Two Free Book Reviews

No, seriously, it's a free book from manybooks.net.  Manybooks allows you to download in a wide variety of formats -- I used epub.  Jay Caselberg is an Australian writer of science fiction, and his book Binary is a sort of King-Lear-meets-Dune-in-space-with-giant-lizards.  What is amazing is that it is pretty well written, and it works better than you would think.  In fact, I would say that the first half of the book is as strong a science fiction story as I have read in quite a while.  The world is nicely established.  The characterization is both sharp and complex.  Mr. Caselberg seems to weaken somewhat toward the end, as the powerful effort in the early chapters may have simply worn him down.  He was holding up a lot of heavy threads that had to be woven together, and I get the sense that he wanted to get it done. 

A mothership had left the home world -- presumably our Earth a hundred or so years in the future.  There were colony ships attached to the mothership that could be sent down to planets that appeared habitable for humans.  The planet Aldaban, orbiting a binary star, appeared very promising.  But the colony ships had encountered problems, possibly due to the disruptive effects of the smaller star.  The landing had been disastrous, and the first colonists had barely survived, scavenging as much as they could from the landing craft but losing much of the available advanced technology.

The binary star system is called the Twins.  When the Major Twin is between the Minor Twin and the planet, the inhabitants experience a season of peace and growth.  This appears to last for the equivalent of a year and two-thirds.  It is not clear if Aldaban's orbital year is roughly equal to an Earth year, but we can assume that.  In addition to the planetary orbit around the Twins, the Minor Twin orbits the Major.  When the Minor Twin is closer to the planet, it's lesser but nearer light sets off an entire season of storms.  The increased gravitational pull apparently triggers frequent quakes as well.  The radiation disrupts communications and limits travel to foot or animal power.  The primary motive beast of burden is called a "padder", which, though never explicitly described (and I appreciate that), sounds a bit like an alien cross between a camel and an ox.

The people of Aldadan have a religion based on The Book of Words, presumably of the one they call The Prophet.  A lot of it sounds vaguely Islamic.  Their government is heavily based on tradition.  They have guilds that control most of the aspects of life.  The big three guilds are Primary Production, Technologists, and Welfare.  Primary Production includes mining and other raw materials.  This is the guild that has the most influence during the productive Clear Season.  When the Storm Season comes, the Welfare guild is most influential.  There are other lesser guilds, but over all is the Principate (principate - caliphate?) headed by the Principal.  These are generally inherited positions.  As the story unfolds, the Principal Leannis Men Darnak is getting older and wants to turn the Principate over to his eldest son, Roge.

The story involves a great deal of political intrigue, betrayal, manipulation, and deception.  Some people see the transition, which happens to occur just as the Storm Season begins, as an opportunity to gain or consolidate power.  Some are not happy with the time-honored and traditional roles they have been assigned.  Some do not like the idea of succession to the eldest son.  There is significant conflict but not a lot of blood and gore until the end -- and even that is mostly indirectly related.  There are a group of humans called the Atavists that remind me of the Fremen from Dune -- if the Fremen were Amish.  They are anti-technology and devoted followers of the Prophet.  There is an intelligent alien race called the Kallathik which the humans have used as forced labor in the mines during their five centuries on Aldaban. 

When the novel finishes, there are some strings left hanging, and it is a little disappointing, especially in light of the book's promise in the earlier sections.  For the first few sections I had to check as I was reading to verify that it was a science fiction novel with a recent publication date (2009) rather than a lost H. Beam Piper classic.  You can't do much better than that.  In the end Binary remains comfortably comparable to a lesser Piper work like Uller Uprising, and, for the price, I can't complain. 

****

However, even free can't keep me from complaining about a couple of other works by D. Dalton aka Dalton Reed -- All Things Impossible and All Things Impossible: Heartstealer.  These are supposed to be, I suppose, fantasy novels, maybe epic.  I don't know.

Spunky, butt-kicking, teenage female protagonist -- Check.
Elves -- Check.
Orges -- Check.
Undead -- Check and Double-check.
Desperate Last Stand -- Check.
"Clever" Double-Twist Ending -- Check.
Evil (and often inept) Satanic Cult -- Check.
Evil Mordor-esque Empire -- Check.
Angst-y, Smitten Vampires -- Check.
Cranky but extremely competent Elf physician who can heal fatal wounds -- Check.
Ambivalent, Unsure Heir to the Throne -- Check.
Unicorns -- Check.
Mixed marriage between elf-chick and (not really) evil mordor-guy with a precocious and annoying offspring -- Check.
Flying Unicorns in Disguise -- Check.
Magic Swords -- Check.
Magic Amulets -- Check.
Unhappy Fat Guy Dragged Along for the Ride Who Acts Heroically Nonetheless -- Check.
Wizards -- You gotta know it at this point.
Dragons -- Of course.
Did I mention vampires who can fly like Superman without changing into bats?
Talking flying unicorns in disguise? -- I know, I just can't quite get over it.  The dragon talks, too, and flies, and can change size.
Raider of the Lost Ark booby traps ... the beat down goes on.

I know I'm missing some cliches, but if you can think of one I've missed, most likely it is in there.

Now, add to all that characters who were apparently schooled at the James T. Kirk Academy for EK-STREAMMMM Overacting and you will have a pretty good idea of the two novels.  The nice thing is that that if you just want a goofy, escapist story, you can read either of these novels as a stand-alone.  They suck about equally, but Heartstealer is worse, both in terms of the idiotic dialog (or maybe I was just getting really fed up) and surplus tropes Dalton couldn't throw into the first one.

These plots and scenes are predictably unpredictable.  Is that even possible?  The author apparently heard that you should show rather than tell.  This means that the characters do a lot of thigh-slapping when angry or frustrated.  Not to mention sly-thapping.  Or sigh-thlapping.  They also suck their tongues a lot when thoughtful.  There is a dump truck load of eye-rolling.  I don't think I have ever sucked my own tongue in my entire life.  Why would anybody do that?

Imagine if Terry Pratchett had tried to write Discworld as NOT a parody but left all the parody stuff in.  You can even leave in some of the self-awareness, but if you take out all the humor, all you have left is stupid.  In the end, it is pretty much a complete waste of time, but if you are looking for goofy, harmless fun, you could do worse.  I guess.