Henry L Lazarus
HOME
4715 Osage Ave.
Philadelphia, PA 19143
Science Fiction for June 2018
As the current television season comes to an end,
many of my favorite Fantasy and Science fiction shows are nor
surviving. Unfortunately many of their replacements are horror. This
means that the current cycle with lots of genre selection is coming
to an end, sigh.
After disease ended the Orc
invasion of human lands, the lot lands were left empty, defended by
small gangs called hoofs manned by half-orcs who ride giant hogs
called barbarians. Jackal hopes to win leadership of one of the
hoofs, The Grey Bastards (paper from Crown Publishing by
Jonathon French), from its founder Claymaster who had been one of
the heroes of the Orc invasion but now was making mistakes because
of his age. It doesn’t help that Jackal and his two friends Oats and
Fletching were involved with killing a human noble assigned to the
castle that helps guard the land. Then a half-orc wizard arrives who
fascinates Claymaster. Jackal loses his bid for leadership and is
cast out. Helped by a previous member, he finds that there is a deep
secret about the hoofs, and that the orcs are returning. Jonathan
French tells a fascinating tale of a wasteland filled with humans,
orcs, elves, and centaurs who go made during certain moons. There’s
plenty of openings for sequels and I can’t wait for them.
One of the partners of a small
investment firm is kidnaped. Assigned to find him is Rune Saint
John, the only survivor of the fallen Sun court on the converted
island of Nantucket which serves as New Atlantis. The Last Sun
(trade from Pyr) works for Lord Tower. With his human companion and
bodyguard, Rune must traverse the islands worst magically infected
parts, he has to face riptide vampires and human recarnates and
illegal magic, problems that will drain all of his sigils and force
him to tap into his inherited abilities. K. D. Edwards tells a
very exciting tale and introduces a background where cell phones and
magic co-exist. Impossible-to-put-down.
Miles Singer hid his healing
ability and his Witchmark (paper from Tor) and had the
government pay for his medical education, which found him serving in
the war between Aeland and Laneer. Working as a Psychiatrist for
patients with PTSD, his healing talent shows a blot on some of the
souls, a blot that makes them want to kill their friends and family.
Aeland, according to C. L. Polk, owes it’s good weather to the
magic of weather mages and other mages are bound to provide the
energy the weather mages need, and treated as lower class, subject
to lots of abuse. Then an investigative reporter shows up at his
hospital fatally poisoned, He is accompanied by a Mr. Hunter who is
far more than what he seems. Then Miles’ sister, a weather mage,
works her way into his life, and his father forces him to bond to
her. Aeland has deep secrets and is in great danger from Laneer
magic. Fun. I look forward to reading more about Miles.
G. T. Almasi has a neat tale of
bionically enhanced super spies in the 80's on an Earth where Hitler
was assassinated early in the war and Germany controls all of
Europe. This time the high administrator Jakob Fredericks has fled
to Europe with the powered clone Talon of Scorpio (ebook
from Hydra) . Unfortunately his arrival, because of the information
he carries, sets up a civil war between the Gestapo and the
regular German army. Alix Nico and her partner Brando sent to
recapture Fredericks find themselfs caught in a whirlpool of war
that includes surviving a tactical nuke. Very exciting.
Jeff Wheeler sets his latest
series two centuries after his Muirwood tales (which I bought after
reading this one) to give it a Regency England feel. The poor live
in cramped cities mostly paying off their deeds of debt. The rich
live on floating palaces – but bad investment can send the palace
hurtling to the ground. Two preteens who will eventually become
close friends are at the heart. Cettie Pratt starts off in an
orphanage where the Landlady doesn’t feed them, forcing them to go
out to steel food. Luckily she finds her Daddy Warbucks in a retired
vice-admiral Fitzroy who is a potential candidate for Prime
Minister. Sera Fitzempress is the only daughter of the Prince
Regent. His selection after the Emperor has a stroke, leads to a
break between the Prince and his wife, with Sara caught between the.
Fitzroy’s mines produce valuable silver and worthless quick silver
until Cettie notices the relationship between the movement of quick
silver and storms and Fitzroy realizes that this Storm Glass
(paper from 47North) is something the empire needs. I’m eagerly
waiting book 2.
Rose Marshall is the ghost
of Sparrow Hill Road (paper from DAW). She is a
hitcher ghost becoming almost alive when someone lends her a
coat. She was run off the road in 1952, when she was sixteen.
