Tag: Review

Review: Blood of the Ancients

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Blood of the Ancients

Like Jerry Ahern, John Schettler decided to take the Kirov series into outright science fiction. Gone are the purely terrestrial squabbles, replaced with sci-fi spaceship battles against aliens and, in this case, an attempt at a John Carter of Mars Homage in Blood of the Ancients. Although much of the book takes place on Earth as the ancient “Sons of Ares” change the past in secret alternate history, this is obviously John Carter through and through.

The issue is that Schettler is not the most inherently suited to write this kind of flowery planetary romance. It would be like a fluffy romance author writing a technothriller. Despite this, it’s a sincere and well-appreciated effort. Who knows, maybe Kirov will turn to nonviolent romantic drama next…

Review: Midnight Ops

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Midnight Ops

Midnight Ops is the latest Duncan Hunter book by Mark Hewitt . It is also not just the worst in the series but the worst “thriller” novel that I’ve read. Ever. At least as of this post. And I do not mean this lightly. Having read literally hundreds of these books, I’ve reached the point.

So the Amazon blurb mentions a defecting F-22 that flew to North Korea as the MacGuffin. Well you will be “glad” to hear that it takes two thirds of the book to even reach that point at all. And then it goes back to what it was previously doing. What was it doing?

Political rants. I’d say it’s like reading the Facebook page of your boomer uncle from rural Oklahoma, but that would be an insult to boomer uncles from rural Oklahoma. If you trained an AI model on nothing but conspiracy talk radio transcripts and then let it rip for five hundred pages, you’d have this book. But I’m still pretty sure the AI could do better.

The worst part is that I used to like this series! It had the same ridiculously right-wing politics and unstoppable Mary Sue, but could be fun in a Mack Maloney manner. This isn’t. The actual ‘action’ is the same repetitive easy victories that feels like an afterthought. It’s easy to tell the real emotion is in the rants.

So yes, I’ve found the new worst (thriller) novel ever. Welp.

Review: Resplendent

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Resplendent

A collection of previously published short stories, Resplendent is Stephen Baxter at both his best and worst. It covers the Xeelee universe from start to finish, in every time and every era. The good news is that Baxter gets to show off his worldbuilding. The bad news is that Baxter gets… to…. show… off… his… exposition.

Besides the infodumps, one big problem is that what the main characters do has to be ‘relevant’ somehow. You can’t just have Bill the monopole gunner getting killed, he has to fire the shot which changes the tide somehow. This Great Man-ism is at odds with the weaving larger than life scope of the settings.

Also Baxter is terrible at naming characters and keeps reusing names. So yeah, this book is a mixed bag.

Review: The Nordkapp Affair

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Northern Fury: The Nordkapp Affair

(note: I got permission to read this book pre-release for the sake of a review).

This fairly short novella to the Northern Fury epic is a side story about a Norwegian ferry at the beginning of the war. It has to try and evacuate people from what could become a warzone (spoiler alert: It does). While a simple plot, it’s a very suitable one.

One thing I particularly liked was keeping the “camera” focused entirely on the ship itself and a running tally of its status. Whereas a lot of “Big War Thrillers” understandably show the big war, something as focused as this is a lot different.

Which is a good thing, as there’s something to be said for an HMS Ulysses type story. Which I mean both in terms of tone/structure and in terms of location-an excellent place for a war novel.

A Thousand Words: Clue

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Clue

As proof that movies based on bizarre IPs are not a new thing, 1985 saw the release of a film based on the board game Clue. Thankfully the board game has a basic plot of “murder mystery”, which the movie uses. It ends up killing a lot more than Mr. Boddy.

This movie is not “good” by any means, but it falls into the category of “a lot better than it could have been” and is perfectly fun for a time waster. Its multiple ending gimmick at least tries to be experimental and interesting (it was intended to have different theaters show different ‘definitive’ endings). And the John Morris score is underrated and excellent.

Review: Super Mirage 4000

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Super Mirage 4000

Finally translated into English, this is a look at what was to France what the Avro Arrow was to Canada, the TSR-2 was to Britain, the Lavi was to Israel, and the Osorio tank was to Brazil. (Or what the AMX-32 and AMX-40 tanks were to… France).

It’s what you’d expect from a small coffee table book whose sources came from inside the program: A combination of knowledge and bias, mixed with tidbits without being the deepest. This isn’t a bad thing if you know what you’re getting into, and the plane is certainly worthy of such a book.

Review: Rust Skies

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Rust Skies

TK Blackwood delivers another World War III treat in Rust Skies. I loved the unusual-for-Fuldapocalyptic standards location in Turkey (which was, after all, one of the few direct NATO-USSR borders). I also liked the timely political dilemma about an enhanced American military draft, which is both plausible and interesting. It does stuff a lot of plot and characters into a small package but rarely overwhelms and never feels bad.

The big “problem” is that it ends on a cliffhanger. Oh well! I’ve done it myself, so I guess I can’t complain.

Review: Nothing Last Forever

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Nothing Lasts Forever

Sidney Sheldon’s Nothing Lasts Forever is the worst book of his I’ve read since The Other Side of Midnight. The story of female doctors in a California hospital, romance, drama, and of course murder, it has all of his weaknesses but very few of his strengths. Namely it’s overloaded with the “pop” part of “pop epic” while totally lacking the “epic” part.

It’s less pretentious than Midnight but otherwise has the same problems. His female main characters are simply wicked or shallow instead of ambitious and powerful. That combined with low stakes and a decided lack of interest makes it hard to care about anyone or anything.

So it seems like he was in the decline by this point. But that’s understandable, as nothing lasts forever.

A Thousand Words: Noita Conjurer

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One of several things responsible for my slowdown in reading, writing and blogging has been the Conjurer mod for Noita (previously reviewed here). The problem with Noita was that it had excellent and complex interactions, an incredibly customizable magic system, and more… thrown into a punishing roguelike. Even respawning mods didn’t really solve the latter problem for me, as it just still felt like luck and brute force.

Enter Conjurer, which turns the entire game into a silly sandbox. It’s great for getting the hang of wand mechanics… and just seeing what happens when you pour lava on things. For me it turns Noita from one fun game into two.

Review: Bush vs. The Axis of Evil

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Bush vs. The Axis of Evil

Another former internet timeline turned book, Bush vs. The Axis of Evil amounts to “What if World War III broke out in the early 2000s”?

It starts with Hezbollah conducting 9/11 while thinking it’d just be a minor message-sender, which gets it off to a “good” start. All this is told in a long series of blocky exposition posts with the occasional in-universe “book excerpt” that mysteriously resembles a blocky exposition post. Anyway, this leads to a spiraling 200X WWIII against Iraq, Iran, and North Korea at once, with such amazing things as:

  • Millenium Challenge 02 being used as a serious reference for a Battle of Hormuz, which leads to a carrier (the Lincoln) being sunk. This is a “good” benchmark for how militarily plausible all of it is.
  • A copy-pasted Christmas Truce straight out of 1914 pop culture.
  • Divergences into music festivals and pro wrestling pay per views, since every contemporary internet AH timeline MUST have a “what about the thing?” pop culture segment.

There’s some potentially interesting divergences like the Unification Church converting ex-northerners en masse, but it squanders all of them. The bulk is just horrible gore-atrocity descriptions done with all the immediacy and intensity of the instruction manual for a 2009 Mitsubishi Lancer.

Stuff like this has made me a lot more respecting of Larry Bond, because he manages, however imperfectly, to combine storytelling competence with knowledge of military operations. Often you get one, or as in this case, neither.