Category: Fiction

Fiction: Books to Enjoy & Experience
In this category, Books for Enjoying & Experiencing, you will find fiction in many genres. This section is for readers with eclectic tastes and large to be read piles; you will find books here to talk about with others, perhaps even discover your next book club read, even if your book club is a friend over coffee break or beach read buddy.

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Book Review: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

Book Review: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Wayfarers Book 1, Becky Chambers

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is a fun but thoughtful journey with the crew of the Wayfarer, a ship that bores wormholes through space to allow ships rapid transport between inhabited stars. The crew is quite diverse. Captain Ashby Santoso, Kizzy Shao, Jenks, and newbie Rosemary Harper are humans. The pilot, Sissix, is an Aandrisk. Dr. Chef (medical officer and cook) is a Grum. Ohan are a Sianat pair, and they serve as navigator. And Lovey is a sentient AI. Balancing the needs, wants, feelings, and skills of these species and individuals is challenging enough during the regular jobs, but when they have the chance to take on a larger job which has them traveling together for almost a year, things get quite interesting.

Becky Chambers does an amazing job building a world (well, galaxy) filled with very different and sometimes barely compatible people. AI may be sentient, but they are not regarded as “people,” and it is illegal to download a sentient AI into a physical body (normally they serve as the computer assistants for ships, buildings, and other similarly large and complex structures). When Lovey and Jenks fall in love, though, they might be willing to break that law. Aandrisk have the appearance (to humans) of feathered reptiles. They are very affectionate with each other and with their friends. On their planet, sex is a normal part of interacting with others, which makes traveling with the (by comparison) much more prudish humans a real challenge sometimes. The Grum are going extinct as a species. Only a few are left after centuries of war and genocide, and they have decided themselves that their crimes as a species are too great to allow them to continue in the galaxy. The Sianat are always referred to in the plural: they are a hybrid of an individual and a virus which allows them to navigate between space, the area where wormholes travel, but also dramatically shortens their lives.

The humans themselves are almost equally diverse. Rosemary grew up in privilege on Mars, but fled to escape her family name after her father was arrested for arms trafficking. Ashby spent his entire life shipboard and is uncomfortable on planets. Kizzy is bubbly, excitable, and friends with almost everyone. Jenks is extremely short, rejected as a child by people who believed that genetic misfits should die. Corbin is an unpleasant recluse, much happier tending his algae than interacting with others.

During their journey they face a variety of challenges: their ship is attacked and many things are stolen. They are stopped by an alien government that arrests Corbin. Ohan become sick. Dealing with these problems brings the crew together in new ways, finding strength in themselves and in each other that they did not know was there, realizing that family is not just the group you are born into or the species you are born from, but it is the people who are there when you need them the most.

Although Chambers works hard to build a consistent scientific framework, this is not a book to read in hopes that faster than light travel has been secretly figured out by a lone author working in her study. The magic of Chambers book is in the relationships between the characters and the histories of the species. Earth has been largely destroyed by pollution and global warming, so it was abandoned in two stages. The first stage was mostly rich people relocating to Mars. The second was the “Exodan,” multiple ships carrying the remainder of Earth’s population out of the solar system in a desperate attempt to find a new home. This second wave of refugees was not welcomed on Mars, and only an alien ship stumbling on them saved the bulk of humanity. Although efforts have been made since, there is still a vast gulf dividing the Solans (people born and raised in Earth’s original solar system) from the Exodans. That kind of effort to create new cultures is brilliant and amazing, and Chambers excels at it.

Chambers has published two sequels, which I will soon review, but this first book (2015) is so good that you should read them in order. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is a trip well worth taking.

Book Review: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

January 19, 2019By scintilla.admin Fiction #BeckyChambers, #fiction, #ScienceFiction, #series, #TheLongWaytoaSmallAngryPlanetLeave a Comment

Book Review: A Closed and Common Orbit, Becky Chambers

Science Fiction Series: A Closed and Common Orbit Wayfarers Book 2, Becky Chambers

Most people do not get to choose their own names. Gamers and artists and writers may opt for names of their own, but they are generally the exceptions. It’s fun to think, though, that a name might mean more if it reflects who we’ve become or who we want to be instead of a parent’s hopes or dreams or ambitions or tastes. “Sidra” means “of the stars” or “like the stars.” The chosen name of an AI illegally ported into a human-appearing body, she is one of the few people who chooses her own name. In Becky Chambers’ book A Closed and Common Orbit we get to share with her the joys and terrors of choosing and discovering who she actually is following this transition.

