The Force is Middlling in this One (and Other Ruminations from the Outskirts of the Empire) by Robert A. Kroese

I gave up on this one.

I’d read his Mercury series (two books and an interstitial short story), which was… okay. Here’s a bit from an article on self-publishing in The Independant:

Robert Kroese, author of Self-Publish Your Novel: Lessons from an Indie Publishing Success Story, decided to publish his own work because he thought traditional publishing was “like trying to get into an exclusive club”. You’re not, he said, “even sure what’s in the club, and there are some people who are coming out of it and saying ‘well, that wasn’t worth it’.” His first novel, Mercury Falls, sold about 5,000 copies, in print and e-book, in six months. Then it caught the attention of the publishing arm of Amazon, who re-released it, and it sold 50,000 more.

The problem is that Kroese is trying very, very hard to be like Douglas Adams. He is trying very hard to be funny. And while he might, in fact, be a funny person, he is simply trying too hard. The catch with self-publishing is, I’m not sure there’s anyone around to tell him so. Maybe there is. Maybe they’re just not very good at it. Or maybe they’re afraid they won’t get his cash if they do so, because he’ll go to another self-publishing house.

He comes across as that person at the party who says something absurd, and then says, “Don’t mind me, I’m a little bit craaazy!” and you nod and smile and say, “yeeaaah.”

I can’t read a whole book full of that. I don’t even go to parties very much anymore. Maybe I’m out of practice.

Redshirts: a Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi

It’s an interesting premise. And it’s well executed. As far as it goes.

A novel from the point of view of the “Redshirts”, named after those characters on Star Trek with the red uniforms (depicting grunt crew), who were effectively there to “show how the monster works”, as my old boss once put it. Disposable characters.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Star Trek style.

But you get two thirds through the book, and it ends. But it doesn’t. Because there are two more “codas”. Which is another way of saying “filler”. The concept just didn’t stretch out to a full length story.

But, what was there was fine. Worth a borrow, if not an outright purchase.

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

I don’t care what the protagonist in Diary of a Wimpy Kid says, this is a good book.

It’s funny, with a good female lead, well written. Also, she’s more or less a fictional depiction of living with my daughter. If she was living in 1908, anyway. So she’ll enjoy it some day.

I can’t get my son to try Pippi Longstocking, so I doubt I’d get him to do this one.

Especially because of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid reference. Stupid wimpy kid.

Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue (The Bern Saga Book 1) by Hugh C. Howey

I don’t remember why I had this book on my wish list… could be I came across it as a recommended book for young girls, and I wanted to keep track of it for my daughter, Scout.

As many, many folks have lamented before me, there is a dearth of good literature, movies, video games, etc with girl role models. You can only read Pippi Longstocking so many times. There are a lot of attempts, but rarely does the quality of the writing pass muster.

So, here’s Molly Fyde, space pilot. She’s an orphan, training in the naval space academy. She’s been shifted onto the navigator track, largely because she’s a woman, though she’s really a good pilot. She’s pretty tough, but gooey eyed for one of her companions in the navy.

She’s got a lot to admire, with some flaws thrown in to give her some realism. The world and entanglements therein she encounters are clever, with some good action sequences.

All that said, it is a young adult novel. I think I’ll leave the rest of the series to the young adults. Scout can let me know how they turn out, once she learns to read.