Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

This is a dystopian novel set in the year 2044.  You could also call it a quest novel, a coming of age novel, or near future science fiction.  It melds many different themes into a unique, funny, and exciting story.  The one common theme that seems to unite all of it is geek culture, video games, and the 1980s.

Wade Watts the main character, is a geeky kid who spends most of his time in the virtual world of OASIS.  Virtual reality in this setting is extremely realistic.  Wade Watts even goes to school in the virtual world.  The virtual world he escapes into is infinitely better than his horrific, crowded, dangerous trailer park existence in the real world. The theme of bits versus atoms pervades this book.  In the real world, even virtual money is worth more than most national currencies.

The story is centered around a contest to gain control of the world wide virtual world called OASIS.  To do this, the entrants must solves riddles that were part of the creator of the virtual world's childhood.  The childhood is a kind of super fanboy and geek festival filled with 1980s references; everything from Duran Duran to Star Trek to the video game Joust.  It is very funny.  It reminds me a bit of my own childhood.

The book adds in many tropes: a love interest, an evil corporation, and plenty of action.  It moves very quickly from scene to scene and makes you want to find out what happens next.  The book made me laugh and smile while I was reading it.  It is lot of fun especially if you are nostalgic about the 1980s, liked roleplaying games, video games, comics, and listened to rock music.

Ernest Cline has a website http://www.ernestcline.com/  .  The book Ready Player One is coming out in August of 2011.  I was reading an advanced reading copy sent to me by Library Journal   I think this book will cross reading genres and be appealing to a wide audience.

The Lost Fleet Beyond The Frontier Dreadnaught by Jack Campbell

The Lost Fleet Beyond The Frontier Dreadnaught by Jack Campbell


Jack Campbell continues his space opera series with the seventh book in the series.  John "Black Jack" Geary has successfully defeated the Syndic worlds as an Alliance commander.  Now, he is going to seek out the aliens who supported the Syndics.  This is classic space opera.  Black Jack is the hero out of time, a common theme in science fiction.  He was awoken out of frozen sleep after 100 years to lead the Alliance to victory.  This theme goes all the way back to Buck Rogers.

Jack Campbell writes about more than just battles.  The story is also about a man who refuses to become a supreme leader and is a living hero.  John Geary must also deal with the politics of command, prisoners of war, and resupplying his war weary fleet.  He is sent back to face a new enemy, the aliens because the people at home are afraid of him.

The aliens are wonderfully enigmatic.  They destroy their own ships and installations before they can be captured.  As the fleet enters deeper into alien space, the aliens become more and more dangerous.  It follows the classic formula of space opera; each battle must be more challenging, and each time the hero must be more morally upright and cunning.  It makes for an entertaining story.  Predictably at the end the fleet meets up with an even more powerful alien race.  It is a classic, reliable formula.

When I started reading this book, I could not put it down.  It was gripping.  The hero did not just fight the aliens, he outstrategized them.  The story is much more than blazing guns.  Jack Campbell, the author served in the U.S. Navy surface fleet and it shows in the writing.  The series is also on the bestseller list in Locus Magazine.  I also enjoyed reading several of the other books.

Echo An Alex Benedict Novel by Jack McDevitt

Echo An Alex Benedict Novel by Jack McDevitt




Echo is part of a series of novels featuring Alex Benedict, a recoverer of antiquities in the far future. In this novel, Alex Benedict is following the trail of an inscription written in stone which is part of no known human language. The inscription makes for an excellent gimmick.



The characterization is better than his earlier novels. I especially liked Sunset Tuttle, an explorer seeking alien civilizations for philosophical reasons. He creates an excellent back story for the book.



Alex Benedict's adversaries are more tragic than evil. The novel is more about how mistakes can lead to horrific consequences. The one exception is the sociopathic assassin bent on killing Chase Kolpath and Alex Benedict. However, the assassin is more subtle and devious than a brutish adversary.



This novel successfully combines mystery, exploration, archaeology, and suspense into a superb science fiction novel. It is the fifth in the Alex Benedict series. The third novel in the series, Seeker, won the Nebula Award.

Behemoth by Scott Westerfield Illustrated by Keith Thompson

Behemoth by Scott Westerfield Illustrated by Keith Thompson

Behemoth is a mixture of alternate history and steampunk written for young adults.  It is the second book in the Leviathan trilogy.  The title Leviathan in the first book refers to a giant living airship.  Leviathan won the 2010 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Novel. I think it is quite readable for adults as well.

