OYENTE

Douglas Sundseth

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Strong and atmospheric suspense

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-10-25

Dick Francis novels all reflect his experience as a jockey, telling stories about the inside of the horse racing business in a way that only another insider can. Francis's horseracing world is often, and his protagonists are usually voices of honor in a wilderness of corruption. This book is typical in that regard.

The protagonist, Jonah Dereham, is a retired jockey, and like many retired jockeys, it was the rigors of the track that caused his retirement. He has become a bloodstock buyer, working on commission. He is honest and hardnosed enough not to yield to threats, which, since this is a suspense novel, are rather thick on the ground.

The protagonist and the supporting characters are drawn very believably, with quirks and flaws that give them life on the page. The villains have believable motives; they're not villains only because they are evil.

The plot moves quickly, and while I figured out the final villain before the end, I didn't think his identity obvious enough to be a problem for the story.

Francis's work seems to be criminally underrepresented in the conversations about suspense and crime writers. (Perhaps it's just that I move in the wrong circles.) This is a short book, and, like the other Francis books I've read, very much worth the time. Recommended.

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Routine Suspense

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-09-25

Straightforward action/suspense with the usual multiply blinded plot.

The flow of the plot is good, with very little dead space and good progression from scene to scene. The plot itself is relatively dumb. There's not much reason for Reznick to be involved and even less for him to stay involved. And the final reveal is incredibly clichéd.

The action scenes are believable and compelling, with no obviously bad decisions by the author.

The character work is fairly well done (leaving aside the motivations of, well, nearly everyone). Once you accept the premises, the character progressions are entertaining.

With a more sensible overall plot, this would be a 4-5 star book, but as is, it's just an average suspense story. If you like suspense, there's a good chance you'll like this book, but it will never be especially memorable.

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Excellent Political/Military SF

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-09-25

The decadence of the Terran Republic (not to be confused with their bitter enemy, the Terran League) has finally triggered an existential threat from the people it has oppressed in the course of 60 years of war with the League. The series of events begun in volume one of this series is devolving to a full-blown civil war. The timing of the war is especially inopportune, since the war with the League is continuing, and the League is supported by a nearby alien empire.

The Republic's oligarchs have determined to exterminate the threat from the worlds led by Terrence Murphy, the hero of the previous book.

This book is less tightly focused on Murphy, spending more time with his allies and subordinates, which allows for a rather more intimate view of the events here. There are several well-handled fleet battles, main villains whose motivations make sense, and some good development of both the political situation and the focus characters.

This is more of a plot-driven story than a character-driven story, as is typical of novels of politics and grand strategy, though there are excellent character moments.

This is very much a series in the vein of the Honor Harrington series, with both the virtues and faults of that series. If extensive descriptions of space battles and political machinations are the thing you are looking for, this would be an excellent choice. Fortunately, I'm looking for exactly that. Highly recommended.

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Slow and generic

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
1 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-07-25

15% of the way through this book, I have decided to abandon it. For some books, that wouldn't be enough to make an informed decision. For this book, though, that's about 50,000 words. If you can't catch my attention in the time it would take some writers to finish an entire novel, I'm afraid that I don't much care to find out if another 50,000 words will help.

We have several viewpoint characters: an astronomer, a Socialist terrorist, a police officer, several mildly corrupt politicians, an explorer/glider pilot, and a retired starship pilot. None of them have done anything interesting and none of them have displayed much in the way of personality or agency.

The purported subjects of this book, two star systems that have disappeared, perhaps behind Dyson spheres or forcefields, have been mentioned a few times, with vague intimations of peril. But virtually nothing has been done other than to say, "We should definitely investigate; let's build a starship." Oh, all those characters have done things, but nothing much has seemed to forward anything resembling a plot.

The setting is a rather generic corporate-controlled empire with suggestions of authoritarianism. There is some examination of how anti-agathics might affect the way that people think, especially as regards willingness to take risks. And there are trains that run from inhabited planet to inhabited planet through stable wormholes, which is at least interesting. Other than those things, this might be the most generic setting for an SF novel that I've read. There are extended descriptions of various places, describing the flora, the geography, and the skies, but none of the descriptions seems important to the story.

And the writing feels like rather quotidian 1960s--1970s, universe-spanning, high-concept SF, which is to say that the people and setting are largely props rather than integral parts of the story.

Fundamentally, there is nothing here that I actually care about. This book was going off of Audible+ soon, so I decided to read it now. Perhaps it was that I wasn't ready for it or perhaps it's just not a book for me. But I have no desire to continue this book now or later. From other reviews, there's something here for some audiences, but I'm clearly not a member of any of them. Not recommended.

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Unsympathetic Urban Fantasy

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
1 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-06-25

After the events of the first book in the series, our hero(?) has even more problems in his life. He's borderline stalking his ex, he's "married" to a supernatural power that he doesn't like or respect, and he's haunted by the ghost of his former best friend.

The setting is still basically generic LA, with magic. And the power of the magic seems to be growing exponentially.

We have a couple of new antagonists, who might be working as agents for somebody else or for themselves. There are several supernatural beings with ambiguous motives. And there are new and old allies who only want to kill Carter part of the time.

The plot seems more confusing than the plot of the first novel, and I found myself losing interest at several points during the read. This might have been purely a function of my increasing detachment from the series. The protagonist is written so as to be able to avoid the consequences of his actions trivially, using stickers, a Sharpie, and magic, which reduces much of the plot to the background. The book ends with a big revelation that didn't really make mechanical sense from elements of the story, but which did make thematic sense.

The protagonist seems to be campaigning throughout the book to become even less sympathetic to the reader, stealing whatever is convenient without consideration of his victims and alienating everyone who might be an ally.

After the first book in this series, I was hesitant to continue, because it didn't work especially well for me. After two books, that opinion is reinforced and I won't be reading any further. I don't care to spend any more time with this protagonist or in this world. YMMV.

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Horror-Adjacent Urban Fantasy

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-06-25

Eric Carter is a necromancer, not so much in the "Raising Armies of Zombies" sense as in the "Spirit Whisperer" sense. He was run out of Los Angeles fifteen years before this book, and has now been drawn back by the murder of someone formerly close to him.

In this setting, as is common in urban fantasy, many of the characters and creatures of myth are real, but largely unknown to the general public. And wizards walk among normal humans without acknowledgement.

The plot is serviceable, but there's a bit much convenient revelation of plot points whose existence isn't signaled until the point arrives in the story. The setup and payoff of the plot are both fairly strong, and there's definite emotional impact to the ending. The pacing is good, keeping the story moving throughout.

The setting is largely a frame for the story; there's not much that really ties the story down in time or place. The supernatural is overwhelmingly powerful, to include the protagonist.

Which brings me to my biggest problem with this series: normal people are just pawns on a gameboard, never really seeming to make any impact on the story. And the protagonist treats them that way, stealing whenever he wants to and using his magic to avoid any repercussions. This both makes him very unsympathetic and reduces the impact of the series. When most people are just stage dressing, there's not much to anchor the reader to the story.

I know several people who have really liked this series, so maybe it's just me, but I think this is unlikely to become a favorite. It's not better than "OK" for me.

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Decent Mecha SF

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-04-25

After a major-power war, the winning side sends an expedition to reinforce a new colony on an extra-solar planet. When they arrive, it seems that something has happened to the original colonists.

The reinforcing expedition has little in the way of weapons to deal with the newly discovered threat and the captain of the ship delivering them obstructs the colonists at every turn.

One of the two viewpoint characters is a discharged military hero, who takes up the challenge of investigating the situation, and eventually of resolving the problem. His character is well-drawn, with a complex personality and background. Once the story starts, while he is the primary driver of the plot, he doesn't change much. The other viewpoint character, his wife, has less screen time and a less-developed background, but is the more interesting character, with her relationship to the developer of the colony AI and need to overcome more personal challenges.

The setting is a bit sketched in, with the history on Earth more mentioned than explained and the situation on Tranquility left mostly to the combat scenes in the book. The ship that transports the colonists to the new system takes almost three years to arrive, which can't really be sublight (no time compression is mentioned), but also no super-light system is discussed either.

The details of the combat are evocative and well-paced, but there isn't much tactical complexity to the combat scenes that take up the majority of the book. The primary combat is undertaken by what are on the border between powered armor suits and mecha. The colonists have to make do with powered assist suits that have been modified to be field expedient suits. (Think "Bob Semple tank", frankly.) This probably works better than it should, but the suits are definitely at a disadvantage to the few remaining combat suits on Tranquility.

For my taste, at least, there's too much time spent on close combat between combat suits that result from frontal attacks by one side or the other. I'd rather have seen more effort spent on the world, the technology, and tactics than descriptions of blow-by-blow fight scenes.

I suspect this book will work better for other audiences, but for me, it was just OK. I'm not generally a fan of mecha, and while I like MilSF quite a bit, this didn't engage some of the complexities of the books in the genre I like better. If you're a mecha fan, this is done quite well; there are good reasons for the existence of at least the colony powered-assist suits and the conversion mostly makes sense. As it is, I'll read the next book eventually, but I have other priorities now.

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Weak MilSF with a few good elements

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 06-30-25

Book 1, Terra Nova

I've started this review several times, but only after thinking about this for a couple of days am I ready to put down my thoughts. There are things I like, but ultimately, it's not a book that works for me.

Premise: After an interstellar war (the subject of the author's "Ember War" series), a colony ship is sent by wormhole to the Andromeda Galaxy, to a planet that was previously used as a bolthole for a small group of human colonists during the war. When they arrive, the colony is abandoned, except for two young boys and some replicant soldiers that are hunting "Shannon".

