Henry L Lazarus
4603 Springfield Ave.
Philadelphia, PA 19143
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Science Fiction for June 2014
by Henry Leon Lazarus
The advantage of the Fantasy and Science
Fiction genres is that can take mystery, historical, or western tale
and modify the basics till it fits.
Greg van Eekhout has essentially the
ultimate heist tale set in an alternate present where magic comes
from California Bones (Hard from Tor) The Hierarch of
Southern California rules the country, separate from the U.S. and
killed and ate Daniel Blackland’s father as part of a purge when
Daniel was twelve. Since his father’s death Daniel has been a thief
on the run because the Hierarch would want his magic too. His father
made a sword, locked in the Hierarch’s vault out of Daniel’s
essence. The crime boss, he used to work for, has an insider with
the maps necessary to get through the vault’s magical defenses. To
help him is Moth who recovers from any injury including death; Jo
who can mimic anyone; Cassandra a lockpick, and ex-girlfriend, and
insider Emma who has something in the vault she desperately
wants. There’s an inspector on his tail, with a person
modified to be a Hound who can trail anyone. Don’t forget treachery
and double dealing. Very exciting and impossible-to-put-down.
P C Hodgell started her tale of Jame, a
young girl Kencyr who wandered out of the desert into the city of
Tai-tastigon where she did a God Stalk. Her people were
brought together by their Three-Faced God to face the Primal
Darkling who has chased them across worlds. A few years of her time
later, her first assignment after military school is to the Southern
Host based below the city of Kothifir ruled by an immortal king and
immortal guild heads. They are on the side of the huge desert, the Sea
of Time (paper from Baen) and the city flourishes from the
silk trade with a city in that desert that actually existed three
thousand years before. Trust Jame to get into trouble. The main
problem this time is that the rulers get their immorality from the
magic of the Kothifir temple which sometime shrinks and removes the
magic. The problem this time is that someone has stolen the temple
and Jame has to face her father’s strange camp that stretches across
time and multiple worlds to get it back. I’ve read the first tale in
this series several times in the thirty plus years since it was
published. I am really glad that Baen decided to pick up the series
and let Ms. Hodgell continue it.
L. E. Modesitt, Jr returns to the world
of Recluse after the fall of the empire base on chaos magic. Lerial
is on of Cyador’s Heirs (hard from Tor) He is the second
son of the Duke of Cigoern on Hamor and his Grandfather was the last
Emperor of Cyador. When we meet him at age sixteen he is a good kid,
eager to learn fighting with sabers and envious that his older
brother gets to patrol with the Mirror Lancers. His father sends him
to be trained by a retired major and that includes digging ditches
and other work done by servants at the palace. When he returns from
training his mother helps him learn how to harness his order talents
by working in the health clinic. Whern a border country of forest
people asks Cigoern for help, he is sent to help train their
potential recruits into Mirror Lancers under command of the Major
who helped train him. But he didn’t expect to be part of an Army
defending the forest people against overwhelming odds and a number
of Chaos wizards. I really enjoy all of these tales and am really
looking forward to the next book which continues Lerial’s
adventures.
Kristen Britain takes an odd turn in the
fifth tale of Karigan G’ladheon, Green Rider. The previous
book sent her on an expedition into the evil Blackvale forest She
wakes up 130 years later in an empire that rose out of the
destruction of her kingdom. The empire, with its immortal emperor
relies heavily on the remains of magic, slave labor, and strange
machinery. There she is helped by an Archeologist, working with
rebels, to fit into this society. But her only hope of
returning home is to confront the Emperor with only her few friends
and her new Mirror Sight (hard from Baen). That allows her to
see into what should have been her present.
