The Deserter (Bone World 2) by Peadar Ó Guilín [Book Review]

May 212011

Going to the Roof to save his love

I became interested in this book when I researched new releases for May and came across it. The blurb sounded good and I like this kind of stories about segregated societies kept in the dark by technologically superior conspirators and how one of the deceived finally starts to learn the truth. I immediately bought The Inferior and you can read my review here. This is my review of the Deserter.

We left Stopmouth and Rockface alone with the refugees from the Roof and Indrani on a globe flying to the Roof at the end of The Inferior. Something happened on the Roof making them want Indrani back again.

On the Roof you can record every minuscule detail of every second of your life and many of its denizens do. Indrani is being hunted for something she saw. Some split second glance in her memory has a secret that changed their minds about saving her and made her a hunted woman. That technology reminds me of some of the life bloggers that carries a camera around in our own time. Not so far off then.

Down below it looks like the ones releasing new species gone one too far with the Diggers. They spread like wildfire planting their paralyzed live victims to feed their young ones, multiplying and multiplying.

Stopmouth has to leave for the Roof to find Indrani and weapons to fight the Diggers. But everything is not right on the Roof. The nanos that provides all their food and comforts are failing to a plague. The Upstairs has already failed, crowding the survivors into what is left. Indrani is in hiding and Stopmouth has to find her before it is too late. His people only have a few days before the Diggers reach them.

The Inferior took us on a journey of discovery on the bellow and The Deserter takes us on a similar journey through the Roof and Upstairs. I enjoy learning the world stories. Here we learn a lot about the people, politics, technology and a few things I wondered about in the Inferior like where the new species comes from. Stopmouth is having a rough time with massive culture chock and more people than he has ever seen before. But he also makes some new friends.

I found The Deserter less disturbing than The Inferior or maybe I got used to the cannibalism. There are some scary parts that might disturb younger kids though.

Some of the characters from the first book are back like Stopmouth, Rockface and Indrani but there are also a few new ones you will like. This is a character driven book and it shows in the quality of the characters. They are believable, well done and continues to grow throughout the story.

The governments Special Forces, the Elite are nano enhanced warriors with superhuman strength and speed. There is a thought provoking sub plot about a boy who would do anything to become one. His sacrifice in the end was very emotional.

This is about the follies of hunger for power and I think it will be to the liking of both young and adults. The Government of the Roof is despicable in my opinion feeding the struggles of the people below to entertain the masses. They withhold every eatable seed from the people below forcing them to eat each other to create conflict. It is a classic case of bread and circus but now the bread is failing and the circus is among them.

The Deserter is quite an enjoyable read with a lot of adventure, tense moments, revelations, action and love. I would really like to read more of Peadar Ó Guilín after this. His characters are just like I like them and the clash of primitives against technology is a favorite theme of mine. You might read The Inferior and The Deserter as a standalone duology but it is part of a trilogy. I have no idea when the last book will be out though I await it with high expectancy.

Book Information

Review of the first book: The Inferior

The Deserter (The Bone World book 2) by Peadar Ó Guilín
David Fickling Books (2011) – Amazon US | UK

The humans are weak and vulnerable. Soon the beasts that share their stone-age world will kill and eat them. To save his tribe, Stopmouth must make his way to the Roof, the mysterious hi-tech world above the surface. But the Roof has its own problems. The nano technology that controls everything from the environment to the human body is collapsing. A virus has already destroyed the Upstairs, sending millions of refugees to seek shelter below. And now a rebellion against the Commission, organized by the fanatical Religious, is about to break. Hunted by the Commission’s Elite Agents through the overcrowded, decaying city of the future, Stopmouth must succeed in a hunt of his own: to find the secret power hidden in the Roof’s computerized brain, and return to his people before it is too late. Peadar O Guilin has followed his extraordinary debut The Inferior with an equally original and pulse-racing sequel in which human primitivism collides with futuristic technology

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Up Against It by M. J. Locke [Book Review]

Books 1 Response »

Apr 042011

Promising Hard SF debut

Up Against It is my most anticipated debut this year. M. J. Locke paints a picture of space colonization in a not to far future in this thrilling story of a criminal takeover attempt of Phocaea, a strategic and independent asteroid colony.

There are two main characters Geoff and Jane. Geoff is coming of age as he and his young rocketbike-riding friends become central to the events. He witnesses how his beloved brother Carl is killed in the mysterious accident that destroys the colony’s supply of methane and water. Jane is the city administrator in charge of supplies and she soon discovers that there is more to the accident and starts to suspect the Martian Mafia is behind it all, since they conveniently have the only load in range to save the colony. She also has been through it all before on Vesta when the Mafia took over there. Jane has to struggle both with the Mafia and her fellow administrators.

