Boneyards (Diving 3) by Kristine Katheryn Rush [Book Review]

Jan 252012

I had wrong expectations

This novel’s title is Boneyards and there on the cover is a woman I am sure is Boss the main protagonist striking a pose in front of what looks like a fleet of ship in a field of some sort. So it is plausible to expect the book to turn around that. That is not exactly what the blurb says but that’s what I expected. Expectations are good but also something you can trip on when the book you are reading delivers something different. I am afraid that is what happened to me here. I had the wrong expectations.

Now I think the title also is about what is left behind in the events described. In a way the empire’s research into stealth technology is a boneyard too. With all those victims.

As you might remember Boss was exploring the mysterious ‘Stealth’ technology (that killed her mother when she was a baby) in Diving into the Wreck and then stumbling on a working Dignity Vessel that was trapped in hyper with its crew in City of Ruins last year.

Now a few years have passed and things have happened that I would have liked to sample. This is where I feel the novel was a bit on the short side (beside the ending). Boss is already in a relationship with Coop, the captain of the Dignity Vessel. Where is the suspense in that? It is somewhat in character with Boss I admit but I want details. No, not those details get your brain out of the gutter. Character building details. As things progress I get some of that but I do feel a bit shortchanged.

We start with the expected search for the fleet which ends up just outside the aforementioned yard. But Boss leaves after a few pages without even crossing into the mysterious field. The rest of the story is about Squishy. I liked all the back story we got on Boss and her friend but multiple time lines that jump back and forth is not my favorite story telling device. It reminds me too much about the Event. And then the book ends without getting back to the great mystery. Frustrated was only the first word of what I was feeling right then.

Boss and Squishy do hit on fundamental questions about friendship and ethics and the length you are willing to go for them. That part was emotional and satisfying to read.

I remember from somewhere that this series was a trilogy but it can’t end here. There are too many unanswered questions! Edit: Kristine confirms that there will be another book on her blog.

I liked Boneyards but it is a bit on the short side, (I read the book on a work night in a few short hours). I will await the next book with even higher expectations (I know, I just do anyway). You should read it.

Book Information

Boneyards (Diving 3) by Kristine Katheryn Rush (Pyr) - uk us

When multiple Hugo Award winner Kristine Kathryn Rusch decided to put her stamp on classic space opera, readers wanted more. Now Rusch’s popular character Boss returns in a whole new adventure, one that takes her far outside her comfort zone, to a sector of space she’s never seen before.

Searching for ancient technology to help her friends find answers to the mystery of their own past, Boss ventures into a place filled with evidence of an ancient space battle, one the Dignity Vessels lost.

Meanwhile, the Enterran Empire keeps accidentally killing its scientists in a quest for ancient stealth tech. Boss’s most difficult friend, Squishy, has had enough. She sneaks into the Empire and destroys its primary stealth tech research base. But an old lover thwarts her escape, and now Squishy needs Boss’s help.

Boss, who is a fugitive in the Empire. Boss, who knows how to make a Dignity Vessel work. Boss, who knows that Dignity Vessels house the very technology that the Empire is searching for.

Should Boss take a Dignity Vessel to rescue Squishy and risk losing everything to the Empire? Or should Boss continue on her mission for her other friends and let Squishy suffer her own fate?

Filled with battles old and new, scientific dilemmas, and questions about the ethics of friendship, Boneyards looks at the influence of our past on our present and the risks we all take when we meddle in other people’s lives.

Boneyards is space opera the way it was meant to be: exciting, fast moving, and filled with passion

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How Firm A Foundation (Safehold 5) by David Weber [Book Review]

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Sep 292011

The Church Strikes Back …

I like the Safehold series and How Firm A Foundation is another good installment. Familiarity is sometimes a good thing, reading an author you like writing something like what he has done before. I often go for that in reading series but it also can become a bit repetitive. This is what happened to me here. This is just more of the same, these medieval battles as entertaining as they are, are starting to bore me and even if we are moving into steam and iron. I do expect at least one more book with this slow technological progression until we hit something more advanced, which is something that I am looking forward to. We have the Gbaba aliens that almost exterminated humanity and made them run for Safehold to deal with.

Merlin, Cayleb and Sharleyan are like family now, extended family even and I love reading about them. Their dialogs are witty and often funny. This time it is a bit darker than before. The Group of Four and the Church are impotent at sea due to the new explosive ordnance of the Charisian Navy so they go for the terrorist response instead with terrible results.

