14 Degrees Below Zero isn’t so much about solving how a crime was committed, but so much as why it was committed. The novel opens with the crime in progress, then retreats several days to follow the events that led up to it.

The story is one of a triangle between Jay, her father, Lewis and her boyfriend, Stephen. Jay struggles as a young single mother, forced to give up on college when she got pregnant and trying to find her place in the world. Her struggle is paralleled by Lewis, her father, going through a mid-life crisis after having lost his wife earlier that year to cancer. Stephen is the college-professor boyfriends who loves Jay and yearns to give her a better life for herself and her daughter. Part of that is breaking free of the manipulative grip of Lewis.

The story is a fascinating character study of each of the players in this drama. Each of them is motivated out of a love that may or may not blind them to the realities of the situation. Lewis doesn’t see his constant involvement in and belittling of Jay’s life and choices as bad. He is motivated out of wanting her to have a better life.

A series of events and confrontations leads to a violent act, an attempted murder and events spiralling out of control. Skinner teases us with the violent act early and then spends three quarters of the novel setting it up and the last quarter watching the fall-out. It’s a fascinating, complex and character driven novel that will keep the pages turning and linger with you long after the final page is turned.

On the day of his 75th birthday, John Perry visits the grave of his wife and joins the army. From this intriguing hook, John Scalzi builds a superlative new universe and a strong, solid, immensely readable science-fiction debut. Old Man’s War is up for the Hugo this year and having read four of the five novels up for this award, it gets my vote as best science-fiction novel of the year.

Reading this novel, I was reminded of the wonder and compulsion to turn the next page just to see where events went next that I got reading Ender’s Game for the first time years ago.

A highly recommended novel. And I can’t wait to see where Scalzi takes us next.

In recent years, it seems there’s been a move in publishing to expand upon the most famous universes created by some of the greats of science-fiction. We’ve had the three B’s (Bear, Brin, Bradford) creating a new Foundation trilogy in the Asimov universe while over in the brilliant universe that was Frank Herbert’s Dune, we’ve had his son Brian and author Kevin J. Anderson working to fill in some of the gaps.

The Bulterian Jihad is the first of a trilogy called the Legacy of Dune and it seeks to explore the war between machines and humans that is often alluded to and referenced in Dune. I can’t aruge with the pedigree of having Frank Herbert’s son write the novel, since he created an encyclopedia for the Dune universe and would have first-hand knowledge of how things fit together.

That said, the book is a pale imitation of the style of Frank Herbert. It’s told in a more episodic nature and the characters, while interesting, lack something essnetial from Frank Herbert’s original vision. The book is fast-paced and has its moments—it does the epic battles in the first-round of the war to overthrow the machines very well. And while the authors make it fun to revisit the Dune universe, it’s not quite as rich an experience as the original novel was.

Outside of Peter David’s New Frontier novels, the DS9 re-launch is the best thing going in Trek publishing right now. (The Titan series could jump up there given time).

What’s amazing about the DS9 books is that unlike David’s New Frontier series which has one author and one vision, the DS9 novels are written by a handful of different writers, each of whom brings their strengths to the stories but yet there’s a consistent feel and direction to these books.

It’s been over a year since the last installment of the World’s of Deep Space Nine hit the shelves, leaving many characters lives in chaos and the series at a crossroads. David Mack’s Warpath picks up literally seconds after the stories of Worlds of DS9 and doesn’t let up to the final page. This one of those books that is instantly addictive. The story shifts from one plot thread to another (there are about three running) but you never feel as if one is being short changed. Instead, all three are interesting and compelling and while we concentrate a good deal on Kira, Ro, Vaughn, Tarrantar and Prynn, the novel does allow us a glimpse of how the other characters are doing and reacting to events.

And while we do get a good bit of Tarrantar and Vaughn, the real star of this book is Pyrnn. She’s been one of the lesser developed charaters of the re-launch, but Mack handles her with ease and confidence here. She’s the star of the show and my opinion of the character changed over the course of the book—for the better.

In TV terms, this is the season premiere for the DS9 reluanch. It will bring you up to speed on what’s going on in the universe quickly and it starts to set up things for future books to examine (not soon enough in my estimation….I need a new book now!). If you’re new to the series, while you can jump in and Mack does a great job of explaining where things are, you still may be lost. I recommend it, but only if you’re willing to invest the time to catch-up on the series. The series is worth is and Warpath will be that much better.

