ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact March 1972

ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, March 1972

Update the photo

This March issue of Analog has stories by Frederick Pohl and Larry Niven. What more could you ask?

For anyone finding these reviews, my purpose is two-fold: enjoying some "classic" sci-fi, and looking for stories that I think could be adapted for TV broadcast since so much of what shows up on anthology shows is rough to awful. Additional Note: I do NOT work in television. I just watch it.

In this issue:

The Editorial: "Born to Lose". The Attica Prison riots occurred in September 1971. This editorial is likely a response to that. (It is referenced.) Ben argues that orgazined crime pays pretty well because professional criminals rarely go to jail. It's the amateurs that go to jail, over and over. And even though every inmate thinks of nothing before getting out, so many of them want back in as soon as they are out. This leads to jail referm without the stone walls and iron bars. Jails could be most like military bases with high-tech surveillance. And inmates could be taught to code. And more stuff that I've heard over the past 50 years. But this would be one of the earliest arguments I've encountered.

Novelette: "The Gold at the Starbow's End", by Frederick Pohl with an illustration by John Schoenherr showing a spaceship rocketing through space. The caption reads, The only way to save the world was to create a group of supermen. But supermen see things very differently from mortals.

A scientist named Knefhausen has discovered a planet named Aleph-Aleph which is orbiting Alpha Centauri. He has a government backed project to send 8 scientists on a ten-year mission to get there. To alleviate boredom along the way, they are supposed to work on math problems to keep their minds sharp. They would get tired of chess fairly quickly.

It starts off that they work on these things to the point of solving the Goldbch Conjecture (which Knefhausen isn't familiar with, but this is progress). The doctor, who apparently came over after WWII, wants the men and women to expand their minds so the universe can do so as well.

Several things go wrong with this project: first, the scientists on board seem to be more interested in sex and drugs -- they use the contraception pills along with byproducts of waste filtration to make mind-altering substances. At some point, they are amputating toes for bone dust. A second problem is that they don't have the power to append large amounts of data to the transmission, so they send an equation which would yield a huge number that is a Godel cipher, which will take twenty years to crack. Important scientific discoveries are buried in there.

The biggest problem, however, is that There Is No Planet. Knefhausen sent them to their deaths for the good of mankind. The president is aware of this. Along the way, the Constitution is amended so the president can stay in office for the entire ten years.

If reads as though the scientists are going crazy and will likely be dead before they make it there. Knefhausen, however, believes that they are advancing. In the end, the ship sends back a beam of particles that causes the ice caps to melt, on purpose. Global castrophe. The final transmission says they got there and established a new planet and will return in three days time. It appears that they have actually become superhuman.

It was interesting until it stopped being hard science fiction and made the leap to fantasy. I have read a lot of Pohl in many years, so I can't compare this to anything.

As for filming this, it has all the tension and drama you would want, with limited sets and limited CGI. Plus it has sex and drugs. The only problem is that I would think audiences would think that they "Hollywood-ed" the ending. But that would be the payoff TV audiences would want.

Short Story: "War in Our Time", by Howard L. Myers with an illustration by Vincent DiFate showing a man in the air in the foreground against a background of buildings and a night sky. The caption reads, Ever seen square gears? Or elliptical gears? They mesh just fine and for some purposes, a weirdo gear in a complex machine works wonders!

Radge Morimet is on the High Board of Trade. He's also a little insane and if he wasn't who he was, he'd have been sent for a "psych-release" long ago. Everyone in society can communicate psychically, so they can reach consensuses.

There's a war with the Lontaste Federation going on, and Radge's side is losing. They have a new creature, dubbed "Monte", who is apparently as big as a mountain.

To combat this, and even out the war, the Board enacts Morimet's idea for an Executive who can make decisions (with help from a mental suggestion that he wants to be on the winning side) to speed up decision processes. That man does a great job, until he defects.

And there's the rub, Morimet wanted him to defect because now they have the Executive and Monte, so they now have a committee, which is bad. The "good guys" now elect a new Executive with a different suggestion so he won't defect. And the war continues for our time. The next generation can deal with it in theirs.

