Member Since: March 27, 2009
Doc Finch
Books
This member has not published any books.Smashwords book reviews by Doc Finch
- Tales From Gundarland
on June 09, 2010
"Like most collections, Gunderland turns out to have both good and not so engrossing stories, but the majority fall well into the "good" side. The Queen’s Hero turned out to be my favorite story. The plotting is intricate enough to catch and hold the reader’s attention, and with enough scope and detail to generate new interest at most every turn. The battle scenes in Part 4 are some of the best I’ve read since Agincourt [by Bernard Cornwell] no small feat. This story alone is worth the price of admission." Doc Finch
- Pilgrennon's Beacon
on July 29, 2011
Review by: Doc Finch on July 29,2011 When an austic girl, Dana, is taken into a hospital following a school fight and X-reys show a piece of metal in her brain, even though there are no visible scars on her head, it sets into motion a journey which will have a worldwide impact. This new novel by Manda Benson, a sci-fi thriller, has a lot of travel involved: from Coventry, England, to Scotland and to the outer islands of the Hebrides. There are even some memorable excursions along the River Styx in a Virtual Realith world, where she meets a three-headed dog named Cerberus. The journey begins when Dana escapes from the hospital but is shortly thereafter captured by Jananin, who calls herself Dana's "mother", but may not be. Jananin begins to fill in Dana's history with her version of how she and her siblings came to have autistic traits and odd capabilities. Dana's ability, or skill, is that she is linked mentally to any form of electronic control system, especially computers. It includes having Global Positioning System data as a constant companion and being able to transmit into other systems, along with other useful skills. Jananin also builds a strong case against a man named Ivo Pilgrennon, whom she blames for stealing her scientific work and perverting it for his personal benefit. Using Dana's GPS skills, they drive north to Inverness, then across to the headlands leading to the Hebrides, where there is a beacon luring Dana and her siblings to Pilgrennon's island hidaway. It is an interesting trip, as the author's careful descriptions take the reader for an armchair tour of northern Scotland and the rugged coast on the North Atlantic. By this time Jananin has prepared Dana for her destiny and drops her off at the islands ferry to find Pilgrennon and kill him. Dana does find Pilgrennon but his death is not accomplished so easily. After her first VR trip, hearing Pilgrennon's story, and seeing two more of her siblings, she suspects there is a threat much greater than him. She begins to believe that Cereberus is a super-computer, a self-aware artificial intelligence that may be working for the government, or setting up a self-defense screen that is dangterous to anyone who encounters it. When Jananin also joins them on the island, new alliances are formed, then broken, then re-formed. Ivor Pilgrennon, Jananin and Dana find themselves guarding against one another, then joing to defeat a new enemy, then another. They find themselves fighting off government aircraft, then plotting against one another as they move step-by-step to eliminate the real threat. A lot of dust is raised and blood lost in the ongoing skirmishes, and the action is almost non-stop, but discussions and opinions find room to be aired, with some good points highlighted on medical ethics, boundries in research, and a well written comparison of Dana and Pandora of the famous box. There is a sweeping and action filled climax, complete with an air battle that is unique in my experience. But Dana's world comes out changed. I would not be the least bit surprised to see a sequel to this fast moving, thought provoking novel. After all, not all the siblings were accounted for.