book rec
I think I’ve mentioned it here before, but never with a link where you could actually buy it, but one of my favorite written science fiction series, the Exordium by Sherwood Smith (aka sartorias and Dave Trowbridge is being re-released in e-book format and the first book is available now from Book View Café. For a meager $3.99, you, too, can download The Phoenix in Flight, the opening salvo in a rollicking good space opera that’s equal parts (for certain definitions of equal, anyway) Farscape and Dune, with maybe a smidgen of Star Wars and The Three Stooges. I loved this series so much out of high school that I had two full sets, one to keep and one to lend (I did the same thing with the Dragonriders of Pern).
Here’s the blurb from the web site:
“Smith and Trowbridge describe the flavor of their five-book space opera Exordium as a cross between Star Wars and Dangerous Liaisons with a touch of the Three Stooges. With its fast-moving blend of humor and horror, of high-tech skiffy and the deep places of the human heart, The Phoenix in Flight launches the reader into a complex, multi-layered universe as Brandon nyr-Arkad, dissolute youngest son of the ruler of the Thousand Suns, abandons the life of Service planned for him and flees into the lawless Rift. Only slowly does he discover that the world he rejected now lies in smoking ruins as the ritual vengeance of Jerrode Eusabian against Brandon’s father, twenty years in preparation, culminates in an explosion of interstellar violence. With both his brothers dead and his father the Panarch imprisoned, Brandon becomes the Panarchy’s last hope.”
(Heh. I didn’t actually read that before I described it above. Just so’s you know. :P)
Here’s the blurb from the web site:
“Smith and Trowbridge describe the flavor of their five-book space opera Exordium as a cross between Star Wars and Dangerous Liaisons with a touch of the Three Stooges. With its fast-moving blend of humor and horror, of high-tech skiffy and the deep places of the human heart, The Phoenix in Flight launches the reader into a complex, multi-layered universe as Brandon nyr-Arkad, dissolute youngest son of the ruler of the Thousand Suns, abandons the life of Service planned for him and flees into the lawless Rift. Only slowly does he discover that the world he rejected now lies in smoking ruins as the ritual vengeance of Jerrode Eusabian against Brandon’s father, twenty years in preparation, culminates in an explosion of interstellar violence. With both his brothers dead and his father the Panarch imprisoned, Brandon becomes the Panarchy’s last hope.”
(Heh. I didn’t actually read that before I described it above. Just so’s you know. :P)