The Husband - Dean Koontz

2006; 415 pages. Awards : NY Times #1 Best Seller. Genre : Crime Thriller, but you'll find Dean Koontz and this book in the "Horror" section of your bookstore. Overall Rating : "B+".

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Mitch Rafferty leads a comfortable but modest life. He owns and operates a small, two-man gardening company, has a couple thousand dollars in savings in the bank, lives in an average house in an average suburb, and is hopelessly in love with his beautiful wife, Holly.

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Then one day, someone kidnaps Holly and gives Mitch 60 hours to come up with two million dollars in ransom money. And to make sure he knows they're serious, they gun down a man walking his dog across the street from where Mitch is working.

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What's To Like...

The story flows nicely, with no slow spots. Koontz creates a number of interesting characters, and they all seem like suspects when you're introduced to them. Both Mitch and I got quite paranoid along the way. Mitch himself comes from a "put the fun back in dysfunctional" family. See the Excerpts section, below.

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Koontz again manages to work a golden retriever into the story. The last time, it was a scrabble-playing dog; here it has no special powers. FYI, Koontz is an avid proponent of dogs in general, and golden retrievers in particular. Oh yeah, and there's a brief mention of Pennsylvania Dutch shoo-fly pie, something I sorely miss from my childhood.

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The story spins to an exciting, if predictable, conclusion. The only negative I can say is that there are some gaping loose ends that remain unresolved. Along the way, Mitch gets framed for a couple crimes to prevent him going to the cops. And on his own, he steals two cars (one's a carjacking), assaults a police officer, and hides three bodies. None of this is ever cleared up. In real life, I don't think the authorities would overlook all of this just so everyone could live happily ever after.

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New/Kewl Words...

Mordant : grim or sinister. Numinous : mysterious, holy, supernatural. Chambranle : the border or frame, usually made of stone or wood, around a doorway. Miscegenation : reproduction by parents of different races (literal) or of different species (figurative).

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Excerpts :

The five Rafferty children, on their thirteenth birthdays, had been expected to stop calling their parents Mom and Dad, and to begin using first names. Mitch's mother, Katherine, preferred to be called Kathy, but his father would not abide Danny instead of Daniel. (pg. 107)

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"Remember when I got caught with the copy of Charlotte's Web?"

"You were almost nine. You spent 20 days in the learning room." Anson quoted Daniel : "'Fantasy is a doorway to superstition.'"

"Talking animals, a humble pig, a clever spider-"

"'A corrupting influence,'" Anson quoted. "'The first step in a life of unreason and irrational beliefs.'"

Their father saw no mystery in nature, just a green machine. (pg. 157)

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What would you do for love? Would you die? Would you kill?

The Husband was my second Koontz book. The first is reviewed here. In both cases, Koontz proves to be a master story-teller. I can see why he's so popular. Be he also manages to squeeze in some delightful imagery. For instance :

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Only the thinnest wound of the fallen day bled along the far horizon, and otherwise the sky was dark, and the sea dark; and the moon had not yet risen to silver the deserted beaches." (pg. 149). Or :

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In the gunman's open and unblinking eyes, the mortician moon had laid coins. (pg. 197).

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It's nice to see that good writing and a good story are not mutually exclusive. I give The Husband a "B+", noting that the only thing keeping it from an "A" are those pesky loose ends.

The Pickup Artist - Terry Bisson

2001; 240 pages. Genre : Fiction; Satire. Overall Rating : "B".

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Hank Shapiro is a Pickup Artist. There's too much art in the world - paintings, albums & CD's, books, films, etc. Some of it needs to be catalogued , archived, and destroyed so that new works can take its place. Hank is part of the "Deletions" division, going around and picking up those items specified for elimination from people who voluntarily turn them in. He might even give you a rebate if you're nice. For the involuntary seizures, there's an "Enforcement" division.

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All goes well until one day when he picks up a Hank Williams LP, and realizes this is who his parents named him after. Alas, HW is on the "Eliminated" list and no one, not even a Pickup Artist is allowed to listen to him anymore.

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What's To Like...

