Graham’s Resolution Series

The China Pandemic - eBook.jpgYou may well get your introduction to this series via an email offering you a free copy. Take it. It will be a PDF but you can mail it to yourself on Kindle. You’ll receive Volume 1 in the series, the China Pandemic. Settle down, all you over-politicized junkies, what is most remarkable about this book is that it was written in 2013, long before the COVID-19 virus ever made its way out Wuhan (however that may have occurred), and its plot unwinds the doomsday scenario that could have been – but was not – one of the forks in the road that may have occurred if the virus had been even more deadly than it was.

The hero is a university professor somewhat in the mold of Robert a (Da Vinci Code) who is more practical and stronger than he thinks. His wife has died in the pandemic and on his way to what he hopes will be a refuge until they can sort things out he acquires a small group of new almost-family members who have to decide whether they can trust each other while facing a brutal environment.

The writing and editing are sound. The style is matter-of-fact, with the horrific nature of this virulent disease spelling itself out without the author trying to explain what you should be thinking. For much the same reason, the characters are not fully developed in Volume 1. There isn’t a lot of room for emoting when you’re trying to figure out how to survive feral animal packs, random human survivors who have gone equally feral, and even other well-intentioned humans who may or may not have been infected or be asymptomatic carriers.

As with any apocalyptic work, there are always practical issues that  may nag at you. For me, I kept wondering how it was that with everything else falling apart and every business and most homes abandoned, how is it that the electricity and cell phone service continue to work?  Maybe we’ll find out in books 3 through N. As of now, the series stands at 6, presumably with more to come as long as they keep selling, as they deserve to do. The price of getting volume 1 for free on PDF is that you get on the mailing list, which will include weekly offers to buy the rest of the set or other sets with a discount coupon. I have no doubt that you’ll opt for the first step, which is a 4-book “boxed” set which if you wait for the right moment will come in at maybe $7.99 (as of 2021).

Aside from the email trail, Ms. Shaw sells the books direct to you (here’s the link: https://www.authorarshaw.com/books), although you can also buy the books on Amazon at twice the price if you want.

David Savakerrva (Volume 1)

A young man – a boy, really – is torn out of his world by forces he cannot understand and compelled to take on an improbable role as the only person who can save this civilization that is far beyond his understanding. The world on which David lands is, like Dune or Tattooine, a strange melding of desert tribes and off-planet advanced aliens, medieval societies armed at the same time with swords and air-scooters, marching robot dinosaur-like combat platforms and hand-to-hand battles with monsters, and of course the suicidal flight between anti-aircraft lasers to an impossibly rock-hard target that may or may not be the real focal point.

So, yes, we’ve seen much of this before, but the sci-fi realm is so richly populated with classics that it would be hard to write such a story that didn’t have elements borrowed from another. Larry Brown’s hero David Savakerrva is carried along by events but, unlike Forrest Gump, who is just an innocent abroad who happens to be a bystander in key events of his time, David rides on the coat-tails of a character that is probably unfamiliar to most US readers: Harry Flashman, the school bully of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. George McDonald Frazier produced the monumental Flashman Papers series,  which offers often hilarious but extremely well-documented readings about the great doings of the British Empire and other key world events from about 1830 to 1890. The whole thing is a spoof follow-on to the original book. Flashman’s poltroonery earns him the distinction of sole survivorship in one disaster after another, which convey on him the image of continued heroic survival against impossible odds, as a result of he is deemed impossibly brave and is carried to higher and higher esteem in his society.

Thus it is with David, who is consistent only in his attempts to avoid facing up to the challenges, which are admittedly daunting given that he has none of the required experience, talents or interest. As he stumbles from one evasion of duty to another, failure and defeat are snatched away and replaced with victories, sometimes by accident, sometimes by  the intervention of others who are more clued into what is really going on. Eventually, of course, we reach the point at which evasion is no longer possible. Has he grown in character, skill and wisdom to the point that the nemesis can be defeated, or will he collapse in a puddle and let the bad guys win?

The fact that one can still ask this question tells you that Larry Brown has put enough wrinkles in his first book that the story does not simply plod on to the perfect endings of Dune or Star Wars. It leaves you the chance to do what all good thrillers do: make you stay up later than you had intended so you can finish the story and find out what happened. Bravo, Larry!

Having reviewed both the initial draft and the current as-published versions of this book [for which purpose I did receive complimentary copies], I have seen how fast Larry is bringing up his game as a thriller writer. As quickly as he is moving up the curve, I’m really looking forward to Volume 2. Meanwhile, if you haven’t gotten into Volume 1 yet, you should find it very enjoyable. You can get it on Amazon at https://amzn.to/2LmPTTK.

Head in the Cloud

The second of Jack Forsithe’s books is a fast-moving read that combines the genres of thriller and alien-type fantasy. It is an easier story to follow than the first volume, Heart in the Clouds, because the four original separate story-lines have merged into two at the book’s opening and quickly becomes a single plot. Naturally that would be easier to follow, although it is hard for me to assess that since I did read the first volume first, so I had already become familiar with the whole other-creature setup (and their tongue-twister moniker, the Zighorottiz). Although Forsithe does provide enough back story to pick up on the ideas, it would definitely be worth your while to read Heart also (here’s the review). Forsithe himself also seems to be more comfortable with his own story-telling style and there is less reliance on Clancy-style descriptions of equipment, and his voice is getting stronger.

At the end, Forsithe chooses not to employ the now-common device of leaving the characters hanging on a cliff in order to drive sales of the sequel (but driving readers like me away because of the cheesiness of it all). Instead, he presents a very satisfying conclusion to the installment of the tale while leaving the characters at a point from which several roads may plausibly diverge. I have a feeling that we are going in the direction of the Sith from Star wars, but that remains to be seen. I look forward to it.

As an added thrill – one I wasn’t aware of until I stumbled across it in the text – one of Caltrop Press’ other books gets a mention along with some of the great business books of our time.  Maybe you too will enjoy Let It Simmer.

Here’s a link to Head in the Cloud on Amazon:

Heart in the Cloud

The back cover promises a “fantasy thriller” and it delivers. This is Jack Forsithe’s first  novel and the highest tribute one can pay to any such work is that I am looking forward to the sequel even though I am not usually into this genre. If you’re not immersed in science-fiction, you may be put off by the complexity of the other-worlders’ species name (Zighorottiz), but don’t let that scare you off: it’s about the only bit of irregular verbiage in the book.

The best advice I can give when reading this book is to try and get about an hour of unimpeded time at the start in order to work out what the various story-lines are. They do all come together in a clever and not overly contrived way, but at first the human stories are so different that it is hard to latch onto them. Once you do, you’ll find this to be a humorous and innovative romp that may in fact be more of a send-up of thrillers and fantasy writing than a faithful member of the club. Great first start, Jack, and bring on the rest.

Get your copy at: https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Cloud-Jack-Forsithe/dp/1530918006