Fortune's Favor (Breach of Faith Book 6) By Daniel Gibbs and Gary Stevens

 Fortune's Favor (Breach of Faith Book 6)

By Daniel Gibbs and Gary Stevens

A quick disclaimer, I know Mr. Stevens and consider him a friend of mine. While everything in this review is my honest opinion, I feel that I would be remiss not to state that upfront. (Same for me.)

Once again we return to Mr. Gibbs's universe through the lens of Mr. Stevens. A science fiction universe originally structured around a confrontation between the (idealized)Capitalist, Democratic, and mostly Religious forces of the Terran Coalition and the (strawman)Communist, Totalitarian, and enforced Atheism of the League of Sol. (Sometimes I think the John Birch Society had a hand in the raising of Mr. Gibbs) Mr. Stevens's books however branch away from that conflict to take a look at what is going on in the neutral corners of human space and what other hostile forces may be lurking in the fringes of the known galaxy. Looking at the universe through the eyes of a crew of a small interstellar starship that is often swept up in historical events that will have an impact long after they are gone. For further details, I'm going to encourage you to look at past reviews of books in the series that I will link to below. 

This book focuses on the crew of the Venture Star as they are asked by their former Captain (now Admiral) James Henry to commit a daring act of espionage. It's a necessary act of espionage as an alien empire known as the Jalm'tar have been using a highly addictive drug known as Curall to spread their influence and outright control over the human population of neutral space. Curall is marketed as a miracle medicine capable of curing almost any disease and at the very least is an incredibly effective painkiller. I do mean incredible here, as fighters can use it to basically shrug off a bullet in the gut or keep fighting with broken limbs or worse. In reality, it's incredibly addictive and only masks the symptoms of the diseases it's taken to “cure.” A single dose is enough to addict you, as it takes over neutral transmission functions in your body and withdrawal is 100% deadly (Gonna be honest here.  Spreading that drug into a population is a straight-up act of war.). 

For the Jalm'tar the plan is simple, spread their miracle drug far and wide at a ridiculously low price and then slowly racket up the price by claiming that demand is outstripping the supply. While this is going on large parts of your population now hopelessly addicted and dependent on Curall will get... Rowdy. Even if they are not prone to rowdiness, don't worry! The Jalm'tar have helpfully seeded your world with agents to encourage... Rowdiness. Of course, it doesn't need to come to that. The Jalm'tar aren't heartless, they have nothing but compassion for the suffering and downtrodden of all worlds! Which is why demand is outstripping supply but... If you just sign a little treaty of association with the Jalm'tar, well then you would be moved to the head of the line. After all, people willing to align with the empire should be considered more than mere customers right? (Yyyyeeeeaaaah, this is when you do the security crackdown.  This is in fact what a state security apparatus is for.{What happens when half your security force has family members taking the drug?} Not against the users.  The sellers and enemy agents. {Which would cut off those family members from the drug, killing them})

As for the treaty, it's nothing major. Just granting the Jalm'tar control over your foreign policy and preferential trade rights. Also some extraterritorial enclaves for the Jalm'tar on your world and some minor basing rights. Plus immunity from your legal system to all Jalm'tar while on your world as well. Sure some alarmists would call this a virtual annexation but don't you feel that? That burning feeling in your veins? That shaky weakness in your limbs? The increasing struggle to take a deep breath? Shouldn't you focus a bit better on the clear and obvious benefits this treaty provided, like complete free access to the Jalm'tar market and all the Curall you need? By now, you all need it don't you? (I read this in the voice of Weyoun. {Thank you!})

Because while the crew of the Venture Star under Captain Miriam Gaon managed to bring back a sample of the Curall and prove that it's not medicine, just a super addictive pain-killer (I feel like there should be an FDA for this? {there are several agencies and no planet’s/governments FDA has approved this but the drug keeps getting smuggled in and people decry their FDAs as just propping up corporate profits. It doesn’t help that there are government officials singing the same tune.}). Many disbelieve the announcement considering it pure corporate propaganda trying to keep them from their miracle cure (That tracks, given various antiparasitics since 2020. {Before 2020 I would have been doubtful of this plot point}). They decry any effort to stop their access as mere actions to protect the medical industry's profits at the cost of the lives of the poor and ill. Even those who believe that Curall is just a drug are willing to fight for it, however, because they know without it, anyone who uses it will die in terrible agony if the drug stops coming. When the choice is to fight for a drug or watch your children scream themselves to death... Most people will fight tooth and nail for the drug and I can't even blame them for it. 

That said, here is some good news, given that intact samples of Curall were recovered, humanity now knows the chemical makeup of Curall. This leads the scientists and doctors of humanity to the certainty that there is a cure for this addiction. However, figuring out what that cure is from just Curall could take years. Years where the Jalm'tar will be taking over neutral space one planet at a time. So there's only one way to keep the new and relativity fragile union of the neutral worlds intact. Someone has to go to Jalm'tar space to find and steal a cure for Curall addiction. This is going to be a problem since the Jalm'tar keeps much of their space closed to outsiders but they do keep one world open for aliens to come and trade. 

