The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Blood, Horror, And Other Things I Found At The Library

Posted on | November 25, 2013 | 22 Comments

— Wombat-socho


Unusually, we don’t have any leftover recommendations from the comments the last book post two weeks ago, although for those of you who missed it, there’s some words from Tom Kratman in the comments. Worth looking at.


Going to start off with something from the Damning With Faint Praise file. Scrapyard Ship by Mark Wayne McGinnis came to me free through the Amazon Prime Lending Library program, and after getting a few chapters into it I have to say it’s worth about what I paid for it. As noted by some of the commenters on Amazon, McGinnis doesn’t seem to know much about the military except what he’s seen on TV, thinks you can land a 200-yard-long starship in the courtyard of the Pentagon, and has a real problem with consistency. Yes, this is a fast-paced adventure with Earth’s bravest and toughest soldiers – er, SEALs – off to save the galaxy from the insectile alien hordes, but what might have worked as a movie (preferably with an actual military adviser to clean out some of the obvious BS) fails as a novel, at least if you have any actual exposure to (or knowledge about) the military. Not recommended.


Speaking of Tom Kratman, I mentioned Come And Take Them in passing last time, but it deserves a bit more attention. I downloaded it earlier this month when it became available for the Kindle (and I had a few bucks to spare for it) and it is definitely a suitable addition to the Carrera novels which began with A Desert Called Peace. It is uncompromisingly bloody and brutal, and as a bonus, shows us Carrera’s opposition from inside their own heads as well. Some of the scenes will be familiar from The Amazon Legion since they deal with the same events but from a different POV. Recommended; if this is the sort of thing that you like, then you’ll certainly like this.


Also, since I’ve been playing a lot of Total War: Rome, I felt compelled to download a copy of David Drake’s Ranks of Bronze, which is a coming of age story built around the notion that one of Crassus’ lost legions was sold as slaves to aliens. Which brings us around to the stuff I actually checked out of the local library, since one of those books was Drake’s anthology Other Times Than Peace, which, contra Amazon, is not actually a Hammer’s Slammers anthology but a collection of several Drake stories from all kinds of places, including the Foreign Legions anthology (how’s that for recursion?) which is essentially the sequel to Ranks of Bronze that Drake himself didn’t think could be written. All good reading, and the influence of Drake’s background as a classics major from the University of Iowa is very evident in all three books.


On a related topic, Jack Campbell made a name for himself in the combat SF field under the name John Hemry with Stark’s War and its sequels. He has since moved on to greater renown as the author of The Lost Fleet, a series of books about two human civilizations (the Alliance and the Syndicate) locked in a century-long interstellar war. Long-lost Alliance hero, Black Jack Geary, is found in a survival pod decades after his presumed death, and succeeds to fleet command after an act of Syndic treachery kills the admiral in command. Geary has to contend with his own legend, a decay in fleet discipline, tactics and training, and scheming subordinates along with a desperate supply situation as he tries to bring the fleet home from deep in Syndicate territory. Unfortunately for me, I started with the second book, Fearless, in which his task is complicated by another legend, Captain “Fighting” Falco, lately rescued with POWs from a Syndic labor camp. Unlike Geary, Falco has political ambitions, and is willing to split the fleet to pursue them. This is a tense thriller of a space opera, which in different ways reminds me of Keith Laumer’s The Glory Game for its tight descriptions of space combat and also of the Bolo shared-world anthology Last Stand, which describes the horrific Last War; the haunting descriptions of things lost by the Alliance in the course of its long war against the Syndicate Worlds is very reminiscent of that fictional war. Campbell writes a gripping tale, and I can’t recommend it enough.


Now, before I start in on the next book, I want to say that when it comes to horror, my tastes are very narrow and tend to the Lovecraftian as opposed to traditional works such as Dracula. The entire zombie craze of the last couple of years interests me not at all, either as entertainment or as an analogy to our current cultural/political mess. Still…I do like me some John Ringo, even if I haven’t read all his stuff, and the snippets he posted on Facebook of Under a Graveyard Sky sure looked interesting…so when I saw it at the local library, I had to pick it up. Turned out it was well worth it. Unlike the pneumonic plague that devastates the world in Ringo’s The Last Centurion, the plague that turns most of humanity into zombies here is man-made, and while a vaccine can be made, it seems there aren’t nearly enough monkeys to go around. So the Smith family leaves New York in their sailboat, only to find that there’s a lot of zombies at sea as well – and people that need help. So the Smiths and some of the folks they rescue become Wolf’s Floating Circus, a band of seafaring freebooters hoping to save what – and who – they can, while putting down every zombie they can find afloat. Because you can’t save the survivors if the zombies are still around. Parts of the novel are extremely creepy if not downright horrific, arguably worse than anything in Ringo’s Posleen War novels, and that includes Watch on the Rhine. Other parts (such as the last concert in New York City), you won’t know whether to laugh or cry. If you’re a fan of John Ringo, you probably already have this, but if not, you should definitely get it. For Trixie, if nothing else.


