Reviews – Page 111

Review of Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

SFFaudio Review

Old Man’s War
By John Scalzi; Read by William Dufris
Audible Download – Approx. 10 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: macmillan audio / audible.com
Published: October 2007
Themes: / Science Fiction / Military SF / War / Telepathy / Space Travel / Galactic Civilization /

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First, he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce – and alien races willing to fight us for them are common.

There’s an excellent subgenre of science fiction that produces a novel every dozen years or so. “Tributes to Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers“, I call it. First in this subgenre was The Forever War (1974) – a kind of anti-Starship Troopers novel. Second was Ender’s Game (1985) a kind of micro/macro version of ST. There was even a satire called Bill The Galactic Hero (1965), which parodied ST. The latest novel in this little branch of SF is Old Man’s War, a faithful ode to Heinlein’s original tale of Earther civilian turned hardened space soldier. The war of the title is both familiar and different. Gone are the powered armor and accompanying fission bomb launcher of Heinlein’s mid-twentieth century novel. In are genetically engineered soldiers and nanotech weapon systems. Another innovation in Old Man’s War includes is the BrainPal™, a neural implant that makes battlefield communication exacty like telepathy. Tech and lineage aside this is one hell of a story all on its own. All of the previous novels in this niche spent a great deal of time in training their protagonist. Same goes here, Old Man’s War has the requisite gruff staff sergeant of the “Colonial Defense Forces” who trains the hero, John Perry, and his fellow recruits. It also has the first shock of combat, a learning curve towards mastery and some twists and turns you can’t see coming. Old Man’s War also has the pure brutality of war, the comradely companionship a love story (of sorts). New to the series is a light touch of humor here and there, John Perry was writer before he joined the army. The alien enemies he fights aren’t bugs (nor “buggers”), but are memorable and varied. The Consu, for instance, are deeply religious, and though having a superior technology to every known alien race – including humans – will fight only with roughly equal technology to any species they encounter. The Salong, meanwhile, are a deer-like species that while appearing shyly doe-eyed, fight humans because they find us extremely tasty – a case of the hunters become the hunted. One scene of combat has Perry and his platoon stomping like Godzilla a city of lilliputian aliens that the Humans have somehow made a grudge with. Later in the book we discover that there are some soldiers in the CDF who don’t share the common background of Perry and his platoon. These “Ghost Brigades” as they are called, are a fascinating new twist all on their own, and judging by the title of the already written sequels (The Ghost Brigades, The Sagan Diary and The Last Colony) were going to be learning more about them. This is delightfully compelling listening, like any little genre it comforts with the familiarity of form and entertains with the variations on the theme.

Audible.com (and the iTunes Audiobook Store) has made itself a must-try service by the very exclusivity of this audiobook. If you want to hear this Hugo nominated adventure, you have to sign up with audible.com or iTunes to get it. Narrator William Dufris is his reliable self, injecting battalions of charm and humor into the voices of John Perry and his various companions. Old Man’s War is a righteous addition to Heinlein’s Troopers legacy. The name of John Scalzi can now stand in Science Fiction pantheon proudly beside the likes of Orson Scott Card, Joe Haldeman and Robert A. Heinlein.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Ascent by Jed Mercurio

SFFaudio Review

Ascent
By Jed Mercurio; Read by Todd McLaren
6 CDs – 7.5 7.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781400103683
Themes: / Science Fiction / Alternate History / War / Cold War / The Moon /

The sun swings behind the world. Night engulfs him. The dull metal craft plunges through space, its portholes pale beacons containing the silhouette of a man, and the only other lights are the stars themselves.

This alternate history novel is a faithful depiction of the Soviet Union’s race against the United States to put a man on the Moon. The sad reality is that it never happened this way, but that doesn’t nullify a tremendously magnetic story of how it very well could have done. The viewpoint character is Yefgeni Yeremin an orphan of WWII, a fighter pilot and a Korean air-war ace. His story is as compelling a depiction of a quasi-Nitzchean overman as I’ve seen in fiction. Yeremnin is a more human, more plausible kind of Ayn Randian character – but he’s also hard to empathize with. He’s a man who can’t quite break free of his upbringing, his colleagues, his country, but who despite this achieves what must be viewed as the ultimate in overcoming. The Ascent of the title is not just that of a man from the surface of the Earth, but of mankind from Earth and that which came before. Just as birth is the obvious, but arbitrary line in the moral sand of personhood, so too is the actual landing of a human being on the surface of the moon.