There's a Fahrenheit 451 storyline here, but the main charm is the vividly-detailed world Bisson paints, which is set in New York City as the story opens. He's created some great characters. There's Henry (female), who's 8½ years pregnant and wants to go to Vegas (which has seceded from the USA and is now an independent city-state) to find the father-to-be, who ran off years ago. There's Homer, Hank's lovable old dog, who dies, yet is kept in existence through the wonders of illicit drugs. And there's 77 Indian Bobs, genetically identical clones who were made so that modern man can appreciate the noble Native American savage. Unfortunately, funding ran out before they could clone their 77 female companions.

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And then there's the satire. On a deeper level, The Pickup Artist is Bisson's vision of where American culture is going. He shows us Misdemeanor Bars, where you can go to listen to deleted music and watch deleted DVD's. The authorities are aware of these, but generally let them subsist. He shows us Flee Markets, where anything - legal or otherwise - can be bought and sold. But they only have a 24-hour grace period in any given state, so every night they flee across state lines. There are several drugs in Bisson's world, the most interesting of which is "Dig" (a take-off of meth, perhaps?) whose users have an uncontrollable urge to dig - in old landfills for discarded trinkets - when they're high on it. And although money and credit exist, the preferred currency is Indian casino chips, despite the fact that the exchange rates always rip you off.

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The chapters are short, and separated by "Interludes" wherein Bisson gives the history of the art extermination movement. And he gives some great examples (such as "A Canticle For Liebowitz" by Walter Miller) of worthy artists whose works have already pretty much been forgotten.

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New/Kewl Words...

Midden : a dunghill; a refuse heap. Ephemera : collectible items not originally intended to last for more than a short time, such as postcards, labels, posters, tickets, etc.

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Excerpts...

"I mean the tree of art, unless pruned, will stop bearing fruit."

"We're not just art," I said. "We do music, literature and movies. No fruit."

"I know," she said. "It's a metaphor."

"We don't do metaphors either," I said. Then added : "It's a joke." (pg. 39)

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"I'm dead! I'll be dead from now on. Forever!"

"It's just the deal," said Henry. "It's okay."

"It's not okay!" Though his dessicated body had ceased, or almost ceased, to smell, Bob's breath was fouler than ever. I had to keep backing up just to talk to him.

"He has to be completely dead," said Womack, who was standing in the doorway, shaking his head. "There are regulations, even here in Vegas."

"He really is pretty muich dead," said Henry. "This is just a residual effect of the LastRites which saturates the alveolar tissues." (pg. 197. LastRites is a drug)

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What if...

I enjoyed The Pickup Artist, and it got me to wondering - what if we really had such a regulation? Would it help Kelly Clarkson's career if, say, all of Janis Joplin's music was deleted? Would more people go see The Lovely Bones if Star Wars wasn't around? Would it be easier for aspiring poets and novelists to get published if we no longer had Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller? Maybe Bisson's premise here has merit. Who cares anymore about Frank Sinatra or Walter Miller?

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I give The Pickup Artist a "B" because I always enjoy spending time in his worlds. It's a good book, as long as you're in the mood for well thought-out satire and don't mind the plotline playing second fiddle. Bisson is not for everyone, but you should read one of his books anyway, before he passes away and his works are deleted to make way for newer fiction.

Black Order by James Rollins

2006; 506 pages. #3 in the "Sigma Force" series. Author's real name : Jim Czajkowski. Genre : Action, Adventure. Overall Rating : "B".
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At a monastery in Nepal, the lamas go beserk - killing and eating each other, and drawing weird signs on the walls with their blood. In Copenhagen, Denmark, someone wants an old Bible enough to burn down a bookstore and kill the proprietor. In South Africa, a mythical man-eating beast (a ukufa) seems to be prowling a game preserve, and munching on little old ladies. The prologue is set in the closing days of WW2 Poland, where we find Nazi scientists trying to destroy their secret research project before the Russian forces overrun them.
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How do all these storylines connect, and who or what is the Black Order? That's what Sigma Force wants to know.
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What's To Like...
There's non-stop action and the characters are interesting. The Cri-Fi puzzles are believable and there are some "gray" bad guys (is that an oxymoron?). The Sigma Force folks are kind of a combination scientists and spec-ops agents. How cool is that? And because the storyline follows a team of protagonists (instead of just a single hero), there is bad-a$$ action happening in several places simultaneously.
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At times, the good guys and their exploits can stray just a bit too close to being a Dirk Pitt knock-off. And after 450 pages of constant chases, fighting, mystery, and escapes; the ultimate resolution kind of staggers to a finish.
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Kewl/New Words...
Provenance : a history of the ownership of something. Etiology : in a medical sense, the study of causes. Paroxysmal : accompanied by a sudden outburst of emotion or actions. In this case, it was shivering.
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Excerpt...
"A bit of the old bait and switch. Took me all day to find a Bible the right size and shape. Course I had to tinker with it a bit afterward. But then all it took was lots of tears and shouting, a bit of fumbling..." She shrugged. "And Bob's your uncle, it was done." (pg. 153). What can I say - I love the phrase "and Bob's your uncle".
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And take a little off the top...
This was my first James Rollins book. The heroes, especially their against-all-odds escapes were at times a bit too over-the-top for me. But that's a personal opinion only. The style reminded me of a cross between Steve Berry (who I like) and Clive Cussler (who I find to be so-so). If you like both those authors, you'll probably find Black Order to be great.
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Ditto for the climax, where they're trying to find a cure for what ails one of the heroes. I found it a letdown; you might not. Overall, this was a page-turning book that kept my interest until the very end. We'll give it a "B" and endeavor to see how other books by Rollins compare to this.

Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett

1987; 254 pages. Book #3 in the Discworld Series. Genre : Comedic Fantasy. Overall Rating : B-.

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There are two immutable truths in Discworld : 1.) Wizards are men, and 2.) Witches are women. That is, until a dying wizard bequeaths his magic staff to the about-to-be-born eighth son of an eighth son (which we all know will become a sourceror), and that son instead turns out to be a first daughter. The village witch, Granny Weatherwax, tries to set things right again, but eventually has to admit that it will take some assistance from the stuffy old wizards at the Unseen University.

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What's To Like...

The realms of witches and wizards are introduced into the Discworld saga. There are also some great new "concepts", such as Borrowing (where a witch enters the body of an animal such as a bird, and uses it for a time while coexisting with the animal's mind), and Headology (wherein, if you act like a witch, talk like a witch, and dress like a witch; people will see you as a witch without you having to perform any witchcraft). Finally, Pratchett adopts a new strategy - writing stories with themes and object lessons.

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Where's Waldo?

Waldo isn't here. Neither are Rincewind, Twoflower, the Luggage, and Cohen the Barbarian. All of whom were major characters in the first two books. There are dwarves and humans here, but no golems, werewolves, dragons, or vampires. This is also before any of the Night Watch show up, and there's no sign of the Patrician.

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Granny Weatherwax becomes a major character, and the banana-loving librarian is here. But the two other major figures in Equal Rites - Eskarina and Simon - are once and done. And ANAICT, the major lesson here (Equal Rights) doesn't stick either. In subsequent books the wizards are all men, and the witches are all women.

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New/Kewl Words...

Pratchett books are always vocabulary-builders.

Inglenook : a corner by the fireplace. Jollop : a strong liquor or medicine. Tannoy : a type of public-address system. Heterodyne : having alternating currents of two different frequencies that combine to make two new frequencies. Alembic : an obsolete piece of labware that once was used for distillations. Souk : the open-air market in an Arabian city. Incunable : Ancient books produced in the earliest days of printing. Topiaric : concerning the art of clipping trees or shrubbery into recognizable shapes, such as animals. Pillion : the seat behind the rider of a horse or motorbike (or in this case, a broomstick). Cowin : Some sort of term of familiarity. Evidently a Pratchettism, as googling it didn't help.

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Excerpt...

She let the animal go and looked out at the scenery again for a long time - the barge was passing between high orange cliffs now, banded with so many colours of rock it looked as though some hungry God had made the all-time record club sandwich - and tried to avoid the next thought. But it persisted, arriving in her mind like the unexpected limbo dancer under the lavatory door of Life. (pg. 103)

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"There's no such thing as a female wizard!"

Equal Rites seems like both a once-only tangent and a pivotal book in the Discworld series. Most of the characters won't be seen again. Yet there is direction here - Pratchett seems to be saying the focus will be on Discworld itself, not on a particular character, such as, say, Rand al'Thor in the Wheel Of Time saga. And the zaniness already present will be supplemented by themes and morals.

