Tag Archives: sci-fi

The Tide of War

Book Review of The Tide of War, by Lori A. Witt

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The Tide of WarI received a copy of Lori A. Witt‘s The Tide of War from Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
Lieutenant Commander Kyle West is one of Earth Fleet’s greatest fighter pilots. Every day, he leads his squadron into battle over Earth’s cities in a seemingly endless war against a vicious alien race, defending his home and his loved ones.

Millions of miles away, the Fleet’s Elite Squadron attacks from another angle, engaging the enemy on its home turf. Casualties are high, and the Squadron needs more of the Fleet’s very best. But joining the Elite is a death sentence—a surety Kyle isn’t willing to face. Until a devastating attack wipes out the family he refused to leave.

Commander Andrei Dezhnyov, an Elite Squadron gunner, isn’t sure what to make of the cocky new American pilot. Kyle is equally uncertain about the snarly Russian, but as they warm up to each other, their tentative alliance becomes a deep bond—one that endangers them both when a daring and disobedient rescue reveals secrets that call into question everything they’ve ever believed about their enemy. Secrets that their .superiors would kill to protect.

Review:
This is one of those ho-hum, ‘it was ok’ kind of books. The writing was fine, the editing was fine, the dialogue was fine. There wasn’t a lot of sex, but it was fine. Nothing in the book blew my mind, but I didn’t hate it either.

Unfortunately, as much as I love me some M/M loving, I thought the book would have been stronger without it. Which is unfortunate, because the aspect of the book I appreciated most was that both men had serviceable, happy marriages that still accommodated their sexuality. One was bi and had an almost worshipful relationship with his wife who encouraged him to take male lovers. The other was gay and married to a lesbian, but had an obvious platonic love for his wife.

I liked the fact that Witt managed to show that love and sex don’t have to  look the same way in every marriage and that having sex with someone else, when done in an open and accepting relationship, doesn’t automatically invalidate the legitimacy of that same love for your spouse. Unfortunately, it also created a situation in which I very strongly felt that in order for a ‘romance’ to develop Witt had to get rid of the inconvenient wives and that sort of compromised the message a bit.

More than any of that though, the romance just wasn’t necessary for the plot to work. In fact, I think it cluttered up what might have be a perfectly readable sci-fi novel otherwise. And it was an acceptable sci-fi. I thought it got bogged down in endless dog-fighting at times and the solution came about with shocking ease, just before the book ended rather abruptly. But it was an all right read.

FlashWired

Book Review of FlashWired, by Anna Butler

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FlashwiredI downloaded a copy of Anna Butler‘s novella, FlashWired from Smashwords, probably during last year’s seasonal sale.

Description from Goodreads:
One day, someday soon, Jeeze Madrid was going to wake up and realize just what he’d been passing up; he’d see what Cal Paxton was offering him so faithfully—”Faithfully, Jeeze! Even you can’t deny that!”—and grab it. And they’d finally have what Cal wanted.

Cal Paxton and Jeeze Madrid are the top scouting team on the Pathfinder-class starship, the Carson, on the very outer edge of Earth’s expansion across the galaxy. A Pathfinder’s job is to evaluate planets for colonization. Cal’s and Jeeze’s job is to find the planets for the Carson’s scientists to analyze. 

Cal and Jeeze are wingmen, best friends… and lovers. Cal wants more than a casual relationship but Jeeze, recently divorced, is wary of commitment. When Jeeze is shot down over a planet inhabited by a race Earth has never before encountered, what will Cal find when the Carson can finally mount a rescue mission? Will he ever succeed in persuading Jeeze to take up that offer of hand and heart?

Review:
This was almost really good. After a jerky first few paragraphs it smooths out into a pleasant story. Cal’s love for Jeeze is really sweet and you definitely feel it. Jeeze you don’t get much of a feel for, but he’s an understandable object of affection for Cal. You get the start of an interesting world/universe and even some interesting side characters. Noah and Veronica especially caught my attention.

Unfortunately, however, after all that initial set up, the story peters out in more ways than one. The rescue went FAR too smoothly, involving too many contrivances and conveyances. Then it ends without concluding in any manner. It’s not so much a cliffhanger as a sense of waiting. But all of the threads are left open.

Perhaps this is the first in a series. I don’t know. The writing was strong enough that I’d be willing to follow the story, but I’m not fond of the serial format of publishing a story.

Book Review of No Light (The Dems Trilogy #1), by Devi Mara

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No LightI downloaded a copy of Devi Mara‘s book, No Light when it was free on Amazon. (I included both covers because the one I read had the second cover, but I so hate the new one that I wouldn’t have picked the book up if I’d seen it first. Seriously, that blank, innocent look on the MC’s face screams TSTL. I would have run the other direction from it and I didn’t want to post it here as something I would have been attracted to. Petty, I know.)

