Tag: E.M. Foner

November’s book recommendations

So I thought it would be fun to start posting some monthly book recommendations on my blog, both of books I personally have enjoyed, and books like mine that I think my readers will enjoy. I’ve seen a lot of other authors do it, and it seems like a good way to pay it forward and invite good karma (and on a purely capitalist note, it also seems like a great way to bring in some affiliate income and spread my books around in the Amazon also-boughts).

For this month, I’ve chosen a novel, a novella, and a short story, all $.99 on Amazon (some of them are $2.99 on iBooks and Kobo). Two of the authors are personal friends of mine (Kindal Debenham and Annaliese Lemmon—we were both in the same college writing group), but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed their books and have no qualms recommending them.

We’ll start with Wolfhound by Kindal Debanham. This is a rip-roaring space adventure, and the first part of a trilogy that I highly recommend. Starship pilots from the frontier regions of space, fighting to defend their beloved home from pirates and invasion. This is exactly the kind of book I used to scour the local library for as a kid.

Nothing Found

I first discovered Date Night on Union Station from the Amazon also-boughts of my own Star Wanderers books, and it did not disappoint. Clean sci-fi romance with a generous helping of comedy. I haven’t read all the other books in the series yet, but I definitely plan to.

Nothing Found

Infant Insomnia is a bit of a departure from the kind of science fiction I usually write, but if you enjoyed Outworlder and Starchild I think you’ll like this one too. Short and tender, the story of a magical seer trying desperately to save her newborn child from the imminent death she sees in every possible branch of her child’s future.

Nothing Found

Thanks for reading!

Date Night on Union Station by E.M. Foner

date_night_on_union_stationI saw this book on the Amazon also-boughts for my Star Wanderers books and decided to check it out. It’s a series of short novels: the first one is currently free and the others are $2.99. Like Star Wanderers, it’s a sci-fi romance, though it leans more toward science fiction than toward romance.

I really enjoyed this book! It’s a sort of romantic comedy-of-errors about a guy and a girl who go on a series of really bad dates before finally ending up with each other. She’s a member of the Earth embassy staff on a giant space station run by super-intelligent robots who view humans as a childish junior race that needs to be nurtured into galactic society. He’s a former mercenary who runs the station scrapyard and has a knack for picking up orphaned children (including one of the robots).

Their misadventures are quite hilarious. One of the running gags are the antics of the flower girls, who run their flower-peddling business with more ruthlessness than an Arab shopkeeper. They actually make more money at it than Kelly, the embassy staff employee, who can barely cover her own rent. The super-intelligent robots are the ones who run the dating service, but as each bad date leads to another diplomatic crisis of some sort, Kelly starts to feel like they’re using it more to help her do her job than to set her up. But with each new promotion in the embassy, she ends up making less and less. And those long-distance calls from her nagging mother certainly don’t help…

My favorite part of the book was watching one bad date lead to another, and wondering how these two people would eventually end up. From the way the book is structured, it’s pretty obvious that they’ll end up together (one chapter from her POV, the next from his). But some of those dates were really, really bad… at one point, she even gets kidnapped by her “date”! But when they finally do end up together, it’s quite satisfying.

So yeah, if you’re looking for a good, clean sci-fi romance with a generous helping of comedy thrown in for good measure, you’ll enjoy this book. And even if that’s not what you’re looking for, if you enjoy a good space story, you’ll probably like this one as well. I’d rate it 4/5 stars, and look forward to reading the next in the series.