If Dilbert, the office nerd from the eponymous comic strip, was working for a top-secret English organization (called The Laundry) which specializes iIf Dilbert, the office nerd from the eponymous comic strip, was working for a top-secret English organization (called The Laundry) which specializes in tracking down Lovecraftian critters and Old Gods who are escaping from other dimensions into our own, you’d have the personality and life of main character Bob Howard, narrator of the Laundry Files series. ‘The Fuller Memorandum’ is the third in author’s Charles Stross’ alternate universe science fiction/horror/fantasy series. Howard is a computer geek who has by necessity learned special skills of magic in addition to those of a computer technician. Besides being a whiz at math and computer programming, he now knows a lot of magical spells and the art of dispelling demonic Cthuloid attacks.
Howard is not happy about this, but he doesn’t have a choice in working for The Laundry. In the first book, The Atrocity Archives, he accidentally almost destroyed an entire English city by creating a magical computer algorithm. So. He was given a choice - work for the good guys of The Laundry, or die, or something. Because he activated a portal, he demonstrated he had the talent The Laundry needs. This talent made him dangerous to be loose in the world without any knowledge or training about his skill set. Besides, in the second book, The Jennifer Morgue, he falls in love with another Laundry employee, Dr. Dominique (Mo) O’Brien.
There is an American and a Russian spy department which also deals with the Old Gods and the various magical monsters who invade our universe. Everyone in these national organizations try to play nice together, but, you know, nationalist pride of place in defeating horrific stomach-turning monsters.
I have copied the book blurb:
”Bob Howard is taking a much needed break from the field to catch up on his filing in The Laundry's archives when a top secret dossier known as The Fuller Memorandum vanishes - along with his boss, whom the agency's executives believe stole the file.
Determined to discover exactly what the memorandum contained, Bob runs afoul of Russian agents, ancient demons, and the apostles of a hideous faith, who have plans to raise a very unpleasant undead entity known as the Eater of Souls...”
It's in the book of rules for agents of The Laundry that officers keep a classified journal of their assignments, thus Howard’s narration. This is a good thing, gentler reader. The horrors of Howard’s job, both human- and monster-caused, puts his life in exciting jeopardy every time he must go into the field. Not to mention the awful rules of corporate life which drain the mind of energy because of the time-sucking horrors of required expense and activity reports, and attendance at Human Resource meetings, with which many of us can sympathize. We readers would never know about the terrors going on behind the screen of what we think of as ordinary life, or the bravery of the secret agents of The Laundry otherwise, if not for these books! You go, Bob!...more
‘The Jennifer Morgue’, #2 in the Laundry Files series by Charles Stross, is another mostly-Lovecraftian-monster-fantasy-masquerading-as-a-hard-science‘The Jennifer Morgue’, #2 in the Laundry Files series by Charles Stross, is another mostly-Lovecraftian-monster-fantasy-masquerading-as-a-hard-science-fiction/spy novel! Interested readers should start with book #1, The Atrocity Archives.
Bob Howard is more nerd than spy, but he has a set of mathematical/computer-science skills, and luck, the England’s top secret Capital Laundry Services (sort of like MI5, only they fight monster threats that have invaded Earth from another universe) finds invaluable. It turns out solving certain mathematical algorithms and theorems open portals between universes. Critters that people think of as demons and tentacled monsters, and other kinds of physics that work like magic, will leak into our world from these portals, usually by accident, when our Earth mathematicians are innocently messing around with maths. When Howard accidentally was messing around with maths, he almost wiped out a city. Instead of being arrested, he was offered a job he couldn’t refuse to work with Capital Laundry Services. He is a trained computational demonologist, an occult practitioner who can summon spirits.
I have copied the book blurb:
”Bob Howard, from The Laundry, secret UK agency against evil forces, narrates boarding yacht of Ellis Billington for Gravedust device that talks with dead. Ellis plans to raise Jennifer Morgue, monster from deep sea, rule world. U.S. Black Chamber sends lethal Ramona Random, in conflict with her bosses. Includes: Pimpf tale - Bob in virtual game; Afterword; Glossary.”
The above is all true, but it is stunningly brief. Ramona Random isn’t human, but a sea-creature entity with a demon inside of her. For resolving the assignment of stopping Ellis Billington in his nefarious schemes that Howard is on in this novel, he must be entangled with Ramona. He REALLY doesn’t want to be entangled (mentally joined). She kills people after having sex with them because her demon needs to eat dead people.
The Black Chamber is an American cryptanalysis agency, a super black agency dealing with occult intelligence. They are forcing Ramona to work with Howard. She REALLY doesn’t want to be entangled with Howard.
Ellis Billington is a bad guy who wants to take over the world, or something like that, using the Jennifer Morgue, which is a, a, a, well, something between a seacraft or ship and a living beast-creature with unimaginable powers. It’s stuck in the bottom of the ocean. The Laundry and the Black Chamber are desperately trying to stop Billington from grabbing it, but he is rich and is somewhere on a super-yacht in the ocean. He also knows about and has quite a collection of dark magical technology.
Complicating things, Howard has a girlfriend, a brainy scientist, Dr. Dominique (Mo) O’Brien, whom he met in ‘The Atrocity Archives.’ Since Ramona is genuinely beautiful, Howard finds himself attracted to her. He doesn’t want to mess up his relationship with Mo, but, for old-gods sake, he is aware of Ramona’s, *ahem*, states of arousal, and unfortunately, he is entangled, which means he feels what she feels! Plus, Mo has been so busy, gone on seminars a lot….
After some death-defying adventures, Howard is noticing a lot of the things happening to him are exactly like what happens to the character of James Bond in movies. Coincidence? No, not, gentle reader.
At the back, a short story called ‘Pimpf’ is included. It involves an intern that Howard is assigned to take care of, and to show how things work in The Laundry. Unfortunately, Howard leaves the intern, Pete Young, alone for only a few minutes with a mechanistically-enchanted computer video game…..
I have never read a novel by Percival Everett before although he has written quite a few. ‘Dr. No’, Everett’s latest book, is pure madcap zaniness! ThI have never read a novel by Percival Everett before although he has written quite a few. ‘Dr. No’, Everett’s latest book, is pure madcap zaniness! The title is intentional since the book is all about making fun of the character of James Bond and the Bond novels. The plot of Everett’s ‘Dr. No’ is similar to the movie Goldfinger. There are helicopters, submarines, secret hideaways, shootouts, kidnappings, a heist, hypnotized women, shark pools, and an abundance of villainy!
Everything conceived by Ian Fleming in his famous spy novels is turned inside out and upside down in a funhouse mirror of wordplay! The main character, thirty-five-year-old Wala Kitu, is on the autism spectrum, and he has no spy skills. He has never had sex, even though women offer sex to him. He can’t drive a car. He wouldn’t know an Aston Martin DB5 from a Volkswagen Bug.
Wala Kitu is a professor of mathematics at Brown University. But he studies only one mathematical concept: Nothing.
I have copied the book blurb:
” A sly, madcap novel about supervillains and nothing, really, from an American novelist whose star keeps rising
The protagonist of Percival Everett’s puckish new novel is a brilliant professor of mathematics who goes by Wala Kitu. (Wala, he explains, means “nothing” in Tagalog, and Kitu is Swahili for “nothing.”) He is an expert on nothing. That is to say, he is an expert, and his area of study is nothing, and he does nothing about it. This makes him the perfect partner for the aspiring villain John Sill, who wants to break into Fort Knox to steal, well, not gold bars but a shoebox containing nothing. Once he controls nothing he’ll proceed with a dastardly plan to turn a Massachusetts town into nothing. Or so he thinks.
With the help of the brainy and brainwashed astrophysicist-turned-henchwoman Eigen Vector, our professor tries to foil the villain while remaining in his employ. In the process, Wala Kitu learns that Sill’s desire to become a literal Bond villain originated in some real all-American villainy related to the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. As Sill says, “Professor, think of it this way. This country has never given anything to us and it never will. We have given everything to it. I think it’s time we gave nothing back.”
