Grumpy Bulldog Book Reviews

Where You Belong

2012-01-24T00:58:00.001-05:00

It's been about a year since I finished writing and editing this book--and from the look of it I should have done at least one more edit. I figured that would be enough time to get a little perspective on the story since it wouldn't be so fresh in my mind. It's good to see that after a year I still like t. Maybe after five years that will be different, though I doubt it.

I set out to write something in the style of John Irving novels like The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules and generally I think I succeeded, though not as well as though books of course. If you're so inclined you can also compare it to Great Expectations, The Adventures of Augie March, or Forrest Gump.

Like those, Where You Belong is the story of a man's epic journey through life--much of it unwillingly. Frost Devereaux never had anything like a normal upbringing. His parents conceived him in a one-night stand during a blizzard and then were wed in a shotgun wedding sans an actual shotgun. Frost's mother hates the man who knocked her up enough that she forces him to live in a barn on her property, from which he is essentially a stranger to his own son. It's not much of a surprise then that when Frost's mother dies in a traffic accident and Frost's face is badly burned, his father takes off to leave him in the care of an inattentive aunt.

From there Frost might have grown up as an isolated lunatic if not for the arrival of redheaded twins from Boston: Frankie and Frank Maguire. They establish the pecking order early on where Frankie is the boss, her brother plotting behind the scenes, and Frost the loyal sidekick to them both. This pecking order remains for the next thirty years of Frost's life.

Much as Frost would like a nice, normal life, it remains tantalizingly out of reach. Or if he does find a moment of happiness it's soon pulled away. His friendship with Frankie lasts through elementary school, but the forces of puberty soon prompt Frankie to leave him behind. He turns to Frank and they head off to an elite private school in upstate New York, but Frank soon has other plans that don't involve Frost. In college, Frost finds a new friend in his roommate Peter, a Trekkie who searches the skies for signs of extraterrestrial life. This budding friendship is soon brought to an end in tragic fashion.

From there Frost ends up in an artist's colony in New Mexico before Frankie returns to his life. Again he thinks he has happiness in his grasp only for it to be snatched away. Heartbroken, Frost finds comfort with Frank only to find he's not that different from his twin.

Maybe this description makes the story sound depressing, but really it's not. Through it all Frost, like most of us, maintains a sense of optimism that someday things are going to work out. And maybe they will. You'll just have to read to find out.

What I like most about the book in reading it a year later is that Frost remains consistent throughout. Some people have described him as passive and he is, with good cause. Never having a stable existence, not to mention a facial deformity, he is an outcast. So it really makes sense--at least to me--that he takes on the sidekick role in order not to alienate those willing to be his friends. Not to mention characters like Frankie and Frank are naturally overpowering and domineering. For the most part these characters and Fate in general move Frost around like the feather in Forrest Gump. It's only near the end where he maybe starts to take control of his own destiny. Still, he remains consistent throughout the book.

For that matter, so do Frankie and Frank. As I said earlier, their pecking order remains in place throughout the thirty years covered by the book. Frankie remains passionate, with her heart on her sleeve while Frank remains a calculating schemer. Because love is blind, Frost never understands that the Maguire twins are more alike than he thinks and generally not good for him until it's much too late. Not to say they're bad people so much as just bad for him.

The downside of writing a book like this that goes from pre-conception to early middle age is that you have a lot of ground to cover. Unless you make the book 2000 pages long, inevitably things get skipped or glossed over. In the first draft I had trouble with dwelling too long on Frost's early years, so that things had to be sped up a little. I think not too much has been lost and so it's still an effective portrait of a man who like many of us is searching for a home.

That is all.

Buy it NOW on Amazon in Kindle or Paperback!

Lyon's Legacy

2012-01-05T14:32:00.002-05:00

Lyon's Legacy (Catalyst Chronicles #1)
by Sandra Ulbrich Almazan
(4/5 stars)

As I've said before in reviews, there are some books that are much too long and there are others that are much too short. This falls into the latter category. While I enjoyed reading the book, I wished it had been longer, to give more time for the story and characters to grow.

The story takes place in the late 21st Century, in a future world that isn't apocalyptic, but not a utopia either. Getting into a PhD program is difficult because of government regulations, but Joanna Lyon still yearns to be a geneticist anyway.

Her rich uncle offers her a way to get the money for enrolling in grad school. All Joanna has to do is get on a spaceship, go through a wormhole, and find her famous ancestor, music legend Sean Lyon.

That's a problem for Joanna because she's grown up in Sean's shadow her entire life. Her uncle even tried to make her go on tour as a tribute act, but Joanna refused, creating bad blood between them. Still, if it means making her dreams come true, maybe she can do what her uncle wants and meet the man who inadvertently ruined her life.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. For a novella, there is quite a bit happening. I really wanted more interaction between Sean and Joanna. Though maybe that will happen in the sequels. Certainly everything is set up for a sequel.

As I said at the beginning, the only real complaint I have is that I wish there had been more. Everything, especially her relationship with George, seems to move so quickly. A full novel would have given the story a little more time to breathe.

Still highly recommended.

That is all.

Vallar

2011-12-15T09:37:00.002-05:00

Vallar
by Cindy Borgne
(4/5 stars)

This is from that old school of space opera with lasers and space ships and not a lot of highly technical explanations for everything. It's not as cheesy as say old "Flash Gordon" serials, but it's not "hard" science fiction either. Which is fine for people such as myself who enjoy "Star Wars" and the like.

The story takes place on Mars, which is divided into a bunch of corporate factions. The largest faction is Marscorp, whose goal it seems is to return to Earth. Marscorp's philosophy is that if you don't agree with us, then prepare for a hostile takeover. (And we're not talking about buying out your stock.)

To help them with this, they recruit a couple of young psychics, Ian Connors and his friend Nate. One day Ian has a vision of himself with a beautiful redheaded girl and becomes obsessed with finding her. But she turns out to be part of a rival corporation, Gentech. Ian has another vision of her in trouble during a Marscorp attack, so he goes to the battle to try and help. But that only winds up getting Nate killed and Ian in big trouble.

As the plot progresses, Ian discovers that while he's the one with the visions, a lot of things are not what they appear.

I found the plot intriguing. As I said at the beginning, it's not really hard sci-fi. There aren't explanations of how everything works. That's just as well for me, because that stuff can get tedious. Though I was curious why radar deflection is such a big deal. We have stealth technology on airplanes now that uses radar deflection. There was even a prototype ship made using those principles, though it was too expensive to put into production. Since this is in the future, shouldn't they have something better? At the very least if radar isn't working, shouldn't they have infrared or something to spot the ship?

Other than that, some of the dialog was kind of cheesy. Like many self-published novels it could have used another editing pass to eliminate some errors.

Overall though it was an exciting light read that's worth the discount price.

That is all.

Merlin's Charge

2011-12-11T13:01:00.000-05:00

Merlin's Charge
by Peter Joseph Swanson
(4/5 stars)

The Arthurian legend is a subject that's been around so long that there are all sorts of adaptations of it from realistic takes like Bernard Cornwell's "Warlord Trilogy" to musicals like Camelot to cartoons like Disney's "Sword in the Stone." "Merlin's Charge" falls on the "Sword in the Stone" end of the spectrum. It's a lot of whimsical, lighthearted fun, though not quite as campy as the Disney movie.

The story takes place in the 5th Century when he Roman Empire is fallen. A terrible drought has taken hold of Britain. Mother Hubbard is looking after a group of children, using her magic to lay eggs for them after their magic cauldron was stolen. Meanwhile, teenage Arthur is under the tutelage of the grumpy old wizard Merlin, learning what it's going to take to become king after he pulled the sword from the stone.

Eventually Mother Hubbard is arrested by the Church for being a witch and set to be burned at the stake. Arthur pleads with Merlin to save her, which he does, though he has another purpose in mind--making Mother Hubbard his wife because even wizards need some company in bed.

When they compare notes, Mother Hubbard and Merlin decide they should try to find the cauldron, otherwise known as the grail. Joining them in the quest are Parsifal, son of a Roman general, and a corrupt abbot of the Church, whose primarily function is to go around declaring everything evil.

The book isn't very long; it only took me a few hours to read it on my Kindle. A lot of it is spent talking, which is good in some ways because it means no windy passages of description, although a few more descriptions might have been helpful sometimes. I think what surprised me the most was that despite being called MERLIN'S Charge, Merlin is largely absent from the grand finale.

Still, if you're a fan of Arthurian legend, especially "The Sword in the Stone" then you'll enjoy this hilarious new take on the subject.

That is all.

The House on the Corner

2011-12-08T22:15:00.002-05:00

The House on the Corner
by Andrew Leon
(3/5 stars)

This starts off like the stereotypical haunted house story. The Howard family (Air Force master sergeant Will, his wife Claire, 12-year-old Tom, 10-year-old Sam, and 6-year-old Ruth) move from Denver to Shreveport, Louisiana. The house they move into is old and spooky-looking with a lot of flaking paint, dusty, and overly large rooms. Some of those rooms have strange things in them. Oh, and the house's last inhabitants disappeared.

So through 40% of the book I kept waiting for there to be the bumps in the night and such that you would expect in a haunted house story. But then the book does a 180 from that and becomes more like "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." There becomes a lot of talk about fairies, Guardians, Towers, wizards, and a magic sword. Which is a little surprising because there are so many Star Wars references.

The book gets much more interesting once that stuff comes into play. Unfortunately at that point there's only 60% off. I think the author bit off more than he could chew at that point. It made for a rushed ending that wasn't extremely satisfying to me.

Also, the book is in dire need of a real editor. A lot of typos. Also, I'm not fond of authors who use the word "suddenly" a lot.

There are still a lot of good things about this book. The first-person narration between Tom, Sam, and Ruth is a little confusing at first but gets easier as it goes on. I liked the kids, especially Sam and Ruth. The relationship between the kids was well-drawn. And once the book really gets going it's hard to put down--or shut off the Kindle.

That is all.

A Dead God's Wrath

2011-12-04T18:02:00.001-05:00

A Dead God's Wrath
By Rusty Webb
(4/5 stars)

The Old West meets the future in this novella. It starts out as a fairly conventional Western scenario: Thomas's main squeeze Mary is kidnapped by the evil O'Malley brothers gang. They demand Thomas give them a thousand bucks (a lot of money back in 1895) by daylight or they're going to kill Mary.

Thomas of course doesn't have that kind of money. But no problem, because he runs into a black guy with a disfigured face who seems to be an old flame of Mary's. But as Thomas encounters the O'Malley's, he finds things aren't what they seem.

I think if I have any complaint, I wish this were longer. The author's notes indicate this is part of a universe, but without reading any of that, I'm not sure exactly what happens at the end. So I'm really hoping there is a sequel or expanded edition in the future.

Otherwise, this was an engrossing story that I read in about an hour or so. It's definitely worth the 99 cents. The formatting is good too for the Kindle, although I noticed a few typos that could be cleaned up.

That is all.

Soon I Will Be Invincible

2011-12-02T16:29:00.000-05:00

Soon I Will Be Invincible
by Austin Grossman
(4/5 stars)

I'm not really much of a comic book reader, so most of my superhero experience comes from "Superfriends" reruns, video games, and the vast array of movies in the last decade. Because of that I probably missed a few in-jokes in this book. I'm just saying.

Anyway, the story for "Soon I Will Be Invincible" is pretty much a comic book without the pictures. Though actually it's simpler than some of the big comic book story arcs I've read about in recent years. I mean there's no time traveling or dimension hopping or any of that, though those things are referenced as having happened at one point.

When it begins, Doctor Impossible (the resident Dr. Doom of this universe) is imprisoned for the twelfth or more time. Meanwhile, Earth's mightiest hero CoreFire (based on Superman) has gone missing. Fatale, a cyborg who used to work for the government, is brought in as part of a new superteam known as the New Champions to find out what became of CoreFire.

Part of that involves interviewing Dr. Impossible. He uses this as a chance to escape and begin with his master plan for finally taking over the world. Fatale and the rest of the Champions--Damsel, daughter of a former hero and an alien princess; Blackwolf (based on Batman); Elphin (an elf warrior); Rainbow Fire, a teenage cyborg; Feral, a mutant cat; and Mr. Mystic (based on Dr. Strange)--go chasing after Dr. Impossible but in true superhero fashion are always one step behind.

Interspersed in the Dr. Impossible parts of the narration are flashbacks to his origins, although we never learn his entire real name. There's also some stuff about some of his previous schemes and battles with superheroes.

The whole thing plays out pretty straight. There's no real attempt to base the story in a realistic world like the recent Batman movies. There are no social concerns like "Watchmen". There's violence but it's not over-the-top without much in the way of gore. Not really any sex either. So basically it's a little more introspective Saturday morning cartoon.

Yet I have to say I was really curious to find out what Dr. Impossible was going to do and if he was finally going to succeed.

So overall it's fun light reading, especially if you like superheroes. And in terms of plot it's a cut above the more recent "After the Golden Age" I read.

That is all.

Chicago Lightning

2011-11-22T12:12:00.003-05:00

Chicago Lightning
By Max Allan Collins
(3.5/5 stars)

In the introduction the author says how he admires Dashiell Hammett and that shows from these stories. Hammett isn't a terrible writer, but Raymond Chandler is a lot better. The stories in "Chicago Lightning" have more of Hammett's straightforward style than Chandler's complexity.

The stories revolve around Nate Heller, a former cop turned private investigator in Chicago. The stories range from 1933 to 1949 and are arranged chronologically by setting, not in order they were written. Most of the stories involve someone being murdered.

My main criticism is that most of the stories are so straightforward. There aren't a lot of twists and turns in the mysteries. I know they're short stories (generally about 30 pages) but having read the collection of Chandler stories, they were much more complicated, often involving multiple crimes.

While I don't usually get too much into particular stories, there were a couple that stuck out in my memory--mostly because they were the weakest too. Also two of the earliest, written in the mid-80s, though they're put in the middle of the collection.

"Strawberry Teardrop" has Heller visiting Cleveland and his old friend Elliott Ness. In the course of about 3 days--and 20 pages--Heller and a female sidekick solve the Kingsbury Run serial killings, which were never officially solved. It seemed really unbelievable to me how easily these famous murders were solved. Not really plausible in my mind. Though I think Collins later adapted it into a full-length novel.

"Scrap" was probably the shortest of the bunch. It's also a real nothing of a story. Heller talks to some union officials. That's about it. Not a very interesting story.

Despite that it's called CHICAGO Lightning, about a third of the stories take place in Cleveland/Los Angeles. Besides Ness, Heller also interacts with Capone successor Frank Nitti and Mickey Cohen, who was prominently referenced in "LA Confidential." Nitti and "Boss" John Rooney also appear in "Road to Perdition" which was based on the graphic novel by Collins. I'm not really a big fan of involving the historical figures. That's hard to pull off very well and I'm a little skeptical that a low-level PI like Heller could really know all these people as intimately as he does.

Anyway, though I didn't like some of these stories and found them a little too uncomplicated, most of them aren't boring. They make for some good, light reading.

On a side note, I know this was an advanced copy, but it was annoying not to have a Table of Contents. Also, I hate short story collections that don't update the heading for the particular story. Those both make it easy to know how where I'm at and how much farther I have to go for each story. That's always nice to know when I'm reading at lunch or something.

That is all.

The Marriage Plot

2011-10-31T22:55:00.002-05:00

The Marriage Plot
By Jeffrey Eugenides
(2/5 stars)

It was about eight months ago when I finished reading Richard Russo's "Bridge of Sighs" which was the first novel Russo published after winning the Pulitzer. Overall I found it to be extremely dull. Part of what I theorized was that Russo had tried way too hard to prove himself after winning the highest award of American literature.

I mention that because this is Eugenides's first novel after winning the Pulitzer for "Middlesex" and it suffers from the same problems, although it mercifully isn't as long. Overall Eugenides's attempts to create something profound and deep winds up being a dull slog, not anywhere near as good as his two previous novels.

First off, I think his entire concept that the "marriage plot" doesn't exist anymore is flawed. There are plenty of books that still deal with marriage. (Even I've written one!) Maybe there aren't as many waltzes and as much worrying about manners, but marriage still remains a key part of many literary novels. More than a few of those are updates of Jane Austen or other Victorian stories too. Really Jane Austen has been updated every which way by now from sequels to being told from different narrators to being set in modern day to adding zombies and sea monsters. So there's nothing groundbreaking about this story.

This story takes place in the 1980s probably for the reason that it was easier for the author to write about twentysomethings during the period when he was twentysomething as opposed to trying to write about the 2010s. Mentioning the recession of the early 80s is of course supposed to make us think of the parallels to now.

It all starts at Brown University in Rhode Island. Spoiled little rich girl Madeline is pursuing a useless degree in English, focusing on Victorian literature. You can afford to waste your life like that when Mommy and Daddy (which she still calls them despite being 22) are paying all the bills. Madeline is finally graduating. It takes Eugenides a good track of the audiobook to finally inform us that the doorbell is ringing and her parents are visiting to watch her graduate.

Weeks earlier she broke up with Leonard, a quirky poor boy from Oregon. But on the way to graduating, she finds out Leonard is in the hospital after a nervous breakdown. She finds out that he's suffering from manic depression. Madeline is the type suffering from Florence Nightingale syndrome and soon becomes essentially Leonard's nurse.

At the same time, in a largely pointless subplot, Madeline's sometimes friend Mitchell is doing like so many kids his age and going backpacking through Europe with his friend Larry. Along the way Mitchell obsesses about Madeline. Why? Because the plot calls for it. I can't see much about her that's worth obsessing about. He also becomes Born Again and says "the Jesus Prayer" about 700 times, which is really annoying in an audiobook because I wondered if the CD was skipping. He finally goes to help Mother Teresa in India.

Eventually, thanks to unwisely cutting back on his meds, Leonard convinces Madeline to marry him. Needless to say this doesn't work out so well.

To put it mildly, this book was drudgery. None of the characters are very likable. Madeline is a whiny bore. Leonard is often a bully. Mitchell is a creep who should be watching Madeline with high-powered binoculars. There's no reason I'd ever want to read about any of these people. Nor do I care who marries who or doesn't marry who. They could all fall off a cliff for all I care.

The writing is mostly fine, though there was one laughable section where Mitchell stares at a French girl's butt and thinks that it's alive and looking at him. That only made me think of Jim Carrey in "Ace Ventura" talking out his butt, which I do all the time.

What I hate most of all though is that it uses that structure where it starts in the present and then we have to go back through what's happened before that. Often we have to hear what happens from Madeline's point of view and then Leonard's or Mitchell's. There's often gratuitous exposition, most of it not mattering at all. There's so much discussion of philosophy, literature, and religion classes that the reader should get course credit at Brown for reading it.

Really there are so many better books you could read. For twentysomethings in the '80s read "Less Than Zero" or "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh." For a novel about a woman torn between a man with a debilitating condition and another guy, read "The Dive From Clausen's Pier." Or you could read Jane Austen.

That is all.

Machine Man

2011-10-10T19:34:00.002-05:00

Machine Man
by Max Barry
(3/5 stars)

There are a lot of books that start off with a good idea, but then fade with the execution of that idea. "Machine Man" is one of those. It starts off with a good concept, but doesn't deliver.

Dr. Charles Neumann is an engineer who's always gotten along better with machines than people. He works at Better Future, a research and development company that creates all sorts of products. One day Charles is looking for his phone in the lab when he accidentally gets his leg torn of by a machine.

Charles is rushed to the hospital, where he meets Lola, who works with prostheses. She shows him the variety of legs they have available and Charles laments how primitive they are. So after returning to work, he decides to invent something better. Which he does. He creates mechanical legs that are stronger, faster, better.

But Charles doesn't want to stop there. Nor does Better Future want him to.

I had to sympathize with Charles at the beginning. When I get blisters from my stupid hammertoes I wonder why I can't get sweet robot feet that wouldn't blister or get tired. Then I could walk all day if I wanted to! At the same time I don't think I'd want to cut off my own legs to do that. Nor would I want to turn myself into Robocop.

That's basically what happens to Charles as the book goes on. Increasingly he becomes more machine than man as Ben Kenobi said about Darth Vader. It's harder to sympathize with him then as the book goes on. Really after the interesting concept at the start it keeps getting darker and darker. That's not really where I wanted to see it go. I was hoping for something a little more lighthearted, as it was in the beginning. But I guess if you like your humor really black, then this isn't bad.

That is all.

The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man

2011-10-10T10:41:00.000-05:00

The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man
by Michael Chabon
(2/5 stars)

Sadly the closest I have to a child is a niece and she's only 7-months old, which is probably about 17 months too young for this. I'd have to say the recommended age for this is preschool and below. Otherwise it's probably not that entertaining. The story is so bland, cliche, and predictable that only a small child would find it fresh or interesting. I figured out the "secret" by the product description alone. Really, this is the best a Pulitzer Prize-winning author could do? Very sad indeed.

Since I'm not an expert on children's books, I can't really say how good the art is or not. Like the story it's serviceable. Not really flashy or anything.

Overall this won't make you forget any of the great children's books of the past. Since everyone from Madonna to Terrell Owens to Hillary Clinton has a children's book out these days, I don't think the world really needed another one. But I guess if your kid likes superheroes and is bored of all the other books out there, then you could try this. Not that I'd recommend paying full price for it.

That is all.

I'm A Box

2011-10-05T13:08:00.000-05:00

I'm A Box
by Natalia Carrero
(3/5 stars)

Obviously I'm not much of an expert on world literature because I had no idea Clarice Lispector was a real person. Which actually makes "I'm a Box" even creepier than I already thought it was. As a writer it's only natural to idolize another writer; I have a serious crush on novelist John Irving. But the extremes Nadila goes to in this book border on the pathological.

Nadila, like many twenty-somethings is confused and trying to "find herself." And like many would-be writers, she tries to write but finds she doesn't have anything to say. This is probably because she's not a very interesting person. By all accounts she spends most of her time hiding from the world, reading Lispector's books. Nor does she seem to realize that writing isn't the kind of thing you can force like a bowel movement; the harder you try to force it, the less you'll accomplish.

Of course it's not just enough for Nadila to simply read Lispector's books. She's not the kind of fan who just appreciates the author's works and maybe writes a letter or something. No, she's that kind of obsessed, crazy fan who wants to BECOME the author. She tries copying Lispector's handwriting, she imagines long conversations with the author, and even goes around in a T-shirt with a line of Lispector's scribbled on it. The next logical step would have been to find Lispector's grave and ransack it. Maybe she didn't have the money for that.

The novel includes a lot of sayings of Lispector's that seem like literary fortune cookies. Surprisingly there's not much from her actual books. There are also pictures of other things, including Nadila's T-shirt I mentioned. At times the narrative gets confusing because some of it is taking place in the 1990s but then things from the 2000s are mentioned so I'm not quite sure when something is taking place.

As I said, I found a lot of this to go from simple hero worship to creepy obsessiveness. It's fine to respect an author and her work, but trying to commune with her dead spirit, staging fake conversations, and trying to interject yourself into her books goes beyond the rational to the point where you need psychiatric help.

That is all.

Other Kingdoms

2011-09-14T08:06:00.001-05:00

Other Kingdoms
by Richard Matheson
(3.5/5 stars)

The true test of whether you want to read this book might be: did you ever think Tinkerbell was hot? Or did you ever watch "Fern Gully" and wish you could be the guy who gets shrunk and live with pixies? Because that's pretty much what's going on here.

Though Matheson takes about 2/3 of the book to get up to that point. First, we have Alex White, who in 1918 joins the army out of spite because his abusive father is in the navy. Take that, Dad! Alex gets shipped to the trenches of France, which as we all know by now aren't a fun place to be. There he meets a British soldier named Harold and they become friends. Harold tells him about a village called Gatford that is just gorgeous--his word for it.

So after Harold is killed and Alex is wounded, he decides to go to Gatford. He soon finds that Gatford is a strange place, a place where they believe in "little people" or "faeries" or fairies to use the American spelling. But so long as you stay on the paths in the woods you'll be all right.

Except of course Alex doesn't stay on the path and comes under attack by something. He's rescued by a middle-aged redheaded woman named Magda. She's believed to be a witch by the townspeople. And Alex soon finds that out for himself. She's got some other weird quirks too.

But one day when Magda isn't around, Alex hears some beautiful singing and sees a tiny blond woman in the woods. Her name is Ruthana and despite not having talked to Alex before, she's madly in love with him and he's madly in love with her.

And the rest pretty much follows as a less happy "Fern Gully" or "Avatar" or "Dances With Wolves" or whatever movie you want to use.

The biggest drawback of the book is the narration Matheson uses. Alex is 82 when he writes the book and since his time in Gatford he went on to write a series of pulp novels under the name "Arthur Black." And he references this fact about 400 times during the novel, like every time he uses an alliterative phrase he makes an aside that it's a bad Arthur Black habit. Which is funny the first few times, but soon becomes a distraction and then an annoyance. I understand that Matheson was trying to show that Alex is rambling and a bit senile at 82, but he overplays it a bit too much for me.

The other thing is I don't know why Magda or Ruthana want Alex. There's nothing remarkable about him at all. Maybe it's because they don't get many 18-year-old Americans in the woods of Gatford.

I also thought the descriptions of the fairy village and lifestyle were somewhat lacking. I never really got a sense of where or how the fairies lived. Left to my own devices I start thinking of Keebler elves living in trees or Smurfs with mushroom houses. So that could have been handled better.

Despite all that I found this a compelling read. I ripped through it in about three days. It's the kind of book I wouldn't recommend paying full price for, but it's not a bad read. Though Matheson has done a lot better work in his career like "I Am Legend" or his work on "The Twilight Zone" for starters.

That is all.

Boxer Beetle

2011-09-09T22:14:00.002-05:00

Boxer Beetle
by Ned Beauman
(4/5 stars)

There are quite a few times when I complain about a book's length. Usually I'll say it's too long and thus drags at parts. "Boxer Beetle" is one of those that's the opposite. At roughly 250 pages, it's really too short for its interconnected plots.

The framing device for the story begins with a London man named Kevin who has a rare medical condition that causes him to smell really bad. (There's a medical term for it I won't attempt to spell.) Kevin is also a collector of Nazi artifacts. Not because he is a Nazi or like Nazis. Like the professor of Hitler Studies in DeLillo's "White Noise", Kevin just sees an opportunity to take advantage of a niche market.

Then one night his employer asks him to check on a private investigator who's looking into the whereabouts of the remains of Seth "Sinner" Roach, a dwarf Jewish boxer back in the '30s. There's also something about a rare beetle bred by Dr. Philip Erskine, a fascist doctor in the '30s interested in beetles and eugenics. But like in many mysteries, when Kevin gets to the PI's office, he finds the investigator dead and is soon visited by a Welsh hitman, who enlists Kevin's help in searching for the boxer and the beetle.

The framing story is then interwoven with those of Roach and Erskine. I'm not sure how much I should mention about that. Suffice it to say that Roach and Erskine's stories overlap in surprising ways.

As I said though, the story is too short. Kevin and the hitman find clues much too easily, with no real obstacles in their path. Their story proves to be less interesting than that of Roach and Erskine and really never contributes anything more than the framing device for the narrative. The relationship between Roach and Erskine is interesting and could have used more exploration. Roach himself is especially interesting and I wish there could be a whole book about just him.

The writing is good, though not great. I found this one passage especially awkward: "Although Sinner tried to be nearly as gentle with Erskine as he'd been with his sister, Erskine soon found himself biting into his own forearm through his shirtsleeve." There's a lot of pronouns and it seems the author switches point of view in mid-sentence. It's the kind of thing I would have pointed out in any critique group for the author to change. Not sure why professional editors don't notice these things.

Anyway, this is an interesting book and a quick read. In terms of historical mysteries it doesn't rise to the level of Byatt's "Possession" but it's not bad either.

That is all.

PS: If you do read this, look for a cameo by the author as one of Kevin's Internet "friends."

Nightwoods

2011-09-04T23:44:00.002-05:00

Nightwoods
by Charles Frazier
(4/5 stars)

I read Frazier's "Cold Mountain" and while I enjoyed it, I think "Nightwoods" is a far more accessible book for more casual readers. After a slow start it becomes a thriller not unlike a Dean Koontz book I once read, though Frazier is a better writer by far.

This takes place in the 1960s in the Appalachians somewhere, a little lake town that isn't really named. Luce lives up there in an old lodge as the caretaker. She's alone since the old man who owned the place died. But then the state brings her slain sister Lily's two kids. You have to suspend a little disbelief that even in the '60s they'd give Luce custody of two small children--especially two small children with psychological problems--when she has no income to speak of and no home of her own. But I digress.

The children are named Dolores and Frank. They're a couple of little pyromaniacs who never speak. Whether they're autistic or something similar or just traumatized isn't entirely answered.

The next fifty pages or so are as dull as Maryanne Robinson's "Housekeeping" only with nature walks and lighting fires instead of braiding hair and making cookies. Things begin to pick up when the children's stepfather Bud is introduced. He of course murdered Lily and perhaps traumatized the kids. Though it's not intentional, he of course winds up in the lake town in search of thousands of dollars he stole and that Lily hid somewhere.

Also arriving on the scene is the beach bum Stubblefield. His grandfather was the one who owned the lodge where Luce and the children are staying. When he was 17, Stubblefield had a crush on Luce that was not reciprocated. But now Stubblefield sees a second chance.

Those are all the pieces of the puzzle. You might be able to figure out how they all go together. Much of it is predictable, though Frazier is a good enough writer that it never seems hackneyed. While it doesn't have the epic grandeur of "Cold Mountain" there's still a lot of rural, American Gothic flavor to be had. It isn't as good as Faulkner, but it's not as bad as Dean Koontz either.

Although something troubling to me is that the book slips from past tense to present tense in the last part. I'm not sure why that happened. It's always odd when authors do that stuff.

That is all.

Life of Pi

2011-08-25T08:12:00.002-05:00

This was one of those books I heard people talking about seven or eight years ago and I kept meaning to get around to it. Though after I read Martel's first novel "Self" I was less inclined to read this because that novel was so boring that it routinely put me to sleep. But eventually I found a copy of this for a really low price so I figured I might as well do it.

I started to regret that decision during the first 150 pages. Like "Self" these pages are so dull. Mostly they concern Pi Patel as he tries different religions like an Indian version of "Are You There God, It's Me Margaret." This might have been interesting if you haven't read any fiction about India before but I've read Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" and John Irving's "Son of the Circus" which were both far more interesting in terms of Indian culture. Then too there was also the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" that also dealt with India and its religious divisions.

So all of that made those first 150 pages a chore to plow through. I kept wondering, "When are we getting to the shipwreck with the tiger?" That's the hook for this novel isn't it? Boy in a lifeboat with a tiger?