The tale follows the two main characters as they in their own ways try to save the colony. There is some teen love, a mysterious trans-human cult, lots of action on the asteroid and in space, kidnappings, and a fleet of thugs on their way. The accident also spawns a feral AI that complicates things.

The world building is good and quite interesting. We get glimpses here and there that hints at the greater universe. Earth is a refugee camp after an ecological breakdown and people in space have a better life but life outside the atmosphere is dangerous as the events here show. Life in the colonies are televised to earth by small mobile cameras that are everywhere, the colony managements have an allotment of privacy minutes every week.

I really like the characters and the world building and I hope M. J. Locke is going to write more in this world. It is a straightforward hard sf read where the mysteries and characters keep you interested. It reads a bit like classic science fiction but with modern ideas and people. It is a standalone novel but it has many interesting people and events that leave the range open for sequels I really want to read.

I give Up Against it a strong recommendation.

Book information

Up Against It by M. J. Locke (Tor March 2011) - Amazon US | UK – Bought it myself

Geoff and his friends live in Phocaea, a distant asteroid colony on the Solar System’s frontier. They’re your basic high-spirited young adults, enjoying such pastimes as hacking matter compilers to produce dancing skeletons that prance through the low-gee communal areas, using their rocket-bikes to salvage methane ice shrapnel that flies away when the colony brings in a big (and vital) rock of the stuff, and figuring out how to avoid the ubiquitous surveillance motes that are the million eyes of ‘Stroiders, a reality-TV show whose Earthside producers have paid handsomely for the privilege of spying on every detail of the Phocaeans’ lives.

Life isn’t as good as it seems, though. A mysterious act of sabotage kills Geoff’s brother Carl and puts the entire colony at risk. And in short order, we discover that the whole thing may have been cooked up by the Martian mafia, as a means of executing a coup and turning Phocaea into a client-state. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s a rogue AI that was spawned during the industrial emergency and slipped through the distracted safeguards, and a giant x-factor in the form of the Viridians, a transhumanist cult that lives in Phocaea’s bowels.

In addition to Geoff, our story revolves around Jane, the colony’s resource manager — a bureaucrat engineer in charge of keeping the plumbing running on an artificial island of humanity poised on the knife-edge of hard vacuum and unforgiving space. She’s more than a century old, and good at her job, but she is torn between the technical demands of the colony and the political realities of her situation, in which the fishbowl effect of ‘Stroiders is compounded by a reputation economy that turns every person into a beauty contest competitor. Her manoeuverings to keep politics and engineering in harmony are the heart of the book.

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Veteran by Gavin Smith (Gollancz)

Books 4 Responses »

Jul 212010

Title: Veteran
Author: Gavin Smith
Genre: Military Science Fiction
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Gollancz, June 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK | sfbok

Three hundred years in our future, in a world of alien infiltrators, religious hackers, a vast convoying nation of Nomads, city sized orbital elevators, and a cyborg pirate king who believes himself to be a mythological demon Jakob is having a bad day: “Nothing gets in the way of a hangover like being reactivated by your old C.O and told to track down an alien killing machine. The same kind of killing machine that wiped out my entire squad. And now it’s in my hometown. My name is Jakob Douglas, ex-special forces. I fought Them. Just like we’ve all been doing for 60 bloody years. But I thought my part in that was done with. My boss has other ideas. If I didn’t find the infiltrator then he’d let the Grey Lady loose on me. And believe me; even They’ve got nothing on her. So I took the job. It went to shit even faster than normal. And now I’m on the run with this teenage hacker who’s had enough of prostitution. The only people I can rely on want to turn the internet into God. And now it turns out that They aren’t quite what we’d all thought. I’ve been to the bottom of the sea and the top of the sky and beyond trying to get to the truth. And I still can’t get far enough away from the Grey Lady. All things considered I’d rather be back at home deep in a whiskey bottle.”

Veteran is a fast paced, intricately plotted violent SF Thriller set in a dark future against the backdrop of a seemingly never ending war against an unknowable and implacable alien enemy.

Information

Veteran is Gavin Smith’s debut novel and it is dedicated to Ruth & James Nicoll. I believe that they are “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary” – James Nicoll and his wife. I found the quote online and I just had to include it here. English’s actions as described are appropriate to the novel.

The Author

Gavin Smith is new both to me and the world but he writes like a pro. I had to check inside if it was a pseudonym for an established author. Gavin Smith is 35. Born in Dundee he now lives in Leicester. He has a degree in Media Production (specializing in script writing) and a MA in Medieval history. He owns his own marketing company.

World building

Earth is a gritty place with social segregation after a long war with the alien Them and Gavin paints it well even though the story is written in first person. There are flashbacks to the time Jakob Douglas fought in the war that explains a great deal. There is also a lot of discussions that sometimes slows down this otherwise fast paced story but makes it clear to the reader what really is going on.

