Book Review: Rosewater

Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry and the helpless—people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumored healing powers.

Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care to again—but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realization about a horrifying future.

Rosewater offers a fresh perspective on the alien contact sub-genre. It takes place in Nigeria with a cast of characters who are locals. America has gone dark, and no one knows why. The remaining world powers keep their distance, though at least one would like to learn more about the alien biodome. But they're on the periphery at best. Instead, it's the Nigerian government that has a vested interest in this strange visitor that appears to be both benevolent and threatening.

The story is completely told from Kaaro's POV. He's a sensitive, someone who can read minds thanks to the xenosphere, an effect created by microbes and spores emanating from the biodome. There are a couple of timelines that the narrative switches back and forth from, and one of them involves Kaaro's youth when he stumbled upon his abilities. It turned him into a thief. We learn how he honed his abilities, his recruitment into a government spy agency (S45), and his day job in xeno-security where he defends a bank from criminals who use their sensitivity to hack bank accounts.

I usually don't enjoy stories involving any super-mental capabilities (telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, etc.), but the way Thompson establishes how sensitives work with the xenosphere, the limitations placed on it, and countermeasures, it was something that I could get behind.

Kaaro is not without his flaws. In the oldest timeline, we endure his thieving. During the recruitment process, he's a coward and a womanizer. In the "current" timeline, he's a jaded, dour man in his 40s. We root for the younger Kaaro to grow up and the older Kaaro to stop being so cynical. Thompson does a great job with Kaaro's evolution, though I wanted one timeline to resolve itself before going to the next. But the way Thompson has the story structured, waiting for the big reveals turns out to be the best move.

I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

4 stars

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Book Review: Brothers

I wasn't planning on reading this book. While I enjoyed the first few Van Halen albums—I checked out after 1984—there are a lot more people further up on the fan spectrum than me. But a friend of mine loaned it to me, thinking that I might enjoy reading it (I'd loaned him Bruce Dickinson's What Does This Button Do?, so fair exchange). And yes, to some extent, I did enjoy reading it.

Alex takes a semi-chronological approach: how his parents met, the early years in Amsterdam, moving to America, and growing up in Pasadena with Ed. Music was a large part of the Van Halen brothers' lives growing up as their father played in jazz bands from before they were born. Another large part of their lives was alcohol, and they started young. Different times.

Alex goes to talk about the early formative years of the band, revealing the gradual evolution of what would become Van Halen. Fun Fact: David Lee Roth was the one who suggested they call themselves that. He thought their name sounded "strong" and had "power to it." Alex talks about each album, a little bit about recording, some more about touring and what it's like (for him) to be a musician. But the book pretty much ends with Roth's departure from the band.

Michael Anthony and Sammy Hagar are background figures. How the former wound up joining the band is there and the latter is suggested by Ted Templeman (producer) as a replacement for Roth when they went into the studio to record their first album. But that's it. And Gary Cherone doesn't even rate a mention. There are a few people that get discussed (particularly if they wrote a book or conducted an interview with a band member), but it's primarily Roth that gets the focus. Alex berates him in one paragraph and praises him in the next. It sounds sometimes like Roth was the third brother.

Alex pulls in a lot of quotes from other people. He admits this at the end of the book. He felt that they helped to jog his memory (He was 70 when he wrote this). After pulling the quote Alex responds to it. Sometimes it comes across as argumentative, but to be fair, he's just giving his side of things and he does give credit where its due.

I'd recommend this for Van Halen fans who want to know a bit more about the brothers' formative years, the first half dozen albums, and Alex's perspective on life with Ed, music, and the entertainment industry. People forget just how great a drummer he is, having been overshadowed by Ed. But he doesn't brag or begrudge Ed. You can tell how much he loved Ed, how much he loved playing music with him, and how much he misses him. While it would've been great to hear how certain songs came together, but it's like the old saying, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." You pretty much had to be there.

3 1/2 stars

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I Hate Marketing - Getting Reviews

I hate marketing; I really do. But I know that "publish it and they will come" is not an effective strategy. I've tried it; many many indie authors have tried it.

So we try to get some reviews. Maybe we ask a friend or they just do it without asking because they realize how difficult it is to get reviews. But that quickly dries up, so we move on.

We submit our ebooks and physical copies—only if necessary—to those few review sites willing to actually read and review indie published books. There aren't many, and so for every book they review they have to say no to a hundred more. I know this firsthand as that's what we had to do here when we were open to submissions—something I hope to do again someday. And after a couple of years, well, you get burned out, or there just isn't time as real life gets in the way. Something has to give, and writing free book reviews is an easy choice to get the ax.