Ascent starts with a shock, builds brilliantly during the Korean War scenes and then plateaus. Mercurio tells a powerful story – the first half of the audiobook absolutely riveted the headphones to my head. That which follows is engaging, but not as impactful. Perhaps the tale could have been told in another manner. Perhaps part of the problem is in the novel form itself. I wonder if it might not have been better, shorter – as a novella say. Yeremnin too is hard to take at this length – he is a hard man, from a hard world, with little in him other than will. The technical jargon that predominates his space voyage, while I’m certain accurate, is burdensome, and the problems that face the protagonist are less thrilling than those in the first half of the book. The end, when it comes, simply…. is. It isn’t wrong for the book, but it isn’t right either. It may be that this kind of tale, with this kind of character, is not actually tellable another way. Todd McLaren helps, he does Russian accented English but doesn’t overplay it – this is a matter of fact delivery. I hope Mercurio can find another topic within Science Fiction with as much passion as that which he put into Ascent, this was a tremendously compelling listen.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of the The Secret World Chronicle by Mercedes Lackey and Steve Libbey

SFFaudio Review

The Secret World Chronicle – Book One – Invasion
By Mercedes Lackey and Steve Libbey; Read by Veronica Giguere
8 MP3 Files (podcast) – Approx. 10 Hours 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: SecretWorldChronicle.com / Podiobooks.com
Podcast: 2006 – 2007
Themes: / Fantasy / Superheroes / Supervillains / Nazis / Communism / Invasion /

The Secret World Chronicle opens with a metahuman named Eisenfaust (“Iron Fist”) warning of an imminent Nazi invasion. Of course the invasion occurs (from another spacetime) and this forms the backdrop for the story, in which heroic deeds are done – if at the high cost of both civilian and metahuman lives. Echo is an organisation of ‘metahumans’ (a word which you can freely translate into ‘superheros’ for our purposes). There are Echo offices and campuses around the world, from which private individuals, non-governmental orginizations and governments can hire superheroes to do good deeds. The Echo mandate is “To support security and peace through intervention by and collaboration between metahumans and international law enforcement.” Comprising over forty separate bases of operation across six continents. This plot may remind some of Jeffrey R. DeRego Union Dues stories that have been heard on Escape Pod. Like DeRego’s tales, The Secret World Chronicle superhumans all have comic book names and costumes, Handsome Devil, Red Saviour, Shahkti, and Yankee Pride. At the end of “book one” there are unresolved story threads around the whys and wherefores of the Nazi invasion, but it just feels like more to look forward to. It may have improved the telling to get inside the lives of the ordinary people, to understand just how the phenomena of the metahumans impacts the regular folks – perhaps that will happen in later books. I can’t say I’m very familiar with either Mercedes Lackey or Steve Libbey individually, but together they tell a good story. Characters are reasonably well drawn and sufficiently believable, but don’t expect any in-depth character analysis. Don’t listen to The Secret World Chronicle to learn about yourself, or the human condition, listen for fun.

People have different ways of classifying the content they put onto their MP3 players. I typically use either ‘drama’ or ‘books’ – the latter consisting of anything that’s read by one person. I break this rule for The Secret World Chronicle. Narrator Veronica Giguere does mostly a solo act in telling the story, the result though is that of discrete characters with whom we can really identify. It is an immersive experience. Veronica Giguere’s pacing is flawless, the variety of intonations and accents sufficient for the story. She gets the story straight into the brain’s pleasure zone with her terrific performance.

You can subscribe to the podcast feed for the series via this URL:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/secretworldchronicle

You can also get the complete book one via this feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/SecretWorldChronicleBookOne

Posted by Nick Gassman

Commentary / Tech Review – Playaway Audiobooks

SFFaudio Commentary

Let’s pretend:

It’s 1970 and a time traveler from the future befriends you. He offers you a gift upon his departure. Something, a mere trinket, he had on his person. He gives this to you, and it is a cassette-sized plastic rectangle with buttons on one side and the cover of a book on the other. He tells you that it’s a book—an “audiobook”.

You say “Wow! How do I read it?”

“You don’t read it,” he says. “You listen to it. The book is read to you.”

“Get Out!” you say.

He then shows you the miniature headphones, which he calls “earbuds,” to place in your ears. In a minute, he shows you how to use the device.

