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songwind's review against another edition
4.0
In the future, nations have fallen. Independent city states and confederacies dot the North American landscape, supported by the Phoenix Society, an organization dedicated to protect the rights of individuals.
Mysterious people manipulate and marshal their forces. A drug runner has taken control of Boston, backed by armed bike gangs. In the middle of it all, Morgan Stormrider is trying hard to hang on to his ideals, and his faith in the society.
This book was interesting in a lot of ways. The actors behind the scenes, their abilities and histories are all heavily influenced by ancient Vedic, Kabbalistic and Gnostic religious teachings. It's woven deftly through the narrative, there to be seen but not called out.
The story itself is engaging. The choice to put Stormrider, an enforcer, into a position where he must succeed with at little violence as possible amplifies the tension. The choice to show us what the actors behind the scenes are up to keeps the story rolling when the mundane details might have bogged down. The inclusion of several characters whose motivations and moral stance are murky at best was also refreshing. The romantic subplot, while never really in doubt and thus not really a source of conflict, was sweet and sincere and a nice palate cleanser.
The two major downfalls as I see them are this:
1. Past perfect. The author chose not to use the past perfect tense, which causes some confusion in a few places, and makes the text read awkwardly in others. With the entire story in the past tense, it wasn't always immediately clear when events being described were further in the past.
2. Pop culture references. This is definitely a subjective thing, but I always have a hard time believing that people in the future (2112 in this case - I see what you did there) would commonly reference 20th century culture. Maybe it would be more well known than our current familiarity with the 19th century, due to digital archiving and the like. But the number of people quoting Monty Python or Queensrych would still be very small. They'll have been replaced with other cultural touchstones by then. This caused several serious cases of eye rolling and lack of immersion. I find this to be a common problem with indie books set in the relatively near future.
All in all, it was a good read, with enjoyable characters, a tight plot, and great world building. I'll definitely be getting the series.
Mysterious people manipulate and marshal their forces. A drug runner has taken control of Boston, backed by armed bike gangs. In the middle of it all, Morgan Stormrider is trying hard to hang on to his ideals, and his faith in the society.
This book was interesting in a lot of ways. The actors behind the scenes, their abilities and histories are all heavily influenced by ancient Vedic, Kabbalistic and Gnostic religious teachings. It's woven deftly through the narrative, there to be seen but not called out.
The story itself is engaging. The choice to put Stormrider, an enforcer, into a position where he must succeed with at little violence as possible amplifies the tension. The choice to show us what the actors behind the scenes are up to keeps the story rolling when the mundane details might have bogged down. The inclusion of several characters whose motivations and moral stance are murky at best was also refreshing. The romantic subplot, while never really in doubt and thus not really a source of conflict, was sweet and sincere and a nice palate cleanser.
The two major downfalls as I see them are this:
1. Past perfect. The author chose not to use the past perfect tense, which causes some confusion in a few places, and makes the text read awkwardly in others. With the entire story in the past tense, it wasn't always immediately clear when events being described were further in the past.
2. Pop culture references. This is definitely a subjective thing, but I always have a hard time believing that people in the future (2112 in this case - I see what you did there) would commonly reference 20th century culture. Maybe it would be more well known than our current familiarity with the 19th century, due to digital archiving and the like. But the number of people quoting Monty Python or Queensrych would still be very small. They'll have been replaced with other cultural touchstones by then. This caused several serious cases of eye rolling and lack of immersion. I find this to be a common problem with indie books set in the relatively near future.
All in all, it was a good read, with enjoyable characters, a tight plot, and great world building. I'll definitely be getting the series.
eoghann's review
3.0
The latest book in my #GreatIndieReviewProject series is Without Bloodshed by Matthew Graybosch, a science fantasy story which mixes libertarian idealism with heavy metal, violence and a healthy dose of sex.
One of the things that independent published allows authors isa freedom to step outside traditional genre limits or push them in different directions. That's certainly something that the author of Without Bloodshed Matthew Graybosch has taken advantage of.
Don't worry, you'll find most of the staple ingredients here too but this book has an agenda of sorts that sets it apart from the herd.
Science Fantasy For An Adult Audience
This is not a book intended for children. And I don't say that simply because of the amount of sexual content. It is present certainly at times somewhat explicit, but not unreasonably so given the story being told.
It's more that the subject matter, while carefully bookended by action sequences, rests heavily on politics and social constructs. There's a lot of intrigue going on here. At times, so much that I rather lost track of who was triple-crossing who. There's also a fair amount of people standing around discussing principles and worrying about morals. These are fairly adult concepts and interests.