A Closed and Common Orbit is set in the same universe as The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. In that earlier book we first meet Pepper, a human tech genius who lives with her artist boyfriend, Blue. Pepper gets called to work on the Wayfarer after it is damaged at the end of the first book. The crew realizes that their sentient AI, Lovey, has been damaged beyond repair. The only hope of saving her is to do essentially a factory reset. If it succeeds, they will restore Lovey. If it fails, everything that defined Lovey as a uniquely sentient person will be gone, replaced by someone or something different.

It fails, and the sentience known from the factory settings as “Lovelace” inhabits the Wayfarer.

“Lovey” was an integral part of the crew. More than that, the human technician Jenks had fallen in love with her, and had purchased a human simalcrum for her to inhabit so they could be together. Learning Lovey is dead almost destroys Jenks, and dealing with “Lovelace” (who has Lovey’s voice) is almost more than he can bear. Rather than simply replace Lovelace with another AI, Pepper offers her the option to inhabit the body Jenks had purchased for Lovey and leave the ship to live on a planet. Lovelace, seeing the effect her presence has on Jenks and the rest of the Wayfarer’s crew, agrees.

Living in a body, though, is very different than living in a ship. Instead of cameras positioned in the corners of ceilings to see everything in a room, you have eyes. Only two of them. Positioned awkwardly in the front of the head, leaving unobserved space above and below and behind. The body does not need food or sleep or air and can withstand submersion and frigid temperatures, but since she needs to pass as human she has to behave as humans do.

More than that, her body is not her own. That is, she is an alien, and interloper, possessing a body she was not designed to wear, that was purchased for another, that is illegal to own on any planet. Sidra chose her own name, but discovering she has agency and can make her own choices is constantly challenging.

Orbit also gives us the backstory of Pepper. Pepper was originally named Jane 23. She was one of many Janes, just another manufactured girl designed to clean scrap for recycling or reselling. She is a genetweaked human, not a machine, but she grew up on a planet with multiple other Janes being raised and trained by non-sentient android “mothers” to do busy work until she died. Escaping her factory after an accident opens a space to the outside world, Jane stumbles into a scrapped shuttle with a sentient AI, “Owl,” who helps her survive and guides her through adolescence. She, too, struggled to learn how to be human, and she never forgot the love and kindness shown to her by the mind and conscience of the ship.

For both Sidra and Jane/Pepper, the process to discovering who and what she is takes many twists and turns. Learning limitations. Making friends. Making mistakes. Deciding. Discovering. Accepting herself. Accepting others. Being human is not easy for humans. When you are a genetically engineered slave or a factory made AI, the process is more complicated. What Becky Chambers shows us in this warm and beautifully written book, the process may be painful and messy but the results can be absolutely joyous. Being a person is a dangerous journey, one that is best taken with friends. I might argue that it should also be taken with delightful books like this one.

Book Review: A Closed and Common Orbit, Becky Chambers

January 19, 2019By scintilla.admin Fiction #AClosedandCommonOrbit, #BeckyChambers, #fiction, #ScienceFiction, #seriesLeave a Comment

Book Review: The Changeling, Victor LaValle

Fantasy: The Changeling, Victor LaValle

Apollo West grew up in New York City wondering why his father had left him and his mother. He vowed that he would be the kind of father who would never leave his child alone. When he met Emma, it seemed perfect. Apollo was a rare book dealer, Emma was a librarian. They fell in love, and baby Brian came along. Everything seemed to be perfect…until Emma started getting texts that erased themselves. Pictures of Brian, taken from some stranger’s camera. Apollo began to worry: his amazing wife seemed to be losing her mind. Soon, she began claiming that the baby in their house was not actually Brian but was someone–something–else. And then one night, everything changed. The Changeling is a beautiful book that sucks you in and grabs hold of you with both hands.

