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Tosche Station Radio #26: Heavy Meta

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On this week’s Tosche Station Radio, we’re joined by author, filmmaker, and Star Wars fan Bryan Young!

Kicking off the show, we highlight new Replace Mara’s Catsuit entries from kataja, Ellen, Bria, and Robert. Brian looked back at Isard’s Revenge and Emily wrapped up our series of X-Wing retrospectives with a fond review of Starfighters of Adumar.

In Fixer’s Flash, both Brian and Nanci have been pretty wrapped up with the Olympics. Nanci did find some time to read The Gathering Flame, the prequel to the Mageworlds trilogy. She also finished her Mirax costume! Brian apologized for live-tweeting the US Women National Soccer Team’s match versus Canada. Over the weekend he jumped into Marvel’s Siege comic arc and started reading Mageworlds again. He also spent the latter part of the weekend nervously watching NASA’s seven minutes of terror.

Deak’s Dirt opens with news that Brian and Nanci are thrilled about. X-Wing: Mercy Kill, the long-awaited tenth novel in the series, has hit bookshelves!  In Celebration VI news, badges were revealed, Warwick Davis was confirmed, the We Love Prequels panel is returning, and the full schedule has finally been revealed. The Old Republic was recently confirmed as going free-to-play, but Brian’s unsure if this is good news for the game. Rounding out the news, Brian and Nanci are pumped that NASA successfully landed Curiosity.

This week’s Camie’s Concerns features author and Star Wars fan Bryan Young. The hosts and Bryan talk his writing and filmmaking career, his love of nerd culture, and all sorts of Star Wars related topics. Bryan dives in and discusses the previous Celebration conventions he’s been at and what you can expect from his Why We Love the Prequels panel. Be sure to check out his novels like Operation: Montauk and Lost at the Con! You can find Bryan at Big Shiny Robot, Bryan Young Fiction, The Huffington Post, and on Twitter.

This time around in Wormie’s Works, Nanci highlights Kate Blankenship’s brilliant Endor Leia costume and Brian cheats and highlights the great costume and art entries submitted to our Replace Mara’s Catsuit contest. Rounding out the show, Brian and Nanci take questions from listeners.

Tosche Station Radio is the official podcast of Tosche-Station.net and a part of the Solo Sound network. If you like what you hear, please leave a review on the iTunes Music Store or the Zune Marketplace. We can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Nanci and Brian are the co-founders and writers of Tosche-Station.net. You can find Nanci on Twitter with the handle @Nancipants and you can find Brian with @LaneWinree.

Review: Operation Montauk by Bryan Young

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Bryan Young’s most recent novel, Operation: Montauk, is a mash-up of dinosaurs, Nazis, and time travel. That’s putting it simply, of course, but if any of those three themes don’t catch your attention…well, what’s wrong with you?

In the vein of the original Star Wars, the story starts out in medias res. Jack Mallory, an American soldier fighting in World War II, is on a mission to travel back in time and kill Hitler before the war can begin. His mission goes awry and he wakes in a tropical jungle, being attacked by monstrous creatures—dinosaurs, he realizes they are. The rest of his team is killed and he escapes, assisted by Richmond, an industrial-age inventor, and Veronica, a technician from Mallory’s future. They bring him to Fort Robinson, the stronghold for several other stranded time travelers. Once there, Mallory and the others speculate why they were dumped millions of years in the past, while Mallory concerns himself with how to get back to his proper time and complete his mission.

Operation: Montauk is a short, fast read, with exciting action sequences and interesting characters. Throughout the novel, you learn more about the inhabitants of Fort Robinson, and one of my only complaints about this story is that I wanted more. I wanted to learn more about them, to learn how they all came to be stranded in prehistoric times. Albert the chimp is an especially fun addition to the cast. Veronica and Valentine were both interesting female characters, and I wanted more of them. I would gladly read a novel headlined by either character. In addition, Richmond was always intriguing, the wise old man of the cast. In contrast, I didn’t find Mallory’s character quite as compelling, but his mission and what he later encounters in the jungle are interesting.

I really enjoyed this novel’s take on time travel. So many times, time travel can get muddied or bogged down in false science, or just not make sense. By keeping the story confined to the dinosaur-laden past, and positing a theory as to why the time travelers have shipwrecked there, Bryan Young deftly sidesteps those potential problems. Smartly, the story doesn’t necessarily concern itself with the hows or whys of time travel, but rather what the characters do to save themselves from impending doom, which is much more interesting.

My other complaint about the novel, besides wanting more about the characters, is the ending. Once again, I want more! But I have a sneaking suspicion that’s exactly what Young intended with his choice of ending…

Overall, Operation: Montauk is a fun read and I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.