A little too cerebreal for TV as everything is mental.

Science Fact: "when the sky falls" by Ben Bova, with an illustration of something by somebody (no name and no idea what I'm looking at -- Rorshach test). The caption reads, What goes up must come down." Whether it's a gentle little star like our Sun, or a whole galaxy.

On the nature of quasars and the Big Bang Theory vs Steady State. Quasars are either really distant objects, or they're a lot closer than we believed. I get the feeling we've learned a lot more about them in the past 50 years.

Novelette: "Cloak of Anarchy", by Larry Niven with an illustration by Jack Gaugan showing a guy swinging a large stick and two others throwing rocks at large spheres in the sky. On the facing page is someone else throwing something or possibly controlling the balls. The caption reads, TThe concep "Complete individual freedom" means, to every individual, "what I mean by right and proper freedom". But since individuals don't agree...

There's a Freedom Park where everyone is free to do as they wish. You are free to build whatever you want, but everyone else is free to take it apart. The only thing you can't do is attack someone. If you do, you and the victim will each be zapped by a flying, basketball-sized copseye.

Some people throw rocks at them, and occasionally take one down.

The Freedom Park is an abandoned stretch of California highway that's been turned into a greenway. The exits are where the old exits were. People are free to walk about fully or partially nude, if that is there choice and no one will bother them.

An anarchist who asked some guys to take down a copseye takes it apart to see what makes it tick. He's a proponent of anarchy as a form of government. He managed to shut down all the copseyes. And then mayhem ensues.

Suddenly the nude feel exposed. People can strike anyone they disagree with, including a psych major carrying a blank protest sign (which is taken and broken) for an experiment. But the exits closed at sundown and people are still inside. Folks group together, but there are idiots guarding the fountain because they are bored and won't let anyone near them.

Violence ensues until more copseyes appear. Maybe anarchy isn't a good model after all.

This is filmable. It just needs a little CGI for the flying balls. Also, it would probably be better to have skimpy outfits instead of nudity.

Short Story: "The Long Silence", by Donald Noakes with an illustration by Leo Summers showing a couple people in the foreground (to the left) yelling/arguing. In the background is a police officer with a bullhorn, standing in front of a futuristic police scooter. The caption reads, Silence is golden, eh? Always? For everyone?

Either I didn't read this or I forgot everything about it. I'll give it a (re)read and get back to you.

Science Fact: "Skylab", by Joseph Green with illustrations from NASA (I think). The caption reads, With the Salyut space station the Russians have once again beaten the United States to a "first" in space. The tragic deaths of the three cosmonauts overshadowed the technological success they achieved. But the Unitid States program will, as usual, be bigger and better!

Obviously, this article will be of interest to me because I have vague memories of Skylab going up ... and better memories of it coming down. And where it falls nobody knows. (It fell across the Pacific and Australia.)

I want to get back to this one, also, but I read the fiction first.

Novelette: "Child of the Gods", by James Schmitz with an illustration by Kelly Freas showing a woman (Telzey) from the waist up (below seems to be buried or just disappearing) with her wrists tied to two poles on either side of her. In the distance is a giant bubble (like Rover?) or sphere of some kind. The caption reads, Telzey found that being under someone else's control wasn't pleasant ... but the question was who is controlling whom?

I'm recognizing James Schmitz' name and knowing a Telzey story is coming. I've enjoyed all the ones I read, although the one that wasn't broken into two parts a little less so.

The story opens with Telzey already under someone else's influence. In today's parlance, she was conning by a phishing email of the psionic kind. A powerful psi gets hold of her and wants her to investigate something for him. He's afraid to show himself, and wants her to be his proxy. He puts safeguards on her to prevent her from using psi bolts and makes it so she will always take actions that are in his best interest.

The man's name is Alicar and he runs a small mining operation. He was mining a particular crystal when they can open djeel oil (or whatever gets refined into that). No one knows what it's good for (other than blowing things up good) but the Federation confiscates all supplies. Alicar has been stashing everything on random asteroids that only he knows about.