In his introduction to “The Stars My Destination” Neil Gaiman observes that one of the most quickly dated genres in the literary world is science-fiction. And he’s right. It’s hard to create a timeless science-fiction novel of universe that doesn’t quickly become dated or you have to read it from the persepctive of readers of that era.

I’d argue that Dune is one of those novels that transcends the time it was written.

Alfred Bester’s “The Stars My Destination” is another.

Bester creates the ultimate anti-hero in Gulliver Foyle. Foyle is a a common man in Bester’s vision of the future. Foyle has no drive, no ambition and no future until he’s trapped on a ship left for dead in space and left for dead himself. Foyle decides that no matter what it takes, he will avenge himself upon the ship that passed him by and refused to rescue him after teasing that it might. The rest of the novel concerns Foyle’s rise from common man to a man of means and a sophistication and his unrelented obsession with revenge. Along the way, his life is touched by four different women, each of whom has a profound affect on Foyle and his quest.

The story is borrowed heavily from “The Count of Monte Cristo” but Bester re-imagines it against a backdrop of a future society that is superbly realized. Bester drops in things that other writers would take entire novels or series to explore. Instead of spending pages examining the ins and outs of things, Bester creates a future world and society that is both timeless and interesting. His world-building skills are on full display here and they’re well worth the price of admission.

But what makes the novel timeless is the characters. Foyle is just one of an assortment of characters whose actions are all motivated by the fact they believe they’re in the right. Each character is intersting and they weave in and out of the novel in fascinating ways. And don’t ever think just becuase someone has gone off-stage that they won’t be back.

But all of the characters and world-building would be nothing if not for a good plot. And “The Stars My Destination” has that and then some. It’s fast paced, fun and frentic. I found myself turning the pages, wanting to find out where Foyle’s obsessive quest would take him next and why. There’s a conspiracy angle to the story as well and that keeps the interest going.

Make no mistake-this is one of the greatest novels-science fiction or otherwise—ever written. Definitely worth reading at least twice in a lifetime, possibly more.

There are good and bad things about shaking up the formula of a long-running series of novels. If done right, a change of pace can re-energize and re-invigorate a series of novels. However, if done wrong, the series can aliennate long terms readers and the book where the change occurs can be seen as the “jump the shark” moment. (See any of the recent Scarpatta novels by Patricia Cornwell)

So, when I heard that Stephen White was going to change things a bit for his latest Alan Gregory novel, Kill Me, I was a bit concerned.

And I’ll have to admit-for the first 100 or so pages I was a bit concerned that having his usual protagonist Alan Gregory as a secondary character to the story might hurt Kill Me. But it didn’t really hurt the novel-at least not as much as I originally assumed.

Kill Me is told from the first-person perspective of a man whose name we never hear. Mr X (for lack of a better term) is a man of means who likes to live life on the edge. He’s a man in control of his environment. But when a friend is injured in a deep-sea diving incident and becomes little more than a vegetable, he begins to question under what circumstance quality of life would end and he’d just be alive instead of living. Through a friend, he’s brought into contact with a group called the Angels of Death, who for the right price will allow you to choose the exact set of circumstances under which you will be killed by their group rather than just be kept alive for heaven only knows how long.

Mr X signs up and then is diagnosed with a brain anerysm. Of course, during this time he meets the son he didn’t know he had and wants to put that relationship at peace before he goes. But the Angels of Death plan to deliver on their promise to kill him, despite his protests (it’s part of the program). Now Mr. X must find a way to live and elude the Angels of Death all while reconnecting with his son and wrapping up that loose end in his life.

What starts out as an interesting morality tale on the right to die and choosing the circumstances under which you’d want to go quickly descends into a standard action-adventure piece. The final 100 or so pages of this novel are filled with one bizarre plot twist after another and the ending is so out of left field and abrupt that it left me shaking my head and wondering why White chose this direction after the novel had been doing so well up to that point.

In the end, it’s a good book that could have been great. It’s ruined by a hasty and ill-conceived ending.

And while I applaud White’s diversion from his usual Alan Gregory novel, I think part of the appeal of this series is Gregory. I hope the next novel gets back to at least checking in with Gregory and th rest of the regular cast.

Foop! starts off on a strong note, but it too convinced of its own wit to be anything more than a disappointment.

It should have been more entertaining and it’s trying so hard to be.

