Tag Archives: Retrieval Artist Universe

And So It Ends

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Masterminds-ebook-cover-webMasterminds
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
WMG Publishing
Trade Paper $18.99
Ebook $5.99

No, not the Retrieval Artist series, just the Anniversary Day Saga. Miles Flint and his associates will be back sooner or later.

Masterminds ends the eight volume Anniversary Day Saga. Reading this has been one of the highlights of the year for me. This is the one were everything comes together.  It goes on sale in the next few weeks, so you’ve got time to get caught up if you’re a book or two behind.

Rusch has set herself a major task in trying to tie together all the threads in a coherent manner. I’m not going to go into any detail because I don’t want to give away any of the surprises. But I will tell you a few things.  SPOILERS AHEAD. Continue reading →

Vigilantes

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Vigilantes-ebook-cover-webVigilantes
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
WMG Publishing
Trade Paper $18.99
Ebook $5.99
Audiobook

As you know (or maybe you don’t know), I’ve been reading KKR’s Anniversary Day Saga and alternating reviews between here and Amazing Stories.

Vigilantes is the eighth book in the ten volume series within a series. It’s kind of an awkward volume to review because everything in the book is a continuation of story arcs begun in earlier books. If you’ve not read them, you won’t follow what I’m saying without my giving in some cases some major spoilers.

I will say this. Early in Vigilantes one of the characters we’ve gotten to know, but probably not love, is brutally murdered. That murder isn’t solved (in a legal sense) before the end of the book, although Bartholomew Nyquist knows who did it. The problem is it takes him away from gathering information about the Peyti Crisis, information gathering that was turning out to be quite productive. Continue reading →

A Review of The Retrieval Artist

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The-Retrieval-Artist-cover-webThe Retrieval Artist
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
WMG Publishing
Paperback $12.99 Powell’s
Ebook $3.99 Kindle Kobo Nook

Over the decade and a half (roughly) Kristine Kathryn Rusch has been building what has come to be known as The Retrieval Artist Universe, a set of novels and shorter works set in a common universe.  The Retrieval Artist is the first of these and was originally published in Analog.  I know because I remember reading it in the hotel the weekend one of my brothers got married.  (Don’t ask me how I remember this; I don’t know.  I just do.)

For the past year, Ms. Rusch has been writing a five novel sequence set in the Retrieval Artist Universe called Anniversary Day.  The first two are out, and the remaining three will be published in January, February, and March.  ARCs for these three arrived in my mail box the Friday before Christmas.  I’m going to read through the whole series, alternating reviews between here and Amazing Stories.

But I decided to go back and refresh my memory of the inaugural story in the series and post a review as an entry point for those of you who haven’t read any of the books yet.

Humanity has made contact with a number of different alien races.  As you would expect, each one has its own set of beliefs and laws, which sometimes are pretty different from those of humans.  By treaty, if you break a law while in alien territory, they can hunt you down and inflict whatever punishment their laws allow, even if the infraction was unintended and no big deal in human terms. Continue reading →