Jeff Rovin

This book holds the dubious honor of being the only one I've ever thrown to the recycling bin. And that after managing to read barely 100 pages.
The moment I read that the best place to find a priest in San Sebastian (Northern Spain) at dawn is in the harbour, blessing the boats for the fishermen, the book flew straight into the paper bin. I wouldn't have touched it again with a stick.
That single detail showed an ignorance of epic proportions. If that was an example of the research to write show more that novel, I don't need to know more. show less

Another heaping helping of crazysauce that had me going "Wait. Wait. WTF did I just read?" Time travel (sorta-kinda) and some kind of magnetic stones that make animals go crazy and spontaneous combustion and Antarctica and, oh yeah, the voodoo priestess from the previous book shows up at the end and offers vague warnings of danger and... Look, it's just crazy. It's not just the plot and the characters that are over-the-top, but there's also this pseudo-mystical angle where it feels like the show more book is trying to bee deep and profound, but just comes off as woo-woo New Age "spirituality".

You know how sometimes it's three a.m. and you can't sleep and you're flipping through channels and come across some weird sci-fi movie with an actor you like and so you watch it, but it's so chock full of every possible thing that it makes almost no sense and yet you're compelled to watch but when it's over you're left wondering if you had really watched what you just thought you watched? Yeah, this series is that movie in book form. show less

Of course I requested this from Netgalley because of Gillian Anderson. This was risky, of course, because the fact that someone is a terrific actor and seems kind of splendid in real life (based on interviews I've heard) doesn't all mean she can write a lick. Which may partly explain the presence of Jeff Rovin on the ticket; Amazon describes him as an established ghostwriter, so I wonder exactly what the partnership here was like.

It doesn't really matter whether they wrote it together or show more whether Gillian Anderson just lent her name. It's good. It's really good. Unique plot, interesting characters, sharp writing – I'm sold. I dislike trying to read a Netgalley which comes anywhere but first in a series, but I wanted to try this – and I did – and for the first time I stopped reading a book for another reason than bad ones. I stopped reading because I bought the first book in The EarthEnd Saga on Audible (read by Gillian Anderson!) and I want to listen to that before I come back to A Dream of Ice, so that I can fully appreciate it. So you could say I've abandoned this book – but just this once it's only for now. I'll be back. I'm looking forward to it.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review. show less

It's amazing that one of the greatest works of science fiction world-building was achieved by the author of the How to Win at Nintendo series. Now, he showed us how to build at world-building.

In writing the Guide, Rovin took a simple premise: create five planets with different chemistries, and derive an evolutionary and culturally history from that starting point.

Oh, and add alien dinosaurs.

Firstly, we need people to look at the alien dinosaurs. Rovin writes in the fashion of a company's show more tourist guide, as if Disney owned the Enterprise. The Star Cruiser and its history is amusingly detailed, and the satire that goes through the book starts early. One one hand, the family trip service reminds you that its brothel serves all sexual orientations! Right after this surprising bit of inclusivity, it also mentions that all legal drugs, from marijuana to heroin, are distributed as well.

The book settles in five chapters, starting from the evolutionary history to the native life and tourist accommodations. Some worlds are cooler than others, I admit.

Dis is a world that world fit great in any science fiction RPG. It's a hellscape where the blind, tremor-sensing intelligent life hides in tunnels under the ground. The Alladis are primitive, but really cool with their human visitors watching them jump to the next cultural level and remake their society.

Morana is completely terraformed, its inhabitants so focused on perfection that they've completely edited sex out of their biology. That should tell you how interesting they are.

Argos is awesome.

Argos is what you get if you throw a box of action figures at a hyperactive eight-year-old gifted kid and asked him to create. Skynet-style machine overlords hunt rebel humans in jungle cities full of space dinosaurs, orc-like ex-slave Brutes, and the mysterious maybe-wizard gnomes.

Argos deserves to be immortalized on the side of a van.

Uriel is a perfectly cromulent science fiction tableau of strange creatures, bizarre landscapes, and weird planetary physics. It also smells. Not shabby at all.

Virtus gave the younger me intense existential nightmares. The inhabitants, the Lam, are sarcastic philosophers who live rooted to the ground. Blind, they argue and bicker as many of them each day disappear, presumably to ascend to Heaven.

Humans are still wondering whether we should tell them that they're actually being eaten alive by a viscous, stealthy predator.

Have we mentioned yet a peaceful race of sensitive artists and poets who accept a pampered life of seven years of creation in return for being eaten as livestock by an even smarter race?

If Voltaire, Douglas Adams, and Harlan Ellison got drunk together, Virtus would be the result.

Then there's the strange artifacts, frozen giants, and an ancient satellite the size of a moon . . .

The book is spectacular. It's a constant stream of imaginative images and mind-blowing concepts. The art is stunning, with recognizable comic artists like Sandman's Rick Veitch. Whether read as a experience or mined for gaming ideas, this is a real undiscovered gem in the crown of the genre. show less