It’s a kind of magic….!

Et voilá! This is the second book of Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops series, Fortress Frontier.

(In case you have not yet read book one, Control Point, you can find some info on my blog!)

In this book we don’t only meet the characters from Control Point again, we also get to know Colonel Alan Bookbinder, whose life suddenly gets turned upside down.
This character shows Myke’s special gift: He can make the characters truly human in the way the act, think, speak and also change. While you read the book, Bookbinder isn’t only a ficional character who is leading this storyline but he is ‘real’. You can completely understand his motives, his thoughts. There’s not only black and white, good and evil in Myke’s books. He knows the world consists of shades of grey (not the series!) and that is what you get.

 

What you also get is an adventure you can fully experience like a good Dungeons and Dragons RPG: You have your party, magicians, warriors, healers etc and they have to work together in order to stay alive. It seems to be very basic but actually it’s what a good story needs. Especially when it’s playing in the world of military fantasy literature.

An army only works if people are working together. Here you can see that in a microcosmos of its own.

I won’t tell you too much of the plot here, because I want you to buy and read the books yourself and support the author!
What I can tell you is that you are gonna love the action, the magic and the movie your mind will play when you read the book. Myke offers you detailed descriptions but at the same time enough space to imagine things on your own. So: Imagine, all comic-like, an army with magic, elemental of course but also other arts, like necromancy and other dark skills, imagine creatures you can only dream of and that creep the shit out of you and imagine yourself right inside this world that seems so fantastic and yet almost around the corner!

Also, maybe you want to scan through the glossary before starting to read. It’s a big benefit being firm on the special military terms!

I think it is a must-read for every man who serves or served and who loved superhero comics as a boy. And of course the ladies are invited to read the series, too. Just know: No one is going to sparkle here. Thank god. (Well…maybe the Naga do sparkle…..)

Für meine Deutschen Leser: Ab diesem Sommer gibts Myke’s Serie auch auf Deutsch! Sie wird im Piper Verlag erscheinen!

 

And a big thanks to Myke! Hope to see you at Leipzig Bookfair next year! XD (I had the impression that your fave word is still ‘outstanding’. 😉 Should have counted it in the book! ;))

The Control Point Diaries Part 6: Alea iacta sunt – final review

Alea iacta sunt – the dice have fallen. I’ve finished Control Point this morning and it’s got a fulminant ending, making you want to have part two on your desk right now.
We’ve been talking about topics somehow connected with the book for a week now – let’s have a look at the actual book now, shall we?
First, the few negative things: The font of the book is rather small, so it’s not the best choice when you’re half sleepy and want to read in bed. Secondly, you have to get used to the military slang.
But that’s already all that I have to mope about.
The positive aspects are that it’s well written and the language is used beautifully. Each character has their way of speaking, the vocab is chosen perfectly and strengthened by the attitude the characters have.
Seriously, I think Myke Cole has mastered a level of language here that is above average compared to other books freshly published.
The story and the setting itself is rather fresh,too, at least for notorical fantasy readers like me, who usually escape into the medieval setting or the urban fantasy settings in a world that is completely like ours except for maybe the werewolves. Here you find yourself on our planet and yet there is some kind of sphere that is completely different – the magical world. Also, we have some kind of new hero. Whom do we have in other fantasy-sub-genres? We have the ladies who get in touch with sexy, fantasy guys, we have the heroes with a prophecy on their shoulders that they need to fulfill. Here, we get a soldier who is ripped out of his usual enviromnment, put in a world of war and magic and who first of all feels completely lost and not destined for greater thing. We meet a man who is fighting for his own freedom, who wants to fight for good things but simply in the way he wants and not how it is forced upon him. We meet a man who has doubts and worries and fears. We meet a human individual confronted with horrors of all kind and who is struggling to find his place in such an insane world.
A world btw that is developped nicely. The descriptions are clear enough to give you an impression of the surroundings and yet they leave you enough space for your own imagination. There are other races of magical creatures (On a sidenote: Marty is soooooooo cute!…) and the use of magic, that you can totally picture while reading but which, I bet, looks different to everyone.
All in all it’s a great story and I bet all the publishers that didn’t take the chance to have Myke Cole as an author will now be kicking their own asses. But then again, I think the timing for Myke’s books is just perfect – we have had a gazillion of stories with vampires, werewolves, orcs and dwarves. Here comes a new, refreshing side of fantasy literature.
(Also, it’s the perfect gift for everyone who ever joined a military force and likes comics…)

Summing it all up: It’s a book you definitely should consider purchasing. Why? It’s well writing, the story is catching, it’s something you’ve never read before and the author is an intelligent AND sexy fantasy nerd himself. So, ladies, order that book for your boyfriends now and single men: Grab that book and see how cool and manly fantasy can be! 😉

Btw… my cat, too, says, this book is a must-have!

