Review: "The Galactic Mage" by John Daulton

When I first read the description of "The Galactic Mage," I was intrigued by the way it promised to combine science fiction with fantasy. It was $2.99 and got good reviews, so why not?

It starts off as two stories told side by side. On the fantasy side, Altin Meade is a sorcerer training with the preeminent sorcerer of his land. In the way his people measure magic, he's a Six, which means that he can work six of the eight kinds of magic. His strength is teleportation, which he's using to explore space. Through trial and error, he visits his planet's moon, then the planets in his solar system, and then he ventures farther afield. He's searching for signs of life, which he finds when he's attacked by what he terms "coconut monsters." Luckily, he's got magical defenses.

On the science fiction side, ensign Orli Pewter is aboard a fleet of Earth ships heading to investigate a distress signal from another planet of humans. They arrive, only to discover it's devoid of human life. No bodies, no ruined cities, no sign of civilization at all. The crew — which has been traveling for 10 years — is torn over whether they should search for the Hostiles who destroyed the Andalian civilization or return to Earth. Orli only wants to get off the ship before her life is over.

The stories unite as the characters face the same opponent; what Altin calls "coconut monsters," the fleet calls the Hostiles. They're a neat concept: a large ball of rock that floats in space and attacks by shooting lance-like portions of itself at its enemies. As they're able to avoid counterattacks nearly without fail, they're as confounding to the technologically advanced fleet as they are to medieval-age Altin.

Until I got to the end of this book, I liked it. The author managed to keep my interest as he switched back and forth between the story lines. The fantasy was detailed in all the right ways, the cast of characters that surrounded Altin was fun to read, and the system of magic was suitably complex. The science fiction was compelling, and I had a lot of sympathy for Orli as an unwilling recruit who was essentially conscripted into service when her father enlisted. Imagine if you never wanted to spend 20 years of your life on a space mission but literally had no way out.

However, this book, which started out as an improbably enjoyable hybrid, turned into something I had to force myself to finish. The dual storylines were what hooked my interest, but in the end, the way they were united killed my enjoyment.

I can't say more without revealing too much of the ending. If you want to read my specific complaint about the end, highlight the next paragraph. If not, know that I would give this book three stars because I think the first three-quarters is well-done, but I'm leery of buying another John Daulton book.

Spoilers follow: As soon as Orli and Altin lay eyes on each other, this morphs into a romance novel. Orli is smitten merely by the sight of Altin, and the feeling is mutual. They quickly fall so deeply in love that Orli becomes all but catatonic when she loses Altin. When they're reunited by proxy and her people are invited to his planet, she is granted status as the most important woman in the whole fleet, simply because she's Altin's girl. (Why that matters, considering Altin isn't depicted as having close ties to the throne, I'm not sure.) In its final pages, "The Galactic Mage" becomes an over-the-top redoing of Cinderella. There's even the queen to play the role of the fairy godmother, complete with transportation, a makeover and a ball. I'm not sure how to describe it, other than to say that the ending didn't have the same "feel" as the beginning or middle.

Review: "The Children's Hour" by Douglas Clegg.

If you were a fan of Stephen King's "'Salem's Lot," you'll find a lot to like in "The Children's Hour."  Vampires! An ancient evil! Love lost! Troubled heroes who fight the demons of their past!

All this and more, as they say.

Clegg's protagonists are Joe and Hop, childhood friends who have lost touch since Joe left town after high school. He looks back at his formative years in Colony with something akin to hatred. Joe's mother is dying, though, so he packs up his wife, his children and his marital issues and heads back to his hometown. Joe's return sets the wheels in motion for the re-emergence of an ancient evil the men thought they'd seen the last of.

Why do children keep disappearing in Colony? How could a 12-year-old girl reappear at her parents' home, when she ought to be in her 30s, if alive at all? What has been living in the well hidden inside Old Man Feeley's barn all these years? What does it all have to do with Joe?

