From: ted@loft.tnolan.com   
      
   OK, this is way late and covers June, July & August, I think.   
   I was on vacation for a good bit of that, so it was a lot of   
   books, and took me half a dozen sit-downs to get through.   
   I've run a spell check, but am sick enough of it all now that   
   I'm not going to make another pass for missing words, second   
   thoughts or other brain-deadness.   
      
   As usual, most of the links are Amazon affiliate ones which   
   could, in potential, earn me a pittance should you buy through   
   one.   
      
   =====   
      
      
   Hijack the Seas: Tsunami   
   by Karen Chance   
   https://amzn.to/4mdfPkc   
      
   Erstwhile Pythia Cassie Palmer is stranded in the future, in a   
   hell-world where the magical communities war to keep the gods from   
   coming back failed and now Earth is once more their hunting ground.   
      
   Running with a rag-tag group of Faery sea-peoples, her powerful,   
   but on his last nerve lover, and members of several post-apocalyptic   
   witch covens, Cassie must lead a raid in to the ruins of Las Vegas   
   to free her imprisoned Pythian successor, regain her powers, travel   
   back in time and stop any of this from happening.  If that weren't   
   bad enough, they have to travel through ghost-space, and Cassie's   
   long-lost but young-at-this-time father is about to put his own   
   plans into motion, plans that led to, well, Cassie and exactly what   
   that means, or how it could go (more) wrong is unclear at best.   
      
   Supposedly Jack Williamson was accused of plotting by starting with   
   his hero in a body-cast facing a tiger, and gradually adding fangs   
   to the tiger.  I'm not sure a Williamson hero had anything on Cassie   
   Palmer!   
      
   Good fun, as usual.   
      
   Leda's Log (Legion of Angels Book 13)   
   by Ella Summers   
   https://amzn.to/4gdPHUX   
      
   The Legion of Angels books were good popcorn, like the Weather   
   Warden series: efficient, fun, entertainment that would rarely pop   
   into your mind later.  I'm afraid that the last few books, rather   
   went off the rails, with the last one in the series-proper being   
   very labored and hard to follow (or enjoy).   
      
   This book is not really in the series-proper, being an ongoing   
   series of short adventures that Leda had between her main series   
   outings.  Unfortunately, they are pretty bad.  Leda is drawn into   
   the politics of a fringe world where neither god nor demon magic   
   really works so the population is independent.  Leda is tasked with   
   making the "right" woman planetary queen in this setting, something   
   which takes her several semi-random encounters with denizens of   
   that world to accomplish, and which puts a target on her back for   
   those on the other side.   
      
   First of all, Leda's being drawn into all this is just awkward and   
   unconvincing, involving Earth people with totally new, and poorly   
   motivated, kinds of magic, and a random encounter with a woman   
   turned into a tree, whose problems Leda "solves" by convincing her   
   to just go with it.   
      
   Leda has no real understanding of the fringe world, and no reason   
   to think that the Queen candidate she is championing is the best,   
   or even better, but that doesn't stop her from going all in, and I   
   don't believe we are supposed to question her choices.   
      
   And in the end, it's all low-level fol-de-rol such that it apparently   
   never warranted a mention as being an ongoing issue during Leda's   
   "level-up" books.  (Of course, it wasn't mentioned because it hadn't   
   been thought of yet, but that limits the stakes of these vignettes...).   
      
      
   The Runaway Robot Paperback - January 1, 1965   
   by Lester Del Rey   
   https://amzn.to/463QfI8   
      
   This classic juvenile is credited to Del Rey, but is now pretty   
   universally acknowledged to be by Paul W. Fairman.  (In fact, ISFDB   
   references Lawrence Watt-Evans writing here in RASFW on that).   
      
   The basic story is pretty simple.  Paul, a young boy growing up on   
   Ganymede has a companion robot Rex, to watch over him and keep him   
   safe in the moon's hostile environment.  Robots are complicated   
   pieces of equipment, with enough random factors that some are known   
   to be better at various tasks than others.  They're not "intelligent"   
   though, so while it's normal that Paul is attached to Rex, when the   
   family is transferred back to Earth (Paul's father is an executive   
   and Ganymede is a bit of a hardship post) there's nothing untoward   
   about Paul's father selling Rex to save on shipping costs, especially   
   as Paul is now a teenager, and can be expected to look after himself.   
      
   Except we know this isn't quite the case as the book is narrated   
   by Rex, and he very clearly is a person, something Paul strongly   
   believes as well.  It is actually Rex who has bought into the company   
   line and believes he is *not* a person, so after he is sold, he is   
   reluctant to go along with Paul's wild idea to run away.  When he   
   finally does, the two are off on an ill-planned adventure that takes   
   them on a tramp freighter, to Mars and finally to a climax on Earth   
   itself.   
      
   I read this book dozens of times in the 60s, and not since, so there   
   were a number of things I had either forgotten, or didn't realize   
   at the time.   
      
   First, it's pretty obviously a slavery allegory, with Huck Finn   
   explicitly referenced once, and second, Rex's very dry, matter-of-fact   
   narration lets him get in a number of zingers, on the foibles of   
   teenagers, and a number of other subjects.  For instance:   
      
   	The Marspoint bubble doesn't cover the whole Point. It's a   
   	comparatively small one over the ticket offices and restrooms   
   	and eating places and such, with tunnels running out to the   
   	boarding ports of the ships.   
      
   	The place was filled with noise and color (which I wasn't   
   	quite used to yet) and activity. There were people and   
   	creatures from all over the System. The polite, green-shelled   
   	Martians always seemed to be apologizing for being alive.   
   	I saw three seven-foot, wall-eyed Venusians, their bodies   
   	pure white, sitting together eating fish out of a basket.   
   	Venusians live on a certain kind of fish they catch on their   
   	own planet. The fish are all that they can eat, so they   
   	always take their food with them in a basket wherever they   
   	go. I do not like the Venusians. They are very ugly.   
      
   	There was also a party of Mercurians -- maybe a dozen --   
   	their bodies much different from those of the Venusians or   
   	of any other of the System peoples. Small, dried-out,   
   	fireproof bodies. You can hit a Mercurian with a blowtorch,   
   	and if it was from the back he wouldn't even look around.   
      
   	Most of the travelers were from Earth. Earthmen dominate   
   	the System. They were the first and only ones to make   
   	spaceships to go anywhere in the System.   
      
   	Earthmen and Earthwomen are always self-confident and sure   
   	of themselves, and aren't liked very well by the peoples   
   	of the other planets and satellites. This always seemed   
   	strange to me, because the Earth people have done so much   
   	for everyone else. They made space travel possible and gave   
   	a lot of the people on other planets a better way of life.   
   	Therefore it would seem that the other peoples should be   
   	grateful and like the Earth people. But they don't.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)