Eye of Cat - Roger Zelazny

   1982; 235 pages.  New Author? : Mostly.  Genres : Native American Mythology; Science Fiction; Navajo Culture.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    The master galactic beast hunter, Billy Blackhorse Singer, has just been offered a job: stop an Stragean assassin who’s on her way to Earth to kill the UN Secretary General.

 

    It sounds easy enough, but this extraterrestrial has some enhancements that will help her in her mission.  Most importantly, she’s a shapeshifter.

 

    Hmmm.  That presents a challenge for Billy.  Humans can’t shapeshift.  He needs a partner who can do that, and remembers capturing an alien creature long ago that showed some shapeshifting tendencies, but no signs of being sentient.  Still, it’s in a cage down at the ILI (Interstellar Life Institute) in nearby San Diego, so why not go check it out?

 

    It'd be great if the beast turns out to be a sentient shapeshifter, but if so, I wonder what other hidden talents it might have.  And what it would take to get it to team up with Billy.

 

What’s To Like...

    Roger Zelazny is the author of several Science Fiction series, but ANAICT Eye of Cat is a standalone tale.  It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Billy successfully recruits the caged creature, who he dubs “Cat”, and who turns out to be both a shapeshifter and a telepath.  But its price for joining up with Billy is a stunner: in addition to being freed from its present cage-in-a-zoo situation, it wants a chance for revenge.  He wants one week to chase down and attempt to kill his erstwhile captor.  Billy.

 

    The main plot thread is a prolonged chase scene: first Billy and Cat contending with the assassin; then with Cat stalking Billy.  It isn’t easy avoiding a stalker who can effortlessly read every thought in your head.  Billy gets some help from a panel of human mentalists, but frankly, they are of limited value.

 

    There is a second, more subtle plot thread which I found to be more intriguing.  Billy is a Navajo, but he has “left the Blessed Way”, meaning he lives and thinks like a white man, and has forgotten his Navajo gods and legends.  It was fascinating to watch him gradually revert to his heritage.

 

    Most of the tale is set in Dinetah, the “Land of the Navajos” located in the Four Corners area of the western US.  Roger Zelazny incorporates a bunch of Navajo words into the text, and I really enjoyed that.  The story takes place in the near future, with strange things such as “float cars”, “Porta-phones”, and “Trip Boxes”.  Yeah, I know, we have Porta-phones now (we call them cell phones), but Eye of Cat was written in 1982.  And those Trip Boxes enable users to teleport, reminding me muchly of the TARDIS in the Doctor Who series.

 

    The ending is not particularly twisty, but suitably resolves the main plot threads.  The storylines are tied up, Billy gets reacquainted with his Navajo roots, and his soul finally finds peace.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 35 ratings and 20 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.64*/5, based on 1,763 ratings and 76 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Chindi (n.) : a spirit, usually malevolent; a ghost.

Others: Yetaalii (n.).

 

Excerpts...

    He thought of the old man’s words and the things of which they reminded him—of the sky creatures and water creatures, of the beings of cloud, mist, rain, pollen and corn which had figured so prominently in his childhood imagination—here in the season when the snakes and the thunder still slept.

    It had been a long while since he had considered his problems in the old terms.  A chindi . . . Real or of the mind—what difference?  Something malicious at his back.  Yes, another way of looking at things . . .   (loc. 245)

 

    “This beast can read thoughts.”

    “So it reads that there’s someone up ahead waiting to kill it.  Doesn’t have to be a mind reader to know that.  And if it keeps following, that’s what could happen.”

    “It can change shape.”

    “It’s still got to move in order to make progress.  That makes it a target.  Billy’s armed now.  It won’t have it as easy as you seem to think.”

    “Then why’d you decide to come?”

    “I don’t like to see any outsider chasing Navajos on our land.”  (loc. 2225)

 

Kindle Details…

    I bought Eye of Cat as part of a two-book bundle of Roger Zelazny sci-fi tales.  The other book is Isle of the Dead.  It appears Amazon no longer offers this bundle in e-book format; but you can buy the paperback version for a mere $59.99.  No, that is not a typo.  Eye of Cat as an unbundled e-book is presently not available at Amazon.

 

“You have been in the minds of too many Californians.  They’re full of pop psychology.”  (loc. 1478)

    There’s just a modicum of profanity in Eye of Cat; I counted only three in the first quarter of the book, all of them variations of damn.  The cussword choices get a bit more varied later on, even including an f-bomb, but on the whole, the expletives remained sparse.

