Explanation

If anyone else ever comes here and wonders what's going on, here's the full story.

In 2001 I read a really crummy book called "Engines of Dawn"--the first review featured here--and decided I needed somewhere to vent. I found my way to Amazon and posted a brief customer review to let out my frustration. This was so fun that I decided to keep doing it and in time I came to see it as a critical thinking exercise to help me determine why certain books worked for me and certain ones didn't. In the process I like to think this might help me in writing my own books, though probably not. At any rate, the good ones are fun to rave about and the bad ones are fun to rant about and many others fall in between.

I have read more books than are featured here, but not every book I read gets a review written. I've left all the pertinent information about the book and review if you want to purchase the book or if you want to see the original review. I write these with the intent of a Joe Q. Public's point-of-view not any kind of literary scholar. I sometimes launch into discussions on the craft of writing, which usually I think causes people to reach for the "not helpful" button, but mostly I'm just saying why I liked the book and why I didn't without a bunch of cliches.

Legal stuff: this isn't sponsored by Amazon or represent them in any way. So on and so forth, although they do have a very nice site and I recommend checking it out for your next book purchase. I'm just shooting the breeze about books I read. Feel free to comment on the books if you've read them or tell me how much my reviews suck or whatever.

That is all.

Do You Like Movies?

If you're a film buff as well as a bibliophile, check out my blog of movie reviews cleverly titled BJ's Movie Reviews. Like this blog it's an eclectic mix of films with my unique (sometimes bordering on insane) thoughts.

All the Discworld You Could Ever Want

For an easier way to read all my Discworld series reviews, check out my Unofficial Companion that compiles all 32 books I reviewed into one handy document. Don't leave for the Discworld without it!

WHERE YOU BELONG

Where You Belong
by Patrick Dilloway
(5/5 stars)

In my review of Saul Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March" I wrote:

"When I thought about it deeper and looked more closely I decided what gave this "great American novel" status is not the story itself but the underlying sense of optimism as Augie never loses hope even after the love of his life leaves him and his Merchant Marine freighter gets torpedoed. It's that same spirit that sent explorers to these shores and propelled pioneers ever westward in search of Manifest Destiny."

In a much similar fashion, "Where You Belong" by Patrick Dilloway is a Great American novel in spirit because while the protagonist of the story--a man with the unlikely name of Frost Devereaux--loses the love of his dreams, he never gives up hope of finding a better life just around the next corner.

Another novel "Where You Belong" draws comparisons to is John Irving's "The World According to Garp" and not just because the main characters in both have unusual names. Like Garp, Frost Devereaux is raised for a time by a nurse (though in this case the nurse is not his mother) and grows up to become a writer. Unlike Garp, though, Frost is never able to find and hold on to his one true love.

Through most of his life, Frost's true love is Frankie Maguire. Frankie, an energetic tomboy who dreams of becoming a Broadway star, is Frost's best friend and first crush, who abandons him in junior high to seek out older boys. This leaves Frost with a hole in his heart that is never filled until Frankie returns to him. If this were a fairy tale they would ride off and Live Happily Ever After, but this isn't a fairy tale.

Frost's search for a love that lasts leads him across the United States, from his boyhood home in an Iowa town noted for the stench of the fertilizer it produces to an all-boys school in upstate New York with a dark secret to an artist's colony in New Mexico presided over by a French-Canadian lumberjack to the Manhattan apartment of Frankie's twin brother, a powerbroker in the Gordon Gekko mold. Each step along the way Frost discovers more about the world, the people he cares about, and himself.

I really enjoyed this book because of that Great American Novel spirit I talked about and its similarities to "Garp." Like the better John Irving novels, Mr. Dilloway attempts to tackle a large social issue without losing sight of the personal story. The character of Frost Devereaux is depicted as naïve and vulnerable, especially when it comes to his feelings for the Maguire twins, which in some ways makes him a more sympathetic character than TS Garp who, let's face it, could be a real jerk by sleeping with babysitters and so forth. By contrast, Frost is the one who gets cheated on, not the one who cheats.