And then it occurs to you that it would be nice to have many books like this so you ask, “Can I place other books on this device?”

Your guest from the future replies, “There are such devices as you describe, but this device only plays one book.”

“But what if you want to hear another?” “Then you buy another such as this, but with a different book on it.”

“Amazing!” you say after you close your open jaw. “A self-contained audiobook.”

Okay, so it’s not a jetpack.

But I have to admit to having a science-fictional sense-of-wonder about the Playaway audiobooks.

As you may have gathered, a Playaway is a complete audiobook preloaded onto a portable player device.

They are about the size of a cassette and can hold up to 40 hours.

There’s over a thousand titles available from many different audiobook publishers.

The package for each title contains a battery, earbud-style headphones, a lanyard, and brief direction on using the Playaway. The player features are simple and easy to use.

It has the basic functions you’d expect: fast forward/up, rewind/back, play/pause and the power button. It also offers an EQ button that has five presets. There’s also a speed button with two settings that can increase the pace of the reading without changing the pitch.

Although I enjoyed the Playaway player, there are a couple of attributes that could be better. One is the way it bookmarked the audiobook when you shut the power off. When the audiobook was turned back on, it sometimes goes back to the beginning of the track. If you’re near the end of a twenty-minute track when you shut it off, then you need to do some fast forwarding to get back to where you were. At other times the book started up where I left off.

The sound quality is just okay. It’s actually quite similar in quality as a download from Audible. Hopefully, this is something that can be improved upon in future titles as the cost of tech components continue to drop.

One last quibble is that the batteries in each of the two titles that I received were dead. The Playaway takes a standard AAA battery. It was easy to replace, so not a big deal in my case. But if you bought one to listen to on a plane; for instance, it could be a bummer if you didn’t have an extra battery. Overall, I think this is great option for many listeners. For hardcore audiobook listeners, it’s probably not going to supplant your dedicated listening device. But as a gift for a non-techie or for the occasional listener, it may be ideal. They are also becoming very popular at public libraries for the obvious conveniences to their patrons.

And because our dedicated readers at SFFaudio rock, we have an exclusive discount code from Findaway, the makers of the Playaway. The discount code is good for first time purchasers.

To receive 20% off, just go to www.playawaydigital.com and during checkout enter this code:

SFFaudio20

Pretty cool, I know. And just in time for the holiday season.

posted by The Time Traveler (of the Time Traveler Show podcast, and is not incidentally sending today’s technology into the past. It must be stated that he is in full compliance with the prime directive of the Time Patrol. And the rumors he has a personal jetpack in his garage are simply not true.)

Review of Dreamsongs: Volume 1 by George R.R. Martin

SFFaudio Review

Selections from Dreamsongs Volume 1: Fan Fiction and Sci-Fi from Martin’s Early Years
By George R.R. Martin; Read by Claudia Black, Mark Bramhall, Scott Brick, Roy Dotrice, Kim Mai Guest, Kirby Heyborne, and Adrian Paul
12 CDs; 15 hours; [UNABRIDGED SELECTIONS]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9780739357125
Themes: / Science Fiction / Horror / Fantasy / Short Stories / Biography /

Audiobooks have evolved over the past few years in a number of ways. CD’s are now the norm, cassettes used to be. Many more titles are being made into audiobooks. But still, even though audiobooks are a distinct medium, they still haven’t taken the inevitable step away from print. This audiobook, which is quite excellent, is a good example of what I mean. Though this is a collection of short stories, nowhere, on the inside or outside of the packaging, does it list the Table of Contents. This kind of thing has audiobook listeners looking for the print version of the book for this information. It’s as if audiobooks are being made as an augmentation of their print counterparts. Surely, they should be created stand-alone. Information, like the Table of Contents of a short story collection, should not only be included, but it should be visible before purchase.

Still, like I said, this audiobook is excellent. It’s the first of three collections that contain selections from the three Dreamsongs books that collect George R.R. Martin’s short fiction. This Volume covers the early years of Martin’s career, from his fan fiction publications through his first sales to his first awards.

As interesting as the included stories are the biographical introductions to each section that are read by George R.R. Martin himself. These introductions are lengthy, though I would have enjoyed even more of them. He talks about his first writings, his first sale, his first nominations, and his first Hugo, for “A Song of Lya”. It’s a candid overview of a writer’s life, and I enjoyed it every bit as much as I enjoyed similar details in Stephen King’s On Writing.

