Your August SciFi and Fantasy Books and Reviews

Your August SciFi and Fantasy Books and Reviews. These are books I’ve read and reviewed this month, or someone else has.

I finished my most recent review the other day on Goodreads:

Your August SciFi > In Enemy Hands

My Review

This is the sixth book in the series. See the next review for the first book in the series.

August 14, 2023

Author David Weber is certainly not nice to his heroine Honor Harrington. She’s had her boyfriend murdered, lost an eye, and had a building she funded collapse and kill 50+ people, mostly children. This is after sexual abuse and attempted rape while she was in the space academy.

But it gets worse in this book. She gets ambushed and while leading her pursuers astray to protect a convoy, she gets captured. Then she gets handed to group of sadistic captors. And her best friends are also captured. And a man she trusted betrays her.

Doesn’t look good. But how it turns out makes this book one of the best in the series.

Andy Zach, Author 10 books, 87 followers

Your August SciFi > On Basilisk Station

My Review

This is the first book in David Weber’s series. I recommend reading them in order. I’ve got them all reviewed.

It’s been six years since I last read this book. This is the third time I’ve read it and I enjoyed it just as much as ever.

Honor Harrington just got her first command of the light cruiser Fearless. She’s 5 years younger than her executive officer Allistair McKeon and he hates her for it. But he’s just the start of her problems.

The admiral in charge of new weapons has halved her missiles in exchange for a grav lance. It’s a deadly weapon, but it only works at close range. Too bad the lightly armored cruiser is unlikely to survive any close-range encounters. Basically, the light cruiser is crippled, with only half of its offensive power.

Honor manages to use the grav lance once to destroy a superdreadnought in fleet practice maneuvers, but everyone then is out to destroy her. So the ship gets destroyed endlessly in fleet practice, depressing the crew.

Then the ship is assigned to the backwater of Basilisk Station. There the commanding officer, Pavel Young, was beaten up by Honor while they were in the Space Academy together because he tried to rape her. He had to apologize for sexual innuendo, but no one knew the full reason for his beating. He hates her guts.

Then he leaves her in charge of the entire station while he takes his ship to be repaired. It’s too much for one light cruiser to fulfill all the responsibilities, so she’s sure to fail and get a black mark on her record.

Only no one tells Honor that. This is where the story gets good.

Don’t miss this book or the series.
Andy Zach
Author 10 books, 87 followers, July 20, 2023

Your August Scifi and Fantasy And My Review

July 30, 2023

I think this is the third time I’ve read this book over the 20 years since it was written and each time I understand more and like it more.

Patricia McKillip writes fantasies and she writes them as mysteries. She doesn’t ever explain the magic that gets used. You have to figure out what’s going on. She doesn’t have conventional villains or protagonists. Very often they seem to switch roles unexpectedly.

In this book, she begin with a classic trope: a princess from a magical kingdom (Sidonie) has to marry a prince (Ronan) from another magical kingdom to cement an alliance. She doesn’t want to be forced into the marriage, but she dutifully goes along with it to save her kingdom from war.

The kingdoms powerful wizard is recuperating from a terrible battle and he sends his apprentice (Gyre) with her to protect her. He’s a very talented wizard in his own right.

They get to the Forest of Serre without incident and then everything goes haywire as the magic of Serre affects them.

Andy Zach

Author 10 books

87 followers