Still, for the seriousness of the topics covered in the novel, it never loses a dark sense of humor, putting Frost in bizarre situations and with even more bizarre characters. For that reason fans of Irving's work should love this novel. Of course it wouldn't really be fair to compare the writing of a young unknown like Mr. Dilloway to great authors like John Irving or Saul Bellow. There are few who can really compete on that level. Nevertheless, the story is solidly written and hopefully the start of more to come.

That is all.

Cobra Bargain

Cobra Bargain

by Timothy Zahn

(4/5 stars)

Special Note: I believe this book is out of print. You can still find used copies on Amazon or at a local store, like I did when I was on vacation up in Harrison, MI.

"Cobra Bargain" is actually the third of what I guess would be the Cobra trilogy. I never read the first one (see special note) but I did read the second one, "Cobra Strike" that was fast-paced but flat. That is largely corrected with "Cobra Bargain"--and not just because it's longer. There's more character development in this story that makes it more enjoyable to read.

This is the third in the series, but each book is separated by 30 years or so and focuses on different generations of the Moreau family. The original "Cobra" focused on Jonny Moreau, who signed up to become a cyborg warrior known as a Cobra and fought aliens known as Trofts. The second book, "Cobra Strike" focuses on Jonny's children, especially Justin Moreau, who also becomes a Cobra and goes to a mysterious planet called Qasama that's populated by humans who make up for their lack of technology with paranoia about outsiders. "Cobra Bargain" then focuses on Jonny's granddaughter--Justin's daughter--Jasmine Moreau, who becomes the first female Cobra. The "bargain" in the title comes in large part because Jasmine is allowed to become a Cobra and go on a spy mission to Qasama when her uncle agrees to quit politics if Jasmine fails.

Once the mission gets underway, though, the bargain becomes secondary to survival. The scout team's shuttle is shot down, leaving Jasmine as the lone survivor far, far behind enemy lines. On the plus side, Jasmine is fluent in the Qasama language. On the negative side, Qasamans view women as only a notch better than outsiders.

Jasmine is taken in by the Shammon family, whose young son becomes her warden--and maybe a bit more than that. While she recovers and tries to come up with a way to get home, Jasmine finds out there's bad stuff afoot on Qasama that could mean very bad things for everyone back home.

For the most part this retains the fast pace of "Cobra Strike" or Mr. Zahn's other books I read. In many ways it's similar to the later "Conquerors Trilogy" that similarly focuses on a multi-generational family and delves into the culture of an alien race. (The difference here being the "aliens" are human.) But as I mentioned before, there's more character depth in this book as it focuses mostly on Jasmine and the younger Shammon family son. There could perhaps have been a little more romantic tension, but for a sci-fi action story it's pretty good.

As a fan of Mr. Zahn's work since his "Star Wars" novels, it was interesting to read some of his earlier novels. The Jasmine character could be seen as a prototype to the Mara Jade character in his "Star Wars" books in that both are strong, independent females. (The difference being that Jasmine comes equipped with all sorts of cool lasers embedded in her skeletal structure while Mara Jade has a lightsaber.) I already mentioned the Conquerors books, which again these could be seen as a forerunner to. If you like a good light sci-fi story, then this isn't a bad read. If you see it in the used bookstore, pick it up.

That is all.

The Long Walk

The Long Walk

By Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)

(4/5 stars)

This was the first Stephen King book I'd ever read. Some "friends" recommended that it was one of his best, so I thought I'd give it a try. Before this my only real exposure to the horror genre was reading Poe in high school. Overall I found this to be a good reading experience, though it was a little long and the end was disappointing.

Every year, 100 teenage boys go through The Long Walk, a competition of endurance and survival. They start near the Canadian border in Maine (being a King book, where else would it start?) and go through New Hampshire, possibly into Massachusetts if anyone survives. The winner receives a Prize, wherein supposedly they receive everything they could ever want. The only drawback is that if you don't win, you die. Get three warnings in a row and you get executed.

