Matthew Hunter

Imagine a socialist paradise that bankrupts itself to develop a single interstellar spacecraft, the USS Alabama, designed to escape the solar system and colonize a new world, called Coyote. Imagine that the colonists for this new world have been carefully selected by the government, emphasizing political loyalty as much as scientific knowledge. Imagine that in this dystopian society, dissidents who remember the dream of Liberty are regularly rooted out, arrested, and shipped to reeducation camps in cattle cars.

Paran is a soldier in the army of the Malazan Empire, chosen by events to play a part in a growing crisis of divinity. He is placed in command of the Bridgeburners, an infamous unit of skirmishers, in their siege of a foreign city. That siege, and Paran’s efforts to consummate it by taking the city, is the focus of the novel. Yet that siege is also little more than a delaying action: a single battle in the prelude to the coming storm, a storm in the form of an army of religious fanatics on the march towards the Empire like a plague of locusts… destroying everything in their path.

Continuing my reread of Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series, I went through The Bourne Supremacy over the course of a weekend. This novel steps away from the question of identity, and instead puts Bourne in the midst of a complex maze of interwoven plots. An imposter has taken the name and reputation of “Jason Bourne”, deadly assassin for hire, and revived it for his own purposes. The assassin who was created to trap Carlos must now return to the land of his birth to trap himself.

I would not classify this as an adaptation of “I, Robot” for Asimov purists. Rather, it’s an action-adventure set in Asimov’s universe that happens to draw upon some of the characters from the stories. But as a stand-alone story, it’s remarkably well done, better than most of what Hollywood produces by leaps and bounds. If the success of Lord of the Rings inspired this movie to cash in on the perceived new market, it worked and it worked well.

A couple years ago, I started to have an idea for a novel. It wasn’t the first such idea; I have several kicking their way around my head. I don’t have time to write more than a chapter or two in brief spurts, but I let the ideas percolate and refine. Eventually, I will have that time, and hopefully the ideas will be timeless by then. Or something. But at least one of those ideas is now out of the running, thanks to S.

This is the 6th book in King’s Dark Tower series. I’ve been a fan of that series for years, ever since I first discovered it, and have watched its slow progress with a great deal of anticipation. I’m not generally an avid King follower, to be sure, but this series is an exception, and a few of his stand-alone novels (IT, The Stand, Salem’s Lot) are works I think highly of.

Sword of Shannara has a well-deserved reputation for being a near-total imitation of Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, with only the serial numbers filed off to aid the deception. It’s not even told particularly well. Readers are advised to skip it.

Imagine a hard-bitten mercenary company, the last of the 12 Free Companies of Khatovar, wielding swords, spies, sappers, and seige engines with equal facility in a world where wizards rule the battlefield and the last of the dragons was eaten millenia ago by something even more dangerous. Imagine ten of the most powerful wizards in the world, all bound to serve one even more powerful than they: the Ten Who Were Taken.

Legend says that only three things can destroy the Secret Country: the Border Magic, the Crystal of the Earth, and the Whim of the Dragon. Only the last remains, as the five children are summoned once more to the land of their own make-believe. This time, however, it will be different. For as they fled at the end of The Hidden Land, the note they left behind will reveal them as imposters.

The White Rose is the third book in the Chronicles of the Black Company. The Lady’s victory over her husband the Dominator at Juniper Shadows Linger came with a high price: the loss of the Black Company, long sworn to her service, to follow the White Rose… the prophecied rebel who first imprisoned her and her husband 400 years ago, now reborn to meet the Lady’s renewed threat. All unknowing, the Black Company had sheltered the White Rose herself within their ranks, and when the Taken begin to turn on them, chose survival and personal loyalty over the Lady’s service.