New Books

American Gods, by Neal Gaiman
To Sail a Darkling Sea, by John Ringo, the second of his Zombie Apocalypse (Black Tide) series
Under Heaven, set in a version of Tang China, by Guy Gavriel Kay

Books

Now reading:

• Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
• Darkship Thieves (Sarah Hoyt)
• Monster Hunter Nemesis (Larry Correia)
• Royal Flash (George Macdonald Fraser)

New Books

Swords of Exodus, by Correia and Kupari
Lord Geoffrey's Fancy, by Alfred Duggan

More books

Picked up Neal Stephenson's Reamde, which reminds me rather more of Snow Crash and particularly Cryptonomicon than of Anathem or the Baroque Cycle, which is good.

Also got Orson Scott Card's Empire, just to support him.

Now reading

Two books on writing:

• Rachel Aaron's 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love
• David Farland's Million Dollar Outlines

Both of these having me taking notes and getting excited about getting back into writing.

And I'm also reading the rules to Impetus miniatures rules, which also look quite interesting

Now Reading

• The electronic Advanced Reader Copy for John Ringo's Under A Graveyard Sky, in which a tailored virus causes people to turn into zombies--not technically "undead" but close enough--and our heroes, who are prepared for various end-of-the-world scenarios, take a boat out into the Atlantic and start rescuing people from other boats. And ships. The assault leader is Faith, a 13 year old girl, which makes sense, because teenage girls can be vicious.
• The electronic Advanced Reader Copy for Larry Correia's Warbound, in which Franklin Roosevelt institutes some rather heavy handed government control--the parallel's with today's administration are, unfortunately, too applicable; Jake Sullivan picks up a couple of sociopaths and leads a team into enemy territory; and Faye Viera, despite being Spellbound, doesn't kill everyone, at least not by 75% of the way through the book. 
• the advance PDF copy of the Hero System book for the Monster Hunter International Emplyee Handbook & Roleplaying Game.

New Books

• Cities of Gold: army lists for Africa and the Americas, 1492-1698, for the wargame Field of Glory: Renaissance. 
• Rogue, by Michael Z Williamson.
• Space 1889: Red Sands

Wool

On one or another of the blogs I follow, someone recommended Wool. And it had something like a thousand 5 star reviews, and quite a few 4 stars, and almost no 3, 2 or 1 star reviews, so I got it.

I have no idea how it got that ratio of 5 star reviews. Absolutely no idea.

The setting is a post-apocalyptic silo, or underground city. The silo has access to mineral ores and an oil well, which may sound improbable, but renders the place self-sufficient. Nobody has to go outside, which is good, because no one who does, even in a sealed suit, lasts long enough to walk up the hill. The outside is a toxic wasteland.  Sounds interesting, in a rather depressing way.

And that is apt, because the first interesting character, dies. Second interesting character, dies. Third interesting character, gets permanently exiled. This doesn't kill her, but does take her out of the setting. If the point of the story is "an interesting setting", then "take your interesting character out of that setting" may not be the best move, from a storytelling standpoint. I'm 55% of the way through, and I'm on the fourth character who was intended to be interesting, but hasn't qualified yet. Thinking back over it, the others weren't all that interesting either. The first one was suicidal for reasons, the second was old and tired and regretful, the third was curious but passive.

It's not bad, it's just not good. I think we're supposed to be intrigued by the silo and ...something. The history, who set it up, something like that. The fact that I'm not sure what aspect we're supposed to find intriguing is probably a strong indicator that I wasn't all that intrigued. Add a depressing setting and fairly bland characters, and the sum does not entice me to read further.

Bridge of Birds

Now reading: the Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox: Bridge of Birds, a tale set in mythic seventh century China. From one of the reviews:

The Chronicles consist of three books based on folkloric Chinese ghost stories. In Bridge of Birds we meet the two main characters. Number Ten Ox is a strapping young man from a peasant village in which all the children between the ages of eight and thirteen have fallen into a coma-like stupor. He travels to Peking with the collected savings of the village to find a wise man who can figure out how a plague can learn to count. Unfortunately, or so it seems, his village is a poor one, and all he can afford is Master Li, a 100+year-old, alcoholic sage with, as he describes it, a slight flaw in his character. The two set off on an adventure that takes them all over China and brings them into contact with such wonderful characters as Miser Chen, Doctor Death, Pawnbroker Fang, Ma the Grub, One-Eyed Wong, the Ancestress, Henpecked Ho, Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wong and Lotus Cloud.

