Endless Blue

Wen Spencer is amazing at depicting cultures - worldbuilding, quickly and without any data dumps. Here we get three cultures in the first chapter - Novaya Rus, the United Colonies, and the Reds. Then aspects of those - the new Reds and their owner have an entirely different slant on things. Then the various ships and landings of Sargasso - cultures, and individuals within cultures. There's an adventure story and a couple romances threaded through, mysteries and puzzles - I kept thinking "why don't these people _talk_ to one another?" If Mikhail had told Turk what he'd learned, and vice versa, it would have simplified things immensely. An amazing story, I'd like to read more in this universe(s), but the story is complete in this book. It show more reminded me why I like Wen Spencer. show less

Space is big. Ships disappear, never to be seen again. Blame the aliens, blame human error... it happens. But when a warp drive from a missing starship drops back into space under mysterious circumstances, the UC Council wants some answers. Captain Mikhail Volkov is the lucky one elected to venture into the unknown in what's probably a suicidal effort to find them. He, along with his Red second in command find themselves lost on a mysterious world of oceans, where islands float high above the water and the crews of wrecked, missing starships eke out a spare existence. Can Mikhail and his crew convince the locals to help them get home?

Paige Bailey and her family run a hand-to-mouth salvage operation. Paige needs money if she's going to show more repair her rundown salvage boat. Captain Valkov and his quest offer a lucrative deal - but the Bailey's have their own secrets, and Mikhail's goals may spell disaster for the family...

Finished this wanting to know what happens next - hopefully Spencer will revisit this world soon. show less

This book gave me a deep nostalgic feeling for the works of Jo Clayton. (There might also be some of Niven’s Known Space in the flavor, but I’m mostly reminded of the patchwork anomaly worlds and environments within Clayton’s paracosm.) Despite the feeling of nostalgia, it was a difficult book to read due to deep knee jerk hatred for certain plot points and social mores. (In other words, I was in a bad position of loving some of the characters while wanting most of their world/universe/society to die in a blaze of napalm. This is not a comfortable feeling to have, most of the time.)

The basic back story is that an alien race called the nefrim has apparently decided to wipe out the entire human race. The human race is fighting back show more mostly by using genetically enhanced humans known as “Reds” to fight for them. The Reds undergo a vicious training program that renders them almost completely incapable of integrating with normal human society. Our heroes are one Mikhail Volkov and his not-quite-foster brother Turk, a Red that acts as the commander/overseer for his Red crew. When a ship called Fenrir, long thought lost to a “subspace jump” reappears--and looks like it had spent a lot of time in an ocean somewhere Mikhail is sent off to try to discover where the ship went.

Read the rest of this review at A Wicked Convergence of Circumstances show less

A stand-alone science fiction novel. Humanity is at war with an alien species, and for many years warp ships have been disappearing. This has generally been put down to mis-jumps in combat; until a warp engine from one of the missing ships turns up at a space station. Encrusted with coral, and with odd modifications, a crew is sent to follow it back - and try and solve the mystery. What they find is bizarre beyond belief; but they manage to return to 'normal' space and at the same time, bring the war to an end.

This was one of the first Spencers I read. It's available as an ebook, but I still have my paperback copy.

Recommended.

Very fast flowing story in a marvelous inverted world with good aliens and good human characters.

I enjoyed this story of two "brothers", one the cloned heir of a famous Russian leader (Mikail), and the other a genetically enhanced cat/person hybrid (Turk). There were a lot of ongoing subplots with prejudice, the pressures of leadership and the support of family. I found the characters to all be very likeable. I enjoyed the romantic aspects of the story between Turk and Paige, as well as the mystery of the planet they land on. My only complaint would be the ending of the story. I would have liked to have a little expansion of what happened after the resolution of the main story. I felt that after going through this journey with these characters, the abrupt ending, especially of Mikhail's particular storyline, to feel like a little show more bit of a let down. Overall, I would definitely recommend reading this very entertaining science fiction tale. show less

I didn't take to this as I did to Tinker, but the world building very very interesting. I'm not fond of stories that swap points of view until friends are reunited, but that's just me. The whole sex as part of the translator service was a little creepy, as was the cat fancy fetish.