Review: Never Flinch

Never Flinch by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review which is a solid estimate of my experience.

Anyone who has read Stephen King's works knows how it goes. You take a couple of people who have "issues", wind them up, and let them wreak havoc on the world. Toss in some protagonists who have their own character flaws. Present it with all of the deft character and social representation/commentary that Stephen King is known for writing.

And the reader gets to experience the anticipation of seeing who actually ends up being the hero at the end of the day. As is typical for a King novel, there weren't many heroes but there were a lot of victims. And one or two villains get away scot-free.

As King books go, this was a very "mid" Stephen King book. A "mid" Stephen King novel is still above average and worth the experience. There aren't any fantasy elements to this book. It's just a straight-up character exploration of normal (for a certain range of normal) characters.

If you are into the Holly Gibney series, then you'll enjoy this. Knock yourself out. If I had read this book, then it would be a 3.5 star review and I might have rounded down.

But...I listened to this book via Spotify. The narrator is fantastic. She not only reads the book, she orates, she performs, and she is spectacular.

Also, a shout-out to Spotify. Their audiobook software keeps track of where you are in the book so you can go listen to music for a while and not lose your place when you come back to the book. I wish they put that much effort into the music portion of their app.

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Review: The Saint of Bright Doors

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a 2-star review which is a reasonable estimate of my experience.

I read this book as part of last year's Hugo Awards. This was nominated for "Best Novel".

This book is a classic example of how badly the ideological capture of the Hugo Awards has damaged the reputation of the awards.

I made it halfway through the book. Nothing really happened to move the plot forward. Lots of angst. Lots of "setup" and not much "pay off". Many unanswered questions that didn't look to have answers forthcoming.

This book came in below "no award" on my ballot, but not at the bottom of my ballot. I wouldn't have made it halfway through except I wanted to give my fellow nominators the respect due their nominations. Give the book a chance to live up to the reputation of the Hugo name.

[edited - grammar, erg.]



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Review: By Blood, by Salt

By Blood, by Salt by J.L. Odom
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review. Probably closer to 3.5 stars would be my experience.

Our hero is Azetla who is the member of a desert race/tribe that is oppressed by the dominant culture. He maintains fidelity to his religion via prayer and ritual. His habits risk his life as the Emperor hates his people and they can be killed almost anywhere for almost any reason. There are holiday celebrations where members of Azetla's tribe are ritually murdered to appease the dominant deities of the Empire.

By the start of the book, he has made himself valuable enough that he is second-in-command of a combat battalion of hardened troops.

The intrigue begins with the Emperor's cousin lending credence to a group plotting a coup. The cousin is lacks any real spine, but he has been talked into participating.

The one group that the Emperor hates more than Azetla's tribe are the devils that live in the deep desert. The Emperor's cousin finds himself "leading" the battalion on a mission into the desert to capture a devil. They do. The captain of the battalion is killed in the process and Azetla finds himself in command. That is the first third of the book.

The rest is imperial intrigue, the movement of the battalion to a remote city, and the maneuvering of Azetla to stay alive. The most "fantastic/fantasy" element is the devil who seems to be super fast, tough, and quite accurate with a bow. She is captured and held in bondage until Azetla is in need of her fighting ability.

He turns her loose. At that point, she could run away at almost any time. And yet she stays. Supposedly a captive, but held without bonds and without any person promise to not escape. It's kind of weird.

This tale is barely getting started by the end of the book. It is clear that the story will take at least another book or two to complete.

The world building is complex. The characters are engaging. The premise is promising. But I'm not sure it is enough for me to continue.

I bought the book because it won the SPFBO competition this year. I my experience, SPFBO winners are almost always great reads. This is a good read. Give it a chance as it might suit your tastes more than mine.

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Review: The Dream of the Iron Dragon

The Dream of the Iron Dragon by Robert Kroese
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3-star review.