Unfortunately, the Independent Systems Federation as a government system is more like the Articles of the Confederation than anything else, so there's not much of a budget for a spy service (This is one reason why I’m not an anarchist.  Loose confederations like this cannot function. {Their new central government doesn’t have the ability to levy taxes just put the cherry on top, that’s a lethal problem for a government} Marx Preserve Us). Fortunately, they have Captain Miriam Gaon, a former spy of the Coalition and a woman desperate to appease her own guilt over actions she took as a spy in conquered Coalition territory during the war. So once again she will walk into the lion's den to do a good and necessary deed in the murky shadows of espionage with a rag-tag crew of maniacs, who have become frighteningly experienced in these kinds of do-or-die missions. They're going to need every bit of skill and luck they can muster for this. 

This isn't the only reason she and the crew will take the job. Bridget, a former citizen of the League who escaped, is savagely devoted to maintaining not just her freedom but the freedom of others. New crew member Janet has lived under brutal totalitarian systems before and will do whatever she reasonably can to prevent a new one from rising. Even Piper the reluctant first mate, is willing to take the job out of a combination of loyalty to Admiral Henry and horror at the effects of Curall. Each crew member has their own reason for being willing to risk their life and freedom in this effort and they're all rather believable with varying intensities and levels of personal commitment. This is one of Mr. Stevens's strengths, as he can juggle a rather wide cast without having them blend together. 

To do that he does have to have characters take a back seat in some stories. Samina the engineer's mate and Pieter the chief engineer, for example, aren't as prominent in this book as they were in the last one. On the positive side, Admiral Henry also takes up less of the book, taking more of a mentorship and patron role. I'm a fan of this since as I mentioned in my last review I really feel that his arc has reached its completion. We do see new characters on his side introduced, most notably Mei-Ling Lou, who serves as a staff officer for Admiral Henry and provides us a viewpoint of the neutral world of Ubana, a human world where the secondary plot plays out. 

Mr. Stevens also shows his ability to create somewhat sympathetic antagonists in the form of the Chancellor of Ubana, Olivia Lilley. Chancellor Lilley is a champion of Curall, fiercely attacking any critics as corporate shills for big Pharma and decrying the Independent Systems Federations for feeling out an alliance with the Terran Coalition.  Her solution is to sign a Treaty of Association with the Jalm'tar to protect Ubana from being enslaved by the Coalition. As her motivations for doing this become clear, it's hard not to understand why she would do this. I won't say anymore because I want to avoid spoilers but it's because of Lilley that you find yourself thinking that even if the crew of the Venture Star pulls this off. It's not going to be an entirely happy ending. 

Which is a good thing, because it adds complexity to the plot that makes it feel all the more real. Yes, the people who decide to believe in Curall instead of their own doctors and scientists are throwing reason and caution to the winds but the suffering that Curall abates is just as real. The underlying resentment of corporations that profit from medical treatments and products is also real. If you don't feel that resentment, I'll encourage you to speak to someone in your life who is dependent on insulin and take a look at what they're being charged for it. I'll admit that's an American-centric example but according to my data, a vast majority of my readers are either American or very aware of our current system. Because of things like this and other fairly recent events, the book plays out with a good deal of sub-text that provides food for thought. I don't know if Mr. Stevens intended that but it's hard not to see it in the book. (He’s very intentional in his writing. {I do think even a socialist medical system would experience issues vs Curall but bluntly I think the issue would be easier to deal with than in a for-profit medical system.  At the very least you can’t scream about corporate profits if medical treatment is kept low-cost and easily accessed by the government})

I enjoyed this book a lot more than I did the last one and found myself provoked to stop and think more about it as well. On top of that, I really enjoyed the peek at the completely alien and different worldview of the Jalm'tar.   Mr. Stevens was able to bring that to life in the story, even in causal conversations between humans and Jalm'tar. I'll be discussing that more in a companion video that I'll be linking below. Fortune's Favor is getting a B+ from me. This is my last review of the year but I'll be back in January and hopefully, y'all will join me then.  What we’ll be looking at is up to my ever-wise patrons, who you can join here https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads for as little as a dollar a month.  Whether you join or not my readers and friends, let me say Happy Holidays, I hope you have a wonderful time with your families and friends, you stay safe, and of course, that You Keep Reading. 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin

Spacer's Luck (Breach of Faith Book 5)

By Daniel Gibbs and Gary T Stevens

Welcome back everyone to the first fiction book review we’ve had in a while. Today we're returning to a series we've been covering for a while set in a universe we've discussed fairly extensively. Now I will be linking to the other reviews at the bottom of this one so if you want to take a look at those for an update as to the core concepts of the setting feel free. I will however give a quick update and a disclaimer here. Gary T Stevens is a friend of mine and someone whose friendship and support I'm very grateful for (Same.  I’ve co-authored fanfic with him.). He is also a patron of this review series. That said, everything below is my honest opinion and I do not pull my punches here. 