Dr. No is a caper with teeth, a wildly mischievous novel from one of our most inventive, provocative, and productive writers. That it is about nothing isn’t to say that it’s not about anything. In fact, it’s about villains. Bond villains. And that’s not nothing.”
Quotes:
I have spent my career in my little office on George Street in Providence contemplating and searching for nothing. I have not found it. It is sad for me that the mere introduction to my subject of interest necessarily ruins my study. I work very hard and wish I could say that I have nothing to show for it.
”It was my expertise in nothing, not absolutely nothing, but positively nothing, that led me to work with, rather for, one John Milton Bradley Sill, a self-made billionaire with one goal, a goal that might have been intriguing to some, confounding and weird to most idiotic to all, but at least easily articulated. John Milton Bradley Sill aspired to be a Bond villain, the fictitious nature of James Bond notwithstanding.”
Wala finds the military would like nothing better than using nothing as a weapon:
”There is in fact no nothing; the simplistic argument for this assertion is that the observation of nothing requires an observer, and so the presence of the onlooker negates what might have been pure absence, what might have actually been nothing.”
“None of us knew just what nothing was, but its possibilities were boundless; that much was a logical necessity and therefore true. I recalled being approached some years earlier by two generals from the army whose names i might have heard but certainly didn’t remember. I did remember that they looked alarmingly similar, though one was a woman and the other a man. They knocked on my office door, timidly, it seemed, for warmongers.
We discussed nothing in a roundabout, yet truthful way for just more than two hours. They wouldn’t tell me what they wanted it for and I couldn’t tell them what it was or where to find it.
“What do you think you can do with nothing if you find it?”
“That’s why we’re talking to you,” said General He. “We’d very much like to know, you know?”
“You know nothing,” from General She. “That is widely accepted. We want your help. Don’t you want to serve your country?”
“I’ve given this country nothing my entire life.” I don’t plan to change now.”
“What do you mean?” From She.
“I didn’t mean anything by that,” I said. “Not anything is not equivalent to nothing. You understand that, right?”
“Nothing could make all the difference in the world, we know that much,” said General He.
I shook my head. “No one can possess nothing.”
It seems English language has a lot of nothing to say, too:
We were silent briefly. “I just received a grant that I hope leads to nothing.”
To empty a box of nothing would have been to lose nothing and to have nothing left to show for it. So, nothing doing.
“You’re, like, in your own world all the time. No one seems to bother you. Nothing seems to bother you.”
“Actually, nothing bothers me all of the time…”
“Tell me what you know.”
“Nothing. I know nothing. I also know that Sill is up to nothing.”
“You’re telling me he’s not planning anything.”
“That’s not what I said. Listen this time. Sill is interested in nothing. He wants nothing. He plans to take nothing. He wants, rather needs, me because I know nothing.”
“What if Sill is actually able to direct nothing at New York,” I said. What if he negates the nation’s largest city?”
“More room for you and more room for me, a chicken in every pot, pigeons in the sea. Sorry, there’s nothing funny about that.”
“What are the odds?” I asked. “That’s a long way for nothing to travel. I mean, what if nothing gets in its way? And what if nothing doesn’t arrive?”
“Well, then nothing will happen.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
“Then it appears to me that you are prepared. You have absolutely nothing to worry about.”
The above quoted conversation is between Wala and his one-legged dog, Trigo. Wala dreams a lot about conversations between him and Trigo. Trigo can’t actually talk or discuss anything with Wala, but Wala needs these dream conversations with Trigo, so there are a lot of them in the novel. Why? Idk, they all seem about nothing….
‘Persephone Station’ by Stina Leicht is a military science fiction read that will be an excellent novel to take along to the beach - if hurricanes and‘Persephone Station’ by Stina Leicht is a military science fiction read that will be an excellent novel to take along to the beach - if hurricanes and global warming effects on melting polar regions on Earth have left any.
I have copied the book blurb because it is accurate:
”Hugo award-nominated author Stina Leicht has created a take on space opera for fans of The Mandalorian and Cowboy Bebop in this high-stakes adventure.
Persephone Station, a seemingly backwater planet that has largely been ignored by the United Republic of Worlds, becomes the focus for the Serrao-Orlov Corporation as the planet has a few secrets the corporation tenaciously wants to exploit.
Rosie—owner of Monk’s Bar, in the corporate town of West Brynner—caters to wannabe criminals and rich Earther tourists, of a sort, at the front bar. However, exactly two types of people drink at Monk’s back bar: members of a rather exclusive criminal class and those who seek to employ them.
Angel—ex-marine and head of a semi-organized band of beneficent criminals, wayward assassins, and washed up mercenaries with a penchant for doing the honorable thing—is asked to perform a job for Rosie. What this job reveals will affect Persephone and put Angel and her squad up against an army. Despite the odds, they are rearing for a fight with the Serrao-Orlov Corporation. For Angel, she knows that once honor is lost, there is no regaining it. That doesn’t mean she can’t damned well try.”
The novel is written in the stereotype/quick-sketch YA style which is in demand for many of today’s readers. A lot of current YA scifi books seem to possess echoes of Star Wars/Firefly in one way or another to me, as this novel also does. Nonetheless, after what I thought an uninteresting start, partially because for me, the book did not have an interesting freshness, I did finally get excited as the plot thickened and military fighting began.
The book wasn’t exactly reminiscent of the books that I think of as space opera scifi. The novel and characters never did grab me, but it is well-written....more
The graphic comic book 'The Boys, Omnibus 1' is a gorefest consisting of 14 issues of the comic. It's an extreme horrowshow full of vivid scenes of viThe graphic comic book 'The Boys, Omnibus 1' is a gorefest consisting of 14 issues of the comic. It's an extreme horrowshow full of vivid scenes of violence and sex, hand-drawn and colorized beautifully page after page. The images have become standardized by video games like Mortal Kombat and the darkest M-rated horror movies. Thankfully, there are also several well-written plots and interesting characters filling out the reasons for the violence and deaths and torture.
When I think back to how the movie 'The Exorcist' sickened me so bad when I was eighteen years old that I walked out before the ending, and now when I compare the cheesy effects of that movie to what I watch and look at today, I must sit down and reflect a bit about how jaded I've become...
Oh well. I do still feel sickened by extremely over-the-top violent visual effects or graphic comics. 'The Boys' crosses into that territory for me. I was appalled. But. 'The Boys' is definitely witty art, a dark dark social satire and a sophisticated comedic snarky noir commentary. Perhaps perversely, I pick up, and sometimes only skim, these horribly graphic works despite that I have actually lived through some real-life shit. These fictional dark fantasy stories are exaggerated and hysterical, yet they mirror real life daily violence in the real world so artfully and compellingly. I have had years of therapy and I no longer have PTSD, I think. No worries, gentle reader. One of the methodologies of psychology is normalizing the experience of whatever is causing fears one may have, like of seeing spiders or using elevators. No psychologist would recommend reading this kind of pulp pop-culture fiction, though. But why I'm drawn to read or watch these dark tales of fictionalized horrors, idk. I see and admire the wit, the acid sarcasm, and the bitter bitter burning rage of the writers and artists. Maybe that's why.
I have copied the book blurb below because it is accurate:
"All-new printing collecting the first 14 issues of the critically acclaimed series, now heading to live-action on Amazon Prime! This is going to hurt!
In a world where costumed heroes soar through the sky and masked vigilantes prowl the night, someone's got to make sure the "supes" don't get out of line. And someone will! Billy Butcher, Wee Hughie, Mother's Milk, The Frenchman, and The Female are The Boys: A CIA-backed team of very dangerous people, each one dedicated to the struggle against the most dangerous force on Earth - superpower!
