Terminal Alliance

By Jim C. Hines

Something terrible happened to humankind. People lost their higher intellectual abilities and became like wild beasts. Millions died. Only a few thousand survived, degraded and vicious. Then came the Krakau. 

The Krakau gave humankind back its humanity. Now humans serve the Krakau as soldiers and workers in gratitude for being lifted out of mindlessness and brutality.

"Mops" and her small crew of humans work as janitors on the Krakau spaceship Pufferfish. She and her people are content in their positions, happy to be lifted up and restored to self-awareness and intelligence. 

They are not the only humans on the ship. There are several hundred human members of the crew. On a routine rescue mission, something causes all the humans to revert back to their "feral" state. The Krakau officers on board all die. But Mops and her crew are safe as they were wearing hazmat suits while dealing with a messy and dangerous cleaning problem. 

As the only senior officer on board the ship who hasn't reverted to unreasoning savageness, Mops is now in charge. And with the help of her small cleaning crew, she will figure out what went wrong with the rescue mission and expose the lies behind the disaster that afflicted humankind,

This was an OK story. The revelation that the Krakau were behind humanity's downfall was pretty apparent from the very beginning of the story, so no big surprise there. There are a lot of battle scenes, which I find tremendously boring to read. Towards the end of the book, I got tired of wading through the battle scenes and just started skipping those parts.

I enjoyed the story, for the most part. I do like stories with weird aliens and this book has plenty of those! But I would like this one better if it had a lot less combat and battle descriptions.

Review by Publishers Weekly.

The Stepsister Scheme

By Jim C. Hines

We all know how fairy tales end ... "and they lived happily ever after." Well, not always. Cinderella had her happily-ever-after until her Prince Charming ran off with one of the wicked stepsisters. And with poor Cindy (whose real name, we are told, is Danielle) expecting her first baby, no less.
This isn't a case of wandering affections or of a husband frightened by the responsibility of impending parenthood. No, something more sinister is afoot. It's up to the intrepid Danielle (aka Cinderella) to track down her errant husband and detach him from whatever charm the nasty stepsister has placed on him. To do so, though, she is going to need some backup and that's where Snow White and Sleeping Beauty come in. No longer just fairy tale princesses, these two women are now in charge of their own destinies and armed to the teeth, to boot.
Off to fight the baddies (and fight they do, lots and lots of fighting), the princesses head off to Fairytown, where they believe the evil stepsisters have absconded with the besotted prince. With a little help from their friends, a magic sword, and some handy magic, the women are ready and able to take on all challengers. Those stepsisters are going to regret the day they ever fooled around with Cindy's guy!

Sounds like a lot of fun, right? Wrong. Unless you like written depictions of battles and tussles. I don't. I should have known what I was getting into when the first tussle occurred within the first ten pages of the story. To me, it seemed like one of those books where the story is merely a transitional device to the next fight. Beyond the constant fighting though, the book is just not interesting. I never really cared about any of the characters until nearly the end of the book. The only part that captured my attention is where Danielle (Cinderella) ends up captive and serving her stepsisters just like in the bad old days. That was the only part of the book that I felt was compelling and interesting. The rest was just blah.