Well it finally happened once Pi's father decides to move his family to Canada to escape the Idira Gandhi regime. The ship they're on with most of the animals from their little zoo in India--to be sold to American/Canadian zoos--sinks shortly after leaving the Philippines.

The crew throws Pi into a lifeboat, where soon he finds that he's sharing space with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a tiger! That's a lot of animals to cram into what's described as one hundred square feet. Actually I have serious doubts that you could hide a tiger under a tarp in that small amount of space.

Anyway (spoiler alert!) it eventually ends up with just Pi and the tiger as they cross the Pacific Ocean. The book at this point deals mostly with Pi's struggle to survive. Not only to find food and water, but also to deal with his boatmate, the tiger named Richard Parker. It's a constant struggle, one that forces Pi to compromise many of his religious beliefs, such as his aversion to eating meat.

This was where the book came to life and became much more interesting. Though the problem with being on a lifeboat is that there's a limit to just how much you can do. With "Robinson Crusoe" or "Lord of the Flies" or even "Gilligan's Island" where the main character(s) is marooned on an island, there's far more you can do because you have a whole island to explore. That makes far more potential for adventure than a boat floating on the water, where essentially everything has to come to you.

For the most part Martel manages to make this interesting with the relationship between Pi and Richard Parker. Then there are strange incidents like meeting another lifeboat or the mysterious island they come upon.

Although what I think is missing is more about his spiritual state. A couple of times he says it brings him closer to God, though which one? Since he believes in the Christian God, Allah, and all the Hindu gods, which one(s) is he getting closer to? Or maybe there's just one ubergod?

The ending is also a little disappointing and mildly offensive with the vaudevillian act between Pi and a pair of Japanese shipping company officers. So basically everything off the lifeboat is far less interesting than everything on the lifeboat. Maybe they should have stayed on the boat.

That is all.

The Way Life Should Be

2011-07-17T16:39:00.000-05:00

The Way Life Should Be
by Terry Shaw
(3/5 stars)

I vaguely remember hearing about the First Chapters contest on the Gather website back in 2007. I'm sure I probably read about this book as it advanced through the contest and finally won. But I'd pretty much forgotten about it until I saw this at the Bargain Books on clearance and then just for the irony decided to buy and read it.

I wouldn't be surprised if the author watched a lot of "Murder She Wrote" back in the '80s. The book takes place in the small town of Stone Harbor, Maine, similar to Murder She Wrote that frequently took place in the small town of Cabot Cove, Maine. The main detective is John Quinn, an editor and writer for the Stone Harbor Pilot newspaper. Of course in Murder She Wrote the "she" was mystery writer Jessica Fletcher. In both there's also a bumbling sheriff decrying the mystery solver's big city ways, although Alvah Sears is a bit meaner than the Tom Bosley character in "Murder She Wrote."

Like most episodes of Murder She Wrote, we start out with the murder. In the case of this book it's Paul Stanwood. He's at a local park late one night, presumably to check out reports of gay sex going on. Someone beats him to death with a flashlight.

John Quinn comes onto the case as both reporter/editor and Paul's childhood best friend. He bumps heads with Sheriff Sears (sometimes about literally) and other local figures, including his own cousin Seth as he investigates the murder. Quinn faces danger a few times, notably during a hike in the wood where he and his son are shot at by a red herring.

I found most of the book to be underwhelming, probably in large part because I've read a lot of Raymond Chandler in the last few months; now there's someone who knew how to write a real mystery! The writing is pretty amateur in that there's a lot of "head-hopping" in scenes and using adverbs, things that real agents and publishers say are no-nos. The characters are pretty much stock, most probably familiar to "Murder She Wrote" viewers. But I will credit the author in that I did not solve the mystery before it was revealed, so he's got that going for him.

Basically if you like cozy mysteries or "Murder She Wrote" then this is an OK book, but just an OK book. And I have to wonder if this was the best of the 2,600 contest entries how bad the other 2,599 were.

That is all.

The Great American Novel

2011-06-04T20:37:00.002-05:00

The Great American Novel
By Philip Roth
4/5 stars

"The Great American Novel" is a baseball story but it's as far from "Field of Dreams" as one can get. There's no schmaltzy father-son bonding or any patriotic nonsense about how important baseball is to America. While Roth's novel does insinuate that baseball is a part of American life, what it shows is that baseball is largely a reflection of how foolish America can be.

Most of the book takes place in 1943, when the Port Ruppert, New Jersey Mundys are forced out of their home stadium to make room for soldier barracks. Instead of finding a new park, like at a local high school or college, the Mundys are forced to play every single game on the road.

Making things worse the Mundys are a terrible team. Not even terrible like "The Bad News Bears" or lovable losers like the Chicago Cubs. No, the Mundys are irredeemably awful. Their lineup features a French-Canadian who doesn't speak any English, a 50-year-old third baseman, a 14-year-old second baseman, a one-legged catcher, a first baseman who only plays well if he's drunk, and the only good player, an 18-year-old whose father pays the Mundys to take him to teach his arrogant son some humility. Their pitching staff is even worse, featuring mostly elderly men, including a Mexican who rolls his pitches to home plate to save himself some pain. When they do make a trade, they trade a one-armed outfielder for a dwarf pitcher.

Needless to say the Mundys do terribly. So terribly their manager can't stand to look at them and instead goes to local churches to pray. The only time when they do well is when one player spikes their food, which considering this book is from 1973 was rather prophetic about the steroids era 25-30 years later.

But the Mundys are undone, as is the Patriot League they play in, not by their terrible play on the field. Rather they are done in by misplaced patriotism that creates a Red Scare years before McCarthy.

The Mundys and their league are a reflection of all of America's faults: the fear, the greed, the arrogance, and the downright stupidity are just as much a part of American life as baseball and apple pie.

While most of the book is entertaining, the beginning and end are not all that good. The lengthy prologue especially will prove daunting to readers. Most of that entails the narrator (Word "Smitty" Smith, who used to be a beat reporter for the Mundys) trying to get baseball to remember the Mundys and Patriot League and discussing the concept of "The Great American Novel" with Ernest Hemingway. But especially the first two pages of Smitty discussing the importance of alliteration might have the casual reader putting the book away. As for the end, the Red Scare idea gets to be a little bit overdone and really makes you question how dumb some people can be.

Another word of warning is that like other Roth novels, it features some sexual humor that some readers might find offensive. In particular is a scene where two Mundy players visit a very unique brothel. Which again makes this a far cry from some other baseball novels.

Overall, despite its faults, I really enjoyed this very different take on baseball and America. For another baseball book that isn't all happy or schmaltzy, check out "Battle Creek" by Scott Lassiter.

That is all.

Bright's Passage

2011-05-16T08:02:00.002-05:00

Bright's Passage
by Josh Ritter
(3/5 stars)
I own a couple of Josh Ritter's folk-pop (or whatever you call it) albums, so when I saw on the Vine newsletter that he had written a novel I thought I'd see how good it was. My final verdict is that Ritter is a better songwriter. In time he could become a decent novelist, but this is an amateur effort. If not for the fact he's somewhat well known already, I doubt it would have been published, so it's up there with those books by the likes of celebrities like Snooki and Pam Anderson.

That's not to say the book is terrible either. It's a serviceable book, but nothing that will make you forget about Cormac McCarthy either.

The basic premise is like "Cold Mountain" with a veteran taking a journey after a war. Except it's World War I and the war's been over for a couple years. Also, Henry Bright doesn't go nearly as far in his journey.

He also has along with him a newborn baby, his son, who is born at the start of the book. The first moment you have to suspend disbelief is to accept the idea Henry can take a baby who was just born that day on an extended road trip by foot. The second and bigger moment is that Henry talks to his horse and the horse talks back.

Henry believes the horse to be inhabited by an angel who protected him from harm in World War I. The angel persuades Henry to abduct his cousin Rachel and "marry" her (though it's not a real wedding) and get her knocked up to breed the Future King of Heaven. If Henry knew anything about the Bible he might be more skeptical about exactly what kind of an "angel" this really is.

But he doesn't, so he abducts Rachel and they're happy and have the baby. She unfortunately dies in childbirth and Henry takes off to escape her vengeful father "the Colonel" and his two sons Corwin and Duncan. The angel also tells Henry to burn down his cabin, which unfortunately leads to a wildfire that threatens to burn down a large chunk of West Virginia.

With his baby, the horse, and a goat, Henry tries to stay ahead of the fire and winds up in a coal-mining company town where he finds refuge at a hotel, but the the Colonel and sons are close on his trail!

Sprinkled in throughout are Henry's memories of World War I, which was pretty unpleasant with the trenches, mustard gas, and so forth. This of course leads to Henry's first encounter with "the angel."

There's not much to fault in Ritter's writing style. For a songwriter he does a pretty good job with the novel format, except for a bit of head-hopping here and there, something publishers frown on--unless you're a celebrity. What brings the novel down are a couple of poor strategic decisions.

First is that Henry's journey isn't very long. Equivalently it's like going from New York City to New Jersey. Or at least it feels that way. There's not the epicness of the soldier's odyssey in "Cold Mountain" or of course Odysseus in "The Odyssey." Which is too bad because an epic journey lets you work in more interesting characters and situations.

The second problem are the villains. The Colonel and his two bumbling idiot sons feel straight out of central casting. It really brings the whole novel down a notch. There was a good opportunity to write something thoughtful about faith, religion, and heroism and so forth but the stereotypical villains ruin all of that.

Those are the kind of mistakes I wouldn't expect a more experienced novelist to make, though they do from time to time. Still, while it's not as bad as I'm sure Snooki and Pam Anderson's probably largely ghost-written novels are, Ritter still has a lot to learn about the book writing biz.

In the meantime I hope he gets back to songwriting.

That is all.

(PS: I know it's an ARC, but this seems like it had far more errors than any of the previous ones I've read. The editor has his/her work cut out for him/her.)

The Marbury Lens

2011-05-04T15:27:00.000-05:00

The Marbury Lens
by Andrew Smith
(3/5 stars)

On the whole, I didn't find this a very satisfying read. Of course I'm not into dystopian fiction, so I wasn't primed to like this in the first place, so feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt. But for the most part I left this with far more questions than answers, which maybe was the point to set up sequels. Though as I said in another book review, you have to hook me in the first book to make me read more and this did not succeed.

The plot involves 16-year-old Jack, who one night after a drunken party is abducted by a man named Freddie for a few days until he escapes. With the help of his friend Conner, they kill Freddie but don't bother telling the police about any of it. Instead they go off alone to England. After another night drinking (because he didn't learn the first time) Jack receives some mysterious glasses.

These glasses transport him to the mysterious world of Marbury. Though unlike Narnia, it's not a nice place with talking animals and centaurs and stuff. Instead it's a dried-up husk populated by violent cannibals who at one time were maybe human. Jack and two boys named Ben and Griffin seem to be the only normal humans around. They struggle to survive and maybe find more people.

With the glasses and the help of a ghost, Jack keeps going back and forth from the "real" world to Marbury. But what is real?

It's too bad the story doesn't provide an answer to that or my other questions. (My first question, why is it called Marbury? That sounds like the name for a brand of marmalade.) Like I said, maybe Smith is hoping to answer the questions in a future sequel. But also as I said, I wouldn't have much interest in reading it. Unlike Narnia or Middle Earth or other fantasy worlds, I don't see Marbury as one worth revisiting. Maybe if you like "The Road" or "Mad Max" or "The Postman" you'd find it worthwhile.

Also, as a backhanded compliment, Smith does a good job of making Jack a realistic teenage boy. Unfortunately that means he's usually sullen and whiny. I have no idea what the beautiful Nickie sees in him. Well, hormones and all that maybe.

On a final note, if you're a parent, this isn't something you want younger children reading. There's a lot of swearing, violence, and gore. It's pretty R-rated for a YA novel. I don't think I'd want my niece reading it until she's at least 17, if at all. Though I have a long time to worry about that.

That is all.

Losing Graceland

2011-04-26T21:52:00.000-05:00

Losing Graceland
by Micah Nathan
(3/5 stars)

The high concept pitch for this book would be: "Blues Brothers" meets "Bubba Ho-Tep." A decrepit old man who at least thinks he's Elvis Presley goes on a mission from God in order to rescue his illegitimate granddaughter Nadine, who's a stripper in Memphis.

Like both of those movies I mentioned, there needs to be a second banana. This is Ben Fish, who recently graduated from college with a useless anthropology degree. Ben sees an ad in the paper promising a lot of money for driving the old man from suburban Buffalo to Memphis. It seems easy enough but of course it isn't.

Along the way, Ben and the old man run into numerous characters, like bikers, a half-Asian prostitute, and some girls in a bar. They also fight a crooked construction company, confront a pimp, and enter an Elvis impersonator contest. These incidents and characters sound more interesting than they really are.

I found the book entertaining enough and breezed through it in a few hours, but that's also the problem. It's too short. I think Nathan's strategic blunder was setting Ben and the old man in Buffalo. That makes the journey far too short. If they had been starting in Los Angeles that would have made for a much longer trip. What would happen with the old man in Vegas? Now that would have been interesting. But maybe the author is far more familiar with the Buffalo area and didn't feel confident enough writing about anywhere else.

The other bugaboo is that Nathan frequently "head hops" or switches from one character's perspective to another. This is the kind of thing that if I showed it to a critique group they'd scream bloody murder. In this case I would have preferred to keep the focus on Ben and his growth as the road trip goes on. Not that he grows an awful lot. I won't give away just how much or how little.

Anyway, if you're a fan of Elvis this is a fun little read. It won't really challenge you and you can finish it in a couple of hours and move on to something more substantial.

I hope this review satisfies your Suspicious Minds...(I got a million of those!)

That is all.

Raymond Chandler: Complete Short Stories

2011-04-18T12:53:00.001-05:00

Raymond Chandler: Complete Short Stories

by Raymond Chandler

(5/5 stars)

It’s always problematic in reviewing a book of short stories because it would take a long time to describe each story. That’s especially true of this book, which collects all of Raymond Chandler’s short stories and comes out to a whopping 1,300 pages. So I’m just going to deal with general issues and some highlights.

From the bibliography most of these stories were published between 1933 and 1939, when Chandler began turning these short stories into novels. The last three or so were published near or after his death in 1959.

As you’d expect, most of these are detective stories. They feature a variety of lead characters, who are generally all the same. There’s the familiar Philip Marlowe from Chandler’s novels, but also Nick Carmady, John Dalmas, John Evans, and others. By and large they are all private investigators, a bit world-weary and cynical, a bit down on their luck, but who maintain their own moral code. They want to finish the jobs they start and do it right, though they have no compunction about hiding evidence from the law if they feel it necessary. There are a couple of notable exceptions to this: “Pearls Are a Nuisance” features a learned playboy as the investigator and “The Bronze Door” features an old henpecked British man. The latter is actually more of a supernatural horror story than a detective story, one that could have made for a good “Twilight Zone” episode years later.

Generally, like Chandler’s novels, the stories feature the private investigator getting wrapped up into a case combining some (or all) of four crimes: missing persons, murder, blackmail, and theft—the thefts usually involving jewels. There’s usually a girl involved. Sometimes she’s bad, sometimes she’s good, or sometimes she’s good and turns out to be bad.

As with most short story collections I’ve read (including my own!) there can at times be some drag involved from too many stories that seem the same. None of the stories are really bad, but at times they feel a little too similar to each other. If you’ve read Chandler’s novels then some of these might seem really familiar because he apparently used these stories as fodder for his novels.

My favorite of the collection is “Red Wind.” This is a Marlowe story taking place on a hot night. It involves murder, blackmail, and a jewelry heist. The introduction talks about how in later novels Chandler began winding down Marlowe’s career (and his own) by having Marlowe get softer with the dames, going so far as to hook him up with one. You can see the seeds for this planted in “Red Wind,” where Marlowe definitely has a crush on the girl involved, though things don’t work out.

Anyway, I think if you really like Chandler’s novels and want to see a bit of how they came about, then read this. But at 1,300 pages I don’t think it’s for the casual reader. A casual reader should try the novels first. Might as well since they’re much the same, right? So I’d recommend this for only the real Chandler enthusiasts.

That is all.

After the Golden Age

2011-03-10T22:39:00.002-05:00

After the Golden Age
by Carrie Vaughn
(3/5 stars)

Sometimes it's a good thing not to write reviews right away. I was all set to give this book four stars. Then nature called and while taking care of business, the realization hit me: most of this plot was meaningless! All the digging for clues and setting things up didn't matter at all because in the end the villain calls our hero to tell her exactly where--and who--he is. What the heck is that?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that really this could have been chopped into a short story because the rest winds up being filler. Setting up all these relationships, what did it really matter? All but one of the superheroes wasn't even present for the grand finale!

The mostly unimportant story is like "The Incredibles" if the kids didn't have superpowers. Captain Olympus is like Superman and his wife Spark is like the Human Torch, only a girl. They have a daughter named Celia West who doesn't have any powers, except being a hostage. She's kidnapped about six times before the book starts.

The big nemesis is called the Destructor, who is like the resident Dr. Doom. The superheroes have caught him at last and now he's facing a trial. Celia is a forensic accountant assigned to the case despite that years ago she defected to the Destructor's side to get back at her parents. Meanwhile some new criminals are stealing priceless violins and fish (no fooling) and unleashing terror while also abducting Celia a couple more times.

The ride getting up to the big finish is interesting enough, though it never gets much deeper than the back cover flap description. This isn't in the vein of comics like "Watchmen" that try to have profound social messages.

The writing is pretty vanilla; it definitely is not going to challenge you. Celia is your typical spunky female just dying to be played by Rachael McAdams or Amy Adams in a movie adaptation. Though it's hard to have much respect for her since she gets kidnapped so many times before the story and four times DURING the story and yet still walks right into the trap at the end. Yeesh, after a while you'd think she'd get wise and start taking some precautions. And as I said, for all the digging for clues she does, it doesn't really have any impact. It would also have been nice if she hadn't been quite so whiny about her parents all the time.

The romance between her and a police detective who is also the mayor's son, like so much of the story just doesn't matter. In this case it's because another romance comes along, one that's a bit creepy.

Besides the end confrontation not being anything very exciting, the last chapter--which should have been an epilogue--quickly summarizes what happens to all the important characters. Besides limiting the sequel potential, there's nothing emotionally satisfying about these little blurbs.

In all it's comparable to the lesser superhero movies at your local multiplex. So long as you don't stop to think about it, it's not too bad.

That is all.

Bridge of Sighs

2011-03-02T21:40:00.002-05:00

Bridge of Sighs
By Richard Russo
(1/5 stars)

(I'm going to spoil the hell out of this, so please don't chide me about spoiler space. You've been warned!)

Richard Russo's previous novel "Empire Falls" won the Pulitzer Prize, the highest award for American fiction. The only award "Bridge of Sighs" should receive would be for Most Boring Narrator of a Novel.

And I'm not just saying that as some random crackpot or someone who reads Tom Clancy books all the time and stumbled on this one. I've read all of Russo's other books, including his book of short stories. "Nobody's Fool," "Empire Falls," and "Risk Pool" were all great novels.

Which is why this is so disappointing to me. If I can speculate (and why not, it's my review) I think after winning the Pulitzer Russo wanted to do something "serious" to prove he was a Great American Novelist like Hemingway, Updike, etc. So he tries all this misdirection and sleight of hand by changing narrators and tenses, creating stories within the story. The problem, though, is that when unraveled the story is perfectly ordinary, a tale so shopworn no amount of magic tricks could make it seem original.

What it all boils down to are three kids and their parents. There's Lou C. "Lucy" Lynch, who unfortunately narrates most of the story. Lucy is such a boring, needy, neurotic individual that if he were real I'd want to knock his teeth out. At 60 he still acts the way he did at 6 and his greatest wish would be that he could be 6 again and living with his mommy and daddy. How sick is that? I mean a lot of us would like to be in our late teens or 20s again, but Lucy actually wants to be a little kid.

Since there's no fortune telling machine around to do a reverse "Big" he's lucky to find a woman to wipe his nose and clean up after him. Her name is Sarah. She's a painter and substitute teaches art classes at the local schools. She lost a breast to cancer and had a miscarriage and gave birth to their son Owen. Of course we only get the bare minimum of detail about that so we can have hundreds of pages of Lucy riding in milk trucks and painting fences like the lost episodes of "Leave It to Beaver."

Sarah also loved another man, a far more interesting man. His name is Bobby Marconi, later Bobby Noonan. Where Lucy was the boring nerd like Richie Cunningham (or Potsy really), Bobby was the Fonz, with a motorcycle and tough guy attitude and probably a leather jacket. Bobby's father was an emotionally abusive jerk, continually knocking up Bobby's mother. This produced a series of boys who are referred to collectively, except one apparently was named David. Anyway, once he comes back from military school, Bobby joins the football team and starts dating the beauty queen. But he really wants Lucy's girlfriend Sarah. And she really wants him, but she settles for Lucy, which as my Amazon friend Ethan Cooper said is obviously a sign of a character defect. What girl is really going to pick Potsy over the Fonz?

Far, far too much time is spent on the saga of Lucy's parents opening New York's first convenience store. I scoffed at how his mom spontaneously comes up with the idea of the modern convenience store. According to our good friends at Wikipedia they already had 7-11 down south, but to hear Russo tell it Tessa Lynch is the one who came up with the whole thing.

A story with a boring narrator like Lucy can be successful if you can do at least one of two things:

1. Move the character to interesting locations.
2. Surround the character with interesting people.

Russo doesn't really do either. Early on we're told that present day Lucy and Sarah are going to Italy, which is where Bobby is living after becoming a successful painter. So it seems obvious that Lucy and Sarah should go there and see the interesting places like Rome, Florence, and finally Venice where Bobby lives.

But no. Instead we stay moribund in Thomaston, New York, the kind of place only Lucy Lynch could love because it's so dreadfully boring. Most Russo novels feature a down-on-its-luck small town in New York or Maine, but this seemed like the least interesting of any of them. Well it's like they say, it's the people who make the town.

Which is the second problem. Other than Bobby, no one else is all that interesting. Lou's father is appropriately called Big Lou. That's exactly what he is: Lou, only bigger--and just as dull. Lou's mom is most often nagging or bossing everyone around. Sarah's only slightly better than that. At least at times there was Uncle Dec there for a little comic relief, otherwise it'd be one bland scene after another.

So we have a dull location with equally dull people. That leaves very little reason for any reader to keep trudging through the maze Russo sets up. A smart reader would give up by 300 pages. An inordinately stubborn reader would plow through to the end, hoping for something to make it worthwhile, only to be sorely disappointed.

This was obviously a misfire for Russo. The only good thing is that his next novel, "That Old Cape Magic" was much better. It far more succinctly dealt with the same issues of kids and their parents and a woman loving two different men. So maybe Russo learned from his mistakes. I hope so.

Now for my own amusement and to recap what I just said, here are the notes I wrote in the comments of Ethan Cooper's review:

BJ Fraser says:
I had to roll my eyes this afternoon when I got up to the part where his mom invents the convenience store. You really expect me to believe that, Richard Russo? He could have at least had her read or hear about it somewhere else first. As it is I doubt a bookkeeper in upstate New York came up with 7-11...but I'll have to go look it up in Wikipedia.

BJ Fraser says:
I've slogged my way through to nearly page 300 now. Except for the locked in the trunk part and the fight outside the movie theater there's really been nothing interesting as far as Lucy goes. The Noonan parts are better.

BJ Fraser says:
And to follow up to one of my comments, 7-11 began in 1927 in Texas and by the time Lucy's mom comes up with her convenience store, 7-11 already had a bunch of locations open from 7 to 11. The better way to do this would have been to have someone come back from a trip to Texas and mention something offhand to Lucy's mom instead of her seemingly on the spot coming up with the idea.

BJ Fraser says:
Lucy's stories really are tedious. His parents argue about money: whose don't? Even billionaire parents probably argue about buying a solid gold 747 from time to time.

When I did my Bildungsroman, I realized after going over the first draft I needed to get through the childhood stuff fairly quickly and move him to more interesting locales. But he has a Pulitzer and I don't, so what do I know?

BJ Fraser says:
I'm on the last 100 pages now. It all boils down to Lucy and Noonan both love Sarah. As if that hasn't been done a million times before. It's just a bunch of sleight of hand with the weird structure to make it seem like it's something different.

BJ Fraser says:
There is a little bit from Sarah's perspective back in high school/college. (Apparently we're never going to get to that period from between college to when they're 60.)

I'm thinking that Noonan runs away after high school (either because of guilt or dodging Vietnam or both) leaving Sarah to go with the boring guy or nothing at all. Many people probably would have chosen nothing.

I'm probably going to annoy people by putting in spoilers whenever I do finish.

BJ Fraser says:
You don't think The Boring NonAdventures of Lucy Lynch would be a great series? At least it would be good for those suffering from insomnia

BJ Fraser says:
Actually that sounds like a good idea for a series of Saturday Night Live skits. In one episode a quart of milk at Ikey Lubin's is nearing the expiration date. Shots of Lucy sweating and staring at the milk as the clock ticks with dramatic music in the background. Then just as Lucy is about to take the milk out, someone comes along and buys it. In the next thrilling episode, Lucy has only 4 pennies left in the cash register!

BJ Fraser says:
BTW, last year I used the Bridge of Sighs in a story. I wonder if Russo was aware of the tradition I found out from Wikipedia, which I assume is true:

Ahead I see there are already a pair of gondolas approaching the enclosed bridge between the old prisons and the interrogation rooms of the Doge's Palace. This bridge is called the Ponte dei Sospiri or later as the "Bridge of Sighs." I probably could have walked the interior of the bridge if any authorities in Venice had ever caught me scrambling around the city and peeping into people's windows.

"What are we doing here?" I ask Alejandro.

"It's a local superstition that if you kiss beneath the bridge at sunset, your love with last forever," he says.

"Did you kiss Aggie here?"

"No, but I want to kiss you here."

The gondolier finds some space for us to park beneath the bridge.

Though I know I shouldn't, I turn around to face Alejandro. As the sun sets, we each lean forward to kiss. It's a chaster kiss than we usually share, due to the presence of the gondolier and other lovers nearby.

BJ Fraser says:
And while I'm going on and on, perhaps the most unforgivable sin is not having Lucy and Sarah go to Italy as they'd been planning. Is there any question that Venice would make for a much more interesting setting than Thomaston, New York? You've got the art, the architecture, the history, and the canals in Venice. What's Thomaston got? A dirty river and a bunch of houses and businesses going to seed. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

BJ Fraser says:
Turns out you were right about Sarah. What happens is that her mom dies and then she collapses into Lucy's arms and that's how they wind up together.

But there was a little drama when Lucy found a love letter Sarah wrote to Bobby after a recent masectomy. They had a slight argument and then she went off to her mom's old neighborhood in Long Island. Of course she'll come back though. Maybe she'll run into Bobby in New York, though I doubt it.

BTW, what I find hilarious is that in the Acknowledgments he thanks his editor for "saving" this novel; I can't even imagine how terrible it was before the editor got to it.

Radiant

2011-02-06T23:33:00.002-05:00

Radiant (League of Peoples #7)
by James Alan Gardner
4/5 stars

It took me a while to finally get to this book. I read the last of Gardner's Festina Ramos books 9 years ago and just hadn't gotten around to buying this. Since it's been several years since this came out and there's no sequel, I guess we can say that (for now anyway) it's the end of the line. And it was a pretty good end.

Like all of Gardner's books in this series it's told in first person. Except for "Expendable" these have all featured someone other than Admiral Festina Ramos, but she always shows up. "Radiant" is no exception to this. The narrator in question is Youn Suu, who hails from a planet colonized by Burmese people. When something went wrong in her bioengineering, she was left with a deformed left cheek--on her face of course.

This gets her into the Explorer Corps. The Explorers are all disfigured in some way because some scientific studies determined that people feel the loss of an ugly person less acutely than an attractive one. On Youn's first real assignment she goes to a planet that's being attacked by glowing red moss known as the Balrog. There she meets Ramos and gets bitten by the Balrog, so that it begins taking over her body's cells.

From there Youn and Ramos follow a distress call to Muta, where a colony of scientists has disappeared. As they go down to the surface, they're attacked by strange smoke monsters who emit EMP to disable electronics. In the process of determining who these monsters are and what they want, Youn and Ramos make some discoveries about the universe--and themselves.

Unlike when I read "Trapped" last year, which was mostly a spin-off of the same universe, for this one you really need to have read the rest of the series. Given that this is sort of an ending, there are references to stuff that happened in the previous Ramos stories--Expendable, Vigilant, Hunted, and Ascension. Since I hadn't read those in almost a decade I was a bit lost at times in remembering what Gardner was referencing.

The good thing is that if you like light space opera, then you'd find this series enjoyable enough to start at the beginning. Actually I'd like to reread "Expendable" at some point but my copy pretty much disintegrated a while ago.

My real complaint is sometimes there was a little too much conversation. This sounds hypocritical because in my blog I have a few times complained how much I hate writing action scenes. But a little less hypothesizing and a little more finding out what things were would have been nice.

Still, like the rest of the series it's light enough to make it a quick read. Recommended if you like "Star Trek" or similar fare. It's too bad that there don't seem to be more of these forthcoming, but "Radiant" makes for a good ending while leaving things open for the future.

That is all.

That Old Cape Magic

2011-02-03T23:46:00.002-05:00

That Old Cape Magic
by Richard Russo
(4/5 stars)

There's a bit of jealousy involved when I read something like this. If I queried an agent with a story about a neurotic middle-aged man who's unremarkable in any significant way who has a low-tempered midlife crisis, there's no way I'd ever get it published. But when you've won a Pulitzer Prize you get carte blanche to write books that many others (including yourself) have already done before.

The neurotic man in question is Jack Griffin. Long ago he wrote movies, that was until he married Joy, who gave birth to their daughter Laura. After that Jack moved to Connecticut, where he teaches film classes while Joy works in the admissions office.

The only real problem in Jack's world is his troubled relationship with his parents. His parents were both English professors who had a love of Cape Cod--the Cape referred to in the title. Jack sees his parents, probably rightfully so, as snobs who looked down on everyone including Joy and her family, despite that they never so much as owned a house, preferring to ruin those of their colleagues. Jack has spent a good portion of life trying not to be them, something that weighs heavier on him after his father dies.

During a wedding on the Cape for Laura's best friend, secrets are revealed and Jack and Joy's relationship begins to unravel. His life goes south, his mother dying and her ghost haunting him--usually taunting him while he moves back to LA to try and write movies again. Meanwhile Joy seems to be doing pretty well with a new man in her life.

