A Midsummer Tempest - Poul Anderson

    1974; 240 pages.  New Author? : No.  Laurels: Nebula Award Nominee (1975); World Fantasy Award Nominee (1975); Mythopoiec Fantasy Award Winner (1975).  Genre : Mythopoeic Fiction; Shakespearean Lit; Fantasy; Romance; Alt-History; Steampunk; Time Travel.  Overall Rating : 6½*/10.

    The year is 1644.  The English civil war rages, with Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads (aka, the Parliamentarians) engaged in a bitter struggle with Prince Rupert’s Cavaliers (aka, the Royalists).  At the moment, things are going badly for Prince Rupert, who is also our main protagonist.  The battle is lost, and he is about to come under house-arrest (well, technically, we’d call it “castle-arrest”) courtesy of one of Cromwell’s devoted supporters, Sir Malachi Shelgrave.

    For Rupert, the future is grim.  It’s only a matter of time before he’s hauled off to London and beheaded.  He’s not above trying to escape from Shelgrave’s castle, but four armed guardsmen watch him whenever he leaves the tower in which he’s imprisoned.  And without young Rupert, his dashing military leader, the days of the king, Charles I, are numbered as well.

    All of this sounds like a fascinating book of 15^th-century Historical Non-Fiction.  That is, until a 19^th-century steam-powered locomotive comes chugging out of its storage shed.

    And when the King and Queen of the Faeries make an appearance.

What’s To Like...

    A Midsummer Tempest is an ambitious effort by Poul Anderson to merge five or six different genres into a coherent storyline.  Sure, Alt-History and Sci-Fi go together like peanut butter and jelly, and so do Fantasy and Steampunk.  But seamlessly blending all four of those, then tossing in Romance and Shakespearean Literature to boot?  That’s impressive.

    There are Multiverses present, but even they are done with a new twist.  You can jump from one dimension to the next, and from one point in time to another as well.  But Poul Anderson’s novelty is to allow literary universes to participate.  So characters from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream jump in and interact with characters from other “real” worlds.

    The story starts out as Historical Fiction; Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Oliver Cromwell, and King Charles I were all historical figures.  The pacing is initially slow, but when the first bit of Fantasy shows up at 17%, things pick up nicely.  If you like anachronisms (and Shakespeare did), you’ll love this book.  Besides the aforementioned  multiverses and steam locomotives, there are other out-of-place things such as semaphore towers, diving bells, and hot air balloons.

    There are some neat phrases from at least five different foreign languages: German, French, Danish, Latin, and Spanish.  The malapropisms, many of which are misquotes from Shakespeare, were a hoot.  One example: "Abstinence makes the font grow harder”.  Occam’s Razor shows up; so does the magical herb Thistledown, the latter for the second book in a row that I've read.  I want to go to my local used-book store in hopes of finding “Introduction to Paratemporal Mathematics” and “Handbook of Alchemy and Metaphysics” and I’d also love to stop in at “The Oald Phoenix” tavern for some suds and socializing.

     The ending is predictable but adequate.  A major case of deus-ex-machina occurs, but I suspect that was deliberate.  The Epilogue was my favorite part of the finale, nicely resolving the elves-in-a-human-world paradox.  Those who read this book for the Romance will not be disappointed.  A Midsummer Tempest is a standalone story, with no ties AFAIK to any other Poul Anderson stories or settings.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Dumbledores (n., plural) : Bumblebees.

Others : Descry (v.); Wadmal (n.); Postilion (n.).

Excerpts...

    “Ye mortals do have powers, do know things, which are for aye denied the Faerie race,” she said.  “Among them is the strength of mortal love.”  Wistfulness tinged her speech: “Mine ageless, flighty kind knows love … of sorts … but simply pleasantly, like songs or sweets.  True human love is not a comedy; time makes it tragic.  In those heights and deeps rise dawns and storms beyond our understanding, the awe and the abidingness of death.”  (loc. 865)

    “Ha, ha, I’m not the only freak around!” he hooted.  “Who’rt thou that walkest thin as sparrowgrass behind yon red cucumber of a nose?”