So update on the universe, the long, long-running war between the Terran Coalition and the League of Sol is over! An alliance of stalwart Saurians, mysterious Mantrinds, and Independent worlds organized into a new confederation called the Independent Systems Federation alongside the Terran Coalition met the last gasp offensive of the League and broke it in a final, bloody decisive battle. This was a counter-assault meant to rip the heart of the Coalition out after the Coalition fleet advanced into League space liberating many worlds. While the League is temporarily exhausted, everyone except the most pie-in-the-sky peace activists assumes they'll be back (Yeah, unless you can strike at the industrial base and remove their capacity to wage war, they’ll be back.). So the Coalition attempts to create a permanent defense alliance uniting everyone against outside aggression. However, some leaders in the Mantrind Alliance and ISF are more worried about the Coalition overwhelming and absorbing them (Given that the coalition is basically Space US, valid concern.{A reminder that I take no responsibility for the opinions of my editor here folks})

Against this Admiral James Henry, former captain of the Shadow Wolf, now Admiral of the ISF navy is working to hammer the navies and people of dozens of worlds and organizations into a coherent fighting force. Given the government he works for is dependent on donations from member worlds and has no way of taxing members just to start with, he's got his work cut out for him (Oh Jesus. Worst. Thing. Ever.). The fact that the council of the ISF is dragooning him into meeting with the Coalition to figure out if they even want to be in the alliance is an extra complication. On top of that is the fact that a mysterious new drug called Curall is showing up, claiming to cure just about every disease and ailment that afflicts humans and aliens alike (Panacea are always grifts). Unfortunately, Admiral Henry has little in the way of a formal intelligence service but he does have friends (He needs to fix that.  A navy without naval intelligence is blind and stupid.{There’s an issue of with what bloody money to consider}). 

Among those is Captain Miriam Gaon, a former Coalition spy carrying enough guilt to kill five men and the new Captain of the independent trade ship, Venture Star. While she's not looking to be an intelligence asset, it's hard for her not to get pulled into things, as she has what I call Peter Parker luck (The poor thing…). She'll get pulled into the worse situations you can imagine but she'll always get out alive through a combination of talent, training, and dumb luck. Captain Gaon inherited the crew that didn't end up in the ISF navy with Admiral Henry or became part of the government after a successful revolution on the oppressed world of Hestia removed their corporate oppressors, or died. We reviewed that book so I'll just tell you to take a look at it. 

That crew would be the returning characters such as Pieter Hartzog, the often innovative but crusty chief engineer.  First Mate Piper Lopez is a woman who wants to just be a normal spacer and as such is in the completely wrong place. The third mate, Brigitte Tam'si, is a woman who escaped the League of Sol and is bound and determined to make the most of her freedom. Engineer mate Samina Khan, is a practicing Muslim who loves machines and ships and is enthralled at the wonders of the universe she is allowed to see by working as a spacer. Some of these characters, Piper and Brigitte most of all, were a bit neglected in my opinion so I was eager to see them get more space. Mr. Stevens does do a good job of giving them more space and characterization now that there's more room in the narrative and I do like that. 

We're also introduced to new ship characters, there's Allen Markson a former member of the Coalition armed forces. He's the second mate and honestly feels a bit bland. We also have Stepan Vasilievich Zakarov, a taciturn, introverted Russian pilot who is talented but rather standoffish. As well as Janet White, who lived on a Coalition World that was occupied by the League of Sol and is deeply scarred by her experiences. The friction between her and the rest of the crew is interesting and Mr. Stevens manages to make her sympathetic without making her pathetic. There's also Doctor Laila Opema who is a member of an alien species called Tal'mayans. Tal'Mayans seem fairly human but there are plenty of other aliens that appear in the series so I'm not going to fuss about it. Lastly is Khalid bin Tawfiq, we don't get much about him in this book other than he is also a Muslim and fairly pious. I'm hoping he gets more development in later books. A decent amount of space is also given to the new characters but with so many characters it's hard to give all of them the time on screen for good development (Mr. Stevens loves his huuuuge ensemble casts…). 

However, I also feel too much space is given to Admiral Henry. This may sound odd as he was the protagonist of the last 4 books, but after book 4, I question what's left of his character arc. He's redeemed his name, reforged his faith, and found a place for himself in the wider universe. I'm not saying he should disappear from the narrative but it might time to relegate him to a periodically appearing background and mentor character in my view (In full agreement.  His arcs are done.  Off to be the quest-and-advice-giving guy). In this book, he takes up a good amount of space in a political arc, which while important just didn't hold my attention as much as the ship's crew did. I suppose you could argue that his part of the plot provided needed context but I was left lukewarm. I would have rather spent more time with what are supposed to be our main characters but your mileage may vary. 

The main plot is interesting as Captain Gaon takes a job running medical supplies out to a far-flung colony world called Starfall. This world earned the name due to a quirk of the star system resulting in dense fields of debris that the planet's orbit takes it through causing weeks at a time when no starship can land or take off. Because of this and the sheer distance from other settled worlds, Starfall is a divided world, with fairly well-off city-states and large stretches of wild, ungovernable land held by quarreling warlords. When a pirate attack forces the Venture Star to stay longer than planned on Starfall, Captain Gaon and the crew are pulled into a rapidly developing situation. 

One of the warlords is called the Droog Lord, which is a name that I love in all honesty but I also giggle a bit when reading it. This guy is something out of a mad max movie and I love it. He's the leader of a cult of violence-worshiping, mask-wearing, maniacs, who call themselves Droogs. Everyone who is not a Droog is a Skrag and deserves nothing but abuse. The Droog Lord is using a new drug named Curall, to subvert the populations of the city-states and expand his control of the wilderness. Because Curall does seem to alleviate symptoms and pain, it is also wildly addictive and the withdrawal kills everyone. When the Droog Lord conquers a settlement, he ensures that enough people have been forced onto Curall that there is a large group of people who will do anything to ensure their supply. Meanwhile, Curall is being sold on the streets of the larger City-states to increasingly desperate addicts who believe it's the only thing keeping them healthy. This is... pretty damn evil I’ve got to be honest but is certainly something I could see all sorts of powers and groups doing as a means of profit or power. 

It doesn't help that the Droog Lord also has some mysterious benefactors (And I wonder who those could be… Hmmmm.{Read and find out folks!}). After all, it's not like the Droogs have the medical or scientific base to come up with Curall all on their own. Oh no, someone or something is providing it to them. When the Venture Star's crew gets pulled into this, they have to find local allies and resources quickly or risk being butchered to protect a secret they haven't even figured out yet. This is complicated by yet another opponent; the pirate who started this whole mess decides to carry a grudge and try to hunt them all down to kill them. So now they have to dodge threats from above and below while figuring out just who is trying to kill this time and why. 

Mr. Stevens is at his best when he can focus on a diverse range of characters and their interactions with each other. As well as develop colorful antagonists and supporting characters and when he's able to do that in this book he shines. When he's pulled into further developing Mr. Gibbs' world I feel like it slows the book down a bit. Parts of this book are awkward because he's trying to weld a political/diplomatic high-stakes plot with a more small-scale plot of "figure out why everyone is mad at us this time". He can do it rather effectively but the fact he has to take up time and effort is better spent elsewhere in my opinion. That said, I love that the Droog Lord, despite his name, isn't a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain but comes across as a cunning leader of savages willing to exploit every opportunity while refusing to do wasteful things like kill messengers or murder people over failure. The larger foe in the background is interesting as well and we're given just enough information to hold our interest in them. All in all, I'm rating Spacer's Luck by Daniel Gibbs and Gary Stevens a B. It's a fun novel but I think some parts don't gel as well as they could. 

I hope you enjoyed this week’s review.  If you did, consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you can vote on upcoming content, see bloopers from the videos (That you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLxet0k0gJBuYTkZgkprIlg ) and more for as little as a dollar a month!  Next week we’re going to turning a discussion about kidnapping in mythology and folklore and I’ll be posting a video on that.  Hope to see you there and until then stay safe and keep reading! 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders. 

Prior reviews in this universe:

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2020/08/breach-of-peace-by-daniel-gibbs-and.html

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2020/09/breach-of-faith-book-ii-by-daniel-gibbs.html

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2022/03/breach-of-trust-by-gary-t-stevens-and.html

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2021/03/breach-of-duty-by-daniel-gibbs-and-gary.html

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2020/05/echoes-of-war-fight-good-fight-by.html

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2021/12/echoes-of-war-strong-and-courageous-by.html

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2022/01/so-fight-i-echoes-of-war-book-iii-by.html

The Greek Overseas: Early Colonies and Trade By John Boardman

 The Greek Overseas: Early Colonies and Trade

By John Boardman 

Professor Boardman was born on August 20, 1927, in Ilford, England. He attended Chigwell School, a boarding school established in 1619, graduating in 1945. From 1945 to 1951 he attended Magdalene College in Cambridge, earning a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters of Art in Art History and Classical studies. He married his wife Shelia Stanford in 1952 and they would have two children together. After graduating he served two years of national service in the British Army Intelligence Corps (Having an art historian and classicist in this kind of position is not as strange as it sounds). Leaving the Army he served three years as an assistant director at the British School in Athens. In 1955, he returned to England and became assistant keeper at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, this led to him also becoming a Reader in Classical Archaeology at the University of Oxford in 1959, as well as being appointed a Fellow of Merton College in 1963. He remained there until he was appointed Lincoln Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology, as well as becoming a member of the Fellowship of Lincoln College in 1978. In 1994, he retired and became an emeritus professor, a position he still holds.

