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Lines of Thunder #1
The First Days on the Front
Gole Naremsa is a raw recruit, new to the trenches of the eternal front. Despite a lifetime of training and a genetic inheritance that makes him a born warrior, it’s not what he expects.
Gole is tossed out of the troop train and into the real war. He's surrounded by other soldiers just like him, all of them twitchy, impulsive, and deadly. Over the generations their genetic twisting has gone off the rails and turned into the Pollution. Now it howls in their blood for mayhem and violence, and it offers the worst advice.
The enemy wants to kill him -- that’s to be expected. The Pollution wants to fight everyone in sight -- business as usual. The problem is that Gole's own sergeant wants him dead too. One blindly thrown punch, one minor accident with a noisy corpse, and now he’s an example for all the other recruits.
As one of the old-timers "A fresh, dumb replacement can give service exceeding his value if you plink him at the right time, in front of the right audience. The Pollution sits up and takes notice, if you follow my meaning."
It’s shaping up to be a race between who will kill Gole the increasingly dangerous enemy or his own unit. At least the enemy isn’t rude about it.
Gole needs to stop inventing new ways to get in trouble. He needs to navigate his sanity-challenged unit and understand the harsh world of the eternal front. He needs to do this soon, because the enemy has a big trick up its sleeve, and only Gole seems to see it coming...
Gole is tossed out of the troop train and into the real war. He's surrounded by other soldiers just like him, all of them twitchy, impulsive, and deadly. Over the generations their genetic twisting has gone off the rails and turned into the Pollution. Now it howls in their blood for mayhem and violence, and it offers the worst advice.
The enemy wants to kill him -- that’s to be expected. The Pollution wants to fight everyone in sight -- business as usual. The problem is that Gole's own sergeant wants him dead too. One blindly thrown punch, one minor accident with a noisy corpse, and now he’s an example for all the other recruits.
As one of the old-timers "A fresh, dumb replacement can give service exceeding his value if you plink him at the right time, in front of the right audience. The Pollution sits up and takes notice, if you follow my meaning."
It’s shaping up to be a race between who will kill Gole the increasingly dangerous enemy or his own unit. At least the enemy isn’t rude about it.
Gole needs to stop inventing new ways to get in trouble. He needs to navigate his sanity-challenged unit and understand the harsh world of the eternal front. He needs to do this soon, because the enemy has a big trick up its sleeve, and only Gole seems to see it coming...
- GenresScience Fiction
148 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2016
3 people are currently reading
23 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 13, 2017
As is painfully obvious from my profile, I rarely post text reviews. However, I feel compelled to write something about this book.
Walter Blaire's Lines of Thunder books first came to my attention when I started using Kindle Scout last month. I did so mostly out of curiosity, and I'm still not sure how I feel about the program overall, but I'm enjoying the process. Part of it is ego - I want to see if I'm as good as I think I am at picking good books. :D
Mr. Blaire's newest entry into the Lines of Thunder universe, What the Thunder Said, was on there. I read all of the book info, then the excerpt, and I was hooked. I nominated it instantly. It was excellent and, apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks so because it was selected for publication.
Realizing that it was part of an existing series, I immediately sought out the first Lines of Thunder book, and here we are. This introduction to the universe is a novella, and it centers around Gole. I refuse to tell you more than what is in the book description (it says plenty, go read it if you haven't), but I will say this - it's a fantastic introduction to the world. It gradually unfolds the details of what's happening on the Eternal Front, and those that are fighting there, and what makes them different. No clinical info dumps, just a view of the world through one misfit scrag who just can't seem to stay in line.
If you like character-focused Science Fiction and Big Things told through very personal perspectives, give this one a shot.
Also, Mr. Blaire has a fantastic editor. I saw one teeny tiny missing word (I notice these things, it's a curse I've had to bear) which puts him way ahead of both Roc and HarperCollins this week.
The only reason I'm not immediately diving into the next book in the series is because I'm also reading Anne Bishop's The Others series at the moment. And part of me wants to wait until What the Thunder Said, is released because when you find a series you love, it's comforting to know there's more, right there waiting for you.
Walter Blaire's Lines of Thunder books first came to my attention when I started using Kindle Scout last month. I did so mostly out of curiosity, and I'm still not sure how I feel about the program overall, but I'm enjoying the process. Part of it is ego - I want to see if I'm as good as I think I am at picking good books. :D
Mr. Blaire's newest entry into the Lines of Thunder universe, What the Thunder Said, was on there. I read all of the book info, then the excerpt, and I was hooked. I nominated it instantly. It was excellent and, apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks so because it was selected for publication.
Realizing that it was part of an existing series, I immediately sought out the first Lines of Thunder book, and here we are. This introduction to the universe is a novella, and it centers around Gole. I refuse to tell you more than what is in the book description (it says plenty, go read it if you haven't), but I will say this - it's a fantastic introduction to the world. It gradually unfolds the details of what's happening on the Eternal Front, and those that are fighting there, and what makes them different. No clinical info dumps, just a view of the world through one misfit scrag who just can't seem to stay in line.