    “Well, not a mildew-spotted calabash,” drawled the Englishman.  “I think I know thee from my maester’s taele.  Now come an’ sniff mine own.”

    Caliban edged toward him, stiff-legged and bristling.  “Be careful, cur.  I’ll haul thy bowels forth to make thy leash.”  (loc. 2948)

Kindle Details...

    A Midsummer Tempest presently sells for $4.80 at Amazon.  Poul Anderson (1926-2001) was a prolific science fiction and fantasy writer, and a couple dozen of his works  are available as e-books.  They range in price from $4.53 to $8.99.  There are also a couple of bundles available, priced from $7.80 to $9.99.  A tip: another good place to find Poul Anderson novels is at your local used-book store.

“I hope (…) you’ve got the wit to grasp the fundamental ideas of the transcendental calculus.”  (loc. 1564)

    The writing is great, the genre-blending is impressive, and the historical setting is fascinating.  But there are also some weaknesses, the most salient of which is a rather humdrum storyline.

    The romantic angle is obvious, yet the two lovers are allowed to meet and hatch an escape plan.  Indeed, there are two escapes, both of which proceed with a yawning lack of snags.  The key artifact is surprisingly easy to retrieve, and the Faerie folk’s largesse with magical gifts solves any challenge that our heroes might face.  In short, no tension ever builds.

    Then there’s the dialogue.  Rupert speaks in a Shakespearean lingo, and his sidekick, Will Fairweather, uses some sort of ersatz Scottish dialect that got old in a very short time.  Imagine reading paragraph-after-paragraph filled with words like: thic, backzide, loard, zaddle, caere, zuppoased, etc.   Yuck.

    The critics certainly loved A Midsummer Tempest, judging from the 1975 laurels listed in the header of this review.  Their reasons are valid – this really was an innovative approach to writing a Fantasy tale.  But personally, I found it to be all form, and very little substance.

    6½ Stars.  My favorite parts of A Midsummer Tempest were the spellbinding set of characters at The Oald Phoenix Inn and those times when the Faerie folk were present.  Unfortunately, those instances were few and far between, lying in the shadows behind the spotlighted (shouldn’t that be “spotlit”?) life and loves of Prince Rupert.  Fantasy yields to Drama and Romance, and more’s the pity for that, methinks.

Origins - Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith

   2004; 295 pages (plus a 24-page glossary).  New Author? : Yes.  Full Title: Origins – Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution.  Laurels: The PBS show “Nova” made it into a 4-part miniseries.  Genre : Non-Fiction; Science; Cosmology.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

    Hey, I’ve got an idea.  Let’s make an apple pie from scratch.  Sounds like fun, eh?

    Except that one of the more famous quotes by the astrophysicist Carl Sagan is: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

    That makes our project rather challenging.  And even if we somehow manage to invent a universe (I think it has something to do with a Big Bang), we’re still quite a few steps away from taking that pie out of the oven, plopping a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of it, and enjoying a fabulous dessert.  There are things like galaxies and planets and apple trees to also invent.

    Fortunately, I’ve just read a book by Neil deGrasse Tyson where he explains all those steps.  So get out the dessert plates and a couple of forks while I make that pie.  But please be patient and don’t get out the ice cream just yet, as it’s going to take a bit more time than if we’d just run down to the grocery store and bought a frozen or freshly-baked pie.

    Like about 14 billion years.

What’s To Like...

    Origins is divided into five “parts”, each one containing 2-6 chapters.  There are seventeen numbered chapters, plus a Preface, Overture, and Coda.  I loved the structure the authors used for these parts, as each one gets progressively smaller (and younger) by any number of magnitudes.  The Parts are:

Part 1: The Origin of the Universe (chapters 1-6)

Part 2: The Origin of Galaxies and Cosmic Structure (chapters 7-8)

Part 3: The Origin of Stars (chapters 9-10)

Part 4: The Origin of Planets (chapters 11-13)

Part 5: The Origin of Life (chapters 14-17)

    Each chapter addressed a specific topic relevant to whatever Part it was included under.  Some of my favorites (yours will be different) were:

Chapter 01: The first moments of the Big Bang.

