The Reading Corner.

[Lord Avalon]

Divine Right, Merovingen Nights #5, ed. by CJ Cherryh

[Rusty Edge]

Perhaps by the time I've reviewed all 44 of them. I was the first person to review one of them. Many don't have more than a couple of reviews.

Bulldozer is the exception. If you look at the reviews for it, you'll get a sense of why
 Jerry Atchley took some of the money he made and started a publishing company, just to put one of these books in his grandson's hands.

http://www.amazon.com/Bulldozer-Stephen-Meader/dp/1931177023/ref=sr_1_1_twi_1_pap?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437357121&sr=1-1&keywords=Bulldozer+Meader

I'm moving on to his sea stories for a while. Don't worry, I won't review them all here.

[Buster's Uncle]

Do, if they're good.

[Valka]

Divine Right, Merovingen Nights #5, ed. by CJ Cherryh

Okay, I've been waiting to ask: What do you think of the cat-whales?

[Lord Avalon]

Flood Tide, Merovingen Nights #6, ed by CJ Cherryh


Cat-whales: an interesting species. Tool-using young, large aquatic adults? Or at least the females. What's their relationship with the sharrh? Are they a reason for the Scouring? With only one book to go, it may remain a mystery.

[Lord Avalon]

Endgame, last book of Merovingen Nights, ed by CJ Cherryh

As I suspected, too much stuff going on to pay attention to another species.

[Valka]

Endgame, last book of Merovingen Nights, ed by CJ Cherryh

As I suspected, too much stuff going on to pay attention to another species.

According to CJ Cherryh, things got too complicated to continue the series - you've seen how some stories either used the characters but not according to their established traits (ie. Altair being described as "arrogant"? Come on!) or didn't fit the setting at all and had absolutely nothing to do with the overall story arc. This series was done before instant communication was so easy, and some authors were just hell-bent on having their own way anyway.

So they did a slap-dash job of "finishing" it, although it could - and should - have gone at least 3 more books. And the problem with CJ Cherryh doing a final novel to wrap up the loose ends (ie. what happened to Raj and the Kamat family who stayed behind to defend their home? Did everyone going to the Chatallen get there safely? Which of the Kalugins were left standing, if any? What became of Black Cal and Rif? And yes, what about the cat-whales and the old spaceport they found?) is that too many characters are under other peoples' copyrights.

Hence, fanfiction. I've been searching online to see if anyone ever wrote any - found some really good stories set in the Cyteen universe - but no luck yet with Merovingen Nights.

[Lord Avalon]

According to CJ Cherryh, things got too complicated to continue the series ...

Ah. Thanks for the info. It's a shame the series couldn't continue.

...found some really good stories set in the Cyteen universe - but no luck yet with Merovingen Nights.

It's all the same universe - it was the Union that colonized Merovin, although 600-700 years prior. It seems like a different universe, because things are so primitive for a far-future setting.

[Valka]

According to CJ Cherryh, things got too complicated to continue the series ...

Ah. Thanks for the info. It's a shame the series couldn't continue.

...found some really good stories set in the Cyteen universe - but no luck yet with Merovingen Nights.

It's all the same universe - it was the Union that colonized Merovin, although 600-700 years prior. It seems like a different universe, because things are so primitive for a far-future setting.

Yeah, my sloppy way of expressing it, sorry. There really doesn't seem to be any kind of connection at all between the two. I have had fleeting thoughts of doing a fanfic in which Ariane Emory XII (or whatever version she'd be up to by then, assuming they keep cloning her) meets Altair Jones - two very feisty, determined, intelligent young women, both very skilled in surviving in their respective settings and societies, and they could teach each other some valuable life lessons.

[Rusty Edge]

Magno Girl by Joe Canzano
A wild world of humor, action, and romance

You know how in the Pixar movie "The Incredibles", the premise is that liability lawsuits drove the super heroes out of business?

Well, this is another funny story with an original array of super-heroes, only this time the premise is that super heroes fight crime in order to get publicity, which gets the heroes commercial endorsements, movie deals, and merchandising. Of course this corporate sponsorship leads to conflicts of interest.

