Henry L Lazarus
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Science Fiction for August and September 2015
by Henry Leon Lazarus
Apocalypse. Ever since J. R. R. Tolkein’s massive
tale, epic fantasy frequently uses a fight against evil to prevent
an Apocalypse. That’s why George R. R. Martin’s massive series will
turn to zombie attacks in the last two books, and the next two
seasons of the HBO series as winter arrives. All the internal
struggle will be gone.
Anthony Ryan’s apocalypse is caused by a
spirit already dead, the Ally, who is preparing for his return with
other dead who have take over the minds of the living. They rule the
Volarian Empire built on slavery. In the last tale, The Tower Lord
(paper), the Volarians used treachery to conquer the United Realm.
But Lyrna, the Queen of Fire (hard from TOR) wants not only
to recover her country, she also wants to conquer Volarian and put
an end to the Ally. A whole fleet has to be built, along with an
army, but the whole world is at stake. The new Empress of Volaria is
a body shifter and willing to kill her own citizens if they
displease her. Battles, individual and group make for an exciting
adventure. Add in the minor talents that can shift a battle and you
have in interesting background. This is a solid ending to a fun
series.
With George R. R. Martin’s Game of
Thrones on hiatus till next year when hopefully the next volume will
appear before the HBO series reveals spoilers, readers might be
looking for similar tales. Robin Hobb began her tale of
FitzChivalry a year before Mr. Martin, and works in sets of
trilogies. In the latest trilogy Fitz looks thirty, but is
double that age. His youngest daughter Bee is strangely like the
Fool who was revealed in the Tawny Man trilogy to be able to predict
futures and manipulate them. Bee has the same abilities. In Fools’s
Assassin (hard) the Fool returns near death after being tortured
Fitz returned him to Buckkeep Castle, not knowing that the same
people who tortured the Fool were after Bee. Fool's Quest (hard
from Del Rey) tells us how Bee is kidnaped and how Fitz almost stops
them. He is also brought by from anonymity as a Prince. His older
daughter is pregnant with is first grandchild, but that doesn’t stop
him from planning his revenge when he thinks that Bee is dead.
Obviously the third tale will take him and the Fool to the White
Island far to the south. Very intense and fill with tropes that are
similar to Mr. Martins.
Max Gladstone has a world where craftsmen
of magic act like lawyers and mundane matters like gentrification
can take odd forms with powerful magic. Last First Snow
(hard from TOR) tells of a former temple slave section, the
Skittersill, in the rebuilt city of Dresediel Lex. Forty years after
the wars that killed the Gods, the area is a slum, partially because
of failing wards created by the old Gods. There’s protests against
changing the wards because the poor inhabitants don’t want to be
forced out. Craftswoman Elayne Kevarian is hired to broker a
compromise. Temoc, a former warrior priest who lives in the district
with his wife and son, preaches compromise. The King in Red, an old
craftsman turned skeleton, who rules the city wants development.
Negotiations fail and a horrible riot ensues. I suspect that this or
another of Mr. Gladstone’s tales will get nominated for an award.
David Duncan, one a major force in
fantasy, has a new tale about an Island empire, the island of Benign
with a truly unique governing system. The seventy are randomly
chosen by the Priests of the goddess Caprice. One of the
sixteen-year olds of that year who become citizens become one of the
rulers, supported in luxury till they die. They can leave nothing to
their heirs. Irona 700 (paper from Open Road Media) faces a
time of great danger to Benign as an evil grows out of the main
continent in the form of shapeless beings and lizard people. Over
and over Erona has to command the navy and marines to fight not only
their enemies, but their allies. Along the way she has a son, losing
his father on the day of conception. Another lover is a major artist
who paints her portrait when she becomes one of the ruling seven. I
found myself fascinated by the picture of a woman driven by duty,
even at the expense of mothering her son. Excellant.