It turns out that only the people that know about the djeel oil remain in the area. The rest are gone. They find that those three have been converted to believe in the Soad, the Child of the Gods, who appears as a giant round blob of water, and who only comes out at night because the radiation from daylight it too much for him. Soad wants all the djeel oil, including what Alicar has taken. He needs it to get back to wherever he belongs. (Another galaxy?) Soad is also psionic in his own way.

It turns out that Soad likely influenced Alicar to pick the spot where he started mining and convinced him to start refining the djeel oil in the first place. However, whatever Alicar did after that is on him, as far as Telzey is concerned.

Telzey manages to get out from under Alicar's control when he's wounded and Soad is on the move. She is under orders to do what she needs to that's in his best interest. At the time, that meant being able to dismantle all the blocks he put on her so she would have her defenses, her offensive power, and would not be hesitant to take action while deciding what's the best course of action.

Soad is defeated at the end, and the two wake up in a hospital run by Psychological Services.

All of Telzey's stories (so far) are great source material for television (or even a series of one-shot films). This one doesn't have too many characters in it, and the CGI shouldn't be too complicated.

Short Story: "BCL 362" by Vernon W. Glasser with no illustration (the color of the title is inverted). The caption reads, How honestly just would a real race be in allowing such an experiment to continue freely?

Let me just to the end here. This is an experimental type story in the form that it is written. It's a Civil Memorandum Opinion and Order of a complaint against Bio-Chem Labs, Inc brought by Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Life Forms. The opinion contains testimony of several individuals.

This is film-ready. The opinion equates to the narration and the testimony is the dialogue. Most of this could be in a court room (of any kind), with the rest being shot in a lab or on a planet with aliens that look like humans (should be easy to cast, no?)

The story involves experimenting on a race of non-humans that was created by the labs and forced to evolve so that they are on par with humanity now. And they are being held back so they don't evolve too far too fast because then they're usefulness in predicting human behavior would be gone. The laws only apply to humans, but how close are these creatures? Is there anything significant about them that differs from actual humans?

As a written story, it's a little lacking. It's fairly obvious where it's going. The unique thing is the format (and at least it isn't told in letters). But it could be filmed very easily.

The Reference Library , by P. Schuyler Miller. Reivews include Science Fiction Story Index: 1950-1968 by Frederick Siemon, and Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch. The intro contains a long review of "A Time of Changes", which is an "inner space" story, whoever coined that term.

Brass Tacks: A letter about the movement to put John W. Campbell on a stamp. Someone brings up the ecological problmes with the ill-fated SST. (Ben says no one is certain about the effects. I remember when they wouldn't let them land in certain places. By I know they were still flying in the early 2000s because one flew over me every afternoon on the highway.) There's a letter about Kelly Freas's artwork and the science articles, and a few more about a story with a Freas illustration that contained a middle finger and a naked butt, and the readers were not amused. (Note that J.W.C. bought both the story and the artwork.)

Now onto April. I hope it's as good. I don't know if I'll read a second old magazine. I'm behind on the others.

The Book of Koli (Carey)

The Book of Koli, M. R. Carey (2020)

Book One of the Rampart Trilogy

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a Book Club selection. It's a post-apocalyptic story set somewhere in England (toward the end we find out it's 200 miles north of London). It is written as a narrative of a young man with little education from a village of people with limited education. The text is difficult to read at first, but you get used to it and ignore it, except for the times that you don't.

The biggest "offender" is the use of "of" in place of "'ve" in contractions. Every. Single. Time.

There are also times when you need to sound something out loud to figure out what he's refering to, and other times, I just didn't bother if I could figure it out from context.

It's also very conversational in how he recounts a bunch of stuff you need to know before he can tell you the story he wants to. It drags on a bit. Once again, had this not been a book club book, I might've bailed out after 30 or 60 pages. The pace picked up later on, but not nearly enough.

