These days, the Navy SEAL memoir is practically a cliche. For 'silent warriors', the SEALs sure do write a lot. Young's 1990 memoir is an earlier example of the genre, an action-packed adventure let down by some repetitive writing.

Young served his six month tour in the Mekong Delta, raiding in the canals around Dung Island with Juliette Platoon. The 14 men of this unit owned the night, making silent aquatic patrols, prisoner grabs, and infiltration raids. The SEALs were self-consciously elite, immune to traditional military discipline and grooming standards, and using a host of tricked out weapons and vehicles to get the job done on their missions.

Young emphasizes the quiet tension of the raids, lurking in pitch black jungle in absolute silent, wading through neck high canals to avoid booby-traps, and then the desperate and overwhelming fire of an ambush and evacuation. He has a good sense for both the quiet and the action. There's also a lot of fooling around at base camp, water-skiing, smoking weed to relax, playing football in the tidal mud with the Seabees, and stealing supplies from REMFs. It may be flip for me to say this, but after BUDS (SEAL training), Vietnam seemed pretty easy for Young and Juliette Platoon. No multi-day missions, no NVA heavy artillery, and none of the tensions and incompetence that more mundane units experienced.

This book is written in a "1970 mindset", as the afterward explains, and there's a lot of racism. More than calling the Vietnamese "gooks" or worse, there's an attitude of casual mayhem towards the country. The SEALs use a cemetery as a firing range, demolishing it with grenades. They spend a truck ride stealing the hats off of men riding mopeds. In a strategic sense, it's hard to see what the SEALs accomplished. Dung Island was VC territory before and after the intervention of the SEALs. The griping about not knowing why they were fighting seems more obligatory than real--Young was there to prove he was the deadliest animal in the jungle, and he did. That was enough.

I believe that all the men on the SEAL team were consummate professionals, but Young can't seem to find the words to write about his brothers in arms. There's more love for the Stoner machine gun than there is for any of the fellow SEALs.

A Wrinkle in Time is a beloved children's scifi classic, with a major movie adaptation coming soon, but I'm not sure that I ever actually read it growing up. So, time for a quick check before the movies. I can see why this is a beloved children's classic. The world-building is fantastic, and the morality of the fight against the Darkness clear, without being preachy. What I appreciated most was Meg's very realistic anger, her sheer rage at a universe that didn't understand her and tries to make her someone she's now. Meg's anger proves vital, but in the end it's love that save the day.

Jacobsen is a serious defense historian, so a journey into the realm of parapsychology may seem out of field. She treats the topic with due seriousness, relying on FOIA'ed archives and interviews with participants to trace the history of the US military's relationship with remote viewing, with brief forays into telepathy and telekinetic weapons.

Jacobsen begins immediately after World War II with Dr. Henry Karel "Andrija" Puharich, a medical doctor and army officer. While investigating mystic experiences with the support of wealthy East Coast socialites, Dr. Puharich became entangled with the CIA's infamous MKULTRA program, and an effort to scientifically study Mexican psychedelic mushrooms, with an aim towards weaponizing their human effects. Puharich research projects eventually focused on a Brazilian faith healer, and his funding dried up in the latter 60s, but he identified some key figures, Ingo Swann and Uri Geller (yes, that Uri Geller), who would become the focus of the next round of major efforts.

Under the aegis of the Stanford Research Institute, and with funding from the CIA and DOD, scientists attempted without success to find the source of ESP, and to make it reliable, focusing on "anchored remote viewing", where a psychic at an SRI facility would attempt to locate collaborators who were at a randomly chosen external location.

SRI's research laid the groundwork for the final and most ambitious psychic project, a highly compartmentalized Army lead effort eventually code-named Project Star Gate to train ordinary soldiers in remote viewing techniques, rather than seeking psychics from the general population. The final project worked through 1980s and the Gulf War, before being disbanded in a flurry of media attention as one of the participants blamed the project for destroying his marriage and subjecting him to demonic messages.

In between the major thrusts, we're treated to Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell's ESP tests in space, Soviet microwave weapons targeted at the US Embassy in Moscow, Chinese rocket pioneer H. C. Tsien's interest in paranormal phenomena, and Uri Geller's celebrity.

Jacobsen holds the pose of a neutral observer. These projects happened, some of the participants claimed at times they could perceive the world through uncanny means, and while the predictions of Project Star Gate seemed accurate in retrospect, it's difficult to say an "actionable" intelligence came out of it. Even today, the military funds research into the paranormal, with transcendental meditation workshops for veterans with PTSD, and a 2014 Office of Naval Research study into combat danger sense, the subconscious intuition that helps some lucky soldiers avoid death on the battlefield. For her pose of neutrality, Jacobsen is ultimately a believer. Uri Geller has powers, unexplained though they may be. Paranormal phenomena are real, not just some fluke of pattern recognition. James Randi and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry are close-minded dogmatists who go beyond ethical standards to debunk the paranormal, rather than honest brokers of truth. Jacobsen lacks the mocking edge of Jon Ronson's The Men Who Stare At Goats, and her book is better for it. Though the paranormal is a rounding error in defense R&D budgets, we deserve to have a clear look at why people hope for some impossible military edge.

