[QuickTidal]

Salt-Man Z, on 09 January 2012 - 06:04 PM, said:

And yeah, those bugs in the second Breach? That was the part where my pulse really started going. I was all WHAT THE CRAP. Fully expecting alien invasion or something.

Those parts of the book gave me the heavy willies. I believe I may have shivered.

And can I just say that reading both your posts on the layers to the series simply confuses me more (in a good way mind you).

I've already recco-d this series to my psuedo-mother in law.

[Pig Iron]

Interesting points. Both the novels and Travis as we see him (ie not future Travis in timeline 1) is pretty anti-authoritarian, so him accepting the killing of 20M people just cause (minor pun?!) some AI you believe infallible thinks it's a good idea for "mankind" is unlikely. Or accepting the virtual tyranny of a bunch of geriatrics and their pet AIs ... Lots of curious twists in there like how that vice president might not be all that bad.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 09 January 2012 - 06:17 PM, said:

Salt-Man Z, on 09 January 2012 - 06:04 PM, said:

And yeah, those bugs in the second Breach? That was the part where my pulse really started going. I was all WHAT THE CRAP. Fully expecting alien invasion or something.

Those parts of the book gave me the heavy willies. I believe I may have shivered.
...

When they were stuck in the second Breach complex and planning to release the wasps against the soldiers, my mind was running 'bad idea, bad idea, really really REALLY BAD idea...'. And yet i was sort of sorry they didn't get a chance to...

Pig Iron, on 09 January 2012 - 06:18 PM, said:

Interesting points. Both the novels and Travis as we see him (ie not future Travis in timeline 1) is pretty anti-authoritarian, so him accepting the killing of 20M people just cause (minor pun?!) some AI you believe infallible thinks it's a good idea for "mankind" is unlikely. Or accepting the virtual tyranny of a bunch of geriatrics and their pet AIs ...

Is it fair to say he's anti-authoritarian? He's anti-corrupt authoritarian, certainly, but it's not like he ever resists Bordertown's people or the President just on priciple.

Interesting point re tyranny of the Deep Sky crew, especialy after future-Garner explains how they are basically supermen compared to present day. Yet based on future-future-Travis sending the Whisper back, he's willing to die (do i remember that correctly? that the blowback from sending the Whisper back in time would have killed him) or at least oppose Paige to make sure the filter happens.

Quote

Lots of curious twists in there like how that vice president might not be all that bad.

Agreed. Future-Garner implicitly lumps him in with the 'bad people who don't want the world to be a better place', but from the perspective of not being all 'I for one WELCOME our new geriatric immortal future time traveller overlords' there's a logical arguement to be made to oppose the filter being triggered, even aside from the 20mil victims angle.

[Pig Iron]

Quite some irony (and I believe the author is playing on all these themes which is great) that the future people think they can get out of mankinds vicious circle of self-destruction by starting a dictatorship and killing 20 mil for their own good. Sounds a bit too familiar.

Thanks everyone for recommending these books anyway, great fun.

[Abyss]

Pig Iron, on 09 January 2012 - 09:50 PM, said:

Quite some irony (and I believe the author is playing on all these themes which is great) that the future people think they can get out of mankinds vicious circle of self-destruction by starting a dictatorship and killing 20 mil for their own good. Sounds a bit too familiar.

Did future-Garner actually say they would take over? I don't recall anything more than 'we show up, kill 20mil people and then try to keep things copacetic'.

But there's a slippery slope argument there where once you've killed 20mil and things don't quite go as planned (as predicting the future is know to do), hey, whats a few million more....?

[Pig Iron]

Abyss, on 09 January 2012 - 09:59 PM, said:

Pig Iron, on 09 January 2012 - 09:50 PM, said:

Quite some irony (and I believe the author is playing on all these themes which is great) that the future people think they can get out of mankinds vicious circle of self-destruction by starting a dictatorship and killing 20 mil for their own good. Sounds a bit too familiar.

