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Metaphysical Talents
Legacy of Valor follows Major Liam O’Connor as he leads a fractured alliance into a brutal campaign on a hostile moon—while navigating family, loyalty, and a mysterious Dreamscape power. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Earth’s recent history contains many memorable battles and warriors to draw inspiration from. The Civil War’s Gettysburg and the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam inspire much of Legacy of Valor. At the Battle of Gettysburg, during the defense of Little Round Top, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and his regiment were on the extreme left of the Union line with orders to hold at all costs. He used the terrain to his advantage, ultimately driving the Confederates back. As Chamberlain did to win the battle (and possibly the war), Major Liam O’Connor does in Legacy of Valor, using the ground topography to win the Battle of Treespo; outnumbered, he held his position until reinforcements arrived.
Another battle on Earth that took place 100 years later was in the Ia Drang Valley of Vietnam. Lt. Colonel Harold (Hal) Moore faced a numerically superior North Vietnamese force. He coordinated his troops to use the artillery on the ground along with air power to hold their position. Using these same battle tactics, Major O’Connor channeled the spirits of Chamberlain and Moore by remaining outwardly calm in the face of overwhelming odds and thinking quickly. He employed the terrain, artillery, and air power, along with orbital forces, to keep his warriors alive.
In this second novel of the series, Legacy of Valor, the triplets are still children who grew up hearing stories of their father’s exploits. Liam now leads Etursci’s Special Operations Company and is attached to the New Terran Marine Corps’ Third Division to retake the moon called Treespo, orbiting the planet Beta Proximus IV, from Marshal Kergan’s Rebel forces. “No plan survives its first encounter with the enemy,” is an old Marine saying. Minutes after landing on the hostile surface of Treespo, treachery decapitates the division, leaving Liam the senior combat officer. Deception has stripped the Third Division of its support. As forces scramble to assist both sides, Liam must keep the warriors under his command alive.
For personal inspiration, there are science fiction books that use psionics like ESP (Extra Sensory Perception), though I put my unique twist on it. Few Military Science Fiction books explore a person’s consciousness being used outside the body, which is called “Dreamwalking.” While Dreamwalking, a person often has to fight enemy Dreamwalkers. I also drew inspiration from video games such as Halo, in particular with weapons and tactics in space combat.
The Dreamscape adds a unique layer to the story. What narrative challenges came with blending physical and metaphysical combat?
I explore the military use of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) powers. For such metaphysical talents to be convincing, I must clearly explain the ESP abilities and their associated costs. To do this, I show that the protagonist does not have an overwhelming advantage, or the reader won’t believe they could lose in a battle.
Belief is critical in the Dreamscape. If a person doesn’t believe he or she can do something in the Dreamscape, such as fly or walk through something, they will not be able to do it. Conversely, when someone is attacked in the Dreamscape, weapons directed at them don’t really exist. Therefore, the victim can only be harmed if they believe the weapon can harm them. This makes the ability to disbelieve an important defense against someone’s attack. However, believing and disbelieving require years of training to discipline one’s mind. As Jarek (an expert at Dreamwalking in Dreamscape Warriors Series) said, “the slightest doubt could kill you.”
While moving around, one’s own subconscious uses very little energy, communicating over a great distance or moving outside the body uses energy more rapidly. When a person is exhausted, the Dreamscape seems filled with fog to the point that they might not be able to find their way back to their body.
Related to Dreamwalking is the ability to “Step Out of Time.” This technique enables a warrior to slow the time around him without it affecting him. In battle, they can move very rapidly, giving them a distinct advantage over their enemy for a limited time. However, like Dreamwalking, it uses energy, and a person can be dragged back into regular time once they become tired.
Are there more stories planned in this Dreamscape Universe?
In my books, I explore family dynamics, especially during times of crisis and separation. The triplets and their brother play a major role in the third novel, Promise of Mercy. Aisling, Bayvin, and especially Deirdre, needed to be their father’s daughters. The girls returned home after advanced training in the Finnian Shock Forces. They’ve inherited their father’s marksmanship, his leadership skills, and his ESP powers. However, they aren’t clones of each other. Deirdre is their best shot, and leadership comes naturally to her. Aisling is an explosives expert and pilot. Bayvin specializes in electronic warfare and excels in military intelligence. Their brother is still in his teens but is already a skilled pilot. We also meet Marissa, a former Rebel war criminal who must confront her past once her daughter, Gayla, is born. Marissa goes against Kergan to befriend Liam and return him to his family.