The setting in this part of the series is an alternate history Ottoman Empire.  There are ornate clockwork mechanical walkers and intricate steam powered machines.  The year is 1914.  In this world, the English and Russians are Darwinists masters of genetically engineered beasts and the Germans and Ottomans are Clankers makers of complex clockwork machinery.  I like that in this world, the Americans do both.

This makes for wonderfully ornate illustrations by Keith Thompson.  His website has some of the art from Behemoth http://www.keiththompsonart.com/ The illustrations are wonderfully ornate in black in white with touches of Victoriana, Art Deco, and even Middle Eastern motifs.

The reader encounters living airships, articulated steam elephants, a steampunk library, and an alternate Orient Express.  This transports you to a very different world.  The descriptions are inventive and eloquent.  We get to imagine Iron Golems in the Jewish quarters of Istanbul, fallen nobility in grand hotels, and an air of revolutionary change.

There is constant action, intrigue, hair raising escapes, and suspense.  Tension is created between the main characters; a young woman posing as a boy to serve in the English air corps, and an aristocratic German who is trying to pass himself off as a commoner.

The design of the book is superb; it is set in Hoefler text.  The line spacing and layout are very easy on the eyes.  The jacket design and photo illustration are by Sammy Yuen, Jr.

This is highly recommended, especially for people who read steampunk or atlernate history.

Rex Riders by J.P. Carlson

Rex Riders by J.P. Carlson

Rex Riders is a "weird western", a combination of weird tale or science fiction and western story. The story is an adventure story for teenagers, but it can be read by most anybody. It is an attempt to bring back the old fashioned pulp style story with better writing and more historical accuracy. There is plenty of action and a strong sense of old fashioned frontier values in this story.

The descriptions of riding include both horses and dinosaurs. Two of the dinosaurs featured are the tyrannosaurus rex and the triceratops. We move between the setting of the old west in the town of Dos Locos and a dinosaur planet. The setting of the west is described in beautiful detail; ranching, square dancing, country doctors, and small town life.

The story has themes about greed, bravery, loyalty, and taking advantage of peoples weaknesses. The villain D'Alessandro has his ranch destroyed because of his greed and his violent henchman, Cooper comes to a bad end.

J. Califiore is the artist who illustrates the book. He is a comic book artist for both DC and Marvel. Bob Eggleton has a small illustration on the back cover. The illustrations by J. Califiore are very precisely rendered, with lots of action, and clean lines. I like the picture of Zeke Calhoun, the main teenage character riding a t-rex, as well as a picture of a stage coach being rammed by a triceratops.

The one flaw I found was the occassional tendency of the author, J.P. Carlson to tell not show. For example, in one instance, he describes the way a pike is used in logging in the old west. This broke the flow of the story. It might have been better if there was a captioned illustration at this point. On the other hand, there is a lot of very fine detail written into the story like exact descriptions of cowboy instruments, tyrannosaurus rexes eating beef jerky, and a stampede of triceratops.

At the time I read this book on June 8, 2010, there was no website for this book. There also was no availability on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. It was released on May 3, 2010. I picked up an advanced reading copy at Book Expo America. The ISBN for the book is 9780982579633 . It is priced at $19.99 . This is the first book by a new press, Monstrosities, Inc.

Ship Breaker a Novel By Paolo Bacigalupi

Ship Breaker a Novel By Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi just won the Nebula award for his novel, The Windup Girl. This is his second novel. He also wrote an excellent collection of short stories, Pump Six and Other Stories. This novel is a young adult novel, but after reading it, I think it will appeal to all ages.

The writing is extremly fast paced and suspenseful. I was glued to the book and finished it in a single sitting. There is a lot of swearing, violence, and some drug references. However, these do not detract from the story. The violence is not sensationalized, it is portrayed as being a necessity to survive, or as a form of hardness.

The setting is fascinating. It is a near future where the age of oil has ended. Empty oil tankers line the coastlines, there are massive hurricanes, and New Orleans is a drowned city. In this setting is Nailer, a teenage scavenger of shipwrecks who makes his living collecting copper wire, tin, and other light metals.

Nailer contrasts well with Nita a rich girl who he rescues from a shipwreck. This brings a life changing adventure. We travel by bullet train and solar clipper ship to escape the bad guys.

I like the technology, it is completely believable. Paolo Bacigalupi even makes reference to a Buckell cannon designed to shoot sails into the upper atmosphere where they will catch strong winds to pull a ship quickly. At the end of the book, he acknowledges Tobias Buckell, another one of my favorite science fiction writers for technical help.

This is a superb, fast paced, adventure novel set in a dystopic near future. Read it, enjoy it, tell others about it.