Customer Reviews

Sister Time (The Posleen War)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Have to admit when I picked up Cally's War I expected another Ringo shoot-em-up. Nothing wrong with that, I enjoy all his stuff. But I was pleasantly surprised to find a totally different perspective, a viewpoint from a troubled conflicted grown version of the little girl I'd come to know in the earlier Aldenata series. Frankly blew me away.
Now Julie Cochrane has done one better, picking up the story, adding in the sister that barely existed in the prior story line and making her a pivotal force to play against not only with the sisterly familial interactions but very subtle politics on the interstellar level.
Excellent read, high adventure, characters you can care about.
My only gripe is for pete's sake get Cally back to a slab and fix her double barrelled handicap. It's only right.

this book was as usual very good,, The thing that has stuck in my mind,as I am sure in many others. What happened between the last posleen battles on Earth to the time of the cally story?? How did the earthmen uncovere, and nullify, for the most part the part the elfs were playing all along in trying to control the rest of the races.. Too many loose ends and assumptions are flying around and left unresolved to bridge ther gap between the main posleen situation and those covered in the cally story and sister time.

Julie Cochrane and John Ringo have created another good book in the Posleen War novels. It continues the story of Cally, Papa O'neal and brings in her sister Michelle. Provides good combat, plenty of action plus humor.

If you are a fan of the previous novels in the Posleenverse, make sure to pick this one up.

I am not an art critic. I don't know the nuts and bolts of what makes a good read. I simply like some books better than others. Some books grab you by the mind and take you for a ride. Others... don't. I am a mil-sci-fi consumer with selfish needs in my reads :) I am into Drake, Weber, White, Shelly, Bunch and the like. Normally Ringo would be right there in that list. I like most all things Ringo has done. All of his other posleen related stuff has been really great for me and hard to beat. Until this book. This book is a little too much drama and too light on combat. This work was not targeted at my tastes. That doesn't mean that others won't be as into it as his other works, I just didn't get into it and as I read it, I kept setting it down for a day or two at a time. That's not usually how I read Ringo's books. Usually I devour a new posleen related novel in a day or two. It has it's place on my bookshelf but it won't be re-read any time soon.

Sister Time (2007) is the third SF novel in the Legacy of the Aldenata series, following Cally's War. In the previous volume, a Bane Sidhe team extracted Cally O'Neal from the Darhel controlled interrogation team at Titan Base. General James Stewart used the Tong to set up his apparent death. Cally has a pleasant surprise when Stewart shows up at Selene Base.

In this novel, Cally O'Neal has a mission to steal code keys from a Darhel executive. After her climb down from the top of the building, she goes through a thirteenth floor window and changes into party clothes. She is busily opening the drawer containing the keys when her sister Michelle suddenly appears.

Michelle O'Neal has been living with the Indowy for decades and has worked her way up to the status of Michon Mentat. However, the Darhel are attempting to trap her in a contract violation involving a stolen Aldenata artifact. She convinces Cally to present a job offer to the Bane Sidhe to retrieve the artifact.

Michael O'Neal, Senior, is the Head of Clan O'Neal, the grandfather of Cally and Michelle, and is important within the human side of the Bane Sidhe organization. He is also a member of Cally's team and is driving the car that picks her up after the run. So Cally first tells Papa O'Neal about the job offer.

Yen Kato -- AKA Manuel Guerrera and James Stewart -- is an assistant to a Tong Grandfather. He is also married to Cally, but they haven't yet told her grandpa. During one of his conjugal visits, Cally casually mentions something about the code keys theft and Stewart immediately deduces the reason that the Darhels have acquired these valuable (and negotiable) objects.

Pardal is a Darhel executive within the Eptar Group. When the code keys are stolen from him, an important purchase is jeopardized. Still, the stolen artifact is working out nicely at the Institute for the Advancement of Human Welfare.

Atlantic Company of SOCOM has a new commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Mosovich. Bravo Platoon of Atlantic Company has a high percentage of Clan O'Neal personnel, all learning their trade at government expense. The new commander is a hot topic among the men, especially the O'Neals.

In this story, the Darhel project is using the artifact to condition humans in a way that bypasses their normal defenses. The project is being conducted at the Institute building on Lake Michigan. The Bane Sidhe inserts agents within the Institute to ease their infiltration of the structure.

