An eye-opening, well-researched book about how Trumpism not only didn't begin with Trump, he's just the latest and worst (so far) iteration of a 75-yeAn eye-opening, well-researched book about how Trumpism not only didn't begin with Trump, he's just the latest and worst (so far) iteration of a 75-year long conspiracy to turn what was originally a party of civil rights and progressive causes, and later a party of rational business interests, into a party of foam-at-the-mouth Right-Wing Theocrats.
If you care about the United States of America's future at all, you need to read this book and see how the Republican Party is nothing more than a rogue terrorist cult. ...more
I got this on Amazon via Bookbub for $1.99, and vaguely remembered having read it in college.
I had the strange feeling while re-reading this book thatI got this on Amazon via Bookbub for $1.99, and vaguely remembered having read it in college.
I had the strange feeling while re-reading this book that it was a more conventional "Sci-Fi" take on some of the themes of Herbert DUNE series
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: A man discovering he is the larva of a god; a jaded look at institutions and how, even with the best intentions, they can become corrupt; and questioning the One Great Person view of history. It nagged at me that this might be a dry run for Herbert's SF classic, though it was published seven years earlier.
A quick Google search clarified matters - it's an expansion of four short stores Herbert wrote between 1958 and 1960 in the pages of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION (which became ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT) Magazine and FANTASTIC SCIENCE FICTION STORIES Magazine. That explains the often-declamatory characters "who look and sound as if they'd been cut off the backs of cornflake packets" (to quote Colin Greenland, who reviewed the book for the UK's IMAGINE Magazine), the abrupt time jumps between chapters, and the decidedly 1950s view of women (the main female character, Diana Bullone, was raised to operate as a power-behind-the-throne, and goes into a snit when she's angry at the hero!).
The Godmakers is enjoyable, but it's not a lost classic by any stretch of the imagination....more
Mel Brooks is one of the greatest comic filmmakers of the 20th Century, and he's a very well-read person for a "vulgar comedian" (a term he embraces).Mel Brooks is one of the greatest comic filmmakers of the 20th Century, and he's a very well-read person for a "vulgar comedian" (a term he embraces). You get all that reading his memoir, but what you don't get is anything past the surface level of a tummeler entertaining his audience.
His first marriage and what broke it up isn't touched on other than to say "...and that's probably what broke up my marriage!" He doesn't even mention his first wife's name in his bio, despite having three children with her.
He goes into more detail about Anne Bancroft and their marriage, but again it's all on an adoring surface (yes, she slapped him once for taking her money to heavily tip a waiter, but that's about all we hear about her temper). She's always telling him to go ahead and direct his first movie, create his own production company, write a musical....
We hear he put his own money into Solarbabies and it initially not doing well, but that's mostly to quote Bialystock in The Producers saying "Never spend your own money!" We have no idea if that strained him financially, or if it strained his marriage, and besides it eventually made its money back plus a small profit, so he's happy!
Gene Wilder pops up from The Producers through Young Frankenstein, then...we only hear from him once or twice more, despite Brooks never using him again. What happened? Why did Brooks and Wilder never work together again? He keeps saying how Gene Wilder is a dear friend of his, but not why his "dear friend" and he stopped their highly-successful professional relationship. Anne Bancroft's death from cancer gets similarly short shrift - he mentions she died in 2005, and that Susan Stroman talked him into writing a musical of Young Frankenstein to get past his grief, but that's all we get.
I don't want or need to see the dark, grim side of a comedy writer/director/performer and I'm grateful he doesn't wallow, but I would like to see a bit more depth. When I read Dick Van Dyke's memoir he very candidly discussed his alcoholism, how his smoking gave him emphysema, how he fell in love with Michelle Triola while still married to his first wife, why he walked away from the Presbyterian Church because they didn't want to do a Civil Rights event with Black Churches(!) - I may have felt Van Dyke sometimes had a "Well, that was a thing that happened" air, but I felt I knew him better once I read his memoir. Mel Brooks's memoir reads like a book length comedy routine - entertaining but not especially informative....more
Extremely good book detailing everything that went wrong with the production, marketing and release of the huge-budgeted Disney movie John Carter, basExtremely good book detailing everything that went wrong with the production, marketing and release of the huge-budgeted Disney movie John Carter, based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs turn of the century SF series which inspired George Lucas to make STAR WARS! (Lucas shows up as a likely secondary villain in the movie's failure, given his desire not to be caught out "ripping off" a century-old "Scientific Romance".)
