Adventure Books - Page 23

Miles, Mystery & Mayhem

Lois McMaster Bujold

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Another Omnibus edition representing the best and worst of the series. 3 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Miles, Mystery & Mayhem is the third omnibus (collection of works combined into one book) in Bujold's Vorkosigan series. These collections feature events that take place in chronological order but were written in non-chronological order. Many debates have arisen regarding the best way to read Bujold's Vorkorsigan adventures but I agree with the overwhelming popular choice of reading them in the chronological order of events. This collection features Ceteganda, Ethan of Ethos and the novella The Labyrinth.

Ceteganda is an example of Bujold at her best. Miles quickly finds himself in a diplomatic dilemma after landing on Ceteganda for a funeral. Political intrigue and mystery abound as Miles finds himself in the familiar situation of having to use hits wits to manipulate people and discover information in order to save his skin. This is where Bujold shines as she mixes delicious political intrigue with clever and likeable characterization. Miles is smart and witty and I found myself smiling in awe as he unravels mysteries and talks himself out of every situation. On top of that Bujold creates one of the more interesting alien societies in her portrayal of the complex Cetagandans.

"Ethan of Athos" falls in the Vorkorsigan series although Miles doesn't really appear in the story at all. In instead follows the adventures of displaced man from an all male planet, and the feisty Ms. Quinn, Miles's future lover. Therein lies the biggest problem that also plagued Falling Free. A story that takes place in the Vorkosigan series that doesn't include Miles is equivalent to a movie that takes place in Gotham without Batman. While the all male Athos society was an interesting, everything else was mediocre at best Bujold should of replaced with Quinn with Miles in this story.

"Labyrinth" is a fantastic short story that comes out of the gate at a shotgun's pace and never lets up until the end. Again it's Miles overcoming his physical differences and using his amazing understanding of the human psyche to overcome impossible odds. It's worth going to the bookstore and reading this there since many will already have read the other two novels.

Finally, I've seen a lot of negative reviews about people complaining how this collection is just reprints of older books. It upsets me that Amazon allows these idiots to post these negative reviews which are solely the results of losers whining because they bought something without even reading the back of the cover.

Bottom Line: Another must read in the fantastic world of Vorkosigan. Skipping Ethan of Athos wouldn't be unforgivable by any means.

Editorial Review:

Award-winning novelist Lois McMaster Bujold serves up three previously published Miles Vorkosigan stories--"Cetaganda, " "Ethan of Athos, " and the novella Labyrinth--in this adventurous and lively collection. In the three stories, the 20-something Barrayan lieutenant gets caught in a devious web of Cetagandan politics, investigates a peculiar obstetrician from a planet forbidden to women, and falls for a mysterious alien woman with fangs.

The Armour of Contempt (Gaunt's Ghosts)

Dan Abnett

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Good Piece Of Ghost 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is, while not one of the best GG's novels, it brings a new aspect to the table. There is a new Ghost in the regiment, and he is proudly welcomed, and is a great character. The whole book is good overall, and has a heartbreak ending. It also does a great job of giving a point of view of your common, run of the mill trooper, who is just now experiencing battle, and a huge one at that. Read it, and if you don't like it, then at least you can move on to the next book.

More good work from Abnett. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I liked it very much; not sure if it was because I always like Abnett or because I'd just finished that dreadful Descent of Angels book. Good plot development, just enough characters to make things diverse without losing any tension. Could have been a bit longer, but that's just me.

Editorial Review:

The Imperial crusade, including Gaunt's Ghosts, are sent back to the planet Gereon to join forces with the Imperial defenders and liberate the planet from Chaos. However, the brutality of the 'liberation' pitches Gaunt into opposition with his commanders, who believe victory must be achieved at any price, no matter how cruel.

The Anubis Gates

Tim Powers

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Total reviews: 93 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Author Tim Powers evokes 17th-century England with a combination of meticulously researched historic detail and imaginative flights in this sci-fi tale of time travel. Winner of the 1984 Philip K. Dick Award for best original science fiction paperback, this 1989 edition of the book that took the fantasy world by storm is the first hardcover version to be published in the United States. In his brief introduction, Ramsey Campbell sets The Anubis Gates in an adventure context, citing Powers's achievement of "extraordinary scenes of underground horror, of comedy both high and grotesque, of bizarre menace, of poetic fantasy."

