{"id":295,"date":"2018-10-01T18:01:21","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T18:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.revolutionsf.com\/revblogs\/?p=295"},"modified":"2018-11-04T21:47:30","modified_gmt":"2018-11-04T21:47:30","slug":"sci-fi-fantasy-book-probe-pathogen-protocol-barren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revolutionsf.com\/revblogs\/blog\/2018\/sci-fi-fantasy-book-probe-pathogen-protocol-barren\/","title":{"rendered":"Sci-Fi Book Probe: Drizzt, Pathogen Protocol, Secret Scouts"},"content":{"rendered":"

RevolutionSF’s Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Probe provides you with new books, eliminating all that troublesome freedom of choice. Book Probe’s choices are best. Book Probe is your friend.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Timeless: A Drizzt Novel by R.A. Salvatore<\/a><\/h1>\n

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RA Salvatore has done more for Dungeons & Dragons than the 20-sided dice industry, and now he’s doing more with his most famous character, the dark elf Drizzt.<\/p>\n

These stories are epic fantasies, with all that the genre requires: magic, monsters, fighting. All good things. The immense world of D&D’s Forgotten Realms is put to excellent use, again, and I found myself flipping through player’s handbooks, DM’s guides, and Monster Manuals as I read.<\/p>\n

These books will make you want to start up a D&D campaign. If you already are playing or running one, they will make you want to stop what you’re doing and get back to it.<\/p>\n

For veterans of the Drizzt stories, this one is a welcome return. All the parts still work great.<\/p>\n

For folks reading the Drizzt character for the first time, the book works great, too, which is nice. Also nice: Those folks will now have a few dozen other Drizzt appearances to catch up on, once they get pulled in.<\/p>\n

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A Deep Horror That Was Very Nearly Awe<\/a> by JR Hamantaschen<\/h1>\n

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You need more weird fiction, and this book has it. This one is a collection of 11 short stories, all of them crammed with horror, suspense, humor, and an underlying sense of disquietude. I mean that as a compliment.<\/p>\n

Hamantaschen also has a particular skill with story titles that I wish others would emulate. Far from using one word (\u201cDark,\u201d or \u201cThe Tunnel\u201d are two books I just made up but probably exist) or from clearly describing what is going to happen in the book, Hamantaschen gets goofy. And by that I mean, excellent.<\/p>\n

For example, \u201cNo One Cares But I Tried.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve Read With Some Interest About\u2026\u201d Here is my personal favorite: \u201cStory Title Revealed About Halfway Through.\u201d<\/p>\n

My favorite story is \u201cI Will Soon Be Home and Never Need Anyone Ever Again.\u201d I hope it\u2019s embarrassing for Hamantaschen to hear this: but this story is sweet. Its characters are outright charming. So, unlike many stories that call themselves \u201cweird fiction,\u201d not every story here ends with staring into the gibbous moon while the abyss consumes your mortal soul.<\/p>\n

Just give it a read. You\u2019ll dig it.<\/p>\n

Secret Scouts and the Lost Leonardo<\/a> by Mr. and Mrs. Kind<\/h1>\n

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This book both made me feel smarter and reminded me of 1980s movies, so that’s a double-thumbs up from me.<\/p>\n

It’s about a gaggle of kids, who, as kids in 80s movies were prone to do, stumbled onto a mystery. In this case, it’s a mystery about Leonardo Da Vinci, and the book proceeded to school me on Da Vinci stuff that I did not know about.<\/p>\n

Sure, Dan Brown named a whole code after Da Vinci, but there’s more. Da Vinci kept busy.<\/p>\n

The story’s setup is very much in the style of Explorers<\/em>, or even E.T.,<\/em> and I mean that as a compliment. It’s also crammed full of factual stuff, which is a good way to cram education into a book about kids and historical mysteries.<\/p>\n

This book, the first in a series, is fun for the young ones and the old ones and any variety of age, really. It’s just fun.<\/p>\n

For more about the series, check out Secret Scouts.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Pathogen Protocol by Darren Beyer<\/a><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This one is a hard-science space adventure story, crammed with true-to-life space science details by someone who would know: Author Darren Beyer, has been a Space Shuttle experiment engineer, who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope launch and was part of Shuttle recovery crews.<\/p>\n

Beyer knows his stuff, but also can tell a terrific story. That\u2019s a drawback that faces some folks with real science experience: how do you translate the one thing into the other? Beyer does it by having the real science parts as the launch pad for the sci-fi adventure parts.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s part 2 of a series, so you\u2019ll need to pick up part 1. But that\u2019s a good thing in this case. It\u2019s just more neat stuff for you to read. I\u2019m anxious to see what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n

Barren by Peter V. Brett<\/a><\/h1>\n

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 <\/p>\n

This one is a novella set in the author\u2019s \u201cDemon Cycle\u201d storyline. You need to check those out for the covers alone, but inside the covers are cool stories about good guys fighting demons. \u201cBarren\u201d is also that, with an excellent female hero and a story that could be a TV series. By that, I mean, I wish it was a TV series, right now.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re just discovering Brett with this book, you\u2019ve got lots more to read ahead of you. Get on that. If you\u2019re a \u201cDemon Cycle\u201d fan already, well, I don\u2019t need to tell you to pick this up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RevolutionSF’s Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Probe provides you with new books, eliminating all that troublesome freedom of choice. Book Probe’s choices are best. Book Probe is your friend.\u00a0 Timeless: A Drizzt Novel by R.A. Salvatore RA Salvatore has done more … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15],"tags":[72,79,82,83,78,81,80,84],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-probe","category-joe-crowe","tag-book-probe","tag-darren-beyer","tag-drizzt","tag-dungeons-and-dragons","tag-peter-v-brett","tag-r-a-salvatore","tag-sci-fi","tag-secret-scouts"],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n