Bobby Cross who made a deal with the devil to keep driving forever
as long as he killed enough is constantly chasing her. According to
Seanan McGuire she can smell death and save some of her rides and
show those who can’t, send them to ‘home’. In her various adventures
she is captured by a witch determined to kill her for the death of
the witch’s beau. She has to deal with college students playing
parapsychologist who evoke more than they can handle, and numerous
other adventures. Lots of fun with a sequel coming in a few months.
In the Wild Card universe, Croyd
Crenson or the Sleeper usually acts as a joker because he has
different talents every time he wakes up. In Low Chicago (
Hard from Tor and edited by
George R. R. Martin) he is at a winner-take-all poker game with a
buy in of a million at the Palmer Hotel in Chicago when a fight
starts and Croyd uses his new talent of time travel to throw the
players all over time (they all arrive nude); two to the period when
the comet killed the dinosaurs, another to the riots at the
Democratic convention in 1968, and another to the Chicago World’s
fair. Unfortunately that causes a timequake in the present and Croyd
and Nighthawk have to find them and bring them home before time is
changed too radically. Each tale is a lot of fun. I’ve been hooked
on this series since they first appeared in 87 and hope that the
potential tv series actually appears.
Kelley Armstrong has a short tale
of Rough Justice (hard from Subterranean Press) that with a
little rewriting could easily have been just a mystery. Olivia
Taylor-Jones is a detective and a member of the Fae who has joined
the wild hunt. On her first ride, she questions whether their victim
is guilty. So she convinces her lawyer and boy friend, Gabriel to
take a case of a woman, Heather Nanson, who had shot and
killed her husband by accident. Text messages seem to imply that she
had lured her husband to his death. The Hunt’s victim was a car
salesman who blamed the Nanson’s for leaving an auto accident in
which his wife might have lived if 911 had been called
earlier. I suspect there will be more Olivia Gabriel
mysteries.
Simon R. Green’s two major series
, Secret Histories and Nightside, come to an exciting Night Fall
(Hard from Ace). Nightside, where everything is possible and for
sale in the heart of London, expands capturing one of Eddie Drood’s
favorite taverns. The authority which governs Nightside sends their
walker, John Taylor, to investigate. When Eddie armors up to kill a
living house that ate the tavern, John Taylor goes to the Drood Hall
to remind the family of the ancient Pacts. A Drood assassin is set
after John Taylor and his murder incites a full war between
Nightside and the Droods. The Droods want to bring order to the
order less Nightside. Soon all the characters mentioned in previous
tales in the series are fighting for their lives. Whole sections of
Nightside are cleaned out, and the gods of God Street flee in
terror. This is much darker than the usually silliness of both
series, but a good solid ending.
There’s a prison Outbreak
(ebook from Tor) of shades (think vampires) from a prison bus. That
sets the final chase of the ancient shade, Hector by Alex McKenna of
the Bureau of Preternatural Investigation and Hector’s sister Lindy.
At his heart Hector wants to become the King of the shades,
something that hadn’t existed since the death of his father thirteen
hundred years ago. Melissa F. Olson has a fun tale of traps by both
side until the inevitable confrontation occurs. This is a nice
conclusion to a fun trilogy.
L. E. Modesitt, Jr is in the
middle of his first trilogy set in the world of Recluse where mages
manipulate order or chaos. The Mongrel Mage (paper)
Beltar hopes to settle in Elparta which he helped to survive when he
was conscripted in the previous book to fight off an invasion.
He’s using his mage abilities to work with a coppersmith,
Jorhan, to create a strong bronze that hasn’t been seen in a
thousand years. He and Jorhan become Outcasts of Order (hard
from Tor) when a rich trader has the city council give him the
monopoly for the metal, and when another black mage covets the
healer, Jessyla, Beltar is courting and tries to remove him.
In Spindlar he works as a mage healer. Unfortunately the council
there is too traditional and blocks Jorhan’s access to copper and
tin. In addition another family who has a 7 year-old daughter with
potential to become a white mage, That gets them also exiled from
Elparta and distrusted in Spindlar. As usual for Mr. Modesitt,
Beltar is a hard worker and honest dealer. There are far more scenes
of cleaning up areas than of fighting. It’s more about dealing with
people than winning wars. I like all of his books and these are no
exception.
Baen books has reprinted John Ringo’s first
exciting tale of Earth being recruited to fight aliens on other
worlds, A Hymn before Battle (trade), and Larry Correia’s Monster
Hunter Siege (paper).
The Science Fiction Society will have its next
meeting on June 8th. Wes Shank, whose museum in
Phoenixville includes the silicon Blob, will speak. The meeting
starts at 8 p.m. at International House on
the University of Pennsylvania Campus. As usual guests are welcome.
Dr. 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 a simpler way to
achieve fusion generation.