I didn't hate this book, but I don't think Russo was really saying anything he hadn't said in all of his previous novels. All of his protagonists are haunted by their parents, like all of us to some extent struggle to reconcile that our parents aren't perfect. It was really hard for me to "root for" a guy who has such an obsessive fixation on his parents that he nearly lets it destroy an otherwise happy marriage. Especially because while his parents were jerks they didn't beat him or molest him or anything like that. You can look in the newspaper (or on the Internet) and see parents who are much worthier of obsessing about. It's really amazing Jack hadn't gone into some form of therapy long before this.

Another thing that bugs me is Jack's story "The Summer of the Brownings." He takes the unfinished story out of a drawer and finds some holes not only in the story but possibly his memory and then later finishes the story. But we never really know exactly how he changed it and the story itself never seemed to have much significance. I thought Jack's possibly faulty memory--brought up again when his mother is dying--would have some kind of an impact like in John Irving's "Until I Find You" but it didn't really seem to do anything. It was more of a red herring than anything.

Another minor point is that although Jack is a screenwriter and a teacher of film, he doesn't seem to have much love for movies. We never learn what Jack's favorite movie is or about any scenes or actors who meant anything to him. We get vague details about some projects he worked on, and even those are treated with apathy. Really I don't think the author thought any of that important, that Jack's career was just means to an end. Interestingly Russo has worked on movies like "The Ice Harvest" and he's taught at universities, so it probably seemed easy enough to combine those two into Jack's career. The way it's presented, though, Jack might as well have been a garbage man--not that there's anything wrong with that--because neither movies nor teaching seemed very important to him.

The good thing, though, is that a skilled novelist can manage to beat a dead horse and still make it interesting for the reader. Despite that I've read numerous books and seen numerous films about a guy having a midlife crisis and parental issues, I was never bored with the book. The narrative and dialog are quick and sharp, keeping the story from becoming a limp, inert mess as could have easily happened (and often enough has happened) in the wrong hands.

So even though Jack's story is probably familiar, especially to fans of Russo's other novels, it's still a lot better than a lot of junk put out there.

That is all.

The Widower's Tale

2011-01-10T22:31:00.002-05:00

The Widower's Tale
by Julia Glass
(4/5 stars)

A good litmus test for how compelling a book is is that when you put it down, you want to pick it back up again. I put down "The Widower's Tale" on December 1, 2010 after muddling through the first 75 pages and then I didn't crack it open again until after the new year. So it did in fact take me more than 40 days and 40 nights to finish reading this book. Not exactly what you'd call a page-turner.

I think a lot of my problem in being able to plow through this book was I felt I'd already read it before--several times. Much of it focuses on Percy Darling, a retired librarian in a wealthy Boston suburb called Matlock. An academic from Massachusetts? The late John Updike made a career with that formula. The rest of it, though, reads less like Updike to me and more like the well-mannered sibling of Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections." Glass uses a lot of the same techniques as Franzen, spreading the narrative among multiple characters, though Glass focuses outside the Darling family as well. The chapters usually have the same structure where they start at a point in the future from the previous chapter and then work back to dovetail where we left off before. This of course isn't unique to Glass or Franzen, which is only part of my larger point that "The Widower's Tale" presents little that's new.

The narrative I mentioned starts with Percy Darling a 71-year-old retired librarian. His elder daughter Clover is a neurotic divorcee, who gets a job with a local preschool that takes over the barn on Percy's farm where his beloved wife Poppy used to practice ballet. There's also 20-year-old Robert, Percy's grandson who goes to Harvard and is studying to be a doctor like his mother Trudy, a world-famous oncologist. Robert's friend Arturo is a rabid environmentalist, who along with Robert and some other ecowarriors has been pulling various pranks against the affluent people of Matlock and other wealthy suburbs in a probably futile attempt to change the world.

There's also Celestino, an illegal alien from Guatemala who does some gardening work for Percy, and Ira, a gay teacher at Clover's preschool. Glass could have saved a good 150 pages by eliminating their narratives, because neither really does much for the book. Celestino's tale of being virtually adopted and taken to America by a wealthy French family is somewhat interesting, but doesn't really go anywhere. Ira was the stereotypical effeminate gay type straight out of central casting, which I found mildly insulting and wholly unnecessary.

The plot, such as it is, involves multiple threads of Percy falling in love with a woman named Sarah Straight (Straight and Darling? Really?), who is some 20 years younger than him and develops breast cancer that's treated by Percy's daughter. The breast cancer part really made me yawn. I think by now there are about 2,000 movies on Lifetime devoted to breast cancer. Not that I have anything against people with breast cancer, but it's clearly been done before. She's tired and loses her hair? Really? I'd never heard of that before! (That might have been true if this were 1957.)

I'm being overly sarcastic here considering I'm giving it four stars. Glass is a capable enough writer and I think a good many people will find it interesting and entertaining. Those who thought Franzen's "Corrections" was too dysfunctional and mean-spirited would find this far more warm and soothing. My primary complaint is that I felt overall I'd seen everything in this book before. So while it was interesting, it couldn't hold my attention, as indicated above.

It's also the kind of book where a lot of stuff happened, but I didn't feel like I picked up anything of value from it. I certainly wouldn't call affluent Massachusetts families, a day laborer, and a gay teacher a microcosm of modern American society, at least not a complete one. Overall the message seemed to be that things change and you roll with the punches. Wow, I've never heard that before.

That is all.

Geek Love

2011-01-01T23:34:00.000-05:00

Geek Love
by Katherine Dunn
(3/5 stars)

A "friend" reviewed this novel and as something of a freak myself I couldn't resist reading a novel about freaks. But I found I didn't like this nearly as much as I thought I would.

The best way to think about this story is that it's like a darker version of "The Addams Family." Ma and Pa work for a traveling circus and decide that it's too expensive to recruit freaks, so they'll breed them! Ma takes all sorts of drugs and such in order to create deformed babies. Some of them die, but four (or five) survive. They are Arturo, a boy with flippers instead of limbs; Ely and Iphy the conjoined twins; Chick the boy with strange psychic powers; and Olympia the hunchbacked albino dwarf who is our narrator. As in most family sagas the narrator is the most boring character with the least personality. Arturo the Aqua Boy is the big star of the family. Ely and Iphy are second with their singing and dancing. Even Chick finds a niche when Arturo starts a cult devoted to making people into deformed freaks. Olympia's only real role is to be Arturo's valet and main worshiper.

I guess despite being something of a freak myself I'm not so deluded to think that being a freak makes someone special or better than "normal" people. As the story goes on I really found it increasingly grotesque and disturbing instead of funny or interesting. Adding to this is the portion that takes place in the present where Olympia is dealing with her daughter and a mysterious woman who thinks like Arturo that deformity is the key to enlightenment.

Anyway, other people obviously thought this was better than I did. I was just a victim of overly high expectations the book couldn't deliver upon.

That is all.

Star Wars: Red Harvest

2010-12-17T09:37:00.000-05:00

Star Wars: Red Harvest
by Joe Schreiber
(2/5 stars)

When I read and reviewed "Night of the Living Trekkies," which covered similar bloodstained ground, I complimented the book for delivering exactly what it promised. Such can not be said of "Red Harvest," which fails to deliver on the promise of Jedi/Sith fighting zombies.

Oh sure there are zombies and there are two Jedi and some Sith, but it never really amounts to anything. From a pure geek standpoint there's nothing COOL about any of the fights. There are a couple of times when a Jedi or Sith hacks apart a few of the zombies with a lightsaber. But there's nothing that comes within tauntaun spitting distance of the sweet lightsaber fights from the movies--even the dreadful prequels. That's a big letdown and as something of a Star Wars geek (especially when it comes to lightsaber battles) I can't overlook it.

If you want a plot summary it's pretty simple. Long ago during the time of the Old Republic (some thousands of years before even the Star Wars prequels) there were a lot more of the evil Sith lords (the "dark side" of the Force like Darth Vader in the Emperor if you're not up to speed on all the prequel stuff) who have their own academies, which are like an evil version of Hogwarts. The head of this academy is Darth Scabrous, who is researching a way to become immortal, which requires a very special orchid.

Just such an orchid is being raised by a Jedi named Zo Trace. What's so special about the thing is that the orchid requires the Force to grow, so it essentially has bonded with Zo. When a bounty hunter comes to steal it, Zo has to go along or else the plant would die.

Once they get to the planet, Scabrous uses the orchid to create some weird concoction that causes some of the Sith students to become zombies. They in turn start attacking others and from then on it's a fight for survival.

The zombies generally operate under "28 Days Later" zombie rules, which means they're fast, as opposed to the shambling "Night of the Living Dead" zombies. What would have made things better is if the zombies could use the Force and their lightsabers.

The author does such a poor job juggling the characters that I question if he's seen any zombie movies at all. I'm not exactly the expert, but I've seen a few, enough to know that you have to have your varied characters come together into one tight-knit group. (See "Night of the Living Dead," "Dawn of the Dead," "28 Days Later," "Zombieland," and even "Shaun of the Dead.") But this never happens until the very end; the characters remaining isolated from one another until that point. Really, there is a formula to writing a good zombie story and if you're going to deviate from that you need to have something better than this.

Also, the author at a couple points uses colloquialisms with the Sith students. Star Wars characters do not say "Whatever" or "Fail." I don't care what year it's taking place in the Star Wars universe, that just shouldn't happen. At least they didn't say, "Talk to the Hand," so we got that going for us.

From a purist standpoint this book itself is an abomination, a cheap way to cash in on the resurgence of zombies in popular culture. I would have been willing to give it more slack if it was fun or had some good fight scenes. Since it doesn't, I definitely can't recommend this.

That is all.

Before, After, and Somebody In Between

2010-11-14T22:57:00.002-05:00

Before, After, and Somebody In Between
by Jeannine Garsee
(4/5 stars)

In terms of wicked mothers, Martha Kowalski's might not be in the same league as the mom in "Carrie" or Joan Crawford in "Mommy Dearest" but she's close. Martha's mother is more often than not drunk or high, and very often emotionally abusive if not physically abusive. The sort of men she hangs out with, like redneck slum lord Wayne, are just as bad.

Like a lot of books of this type, it begins with Martha and her mother moving into Wayne's house in inner-city Cleveland. Martha's upstairs neighbors are the Lindseys and she forms an attachment to Jerome, who is about her age and dreams of being a nuclear physicist.

Martha goes to the public high school, where an older girl named Chardonnay makes her life a living hell. When Martha finally snaps under the strain and her mom's addictions take a turn for the worse, Martha winds up in a foster home.

Then in a Dickensian twist Martha winds up with the affluent Brinkman family. She adopts the name Gina and most everything seems to be going her way, except for the Brinkman's annoying daughter Nikki. But it doesn't stay that way forever...

Anyway, it's hard to say I could "enjoy" a book like this. It's not exactly a happy story of hope and redemption or anything like that. But there are some valuable lessons to be learned from it. The writing is solid and while the pace lags a bit at times, it generally held my interest.

That is all.

Blood Song

2010-11-09T08:55:00.002-05:00

Blood Song
by Cat Adams
(4/5 stars)

I've never been a fan of vampires or werewolves or any of that of that paranormal stuff. "Blood Song" really didn't change my opinion of that. I have to say upfront, though, that if you are into that I think you'll find this book enjoyable enough.

In the world of this story there are vampires, werewolves, mages, and ghosts all living amongst us. Unlike say, "Twilight," the vampires are not very nice; mostly they're evil fiends who feast on the living. One night while working for a prince of fictional Rusland (which was also called Ruslund a couple of times) professional bodyguard Celia Graves is ambushed by the bloodsuckers and bitten.

She's not fully turned, so like "Blade" she's only half-vampire. She doesn't need to drink blood but she can't eat solid food. She can go out in the daylight, but it smarts after not long in the sun. She can heal quickly, but not as quickly as a vampire.

After that the story focuses on Celia trying to adjust to life as an "abomination" and avoiding various attempts on her life. There's also unraveling who was behind the ambush that nearly killed her.

The latter is not brought to a very satisfactory conclusion. Especially the subplot about her "sire" or the one who turned her, which is dealt with in an extremely offhanded fashion. I found most of the story very plodding and slow, really about 100 pages longer than it needed to be. A lot of it seemed to be setting up characters for future books, which didn't help to make this first book all that memorable for me.

But I'm still going to give it 4 stars because it's capable enough and as I said at the beginning, if you're into vampires and werewolves and such without the "Twilight" teen angst then you'll probably enjoy this more than me.

That is all.

Sunset Park

2010-11-03T21:50:00.002-05:00

Sunset Park
By Paul Auster
(4/5 stars)

Previously I had only read Auster's "Book of Illusions" and didn't really care for it. But since this was free, I decided to give it a try. For some reason I can't explain, I really liked the book and when I wasn't reading it, I wanted to be.

My best guess is because the focal character Miles Heller is near 30, a baseball fan, and had an annoying brother. So we have some things in common there. That usually helps to like someone, as various scientific studies have pointed out. (Other studies probably say the opposite, but that's neither here nor there.)

When the book begins, Miles is living in Florida. It's 2008, in the middle of housing bubble collapse and Wall Street collapse. Miles works cleaning out houses of those who have been evicted from their homes. The love Miles's life is a Cuban girl named Pilar, who is only 17, 11 years his junior. Miles plans on marrying her once she turns eighteen. Then Pilar's sister gets involved and Miles has to flee. Unlike Humbert Humbert, he doesn't take his Lolita with him.

Instead, he goes alone to New York. Specifically to Brooklyn and a house in the neighborhood known as Sunset Park. A college chum and two of his friends are living there already, rent-free because the house belongs to the city after its former residents were evicted. (Irony, anyone?) So Miles and the others squat there for a few months, waiting for the police to lower the boom on them.

As much as I really wanted to like this book and give it five stars, I can't overlook the fatal flaw. There are too many characters and too many things going on. There are the four housemates, Miles's parents, and his stepparents, all of whom except Miles's stepparents get a turn at narrating. With so much going on in a book that comes in at less than 350 pages, there just isn't time for Auster to deal with everything. So it comes off as shallow, the characters, situations, and conversations as sketches instead of fully-formed.

While I enjoyed Auster's writing, I think the story would have been vastly improved if he had just picked one or maybe two narrators (like Miles and his father) and focused on them. That or make the book about 300 pages longer. Because as it stands, while the housemates Bing, Alice, and Ellen are interesting, their potential is squandered. Just as squandered are the interactions between the housemates during the squatting in Sunset Park. Really you get more drama from an episode of "The Real World" or "Jersey Shore" or any "reality" show where people are cooped up together than you get from these four.

So in the end it's a good book and I really liked it, but it could have been a lot more. While I liked it more than "The Book of Illusions" I doubt it's his best effort.

That is all.

Djibouti

2010-10-24T16:13:00.003-05:00

Djibouti
By Elmore Leonard
(2/5 stars)

Elmore Leonard has written a lot of books, but the only one I've ever read is "Get Shorty" that I enjoyed. Still, I thought I'd seize the chance to get a free copy of his latest effort, "Djibouti." Now I wish I hadn't.

The first third of this book was torture to plow through. Leonard lost me on the first page with this sentence: "By 8:30 the once-a-week Air France was in, the stairway wheeled up and a gang of Arabs and Dara Barr coming off, the Foreign Legion checking out the passengers, seeing could they tell a terrorist they saw one." It's really the last part of the sentence that threw me. It sounds like it's missing two different "ifs" in there. I suppose this was supposed to be from Xavier's point of view, though it's so early in the book that we don't really know anything about Xavier yet, so at that point it didn't make much sense to me.

After that, so much of the first 100 pages is just Xavier and Dara sitting around talking about what they shot. It's extremely boring. I got to thinking, "How can a book about pirates be this DULL?"

The thing is, the book isn't really about Somali pirates. That's just what the book jacket might say. Really it's about the harebrained plot of a wanna-be bin Laden that intersects with a couple of documentary filmmakers, a pirate, a crazy lawyer, and an eccentric billionaire. (Are any billionaires not eccentric? In books and movies it seems they're always up to some crazy scheme or another. I suppose there probably are noneccentric ones who just stay in their mansions and sip their brandy.) What this reminds me of is less "Get Shorty" than the Coen brothers movie "Burn After Reading" that I described as "a battle of wits between the witless."

So here are all the players. First there's Dara Barr, the documentary filmmaker who like all women in this type of story is a bit of a tomboy but would probably be attractive if she bothered to clean up. Her cameraman is an old man named Xavier, who previously worked with her during Hurricane Katrina. They come to Djibouti to make a movie about the Somali pirates. One of the pirates is Idris, who would like to be sophisticated and like many of the pirates has found the good life by ransoming Western ships. Harry is a British-Arab lawyer who ostensibly tries to talk the pirates out of pirating. Also there is the billionaire Billy and his hot girlfriend Helene, who will only become Billy's wife if she completes a trip around the world by boat with him. Billy is sort of a conspiracy theory type who has the money to waste paying people to feed him information to fuel these theories.

Then there's Jama, who's an American who converted to Islam in prison. He made contacts with al-Qaeda and has been doing some work for them. He comes to Djibouti as well, hoping to make a big splash.

As I said, most of it was pretty boring to me. I think it would have been better if it'd just stuck to the pirates. The Somali pirates are relatively new enough to be interesting and fresh. Maybe too new and fresh for an octogenarian white guy in Detroit to write about, so instead he falls back on the old terrorism story while leaving just enough of the pirate thing so they can put it on the book jacket and make you think that's what you're reading about.

Anyway, if you've read a lot of Leonard books maybe you'd like this more, because it's probably the same general thing he's done a dozen times before. I really could never get overly interested in the slow-moving plot or the thin characters. Of special note (which I almost forgot to mention) was the terribly contrived way in which Dara figures out Jama's real name. Just really implausible.

It makes me think, though, someone should update "Casablanca" and set it in Djibouti with Somali pirates. I'm sure Dara and Xavier could think up who to cast in it.

That is all.

The Human Blend

2010-10-20T07:51:00.003-05:00

The Human Blend
By Alan Dean Foster
(3/5 stars)

Here's the definition of MacGuffin from our friends at Wikipedia:

A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or maguffin) is "a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction".[1] The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are (at least initially) willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is. In fact, the specific nature of the MacGuffin may be ambiguous, undefined, generic, left open to interpretation or otherwise completely unimportant to the plot. Common examples are money, victory, glory, survival, a source of power, or a potential threat, or it may simply be something entirely unexplained.

A MacGuffin then is what drives "The Human Blend" and in theory the books that follow it. In this case the MacGuffin is a silver "thread" that is some kind of data storage device. A thief named Whispr finds this thread after he and his friend Jiminy Cricket (his chosen name, not his birth name) mug a guy in Savannah.

An explanation of the world this takes place in is probably in order. In this future (how far into the future I'm not exactly sure, but probably late 21st or early 22nd Century) flooding from global warming has put most of the North American coast under water. Cities like Savannah survive by putting the old buildings up on hydraulic platforms. (Others like Washington use dikes to hold back the waters.)

The biggest change, though, is with people themselves. Cosmetic surgery has allowed everyone to add all sorts of "melds" to themselves to alter their appearance. You can look like a famous celebrity, a historical personage, or even Big Bird. Though by this time, most people like Whispr just use melds to help them in their line of work. In his case, Whispr is ultra thin and quiet. Jiminy Cricket can jump long distances. Police are built like weightlifters on steroids.

Some, though, don't take melds, like Dr. Ingrid Seastrom. She's content to be just your normal young, hot blond doctor. She has a practice in Savannah and a comfortable life and a seldom-seen boyfriend. Then of course Whispr shows up looking for medical help--and with the thread.

Most of the book is devoted to various people like the assassin Mole (Mo-lay, not Mole) or some other assassins chasing Whispr and then Whispr and Ingrid to get the thread. Meanwhile, Whispr and Ingrid try to find out what it is on the thread.

Of course they don't find out what's on the thread, because that will be dealt with in future books. Future books I have no interest in reading because this one didn't really hook me. It was an OK sci-fi thriller, but it never rose to the level of Philip K. Dick or "Neuromancer." It's more "Paycheck" than "Minority Report" or "Blade Runner."

Or in other words, it's a competent book, but it feels paint-by-numbers. The characters aren't all that interesting and the uniqueness of the melds and the world these people inhabit just didn't come to life enough for me to really care that much.

But if you're less discriminating than me, you'll probably enjoy it as a beach/airplane/subway read. And maybe you'll be interested in following the Quest for the Thread. I'll just wait until the last one comes out and peek at the last pages to see if they throw it into Mt. Doom or not.

That is all.

PS: Foster does have a character call the thread a "maguffin" at one point, so at least he has a sense of humor enough to recognize this.

Unseen Academicals

2010-10-14T08:27:00.000-05:00

Unseen Academicals
(Discworld Series #37)
By Terry Pratchett
4/5 stars

In the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" series there was an episode called "Lower Decks" that focused on a group of young people serving in minor positions on the Enterprise instead of the usual group of head honchos. That is essentially what happens in "Unseen Academicals" which focuses on the people who work in the Night Kitchen and the candle vats of Unseen University, the school for wizards in the city of Ankh-Morpork.

Ostensibly though the book is about the game of foot-the-ball or football (or soccer as we call it across the Pond). In Ankh-Morpork, the game of foot-the-ball is actually more like rugby, with a lot of tackling and fighting and very little scoring. Young Trevor Likely's father was a legend because he scored 4 goals.

Trevor works in the candle vats of Unseesn University with Nutt, a very learned goblin who talks like a shelf of self-help books. Nutt has a Mysterious Past that not even he remembers. Eventually though Trev and Nutt go up to the Night Kitchen, where they meet the plain, fat Glenda and the beautiful, ditzy Juliet.

As it happens Juliet is from the Stoops family, who are sworn enemies of Trev's family because of their foot-the-ball allegiances. Trev & Juliet doesn't play out like Romeo & Juliet because tragedy is not ever really on the menu in the Discworld. Nutt does a little Cyrano in writing a poem to help woo Juliet, which would work better if Juliet could read words of more than one syllable.

Oh yes, there is a football game in there too. The wizards of Unseen University discover that they have to play a game of football in order to keep a bequest that keeps their Night Kitchen stocked. (If there's one thing wizards really like it's their kitchen.) When some new old rules are "discovered" from a museum, a new brand of foot-the-ball is born with Nutt taking the lead as coach.

This book utilizes two recurring theme-like items in the Discworld series. One is equal rights/tolerance, which is embodied by Nutt. Goblins (or what Nutt really is) being the latest in a line that includes dwarfs, trolls, werewolves, vampires, and golems who break the racial barrier in Ankh-Morpork. The other theme-like substance is modernizing the city. The police force, post office, bank, and Unseen University itself have all been dramatically remodeled since the earliest Discworld novels. As well football joins other modern things like newspapers, movies, the Internet, and rock music to become part of the fabric of Disc society. So really while the book is entertaining (as most Discworld books are) it's not anything fans of the series haven't really seen before.

What bugged me about the previous book "Making Money" was that there was no money made in it; the actual printing of money seemed like it would be taking place off the pages. I feared that Pratchett was going to do the same here and have the football game take place off the page, but he does at least manage to get it in, even if it is a bit underwhelming. While it was nice to see Rincewind (with a cameo by The Luggage) and the Librarian again, I wish they could have been used more.

That the book doesn't focus on any of the major characters in the end means that this can be filed away as "Minor Discworld" along with one-offs like "Pyramids," "Small Gods," "The Truth," and "Monstrous Regiment." Since football (soccer) hooliganism isn't a big thing here in the States, I'm sure some of the jokes in this one went over my head; British readers would then probably enjoy this more.

Still, it's not a bad entry in the series, but not an overly important one either. You could do a lot worse.

That is all.

Post Office

2010-10-01T13:41:00.001-05:00

Post Office
By Charles Bukowski
(4/5 stars)

If you really hate your job, "Post Office" beats a whole stack of Dilbert cartoons or watching an endless loop of "Office Space," "Clerks," and other workplace comedies. From the way Bukowski describes the post office, it's no wonder "going postal" entered our lexicon. It's probably also why my uncle who worked for the post office for a number of years was always so cranky.

The story concerns Bukowski's alterego Henry Chinaski. When he's a younger man, Henry does his first stint at the post office as a substitute mail carrier. As the motto says, he winds up trudging through rain (and mud) and dark of night, occasionally being attacked by the odd dog or two. This finances Henry's life of drinking and cavorting with Betty.

Eventually Henry moves on to other jobs and other women, including a wealthy heiress with a thing for animals and geraniums. He drinks and cavorts a lot with all of these and even fathers a child with one. To support this lifestyle Henry is drawn back to the post office, this time working as a clerk. It's a maddening, routine job that his supervisors only make more maddening. One of the funniest parts is early on when Henry's supervisor keeps writing him up for ignoring his write ups, which Henry keeps throwing in the trash.

Despite that his style is like a seventh grade student's, Bukowski's writing has a drunken swagger that makes it enjoyable. I have to wonder how much of what happens was based on real events and how much was just bravado. While it never rises to the level of "Catch-22" or "1984" it still demonstrates the crushing effect of a soulless bureaucracy on the common people.

Of course a lot of people will not want to read this because of the bad language, the sex, the violence to women, and so forth. But if you're a fan of writers like Hemingway, Chuck Palahniuk, or Bret Easton Ellis or you just have a really crummy job, then you'll get a kick of this.

That is all.

Stuck in the 70s

2010-09-30T08:01:00.002-05:00

Stuck in the 70s
By Debra Garfinkle
(4/5 stars)

I guess you should really be careful around hot tubs. Party girl Shay falls asleep in hers in 2006 and wakes up in a bathtub in 1978. She finds herself in the house of nerdy Tyler, his Betty Crocker-type mom, and sister Heather. The early part of the story then focuses on Shay surviving, obtaining clothes and a plausible excuse to stay at Tyler's house.

Then in "Back to the Future" style, she starts helping Tyler try to be cool, though she doesn't need a radiation suit and Walkman playing Van Halen to do it. In turn she winds up making over Tyler's sister and mother, which in turn throws everything off balance. At the same time, Shay and Tyler make halfhearted attempts to send her home. (Though in the old "Twilight Zone" tradition we really have no idea how she got there in the first place.)

I breezed through this book in about two hours. It's really not a very difficult read. If not for a sex scene it would probably be more interesting for middle schoolers than actual high schoolers. Though since there are no sexy vampires or wizards or anything, I'm not sure how interested kids would be in it, since none of them would have been alive in 1978 and unless they watched "That 70s Show" it's unlikely they'd know much of anything about that time period. (It doesn't seem to me like much of a time worth remembering or reliving unless those were your golden years.)

Anyway, my rambling aside, it was an entertaining book, but the end disappointed me. Shay never actually deals with her issues of her bad mother or absent father. In fact, the way things play out it's like the author is tacitly condoning running from your problems. I think it would have been better if Shay had been able to interact with her mother in 1978 and maybe convince her to be a better mom in 2006. But that's probably just me.

That is all.

Mercury Falls

2010-09-29T07:53:00.000-05:00

Mercury Falls
by Robert Kroese
(4/5 stars)

When you write a humorous story about scheming angels and the Apocalypse, you're just asking to be compared to "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. And going against the combined talents of two great humorists like that, it's not going to go very well for you. Still, "Mercury Falls" at least manages to be a fun read.

When the story begins, Christine is a reporter for The Banner, a Christian magazine, despite that she's not much of a Christian. She lucked into the job after writing a news story about a doomsday cult and since then she's had to traipse around the country, profiling other doomsday cults who are inevitably wrong about the date of the world ending.

But after getting some new linoleum installed in her breakfast nook--which is a crucial plot point--she takes an assignment to Israel, where tensions are heating up in the middle east near a little place known as Armageddon. After nearly being killed in a rocket attack, Christine finds a strange attache case and eventually finds her way to another cult leader who calls himself Mercury.

Mercury is an angel, but he's closer to the Joker than any of the angels you might remember from the Bible. Really all Mercury wants is to sit on the sidelines and wait for the world to end, but when Christine shows up, he gets dragged into all the plotting and scheming between Heaven and Hell.

The rest of the story follows Christine and Mercury as they try to stop the Apocalypse, or at least make it less destructive. There are the annoying "Dogma"-like moments of characters having to explain Biblical things, though not to the extent that pretty much destroyed that Kevin Smith movie. Also unlike that movie it doesn't focus solely on Catholic dogma, so that a reader from any Western faith (or lack thereof) can follow along. Since there's really not much talk about Jesus or the Messiah, Jews or Muslims as well as Christians should be able to read it. Whether you're offended or not depends on how seriously you take your beliefs.

This is clearly not a book for the true believers, as it makes light of both Heaven and Hell. The writing is nothing special, but the author does manage to make it entertaining enough that it doesn't drag along. You probably aren't going to get any spiritual enlightenment from reading it, but it's not a bad time either.

Though of course if you haven't read it, "Good Omens" is a much better use of your money.

That is all.

Night of the Living Trekkies

2010-09-16T13:23:00.000-05:00

Night of the Living Trekkies
By Kevin David Anderson
(5/5 stars)

This is one of those things like "Zombie Strippers" or "Lesbian Vampire Killers" or "Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter" that you have to watch (or read in this case) just because of the title. As someone who grew up watching a lot of Star Trek (more of the Next Gen/DS9/Voyager/movies than the Classic series) and has watched a few zombie movies, I couldn't resist something called "Night of the Living Trekkies."

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but in this case that actually works. "Night of the Living Trekkies" provides you exactly what you'd expect: Trekkies fighting zombies. There's not much more or less to it. Also as you'd expect, this is not to be taken seriously.

The plot works pretty much like any zombie movie. Things are going along, then some alien parasites break out of a secure government facility outside of Houston. They cause people to become zombies and spread into the city, where there's a Star Trek convention being held at the Botany Bay Hotel. (The name of the hotel is one of the many references to Trek for obsessive geeks.)

Another reference is the main character's name: Jim Pike. This is an amalgamation of Jim Kirk and Christopher Pike, the two captains of the Enterprise in the original series. Jim has served two tours in Afghanistan and come home to take a job at the hotel. He's on duty--in a uniform eerily similar to those worn by Starfleet officers in the first six movies--when strange things begin happening at the hotel. Most of these strange things involve people being bitten and/or disappearing.

The book pretty much then goes on like "Dawn of the Dead" where Jim, his sister (dressed as an Andorian), a Princess Leia impersonator, and a couple other geeks struggle to survive as the zombies continue to multiply.

Where it veers off from most zombie movies is that the book provides some evil mastermind behind it all. If they can survive long enough, Jim and the others might find out who it is.

As I said, this book provides you exactly what you expect and not much more. The writing isn't pretty or anything special, just your basic potboiler fiction. The characters are pretty thin and most of the time is spend eluding zombies. But again, that's what you expect.

Overall, though, it's a fun, brisk read recommended for fans of Trek and zombies.

That is all.

The Plot Against America

2010-09-10T08:50:00.001-05:00

The Plot Against America
By Philip Roth
(3/5 stars)

I was all set to give this at least 4 stars--and then came the last fifty pages. I haven't been this disappointed with an ending since reading "Next" by James Hynes. (Admittedly that was only a few months ago.) Amazon's review calls that ending "ingenious." I would call it "far-fetched," "ridiculous," "implausible," "deux-ex-machina," and most of the 7 words you can't say on television. It's an ending that completely destroys an otherwise good novel.

This is one of those "alternate history" novels. Only Roth's is more plausible (until the end) than say Harry Turtledove's "Guns of the South" where time travelers give machine-guns to the south in the civil war. Roth's scenario all turns on Charles Lindbergh running for president in 1940 and winning. I'm not sure Lindy could have beat an experienced politician and campaigner like FDR even if he had run, but that's not important.

Instead of focusing on Lindbergh, FDR, or any historical persons, most of the story revolves around Philip Roth and his family. (Because if there's a subject Philip Roth really loves it's Philip Roth.) Philip is 7 at the start of the book and lives in a flat with his older brother Sandy, his insurance salesman father, his stay-at-home mother, and his orphaned cousin Alvin.

After Lindbergh takes office, his parents--especially his father--fear that America will turn into a fascist state like Nazi Germany. He has reason to fear when Lindy signs an "understanding" with Hitler to maintain peace between them. Cousin Alvin goes off to Canada to join the British in opposing the Nazis while Sandy becomes smitten with Lindbergh after a stint on a Kentucky farm through the "Just Folks" program that sends urban kids--mostly Jews--to rural areas to spend a summer.

That kind of cultural assimilation is the most anti-Semitic it gets through most of the book, except for an incident on a trip to Washington DC. Most of the time the Roth family's fear and paranoia is the real enemy. There are no concentration camps or gas chambers.

Most of the book then is a portrait of how fear can tear a family apart, as it nearly does the Roth family. Fissures form between Philip's father and Cousin Alvin, between Philip's father and Sandy, and between Philip's mother and her sister, who marries a rabbi who advises the new First Lady.

Where the book really goes astray is by trying to tack on a sort of happy ending. OK, here's your spoiler alert:

There's the spoiler space!

Anyway, in the last 50 pages, Walter Winchell makes wild accusations about Lindbergh on the air and gets fired. When he decides to run against Lindy (a campaign with as much chance as Stephen Colbert in 2012), he's assassinated in Louisville. This sparks riots and anti-Jewish attacks.

That's all fine. Where it really goes wrong is that Lindbergh flies to Louisville in the "Spirit of St. Louis" and delivers a brief speech to reassure people. After that he disappears! The plane presumably crashes somewhere. Like something out of "24" the new president starts arresting people right and left, including FDR. He even goes so far as to have Mrs. Lindbergh committed. But she escapes and delivers a speech accusing the new president of treason and he's arrested and a new election held. FDR wins this election and from there everything goes back to the timeline we know. The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and America enters the war.

And in less than 3 years we're victorious! That's the most implausible part of all. The Germans are more entrenched, as are the Japanese, and yet we defeat them in less time? That's absurd. This whole part becomes some bizarre patriotic flag-waving exercise that makes no sense at all. It also relies on the deux-ex-machina device of a plane crash, after which Roth piles one absurdity onto another.

It would have made more sense to end the book unhappily. Have the Roths flee to Canada. Have Lindbergh set up concentration camps. That would make sense. Trying to make this end in a somewhat happy fashion, especially one this implausible, does not work.

There, now you can't complain about the spoilers! The ending is one of those that makes me so angry and disappointed that it's hard to remember the rest of the book was good. Maybe not as good as "American Pastoral" or "Portnoy's Complaint" but still better than a lot of books.

It was still better than Michael Chabon's "Yiddish Policeman's Union" which is a similar Jewish-themed alternate history. That was wrapped in a lame Dan Brown-style thriller plot. Roth's family drama makes for a better read--at least until the end.

(Actually they both have terribly ridiculous endings. Maybe alternate histories just inspire that.)

That is all.

Father of the Rain

2010-08-25T21:11:00.000-05:00

Father of the Rain
By Lily King
(4/5 stars)

One thing I've mused about in a couple of different reviews is that sometimes it takes a while for a book to get going. In those instances, being patient can really pay off as by sticking it out the end makes up for the slow beginning. "Father of the Rain" doesn't quite fall into this category, but almost.

The story starts off in Massachusetts in '73 or '74, during the Watergate scandal. This is used as a backdrop to the dissolution of Daley Amory's parents' marriage. Daley is 11 at the time and her father is like Archie Bunker, only with more alcohol. He's not (usually) physically abusive, but his recklessness and insensitivity emotionally abuse Daley, her older brother Garvey, and in particular their mom.

Mom finally moves across town with Daley while Daley's father shacks up with another woman named Catherine. She too is recently divorced, has three kids, and likes to drink. It's a match made in Heaven...or somewhere a lot hotter.

This first part of the story bored me. It all seemed so cliche, like something taken out of a Judy Blume novel or an After School special about coping with divorce and drinking. Even the idea of using Watergate as a backdrop is a cliche. (For instance, I used this in a short story 5 years ago--if you have a Kindle you can read it as part of my collection "The Carnival Papers." It also took place in Massachusetts.)

The second part of the story picks up more momentum. In that, Daley is 29 and an aspiring professor at Berkeley. She's dating a black philosophy professor named Jonathan. But then she gets an urgent call that brings her back home, where her father has lost another wife.

Daley attempts--quixotically everyone thinks--to get her father on the wagon. She hopes to not only get him sober, but in the process to repair the shattered bond between them.

I'm not sure why exactly the first part of the book didn't work for me and the second part did. It might have to do that as an adult I can relate a lot easier to Daley's struggles as an adult than as a child. Especially since unlike 50% of people my parents didn't divorce--and didn't drink either--so none of that really hits home for me. Whereas an adult trying to reconnect with a parent is something I can understand better.

The writing is sound. I don't really see any benefit from using present tense instead of the more traditional past tense, but it doesn't really hurt the story either. It's solid literary writing, but nothing beautiful or particularly memorable.

Anyway, I enjoyed the last 2/3 of this book and other people will probably enjoy 3/3 of it. Then others will enjoy 0/3 too. Still, it's worth a look.

That is all.

(PS: The author also lost points with me for making Michigan outside of Ann Arbor sound like Mississippi in the '50s. We ain't all a bunch of slack-jawed yokels out here in the sticks.)

Cryptozoica

2010-08-16T11:50:00.002-05:00

Cryptozoica
By Mark Ellis
(5/5 stars)

A perennial hot button issue in science and religion is on the origin of life. Were humans created by God--in which case, whose God?--or by evolution or by something else entirely? In "Cryptozoica," Mark Ellis adds fuel to the fire by offering another theory on the origin of man that involves dinosaurs and some very special goo.

Like "The Da Vinci Code," the story also involves secret societies. In this case it's the School of Night, an ultra-secret club of scholars that included Charles Darwin himself. In the book's prologue, we learn that Darwin and the crew of the Beagle ran across the Tamtung islands, which were home to some very weird creatures. They didn't really know what to call them since the word "dinosaur" hadn't been invented yet.

Skip forward to the present. "Tombstone" Jack Kavanaugh is living on Little Tamtung along with his friend Crowe. They, along with an eccentric billionaire, tried to start a sort of Jurassic Park/dinosaur safari on Big Tamtung, but the venture was shut down after three people died. Now the School of Night is getting involved, along with some Asian gangsters who helped bankroll the original venture. This means that Jack, Crowe, and some new and old friends all have to return to Big Tamtung and unlock its secrets.

What secrets are those? You'll just have to read to find out.

"Cryptozoica" is a taut and engaging pulp adventure. If I have one complaint, it's that there wasn't enough of a body count. I wanted the dinos to munch a few more people. Still, this is a fun, exciting read with some great illustrations too that should bring to mind old school adventure stories like "The Lost World" while adding a little modern science and conspiracy theory to the mix to freshen it up.

That is all.

Koko Be Good

2010-08-10T19:59:00.000-05:00

By Jen Wang
(4/5 stars)

I got this because I thought I should read some graphic novels and it was free, so what the heck. This is just a bit different from the Batman graphic novels I'd read previously. There's no one wearing a cape and tights, though there is some overlap in that "Koko Be Good" concerns itself with heroism and what it means to be "good." There's also a Nick Hornby novel called "How to Be Good" that similarly considers what it means to be a good person.

Most of the story revolves around a young man named Jon, who is about to follow his girlfriend to Peru to work at an orphanage. One night while he's out and about, Jon meets Koko, who's a real wild child with no home, no family, and no job. Koko winds up with Jon's tape recorder, which has a tape from his girlfriend on it. He tracks Koko down to get it back and after hearing about what he's doing, Koko decides that she'll try to be a good person.

Her efforts to be good backfire for the most part. When she works at a rest home she winds up being terrorized by the old people. Working at a soup kitchen, day care center, and so forth mostly leave Koko feeling tired and still unfulfilled. Meanwhile, Jon is having second thoughts about going to Peru.

There's also some kid named Faron. I couldn't really follow his story or what exactly his relationship was to Koko. Makes me think at some point I should read it again; despite being 300 pages it only took me about 90 minutes to read through it.

As for the artwork, it's pretty cartoony with a muted color palette. Sometimes it was difficult to decipher what was going on, especially in action sequences. But I'm not really an expert on art design so my judgment means nothing on that subject.

Anyway, about the best I can come up with for a moral is that maybe you should just relax and not worry so much about trying to be "good." Certainly being "good" didn't make Koko or Jon much happier. That was actually about the same thing in the Hornby novel too. And, well, Batman's not exactly a happy camper either.

That is all.

The Dark Knight Returns

2010-07-27T20:50:00.003-05:00

The Dark Knight Returns
by Frank Miller
(3/5 stars)
I wasn't a big comic book fan even when I was a kid, so I missed out on when this first came up and by all accounts was a Really Big Deal. It's pretty easy to tell this is the same guy who did the crummy "Robocop" sequels and equally crummy "The Spirit" because of the ridiculous plot, absurd newscasts, and hammy noir-ish narration.

As the title suggests, the story is about (initially) an older Bruce Wayne taking up the old cape and tights ten years after retiring. Somehow this morphs into a plot involving Superman and nuclear holocaust. Many of the familiar players like Commissioner Gordon, Two-Face, and the Joker are featured. There's also a new, female Robin.

Since this was written in the mid '80s it focuses on the Cold War and ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation. Alan Moore's "Watchmen" similarly covered this ground, only in a less heavy-handed, juvenile fashion. They're both pretty dated, though this one feels more so. If you were going to read just one major graphic novel from the '80s, read "Watchmen."

I obviously don't know much about artwork. Sometimes the crude drawings were distracting. Especially during some action scenes it was hard for me to tell what was going on.

Despite that I thought this was pretty silly, it was grimly fascinating. And really it only takes a couple of hours to read through. But I guess to really appreciate this you would have had to have read it when it first came out.

That is all.

How to Be An American Housewife

2010-07-25T21:39:00.002-05:00

How to Be An American Housewife
by Margaret Dilloway
(5/5 stars)

I've said before that sometimes how much you like a book depends on what time in your life you read it. The same can be true for what book you read previously. The last book I read was so dreadfully dull that basically a book where anything happened would make it seem like a Robert Ludlum thriller. And so "How to Be An American Housewife" certainly didn't disappoint. Once I got started on it I didn't want to put it down.

The story is essentially divided into two halves. The first half focuses on Shoko, a Japanese woman who as you could guess from the title marries an American Navy corpsman name Charlie. They eventually go to America, where Shoko raises a son named Mike and a daughter named Suiko or Sue.

Shoko's story itself is really divided into two halves. One half takes place in the present where Shoko as an old woman is suffering from a bad heart probably caused by radiation from the Nagasaki bombing. She desperately wants to go home to Japan to see her brother Taro one last time before she dies. The other half of her story takes place back in Japan during and after World War II as she meets and eventually marries Charlie. It's not exactly Romeo and Juliet. It's more a marriage of convenience.

The second half of the novel concerns Shoko's daughter Sue taking her mother's place and going to Japan with her too-cute 12-year-old daughter Helena. Sue had Helena when she was very young, in a marriage that broke up not soon after that. Her trip to Japan is sort of a combination of "Lost in Translation" and "Under the Tuscan Sun." (She just needed to meet some hunky guy and it could have been perfect rom-com fodder.)

Overall I thought this was a great debut novel. The pacing is fast enough and the topics interesting enough to make me want to keep reading. The writing is effective enough. The small quibble I have is that Shoko seems to write in English a lot better than she speaks it. I guess if you think four-dimensionally she could have written it in Japanese and someone could have translated it. Or her daughter (or someone else) could have written it like she would have if she spoke better English. My only other quibble is that the ending seemed too happy to me. But that's just me.

Like many Americans, about all I know about Japanese culture is sushi, anime, and Godzilla, so this also provides an interesting look at how Japanese and American cultures compare. The sections before every chapter of the "How to Be An American Housewife" book given to Shoko and other Japanese women after the war are often hilarious with their '50s sexist tone.

Overall this was a great read--and I'm not just saying that because I'm probably a distant cousin of the author's husband.

That is all.

(PS I was reading an advance copy but I noticed one factual mistake where the author refers to B-52 bombers doing reconnaissance before the war. B-52s didn't exist until after the war. I hope some editor notes that. Though as readers of "Middlesex" can attest to, that doesn't really matter.)

Stiltsville

2010-07-11T12:02:00.003-05:00

Stiltsville
By Susanna Daniel
(3/5 stars)

I think the simplest way to sum this up is to say: If you liked "The Stone Diaries" you'll like this book. I thought "The Stone Diaries" was an exercise in tedium, so there you go.

The problem with this book is that the life of the narrator Frances is so ordinary that it's dull. I always say that if I want to read about an ordinary life I can read my journal. The reason most of us read books is that we want to read about lives that aren't ordinary, about people who have experiences that we ourselves don't have in our ordinary lives. Until a terminal illness is thrown in for the last third of the book, there's nothing that even remotely qualifies as anything extraordinary.

The more cynical reader of this review would sneer and say I want car chases and explosions and that. No. I would appreciate some kind of conflict and drama, though. Really, Frances goes through the first fifty years of her life without anyone dying. By the time I was half that I'd lost both grandfathers plus numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins. That's just symptomatic of the problem that really nothing of interest happens through the first 2/3 of the book.

Here's what happens: a woman named Frances goes from Atlanta to Miami with a friend and they go to this place called Stiltsville, which is a group of houses off the coast of Miami built on stilts. She meets a man named Dennis. They date, get married, and have a kid. There you go.

On rare occasions you can get away with telling an ordinary story. I point to "Breathing Lessons" by Anne Tyler as the gold standard for that. But to be successful, you have to really make the characters and their world come to life. You have to make the ordinary seem extraordinary. The mistake the author makes is writing this as a first-person story. Frances' narration is about as interesting as talking on the phone with my mom. Her voice is dull and that makes her life seem dull.

The terminal illness at the end almost redeems this, but it comes too late. Anyway, I'm a guy so I'm not really the target audience. I imagine women might find it a better read. Though why they want to read something that would only reinforce the dullness of their own lives is beyond me. (But hey, if I knew anything about women I'd be a lot further along.)

That is all.

Model Home

2010-06-28T14:30:00.000-05:00

Model Home
By Eric Puchner
(4/5 stars)

In the sub-genre of "suburban families whose lives go into the crapper" there are the truly standout examples like "White Noise" by Don DeLillo and "American Pastoral" by Philip Roth. Then there are those highly regarded examples like "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen or "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold. (And there are probably dozens of other examples I can't think of at the moment.)

Since his book takes place in the 1980s and a toxic incident is prominently featured, Puchner is clearly aspiring to be "White Noise" but his story and characters all have a been-there, done-that sort of feel to them. It's a decent enough read, but it's not enough to make you forget the books I mentioned above, plus probably a number I didn't. And we could throw in movies like "American Beauty" as well to murky the waters a bit more.

Anyway, as mentioned the story takes place starting in 1985 in suburban Los Angeles. The Ziller family has moved from Wisconsin a couple of years ago so patriarch Warren could launch a housing development in the desert. Except the government decides to put a toxic waste dump near the development (the toxic incident I mentioned) which wipes out Warren's dreams of wealth.

He keeps his looming bankruptcy a secret from his wife Camille, who makes educational videos for the local school district and if this were the '90s would be driving an SUV and described as a "soccer mom." The good thing for Warren is that his three children are all too engrossed in their own lives to notice the handwriting on the wall, even after Warren's car and the furniture in the house are repossessed. 18-year-old Dustin dreams of being a punk rock star. 16-year-old Lyle (short for Delilah) dreams of books and escaping her embarrassing family. And 11-year-old Jonas dreams of Mandy Rogers, a missing mentally handicapped girl.

The first act of the story begins the unraveling of the Ziller family. Warren tries in vain to sell houses in his development. Camille thinks he's having an affair and takes up smoking. Dustin becomes obsessed with his girlfriend's sister. Lyle starts seeing the older boy who works the gate of their subdivision. And Jonas starts wearing all orange.

The second act is when things really hit the fan. Like in the movie "A Serious Man" it's like the God of Job shows up to shower plagues upon the Ziller household. Really all you needed was the frogs raining down from the sky.

The third act then is picking up the pieces to get to the message such as it is.

Really I gleaned two messages from this book. The first is that if you have a family, you should value your time with them. Not just the big moments like holidays and such, but the little ones. This I found to be very true when thinking of my own family. For instance, I remember one time my dad was in the hospital and my siblings and I were just hanging out late that night, eating pizza and watching a rerun of "Wings" on TV. It's little things like that stick in your memory years later when time and space conspire to tear you apart, because you realize that just being together meant as much or even more than big gestures like Christmas or birthday presents or what have you.

The other message might not have been intended, but really when the book gets to the second act it seems like someone should be wearing a sandwich boards and shouting, "Repent, ye sinners, ye relentless consumers worshiping the false idol of Commercialism!" Because think about it, the Zillers go from idyllic Wisconsin to California, that hotbed of commercialism and phoniness best exemplified by Hollywood, and live well beyond their means in an attempt to accumulate more wealth. Then, as if in retribution, all this bad stuff happens to them. Maybe I'm overthinking this point.

Despite the problems I've mentioned, the book was interesting enough to keep me moving forward. Puchner's writing is sharp and witty, though again it's not going to make you forget about DeLillo or Roth. Parts of it in the second and third act drag a little and really the story ends with more of a whimper than a bang.

Still, I'd recommend it as a decent enough read that should remind you of the value of family and perhaps the evils of commercialism.

That is all.

Imperial Bedrooms

2010-05-07T12:39:00.001-05:00

Imperial Bedrooms
by Bret Easton Ellis
(1/5 stars)

It's just as well that JD Salinger never published a sequel to "Catcher in the Rye" with Holden as a middle-aged man because it probably would have turned out like "Imperial Bedrooms." While Ellis' "Less Than Zero" wound up being the '80s version of "Catcher in the Rye," perfectly capturing the emptiness and wastefulness of that decade, "Imperial Bedrooms" has nothing to say and really no reason to exist. It's just a dull Hollywood thriller like the type we've seen dozens of times before in books and films.

Picking up 25 years after "Less Than Zero" the novel again features Clay as the narrator. It might have been helpful to have reread "Zero" beforehand because the first few pages go on about how someone wrote a book about Clay and his friends back in the '80s but it wasn't really Clay, it was someone else who like Nick in the "Great Gatsby" was close to the action but not entirely a part of it. The book then goes on about the difference in the movie version, which is remarkably different.

Then it finally gets down to the brass tacks. Clay is a screenwriter and like most stereotypical Hollywood screenwriters is an alcoholic and fringe player on the scene. The rest of the book goes on as a B-movie-style thriller involving Clay, his friend Julian, and the stereotypical struggling actress/whore Rain Turner.

None of this rises above the level of cliche and really the only thing you could take away from this is something I figured out a while ago: most people don't really "grow up," they just get older. If you were looking for Ellis to provide some kind of commentary on 21st Century society, think again. He gets bogged down in the cheap TMZ tabloid theatrics instead. But maybe the point as I said was that nothing's changed for Clay. He's still a selfish idiot, only now he abuses alcohol more than cocaine.

In short this was a disappointing book that smacks to me of a cash grab. If you're reading this and you haven't purchased the book yet, then don't waste your money. Just go pop "LA Confidential" in the DVD player instead if you want a good Hollywood thriller or reread "Less Than Zero" if you want a nostalgia fix.

That is all.

Play Dead

2010-04-28T20:57:00.001-05:00

Play Dead
By Ryan Brown
(3/5 stars)
I've never actually read a book featuring zombies before, but I have watched a few zombie movies like "Night of the Living Dead," "Shaun of the Dead," and "Zombieland" so I am familiar with the subject. All of those movies I'd say are better than "Play Dead," a book I'd give 4 stars for the concept and 2 stars for the execution. A lot of potential was left in the locker room instead of on the field, not to mention an overall pedestrian writing style. While the book is easy to read and not really terrible, it could have been a lot better too.

The story is about football--and zombies. In Texas there's almost nothing the people care about more than football, so that the people of Killington (pun intended?) are crazy about their team even though they're about as good as the Detroit Lions. Things seem to be finally going their way with the emergence of quarterback Cole Logan, who has the team one win away from the district finals against the hated Elmwood Badgers. The Badgers have made a successful run in large part because their team is more doped up than the East German Olympic team.

Everything's bigger in Texas, including the pranks played on the opposing team. Instead of stealing the Killington mascot, the Badgers attack Cole with a hatchet and then run the team bus off the road, seeming to kill everyone but Cole (who wasn't on the bus) and Coach Hickham, who managed to escape out a window. That's where the zombies come in, thanks to a football-crazed witch. From there it's down to a showdown between the zombie Killington team and doping Elmwood team.

The game itself is almost an afterthought, crammed into the last 30 pages of the book. The other 310 set up the bus accident, the zombies, and the game itself. Most of this is devoted to the emerging romance between Cole and ace school reporter Savannah Hickham, also the coach's daughter.

In the hands of a far more gifted author--like Stephen King maybe--this situation could have turned out to be much more interesting. As it is, the characters are stock and the Killington players have no personality BEFORE becoming zombies. Even the name "Cole Logan" seems like something pulled from an Action Movie Cliche guidebook.

In the hands of a gifted satirist the Texan love of football, various football cliches, and so forth could have been exploited to better advantage than they are here. There is some of that, but not enough to make this a truly great book. That's too bad because Brown has a fun concept but he's the wrong author to pull it off effectively.

I mentioned the pedestrian writing earlier and overall I felt this was the kind of story I'd see in an online writing critique group. One particular issue was the author's heavy use of dialog to the point he actually describes Savannah through dialog thusly: "Oh, she's a doll. Red hair. Green eyes. That adorable figure." That just made me shake my head sadly. For one it's unbelievable dialog and for another it's just plain sloppy writing. Probably the only worse way of describing a character would be to use a police APB.

Anyway, this is an OK book, not a great one. It is light beach/airplane reading that seems destined to be made into a movie with a Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart lookalike in the Cole and Savannah roles.

That is all.

The Serialist

2010-04-10T22:08:00.002-05:00

The Serialist
by David Gordon
(4/5 stars)
I was predisposed to liking this book as I wrote a very similar character to Harry Bloch in my novel Where You Belong. That is a writer who gets by writing under pen names that sometimes are not of the same gender as the real author. In my case the male author wrote a YA sci-fi series under the pseudonym of an Irish woman. In "The Serialist," author Harry Bloch writes porn, sci-fi, "urban" detective novels, and lately vampire novels by using a variety of aliases; the pseudonym for the latter series is actually his mother's identity.

Despite publishing dozens of books, Harry has never published under his own name and he makes only enough money to get by. He lives in his mother's former house, alone after his ex found greener literary pastures. The closest he has to an agent is a 15-year-old girl named Claire whom he "tutors" by writing term papers for her.

So it's not much of a surprise that Harry jumps at the opportunity to ghost write the autobiography of notorious serial killer Damian Clay. Clay is on death row and slated to be executed in just three months. In exchange for providing his story, Clay wants Harry to visit some of Clay's fans and write perverse stories about them for Clay's amusement. While Harry is reluctant to go along with this, ultimately it's an opportunity he can't pass up.

From there things take a deadly turn. Really the second half of the book plays out like a two-part episode of "Murder She Wrote" where Harry takes on the case. Actually it would make for a good series on the USA Network with the unconventional detective and his equally unconventional sidekicks Claire and a stripper named Dani who's the sister of one of Clay's victims. The last fifty pages especially drag along as Harry unravels the last few clues of the mystery and things run their course.

I suppose, though, that if this never turns into high art or "literature" that's keeping in character. It's hard to believe someone like Harry could suddenly create a stunning masterpiece. Then again it's hard to believe he does a number of things he does in the book, so here we are.
Anyway, the narrative is witty and engaging. Harry is a lovable loser, not a Sam Spade-type detective, which makes the story fun as it goes along. I am disappointed though that, as I said, the second half comes off as a TV detective show, but then I was probably hoping for something too much from a mere serialist.

That is all.

Snapped

2010-04-07T12:04:00.002-05:00

Snapped
by Pamela Klaffke
(5/5 stars)

I'm surprised I liked this as much as I did because I'm definitely not in the book's target audience. For one thing, I'm a guy. For another I don't know anything about fashion. I've never seen an episode of "Sex and the City" or "Ugly Betty" or "America's Next Top Model" or "Project Runway." I never watched "The Devil Wears Prada." I did read one "chick lit" book solely on a whim because it was super cheap and I was bored.

But I did really enjoy this book because it's so funny. The story centers around Sara B., a cofounder and photographer for "Snap" magazine. Sara's main contribution is to take pictures of people who are then labeled as "DOs" or "DON'Ts." She's been doing this for almost twenty years to the point that she's now 39 and most of her subjects are far younger than her.

Despite the success of the magazine, Sara feels generally unfulfilled. She's never married or had children like her friends or really even had a serious relationship. She drinks and smokes almost constantly, often to the point of excess. And when she takes the picture of a young woman with a parrot on her shoulder whom she calls "Parrot Girl" she realizes her passion for the job is waning. Not long after this, she meets a perky young woman named Eva, whom Sara makes her assistant and takes under her wing. Except of course Eva is a backstabbing phony out to usurp Sara's job--not that she really cares.

The story is narrated by Sara and full of hilarious asides and fantasies, many of which are darkly comic like a game show where only the fastest shoppers survive while those who use coupons and write checks are shot. A lot of her asides are also self-deprecating about her enlarging rear or sagging breasts or flabby stomach.

I think what I enjoyed the most is that while Sara goes through changes, she never really changes entirely. There's not that "A Christmas Carol" moment where she decides to change her ways and be "good" forever. Nor does she decide that to be happy she needs to settle down in the suburbs like her friends and have kids. In other words, she never sells out herself.

The story doesn't contain many surprises, but it's enjoyable guilty pleasure reading--even for dudes.

That is all.

2010-03-19T23:30:00.001-05:00

I really enjoyed the first two-thirds of this book. It's too bad the story did a horrible 180 for the last third that completely ruined my enjoyment. If not for that I would have definitely given it 4 if not 5 stars. But 3 is the best I can do and that's being generous.

In those first two-thirds this seemed like one of those books that seemed so closely tailored to me I thought the author must know me--if not actually then through some kind of telepathy. The story focuses on Kevin Quinn, a Michigander (like me!) who was raised in Royal Oak in suburban Detroit. Later he went to Ann Arbor to the University of Michigan, where he cycled through several majors before earning a worthless General Studies degree that earned him a job as an editor at the university's Center of Asian Studies.

The main problem is Kevin's life is that he's drawn to women much younger than himself. While Kevin is 50, all the women he's been with are significantly younger. His current girlfriend Stella is 35 but tries to pass herself off as 29. It's this attraction to younger women that lands Kevin in trouble on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Austin, Texas for a job interview. Sitting next to him is a girl named Kelly who is half his age, if not younger. But Kelly reminds Kevin of Lynda, the fling of his youth, the memories of which call to him like a siren's song.

When Kevin sees Kelly again outside a Starbucks in Austin, he finds himself following her around the city. This is only the first act of the story. The second focuses more on Kevin and a Latina doctor who aids him in a moment of need. Kevin also evaluates his relationships to Stella, Lynda, his father, a girl he met before Linda referred to as The Philosopher's Daughter, and a woman he spent a number of years with named Beth.

This story could have been turgid and boring, but Hynes's writing is witty and insightful enough to keep things humming along. It helped for me that most of his observations about Michigan and Midwesterners were bang on the money. (The only thing I'd take issue with is that the author kept referring to Detroit's main airport as "Detroit Metro." That's fine if you're an out-of-towner but there's no way Kevin would think of it as "Detroit Metro" any more than someone from Chicago would think "Chicago O'Hare" or "Chicago Midway." Usually we refer to it simply as "Metro" or "Metro Airport." Adding the "Detroit" seemed like a bit of authorial intrusion to indicate to the reader that it's located in Detroit--actually, in Romulus but let's not quibble.) The only significant issue I'd had was I would have suggested the author scale back the current pop culture references. Those sound nice in the moment and I got most of them, but in 5-10 years references to "Sex in the City," "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," "Battlestar Galactica," "Lord of the Rings," and so forth are going to seem moldy. Still, for me the first two-thirds then were a breeze to read and very enjoyable. The way Hynes delved so deeply and entertainingly into Kevin's inner life brought to mind Richard Ford's "Independence Day" and especially David Gates' "Jernigan."

It's such a shame then that after creating this wonderful portrait of a character, Hynes decides to throw his story away and turn it into "The Towering Inferno." (Slight spoiler.) It just seems lazy to me, like when an excellent thriller movie devolves into a series of car chases and kung-fu fights at the end and you just wonder why the filmmakers felt they needed to dumb down the product at the end for the popcorn crowd. Though the best example might be "Huckleberry Finn" where Twain/Clemens had such a great story going with Huck and Jim and then threw it all away by inserting Tom Sawyer and his shenanigans into the end.

In the same way I feel betrayed here. I followed Kevin this far, I wasn't going to stop reading just because there wasn't enough "plot" to the story. More to the point, I liked Kevin and I wanted to see him work things out--or not. Instead, the book takes a shortcut that left me unsatisfied and angry. To me it just seems like Hynes lacked the courage to let the story unfold naturally, so instead he fell back on a deux ex machina device. It's quite a wasted opportunity.

