Descriptions of the novels, repeated from the weekly posts.
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●●●○○ No More Unsworth Manor Nudes {Unsworth Manor 3} - P.Z. Walker (nov) 2020
The concluding book in the trilogy doesn't kill a family at the start of the story¹, which is a plus. We follow the same family from the middle volume: Avery and Tracy Montague, children Charles and Patricia (15 and 13 when the book starts), and their staff and friends.
A minor plot is that Neville Unsworth turns up, a distant relative of the family from the first book. He held that, since he was an Unsworth, Unsworth Manor was his, so the Montagues had to surrender the property. This occupied several letters and visits, and paying lawyers, and the Montague family eventually paid to have their home's legal name changed from Unsworth Manor to Measham Manor, Measham being the name of the nearby village.
The major (though not big) plots concerned nudist happenings. Over the years, the Montagues had made many nudist friends, who dropped in to enjoy the grounds where they could be naked, which overburdened the four-person staff. So Avery and Gerald Brinks (the Chief Inspector for whom Tracy had worked before marriage) sought out and bought some isolated property along the River Mease, which they made into a nudist spot.
The family, and a dozen of their friends, also reenacted a scene from Gretchen Unsworth's diary, and made a trip to the seaside, where the Unsworths had found an isolated stretch of beach upon which they could go nude. When the Montague crew came, they found it was now an active nude beach, which the town was aware of, but took no official notice of.
There they enjoyed the day. While swimming, Avery and Charles went past the textile beach, and found a bathing machine tipped over. Charles and a friend rescued the woman trapped inside, and the nude crew carried her onto the textile beach. The woman and her husband later went to the nude beach to thank everyone, and later became nudists themselves, eventually setting up a second nude beach some distance away.
Not a lot of major happenings in the book. It's most a matter of just enjoying characters and minor adventures, and then getting a misty time jum[.
●●●●○ Bear Head {Dogs of War 2} - Adrian Tchaikovsky (nov) 2021
At the end of the first volume of this trilogy, Bioforms — cyber-enhanced, genetically-modified animals uplifted to sapience — were beginning to get the rights of personhood, with Collars (neural hardware that ensures obedience and loyalty) outlawed. Forty years later, the pendulum has swung back, and controlling Bioforms is the hot topic that politicians and pundits use to distract people from climate change and economic troubles.
Professor Honey Medici, the over-engineered bear from the first book, continues to fight for Bioform rights, and general rights of people against their controllers. But she's old, and tired, and one day gives a speech that goes too far. She talks about the game and the metagame.
The rules of the game suggest that the people that do real things and know their jobs should be the ones to get promoted. But that's not how reality works. The bosses are the people who can schmooze higher-ups, who can look like they work hard and know things, but in fact don't.
This was fine (unless you were a called-out metagamer), but then Honey said that the metagame applied to society, too. That had drawn the notice of Warner S. Thompson, candidate for the World Senate Seat of Alabama-Virginia¹, a man marked for bigger things. Except he was less a man than a raw id. He could say things and do things, but he had little intelligence, little humanity, little sense of self. He was a parasite, and he knew he'd been seen. Honey had to die.
Which is how the story shifts to Mars, where Jimmy, a low-level worker, a biomod human, gets mixed up with things far bigger than himself. Things that include Bees, a distributed intelligence that was sent to begin the terraforming of Mars, but who's gone her own way. And who might be tiring of humans trying to wipe her out, just because she once did something environmentally sensible that cost rich people money. Both Honey and Thompson ended up on Mars, sort of, and the scale of the conflict got bigger.
●●●◐○ The Wrong Number {Ambassador to the Stars 01} - David Collins (nov) 2023
I like Collins' Artifact series, so I thought I'd try some more; he has many. Skipping the war ones, this seemed like fast, light adventure. The book begins in a similar "regular guy just stumbles into alien stuff" way.
Steve White is 24, fresh out of the military, living with his parents for the summer until he starts college on the GI Bill. He visits the pond he played at as a boy, and happened to be standing between three white rocks when someone 43 light-years away dialed a wrong number, and the "rocks" teleported him to another planet.
He's greeted by a tall, deep-blue semi-insectoid Amazonian woman, Countess Petra GunMuller, and the short grey-skinned transporter tech who misdialed. By the rules of the League, as the first of his species to transport to a world of one of the 72 Races — now 73 — he was the Ambassador of Earth assigned to the Pathless world Zigiproll.