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Equal Rites will probably never be anyone's favorite Discworld volume, and I don't suggest it as the first-read for anyone new to the series. But it's still an entertaining read. We'll give it a "B-", and recommend it to all geeky readers (such as me) who like to watch the Discworld universe as it gradually adds new personalities, places, and species.

In the Courts of the Sun - Brian D'Amato

2009; 679 pages. Genre : Apocalyptic Fiction; Alternate History. Overall Rating : B+.

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"Beware December 21, 2012!" said the Mayan codex, and no one in the present world took it very seriously. But it also said December 23, 2011 would be a "warm-up" calamitous day, and when that prophecy came true, it was suddenly very important to somehow go back to 664 AD (when the codex was written) and learn about, or even alter, the prophecy.

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What's To Like...

It's got time-travel and alternate history, so you know I'm gonna like it. The storyline moves at a good pace. It's a vocabulary smorgasbord, including lots of German, Spanish, and Ch'olan (Mayan) expressions. D'Amato takes time to bring to light some of the modern-day issues faced by the Mayan descendants in Guatemala - repression, executions, loss of identity, and eviction from their lands. The "travel back in time" technology is clever and believable; as is the prophecying mechanism, a Go-like game called "The Sacrifice".

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I also liked the writing style. It's first-person and has a Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) tone. The protagonist, Jed, has some amazing talents. Give him any date in time and he'll instantly tell you what day it falls on. Or throw a handful of seeds in front of him, and right away he'll tell you exactly how many there are. But said gifts don't have much practical use, and if you bring Jed along on a dangerous mission, he's more of a liability than an asset.

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The best part of ITCOTS is the details. Hey. if you're going to set a story in 7th-century Mexico, I want to hear about every aspect of daily life there - the plants and the animals, the clothing and the culture, the weapons and the pastimes, the politics and the mind-sets.

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OTOH, it does take about 100 pages for the book to get going. And the "mathematical proof" of time travel and the details of playing the Sacrifice Game can get a bit tedious. The ending is logical, but seems a sconch abrupt.

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New/Kewl Words...

There's a bunch of them. Here are a few...

Misprisions : Misinterpretations. Anhedonic : A loss of the sense of smell. Homunculus : A very small, but fully-developed human. Eidetic : Involving extraordinarily accurate and vivid recall. Loblolly : used in the phrase 'loblolly pine' here, but as a stand-alone, it means "a mudhole".

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Excerpt...

I thought I could hear asteroids screeching toward the earth, that I could feel the friction between tectonic plates, the energy building up in granite watch-springs, that I could watch gravity - which is a kind of mulberry-purple color - spreading out from the earth and bunching into dark stars and draining into the abscesses in existence, and that even the black holes were visible in a way, silhouetted against drifts of interstellar dust balls. (pg. 674)

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Q. : How long should an Alternate-History book be?

Answer : long enough to tell the story properly, and give enough details about the setting to where it feels "real".

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ITCOTS does this nicely, much to the consternation of various reviewers that complained it was too long. Personally, I liked the book because it wasn't "dumbed down". This is not a quick read. And yeah, D'Amato could have left out the detailed descriptions and told the story in 500 pages. But then readers would gripe that it didn't have a "real" feel to it.

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So we'll give ITCOTS a "B+", and recommend it to anyone who's tired of reading Alt-History stories written at an 8th-grade level. If this is the future of the genre, then I'm all for it.

Napalm and Silly Putty - George Carlin

2001; 269 pages. According to the cover, it's a "#1 New York Times Bestseller". Genre : Humor. Overall Rating : C.

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A collection of short pieces by Carlin, and for the most part (ANAICT) taken from his past stand-up routines. It is better organized than its sequel, When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?, which is reviewed here.

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What's To Like...

The tone of N&SP is lighter than that of WWJBTPC. More importantly, it's funnier too. The best parts are once again the one-liners, dubbed "Short Takes". Some of the longer routines, such as the "Food" one (pg. 132), will make you laugh. Others, such as the one about "Time" (pg. 163) are both funny and thought-provoking.

