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 […]
Jagged Worlds: Avoid Your Senseless Death” by Cliff Galbraith
Science Fiction isn’t a genre. It’s a setting. Of necessity, the story line must deal with a specific conflict of some type. So we have Sci-Fi Romance, Sci-Fi Military, Sci-Fi Action, Sci-Fi Detective and the list goes on. This novel should probably be labeled a Sci-Fi Business Procedural. The story provides an in-depth look at […]
“Beyond the Crystal Sky” by Glen C. Strathy
This novel is a version of the “Generation Ship Gone Haywire” variety, but with an interesting format. Most of the narrative involves the main character, Perdit, describing the events of the story to the AI that runs the Ship. In most novels this would devolve into a mind-numbing info dump, but this author is above […]
“Secrets of the Sky Gods” by Ryan McBride
This novel is Epic Fantasy in the most sweeping scope and style, but the book’s true appeal comes from the portrayal of the main character, Runa. Much of the conflict is internal. There are four ways to show personality: what the author tells us directly, what the character says, what the character does, and what […]
“AI Risen” by Endoc Evans
This book has all the elements of a good Sci-Fi story. It discusses the rise of Artificial Intelligence, which is topical these days. It has a detailed future setting with a realistic social order. It has a reasonable amount of hi-tech gadgetry. It has sympathetic and admirable characters we can empathize with. It has a […]
“Dappled Leaves and Dust” by Isabella Wu
Poetry is hard to review, because different types of poets have different objectives in their writing. With my theatre background, I come to poetry from a performance point of view. I gather Ms. Wu comes from a more academic background. There are bound to be disagreements. For example, there is a cute bit of visual […]