The sequel to Hunger

Racing against this impending outcome, Peter Crane and his family attempt to reach a laboratory in Boston, where a slim hope of saving the human race from extinction exists. But before heading northeast, they must visit the swamps of South Carolina’s Hellhole Bay to find a scientist who can help undo the damage done by ExoGen, the corporation that created and unleashed RC-714.

Where the first book was a road trip, this is more like a siege. The team take refuge at a bio-dome. They they get split, all the characters look to be converging for a final all-out battle.

This is even better then the first, thanks to a more complex plot and changing motivation of the characters.

But things end abruptly, as this is the second of a trilogy and despite the third (Famine) due in 2017, it has yet to turn up.

Desperate to solve a global food shortage, ExoGen scientist Dr. Ella Masse oversees the creation and release of RC-714, a gene that unlocks millions of years of adaptation and evolution, allowing crops to use long dormant junk DNA to rapidly adapt to any environment. The world’s food supply grows aggressively, occupying every inch of earth, no matter how inhospitable. World hunger is averted. Humanity flourishes. RC-714 is digested, absorbed and passed on.

Peter Crane and his son Jakob survive the Change, living in their family farmhouse and eating non-ExoGen food from a biodome, one of many provided by Ella Masse, who discovered the ramifications of her breakthrough too late……

It’s a post-apocalyptic thriller, with bio-genetics gone wrong creating monsters. Of course it’s also just an excuse for to take a monster filled road trip across America. And it’s action all the way. Our hero is ex military (of course) and there may be a love interest.

Yet another recommended read from Robinson.

Meanwhile… Dewbush finds himself falling in love with a retail-bot who’s in illegal possession of a sense of humour. But when she’s recalled by her manufacture for immediate decommissioning, Capstan suspects they may have darker motives for wanting her silenced.

Stranger, sillier and with more nuts. This is even better then the previous one. Dewbush seems to have dropped in IQ, along with the villains. Yet again the team find themselves in a life and death situation solved by the obvious (to anyone but themselves).

Recommended.

A Military Science Fiction Novelette from Pew! Pew! – Bad versus Worse.

Here is an example of a story that gets things half right. The action scenes work well and the dialog is suitably snarky, tough and occasionally witty. Trouble is, the other things; characters and story just don’t work. It starts well with a prelude setting the scene, but I just couldn’t work out the motivations for the characters. They were rouges, but why did they take on the quest.

The author can write clear prose, but maybe other stories work better.

A novelette from  Pew! #3.

Zen DiPietro is a young writer and her prose has an easy flow and rhythm to it. What is surprising is that this is not much of a science fiction story. Most of it is a romance between the three main characters.

When they finally get to see Nana, there are some interesting science fiction ideas, but at the end of the story there is little space for them to be explored. She does write what appears to be military science fiction, so it will be interesting to read one of these.

Dan Chambeaux, a.k.a. “Shamble,” is an undead Detective, working in some parallel universe to our own where Ghouls, Vampires and mythical creatures somehow also exist.

In this novelette, Dan attends a Comic-Con type event and solves a murder. It’s all rather ordinary and business-like prose from Anderson. He may be trying for humour, but the characters are a but too mundane to raise from the dead a hint of a chuckle.

The Sword & Laser Podcast June 2018 pick.

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child–not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power–the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Comparisons can be made with with Tanith Lee’s Night’s Master. Both have a mythological style and draw on material from Western canon. In fact Circe draws characters from Homer’s Odyssey.

The prose is rich and detailed, due mainly to sentence length. However where Lee’s writing compresses time into paragraphs and drives the story along, Miller’s prose adds details to scenes and dialog. This is fine at times, but it does lead to a slowing pace and little story.

This is the main problem with the book. At first it is difficult to get into, with numerous characters and an undefined setting. But when Circe finally lands on her island, the plot simplifies and the story gets going. It’s fine until about 80% through when the weight of all the talk, little action and slow pacing just drags everything down and reading it becomes a slog. It’s at this point I had to give up and move on to something new.