Book Blog – Page 53 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

May 22, 2022

We Lead (Review)

losing out the Vanguard trilogy in Christopher Nuttall’s third series in the Ark Royal universe is We Lead, or (as it could be known as “A woman and her Battleship”). Yes, we had the Yamato-like story of the armored carrier that won the first war, and then the heavy cruiser that thumped the Indians, and now we’ve seen weapons develop with Battleships forming the backbone of the new navy. The story is simple – a deep raid using new FTL technology puts Vanguard and her formation deep behind enemy lines. The idea is to thump the alien homeworld and get […]

May 29, 2022

The Cure (Review)

his was an interesting science fiction book I picked out of a curbside library somewhere. And the last page was interesting enough that I’m going to comment at length (and possibly with obscenities) in the next Dog Ear. Nothing against the writer, just… something. Anyway, yes, The Cure. So, the story starts in a future human society, 2400 AD or so, where every chance of emotion or love or anger has been removed. This includes sex, music, and even facial expressions (everyone wears masks day and night to hide their true faces). Calming drugs are openly given to them (in […]

June 5, 2022

Gods of Risk (Review)

es, the trilogy covering The Three Body Problem are all big books and I’m enjoying them immensely. But good things take time and I have a weekly review to run. Sooooo I’m pulling in another short story from The Expanse novella collection, Memories Legion, specifically Gods of Risk. Not quiet sure why this (or any of the books) are named as they are. Asides, it’s a novella (and a bit of a long one) from the POV of Gunny Draper’s (i.e. Bobby’s) brother David. We know from the show that he got involved with cooking for a pusher and ended […]

June 12, 2022

The Dark Forest (Review)

he Dark Forest is the follow-up book to Cixin Liu’s fantastic The Three Body Problem. As you’ll remember, the Trisolarian race, with intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes* and have launched an invasion fleet to destroy humanity and use Earth as their new homeworld (if you know what the three body problem means, you might better understand why this is). The good news is that the invasion fleet will take 400 years to get here. The bad news is they have launched tiny atomic spies at our Earth, spies that that alter computer data […]

June 19, 2022

The Seas That Mourn (Review)

o I was looking for something other than cutting edge scifi and saw this book on my wife’s done stack, something she got from somewhere that had caught her eye, The Seas That Mourn, by Patrick D. Smith. Now, I didn’t know about Mr. Smith but have since found out that he is a very popular Florida writer and has a section of State Road 520 named after him (which I’ve driven a lot of times and never noticed). Of course, this honor was done by a governor before they started using their office to ban books and punish gay-tolerating […]

June 26, 2022

The Churn (Review)

veryone knows the few facts about Amos Burton of the Rocinante in The Expanse, that he is a mechanic and also a likable yet unstable crew member. When it comes to total zen violence, Amos is your man. Other facts we know – he grew up in flooded Baltimore, a city of people either involved in criminal acts or on government assistance. We know that his real name was Timmy, that he lived with an old woman, Lydia.That his childhood friend Erich is a cripple with a shriveled arm who now runs the crime in Baltimore. And that Timmy took […]

July 3, 2022

Death’s End (Review)

nd this is the third book in the series that started with The Three-Body Problem and ramped up in The Dark Forest. It’s a look at humans, our planet and our place in the sprawling galaxy. Older characters have pretty much faded away and the story focus on Cheng Xin, a thoughtful young rocket engineer who ends up getting caught up in events she is forced (and sometimes unqualified) to face. She is the one, upon finding out that a passing college acquaintance gifted her an actual star (not the name of the star, no, but the entire thing, planets […]

July 17, 2022

The Longest Day (Review)

his book got me through a very confusing and disturbing day at the hospital. And for that I’m grateful; both the for companionship and that it was really quite good. It’s book 10 of the Ark Royal series and for this one, we leave the idea of the three-book set (which author Christopher Nuttall did for Ark Royal, Warspite and Vanguard) and focus on the Battle of Earth (which resulted in multiple KEW hits on Earth and the flooding of much of our low-lying coastal cities). England was particularly hard hit and one of the Ark Royal characters had a […]

July 24, 2022

Watching God (Review)

ey, I’m a long-term China Mieville fan. He writes wonderfully and while I don’t often understand everything that is being conveyed to me, it’s usually a treat. Found his name on a collection of short stories titled Out of the Ruins. Possibly I should have peeked at the story he’d contributed to the collection because now, in retrospect, I think I’ve got it elsewhere in my stacks. Anyway, the tale is titled Watching God. It’s a great piece, if not (as usual) a bit esoteric for a guy like me. So in this story, there is a community of people […]

July 31, 2022

We have always lived on Mars (take 2) (Review)

o this was one a coworker handed me, a short piece of fiction of a failing Mars colony from Tor Books. Imagine a Mars colony totally cut off. Earth no longer communicates. Dust covers their sky – they’ve not seen the moons or stars or anything. The colony has no resources to expand. All they can do is carefully monitor life support, sending out old folks to die while replacing them with occasional births. Everything is dusty and worn and bleak. So Nina, one of the young women of Mars, turns out to be special. With her suit ripped in […]