This week, I'm offering you the possibility to win an Amazon gift card. Just click this link and follow the instructions. Good luck.
That said, below, you'll find three science fiction books.
Let Deborah Walker take you to familiar places with unfamiliar realities with these twelve short stories.
An English church, an August Wedding. Aunty Merkel never brings a present; she has something better in her handbag.
A trash picking girl volunteers to work off-world for an alien; it’s all jam from now on.
A politician cruises Soho to find out what the public really think of her new polices.
Find out what it’s like to be happy all the time with your own personal Circe.
Fitting in is hard to do when you’re in a new place, especially when you’re in another galaxy.
A soldier left in the trenches on an alien world will need to undertake a metaphysical journey, with the help of Laurel and Hardy.
And Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned, so for pity's sake, don’t let her near your genome.
Twelve enthralling short stories. Take a break from your day to visit the future, hours away and lightyears gone in your imagination. The future is closer than you think.
You can get your copy of this anthology here.
In a world separated into the privileged chipped, and the lowly unchipped, manipulated by a corrupt powerful technocracy, what will it mean for humanity when injustice is too much to bear?
6 thrilling stories. 500+ pages of fearless heroes, non-stop futuristic action, and neck-breaking plot twists.
Welcome to Paradise!
For those who hold a chip in their head, the world is their oyster. But for those who do not, there is nothing but hell.
Indigo White’s net worth is fast approaching trillionaire status and he has consequently cemented his powerful grip on many parts of the world. This sense of power is further exacerbated by his commanding presence in a small secret consortium of global elites who effectively decide what is best for the rest of humanity or more so, what is best for them.
Out there in the Outlands, there is only suffering and toiling away for a chance at a better life. And while the dangerous drug Andolyte ravages the city with dire consequences, it provides a welcomed escape from the mundane.
But for Duke Calgary, the promise of a better life is supporting his father’s almost impossible cause – the great rebellion to save their people and address the suffocating oppression they live with on a daily basis. When a mysterious stranger appears at their doorstep, with an offer too enticing to deny, what will the rebels do? Continue suffering as they always have or look to get revenge on the man who put them there, the heartless all-powerful tech genius, Indigo White, who lives well out of reach in the Utopia of his chipped high-tech world.
Can the iron-clad grip of power be broken? Only time can tell, but is there enough to go around?
˃˃˃ A Must-Read Sci-Fi Dystopian Techno-Thriller!
Books included in the set:
Book 1: Rise
Book 2: Unguarded
Book 3: Rising
Book 4: Faith
Book 5: Forge
Book 6: Insurrection
A mutated superhero. An evil scientist. When justice comes to the corrupt-ridden metropolis, will anyone survive?
When the raindrops touch him, mutant Reinhardt’s enhanced strength and awareness pulse through his green-glowing veins. Using his superhuman abilities, the mysterious vigilante stalks those who turned his home into an anarchic chaos of violence. But when his activities attract the attention of a demented genius, Reinhardt is forced to mount an attack… or become the hunted.
Desperate for answers, he teams up with an intrepid journalist to expose the doctor and protect New Hampton. And when they discover the fiend’s secret lab, they fear the horror he’s unleashed with his unspeakable experiments can never be stopped.
Can Reinhardt save the city before the psychotic mastermind lines the streets with carnage?
The Rain is the first book in the eerie The Mutant Rain dystopian science fiction series. If you like nail-biting tension, an epic cast of characters, and dispensing gory vengeance, you’ll love L.A. Frederick’s supercharged story.
Grab your copy of this science fiction adventure here.
My last review of Abaddon's Gate, book 3 of The Expanse by James S. A. Corey
For movies, they say the third one is usually the worst. I think everyone agrees that statement is true for The Return of The Jedi.
Mind that whatever follows in the next paragraph is only my opinion and how I feel about this book. The paragraph after instead is a technical evaluation, but they all bring me to the conclusion that the statement above is valid for this book too. I found it ... meh.
Warning, I’m going to get political.
With Miller kind of gone and Avasarala absent in this book, I struggled from the beginning to find a character I really liked. Holden is Holden and I doubt I’ll ever cheer for him. Of the new ones, only Bull, the security officer of the Behemoth, gets some traction. He should have been the captain, but Fred Johnson knows the Belters would never follow an Earther because racism and prejudice work both ways. And so we get Ashford who in the TV series is not as bad as in the book. From what I remember, he kind of redeems himself while Bull isn’t in the series. Again, my memory could be at fault here. That said, Ashford is an asshole and Fred Johnson made a huge mistake choosing him as captain of the Belter ship directed to the Ring, the structure created by what was breeding on Venus at the end of the previous book.
Everyone in the solar system wants to know more and that's why Earth, Mars, and the Belters are all sending ships to it. And that’s where the shit hits the fan.
Aside from Bull, I found Clarissa (Peaches, as Amon calls her by the end of the novel) boring. She’s supposed to avenge his father and kill Holden in the process, except that she doesn’t, and I’m not persuaded by the way she changes her mind, suddenly realising that her father is a piece of shit, and Holden is not bad enough or at all to deserve death by her hands. So, much ado about nothing felt rather boring, Ashford as a villain works much better. You really want to strangle him at every turning page.
And for last, we have Anna. She’d be a decent character if she weren’t a member of what I call the religious cast. To me, she’ll never be in the right perspective, even though she kicks ass in her own way. Perhaps, by the end, she becomes interesting, except that she's not in the following book (a flaw of the whole series: interesting characters either die or just vanish). She’s a fighter of another kind. The kind that manipulates people for what they think is the right vision of the world. Cortez is another one. The holy manipulators to me don’t look any different from the politicians. They just pretend to work for a higher entity. Now, don’t get me wrong, Anna is one of the good guys, and as I said, she’s kickass without ever firing a bullet or punching anyone. But she belongs to a category I will never like, no matter how much good they can do as individuals.
To be honest, I felt the same during the show. That season left me with the question, why am I seeing these people? I don’t care about them.
So, I’m telling you that, unlike the first two books, I didn’t much like this one.
And now let’s get technical.
While the first two books only had typos, Abaddon's Gate had a couple of major mistakes. There’s a chapter by the end where we are in Clarissa’s POV and she suddenly can read minds because she knows exactly how Holden is feeling. This is a mistake newbies do, and something a good editor should spot right away, but no one did in this case. It kind of left me disappointed.
There’s also a great deal of telling throughout the novel. I suppose by the time this book was out, the author was already selling well and the publishing company saved some money by investing in less editing. It’s not something I’m willing to forgive in terms of score. If this were the book of an unknown author, I wouldn’t buy anything else by them. Instead, I’ll be reading all the other books in the series because I want to know what happens next. I only hope I’ll get more Avasarala, but since I already bought book 4, I know there isn’t much of her. But I'll get to that in the next newsletter when I'll write the review of that book.
I give this book 3 stars.
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