[Book Review] ‘The Spark’ by David Drake

In the time of the Ancients the universe was united—but that was so far in the past that not even memory remains, only the broken artifacts that a few Makers can reshape into their original uses. What survives is shattered into enclaves—some tiny, some ruined, some wild. Into the gaps between settlements, and onto the Road that connects all human reality and the reality that is not human and may never have been human, have crept monsters. Some creatures are men, twisted into inhuman evil; some of them are alien to Mankind— And there are things which are hostile to

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[Book Review] ‘Princess Holy Aura’ by Ryk E. Spoor

What Would You Give to be a Hero? Stephen Russ never expected to have to answer that question; he went to work, he stayed in his apartment, sometimes had friends over, and the worst thing he’d had to face was looking for a new job after losing his old one. But that was before a child’s desperate scream led him into an alley filled with faceless winged things that almost killed him, before the strange white rat spoke to him, calling itself Silvertail Heartseeker and telling him that this was but the beginning, that the Stars were almost Right and

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[Book Review] ‘The Golden Gate’ by Robert Buettner

“When the world’s richest man is the victim of a car bomb and literally blown off the Golden Gate Bridge the attack is attributed to terrorists and the world moves on. But some still wonder. Was Manuel Colibri targeted because, as Silicon Valley rumor has it, he was about to make the dream that people alive today can live to be one thousand come true? Two people are pursuing the truth. Tech journalist Kate Boyle and recovering Iraq war veteran Ben Shepard race through the Bay Area chasing the only clues the reclusive Colibri left behind. They discover not only

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[Book Review] ‘1636: The Ottoman Onslaught’ by Eric Flint

“The  modern West Virginia town of Grantville has been displaced in time to continental Europe in 1632. Now four years have passed. The long feared attack on Austria by the Ottoman Empire has begun. Armed with new weapons inspired by the time displaced Americans of Grantville, the Turks are determined to do what they were unable to do in the universe the Americans came from: capture Vienna. The Ottomans have the advantage of being able to study the failings and errors of their own campaigns in a future they can now avoid. They are led by the young, dynamic, and

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