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Source: Purchased
1633
Another year has gone by and the residents of Grantville and the new United States are making their way in 17th century Europe. In 1633 this new country will be reaching further into their world and continuing their conflicts with the Catholic countries that oppose them. 1633 is not only a quality sequel to its predecessors but one of the rare occasions that a sequel beats the original in some ways, although not all. I would credit a lot of the advances this book makes to the addition of Weber partnering with Flint. I can feel a lot of his structure and character work behind the Flint façade. As with 1632 the majority of characters are still pretty cliché. However many of the major character, including previously minor characters who have been moved up to the big leagues, are getting fleshed out a bit more. Raising the profile of already… Read more »
1632
I have said it before and I will say it again, Eric Flint is the most upbeat sci-fi writer I have come across. His good guys are pure, his bad guys are evil and deserve what they get, and you can see in his writing how much joy he has in telling the story. He is the literary equivalent of methamphetamine, of course without the life crushing physical addiction. 1632 is the first in a series about a small town in West Virginia that has been torn from its place and time and dropped into southern Germany in 1632, hence the name. For historians this time period has meaning but it is an unusual choice because it is not one of the flashy, popular moments in history. The story is set in the midst of the Thirty Years War where Catholic run nations were fighting against those ruled by Protestants. … Read more »
Never Go Back
Review by Reynold Starnes Never Go Back is the eighteenth and latest Lee Child thriller featuring Jack Reacher. For those new to the series, Reacher is a drifter who, often without intending to, finds himself against very bad people, which never ends well for the bad guys. He is an ex-Army MP who is six feet, five inches tall and weighs around two-fifty. He is an accomplished investigator, expert marksman, trained in hand-to-hand combat, and very smart. In Never Go Back, Reacher heads to the special MP unit he used to lead to see the new commander, a woman, whose voice he liked when he spoke to her on the phone. When he gets to the post, he becomes involved in a conspiracy she has inadvertently touched. Like the other Reacher novels, this is a good read. It isn’t a favorite, but it isn’t the least favorite either. Middle of… Read more »
Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior
Review by Travis Starnes While I usually read more conflict oriented military history focusing on particular wars there is an interesting sub-genre that focuses on the building and structure of the military. Books in this sub-genre are more history and cultural study hybrid that true history. For me Chosen Soldier is one of the highlights of the genre. This book takes that sub-genre and makes it even more focused, and is all the better because of that. Dick Couch’s choice, with the exception of the first chapter, of focusing solely on the training of Green Berets rather than on the whole history of the outfit as a whole really lets him go into details that broader texts miss. As a former SEAL Couch defiantly knows about Special Forces and is able to translate that into really detailed and clear explanation of what these men go through. He gives enough background… Read more »
Sudden Prey
Review by Travis Starnes In the 8th installment of the Prey series John Sandford has decided to kick things up a notch. Up till now Lucas Davenport has faced a cavalcade of psychopaths who have all had self-preservation at the top of their list. In this book however Davenport has to face off against criminals targeting cops for all out revenge and a do or die attitude. So far the Prey series has really worked for me. The stories have all been connected enough that I can feel the thread between them but with plots and even a tone that is different from book to book. It’s not often a series manages to pull that off and Sandford has does it with flying colors. As usual this is not a “who done it” type of book, as we see the story from both the perspective of Davenport and the people he is… Read more »
The Magician
Review by Andy As young adult fiction goes The Magician is okay but needs some work. Even though it is fantasy the chances of a fifteen-year-old killing a millennia old giant lizard seems kind of slim. The weak plot is helped some by a subplot that is pretty good and characters that are interesting and funny. As a sequel it does not hold up to the first book in the series, The Alchemyst. What makes this series work is the setting of Earth where magic is very much alive. The series also brings legends, gods, and goddesses out of fiction and puts them beside famous people from history, who are themselves often immortal. For anyone interested in mythology this combination comes off as pretty clever. While the main plot is fairly weak it does pick up the story where the first book left off and continues the plot through well. … Read more »
One for the Money
Review by Travis Starnes This is the first in the Stephanie Plum series about an ex-lingerie saleswoman turned bounty hunter. To be honest the premise did not give me have high hopes for this book. Many mystery novels that I read tend to feel very similar and the “smart mouth, strong willed armature bounty hunter” did not hold a lot of promise for me. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this book. For me the first and most important part of a mystery the quality of the mystery itself. Is it a good chase with enough clues sprinkled in so you can figure out what is “really” happening but not so many clues that it is simple to guess the ending? It really is a hard balancing act and in all honesty “One for the Money” does only an ok job at it. The main reason for… Read more »
March UpCountry
Review by Travis Starnes What starts off as a military space fiction in the vein of David Weber’s Honor Harrington series quickly become a high tech meets low tech style of military fiction. I wasn’t sure what to expect after the first chapter but I really enjoyed the journey this book took me on. It is an excellent start to a series. Let me start off by saying I felt more of Weber’s influence in this story that John Ringo’s, although I have been unable to find how much each writer contributed. The overall story arc, character progression, and setting feel like pure Weber to me while the action beats have Ringo’s finger prints all over them. While there are a few things that could be said negatively about this title there are so many more things to like about it. There was a book I read years ago from… Read more »
Death’s Head
Review by Travis Starnes It’s been a while since I hit a sci-fi series I wasn’t already reading, and this one seems like the beginning of a pretty good military sci-fi series. The book focuses on the journey of the main character from a barely functioning legionary to one of the most the elite of the empires military. While it is straight up military fiction and adventure fodder, it is interesting to have a book which is almost a study in character progression. Very unusual for a military fiction book. When it comes to the building of the world, it’s hard not to draw comparisons with the world of Starship Troopers, what with the futuristic fascist thing going on. We have seen this kind of setting before, but Gunn does a good job not making it feel too much like a copy of previous books. While following the Journey of… Read more »
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