Did future-Garner actually say they would take over? I don't recall anything more than 'we show up, kill 20mil people and then try to keep things copacetic'.

But there's a slippery slope argument there where once you've killed 20mil and things don't quite go as planned (as predicting the future is know to do), hey, whats a few million more....?

Kill those specific people and things will be OK for a thousand years? I took it as they have to keep monitoring and offing new potential troublemakers. Apart from the question of predictions (chaos theory would seem to invalidate this), what usually happens with a junta is they turn on each other eventually over power or differences in doctrine.

If this had been Stanislaw Lem there would quickly have been a number of different time travelling parties (e.g. Travis 1 - 20) from slightly different times figthing with each other for domninion. In one of his stories a guy in a spaceship passes a space-time anomaly and the monday version of him teams up with thursday to fight wednesday etc.

[Abyss]

Pig Iron, on 09 January 2012 - 10:24 PM, said:

Kill those specific people and things will be OK for a thousand years? I took it as they have to keep monitoring and offing new potential troublemakers. ...

Implicit but not stated perhaps.

Quote

If this had been Stanislaw Lem there would quickly have been a number of different time travelling parties (e.g. Travis 1 - 20) from slightly different times figthing with each other for domninion. In one of his stories a guy in a spaceship passes a space-time anomaly and the monday version of him teams up with thursday to fight wednesday etc.

Phillip K Dick played with similar ideas, but the sheer complexity of that approach really supports the theory that there is in fact one timeline, not alternate ones.

...tho Ghost Country effectively nukes that theory, since the Ghost Country timeline cannot exist if the filter is opened... ...unless of course GH-Travis and Paige were lying...
fuck my brain just melted some more...

[Baco Xtath]

Abyss, on 09 January 2012 - 10:33 PM, said:

Phillip K Dick played with similar ideas, but the sheer complexity of that approach really supports the theory that there is in fact one timeline, not alternate ones.

...tho Ghost Country effectively nukes that theory, since the Ghost Country timeline cannot exist if the filter is opened... ...unless of course GH-Travis and Paige were lying...
fuck my brain just melted some more...

Umbra would've happened before 2016 when Travis opens Breach, and so the filter wouldn't have happened and Whisper/Blackbird wouldn't have come back, which was Travis's brainchild while working with his brother, nor would Paige's note to herself which appears to be a reaction to filter, yet they did, so it was destined to fail, but the Umbra future was shown, so it must've happened before he undid what was done ensuring that what he does, doesn't happen in which case he undoes the doing by.............God, my brain is bleeding.

Fuck it. It was fun. I feel no need to prod and poke.

[Pennywise]

I would like to point an accusing finger at Abyss for his infectious enthousiasm concerning this series. My decision to try them out came almost directly from this thread (meaning the novels are criminally underread in the rest of the blogosphere, since I have rarely come across them), and OH MY GOD!

The Breach was awesome and gruesome in equal measure (the mist-enshrouded gunfight!), Deep Sky was a fitting end to the series, even if the thing mentioned in the title came out of the blue a little. But man oh man, Ghost Country might just be my favourite read of last year. A year that included five Dresdencracks, mind you, as well as some Martin and Abercrombie, so that's saying something.

The ending to Ghost Country was just f'ing perfect! I nearly dropped the book several times because the finale was so tense, and then the final paragraph just stunned me into silence for a moment. Character development and development of the relationship between Paige and Travis had carved a perfect path to that scene, and the wording was spot-on. Truly, truly awesome!

This post has been edited by Pennywise: 10 January 2013 - 07:57 PM

[Salt-Man Z]

Heads up! Patrick Lee's new book Runner is due February 18, 2014. Looks like it's (probably) unrelated to the Travis Chase books, though it seems like there might possibly be some SFF stuff going on. I've entered for an early review copy at LibraryThing, fingers crossed.

