The Tudor Secret by C.W. Gortner (My Goodreads Review)

The Tudor Secret by C.W. Gortner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very enjoyable historical fiction story set during the final days of England's King Edward VI. The boy king is on his death bed and plots are afoot to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne instead of Mary I (Bloody Mary) A young spymaster in the making starts his career in this atmospheric tale. Very enjoyable read.

Unparalleled by D.S. (My Goodreads Review)

Unparalleled by D.S.   Smith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Doctor Carson is baffled by her new patient. The man is Stuart Milton. He has been telling a story of his life that is very different from the one he has been living. Stuart Milton has been living a different life to the one people keep insisting he has been living. He is obviously traumatised. He is logical and accepts he is traumatised in some way. But he knows he had a pregnant wife, despite what his honest brother and others are telling him.

Doctor Carson a psychiatrist can't detect any form of lying during her psychoanalysis. Milton is telling the truth. Even under hypnosis, Doctor Carson can only deduce her patient is telling the truth. It is as though her patient has quantum lept into the world from a parallel universe. That is just for starters. There are other things at work too. More bizarre consequences begin to unfold as Stuart Milton and Doctor Carson delve deeper into the phenomenon.

This is a very compelling science fiction story. All the credible approach to the strange phenomenon are there. Very gripping indeed.

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Did War of the Worlds' HMS Thunder Child Look Like This?

1. Did you enjoy the dreadful thought of the War of the Worlds Tripod Fighting Machines from Mars?

2. What About the War of the Worlds 1953 Radio Broadcast?

3. Or the Jeff Wayne War of the Worlds Musical?

Imagine it from the cool maths game point of view. The Martians did not make an allowance for a world of warships. Therefore, war and thunder spitting from the ironclad's guns would take the complacent Martians, in their fighting machines, by surprise.

Science Fiction Lovers Indulge This Thought.

Imagine, if you will, how it would have been to be a Victorian sailor from retro British times of 1898. You are on board HMS Thunder Child and the ship is picking up strange semaphore messages from the shore stations. Invaders from Mars are striding about and destroying the entire fabric of our nation. Would you believe such outrages things? The entire ship would be alive with speculation and disbelief. These sailors were destined to see three Martian fighting machines and confront the colossal edifices in battle.

As an impressionable young lad, I always found myself pondering such things.

I would walk about in my dream thinking, “If I was in that story, I would do this or that.” I found myself wishing for all sorts of adventures.

When I read H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, I remember getting a tremendous lift out of the short excerpt when an ironclad called H.M.S. Thunder Child attacked three Martian tripods in the River Blackwater to save a paddle steamer full of refugees.