Pathless techs take his iPhone and modify it, so now it can suck in human media from the internet at a prodigious rate for later sale: humankind can make a fortune from this, and as ambassador, Steve gets two percent. He buys a six-seat spaceship, and appears in orbit (the stones project a cone into the sky for larger objects), parking near the International Space Station to get NASA's attention.
The same type of dealings that happened in the early Artifact books go on, with Steve and Cobalt (the Pathless royal larva who underwent directed metamorphosis to the form of a human woman to be his partner in maintaining the Pathless-human relationship) dealing with the US government and military, and so on. Light, fast adventure.
●●●◐○ Those Left Behind {Behold: Humanity! 20} - Ralts Bloodthorne (nov) 2025
More aftereffects of the Big-C3, the Confederacy-Council Conflict, which morphed into the War Against the Atrekna, which begat the Phase Ghost Invasion, which woke the Earthlings. And Earthlings smite whatever bothers them.
When Earth had barely achieved solar system colonies, a Precursor War Machine — a continent-size robot warship, relic of a war millions of years ago — attacked. Humans barley survived. They decided they couldn't keep all their eggs in one basket, so they adapted Precursor tech and built ships, taking humans who would later be called Earthlings (as opposed to the Terrans who stayed behind and spread) into the Great Dark, to hide and grow. If humans were wiped out, some would remain to wreak vengeance.
An Atrekna temporal attack wiped out 99.9% of Terrans. Earthlings responded by novabombing their star systems. Now some are in Council space, investigating the Lanaktallans. The cow-centaurs started the war against the Terran Confederacy, but later surrendered to Terrans and allied with them against the extra-universal Atrekna. Earthlings never investigate. Something odd is going on.
We also see Vuxten get sucked into a holiday special, where he ends up fighting a rogue World Court elf, a holiday banshee, a squad of toy soldiers, and Jack Frost himself before rescuing Santa and Mrs. Claus, who'd been kidnapped by Kris "Krusher" Kringle.
The Flashbang resets normspace, banishing phase ghosts who'd escaped the networks. A Lanaktallan gaming lord nearly kills himself writing a program to purge phase ghosts still in GalNet. Hesstlan combat medic Melinvae gets psych-eval'd out of the military, and courtesy of Atrekna time resets, comes home 82 years old, when her mother is only 45. The rebooting of the SUDS matrioshka shells continues, and Marco's mind unravels, legacy of his personality having been rewritten thousands of times by the now-defunct Council of Eternity.
And so on. Unless you've been reading the series, none of this makes the slightest bit of sense to you. But the author got his organ transplant, and it looks like he'll now live to finish the series.
●●●◐○ Gateway to Elsewhere - Murray Leinster (nov) 1954
Tony Gregg bought an interesting coin at a flee market. The owner of the Syrian restaurant he went to identified the Arabic writing on it as saying "Barkut". He said that if Tony came back Thursday when businessman Mr. Emurian dined, he could ask him about it.
Mr. Emurian spun a tale of an alternate world where the Arabian Nights were factual. A world that one could get to via isolated places in each world that were identical. He also said that he had a friend who'd pay two thousand dollars for the coin. But the adventurer in Tony won out, and he decided to visit Barkut. He began at the racetrack, flipping the coin — which Mr. Emurian said would be trying to get back to its own world — to choose what horse to bet on. He made eleven grand.
Tony used that money to go where the coin flips led him, eventually ending up in Suakim, on the Red Sea. A journey with a dangerous crew, then stealing a dinghy at night, led to him being washed up on a beach, which ended up being near Barkut. He fought bandits, stole their camels, came to a city, and was imprisoned as a likely djinn, in which incarceration the queen's chief slave girl taught him Arabic.
So we have a djinn-kidnapped queen — who doesn't want to come home. Her chief slave, Ghail, who insists upon it, and who has feelings for Tony — and who knows that the foreign hero will surely mess up. A city of djinns and djinnees, all of whom have the intellect of children, the attention span of butterflies, and vast powers of transmogrification. Tony must try to save Barkut and to win the human Ghail over, while dealing with the two slave-girl djinnees assigned to him, and the other one who has a crush on him. What can a poor fated hero do?
●●●◐○ Three Faces of Time {Many Worlds 2} - Sam Merwin Jr (1955 nov) ִ
Three years after H. Beam Piper published his first Paratime book, Merwin published his own, though his time police are far less ancient and powerful. In this sequel (which I didn't know was a sequel when I started it)¹, Time Watcher Elspeth Marrever is assigned by her boss to go to a strange world code-named "Antique" where it's 80 ᴀᴅ, the time of Emperor Vespasian in Rome.²
The Watchers are not a powerful organization, but they try to study newly discovered Earths, to prevent undue exploitation of low-tech worlds by high-tech ones, and to forestall war between timelines. In this case, they've found evidence that an advanced world (code-named "Heartland") that's exhausted its resources and suffered a nuclear war is going to exploit this time-slowed world.