Blurb said:

Sam Dryden, retired special forces, lives a quiet life in a small town on the coast of Southern California. While out on a run in the middle of the night, a young girl runs into him on the seaside boardwalk. Barefoot and terrified, she’s running from a group of heavily armed men with one clear goal—to kill the fleeing child. After Dryden helps her evade her pursuers, he learns that the eleven year old, for as long as she can remember, has been kept in a secret prison by forces within the government. But she doesn’t know much beyond her own name, Rachel. She only remembers the past two months of her life—and that she has a skill that makes her very dangerous to these men and the hidden men in charge.

Dryden, who lost his wife and young daughter in an accident five years ago, agrees to help her try to unravel her own past and make sense of it, to protect her from the people who are moving heaven and earth to find them both. Although Dryden is only one man, he’s a man with the extraordinary skills and experience—as a Ranger, a Delta, and five years doing off-the-book black ops with an elite team. But, as he slowly begins to discover, the highly trained paramilitary forces on their heels is the only part of the danger they must face. Will Rachel’s own unremembered past be the most deadly of them all?

[Salt-Man Z]

I've got a review copy coming. Watch this space.

[QuickTidal]

Salt-Man Z, on 29 October 2013 - 05:54 PM, said:

I've got a review copy coming. Watch this space.

It's times like these I miss reviewing. Sadly, those reins have been entirely taken up by my co-blogger (when he gets a free chance).

So no more review copies for me.

Let me know how it is though Chris!

[Salt-Man Z]

Finally sat down and forced myself to finish my review for Runner.

SMZb said:

A couple of years ago, I read Patrick Lee's debut trilogy, consisting of The Breach, Ghost Country, and Deep Sky. It was a new breed of fiction for me: the structure and feel of your run-of-the-mill action/thriller novel, but wrapped around the chewy gooey center of a science-fictional premise/MacGuffin. I enjoyed the heck out of them, and when I heard that he was writing another novel (albeit one unrelated to the trilogy) I was sold, sight-unseen.

Fast-forward to October 2013, and while perusing the latest offerings from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, what do I stumble across but a new novel from Patrick Lee! I was excited, but even better, I was fortunate enough to land a copy for review.

The blurb was inoffensively generic, bordering on cliché: Ex-military man takes in a girl on the run from bad guys trying to kill her. I wondered if this was to be a straight-up thriller this time, or if Lee would manage to work in a SF angle; I assumed the former, but held out hope for the latter. All the while figuring it would be a wild ride either way.

I love it when I'm right.

Sam Dryden is an ex-special forces operative who lost his wife and child in an accident a while back. Recently he's been having bouts of insomnia, and has taken up midnight jogs along the boardwalk. One fateful night, he runs into Rachel, a 12-year-old girl being hunted by a squad of armed men. Naturally, Dryden decides to help her. But Rachel is more than she seems: not only does she have the uncanny ability to read minds, but her drug-induced amnesia hides a terrifying secret.

Science fiction it is, then—and Lee even throws some pseudo-scientific explanations for Rachel's telepathic powers (but then, I'm no biologist.) But beyond that, he teases out the ramifications of such an ability: if telepathy actually existed, how would the military-industrial complex seek to utilize it? Lee's answer is both horrifying and depressingly realistic. Most importantly, it's wildly entertaining.

The pace Lee sets for the book is a breathless one. The action starts right on page two, and hardly lets up from there. The entire first chunk of the book is an extended chase sequence, and even when you think you can stop and take a breath, there's a massive twist or turn on the next page to keep you reading. In fact, the only criticism I have of the book is those sections where the pace actually does slow down: these sequences shift away from Dryden and Rachel to show what is essentially the "bad" guys' side of things. Much of the insight into the military's use of telepathic powers is revealed in these sections, and though they all end up tying together at the end, they don't do a lot to advance the plot at that moment. In any other book, it wouldn't bother me like it did here; but in a book this relentlessly-paced, such a noticeable slowdown is harder to forgive. But this is a minor gripe for a book that is still nigh-impossible to put down.

