Karl K Gallagher

This is the second half of the story begun in "The Lost War". A group of about 200 re-enactors (similar to the SCA) were at an event and somehow pulled to another world where they are the only humans. The first book was how they survive and learn some of the dangers of their new home. The focus was on the crafters, historians, and others with survival skills.

This book is them finding out the larger context of their adventure in another world, and the fighters become more central to that survival. just as fascinating as the last book -- with a firm grasp of the kinds of dynamics that can exist in groups of friends, acquaintances, and near strangers.

I could barely put it down, and I am happy to say that most of the characters do get a satisfying ending.… (más)

I am a long-time SCA member; I really enjoyed this book. It starts off with our hero, hight Newman Greenhorn, attending his first event in The Kingdom at the invitation of his date, Lady Goldenrod. Then something happens: the whole event with all attendees, tents, food, etc. are swept into a new reality, plopped down in the middle of a woods, near a stream.

So how does a group of medieval re-enactors react in this situation? What happens when the make-believe becomes real?The people know this was not the same world, physically or socially, that had been their experience for most of their life-- but they also only know people as their personae. Some skills from their previous lives are more useful than they had expected (such as tracking game animals). Some skills gained because of medieval interests were very useful (such as building a fish weir).

The characters are doing their best to come to terms with the conflict between the new reality and their make-believe personas, the challenges of exploring a new situation, and also dealing with the touches of magic introduced, such as what got them there in the first place. But this new world is not a nice, idyllic world, and they must figure out what the dangerous differences are before everyone dies.

I bought the second volume of the series for my Kindle last night, because the end of The Lost War did not wrap things up as expected.

This book speaks to me, as it likely will to other re-enactors, whether SCA or not, and I'm enjoying it immensely.… (más)

Gallagher, Karl K. Torchship. Torchship No. 1. Kelt Haven Press, 2017.
Karl Gallagher, an M.I.T. alum, is a systems engineer in the aerospace industry who splits his fiction-writing time between space opera and fantasy. Torchship is space opera with some nice touches. It is cool that planet names include their gravity in meters per second squared, not in fractions of a g. I like that one of them is named Kitty Chow. You cannot really run an interstellar economy without AIs, but they don’t like being a permanent underclass in society. They are not warm and cuddly. On some worlds, even researching artificial intelligence is a criminal offense. I like the catch-as-catch can crew of the Fives Full, acquired the same way John D. McDonald’s Travis McGhee acquired the Busted Flush houseboat. They carry passengers who can’t afford better, run intelligence missions, search for treasure, and try to work off their debt and stay out of trouble. It is a tight group, a la Firefly and the Expanse. Like the crewmembers of the Rocinante, the crew of the Fives Full have secret agendas of their own. The story is uncomfortably episodic and does not have the stylistic flourish of a Becky Chambers novel. But readable space opera with some originality is hard enough to find that Torchship gets 4 stars from me.… (más)