It's also in the presentation. The book requires concentration to read, particularly in the early chapters. There is so much information to be processed that it's easy to get lost in it. And then there is the large cast.
Characters, Characters Everywhere
I think it's safe to say that Morgan Stormrider (the author does actually take a moment to justify that rather extravagant name) and Naomi Bradleigh broadly represent the authors values (as displayed in an idealized action environment) and they are both quite appealing protagonists.
At times I did think that Morgan in particular comes across as just a bit too perfect. He has made mistakes, but they are in the past and in this story he always seems to know what the right way to behave is. I sort of want him to do something selfish occasionally.
Once we move away from the primary characters though things got a little more confused for me. For a start, the story has a large cast due to its level of politics and intrigue. But to make matters worse, quite a few of these characters go by two or more names. At several points during the story I had to stop and try and figure out who exactly was talking about who. Obviously anything that pulls me back out of the story is a bad thing, so I think it's an area where the story could have benefited with a bit more work to better differentiate the players.
Fortunately once I had got myself past the half way mark most of the characters had sufficiently imprinted themselves on my brain that the confusion lessened. I think my perseverance was rewarded, but you can't assume all readers will be as patient as I was. Which would be a shame because by the end there are plenty of hooks in place for the larger plot and it's obvious the scale of the story is intended to grow even further.
The characters themselves are for the most part quite distinct, it's more the volume and names that create the confusion, although there is one glaring exception in a character who is so forcefully one-dimensional in her bitchiness I sort of wonder what is going on with her.
Displaying Your Influences
Every author has their influences and it's usually not to hard to pick out what they are. While the book itself is unquestionably of the science fantasy, the style of the book shows several other influences.
I am not a huge fan of either rock or heavy metal music so most likely I am missing a good number of references in Without Bloodshed, but even I can pick up on the fact that it is a significant influence on the book. I also strongly suspect a significant anime influence based on both the culture presented and some of the descriptions used.
The third major influence in the book is a Libertarian one. Society and many of the characters espouse libertarian values and it's not hard to see that we are expected to see those as the "good" values. As a writer you have to be very careful not to step over that line from character expression to authorial expression. There are a few places where maybe the soapbox got pulled out but for the most part it is kept in check.
World Building
While the politicking and intrigues are undoubtedly a strong element in the book, the world building is more of a mixed bag.
On the one hand the Graybosch clearly spent time thinking out his world, how it functions and what it's technical level would be, but on the other we really aren't exposed to this world very much.
So we get a lot of very specific information about sidewalk heating or the use of Tesla points to power things but we don't ever get the viewpoint of a regular person in this new world.
Clearly Nationfall radically altered the political structure of the world. The story doesn't go into detail on this, which is fine, but the implication is that all the geo-political governments collapsed and we are now dealing with some sort of semi-anarchical city-state structure. But I never got a good feeling for what that meant. I would think there would have been some pretty nasty fall out along the way.
Morgan and Naomi are so insulated from the real world due to their twin jobs as music stars and Adversaries that they never really interact with regular people. They are too rich and too important.
Admittedly this is also often the case in fantasy stories where our protagonist is a king or prince, but in that case we sort of know what the average peasant's life is like. Here I genuinely have no idea.
We get some brief infodumps about biker gangs and some sort of proto-libertarian anarchical free-state made up from Anonymous and the Pirate Party (not a completely absurd notion) but again, what does it actually mean to live like that? I think in this case having at least one viewpoint character
Who Should Read This?
Do you like rock and or heavy metal music?
Do you appreciated some fantasy in your science fiction?
Are stories better with a healthy dose of political intrigue?
Are you okay with some sexuality in your reading material?
If some or most of these apply to you then you should give this one a shot.
Did You Like It?
Yes, overall I enjoyed reading Without Bloodshed. There are areas where I think the storytelling could be tightened up and early on confusion is definitely an issue, but the book is trying to do more than just tell an action story. The politics and the social views the characters present are intended to illustrate and exemplify as well as entertain. Plus the anime and heavy metal infused setting is quite distinctive.
I don't think there's anything else quite like this on the market.
One of the things that independent published allows authors isa freedom to step outside traditional genre limits or push them in different directions. That's certainly something that the author of Without Bloodshed Matthew Graybosch has taken advantage of.
Don't worry, you'll find most of the staple ingredients here too but this book has an agenda of sorts that sets it apart from the herd.
Science Fantasy For An Adult Audience
This is not a book intended for children. And I don't say that simply because of the amount of sexual content. It is present certainly at times somewhat explicit, but not unreasonably so given the story being told.