More books!

Part of the Josh Collection, imported from Canada:

• The Smoke and the Fire (John Terraine)
• Military Uniforms of Britain and the Empire (Maj R Money Barnes)
• Model Soldiers (W Y Carman)
• Weapons of the British Soldier (Col H C B Rogers, OBE)
• The Law and the Profits (C Northcote Parkinson)
• Regimental Heritage

New Books

The Scramble for Africa

Victorian Colonial Warfare: India

Victorian Colonial Warfare: Africa

The India one is primarily a sourcebook, with quotes from articles and people around the time of the Sikh wars through the Mutiny. The Africa one tells of the campaigns against the Abyssinians, Ashanti, Basuto, the Boers, Kaffirs, Matabele, Zulu, and small actions in other parts of Africa. It doesn't cover Egypt and the Sudan, because those are enough to warrant their own book.

Moon Maze Game

There will be spoilers below.

I read and enjoyed Dream Park and its sequels Barsoom Project and California Voodoo Game, back when they came out years. Last week I saw Moon Maze Game in the library and picked it up, expecting it would be just as good, or at least nearly as good.

It wasn't.

The premise is that there's a colony on the Moon, and Cowles Industries has arranged the first Dream Park type game to be played on Luna. As usual, shenanigans outside the game--in this case, the politics of an African country, with princes and terrorists--intrude into the game, and the gamer players have to cope with that while also getting through the game and interacting with the other gamers. Except...they don't. They do have to get through the gaming area while terrorists are searching for them; in a few cases they have to interact with the scenario to get a door to open; but generally speaking the power is off, the gamemaster can't do anything except watch, and most of the magic is dead. Which kills the main point of it being a "Dream Park" novel. It is merely a "bad guys hunt good guys" with a little HG Wells window dressing.

The characters are not nearly as interesting as they were in the other three books, and specifically they are not witty, charismatic, or brilliant. Granted, there are plenty of gamers who are lacking, but these people are supposed to be top notch, world class, invited to an historic occasion. No way.

My immediate reaction on finishing the book was "...they phoned it in..." I can't recommend reading it and I certainly don't advise spending money on it.

Books

Just received The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State , a book on government failure in the provision of law, and private alternatives. Five sections, which are:

• From Voluntary to Authoritarian Law
• A Public Choice Approach to Authoritarian Law
• Reemergence of Private Alternatives
• Rationalizing Authoritarian Law
• From Authoritarian to Private Law

Thus far I've only taken it out of the box and read the introduction, but speaking as the creator of the Alarishi Empire, this is a book I'm really looking forward to.

A Wrinkle in Time

Ran across A Wrinkle in Time on Josh's bookshelves--this copy was one that a college friend had given me. Worth re-reading.

Books in Progress

Dies the Fire, by S M Stirling. Imagine if electricity and high energy chemistry (gunpowder, internal combustion) went away. You have medieval technology plus whatever you can scavenge; chainmail is a lot easier to make than it was historically, for instance, because you can find reels of wire instead of having to draw it. If you're already concerned about a Carrington Event or a EMP attack, this may be a bit depressing.

Story Engineering by Larry Brooks. Haven't gotten far into it yet; the message thus far is "any good story has to have these six factors. You can wing it or plan it, but you have to have these. You will do better if you know what they are, instead of blindly flailing around and hoping to hit them."

Burton & Swinburne in the Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon, by William Harrison. Sometimes you can read Book 3 of a trilogy without having gone through 1 and 2 first. And you could probably do it with this one, but I wouldn't recommend it. I found it hard going. This may be because Burton does some time travel, and gets involved in the Great War , with all the gore and mess and stupidity of the real Great War, plus biological weapons. Not something I want to read about for fun. I quit about halfway through.

Agent to the Stars, by John Scalzi. The protagonist is a talent agent in Hollywood. His boss hands him a challenge: "An alien species has secretly contacted me. They want us to market them to the world, to make sure that the world sees them as Friendly Aliens rather than Evil Aliens. By the way, they look like snot and smell like rotten fish." The story is a lot of fun and has a couple of twists which took me completely by surprise.

