Book Review: Warrior: Monster Slayer (Book 1, The Monsterworld Saga), by Sam Ryder

I came across this book totally by accident.  I was looking through the Prime Reading list on Amazon and found it in the fantasy section.  I'm a fan of the Monster Hunter International series by Larry Correia, so this sounded interesting.  However, this is more of a fantasy tale - something like GameLit or LitRPG (I'm not super familiar with either of these sub-genres, so take that with a grain of salt).  But, the encounter was very similar to Monster Hunter International, which I came across in the local bookstore years ago - the concept sounded kind of neat.  I wasn't really taking a chance with "free" - other than sacrificing a bit of my time.

I'm glad I decided to check this out.  It is a light and fun read! It is an interesting twist that the main character, Sam Ryder, is also the author of the book.  I also understand that Sam Ryder is a pen-name.

There are a few concepts borrowed from other fantasy series here - things I've seen in other fantasy works like the following:

• Conan stories - Robert E. Howard
• The Barsoom Series (John Carter) - Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Dancing Gods series - Jack L. Chalker
• Guardians of the Flame series - Joel Rosenberg
  

For some reason, appears on a list of "Harem" or "Polygamy" fiction on GoodReads, and Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein, is included on the same list.  Kind of strange - while there may be sex with multiple partners, I would not consider Time Enough for Love to be the same kind of story at all.  Yes, the main character has sex, but no more than James Bond does in a single film (well, at least the older ones with Sean Connery and Roger Moore).  The scenes may be a bit more graphic, but they don't last long, and I've seen similar scenes in may other books - I have no problem with the content.

Another oddity is that the series is on these two lists on Amazon:

• First Contact Science Fiction
• Time Travel Science Fiction
• Time Travel Fiction

The last two entries are strange - there is no time travel  in first book (and I understand there isn't any in the rest of the series either - the author is confused by this categorization).

The first contact piece I can understand - while there are sword and sorcery elements to the story, it is kind of science fiction as well.  This isn't just swords and sorcery on a single world - there is definitely a science fiction element to it, which I won't reveal.

So, Sam Ryder is kind of a loser - an outcast.  He has a dead-end job as a programmer, which he just got fired from.  He spends most of his time playing Alien Civilization, an online RPG.  A gorgeous woman on a motorcycle offers him a thrill ride, one thing leads to another, and he ultimately finds himself on a world filled with goddesses and monsters.

This world is kind of like an RPG - there are levels, and Sam arrives as an Outcast, which is what he was in the real world.  He is immediately leveled up to Warrior for free.  Future level ups have requirements.  After being leveled up, he finds himself fighting for his life in his new Warrior body - think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan, or maybe even a little bigger than that.

Eventually, Sam learns that he has been recruited to protect the Three goddesses from the monsters on the world, along with other recruits, some of whom aren't human.  Survival on this world is brutal for new recruits.  There are daily fights against the monsters, and any real information about what is going on is sparse - different people know different things, and there is very little sharing of information.

The combination of different elements made this a very satisfying story for me.  Believe it or not, the sex scenes, while graphic at times, are fairly short (one or two pages at most), and are actually an integrated part of the story - it will become clear if you read it.

I enjoyed this first story enough that I bought the full boxed set that includes all five novels on Kindle - the price works out to about one dollar per book.

If you like some of the novels I mention above, you may enjoy this.  I was originally able to read it for free on Amazon Prime Reading, but the book is currently $0.99 - pretty low price to take a change on something you may enjoy.  At the end, you will learn the real name of the author, who has a few different series under different names.  I will definitely be checking out at least one of them.

As always, I'm interested in hearing from my readers.  Have you read this series?  What did you think of it?  Please feel free to leave a comment.

My Favorite Aliens

I'm a big fan of science fiction - movies, TV shows, novels - and I've been a fan for a very long time.  I was watching Battlestar Galactica when it first aired in 1978, and I was a fan of Tom Baker as the fourth Doctor on Doctor Who several years before that (thanks to PBS).  I saw the original Star Wars at the theater when it was released in 1977, followed a few years later by Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and then many more after that.  Some of my favorite TV shows were Alien Nation (the movie was awesome too) and Babylon 5 (lots of aliens there).  There have been too many aliens to count over the years, and this post is about some of my favorites, and why I like them.  Here we go!

Davros - Doctor Who

We'll start off with a villain from one of my favorite TV series of all time - I've been watching it most of my life.  Davros is the evil genius who is responsible for creating the Daleks.  The Daleks have been around on Doctor Who since the very beginning, in the second story to air in Season One, way back in 1963.  They appeared in stories for the first, second, and third incarnations of The Doctor, but Davros did not make an appearance until Season 12, in the story Genesis of the Daleks - as it turns out, the fourth story for the fourth incarnation of The Doctor, Tom Baker (my favorite of all the actors to play the role).  While he is certainly a genius, he is also a twisted, megalomaniac, prone to wild, ranting outbursts, and willing to go to great lengths to achieve his goals - including the destruction of his own race, the Kaleds (note that Dalek is an anagram of Kaled).  To reveal the depths of his desire for power, The Doctor asked him that if he created a contagious and infectious disease that killed on contact, which would destroy all other forms of life, would he allow its use?  After imagining himself, holding a tiny glass capsule that held such power, that his act of crushing it would end everything in the universe, he realizes he would do it, as the power would make him more powerful than the gods. Ultimately, he sees himself achieving that power through his Daleks, as they exterminate all other forms of life, and become the dominant life form in the universe.  You wouldn't want to be in the same room with this guy!  Davros continues to appear in different times throughout the history of Doctor Who, right up to the Twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi, in 2017.

Kosh Naranek - The Vorlon Ambassador on Babylon 5

The  Vorlons are among the most cryptic aliens I've come across.  The Heechee from Frederik Pohl's Heechee Saga, are deemed somewhat mysterious, they they take second place when compared to the Vorlons.  Kosh is the one we get to know the best (if you can really call it that) throughout the series.  They are a mysterious race - not only to viewers, but also to the other races on the show.  They have been around for millions of years, and speak in vague riddles most of the time.  Some of their statements eventually come to make some sort of sense at some point in the series, and others...not so much.  Well, nobody said that an alien mind needed to work the same way as ours.  Kosh has some great quotes throughout the series and, IMO, we gradually learn some of the reasons why they appear so cryptic.  One of the greatest things about Kosh is that he is not what he appears to be, in more ways than one.  Overall, my favorite alien.

The Vorlons also have really cool ships, which are made with organic technology.  Each ship is mentally/psychically paired with an individual Vorlon.  Yes - the ships are alive.  Very neat concept, and while Babylon 5 was one of the first series to use it extensively, the idea isn't new to science fiction.  A few past examples of organic/living technology include:

• The novel Sentenced to Prism, by Alan Dean Foster
• The Night's Dawn Trilogy, by Peter Hamilton
• Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Tin Man"

I'm sure there are many other examples that I'm either forgetting or have not yet encountered.

The Shadows - from Babylon 5

The Shadows are the mysterious bad boys on Babylon 5.  They mostly, well, hide in the shadows...metaphorically.  They mostly work behind the scenes through intermediaries.  It is a rare occurrence to see one on the show, and it is a major event when this happens.  The shadows are even older than the Vorlons, and have equivalent, or even superior technology in some ways.

The Shadows also have very cool organic spaceships, which work a bit differently from the Vorlon ships in how they are piloted.  They also have some superior abilities.  I won't reveal details - you should watch the show and see for yourself.  Ultimately, there isn't much to write about the Shadows - even after several seasons of the show, we still know very little of them.

The Xenomorph, from the Alien franchise

Since the film Alien came out in 1979, you might say that the Xenomorph is the original bad boy of modern science fiction.  As the film unfolds, we encounter it in three forms:  the facehugger, the chestburster, and the adult form.  All three forms are horrifying.  Ash, the Science Officer of the Nostromo, states his opinion of this creature in very cold words:  "A perfect organism.  It's perfection is matched only by its hostility."  These words are backed up byXenomorph behavior in the 1986 sequel, Aliens.  This alien was a truly original concept.

A few interesting notes on this alien.  The idea for the chestburster was a shocking idea - nothing like it had been done in film before.  Where this idea came from is a matter of some debate.  First, the novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle, by A.E. Van Vogt, has been suggested by critics to be a source for the idea.  In fact, two chapters of the book are attributed as source material for the movie Alien.  The chapter called "Black Destroyer", involves an alien creature which gets aboard the ship and hunts the crew members.  Another chapter, called "Discord in Scarlet", is attributed to the chestburster.  A creature called an Ixtl, which lays its eggs inside crew members; when the eggs hatch, the young eat their way out of the host.  It appears that while there are similarities here, it may be mere speculation.  According to other sources, the screenwriter came up with the chestburster from his own experience with Crohn's disease.  These days, who knows where the truth lies.

As it turns out, there is at least one on Earth that has a similar reproductive cycle.  The ichneumon wasp, which was the inspiration for the Wirrn in the 1975 Doctor Who story The Ark In Space, has a similar parasitic life cycle.  You can't make this up - it is terrifyingly real.  Kind of reminds me of a Sherlock Holmes quote:  "Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent".

Calvin, the life form from the film Life

The life form which is discovered by the crew of the International Space Station is quickly named "Calvin" by schoolchildren, which unknown to them is an appropriate name.  Just like Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, he is a handful - literally a TON of trouble.  Calvin gives the Xenomorph from Alien a run for its money - especially in the horror department.  Calvin starts off as a single cell, which quickly becomes a multi-celled organism, and continues to grow at an alarming rate.  This is very similar to the plot of Alien, but unlike the Xenomorph, Calvin does more than put in a handful of appearances - he is ever present, and the horror of its nature grows as the story progresses.  The tension in the plot reminds me of the growing feeling of uneasiness in John Carpenter's The Thing, where a scientific team in Antarctica slowly realizes that they can no longer instinctively trust any other member of the group.  You feel the same feeling of desperation with the ISS crew, and the dread they feel wondering what might happen if Calvin ever makes it to Earth.  Easily one of the most terrifying aliens I've seen in the last few years.

Arachnid, from the film version of Starship Troopers

 
I've never read Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein, but I was really excited about the movie when it came out.  Unlike many purist fans of the novel, I enjoyed the film immensely.  The Arachnid soldiers were nasty, capable of dismembering a human in a matter of seconds.  Facing one is bad enough, but facing hordes of them is a completely different level of insanity.  The fact that they are more than 75% combat effective after losing a limb is a dire statistic.  I would not want to encounter a swarm of these things.  In the film, they were capable of dismembering soldiers in a matter of seconds.

The Thing, from John Carpenter's The Thing

Barlowe

"So, how do we know who's human?  If I was an imitation, a perfect imitation, how would you know if it was really me?" This is the question asked by Childs, one of the twelve members of an Antarctic research team which encounters a form-changing alien that can perfectly imitate any living organism.  This is an alien which can imitate your best friend perfectly, and you would have no idea.  When this movie came out, there was no way my parents would let me see it, so my first experience was the novelization by Alan Dean Foster, and it was excellent.  In fact, I think it portrayed the tension and desperation better than the movie at times.  Several years later, I came across the original short story by John W. Campbell Jr.  The depiction to the left is by Wayne Douglas Barlowe, from his book Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials.  It is based on the description in the story.  The appearance of the Thing in Carpenter's film is far more disgusting and frightening.  Even when the men realize that the alien is very likely standing among them, it's motive is unclear.  It wants to stay hidden.  Is it out of fear?  Does it want to take over the Earth?  Does it simply want to escape?  We learn almost nothing about the ship it arrived in, which stayed buried in the permafrost for at least 10,000 years.  Did its race build the craft?  Was it a prisoner on the ship?  All these unknowns add up to a chilling encounter that keeps you guessing who is the Thing until the very end.  What is really chilling about this alien is that it was imagined way back in 1938.  I have also included a picture of the original hardcover of the story.  In 2011 a prequel film was made, which was also called The Thing.  This was a prequel to the Carpenter film, and deals with the Norwegians from the beginning of the 1982 film - the original discoverers of The Thing.  In this film, we actually get to see inside the ship, but we don't learn much else - the alien pretty much remains an enigma.  Author Peter Watts wrote a short story called The Things, which tells the story of the 1982 film from the perspective of the alien. This is a very interesting story, and the thoughts and motivations of the alien are surprising, as are its history and perspective on the universe.  Worth your attention - if you can find it.  I also recently learned that there is a novel-length version of the original story, which is called Frozen Hell.  This is definitely one I'll be checking out.

There are many other aliens that I like, but this is still my main list of favorites.

What are your favorite aliens?

Book Review: Artemis, by Andy Weir

I absolutely LOVED The Martian - both the novel, and the Ridley Scott film adaptation.  So, naturally, I needed to read Weir's next book.  This is quite a different story.  While there are some science based elements to the story, and I learned something new about moon dust that I had never heard before, it is nowhere near the level of The Martian, which is almost like a documentary of the near future.  Artemis may have more in common with Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, than any other story which I've read - both are about colonies on the moon, and involve a struggle for control of the colony.  At least, as far as I can recall - I never finished the Heinlein book, as the pace was too slow for me, and the elements weren't as interesting (plus the fact that I'm very hit or miss with Heinlein - some I really liked, and others I hated with a passion).