Victor LaValle creates two amazing characters in Apollo and Emma. Apollo is a devoted father and husband, committed to his baby and his wife. Despite not having a male role model, he tries very hard to be the kind of father that his son would look up to and to be the kind of husband that his wife deserves. Emma is a bibliophile, committed to libraries because her childhood librarian was committed to her. She loves children, especially her baby, and she loves her husband. But when she starts seeing things that no one else can see, it marks the beginning of the end. She cannot love this thing that has replaced her baby. Or has it? Apollo just sees their baby, Brian. Has Emma gone crazy, or is she the only one who is sane?

The Changeling starts firmly in the real world. Set in New York City, other than the title and the location on the “Best Fantasy Novel of the Year” lists, there is nothing in the early part of the book to indicate it is anything other than a story of a family falling apart. As the book progresses, though, we see that the “normal” part of New York City is a patina disguising a much darker fantastic reality. Apollo begins to realize that nothing is quite what it seems. Witches and darker beings share the city with regular people, and the tragedy that destroyed his family is not unique. It is not even particularly unusual.

LaValle’s characters confront a number of challenges, and not all of them are of the supernatural kind. Apollo West is a young black man in a field dominated by older white men. Racism is a daily reality in his life. Later in the book he is confronted by police for walking through a white neighborhood. They were called because he did not look like he belonged there. Apollo and Emma are not poor, but money is a constant struggle. Apollo’s best friend suffers from PTSD after military service. Apollo wrestles with nightmares about his missing father and tries hard, maybe too hard, to live up to his ideal standard of fatherhood. Some of the greatest challenges faced by the characters in The Changeling come from living regular lives in New York City and not just from supernatural forces that they cannot control.

The Changeling won the World Fantasy Best Novel Award, along with several other awards and “best of the year” selections. Victor LaValle has spun a story that shows the dangers of a real world can be intimidating, the dangers of a supernatural world can be overwhelming, but the power of love can overcome almost anything.

Book Review: The Changeling, Victor LaValle

January 11, 2019By scintilla.admin Fiction #fantasy, #fiction, #TheChangeling, #VictorLaValleLeave a Comment

Book Review: Space Opera, Catherynne M. Valente

Science Fiction: Space Opera, Catherynne M. Valente

If Doug Adams and Keith Laumer and David Bowie and James Joyce somehow shared a night of passion with a word processor that produced a science fiction cum Eurovision tribute novel featuring the absurdity and satire and fun and glam and extraordinaryrunonsentencesandportmanteaus of those fathers but was actually written by a woman who makes it her own and amazing and wonderful and absolutely delightful then you would have Space Opera and you would have the talented Catherynne M. Valente and you would have a book that reminds you of some terrific things while being unlike anything else. (This rather intentionally long sentence is in tribute to the authors mentioned above.)

A recurring theme through the book is that “Life is beautiful…and Life is stupid.” Proof of concept: Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros is a three-person band which had an unexpected hit, did a few tours, made a brief splash, then disappeared into what was undoubtedly well-deserved anonymity and obscurity. Until the day when everyone on earth simultaneously meets a representative from the galaxy, shaped rather incongruously like the plastic flamingos filled with liquid that bob up and down as the liquid flows from head to…other side.

Using a technology that allows it to appear to everyone on earth simultaneously (which saves so much time compared to trying to explain it over and over again), the representative gives Earth the good news: the other sentient races in the universe have recognized humans as being potentially sentient and are willing to give them a chance to prove themselves. The bad news: if Earth fails to prove itself, humanity will be destroyed. However, the rest of the universe will check in every 50,000 years or so to see whether another species has arisen to accept the challenge, so although it may be bad news for humans the planet as a whole might see this as simply a practice run.

To prove sentience, a species must participate in an interspecies singing contest and not finish last. They don’t have to win it. That would be an unfair amount of pressure for a new species, after all! But if they finish last, well, Simon Cowell will be the least of their worries. Or maybe the last of their worries. The other good news, though, is that the representative has helpfully identified several musicians and bands that would likely do well in the competition. The other bad news, though, is that the only one of them still living is Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros. And perhaps the worst news is that although their lead singer and their chief instrumentalist are both still alive (though no longer speaking to one another), the heart of the band was killed in a car accident. Her death marked the end of the band, the end of their careers, the end of their friendship, the end of Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros.