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Alas, as with WWJBTPC, a lot of the stuff here is shock comedy. Carlin wants to show you that he can be witty about anything, including topics like rape and OJ Simpson. He wants you to know all the things that p*ss him off, which families he loathes, and why all kids are ugly. There's also a not-so-funny interview with Jesus. Some of N&SP works. Some of it doesn't.

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New/Cool Words...

George Carlin is not a good resource for expanding your vocabulary. The only N/C word was : Zeitgeist - the spirit of an age; the spirit of the times.

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Excerpts...

People who say they don't care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don't care what people think. (pg. 9)

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I hope no one asks me to show them the ropes. I have no idea where they are. Maybe I could pull a few strings and find out. (pg. 189)

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(re airplane announcements) "Place the mask over your face and breathe normally." Well, no problem there. I always breathe normally when I'm in an uncontrolled 600-mile-per-hour vertical dive. I also sh*t normally. Directly into my pants. (pg. 15)

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Good, funny, occasionally smart, but essentially drivel...

That's a snippet out of the "Acknowledgements" section of the book, and probably a good, honest 7-word summation of it. N&SP tapdances the whole way between funny and crude. I have a feeling this is one of those rare books where it's better to listen to it as an audiobook (which I believe he narrates himself) than to read it. George Carlin was a talented stand-up comedian, and an absolute master of timing, wordplay, and inflections. All of that is lost here.

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We'll give this a "C", because it's better than WWJBTPC, which earmed a "D+". Read it only if you don't have access to his albums, DVD's, and/or audiobooks.

The Venetian Betrayal - Steve Berry

2007; 550 pages. Book #3 of Berry's "Cotton Malone" series. Genre : Action-Thriller; Cri-Fi. Overall Rating : A-.

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Someone's collecting a group of ancient medallions that were minted to commemorate Alexander The Great's semi-victorious campaign in India. They're doing this by stealing them out of museums, then torching the buildings to cover up the thefts. Cotton Malone becomes involved when he's included as part of the kindling at one of the heists.

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What's To Like...

It's a "busy" book, with a bunch of storylines. To wit : a search for Alexander The Great's grave; finding a cure for HIV; political intrigue in a newly-formed Alt-History nation in Central Asia made from the various "-stans" there (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, etc.); a secret order of Venetian businessmen; the re-invention of Greek Fire; and last but not least - what's so cotton-pickin' important about those medallions?

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Berry deftly interweaves all these lines. The action is non-stop, there are a bunch of red-herrings, and a zillion plot-twists. The tale teeters on having too many twists - is the one character a septuple or an octuple agent? But it keeps you on your toes.

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All this action and plot comes at the cost of character development - everyone is either black or white. Indeed, one of the main characters, Irina Zovastina, starts out "3-D gray", but towards the end she's "2-D black". One of her (wounded) soldiers heroically saves her, and she rewards him by shooting him in the head. Actually, she ends up killing lots of her fellow black-hats, yet is curiously averse to offing any of the good guys/gals.

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Kewl New Words...

Most of the new words were technical ones - dealing with architecture, medical research, etc. Some of these were : Mullioned (divided by vertical bars of wood or stone, such as a 'mullioned window'); Campanile (a bell tower, usually as a separate structure); Cartonnage (a type of material used for Egyptian funeral masks, consisting of layers of linen or papyrus and covered with plaster).

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Excerpt...

And you, adventurer, for my immortal voice,

though far off, fills your ears, hear my words,

Sail unto the capital founded by Alexander's father,

where sages stand guard.

Touch the innermost being of the golden illusion.

Divide the phoenix.

Life provides the measure of the true grave.

But be wary, for there is but one chance of success.

Climb the god-built walls.

When you reach the attic, gaze into the tawny eye,

and dare to find the distant refuge.

(pg. 130. this is the riddle to be solved)

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It was a Berry good book...

I liked The Venetian Betrayal, even if there were a couple eye-rolling moments. The cri-fi aspect (finding a cure for HIV) was done well enough to where one reviewer felt compelled to tell us why Berry's solution doesn't work. Well duh. Too many twists is much to be preferred over too few. The characters could've been developed a bit more, but then we'd have a 900-page tome. We'll give it an "A-", and note that the next book in the series, The Charlemagne Pursuit, is sitting on my TBR shelf.