Recent Reading - 2011
2011-11-20
Giles Blunt
No Such Creature
Crime can pay if you plan and execute precisely, and if you are also non-violent. But, then there are the Subtractors. They are crooks who steal from other crooks and have no qualms about violence to get their payday. Blount exposes the humanity of some not-so-nice people. One character is dealing with the onset of senile dementia and Blount writes beautifully about how it seems from the inside.
Recommended
2011-11-14
Jeremy Robinson
The Last Hunter: Pursuit
Solomon (A.K.A. "Ull") escapes from his brutal keeper/trainer Ninnis after absorbing a small element of the Nephilim, ancient Earth "gods" alive beneath the surface of Antarctic continent. His first task is to regain his humanity, suppressing the presence of Ull and the Nephilim so he isn't just a vessel to their will. It isn't easy, and there are many perils along the way. The good news is that he gains some unexpected allies as he decides to face his destiny.
This is the second book of the series. See also The Last Hunter: Descent.
Recommended
2011-11-07
Janet Evanovich
One for the Money
Stephanie Plum has lost her job. Her car is being repossessed and moving back in with her parents seems to be next. She asks her cousin Vinnie for a job. The only one available is one he doesn't want to give her, skip tracing (bounty hunter). However, he gives her a week on trial as a temporary replacement for another injured employee. Things get interesting when one bail jumper turns out to be Joe Morelli, a former policeman with whom Stepanie went to school. Nothing goes well, but this opening story of Janet Evanovich's series moves along quickly and Stephanie becomes a truly wonderful character. I am looking forward to the next book (there are 22 books so far). My wife is also eager to get to the next one.
Highly recommended
2011-11-01
Richard Matheson
I am Legend
Vampires are everywhere, and Robert Neville may be the last human not infected by the virus or germ which has jumped from obscurity, taking over everybody else. Matheson's writing is matter-of-fact, avoiding the clichés of horror stories. Gradually, Neville finds out more about the plague which surrounds him while he drinks too heavily and must get home before dark.
The book was written in the 1950s when the cold war fears of atomic attack were very real. Some of the perspective seems dated today, but the powerful human story moves steadily forward to an abrupt finish. The abrupt finish is both odd and satisfying.
Recommended
2011-10-15
Jeffery Deaver
Carte Blanche
Carte Blanche is a new start to the story of James Bond, "007" of the stories by Ian Fleming. The story crosses many international borders as Bond attempts to thwart plans of mass murder, apparently planned by the head of a trash collector and recycler. It isn't even clear what "Incident 20" is going to be.
There are too many acronym references, even though Deaver seems to acknowledge that within the story. There's plenty of action, but, if there is one, a movie version will give the story more punch. I wondered whether Deaver wrote this book as a contract job. The James Bond about whom he writes doesn't seem to come up to the level of his own characters. I've enjoyed other books by Deaver much more than this one.
Mildly recommended.
2011-09-26
Bill Bryson
A Walk in the Woods
The Appalachian Trail is over 2000 miles long and Bill Bryson decided to walk as much of it as he could. His story of the trip includes lots of details about the trail's history, the park service which maintains some of the trail, the volunteers who maintain other sections, including the well-known Appalachian Mountain Club which takes charge of the New England section. The book is interesting, but it is also personal and downright funny. My daughter recommended this book to me. I recommend it to you.
Highly Recommended
2011-09-07
Lois McMaster Bujold
Cryoburn
Miles visits a planet with a central industry freezing people at or before death. The conference is interrupted by kidnappers and his adventures include escape, rescue, revenge and ressurection of some corpsicles, frozen before their time.
Highly Recommended, as usual for Bujold
2011-08-27
Jeremy Robinson
The Last Hunter: Descent
This fantasy is billed as a YA (young adult) novel. Perhaps I'm regressing because I've passed the 65 year mark, but I enjoyed it. Thirteen is Solomon's next birthday. His return to the place of his birth brings huge changes and family upheaval.
Recommended.
2011-08-20
Stieg Larsson
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
It isn't clear at the beginning, but the main character isn't Mikael Blomquist whose trial and story dominate to start. It isn't until later that the character of a strange, skinny, asocial research assistant becomes more and more important. Finance, family tragedy and long unsolved murder fills the book with intrigue.
Highly recommended.
