{"id":1064,"date":"2014-12-01T16:17:25","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T22:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1064"},"modified":"2014-12-25T13:41:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-25T19:41:39","slug":"visit-the-fortress-in-orion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/visit-the-fortress-in-orion\/","title":{"rendered":"Visit The Fortress in Orion<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fortress<\/a>The Fortress in Orion<\/em><\/a>
\nDead Enders Book I<\/em>
\nMike Resnick<\/a>
\nPyr Books<\/a>
\nTrade Paper $18.00, 300 p.
\nEbook $11.99 Kindle<\/a> Nook<\/a>
\nAudiobook<\/a> $19.95
\naudio clip<\/a> (15 min.)<\/p>\n

Mike Resnick is one of the most prolific and honored people in the science fiction and fantasy field.\u00a0 It’s easy to understand why.\u00a0 The man’s work is innovative, engaging, and one heck of a good story.<\/p>\n

Probably his most significant body of work is the Birthright Universe, which first saw light in the 1970s in Birthright:\u00a0 The Book of Man<\/em>.\u00a0 This was an outline of roughly 18,000 years, culminating in mankind’s extinction.\u00a0 That’s a lot of room to play in.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, most of Resnick’s novels and many of his short stories are set in this universe.<\/p>\n

The Birthright Universe is divided into five periods, based on the political structure of the time:\u00a0 Republic, Democracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy, and Anarchy.\u00a0 The Fortress in Orion<\/em> is set during the Democracy.\u00a0 It’s the start of what promises to be a solid series.<\/p>\n

Colonel Nathan Pretorious is the kind of special forces operative you turn to when it’s already too late.\u00a0 He’s tasked with putting together a team to try and infiltrate the Traanskei Coalition, specifically a particular fortress in Orion.\u00a0 Once there, he and his team are to replace the leader, General Michkag, with a clone.\u00a0 If they can get out, they bring the original with them.\u00a0 If not, they kill the original Michkag and leave the clone in his place.\u00a0 The clone has been thoroughly trained to take over and will end the war within a year.<\/p>\n

How Pretorious and his team are supposed to accomplish this is entirely up to Pretorious.\u00a0 He’s a master of making things up as he goes along<\/del> improvising.\u00a0 So along with a killer cyborg, an empath, a contortionist thief, a computer expert, and an alien who can project an image of just about anything in place of itself, he sets off.\u00a0 Just another day’s work for Pretorious and the Dead Enders.<\/p>\n

Like most of Resnick’s work in this universe, there’s a great deal of dialogue.\u00a0 The book moves quickly, and every couple of chapters Resnick throws a complication in to keep things lively.\u00a0 Everything Pretorious does has a reason behind it.\u00a0 He doesn’t tell his team much because he doesn’t want them to worry or get fixated on a particular plan.\u00a0 He wants them to be prepared for anything.<\/p>\n

Resnick makes Pretorious’ plans fairly believable, and there’s solid logic behind everything the team does to get into the fortress.\u00a0 Any coincidences that aid the team are offset by things that work against them.<\/p>\n

The Fortress in Orion<\/em> goes on sale tomorrow (December 2).\u00a0 It’s a fun adventure like you used to see all the time in science fiction but is all too rare these days.\u00a0 Check it out.<\/p>\n

This time I didn’t get the review copy from Pyr.\u00a0 John O’Neill passed it along to me, so I’d like to thank John for doing so.\u00a0 The Fortress in Orion<\/em> was a fun book and just what I was in the mood for.<\/p>\n

Update:\u00a0 I’d like to thank Esther Bochner for the audio clip.\u00a0 I put it at the top of the page, but here it is again<\/a> for your convenience.\u00a0 It’s a 15 minute clip, so you get a good feel of the tone of the book, the character of Pretorius, and the plot setup.\u00a0 Christopher Rummel has a deep, gritty voice that’s perfect for the story.\u00a0 The audiobook is 7 hours and 32 minutes in length.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fortress in Orion Dead Enders Book I Mike Resnick Pyr Books Trade Paper $18.00, 300 p. Ebook $11.99 Kindle Nook Audiobook $19.95 audio clip (15 min.) Mike Resnick is one of the most prolific and honored people in the science fiction and fantasy field.\u00a0 It’s easy to understand why.\u00a0 The man’s work is innovative, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[345,14,18,8],"tags":[723,776,761,722,759],"class_list":["post-1064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-oneill","category-mike-resnick","category-pyr-books","category-space-opera","tag-birthright-universe","tag-john-oneill","tag-mike-resnick","tag-pyr-books-2","tag-space-opera"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-ha","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1064"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1077,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions\/1077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}