More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

A Trail Through Time – Max Runs for Her Life, Saves the Day and Grows Up Jodi Taylor

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Last we saw Madeline Maxwell, historian at the St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, she was sprawled on the carpet, bleeding from a should-have-been fatal sword thrust through her heart, courtesy of Agincourt.  A Trail Through Time picks up directly after A Second Chance, with Max solidly in a parallel world, one where she had died and Leon lived, one with virtually the same people, with similar personalities as she knew.

Leon Farrell owns the carpet Max just bled all over and he isn’t sure what to think.  Sure, he’s delighted to have Max – any Max – back, but he knows darn well that his Max is dead from carbon monoxide and cremated.  Nonetheless Leon jumps to save this new Max when mysterious men in black arrive at his home in Rushford, and he whirls her off in his own personal time pod.

Thus begins a wild ride through time as Max and Leon desperately search for a place where they can relax, get to know each other and Max can heal her chest wound.  Unfortunately the men in black are the Time Police, a group that Max’s original world never had, and they are after Leon.  Max and Leon escape by a whisker in ancient Greece, in frozen London, in ancient Thebes, and finally realize that the Time Police find them so easily because Max has a tag in her arm.  Max comes up with a brilliant plan to take care of this problem (which doesn’t work) and finally Leon brings her to St. Mary’s for medical care.

At St. Mary’s we learn the real problem is that the original Max, now dead, brought Helios back from Troy and someone ratted her out to the Time Police.  Bringing someone from their time is a capital offense and the Police are determined to see the leadership of this St. Mary’s executed and replaced by a more amenable team lead by none other than our old friend Isabella Barclay.

Plot Holes

Just like all the other St. Mary’s novels A Trail Through Time moves so quickly that we run right by most plot holes.  Just ignore these when you see them and you can enjoy the story!

First, Max finds that B**hFace Barclay is still around and had supposedly been the original Max’s good friend.  We get hints from several of the more astute St. Mary’s people that Miss Barclay is maybe not so liked and trusted as she thinks, but the woman is still there while in Max’s original world Miss Barclay was kicked out when she marooned people back with the dinosaurs and tried to usurp the directorship.  Max comments a couple times about the dinosaur rescue in later novels, so we know people were marooned in this world too.  How is Miss Barclay not tainted by her role?  We don’t know.

In Max’s original world Leon had rescued Helios, bringing him to the future St. Mary’s where he grew up, then later to our time where Helios runs an inn.  In this alternate world Max did the rescue and only a few years have passed, yet Helios is grown up.

Characters

Max is growing up!  (Finally.)  She tells Leon that nothing, absolutely nothing, can be as terrible as seeing him dead.  Leon feels the same about her.  This grief and miraculous do-over help Max max mature.  She is hurt and upset that the St. Mary’s people don’t accept her at first, although this is understandable given they all grieved for the original Max.  Max knows this in her head but her heart suffers.

Max still doesn’t trust people easily and accuses Dr. Bairstow and Tim Peterson of wanting to maroon her in the 14th century, and accuses Mrs. Partridge (aka Kleio the Muse of History) of sacrificing Max to the Time Police in order to allow the others to go free.  Neither suspicion makes much sense (especially the second one) but that’s Max.

A few of the other characters take on more life in A Trail Through Time.  Professor Rapson and Dr. Dowson emerge from their stereotype caricatures to be real people, friends and colleagues to each other and the first to welcome Max as herself, not as a sort-of substitute.

Overall

A Trail Through Time is the story of Max rebuilding her life in this new world, creating friends and establishing herself as a person.  In the sense of a new beginning it has echoes of Book 1, Just One Damned Thing After Another, but with more terror, more threats, much more to lose.  In Book 1 Max could lose herself and her life.  Now she could lose her life and those of people she loves, Major Guthrie, Dr. Bairstow, Tim Peterson and Leon, and see St. Mary’s destroyed.  That makes the story more believable as it heightens the suspense and the conflicts.

I am glad to see the characters develop and adding the Time Police adds more opportunity for conflict and threat.  Clive Ronan is a serious opponent but he is a fraction of the problem the Time Police could be. Overall this is an excellent addition to an already good series.

5 Stars

Well That Was Fun… We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1)

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We are Legion (We are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) is a lot of fun but read the caveats before you buy.

