(Ed.– Today’s review comes from guest reviewer Chris Smith. We here at Shiny Book Review thank Chris for stepping up and delivering this review, and hope that he sticks around for more.)

I blame it on Howard Stern. The idea that crude and obnoxious is inherently funny. For him, it worked. I think part of that was the fact that it had never been done in such an obviously over the top way. I’m not a fan of Stern’s show, but I’m willing to give him credit for being a pioneer of sorts in the ‘shock value entertainment’ industry.

Unfortunately, his success spawned imitators. Lots of imitators. Oh Dear and Forgiving (insert favorite God, Goddess, Higher Power, or Celebrity) the imitators. Each newcomer, it seemed, had less talent, and less wit, than the one that had come before. I quit listening to morning shows on terrestrial radio, the natural spawning ground for the species. They made their way to satellite, infecting the airwaves I paid for, trying to escape. There is now one station I can’t listen to on Fridays, simply because they play a certain host’s show for three hours in the morning, and then replay another three hours of “The Best of.”

Then came MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and all the rest of the social media. Whatever good has come from social media- yes, there is some good, be it keeping long distance friends in touch with each other, getting to know your favorite authors, free publicity for your business, etc.- the format has also brought out the ‘140 character brain dump’ style of commentary. Some of it is good. Most is not. The shock jocks had found a new format. The virus spread.

So this is what it has come to, then. A collection of what seems to be a bunch of Facebook posts, blog entries and assorted ‘Deep Thoughts’ (the old SNL bit, not something deep and profound) liberally sprinkled with bathroom “humor”, penis “jokes”, and direct references to masturbation.

I’m not using quotes here in an attempt to sound elite or snobby, I actually don’t have a problem with low humor done well. “Blazing Saddles” is one of my all time favorites, and still brings me to tears with the infamous ‘bean scene.’ I thought the first “Hangover” was hysterical.  Louis CK has the ability to be crass and over the top, yet still come off as a likeable guy. “40 year old virgin?” Modern classic.

No, I use quotes simply because, unlike Mel Brooks, the author seems to assume that just mentioning his defecation or masturbation is somehow funny, with very little setup, attempted wit, or punch line. Or point, for that matter.

I can’t say I wasn’t warned, though. It was right there in the introduction. Following a short sample, we get this: ”Had enough? That’s pretty much what you’re going to get if you read this book. Don’t know what the point is? Neither do I most of the time.”

Fair enough, the sample was crude, but had potential. I read on. Three or four entries in, I found myself losing hope. What had seemed somewhat promising was not getting any better. I started counting the pages until my minimum, looking forward to putting this all behind me.

Roughly a third of the way through, the promise of improvement came back. There were a few stories, such as “A whole lot of shaking going on” and “New Year’s Day” that started out strong and fizzled at the end. The feeling crept over me that this author, when confronted with a story that went somewhere, panicked and scuttled it before it became a fully developed piece.

I glared at the remaining page count, resenting the fact that I had been teased with something good, only to have it snatched away at the last line.

What kept going through my head was that the author, for better or worse, was taking George Carlin’s later routines, Dane Cook’s current routines and attempting to write them in Dave Barry’s irreverent style.  With less than spectacular results.

Then I read “States of Grace.” It started out as more of the same, and to be honest, it took everything I had to keep going. Then the unexpected happened; the final line made me go back and read it again. My jaw dropped. In this one story, everything I had been hoping for had finally made an appearance. Plot, character growth, and yes! an actual point! It even showed the deeper and more introspective side of the author that had been hinted at earlier entries.

Dare I say this was a new direction for the rest of the book?

I read the next entry, “Stop bullying racists”, with hope in my heart, and a new look at the author. More of the same, but there was humor under the surface, waiting-just waiting, I knew it!- to burst forth. It didn’t.

A few more like that, same results. The potential was there, so close I could touch it, but never fully realized.

I checked the page count. Home stretch, twenty or so to go to minimum. I can do this.

