Reading – Page 6 – The Warbler Books

Featured Author: Tal M. Klein

April 9, 2016 1 Comment

Readers, it is once again time to feature a group of great books on the blog. Inkshares is running a new contest, this time with Geek & Sundry, searching for the next great works of hard science fiction. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of hard sci-fi, I boil it down to this: hard sci-fi is fiction that builds upon the known rules of plausible science, emphasizing and explaining the science as an integral part of the world and/or plot. That definition might not capture hard sci-fi for diehard fans, but it’ll suffice for us. So, let’s dig into our first featured author, Tal M. Klein, and his book, The Punch Escrow. About The Punch Escrow: It’s summer in New York, 2471. Teleportation is the elite mode of transportation. Air pollution isn’t a problem anymore. Advanced nanotechnology has made everlasting life possible. Artificially intelligent things make daily chores a cinch.

Calamity – Brandon Sanderson

April 6, 2016 No Comments

With Calamity, Brandon Sanderson gives fans the rarest of treats: an ending. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I love Brandon’s work, am beyond thrilled at his expansive and intricate Cosmere, and am fully committed for the long haul, if it ends at thirty-six books, or fifty, or one hundred. But to see the pieces click into place, to watch the carefully laid plans line up and deliver on an epic-if you’ll pardon the pun-finale; that’s a special feeling. And while it doesn’t answer every question raised in the Reckoners series, Calamity ties up the story with an explosive bow. (See my Steelheart and Firefight reviews before continuing, and beware of spoilers below.) The Reckoners series is about fear. It’s about what feat does to us when we let it own us, and it’s about how it can be taken advantage of as a means of control. It is also

An Unattractive Vampire – Jim McDoniel

March 29, 2016 No Comments

Now that the past few (very busy) weeks are behind me, I can focus on reviewing Jim McDoniel’s An Unattractive Vampire, which I finished a few weeks ago. It’s the second of three winners from Inkshares’s Sword and Laser contest—the first being The Life Engineered—and is a pleasure to read. An Unattractive Vampire is a humorous swing of the pendulum, a witty response to a zeitgeist flooded with angsty teenage vampires who are no longer monstrous, no longer the stuff of horror. It is a guffaw in the face of the “sexy vampire” that boldly states, “you think that’s a vampire?! THIS is a vampire!” And yet, there is angst, and kitsch, and a healthy number overly-sexualized teenage vampires in An Unattractive Vampire. And it all serves to move along an active, interesting, quickly-paced plot that rewards the reader greatly. It follows an unlikely trio, orphaned siblings, the older sister—a

Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan McGuire

March 16, 2016 1 Comment

After seeing her at a reading at Borderlands in San Francisco, I became a fan of Seanan McGuire. Before that reading, I’d only seen her work in Altered Perceptions, wherein she wrote a very moving personal piece about living with OCD. I knew she was rather prolific (from her essay more than anything else), and knew that I wanted to read something by her, the gods of my ever-growing to-read list willing. The opportunity came to request her upcoming novella, Every Heart a Doorway from NetGalley, and I was delighted. Two birds with one stone, as they say. Every Heart a Doorway is a tale of belonging, of a community of misfits and ill-fits, and of self-discovery. While it is, superficially, a simple tale, it is built on a wonderful, rich concept that is so large in scope that it encompasses worlds. It’s appeal lay in its telling-which was beautifully executed-and in its

Bands of Mourning – Brandon Sanderson

March 9, 2016 No Comments

The sixth book in Brandon Sanderson’s outstanding Mistborn series, Bands of Mourning is a wonderful read. Like all of the Mistborn books, it is action-packed and fast-paced, but the purpose of Bands seems-to me at least-to be more of an informational novel. It’s no secret to fans of Sanderson (and fans of this blog, if there are any out there,) that most of his novels take place in a single universe: the Cosmere. The deeper we get into a single series, the more the connection to the Cosmere becomes apparent. Bands of Mourning blows the lid off of the connection to the Grand Story, making it direct, and raising as many questions as it begins to answer. For a die-hard Sandersonian, it’s an epic feast of thought-provoking Easter eggs. I bet the forums at the 17th shard (the Sanderson fan site) are still out of control with discussions about the ramifications of what we learned