 

    There were a number of typos, but most of these were spacing issues: Hewas, Hehad, Itis, Idropped, and theoldman.  I suspect these slip-ups arose during the e-book bundling conversion stage, and therefore I don't blame the author, who passed away in 1995. 

 

    A variety of literary tropes are sprinkled throughout the text, including flashbacks, deliberately garbled paragraphs and what I presume were newspaper headlines.  I found them to be more distracting than enlightening.  Your take may be different.  In any event, they became sparser as the book progressed.

 

    Overall, I thought Eye of Cat was an ambitious effort by Roger Zelazny that unfortunately falls a bit flat.  I enjoyed the Native American cultural aspects of the book, but the action scenes, although present, were few and far between.  Fortunately, Roger Zelazny’s writing skills do a good job of overshadowing the overly lengthy storyline.  The relatively mediocre Goodreads rating, listed above, reflects this.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  There’s a brief but heartwarming “Dedication” at the beginning of the book that simply reads “For Joe Leaphorn, Jimmy Chee, and Tony Hillerman”.  If you know who these three are, and like their tales, you’ll enjoy Eye of Cat.

Daisy's Run - Scott Baron

   2018; 366 pages.  Full Title: Book 1 (out of 5) in the series “The Clockwork Chimera”.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Space Opera; Science-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    It's always a bummer to wake up early, even if it's only a few minutes ahead of schedule.

 

    So you can’t blame Daisy Swarthmore and the rest of the crew on the spaceship Váli for being a bit testy when it happens to them.

 

    Especially when they’re roused six months early.  Especially when it’s the ship’s AI, nicknamed “Mal”, who’s waking them up.  Especially when it means being disturbed from a cryogenic sleep during their interstellar return home to planet Earth.  There had better be a very good reason for this.

 

    There is.  Something crashed into the Váli and the ship’s now on fire.

 

What’s To Like...

    Daisy’s Run is the first book in Scott Baron’s 5-volume Space Opera “The Clockwork Chimera”.  The storyline takes place across three settings: Outer Space (mostly on board the Váli), Earth, and the Moon.

 

    The overarching storyline involves Daisy learning about her past history, her present crewmates, and her inner abilities.  Nothing is as it seems, and although there is a steady trickle of hints as to the answers, most of them just lead to more questions.  I had fun tagging along with Daisy, trying to figure out what was going on, and enjoyed musing on the philosophical conundrums of “how do you know for sure you’re a human?” and “is eating rabbit venison bad for your karma?”

 

    I liked the nods to other sci-fi classics: 2001: A Space Odyssey (“Mal” is eerily similar to “Hal”), Alien, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, and PKD’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  I chuckled at the name-choice of the Los Angeles-based "Schwarzenegger Space Port", and had to look up what the Qi Gong meditation routine was.  The Neuro-Stims were a nice detail, as was the fascinating sport of Chess-Boxing.  I’m pretty sure that last one really exists; I vaguely recall reading about it many years ago.

 

    There aren’t a lot of characters to keep track of, but Scott Baron does a good job of making them an interesting and varied cast.  Daisy encounters a bunch of different critters, including humans, AIs, cyborgs, robots, and aliens, and sometimes it’s hard to discern exactly which species they are.  The writing style is storyline-driven, with a bunch of Daisy’s snarky banter with those around her mixed in.

 

    The ending is not particularly exciting, but does provide answers to most of the plot threads.  Daisy finds out who she is, what the Váli’s mission really entails, what the cosmic situation is, and what the rest of the crew have planned for her next.  The Epilogue is a catchy teaser for Book 2 in the series, Pushing Daisy, presumably chronicling how she reacts to all those revelations.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 731 ratings and 139 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.99/5 based on 830 ratings and 143 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Horking (v.) : vomiting; coughing up.

 

Excerpts...

    “Okay, listen to this one.  They wrote, ‘Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong.  No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has already got there first, and is waiting for it.’

    Sarah was silent a moment.  “That’s kind of messed up, Daisy.”

    “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

    She stopped crawling.

    “Hey!”

   “Hang on a minute,” Daisy said, the pulled a fresh pen from her pocket and scratched out a message of her own, then started crawling again.  “’Without a little darkness from time to time, man would forget that he dwells in the light,’” Sarah read.  "Who said that one, Daze?"

