Author Mary Doria Russell is a paleoanthrolpolgist, as well as an adherent to Judaism. However, she grew up Catholic, renounced her faith as a teenager, and took up her current faith when she had children and was trying to figure out what she wanted to pass on to her children. Her professional and spiritual background put her in an interesting position to create a cerebral, unique work of speculative science fiction. The Sparrow is equally engaging and horrifying. I wanted to put it down, but I […]
Naval Battles in Spaaaaaace!
While I am a big science fiction guy, and a history guy, military science fiction is a new genre to me. David Weber’s Honorverse series grabbed my attention because a very short version of this book was recently featured in 2015’s Free Comic Book Day. I liked the story, so I downloaded the first book of the series for free on Kindle. Weber’s Honorverse series chronicles the exploits of Honor Harington, a naval officer in the future, in space. Honor is a natural leader – […]
Sci-fi? Yes! Star Trek? Kinda! Inceptionesque Metafiction? Wait…what?
This book was a very quick read. I don’t know how many pages it is actually, because I read it on my kindle, but it only took about six hours to finish. It’s hard for me to review, because I don’t want to give anything away, but here goes. The beginning of the story takes place in the 25th century, and the characters are members of the Universal Union, and crew on the starship Intrepid. If it sounds a lot like Star Trek, it’s supposed […]
Flames…FLAMES…on the side of my face…
I don’t think I can handle a coherent review on this one. Sputtering outrage, yes. Actual reasonable thoughts? No. See that picture over there? All those little pieces of paper are where I flagged sexist stuff. There are only two women in the book, basically, so that gap at the beginning is when neither of them had shown up yet, and that gap in the middle was because I just got too tired of outrage. This is your brain on fantasy/sci fi from the 1960s. Sigh. […]
What did I just read?
So, I finished this book this morning and I might have liked it? Maybe? I’m not really sure how I felt about it. It might have been good, but I think I might have simply been trying to figure out WTF was going on. Instead of good, maybe intriguing would be a better description. I’ll try to explain. The book has many viewpoints/location points. There’s some sort of interplanetary organization (John and Quinn work there)where the Chair has died, a successor has been announced […]
I know all there is to know about the Lion Game…
Okay, that’s not true at all. I know very little about the Lion Game. This book is only 157 pages, and it could have used a few more. A lot is packed into those pages. It starts out well, but then it feels like a snowball gaining momentum down a hill, and I’m not sure I followed everything in the second half. Although I do know this. See exhibit A, our heroine, Telzey: She is 15. FIFTEEN. Way to go, 1973! Anyway. Telzey has psi […]