In the early 21^st Century, the world is crumbling. The economy is failing, the world is ravaged by storms, and people speak of a mythic figure named the Crowman, (aka Black Jack or the Scarecrow), who haunts peoples’ visions and dreams. Some see him as a Satan-like figure, some as savior, while many see this figure as the harbinger of the Black Dawn, the apocalypse that will transform the Earth. Gordon Black is born at the turn of the century just as the apocalyptic slide begins. As a baby, corvids are drawn to wherever Gordon is and as the boy grows, he begins collecting the fallen black feathers from the birds. Throughout Black Feathers, the strongest thing I felt D’Lacey was trying to convey in this dark, apocalyptic tale through his characters is that hope is ever-present.

[The world may be dying, but hope is alive….]

Peter V. Brett’s Demon Cycle has gained readers over the course of the first two installments, The Warded Man and The Desert Spear, and reader anticipation for The Daylight War has been quite high. In the first two novels the demons, which rise in the night, were the greatest threat facing humanity. While the demons are still very present in The Daylight War, humanity’s remnants need to get their collective heads together before the demon threat can effectively be vanquished. In many post-apocalyptic stories—and a case can be made for The Demon Cycle as a post-apocalyptic story—the trigger event marginalizing human society becomes window dressing as the story progresses and the human character’s conflict takes center stage.

Perhaps the most popular current example of a human conflict against an apocalyptic backdrop is The Walking Dead (in both comic and TV format). Sure the zombies are still an ever-present threat, but the characters’ struggles against each other is what drives the story, as their competing ideologies and beliefs define each individual character’s reaction to the threats. The same can be said of The Daylight War, as the clash of cultures between those who consider Arlen to be the Deliverer and the desert dwellers claiming Jardir as the Deliverer.

[Brett’s best effort yet.]

In The Kassa Gambit, the human race has expanded beyond the confines of Earth. So much so that Earth is a distant memory, a legend if you will, with the word “Earth” residing in the modern lexicon of the novel as something of a mythical expletive. After many planets have been deemed to have no intelligent life, those lifeless planets were mined for their resources. Consequently, humanity comes to realize they are alone. At the start of the novel, the space freighter Ulysses, captained by Prudence Falling, is en route to the farming planet Kassa, from which it hears no signal or signs of life. The planet Kassa has been devastated with no life remaining. The cause of this destruction will be at the heart of the novel’s mystery, for it seems non-human aliens are responsible. This, per my earlier statement, should not be possible because no traces of intelligent life were found prior to the novel’s events.

Prudence’s ship is the typical motley crew found in such stories: the simple brute Jorgun; Melvin, the snarky engineer; Garcia the cargo-man. Much like Malcolm Reynolds and the crew of Serenity, the cargo they carry isn’t always above-board or within regulations of the League, humanity’s governing body. So when the Ulysses tries to get a better handle on the situation on Kassa, Prudence and her crew come into contact with space cop Lt. Kyle Daspar. Kyle isn’t exactly what he seems either, nor do many of the things characters have taken for granted seem to be.

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Alastair Reynolds is one of the Big Names in Science Fiction; he writes large scale far future novels many would place at the forefront of Space Opera. With Blue Remembered Earth, Reynolds launches a new milieu titled Poseidon’s Children – I say milieu rather than trilogy since, at this point, the novels in the series are planned as connected stand-alones rather than a contiguous story over three novels. Regardless, he paints his story on a grand canvas balanced with intimate human moments.

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Military Science Fiction hasn’t always been my go-to Speculative Fiction subgenre. I liked it, sure, but I was more often drawn to Epic Fantasy with toe-dips into Urban Fantasy, New Weird, Space Opera to name a few. Over the past year or so, I’ve been gravitating to Military SF for reasons I can’t quite explain, maybe the space battles, perhaps a yearning for something to fill the post-Battlestar Galactica hole, but for whatever reason, I’ve read quite a few of them in the past year. One series I’ve seen discussed over the past year, in my internet circles, is Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series. Maybe because the first six-book series recently completed and is receiving release in the UK through Titan books this year, or maybe because a new ‘sequel’ series was launched this year with Dreadnaught – including a “promotion” from Mass Market Paperback to Hardcover. These things tell me Jack Campbell has been doing good things with the series. Reading Dreadnaught earlier in the year gave me an inkling those things were right. What finally convinced me was reading Dauntless, the first Lost Fleet novel.

When March Upcountry published in 2001, David Weber was well-established in Military Science Fiction, with nine books of his Honor Harrington saga plus an additional 10 novels published. In short, he was a Military SF brand name. John Ringo, his ‘apprentice’ partner in crime for March Upcountry, was a relatively new writer, having published the first two books of his Legacy of Aldenata/Posleen War series. For Ringo the rest, as they say, is history.

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