Stories To Paint By: The Destroyermen Series

Time for another installment in 'Stories to Paint by', where I review audio books I've been listening to while painting.  As always, I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum, hopefully nothing more than you'd get from the jacket of the book, though if there are possible spoilers beyond that I'll warn you. I tend to not even like movie previews because they give away far too much, so I won't do the same to others. What I will do is explain why I think the book is good or lacking, and why and in what ways you might enjoy it.  On we go!

I had intended to do this review after having finished the third book in the series, but I found I couldn't stop listening to them, and kept delaying the review for 'just one more book'.  The Destroyermen series by Taylor Anderson is an adventurous romp that is hard to set aside. If you're a fan of World War II, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Parallel Worlds or Alternate History, or like me, a fan of all of these genres, then it's easily worth a look.  This work falls into a sub-genre that is hard to define, since there are not a lot of stories like this.  Central to the concept is a group of people from our world find themselves back in time or to an earlier other-version of our world, and with greater technology and knowledge, but limited resources and numbers, must find a way to survive, thrive and 'save the day'.

The first series I read in this concept was 'The Lost Regiment' series, which I quite enjoyed, and I'd say this is better than that.  There is also the Philadelphia Experiment, but it is a much more limited vision than what Destroyermen achieves.  The last of this type that I have read is S.M. Sterling's Island in the Sea of Time series, which is an out and out masterpiece and my favorite series of this type, and one of my favorite series of any genre.  The Destroyermen however, while maybe not as good as Sterling's, is quite good and offers more variety of creatures and cultures, since the world in question is a parallel world, not our own world's past.

The Basics: 
In the early days of WWII in the Pacific, the crew of U.S.S. Walker, an aging destroyer, finds itself flung by a freak storm into a parallel Earth.  Everything they know is gone, except for the coastlines, and they are now aliens in this world.  Imagine if the asteroid that hit 65 million years ago had missed.  What would our world have been like?  The crew of the Walker are about to find out.

Peopled by raptor-like beings and a furry primate descended from Lemurs, the humans find themselves in the middle of a different war, one where they are now the pinnacle of military technology, instead of being out-gunned and out-classed as they had been.

Both on the large scale and the individual, the story does a great job exploring the issue of rising to meet the needs and expectations of the situation, regardless of how well prepared or fit for it they might previously have been considered.  The characters are memorable and well developed, especially for an adventure tale.
Unlike a lot of science fiction or fantastical adventure, it does not set a single-minded pace that ignores the 'why' questions.  There is a character who's role is to satisfy the reader's desire to know more about the world and people, which I was very grateful for.

The alien cultures are well considered and strike me as realistic.   With interesting implications about the influence of biology and evolution on developing culture, as well as cultural transmission and its effect, it again is more than just an action adventure, though there is plenty of action to be had. combat occurs both on sea & land, and despite the inhabitants of this world being more technologically limited, they have their own advantages, making them dangerous adversaries and welcome allies.

As the books go on new layers of complexity are added as more of the world comes into their awareness.
For me, this only increased my enjoyment of the books.

There are a couple areas that I had some minor problems with that I wish had been handled differently.
For one, the author repeats himself too often to remind readers of some of the character relationships and idiosyncrasies. After a few times hearing it, I have it, I don't need to be told the background of the inside joke, in full, for the fourth, fifth or more times.  A simple quick reminder might be good for readers who spend greater time between sessions of reading, but it was excessive in a couple cases.  That is an advantage of printed word over audio: it is much easier to scan your eye down, than to stop painting and hit fast forward, and possibly overshoot, then back again- no, just keep the brush in hand and wish the repeating didn't take so long.

Slight spoiler paragraph: 

The other issue is, in my opinion, the author gives too much credit to human adaptability and tolerance.  The story makes it clear that there is really only one member who has any advanced education, other than specialized in medical nursing. Yet the crew never seem to have a struggle with or adjustment period in accepting the Lemurian primates as people.  Considering the time period, and how most of America did not even accept evolution at the time (if they had any understanding of it at all) and with the prevalence of racism, the fact that they instantly accept the furry, short, tailed 'monkey-cats' as equal people is too laudable to be believed.  I think human better nature would get there eventually, but I think it would have been more realistic and more interesting for the story and character development to see this struggle and adjustment to their thinking.

/spoiler off. 

Audio content: The narrator does an excellent job.  He handles a variety of voices, even for different nationalities, genders and species, very well.  The voices for the two engineers, 'the mice', might be a bit over the top, but they are often comic relief, so it isn't unexpected. One of the better narrations I've listened to.