Chapter 02: Anti-Matter – We’ve seen it and produced it.

Chapters 04-&-05: Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

Chapter 06: Multiverses!

Chapter 10: The  Elements.

Chapter 13: Exoplanets.

Chapter 17: The Best Way to Search for Life in the rest of the Galaxy.

    I liked the writing style.  The authors did a good job of taking the incredibly complex subject of Astrophysics and making it (relatively) easy to understand.  The emphasis on each section is  WHEN the main subject in each part came into being; HOW each creation process might have occurred; and WHAT scientific and astrophysical observations and tests support those first two questions.  When “proofs” exist for anything, they are pointed out, but the calculations for them aren’t detailed.  I found this to be a positive, since it made things easier to grasp and much less tedious.

    Einstein’s trademark equation, E=mc² shows up, and I was surprised in how many different situations it was applicable.  There are 40 great color photographs included, with lots of galaxies and planets to drool over.  The 24-page glossary at the back of the book is a handy reference. 

    In addition to the chapter subjects mentioned above, the book is chock full of fascinating trivia and other astrophysical phenomena.  Some of these that resonated with me were:

    How to determine the age of a star.  (Hint: it involves Lithium)  (pgs. 156-157)

    The Copernican principle.  (pg. 230)

    The Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt  (pgs. 197-198)

    The Fermi Paradox  (pg 288)

    The universe will keep on expanding forever.  (chapter 5)

    Quasars!  (pg. 134)

    100 billion galaxies exist, and those are just the ones we can see (pg. 27)

    Each of those galaxies average a billion stars.

    The distance to the nearest star (not counting our own Sun) is 500,000 times greater than the distance from the Sun to Mercury, and 5,000 times greater than the distance from the Sun to Pluto.  (pg. 208)

 Kewlest New Word ...

Hypnagogic (adj.) : relating to the state immediately before falling asleep.

Others : Quotidian (n.); Protists (n., plural); Proscenium (n.); Agglutinative (adj.).

Excerpts...

    The beginnings of planet building pose a remarkably intractable problem, to the point that one of the world’s experts on the subject, Scott Tremaine of Princeton University, has elucidated (partly in jest) Tremaine’s laws of planet formation.  The first of these laws states that “all theoretical predictions about the properties of exosolar planets are wrong,” and the second that “the most secure prediction about planet formation is that it can’t happen.”  Tremaine’s humor underscores the ineluctable fact that planets do exist, despite our inability to explain this astronomical enigma.  (pg. 184)

    To the average person, relativity, particle physics, and eleven-dimensional string theory make no sense.  Add to this list black holes, wormholes, and the big bang.  Actually, these concepts don’t make much sense to scientists either, until we have explored the universe for a long time with all senses that are technologically available.  What eventually emerges is a newer and higher level of “uncommon sense” that enables scientists to think creatively and pass judgment in the unfamiliar underworld of the atom or in the mind-bending domain of higher dimensional space.  (pg. 294)

 If you board an aircraft built according to science – with principles that have survived numerous attempts to prove them wrong – you have a far better chance of reaching your destination than you do in an aircraft constructed by the rules of Vedic astrology.  (pg. 19 )

    There’s not much to quibble about in Origins.  Like other books I’ve read about advanced science topics such as Quantum Mechanics, Astrophysics, etc.), this one made my brain tired after about 30 pages or 30 minutes, whichever came first.  So it took me more than a week to plow through it.  The authors do a commendable job of simplifying the subject material as much as possible, but trying to grasp the whys and wherefores of things like black holes, anti-matter, and dark energy is going to be challenging, no matter how far it is dumbed down.

    I have no idea who Donald Goldsmith is; there isn’t even a Wikipedia page for him.  I’m curious as to how he and Neil deGrasse Tyson divvied up the writing responsibilities, as the text flowed smoothly throughout the book.  Some bits of the text imply that the two got along swimmingly.

    9½ Stars.  I’ve been meaning to read something by Neil deGrasse Tyson for quite some time, and Origins was a delightful introduction to his literary efforts.  Santa Claus brought me this book and two others by him, so 2019 might be the year I really get into him.

