Writing / Book Review.
Janice Hardy is a Fantasy author, and runs the Fiction University website / blog. Her blog is a source of interesting titbits, related to writing fiction. She turned a number of those blog posts into books, of which I purchased three.
The three books by her hand that I'll discuss are focused on beginners to mid-level writers. They might make some good presents for under the tree, in case you have a young niece / nephew who wants to be an author some day…
Highly spoken of, 'a classic', and yet... I don't know.
It's epic scifi allright. Kim Stanley Robinson describes the colonialization of Mars, and all the stumbles along the way, and once you're done with book three, you know all there is to know.
But... after reading all three books, I was left with a kind of empty feeling, as things didn't go anywhere. Mumble muble bla bla mumble mumble... with a sudden stop at the end.
This series is literally using ‘imagination’ as the primary magical means and method. It has some interesting aspects and intrigue, but the main character is a little too powerful, and the whole writing style smells of LitRPG and Cultivation (which I don’t like) but… he doesn’t belong to that wave of writers.
I’m a little puzzled though. L.E. Modesitt has been around for quite a while, but I have no recollection of reading anything by his hand before. Hmmm…
I suffer from an old time music revival, and now I'm stuck in the 70's. So let’s throw a classic at you: Boston’s debut album Boston. I’ve been playing it whilst working on my latest Dapper contribution, and damn, every track (except perhaps the last one) is fantastic. Ah, more than a feeling… and that organ!
Verdict? After all these years it's still fantastic!
Space Opera by the numbers. So many books follow the traditional ‘captain down on his luck’ ‘fight against a secret force and a corrupt army / government’ etc. etc. etc. and this is just another one. Still, this series made it into book seven (or eight?) by now.
I believe human nature is effectively blocking any usable form of communism and anarchism. That's why I believe in enlightened capitalism, with a shot of socialism to protect the weak. That’s the role of government: protect the populace from getting hurt by greed and stupidity. (Click on the image to enlarge.)