I'd definitely recommend reading the first two-thirds of the book. Once you get to Part 3 though you might want to stop reading.

That is all.

The Kite Runner

2010-03-08T09:50:00.000-05:00

The Kite Runner

By Khaled Hosseini

(4/5 stars)

The structure of this story should be familiar to readers of Charles Dickens, John Irving, or Patrick Dilloway. It starts off with a young boy who grows into a man and then deals with some of his lingering issues. The only difference is that instead of taking place in London or New England or Iowa, it's taking place in Afghanistan.

Amir's mother died in child birth, something his father (referred to as Baba) seems to hold against him. As much as Amir would like them to be close, Baba always seems disappointed in him. They live in a well-off neighborhood in Kabul in the '60s and '70s, back when Afghanistan was still a monarchy.

Amir's best friend is his servant Hassan. Hassan is an outcast not only because of his harelip and occupation, but also because he's a Hazara or someone with Mongol blood to give him a more Eastern appearance. Despite this, Amir and Hassan are as close as brothers, in large part because they suckled at the same breast.

Then after a kite fighting tournament to which the title refers, something terrible happens that creates a rift between Amir and Hassan. Not long after, they're separated when the Soviets begin moving in, setting off political chaos that remains to the date of this review. Amir and his father go to America, while Hassan and his father stay in Afghanistan.

Over the ensuing 25 years, Amir becomes a man and finds a wife, but he never forgets Hassan or the moment of cowardice that ruined their friendship. The only way for him to redeem himself--to be good again as a friend says--is to go back and face his demons.

This is definitely a book that came along at the right time. With the 9/11 attacks planned by terrorists sheltering in Afghanistan and the subsequent US invasion, the American public was obviously hungry for any insight into Afghanistan and its people and Islam. And the author doesn't disappoint here. The problem the US faces, as did the Soviets and British before them, is that Afghans are reckless and not prone to following rigid rules, as Hosseini describes during the kite fighting. And it has its own melting pot of cultures that to outsiders would seem trivial but to them (as demonstrated by the very different lives of Amir and Hassan) are extremely important.

There isn't a lot I can say negatively about this book. My main complaint was that the ending was so obvious. It's the kind of ending where you know what's going to happen 50-100 pages in advance, so you wonder why it takes Amir so long to figure it out. I won't say what exactly, but if you read the book you might see what I'm talking about.

Other than that I only have a couple of nitpicks. One is that after Amir gets into his fight and gets his jaw wired shut, he mentions that his voice sounds like Al Pacino in "The Godfather." I assume he meant Marlon Brando with the cotton stuffed in his cheeks. Maybe this was intentional to show Amir's incomplete grasp of American cinema. Or it's an oversight. Not a big deal, but a little jarring considering "The Godfather" is one of the 10 greatest American films ever so you'd think an author would be able to keep track of who played what character.

The only other thing is I found it a little odd and creepy that Amir romanticizes a woman's unibrow and big nose. Maybe it helps if you're from Afghanistan on that score.

Anyway, this overall is a good book. I wouldn't put it up there with Dickens or Irving's best works, but it's close. Generally though it follows the same pattern of following the main character from pretty much birth to present, so that even though it focuses on a different culture it should seem pretty familiar. If you're looking for a similar book that's a bit more challenging, check out "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie.

That is all.

In Control

2010-02-14T19:26:00.002-05:00

In Control
by Ethan Cooper
(5/5 stars)

If I told you this book was about a bank facing financial ruin when the real estate bubble bursts, you'd probably think this book was set at the end of the 2000s. You'd probably never guess that the story takes place in the early 1990s in Minneapolis and that the book was published in 1999, nearly a full decade before some banks ceased to exist while others were deemed "too big to fail."

The story focuses on Limestone Bank in Minneapolis, which is run by the manipulative Harry Kramer. During a real estate boom, the Minneapolis skyline changed drastically as companies began building huge skyscrapers. There seemed like no problem at the time when Limestone gave a loan to Aldco to build another skyscraper for a large company. Then that company decides to back out of the deal, leaving Aldco building a tower with no tenant and Limestone with a huge loan that might end up defaulting.

Another CEO might have decided to bailout and take his golden parachute or whine to the government about needing a bailout. Not Harry Kramer. No, Harry is always in control of the situation. The book then follows how Harry manipulates events and people to wriggle free of the trap and avert financial disaster. At the same time, we also see into Harry's personal life with his amiable partnership to his wife Holly, strained relationship with schoolteacher son Harry, and far less strained relationship with his doctor daughter Elizabeth.

I was reminded a little bit of Philip Roth's "American Pastoral" that focused on a businessman, who beneath the gilded veneer of financial success faces personal turmoil. Harry's life isn't nearly so much disarray, but behind his success at the bank we can see that his marriage is passionless, his son a disappointment, and his protege Gordon Elliam a fraud. So maybe Harry isn't as in control of things as he likes to think.

In the end if you've ever wanted to see what makes these high-powered movers and shakers tick, "In Control" is a good start. Not to mention the sort-of-sequels "Smooth in Meetings" and "Tom's Job." They all provide a fascinating look beyond the headlines in the Wall Street Journal.

That is all.

Last Night In Twisted River

2010-02-03T23:03:00.002-05:00

(This is going to get creepy, but bear with me. May contain spoilers. You’ve been warned.)

Dear John:

This is hard for me to say because I love you. Not as a person as we’ve never met. I love you as a writer and a reader. Your book “The Cider House Rules” made me want to be a “serious” writer. I loved the intricate plots and memorable characters; I hoped to someday do something just as well. Maybe I didn’t love the semicolon as much as you obviously did, or wrestling or Vienna or Exeter in its many forms, but part of love is overlooking faults, seeing only what we want to see.

It was in reading “Until I Find You” that I knew something was wrong. It just didn’t make me feel the same as “Cider House Rules” or “World According to Garp.” The story seemed like a jumbled mess, the plot elements borrowed from previous novels, and the characters unmemorable. When you kept describing Jack’s “little guy” it got to the point where I almost couldn’t finish. But I did in the vain hope it would get better. It didn’t. This failure left me shaken. I said in my Amazon review that it was probably time to hang it up, mostly to spare me the grief of having to go through another experience like this again, one that might taint your considerable legacy.

When I heard about “Last Night In Twisted River” I felt a mixture of hope and dread. Hope that maybe you’d exorcized your personal demons with “Until I Find You” and now the magic could return. Dread that “Until I Find You” wasn’t an aberration. I received my copy of the book in November, but I put off starting it for another two months because of this trepidation.

It didn’t take long for my fears to be validated. I nearly fell asleep trying to read the first 50 pages of jumbled background about the characters. You killed poor Angel on the very first page and yet it seemed in no time we were forced to endure the life story of the logging camp cook’s son Daniel and is father Dominic in addition to lengthy passages about the logging industry and Coos County, New Hampshire.

Maybe you could salvage it, I told myself. Sadly not because of a serious miscalculation. You have Danny accidentally kill a woman and then he and his father flee from Coos County—not before Dominic dumps the body in the house of Carl, the county’s resident cop and the woman’s lover. Then you try to cast Carl as the villain, repeatedly referring to him as “crazy,” “stupid,” and “a coward.” It never seemed to occur to you that Danny is the killer and he and Dominic the stupid cowards who try to frame the cop and then run away.

Moreover, you don’t have Dominic and Danny show much in the way of remorse for what they’ve done. They certainly don’t show any remorse about framing Carl for murder. Mostly, you indicate what an inconvenience and bother it is to noble Danny and Dominic to have to move from Boston to Iowa to Vermont to Canada. You only compound this when you have Danny allow a friend to sic a vicious dog on another dog that had bothered Danny while he was running. Certainly I didn’t expect Danny or Dominic to be saints, but these crimes are far greater than merely stealing a loaf of bread and yet you want us to believe that Danny and Dominic are the ones who are being persecuted. Did you think that Carl should have just been cool about it when Dominic dumped his girlfriend’s body in his house so Carl would think he’d killed her? Am I really supposed to believe his reaction was unjustifiable? And how stupid are Dominic and Danny that they know Carl’s history and try this stunt anyway? Didn’t they know it would only make things worse? And did you really expect me to root for the ones who framed an innocent person (at least innocent of that particular crime) for murder?

Only compounding these mistakes further is that by constantly ridiculing Carl, you negate any value he might have as a menacing figure in Danny and Dominic’s lives. He’s certainly no Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men.” You probably should have read that book or at least watched the movie to get a better sense for how this is done.

Could I overlook these huge flaws? Perhaps if there was a great story to go with it or some memorable characters. Sadly the way the elements of the story play out is like a Greatest Hits collection of your previous works—and your own life. Danny goes to Exeter like you did and Ruth did in “Widow for One Year” and Jack did in “Until I Find You” and Garp, Owen Meany, and the Berry family did in previous novels—though in thinly veiled versions of the original. Then he goes to the University of New Hampshire like you did. And he goes to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop to be a writer, like you did. He even teaches there when you did and knows the same people, like the dearly departed Kurt Vonnegut. Danny goes to Vermont like you did and then to Toronto like you did. And yet you chide reporters for asking how much of Danny’s novels are autobiographical. The sad hypocrisy of this made me laugh.

Even sadder is that these interludes added nothing to the story. We’re introduced to a bevy of Asian characters in Iowa as well as Lady Sky the naked parachutist, but none of them have any impact on the overall story. It’s the same everywhere else Danny and Dominic goes. They meet people and things happen to them, but none of these seem to matter. By the time the book ended, there were very few of them I could actually name and it would be harder still for me to list any purpose they served. The only interesting character in the book was Ketchum the logger and only because he reminded me of Yukon Cornelius in the old “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” special.

I saw that you described the book as a “political novel” but I failed to see anything political about it. Ketchum rants about George W Bush and Danny meets a woman who allows him to knock her up so he can avoid Vietnam but those are the only “political” elements that I could make out in all of this. Really the criticism of Bush on September 11^th struck me as writing in hindsight. I’m not a Bush lover by far but there seemed nothing original or fresh about Ketchum’s rants. They didn’t add anything and they certainly didn’t open my mind to any new insights about the situation. Not the way “Cider House Rules” did.

The book jacket tries to make the case that Coos County is a microcosm of America in the last 50 years and how hate has driven us apart. Or something like that. Maybe this is supposed to be why the novel is “political.” In that case, who do Danny and Dominic represent? Who does Carl represent? I don’t really see it. Maybe at some point I will.

At any rate, now is the time to say goodbye. We’ve had some wonderful times since I first picked up “The Cider House Rules;” nothing will ever be able to take those away from us. But like all good things, this must come to an end. I’m sure you’ll land on your feet as you still have millions of loyal, adoring fans who seem far more able to overlook the flaws I’ve noted above. Given time I’m sure I’ll find another author to love, though perhaps not as much. Certainly you’ll always be my first and for that I’m grateful.

Best of luck to whatever you do next.

Sincerely,

BJ Fraser

PS: For a novel more closely resembling vintage Irving classics, check out “Where You Belong” by Patrick Dilloway

Cobra Bargain

2009-09-22T14:00:00.001-05:00

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

2009-09-11T13:17:00.001-05:00

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

2009-09-11T13:12:00.001-05:00

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.

Excalibur

2009-07-31T13:57:00.001-05:00

Excalibur

(Book 3 of the Warlord Trilogy)

by Bernard Cornwell

(5/5 stars)

Cornwell's Arthurian trilogy set around 500 AD concludes with "Excalibur." You can check my recent articles for reviews of the two preceding books.

At the end of Book 2, Enemy of God, Arthur survived not only a Christian rebellion led by the cowardly Lancelot, but also betrayal by the love of his life, Guinevere. Now declaring himself the Emperor of Britain, Arthur is taking a firm control of ancient Britain with plans to unite the various kingdoms of the island to wipe out the invading Saxon horde.

Meanwhile, Merlin the Druid wizard is collecting the Thirteen Treasures of Britain--relics of magical powers--in order to stage a ritual that will bring the old Gods back to the island and wipe out not only the Saxons, but the Christians as well. In order for this to work, Merlin needs Excalibur and something much more precious that Arthur possesses. This creates a rift not only between Arthur and Merlin but our narrator Derfel and the crazed witch Nimue, who is Merlin's priestess and Derfel's former childhood friend and lover.

Not long after this ritual goes terribly wrong, Derfel is sent to rescue the imprisoned Guinevere from the invading Saxons. She, Derfel, and his band of warriors end up on an old mountain fort called Mount Baddon, from which they fight a desperate siege against the Saxons. During this we see that Guinvere still loves Arthur--and the feeling is more than mutual--and she's not such a conniving, evil [witch] after all.

But even with the defeat of the Saxons there are dark times ahead as the enemies of Arthur and Derfel continue to plot and scheme. As Merlin says, it all ends in tears, which anyone who knows anything about the Arthurian story already knows.

The conclusion of the trilogy wraps everything up nicely. The story doesn't sag as much under political intrigue as the two previous entries with the fiery ritual to lead things off, followed by the big battle at Mount Baddon, and then the smaller final battle to end the story. The real achievement is that by the end I really cared about all those who had survived since the beginning like Arthur, Derfel, Galahad, and even Guinevere, who really gets to shine in the Mount Baddon segment. At the start of the series there were so many characters, but by the time the end comes the less important ones have been winnowed out and we're left with only the important characters, whom we've either come to love or hate as the story has progressed. Because of that, when the end finally comes, it's bittersweet, which it always is at the end of a great series.

All the good things about the series from the other books are also present like the more realistic battles, the depth of the political intrigue, and the clash between religions that still resonates today. Because of all that, there's really nothing I'd speak against with this book. While the writing isn't Tolstoy, no one expects it to be and so for a rollicking historical read, I'd highly recommend this and the two that precede it.

That is all.

Enemy of God

2009-07-27T08:56:00.001-05:00

Enemy of God

(Warlord Chronicles Part 2)

by Bernard Cornwell

(3/5 stars)

See my review of Part 1, "The Winter King" Here

As far as the middle parts of trilogies go, "Enemy of God" is more "Attack of the Clones" than "The Empire Strikes Back." By that I mean it helps move the story from the beginning (Part 1) to the end (Part 3) but by itself isn't as interesting as either of those. The action in this second installment of Cornwell's tale of a 5th Century AD Arthur is largely political, with only one major battle--and a short one at that--punctuated by a few smaller skirmishes. Instead, "Enemy of God" sets the stage for the climactic battles that await in the final part of the trilogy.

What's important to note here at the start is the difference in Cornwell's Arthur from what people traditionally think of. The traditional Arthur created in the Middle Ages was a Christian hero, as evidenced by the quest for the Holy Grail. Cornwell's Arthur though is an agnostic pagan, who makes an enemy of the early Christian church in Britain by insisting the church pay taxes to help him fund expensive wars to keep Saxon invaders from taking over the land. For that matter the church in those days was far different than most churches today, with far less organization and rituals akin to those of revivals.

In this 5th Century world after the Romans have gone but before the Saxons, William the Conqueror, the Tudors, and so forth, paganism defined by the Druids is fading while the newer religion of Christianity is rising. This creates bitter rivalries and conflicts within Britain even as Arthur struggles to bring peace to the land.

After the bloody battle of Lugg Vale that ended Part 1 of the trilogy, the warlord Arthur sets about the business of uniting Britain (what we'd think of as England and Wales) to fight the invading Saxon horde. This he does with political alliances and a Round Table oath, but the war against the Saxons goes terribly wrong thanks to a betrayal by the cowardly, vainglorious Lancelot.

However, a peace is established, during which time the conflicts turn from military to religious. As the year 500 approaches the Christians believe Christ is set to return and thus all unbelievers must be converted or otherwise eliminated. Meanwhile the Druid Merlin sets out to find the 13 "Treasures of Britain", including a daring raid into a wild Irish kingdom to find a magic cauldron. (The cauldron story is like the equivalent of the search for the Holy Grail.) And while Arthur has peace, chaos threatens thanks to a betrayal by the one he loves most. (Anyone who knows anything about the Arthurian saga knows to whom this refers.)

As I said at the beginning, most of the action in this book is of the dramatic kind as the Christians and pagans clash and various people scheme for control of Britain. Our narrator, the brave warrior Derfel, is caught up in the middle of everything, including the quest for the cauldron--how convenient! The middle of the story then tends to sag, something Cornwell tries to remedy by weaving the tragic tale of Tristan and Iseult (or Tristan and Isolde as it was in the recent movie) into his Arthurian tale. As interesting as much of this is, it's hard not to get anxious for the climactic finish you know is coming.

Still, it's a necessary piece of the puzzle and an interesting study of life in the Dark Ages. Christians might find it especially interesting and should certainly find some parallels between these ancestors and current society. Certainly the idea of religions battling each other is something we all know something about these days. Maybe if we all had a little more of Arthur's pragmatism about the subject we'd have more of a Camelot.

That is all.

The Winter King

2009-07-17T15:36:00.001-05:00

The Winter King

(Warlord Chronicles, Part 1)

(4/5 stars)

by Bernard Cornwell

OK, most everyone should know the legend of King Arthur by now. If you don't, the basic summary is that there was once a king named Arthur in England who became king when he pulled a sword called Excalibur from a stone with some help from a wizard named Merlin. Later he married a woman named Guinevere and formed a wonderful kingdom known as Camelot, where he and his brave knights sat around a round table after a day of searching for the Holy Grail or battling dragons. But eventually he was betrayed when his top knight, Lancelot, slept with Guinevere. Later his bastard son Mordred shows up and they lock horns and Arthur is ultimately killed. Excalibur ends up thrown into a pond, where a disembodied female hand takes it while Arthur is taken on a boat to a magical land known as Avalon to wait the day when he is needed again.

Now most of that historically speaking is pure bunk. There are some who try to assert there really was an Arthur, but evidence is sorely lacking. Nevertheless, Bernard Cornwell, known in the UK for writing the Sharpe's series of historical military novels, tries to recast the Arthurian legend in a more historical context in the 5th Century AD.

Before the story begins, it's important to note that at the time the series begins, what we think of as Great Britain is divided into a bunch of little kingdoms. There's an alliance among the kingdoms of central and western Britain (what we think of today as England and Wales) rules by a High King named Uther. Uther's son Mordred was recently killed by Saxon "barbarians" who are coming over from probably what we'd think of as Scandinavia now, leaving the High King with no heir and thus leaving the alliance in trouble if the frail Uther should die.

The story begins with the dead Mordred's wife giving birth to a boy, whom is named Mordred for his father. The only hitch is that the boy is born with a deformed foot. But for the moment the alliance is saved. Unfortunately, before long, Uther finally dies and some of the other kings want to take power for themselves. Enter, Arthur.

In Cornwell's vision of the Arthurian saga, Arthur is not a king. He starts out merely as Uther's bastard son who is a warlord in Brittany (France) and pledged to help his nephew obtain the throne. This Arthur does by sweeping in with his armored horse troops and putting down any rebellion and in the process making himself the unquestioned leader of Britain.

All seems to be going well and will be even more well once Arthur marries a princess named Ceinwyn to cement an alliance with a neighboring kingdom. Except when he goes to meet the princess, he sees a beautiful redheaded woman across the room and is smitten with love. That redheaded woman is named Guinevere and while she too is a princess, her father lost his kingdom to Irish marauders and thus she isn't nearly as good of a bargaining chip.

Though Arthur should think with his head and marry Ceinwyn to keep the peace, he instead thinks with his netherregions and marries Guinevere on the sly. This ticks off Ceinwyn's daddy, who in turn rounds up a huge army to crush Arthur and make himself the High King. It all comes down to an epic battle in a place called Ludd Vale.

That's leaving out a lot of what else happens in the story. Cornwell tells the story through Derfel, one of Arthur's loyal soldiers. He is a Saxon child raised by the Britons, who survived being thrown into a pit of spikes as a sacrifice to pagan gods. This led to Derfel being raised in the household of Merlin, the most powerful Druid in all of Britain. Derfel's coming of age from a boy in Merlin's household to a warlord at Ludd Vale parallels the coming of Arthur and his rise to power and fame.

I first read this trilogy about ten years ago and what I like about it is the way that even if none of this ever happened, it feels like it COULD have happened. Instead of the old Arthurian world with plate armor and jousting contests and courtly love, we have a Britain a generation removed from Roman rule, thrust into chaos as various kingdoms fight each other while invaders from Scandinavia and Ireland threaten to wipe everyone out. Instead of noble jousting and such, men fight in clusters called "shield walls" because the shields of the clustered men are used to protect each other from attack. There's nothing heroic about shield walls fighting, as it's a bloody, gruesome business of pushing and stabbing.

The way Cornwell debunks the myth while at the same time turning it into a more realistic story reminds me of reading Mary Renault's "The King Must Die" and its sequel about ancient Greece and the hero Theseus or Colleen MacCullough's novels about Rome like "Caesar's Women." As well the attempts to make the battles more realistic is similar to Stephen Pressfield's "Gates of Fire" about the Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae (more famously recounted in idiotic fashion by Frank Miller's graphic novel "300"). There's also a lot of political intrigue that helps make the world in which this Arthur and his companions live seem to come alive.

My major nitpick is that there are too many names. There are so many kings and warriors and princes and princesses and different regions that you need a scorecard to keep track of who rules what and who hates who at the moment.

Still, even with no magic swords, dragons, or Round Table this is an exciting book that promises much more to come.

(On a side note, this to my knowledge has no relation to the "King Arthur" movie starring Clive Owen and Keira Knightley put out in 2004, though that also deals with an Arthur in the 5th Century. These books came well before that, which means Jerry Bruckheimer probably stole and corrupted them. I've long thought the Cornwell novels would make a great series of films like "Lord of the Rings" but I doubt that would happen.)

That is all.

The Hours

2009-07-17T12:54:00.000-05:00

The Hours
By Michael Cunningham

I feel cheated by this novel. The sole reason I read the book is because I had just watched the film version and thought the source novel might shed some light on a couple of points, especially the relationship between Richard and his mother. I suppose it helped a little, but not much.

I think that about summarizes my entire problem with the novel--it's too short. I suppose that was in part because it's only supposed to cover one day for each of the three main characters--Virginia Woolf in 1923, Laura Brown in 1949, and Clarissa Vaughn in "the present" or late 90s--and so to maintain that the author couldn't go so much into a lot of backstory. References are made to the past relationship between Clarissa and her former lover Richard, who's dying of AIDS, and his other former lover Louis, who is not dying of AIDS, but still I would have liked to have known more. As I mentioned at the beginning, the relationship between Richard and his mother was something I didn't quite understand in the movie, but it makes a little more sense in the book. In particular I didn't understand how she shows up at the end of the movie when they seemed to imply earlier that she was dead. In the book it makes more sense that she dies in Richard's book in real life and later he asks Clarissa to call her.

I'm sure some people would be annoyed that I'm comparing and contrasting the book and movie and not taking them as separate entities. On the whole, I think it was a push as to which is better. The book does a better job, as books do, of giving characters internal life. The movie conveys much of this through dialog between the characters, which makes for better drama, especially when Virginia Woolf and her husband are arguing at the train station. It works much better in the film version when they're talking than in the novel where most of it occurs in Virginia's head as she sits on a bench. Some of the background characters like Sally, Clarissa's lover, and Julia, Clarissa's daughter, are given more depth in the book than the movie while Virginia's husband Leonard and her sister, niece, and nephews seem to get more time in the film. So it's hard overall to say which is better, though in the end I think I'm more attached emotionally to the film because of the heightened drama, whereas the book seems a little dry.

To summarize the plot, it involves three women, as I mentioned above. First there's Virginia Woolf, the brilliant but mad author who in 1923 is living in the countryside of England with her husband, a printer, and not altogether happy about it. She sets off to writing "Mrs. Dalloway," a novel about a woman who is giving a party and what all happens to her and those around her in London that day. Concurrently, Laura Brown is living in LA in 1949 with her husband Dan and son Richie and is pregnant with another child. A socially awkward girl, she seems to have struck it rich when Dan returns from the Pacific and asks to marry her. But three years later she's not happy. She's reading "Mrs. Dalloway" and sees parallels to the book and its author in her life. And parallel to this we have Clarissa Vaughn in the present. Her former lover Richard nicknamed her Mrs. Dalloway for Clarissa Dalloway and like that character, Clarissa Vaughn is giving a party. In her case it's a party for Richard, who has won a prestigious poetry award. This section of the book often has parallels to the Woolf novel, with modern characters recreating the roles of those in "Mrs. Dalloway." (Sally as Mr. Dalloway, daughter Julia as Elizabeth Dalloway, Richard as Septimus, Louis as Peter Walsh, and writer friend Walter as Hugh.) Most of the events of this section also mirror those of "Mrs. Dalloway," which is really obvious to pick up if you do like I did and read Woolf's book immediately prior to reading "The Hours."

All three sections of the book are interwoven together to create a rich tapestry of the lives of these three women. It might have been richer if the author had expanded a little more, as I indicated earlier. Still, it's a good book and an even better film. I recommend both.

That is all.

BTW, it's ironic in the novel that Clarissa thinks she sees Meryl Streep in the trailer of a movie being shot in New York. For the film version of "The Hours" Clarissa was played by none other than Meryl Streep. (This probably explains why that scene was omitted from the film as it would have been pretty cheesy to have Meryl Streep trying to meet herself.)

Anansi Boys

2009-07-06T10:19:00.001-05:00

Anansi Boys

By Neil Gaiman

(3.5/5 stars)

"Anansi Boys" is not so much a sequel to Gaiman's "American Gods" as it is more of a spin-off, a literary "Rhoda" or "Facts of Life." In "American Gods" there was a trickster god called Anansi or Mr. Nancy, who was a spider but also manifested himself as a swinging black man in the mold of Cab Calloway.

When "Anansi Boys" begins, Mr. Nancy is dead. He leaves behind two sons. One is "Fat" Charlie Nancy, who is not fat but the childhood nickname given to him by his father has stuck no matter what he does. Though he grew up in Florida, Charlie moved to London as an adult, where he works for a sleazy talent agent and is engaged to a charity worker named Rosie. By any standard Charlie's life is pretty boring.

That is until he meets his brother. Charlie's brother goes by the name Spider. He has no job, spending his time flitting from place to place, having a grand old time. He has no steady girlfriends either. What Spider does have is magic. This is what he inherited from his father and that he uses to make himself the life of the party.

Charlie makes the mistake of inviting Spider to stay with him and before long Charlie's life is turned upside down. And like house guests everywhere, Spider soon overstays his welcome.

If the plot sounds like a sitcom, it's because for the most part it is. It's like "Two and a Half Men" without the kid. And with a bit of island magic. That makes the book more lighthearted and fun than "American Gods" but it also doesn't have quite the same impact. Though a fun and engaging read, it's likely to stick with you as long as it takes to flip the channel.

Still, I'd recommend it, especially if you're a fan of books like Terry Pratchett's Discworld series that similarly combine humor and fantasy.

That is all.

A Heart Lies Within Us

2009-06-12T13:55:00.001-05:00

A Heart Lies Within Us

By Steven LeBree

(5/5 stars)

The life of Lucas Colby is never easy or simple. Shortly after the turn of the century, Lucas's parents travel from West Virginia to Ohio, where Lucas is born. His father spends most of his time drinking and working, so that Lucas is raised primarily by his religious mother. On Lucas's tenth birthday, his father is finally done in by the alcohol and a jealous rival. Years later, after Lucas is orphaned when his mother dies of cancer, Lucas takes revenge on his father's rival before hitting the rails.

After some time spent living as a hobo on the rails, Lucas finally winds up in New York City, where he becomes bartender/bouncer for a speakeasy run by a man named Charlie. It's there where Lucas's life takes dramatic turns as he takes up drinking like his father and eventually meets the love of his life.

There's just one problem as the love of his life happens to be in love with the spotlight. Though Lucas loves her as much as he can, he can't ever compete with her desire to be a famous. Heartbroken and alone, Lucas is saved by an old friend, becoming a journalist for a small paper, where his life takes another dramatic turn.

There are a few other dramatic turns in store for you, but I won't spoil those.

All these dramatic turns are what make the story a worthwhile and engaging read. I was fascinated by the Lucas character and couldn't wait to see what would happen next to him and if he could finally get his life in order. This makes the book a real page-turner.

While the story takes place largely from the 1910s to 1940s the subject of finding your one true love and holding onto it is universal enough that it still resonates with modern readers. As well, LaBree's writing is uncomplicated enough that it never becomes too cumbersome or "literary" for the average reader.

Overall, this is a great book you should add to your reading list.

(Note: this book is available exclusively on Amazon.)

That is all.

American Gods

2009-05-22T14:42:00.000-05:00

American Gods

by Neil Gaiman

(4/5 stars)

I mentioned this in my review of "Good Omens" but just to recap, I came by this book after reading Terry Pratchett's fabulous Discworld series. From there I went to "Good Omens", an apocalyptic comedy penned by Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. So now I'm segueing to Gaiman solo in "American Gods." I have to say, for the record, I think Pratchett's books on the whole are a lot more fun. While there is humor in "American Gods" it's darker and a little more subtle--ironic might be the best way. The difference is probably that the Discworld books are written as comedies while "American Gods" isn't. I still enjoyed this, but in a different way.

"American Gods" covers territory covered by Gaiman and Pratchett (or Pratchett & Gaiman) in "Good Omens" and by Pratchett in Discworld books like "Small Gods" and "Hogfather." That territory is the concept that gods exist because people believe in them; gods are an extension of a human belief to believe in something. Over time, for a variety of reasons, belief in gods rises and falls. For instance, thousands of years ago no one outside the Middle East had ever heard of the god we know as GOD. They believed in their own more local gods, some like the Greek/Roman gods we studied in school and still remember because they're named for things like planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto) or Greek restaurants. Others have pretty much faded away from memory entirely, except perhaps for an artifact in a museum.

What Gaiman does in "American Gods" is to take that concept a step farther. For thousands of years people have been coming to America--"Native" Americans, Spanish, French, English, Dutch, and of course the Vikings--and with them they bring their gods and make sacrifices to them and build places of worship to them and so forth. And in the process they give life to those gods in America. But what becomes of the gods after war, disease, slavery, and assimilation have eroded that belief in them? Basically they're left roaming the countryside, living essentially as mortals.

A big man named Shadow gets out of prison and meets one of these fallen gods, a grifter now going by the name of Mr. Wednesday. With no job, no family, and no place to live, Shadow agrees to become Wednesday's bodyguard for a dangerous mission that takes them across the United States, though much of the action is centered in Illinois and Wisconsin. There's a storm coming, one that threatens not just Shadow but the entire fabric of reality. Because, you see, there are new gods being created everyday--gods of Technology and Media and so forth. When old gods and new gods clash, all hell is bound to break loose.

