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Wednesday, February 01, 2012
you and me and Smelly makes three
Title: Very Hard Choices
Author: Spider Robinson
Bookmark: that business card, again. It was handy.
A few months ago, I started an office library. People could bring in books they owned, add a Post-it with their name, and drop them on a shelf for anyone to access. Knowing how some people treat books (curling the covers of paperbacks, dribbling food in them, smashing bugs between pages--I even know someone who used to read in the shower. Appalling.), I was hesitant to involve books which were important to me, but I sent a cautionary email about handling other people's stuff, and the project has gone pretty well. It gets less use now that someone has claimed that room as an office and moved all the books to a bottom shelf, hidden behind his desk, but I still managed to find a book with the coolest author name ever. I would have read it just for that. As it turns out, there's plenty of reason to read a Spider Robinson book.
Sure, his politics are all through it, but there are great lines (even paragraphs) comparing the US and Canada, and sentences which simultaneously mock and laud our neighbors to the north. The book can be both hilarious and terrifying, and despite the fact that it's a sequel, I had convinced myself while reading that it only seemed that way. The story is so complete on its own that it doesn't need something else to lead into it, although I admit that I spent most of my time wishing I knew the story to which they kept alluding, because it seemed even more wrenching than Very Hard Choices.
Russel Walker, a reclusive national columnist, was college roommates with Zandor "Smelly" Zudenigo. Smelly never bathed, and is described as looking like the Michelin Man with a childlike version of Winston Churchill's head. Oh, and he's a telepath. But Walker doesn't learn that until the previous book, when Smelly comes to him for help after discovering that a very bad man is planning to do very horrible things to a completely innocent family. They enlist the help of police constable Nika Mandic to stop the bad guy.
This book covers what happens next, after the bad guy is no longer a problem, but a new bad guy appears on the scene, and he wants Smelly (usually referred to as "Zudie" in this book, because his island hermitage, far away from the noise of other minds, allows him to have a more conventional hygiene schedule, as he had previously used the stench to keep people away while protecting his secret mental powers). Russel, Nika, and Russel's son Jesse must deal with the mysterious agent tracking them across the island of Heron Rock, contact the elusive Zudie, and figure out what to do to protect themselves and each other. The whole book (except for a couple obligatory flashbacks) takes place over one night. It's excellent, even if the ending is a bit pat.Labels: action, decomposing bodies, espionage, secrets, special abilities
posted by reyn at
10:59 AM
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Most intense reality show, ever.
Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
I hate reality television. Hate it. Nothing about it seems real. I have often joked--joked!--that to really make a show called Survivor, it should be ten people and one knife thrown into a big pit.
But I was joking. Really.
In the future that Suzanne Collins found, they really do that, but there are twenty-four people, the pit is a huge outdoor arena that could include forests, desert, frozen tundra, lakes, and rivers, and there's a lot more knives. Oh, and all the contestants are kids age 13-17.
The Hunger Games are a tool used by the government to keep the people of the Twelve Districts in line. Watching them is mandatory. Participating is obligatory. Losing means dying, often horribly, at the hands of the other contestants. Some of the districts actually train children for this dubious honor, and those districts usually produce the winners. Those kids volunteer for the Games. Kids from the other districts are chosen by lottery, and usually end up as camera fodder.
Katniss Everdeen wasn't selected by the lottery, but she volunteers when her sister is, saving her sister's life. Katniss grew up poaching game in the forests surrounding her district, selling meat and berries in the black market with her hunting partner, a boy who obviously loves her and promises to take care of her family for her; Katniss's mother and sister depend entirely upon her work. She is joined from her district by a baker's son, and it eventually comes out that he also loves her. Ok, so there's some smarmy love triangle stuff going on, and it causes the complications for Kat you'd expect from a novel aimed at teens, but there's also a diabolically twisted government at work, and some interesting insights into how we entertain ourselves as a culture, and the skewed perspective people have with things they see on TV (at the end of the Games, people talk about major events during the competition in terms of what they were doing when it happened, i.e. "I was having my nails done when the boy from District 3 was killed with the spear"). There are a few things that don't quite seem to fit, like the skill and wisdom some of the characters have compared to their ages, but that can slide. Sometimes those can come from life experiences instead of years. Overall, it's really well done. I'd like to find the rest of the trilogy, because I suspect that it will somehow resolve some of the political machinations introduced in the first book, even though it's far more likely that they just screw around with the love triangle crap.Labels: action, dystopias, girl power, sci-fi, young adult
posted by reyn at
4:11 PM
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Saturday, December 06, 2008
Score!
