Review: Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues, by Diana Rowland

This was a fun sequel to My Life as A White Trash Zombie. While the first book didn’t end on an obvious cliffhanger, this one managed to pick up pretty much right away with more drama and spunky zombie attitude.

Our narrator/protagonist, Angel, is finally settling into her new life as a zombie and figures she has some breathing room now that she has dealt with the zombie hunter from the first book. Ha! Think again, because now she’s getting dropped into the larger world of zombies, complete with power plays, mobster politics, and hidden agendas. Allies become enemies. Enemies become allies. And to top it off, she’s getting hassled at work because… if you can believe it… it’s an election year, and someone wants to score points against her boss at her expense.

I had a fun time with this. The character voice is great, and her plight makes life as a zombie less about “Rrrrg” and more about “How dead do I smell today?” While the first one squicked me several times with all-too-vivid descriptions of the taste and texture of a “brain smoothie”, this one avoided such over-the-top sensory paintings. I think my only complaint was one shared by our protagonist, that too many people did not take her seriously when she suspected things were getting weird. Well, at least weirder than being a zombie.

This one does end in a more unresolved state than the first book. I won’t go so far as to call it a cliffhanger, but I will say that my first act upon finishing the book was to look for the next one. Sure enough, it looks like we’re rounding this one out to a trilogy with White Trash Zombie Apocalypse, due out July 2, 2013.

Review: Saving Mars, by Cidney Swanson

Saving Mars is the first book in a trilogy (or series) of books about a teenage pilot from Mars and her brother. I was mostly checking this out for my daughter, because she is nuts about Mars, and the brother in question is a reasonably high-functioning autistic. Likewise, my daughter’s brothers are autistic. On that point, I will probably recommend it to her around age thirteen or fourteen. (She’s nine now.)

However, it didn’t work that well for me as an adult. I have certainly enjoyed some YA fiction, but this one only did so-so. Too many details were glossed over for my taste, and I found a number of decisions (made by both youngsters and adults) to be poorly thought out. While I can say that’s something to be expected amongst the adolescent, some of these pushed my willing suspension of disbelief, especially the ones made by the adults. This probably would not have bothered me had I read it as a young adult myself, but looking at it with adult eyes it bothered me.

I will probably continue to read the series – after all it’s high-adventure and solar-system politics – but I really do hope the characters get smarter in the later books.

Review: Captain’s Fury, by Jim Butcher

This is the fourth book in Butcher’s epic fantasy Fury series. Here we follow Tavi and others as they repel the Canim invasion and battle against a rebellious High Lord. There are a fair number of dark deeds done because the alternative was worse, but in the end, good prevails, of a sort.

As for Tavi’s personal journey, he… hmm, this gets hard without getting into spoiler territory. He picks up some new skills and learns some more about his personal history. He continues to kick butt in various ways and inspires a surprising collection of supporters to kick butt for him. And as always, he shows that in a world of dark sorcery and elemental furies, the best weapon is still calm intelligence.

I did enjoy this one quite a bit, though I have to say I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as the previous book Cursor’s Fury. The writing was superb, of course, and the characters were compelling. I suspect that this time, however, the plot was not as gripping as the previous one. There was simply too much time spent getting from point A to point B, sometimes plotwise and other times geographically. Thus, when the various plots reached their climax, I felt they were about 100 pages overdue.

Not that this is going to stop me from going after the last two. I’m definitely seeing this one through to the end.

Review: Protector, by C.J. Cherryh

This is the fourteenth – yes, fourteenth! – book in the Foreigner series, following the interpreter-ambassador Bren Cameron on his adventures through the Atevi’s world of deadly intrigue.

I confess that I’ve been waiting for Cherryh to pick up again on a plot thread left hanging in book 6, and it’s not like she’s forgotten about it. Indeed, the looming return of that plot thread is on everyone’s mind, but we did not get it in this book. I found that very disappointing in the previous book, but I did not mind it so much this time because the rest of the story was so engaging.