Unlikely - Frances Pauli

   2013; 227 pages.  Book One (out of 4) in the Kingdoms Gone series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Fantasy; Romance; Sword & Sorcery.  Overall Rating : 6½*/10.

    Oh, what Satina wouldn’t risk for a night in a warm bed, in a warm room, in a warm house!  Alas, most of the time she gets to sleep outdoors on the cold ground because frankly, not a lot of folks like her kind.

    Satina is unpopular on three accounts – she’s a Goodmother, she’s a Granter, and she’s a Half-Blood.  The local gangs (the Shades and the Starlights) don’t want her around because she can do magic, which means she’s a threat to their bullying.   Those who can’t do magic (they’re called “Humans”, not “Muggles”), don’t trust anyone who practices such arts.  And full-blooded magical beings (they’re called “Gentry”) have a prejudice against any person (or creature) less “pure” than they are.

      That pretty much eliminates everyone from the list of those who Satina can trust and rely on.  Except for one.

    A fellow Half-Blood.

What’s To Like...

    The excitement starts almost immediately, and in a library, no less.  The would-be ambushers apparently know Satina’s weak point – she’s a book-lover.  We get a hint of a world whose better days have past – times when castles were built, spells were cast, and kingdoms maintained armies for protection.  Now the castles are in ruins, magic has been banished, and it’s every town for itself when it comes to survival.

    Unlikely is part-Fantasy and part-Romance.  The storytelling is straightforward; the target-audience appears to be YA girls with an interest in those two genres.  Fantasy lovers will like the wide range of critters that show up – fauns, imps, fiends, gargoyles, and goblins; just to name a few.  The Romance angle is developed equally – the first kiss comes a third of the way through and the first spat shows up around halfway through.

    There aren’t a lot of characters to keep track of; I listed just nine of them in my notes.  The setting has an “English countryside” feel to it; I liked the menhirs that were present.  The magic system includes portals and sigils, powders and pockets, and herbs such as thistledown.  There are lots of allusions to lot to bygone things like “Old Magic”, the titular “Kingdoms Gone”, and the “Final War”.  Weapons-wise, this is a Sword-&-Sorcery tale.

    It took me a while to figure out what the main plotline was.  Yes, the Romantic portion was obvious from the get-go, but I kept waiting for some sort of epic quest or conflict to develop.  It gradually dawned on me that Satina and company wouldn't quite be saving the whole world; just a town needing help to rid itself of a gang of bullies squatting in their midst.

    The ending is geared toward the target audience.  It is suitably twisty, romance blossoms, sequels beckon, and all parties get their just desserts.  I liked meeting Henry, and the brush with the magic mushrooms brought back old memories.  The story ends at a logical spot, with some of the plot threads hanging loose, serving as teasers for the next book in the series.  Unlikely is a standalone story, as well as part of a (ANAICT) completed series.

Kewlest New Word ...

Ensorcelled (past participle) : enchanted; fascinated.

Kindle Details...

    Unlikely is currently free at Amazon, and I think it’s that way most or all of the time.  The other three books in the series are priced at $2.99, $3.99, and $4.99 respectively.  Frances Pauli offers a couple dozen other e-books; they range in price from free to $4.99.

Excerpts...

    Hadja sat and banged her elbows onto the tabletop.  She stuck her chin into her palms and pursed her lips.  “Now we need a plan.”

    “What?”

    “Well, we can’t exactly storm up to this Vane fellow, just the two of us, and demand he gets out of town.”

    “But we can do something.”  Together.  She felt lighter with an ally.  The task seemed less impossible.  “You have an idea?”

    “Nope.”  (loc. 1334)

    Henry romped in their direction, wagging his long, forked tail merrily.  She could only imagine what Marten saw.  The look on his face gave her some clue, though he followed her directions and made no sudden movement.  Then again, he might have been paralyzed with fear.  Henry’s size, his armored flesh and long, curling talons had registered.  She could tell by the way his lips moved, by the way he said “g-g-g.”

    “Henry, sit!”

