Angus Wells author of "The GodWars" trilogy

Every now and again I will hunt through my library looking for something to read. I will look through the books searching with my mood, what am I into reading?  I decided on an older series that I haven't read for many years and I forgot what the ending was, Angus Wells, Dark Magic, book one.

Angus Wells wrote two trilogies, the Godwars and The Book of Kingdoms.  The GodWars series,  I think is well written but it follows in the vain of the heroes journey where a mismatch group goes through insurmountable odds to obtain their goal in the end.

The main  character is Calandryll Den Karynth,  the second son of the Domm of Secca who we read early on is a disappointment to his father.  Calandryll's older brother, Tobias is the heir apparent so the Domm decides that his younger son will become a priest as not to be a threat to his elder son's succession.  At this point in the book,  Calandryll is more of a scholar who's head is always in the books rather than a warrior like his elder sibling.

There's a treaty being worked out between Secca and a neighboring city state Aldarin through the ambassador of the latter, Lord Varent den Tarl.  This man will become the instigator to the quest who is also a fair wizard and more.  He enlist Calandryll's help to find a book that has the potential of awaken the war god, Tharn. He tells Calandryll that he wants to destroy the book but I had a hunch there was more to Varent's story. Even though I have read this book in it's entirety, I couldn't remember much of the storyline.

In the meantime Calandryll is shocked to find out that the woman he secretly loves is being bethrothed to his brother and that he will be going to the temple to become a priest.  Before Callandryll knows all this, he seeks out a seer who can foretell his future. She sees him on a life changing path and travel as on a quest with two others.

Through rage and fustration after hearing his fate from his father, Calandryll goes out and ends up in a tavern in the seedy part of town. He meets one of the two in a tavern where he almost gets beat up for not having any money for the wine he drank.  Calandryll is saved by Bracht of Kern, a freesword who later is hired by Varent to help Calandryll's journey to the far reaches in search of the Arcanum.  Later in the book, the third member of the party, Katya of Vanu is added to the quest.

A long time ago the original gods of this world had to entomb their two sons who had been at war with each other after seeing how much devastation this was causing the world. The Arcanum is an ancient book that has spells that can release them from their slumber.

The trilogy follows the three who now have become friends through the ends of their knowledge of the world and back with the finding of the book. Throughout the series it is said that they are pre-destined by the gods. And they do get help from the younger gods who earn their existence to the demise of the slumbering ones.  In the end the questers have to figure how to keep Tharn asleep forever.

Hunter X Hunter, anime

In the last few years I have been really interested in Anime, Japanese Animation. I watch them because of the content, humor, and the Japanese language is interesting. I watch either in subtitles in English or English dubbed. My recent find is Hunter X Hunter watched through Crunchyroll app on iPAd.

Hunter X Hunter is about a young 12 year old boy, Gon who wants to be a hunter like his father. When Gon finds out that his father isn't dead, he sets out to become a hunter. Gon want to find his father so he can ask the question, "why did you leave me?"  The Hunter exam is brutal but along the way  he meets other applicants who become his friends. Each boy hass their own reasons for taking the exam to be a hunter. On a boat to the island Gon meets, Leorio and Kurapika. They inadvertantly join up and save a sailor who goes overboard during a storm. Because of their joint effort they pass a test to go to the next step of the Hunter exam. They later befriend another boy, Killua who is the same age as Gon. 

The first 20 episodes are of the Hunter Exam.  Crunchyroll has 120 episodes for free. 

Hunter X Hunter started out as a manga (Japanese Comic) in March 3, 1998 in Shuesiha magazine, Weekly Shonen Jump. The series is illustrated and written by Yoshihiro Togashi.  Yoshihiro Togashi came up with the name of the manga while watching a variety show, Downtown on the television. The host would repeat his words to get a laugh from the audience. There are 340 chapters published in chapter collection in Japan.

I recommend this anime for all ages who love adventure stories with humor, action, and drama.