Probably what most impressed me, though, was the emotional layer Lee was able to squeeze in. I got a hint of it in his Breach books, but here...well, here it may have seemed a bit manipulative at first (guy loses his own child, then takes in a young girl on the run? Where do you think this could be going?) but Lee totally makes it work. The ending does much of the heavy lifting in this regard: instead of wrapping everything up all happily-ever-after like you might expect, Lee goes for the truer, more realistic approach, and the whole work is the more powerful for it. The last page in particular not only made me mist up a little, but actually had me flipping back to the first page to reread how it all started. Great stuff.

Runner will be out in February. Get it. Read it. And whatever Patrick Lee decides to write next, I'll be in line for that, too, no questions asked. 4 out of 5 stars.

[Morgoth]

Sooo... did you like it?

[QuickTidal]

Um.

Was anyone aware THIS was fucking happening?!

http://www.bleedingc...nd-24%E2%80%8F/

OH gods, PLEASE do the whole trilogy. PLEASE.

[Salt-Man Z]

Suh--



...wait for it...







--WEEET!

[Aptorian]

Finished the last book earlier.

I think you guys kind of ruined the last two books for me by insinuating that they get better and the series goes out with a bang. I think I got my hopes up too high.

I think the series is just... okay. Good I guess, good action thrillers I would call them, but kind of disappointing because the first book was so brutal in places, so full of strange potential, that the sky was the limit. And then it just turned out sort of meh.

Spoiler

I'm going to start out by being blunt. Patrick Lee is not an exceptional writer or storyteller.

Everything about these three books felt familiar and generic. They read like a ton of other, I want to say typically American novels all though I don't know if this description holds true, but definitely distinctly recognizable and formulaic story types. They read in a way I expect from writers who create thriller novels. You could have told me that this book was written by Dean Koontz, Dan Brown or one of another half a dozen popular others who write stories about a man and a woman who get into trouble, fall in love and save the day, and I would have believed you.

The characters are also extremely familiar. Each of them are good people, usually the guy has some kind of military or police background and the woman has a certain set of skills, like she is a scientist or expert in Alien Yoga. A conspiracy is unearthed and only the exceptional combination of these two's skills, their undaunting will and unbreakable conviction in what is good or what ever sees them through. For some reason it really bothered me that Travis past never featured more in the tale and nobody was more... cautious around him. It is never explained fully but I assume that Travis was not just a dirty cop but also some kind of mob hitman or something, given his skills. What ever the case he has a pretty black past.

Never mind, it's one of those combinations that just work and readers eat up like candyfloss, how ever, the books are way too dependent upon the gimmicky entities.

By the third book I had completely ceased to follow the plot and was seeing straight through the story into the upcomming revelations. What's that? You can go anywhere and do anything in your memories with the Tap? I bet everything is a dream then. There's a drug that allows you to alter and change peoples memories and make them do weird shit? I bet that is what happened when Travis had that dream. There's an entity that can set things on fire but is ignored right after it is introduced? That thing is popping back up in 200 pages for sure.

It's a shame how predictable the books became because the first one was the opposite. The Whisper made you question every move the characters made. It made you wonder about countermeasures and counter-countermeasures ad infinity. And I loved the sheer brutality of that book. That Zurich rage-mob killzone was amazing to read in the sheer horror of what they had to do. And Travis cold blooded killing of countless bad guys was fascinating in the ruthless no-nonsense way it was performed. The later books lacked the uncertainty and shock factor of the first book in my opinion. Probably, mainly, because I was expecting the books, as a trilogy, to build upon the first book and focus on Travis and the Breach. Instead the other books are more of a self contained story that only in the end of the third book loop back into Travis role in the whole mess. The second book had a bit of it, what with Yuma being the graveyard for the entire nation of the USA, but in general the next two books just didn't capture the same raw feeling in me.

Also I disliked the final explanation. I am not sure I actually wanted an explanation at all but I know I didn't want it to be 1200 year old astronauts trying to re-write Earths history.

Eh, like I said, the stories were good. It just feels like it could have been more.

This post has been edited by Maybe Apt: 04 February 2014 - 02:27 PM

[Salt-Man Z]

I agree with most of your points, I think, Apt, but I'm a little more forgiving of Lee. I loved The Breach, but was slightly disappointed with Ghost Country, and then, though the Tap and a couple other things blew my mind in Deep Sky, I didn't particularly like the ending. Still, it was a fun trilogy, and put Lee on my radar.

I definitely recommend checking out Runner when it hits sometime later this month.

This post has been edited by Salt-Man Z: 04 February 2014 - 03:53 PM

[QuickTidal]

I thought the ending was mind-blowingly phenomenal. I didn't see it coming, and the very nature of what it represented to me was a PERFECT way to end a series like this.

Spoiler

The human question. Is the killing of many in service to the few okay? Can you make that decision if you are the one who is told to throw the switch?

As to the writing. These are thriller novels. They should read like them. I'm not sure what else you thought you were reading?

Sorry the ending didn't do it for you. But I loved these more and more as I read on.

[Aptorian]

QuickTidal, on 04 February 2014 - 04:11 PM, said:

I thought the ending was mind-blowingly phenomenal. I didn't see it coming, and the very nature of what it represented to me was a PERFECT way to end a series like this.

Spoiler

The human question. Is the killing of many in service to the few okay? Can you make that decision if you are the one who is told to throw the switch?

SPOILERS FOR ALL THREE BOOKS!

Spoiler

I thought there was way too many problems with the ending.

First of all to address the dilemma. According to the talk Future Gamner has with Travis 20 million people will die, immediatly. How on earth is this going to create a world of peace/balance? I get that their alien super computer can predict the future but it doesn't actually hold water. Killing the potentially 20 million worst people will not cure the main problem, human nature. Being a dick is not caused by genes or even culture. It's caused by every day circumstances and pure happen stance.

Killing all those people will make the world a better place for a year or a decade maybe, but the future generations will still be dicks. So unless the killings, or should we call them cullings, continue and/or a very strict form of human philosophy propagates through out the world then this is not going to save the world.

Furthermore if 20 million people suddenly died at the same time across the world, and we have to assume a great many of these will be people in positions of power and control, then the world is going to light up with unrest as mass confusion and fear spreads. Religious people will throw a fit. Cults would emerge. There'd be wars and riots and general unrest.

Peace and happiness would be the last thing I would expect from killing 20 million people.

But that is just the problem I have with the final dilemma. There are also problems with the future.

If we all became immortal in 2030 something, what the hell happened to earth? Are we living in some kind of weird super ark structures out of Sim City or how does 22nd century earth handle a hundred billion people eating and shitting their way through the eco system? Did we travel out and colonize other planets? We must have or some really series birth restrictions must be in place. If so, why change the past? So long as a few of us survive and can continue?

The ending never actually explains the Breach, or it kind of does with the 32nd century astronauts, but not really. Instead of some kind of dread cthulhu garbage people on the other side who wants to take over the world it turns out that it's just refuse. How boring! In the first book we got the impression that there was dread purpose behind it all and everything is connected. In the final book it turns out it's just old detritus in a water hose.

And the craziest thing, when you think about, is that the bad guys in the third book are actually the good guys. They hear about Aliens living among us. They hear that there are bad things out there and powerful people who have made a conspiracy. They find out that the bad guys even made second breach! No wonder they sent out assassination teams and bombed the fuck out of Border Tow. Think about it, Gamner and his fellow secret 9, are actually the bad guys. They are opening up a portal so who knows what can come through. It's nice that we get that little philosophical ending but for all we know it was all an illusion and The Spacegoat With a Thousand Young is coming through the portal as soon as Travis says the magic word.

This post has been edited by Maybe Apt: 04 February 2014 - 04:44 PM