Fantastic Tales of Steampunk (Lyman)

Fantastic Tales of Steampunk
by Jeffrey Lyman (2025)

(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 book was a free Advanced Reader Copy from Library Thing. I'm encouraged (but not required) to leave reviews in exchange for the free books.

Also of note: I have been published by eSpec Books, which also published this book. Final note: I've had a copy of "The Troll King" for a couple of years, having earned it as a bonus story for some eSpec Kickstarter event. I hadn't read it yet mostly because of its size -- I've been reading all those stories in older of size in my computer folder directory.

I left the following review on the Library Thing website:

Fantastic Tales of Steampunk has five great stories. The stories range wide from creating bridges to other places to ships locked in ice and wary of sea monsters to a photographer taking photos for a police investigation aboard a dirigible that flew through the Harrow.

My favorites were "The Troll King" and "The Ring of Hours and Seconds" . The Troll King is protected by steampunk armor and has an army of similarly suited ogres. Forty-eight young men of the kingdoms must survive three challenges against ogres taking place on land, in the air, and underwater. Few are expected to survive, but ogres can be beaten. The question becomes, can the Troll King be beaten as well?

The Ring of Hours and Seconds is owned by a necromancer and must be stolen by Toten to pay off his girl's gambling debts. The necromancer makes a counter-offer, asking Toten to take on a different challenge, which could clear the debt if successful, or possibly kill him.

A nice, varied collection of stories showing what steampunk can do. Great for readers new to steampunk.

Other notes:

The first story with the bridges was a little confusing to me at first, but it picked up. The Troll King was definitely the winner with its Hunger Games vibes -- I left that out of the LT review on purpose. The arctic story was a nice change of scenery. I can't think of two many stories set in a similar location. I didn't follow the Camera story as well, but there are ghost in the blimp remaining from the Harrow, which in itself is an interesting concept.

The necromancer story has a great setup with airships taking people to different skyscrapers.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.

Cast the First Stone (Warren) -- repost

Cast the First Stone
David James Warren (2021)

(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. I decided to make a separate entry rather than update the entry from June. That's the blog biz for you. And there was so much time between the two readings that this make sense. The last time (that I recall) reading after listening, it was closer in time and there were no other grand revelations to discuss.

I listed Cast the First Stone as one of my three picks for the book club. My other choices were Sea of Tranquility, which I read after, and Gods of Manhattan, which I haven't read. Gods was rejected mostly for being a kids book.

Overall, the book was well-received. A couple of people would be interested in the second book, or at least hearing about what happens next. It was a pretty straightforward book, so there weren't a lot of questions for discussion. Mostly, what did we think of the plot, characters, and situation. What do you think will come next?

We did compare it to other time travel books that we've read previously.

Also of interest is that David James Warren doesn't exist. There are three authors for this book: Susan May Warren, James L. Rubart, and David Curtis Warren. So I each of the three supplied one name even though Susan and David have the same last name.

It was just as enjoyable the second time around, and it's eassier to review what I missed or what happened while I was falling asleep, as opposed to rewinding when a loud truck or train passes by.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. The fourth book will be available by the time you see this!

Sea of Tranquility (Mandel)

Sea of Tranquility
Emily St. John Mandel (2022)

(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 listened to this book earlier this year and reserved it to read later on. I thought it had problems when I was listening to it, but I thought I just missed stuff while I was walking.

Not so much.

My plan is to leave a review a four-star review on Good Reads that says, "I really wanted to like this story more. I also wanted to rate it less, but I wasn't sure that that would be fair."

My contention is that the first three parts of the book aren't necessary and that the reader could start at Part 4 and read the book as a novella and have the same or better experience. You could then go back and read the first three parts as an appendix with more information.

Basically, nothing in the first three parts actually matters. We get stories about people that mean nothing to the story until they encounter the anomaly, but they're stories don't have endings. Everything we encounter with them is like a human interest segment five minutes before the end of a newscast. Had they been actually short stories that tied into the anomaly, maybe I'd've felt differently.

As it is, when we get a character that hangs around a while, it seems odd and the older characters seem more quaint.

As for the story, time travel exists in the future, and the danger is present that someone will do something to change the past. Also, there is an anomaly that has been observed leading some researchers to wonder if our very existence is a simulation. (side note: by sheer coincidence, this is the second book in a row I read where characters don't know if everything is a simulation, after Selene.)

However, it seems that the anomaly created itself because everything that happens because of the time traveler (introduced midway through the book) has already happened. Nothing he does that changes history actually changes history -- his changes have already been documented -- with one exception that gets him into trouble, which we already knew was coming.