It would seem that young Cajeiri (son of the Atevi ruler) is finally going to have his felicitous ninth birthday, and to celebrate it, three of his human friends will be coming down from the space station to join him. Certainly, things have been tense, but it looks like, for once, he will have a nice smooth birthday.

Of course, not everyone wants it to come off that smoothly. He is a ripe target for assassination, as is his uncle, his great-grandmother, and Bren himself. Will the outlawed shadow guild actually make an attempt at all of them? Or are they unknowingly biting off more than they can chew?

It’s good old Atevi politics and assassination plots at their finest. If you’re an old Atevi hand, fluent in Ragi, and clear on your man’chi, go ahead and grab this one. It’s a worthy installment. I won’t say that it ends on a cliffhanger, but I’ve got a pretty good idea what the next book is about. Plus, Cherryh has hinted that the long-delayed plot thread from book 6 might be making a return soon. Can I hope?

If all of this is new to you, I direct you back to the first book, Foreigner. I admit it’s a bit of a slow start, but it sets the world off in the right direction. Think of the TV show Downton Abbey but with aliens and deadly politics.

Review: Fated, by Benedict Jacka

This is the first book in the Alex Verus series, of which there are currently three – and a fourth one coming out later in 2013. A friend from Australia recommended them to me, saying “If you liked the Dresden Files, you’ll like these.” That set a high bar, but I was not disappointed.

In many ways, it’s a Dresden-like world with wizards and other magical creatures hiding beneath the surface. He even makes a cute reference to Dresden with a remark of “supposedly there’s a wizard in Chicago who advertises in the phone book.” There’s even some wizard organizations, of both good and evil varieties. And our hero is one of these wizards, somewhat caught between the two camps, much like Dresden.

But the similarities end there.

Alex Verus is no fire-wielding combat wizard. In fact, he’s quite the opposite. In face to face combat, he can’t do much more than throw a punch or try to trip you. You see, he’s a diviner who can see the future. But of course, seeing the future means you can change it, so what he really sees is the massively bifurcating tree of possible futures.

Do I turn right or left here? Do I say hello or run like hell? Do I accept this offer, or do I find out that it truly is an offer I cannot refuse? He can explore all those options and try to make the decisions that keep his body and soul joined. But he can only see so far, and he can’t see past someone else’s independent decisions. So, like most good diviners, he puts most of his efforts towards laying low and staying out of trouble.

But then trouble comes looking for him. The various powers-that-be want help cracking open a mysterious artifact, and to do that, they need a diviner. It’s a magical safe-box of sorts, and who else would ask to see the future of all those magical combination locks? Alex is not exactly at the top of the list for diviners, but the best of them have all coincidentally realized that now is a good time to be far, far away from this artifact and those who would open it. Alex isn’t quite that smart, or that lucky.

So he gets drawn back into a world he had done his best to leave behind, hoping he’s smart enough to find his way back out again when it’s all over.

I liked it. A lot. As much as I enjoy Harry Dresden blundering in with his blasting rod and .44 Magnum , he solves more of his day-to-day problems through brute force rather than cunning guile. Alex Verus doesn’t have the option of firepower.

He has to be smart. Or dead. He tries to be smart.

Review: Starbound, by Joe Haldeman

This is the sequel to Marsbound, which I reviewed earlier. In this one, our protagonist Carmen heads off on a relativistic sublight trip to a nearby star to meet with the aliens who were behind the machinations of Marsbound.

I was a little disappointed by this one, not so much for the story itself but for some of the mechanics of how it was told. The basic story is that of the journey, i.e. the preparations, the long trip itself, and what happens once we get to the destination. Those aspects were fairly interesting and held my interest, so on the basic point of telling a good story, I’ll give it good marks.