Virga: Sun of Suns

Karl Schroder's book Sun of Suns is set inside Virga, a mini Dyson sphere about 5000 miles across. There is a small artificial sun in the center, around which everything else drifts in slow orbits: lesser suns, spinning cities, spherical forests, icebergs, rocks, and immense clouds. "Winter" isn't a time, it's a location--anywhere that is too far from a sun, or shadowed by cities or other permanent features, and therefore doesn't get enough sunlight. Ships through immense clouds.

Hayden Griffen's mother attempts to start a sun for the city-state Aerie, but the project is attacked by Slipstream forces, a city whose orbit has brought it close to Aerie. Hayden sets out to seek revenge on the man responsible for the attack. He meets his enemy's wife, and a youngster serving in the Slipstream navy, and a woman from outside the world. They discover that an enemy nation is getting closer, and it has dreadnoughts; in order to defeat this enemy, they set out to find a legendary pirate treasure.

The story is interesting, the characters are realistic rather than cardboard, but what's really fascinating is the setting, and the worldbuilding behind it. Definitely buy.

New Books

Got The GASLIGHT Compendium, Monster Hunter:Alpha, The Difference Engine, and The Anubis Gates.

Now the problem is deciding which one to read first...

Dead Six

Just got Dead Six, by Larry Correia and Mike Kupari.

From Larry's blog, a description of the book:

The plot is big. The action is big, but we kept it plausible. The tactics/equipment stuff is solid. One of my proof readers is a guy that Jack Bauer would hang out with. We did our homework. Considering that we wrote this years ago and put in the Arab Spring, a narcotrafficante revolution in Mexico, and stealth helicopters, none of which (we knew) existed at the time, I’d say we were at least semi-plausible in our brainstorming process. We took some liberties with reality, all authors do, but we tried not to make them stupid liberties.

Also from Larry's blog, a description of his co-author:

This is Mike’s first book, and it is a darn good one that deserves to be read. For those of you who don’t know, Mike is an EOD Technician, currently defusing roadside bombs in Afghanistan. He will still be in Afghanistan, risking his life and being awesome, when his first novel appears in stores. Places like NPR can talk about thriller writer street cred, but Mike plays high-explosive chess against terrorist IEDs before breakfast. Most first time authors are super excited to do their first book signings, but Mike can’t because he’s deployed… Think about that for a second… He can’t do book signings for the really nifty book he wrote because he is too busy DEFUSING MURDER BOMBS.

For most authors, the most exciting part of our day is when we spill Coke Zero on our keyboard. EOD are complete lunatics that do something so absurdly dangerous that complete snake eating warriors look at them and say "F’ that noise, let the dude in the big suit play with the booby trapped death machine."

Mike is humble. You probably won’t ever hear him talk about that kind of thing. Luckily for him, I’m not humble at all. :-)

10 Seconds of My 15 Minutes of Fame:

I got mentioned by Professor Reynolds of Instapundit:

CLOSE CALLS: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883: A reanalysis of historical observations suggest Earth narrowly avoided an extinction event just over a hundred years ago. Shades of, well, you know.

UPDATE: Reader Chris DeBoe writes: “Shades of The Peshawar Lancers by SM Stirling, which posits a comet hitting North America and Europe during Victoria’s reign, and the British government relocating to India. And the Great Game still goes on.” Several readers made that connection, which I should have caught. I read that book and it was good — one of several that made my list of recommended alt-history reading.

Thomas the Rhymer

I'm still not sure what to make of Ellen Kushner's Thomas the Rhymer. It's a retelling of the Childe Ballad story: Thomas meets the Queen of the Elves and asks for a kiss; she takes him to the Fairy Lands to be her lover; seven years later he returns to the mortal lands, with the gift of prophecy. He becomes known as True Thomas--he is unable to say anything except the truth.

It is not epic. No battles, not cast of thousands, no clever system of magic, no life or death decisions. Just a few people, interacting with each other, and one of them is the elf queen. It is definitely not a "buy multiple hardback copies", but then again, not many books get that rating. It is well written, lyrical; certainly the author deserves some support, so it comes in above "buy secondhand" or "check library". I'm going to call it "buy paperback" and expect some disagreement.