Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

It's a bit of a relief to take a break from my run-up to the Hugos, just to read some good books. However, it makes me realize just how many good books and good authors there are out there who DON'T get the recognition they deserve. Mackey Chandler is one of these. He provided me with a review copy of "Family Law," and I can tell you in all sincerity that there is not one BIT of difference in the quality of this work and that of the Hugo-nominated books I review. Jack and Myrtle Anderson, their almost 13 year old daughter Lee, and their partner Gordon the Derf are explorers, looking for Earth-compatible planets, and they have just struck it rich with the discovery of Providence. What? Did he just say 'Gordon the Derf?' Yup, that's what I said. A Derf is a member of one of the sapient races humans encountered on their exploration of the stars. Imagine a grizzly bear with an extra pair of arms, and a big mouth, and you've got it. They are at least as int...

I anticipate the latter part of this review will give me trouble. The front part, not at all. This is the latest book in my run-up to the Hugos. Until he withdrew, Marko Kloos' book "Lines of Departure," the second book in his "Frontline" series, was nominated for Best Novel. "Terms of Enlistment" is the first of the series. Andrew Grayson has gone as far as he can go. There are no jobs, and he has finished all the education that's available. He lives with his mother in a bleak, crime-ridden Public Residence Center, and can look forward to a future of nothingness. Each week, a government-supplied ration is available. And that's the way the rest of his life will go. All of the world is not like life in the PRCs. He is aware that more affluent people exist, and that they live in houses outside the wreckage of the city. He just has no way of getting there; it seems that just about all the mobility in our society has vanished by the time the story ...

Some mistakes you CAN fix. It didn't start out as a mistake, actually. It started out like this: I read a lot of good writing. And, I have recently reflected upon the chain of writers and etc. that have brought me to my present job, which is reviewing books. It started with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle with Lucifer's Hammer in 1978. That was followed up, in rapid order, with Flight of the Horse, World of Ptaavs, A World out of Time, and Inferno, and then I realized anything either of them wrote, I wanted. And somewhere along the way, I discovered David Drake. And after a while, I realized that the books I liked had little rocketships on them, and then I found Baen.com and webscriptions, and over time, read Sarah Hoyt. And someone said Sarah had a good column on the Mad Genius Club, so I went there. And, beginning with 'Plant Life' by Cedar Sanderson, I started to read the works of the other authors, and to review them on Amazon. I eventually got a Kindle Unlimited me...

After reading this review, I want you to go DIRECTLY to Amazon and get this book. Don't go to the kitchen for a sandwich, don't check your email: just go get this book. You should already have signed up for Kindle Unlimited, so it's a freebie. If you haven't, then it's going to cost you 11 cents per page. If you think that price is too high, then you should sign up for Kindle Unlimited. Because you need to read this story. Here's the basic outline: in 1945, a damaged American B24 bomber makes a forced landing in the Libyan desert on the way back from a bombing run. All but three of the crew (led by the luckless Joe Buckley) bail out, and are never heard of again. The pilot, co-pilot, and flight engineer remain with the plane; the pilot miraculously makes a wheels-up landing. The three crew attempt to make repairs to the engines which would allow them to take off, but die of exposure. In 1989, the plane is discovered, with their mummified bodies strapped into th...

Months and months ago, I wrote a series of posts on Baen's Bar in which I postulated that the reason for the fantastic success of the 1632 series was that Eric Flint had wisely created the title so that it would always show up at the head of book lists. I was roundly and severely ignored. Not, it would appear, by that sixth iteration author, a. abbie aardmore. Brilliant strategy! However, the title page contains a 'hint,' and by that, I mean dead giveaway, since the copyright is in the name of Rebecca Meluch. In retrospect, I should have read this book in the northwest corner of my yard. The trees provide shade and privacy. I have company out there. Under a tree, her collar hanging from a branch, sleeps Darlin Ann, my sweet little tabby cat, who was with me from my first apartment as a civilian in 1976, to this, likely the last house I will ever own. And, in a row, are three little mounds, covered in white stone. Jumper Bill, the precious beagle/redbone mix, who delighted u...

I received my copy of this book as a loan, for review purposes. Raven's Children is the second novel in the Sequoyah series by Sabrina Chase, and works best when read after “The Long Way Home,” which I reviewed on April 6. However, the character and plot developments are more than adequate to be satisfying to someone who just picks up this as a singleton. It will, however, create a need in that mythical person to get the entire series. I'm a bit uncertain about how spoilers work when reviewing a series. If a plot point in the second book is a spoiler for the first book, do I ignore it? Hmmm. I don't think so, because then the review for every book in a series after the first would consist of 'more things happen.' Make for an easy review, I suppose...but hardly satisfying. SO: Who the heck is Raven? And why do we care about Raven's Children? It's like this: Raven is a ship. And the ship is captained by Moire. And the children? More than one answer to that. T...

Rachel is a little bit older than my oldest (biological) child. She is a graduate of UCSC (The Banana Slugs) and the Iowa Writers Workshop, which I understand offers the MFA in English. From this, I draw the conclusion that she loves books. Without any direct evidence, I choose to also draw the conclusion that this is a love that she developed in childhood. It doesn't take much more imagination to suggest images of her as a young girl, learning to love stories read to her by parent or grandparent, a love that continued as she learned to read on her own. One of the great books to hit the scene when Rachel was small was the first in a series of books by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond, “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.” My children loved this one, and the next in the series, “If You Give A Moose A Muffin;” sadly, by the time “If You Give A Pig A Pancake” came out, my little ones were no longer little enough to for me to sit with them on the sofa, curled up, and read the words to them wh...