Chloe Neill has a tale set in New Orleans
after the Fae invaded our world. Claire Connolly is the last
generation to run Royal Mercantile, a antique store in the
French Quarter that now mainly sells dehydrated food to the
few people still living in the city. She is also a sensitive, able
to move things with her mind, and she hides this ability from
Containment, both because they would send her to Devil’s Isle where
the Fae and sensitives live, and because using too much magic would
turn her into a mindless wraith. But Wraiths are popping and when
two of them attack a stranger, she decides to help using her magic.
Liam Quinn is a bounty hunter whose sister had been murdered by
wraiths who discovers her and helps her control her magic. The
problem is that someone is trying to unlock The Veil (paper
from DAW) that separates our world from the world of the Fae, and
they are turning sensitives into wraiths to restart the war. Very
exciting and a fun beginning to a near series.
Imagine if the Avengers had to fill out
after-action reports and deal with committees Charles Stross’s fun
Laundry files series started with the odd mixture of an early Len
Deighton spy, Bob Howard facing not only British bureaucracy, but
Lovecraftian monsters. In the latest there’s a plague of
Superheroes. Bob’s wife, Dr. Dominique O’Brien (Mo) has to deal with
them. She was facing down a nutty super-powered villain with her
evil violin, Lector, when she was caught on tape by news crews. Her
fifteen minutes of fame leads to her heading a new division of
Scotland Yard with a team of superheroes. But the evil Professor
Freudstein wants her and lector to play The Annihilation Score
(trade from Ace) broadcast on BBC to warp the minds of the
British public. She and Bob are separated so he goes on dates with
one of her heroes, Captain Friendly, who in real life is a senior
bureaucrat in Scotland Yard. I eagerly await each new addition to
the Laundry Files and was glad to have more background on Mo who
usually just a minor character.
Christina Henry takes a nightmarish look
at Louis Carroll’s classic tale. Alice (trade from Ace) and
her ax-murdering Hatcher have been in an insane asylum for a decade
when a fire lets them escape. Unfortunately the Jabberwock is also
set free. In an area of the city run by gangs like the Walrus, the
Carpenter and the Caterpillar, all of whom trade in girls and to
whom life worth nothing. The ‘eat me’ cakes and ‘drink me’ are
needed to get into the Caterpiller’s lair with girls tattooed with
butterflies available to the male clients. Alice and Hatcher are on
the hunt for the Vorpal blade to go snicker-snack before the
Jabberwalk can get its magic back and both don’t hastate to kill
enemies in their way. Dark, but somehow fascinating.
E. C. Blake concludes his trilogy about
Mara, a sixteen-year-old who has the rare power to see all the
colors of magic and to take magic from living creatures. Only two
others share her powers; the Autarch who has been stealing magic
from his people to keep himself from aging; and the Lady of Pain and
Fire who was exiled from Aygrima. With the surviving
troops of the army of the unmasked, takes refuge with the Lady and
helps her cross the magical barrier to confront the Autarch.
Corruption of power, magical power in this case. As Mara grows older
will she use her power to make people slaves like the Autarch?
Faces (hard from DAW) makes that choice something to care
about. Mr. Blake has a short answer at the end, leaving room for a
second trilogy Fun.
Phyllis Ames walks the path between were
and human with a sure step. Frozen in Amber (paper from
DAW). Amber Treganis is a were-cougar who was raised by her
grandfather, a very expensive lawyer. His law firm is filled with
werewolf and werecougar associates, and right now is defending a
wealthy industrialist, Jonatghon Bergman accused of murdering his
wife. The were council wants Bergman’s gene therapy treatment to
reverse the effects of a were bite. Amber only turns cougar when she
has to because of a horrible incident at college, but something
happened during her last hunting trip in the mountains. The problem
is that evidence is disappearing, but she is sick for the first time
in her life. There’s also a werewolf illegally turning others. Then
her Grandfather is sick for the first time in a century and she is
falling for a were Eagle. Fun, but the ending is a bit too
convenient.
