On the 24th
of March I had a quick look at Amazon’s Kindle books, specifically
the top 10 from new releases (30 and 90 days) and hot new releases.
Disregarding things that looked really not my cup of tea and later
entries in series, I noted a few down and gave the samples a quick
going over. Here are my thoughts.
I found
this near(ish) future sci-fi easy to read, with multiple POVs and an
interesting premise. A telescope on the Moon (now colonised)
discovers alien ships heading to Earth. The telescope’s director
announces it publicly, and the seven Great Powers have six months to
decide how to react. There were a few small problems with typos (and
clunky writing/repetition, one line describing two nations as firm
allies, then the next saying one might be a slight ally to the other)
but nothing that got in the way.
A small crew of humans
have developed travelled, mostly in stasis, aboard a less than
perfect ship to a different star, and come back. Due to dilation of
time, just over eight years has passed for the crew, but nearly a
thousand has for Earth. What will they find? Upon returning to the
solar system, problems arise with the ship, and the only signal they
can get is a repeating beacon from Mars. Can they decelerate to
actually return to Earth? What’s the state of mankind? It’s
possible the author deliberately curtailed the sample to avoid giving
away whether or not, and how (if so), they get back to Earth. Very
early on is there are quite a few character names thrown in at short
order but that shakes itself out fairly soon, and the crew reactions
to the difficult situation help to set them apart. I was left wondering how things pan out.
NB I cheated with this
one. The fifth and final book, lacking a subtitle, appeared on the
list and I decided to check out the first.
Unusually for fiction,
this uses blank lines rather than
indented paragraphs. It doesn’t detract at all, just looks a bit
unusual at first. The opening story follows Ridmark and his family as
they attend a grand do. He and his wife Calliande recently lost their
newborn daughter, and Calliande leaves the house for the first time
in months to attend. All seems well, until an unexpected guest
arrives. Interesting setting, which seems to be a mix of high fantasy
and Roman/European history, but there is an awful lot of info-dumping
(much of which appears unnecessary) that bogs down the earliest part
of the story.
Told from multiple
POVs, this sci-fi sample is intriguing but also a little frustrating.
The story appears to cover the end of an interstellar war and a new
conflict emerging afterwards, but the sample feels too small to get
to grips with the premise. The writing style is well done and I
enjoyed what I read, but there wasn’t enough text there for me to
feel engaged with the story. It may well be a very good book, I just
wish there was more in the sample to gauge whether it was my cup of
tea or not.
Told from the single
perspective of Vekal, I really liked the sample of Blood and Sand.
It’s set, as you might expect, in a fantasy desert location.
Vekal’s a Sin Eater, a religious warrior-monk type of fellow who
can remove the sins from others to ease their passing into the
lovelier side of the afterlife, but who is nevertheless held in
contempt by those who serves. His city’s been overrun by barbarians
and his immediate task is to stop himself getting killed. Even in the
sample there are some plot twists and I like the way things are
going. The odd flashback helps add to Vekal’s character and break
the otherwise continuous narrative of what he’s doing, and the
action’s well told without being overdone. I may well buy this (and
it doesn’t hurt that it’s just 99p for the equivalent of 520
pages).
Quite a lot of good
stuff, and if I had to pick just one, it’d be Blood and Sand. Not only did I enjoy it the most, it’s very
reasonably priced.
Thaddeus
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