To begin with THE REACHES is not a new book by any stretch of the imagination. It is the compilation of the Igniting the Reaches series including the title story, Through the Breach and Fireships. If you haven't read or have but want to own the entire series this volume is a great way to do it, but there is nothing new here.

To me THE REACHES seemed less a story than a psychological study into the effects of war on man, primarily combatants, and especially those involved in the hand-to-hand, in-your-face type of combat. In fact the plot has the appearance of being more of a support for the combat scenes than the other way around, and combat there is in plenty. Combat in exceptionally bloody, gruesome detail. If you don't like combat fiction then stay away from this one, if you do it will give you everything you ever wanted.

Although the combat scenes are exceptionally well written the plot is fairly thin and superficial, the characters shallow and one-dimensional. As a study into the psychological damage that combat can inflect on a participant this book is superb, as a story read for entertainment it is only average.

Not for everyone but good enough to be RECOMMENDED.

A dramatic and gripping story of a young boy, Alfredo, orphaned when his home is burned down and suddenly finds himself in the care of his strange uncle. Uncle Giorgio is more than just strange he is also the Master of the Mountain, the one with the gift to control the volcano and protect the lives of all who live under it's shadow. But is he just strange or maybe something more, something evil? Alfredo discovers that he too has the power to talk to the mountain and what it tells him is that Uncle Giorgio is maybe trying to control more than just itself.

TEARS OF THE SALAMANDER is a fairly short book and a very quick read. Of course one of the reasons it went so quickly is the fact that I had a difficult time putting it down at all!

Young adults (and some of us older ones also) who like a bit of drama with a dash of fantasy are going to really like this story.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it!

ALTA continues the story of Kiron (nee Vetch) started in JOUST as he makes good his escape from serfdom and begins a new life as a dragon rider. Making his way back to his homeland he integrates himself into the Alta dragon rider (Jousters) community using his knowledge of how to tame dragons without using drugs, the normal method. While training his new squadron of tame dragons he helps uncover a nefarious plot by the evil Magi and Alta's rulers to use the life force of their subjects for their own purposes, making him a primary target for their wrath.

ALTA and JOUST can best be classified as juvenal fantasy. Adults could quickly become bored with the fairly slow pace and lack of either romance (serious romance that is, there is some adolescent involvement with a girl he saves) or action. I won't say the plot is strictly formula but it is fairly predictable.

I was interested in what would become of Vetch and I can't say I was disappointed, but then I didn't have particularly high expectations either. If you liked JOUST then you will like ALTA, if you didn't then don't bother.

Not the best but I have certainly read worse, I remain NEUTRAL on this one.

For those of too young to have grown up on Keith Laumer's stories of self-aware fighting machines you now get a chance to taste what you missed. But these aren't KL's Bolos. No sir, gone are the independent tank sized fighting machines, the Bolo of the Ringo/Evans era are massive, 13,000 ton brutes that are large enough that only one is needed to protect a planet from enemy invasion

ROAD TO DAMASCUS is a story about one such machine. Obsolete and scheduled to be scrapped, a new war with aliens requires "Sonny" and his human commander be sent to Jefferson to protect them from the Deng, which he does with the usual Ringoisk style where you would swear that you were in the middle of the battle instead of just reading about it.

However the Bolo and the various wars it comes to fight are secondary to the real plot of the book, the subjugation of a once prosperous planet by a group of truly evil people. It was like reading Hitler's Mein Kampf all over again. The POPPA, a hideous blend of Nazi's and communists, use class warfare, brainwashing, gun control, goon squads, death camps and one really big semi-sentient machine to maintain their iron fisted rule. It is a story as much about politics as it is about war.

So what is a thinking machine suppose to do when the revolution comes? That's the big question and what makes this story different from any other Bolo story I've ever had the pleasure to read.

Lots of blood, guts, mystery, intrigue, and even a little romance thrown in. While RTD isn't your average Bolo war story it is a fascinating new look at human/machine interaction, revolution and dictatorship.

I liked and wholeheartedly RECOMMEND it.

First off lets start with what 1634TGA is about. For the most part it's about a trade mission from the USE (United States of Europe) to the city-state of Venice. Oh yeah there is a very minor subplot about a small group of uptime kids and Venetian revolutionaries attempting to break Galileo out of the clutches of the Inquisition. It's such a minor part of the story that you wonder why the book was called THE GALILEO AFFAIR, don't sweat it, you'll be wondering about the point of so much of this book that the almost total lack of Galileo in it will seem like a minor quandary in comparison. Some of those other problems? Well let's list a few:

Anyone expecting any resolution to the incredible blunders Pres. Mike Sterns made in sending almost all of his top advisors, including his wife, into the hands of his enemies, will be disappointed. This is a completely separate story. Nothing from 1633 is resolved, they still have a group stuck in the Tower of London and another in Amsterdam.

There are a number of new characters introduced but to know their background you need to have read RING OF FIRE, which is worth reading in and of itself. But if you haven't you will be wondering just who some of these people are.

Back to the plot of 1634, it's about a trade mission and that's about as much action as you get except for the ridiculous farce of the attempted Galileo rescue. The only semi-interesting subplot involves the romance of one of the Stoner boys to a young Venetian girl and her very strange family. If your interested in the fictionalized internal struggle of the Catholic church of the 17th century when confronted with the teachings and beliefs of the 'modern' church then maybe you can find something of interest here. I didn't.

