Niall Teasdale's Aneka Jansen Stories [Transformation]

[Grendizer]

I've recently finished The Winter War, fourth in a series of ongoing novels by author Niall Teasdale. He writes fantasy and science fiction with erotic elements. Notice I didn't say "erotic fantasy and science fiction." There is definitely a bunch of sex, and a bit of sexual tension, in all his books, but the story doesn't often turn on the numerous erotic encounters, although it does often turn on the associated relationships.

This series centers on the adventures of Aneka Jansen, a hot current-day mercenary who got abducted by aliens and turned into an even hotter gynoid with hidden combat features. After an explosion cripples her captors' vessel, she wakes up 1200 years in the future to a completely different reality than the one she once knew. It is well worth reading, as are Teasdale's other novels (if you like urban fantasy). What I liked most was seeing Aneka react to the culture-shock, specifically how she relates to modern society's view of her own lost civilization of birth -- and how her new contemporaries react to her. The author does a great job of envisioning how a transplanted mind might relate to the world, the challenges and benefits a person could be faced with.

This guy has a lot of books. Get more info at his Steel Beneath the Skin blog, and his Thaumatology blog. You can find his books on Amazon or Smashwords. I recommend Smashwords, just because you can download DRM-free in multiple formats.

[BA2]

I've read a few of these. Not the greatest depth or literary merit but good fun for a light SciFi adventure. A beautiful robotic protagonist with concealed combat enhancements who enjoys quite a lot of sapphic fun when not battling bad guys is the big selling point for us!

[Grendizer]

It's true, Hemingway he is not. That's because, among other reasons, he doesn't usually bother with a deep theme -- which is appropriate for light adventures, actually. I can go a long way without a "special message" in everything, like you get in most sitcoms, for instance. That's what made Seinfeld so much fun to watch. Yet Teasdale's worlds are generally well-thought out, and his characters are fun to live with for a while.

[dale coba]

The "special message" is a fail. There's no subtlety, no danger of opacity, therefore no trust in the viewer, no true respect, no desire to improve your world by teaching you to see with new eyes.

Every time you really engaged the Seinfeld humor, you got smarter on that fundamental level of comedic analysis. It's Vaudeville teams, and torah debates before them. Even if you never think it out explicitly, if you're laughing then the gears area turning in your brain.

I watch tooo much t.v., and I saw every episode multiple times; but get this: I don't even consider myself a huge fan of the show. Unlike for many, Seinfeld couldn't be a revelation for me, because I learned my Vaudeville two decades earlier from Ernie and Bert, Oscar and Big Bird, Grover, Kermit. Just about the best comedy primer a kindergartener ever had.

- Dale Coba

[Grendizer]

Well, yes. I agree.

There are some authors who heavy-hand their themes into the ground. Terry Goodkind comes to mind in this regard. Talk about preachy! At one point he literally had his protagonist on a tree stump expounding Objectivist values to a mob of newly-liberated worker-bees. Opaque it was not.

However, as a writer, I find using theme as a guiding structure immensely valuable, not to beat readers over the head, but to help the narrative from falling apart into a Rorschach test. Some writers can be entertaining and keep on point without cogitating on any theme at all, well-hidden or not.

[Tharcion]

It's true, Hemingway he is not. That's because, among other reasons, he doesn't usually bother with a deep theme -- which is appropriate for light adventures, actually. I can go a long way without a "special message" in everything, like you get in most sitcoms, for instance. That's what made Seinfeld so much fun to watch. Yet Teasdale's worlds are generally well-thought out, and his characters are fun to live with for a while.

I never thought I'd be compared with Hemingway, even in a negative sense. I'm honoured. While I try to have some sort of theme in my stories (Aneka's is about identity) I do focus on telling a story. I'll leave the deep and meaningful stuff to better wordsmiths.

Thanks to the OP for linking in my blogs, btw. I found this place because several people have clicked through. This is a genre I never considered when writing the stories. Aneka began as a frozen human, became a cyborg, and then got rewritten as a robot with a human mind. For the life of my I can't remember the reasoning behind the change, but it had some solid reason behind it.

[Sthurmovik]

Just finished the first story. Not bad, but it hits a lot of common tropes that I feel are a bit over used such as Earth being destroyed in some war and massive human prejudice again robots and AI's. In terms of world building he gets a lot of things right, but there are still significant plot contrivances that might get annoying if you are looking for something a bit more rigorous. For example the notion that the entire contents of Earth history would be lost when all one would need is one Wikipedia mirror is rather far fetched. There are also a lot of super hero tropes and the story seems to be setting up a lot of high stakes situations that only our heroes can solve. The android character borders on a Mary Sue at times and not because of her power, but because her opponents seem to be just a bunch of traffic cones for her to knock over. I'm against artificial peril as the next person, but if the conflict doesn't pose a test of the characters abilities you need to test them in other ways. The story felt exactly like the Phase 1 Marvel movies that basically introduced the characters and world and little else. Like I said I suspect the challenges will get more challenging, but it feel like a setting where everything revolves around the quest group.

The erotic elements were well integrated into the story and didn't come across as "glued on", however a good third or more of the story involved sex, talk about sex or dealing with the characters' appearance (shopping, getting dressed, looking at other guys and gals, etc). So again if you are looking for story...that's a bit thin in the first book.

I'm going to send the author a private note with some feedback and see if he's actually interested in that sort of dialogue.

On a rating of "worth paying for" to "not worth hard drive space" I'd rate it a "Humble Bundle - Pay what you wish'.