Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "dystopian-fiction"

Book Review: Carbon Run (Tales from a Warming Planet Book 1) by

Carbon Run (Tales from a Warming Planet Book 1)
Joe Follansbee
Print Length: 331 pages
Publisher: Joseph G. Follansbee / Fyddeye Media (October 20, 2017)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B075HMN6RL
https://www.amazon.com/Carbon-Tales-W...


Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton

I’ve decided one of my favorite attributes I look for in new sci fi is the freshness or originality in the premise, settings, or characters. Whether I’m reading space opera or dystopian speculative fiction, I like to be pleasantly surprised and not feel like I’m reading yet another paint-by-numbers adventure.

Pleasantly surprised is exactly the vibe I felt delving into Carbon Run, a dystopian yarn that doesn’t follow the usual molds. As the story opens, we learn about a future after a methane “spike” that aggravated a planet already plagued with global warming. After that, crimes against the environment are what gets the guilty and innocent alike into trouble. Government agents hunt anyone who is exceeding their limits on use of resources, being excessive about leaving their carbon footprint, not properly recycling their waste or, most heinous of all, contributing to the extinction of a species. In this future, fossil fuels are banned, pirates smuggle oil, and governments erase citizens' identities.

In Carbon Run, Bill Penn becomes a criminal when he accedentily set his house on fire and the flames destroy a nearby sanctuary of an endangered species of magpies. Deputy Inspector Janine Kilel begins to hound and chase Penn feeling the law must be strictly adhered to and claims no excuse mitigates the destruction of the bird sanctuary. While Penn goes on the run, his daughter Ann is used as a pawn to track him down. At the same time, we meet former businessman and now beggar monk Martin Skribb who is justly blamed for the “spike” and has had his identity purged from all public records. Equally, if not more so, culpable is Molly Bain, a woman with a scientific past, business-minded present, and is a high-priced prostitute. She is also Penn’s former wife and the mother of Ann who abandoned her family fifteen years ago. Among the men, or creatures, enamored with her is Gore, a mutant that is part human, part tiger. (I must admit, Gore’s genetic mutation seems a bit contrived, a gratuitous character descriptor tossed in to make the book seem more sci fi than it is. Just my impression . . .)

All these characters come together in surprising ways on ships near Russia when old family dramas are more or less resolved, ecological crimes are solved, and justice, if not the strict letter of the law, is served.

Readers may be forgiven for being a tad confused about whether Carbon Run is the first or second book in the series as it’s listed at Amazon and elsewhere as Book 2 but press releases proclaim it’s book 1. Apparently, Carbon Run was preceeded by a novelette, The Mother Earth Insurgency. Two sequels are in the pipeline for 2018, City of Ice and Dreams and Restoration.

Until then, Carbon Run is certainly worth the interest of sci fi fans with a taste for futuristic, terrestrial adventures with very well-drawn characters. It’s a nice tapestry of storylines that weave together pretty much seamlessly.

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Oct. 17:
http://dpli.ir/vNJIYE

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From now (January 31, 2019) to next Friday (February 7, 2019) you can take 25% off any print book published by BearManor Media, and that includes Wes Britton's The Blind Alien! Just use the coupon code SALE25 at checkout!

http://www.bearmanormedia.com/the-bli...

Below is the text of an interview with me that was supposedly going to appear in a newsletter to promote my Return to Alpha, The Beta-Earth Chronicles, Book 6.

That was over a year ago and the interview was never published. I don't know why. I just rediscovered it in my files and decided to post it my blogs despite the fact another book in the series came out lastfall and a batch of new short stories are appearing related to characters introduced in Return to Alpha, especially those featuring detective Mary Carpenter before she meets the aliens in RTA.

So, at long last, here are insights into Book 6 of the Beta-Earth Chronicles:

Question: Why a book on this subject?

Answer: Twice before, I thought I was done with the Beta-Earth Chronicles, first thinking book 4 was the end, then book 5 as I had gone as far as I could with the original characters. Then an editor suggested I write a Romeo and Juliet story with a new Adam and Eve. I took those two starting points and created a new cast of characters and sent them to our own planet 40 years in the future.

Question: What was the most interesting thing you discovered?

Answer: It’s very different to project what might happen on our earth from creating totally different alternate earths. Trying to describe what humanity might become in the aftermath of devastating global warming and weaponized biological plagues.

Question: What's in the book that no one yet knows about?

Answer: That we would become very localized in the aftermath of massive devastation to the point the U.S. would split into four countries. That keeping control of our lives would mean becoming tribal and more independent.

Question: The most fascinating character is . . . .?

Answer: That’s a toughie. I’d have to say a couple, Malcolm Renbourn II of Beta-Earth and his lover from our Alpha-Earth, Major Mary Carpenter.

Question: I'm only buying one book this year. Why should this be the one?

Answer: Well, this book includes a cosmic Romeo and Juliet story, sets up a new Adam and Eve, and has much, much more. As with the previous Beta-Earth books, expect originality, surprises, the unexpected, going where you’ve never gone before. I promise.

And, it works very well as a stand-alone book. This means you wouldn’t have to read the previous five books to understand what’s going on.

Question: What are you working on now?

