Review: Lion Loose
Wanna-be Lions, or Fuzzy Jellybeans?
This last week has been chaotic, to say the least. School started, I had a long-overdue meeting with my adviser that may mean shuffling classes after they have already started, and there was a minor kerfluffle on the internet that served for most of my reading the last couple of days (but a cross between amusing, and watching a trainwreck, if you know what I mean).
So what did I read this week? Well, school books, but you don't want to hear about that. I'm working on The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett again, it is fascinating, but I'd started last semester and put it aside due to lack of time and energy to read non-fiction. I'm just to the chapter dealing with oncogenes and the discoveries of viruses that cause cancer, thrilling stuff that happened when I was a mere child. And I'm very serious here, this is truly interesting material, and from both the perspective of the Mad-Scientist-in-Training, and as an author of Science Fiction. I should post snippets of Methuselah Germ (which badly needs a new title) and show you all what I was thinking about these subjects close to ten years ago.
Ok, actual review time. I've been on a James H Schmitz kick (follow the link for his best, collected by Baen). I found a bunch of his work free on Amazon and grabbed it, some short stories, some short novels, for my kindle. Which is what I read when I'm falling asleep. The novel I went through the last week was Lion Loose, a quitessentially Schmitz tale, with a beautiful young woman in some distress, a young man secretly working for the side of Good, and a weird alien creature that may or may not be a threat. Lion Loose is set on a once-glamourous space station, a sort of mega-casino in space, slowly falling into disrepair and disrepute, but still populated. Reetal, the afore-mentioned lovely and deadly young lady, has discovered a plot to blow it up. She calls on Quillan, believing him to be shady as her, but with a heart of gold. They conspire to defeat the gang.
Click on cover to find a free book…
The interesting twist here, as it so often is in Schmitz' tales, is the alien. I won't give too much away, but I do enjoy his stories, since the first one I'd ever read as a girl about Telzey and TT, her telepathic cat. If you're looking for light, classic science fiction, enjoyable read with characters who are a little gritty by never malicious (well, the villains can be quite so…) then Schmitz is a reliable go-to.
I'll try to read something more challanging for next week. But no promises.
Oh - I really liked this one. A lot of fun. Much more psychological than action, but still. Click on cover below for link.
