Henry L Lazarus
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Science Fiction for January 2023
by Henry L Lazarus
According to what I understand of human nature
from reading Fantasy, Science Fiction and of course History, 2023
promises to be more turbulent than 2022. I hope I’m wrong.
Palmer Pickering has a solid tale
of a world where mages and stone guardians fought so much they were
exiled and magic was forbidden. Teleo, a former soldier who had lost
his family in a raid is working as a artistic stonemason repairing
the Heliotrope (paper from Mythology Press)
design from the mage era, when a coup takes
place. He manages to rescue the princess and his new apprentice, who
had been a slave, and together with his female cousin who knows some
magic, they head out of the kingdom up the mountains pretending to
be a family. Eventually he learns the magic of the mages, as
expected, but that takes a while. The rulers he encounters seem to
be extraordinarily greedy but there is a magical reason. I really
like the detail of the world and Teleo’s work ethic. Highly
recommended.
Heather Fawcett has a nineteenth
century world in which fairies are quite real. A Cambridge
professor working on Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
(hard from Del Rey) travels to Ljosland in what today is Norway for
a chapter on snow Fae. She thought she’d be alone with the local
villagers who she has riled because of her rough edges, but a
colleague, Wendell Bambleby, suddenly drops by. He is a tenured
professor, but seemingly knows more about the fae than Emily who has
studied them all her life. The problem with investigating the Fae is
that it is easy to get drawn into their stories. Emily and Wendell
have to deal with a changeling terrifying the poor parents of the
missing boy, a king of snow trapped in a tree, and the cold and snow
of the far north. Sequels are promised. I hope this finds it’s way
to some award list. Amazing!
At Summer's End (paper
from Baen) Dave Walker leaves Earth as assistant engineer on a tramp
freighter Iowa Hill, running because his step father, who he never
met, wants him dead. In John Van Stry’s future earth, has settled on
three castes; drones who don’t work, proles who have to work, and
elies who own everything. Dave’s mother had slummed with his father
a Prole until the luxurious life of the elie called her back and her
current husband want’s the black sheep of the family gone. His gang
history on Earth gave him some skills to fight off assassins as the
Iowa Hill goes from port to port in the solar system. Dave is a
solid worker and within a year has moved up a grade and gotten
several certification that would allow him to move to a better
freighter when pirates, who weren’t really pirates capture him and
the first mate, a woman terrified of being raped. That’s only the
beginning. This is a fun tale taking place in a very settled future.
I really enjoyed the tale and wouldn’t mind returning for a sequel.
There are hidden portals on our
world that let people traverse the harsh beyond to other worlds.
In Kate Elliott’s tale, it takes a group of The Keeper's
Six (hard from Tordotcom), each with special powers, to be
able to survive. Esther, and her hex, have been banned from the
Beyond by the Concilium, but someone had kidnaped her son Daniel, a
keeper. So Esther gathers her group and heads into the harsh
destructive desert lands to recover her son. This has
wonderful world building, and I would love to see further
tales. Lots of fun and highly recommended.
Chad Hagan lives in a world, much
like our own, where magic is tightly controlled by magical
institutes While an apprentice, Chad learned he could pick up spells
easily and pretends average magical ability while he volunteers to
clean the master’s rooms, stealing access to their books. Then he
runs away and survives several attempts on his life. The US
government gets interested in an independent, and Forbidden
(hard from Severn House) wizard that the institutes will stop at
nothing to destroy. Davis Bunn tells a fun tale of love and
magic.
Glynn Stewart tells us of Captain
Coral Amherst whose destroyer finds shelter from a horrible ice
storm. Unfortunately she has to share the shelter with one of her
country’s enemy’s ship from Stelforma. Coral is one of the magical
Dalebloods with greater agility and ability to handle heat and cold
far better than the seabloods, who two centuries before had come as
refugees. The locals tell her that the storms have been increasing.
The admirality of Daleland promotes Coral to Admiral and sends her
flotilla, headed by her flagship Icebreaker (ebook from
Faolan's Pen Publishing ) to the abandoned city at the far north to
stop the evil magic destroying her world and forcing a war between
Daleland and Stelforma. It is there she finds the truth of her world
and the journey she has to make to save it. Lots of fun. Why this is
planned independent, I don’t know. I would love a sequel.
S.E. Anderson has a tale of Dora,
an illegal clone of the princess, who was secreted away to prevent
her being killed like the rest of the clones. She lives in the tiny
agricultural colony of Nesworth on a small moon and was getting good
at repairing the farming equipment and built her own small bot Tau,
who floats around. Then a series of incidents cause her to find a
ship that takes off, Over the Moon (ebook from Sea Breeze
Books) to a world in the Outer Zone where she lands on the
Technowitch of Night, rescuing the droids. The good
Technowitch Gleia tells her to go to the Technomage’s moon to get
help. Yes this is a high tech version of The Wizard of Oz. I really
enjoyed how the Scarecrow, Cowardly lion, and Tin Man were
introduced. Luckily the tale moves into its own thing long before a
pail of water or flying monkey is introduced. Lots of fun.
Lois McMaster Bujold has a new
novella about Penric and his demon Desdemona. In his world there
exists a death ritual where someone can offer their life for the
life of one they hate. If the white god grants the wish, two
unoccupied bodies are left that unfortunately can be inhabited by
ghosts, creating a Knot of Shadows (hard from Subterranean
Press). One body has been washed from the sea, and has to be
identified, and the other body found. The hardest problem is
convinceing people thr moving corpses are dead. The usual fun.
Joshua Phillip Johnson completes
his Tales of The Forever Sea (paper)dualogy that takes place
in a world where ships sail above a huge, endless forest. After she
started a massive fire, Kindred Greyreach reaches the floor in
search of her missing grandmother. Her grandmother has horrible
plans involving magical monsters to stop the surface dwellers from
using their magic to hurt the forest. On the mainland, Flitch,
fourth son of the Border Baron, has been given a magical book that
might stop the magics that are hurting the forest, restore his
family fortunes, and stop the King from taking his family land.
Kindred has to master The Endless Song (hard from DAW) to
save her world. This is a lyrical, magical work set in a magical
world that was hard to get out of my head.
Jack McDevitt has a new mystery
for his relic hunter in the far future, Alex Benedict. This time
there is a Village in the Sky (hard from Gallery / Saga
Press) discovered by an expedition looking for new world to settle.
The alien village stands by itself on an empty planet. When a new
expedition is sent, the village has somehow disappeared. So
Alex, his assistant Chase Kolpath and two others take their yacht on
a months journey to hunt for concealed relics that might prove
valuable. I always love this series, but this time the ending seems
to come too abruptly. Fun.
Simon R. Green’s Ishmael Jones is
assigned to discover why a bureaucrat from the organization has
disappeared. So he and Penny Belcourt go to Glenbury Hall, an old
country manor house turned hotel – a mansion Haunted by the Past
(hard from Baen). The victim, Lucas Carr, belonged to a society
investing the nineteenth disappearance of Lord Ravensbrook. Soon
there is an Agatha Christie type mystery about who or what was
responsible. Fun.
Baen has reprinted Michael Z. Williamson’s fun
time travel sequel That Was Now, This Is Then, and Charles
E. Gannon’s This Broken World fantasy in paper. They have a
collection new stories of Worlds Long Lost edited by
Christopher Ruocchio and Sean CW Korsgaard in paper.
Henry Lazarus is a retired Dentist and the author
of A Cycle of Gods (Wolfsinger Publications) and Unnaturally
Female (Smashwords).Check out his unified field theory at
henrylazarus.com/utf.html that suggests fusion generation requires
less energy.