Feast of Souls by C.S. Friedman. Here we have young whore apprenticed to a sorcerer. I really liked C.S.Friendman's science fiction books, and I also liked Black Sun Rising, which took a step towards fantasy, but kept one foot in reality. This book leaves reality pretty much behind and enters completely into fantasy. There are some rough edges to the plot, kind of like she was figuring out the implications of the powers available in this imaginary world as she was writing it. There's a bit much of the stilted fair lady / brave knight style of speech. But all in all it's a pretty good story.
Counterprobe by Carole Nelson Douglas. This one reads like a script to a made-for-TV UFO abduction drama. Lot's of tears, anguish and confusion, along with evil government agents and mysterious aliens, who still hadn't made an appearance by the time I got a third of the way through the book, where upon I gave up on it. Too much drama, not enough plot. The woman in this story isn't as psycho as the others, she's just an alien grown clone and as such has no memories of growing up.
Forbidden Knowledge, The Gap Into Vision by Stephen Donaldson. Here we have a beautiful (it's implied, but I don't think the book ever states it explicitly) young, talented female space cop. Prior to this book she was kidnapped by a really rotten space pirate who implanted a remote control in her brain. With this remote control he was able to subject her to all kinds of degrading acts. Presumably sexual, but we never learn just exactly what happened. We are just told, over and over again, how awful and degrading it all was. But this remote control has all kinds of capabilities, and once she gets control of it she starts finding out that there are some things she likes. She likes them so much she becomes addicted to it, and hides it's existence from her superiors and everyone else. As soon as she is rescued from the bad guy, which is where the book starts, she is spirited off by another space pirate, and an endless stream of adventures and predicaments ensue. Great space opera. In this universe they have space ships with engines that consume fuel and can propel their ships to sizable fractions of the speed of light. They also have the "Gap" drive, which allows them to make jumps across interstellar distances. The author's grasp of sub-light physics is not quite perfect, but since you are only operating in a realm that is only a fraction of a light year across, it really doesn't make any difference. And well, super-light physics, well, that's whatever you want to make it, isn't it?
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