Content here is by Michael Still, mikal@stillhq.com.
This book isn’t very good. I read it because my six year old son really liked the front cover art, and wanted me to read it. He wanted me to read it so much in fact that he bought two copies to give me. The book starts off with something which feels like its lifted…
There seems to be a formula for bolo books — an obsolete bolo or two, and alien invader, a solitary bolo commander, and preferably a management chain which either doesn’t trust bolos, the officer, or preferably both. Its even better if the chain of command is also grossly incompetent. This book has all of those,…
This book is a novelization of “Night of the Trolls”, which I have already read as part of The Compleat Bolo and Battlefields Beyond Tomorrow. I’m pretty fond of the short story, and this book version didn’t start out strongly — there is a prelude to explain some background, and then the book launches into…
This is book seven of the extended Deverry series (preceeded by Daggerspell, Darkspell, Dawnspell, The Dragon Revenant, A Time of Exile, and A Time of Omens). The blurb on the back cover of this book implies that it should be safe for a new reader to enter the series here, and I can understand why…
Boing Boing put me onto this online short story. Its really very good, and it distracted me from the book I am meant to be reading by not only being clever, but also by using jargon in a manner that not only furthered the story, but (and here’s the rare bit) didn’t make me immediately…
Bruce did an ok job with this book, although I think overall he was suffering from not having a lot to work with. The book is quite readable, which isn’t true of some of the others, and has some nice details such as an attempt to sound technically feasible by the liberal sprinkling of unix…
This is the third book in the Harper Hall trilogy (after Dragonsong and Dragonsinger). I didn’t enjoy it as much as the other two. This book focuses on Piemur instead of Mellony, and the first half is about his pubescent turmoil, which is probably why I didn’t enjoy this book as much. I had similar…
This book is interesting because its 200 or so pages only cover a seven day period. Its a coming of age story that continues directly on from Dragonsong, and overlaps somewhat with The White Dragon (if only peripherally). This book has parallels with Pawn of Prophecy in my mind, mostly because they’re both about young…
The White Dragon Bio of a Space Tyrant: Politician Bolos 6: Cold Steel Dragonsong
Dragonsong sits between Dragonquest and The White Dragon, although there is some overlap with The White Dragon and it doesn’t matter what order you read those two in. Some friends and I were joking the other day that all McCaffrey books seem to involve a pained teenager coming to age. That’s true with this book,…