The Life Engineered – JF Dubeau

March 1, 2016 No Comments

It takes courage-and perhaps audacity-to come out swinging, and I’d say JF Dubeau‘s debut novel, The Life Engineered, throws a few powerful punches that make his a book worth giving your undivided attention. In many ways, The Life Engineered is archetypical, but in other ways, it represents a novel approach to a classic medium: robot-focused science fiction. The Life Engineered, one of the Inkshares / Sword and Laser contest winners, is available today, at the end of a long and interesting road. Because of its publication through Inkshares, readers have had unprecedented access to information about the writing and publication process, and knowing Dubeau’s state of mind put some additional weight behind moments in the novel. But, as I’m learning in a wonderful book called Reading Like a Writer, it is important to look at the words themselves, rather than the extraneous meta-data of the circumstances surrounding their origin. So I

Featured Author: Zack Jordan

February 28, 2016 No Comments

Zack Jordan’s entry in the Inkshares/Nerdist space opera contest, The Life Interstellar, looks like one hellofa novel. His reader updates are wonderful, and the pitch is outstanding. I can’t wait to read this one. About the book: The Life Interstellar is a rip-roaring, unapologetic space opera. It’s set in a crowded galaxy at some undetermined point in the future where the Humans, sadly, have been exterminated. No one seems to know what happened to them, a fact which only adds to their mystique. What kind of intelligence could wipe out four trillion beings in a single Galactic year and yet make each death look like an accident? From novas to starship crashes to an isolated escalator incident on Braka IV, what made the Humans so special–or so frightening–that they warranted such treatment? This is how legends are born. Humans have been the boogeymen of the galaxy for hundreds of years

Firstborn & Defending Elysium – Brandon Sanderson

February 26, 2016 No Comments

Any opportunity we have to see the progress of those we idolize, to humanize our creative deities, is a good thing. I’ve made no secret of my passion/obsession with Brandon Sanderson’s work both on and off the page. His contribution to genre fiction will surely go down in history as the most significant of our time. He’s our Tolkien, or our Bradbury. There are other authors who have made spectacular contributions to genre fiction, and I do not mean to minimize their impact, but I think Brandon Sanderson has made the biggest waves among them. And yet, he constantly makes his fans feel special. Like each and every individual matters. Like those fans of his who are aspiring writers (like me) have every chance to become great too. A great example of this kind of encouragement comes in the form of Firstborn & Defending Elysium, two novelettes bound into a single

Featured Author: Christina Feindel

February 23, 2016 1 Comment

Christina Feindel’s The Revenant, another competitor for the glory of a top spot in the Inkshares/Nerdist contest, features the badass heroine we’ve all been dying to read. About the book: With its advanced weaponry, the Revenant was supposed to turn the tide of the war… but went missing instead. Ten years later, the Federation’s hold on the three suns is firmly cemented and corrupt in every way, and any Separatist hopes or dreams seem to have gone the way of Old Earth and its dinosaurs. Grayson Delamere was still a child when the war ended and she doesn’t much care why it was fought in the first place. In the vac, most lives are short and brutal with or without the Federation’s interference. She’s worked hard to keep her head low, making her living as a mechanic on any ship that’d have her… and covering her tracks well any time that ship happened to

Featured Author: Michael Haase

February 22, 2016 No Comments

Today The Warbler features Michael Haase, whose book, The Madness of Mr. Butler, looks like an interesting pseudo-Galilean tale in an absolutely fascinating setting. Read selected entries from Mr. Butler’s journal that he kept prior to the events chronicled in the novel at The Diary of Mr. Butler. About the book: The Madness of Mr. Butler is a satirical space opera packed with adventure, mystery, and drama. Swiftly alternating between character perspectives, the novel has an aggressive pace that keeps the reader locked into the story. Mr. Butler is packed with sharp turns around every corner that will drive you to read more and more until you’ve finished the entire book, reflecting on how it made you think, laugh, and wonder the entire time. The story follows Thaddeus Butler, a man thought to be insane because he is the only person who believes his world is round and floating through space. One evening, Mr. Butler

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