In the fourth book, Addiction of Power, Liam is older. His daughters are now middle-aged. His son, Aidan, is a veteran fighter pilot. The daughter that Liam and his wife Celinia conceived in Promise of Mercy, Tetia, is in her teens and planning to follow her mother’s path as a priestess and healer. The theme of family carries over. Aidan agrees to deliver information to Finnian Intelligence while on a trip with his Great Aunt Máire and sister Tetia when Kergan attacks their ship. After escaping, Marissa and her daughter Gayla, whom the audience meets in Promise of Mercy befriend Aidan and his family. This starts a journey to end a 700-year interstellar civil war. Factions on both sides of the conflict must wrestle with the implications of peace: an end to the bloodshed versus losing power. It also plants the seeds for threats from beyond the Milky Way.
While I was writing the Dreamscape Warriors Series, I realized my central characters had interesting personal life adventures—and I wanted to write about them. These can be major emergencies that only last a matter of minutes, or everyday surprises that take us down unexpected roads. They make up the backstories of each person’s life. This realization started me writing the Sci-Fi Short Book Series based on the characters in the Dreamscape Warriors Novels.
The first short book in the series, Way of Forgiveness, highlights the main character, Liam O’Connor, between the first and second volumes. Liam is not sitting idle between the novels. Things happen in his life that are not covered in the full-length novel, but make a good story in this short book. Here, I focus on Liam’s journey to understand the nature of forgiveness as he struggles through and learns from his archenemy, Licinious.
In the next short book, Evolution of Leadership, Deirdre (one of Liam’s triplet daughters) goes from being a scamp who always leads her siblings to mischief into a military leader. As she goes through her advanced trooper training, Deirdre learns to make responsible decisions when others’ lives are on the line.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Kurt’s Frontier | Facebook | Price of Vengeance | LinkedIn | X (Twitter) | Amazon
Major Liam O’Connor is a hero in his own right. He is descended from a family of heroes. Now he will be tested. Now he will become legend. The Rebel faction lead by Marshal Kergan has seized Treespo, the fifth moon around the fourth planet of Beta Proximus. Treespo is a major source for valuable rare metal elements. With all other Alliance forces out of position, Liam’s Special Operations Company has been attached to the New Terran Marine Corps Third Division. Their job is to provide the spearhead to retake Treespo.
There is an old Marine saying: “No plan ever survives its first encounter with the enemy.” Treachery kills all senior officers in Third Division, leaving Liam in command. With humans of Terran, Neo-Etruscan, and Finnian descent looking to him to keep them alive, Liam must reach deep inside himself. Failure leaves the bulk of the galaxy’s rare metal elements in Kergan’s hands. If Liam succeeds, he will find himself an heir to his family’s legacy of cunning, their legacy of courage, their Legacy of Valor.
Light Seen Through a Dark Veil – Book Five
Light Seen Through a Dark Veil is a character-driven science fiction space opera that pulls together a whole web of lives at the moment humanity faces another “Harvest” from the alien invaders. We follow Myra, the sharp, ancient advisor trying to drag the mysterious Builders into the fight, Svetlana the orphaned ballerina who gets drafted off the streets of Alkonost, and Father Francis, the doubting priest turned battlefield chaplain, along with a wider orbit of Sisters, soldiers, and politicians scattered across the galaxy. The book moves back and forth between front-line chaos and big political maneuvers as different worlds burn, resist, and regroup, all while the Sisterhood and the Builders quietly set up a counterstrike that might actually change the rules of the game rather than just survive the next battle.