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Comments

22 Responses to “Blood, Horror, And Other Things I Found At The Library”

  1. MrEvilMatt
    November 25th, 2013 @ 2:00 pm

    Blood, Horror, And Other Things I Found At The Library: – Wombat-socho Unusually, we don’t have any leftover r… http://t.co/REheWsfzQA

  2. CHideout
    November 25th, 2013 @ 2:00 pm

    Blood, Horror, And Other Things I Found At The Library: – Wombat-socho Unusually, we don’t have any leftover r… http://t.co/YAFcnDzjvP

  3. jwbrown1969
    November 25th, 2013 @ 2:00 pm

    Blood, Horror, And Other Things I Found At The Library: – Wombat-socho Unusually, we don’t have any leftover r… http://t.co/i2JATyRTRq

  4. Lockestep1776
    November 25th, 2013 @ 2:00 pm

    Blood, Horror, And Other Things I Found At The Library: – Wombat-socho Unusually, we don’t have any leftover r… http://t.co/mqSoeJyqQc

  5. Resista38176897
    November 25th, 2013 @ 2:00 pm

    Blood, Horror, And Other Things I Found At The Library: – Wombat-socho Unusually, we don’t have any leftover r… http://t.co/C9VLSjz443

  6. Citzcom
    November 25th, 2013 @ 2:00 pm

    Blood, Horror, And Other Things I Found At The Library: – Wombat-socho Unusually, we don’t have any leftover r… http://t.co/VzNZAhl8ya

  7. rsmccain
    November 25th, 2013 @ 2:11 pm

    Blood, Horror, And Other Things I Found At The Library http://t.co/LOPlnrOv9Y – via @wombat_socho

  8. Kevin Trainor Jr.
    November 25th, 2013 @ 2:27 pm

    Kevin Trainor Jr. liked this on Facebook.

  9. BMG71
    November 25th, 2013 @ 2:48 pm

    Just got Under a Graveyard and hope to start it next week. I just finished book 3 of the Odyssey One series by Evan Currie. Pretty good work! http://www.amazon.com/Evan-Currie/e/B004V4PCV8

  10. Dianna Deeley
    November 25th, 2013 @ 3:18 pm

    Seriously, you get Tom Kratman in the comments, and I miss it because I’m working?

    This must cease! I don’t want my social life (especially discussing books) interfered with by my employment!

    Uh, wait…nah. I’m going to go on letting my work interfere with my social life. But I reserve the right to pout.

  11. Dianna Deeley
    November 25th, 2013 @ 3:19 pm

    You won’t regret it. Good fun.

  12. Tom Kratman
    November 25th, 2013 @ 3:39 pm

    I’m nobody special, Dianna.

  13. Wombat_socho
    November 25th, 2013 @ 5:20 pm

    Those of us who read your novels clearly disagree.

  14. Tom Kratman
    November 25th, 2013 @ 5:26 pm

    Mmmm…”different” and “special” are not exactly the same things.

  15. BobBelvedere
    November 25th, 2013 @ 6:48 pm

    RT @rsmccain: Blood, Horror, And Other Things I Found At The Library http://t.co/LOPlnrOv9Y – via @wombat_socho

  16. SPQR9
    November 25th, 2013 @ 7:36 pm

    John Hemry’s JAG in space SF novels are actually his best work IMO.

    “A Just Determination”, “Burden of Proof” and “Against All Enemies”

  17. Wombat_socho
    November 25th, 2013 @ 8:24 pm

    Others have said so; I think they’d have to be damn near Hugo-quality to beat Stark’s War and its sequels, though.

  18. Dianna Deeley
    November 25th, 2013 @ 11:19 pm

    Ah, you misunderstand! I was hoping for free advance copies if I signed on to proofread for typos!

    I’m in the middle of Come and Take Them. I’m enjoying it. I’m just irritated by the number of little typos.

  19. Tom Kratman
    November 25th, 2013 @ 11:27 pm

    As Jesus said, Dianna, “The typos shall be with you always.” Hmmm..or was that Paul…?

  20. M. Thompson
    November 26th, 2013 @ 12:28 am

    And I haven’t had time to read much of anything. Curse this whole school thing.

  21. Wombat_socho
    November 26th, 2013 @ 3:57 pm

    Judging from the paperbacks I own, I’m thinking Jim Baen. (I kid, I kid!)

  22. Wombat_socho
    November 26th, 2013 @ 3:58 pm

    That was the worst thing about school. It cut into my (non-accounting) reading time