While I have greatly enjoyed other books by this author, this one was a bit pedestrian. The crew of a spaceship attempts to save themselves with a radical last ditch maneuver that tosses them back thousands of years into the past. They crash land back on Earth. The original intent was to use their modern tech to survive until they could effect repairs or they were otherwise rescued.

Their ship is in pieces. There is next to nothing left of their tech. So they must make themselves useful to the locals by using their knowledge of science and math.

Interesting premise. Reasonable well told.

But the obvious beginning of a much longer series with no significant problem resolution present in the first book. Not enough here for me to consider coming back to the series.

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Review: Chloe's Kingdom: The Koin Vault Heist

Chloe's Kingdom: The Koin Vault Heist by Gregory Michael
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a 2-star review. The spelling and grammar were very good. The story and characters were not compelling enough to make me want to continue after the first few chapters.

Thereafter rose the putative ghost of Dorothy Parker.

I'm glad to have supported the author with a purchase of the book as he supported the idea of respectful disagreement and free speech when another author was bounced from the SPSFC earlier this year.

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Review: Dark Day, Bright Hour

Dark Day, Bright Hour by Julie Frost
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3-star review.

The book tells the story of a soul bound for Heaven that finds herself in hell with her guardian angel who is trying to help her find a way out.

This is a light/breezy fantasy story set within a Christian cosmos. If the works of C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia, etc.) are heavy weight Christian theology in a fantasy setting, this is a cotton candy version of the same. Decent writing. I enjoyed the book.

The ending was less than surprising.

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Review: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3-star review. That is the average that I give as there are excellent parts of the book and some poor parts of the book.

I learned about this book by hearing an interview of the author on Bari Weiss' "Honestly" podcast. That is a podcast worth following, FWIW.

As presented in the interview, the premise of the book is that humanity does not generate nearly enough sex disaggregated data to allow us to make informed regulatory and policy choices on issues that specifically impact women. Women are different from men (I caution gender identitarians to avoid reading this book) and using non-disaggregated data that presumes the male body to be the "standard" actively harms women.

I like data. I like seeing how data can be used to improve everyone's quality of life. The premise (above) was very interesting to me. I was already aware of the medical impact of non-disaggregated data impacting women in the healthcare field (imagine drug qualification trials where women are a fraction of the human testing pool) and found the author's perspective as presented in the interview to be compelling.

And had the book stuck to that premise and demonstrated a commitment to basing all the arguments are hard data (rather than anecdata), I would have loved the book, and learned from the book.

But, no.

In a rarity, I am turning on my Kindle notes. I frequently found myself arguing with the author about either her use of highly selective data, the lack of evolutionary context, or her wandering from a discussion of statistically significant conclusions and into political opinion. More on the latter later.

The author uses questionable sources a few times. Vox.com is not a serious news source for this sort of work. The author leans heavily on one or two organizations that have an ideological objective. It would have been helpful if she could have presented more complimentary data examples from non-biased sources.

A few times, she takes tangential data and strings it into broad commentary on all human cultures as if an authoritative conclusion was justified. Admittedly, the book is about the lack of gender segregated data for a reason. There isn't much of it out there. And what is out there doesn't always paint a flattering picture of society. By the same token, one would not look at a wild game trail in the middle of the woods and extrapolate it into a 6-lane divided highway.

There were many occasions where I found myself asking why the author didn't refer to any biological/evolutionary context. In some cases, the author demonstrates her ignorance of processes that are beyond her experience. One example is a passage where she points out that bricks/blocks used in construction are too heavy for most women to effectively lift. If those bricks/blocks were lighter, then more women could participate in that sort of construction. What she ignores is that the bricks/blocks are as heavy as most men can lift on purpose. Smaller bricks/blocks means that more layers of bricks/blocks must be placed which means more mortar work needs to be done. Building a wall 8 blocks high with 8 lifts of mortar requires less precision mortaring work than building the same height wall with smaller blocks (i.e., 16 half-height blocks high with 16 lifts/layers of mortar). The bricks/blocks aren’t designed to be heavy for the purpose of excluding women from the construction field. They are designed to minimize the amount of precision mortar work to be performed.

