This is a more traditional bolo book than The Road to Damascus, which means I enjoyed it more. I'm a little sad that its the last one of the series, but there is another one coming soon (entitled Their Finest Hour due out in August) which gives me something to hang out for. This book gives some nice closure to operation Ragnarok, whilst not being too predictable. Overall I enjoyed it. [isbn: 1416521046]
I didn't like this book. Bolo books should be about combat and human interactions with AI machines, which this book starts nicely with. However, the book then diverts from that and spends hundreds of pages ranting about how bad socialism is. Sure, the baddies are nasty, but its not a very believable rendition of communist Russia. Worse, the story is told with a whiney teenager I found deeply annoying as a character (she's meant to be annoying, but I just didn't care about her). Finally, after about 400 pages of such drivel, we finally get around to having some more actual bolo story. The finish of the story is ok, I just wished it didn't take so long to get there. This is by far the weakest Bolo book I have read so far. [isbn: 0743499166]
This book was strongly recommended by a friend, and has been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read for a while. Its my first real taste of "hard" science fiction, and I enjoyed it. The story is surprisingly fast moving given it has to cover the entire development of an intelligent species, and the process is interesting. There are strong parallels with our own past, which I guess isn't that surprising a thing for an author to do. I've seen complaints that the human characters in this book are a bit one dimensional, but I think that's unfair. The book isn't about the humans, and they are there only to progress the plot. I think the human characters are fine. If you want to see poor character development, checkout Robot City and Robots and Aliens series. [isbn: 034528349x]
Buy Jupiter Asimov's Mirage The Renegades of Pern The Man in the Rubber Mask
Another combat anthology, this time edited by David Drake. Or Battle's Sound (Harry Harrison): already read in Battlefields Beyond Tomorrow and Body Armor: 2000. Liberty Port (David Drake): already read in The Complete Hammer's Slammer's Volume 1. Straw (Gene Wolfe): steam punk mercenaries in a future which is more like the past. A good read. Tomb Tapper (James Blish): this one has a nice twist at the end, although I found the underlying premise of the story hard to believe. A Relic of War (Keith Laumer): already read in The Compleat Bolo. Basic Training (Mark L Van Name): this one is a bit sad. Well, all of the stories in this book are sad, but I find this one a bit harder than others because the main character is about the age of my kids. Witch War (Richard Matheson): an interesting little tale which doesn't end up at all like you expect. Transstar (Raymond Banks): I didn't think this story was all that good when I was reading it the other night, but its the one I kept thinking about for the next day. There are lots of interesting issues raised here -- arrogance, response, the cost / benefit of…
I love a good anthology, although I'd read a few of these stories before: Contact! (David Drake): this story is quite unlike the other stuff of his that I have read, mostly because its set in the Vietnam War, not the far future. A good story with an excellent twist. The Warbots (Larry S. Todd): this one wasn't for me. I'm not sure what point the author was trying to make, if any. Its just a long history of imaginary weapons. The Scapegoat (C. J. Cherryh): this is long, being a novella, and a little hard to read in places because the story jumps around. Overall, a good read though. My first Cherryh, although I have a lot queued up on the shelf. The Last Crusade (George H. Smith): this was a good story, and would have fit well in Battlefields Beyond Tomorrow as it has a similar war-is-hopeless tone. Hired Man (Richard C. Meredith): there is a nice twist at the end of this one, although its obvious a few pages before it happens. Early Model (Robert Sheckley): I was surprised by this one, its the first Sheckley story I've read that I didn't hate. Its not fantastic, but…
This is another book I read as a child, except in this case I didn't really remember much of it -- the only bit I remembered was the punishment of Madouc's mother, but that might have been because I was a teenaged boy at the time. Overall this is a very good book. It took me a while to read because of being distracted with other projects, but the ongoing oppression of Princess Suldrun didn't really help either -- it was interesting at first, but got depressing after a while. Its also disturbing how many times sexual assault is used as a plot element in this book... [award: nominee nebula_novel 1983] [isbn: 0441505309]
I'd been looking for this book for ages, as it is quite rare, so it was exciting to find it at Gould's the other day. This is the memoir of the dude inside the rubber mask that Kryten wears in Red Dwarf. The book is an easy read, and entertaining, although I wouldn't call it funny. Most of the book focuses on how terribly horrible it is to be encased in rubber day after day while shooting a comedy in terrible locations. Oh, and Robert is slightly insecure which doesn't help. Overall I'm glad I found this book, and glad I read it again. [isbn: 0140235752]
This book starts off in quite a disjointed manner, with the introduction of a variety of seemingly unrelated characters. The only thing that they all have in common is that they're holdless. However, as the book progresses these characters are all weaved together into a relatively cohesive story line. I say relatively because there are gaps in the story telling, which can be a little jarring. Interestingly, this book also clarifies some of the events of the others in the series. Most satisfyingly it includes more detail of the buried settlement at Landing than The White Dragon did, which ties in nicely with the introduction provided in Dragonsdawn. This gives me hope that later books will take the science fiction track I've been wanting them to for a while. [isbn: 0345369335]
If I was to name one flaw with the Robot City and Robots and Aliens series, it would have to be that they're not very good. They're lackluster, have difficult to believe plots, very simple structure, and are overall poorly thought through. Its a similar sensation to that I feel when I read the tie-in books written after Harrison's Bill the Galactic Hero series. I feel a little sorry for the writers in later books in these series, because I suspect their hands were tied by the poor decisions of previous authors (similarly to the mess that Bear's Foundation and Chaos had to dig that series out after Benford's tragically terrible Foundation's Fear). Robot City and Robots and Aliens were disappointments because I read Roger MacBride Allen's Caliban series before them, and Caliban is ok. Not awesome, but ok. I say all of this as an introduction to Mirage. I guess what I'm saying is that I've been wading through Asimov robot tie-ins from other authors for a while now, and some of them are not very good. That's why finding Mirage was such a delight. Its well written, has a similar style as Asimov's own writing, reuses characters and…