Below the Pentagon, in H Ring, American
Craftsmen (hard from Tor), the magic workers who keep our
country safe, are based. Captain Dale Morton, of the ancient Morton
family, is sent to assassinate an Iranian Magus when his mission
goes horribly wrong. Convinced he was set up, and working with the
ghosts of his father and grandfather he tries to eliminate the
Sphinx who he believed was responsible, but the treason goes far
deeper and soon with the help of a mad Ukrainian sorcerer, and an
American-Iranian girl with undiscovered potential he first has to
face his enemies in a magical place in the Appalachian Mountains
where the Civil War dead still fight the ancient war. Tom Doyle
takes the climax, of course, to the H ring where magic and ghosts
provide exciting and overwhelming danger. Very exciting and a nice
beginning to a fun series.
Sophie Hansa’s hunt for her birth parents
leads her to a different world where magic works. For this Child
of a Hidden Sea (hard from Tor) who had been working as a deep
sea videoopgrapher, it starts when the woman who might be her aunt
is attacked and when she helps, she finds herself suddenly in the
ocean towing her injured aunt. When things sort themselves out she
is sent home, only to be brought back to settle legal matters. Of
course she brings diving and video gear and her adopted tech-nerd
genius brother. Then the aunt is really murdered by people modified
by magic into being monsters. Somehow it becomes her job to discover
who was responsible and sends her across this island dotted earth
seeking answers as to what her aunt had gotten herself into and why
some of the bigger governments were involved. Attacked by monsters
on sailing ships, it can get very dangerous. I really like the way
that A.M. Dellamonica has the people distrust technology so that
Sophie can use cameras in front of them and they react normally. I
enjoyed the new world and hope that Sophie and her brother get
another chance to visit.
C. Robert Cargill works with dark fantasy
heavily incorporating Australian dream walking. This is the tale of
how the ten-year-old girl in purple pajamas, who can walk in her
dreams, becomes the Queen of the Dark Things (Hard from
Harper Voyager. She wants something that only the Wizard Colby can
give her, and comes with her monsters to Austin Texas. She is
willing to kill all of Colby’s friends to get what she wants and
what she wants is almost impossible. Intense and nightmare inducing,
it’s a very interesting, and very different way of looking at the
world.S
David Wellington writes about a Jim
Chapel, a U. S. Spy with an artificial arm. Apparently the Soviets
built a fail-safe computer, Perimeter, before the fall of the
USSR, using The Hydra Protocol (hard from William Morrow)
designed to launch all of Russia’s missiles if a nuclear strike was
detected. A beautiful Russian agent needs Jim’s help to disable the
ancient computer hidden deep in Kazakhstan. Chased by Russian
FSB agents, they have to survive the desert and reprogram Perimeter
so it cannot set off Russian Missiles. With action scenes borrowed
from exciting movies and treachery in the worst places, it’s
impossible to put down. I wish there had been more science fiction
in it.
Mary Robinette Kowal sends
Glamorists Jane and Vincent to Venice where they intend to
work with glass makers to improve their process of putting glamour
into glass. Alas an attack by pirates leaves them penniless until
they can contact family. Then, using after using loans, they find
their work stolen and them accused of being thieves. It’s all a
scam, or course. Valour and Vanity (hard from Tor) is the
fun tale of how they turn the tables on their scammers aided by the
poet Lord Byron who also visited Venice in our world at that time. I
enjoyed it and will enjoy any of Jane and Vincent’s further
adventures.
Mark Lawrence has a new series set in his
medieval world centuries after a Nuclear Apocalypse where magic has
the ability to raise the dead. This trilogy is the tale of Jalan, Prince
of Fools (hard from Ace. His grandmother, the Red Queen rules
Red March (Norther Italy) and Jal is tenth in line. So he chases
women, gambles, and lives off his reputation as a hero gotten from
running from battle and ending up in the wrong place. Then he is
magically attached to Snorri, a Norse warrior whose family had been
murdered. Snorri, escaped from the fighting pits that Jal had
somehow gotten him into, is heading North for vengeance and Jal is
merely escaping a nasty creditor so he goes along. It doesn’t help
that the magic gives him visions of a disapproving Angel. The only
way to break the magic that binds them together is to find the
“unborn’ being who is located at a fort edge of the Arctic
where Snorri’s enemy resides. Lots of fun, though only the first of
a trilogy.