A Douglas Adams-like story about the absurdities surrounding time travel and its implication, Foop! never lives up to its early promise. The middle lags a lot and I figured out where the story was headed long before the main characters did. Whether it’s because I’ve read a bit of these type of stories in the past or it was just a bit too predictable I’m not sure.

For want of a doughnut, a company is reorganized pretty much sums up Max Barry’s latest novel Company.

If the premise sounds absurd, you’re right. But just like the corporate world, a single dougnut brings about the decline and fall of a company. It serves as a catalyst for the absurdity that can be and is corporate life.

What Jennifer Government did for the advertising industry, Company does for corporate life. But where Company trumps Jennifer is that the story follows a single protagonist in the story of corporate absurdity. If you’ve seen Office Space or The Office, you have a taste for what you’ll find in these pages. Thankfully, the story is more linear and doesn’t work as hard to have characters’ lives intersect ala Crash as was the case in Jennifer Government.

Stephen Jones is hired right out of college to work for the Zephyr Company. Within a day he’s promoted over people who have been with the company for years and tries to discover the rhyme and reason as to why certain decisions are made. As he tries to figure out the mind of the suits and just what it is Zephyr does, he’s drawn into a whole different world, one he never expected.

Max Barry’s satire is biting, especially as you recognize fellow co-workers in the pages of Company. The absurdity of behavoir from Roger the guy who can’t let go of his doughnut being eaten to Elizabeth, the sales rep who falls uncontrollably in love with her clients…that is until they sign the contracts, you will recognize people you know and have worked with. Yes, Barry does make some of the characters one-dimensional but overall, his wry comments on corporate life and the corporate world are dead-on.

The only negative is that the reveal of what is really behind Zephyr comes to early in the story and the novel coasts from there.

Never let it be said that Greg Iles writes the same book twice.

The man apparently doesn’t realize that once you become a bestselling author, you should find a formula and stick to it.

That’s good news for his fans. I’ve read four of his novels so far and have enjoyed each of them for different reasons. But one thing they all have in common—they’re all great.

The Quiet Game may be one of his stronger works. I admit I read Turning Angel, the follow-up novel with protagonist Penn Cage before I got to the Quiet Game. But I will give Iles credit—Turning Angel is a novel that features the same characters but doesn’t ruin the ending of The Quiet Game in any way.

My reading of Turning Angel first may have made the first few chapters go a bit slower than I’d like (I already knew all the characters in play and so to meet them again for the first time wasn’t exactly a page-turner). The story starts slowly, putting all the pieces into play within the first 100 or so pages. Then, it takes off. Penn Cage returns to his hometown of Natchez to help his daughter cope with the loss of her mother. And to help himself deal with it. While there, Penn starts to dig under the surface of some unresolved family issues and undercovers a powderkeg. His father is being blackmailed and when Penn resolves this, he uncovers a far more horrifying conspiracy of silence that leads all the way to the highest corridors of power in the United States. As Penn uncovers the truth, he and his family are placed in greater danger, but that only reinforces his resolve to dig deeper and solve the mysteries at the heart of the novel.

The highest compliment I can pay this novel is that in the last 100 or so pages, some revelations start to come fast and furious that could make you roll your eyes and say, “No, really, come on on!” Instead of that, Iles sets them up well and really makes them feel authentic. Iles takes what could be cliches and makes them new again.

This is a great novel, easily on par with Turning Angel. I will have to save Turning Angel is a bit better but that’s only because it grabs you by the collar and doesn’t let go until the final page. But the common element to both novels is Iles superlatives storytelling skills and how the novel lingers in your mind long afte the final page is turned.

Kim Stanley Robinson has made quite the reputatation as a science-fiction writer with his Mars trilogy winning numerous awards and accolates (all of them deserved).

Now, he’s back with a new trilogy. And while it would be easy to classify it as science-fiction, that might be selling the book short. Forty Signs of Rain is more than a science-fiction story, it’s a cautionary tale of what could go wrong if we don’t start paying attention to the environment.

What I liked about this book is there are several distinct groups working on the issue from different angles. There’s no one super genius who figures it all out but instead we see various people having one peice of the puzzle and we, the reader, are able to fit together what is happening and what is going to happen. It’s a fascinating book and the good part is—Robinson makes all of the characters at least interesting enough that you want to spend time with them.

I will admit I was a bit irritated that it ended on a cliffhanger. But it’s a trilogy. That’s only to be expected.