Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

It's hard to believe that I never got round to writing about some of the early books in the Vorkosigan saga, but it appears that Memory came out during the early days of this blog, and I never went full retro, as I did with Cole & Bunch's Sten novels. I recently finished Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, and it led me to re-read Shards of Honor (and continue through to Barrayar) in a moment of temporary new novel drought, as I had copies on my tablet ready to hand.

There are certain stories which I cannot read without sentimental tears coming to my eyes at times, and Bujold has written a fair number of them. A Civil Campaign is the weepiest one for me, but Shards did a pretty good number on me, too, and as I mentioned before, I began grieving for Aral all over again while reading Gentleman Jole. Crazy thing is, Shards used to be my least favorite story in the series. But I began by reading The Warrior's Apprentice when I was in my twenties, and now I'm in Cordelia's demographic. Odd, that.

This is, at the moment, the true beginning of the story. Captain Naismith is in charge of a peaceful survey expedition on an uninhabited planet (later named Sergyar), which is attacked by a small Barrayaran force which has arrived to garrison the planet and prepare a stockpile for their invasion of Escobar (we find this out over the course of the first half of the book). Also caught up in the scuffle is Captain Aral Vorkosigan, a man of strong personal integrity who has run afoul of the secret political police, and who is assaulted by one of his own crew and assumed to be dead, though  it turns out the conspirators really didn't truly understand the motivations of the man they picked to murder him.

Cordelia is left with one crew member dead and another nerve-damaged, when Aral arrives on the scene to make her his prisoner, technically, though the relationship soon develops into something far different. Together they journey for a week or so, facing the dangers of an untamed planet, followed by the dangers of untamed Barrayaran soldiers. Aral retakes command of his ship, but is forced to fight against another round of mutineers, and Cordelia manages to flee to freedom in the confusion.

Intermission.

Cordelia is now the commander of a top secret mission to supply the Escobaran forces with a secret weapon, a force shield which will reflect the Barrayaran (space) navy's weapons straight back at their own ships. The mission is successful, but she and her crew are captured by the Barrayarans and she is taken aboard the flagship as a prisoner - again. The fleet is commanded by Admiral Vorrutyer and Prince Serg, heir to the Imperium. These two are well suited to partner up, as they are both sexual sadists, and Cordelia is dismayed to learn that Vorrutyer has taken a personal interest in her, but she is rescued in a surprising manner, and then encounters Aral again on the same ship.

I don't want to say too much more, cause there's plenty of spoilers, but I think we all know the end of the story, if we've been reading Bujold for a while.

One little note that made me laugh out loud was when Cordelia bamboozles a pilot officer into smuggling her off of Beta Colony, one step ahead of the authorities. The pilot officer's name will be very familiar to anyone who has read The Warrior's Apprentice, and we wonder why the man didn't run screaming the minute he heard the name, Naismith.




Great story. Barrayar to follow.

A Rose-Red Chain by Seanan McGuire

You know, a person can slog along, trying to finish reading books over longer than normal periods of time, and begin to think that it's because they're distracted, too busy, under the weather, or some sort of excuse to justify matters. Then, suddenly, you pick up a book that is quite simply so riveting that you have to force yourself to put it down so you can get a decent night's sleep before work, finding yourself halfway through it in the first hour, and tearing through the rest as soon as it is possible to pick it up again. This latest book in the saga of Toby Daye is one such book. Loved it.

The book opens with Toby, the bridge troll Danny, her squire Quentin and her fiancee, Tybalt battling a large group of supernatural Mauthe dogs that has gotten loose from one of the inner realms of faerie. When Toby realized that the Mauthe were not hostile, but rather terrified of the modern world and decided to rescue them instead of killing them all, I made a mental note of this, thinking that the dogs would end up in the role of calvary to the rescue later on, but it turned out that they were simple a device to introduce us to Madden, one of the "dog" Sidhe, who becomes the first casualty when war is declared on the Kingdom of the Mists by the Kingdom of Silence, where one of the villains of a previous novel has taken sanctuary, and seduced its King into attacking Arden's domain.