I kept feeling like the real focus was not “who wins the war” but “who these people choose to be while the war is happening.” The writing leans into that. Author Forest Woodes loves close, intimate scenes: Myra trading barbed jokes over tea at the bottom of an alien ocean, Svetlana stepping out of ballet rehearsal into apocalypse, Francis and his childhood friends arguing about God in a dingy neighborhood bar right before the sky falls in. The prose is clear and unpretentious with the occasional poetic punch, like when the book talks about suffering as “black ink meant for a pure white page.” The structure is almost episodic, hopping between fronts and characters, which sometimes made me want a breather, but it fits the feel of a galaxy-wide crisis. For a fifth book in a space opera series, it is surprisingly grounded. Battles matter less for their explosions than for what they do to people’s faith, identities, and relationships.
I also appreciated how many choices are political and spiritual at the same time. Myra’s trip to the Builder homeworld is not just a diplomatic mission, it is an old woman trying to keep her mother’s vision alive while the universe shifts under her feet. Svetlana, the “ballerina who dances on the graves of her enemies,” is very clearly still the hungry, lonely girl who once ate from dumpsters, trying to build a self that is more than just a weapon. Francis is probably my favorite. He is a priest who admits he is angry at God, terrified, and tired of being the adult in every room, yet he keeps stepping up anyway, doing field medicine and offering last rites to people who do not share his faith. That mix of doubt and duty felt very human to me. The science fiction frame, with alien Harvesters, Builder tech, and stealth ships, gives big stakes, but the heart of the book is small moments like friends sharing bad bar food while watching the end of their city on the news.
Stylistically, the book sits in a middle ground that I liked. It has the scale and moving pieces of classic space opera, but it reads more like character-centered speculative fiction than crunchy military SF. The tone can jump from darkly funny to grim to quietly hopeful, sometimes in the space of a page, which made it feel like people coping rather than characters in a perfectly plotted arc. There are a lot of proper nouns, factions, and previous events referenced and, If you’re someone dropping in at book five, you’ll have to just accept the history. Even so, the emotional through-line will keep you anchored. When Myra pushes back against despair, or when Svetlana learns to see herself as more than a drafted victim, I felt it.
I would recommend Light Seen Through a Dark Veil to readers who enjoy science fiction space opera that cares more about people than hardware, and who do not mind juggling multiple points of view and some dense series lore. If you like stories about found family, messy faith, and resistance built from ordinary lives under extraordinary pressure, this will probably hit you in a good way. Light Seen Through a Dark Veil is a strong closing chapter for this science fiction space opera series. If you have been following the series, I think this is a satisfying and earned finish. And if you simply enjoy character-driven space opera, with big stakes, strange worlds, and a lot of heart, this is the kind of book that makes the whole journey feel worth it.
Pages: 321 | ASIN : B0G429M8VR
The Ocean Between Light and Darkness – Book Four
Book Four in the Emergent Universe series follows Ravi and Shashi, twin investigators linked to a quiet outfit called The Group, and it starts on Izumo with a hunt for Builder ruins and strange “clocks” tied to a looming Harvest. They cross paths with Amy Sato, a local with grit and brains, and she can bully Builder tech into cooperating, so she ends up in the mix. The trail spreads outward to the lost Invictus Colonies, and the story keeps widening in scope as old human choices echo through abandoned stations, wrecks, and half-dead worlds. The countdown pressure never fully lets up, and the ending lands on a rough kind of hope, with time bought through a risky upload and a promise of more work ahead.
The voice feels direct and lived-in, and the book moves with purpose. I liked the rhythm between tense scenes and bits of humor, and the jokes often act like a pressure valve. Ravi reads open and earnest, Shashi reads sharper and more guarded, and the contrast keeps the pages turning. I also enjoyed the way places show up with quick detail that sticks, like a dive bar vibe on the edge of nowhere and the uneasy quiet of old metal drifting in the dark. I did hit a few stretches where the story slows down for explanation, and my attention wandered for a beat.
The ideas are the real hook for me, as it was with the other books in the series. The Harvest Cycle feels cruel and mechanical, and it gives the whole book a cold wind feel. I kept thinking about the theme of light and darkness in people, and it fits the characters and the larger history in a clean way. The Builders come off as powerful and unreadable, and humans come off as clever and messy, and neither side earns a free pass. The Invictus angle was emotional, since it points at ambition and pride and shortcuts, then it shows the bill coming due for everyone. I felt dread in the big reveal moments, then I felt a stubborn little thrill too, like the story was daring me to look into the deep end and not flinch.