Like the heroes they are, however, the two remaining band members step up and…oh, who are we kidding? Earth doesn’t want them to be the representatives. They don’t particularly want to go, nor think they can get the job done. But you can tell from the set up, those concerns are irrelevant to the plot. Off they go to save the world. And all they, and Earth, and we the gentle readers can do is hang on and enjoy every white-knuckled farcical moment of this hilarious novel.

Although the author acknowledges her debt to Douglas Adams, Space Opera reminded me more of the adventures of Jame Retief by author Keith Laumer. (That may be more do to my being American and to my age–Laumer was one of the first sci-fi authors I read as a child and certainly one of the first satirical authors I read.) Regardless, Valente’s book deserves a place of honor on that same shelf. She is witty, brilliant, outrageous, and piercing. She completely sells the possibility that a Eurovision-style competition between races is the appropriate way to determine sentience. Should that indeed prove true, we are probably doomed. But it will be a great show.

If you are looking for a realistic-sounding serious look at future earth, this may not be the right novel for you. If you are looking for a whimsical, farcical, sarcastic, satirical joy ride filled with pop culture references and some of the most creative writing you will see in a long time, the Space Opera is just the ticket. What it may lack in hard science it more than makes up for with hard rock and sheer fun.

Book Review: Space Opera, Catherynne M. Valente

January 8, 2019By scintilla.admin Fiction #CatherynneValente, #fiction, #SicenceFiction, #SpaceOperaLeave a Comment

Recipe & Review: Teatime with Rachel Chu & Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan

Book Series Review: Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan

Crazy Rich Asians Trilogy:

Crazy Rich Asians

China Rich Girlfriend

Rich People Problems

August 2018 welcomed the first major Hollywood film set in modern times staring a predominately Asian cast since Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club in 1993. Crazy Rich Asians, like Joy Luck Club, was a book before it was a movie.

Rachel Chu, overworked NYU economics professor, needs a restful vacation. What she gets, when she agrees to accompany her boyfriend to the wedding of a family friend in Singapore, is an out of control cultural explosion the size of the Ring of Fire.

While the movie focuses mainly on the love story between Rachel Chu and her boyfriend Nick Young, Crazy Rich Asians, the book digs deeply into the broader cast of characters that Rachel meets when she encounters all three branches of Nick’s extended family. There is family tree included as part of the opening pages in each of the trilogy’s books to help readers keep track of the complicated relationship ties. Besides dealing with the ins and outs of flamboyant and dramatic family connections, Crazy Rich Asians is a satire. A sharp, cutting, hilarious satire.

The humor of Kevin Kwan cuts like a sword through every stereotype — economic, racial, social class, immigrant status, nationality, religion, and educational level. Sometimes Kwan’s strikes are bold and sweeping, as shown in the opening scene, when the crazy rich wealth of the family in a surprise move slaps down the prejudice of an upscale hotel official. Other times, the satire is a pin prick poke so subtle you can miss it, such as a single descriptive sentence differentiating between Filipino and mainland Chinese servants embedded in a personal reflection. No personal paradigm is left untouched; no stereotype is left unquestioned.

In the Crazy Rich Asians series, character growth or stagnation occurs when a character is faced with a plot point that challenges her or his point of view. The satire is strong, yet the humor is the draw to pushes the reader to face each event with Rachel. The barbs, banter, and dialog are wickedly witty. The over the top scenes are filled with exuberance and luxury that makes you want to alternate between hugging or slapping characters. Crazy Rich Asians is a fun read.

Recipes

With all of the Crazy Rich Asians that Rachel needs to deal with when she visits the home of Nick Young, she needs some alone time just roaming the streets of Singapore’s markets enjoying some bubble tea and a sweet rice treat. For Rachel, here’s an indulgent iced tea drink and a snack to ground her before the next confrontation with Nick’s family.

Bubble Tea

Bubble tea is a fun fancy ice tea with dozens of variations.

In its simplest form add approximately 1/4 cup of large tapioca balls to your favorite ice tea with a splash of milk and sip through an extra wide straw. For a first time experiment try a green tea with crushed ice mixed with sweetened condensed milk; other tasty options are iced chai tea with coconut milk or thai tea with half & half.

