Category Archives: From My Bookshelf

Halfway Through IT, Announcing October Reading Plans! (Here Be Unicorns)

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So I am halfway through Stephen King’s masterpiece IT and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the first half of IT and announce my October Group Read as well! This way all who want to join have time to get ahold of a book for October! 


The first half of IT is not particularly scary to me as much as it is tragically sad to me! Why sad? Because if you were to eliminate the supernatural monster from IT you would still have the monsters of humanity rearing their ugly heads: racism, sexism, child abuse, bullying, spousal abuse, homophobia, hatred of the other, antisemitism, manipulation, so many ugly aspects of humanity that need to be changed. 

Also it is worth noting that the main reason IT seems so long is not due to SK’s over descriptiveness as much as IT really is six separate stories masterfully woven into one story. I think SK has a way of capturing the magical combination of whimsy and seriousness of childhood that is greater than any I’ve encountered. I’m looking forward to the rest of the book and hope all who joined me in #FallOfTheKing and #ImReadingIT have enjoyed their journey so far!


Announcing my October Reading Plan! Many of you already know and follow my friend MillieBotReads and if you don’t you should click that link and get to know her! She is a fan of Tanith Lee, so much so that I associate TL’s books with her! I’ve seen a lot of Tanith Lee’s works through my reading life but I haven’t ever read anything of hers that I know of. So MillieBotReads and I are going to host a #TanithLeeRead group read this October! 


To join in you simply need to get ahold of a Tanith Lee book and join us in reading it on October first! MillieBotReads and I will be specifically reading the first book of her Unicorn Trilogy: Black Unicorn, and using the hashtag #HereBeUnicorns for that trilogy in particular. However the #TanithLeeRead is open to ANY Tanith Lee book you choose to read. We think Black Unicorn is a good entry point into her work and if you can’t find it at a store or a library you can get it for your kindle HERE.


After reading an armbreaker like IT it will be nice to read a short 138 page fantasy novel. After seeing how I enjoy Black Unicorn I might continue on in the trilogy! I’m excited to start #TanithLeeReads and #HereBeUnicorns as this will also be a #FirstAuthorContact read for me! In looking at Tanith Lee’s BIOGRAPHY I find her to be an interesting person who refused to let adversity stop her from pursuing her dreams. I hope you’ll join in with us and pick up Black Unicorn or any other Tanith Lee book this October! 


I’ll post more about this again soon to remind everyone about this! I’m excited! Feel free to share this post and spread the word! 

What? Frank Herbert Wrote More Than Just Dune? Part 1

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When you hear the name of Frank Herbert you instantly think Dune, and rightly so! Dune is a masterpiece and is extremely influential in a way that most authors can only dream of. However if you stop at Dune you do yourself an injustice as Frank Herbert wrote several other amazing works. 


Frank Herbert wrote the ConSentient Series consisting of Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment along with a couple of short stories. This series never gained the fame or acclaim of his Dune Saga, but it is an incredible work nonetheless. 

Whipping Star is a strange name for a novel but soon after starting this book you realize it makes sense! This book is more dialogue and philosophy than action, but Herbert demonstrates his ability to weave action into his dialogue. This book (and the overall series) examines morality, justice, law, and truth. In this story we are face to face with an intelligence much greater and more ancient than our own. You are left asking what is the value of life when viewed through an ancient lense. What is it when viewed through a personal viewpoint? What is the value of all life in the galaxy? This story involves a lot of thinking and reasoning on the part of the reader, and I loved it. Very well executed. 


The Dosadi Experiment is gripping and fast paced, but again it hides its action within the dialogue. In this we examine evolution (a common theme in FH’s works) and not only how environment can cause evolutionary change, but also the proximity of alien life can drastically alter how a species evolves. The stakes in this novel are high and the tension is constant from start to finish. An amazing work of art. 

I’m writing this because a few years back I decided to branch out into the writings of Frank Herbert, to go further than his Dune Saga. I’ve been thankful for that choice and I’ll be sharing more on his other writings over time. I hope these posts encourage you to seek out his other works and join me in exploring them! 

Careful Lest Ye Wake The Sleeping Giants

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Sleeping Giants by Slyvain Neuvel is a book you won’t want to sleep on! Ok so cheesy opening line to the review, but for real this SciFi is interesting!


There are two main things to discuss here: The Story and The Storytelling Method.

First the story: Pieces of an ancient statue are showing up around the world that appear to have been created and hidden long before humanity had the skill to craft such a wonder. A group of people are brought together to search for all the pieces and reconstruct them to discover what they are. However when you start messing with ancient things that have been hidden away you have to be careful of the repercussions. 


Next the Method: The author uses an interview/journal method to tell the tale. At first I thought this was just a way to move the story along quickly at the start and expected the traditional method of story telling to start soon after. It wasn’t just for the start, it really was for the entire story. This is fine as the author kept it interesting and intriguing. However it can become tiresome and resulted in me setting down this book at times to read a different and more traditionally told story. That said I think the author did well with the method and surprisingly kept the plot moving fairly quickly. 


I thought that this SciFi was very interesting and that the story has a lot of promise. The characters were well crafted and the differences in their personalities do shine through in the interviews. I will be picking up the sequel when it is written and I do think you would enjoy reading Sleeping Giants. 

A big THANK YOU to my wife for buying this book for me on my birthday! The cover caught her eye and I have to agree that this cover is stunning. 

The Fall Of The King And I’m Reading It

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Fall is almost upon us! Time for Football, Bonfires, Hot Chocolate, Cold Weather, Longer Nights, and Horror Stories!


Horror Stories? Yes! There is something about Fall and Winter that lends itself to scary tales and no one tells them better than Stephen King. That’s why on Labor Day I’ll be picking up and reading IT by Stephen King, and I want you to join in!


However I know many of you have already read IT so while I’ll be reading IT I’m inviting you to pick up any Stephen King book and join in on the fun! Several will be joining me in reading IT for the first time while others will be picking up that Stephen King book that has been staring at them on their bookshelf for ages. 


We’ll be using the hashtags #FallOfTheKing for the overall read and #ImReadingIT for any specifically reading IT. Group reads with RedStarReviews are very laid back. There aren’t any chapter date goals or anything like that. I know many of you have reading obligations already. Read at your own pace and have fun. I hope you join! I’ll be starting IT on Labor Day (this Monday) morning! 

First Contacts Can Be Difficult

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In April I came up with the idea of reading my first CJ Cherryh book, and as it was my first contact with her work I thought it would be clever to call it First Author Contact and to read her book about First Contact: Foreigner. I had seen and heard of Cherryh’s books for decades but I had never made time for them and decided it was finally time to change that!


The book started out fast and interestingly! A colony ship flung far off course into uncharted space, a crew sacrificing to save future generations of humanity, a battle of visions for the future, and ultimately an embarkation to a planet already populated by a relatively advanced civilization of aliens and first contact with them. All within the first forty pages. I was hooked. I was amazed. I was eager to dive into the rest of the story and then…. I was frustrated and bored. 


You see I had a very difficult time connected with the POV character chosen for the rest of the story. Bren is an intelligent and thoughtful human who is selected as the primary contact for the alien species on the planet. They call themselves Atevi and at first glance you might get an idea of Japanese culture combined with cats who think that assassination is perfectly acceptable as a political practice, but in truth that’s just the first impression. As you dig deeper you truly see something very rare: an alien culture in a SciFi book that is truly alien and difficult to comprehend. More on that later. Back to Bren. Bren is smart and capable yet very alone amongst the Atevi and is at their mercy. He is the target of assassination and an important piece in the Atevi political wars. He is forced to walk a difficult path trying to help create understanding between Human and Atevi while not being killed or creating a war based on misunderstanding. But his mind is frazzled and jumbled which makes the book difficult to comprehend. That confusion caused me to lose my enthusiasm for the book and set it behind me as I read other books. 


However this book stayed alive in the back of my mind. Other friends joined me in reading it and they had loved it. The concept was great. The aliens so alien. The desire to return and finish the book grew and grew and so I did. And I’m thankful I did. 


I found I could forgive Bren his jumbled frazzled mind since aliens were trying to assassinate him. I found his attempts to bridge the gulf between the species interesting and I found the second half of the book to be the best part of the story overall! I admit that I almost quit this book, but I’m glad I returned and I’m impressed enough that I’ll carry on in the series! CJ Cherryh did something so many try to do and few succeed: She created an alien species that has its own emotions, reactions, concepts, and methods. She didn’t just humanize them, she made the humans in the story (and the ones reading the book) have to struggle to communicate with and strive to comprehend them. She made them aliens, and she made words matter. I found this to be an excellent story and very well worth the time. 


And a special thanks to the cute puppy Lil Ms Piper for helping me to write this review! 

Notes On Notes From The Shadowed City

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Jeffrey Alan Love has created a beautiful work of art in his book Notes From The Shadowed City. This book is GORGEOUS. 


I still recall the first time I encountered Love’s artwork on a SciFi book cover and how amazed I was by it. Everything about his style grabs my attention and draws me to the books featuring his cover illustrations. So when I first heard he was working on a book of his own that would prominently feature his artwork I knew I would be purchasing it. I had high expectations and expected the book would meet them. It exceeded them. 


Mike Mignola describes it best. “Plain brilliant” This work is lovely and dark with ominous tones. The book is a journal of an adventurer who has lost his own identity but discovered a city residing beneath the dark shadows of a floating city of magical beings. Having no idea as to who he is he decides to use the journal he has with him to illustrate his discoveries within the Shadowed City. Masked swordsmen, bandits, warriors, giants, mages, powerful swords, and secrets abound. 


