Books

The Vixen War Bride

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When you say screw it and decide to buy the remaining books in a series as you near the end of middle novel, I think this could be defined as a successful novel on the author’s part, or at least evidence of being well entertained by it.

A while back, one of my Kindle’s suggestions for what to read next was book one of The Vixen War Bride by Thomas Doscher. Having a bit of rewards piled up and it sounding like it could be worth a read, I decided to check it out. There went a night’s sleep, lol. The Vixen War Bride is full of amusing cross cultural misunderstandings and people who are trying to do the right thing even if it’s hard to communicate that to the other.

Ben’s forces come from a period where armed security drones making like flying monkeys and optics that can turn night into day, are simply old hat and have been for centuries. Then they get shipped off to an occupied alien planet where the background level of electromagnetic interference is so strong that they may as well be dressed in uniforms from 1942 😅. Life is surely sad when someone has to switch from computer all the things to a Mark I Pencil, but that pales in comparison to the problem of understanding the locals and vice versa. The exchange of weapons of mass destruction between the aliens destroying the American’s colony with an asteroid and several nuclear strikes on the alien home world, surely did not endear either side to the other before the war’s end. Ben and most of his troops come from our destroyed colony, and given the enemies skill for slitting throats in the night and the Va’Shen’s horrific sci-fi weapons, it’s little surprise that most sectors have at best an uneasy relationship with the local population.

Alacea’s village is deserted and the chieftain is giving the Ben’s folk the run around. Fearing that the vicious, cruel, baby eating monsters from outer space will destroy the village in punishment for the war, the community has fled into the hills leaving only a few behind that are too old to make the long journey to shelter. When the Alacea barrels into town to face the dark ones according to their custom, she literally sets off a storm. In their culture, the head priestess is responsible to the community and arguing their position before their gods. If your Na’Sha guides her community and argues well when entering the afterlife, she may make it to the glade and her people be blessed with good fortune, or if her community is not righteous, sacrifice themself to an eternity in the frosts beyond and pray the gods be merciful in the hardships set upon their community to set them back on the right path. It’s into such a culture that paths cross.

It doesn’t take very long before cross cultural communication to rear its head and begin the snowball effect. Alacea’s confession to war crimes against humanity is quickly understood to be full of shit, but she’s the only one who will both talk to the Dark Ones and knows where the villagers are hiding. Deciding maybe-pissed-off villagers down the road are better than angry ambushes out of know where, Ben wants them to come home and live normally. Sadly, the Va’Shen language is virtually unknown and they are just lucky to have an interpreter along that can “Kind of” speak the language. Convincing Alacea that Ben’s people won’t destroy the village or kill them all in a rage is virtually impossible, and convincing her to help them is hard to do when your terp can barely speak the same language herself.

Thanks to a mix up in translation and very different social histories this results in Ben and Alacea’s sudden marriage! Not quite the help the terp was trying to ask for, lol.

For one whose culture sees marriage and divorce as but a post card in the mailbox, and one whose culture sees marriage integral to every part of their society, it’s quite the mix up. But it’s one full of story potential.

For Alacea, it’s a chance to secure her community’s safety from the dark ones and direct the dark one’s anger away from her people. For Ben, it’s a chance to avoid hundreds of angry villagers wiping his company off the map before the army knows they’ve even been hit. Somewhere in the middle, the truth is it’s a great opportunity for peace and understanding, if they don’t kill each other first.

By the Va’Shen customs, marriage is forever and taking the head priestess as a bride is an old way for a conquering overlord to dominate a village, but by extension her community becomes his and due some measure of protection. But how can some alien from Earth know their ways? Everyone in Pelle expects such cruelty and horror from the humans that few Va’Shen believe their Na’Sha’s sacrifice will protect them. By human customs a few hundred years into the future, divorce rates are over 80% and far less eternal than anything known on the alien world. A world so foreign yet familiar, that flashlights are a water jar full of rocks that grow when wet and sound-reactive crops can rot if you fly loud helicopters overhead.

The journey to where the villagers of Pelle are hiding and their return home sets the tone well. I especially loved how the discussion of how Alacea can be sure Ben won’t harm her village and that she will kill him if he does betray her plays out. Seeing that she’s unlikely to succeed in it but will make it her dedicated mission in life if that comes to pass, Ben hands her his Ka-Bar and tells her if he breaks his promise not to harm her people, she can use that knife to kill him for it. Likewise, the brawl between Ramirez and an angry young farm hand that turns into a friendly exhibition while folks were discussing peaceful terms, that then snowballs into Alacea and Yasuno yelling at tod for his stupidity until the Ranger feels bad for the guy, was just freaking hilarious and well executed.

By the second book, Holdouts, the antics of SSgt Ramirez and huntress Alzoria seriously had me laughing my ass off and made it quite the binge read. Both Ben and Alacea’s own antics end up intersecting and making it quite a story. It was great, best book in the series so far. By the end of the third book, Uncivil Affairs, both main characters now know the embarrassing truth of how their marriage occurred and have stirred up a storm. I’ve been entertained well enough that towards the end, I had to exercise Amazon’s button for buying the remaining books in the series thus far.

I love stories that turn the expected on its head and that build upon the characters and situations. Good science fiction rarely has anything to do with science directly, so much as the technology is a backdrop that enables the story.

Reading nooks and kindles

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Well, it looks like at 10% off on the most expensive of my short term projects, means I’ll be experimenting with a planned lifestyle shift: having a dedicated reading spot. That, or a chair that proves suitably uncomfortable enough to be repurposed elsewhere, lol.

I’ve done well with my goal to read a little bit every day. Typically, this works out as being before bed. Working off the same concept as why you shouldn’t use a laptop in bed because of its effects on your sleep, I’ve for a while now, thought about having a dedicated place to read. My vision for the next phase of bedroom development is a pair of bookshelves, a chair, and maybe a comfortable rug to help zone it off from the rest of the room. The dogs bequeathed me enough blankets not to have to worry about details, and a place to rest a book and a drink is easily solved.

My theory is that it would be better to sit and read, put up my kindle for the night, and then cross the room and crash into bed than it is to toss and turn alight with a kindle in hand. How well this works in practice, I think will depend on a suitably cozy place. It’s also a better incentive to read earlier and not stay up so late.

And of course there’s the issue of shelving. Most of my books are still in the garage, as I opted to convert my old shelves (about 15 and 25 years old, respectively, or older) into storage shelving in the garage, leaving me with know place to store them other than how I packed them. Bookshelves are cheap though, so that’s less a concern. The downside of sorts is that Really Cheap shelves are now better than my old shelves for weight capacity without falling apart, and are almost cheap enough to turn the spare room into a library by papering the walls with bookshelves. I must resist this temptation.

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In cleaning out my patio’s storage unit, there was this one box that I just wondered what the heck was due to the unexpected heft of it. Much to my surprise it was full of some of my mother’s books.

After wondering just how many copies of the holy bible did we have, I was both surprised and amused to find her copy of Lady Chattery’s Lover (1928, D.H. Lawrence) mixed in along with a couple less controversial novels like Hotel (1965, Arthur Hailey) and Cleopatra (1937, Emil Ludwig). Not sure how to feel about the combination, but let’s be fair, while far less explicit the Bible probably has as much sex in it as Lady Chattery, if not more 😂.

Being the odd family, my grandfather had recommended it to her in high school and in turn she had recommended it to me in high school as a book she had enjoyed. Reminds me that I never did get around to scratching it off my reading list, lol.

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Recently, I’ve finished the Frontlines series after more than a year of reading. Sometimes a book or two a week, sometimes a book or two a quarter. Quite a good series in its genre. After eight volumes, it does rather make me think about how my reading habits have changed in the last few years.

Somewhere over the years, I’ve started to divide my taste in reading into two different groups: light reading and heavy reading. Light reading is often serialized, less deep and more to the point. Good examples abound among Japanese light novels (thus, my choice of noun, lol) and the more “Pulp” like spectrum of science fiction and fantasy. Something you can sit down, read, enjoy, and not have to spend a lot of brains on to avoid distraction. Heavy reading tends to be more in depth and long form, things that reward interests in world building and greater detail up to the point that focused reading is necessary for enjoyment. Good examples are epics like Lord of the Rings and Shogun, things that aren’t short reads and benefit from focused reading where you can really enjoy them.

Oddly, I think Frontlines fits neither of these taxonomy. Terms of Enlistment and some of the other entries in the series, straddle a fine line between little enough detail to maintain the pacing and focus; but also flesh out the world sufficiently that it provides the depth needed for character and plot development. That’s not an easy balance to achieve in writing a story.

While I’ve found that fitting more light reading into my life fits better with the reality of how much time I can spend reading, many of my favorite novels are definitely in the heavy category. Curiously many of the best novels are somewhere in between these two extremes. But the only way to really tell whether a book will land in between is to give it a good reading 😀

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Been hearing bits and pieces for a while now, and anxiously wondering when we’d see a release. Sounds like the new Dune fil is due in October, and one can hope ^_^.

My introduction to Dune was the 1984 film. One late night, my mother invited me to watch it with her, but warned that you’ll probably have to watch it twice to understand it. And of course, I did, lol. Some years later, she would also lend me her copy of the book, and House Atreides. I think Dune still holds my personal record for most pages read in a sitting, since I basically sat on my ass and inhaled about the first 100 pages–after reading the four appendices! I remember seeing the novel had appendices with information about its world, and just knowing that it would be my kind of book.

Oddly, ironically, or fated, the other night I started reading Dune again. It’s been maybe eight or ten years since I last read it.

Since reading the novel as a kid, I’ve come to have a cautious view of anyone attempting to make a movie out of the story. It’s just to big and multifaceted. The cluster-hells aside, the ’84 film basically cut out 30 – 60 % of the novel, literally an entire cast of characters worth. But it still managed to tell the important pieces of the story, and is far from a short film. Much like the Lord of the Rings, I try to respect the fact that no one can watch a 12-hour long movie without taking multiple bathroom breaks unless you’re wearing a still suit or diapers.

IHMO, unless you’re prepared to make a film trilogy out of it I think Dune lends itself more to a miniseries than a theatrical film. So at best, I can hope to enjoy Villeneuve and cie’s efforts. Sounds like he has the good sense to make it more than one movie, hopefully that pans out. The novel itself, as I recall: was not only followed by four appendices, but also divided the story into three “Books”. Which is well reflective of how long a story Dune is, regardless of the publishing history that lead to it being so.

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So far my adjustment to the new Kindle has been going well. Also nice that I’ve been able to catch up on my reading a bit, hehe.

My biggest real concern was the refreshing, which kept me on the wall a while. E-ink screens are actually pretty fascinating technology, but not your average display. The refresh rates are high enough that hard flipping pages aren’t an issue, but a whole lotta flashin’ is goin’ on when images are involved. Typically this is more towards the UI, browsing covers on shelves kind of things. I assume this is in the name of making book covers render without artifacts. Because the black flashes are often more a ping-ping-ping than a slam-bam, and mostly occur in UI.
Thus far it hasn’t bothered me, or been anywhere near as bad as I had expected. But it should probably come with a seizure warning or something just in case.
The pint sized device is also damned convenient. It’s literally small enough to stuff in the breast pocket of my t-shirt, a feat not even a Goosebumps book could achieve so well. For the most part though, I just carry it like a PADD from Star Trek.
Actually the size and design of the 10th generation Kindle very much fits my mental image of the 24’th century PADD.
This is especially true with the extra bezel towards the bottom. And that the damned thing weighs so little: you could mistake it for a sheet of paper, or a weight reduced plastic Frisbee.
Thus far I’ve found the e-ink rather lovely. It’s suitably sharp that I find it easy to read. Brightness controls range from that’s really friggin’ dim to a fairly bright white. After a few days, I backed off from a few notches over half to a few notches below; the brightness scale is 24 notches.
At really low brightness: for a moment I was reminded of the original GameBoy; which really is an unfair comparison because it’s a much better screen than those ever were. Cranked up the front light makes it feel more like a tablet set to white on black. Dimmed to the middle is like a crossing point between notably white, and something closer to a page in a book.
If you have 20/20 and drop your phone on your face a lot, I could see why higher resolution would be an interest. For me it’s kind of like the 720p vs 1080p debate in phone screens. Yeah, better resolution would be nice, but I’m not inclined to cram the screen close enough to my eyeball for it to be a big return on investment. So I’ve no worries there. Mostly, it’s like paper. Which isn’t all resoluted equal itself, but just fine in the magority.
It’s been a pleasure to read on for conventional text. Most of the content I’ve loaded takes the form of novels. For that kind of text it’s brillant. Haven’t tried fancier technical books but expect anything not too PDF centric rather than reflowable would be fine. For manga it’s a no go, but just like on a phone: this is more a matter of size than quality. The Kindle can render the content well enough but no one really wants to shrink a comic book page down that tiny, and I don’t really like the panel-by-panel thing.
Personally, I think the browser experience sucks like a twenty year old phone, combined with a broken thumb stick. Let’s just say for reading Wikipedia: reaching for my iPad is a better plan.
Battery life is fair. The past week has seen the battery drop from 100% to 68% since Monday, and I’ve probably been reading a mixture of 20~30 minute to 2~3 hour sittings. Unlike my old HDX: the battery is not 7 years old! And much like my various tablets, I don’t need a booklamp.
Actually that’s one of the things I’ve come to like about e-books in general. As a teenager: I spent a lot of time with a book canted towards TV light, reading in the dark. As an adult: my love and respect for a good booklight is such that mine is kept safely on my bookshelf, batteries removed. I can’t say that I really miss needing a booklight, and I reckon the amount of reading I do at night is probably a larger percentage than when I was a kid.
Damned adulting, and all that more wearing pants and reading less :-o.

I finally bought a Kindle

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After much trepidation, I’ve finally gone and done it. The 10th generation Kindle makes both the first e-ink device I’ve ever owned, and the first Kindle I’ve actually bought.

A good number of years ago I ended up “Winning” an HDX 7 from a developer raffle that a certain audio company was doing at the time. But I’ve never had one of their dedicated e-readers, and the only Amazonion devices I’ve bought over the years have been their Fire TV boxes, a product I’ve come to enjoy.
For me the HDX7 was both surprising and novel. On one hand, it was pretty much free; on the other it was pretty cool. The device’s battery life and performance was spectacular for its day. Comparable hardware for the day would have been a Nexus 4, if you traded all the Googly services for battery life that was more like a week of mixed us / when the heck did I even plug this thing in, kind of idle time.
Back then my content was more mixed. Amazon Kindle, Google Play, and various odds and ends made up my repository of books. I have gigs of files on my private server from back when I was a heavy use of Calibre. I’ve made pretty good use of the lit’ HDX for reading over the years.
Amazon would go on to become the dominate source of e-books over the decade. But still I never bought one of their readers. In fact, I posted nearly a decade ago about how unlikely me and an e-reader were. That was before tablets came to dominate my computing life. So even after the Tabletination I never really saw the point in a purpose built e-reader versus a standard tablet.
At best: my freebie HDX has always been an auxiliary device. A device that I would mostly use for reading books, many of them converted via Calibre, or passing an insomniac night. Typically I’ve stuck to my regular tablets, since last year: an iPad, and much the earlier decade Android tablets from Samsung and Asus. Even for reading, I’ve usually used a regular tablet about 80% of the time; maybe more.
Lately, I’ve been using the HDX more as a book reader because of its small size. Something that is pretty damned perfect for reading. The folks that designed that generation put much TLC into its build, IMHO.
My iPad is rather large and I’ve always valued the little Kindle Fire’s superb build for reading. Thus not a big surprise when the device still works (hehe). Yes, I preferred paperbacks over hardcovers to the face back when I still had shelf space. After seven years though: the battery life under load isn’t as Hercules strength as it once was, and honestly there are more than a few “Yeaaah pal, your software is so frakkin’ old this ain’t supported no more”. Considering the age, I of course have no right to complain. Especially when it’s a really nice device that I didn’t pay a dime for, lol.
In fact in the past couple years it has spent some time as a clock or a photoframe. Being repurposed for reading once in a while, or to curiously see if the old thing was still turning on.
I’ve recently given some mind to whether or not to trade it in towards some regular tablet purchase, or to buy a modern Fire just for the non-reading parts. But I’ve not seen too much of a point to trading it in. Unless it’s a killer deal, like Samsung / Best Buy sometimes run, it’s too damned old to be worth much to anyone shy of being an alarm clock that reads books. Likewise, I don’t really care much about Amazon’s app store, so much as it can be convenient to read Wikipedia on a 7″ device.
Well, after a while of thinkin’ on it: I finally caved in, and bought a Kindle. So far, I rather like it.
I remember being tempted back when the 3rd generation came out with an accessible price. Think folks call that the “Keyboard” now. It helps that for some years now: the basic Kindle has been pretty cheap. Even more so with another year older, coming up soon.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be dead a few thousand years before I catch up on my reading backlog.
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Passing thought: it’s kind of sad The Outlaw King trilogy never ended up a TV mini series, or a feature length film. And probably never will 😕.

The whirlwind in the thorn tree, Law of the wolf, and Ten thousand devils made a rather good set of stories. Both when I read it years ago, and as I reread it, I enjoy this tale.