2011-07-28
Patrick O'Brian
Master and Commander
Jack Aubrey gets his first command and engages his new friend Steven Maturin as ship's surgeon. All isn't well aboard his new ship, the Sophie. Storms, both the atmospheric and the personal fill this first book in the excellent series. The language is designed to be like that of the times and the naval service. It takes effort to read, but ultimately, I was enthralled. (A re-read)
Highly recommended
2011-07-25
Robert J. Sawyer
WWW:Wonder
Webmind, the "awakened" consciousness of the Internet, has eliminated most email spam worldwide. Caitlin is pretty sure she is in love with her boyfriend. Hobo, the Bonobo-Chimpanzee hybrid has decided to be less agressive, choosing his future. The Federal Government WATCH isn't giving up trying to wipe out Webmind. The Chinese want their Great Firewall to work.
This trilogy presents the best "definition" of science fiction for me. It sees the world through the eyes of a creative, thoughtful kid (who isn't hindered by her youth). The books explore the science of many things, in this case the human-technology interface and the consciousness of "software." Sawyer does these things with likeable protagonist characters, understandable (not cartoonish) adversaries. The story is is accessibly human and explores the boundaries of what that means.
The books could be sold as "juveniles", but they are also richly written, full of ideas to challenge the assumptions of any adult reader.
If you are not specifically looking for space opera, these books would be a great way to start reading science fiction.
Highly recommended
Gap -- Not sure what got read here.
2011-05-28
Linda Barnes
Coyote
Carlotta Carlyle speaks a little Spanish. After a woman with a green card gets killed, another woman shows up and tells Carlotta that the card is actually hers. Days later, the second woman is also dead. Carlotta, a Cambridge/Boston private eye, formerly of the police and a part-time cabbie gets dragged along by circumstance and the involvement of Paulina, her "sister" from Big-Sister/Little-Sister.
2011-05-21
Charles Stross
The Queens Trade
Book six, climax of the series, now confirmed by Charles Stross himself to not actually be fantasy. It was a contract avoidance ploy to book it that way.
The atomic bombs set by conservative Clan members have done their worst. America, declares war and the Clan must decide what can still be done. Flee or fight? Miriam must choose her paths carefully. Choices are not abundant.
Strong recommendation to read the whole series
2011-05-17
Charles Stross
The Revolution Business
Clan families split between conservative and progressive factions. Mother vs. daughter vs. granddaughter. Swearing allegiance and just plain swearing. Death and distruction all around. Will a final confrontation occur with the American government?
Recommended as part of the series
2011-05-10
Charles Stross
The Merchants' War
Gruinmarkt, world 1, is in turmoil. Plots in plots make Miriam/Helge a pawn of the royal family as much as a player in clan business plans. Prince Egon stirs the pot by staging a coup.
Recommended as part of series
2011-05-03
Charles Stross
The Clan Corporate
Time in New Britain, world 3, setting up a patent and idea business. Clan cliques continue to plague Miriam/Helge. Uncle A. gives her slack, rope to hang herself.
Recommended as part of series
2011-04-26
Charles Stross
The Hidden Family
Miriam moves through the second part of this series by challenging the Clan of world walkers, her family. Assassination attempts threaten to rekindle the Clan's civil war which her birth had been meant to settle. There may be more to it than infighting among the five families. There were originally six and Miriam discovers that one of her would be assassins has a locket with a different pattern inside.
Recommended as part of series
2011-04-22
Charles Stross
The Family Trade
Miriam is an adopted child. Her real mother was killed by knife cuts when she was six months old. After Miriam gets fired, her adoptive mother gives Miriam her real mother's locket. When Miriam opens it and stares into it, she suddenly finds herself in a wild forest, another world.
Recommended
2011-03-23
Orson Scott Card
The Lost Gate
Mythic gods on Earth, trapped there, as a matter of fact. Through the story of thirteen-year-old Danny North, we find out that Loki, the trickster, closed all the gates between the world of the gods and the planet Earth, trapping the members of several god families away from their source of rejuvenating power, forcing them to live among those humans who formerly worshipped and feared them. For 1400 years, the Great Gates have been closed.
Danny is a child in the North family, members of which are major and minor deities of the Norse "mythology." Danny's father is the current Odin and mother is Gerd, a powerful lightmage who could bend light to render things invisible. It was hoped that Danny would turn out to be a powerful mage of some kind, but he's not. All his cousins, who all have skills, laugh at him. He shows no skills, just like the despised "drowther" humans who live around the North Family compound in Virgina, south of Washington D.C.
The weakened families all want to get the gates open again, but they have been at war with each other again and again, trying to ensure that no other family will get a powerful "gatemage" and energize their own family alone. Families get surprise inspections from other families to verify compliance. Trouble ensues when a girl from the Greek Family senses him eavesdropping behind the wall. His escape from capture and big trouble propels him through the house wall, through a gate he didn't know he could make. How will he hide, evading the families who want to capture, control or kill him?