Anyway, Artemis is about Jazz Bashara - a criminal of sorts who grew up on the moon after moving there when she was at the age of 6 with her father.  She has a typical poverty-level job (if I remember correctly, a delivery person for some kind of UPS-like organization), and makes extra money on the side by smuggling things into Artemis.  Nothing dangerous, like drugs or weapons, just things that people desire which may not be allowed, so by that standard Jazz is hardly a criminal.  And, she's inventive and prosperous - by undercutting all her competition, she's the only game in town, and people are willing to pay handsomely - money which Jazz is saving to somehow make a business which will make her wealthy.

As it turns out, there are three kinds of people on the moon.  The poverty-stricken, who do all the work locally, those who have become wealthy by offering services which have made them wealthy, legitimately or otherwise, and the super wealthy, who are typically tourists to who can afford to pay anything to take a vacation on the moon in luxury.

All of a sudden, Jazz's dream of being wealthy seems possible.  She is asked to perform a task that will make one of her wealthy customers more wealthy, while making herself rich as well.  Her task is a difficult one, but she formulates an excellent plan to pull it off.  And then, she finds herself pulled into a struggle for control of the moon's economy, and people are out to kill her.  The stakes continue to escalate, and ultimately Jazz isn't sure who she can trust.

I don't want to reveal too much, as it will spoil the story.  I will say that Jazz somewhat reminds me of the character Tavi in Jim Butcher's Codex Alera fantasy series, particularly in Book 1, Furies of Calderon.  Tavi is quite clever, and so is Jazz.

While not as scientifically riveting as The Martian, this is still a very entertaining and creative tale.

Highly recommended!

I really interested in what Mr. Weir will be doing next.

Book Review: Not Alone, by Craig A. Falconer

I came across this book in the Kindle store back when I first bought a Kindle - probably summer of 2016.  I was immediately interested in it, and purchased it.  It then got buried under a bunch of purchases of books my some of my favorite authors and I forgot about it.  I recently saw that a sequel has been published, which jogged my memory that I had this book on my reading list.  I also recently had a very busy period where I wasn't reading any novels at all, so I started it during a free moment.

Let me say that this book is not what I was expecting.  The back cover blurb indicates that Dan McCarthy discovers evidence of a government cover-up and his quest to force disclosure.  Given the books length, about 736 pages, I expected that this would be the smallest portion of the story - I expected the majority of it to deal with first contact.

This isn't the case - and that is not a bad thing.  This is a very different kind of first contact story - and it *is* a first contact story, sort of.  What do I mean by that?  Well, you'll just need to read the book - as I said, it is a very different treatment of the first contact theme.

The story is fast-paced.  Dan's accidental discovery of the evidence, his leak of of the information, and his path to forcing disclosure, unfolds over two weeks, and about 50% of the book.  The remainder of the book deals with the events that take place after disclosure, and this is where the plot becomes much more interesting (and it was already super engaging).

The chapters count down to disclosure, and then begin counting up once disclosure occurs (a mechanism you've probably seen in some other novels).  I'm not sure I understand the countdown measurement - it is not in days or hours, and there is no hint that I could find as to what the numbering stands for.

I don't want to reveal too much of the plot, but Not Alone is interesting and engaging from beginning to end, and it doesn't disappoint - quite the achievement when the story ended up being much different than I was expecting.  There are also some very unexpected surprises later in the story.  Remember the surprise in The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle?   (What, you haven't read it?  Remedy that immediately - you are missing out!)  There is an equivalent element of surprise to be found in Not Alone.

Overall this is a very pleasing story of a young man with his head in the stars who stumbles onto the opportunity to prove that his belief in UFO's and aliens is real, and chooses to act on it.  Very highly recommended!  I can't wait to check out the sequel and see how things ultimately get resolved.

As always, I'm interested in hearing from others.  If you have read this book and enjoyed it I'd be interested in hearing from you.