Now some entrepreneurial types figured out how to keep writing book reviews for indie authors. You could pay someone to give you a five-star review on Amazon. Maybe they had a few sock puppets to give you several five-star reviews. Some people did it themselves. Once it got out of control and reviews on Amazon didn't mean shit, Amazon cracked down and only allowed verified purchasers to write reviews. Does it still go on? Maybe. I don't know. But it gave paid reviews a stigma. How would you know if the review was honest?

Well, some people figured out how to do it the right way. I think it might be the norm now. I recently went through the list of reviewers at the Indie View, and there were a lot of paid review sites. But I wasn't ready for that yet.

But the free indie reviews list for sci-fi was short. There were plenty that were MIA or closed to submissions. I did manage to come up with a list of several sites and submitted my requests. That was July. Only one person has replied to say that they're interested. One site auto-replied to tell me to watch their site. Maybe they'd review it; maybe they wouldn't. The rest of them didn't respond at all. I'm not surprised by it really, nor can I blame them. They're probably inundated with requests and don't have the time to reply to them all. I get that. Sometimes people can be rude when you reject their book review request.

I realize that I'm going to have to open my wallet. I've got a debit card for switching my ISP and commiting to an extended period of time. It's found money. But I have to be smart with how I'm going to spend it on marketing. A few indie authors have shared how fast that ad dollar disappears. So I'm going with the biggest bang for the buck. Goodreads (owned by Amazon) is having a giveaway sale. I can give away 100 ebook (Kindle) copies to GR readers (that know to look for giveaways) for $99. The impression I get is that if I get five reviews out of that, it's a success. It runs for the month of September, so I'll report back to let you know how I did.

Want to read Armistice Day? Visit this page during the month of September to enter for a chance to win.

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Book Review: Swords Against Wizardry

This is the fourth book in the series and it contains four stories.

The first story is "In the Witch's Tent," and while it has some humorous aspects, it really just serves as a preamble to the next story.

And that story is "Stardock." Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser embark on an expedition to climb one of the highest mountain ranges in the world in search of a fabled treasure. It is said that the mountain range is so high that the gods used to dwell there and launched the stars into the night sky from the tallest peak. The gods used gems as models for the stars and then tossed them aside when they were finished.

This expedition is Fafhrd's idea, him being accustomed to cold laden lands and climbing icy peaks. Mouser is skeptical, but agrees to go anyway. Joining them is Hrissa the snow cat, who helps with the hunting and the fighting.

The journey makes up a good deal of the story. Leiber goes into so much detail describing climbing up the cliffs, dealing with the cold, and traversing the frozen wastes that I couldn't help but feel that he had firsthand knowledge mountain climbing, but I have no idea if he truly did.

The altitude, cold, and dwindling provisions lead Mouser to hallucinations which he dares not share with Fafhrd. But as they persist, he can't help but feel that they're real.

The third story is "The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar." Our heroic pair have set out to sell their most recent haul, but each decides to outdo the other by selling their respective share to a jeweler or fence that each feels will give him the best price.

Women in the Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories to this point are typically of the mother, maiden, crone variety, with maiden being the most common. But in this story, Leiber breaks out of the pattern that he's set and gives us female characters who can stand on their own.

The last story is "The Lords of Quarmall," a novella. Our heroes have had a bit of a spat and set off on their own for a while. Unbeknownst to them, each has been recruited by one of the sons of the Lord of Quarmall to serve as his champion. Both sons are adept sorcerors who despise one another. There's something of a "cold war" going on between them. Each has about a dozen sorcerors who cast spells attacking the other or defending their liege. Neither one is worth rooting for, and each of our heroes grows disillusioned with the job they've taken on. That leads to a bit of mischief. Ultimately, the cold war turns hot.

Besides the obvious familial intrigue, Lieber's Quarmall is a place where dread lurks in dark corners and forgotten rooms. The enslaved are not much more than zombies, forced to spend their lives (eternity perhaps) serving their master's needs, shambling on treadmills that turn fans that keep the air circulating in the forboding depths.

A solid collection of tales in the Fafhrd & Gray Mouser annals.

4.25 stars

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Book Review: Footfall

This is another entry in the alien invasion genre, one of the longest running plots in science fiction. War of the Worlds, probably the most well known work in this category, first appeared in print in 1897 (the novel in 1898). Hollywood spawned too many alien invasion movies to count in the 1950s and 60s. After a bit of a break—disaster movies and sci-fi adventures dominated the 70s—the sub-genre diversified. Some aliens were just stopping by to say "Hi" (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Starman), while some were here to eat us (numerous horror movies). Footfall stuck to the invasion part, but mixed things up a bit.