In summary: it was good, but the first parts weren't important. It would've been a good novella.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.

Cast the First Stone (Warren)

Cast the First Stone
David James Warren (2021)

[NO IMAGE -- AUDIO BOOK ONLY]

(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 needed a new audiobook to listen to while I'm out walking (and I do a lot of walking). It would be nice if the library had a tag for audio duration or if I could sort by time. Cast the First Stone came up as a "short enough" science fiction novel, so I gave it a shot without knowing anything about it.

Overall, I was pleased, and during the summer, I might look for the actual book after I've caught up with some other books.

The main character is a cop named Rembrandt Stone, who receives a watch from the former Chief of Homicide, who passed away, along with a box of cold cases. The watch doesn't seem to work, so he brings it to a jeweler who tells him that the watch is working exactly as it should be. Stone doesn't understand.

Stone wakes up "the next day" and he's traveled back in time to the time of an unsolved cold case involving three bombings. He also has the young body he had back then. He believes that he's still dreaming, but he goes along with it and tries to solve the case. He starts to realize something's off when he stays in the past.

While he's there, he sees the jeweler again, or for the first time, and sets up the future meeting. He also starts talking to the woman who would later become his wife, figuring that he could speed things up, instead of waiting years to start dating.

Instead of getting information to solve the cold case in the "future" (the present), he prevents the third bombing and solves the crime "back then".

Stone returns to his present time, feeling the pain of the injuries he'd suffered many years earlier. The book ends with Stone finding else what else has changed in the intervening years. This opens the book up for a series where he can solve more cold cases -- but are they really cold cases any more? -- while trying to repair the damage he's done to his own personal life.

Would I read more of these? Maybe, but first I have to read the first one.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. The fourth book will be available by the time you see this!

Wrong Place, Wrong Time (McAllister)

Wrong Place Wrong Time
by Gillian McAllister (2022)

(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 Pandemic Book Club selection, but I would have read it anyway. As a matter of fact, I started it before it was actually selected by the group. (The final vote was 4-3, so I "lucked out", but I would've read the other book if I needed to.) I heard my daughter describe the book to her mother (my wife) and it sounded interesting to me, with a nice little fantasy/sci-fi twist to it. The book had been recommended by Reese Witherspoon, so there was a wait for the ebook -- about 10 weeks or so. I put the paperback on hold when I was afraid I might not finish the book in time, but I did. Still I'm curious how long it will be.

It starts on a Friday evening at the end of October 2022. Jen finished carving the Halloween pumpkin when without warning or explanation, her son Todd stabs and kills a man out the street outside the house. He's arrested and Jen and her husband Kelly are off to the police station. What caused this to happen?

Next morning, Jen wakes up confused to find that it's the same day again, and the day repeats. She does what she can to make sure that Todd doesn't leave the house and can't kill the man. Meanwhile, she wants to know what would cause her son to do this in the first place.

The next morning, she wakes up and it is a day earlier. This continues for several days where she relives those days but nothing carries over. She's getting younger, not older. She learns more about her son and and her husband's secret behavior. She also find some information about about a cop named Ryan and a poster about a missing baby.

Interspersed with these chapters, there are Ryan POV chapters. Ryan is a young cop who becomes an undercover cop and starts working on a car theft ring case. His chapters are told forward in time, but when exactly they take place compared to the Jen chapters isn't stated. Speaking of Jen chapters, looking at the chapter titles themselves is a bit of a spoiler, which I'm about to spoil.

After about a week, Jen starts jumping farther and farther back. She jumps back a year and then a few years to the day her father died and farther back than that, all measured by the number of days. She found a professor who can explain some of this to her, but she has to prove herself to him every time.

We learn more about Ryan and the secrets Kelly is keeping. There's a woman named Nicola whose number shows up on a burner phone. There's this man named Joseph who's nosing around, asking questions, who, it turns out, was in prison and who will become the murder victim. There's Joseph's daughter Clio who was dating Todd before they broke it off. And there's something connecting all of it.

It mixes Groundhog Day with Quantum Leap as Jen thinks that there is something that she needs to put right, but she doesn't know what it is. She just continues learning the pieces of the puzzles that she needs to know to eventually fix things way back in the past. (Note: the author herself admits that she conceived this after watching Russian Doll, which also has a Groundhog Day effect to it.)

