Meet Adair Finch. And he’s about to have one of the longest days of his life. To the point where Jack Bauer would just shrug and give up.

Buy this book.

The Story

Adair Finch wakes up at 4:34 am and marks the time. A loud pounding on his door wakes him. A child named Bree Blackstone is there, seeking his help; her mother Vera is an old friend of Finch, and she’s been murdered, and Bree’s father Liam has been kidnapped. Finch has been out of the PI business for nearly a decade, but Bree just needs someone to ask some questions. And it’s LA, are we really going to trust the police?

Everything is going well until a sniper kills a witness, and Bree…

Then Adair Finch wakes up at 4:34 am, collects Bree from the front door, and the day starts again. In this world, Warlocks make deals with spirits and “gods” and other creatures. Finch has made a deal with Chronos. When he marks the time, he can reset an entire day with everything he knows, and start fresh.

There is a reason the blurb describes this as The Dresden Files meets Groundhog Day. Though there are more moments that feel like Benedict Cumberbatch is about to say, “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”

For a case that Finch didn’t even want to join, it becomes more and more of a rabbit hole each time. A murder and missing person case turns into a story of gang warfare, corruption, a conspiracy, drug dealers, and enough dead cats to run a Chinese food restaurant for months.

Shami Stovall’s writing style is nice and efficient, using enough details to paint a picture, but not enough to bog us down in the prose.

Overall, the pacing is nice and even. Like Edge of Tomorrow, there isn’t a lot of tension except for certain points where there is a genuine concern that our main characters might die. Mostly it’s just a mystery, unraveling bits and pieces, sorting out what are the real crimes from just ominous red herrings, the true criminals from the hired help.

All in all, it is a fun, unique little murder mystery.

The Characters

While the blurbs for Time-Marked Warlock like to compare it to The Dresden Files meets Groundhog Day, there are better comparisons. Adair Finch is not Harry Dresden—there is no first person snarky narration. He has more similarity to Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: he’s anti-social, a bit of a shut-in, with a dead brother, who’s death is still an unsolved mystery. He is short-tempered, has no tolerance to stupidity, and he’s not filled with quirky one-liners. (For the record, no, this does not end up with Judge Doom having killed his brother. That would wreck what I presume is the series arc.) He prefers indirect ways of dealing with problems. Quietly. Thoughtfully. Oh, and Finch’s secondary weapon (aside from time manipulation) is fire.

So of course, he’s teamed up with a perky, outgoing preteen girl.

Bree is a weird little girl. She’s manic. She’s vengeful. She’s squeamish. She’s up. She’s down. She’s Left. She’s Right. B. A. Start. I know she’s supposed to be a prepubescent female, but I personally know people with multiple personalities who are more consistent than this girl. The only constant in her personality is that she’s the child who always asks “Why?” Overall, Bree is the biggest achievement of Stovall’s novel: avoiding the feeling that this is just one long, drawn-out escort mission, and all of the usual drawbacks thereof. I didn’t want Bree to get killed at any point, making that a major achievement.

Kull: a trickster spirit who was only supposed to fill a quick need in the plot, and ends up tagging along. She gets most of the one-liners in the novel. (“Can you tell what [idiot warlock] has bonded with?” Kull: “Marijuana.”)

The World

This is more of the “secret world” genre of urban fantasy. Those in authority know about the supernatural, but few others. Reasons for that have not been spelled out here, except in cases where the supernatural folk just like to keep to themselves. (Like Finch, for one.) It’s clear that the police need to hire warlocks and witches to catch supernatural criminals, and that becomes its own problem in the novel.

Shami Stovall has a very well laid out magic system, with preciously described rules and regulations. Warlocks gain magic one way (by making deals with certain supernatural entities), witches gain power in different ways (depending on the phase of the moon).

One of the nice things about the world is that the supernatural beings that come up are well-defined. Spirits are just things that are born of nature, demons are not to be messed with, and making deals with angels will just get you into a war with Hell. Things like that.

Politics

None. Not applicable. If you see politics here, seek help.

Content Warning

Dead cats. So many dead cats. Though none are actively killed on the page.

There is limited language abuse. As Bree notes, she has the internet, so the language isn’t strictly PG-13.

Who is it for?

Any fan of urban fantasy will enjoy this. It’s certainly better than anything in the Iron Druid series.

Normally, this section is all about “If you like the X-premise of Y-series, you’ll love this book.” But what sells Time-Marked Warlock is the originality of the premise. It isn’t the Dresden Files. Nor is it really Groundhog Day. It’s something unique.

Were I to rank it, it would probably make the top six urban fantasy series I’ve read—John Ringo’s Special Circumstances, Jim butcher’s The Dresden Files, Daniel Humphreys’ Paxton Locke, Monster Hunter International, Saint Tommy NYPD, and then Madam Stovall’s work.

(I would add Michael Gallagher’s Body and Blood, but one book is not a series. And NR LaPoint is more fantasy than Urban.)

Why buy it?

While I wouldn’t put it on the list of THE BEST URBAN FANTASY EVER, I certainly enjoyed it.

If you like a sold, character- and mystery-driven novel, you should probably have already bought Time-Marked Warlock.

Buy this book.

Buy the book

The Story

When Selia Lascari was banished from her (not paradise) island of quasi-Amazons, she fell in with the mob. For years, she kept out of “the family business” while being a little too close to … all of them. She thought it a little odd when her adoptive father had her run an errand, but it was just a courier job with a flash drive.

Except that turns out to be a trap, and a traitor tries to kill her father, and Selia.

But that’s when they learn that where she’s from, throwing magic was a basic skill.

Everyone in “The Family” want Selia to go to the mattresses, like The Godfather, but she isn’t wired to be idle.

Teaming up with Sandman, the city vigilante, Selia intends to hunt down the traitor before she can sell some of the Family’s most precious secrets—including her own.

Taking the Night is a fun little novel. While I liked her science fiction outing, Scales of Injustice, this was better balanced between plot and romance, where the threat felt more constant, and coming from multiple angles. The plot is more rigorous, really. Both book open strong, but while Scales of Injustice slowed down for its romance, Taking the Night coasts at a steady pace.

And while Taking the Night has the same flirty banter from The Thin Man that she has in Scales of Injustice, it has more detective work and more action.

Selia and Sandman are fun, both as characters and as a couple. This isn’t purely character-driven, but character carries a lot of it.

There is only one real problem with the writing: JF Posthumus seems to have a very broad definition of what counts as a quip.

The Characters

Selia has a little less backstory, but she’s had a more straightforward life … if growing up on an island of magic amazons and being adopted by the mob is “straightforward.” Her life has been simpler. She has a few alien cultural ideas, but she’s been off her island for a decade, so must of her thought patterns align with basic society. She thinks the mob is too prudist, but that almost feels like a 90s trope. It’s one of the few things that didn’t quite gel for me.

Selia also has some interesting relationships, including with two hitmen she practically grew up with. They’re an entertaining couple of kneebreakers, like the pair from Diamonds are Forever or Neverwhere. They’re not that level of evil, but still entertaining.

The Sandman is a fun conglomeration of parts. He has no superpower except for being rich, and being smart about it—down to copyrighting his image and using enough shell companies to make the Cayman Islands happy. He has more costumes than Clayton Moore’s The Lone Ranger. If he had multiple agents who owed him his life, he’d be the Shadow. He’s clearly more Batman, with fewer gadgets.

The character interaction between Sandman and Selia is a little fast. It becomes very flirty very quickly. As noted above, Scales of Injustice had that sort of banter, but between a couple who had already been in a relationship. Here, it was very sudden, going from “we’re both hot” to more serious flirting within a few pages.

(Disclaimer: This may just be my reading speed distorting the speed of events, since the more “serious” aspects don’t take over for a hundred pages of the book. So your mileage may vary)

The World

The world is interesting, since it has magic, the mafia, and DC-like Amazons. Only in this world, the mafia and the Amazons have a contract—including human trafficking of Amazonian criminals—and only the mafia know where the island of the Amazons is. JF Posthumus plays with this premise more than DC comics has.

Politics

See content warning:

Content Warning

The violence doesn’t go much beyond the animated Justice League from the original DC Animated Universe. (PS: Screw you, DC, and all your straight-to-DVD trash, and the lousy animation. Also, Bruce Timm, you were better at this stuff 20 years ago.)

While there are no sex scenes, there’s a lot of suggestion amongst the flirty banter. Most of that suggestion is a cover story to make people not ask too many questions. But I wouldn’t be giving this to the under 13 crowd. Selia’s island would view Wonder Woman slash fiction as normal. It takes up only a few paragraphs, but it was a distinct record scratch in the middle of this story. It felt extraneous.

Who is it for?

This book is for people who want superheroes that are better than Marvel after Endgame. It’s not as dark as John Ringo’s, but certainly as entertaining.

Why buy it?

If you’re looking for a fun, action-heavy superhero story with enough surprises to keep the tension going, you’re going to want to try this.

Buy the book

Sometimes, there are books that make me worry about the author. There are moments here that make me want to ask John Ringo if he’s okay.

Buy here

The Story

While a great many authors lately open with “pure action” sequences, most of them suck because it’s a situation the reader knows nothing about, with characters we haven’t been introduced to yet. For those people, they should read the opening of Not That Kind of Good Guy and take notes.

During a Baltimore shootout with MS-13, thirteen-year-old orphan Michael Edwards is shot to pieces … but he’s saved when his superpowers kick in. Not only does his healing factor save him, but his new powers lead him to a government program for “junior supers” like him. He’s dragged out of the ghetto of Baltimore and into the nicer parts of New York. He’s put with new foster parents, who are genuinely good people (even if they are vegan), and a super team.

Now Michael’s only problem is to deal with The Society, the secret masters of the world who pull strings behind the scenes. They’re a deep state / World Economic Forum hybrid that manipulates governments and hierarchies.

But Michael also has a secret society of his own called Gondola. And Gondola doesn’t play nice either.

Also, MS-13 still wants to kill him.

And the government agencies are run by rejects from Epstein’s island and other progressives.

Not That Kind of Good Guy is very … John Ringo. His data dumps are intensive and entertaining, and could teach David Weber a thing or two. Michael’s powers involve the manipulation of earth minerals, so Ringo goes into weaponizing types of rock. And while we’re at it, Ringo throws in elements of Hindu mysticism. Instead of logistics, like the Vorpal Blade novels, Michael spends time on the covert development of his abilities. Since this is in the genre, let’s poke fun at the superhero genre. And looking at federal waste and bugout bags.

Since it is the superhero genre, it’s very much a frappe of elements. There’s a fully self-aware AI, demons, witch doctors, two competent FBI agents (bringing the book fully into fantasy). And since Michael comes from Baltimore, we have to take a few shots at The Wire while we’re at it.

Since this is Ringo, we seem to be building to a world-threatening antagonist that may destroy the world. Or at least kill 95% of of the human race, as usual. To some degree, it feels a little bit like Larry Correia’s Grimnoir Chronicles—all the superpowers, none of the alternate history.

It’s also very clear that Ringo has done research on child psychology and the foster care system, and vomits it out onto the page more than once. It’s presented in enough of a clinical way that it doesn’t feel like another episode of SVU. But Michael’s file is referred to several times as “The War and Peace of Child Abuse.”

Even taking all of this into account, Not That Kind of Good Guy was an entertaining read. This is an intelligent look on the superhero genre I haven’t seen since Silver Empire’s Heroes Unleashed series. Ringo took some very basic powers we’ve seen in multiple shows, and weaponized them in creative and smart ways. The plot has a nice balance of superheroism, conspiracy thriller, and the looming threat of MS-13 in the background.

The Characters

Ringo insists that Michael is Chad from his Monster Hunter Memoir series. Which is funny, I don’t remember Chad being quite this broken, with layers of PTSD, abuse, and the focus of a meth-addled squirrel. For Chad, killing monsters is just business. For Michael, it’s pure survival. Michael’s upbringing in the ghetto has basically made him decide that Dave Chapelle is too politically correct.

Any other character would probably be a Mary Sue, but Michael is far too broken for that.

On the one hand, he’s a self-taught 5’10” thirteen-year-old with multiple graduate papers in multiple areas. Before any superpowers kicked in, he had learned

“….since I was six and figured out how to set it up, I’ve been listening to two college lectures at a time on earbuds, one in either ear, sped up to usually three times speed.”

Like I said, a little Mary Sue.

He’s also been abused multiple times by multiple foster homes, and been resuscitated repeatedly due to Baltimore being a hellhole. His catchphrase is “If what don’t kill you make you stronger, I be diamond.”

ADHD and PTSD are a hell of a combination.

The World

It’s our world plus superheroes and renaming the deep state and the WEF as “the Society.” It’s much less development than Morgon Newquist did for her superhero world, but there are a lot of overlaps—mostly that a lot of heroes seem to be more interested in selfies and celebrity than actual heroing (in this case, part of that is encouraged by ye olde secret society). But it has some of its own history going back a few years, even a few boogiemen.

Politics

It looks very much like John Ringo watched the last five years of public stupidity, noted all the sacred cows, and skipped turning them into hamburger. He just decided to break out the flamethrower and hit “flambe.” Want to talk trans? Want to talk about low-trust societies, defund the police, and “bail reform”? How about a discussion on the foster care system as a massive abuse factory? Perhaps shooting at academia? If you’re on the left side of the issues, this will not be your cup of tea.

Ringo basically took 2020 as well as I did, and my thoughts on 2020 involve arson, because nukes are too quick.

The only thing that could be considered “centrist” is one attempt for a 90s “muh both sides” moment regarding an element of the trans issue. But I suspect it was written before every mass shooting was led by someone diagnosed as “trans.”

Content Warning

Violence. Lots of violence, and that’s just in chapter one.

Discussions of rape and pederasty, sexualizing children, and someone who expresses Marion Zimmer Bradley’s opinion that “everyone is innately homosexual.”

Torture. Torture-like symptoms.

I don’t care if the protagonist is thirteen, do not approach it like a YA novel.

Who is it for?

For those who liked The Grimnoir Chronicles or Jim Butcher’s Spider-Man novel The Darkest Hours.

(Yes, I’m reaching back through the sands of time. Do you know how hard it is to get a good superhero novel in prose?)

Why buy it?

It’s a solid, character-driven novel by John Ringo. And this time, the only squicky is with the villains.

Buy here

His review of the movie is what we were promised, as opposed to what we got.

The end result of this shot-from-the-hip mock review came an outline of a twelve-book series. You can read it without much in the way of spoilers. The story grew exponentially as time went on, with the addition of many, many more space pirates.

Space Pirates of Andromeda

The Story

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

To begin with, Alderaan was destroyed…

No, sorry, wrong opening.

The despotic Galactic Empire has fallen. The Dark Overlords, masters of mysterious mental powers, are dead. The remnants of the Imperial forces have retreated to the Black Sun Nebula at the core of the galaxy, brooding on revenge.

The Republic is reborn, and with it, truth, liberty, and hope. But from the ashes of the quenched tyranny, new evils arise!

One by one, an unknown force is extinguishing the life-giving suns throughout the arms of the galaxy, leaving billions to die in darkness.

Princess Lirazel Centauri (or simply “Lyra”) watched her world, and her die. They went down battling the forces of darkness. And despite everything she personally witnessed, no one will believe that the Galactic Empire was behind it—the Empire and its overlords were all dead.

And that’s just the thirty-page prologue.

Thirteen years later, Star Patrol Captain Athos Lone (not Solo, Lone) is boarding a pirate vessel, reading to exterminate the vile scum. He has a high tech mask from the ancient times that helps him be on par with a whole ship filled of pirates. When he finds himself on the hull, he discovered a translucent maiden with a bow and arrow just striding along the vacuum of space.

Lyra has learned a few tricks since her planet was destroyed.

From here is a breakneck run for survival against a horde of pirates, all out for Athos’ blood.

Think about the pacing of the original Star Wars: A New Hope. We open with a space shootout, follow two droids down to Tatooine, then the film slows down as the droids wander over the sands.

Space Pirates of Andromeda has no such slow down. It doesn’t stop to breathe. Like the original serials that Star Wars was based on, the plot is always moving, and the threats are omnipresent. The pacing is on par with Flash Gordon or a Barsoom novel.

And the prose is … well, it’s John C. Wright. His narration is poetry, no matter who’s being chased, stalked and / or shot at. It’s also very clear that Wright wanted to take a stiletto to the woke nonsense of “modern audiences.” Everyone is lovingly described. The heroes are heroic. The villains are villainous. you know, like most fiction.

The reason this review is so late, despite having an early review copy, is … well, the ending was very much like a Flash Gordon serial. Complete with a cliffhanger. The sort of cliffhanger that was fine if the next chapter came out next week, not months later. What do I mean? Imagine if The Empire Strikes Back stopped with TIE fighters chasing the Millenium Falcon into the clouds, and Luke Skywalker just dangling over Bespin, and everything just cut to credits… Yeah, that sensation right there? That was me when I first read it.

However, book two is out, I read it, it’s fun, so you can go straight from book one to book two.

The Characters

It you imagined the next generation of the rebels from Star Wars as more akin to superheroes, living up to the shadows of their parents … you pretty much have an idea of the characters.

And it’s John C. Wright. Even the bit characters have personality, backstory, and motivations, and they’re all relevant to the story.

The World

Despite how I’ve written it thus far, lest you think this is a bit if rewritten fanfiction retread, Wright has rewritten so much of Star Wars I want him to go back and give us the Starquest version of every episode before this. Everyone now has different background. Chewbacca looks more like Doctor McCoy from X-Men. There are conversations about the rise of this Empire, which rose in response to pirates, barbarians, “unholy things from Beyond the Edge, doppelgangers and underdwellers.” The ancient order of the Templars (not the Jedi) are freeing mutinous robots.

There is clearly a large world stuck in Wright’s head, and it has multitudes of planets swarming in there, each with their own distinct cultures.

How does Wright pull this off while keeping a breakneck pace akin to a thriller? Mostly by bringing up what’s relevant as it becomes relevant. And try not to breathe too deeply along the way.

Politics

Pirates bad. Evil should be crushed… um. That’s it.

If you think religion is just hokey superstition, you might have some issue. But this is a science fantasy in space. If you have problems with all that, you may be reading the wrong review.

Content Warning

Oh, the content is about as harsh as a Flash Gordon serial. Which is tame by the standards of some modern cartoon.

Who is it for?

Imagine Gene Wolfe writing Star Wars. If that sounds like fun, you’re the target readership for this book.

Why buy it?

When I first encountered the David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, it was described as “Horatio Hornblower meets Star Wars.”

If David Weber is the CS Forester of of science fiction, then that makes John C. Wright sci-fi’s Patrick O’Brian.

Space Pirates of Andromeda

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Jill Bearup is a YouTuber whose hobbies include the art of staged combat. Many of her videos center around fights in media, as well as armor and weaponry.

A few years ago, she made a series of shorts that lampooned fantasy romance tropes … all the romance tropes. The series focused on the discussion between the author, Caroline, and the heroine, Rosamund.

This is the series in one video, assuming YouTube doesn’t do something stupid. Again.

The series was so popular, fans of the series demanded that Jill Bearup write a novel.

The result is Just Stab Me Now.

Buy This Book

The Story

I will assume you have not watched the above video. If you have, please bear with us.

Caroline Lindley is a mid-tier author who tries not to let her day job as a database administrator get in the way of her writing career. Mostly, Caroline writes about cozies centered around a coffeeshop. But now she is going to write fantasy romance!

If only the characters would cooperate.

The nineteen-year-old heroine has turned into a thirty-six-year-old widow named Rosamund. Captain Leo Collins, the “Hot Enemy” in this enemies-to-lovers trope, looks suspiciously like Caroline’s editor. And they are all giving Caroline lip.

While in the book, Rosamund and Collins are on a mission to get a peace treaty signed… if only their author would stop appearing in their book and meddling.

When Jill Bearup tried to get this book traditionally published, the universal reply was “We like this book, we just can’t market it.” While the Amazon description hearkens to Terry Prachett, I would argue that Just Stab Me Now has more in common with The Princess Bride novel. Like William Goldman’s original novel, there is our fantasy story, and there’s the meta-universe.

Unlike The Princess Bride, Bearup created a fictional author with her own character arc to go through, differentiating it from Goldman’s meta-fiction that he himself is a part of.

You would think Caroline popping in and out of the narrative would be a distraction, or that Bearup’s multiple-font system to convey point of view would be a pain. They both work.

One of our modern-day concerns is that if the author is a woman, and the main character is a woman, the female lead in the story will out-fight, out-think, and be superior to her male counterpart in every way, making the reason for his existence to be a punching bag for her. That is not a problem here. They each have different strengths that balance out the narrative. Rosamund is no bitch girl boss here, perhaps more what John C. Wright referred to as an “action girl.” She gets into three fights in the entire story, and it’s all surprisingly realistic melee combat, utilizing a sort of sword judo at one point (read it, it’ll make sense). In fact, there is a scene where Rosamund spends half a page contemplating how, if she gets into a fight, she will get her butt kicked—and I can’t help but wonder if Jill Bearup deliberately put that scene in to deliberately counter the trend of catering to “modern audiences.”

Interesting thing about Just Stab Me Now is where it deviates from the original series of shorts on YouTube. very few sections are just cut and paste, much to my surprise. It treats the original series as an outline. All to the book's credit.

Another difference is how Caroline interacts with her characters. She's not limited to interacting with just one. Funny enough, Bearup does capture writer character problems— when the characters develop free will and make choices on their own, and having two problems solve each other even if it wasn’t in the outline. It's good enough to explain writer schizophrenia, even if it doesn't capture it perfectly. (My personal experience with writing never sees me having a direct conversation with characters, their random events and independent choices just sort of … happen.)

The Characters

As I alluded to above, this has an interesting four person rotating POV.

We have Caroline, the author, who is fighting with her characters, struggling under an overbearing boss who makes both of her jobs difficult, and has unresolved feelings for her own editor. She has work to do.

The editor, Henry, is a relatively minor character in this novel, but he has an amusing perspective that highlights parts of the story we wouldn’t otherwise get. Bearup tells the story through a strict third-person personal perspective—we see things through the character’s eyes, and we are severely limited to what what know, and no more. Henry’s view on Caroline help shape her more.

Our two romance characters are also well-developed. Part of the joke is that they are too well-developed to be trapped in the tropes Caroline wants them to be in.

Rosamund is recently widowed with two children, her husband murdered less than a year ago. And if she thinks she’s having a bad time of it now, just wait until she learns while he was killed. She is logical, she overthinks problems, she is bound by duty … which leaves little room for romance, driving Caroline crazy. While she carries more knives on her than a Ginsu outlet story, she isn’t getting into fistfights, and she well knows her limitations.

Captain Leo Collins is taciturn, has no skill in diplomacy, and is quite bemused by the games the aristocracy play. He has other layers to his character, but those are spoilers.

The World

The fantasy world is interesting. The geopolitics is as serious as Game of Thrones (lacking the sexual perversion and murder porn) with enough social etiquette to make for some comedy on par with h Jane Austin. There are two warring kingdoms, our two leads are from opposite sides of the conflict, and they act as couriers.

I find it interesting that Bearup went through a lot of trouble to insert a religion in the book. It’s clearly “Christianity with serial numbers rubbed off” and I’m not sure she scrubbed very hard.

There is a little bit of magic thrown in there, and fantasy medical remedies, but the entire thing is fleshed out just enough to get the plot going. This isn’t Tolkien. But it has slight similarities to David Weber orders a pizza.

Politics

There are no modern politics in here. At all. Zero. There is none of “the message.” There’s no rewriting for “modern audiences.” It’s just a simple fantasy romance … with the authors personal problems thrown in for good measure.

Content Warning

The harshest I think this gets is PG-13. It helps that “Caroline” is squeamish about certain scenes, and prefers they fade to black.

Who is it for?

Frankly if you like The Princess Bride, I think you’ll like this one. Unlike Goldman’s work, the characters get paragraphs of backstory instead of pages, but it’s the closest work I could accurately compare this to in my experience.

Why buy it?

