Book 1, Gamadin: Word of Honor
Product Description
Sixteen-year olds Harlowe Pylott and Matt Riverstone are bodysurfing the narliest waves of the new century when their fun is interrupted by a yacht capsizing off the Newport coast. After rescuing the famous movie star Simon Bolt and the half-alien socialite Leucadia Mars from certain death, Fate sends them on the greatest ride of their lives. Robobs and the undog are only the beginning! Dakadude killers have swooped down from the heavens looking for the galaxy’s most powerful weapon: an ancient Gamadin spaceship named Millawanda.
If the Daks cannot capture Millawanda, they will kill her while she is still weak and unprotected . . . along with the Earth and anyone else who gets in their way.
If you think finding an ancient spaceship in the middle of the desert is cool, wait till you get a load of what Harlowe and his friends dig up . . .
And it still works!!!
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:46 am
I LOVED it! I couldn’t put it down. That says a lot for the author as I am not a big fan of science fiction reading. This is an incredible, fast paced ride of heroic yet real characters interacting with unimaginable alien creations that endear themselves to us both in locations that we know so well and galactic scenes that the author so intricately creates in our mind’s eye. Give this new author a try – you won’t be disappointed! I can’t wait for the next book!!
Rating: 5 / 5
August 2nd, 2010 at 12:45 pm
What happens when two teenage bodysurfers are manipulated into saving the life of the daughter of an alien warrior? Harlowe and Riverstone, along with their buddy Wiz, find themselves in a desperate search for a immensely powerful spaceship hiding in the Utah desert for tens of centuries. If they can’t find and restart Millawanda (the ship), Earth will be destroyed.
There’s the story in a compact nutshell. The leaps of faith required here include the ability of an alien from across the galaxy to be able to have a viable offspring with a human partner (unlikely in the extreme… sorry, Leucadia Mars), Harlowe and Riverstone to continually battle or escape hardened alien warriors successfully (bodysurfing being an appropriate training regimen for this?), and the exaggerated cowardliness of actor Simon Bolt along with the shoot-to-kill mentality of our military.
Then there is the continuous sexism of the story and the banter between the characters (clothes always seem to be falling off Leucadia, women are referred to as “does”, “Mrs. Mars” is a beautiful Amazon/Wonder Woman cross, and Leucadia continually needs rescuing).
See the pattern here?
Author Tom Kirkbride develops his heros as “surfer dude” types, focusing on the language, style, and mannerisms of the laid back Southern California “waves before school” mentality. They seem undereducated, unsophisticated, unruly, and undependable, yet the reader is asked to believe that they were specifically identified as the ones needed to save the Earth.
Mildly entertaining, but I kept wincing too often. The best character is the “dog”, Mowgi, who is either playful as heck or transforms into a giant dragon that eats heads.
Rating: 3 / 5
August 2nd, 2010 at 2:58 pm
I am not a sci-fi reader, but gave it a try as the author is an old friend. It took me a while to truly get into the sci-fi aspect of the book but soon was hooked into the story of these young men and the adventure they fell into. I enjoyed the character development and how it drew me into their exciting and supenseful story. Great descriptive writing helped me to visualize what the author was able to see in his mind and put to paper, taking me to a world beyond my imagination. This is sci-fi I can handle! A great ride!
Rating: 4 / 5
August 2nd, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Most of the time you will find me reading non-fiction. However, in the case of the Gamadin Series, it offers an escape, fun, thought, creativity and a sense of what if. Tom has done an incredible job of creating a series that can be enjoyed by young and old alike. This is a great series to utilize in interacting with your children, and grand children. Yet, you can share your thoughts on an adult level with your friends. Seldom does a book series offer such an opportunity.
As a past advisor to numerous politicians, on the subject of Higher Education, I sincerely recommend this series to young and old alike.
Rating: 5 / 5
August 2nd, 2010 at 6:04 pm
I grew up reading SciFi, from Asimov to Zelazny, with plenty of Heinlein, Herbert, Bradbury and a host of others thrown in. I saw the first Star Trek on TV on the original air date. I saw Star Wars with my kids the week it came out. I love science fiction. But I stopped reading it and turned to horror in my thirties, then I started in on mysteries and thrillers in my forties. It’s been a while, since I’ve read fictional tales of other worlds. Then last week I picked up S.M. Stirling’s CONQUISTADOR, a sort of SciFi, alternate history novel and I discovered why I liked those kind of books in the first place. It’s because they require you to read like a kid again.
I went straight from Stirling’s 506 page book to this one, which comes in at a mere 434 pages. Five days and over a thousand pages of the willing suspension of disbelief. Yes, you have to set aside what you know to be true to enjoy this book. But you have to do that with anything written by the masters I’ve mentioned above. You have to do that with Stephen King and Dean Koontz as well. And that, willingly disbelieving, is something I’d forgotten how to do. It’s something kids do so well, but grownups get serious and as serious people many turn to serious reading. Well, that or detective stories.
This is not serious reading. This is a story for kids, for young adults and maybe for us adults who want to believe, even if only when we have our eyes glued to the pages of a far-fetched, swashbuckling, romantic, out-of-this-world, story that takes all life as we know it and hangs it in the balance. Isn’t this, after all, why we like Star Wars, Star Trek and Stargate.
I go to those kinds of movies to become a kid again, if only for an hour and a half. This book, with its surfer dudes who do battle to save the earth from a conquering alien force that would destroy it without thinking, is like those kind of movies. There is nonstop action with bodies, alien and human, piling up as you burn through the pages. There’s romance, but it’s not too sappy. There are clearly definable good guys and the bad guys are about as evil as they come. Surfer dudes, good — evil, ugly looking dudes, bad. Well, government, military dudes are bad too, but can it be any other way when the biggest military find since Roswell just about falls in their laps.
Wait! Roswell, that’s science fiction, isn’t it? It didn’t really happen, did it? It could’ve. If it did and an old man with his old yeller type dog happened upon the ship at about the same time four kids looking to make out did, well, you get the picture and if you get this book, you’ll be in for a rollicking good read, because this is a fast-paced, character driven book that is a whole heck of a lot of fun to read.
Rating: 5 / 5