However, while Marsbound was told from the single point of view of Carmen, “the girl from Mars”, Starbound is told from three separate first-person points of view: two human and one Martian. I can see some justification for the choice, but it ended up confusing me frequently. I could get two or three pages into a chapter and not be sure who the current “I” was. It would have been nice if each chapter could have led off with some identification, even if it was something explicit like the character’s name in the chapter heading.

The second mechanical thing that soured the book for me was something of a cheat. Telling the story of a thirteen-year round-trip voyage is hard to do without boring the reader to tears. Yet Haldeman pulled it off for the first three-and-a-half years or so. Then… I don’t know, maybe he ran out of steam. Maybe he just didn’t want to have to do another nine years of it, so he pulled a rabbit out of his hat and made it go away somewhat magically. He went to some length explaining why we wouldn’t understand the real explanation, but it still felt like a cheat.

So, while I enjoyed the tale, I was disappointed by some of the execution. I’ll probably finish off the trilogy, but I’m no longer quite so excited about it as I was after Marsbound.

Review: Moon Called, by Patricia Briggs


This is the first book in the Mercy Thompson series. She’s our first person narrator and also a “skin walker”, a kind of shape-changing witch from Native American lore. Since she has the habit of turning into a coyote, she was sent to be raised by a pack of werewolves in a small Montana town. Now she’s in Washington state, living next to another werewolf, and running a one-woman garage she inherited from a gremlin.

A few of the magical beings came out to the public a few years ago, but most remain in private, including the werewolves and the vampires she’s paying protection money to. Or at least she would be paying if she could afford it. Fortunately, one of them is trying to restore an old VW bus, so she’s working it off in trade. So, she was not entirely surprised when a teenage werewolf on the run showed up at her doorstep looking for help.

As you would expect, hijinks ensue. The folks chasing the young werewolf start sniffing around for him, and the local pack of werewolves is none too happy about it. Then it starts look like an even bigger problem stemming from other packs across the country, and that brings in the pack that raised her… and by the way, she did not exactly leave that pack under the best of circumstances. Before long, the moon is up, and all hell is breaking loose. Well, not literally hell, it’s at least… um, hair-raising.

I liked it. The plot was good, and it kept me guessing. The characters were fairly real to me, and she did a good job of humanizing werewolves without turning them into sparkle-puppies. My biggest complaint was that some of the important plot-movers were “off screen” until late in the book, so I had a hard time keeping track of who was who once they showed up in the final build towards the climax. My much smaller complaint was there was a sidetrack thread about the local vampires that was interesting but not really required for the plot of this book. Clearly, it’s there to set up more events in future books, but it felt very extraneous in this one.

Still, even with those caveats, it was enjoyable. The next one is already sitting in my kindle samples, waiting to go.

Review: Lieutenant, by Phil Geusz


This is the third book in the David Birkenhead series. I reviewed the first two books already. It’s the story of the apparently epic career of… well, a rabbit in the royal space navy. More specifically, he’s a genetically engineered rabbit-human crossbreed, raised as a part of a slave race but elevated to the status of a free person in reward for an act of bravery.

Lieutenant picks up David’s story as he gets his first assignment following his graduation from the naval academy. Just as plenty of people tried to push him down in the academy, the defenders of the status quo intend to tuck him out of the way, never to be seen again. So, instead of the ship engineering position he desperately wanted, he is posted to graves registration, seeing to the collection and proper burial of the humans who have fallen in service to the king.

Disappointed, he does what he can to perform at his best, but he is starting to accept that he will never escape this dead-end job and will simply have to serve out the remainder of his term before trying to find his way in the civilian world. But then, as plot contrivances would have it, he finds himself out on assignment collecting bodies from an old battle that sparks back to life. Left in command by acts of foolishness and desertion by his superior officers, he has to face impossible odds, resigning himself to die in a hopeless cause.