Description from Goodreads:
“Name?” he demanded. 
“Sarah Mackenzie.” She swallowed hard. She would be like the ones who had fallen, her remains something to be cleaned from the floor. 
“Age?” 
She tried not to tense when he brought his face to her neck and inhaled deeply. 
“Twenty-two.” The lie tried to stick in her throat. 
He pulled back and gave her a dark look. “Try again.” 
“Eighteen,” she whispered, tensing when his lips pulled back from his teeth in a shark smile. 
“A lie, Sarah? How nice that you are not as innocent as you look.” 

In The Corridor, there are the immortal Dems and the human handlers who guard them. When the leader of the Dems gets a handler straight out of training, she is not expected to live beyond her first day. She is everything he hates and he is everything she fears, but an accident permanently binds them together. With corruption growing among the humans and the threat of war, they must escape The Corridor and find common ground in a place with No Light.

Review:
This book was at best OK. The actual writing itself is fine, though it needed another edit, but the story is so full of inconsistencies, insubstantial world-building, poor character development and absent emotional growth that it pains me to discuss it.

I’ll start with Sarah. For 2/3 of the book, she is such a limp noodle, so weak and scared of everything that she literally can’t even communicate in complete sentences, just stutters and apologies. Then for the last 1/3, she miraculously, with no apparent instigation for change, becomes a strong-willed, brave, stand-up for herself and those she loves, fighter and I was left thinking, ‘this is not the same girl.’ Her character was wholly inconsistent.

Then there is Farran. He too has an instant and unfollowable change of temperament. For 2/3 of the book, he’s gruff and unfeeling, hates humans and barely tolerates Sarah. Then, he morphed into an expressive, demonstrative, lovely man. What? How? Why?

The plot…it makes no sense. The Dems are imprisoned on what I assume is Earth. They are bigger and significantly stronger than humans. They can see in complete darkness, heal almost instantly and are maybe psychic. But they are guarded by a single person with nothing more than a stun gun. What’s more, they always seemed to be alone with that guard, or at least Sarah and Farran do.

Plus, it’s inferred that Sarah is assigned to Farran because she’s the only day guard in the current training class, therefore the only one available. But what makes a day guard, morning guard or night guard different is never addressed. If it’s just preference for time of shift (and it’s shown guards can change shifts) why does it matter? Even more to the point, couldn’t someone cover the shift long enough for Sarah to at least get trained?

Plus (again), if a Dem has three guards, why is the day guard the only one referred to as ‘his handler?’ What about the other two, do they not count and if not, why not? Nothing about the prison-setting, handler/guard set up makes any sense. NOTHING.

Then there is the Marking (which I suppose is intended as the romance). Farran marked Sarah by accident. That’s right he didn’t mean to and he even actively disliked and was disgusted by her at the time and for most of the book. But that marking, which should take years to develop is unusually strong, but we’re never told why. And in and among all this being disgusted by Sarah and Sarah being terrified of Farran, they’re supposed to have fallen in love. I saw no indication of this until BAM love. But it’s anyone’s guess what it’s based on. She’d hardly even been able to speak to him and he did nothing but snarl and bark at her.

Then there is the world-building…oh, wait, no there isn’t. There really isn’t any world-building to speak of, sorry.

There are also some really cliché scenes. For example, the alternative love interest taking her clothes shopping and changing the ugly duckling into a beautiful swan with the help of his riches and a good sales girl. Meh. This same theme is echoed in Farran picking out Sarah’s clothes for her. Because, obviously, what a girl looks like and how she visually presents herself is sooo important.

Lastly, (or the last thing I’ll mention for fear of appearing to attack a book) some of the plot-devices are extremely obvious. As an example, Farran has no problem understanding humanity or communicating. (In fact, for much of the book I wondered how everyone did communicate so easily—newly arrived aliens even using English when conversing among themselves, for example.) But toward the end he is painfully dense and unable to understand why he’s ineffectively communicated an important point, which leads to Sarah running out and committing the requisite TSTL acts and obviously needing rescue. The set up on that scenario was so obvious I could have provided bullet points before reading it. Similarly, Sarah’s inability to see the obvious so that the author could drag it out as a big ‘Ta-Da’ at the end was worth at least one eye-roll.

The writing does have an appreciable eerie feel to it. I liked Farran’s Colonels. They were funny. I liked that Luke seemed to have a little grey to his character. He genuinely seemed to want to help Sarah, but was in too deep to be able to do it. I liked that the Dems actually committed violence that supported the claim that they were dangerous, as opposed to the reader being told they’re dangerous but never seeing anything to prove it. I’ll even grant that the boook lacked the normal NA angst about sex, for which I’ll thank every literary god there is. So, it’s not that there wasn’t anything I liked about the book. But the dislikes outnumbered the likes by a significant amount. (And the totally sappy ending was my final straw, really. *shudder*)