Plot and World Building

Bob sells his software company and signs up to be frozen for eventual resuscitation just before he dies in a traffic accident.  He wakes up about 100 years later, this time as a “replicant”, a personality and mind uploaded into a computer program.  He learns he has zero rights and has the opportunity to become an interstellar probe pilot – or be turned off.  To add challenge, there are 5 other replicants who have the same opportunity.

Bob’s a competitive guy and decides to win.

Bob’s new world is grimmer than ours.  The US no longer exists and is now a theocracy centered in the Pacific Northwest.  Brazil among other countries is also building probes using artificially recreated personalities and the world is in an arms race.  Bob manages to get off the planet and launch towards Epsilon Eridanni just ahead of Brazil’s attack.

Here’s where Bob’s software background gets handy.  Bob is able to weed through his programming and remove several backdoor control points and rebuild himself as autonomous.  He decides to go ahead with the mission anyway.

Bob gets to his target system and explores a bit, encounters the murderous Brazilian probe, fights the Brazilian off.  Bob clones himself and puts his copies – who are also autonomous individuals – into their own spaceships.  Howard and Will return to Earth.  Good thing too, because one of the Brazilian software clones is slinging asteroids – big ones, planet killer types – at Earth.  Over 95% of humanity has died off from the prior wars and now the Brazilian’s asteroid attack will kill everyone left.

Much of the plot after this point turns on how to rescue the remaining people on Earth:  Where to move them to, how to get them there, who first, so on.

Parallel plots center around Bob and the main clone characters.

Characters

Bob is the main character in this novel of course, but he also clones himself and makes Bill and Homer, then many more generations.  Each has slightly different interests but all are quirky, nerdy types, the ones you figure will keep their teen senses of humor forever.

Bob discovers the Deltans, a race of primitive folks just beginning their stone age and is fascinated with the culture.

Will aka Riker (one of too many Star Trek jokes) and Howard  go back to Earth and spend their time helping the folks left, and eventually to evacuate them.

Bill is actually a more interesting character than Bob.  Bill tinkers and explores and develops faster-than-light communication in this first book and later develops other neat whiz-bang things.  Bill also acts as the hub for the Bobiverse as it grows to include about 100 Bobs.

Dennis Taylor does a decent job showing us the different Bob variants although he also does a fair amount of telling.  It seemed like he created so many variants mostly to have a lot of names around; we have 3 or 4 main Bobs in this first book and a few more in each of the sequels that play noticeable roles.

I suspect it’s kind of hard to have a lot of character development when your character is a computer program.  The basic premise is that the program is scanned from Bob’s brain and contains his personality along with generic computer capabilities and this personality can adapt and change.  Still, character development is somewhat thin in this and successive books in the series.

Caveat

As I said in the title of this post, We are Legion (We are Bob) and its sequels are a lot of fun.  The Bobs explore our tiny neighborhood in the galaxy; they meet new civilizations and peoples; they rescue humanity from death.  The book is fast-paced and overall most enjoyable.

However.  The author apparently believes that religious belief is ridiculous and that there are enough Christian nutcases to go create a theocracy.  It reminded me of some of the more fervid nightmares people foamed about during Bush’s presidency. Taylor inserts Trump into the story a bit too.

I don’t know whether the author is an atheist; to me this attitude was just a backdrop for the story.

There is also a lot of gee-whiz going on.  Bob tells us that the basic prerequisites for interstellar work are the 3-D printer and intelligent software.

The 3-D printer is souped up version, able to layer individual atoms to build anything from elaborate computer cores sufficient to hold a Bob clone, to new spacecraft, to bombs.  About the only thing it can’t print is something alive or food.  (I think its problem with food may be more because it would be grossly inefficient rather than technically impossible.)  Now years ago I was a research chemist.  Just because you stick two atoms next to each other, even if aligned just exactly right, Mother Nature is stubborn and you might not get the chemical reaction you want.  I don’t see how a 3-D printer could assemble atoms into plastic, for example.  (Today’s printers today use plastic as raw material.)

Even if you believe the 3-D printer could assemble mining robots, etc., etc., to go build a new spacecraft with computer core, I think the timescale is off.  In the book Bob/Bill/Howard are independent within a few years.   That brings me to the final point, the idea of copying someone into a computer.  Frankly I don’t believe it.  Perhaps it might be possible to load memories into non-brain storage, but I don’t see how copying memories will create a personality, one that is inherently a person, not a program.

If you can ignore the gosh-darn technological wonder doings and don’t take the idiotic anti-Christian backdrop personally then it’s a blast.  Don’t look for outstanding writing or subtle character building; this isn’t literature.  Instead enjoy for what this novel is, entertainment.

5 Stars for entertainment.

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Wow! Humor at Its Best – P. G. Wodehouse on Hoopla

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There is no one like P. G. Wodehouse.  No one has his combination of humor, plot, characters and language.  Not to mention the fun of reading about house parties in old castles, valets and butlers, ocean trips across the Atlantic, girls on the make, dressing for dinner, mad coincidences, traveling on the train (leaving just ahead of a wrathful aunt).

Our old library had about 50 Wodehouse novels and I read every one and bought more and read those too.  For years it seemed as if Barnes & Noble or Amazon stocked the same 50 or 60 novels that everyone has – Jeeves and Wooster stories, a few trips to Blandings Castle, Galahad Threepwood and his buddy Uncle Fred – but neglected many of his less well-known stories.

I’m so glad to see Hoopla offers many of these novels that weren’t readily available.  I’m borrowing one a month for now, such a treat.  Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble have many more Wodehouse masterpieces now.

The Gem Collector

Jimmy Pitt, once a distinguished safe cracker and jewel thief, now a distinguished rich baronet, is dining alone at the Savoy Hotel when he notices a young man at a nearby table who shows all the signs of not having his wallet.  Jimmy helps the fellow out.  This is how Jimmy meets Spencer Blunt, who just happens to be the son of Lady Jane Blunt, now married to Mr. McEachern, formerly a New York policeman.

Of course Lady Jane and her society don’t know that Mr. McEarchern was a policeman and believe his money came from Wall Street, which is only partially true, as he certainly got some bribes while on that exciting street.  McEarchern and Jimmy know each other (of course) and both know the other had been as crooked as could be, and both want to present reformed faces to the world.

Jimmy goes with Spencer to his mom’s and McEarchern’s home for an extended house party where he again meets Molly, McEarchern’s daughter.  As usual with Wodehouse we have assorted nasty characters, love interests and naturally, Spencer’s obnoxious aunt who owns a pearl collar supposedly worth 40,000 pounds, or $200,000 at the exchange rate of those days.  (This is roughly several million in today’s money.)

If you can see the plot thicken from here, then congratulations, you are a Wodehouse reader.

I thought The Gem Collector was a little more serious than some Wodehouse.  For example, Lady Jane is “drawn to Mr. McEarchern.  Whatever his faults, he had strength; and after her experience of married life with a weak man, Lady Jane had come to the conclusion that strength was the only male quality worth consideration.”  “She suspected no one.  She liked and trusted everybody, which was the reason why she was so popular, and so often taken in.”  McEarchern “had an excellent effect upon him (Spencer) but it had not been pleasant.”

Another character is a card shark who lives from house party to house party and preys on young men.

Both Jimmy and McEearchen are interesting people, as is Spike, Jimmy’s former sidekick now masquerading as his valet.  Will Jimmy restrain his love of fine jewels or will he once more give in and steal the pearls?  Will McEarchern manage to act the gentleman or will he get the horsewhip out for Jimmy?  Will Spike lose his accent?  (I wish.  Spike’s accent was the one negative in the story.)

5 Stars

A Damsel in Distress or No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

This is another romantic comedy with plenty of mistaken identities, meddlesome aunts and love triangles.  Our leading man, George Bevan, is an American playwright currently in London for his hit musical.  He meets Maud when she jumps in his taxi and things go sideways from there.

A Damsel in Distress is also a little bit more serious than most of Wodehouse’s books with all three romances a bit out of the ordinary.  Wodehouse shows real feelings with these characters.  People don’t spend the entire novel ducking aunts or getting clever or hiding behind the sofa; instead we see self-sacrifice and men risking social opprobrium to marry the ladies they love.

The story is still Wodehouse funny, but a bit less fluffy than the Jeeves stories.

Amazon offers A Damsel in Distress; currently the Kindle version is free.

4 Stars

The First Global Collapse: 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline

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1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History) by Eric Cline is both readable and scholarly, a difficult combination for any author.  Cline looks at the 300-500 years before 1177 BC and shows how ancient peoples interacted before several kingdoms mysteriously faded or collapsed around 1177 BC.