Tapioca balls – for every 1/4 cup tapioca balls boil with 2 cups of water for 15 minutes, then let stand for an additional 15 minutes. Drain and rinse under cold running water; then use immediately or store in the refrigerator in a sealed container covered with a simple syrup (1 cup sugar boiled with 1 cup water till dissolved)

Sticky Sweet Rice — Binko, a Filipino version

This tasty rice cake snack has the consistency of a chewy gelatin block or gummy candy.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prep a 8 x 8 inch glass baking dish with pan release spray or oil

Rice cake

2 cups sticky sweet rice or gelatinous rice
2 cups water
3/4 cups brown sugar
2 cups canned coconut milk

Topping

1/2 cup canned coconut milk
2 TBS brown sugar

Mix the ingredients together in a medium sized pot (the rice will more than double in volume). Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer for approximately 20-25 minutes. (Will be the consistency of a thick risotto or porridge). Spread rice in to the baking dish and pour topping over rice. Bake for approximately 60 minutes till topping has caramelized. Cool to room temperature before cutting into squares.

Recipe & Review: Teatime with Rachel Chu & Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan

January 4, 2019By scintilla.admin Fiction #ChinaRichGirlfriend, #CrazyRichAsians, #fiction, #KevinKwan, #recipe, #RichPeopleProblems, #seriesLeave a Comment

Book Review: The Incendiaries, R. O. Kwon

Book Review: The Incendiaries, R.O. Kwon

Fiction: The Incendiaries, R. O. Kwon

Will Kendall loved God so much that he traveled to Beijing as a high schooler to hand out flyers inviting the Chinese to Jesus. He then went to Bible college. Something happened to his faith, though, and he left Bible college to attend a secular university on the east coast. There he meets and falls in love with Phoebe Lin, a Korean-American girl who is the life of every party but carries with her a dark secret. She was driving when her car went out of its lane and was crushed by a truck. Her mother, the only passenger in the car, was killed in the accident. This darkness within Phoebe has her searching for answers, for God, and she finds comfort and meaning in the embrace of Jejah, a small church/cult led by charismatic leader John Leal. Leal, himself half-Korean, claimed to have spent time as a missionary in China and as a prisoner for his faith in North Korea. As her need for redemption and meaning grows, her ties to Leal and to Jejah also grow–and her relationship to Will becomes both complicated and toxic to both. Without giving too much away, that is the plot direction of The Incendiaries, a 2018 novel by R.O. Kwon.

Kwon is herself a Korean-American, and like Will she also had a passionate relationship with faith when she was a young adult. Like Will, she lost her faith after a few intense years. It seems likely that this part of her life informs the vivid and powerful descriptions she gives of faith and life committed to the church. Her descriptions of the inner life, the struggles and the surrender and the excitement and the angst, all ring true. Particularly haunting are the descriptions of the inner life after faith has left, the “God-shaped hole” and the longing to rekindle a flame that no longer can access the fuel that once seemed inexhaustible.

Much of the book reflects Will’s perspective, though the perspective shifts throughout from Will to Phoebe to John Leal. Each of these narrators is flawed and damaged, and each has a story to tell that rings true to him/herself but not necessarily to each other or to the reader. John tells of the time in the gulag when he tried to save a pregnant woman who had been beaten and was losing both her baby and her life–or did he try to help a pregnant woman abort her baby and the failure resulted in both of their deaths–or was it something else entirely? Or was he even in the gulag? Not every question is answered or answerable, and just because one character believes it to be true or even “proves” that it is true does not mean that we as the readers should accept their word as, well, gospel.

Readers should be aware that there are potential triggers for sexual assault and rape. At least two scenes within the book are quite disturbing, though not particularly detailed or graphic. Still, readers, particularly those who have been victims of sexual violence, should proceed with caution. There are also strong passages dealing with religion and religious experience, abortion, torture, and terrorism. This book packs a lot into its relatively few pages for a novel.

Kwon’s characters are brilliant and the plot is tight. The Incendiaries is a powerful book that delves deeply into a number of sensitive subjects. For those who struggle to understand people of profound and sincere faith, and for those who cannot see the appeal of faith, Kwon does a masterful job of exploring some reasons why faith is so powerful and why people cling to it so desperately. She also does a masterful job of exploring how bereft one is when that faith becomes unsustainable. The Incendiaries absolutely does not show the ultimate outcome of passionate faith–but it does show some possible outcomes that we see far too often in our world, and neither condones nor entirely condemns any of her characters for their choices.

Book Review: The Incendiaries, R. O. Kwon

January 2, 2019By scintilla.admin Fiction #fiction, #ROKwon, #TheIncendiariesLeave a Comment

Book Review: The Caledonian Gambit, Dan Moren

Science Fiction: The Caledonian Gambit, Dan Moren

The Imperium was spreading inexorably through the galaxy. Earth was among the many systems under the thumb of Illyricum. Now, an unbeatable invasion force headed for Sabea. Eli Brody, one small part of that invasion force, was among the first through the interstellar gate in the vanguard of the attack. What he quickly found out is that he was also among the last. In an act of desperation, the Sabeans destroyed the gate, shutting their planet off from the rest of the galaxy, but also destroying the entire invasion fleet. Thousands of dead, trapped in the nothingness that was “between” areas of real space.

Five years later, a new gate opens and an agent of the Commonwealth visits Sabean space, their first visitor from the larger galaxy. He has one mission: get Eli Brody and take him back to Eli’s home planet of Caledonia. The Commonwealth is at war with the Imperium, and the Imperium is building a weapon on Caledonia that threatens to change the shape of that war. The information that the Commonwealth has received about the weapon has come from one source: Eamon Brody, Eli’s brother. And that source is missing.

The Caledonian Gambit is a lot of things, but most of all it is just fun. It careens through the dark alleys of an Irish-inspired planet. It has spies and secret networks and terrorists/freedom fighters. It has family tensions and a pretty girl who can knock you out with her fists. It is spy thriller and space opera and snarky humor all rolled up into one neat package. Dan Moren is a fan of science fiction, and his love for the genre shows in the pages of this delightful novel.

Science fiction is a very versatile genre. It has plenty of room for social commentary: economic disparity and racial inequality and social engineering. It let’s us explore scenarios of nuclear holocaust and climate catastrophe and computer meltdowns and global pandemics. It gives us hope in a future that is welcoming for LGBTQ and POC and the differently abled and the non-neural typical. And it leaves room for romps through space that just want to play with heroes and bad guys and secret agents and leave the deeper questions to others.

And I’ll admit it: as much as I love the works that shine a light on our present by exploring a potential future, sometimes it’s fun to just see heroes do heroic stuff and chase the secret weapon and fight the bad guys and let the music swell at appropriate times and let the credits run at the end. (Literally, there’s a long list of people at the end of the book that the author thanks.)

This may not be one of those books that makes me reflect on our world as it is. This is not a book that changed me or moved me or challenged me. Frankly, I read a lot of those books, and sometimes I don’t mind taking a break. This is a book that I had fun reading. I smiled, I cheered, and I hope that Dan Moren has some further adventures to come for his team from The Caledonian Gambit.

Book Review: The Caledonian Gambit, Dan Moren

December 27, 2018By scintilla.admin Fiction #DanMoren, #ScienceFiction, #TheCaledonianGambitLeave a Comment

Book Review: Long Road to Mercy, David Baldacci

Thriller: Long Road to Mercy, David Baldacci

An Atlee Pine Thriller

Atlee Pine is an FBI agent. Resident Agent in the Shattered Rock office, serving a large swath of territory in Utah, Colorado, and Arizona, she is actually the sole FBI agent in the region that includes part of the Grand Canyon. She is also a former competitive weight lifter having just missed the Athens Olympics, and the survivor of a childhood encounter with a killer, an encounter that her twin sister, Mercy, did not survive. Long Road to Mercy is a multilayered story about an agent whose past has shaped her present, and taught her some lessons she will need to use if she is to see her future.

Being the sole FBI agent means you get called in for a number of different things. Nothing could have prepared her for the crime that takes her to the Grand Canyon. There she is shown the body of…a mule. Not the drug smuggling kind, but the actual horse-donkey hybrid used as pack and transport animals in the canyon. Someone has killed a mule and carved the letters “J” and “K” into its side. A hiker is missing also, which is bad and may be related, but much less unusual.

Still, it would not be a Baldacci thriller if the action stopped with a dead animal. Even a dead mule.

Pine’s search for the missing hiker, the reason for the mule’s death, and the reason why upper echelons within her own agency and other federal agencies want this case to go away lead her across the country to Washington, D.C., and back again. Accompanied by her no-nonsense secretary, a grandmother who carries a gun and an attitude, Atlee pursues the truth despite the increasing danger to herself and the increasing awareness that some members of the government will stop at nothing to hush this up.

Baldacci has created a badass heroine in this novel. Pine knows how to use a gun, knows how to use her fists and her feet, and is as strong as most men. One thing I liked, though, is that her toughness is consistent with her character. There are times when she needs to be rescued–not because she is a woman, but because anyone in the situation would need a hand. Most of the time, though, she is the one charging in to save the day.

I enjoy the thriller genre, and Baldacci is one of my favorite authors. His stories have the action, the high level of intrigue from power players working behind the scenes, the unlikely hero (or in this case heroine) working against all odds to save the world, and just enough mystery to keep it interesting through the end. Baldacci knows we are in a time (2018) when the FBI is being publicly challenged and its agents under greater scrutiny than is usually the case, and much of that scrutiny is politically motivated. He uses these current realities in the plot, but also uses them to show that although FBI agents are human, they are also dedicated professionals whose love for country and love for the law has led them to take an often dangerous and thankless job.

Long Road to Mercy introduces a new protagonist to the Baldacci canon, and she is up to the task. Atlee Pine is a great character, the other characters in the book make a great team, and I hope she has many more adventures to come in pages of future books.

Book Review: Long Road to Mercy, David Baldacci

December 19, 2018By scintilla.admin Fiction #DavidBaldacci, #fiction, #LongRoadtoMercy, #thrillerLeave a Comment

Book Review: Tales from the Inner City, Shaun Tan

Short Story Collection: Tales from the Inner City, Shaun Tan

I’m not sure I have ever used the word “luscious” to describe a book before. I probably would not use it often. I will use it here. Shaun Tan’s Tales from the Inner City is luscious. Beautifully illustrated, rich, poetic and surreal, it is a visual and lyrical journey into a series of imaginary realms exploring imagined relationships between humans and animals, relationships that don’t actually exist. Some of them we can be grateful are entirely imaginary. Others, it might be nice if they were real. Either way, the paintings Tan pairs with each story or poem are gorgeous and give a visual dimension to the words that makes them even more vivid.

It will be impossible in this review to do justice to the Tales from the Inner City. It is worth buying just for the pictures. Tan is known for his graphic novels and children’s books, and won an Oscar for his short film The Lost Thing. Clearly he is comfortable with visual communication, but don’t think for a moment that the visuals detract from the words. If this were just a collection of short stories and poems it would be worth getting. The fact that Tales from the Inner City has both gorgeous and (again) luscious paintings illustrating creative, poetic, and surreal stories is almost unfair to other books.

Tales from the Inner City starts with a story about crocodiles living in a skyscraper. On the eighty-seventh floor. Most people do not know they are there, and the crocodiles themselves do not seem to know (or care) that they are in a skyscraper as opposed to a more traditional crocodilian location. Many of the stories follow this kind of strange, absurd premise. One of my favorite stories is of a family that goes fishing in the sky…and catches a moon fish. The painting illustrating this story is also on the dust jacket of the hardcover, a silhouette of a man holding a large silvery, glistening, light-filled fish with orange fins. Horses, unseen by adults but obvious to children, gallop across the skyline of a city. Pigeons live and raise their young in nests built in a flying bank. Owls wait with patients in hospital, assuring them of their constant care. These stories, some whimsical, some poignant, some eerie, some all of those together, tell of a world with magic and wilder than we usually imagine.

Most of the stories have just one painting illustrating them. An exception is his metaphor of wolves becoming dogs. More of a poem than a story, Tan writes,

One day I threw my stick at you.

You brought it back.

My hand touched your ear.

Your nose touched the back of my knee.

Then we were walking side by side

as if it had always been this way.

The poem follows the two, human and wolf/dog, together until they are separated by death. Death, though, is imagined as a road or path or river to cross…and the wolf/dog waits on the other side for their human to join them so they can walk together into the next adventure. Illustrating this is a series of paintings of different people and different dogs/wolves separated by different paths. The poses are the same, but everything else is different from one painting to the next. Then, finally, paintings reflect the reunion of the two as they walk together away from that place of separation. I know a lot of dog-lovers who would cry at this story.

Tales from the Inner City is a beautifully written and beautifully illustrated book. Some will love the pictures, some will love the stories, but most will love the way the words give depth to the pictures and the way the pictures give life to the words. Shaun Tan has created something absolutely luscious.

Book Review: Tales from the Inner City, Shaun Tan

December 15, 2018By scintilla.admin Fiction, Poetry #collection, #fiction, #ShaunTan, TalesfromtheInnerCityLeave a Comment

Book Review: Tom Clancy Line of Sight, Mike Maden

Fiction Series: Tom Clancy Line of Sight, Mike Maden

Fans of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series know that the world Clancy created continues in a series of novels about Jack Ryan, Jr. Using his cover as a financial analyst, Jack and his colleagues at the Campus serve as an off-the-books intelligence agency for his father, President Jack Ryan. In this latest offering, Line of Sight, from a new author to the series, Jack is sent on a mission of a different sort. His mother, eye-surgeon Cathy Ryan, hears he is heading to central Europe. She asks her son to look up an old patient of hers, Aida Curic. Dr. Ryan had operated on the little girl twenty years earlier and wanted to know how she was doing.

Jack’s trip starts in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he has a financial consultation–and where he faces an attempt on his life by a beautiful hit woman. After successfully turning the tables on her, he flies to Sarajevo to look for Aida Curic. After several days unsuccessfully searching, Curic shows up on his doorstep, and the two of them quickly connect.

I do not believe in doing negative reviews, but I do have a couple of criticisms of this book. I am a red-blooded cis straight male, but wow! One character is described as a busty blond girl-next-door. Jack’s would-be assassin, or more accurately his first would-be assassin, is a beautiful woman who attempts seduction as her prelude to murder. When Aida Curic shows up on his doorstep, her curves are described in vivid detail–and in very short order Jack and she begin an affair. Given that both her Muslim faith and his Catholic faith are supposed to be central parts of their characters, and furthermore that Ryan is supposed to be a highly trained and disciplined operative who (we would think) is already on his guard after an attempt on his life, this seems more James Bond than Jack Ryan, Jr.

The other is probably more of a general criticism of the entire series, but it does specifically apply to this book. Recent novels in this series have been less overtly political–maybe because they were written during an era when Democrats were in the real White House. This book feels at times like a Republican campaign commercial. Granted, you don’t go into a Tom Clancy novel expecting subtlety or nuance in its politics, but the tone is much stronger in this offering, and I found it occasionally distracting.

Those criticisms aside, Maden checks the boxes for a Tom Clancy thriller. Multiple intractable foes, bringing both personal danger and global destabilization. The hero needing to use his spycraft, his brilliance, and his physicality to resolve the situation. Familiar names from the Campus bringing their skills to the party. (Though this book does spend much less time with other characters than other authors in the series have.) President Ryan and his cabinet being on-top-of-everything-in-amazing-fashion. These are expectations that fans of the series have, and Maden delivers.

Something else that Clancy fans have come to expect is detailed exploration of challenging subjects, whether that is the specs of a Russian sub or the destructive capability of a jumbo jet crashing into a government building. Maden writes with impressive sensitivity and detail about the aftermath and political consequences of the Balkan wars. NATO, America, and Western Europe may not have had any good options during those wars, but the failure to act and the refusal to protect civilians led to the worst atrocities and genocide seen on the continent since World War II, and the scars are still fresh in the region.

Tom Clancy Line of Sight is not a perfect novel, but it is a worthy continuation of a series that has entertained generations of readers since the 1980s. I look forward to seeing how the Ryans and the Campus next save the world–though Jack may want to ask a relative to set him up with dates in future books!

Book Review: Tom Clancy Line of Sight, Mike Maden

December 10, 2018By scintilla.admin Fiction #fiction, #LineofSight, #MikeMaden, #seriesLeave a Comment