I finished the book impressed, a bit unsettled, and honestly kind of pumped for the next book. The clock keeps ticking, and the story keeps nudging you forward. The Ocean Between Light and Darkness delivers a solid space adventure, and it keeps its moral spine intact, and it does not sugarcoat the cost of discovery. I recommend it to readers who want fast momentum, strong character chemistry, and a big sci-fi threat hanging over every choice, plus anyone who likes lost-colony mysteries and ancient tech with sharp edges.
Pages: 298 | ASIN : B0G4277JV9
Moonlight Falling on Dark Water – Book Three
In Moonlight Falling on Dark Water, author Forest Woodes drops readers into a human civilization still twitching after the appearance of Builder artifacts, and then asks me to follow Princess Sarasvati “Sara” Singh as she leaves the political gravity of the Saladin for a long, cold search: encrypted clues left inside her mother’s research LLM point toward an ocean world named Calypso, where a settlement called Abyss sits near a newly awakened underwater transport system that nobody trusts. Along the way, the expedition gets the unmistakable itch of pursuit—an unnamed ship stalking them through the smear of FTL, and the book keeps tightening its braid of exploration, paranoia, and high-stakes diplomacy until it becomes, unmistakably, a first-contact story with teeth.
What I enjoyed most was how the novel refused to treat “politics” as a separate genre from “adventure.” The same chapter can hold a scheming conversation about manufacturing legitimacy and then pivot into the physics-flavored terror of being hunted in deep space, where a “burp” of gamma radiation is floated like an ugly prayer. The moral texture is the point: Sara and her allies aren’t cartoon puppeteers, but they are willing to shape outcomes, and the book makes me sit with that. uneasy, complicit, and weirdly invested.
I also liked the book’s sense of scale, wide enough for fleets and constitutions, intimate enough to linger on the grit of a frontier bar and the sulfur hint in a beer you drink because the water is complicated. And when Sara finally finds her mother, the reunion lands with raw force: it’s not a tidy revelation, it’s a messy human break in the hull, tears, anger, relief, the blunt question that’s been waiting for years. That emotional honesty is what kept the cosmic machinery from feeling sterile.
Moonlight Falling on Dark Water is a book that turns the darkness from a backdrop into a character. I think readers who like space opera, hard-ish science fiction, first contact, interstellar political thriller, and exploration/adventure will feel at home here, especially if you enjoy watching a new order get forged in real time (the Nomads adopting a constitution and elevating Kara-Sal is pure history-in-the-making spectacle). If you’ve devoured The Expanse by James S. A. Corey and liked it for its lived-in future and factional chessboard, this has a similar appetite for consequence. But it tilts toward something more quietly metaphysical when the Builders, “the People Under the Shell,” choose to withdraw and keep watching.
Pages: 324 | ASIN :B0G42G7Z3J
Light in a Dark Place – Book Two
Light in a Dark Place by Forest Woodes is a science fiction space opera with a strong political thriller and military sci-fi streak, plus a pinch of cosmic horror. It opens with Yasmin Pasha and Crown Princess Sarasvati poking through a captured “ghost ship,” a vessel packed with corpses and scrubbed logs, except for a surviving clue that points to a mysterious Builder shipyard. The story then widens into court politics on Deva, a hunt for the warlord Bibi Khan, and a looming, much bigger threat that Sara insists is “coming” from the dark between the stars.
What I enjoyed right away is how Woodes balances big stakes with very human moments. The early banter between Yasmin and Sara in literal open space is funny and nervous in a way that feels earned, not “quippy for the sake of it.” Then, a few pages later, you’re in the Glass Palace with stormlight, marble, and all the weight of legacy, watching Sara try to convince her father that she is not being dramatic, she is being realistic. I also appreciated that the “ancient tech” thread is explained in plain terms through Clara, without turning into a lecture, just enough to make it feel dangerous and plausible in the book’s world.
