science fiction author
I realized that I haven’t done an update in a long time. I’ve been posting the books I read and I’m trying to include details about what I’m learning along they way, but what about me? Starting in about December of 2020 I recommitted myself to writing. I joined a biweekly writing group, I meet approximately weekly with an accountability buddy, and I’ve been doing a lot of writing. So far in the last 8…
This is book 3 in the Expanse series and it continues to follow James Holden and his crew as they travel around the solar system. There isn’t a lot I feel I can say about this book that you won’t find reading a review on Amazon, and I don’t want to give any spoilers. This series continues to be good quality hard SF and I really have enjoyed reading it. The authors are careful to…
I’ve heard a lot about this book. It was highly recommended and for me this book checked all the boxes. A new crew member joins a starship to take over record keeping but she has a complicated and secret past. The captain is a good man, trying to keep everyone happy with a firm but gentle hand, and yet he too has a secret… his girlfriend must be kept secret because the xenophobic race she…
I became aware of Dotson’s writing on social media (twitter, specifically), mostly because Gareth Powell regularly lifts her up. I love space opera and so I decided to look into this author. In many ways, her life story sounds a lot like mine. We both created worlds as children and young adults, wrote stories and fleshed out our characters, but are not full time fiction writers. The difference, of course, is that she has followed…
Shards of Earth is a space opera that takes place in a future where the Earth has been destroyed. This is not a spoiler, as it is in the prologue. The Architects have come, giant moon sized entities who do not respond to our communication attempts, and they destroy settled worlds while leaving empty worlds alone. There is a rich cast of characters including heroes from that war, merchants, bureaucrats, religious cult leaders, several alien…
I really enjoyed the first installment of the Expanse series so I was looking forward to this one and I was not disappointed. The book follows the same set of main characters from Leviathan Wakes, Holden, Amos, Naomi and Alex, and introduces/focuses on some additional characters, such as Bobbie, a Martian marine, Prax, a botanist on Ganymede, and Chrisjen Avasarala, a high ranking member of the UN. The switching between the four PoV characters (Holden,…
The author described this book as wanting to experience what Guardian’s of the Galaxy felt like. If he meant a wild ride with a fast-paced plot and a varied collection of aliens working together, then I think he succeeded. The story is principally a story about a collection of three aliens who work on the same ship. One is a human from Earth (Max) who accidentally stepped on a portal and got teleported to a…
This book popped up on my “recommended reading list” on Amazon and I read the preview. I am a big fan of military SF and the first three chapters hooked me in, so I bought it. I ended up reading it in one day while on a quick start of summer vacation. The book is action packed, following the exploits of a young space marine, Cam Alvarez, who joins up to avoid a lengthy “hibernation”…
I believe heard about this book I believe at the online Dream Foundry convention 2 months ago during a panel on AI characters. I started reading it a few days ago and it is not an exaggeration to say that this book has been inhabiting my dreams for the last few days. I couldn’t stop thinking about it! This is one of the best descriptions of what life onboard an ark ship would be like…
I read this book on the strong recommendations I’ve seen online, but in the end I don’t feel like I got very much out of it. This book is a collection of short stories and novel excerpts that were chosen by his fans and collected. They are presented in chronological order so you can see his growth as a writer. That is the theory. I saw a change in tone of the stories but honestly,…