The audio books run on average between 16-18 hours, making them a bit shorter than my preference, but then, just load the next one!

For the Gamers: 
A treasure trove!  A great setting for an RPG as well as a variety of scales of miniature gaming.
How would a WWI Destroyer fare in a battle against a score of Age of Sail cannon-armed merchant men?
I don't know about you, but I'd like to try that out on the tabletop!
Or a dozen rifle armed sailors fighting in the jungle against raptors with swords!
A city of musket-armed non-human primates, backed up with mortars defending against an endless tide of dinosaurs with firebombs... too fun for sure!

If this series doesn't get your minis-gaming mind spinning you might be in a coma.

Rating:

I have listened to the first 6 books, and eagerly anticipating starting the seventh, probably tomorrow.
You can find the list of books in their correct order here.

I give the series 4.5 out of 5 bottle of paint: Very enjoyable, you'll look forward to painting! 

A little bit slow near the first half of book 4, but very worth continuing because the story only gets more complex and entertaining. In fact, where the story has left off in book 6, I'm hoping for at least 10 books in the series. 

Happy story-time & painting everyone!

Stories To Paint By: Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDevitt

Time for another audio book review.  As I've mentioned before, listening to Audio books is probably my favorite way of occupying my mind while at long hours in the studio.  I do listen to a lot of podcasts, but the imagination wants story-time so that is what it gets.

Fairly regularly Audible has sales, so when I can get a book for quite cheap or two for one credit, if anything looks good I can be tempted to take a chance.  Time Travelers Never Die was one such title. Time Travel is one of my favorite genres, not surprising, considering I love history as well as science fiction: win-win.

The book is shorter than I usually look for, just a bit over 13 hours, but the price point was right and the narrator, Paul Boehmer, was one I'd listened to and enjoyed before so I went with it.

I always try to limit spoilers as much as possible and still have a reason for my ratings.  

There are a number of great, even classic, stories of time travel, but I'm afraid this is not one of them.  

Overall I can say it is enjoyable in a light treatment of the mysteries and paradoxes which tend to arise with time travel, but it didn't live up to the potentials for a few reasons. 

Lack of Curiosity.

For one thing, the characters suffer from what I think of as "movie character blinders'.  You see this most often in characters in speculative fiction movies.  For example, in almost every science fiction movie the main characters, upon meeting aliens for the first time in human history don't seem to have any questions for them beyond the immediate circumstances.  Really? If I met an alien I'd be like a five year old kid! 'where do you come from? how did you get here? how does that work? why'd you come? what's your home like? how many other planets have you been to? what's the history of the universe? do you know how it was made, was it made? how do you know?' and more and more. But no, movie characters seem to be satisfied with a hint at most if that. And the main characters here are no different.  Knowing they effectively have all the time in the world to find out the answer to their immediate personal life problem, they nonetheless seem to have only mild curiosity about the past.  They do visit several time periods, but curiosity takes a secondary motivation.  And the future? Let's leave it with saying I was very, very, disappointed with the lack of any curiosity drive.  I have a hard time believing anyone could be so blase' about knowing what the far flung future is to the point that they can't be bothered to walk a mile (or push a few buttons) to find out.  Then again, I've met people who have no desire to travel and don't seem interested in the scientific or metaphysic or anything beyond the sitcom level of distraction, so maybe it is realistic, but why write about such characters? 

Time travel is wasted on these two characters.  Give it to someone who'd appreciate it! Like me! ;) 

Mystery Too Easy

There are a couple mysteries set up, but I found them predictable. Won't say more. 

Undeveloped

The secondary character is too underdeveloped.  He almost gets a chance to flesh out with a believable personality and drive, but the author pulls him back and he returns to being two dimensional.  That was one 'mystery' that I didn't figure out ahead of time, because the author simply let this story line potential hang untouched.  Why I couldn't say, I think it had potential. 


Time as Planned
This aspect bugged me. In this presentation of how time travel works, time can be changed, but not.. too much? Or, not by you, about something that affects you.. too much.  It's an odd, not fully fleshed out and not very logical premise.  For time travel to 'work' under this set of laws, it would require time to be both self aware and aware of you, the time traveler.  

This makes time constructed by either plan or predestination or both. It allows for some wiggle room, but not a whole lot.  It makes no sense. It isn't even dictated by the old 'you can't kill your grandpa before you were born' type of scenario, it's a more active system than that and it got in the way of me accepting the premise of the story. The other dimensions don't revolt and prevent your actions.  The third dimension won't prevent you from walking off a cliff, so why would the 4th? No, it just didn't feel well thought-out. 

