Lucifer (Graphic Novel Series) by Mike Carey

I  have made several unsuccessful attempts to get into graphic novels but this is the first series that has really gotten my attention. Lucifer is the fallen angel (and coincidentally a spinoff character from an earlier Marvel series: "Sandman"). At the start of the series Lucifer is retired from Hell and is running a nightclub in LA with his demon sidekick / lover Mazikeen but when God comes knocking with an offer he can't refuse he is tempted to re-enter the fray.

There is some seriously inventive storytelling here populated by a great list of characters. This was originally serialised in 75 episodes but is now available in 11 volumes. I am only two volumes in so far and loving it. 

The funny thing is that I have come to the realisation that I have forgotten how to read comics despite all of the time I spent with the publications of DC Thomson and their American equivalents in my childhood. It is a much leaner form of storytelling than a written novel. It is said that a picture can speak a thousand words but in comics they have to because there simply isn't enough space to outline all of the incidental details. A few sparse panels must set the stage, develop the characters and advance the plot. It is quite a feat to interpret all of this particularly when the story and setting are as complex as the one in Lucifer. This complexity is further enhanced by the serial format in which an overarching story is filled with a myriad of mini plot lines all overlapping and interacting. I am still re-learning  how to read comics and I find myself often going back to review earlier panels for vital clues I missed. 

Two volumes read so far: 

Vol 1: Devil in the Gateway

Vol 2: Children and Monsters

The Expanse Series by James S. A. Corey

I have really enjoyed the first five books  in this thoroughly enjoyable space opera series set in a near future solar system where mankind has expanded out to the asteroid belt between Earth and Mars. The hardy "Belters" who inhabit the various ships and stations in the belt are fiercely independent and live by their wits but they have long been exploited by the United Nations of Earth and the independent planet of Mars who use their military might to keep the Belters down. Earth and Mars themselves maintain an uneasy peace always just one mishap away from deteriorating into war. The Expanse has recently been made into a TV series by SyFy. The series is well made and very faithful to the books so far which is great if you are a fan of the novels but perhaps confusing to those who are less familiar with them.

By the way James S.A Corey is actually two people: Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank writing in collaboration.
Books:
Leviathan Awakes
Caliban's War
Abaddon's Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games

How Star Wars Conquered the Universe by Chris Taylor

The story of George Lucas and the iconic franchise he created. Great stuff.

The Count of Monte Christo by Alexander Dumas

A young French sailor with a bright future ahead of him and is looking forward to an early promotion and marriage to his sweetheart when he is falsely accused and condemned to rot in prison.  The fourteen years he spends in that dank dungeon drive him to the depths of despair and the brink of madness but a chance encounter with another old prisoner gives him a new hope and sets up the greatest revenge story in literature.  

Dumas's story was originally serialised in 18 parts so the sheer size of the novel is a bit overwhelming.  To tell the truth I found it a bit long winded in parts and if it was being published today it could benefit from some enthusiastic editing. Nevertheless Dumas tells a fascinating tale that still holds up. There are also fascinating bits of history in the book - a glimpse at French society shortly after the time of Napoleon. 

One word of advice - If you are reading Monet Christo in English  don't be tempted by the free versoin on Gutenberg. It is an inferior 19th century translation.  The 1996 translation by Robin Buss (Penguin Classics) is far superior. Buss' s modern language is  more accessible to modern readers but his translation is also more complete with restored content and copious footnotes.

Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

What do you get if you mix medieval fanstasy with spaghetti Western? "Red County" is the answer snd it is surprisingly good. This is set in the familar "First Law" universe and even has some familar chacarcters but they are turned into pioneers travelling west in a wagon train across a land beset by fearsome tribes. ~There isn't a six gun in sight but nevertheless the whole thing has together. Recommended.

The Martian by Andy Weir

A lone astronaut must figure out how to survive on Mars. This book has been made into a blockbuster movie which received rave reviews. It is a groping read but only if you are interested in the science and engineering aspects of the problem. Character development is non existent and the plot consists of "we are in a hole how can we use science to fix it" followed by "something else has gone wrong how can we use science to fix that". I haven't seen the film yet but it will be interesting to see how they flesh out the characters and drama for the big screen. One thing that bugs me more than it should is that there are a few obvious errors in the science that are obvious even from a high school knowledge of physics and chemistry (I spotted several related to atmospheric concentrations but there are plenty more).   Nevertheless it is an enjoyable read.

A Gift Upon the Shore by M.K. Wren.