The colonization of Egypt by western European powers is the launch point for power plays and machinations. Steeping together in this time-warp stew are such characters as an unassuming Coleridge scholar, ancient gods, wizards, the Knights Templar, werewolves, and other quasi-mortals, all wrapped in the organizing fabric of Egyptian mythology. In the best of fantasy traditions, the reluctant heroes fight for survival against an evil that lurks beneath the surface of their everyday lives.

Omen (Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi, Book 2)

Christie Golden

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Cloak of Deception (Star Wars)

James Luceno

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 94 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From New York Times bestselling author James Luceno comes an all-new Star Wars adventure that reveals the action and intrigue unfolding directly before Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

Mired in greed and corruption, tangled in bureaucracy, the Galactic Republic is crumbling. In the outlying systems, where the Trade Federation maintains a stranglehold on shipping routes, tensions are boiling over?while back in the comfort of Coruscant, the hub of civilized space and seat of the Republic government, few senators seem inclined to investigate the problem. And those who suspect Supreme Chancellor Valorum of having a hand in the machinations are baffled?especially when Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi foil an assassination attempt on the Chancellor.

With the crisis escalating, Valorum calls for an emergency trade summit. As humans and aliens gather, conspiracies sealed with large sums of money run rampant, and no one is entirely above suspicion. But the greatest threat of all remains unknown to everyone except three members of the Trade Federation who have entered into a shadowy alliance with a dark overlord. While the trio will be content with more money and fewer problems, Darth Sidious has grander, far more terrifying plans.

It is a time that tests the mettle of all those who strive to hold the Republic together?none more so than the Jedi Knights, who have long been the galaxy's best hope for preserving peace and justice. Yet despite their most valiant efforts, the meeting will explode into fiery chaos beyond everyone?s worst fears . . .


From the Hardcover edition.

Crystal Rain

Tobias S. Buckell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Long ago, so the stories say, the old-fathers came to Nanagada through a worm’s hole in the sky. Looking for a new world to call their own, they brought with them a rich mélange of cultures, religions, and dialects from a far-off planet called Earth. Mighty were the old-fathers, with the power to shape the world to their liking---but that was many generations ago, and what was once known has long been lost. Steamboats and gas-filled blimps now traverse the planet, where people once looked up to see great silver cities in the sky.

Like his world, John deBrun has forgotten more than he remembers. Twenty-seven years ago, he washed up onto the shore of Nanagada with no memory of his past. Although he has made a new life for himself among the peaceful islanders, his soul remains haunted by unanswered questions about his own identity.

These mysteries take on new urgency when the fearsome Azteca storm over the Wicked High Mountains in search of fresh blood and hearts to feed their cruel, inhuman gods. Nanagada’s only hope lies in a mythical artifact, the Ma Wi Jung, said to be hidden somewhere in the frozen north. And only John deBrun knows the device’s secrets, even if he can’t remember why or how!

Crystal Rain is the much-anticipated debut novel by one of science fiction’s newest and most promising talents.

How Few Remain

Harry Turtledove

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 121 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A stunning start to a lengthy series 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Good ol' Turtledove. Love him or hate him, in many ways he's responsible for the recent surge in alternate history stories. At his best he puts out books like Guns of the South, Ruled Britannia and In the Presence of Mine Enemies. At his worst... well, even at his worst he's still pretty darn readable.

Thankfully this book, which starts the mammoth so-called "Timeline 191" series, is one of the better books. Taking place in a world where the CSA survived the Civil War, and is now about to go to war against the USA again in 1881, the book is an excellent vision of what might have been.

Most fascinating in the novel are the uses of historical characters. Fredrick Douglass, frustrated at the continuation of slavery in the South. Abraham Lincoln, voted out of office in 1864 and now hated by the nation. Sammuel Clemmens, newspaper editor and all around smart-ass. Stonewall Jackson, the great Terror. And my personal favorite, Teddy Roosevelt, assembling Roosevelts Unauthorized Regiment to fight those dirty Canuks!

This book sets up many events that will come into play later. The Mormon uprising starts here. The Socialist Party begins to come into its own. Roosevelt and Custer make their first appearances. And we start to see the slow transformation of the United States into the sort of country that would, a few decades down the line, consider it entirely acceptable to, when a soldier is attacked, round up civilians and murder them as punishment.

