Re: RI August 2024

On 9/8/24 12:24 AM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

Here is August, and one other.
 As usual the links (except for gutenberg) are Amazon Affiliate
ones which could in theory earn me a pittance should you buy through
one.
 I should probably let this rest overnight and read it for sanity
tomorrow, but what the hey.

As always, thanks for these! A few comments below...

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 Gods' Battleground (Legion of Angels Book 12)
by Ella Summers
https://amzn.to/47gdSgO
 Leda Pandora has come a long way since she joined the Legion of
Angels as a way to level-up enough to rescue her kidnapped brother.
She long ago accomplished that, but by that time her life was
complicated enough that that was hardly the end of her adventures.
Now as the child of both a god & a demon, she has the task of
coordinating both of those fractious pantheons against the ultimate
menace of the "Guardians" who have cursed her sister as well as
being just generally mean & nasty.  It plays out well enough,
including a standard fantasy "arena fighter" sequence, but on the
whole, it feels like what it is, a wrap-up book and doesn't quite
have the energy of the early books.
 Leda's arc is basically finished, but I believe we can expect more
books in this universe.  In particular, Leda's daughter is a child
of Prophecy...
 

I may have said this before, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to try this series some time. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
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 Captain Future #22 Children of the Sun
by Edmond Hamilton
https://amzn.to/4cYJ1Xs
 Here's one from my review hiatus of last year that I wanted to get out.
 Curt Newton, aka Captain Future started out as a pulp hero, sort
of a future Doc Savage.  Like Savage he had a crew of bickering
side-kicks, went on done-in-one adventures, and was pretty much the
same book to book.  Most of those short books (one appearing in
each issue of "Captain Future" magazine) were (mostly) written by Space Opera
pioneer Edmond Hamilton, and there were 20 of them before the
magazine folded.
 I don't know if it were Hamilton's idea or an editor's request, but
that wasn't the end of Captain Future with Hamilton bringing
Curt Newton back for a number of novella length "mature" adventures
in other magazines with this being the second such.  And good heavens,
it's a winner, a marvelous story.
 One of Newton's scientist friends is missing, and the crew tracks him
to Mercury (this is still the habitable Solar System), a place they
have been before.  On-planet, the clues all lead one way, and when they
find the scientist's fate, Curt must decide whether to follow and try
to bring him back or not.  In the event he does try, and it's
an emotional roller-coaster of a journey with an ending that wrings
out everybody.
 You can sense the differences from the pot-boiler pulps immediately.
Newton's famous ship, The Comet, is battered and pitted, the crew
are all serious, and are all given real things to do, there is no
"villain" and no fights though there are certainly heroics, and there
is no pat happy-ending though it is a satisfying one.
 Bravo, Mr. Hamilton.

This reminds me that Hamilton's Starwolf trilogy has been sitting dormant and unread on one of my shelves. I need to read that some time.
Thanks again,
Tony