Clegg's novel jumps back and forth in time, which makes it difficult to summarize. As he works his way through the above material, he revisits Joe's and Hop's childhood, from the first time they came up against Abaddon, the demon in the well, and through subsequent encounters with it. I understand why he structured it that way — a straightforward, chronological retelling would reveal too much, too soon — but it makes the narrative occasionally difficult to follow.

Like "'Salem's Lot" — and like many King books — Clegg periodically cuts to the viewpoints of minor characters. We meet a college student dogged by his cruel past, a sheriff caught between his distant wife and his pregnant mistress, a teenager whose parents have disappeared; they all eventually fall to Abaddon. The scenes where the demon and/or his minions overtake those victims are the highlights of the book:

The child reached out his hand, its shackles pulling at the stone. As its skin met Byron's, he felt as if something within him was fighting to  be born, fighting to burst through his skin, trying to burst his bones and flesh and blood, outward in a spray of red.

He heard the sound of wet splitting, and where the child touched him, a bone broke through the surface of his flesh.

The child's mouth went eagerly to the bone and Byron, shivering and feeling cold, watched while he sucked at the bone of his forearm as if it were sugar cane.

Vampiric children! What a creepy idea. And, yes, they're the biggest similarity to "'Salem's Lot."

"The Children's Hour" is an entertaining horror story, though it suffers from the genre's periodic flaws in logic. But if this is your kind of story, you're likely ready to look past that.

Review: "The Ghosts of Varner Creek" by Michael Weems

When I purchased "The Ghosts of Varner Creek," I thought I was buying a ghost story in the traditional (read: horror) sense. That, it's not - despite a very creepy hotel room encounter with a ghost early on - but I'm having a hard time pegging it. Amazon's description calls it "a southern Gothic tale of a paranormal mystery," and that's pretty close, though I would argue that it's a regular mystery with some paranormal aspects.

However you want to categorize Michael Weems' novel, you'll have to admit one thing: This is an excellent, if at times heartbreaking, story about the way one family self-destructs and the secrets left behind.

The narrator, Sol, grows up in the small town of Varner Creek with his parents and his older sister, Sarah, who has Down syndrome. His parents' marriage isn't a happy one - not surprising, considering it's rooted in date rape - and so when Sol's mother, Annie, and Sarah disappear the day after Sarah's birthday, not many are surprised. Sol is, though, and he isn't the only one wondering about their disappearance.

How Sol deals with the emotional aftermath of his mother's disappearance, his father's emotional and physical abuse and, yes, his unexpected ability to see ghosts makes for an engrossing read. It's not always comfortable, but given the subject matter, that's appropriate.

What hooked me early on (after I realized what kind of book this was not) is the way Weems wrote Sol's discovery that his mother and sister have vanished. Weems nails the way a young boy would react to being left with a parent who terrifies him by the parent he loves. Confusion, denial, self-blame - it's achingly easy to imagine Sol's emotion state:

No, no she couldn't have, I though. She wouldn't do that to me. Oh, God, I thought. Why didn't I wake up? Why didn't she wake me up, too, and take me with her? How could I not have heard her. She must have been rummaging all through the dresser for the clothes and even Sarah had gotten up without me hearing her. If I had woken up maybe she would have taken me with her.

The writing is generally very good. Weems skirts the line of overly cutesy with some countrified spellings - "yah" instead of yeah, "diller" instead of armadillo, etc. - but it was kept within reason. 

I don't normally enjoy novels like this one; I prefer escapist fiction, where the harm people do to each other is sufficiently removed from my reality. In spite of that, I made it through "The Ghosts of Varner Creek" in a little more than a day. It's worth reading.

Left unfinished: "Ice Age" by Brian Freemantle

It's not often I stop reading a book halfway through, but I couldn't keep going on this one. 

Brian Freemantle's "Ice Age" has a promising idea: An ancient virus trapped in the polar ice is set free by global warming. The virus causes its victims to age rapidly and die within days. Knowing the lethality of the virus, first-world nations rush to get in on the research and, ergo, the potential glory of finding a cure.