Dave Freer, late of South Africa and now living in Australia, is one of the nominees for this year's Hugo in the Fan Writer category. His blog entries truly are of stellar quality. This review, however, is based on the advanced copy I received for his a soon-to-be released novella, “The Bolg and The Beautiful.” I'm not certain what music is appropriate as background for this type of review, but I'm going with ZZ Top, which is almost always a good choice. And in this case it will give me way to try to communicate to you, in a multimedia sort of way, what reading this is going to do to your head. Because Dave indulges in wordplay. Shamelessly. Incessantly. Like “Forewarned makes four-armed, which must make buying shirts tough.” Like that. I suppose it is incumbent on me to give a brief description of Bolg, for those who have not had the pleasure of his acquaintance: he's 4'9” of Sharp Dressed Man. Tattooed blue from head to toe and every where in between, Bolg is an...

Tom Kratman is on the 2015 Hugo list for Best Novella with his BOLO story, Big Boys Don't Cry. When I contacted him, and asked if he had a preference for a work to be included in my Hugo run-up, I was expecting him to suggest one of his books in either the Carrera or the Countdown series, both of which I have enjoyed enormously. And, well, they are ...BOOKS. And one of the assumptions in the case of book reviews is that reviews MIGHT enhance sales. And everybody likes sales, right? NOTHING wrong with that, in fact, that is one of the primary reasons I write book reviews. I want some of the incredible authors, most of whom do not have as much exposure as they deserve, to get noticed. So what does Kratman do? He tells me to review a piece of free nonfiction he wrote four years ago: The Amazon's Right Breast. I have my suspicions as to why he chose that one, but I could be wrong, and at any rate, it doesn't matter. As it happens, this is a piece I am familiar with, having pra...

Mad Mike received a Hugo nomination in the category “Best Related Work” for “Wisdom From My Internet,” a book that comes pre-packaged in a plain brown wrapper. I've read it, it was funny except when (insert your choice here), but it's really not the sort of book you review. Fortunately, he has a LOT of books that are good to review, and I picked “Tour of Duty.” Here's my disclaimer: this book, or to be specific, one selection from this book, means an awful lot to me, and at the end of the review, you are going to have the option of discovering why. But, on to the review: The full title of the book is “Tour of Duty: Stories and Provocations,” and that works as a short description of the contents. The first part of the book consists of 13 short stories and two related works. The second part contains 11 works of widely varying length and subject matter, with impertinence being the common bond. The last entry, in particular, requires you to detach and carefully store sensitiv...

I received a free review copy of Witchfinder in the Kindle version. There were no technical problems with the transfer. This is the third book in my run-up to the Hugos. It really serves a double function. In the first place, it's a substitute for the Hugo recommended “ A Few Good Men ” which was on the SP2 slate, but did not make the nomination ballot. However, I very recently reviewed AFGM, on March 4 to be exact, and 'Witchfinder' makes an excellent substitute for that work, since the story-telling is of the same quality, and the non-story elements that MAY enter into Hugo consideration are essentially identical. The second reason that this book is included in the Hugo run-up is that Sarah serves as a mentor, trail-blazer, role-model, and cultivator of good writers through her blogs. It is worthy to note that no less than THREE of the Nominees for Best Fan Writer are rotating authors of her spin-off blog Mad Genius Club ( Dave Freer , Amanda Green , and Cedar Sanderson ...

I first read “Lights In The Deep” when it appeared in Baen's catalog in July of 2014. I had heard rumors of “The Chaplain's War” as something that was very different, and it was. After reading it, I HAD to read everything else I could find by Brad Torgersen, and that led me to this marvelous collection of short stories and essays. I believe that “Lights In The Dark” is the perfect review for this time of spasm we are seeing following the Hugo nominations. There is an optimism in these works, and a collegiality expressed in the contributed essays, and together those two themes pretty much define the dream that Brad was working for in his advocacy of the works on the Sad Puppy 3 list. I suppose we are doomed to have every SF work that speaks of the military in a positive light produce comparisons to Heinlein. There are much worse fates. However, I never caught the first sniff of Heinlein-imitation in Brad's work; they just share some of the same subject matter. Having said t...

Today's blog post was supposed to be a review of Brad Torgerson's "Lights in the Deep." That review is a very important one, and it's coming, but today I have to write about something else. Earlier this week, I got the news that a long-time friend, Virgil, had passed away. He had lived a long, active, productive life. He loved his children and grandchildren, and his wife, and His Lord. As my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock GA was getting my clothes ready last night for the funeral today, I received another piece of gut-wrenching news. Our MGC friend, ShadowDancer, suffered the loss of her beautiful 11 week old son, Brandon Tetsuya Alrhain, likely due to SIDS. How do I do this? I sat there, stunned at the mountain of grief that was suddenly in front of me. It blocked my path. It blocked my view. It was overwhelming. The solace of drink is no longer available to me, due to my misuse of ...

I decided to do a series of book reviews as a run-up to the Hugo awards, and can think of no better place to start than with Larry Correia. If you don't understand that, let me explain:....ummm, no; that would take too long. Let me sum up: Larry Correia will ultimately be regarded as THE person who returned integrity to the Hugo process, and in doing so, saved the award from oblivion. But I will no longer discuss his work in other matters; this is a book review. I will, however, make two negative observations: Negative Observation Number 1: I don't like names that are spelled funny. I don't read the names in Michael Hooten's Bardic Chronicles ; in those, the characters have long multiple names with NO vowels at all, except for the occasional 'Y' thrown in like a pasty on a 1950's exotic dancer. (I saw it in a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie.) And Larry's name is spelled funny for the opposite reason: It ends with three vowels in a row. He could have changed...