Koli and his family live in the village of Mythen Rood, which supposedly means something, or it could just be a corruption of "road". ("Rood" means Crucifix. It's also "door" backward but that doesn't mean anything.)

You never get a good idea how big, how populated, this village is. Is it dozens, hundreds, a thousand?There don't seem to be a lot of people mentioned and there are only three "Ramparts" protecting everyone. Ramparts are people who can wake up the ancient tech, except that there's only three pieces of working tech, and all the people who passed the test to wake the devices are come from a single family.

Like in Armored Saint, everyone's last name is their occupation. When they become an adult, if they don't become a Rampart, they choose the name they will be known as. Koli wants to be a Rampart but he ends up being woodworker. His best friend becomes a Rampart (and he's a member of that same family) and asks their mutual female friend to marry him. Koli is sad but doesn't stand in the way (nor does he stand up for him.) Koli finds out from Ursula, a medic who travels from village to village accompanied by a "drudge" that is apparently the size of a mini-van, that there are ways to activate tech and ways to authorize users. Koli comes up with a plan to acquire tech.

Koli's father was a traveling locksmith. He installed the lock on the door in the basement in Rampart Hold ("the Count and Seal") and another lock in the woodshed of Koli's mother. He installed the same lock with the same key. Koli uses the key, sneaks in the Hold and makes off with a bunch of devices, which turn out to be same kind of tech. (He also forgot to bring a bag to carry them, so he could only take what he could hold.) Of all of these, he gets a single item to charge up with sunlight: a Sony Dreamsleeve music and entertainment player, with a young woman AI interface named Monono Aware (A-war-ee). We find out more about her later on.

Koli keeps hoping that there's a weapon in the device, but there isn't. He also wants to be sure that he is authorized and that no one else is. He manages to make a verbal passcode for anyone other than him. Monono tells him that she can still access a site were the upgrade with the personal alarm is stored but it'll take a while to get it. Koli says okay, and the device goes silent for a long time. Koli thinks he broke it or chased the girl away. She returns at his friend's wedding (I forget his name already, but he married Spinner, but they won't be in the story much longer). He declares himself to be Koli Rampart.

The Ramparts disagree and imprison him. Half of them want to kill him and the rest want to make him Faceless and banish him. The Faceless men in the woods are mostly cannibals. So he sets out, without the Dreamsleeve, and tries to make his way to Ludden (which turns out not to be London, as I figured, but it was only 4 miles away, so it didn't make sense that it would be London.). The problem is that the trees can kill you either with vines or by boring seeds or whatever into you. But they are usually only active on sunny days. Overcast days are okay.

He makes it through the trees to the gate of Ludden. He finds out when he gets there that Ludden is dead. Everyone died off. (They weren't making enough babies, and not enough of those lived.) While he's there, he's ambushed by one of Rampart Cutter who followed him because he wants to know how to make the dreamsleeve work. Koli refuses to tell him and dares him to kill him already. There's a fight, and first the Rampart is cut with his own tech. The Rampart threatens to destroy the Dreamsleeve, but Koli uses a large rock to destroy the cutter, which blows up, taking the Ramparts arm with it. He dies.

Koli climbs a tower to spend the night (instead of finding a bed in any of the houses that remain). While up there, he hears voices. There are three people out looking for someone. They capture Koli and carry him back to a religous cult that is in an underground railway station. (They followed the tracks for quite a while.) When he gets there, the leader is ready to make him his altar boy, who will lead the land that was (shades of Hale-Bopp Comet folks). He's tossed in a cell, and there's Ursula, who is described as missing an eye, but it's actually just messed up a bit.

They eventually escape by creating a diversion, spilling gasoline onto the train and setting it on fire, and making a run down the tunnel. Many of the cultists leapt into the flames, thinking it would take them to the promised land. It did not. They make it outside, but Sky and some men capture them and are going to bring them back. Then the drudge strikes. They are free to make their next move.

At this point, the youngest cult member who helped catch Koli, Cup, catches up with him and is ready to kill him. Koli prevents the drudge from killing Cup. Cup is then revealed to actually be a boy who ran away from his village when they were going to marry him off to an old woman, which makes no sense if marriages are supposed to produce children from the villages to survive. This revelation wasn't foreshadowed and doesn't add anything to the story. If it was cut out, the story wouldn't be affected at all. If you skip a half dozen paragraphs, you'd have no idea.

At this point, they're ready to head to London. We don't have any closure on any of the earlier story elements, but since it's stated up front that it's a trilogy (and not some open-ended series), that is less of a problem. The only problem is that I don't think I'm going to look for book two, because reading book one was a bit of a drudge. (I didn't plan that, but it fits.)

Last note: apparently the apocalypse was caused by climate change, and a time very soon to now, but far enough away from all this wonderful tech to be developed. How climate change created those killer trees is not explained or readily apparent.

An Ignorant Witch (Graham)

An Ignorant Witch, E. M. Graham (2019)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a free book in an email. It's the first in the Witch Kin Chronicles, which includes similar titles where the adjective is changed. In fact, a few times while reading this, I thought it was "An Arrogant Witch". Nope, that was just Kindle trying to sell me the next book. (Granted, there are arrogant witches in this volume.) They also have similar covers, but they wouldn't lead me to believe that this is happening current day. The outfit the witch wears is old-fashioned.

First off, it's not exactly my cup of tea but there wasn't much to complain about for the most part. I can see why the series might be popular. I do have complaints about the ending, and the lack of closure. Yes, it's a series, and there are things that can be resolved later, but there are some things that needed to be resolved to complete this story in the series. Dara has the ability to see into Alt, which is a magical realm that exists right on top of our own, although at a different time period, even though the timelines run parallel.

Dara Martin is a bit of a ghost whisperer by way of being a half-blood witch. Her father is John De Teilhard, an important member of his Witch Kin, who had an affair with her mother 20 years earlier. The mother is now missing, and Dara lives with her Aunt Edna, who is a aware of the situation but keeps herself blissfully ignornat to the particulars. Her father gives her a stipend to go to school and to stay away from magic. It's dangerous for half-breeds, partiuclarly those with no training and no idea what they're doing. (Note that Dara has older step-siblings, so it wasn't like John stayed outside of witch kin first and then married into it. He had an affair with a woman he seemed to have love and then went back to his wife. And she took him back.)

Dara is friends with Alice Hoskins, who is Dara's only friend besides a ghost in Aunt Edna's house that won't leave its room. That ghost doesn't figure into this story. Alice has a brother named Benjy, who is trouble, and a dead great-grandmother, Old Nan, who is another ghost who has been acting up lately and won't leave the house. Dara can't make her leave, and Alice doesn't want to be in the room with her.

Benjy went to pick berries from a secret family patch days ago and hasn't returned. But it isn't unlike him to disappear with friends on a bender for a week. While hiking, the girls find the red bucket (insert poetic waxing about the perfectness of the bucket) that Benjy had. He's actually under the hill being held by fairies. Alice climbs in and Dara follows. Dara can see through the illusions and knows that everything is not as pleasant as it appears to be. Benjy is being held captive and he doesn't even know how miserable he is. If they can't rescue him, he will fade into a shade, like the band against the rock wall. Dara and Alice escape to figure out what to do, and to consult old Nan.

Dara looks for help. She goes to the new magic shop. She feels around but there is nothing magical about the shop, except for one coin in a barrel in the back of the shop, which seems to radiate evil, beckons to her, and reminds her of her mother. She stays away from the coin without asking anything the proprietor anything about it. This coin isn't referenced again, excpet when the shop is burned down later in the book. When Dara leaves the store, she is seen by her father and his wife who just happen to be passing by. The scene frustrates her so much that she shifts into Alt accidentally and nearly falls into the water because the shoreline has been built outward in the past hundred years or so.

Another half-breed, Hugh, calls her out. He saw her shift into Alt and back again. He's a witch from Scotland who is visiting Newfoundland, and staying at her father's house. Now we have most of the important players.