For example, he has an interesting chart showing the different individuals that Pharaohs and ancient rulers communicated with – based on actual letters kept in royal archives.  It is eye-opening to see Egyptians talking to Mitanni (northern Mesopotamia) and Cretans and Mycenaean (Greece) and Hittites (Turkey) and Canaanites (Israel, Syrian).  The different rulers addressed each other as “brother” if they were about the same rank, or as “father” or “son” if unequal.  It is fascinating to see who equated themselves with whom!

Rulers were not the only ones who communicated.  Traders sent vessels from the Ageaen to Egypt with luxury goods and even food and prosaic items, and used land routes to get tin from the Afghan mountains for bronze, the essential metal in these cultures.  Archaeology shows Egyptian walls painted with Cretan frescoes; finds Mycenaean beakers in the Near East; unearths Cypriot trading goods across the arc stretching from eastern Italy to the Babylonian cities.

I especially enjoyed Cline’s coverage of this Late Bronze Age culture that occurred about 1500 to 1200 BC.  He used this to show the backdrop for the collapse that occurred sometime around 1177 BC, the year the Egyptian pharaoh writes of the Sea People incursion.  Cline offers several theories for the fall of this interconnected civilization – after first showing that it was indeed a fall – and suggests that the barbarians were not the only cause.  He doesn’t land on any one reason and stresses that it is unreasonable to think Sea People invaders would be responsible equally for wrecking civilizations far inland such as the Kassite empire in Babylonia as for ruining Mycenaea and Ugarit (Syrian coast).

Climate change, drought, famine occurred around this time, but kingdoms had recovered from those before.  Invaders came before, but people had recovered.  Earthquakes happened before but people had recovered.  Yet something happened that caused about a dozen civilizations to contract and some even to collapse over a 10-30 year period.  Cline examines each possible reason for the collapse and rules each of them out as the sole cause.

Instead he posits that the sheer interconnectedness – the early globalization – of the late Bronze Age was part of its downfall.  Once one or two states fell into disarray then trade routes were hurt, possibly even cut completely, and the occasional drought and famine were exacerbated.  It is an interesting idea and one that implies we today need to be careful as we are even more globalized.

I highly recommend that you read the physical book and not the E version so you can flip between text and maps.

5 Stars

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General’s Legacy: Part Two, The Whiteland King Outstanding Fantasy from Indie Author Adrian Hilder

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It’s always delightful to find a new author to love, books to buy then snuggle up to read.  It doesn’t happen often enough.

Recently Adrian Hilder’s fantasy novel Inheritance, part 1 of The General’s Legacy made its way into my Kindle book pile.  I got it along with a hundred others via Instafreebie, most listed with only the cover so every pick was a guess and golly.

Authors’ newsletters clued me for which novels to read first.  All the shape shifter and vampire, YA romance went to the back of the pile, along with any promoted by newsletters that were incoherent, full of swear words or boring.  Hilder’s newsletter caught my eye because he sounded down to earth, authentic, humble yet confident that his work of love, Inheritance, is worth reading.

I agree. Inheritance is outstanding, especially for a newbie author.  Book 2, The Whiteland King, nearly matches it for quality and compelling reading.

Plot

The Whiteland King picks up immediately after Inheritance, with Valendo’s forces divided in two.  The larger group stays to defend the country from the undead army and ends up besieged in Dendra castle.  Prince Cory leads a tiny group into Nearhon to end the war.

The story moves fast. The plot is exciting enough to keep our interest and we aren’t sure how Cory will triumph or who will survive, or who will end the problem how with Nearhon’s lead mage, Magnar.

Whiteland King missed a couple opportunities to make more of the Dendra defenders under siege.  For example, the men fear the undead necromancer will re-animate any creature that dies, yet one horse dies and is not re-animated.  Despite the defenders being curious nothing happens about the horse.  I thought the author could have developed that into a little vignette, either explaining that the horse’s rider somehow left it immune to the necromancer, or that it indicated the sorcerer was absent.

The defenders’ situation was grim after a week or so, with their food stores destroyed, no feed for the horses, unable to sortie, unable to receive reinforcements or materiel from the outside.  The Cory narrative continues for about 10 days after this, so presumably the defenders had no relief.  I wondered a few times how they were doing, how they continued to survive the necromantic attacks.