Weber shows great historical knowledge down to a very detailed level as usually. The ongoing geopolitical struggle makes sense to me as a reader and it is quite entertaining. The bad guys don’t know what awaits them around the corner.

Merlin explores the limitations of the orbital weapon responses early in the book but later revelations fulfill the promises of the blurb about what is under the Temple. But that is all I am going to say about that.

Bottom line I liked How Firm A Foundation. It has great characters as always and there is progress. Things are starting to get interesting and tense on the mainland. There are things brewing that will be fun to see expanded in the next volume.

Book Information

How Firm A Foundation (Safehold 5) by David Weber (Tor) – Amazon US| UK

The Charisian Empire, born in war, has always known it must fight for its very survival. What most of its subjects don’t know even now, however, is how much more it’s fighting for. Emperor Cayleb, Empress Sharleyan, Merlin Athrawes, and their innermost circle of most trusted advisers do know. And because they do, they know the penalty if they lose will be far worse than their own deaths and the destruction of all they know and love.

For five years, Charis has survived all the Church of God Awaiting and the corrupt men who control it have thrown at the island empire. The price has been high and paid in blood. Despite its chain of hard-fought naval victories, Charis is still on the defensive. It can hold its own at sea, but if it is to survive, it must defeat the Church upon its own ground. Yet how does it invade the mainland and take the war to a foe whose population outnumbers its own fifteen to one? How does it prevent that massive opponent from rebuilding its fleets and attacking yet again?

Charis has no answer to those questions, but needs to find one…quickly. The Inquisition’s brutal torture and hideous executions are claiming more and more innocent lives. Its agents are fomenting rebellion against the only mainland realms sympathetic to Charis. Religious terrorists have been dispatched to wreak havoc against the Empire’s subjects. Assassins stalk the Emperor and Empress, their allies and advisers, and an innocent young boy, not yet eleven years old, whose father has already been murdered. And Merlin Athrawes, the cybernetic avatar of a young woman a thousand years dead, has finally learned what sleeps beneath the far-off Temple in the Church of God Awaiting’s city of Zion.

The men and women fighting for human freedom and tolerance have built a foundation for their struggle in the Empire of Charis with their own blood, but will that foundation be firm enough to survive?

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The End Specialist by Drew Magary [Book Review]

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Sep 142011

Who wants to live forever?

What would happen if we found a way to stop ageing?

That is the question Drew Magary tries to answer in this debut novel. Immortality is a fun concept for science fiction. At a glance it looks wonderful but if you think about it for a while there are obvious drawbacks as is made clear in this story.

John Farell gets the cure in the beginning of the book and we get to follow him and society as the consequences manifest. He starts out as a Lawyer and bums out for a while before becoming a certified end specialist who helps people who want to die.

I am impressed by Drew’s imagination and he presents good arguments for how immortality affects marriage, economy, work life and more. The unavoidable anti movement is also well portraited.

John is well developed as a character even if I feel a certain distance at times but it feels like that was intended. The reader is there as the observer. The other characters are more of a support cast. Even so I greatly enjoyed this novel.

The End Specialist lives high on idea and ambience. It has a grim humor that might not be for everyone but fit my mood like a glove. The characterization could have been better. You have to decide for yourself it is a deal breaker. It wasn’t for me. I am keen on reading more by Drew Magary in the future.

And who isn’t secretly interested in living forever? This novel might change your mind.

Book Information

The End Specialist by Drew Magary (Harper Voyager 2011) – review copy – Amazon US | UK

Alternative title The Postmortal.

A gripping, compulsive thriller set in a future where the cure for ageing has been discovered… to devastating consequences

“You got me. I don’t want to die. I’m terrified of death. I fear there’s nothing beyond it and that this existence is the only one I’ll ever possess. That’s why I’m here.”

(An excerpt from the digital journal of John Farrell, cure age 29)

2019. Humanity has witnessed its greatest scientific breakthrough yet: the cure for ageing. Three injections and you’re immortal – not bulletproof or disease-proof but you’ll never have to fear death by old age.

For John Farrell, documenting the cataclysmic shifts to life after the cure becomes an obsession. Cure parties, cycle marriages, immortal livestock: the world is revelling in the miracles of eternal youth. But immortality has a sinister side, and when a pro-death terrorist explosion kills his newly-cured best friend, John soon realizes that even in a world without natural death, there is always something to fear.

Now, John must make a new choice: run and hide forever, or stay and fight those who try to make immortal life a living hell.

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Finders Keepers by Russ Colchamiro [Book Review]

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Sep 082011

A Missing Jar of Cosmic Building Material

Finders Keepers is a humorous science fiction about god and backpacking in Europe. Not so much about god as about the people he has working for him creating the universe. Donald and Danielle steal some time from making the Milky Way to make love on the newly created earth. Unfortunately they lose a jar of cosmic building material too.

This Jar is the focal point for the two storylines that follow. One continues with Eternity and the stressful and oh so human lives people lives there with their cocktail parties and work issues. The other follows a cast of humans and downcast Eternians on Earth and how their travels interweave each other’s as an unsuspecting New Zealander finds the Jar.

A Young American, Jason Medley takes to backpacking in Europe. That part felt genuinely self experienced to the point that some parts got a bit wordy. Jason meets Theo from New Zealand and they have a sort of bromance while traveling around Europe. Yes that is the New Zealander who found the Jar.

There is a bit of love here and there which helps the story.

It is a well crafted story and the weave created by the people trying to get the Jar or finding out about it is clever and I enjoyed it most of the time.

I have a hard time beside the wordy bit in the travelogue to say anything bad about this book.

Finders Keepers serves as a fun pastime and I wouldn’t mind reading more by the author.

Book Information

Finders Keepers by Russ Colchamiro (3 Finger Prints 2010) – review copy – Amazon US | UK

Caught in the netherworld between college and a career, novice backpacker Jason Medley and adventuresome Theo Barnes stumble through this novel filled with European hash bars and hangovers, religious zealots and stalkers, saucy girls and overnight trains—all under the looming specter of adult responsibility. But when a jar of the universe’s DNA accidentally drops to Earth from eternity, these new friends find their loyalties put to the test, unaware that a motley crew from another realm is feverishly chasing them across the globe with the fate of the Milky Way hanging in the balance. Traversing Europe, New Zealand, and the backbone of eternity, this hilarious buddy story not only tackles friendship, sex, love, and desire, but also God, reincarnation, and what really happened to the dinosaurs.

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A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan [Book Review]

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Aug 252011

A Near Future Sleeping Beauty

Imagine waking up after 62 years in a stasis tube by a kiss. That’s what the protagonist in this story, does. But what starts like an ordinary romance-on-rails story takes some surprising twists and turns and uncovers dark secrets.

This is part Citizen of the Galaxy since Rosalinda Fitzroy is the long-lost heir to an interplanetary empire and not everyone is happy to step down from their position of power in the company. It is also part Sleeping Beauty the sequel since she is drawn to the boy that woke her. But it also has a splash of Terminator.

Anna Sheehan weaves a thrilling and fascinating story about a vulnerable young girl in a new world. Rose slept through the Dark Times that killed millions and has to learn the world anew as she struggles with the situation. She has a unique coping mechanism that is central to the story but it is also quite dark. There is some action but also a lot of everyday events that lets the reader get to know the people and their world

A Long, Long Sleep was a happy read, I liked it quite much. Both young and old should get enjoyment and entertainment out of this one. It is very standalone though I wouldn’t mind revisiting the world and these characters again in another story.

I have been blessed with good reads lately and now I am even happier since I discovered a new-to-me writer. Anna Sheehan feels like a new favorite I have to read more by.

Bottom line is read A Long, Long Sleep, you won’t be sorry.

Book Information

A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan (Chandlewick Press) - Amazon US | UK

Rosalinda Fitzroy had been asleep for 62 years when she was woken by a kiss.

Locked away in the chemically-induced slumber of a stasis tube in a forgotten sub-basement, sixteen-year-old Rose slept straight through the Dark Times that killed millions and utterly changed the world she knew. Now, her parents and her first love are long dead, and Rose – hailed upon her awakening as the long-lost heir to an interplanetary empire – is thrust alone into a future in which she is viewed as either a freak or a threat.

Desperate to put the past behind her and adapt to her new world, Rose finds herself drawn to the boy who kissed her awake, hoping that he can help her to start fresh. But when a deadly danger jeopardizes her fragile new existence, Rose must face the ghosts of her past with open eyes – or be left without any future at all.

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