Juanita Coulson

A futuristic, post-cataclysmic, sci-fi soap opera. At least, that's my impression. And, while I was never really intrigued by conventional soap operas, this held my interest pretty well.

On an Earth whose population has been decimated and whose landscape has been forcibly altered by natural causes and the effects of mankind's weapons, political and national boundaries have been altered. The Saunder family has gained wealth and power due to the actions of the manipulative matriarch, and the show more three offspring are in positions of great power and responsibility. But the family has cracks that ultimately will risk tearing the family apart. And into this volatile mix comes news that an alien spacecraft is approaching Earth.

Hysteria, propaganda, deceit, betrayal, and redemption. What every good stereotypical soap opera needs. Throw in some advanced technologies and alien visitation, and you've got a rather interesting result. show less

Many of the premises of this novel are common to several science fiction books: a future world in which the gap between rich and poor is very wide, a fairly recent past of war and disease, and a violently sovereign and populist politics. Indeed, read in 2021, a book written in 2016 about a pandemic and an Earth First movement gives one the creeps. That said, underlying the novel is a complicated family feud, the mechanisms of which are quite well described. The alien vehicle approaching show more Earth is the obvious trigger for a series of conflicts simmering beneath an apparently calm, if not benign, surface and, after a brief moment of reckoning, the happy ending is fairly predictable. show less

With a very tedious beginning, the story opens up to a pretty brisk YA political thriller…sadly, with a kind of hokey ending.
The hero belongs to an illustrious, and wealthy, family that is working, not very hard, to keep the family together. The older brother's political ambitions to be the de facto elected ruler of the world are hampered by his siblings' ambitions. All of this in the remnants of several horrific world wars where no political group trusts any other. Meanwhile, to make show more things more complicated, one of the siblings discovers that an alien artifact is homing in on the solar system and wants to talk to them. The wrong attitude to all this is assumed by the wrong people who want to assume the worst and are struggling to destroy the hero's rich family hegemony...and the alien artifact. All at the cost of human viability on Earth. show less

Alighting in a new land, Tyrus and Erezjan are no strangers to a life of wandering. They have travelled far and wide across the realm of Krantin, descrying regions from afar. Now they find themselves integrated into life in a distant and eccentric new province, Couredh. Before long, it becomes obvious that they will not be able to conceal the true nature of their arrival from the locals for long, as their true mission is to track down a murderous wizard named Vraduir.

They attempt to prevent show more him from wreaking more havoc and destruction upon the people of Krantin. An alliance is forged in secret between Tyrus and Erezjan and the malicious wizard's defecting companions, Jathelle and Ilissa. They too know the doom that faces this world if they stand by and do nothing.

As they track their quarry ever northward into the cold and barren wildlands, they encounter magic as they have never seen--both of man and of the gods. Vraduir's thirst for power has caused him to sacrifice much in order to forge and bond with the gods and call upon their power. Tyrus, Erezjan, Jathelle, Ilissa, and their companions journey toward the Death God's Citadel, a realm at the top of the world from which no man has ever returned. show less