Brian M. Thomsen (1959–2008)

I just had to stop for a few moments while cataloging my Forgotten Realms books and say a few words about this book. It is so bad I don't really know where to begin. I guess with relating how cheesy it is. I have enjoyed FR and Dragonlance for almost twenty years now and some of their books are obviously better than others, but the sheer level of absurdity in this one in particular was way too much to take. How about a little merchant gnome named 'Gnorm', and every body knows his name, or show more the airship Minnow that obviously crashes in some odd corner of the realms. Now, in its favor is the fact that there are descriptions of rarely travelled corners of a vastly chronicled shared fantasy world for gamers like myself, but my god! There are limits of goofiness beyond which the human mind can never recover. Seriously, Forgotten Realms novels are on the whole pretty good fantasy stories, but this one is for veterans only. Newer readers should stick to the Salvatore Drizzt series, Douglas Niles' Moonshae, Ed Greenwood (the Realms creator) or really about any of them but Once Around the Realms. show less

A collection of military sci-fi from some of the genre's greats. My favorites are probably Keith Laumer's BOLO entry and Heinlein's The Long Watch, but Eric Freer's contribution is a welcome tone lightener, and John Ringo's offering is a reminder of why I like his stuff. Otherwise, it's typical anthology fare - either short enough to plow through, or just long enough to wet the literary taste buds and leave you wanting more.

This book is a collection of 15 military sci-fi short stories. I like some sci-fi and I like military history, so I thought the combination could be interesting. Each of the contributors is a military veteran, several are well known sci-fi authors. The stories include military engagements, genetic mutations, alien invasions, and self-sacrifice for the highest cause. There was a good balance between serious, sad, and humorous stories. I think my favorite had to be "The Question" by Patrick A show more Vanner. Basically inter-galactic relations with a new species were ruined due to human allergies. The whole story ends up being an answer to 'the question,' and it's just amusing. There were a couple of stories I didn't enjoy as much, simply due to the level of violence for no apparent reason. They just seemed under-developed. But overall an enjoyable book. show less

The Further Adventures of Beowulf does what it says on the cover. The book starts off with an interesting introduction discussing the legacy of the Beowulf text and Middle-Earth. This is followed by 'The Deeds of Beowulf' translated into prose by John Earle in 1892. This prose version is rather old fashioned and has a few issues with sentence structure, which could have used cleaning up and clarification by an editor, or better yet, the inclusion of a better prose version or even just a show more summary of the Beowulf story. The book then provides 4 fantasy-tales, by 4 different authors, involving the adventures of Beowulf after his run-in with Grendel. These 4 fantasy adventures are written in a style that reminds me of a typical Sword & Sorcery/ Forgotten Realms Novel, but each short story is rather interesting, or at least entertaining. Each chapter/story is followed by a short (rather pointless) interlude which doesn't fit and could have been left out. The book also includes a rather useful (especially for scholars of Beowulf) partial, annotated bibliography of the Beowulf cannon through to current times.

In short, this is an entertaining, but not spectacular, fantasy anthology featuring the further adventures of Beowulf that could have used improvements with some of the other material. show less