Science Fiction – Page 9 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Review: ‘Cold Storage’, by David Koepp #HQ #PublicationDay

Cold Storage Hardcover by — **ISBN:** 9780008334505
**Imprint:** HQ
**On Sale:** 2019-09-19
**Format:** Hardcover
https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780008334505/cold-storage/

Blurb
When Pentagon bioterror operative Roberto Diaz was sent to investigate a suspected biochemical attack, he found something far worse: a highly mutative organism capable of extinction-level destruction.
Now, after decades of festering in a forgotten sub-basement, the specimen has found its way out and is on a lethal feeding frenzy. And only Diaz knows how to stop it.
He races across the country to help two unwitting security guards – one an ex-con, the other a single mother. Over one harrowing night, the unlikely trio must figure out how to quarantine this horror again . . . before it’s too late,

Review: ‘Broad Plain Darkening’, by Clare Rhoden

Broad Plain Darkening – Chronicles of the Pale #2
The safe world of the Pale is under threat.
Inside the policosmos, the new Regent Adaeze strives for dominance over the all-powerful Senior Forecaster, but the Pale’s humachine citizens are unaware that their city is close to collapse.
Outside on Broad Plain, the exiled human Hector undertakes a dangerous trek to find a safe haven for the orphaned twins.
How can anyone survive as their world shifts underneath them?

Purchase Link – viewbook.at/clarerhodenbroadplain

Review: ‘The Pale’, by Clare Rhoden

The Outside can be a dangerous place.
But so can the inside.
It’s been years since the original cataclysm, but life has been structured, peaceful, and most of all uneventful in the Pale. The humachine citizens welcome the order provided by their ruler, the baleful Regent.
However, when one of their own rescues a human boy, Hector, from ravenous ferals on the Outside, their careful systems are turned upside down.
As Hector grows more and more human-strange, the citizens of the Pale grow uneasy.
What will happen when the Outside tries to get in?

Purchase Link – viewbook.at/clarerhodenthepale

Review: ‘Lost Solace’, by Karl Drinkwater

Sometimes spaceships disappear with everyone on board – the Lost Ships. But sometimes they come back, strangely altered, derelict, and rumoured to be full of horrors.

Opal is on a mission. She’s been seeking something her whole life. Something she is willing to die for. And she thinks it might be on a Lost Ship.

Opal has stolen Clarissa, an experimental AI-controlled spaceship, from the military. Together they have tracked down a Lost Ship, in a lonely nebula far from colonised space.

The Lost Ship is falling into the gravity well of a neutron star, and will soon be truly lost … forever. Legends say the ships harbour death, but there’s no time for indecision.

Opal gears up to board it. She’s just one woman, entering an alien and lethal environment. But perhaps with the aid of Clarissa’s intelligence – and an armoured spacesuit – Opal may stand a chance.

Review: ‘They Don’t Make Plus Size Spacesuits’, by Ali Thompson

“They don’t make plus size spacesuits” is a sci-fi short story collection, featuring an introductory essay. It is written by long-time fat activist, Ali Thompson of Ok2BeFat.
This book is a incandescent cry from the heart, a radical turn away from utopian daydreaming of future body perfection to center a fat perspective instead.
Ali invites people to experience a fictional version of a few of the many ways that fatphobia can manifest in a life. The ways that the people closest to fat people can subject them to tiny betrayals on a near constant basis. The disdain that piles up over the years, until it all becomes too large to bear.
And while some of the fatphobic tech in these stories may seem outrageous and downright unbelievable, it is all based on extrapolations of so-called “advances” by the diet industry, as they search for ever more efficient ways to starve people.
The modern day worship of Health promises a future peopled only by the thin, a world where the War on Fatness is won and only visually acceptable bodies remain.
What will that future mean for the fat people who will inevitably still continue to exist?
Nothing good.

My Review

This book contains an essay and four short stories on the subject of being fat. Sci fi has a bit of a fatphobia problem, like the world in general. Ali Thompson writes short powerful stories that takes the current obsession with forcing everyone into a single acceptable body type to logical conclusions. They are painful to read but a necessary pain if we are to understand the daftness of the idea that thin = healthy.

Highly recommended, especially to anyone who thinks telling a child they’re fat is a good idea.

