As an avid reader, I have indulged my ravenous feeding upon Shawn P. Madison's work for quite a while now. His genre is absolutely overflowing with his unique vernacular. He creates worlds and characters that are realistic and convincing. In Shawn's novel, Guarder Lore you can see his imagination and his intelligence both caressing the story and the readers attention while grasping a whole new world he constructs.

You get no spoilers from The Brutal Dreamer, but you may be wondering what Guarder Lore is about. This highly explosive novel is based upon an elite militaristic soldiers of the galaxy and the leader of the Guarder Squadron is Frank "Buzzer" Buzzito. Buzzer has always proven to be the best guarder in all venues of their missions. This military is the most secretive of squadrons that have been sanctioned by the United Earthian Nations (U.E.N.) to fight the Soviets; a hard-core communistic Super Power. These enormously formidable military guarders are appointed by this U.E.N. Judiciary Board to defend their interests at all costs. There are no tasks too difficult or no odds too great for these warriors. They are greatly feared for their brutal combatant skills by their foes. The Guarders do the dirty work no one dares discuss, and no one dares to think about. And they do it with no conscious, and no remorse, they do it out of duty.

Shawn's creativity flows well in this Scientific saga filled with clever one liners, incredible and believable characters, and enough vivid details that paints a picture for a bookworm to bask in. His Science Fiction scruples are ingenious as he adds a splash of gore and horror to the already powerful scenes he has set up.

An awesomely creative horrific sf story by an extremely talented author.

~Brutal Dreamer Rating:
five out of five Grape Tootsie Pops!

I've read a quite a number of first novels from authors who have previously specialised in short fiction. A fair amount of these do not work, with the full length work often resembling a short story that has been padded out to novel length without anything of importance or relevance or interest being added. I've also read first novels that are in effect a number of linked short stories joined together to form a continuous narrative

This book is an example of the latter. A journalist is given permission to interview Frank "Buzzer" Buzzito, the best of the Guarder regiment - a futuristic black ops/SAS type unit of soldiers, the elite fighting men of the galaxy - and Buzzer describes some of the missions he has completed during his twelve years as a Guarder.

This is fairly militaristic stuff although nowhere near as I had first expected when I began reading this novel. The feeling in this is more adventurous. Madison writes like a slightly more gory Mike Resnick, setting up his galaxy backdrop to be used in many future stories with characters and references appearing throughout many different works (as Resnick did with Santiago, Dark Lady etc). They both have a knack of throwing in a simple one liner or short paragraph to greatly enrich the fabric of his universe and to flesh out the worlds and history without excessive descriptive passages.

This is a universe in which I would love to read more tales, finding out what happens on some of these outpost worlds that have all-too-brief mentions upon in this work. There is a history here, with wars, treaties and exoduses to the stars that I'd like to explore with the characters. In short I want more!

Thankfully there are sequels and other works planned - get writing Shawn!