The author’s choices get especially interesting when the book pivots from mystery into systems and power. There’s a coup speech that is chilling because it sounds like a real person justifying the unthinkable, and the book doesn’t soften that edge. And when Sara finally tells her twins what she is really up against, the mood shifts. The “little light” inside a black artifact, like looking at light under dark ice, is one of the few times the sensory language lands perfectly, because it matches the feeling of the whole book: hope, but faint, and surrounded. Then she goes further, laying out the towers, the countdown clock, and the Harvesters who leave dead worlds, and suddenly the story isn’t only about politics or even war, it’s about survival on a clock you did not know you started. That’s where it hooked me. It’s big, it’s scary, and it makes the smaller arguments feel tragically petty in a believable way.
I’d recommend Light in a Dark Place most to readers who like space opera that actually uses its scale, the kind where courtrooms and battle plans matter as much as starships, and where the “enemy” is not just a person but a whole pressure system. If you enjoy political maneuvering, morally complicated loyalties, and action that can jump from a tense ship investigation to a brutal public arena scene, you’ll find a lot here. If you like your science fiction a little stormy, with a professional, hard-eyed look at how civilizations crack and how people still try to build something anyway, it’s an easy recommendation.
Pages: 336 | ASIN : B0G42BPC1Z
Blinding Light / Implacable Darkness – Book One
Blinding Light / Implacable Darkness follows Nico Laertiadis, a nineteen-year-old student on the colony world Ithaca, as his easy life crashes into galactic politics, terrorism, and full-scale war. A glittering trade summit on Ilium turns into a mass killing underwater. From there, the book tracks the slide from trade disputes to emergency laws, riots, and finally a draft and interstellar conflict. Nico becomes both a politician and a soldier, moving from protests in the streets to brutal missions on alien worlds, while his bond with his partner Emily and their dog Argos hangs by a thread. All of it is framed as an older Nico looking back, trying to give shape to chaos, openly telling us this is the story of the war, what happened to Earth, and his long journey home.
I really liked the writing. Nico’s voice feels casual and sharp, and it lets the book move from dry political debate to gallows humor to moments of real tenderness without feeling fake. Domestic scenes with Emily and Argos have a soft warmth I found disarming, like the quiet afternoon when she paints the dog while Nico reads Mary Oliver and worries about looming war. Then the book yanks that comfort away with a riot, or a bombing, or some other disaster, and the shift hits hard because the calm was so vivid. The action scenes are clear and tense. A sequence at a remote dam where turbine noise wakes a sky full of shrieking predators is pure nightmare fuel. Sometimes the worldbuilding comes through thick blocks of explanation and committee roll calls. Those stretches slowed me down a bit, yet they also gave the setting weight and made the later fighting feel like the inevitable result of a long chain of choices.
What stuck with me most were the ideas humming underneath the explosions. The book explores how fear, the media, and misinformation push entire societies toward war. We see false reports, staged clashes, and a protest that is very obviously engineered to turn into a riot, and it all felt uncomfortably plausible. The technology has the same moral bite. The entangler network that lets humans talk across the stars turns out to be a kind of haunted system. Someone, or something, listens in. The only way out is to break the network and blind everyone, which is exactly what a secretive faction does. I felt real anger at that choice and still understood why the characters made it. The story keeps circling back to trauma and responsibility. Therapy scenes, panic attacks, the way Nico’s jokes thin out as the war drags on, and finally his shaky, beautiful reunion with Argos and Emily at the end, all gave the book a heavy emotional punch.
The story does not pretend that war makes anyone noble. It shows people breaking, doing terrible things, and then trying to live with what is left. At the same time, it keeps finding small lights in the dark, like a dog that still remembers his person after years apart or a partner who keeps asking hard questions instead of walking away. For me, Blinding Light / Implacable Darkness is a strong pick for readers who like character-driven military science fiction, political thrillers set in space, or modern anti-war stories that still care about love, family, and ordinary life. If you enjoy books that balance big battles with close-up emotion, and you can handle vivid violence and themes of trauma, this first volume in the Emergent Universe series is well worth your time.
Pages: 457 | ASIN : B0G429RS11
Family Dynamics
Toriko Tales: Toriko vs. The Crowned Paw follows a brilliant and eccentric catgirl engineer as she tests her groundbreaking AI-powered battle armor, who ends up in an emotional and ethical conflict when the AI goes rogue. There was a lot of time spent crafting the character traits in this novel. What was the most important factor for you to get right in your characters?