Book Review: Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

This is the first novel I've read by John Scalzi.  When it was nominated for the Hugo award for best novel in 2006, I checked it out, and read the first few pages.   For some reason, I wasn't interested.  Perhaps I felt this had too much in common with Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers.  Perhaps the book started with too much of the first person prose and very little dialogue that I typically have difficulty with.  I can't really remember.  But, as has happened all too frequently since I purchased a Kindle, I managed to get a good price on this book so I decided to check it out.

On the surface, the theme of this story is very similar to Starship Troopers, but there are many differences, both in the story and in the protagonist.  In Starship Troopers, Juan "Johnny" Rico graduates from high school and follows a classmate into the military.  He then goes through a brutal boot camp, and then heads off to fight the "bugs" which have been attacking Earth.  I'll leave other differences for the reader to discover.

In Old Man's War, John Perry is a 75-year-old man with a lifetime of experience, who then joins the military to extend his life.  He must serve for a mandatory 2 years, and a potential maximum (and,  highly likely to be imposed) of 10 years of service protecting human colonists from all the other lifeforms in the universe (and there are several of them - some of which list human beings as a delicacy on their menu).  There is also an interesting twist on who can qualify as a colonist, which I won't reveal.

This story qualifies as "military" science fiction.  I don't reach much of that, and frankly I don't care for most of it.  I did finally get around to reading The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman, a few years ago, and I found it painful to get through.  It had some interesting concepts, which is why I continued reading it, but it really wasn't for me.  I also tried reading a few other series, but for the most part they weren't for me.  One exception was The Lazarus War:  Artefact, by Jamie Sawyer.  I enjoyed this, but did find it a bit hard to get through.  Some of it was the pacing of the book.  You can find my review here.

So, why did I take a chance on this book, other than the price?  Well, I'm 11 years older, so my perspectives are changing as I get older.  I should have taken a chance on this book earlier.  While the first few pages are kind of slow, with John Perry giving some of his background, but it turns out he's kind of a funny guy.  The story is told from Perry's point of view, and immediately the character reminded me of the character Colonel Miles Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang, in James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar.  Perry seems very focused on the things he speaks about.  The initial discussions he has with fellow recruits about the Colonial Union(CU) and the Colonial Defense Force(CDF) is interesting (early on, it is the discussion of the elevator ride into orbit).

The blurb on the cover reminds me of the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.  Essentially, the number of planets which are habitable are few and far between.  In the film, Keanue Reeves' character states that humanity is destroying our own planet, and due to the limited number of livable worlds in the universe, this can't be allowed.  In Old Man's War, it means that aliens are willing to fight over habitable worlds - regardless of whether the world is already inhabited,  Humanity must play the same game and expand their territory at all costs or risk extinction.

The technology in this story is fascinating.  Soldiers get a weapon that is somewhat reminiscent of the Lawgiver II from the Sylvester Stallone film Judge Dread - but much cooler.  And the rejuvenation process is equally cool (and was somewhat unexpected for me).  The CDF battle cruisers move around the universe using "skip" drives, and we learn a few details around how these drives work.  The way skip drives work was a surprise to me, and I'll leave it to the reader to learn about it for themselves when they read the book.

There are some very interesting alien races in this story as well.  In particular, the Consu stand out from the others.  They behave strangely and speak cryptically.  For me, this was very reminiscent of the Vorlon race in the TV series Babylon 5 (the Vorlon's rarely said anything which could be immediately understood; sometimes, but not always, whatever was said became clear later on - sometimes several episodes away, or in a few cases almost a season later).

The story is told in three parts.

Part 1 is about John's recruitment, which is an interesting process.  Those on Earth know very little about the CDF, aside from the fact that they keep the best technology for themselves and don't share it with Earth.  People are not allowed to enlist until they reach the age of 75.  Everyone expects that once they join, they will be made young again - after all, geriatric troops won't be able to put up much of a fight.  Of course, nobody on Earth knows much about what this really means, but John finds out soon enough.

Part 2 focuses on John's training at boot camp, and the details of several short missions.

Part 3 details a very important mission which is a followup to a previous mission which is completed at the end of part 2.  The focus is around some very dangerous information about one of the alien races which is in conflict with humanity, and resolving this crisis.

Overall, this was a fantastic read, and a wonderful first effort from an author, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys science fiction.  I should be kicking myself for not reading this book when I first saw it back in 2006!  I'm sure I'll be checking out other books in the series at some point.

As always, I'm interested in hearing from my readers.  If you have read this book, I'm interested in what you thought of it.  If my review impacted your decision to read this book, I'd be interested in hearing about that as well.