Is this a heartbreaking work of staggering genius? Nope. But it’s fun.

Buy This Book

In The Icarus Needle, Zahn has gone to full Kobayashi Maru.

Buy The Icarus Needle

The Story

Gregory Rourke and his partner, the Kadolian named Seline, have been working for the Icarus group for a few years, looking for the Icarus gates—long lost technology developed by an ancient civilization. It’s the only way to break the transportation monopoly of the competition—the Paath.

Unfortunately, all that has changed. The human part of the Icarus group has taken over, and started a purge of everyone else. The new General in charge was responsible for pulling Rourke’s backup in The Icarus Changeling, and wants Rourke to fall in line, take orders without question… because Rourke has played so well with others. But Rourke’s solutions in previous encounters have led to one too many Paath victories.

To smooth over the transition to the new status quo, they’ve hired a renowned fixer, Nicholas Rourke—Gregory’s father. (When I thought that Rourke’s father would show up in the series, I always believed he would be a punchline to the series, not a main character. I still want him played by James Garner.)

The General has a new mission for Rourke and Seline: go down to a planet and seek out the codex of gate addresses Rourke surmised back in The Icarus Twin. The General has a plan that includes a one-way trip for Selene.

Now, Rourke and Seline have to circumvent their own allies, in a plan that amounts to a suicide mission. And that’s just the first hundred pages.

If they survive that, there’s just one other problem: the locals used to work for the ancient aliens Rourke calls the Icari … and the former employers would like to become the masters. The key to their plan: using Seline.

And all that is before the Paath show up.

Once again, I find I cannot say enough good things about one of Zahn’s Icarus novels. Every Icarus book is a smart, snappy thrill ride with no slow moments, or time to breathe. While I am a fast reader, I generally do not consume 400-page novels in under four hours, as I did here. Each Icarus novel has more twists than a bent corkscrew designed by MC Escher, and they all move at the speed of a Larry Correia Monster Hunter novel.

Normally, Rourke has to tangle with an 8-sided chessboard—be it with multiple branches of organized crime, the Paath, law enforcement, environmental factors and the guest star of the week (sometimes an assassin, sometimes a con man, etc). Now, he has a new side to worry about: his own.

I guess Zahn thought Rourke didn’t have enough problems. It gets bad enough that Rourke actually has to take up arms and open fire—something he has largely avoided up to this point in the series.

On top of all that, The Icarus Needle brings multiple plot threads to a head. The mystery of the Icari has been built up throughout the series, and many of them come together here, tying together multiple threads. Once again, Zahn shows off that he has mastered the art of playing perfectly fair with the reader. Unlike Sherlock Holmes, the reader sees everything Rourke sees, making the conclusions self-evident and obvious … but only after Rourke explains it.

The conclusion of the book is truly unexpected, and seriously changes the board and the players in this game.

The Icarus Coda is the next and final book in the series, and I can only imagine what twists Zahn has in store for us next.

The Characters

One of the nice things with Zahn is that he doesn’t believe in dumb characters. No one here is stupid. Seline knows how Rourke’s mind works (sideways, with WD40). Even among the Paath, there are people who are at least Rourke’s equal, and they have more resources at their disposal.

The fun part of The Icarus Needle is watching Rourke and Seline play off of each other, their enemies, and the competition.

As usual, Gregory Rourke feels like a spy who has been raised by Bret Maverick. Gregory Rourke never gets lost in the wilderness of mirrors, since he grew up there. And putting him up against his own father truly makes this two chess players who know their moves from the beginning.

Seline is truly Rourke’s partner, and if she’s not his equal, she can certainly keep up with him.

We also see the return of the Paath Director Naask and his minion, the expeditor Huginn (Muginn appears later). They are truly enjoyable to watch as everyone spars with each other, and one never knows which way the characters are going to jump next. I haven’t seen a relationship like this, with characters this smart … maybe ever. The alliances seems to shift like sands in an earthquake. It is a joy to watch competitors team up against an external threat, all the while, everyone is playing their own game. And while Naask and the Paath are still the competition, The Icarus Needle makes it clear that they are not exactly “the enemy.” But what else can we expect from the man who created Grand Admiral Thrawn?

The World

Usual, there is just enough world-building to make the plot work, building upon the layers of we’ve seen in previous novels. This time, Zahn is continuing to build on multiple worlds at once: there’s Rourke’s day-to-day existence, the new world being landed on today, and the world of the Icari, thousands of years ago, in an effort to piece together why the Icarus Gate network fell apart in the first place.

I may have to reread this series again just to take notes.

Politics

The only politics of this book are the interpersonal.

Content Warning

It may be PG. At worst.

Who is it for?

This is for anyone who likes the brilliance of Sherlock Holmes, the spycraft of John Le Carre, the action of an Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the complexity of only the best caper novels.

Why buy it?

This series Timothy Zahn at his best. Unlike certain authors who get lazier and more long-winded with success, coasting on their prior reputation, Zahn just keeps getting better as an author. If there is justice in this world, Zahn will be made an official grandmaster of science fiction, just for the Icarus series alone.

Buy The Icarus Needle

Nope. This time, the book I described belongs to “werewolf author” Julie Frost. I encountered Julie when we were in an anthology together (Venus, from Tuscany Bay Press, if you’re curious), which was so good I want the rest of the series. While at the recent LibertyCon, she mentioned Dark Day, Bright Hour, a book “Too Christian for most publishers, and too gritty for Christian publishers.”

Not that I would know anything about that. Heh.

Buy "Dark Day, Bright Hour"

The Story

Anthony is a hitman, killed by irony; he died trying to save a woman after her car went off a bridge. They both drowned, and now the two of them are in Hell … except she’s a parole officer and a virtuous woman who’s not supposed to be there. There’s been a clerical error. Her guardian angel is even at her side. Since no demon wants these two in the abyss, a crossroads demon named Derek is assigned to escort them through the inferno. Along the way, they’ve been tasked with recruiting for yet another rebellion, against Satan himself.

The resulting story is one part Dante’s Inferno with a touch of The Screwtape Letters. Just add guns that explode demons, enable the virtuous to beat up devils, and make Screwtape into middle management who hated everyone else in Hell.

First of all, this book Should Not Work. It is literally told from a rotating first person point of view. All four character get their chance to tell the story at certain legs of the trip. However, Julie Frost makes this work entirely because they have long stretches of narration.

It helps that the plot is constantly moving. Sometimes it moves a little too fast. Sometimes, the story doesn’t even wait a beat before the next damned (literally) thing falls out of the sky (or crawls out of the dirt, etc). As I said, the plot is pure Dante, where the story is an escort mission out of Hell, with a subplot of a recruitment mission, polling the demon kings of Hell to see who wants to overthrow Satan before he tries starting things with Heaven again. There are moments of comedy, again, like Screwtape, in seeing the various demon factions snipe at each other.

Overall, this was a fun ride that was part action, part comedy and just enough gonzo to make it a perfectly enjoyable cocktail. Yes, I probably killed that metaphor.

The Characters

Anthony is a hitman who died saving someone else, but is in Hell anyway. He’s only a little confused, since he only killed people who had it coming. He also has an Ivy League degree and was born into the family business, and was just too lazy to get another job.

Freddi is the virtuous one, whose parole officer career was cut short by a car accident. She’s in Hell entirely by accident.

Zeeviel is a guardian angel, attached to Freddi’s side.

Derek is … pretty whiny as a demon. Like Tom Ellis’ Lucifer, one of his major character traits involves serious Daddy Issues. Also like the aforementioned Tom Ellis character, this personality trait is as boring as it is grating

Everybody here is fleshed out, with their own back stories and motivations. There’s almost enough character here to make it a character-driven story, but there are too many fireworks to make that characterization. And the character exploration is integrated so well into the plot, I really didn’t notice until I looked back over the story for this review. It was just that well done.

The World

It’s Hell. There’s not much to discuss.

Politics

Depends. Do you believe that a belief in God, or Hell, or redemption, is political? Then this is political. Otherwise, no.

Content Warning

It’s … Hell. Everything you might have a problem with in Dante’s Inferno, you’re going to have here. Nudity. Torture. Violence. Probably some cussing, but I don’t recall. And a mercy killing that I’m not 100% certain makes sense in context.

The biggest issues you might have are theological. Some plot points require God to deliberately not be omniscient and takes “turns His face away” to mean that God means He ignores and allows Himself to be ignorant of something.

As I said, it’s required for the plot, and this is a line in the last ten pages, so it’s not that big a deal, unless you’re a mildly neurotic reader with a philosophy degree, like me.

Who is it for?

Take the total gonzo action of NR LaPoint (or any similarly pulpy author) writing Dante’s Inferno, only Hell is more like The Screwtape Letters.

Why buy it?

If you want to enjoy something that could be “Christian Fiction” but is too much fun to fit into that genre, you should be buying this book.

Buy "Dark Day, Bright Hour"

Now, Raven Mistcreek is going to have to stop the end of the world … again. Somehow, it never gets easier.

Buy Archangel here.

The Story

“I was surrounded by dead bodies, and only half of them were my fault.”

Has NR LaPoint been reading Jim Butcher again? Because that’s the opening line of Archangel.

To begin with, Raven Mistcreek and her friend the Kitsune (and her friend the half-succubus) have been ambushed by the forces of darkness. “Even the cute little pink bow” on her nightshirt had blood on it.

Then they are promptly swallowed by a sandworm of Dune. When they force it to cough them up, they land right in the middle of Raven’s old Catholic girls school.

Unfortunately, they ended up exactly where the worm was supposed to drop them.

Raven’s old school has been turned into a gauntlet. Two of the Deadly Sins are out to kill her and her friends. The walls are rearranging themselves. Monsters are crawling out of every corner of the high school. Every death drags the school deeper into the varying levels of Hell itself. Her chalk golem August is getting beaten around, her chainsaw is running out of fuel, and they’re all running out of bullets.

And that’s only act one.

I have to hand it to Nate LaPoint, the man knows how to write a flying start to a novel. At this point, Nate feels like he’s in a race with himself to see just how fast he can pace a novel. Also, he’s trying to top how many weird monsters he can stuff in each book. Chalk golem? How mundane. The horseman of War with a Velociraptor mount, armed with miniguns? Droll. Time to throw in giant blind albino penguins and a Yoggoth!

Nate gets double bonus points for the Lovecraft references.

Agatha Christie liked to wave the main clue under the reader’s nose the entire plot of her book. But Nate LaPoint is more like Mickey Spillane; the reader is so busy being caught up in the action, one barely notices that there’s even a mystery to solve, never mind the clues being assembled in front of them. He and Timothy Zahn have that in common.

While Zahn’s heroes are busy with a full puzzle, LaPoint just keeps everyone running too fast.

The Characters

Raven Mistcreek is the oddest fairy tale Princess in the written word. She’s an oddball, and even the other magic users and half-monsters think she’s a little off. She stops short of being full Magical Girl, and will slow down long enough to think her way through to the novel’s solution.

One of our characters is the literal Beast of Gévaudan, who will also go by Cerberus, who also sounds like Christopher Lee for some reason.

But really, this has all of the wacky, colorful characters from the other two books. There’s her kistune friend Kasume (with a katana named… Katana), the knight Percy Dayspring with “smart metal” swords that throw plasma, and August, Raven’s chalk golem. There was also Damien Mistcreek, Raven’s brother the Paladin, and her sister Ariadne, who walks through shadows and feels like Wednesday Addams.

The World

Oh, this world is so interesting. It’s supposed to be a backdrop, but it feeds the plot so heavily they’re indistinguishable.

NR LaPoint has a great visual style, painting an elaborate landscape wherever the plot takes him. Some of these horrors are what HP Lovecraft would have described if Lovecraft every moved a step beyond "this horror was indescribable."

Politics

None. No, seriously, none. Unless you think that having Templars and the Holy Catholic church are heroic figures is political. If that’s how you think, I worry about you.

Content Warning

None. It’s a credit to Nate’s writing that he can have a succubus as a character, an incubus as a villain, and Deadly sins as demons, and still be on this side of PG-13. In fact, it would probably be considered a relatively soft PG-13… however, you can’t go by me, I read Jurassic Park when I was ten.