    Daisy continued her crawl for the exit.

    "I did."  (loc. 715)

 

    “What’s the next step in our evolution?  In theirs?  Are they trying to bastardize mankind until we are as much machinery as they are?  And why do humans have exposed metal, while full-on robots are covered with flesh?”

    “They’re probably just trying to make us feel comfortable around them, is all.  Familiar faces and all that.”

    “But why cyborgs?  I mean, take Barry for instance.  He’s basically a sentient toaster covered in steak—”

    “I think he might take issue with that description.”  (loc. 2083)

 

Kindle Details…

    Daisy’s Run goes for $0.99 at Amazon right now.  The other four books in the series are all in the $2.99-$3.99 range; or you can buy the entire series in a bundle for $7.99. Scott Baron has several other Sci-Fi series for your Kindle, and they seem to follow the same pricing strategy: $0.99 for the first book in the series, $2.99-$3.99 for the others, and bundles appropriately discounted.

 

“Yet here you are, a chatty ghost in my head.”  (loc. 2891)

    I couldn’t find much to quibble about in Daisy’s Run.  The pacing seemed a bit slow at first, and the text felt overly-descriptive at first, but that was inevitable since Scott Baron has world-building to do, plus characters and enigmatic plot threads to introduce.  Once that’s done, the action speeds up nicely.

 

    There’s a fair amount of cussing (27 instances in the first 10% of the book) and a couple of rolls-in-the-hay, but nothing lewd and lurid.  Some reviewers were put off by the sex passages, but hey, that’s a common occurrence in Space Opera novels.

 

    Other reviewers felt Daisy was an unlikeable protagonist, one going so far as to accuse her of being a bigot.  Well, it’s true she gets called that at one point in the story, but the alleged bigotry is against robotic entities, and is ultimately proved false.  Methinks someone had a grudge against the author.

 

    My only big gripe has to do with the Amazon blurb for the Kindle edition, where one of the genres is listed as “Humorous Science Fiction”.  Amazon lies.  If you pick up this book for the LOL’s, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.  In fairness though, neither of the other two formats – Audiobook and Paperback, label this as a humorous sci-fi novel.

 

    8 Stars.  Overall, Daisy’s Run kept me interested and fully lived up to my expectations for a Space Opera.  Now that the main characters have been established and the requisite world-building is done, it’s time to get kicking some Chithiid ass in the sequel.

The Human Division - John Scalzi

   2013; 493 pages.  Book 5 (out of 6) in the “Old Man’s War” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Military Sci-Fi; Science Fiction.  Overall Rating: 6*/10.

 

    One of the Colonial Union’s (“CU”) spaceships has disappeared!

 

    Okay, that’s not totally unheard-of.  The galaxy is a humongous place, with lots of civilizations and lots of commerce, so it’s not surprising that there are lots of space pirates preying on far-flung commercial freighters, easily avoiding the too-few patrolling military vessels.

 

   But this spaceship was different: it was carrying a top-tier CU Ambassador to a top-secret rendezvous with an alien race called the Utche to open negotiations concerning mutual defense.  The CU ship arrived first, and while waiting for the Utche, suddenly vanished!

 

    Of course, it’s also possible they were ambushed by some unknown enemy and vaporized into nothingness.  We better send a replacement ship, with a replacement ambassador there right away.  It’s vital that we commence developing that treaty with the Utche.

 

    And while we’re in the neighborhood, let’s do a search for the missing ship’s “black box”.  If we find one, it’ll be a sign that someone obliterated the ship with a loss of all hands aboard.  And then we'll have to figure out who did such a dastardly deed.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Human Division is the fifth, and penultimate, book in John Scalzi’s space opera series, “Old Man’s War”.  Its main focus is the galactic rivalry between the Colonial Union, mostly humanoids, and the Conclave, a vast confederation of several hundred alien races, almost all of them non-humanoids.  Surprisingly, at least for those who aren’t reading the series in order, Earth has yet to commit either of the two alliances, ever since finding out that the CU had been using them as a "breeding planet" for a very long time.

 

    Due to the book’s structure (more on this later), there are a whole bunch of characters to meet and greet, but the six main ones are Wilson and Schmidt, Coloma and Abumwe, and Egan and Rigney.  I found the friendly banter among all of them immensely entertaining.  The character development of both the major and minor players is excellent, and thanks to the diverse makeup of the Conclave, we are introduced to more than a dozen fascinating extraterrestrial species, albeit often in just a cursory manner.

 

    The two main plotlines are: a.) who is manipulating the enmity between the Conclave and the Colonial Union, and why?; and b.) will the Earth and the Colonial Union kiss and make up?  The book’s title alludes to the latter plotline.

 

    I liked the “talking baseball” dialogue used to determine if certain suspects were indeed Earthlings as they claimed.  I chuckled at what tripped them up – they thought the Chicago Cubs had yet to win a World Series after more than a century of frustration.  In Scalzi’s timeline, the Cubs had triumphed two years earlier, thus tripping up the suspects.  In actuality, although the “Cubs curse” was still in effect when Scalzi wrote The Human Division in 2013, they won it all in 2016, which invalidates this portion of Scalzi’s story.

 

    The ending is suitably tense and exciting, but also disappointing in that it leaves both main plotlines unresolved.  Further, the overarching storyline about life-and-death in the “Old Man’s War” future, hasn’t been advanced one bit.  I agree with other reviewers, The Human Division is really just an anthology containing 15 short stories, all set in this galactic world that Scalzi created.  The book’s title should be something like “Tales of the Colonial Union”.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Idiosyncratic (adj.) : peculiar; individual; distinctive.

Others: Legerdemain (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 1,517 ratings and 668 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.08*/5, based on 30,280 ratings and 1,653 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “I’m ruminating on my life, and karma,” Wilson said.  “And what I must have done in a previous life to deserve being spit on by an alien species as part of a diplomatic ceremony.”

    “It’s because the Farnutian culture is so tied to the sea,” Schmidt said.  “Exchanging the waters of their homeland is a symbolic way to say our fates are now tied together.”

    “It’s also an excellent way to spread the Farnutian equivalent of smallpox,” Wilson said.

    “That’s why we got shots,” Schmidt said.  (pg. 12)

 

    “We just got our new mission assigned to us.”

    “Really,” Wilson said.  “Does this one involve me being held hostage?  Or possibly being blown up in order to find a mole in the Department of State?  Because I’ve already done those.”

    “I’m the first to acknowledge that the last couple of missions we’ve had have not ended on what are traditionally considered high notes,” Schmidt said.  Wilson smirked.  “But I think this one may get us back on the winning track.  You know of the Icheloe?”

    “Never heard of them,” Wilson said.

    “Nice people,” Schmidt said.  “Look a little like a bear mated with a tick, but we can’t all be beautiful.”  (pg. 220)

 

“How do we feel about ghosts?” (…) “I prefer my dead to stay dead.”  (pg. 348)

    Other than the major issue of the “anthology” aspect of The Human Division, which we've already discussed, the quibbles are minor.  The writing is clean - just 7 cusswords in the first 10% of the book and no R-rated situations that I recall.

 

    Some of the episodes – specifically numbers 2, 10, and 11 – are really tangential to the main storyline.  Episode 10 is particularly irrelevant, chronicling Hart Schmidt’s going home to spend the holiday “Harvest Day” with his family.

 

    There are a couple typos – soliders/soldiers (pg. 86) and It it/If it (pg. 444) which is embarrassing for a publishing-house-issued paperback.  But we’re talking about Tor Books here, and their proofreaders have a long history of shoddy editing.

 

    It was nice to see General Gau show up as a recurring character, but sadly, neither John Perry nor Zoe make even a cameo appearance.  And lastly and leastly: the goat dies.

 

    6 Stars.  I get the feeling that The Human Division was a literary experiment by John Scalzi.  If so, then for me as well as a number of other reviewers, it fell flat.  Plotlines go unresolved, dozens of pages are wasted on tangential stories, and there’s not even any continuity from one episode to the next.  What saves this book, however, is John Scalzi’s writing and storytelling skills – the guy is one heck of a gifted author.  I have one more book to go in this series; here's hoping it isn't subject to any writing tomfoolery.

Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Bottled Brains - Harry Harrison & Robert Sheckley

   1990; 248 pages.  Book 3 (but Volume 2) (out of 7) in the “Bill the Galactic Hero” series.  New Authors? : No, and Yes.  Genres : Science Fiction; Humor and Satire.   Overall Rating: 3*/10.

 

    Central Headquarters needs a volunteer and Space Trooper Bill is the perfect fit.

 

    Maybe it’s that pair of Deathwish Drang fangs he sports.  They’d scare a Chinger right out of its lizard pelt.  Of course, since Chingers are only seven inches tall, that's not saying much.

 

    Maybe it’s that alligator foot that the military surgeons at Camp Diplatory have just attached to Bill’s leg.  Alligator feet are quite powerful.  But since Bill only has *one* of them transplanted so far on him, all it does is make him walk lopsided.

 

    Maybe it’s because Bill’s a part of the famous “Fighting 69th Deep Space Screaming Killers” unit.  But heck, there’s fifty thousand such troopers stationed here at Camp Diplatory.  So what makes Bill so special?

 

    Actually, it’s because Bill’s been classified as expendable, and that’s exactly the kind of soldier needed for this next mission.  It’s a trip to “Tsuris”, a mystery planet where objects passing nearby – even starships – get plucked from space, disappearing into thin ether, only to reappear again millions of miles away.  Someone needs to go there and reconnoiter, even if they also get zapped to who-knows-where and are never heard from again.

 

    Someone expendable.

 

What’s To Like...

    Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Bottled Brains is the third book in Harry Harrison’s 7-volume humorous sci-fi series, and the first to feature a co-author, which then became the norm for subsequent entries, although the co-authors change from one book to the next.

 

    The book is first and foremost a spoofery of other Sci-Fi series, most notably Star Trek (with Captain Dirk and Mr. Splock) and Star Wars (with Ham Duo and Chewgumma).  Bill gets introduced to time-travel, thanks to a gizmo called a "Temporal/Spatial Displacer", and a bit later experiences getting sucked into a computer as well.

 

    The writing is a vocabularian's delight, featuring some kewl words I’m familiar with (such as “simulacrum” and “tintinnabulation”) plus some that were new to me, a couple of which are listed below.  The multifunctional expression “bowb” (it can be used as a noun, verb, interjection, and/or adjective) is back; I think it should be added to everyone’s vocabulary.  I enjoyed the nod to Robert Heinlein by having Dirk “grok” things, and of course the journey back through time to Carthage and the encounter with Hannibal resonated deeply with me. 

 

    There's some subtle wordplay, such as a capital city named “Graypnutz” and some hilarious mistranslations as Bill’s computerized translating device struggles with the idioms of the Tsurisian language.  I chuckled at some of the religious references, including the “Church of Very Little Charities” and the “Zoroastrian Winter Solstice Defloration Festival”.  Nowadays we call that latter one "Christmas".

 

    There are multiple plotlines to keep the action and excitement flowing: will Bill get a brain transplant?, will he fail the intelligence test?, can he successfully steal a temporal/spatial displacer for his superiors?, can he avoid being court-martialed and executed?  I guess the answer to that last one is self-evident, since there are four more books in this series.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Zaftig (adj.) : having a full, rounded figure; plump,  (a Yankeeism)

Others: Crampon (n.); Concomitant (as a noun, not an adjective).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 11 ratings and 5 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.42*/5, based on 811 ratings and 18 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Yipe!” Bill yiped.  “What the bowb are you doing with my ear?”

    “I’m fastening a translating device to your ear, so if you find any Tsurisians on Tsuris you can talk to them.”

    “Tsuris!  The place nobody ever comes back from?”

    “You catch on fast.  That’s the whole point of the operation.  Your non-return will give us the excuse to invade.”

    “I don’t think I like this.”  (pg. 16)

 

    “They’re giving me the Usladish look; you know what I mean?”

    “No, I don’t,” Bill said, desperation in his voice, a trapped feeling coursing through every fiber of his being.

    “I keep forgetting you weren’t born here,” Illyria said.  “An Usladish look is what we call a look that means, I know you’re up to something sneaky and rotten but I’m not going to tell anybody about it yet because I’m sort of sneaky and rotten myself.”

    “They don’t have that feeling where I come from,” Bill said.

    “No?  How curious.”  (pg. 22)

 

“When they handed out the brains you were in the corner picking your toes.”  (pg. 181)

    Sadly, there are a bunch of weaknesses in Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Bottled Brains.  Overall, the writing is bad, and the storytelling is even worse.  I felt like I was reading a high school student’s effort.  The various plotlines meander all over the place in the tale, and there is no overarching storyline to tie everything together.

 

    The first part of the book has some funny moments, but things soon devolve into just plain silliness.  I felt like the authors were trying to spoof Starship Troopers and its “so bad it’s good” reputation, but ended up instead with a “so bad it’s terrible” result.  I’m also at a loss to say who the target audience is; the book’s too silly to appeal to most adults, but it’s also got too much cussing and sexual references (tumescence, phallus, copulation, detumescing) to be appropriate for a YA audience.

 

    Summing up, there’s just too much wrong with this book, and the series as a whole, to recommend it.  The low Goodreads rating and the scarcity of reviews/ratings at both Amazon and Goodreads (B,tGHotPoBB has been around for 32 years now, and both Sheckley and Harrison are well-known sci-fi writers) should’ve clued me in that this was something to avoid.  I doubt I'll go any further in this series.

 

    3 Stars.  The book’s cover lists Harry Harrison and Robert Sheckley as co-authors, (with Sheckley’s name getting the smaller font size), while the Wikipedia article (the link is here) says Harrison was merely the editor.  Also, Harry Harrison’s comments in Wikipedia sound like he really didn’t want much to do with this series, likening it to “sharecropping”.

 

    Personally, the 72 chapters of Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of the Bottled Brains seemed like a friendly contest between the two writers.  I got the impression that one would write a chapter, but end it with a ill-fitting and superfluous sentence, and it would then be the other writer’s challenge to somehow make it fit.  For instance, Chapter 60 ends with this sentence: “Surprisingly, the answer was to be provided by a single long-stemmed blue rose.”  Oy.  Good luck making that segue smoothly into the next chapter.

Belly of the Beast - Scott Baron

   2021; 433 pages.  Book 2 (out of 5) in the “Warp Riders” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Space Opera; Science Fiction; Space Exploration.  Overall Rating: 7*/10.

 

    Thus far, the galactic reconnaissance mission has been an utter failure.  Just ask Captain Sadira Perez.

 

    They've been sent out on a mission to locate the homeworld of a spaceship that had the gall to fire preemptively at Sadira’s ship, and the first thing to happen was a warp malfunction that booted Sadira and her crew into a who-knows-where-we-are part of the galaxy.  Her star charts are useless, as is the AI that controls all the vital functions of the spaceship.  Finding those hostile aliens is now Priority #2; Sadira would settle for somehow finding her way back home.

 

    But look!  Out there, dead ahead!  There’s an alien spaceship headed right toward us!  It’s different from the one that fired at us earlier, but maybe they have some star charts that would help Captain Sadira figure out where in the Milky Way we're at.

 

    Man, that ship is huge!  I wonder how many miles long it is.  And now, what looks like a giant mouth is opening up.  Jeez, it's so big it could swallow our ship whole.  It’s getting dangerously close now, and we seem to be headed right for that entryway!

 

    GULP!

 

What’s To Like...

    Belly of the Beast is the “sequel-to-the-prequel” in Scott Baron’s Warp Riders Space Exploration series.  I read the first novella-sized book, Deep Space Boogie, a couple months ago; it is reviewed here.  Sadira’s entire crew from that book are back for more thrills-&-spills: Hellatz, Moose, Holly, Goonara, Hump, Ace, and of course, Turd.

 

    The book’s title alludes to the “swallowed by a whale” tales – both the biblical “Jonah” one and the Disney “Pinocchio” one.  Sadira and crew need to find a way out of a decidedly bigger whale which, they quickly discover, has gulped down lots of asteroids and other spaceships.  Exploring the interior of the behemoth is the first order of business, and since they didn’t die while being swallowed, there might be other survivors in the same situation, some of whom might have valuable information to share.  Of course, others may prefer to kill and eat them.

 

    Once again there are lots of alien species to meet and marvel at.  Some get developed more than others, but there’s a nice variety in their structural make-up, including being mechanized, microscopic, made of stone, and coming with various numbers of legs, arms, and eyes.

 

    I liked how the “communicating with aliens” technology was handled, and laughed to learn that, like me, Holly hates the expression “it is what it is”.  It was fun to learn about the “archer’s paradox” (arrows bend in flight in order to fly straight), and I liked seeing Cthulhu get a brief reference.  The writing was surprisingly sparse of typos, and I found the author’s practice putting teasers at the end of most of the chapters kept me turning the pages.

 

    The ending is what you’d expect: after an appropriate tension build-up, the good guys escape the belly of the beast (well, most of them do, anyway) and the bad guys don’t.  Things close with a nice epilogue, which is serves as a teaser for the next book in the series, Rise of the Forgotten.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Nut up (v., phrase) : to suffer in silence, without complaint or protest.