To some extent, this is young Birkenhead facing the Kobayashi Maru challenge from Star Trek, deciding how to face death and lead his fellow officers and rabbits willingly to it, but much like James T. Kirk, he does not believe in the no-win scenario, and woe be to the enemy who expects him to lay down and die peacefully.

So, in that respect, it’s a great bit of space opera worthy of any of the better known authors and universes. But I still have to admit, it’s this rabbit thing that makes it both really weird and strangely compelling.

In many ways, Birkenhead’s status as a free rabbit acts as a placeholder for any groundbreaking career officer, perhaps the first black officer or the first female officer here in the U.S. He faces many of the same challenges that they would, from the prejudices of his fellow officers to the outright hatred of those who must defend the status quo against the inevitable pressures of the future. On top of that, he is dealing with both the admiration of his fellow rabbits as well as their own preconceptions of subservience and inadequacy.

And yet he is also dealing with many problems that are unique to being a rabbit instead of a pure human. He eats different food, so he’s not necessarily welcome in the officer’s wardroom. He’s covered in fur, and that makes a difference in some of the special engineering suits they require. And for that matter, his feet are enormous by human standards, so his dress uniform is decidedly lacking in the polished boots department. So, all of that keeps this from being a simple proxy for the standard “first minority officer” story, and that combination, as I said, keeps it both weird and compelling.

The title of the next book hints at his continued rise through the ranks, and I’m looking forward to reading it. I’d rip right through the whole series, but I’m trying to pace myself.

Review: Dead Witch Walking, by Kim Harrison


This is the first book in The Hollows series, an urban fantasy series where the various Inderlanders (everything from pixies to vampires) were revealed when they proved immune to a pandemic that wiped out a good chunk of humanity years ago. It’s a first person tale told by Rachel Morgan, a witch who has had her fill of working for the magical cops of Inderland Security.

So, she’s off on her own, or at least she would be if she wasn’t joined by two partners, a pixie named Jenks and her old partner Ivy, a living vampire. Being a magical private investigator is not technically illegal, but her bosses at I.S. aren’t the kind to just shake hands and say goodbye. So, in addition to setting up shop and trying to track down her first case, she’s got her old bosses trying to turn her into a grim warning to anyone else foolish enough to follow in her footsteps.

The world was interesting, and her first case was a reasonably good exploration of it. I liked the characters for the most part, though I found the vampire and pixie to be a little too stereotypical. That is, the vampire was a touch too brooding, and the pixie was annoyingly perky and excitable. The story kept things moving, but I thought it was a slow take-off with too much world-building narrative in the early chapters.

Still, it finished strong and left enough open questions to lure me into the next book. It’s evidently quite a long series now, and a friend of mine is quite happy with the later books. So, I guess I’ll be digging into them soon enough.

Review: Code of the Lifemaker, by James Hogan

This is an odd book. It starts with a long prologue that gives the evolutionary history of a machine race on Saturn’s moon Titan, from its inception with a damaged Von Neumann factory ship to mutation, sexual reproduction, competition, and the rise of diverse species and intelligence. Then it sets up a first contact situation between humanity and these machines. We in our spaceships, and they struggling to move past their own equivalent of the stone age.

There are also twin battles going on between science and mysticism. For the robots of Titan, there is a nascent movement towards science and observations, all the while struggling beneath an oppressive religious doctrine handed down in the sacred scribings of the Lifemaker. Meanwhile, amongst the humans, we have hardened scientists trying to expose the trickery of a new-age psychic who is in truth an incredibly talented con artist.

It was an interesting story, and I eventually enjoyed most of the characters, though the psychic bugged the hell out of me at first. I did find some of the storytelling mechanics hard to follow as we jumped from one setting to another and one POV to another with little visual or textual clue that it was happening. I wonder if this might have been the fault of the transfer to ebook, since this is an older book that came out on paper back in the 80’s. Either that, or it was just the way it was written.

It was a good ending in that everyone got what they deserved, so I came away pretty happy.