Bravo Platoon is providing backup security for the Institute. Soon after the Bane Sidhe team begin their operation, the Platoon receives urgent orders to provide additional security. Two squads arrive in the middle of a firefight between the Bane Sidhe team and building security.

Stewart dispatches the Tong courier ship to carry certain orders to several planets. If the ship reaches these destinations ahead of the Eptar Group couriers, the Tong has a chance to make a huge profit. Of course, Stewart hasn't yet informed the Tong head of his actions.

This story has at least three plotlines: Cally O'Neal and her Bane Sidhe team, Bravo Platoon, and Stewart and the Tong. The Eptar Group Darhels are mostly spectators as their plans gradually unravel. Much of the story, however, takes place away from the action on O'Neal island, where Cally is raising her kids.

This book advances the Cally O'Neal story, but leaves plenty of room for sequels. But the authors are taking too long between novels! Oh, the agony of waiting for the next volume in the series!

Highly recommended for Ringo & Cochrane fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of gutsy women, special operations, and covert romance.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Baen books through their fifth imperium website has most of the Posleen War series available for free.

Sister Time is a much stonger novel than the first in the Cally's War subset of the Posleen War Series. A good read overall.

I read this book thinking "It can't possibly be as bad as the last one!" And I was right. It isn't _quite_ as bad as Cally's War. But its pretty weak. Furthermore, if you have not read the previous eight or ten novels about the Posleen War, you will be completely lost as to characters an relationships.

The story supposedly centers on Cally & Co. plotting to steal an evil mind control device from an evil human working for the evil Darhel. Throw in the first reappearance of Cally's sister Michelle (hence the title) in ~50 years. Michelle is now an uber-master of the Indowy nanite technology, ranked as a "mentat". (Ringo at least acknowledges where ho got the term from.) Her and four other humans. This seems unlikely, as we've been led to believe in normally takes hundreds of years just to reach master rank. Throw in that she (and others) have access to instantaneous interstellar teleportation with pinpoint accuracy. After ~10 novels, this is a cheap shot, but necessary to allow Michelle to be in another star system with frequent side trips to Earth.

At least this book doesn't spend most of the time wandering pointlessly into completely irrelevant side plots (as Cally's War does), though the side plots dominate, and seem to be there to set up future context that readers won't understand unless they have read all the ~10 preceding books to the ones that follow this one. (See paragraph one).

The actual execution of the "mission" and its preparatory ops are weak to say the least, especially if you consider that this is supposed to be Earth's premier covert ops team. Specifically disappointing is when Cally drives a Darhel into a fugue state by the equivalent of taunting him with "Your mother wears army boots! (OK, that isn't what she says, but it's about as effective.) Getting the team caught in the middle of the theft by a member of an elite military counter-insurgency group on guard duty, and having him respond "Hi Aunt Cally! Have a nice day," really sours things for me too.

The climax is especially lame, when the bad-guy mentat teleports into the middle of the shoot-out that results when the team blunders into the assembly of company security guards(!). He does this (presumably) from the first class seat of an airliner. Followed by Michelle teleporting in. Followed by an ooh-aah super mentat mind duel. Followed by Cally blowing the guy away with a Desert Eagle .50 pistol (can you spell overcompensating?)

I think I'll wait for the next one to appear on Half.com for $0.29 or such. At least I won't be directly subsidizing such weak writing. The next book, "Honor of the Clan", aka "The Return (finally) of the Missing Mike O'Neal Jr." promises more of same. At least I won't have any high expectations to be disappointed on. :(

Sister Time is an excellent continuation of the Cally's War plot that reads more like a Ringo book than Cally's War did. It still doesn't have the heaps of dead Posleen that some Ringo fans would want but it does have more of the military action that Ringo is known for. While faster paced than Cally's War, Sister Time still manages to advance the plot and reveal more about the characters we all love in the Posleen War universe. It's also a really good spy thriller set in a dynamic sci-fi universe. If you were frustrated by Cally's War because you expected more action, consider picking up Sister Time. You won't be disappointed.

This series is one of the best sci-fi series I've read in a long-time. Action pack, great characters and plenty of development from the previous books making me want to read the next one.

Cally's still stuck with her blonde hair and, err, large assets which makes her under cover ops interesting and Clan O'Neal has multiplied and taken over Earth's anti-terrorist special forces group (well, 90% of them are O'Neal's and they think it's all good training).

Cally's sister is now an adept at manipulating the fabric of time and space but another mentat is hell bent on using mind control to make the humans more "civilized". Enjoy!