And disclosure, I got a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a review. I received no other compensation.

Space Team is a fast-paced scifi parody in the vein of Harry Harrison. Cal Carver is a low-level crook and con artist who's life takes a turn for the awesome, as he's abducted by a galactic government, assigned to a team of malcontents, and given a very important mission to retrieve a super-weapon and stop a civil war. The first and biggest problem is that they've mistaken Cal for his cellmate The Butcher, an infamous serial killer/cannibal. After that, well its a dizzying array of stock scifi tropes , gross-out humor, and casual misogyny in pursuit of action.

Overall, this story is aggressively average. The humor relies on body functions (especially snot) and references to nerd pop culture. Cal is a relentless optimist, which does a lot of good for making the plot feel exciting, even as it consists of meetings and arguments and chase scenes which are circular at best. But there are irritating tics in the writing (do people have expressions beyond various levels of false smiles?), and you know, I'd never expect to say this about a comedic scifi novel, but there's an irritating amount of white male privilege on display. Cal is the captain, despite a complete absence of leadership qualities, because he's too arrogant to shut up and let people who don't preface everything they see with "space-" do their jobs. The other characters exist purely in reaction to Cal, without much characterization of their own.

Not bad if you can pick this up for a dollar and want to kill a few hours, but you're better off reading Bill The Galactic Hero instead.

Seven Surrenders does something rare as a sequel to a very promising book: exceed and build on that which came before. Tons of spoilers to follow.

Set as the second half of the week that shook the world, Palmer continues to dive into the mystery of the Hives and 'bashes, but this time the gloves are off. Every major character reveals a second, deeper layer. Mycroft Canner reveals the true reason for his murders. They were not just a senseless act to show the world that humans could choose evil: rather his targets were a cadre of Utopian military historians working to trigger a cataclysmic war sooner rather than later. The Mardi 'bash believed that in an echo of the First World War, the long and technologically fruitful peace would lead to a utter slaughter. They planned a small, vaccinating war, to stave off an absolute future catastrophe of the Utopian Hive against everyone else. Mycroft disagreed. Whether or not he was right is for the next book.

Carlyle Foster is no simple sensayer, rather she's the right hand of Julia Doria-Pamphili, helping to recruit elites into the web of blackmail and gendered sex centered around Madame's brothel. She's also looking for her own opportunity to strike out. Sniper lives up to his name, and the true calling of the Saneer-Weeksbooth 'bash in peace through assassination.

The plot centers on the escalating tensions of war between the hives, the efforts of European leader Casimir Perry to carry out a scheme of terrible revenge, and the coming revelation of J.E.D.D Mason and Bridger. Two possibly divine beings, appearing on Earth at one time, what could it possibly mean?

Palmer teases disaster as Sniper assassinates J.E.D.D Mason, only to have Mason resurrected by Bridger. Madame is revealed to be behind the past half-century of politics, decades of sexual and psychological manipulation to prove her power, which somehow intersects with the strange being of her son, J.ED.D. Mason. And the world shifts out into sides, on the fundamental philosophical question of "is it right to kill one to save many?" and "would you destroy this world to save a better one?"

I'm not sure where the series is going, and I have two more books, but for all the density introduced in Too Like the Lightning, Palmer knows what to push for the sequel.

UPDATE: Dec 2021
I re-read the first two Terra Ignota books together, and knowing the core details of the setting instead of having to puzzle out the mystery box just make this better. The two books work wonderfully together, an intense chronicle of a world changing week.

I'm conflicted about 13th Age, I really am. On the one hand, it's almost my ideal fantasy RPG system, keeping the designed tightness of D&D 4e while dropping the most finicky parts of the tactical battle system. Classes in 13th Age are a fast 10 levels, with unique talents and powers, none of the "screw it, just play a cleric" mess of D&D 3.x. But I've never managed to run a campaign of it that's lasted more than 3 sessions. And while the map may look like generic fantasy, the world is very different, with flying islands, giant beasts, demigodly icons that walk with the PCs, and the end of an Age at hand.

13 True Ways extends the 13th Age core with six new classes, including the jack of all trades druid and super cool occultist. The commander and monk feel more like misses, though, and the chaos mage's core mechanic of not knowing what spells he's casting until the round before seems like a recipe for boring delay of game.

The book rounds out the setting, with descriptions of the major cities, lots of rumors, a whole new collection of devils to serve as tough nemesis, and some example NPCs and locations. It's imaginative, but I don't feel inspired to run this game, so much as impressed at the cleverness of the designers. Who knows, maybe one day.

Fate Accelerated is probably the definitive minimally viable universal RPG system. Roll 4dF (special d6s marked with -,0,+), add a bonus from one of six approaches that are basically the classic six stats with more evocative names, and play fate points to invoke aspects, from the high concept of your character to situational bonuses. The true clever part is how aspects cover almost every possibility in play, providing mechanical weight to describing how things happen without weighing down the game with a ton of rules. Fate points provide a nice way to limit character power, and compels, where a negative aspect is invoked against the character by the GM, create drama in the moment and fuel the fate point economy.

