Stephen Goldin

I'm a sucker for a massive, galactic-spanning space opera that has everything but the kitchen sink in it (Star Wars anyone?), so when the tongue-in-cheek Tsar Wars came across my recommendation list, it was a given I'd snap it up.

I enjoyed this book far more than perhaps I should have. Galactic empires, political back-stabbing, genetically engineered secret agents, a princess-in-peril, and ... circus performers? Including a cameo with some otherworldly jaguar-like antagonists? Oooh! Yeah. show more This book hit a sweet spot that ain't been hit since Princess Leah kissed Luke Skywalker just before swinging across that yawning chasm and said 'good luck!'

Since when did it become not okay to just plain have FUN reading a book? With a happy ending? Why has everything become about some dark, tortured anti-hero? Can't heroes just be heroic because it's the right thing to do? If you enjoyed the light-hearted feel of the first three Star Wars movies (IV-VI)and lamented the loss of both characterization and feel-goodedness (is that even a word?) from the latter three prequels (I-III), then you'll enjoy this book immensely.

And oh, goody ... there are several more books in this series....

5 lightly-leaping space-faring circus tigers show less

I find organized religion to be deeply offensive to what I *KNOW*. Polly, however, tickled my funnybone, with a deeply irreverent take on God not seen since Alanis Morrissette played god in the movie Dogma. This story was like reading one of those funny, feel-good stories you find in Guideposts magazine, only instead of scripture, this story is hilariously blasphemous to the teeny-tiny confines organized religion has tried to place around so vast a being as God.

I can't tell you how many show more times I giggled as the protagonist (Herodotus ... or 'Hero') navigates his way out of personal tragedy into a Kafhaesque situation where you ask yourself if he died and went to heaven, hell, or some purgatory deeply reminiscent of the Twilight Zone. Polly is irrational and funny, and as she drags Hero in and out of various situations, it will lead you to a much more empowered viewpoint of the Dude Upstairs.

If you are a religious person who believes that God truly makes wagers with the devil and tells people to go slit their son's throats to make burnt offerings, then is NOT the book for you.

4 Perfect Points show less

Wow! Just one more chapter…

As a child, I loved the Tales of the Arabian Nights, of djinns and wizards, clever thieves and maidens-in-peril. The Parsina Saga has that same feel of exotic landscapes and ordinary people caught up in the clash between ancient good vs. evil. I could smell the spices and feel their exhaustion as they stumbled through desert heat, cheered for the characters who jumped right off the page, and found myself staying up late into the night to read 'just one more show more chapter' like Sheherezade's mad sultan.

What was most interesting about this series is the fact it's not your same old boring re-hash of Lord of the Rings (which, let's face it, while we all love it, does every … single … epic fantasy series really need to be set in a medieval world?) I found myself running to the computer to google exotic words such as caravansary which, while I understood perfectly in context of the story was a camel-stable, I just -had- to find out if such a thing existed in real life (they did). Of course then I fell down the Wikipedia rabbit hole to learn about djinns and the ancient caravan routes. Some of the ruins of these caravan-cities were beautiful (google Qalaat al-Madiq). After reading this series, I could picture what they must have looked like in their heyday.

While the length and worldbuilding in this series was excellent for a hard-core epic fantasy doorstopper fan like me, I would feel very comfortable giving these books to my teenage daughters to read. Fingers crossed: maybe THEY will fall down the Wikipedia rabbit hole as well. There is a nice blend of characters of different ages, genders, backgrounds and personalities that there is something for everybody. I think I learned more about the history and geography of the Middle East than in two semesters of World History classes.

My only criticism is the first chapter starts out with an 'old style' history of the city from an omniscient narrator. I'm an action-oriented reader, so I was a lot happier once I got into the head of the characters and started seeing the city through their eyes. Once there, I was absolutely hooked through the next 1,000+ pages of epic goodness. show less

This book sounded pretty good at first and read pretty well at first, but then it simply just degenerated into smut, so I gave up in disgust midway through and didn't finish it.