Two women survive the combined ravages of a pandemic and nuclear war. They make it their life's work to save a collection of books from before the collapse of civilisation. Unfortunately when they finally come across another group of survivors that community's strong religious beliefs may be a threat to the precious cache of knowledge.

This is an excellent post apocalyptic novel that actually make you think. Is the quest to preserve human knowledge more important than the need to live in community and ensure the survival of the species?

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

Wallander is a detective who drinks too much while coming to terms with a recent divorce when a horrific double murder shatters the peace and quiet of the sleepy Swedish district he polices. This is the first book in the Wallander series which inspired at least two successful television series (one in Swedish and one in English). I am not a crime aficionado so I can't really comment on how this book compares to others in the genre but it kept me reading to the end.

The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie

This novel is set in Abercrombies "First Law" world some time after the end of the first trilogy. It has a very restricted scope being largely restricted to a single battle between the armies of the Union and northern forces led by Back Dow. The Heroes of the title refers to an ancient hill which forms the centrepiece of the fighting but of course it also refers to the characters who play out the action. The book scored very highly on two fronts: deep characterisation and masterful depiction of battle. We follow the toils and motivations of a motley crew of characters on both sides of the divide. A battle weary "named man" on the Northern side leading a unit of hardened fighters. A disgraced former personal guard of the Union King who fights like a man possessed perhaps in hope of winning his honour back, perhaps because he just loves war. The daughter of the Union commander equally full of contempt for he inept union generals and ambition for herself and her husband. The battle shy younger son of the former Northern ruler that Black Dow displaced. Despite his lack of combat prowess he too has ambition to regain his fathers place.

With regards to the battle scenes that fill most of the book all I can say is that Abercrombie is that I haven't been as engrossed in descriptions of battle since David Gemmel and that is high praise indeed.

The main flaw of the book for me is that it rook too long to finish up. About a quarter of the book is devoted to tying up loose ends after the main plot is already resolved. Perhaps this is a consequence of the deep characterisation with so many individual sub plots to resolve but to my mind it goes on way too long.

And yes the Bayaz the first of the Magi is involved as usual and yes the outcome is just as you would expect.

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

What if almost everyone suddenly discovered they could step sideways to a parallel world. What if there wasn't just one world but any number of them. Everyone can have their own private world with all the resources in it. This collaborative novel explores that premise in a simple approachable way and it makes for a very entertaining read. In order to keep things under control (and easy to comprehend) these worlds are linked serially each to two neighbours. Most people need a simple device (a stepper) to swap between them and it takes them some time to traverse more than a few worlds. Settlers set out on epic convoys to travel to far distant worlds like pioneers of the American West. Joshua Valente however is a rare individual who can step without the aid of any device and he can travel much farther and much faster than others. He sets out with an inquisitive AI to discover just what surprises lay in store millions of worlds away from datum Earth.

The Healer's War by Elizabeth Anne Scarborough

This is an unusual war novel based loosely on the author's first hand experiences as a nurse in Vietnam during the USA vs. VietCong war. It has a very mild fantasy element in the shape of a magical healing amulet that actually has very little impact on the novel but serves as a plot device to justify some of the settings that Scarbrough wanted to explore.

I found the book to be well written and engaging. It is a fictionalised account (see magical medallion) but Scarbrough was really there and the settings and the emotional impacts on characters are based on her real life experiences. I have read a number of books about Vietnam from the point of soldiers so it is intriguing to get a complementary view from a non-combatant.

Freehold by Michael Williamson

It was only when writing my instant review for William Dietz's Freehold that I stumbled across Wiliamson's prometheus award winning book with exactly the same title. I read the blurb, noted that it was available for free download on Kindle and decided to read it.

There is good stuff in this book but there is also a lot of bad stuff  and sadly for me the bad outweights the good.

The first section filling about half of the pages sets the scene in which our heroine escapes from the corrupt Earth based UN to an idyllic libertarian society on the planet freehold. This section is painfully didactic and I found it very tedious.

Then Earth invades freehold and the story turns into a cracking combat yarn of guerilla warfare as the independent minded freeholders fight against the might of the invaders. I really enjoyed the combat scenes. It was almost enough to make me overlook the tedium first half of the book (almost).

Unfortunately the book ends with a rambling section dealing with the emotional scars of the survivors. Post traumatic stress and the after effects of rape are important subjects but they felt out of place to me in a book like this. This section detracted rather than added to my enjoyment of the novel. 

