Makk had the misfortune to be born on a day believed to be so unlucky that his parents barely paused long enough to get him tattooed with the outcast mark before dumping him at an orphanage. The stigma of that mark is so strong that before becoming a cop Makk considered joining the House, planet Dib's religious organization, simply because some of the monks wear concealing robes that would hide it. The city of Velon's best detective also grew up in an orphanage and is therefore familiar with their compound when a scholarly monk is found murdered. Almost from the beginning this isn't a typical case. The monk, Orno, is the younger brother of Velon's most notorious criminal. Orno had recently stolen a priceless ancient religious text that no one can read, but it appears to discuss the Culling, when the god known as the Outcast will return and bring about the apocalypse. Then, just to really annoy Makk, he gets saddled with a shiny new detective as a partner. Everyone wants the case solved without any secrets being revealed, but in a world where independent reporters record everything with drones and conspiracy theories are more common than facts, Makk will have difficulty distinguishing the possible from the impossible.

Originally published back in 1959, and winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960, Starship Troopers is a classic sci-fi novel that has been considered controversial from the day it was first published. It bears little resemblance to the 1997 movie with the same name and there are many different takes on why it is controversial. Set 700 years in the future, it's a coming of age story for Johnny Rico, who joins the military upon reaching his 18th birthday. Boot camp is no picnic and I frankly love the writing about Johnny's experiences after signing up. He goes through hell, even earning himself a few lashes for disobeying an order, but in the end he learns to respect and trust those around him. Unlike the YA coming of age stories of today, the adult leaders are not portrayed as morons, and they seem to be people worthy of their rank. A quality that definitely gets passed down to Johnny as he struggles to find his own path in life.

After languishing in a brutal enemy prison for twenty years, Captain Faulkner is finally freed but he immediately finds himself the target of assassination attempts and political conspiracies. Instead of a quiet retirement where his broken mind and body might have a chance to recover, he finds himself back where he was during the war twenty years ago, commanding the Confederate battleship Mantis. Like its Captain, the Mantis is being rebuilt and forcibly brought into the modern era with unpredictable results, which wouldn't matter much if a series of puzzling events wasn't reigniting the flames of war again. After a generation of peace, and officers who rose through political connections rather than merit, the last hope of the Confederation might be a broken man, an antiquated patched up warship, and its crew of random misfits.

Early on in this series, Donut received a magical crown and of course she put it on before reading the description. The warning on the crown stated that the wearer would become a member of the Blood Sultanate and would not be able to leave the 9th floor of the dungeon without killing every other member of the Sultanate. This was a permanent liability as removing the crown does not negate the effect. She eventually replaced the crown, but that too was a mistake, because it allowed that same crown to be forcibly placed onto the head of fellow crawler Katia in a later book. At that point there was no way that both Donut and Katia could both reach the 10th floor, but it was a problem for another day. No longer. The 9th floor, known as Faction Wars, is finally here and it is one of the most deadly floors in the dungeon. Add on the Donut/Katia situation and there is no way that Carl makes it to the 10th floor without losing someone he loves.

Dalton Greaves agreed to join a Unity scout ship after a humiliating break up. Those who sign up to work for the galactic organization either come back to Earth rich or just don't come back. His job is to go down to newly discovered inhabited planets and explain that Unity is there to help them just like they helped Earth. His predecessor was eaten by a potential new member species, so he doesn't expect to survive his ten year contract. Their current assignment doesn't look promising since the horrifying looking insectoids live on a planet teeming with wildlife, so vicious even they stay behind city walls at night. But things start to go wrong even before they land when a rival galactic organization, the Assembly, shows up and the two ships destroy each other stranding their representatives on the planet. Dalton's counterpart is an alien whose race is famed for slaughtering Unity soldiers including humans and considers all humans to be conniving manipulative liars. Since it wastes no time convincing the local hive queen of this, Dalton thinks he's lost all touch with reality when she informs him that she's taking him as a husband, her Fourth Consort.

To nobody's surprise, when your stuck on a backwater planet, you can't afford to buy fuel when the only thing of value you have are some fancy geese. To be fair, Mal never intended to do a job in exchange for some supposedly rare geese, but that's how things worked out, and that's actually quite a problem. Serenity does not have enough fuel to leave the moon, which means they can't get to a location when they can cash out the unwanted geese, and the locals are not about to sell them fuel in exchange for the geese. The only way out of this predicament is, of course, to take another job. Luckily the owner of the fuel refinery is a former acquaintance of Shepherd Book, and he is willing to hire Mal and the crew to help him out of a labor dispute. But in typical Firefly fashion, this new job is not about to go to plan either, especially with Jayne out of commission due to a goose-related injury...

It's been a while since a Riyria book was published, five years in fact, and fans of the series have watched lots of others books be published in the world of Elan, but none in the timeline of the originals, until now. This is of course a prequel story because Michael J. Sullivan is happy with where he ended the original series, but any Riyria story is better than none. This story takes us back in time to a mission where Royce and Hadrian are contracted to go on a road trip to stop a disgruntled Dwarf from destroying an entire city. This ancient dwarf has spent his entire life keeping Drumindor operational, and since it sits on top of a volcano, that's a good thing for everyone. When he is fired from his job for cost cutting reasons, he decides to use his knowledge to turn Drumindor into a massive bomb that will surely destroy the resort city of Tur Del Fur. It's up to Riyria to stop him.

Although sad, there are occasionally small dragon eggs that fail to hatch, but Lord Jaxom of Ruatha Hold manages to save one after sneaking into the Hatching Grounds. He assists this small dragonet as it tries to break open the shell and Impression is made. Ruth is small and the only white dragon ever seen, but both Ruth and Jaxom are convinced they should be able to fight thread together. While they're sneaking around practicing flying and breathing fire, the situation with the Oldtimers finally hits the breaking point. They do the unthinkable in a desperate bid to regain power; they steal a queen egg. Can Jaxom and Ruth find and return the egg before the dragonriders go to war when everyone else has failed? They make some amazing discoveries along the way that will reveal Pern's past and change its future.

Each book in the Stormlight Archive is massive, and Wind and Truth clocks in as the biggest of the bunch. Despite its size, the book covers a time period of only 10 days, which is the amount of time left before the pending contest of champions between Dalinar Kholin and the god Odium. The outcome of this contest will determine the fate of Roshar and Dalinar knows in his heart that he can't win. This makes every different story line feel like a desperate race against time, and each main character has a role to play. In fact, there are so many different story lines and threads going on, not to mention flashbacks and travels through time in the spiritual realm, that it can be a bit overwhelming to follow it all. Even more so if it's been a while since you read the first four books in the series, but the real question is - does Wind and Truth properly end the first arc of the Stormlight Archive, or is this a new level of bloat coming from Sanderson, who seems to have no control over the scope of his own story telling?

You can always count on Nicholas Sansbury Smith to write a good apocalyptic tale, and he has quiet a variety of those to choose from: Hell Divers, Orbs, The Extinction Cycle, and Trackers to name a few. So I was excited to see a sci-fi series written by him, and The Last Steward is the first book in that series. This is a battle heavy series that follows a few different PoV characters, Axel Finn, the captain of a diverse crew of misfits that make a living running salvage missions, a young sergeant, Jax, who finds out quickly that doing the right thing in the military isn't always appreciated, and a paranoid bounty hunter, Rangnar, who collects ancient artifacts. This series has a rich universe inhabited by many different species, multiple factions vying for power, and a brewing war that puts the main characters right in the center of things. But, is it on par with the rest of Sansbury's work?