of the leadership set themselves up as Angels and they don’t want any change. But others have taken precautions one of them is a long dead woman, Nimue in a cybernetic body who wakes up after more than 800 years with a mission to restore civilization to Safehold.

1. Off Armageddon Reef
2. By Schism Rent Asunder
3. By Heresies Distressed
4. A Mighty Fortress

Dahak

Awsome space opera. I have read those books many times. Epic!

1. Mutineer’s Moon (Free Online at Baen)
2. The Armageddon Inheritance
3. Heirs to the Empire

There is an omnibus version out Empire from the Ashes

1632 – Ring of Fire – Assiti Shards (with Eric Flint)

Written with Eric Flint in his 1632 universe(A conteporary american town – Grantville is shifted in time to 1632′s thirty-years-war Europe).

1. 1633 (Free Online at Baen)
2. 1634 The Baltic War

Starfire (with Steve White)

I got the whole series and will eventually write about it here. Slightly less personification but more military than David Webers usually is.

Empire of Man (with John Ringo)

The prince Roger series is an excellent collaboration between David Weber and John Ringo and is one of my favorites. I often go back and reread it.

1. March Upcountry (Free Online at Baen)
2. March to the Sea (Free Online at Baen)
3. March to the Stars
4. We few

Collections

• More than Honor (Honorverse)
• Worlds of Honor (Honorverse)
• Changer of Worlds (Honorverse) (Free Online at Baen)
• The Service of the Sword (Honorverse)
• Worlds of Weber (stories from different universes) part 1, part 2

Stand alone Novels

• Path of the Fury and its expanded version In Fury Born are also a personal favorite. I have reread them many times.

Related Posts

• New Series by David Weber – Out of the Dark – Cover Art & Blurb

Links

• Latest snippet from David Weber at Eric Flint’s Place on the Web
• Everything tagged David Weber at Cybermage.se
• http://www.davidweber.net (official)
• http://thefifthimperium.com (fan)
• David Weber on Wikipedia

Available from Baen Books as a free online book

Agent of Vega stories

Agent of Vega -Iliff is sent  to the planet Gull to assist Pagadan with an Identification and finds the aliens parasites Ceetal trying to take over the universe and at the same time his arch enemy U1.

The Illusionists – The case of the immortal illusionist with Pagadan

The Second Night of Summer – Grimp’s grandma foils a Hapla invasion on a rural planet

The Truth about Cushgar- The tale of how tens of thousands of agents swarmed in to help one of their own reunite with her family.

Other stories

The Custodians- McNulty the Rilf meets the Custodians

Gone Fishing – Con man gets caned for five years

The Beacon to Elswhere – Freeholder rebels looking for time travel

The End of the Line – a small group escapes

Watch the Sky – Is faking isn’t easy

Greenface – Green horror

Rouge Psi -

The conflict between Haven and Manticore reaches absurd levels with the new pod technology. Both sides want peace but they are frustrated time after time. Eventually it leads to the ultimately battle in the Manticore home system. And it ends with over 2 million dead and over 500 ships of the wall destroyed. Honor Harrington’s 8th Fleet are now Home Fleet, the only Fleet the Alliance have left.

Manpowers involvement in the conflict starts to unravel.

Honor Harringtons son is born as well as Emely’s daugther.

This story shares a timeline with The Shadow of Saganami and Storm from The Shadows. Manpower launched a delayed attack on Manticore at the end of Storm from the Shadows. And the solies prepared an offensive in the Talbot cluster against Manticore.

The next main story book Mission of Honor, will be out in 2010, and it is the first book in the war with the Alignment. According to David Weber the Alliance will have a rough time the next few books.

The next side story Torch of Freedom, will be out in October 2009.

You can also read At All Costs online at Baen Free Library (link). It is available in a number of formats including Microsoft Reader and MobiPocket.

You might want to check out some of my favorite writers on the Author pages. I have tried to put links to free online books there.