In the category of Really Bad Ideas Arden's subsequent decision to send Toby as the chief diplomat to begin negotiations with Silence to try to halt the war really ranks near the top. Toby and her fetch, May, Tybalt and Quentin, and her friend the alchemist, Walther all journey to Portland where Silences is located in the physical world. Why Walther? The Sea Witch tells Toby she should take someone who knows the lay of the land with her, and Walther was born there before a coup by the present ruler, and fled to the human realm, where he has hidden ever since.

As it turns out, Walther is key to the success of the mission. It turns out that he is related to the former royal family in Silences, and that he also is the only person with the skill, combined with some of Toby's special knowledge, to create a potion which can waken the elf-shot true rulers of the land, who have been kept asleep for more than a century now, as conditions in their rightful kingdom grow more and more oppressive.

This plot moves right along, never a boring moment. After nine novels, McGuire's tale is still going strong.

Nocturnal Interlude by Amanda Green

One might begin to think that all of the bad guys in the shapeshifting society are out to get Mac, from the way things are going. She and Jackson return from a trip to Hawaii, where they have lots of fun in and out of the sun, and decide to tie the knot in a small ceremony, and find out that Mac's partner, Pat, has disappeared, apparently kidnapped, by an unknown entity who has abducted shifters and weres in several other cities previously - none ever being seen alive again.

Mac gets recruited, technically her enlistment in the Marines is re-activated, to detached duty for a division of Homeland Security which is aware of the existence of shifters and is committed to making sure that the "torch and pitchfork" scenario never comes to pass when shifters are finally outed to the public, which is only a matter of time, given modern forensics. Her cousin, Matteo, is part of the unit, and her grandmother, Ellen, has been aware of its existence for some time now, though her former colleagues in the Conclave are not.

Another good story in the series. Book # 4 is out already, and I think I'll pick it up next week on Kindle.

Nocturnal Serenade by Amanda Green

Another fair tale in the saga of McKenzie Santos, wherein we learn a bit of her family's history. It turns out that Mac's mother was freaked out by the family's furry moments, and refused to tell Mac about them when she was young, and had forbidden her own mother, Ellen, from telling Mac either. So we know now why Mac was shocked and appalled to find herself changing with the phases of the moon after being attacked by a were.

But when the brother of the villain Mac vanquished in the first books turns up on the scene and makes it his goal to destroy Mac and her family, and Mom is attacked and hospitalized, old issues rear their heads, and Mac and Mom must make up. Grandma Ellen turns out to be quite a handful, and will probably provide her granddaughter with some much needed training in the shifter skills.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen

I needed my Vorkosigan fix way too much by the time this book came out. It had been long enough since the last one that I had completely forgotten the death of Aral Vorkosigan, Miles' father, and found myself grieving once again with Cordelia, three years later in book time. Cordelia, herself, and Aral's long time protege, Oliver Jole, now an admiral in his own right, and as we learn fairly early in the story, Aral's lover.

The menage a trois evidently worked quite well when Aral was alive, but Oliver and Cordelia were unable to kindle any fire between the two of them when Aral was gone, so they simply lapsed into being friends, and Jole ended up in charge of the Sergyar fleet, while Cordelia continued to serve as Vicereine of the colony.

These chapters of their lives are drawing to a close, as Oliver approaches his "twice-twenty" years of service to the Emperor in the fleet, and Cordelia considers turning over the reins of power to a younger person as the colony matures. She has also decided to quicken some of the fertilized eggs that she and Aral put in cryogenic storage back before Miles was born, and to raise a number of sisters for the new Count and his wife, Ekaterina's children to play with.

Always even-handed, she also gifts Oliver with some of the embryos, leaving the choice up to him of whether and when to start a family of his own, with the children of the man he loved.

So, this book isn't filled with all of the danger and frying pan to fire goodness that we've come to enjoy from our old friend Miles and his cousin Ivan (who doesn't even put in a cameo here), but at least we get to spend a bit of time with some old friends and to see the man whom Miles has become, now that he's not off derring and do-ing.