This book holds up well as a stand-alone novel, but much better if you then go from this to the Great War books. It's probably the best of the series, which isn't saying THAT much because the other ones are pretty good, too. While the reader might not always agree with the tracks Turtledove takes the world onto in this book it is at least always an entertaining voyage, and there's far worse things to be.

Editorial Review:

From the master of alternate history comes an epic of the second Civil War. It was an epoch of glory and success, of disaster and despair. In the "Second" War Between the States, the times, the stakes, and the battle lines had changed--and so would history.

Scattered Suns (The Saga of Seven Suns)

Kevin J. Anderson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The author of 32 national bestsellers delivers the fourth book in a breathtaking, galaxy-spanning space opera series. As the war escalates, the various civilizations across the Spiral Arm crack from the strain. Focused intently on the outside alien foe, leaders across the galaxy are failing to hold their nations together. Amid the mounting tensions, empires begin to crumble. In despair at his powerlessness to keep his human race alive, Chairman Basil Wenceslas grows increasingly irrational and tyrannical. Unable to effectively defend against the alien enemy, he blames the unruly colonies and independent human nations around the galaxy and punishes them with violence. Meanwhile, the leader of the Ildirans, Jora'h, flounders under a massive rebellion. For the first time in memory, Ildiran has taken up arms against Ildiran, and feeling every death through their psychic network, Jora'h suffers at the slaughter of his people. Every planet and colony across the spiral arm, human or alien, feels the devastation. No one is safe.

Deluge: Book Three of The Twins of Petaybee

Anne Mccaffrey, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

When two award-winning science-fiction masters like Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough collaborate, the results are astonishing. Their master creation is Petaybee, a sentient planet able to guide its own evolution and, with some help from its loyal inhabitants, defend itself against predation by offworlders. Now, at last, McCaffrey and Scarborough return to Petaybee for the thrilling conclusion of the Twins of Petaybee trilogy, the sixth novel of the amazing self-aware world.


DELUGE

InterGal Corporation has long desired to exploit the resource-rich Petaybee. But the planet and its guardians, led by Yana Maddock and Sean Shongili, along with their twin children, Ronan and Murel, have successfully thwarted every attempt by the Corporation to impose its iron-fisted dominion.

Until now.

In a bold two-pronged assault, the predacious Corporation has arrested Petaybee’s leading off-world champion, Marmion de Revers Algemeine, on trumped-up charges, while InterGal’s military arm has dispatched an invading force to subdue the planet once and for all. Marmion has allies within the Corporation who can halt the invasion. but if they cannot be found quickly, it will be too late for Marmion . . . and Petaybee.

While their parents work to foil the invasion of their world, Ronan and Murel are captured and sent to a desolate prison world where an old enemy, Dr. Mabo, waits to continue her cruel experiments on the shape-changing siblings. The twins’ only hope of escape lies in the uncharted seas of the prison planet. But in the murky depths, something else is waiting. . . .

Watch on the Rhine (Posleen War Series #7)

John Ringo, Tom Kratman

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Total reviews: 55 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The invaders are coming¿the Posleen, a seemingly unstoppable horde who have conquered one star system after another, literally feeding on their conquests. Earthlies, the Darhel, have given the humans a number of highly-advanced technological devices, including a process for rejuvenating the aged, including trained and proven soldiers who otherwise would be too old to fight. Rejuvenation may give a critical edge, since to survive, the Earth must use every resource at hand. Every resource . . .

In the dark days after the initial Posleen attack, but before the primary invasion, the Chancellor of Germany faces a critical decision. Over the years, with military cutbacks, the store of experienced German military personnel had simply dwindled. After the destruction of Northern Virginia, he realized that it was necessary to tap the one group he had sworn never, ever, to recall: the few remaining survivors of the Waffen SS. Has he made a devilr is this a chance for the reviled SS at last to fight the good fight? And, perhaps, gain redemption. . . ?

Watch On the Rhine, a new chapter in the New York Times best-selling Posleen War saga, is perhaps the most unbiased, and brutal, look at the inner workings of the Waffen SS in history. Meticulously researched, it explores all that was good, and evil, about the most infamous military force in history using the backdrop of the Posleen invasion as a canvas.