• Baen Free Library (recommended) contains work from many good authors I like: David Weber, Larry Niven, John Ringo, Elizabeth Moon, Lois McMaster Bujold.
• Clarkesworld
• Electric Velofipede
• Expanded Horizons is a online magazine with many good short stories.
• Fantastic Metropolis discontinued content still available
• Fictionwise Free eBooks
• free-online-novels.com/sciencefiction.html
• Free Speculative Fiction Online (recommended) is a good comprehensive list of free online scifi. It contains content links for Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award.
• independentbook.com – (seems to be down) has Richard Stott’s Empire series among others.
• Infinite Matrix – discontinued content still available
• infinity plus – British sf. discontinued content still available
• Justfreebooks is a search engine for free online books
• Lone Star Stories
• Memoware – free books and documents for PDAs
• Project Gutenberg Science Fiction Bookshelf – scifi in many different languages.
• SF & Fantasy Books Online
• Suvudu Free Library (New January 2010)- also contains non scifi
• Subterranean Press Magazine
• The Online Book Page – also contains non scifi books.

Some authors also have free samples on their homepages:

• Lois McMaster Bujold mostly excerpts and also the award winning The Mountains of Mourning.
• Aliette de Bodard – short stories with a unique perspective.
• Ursula Le Guin
• John Scalzi (recommended) – great sampler, contains Old Man’s War and Agent to the Stars.
• Charles Stross

I will add more links as I go. I appriciate pointers and suggestions of the ones I missed.

The first time I meet Honor Harrington was many years ago. In fact it wasn’t even my first contact with David Weber’s works. I started with Mutineer’s Moon and was hooked.

On Basilik Station is the first book in the Honor Harrington series. So far 11 Novels, 4 collections of short stories and 3 spin off novels in the same universe (the Honorverse). The next novel is expected early 2010 – Mission of Honor.

Honor Harrington takes command of her new ship HMS Fearless not knowing it has had its armament gutted and been replaced with a Grav lance that can crush the wedges of even capital ships. It has a drawback though, its range is not more than a stone throw in space combat.

Honor is deported to Basilik Station after the wargames that were supposed to prove the concept of the Grav lance proved that once the enemy knows about it he can avoid it. Honor did succeed once to kill a flagship SD though.

Well in the Basilik system she is confronted with a hostile crew, a former class mate that once tried to rape her – now her commander, smugglers, an alien insurgency, a plot by The Peoples Republic of Haven and much more.

I warn you, if you read it you will want to read all the rest.

Available as a Baen’s Free Library Book.

At first I imagined the protagonist as a female; it was not until the finale I realized he wasn’t.

Link: http://aliettedebodard.com/bibliography/online-fiction/the-lost-xuyan-bride/

Kendra Pacelli flees from Earth to Freehold after getting implicated by association in the embezzlement of her UN bosses. You don’t take any chances with UN security; they usually arrest everyone and create their own scapegoats as needed. And Kendra don’t have the money to bribe anyone.

What Kendra meets on Freehold is completely different from the mostly socialistic and decadent Earth. Freehold is a utopia of personal freedom where everyone is armed to the teeth. Good character description and logical buildup of the story. The story is pretty PC, even if I think Republicans like it better. It is also good military action in the second part when UN troops invade.

I really enjoyed how Kendra grows as a person during the book. I really liked Kendra. I would love to read more stories with her.

Freehold is available online or as a download through Baen’s Free Library.

Book I: Midshipman pdf
Book II: Heir to the Throne pdf
Book III: Majesty pdf
Book IV: Acheon pdf
Book V: Citizen of the Empire pdf

I know nothing about the Author except his name. Full name should be Richard Allen Stotts. He is sometimes referred to as Richard A. Stotts. I hope he writes more and that he will be published. He is good, maybe a bit rough around the edges.

Now I have to take a pause while reading Prototype, a story I found while doing research for this article.

Prototype was great. Its about a 10 year old boy that is a prototype for the perfect soldier when the project is canceled and he is taken in as a foster son by an ordinary family.

Back to Empire. It takes place in a far future where humanity is governed by an Emperor elected by his predecessor. Its about a boy from a Free Trader family that has an uncanny aptitude for piloting and leadership.

At first the story seemed a bit rough, but eventually you come to love the characters. Its well written with a lot of emotional events. Seems to me Richard should be published by someone soon.

I can warmly recommend the Empire series.

ps. Check out my page on Free Online Science Fiction ds.

Agent to the Stars (it is available online at http://www.scalzi.com/agent/) is another brilliant book by John Scalzi. A junior Agent in Hollywood is contracted by a race of smelly intelligent cubes to better their image before breaking the news to the Human race. Of course he makes them Stars!

According to John he wrote this as training before doing real books like Old Man’s War.

I said it before, and i’ll say it again, John writes as the Master of Science Fiction he is. This story is more of a comedy, it is witty, catching and I Love it!

Write more, Please!