Games of the Powerful

[shotokan1955]

I have a new book titled Games of the Powerful that is a mix of sci-fi and fantasy. Frankly, I love to read books and now that I have written one, I love to write books but the question that will need answering is whether I am any good at it. I have been reading fantasy sword and sorcery type books since 1971 when I read Savage Tales #1 The Frost Giant’s Daughter, Robert E Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. That single comic book changed my opinion of reading. Prior to me reading the Frost Giant’s Daughter, I hated reading with every fiber of my being, much to the chagrin of my parents I should add, to a person that could not get enough of reading. I destroyed the entire Conan the Barbarian series paperbacks written by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp in a matter of months and I still could not get enough. John Carter of Mars soon fell followed by John Norman’s Tarnsman of Gor, Lord of Rings, The Sword of Shannara you get the picture.
Thinking about all the books that I ever read I wanted to break the mold as they say in fantasy and write something different. I did not want a book that based its whole story on a quest. Ok don’t freak out there is a couple of small quests in this book but they won’t take a trilogy to complete the darn things and certainly not the whole book either. So what is the same you ask? I figured we would go over that real quick then what I have done a little differently. Yes we have elves, trolls, orcs, humans, half humans and half elves, and dwarfs that speak a variation of Scottish (please forgife me mah Scottish friends an' relati'es fur butcherin' th' wonderful Scottish language). What I tried to do is use the Scottish language and interspersed it with English so that it is understandable yet fun to read. There is a hated glossary at the end of the book just in case. In addition, there are castles, knights, dukes, counts, all that good stuff and spies to boot. It has all that darkness vs. light stuff that we all seem to like. Oh yeah it is chock full of wizards good and bad, magic weapons, grotesque creatures on four legs, wraiths, and shades.
Ok enough of that I think you get the picture. So, what is the difference you ask? All right, I will tell you. To start Earth the year 3028, awesome cars, (yes they still have cars what’s a world without cars and fast driving) forget cell phones they have it much better. Spaceships sure enough big ones, laser cannons, fighters, shields, wormhole generators, space colonies (more of that in the second book), and space battles. There is a quest on Earth, police detectives, FBI, CIA, dead bodies lots of dead people lying around, gun battles, and handheld rocket launchers (state of the art of course). Bad guy’s lots of them, evil creatures’ right out of fantasy into the modern world, evil possession, magic, magical weapons, and spy’s good and bad. Did I mention gadgets? Lots of cool gadgets, and disguises included. Let us get back to the cars, awesome state of the art cars that can do just about anything. For you people that like to shop until you drop so to speak there is even a shopping mall heck what is world without malls.
So here, we are with a shot in the dark so to speak with my first book in hopes that you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. I am going to try my hand at some short stories directly related to this book so I hope you enjoy them as well. Thank you in advance for any kind words you may have for this book and me. Also, see at the end of this book the prolog for my new book titled Magda: Rise of Darkness.
First reports on the book are good but it does need a professional editor. The corrections that need to be are for words like "knew, new or to too" etc. With that in mind, I download some software to proof read it and that is an issue for another thread. Here is the link to my book please give it a try and feedback is welcome! https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/336390