The main characters—Toriko, Spark, Maro, Ujaku, Minea, Mini-T, Allia, and Ichini—originate from my main D’mok Revival series. They’ve long been among my favorites, so I was thrilled to dedicate an entire book (and side-series) to them. Even though I’ve “known” them for years, each revealed personal depths I hadn’t expected. As a mostly dedicated “pantser” in my writing approach, authenticity and consistency are the two most important factors for me. Beyond the usual character interviews I conduct to understand them, I also wrote numerous short pieces exploring their homeworlds, histories, families, and formative events—so I could portray how each character’s actions and choices would naturally unfold.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I’ve been evolving my writing from simply telling an entertaining story to sharing a perspective and sparking conversations. My background—both in formal education and a career focused on crafting technologies and driving innovation—has taken me to the edges of AI research. I’ve seen firsthand how our culture is responding to it, and I have both possibilities and warnings I want to share.
In Toriko Tales, those ideas found the perfect home. The characters, the moment in time within the D’mok literary universe, and the events unfolding in our real world all came together to make this the right story at the right time.
Beyond technology, there are many all-too-human themes: deep roots in family dynamics, sibling rivalry, and hidden secrets coming to light. These elements ground the high-tech story and offer readers something relatable amidst the adventure.
I hope the series continues in other books. If so, where will the story take readers?
This book is part of a much larger story arc within the D’mok Revival literary universe. It really showcases who Toriko and her family are, and helps shape the impact they’ll have in the future. Originally, I didn’t think there would be more—but this isn’t the first time an initial impression turned out to be wrong.
Based on how the story ends (no spoilers!), there are so many threads that could continue Toriko Tales—alongside the ongoing D’mok Revival series. I’m all about giving readers what they want, so I can’t wait to hear which topics and issues they’d love to see explored in a future Toriko Tales adventure.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Toriko Tales | Amazon
Sol Accords: Starbourne
D.G. Podporski’s Sol Accords: Starbourne is a gripping journey into a future where humanity’s reach extends across the stars, but old struggles—corporate greed, personal identity, and survival—remain stubbornly present. At its heart is Jaeden Starbourne, a man recovering from cryogenic sleep and grappling with amnesia, debt, and the harsh realities of a universe dominated by bureaucracy and exploitation. The book seamlessly blends high-stakes space adventures with raw human emotions, creating a world that feels as vast and cold as the space Jaeden inhabits.
The opening prologue, with its dim lights and encroaching darkness, had me hooked instantly. Podporski masterfully sets the scene, like when the derelict ship first awakens with “sparks blowing through the door unabated.” The tension is palpable, and the descriptions are so vivid I could almost hear the hissing of machinery as the ship slowly came back to life. However, the pacing can feel uneven; moments of technical description occasionally bog down the flow. That said, the immersive world-building more than makes up for it. I also appreciated the deeply flawed and relatable characters. Jaeden’s struggle with anger, debt, and his loss of memory felt painfully real. His irritability, as highlighted in the scene where he fights with the AI assistant “Lexi,” reflects the weight he carries daily. Yet, there’s a quiet resilience in him that makes you root for his survival. Supporting characters like Joanna Stokley add depth and camaraderie, though some secondary figures felt underexplored—Sylvie, for example, seemed more like a trope than a fully realized individual. The story raises thought-provoking questions about identity and second chances. Jaeden, labeled with the surname “Starbourne” to denote his orphaned status in space, embodies this struggle. The societal disdain he faces for his name mirrors real-world biases, and his journey to reclaim purpose resonates deeply. The corporate backdrop, meanwhile, critiques unchecked capitalism in a way that feels uncomfortably close to our present-day realities.
Sol Accords: Starbourne is a rich, character-driven space opera that rewards patience. Fans of slow-burn science fiction with a focus on survival and human complexity will find much to love. While the story’s pacing might challenge those looking for constant action, its emotional depth and detailed world-building make it worth the ride. I’d recommend it to readers who enjoyed The Expanse or Dark Matter and anyone who’s ever pondered the price of progress and the resilience of the human spirit.
Pages: 445 | ASIN : B0D4FBRCTH