I should have seen it coming. Whipping through the pages before the intermission, I slogged through ‘meh’ (“Easter realization”),’hunh?’ (“Al goes his own way”), not bad but needs polish (“Little ditty bout Jack and Diana”), weird-in-a-good-way (“The perpetual scary-go-round”), then touching and insightful (“Piedmont”). “Piedmont” was like “States of Grace,” it caught me off guard and felt genuine.

Then came “Bad advice for writers.” The author lays out his method and theory on writing. As I read the piece, the feelings of minor irritation at some of the lackluster entries disappear, turning into something more like relief. Here’s why; After the analogy of a best-selling author as a parade, and himself as the janitor that cleans up after, the author says “Usually there are a few people who are looking down and finding something more interesting caught in a storm grate or written in fading spray paint on an alley wall. They buy books as well. Just not my books. Yet. And they deserve the very least I can provide.”

Well, if this is the very least the author could provide, I don’t feel so bad about thinking most of it was crap. This isn’t something he had put a lot of time into creating, which is reinforced by the line “Just write it down. Don’t worry about the “craft,” that only applies to about a dozen people. The rest of us are just churning s**t out.”

To be honest, he’s probably right, and given the culture of shock value entertainment I mentioned earlier, will continue to be right for years to come.

Fine. I accept that this is not something you care about enough to give your best effort.

Then came the intermission, and the swearing. On my part, and for once, not the author’s. This is your only warning on spoilers, because frankly, if my reprinting this line from the intermission ruins the effect that the author had in mind, GOOD. He doesn’t deserve to get the effect. Not after this:

“Please keep in mind that the purpose of these stories is not to immerse you in some epic saga but instead act as a catalyst for your own imagination. If you’ve gotten to this point and haven’t already come up with much better endings for some of the stories or even much better stories that you wouldn’t have thought of unless you were reading this book then you might be missing the point … although I will give you credit for sticking with it then.”

No. Just no. You don’t get to say this after laying out your “write down anything that comes to mind” manifesto. I could accept that, and possibly be interested in reading the rest of the book to find some gems. Not now.

Screw you, dude. You copped out. I can’t help but envision you sitting at your laptop, reading over what you had compiled, not liking it, and then coming up with this BS reason for putting it all together. It comes off as a desperate attempt to strive for a loftier goal, and a weak attempt at convincing me that this is what you planned all along.

I don’t buy it. I feel betrayed.

If this were an actual paper book, I wouldn’t give it the honor of “hurling it across the room with great force.” It would be taken out back and dropped in a bucket of water, so no accidental reading could occur. Then I’d toss it out while driving on a back road. That’s it, the very least I could do to make sure it didn’t find its way into anyone else’s hands.

All moot, though, as I was given a PDF to read. It galls me that I have to go through the process of deleting it from my hard drive, as I don’t feel that this work deserves any more of my time or attention.

Link to a free copy here at Amazon

On one hand, it’s never wise to get hopes up for a series that you know is going to be nothing more than a bunch of Mack Bolan novels on steroids. On the other, when the series becomes much better than anticipated and the characters are completely believable (albeit in the fictional sort of way), you expect something more from a series. That said, Tiger by the Tail is a horrible addition to the Paladin of Shadows series by John Ringo.

Picking up a co-author along the way (newcomer Ryan Sear), the series takes a twist as Mike Harmon (aka “Ghost”, aka “Kildar”) and his Keldaran special operations team (if you haven’t read any book in this series thus far, start with Kildar. Ghost is, technically, the first book of the series but is… uh… not for the faint of heart and really doesn’t add much to the series until you finish Unto the Breach. Only then should a noob — that would be someone new to the series — go back and read Ghost) are currently taking on pirates in the Asian Pacific near Myanmar (Burma). “Practice” seems to be the best way to describe the operations that the Kildar is currently performing, though there are hints that things in the South Pacific aren’t all that they appear. Stumbling onto a criminal enterprise far bigger than anything the Kildar could imagine, Harmon and his team push through the underbelly of the Asian criminal underworld to find out the truth — and stop the bad guys once more.