However, it is horror. So if you’re squeamish about tentacled monstrosities … I still wouldn’t worry. This isn’t Hentai, and there aren’t even any jokes along those lines. Not even from the Kitsune.

Who is it for?

If you like the action of Larry Correia, John Ringo or Jim Butcher, with the mind of John C Wright, you should already own this book.

Why buy it?

If you like insanely good action with a fantasy world that stops just short of over-the-top, you are going to enjoy this one.

Buy Archangel here.

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However, JD Cowan asked me to review this one when this was in theaters...

My fiancée at the time made me sit all the way through Tomb Raider… you may have read that review. I’m a little surprised I married her anyway. But she apologized.

Equally odd… because I have never really been a fan of the Death Wish series. I don't really have anything against it, I just hadn't seen many of them no TV, nor did I ever go out of my way to watch them.

But when the Death Wish remake came out, I went out of my way to watch the original with Charles Bronson. It was okay. It seemed a little ... dated? It was very slow. Though it was an interesting look at a really young Jeff Goldblum as one of the hoodlums who attacked Bronson’s family.

Fast forward to the modern remake.

Dr. Paul Kersey (Willis) is a surgeon with a loving wife and daughter. He lives in Chicago's Lake Shore Drive in 2016, during the spike of 90-kills a week, and 40 on a weekend. When he is called away to surgery, his wife and daughter are attacked in their own home. His wife is murdered, and his daughter left in a coma.

Inspired by his Texas father-in-law, Kersey steals a gun from a gangbanger in his own ER, and starts to practice. It's clear at this point in the film (about 40 minutes in) that he's going to use it for some less-than-legal purposes, he still takes his time, builds up his skills … mostly by watching YouTube videos. And after interrupting a car jacking and saving a boy from the corner street dealer (the Ice Cream Man.. yes, really) he starts hunting the men who attacked his home. And we’re off to the races from there.

I like this film. I really do. Like the original, this one took its time. I think Bruce Willis waits a whole 45 minutes before killing anyone — which is a long time in a Willis action role. There is so much time spent building up the characters and establishing a rapport with them, it was strange — I actually gave a damn about what happened with these people.**

Unlike the original, this one doesn't spend long elliptical moments spent on nothing, but it also doesn't rush. Also unlike the original, this one had a plot.

Yes, I said it. Charles Bronson's Death Wish was an anatomy of a man as he goes from a nonentity to being a vigilante with a taste for hunting the wild criminal through the streets of 70s New York. Bruce Willis is a father who has learned the art of self defense, and goes hunting the people who murdered his family— killing a few other criminals along the way. And yes, he does seem to have a taste for it.

Somewhere around killing “the Ice Cream Man,” this Death Wish almost feels like The Fugitive for the dark side.

And frankly, while this one moves faster, it may have a lower kill count (I think Willis killed only 8, while Bronson killed at least that many) and I think it did their social commentary better. Yes, really. It felt really weird laughing in the middle of this film at “a vigilante in the age of social media,” with the talking heads of the radio arguing about the morality of the situation, and coming up with … a shrug.

You know how odd this film is? I even liked the directing. And I generally don't care about camera angles and panning shots. But this one used a lot of nice camera techniques that surprised me — hell, I'm surprised I even noticed them.  Now, I don't know Eli Roth from a hole in the ground (I think he does horror films?) but I can't complain about his directing technique. I’m certain he’s spent some time looking at Hitchcock films — it's definitely clearer in the first hour than in the later segments, but Roth still has them sprinkled throughout. Though Roth does like a good Chekov's gun; several of them.

And it's so nice to see a film where gun owners aren't branded as nut cases, just enthusiastic.

Let's go over the acting a bit.

Bruce Willis was allowed to act. He isn’t doing John McClain here, nor is he doing his more recent routine of self-parody or total apathy (which may have been early warning signs of his onset of dementia). There are some moments where I felt like he should have put more effort into the emotional bits, but that slack is picked up by some of the other actors.

Vincent D'Nofrio is a great character actor. As usual. And it was amusing to see him as Bruce Willis' brother, as they have similar hairlines.

Dean Norris, as the investigative cop … there’s something about having Chuck Norris’ brother in a Death Wish film that strikes me as funny. Also, the interactions between him and our main character felt a lot more real here than it did in the original.

Granted, really, the only thing I think needed work in this movie may have been the development of the bad guys ... but I don't think that interfered with the plot at all.

Overall, really good. Give it 7/ 10. Good movie. Recommended.

My books

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**Sigh. Yeah, I feel I gotta talk about the original. It’s a really good snapshot of the mood of the era: screw “the man,” who needs the cops?, and still thinking that Kitty Genovese was really left to die without anyone calling the cops (it's a myth). The ending was more about how the cops “just want this all to go away,” and rather than addressing the crime, or the situation. Here, it's more about making certain all of the right people are in the ground, and that the vigilante killing stops. But wow, do I not care about anybody in that movie. Everyone feels lifeless while we have long shots of very little — I would call them ponderous, but it doesn't really ponder anything. It tries to be deep and discuss vigilantism, but honestly? It didn't work. 

Doctor Robert E Hampson was inspired by fiction to go into the field of bionics—having discovered it did not exist at the time, he’s spent his entire life helping to invent the field. With degrees in physiology, pharmacology, and neuroscience, he’s smarter than you, me, and a dozen other people put together. But having met him, he’s far, far too modest about it.

If you don’t recognize the title, it is taken from the pilot episode of the Lee Majors TV show.

Buy the book

The Story

Glenn Armstrong Shepard was always going to go into space. After a ten-year career as the chief medical officer on the moon, a training accident nearly kills him. What doesn’t kill him doesn’t make him stronger, but costs him an eye, an arm, both legs, and other medical issues. In most cases, Space Force members have a Do Not Resuscitate order, because “anything in space that didn’t kill you instantly might as well have done so anyway.”

But instead of a DNR, he has a different medical directive on file. Because the Space Force can rebuild him. They have the technology. They can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster. But the price tag is going to be a lot more than a lousy six million dollars.

Despite the events of the books covering four or five years, this story moves. We open with the inciting incident in media res, and Hampson wastes no time getting Shepard fitted with biotechnology. From there, half the book follows Shepard along the path to recovery, through physical therapy and through post traumatic stress. He may never get back to space, and many are trying to keep him out of action.

But then there’s an emergency with a Mars mission. The crew is slowly going mad, ending in death. There’s only one man who can survive the G-forces needed to make it in time. From here, we have a medical mystery that requires every upgrade, skill and medical knowledge he has in order to save the crew, and to survive as well.

But dang did I enjoy this one. It even has a sense of humor with lines like “Ohm wasn’t built in a day” or a nurse labeled “L. Charon.” And we won’t even go into what he does to the sensitivity speaker. And Hampson has a series of one-sided telephone conversations reminiscent of Bob Newhart.

The Characters

You would think that for a man with as many science degrees as Hampson, this would a very different book. The Desert and the Moon is a techno-thriller that puts Tom Clancy to shame, but it is also largely character driven. We follow Shepard through the accident, into surgery, then rehab, PTSD, and coming back to being a functional human being again—in some ways, more functional than he was before. He’s a fully fleshed out character with a complete character arc and a well-sketched out biography.

Another member of the cast is Jennifer Butler, a reporter who has fallen into a profile of Shepard’s life, and falls into his life as well.

And then there is the character of General Boatwright. Somehow, Hampson has created a science fiction version of John Le Carre’s George Smiley. Boatwright is a hidden force behind the scenes of the entire novel, impacting every level of the story, and we barely see him until the last 10% of the novel.

Everyone gets a character arc in this novel. Everyone. And it is impressive how much Hampson achieves with the secondary characters, using relatively little space.

The World

Most of this world is ours, less than 20 years old. Much of that is built around the technology, or through little excerpts pf “ChirpChats”. For example, one such chat explained, “A portmanteau is a combination of two words, with a meaning that combines both. Example: Biologic + electronic = bionic.”

Despite being tech-heavy, this novel never lost me, and I don’t have a fraction of Hampson’s science background (I’m a historian with a philosophy degree).

Politics

The only politics is a page about the defense of why we should go into space.

Content Warning

None, really. There’s no nudity or language that left an impression.

Who is it for?

For anyone who wants to see a Tom Clancy recreation of The Six Million Dollar Man, this is your book. If you’ve ever wanted to see a medical mystery in space, you definitely have to read it.

Why buy it

You buy The Moon and the Desert to watch a character study of someone who needs prosthetic limbs, and rebuild both his body, and himself from the ground up, and then launch into a medical mystery in space that I haven’t seen since James White. It’s just a fun, well-crafted novel.

Buy the book!

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This will actually be a dual review. In large part because the film is trash. Garbage. I have never in my entire life walked out of a movie before. The only reason I didn't walk out of this one and intoDeath Wish down the hall is that my fiancee wanted to see the end of the movie.

Let's get this straight: Tomb Raider (2013) was a fun game with a well-crafted story, well-developed and rendered setting, and had depth of plot and character that I would set as a standard against other movies. Not other games. Films.

(The less said about the next two games, the better)

Yes, it is that good. If you don't believe me, play the game. If you don't feel the same way after you leap from the top of a burning temple, into a helicopter, seconds before the temple explodes .... then you're just lying.

Now, I know what you're going to say. "But, Declan! A film can't jam 10 hours of gameplay into a two-hour movie."

Excuse me, but Tony Stark had a character arc and growth in Spiderman Homecoming, and he was barely on screen for 5-10 minutes. Don't tell me that two hours of screen time isn't enough for a character arc of your protagonist.

Which brings me to the film, Tomb Raider, starring Alicia Vikander.

In the video game, we start on the mysterious island of Yamatai, home of the Sun Queen, Himiko, a legendary empress of a long-deceased nation in the Pacific that makes the Bermuda Triangle look like a theme park. Why? Because Lara is a newly-graduated archaeology student, and she's assembled a team to go in search of the island. That's it. That's the motivation.

In the film, we spend an hour of the film just getting to the island, with no fewer than two gratuitous chase scenes … a lot of talking at one another… and instead of Lara doing all of the research herself, showing off that she's a bright woman with a future ahead of her … she's merely following in the footsteps of her father.

It’s not even Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, since Indy had to work at it. She’s not doing any heavy intellectual lifting, and it's fairly boring to watch her plod along.

Because that's what we expect from a Tomb Raider movie — Lara Croft, running through paperwork, audio tapes, camcorder footage, and dusty offices in her family's mansion... which, come to think of it, was DLC, not the main campaign.

Why have her running through tombs, or pretending like she actually knows her ass from a hole in the ground?

Good God, man, Angelina Jolie did a better job.

Oh, and of course, this Lara is taking MMA, because of course she is. Let's check box all of the “Strong Female Character” tropes in the movie … but yet, somehow, the film infantilizes Lara by making her unable to take charge of her own damn life. (Oh, she’s the heir to a billion-dollar Croft empire, but she works as a courier because she won’t touch a dime of Daddy’s money because “I can't believe he’s dead.” Sigh. That’s not how this works.)

Also, Lara gets her ass kicked in the fight against her first, female, opponent. Because that’s how a badass rolls.

Ow, I hurt my eyes with that roll.

Oh, and the flashbacks.

So many flashbacks.

You know what? I don’t care how she grew up. There was exactly one flashback that added anything… and you have to believe that, just because Lara had some training with a bow and arrow when she was 12, she can hit what she aims for over 20 years later.

And then—AN HOUR IN— we finally get to the freaking island of Yamatai, the thing they focus on in every muthaf**king film trailer.

In the game, they very subtly hint that Yamatai is haunted by supernatural dealings. The boat Lara’s team arrives on is taken out by a horrible storm that tears the ship in half. It is a gloriously rendered sequence, taught with tension.

And this is the first few minutes of the game, where you don’t know any of the characters, and you barely even know Lara — technically we don't even know Lara, since this is her origin story. It is tense, gripping, and makes your pulse race just watching it. It’s pure Indiana Jones.

In Tomb Raider, 2018, the ship is a rust bucket that’s sunk because Lara browbeats some poor drunken schmuck into trying to find their fathers, because both of their parents were lost trying to find Yamatai. (Coincidence!!!!!)