Image- copyright Yoshihiro Togashi

Bullet, Anita Blake novel by Laurell K. Hamilton

I have been in a dry spell for my book addiction for many months now. I won a book from Kristen from Fantasy Cafe, a Tad Williams novel "The Dirty Streets of Heaven" but couldn't get into it. I bought another book by an author I have read in the past, Katherine Kerr's "License to Ensorcell" and I couldn't get into that one either. So for Christmas I received as presents, 4 paperback novels, each a continuation of a series.

Bullet is the 2010 novel of Laurell K. Hamilton.   It is the first book I really enjoyed in a long time. It is an Anita Blake novel where she is in a dire situation with her sweeties. It was funny, provocative, violent, and tense, all wrapped into this one book. I have read her Anita Blake series for many years and had gotten bored with it but now I liked this book very much that I read it in a few days.  I know that seems long but in my younger days it would have been hours of me being engrossed by this book. 

For those who have never read any of Laurell K. Hamilton's books, Anita Blake is a necromancer and Vampire Executioner with a Marshall badge. She is really bad-ass. Through a magical circumstance she became bonded to a werewolf, Richard and a Master Vampire of St. Louis, Jean-Claude. Through each man she has developed some of their metaphysicalities, from Jean-Claude a way to feed by way of sex,  it's called the Ardeur, through Richard the awareness of the pack.

I recommend this book to anyone who loves the Anita Blake series. In this book, the shit is hitting the fan again and Anita must help to save her people from the bad guys. The Mother of All Darkness is back again trying to get a body of her own which happens to belong to Anita Blake. To keep her at bay, Anita must pick a Rex (lion king) to bond (sexual) to her Regina (queen), of course, all of this is metaphysical since she doesn't change into a lion. The Mother of All Darkness can beckon to call large cats and Anita has an amalgam within her so maybe she might be able to trump the vamp with the combination of all were-animals within to defeat the threat. And then there's Asher who has so much emotional and sexual needs that he's blackmailing Anita and Jean-Claude by leaving St. Louis to be a Master Vampire in another city.  

Female Science fiction and Fantasy Authors

I was cataloguing my bookcase and I was astonished on how many women authors were on my shelves. I mostly read books from my favorite authors or try new books with similar subject matter or recommended ones. So in the beginning of my addiction, I read mostly male authors such as Asimov, Piers Anthony, Terry Brooks, and so on. But what got me was how men skirted the sex between their characters relationships or at least the ones I read, and I got bored so decided to try someone new.  The first female author I read was Anne McCaffrey, Dragon Flight and I was hooked but wasn't exclusively I still read many male authors at this time. Then I randomly picked up a book to read on a flight to Hawaii, Narcissus in Chains by Laurell K. Hamilton.

I had never read such a violent, sexual, and adult fantasy before nor a vampire book so this blew me away.  Hamilton writes in first person which at the time wasn't a style I read much but it works very well in her stories. I have read most of her books and that started me on my journey of reading female authors. They deal more into the sexual aspect of relationship without getting too much into the romance genre.

There are so many female sci-fi/fantasy authors, it's amazing.  The genre has grown so much from when I started reading them.

Here are some of my favorite authors:

Laurell K. Hamilton- writes about Anita Blake, a Necromancer/Vampire Executioner who through her own magic of raising the dead becomes involved with a vampire, Jean-Claude, the master of the city. not all here books are equal but she is consistent in her writing but there isn't random violence or sex in her Anita Blake series or Merry Gentry series.  Merry Gentry is a private detective whose aunt is the queen of the dark faeries.

Lilith Saintcrow- has two series that I have enjoyed reading, the Dante Valentine and the Jill Kismet books. Both are about bad-ass, headstrong, and independent women.

Ann Aguirre- the Sirantha Jax series about a pilot who is a carrier of the J-gene and can navigate through grimspace.

Tara Harper- has two series about two women who have a bond with an animal and can communicate with them. Both books are futuristic and set in distant planets.

Lisanne Norman-The Sholan series about a human girl who is telepathic and her encounters with an alien race that also is telepathic. The story starts out in a planet settled by humans that later is invaded by an alien race and uses the planet for rest and relaxation for their soldiers.

Kristine Smith-Jani Kilian series where the main character is an officer who because of an accident turns into a human/Idomeni hybrid. There is much government intrigue in this series.