Review: ‘The Perfect Wife’, by JP Delaney

Details here

Abbie wakes in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. The man by her side explains that he’s her husband. He’s a titan of the tech world, the founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most innovative startups. He tells Abbie she’s a gifted artist, a doting mother, and the love of his life.

Five years ago, she suffered a terrible accident. Her return from the abyss is a miracle of science, a breakthrough that has taken him half a decade to achieve.

But as Abbie pieces together memories of her marriage, she begins questioning her husband’s motives – and his version of events. Can she trust him when he says he wants them to be together for ever? And what really happened to her, half a decade ago?

Published by: Quercus Fiction

Publication Date: 8th August 2019

Format: Hardback

I. S. B. N.: 9781786488527

I got this book from Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival. On the Friday there was a pop-up Crime Files event where this book was given out.

I hadn’t planned to read or review it yet, but something was brought to my attention by the delightful @autiedragon on Twitter, who was reading an eARC and came across something that they felt had to be highlighted. Before saying anything I wanted to read the book and form my own opinion. I have, and I fully support @autiedragon’s response.

You will see what I mean when I get in to the review. As regular readers know, I don’t normally review books I don’t like but this is important to me. I need to warn Autistic fans of thrillers, psychological suspense novels etc. about the content.

There will be spoilers in this review. If you don’t want to know what happens, there are other reviews available elsewhere.

Continue reading “Review: ‘The Perfect Wife’, by JP Delaney”

Review: ‘White Gold’, by David Barker

Blurb
VENGEANCE ALWAYS HAS A PRICE
Sim Atkins, Overseas Division agent, returns to Earth, having saved the Moon base from a deadly terrorist plot (see Rose Gold). All Sim can think about is finding the criminals responsible.
But his fury and lust for revenge are put on hold when a nuclear warhead is stolen by Terra Former leader Matthias Larsson. Can Sim and his colleagues track down the terrorist cell and disarm the device in time?
White Gold is the gripping finale in the compellingly original Gaia Trilogy, page-turning thrillers that provoke as well as excite.

Unexpected Review #2: ‘We Are Legion (We Are Bob)’, by Dennis E Taylor

Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency; 2nd edition
14th April 2017
£9.31
9781680680584

Blurb
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it’s a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.
Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he’ll be switched off, and they’ll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.
The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad — very mad.

Unplanned review: ‘Artemis’ by Andy Weir

36426750 — Published By: Del Ray
Publication Date: 12th July 2018
Format: Paperback
I.S.B.N.: 9781785030253

Blurb

Jazz Bashara is a criminal.

Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you’re not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you’ve got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.

Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of Jazz’s problems, as she learns that she’s stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself – and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even more unlikely than the first.

Review: ‘Survive’, by Stephen Llewelyn

Survive

Published By: Clink Street Publishing

Publication Date: 18th September 2018

Format: Paperback

I.S.B.N.: 9781912562039

Price: £10.99

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41643888-survive

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Survive-Stephen-Llewelyn/dp/1912562030

Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/gyTWR6iC3rc

Audio Clip: https://youtu.be/4F7NL9Pq_1I

Blurb

A young man and his mother fight to leave tragedy behind. Striving for a new life on Mars has cost Tim and Patricia everything, but as even their future is taken from them, their past is just beginning.

Earth: population 50 billion. Pollution, crime and scarcity are out of our control. Instantaneous travel provides hope for the terraforming of another world.

A terrorist attack. An explosion at the event horizon of a wormhole. A murder. A trail of clues, misinformation and sabotage. Nothing is as it seems as an old enemy returns from the shadows. 100 years from now, the 100 souls aboard the USS New World are thrown back 100 million years to the deadly Cretaceous Period. From there, an epic fight to save humanity begins; but first, they must survive.

A multi-national, eclectic crew; among them the good, the not so good and the no damned good at all. Loss, courage, genius and sheer bloody-mindedness bind them. NASA Captain, James Douglas, and his first officer, Jill Baines, expected a taxi run to Mars. Now they must escape a fearsome Mapusaurus pack, survive natural disasters, brutal discoveries and treachery.

Continue reading “Review: ‘Survive’, by Stephen Llewelyn”