This novel is a Space Opera that transcends its genre in form and creativity, breaking all the rules and making it work. Let me explain. One of the main strengths of a good story is a main character who makes emotional contact with readers, drawing them in until they feel vicarious connection with the conflict. […]
“The Demon Overlord’s Retirement Plan” by M. H. Foster
Word has it that James Cameron summed up “Titanic” with, “In the end the boat sinks and everybody dies.” And then he proceeded to make an award-winning movie about it. This book has the same problem and a similar solution. Because we know from the very start that it has to be a happy ending. […]
“Cristobal Ritter” by Mijo Rebic
This novella updates the old Noir Detective form with a modern and subtly humorous twist. The electronic cityscape blends in with reality, which I assume is the intended effect, but in places (especially flashbacks) the readers could wish for clearer clues about where and when we just jumped to. Except for that, the setting creation […]
“Hypgnosium” by J. E. R. Sanderson
This novel shows an example of an author who has planned a book of great scope but then doesn’t have room in a single volume to “show” readers everything, and thus is reduced to “telling” all the creative details. Characters are carefully thought out and described in great physical detail., and they develop in interesting […]
“Dad vs Evil” by William T. D. Feeley
This is the first book in a Paranormal/Sci-Fi/LitRPG series. There are a lot of books coming out in this style, but this one stands head and shoulders above the rest. Many of them are written for gamers, and the results read like a play-by-play announcer from a hockey game. Mr. Feeley goes in the other […]
“Caenogenisis” by Tasha He
This novel is a classic example of Rebels-in-Dystopia Sci-Fi. It has multi-layered conflict, tightly related to the themes and to the emotions of sympathetic characters. It starts out with an attractive opening: evocative setting description teasing us with an interesting character puzzle that keeps us reading through those tricky opening pages. Then we are presented […]
“The Men of the Mountain” by Drew Harrison
Reading this novel is rather like putting together a complicated jigsaw puzzle made from colourful pieces. Similar fragments fit together, and each section grows slowly as new pieces are revealed. The development of the main character is of course the central block. Cade starts out as a simple rabbit hunter. The author stays true to […]
“Robot Asteroid” by Paul May
This novel is a hodgepodge of styles and standard plotlines, trying to do too much with too little organization. The promo material sets it up pretty well: “Robot Asteroid follows three researchers racing against both a bizarre plague and a crumbling, Orwellian society to decode an ancient riddle foretelling the current collapse of the Earth’s […]
“The Sentient Odyssey” by Ken Craggs
If you haven’t watched a YouTube video where an AI predicts the next thousand years, you ought to, at least to prepare you for the first half of this novel. This is an adventure in scientific prediction, a treatise on every moral quandary predicted by Science Fiction in the last hundred years. It starts with […]
“Li-Ming the Sand Witch” by Steven Allen
A word to the author. Fiction should never need an introduction. It is a sign that the author is intruding into the story, trying to affect our reaction to it because he doesn’t believe the story can stand on its own. In the case of this introduction, it seems meant to draw us in, attract […]