The action is there. The suspense is there. Dialogue, pop culture references, nerdy “in” jokes… they’re all there. However, this book is lacking something profound. There is not sense of “soul” to this book. Mike Harmon is cool, but he lacks something defining in this book, something that makes him the anti-hero we root for. Anyone familiar with the series will know that Harmon is a special kind of evil, one that is the most dangerous towards other kinds of evil (see Dexter). This book takes this away and gives us juvenile jerk material instead, which is somewhat of a surprise. Sexuality in these books isn’t hidden (trust me, I’ve read Ghost) but in this book it is more portrayed as a teenager discovering his dad’s nudie books in the shed. Before there was rhyme and reason why the Kildar randomly banged women (“rapist in his heart” is a start… I never claimed that they were good reasons) but now, it comes across as someone deciding to slather it across the page because they can.

The Keldara are nothing more than cardboard cutouts this time around, and Chief Adams seems to have reverted to a drunken Navy SEAL set loose on an unsuspecting town of debauchery (which was funny a few books ago; now it’s just something to add to the word count). The villains who are featured for only a short time before the Kildar offs them seem to be better drawn than the actual heroes of the Keldara teams, and the entire book comes across as something that started as fanfic and somehow got published with the original author’s name on it. Before you fire up your torches and pick up those pitchforks, let me explain.

I like the majority of John Ringo’s books. He has an extraordinary gift for gab, to draw the reader in with nothing more than a few lines of dialogue. The only other writer I know of who seems to be able to pull that off without much effort is Joss Whedon. You can always tell a Ringo book apart from the rest of the field because the dialogue is witty and snappy, and can tell a scene without going into expressive detail about every surrounding. Tiger by the Tail is missing this gab, the easy conversation which helps propel the story along. Some of the dialogue is downright painful.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone but the most ardent fan. There’s potential, and this book does move the series along. As itself, though Tiger by the Tail is a perfect miss and very disappointing addition.

–Reviewed by Jason

Part of reading a new novelist is the joy of learning how they write. Their pacing, their characters, their voice… all new and exciting.

While Chuck Gannon isn’t entirely “new” for me (I’ve read his 1632 stories), this is his first solo novel I’ve read and I was quite pleased with the end product, Fire with Firea science fiction novel that has a lot of everything in it — intrigue, suspense, action, mystery, and even a little bit of romance. Without a doubt it’s one of the best SF books I’ve read this year.

Caine Riordan wakes up out of cold sleep and missing memories from the past 100 hours. He is disoriented and confused, since cold sleep (cryogenic freezing) was not something one usually lost that many memories to. He learns that he has not been asleep for 100 hours but, instead, for over 13 years. He struggles to answer questions and to find out what had happened, how it happened, and what would drive them to keep him asleep for so long. However, answers aren’t entirely forthcoming from those asking him questions, and he soon realizes that the man asking him questions, Richard Downing, has a hidden agenda. The man also wants to give him a job.

Recruited into a world of intrigue, Caine must figure out what is going on at a small island known only as Shangri-La on a planet humans have settled far out in the galaxy. Initially thinking that it is simply an oil operation by a major corporation, he soon discovers that something far deeper and darker is at play as he stumbles upon the remnants of a lost alien culture living, and sentient aliens living on the planet. Armed with this information, Caine must make it back to Downing and his allies before the assassins of the oil corporation can stop him.

The only downside of this book is that it really is two books in one, which means that reviewing this without spoilers is very difficult.

Caine must survive long enough to make a presentation to a group of power brokers on Earth at the Pantheon in Greece, and again survive assassination attempts in order to let the politicians on Earth know that humans are not alone. A world government is being formed, and the news of alien existence could make or break the proceedings.

And then the book really gets going as aliens themselves initiate First Contact, and request that none other than Caine Riordan be on the first contact team.