As the author documents, there are significant physical differences resulting from the evolution of men and women. Some of those differences result in different abilities. Would the author suggest that the standard ballerina shoes be made bigger to make it easier for a 6-foot, 220-pound construction work to compete for prima ballerina?

There are many, many passages where the author successfully documents both the need for sex disaggregated data sets and how such information might be used in the future to improve polices and regulations. There are parts of the book that are absolutely 4-star and 5-star worthy. There are excellent sections detailing how both medical and automotive research/design suffer from the lack of sex disaggregated data.

I checked out in Chapter 14 because the author chose to go political. She asserted that the only reason Hillary Clinton didn't get elected was because of anti-woman bias.

No.

The objective of an informed electorate should be to select an intelligent and capable officeholder that will produce net-positive change on society.

Hillary Clinton is ineligible to be described as fulfilling that objective. A complete description of her lack of qualifications is beyond the scope of a Goodreads review but may be read HERE.

At this point, it became clear that the author possessed serious experiential deficiencies. I opted to accept the positive sections as welcome pieces of new information and move onto something better. I'm labeling this as a plain DNF rather than a Dorothy Parker-esque finish as I made it most of the way through and the book does contain a wealth of valuable information and perspectives. But it isn't the homerun that I was anticipating when I opened the book for the first time.



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Felters Mill - Millbury, MA

 More about this later.  I just needed a place to host these photos for some friends.

Hemmingway, Steinbeck, and O'Neil

Saving this here for future reference.  Periodically, I will not finish a book and will reference Dorothy Parker.  Dorothy was a writer from the early 20th century.  She is mistakenly credited with saying "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."  [I think George Kaufman actually said it.  Dorothy repeated it without attribution in a setting where attribution wasn't really called for.]

In Season 5, Episode 14 of the TV show M*A*S*H, Radar O'Reilly says that he was accepted by the Famous Las Vegas Writers School run by Hemingway, Steinbeck, and O'Neil*.

We find out that the school is run by Ethel Hemingway, Jerry Steinbeck, and Eunice O'Neal.

This post is just a reminder of that sort of flowery writing.  Lots of telling.  Not much showing.

Not worth reading.  Worthy of being tossed aside.  With great force.

Something to watch in the meantime.

*An obvious reference to Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Eugene O'Neil.  I'd never heard of Eugene O'Neil before.  I had heard of his son-in-law.

Review: Theft of Fire

Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a 5-star review which is a reasonable estimate of my experience. Perhaps 4.5 stars, but I was so engaged that rounding it to 5 is justified.

The story is largely focused on three characters.

Marcus - an asteroid miner turned pirate. Still living with and attempting to resolve his many mistakes over the years. One of those mistakes cost him his father. His father's advice rings on in his head.

Miranda - a trophy daughter designed by a trophy wife who, with enough money, was able to ensure that Miranda would have all of the features her mother desired - genetic a la carte progeny! And she wants to be so much more in a family that simply expect so much less.

and Leela - an AI who doesn't know she is an AI until Marcus spills the beans.

The three of them are off to the outer reaches of our solar system in search of the most valuable archeological find in the history of humanity.

It was supposed to be a quick smash and grab. Get it there quietly. Find it. Stow it. And get away. It was a plan. But a plan is just a list of things that won't happen.

This book was formerly a part of this years SFSPC. More on that in the spoiler section.

The premise seemed to be pretty standard stuff. I hoped for entertainment, but didn't think there would be much meat on the bones. Boy was I wrong.

There are several important themes running throughout the book.

What is the value of government in a human society? Can we do better via straight contracts?

What is the impact of monopolies on society?

What sort of class struggle might exist between an elite class that holds all of the technology and the people who must submit to strict contracts in order to obtain just enough technology to survive?

What does it take for the powerful to recognize the humanity of those that aren't "elite"?

How badly can parents screw up their children?

How badly can children fail their parents?