This book really brings out and engages the imagination of the reader. After each page you’ll find your thoughts wandering along with the adventurer’s, imagining what wondrous things you might encounter in so magical a city. I couldn’t be happier with this amazing work of art and highly recommend you order a copy for yourself! You can do so here: FleskPublications and you can get a glimpse of the artist’s work on his  Instagram page or on his Twitter account. I’ve truly been amazed by his art and the dark beauty captured within the pages of this book. 

Ten Years Of Heresy

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Imagine it is the year 40,000. You a part of a vast galactic empire that is based out of Earth. You only know war. On every border you are attacked. The enemy has struck deep into the heart of your territory. War is all there is. You long for the God Emperor to awaken and rescue humanity from itself but He has been locked away for 10,000 years and you aren’t even convinced that He is still alive anymore… yet you have lived your whole life for Him, and you know you’ll die for Him. For there is only war. 
This is the grim dark universe of Warhammer40K it is a universe in which humanity barely holds on, seems on the verge of destruction, but still fights. It is a harsh future which promises only destruction and the slow fight leading to it. What happened to humanity to set it on this path of constant warfare? 


To answer that you’ll need to turn back time 10,000 years to a golden age of expansion and enlightenment. To a time when the glorious Emperor walked amongst his chosen warriors and guided humanity. To a time before he was a God locked away from all of humanity. To a time when everything seemed possible and promising. To a time when the future was bright. To a time when the Emperor’s chosen sons took up the mantle of leadership. You would have to return to a time when his greatest son, Horus, turned his heart away from his own father and betrayed him. To when Horus split the galaxy into warring fragments. To a time when Horus believed the Heresy of Chaos and fell victim to it. To the time of The Horus Heresy. 


The Horus Heresy is an excellent Military SciFi series that covers the fall of the greatest galactic empire in epic heroic fashion. It is the tenth anniversary of the publication of Horus Rising by Dan Abnett. Ten years and over thirty books later the Horus Heresy is still going strong! I am twenty books into this excellent series. Each new book adds an extra layer to this epic story. It has kept me following year after year and book after book. The authors (there are several contributing authors to the series) keep the story fresh, interesting, engaging, and worth reading. This is an excellent series for anyone to read and if you are a fan of Military SciFi you’d be hard pressed to find something better to invest in. Here’s to a wonderful ten past years and here’s to many more stories in The Horus Heresy! 

A Magical Book Story

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The Wheel Of Time, Memory Sorrow And Thorn, The Heritage Of Shannara: Three epic and beautiful fantasy series that I discovered all around the same time in my life.   
I still remember finding The Eye Of The World, The Dragonbone Chair, and The Scions Of Shannara at my local library back when I was around the same age as the main characters within the pages of these stories. It was at a time shortly after my family had moved across country to a new state, having to make new friends, and create a new life. If you were raised in a military family you know the drill. Moving happens! Starting over in a new place has its ups and downs but at the time I found these books I was experiencing a particularly down time. There are always plenty of reasons why someone will experience down times or up times or travel from one to another, but in the midst of all the reasons and everything that was happening I found these three books at my library and brought them home. 
I agonized over which to read first! Knowing that each started off a series and that I’d probably want to read all the available books in the series before starting the next. So I hemmed and hawed, I went back and forth trying to decide, attempting to somehow pick the exact right one to start first. Without fail each one I read drew me in completely. I ended up devouring them all and reading every book written at that time in each of the series and eventually completed all of them. You might be wondering which book I read first… but that’s not the important thing and that isn’t what this is about. 

  
You see the important thing is that in the midst of a personally difficult time I discovered these beautiful stories of flawed characters that were around my age that I found myself identifying with. I found solace in the pages of these stories and turned to them time and again. I read the available books and then read them again. And again. And again. Finding myself and losing myself within the books. In my thoughts I became a part of the stories. The books helped redirect my creativity and focus. The authors (Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, and Tad Williams) will never know the impact their stories had upon my life. 

  
This is yet another reason we need stories. Lots of them. We need diversity in books. We need YA Books, SciFi, Mystery, History, Fantasy, Romance, Western, Children’s Books, Graphic Novels; we need them all and more. 

  
I found that I could identify with the characters in these stories. That helped me through a difficult time and has always stayed with me. With greater diversity in our stories even more of us will be able to easily identify with more characters and find the stories that can help us through our difficult times and encourage us during our best times. Stories are magical. I’m thankful to have found the magic I needed. I’m hopeful that you will find the magic you need too. 

  
And if you’re still wondering which book I read first well that’s a secret of my own that maybe one day I’ll tell… but not today.

