Turn the Other Chick

by on January 13, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Sadly, the first impression of this book has to be that it lost Larry Elmore as a cover artist, and this one just doesn’t measure up to the previous covers in the series.

But, the important part, the stories, are as good.

The anthology leads with John Hemry’s “Mightier Than the Sword”, which is a farce mashup between swords-and-sorcery, and writers wanting to strangle their muse. It makes a good start to the volume, but not as strong as it could be. The final one is Harry Turtledove’s “Of Mice and Chicks”, which tries too hard with narrative interruptions and allusions to Of Mice and Men.

So, thankfully, the rest holds up better than the tentpoles.

The top story is definitely Cassandra Claire’s “The Girl’s Guide to Defeating the Dark Lord“. It’s pretty easy to see just what kind of story this is going to be, but the writing and journey are well done. Past that, its harder to point out particular ones, as they just about all have positive points, which makes it harder to concentrate on a few. I’d go with Jody Lynn Nye’s “Protector of the Small” and Steven Piziks’ “Smoke and Mirrors”. After that, I think I wind up with a three-way tie for fourth best.

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Chicks ‘n Chained Males

by on January 5, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

I recently picked up the package deal of three of the Chicks in Chainmail anthologies on Kindle. I’m disappointed that the first two haven’t gone electronic.

The general idea is fantasy stories featuring women warriors saving males in distress. The various titles in the series have had word plays on the original title, and this one plays that straight with just about all the stories having a man in literally in chains at some point (though some merely settle for a more figurative side). Also, the usual anthology editing applies here, one strong story to lead with, then several secondary stories, leading to a series of better ones, and the best for last. And the tone of the series is generally humorous.

There’s eighteen stories here, most of which are authors I know to one extent or another, and all are enjoyable. The starting story by Harry Turtledove is a lighthearted look at Greek myth with a bit of role reversal, and certainly has some good lines along with setting a good mood for the rest of the book. The next three add to this, with good Elizabeth Moon and Lawrence Watt-Evans stories (I think I’ve seen “In For Pound” elsewhere).

The final story, “Miss Underwood and the Mermaid”, really brings home the classic 80s/90s fantasy feel, and has a good climax, but isn’t actually the best of the lot. Other reviews have rightly pointed out “Leg Irons, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe”, “Cross CHILDREN Walk”, and “Baubles, Bangles and Beads”, the last of which is my favorite.

Esther Friesner is a good editor, with an eye for humor. This isn’t all time greats, it’s not pretentious like Dangerous Visions (and doesn’t want to change SF like it), but it fills its intended role very well.

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The Serpent Sea

by on December 23, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

With my schedule, it can take years to get back to a series. And this case, I was a bit lost, as I didn’t entirely remember how The Cloud Roads had ended. So, yeah, start this series at the beginning.

And it is worth reading. As I stated with the first book, this is a climax forest of fantasy tropes, and it continues here. We still don’t get much of a sense of the wider world around this, just the various fragmented pieces the novel goes into.

This time there’s two. The novel picks up right after the last one with Indigo Cloud court moving back to its ancestral home, and we get to see a lot more of how Raksura society works overall, though we still only see two communities. Not too surprisingly, the main plot flows out of this move, though not necessarily in the direction you’d expect.

The mountain tree that should house Indigo Cloud is dying, so instead of largely focusing on external problems of other clans, we deal with a mystery, and then a chase in familiar action-adventure mode. Much of the novel does take place in one of the ‘kingdoms of the sea’ that we didn’t get anything of last time. And, as ever, it’s different, inventive, and part of what makes these books good.

There is a fairly large cast of characters here, and there’s enough cross-currents to generate a hefty amount of extra plot points. It’s handled well, and characters are generally one of the strong points here. Overall world-building is still a bit lighter than I’d like, and there’s only a little added to from some of the big subjects of the first book. In fact, the Fell don’t get more than a mention here; which is good, as it helps the plot be it’s own thing here. But, I’m sure they’ll be back. There are more books, and I want to get to them!

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Starfleet Year One

by on December 15, 2023 at 2:19 pm
Posted In: Books

I got this at the same time as the two Enterprise Romulan War novels, but it was written noticeably before those. Those were done in 2009-11, after Star Trek: Enterprise was off the air and a lot more had been established. This was published as the series was getting going, and was written before that, and isn’t directly tied to it at all.

Apparently, it began as a serial, apparently appearing in the backs of the then-monthly publishing of Star Trek books at Pocket. So, the chapters are almost a sequence of short stories (the plot unifies as it goes on), that have been collected together. It also has its own cast of characters, and doesn’t lean on existing ones at all other than Dax.

As such, it has been somewhat overcome by events, though the concept is still a sound one, and you can change some details to save the general plot. The book covers the end of the Earth-Romulan war (which looks a lot different than in the later novels). Earth remains committed to strengthening ties to its other neighbors after the war (this is consistent), and wants to found a new fleet that everyone will be part of. Naturally, lead by humans, because it’s all their idea, but they’re trying to get as many aliens into the Federation and Starfleet as possible.

The real plot begins about a third of the way through with the idea that Starfleet is beginning with six ships taken from Earth Command, and soon, the first ship of a brand-new class, USS Daedalus (that’s her on the cover), will be commissioned and given to one of those six. These six captains fall into two rough camps, with external champions of each faction wanting to decide the direction of the new organization.

On one side are people from Earth Command, who see it purely as a regular military defense fleet, dedicated to nothing more or less than the defense of the new Federation. They derisively call the other captains ‘butterfly catchers’, who are backed by people who want to take the opportunity to explore, chart dangerous anomalies, and make scientific discoveries.

The bulk of the novel deals with the internal tensions of the new Starfleet from the point of view of the captains. It’s a good enough premise, and decently done in classic Star Trek action format. There were originally plans to do seven years of the beginnings of Starfleet, and I think with Enterprise to build off of now, it could still be a good idea to return to.

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The Battle of Quatre Bras 1815

by on December 7, 2023 at 1:21 pm
Posted In: Books

I will take Robinson at his word that there’s been no single work focused exclusively on the battle of Quatre Bras before in English. It seems unlikely that there’s nothing, but with the long shadow of Waterloo, it’s all too possible.

However, I was also surprised, and skeptical, when he said that his look through French sources did not turn up anything of help in writing the book. Having read it, I now wonder just what he was looking for.

Overall, this is an account of the battle using as many low-level primary sources as possible. I assume that Robinson’s trouble revolves around a lack of Frenchmen who survived the campaign, and desired to talk about it in writing. I would still think there’d be something, but perhaps not nearly enough to assemble a narrative from the French side.

What this means is that it is a very lopsided book. To Robinson’s credit, he does draw in a lot of sources from allied contingents, so this is not presented as just a an English show. However, everything is told from the British point of view. French forces are encountered the same way Wellington’s army did, as masses of men moving around, firing, charging, seriously challenging the allied army’s hold on the field, but no unit names or other specifics are given. What is actually going on in the battle is lost. Bédoyère’s conflicting orders aren’t even alluded to.

I found following the action very rough going in this book. I think it’s partly because the one-sided nature of the book, which aids a jumbled narrative. It got a lot of—limited—detail, and worth studying for anyone wanting to dive deep into the battle. But there is still yet to be a good one-book study of the battle as a battle.

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