The only other plot of note is the hooking up of Sharon Nichols, excuse me while I gag, to a sixty year old Spanish spy. This is probably one of the most disgusting and despicable plots yet to come out of this storyline. It left me with a foul taste in my mouth that I admit tainted the entire book for me. While I agree that an author may do with characters what they will the hooking up of a twenty-four year old women in grief with a sixty-year-old geezer from the enemy camp could only be the work of a testosterone depleted, aged old man trying to regain his virility vicariously through his characters. Being sent back in time through the Ring of Fire was more believable then this one.

Get this one out of the library; no need to pay for it.

I am NEUTRAL on this one. It's not anywhere near the best in the series and to be honest you won't miss much if you skip it.

"Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers..."

So begins the original. While HEART DUEL isn't an exact duplicate of ROMEO AND JULIET there is no doubt where the basic premises for the story came from. A woman and a man fall in love but are separated by feuding families. Sound familiar?

Alright it isn't exactly the same. You still have the fascinating world of Celta with it's novel blending of psi-powered humans and hierarchical oligarchy. That's different, but to be honest there really isn't any new ground broken in that direction with this volume. Neither are some of the common storylines from her other two Celta novels, that is boy finds HartMate, girl doesn't know it (this must be some kind of sex linked trait), boy pursues girl, girl resists boy but in the end...well lets just say at the heart of it all it is a romance so you guess the ending.

Tired premises? Weary storyline? Yeah a little, that's what shades it more toward the average than above. The writing is still exceptional, the characters well fleshed out, believable and compelling. Technically HEART DUEL is well done but it certainly loses points in the originality category.

By no means fatally flawed HEART DUEL is an admirable bit of poolside fluff. Something pleasant and unpretentious to enjoy while wiling away the hours this summer.

I RECOMMEND it.

It has been a long and at times difficult journey but OUT OF DARKNESS does a fine job of ending the DARKNESS series. An analog of WWII this final chapter brings to conclusion the story of a world embroiled in a war that mixes wizardry, heroics, horrors and human fallibility. Since the series so closely parallels WWII the ending is really no surprise but we finally get closure to the multitude of characters we have been following in the previous five books.

As an ending it's pretty good. The bad guys get their just deserts, mostly, and the good guys get their just rewards, mostly. As with real life the end for most characters isn't 'perfect,' but then when is it ever?

As before the large number of characters and the jumping from one viewpoint to another can set your head spinning if your not paying attention, but if you've managed to make it through the first volumes you should be used to it by now. It is interesting to watch as Mr. Turtledove weaves the lives of his characters together as they struggle through these troubled times and bring them to coherent finality.

A well done series conclusion, a rarity these days for which the author should be recognized. I RECOMMEND the Darkness series in general and OUT OF DARKNESS specifically.

If you read FIRE LOGIC and liked it you will probably feel the same way about EARTH LOGIC. EL is the continuation of the story although it picks up some five years after the end of the first volume. Shaftal is still occupied and the rightful ruler still in hiding however that is about to change.

I can't say that this one riveted me. Slightly more interesting than the first volume it still has many of the same flaws FIRE LOGIC was prone to. The sexual orientation of what seems to be the entire population is still very much non-straight and seeing how children figure prominently in the story line I am still baffled as to how they even came about let alone can have a major impact in this alternate universe. Anyway the romance portions of this book are still decidedly one-sided and just as dull. Maybe this was intended to be a gay targeted work, if so more power to her but it makes it a bit of a yawner for the rest of us.

Not much in the way of character development. A few new ones are introduced but they are really just duplicates of the ones already there; a super masculine female and an extremely effeminate male, nothing new.

The plot itself was good enough to hold my attention for at least long as long as it took me to read it. I can say it beats watching TV so I'll RECOMMEND it but it wouldn't be my first choice.

NO PHULE LIKE AN OLD PHULE is the fifth in the 'Phule' series and to be honest it's at least one too many. Where the first two, maybe the first three if you're charitable, were at least funny with some discernable plot this one fails on both accounts.

To begin with it's not funny. Just more of the same old jokes we've heard before, and not many of them to boot. It's like watching a sitcom rerun for the tenth time, you begin to forget why you laughed at it the first time.

Plot? There isn't any, just a mishmash of unrelated subplots that wouldn't be particularly interesting even if there were some underlying connection.

Character development? Again none. Hey even in a spoof there must be some character growth to keep the reader interested, there just isn't any here. Part of the problem may be that the story doesn't seem to be able to focus on any one, or even a group of characters, long enough for any of them to achieve any significant development. But that goes back to the noted lack of plot and storyline.

To keep it short and simple this one is dull, uninteresting and unpleasant to try and follow.

NOT RECOMMENDED.

Mix a little magic with a pinch of politics, add a healthy dose of invasion and guerilla warfare, flavor it with a dash of romantic involvement and you get FIRE LOGIC. The four elements, fire, water, air and earth infuse magic in certain people giving them supernatural powers in the land of Shaftal, but Shaftal has been invaded and is being occupied by a brutal oppressor. FIRE LOGIC is the first book in a series that deals with the lands wounds and the subsequent attempts to heal them.

The characters are strong and fairly well developed but to be honest not particularly diverse. Almost all the primary female characters are extremely masculine (...). Of course most of the male characters are effeminate and gay, except one who is masculine, and gay. In fact one must wonder just how there are any little Shaftaler's running around at all, the concept of heterosexual romance seems to be totally unheard of in this world. Well if you're interested in that type of romance then I suppose you will find FIRE LOGIC entertaining. For those of us who find it rather uninteresting it is merely dull.

The plot itself is decent. It's not the type that grabs you and won't let you put the book down from beginning to end, but it's good enough to keep you interested and maybe even look forward to the next volume.

Average, professionally done work. Good enough to be RECOMMENDED but don't think you'll be reading the next great American novel.