During all of this, he was also leading and attending archaeological digs across the Mediterranean world and produced numerous written volumes. For example, ten catalogs on ancient gems and rings, four handbooks on Greek Vase painting, three handbooks on Greek Sculpture, and an additional 6 books focused on archaeology. For his work he would be awarded, receiving a knighthood in 1989, the Kenyon Medal in 1995, and the Onassis Prize for Humanities in 2009. He has been declared Britain's most distinguished historian of Ancient Greek Art. Today we're going to look at one of his main works, The Greek Overseas. 

  Now I came to this book because I was interested in looking at Greek Colonization after doing some studying on various Greek myths linked to the Trojan War, this ended up being an entire continuing video series on youtube that I'll link to. However, I couldn't find much in the way of history books that focused on that. Plenty of books focused on the history of mainland Greece sure, but the colonies and the colonization process? Not much, at least nothing under 150 dollars. The Greek Overseas focuses relentlessly on that; it was however first written in 1964 and the last update was in 1999. So a good amount of the information is out of date. That's not great news honestly but sometimes you have to work with what you have (True, but pottery shards are forever.). 

The Greek Overseas focuses on the colonization efforts of the Greeks before Alexander, mostly in Classical times, although there is some discussion of Mycenaean colonization in the Bronze Age (not that much survived the collapse…). This is focused on Greek efforts in the Eastern Med, with 119 pages out of 287 talking about Egyptian and Eastern Med settlements. To be fair, the oldest Greek colonies are on the coast of what is now modern-day Turkey. From there the book moves west, focusing a lot on Sicily and Magna Graecia on mainland Italy. Given that these were the larger and more successful colonies I can't blame him for this focus there either. Considerably less attention is given to Greek colonies in Libya, Southern France, and Spain, which is unfortunate because I know very little about these areas and I wanted to know more. From there he moves us back north and east to focus on colonies in the Po Valley, Thrace, Macedonia; and around the Black Sea but you can tell he's not especially interested in those colonies for reasons I'll get into later. 

Professor Boardman goes to great lengths to map out the Greek trade relations with the eastern powers and Egypt and carefully denotes the influence these powers had on Greek art, architecture, and material culture. Just real quick when we say material culture, we mean the literal material goods that people were making at the time. To give a modern example, art posters, Tupperware, furniture, as well as books, and movies are all examples of material culture. Perhaps due to his art history background, Professor Boardman backs this with exhaustive lists and descriptions of artifacts found on various digs across the Greek world. Now I will say this if you're looking for extensive lists of things like pottery, art objects, belts, pins, and so on, this book is the mother-load for you. If you're an aspiring writer looking to fill out a hoard of a long-lost civilization or even just a GM looking for novel treasure, you could do worse than pulling open a book like this and taking a look at some of the lists. Unfortunately for me, one of the things I learned in college is I hate looking at or reading about pottery shards or comparing art on vases. So this book didn’t go well for me (95% of archaeology are coins, belt buckles, and pottery shards; because these can be used to trace time and place of construction, allowing you to do things like trace trade relations {Which means digging through trash heaps, which I didn’t care for}).

On top of that, if you're more interested in the description of the political, social, and economic life of the colonies or how they related to each other, the natives of the lands they were settling, and their mother cities…there's not as much to read. Now I'm not going to say there's nothing because Professor Boardman does take some time discussing these things but he does so in a very bare-bones fashion with none of the attention and detail that he lavishes on discussing the style of various pots and vases found in the various dig sites. Serious students of archaeology will likely enjoy or at least be interested in that. Because he takes a lot of care and effort giving intense details to various finds as well as carefully going over their context. 

People who, like me, are more inclined toward the social anthropology aspect or the historical aspect won't be so thrilled, however. Now there is good information in this book, Professor Boardman does detail how the majority of Greek colonies in the East and Italy were established for trade reasons. In Egypt and the Eastern Med, colonies mainly started as trading posts or as treaty ports of sorts. These ports and trading posts gradually expanded over time as more and more people came east to seek their fortune or learn more of eastern arts and technology. In Egypt, we see the first settlement of Greek Mercenaries as later day Egyptian Pharaohs turned to Greek soldiers to wage wars both against rival claimants and invaders from the south and east. Before finally falling to Persians, who in turn relied on Greek mercenaries as well and allowed further settlement of Greek soldiers. 

We also learn that the Mycenaean Greeks settled in the east as well, although not in the numbers or the extent that the Classical Greeks did. Many colonies seemed to have entirely failed and were abandoned during the Bronze Age Collapse, only for the Greeks of the Classical age to return and found new ones in the same location. This is mainly due to the fact that there are only so many places you can build a trading port if you want to be successful. Colonies in nearby Libya were driven more by a desire for good farmland and because of that, there are fewer material goods here so Professor Boardman isn't interested in them (At that point it might not even be “interest, so much as just being outside his wheelhouse, and the scope of the book.{Then he shouldn’t have written that the book was about Greek colonization!  He should have said it was about Greek artifacts left in Greek colonies!}). 

There's less to no evidence of Mycenaean colonization in the west from what I can find but it was trade that brought the Greeks to Italy and Sicily. It's in these chapters we get some brief discussion on Greek and Phoenicians interaction. The Phoenicians were the other group of expansive traders and colonizers in the Mediterranean Sea at this point in history and they're mainly remembered for founding Carthage. Carthage wasn't their only colony however and they had settlements in France, Spain, and Italy as well. Where they would have been competing with the Greeks pretty heavily I would think. Professor Boardman doesn't spend a lot of time here on these interactions although he does give a general outline. He also gives a general outline of Greek-Etruscan interactions. The book shows its age here by being rather dismissive of the Etruscans as a civilization. This is incredibly frustrating for me because all I know about the Etruscans is that they were conquered by the Romans and learning anything about their pre-Roman days would be fantastic! 

Spain, France, and the Po Valley also get the short end of the stick in my opinion. Frustratingly so, as I don't actually know anything about Greeks in the Po Valley of northern Italy or Southern France. Professor Boardman spends some time implying that much of the Gauls' urbanization came from interaction with the Greeks, which honestly I'm a little doubtful of. That may be because everyone and his mother wants to take credit for the Gauls building walled towns and moving from semi-nomadic to settled farmers in the mid-Iron Age. While the Southern French settlements also seem built on trade, it seems the settlements in the Po Valley were farming sites. 

Much like Libya and the Po Valley, little time is spent on the Black Sea colonies beyond really focusing on the Scythian trade interactions. Again we're treated to lavish details on archaeological artifacts but little discussion as to the societies at the time except for a rather badly dated comparison of the Scythians to Native Americans. It's in sections like this that the book shows its age and I think it's time for an update with a younger author. 

I found the Greek Overseas to be informative in a limited fashion but really dry and somewhat of a slog to read. Maybe I've been spoiled since graduating college but I'm also going to say that college textbooks can be interesting and compelling to read! You don't need to make a textbook dull! I also think that Professor Boardman was overly dismissive of texts from the time frame and showed way too much favoritism to archaeological artifacts. Not that we should ever just take Herodotus' word without several grains of salt mind you but the belts of noble women buried in a burial mound can only tell us so much while the written works of Greeks who were alive at the time give us a much bigger window into their world view and what was going on around them 

I'm afraid I have to give Greek Overseas a C-, partly because the last update was 23 years ago. A lifetime when it comes to archaeology and history. Unless you're really into tracing Athenian and Corinthian pottery this is likely not your book. Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will write something a bit more accessible when it comes to Greek colonization in the near future. That said I hope this review was more entertaining than the book. If you enjoyed it why not join us at the patron where you can vote on videos and book reviews? You can join us here at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads for as little as a dollar a month. Speaking of patrons, a special thank you to Big Steve for his support. I hope y'all join us again soon for the upcoming review of Spacers Luck and a video on “romantic” or bridal kidnapping. Until then, stay safe and keep reading! 

This week, I discuss Greek Colonization further in this video: https://youtu.be/dX4oVsiy4a4

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black Text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Atomic Robo and Other Strangeness Vol IV By Brian Clevinger

 Atomic Robo and Other Strangeness Vol IV

By Brian Clevinger

“No! You're an idiot and your origin story doesn't make any sense!” Atomic Robo to Doctor Dinosaur

So, I'm not gonna spend too much time on introductions here, since we've reviewed the past 3 volumes already. Just be aware we're talking about a world where comic book super science works and Atomic Robo is the living avatar of that. We got a lot to cover so let's get to it.

Other Strangeness isn't a unified story about Robo's struggles against one of the many threats that lurk in the universe. It is mostly set in the late 90s and early 2000s, so it still functions as a look into a specific period of Robo's life (A very special time in US history.  When history was supposedly over. Get bent Fukuyama!). At this point Robo is riding high on the hog, leading Telsadyne in investigations on the very edge of human learning and living knee-deep in Action Science. Robo isn't just wealthy, respected, and politically connected; he's a damn celebrity and frankly, he deserves it. He's not just devoting his life to pushing the frontiers of knowledge in between bouts of fighting living and undead Nazis. He's also our nuclear-powered, steel-forged guardian angel. While much of his life is secret from the general public, everyone knows he's averted multiple mass extinction events. Just don't think too much about why he had to avert multiple mass extinction events in the first place! After all, you need to be able to sleep at some point in your life.

It's not like Atomic Robo is the only guy in the business of pursuing the extreme edge of science and punching evil while doing it. In this issue, we're introduced to the Japanese institution of Big Science Incorporated and its team of super scientists, the Super Science Team Five (This is incredibly Japanese.). Just in case you're wondering, yes each member dresses in a suit that is a different bright primary color from the others. Big Science Inc and Super Science Team Five are a bit mono-focused compared to Telsadyne however, as they focus their energies on containing and stopping a single threat. The strange biological monsters that defy all manner of laws of biology and physics called Biomega. They operate much like Kaiju with some extra weird almost alien biology but I'm sure everything will be fine (They’re just Kaiju.). After all, after being fought off in the 1970s no one has seen a biomega emerge from the oceans. How many giant alien monsters that ignore everything we know about science could be hiding in the Pacific ocean anyways right? (Probably a great many!  What is this false sense of security?)