Recommended
2011-03-20
Robert Buettner
Orphan's Triumph
The Human Union needs to find and eliminate the Slug threat. Find the home world, blast it away. Slugs don't fight as individuals. They only operate as an extension of their local control node which, in turn, follows the edicts of the center of Slug influence. Jason Wander's still at the center of this story, and he's there at the end.
Mildly recommended (glad to have finished the series, though)
2011-03-16
Robert Buettner
Orphan's Alliance
Jason Wander gets to the second human slave world set up by the Slugs, Tressel. Cavorite is long gone, and in spite of that, Earth wants to gather all the human worlds into a Human Union. Creating an alliance to fight the Slugs is made more difficult because the two warring populations on Tressel, so Jason heads there to aid one side in an "alliance by force" attempt. At about the same time, a nexus point of several space-fold jump points is found. Dubbed Mousetrap, it seems unknown to the Slugs, but shortens the trips to all the human occupied planets from muliple jump sequences down to one. All the human worlds need to be contributing to the effort to secure and develop Mousetrap, before the Slugs take notice.
Gravity is at the center of these stories, but I didn't think it made much sense as overhead rock collapses inside the moonlet and traps Jason, Munchkin and one of the others excavating the interior of Mousetrap to make it into a base of operations. At the next chapter, the surface is so gravity free, that Jason needs to have lines attached so he won't float away. Oh, yeah. Ignore science issues and follow the story. It's pulp era writing style.
Mildly recommended.
2011-03-13
Robert Buettner
Orphan's Journey
Jason Wander captures a Slug attack vessel which humans call a Firewitch at the end of Orphan's Destiny, and Howard figures out that it operates using a gravity offsetting substance he dubs Cavorite, after the ficticious material described by the early science fiction author, H. G. Wells which did the same thing for his fiction as it does for the Slug vessel. It turns out Jason's godson, Jude, is the only human with reflexes that might allow control of the Firewitch. Of course, as soon as Jude sits in the pilot's station, the ship takes off, ripping away from the space station. Off go Howard, Jude, Sargeant Ord and Jason, through a fold in space and on to a planet where humans are slaves for the Slugs. Cavorite is lethal to Slugs within 500 yards, but has no effect on humans, so they collect the scattered Cavorite and deliver it to their masters. This cannot be allowed to go on.
I've decided to ignore the scientific logic or lack of it. I'm reading along through the series, just going for the story and trying to gloss over the stuff that I usually let bother me. The reading is quick and the characters have gotten into my head, so I want to see how things pan out.
Mildly recommended
2011-03-11
Robert Buettner
Orphan's Destiny
Jason Wander returns from becoming the victorious commanding general on Ganymede (quick promotions in the face of massive troop losses against the Slugs). A brief stint as public relations pawn is interrupted when the Slugs attack again. Jason and Howard join forces again and jump into battle against the armada of Slug ships.
Not as easy to swallow the sudden science advancements in this one.
Mildly recommended
Orphan's Destiny is
2011-03-09
Robert Buettner
Orphanage
Jason Wander is a wild kid whose antics have him before the judge. When the decision is jail or enlist, Jason enlists in the infantry. From there, he goes into basic training but the Earth is attacked by pseudocephalopod aliens quickly dubbed slugs when Jason demonstrates uncanny ability to find artifacts in the rubble of their attack vessels. Training becomes engagement when humans quickly re-develop space capability, and Jason again shows his stuff by finding and extracting a slug from an attack vessel crashed on the moon. Scientists, lead by Jason's genius buddy Howard Hibble, quckly ramp up capabilities to plan a counterattack against the Slugs dug into Jupiter's moon Ganymede.
Orphanage is military science fiction in the style of the pulp era, where science is easy because of the good guys who are really smart.
Mildly Recommended
2011-03-05
Michael Connolly
The Lincoln Lawyer
Mickey Haller is a defence attorney whose office is mainly his Lincoln Town Car. He advertizes on the benches of bus stops. As clients, he has drug addicts and dealers, prostitutes, anybody who will pay and pay up front. Today is his lucky day, a rich boy from Beverly Hills calls him for an assault and rape accusation. It's what Haller and his buddies call "a franchise case" because it will pay Hallers bills for a year. Nothing is that simple, of course, and the deeper he gets into the case, the less he likes the job. Justice, murder, court process and evil crisscross throughout this well written book.
Highly recommended
2011-02-24
John Scalzi
Agent to the Stars
Tom Stein is a Hollywood agent with a single bikini babe star along with a bunch of "talent" and he handles them well. They get work. He gets his ten percent. His boss calls him in for a meeting and his client list suddenly changes. Just how do you introduce friendly mobile "tuna Jell-O" aliens to humans so the humans won't run screaming from the room? And how do you do it while continuing to juggle your client list so nobody knows what you are actually working on?
Scalzi handles the mixture of humor and serious interpersonal and inter-species issues with style and good dialog.
The full text of this novel is available on the Web: http://www.scalzi.com/agent/ in Web page (HTML) format which makes it easy to read on a computer, but in its introduction, we get this option: "Legal Notes: This work is copyrighted by John Scalzi. The novel is freely given and may be freely distributed on a non-commercial basis, in whatever electronic format you please, as long as the work remains intact and unaltered and is attributed to me, John Scalzi." It was relatively easy to to take the text and put it through the wonderful ebook management program Calibre to convert it into epub format so I could read it on my Nook reader. Thanks to John Scalzi for the chance to read this book in such a convenient way. If making the conversion for yourself isn't convenient, I'll happily send you the epub file. Contact algot@runeman.org
Recommended
2011-02-23
L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
The Eternity Artifiact
I started out reading and was sure that Modesitt had a problem with words. It was as if he were writing with a thesaurus open beside his writing pad (or computer keyboard). It seemed that any time he was ready to write a common word, he seemed to use the most odd choice available in the thesaurus. I complained to my wife. She suffers from my steady comments about books, no matter whether I'm gushing praise or heaping scorn. Well, it turns out that the excess in verbiage was a character's flaw. Another person in the book complained about it.
After realizing I wasn't in for thesaurus thrall, I began to relax and also began to get into the story. Some artifact has been found and one political group of the several human cultures, the Comity, wants to explore it. The deeply religious cultures don't want the artifact to be explored or exploited, especially if it makes the Comity stronger and them weaker.
The many good characters carry this space opera forward effectively, and the battles don't overpower the thoughtful consideration of humanity divided against itself even though no longer confined to the single home world of Earth.
Recommended
2011-02-15
Lois McMaster Bujold
The Hallowed Hunt
While this book extends the world of both The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, it does not share a direct story connection. It takes place in a different country and only one of the characters has even been to Chalion. The same five gods play their roles, but so does ancient alternative Weilding beliefs of the Hallow kingdom. At issue is the pending accession of a new Hallow King because the current one is deathly sick.
There are two living sons of the king, but one is killed during a failed, and theologically forbidden, attempt to draw strength from animal spirits. The story follows Ingrey, the courtier sent to arrest and transport for trial Ijada who killed the prince.
Highly recommended
2011-02-07
Lois McMaster Bujold
Paladin of Souls
This book continues the story begun in The Curse of Chalion. The story focuses on Ista, the mother of the newly crowned royina of Chalion-Ibra. Ista, long thought to be crazy because of a curse that had plagued generations of the royal family. Though Cazaril, the main character of The Curse of Chalion, has mitigated the effects of the curse, it isn't totally gone. Paladin of Souls shifts focus from the newly formed alliance between Chalion and Ibra, away from the issues of the court entirely. Ista longs to live a less constrained life and escape the confines of family, ladies in waiting, tedium.
Once again, Bujold draws us readers into a story with logical structure, blending a world of flesh and mortality with the world of the spiritual, one with five gods who share responsibility for the world/universe of the book. Demons escape from the metaphysical realm into the physical, though are forced to act through living creatures, whether animal or human.
Highly recommended
2011-02-04
Lois McMaster Bujold
The Curse of Chalion
(Okay, I took a break in the middle of The Count of Monte Cristo. I'll go back. There's no real rush. It's a classic stored on my Nook, right?)
Bujold quickly made me forget that this was a fantasy. Even with a Five-God belief system at the heart of the story, I was steadily drawn in by the characters and the challenges they had to meet. Can a soldier and sometime galley slave help a princess (royina) escape the family curse which has gradually crushed her mother, her uncle, her half-brother? I cared what happened right away and was pulled along all the way to the end.
This first of three novels has me putting off the Count a little longer.
(Bujold is a multiple award winner [Hugo and Nebula], mainly known for her series about Miles Verkosigan.)
Highly Recommended (read as ebook)
I'm opening the year by reading The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I'm reading it as an ebook on my Nook. The Nook/ebook experience is great.