Some superheroes have to be watched. Some have to be controlled. And some of them - sometimes - need to be taken out of the picture. That's when you call in The Boys! After the opening story arc introducing Hughie to the team (issues 1-6), Dark avenger Tek-Knight and his ex-partner Swingwing are in trouble (issues 7-14). Big trouble. One has lost control of his terrifyingly overactive sex-drive, and the other might just be a murderer. It's up to Hughie and Butcher to work out which is which, in Get Some.
Then, in Glorious Five-Year Plan, The Boys travel to Russia - where their corporate opponents are working with the mob, in a super-conspiracy that threatens to spiral lethally out of control. Good thing our heroes have Love Sausage on their side.
Featuring some ever-so-slight tweaks the creators have meticulously restored, The Boys Omnibus Volume 1. It also features bonus art materials, the script to issue #1 by Garth Ennis, a complete cover gallery, and more! "
Of course, viewers of all ages can watch bloody movies and TV shows every day, with commercial breaks advertising munchies, on the SyFy and the FX channels among many other 'regular' cable-TV channels. We have choices of fictionalized bloody, bloodier, and bloodiest movies and TV shows. This kind of stuff, believe it or not, used to be only obtainable in specialty S&M shops in red-light areas of big cities. Even if you yourself ARE only watching the Hallmark channel or family dramedies, many others are watching the now normalized everyday viewing of S&M plots, undisguised except by appearing without being spoken and named out loud by the actors, scriptwriters and producers. Adults can watch even more graphically uncensored violence and visually-imagined S&M deaths and voyeuristic explicit sex acts on the elite, commercial-free, subscription channels. The only thing I've noticed that is still out of bounds unless it is an X-rated show, is real sex penetration. Fake penetration (of mouth or nether regions) is good to go for an R-rating.
Mainstream CBS, NBC and ABC and Fox channels have supposedly PG shows showing graphic simulated operations of people having surgery with doctors smeared in blood squirting out of abdominal cavities or open chests, along with sound effects, such as of saws on skulls or limbs, with sometimes a discreet sheet or having the camera swoop into a close up of the surgeons to 'hide' the seemingly act of cutting that is happening. Not to mention the many many many scenes and sounds of breaking bones in fights.
Quite amazing, really, what visual effect artists and sound engineers can do with their life/education skills and imagination. But of course, even if talented visual and sound artists have been in a war, or are serial killers or American-city police officers, or have seen or done surgeries, most of the rest of us have seen smashed up roadkill, and some of us hunt deer. We all, well, most of us, cook meat for dinner.
'The Boys' is rubbing our noses in what violence looks like without gauzy subterfuges. A case can be made for 'The Boys' series having artistic values besides that of simply salacious sadism because: 1. beautiful and realistic artwork (argumentatively, right?); 2. witty social satire on the having of power over others in all of its rawest, most obvious forms; 3. the moral and psychological corruptions of fighting fire with fire to defeat genuine Evil. Absolutes of being only Good means dealing with the Bad Guys as always a Good person results in the Bad guys winning a lot, even all of the time.
Doctor Who occasionally realized genocide and murder was a necessity, as did Frodo Baggins (The Lord of the Rings books). The problem is in not being taken over by the darkness of moral depravities and human evils. Hughie is that kind of Goodness and somewhat walking-in-the-Light anchor for 'The Boys' team, much like Doctor Who's human companions are for the Doctor or how Sam was for Frodo. Books are an excellent Goodness anchor through vicariously feeding readers justice, too, even if only in a fictional story....more
'The Laughing Corpse' by Laurell K. Hamilton, the second in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, is exciting hardcore horror!
Anita Blake is a bada'The Laughing Corpse' by Laurell K. Hamilton, the second in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, is exciting hardcore horror!
Anita Blake is a badass slayer heroine in a dark fantasy world where vampires, witches, zombies and ghouls live (sort of live, being dead, right?) among humans, set in an alternate modern America. She is known as an animator of anything dead. She also graduated from college with a degree in biology, and she lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
Yeah, this series is full of dark noir snark and satirical touches.
In the first novel, Guilty Pleasures, Anita fights vampires. In 'The Laughing Corpse' Anita is drawn into several plots involving zombies. I must say the world building in this series is intricate, detailed, fascinating and logical, even when the author is mixing into the traditional horror elements of these paranormal creatures her newly invented ones! The vampires have rigid intricate rules they must live by, and surprisingly, so do zombies! They are not entirely only mindless eaters of living flesh. Ok, mostly they are, including in this series, but the author has "fleshed them out". So to speak.
I have copied the book blurb because it is accurate:
"Harold Gaynor offers Anita Blake a million dollars to raise a 300-year-old zombie. Knowing it means a human sacrifice will be necessary, Anita turns him down. But when dead bodies start turning up, she realizes that someone else has raised Harold's zombie--and that the zombie is a killer. Anita pits her power against the zombie and the voodoo priestess who controls it.
In The Laughing Corpse Anita will learn that there are some secrets better left buried-and some people better off dead..."
As much as I enjoy the vicarious thrill of riding invisibly on Anita's shoulder while she massacres extremely wicked people (and other creatures, like the vampires, ghouls and zombies), these novels are incredibly gory. If you have ever spent a Saturday watching SyFy horror movies, just imagine reading on the page in words the many televised scenes of disembowelments in a Leatherface movie, or heads popping in a telepathy-horror pic, or an actor being torn limb from limb in a Sharknado movie. In fact, author Hamilton might be worse than Stephen King in writing a graphic description of horrible maiming and killing. Gentle reader, skimming is a useful skill. However, these books definitely have loads of charmingly powerful schadenfreude. Anita is a good person, and her enemies deserve her wrath! Still, I can tell I have to be in the right mood for an Anita Blake novel. She goes to war against the bad guys, no holds barred....more
I LOVED 'Sandstorm' by James Rollins! It is pure old-fashioned adventure much like the Doc Savage series by Lester Dent.
Reader, if you love thriller I LOVED 'Sandstorm' by James Rollins! It is pure old-fashioned adventure much like the Doc Savage series by Lester Dent.
Reader, if you love thriller novels which combine adventure, fantasy, and black-ops excitement, I beg you to read once in your lifetime the Doc Savage series beginning with Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze! If you can. Amazon shows these novels are out of print, alas! They are also not politically correct. I don't care! But I digress..
I have copied the book blurb about 'Sandstorm', which IS a politically correct novel:
"An inexplicable explosion rocks the antiquities collection of a London museum, setting off alarms in clandestine organizations around the world.
And now the search for answers is leading Lady Kara Kensington; her friend Safia al-Maaz, the gallery's brilliant and beautiful curator; and their guide, the international adventurer Omaha Dunn, into a world they never dreamed existed: a lost city buried beneath the Arabian desert.
But others are being drawn there as well, some with dark and sinister purposes. And the many perils of a death-defying trek deep into the savage heart of the Arabian Peninsula pale before the nightmare waiting to be unearthed at journey's end: an ageless and awesome power that could create a utopia... or destroy everything humankind has built over countless millennia."
Almost every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, much like the serials of the 1930's. Omg, gentle reader, I'm in fricking heaven! I'm so glad I have discovered these books! Omg, I hope the rest of the series are like 'Sandstorm! I will be absolutely devastated if they aren't. This novel, anyway, is a throwback to matinee serials like the one starring Buster Crabbe, star of Flash Gordon and the fictionalized novels of other comic books. What others you ask? Ok, nobody is asking me, but I'm going to show you anyway.
Needless to say, they ALL are politically incorrect, but when I was able to get my hands on one of these pulp comics or novelizations I went out of my mind with joy! This! This! This!
*ahem*
Sorry. But these dime novels were the start of my adult love affair, so to speak, with reading, once I found them with torn covers, missing pages, and stained with coffee cup rings in the damaged paperbacks bins at my local Salvation Army store. Originally, it was novels like The Complete Sherlock Holmes series and The Black Stallion series that were my elementary school loves, but it was the silly 1930's pulps which cemented my adoration of reading, discovered when I was in junior high (or middle school to non-baby-boomer generations).
'Sandstorm' was printed in 2004, and it involves an up-to-date team of competing scientists and military teams, but it also includes what are to me the absolutely delightful touches present in the movie 'Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark'
I hope my library has the next one in the Sigma Force series, Map of Bones! I haven't felt this happy since I read Relic!
I love early pulps! And the radio shows, too! Like "The Shadow" , "Adventures by Morse", "The Creaking door", Arch Obeler plays, "CBS Radio Mystery Theater", "I Love A Mystery" - to name my favorites! No, I wasn't born when these shows were on the radio except for CBS Radio Mystery Theater, but there was, and is sort of a cycle of bringing them back every fifteen years or so. A lot of these are available as podcasts today. However, warning they often are not politically correct.
Don't judge me. My life is small.
P.s. Many of these early pulps are terrible, awful. I laugh and laugh!...more
‘Die Trying’ by Lee Child gave me a serious chill of déjà vu!
The plot: a right-wing militia is secretly preparing to take down the American governmen‘Die Trying’ by Lee Child gave me a serious chill of déjà vu!
The plot: a right-wing militia is secretly preparing to take down the American government because they think the country is in danger of a takeover by the United Nations - which they believe is the front organization for the One-World Government. They have established a secret camp in Montana to train up militia wannabes, consisting of ex-soldiers and others. Their women and children are made to obey to rigid security rules and learn absolute military obedience to the men. The leader is a charismatic personality who gives daily talks about the United Nation conspiracies surrounding them that are destroying America and the real Americans - white men. The leader is also a strict disciplinarian, resorting to torture punishments of anyone who disagrees with him, not just simply for any disobedience, of his beliefs as well as his commands. He is ordering missions to steal money from banks and guns from everywhere but especially the American military camps. The Montana militia is stockpiling food.They have taken over other militias who were also hiding in and around the Montana valley, disappearing other leaders. The valley is almost inaccessible except by one road. Except for the militia and scattered preppers who have been preparing for Armageddon for decades already, hardly anyone else lives there. People live off the grid because of their fears of the government, so they were easy targets for the leader and his militia.
They believe the United Nations is plotting to take over all governments and install a world government. Their leader told them vaccine jabs are really the way GPS trackers are being installed inside their bodies. They believe voting doesn’t matter because the system is rigged. They believe foreign countries have invaded America already, planting soldiers here through secret immigration, waiting for the word to take over. They believe forty-three concentration camps have been secretly built by the United Nations in America to enslave white Americans when the takeover happens. They believe all babies are getting a secret microchip implanted when they are born in hospitals. They believe United Nation satellites are watching all of the American militia camps and listening to all communication systems. They believe the leader when he says he has proof of everything he is teaching them, documents taken from secret files to which he got access, in his office safe. They all wear camouflage fatigues. And they are going to destroy the powers of the American government, The President, Congress and the military, whom the militia leader is certain are all controlled by the United Nations, before it takes down the militia! They are certain the one-world government attack will happen soon, so the militia will attack first!!!
Is this about January 6, 2021? NO. The book was written in 1998!
O _ o
‘Die trying’ is the second novel in the Jack Reacher series. It can be read as a standalone, but if one wants to read book one, of which Amazon has made into a current Prime Video series, start with Killing Floor...more
'Saga' is a graphic science fiction/fantasy comic, book one, vol. 1-3. But the story is much more than a superhero mosh pit! It is exciting, fascinati'Saga' is a graphic science fiction/fantasy comic, book one, vol. 1-3. But the story is much more than a superhero mosh pit! It is exciting, fascinating, and vulgarly overdone in symbolism. It also has attractive space aliens and horrible ugly obscene creatures all done with beautiful art work that is mindbogglingly creative! And oh yes, it's a space opera about a Romeo and Juliet couple on the run from their respective governments!
Marco's people are from the moon Wreath. Alana is from the planet Landfall, around which Wreath orbits. Alana, a winged being, meets Marco, a horned being, whom she is guarding in a prison. Unexpectedly, they fall in love. Alana helps Marco escape. They have sex which no one thought possible. Even more impossible, they have a baby. Both enemy nations see the child as an abomination. Assassins are hired by both sides to track down the couple and kill them and the baby.
The fight is on! This is even harder than you'd think because Marco and Alana have sworn not to kill anymore. Ffs. Still, many deaths happen and are graphically drawn in each chapter. Warning - this comic isn't for children.
The Horns and the Wings would destroy the other's world gladly, but if the moon or planet were blown up, the other world would spin out of orbit. So. Both sides are locked into less explosive murderous warfare that is nonetheless quite lethal with lots of injuries, torture and deaths. They also have outsourced their battles to proxies all over the galaxy, no holds barred so to speak. The war between Wreath and Landfall not only spans entire planetary systems, forcing everyone in the galaxy to take sides, but the war has gone on so long people can't remember how many centuries it has been since anyone was at peace. Many planets and moons have become post-apocalyptic wastelands with survivors who no longer feel anything lighthearted or kindly about any visitors to what's left of their homelands.
Adding into the mix is a world of robots. They are sentient, with human bodies, and a computer monitor for a head. The robots have a royal aristocrat class, and one in particular is having a bad day. The robots are allies of the winged beings. Prince IV has been specifically tasked with hunting down and killing the pacifist couple and their multiracial baby by his father the King. He reluctantly accepts. He was supposed to get two years off to start a family, and he is suffering from PTSD. Nonetheless, he hates the Horns and he can't even understand how a winged woman could bring herself to mate with such ugly 'animals'.
The Wreath, Landfall and the royal robots all have human forms, btw. However, almost no other characters do. Be prepared for shocking and gory images, gentle reader! I love the Lying Cat, partner of a human assassin called The Will, of course.
This should be a totally dark, visually obscene story, but there be jokes, snarky humor and in-law complications as well as pretty drawings and interesting artistic creations. Marco and Alana spar with and adore each other in equal measures. They are fun to watch! Their babysitter, who they pick up in a haunted forest, is a bit creepy, but she is a smart and loyal girl ghost despite missing her body below the waist, intestines draped below her like an interesting hippie skirt. Remember Lady Gaga's meat dress? I think Izabel is a symbol similar to the meat dress. I think. Anyway, that is the kind of joke readers will be constantly seeing.
I want a space ship like the one Marco and Alana find. It's a sentient tree, hollowed out, outfitted with rooms and pilot controls. It's way cool, gentle reader. So is 'Saga'! I highly recommend it....more
''A Death in China' by Bill Montalbano and Carl Hiaasen is a good thriller. But I don't think Carl Hiaasen was involved very much in the writing of th''A Death in China' by Bill Montalbano and Carl Hiaasen is a good thriller. But I don't think Carl Hiaasen was involved very much in the writing of this novel. It is a straightforward crime thriller without any satire at all.
China has changed since this 1984 book was published insofar as infrastructure is concerned. For one thing, China has more tools for spying on the activities of everyone within it's borders. The way the main character maneuvers about "Peking" would not be possible today in China. China is currently a hardfisted communist government hiding behind a front of capitalism.
The book uses the older names for cities and places in China. It calls Beijing Peking, for example. Most people use bicycles for transportation in "Peking" in the story instead of cars. People are wearing Mao suits. China has changed so much and very very quickly since 'A Death in China' was written. The government has embraced the making of money and spending it on oneself only.. Cities have been rebuilt with beautiful futuristic buildings. However, I think many Westerners are unaware that basically all house and condo owners are basically trailer park residents. The communist government owns all of the land forever. Housing owners are basically all renters.
Moving on....
Tom Stratton is in China as a member of the American Association of Art Historians. The AAAH is touring museums. Stratton is a professor and an art historian, teaching in New England, but during the Vietnam War he was what we call today a black-ops guy. One of his assignments during the war, to rescue hostages in China, went horribly wrong. The incident haunts him, but it was long ago and he has moved on from the military to becoming an academic. He decided to return to China for a visit since he was very bored when the AAAH conference was announced. Besides, he is very excited to meet up with his mentor, David Wang. If it wasn't for Wang, Stratton would never have become an art historian. Wang also helped him recover from his war experiences.