The Control Point Diaries Part 3: Magic

Hello to Part 3 of the Control Point diaries. I’ve reached chapter 13 and I thought we should have a closer look at the magic of the book today. (Without spoiling the plot…it’s gonna be tough but I am trying nevertheless.) While reading the book you – in case you are a little nerd yourself- definitely know that the description of Myke Cole at the end of the book is sooooooooooo true. Especially the part about Dungeons and Dragons. I don’t know who of you have already played role playing games – either the videogame version or the good old pen and paper games – but you usually find most parts of the magic featured in the Shadow Ops series there, too. When you find you party in the games you usually combine warriors, thieves and magicians – healers, elemental wizards, black mages etc. They’ve got different names in the book, featuring the Latin/Greek forms, but if you’re a role player you definitely recognize members of magical schools you’d totally want to recruit for your own team. (for the videogame fans here: Somehow Control Point reminds me on a Final Fantasy 8 for the generation 30+ – soldiers who kick ass and have magical abilities.)
I remember one of my first pen and paper adventures. I was playing an orphaned elf black mage, level two and not the most charming person in the party. But the most clumsy one, mind you. So my black mage tried a summoning which was only supposed spy on a village but turned out to be a level 19 demon that I had no control of whatsoever. (the clumsiness!) Yes, I did manage to wipe out my entire party before the adventure could really start.
And that is where we come back to the book. Here,too, the characters first of all have to learn how to even use and control their magic before they accidently make something go kawoom or everyone gets killed in action. So the reader gets a live in-view into the world of magic, its development and its connection to the person carrying it which brings us closer to each character. Shall we bet that at the end of the book we’ll see some great magical firework? 😉
So yeah, the idea of magic might be an old one – after all you find the stories and sagas about magic in every culture on this planet, every country has their own stories about ghosts, mages, gods and magical items, but its set into a new context. While D&D is set in more medieval world and most fantasy roleplay games are set in a world hardly comparable to the one we live in right now (they are usually on another planet or at least somewhere in the past or the idea of a future), Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops series plays in world we can very well relate to. We see the news each day – countries fighting or threating each other, people not going with the system, people easily stereotyped. The thing that divides the book from our world is the featured magic. And that’s one of the reasons why you MUST read it. It’s not only a first hand experience of a soldier’s life (which the author can tell you a lot about!), it’s the perfect combination of the world we know with a world we love to imagine in movies, games and stories, the magical realm.
On a sidenote: Oscar Britton (see entry 2) really kicks ass!I like how you are allowed to know what he feels and thinks and how he stands in for others because he hasn’t switched off his brains and decides for himself what is right and what is wrong, even if there is a system that tries to put a collar around his neck.

The Control Point Diaries Part 2: Meeting Oscar Britton

Alright, yesterday we talked about the author of the Shadow Ops series…now let’s have a look at the main character, Oscar Britton. I’ve started reading last night and are about to start chapter seven, so I already got an impression of the protagonist. (well, at least about who he is in the beginning of the story…) We meet him and his team right in the moment when they are doing their job and carrying out a mission. A mission however, that gives the team and also the reader some kind of moral trouble. We find ourselves on earth, the planet that we know, but at the same time it’s extremly different to what we are used to. Magic has found its way to our world and people are coming out with different magical talents – pyromancy, necromancy and so on. But it’s not like everybody’s happy about that. Magic is used for military reasons and people with ‘good’ magic are to be recruited. Others however… well let’s say they don’t really have the time of their life. The thing is that it isn’t up to you if your own magic is ‘good’. It doesn’t matter what kind of person you are…if you have some sort of prohibited magic you are fucked. Doesn’t sound quite fair to you? Well, then you can relate to Oscar Britton, who, usually a faithful servant of the system, begins to doubt if they are doing the right thing. He’s someone who’d give you a chance to explain and calm down, who’d actually look behind the official name of the magic you are carrying to see what kind of man you are. Sounds like a cool guy, huh? Well, the world he lives in has a different few on that. Especially when it gets obvious that the soldier Oscarr Britton has quite some magical talent, too. A talent that scares him and makes him the target of the service he has been working for all his life. As a reader you get the full experience of the mental rollercoaster he is forced to ride and you have to make this journey with him. You know he isn’t a bad guy but at the same time his life is totally out of control.
He’s a man who deeply cares for his teammates and who respects them deeply. A man who always did his duty and whose priority is saving lives rather than shooting blindly only because you got the order to.
A soldier with a mind of his own? Yeah, it’s a good question if that can work out when the law system has to be followed very strictly but at the same time we cheer for Oscar because we can understand his trail of thoughts so very well.
I am very curious as to how his story will continue and how much it will actually make me think about ourselves and our way of thinking and considering things.

Before I am ending this second entry I want to say something about the style,too.
To be honest, it took me quite some pages to get into Myke’s way of writing, mostly because I am not used to the vocab he uses (that’s the hard thing when you are female and usually don’t deal with military terms other than the rank and order system on Star Trek’s Enterprise….), but once you get used to it (and have read the glossary at the end of the book) you totally get into the flow of reading. You all know I read a lot and the people close to me know how much I’ve been complaining lately that most authors don’t use a nicely developped sentence structure anymore. “She noticed he was a vampire. She was scared.” Those short sentences, even if they make it very simple to read a book in no time, are driving me insane. I love literature and language itself and a sentence can be as beautiful as a nicely arranged flower bouquet in the eyes of a book lover. Reading Control point gives you that experience of language used with intelligence and with a certain touch of art. Well…you might not want to compare a military fantasy novel with a flower bouquet but I hope you know what I mean. 🙂

So see you soon, I need to go back reading the book!!!!