We also find out that our nearest neighborhood universe has an earth where everyone was turned into blood-drinking vampires (Oh No.). They're so close that any experiment that monkeys about with the universal barriers can bring them over by accident. Like various experiments in hyperspatial technology or quantum barriers or so on and so forth. Thankfully these experiments are easy to reverse so long as a single vampire never escapes into the “wild” from the initial infection point. We'll be fine (No, no we won’t!). It helps that the vampires seem to have lost most of their intelligence, so they're not able to create their own technology to jump dimensions. To do that, they would have to have to turn someone who was driven and brilliant and not tear him apart while doing so and how likely is that? (Pretty fuckin’ likely!  STOP JUMPING DIMENSIONS!  OR IF YOU DO, HAVE FREAKISH CONTAINMENT PROTOCOLS!   DO IT ON MARS! {plays Doom theme})

Finally, we have the glorious Dr. Dinosaur! One of the most magnificent comic book villains ever. Now whether he's a threat to humanity is open to debate but he is certainly the biggest threat to Robo's sanity and pride. If you believe Dr. Dinosaur, real name H'ssssk, he's a refugee from the Mesozoic Era, a Velociraptor mutated into a genius by mammal energies echoing backward through time to wipe out the dinosaurs (Woah.  That might make him bitter.). As Robo points out, however, he has no feathers and is way to big to be a Velociraptor, although he's pretty close to the build and size of a small Deinonychus (Then he is an artificial construct.  No Feathers=Not an actual Dromaeosaur.  I HAVE SPOKEN!). If you believe Robo, Dr. Dinosaur is most likely the result of illegal genetic experiments on one of the many Pacific islands that hide secret super science labs run by various nations such as Russia, the United States, France, the UK, Japan, China, and more. This volume doesn't provide answers to the question of where the hell Dr. Dinosaur came from but it does show the first meeting of Dr. Dinosaur and Robo. As well as explaining why these two hate each other. So, so very hilariously much. 

We also get introduced to allies and friends of Robo, such as Dr. Bernard Fischer. Who has degrees in paleontology and paleobotany. He's also studied a fair bit of geology but I'm sure that won't come up (If he’s a paleobiologist, he has studied and will use a lot of geology.  Period.{Yes but he’s applying for a job in Action Science!}). Dr. Fischer's biggest qualities are that he's some kinda weirdness magnet, like having vampires phase into reality during his job interview, kind of magnet. He is also absurdly lucky, like, incredibly bad luck or amazing good luck, there is no in-between. That said he can keep his cool just enough that he's an asset. We're also reintroduced to the unstoppable Jenkins, in this case by watching him tear through a small army as if they were dummies made of plywood filled with blood. So. Much. Blood.

There's a lot of scene-setting in this volume but it's worked into some really nice slice of lifestyle storytelling and done in a very entertaining way. Mr. Clevinger basically uses a series of short more-or-less self-contained stories to set up elements of Robo's world that establish that Robo isn't the only super scientist in town. As well as setting up the fact that our tranquil little civilization is in fact ringed around by terrors beyond our ability to meaningfully comprehend, never mind resist, without the protection of these groups of Super Science practitioners. Which I'm sure won't be an issue, I mean it's not like a government will decide that leaving the security of humanity to a bunch of free-range nerds is a bad idea or that one of these threats will slink under the radar and bite us all (Honestly, given the global response to HIV and then COVID, I think leaving it up to free-range nerds might be better.). What makes this satisfying is the fact that even the stories setting up elements for later use have their own payouts; as well as working as single self-contained episodes which means I can simply enjoy them for their own sake.

As you might have guessed I really did enjoy this volume. There wasn't a single unifying threat. Despite that all the stories, save the Dr. Dinosaur ones, were connected enough to make it work. Also, Dr. Dinosaur needs no justification, he really is one of my favorite villains and this introduction shows him as capable of being a danger to Robo. While also being insane and hysterically funny. Atomic Robo and Other strangeness gets an A.

I hope you enjoyed this review.  If you did consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you can vote on upcoming projects for as little as a dollar a month.  Speaking of upcoming projects, I will be skipping a week to put in more work on such a project.  My paterons will be getting a sneak peek at that and I hope you’ll join us.  See you soon and until then Keep Reading!

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black Text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

The Star Wars By Jonathan W Rinzler and illustrated by Mike Mayhew

 The Star Wars

By Jonathan W Rinzler and illustrated by Mike Mayhew

So as I'm sure most of you were aware, A New Hope didn't just leap out of George Lucas' head fully formed but was the result of a writing process that took several years. The first hack at it was in 1973, a two page outline called Journal of the Whills. Lucas shared with his agent and his agent told him bluntly that he couldn't make heads or tails of the document. Lucas accepted the criticism and trudged back to the writing desk and came up with a ten-page document Star Wars: Story Synopsis. This was shopped around, rejected by United Artists, passed over by Universal but accepted by 20th Century Fox. However the suits at Fox weren't just going to shove money at Lucas, they wisely wanted a full script first.

