Hellfire (Theirs Not to Reason Why) by Jean Johnson

Finished on 9Nov.

"Hellfire" is Ia's doomsday ship - and the members of her handpicked crew are Ia's Damned.

Hellfire and the Damned run around the galaxy picking off the bad guys and working to set up the sequences of events that will save the galaxy three hundred years in the future.

We have known for some time that Ia and her half-twin brother (different mothers/same father) are the children of a member of an energy-based species that can operate on the physical plane if necessary and whose primary purpose is to interfere in the workings of the universe of physical beings. Hence, they are generally known as "Meddlers." This is their great "game." What we haven't known until this story is that half-breeds like Ia can sometimes actual become members of the club.

I was warned that I wouldn't like the ending - and I didn't - for the usual reason. There is no conclusion; everything is just left hanging for the next book in the series. Always annoying - but not so annoying that I won't read the next one - as sometimes has happened.

An Officer's Duty (Theirs Not to Reason Why) by Jean Johnson

Having accomplished all she can as an enlisted Marine, Ia is awarded a field commission and is shipped of to OCS. A curious feature of TUPSF (remember - Terran United Planets Space Force) is that it encompasses all of the conventional branches of the military with the exception of the Air Force - I suppose because in-atmosphere flight is simply passe - or at least superceded by space flight. I wonder why it is that in science fiction it is always the Navy that flies space ships, perhaps it is because space flight vehicles are traditionally known as "ships" - hence the responsibility falls to the Navy with its archaic ranking system.

Whatever. At any rate, Ia has the choice to attend the officer's academy in any branch and chooses the navy because she knows that she must be ready to command a ship to be built with a doomsday weapon that only she can handle.

At the academy, Ia encounters a man who is invisible to her precognition. This makes their relationship something very different for her. This also constitutes a flashing neon light saying "This guy is important!!!"

Johnson's prose is certainly effective in the context, if not extremely imaginative, but she dropped in the word "politarazzi" - a new one to me. Google informs me that it is probably not of her coinage - but it is such a charming and descriptive word that I am eternally grateful to her for throwing it in my path.

A Soldier's Duty (Theirs Not to Reason Why) by Jean Johnson

I read this fairly recently - that is within the last couple of years, I think - almost certainly within the period of this record - but I didn't remember it well enough to read the next two in the series which my sister recently purchased. It was worth the reread. I'm certainly not an expert, but the military setting seemed fairly plausible, with the possible exception of the rapid advancement of our heroine, Ia ("just Ia, no more, no less"). Certainly the heartburn her name (or lack thereof) causes with the military resonates with anyone who has ever dealt with bureaucracy at any level.

Ia is a precog and has as her mission nothing less than saving the galaxy from a predatory species due to arrive in three hundred years. In the meantime she is working at saving the good guys from the Salik, a really nasty bunch of amphibians who prefer to eat their meat alive, kicking, and screaming, and who find humans particularly tasty.

Her vehicle for galactic salvation is the TUPSF (Terran United Planets Space Force) Marine Corps. Having been born and raised a heavy-worlder, she has obvious advantages as a Marine - faster, stronger, etc. But none of that compares with the advantage of her wide range of psi talents. Precognition is the strongest, but it is only the first in a long list of of talents.

So, is this space opera? It has some of the elements, but it also has strong characters - strong, well-developed characters. There are also at least two levels of plot and thereby motiving forces. Not characteristics of space opera in general. On the other hand, there is a great abundance of action and heroics and blood and gore. Then there is the scene at the end of boot camp when the DI orders her to tow the bus with the remainder of her class back to camp ...

Relic (Pendergast, Book 1) by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

This may be only the first Pendergast book by this pair, but it is the last one I will read. I think they were trying to create a more sophisticated Fox Mulder, and failed utterly. The heroic FBI agent was flat and lacked personality, although the monster was as grotesque as any from the X-Files.

The setting should have been interesting - the Smithsonian renamed and relocated to New York - but the characters inhabiting it were bizarre parodies of scientists and administrators.

To add to their other crimes against literature, they stole without attribution the Churchill line about Russia - "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." I don't believe they even gave the lazy researcher's excuse "didn't somebody once say: ... ." I find that line frequently in stories - along with the query : "Who was it said " ... ?" This, of course, gives the characters the opportunity to discuss who said it and why their own situation is different.

Oh well, this was a disappointment and not worth any further effort toward discussing it.

Kris Longknife: Daring by Mike Shepherd

Space opera, gotta love it.

The politics resemble small town city council wrangling and when the Princess of one bunch decides to take her ship and crew to investigate the disappearances of ships belonging to the friendly aliens both the over- protective and the over-suspicious insist on sending massive battle-wagons to accompany her. By the way, the Princess and the Grand-duchess of the somewhat hostile opposing clan (think Hatfield/McCoy cliches) agree that the multi-tentacled semi-aquatic alien is "kinda cute." Take it from there.

They discover the hostile aliens - who, imagine the horror, resemble human beings rather markedly (no heavy-handed message there). All the battle ships are destroyed and the Princess eventually manages to limp home with her cruiser to face court martial for something or other.

No story lines are concluded, everything is left hanging, and the Princess Pauline will doubtless live to be in peril another day - she may even someday be reunited with her security chief.

Complaints aside, it is space opera and it was mostly fun, if a little repetitive. I am informed that this is not the first book in the series, and that in earlier exercises there was more closure at the end of each. I have frequently had the uncomfortable suspicion that sometimes series writers feel that they must do something to trick readers into buying the next book. One might hope that good writing, good characters, and a satisfying plot ought to do the trick, but it would appear that the incomplete ending is less work.

Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

Some months ago I read the second book in this series. At the time, I ordered this book on paper since it wasn't available for kindle. It has been on my "to read soon" shelf ever since - but I don't often read on paper these days. Then it popped up on my kindle! My sister had finally gotten around to reading the second book, City of Veils, and when she went looking for book one - it had been released for kindle. Not the first time this has happened.

Whatever. I am pleased to note that if I had read this one first I would have gone looking for the second. This one begins with the disappearance of a young woman rather than the discovery of a body, but again the motives are bound up in Saudi religious law and moral codes. And, as in her second book, Americans are involved, although not as deeply in this one.

In spite of the title note - Katya Kijazi - the focal character is definitely Nayir. Although Katya provides information and access, the insights into the crime come primarily from Nayir. We are also privy to his struggles be a good muslim in spite of the great temptations placed in his way.

I have to wonder if Ferraris's experiences in Saudi Arabia and with her Saudi husband and his family truly make her qualified to comment in such depth on Saudi culture. In the second book, we are given a view through the eyes and mind of an American woman, a woman whose situation was fundamentally different from Ferraris's own, but still an educated American, not a Saudi woman of any economic or educational level. I have often thought that one of our national errors is assuming that all people are fundamentally the same - even as I find it difficult to write that without making excuses for that statement. I suspect that the patterns of thinking in the Middle East are quite different from ours and the careless assumption that all of us have the same fundamental priorities is responsible for many problems.