What is it like to be a woman dealing with cultural expectations?

What is it like to be a man who is more than his base desires despite society only seeing him as the product of those desires?

And of course...are AI truly alive and worthy of being considered something more than property?

Our trio of strangers gets tossed together and forced to deal with one another as well as their individual histories. Marcus relearns the concept of honor while Miranda discovers that honor is more important than money and contracts. They both learn to value one another beyond the superficial details of their lives.

I don't expect that kids will be reading "Theft of Fire" 30 years from now as an example of great genre literature. There are a few eye-rolling moments as well as some popular culture call backs that break reader contact with the narrative.

But I hope they will still be reading "Theft of Fire" because it is fun, engaging, and more than a little thought provoking.

The spoiler space is because the rest of this is political. IMO, politics in genre fiction should primarily be generated by the substance of the story and not based on outside factors. If the above review has you interested, then please skip the spoiler space and go read the book. I promise it is worth the purchase.

[the spoiler]

You looked anyway, didn't you? Mistake.

The author's wife thought it would be cool if his book was entered into this years Self Published Science Fiction Competition. She didn't tell Devon. She just entered the book. That is an entirely acceptable submission method according to the SPSFC staff.

Fast forward a few months and someone has located some posts that Devon wrote on his web site and on X that were...intemperate. That's being kind to Devon. More accurately, he acted as if he was a commando in the First Chair Force, Neon Keyboard Division.

He is conservative. Devon's statements approve of returning illegal aliens to their home countries. He also said something about tossing communists out of helicopters. He also has a lengthy rant that where he appears to describe a very odd sort of horseshow theory where fascism is needed to counter communism.

FTR, I disapprove of speaking positively about tossing anyone out of helicopters. I also am not impressed with keyboard commandos who talk a tough a game behind several hundred miles of fiber cable.

Having seen a tiny bit of war at a distance closer than most, I zero respect to positive references to violence. Fascism...the real deal and not just modest disagreement...leads to a bad place and should be rejected at all costs.

The only thing worse than fascism is communism. [But of course, no one gets removed from a competition or a speaking engagement for wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt or speaking kindly of Uncle Joe. And of course, supporting those that "punch a Nazi" are fine according to those who dominate the literary world.]

You can read more about the entire imbroglio here.

Someone made a stink about Devon's posts. The SPSFC did the only thing that one can apparently do when faced with such a situation. They wrote a Code of Conduct (CoC) 4 months after the competition had begun. They they used this sparkling new CoC to justify removing Eriksen's book from the competition.

A competition he didn't enter. A CoC that he never agreed to abide by.

This sort of post hoc "justice" will make Lenin and Stalin beam with joy. That unusual hum centered Sutton Courtenay in England would be George Orwell spinning in his grave.

The SPSFC committee didn't get the response they apparently expected. As of this date, 12 authors have requested that their books be removed from the competition. Many of those authors clearly stated that they didn't agree with Devon's statements (far from it), but they were more disturbed by the actions of the SPSFC committee.

When faced with speech that they found disagreeable, those authors opted for the best solution - more speech. Not bans. Not a post hoc dismissal based on an ex post facto "Code". Just comment on the facts so that their voices are heard.

I've been in a few discussions since this began. Almost uniformly, my interlocutor will run to the defense of the SPSFC volunteers. Why it is unreasonable to expect them to read material from such a loathsome creature! Think of the rights of those volunteers!

Never mind the fact that several of the themes is Devon's book are reasonably supportive of left leaning perspectives. There's even a brief line in the book in support of tolerance of the trans community!

I disagree. By offering a public competition, those volunteers acquired an obligation to consider all of the books that were submitted. They are free to use their free speech rights to criticize a book that is poorly written or has unproductive themes. They could certainly append any review with a statement about the author's political writings as being..."problematic".

The cure for disagreeable speech is more speech.

What they may not do is remove a book from the competition in the manner described above. That is a violation of their obligation.

While I have had great success reading books from fantasy self published competition, my experiences with SPSFC have been lack-luster at best.