Ctrl Alt Revolt by Nick Cole

Very much like Armada, by Ernest Cline, Ctrl Alt Revolt is an example of going one too many times to the well in using computer gaming as the scenario to play out real world events in a novel. Fun once, but after that it grows old quickly. It was my choice when I got a free week of Kindle Unlimited, and I never really did get into it enough to regret not having finished it when the week ran out.

This novel ended up being independently published when the editor at one of the major publishing houses took offense to the AIs (artificial intelligences) in this novel concluding that humans were a murderous species after observing the number of abortions that take place each year, but there were far more attacks on progressive shibboleths throughout the book that probably would have given her apoplexy should she have actually finished reading.

Wonder if Cole simply got tired of all of the lazy writing by liberal authors in their depictions of dystopias caused by global warming and so forth, and just decided to shake the tree and see what fell out.

Personally, I'd recommend that you either pick Soda Pop Soldier or this book to read as an example of Cole's gaming-based works. Two of them is one too many.

Soda Pop Soldier by Nick Cole

This is another one of those books that is a lot of fun for hard core computer gamers to read. Professional gamer Perfect Question falls into the middle of deep plotting by multinational corporations trying to get the monopoly on marketing through battles fought in a Halo-like environment. He is a mid level officer for Cola Corp's online army, and as the novel begins they're getting their tails seriously kicked by a competing army. As his pay for gaming is based on victories, things are starting to get a little tight in the real world, and when his girlfriend (whom we get to know not at all other than a quick description at the beginning of things) runs off with someone in show business who can help her career, he has to join an online fantasy game on the dark net to try to win some money to pay the rent on his apartment.

The mix of live and online game action in this one is tons of fun and a roller coaster ride through a world that reminds me of my first impressions of Neuromancer, back in the day.

Betrayal by Amazon

Shortly after I first began book blogging, I decided it was taking way too long for me to scan an image of the book cover for what I was reviewing at the time, uploading it to blogger, etc. I discovered that if one became an Amazon associate, you could create a link to Amazon where the book was on sale, that included the cover picture, and so I signed up for associate status. Never made any money from people buying books at the link, but at least I had a nice image on every post.


A few months back, I noticed that the images on all my older posts had disappeared. Amazon changed the image URLs, and it was all cut adrift. Now, to make the blog look nice once more, I either have to go out and re-link those images, scan some independent ones, or simply delete all of the images from over a thousand posts.


Thanks Amazon!

Her Brother's Keeper by Mike Kupari

There might be a decent beginning to a swashbuckling science fiction series here for Kupari, if he chooses to follow up on it. Catherine Blackwood is a privateer, originally from the planet Avalon, who has been estranged from her family ever since she chose a career not suitable for a noblewoman of the Arthurian system (I think Kupari could have spent  bit more time with his place names rather than choosing something as overused as these).  Her father has requested her presence and asks for her help in rescuing her younger brother from a lawless world where one of his treasure hunting schemes has gone awry, leaving him a hostage in the hands of a megalomaniac.

Catherine recruits a crew of mercenaries to help break her brother free, as this isn't exactly the type of mission her own crew normally encounters while escorting merchant vessels from planet to planet. Some very entertaining adventures ensue, and Kupari makes use of some nice little plot devices to make sure things fall out the way they need to.

Hope to see more of this sort of thing from him in the future.

His Father's Eyes by David Coe

The main talent that Justiss seems to have is getting into trouble with other sorcerers who can reliably kick his butt. Once again, Phoenix is invaded by powerful users of black magic, who are using blood sacrifices to power their rituals. And again, as soon as he starts investigating their activities, he gets smacked down hard.

The bad guys, to their dismay, make the mistake of threatening people close to him, which definitely motivates him to get to the bottom of the crimes and to thwart their plots. Justiss' father, it turns out, was not as powerful a mage as his son is going to be one day, and even in his untrained way, he comes up with some very powerful spells when sufficiently motivated.

If this series keeps going along the same lines, it might turn out to be as good as Dresden.

Making it Up

I'm going to go ahead and publish a bunch of short book reviews this week, to make up for long silence, one each day until I clear the backlog. Short on substance, perhaps, but enough info to make the read/no read decision.

