Blueshift by Joshua Dalzelle

Blueshift by Joshua Dalzelle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Daedalus is on the return leg of its journey into the depths of space and a rendezvous with a planetary system which may support life. The mission was undertaken by a privately funded project helmed by a billionaire but as it returns to the Solar System around 800 years later the awakening crew find that things have changed significantly. There have been deaths on board the starship thanks to failures in the cryotechnology and general bad luck and wear and tear but the survivors now detect no signals from Earth, no movement in the asteroid belt but then contact is made but from Mars warning them to avoid Earth....
Blueshift is as Joshua states a very different style of story then his regular readers are familiar with and yeah that is certainly true. I didn't enjoy this novel or the characters in the same manner as from his Omega Force series but it was interesting concept which could have been spun out in many ways if that's what the author intended. The novel may indeed be a good choice for someone not familiar with the bulk of his published work but certainly don't avoid it if you think that if it's not Omega Force then you are not interested.

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Into the Breach

Into the Breach by Jonathan Yanez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Frank Wolffe a former Marine now working for Ballistics United Tactical and Tech Systems (B.U.T.T.S) is well not quite a salesman but certainly a middle man between the company and the clients. He is given a time sensitive account to fulfill with the US military and finds himself delivering high tech armour and weapons to a facility buried deep below the Hoover Dam. Here he finds that his boss has "volunteered" him to support an operation using the supplied inventory and the mission involves using an alien device to travel well somewhere in the universe!
I think that is all you need to know and if sounds a little familiar then the author makes no bones about the love for all things Stargate and Green Lantern and the two story themes work well with the military setting and a fish out of the water situation the Marines find themselves in when they travel via the alien device. The novel is fast paced and full of humour, good interaction between the characters both main and secondary and well it's fun without getting itself bogged down in technobabble to explain how any of the tech or other things work.

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Lucky Universe by Joshua James

Lucky Universe by Joshua James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lance Corporal "Lucky" Lee Savage is a Frontier Marine one of a highly trained and equipped assets of the Empire. Between missions they are frozen to prolong their use but "Lucky" was the sole survivor of a disastrous mission and spent over half a century frozen and lost in between the stars. Together with his AI which is named Rocky a legend has grown, the ability to survive missions and come away unscatherd (even allowing for the nanotec in the suits) has made his name known across the military but with his memories lost thanks to long term cryostasis was it luck or something else at work?
Lucky Universe was an entertaining read, the technology was off the charts and the world created by Joshua sufficiently futuristic but still anchored in a military mindset. The humour worked and the mystery behind the nightmares and lost memories were intriguing and I'll probably pick up the second novel in the series just to confirm if I am committed to the full story which will span multiple novels.

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Tin Man — Stargate Archives

Tin Man — Stargate Archives


Ian joined me to discuss Stargate SG1 "Tin Man" on this new episode from the Stargate Archives.