As for Shadow, he has to confront his tragic past and his destiny. Plus he has to find a way to bring his zombie wife back to life.

Overall this is a good book, though the ending seems pretty anticlimactic. I guess that's how life is sometimes. It would help too if you knew more about mythology than I do; I know a little about Greek and Norse myths from school but Gaiman includes myth creatures from pretty much every culture in the world. (Though it seems like the Greek gods like Zeus, Aphrodite, Athena, Poseidon, and so forth are missing.) Anyway, I think this is the kind of book I'd really have to read a second time--or possibly more--to GET it because there's so much going on.

Of course a lot of people will probably steer clear of a book like this because it might challenge their personal beliefs. Though I personally like a religious philosophy where pretty much everyone can be right.

That is all.

PS - I feel a little ethically compromised because Mr. Gaiman is my "friend" on the Goodreads site and I follow him on Twitter.

WHERE YOU BELONG

2009-05-19T13:51:00.000-05:00

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.

Good Omens

2009-05-15T14:27:00.001-05:00

Good Omens

by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett (Or Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman depending on your edition)

(5/5 stars)

In 1988 two great British humorists got together to write a story about the end of the world. I'm overselling a little here, but think of it as if the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin got on stage to jam together in the early '60s or so before they were huge stars. As you'd guess, the result is something unique--and hilarious.

How can the end of the world be funny? Watch and learn.

Long ago in the Garden of Eden, a demon named Crawly tempted Eve & Adam to eat the apples off the Tree of Knowledge and thus get kicked out of the garden. Taking pity on them, an angel named Aziraphale gave Adam his flaming sword to use for protection and making fire. Since then Aziraphale and Crawly (now known as Crowley) have formed a friendship even as their masters (ie Heaven and Hell) plot to destroy each other.

Along comes the big moment when Crowley is supposed to deliver the Antichrist to a satanic group of nuns, who will then switch the evil baby for the normal one born to an American cultural attache--a reference to "The Omen." Except one of the nuns messes it up and the Antichrist ends up going to a normal British family in a place called Lower Tadfield while the supposedly evil baby is watched closely by the minions of Heaven and Hell.

Skip forward eleven years to when the time has finally come. The Four Horsemen are getting to ride out--for fans of Pratchett's Discworld series the Horseman of Death is the same as in those books with the speaking IN ALL CAPS and the same dry wit--only now they've upgraded to Harleys. The lost continent of Atlantis has risen to the surface once more. And other weird stuff is happening, but now someone needs to find the Antichrist.

Crowley and Aziraphale, who have grown fond of if not humanity itself then at least all of humanity's stuff like books and Bentleys, set out to avert the seemingly inevitable End of Days. Their efforts are joined by a witch whose distant relative Agnes Nutter wrote a book of prophecies that never sold because of their terrible accuracy, a pair of witchhunters, and a gang of kids. But can they avert the Apocalypse in time? (Well, we're still here, aren't we?)

It occurs to me now that director Kevin Smith really should have read this book (and taken notes) before making his lamentable "Dogma" that dealt with similar concepts but was bogged down with too much information and not enough laughs. Gaiman/Pratchett (or Pratchett/Gaiman) manage to seamlessly blend in Biblical elements without sacrificing the humor. But as I've come to expect at least where Mr. Pratchett is concerned, there's intelligence behind the humor. Some of it may be a little too British (like Mr. Shadwell's terribly thick accent) or a little dated (like the jokes about answering machines, computers, and cassette tapes) but even so it's hard not to go more than a page without laughing.

This is a superb book that I think would make even those most fundamental Christian crack a smile. And as I said at the beginning, you're probably never going to see two masters get together like this again, so don't miss this opportunity.

That is all.

(BTW, as I finished Pratchett's Discworld series I thought this would make a perfect segue into my next book, Gaiman's "American Gods.")

The Darkest Evening of the Year

2009-05-08T13:32:00.000-05:00

The Darkest Evening of the Year

by Dean Koontz

(1/5 stars)

I've never read any Koontz before and never intended to except I needed something quick--and cheap--and my selection was limited. My question is: are they all this terrible? Seriously. This book went from mediocre to bad to terrible to outright laughable by the end.

I'm not sure, was this supposed to be suspenseful? The villains were more goofy and cheesy than scary in any way. The mystical twists struck me as hokey more than anything. And there was never any time when I didn't know I was reading a book.

To get to the dull story, it's about Amy Redwing, who was orphaned at two and has a Mysterious Past. Amy lives in California, where she rescues golden retrievers and rehabilitates them for adoption. One night she and her architect boyfriend Brian--who also has a Mysterious Past, though presumably is not an orphan--go to the home of an abusive drunk, where Amy pays two grand for the drunk's golden retriever named Nickie. The dog also has a Mysterious Past that is part of Amy's Mysterious Past. As well the drunk has a seemingly autistic little girl with Mysterious Eyes. Amy rescues the girl as well, but pays far less for her.

Meanwhile we have "Moongirl", an evil pyromaniac and her lover Harrow, who obviously are Mysterious as well because they don't have real names. Their lives are entangled with Amy and Brian's, but I won't get into how so I don't spoil anything and subsequently get yelled at by people for ruining a perfectly ridiculous book. There's also a hitman who has an obsession with literature, going by the name Billy Pilgrim from Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse V."

The only character I felt any connection to was the hitman and that's because I like Vonnegut's writing far more than Koontz. As I mentioned before, there was never a time where I didn't think of these characters as just characters; none of them ever seemed even the teensiest bit real. I feel a little duped by the back cover because the story to me sounded like Amy and the dog are sitting around on a presumably dark night when bad things start happening and they have to overcome them. As a concept there was at least some prospect for suspense there in the "things that go bump in the night" category. Instead we're treated to silliness about angels and Mysterious Pasts and girls/dogs with weird eyes. Ugh.

The dog angle only adds to the cheesiness of the story, as it's hard to gather any suspense when you're talking about dogs peeing or begging for treats. The whole thing has the feeling that was tossed off in a few hours on a lark to make a few bucks. Though I suppose it might help educate people about dog abuse, so there's that.

The only good thing is that the book is so easy to breeze through. I could get through 100 pages of my paperback version in about an hour, which means it took only about 4 1/2 hours. 4 1/2 hours I'll never get back! I'd have wasted them anyway.

At one point Moongirl tells Brian that Amy seems like Sandra Bullock, which is a vibe I picked up on. She'd be great in a movie version of this that would probably work better as a made-for-TV movie on Lifetime or something like that. Then it could be shortened to only kill 2 hours of your life.

BTW, People magazine describes this as "Silence of the Lambs" meets "Marley and Me." I take it they meant that as a compliment.

That is all.

Strata

2009-04-21T22:08:00.002-05:00

Strata
by Terry Pratchett
(3/5 stars)

This is a book by Terry Pratchett and it is about a disc-shaped world, but it is NOT a Discworld book. That's an important note. Strata was first published two years before the first Discworld book, The Color of Magic, so you can think of it as sort of a precursor to the series.

Kin Arad wrote the book on terraforming--literally. Thanks to gene engineering and other stuff she's lived over two hundred years, most of it for The Company, which is in the business of terraforming planets to make them habitable for humans. The idea is for humanity to spread out as much as possible to ensure the continuation of the species. The technology for the terraforming comes from artifacts left behind by a dead species known as the Spindle Kings. Another interesting side note is that in this universe Rome was founded by Remus and called Reme and Vikings colonized North America (called Valhalla), mating with Native Americans (or Native Valhallans I suppose) and eventually taking over Europe.

Then one day Kin is paid a visit by a supposedly lost space pilot called Jago Jalo, who shows her a cloak of invisibility and tells her there's more goodies to be found on a mysterious planet. She decides to travel with him to this planet, along with a Kung (a four-armed paranoid alien who sees violence as the first and best solution) named Marco and a Shandi (a big bear-like alien with walrus tusks who eat a very specialized diet--mainly each other) called Silver. Jago soon dies of a heart attack, but the other three go on to find a planet that is completely flat and contained in a sort of bubble with its own stars and planets. (Unlike the Discworld, this flat disc-shaped world is not carried by four elephants on the back of a giant turtle.)

Unfortunately, their ship crashes on this planet, where they soon bump into Vikings who are searching for North America, which doesn't exist here. Not long after that they come under attack from dragons. Demons, genies, flying carpets, and even the Grim Reaper also call this strange place home. But who built it and why? That is the question.

This was an OK book, but not really great. I read somewhere that it's a parody of "Ringworld" by Larry Niven, which I've never read; if I had I might have understood this better. That Kin's "real" Earth is an alternate history just makes things more confusing than they already are. Some of the action scenes were a little confusing as well. Having read all the Discworld books, I know Pratchett is capable of better, but then this was one of his earliest works, so it's not right to punish him just for setting a higher standard for himself later on.

Really there are some books, including a few of the Discworld books, that should be shorter, but this is a case where a little more length might have been helpful. I felt like I didn't really get to see enough of this flat world with all its magical inhabitants. As well Kin and the other characters felt a little flat--pun intended--so a little exposition might have been nice. (But character development has never been Pratchett's strong suit, even in the Discworld books.)

Another thing to note here is that while the Discworld books are fantasy, this is aimed more at science-fiction readers with space travel and aliens and whatnot. Of course there is some fantasy as well, just not as much of it.

Overall I'd say there's no reason to read this unless you're a big Discworld fan, or like me you got it in a box of other books and had a couple hours to kill.

That is all.

Making Money

2009-04-19T20:35:00.000-05:00

Making Money (Discworld Series, Volume 36)

By Terry Pratchett

(3/5 stars)

At last we come to the end, at least until October when the next volume in the Discworld series comes out. For now though, I’ve read all of the adult Discworld novels in the series, concluding with “Making Money” the second installment to feature conman Moist von Lipwig.

Last time we saw Moist in “Going Postal” he was charged with resurrecting the post office in the metropolis of Ankh-Morpork and in the process found himself going straight. A little time has gone by since then, with Moist still engaged to golem rights advocate Adora Belle Dearhardt and managing the post office efficiently. A little too efficiently really, as Moist has the itch for his old criminal ways that he scratches by breaking into his office at night and picking every possible lock in the place. Fortunately the city’s uncontested tyrant Lord Vetinari has a solution: he wants Moist to take over the Royal Bank and shake up the system to meet modern times.

Now here is where we have to branch out into the hypothetical story on the book jacket and what actually happens.

On the book jacket it sounds like Moist is going to take over the bank and start printing paper money. Until then the city has relied on the gold standard, using a variety of coins for its money. By introducing paper money and taking Ankh-Morpork off the gold standard, he makes new enemies and runs into dangerous situations.

What actually happens is that probably a quarter of the book is spent just getting Moist into the bank and introducing all the key players like Mr. Bent, the manager who can add pages of numbers with only a glance and worships gold like a god, and the Lavish family who run the bank, especially Cosmo, who wants to make himself into Lord Vetinari. At the same time, Adora and her Golem Trust have found some ancient golems, who make things very interesting. The rest of the story involves an audit and recriminations about missing gold—and the golems. As for the paper money, it doesn’t come along until the very last chapter of the book.

So like one of Moist’s customers for cheap diamond rings, I feel a bit cheated here. This wasn’t exactly the book I thought I was going to read. Admittedly it still is a fun read, but I kept thinking, “When are we going to get to the money? WHEN?” The actual running of the bank, the story promised on the jacket, seems like it’s going to happen off the pages. No matter how good the rest of the book is, it’s hard not to feel disappointed by that. Though I suppose a conman like Moist can’t be any more outrageous than the Lavish family who were running the bank.

What saves this book for me, and made me really, REALLY want to give it four stars against all reason, is that I like the Moist character. Having now read the entire series, he reminds me mostly of Rincewind the cowardly wizard. Like Rincewind, Moist is that breed of noble coward who doesn’t want to help anyone but seems to end up doing so anyway. Whereas Rincewind achieved this by running away from danger, Moist does it by using his very persuasive mouth. That’s what makes them both fun antiheroes, unlike those brave, strapping heroes in most fantasy novels. And for personal reasons the idea of accountants traveling around like gypsies has me laughing so hard I needed an Igor to stitch me back together. So overall it’s not a bad addition to the series (and provided Pratchett’s health holds up long enough he’s already sown the seeds for a third Moist adventure) but there have been better among these 36 volumes.

And that does it. Overall I have greatly enjoyed this series because not only are the books a lot of fun, but there’s a lot of wisdom to be garnered from them as well. Even “Making Money” seems ripped from today’s headlines with all the trouble in the real banking system. To do smart and funny takes a special talent and Pratchett is indeed very talented.

That is all.

Thud!

2009-04-14T20:00:00.002-05:00

Thud! (Discworld series, Volume 34)

by Terry Pratchett

(3/5 stars)

I feel the book's title needs an explanation. Thud is a game sort of like chess combined with Risk or Stratego that's played by trolls and dwarfs on the Discworld. The object of the game is to reenact the legendary battle of Koom Valley, in which dwarfs and trolls fought each other over a thouand years earlier. There's been bad blood (or whatever trolls have) between the two races ever since.

And thud is also the sound made when a troll club whacks a dwarf over the head. That dwarf is a rabble-rouser in the metropolis of Ankh-Morpork who has been rallying dwarfs to fight trolls on the eve of Koom Valley Day. The murder takes place deep underground in a dwarf mine, which complicates things for Sam Vimes and the City Watch, as the dwarfs are not keen on outsiders wandering around their mine.

The murder is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, though. Even as the whole city seems ready to explode, a strange dwarf sign begins cropping up all over the place. As well, a priceless painting of the battle of Koom Valley has disappeared from the city museum. Somehow Vimes has to put all these pieces together to find out who murdered the dwarf--and why. Oh, and he has to do it all by six o'clock when he must read Where's My Cow? to his infant son--with all the appropriate noises.

This installment of the series I take it was supposed to be like The Da Vinci Code (or a lesser extent the National Treasure movies) in that there's a murder that leads to the unraveling of an important historical mystery. While I think overall Pratchett is a much better writer, Brown's story probably moved along a little better; Thud seems to plod along until an ending that generally makes it worthwhile. It probably needed a couple of good chase scenes thrown in there to get things moving.

On problem I had in particular was I really became bored with the Angua werewolf character. This is the fifth book that features her in a significant role, but all she ever seems to do is whine about being a werewolf--that and smell stuff and threaten to rip people's throats out. By now it's like, "I GET IT! Being a werewolf sucks! Let's move past it, shall we?" But that's the problem is that none of the secondary characters are really allowed to grow much. The relationship between Angua and Captain Carrot hasn't really moved forward since the beginning. You'd think after what's probably ten years or more they'd be getting serious, or something.

Vimes is the only character who seems to be given any development. Since appearing in "Guards! Guards!" (volume 8) he's gone from a lonely drunk to a civic leader with a wife and son. That kind of growth is what allows you to like the character more, not to mention it keeps him from stagnating like the others. It's too bad some of the others (like Angua or Carrot) aren't really given this same opportunity to develop.

Anyway, it was still an entertaining book, with a good message about racial tolerance and all that. And as I said earlier, it picks up in the end to make up for some of its deficiencies in the thrill department. It really could use a better title, though if you look at all 36 series titles, none of them really seem especially clever. I suppose it's what's on the inside that counts--isn't that what they always say?

That is all.

Monstrous Regiment

2009-04-10T20:47:00.000-05:00

Monstrous Regiment (Discworld Volume 31)

by Terry Pratchett

(4/5 stars)

In the remote country of Borogravia, war is the national pasttime. The problem is that lately Borogravia has been as successful at war as the Detroit Lions are at football. Like desperate countries everywhere, though, they claim they're winning, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Because of all this war, villages are pretty much down to the elderly, children, and women. One of these women named Polly Perks decides to cut off her hair and join the army so she can find her brother Paul, who disappeared years earlier in the war with neighboring Zlobenia. She soon joins a regiment (really more of a squad) with other young people including a pyromaniac, a potential psychopathic killer, and schizophrenic, as well as a troll, a vampire, and an Igor--the latter being one of those hunchbacked assistants to mad scientists everywhere.

Though of course Borogravia is winning the war (wink, wink) there's no time to train the new recruits in warfare. But before they can get to the front, they come under attack from Zlobenian forces. Polly uses all her cunning to defeat the enemy, but from then on this monstrous regiment is on the run. Their only hope is to retake their country's stronghold and free the prisoners inside, including Polly's brother. To do so, though requires the regiment to put themselves in great danger from the enemy--and their own superior officers.

In "Jingo" Pratchett took on war from the perspective of the invader. Now in "Monstrous Regiment" it focuses mostly on the defender. The key point is that Polly and the other Borogrovians are not bad or evil. They're just doing their job and defending their country--and each other. It's the ones in charge, like the insane god Nuggan or the never-seen Duchess, who are the bad ones. That's good to remember because in any war there's a tendency to demonize the other side so that they seem like demons instead of real people. Otherwise it would be hard for a country to want to go to war and kill other humans not so different from them.

Though I'm sure this was unintentional, the conflict between Lieutenant Blouse and Sergeant Jackrum reminded me of Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead." In both the inexperienced young officer thinks he's in charge while the sergeant thinks he should be the REAL boss because of his experience and the officer should just be a figurehead. Things go much better for the lieutenant in this book though.

While Borogravia and Zlobenia sound more like the Balkans, there are references to the second Iraq war with the term "shock and awe" and the concept of embedded reporters. That allows readers to easily relate to the story, despite the presence of fantasy elements. William de Worde and Otto the vampire photographer of "The Truth" (Volume 25) make a cameo as the aforementioned embedded reporters while Sam Vimes and members of the City Watch also appear in the story.

The one knock I have on this book is one that I've had on a couple other of the Discworld ones. Sure there's a vampire, troll, and Igor in the regiment but they don't really contribute much to overall story. Actually the vampire and troll sit out most of the conclusion. Other than the vampire's jitteriness at needing coffee (to keep him from draining people's blood) that allows for a couple of Vietnam allusions predating "Tropic Thunder", he doesn't do much and the troll does less. At least the Igor serves as the medic. They could easily have not been in the book and it wouldn't have affected the story much. The example I used before was it's like having a few pieces left over after putting together a jigsaw. The pyro, schizo, and even the psycho all have their uses in the story, but the most monstrous characters seem just there to make the jacket sound more interesting. A pity.

Still, this is a good book with humor that doesn't dumb-down it's very non-humorous subject matter.

Join me now in a verse of "War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin'!"

That is all.

Night Watch

2009-04-07T14:27:00.001-05:00

Night Watch (Discworld Series, Vol. 29)

by Terry Pratchett

(4/5 stars)

NOTE: My previous reviews of the series have covered up to volume 27 "The Last Hero." Volume 28 "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents" is one of the four young adult books in the series that I will not be reading at this time.

In the 28 other Discworld books a lot of sci-fi/fantasy staples have already been lampooned: heroic quests, magic swords, wizards, witches, vampires, werewolves, elves, and so forth. The one staple not yet really tackled has been time travel. "Night Watch" takes care of this glaring error in relatively entertaining style.

As his wife is involved in a long labor to give birth to their first child, Commader Sam Vimes of the City Watch is involved in cornering a cop-killing madman named Carcer. In hot pursuit of Carcer, Vimes climbs up onto the roof of the library for Unseen University (the school for wizards) during a thunderstorm. When a bolt of lightning strikes the library, Vimes and Carcer are transported back in time 30 years.

And of course it is a pivotal moment in the history of the metropolis of Ankh-Morpork. The brutal Lord Winder has been heavily taxing people and rounding up any who dissent. Revolt is fermenting, all it needs is a spark.

Vimes takes on the identity of his mentor in the City Watch, John Keel, after the real Keel is killed by Carcer, who joins a secret police force known as the Unmentionables. Vimes has enough time to teach his younger self a few lessons about policing before that spark hits and the entire city erupts in violence. Now Vimes has to somehow keep the peace, keep himself (both of himselves) alive, and bring Carcer to justice. A tall order to be sure.

This book is an interesting addition to the series because it provides a little more background on some of the Ankh-Morpork characters like Vimes, Lord Vetinari, Nobby Nobbs, and even Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler the crooked merchant. I was disappointed there was really nothing included about the wizards, especially the Librarian--who was turned into an orangutan in a magical accident; I kept waiting to see if there'd be an appearance by him in human form.

My biggest complaint though is the story drags a little. Part of that is the nature of time travel stories like this. We already know there's going to be a riot because technically it's already happened. And we know in that riot there's going to be a final showdown between Vimes and Carcer, just like you knew Marty McFly would have to have it out with Biff Tannen in "Back to the Future." It's inevitable, so let's just cut to the chase.

Still, like most of these books, there's a good message underneath the action. In particular is the concept that the reason they're called "revolutions" is that they typically go in a circular fashion. Or in other words the new regime is rarely better than the old one. The main point of reference in the book is the French Revolution, only in this case no one loses their heads--literally at least.

We're down to just three more of these books now.

That is all.

Tom's Job

2009-04-01T20:38:00.001-05:00

Tom's Job

By Ethan Cooper

(5/5 stars)

Just about anyone who's ever gone out into the working world has held a job like Tom's Job: a job that is a real J-O-B, not a career. It's the kind of job that pays the bills (barely) but isn't a lot of fun. That's what allows a reader like myself to connect with this novel.

Tom's Job follows Tom Howell through five days of his life as he attends a big conference in New York. Tom works as an editor and writer of business newsletters for a small publisher in Minneapolis. He is also the ghost writer of a biography for a business titan, Jack Ostron, who has cameos in Mr. Cooper's previous "Smooth in Meetings" and "In Control." Every day Tom trudges to work to endure the interference of his annoying boss Bob before heading back to his bachelor apartment. The only bright spots in Tom's life are the bi-monthly visits of his seven-year-old daughter Katie and his work on a novel about corporate life called "Smooth in Meetings."

Tom's trip to New York becomes complicated by the presence of his boss's daughter Lisa, who is also Tom's boss, and a beautiful but reckless conference coordinator named Melanie. As if this isn't enough to juggle, Tom has to put up with Bob and Sandy, an obnoxious newsletter writer and would-be self-help guru. Plus there's the countdown to the conference Tom has to host. Even as everything seems to be going wrong, finding a way to muddle through is Tom's Job.

This was an engrossing book for me because I felt a real kinship with the character. As someone with a dead-end job, bachelor pad, and annoying boss--everything but the adorable daughter--I could really sympathsize with Tom Howell. At his core Tom is a dreamer and idealist who'd be happier chatting about literature or writing his own opus, but like most of us (especially in this economy) he has to make ends meet however he can. And so the struggle for Tom and all of us is to find some way to stay sane in this workaday world while part of us yearns to be free of it.

That is all.

Smooth in Meetings

2009-03-31T14:26:00.001-05:00

Smooth In Meetings

By Ethan Cooper

(5/5 stars)

A Machiavellian manual for the business world, "Smooth in Meetings" is a great book to read in this decade of corporate scandals from Enron to AIG. The novel provides keen insight into the minds of well-paid executives who grapple for money and power like corporate knights in a perpetual jousting contest. And just like a jousting contest, one wrong move and you're off the horse, into the mud forever.

This breezy novel takes place in 1994-95 just as the tech sector is preparing to boom. Ward Wittman is a senior manager for TriTech, a Minneapolis company that makes hard drives and other computer components. After nearly twenty years with the company, Ward has proven himself an able manager who can work a room better than any politician. Throughout the novel we see how Ward ably manipulates everyone from his wife and two kids to his superiors at TriTech. He is truly a smooth operator.

Yet Ward faces challenges when the company's CEO is deposed and a new man known to be a brutal hatchetman takes over. At the same time Ward is juggling a marriage going stale, a son lacking direction, and a secretary flirting with him. To survive, Ward is going to have to take his game up a notch.

The book focuses exclusively on Ward, giving us insight into how he sees the world as one big game he intends to win. Every gesture, every facial twitch becomes important to conveying his image of the competent professional, while every gesture and twitch of a rival is used to give him an inside edge. As noted above, he remains in this mode even outside the office, working his wife, kids, and "friends" just like his peers and clients. I wouldn't say that he's amoral or unfeeling so much as fiercely determined. The complexity of Ward makes for a great character study.

A well-written and fascinating read, "Smooth in Meetings" plays like an episode of AMC's "Mad Men" with a tad less melodrama, and of course set in the '90s. For those who enjoy that show or just want an insight into the upper echelons of power in the corporate world should read this book. My only major complaint is that Ward is so smooth I kept hoping he was going to get a comeuppance. But I guess as recent history has shown comeuppances in the corporate world are hard to come by.

That is all.

(PS: you won't find this book at your local bookstore or library, but you can find it through Amazon or other online retailers.)

The Truth

2009-03-27T12:43:00.000-05:00

(Discworld, Volume 25)

By Terry Pratchett

OK, circling back now to catch up on Volume 25 of the Discworld series. Before we hit the home stretch I've got a couple other books to read first, so this will be the last of these for a couple weeks. Huzzah.

It's important to note that in the Discworld, newspapers have never existed. The engravers guild, in order to preserve their monopoly on printing, preventing anyone from using a mechanical press. That is until a group of dwarfs arrive from the mountains yearning to make money by printing.

Along comes young William de Worde, a prodigal aristocrat whose broken from his wealthy father to make it on his own. When William visits the printing shop, he finds himself plunged into the new world of journalism. Together with a proper young lady named Sacharissa, they set out to create the Disc's first newspaper called the Times.

As luck would have it, just as they're starting out, a huge story breaks. The metropolis of Ankh-Morpork's leader, The Patrician, is accused of stabbing his clerk with a knife and then trying to flee the city with embezzled funds. The City Watch is baffled by the case, but William soon finds a "man" on the inside, the mysterious Deep Bone. Aided by Sacharissa, the dwarfs, and a vampire photographer (on the wagon, meaning he only drinks animal blood) who turns to dust if he uses flash photography, William is determined to get to the bottom of things. But the truth isn't always so easy to set free, especially when hired goons are trying to kill you.

This was a good addition to the series, but it could have been better. When I first read the description, I thought for sure there'd be some Citizen Kane references in there. I was expecting William to be one of those larger-than-life type characters like Charlie Kane and his real world counterpart William Randolph Hearst. That never materialized, which is disappointing. Instead William is an earnest young man in search of The Truth, which is OK too, but don't we all like more grandiose characters?

There are some good insights into what makes the news, especially in the comparison between the Times and its rival The Inquirer--which despite its name is more based on Weekly World News. As the Deep Bone indicates there are references to Watergate and also the hired goons Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip are based on the killers in Pulp Fiction, as evidenced by the line, "Do you know what they call a sausage-inna-bun in Klatch?"

On a side note, this story probably was the template for the later Going Postal, the first in the series I read. That involved the creation--resurrection really--of the post office in a similar fashion. Though the central character of that one, Moist von Lipwig, was more interesting. Conmen are just more exciting than conflicted aristocrats.

And that's all the news fit to print.

Discworld series Volumes 24, 27

2009-03-21T07:54:00.000-05:00

Discworld series

by Terry Pratchett

Volume 24: The Fifth Elephant: The Discworld is held up by four elephants on top of a giant space turtle. But long ago legend has it there was a fifth elephant. That elephant fell off the edge though and slammed into the ground, creating mountains and most notably, large resovoirs of fat. It's this fat that the city of Ankh-Morpork wants to obtain cheaply for making candles and frying things. And so the city dispatches Duke Samuel Vimes, also commander of the City Watch, to make a deal with the dwarves who mine the fat.

The last Discworld book I read "Carpe Jugulum" dealt with vampires. This book also has vampires, but more prominently features werewolves and dwarves who ruin the remote nation of Uberwald, where all that fat can be found. As always happens when Vimes is involved, people are murdered and there are mysteries to be solved. In particular is the mystery of the royal dwarf throne known as the Scone of Stone--as the name implies it is a baked good that is very ancient and thus very hard. If the Scone of Stone isn't found, the entire kingdom could tear itself apart in civil war.

Meanwhile, in Ankh-Morpork the City Watch faces its biggest challenge yet when career sergeant Colon is forced to run things. A word to the wise: if someone's been a sergeant for 30 years there's probably a really good reason for that.

On a side note, this book also introduces the "clacks" the semaphore towers that allow one part of the Discworld to communicate with another in hours instead of days. This is the Discworld equivalent of cellphones and the Internet. The "clacks" technology later becomes a major issue in "Going Postal" the first Discworld book I read.

Though there is that mystery involved, a lot of book involves action as Vimes becomes a fugitive from the dwarves and the werewolves. Because of that the book is a very quick and exciting read. And maybe werewolves aren't as in vogue right now as vampires, but they're pretty fun too. (4 stars)

Volume 27: The Last Hero: I'm veering a little off the proper order here, but for a good reason. If "The Fifth Elephant" was a quick read, then "The Last Hero" is an even quicker read because it's an illustrated book. The paperback copy I bought comes in at a mere 176 pages. Because of this and since it's hard transporting an oversized picture book, I decided to read it over the weekend.

Anyway, this picture book in some ways is the Discworld equivalent of one of those reference movies (Date Movie, Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie, ad nauseum) in that it makes references to nearly all the major characters in the Discworld universe, except for the Witches of Lancre. The City Watch, Rincewind, the other wizards, DEATH all make appearances here.

What brings them all together is Cohen the Barbarian. The first hero stole fire from the gods, so now that Cohen is getting on in years, he decides that he'll return the fire. So along with his Silver Horde of veteran heroes, he undertakes a harrowing journey to the mountain that houses the Discworld gods. The only problem is that if he succeeds, the entire Discworld will collapse on itself and be destroyed.

To save the world the failed wizard (and professional coward) Rincewind joins up with heroic Captain Carrot of the Watch, mad genius designer Leonard da Quirm, and the Librarian of Unseen University to mount an expedition to intercept Cohen. Using a fleet of dragons and a wooden bird, they plan to sail beneath the Discworld and come out the other side to reach Cohen in time. But will they? (Well since there were more than a half-dozen books after this do you need an answer?)

Despite this being a picture book it's not exactly kid's stuff. There's a very real message here about people's relationship to gods and the struggles of getting older. Still, it's not heavy enough to bring you down. In general this is a fun little book, and it's great for fans to be able to see some of the major characters, not to mention what this entire odd little world looks like. I can't really critique the art because I can't do anything more than stick figures myself. I didn't really have any problems with it though. (4 stars)

Next time I'll double-back for Volume 25: "The Truth" Volume 26: "Thief of Time" was previously reviewed on its own.

That is all.

Carpe Jugulum

2009-03-18T08:27:00.001-05:00

(Discworld vol 23)

by Terry Pratchett

(4/5 stars)

(Ordinarily I review a few of these at a time, but I'm bored, so here we are.)