On the plus side, it is about Time Travel.  It has some tense moments, some action, some interesting interaction with people from different time periods.  It did allow me to daydream off about what I would do if in the time & places they go to, though often that brought me back to wanting to smack them for their lack of initiative. In short, this would make a good made for TV movie, but it's not blockbuster material nor is it ready to join the shelf of great time travel stories. 


For the Gamers: 
It is time travel. The genre alone sets you on the right path, but there isn't a lot of new fodder for games, at least not tabletop games. For an RPG it has potential material.


Rating:

I give this audiobook 2.66 bottles out of 5. 

It is light, entertaining, raises interesting questions, but doesn't provide much exploring of them.

I'd recommend it for casual entertainment. 

Stories To Paint By: River God by Wilbur Smith

In the ongoing series, Stories to Paint by, where I review one of the audio books I've finished recently, lets move a bit away from the first two which were Science Fiction and go to ancient historical fiction with Wilbur Smith's River God.  As always, I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, with never any significant plot reveals.  Personally I hate 95% of movie trailers because they always show much more than I want to see before I actually see the movie, so I won't do the same to you.

I read Wilbur Smith's Birds of Prey & Monsoon a couple years ago, which are great naval 'tall ships' adventures and I highly recommend them. Knowing I like the author's writing style and adventurous pace, I selected the audio book 'River God' which is a novel set in Ancient Egypt.  The unabridged version from Audible (I won't bother with abridged) is just shy of 25 hours long.

The narrator, Dick Hill, was very easy to listen to.  

While not having a vast array of character type voices, the ones he uses are significantly different from each other and help keep the characters clear in your mind.  Always a potential problem, he handled opposite gender characters just fine, without resorting to grating falsetto. 

The story is told through the character Taita, a slave of distinction, serving in the court of the Grand Vizier, Lord Intef.  Taita pulls strings to help his two younger friends in their hopes of romance and a life together in the face of political plots, invasion, exodus, revenge, war and tragedy.  In a way, you could think of him as the 'Egyptian Merlin'.  

The action is quite good. Wilbur Smith knows his way around a tense battle or hunt, there is no doubt.  

Just like Birds of Prey, he is also good at portraying the impracticality of adolescent love, but here you do get a longer span of time and it is nice to see these characters mature.  There is some good depth of character here.  The fact that there is some romantic motivation in the characters doesn't make this 'Twilight' for Pharaohs or a 'romance' novel by any stretch: humans do have emotions and romantic motivation, and that is weighed appropriately in this presentation of the characters' span of life.  

If there is one downside to the story for me, it is the overwhelming accomplishments of the main character Taita.   -no real spoilers- Taita is a eunuch, which would be problem enough for anyone, but to make matters worse he's a full-monty eunuch. Ouch.  Either this causes him to really feel the need to compensate from this loss with exaggerating the length and breadth of his many accomplishments, or the author is suggesting that if you have to live life without this most enjoyable aspect this frees up enough time to master every discipline known to man. Either way, it is too much. At every turn, Taita is not only competent but the veritable master of anything needed. He is the finest artist, architect, doctor, scientist, engineer, fastest runner, most attractive, widest linguist, and more. He is Archimedes, Leonardo DaVinci, Newton, Paracelsus, and Edison all rolled into one and not one bit modest about it.  

It did get to be a little much.  

Though the afterward states that this is a true story, translated from a discovered scroll, the author is just having a bit of fun. It isn't, and there are several historical inaccuracies that make that clear as you go through the story if you know this time in history.  But that doesn't take anything away from a great story.  

There are two other books related to this one, 'Warlock' continues the life of Taita, and 'The Seventh Scroll' is set in modern times with archaeologists trying to find the treasure from River God.  Both sound very promising and I'm sure I'll check them out. 

For the Gamers: 

This had me wanting to play large games of chariot battles in the ancient period. 

Some great descriptions of battles, chariots, tactics and more.  If you find yourself building a 'Chariot Wars' period army, this is a great novel to listen to while doing it! 

Rating: 

I give this audiobook 4.25 Bottles out of 5: very entertaining, you'll want to keep painting!

If you have an interest in ancient history I highly recommend the book.  Even if you don't, you'll likely still enjoy it for the 'movie-style' adventure that it is.  

Stories to Paint By: Hyperion to Endymion

This is the second installment in my 'Stories to Paint By' reviews of audio books.
In these reviews I will try to refrain from any spoilers, but will try to explain why I think you should, or shouldn't give them a listen.
As I mentioned in the last, I paint and work in the studio a lot.  More time than can be filled by podcasts alone, and podcasts aren't enough... I crave stories. I used to be a big reader, but I find I just don't have the time so having audio books, especially nice long epics, can give me my story fix while I am being productive.