Nobody involved with the direction, writing, marketing, etc. of the movie is spared by
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Sellers, who is a lifelong fan of the John Carter of Mars books and headed up its fan club before and during the film's production....more
**spoiler alert** I wasn't sure when I read the sample chapter, but I think this might be one of the best Eve Dallas books in a while.
While this isn'**spoiler alert** I wasn't sure when I read the sample chapter, but I think this might be one of the best Eve Dallas books in a while.
While this isn't the first time
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J.D. Robb has gone to the Young Women Abused well, it's one of the more powerful stories she's done recently. I admit, knowing the book is about "grooming", which has become a Right Wing attack on everything from Marriage Equality to Women's Choice, put my hackles up at first - but this is not that kind of mystery/thriller. I was also concerned that we'd have Eve and Roarke at loggerheads again, and while it starts out a bit like that?
[image] Dennis Mira Saves the Day!
Mr. Mira puts his finger on the issue in a way that reminds Roarke why Eve can't not pursue cases that are emotionally devastating to her, and why Eve should cut her sometimes...difficult spouse a great deal more slack on how he shows his concern. He also reminds them both that he and Dr. Mira have lived together for decades, dealing with issues just as thorny and providing love and support for each other. There's even a hint that Charlotte Mira might be more like Eve Dallas than Eve realizes....
[image] Eve Still Doesn't Quite Believe That!
As fits the theme of the book (a global pedophile ring operating under everybody's noses), a number of the children involved are runaways or from bad homes, and thus...less than grateful at having to deal with a Supreme Bitch Cop like Lt. Eve Dallas:
[image] Good Thing She's Just as Obnoxious, and Bigger Than Them!
We get to see An Didean, Roarke's shelter/school for runaways, in operation for the first time. Dr. Rochelle Pickering is running things quite well, and for added security presses her boyfriend, Crack, into service. We also get the return of Sebastian, a character Eve just gets her back up about despite the fact he saved Mavis's life as a girl and Roarke, for obvious reasons, gets along with him fine. That still bugs me a bit, that Eve can't see past Sebastian's criminal side to the good he's doing
[image] and that He Seems Straight Out of a West End Musical!
What I like the most about
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Desperation in Death is that, despite there being a ticking clock to push things forward (a literal babyraper slave auction!), we don't get hung up on Eve's emotional traumas...or Roarke's, for that matter. Everybody in this book brings their A Game to see justice done.... ...more
It's no putdown when I call this book "The best version of Mr. Spock Meets HERE COME THE BRIDES", because feminist fantasy/historical writer
[imageIt's no putdown when I call this book "The best version of Mr. Spock Meets HERE COME THE BRIDES", because feminist fantasy/historical writer
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Barbara Hambly (who counts Charlaine Harris and Tamora Pierce among her fans) writes such an engaging story you don't need to know anything about the short-lived Western series set in Seattle, Washington which launched the careers of actor/singers Bobby Sherman and David Soul.
Due to a ::handwave, handwave:: Klingon plot involving ::technobabble, handwave:: time travel, an amnesiac Spock is transported back to mid-Nineteenth Century Seattle, where he's found near death by local businessman Aaron Stemple (the series' antagonist played by Mark Lenard, who also played Spock's father Sarek on STAR TREK!). Stemple nurses the Devilish-looking alien back to health who only remembers that he is "from the stars", but speaks fluent English (and as is later shown, several other languages as well!). They pass Spock off as Aaron's nephew Ishmael Marx who he hired as a bookkeeper, and the now long-haired Vulcan integrates into Seattle in its early days as a Western city. Back in the 23rd Century, meanwhile, Kirk is trying to find what happened to his First Officer, and slowly uncovers the Klingon plot....
If you know anything about television Westerns from the 1950s - 1960s (Hoss and Little Joe Cartwright and one of Mavericks show up, as does Paladin from HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL, while Marshal Dillon get name-checked) or Seventies SF television/movies (Apollo and Starbuck, Han Solo), you'll recognize many of of the background characters here. It's one of Hambly's skills as a writer that you'll enjoy the book even if you don't know who any of these characters are....more
1951's
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The Puppet Masters by
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Robert A. Heinlein is a classic of Golden Age SF by a master of hard SF. It has been made into a 1951's
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The Puppet Masters by
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Robert A. Heinlein is a classic of Golden Age SF by a master of hard SF. It has been made into a motion picture twice - once unofficially as 1958's The Brain Eaters,
[image] The Voice of the Leader of the Brain Eaters is a Very Young Leonard Nimoy!
and in 1994 under its original title with a plot loosely based on the book itself.
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It is also...very much a book of its time, treating the "Titans" (the name given the slug-like Puppet Masters as the characters discover they come from Saturn's moon of Titan) as a fantastical version of Cold War Anticommunist Paranoia, while engaging in American Exceptionalism, Casual Misogyny (the hero "Sam" often slaps or spanks his partner and later wife "Mary" for one story-based reason or another), and Gung-Ho Jingoism (the last line in the book is, literally, Death and Destruction!...italicized.)
How much you enjoy this book depends on how reading that last paragraph strikes you.......more
A story about Miss Lucy Muchelney, young woman astronomer in Victorian England who, after her female lover Pris goes off to get married and her artistA story about Miss Lucy Muchelney, young woman astronomer in Victorian England who, after her female lover Pris goes off to get married and her artist brother Peter starts talking about her "settling down with a man", goes to London to ask the widow of prominent globe-trotting scientist for permission to translate a groundbreaking French book of astronomy into English. The widow, Catherine, Countess of Moth, surprises both of them by offering to let Lucy stay with her while doing the translation. Catherine reasons at first she's just happy for the company of a young woman who, despite her limited circumstances, is a well-educated and of quality. However, over time Lucy's passion for astronomy and enjoyment of Catherine's company starts to evolve into something much deeper, despite Lady Moth never really thinking of herself as liking women in that way before!
While the book is a lesbian romance, the author makes certain we understand the limitations placed on women in the sciences in Victorian England...and that even in those times there were ways for women who loved the sciences and each other to express themselves. Catherine's "Aunt Kelmarch", who was her mother's dearest friend when she was alive, subtly reveals to both her and Lucy that Catherine's mother was her lover as well, which helps the current Countess accept her growing attraction to Lucy. The two women slowly become intimately involved, and over time realize that the household servants are not only aware of what's going on, but seem to approve given how much happier Catherine has become.
Lucy's translation (which includes her own commentary to make astronomy accessible to non-astronomers like Catherine) becomes a major success - which Peter capitalizes on by painting a popular but insultingly "feminine" picture of her for her readers! The all-male "Polite Science Society",
[image] Completely Authentic Photo of The Polite Science Society
horrified that a woman(!) would engage in such "masculine" pursuits, attempt to sabotage her translation by having one of their membership write a public letter allegedly pointing out errors in her translation and commentary, and hoping to scuttle her astronomy ambitions invite the author of the original text over to debate her! Lady Moth, meanwhile, discovering Lucy is far from the only female scientist in England (including the sister of the Police Science Society's head!), concocts a scheme that might provide a counterbalance to all that male Science
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...and to give the two lovers something that would legally bind them together for the rest of their days....
This being a romance all ends well for Catherine and Lucy, especially once the Polite Science Society (view spoiler)[discovers that the Marquis of Oleron is actually a Marquise - not only a woman, but a Woman of Color (hide spoiler)]! It's a satisfying "Smash the Patriarchy" conclusion to book about two women you wish to see be together, always....more
A short story collection from
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William Gibson, author of cyberpunk classics like
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Neuromancer and
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Pattern RecognitioA short story collection from
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William Gibson, author of cyberpunk classics like
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Neuromancer and
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Pattern Recognition, and steampunk novel
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The Difference Engine. As short stories they don't show us the worlds he builds as completely as Gibson's novels do, but the themes he later developed are there in short stories and novelettes like "Johnny Mnemonic",
[image] "Whoa...."
"The Gernsback Continuum", and the title story.
Gibson's shorter work tends to be more downbeat than most of his novels, where the main characters frequently come out the other end of things alive, whole, and often in better shape than they were when they started. These stories often end in the main characters losing someone, or something, they didn't realize they cherished until that person or thing was gone. If you're like me and prefer the Ross Thomas-like picaresque of his novels, the stories might not appeal to you as much.
Even so, there are stories you've heard of and recognize in here, and bits and pieces of what became his later, better-known work....more
Sorry, this has sat in my Kindle for months and, after trying to read the first couple chapters I just didn't care enough to go on.
I was hoping for anSorry, this has sat in my Kindle for months and, after trying to read the first couple chapters I just didn't care enough to go on.
I was hoping for an updated version of
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Georgette Heyer's classic
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Venetia about a virginal young woman who befriends and falls in love with a rake who is a great deal more than his public reputation suggests. This book isn't it.......more
This book, set a Millennium after Arthur C. Clarke's and Stanley Kubrick's classic
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2001: A SpaDisappointing Conclusion to a Classic Series
This book, set a Millennium after Arthur C. Clarke's and Stanley Kubrick's classic
[image]
2001: A Space Odyssey, ends the saga of Humankind's progression towards transcendence with all the grace of limp noodles. Rather than the hopefulness of of his first three books, what we get is Clarke's version of one of those ancient treatises where a "normal" character from our time walks around in an unrecognizable world and lets us know about it by having people dump exposition on him (yeah, it's always a "him"!) when he expresses surprise at the various marvels and quirks thereupon.
Here, our Traveler from Our Time is Frank Poole from 2001,
[image] Remember Him?
who we thought died when the HAL 9000 computer cut knocked him off the outside of the Discovery and cut his air hose. Turns out Frank froze so quickly that instead of dying he's been cryogenically preserved.
He's found by the Captain of a "spacetug" responsible for shipping the ice from comets to the Solar System's populated inner worlds and artificial habitats and revived...near Earth, let's say. (The explanation of where he is would take a long time, and I'm not sure I'd entirely get it right.)
Treated as a combination walking history and curiosity, he's told he can no longer go back to Earth because Earth-Normal gravity would be potentially lethal to him, but can go pretty much anywhere else habitable in the Solar System. Looking for his place in this Brave New World other than as a living museum piece, he makes friends with a number of people, finding out what happened to society and technology between the late 20th/early 21st Century and and the 31st, including the events of
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2010: Odyssey Two (made into the respectful movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact), in which the Monolith orbiting Jupiter lights the planet up, turning it into a weaker second sun dubbed "Lucifer".
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Over time, Poole think he occasionally hears his former shipmate David Bowman talking to him, usually when he's between being asleep and awakening, which seem to coincide with signal bursts from the Monolith, which is now on Jupiter's moon Europa (forbidden to humans by the Monolith at the end of 2010). Convinced Bowman's trying to reach out to him, Poole eventually manages to "accidentally" crash-land on Europa (which has been teeming with incompatible-to-Earth's biology sea life as discussed in
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2061: Odyssey Three), where Bowman, now combined with the Monolith, has indeed been trying to reach him, and to explain, somewhat, what the Monoliths (the one on Earth, the one on the Moon, and the one on Europa) are, why they're where they are, who sent them, and how it all may affect Humankind....
[image] You Just HAD To Tell Us, Didn't You?
After three books in which the atheist Clarke flirts with transcendence, the explanation is Right Out of The SF/Comics God-Like Being Handbook. And Humanity's response... shows that a thousand years after 2001, we still haven't learned a damned thing.
I've gone between three stars and two stars while writing this review. Had it been anybody other than the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke, I'd have given this book two - but it's still written by the man who wrote not just 2001, but also
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Childhood's End,
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Against the Fall of Night,
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Rendezvous With Rama, and the classic short stories "The Nine Billion Names of God", "Superiority" and "The Star"....more
While if this point it's practically impossible for Nora Roberts to write a bad Eve Dallas novel, FORGOTTEN IN DEATH is a biNot Top-Flight Eve Dallas
While if this point it's practically impossible for Nora Roberts to write a bad Eve Dallas novel, FORGOTTEN IN DEATH is a bit disjointed, and the interlocking series of investigations feel clumsy rather than like the compelling puzzle NR can write when she's firing on all cylinders. Maybe that peculiar sense of nothing happening which so many of us experienced during COVID lockdown got into her story, same as it seemed to get into just about everything...?
Oh, Eve Dallas's "Magic Coat" (well, "topper" since this book's set in the Spring)? Stops bullets same as it does stunners, knives, and blasters! Once Roarke figures out how to reduce a jetpack's size so she can slip it on like a knapsack, Eve will be ready to be a superhero.......more
::5 stars for the novella - the book, she drags in spots, but the story's still there::
Self-proclaimed "Last Hell's Angel" Hell Tanner agrees, in exch::5 stars for the novella - the book, she drags in spots, but the story's still there::
Self-proclaimed "Last Hell's Angel" Hell Tanner agrees, in exchange for a full pardon for carjacking, gang rape and murder to drive a supply of Plague antiserum across the radiation-ravaged United States from the Los Angeles, Capital of the Nation of California to Boston, MA in armed and armored, radiation-shielded "cars". Two other cars also carry the antiserum and are driven by soldiers under orders to shoot Tanner if he deviates in any way from the mission, including his co-pilot. Unsurprisingly, only Tanner has what it takes to accomplish the mission, which he continues on with even after the other two cars are destroyed and his co-pilot attempts to turn the vehicle around because he's panicking about dying in the wasteland like the others....
SF reviewers and fans were a bit sniffy about the story, and I will grant you that the novella's better — but without the novel, the story would've likely not been read by George MillerJim Steinman many people who went on to use it as a template for Mad MaxBAT OUT OF HELL post-apocalyptic SF movies and music about morally-compromised loner heroes.
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"The sirens are screamin' and the fires are howlin'/Way down in the valley tonight..."
Avoid, at all costs, the 1977 film adaptation, which completely rewrites the story and, despite a hefty $17M budget, is a farrago of lame characterization, by-the-numbers direction and laughably cheap special effects. ...more
It's the tenth (and now, sadly, final) book in W.E.B. Griffin's THE CORPS series about Marines and how they ended up working with first the OSS and laIt's the tenth (and now, sadly, final) book in W.E.B. Griffin's THE CORPS series about Marines and how they ended up working with first the OSS and later CIA. It stops with Ken "Killer" McCoy being injured badly enough that his mentor, Gen. Flem Pickering, worries about him (which gets McCoy out of an butt-chewing for going back behind North Korean lines again!), hauling a load of Chinese officers he found in North Korea to prove to Gen. Douglas MacArthur once and for all that his Intelligence Chief, Gen. Willoughby, is dead wrong about the Communist Chinese not stepping in if they feel MacArthur is threatening China's border. (MacArthur in the series claims to have no interest in invading China, just wanting to "scare" them enough that they stay out of his determination to reunite Korea — and Willoughby is, like a good courtier, finding intelligence to back "El Supremo"'s assessment.)
It's the usual gang from THE CORPS series, so I won't be running them down again - but this time it's all against the personal backdrop of "Pick" Pickering having vanished behind enemy lines when his plane was shot down in an attempt to become the first "Railroad Ace" by destroying five trains(!). None of this is authorized, and in fact his immediate superior (and friend) William Dunn orders him to stop
[image] ...which Works About as Well as Telling Your Cat to Stop Clawing Your Office Chair.
McCoy keeps venturing into North Korea to try and find Pick along with gathering more intel on Chinese involvement in North Korea, to Gen. Pickering's increasing frustration. As Pickering Sr. reminds him more than once, he's no longer a Junior Marine doing Temporary Duty in Intelligence, he's Pickering's unofficial head of Operations in Korea - and he's the husband of pregnant Ernestine Sage (a close family friend), as well. With Dunn and Pick's "fiancée" (they're engaged to be engaged), CHICAGO TRIBUNE War Correspondent Jeanette Priestly, both searching for Pick as well, there are more than enough people to be caught or killed behind enemy lines already....
The final book in this series to date (and now that William E. Butterworth III who originally wrote under the "Griffin" name had died, most likely the last as his son seems less than eager to continue the series), things sort-of wrap up (view spoiler)[with Pick finally found alive, Jeanette missing & presumed dead after the transport plane she caught a ride on was shot down by the enemy, and "Ernie" Sage finally successfully delivering a child (hide spoiler)]. As is often the case, there are a lot of characters who you'd like to see more of who just fade away in Griffin's books because they're not a part of the main narrative, which is one of his more frustrating tendencies.
As I've said elsewhere, if you like W.E.B. Griffin you'll like this book - if not, then it's not going to change your mind any....more
It sounds strange to say this, but W.E.B. Griffin military historical fiction novels are a form of literary comfort food for me. He had a way if inserIt sounds strange to say this, but W.E.B. Griffin military historical fiction novels are a form of literary comfort food for me. He had a way if inserting his fictional characters, Forrest Gump-like, into real historical situations so we could see them shine without changing history, and his research is usually excellent.
He has a set number of character archetypes who come across as old friends:
* the talented, privileged screwup who somehow comes through when it counts;
* the working-class stiff who works his way through college and over the course of a series rises to high up in the military;
* the sergeant who may start off tearing strips off our heroes' asses, but who by the second or third book at the latest is part of the Band of Brothers;
* the powerful patrician who can't be kept from dashing for the front the moment the bugle is blown (occasionally, he'll put up some token protest), and takes an avuncular interest in our heroes;
* a bunch of kids who grow up in combat, and are often expert in one or two essential areas; and
* Nature's Nobleman who, despite coming from the lowest or most obscure place imaginable, rises through the ranks via innate talent, A Certain Set of Skills, and a genius for whatever form of combat he needs to handle.
This book, largely about Gen. Douglas MacArthur moving from the Philippines to Australia, and planning strategies to both protect Australia and New Zealand, and to retake the islands the Japanese took in the early months of the war, contains fairly little of Griffin's characters, except for U.S. Navy Captain Fleming Pickering (the Powerful Patrician — an ex-Marine who, at the behest of the Secretary of the Navy, finds himself in a naval uniform as a roving fixer/pair of eyes). He, and we, get to see MacArthur at work, and clearly Griffin both deeply admires and is well aware of the pettiness and eccentric behaviors of "El Supremo" (as pretty much everybody calls him...but not to his face!).
We also meet a couple of Kids — Lt. John Howard, an armorer who blames himself for losing it at Pearl Harbor — after he'd distributed weapons to all the soldiers there, which was his job!; and Cpl. Steve Koffler, who barely looks old enough to be enlisted, but is a ham radio enthusiast and typist, and goes to parachuting school so he's the best man available to drop and operate a radio behind Japanese lines with some "Coastwatchers", who are reporting back to Melbourne what the Japanese are doing if they're behind the lines as a mix of intelligence asset and guerilla units. Howard goes with him because Koffler knows radios but couldn't tell a Japanese Zero from a Sopwith Camel, and part of Howard's previous job was planespotting (hopefully without the aid of controlled substances!).
Near the end of the book, the U.S. Navy in the Pacific decide to retake the Solomon Islands, over MacArthur's objections. It turns out that history proves MacArthur right, as the Battle of Guadalcanal proves to be what's euphemistically called a "Charlie-Foxtrot" (the wrong troop carriers, trucks which can't drive on sand, and Japanese snipers making matters interesting for the Marines). The Marines take Guadalcanal, but...they don't really get rid of the Japanese, which leads to problems down the line.
Oh, and our least-favorite Marine of all, Lt. R.B. Macklin, who assumes he's naturally better than some Mustang like McCoy, Howard (or Flem Pickering, for that matter!) because he is an Annapolis grad, (view spoiler)[rationalizes being an utter coward during the Guadalcanal landing and overstates the damage he took from a minor wound to get out of combat (while hopefully bolstering his chances for promotion!). Pickering, meanwhile, has disobeyed (indirect) orders, reported for duty as a Marine rifleman, picked up a rifle (probably a Springfield rather than the Garand M-1, which the USMC has at this time very little respect for), and gone out on patrols to "discourage" Guadalcanal's Japanese defenders (hide spoiler)].
If you're following this series, then you'll enjoy this book....more
This book, set in an alternate Victorian(?) London post-"Revolution" (never clearly described, but apInteresting Blend of Steampunk and Erotic Romance
This book, set in an alternate Victorian(?) London post-"Revolution" (never clearly described, but apparently it resulted in greater freedom for women and more importance for the Merchant Class), tells the story of lady engineer Astrid Bailey, a barely-getting-by designer of "felicitation devices" (vibrators). She tries to enter The World's Fair set in London that year, but because she has no storefront (and is a woman, though that's never explicitly said!), she'll need a "responsible businessman" partner (gender very much intentional). Remembering watchmaker Eli Rutledge who she'd clashed with during a "Tea and Talk" seminar for a women's business organization, she sounds him out about partnering on the ultimate felicitation device, the "Oscillating Felicitator" (a powered saddle with vibrating dildoes) — and to her considerable surprise, he agrees.
[image] Say Whut?
The worldbuilding is interesting both for what it shows The Revolution having changed...and how so much remained the same even so. Felicitation devices are legal, but (and this is a plot point) looked down upon by the "respectable", all Male, London Business Council who run the World's Fair. Women are allowed to run businesses, but are expected to marry and pop out babies. There appears to be electricity (Astrid provides chargers with her devices), but London feels like a world lit by kerosene lamps and gaslight.
[image] Sherlock Holmes Would Be Right at Home Here!
Both Astrid and Eli realize they have a strong mutual attraction, but the orphaned Astrid considers Eli a Masculinist Stick-in-the-Mud, and Eli is sure Astrid doesn't even like him! They agree to try a one-night stand to "get it out of the their systems"....
[image] Which works just as well as you'd think it does!
For the curious (or concerned), there are sexually explicit MF, FF, and F and M solo scenes. Sex toys are as far as kink goes, and all sex is completely consensual.
The book's a standalone, although there are supporting characters which suggest this may have been written to be part of a series. I would really enjoying reading more, and learning more, about this world Elia Winters had created.......more
In the 9th book in
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W.E.B. Griffin's THE CORPS series set in 1950, main character Capt. Kenneth "Killer" McWhen in Doubt? Send the Marines!
In the 9th book in
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W.E.B. Griffin's THE CORPS series set in 1950, main character Capt. Kenneth "Killer" McCoy files a report giving strong evidence of an imminent North Korean invasion of South Korea, and his belief that the US Military forces in South Korea are incapable of repelling a concerted attack due to excessive postwar military cutbacks. This report is suppressed by Gen. MacArthur's Intelligence chief Gen. Willoughby, and McCoy is stripped of his brevet rank and sent back to America to finish out his enlistment.
McCoy surreptitiously gives the report to his former superior officer Gen. Fleming Pickering (ret.), knowing what he's doing is illegal, because he firmly believes somebody in authority has to be made aware of what he is certain will happen. Pickering, believing McCoy because he knows how important this must be for him to go this far off the reservation, takes the report to a Senator he knows who puts it in front of Admiral Hillenkoetter, Director of the CIA. Hillenkoetter sensibly sends one of his people to Seoul to see if there's any truth to the report — which becomes moot a couple weeks later when the North Koreans invade South Korea, and push the combined South Korean and US forces out of Seoul and down the coast just like McCoy's report predicted they would!
McCoy, Gen. Pickering and all their now-demobilized friends from earlier books are called up, including Gunnery Sgt. Ernie Zimmerman (ironically, McCoy's wife Ernestine is also nicknamed "Ernie"!), Major Malcolm "Pick" Pickering, Lt. Col. Bill Dunn, and Capt. George Hart, who has command of reserve company in addition to his day job as a Homicide Detective. Reinstated as a Captain, McCoy heads to Korea to see just how bad things really are, and his wife Ernie moves back into their home in Toyko, which she buys because...she's the heiress to a Personal Care company.
As is the case with pretty much all W.E.B. Griffin's books, there's a lot of time spent talking over what to do and planning it, interspersed with action scenes. Either you like Griffin's writing or you don't —if you don't, you'll probably find the going draggy, the microaggressions characters spring on each other vexing, and the politics very Right-leaning. I happen to enjoy Griffin despite all that, because he does a good job of showing what it's like to have to actually get something done in a bureaucracy as unwieldy as the U.S. Military. (I first read his books decades ago when my kid brother, who was in the Navy, left a couple behind after spending leave with me in New York City.)...more
When I first found out the premise of the book, I had a horrible feeling it was going to be one of those QAnon "PizzaBetter than I thought it would be
When I first found out the premise of the book, I had a horrible feeling it was going to be one of those QAnon "Pizzagate" conspiracies — you know, the ones where every high-ranking Democrat is part of a pedophile ring running out of a Georgetown pizza parlor? Though there were whiffs of that here and there, the book mainly is a suspense thriller, not a polemic, about Modern Mercenaries "Contractors" like Blackwater, corrupt Presidential candidates and legislators, and a group of people so incredibly badass you really don't want to ever go up against them!
I had not known that the author,
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Barry Eisler, had already written series featuring most of the heroes as main or major supporting characters characters; half-Japanese assassin John Rain, Thai Seattle PD Sex Crimes Detective (and sometimes Rapist-Killer) Livia Lone, ex-Special Forces soldiers (and enemies) Ben Treven and Daniel Larison, ex-Marine Sniper (and Livia's on-again, off-again lover) "Dox", former Mossad Agent (and Rain's estranged lover) Delilah, and Col. Scott "Hort" Horton who used to command Treven and Larison. To say this group has its...frictions would be to put it mildly - and yet, when confronted with a "hurtcore" group of powerful pedophiles who's already blown up an airplane and nearly killed four of the group just to tie up some lose ends, they manage to put their differences aside long enough to work together tracking down who's responsible. None of the group, not even Det. Lone, hesitates at Doing Unto Those Who Would Do Unto Them - only more and harder.
The book blurbs claim Eisler's writing
"combines the insouciance of Ian Fleming, the realistic detail of Tom Clancy, the ennui of Graham Greene, and the prose power of John le Carré.” - News-Press
It's good, but it's not that good.
The violence is strong but not gratuitous, the sex non-explicit, the language as harsh as you'd expect from a number of elite soldier/spy/police types, and the characters are smarter and more thoughtful than your usual men's adventure "Military Meatheads". The story's told from multiple PoVs, which I suspect lines up with the characters in their own books - except for John Rain who's in First Person, the other characters' chapters are Third-Person...which may be a bit jarring, but I was able to roll with it easily enough.
I'm debating whether to go back and re-read the earlier books - but I'm sure I'll read this book's follow-up coming out September 21, 2011,
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The Chaos Kind....more
It's the second book in a series, THE CORPS, by
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W.E.B. Griffin. Since I've been reading this author for between thirty and forty years (myIt's the second book in a series, THE CORPS, by
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W.E.B. Griffin. Since I've been reading this author for between thirty and forty years (my kid brother's a fan and sent my partner and I a bunch of books couldn't take aboard, including some of Griffin's first series, THE BROTHERHOOD OF WAR), he's very detailed, has a definite pro-military political stance, and has certain tropes he likes to re-use: The Hero who's smart, brave, and comes from a poor family; the usually wealthy Natural Pilot/Tank Commander/Strategist who doesn't think the rules include him and is, as a result, considered a "Four-Star Fuckup" when it comes to being a regular officer; the Wealthy Woman who falls madly in love with our Hero and he with her; the Sad Widow who loves, and usually manages to get our Four-Star Natural in trouble by not following protocol;
[image] Because of Love!
and the grouchy but loyal Sergeant who follows the Hero into the fire every time, is almost as fluent in non-English languages as the Hero is, and almost always has a wife he married during some deployment or other and a brood of children that he wants to go back to (miraculously, he doesn't die, ever!). The historical military novels (like this one) are generously peppered with real-life historical figures for our main characters to interact with - in this book we have James Roosevelt, son of FDR and a US Marine; William J. Donovan, WWI Medal of Honor winner, successful trial lawyer, founder of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS); and founder of the Marine Raiders (one of the first Special Forces outfits in the US Military) Evans F. Carlson.
The plot of the book is the formation of the Raiders, the pushback (including accusations of... Communism!)
[image] Now WHERE Have I Heard That Tired Old Saw Before...?
against it by senior "Palace Guard" Marines, and the Raiders' first assault on Makin Island (now Butaritari). But it's mainly about a group of Marines who become friends and weave in and out of the books in this series, along with their wives and lovers:
This is Joe Haldeman's follow-up to his Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning SF Classic
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The Forever War, set in a different fictional universe. HThis is Joe Haldeman's follow-up to his Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning SF Classic
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The Forever War, set in a different fictional universe. Here people travel across the Universe by means of "Levant-Meyer Translation", a form of Interstellar Portal technology that requires a great deal of power to work and is constrained by both the size of the portal and distance (minimum nine light-years, maximum 100 light-years, give or take — to start).
Our protagonist, Jacque (no "s") Lefavre, is the son of a once-eminent physicist who scientifically disproved the existence of Levant-Mayer Translation — just before Dr. Meyer proved it worked by sending a mouse and a camera to another solar system and back, safely. Having to admit he was wrong crushed Jacque's father, and he spent the rest of his life teaching at a Junior College while trying to prove he'd been right all along, while his son grew up with...let's call them "Anger Management Issues".
[image] That's Not Far Off the Mark, Actually!
Jacque, out of a combination of rebellion and youthful romanticism, signed up to become a "Tamer", part of a First Contact team that "Translated" to strange new worlds to see if they were suitable for human habitation, and to record data for later terraforming teams if they weren't. Having eventually passed his Tamer training (those Anger Management Issues held him back two years), the team Jacque is on for his mission discover a safe for human habitation world with a sponge-like creature...that links people telepathically....
Haldeman's worldbuilding is superb, as you would expect from the author of The Forever War. While the plot keeps piling on elements (i.e., there's a sentient alien race that eventually comes into play), the story hangs together and is never less than enjoyable. If it's not as great a book as its multi-award winning predecessor, that's most likely due to the characters feeling a bit more off-the-rack (while the stakes are higher than Space Vietnam War, all the main characters are trained to "face certain death with a slightly raised eyebrow")
[image] Which, as STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES could tell you, doesn't make for great drama!
and the sense that Haldeman had a bunch of different ideas and...just mashed them together, and when he saw the structure didn't fall over called it a day.
It's a good book that just misses being great....more
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