"Marina Elspetia" poses as a noblewoman and poetess, and infiltrates Roman high society, with the help of Pliny the Elder, a Watcher Resident, a local who's not been told any outtime secrets, but who agrees to help those he's been convinced are helping his people. Elspeth learns that Vespasian's son Titus, who's been carrying on a relationship with Jewish princess Berenice, has met a red-haired barbarian queen in Germania.
Elspeth also finds that Gnaius Laconius, a patrician in her social circle, is in possession of a blaster and a plastic map. Either Heartland worries less about culturally contaminating it Residents, or he's from Heartland, though as a spy, he seems inept.
After avoiding an assassination attempt, Elspeth and a pilot (from the Watcher troop hiding out in a nearby villa, awaiting intel from Elspeth on what to do next) follow the map to Silesia, where they find a large facility mining and processing uranium. Their aircar is hit by a laser rifle, but they manage to get back to Rome.
Soon thereafter, Elspeth hears that Titus's barbarian princess is to visit Rome, and that "Anna Martina" — really Ana Kai-Martenez, red-haired Amazonian warrior from a matriarchal world — is about to make her move. Can Elspeth and the Watcher troop stop Ana's far larger and more advanced force?
●●●●○ Problems with Planning {NBL Solutions 4} - Ted Bun (2023 nov) ִ
One of Chief Constable Geraint Edwards’ Freemason lodge brothers is having a problem, so Geraint calls on problem-solving Melody of Naked Beach Lady Solutions. Jonathan Franks owns a holiday camp. It doesn't make him a fortune, but it supports thirty staff, and he gets by.
Harold Stanwick — someone blackballed from Freemason lodges nationwide, notes Geraint — made Jonathan a low-ball offer for his land. Jonathan refused, and since then all manner of small accidents and equipment breakdowns have been happening at the camp. No one has been hurt, but it's cutting into his slim profits.
Further, it looks like an upcoming Specialist Weekender (events that make the difference between the camp surviving or going under) might have been sabotaged. The South London Sun Club, a naturist group, has reserved the camp. But they're not large enough to fill it, so with permission Franks sent out flyers to his camp's mailing list in case any non-club nudists wanted to also come that weekend.
Someone sabotaged the flyer before the printer got it, removing "nude" from the description. A Canterbury seniors group booked the remaining slots, unaware that the weekend would be nude. Jonathan faces a clash, but the bad publicity of canceling either group would hurt the camp too much.
Melody investigates the seniors group (and find a man to have a fling with, naturally), and finds that he's also on the case, and is an MI5 agent. It seems that Stanwick is part of a local group — comprising him, some councilors, the planning office, and the local paper — doing dodgy real estate deals, and in this instance they attracted a Russian oligarch seeking to launder money.
Melody ends the case with a Hercule Poirot meeting of suspects. She also passes on her fling to a woman who had a crush on him (after discussing things with her on a nudist weekend), and has a new man by the end of this, what seems the last book in the series.
●●●●○ The Anxious Lives of Edwin Miller {Middle Falls 17} - Shawn Inmon (2022 nov) ִ
Anxiety ruled Edwin's lives. What to say, what to do, what not to say, what not to do. Near the end of his first life, 72-year-old Edwin found he had no food at home, so he was driving to Artie's for a burger. Except on the way he saw a new place, Mickey's Subs.
On a whim, he went in. But there were so many choices. What kind of bread, of cheese, of meat? Too many choices. Too much pressure. Too many people watching, judging. After getting in line — then out again to think more — several times, Edwin was forced to flee, heart thudding in his chest, covered in sweat. It may have contributed to Edwin dying of a heart attack that night.
Edwin came back as a fifteen-year-old in 1962. High school was hell, of course. But this time Edwin, with a bit more life experience, was less submissive to the school bully — who then caused Edwin trouble for decades thereafter.
With the help of his family, and his sole friend Moondog (who made an appearance in Book 12 of this series, The Many Short Lives of Charles Waters, where he helped a possibly-autistic man stuck in a 26-day-long reincarnation loop make progress), Edwin made some progress, though it literally took lifetimes. Therapy, which he was finally willing to try after several loops, also helped, as did painting, which Edwin took up one life.