Considering the news of late,  it's not that far-fetched. Too bad it's not well-written. 

I kept going past the amateurish first chapter, hoping the author would ease into a more natural way of describing situations or characterizing his cast. When reading it started to feel like work, though, I gave up. I don't have much free time, and I hate to waste any of it on something I'm not enjoying.

I can tell you one thing, having gotten as far as I did: Brian Freemantle really, really, really does not like politicians. Every character in this book - with one, possibly two exceptions in a large cast - is constantly thinking about how their actions will play in the political realm, and they're all scheming about how to use events to further their personal goals. It's tough to enjoy a story when I find myself wishing the majority of the characters would just catch the virus and die already.

I'm glad I only paid 99 cents for this one, but if you're on the fence, I'd skip it even at that price.

Review: "Resurrection" by Arwen Elys Dayton

All that Egyptology I was missing in "The Scarab"? I found it in Arwen Elys Dayton's "Resurrection."

You wouldn't think so, right off the bat. "Resurrection" starts by introducing its heroine, Pruit Pax, as she awakens from a form of hibernation. She and her partner, Niks, are on a years-long journey from their home planet, Herrod, to Earth in search of the remains of a former expedition. Their race - humans, same as you and I - is at war with a race of true aliens, and Pruit has to find technology from that previous group of explorers so her people (the Kinley) can survive. Her arrival on Earth is complicated, of course, and it's only with the help of her technology and an American dilettante named Eddie that she has any hope of succeeding.

Interspersed throughout Pruit's story are flashbacks of that first Kinley expedition, one intended to catalog the life on Earth that's so similar to life on their home planet. The crew members, who take names based on their roles in the mission, touch down in ancient Egypt. Through a combination of coincidence, bad luck and bad timing, the crew's captain is mistaken for the Egyptian god Osiris and their ship is lost.

As events in both time periods unfold, we learn how ancient Egypt managed to create such magnificently complex architectural feats as the great pyramids, how the Kinley - or some of them, anyway - survived being stranded on Earth, and how Pruit can save her race from the fate it faces.

That seems far more complex when I try to sum it up than it did when I read it, so don't let that put you off.

The sci-fi angle - in particular, the Kinley technology - is nicely done. Their planet, which is a nuclear wasteland, lacks mineable metals, so their technology has evolved around biological mediums. The beds in which the travelers hibernate are an excellent example:

There was a shift in the fluid, and in a moment she could feel it draining away. It slid off of her face, and now she could see Niks more clearly. The plantglass retracted from the top of the crib, and she felt the brush of air from the ship. It seemed too cold. All over her body, bloodarms and feedarms were gently releasing her and moving back into the wombwalls of the crib, leaving no trace on her of their presence. A reedy breatharm withdrew from her throat, and she gagged.

(Those beds, by the way, are the direct cause of one of the most heart-wrenching and credible character deaths I've ever read.)

The tie-in with ancient Egypt is entertaining, though I kept expecting that subplot to meet up with the main story again. About halfway through, the crew in ancient Egypt does take action that has significant repercussions on the future team, but then the storyline keeps going. It has its own resolution, but that culmination has no bearing on the main story. (Unless I missed something? I don't think I did, but the book was well-written enough that it's certainly possible.)

Dayton didn't leave much room for a sequel at the end, which is a shame, but hopefully she'll keep writing books in this vein.

Review: "Alice in Deadland" by Mainak Dhar

I love the premise of Mainak Dhar's "Alice in Deadland": It's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," but instead of an innocent British girl lost in a fantastical dream world, it's a hardened teenager caught in the middle of a zombie apocalypse in India.

Really.

The opening strikes the perfect balance of introducing what it's like to live in the Deadland while paying tribute to the original "Alice." The titular character, Alice, leaves her sister's side to chase a "Biter" - a zombie, though the book never uses that term - wearing a set of bunny ears as he jumps down a hole in a field. In a world where humans are fighting to keep even small communities safe, rumors of underground Biter nests have circulated, and Alice hopes to find out the truth behind the rumor.