Apologies may be in order

Life has been, well, just life, lately. Too busy to write reviews, barely have time to read. I got a week of free Kindle Unlimited, and didn't even finish the one book I checked out.


Things will ease up at some point, and I'll get more reviews out.


In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves.

Oysters: Recipes that Bring Home a Taste of the Sea by Cynthia Nims

My wife and I spend a lot of time vacationing on the coast of Washington State, and one of the local visitor bureaus was recently bragging about a Washington author's oyster cookbook, so when I found it in the library 500 miles away, I was surprised, and immediately checked it out to...check it out.


Nims provides a great deal of information on the history, biology, and cultivation of oysters, and the many ways they can be prepared. In my years in the restaurant business, I think I've tried most of them, but there are always a few new twists to be found. I think a few of the tips and recipes she showcased may end up on my personal menu pretty soon.


To rewrite an old cliché, there are two types of oyster eaters; those who enjoy the fresh taste of the sea, and the delicate texture of a newly shucked oyster, and those who enjoy smothering the oyster with enough other distractions to ensure that they can forget they're actually eating one.


Come to think of it, there are a number of foods people regard that way.


Nims, however, is of the first sort, and in most of the recipes the ingredients are simply there to enhance in subtle ways the experience of slurping a succulent oyster. Raw oysters with mignonettes, relishes and granites, baked, grilled and smoked oysters, fried and sautéed, steamed and poached, they're all here.


I think a copy of this book may make its way to my kitchen shelves pretty soon.

Intergalactic Medicine Show by Orson Scott Card

Actually this collection is edited by someone else, but it's the product of one of Scott's writing workshops, so that name fades easily into obscurity, and you'll have no problem finding the book if you search for the title, which is, I believe, also the title of Scott's online publication. Y'all know, if you've been around here a while, how much I love Scott's writing, both fiction and non, and any writers whose stories he is thrilled about are sure to be good.


If you're looking for a few newer authors to add to your watchlist, Card can pick 'em.


Card also publishes a couple of new stories in Ender's universe, and in one of the afterwords he penned a paragraph that had me nodding and chuckling at the same time.



"I had to force myself to keep Bonzo's family from getting too strange. Still, in the real world, everyone's family is strange, in one way or another. On average, families are pretty much alike, but in detail, every family does tings that make people from outside the family shake their heads and wonder how any of the children emerged with their sanity."

Saturn Run by John Sandford and Ctein

Once in a while you take a flyer on something new, and it turns out to be a nice experience. Such is the case with this book. John Sandford is well know for his "Prey" series of suspenseful mysteries, and I've read a couple of those randomly, so I knew he was a decent writer. Ctein I'd never heard of. Turns out he's an internationally know photography expert with degrees in English and Physics, and he seems to bring a good deal of that knowledge to the project. Indeed, one of the primary characters becomes the videographer for the U.S. expedition to Saturn, which is the whole point of the book, the title, and so forth.

This is some good old-fashioned hard SF, with a minimum of magical handwaving regarding the technology necessary to successfully make a trip to Saturn survivable about five decades from now. A rich dilettante, Sandy, is working in an astronomy facility in California, more interested in surfing and seducing women than watching the stars. So everyone is quite surprised when he is the first to discover an anomaly out near the orbit of Saturn - a massive alien spacecraft on a rendezvous with an artificial moonlet.

There's a bit more to Sandy than meets the eye, and he ends up with what appears to be a plum job when the expedition gets on its way to investigate the aliens and especially to beat the Chinese space ship to the prize.

A good plot, fun characters, and some believable fictional science.

The Lawyers of Mars by Pam Uphoff

I have to wonder if the title of this book, though appropriate, wasn't initially conceived as a parody of the Burroughs John Carter series, as in Fighting Man of Mars, Warlord of Mars, Princess of Mars, etc. The book is actually three related novellas about a race of Martians which once existed (16mbillion years ago?) on the Red Planet when it still had water and enough atmosphere to sustain life. The funny thing is that their society seems very much like our own modern technological society, with a few twists.


