Well I’m now at 83% of the way through Gust Front by John Ringo. The Posleen have arrived with an army of a few million heavily armed centaur-shaped aliens. What do you do when you’re outnumbered a hundred to one by enemy berserkers? You do this:
Tag: the war of the ravels
Teaser Tuesday 1/22/2013: “Gust Front”
At the moment, I’m about 25% of the way through Gust Front by John Ringo, in which the alien Posleen are poised to invade the earth. At least, that’s what they keep saying; there’s been no actual sign of the Posleen yet. But I’m sure they will be arriving any time now! *checks watch*
Teaser Tuesday 1/8/2013: “A Hymn Before Battle”
So not long ago I started reading a book called Gust Front, which very excitingly starts in the middle of a galactic war between a group of aliens called the Posleen on one side and a Galactic Federation consisting of several other alien races plus the Terrans on the other. I eventually realized that the reason Gust Front starts that way is that it’s actually the second book of the Posleen War, the first being A Hymn Before Dying, which I switched over to and am now reading. No harm done, except that there’s at least one character in this book that I know survives into the next one. Spoilers!
In this scene from A Hymn Before Dying, a friendly alien called a Tchpth, which looks like a crab, is explaining to the President and his advisors why using nerve gases or other chemical weapons against the Posleen is doomed to failure.
“Your vicious and disgusting mustard gas would make me quite ill at lethal concentrations, but nerve gases would be completely ineffective. Despite my oft-noted resemblance to a cockroach or a crab you are much more closely related to your order crustacea or arthropoda than I.”
Oh, snap! Take that, you vicious, backward omnivores (another pet name the Tchpth have for humans)! With friends like these …
And of course, here’s this week’s excerpt from The War of the Ravels, in which Mercy is suffering from altitude sickness, and would like someone to bring her a cup of soup. And possibly a blankie.
A diagonal gust of wind knifed across the cliff face, reminding Mercy that her attic room and her bed and anyone who might bring her soup were all far, far away. There must be somewhere better than this she could be, though. She tried to get up, but her muscles wouldn’t cooperate, as if something were holding her to the ground; after a moment she realized it was Nebandalex, restraining her. “Do not try to get up again,” he said. “The last time, you collapsed and nearly started rolling down the mountain.”
Hmm, rolling down a mountain is bad, unless you’re a boulder. And even then it’s probably not that much fun for the boulder.
“The War of the Ravels”, Then and Now
So lately I’ve been doing mostly Teaser Tuesday posts, which are quick and fun, but for the last post of the year I thought I would go back and do another comparison of an original scene from the Shards follow-up, The War of the Ravels, and the same scene as it currently stands in the draft revision. (The final revision will be done in 2013.) Although the scene name remains the same for the moment, and the activity in the scene is similar — Mercy is still going after Daras-Drûm, AKA the death-wind — the setting has totally changed. There’s no longer a flashback to Yexandor’s place (which in the current version was no longer a temple, but instead a fallen tree) and a certain blue-skinned sorcerer, whose influence is alluded to in the original scene, is no longer involved in the death-wind’s activities. But other than that it hasn’t changed at all.
Teaser Tuesday 12/18/2012: A Plague of Demons
This week I’m reading A Plague of Demons by Keith Laumer, another of the e-books that I downloaded directly from Baen’s Free Library. This is not the sequel to the much-loved A Plague of Angels (that would be the quite avoidable The Waters Rising); rather, it’s about aliens in North Africa harvesting brains. Why? I don’t know yet. Maybe they sell them in roach coaches that roam zombie-infested areas. (Or maybe not.)
Then I re-crossed the street, slowed, and gave half a dozen grimy windows filled with moth-riddled mats and hammered brass atrocities more attention than they deserved. By the time I reached the end of the long block, I was sure: the little man with the formerly white suit and the pendulous lower lip was following me.
Another protagonist being followed by another unskilled tail? I see a trend! Clearly our villains need to invest in a training program for their operatives.
And, of course, here is this weeks teaser from The War of the Ravels!
“They were issuing weapons to every man who could hold a blade,” Cynidece said. “Even you probably would have gotten one, if Aldric hadn’t tucked you into his fancy cab and given his horse a smack on the rump to make it run along home.”
Teaser Tuesday 12/11/2012: “Tears in Rain”
This month my free book from Amazon is Tears in Rain by Rosa Montero. The astute reader may recognize “tears in rain” as part of Rutger Hauer’s epic Famous Last Words in the film “Blade Runner”, appearing here as listed on Wikipedia:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. [laughs] Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like [coughs] tears in rain. Time to die.”
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Teaser Tuesday 12/4/2012: The Apocalypse Troll
So at the moment I’m reading a book by David Weber with the somewhat unfortunate title The Apocalypse Troll, which always makes me snicker a little, perhaps because of Dennis the Vizsla’s run-in with Obvious Troll a few years ago. (However, the Troll in this book is not obvious. At least, not once it stops firing nukes at the U.S. Navy.)
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Teaser Tuesday 11/20/2012: “The Half-Made World”
Well I finally paid for another book, The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman. Why, you ask? Two reasons:
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Teaser Tuesday 11/6/2012: “Apocalypse Z”.
So I’ve been a bit remiss the last couple of weeks with Teaser Tuesday posts. Busy busy busy, you know, plus the stuff I’ve been reading has been mostly freebie Halloween short stories that I downloaded toward the end of October, and not really conducive to teaserification. But this month I have another real, live book, Apocalpyse Z. Hmm, what could a book with a title like that be about?
In some refugee camps in neighboring republics, they’re reporting new cases of what they insist is an especially virulent strain of the West Nile virus. But media sources are calling it Ebola.
Hmm. West Nile, Ebola; potato, rotten tomato that oozes nasty red juice all over everything. But hey, whatever gets you the most clicks, media sources! Interestingly, this book is translated from the Spanish and takes place in Spain, making it the first foreign zombie novel I’ve read. (Although I’ve seen one or two Italian zombie movies, and sort of wish I hadn’t.)
And, of course, here’s today’s teaser from The War of the Ravels. I’m rewriting this part of it pretty much completely, so it’s been rather slow going, but things are shaping up!
She soon realized she was wandering through unfamiliar territory, and moved closer to the buildings on the left—which, she thought, was the direction in which the harbor gate would be found—hoping to spot a building she recognized, or maybe find a sign or a person to tell her which way to go. Not that she had much hope of either; no one was out on this sinister night, and as far as she could tell, Abacar did not believe in “You Are Here” kiosks.
Just imagine how much easier going the mines of Moria would have been with “You Are Here” kiosks scattered around! Or, even better, “You Are Here And The Balrog Is There” …
Teaser Tuesday 10/23/2012: “Bad Juju and Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem”
So my quest to save money continues this week with Bad Juju and Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem, a collection of short stories by Jonathan Woods. It’s sort of like what you might get if Joe R. Lansdale, Elmore Leonard, and Carl Hiaasen spent the night together drinking and trying to top each other with crazy stories about life in an unnamed Caribbean republic. For some reason, the setting keeps making me think of a much, much seedier version of Catalina Island, probably because that’s the only island I visit on any sort of regular basis.
As Ariel’s hands grabbed my throat, I kneed him in the jewels as hard as I could. The next instant he was writhing on the floor like a dying insect.
Oh, ouch. I’ve got nothing to add to that one!
And, of course, here is this week’s excerpt from The War of the Ravels, my current work in progress:
The sun lay very near the horizon now, thick and red, coloring the sky with swirls of angry color. The bottom of the chasm became obscured by a thick layer of luminous fog that oozed up from the sea, as if someone had dumped a massive quantity of dry ice into the water and then lit it from below with flood lamps.
Hmm, that can’t be good …
Viscosity 