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Just picked up Owl Dance by David Lee Summers, a steampunk novel set in Socorro, New Mexico (where I went to school) in 1876. A handful of pages in and there’s a fistfight at the Cap, the same saloon where I spent many quality hours. I think I’ll enjoy this one.

Turns out the author and I both studied astrophysics in the same program at the same time, he as a grad student and me as an undergrad. I'm struggling to remember him, but we were undoubtably at the same place at the same time often.

She is a fourth daughter of royalty with no hope of advancement in station, determined to invoke the promise of aid given to her ancestor generations ago by a powerful wizard when her mother refuses to engage a demon threatening the kingdom.

He is a long-lived exo-socialogist, sent to observe these people but not interfere. He broke that directive once before, many years ago, and now another of them has shown up at his outpost door...

I've never seen a story play with Clarke's Third Law ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.") like this before. Each chapter alternates POV between the two main characters, so it is half science fiction and half fantasy. Sometimes the same events are told both ways. The story is interesting on its own, but told this way it also becomes a lesson on empathy and understanding.

It surprisingly also became a story about severe depression, persevering through grief and trauma, methods of self care, and how mental anguish can appear from the POV of both those suffering and those around them.

And that will always endear this story to me.

I love these interstitial short stories, taking place between the much larger novels in the Galactic Cold War novels. They give a quieter chance to spend time with a character, learning more about them and seeing how they think and act outside their team. They also serve to give us fuller glimpses of places only mentioned in the novels. And, purchasing them felt like I was tipping Dan directly, beyond what he made from his publisher for the novels. He deserves that for a job well done.

Competing teams of spies on a luxury interstellar cruise ship owned by a mob boss, all trying to possess what might be the first discovered alien artifact. Action, intrigue, believable science fiction elements, and characters I care about. I'm already sad I have only one more book to read in this series!

Competing teams of spies on a luxury interstellar cruise ship owned by a mob boss, all trying to possess what might be the first discovered alien artifact. Action, intrigue, believable science fiction elements, and characters I care about. I'm already sad I have only one more book to read in this series by @dmoren@mastodon.social!