Cowboys and Drones

By: Aaron Frale

Narrated by: Richard Coombs

Cowboys and Drones is a collection of short stories including:

The Entire Sperm Donor for a Cosmic Paradox Series:

Jed finds out some disturbing news after a DNA test: He is his own great-great-grandfather. However, Jed's daily struggles involve video games and crippling self-doubt. He's not the time traveling pioneer type. He may as well try to get to the bottom of the mystery. It's at least a reason to get off his couch.

Anna is the time traveling type and Jed's ex-girlfriend. She finds herself in the Old West in a town terrorized by a man called the Gold Piece Bandit. Jed better get off his butt and help her. Although Anna has never been the type to let the men do all the shooting.

"Our Final Days on Bellicus Prime":

142 is a researcher from an advanced civilization that watches other pre-faster-than-light civilizations to see if they are fit to join the intergalactic community. Do the citizens of Bellicus value war over art and science? Is it right to kill a warlike species before they start the war? 142 must answer some difficult questions before he risks his career on the dominant species of Bellicus Prime.

The stories in this collection:

"Sperm Donor for a Cosmic Paradox"

"Customer Service Scientist"

"Rest Area of the Future"

"Time Travel Girl and the Paradox Kid"

"Living Material Inside - Open Immediately"

"The Government Shutdown"

"Boxed Furniture and Other Dangerous Endeavors"

"Rumspringa"

"Photographs"

"Our Final Days on Bellicus Prime"

"Time Beast"

"One Way Trip to Solasoma"

"Kal's Fall"

©2015 Aaron Frale (P)2015 Aaron Frale

A collection of eclectic stories that electrify

Frale is a pretty creative writer, and keeps coming up with things that are surprisingly refreshing, like an eternally reincarnating man in Orion, for example. The Teristaque Chronicles is like this book, a series of Short stories that are strung together, and have an underlying theme. Here, rather than a dystopian world, we get time travel and sci-fi type tales. The first short revolves around a fella that just so happens to be his own great- great something or other grandfather (I can never keep those straight). And I do not mean like in that stupid song Tom Arnold sang in The Stoopids, I'm my own grandpa. That was all done through marriage, this is by DNA. Kind of like Frye in Futurama.

Those are the kinds of stories that you get, some creative inventions that make you think while you are having fun. I have to say that Richard Coombs's narration isn't as good as I'd hoped. His voice is a little robotic at points, and lacked a little life. He isn't bad, but there were some stumbles. I think a different narrator would have elevated this a bit more. Even though I did receive a promo code for this review it in no way influenced my considerations of the material, and in fact, inspired me to be more honest. In fact, getting a code generally makes me harsher as a reviewer as I am more often concerned what someone like Me will decide based on my review.

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