So the rules are simple: keep walking or die. There are no stops to use the bathroom or sleep or eat or get a foot massage. You walk all day and all night until you stop walking and die. It's sort of like the Tour de France then if the bikers had to keep riding 24 hours a day and the losers were all killed. The contest is broadcast on TV and is a huge thing in Vegas. Throngs of people show up on the sidelines to cheer on the Walkers, showing little concern even as the losers are shot on live TV. (A similar premise to another King story, "The Running Man." With reality TV the way it is today, is such a thing really so implausible? I think not.)

In the current year's competition is young Ray Garrarty, a local boy from a small town in Maine. His father was abducted years ago by "the Squads", some kind of fascist secret police. (The story takes place in an alternate history where either the US lost WWII or otherwise turned into a fascist state. It's not entirely clear what happened, but there is mention of Germans bombing the US east coast and a raid on a German nuclear plant in Santiago in the '50s.) Ray has since lived with his mother and has a girlfriend named Jan. But for whatever reason he signs up for the Long Walk along with 99 other boys from around the country. He bonds with some of them like the cynical McVries and the weirdly prophetic Stebbins even as they are ostensibly trying to kill each other. They face a variety of physical challenges like steep hills, cramps, and fever but the real challenge is the mental fatigue from pushing on while watching all the people around you drop and die. Can Ray make it to the end? And what then?

I thought this book probably would have worked better as a short story or novella. At 370 pages it's a little too long. It sort of sets into this pattern of they walk for a while, someone gets shot, they talk to each other, some more people get shot. Yadda, yadda, yadda. What saves it though is the bonding between Ray, McVries, and the other characters as they become well-fleshed characters. You really do want to see who's going to make it and who isn't.

The end was disappointing, ending with a whimper instead of a bang. After going so far, I was really hoping for something a little more epic when it gets down to the last handful of people, but instead King/Bachman wraps up the last stage in just a couple of pages. So it seems like a lot of buildup for little payoff.

Still, it was a good book and makes me want to get my copy of "The Green Mile" off the shelf.

That is all.

Trapped

Trapped
League of Peoples Book #6
by James Alan Gardner
(4/5 stars)

I've read the five other "League of Peoples" novels before this, most of which take place away from Earth. This is because Earth in 2457 is a very different place than one who watched Star Trek might imagine. Thanks to war and a mass exodus caused by first contact with aliens, Earth has reverted back to roughly the Renaissance with various feudal states all under the control of the Spark Lords, a royal family who use the League's advanced technology to keep the people of Earth in line.

So because of this, "Trapped" is more a fantasy novel than a science-fiction novel. There is some science-fiction involved as there are aliens, psychics, and teleportation, but there's also magic, swords, and a quest. That quest is thrust upon Phil Dhubhai and his friends when Phil finds a dead girl in the dorms at the school where he teaches "science."

The girl is named Rosalind and she's the daughter of a nefarious crime lord, which is only the beginning of complications for Phil. Rosalind was also set to elope with Sebastian, a gifted psychic.

With Rosalind dead, Phil and his party (a kung-fu nun, a knight, a sorceress, a psychic, a music teacher, and Phil's sometimes lover.) have to travel by sea and land to Niagara Falls to find Sebastian. Finding him is only the tip of the iceberg, as Sebastian is embroiled in an evil plot involving otherworldly forces.

Like the other "League of Peoples" novels this is a fast, fun read not to be taken too seriously. This is aided by Phil's sometimes snarky, other times self-deprecating first-person narration. As in any good quest yarn the various members of the party all get their chances to shine, some making noble sacrifices. For the most part these party members are static, though each is given a little quirk to make them more interesting and fun than a cardboard cutout.

If you haven't read the Festina Ramos books in the series ("Expendable," "Vigilant," "Hunted," "Ascending," and "Radiant") there's no need to worry as this book is not directly connected to those. It's more of a spin-off like Gardner's previous "Commitment Hour" that also took place on Earth, though was far less interesting. It does help if you've read those just for a background on the League of Peoples and Explorers and things like that, but it's not absolutely necessary.

Overall I'd say if you like some fun space opera/fantasy then this is a good read to while away a few hours. The rest of Gardner's books are good for that as well.

That is all.