Freehold by William C. Dietz

Freehold is a very enjoyable piece of military science fiction from William Dietz. It has no connection with the later Freehold series by Michael Williamson. The plot is straightforward and engaging: Freehold is a mining colony planet on the edge of human space whose independence is under threat when powerful outside forces realise just how valuable the planet's mineral deposits are. The settlers are tough but they are no match for the space pirates or the the aliens or especially the powerful mega-corporation who want to take their planet. Their last last hope is "The Brigade" a group of space mercenaries led by Colonel Stell. The military aspects of this novel are very low key and it focuses more on space opera adventure and the underlying human interest story. The plot wouldn't be out of place in a Hollywood western and the book is so much the better for that in my opinion.  

Assemblers of Infinity by Kevin J Anderson and Doug Beason

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The Reluctant Swordsman by David Duncan

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Black Book by Dylan Jones

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Old Man's War by John Scalzi

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Destination Void by Frank Herbert

Following a series of system failures the crew of a pioneering spaceship bound for Alpha Centauri realise that their only hope of staying alive to complete the mission is to upgrade their onboard computer to sentient consciousness. Previous human attempts at creating artificial sentience have had disastrous outcomes so the crew must struggle with the philosophical, ethical and technical challenges of creating artificial consciousness if they are to succeed. 

This is quite a famous 1965 novel from the author of the Dune saga that spawned its own series sometimes called the Pandora Sequence. Nevertheless I found it quite difficult to read. There is relatively little plot and much of the book is filled with rambling internal and external dialogues concerning the meaning of conciousness. The technology in the book is laughably dated both on the hardware and software side. References to teleprinters and thermionic valves are hidden in among rambling descriptions of "dilithium crystal" level gobbledy gook. An ever bigger problem is that the entire premise of the book that "only an artificial sentience could possibly guide the ship on its journey" is very hard to swallow for a modern reader who knows just how much today's computers can do without being one bit sentient. Nevertheless I found the book reasonably compelling and the metaphysical discussions about artificial sentience hold up a lot better once you separate them from Herbert's pseudo science. 

Overall I would hesitate to recommend Destination Void to a modern reader unless they were a fan of Herbert or a keen follower of historical Sci Fi. 

The Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

The Fey are a ruthless race of warlike magic user who are arrogantly determined to conquer the entire world and subjugate all others.  When an expeditionary force from this military juggernaut rolls up to the prosperous but peaceful inhabitants of the Blue Isle the outcome seems inevitable. Yet the Islanders who don't even have a standing army find help from a surprising source and a stand-off ensues.

I had never heard of this series before getting this opening novel in an e-book bundle but I am quite hooked. Rusch's characters are rich and complex and her plots are full of twists surprises. In terms of character and plot development this book bears favourable comparison to George R.R. Martin's game of thrones.  Indeed the Fey's ruthlessness far surpasses that of Martin's characters.

While the characters and plotting are very strong in the book the battle scenes and military strategy are a significant weakness. Perhaps I have been reading too much military Sci Fi recently but it strikes me there are huge gaps of credibility in the whole military aspect of the novel. The Fey for example have supposed to be a militaristic race who have conquered the known world. You would expect them to display some of the traits we have come to expect from armies and soldiers but they actually come across as quite inept soldiers. The residents of the Blue Isle were supposed to be peaceful which explains their initial ineptitude but a year after the initial attack they still haven't organised a proper army and seem incapable of implementing any form of strategy.

Regardless of the shortcoming on the military side this story has me hooked. I am determined to get the next instalment to follow the continuing machinations of those dastardly Fey.

The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

This is the second novel in Scalzi's highly acclaimed "Old Man's War" series and even though I haven't read the prequel I am pleased to say it stands on its own. Scalzi's universe is a belligerent place and everybody species is either openly at war with its neighbours or plotting secretly against them. In order to survive and indeed thrive the CDF representing humanity has developed an army of bio-engineered super soldiers. The elite of the elite are known as the ghost brigades: special forces with bodies that are grown at a vastly accelerated pace and whose minds come from dead recruits. When a brilliant scientist defects to enemy who is planning a genocidal war against humanity the only clue left behind as to his motives is a computer snapshot of his mind.  This conciousness is imprinted on a unwitting new ghost brigade soldier in a risky attempt to try and find out what humanities enemies are planning.  It falls under the heading of military Sci Fi but you certainly don't have to be a military nut to appreciate this story. Good stuff. Highly recommended.