Long before "Twilight" made vampires cool again, the witches of Lancre were battling the bloodsuckers. That proves difficult as these aren't your father's vampires; these are far more enlightened vampires (so to speak) who have learned to tolerate garlic, holy water, and even a little sunlight. When the king of Lancre invites the Magpyre clan for the christening of his daughter, the vampires decide they'll make themselves at home by taking over the kingdom and making everyone into docile sheeple.

The witches of Lancre won't stand for this, but there's just one problem: the most powerful of their coven, Granny Weatherwax, is missing and presumed sulking after her invitation to the christening gets lost. Led by the folksy Nanny Ogg, the other witches do what they can against the vampires with the help of the Wee Free Men (think Scottish Smurfs), a missionary from Omnia (think a Jehovah's Witness combined with a televangelist), and an Igor (think Dr. Frankenstein's assistant). But of course the vampires aren't going to go quietly or without some blood being shed.

Though the plot is largely the same as "Lords and Ladies" where elves terrorized Lancre, there's enough different about this so that it feels fresh. Like "Lords and Ladies" this is a little darker than previous witch adventures like "Maskerade", which I guess you should expect with vampires. For fans of "Twilight" there is a sort of romance with the sexy young vampire Vlad and Agnes, a fat young witch with a touch of schizophrenia. But really it was refreshing for me after all this "Twilight" and assorted other stuff to read something where the vampires are the bad guys.

One criticism I have is that there's a lot of stuff going on in the story and at the end it seemed like some of it didn't do a whole lot. It's like assembling a puzzle and realizing you have pieces left over. In particular the Wee Free Men angle didn't add a whole lot and while it was nice to have Magrat (formerly a witch but now the queen) back in the fold, she didn't do much either other than change diapers. When's all said and done though I think Granny Weatherwax is up to third on favorite Discworld characters list behind The Librarian and DEATH, so any book with her kicking vampire butt can't be too bad.

It's too bad then that this is the last witches book I'll be reading. They do pop up in the young adult series, but for the moment I'm not reading those. From here on out it's mostly City Watch books. Oh well.

That is all.

Discworld series Volumes 18-22

2009-03-01T08:29:00.000-05:00

Discworld series Volumes 18-22

by Terry Pratchett

Volume 18: Maskerade: Last time we met them in Lords and Ladies, the Lancre witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg were helping the third member of their coven become the queen of Lancre. Now that the coven is down to two, it's time to look for a replacement. As it happens, Nanny has a perfect replacement in mind. There's just one hitch: this person is hundreds of miles away in the metropolis of Ankh-Morpork trying to become an opera singer. No worries though as Nanny and Granny have an errand in the big city, mainly getting Nanny's fair share of royalties from the publishing of a scandalous cookbook.

Meanwhile, at the Ankh-Morpork Opera House strange things are afoot. For many years the Opera House has been haunted by a mask-wearing phantom, who generally likes to watch the first performance of any opera from a specially-reserved box. But now the Ghost has started murdering people and it's up to Granny and Nanny to put a stop to it.

Really, since most of the story focuses on murders in the city of Ankh-Morpork, I kept wondering why this wasn't a City Watch book instead of a Witches book. I suppose since much of the story is (probably) taken from "Phantom of the Opera" it's fitting for Granny and Nanny. I didn't like this as much as some of the other Witch books like "Witches Abroad" or "Lords and Ladies." For one thing the newest witch, Agnes Nitt, doesn't have much to her yet. She's very fat, has poor self-esteem, and a good voice. Not all that interesting really. As well some of the gags like the cat Greebo turning human had already been used, so there was some staleness as well. And really, the story seemed like it could have been a "Scooby-Doo" episode--Now we'll find out who you really are, Opera Ghost! (3 stars)

Volume 19: Feet of Clay: Maybe you're like me and never quite understood what a golem was, or at least I didn't until I saw a Simpsons Halloween episode featuring one--which is how I learn most everything. Anyway, in Judaism there's this idea of making big people out of clay and then a rabbi marks it with a symbol and it comes to life. It will do anything you tell it to do by putting scrolls in its mouth.

In the Discworld, golems are used like a cross between industrial robots and illegal aliens. Since a golem can work continuously without food or sleep it means less people are needed. And a golem can do all sorts of hazardous jobs like working with acids or other chemicals because they're extremely tough and never complain. Then one shop owner gets more than he bargained for when he buys a golem that goes off on a killing spree.

Meanwhile, the City Watch is expanding its operations. In "Maskerade" we learned about a new undercover unit and now in "Feet of Clay" comes a CSI unit, which consists of one female dwarf who works in an old privy. This comes in handy when someone begins poisoning The Patrician, Ankh-Morpork's leader. Commander Vimes, Captain Carrot, and the rest of the Watch have to put together the pieces before it's too late.

This was a really interesting book because the plight of the golems touches on serious issues. These issues are brought up again later in the series with "Going Postal" and presumably "Making Money." It's a good reminder that while the plots of these books seem outlandish, they bring up topics that are still in the news today. What really got me though were some great references to movies like "Terminator 2" and "Robocop." As well the mystery, or really conspiracy, wasn't so easy that I could figure it out, which is always a good thing in a book like this. There were a couple of times where I thought I had it figured out and turned out to be wrong, just like Vimes and company investigating the crimes. So it's a great crime story ripped from today's headlines as they say in "Law & Order" promos. And you can't beat the thought of a dwarf in drag. (4 stars)

(NOTE: Volume 20 is "Hogfather" which I have previously reviewed.)

Volume 21: Jingo: When an island rises from the ocean between the metropolis of Ankh-Morpork and the desert kingdom of Klatch, it's the impetus for war. There's just one slight problem, as Ankh-Morpork hasn't fought a war in centuries, content during that time to invite its enemies to come in and stay awile, followed by robbing them blind in their sleep. Because of this, the city's gentry take to raising private armies, which includes Commander Vimes of the City Watch. As expected, his unit is composed of Watchmen like heroic Captain Carrot the "dwarf", Angua the werewolf, and Detritus the troll. They face a race against time to prevent an all-out war.

This was an interesting book in that it takes the City Watch out of the city. There's references to the JFK assassination and it's hard not to think of the desert kingdom of Klatch as Iraq, though this book was written in about 1997. Certainly the sentiment that war is good for absolutely nothing rings true these days, especially when the leaders fighting the war are dopes. (4 stars)

Volume 22: The Last Continent: Everyone's favorite cowardly wizard Rincewind returns for his last full-length adventure. At the end of "Intersting Times" Rincewind ended up on the continent XXXX (so called because no one else has ever gone there and returned). With his usual luck, Rincewind is embroiled in an adventure against his wishes when this barren continent runs out of water. A helpful kangaroo helps him find his way through this strange desert continent where everyone says things like "G'day!" and "no worries" and drinks lots of beer. At the same time the orangutan Librarian of Unseen University is sick, so the school's top wizards go in search of Rincewind, as he's the only one who knows the Librarian's real name. In the process, the wizards end up stranded in time on a remote island with a god who is far from omnipotent. Somehow this all ties together.

One of the running jokes in the second half of the book is that a lot of ideas sound better after midnight and copious amounts of alcohol. This book would be best read in that state. It's not that it's not fun or interesting; it just doesn't make a lot of sense--even less sense than most Discworld books make. There are references to Australian-themed movies like "Mad Max," "Priscilla Queen of the Desert," and "Crocodile Dundee" that work best if you've seen those. I was disappointed there wasn't a "shrimp on the barby" reference. No worries! I'd recommend this one only for Discworld completists. (3 stars)

That is all...for now.

Interesting Times

2009-02-18T09:30:00.001-05:00

Interesting Times

(Discworld Volume 17)

by Terry Pratchett

(4/5 stars)

I'd been reviewing these in batches, but I might not finish another one for a little bit, so I'm going to do this one separately.

Anyway, the expression "May you live in interesting times" can be either a blessing or a curse. To Rincewind the wizard, it's definitely a curse. There's nothing more Rincewind would like more than to hide out somewhere safe and quiet with a large supply of potatoes. Unfortunately, Rincewind has the same kind of luck as Charlie Brown in kicking the football; whenever he thinks he's going to do it, someone pulls the football away.

This time, Rincewind is called upon by the other wizards at Unseen University to travel to the remote "Counterweight Continent" a region that has little contact with the rest of the Discworld. Now a hungry albatross arrives with a message requesting a "Great Wizard" be sent to the continent ASAP. Since there's no one more expendable for a dangerous mission, Rincewind is chosen to be teleported across thousands of miles, where he meets an old (literally) friend: Cohen the Barbarian. The ancient "hero" and his Silver Horde of six other old geezers are planning to mount a daring mission to steal something precious from the Empire ruling the continent.

Trying to avoid this suicide mission, Rincewind strikes out on his own, but is soon taken captive by the "Red Army", a group of teenagers who are good at plastering slogans on walls and little else. They believe Rincewind is The Great Wizard who will lead them to victory over the repressive empire.

As always happens when Rincewind is involved, his attempts to avoid trouble wind up leading him deeper into trouble and his attempts at being a coward wind up making him a hero. How this plays out was sort of predictable, but I've really come to identify with Rincewind, possessing about the same amount of "luck."

Though this isn't a sequel, there are references to the other Rincewind novels, including the reappearance of Twoflower the tourist, who first set Rincewind on the annoying path to adventure in the first two Discworld books. So there's a feeling like a class reunion in reading this that makes it fun to read. It's always good to reunite with old friends, even if they aren't real.

That is all.

Discworld Vol 15-16

2009-02-11T21:07:00.000-05:00

Discworld Series

Volumes 15-16

by Terry Pratchett

I've gotten through the first 16 volumes of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series; just 12 more to go! Picking up where I left off, here are reviews of Volumes 15 & 16.

Volume 15: Men At Arms: Affirmative action comes to the corrupt metropolis of Ankh-Morpork when the city's leader, The Patrician, inducts a troll, a dwarf, and a warm into the City Watch, Night division. The Night Watch used to be a joke, but after Corporal Carrot joined the force in "Guards! Guards!" the Watch became somewhat respectable and started actually doing work.

While the Watch is gaining three new recruits, it's losing its commander in Captain Sam Vimes. Formerly a drunk used to waking up in gutters, Vimes is now living the high life and about to marry Sybil, a wealthy swamp dragon trainer. Everything seems to be going well, except behind the scenes, someone wants to restore the monarchy to the throne.

To do this, the fiend plots to create a deadly new weapon: a gonne, which uses fireworks powder to shoot a lead slug into someone--on in other words, it's the Discworld's first gun. As racial violence between dwarves, trolls, humans, and undead heats up it's up to the Night Watch to save the day.

My problem in reading this book was I was distracted by other things, so I couldn't give it my full attention. The final solution to WHO is behind everything wasn't too obvious, which is a good thing. Like "Lords and Ladies" before it, this one had a darker tone with one central character being killed. It seemed odd to me that Corporal Carrot at the start of the book seems kind of dull-witted, but by the end he's outsmarting everyone, including a master manipulator like The Patrician. The more I got thinking about it, the more I realized Carrot is like Columbo in those old '70s mysteries. Only instead of going around in a rumpled trenchcoat and smoking cigars, he wears shiny chain mail. But the result is the same, where foes and friends grossly underestimate him until they realize they've answered "one more question" too many. (3 stars)

Volume 16: Soul Music: I was hoping to like this more than I did. DEATH--what we would think of as the Grim Reaper--is my favorite recurring character in the series, so I was hoping to really enjoy a book focusing more on him. But I didn't, in large part because "Soul Music" is much like "Moving Pictures" only instead of parodying the early film industry it parodies the early days of rock n roll--when it was actually rock n roll and not two hundred different sub categories.

Anyway, DEATH gets depressed and takes a sudden leave of absence. The job of making sure people die goes to his sixteen-year-old "granddaughter" Susan. She is the offspring of an orphan DEATH adopted and his former apprentice Mort, who got married in the earlier book aptly titled "Mort." While in many ways Susan is a normal girl, she also has the ability to will herself invisible and see things that no one else can, like a skeletal rat with a scythe that goes SQUEAK! As you'd expect Susan is no better at being DEATH than her father was, though not quite with as disastrous results.

Meanwhile, in Ankh-Morpork a bard named Imp arrives and wants to be the most famous musician ever, but can't afford to join the Musician's Guild to play legally. He joins up with a dwarf and troll and form a band. When Imp breaks his harp, the band discovers a music shop that has always been there, by which I mean it's NEVER been there and just suddenly turned up. Imp buys a guitar that seems to take on a life of its own. Before long, he and the others are playing a new kind of music they call Music With Rocks In, presumably because instead of drums the troll beats a sack of stones.

Music With Rocks In becomes a sensation, but for Imp--who takes the name Buddy--fame comes with a high pricetag.

What I didn't like, as I mentioned earlier, was much of this seemed derivative, as a combination of "Mort," "Reaper Man," and "Moving Pictures." At least Pratchett knew he was rehashing some of the same material, so he avoids duplicating those books exactly. Still, there was a definite feeling of "been there, done that." It was still an enjoyable read, but not a great one. (3 stars)

These were definitely not the best in the series (at least to me) but maybe things will pick up a bit with "Interesting Times."

That is all.

Watchmen

2009-01-25T22:44:00.001-05:00

Watchmen

Written by Allen Moore

Illustrated by Dave Gibbons

(5/5 stars)

I've never been interested in reading comic books, which is ironic because I watched comic book heroes on TV and in movies, but I never could get myself to read any of the source material. Because I'm so out of the loop on comics, I didn't know what a turning point the "Watchmen" series was for the comic book industry until I heard about it on the History Channel. Now with the movie coming out in March, I thought I'd finally give the source material a try. I was not disappointed.

It's important to note straight off that these are not your father's comic book heroes. What "Watchmen" did when it came out in the mid-80s was to make comic book characters REAL--or as real as can be expected. The "costumed adventurers" depicted in the series are not in it for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. They have varying reasons like psychotic obsessions, family pressure, fame-seeking, or just plain old curiosity. Most of these "heroes" might help you if you were being mugged or trapped in a burning building, but don't expect them to help old ladies cross the road or give a lesson on civics to a 3rd grade class.

The story begins in 1985, a very different 1985 from what you might remember. For one thing, Richard Nixon is still president and American won the war in Vietnam thanks to the costumed adventurers, most notably Dr. Manhattan, a god-like being who is blue and pretty much do whatever he wants to matter--including making it disappear. (Another difference is that thanks to Doc Manhattan electric cars were invented in 1960, thus global warming is not so much of a problem, nor are rising oil prices.) Only Dr. Manhattan and an aging mercenary known as The Comedian (like a sadistic Captain America) are still allowed to fight evil by working for Uncle Sam. The rest are all forced into hiding. Most find other jobs while some, like the obsessive Rorshach, continue to operate at risk of prosecution. (The premise of superheroes being outlawed was later used in the Disney movie "The Incredibles.")

One night, though, The Comedian is found dead in his apartment. As Rorshach investigates the case, he begins to see a conspiracy at work and not only because he's paranoid. Someone is out to eliminate or marginalize all the costumed adventurers. But who and why remains a mystery as the world teeters on the brink of Armageddon with a Soviet incursion into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Can the "heroes" find out what's going on and put a stop to it? With the USA and USSR turn the earth into a radioactive cinder? Tune in to find out.

I have to say, for a comic book (originally published as a series of 12 and now packaged together into a novel) this was fascinating. It's not just one slugfest after another between heroes and villains. The narrative not only goes into the mystery and conspiracy, but it delves into the backgrounds of the characters and includes interesting sidebars, notably a comic within the comic about an evil pirate ship of damned souls that makes the Black Pearl seem like a Carnival fun ship. The comic within the comic fits into one of the overreaching themes of the book, which is: do the ends justify the means? And as is frequently scrawled on walls in the book: who watches the watchmen?

Unraveling the various complexities and symbolic elements of this would take a long time, and I doubt I could nail them all own. Suffice it to say if you think comics are kid's stuff then you are dead wrong in this case. This is a comic for adults with adult situations like rape, impotency, and other stuff you certainly won't see on Saturday morning cartoons. "Watchmen" was one of the first books to really focus solely on the adults and revolutionized the industry. Its influence is still felt today in movies like "The Dark Knight" that strive for a more realistic approach to those costumed adventurers.

That is all.

(BTW, as I have no experience with graphic novels there's nothing I can say about the artwork. I thought it was good, but what do I know?)

Discworld Vol 12-14

2009-01-14T21:11:00.001-05:00

NOTE: reviews for Volume 10 "Moving Pictures" and Volume 11 "Reaper Man" were written in separate reviews previously.

Discworld Volumes 12-14

by Terry Pratchett

Right, so to anyone still paying attention I'm continuing to plow through the 36-volume Discworld series. I've got 15-ish more left to go! Anyway, here are brief reviews of the last three volumes I finished.

Volume 12: Witches Abroad: Granny Weatherwax and the witches of Lancre are back, and this time hitting the road (or really the sky given they fly on broomsticks) to stop a royal wedding. The princess Ella is about to marry a Duc with clammy skin, weird eyes, and a prediliction towards eating flies unless the witches can get there in time to stop the Happily Ever After. This is the kind of anti-fairy tale fairy tale in the same vein as the "Shrek" movies, though written years earlier. Besides "Cinderella" other fairy tales like "Little Red Riding Hood" are also referenced with hilarious results. The best part is what happens to Nanny Ogg's fiendish cat Greebo; I could imagine my cat would be nearly the same under similar circumstances. A fun romp through classic fairy tales. (4 stars)

Volume 13: Small Gods: This story doesn't involve any of the main characters (except for DEATH, who appears in every book) taking place in the realm of Omnia. The people there worship the Great God Om--usually depicted as a bull--with a fervor enforced by the sadistic Quisition, obviously based on the Spanish Inquisition. There's just one problem: the Great God Om is trapped in the body of a tortoise and finds himself with just one true believer: a small-witted novice monk named Brutha. This book touches on a theme presented earlier in "Pyramids" (and possibly other books) and notably later in "Hogfather" that says gods come and go based on changing beliefs. What Pratchett suggests isn't atheism; it's more like universal apathy saying whatever you choose to believe in is as good as anything. When you think no one can really prove which god(s) is God this makes a lot of sense; after all, who's to say your toaster can't be God if you really, really believe hard enough? I like too the Discworld concept that the afterlife is whatever you believe it will be, something touched on in "Eric" among others. This is a book for the open-minded on the subject, not the true believers. (4 stars)

Volume 14: Lords and Ladies: In my review of volumes 1-6 I posited that "Light Fantastic" was the only direct sequel in the series. This is not the case as "Lords and Ladies" picks up after "Witches Abroad" though really it continues the events of "Wyrd Sisters." Granny Weatherwax and crew have returned home and now it's time for the young witch Magrat to marry the king and become queen of Lancre. As people arrive from all over the Discworld, all heck is about to break loose when elves return to plague the land. These aren't the cute Santa's helpers or even the beautiful, noble creatures from "Lord of the Rings." No, these elves are psychotic, sadistic monsters intent on enslaving humanity. Because of this, the book has a darker tone than others in the series. It draws from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which I've never seen, so like with "Wyrd Sisters" there's probably a few references I didn't catch. I was happy, though, my second-favorite character the Librarian got significant time in this book. As well, this book and "Witches Abroad" helped evolve the witch characters, fleshing out their personalities a bit more. I wasn't sold on Granny and the others in "Equal Rites" and "Wyrd Sisters" but I've started to enjoy them with these two books. (Though other than the four YA novels I'm probably not going to read I think they only feature prominently in one more book--unless Wikipedia is lying.) (4 stars)

Overall these were three good books, well worth reading. And so now I press onward!

Discworld: Volumes 7, 9

2009-01-13T09:10:00.002-05:00

I'm continuing my march through the entire Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. I opened my box of Discworld books on XMas Day and began with "Pyramids", volume 7 in the series.

Pyramids involves a kingdom loosely based on ancient Egypt, complete with pharaohs, mummies, and of course pyramids. The pharaoh's son Pteppic is sent to the city of Ankh-Morpork, where he becomes an assassin. But on the day he graduates, his father dies and he's brought home to take over as the god-king. The new pharaoh soon finds that all the real power in the kingdom rests with the high priest, who is so old and so much a fixture that no one can remember not having him around--there's a reason for this that's probably quantum. In one case, the high priest sentences a handmaiden to death in the name of the pharaoh, who then uses his assassin skills to rescue her, thus making him an enemy of the state--himself.

Meanwhile, construction begins on a pyramid for the previous pharaoh, one larger and grander than ever. But not only is the cost for this monstrosity devastating to the kingdom, the temporal energy it gives off threatens to destroy the entire kingdom.

I can't say I enjoyed this one a whole lot. Maybe I'm not into Egyptians and temporal mechanics enough. Or maybe because I was anxious to get at "Fall of Hyperion" that I bought myself after XMas. Or maybe like "Equal Rites" there wasn't enough of the main Discworld elements in this one to really pull me in. Or maybe I just like making stupid postulations. (3 stars)

(For Volume 8, See my review of Guards! Guards!)

Eric - This is the ninth Discworld book that comes in at a brief 197 pages if you don't get the original illustrated edition--which I didn't. In this one Rincewind returns from exile in the Dungeon Dimensions at the end of "Sourcery." A 13-year-old demonologist named Eric has brought Rincewind back, thinking he's summoning a demon who can give him control of the universe, the most beautiful woman in the world, and eternal life. To Rincewind's surprise, he actually does this--after a fashion, but as the say: be careful what you wish for.

I read this book in about two hours this afternoon, so it's a real light read. The way Pratchett melds ancient Greek and South American history to Discworld history is interesting, and his concept of Hell is funny for anyone who works in a cubicle. His Creator of the universe, though, seems borrowed in part from another Brit: Douglas Adams in the original "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

Anyway, probably because this was supposed to be a picture book there's not a lot of depth to it. It'll amuse you for a couple hours though. (3 stars)

I'll continue to add more reviews when and if I feel like it.

That is all.

Fall of Hyperion

2009-01-12T09:30:00.000-05:00

Fall of Hyperion

by Dan Simmons

(3/5 stars)

I was trying to think of a good sci-fi related way to compare my disappointment with "Fall of Hyperion" compared to the original "Hyperion." To use a popular culture example, it reminded me of when I watched "The Matrix Reloaded." I really enjoyed the first movie and as I watched the sequel it seemed we were getting farther and farther away from what made me like the original in the first place. But at least it's not a shameful debacle like the regrettable "Star Wars" prequels.

Most of "Hyperion" was devoted to seven pilgrims gathered from around the Hegemony of Man to travel to the mysterious world of Hyperion and confront the dangerous spirit/monster known as the Shrike. Along the way the pilgrims told their stories "Canterbury Tales" style of how they ended up on the trip. The story was focused on these seven (six really) characters and the mystery of their journey. I was more than a little frustrated to realize I'd have to wait for another book to find out the solution to this.

Imagine my surprise then when the first third of "Fall of Hyperion" has almost NOTHING to do with the pilgrims or their mission. Instead, we're treated to the narration of "Joseph Severn" or John Keats mark 3. Severn/Keats is a clone of a clone of the 19th Century English poet who somehow has the ability to see what's going on with the pilgrims in his dreams. But mostly he's sitting around at meetings and parties as the Hegemony compares to confront the dreaded Ousters, a race of sort of humans who rejected the decadence of the Hegemony and its reliance on machines of the artificial intelligences known as the TechnoCore. At first this war relates only to the space above Hyperion, but soon it spreads all over. (I have to say that a space empire of 200-plus worlds that has a military of only half a million troops and 600 ships, one that KNOWS there are barbarians outside the gates, deserves to be destroyed. In Earth terms, it would be like tasking Portugal's military to protect the entire North American continent; you'll be spread just a bit thin.)

My reaction was: WHO CARES? I want to know what's going on with the pilgrims, Time Tombs, and the Shrike; I don't care about the silly Hegemony, barbarian hordes, and AIs that communicate in poetry. It seems almost spiteful for an author to lure you in with that first 484 page book and then make you wait hundreds of pages more to get back to that main point. And in the process, the story also lost much of its focus as it tried to spread around to Severn, the pilgrims, the Hegemony, and so on. For the most part then it lacked the humanity of the first book.

When Simmons finally gets around to solving the riddles of the Time Tombs and the Shrike, I found it disappointing. I had already figured out "Moneta's" identity in the first book, so when it's revealed at the end it was no surprise to me. (Though if I hadn't been right I'd probably be complaining about the solution being ridiculous.) Then there's private detective Brawne turning into some superpowered Virgin Mary--only without the "virgin" part--that seemed completely absurd. And really, what did Martin Silenius, the annoying 400-year-old poet, actually contribute to the story? The Tree Templar contributed more to the final result and he was believed dead/actually dead for most of both books!

(Possible spoiler: for a hint at what the final solution involves it'd be like the inhabitants of "The Island of Dr. Moreau" battling SkyNet and its army of Terminators.)

In the end, I came away disappointed with this book, but it's not a completely terrible book. Most of the writing was sound, though I found a little of it to be amateurish, like when a senator says something and then the author says, "She was a short woman with dark hair." which really had no relevance at the moment. While it was written in 1991, a lot of what it says about humanity's dependence on computers and scientific stagnation is still relevant in the 21st Century. The "datasphere" people plug themselves into to communicate with far-off people isn't so different from the Internet we use right now. It might have helped if I were familiar with the Keats poem that shares its title with the novel, but I don't really care about Keats no matter how many clones of him there are.

That is all.

Hyperion

2008-12-24T11:47:00.002-05:00

Hyperion

by Dan Simmons

(4/5 stars)

I can honestly say it took me seven years to read this book. Not because it's extremely long--though at 482 pages it's not short either--or because it wasn't interesting--once I started reading I could hardly put it down. The problem was I originally bought the book, but before I could get around to reading it I moved and the book was in a box that was misplaced for four of those seven years. After the box was found I just didn't get around to reading it, in part because my reading tastes had changed away from sci-fi and in part because I worried this would be one of those dull "hard" science-fiction novels that spend more time on discussion of astrophysics than characters or story. I could not have been more wrong.

Nothing much actually happens in the actual story of "Hyperion." Seven different people from around the galaxy--known as the Hegemony of Man--are brought together by the mysterious Church of the Shrike for a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs on the backwater world of Hyperion. Other than what appears to be a murder of one pilgrim, there's not much else involved other than travel arrangements.

The far more interesting part of the book are the stories within the stories. "Hyperion" is a sci-fi update of the classic "Canterbury Tales" where each of the six remaining pilgrims tells their story to the others of why they're on the pilgrimage. The Catholic priest Hoyt needs to get there before he dies from something that happened last time he was on the planet, the warrior Kassad needs to go there because of an encounter with a mysterious woman, the poet Silenius because the strange planet is the muse for his greatest work, the "Wandering Jew" Sol Weintaub to save his baby daughter, the detective Brawne to complete a case she took up, and the Consul, well, I won't spoil that surprise.

The mystery of what everyone wants and what exactly is going on with the Time Tombs and the mysterious creature known as The Shrike makes it hard to put the book down even though not a lot is happening. There are hints of a destuctive war to come, but that's saved for the sequel. I was disappointed after seven years to find out I need to buy the sequel to find out what happens to the pilgrims; I know it won't take seven years to read that.

My only real complaints are first some of the descriptions are a bit purple, especially the erotic encounter between Kassad and the mystery woman. Also, I wasn't happy with the order of the tales. Especially Weintraub's being in the middle of the book. It's such a great emotional tearjerker story that it should have been placed second-to-last in front of the Consul's nearly as emotional tearjerker story. Putting the hardboiled detective story of Brawne between the two takes away some of the flow. Still, maybe that was to keep with the form of "Canterbury Tales"; I wouldn't know because I've never read it.

In any case, even if you're not an avid sci-fi reader this is still a great book. You'll probably be a little confused about what a "farcaster" or a "Hawking drive" or a "fatline" is or how a "time-debt" works, but so was I and I've read a bit of sci-fi. Beyond that, the stories and characters are so classic to appeal to every reader.

That is all.

Discworld: Volumes 1-6

2008-12-19T15:35:00.000-05:00

Discworld: Volumes 1-6

By Terry Pratchett

I recently bought most of Pratchett’s Discworld series off Ebay and began reading them in more-or-less chronological order, instead of the hit-or-miss order in which I read six other ones. The first six books come in at about 250 pages or less and that’s with easy-to-read print, so it doesn’t take look to read--I read half of one in two hours at a Starbucks. It seems most economical then to just review these first six all in a bunch instead of one-at-a-time.

The Color of Magic (Or Colour of Magic if you prefer the UK spelling): This is the first Discworld novel, published originally in 1983. I doubt Pratchett thought he’d still be writing the series 25 years later. This first novel serves mostly as a send-up of fantasy epics like “Lord of the Rings” and such and lays out the unusual geography of the Discworld, that being a flat world carried by four elephants on the back of a huge space turtle. The novel deals with Rincewind, a dropout of the Unseen University for wizards, who knows only one magic spell and makes a living on the streets of grubby Ankh-Morpork as best he can. When he is employed by a rich tourist from the far-off Golden Empire, Rincewind thinks he’ll make a quick buck. Little does the cowardly would-be wizard know that he’s gotten himself entangled in a quest that will take him to (and over) the edges of the Disc.

As I said, this largely lays out the geography of the world, with lots of explanations of how the Disc and its various societies, gods, and so forth work. (This includes the “color of magic” to which the title refers; that color is octarine, an eighth primary color.) On its own it’s an amusing novel, though not great. Having read future installments of the series, everything seems a bit off in this first installment. It’s like watching season 20 of “The Simpsons” and then going back to watch an episode of season 1 where the voices of some characters (notably Homer) aren’t quite right. Had I started with this one, I’m not sure I’d have been keen to read 30 more. (3 stars)

The Light Fantastic: This is a direct sequel to “The Color of Magic” and possibly the only direct sequel in the series, though if I’m wrong I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough. Anyway, Rincewind thought he was through with crazy adventures, but an even crazier adventure beckons as the great space turtle seems to be on a collision course with a sun. It just might be the one spell Rincewind knows can actually help save the entire Discworld.

Like “The Color of Magic” before it, this one is good, but not great. I think Pratchett had begun the process of settling in more to creating a series instead of just one book. It’s still an amusing read if you have a couple hours to spare. (3 stars)

Equal Rites: This is the first Discworld novel to expand the universe outside of Rincewind. In this case the story revolves around a witch named Granny Weatherwax, who lives in the isolated Ramtop Mountains. On general principles Granny doesn’t like associating with non-witches, but finds herself becoming a mentor and guardian to a little girl named Esk, who seems destined to become a wizard. Just one problem: there’s never been a female wizard before.

There was some good potential for this story in the beginning, but the end never really lived up to it. For one thing, the story focuses itself on too narrow a timeframe, so that we don’t really get to see much of Esk’s challenges in trying to become a witch or her relationship to Simon. That they haven’t reappeared to headline any of the other 30 books probably says something about the author’s detachment to them. On a positive note, though, getting away from Rincewind allowed more of the Discworld universe to evolve. None of the Discworld books are probably essential reading, but this one even less so. (2 stars)

Mort: This is the first Discworld novel that focuses on DEATH as a main character. He appears in most every novel, at least in a cameo, but this novel really fleshes out (bad pun since he hasn’t got any flesh) Death’s world. Death becomes fascinated with humanity and so decides to experiment with human pleasures like drinking and eating, though fortunately not that other human pleasure. Meanwhile, he recruits a young man named Mort to cover for him. When Mort falls in love with one of his victims, the consequences are dire.

Maybe it’s terribly morbid, but DEATH is probably my favorite character in the series to this point. (Second is the Librarian, an orangutan who answers everything with a hearty “Ook.”) I’m pretty sure this laid the groundwork for the Susan character featured in future novels in the series, though I haven’t got to that point yet. Anyway, on its own I liked this novel, though not as much as the later “Reaper Man” that also focuses heavily on DEATH. Still, I’d have to say that of the first group it’s the one I liked best. (4 stars)

Sourcery: After two books Rincewind returns and once more the cowardly non-magical wizard has to save the universe. This time it’s not a collision with a sun about to put an end to the world, but a powerful ten-year-old sourcerer, so called because he serves as a “source” for raw magic—it’s a little complicated. A magic war breaks out among the wizards that threatens to destroy the fabric of reality unless Rincewind can save the day. (So everyone is pretty screwed.)

The Discworld universe continues to evolve with this book, especially the wizards. Rincewind is probably at his best of the three he’s featured in at this point and is forced with a real issue other than survival when he has to take sides against his fellow wizards. The only flaw is at the end some of the characters were left with little to do but stand around and watch the fireworks, so to speak. That’s a little slack storytelling. (3 stars)

Wyrd Sisters: This is the last of the six I’ve read and this time we’re back to Granny Weatherwax last featured in “Equal Rites.” Granny’s got a couple new friends to form a coven—of sorts—that soon finds itself embroiled in political strife involving the assassination of a king and his newborn successor. Much of the story is modeled after works of Shakespeare like “Macbeth” and “Hamlet,” which would probably be more humorous to me if I’d read (or watched) much Shakespeare.

I can’t say I’m overly fond of the Granny Weatherwax character, but I think if you like “Wicked” (the Gregory Maguire book or the musical) you’ll probably enjoy Pratchett’s less-than-fanciful account of witches—and it’s worth noting this came along seven years before Maguire’s book. As I said above, if I knew about Shakespeare I’d have liked it more, but that’s my fault not the book’s. (4 stars)

I got myself a big box of Discworld books for Christmas, so after the holidays I’ll get into that and post some more reviews when and if I feel like it.

That is all.

Hogfather

2008-12-02T14:45:00.002-05:00

Hogfather

(A Discworld Novel)

by Terry Pratchett

(4/5 stars)

In the fictional Discworld, which is carried by four elephants atop a giant turtle floating through space, what we would consider Christmas is known as Hogwatch. The jolly, bearded fat man in the red suit we would associate with Santa Claus is known as the Hogfather and drives a team of four boars instead of eight reindeer. This year, though, something has gone amiss--mainly the Hogfather himself--and so if the Hogfather looks as if he's lost a lot of weight it's because Death is standing in for him.

The plot itself for "Hogfather" sounds like one of those cheesy Christmas specials we used to see more of on television like "The Flintstones Save Christmas" or "Ernest Saves Christmas" or even "The Santa Clause" where some ordinary klutz has to fill in for Santa and bring toys and cheer to the good little boys and girls. But things are never that simple or straightforward in the Discworld. While the Grim Reaper is filling the Hogfather's boots, his "granddaughter" Susan goes in search of the Hogfather, which ultimately involves assassins and The Tooth Fairy. Meanwhile, at Unseen University, the school for wizards, strange things are happening like gods and fairies appearing out of thin air. (It makes slightly more sense when you read the book.)

The story centers not so much on "saving Christmas, er, Hogwatch" as on the nature of belief and how it changes over time. In particular is the concept of old gods serving new purposes. If you look back through history you can compare the roles of old gods like Zeus or Odin with the Christian God (or Jesus) or Hindu gods, and so forth. No matter the society or the religion humans have always had a need for belief in something, even if it's something ridiculous like a jolly fat man and a team of flying hogs.

There's a good moral as well in the story of Death learning to be Santa, er, Hogfather in that Christmas, er, Hogwatch doesn't always mean getting everything you want. Even as children a little disappointment is necessary to help us mature into adults. (You've seen what happens to people who get everything they want growing up with the Paris Hiltons of the world.)

So really what could have in lesser hands been rendered into a cheap, sappy Christmas special has been given far more meaning by Mr. Pratchett. Not to mention the book is hilarious and a breeze to read. Some of the things near the end were a little confusing, but overall this was a great read for the holidays.

I bought the British miniseries of this off the Amazon Black Friday sale; I hear the miniseries sticks pretty close to the book, which would be a good thing. Once it arrives I'll have to find out.

That is all.

Moving Pictures

2008-10-02T12:09:00.001-05:00

Moving Pictures
(A Discworld Novel)
by Terry Pratchett
(3/5 stars)

I'm going to be lazy here and borrow heavily from the review of the last Discworld book I read recently because really, it's about the same thing.

When it comes to some airplane/beach reading, Terry Pratchett's Discworld books are definitely not a bad choice if you're a sci-fi/fantasy fan. They're light, not too long, and funny in that British kind of way. They'll make you think a little bit, but not too much to make your head hurt. The mixture of comedy, action, and a little romance is just right for when you want an enjoyable book that isn't too heavy and overbearing.

That said, "Moving Pictures" is the fifth of Pratchett's Discworld novels I've read and it didn't really make much of an impact on me. It killed a couple hours at the airport, on the plane, and later at work but that was really about it. Mostly, this felt the same as the other Discworld books I'd read where some seemingly innocuous thing created by some fringe character threatens to destroy the universe until a ragtag bunch of non-heroes band together to stop it.

In this case an alchemist is conducting one of his idiotic experiments when he lo and behold SUCCEEDS at making something useful! What he invents is the Discworld equivalent of film. Before long he and his fellow alchemists head off to an abandoned place called Holy Wood and begin shooting silent movies that are made by imps quickly painting images onto the film while one of the alchemists turns a handle that "motivates" the imps to keep working.

Meanwhile, Victor is a wizard student at Unseen University who because of his uncle's will doesn't want to graduate and doesn't want to drop out either; he just wants to coast along like a less wild "Van Wilder." But when he sees a "click" as the silent films are known as, he heads off to Holy Wood along with thousands of other starstruck humans, trolls, and even dogs. Victor becomes a moving picture star along with a woman named Ginger.

Before long a former sausage salesman becomes a big-time movie producer and endeavors to put on the mother of all clicks--with a thousand elephants! But all this meddling with mysterious forces in abandoned places is bound to lead to trouble--trouble fit for a click!

All these different plot threads come together fairly well in the end as all our non-heroes battle weird Things for the fate of the Discworld. Still, as I said, even though I've only read four of these it felt like I'd read most of this before with only the specifics changed. I suppose when you write as many of these as Pratchett has it's easy to fall into a formula, albeit an enjoyable formula.

I did enjoy this one slightly more than the previous one I read if only because it was fun to play "spot the reference" in terms of real movies like "Gone With the Wind," "King Kong," "Lassie," and "Casablanca" among others. The real film industry was about as primitive as the Holy Wood version early on, only without the imps and trolls.

As I said at the beginning though, if you want some light reading that is a little more substantial and enjoyable than the latest Nicholas Sparks or James Patterson rag, Pratchett is your man. It just probably doesn't matter WHICH one you read.

That is all.

Thief of Time

2008-10-02T12:07:00.000-05:00

Thief of Time
(A Discworld Novel)
by Terry Pratchett

(3/5 stars)

When it comes to some airplane/beach reading, Terry Pratchett's Discworld books are definitely not a bad choice if you're a sci-fi/fantasy fan. They're light, not too long, and funny in that British kind of way. They'll make you think a little bit, but not too much to make your head hurt. The mixture of comedy, action, and a little romance is just right for when you want an enjoyable book that isn't too heavy and overbearing.

That said, "Thief of Time" is the fourth of Pratchett's Discworld novels I've read and it didn't really make much of an impact on me. It killed a couple hours at the airport, on the plane, and later on a train but that was really about it. Mostly, this felt the same as the other Discworld books I'd read where some seemingly innocuous thing created by some fringe character threatens to destroy the universe until a ragtag bunch of non-heroes band together to stop it.

In this case, Jeremy Clockson is an orphan adopted by the Clockmaker's Guild who is obsessive about making accurate clocks. A strange but beautiful woman named Lady LeJean comes into his shop one day with the challenge to make the Ultimate Clock. Jeremy takes this on with the help of his rented Igor and some inspiration from his dreams for a glass clock.

Unbeknownst to Jeremy, this has already been done before and the fallout required the mysterious History Monks to patch Time back together into something resembling a plausible reality. Sweeper Lu Tse was the one who nearly stopped the last clock and vows to stop it this time with the help of his new assistant Lobsang Ludd. Meanwhile, Death realizes the universe will end on Wednesday and is preparing for the Apocalypse by rounding up the other three Horsemen: Pestilence, Famine, and War in a style reminiscent of the "Blues Brothers." In the meantime he tasks his "granddaughter" Susan to look into what will bring an end to life as we know it.

All these different plot threads come together fairly well in the end as all our non-heroes battle the bureaucratic Auditors for the fate of the universe. Still, as I said, even though I've only read four of these it felt like I'd read most of this before with only the specifics changed. I suppose when you write as many of these as Pratchett has it's easy to fall into a formula, albeit an enjoyable formula.

As I said at the beginning though, if you want some light reading that is a little more substantial and enjoyable than the latest Nicholas Sparks or James Patterson rag, Pratchett is your man. It just probably doesn't matter WHICH one you read.

That is all.

The World According to Garp

2008-10-02T12:04:00.002-05:00

The World According to Garp
by John Irving
(4/5 stars)

I first read this book about five years ago when I was just exploring the works of John Irving, who has since become my favorite writer. I tried to post a customer review on Amazon back then but through some glitch the review never posted, so I can't be sure what I thought of the book back then, except I know I enjoyed it.

Anyway, for reasons that don't need explained right now, I'm rereading all of Mr. Irving's novels starting at the beginning with "Setting Free the Bears" (a decent first novel that displayed the author's potential though on its own it's not the best) to the dreadful "Until I Find You" which I will somehow have to struggle through a second time--or maybe it won't be so bad now that my expectations have been thoroughly dampened.

Right, so "The World According to Garp" was Mr. Irving's fourth book and I'm fairly certain the one that launched his career as a major writer with more than a "small but serious" audience. This is also the first of Mr. Irving's books to use the Dickensian 'cradle-to-grave' method that follows the main character from conception all the way to death. This similar device is later used for varying levels of success in "The Hotel New Hampshire," "The Cider House Rules," "A Prayer for Owen Meany," "A Widow for One Year," and the aforementioned dreadful "Until I Find You."

In this case the character we're following from conception to death is T.S. Garp. What do the initials TS stand for? (No, not Tough Sh*t.) They don't really stand for anything. Garp's mother was a nurse at a Boston hospital during WWII named Jenny Fields and wanted a child without the hassle of having a man in her life. This being before sperm banks and artificial conception, she decides to have sex with a brain-damaged and dying ball turret gunner named Technical Sergeant Garp. This less-than-immaculate conception gives birth to TS Garp.

Garp's mother loses her job at the Boston hospital but eventually finds work at the illustrious Steering School an all-boys school at the time. While growing up there, Garp nearly falls off the roof of the infirmary trying to shoo away pigeons and has his ear bitten off by a dog belonging to the airheaded Percy family. The eldest daughter of those Percys--the very easy Cushie Percy--gives Garp his first sexual experience at eighteen. Meanwhile, Garp also meets the lovely though nerdy Helen Holm, the daughter of Garp's wrestling coach. She loves to read so he decides he'll win her love by becoming a serious writer.

After graduating from Steering, Garp decides to travel abroad to Vienna to work on his writing. (Why Vienna? Because in his first five books Mr. Irving always uses Vienna or the greater Austria countryside as a location probably because he went there when he was about eighteen. Mercifully Mr. Irving grew out of that habit.) His mother tags along to begin work on her controversial autobiography. Meanwhile, Garp learns all about the legal prostitution system in Vienna--prostitution is another Irving staple along with wrestling, private schools, and bears--including a prostitute named Charlotte who dies of cancer. This helps propel Garp into finishing his first major work, a short story called "The Pension Grillparzer."

When he and his mother go back to America, his mother is a major feminist celebrity while Garp marries Helen Holm and the two of them settle down in suburban New Hampshire to raise two boys. There's trouble in their marriage from wife-swapping, babysitters, and a France-loving student, which leads to a terrible tragedy I can't go into without spoiling things.

After this tragedy, the Garps move in with his mother and he writes the book that launches his career from a "small but serious" audience to major commercial success with "The World According to Bensenhaver" an "X-rated soap opera" that explores themes of rape, violence, death, and the need for a parent to protect his children. This book is a direct result of the terrible tragedy I can't describe and afterwards Garp suffers from writer's block for years.

The family moves on to the Steering School, where Garp replaces Helen's father as wrestling coach and Helen teaches English. At the same time a long-standing feud between Garp and a society of women called the Ellen Jamesians comes to a head. The Ellen Jamesians are a fanatical group of women who cut their tongues out to "honor" a young girl named Ellen James whose tongue was cut out by a rapist. What precipitates the feud is Ellen James herself coming to live with Garp and denouncing the fanatics. Again I can't describe what happens next though I've left a clue if you remember what I said about how the book is structured.

Anyway, this was Mr. Irving's first big hit and some might argue his finest work. (I prefer "The Cider House Rules" myself.) Not only does it manage to cover an entire person's life in about 600 pages--depending on the edition--but it covers a broad spectrum of issues from "feminism" to marriage to writing. If you are a writer, like myself, then this book is a must-read for its insights into the fiction-writing process, the most important insight being the difference between what is true in actually happening and what is true in spirit. Mr. Irving uses that archaic omniscient style no one is supposed to use anymore to great effectiveness, though sometimes he goes a little too far in stating the obvious or heavy-handed foreshadowing.

The reason I don't give this 5/5 stars--or a perfect rating on any scale--is because there's one issue that always bugs me. It relates to the Garp Family Tragedy I can't reveal. I can say the problem with that is the setup for it is so obvious, illogical, and contrived that it never ceases to bother me. I'm a strong enough believer in Mr. Irving's work to think he could have managed to get the same result a little more effectively than that.

It's a minor blemish on an otherwise great work that's a good read and an important read that at the same time isn't a complete bore to read--except the wrestling parts. Mercifully unlike his previous novel "The 158-Pound Marriage" there's not nearly so much of that boring wrestling shop talk that bores me to tears. Maybe you'll enjoy those parts more than I do.

Anyway, after first reading "The Cider House Rules" and other works by Mr. Irving like this one I became sort of a disciple of the man's genius to the point where in 2004 I wrote a tribute story called "Spring in the Land of Broken Dreams." You can read that here

Guards! Guards!

2008-10-02T12:04:00.001-05:00

Guards! Guards!
by Terry Pratchett
(4/5 stars)

Well this is the third of Pratchett's "Discworld" books I've read and probably the last one I'll read for a bit as I have some other stuff to do. Anyway, "Guards! Guards!" was another entertaining and quick read, though I couldn't help thinking it bore a lot of similarities to the later "Going Postal" which I read first. It wouldn't surprise me if many of Pratchett's nearly 40 Discworld books are very similar because in my experience authors develop a certain way of doing things and so do I, although I don't consider myself a true "author" at this point, just a hack writer.

But enough about me and vague generalizations. "Guards! Guards!" is about the laughably inept City Watch, who work the graveyard shift ringing a bell, shouting "all is well," and trying to stay out of the way. This is because the Machiavellian head of the metropolis of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, has essentially legalized crime by unionizing thieves and assassins and giving them strict quotas. The head of the City Watch's night shift, Captain Sam Vimes, comes from that Bruce Willis mode of cops in that you can usually find him in a bar or in the gutter afterwards, stinking like a bar.

Things begin to change when a "dwarf" named Carrot arrives from the mountains. Carrot really isn't a dwarf, he's a human taken in by the dwarves since he was a baby and his parents were murdered. When he arrives in Ankh-Morpork he starts throwing the book (figuratively and literally) at the criminal element in the city despite Vimes and his lieutenants telling him to chill out. Meanwhile, a real crime is being purpotrated by a secret society trying to take control of the city by summoning a dragon. They get a lot more than they bargained for and now the only ones who can stop it are the City Watch with the help of the Lady Raskin, one of her pet swamp dragons, and an orangutan librarian.

I think the good thing about this off the bat is that while the book is funny and the cops are inept, they aren't really "Keystone Cops" so much as guys who really don't have an important job and are well aware of this so they just don't care. Some of the plot is predictable but the main twist at the end I didn't really see coming. Like the other two Discworld books I've read (and I'll bet it is the same for most) it features a lot of subtle comedy that makes it laugh out loud funny. As I said earlier, at some point I'll get around to reading more of these because they are high-quality reads that are fun and cover serious topics as well.

Also, as far as comparing this to "Going Postal" they both start off with the "hero" who isn't a hero by any stretch (drunken cop vs. con man) who is embroiled in a much larger game and somewhat reforms, in the process meeting a lady who isn't necessarily a "lady" in terms of decorum. Like I said, I'll bet a lot of the other books in the series follow a similar pattern, but it's a good pattern so that's not really a bad thing.

That is all.

Star Wars: Thrawn Cycle

2008-10-02T12:02:00.001-05:00

It was way back in 1991 or 1992 when I first walked into the local Waldenbooks and saw the display for "Heir to the Empire" by Timothy Zahn billed as "the official continuation of the Star Wars saga!" My first reaction was skepticism. I mean, did we really need a continuation to the Star Wars saga? Was this going to be some really lame sequel like "Godfather III" or "Scarlett" (the sequel to "Gone With the Wind")? Turns out the answers are not really and no. We certainly didn't NEED a continuation to the Star Wars saga as most of us who grew up with the movies had been doing that on our own for over a decade with our action figures and friends and fanfics. Still, if there was going to be a continuation, the three books by Timothy Zahn were a good choice.

(With all apologies to the purists I have no idea what the technical title for this trilogy ended up being. Let's just call it the Thrawn Trilogy for lack of a better name.)

So then, "Heir to the Empire" picks up five years after our favorite heroes from a galaxy far, far away destroyed the Death Star, killed Darth Vader and the Emperor (indirectly), and toppled the evil Galactic Empire. Now Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, and the rest of the gang are putting together a government called the New Republic to bring peace and freedom to all the peoples of the galaxy.

But the Empire is not finished yet by any means. The brilliant strategist Grand Admiral Thrawn has taken the reins of power over what's left of the Empire and he aims to bring it back to its glory. But to do this he's going to need some help from a cloned Jedi Master named Joruus C'Baoth, who agrees to help so long as Thrawn delivers Luke, Leia, and the Jedi twins she's carrying in her belly. As well, Thrawn is planning a little Attack of the Clones of his own.

The main purpose of this book is mostly to familiarize readers with all the new characters who will play prominent roles not just in the rest of this trilogy but in many of the future books as well. Besides the aforementioned Thrawn and Master C'Baoth, we also have Talon Karrde the gentleman smuggler who knows everything that's going on in both the New Republic and Empire but refuses to take sides in the struggle, though like Han Solo in "A New Hope" (the original 1977 movie if you're not a nerdy fan like me) he eventually has to make a choice. And more importantly there's the enigmatic Mara Jade, a young woman who was known as the Emperor's Hand and has a personal grudge against Luke Skywalker for bumping off her boss.

All our old favorites like Lando, Chewie, C3PO, R2D2, and Wedge Antilles (I'm just throwing him in there because he's my brother's favorite character) show up as well. What Mr. Zahn does well (unlike George Lucas' childish attempts in the woeful prequels) is to mix political intrigue into the action so there's more depth than the good guys are Good and the bad guys are Evil. As well, I think he does a good job in keeping the established characters more or less the way we remember them except, as five years have gone by and Han and Leia are married now, a little bit more mature. In some of the sequels that followed over the years under other authors there were times when you thought, "Han wouldn't say that." Or "Luke wouldn't act like that." But that doesn't happen here. As well, Zahn keeps Luke Skywalker's Jedi powers consistent with the movies so while he can block laser blasts with his lightsaber and confuse weak-minded stormtroopers, he can't fly or bring down whole buildings with his mind or anything like that. There was a tendency in later books (after Luke unilaterally decides he's a Jedi Master, which always seemed completely out of character to me) to make him a superhero with a lightsaber only without the tights and cape. The new characters fit right into the story and with the existing characters. I have to say Thrawn is one of my favorites because he's as smart and evil as a Bond villain but unlike a Goldfinger or Dr. Evil he doesn't have that blind arrogance; he wouldn't play some idiotic game to kill our heroes like dangle them over a shark pit or whatever. His only mistake was underestimating the colossal good fortune of the heroes. (If you know Luke Skywalker is on a planet, just bomb the whole thing from orbit until there's nothing left but ashes--and even then he'll probably find the one rock or cave or something to hide under.)

The only thing lacking from "Heir to the Empire" and the two sequels is that while there's lots of space there's not much opera. There's no epic lightsaber duel (which really disappoints me as I love those unless Yoda is involved, in which case it's unintentionally funny) or Death Star or "I Am Your Father" moment to give it the same epic grandeur and spectacle of the movies. But I think the story and characters are interesting enough to more than offset this. And on the bright side there's no Muppets or teddy bears or mildly racist caricatures like the movies either.

The sequel and second one in the trilogy "Dark Force Rising" is kind of dull in places. Mostly this one is designed to bridge the gap between the introduction and the epic conclusion and so the pace at some times suffers while all the pieces are maneuvered into place. Luke goes off to study with C'Baoth until he realizes the Jedi Master is nuts, Leia goes to the planet of the Noghri who are trying to kill her so she can make peace, and Han and Lando race to find a lost fleet of ships before Thrawn.

In the epic conclusion the good guys are on the rope as Thrawn launches his Attack of the Clones and seems on the verge of winning. To stop him, our heroes must find the source of his clones on the remote planet of Wayland and do battle against C'Baoth and his minions. The excitement here definitely picks up, rewarding readers for slogging through some of that setting up in the prior book. I don't want to spoil too much here but it should be obvious the good guys win or how else could they have done about a thousand sequels afterwards?

I kept up with most of those sequels by many of whom I would consider lesser authors over the next ten years or so. I finally got tired and bored during the whole "New Jedi Order" series. I think by now Han is like seventy and Luke and Leia are in their 50s with Jedi grandchildren and the epic struggle is not to wet their Depends undergarments. Sorry, but it's getting a little ridiculous by now with our heroes having foiled more evil capers than Scooby and the gang. No one is that lucky.

One of the things I would love to ask Mr. Zahn about if I went to see him at a convention would be how annoyed he was at some of the sequels that came out. That's probably a discussion that would be better to have at a bar over a few drinks than standing in line at a booth, though. Because about six years later Mr. Zahn returned to Star Wars writing with the two-book "Hand of Thrawn" series that seemed to serve little other purpose (besides making money for the Lucas Empire) than to correct some of the mistakes made in the sequels, most notably the relationship between Luke and Mara Jade.

My personal theory is you can tell which books Mr. Zahn liked and which he didn't by doing a little reading between the lines. For instance characters like Corran Horn from Michael Stackpole's "Rogue Squadron" series are featured prominently while the Solo children are conveniently herded off to some distant planet and none of the Jedi from Luke's Jedi Academy really show up. As well Mara Jade refers at one point to essentially wasting the last ten years of her life (which is the time between the two Zahn series) and Luke decides he ought to rein in overusing his Jedi powers.

The excuse for all this to happen in "Spectre of the Past" and "Vision of the Future" is that Grand Admiral Thrawn has supposedly returned from the dead and is plotting to reinvigorate the little bit of the Empire that remains. There's not quite as much action and political intrigue as the previous three books and really no new characters worthy of note. Still, it was refreshing after all the lesser efforts that preceded it because for my money Timothy Zahn's books are the gold standard by which to judge any other Star Wars novel. Others will disagree--and they will be wrong, wrong, WRONG! but they're entitled to their idiotic opinions (just kidding...maybe)--but as the first one to take a crack at it he set the bar pretty high.

I rented the other two adult Star Wars novels Mr. Zahn has written--"Survivor's Quest" and "Outbound Flight"--from the library so I'll read those as well. They certainly aren't essential reading, but it's a fun way to kill a few hours. And no matter your opinion of his books, one thing is for sure: Mr. Zahn wouldn't have made as much of a hash of the prequels as Lucas did. (I mean, just about any of us geeks playing with our action figures and writing fanfics could have written better scripts than those!)

Sorry to go on so long about this. I am a total nerd about it, but then the Star Wars movies were pretty much the first ones I can remember seeing so there's a lot of love there.

That is all.

Dirk Gently Series

2008-10-02T12:01:00.001-05:00

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency &
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
by Douglas Adams
(4/5 stars)

I bought the compilation of both books in the late Douglas Adams' (author of the better-known Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series) Dirk Gently series, which you probably can't find in stores, but you can buy it used online or just buy the two books separately. Anyway, because of this I read both books together and so I might as well review them together.

Overall if you like the Hitchhiker's Guide books there's a lot of the same quirkiness to be found in the Dirk Gently series. Dirk Gently (his real name has changed many times to dodge bill collectors and other nefarious characters) is as oddball as Ford Prefect or Zaphod Beeblebrox only he keeps his feet more or less planted on Earth. He runs what he terms as a holistic detective agency in London that investigates the interconnectedness of all things and mostly on the surface would seem to be a way to bilk gullible old ladies wanting to find their cats out of some money. And yet what we find is that through his strange methods (or perhaps in spite of them) he does manage to get results in the two cases of the series.

Book 1: "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" focuses on the murder of a software designer. Richard, one of the victim's employees who is also dating the victim's sister, is an old school chum of Dirk Gently and so employs him to help find the culprit. Finding the solution involves investigating a magic trick performed by one of Richard and Dirk's old professors for a little girl at a stuffy dinner. How the two events are interconnected is the real mystery as it's pretty easy to deduce the software developer's murderer in the first third or so of the book.

I found the ending a little confusing and the interaction between Richard and Dirk was perhaps a little too similar to that of Arthur and Ford Prefect in the Hitchhiker books with Richard playing the befuddled straight man to Dirk's wacky troublemaker. Still, with its notions about time and Electric Monks it proves to be a good bridge between the Hitchhiker books and the next entry in the Gently series.

Book 2: "Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" features more of Dirk Gently than the first book. This time the befuddled straight man is actually an American woman named Kate, who is on her way to Norway to meet an old flame when the airline counter is destroyed and not by Al-Qaeda either. At the same time, Dirk has been hired as a bodyguard to a record producer, an assignment that goes terribly wrong when the record producer is decapitated by a woolly, green-eyed creature with a scythe. Again the real mystery is unraveling how the two events are interconnected, which is the whole point of having a holistic detective.

And again the ending is a little bit confusing. Still, I liked this one better than the first because it featured more of Dirk Gently so that he seemed to becoming more into his own as a character. Unfortunately, Adams was not able to finish any more books in the series--I believe part of a third novel is included in the "Salmon of Doubt" anthology published posthumously.

As it stands, these books are pretty much just as much fun to read as the Hitchhiker novels and just about as short. Of course since both are (more or less) just set on Earth there's not the same opportunity for galaxy-spanning mirth and mayhem, but there's plenty of quirky humor and fun to be had all the same. So no matter how you go about obtaining them, they're worth the read.

That is all.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

2008-10-02T12:00:00.000-05:00

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

By Kurt Vonnegut

(3/5 stars)

This is the fifth Vonnegut novel I've read in about as many months. I enjoyed "Timequake" and loved "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Bluebeard." But the last two I've read just weren't as good. I read "Cat's Cradle" and thought overall it was weird, not in the wacky fun-loving way of a Willy Wonka, more like the creepy way of that guy who sits in a van outside playgrounds. But then I had a head cold so maybe I wasn't prepared to appreciate the subtleties. As for "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" I just found it to be completely unpleasant and perhaps in this case it was because the novel was telling me things I knew but didn't really want to hear about. The truth hurts.

The book deals with the Rosewater family, in particular two branches of the family. One group is based out of Indiana, but they don't really live there. The father is a senator who visits the county named for his ancestors a couple times a year, which is not unlike most politicians, some of whom (a certain senator representing New York) have even less connection with the territories they represent. Thanks to shrewd dealings in the Civil War by his ancestors, the senator has plenty of money. To keep the government he ostensibly works for from touching the fortune, the senator's lawyers drew up a foundation. The senator's son Eliot comes to be the head of this foundation and he (gasp!) actually tries to use the money to help people! He moves to Rosewater County, where he dedicates himself to helping people by giving them money, medicine, and an ear to talk to while also fighting fires as a lieutenant of the Volunteer Fire Department. In the process of all this good, Eliot drives himself and his wife crazy.

Meanwhile, a greedy young lawyer locates the other branch of the Rosewater family in Rhode Island. In particular, he finds Fred Rosewater, a miserable life insurance salesman with a wife who hangs out with a rich lesbian to lap up some of the golden crumbs. The lawyer concocts a grand scheme to declare Eliot insane so he can get the foundation's money and snap up a few golden crumbs of his own.

What makes this book so depressing is that the only admirable human in the book is also the one accused of being insane. And while he is performing a lot of charitable deeds for the people of Rosewater County, he does it more out of guilt than anything and sees most of the people he helps as a nuisance. The poor people of Rosewater County and Rhode Island are all described as lazy, stupid, and useless. The rich people are also lazy, stupid, and useless, but at least they have the money to dress and smell nice.

So I think you can see what I mean about this being a real downer to read. While I understand much of what the author is saying is true--a lot of people are lazy, stupid, and useless, including Yours Truly--it's not exactly the kind of message I want to hear. As I said, the truth hurts. Maybe if you're secure enough to think you aren't lazy, stupid, and useless then you'll enjoy the book far more than I did.

That is all.