Others: Ghillie suit (n., phrase).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 37 ratings and 9 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.16*/5, based on 37 ratings and 9 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “You two go on ahead,” she told Hel and Moose.  “Clean up and get a decent meal in you.  And take a quick session in the med pod to up the oxygen content in your blood.  Both of you.”

    “But that thing’s in the med lab,” Moose said.

    “Yeah, and?  It’s strapped down and not going anywhere.”

    “It just creeps me out, is all.  Four legs?”

    “I have four arms, and yet you have no such issues with me,” Hellatz said.  “Or are you a secret limbist?”  (loc. 3562)

 

    “That’s his place,” the Pestri said, pointing to the marked domicile on Sadira’s tablet.  “Bestrus will probably be with a hunting party.  He will not be home.”

    “Are you sure of this?” Mahdus asked.

    “Sure?  Not at all.  I lost time in your ship.  I do not know which shift it is now.  But it is likely he is not there.  He only spends time in his home for two things.”

    “Sleeping and eating,” Hellatz said.

    “Sleeping, yes.  Eating, no.”

    “If not eating, then—”

    “Let it go, Hel.”  (loc. 6098)

 

Kindle Details…

    Belly of the Beast sells for $0.99 right now at Amazon, as does the prequel, Deep Space Boogie.  The other three books in the series each cost $3.99, and you have an additional option of picking up the first two books bundled together for just $0.99.  Scott Baron has several other series and short story anthologies to offer, with the books therein costing anywhere from $0.99 to $3.99.  Various bundles, containing anything from two to six books, range in price from $0.99 to $29.95.

 

“If that thing comes and sucks out my brains, it’s on you.”  (loc. 3579)

    There are some things to quibble about.

 

    After the initial ingestion, there’s lots of exploring but not much action over the first half of the book.  Even the “first contact” is rather bland, although the pace picks up when Varsu enters and then continues briskly through the end of the story.

 

    There are some telling/showing issues in the writing, although not to where it became off-putting. And if you don’t like a lot of cussing in your reading, be aware that I counted 26 instances in the first 5% of Belly of the Beast.  That extrapolates out to 560 cusswords total in the book.

 

     The timing of key events often felt a bit too convenient, particularly when it came to our mechanized heroes recharging or the AI entities rebooting.  The same “secret weapon” that carried the day in Deep Space Boogie once again gets used here.  And what ultimately enables Sadira and company to escape the belly of the beast is really just a deus ex machina.

 

    Finally, although the proofreaders did a great job here, I did chuckle at both a cameo appearance by Daisy, who's the protagonist in a different Scott Baron series, and something that gets put “through the ringer” instead of "through “the wringer”.

 

    7 Stars.  Despite the quibbles, I enjoyed Belly of the Beast.  Realistically, you probably would do a lot of exploring if caught in such a large area before crossing paths with a relatively small number of other survivors.  And realistically, if you were to escape by the hair on your chinny-chin-chin, lucky timing probably would be a factor.  So what if this is more of a beach-read than a work of hard science-fiction?  It was a fun read.

Deep Space Boogie - Scott Baron

   2021; 138 pages.  Book 1 (out of 5) in the “Warp Riders” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Space Opera; Science Fiction; Space Exploration.  Overall Rating: 7½*/10.

 

    Space.  The final frontier.  It’s big.  Hugely big.

 

    Just ask Captain Sadira Perez.  She’s just volunteered to lead a mission into deep space, looking for a planet with sentient lifeforms on it, and with a less than friendly disposition.  Their space travel technology is superior to ours, judging from a recent initial encounter with them, where they came this close to destroying one of our starships, then went warping away (think Star Trek) to regions unknown.

 

    Our Artificial Intelligences (“AI”) have given Sadira the general direction to which they fled.  But who knows how far they jumped?  We humans have warp technology as well, but the AI estimates it will still take at least five years to scout that part of the galaxy, and that assumes nothing goes wrong.

 

    Alas, Murphy decided to pay a visit to Sadira (their way of citing Murphy’s Law), and right off the bat her ship’s warp drive overheated, which almost blew all aboard to smithereens.  Things were eventually brought under control, but now their AI's star charts are useless, and they have no idea where they are, how to get home, or how to get to the galactic area they’ve been assigned to scout.

 

    That five-year estimate for the mission seems rather low right now.