I enjoyed the book but I'm not 100% on the final resolution and how things play out afterward, back in the present day. (She doesn't have relive all those years.) Whatever "science-y" explanation could be posited for the energy to cause this time travel, it doesn't explain waking up again in 2022, a leap of many years, with very little fallout. There is no "Butterfly Effect". The changes are very narrow, which works fine for the narrative (although a little too pat in one regard). Considering she went back and changed how she and Kelly first met and changed the nature of their relationship, the fact that their son was still born at the same time (and is the same person) means that there's something more to this guiding the outcome (as Sam would've said on Quantum Leap).

A minor quibble, but I can imagine some people might feel let down by what needed to be changed to not only prevent her son from becoming a murder, but all of the extenuating circumstances and ancillary factors, and then how little actually changed in the end.

I might have to check out some of Reese Witherspoon's other picks ... but the older ones, which might actually be available from the library.

Doctor Who: Engines of War (Mann)

Doctor Who: Engines of War, by George Mann, 2014

The Time Lord who rejected the name "The Doctor" nonetheless picks it up again, mostly because readers need to call him something. Likewise, so do the rest of the Time Lords on Gallifrey, including Rassillon, the Daleks, and, of course, his latest companion.

Taking place in the middle of the Great Time War, the Doctor is part of an attack fleet that's ambushed by Daleks. He crash lands on the planet Moldox, infested not only with Daleks, but with Skaro Degradations with new weapons. The Temporal Cannon removes the target from history, though gaps seem to remain. Even though a soldier never existed, his cot is still there, even if you can't remember whose cot it was. (Problems like this occurred with the crack in the universe in the first Matt Smith series.)

The Doctor and "Cinder", whose family was killed by Daleks when she was a child, head off to Gallifrey where the Council decides to kill the Daleks by destroying the Tantalus Spiral and annihilating billions of lives (along with Daleks), which are acceptable losses to save trillions of others. Oh, and kill the Doctor. The Doctor does his best to make sure that neither of those happen.

Long time fans of the series (from before the revival) will be rewarded, but no viewers won't be left scratching their heads.

It reads like a long episode, and that's not a bad thing. It's a satisfying read, but it doesn't really give us more insight into the War Doctor, except that he's already tired of War. He rejects the name Doctor, but that's all he ever seems to be. Again, not that that's a bad thing.

Dirty Machines (Olson)

Dirty Machines, by David Matthew Olson, 2014

Dirty Machines is a story that puts forward a lot of ideas and doesn't develop any of them, which is a shame because some of them could have been good. Starting from the beginning where the main character's name is omitted and references to it are jarring to say the least. (Seriously, it's "[Del]" or "[Del]'s" or similar and it wasn't until much later that I realized that it was supposed to be a reference to the "Delete" key.) Not that it matters what his name is because he'll change it when he goes into the future.

The plot centers on the head of the world's only Time Travel company (which replaces the letter "T" with stylized crosses everywhere!) personally comes back a few decades to convince our nameless protagonist to journey into the future. Here's the hook: if he doesn't, history says he's about to die from a stray bullet while minding his own business. However, they can replace him with some poor shlub from the past who is genetically similar and dressed up in a matching outfit. The doomed man, who would've died alone in the past and never have been found, gets a quick death and spares a life. The catch: now that he knows, he can't avoid his fate because they can hit a magic Reset button and he'll be back on the subway before the offer was made with no memory of the meeting and blindly unaware that he'll be on his way to his death.

Naturally, he agrees after considering if this is some kind of gag. And smoking some weed. And whining and complaining about stuff.

Never answered is why Jim Doors (a reference to things hidden behind doors or to Jim Morrison of the Doors?) is so interested in the protagonist. Yes, a reason is given, but it isn't a satisfactory one, so you figure that there must be more to it. The most important, most powerful man in the world takes a special interest in some random pothead, stand-up comedian because he thinks he can write click-bait articles to get the world reading more? What?

The time travel at the center of the story is even more confusing. Everyone is free to travel back in time to visit important events as spectators, but no one may change The Course because that would be bad. But with all these people going into the past (there are mandatory trips), where are they? Only a handful are ever present at an event, such as a bus filled with witnesses to a major milestone in time travel history could be seen by the people of that Era and yet it's always the same bus. Does the trip get Reset? But then why is it there to be seen in the Past.

The title "dirty machines" refers to unauthorized time travel machines and isn't referenced until at least three-quarters of the way through the book. It could have been a separate plot in itself (and probably should have). And then there's the ending, which I won't mention, except to say that that scene should have taken place a hundred pages sooner with the story going on from there.