It's more that the subject matter, while carefully bookended by action sequences, rests heavily on politics and social constructs. There's a lot of intrigue going on here. At times, so much that I rather lost track of who was triple-crossing who. There's also a fair amount of people standing around discussing principles and worrying about morals. These are fairly adult concepts and interests.
It's also in the presentation. The book requires concentration to read, particularly in the early chapters. There is so much information to be processed that it's easy to get lost in it. And then there is the large cast.
Characters, Characters Everywhere
I think it's safe to say that Morgan Stormrider (the author does actually take a moment to justify that rather extravagant name) and Naomi Bradleigh broadly represent the authors values (as displayed in an idealized action environment) and they are both quite appealing protagonists.
At times I did think that Morgan in particular comes across as just a bit too perfect. He has made mistakes, but they are in the past and in this story he always seems to know what the right way to behave is. I sort of want him to do something selfish occasionally.
Once we move away from the primary characters though things got a little more confused for me. For a start, the story has a large cast due to its level of politics and intrigue. But to make matters worse, quite a few of these characters go by two or more names. At several points during the story I had to stop and try and figure out who exactly was talking about who. Obviously anything that pulls me back out of the story is a bad thing, so I think it's an area where the story could have benefited with a bit more work to better differentiate the players.
Fortunately once I had got myself past the half way mark most of the characters had sufficiently imprinted themselves on my brain that the confusion lessened. I think my perseverance was rewarded, but you can't assume all readers will be as patient as I was. Which would be a shame because by the end there are plenty of hooks in place for the larger plot and it's obvious the scale of the story is intended to grow even further.
The characters themselves are for the most part quite distinct, it's more the volume and names that create the confusion, although there is one glaring exception in a character who is so forcefully one-dimensional in her bitchiness I sort of wonder what is going on with her.
Displaying Your Influences
Every author has their influences and it's usually not to hard to pick out what they are. While the book itself is unquestionably of the science fantasy, the style of the book shows several other influences.
I am not a huge fan of either rock or heavy metal music so most likely I am missing a good number of references in Without Bloodshed, but even I can pick up on the fact that it is a significant influence on the book. I also strongly suspect a significant anime influence based on both the culture presented and some of the descriptions used.
The third major influence in the book is a Libertarian one. Society and many of the characters espouse libertarian values and it's not hard to see that we are expected to see those as the "good" values. As a writer you have to be very careful not to step over that line from character expression to authorial expression. There are a few places where maybe the soapbox got pulled out but for the most part it is kept in check.
World Building
While the politicking and intrigues are undoubtedly a strong element in the book, the world building is more of a mixed bag.
On the one hand the Graybosch clearly spent time thinking out his world, how it functions and what it's technical level would be, but on the other we really aren't exposed to this world very much.
So we get a lot of very specific information about sidewalk heating or the use of Tesla points to power things but we don't ever get the viewpoint of a regular person in this new world.
Clearly Nationfall radically altered the political structure of the world. The story doesn't go into detail on this, which is fine, but the implication is that all the geo-political governments collapsed and we are now dealing with some sort of semi-anarchical city-state structure. But I never got a good feeling for what that meant. I would think there would have been some pretty nasty fall out along the way.
Morgan and Naomi are so insulated from the real world due to their twin jobs as music stars and Adversaries that they never really interact with regular people. They are too rich and too important.
Admittedly this is also often the case in fantasy stories where our protagonist is a king or prince, but in that case we sort of know what the average peasant's life is like. Here I genuinely have no idea.
We get some brief infodumps about biker gangs and some sort of proto-libertarian anarchical free-state made up from Anonymous and the Pirate Party (not a completely absurd notion) but again, what does it actually mean to live like that? I think in this case having at least one viewpoint character
Who Should Read This?
Do you like rock and or heavy metal music?
Do you appreciated some fantasy in your science fiction?
Are stories better with a healthy dose of political intrigue?
Are you okay with some sexuality in your reading material?
If some or most of these apply to you then you should give this one a shot.
Did You Like It?
Yes, overall I enjoyed reading Without Bloodshed. There are areas where I think the storytelling could be tightened up and early on confusion is definitely an issue, but the book is trying to do more than just tell an action story. The politics and the social views the characters present are intended to illustrate and exemplify as well as entertain. Plus the anime and heavy metal infused setting is quite distinctive.
I don't think there's anything else quite like this on the market.
robotgoods's review
3.0
Reads like an Anime story. Pretty good, but probably won't read any more of the series, even though the ending was wide open on this one. Maybe I'm just not as obsessed with cats like the rest of the internet.
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