Sage Fire Reviews

The Apocalypse Troll

Instructions for action when the future is worse than today.

 How do you destroy an alien war machine which devestates the Atlantic Fleet by ignoring it?  To top it off, what exactly do you say to a beautiful gorgeous human woman who literally drops out of the sky right next to your sail boat?  Capt. Richard Aston's life is about to become a lot more complicated, and falling love with a true alien is the least of his problems.

Synopsis:

Capt. Richard Aston is about to become Un-Retired, be bumped to Admiral, track down a BEM, and fall in love with an alien which was once upon a time maybe human, when all he really wanted to do was sail his ketch around the caribbean.  Too bad life had other designs.

The Troll, was a true BEM, designed from human dna to hate his Kanga masters and the human race as a whole.  When fate left him alone in a universe different from his own he found a plan to wipe out both races and generate more of himself.

Col. Lenova is a symbiont, mostly human, but incredibly fast, and forever young. A product of a Kanga mistake with their germ warfare, her kind is hated by the Trolls since humans accept them. She may look like she is a human 19 or 20, but she has 50 years of experience under her belt just like Richard Aston.  Her duty is to kill the Troll, even if it is not her own universe. Falling in love with Richard Aston should never have been on the table of mentionables.

In a true to life struggle, battle emergencies arise and Lenova must in a single split second decide if her love of Richard Aston means more than killing the Troll.  Her decision will either way forever change the human race.

Impression:

A classic Space Opera tale, this story was originally published in 2000, this book is into its 4th printing. Unlike many of Weber's other stories, this one does not revolve around a recurrent social issue, but around a controversial clause of physics.  This controversy was very strong in the early 2000's but has since become the most agreed upon explanation for observed quanta experiments.  If time travel is possible, then doing so creates a new universe and both universes see no change in history! 

Weber's normal writing style totally absorbs the social implications and brings you into close contact with each of the characters. When you are with the Troll, you despise him, when you are with the hero, you wonder how he will prevail, when you are with the heroine, you are madly in love wanting to save the hero from his own actions.

Sometimes a reader needs to be engrossed away from the every day life, and when you do, turning to this book, will be a bennefit to you.

RATING:  9 Campfires

Citations:

Although written as PG material, do to the sensitive nature of discussions about what war is and is not, the reviewer feels this book is best targeted for 17 and up. 

0 Flames for sexual content.

Author's credentials:

David Mark Weber is an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1952. In his stories, he creates a consistent and rationally explained technology and society. Even when dealing with fantasy themes, the magical powers are treated like another technology with supporting rational laws and principles.

Many of his stories have military, particularly naval, themes, and fit into the military science fiction genre. He challenges current gender roles in the military by assuming that a gender-neutral military service will exist in his futures, and by frequently placing female leading characters in what have previously been seen as traditionally male roles, he has explored the challenges faced by women in the military and politics.

His most popular and enduring character is Honor Harrington whose alliterated name is an homage to C. S. Forester's character Horatio Hornblower. Her story, together with the "Honorverse" she inhabits, has been developed through 13 novels and four shared-universe anthologies, as of spring 2006.

MD Johnson is a mountain northwest regional -- freelance author, living in Payette, Idaho. His writing interests include poetry, romance, westerns, science fiction, travel, and history. His work has appeared in a diverse range of publications including True Romance and Ballyhoo Stories. He is currently republishing the 1935 western classic historical novel, “The Bitterroot Trail” as the anthologist.

If you have a book or an ARC, you would like Mr. Johnson to review, please address your questions to him at queries@pencraft.biz.