Ace is Wild (ebook from Amazon
Digital Services, Inc.) Is a mix of Harry Potter, the old west
(during the Civil War period), and a dash of The Wizard of Oz.
C.B. McKee tells of Ace, an orphan who spent formative years with
the Indians who is sent to a camp for a few orphans with magical
powers. But Ace has so much power because of a magical entity that
has adopted her that bands of card suit- named rebels against the
magical authority want her to help their cause. She ane her friends
are soon on the move to find wizards that can help remove the entity
like a swamp voodoo witch, a wizard in a small town, and eventually
the center of magic that is slightly out of this world. Lots of fun.
Bremy St James was a daughter of the
super rich until a fight with her father. Now, according to Auralee
Wallace, she has to worry about paying the rent from a landlord who
wants to break her fingers if she doesn’t pay. But a bank withdrawal
is foiled by a robbery by a group of clowns, and the city’s only
superheroine, Dark Ryder, doesn’t arrive in time. Then she borrows
her rent from her new boss, who also makes threats, and loses it in
a robbery, bombing that Dark Ryder saves the day and she helps. It
seems like a good idea to become Dark Ryder’s Sidekick
(ebook from Escape Publishing) only to discover that her
father is behind an evil plan involving brain chips. Since Dark
Ryder was injured it falls on her to do the impossible helped by a
hacking genius, Dark Ryder’s mentor, and her next door neighbor who
knows how to fix Bremy’s hair. Lot’s of silly fun.
Eight centuries from now humanity has
spread across the galaxy using teleportation portals. But some like
Jarra, are handicapped to like on Earth because their immune system
would kill them on any other planet. But this Earth Girl
(paper) has settled in working for a history degree with normals who
are doing Archeology on Earth’s ancient cities. Then, suddenly, and
alien craft appears at Earth Star (hard from Pyr) and Jarra and her
boy friend are soon drafted into the Military. Janet Edwards has
nothing really original to say about this first contact and, unlike
the first tale, really has to stretch coincidence to get Jarra in
the middle of the action. Still it’s an enjoyable series with a
likable heroine overcoming odds to get what she wants.
Pyr has the Nebula Awards Showcase 2014 (trade
and edited by Kij Johnson) with the winner and finalists of the
shorter selections plus more. Nebula’s are awarded by the Science
Fiction Writers Association and represent excellent writing.
Baen paper reprints this month include the Honorverse
Companion House of Steel by David Webber; Ryk E. Spoor and
Eric Flint’s tale of ancient aliens whose remains are found in the
future, Portal.. They’ve also put out a special signed
edition of Michael Z. Williamson’s Freehold. In trade we
have two andre Norton tales Secret of the Stars.
Star War’s fans in anticipation of the new movies
coming in a few years will be excited about Star Wars Storyboards
(hard and edited by J. W. Rinzler). These is amazing art, frequently
better than the movie version.
The Science Fiction Society will have its next
meeting on, June 20th 2014 at 8 p.m. at International house on
the University of Pennsylvania. Campus This is the Annual Hugo
Review Panel. As usual Guests are Welcome.
Hugo Award nominations this year for novels are:
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit US/Orbit UK); Neptune’s
Brood, Charles Stross (Ace / Orbit UK); Parasite, Mira
Grant (Orbit US/Orbit UK); Warbound, Book III of the
Grimnoir Chronicles, Larry Correia (Baen Books), and The Wheel
of Time, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (Tor Books /
Orbit UK).
Dr. Henry Lazarus is a local Dentist and the
author of A Cycle of Gods (Wolfsinger Publications) and
Unnaturally Female (Smashwords).