Star Trek: Allegiance in Exile
{4.5/5} “As Kirk padded down from the outer ring of the bridge to its inner section, he shifted from reflecting on the reliability and longevity of his command crew to the interpersonal relationships that had grown among them. He felt closer to the members of his senior staff than he had to any other group […]
Bard’s Oath
{4/5} “That oath cut them off from family, clan, and country. They forswore all thought of vengeance for wrongs done to themselves or their kin. They could not take up arms in war. Instead, their task — impossible as it all too often seemed — was to remain impartial and seek a peaceful solution to […]
Julian Comstock
{4.5/5} “It was Christmas morning. I supposed that didn’t mean anything in particular to Julian or Sam, but I was poignantly aware of the date. The sky was blue again, but a squall had passed during the dark hours of the morning, and the snow ‘lay round about, deep and crisp and even.’ Even the […]
Dragon and Phoenix
{5/5} “To rule the heart of the Phoenix Lord — that was power. Yet what was power if one lived confined? Though the bars of the cage were of carved jade, banded with gold and hung with silk, they were still bars.” Linden and Maurynna have returned to Dragonskeep. Maurynna changed into a dragon once but […]
Books & movies show a world filled with idiots
David Brin, author of books such as Startide Rising and Earth, has a thought-provoking article on Locus Online. It’s about why books and movies have most of their characters behaving as fools. One of his great points: “you never notice propaganda that you already agree with.” He argues that fictional worlds should be more like the real […]
Highway of Eternity
{4/5} “The incorporeality was, to many of the human race, something akin to a new and exciting religion… There were, however, some who protested most violently against it. We number ourselves among those protestants. There are many other protestants hiding out in various time periods. We maintain small, widely separated groups. It is harder to […]
Author discovery of the year
I’ve decided to imagine, just for fun, that I’m giving out an award for the most significant (to me) author I’ve discovered in a given year. The award is given to an author that I really like (ie. who writes brilliant books) who I haven’t read before (except possibly a small number of short stories). Since […]
This is the Year Zero
{4.5/5} “Following their meeting with world leaders, and a single, carefully orchestrated press conference, the aliens had been keeping a studiously low profile. They were here, they claimed, strictly in a touristic capacity. They wished only to obtain the requisite visas to come and go as they liked, along with a supply of native currencies. […]
More Than Human
{4.5/5} “He was in the wood, numbly prying the bark from a dead oak, when it happened. His hands were still and his head came up hunting, harking. He was as aware of the pressures of spring as an animal, and slightly more than an animal could be. But abruptly the spring was more than […]
The Last Dragonlord
{4.5/5} “He landed, claws scraping against stone, the sound harsh in the crystalline air. A red mist surrounded him and the great dragon became a wraith; the mist contracted, then disappeared, leaving behind the figure of a tall man.” Linden is a dragonlord, a human who can turn into a dragon. But he’s the last […]