Answer: Since Return to Alpha was published, I’ve been working on short stories that are both prequels and sequels to what happens in RTA. Several tales you can download for free at various book publicity sites—the rest you have to wait for until a collection of these stories is ready to go.

Shadow: A Grimdark Military Sci-fi (Warpmancer Book 1)
Nicholas Woode-Smith
Print Length: 266 pages
Publisher: Warpmancer Press (May 15, 2018)
Publication Date: May 15, 2018
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B07CPYFHLW
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...

Reviewed by: Wesley Britton

In closing notes to Shadow, author Nicholas Woode-Smith admits this novel is a major retelling of the first third of his earlier version of the same tale, The Fall of Zona Nox. So there are several groups of potential readers for Shadow--those already familiar with his epic and readers like me completely new to his world-building--and world-destroying- adventures.

The story centers on James Terrin, a rough-edged thief and street-fighter turned soldier who is a bit, just a bit, reminiscent of Harry Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat." Unlike Harrison's Jim DiGriz, who's an intergalactic rascal and con-man portrayed in light, satirical stories, Terrin lives in a grim, violent, and dark world in the 36th century where everyone has to be constantly aware of the many ways death can burst through the door in brutal cities like Galis where humans and aliens must survive meager existences.

What DiGriz and Terrin have most in common is their being almost constantly on the run, escaping or nearly escaping would-be killers and captors. Terrin is often running down alleyways and over rooftops while miraculously not getting hit by assassins, soldiers, or gangsters.

One aspect that really impressed me is Woode-Smith's ability to introduce new species and layers of his world's "cultures" with economy and precise descriptions. He's able to paint his gritty, gruff, dangerous environments in vivid detail while never letting the action slow. The book doesn't really have a plot beyond Terrin's becoming more and more involved in the various competing deadly interests on Zona Nox, especially as he goes beyond fighting for his own survival and then becomes part of his planet's defense against invading aliens and their deadly talons.

It's very obvious that Shadow is the starting point for the author's reinvigorated Warpmancer series which means the yarn isn't a stand-alone adventure with any story-lines tied up on the final pages. If you get interested in Shadow, plan to carry on with the epic in the subsequent volumes, both book length and short stories already available. The sequels begin with Trooper: Warpmancer Book Two listed here:

https://www.amazon.com/Trooper-Warpma...

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on May 30, 2019:
https://waa.ai/XH6W

Marigold
William G. Howard
ISBN: 978-1-6657-0260-7 (sc); ISBN: 978-1-6657-0261-4 (e)
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08ZSDF3NQ
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Archway Publishing (March 11, 2021)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZSDF3NQ/...

Reviewed by : Dr. Wesley Britton

If you like your reads fast-paced, non-stop, wall-to-wall action adventure, William G. Howard’s Marigold just might be your ticket to ride. That’s especially true if you’re an aficionado of video games as so much of this novel reminds me of a multi-layered game with a wide cast of characters always on the move. They’re either chasing or being chased, constantly escaping from perilous situations with clever if often implausible gimmicks to get out of harm’s way, and it’s often difficult to know who are the good guys, who are the baddies.
Howard’s unique vision is set in the year 2270, a time in which eastern countries dominate planet earth, so Howard presents his canvas with a considerable amount of imagery drawn from the mythology of Egypt and India. But this is a world full of dangerous if useful futuristic technology, multi-layered political power struggles, and world threatening dangers ranging from viruses to nuclear bombs.
With all these moving parts and sub-plots, we get so many characters we don’t get to know any of them in any depth. All the publicity for the book focuses on “Marigold,” a half-human, half-android called an “inorganic” woman on the run as she’s suspected of murder she didn’t commit. She was created in the Lyceum Mechaniska laboratory, an inorganic built to assist individuals who have experienced emotional or physical trauma. But she’s now on the run, in danger of being terminated while being on a mission to stop a virus from being released and find the mysterious “Pink Bunny.” She’s being chased by, among others, Detective Chabox Brignadoc, who thinks Marigold might be the victim of a high-level conspiracy.
Marigold’s saga is, however, just one thread of a complex tapestry that never quits. You can’t let your attention lag for a second if you want to keep up with this adventure-on-adventure-on-adventure.
I had to admire howard’s futuristic world-building which is extremely vivid and colorful. You might be a tad disconcerted by just how all the dialogue is so formal and verbose. Still, that is a small quibble in this flood of thrills and chills and surprises, lots of surprises.


This review first appeared on Nov. 27, 2021 at BookPleasures.com:



https://waa.ai/q2hq

Thanks to “The Protagonist Speaks” website, the “home of interviews with the characters of your favorite books,” I was able to let Major Mary Carpenter Renbourn answer a number of in-depth questions in her own words. Not only can you learn some insights into her appearances in Return to Alpha: A New Saga Begins, and Alpha Tales 2044, Mary offers some tidbits into coming attractions. It’s your turn to fall in love with Mary at:

https://theprotagonistspeaks.com/2021...


And don’t forget, you can still get a free copy of the audiobook edition of Return to Alpha just by signing up to AudibleBooks-

https://www.audible.com/pd/Return-to-...

And you can still check out the exciting new Return to Alpha trailer featuring new music by the rockin’ band called Jelli-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbZgY...