Battle of the 2013 Books, Bracket One, Championship Round :: The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord vs. The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke

We have arrived at the championship round of our current bracket of the Battle of the Books. In one corner we have The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord. In the other corner we have The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke. Two fine books. I (Jackie) have read through Page 200 of both these books, and the novel I most want to continue reading to the end will be the champion of Bracket One of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the 2013 Books.

The Best of All Possible Worlds:  Del Rey; February 2013; 306 pages; book design by Victoria Wong. Keren Lord's debut novel, Redemption in Indigo, was published in 2010 and won the Frank Collymore Literary Prize in Barbados.

The Best of All Possible Worlds defeated 23 Years on Fire by Joel Shepherd in the first round, overpowered The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi by Mark Hodder in the second round, and got past Electricity & Other Dreams by Micah Dean Hicks in the semifinal round to reach the championship.

In the first 200 pages of The Best of All Possible Worlds, we learn that the Sadiri are people with advanced mental capacities; they share a low-level telepathic bond. Many men travel off-world but the females mostly stay on the planet. When their planet is poisoned, killing everyone, the off-world men must come up with a plan for their race to survive. "Councillor" Dllenahkh was off-world on a meditation retreat when the planet-wide genocide occurred. He is sent on a mission to the planet Cygnus Beta to decide what might be done.

Dllenahkh meets biotechnician Delarua of Cygnus Beta who has studied the Sadiri language and society. She's the perfect Cygnian government worker to accompany Dllenahkh and to introduce him to the different settlements. Delarua discovers that Dllenahkh is looking for women with Sadiri genetic heritage, and hopes that many of the women will volunteer to become wives and bear offspring so that the Sadiri mental abilities and customs can survive.

A group is gathered to travel the world for a year to make genetic tests at the various settlements on Cygnus Beta. The settlements have varied cultures, which feel like different worlds. One settlement, on the Kir'tahsg Islands, has a caste system. Delarua is notified that the settlement's elite deal in slave trading and treat the poor people abhorrently, which is against rules and regulation of Cygnus Beta. Delarua, without the settlement's approval, illegally tests the servants' and workers' blood and discovers a cruel fact. In order to fix the problem, Delarua must let her government know what she's done, which causes her to lose her government job. Dllenahkh then hires Delarua to continue working for the Sadiri because of her "insightfulness concerning Sadiri society."

Delarua is happy to stay with the group and works hard at the new job. She needs to use drug patches to keep herself awake. She finds it difficult because Sadiri need less sleep than Terrans. At another settlement, Delarua and group member Nasiha are attacked. The chemical used to try to subdue them interacts with Delarua's drug patches. Her short term memory is affected. Dllenahkh and Delarua are becoming closer.

The Cusanus Game:  Tor, English translation September 2013; originally published in 2005 in Germany; 538 pages; translator: Ross Benjamin. Wolfgang Jeschle was a German science fiction writer who also wrote Last Day of Creation.

The Cusanus Game overpowered The God Tattoo by Tom Lloyd in the first round, won a decision over The Doctor and the Dinosaurs by Mike Resnick in the second round, and got past Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson in the semifinal round to reach the championship.

The prologue in The Cusanus Game takes place in 1425. Caravan Leader Emilio meets with a starship from the future, the 21st century, to trade goods. Bahktir, part of the caravan, learns his son Hakim was killed while trying to enter the area where past and future meets.

In the mid-21st century, botany student Domenica is in her last year of college in Rome. The nuclear war of 2052 in Germany has affected all of Europe. Factions are still fighting in Italy. Genetic mutations occur among people and plants. People are trying to survive in a violent and scary world.

Domenica and some friends apply for a job with the Rinascita Project. Domenica is not sure what the job is about but they need a botanist and jobs are hard to find. She ends up getting the job with four other friends, including a theoretical physicist and a medieval historian. Domenica's ex-boyfriend Bernd and his sister turn down the job offer because they think bad things will come from this project. Domenica and the others taking the job travel to Venice for more testing and orientation.

In this future, nanotechnology is used in various ways, and not all are favorable. Nanos that are meant to bolster the wooden pilings that hold up Venice will occasionally get ingested by fish and, to the fishermen's disgust, the fish morph into wood. The scientists created an ice border around Venice to keep the nanos confined, but now the nanos have penetrated the border and are damaging the environment.

In the mid-1400s, Caravan leader Emilio and Bahktir are ready to meet the starship from the future to trade goods. Bahktir's son Hakim is still alive in this timeline. Emilio and Bahktir go to the ship and see Hakim with broken bones prone on a wheeled stretcher. The starship liaison says they will take Hakim to a clinic in Mantua to get him healed. Bahktir can get him the next time they trade goods.

Domenica learns that she will travel to the 1400s to gather seeds and plants and bring them back to her time. In this timeline, 1400s Cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus learns that a witch who collects seeds and plants and labels them with strange Latin names is going to be burned at the stake.

The Battle:  We have the galaxy-spanning science fiction epic The Best of All Possible Worlds vying to become champion against The Cusanus Game, a futuristic science fiction novel that involves nuclear disaster and time travel.

In The Best of All Possible Worlds, I find the idea of searching for mates with the right genetic heritage weird, but the storyline makes it seem plausible: 1) the genocide on the planet Sadira and 2) the desire of the government of Cygnus Beta to have more information about the settlements on the planet. As the group travels around Cygnus Beta, which was described as "a galactic hinterland of pioneers and refugees," their interactions with the varied subcultures are believable. Some settlements are downright strange.

One settlement is hidden, a monastery with Sidiri monks, both men and women, whose mental abilities surpass the Sidiri. Telepathy and telekinesis are the norm for them. At one point, Dllenahkh and Delarua, with the help of a Sidiri monk, walk across a fast moving creek and fly down into a valley.

Humor is sprinkled throughout the book. Delarua must translate between Dllenahkh and the Faerie Queen, a forest settlement leader. Delarua unknowingly tones it down a bit, sounding more like an emotionless Sadiri than herself, jealous with their interaction. Delarua discovers that Sadiri send their bad people off-planet. She realizes that the Sidiri on her world and elsewhere are "diplomats and judges, pilots and scientists, nuns and monks...and jailbirds." Delarua is a hoot!

The characters are fleshed out and believable, and I like them. The Sadiri have mental abilities and they push emotions away, like Spock on Star Trek. Some of their interactions can be amusing.

I need to mention the proliferation of names and diseases beginning with the letter "D." It simply annoys me.

The Cusanus Game seemed better to me in the second hundred pages, probably because there weren't as many time switches. In the first hundred pages, we switched back and forth from Domenica's present to her past one year earlier more often than I would have liked.

The Cusanus Game is well written and offers scientific explanations behind the ability to time jump backwards and to the present, never into the future. Simply put, "we produce the match, which aligns the here and now with the there and then." But don't let that tiny bit of simplicity fool you. Discussions about solitons, quantum physics, particle waves, space-time, "nanos," and other scientific verbiage fill pages and pages, most of which makes sense. It's interesting stuff, and I love reading about quantum physics.

Domenica doesn't seem to catch on to the hologram experience, which she would if she were more observant. She's taken into a simulation and she goes through the whole thing not realizing that it was fake, even though clues hit her in the face throughout. She seems oblivious even though her ex-boyfriend told her time travel was involved in the project. Domenica seemed intelligent and compassionate to me earlier in the book. Now she seems dense. Unfortunately, I don't feel connected to the characters in The Cusanus Game.

Descriptions in The Cusanus Game in some parts are masterpieces, yet in others seem overdone or confusing. I also find some descriptions both fascinating and frustrating, such as in a description Domenica gives of a mechanical wheel-chair:

It looked like an armchair spun out of strong silver wire, or rather a wicker beach chair...with the undulating movements of its wire bristles or tentacles or whatever the winding, surging, thin tendrils of flexible steel wire should be called...

I think the description should be exact to help the reader visualize because, to me, armchair and beach chair are very different, as are wire bristles and tendrils. I'd prefer a more exact simplified description. This book was originally written in German, which might account for this type of overlap.

This book is not a fast read; challenging time flips, beautiful prose with some confusing storylines, and interesting science cannot be skimmed.

There's a gift in writing time travel and this book does a great job. Many chapters begin with a different time period. After 200 pages, we're seeing that history is already changing. I'm curious to see what happens, and I look forward to figuring out why the past now has different outcomes. Will Domenica burn at the stake when she goes back in time? What havoc does Emilio plan to create when the spaceship brings back a healed Hakim?

The winner of this match of Battle of the Books will be the champion of the 16 books placed in this bracket. I (Jackie), after reading 200 pages of each book in this last battle, have a difficult decision to make because both books have their positives and negatives. However, I find myself drawn to the book where I like the characters enough to read about what happens to them and that also suggests that a possible romance is afoot. Despite that last revelation, which I do so grudgingly, I plan to finish reading both books. Well done I say to these two novels!

THE WINNER: The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord

The Best of All Possible Worlds wins Bracket One of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the 2013 Books. Congratulations to Karen Lord as our newest Battle of the Books champion!

To see the completed bracket, click here.

We've crowned a winner for this bracket, but soon we'll announce a whole new bracket of sixteen books. Aaron will be judging the next bracket of Battle of the Books. Stay tuned for more book battles to come!

Battle of the 2013 Books, Bracket One, Second Semifinal :: Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson vs. The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke

Our second semifinal match in Bracket One of the Battle of the 2013 Books features Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson going against The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke. In the semifinal round, the books are judged after reading a total of 100 pages. The winner, the book I (Jackie) most want to continue reading after 100 pages, will advance to the championship round.

Burning Paradise:  Tor Books; November 2013; 317 pages; jacket art by Getty Images; jacket design by Base Art Co. Robert Charles Wilson has written many science fiction novels including Darwinia, Julian Comstock, Blind Lake, The Affinities and the Hugo Award winning Spin. He has won various awards.

Burning Paradise overcame Trinity Rising by Elspeth Cooper in the first round, and got by Shadow People by James Swain in the second round to reach the semifinals.

In the first 50 pages of the alternate reality book Burning Paradise, we meet 17-year-old Cassie and her younger brother Thomas who must both flee the apartment they share with their Aunt Ris because a simulacrum, a human-like robot, seems to be after them. They escape to 21-year old Leo Beck's apartment. Leo, his girlfriend Beth, Cassie and Thomas drive out of the city, hoping to get to Leo's father's home. Werner Beck is a leading member of the Correspondence Society and he'll know how to help. Cassie's parents, seven years earlier, were killed by simulacrums because they were part of the Correspondence Society (CS), a group that discovered the truth about the sims.

Meanwhile on a remote farm, former University Professor Ethan Iverson has captured a simulacrum (sim) that came to his door and wanted to talk to him to explain more about the radiosphere. But Ethan doesn't believe the sim. Soon another knock on the door brings Cassie's Aunt Ris, who is Ethan's ex-wife Narissa. Ethan has duct taped the simulacrum to a pole in the basement and told Narissa that the sim mentioned their niece's name "Cassie" and they need to figure out why it knows about her.

In the second 50 pages, Ethan and Narissa hear an alarm, letting them know more simulacrums are on the property. Ethan manages to kill two of them, but the third enters the farm house. It shoots the taped-up sim in the basement but doesn't manage to kill it. Ethan and Narissa patch up the injured sim, put their necessities and the sim in the truck and take off. The sim tells them that it is part of another group of sim entities. Ethan knows that people can't trust sims because they operate as a hive mentality, like ants in an ant hill.

Meanwhile, Beth is causing problems for Cassie's group, including making a phone call that probably blew their cover. When they reach Werner Beck's house, he's not there, but the young people find information that tells them what to do next.

The Correspondence Society discovered that the radiosphere, which is a layer of the atmosphere that reflects radio waves around the world, is actually made up of trillions of intelligent spherules.

The CS discovered that the hive-like spherules sometimes alter communications, sending fake messages back to Earth and deleting others. This interference has altered more than communications. Because the spherules have been deleting or altering war threats, Earth has had no war since Armistice Day 1914, which was 100 years ago. The CS believes these manipulations must end.

The spherules created simulacrums to roam the Earth to kill Correspondence Society members to keep the knowledge of their sentient existence and interference a secret. Ethan's sim now claims that it is a part of another group of entities that is fighting to kill the radiosphere spherules and needs the CS's help. But is this sim telling the truth or is this part of the radiosphere's plan?

The Cusanus Game:  Tor, English translation September 2013; originally published in 2005 in Germany; 538 pages; translator: Ross Benjamin. Wolfgang Jeschle was a German science fiction writer who also wrote Last Day of Creation.

The Cusanus Game overpowered The God Tattoo by Tom Lloyd in the first round, and won a decision over The Doctor and the Dinosaurs by Mike Resnick in the second round to reach the semifinals.

The prologue in The Cusanus Game takes place in 1425. Caravan leader Emilio trades supplies such as spices, coffee, tobacco and cocoa with the "future" people, who then give Emilio medicine, vaccines, and solar technology to name a few. During one of the exchanges, some of the caravan young men try to enter the "future" compound but are wounded or killed. Bakhtir loses his son and feels so distraught he tries to kill a future person, who is actually a hologram, and the bullet damages the "airship." Emilio and Bakhtir barely escape certain death.

Moving forward over 500 years, Domenica is a botany student at a university in Rome. The time is 21st century after Europe has been contaminated by a nuclear world war. War continues with various factions fighting and committing murderous attacks on civilians. People are trying to survive while avoiding the ravages of fallout and uncertainty.

Mutations, both manmade and genetic from radiation damage, abound, and with those modifications come biases, prejudices and hate. Domenica's Siamese-twin friends were chillingly murdered by a Nazi-like hate-group. Domenica came across a modified dog, created with human genes used to add some intelligence and the ability to talk, but also programmed to die after a certain time period. Living in Rome after the European apocalypse is rough, violent and scary. Still, Domenica and her friends continue to survive, going to school and securing jobs.

After graduation, Domenica and some friends have applied for a position with Rinnascita della Creazione di Dio. Five graduates get the job but don't know to where they are traveling or what they will do when they get there. The five traveling to Amsterdam are three botanists, a theoretical physicist, and a specialist in medieval history. All they know is the jobs have something to do with the "Salvation of God's Creation, the salvation of the future."

The 100 pages of reading ends back with the prologue's two characters Emilio and Bakhtir, right before they bring their caravan goods to the barters from the 21st century. Bakhtir's son is still alive in this time jump.

The Battle:  This semifinal match-up of Battle of the Books features the alternate history science fiction book Burning Paradise trying to best The Cusanus Game, a futuristic science fiction novel that involves nuclear disaster and time travel.

Burning Paradise offers an interesting concept of alien life forms. In this case they are tiny spherules that have a hive-like mentality and surround Earth above the atmosphere. Scientists say that life off planet will probably be totally different from what we might expect, and this fits in perfectly with that concept. By the end of the 100 pages, a new life form shows up saying that there are many alien creatures that travel from solar system to solar system with the purpose of using resources on other planets and to reproduce. I'm curious to see how the characters treat this new information. Is it real or are the aliens feeding false information to the Correspondence Society?

The Cusanus Game begins immediately with time travel, for the purpose of gleaning items from the past to supply future Earth with what they need to survive after the nuclear war. The major part of the 100 pages follows Domenica, but we jump through time with her past and present to discover her situation and the world news. The jumps became confusing at times, and the details of the war came in bits and pieces that made the reader work to figure things out. In the last 20 pages, the story does not jump around as much and stays in the present time period for longer than a few pages, which makes me enjoy the story more.

I enjoy both books' writing styles. The Cusanus Game seems to be on a higher literary level, or maybe I'm finding it a bit harder to follow since many locations are, of course, written in Italian. The story seems believable and gritty. The descriptions leave me feeling war weary and drained. I do see some hope with the characters and their new jobs that will most likely propel them into other historic times.

I (Jackie), after reading 100 pages of each book, must make a difficult decision. I'm especially interested in reading both books and will probably do so after the final Battle of the Books. The winner was only decided when I reached page 80 and farther in this book.

THE WINNER: The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke

The Cusanus Game advances to the championship round to face The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the 2013 Books, Bracket One :: Final Four

We're down to the Final Four in Bracket One of Fantastic Reviews Battle of the 2013 Books:

Electricity & Other Dreams by Micah Dean Hicks
vs.
The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord

Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson
vs.
The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke

We hope you've enjoyed this tournament so far. Now only four books remain of the starting sixteen. This bracket contained books from across the genre. There were fantasy novels, YA fantasy, science fiction, mainstream speculative fiction, story collections and a horror novel. To get to the Final Four, these four books won their first two matches. The other books in the competition, and some of them were quite good but by chance faced a strong competitor, have been knocked out of the running, like in college basketball's March Madness.

Judging between books, which can be totally different, based on reading only 25 or 50 pages can be difficult. It's also inherently subjective. But our Battle of the Books format allows us to sample and spread the word about many more new books and authors than we otherwise could.

In this bracket, two of the four books which were "seeded" reached the Final Four. The unseeded books which made it to the Final Four are Electricity & Other Dreams by Micah Dean Hicks and Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson.

Thanks again to all the authors and publicists sending us great books to consider. If you're an author or publicist, click here for the rules and an address to send your book if you'd like to be included in a future bracket.

We have had a great response to the Battle of the Books format. Several future brackets of Battle of the Books are now in the hands of our reviewers, so check back for many more battles to come.

Battle of the 2013 Books, Bracket One, Second Round :: The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke vs. The Doctor and the Dinosaurs by Mike Resnick

Our fourth and last second round match of Bracket One of the Battle of the 2013 Books is The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke versus The Doctor and the Dinosaurs by Mike Resnick. The winner will be the book I (Jackie) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

The Cusanus Game:  Tor, English translation September 2013; originally published in 2005 in Germany; 538 pages; translator: Ross Benjamin. Wolfgang Jeschle was a German science fiction writer who also wrote Last Day of Creation. The Cusanus Game overpowered The God Tattoo by Tom Lloyd to get into the second round.

The prologue in The Cusanus Game takes us back to 1425. Caravan leader Emilio and one of his guards Bakhtir discover that four of their men had tried to leave the caravan by crossing through the "repellers," which create the border between the past and future. Bakhtir is upset because one of the men who died during this attempt was his son.

The caravan brings supplies for an airship, which arrives periodically from the mid twenty-first century. Emilio and Bakhtir meet a holographic man who isn't really there but can communicate while exchanging goods. Distraught, Bakhtir attempts to kill the future man, resulting in the hasty departure of the airship. Emilio and Bakhtir barely escape.

The first chapter begins in mid twenty-first century Italy where Domenica lives in a war-ravaged town, with the factions still fighting. Domenica relives memories from her past, as she tries to survive the brutal life after nuclear catastrophe in Europe.

A year ago, Domenica's boyfriend Bernd was handsome, but flawed. Entertainment in the city was brutal and cruel: one show included barbaric sex on stage. Domenica felt disgusted, but Bernd seemed entranced. She decided their relationship is over.

War caused trauma seems to be everywhere, from creatures to landscape. CarlAntonio are Siamese twins, with Carl riding like a backpack behind Antonio. Stavros, fellow tenant of Domenica, has a prosthetic tongue — his was cut out while in captivity during the war. A modified military dog was dying from the inside out due to self-destructing implants.

Domenica remembers a conversation that happened a year earlier when she was out together with Bernd, his sister Birgit, and CarlAntonio. Birgit and CarlAntonio said they saw someone who looked just like Domenica, like an older twin. CarlAntonio also gave Domenica an envelope from the university.

Domenica recalls how CarlAntonio died. A racist group called the Hobbits, who wear lederhosen and call themselves the "guardians of the genetic inheritance," go around killing mutants with their knives. They ambushed CarlAntonio. Carl died last.

More recollections were about the Germans Birgit and Bernd. When the "catastrophe of 2028" occurred, they were young children in Italy on vacation with their parents. At that time the government was not releasing true details of the radioactive disaster. Their parents went back to Germany to see what happened and were never heard from again. Young Birgit and Bernd were adopted, but six years later they abruptly ran away when bad things happened to Birgit. The two are inseparable.

The envelope CarlAntonio passed to Domenica contained a papal VidChip. She slipped it into the flexomon and had a visual discussion with a man named Bertolino Falcotti who has a connection to the Holy Father. Falcotti interviewed Domenica for a job and asked her questions about her parents. She told him that her father had died in an attack 10 years earlier in Naples during the battle of 2039. Falcotti told Domenica to have a physical exam at a specified location. The experience was weird because they knocked her out for two hours, then she woke up with no recollection of what happened. She didn't hear back from Falcotti.

After one more murderous scene near her neighborhood, Domenica decided to move closer to the university. She was at her new apartment when yet another attack occurred near her old apartment at a convent. Stavros died trying to help the nuns. Domenica wept and got drunk and yelled out her window, "Rome is dying!"

The Doctor and the Dinosaurs:  Pyr; December 2013; 255 pages (with and extra 30 pages for appendixes); illustration by Andrew Bosley. Mike Resnick is a prolific writer of novels and short stories and has edited 40 anthologies. He has won five Hugo Awards and has been nominated over 30 times. He is the author of the Starship series, the John Justin Mallory series, and the popular Kirinyaga series. Resnick's novel The Doctor and the Dinosaurs is the fourth book in his "Weird West Tales" series. The Doctor and the Dinosaurs won out over The Scholar, the Sphinx, and the Shades of Nyx by A. R. Cook to get into the second round.

The Doctor and the Dinosaurs takes us on a trip to an alternate version of the Wild West. Doc Holliday is dying in a sanitarium in Leadville, Colorado. An owl rests on the windowsill, turns into Geronimo, then offers Doc a chance to live about one or two more years if he will help Geronimo.

According to the Apache Geronimo, white men are digging for dinosaur bones on sacred Comanche land. Geronimo thinks Doc Holliday can convince the men to stop digging, using any means possible, including Doc's famous gunmanship.

Geronimo reveals that, if the digging on sacred land doesn't stop, the Comanche medicine men plan to resurrect some of the dinosaurs to destroy the white men and end the digging. However, once the dinosaurs are resurrected, they can't be controlled and will mindlessly kill anyone, including Apache and Comanche, in their path. In Geronimo's opinion, the better plan would be to simply stop the dig and leave the dinosaurs as bones and the sacred ground intact.

After Doc Holliday agrees to this deal, Geronimo does some chanting prayers. Although Doc still coughs, he feels as he did two years ago. Doc then sets out on his journey, which first takes him to Cheyenne, Wyoming. There, he meets up with Theodore Roosevelt, who is not president yet, and they head in a northwest direction to find the paleontologists' digging site and to see what's what.

Nearby Cope's dig, outside the camp, Holliday and Roosevelt run into Cole Younger, former outlaw, who has been hired by Cope as shootist to help protect the camp. Younger tells them that paleontologists Marsh and Cope do not like each other. Their camps are about 30 miles apart. Both parties have shootists (Marsh hired Bill Cody) to protect them and both try to sabotage each other's digs.

The three men, Younger, Holliday, and Roosevelt, recollect Younger's previous raids and robberies.

The Battle:  We have The Cusanus Game, a futuristic science fiction novel that involves disaster and time travel verses The Doctor and the Dinosaurs, a Wild West alternate-reality fantasy.

The Cusanus Game is a fleshed-out epic tale that jumps from one time to another. Domenica's life takes place in her present time, with remembrances that take place a year ago, or 10 years in the past, or sometime earlier than that. Bits and pieces of historical events are revealed non-sequentially, which seems disjointed at times. The war torn area, the racist behavior, the murders, the crude entertainment all make the novel very depressing. However, awesome writing keeps me reading.

The many street names and towns can be difficult to follow, probably because I'm not familiar with the specific locations in Europe, in particularly Italy. Street names abound, such as she headed "south on Amba Aradam and Terme di Caracalla and finally came out at Via Aventino." Too many unfamiliar names pull me out of the story. The details feel unnecessary.

There are many armed factions that confused me in the beginning, not knowing who's on the "good" side: the military, the Praetorians, the EuroForce, to name a few. Maybe that's purposefully done.

When CarlAntonio and Bernd and Birgit say they saw an older version of Domenica, I wondered if Domenica will become part of the "travel back in time" group. I'm curious to learn more about this "twin."

The Doctor and the Dinosaurs has no time travel, so it's easy to follow. Humor seeps in a lot. The story is fast-paced, and the conversation between Roosevelt and Doc Holliday is lively and entertaining.

Many famous Wild West names enter and leave the story faster than two shakes of a lamb's tail. Some names seem stuck in there to educate the reader as opposed to move the story forward.

An interesting high school project would be to read this Wild West alternate-history book and write a book report, maybe comparing a couple of real Wild West characters to their fantasy counterparts. Nine appendices are included at the end of the book, which I would like to read.

Choosing a book to continue is difficult on many levels. The Doctor and the Dinosaurs is easy to read, has an interesting plot, and would be fun finish. The Cusanus Game is depressing and reveals the horror of war and its aftermath. However, the writing is captivating. Although I'd like to continue each book for different reasons, I must make a tough decision.

In Battle of the Books two books face off against each other, but only one book can continue in the race to become the final overall winner. So, I (Jackie), after reading 50 pages of each book, must declare which book I’d rather continue reading.

THE WINNER: The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke

The Cusanus Game advances to the semi-finals round to take on Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the 2013 Books, Bracket One, First Round :: The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke vs. The God Tattoo by Tom Lloyd

Our seventh and next to last first round match of Bracket One of the Battle of the 2013 Books involves The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke going up against The God Tattoo by Tom Lloyd. The winner will be the book I (Jackie) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The Cusanus Game:  Tor, English translation September 2013; originally published in 2005 in Germany; 538 pages; translator: Ross Benjamin. Wolfgang Jeschle was a German science fiction writer who also wrote Last Day of Creation.

The prologue in The Cusanus Game finds the caravan-leader Emilio awakened by the "hum and rumble" of heavy repellers. One of his guards Bakhtir angrily brings two bruised and bloodied men to Emilio. The men were runners who survived their escape, unlike their other two companions who had died. They had attempted to leave the caravan through the repellers, which create the border between the past and future. Bakhtir's anger and mourning comes because one of the dead men is his son.

The year is 1425, and Emilio has brought supplies for the airship, which arrived from the mid twenty-first century. Emilio and Bakhtir meet holograph men who aren't really there but can communicate while they take supplies. Distraught, Bakhtir attempts to kill one of the future men, resulting in the hasty departure of the airship. Emilio and Bakhtir barely escape.

The first chapter begins in mid twenty-first century Italy where Domenica lives in a war-ravaged town, with the factions still fighting. Domenica needs to cross the bridge over a dry riverbed. Sandbags line one side of the river while armored vehicles and a tank sit on the other side. A man tells her she can't cross because of the danger. "But I live there!" she states. She pushes her battery-dead "lectric" over the bridge. The soldiers let her pass. So, while the factions fight, life continues.

Domenica's boyfriend Bernd is handsome, but flawed. Entertainment in the city is brutal and cruel: one show includes barbaric sex on stage. Domenica is disgusted, but Bernd is entranced. She decides their relationship is over. She crosses paths with a modified military dog who is dying from the inside out due to self-destructing implants. "Help me," says the dog. Domenica gives him a chocolate bar.

War caused trauma seems to be everywhere, from creatures to landscape. CarlAntonio are Siamese twins, with Carl riding like a backpack behind Antonio. Stavros, fellow tenant of Domenica, has a prosthetic tongue—which was cut out while in captivity during the war.

The God Tattoo: Untold Tales from the Twilight Reign:  Pyr; November 2013; 250 pages; illustration by Larry Rostant; Story collection. Tom Lloyd is a British writer who has written eight fantasy books, including the five-book "Twilight Reign" series.

The God Tattoo contains eleven stories. For this book, the 25 pages I read included one and a half short stories.

The first story, "A Beast in Velvet," follows the Captain of the City Watch of Narkang. He is called to investigate a gruesome crime that involves blood, gutted people, and runes scratched on the walls. When a second gruesome crime occurs, the Captain's superior brings in Nimer, one of the King's Men, to help with the investigation. Nimer declares the murders to be either a sacrifice for summoning or banishing daemons or caused by a vampire. Nimer works with the Captain, who eventually comes up with a surprising suspect.

The second story, "The God Tattoo," begins with a large, "white-eye," humanoid creature Daken and his human companion Yamal, walking down the road. They had been fighting in a war on the losing side and now feel dirty, tired, and hungry. Daken observes a traveler riding toward them. Being a white-eye, Daken wants that human for his evening meal. Yamal hopes the traveler has food in his knapsack so he can enjoy a meal as well. When the traveler arrives, Daken attacks him and misses. The traveler uses magic to confuse Daken's vision. The one traveler becomes two and then the traveler looks like Yamal and then he's the traveler again. Daken lunges at the traveler but severely wounds his companion Yamal instead, due to the illusion created by more magic. The traveler says that if Daken does as he demands, Yamal, who is now at death's door, will live.

The Battle:  We have two different types of books to decide between, which is never easy. The God Tattoo is an epic fantasy short story collection that offers stories from the world of the author's "Twilight Reign" series. The Cusanus Game is a futuristic science fiction novel that involves disaster and time travel.

The Cusanus Game is a novel that, so far, offers tragic background stories that come with being in a war-torn country, which we see through the eyes of Domenica. Crude, crass, morbid, and yet fascinating, the stories within the novel both pull me in and push me away. The writing seems masterful at this point. There are some confusing jumps in time, some being centuries and others being months.

Time-travel is involved, but after 25 pages I only know that the humans in the future need supplies from the past. After the airship leaves the past, Emilio says that they have time. But time to do what? Change the direction of the future? I’m curious.

The God’s Tattoo contains eleven stories, and unfortunately, Battle of the Books stopped me in the middle of the second story. The excellent writing pulled me into the stories. The first short story had a nice twist at the end, which I hadn't foreseen. Ending my reading in the middle of the second story left me wanting to find out who the traveler was and to discover more about the magic. The Twilight Reign, so far, seems to offer stories that take place in a violent, coarse world.

Sadly, though, after reading 25 pages of both books, I (Jackie) must choose a winner to advance to the next round of Battle of the Books. Only one book can continue on in the tournament. Even though both books contain believable characters and interesting plots, I really want to learn more about the fate of Domenica and discover her role, if any, in time travel.

THE WINNER: The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke

The Cusanus Game advances to the second round, to take on either The Scholar, the Sphinx and the Shades of Nyx by A. R. Cook or The Doctor and the Dinosaurs by Mike Resnick.

To see the whole bracket, click here.