Gannon’s plotting and pacing is fabulous, and Caine is a believable character you can’t help but to root for. His bodyguard/companion/potential love interest, Opal Patrone, is a solid support character with her own tragic past and, due to cold sleep, a woman out of her time. The empathy one feels when she struggles to adapt and, after she does, going about her business with a strange mixture of relentlessness and trepidation is nerve-wracking. The author keeps the action and story barreling forward with only one inevitable conclusion at the end.

Gannon has himself a winner here. Fire With Fire is a tremendous first effort and promises so much more in the following sequels. This is a must-buy for fans who love a good SF story.

–Reviewed by Jason

One part political discourse, one part romantic adventure, and one part… something else entirely, Sarah Hoyt’s A Few Good Men is a continuation novel set in her Darkship universe that is the first in a series all its own.

Lucius Dante Maximilian Keeva was a monster, kept hidden away in the Good Men’s undersea prison of Never-Never, forever being punished in his mind for murdering his best friend. Locked away and forgotten, it seemed, until one day when is he broken out of prison. But instead of being the monster he believed himself to be, however, Lucius listens to the voice in his head — his long-dead friend Ben — and sets about helping the poor bastards on the lower levels out of the prison before Never-Never flooded.

Lucius manages to help the others escape and fights his way out of Never-Never, flies off away from his old home (the Olympus seacity) and finds himself in one of the other massive seacities of the world, the Liberte seacity. Unfortunately for Lucius, he has not really seen, talked to or even been touched by another human being in fourteen years, and the sudden sensory onslaught of freedom in Liberte almost causes him to curl up in a ball and quit. Fortunately, the voice in his head (Ben) is as stubborn as he, and forces him to go into the city and try to find a way to survive.

Once he overcomes his fears, he catches up on the news of the day — and discovers that his father is dead and his younger brother, who had become the next Good Man, had just been found in his home, brutally murdered. Lucius, knowing that Ben’s family would be subjugated to horrors of a hereditary system and would not have the same security if a new Good Man took over the Keeva’s seacity of Olympus, decides to claim his inheritance.

The first half of the book is splendidly told, with the prodigal son/convicted murderer returning home to claim his family’s fortune and the secrets and lies that he had been fed throughout his entire life being laid bare before. He realizes that Ben’s younger brother, Nat, is in the same peculiar position that Ben had been in many years before with his dead brother Max and that his own story about what has happened in the Keeva household — indeed, with all of the Good Men across the globe — is almost unbelievable. The author teases the reader with the big secret, the big reveal that the reader already knows about if they had read Darkship Thieves (reviewed here) or Darkship Renegades (reviewed here), a slow and almost torturous tease that goes on for almost too long. Once the big reveal is made, though, the book drastically slows down.

Part of the problem is Lucius’ inner dialogue. Since the book is told in a first person POV, this is okay in the beginning, with the narration being fairly thorough and fast-paced. As the book goes on, however, Lucius’ dialogue seems to be replaced more with his growing ideology and less with the actual telling of the story, including points of purposeful “But that’s not my story to tell” comments interspersed. There is a lot less “show” here than the first half of the book, and it does detract from points that could have been especially telling with the characterization of Lucius. It also does a number on the bond between reader and character, since a large part of the second half is political discourse (which is fine, mostly… I enjoyed it, but I don’t know if it is for everyone).

However, the portrayal of Lucius’ guilt about surviving (and murdering his best friend) is excellently done, with the pangs and remorse any survivor has painted beautifully and tragically on the page. The author does a tremendous job and forcing the reader to not only see that pain, but experience it as well, which is something not many try to do these days. An amazing venture here, with the author almost daring the reader to keep going, to see what the hero sees, to feel the pain and anguish of life… not just to use the book as an escape from reality, but as a window in to a reality that is potentially on our doorstep.

A pretty good book from Ms Hoyt, and the promise of a solid series all around. If you liked Darkship Renegades, you will definitely enjoy A Few Good Men.

–Reviewed by Jason