Plot

The plot is in short that Jakob Douglas is reactivated to hunt down one of Them. Then he discovers that there is more going on than meets the eye and become the hunted himself. He must fight back to stay alive. Which he eventually does after a number of adventures in some spectacular and intriguing places with names like Rigs, Crawling Town and Atlantis.

Characterization

The characters are what I really love with this story. They are gritty and twisted but in a good way. Jakob is no superman he has lots of luggage from the war to carry around but he grows as the story grows. But no one grows more than Morag, first the story play her as an almost insignificant figure which reflects the way Jakob and the others treat her. This is something she resents but it is also her driving force to grow later in the story where she becomes principal.

There are a great many other notable characters both friends and enemies that easily takes up life in the mind of the reader.

The banter and bickering is excellent and that is a huge plus for me.

My view

Veteran is an excellent read, I had trouble putting it down. This is one of the best books I read so far this year. It got mysterious aliens, conspiracies, realistic battle scenes, fast pace, lots of wow moments and wonderful characters. I would say this is a mixture of Heavy Metal, Cyber Punk and Classic SF. It is Military Science Fiction at its best and I would recommend it to a wider audience. I can’t wait for his next book.

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Overthrowing Heaven by Mark L. van Name (Jon & Lobo 3)

Books 1 Response »

Jun 172010

I guess I should be worried when an author keeps writing longer and longer books. The first book One Jump Ahead published 2008 had 416 pages, the second book Slanted Jack came out later that year and had 480 pages and now Overthrowing Heaven is out and it has 560 pages. But I like it, keep going in that direction Mark. This time Jon a mercenary who talks to appliances and Jobo the witty assault vehicle take on a man that experiments on children. How was the book? Let me tell you …

Title: Overthrowing Heaven
Series: Jon & Lobo 3
Author: MarkL. van Name
Cover Art: Stephen Hickman
Genre: Space Opera | Military Science Fiction
Publisher: Baen 2009
Paperback: 560 pages
Excerpt: Chapter 1-16
Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

It began as a favor to a woman trying to get away from an abusive husband. Jon Moore grew up in a prison laboratory. When he escaped with nothing but his body’s nanotech enhancements and more anger than even a long lifetime could wash away, an entire planet died behind him. Memories of the things he’d done still haunted him; because of them, he often ended up helping those in need. His kindnesses frequently didn’t work out well. This one really didn’t work out well. It hurled Jon and Lobo, the intelligent assault vehicle and Jon’s only friend, down an accelerating, ever more dangerous spiral involving:

Private armies and government covert ops teams

A courtesan who always seems a step ahead of him

Rival superpowers that define Good in terms of their own advantage and Ethics as whatever doesn’t get in the way of their Good

And a brilliant, amoral scientist to whom human beings are just more experimental animals–and who might be Lobo’s creator.

Jon and Lobo take the reader on a headlong rush through armed enemies and untrustworthy allies and encounter what just might be the worst danger their partnership will face: the truth.

Information

The book is dedicated to Allyn Vogel.

Jon is the only human who has survived nanotech enhancements and now he is making a living as an on and off bodyguard/mercenary while hiding his powers in fear of being returned to a lab again.

Lobo is an extremely intelligent assault shuttle he picked up as payment for a job (see One Jump Ahead) he/it is also quite witty and at times a bit condescending to his ‘owner’. Jon and Lobos good natured banter is one thing I enjoy in the series. It is in fact one of the things that can make or break a book for me. Give me snappy, funny, edgy, bitchy entertaining dialog any day and it is probably a book I am going to like.

About the Author

Mark is a relatively new author for me, I finished the first book in December 2009 and was hooked. As I understand it Mark used to be a stand-up comedian and it is easy to believe with the often snappy jokes and humor in the books. I must admit that my first reaction Mark L. Van Name was that this must be a pseudonum but I was wrong, see his homepage.

Mark L. Van Name, whom John Ringo has said is “going to be the guy to beat in the race to the top of SFdom,” has worked in the high-tech industry for over 30 years and today runs a technology assessment company in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. A former Executive for Ziff Davis Media and a national technology columnist he’s published over a thousand computer-related articles and multiple science fiction stories in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including the Year’s Best Science Fiction. Jon & Lobo stories have appeared in a Baen anthology and Jim Baen’s Universe.

World bulding

The world feels like The Stainless Steel Rat meets Dominic Flandry. There are two galactic empires/super powers looking to advance their own borders without starting a full scale war. Their officials reminds me of similar ones in Harry Harrison’s books.

The world building is not extensive, this is not a political book. What your protagonist see is what you get sums it up.

Plot

In concentration the plot is beautiful damsel in distress need transport off planet to escape abusive husband. Enter superpower space fleet that just wants to ‘chat’ or else. Amoral scientists backed by the government of Heaven experiments with nano technology on kidnapped children. Damsel is mother to one of them and the Super Power wants Jon to capture scientist to stand trial. Lobo asks Jon to take job so he can meet his maker, the aforementioned scientist.