In May 1974, Mr. Lucas completed The Star Wars: A Rough Draft. Which gave us characters, a plot, and the first outline of the Star Wars galaxy. Not happy with it, Mr. Lucas went back and rewrote it. At least 2 more times before producing A New Hope in 1977. The Star Wars however was not thrown away but was allowed to molder on the shelves of the Lucas archives. Fast forward to the 21st century, Mr. Rinzler was hired to write books that would look at the behind-the-scenes processes and events of making Star Wars, both the main trilogy and the prequels. This gave him access to the archives and during his work, he discovered the rough draft. He approached Mr. Lucas and was at first rejected; to be fair I wouldn't want to share my rough drafts with the public either (None of us would…).  However, with the help of Dark Horse Comics producing a few pages of artwork and storyboards he got the go-ahead from Mr. Lucas a few years later.

Dark Horse published the eight-issue run of The Star Wars from September 2013 to May 2014. The comic tells the story of Annikin Starkiller and Luke Skywalker and their efforts to protect the planet of Aquilae from the forces of the New Galactic Empire. Now in this version, the characters are very different. In fact, Luke is a Jedi Bendu General in his 60s and Annikin is a young man just entering his prime. Furthermore, Luke and Annikin are not related, Annikin is the son of another character named  Kane Starkiller. In this version of the story, Kane asks Luke to train Annikin to become a Jedi Bendu, being unable to do so because he has become more machine than man (But not twisted and evil? {Not so much} Huh).

The plot follows Luke and Annikin with their allies such as the alien Han Solo and the secret agent Clieg Whitsun as they attempt to keep Princess Leia and her younger brothers from being captured by Imperial Shocktroopers. This is complicated given that the Empire has brought a gigantic Space Fortress into the Aquilae system causing a collapse of organized resistance. The Empire may be on the verge of victory with the death of Leia's father and the capture of her mother but much like how I pointed out in my Arslan review, as long as one member of the royal family stays free there is a center for resistance to form around. So Luke's plan is to basically keep the royal children from being captured while he assembles a rebel alliance to try and destroy the space fortress and throw the Empire back.

To do this, he not only has to gather old allies but recruit new ones, such as the Wookies of Yavin Four led by their Prince Chewbacca (Which, it turns out, actual prince.  Though what the hell is it with all this Space Monarchism? {George Lucas was copying Japanese Samurai movies and Flash Gordon, you do that you’ll have space monarchies.  You should write me some socialist Space Opera} I have been nursing that idea…). Meanwhile, Annikin has to deal with his romantic feelings toward Leia and try to complete his training (Well at least she isn’t his sister this time around…{Except they never reveal who Annikin’s Mother was…Dun Dun Dun!}). They are in turn hunted by the forces of General Darth Vader, a hulking scarred man, and the Sith Knight Valorum. Darth Vader doesn't get a lot of screen time in this version with Valorum serving as the more central antagonist. The Jedi and Sith are both portrayed as rival warrior orders without much explanation as to why they're opposed to each other and we don't see much in the way of Force powers here. The Jedi and the Sith just appear to be really well-trained fighters and swordsmen. Although I'll note that even regular Shocktroopers carry laser swords in this version so people and creatures are getting chopped into bits all over the place.

This is very much a rough draft and it shows. The cast is simply too large for the size of the story and the plot is also too packed with events and factions. Honestly, I feel Mr. Rinzler, in his desire to stick as close to the script as possible, did himself a disservice because that led to a poorer story. Especially since he only had eight issues to get this all wrapped up in. Which forces him to move at light speed. For example, the Wookies are supposed to be brutal fighters who attack everyone, until they meet Annikin and now they're best friends with the Jedi. We're also never really clear on why the Empire has decided to crush this planet, although there is some vague talk of “scientific and genetic” treasures. Also, the Force called the Force of Others in this story is very ill-defined. It seems to function more as a popular religious belief than anything else.

That said if you're a Star Wars fan there's a lot of value to be had here. You can see story elements from the prequels and you can see the seeds of A New Hope and other stories in this comic and that alone makes it an interesting read. If you're not a Star Wars fan, give this one a miss. If you are, go ahead and take a look but temper your expectations. That said I wouldn't mind someone tackling this and seeing if they could create something different from it than what Lucas did but that's just me. If I have to grade this, I have to give it a D+ at best for the fact that we have incomplete characterizations, only half-realized world-building, and a cast that is too big to be really used in a smart fashion. Which I feel isn't fair all things considered. That said I am a Star Wars fan, if not as intense as some and I enjoyed the peek into the process this provided. So your mileage I think will vary by a great deal.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s review.  If you did you should consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads for as little as a dollar a month you get a vote in upcoming reviews, projects, and more.  Join us next week for the review selected by our ever wise patrons of Atomic Robo and Other Strangeness.  Hope to see you there!  Until then, stay safe and keep reading! 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders