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Masterminds: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Eight of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist Series 15) by [Kristine Kathryn Rusch]

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Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Masterminds: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Eight of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist Series 15) Kindle Edition

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Book 15 of 15: Retrieval Artist Series

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The fate of the Alliance hangs in the balance as the masterminds behind the Anniversary Day bombings trigger the final stages of a plan decades in the making. A plan that will bring about the total destruction of every dome on the Moon.

As Moon Security Chief Noelle DeRicci struggles with the overwhelming scope of the investigation, Retrieval Artist Miles Flint races to save the life of a man from his daughter Talia’s past. A man with vital information regarding the identity of the masterminds who planned the Anniversary Day bombings. And deep beneath the surface of Armstrong, a dome engineer makes a chilling discovery that could crack the investigation wide open.

If only he can get someone to believe him.

The thrilling conclusion to the Anniversary Day Saga.

“Rusch wraps up the near-future Anniversary Day Saga, set in her Retrieval Artist universe, with this deeply satisfying eighth entry. … Rusch juggles the ensemble cast and numerous plots skillfully, offering up a cerebral thriller that’s part mystery and part action-drama with a ticking countdown. The human element plays well against the tense atmosphere, and frequent scene shifts help provide a sense of momentum and foreboding. While it’s almost essential to have read the previous installments, this is a very strong payoff for the series.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The Retrieval Artist universe is rich and exciting, and Rusch’s characters are real beings (Human and otherwise) struggling against overwhelming odds. The thrills are nonstop, and the tension keeps increasing with each successive book [in the Anniversary Day Saga]. If you’re a nail-biter, you might want to wear gloves for these.”
—Analog

“Starbase Human puts all the pieces in place for the big showdown/crisis in Masterminds [the final book in the saga]. I highly recommend the Anniversary Day Saga. It’s one of the major events in science fiction this year.”
—Amazing Stories

“…the way Ms. Rusch structured the book was very much along the lines of a chess master arranging the pieces for a devastating endgame. … This is one of the best series out there..”
—Futures Past and Present on Vigilantes

“The Anniversary Day Saga just keeps getting more interesting and more complicated. Each addition is eagerly anticipated and leaves the reader anxious to discover what will happen next, who the bad guys are and what it is they are hoping to achieve.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Peyti Crisis

“This new Retrieval Artist Universe novel is action-packed and continues where A Murder of Clones leaves off. These must be read in order to fully appreciate the suspense and mystery that is taking place.”
—RT Book Reviews on Search & Recovery

“Fans of Rusch’s Retrieval Artist universe will enjoy the expansion of the Anniversary Day story, with new characters providing more perspectives on its signature events, while newcomers will get a good introduction to the series.”
—Publishers Weekly on A Murder of Clones

“The latest Retrieval Artist science fiction thriller is an engaging investigative whodunit starring popular Miles Flint on a comeback mission. The suspenseful storyline is fast-paced and filled with twists as the hero comes out of retirement to confront his worst nightmare.”
—The Midwest Book Review on Blowback

“Anniversary Day is an edge-of-the-seat thriller that will keep you turning pages late into the night and it’s also really good science fiction. What’s not to like?”
—Analog on Anniversary Day

Print length

384 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

June 9, 2015
File size

1088 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00UKCJTR8
Publisher ‏ : ‎ WMG Publishing, Inc. (June 9, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 9, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1088 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1561466255

Best Sellers Rank: #606,716 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,005 in Colonization Science Fiction eBooks
- #1,299 in Colonization Science Fiction
- #2,267 in Genetic Engineering Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
67 ratings

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Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.

Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award.

She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson.

She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith.

To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com, fictionriver.com, pulphousemagazine.com).

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

67 global ratings

5 star		68%
4 star		20%
3 star		7%
2 star		3%
1 star		2%

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ndmzero

reaction to series more than individual book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 12, 2015

Verified Purchase

Wow, this is a tough one.

First, this isn't just a review of this book, Masterminds. It is more a reaction to the Anniversary Day series, the last six of which have appeared in the last six months.

I've been reading the Retrieval Artist series from the beginning (although I can't really pin it down to the actual start date.) I like the concept and I think it has addressed some interesting issues in interspecies relations from the get go.

And partially, I'm reacting to the style of this presentation - that six books were published in six months. I bought the ebooks, and I don't regret it (I want to support authors I like) but I felt pressure ... of the top of my head I can't think of another author who at this time I would buy this many books from so quickly - so OK, for now, but I really hope this isn't a harbinger for the future of publishing. I assume it was an experiment, and I don't know how it turned out, but I think the circumstances were pretty unique.

OK, for this series -- this book did resolve the overall situation.

Possible Spoilers.'

While I will concede that there is some justification for the scope of this situation, and even, now that I've read it all, the overriding motivation, the complexity of the series is an issue --

Again, Spoilers

The overall complexity of the "Plan" of the Masterminds is daunting. THe author obviously spent a lot of effort supporting the story of the "attack" (in stages) on the Moon. There is a tradeoff here -- the "plan" has been in the works for decades, and somehow the separate stages are defeated by our "Heroes" in a short span of time. The first, second and even third times this happened it was -- acceptable. This last time it seemed to stretch the balloon just a bit much.. The exactitude of the "bad guys" - that the Peyti Clones knew the date they would die decades ahead (and apparently, that they all had the same date even though they were raised decades apart. (ed. to remove reference to a major error I made. apologies to Ms. Rusch - - Peyti clones did not attack on AD although their strike appeared linked to all the fallout from Ann Day - so not clear. So my position is weakened. )
Ultimately, there were too many moving parts in the plan. Even with the infinite resources (which were established quite convincingly) for the Masterminds.

I like the book. I'm beginning the reread (and HINT, pay attention at the beginning of this book - it'll pay off later) - I like the series and I like the universe, I'm just not entirely convinced that it needed quite this many books to get to the conclusion. But they were all good reads.

I don't see this model of publishing fitting well into a universe of used book stores and/or libraries. So possibly this is the future - I'm just not sure I'm going to like it.

Edit - Oct 2016 - FWIW - one of my local libraries (Fairfax Cty, VA) does have at least three of this sub-series in paperback. I believe that means they will have more.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Karen A. Wyle

Imperfect but largely satisfying culmination of the Anniversary Day saga, and well-written when viewed as an installment

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 20, 2015

Verified Purchase

I have two different assessments to this book, as an installment of the Anniversary Day saga and as its culmination.

As an installment, I liked the book very much. Down-to-the-wire suspense is difficult to do well, and Rusch does it well, in general and here. Multiple character threads come together, and as we learn more about some characters who earlier appeared peripheral, we in some cases will like them more as well.

As a culmination of this saga-within-a-series, I find the book not quite as successful -- though I hope and guess that some of the many loose threads will be addressed in future Retrieval Artist books, even though Rusch characterizes those coming books as "stand alone" novels. Of those threads that Rusch seems to mean to resolve to some extent, I find the treatment of the "masterminds" disappointingly cursory. The revealed motivation itself, to the extent (not clear) that it applies to most or all of the conspirators, is not implausible (and in fact I'd thought of it as a possibility), but as Rusch handles it, it doesn't quite work as an adequate explanation of the conspiracy as a whole.

All that notwithstanding, I found the way the book pulls threads together somewhat satisfying, despite the issues I've identified.

Helpful

Spoon

A Good Finale to s Good Story

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 29, 2015

Verified Purchase

Rusch has finally wrapped up the "Anniversary Day" sequence of books in her Retrieval Artist universe. Previous books have detailed attacks on the moon over a period of years, with flashbacks showing other events leading up to the attacks and the overall conspiracy. In this book, Rusch somehow manages to tie together the many different story lines, leading finally to the mastermind of the whole scheme and the reasons behind it. We also see heavy involvement here of Miles Flint in this book; his character was minimal or non-existent in the previous books of the sequence.

However, some items were left hanging (such as the legal defense of the Peyti clones and the arrest of the bad cops), so some effects of the attacks and the conspiracy will linger (hopefully) into future books.

Rusch did an amazing job of putting out last five of the "Anniversary" books on a monthly basis earlier this year, making it easier to follow the convoluted paths and story lines she set up. She introduces each book with a short forward explaining how and why she did it this way. I'm looking forward to the next book in this universe.

2 people found this helpful

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John H. Hardin

but pretty complicated. There are a great many threads that ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 21, 2016

Verified Purchase

Masterminds is the conclusion of an 8-book saga, so it does not make sense to write a review of it in isolation. As a whole, this saga is very impressive, but pretty complicated. There are a great many threads that are introduced in the various books and they don't get tied up until Masterminds. While reading this series of books, it was sometimes frustrating to have a new character and story thread introduced in each chapter and I found myself wishing I'd kept a notebook of the characters from the start. Reading this series on a Kindle helped. When a character would pop up that sounded familiar but which I couldn't place, I could run a search of all the books in the series for previous appearances. By the time I'd finished Masterminds, I came to the belief that this might be KKR's magnum opus. I've read and enjoyed each of her Retrieval Artist books and especially the Anniversary Day saga.

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Kindle Customer

One rip snorting adventure. But read the whole series to make sense of it.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 10, 2021

Verified Purchase

Good sci-fi, good science. Read the whole series to follow the story. A fun read. It hangs together well. Good imagination.

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Top reviews from other countries

Nicole Normand

Finally back to good writing

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 15, 2017

Verified Purchase

After painfully getting through the previous four books, this one finally returns to the pace and suspense I was used to in the early part of the Disappeared series.
Only four stars because there are to many characters and to many side stories making it difficult to follow. Plus a last minutes almost miraculous save makes it a but unrealistic.

99triumf

Yes it is like a TV series unfortunately

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 2, 2017

Verified Purchase

A good long series, can drag on at times but it doesn't loose the reader. I will check out her other books.

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