No one wants to help Dara save Benjy, so she tries herself. She speaks to the fairies and one of them wants a bottle of breast milk to help cure another one of them. Dara babysits, so she reluctantly agrees. The fairies follow her, get into the house, steal a bottle on their own, and also take the baby, leaving a changeling. Dara knows its a changeling but she can't explain it to her.

She continues blundering her way through plans and ideas to get help and nothing works. But she does wind up getting herself and Alice targeted for a ritual killing on the equinox the following night. With her from Hugh, they managed to foil the death plans. And Dara is finally ready to go away and learn about real magic.

Okay ... EXCEPT ... the plot at the start was to save Benjy, and in the middle of the book it grew to save Benjy and the baby. By the end, they needed to rescue Alice, too, which they do. And what about Benjy and the baby? Maybe it was a changeling? Maybe I was wrong? Ho hum? What if Benjy doesn't want to leave?

What?

I can understand not answering what happened to the mother. That happened before the book and would obviously be important to the series later on. And, okay, that stupid coin was some kind of plot hook left out for the future. But Benjy and the baby needed to be resolved. Even if they managed to save one but lost the other at the last minute.

Instead, it's all simply forgotten just because Hugh helped her solve a problem she got into in the latter half of the book because the events in the first half were so important, but not so much any more. Ho hum, what can we do? I don't buy it.

So while the book was written well enough, the story was not told enough. Would I read a second book? If it shows up for free on BookBub, maybe. Until then, probably not. I won't even try the library (which isn't likely to have it anyway.)

Armored Saint (Cole)

Armored Saint, Myke Cole (2018)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I had to do some research on this book. It's been in the kindle app on my iPad for a long time, but I couldn't Archive it to make space. I could only Delete it. I found an email from Tor.com for a free download late in 2018. However, I don't have a copy of the book on my hard drive that I can find. Either I deleted it from my Downloads without storing it elsewhere, or I never downloaded it at all. It's possible, I guess, that I may have downloaded it straight into the kindle app from the mail app on the device.

The other thing that stands out is that I have an uncle by this name, except that he spells it differently.

The cover of the book shows the head of a woman (or a long-haired boy) poking out of the top of an oversized suit of armor. The bottom of the page shows a town on fire.

So, it was an okay book. It was different, not your standard run-of-the-mill fantasy. I thought it was going to be steampunk, when the Tinker and his family appeared. I haven't really read any steampunk to speak of. There were machines with engines that ran with seethstone which produced steam when it got wet to run the engines. And then nothing like that appeared for about 60-70% of the book.

The story centers around a girl almost a woman grown but not yet betrothed named Heloise, who is the daughter of Samson Factor, who writes letters (among other things). His name is Factor because it's related to his job (although I wasn't familiar with the occupation). She's headstrong and speaks her mind, even when it might get her into trouble. You know, a teenager.

Except in this world, it's hard to believe that she's still alive given how she acts and the things she says. That said, a great number of the deaths in the book and the trouble caused can be attributed to her acting out. But she'll come out as the hero in the end.

We meet Heloise and her father, Samson, on the road to Hammersdown. They are approached by Pilgrims riding on horses and led by a Sojourner who are agents of the Emperor, who is Holy and responsible for all good things. They ride up to the two Factors and ask directions. Samson cautions Heloise to be still and hold her tongue. She does neither.

The Pilgrims, who are dragging two bodies behind them which are no longer recognizable, and for food or drink. Samson says that their is no food, open ink and paper. A Pilgrim turns the bag upside down to prove it. Paper falls in the mud and Heloise moves to retrive it and keeps trying to explain herself, getting herself into further trouble. One finally checks Samson's eye for a portal of light which would allow devils through. The Pilgrims ride off following Samson's directions so they can reach their destination before nightfall.

At Hammersdown, we meet some of the town residents, including a girl around Heloise's age. There is also someone who has basically lost his mind. He utters nonsense and starts proclaiming that he is a wizard. Samson refuses to do business there and tells the people that they need to turn the crazy man out because he's a risk to the entire town, even if he's not really a wizard.