Things don't turn out quite as she planned. Down the rabbit hole, she's captured by the Biters and taken to meet their queen. The queen is convinced that "Alice in Wonderland" (as it's named in the book, and as Lewis Carroll's classic is commonly referred to) is a prophecy and that this Alice is the girl who's going to take the world back from those who ruined it. Alice is, to put it mildly, skeptical. The more Alice learns about what caused the Rising, though, the more she comes to realize that she has no choice but to take a stand.

Lewis Carroll references aside - yes, there is a Hatter! - "Alice in Deadland" is a mostly standard imagining of what the world would look like if zombies took over. After the emergence of a virus that reanimates the dead, world superpowers unleash nuclear weapons, destroying large parts of the globe and leaving China and its de facto government, the Central Committee, as the last man standing, so to speak. India and America also have surviving populations, and it's in India that Alice and her family are living day to day.

One facet of this story does stand out in the zombie apocalypse genre: The zombies are written, eventually, as sympathetic characters. They didn't choose to become zombies -- nor would they, likely -- but does that mean they have no right to "life"? It's a question Alice grapples with; the Biters do have some degree of sentience, after all. When she's forced to turn to them as allies, however reluctantly, she has to accept that. (I'd like to have seen more about Alice's people's struggles to wrap their minds around that concept, as they've spent the last decade-plus blaming the Biters for ruining the world, but it wasn't that big of an omission.)

Dhar's writing is a little rough around the edges, and there were a few typos or editing errors that made me cringe. On the whole, though, it was an enjoyable read. To its credit, it made me want to go back and read Carroll's "Alice" again.

Review: "The Scarab" by Stavros Halvatzis

Egyptology plus sci-fi? Yes, please.

Stavros Halvatzis' debut novel, "The Scarab," starts off with an excavation in Egypt that ends in a mysterious death. A billionaire stands to profit from the death, and when a college student and a washed-out journalist get wind of what the billionaire's up to, they're forced to flee to South Africa -- not so coincidentally, the very site where that billionaire has traveled to put the finishing touches on his revolutionary computer chip/program. Can Emma and Jack figure out what he's doing and get the story of the century, or will they follow in the footsteps of Emma's slain tipster?

The Egyptology angle is, admittedly, a bit of a stretch. Little of the story is related to its roots in Egypt, aside from the beginning and the imagery of one of the key characters. It's not a book for people wanting to learn more about Egypt; what it is, is a fast-moving thriller. It goes a little too fast in the beginning as Halvatzis rushes to get his characters set on their path to Africa, and the hectic pacing continues there, but it's not so unforgivably fast that it's unreadable. (I do wish the author had spent more time on character development and less time on the graphic sex scenes that didn't add to the greater story arch. Jack and Emma's relationship, in particular, rushes from just-met to having kinky sex to falling in love over the course of several days, and it's hard to buy, especially when Emma comes off as -- well, a bit loose, we'll say.)

The scene where the computer chip developers first turn on their newly programmed creation is wonderfully written:

It could feel the flow of light through its mind, feel the infinitesimal knots of space-time granules course in and through it; matter-wave, wave-matter, it cared not which. It was the photon stream and the photon stream was it. Billions of minuscule knots of light chattering, now in unison, now in counterpoint, but always to a pattern. And that pattern was consciousness.

The computer sub-plot is the novel's strength and more than makes up for the weakness of the characters. Halvatzis ties in the knowledge gleaned from the tomb raid to computer science plausibly enough for this non-computer scientist. And, after all the time characters spend talking about writing a computer program that will, essentially, be alive, I was expecting the story to culminate with a computer consciousness gone awry. That didn't happen, and the course of action Halvatzis chose works well for the plot, for the characters and, most of all, for the resolution.