If you've never read the Hyperion novels by Dan Simmons, I recommend them.
This is a science fiction epic in the tradition of Asimov's Foundation and Herbert's Dune.
Big sweeping stories told from several perspectives and touching on many worlds and factions.
If you like that sub-genre, you should like these books.

I didn't listen to the audio books of the first two novels, Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, since I did read those books, and though it has been many years, the story was still pretty solid in my memory.  Hyperion is set at a time when Humanity has colonized many worlds, but have not run across any significant alien life, with the possible exception of a strange semi-mythical being called The Shrike, which some worship as an avatar of death and retribution. The story focuses on a half dozen pilgrims, on their journey to Hyperion, the world of the Shrike, and in a slight parallel with The Canterbury Tales, each pilgrim tells their personal story.  There is a lot of mystery to this story as well as a lot of good mental fuel for thoughts about the nature of humanity, what is good for us as a species, and more. 

The sequel books, Endymion and Rise of Endymion were written about a decade after the first two.  I had not read these before so I got them on Audio book from Audible. The narrator, Victor Bevine, does a great job,and seeing how he's also narrating the Hyperion duo, I'm sure they are just as good.  Endymion picks up over 200 years after the Hyperion books.  Simmons did a good job following the trajectory of the events at the end of the Hyperion books.  Humans have created a true dystopian society.  If anything I enjoyed these two books even more than the first two. There are even more of the 'big questions' for consideration and possibly more action as well.  Unlike Hyperion, these two books are told from one character, Raul Endymion, as he travels with his companions, as they try to set the universe right.  If you like a balance of philosophy, action, technology, diverse cultures and questioning things like artificial intelligence and the role of religion, you've got a lot to like here.  A bit of the Foundation series, Lord of the Rings and Stranger in a Strange Land. 

Apparently Warner Brothers has the movie rights. This would be a story I'd strongly suggest reading or listening to the unabridged novels first.  There is just too much story here for one or two 140 minute movies. 

I wish they'd given the rights to HBO for a series instead.  

This series has been one of my favorite audio books I've listened to so far.  

The Hyperion books come in at about 21 hours each and Endymion is 23 and Rise of Endymion is 30 hours.

The hours flew by.  I didn't find fault with the narrator, which can be a problem over so many hours. 

If there was any fault to it, I'd say i did get tired of hearing the wordy phrase describing Aenea's hand gestures that "he had come to recognize".. etc. That is something you'd probably see but stop 'reading' after the 10th time you see it, but in audio you will hear it every time. A very small issue. 

I give this series a rating of 4.9 Paint Bottles out of 5: Well worth the time: keep on painting!

I'd highly recommend giving these books a listen or a read. 

Enjoy some music inspired by the books:

Stories to Paint By: Pandora's Star & Judas Unchained

I paint a lot.  And convert a lot. I often spend near half the day in the studio.  I listen to a lot of podcasts, but I like *stories*.  I've been an avid reader since early teens when I was hit by a car (won't take long laying in a hospital bed before you will try anything to get your mind somewhere else) and of course I like movies.  So that, and the fact that I tend to be too busy to find any time to read, lead me to listen to audio books while working in the studio, and it makes the time that much more enjoyable.

My most recent big project, the Genestealer Cult army, finished off a series I have been listening to: Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton.

   

Audible has the books unabridged (I don't like abridged versions, besides, I have plenty of listening time available for the complete versions).  It is a sci-fi series, set a few hundred years into our future.  On the day humans first set foot on Mars, the astronauts are beaten to the punch by a couple young geniuses who figured out how to generate wormholes.  From there, humans are soon exploring the galaxy, and settling planets further & further out into space.

The story is engaging because it is really several stories entwined into one: a detective story, a story of guerrilla war against an unknown alien threat, a tale of ancient discoveries, and eventually, one of an intergalactic war.  The few alien species are properly very alien.  As a gamer, it made me think of several fun concepts for tabletop battles both terrestrial and spaceship combats. I also enjoyed my own side-thoughts about issues it brings up, such as what is selfhood, what is the nature of our species, and what happens when evolution stumbles into creating a species that is dangerous to all other life forms.  Plenty of good entertainment in these books on many levels.

If you like sci-fi, in the tradition of Asimov, Clark & Heinlein, which I think these would fall into, then give it a read or listen, whatever your preference and time allows for.

I give the story 4.5 Paint Bottles out of 5: well worth the time and very enjoyable painting time!

Not the same aliens as this series, but insidious in their own right, here's a w.i.p. shot of a bunch of aliens for the current project: