Marsbound, by Joe Haldeman, $24.95. Joe Haldeman can tell a complex story in a sparse and highly effective manner that would take many other authors three long volumes. His new novel is an elegant story of colonizing Mars and meeting aliens.
Eighteen-year-old Carmen Dula and her family are on the way to Mars. She doesn’t plan to be a permanent colonist, but Mars holds surprises for everyone. She makes friends with the ship pilot on the long space elevator ride to Earth orbit. She continues school from a distance on the space voyage.
On Mars, Carmen has a few friends but also a powerful enemy in the colony leader. When Carmen gets into trouble and wanders from the compound, in her depression she stumbles on another Mars colony that has been there a long time and is not human.
The encounter makes Carmen deathly sick and she has to find the aliens again for medical help. They in turn want her as their contact with humans. Their meetings hold surprises for the aliens, as well as humanity.
What starts as an amusing coming-of-age novel becomes an interesting solution to the paradox of why we don’t encounter aliens in a universe that should be full of them.
Dogs, by Nancy Kress, $14.95. People become desperate when their pets are threatened. When dogs become agents of terrorism, it sets a small town at war with itself. Something has infected the dogs of Tyler, Md. Friendly dogs are attacking people, including fatal attacks on children.
Tessa Sanderson retired from the FBI after her husband’s death. She suspects she was passed over for promotion because her husband was from a Muslim country. Some cryptic e-mails lead her to a connection between the Mideast and the infected dogs.
Tessa starts to work with Jess Longstrom, the Tyler animal-control officer who remains one of the few sane people in the crisis. Tessa doesn’t trust her old employers and runs off to conduct her own investigation.
The government sees the crisis as a chance to bolster its tarnished reputation at emergency relief. FEMA plus the National Guard and the FBI aren’t up to the task when people’s feelings about their dogs are at stake. Militias pop up to free all the dogs along with a counter-militia ready to take immediate action to eliminate all the animals.
Kress’s engrossing thriller shows a range of reactions from the community. Her bio notes she lives with “the world’s most spoiled toy poodle” and that kind of attachment is evident in the strong feelings of her characters.
Soul of Fire, by Sarah A. Hoyt, $6.99. The second volume of Coloradan Sarah Hoyt’s trilogy of a 19th-century British empire run on magic stands on its own as a romantic story of shape shifters in India.
Peter Farewell is searching for the Soul of Fire, a lost jewel that was the basis for magic power in Europe dating back to Charlemagne. He’s not having any luck, but his natural chivalry takes over when he sees a young lady about to fall from an upper story window. Peter is a were-dragon and changes form to fly up and rescue her.
Sofie Warington was running away because her parents had promised her to the king of the tiger clan. The tiger wants her for the promised dowry of a damaged jewel and Sofie’s ability to unleash its power. When Sofie runs away, her maid, Lalita, is revealed as a member of the monkey clan with her own designs on the gem.
Peter thinks he can never know love or marriage because of his dragon nature, which is punishable by death in British culture. He is isolated from his own kind and from most people, and he plans to give up the estate and title he has inherited.
Peter volunteers to take Sofie to a man she thinks will marry her. Peter and Sofie play the romance story game of never telling each other the whole story while their inevitable love is obvious to everyone else.
The first volume of the trilogy “Heart of Light” told a story of Africa. Both of the books stand on their own as independent stories while combining as a whole to give anticipation for the concluding volume, “Heart and Soul” out in November.
Fred Cleaver is a freelancer who writes regularly on new science fiction.