Charlaine Harris- Sookie Stackhouse series are fun books to read. Sookie is a telepath who thinks of herself is a freak until she meets her first vampire. I was at first disappointed when it was made into a HBO series since it didn’t follow the books but now I love it and think of it as a separate entity.

Rob Thurman- Not a man but Robyn. She’s the author of the Cal Leandros series, he’s half Auphe, old world creatures that are bloodthirsty and human. He lives with his half-brother, Niko who is a martial arts expert. They become detectives for the supernatural.

Anne McCaffrey-Love her Pern series about human space settlers on the planet who genetically engineer the local animal into flying dragons to counter the threat of an alien organism, Threads.

It's quite apparent that women sci-fi/fantasy authors are just as competent as men in writing in the genre.

Sci-fi Month: My All time Favorite Classic Sci-fi Films

I'm going to take a gamble that most of you haven't seen some of these classic sci-fi film so this is my list of my all time favorites starting from the 1950's.  When I was a young girl my family would watch science fiction, horror, and fantasy films on a TV show called Creature Feature. Most of the films on this list were watched on this TV show at the dinner table. I have listed the films in chronological order just so you see how this genre stretched throughout Hollywood's history. There are some of these films that have been remade, modernized but the originals are always the best or at least more fun.

1945- The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, is a terrifying movie about a town of people who go to sleep and wake up Pod People, cloned by an alien race who plans to invade earth.

1951- Day the Earth Stood Still, an alien ships lands in President’s Park in Washington D. C. to warn the people of earth to stop their violence so else. It's a wonderful science fiction movie for it's day.
















1953- The War of the Worlds, a movie based on the novel by H. G. Wells. This one is the perspective of a scientist played by Gene Barry who witness's the first crash of an object from space which is thought to be just an meteorite but in reality a spacecraft.

1954- Godzilla, a creature created by the nuclear fallout of bomb testing by the Americans. and wrecks havoc to Japan.

1960- Time Machine, is another H. G. Wells novel set to film. Rod Taylor plays Alexander Hartdegen, scientist and inventor of the time machine, who proves it possible by traveling into the future.

1964- First Men in the Moon is another H. G. Wells novel that is set in 1899 where a scientist named Joseph Cavor has invented a substance that defies gravity and is going to use this Cavorite on a spherical spacecraft to go to the moon. It's a fun movie where we meet the Moon people that are ant-looking creatures.

1966-Fantastic Voyage is a futuristic movie of a team of scientist who are shrunk in a submarine then injected into a man who needs surgery but there's a time limit until they start growing back to normal. I saw this film in the movie theater when I was younger, I loved it.

1968- 2001: A Space Odyssey, this was a very strange film for me, I had a difficult time with some of the concepts. But it's basically a AI (artificial intelligence) that takes over a space station.

1977- This film has become a classic among science fiction fans, Star Wars: A New Hope.  I saw this one in the movie theater where I was amazed and subsequently have seen the rest of  the trilogy.

1977- Close Encounter of the Third Kind, is a journey of Roy Neary, a telephone line worker who one night has a close encounter with a UFO. This is a Steven Spielberg movie that is one of his best works.

Poster images from internet:

www.jhalpe.com

www.northwestchicagefilmsociety.org

ww.subversify.com

www.wrongsideofheart.com

www.geeknerfherder.blogspot.com

www.grandoldmovies.wordpress.com

en.wikipedia.org

www.sci-fimovieposters.co.uk

www.vintage.es

www.flickerobsession.blogspot.com

Sci-fi Month: 6 Top Science Fiction Must Read Books

The 6 top favorite Sci-fi books are ones that I have read over many times and hopefully they will be your favorites too. I was going to recommend just 5 books but I had to add one more that couldn’t be left out of the list. These are my science fiction must read books.

1. Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov, is a classic science fiction book with a twist, it also a murder mystery set in a futuristic Earth. It's centered around Elijah Bailey, a New York Police Detective and R.Daneel Olivaw, is humanoid looking robot as with the R in his name, both are assigned to solve the murder. It is one of my favorite books because of the interaction between Bailey and Olivaw. There's a theme that prevalent in most of Asimov's work, that humans seed the galaxy and that earth eventually will be uninhabitable.