 

What’s To Like...

    Deep Space Boogie is the opening book in Scott Baron’s space opera “Warp Riders” series.  Amazon labels it “Book One of Six”, while at Goodreads it’s called “Book 0.5 of Four”.  Goodreads’ designation is probably more accurate, since Deep Space Boogie is of novella length (130 pages or so), and, I gather, serves as the prequel to the series.  Scott Baron also offers the first two installments bundled together, which is the way I’m reading them.

 

    The book is a fine example of Space Opera; the reader is treated to various creatures (humans, AI, cyborgs, chithiid, and other extraterrestrials), weapons (railguns plasma cannons, pulse pistols and cannons, and furry pink ferocity), and gizmos (stasis pods and warp drives).  The action begins immediately, the pacing is brisk, and I don’t recall any awkward info dumps.  The main purpose of the story appears to be to introduce the reader to the ship’s crew and explain how they all got thrown together.

 

    There’s a fair amount of wit and humor, mostly in the dialogue, but it doesn’t overshadow the main storyline.  Some of the action may be over-the-top, but this is first and foremost a space opera, not a spoof or a satire.  I thought the characters were well developed; each crewmember has his or her (and in one case, both) own individual traits.  The editing is good, which was a welcome relief from a lot of efforts by indie authors.

 

    There aren’t a lot of characters to keep track of, which makes sense since we’re following the crew of a single spaceship as they blindly hop around the galaxy, desperately trying to find a familiar location.  There’s a nice mix of “races” in the crew (see above), and my favorite one is the last to join.  It will be yours as well.

 

    The ending is decent with a nice little twist to it that I didn’t see coming.  The immediate plotline is tied up, but the overall one – Sadira and her team finding their way home – remains open.  I don’t view that as a negative; the book’s purpose is to get you ready for further warp-jumping adventures, and I appreciate the author not sinking to the use of a cliffhanger.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 32 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.10*/5, based on 40 ratings and 14 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Okay, listen up, everyone.  We’re going to try something.  If it works, we’ll lose gravity and life support for a few minutes, so stay calm and conserve air until we get it back up and online.”

    “And if it fails?” Goonara’s wavering voice asked.

    “It’ll be over so fast we won’t even know it.” Sadira replied.  “But think positive.”

    “Yeah,” Moose chimed in.  “And if we blow up, at least we’ll go out on a happy thought.”  (loc. 626)

 

    Sure, they’d have one another’s company on those long runs, but neither had formed any sort of affectionate bonds with anyone when they were back home, and the only love between them was the platonic variety.

    Having something to pour his love into had given her friend an outlet neither had realized he needed.  And as much as it had never even been a blip on her mental radar, it seemed her crew now had a mascot.

    And its name was Turd.  (loc. 1626)

 

Kindle Details…

    Deep Space Boogie sells for $0.99 right now at Amazon, as does its sequel, Belly of the Beast.  The other three books in the series each cost $3.99, and you have an additional option of picking up the first two books bundled together for just $0.99.  Scott Baron has several other series to offer, with the books therein costing anywhere from free to $3.99.  Various bundles, containing anything from two to six books in these series, range in price from $0.99 to $23.94.

 

“Ooh, chatty primordial ooze.  I long for the day.”  (loc. 164)

    The quibbles are minor.  There is some cussing, which is typical of most Space Operas.  But it's not excessive: I counted only eleven instances in the first quarter of the book.  There's a nice variety to the cusswords, with a slight preference for “hell”.  That's it for the R-rated stuff; I don’t recall any sex or drugs or rock-&-roll.

 

    One of the crewmembers, Holly (the ship’s AI) has gender-identity issues.  I noticed this before Sadira and her colleagues do, which makes me wonder if it started out as a plot continuity blip.  No matter, it will be interesting to see if/how this impacts any of the other stories down the line.

 

    There’s not much of a backstory given, other than a brief reference to a “Great War” being fought twelve years earlier and which was won by us humans.  However, another reviewer noted that the book is set in the same world as Scott Baron’s Clockwork Chimera series, who's protagonist, Daisy, makes a cameo appearance here.

 

    Finally, if the title had any tie-in with the story, I missed it.  I even searched the e-book version for the word “boogie” but found no hits outside of the title.

 

    7½ Stars.  Add 1 star if you’ve read the Clockwork Chimera series.  I have a feeling I missed something by not doing so.