The story is set in New York City, and seen through the eyes of Ron, Magno Girl's ninja biker boyfriend.   Ninja biker is a little misleading , because it makes you think of power rangers or something. Ron is an ordinary guy from an Italian family that makes pizzas and hijacks trucks for a living, and he rides an American chopper. Magno girl is a T-shirt and yoga pants-wearing martial arts instructor who can fly. She can also use a super "gaze of guilt" to make criminals confess and apologize. She's afflicted with a drunken mother who pressures her to get married and have kids, and a ne'er do well brother.

My favorite laugh aloud came when Ron said something like - That was the worst defeat I'd experienced since that drunken night in Atlantic City when I lost $4,000 playing the parking meters.

I got it off Amazon for 99 cents. I'll read the short story next.

Note- as the story progresses and passions rise, sex and cursing become less of an allusion and more explicit, so not something for younger readers.

[Rusty Edge]

Well, the short story Magno Girl and the Beast of Brooklyn is a prequel. It tells how Ron and Magno Girl met. I liked it, too.

So, chronologically, it should be read first.

[Zoid]

I'm re-reading Peter F Hamiltons epic (~3500 pages) space opera "Nights Dawn", one of my favourite authors. It is a bit hard to get into, which is why I put it down after a 100 pages the first time I read it. As this review explains

Nominally, the Night’s Dawn trilogy is about a mysterious disaster originating on Lalaonde and threatening the entire Confederation. In reality, though, Hamilton’s goal is to create a believable society and then show every effect of that disaster, both physical and moral, on his creation. As a result, this is a very decentralized story, where the number of point of views spreads throughout the entire Confederation, staying just half a step ahead of the waves of change and destruction. The best way to understand these books is to imagine a massive glass creation, gigantic but every inch carefully devised and filled with details, and then to imagine the inexorable destruction of the sculpture, inch by inch, the cracks spreading so slowly as to be visual but so quickly as to be unstoppable. It’s an effect that would only be meaningful if the reader first understands every intricacy of Hamilton’s creation, and so Hamilton shows us exactly that.

Imagine, for a second, that there are three layers to every story. The first layer is the present time, the plot, if you will. Just about every author will explicitly show this, because it is, presumably, why we’ve come. The second layer is the backstory, how the characters got where they are, who the characters are, etc. This is generally implied, though the degree to which it is shown depends on the author. Finally, we’ve got the layer behind even the backstory, what’s simply the background. This is stuff like the minutia of the justice system, or how planet X was settled, why coalition Y makes this product, etc. it’s the kind of thing that’s important for an author know, but it’s rare for the readers to ever learn – or care – about much of it.

However, once you get past this it's a rollercoaster of a book impossible to put down. Once I got into this I bought everything PFH has ever written (but you can skip "Misspent Youth", reading that is like having an angry libertarian shouting in your face...).

The Night’s Dawn trilogy has quite a few problems, not the least of which is the sheer number of sub plots, many of which are either extraneous or just plain not as good, that clog it up. None of that changes what it is at its core, however, and that is one of the most explosive and wide screen science fiction stories ever conceived of. Hamilton’s creation is both majestic and impossible to put down. If you’re a fan of the genre, you need to pick this up without question.

http://evilhat.blogspot.se/2010/07/peter-f-hamilton-nights-dawn-trilogy.html (spoilers halfway down the page)

[Geo]

The Deadknights subplot comes to mind as being way extraneous and rather unnecessary.
And Gerald should have dissappeared from the story as well once his 'role' was played out on Lalonde.

What do you think of the 'Escape Route' short story in the 'A second chance at Eden' bundle?

[Zoid]

The Deadknights subplot comes to mind as being way extraneous and rather unnecessary.
And Gerald should have dissappeared from the story as well once his 'role' was played out on Lalonde.

I agree, PFH has a tendency to overload his storys with extraneous characters, but he's reined that in in later novels imo.

What do you think of the 'Escape Route' short story in the 'A second chance at Eden' bundle?

I can't exactly recall it, been a while since I read it. But I love his short fiction, he should write more of it. It gets more condensed and to the point. It's harder to write good short fiction than epic volumes...

[Rusty Edge]

I just Bought Jim Butcher's e-book, "Working for Bigfoot", but I won't discuss it until Uno's had a chance to read it.