They return home, we meet the Tinkers (father, mother, two strong boys, and a daughter Basina), and then we meet the Ranger Clodio who trades supplies with Samson so he can create special ink. In payment, he wants Samson to write a letter for him, even though Samson thinks it's pointless. It's a love letter for someone who no longer acknowledges him.

Clodio disappears when the Pilgrims show up. It's not easy to catch a Ranger who doesn't want to be caught. Brother Thone makes a point to mention Clodio's homosexuality as being a sin against the natural order or whatever. (I don't remember, I just wondered when the lecturing would come in.)

The folks of the town participate in a Knitting to fix the Veil who that devils cannot get through. Basically, they are all armed with spears and they travel to Hammersdown. The townspeople's job is to kill anyone who gets past the Pilgrims as the burn the town down (because of the mental guy). In the process, they have to kill the young girl we see earlier. Samson lets her pass, and Thone tracks her down and kills her. This sets Thone and Samson against each other for the rest of the book. Thone will have his vengence. Yada yada.

After this the Factor family needs to be hidden, in separate houses, and the town will say that they ran away. Most of the town owes the lives to Factor who had their backs in the last war. Samson says with the Sigir, the Mayor. His wife stays with the Herbalist. And Heloise stays in the Tinker's vault. This is great for Heloise because she has realized that she wants to be more than just best friends with Basina, who is betrothed to a man we don't know.

While she is in the vault and bored, she starts looking at the Tinker's special projects for the Emperor, which includes the set of armor from the cover. This is the first time we hear of it. Heloise is playing around climbing inside it when she hears the signal that danger is coming. She's tangled in the straps, so she covers herself with a blanket. Thone appears in the doorway and asks questions. Tinker is surprised that the girl is missing but sees the blanket and explains it away.

After the Pilgrims ride off, Heloise spends some time with Basina. She convinces Basina to let her kiss her like her husband might kiss her. Basina agrees but tries to break it off while Heloise is still leaning in, not letting go. Basina is upset and Heloise runs off into the night. She comes across Clodio who camps under the stars. We learn that he is actually a wizard and wizards aren't bad. He has the ability to shape plants into his furniture. He demonstrates this for Heloise.

We then get preached to like it's 80s or 90s basic cable or a Very Special Episode of some sitcom. This goes on for quite a while. It takes a while for Clodio to get Heloise to return to her village even though he knows peope will be stumbling in the dark looker for her. She finally goes back but instead of facing the Tinkers, she decides that she will go see the Mayor to see if she can see her Dad for just a minute. At this point, the Pilgrims are returning and there's no place for her to go.

Instead of returning to the woods (which it would seem might have been possbile), she gets herself captured by Thone. This brings the father out of hiding to protect his daughter from torture. The father and the entire town are now in danger AGAIN but along comes Clodio who actually has must greater magic that he can work. Trees grow and move and take on the Pilgrims, who turn scared and run.

After this Clodio collapses from overusing his abilities. Many in the town are ready to turn Clodio over to the Pilgrims because he is a wizard. Samson believes that Clodio will be needed if they come back again. Samson and Heloise try to help Clodio, except for one thing...

He open a portal allowing a devil to come through. He transforms into a six-armed thing which is unstoppable -- until Heloise runs back to the vault and climbs inside the armored suit. She takes a lot of damage but manages to kill Clodio. She wakes up in bad shape.

At this point, the father wants to see her protected. The Tinker is proclaiming her as a Palantine and wants her to lead. They know the Pilgrims will be back and they have no wizard to save them.

And the book is over.

It was okay as a book. I would've like more of the steampunk in action. Less of the Very Special Preaching. The wizard reveal about 50 pages earlier (maybe halfway through the book), and whatever is going to happen in book 2 to happen at the end of book 1.

Anyway, I can now remove this from my iPad. I'm not likely to look at for the next book. I read the author's story about how this story was trunked and revived. And I am happy for him that this found a home at Tor instead of going the self-publishing route. But I can't describe it as better than okay. It didn't suck, so this could serve as a benchmark for other books.