Writing Style

The author develops three main points of view, the besieged defenders, Prince Cory’s band, and the Nearhon group of King Klonag, Magnar, Julia, Commander Brocksheer, easy to follow with smooth transitions.  We never wonder where we are as Hilder breaks the point of view changes into chapters and orients each one, e.g., “Resting his face against Sunny’s warm neck Cory…” followed next chapter by “King Sebastian watched…”

I admire Hilder’s ability to add small details into the main narrative flow.  He doesn’t sidetrack us with abrupt segues to tell us about the scenery or expand the minor characters; instead uses a phrase or two to show us.  This keeps the novel flowing.

For example, minor character Toldroy acts as a guide for about 3 pages.  We learn more about Toldroy when we find that “he kept some of the steps in the staircase loose so they creaked ensuring no visitor could arrive unannounced.”  That tells us about Toldroy:  He is more than he pretends, and he has good reason to be afraid, and we can feel the dark staircase and hear the creaks.

Whiteland King is the second book in The General’s Legacy and it combines with Inheritance to tell a complete story.  The two together have a beginning, middle and end.  The Afterword mentions a third book but I expect it is set later and has different challenges.

Characters

Julie shines in Whiteland King.  She shows courage, resourcefulness, dedication, honor, honesty, family devotion. Julia introduces us to a new character, Lyam Brocksheer, equally honorable and dedicated.  Neither is perfect so you know they could be real people.  Julie is impetuous; Lyam is willing to deceive his king when Klonag expects repugnant action.

We get a glimpse of Cory as a child and see a little why the General chose him and we see him grow as he faces what must be done.  Cory’s brother, King Sebastian, also sees what he must do, takes a deep breath and does it.

One of my favorite characters is Zeivite, Arch Mage of Valendo.  Through him we meet his daughter Petra who plays a major role in the plot but doesn’t take up a lot of room on the stage.  I expect we’ll see more of Petra in subsequent novels.

Just as with Inheritance the novel starts with a vignette that is incidental to the plot.  We meet Flynn, merchant and orphanage master, whom I hope to see again.  Flynn is interesting!

Petra’s reminiscences in the early vignette hint at another mage, a mysterious bald man who is an instructor at Petra’s school.  He’s another one that is likely to show up in later books.

It was refreshing that neither Inheritance nor Whiteland King used swearing or blasphemy and most of the older characters are married and happy about it.  I’m always glad to find a book with decent moral attitudes, sadly harder to find now.  Hilder is matter of fact about God and heaven and hell; he doesn’t preach, it’s just assumed that of course God exists.  I liked that.

Setting

Inheritance moved slower in the beginning, with people going about their daily life, romance and courtship, government, family worries.  Hilder spent a little of the slow period lovingly showing us Valendo; we got to know its green hills and waterfalls, the towns and castles.

Hilder took a different approach with Whiteland King.  He bundles the setting description into the narrative.  It doesn’t work quite as well as a method to show us the landscape, but it also allows setting to get out of the way and let plot and character run the show.  Part of Cory’s mission trudges through a high plateau in a winter blizzard.  Hilder could have bored us to tears with the snow, or spent a paragraph or so to help us feel the cold.  What he actually did was to skip right by the winter scene; we read once that Cory was miserably cold and uncomfortable huddling in a yurt.  That felt rushed.

Setting helps us feel and experience alongside the characters.  Too much description and we’re bored and too little and the story loses some of its emotional impact.

Emotion

Whiteland King has a tiny bit less emotional punch than Inheritance.  We feel tension, worry, love, concern, fear, all tempered by the fact that the Valendo people have no choice.  They either move forward or they die.  The do-or-die nature actually calms the heart, allowing the characters to still feel – and us along with them – but also to shove their feelings to the back and get on with the task.

Summary

I rated Inheritance a solid 5 stars, and would give Whiteland King the same.  I thought Whiteland King was just a hair less polished than Inheritance, as it felt a bit rushed and I would have liked to see more of the Dendra Castle group, but overall it is excellent, well written, with solid plot and people.  The setting and emotion were less solid or intense, still very very good.

Sometimes new authors put their heart into their first novel and don’t have much left for the second.  Hilder delivers outstanding fantasy in both novels in the series and I look forward to reading the third one when it comes out.

5 Stars