I'm fairly certain that the names of many of the "Martian" characters in the book, if pronounced correctly, would be quite punny or ironic; one I easily spotted was Orton N'drea (Andre Norton) a science fiction writer. I'll leave it to other readers to puzzle out a few more.


The lead character, Xaero, is a lawyer in the family firm, assigned to defend an accused REM (Red Ever Mars - like Earth First?) terrorist in court. When her assistant is captured after he foolishly decides to tail the acquitted criminal, she undertakes a rescue on her own, and gets into a comedic caper filled with incompetent crooks and Bond-ian villains.


In the second novella, she and her allies outwit a time-traveling mad scientist, and in the third she journeys to a Jurassic period Earth with a group of scientists trying to mine uranium to sustain Mars' faltering energy resources.


Not deep, but fun for an evening or two.

Spell Blind by David B. Coe

I had never previously read any of David Coe's books, so this first book in his most recent series served as a good introduction. When one does this, it is a bit dangerous, as you might assume that if this book is good, then all previous books will be good, too. However, the author may merely have hit his stride at this point in their career, or finally found the right genre and setting to tell the tale they were meant to. At this point I can only recommend this particular series as being worthwhile, though I may try to work my way backwards in time later on.

Justis Fearsson is a weremyste, a practitioner of magic who has certain inherited native abilities in that direction. Weremystes have a serious problem, though, in that when the moon is full- called a phasing - their magic goes out of control, and the experience is not unlike a psychotic episode, filled with hallucinations and delusions. Justis' father was a successful police detective at one time, until the effects caused by the phasing of the moon cost him nearly everything, and Justis is beginning to follow in his footsteps, having lost his job with the Phoenix PD, becoming a private investigator instead.

When a serial killer, known as the Blind Angel, who uses magic to burn out the eyes of his victims strikes against the daughter of a prominent politician, Justis' former partner, Kona Shaw, pulls him in to consult on the case, and he rapidly becomes deeply involved in trying to find the killer before he strikes again. Justis is helped in his journey by the spirit of a powerful Native American magician named Namid - these powerful ghost magicians are called runemystes, and are somewhat like guardian angels of the magical community.

Harry Dresden, he ain't, but Justis Fearsson is a pretty good wizard PI, and Coe delivers an amusing tale.

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

So, of course, I couldn't resist the title of this book,obviously. It's a young adult novel, which is not my usual fare, but it wasn't bad. In a comic book inspired version of the future, random people have turned into Epics, beings with super powers, such as being bulletproof, having precognition, pirokinetics, flying or casting illusions, and so forth. As a Calvinist might suspect, with great powers come great corruption, and the Epics rapidly rule the cities of Earth with an iron fist. Every Epic, however, has one mortal flaw, a certain way they can be killed.

When the Epic named Steelheart rises to power, he eliminates everyone who may have any knowledge of his weakness, but he misses one small boy, David (something David and Goliath-ish here?), who watches his father and many others destroyed by the Epic, and devotes the rest of his life to discovering Steelheart's flaw, and investigating and recording the flaws of all of the other Epics he is aware of.

Eventually, David joins forces with the Reckoners, a group of ordinary humans who have begun a Quixotic quest to eliminate the Epics and return Earth to humans once again.If you accept the premise of corrupt superheroes appearing to rule the planet, the book is an entertaining, fast moving read.

Day Shift by Charlaine Harris

It hadn't been very long for me since I read the first book in this series, Midnight, Texas, so I didn't really need it, but Harris does a nice little cast call in the first few pages of the book, reminding us of all the dramatis personae we got to know in the first book. A large corporation has purchased the defunct hotel in town and are renovating it to turn it into a senior citizens transitional facility, with a few regular hotel rooms to rent to nearby tech workers, as well. Manfred and Fiji and Bobo and the rest of our friends gather gradually on Witch Light Road to watch the construction crews arrive, and the work begin. Nice touch.