The first problem I have with this series is that the colony, by pure chance, went to a system being used as a prison by an alien race. I'm generally willing to forgive setups for books or series, but there are about 1,000,000,000,000 stars in the Andromeda galaxy, a bit more than 100 for every person on Earth. To randomly pick the one that happens to have the big bad imprisoned isn't just unlikely, it's "drop a rock randomly from space and hit the front yard of the bad guy" unlikely.

<spoiler>Then we have the main ship unable to cross the system in less than months, while one (but only one) of their auxiliaries could cross the same distance in hours. This is the excuse for sending only a small squad of elite soldiers to the place where they believe the colonists are. It later becomes clear that they have very robust automated manufacturing capabilities, but using those to give them more capabilities is not an option, for some reason.

The highly capable special forces soldiers, of course, are ambushed, and most of them taken captive, showing no evidence of high capabilities. This leaves the remaining few soldiers to take on a whole planet and rescue their comrades (because apparently, ten against a planet is just not enough of a challenge. With the power of hand-wavium, they succeed, of course. And the evil overlords run away, taking the brother of the new expedition with them.</spoiler>

So, why isn't this a one-star book? The character work for most of the good guys is memorable, with believable military characters and character interactions. And the characters are sympathetic. And when credulity isn't being strained well past the breaking point, the action scenes are done very well.

There is so much in this series that would bother me less if it were not so bombastically unlikely. They're in the Andromeda galaxy to hide, because it's far away. Well, yes, 766 kiloparsecs is indeed far away. But somehow, they're able to reliably hit a single star system (of a trillion) at that distance, and somehow nothing closer would work. The bad guys just happen to be in that system. The brother of the incoming colony governor just happens to be involved in the problem that's happening. And four(?) people are obviously enough to take on the full force of a technologically superior force that controls a planet.

Book 2, Bloodlines

Book two of the Terra Nova series isn't any better than book one was.

We see the same small group of "Pathfinders" again in this book. Since there are only a few Pathfinders in the expedition, that makes sense, though one would hope that the manufacturing capability of the colony ship could have built something other than their one fast ship. Since there has been a large space battle, with huge quantities of wreckage in orbit, one would expect hull metal (of some sort) to be easy to source.

Well, at least they were able to get an FTL drive intact from a wreck, and figure out how to use it in only a few days. Like you do.

Again, we have a tiny group of people against a planet, though at least at the start, it's a planetary bureaucracy. This was seemingly written for laughs, which doesn't really fit in what is mostly a serious story. We get more unlikely coincidences that both create and solve problems for the protagonists. <spoiler>And this time we get Wesley Crusher using an Independence Day computer hack to save the day. Oh, and then there's the teenager who uses a box to bash in the skull of what is described as a competent warrior. Which I totally believed.</spoiler>

At the end, we get the mustache-twirling enemies (who seem to be drawn from the Kryptonian enemies from Superman 2) setting up the next episode in the story. Which I will never read.

Again, there are some really well-done bits of this story, but there just isn't enough for everything to coalesce into a coherent whole.

Shamus Young published an article on "Story Collapse" in his blog some years ago, and it's the mechanism he described that perfectly represents what happened to me. With each improbability dropped onto the pile, it became harder for me to care. In the end, I mostly didn't.

Finally, Luke Daniels did his usual excellent job of reading the story.

Not recommended.

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One of Wortham's Best

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 06-30-25

The story begins with cattle rustling and ends with murder. The path between them is not straight, and the moral of the story is, "Don't threaten the families of the Snow brothers."

Reavis Wortham evokes the atmosphere of southwestern cowboy culture as well as any writer I've read. My uncle was a USDA herd inspector in the Texas panhandle and southeastern New Mexico, and I could hear his voice telling every piece of this story.

The characters are ... characters, and they fit the story well. The Snows are hard-bitten old Texas lawmen and their families have been raised to take care of themselves. The enemies are a bit oversold, but there are reasons for what they're doing, and they use all of their considerable resources in an effort to get out of the situation they find themselves in.

The story is tightly crafted, with no time for a rest, or even a spare breath, from start to finish. I could have done without some of the cultural commentary, but even that was completely consistent with the characters in the story.

I had had a run of weak books in the last few days, and had almost forgotten how refreshing a really good book is.

The best book of the month for me on the last day of the month. Highly recommended.

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Not strong

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 06-27-25

War is on the horizon and Corin is summoned to a meeting of the Emerald Council.

This series began as an academy fantasy, but that seems to have been left behind without much comment.

We have tower exploration, crafting, politics, and duels, so all of the usual things from previous books. Except the spark that animated the series previously. This feels like a rather rote recapitulation of all the series tropes, but it really didn't engage my attention as much as previous volumes.

This is the weakest book in the series so far, but it's still entertaining. I don't regret my time spent with this book, but this book would not cause me to read the series. I hope the next book will be better, but I'm not as eager to see it as I would have hoped to have been.

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