I could go on nitpicking some pretty sizable nits, and not just the massive numbers of typos. The narrative is disjointed, randomly switching point-of-view characters. There are no chapters, just breaks in the text. An entire section is crossed out -- I guess to symbolize that it didn't take place. Details of the future are sketchy and are poorly delivered. The main character is lost without his iPhone but hesitates to use Current tech to the point that others have to keep filling him in. The book touches real life with a flyer for Stephen Hawking's party for time travelers and circles back to it with time travelers having a party across the street and observing Hawking through his window all alone. Hawking could never know the "truth" of the matter. Ultimately, he got the better end of that deal.

Final note: the book suffered from not having an editor or a copy editor.

Timeline (Crichton)

Timeline, Michael Crichton, 1999

Fast-paced, thoroughly enjoyable. Better than Pastwatch. The ending with Daniger was a little wanting. Sure, he deserved whatever he got, but how it was delivered wasn't quite right. A group of historians goes back in time to find "the Professor", who is lost back there, using technology of an evil, greedy, corporate scientist, who uses the past to shape the future. The past also supplies detailed floor plans for excavation work in France. Twists and turns galore wrapped up in 32 hours. It would be a shame to make a movie out of it. A mini-series (a real one: 6 or 8 hours) would be better.

Of course, a movie was made from the book. I haven't seen it as of this writing, so I don't know how well it translates. Then again, at this point, I might not remember enough to notice how different the adaptation was.

The Empire of Time (Kilian)

The Empire of Time, Crawford Kilian, 1978, 182 pages

Short but boring. I fell asleep too many nights without finishing two pages. Dense and too long. Might've made a good 90-page Analog story. Interesting premise: Other timelines are discovered, all parallel to ours, all in the past, except for two future ones where the world has been destroyed. I bought this book for a quarter and picked it, probably, because of the word "Time" in the title and the subway train (No. 1 line) on the cover (with rats). Subways allow more people to travel through the I-Screen quicker --- saves energy. It started off well, though with lots of exposition, but the middle gets bogged down as the plot unravels. You never get to like the characters at all.

Another book that I'd forgotten that I'd read. I don't remember any of it. Not even the cover that I seemed to have liked.

Pastwatch: the Redemption of Christopher Columbus (Card)

Pastwatch: the Redemption of Christopher Columbus, Orson Scott Card, 1995

Apparently a result of anti-Columbus propaganda from 1992 (the 500th anniversary), but it was an interesting premise nonetheless. A science group can observe the past and find that under certain circumstances, they can affect the past in small ways. They start a group dedicated to pinpointing when Columbus made his decision to sail west so that they can change history and prevent suffering. What they discover is that someone has already changed history so that Columbus went west instead of going to Constantinople on a Crusade. Interesting theories about the American Indians rising up from the ashes of the fall of the Aztecs to eventually take over Europe (having been innoculated by a small group of Portuguese that land in Brazil). Interesting historical "footage" of Columbus. And a nice association of Noah, the Great Flood and Atlantis (and the last Ice Age). Enjoyable book. Long, but good.

Time Blender (Dorn, Hemmingway, Lindsay)

Time Blender, Michael Dorn, Hillary Hemmingway, Jeffrey P. Lindsay, 1997
(not a Star Trek novel)

Samurai warriors battle Egyptian gods on the island of no return! First off, that didn't happen. Close, but it doesn't happen. (Both groups do appear in the latter half of the book -- the samurai only briefly.) The story starts Tony Miller, archeologist, and his buddy on an island in the path of a tsunami. The other guy falls and gets a concussion and Tony rescues him, tosses him in his plane, and mistakes the invasion of some foreign entity into his friend's body as the ravings of a man whose sanity is in doubt. Half the book passes before they encounter The Artifact, the destruction of which sets off the Time Blender (not Time Bender, as I originally thought when I picked up the book). He travels with a Celtic warrior woman, battles an Egyptian god, and makes his way to San Francisco, which is still where it should be despite all the other land masses and time periods intermingling. He has a fateful decision to make, but instead we get: Here ends Book One of Time Bender ?! Nowhere on the cover does it say, "1st book in an exciting new series!" The copyright page doesn't list a "Coming Soon". There is no indication anywhere that this book is multiple parts. I wasn't happy. Good setting. Okay follow through. Lousy ending. I was going to pass this on -- now I'm going to chuck it out.

Despite the tag, this is not a Star Trek novel. However, it might be of interest to Star Trek fans that care that the publicist of two nobody authors got Michael Dorn to put his name on their book so that it would sell more copies. I only paid 39 cents (might've been 79 cents -- I don't remember) for it, so at least I didn't waste much.