If you like character-focused Science Fiction and Big Things told through very personal perspectives, give this one a shot.
Also, Mr. Blaire has a fantastic editor. I saw one teeny tiny missing word (I notice these things, it's a curse I've had to bear) which puts him way ahead of both Roc and HarperCollins this week.
The only reason I'm not immediately diving into the next book in the series is because I'm also reading Anne Bishop's The Others series at the moment. And part of me wants to wait until What the Thunder Said, is released because when you find a series you love, it's comforting to know there's more, right there waiting for you.
November 2, 2016
A good first look into the trenches.
The endless war rages on, and the Eternal Front collects new soldiers and spits out bodies. Two brothers find themselves in the thick of things when they arrive. The smarter of the two starts to see things about their enemy that don't add up; they seem to be getting smarter, more clever, but he's fighting a superior just itching to see him shot, and his fellow soldiers are getting in line to kill him!
This book feels dirty and gritty, as life on the front would be, with a dark humor about death in the trenches. It feels real, as if the author had been there himself. Or maybe watched a lot of war movies, perhaps? It feels well-researched, however he did it! And the Haphan Overlords seem sufficiently aloof, spending their underlings with hardly any thought.
All in all, I enjoyed this read, and would recommend it to anyone who likes soldier stories, especially the in-your-face trenches stuff.
The endless war rages on, and the Eternal Front collects new soldiers and spits out bodies. Two brothers find themselves in the thick of things when they arrive. The smarter of the two starts to see things about their enemy that don't add up; they seem to be getting smarter, more clever, but he's fighting a superior just itching to see him shot, and his fellow soldiers are getting in line to kill him!
This book feels dirty and gritty, as life on the front would be, with a dark humor about death in the trenches. It feels real, as if the author had been there himself. Or maybe watched a lot of war movies, perhaps? It feels well-researched, however he did it! And the Haphan Overlords seem sufficiently aloof, spending their underlings with hardly any thought.
All in all, I enjoyed this read, and would recommend it to anyone who likes soldier stories, especially the in-your-face trenches stuff.
November 12, 2016
I'm hooked!
Blair does an amazing job of building a world surrounding an eternal war while bringing the Tachba and Haphan to life. This is one of those books you want to read every word of instead of skipping redundant paragraphs. Every written word has a purpose and job in telling the story. I really disliked Corphy and worried about Gold and his brother. It's the rare author who can make me really care about imaginary people they invented. Blair does the job. On to next book!
Blair does an amazing job of building a world surrounding an eternal war while bringing the Tachba and Haphan to life. This is one of those books you want to read every word of instead of skipping redundant paragraphs. Every written word has a purpose and job in telling the story. I really disliked Corphy and worried about Gold and his brother. It's the rare author who can make me really care about imaginary people they invented. Blair does the job. On to next book!
June 11, 2019
This a strange book or short story or novella as the author calls it. I’m not sure how or when I got this, but I’ve been putting off reading it for some time and I don’t know why. Now I do. First, I don’t read novella’s usually because they are too short. I prefer epic novels that go on forever or at least a series that goes on forever. I don’t know it this one will or not and I don’t intend to continue on reading it.
It’s just kind of hard to read. The dialect is very strange. This scenes are very strange and the entire situation is very strange. This sounds like something that could have occurred in WW1, but then I know it didn’t because these people have are aliens with alien Overlords. Anyway, we’re on a journey with a very, very young man and his brother, blood-fed brother, whatever that means. They are going to war. Only it sounds like they’re just going to go to the front and die. I don’t know how long this war has been going on or why it’s even been going on and you never find out. You don’t even know about the enemy except that they are the “Southerners” and you are a “Northerner”. Yeah, I know we (America) fought it’s on kind of stupid civil war, but at least the kids in that war knew what they were fighting for or at least they should have. And no one that we have ever sent to war was bred just for that purpose!
So, if you want to read this book, it’s up to you. There’s not much to it that makes much sense to me. There is a twist, but it’s not what you’d ever think and the novella doesn’t end very satisfactorily. So, with that, I’m satisfied in ending this review.
It’s just kind of hard to read. The dialect is very strange. This scenes are very strange and the entire situation is very strange. This sounds like something that could have occurred in WW1, but then I know it didn’t because these people have are aliens with alien Overlords. Anyway, we’re on a journey with a very, very young man and his brother, blood-fed brother, whatever that means. They are going to war. Only it sounds like they’re just going to go to the front and die. I don’t know how long this war has been going on or why it’s even been going on and you never find out. You don’t even know about the enemy except that they are the “Southerners” and you are a “Northerner”. Yeah, I know we (America) fought it’s on kind of stupid civil war, but at least the kids in that war knew what they were fighting for or at least they should have. And no one that we have ever sent to war was bred just for that purpose!
So, if you want to read this book, it’s up to you. There’s not much to it that makes much sense to me. There is a twist, but it’s not what you’d ever think and the novella doesn’t end very satisfactorily. So, with that, I’m satisfied in ending this review.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews