Night of the Living Trekkies

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Stiltsville

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.