Drew Hayes writes his tales of a modern
world with supers, heroes and villains and those who use their
talents to earn a living, There are also ordinary people and
powered’s who can’t control their talents. Lander College in
California has one of the few Hero Certification programs, and
impossibly difficult program that only graduates ten students each
year. Super Powereds Year 3 (ebook which I bought) continues
the tale of the special group of five students, who had been treated
with an experimental treatment. Nicholas, who had been
kicked out of the program and had his memories wiped, returns to
Landers as an ordinary student. An enemy from another crime family,
Nathaniel, comes there to confront him. The first semester is mostly
about Nicholas regaining his memories There’s also the usual
training in the HCP program where each of the students learns better
how to use their talents, and the ordinary parties and fun. In the
second semester Nathaniel uses extra funding to enable an attack on
Lander College. Mr. Hays writes two or three chapters a week and
post them on his web site. It will, alas, take several years for
year 4 to reveal the answers to all the puzzles that makes this tale
so fascinating. I can’t wait.
Jean Johnson begins a new tetrology set
two centuries before her last amazing tetrology about Ia who can
predict the future so well that she manipulates the present to
assure survival in a war a thousand years in the future. This is the
tale of the first Salik war. The Saliks are really bad and
love to eat sapients alive. Earth is now a Utopia, a republic
modified to keep greed and politics separated. The Terrans
(paper from Ace) have explored near star systems but have not met
aliens. Psychic powers have appeared and precogs have seen Jacaranda
MacKenzie, a psychic with telepathic and telekinetic powers,
rescuing other humans, V’Dan, from aliens who turn out to be the
Salik. The V’Dan were taken from Earth 10,000 years ago and have
stripes on their faces. Jacaranda uses her abilities to rescue the
five V’day survivors and bring them to Earth. This tale
introduces to some of the V’Dan including a prince, and ends with an
embassy being sent to the V’dan home planet. I’m waiting eagerly to
the next tale in January to continue the fun story.
Jennifer Estep returns to Ashland for
another tale of a Spider's Trap (paper from Pocket) . In
this 13th tale Gin Blanc, assassin with ice and stone powers
and owner of a barbecue restaurant called the Pork Pit In her part
time she is the head of Ashland’s gangs, after killing all the
previous heads and pretenders. It is not a role she wants, and it
brings with it lots of danger. When a man bent on revenge,
with powerful metal abilities, comes town and sets off bombs near
her, it gets her involved and, as usual, almost killed. For a series
that ended about six books ago, its still a lot of fun.
Wolfcop is a horrible, over-the-top
movie about a cop turned werewolf available on netflix.
Andrew Klavan, winner of mystery’s Edgar Award, decides to tell that
tale in a very different way. Zach Adams is a super cop working for
a federal agency hot on the trail of Dominic Abend, a European
criminal come to America and killing everyone who gets in his way to
reclaim a dagger made in the middle ages, that theoretically killed
the first werewolf. Of course he is bitten and turned Werewolf in
Germany where he goes researching the dagger. Werewolf Cop
(hard from Pegasus) is a dark and twisted as the HBO series True
Detective. Fun.
Carl was sent to Phoenix Island
(paper) as a troubled teenager which turned out to not only murder
the inmates that didn’t measure up, but was testing a program that
would improve fighting skills with a computer chip, Carl not only
survived, but he managed to integrate the chip. Now its on to the
ultimate street fighting competition in the Devil’s Pocket
(paper from Gallery Books) of a volcano and sponsored by extremely
rich and powerful people with ulterior motives. Many of the fighters
die because of the deliberate lack of safety rules. Helping him
discover the secrets of this awful place is Octavia, the girl he
thought dead. Her chip allows her to approximate faces behind masks
and hidden passages in the walls. In the end Carl faces an opponent
he cannot survive. Fun and exciting.
The Science Fiction Society will have its next
meeting on August 14th with Don Riggs,a professor of English
Literature at Drexel who teaches Science Fiction and September
11th 2015 with Dena Heilik from the Free Library of Philadelphia ;
both at 8 p.m. at the International House on the
University of Pennsylvania Campus. As usual Guests are Welcome.
Dr. Henry Lazarus is a local Dentist and the
author of A Cycle of Gods (Wolfsinger Publications) and
Unnaturally Female (Smashwords). Check out his non-formula
unified field theory at henrylazarus.com/utf.html