Tag Archives: Dave Freer

Fiction, Reviews

‘Save the Dragons,’ by Dave Freer

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He has a long, double-barreled English name, but is generally known as “Squigs.” He is very tall and thin, has big feet, and is extremely awkward with girls. He studied Alchemy at an English university, which led him, through complex circumstances, to find himself on a watery planet called Zoar, where he’s completely out of his element – and he was never all that at home even on earth. Also, his right hand is missing. He finds himself rescued by a beautiful young girl in a boat, with whom he falls immediately in love. She finds him beneath contempt. Now, Crum the Barbarian, big, blond, dumb and handsome – that’s a guy she could go for.

The girl’s big, pugnacious father is looking for help hunting poachers. Zoar is inhabited by dragons, and dragon teeth are a coveted natural resource. But unfamiliar, interstellar vehicles have been showing up recently and killing dragons way over the hunting limits. Eager to impress the girl, Squigs volunteers to help pursue the poachers. He doesn’t seem well equipped for the quest, but he has qualities nobody has ever appreciated, and he acquires a faithful friend in a fearless dwarf. And the new hand he acquires – black, with eight serpentine fingers, turns out to be useful in surprising ways.

Save the Dragons is by Dave Freer, and showcases his punning, likeable, and satirical style. Lots of fun.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cloud Castles,’ by Dave Freer

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If the name Augustus Thistlewood strikes you as something out of P. G. Wodehouse, you and I have that in common. And we’re both right. There are echoes of Wodehouse at the beginning of Dave Freer’s science fiction novel, Cloud Castles, though the book gradually evolves into something quite different.

Augustus is a son of a wealthy, but low-profile, family of industrialists. He went to university to become an engineer, but he’s so brilliant he needed more of a challenge. So he took a degree in Sociology too, and that’s where the trouble began.  Convinced of “modern” views of society and economics, he decided he needed to spend time with the less fortunate, “uplifting” the poor.

That mission took him to Sybil III, a floating city in the “habitable region” of a gas-dwarf star. The city floats on antigravity engines and shares the skies with “floating castles” belonging to two alien races who are war with each other but “neutral” (though hostile) to humans. The skies also feature clumps of floating vegetation that nobody cares about much.

Augustus arrives in the floating city as the perfect innocent. The place is the most debased and claustrophobic of slums, but he, having no experience of real life, trusts everyone. He’s immediately spotted by an urchin called Briz (a girl, though he assumes she’s a boy), who “takes him under her wing” with the intention of robbing him blind. Only Augustus proves strangely resilient – the stupid moves he makes tend to work out all right for him (kind of like an old Mr. Magoo cartoon), and his engineering skills prove useful and even lifesaving. And Briz, against her will, finds herself drawn to this gormless do-gooder, developing a genuine sense of obligation.

Then they end up on one of the floating “skydrift paddocks,” vegetation clumps, and discover a thriving, if marginal, civilization – a place mirroring Australian Outback culture, but in the air. And gradually Augustus becomes “Gus,” their strong, inventive, and decisive leader. In this capacity he’ll face war, slavery, and worse from the aliens, on whose domains he can’t help encroaching.

Cloud Castles was a lot of fun – creative, original world-building, and a cast of colorful, well-developed characters. Dave Freer has been a Facebook friend for some time, but I hadn’t tried his science fiction before. This is an extremely good space opera, and I recommend it highly.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bolg P.I.: The Bolg and the Beautiful,’ by Dave Freer

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One of many things that irritate me in this world is reviews that say, “This book just didn’t work for me.” I’m sure I’ve written some myself, but it seems a pointless exercise. Reviews should be reserved for people who understand what’s going on, whether they love it or hate it. If it just disappoints you for reasons you can’t articulate, why bother reviewing at all?

Still, here I am reviewing a book written by a friend of several friends, who is acclaimed by all as a good guy and a fine writer. And yet about all I can say is that it didn’t really work for me.

Bolg P.I.: The Bolg and the Beautiful is a comic mashup, a combination of hardboiled detective story and fantasy. A “bolg” is a kind of Irish dwarf, and our hero/narrator, who is generally just known as Bolg, has survived (like the characters of Gaiman’s American Gods) into the modern world. Surviving with him are a number of mythological beings, including a wizard, the goddess Freya and some family members, and the dwarfs of the Rheingold.

When Freya, who is quite old now but still retains the power to dazzle any normal male, is robbed of her savings by a con man (who is immune to her charms because he swings the other way), Bolg is called in to try to recover the money for her. He employs natural and supernatural means to accomplish this task, and there’s a lot of comedy along the way.

I did laugh sometimes, and the author now and then made comments on the world with which I agreed profoundly. But the mix didn’t satisfy me. It didn’t entirely work either as drama or farce, for my taste.

I won’t deny, however, that the prose was good and I got some laughs out of it. So your mileage may vary, and likely will.