I can't say that I want to run Fate, but like a set of hex keys ever game collection should have it.

A classic of social history, Life in Medieval City uses Troyes in 1250 to explore the ordinary life of the small yet prosperous bourgeois. This is an age of relative stability and wealth. The Catholic Church is the undoubted supreme power in Christendom. A system of interlocking guilds regulates the cities, and the sophistication of stone walls against the relatively crude military logistics of the age favors defenders. Troyes is situated to mediate trade between the weavers of Holland and Europe, and the great markets of the Mediterranean, with winter and summer fairs the source of the city's wealth.

It's still the Middle Ages, and if something is to be done (cooking, cleaning, crafts, farming...) it is likely to be done with backbreaking effort, but the population is on the rise and things are noticeably better than they were a hundred years ago. The dislocations of the Black Death and the Reformation are far in the future. This is a charming little book, and if scholarship has moved on since 1981, its foundational, accessible, and a steal at $2.

Amazon had a deal on the first six books in the series because the seventh one is coming out, and I like military scifi so why not?

Welcome to the future, a future of war! Galactic civilization has fallen after setting up a network of FTL routes, and the technology for building new ones have been lost. Three major powers have risen in the aftermath. The Confederation are our good guys, a democracy with an independent streak that is regarded as soft by the enemy, but which has survived three existential wars thanks to daring heroics and superior technology. The Alliance is our bad guys, a militaristic empire with a warrior aristocracy and Spartan/Roman overtones. And the ugly guys are the Union, a totalitarian empire with a fearsome secret police and purge-driven politics. The troops of the Union are the Foudre Rouge. Subtly is not Allan's strongpoint as an author, though compared to David Weber (Rob S. Pierre, folks!) he's doing okay.

So the plot. War between the Confederation and the Union is imminent, and Confederation battleship Dauntless is patrolling the frontier, when it gets pulled off for a refit at the rear of Confederation space. Except that the Union has convinced the Alliance to launch an attack as well, hoping to force the Confederation to fight on two fronts. The Alliance is skeptical, and in the midst of their own refit after a recent conquest, but they can dispatch their most advanced dreadnought, the Invictus, under the command of Kat, a staunch warrior who conceals her doubts about the Alliance, to take a distant refueling outpost. If the attack succeeds, the Alliance will press forward. If it fails, they'll deny everything. The fate of the Confederation rests on Dauntless, her crew, and her captain Barron, grandson of the Confederation's great hero.

Allan mixes action sequences and the rush to war with philosophical musings on combat and death, but this is very much war via John Wayne movies, a kind of pop-culture profundity. The space ships are Galactica style battlecruisers with laser and particle beam weapons, carrying a few squadrons of fighters armed with missiles and plasma torpedoes. There are some gestures towards Newton and vectors, but the style is "World War 2 in space" rather than a new, or even particularly cohesive take on war in space. There's a recurrent moment of ships hiding by orbiting behind a moon or planet, and as anyone who knows about orbital mechanics well tell you, the thing about orbits is that they go around a mass. You can't hide in orbit for very long. This is very much Extruded Space Opera product #7. There aren't any major flaws, but it is definitely a step down from The Lost Fleet or the good Honor Harrington books.

There was one thing that I couldn't tell if it a dumb oversight or actually clever. The Confederation has an emergency alert command "Omega One" which signals invasion of the Confederation. The Alliance has a command "Omega Zero" which triggers their self-destruct. Did Allan forget he used that name already, or it it a statement about what each side regards as their 'ultimate'? I'll probably read the rest of these between serious books, because I was entertained, but that's as far as I'll go.

Raymond Chandler wrote "When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." Killing Gravity author Corey White must be in some kind of ongoing existential crisis, because this book is Chandler's law padded out to novella length.

Mars Xi is a voidwitch, a telekinetic supersoldier forged by the sinister MEPHISTO arms combine. We meet her in a crippled corvette, life support on critical and waiting for the air to run out, when she's rescued by a freelancer scrap/salvage crew. We barely have time to meet nonbinary captain Squid, angry mercenary Trix, and deserter soldier Mookie when a man comes through the door with a gun in his hand a cruiser wormholes in and deploys space marines, and Mars kills them all with her telekinetic powers. Then it's off to a space station, where Mars meets a data broker, men with guns burst through the door, and Mars kills them all with her telekinetic powers. A clue leads her a mist-shrouded fungus planet, where Mars meets her sister, who freed her from the supersoldier training program, and she has brief reunion before a bounty-hunter with a sniper rifle kills Mars' sister, and Mars kills him with her telekinetic powers. When she finds out that Squid and co have been captured, Mars has only one course of action: Find the MEPHISTO flagship and use her telekinetic powers to kill them all!

Killing Gravity mimics the style of better authors: the blood-splattered excess of Alistair Reynolds, the gender-fluid killers of Yoon Ha Lee, the magical space cats of David Weber (yes, there's a magic space cat), but it adds up to an ADHD power fantasy, space opera by way of Michael Bay. I'll not be getting the rest of the series.