“The nurse would play the moment over and over in her head, on an infinite loop that would surprise her sometimes, startling her out of a reverie or out of her sleep, for the rest of her life.

And she would listen to it, watch it, scrutinize it through the windowpane of her memory and wonder if it mattered. Surely it didn’t matter who fired the first shot, or what small event caused the action to begin. But merely knowing that it might not matter did not make it bother her any less, not at the time and certainly not in retrospect, and it did not keep that moment out of her waking nightmares.

Her terrified and very human reaction was to duck down, to dodge, to lie on the floor and pray.”

Dreadnought ~Cherie Priest

2010, Tor Books
400 pages
8/10

In her Locus award winning novel, Boneshaker, author Cherie Priest unveiled The Clockwork Century, her alternate history universe in which:

“The Civil War is still underway, drawn out by English interference, a different transportation infrastructure, and a powerful Republic of Texas that discovered oil at Spindletop some fifty years sooner than real life allowed.

The competition of war has led to technological progress and horrors unimaginable, and many people have fled the combating states, hoping for an easier life out west.”

Her steampunk-infused tale expertly wove together two alternating story lines: those of a teenage boy whose adolescent bravado and curiosity about his birth leads him into the plague-ravaged underbelly of Seattle, Washington, a city walled in to prevent both the escape of poisonous gases and the decaying post-humans who occupy its streets, and the desperate mother who will brave all for his safe return.

In her follow up novel, Dreadnought, Priest turns the focus on Mercy Lynch, a Southern nurse tending the wounded in a Richmond, VA hospital. Lynch is propelled on a cross-country journey when she is confronted with the news that her husband has died in a POW camp and that her estranged father is on his death-bed in Seattle, Washington. With a small store of cash, two pistols and the supplies in her Red Cross bag, nurse Lynch undertakes a lone journey by airship and locomotive across the very active war torn front, not knowing what, or who, she will find at journey’s end.

Though her nursing experiences have prepared her for the horrors of war, Mercy Lynch will learn that there are far worse terrors yet to be revealed.

Continue reading Dreadnought ~Cherie Priest →

The Heart of Valor ~Tanya Huff

–2007, DAW Books
–432 pages
–7/10 stars

Take a group of soldiers in Marine basic and drop them on a planet for 20 days for a live-fire military exercise. Now throw in a civilian doctor and her charge, a Major who recently came out of a regeneration tank after being nearly killed on his previous mission. Just to make it interesting make sure that one subset of your recruits is an alien race that suddenly finds itself in a pheromone induced crisis. And one more tiny little thing: The mechanized war machines on the planet have suddenly gone rogue and are out to kill, communication is down, and no ships will be returning to pick you up any time soon. If you mix all that together, what do you get?

Just another routine day for Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr.

Continue reading The Heart of Valor ~Tanya Huff →

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”

~from “The Sayings of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

It seems impossible, this journey many years in the making, has come to an end. As I sit here in the early hours of Saturday morning I am stunned at the realization that I have completed this journey, that I have traveled with Paul Atreides to Arrakis and have watched him become Paul Muad’Dib.

This final week of the group read of Dune covered Book Three: The Prophet. Each section of this book has held surprises for me and it was rare that even the parts of the story that I knew weren’t filled with revelations that I had not expected.

I like this novel. I like it a great deal. I feel the deep satisfaction of a story well told and it was the intricacy and skill of Frank Herbert that made this tale come to life in ways that I had not foreseen. Grace was kind enough to step in to create the questions for this week’s discussion.

The standard warning still applies:

Here There Be Spoilers!

Continue reading Dune Group Read, Round III →

My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. “Something cannot emerge from nothing,” he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable “the truth” can be.

~from “Conversations with Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

A Duke is betrayed. The betrayer is silenced. And in the aftermath a boy and his mother set out into a barren desert wilderness, perhaps in fulfillment of an ancient prophecy.

It is Saturday, and that means it is time for more conversation about Frank Herbert’s masterwork, Dune. This past week the group read covered Book Two: Muad’Dib, the gripping middle section of this unfolding drama. I cannot help but recall the words of Poe–

That the play is the tragedy “Man,”
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

Andrea (Little Red Reviewer) took on the challenge of coming up with this week’s discussion questions. Thank you Andrea! She sent out a list of questions giving responders the option of answering all or just some of the questions. Below the jump you will find my reflections as well as our good friend Mr. Linky, who will guide you to the discussions of the other respondents.

Once again I feel obligated to warn you that spoilers are present in the Q&A portion of these posts. And once again I would like to encourage discussion from anyone who would like to participate, not just those who are currently a part of this group read.

And now, Book Two.

Continue reading Dune Group Read, Round 2 →