I will give the film props for at least trying to get the same cinematic feel as the game during the approach to Yamatai. Except that, even though we’re an hour in, I don’t feel any connection to the two characters who are supposed to be at risk in this situation.

A lot of this film from here is paint-by numbers.

Tomb Raider (2013) has Lara crashed on Yamatai, and immediately kidnapped by insane cultists. We eventually learn they believe that Himiko lives, and that the Sun Queen will never let them go unless they find a sacrifice that will make her happy.

Tomb Raider (2018) has Lara land on Yamatai … and she encounters an evvviiilll organization who is evil for the sake of being evil, led by a sad man (a sleep-walking Walton Goggins, who left all his charisma at home) who is running an archaeological dig at gunpoint by his shadowy bosses. They want to find Himiko because of her “powers,” that she could kill by touch.

Tomb Raider (2013): Lara escapes the cultists and begins a desperate journey of survival, collecting weapons, learning to kill, in order to saves her friends. She goes from apologizing to a deer she kills for food, to killing a cultist, to eventually becoming a badass with an array of weapons and eventually goes on to cut through over 400 gun toting lunatics. One particularly fun bit is when she gets a grenade launcher, and calls out “I’ll kill you all!” with line delivery that makes the player believe it.

Tomb Raider (2018): Lara escapes, gets dropped off of a cliff, wounded, and kills a man three times her size with her bare hands without so much as a whimper on her part (despite having been run through the abdomen with a bit of tree branch). There are a collection of slaves on the island that we don't know and have no connection to, and I don't think even the protagonist cares.

Lara then trips over her father, who is alive, has been on the island for years trying to prevent our villains from making progress. And he says the line: “It’s a good thing I told you to burn my notes, otherwise they could use them”…

I think I liked it better when Sean Connery said it in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, as “Why did you think I sent you my diary? So it wouldn’t fall into their hands! I should have sent it to the Marx Brothers.”

Lara’s father is kidnapped by the bad guys, and they threaten to kill him unless our hero does their bidding; at which point, she navigates through a series of booby traps, where the floor falls out from underneath their feet and “In the Latin alphabet, Jehovah begins with an I.”

Did I mention this was “paint by numbers”?

… Lara kills a few people with a bow and arrow, because guns are bad? I guess?

It is also LAUGHABLE to see Alicia Vikander threaten a helicopter with a bow and arrow.

SPOILERS (game and film)

Tomb Raider (2013 game): The ghost of Himiko is real. Not only is she a witch who can control the weather, but she is an evil monstrosity that leaps from body to body. She’s been trapped in a corpse for centuries, and the cult that runs the island wants to give Himiko a fresh, living body — one of Lara’s friends.

Tomb Raider (2018): Himiko was just so misunderstood. She was a Typhoid Mary whose touch was death, and she sealed her corpse away behind all of these booby traps because she cared just so much… yet couldn't be bothered to arrange for her body to be burned? What? AYFKM? Even Europe figured out that the Black Death could be destroyed by fire.

Tomb Raider (2013 Video Game): The final battle is Lara cutting a swath through monsters and beasts and cultists using an array of guns, grenades, fire bombs, as well as a bow and arrow. She has learned to survive in a brutal environment. She ends by dual-wielding the final villain. This is Lara Croft: The Tomb Raider.

Tomb Raider (2018 film): Lara takes on a guy about a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier in hand-to-hand combat, using skills she had at the opening of the film. No evolution happens. I would say this film was made by Anita Sarkeesian, but our heroine is attractive.

Tomb Raider (2013 Video Game): Lara has learned that the supernatural is real. Her father wasn't crazy when he talked about legends being real. Because legends just tried to murder her. It’s time for her to go out and fight legends, and prove her father’s legacy, as well as start her own.

Tomb Raider (2018): Lara knows that her father is dead, and he was totally insane for believing in the supernatural. But there’s this evil organization out there that she is going to personally hunt down and destroy, setting up a sequel that will not happen, because no one signed the actress to a three-movie deal, and she's already moved on.

I can only imagine how the script writing worked for this film.

HEY! I KNOW!  Let's take this AWESOME, truly cinematic game about Lara Croft's survival on a mysterious island, haunted by the ghost of a witch, and witness Lara's growth from a timid, scared college girl into a woman hardened by circumstances as she uses multiple guns and weapons to cut through legions of insane cultists…

And then make a movie about Strong Female wood carving #3, that spends most of her time getting to a bland island, overrun with cardboard cutouts, so they can get their hands on a glorified biological weapon, and then take EVERY SINGLE PLOT POINT from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Gee, I wonder why “video game movies make no money.”

They made a thrilling, gripping game with character depth into a bland, boring, aggravating exercise in naval gazing. They made Lara a “strong female character who needs no one,” losing all of her evolution in the game, giving her almost no character development in the film. Her only super power is “solves puzzles and wins fights for no reason.”

I’m not even saying “They didn’t mimic the game perfectly.” I’m saying that there was NO CHARACTER EVOLUTION OR DEVELOPMENT AT ALL.  But then again, it would help if she had a character to start with.

And you know what? The marketing people knew this movie was going to suck. They knew it. Because none of the trailers, none of the behind the scenes interviews, none of them focused on the entire first half of the movie. They all focused on the Yamatai sequences, and the handful of images and set pieces that mimicked the best parts of the game.

I actually liked Vikander. I don’t like how she was written, but she definitely put an effort into being Lara Croft. She put more effort into being Lara than the writers put into the script.

Oh, and the visual design people. You know they played the game. The makeup, the wardrobe. Any side-by-side comparison shows you that the visual design people did their damnedest to make Alicia Vikander look like Lara Croft. You want effort, it’s there.

There were obviously a lot of people who worked their hearts out trying to make this film look awesome.

But the writing team?

And yes, it was a team. Three people developed the script. Two people worked on the story. Two people worked on the scrip. Only one person worked on both.

Oh, and that one person who worked on both? She wrote the screenplay for Marvel’s upcoming Captain Marvel film, a D&D movie, and Sony's Silver & Black film for Silver Sable and Black Cat. Because Womyn?

Oh, yeah, and this woman, Geneva Robertson-Dworet? This was her first writing credit, and yet she's already part of another major franchise. Who is this woman, and who did she have to blackmail to be put on this film?

And the director is … Norwegian. That’s it. That's his claim to fame

I hated this movie. At this point, you can make a better investment paying $10 for a used copy of the video game for Playstation or Xbox.

Film rating: 2/10

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We start with a buddy cop genre as mismatched as Lethal Weapon, a initial terrorist mystery that looks like 24, until it turns into a battle royale and running shootout during a motorcycle chase.

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The Story

Division 7 cop David Carter has strayed too close to the line once too often, so he’s saddled with rookie agent Veronique de Tournay to observe him and see just how over the line he is. What starts as a stopping a single terrorist incident spirals into a rabbit hole that bounces around five different planets, fighting off multiple threats, stalked every step of the way by a Bond villain masterminding everything behind the scenes, as well as his pet psychopath.

It’s fun.

The book is written very much as a police or espionage procedural with two primary points of view, both from our leads. There are occasional asides to the primary henchman, who is coocoo for Cocoa Puffs. Janeksi’s characters tend to think through and observe everything. While she never reaches the level of depth that Tolkien does, it’s clearly what she’s shooting for.

There are elements of the first half of the story that feels like if Robert Ludlum or Mickey Spillane wrote scifi cops instead of spies and PIs. Go to planet A, get shot at, stop terrorists, get information; go to planet B, repeat. Then we get halfway through the novel and it turns into an 80s action movie. We even get a motorcycle chase.

Frankly, my only complaint with the book is that the third act drags a little. But it’s also the end of a 200,000 word book, so I may have been the one dragging. Whatever you do, don’t drop this one on your foot.

The Characters

Take the buddy cop genre but IN SPACE!

David Carter at first glance looks like your standard burnout with a tragic past (either that or Dirty Harry Callahan) but it’s not the standard tragic past. He has a fondness for classics, and old technology. He prefers physical books to readers, and he prefers his 1911 to plasma guns. Background? Basic blue collar.

Veronica de Tournay is a rookie who reads people’s faces like others read a billboard. She comes from a French wealthy family on her mother’s side, and her father used to be the spymaster of Department 7. She’s the scalpel to Carter’s lead pipe.

The fun part is what each ends up learning from each other. And it’s a lot more than Riggs and Murtaugh ever learned from each other in Lethal Weapon.

The secondary characters are all vivid, down to the Bond henchman Ludendorff, who is in a battle of doing the dozens with Carter … only they do it with trading insults from Richard III.

Even our Bond villain is entertaining, in a deranged psychopath sort of way.

The World

The world here is built as the story goes along, but this story goes along for 200,000 words and thus there is a lot of world building to go with it. From the Manichean terrorists who speak in Aramaic to weather control satellites to the new technologies that could level entire cities if things go wrong.

The culture is also interesting, including the world government painted as being heavily libertarian, as well as very Dominican (the Order of Preachers, not the Dominican Republic).

It was almost Tolkien deep, but avoiding all of the pitfalls of diving too deep. There are a whole collection of little details along the way, like the IRA (Independent Republic Armada). Or the J Carter Irish Pub (With the Warlord of Mars lunch special). The future of New Orleans is darkly entertaining, but I am a sick, sick man.

Politics

There is some in-world politics that is almost analogous to modern politics, but there are maybe five pages of it. Then things blow up again and we can all get on with our lives.

Content Warning

None, really. There may be some cussing, but not much. There is limited bloodshed. Heck, one bad guy gets taken out with a headshot by a Colt 1911, and there isn’t even a description of a gory mess afterwards.

Who is it for?

Do you like smart science fiction stories that think their way through problems, like Timothy Zahn?

Do you like John Ringo levels of action?

Do you like solid world building like David Weber?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then you should have bought this book already.

Why buy it

If Robert Ludlum wrote a scifi noir mystery that turned into an 80s action film, with a depth of writing on par with Tolkien and romance subplot that looks like Castle. Add a touch of the film Magnum Force. Tell me that doesn’t sound like fun.

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However, the rabbit hole wasn’t good enough for John C. Wright’s Somewhither. No.

Somewhither needed an inter-dimensional portal that opens up to an invading army, sucking our hero into a realm that makes Wonderland look positively friendly and harmless.

Buy Somewhither here

The Story

Ilya Muromets is going to save the mad scientist's beautiful daughter. With his grandfather's sword girded on, his squirrel gun, and his father's crucifix, Ilya races to save the girl, and, incidentally, the world. This would be odd, but his father is often away on missionary work that involves silver bullets, sacred lances, and black helicopters.

One night, Professor Dreadful sends a warning to Ilya that his Many Worlds theory correct, but that his experiments have opened a door that should have remained closed, and his beautiful daughter, Penny, is in trouble.

I loved this book. It was so delightfully insane, and so marvelously put together. I enjoyed it from the first page. Especially as our hero narrates that this was all for a girl named Penny Dreadful.

.... Yes. He went there. It doesn't even stop there. If you folks think my writing is proof that I'm a smartass, you have got to read Somewhither. And this is just page one. Which includes the line "If you blame the damsel in distress, you are not the hero."

The opening chapters may be a little slow to people who are not nerds. But you're reading a book that's one part scifi and one part fantasy. If you are not nerdy enough to enjoy Wright's conversation about the how's and why's (and why nots) of branching timelines and alternate universes, why are you even reading this review?

But this is John C. Wright. He can probably describe paint drying in an entertaining fashion. Especially when he describes one incident with the supercollider as "let's just say over a dozen scientists, staff members, and visitors were electrocuted, microwaved, and Hiroshima'd."

I told you he could make anything entertaining.

And the lovely little dissertations along the way are charming, and so un-PC, it's delightful. There's a conversation on lovely damsels. Or getting two halves of the brain arguing with each other lest they gang up on the hero to stop him from heroics. (The note I made on points like this is "Remember when Peter David was funny? Pepperidge farm remembers.")

After Ilya falls into another world, and the plot gets off to a running start, one of the running gags throughout the novel involves language. Let's just say that I think that if John C. Wright wrote Lord of the Rings, he would have sentence diagrammed elvish.

Once we get to meet the villains, they are delightfully evil pricks. In a world where astrology is an accurate science, and fate is everything, even some of the men running the evil empire are trapped. It strikes me very much like the Persian empire -- "freedom" wasn't even a word in the language. It's not in this language, either. Neither is "right and wrong." Funny that. They are so unambiguously evil, even the narrator points out

“On principle, I was not helping any group that called itself The Darkest Tower against places called the Great Golden City and Land of Light. That was a no-brainer. I mean, get serious. Suppose you were from another world and came to ours circa 1940 and you saw an SS officer in his black uniform with the silver skulls on his collar, and he said he wanted to exterminate some folks called The Chosen People from some place called The Holy Land, who would you think the bad guy was?”

Despite how obviously evil the adversaries are, they are not shallow evil. There is a bit reminiscent of Sam and Frodo being Shanghaied by orcs -- Ilya is given a tour of The Tower by a creature that even Richard Sharpe would have identified as a Sergeant just by his banter. In it, we get a perfect picture of a Screwtape bureaucracy where Ilya concludes that the empire "is all full of bureaucrats and lawyers? This place is hell."

Also, there is a lot of casual bits of humor scattered throughout. Such as the misattributions ("There is an old saying: if you want peace, prepare for war. I think it is in the Bible or something."). And the little shots scattered throughout this novel are so much fun to behold. There's the "Professor Dreadful" referred to in the blurb, who is a "Harvard trained symbologist" (to which Ilya's father replies, "Amazing what they give degrees in these days.") And the Templars are the good guys. (Dan Brown felt that one,) The bad guys of the piece are from The Dark Tower. And all of the evil sorcerers carry golden compasses (snicker). Some of the warnings of prophecy are right out of Lovecraft. When Ilya hears that someone is a ringbearer, he says, "You mean like at a wedding? Or do you mean like Sam Gamgee carrying Albrecht's ring when it got too heavy for Tom Covenant?"

Even the casual comments about other timelines are entertaining ("Dude, my planet is run by Prussians .... You need paperwork to get permission to go to the outhouse.")

Then there's the bit that compared Fantasy Island to The Tempest. I feel like Wright has a lot of stuff in his head and it's all stacked on top of each other.

And I swear the entire building of the final team is a reference to the X-Men, only interesting and without the angst.

The Characters

There's even an entire conversation between Ilya and his father ... during which you realize that things aren't all that normal with this family ("Now Ilya, you've known that since you were twelve, when we taught you quantum mechanics." Huh?). The punchline of this conversation ends with one of the most awesome reveals that I've seen in a while, and more or less backhands Stephen Pinker into next Tuesday, casually and easily, in one paragraph.

By the end, our heroes are all very vivid. The team consists of an unkillable killing Machine, a wind manipulator called a “Cloud Walker,” a ninja, a Norse Shadow meets Moon Knight, the monster that chased Bugs Bunny and Captain Nemo. And there’s at least one reference to Lady Hawk.

Though I’m relatively certain that Wright was going for a D&D campaign given how often he comments on character classes.

The World

Illya starts in our world, an then the multi-dimensional rabbit hole kicks in, and then we’re off to the races. Not only has Wright decided to build one one, he’s built at least a dozen, but probably more than three dozen.

The Politics

None. Seriously, none. You’d need to do a lot of mental yoga to twist yourself into being pissy over this book.

Content Warning

There is a large section where it feels like the book drifts into torture porn. Our hero tries multiple escape attempts, and fails horribly. If I didn't know better, I would swear that Wright was a fan of Hellraiser. I recommend skimming those sections.

Why Read It?

If I were to sum up this book in one phrase, it would be “Anime Narnia.” Thus, it would have a ton more action, epic fantasy, and make most of the golden era pulps look slow. Yes, there is a slow part here, but that's mostly a horror element.

Honestly, you should be reading this book already.

Buy Somewhither here

You know, another good, solid, likeable hero who has the superpowers of magic, snark, and taking a beating like he's Jim Rockford?

No, not Iron Druid. I said a likeable and witty protagonist who is a hero. I'll talk about that series if Upstream Reviews ever gets around to reviewing trash.

Fade is the book that made me realize that if (God forbid) Jim Butcher dropped dead tomorrow, there is someone who could easily do for The Dresden Files what Brandon Sanderson did for The Wheel of Time.

Meet Daniel Humphreys, and his hero, Paxton Locke.

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The story

Paxton Locke has had a tough life. That’s what happens when one's mother sacrifices one's father in a demonic ritual. She also tried to add Paxton to the mix. Paxton's mother went to jail, and Paxton was left with hair and skin like an albino, and magical abilities. Now, Paxton makes his living as an investigator of the paranormal, and ridding homes of ghosts.

When a ghost warns Paxton of impending doom, he has to go straight to where all of his worst fears live: home.

The flap copy on the book described it as “Harry Dresden's sorcery goes on a Supernatural-style road trip. Cool car sold separately.” Frankly, the line isn't branding. It's fairly accurate. Despite having his own family drama, Paxton Locke is no where near as angsty as the Winchester brothers, whose own whining BS killed any interest I had in Supernatural, no matter how good the plots or the actors were.

Let's skip to the short version: This is NOT a Dresden knockoff, but most certainly a successor. Paxton wanders like the Winchesters, has a motorcycle like half of 80s action heroes, and an RV like ... no one. No one has an RV. At least no one who comes to mind. (Did anyone else even watch Midnight, Texas?)

But seriously, I’ve read Dresden knockoffs. THIS is the descendent of Harry Dresden.

The characters

Paxton Locke carries the book. Sure, there are a lot of similarities between Dresden and Locke. Locke is a snarky first person narrator who uses a lot of quips and media references, as well as guns. Hell, he even gets beaten up like Dresden, though Locke is much better at fixing himself. But that's about where the similarities end...

Also, the first client in the novel is a woman named Shirley Jackson, and her house is haunted.

Did I mention that the author is also a smartass?

Oh, yes, and the evil mother? Adjunct professor of cuneiform studies at the University of Chicago. Also, she was an evil vegan, which I know is redundant, but still. If you thought that Harry Dresden had family issues? Mommy dearest is freaking evil. And she has fan mail.

The ending was a wonderful setup for book two, setting up a villain and introducing new elements to be explored in the next book. Including one thing that I always noted that Harry Dresden seemed to lack -- more than just a local interest in magic.

(Seriously, Jim, if you're reading this, does everything go to Chicago? Nowhere else in America? We've had magic destroy entire buildings in odd and bizarre ways, and no Feds have ever put two and two together before Battle Ground?)

The world

This follows the school of the "Hidden World" branch of Urban Fantasy.

I like the magic system. When it comes to most Urban Fantasy books, I've never really noticed or felt a cost for the magic in each system. With Harry Dresden, a wizard is literally a different species from humans. Here, magic has a concrete cost that has echoes and impacts on our hero, and other people can see just how much it costs him.

I even like this concept of ghosts, where they are less the soul of the departed and more like the echo of the pain and suffering they went through as they died... usually in terrible, horrible ways. I even like the grimoire, which has a personality of its own.

And then the Men in Black show up. Like Larry Correia's MHI series, the Feds know there's magic afoot. But they get developed more in book two.

The politics

Paxton rids people of ghosts and fights the literal forces of darkness, there isn't a lot of politics there.

If you want to stretch politics to fit the book, like Ghostbusters, Paxton Locke is an independent contractor who doesn’t play well with others, including the feds. He has multiple guns and charges what he sees fit for his services. And his mother is the worst sort of left-wing ideologue. Draw your own conclusions.

Content warning

Parents sacrificing children and spouses, ghosts, zombies, demons, guns and violence.

Who is it for?

This is for any fan of Urban Fantasy, be it Jim Butcher or Larry Correia.

Why read it?

When I read Harry Dresden, if I didn't have a three in one volume, I never would have finished the series. Fade is book one of the series, and it's better than Storm Front or Fool Moon by Butcher. Unlike those two by Butcher, when I finished Fade, I was ready and rearing to go on book two. Granted, Butcher's magnum opus is better, if only in metric tonnage, but give Daniel equal time in terms of decades, and we'll see how they go toe to toe.

If you don't believe me about how awesome this is, read Fade and prove me wrong.

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Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International has been going strong for over a decade now. He's built up a solid world, and had made enough money to buy himself a mountain stronghold... which he has done.

So the next step was to do what every other successful author does with a world: invite other people to join the party.

This is the first review of an anthology on this website. While the book is still good, We're are compelled to largely throw out the format. But we'll make it work.

The stories

“Thistle” by Larry Correia Owen and his team take on a new kind of monster in Arizona -- This first story in this particular volume is by Larry himself, starting with our usual main character, Owen Z Pitt.  It starts as your usual, straightforward monster killing story. Then Larry does a twist at the end of this one that makes Rod Serling proud. I didn't see it coming, but I should have. The action is solid, and it's Larry playing in his own universe.

“Small Problems” by Jim Butcher MHI’s new janitor has to deal with some small problems -- This short story is brought to you by Jim Butcher. Do I have to say this one was awesome?  However, I will say that this feels like he hadn't recovered from all of his Roman legion research from Codex Alera ... while watching The Secret of NIMH.

“Darkness Under The Mountain” by Mike Kupari Cooper takes a freelance job in Afghanistan-- The Chinese have dug too greedily and too deep... and that's a line in the story. And this time, there really are a lot of older, fouler things in the earth. It's almost a Monster Hunter procedural novel, with a soupcon of MCB BS.

“A Knight Of The Enchanted Forest” by Jessica Day George (Trailer park elves versus gnomes TURF WAR!)-- A straight up comedy from the first page, with the redneck elves versus a collection of hippies. It's straight up funny

“The Manticore Sanction” by John C. Wright (Cold War era British espionage with monsters) -- This one was dark. Very British. Also very Universal monster movie... the black and white version, not the new crap with Tom Cruise. This one was ... surprisingly powerful. The conclusion had a twist that hit so hard I'm sure it left a mark.

“The Dead Yard” by Maurice Broaddus Trip goes to Jamaica on some family business-- It was okay. It needed more meat to it. It was awkwardly paced, and finished very suddenly. I think it needed more room to work.

“The Bride” by Brad R. Torgersen Franks wasn’t the only thing Benjamin Franklin cut deals with-- This one was awesome.  In MHI lore, we know that Benjamin Franklin made a deal with Frankenstein's monster, but here is something else again. And yes, Ben Franklin is a point of view character, and Brad writes him perfectly. I can hear the actor from 1776 when I read the story. Also, Franklin's bit of a badass.  Who knew? Though this one pissed me off ... it was over too soon. I wanted it to run another ten pages. Dear Larry: Can Brad write a novel on the Revolutionary War history of monster hunting? Please?

“She Bitch, Killer of Kits” (a Skinwalker Crossover Tale) by Faith Hunter Jane Yellowrock teams up with MHI -- This was okay. I have seen Faith Hunter on panels at DragonCon, but having read her work here, I honestly think the author is more interesting than the story she wrote. Which is odd, because the inverse is usually the case. If you're a fan of her work, this one may be for you

“Mr. Natural” by Jody Lynn Nye An STFU mission in the 70s has to deal with plant monsters and hippies! -- The government's Special Task Force Unicorn has assembled a dirty dozen of mythological creatures to take down the Not So Jolly Green Giant. It was hilarious and fun as heck.  Though the bunny ex machina ending threw me.

“Sons Of The Father” by Quincy J. Allen Two young brothers discover monsters are real, and kill a mess of them -- Quincy is apparently a newb author, but I couldn't tell from the story. It was very Supernatural, if they focused more on being badass than soap opera. Had Quincy Allen wrote Supernatural, it wouldn't have become boring.

“The Troll Factory” by Alex Shvartsman Heather gets some help from MHI for an STFU mission into Russia -- Yeah, this was fun. A post-MHI: Siege story. It has a nice setup of a newbie hunter, and it has an awesome, awesome punchline.

“Keep Kaiju Weird” by Kim May  A Kitsune may have already earned her PUFF exemption, but she’s not going to let some monster squish Portland -- I really enjoyed this one. I was having flashbacks to the better episodes of Grimm, though. This one stars Franks, his government sidekick Grant, and taking on Godzilla.