This one hit hard, since I've also long found the world a scary place full of frightening people. I, too, prefer to be alone, because only then can I avoid all the negative reactions that come from being around people. And I'll never have the nerve to fix things in this lifetime, nor am I likely to have more lifetimes to try.
●●●◐○ Bee Speaker {Dogs of War 3} - Adrian Tchaikovsky (2025 nov)
The Crash was bad. Climate change brought huge storms, floods, drought, famine, and disease. The dying spasms of capitalism brought war, division, hoarding, riots, more. Within three years, 98% of humankind was dead. Two decades before the End, Mars was colonized, and terraforming begun, with an engineered moss cleansing the toxic soil and releasing oxygen, and heavily modified humans and Bioforms (genetically modified and cyber-enhanced animals uplifted to sapience) living in Hellas Planitia. They were not quite self-supporting when the crash came, but Bees, a Distributed Intelligence who'd been sent as a first-wave terraformer, was able to help the new Martians through the bad times.
Now, a century later, Mars receives a signal from Earth, saying that the version of Bees left there was in trouble, and would die out if it didn't get help. The Martian Work Committees met, and decided they now had enough reserves to assist the old world, and a team of four was sent out: two modified humans, plus a Dog (with some monkey and bat genes thrown in), and a Reptile (a mix of Komodo dragon, chameleon, skink, and boa).
The situation they found near the beacon? A Bunker founded by an oligarch, whose guards had maintained an underground society that collected tribute from their neighbors. The town Clearwater, built to defend a clean spring. The Dog Factory, which could still turn regular dogs into sapient Bioform people, if not up to the standards of the Old. And the Apiary, where Bees lived, and whose monks acted as mediators and messengers between the polities.
Except things were more complicated than that, part of that was dead wrong, and Ada the human and Wells the Dog both had great difficulties adapting to Earth, while even Irae the Reptile had some. Tecumo, the other human, adapted well, but then he made a major mistake and got himself killed in the first chapter, leaving a major mess for everyone else to clean up.
●●●◐○ Death Game {Stargate Atlantis 14} - Jo Graham (2010 nov)
Six Lanteans were on an exploratory mission to an odd world in the Pegasus galaxy, one of those where the Ancients had left a forcefield protecting it from space conquest. They'd also left a functioning stargate on the interdicted planet, which rather defeated the purpose of the forcefield, so the team looked into it.
Rodney McKay was left to study the gate while Radek Zelenka was dropped off to study some Ancient ruins (with Ronon Dex left as guard and company), while John Sheppard and Teyla Emmagen flew off in the puddle jumper to study some energy readings. Or the latter pair would have, if they weren't shot down by a Wraith cruiser.
We end up with Rodney finding out the gate had been modified to accept incoming wormholes, but not generate outgoing ones. Unless he could modify it, there was no going home. When the puddle jumper didn't return, Atlantis called in, and Rodney reported the situation, and Evan Lorne was sent out on a (potentially one-way) with four control crystals for Rodney to work on, and to be guard.
When no one came for them or called, Radek and Ronon resorted to stealing a fisherman's boat to try to get back from the island to the mainland where the gate was. Pity neither of them knew how to sail a boat, and the mainland was 350 kilometers away.
As for John and Teyla, they crashed at an oasis, and were imprisoned by the corrupt mayor of the place, who realized they were important, so he took them on a long barge ride to the capital. There they're made part of the annual Games of Life, where fifty people are sent into a complex underground labyrinth, and only one emerges to win a prize and go free. Turns out the world is secretly run by a Wraith cruiser that got trapped beneath the planetary shield, and they like entertainment with their dinner.¹
Before the novel reaches its end point, there's a lot of waiting — Teyla and John locked in a room, Radek and Ronon on their little boat — so people end up telling stories about their childhoods and how they joined the Stargate program and so on.
For example, Radek reveals how he was indirectly responsible for Stargate Command finding out that the Russians had the Giza gate's original Dial Home Device. And John tells how he ended up in the Air Force when his father dumped his mother for a younger woman when he was nineteen, and because John wasn't fine with it, his father stopped paying his college tuition.
This novel is set early in season two, a few weeks after episode 2.04, when Laura Cadman's mind briefly shared Rodney McKay's body. The nature of a continuing series means we know no regular character dies or is seriously hurt. Overall, the story is a fairly low-key adventure.
[0] Footnotes have been removed, so some parts may lack further explanation. If you absolutely must see the footnotes, they were in the weekly posts, along with descriptions of the shorter works.
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