Despite his warts, Mr. Eriksen has written a fine novel. It is in turns amusing and inspiring of tears. Theft of Fire is in keeping with a long and storied science fiction tradition of exploring large issues as well as examining close, personal relationships.

I look forward to book #2 in the series; Box of Trouble. Due out later this year.

[2 word edits]


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Review: Heart of the Mountain

Heart of the Mountain by Larry Correia
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a 5-star review. That covers my experience with the entire series.

Larry Correia has managed the difficult task of writing a 6-book series with a cascade of challenges faced by our hero and his friends. Usually, making the "big bad" of each book bigger and badder than the previous book means that the "big bad" in the last book is just unbelievable.

Not so in this case.

The resolve at the end of the book allows great closure for all of the characters that the reader has become familiar with. Buy the series. Sit back. Enjoy the ride. It's worth every penny.

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Review: A Strange Penance

A Strange Penance by Cassandra Byrne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3-star review. More like 3.5 stars but not enough to push it to 4.

This is a pretty good story about a guy who just wants to go back to a time when his mom read him books. But life hands him a shit sandwich and he ends up being a pretty rough and tumble character in trouble with the authorities and set on a bad path.

Things go bad. And then worse. And a little better. If you don't think about the plot much, this is a pretty good story. By the end, I wanted to know more about the characters.

But it ends just as the characters and the story are going someplace. It really felt like the start of a pretty good novella rather than the beginning-middle-end of a short story. Kind of frustrating, but in a good way.

However, when you think about the story, there are a couple of elements that really stick out. The first is the power imbalance between our anti-hero and his benefactor. In any other tale, we would questioned the benefactor's motives and certainly questioned whether the power imbalance would allowed any long-term relationship to be legitimate/successful.

The second is that the relationship between our anti-hero and his benefactor at the end of the story isn't really earned. A little work...just a couple of sentences...earlier in the story to justify the later relationship would have been enough. Call it Chekov's Love Gun.

I'm not giving away the details as I don't want to spoil the story. It is worth a read. Give it a buy/try.

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Minor edits for grammar 2/20/2025

Review: The Incident with the Pirate

The Incident with the Pirate by Cassandra Byrne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a 5-star review.

I don't want to spoil a great story. Spend a buck and buy this. Very well done.

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Review: The Innocence of Death

The Innocence of Death by E.G. Stone
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a 2-star review which is a charitable rating. This book was a hard DNF - Dorothy Parker would be proud of how far I heaved this one.

Our protagonist is a marketing guru. Death decides he needs help polishing up his image and gives our "hero" a choice; die right here and now or serve Death in the hereafter. He goes with option 2.

Shortly thereafter, our hero finds himself with some sort of eternal computer connected to various social networks and an administrative assistant. She is some sort of troll/giant/something big.

Usually, the fish spends more time pondering the lack of water before figuring out how things work. In this book, our protagonist slips into his new role with little muss and less fuss. I checked out when his administrative assistant sits on a sofa that cartoonishly bends/tilts to force our hero to slide down into her.

The plot had generally lost me, and that sort of cartoonish action caused me to move onto something else. Skip this and read something good.

If you want to experience a "fish out of water" and "hero dies and lives on in the hereafter" book, then please read "On A Pale Horse" by Piers Anthony. The first 6 books of that series are great.

But stop after book 6. Please.

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Modest edits for grammar/spelling 2/20/2025

Review: Iron Truth

Iron Truth by S.A. Tholin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3-star review which is a fair estimate of my experience.

This book won the Self Published Science Fiction Contest.

The first three fourths of the book was really pretty good. Solid sci-fi involving colony ships, crash landings, and weird worlds. Then it diverted into some religious stuff.

I'm OK with religion in fantasy. And faith in some unknowable whatever in sci-fi is OK. But when you suggest that there is an active, mystical component in sci-fi, it stops being sci-fi for me. The last quarter of the book lost me.

Well written, but the plot went off the rails.

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