Tag: books

A warning to fake reviewers

Someone should send news of this legal decision to the attention of Virginia Conterato of Minneapolis, the fake reviewer of A Throne of Bones. As well as the various fake reviewers on GoodReads.

In a decision that could reshape the rules for online consumer reviews, a Virginia court has ruled that the popular website Yelp must turn over the names of seven reviewers who anonymously criticized a prominent local carpet cleaning business.

The case revolves around negative feedback against Virginia-based Hadeed Carpet Cleaning. The owner, Joe Hadeed, said the users leaving bad reviews were not real customers of the cleaning service — something that would violate Yelp’s terms of service. His attorneys issued a subpoena demanding the names of seven anonymous reviewers, and a judge in Alexandria ruled that Yelp had to comply.

The Virginia Court of Appeals agreed this week, ruling that the comments were not protected First Amendment opinions if the Yelp users were not customers and thus were making false claims.

It will be interesting to learn what position GoodReads and Amazon take on this, since in most cases the reviewers are customers, but are provably making false claims with the complicity of the site host given its ability to check if they have purchased the book or not.

Given where this appears to be going, I think Amazon would be well-advised to take a strong position against fake reviews and only permit those who have a) bought the books and b) are willing to click a checkbox affirming that they have read the book in its entirety are permitted to post reviews there.

I have always felt that it was fraudulent to post a fake review and it is good to see that this is indeed the case.

Mailvox: The Fahrenheit Registry

Anang laments his inability to continue supporting authors who are his political enemies: 

As an author you
obviously want your works reaching the widest possible audience without
sacrificing your own creative vision. At the same time, I believe an
author’s ideology, his Weltanschauung is
reflected in his works. I’m a new and proud male American citizen. Why
should I pay my good money to read or watch something that ignores and
insults my gender, my politics or the things that made me want to be an
American?

 It’s
a little sad actually, having discovered I think this way. It means I
can never enjoy some of the most creative artists currently living. I
threw away my collection of Naomi Novik’s fantasy books after I realized
she was a local party volunteer for John Kerry’s 2004 election. All her
meticulous research into creating an alternate, fantastical history of
the Napoleonic Wars was just to insert leftist ideology and harp on
social justice/race theory/gender inequality.

It’s
a very lonely feeling, to know you are cut off from nearly every work
of popular entertainment and art if you wish to avoid propaganda-filled attacks on your existence. I suppose that is why most men watch
sports.

I knew Novik’s books fell completely apart upon the visit to Australia, (never managed to finish that one), but I didn’t realize there was a sound political reason for it. I think Anang forgets that there are actually many excellent writers who support and sustain the Western intellectual tradition; the fact that they have been exiled by the Left’s gatekeepers doesn’t mean their works don’t exist or can’t be found. In fact, increasing the exposure and awareness of Blue SF/F writers is one of my objectives in the coming year.

Perhaps it would be helpful to maintain a political registry of SF/F writers so we can permit those who don’t wish to financially support their enemies to avoid doing so. This doesn’t mean one has to avoid reading them entirely, of course, as The Pirate Bay, LibGen, and other sites have far more books that one can hope to read in a lifetime. For example, here is LibGen’s list of the current SFWA president Steven Gould’s books, in the unlikely event that anyone feels any pressing need to read them. As an added bonus, I can tell you that the SFWA absolutely hates and fears those sites; the idea that people can download their books for free seems to bother them considerably more than simply being ignored.

Never mind that there is no evidence indicating that pirated books actually harm an author’s book sales. As I’ve noted, about one in five free Amazon downloads turns into a purchase of A Throne of Bones, which is why I’d love to give away more than the 21,760 copies that were downloaded in 2013.

My thought is that one can rate an author in terms of “noviks”, in honor of Anang’s epiphany.  10 noviks would indicate an author that conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, and traditionalists should avoid at all costs on the basis of his anti-civilizational beliefs and activities. On the other side, 10 “kratmans” would indicate a staunch defender of Western civilization. Here are a few suggestions for the scale:

Naomi Novik: 5 noviks
China Mieville: 9 noviks
Charles Stross: 7 noviks
Larry Corriea: 8 kratmans
JRR Tolkien: 10 kratmans

I leave it to the rest of you to provide the ratings. I shall merely post them as they are added.

Reading List 2013

Of the 81 books I read this year, the one I enjoyed most was Jill Paton Walsh’s remarkably good revival of Dorothy Sayers’s famous characters in A Presumption of Death, followed by Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 and Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile. The
worst book I read this year was, without question, Isaac Asimov’s Forward the Foundation,
which is one of those ill-considered prequels that makes one wonder how the author ever managed to write the books that inspired them in the first place. I couldn’t even bring myself to start the third book in the trilogy, which was so dreadful that it almost caused me to reconsider the merits of the original Foundation trilogy. The
most disappointing book was Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery. It wasn’t bad or poorly written, (in fact, it was remarkably well-researched), but it was unpleasant, the protagonist was a cipher, the literary device employed was both irritating and unnecessary, and there was little point to the plot itself other than to provide a creative explanation for the authorship of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

On the non-fiction side, I read a number of truly excellent books this year. Rothbard’s An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought: Vol I is an epic must-read for anyone with any interest in economics, (I’m halfway through Volume II now), and Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile articulated some very important concepts towards which I’d been fumbling over the last ten years. I finally got around to actually reading Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in its entirety, and re-reading Mere Christianity was, as always, both thought-provoking and encouraging. However, PJ O’Rourke’s Don’t Vote It Just Encourages The Bastards read as if it had been phoned in; either O’Rourke has lost his fastball or his effervescent conservativism was fatally discouraged by the Bush ’43 administration.

Keep in mind these ratings are not necessarily statements about a book’s
significance or literary quality, they are merely casual observations of how much I
happened to enjoy reading the book at the time. 

FIVE STARS
An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought: Vol I, Murray Rothbard
Panzer Commander, Hans von Luck
My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok 
A Presumption of Death, Jill Paton Walsh
Antifragile, Nassim Taleb
Mere Christianity, CS Lewis
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn
Dune, Frank Herbert
Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
Inherit the Stars, James Hogan
1Q84, Haruki Murakami

FOUR STARS
Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
Il Cavaliere Inesistante, Italo Calvino
Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
King Rat, China Mieville
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
Officers and Gentlemen, Evelyn Waugh 
Red Country, Joe Abercrombie
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, PG Wodehouse
Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino
Five Red Herrings, Dorothy Sayers
Clouds of Witness, Dorothy Sayers
Spellbound, Larry Correia 
Warbound, Larry Correia
Monster Hunter International, Larry Correia
Defense of the Divine Revelation against the Objections of the Freethinkers, Leonhard Euler
The Art of Game Design, Jesse Schell
The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, James Hogan
Giant’s Star, James Hogan
In Search of Stupidity, Rick Chapman

THREE STARS
The Theory of Money and Credit, Ludwig von Mises 
Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams
The Meaning of It All, Richard Feynman 
Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh 
Sharpe’s Battle, Bernard Cornwell 
Sharpe’s Company, Bernard Cornwell 
Sharpe’s Sword, Bernard Cornwell
The Desert Spear, Peter Brett 
Macroscope, Piers Anthony
Greenwitch, Susan Cooper
Down on the Farm, Charles Stross
Terms of Enlistment, Marko Kloos
Men on Strike, Helen Smith  
Looking for Jake, China Mieville
Hailstone Mountain, Lars Walker 
Tales of the Dying Earth, Jack Vance
The Jewels of Paradise, Donna Leon 
Lord Talon’s Revenge, Tom Simon
Jhereg, Stephen Brust 
Yendi, Stephen Brust 
Teckla, Stephen Brust 
Taltos, Stephen Brust
Hard Magic, Larry Correia
Monster Hunter Vendetta, Larry Correia 
Monster Hunter Alpha, Larry Correia 
Tour of Duty, Michael Z. Williamson 
The Gap into Conflict, Stephen Donaldson 
Lights in the Deep, Brad Torgersen 
The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks 
Busman’s Honeymoon, Dorothy Sayers 
A Desert Called Peace, Tom Kratman 
The Prague Cemetery, Umberto Eco 
Big Boys Don’t Cry, Tom Kratman
Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert 
Frostborn: The First Quest, Jonathan Moeller
On Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman

TWO STARS
 Victory of Eagles, Naomi Novik
The Daylight War, Peter Brett
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
Imperialism & Social Classes, Joseph Schumpeter
Phoenix, Stephen Brust 
Athyra, Stephen Brust 
Songs of the Dying Earth, Dozois and Martin, ed.
The Gap into Vision, Stephen Donaldson 
The Gap into Power, Stephen Donaldson
The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoevsky

ONE STAR
Prelude to Foundation, Isaac Asimov
Forward the Foundation, Isaac Asimov
Tactics, Asclepiodotus
Don’t Vote It Just Encourages The Bastards, PJ O’Rourke

Unpublished

For reasons that will become clear in a few weeks, and which I am not presently able to disclose, I am no longer publishing my books with Marcher Lord Hinterlands as of today. There haven’t been any problems or a falling out, and indeed, even our most recent collaboration has been successful, with 1,100 copies of QM being sold in its first month of release. I have merely arranged to reacquire the full publishing rights to my books.

What this means in the short-term is that neither the Selenoth books nor the Quantum Mortis books will be available from Amazon or anywhere else for that matter. I expect the books to again be available on Amazon, the Apple Store, and elsewhere, by the end of January.

I very much appreciate what Jeff has done with Marcher Lord. Were it not for his contacting me a few years ago and asking me if I had anything that my other publishers weren’t likely to publish, I would never have written Summa Elvetica. And were it not for Summa Elvetica, I very much doubt that I would have proceeded to write A Throne of Bones or to write the nine shorter works that presently make up the land of Selenoth.

Rest assured I am still hard at work on both QM2 and TAODAL 2. I’m hoping for September and December releases there.

Due to some vagaries with regards to the Kindle Select program, please note that it is possible that AMB, TWC, TLW, and QM:GK will continue to be available on Amazon in some capacities until the end of February. If that is the case, it is not necessary to inform me that they are still being loaned or sold.

Mailvox: starting out in SF

CR asks for some advice concerning science fiction:

Hey man… so I’ve never been a fan of science fiction involving elves and dragons and all that so I’ve never given a science fiction book a try. The only scifi movies I’ve watched are the ones that could conceivably be true at some point, such as Oblivion, Europa Report, Moon, etc…

You’re probably one of the most intelligent people I know of and you certainly seem to be a fan of this genre… since I have some free time on my hands over the holidays, can you recommend a starter list of sci fi books? That whole Quantum Mortis series looks interesting… what’s the correct order to read them in?

With regards to Quantum Mortis, I recommend reading A Man Disrupted first, then Gravity Kills. As for elves, dragons, and science fiction, I should first point out that elves and dragons are typically indicative of fantasy, whereas rocket ships, scientist progagonists, space empires, and future technologies are indicative of science fiction.

The distinction is an important one, even if all the major science fiction organizations and awards refuse to recognize it. The fact is that Fifty Shades of Grey is every bit as legitimately science fiction as A Game of Thrones; it is certainly pure fantasy.

In answer to the question, this would be my SF starter list, listed in order of recommended reading.

  1. Nightfall (short story) by Isaac Asimov
  2. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  3. Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinlein
  4. Flowers for Algernon (short story) by Daniel Keys
  5. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
  6. Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan
  7. Neuromancer by William Gibson
  8. Dune by Frank Herbert
  9. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
  10. Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

If you can read through the first five books on the list and find yourself to be largely indifferent, then science fiction is simply not for you. Upon re-reading three of the best-regarded SF series, however, I have to conclude that it may actually be the underrated Giants trilogy by James P. Hogan that is the height of science fiction achievement to date, combining as it does physics, evolution, creation mythology, and the great secular dream of a united Man take his first steps out into the wider universe.

It was fascinating to discover how much better I liked Dune Messiah and Children of Dune as an adult. They’re not epic like Dune was; Herbert literally turns the usual “show, don’t tell” mantra on its head by refusing to show anything at all of Muad’Dib’s jihad. But I think some of the two books’ subtleties are lost on a teenager, as well as the full scope of Herbert’s incisive commentary on failure and human tragedy.

A must-download

The Seal Queen is a free download on Amazon today.

“The Seal Queen tells the story of Briah, an escaped slave, who finds
sanctuary for herself and her unborn child on an enchanted beach. There
her life is filled with contented solitude, the joys of motherhood, and
even the possibility of love with a merman whose song haunts her dreams.
But Briah’s magical world is shaken when she discovers that
her son is the long-awaited savior and future king of the roane (the
gentler cousins of the selkies).”

Can you say… WERESEAL FICTION!

Lions Den VIII: Jonathan Moeller

The Pulp Writer throws Frostborn: The First Quest into the Den and takes a decidedly different approach in introducing it to everyone here. If you’re interested in being one of the book’s three reviewers, shoot me an email. You may also be interested in noting that both his Demonsouled and Child of the Ghosts are free downloads today.

Today I am going to tell you a story about the dangers of opening doors.

Long ago, before humans ever came to my world,
before humans even existed, the high elves ruled this world. We
believed that God had put us here to care and maintain this world, for
God had indeed created it for a purpose. A great darkness had been
imprisoned within the skin of the world, inside a place the humans would
one day call the Black Mountain. Our responsibility was to guard the
prison and serve as the world’s caretakers.

And so we did.

For spans of
time so vast that no human tongue has the vocabulary to describe them,
the high elves kept watch over this world, dwelling in great bliss and
splendor as they went about their task.

But for some of us, that was not enough.

Those
of us with wisdom and courage, those of us with the strength to cast
aside old ideas and grow beyond our purpose, used our spells to examine
the Black Mountain, to consider the darkness sealed within as a bored
child might pick at a scab. In time the darkness spoke to us. At first
we spurned it, but we came to see that it spoke wisdom, words of
strength and power.

And the darkness reached out and possessed one of
us, and we fell to our knees and worshipped him as our new god, the
bearer of shadow, the teacher of new ways.

The
high elves turned against us, the shortsighted fools. They called us the
dark elves, but we were the true elves, the stronger elves, for we
alone had been brave enough to cast off our shackles and make ourselves
more.

They made war upon us for millennia, and we laid the
world waste. Spells beyond the capacity of the human mind to understand
shattered the land, and mountains crumbled and deserts froze and
forests burned. Yet for all our power, the high elves had the mastery,
and drove us back mile by mile.

But the bearer of shadow walked among us, whispering
his secrets into our ears. He taught us spells of necromancy, of
shaping flesh and bone into weapons of death. And he taught us the
secret of opening doors between the worlds. For there are as many worlds
as there are stars in the night skies, and as many kindreds that live
upon them. Our wizards opened the doors between the worlds, and brought
forth new kindreds to serve us as slaves and soldiers.

The orcs were the first. They made superb slave
soldiers for our armies, and we brought hundreds of thousands of them
through the gates. Then came the beastmen and the manetaurs. They were
harder to control, but served well as shock troops. Halflings were too
weak for battle, but made useful slaves. The dwarves proved impossible
to control, and soon rebelled and sided against us, but they were a rare
error

And one day, we found the urdmordar.

We
had never seen anything like them. They wore the form of spiders, yet
wielded great dark magic. They disdained the use of tools and weapons,
yet had intellects of genius, and dominated lesser creatures with ease.
They feasted upon living flesh like any rude predator, but were so
cunning and so clever that they remained hidden and their victims rarely
knew their true foes.

What slaves they would make! With their power, we could at last crush the high elves.

And so we opened the door to their world and brought the urdmordar to ours.

Fools, fools, fools.

For the urdmordar were too powerful to control.

They
swarmed the gate, and devoured the wizards that sought to bind them. We
were the rightful masters of this world, mighty in sorcery and wisdom
without peer, but the urdmordar saw us as only one thing.

Food.

Within five years
the dark elven kingdoms had been enslaved and forced to serve the
urdmordar. Our armies of slaves transferred their allegiance readily
enough. The high elves briefly rejoiced, thinking they had found an
ally, but the hunger of the urdmordar was insatiable.

One by one the high elven kingdoms fell, until only Cathair Solas remained.

And then the urdmordar met a new kindred coming up from the south.

The
humans, the exiles of Old Earth, the heirs of Arthur Pendragon, fleeing
through a magical gate from the fall of their realm. Heedless of the
ancient conflicts of their new world, they blundered into the path of
the urdmordar.

There is danger in opening doors…but there is also opportunity.

For in the humans, after long millennia, I see the key to my freedom.

– The Warden of Urd Morlemoch

Retreat and revolution

The head of CNN finally tires of being repeatedly prison-raped in the ratings every night by Fox News and throws in the towel:

After
almost a year of tinkering, CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker has
concluded that a news channel cannot subsist on news alone. So
he is planning much broader changes for the network—including a
prime-time shakeup that’s likely to make CNN traditionalists cringe.

Once,
CNN’s vanilla coverage was a point of pride. Now, the boss boasts about
the ratings for his unscripted series, and documentaries like the Sea
World-slamming film Blackfish. Zucker, in his first one-on-one interview
since taking control of CNN last January, told Capital he wants news
coverage “that is just not being so obvious.”

Instead,
he wants more of “an attitude and a take”: “We’re all regurgitating the
same information. I want people to say, ‘You know what? That was
interesting. I hadn’t thought of that,’” Zucker said. “The goal for the
next six months, is that we need more shows and less newscasts.”

Zucker—“rhymes
with hooker,” he likes to say—also expanded on comments he has made
about breaking CNN out of a mindset created by historic rivalries with
MSNBC and Fox. He wants the network to attract “viewers who are watching
places like Discovery and History and Nat Geo and A&E.”

“People
who traditionally just watch the cable news networks [are] a great
audience,” he said. “I’m not trying to alienate that audience. But the
overall cable news audience has not grown in the last 12 years, OK? So,
all we’re doing is trading [audience] share. … We also want to broaden
what people can expect from CNN.”

The 48-year-old
Zucker initially faced internal resistance to his experiments beyond the
realm of hard news, but he now has an irrefutable retort: The No. 1
show on CNN is now “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” a travel-adventure
show featuring the bad-boy celebrity chef. Zucker said that inside CNN,
his formula has finally been accepted “because people have seen the
results.”

As JartStar commented: “It will be amusing
that in another year or two CNN will have less to do with the news and
more to do with reality TV than SyFy has with science fiction”.

And
fitting. What Fox has done to CNN is exactly what Larry, Mike, Tom,
Sara, and me are going to do to the world of Pink SF. By presenting an
ideological alternative that appeals to more than half of the
prospective audience that is ignored and denigrated by the monolithic
gatekeepers, our market is far less saturated. Having lost their former
ability to keep us out of print and out of the bookstores, there is
nothing the genre publishers can do except watch helplessly as we cut
into their sales in the same way that Fox News cut into CNN’s ratings.

I
only wish Amazon permitted authors to give away Kindle Select
books on an ongoing basis. Every individual who downloads a free copy of
The Last Witchking or The Wardog’s Coin and reads it isn’t merely a potential buyer of A Throne of Bones or Quantum Mortis, he is also one more book sale lost to the gatekeepers.

They
are the dinosaurs, heavy with overhead and thin operating margins. We
are the mammals, able to write and publish a book in the time it takes
them to bring a finished book to market. That’s why we are going to win
despite their best efforts to pretend we don’t even exist.

Speaking
of which, I’m looking for translators who are interested in translating
my books in return for a share in the revenue. If you are a native
speaker of a language other than English and you want to take active part in the Blue
SF Revolution, fire me an email.

Free stuff: QM and Selenoth

To further celebrate the release of the first two QUANTUM MORTIS novels, JartStar, the cover artist of the newly published Gravity Kills, has created a wallpaper from the cover image and offered it to any VP readers who might be interested in downloading it. It presently adorns my desktop, and if you’d like to download it, just click on the image to the left, then right-click on the full-size image and “Save Image As”.

As I mentioned yesterday, the first 25 reviewers of the two QUANTUM MORTIS books will receive a free audiobook code from Audible. Make that 24 now, as Sensei was the first to claim one. But don’t rush through the books, I’m sure you’ll want to linger over every savory moment of the delicate, deliciously enchanting prose that dances across the pages with all the ethereal grace of a half-starved Russian ballerina.

Ah, who am I kidding? There are explosions and guns and futuristic technologies and guns and artificial intelligences and guns and Meteor air-to-air missiles and collateral damage and twin Degroet Tactical M165 20mm cannons. There are also, as it happens, guns. And possibly a mystery or two.

If you want pages and pages of thickly sensuous prose concerning which side of the pillow is more palatable to the semi-conscious senses, read Proust. If you are looking for deep insight into the psychology of the human mind, read Dostoevsky. If you would like a grand and sweeping tale of epic scope and grandeur combined with intelligent commentary on the human condition, read Tolstoy. If you seek snarky, sparkly adolescent dialogue and the inevitable triumph of the gamma male’s wit, read Scalzi.

But if you like murder mysteries and old school Mil-SF where the hero wouldn’t recognize self-doubt if he saw it and would shoot it on sight if he did, you might enjoy QUANTUM MORTIS.

Did I mention the guns? To quote one confirmed gun porn enthusiast whose blurb for A Man Disrupted was, regrettably, deemed to be a bit too enthusiastic by the publisher:

“That was a seriously satisfying ending. I loved every second of this. I sincerely did.  I think it’s more
enjoyable than A THRONE OF BONES… and I think it has broader market appeal. Seriously. Standing fucking ovation.”

Speaking of Selenoth, if you are interested, you may wish to note that the following three books are free on Amazon today:

This concludes the commercial portion of the flight.

QUANTUM MORTIS live on Amazon

The first two ebooks in the Quantum Mortis series are now available from Amazon. QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted retails for $4.99. If you’re interested in obtaining it in epub format, you should be able to find it at Barnes & Noble or Kobo soon. Otherwise, if you send me an email with a copy of the Amazon receipt, I will send you an epub copy in return. QUANTUM MORTIS: Gravity Kills retails for $2.99 and is available only from Amazon. If you want the epub, send me a copy of the Amazon receipt and I will sent you your favored format. You can also just use Calibre to convert the file since the books are not DRM-protected.

In order to celebrate the introduction of the new Mil-SF mystery series, all three Selenoth novellas, A Magic Broken, The Wardog’s Coin, and The Last Witchking will be free on Amazon for the next two days, beginning tomorrow. So, if you don’t have all of them yet, this would be an excellent chance to complete the set.

And since ACX and Marcher Lord were so gracious as to give me 25 free audiobook download codes for A Magic Broken, I will be giving them away to the first 25 reviewers of either QM:AMD or QM:GK. (NB: this offer includes the early reviewers who received a review copy last week so long as they review the other book.) Send me an email with a link to your review and I will send you the download code.

You’ll need to have an Amazon account to use the code, but since you’ll need one to post a review there, that shouldn’t be a problem. And just to be clear, the free audiobook code is not contingent upon the nature of the review. As always, I encourage honest and serious reviews, I do not seek mindless flattery any more than I approve of witless criticism.

Baen Books author Tom Kratman, who most of you are aware comments here from time to time, provided QM:AMD with a blurb that is featured on the back of the book. He described the book thusly:


“What are we going to do when artificial intelligence becomes self-aware, self-willed, and maybe stark raving mad? The question matters because that day is coming…fast. With approximately as many twists and turns as China’s Tianmen Mountain Road, QUANTUM MORTIS starts fast and then accelerates, leading to a conclusion both shattering…and more than a little heart warming.”
—TOM KRATMAN, author of A Desert Called Peace

As for QUANTUM MORTIS: Gravity Kills, being a pure ebook it has no blurbs, but the first reviewers on Amazon appear to have enjoyed the novella. Keep in mind that the first GK reviewers have not read AMD and vice-versa.

“This story is an effective and entertaining rework of several of my favorite SF and Mystery themes, with a result greater and more original than the sum of its parts. Let’s start with the homeworld, which is also a refuge for a thousand plus governments in exile. To quote Agent K from “Men in Black”, “It’s like Casablanca, but with no Nazis”. Like “Casablanca” and “Men in Black”, but unlike that prize turkey, “Barb Wire”, the authors make this trope a proper background to the story itself…. The result, shaken not stirred, is an entertaining story, which combines the best aspects of hard SF and ‘Tec novels. The best thing, though, is that this world shows the possibility of many more such stories. I am looking forward to them.”
—BERNARD BRANDT