Wang retired and is still living in the United States, but he has a brother living in China. His brother, Wang Bin, is a Deputy Minister in the communist government, a very powerful official in the Communist Party. Wang Bin asked David to visit him. David decided it would be ok. So he tells Stratton that after his meeting with his brother, he will meet Stratton at the hotel for dinner.
Strangely, David never shows up. Stratton makes inquiries at David's hotel and discovers David's room is emptied out of David's things and being cleaned. When Stratton goes to the American embassy to report David is missing, the diplomats and the CIA dismiss Stratton's concerns as overblown. Then Stratton is told David is dead! Heart attack. Stratton knows that is a lie. What is going on?
Then the attacks on Stratton begin. Someone is trying to kill him! Stratton is Not. Going. Down! The fight is on, even if Stratton has to take down Wang Bin and all of China to find David...
I liked this thrilling beach read! But there is an instant love interest which kinda pulled me out of the story a little. The relationship reminded me a bit of the more fantasy-based James Bond novels which was jarring. 'A Death in China' plays the secret operative dangers a lot more straight and serious than the Bond books....more
‘Guilty Pleasures’ by Laurell K. Hamilton is the first novel in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, paranormal mystery series. I have seen the books here‘Guilty Pleasures’ by Laurell K. Hamilton is the first novel in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, paranormal mystery series. I have seen the books here and there but I never picked them up until now. I liked it! There is a lot of thrills and chills! However, Blake must have been covered in scars from head to toe by the end of this exciting action novel.
‘Guilty Pleasures’ is one of the first fiction series to feature a continuing main character who is a woman and an action figure who is indistinguishable from the fictional male ex-military protagonists in many popular action thrillers. Blake is an “animator” - she makes zombies by raising dead people using a method which seemed like voodoo to me. But in 'Guilty Pleasures' she is hired as a detective by a powerful leader of a vampire coven residing in St. Louis, Missouri. Blake is an employee of Bert Vaughn, owner of Animators, Inc. The business has an investigator on staff, but it isn’t Blake's job. Usually.
The vampire client, Nikolaos, is insane, unfortunately, and very evil. She can’t seem to stop herself from wanting to torture Blake to death even while Blake is trying to solve the mystery of who is killing vampires. There is a law in this alternative United States that forbids the killing of vampires unless sanctioned properly by legal authorities. But clearly the powerful of any kind, dead and undead and living, can do whatever they want in this alt-universe of ghouls, werewolves, vampires and zombies. Nikolaos is using blackmail and threats to coerce Blake to work for her. Blake hates vampires.
Published in 1993, the technology in the book is at the beeper notification stage of communications with phone calls being returned when in the field by finding a convenience store with an AT&T phone booth standing outside of the store. (If you, gentle readers are completely mystified by that previous sentence, Google is a good search engine to use to find out about ancient technology before cell phones and the internet.)
The gory graphic violence in an Anita Blake plot has never gone out of style. John Wick, Mad Max, every Quentin Tarantino character in every Tarantino movie ever made, for example, has continued the tradition of graphic body-destroying ass-kicking in most modern blockbuster actions movies. Of course, graphic stomach-turning scenes have been in most noir detective novels since they were invented, even in the strict regulated eras of media in American history. Fans will find the action in the Blake series familiar territory. If you enjoyed Tarantino’s ‘Dusk to Dawn’ movies, you will LOVE ‘Guilty Pleasures’!
I have not read the other books in this Dark Romance action series, but all of the reviews speak of the novels becoming pornographic around book ten. I suspect, based on the reviews I’ve read on GR, the porn in the Blake series will be a turn off, but for others, maybe not. After all, sexual pornography is the number-one type of entertainment consumed by people all over the world. I do enjoy moderately graphic vampire horror novels. To a point. Punishment/retribution/revenge porn induced by or for the purposes of schadenfreude on evil adults, or things - well, ok then, I admit I’m mostly good to go, especially if it's funny. I might end up skimming scenes of way too much violence between my fingers held over my eyes. But I also have the curiosity of the proverbial cat to my regret.
I am not exactly a reader of gentle genres in the first place. I can already see Anita Blake is not developing into the usual Dark Romance horror heroine. She is definitely without snowflake liberal sensibilities (indeed, I am detecting a distinct self-sufficient libertarian vibe). She possesses an obvious Catholic Christian circa 1990's faith. She IS developing a bloody romance with a vampire, Jean-Claude, manager of the vampire club “Guilty Pleasures”. Is Hamilton the author practicing a "give the suckers (hehe-pun alert) whatever low-rent entertainment they will pay for"? series? Very likely.
I never said I didn’t read or investigate trashy novels (see my profile). Perhaps you are a GR member of breeding and discernment, and maybe sensitivity. I absolutely cannot recommend this book to you. I’m going to read book two in the series. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯...more
‘Killing Floor' by Lee Child is the first novel in the Jack Reacher series. I've heard a lot about this character, but I never got around to reading t‘Killing Floor' by Lee Child is the first novel in the Jack Reacher series. I've heard a lot about this character, but I never got around to reading the books. I am sorry to say I like Jack Reacher, but I wouldn't want him around unless I was in a firefight or facing horrible killers. He's a cold-blooded assassin and a hot-blooded vigilante, and a loner. Reading how Reacher saved good people satisfies my own occasional fleeting sense of righteous vigilantism but certainly I would never do. I think.
I thought about doing a count of the immobilized bodies in this novel. There were a LOT of bodies that were killed or disabled in 'Killing Floor'. This is not a book for either sensitive readers or fans who only read high-end literary Literature or Romance. It's revenge porn. Reacher kills the guys who are trying to kill and/or torture him and his friends and good people or children. So. A good guy, basically, right? Right. Shut up. He does splatter revenge easily. The people he kills are folks who are really really evil. He's kind of a Batman superhero, but Reacher doesn't do social work. He's into social re-engineering, so-to-speak.
*ahem*
The book jacket's blurb is accurate, so I copied it below.
Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is a drifter. He's just passing through Margrave, Georgia, and in less than an hour, he's arrested for murder. Not much of a welcome. All Jack knows is that he didn't kill anybody. At least not here. Not lately. But he doesn't stand a chance of convincing anyone. not in Margrave, Georgia. Not a chance in hell.
The book is a dark black-ops fictional cartoon, just wish-fulfillment fun for the id. I hope....more
'Salvation' by Peter Hamilton is book one in a trilogy called the Salvation Sequence. It is a world-building introduction to an extremely high-tech Ea'Salvation' by Peter Hamilton is book one in a trilogy called the Salvation Sequence. It is a world-building introduction to an extremely high-tech Earth of the future. It synthesizes some major plot ideas from Ender's Game and Hyperion, but I thought the novel very inventive and interesting, and exciting!, on its own merits nonetheless.
There are two (and a flashback third) timelines, with flashbacks. There are five main characters in one timeline which centers around the planet Earth or off-Earth colonies from 2092- 2204. There are two main characters in the second timeline from about 583-593 on a planet called Juloss. Each character in the first timeline has an independent past history (shown in flashbacks) and an intertwining history with the other four. The second timeline is so far in the future that the five characters in the first timeline have become Saints to characters in the second Timeline. Every main character has friends and peers and enemies.
The book's action revolves around speculative technology beyond anything that exists today, if ever. Portals have been invented which permit people to step through one in London and exit almost instantaneously on a Mars terminal or to an asteroid being mined. Small ones can be carried in a backpack. Large ones can transport larger items. A portal can be placed under a waterfall where the water pours into a portal and exits out into a desert. Portals are all over Earth and are as common as bus stops. The author imagines a gangbanger murderer who is on the run from security personnel who jump locations not only all over Earth, but landing all over the solar system in minutes. Minutes, like in 15 minutes, fifteen rooms, on fifteen planetary bodies. Like that. The portals work by quantum spacial entanglement. Shutup. You simply have to go with it.
Portals have made spaceships unnecessary for most mining jobs and vacations requiring travel. Rich people have high-tech homes everywhere in the solar system, and colonies are being contemplated on discovered exoplanets. Of course, care must be taken to handle atmospheres, gravity and other possible dangers to human bodies, like the invention of really tough habitat spheres and other materials. Which brings up the topic of human bodies! Lifespans have been extenuated by telomere extension therapy. Powerful self-defense add-ins can be surgically implanted into the bodies of military and security operatives.
Space aliens have discovered humans and the planet Earth. One species called the Olyix are of particular interest. They are extremely religious. They tell the people of Earth they only are interested in trade to resupply their arkship, called the Slavation of Life, um, sorry, I meant the Salvation of Life, on the way to the end of the universe. They expect to meet God at the end of Time. The Olyix are willing to exchange their high-tech inventions for food, water and energy. Some of their technology can make human cell tissue, replacing body parts and extending lifespans as well. They mean humans no harm whatsoever.
Right? Right.
As one can imagine, gentle reader, the Salvation Sequence is an epic and complicated space opera where both characters and technology and plot mysteries add up to a story which requires a section of Cast of Characters and a Timeline, supplied in the back of the book. 'Salvation' is an introduction to Hamilton's imagined Sequence universe and ends on a significant cliffhanger. The novel is definitely not standalone, and definitely not a beach read to be read casually whenever. But it is very interesting with almost funny, but graphic, scenes of violence because of the technological marvels involved in various scenes of mayhem.
Conservative readers! Warning! Gender identity in this novel has become a matter of physical fluidity that is as easy as changing your shoes. Some people go through a DNA-manipulated sex change-up every few or seven years. It's a built-in periodic sex change human members of a philosophical society named Utopial undergo, which is called omnia, like these Earth animals do today:
A Subtle Agency Omnibus' is kind of a misnomer! There is nothing subtle about the action, thrills and chills going on throughout these three novels! GA Subtle Agency Omnibus' is kind of a misnomer! There is nothing subtle about the action, thrills and chills going on throughout these three novels! Graeme Rodaughan has written a dark-fantasy vampire war series with a lot of amazing futuristic military equipment involved and vicious battles between competing agencies. The omnibus includes the first three novels in the Metaframe series: 'A Subtle Agency', 'A Traitor's War' and 'The Dragon's Den'. Heroes fight to live another day - or not! Ancient powers are unleashed! It is a mystical Avengers movie with vampires and vampire slayers as the main characters.
Similar to many current science fiction and fantasy novels, the involved protagonists in the Metaframe universe are members of many clans and agencies (all are Earth-based - this is not a space opera). In the Metaframe universe, three agencies are struggling for dominance over the other groups, hoping to wipe out the members of whoever are the 'bad guys' in their worldview - The Vampire Dominion, The Order of Thoth, and The Red Empire. In addition, the three main agencies have created or aligned themselves with miltary mercenaries who are unaware they are basically acting as shell corporations shielding the true leadership which is directing their assignments. While top management of the secret agencies are feeding their minions filtered information designed for obfuscation of real motives, many of the leaders in the second layers of each agency's organization chart are also planting spies within each of the groups hoping for opportunities to take control from their putative commander-in-chief.
It isn't unusual anymore for fantasy/science-fiction novels to be intricately plotted with multiple layers of tricky politics, 'Houses' of loyal members and dependents, and secret alliances that are constantly changing and undermining each other (the Dune series was the first of this type of novel I encountered), but it is an acquired taste. Fortunately, these books usually include a 'Dramatis Personae' list or organization chart. 'A Subtle Agency' includes such a list for reference.
I think readers who love military-theme action thrillers, and vampire movies of course, would REALLY like Rodaughan's series! Every other scene is one of high-octane murderous battles! There is almost a seamless mixing up of real-world military action and dark fantasy magic. I can't see any reason graphic comic fans wouldn't enjoy this series alongside military action fans. A Game of Thrones fans should check it out, but keep in mind these books are modern military (guns, vehicles, jets) oriented, not a middle-ages technology fantasy. Fans of Patient Zero should ADORE the Metaframe world!...more
"Use of Weapons" by Iain Banks is a loopy trip. It also is a literary read, disguised as a science fiction story. The novel is even possibly a masterp"Use of Weapons" by Iain Banks is a loopy trip. It also is a literary read, disguised as a science fiction story. The novel is even possibly a masterpiece! Of course, that means a lot of readers will hate it. A smaller group won't be able to figure out how the hell the book can even be understood at all because it goes forward on a timeline every other chapter, while going backwards in time in the other chapters. Also, it is kind of a biography of a soldier of Fortune, someone who is morally compromised by his job with the Culture. ('Use of Weapons' is book three in a series about the Culture Universe - although each book can be read as a standalone, I would start here: Consider Phlebas)
I get it. I do. I am a self-teaching, third-rate literature-major wannabe myself. Librarians and the library have been my tutors. I had to go back and re-skim what I had read after finishing the book. It definitely makes sense, except it is hard to grok because of the book's structure. Especially if one reads straight through only once. Plus, it is a layered literary near-masterpiece, in my humble opinion.
I loved it. Bite me. Brain candy makes me hot.
Ok ok. I'm in my late sixties, so maybe very warm is a better word choice because of the amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. Think Rupert Giles, only low-rent. And a dry-stick ex-secretary. With a hidden goth soul.
Since the cover blurb is actually accurate for once, instead of blathering on in my usual TLDR fashion, I am copying the publisher's text:
"The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks and military action. The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought. The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a burnt-out case. But not even its machine could see the horrors in his past. Ferociously intelligent, both witty and horrific, USE OF WEAPONS is a masterpiece of science fiction....more
The Institute' by Stephen King is wonderfully terrible! As usual. A little overlong, a lot exciting and full of American culture and dead kids.
SomethiThe Institute' by Stephen King is wonderfully terrible! As usual. A little overlong, a lot exciting and full of American culture and dead kids.
Something wicked this way comes....oops, wrong author reference, but I had to get that out of my system! 'The Institute' is not strictly about the paranormal in an overwhelming manner, but it is a little. Telekinesis and telepathy are all that's involved, but gory horror is minimal until the story nears the finish line. Even then, I'd allow those middle-schoolers who tend to sneak in and read your horror novels when your back is turned to also surreptitiously take your copy of 'The Institute' from your shelves. This novel is about everything which gives middle-schoolers thrills, chills and nightmares to think about! Immunization shots, parents possibly being killed, being pushed into trying out smoking/drinking by peers, cutting school, having evil institutional adults keeping kids locked up and under their power, seemingly without any purpose kids can see ("why do I have to go?"), and without the presence or knowledge of their parents!
All of the other usual King elements in the novel are present, even if abnormally tamed and controlled! Lovable group of kids (similar to It, but nothing is as good as 'It' imho), mysterious terrors, adult monsters and heroes, small town foibles and nostalgia. A South Carolina whistlestop gets King's glorious misery of human monsters shaking up the sleepy denizens this time though, although he does not leave out Maine either.
Ian Fleming often teased readers in earlier James Bond novels by including scenes where James Bond fantasizes what his life would be like if he retireIan Fleming often teased readers in earlier James Bond novels by including scenes where James Bond fantasizes what his life would be like if he retired from the Secret Service. Bond often discusses quitting with his friends in almost every book in the series, too. The ending of ‘You Only Live Twice’, number twelve in the series, leaves readers wondering if Bond has really come to the end of his career! The tone of this book is elegiac, and the story seems more of a funeral plot (pun intended) for the series as well as for many of the characters.
Bond is coming to work at his London desk late and leaving early. He is drinking a great deal, including at lunch. He is doing no paperwork, rarely responding to work-related questions. He totally screwed up his last two field assignments. Bond wonders whether he should resign before he gets fired. Finally, M summons him to his office. Bond is certain he is finished.
Instead, M ‘promotes’ Bond to the Diplomatic Section, giving him a new higher salary and a number: 7777. Is it the old scam of promoting a failing employee by bumping him up in title and salary? Maybe. M has been consulting the Service’s psychiatrist, Sir James Molony, who has recommended an extended vacation at minimum in the past for Bond. This time, though, Molony has recommended giving Bond a hopeless assignment without any dangers, something to ignite Bond’s patriotism and ingenuity. So, M tells Bond he is getting an undercover assignment without any gunplay. M wants Bond to somehow encourage Japan’s secret service department head, Tiger Tanaka, to give over its intelligence reports on the Soviets. England no longer has levers of influence, or even offices, in Japan. The CIA has taken over the region. Bond’s cover will be as the Australian’s embassy number two under Richard “Dikko” Lovelace Henderson of Her Majesty’s Australian Diplomatic Corps.
Dikko introduces Bond to Tiger. Tiger and Bond spend much time together, sizing each other up. Bond learns a lot about Japanese customs, does a lot of traveling around Japan. Finally, Tiger says he will give Bond important secrets the Japanese have gotten from spying on Soviet communications IF he does a favor for them. It seems there is a rich European in Japan the Japanese authorities would like to kill...
Japan is sometimes called “The Land of the Rising Sun”. From Wikipedia:
"The Japanese names for Japan are Nippon (にっぽん) and Nihon (にほん).They are both written in Japanese using the kanji 日本. Both Nippon and Nihon literally mean "the sun's origin", that is, where the sun originates, and are often translated as the Land of the Rising Sun. This nomenclature comes from Imperial correspondence with the Chinese Sui Dynasty and refers to Japan's eastern position relative to China."
However, after World War II, many Japanese were not feeling it. A book, ‘The Setting Sun’, was written (from Wikipedia):
“The symbolism of the book: "The Setting Sun refers to how Japan, the "Land of the Rising Sun" was in a period of decline after World War II. In her last letter to Mr. Uehara, Kazuko says that Japan is struggling against the old morality, "like the sun"."
Fleming died shortly after ‘You Only Live Twice’ was published. The book takes several feints towards the death of Bond, or of his career, and especially at Bond’s purpose in life, highlighting Bond’s death wish. The setting in another country destroyed by World War II, with a plot about an insane Edenic garden of deadly plants for Japanese people intending suicide, created by Bond’s old foe Blofeld, a Polish-German madman, adds up to a literary scream of despair. I believe Fleming set the final (?) book about Bond in Japan (the novel is a travelogue about Japan for 2/3rds of the book) because Japan was another country which was seemingly in its sunset years of influence, power and wealth in the world.
I think Ian Fleming was emotionally done in for real when he wrote 'You Only Live Twice'. The novel has many references to the diminution of England - financially, and in its political influence on the World. There is a thread of sadness and a sense of loss over the overall decline of manners and customs and class throughout the story. Although two more James Bond books by Fleming were published after his death from draft manuscripts and notes, I think if it wasn’t for the Hollywood deals, Fleming was ready to stop writing about James Bond. Fleming seems awfully embittered? angry? in the books through the cartoon character he made to represent England’s tired masculinity - a spy suffering from a lot of PTSD. (Hollywood turned Bond into a wise-cracking psychopath.) I believe Fleming was truly soul-sick. I do not have the sympathy for him that maybe some do, since I think his despair was mostly from the blurring and degrading of male class-structures and mores after WWII. He equated nobility and patriotism as weft and warp of upper-class values, so the ongoing growing disrespect of the upper-classes around the world meant the concurrent degradation of country and social life to him, I think, thus his resulting angst and depression. As an underclass woman who grew up a little later in the twentieth century, my sympathy for the death of toxic masculinity, whether upper class or no, must remain rather with the hopeful blooms in a feminist poison garden....more
‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ is an exciting and nerve-wracking James Bond novel! Ok, most of us have seen the movie dozens of times, and the movi‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ is an exciting and nerve-wracking James Bond novel! Ok, most of us have seen the movie dozens of times, and the movie follows the book’s plot very closely. But that doesn’t mean the book is without merit just because a movie based on it has been overexposed on television! It’s been a popular action movie for good reasons, and the novel’s plot the movie is based on is partially why. People who have not seen the movie yet like it very much when they do, despite the shock in the changeup of the actor who plays the part of James Bond! Those of us who have watched the movie a dozen times have done so because it is very entertaining and remarkably bittersweet for a Bond movie.
‘OHMSS’ is book two in a trilogy about the SPECTRE leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld, an extremely hardcore bad guy James Bond tangled with in a previous book in Ian Fleming’s Bond series, Thunderball. Bond also meets a headstrong young woman, Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo, daughter of a powerful Corsican organization mafia boss, the Unione Corse’s Marc-Ange Draco, in this novel. Tracy will change Bond’s life forever - as does Blofeld.
Tracy has a history of being suicidal, but James is drawn to her because of her beauty and high-spirited attitude when in danger. Her depression is caused by various losses of people close to her. Tracy is very reckless in her approach to challenging or dangerous circumstances partially as a result of her emotional pain, but she is expert in everything she does. Draco made sure she was trained in many things . Bond admires her skill set, which is similar to his own. The two young adventurous lovers (of course they are, this is a James Bond novel) are like matching bookends in what they enjoy doing for fun.
Some of the things Bond thinks are fun is stuff like destroying the nefarious plans of bad guys like Blofeld. Bond already wrecked one of Blofeld’s extortion capers, despite that Blofeld himself escaped being captured. But there are emotional difficulties with which Bond is struggling lately after every assignment. He is burning out. Tracy seems to be offering him a new path forward. But Bond cannot resist taking one more assignment from the Secret Service.
Blofeld has turned up unexpectedly in Switzerland. Maybe. Apparently, if the information was accurate, a man who could be Blofeld is interested in establishing his line of descent from established royal titles. This person contacted London’s College of Arm’s department researcher Sable Basilisk asking for official verification of his noble lineage. The title the wealthy Swiss gentleman, Monsieur le Comte Balthazar de Bleuvulle, wishes to be bestowed on himself is Comte de Bleuville, with the family arms.
Bond cannot believe it, but Bleuville seems to be Blofeld. There is no extradition agreement with Switzerland, so if Bleuville is Blofeld, he is safe in Switzerland. The Service needs confirmation of Blofeld’s identity, and if it is the master criminal, a plan is needed to entice Blofeld out of Switzerland. Basilisk agrees to send Bond to Blofeld’s Swiss ski resort business as a College of Arms' employee with fake credentials. Bond and Blofeld never met, but it still is a risky visit. Blofeld is not only a murderous psychopath, he is very intelligent and cautious. If he finds out Bond really is 007, he will kill Bond immediately. Plus, is it possible a man like Blofeld has settled down to running a ski resort? No, not, gentle reader.
This novel is definitely one of the best in the James Bond series....more
James Bond has been sent to Jamaica for a fun assignment - to act as an inquiry agent. He resents this. He loves Jamaica, but he hates that M thinks hJames Bond has been sent to Jamaica for a fun assignment - to act as an inquiry agent. He resents this. He loves Jamaica, but he hates that M thinks his last assignment (From Russia With Love) has wrecked him. He's afraid, not that he will ever admit to M he HAS fear, that M might be wondering if Bond should be permanently on light duty from this point on. Oh well. Bond will soldier on. He's also mourning the loss of his beloved .25 Beretta. The Secret Service's Armourer took away the Beretta, exchanging it with a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver and a Walther PPK 7.65 mm. M's orders.
Jamaica's Head of Station Strangways and his number two Mary Trueblood have disappeared. The gossip going about is that the two have eloped, but how they vanished is peculiar. They left behind everything. M wants Bond to look around, especially since the Governor of Jamaica is an ass.
The case Strangways was investigating before he disappeared was damage to a bird sanctuary for the Roseate Spoonbill on a small island, Crab Key, near Jamaica. The American Audubon Society is angry, very angry. M is disgusted, very disgusted, that the Service has to be at the beck-and-call of an "old women's society". "Sourly", M thinks it is the perfect busy-work assignment to ease Bond back on his feet after his terrible illness from being poisoned on his last job. Adding to M's disgruntlement, is the story going around that a dragon on the island killed the two Audubon wardens.
The Chief of Staff explains that Crab Key is owned by a guano-mining industrialist, Dr. No, who agreed to leave the Spoonbill sanctuary alone.
Unbeknownst to everyone, Dr. Julius No is a 'researcher' into the effects of pain on people. He has been studying pain for decades. He has used up all of the prisoners he had been holding in the cells he built in his secret underground home on Crab Key. Of course, his acceptance of the bird sanctuary is a cover for the various illegal enterprises he is also undertaking. But without a doubt, he will get more prisoners to experiment with. People are always trespassing, like investigating secret agents....
Poor James Bond. If you have seen the movie, and who hasn't, you can guess what kind of Jamaican vacation Bond is in for. The only good thing is he falls in love yet again (Bond falls in love in every book in the James Bond series so far). On the island he meets Honeychile Rider, gorgeous and blond, a seashell entrepreneur.
Ok then.
Adding to my running list of explicit prejudices author Ian Fleming is piling up in these exciting but very upper-class White male British Romances for ex-World War II aficionados and PTSD survivors:
16. Chigroes (a Chinese and a Black parent) 17. Portuguese Jews (maybe two cultures - Portugal and Portuguese Jews, idk) 19. Jamaicans (maybe two at one blow again - Jamaican Indians and Blacks) 21. Indians in general (?) 22. Animal Rights activists 23. Environmentalists 24. Old American women
For the record, I am a liberal, so, I should be outraged, but omg, I believe Fleming was slyly bum-flashing some of the Brit audience along with most of his more sensitive and maybe, some reactionary, readers. Maybe his American publishers, too, since I suspect they spanked Fleming for the obvious real racism and prejudices in his earlier novels. Wow. Witty British writers who graduated from Eton College, right? Terrible, yet hilariously self-aware. And so in-your-face in response, I think, to American publisher/public concerns. I am ROTF! I wonder who it is Fleming next decided to take down in book seven!...more
The most important thing to know about these James Bond novels is they are almost nothing like the movies. Bond is emo, error-prone, narcissistic, andThe most important thing to know about these James Bond novels is they are almost nothing like the movies. Bond is emo, error-prone, narcissistic, and almost always grandiose in his thinking about his skills when he is not worried about them - very very surprisingly bipolar than what the movies have primed us readers to expect. The action events in the books, which are indeed mostly copied or technologically enhanced in the movies, happens over a longer span of time. However, some novels are not at all directly copied by the movies even though the titles and some of the action scenes are. The action might be included in another movie of another name. Bond rarely is rescued in time from undergoing torture, and he has wanted to marry almost every girl who helps him throughout the assignment.
I can't help but wonder what anti-depressants and Lithium might have done for Bond's career. Maybe kill it? His psychological presentation in these novels seems like a snakepit of PTSD symptoms while at the same time Bond appears to be a poster boy for one kind of toxic masculinity. At least, that is my opinion, formed on our values in these modern times. I know other reviewers have written the same observations, too.
In 'Diamonds are Forever', written in 1956, James Bond is explicitly and unapologetically racist against Italian-Americans (he visits Las Vegas on a smuggling case in this novel). He was somewhat taken aback when he was advised by Felix Leiter after arriving in America for an earlier assignment to watch his tongue on certain subjects while in America, such as openly indulging in racial slurs against Black-Americans. I think he is surprised because he is unaware he is being racist - he thinks he is stating the obvious or well-known 'facts'. In 'Diamonds are Forever' he also is disparaging of what he thinks is a problem for 90% of Americans - they are too fat and physically weak. Americans huff and puff and find climbing a few stairs too hard in many of these books.
Basically, in the four books I have read so far in the James Bond series, he has prejudged negatively and is disgusted by what he feels defines the national character of Germans, French, Americans, Japanese, Italians and China. He also subscribes to racial/sexual prejudices about women, Black people and Asians. So far. Added to the list from this novel are obese folk. So, I was pleasantly surprised Bond and Leiter apparently are not feeling anything prejudicial against gay people beyond a comment about homosexual gangbangers as being part of a 'lavender' gang. We readers meet a couple of bad guys who are gay in this book, Winter and Kidd - very competent and scary bad guys. Bond seems to be only disgusted by Kidd because of his obesity.
To be fair (loosely utilizing the definition), when Bond works with someone who is a member of a race, sex, or foreign country he initially feels much contempt towards, he IS willing to work with people he feels are beneath him and the White upper-class men of England as an equal without open hostility. He treats criminals of a different race or nationality with apparent awareness they are skilled or dangerous despite his prejudices, even realizing sometimes his prejudices lulled him into a mistaken judgement call which nearly costs him his life or failure of his assignment.
I think Bond's racism and sexism is based on what was normal post-war English social class and educational beliefs, alongside an ignorance from a lack of extensive cultural contact outside of his social bubble. I think maybe, maybe, Fleming was intentionally focusing the character of Bond on having prejudices. I am beginning to wonder about this maybe authorial intentionality based on a subtle undertone pattern I am beginning to suss out after reading four of the books in the series. Every time Bond encounters these not-English people on these assignments, he appears to grudgingly accept this individual or that person as much more competent than he had expected. I am beginning to think author Ian Fleming was doing what many authors do - introduce and revolve plots around a character which not only does not entirely reflect his views, but is less sophisticated and knowledgeable or more exaggerated than what the author thinks. It is as if James Bond undergoes a reluctant, slow, inching-forward, slight coming-of-age in each book, noticeably a plot pattern, as I have read the series. Bond expresses his distaste for a race or nation in the early chapters, then next, after he deals with competent members of the class/race/nationality he felt were so subhuman, he is always later humbled by those folks he disparaged, inevitably needing rescue, often by an American. Did Fleming do this on purpose, or is it subconscious, because of the outcome of World War II? Was Bond more than a surface caricature sorely needed by an almost defeated nation after World War II? Was Fleming taking his country to the woodshed within a subtly satiric series about a personality type that almost destroyed Britain through arrogance and ignorance? I am starting to wonder....
Perhaps, Fleming also was undergoing a slight evolution of mind despite his upper-crust identity as his books became popular in spite of their very White post-war English viewpoint. Idk.
Whatever.
Do I really need to describe the plot of 'Diamonds are Forever'? Ok, then. Diamonds are being smuggled out of Africa. Since an English company owns the African mines, Bond is put on the case by M to find whoever is masterminding the stealing. To do this, it means he must follow the mule, or mules, carrying the diamonds secretly through international borders from Africa to England to Las Vegas in America, as it turns out. M, Bond's secret service boss, through his contacts discovers who one of the mules is, and Bond inserts himself into the mule's place in London. Bond happens to look a lot like the carrier for the diamond smuggling outfit. So, undercover, he meets the other carrier as well as card sharp, the gorgeous Tiffany Case, and the nefarious assassins Wint and Kidd, and other members of the Spangler Gang, as he tries to unmask the criminal leader of the gang known only as the mysterious 'ABC'. Of course, there is horse racing, and card games, and guns and shootings, car chases, explosions, helicopters, and martial arts, weird criminals with fetishes and ticks, and even an ocean voyage of deadly danger on the Queen Elizabeth.
There are continuing characters, so possibly readers should start with Casino Royale. But it is possible readers will not abide Bond's mild racism or the old-fashioned type of male-romance spy-thriller Fleming indulged himself in writing. It is a little bit like spending time in the company of an old White ex-military grandfather. But at least he can tell an exciting story! Have some tolerance and learn, gentle reader. This is what the 1950's were like. This is from what we all have moved on. Most of us....more
aPriL does feral sometimes
>
Books:
black-ops-fantasy
(32)
Loading...
