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The Alembic Plot
The Alembic Plot
A Terran Empire novel
Book Excerpt
all involved different people, maybe it was because none had reacted as positively to him on first meeting . . . he didn't try to analyze it. He was in Special Operations; analysis was for Intelligence. He simply accepted facts as he found them.
Odeon let Egan choose pastries while he drew coffee and paid the cashier. Once they found an empty table and settled themselves, he said, "Okay, Doctor. Tell me."
"To begin with, most of her injuries are what I understand you Enforcement people call minor. Fractured skull, three broken ribs, assorted cuts, burns, and bruises." Egan frowned. "However, her spinal injury is serious even by your standards, and . . . Captain, did she plan to have children?"
'Did,' not 'does,' Odeon thought grimly. "Yes, Doctor." Until he'd met Joanie, Odeon hadn't minded that the red crossed daggers of the SO patch on his sleeve meant he was sterile; his parents had both had plague-derivatives that made it inevitable, and it was a fate he shared with almost a third of
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Author seems to have some serious issues with Christianity, the Catholic church, and Power - I like a good science-fiction book, but couldn't get more than half way through it, although if the author had done away with most of the sadistic sex scenes, I would probably have gone farther.
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This novel is a weird mixture of sex and religion with very little plot. I got about halfway through the book and realized I did not want to waste any more of my time with this drivel.
09/25/2010
While I liked some of her other stories, there are a number of premises in this book that I could simply not stomach:
* Sadism is good as long as it's done to torture captives to get information.
* Soldiers must have free sex in unlimited quantities in order to function.
* The main "hero", who is a sadist, is as holy (or even holier than) Jesus.
* If a population has low birth problems, the only answer is polygamy (more sex appears to be the answer to everything).
So, while the book was well written, it quite literally turned my stomach.
* Sadism is good as long as it's done to torture captives to get information.
* Soldiers must have free sex in unlimited quantities in order to function.
* The main "hero", who is a sadist, is as holy (or even holier than) Jesus.
* If a population has low birth problems, the only answer is polygamy (more sex appears to be the answer to everything).
So, while the book was well written, it quite literally turned my stomach.
08/21/2010
This book is organized oddly--many interesting scenes are sent to footnotes at the rear of of the book, instead of being integrated with the rest of the text. I also found the juxtaposition of tender love with a gleeful acceptance of torture (done by the heroes) rather jarring (hey, I didn't like it in the Harry Potter series when the Gryffindors did bad stuff and didn't think anything of it either). Once I considered the 'human' race in this book as aliens, I was able to deal with certain oddities somewhat better.
I'll still read more of these Terran Empire books, but this one was not by favorite.
I'll still read more of these Terran Empire books, but this one was not by favorite.
04/12/2009