Illegal Action
by Stella Rimington
I was so excited to see this just sitting on the shelf when I went to the library in desperate search of books so that I could survive the long Thanksgiving weekend with my family. And it didn't disappoint.
We rejoin Liz shortly after the events of the previous story have taken place. There are definitely some personnel shifts and repercussions, though Liz is not supposed to think of her transfer from counter-terrorism to counter-intelligence as a demotion or punishment. However, the lifestyle there is vastly different - much more relaxed, with normal hours, since the imminent threat of the Soviets having a spy in Britain isn't that big a deal now. Or so they think...
A few government members get complementary tips regarding a Russian oil oligarch being targeted, so they eventually get over to MI-6 and Liz gets stuck playing an art enthusiast to an oligarch who's in the market for a priceless painting. Plus there's secret motivations and some in-fighting between agencies messing with the whole investigation.
Essentially, those sneaky Russians still know what they're doing. And you never betray Mother Russia. There's a few casualties, but everyone learns a valuable lesson.Labels: action, conspiracy, Russia, strong female author
posted by ket at
12:11 PM
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Saturday, November 15, 2008
Still Awesome.
Secret Asset
by Stella Rimington
Sequel to At Risk. Liz is on the trail of a mole in MI-6 this time. Plenty of betrayal, plus a valid (and semi-related) terrorist threat, and despite some false starts she figures out who's behind the whole thing. Really, I'd rather say less about the book and just get you all to read it.
Also, are we starting to sense a theme in the books I'm really enjoying these days? And yet I saw Quantum of Solace last night and was rather disappointed. Maybe they need a girl-power version...Labels: action, conspiracy, Ireland, strong female author, terrorism, vengeance
posted by ket at
12:28 PM
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If this exists, my children are so going there
Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy
by Ally Carter
We rejoin Cammie and the rest of the Gallagher girls during her sophomore year of high school at the Gallagher Academy, a super-secret private school that teaches the students how to be spies (to the point where there's a designated language/dialect for each meal, and they're regularly kidnapped by teachers for class exercises).
Cammie's still recovering from her freshman year, where she had a forbidden relationship with a boy in town (just hand-holding and a kiss, you perverts) - the locals just think it's a snooty girls school, and for security reasons they prefer to keep things that way, so no outside relationships.
Following an exercise where the girls have to shake a tail and meet at a rendezvous point, they receive news that BOYS are COMING TO GALLAGHER. This is blasphemy. There are some male teachers, but it's been girls-only since its founding 100+ years ago. Plus Cammie's still trying to figure out what really happened when her father was killed during a mission several years ago; her mom, who also happens to be headmaster, and one of her teachers, know more than they're letting on.
So Cammie and her 3 friends (the nerd, the bombshell, and the rebel, of course) set out to find out what the boys are really doing at their school. As you may expect, this involves planting bugs and tracking devices in the boys' dormitory. Come on, they're spies, after all. And during all this the cutest of the boys has definitely taken an interest in Cammie, which she finds suspicious because her greatest talent is being essentially invisible (great for a spy, not so great for finding a boyfriend).
By the end of the book, very few of Cammie's questions have been answered, except that the boys are NOT up to no good. The powers-that-be decided that the girls should learn how to interact with boys/men before they're thrown out into the real spying world, so they imported some from the semi-rival equivalent boys' spy school. But to get to this point, there was another awesome kidnapping and chase sequence where the girls had to trust the boys and accept their help in order to recover potentially sensitive information revealing the names of all former students (aka a list of current spies).
Apparently the first book has been optioned for a movie by Disney. If they screw this up, heads will roll, even if I don't have the training to accomplish that.
I WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL HERE.Labels: action, friendship, girl power, hunky armed forces or government operatives, martial arts, romance of the non-trashy variety, young adult, young protagonists
posted by ket at
12:10 PM
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Monday, October 27, 2008
Is it really worth all this chasing?
Title: The Chase
Author: Clive Cussler
Bookmark: one of thirteen thousand election-related fliers I've received in the mail over the past month.
Years ago, when my brother got home from school, he would watch Where in The World is Carmen Sandiego?, not because he was fascinated with geography, but because he liked to absorb as much radiation as possible from the television to ensure his mutations remained stable. I watched because we lived in a one-room shack, but I liked that I usually knew the answers. On each episode, there was a segment called The Chase which was always introduced by Rockapella singing "Oooooooooh, the chaaaaaase!" Every time I looked at the cover of this book, that three-word jingle ran through my head before I could start reading. Sometimes, it was the most compelling part of reading.
I've read two other Cussler books, and while they're exciting enough to make me keep reading, like Dean Koontz and Louis L'Amour, they often spend far too much time in Popcorn territory, and are supported by lots of WTF moments (like using quantum teleportation to fill a briefcase with oil and when Cussler himself appears in The World's Sweetest Yacht to save Dirk Pitt and the female lead). The Chase continues in that proud tradition.
Sure, I enjoyed reading it. I like any good heist story, and this one's also a western. Isaac Bell, an agent for the Van Dorn Detective Agency (an obvious parallel to the Pinkertons--even the motto is similar), is assigned the case of the Butcher Bandit, a daring and ruthless killer who single-handedly robs banks all over the west, kills all witnesses, and vanishes without a trace. Bell is Van Dorn's best agent, and as a typical Cussler hero, is suave, charming, crazy rich, and dashingly handsome to the point that every woman who sees him immediately swoons or entertains thoughts of humping his superior detective brains out.
Other Cussler standards are present: despite three chase scenes (posse vs. wagon, car vs. train, train vs. slightly faster train) across western deserts, divers are necessary to retrieve the wreckage of the train in the west's largest lake. Yeah, the train was at the bottom of a lake. That was necessary to use divers. Clive loves his divers. He also loves anything with an engine (cars, trains, motorcycles, bad-ass boats) or anything that floats (Viking longboats, high-tech yachts, the Titanic, paddle-wheel ferries, etc.), and describes them with a classic car enthusiast's loving detail.
But Clive? Honestly? I need to make a suggestion. Next time you send a book out to the stores, have your editor or someone hire a proofreader to check for continuity. I can keep track of an awful lot of characters if they're unique enough, and you do OK there, but it's a royal bitch when their names change. One kid was only in scene, and for one line in the middle, his name suddenly changed to Warren, then back to whatever the hell it first was before he was sent on his merry way twenty bucks richer. And names aren't the only inconsistency. Get it straight, man. I love to read crime stories, but it's confusing and hard to figure things out on your own when the author feeds you inconsistent facts. The last book I read so badly in need of proofreading was an advance copy that was hopefully released before a proofreader okayed the final release. They had an excuse; The Chase really doesn't.
On a side note, for anyone else who watched Carmen Sandiego and now watches too much police procedural, this is a good NSFW spoof of both.Labels: action, hunky armed forces or government operatives, mystery/detective, trains, western
posted by reyn at
11:55 AM
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Monday, July 28, 2008
More meh.
The Perfect Fake
by Barbara Parker
Lots of double-crossing and international terrorists and garden-variety criminal types all revolving around the forging of a Renaissance-era map that was inadvertently destroyed during a murder. Lots of people die because of this map. Lives are generally ruined, but, of course, the protagonists, who initially argue and hate and don't trust each other, come to their senses, and after the bad guys are all killed or arrested, sail off into the sunset (no, seriously, he's been restoring a boat in his spare time).Labels: action, romantic "suspense"
posted by ket at
10:48 PM
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Wednesday, June 04, 2008
A Planet too Far
Title: Steel Gauntlet (Starfist Book 3)
Authors: David Sherman and Dan Cragg
Bookmark: receipt from seafood dinner and hot chocolate.
It became apparent very early in this book that the writers were both military men. It was left at my place by a visiting friend who was done with it in exchange for a Ludlum. I got hosed on the trade.
Glancing at the cover, even reading the back, assured me that this was pulp sci-fi, and would soon prove to be bad, if not terrible. Who says you can't judge a book by its cover?
Synopsis: Nobody uses tanks anymore, so all of the anti-tank weapons have been dismantled and recycled except for the 11 museum pieces. When Marston St. Cyr, a pathologically insane industrialist who thinks "hostile takeover" involves shooting everyone else in the boardroom (and their families, staff, and business allies plus THEIR families and staff) uses his extensive R&D budget not to research new mining methods, but to build several battalions of tanks to aid in his takeover of a corporate-controlled resource-rich planet, nobody has anything that can stop him. A history prof is recruited to train Marines in antiquated technology while somebody else gets busy making shitloads of anti-tank missiles, then they all get dropped on this planet to blow up tanks and get incinerated by plasma weapons in turns.
Lessons learned (and heavily hammered home, over and over, as bluntly as possible):
- Marines are awesome. They can do anything, and always win, even if they lose a few men, or are insufficiently armed. They may even attack a tank with only two men carrying sidearms, and win.
- Army screws things up for marines
- Many high officers are boneheads, cannot be trusted, and make extremely poor decisions. Except Marine officers.
- Diplomats are pompous gasbags who don't like Marines.
- War is hell.
- Violence solves problems, and is an acceptable means of vengeance.
It's heavy-handed and ham-fisted. Imagine a description of a months-long war in which every skirmish is described, with names of vital participants, full radio chatter, details of every shot fired, and post-shooting grumbling of poor management decisions. I gave up trying to keep all the characters straight in the fourth chapter, and just let everyone shoot each other until it was over. The closing chapters involving a hostage situation in an abandoned mine (no, really--the villain had a lair in a mountain, just like a James Bond villain. Kinda named like one, too, for that matter) were by far the best and most interesting of the book. The rest was readable, but a little too plodding to really be entertaining.
For the sake of placating anyone who randomly comes across this blog, because we've had more of that lately, let's be clear on a couple points:
- Marines are awesome. I'm a big fan of all our armed forces, and fully recognize and appreciate their efforts at putting themselves in harm's way to protect and serve the rest of us. Even if they do occasionally receive asinine orders.
- I even like books about the armed forces. (Note the above Ludlum reference, and the Clancy thrillers I read before starting this blog)
- A bad book, despite the subject matter, is still a bad book. But often fun to review. Hence the name of the blog.
Labels: action, hunky armed forces or government operatives, over inflated ego, war
posted by reyn at
9:01 AM
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Monday, May 12, 2008
Chug-a-Dud
Title: Orient Express
Author: Graham Greene
A few weeks back I was in the mood for a romantic adventure on a train. Graham Greene does foreign adventure, and he wrote a book about a train – Orient Express. So I checked it out from the library, hopes high.
It wasn’t even worth the $1.35 in late fees.
Basically, a cast of idiosyncratic characters interacts on a train. The problem is that none of them have the personality of a sponge. (Really, Sponge Bob is vastly superior.) Even the two noblest have irksome moments. The Socialist revolutionary is a melancholy, self-obsessed moper, and the innocent choir girl decides to sleep with a stranger because he buys her a train ticket when she’s sick (because, she figures, good girls are expected to pay back men who are kind to them). Imperfect characters are fine, but when they’re also boring and about as intelligent as the lint you pull from a drier, I lose interest.
Yeah, and it was published 1930-ish, and reads very dated. And there’s a vague streak of potential anti-Semitism that could raise modern eyebrows (lots of talk about the characteristics of the Jewish race).
So basically, neither substantive nor entertaining nor full of good moral lessons. I skimmed the action-packed climax at the end. This supposedly was the most exhilarating part of the book, but I just couldn’t be bothered any more.Labels: action, boring, fiction, trains
posted by Elizabeth at
10:16 PM
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