nuttall – Page 2 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 14, 2022

The Cruel Stars (Review)

eah, yeah, I know, ANOTHER Ark Royal book, this the eleventh in the set. And for The Cruel Stars, we go back to author Christopher Nuttall’s favorite moment in his history, the desperate First Interstellar War between the humans and the Tadpoles, where humans were only just hanging on against a foe with slightly better tech, one that had studied us and played us and destroyed our joint fleet off New Russia. So now the humans are struggling to find ships and manpower to replace their grievous loses. This book tells us one of their many attempts, and this one […]

October 23, 2022

Invincible (Review)

an you believe it? I’m already at book twelve of the Ark Royal series! Anyway, true to author Christopher Nuttall’s usual way of doing things, we get a three book set with the latest British hull/class in spaceships. This time, it’s the Invincible, and England is trying to see how fast attack carriers (armored, and with fighters and big guns) will work. So, shortly after its shakedown cruise, Invincible is sent to a listening station at the edge of human space. So we’ve had Pearl Harbor alien contacts, Indian history alien contacts, straight out warfare with alien contacts, but this […]

November 6, 2022

Para Bellum (Review)

have to say this, but if you are an Ark Royal series fan and have not read this book yet (the 13th in the series), well, SPOILERS AHEAD. So we discovered in the last book that a virus has corrupted at least three races and is eager to add more to its fold. That generation ship that came into human space and was allowed to land on a colony world was lousy with viruses.Yes, we think it was contained but there are some freighters that called on the world are missing. And now HMS Invincible has been assigned a small […]

December 4, 2022

The Right of the Line (Review)

think I always say this, but “Another book of the Ark Royal series…” Yes, this is the fourteenth of the series that started for me in a used bookstore in Norfolk, Va and ended up on my straining bookshelf. For those of you who don’t religiously (because I post these every Sunday?) reviews, the Ark Royal series follows a cast of evolving (and perishing) characters through a near space-n-time setting, that being the English Navy two or so centuries hence. We’ve fought several alien races so far, and nearly gotten squashed, but this time we are facing Earth’s biggest threat – a […]

January 29, 2023

The Lion and the Unicorn (Review)

o yes, I’ll bet you are thinking this will be another Nine Princes in Amber reviews with a title like this.No, I’m back to reading the Ark Royal series, where the humans (as of this book, the fifteenth of the series) are fighting a virus that has the human fleet against the wall, and seemingly will not stop until all of humanity are its wretched, brainless slaves. And this book is probably one of the best of the lot, since the original Ark Royal. In seeking new weapons systems, the designer on Earth have come up with an interesting idea. […]

February 19, 2023

Fighting for the Crown (Review)

ezus! Ark Royal XVII. Who’d have thought that those five books I picked up at that used bookstore in Norfolk would have resulted in this, hundreds of dollars and pages, all to get through the several interstellar wars humanity has faced. So you’ll remember the two characters from the last book, Captains Hammond and Campbell of the Lion and the Unicorn, night and day, thoughtful and bold, and seemingly totally unable to work with one another. Well, in this book, humanity is faced with a desperate situation – the virus which controls four races (that we know of) is building […]

March 5, 2023

Drake’s Drum (Review)

nd finally we finish (for now) the war against the creepy virus which takes over entire races and uses them as total brain-slaves, grinding its subjects into ruin as it continues with a full wartime economy (because what else would there be) as it attempts to take over the universe. So, in this Ark Royal installment (number XVII, but who’s counting), humanity decides to move against the virus’s homeworld (totally built up, nothing but an over-polluted, totally factoried system worked by mindless slaves (the goal of the current governor of Florida, no doubt)). But the humans cannot send anything of […]