    “Gargoyle.”  (loc. 1597)

 A crumbling stone foundation criss-crossed the alley, a snake from the past reminding the upstart town that something else had thrived here before it – that nothing lasts forever.  (loc. 575)

    There are a couple of quibbles.

    There is zero backstory, and this made for lots of questions early on.  You can suss out that the “Granters” are those who grant wishes (although Satina never does end up granting one), and that the Gentry are full-blooded magic-wielders.  But what exactly is a Tinker, a Skinner, and even a Goodmother?

    Similarly, how does the magic system work?  What is the history behind this fascinating, but past-its-prime, setting?  On a personal level, why, and from what, is Satina fleeing as the story opens?  In lieu of a backstory, it would’ve been nice to at least have a glossary covering all this.

    The other issue is more technical.  There are chapters, 22 of them, but the Kindle version has no chapter tabs, so you can’t easily skip back to an earlier point unless you bookmarked it.  Because of this, there is no “time remaining in chapter” info at any given point, just the time remaining in the whole book.

    But these are minor annoyances and who knows: the three sequels may explain the backstory, and the technical issues may be corrected by Book 2, Horded, which resides on my Kindle.  Overall, Unlikely was a fast, fun, and easy read, even for someone like me, who shuns Romances whenever possible.

    6½ Stars.  Add 2 stars if you are a teenage girl who likes reading stories with both gargoyles and Prince Charmings in them.   You’ll love this this book.

Zoe's Tale - John Scalzi

    2008; 400 pages.  Book 4 (out of 6) in the Old Man’s War series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Science Fiction; Military Sci-Fi.  Overall Rating : 6½*/10.

    Zoe Boutin-Perry is a lucky girl.  The Chosen One.  

    She’s the adopted daughter of Major John Perry and Lieutenant Jane Sagan, the husband/wife team of colony leaders on Huckleberry, a colony on a faraway planet.  But she’s also the biological daughter of the late Charles Boutin, who gave the alien race called the Obin that which we call “consciousness”.  The Obin revere her because of this “gift” from her dad and have sworn to defend and protect her no matter what.

    By treaty, the Obin have been permitted to assign two of their kind as bodyguards to Zoe, with the provision that the pair are also allowed to monitor and record Zoe’s feelings as she grows up.   The Obin may have consciousness now, but they sorely lack any emotions.  They are eager to learn how to “feel” human.

    All of this makes Zoe an important player in galactic politics.  Certain alien empires, by taking her hostage, could gain important leverage in the galaxy; and killing her might have some military advantages.  But there's a cost, at least in Zoe's mind.  The presence of two hulking, powerful alien bodyguards makes finding and keeping a boyfriend a daunting task.  No one wants to be killed because his kiss was erroneously interpreted as a hostile act.  So it’s not surprising that Zoe has a secret desire.

    To just be a normal teenager.  With normal friends, with no one trying to kidnap or kill her, and with a normal boyfriend.

    Good luck with that, Zoe.

What’s To Like...

    Zoe’s Tale is the companion to the previous book in the series, The Last Colony (reviewed here).  It takes place at the same time, and in the same setting, but is told from the viewpoint of Zoe, the daughter of the two protagonists.  John Scalzi divides it into three parts, namely:

    Part 1:  (pgs. 1-128) : The resettlement move from Huckleberry to Roanoke.

    Part 2:  (pgs. 129-280) : The first year on Roanoke.  Life without electronics.

    Part 3:  (pgs. 281-400) : Zoe’s diplomatic mission.

    Most of what I liked in this book is a repeat of the good things about The Last Colony.  There are crazy-kewl critters, well-developed characters, and a blurring of the difference between a good guy/creature and a bad guy/creature.  The “how can we live without our electronics?” theme is once again deftly and lightheartedly explored, and this time it’s supplemented by Zoe’s personal struggle to come to grips with “why can’t I just be allowed to live a normal life?” motif.

     As in any John Scalzi novel, there is an abundance of wit, perhaps even a bit more here since we’re following a bunch of sassy teenagers and their interactions.  There’s also some a couple of romances to follow, and Enzo’s love poem “Belong” (pg 298) is a powerful bit of prose.  It’s fun to watch Hickory and Dickory, the two Obin bodyguards who are also assigned to learn all about human emotions.  They struggle with the complexities of romance, since they’re hermaphroditic.