2. This next book is a crossover between science fiction and fantasy, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight in the Dragonriders of Pern series. It's set in a planet Pern that was settled by Earthers, there the inhabitants encounter a spaceborne substance that plagues the planet in cycular intervals called the Thread that bombards the planet and kills in it's wake. The original settlers then genetically alter the native species into dragons. It is a fantastic story with love, treatery, comradeship, and dragons that can be ridden.


3. Neuromancer by William Gibson is the next on my list because it foretold the future with cyberspace (the internet). You can see some of Gibson future in the movie, The Matrix with jacking into the net. It's main character is a hacker named Case who jacks his consciousness into the cyberspace for information to sell.

4. My fourth pick is by David Weber, Basilisk Station the first book in the Honor Harrington series.  He portrays Honor as her name, honorable, straightforward, and a good officer in the Royal Manticore Navy. There isn't much romance or sex in this series but I haven't read all the books. It's not only a military novel where Weber regales his knowledge of battle and weaponry but there's the relationships among the crew.

5. Jack L. Chalker's Midnight at the Well of Souls is my fifth all time favorite science fiction book. It's about a planet called the Well of Souls that was a research lab for eventually seeding the best prototypes. The Marchovians have died off but left this planet operational where there are thousands of gateways into the planet. Once processed by the planet which changes you into a different being and you end up in one of the hive quadrants with similar beings. The main character is Nathan Brazil who has lived lifetimes, and he isn't what he appears to be, human.

6. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton has to be on this list. On July 4, 1993 I took my two girls to see the movie and we were blown away, dinosaurs really! But later I read the book and realize that the movie was good but the book is so much better. I delves into altering of frog DNA with samples of DNA of dinosaurs from insects petrified in amber. There’s also the relationships of the scientist who are caught in on the island and must survive their encounters with the dinosaurs. It was a fantasy that has become reality with the first cloned sheep, Dolly, in 1996 to the Japanese scientist today taking DNA from well preserved frozen Wooly Mammoth to eventually clone a living one.

Hopefully this list will inspire you to read one of these books and give you a sense of the variety in science fiction books.


Book cover provided by;
synthiaca.blogspot.com
jameystegmaier.com
advgamer.blogspot.com

Sci-fi Month: Favorite Science Fiction Book Covers

As I was perusing my library for some of my favorite Sci-fi book covers, I realized that I haven't bought a new sic-fi book in a while in fact most of my books are fantasy related. These five science fiction books are about some strong women who are tough, brilliant, but get themselves into all kinds of trouble. These women are also spacers, either in the military, civilian core, or attached somehow working in the outer limits.

The first book is one that I have read many times and love that a man wrote this series about a strong woman who is an officer in the Royal Manticore Navy. She is bonded to a telepathic Treecat that is a species from her planet, Sphinx.

I think this shows Honor Harrington as cool 

and assertive with her Treecat,  Nimitz.  

Price of the Stars book one of Mage Worlds is another book about a woman from an influential family who wants to be a Captain of her own ship.  The cover shows her in cross dressed as in a dandy pirate garb and she does play tough.

Beka Rosselin-Metadi as Tarnekep Portree

This next cover doesn't have any reference to space but for some reason I love it.  The book is the first installment of the Miles Vorkosigan Saga books.  Cordelia's Honor is about his mother, Cordelia Naismith who is the captain on an astronomical survey ship. This book is an omnibus that has tow book, Shards of Honor and Barrayar.

Cordelia Naismith Vorkosgian

Kristin Smith wrote a sci-fi book, Code of Conduct but I like the cover of the sequel, Rules of Conflict.  Captain Jani Killian is the main character who's becomes a hybrid of human and Idomeni, an alien race. The cover is cool with just one black boot and a knife.

The last book cover is from Ann Aguirre's Sirantha Jax series. The cover is from the first book, Grimspace, Sirantha Jax is a nagivator for the Corp who pilots ships through grimspace.  The cover has nice color and has a representation of Jax.