First Author Contact: C J Cherryh

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I am a fan of Science Fiction. I have been a SciFi fan all my reading life and probably will be one for the rest of my days. When you are heavily invested in a particular genre you notice certain authors often. Their books stand out. Their names grab at you as you pass by. Your friends rave about them and are shocked you haven’t read them yet. Yet is the important word. This month I am addressing one of those yet situations.   
C J Cherryh is an author that I have heard about for decades. I’ve seen her books and wanted to read them for years but for various reasons never got around to it. She is a celebrated and respected author who has contributed greatly to the SciFi genre and is still contributing! Her work has entertained and challenged countless readers since she was first published in 1976. 

  
Having obtained a hardback copy of Foreigner, the first book published in her Foreigner Universe, I decided to make April the month I finally achieve First Contact with C J Cherryh’s work. What better place to start than with a novel of First Contact? A lost generational starship at the end of its five hundred year journey coming in contact with an alien species sounds like a wonderful way to meet an author’s work.  

  

 I am inviting any and all who want to join me in starting C J Cherryh’s work to join in! Several friends have decided to give Foreigner a read this month with me and I’d love to have more join in. I don’t have a set reading schedule of so many chapters a week or a scheduled date to be done with the book. I know time zones, schedules, and TBR Piles don’t always allow for identical reading goals so this one is a very loose one. I’m starting Foreigner today and hope y’all join me in reading it this month! 

  
Feel free to follow my progress on GoodReads as I will mark my progress there. Or you can follow on Instagram/Twitter as I will be using the hashtags: #FirstCherryh #FirstAuthorContact and #CJCReading on those sites. I’ll post a review of my final thoughts here on my website. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Foreigner by C J Cherryh! 

Military SciFi: What Makes It Good

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What qualifies a book as Military SciFi? Or better yet: What makes a story a GOOD Military SciFi story? 
Wikipedia describes it like this: “Military science fiction is a subgenre of SciFi that features the use of SciFi technology, mainly weapons, for military purposes and usually principal characters that are members of a military organization involved in military activity; occurring sometimes in outer space or on a different planet or planets.” 
I am happy with that description. Military SciFi, as basic as this sounds, involves primary characters who are based within the military and are engaged in some form of military conflict. Typically you’ll experience that war from the every day soldier’s point of view, and often that soldier will climb through the ranks so that you can experience the war from multiple levels. This leaves room for a lot of character development to happen, and in good Military SciFi that development happens.  
There it is again: GOOD Military SciFi. What sets the best stories apart from the rest? Well that is a highly subjective question, and fortunately I enjoy subjective questions! 

  
Good Military SciFi features technology, but focuses on humanity. It is a human story designed to look into the heart of humanity and warfare. Yes we want to read about the cool space guns and space ships but the story can’t be a tech manual. That’s boring and ultimately becomes outdated quickly. Good Military SciFi looks deep into us, into what makes us human, what drives us, what breaks us, and ultimately how we find the will to persevere. The cool technology sets the stage for the players to act, it isn’t meant to be the play itself.

  
Good Military SciFi should include diversity of some form. The military has often been a leader in areas of integration and diversity. It has had successes and failures but in theory it is a place where you excel based on character, deeds, and abilities. However good Military SciFi can showcase the struggle minorities face to be known for their abilities, or show a non minority character facing, acknowledging, and advancing beyond their inner prejudices. It isn’t a prerequisite of Military SciFi but the best ones do address the issue of diversity.  And we need more diversity in books.

  
Good Military SciFi deals with the moral dilemma of warfare. War is not pretty, and it is not easy, and it comes with a high cost both to the victors and the defeated. Good Military SciFi recognizes this and addresses the cost of war on the people waging it and the nation state behind them. War brings out the best and the worst in us. This fact shouldn’t be ignored. 

  
Good Military SciFi involves ambiguity. The fog of war envelops not just the plot but also the hearts and minds of the characters. Everything shouldn’t be tied up into a neat little package for the reader. The reader should have to invest in the story alongside the characters and reach their own conclusions about the dilemmas facing them. 

  
The best Military SciFi involves sacrifice. These tales should be cautionary tales designed to help us understand the high cost of war and one of those costs is sacrifice. The willingness to put your life on the line in front of others is a part of the military mindset, and often that sacrifice is required for the good of the many. 

  
Military SciFi is also about the camaraderie that military service develops. Oftentimes you’ll hear veterans attest that the primary reason they fought and held a position was for the soldier next to them. They fought, bled, and sacrificed for each other. 

  
In my eyes good Military SciFi includes a look at the technology, the trappings of the military, the training, and the actual warfare, but it goes beyond that to teach us a lesson about ourselves. About humanity. About what our soldiers face, and about our responsibility to our veterans. It lets us look into human nature and either help us understand humanity better or at least learn some of the questions about humanity that we should be asking.  
And it tells a damn good story.