Review | Space Captain Smith by Toby Frost (Myrmidon)

Isambard Smith has been drafted for a mission - to collect a passenger, Rhianna, for one planet and take her to another. He's given a small, pretty pathetic ship, the John Pym, a pilot in Carveth, an android and former sex-bot that is on the run, and he brings along his alien friend, Suruk the Slayer, an M'Lak with an unhealthy obsession with collecting skulls.

With this mission, and representing the British Empire, he goes off with tea in his cup and not much of a clue. Picking up Rhianna he ends up running into the Ghast, who want nothing more than to destroy humanity, and John Gilead from the religiously fanatical Republic of Eden.

Can Captain Smith complete his mission, can he put the Ghast in their place for interfering in his mission, and can he have biscuits with his tea?

Space Captain Smith is Toby Frost's debut and a thoroughly enjoyable and very British space adventure, somewhat describable as a high seas British Empire novel in space. Despite how this sounds, it just works so well. The humour, which is decidedly British, is prevalent throughout and not a page goes by without a smile coming to my face in some way. It comes from not only the dialogue, which is witty and fun, but also from the scenarios that the crew are put in.

Talking about the crew (and characters in general): they are so well suited to exactly this sort of situation. Isambard Smith is completely British, right to the bone, and some of his views of the universe and other life living within is completely ridiculous - but it just works. Carveth is great to read simply because you don't know what you'll get next, but it's sure to be amusing. And Suruk, well, he steals the novel. Completely obsessed with war, killing and collecting skulls he can turn any situation in to an opportunity for battle and glory.

Here are just some reasons why I enjoyed it so much:

Suruk the Slayer on racial issues:
"Petty prejudice does not interest my people. A wise warrior once told me: 'Respect your brother M'Lak, no matter what shade of greenish-grey he may be'."
And of human racial issues:
"Many colours of skin are there, many different shades of face. But if you look within, deep inside a person, human beings are all alike. Red and squelchy."

Carveth, the former sex-bot, on how their ship was damaged and what happened:
"Well, we were cruising, hardly looking for action at all, when suddenly the Ghasts jumped us from behind, stuck a torpedo up our back end and blew our motors out. They must have seen that we were exposed at the rear because they stuck out their tube so they could come inside, but the captain ordered us to get our tools ready and beat them off if they tried to enter us by force. They all came at us at once down the passage, but what with Smith shooting off from the hip and me pumping my piece for all I was worth, we were able to give them a good seeing-to until they had to withdraw. We were knackered, though. We could hardly pull off, let alone thrust, so we saw this lake and decided to dump in the water until we were able to repair the ship and get it up again. That's pretty much the size of it."

Space Captain Smith is a great, refreshing read and is very highly recommended.

Review | The Last Colony by John Scalzi (Tor)

The Conclave, a collective of over 400 alien species, has declared any attempts at colonisation by non-conclave members on any planet will be met with the removal of the colony. The CDF, not a member of the conclave, plans to make a mockery of the conclave by setting up a new colony and leaking false information about its whereabouts.

To run this colony a family is chosen, one with a history and capabilities that can help it succeed. John Perry, a CDF veteran with a decorated history; Jane Sagan, a former CDF special forces intelligence officer with knowledge usually reserved for the highest ranking CDF officers; and Zoe Boutin, daughter to the traitor Charles Boutin and now worshipped by the Obin for her fathers work in bringing them consciousness.

But the colony is not told of its secret until they arrive at the planet and find themselves unable to use technology for fear of bringing the conclave to them. Will the colony survive and, more importantly for the CDF, will their plan to break the conclave work?

We once again return to the Old Man's War universe, this time with familiar characters from both the previous novels. John and Jane are already well flushed out characters, but put in a new situation it gives a new light to them. We've seen them in the Colonial Defense Force but now we get treated to normal family life, at least for a while, before they're thrown into the situation of being cut off from civilisation.

The rest of the characters, ranging from politicians to farmers and all in between, are nicely flushed out. The motivations and ideals they hold are well defined and interesting to see mixed together. The situation they are in gives Scalzi a good stage to develop them further than I would have thought, and by telling people they can't use technology it explores what a lot of people these days would feel very uncomfortable with. He does it with ease and style, a couple of the reasons that his books are so readable.

What I've noticed the most about Scalzi's writing is the way it has developed through the three books. Old Man's War was all first person and although there was good description at times, it wasn't about that. It was about telling the story. The Ghost Brigades stepped away from that point of view and included some info-dumping sections that sometimes felt a little, well, info-dumping. This time we have some first person, some third person and the info-dumping is a lot less obvious. It's there, don't be mistaken, but this time it just feels smoother.

All the things I've come to expect from a John Scalzi novel were here again this time, although the humour to a lesser extent (and that's something I really did enjoy about Old Man's War). I wasn't disappointed, and with the high expectations I had I can't praise it any more than that.

Review | The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi (Tor)

The Colonial Defense Force his discovered a traitor to humanity, Charles Boutin, who faked his own death and is working with three other alien races to bring a war against the CDF. However, the project Boutin was working on, a way to transfer a consciousness into a blank clone, has left an interesting development - during his research he stored a copy of his own consciousness in a system.

Now that the CDF have found it they want to use it to get into the enemies mind and create a clone of Boutin. Although this is not a normal clone, they have used their advanced techniques to grow a body fit for the Ghost Brigades: the special forces of the CDF made up from the DNA of volunteers that died before starting duty. Fully grown and built for fighting the Ghost Brigades are a deadly force.

The attempt at transferring the memories of Boutin into the clone appears to fail and he is given a new identity: Jared Dirac. Dirac is sent off to train with his fellow soldiers and assigned to the squad of Jane Sagan who is ordered to watch him in case of any developments. And developments there are which turn into a race against time to find Boutin before war breaks out.

Following on from Old Man's War I doubted that The Ghost Brigades could live up to my expectations. After all, Old Man's War was a fantastic novel full of everything that is good about science fiction. Well, Ghost Brigades did live up to those expectations in a spectacular fashion, delivering more of what was good about OMW and expanding on it further.

This time around the narrative is no longer in the first person allowing plenty of freedom for Scalzi to fill us in on the little bits of information we missed out on in OMW. This one is definitely more descriptive, with a few examples of info dumping, but Scalzi keeps the story well paced with few diversions. Although the humour found in OMW isn't as prevalent in Ghost Brigades, the times it does appear it is wholly suited to the situation and will bring a smile to your face, if not make you laugh out loud.

This brings me to what I like about Scalzi's writing - it's down to Earth without all the usual in depth descriptions of other science fiction authors I read. These are books that you can pick up and enjoy at any point and will appeal to almost any science fiction fan.

Ghost Brigades is yet another example of science fiction at its finest. An action packed, straight to the point novel, it will keep you turning those pages - and not just to find out what happens next, you'll want to read more of writing like this. I'm fully signed up to John Scalzi now and he can count me in as a fan for life, his stuff truly is exceptional.