    Cusswords are both rare and mild, and mostly spoken by Zoe.  It’s nothing you wouldn’t hear in any normal YA conversation.  I liked the role the Colonial Mennonites play, and laughed at the term “Roanokapella”.  The book is written entirely in the 1^st-person POV (Zoe’s), and the chapters are reasonably short: 25 of them (plus a prologue) to cover 400 pages.  The author’s “Acknowledgements” section (pgs. 401-406) is worthwhile reading.

    The ending was a mixed bag for me.  I found the Action parts a bit too conveniently contrived, but OTOH the titular “Zoe’s Tale” resolution was great.  This is both a standalone novel and part of a completed, 6-book series.

Kewlest New Word …

Proscribed (past participle) : forbidden; condemned; denounced.

Excerpts...

    “At least I’d get to see you every once in a while.”

    I didn’t have a good answer to that.  So I just gave Enzo a kiss.

    “Look, I’m not trying to make you feel bad or guilty or whatever,” Enzo said, when I was done.  “But I would like to see more of you.”

    “That statement can be interpreted in many ways,” I said.

    “Let’s start with the innocent ones,” Enzo said.  “But we can go from there if you want.”  (pg. 198)

    This General Gau was in his way a remarkable person.  He wasn’t like one of those tin-pot dictators who got lucky, seized a country and gave themselves the title of Grand High Poobah or whatever.  He had been an actual general for a people called the Vrenn, and had won some important battles for them when he decided that it was wasteful to fight over resources that more than one race could easily and productively share: when he started campaigning with this idea he was thrown into jail.  No one like a troublemaker.  (pg. 273)

“He writes me poems.  I document his physical ineptitude.  That’s how the relationship works.”  (pg. 121)

    The big issue I had with Zoe’s Tale, and one that can’t be circumvented is: If the reader has read The Last Colony (and I have), then there really are no twists, surprises, and/or tension in the storyline.  You’ve read it all before.

    I like that the author takes the time to address the storytelling omissions from the previous book (which he recounts in the Acknowledgements), but perhaps it would’ve been more effective to just issue a new version of The Last Colony.  Yes, as John Scalzi points out, that would mean lengthening the book.  But the critter-danger episode is hastily resolved here, and Zoe’s diplomatic efforts, part 3 in this book, would only add about 120 powerful pages to the story.

    So the 320-pages of The Last Colony would now become, say, a 460-page tome.  That’s not much longer than Zoe’s Tale, which is 400 pages long.  It would also negate the other issue I had with Zoe’s Tale: there just isn’t  much action in it.

    6½ Stars.  If you’ve read the first three books in this series, you can skip Zoe’s Tale without missing anything vital to the overall plotline.  If you’ve read only the first two books, then you can choose either The Last Colony or this book for the next part of the saga.   You can even read all four books, as I did, and be adequately entertained despite encountering nothing new.  John Scalzi's writing skills apparently are sufficient for telling the same story twice.

Fuzzy Navel - J.A. Konrath

    2008; 250 pages.  Book 5 (out of 11) in the Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Thriller; Crime Fiction; Women Sleuths.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    It’s inevitable:  if you’re a cop, you’re bound to make some pretty nasty enemies along the way.

    Sometimes you make them simply by being at the scene of a crime, when one or more of the perpetrators realize you’ve seen their faces and can identify them in a police line-up.  More often, some criminal you’ve helped put in jail comes back after you, seeking revenge.

    Chicago police lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels is doubly blessed.  She’s recently made enemies from each of those two categories, and they’re coming after her.  It goes with the job, and it’s not the first time this has happened to her.  She’s dealt with it before.  But this time, there’s a new, unprecedented aspect to it.

    Both sets of killers have shown up on her doorstep.  At the same time.

What’s To Like...

    Fuzzy Navel is a vintage J.A. Konrath thriller: non-stop action from the get-go that’s just a wee bit over-the-top, crazed psychopathic killers, a gritty policewoman protagonist, and lots of witty banter between her and everyone she's around. 