“The Gift” by Steve Diamond Two of the Vatican’s Hunters from the Blessed Order of Saint Hubert the Protector on a mission in Mexico -- I wanted to like this one more. It felt like someone condensed a novel with a lot of background information left out. Perhaps this would work better as the first five chapters of a full novel.

“The Case of the Ghastly Specter” by John Ringo While studying at Oxford, Chad takes a case -- Was Ringo watching old Sherlock Holmes movies? There were moments when Chad sounds like Basil Rathbone. I might like this one better in the full novel of Sinners, as downtime in an action packed novel. But here, in this anthology, it just feels like "the slow bit." The difference is jarring. It's still good.

“Huffman Strikes Back” by Bryan Thomas Schmidt & Julie Frost Owen’s vacation gets interrupted for some monster revenge-- This was part comedy, part action scene. Either way, it was awesome. Owen's first kill was his fat slob of a boss that Owen threw out the window of the 14th floor of his office building. The fat slob was a werewolf. The fat slob also had a brother.

“Hitler’s Dog” by Jonathan Maberry It is WW2 and Agent Franks really hates Nazis-- Prisoners in a concentration camp make a golem to fight the Nazis. However, there's only one available animating spirit that can make this clay man walk. And everyone's favorite monster, Franks, is cranky on a good day. When he's hijacked to animate their golem, he's as friendly as ever. But at least has has Nazis to take it out on. Good story, but I think it needed a little more fleshing out.

The world

Each story does a nice job fleshing out Larry Correia's world just a little bit more. Some more than others.

The politics

Monsters need to be squashed, and to do that, you need guns, lots of guns.

Content warning

Sexual situations. Horror elements. There should probably be a language warning tagged on here, if only for the dick pic mentioned in one short.

Who is it for?

This is for anyone who likes the part of Supernatural where they hunt monsters, or for anyone who likes a good fantasy action world

Why read it?

It's a fun collection of playing in Larry Correia's world. You should try it if only for the best of the bunch, which stand all on their own.

While there have been many people who have played "What If" games around World War I, most of them have been academic.

This is the first time I've seen an alternate history novel tackle it from a different approach-- not by changing the outcome of the war, but working out how to save the Russian Tsar and his family from being butchered by the communists.

Unlike most alternate history, this does not require the intervention of aliens, or the introduction of magic. In this case, all it takes is a  series of normal, human decisions that one is surprised no one made the first time.

The story

In 1918, a German General looks to the east and sees that Germany has done something unconscionable: they unleashed Lenin and his communist philosophy on Russia. Looking at the havoc and terror waged on the Russian people, In The Romanov Rescue, there is also a plan to fix what is broken. After all, Germany has so many Russian prisoners from the war, surely Germany could send a few back... on a mission to save the Tsar and the rest of the Romanov family. Cue the Lalo Schifren music, because we're about to launch Mission: Impossible.

Much of The Romanov Rescue focuses on training for an operation unlike any other. This is 1918, before the invention of any special operations forces. To us, it would look like reinventing the wheel. In the case of our heroes in The Romanov Rescue, they're designing the wheel without knowing what it looks like. They're inventing the flashbang, urban warfare operations, their own codes, and operating at night without night vision goggles, as well as navigating a ton of logistical difficulties. We even get to make fun of military food.

The writing is detail heavy. How heavy? I already knew that Tom Kratman is the master of military minutiae, because he's well aware that the little things can kill you in real life. Apply that level of detail to historical times and places, and you have a sense of how much detail is here. The sections involving the zeppelin are wonderfully claustrophobic, almost feeling like it's a submarine thriller out of Run Silent Run Deep--only instead of crush depth, the risk is falling out of the sky. There's a whole section on the care of military animals, occasionally making me feel like I was reading a militarized All Creatures Great and Small. 

I will admit to being surprised by the lack of a lot of historical figures outside of the Romanovs. Trotsky, Lenin and de Gaulle appear, but are essentially cameos in the overall plot. But there wasn't a real need to focus on them. At the end, we have a subtle subplot come to a head as intelligence resources come into play. And then, that's when the fecal matter hits the rotary impeller.

The characters

While we do not have a cast on par with War and Peace, it is sizeable. I did not count them, but we have more characters than Lord of the Rings. If this puts you off, I submit that their sections are broken down into manageable chunks sizable enough so you remember who's who when it's necessary.

But our major focus revolves around a few people. Daniil is the head of the rescue operation as well as training, who has his own stake in the operation. The German General Hoffman is introduced in a way that makes it impossible to dislike him.

Another POV character is Tatiana Romanova, one of the Royal family, as well as two of the soldiers assigned to guard the Tsar and company. These sequences express just how vague and confused the situation on the ground was in 1918, to the point where some people barely know what side they're on, or what sides are there.  This plot line is almost pure character development, showing just who is at stake ... until it culminates into a sudden twist. And let's just say that Alexei Romanov, who, historically, is best known for his hemophilia and being an entry point for Rasputin to entire royal circles, has one of the best moments of the book.

My personal favorite characters in this book revolved around the recon team sent to fight where the Romanovs are being held. Lt Turgenev is humble and smart enough to listen to sense when it's brought up the first time; he is noble and honorable, almost a paladin, but less D&D and more Have Gun -Will Travel. Turgenev and his recon team keep this book moving on at a nice, clipped pace. His Sargent Mokrenko offers an interesting, entertaining perspective on things, and there is a third character they pick up along the way who is also amusing.

I will admit that there was a brief moment early on where this felt like it could become on par with The Dirty Dozen -- but none of our heroes are slated for the firing squad, and they're not motivated by a de facto pardon, they're out to save their country. While every named character has a character moment, this isn't character heavy. Everyone has enough to deal with already.

The world

Alternate history, or even just plain historical novels, require the same amount of world building and level of detail that any fantasy or SciFi world does. The Romanov Rescue meets that standard and exceeds it.

This does not go into insane, Tolkien-level detail on historical events, As a historian, I knew that the details weren't going to become overwhelming once the narration lacked any mention of the Allied Invasion Force of Archangel and Murmansk in January 1918 (which was supposed to fight against the Bolsheviks). While I do not exclude the AEF appearing in a sequel, it would have been irrelevant to the events of this novel... also, including the AEF would have probably broken the narrative flow. There is a piece of dialogue that suggests "What if there are other plots to save the Tsar?" which may have been directly address the AEF mission.

At the same time, there are no broad sketches of information here. Like every good technothriller, we get into insane levels of detail on the technology, as well as training and tactics, and just how things get done.

Though I do like the detail that local newspapers are always on the opposite side of the home country, even in 1918. The more things change, the more they remain insane.

There's even an entire page on Russian Orthodox theological impacts on the care and feeding of troops.

As an added bonus, this alternate history has footnotes.

The politics

It is less a matter of "Better dead than red," but more a matter of "Reds are better off dead, why haven't we killed them all already?"

Content warning

There is violence, but nothing gratuitous. Rape happens, but not on the page, so the reader never has to deal with it in detail. There are some righteous executions which may not sit well with some people. I recall no language issue that stood out.

Who is it for?

There is a lot packed into this. This is for fans of Tom Clancy technothrillers, historical novels, military history, Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, and even All Creatures Great and Small thrown in for fun. To be fair, there are heavy dramatic elements of The Great Russian Novel, unexpected romance,

Why read it?

If you are a fan of reading just "how things get done," with a heavy dose of history, and killing lots and lots of dirty commies, you should be reading this already.

Some years ago, when the augmented reality game Pokemon Go first came out, I mostly heard about it from its biggest fan: John Ringo.

Like every good author, Ringo took something from his life, and weaponized it for a novel.

And, it being a John Ringo novel, that requires weaponizing it on multiple levels, including as a real weapon.

In the case of Into the Real, written with Lydia Sherrer, they took Pokemon Go and turned it into Ender's Game.

The story

Larry "The Snake" Coughlin is an internet mercenary, a top tier game player for hire. Hire him to rid yourself of annoying opposition in your online video games. Except "Larry Coughlin" is really Lynn Raven, a 17-year-old high school girl. When the CEO of the biggest video game company in the world reaches out to her to beta test his new Augmented Reality game, she is hesitant. An AR game means she has to go .... outside and deal with ... people. Even worse, Lynn eventually has to work in teams, especially when the company offers a contest where the grand prize is five million dollars and a guaranteed job in the game industry.

I must admit, "John Ringo" and "YA" do not fit easily together in the brain. But it's executed perfectly well here. I have no idea how much is Ringo's concept or Sherrer's execution. Either way, it works perfectly.

Despite the fact that there are no mortal stakes involved here, Into the Real keeps up the pace admirably. There is no threat to life and limb, and a very rare threat of bodily harm, but for the most part, there are no slow bits. Sure, some fight scenes drag on too long, mostly because the reader understands that there is no genuine threat to our characters... that we know of.

If there is one big problem to the novel, it's that the reader knows what's going on, though the characters haven't put it together. When the monsters of the Into the Real game feed on electricity, and there are power fluctuations and blackouts throughout the entire country, it's easy for us to put two and two together before a third of the way into the book. It ends on a To Be Continued without more than hinting at what the reader suspects.

And only 40% of the way into the book, we get an exchange that goes

"When we say these entities.... are unknown, we mean we don't even know what they are. The data is encrypted and how the AI assigns them is also unknown."

On top of everything else, all one can think is "Gee, what can go wrong?"

Trust me, these aren't spoilers. The overall story of the "TransDimentional Hunter" novels is advanced entirely by seeing Lynn on her journey from gamer to leader, and it's quite fun. It suffers  a little from feeling like it is only the first part of a novel... until you realize that there is no way the events of this book could have been handled any other way. You're just going to have to buy another Ringo novel to see how the story pans out.

The characters

Lynn Raven is an unusually likeable teenager. The daughter of a widowed single mother, Lynn has long ago monetized her video game exploits, generating a steady income via microtransactions. She is smart, capable, and even her foibles are relatable. Seriously, who likes interacting with teenagers or people?

It is also fun watching Lynn's character develop over the course of the book, going from gamer physique and finding out how sunburns work, to someone more formidable.

The second main character is Hugo, the AI that comes with the Into the Real game, and is basically Jarvis from the Marvel films, complete with British accent and snarky dialogue.

As for the others characters, there are none of the usual YA formulas in Into the Real. The school bully isn't some copy and paste reject from Mean Girls, she is her own unique brand of psychotic.

The only thing that felt formulaic may have been the introduction of Lynn's friends. Mercifully, they turn out to be deeper than they appear.

The only irksome protagonist is one character who insists "Girls can't game," despite all evidence Lynn presents to the contrary. (As I grew up having to fight my mother and sister for control of the Game Boy growing up, the stereotype never made sense.) Push through these sections, and you will be rewarded. Like the rest, he is no shallow stereotype, as one might expect from a YA novel.

The world

Easily half of this book is world-building.  Lynn's beta testing involves a lot of explanation as she pulls and prods the inner workings of the game in her attempts to push it to its limits... and as Lynn tries to find glitches to exploit and hacks to the game, like every other gamer. Lynn's exploration covers  both the technology of gaming as well as the world-building of the game. Of the first 20% of the book, easily 14% of the book is the game and the mechanics.

If you're not into technology or the world-building... then why are you reading science fiction?

One of the major, obvious Ringo touches is that the book gets into the nitty gritty of just how things work. The game IA monitors the gamer and can contact emergency services if things go wrong. There are a lot of details on weapon classes and armor sets, and how microtransactions now work. It's also a game that comes with customer support and tactical support.

The world contains an element that pisses me off in that it has long-lasting impacts of Coronavirus lockdowns--all modern theaters are dead, replaced by VR movie cafes, half of education includes VR automatons, and doctors are always looking for the next novel virus. I don't hate that Ringo and Sherrer have this view of the future, I hate that they might be right.

And some of the game is cute. Healing capsules are called Oneg, The werewolf like monsters are the Varg (paging Jim Butcher). There is a shotgun referred to as the Abomination, which I think is the second Larry Correia reference (the first being, I believe, Larry Coughlin).

The politics

As this book does not spell out anything too clearly by the end, you can garner a message if you squint real hard, tilt your head sideways, and stretch like a pretzel: That big business and civilian individuals can do a job better than the federal government.

Also, part of the moral of the story is that you should pay attention to current events.

Content warning

You can tell that John Ringo didn't write the bulk of this novel for the simple reason that it is obviously YA, and this includes the content.

If you're worried about "video game violence" ... then I deeply worry about you, since there is no correlation between video games and violence. Since a third of American households own a game console (not counting PCs) if video games meant violence, we'd be hip deep in blood.

Who is it for?

If you liked Ender's Game, or even video games, you're going to enjoy Into the Real

Why read it?

Ringo and Sherrer have created a modern day Ender's Game using the technology of Pokemon Go. The characters are vivid and interesting, and the action is strong enough to carry you along.

Detective Tommy Nolan, NYPD is a badass living saint.

Just don’t tell him that.

The story

Detective Tommy Nolan is having an interesting day. He starts by taking down a purse snatcher…by seeming to teleport in front of him. While at the local precinct shortly after, he sees what looks like a normal junkie getting booked. Things get strange though when the addict sees Nolan and loses it, attacking Tommy with animal-like ferocity and displaying superhuman strength before finally being put down.

It only gets worse as he and his partner, the decidedly rumpled Alan Packard get called to a murder scene. The murder is ritualistic, and before long it’s clear they are dealing with a serial killer, one with a fetish for killing people close to Tommy and doing so in a brutal, gruesome way that is also strikingly familiar.

Before long, they realize they are not dealing with an ordinary serial killer but one who has abilities that no human should have. Tommy, develops a few of his down, putting him on a more level playing field. Throughout the course of Hell Spawn, the detective learns he can bi-locate, smell the presence of evil and more besides.

If this sounds like a superhero origin story, it is in a way. Though again, you would never want to tell Tommy that. His ability to do all of these things is tied directly to his prayer life and he’s careful to correct anyone who even hints that the abilities he shows actually come from him.

The characters

Thomas Nolan fancies himself an ordinary cop. He has a wife and a young son. He volunteers at his local parish as much as he can and generally lives his life in the best way he knows how. He not only doesn’t think of himself as a living saint, but rather as a sinner who needs help with his anger problem. Yet, he doesn’t come off as a holy card come to life. He really does just seem like an ordinary guy. At least until he has to take down an MS-13 gang that tries to kill him. Then he basically turns into someone that might scare Rambo.

His partner is Alex Packard, who is a little more worldly than Detective Nolan. Rough around the edges and little jaded after all that he’s seen, Packard makes an excellent foil for Tommy, ribbing him about his newfound abilities and his confusion about having them in a way that only a close friend can.

There are plenty of supporting characters as well, particularly Tommy’s wife Mariel who is a perfect match for him, humble and tough in all the right ways. And there is of course the ‘not-quite-a-gangster’ known as ‘D’. The large black man operates on the fringes of the law and has maintained a friendly relationship with Detective Nolan for years, and becomes an important part not only of this book but the entire series.

The world

The world of Hell Spawn is our world. There are no laws of physics that particular characters have the ability to break. Every ability Tommy has are clearly a divine gift and the supernatural aspects of the primary villain are of demonic origin. Given that Finn bases all of these off actual accounts, we really are operating in the real world. Normally, all the good detective has to concern himself with are gangs and random purse snatchers. Demonic serial killers feel as out of place as they should in what is otherwise an everyday world with everyday concerns.

The politics

Finn makes no secret in the book of his disdain for the political left. Nolan goes up against MS-13 and others that are at or near protected class status by the left. Not that Finn ever indulges in preaching, he simply states the facts as they are and then St. Tommy lays down the law. No one is safe either, not politicians, defenders of brutal gangs, or the obvious Planned Parenthood analog.

Content warning

This is not for the faint of heart or the young ones. The violence is graphic as is the description of the bodies left by the serial killer. There is also a scene at the end that involves a young child and his mother being physically threatened.

Who is it for?

This is definitely for anyone teen and above, but especially young men who need an example of someone who is both pious and an ass-kicker to help jumpstart their own male protective instincts. This book is part Exorcist, part Seven, and part Lethal Weapon.

Why read it?

Because St. Tommy is one of my favorite characters this millennium. I’ve read Hell Spawn and all of the subsequent books as well and Declan Finn never struggles to give his readers an action packed story in which evil is punished and the good guy never stops to wonder if he really is the good guy. He might wonder if he could have done things better, if he might have punched a demon in the face harder than he needed to, but there is never any doubt as to who the good guy is. That alone is refreshing in time when most franchises have become brooding, moribund, navel-gazing drek.

By the end of the first Monster Hunter International novel, all is right with the world. The villain was finished. Our hero, Owen Pitt,  got the girl, and while there were a few residual hiccups along the way involving some of the crew becoming vampires, everything is perfect...

Except for one niggling little detail.

Buy Monster Hunter Vendetta

The story

At one point during the final battle of MHI, the government accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb through an interdimensional portal, getting the attention of a Cthulian elder god, who decides that only one human creature is to blame...

Owen Pitt.

Yup. This guy has Murphy's own luck.

Pitt is now being hunted by a death cult known as the "Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition," led by necromancer known as the Shadow Man. They all want to feed Pitt to their monstrous, world-devouring deity.

The (n)ever-helpful government wants the Shadow Man. They give Pitt his own troop of government bodyguards, including one Monster Control Bureau man-like thing known only as Agent Franks. It's the MHI versus the army of darkness, only they're better armed than Bruce Campbell ever was.

Monster Hunter: Vendetta might arguably be better than MHI. We need little to no setup for the action, the plot jumps out at you and never really leaves you alone, and we can't even have a nice, simply plot-starting exposition without it being menacing (when the two people telling Pitt that he has to save the world … again … are vampires, it’s hard to have a relaxed conversation).

Since there is no such thing as a slow Larry Correia book (with one rare exception), this just speeds along with all the pacing of a Mickey Spillane. He consistently gives a pulse-pounding story almost every time.

The characters

Vendetta really proves that Correia has assembled a strong cast, and a great sprawling universe out there.  There are no cardboard cutouts as characters, even the ones that you're not supposed to like.

Interestingly, despite Correia's attitude on government in general, while he could have left the MCB crew as a bunch of mindless government automatons, even they get character development in this book.

The world

Each book in the MHI series continues to expand the world. Usually, just enough world is explored to make the plot run. But there was a lot of plot in this one, so there was a lot of additional worldbuilding.

The politics

Libertarian. "Why, yes, there should be private ownership of attack helicopters. Why do you ask?"

Is the government completely useless? No, not completely, they're missing parts.

I kid. The government agents here are slightly more useful than they are in real life. That is to say that they do actually aid our heroes from time to time.

Content warning

There are horror elements, up to and including body parts being ripped off. In one case, that's okay, he'll just sew them back on.

No language issues popped out at me, but that pales next to dismemberment.

Who is it for?

Fans of Harry Dresden would definitely enjoy this. This is for anyone who has ever seen a horror film and wondered what it would be like if all the heroes had an arsenal at their command... or, at the very least, if the protagonists were smart.

Why read it?

It's basically epic urban fantasy with guns. Think of the later Dresden novels, where Harry needs a small army to deal with a massive, world-destroying threat. That's every MHI novel.

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So after a while, I shrugged and said, Oh what the Hell? Why not?

Being a bit of a cheap bugger, I decided to go for his Three-in-One collected work of his largest series at the time. And book 5 had just come out, so obviously someone likes it. And it was published by Baen Books, and I already read their top authors.

But I really just wanted to understand who or what was a Larry Correia, and why was he writing about the monster hunter video game franchise.

Unknown to me, I had started at the deep end.

I promptly went out and bought ... well ... everything else Correia has written, including the rest of MHI, his three Grimnoir and his Dead Six novels.

Seriously, these books are kinda awesome.  I finished all of them in a matter of days.

One thing at a time.

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story

Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a fourteenth story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer.

How can you argue with a plot description like that?

Yes, chapter one involves a brawl between the above mentioned Owen Pitt, and his boss, who has become a monster of a completely different stripe than he had been.  Let's just say that I would have considered throwing him out a window before he became a large furry sociopath.

Yup. Pitt has to go toe-to-toe with a freaking werewolf.  And he has no silver. But Own Pitt is 6'7", and gravity kills.

After Pitt hands in his resignation the hard way, he has officially fallen down the rabbit hole. Monsters are real -- all of them. Pick a B-Movie horror film or a Lovecraftian monster. There are only two forces that deal with the legion of nightmares (that we see in this book).  One is the Monster Control Bureau (MCB), a government bureaucracy that looks like it's run by either the Keystone cops, or whatever random thugs can be brought in off the street (though it'll turn out that they aren't random). The other group is Monster Hunter International, a private organization dedicated to collecting bounties as they exterminate the world's nastier pests -- including vampires, giant spiders, and a few creatures from the black lagoon.

And MHI offers Owen Pitt a job. The perks are good -- play with weapons, hang out with the stunning woman who recruited him, and the paychecks are insane -- and, well, why not?

Unfortunately for Pitt, his first day on the job is going to get messy.  He soon finds himself being haunted by an old Jewish ghost, is getting visions of an ancient entity called "the Cursed One"who just arrived on US soil, is hip deep in ghouls, vampires, flying killer gargoyles that bleed magma, and did we mention that the Cursed One might be about to end the world?

This book was awesome from start to finish.  It didn't really slow down.  Despite the constant description of these books as "gun porn," I have yet to be bogged down the guns. Most of the time, the weapon details are critical to the plot, considering what fresh new horrors they run into all the time. The chapters that amount to a large training montage are detailed and interesting, and establish the characters better than heading straight into the action.

Then the shooting started, and didn't really stop for another three hundred pages or so.

And just remember: vampires only sparkle when they're on fire.

The characters

MHI has a wonderfully colorful cast of characters. From a former Vegas stripper who is more vicious and bloodthirsty than the lot of them, to Julie, a member of MHI's founding family, who is also a sniper... and her physical description in the book reminds me a lot of Bayonetta, but we won't go there.

There is a wonderfully broad collection of folks here, from the high school chemistry teacher who had to blow up his school filled with spiders, to the poor guy who had to kill his zombiefied students, to the explosive-happy Q-variant, to Earl Harbinger -- an old member of MHI's founding family with an interesting history.  The characters are likable, the dialogue engaging, and I don't think I came across a single flaw in the execution.

The world

For the record, MHI has nothing, repeat, nothing, to do with the Monster Hunter video game series. Thank you. All the books are fun. There's one novel in the series that you swear is going to be boring, it rallies at the midpoint, and ends with a demonic werewolf hellspawn and his legion of unkillable feral weres.

Imagine a fully-developed world for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the government has been aware of monsters for decades, and those civilians who have been dragged into the nightmare little world in the shadows have become Bounty hunters in their own right.  Of five books, I saw only two punchlines coming ... only one of them was more like a feinted jab so we could be decked with an uppercut. That's not bad.

Now, there isn't a ton of worldbuilding in book one. Everyone is too busy trying not to die.

The politics

The really, really, really short version about Larry Correia is that he is an unstoppable writing machine who pumps out books the size of Tom Clancy doorstoppers at least once a year, in addition to maintaining an almost daily blog, is almost omnipresent online, and has a BS tolerance threshold lower than mine.

Correia is, personally Libertarian. He prefers his heroes to be smaller, private groups, rather than sprawling government bureaucracies, though even the bureaucracies get a fair shake in his books (one of them at the very least).  He also owns a gun range, so he likes his weaponry.

Content warning

Monsters and gun violence. There may be a language warning. But I'd honestly give this to early teenagers. Granted, I read Tom Clancy novels when I was 14, so I may not be the best judge of that.

Who is it for?

Anyone who likes, fun, innovative ways to use the forces of darkness as an enemy, and new ways to approach them.

Or, to paraphrase Correia himself, these books are for anyone who thinks Cujo should have been a five page short story, with three pages debating which gun to use.

Why read it?

Larry Correia sets the standard for fun insane action and vivid characters.

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