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Book Review: One Good Dragon Deserves Another by Rachel Aaron

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After foiling one plot by a foreseeing Dragon, Julius Heartstriker, the nicest Dragon in the world, gets dropped into the maw of his family’s machinations by way of a reward in ONE GOOD DRAGON DESERVES ANOTHER, the second Heartstriker novel by Rachel Aaron. One Good Dragon is the sequel to Nice Dragons Finish Last [review here at S&F] and picks up the action a few months after the end of that novel. Julius and Marci have started their business of dealing with spirit infestations, living a financially precarious but independent life in the DFZ, the Detroit Free Zone, the independent state carved from the United States by the actions of Algonquin, the Lady of the Lakes. Julius and Marci’s defeat of Estella’s plans in the previous novel, however, means that Julius’ grasping, ambitious mother Bethseda might have a use for her most useless and undragonlike son, whether he likes it or not. And as the prologue makes clear, Estella, the dragon who Julius thwarted in Nice Dragons, is far from defeated, and like the Cylons, She Has a Plan. And poor Julius is at the center of that plan. As he is at the center of many other people’s plans as well.

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In the Duke’s Sights: Books of Note for 8/7/15

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In the Duke’s Sights returns with a belated book-heavy monster post (no, they won’t normally be this big, but I’ve been lazy, so…).  From space opera to urban fantasy to epic fantasy to steampunk and beyond! Here’s a chunk of the stuff I’ve received in the last couple weeks that I may just have to read…now.  Needless to say, my TBR pile just got exponentially taller… Included below are the descriptions of books from Tor Books, Subterranean Press, Harper Voyager, William Morrow, and Fairwood Press.  Anything look interesting to you?  Let me know in the comments!

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Book Review: Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold

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A fallen interstellar empire, a curious, adventurous archaeologist, and a lost pleasure planet whose inhabitants live in the midst of the secrets of that fallen empire are the setting for Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold. Lindskold is an author whose work I read early in her career, in her collaborations with and her Zelazny-inspired early work. Griffin is a scholar whose researches on his rebuilding-to-space-travel home planet have led him to take a solo mission to search for and find Artemis. Back in the days when the old Empire reached across this part of the galaxy, Artemis was designed and built as a high-class resort for the creme de la creme of the Empire. A place such as this, Griffin reasons, would be full of wonders and technology of the old Empire. Crash landing his shuttle on Artemis, however, and having to be rescued by Adara, one of the relatively primitive inhabitants, changes his mission entirely. Now Griffin needs to find the technology of the ancients to try to find a way back up to orbit.

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Book Review: Cracking the Sky by Brenda Cooper

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Quantum searching across timelines with a high powered, sentient computer. A little girl who is being raised by robots, and may be one herself. Danger and adventure on a wondrous construct connecting an icy world and its cold neighbor. Small squad operations against rogue corporations. Long-distance virtual reality riding of a young woman living in Mexico. All this and more are found in Cracking the Sky. Cracking the Sky, from Fairwood Press, represents the first science fiction-only collection of stories from science fiction, fantasy and futurist author  Brenda Cooper. The stories range throughout her oevure, selected from the last twelve years of her writing career. While Cooper is better known for her novels (see my review of Edge of Dark, for example), Cooper’s pen does take her into shorter forms. Indeed, some of the stories in this collection are short enough to be almost flash-fiction in length.

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