The main plot of the story, however, results from an unfortunate incident related to Manfred's work. One of his clients, an elderly woman whose husband recently "passed on to the other side" dies suddenly during a reading, and the woman's paranoid son accuses Manfred of murdering her and stealing her jewelry, which she had hidden from her greedy offspring. Manfred and his friends attempts to discover the whereabouts of the missing treasure and the identity of the real murderer (it wasn't really natural causes after all) proceeds in a haphazard fashion, but eventually accomplishes at least one of those goals, with some surprising twists along the way.


There's more than one tie-in to the Sookie Stackhouse series here that all her fans will appreciate, and Midnight, Texas acquires a few new residents to keep things interesting. We also get the chance to learn some surprising things about various residents during our sojourn in the Lone Star state.


Time to put the next book on hold at the local library.

The Hanged Man by P.N. Elrod

I'm not much of a historian, but I'm fairly certain that Queen Victoria did not, in fact, establish a secret corps of psychics to help her govern her empire, and to assist Scotland Yard investigations. However, P.N. Elrod takes the idea and runs with it rather well, producing a fun and entertaining tale, flavored with bits of darkness and drama.


Lady Alex is one of Her Majesty's psychics, called in to investigate the apparent suicide of a "snake oil" salesman, Dr. Kemp. She arrives to discover a number of irregularities in the crime scene which make it obviously a homicide, and to ascertain that some sort of supernatural entity may have been involved, before discovering that the victim is actually her own father, in mufti.


She is immediately removed from the investigation by her superiors, but the crime doesn't seem to want to let her go, and she very nearly becomes the next victim. Despite clear orders to stay out of trouble, she is simply not the type of person to sit quietly and wait for others in the psychic service to get results, and so she, and her bodyguard, Lieutenant Brook, seem to rush headlong from one frying pan into subsequent fires, while unraveling a plot that could shake the foundations of the British empire.


Rather looking forward to another installment, should Elrod choose to write some.

Saturn by Ben Bova

For a good many years, when I was in my teens, twenties and thirties, Ben Bova was at the forefront of the science fiction field, publishing many great novels which I eagerly read and collected. A couple of years ago, after a long hiatus, I began to read some of his recent books which I had missed, and enjoyed a couple of the earlier ones, but at some point Bova, quite frankly, just started "mailing it in". His books are no longer very creative, his plotting and characterization are weak and filled with the latest memes and clichés, and Saturn was only able to hold my interest for about fifty pages before I gave up.


Another giant in the field is simply publishing on his laurels.

Midnight Crossing by Charlaine Harris

Now that Harris has finished with the Sookie Stackhouse novels, she's moved on to a new venue in the stories of Midnight, Texas. The story begins when a twenty-something Internet psychic, Manfred, with a touch of the real "sight" moves to a backwater town and meets a very odd assortment of residents. His landlord, Bobo, is the owner of a pawnshop which may have been around since Texas' founding, and who we find out eventually was a minor character in Harris' earlier series about the town of Shakespeare. His grandfather was a white supremacist who amassed a legendary hoard of weapons. To this day, militias around the country believe that Bobo knows what happened to that stash.

The pawnshop is tended during the nighttime hours by a vampire named Lemuel, who has definitely been around for a long time, and some of his clientele are definitely on the eerie side. He has a "girlfriend" named Olivia, whom I assume is some sort of vampiric human servant, or Renfro, who is quite a handy person to have around in a pinch.

The girl next door is Fiji, who is a practicing witch. She teaches classes and sells herbal concoctions out of her home which doubles as a shop and classroom, but she actually does have some supernatural powers, and her cat, Mr. Snuggly, has a few tricks up his...paws...too. There's the gay couple, Chuy and Joe, who run a combination salon and antique gallery, and the couple who own the only diner in town, Home Cookin', Madonna and Teacher. We have a family that runs the gas station and mini mart, Shawn, Creek and Connor, and Rev, a very different sort of preacher running the wedding chapel and pet cemetery.

When the body of a missing woman turns up, and some of the militia members hunting for Bobo's granddaddy's arsenal get feisty, things start to heat up, with some really surprising twists in this new mystery by Harris.

Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia

I'd have to consider this more of a dark fantasy than classic fantasy, perhaps as grim as some of Joe Abercrombie's novels, or Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series. At the same time, there's a certain element of post-apocalyptic fiction, as there are hints that the world was once much more technological before the "demons" came from outer space to attack mankind. It will be interesting to see how that all wraps up at the end of the series someday.

Asok is a Protector, one of a group of select warriors whose primary responsibility is to uphold the Law, and he has spent the last twenty years of his life becoming the ultimate fighter and executioner. He bears an ancestor blade named Angruvadal, a magical black sword that contains the memories of dozens of generations of warriors of his family who have borne it before him.

When the bearer of one of these blades dies, the blade itself usually chooses a successor from their bloodline, but there was a very different circumstance which occurred when Angruvadal's previous owner died. None of the warriors who came to touch the blade were acceptable to it, and it either forced them to wound or kill themselves, depending on how unworthy the blade felt they were, until at long last, a casteless boy, lowest of the low, whose job was to scrub the blood from the stone floors of the room where the sword was kept, touched it and was chosen. This, of course, was a disgraceful thing to happen in the eyes of the upper castes, so they determined that none would ever know of this dishonor, and they slaughtered the boy's entire family, then pretended he was one of their heirs all along, when they sent him to train to be a Protector - an apprenticeship with a very high fatality rate - in hopes that when he was killed in the training, the blade would return to their family and honor would once again be restored. Their wizard altered the boy's memories so he would never realize that he'd been born casteless, and all was well - for a time.

But Asok survived the training and went on to become one of the most fearsome Protectors ever known, until the day when his memories were restored, and he discovered his true beginnings. He returns to the House which had adopted him and killed his real family, and executed the matriarch of the clan, who had hatched the plot, then turned himself in as a criminal. During his time in jail, political plotting by the high castes, combined with an uprising by the casteless creates a situation where Asok is compelled to undertake a hazardous quest, and encounter his true destiny.

Great battles, complicated plotting, and a tortured hero. What's not to love?

Solar Express by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

You know, I've read a ton of Modesitt's novels over the years, starting with his Recluse saga, moving on to some of his standalone science fiction, back to a longer series with the Imager portfolio...and I've generally really enjoyed it, but I could not, after 150 pages, continue wasting my time reading this book. It should have been subtitled, "the least exciting book of alien invasion ever". The tale is told from the POVs of a space pilot, Chris, and an astronomer stationed on the lunar farside, Alayna, who became at least mildly attracted to one another on her voyage to the Moon.

I can't determine whether Modesitt was trying to capitalize on the success of Weir's The Martian, with his mind-numbing descriptions of antenna maintenance, or whether this is some old story he dusted off when the publishers demanded another 10K words for the sake of the contract. Just slap on a world ruined by global warming and Oila! nicely updated for the twenty-first century.

I also wonder if Modesitt's courting included discussions of obscure political subjects, cribbed from Machiavelli, but he's used the gimmick twice now. In the Imager series, it was cute the first time around between Quaeryt and Valera, but when it turns up again, I simply tuned it out.

I've read much better by Modesitt. I'll try not to lose heart.

The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross

The finishing pages of the last Laundry Files novel left Bob & Mo in a sticky wicket, relationship-wise, as the supernatural violin she carries wants to destroy the Eater of Souls which Bob is currently hosting, and they decided they could no longer live together, which was heart-wrenching for both of them, and also for us gentle readers.

The Annihilation Score takes up with a recap of those events, and moves on with a new point of view. Dominique O'Brien "Mo" tells the story, and we see and hear very little from our old friend Bob. 

Mo is tapped by The Laundry to head up a new quick response unit dedicated to handling the sudden onset of Superheros - ordinary human beings who suddenly gain supernatural powers, often resembling those of folks from the Marvel Comics universe, like super speed, strength, or flying. Mo is way out of her depth, here, but rapidly rises to the challenge, even when saddled with two new deputies - a mermaid and a vampire - both of whom were formerly Bob's lovers. Awkward.

Lots of adventure, bureaucratic intrigue and macabre conflicts ensue.