Problem is that the scientist is turtled up in a fortress under a Mega Jurassic Park styled tourist attraction protected by the government, he has one weakness though, he sometimes visit a prominent but secretive escort girl in the city.

Most good books have some kind of mystery in them for the protagonist to overcome and here it is locating and capturing that scientist the main mystery but seeing Jon a man inexperienced in relationships trying to handle the ‘opportunities’ that presents themselves is a great amusement.

There is also a great deal of wonder in the amusement park with all their security systems but not least their attractions.

Characterization

Jon and Lobo are both well developed. Child abuse and especially the experiments with nanotechnology is something directly from Jon’s past (he was himself the only surviving child from one such experiment) and his character’s raw emotions speaks well to the reader. We have a character in the beginning that doesn’t trust anyone and who have never contemplated a relationship. In the end he still doesn’t trust anyone but his relationship with Lobo has deepened and he has started to think about relationships.

The other characters are not so well developed and we never tap them for any inner dialog. The female cast was intriguing and created many tense and funny moments.

My View

I am trying to find flaws in the book but I cant find many. I checked out my sense of disbelief at the beginning and it held all the way. Some of the plot twists might be unlikely but in general it is one consistent tale. It is funny and there is a lot of friendly banter and some tricky personal situations to enjoy with the action. There might be less action and more preparation and ‘drama’ here than in previous books but it never felt tedious or boring. It gets a warm recommendation from me. Overthrowing Heaven was a fast and fun book to read and it touches on some serious issues around the ends justifying the means, child abuse and the meaning of friendship.

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Line War by Neal Asher (Agent Cormac 5)

Books 3 Responses »

Jun 062010

The Polity is under attack from the renegade AI Orbus but the plan seems uncoordinated and random. What is the real plan? Polity agent Ian Cormac has to put all the pieces together in this concluding volume of the Cormac Saga. Here is my view.

Title: Line War
Series: Agent Cormac 5
Author: Neal Asher
Paperback: 496 pages
Genre: Space Opera | Military Science Fiction
Publisher: Tor 2008
Order by: Tor | Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok | tbd

The Polity is under attack from a ‘melded’ AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebus’ worm ships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being should possess…and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters.

Further attacks and seemingly indiscriminate slaughter ensue, but only serve to bring some of the most dangerous individuals in the Polity into the war. Mr Crane, the indefatigable brass killing machine sets out for vengeance, while Orlandine, a vastly-augmented haiman who herself controls Jain technology, seeks a weapon of appalling power and finds allies from an ancient war. Meanwhile Mika, scientist and Dragon expert, is again kidnapped by that unfathomable alien entity and dragged into the heart of things: to wake the makers of Jain technology from their five-million-year slumber.

But Erebus’ attacks are not so indiscriminate, after all, and could very well herald the end of the Polity itself…

Information

This is the final Cormac Novel as far as I know, the ending is open but with good closure so there might be future stories. There are three important points of view in the story Cormac’s, Mika’s and Vulture’s.

Agent Cormac is as usual the main protagonist. Mika is Cormac’s love interest and the one the Dragon choose to communicate with. Vulture is again a ship accompanying Mr Crane.

World building

As usual Neal build a coherent well thought out future world as the setting for his story. The Polity is one of the better ones I have seen and I like that it is not the perfect world, it got flaws and the players human, haimen and ai’s all have their weaknesses.

Plot

Orbus makes his play for the Polity with massive diversion attacks along the Line while he hold his real plan a secret. I thought that part was well thought out and was believable as was the Polity AI’s responses. Here you get mighty space battles with huge loses of life and equipment. It disturbs me a bit the casual way thousands of deaths is treated but then I realize that is exactly the way emotionless machines would see it.

All the players are being played in true spy thriller tradition and each step in the plot reveals deceit after deceit until the true players are revealed in the end.

Cormac tries to understand the randomness of the attacks together with his drone sidekick and Jerusalem. They start to make progress when they get help from an unlikely source.

Mika’s sejour with the Dragon is an amazing thrilling journey to the roots of the Jain technology and the gruesome deceit at its bottom.

Characterization

This is a story about revelations and Cormac has fears that he might be an avatar of some distant AI like Horace Blegg especially with his newfound powers. That question keeps us in suspense up until the end.

I love the characters even the ones on the ‘evil’ side. I would have liked a bit more on Cormac and Mika but then I am a sucker for love.

My View

Line War is a good ending to the Cormac Saga. The onion is pealed, the truths revealed and the guilty punished what more is there? Well, there is an opening for future Cormac stories but I haven’t scryed any such intensions from Mr Asher. I have been taken in by the Polity universe so I have The Skinner and The Voyage of the Sable Keech marked down for summer reading.

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