Cover Reveal: Special Delivery by Rex Burke
OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: A dangerous mission. A second chance.
Actually, scratch that. No chance.Dix’s career as a trooper in the Federation army is unblemished – until the day he disobeys a direct order and strikes an officer.
Now Dix has a choice. Face a life of hard labour that promises to be brutal and short. Or accept a mysterious invitation to join a black-ops mission in hostile terrain.
The plan sounds simple, if horribly dangerous. Fetch a fearsome weapon from a secret location and deliver it to a distant planet, whose population is under the chilling yoke of the Federation’s rival empire, the Axis. Do it without getting caught, or implicating the Federation, and Dix’s transgressions will be forgiven.
But the weapon turns out to be unlike anything he could have expected, and Dix’s troubles have only just begun.
'SAS Rogue Heroes' x 'Starship Troopers' – Special Delivery introduces a ragtag crew of misfits and malcontents on a mission with more holes than a blaster-riddled corpse. It’s a fluid, easy-reading, military-action Sci-Fi adventure, perfect for fans of Tanya Huff and John Scalzi.
Intriguing? Let's look at the cover, designed by: Chris Hudson
When he was young, he read every one of those yellow-jacketed Victor Gollancz hardbacks in his local library. He’s sure there are still thrilling SciFi adventures to be told – even if he has to write them himself.
When he’s not writing, he travels – one way or another, he’ll get to the stars, even if it’s just as stardust when his own story is done.
Website: https://rexburke.com/
Contact: rex@rexburke.com
BlueSky: @rexburke.bsky.social
Let's hear from the author about how he came up with the idea from the book:
"Ideas for books come to me in all sorts of ways – the first germ of what became Orphan Planet was a disastrous camping trip one of my sons went on; The Wrong Stop came out of a lifetime spent travelling around Europe on trains, and wondering about the people I met on board.And sometimes a single thought is enough, and on one such train, early last year, two fully formed sentences popped into my head, unbidden. Here they are:
†'Their unit, OneSquad, had been fighting hard all day across difficult terrain. The planet was a squelching, crater-filled shithole, and Dix was covered in mud – at least, he hoped it was mud – but orders were orders.'
Those two sentences begin the book that is Special Delivery, which will be published in April.
I never set out to write a hard-edged Sci-Fi story about space troopers on a secret mission, but that's what my next book is – though you should be reassured that it's also full of banter, laughs, scrapes and mysteries. A traditional Rex Burke book, in fact, but this time set entirely in space, and with added fights, guns, blood, intrigue and betrayal."
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Book Review: Generation Ship by Michael Mammay
FORMAT/INFO: Generation Ship was released on October 17th, 2023 by HarperVoyager. It is 608 pages long and told in third person from multiple POVs. It will be released in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Generation Ship by Michael Mammay is a science fiction book that follows the space faring journey of the people on a ship on it's way to colonise a viable planet.
A big crew of people leave the Earth and go on a space voyage to find another planet to colonize. It's been 250 years, and their probes give them data indicating the possibility of a suitable planet, and what follows is this story. They left our planet behind, but not all of our problems. Micheal Mammay uses this premise to create a fantastic and engaging novel that follows five of them: a farmer, a scientist, a politician, a security officer and an engineer.
This book is not short by anyone's standards, but it is immersive. I read about a quarter of it before picking up another book, and when this happens, it's very difficult for me to be able to get back to reading the previous one. But in this case, that wasn't an issue at all. Once it got going, I read a big chunk of it in one go. What I loved the most was the tiny little details meticulously dropped in about everyday life on the ship, on the different things experienced by the characters that made it feel so lived in. I lapped up all those mentions, and while I generally express a preference for more compact books, I just want more.
The pacing is even, and all the characters are given equal(ish) page time, and while I have no affection for any of them, there were times when I did stop reading and ask myself "Is this person right?", and that is a testament to the skill with which the author deals with real people dealing with problems that are complicated by the implications of any stance they take, and the effect this has on a story that's mainly furthered by a balance of political and personal objectives.
From the beginning, it is clear that this story isn't really about the exploration of the new planet, and that a large part of it takes place in the ship. This I enjoyed, and it paved the way for some unfamiliar beats as the personalities clashed, bickered, made decisions in a way that brought disaster after disaster, as well as makes a lot of points for and against democracy, technocracy, autocracy, as well as the sustainability of a civilisation that wears blinders in its push toward extreme reliance on technology. At the end though, it's a little bit of an unexpected whirlwind with everything that happens, but in a way that makes sense to the characters we follow.
While I was able to appreciate all the manoeuvres of the clashing personalities, at the end of it all, I remember more vibes than plot in a way. For such an intricately woven story, this is not the aftertaste I wish for. While I understand the cases made by all the characters, I felt like I was following the story without any deep investments in any of their successes, and this was a slight dent in my enjoyment of the book.
CONCLUSION: Generation Ship is a fantastic political drama about the different players and their motives, and how those can shape the future of a civilisation. I highly recommend this to fans of science fiction, and you bet I'll load all of Michael Mammay's work onto my kindle.
Book Review: Grievar's Blood by Alexander Darwin
Outside of writing fiction, Alexander has written for publications such as Rolling Stone Magazine and SF Signal. His latest piece - "The Lost Diary of Anthony Bourdain" - was a featured piece in Rolling Stone’s January 2022 issue.
Book Review: Star Bound by Rex Burke
Buy Star Bound HERE
When he was young, he read every one of those yellow-jacketed Victor Gollancz hardbacks in his local library. That feeling of out-of-this-world amazement never left him – and keeps him company as he writes his own SciFi adventures.
When he's not writing, he travels – one way or another, he'll get to the stars, even if it's just as stardust when his own story is done.
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Book Review: Starter Villain by John Scalzi
Divorced and emotionally dependent on his cat, Charlie wasn’t loving life. Although they weren’t close, news of his Uncle Jack’s death didn’t help. And that was before Jake’s rivals (seriously vengeful ones) ambushed his funeral. Now Charlie must decide if he should stay stuck in his rut, or step up to take on the business, the enemies, the minions, the hidden volcano lair . . .
Even harder to get used to are the sentient, language-using, computer-savvy cats – and the fact that in the organization’s hierarchy, they’re management. If Charlie does say yes, this lifeline could become a death wish. Because there’s much more to being an Evil Mastermind than he suspected. Yet could this also, finally, be his chance to shine?
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