Footfall was published in 1985, takes place in 1995, but feels like 1975. How do I mean that? Culturally. It's a vibe I get. Men are men, and women need men. Everyone is either getting laid or deciding if they should get so-and-so in the sack. It doesn't matter that the aliens are bombing the place; people are sizing up members of the opposite sex for their nookie potential. And in a scene both funny and cringey, the aliens, while raiding Earth, raid a movie rental store and grab some porn. The aliens watch the porn and are confused by it, demanding their human prisoners to explain it to them. Not that the aliens were prudes, they were just as obsessed with their mating season as the humans with their... well, I guess we don't have a "season."

It also feels like it was written for the big screen or maybe a TV series. It has a huge cast full of stereotypes with no real character development. There's a bit of bloat to it with dialogue that one might expect in a screenplay, particularly near the end with endless comm chatter. With proper editing this probably could've been 100 pages shorter. Definite popcorn material.

I initially read this in the 80s as a teenager. I liked it then, but I don't like it as much now. The aliens were cool, even if they were just baby elephants with bifurcated trunks. There was a concerted effort into developing their culture. They weren't an all-knowing sophisticated race—they seem to have stumbled upon the technology that enabled them to cross the interstellar void. Their dealings with humans left them stressed. Some of their soldiers seemed to be getting PTSD. Their confusion over how humans behave showed that they really didn't do their homework. If the whole story had been them trying to figure out humans and how to conquer them, it would've made for a more enjoyable story.

3.5 stars

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More eBook Formats for Gateway to Empire

Well, it took far longer than expected, but Gateway to Empire is now available in other ebook formats besides Kindle. If you want it on the Nook, click here. For all other ebook formats, head over to Books2Read.com and choose your preferred platform. But if print is still your thing, well, there's that too.

And when you're done, a rating or a review would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
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Book Review: The Pride of Chanur

When Tully, a fugitive from a spaceship captured by the arrogant, thieving, rodent-like Kif, takes refuge on the Pride of Chanur, a merchant vessel belonging to a clan of the lion-like Hani, Pyanfar Chanur, its captain, gives him shelter, in spite of all the dangers she and her crew will face.

I remember seeing this offered in the science-fiction book club that I was subscribed to in the 80s. For some reason— probably financial as high school me didn't have much money—I never picked it up. So when a local used bookstore went out of business and was selling off their inventory, I snatched it (along with several other books). I wish I hadn't waited so long.

The story is told from the viewpoint of Pyanfur, and I think it's a great idea. Humans are the alien here. When Tully shows up on her ship, she initially mistakes him for an intruder and thus her claws are out. She has no idea if he's a wild animal or not. When he starts writing something in his own blood, it dawns on her and her crew that this naked creature is a sentient being, alone and afraid. Some protective instinct is triggered inside of her, and she orders that he be treated for his wounds. It's a decision that she constantly wrestles with, for it puts her and her crew in danger. The Kif consider Tully to be their property and demand that she return "it" to them. She's no bleeding heart, but it strikes Pyanfur as wrong, and she strives to prove that Tully is sentient and deserves the rights that all sentients of the Compact—a trade agreement among several civilizations—enjoy.

Pyanfar knows that she needs allies. The way home is a long one, and the Kif have faster ships than hers. She's also outnumbered; the Hani are a feudal society and thus not all clans are willing to set aside rivalries when the threat is from another species. Pyanfar has to negotiate with other species, convince some of them not only of Tully's sentience but value as a potential trading partner once proper contact with his homeworld is established.

Communication is as much an obstacle as the Kif gauntlet. Even though Tully is an avid pupil—he realizes that he can't plead his case if no one understands him—it takes some time before he can communicate with the Hani. And even then, there's difficulty. But even among the established species of the Compact, communication is difficult. Different larynx shapes make speaking awkward. Short sentences dominate conversations. There's a lot of repetition. While there are machines to help with the process, Star Trek's universal translator does not exist. Still, when there's money to be made, people try to find a way to communicate.

I really enjoyed this story. I would've liked more world-building, but the way the story unfolds, there's really no time to dwell on that. It's very much a novel where everyone is living in the moment, trying to survive. While I appreciate shining a spotlight on the difficulty of interspecies communication, sometimes it was a bit cumbersome to read, not to mention repetitive when Pyanfar needed to get a point across. But those are just quibbles. It's definitely a classic sci-fi novel worth checking out.

4 stars

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