A Four Color Fanboy, read by George R.R. Martin
“Only Kids are Afraid of the Dark”, read by Adrian Paul
“The Fortress”, read by Mark Bramhall
“And Death His Legacy”, read by Scott Brick
This section contains stories that Martin wrote for fanzines. If you want to read a villain’s monologue as written by George R.R. Martin, look no further than “Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark”, which is a “hero meets demon prince” story. Adrian Paul gives the story an uplifting dramatic reading.

The Filthy Pro, read by George R.R. Martin
“The Hero”, read by Roy Dotrice
“The Exit to San Breta”, read by Scott Brick
“The Second Kind of Loneliness”, read by Mark Bramhall
“With Morning Comes Mistfall”, read by Claudia Black
Roy Dotrice should read all of George R.R. Martin’s fiction. He’s just got this gravel quality that seems to match so many of Martin’s heroes. In “The Hero”, Martin’s first story sale, which Dotrice reads, a future soldier who has finished his tour of duty decides not to re-enlist, and to request passage to Earth, as was promised when he signed on. Dotrice manages to make the soldier even more believable.

The Light of Distant Stars, read by George R.R. Martin
“A Song for Lya”, read by Mark Bramhall
“The Tower of Ashes”, read by Kirby Heyborne
“And Seven Times Never Kill Man”, read by Roy Dotrice
“The Stone City”, read by Adrian Paul
“Bitterblooms”, read by Kim Mai Guest
“The Way of Cross and Dragon”, read by Roy Dotrice
And here we see Martin at near full-strength. “A Song for Lya”, read by Mark Bramhall, is the centerpiece of this volume as far as I’m concerned. It won Martin his first Hugo, and is a moving story about a couple who arrives at a planet to investigate the influence of the indigenous alien religion on humans. “The Way of Cross and Dragon” again deals with religion, but this time in a form that closely resembles the Catholic Church.

Audible.com has all three volumes of Dreamsongs available now. Not only can you buy each volume, but they’ve also allowed you to purchase the individual sections of the books, each introduced by the author. Wonderful stuff!

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of Armageddon’s Children by Terry Brooks

SFFaudio Review

Armageddon’s Children
By Terry Brooks; Read by Dick Hill
12 CDs – Approx. 14 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 1423322568
Themes: / Fantasy/ Post-Apocalyptic / Demons / Elves / Quest /

The first entry in Terry Brooks’ new Genesis of Shannara trilogy, Armageddon’s Children starts things off brilliantly. It is immediately engrossing, capturing the listener’s attention from the first minute clear through its cliffhanger ending. Set on an Earth where civilization has been mostly destroyed by war, diseases, and by demonic entities it is a world inhabited by mutants, demons, elves and humans, all hiding from an inevitable end. Post-apocalyptic fantasy is an odd sub-genre but Brooks pulls it off well, mostly combining the feel of post-apocalyptic science fiction with the trappings of fantasy.

Like many stories of this size, there is more than one main character. Armageddon’s Children has four: Logan Tom, a Knight of the Word is the foremost protagonist. Here has been given a mission to find a mysterious “gypsy morph” and lead it and a few human survivors to salvation. Logan, like most of the characters, must overcome self-doubt and accomplish his mission if humanity is to be saved. Another character, Angel Perez, another knight is sent with a tatterdemalion to find, and help save the elves. Hawk, a street urchin leads a small group of children. Kirisin, an Elf, is chosen to tend the Ellcrys, a sentient tree from the original Shannara series. The fates of all these characters are all intertwined and each must succeed in their respective quest if humanity and elfkind are to survive the looming destruction of the Earth.

Dick Hill, the narrator, is one of the better readers I’ve heard. Though the novel builds upon characters and ideas from earlier books in Brooks’ series, it stands on its own quite well. I haven’t heard or read many of them, yet I never felt as I were missing anything while I was listening to Armageddon’s Children. Indeed, the only complaint I have about the audiobook is a very minor one. This is a marketing problem. It is annoying that “Shannara” is not mentioned anywhere on the cover of the audiobook, despite the fact that it is the third largest word on the paperback version’s cover. Simply put I loved the audiobook of Armageddon’s Children and I can’t wait for the next in the series to be released.

Posted by David Tackett