[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Now onto One Good Soldier by Travis S. Taylor. Third book in of his "Tau Ceti" series that started with One Day on Mars.

The previous two were action-packed with fun science speculation. It looks like the third is in similar vein.

Well, this was similar sort of stuff, but perhaps I wasn't quite in the mood for it. It seemed to be more concentrated on simple description of action with mecha than with plot. And the resolution at the end seemed to happen rather too swiftly. I was also concerned with the way things were resolved.

Spoiler:

Having a villain who apparently had a plan to ultimately benefit the human race that required atrocities in the short term was interesting. Having it turn out that the villain was actually an insane AI was unsatisfying, especially as that insane AI seemed to succeed in getting tens of millions of people to follow her. And having the rebellion stop just because that leader says to surrender also seems implausible.

Now for 1635: The Tangled Web by Virginia DeMarce. This is in Eric Flint's "Ring of Fire" universe, when a small american town has been mysteriously transported back to 1630s Germany. It is the first of those books that hasn't got any material in it by Eric Flint, either as co-author, or as a short story.

The "Ring of Fire" series certainly is a tangled web - lots of plot threads and characters. Sometimes it's a bit tricky to keep things straight. I hope that this book isn't too confusing as it's been a while since I read the last main book.