Latency (Hunter Bureau #2) ★★☆☆☆

~ Bookstooge

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Latency
Series: Hunter Bureau #2
Author: Blaze Ward
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 197
Words: 62K

When I read and reviewed the first book, I mentioned that there were key words or phrases that usually only came from a political side that was completely opposed to everything I stand for in terms of morals, principles and guiding principles. So instead of either brushing it off or making a mountain out of a molehill, as I was reading, I just highlighted stuff that caught my eye. That’s mostly what this review will contain, is quotes from the book. I am not trying to provide context within the story or anything like that. I’m planning on hiding it all behind the Details code so you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.

Location 147: (speaking of handguns)Greyson’s grandfather had had something like that, demilled when the aliens decided to make humans safer.

Location 378: Back when the US was a thing and had an army they liked to sic on weaker nations.

Location 611: be allowed

Location 726: And they hadn’t done androgynous in those days. Being less than stridently hetero in the late 20th Century was an invitation to get beat up. Fucking barbarians.

Location 793: The bits that were left were generally the ones the Army had found useful as tools. Deliberate cruelty. Premeditated self-defense.

Location 972: Universal Basic Income kept people from starving,

Location 1184: Mostly, ex-special forces, so knuckleheads who liked to solve problems with extreme firepower.

Location 1332: Honest men got no reason to bolt,

Location 1904: Superfast trains had already worked in other countries because the governments had been able to get right of way. In the old United States, NIMBY had delayed everything for so long that it was never economical to actually build. Not In My Back Yard. Then the middle-class bastards had the audacity to complain about bad roads and crowded….

Location 2135: Greyson was just old enough to remember the great awakening in this culture, when everyone discovered that there were more options than white-bread hetero. Folks like that had always been there, but for the longest time the power structure in his country had come down hard on anyone deviating from the strict party line, both legally as well as socially.

Location 2277: would still be the rest of his lifetime and maybe all of Rachel’s before the planet started cooling down again, but hopefully they’d managed to save it in time.

Location 2686: Back in the bleak days of a War on Crime that was a thinly-veiled War on Black People that had started before 1618 and never really been forced to subside until aliens landed and threatened to crack heads together.

Location 2849: Sandwiches he brought from home instead of lunch out.

Location 2927: where a young white boy like him had had no business being.

Location 2951: But then, most men didn’t know how to deal with a woman who was tougher than they were, and probably smarter.

Location 3206: If Greyson had shown some of his otherwise private political leanings with the places he had mailed his packages, that was between him and God. And God supposedly loved everyone, so Greyson figured he was on safe ground

I read to the end of the book and with all of those quotes decided that I won’t be reading any more by Mister Blaze Ward. Now I just have to figure out what I’m going to replace this series with. Choices, choices, choices.

★★☆☆☆

35 thoughts on “Latency (Hunter Bureau #2) ★★☆☆☆”

  2. There’s definitely a tendency for this kind of political sermonizing in today’s SF. I don’t see it as working very often.

    That said, we really should have high-speed passenger rail in Canada, especially on the Windsor-to-Ottawa corridor. It’s a joke we don’t.

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    1. No, it really doesn’t work. So unless you have a big fan base, you’re just turning off those who might want to read the story you are not telling 😦

      Any particular reason that you are aware of why not? the whole nimby thing?

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      1. Not to mention the difficulty in reading books with all the variant pronouns like ze and zir being used.

        They keep talking about high-speed rail up here, but usually they end up saying there are too many technical and environmental problems. I can’t figure it out. Since there’s no strong public demand for it, it just goes into the bin of lost causes, like getting rid of the first-past-the-post election system.

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            1. I’m picking up you don’t like fptp. I had to go look it up. What about the winner take all don’t you like? or how else would it be done? If there is only 1 spot, you can’t have plurality…

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              1. Yeah, I don’t like FPTP. It’s basically a system that’s only used in the English-speaking world, an inheritance from the Old Country. Other countries use some form of proportional representation where a wider range of interests and points of view get represented.

                I don’t like it because it inevitably leads to a two-party system where both parties are bought by corporate interests, making any kind of real change impossible until things break down completely. The parties take turns gaming an antique system (think of the gerrymandering and the electoral college in the U.S.) so that even clear majorities can’t win. In Canada the Liberals have lost the popular vote to the Conservatives a couple of elections in a row but keep forming the government. It’s frustrating but people are resistant to change because they see all change as bad.

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                1. The current deadlock in US politics kinda points at the fact that ftpt eventually leads to too much polarisation, grinding the system to a halt. Imo politics is essentially about cooperation, and the political system works better if it takes that into its design.

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                  1. If I remember my history correctly, it wasn’t always like how it is now. I’m pretty sure the whole President/VP were the winner and runner up, forcing them and their parties to work together. Not sure when that changed though.

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                    1. yes indeed, if it is mitigated somehow the system might work better. as it is now, it would be possible for 51% of people voting Democrat in all the states, and they would get 100% of all seats in Congress.

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                    2. I’ve been thinking about this. I think part of the issue is that you (and Alex and likeminded people) think of the government as the great savior. It is meant to DO all these great things and do the things that individuals can’t. So then your point of trying to make it work as best as possible is of course the outcome you want.
                      People like me view the government as a great slavvering beast, that while having a very specific purpose, must be stymied as much as possible. Because it is trying to take over, everything. And that is exactly what it is doing. So of course I don’t want it streamlined or working well. I want it hobbled and focused on the specific purpose it was created for.

                      And as long as people have those 2 opposing views, well, you’ll never get me to agree to some system that you would want. And vice versa.

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                    3. I can understand the American sentiment for a small government from an historical perspective (both the history of the founders fleeing religious persecution in Europe, and the history of severe internal ideological propaganda in the Cold War). But today, in a society of over 350 million Americans, intricately linked economically in a global world of 8 billion people, any decent organization of all those differences needs a proper functioning government.

                      But I agree, from a European perspective, the way Americans organize democracy at the moment is flawed, leading to a flawed government, and as a result, a society that doesn’t reach its full potential by a long shot. It seems the main reason for that is the fact that the views of ordinary people don’t seem to matter much for politics. There has been Princeton research that found that for nearly 2,000 issues looked at, the attitudes of wealthy people and business groups mattered a great deal to the final outcome — but preferences of average citizens were almost irrelevant. (https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf) As such I agree on the slavering beast, and that seems to me because government is solely controlled by a certain elite, as shown by Princeton scientists. I think the way to tame that beast is not to make it smaller or stymy it, but to simply control it much better (via better representation & procedures, e.g. more democracy), so that it becomes a beast that does good, and lets individuals shine, instead of something that enslaves them.

                      Could you specify what’s the specific purpose government was created for?

                      Liked by 1 person

                    5. Ok, sorry about the delay. This month is pretty much going like last though, so not a lot of fun times.

                      I believe that government (and functions change based on whether local, state, federal, etc) exists to punish lawbreakers, to protect the country militarily and to levy just enough taxes to carry out both of those functions. That is it.

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                    6. Okay, clear. Two additional questions spring to mind:
                      Who makes the laws?
                      Who should help orphans, widows with five children, bedridden sick people in big cities or small towns without enough functioning social fabric so that charity can help them?

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                    7. 1) The representatives who the people have elected.
                      2) The church but not as just an organization, but as individuals as well. An old example was God’s command to Israel to not harvest their field twice or shake the trees for olives/fruit, but to leave the gleanings for the poor. The poor still had to work, it wasn’t charity handed out to them.

                      Now, I realize that what I’ve outlined certainly isn’t the reality and with peoples’ attitude today (in general) we’ll never go there. Or go back to it.
                      But that is my starting place and I operate from there.

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                    8. Okay, clear. For me, given reality, the choice is fairly simple then: would you rather have a better government helping the poor & sick, or a stymied government unable to do so properly? (I know this is rather black&white, but that´s where we started anyhow.)

                      Liked by 1 person

                    9. If I wasn’t paying 30% of my paycheck automatically to taxes, then I could do more charitable things. But the thing is, the government COMPELS us to pay those taxes, so people don’t have to actually take responsibility and show the charity they are supposed to. And they don’t have to change their lifestyles to accommodate said charity either. A concrete example of this is something our church has called the Deacons Fund (it is administered by the Deacons). People contribute towards that and it goes to help members in the church who are struggling over specific issues. We’re not talking about handing out money willy nilly so they can spend it on cable tv and beer, but food gift cards to the grocery store for a month or two. Now, if I lived beyond our means, I couldn’t contribute towards that. But we DO live under our means so we can contribute to that.

                      But to the black and white answer. I’ll take the second option because I feel the “pain and suffering” that an out of control bureaucracy inflicts is far worse and in the long run leads to Soviet Russia and the gulags.

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  3. I actually bought and read the first book, based on your review. I thought it was pretty solid for what it was? (ie, pulp). I’d qualify that by saying I expected a bit more in terms of world-building, also in terms of what the mc actually was – what I got was a police procedural with a light topping of sf.

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    1. The “sf” element is VERY light, almost to the point of being a garnish of parsley instead of the baked potato.
      If you enjoyed the first book, then try this one. If the snide politics don’t bother you (I’m pretty thin skinned about that kind of thing, which is why I note it), then you might enjoy this as well.
      Politics aside, I think I’d be done with this anyway. The mc is the quintessential Mass-hole and I have to deal with them enough in real life, I don’t want them infesting my escapist time too.

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    1. Oh, don’t worry. you wouldn’t believe how often I google “Author X goodreads” or “Series X goodreads’. For all that I storm about the place, it started out with good foundations and those still occasionally show through 😉

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