Birk Aaland is a world class scientist who invents an awesome new space ship engine that revolutionizes space travel and he becomes wealthy and famous. Then, a military dictator takes over and starts purging Earth of undesirables. He imprisons, tortures, and murders millions. Birk is stupid enough to speak out, show more thinking that his fame will protect him, and he soon joins the other political prisoners. His beautiful wife divorces him, his colleagues lie about him, he is sentenced and tortured and doesn't know when he's going to be executed. However, this dictator has filled up so many Earth prisons, that he has to start shipping prisoners off planet to colony worlds, so Birk is loaded on a ship with other prisoners and they take off. And they mutiny and take over the ship, but take some damage. Birk is the only one who knows how to fly, so they fly seeking a suitable planet to land on and finally he flies into a huge gas cloud in desperation and spots an unmapped, perfect planet. However, he doesn't know how to land and crashes the ship. He's the only survivor. He wakes to find he was saved by robots and the world is fully developed and full of functioning robots, but empty of its previous civilization, whom he begins to refer to as the Makers, a warlike alien race, long gone. And so he spends 11 years there, exploring and basically enjoying his solitude.

However, we learn early on he's horny as hell and masturbates frequently. Even the robots joke with him about it. He wants a woman, preferably one who looks like and reminds him of his ex-wife. So, his life is uprooted one day when a new space ship crash lands on the planet. The robots rush to the crash site, while he has ambivalent feelings. What if they're looking for him? What if they're after him? He goes to the site and discovers that, sure enough, it's a military ship. There are six critically wounded survivors, two of whom are women. And so it begins.

One, a tall blonde, reminds him of his ex in his fantasies, so he begins masturbating while fantasizing about her. Three of the men die and then this woman dies. He's distraught because the remaining woman is Japanese and apparently Asians aren't nearly as attractive in his book. The robots come to him with a dilemma. Both of the remaining survivors are doing badly, but it's possible one could survive -- with organ transplants from the other. So he has to play God and decide who lives and who dies. And while he makes a big show about trying hard to decide, naturally he chooses the woman, because above all else, he wants to get laid and he's already begun fantasizing about having her as his sex slave, er mate, and is masturbating frantically to the fantasy.

Michi Nakamura survives. She awakes in a hospital surrounded by robots, confused, and wondering where the people are. Arthur, the robot boss, comes to talk to her and tells her there are people in charge and she'll see someone soon. But that's not good enough for her, so she escapes from her room and flees through the building, eventually locating Birk, where she tells him her colony world was invaded and it's imperative she reach Earth to warn them. He tells her she can't, she's stuck there and she pretty much loses it. And he loses it back. And then the book is full of them fighting and his continued stupid fantasies about her. When he sees her or even thinks about her, no matter how much he despises her, he gets an erection and wants to bone her. Honestly, I know many sci fi writers are perverts, but the only writer I've seen that's more sex obsessed than this one is Heinlein and he's a pervert of the first degree, beaten only by de Sade. I don't know whether Goldin himself is a sex starved maniac or just likes to create characters who are and I can buy someone who hasn't had sex with a woman in over a decade being horny, but every single thought and action surrounding this single woman has to involve sex? It's ridiculous! And Birk also acts like a spoiled brat, like a small child. He's got the emotional breakdown of a four year old. At first I kind of liked him and his explorations and interactions with the robots, but when he went to a dark city to have sex with a robot who, through somehow magically reading his thoughts and memories, could look and act like his ex-wife, I was just kind of repelled. And it just got worse. I don't know how this book ends. I suspect that they wind up fucking each other's brains out and loving it and they both escape this planet and make it back to Earth where she warns the government and he is granted a reprieve. But who knows? I do know that I don't want to continue reading this one track smut to find out. I'm no prude -- I've read de Sade -- but I don't like gratuitous sex just for the sake of turning horny teenage readers on. It's really quite stupid. This could have been a good book. Instead, I can't recommend it at all. show less