    There’s a fascinating Author’s Introduction at the start of the book, wherein J.A. Konrath gives the reader some insight about his planning of the story.  He deliberately wrote it in “real time”.  He estimated it would take the average reader about 8 hours to read the book, and the chapters are labeled by which character will have the spotlight therein and exactly what time the chapter begins.  Taken together, those chapters encompass about 8 hours.  Konrath wanted the protagonists trapped in a remote house and ducking snipers’ bullets; and to make this happen he purposely had Jack move in with her mother in the previous book.

    There are two parts to the plotline: a.) a crazy killer seeking revenge for an earlier encounter with Jack; and b.) a group called The Urban Hunting Club, who start out shooting porn-watching perverts and end up taking on the cops instead.  These are not spoilers; this all gets established early in the story.  Konrath’s twist is having the threads converge on Jack’s house at the same time, causing mayhem for all concerned.

    I liked J.A. Konrath’s tastes in music: Jim Croce, John Denver, Keith Richards (with the obligatory Keith Richards joke), and one of my personal faves, The Kingston Trio.  I also liked that the two biggest and bad-assiest characters were both females.  The titular cocktail drink name gets worked into the story about halfway through, but really it’s just there because all the titles in this series reference mixed drinks.  Finally, if you’re a gun enthusiast, you’ll find lots of details about the weapons used here, the pros and cons of various scopes, and which types of ammo work best in which situations.

    The storytelling is a curious blend of 1^st-person and 3^rd-person.  The former is reserved for our two protagonists, and the latter for everyone else.  There are 74 chapters if I counted right (they aren't numbered), of varying lengths depending on what’s going down at that moment, and averaging out to about 3 pages per chapter.

    The ending is suitably climactic and exciting.  J.A. Konrath calls it a cliffhanger, and I hate cliffhangers, but actually it’s a teaser for the next book, where our two combatants apparently will go another round and we’ll find out who got shot at the hospital.  Both main story threads here are resolved, so I can call this a standalone story in good conscience.

Excerpts...

    Another bullet hits the fridge, a few inches above his head.  I consider crawling down the hall, back into the kitchen, but that would leave Harry stranded in the hallway, an open target.

    “Run, Jack!”

    I can’t believe it.  Harry isn’t the heroic, self-sacrificing type.

    “Run in front of the bullets!” he yells.  “Shield me!”  (loc. 5519.  Note: location numbers are relative to the bundled version of this trilogy, which is the format in which I read this book.)

    “Push me up with your hand,” I say.  Then I add, “Your real one.”

    The aforementioned hand lands softly on my ass, and he squeezes.  I freeze up.

    “McGlade, there is so much wrong with what you’re doing right now.”

    “I’m not enjoying it either, Jackie.  You’re not exactly heroin chic.”

    Fighting words.  “Are you saying I’m fat?”

    “No.  Of course not.  You’re … what’s the opposite of anorexic?”  (loc. 7108)

Kindle Details...

    Fuzzy Navel presently sells for $4.99 at Amazon.  The other ten e-books in the series vary in price from $3.99 to $5.99.  J.A. Konrath offers a number of other e-thrillers, and most of them seem to be in a similar price range, with a couple as low as $2.99.  I read Fuzzy Navel as part of a bundle of Books 4, 5, and 6, and right now it goes for $9.99.  J.A. Konrath generously and frequently discounts his books and bundles, and it is not unusual to see them offered for free.

“There’s blood in the water, and the sharks are circling the wagons.”  (loc. 5351)

    I went on a Jack Daniels kick in 2008-09 by reading the first four books within a year or so, and in their proper order.  After that, I didn’t read any more of the series until now.  I’m not sure why; I suspect it was a “so many books, so little time” thing.  The only two characters I remembered were Jacqueline and her police ex-partner, Harry McGlade.

    I didn’t feel like my enjoyment of Fuzzy Navel suffered from the 9-year layoff, and I get the impression you can read these stories in any order and not lose much of the overall storyline.  So the next time you see one of J.A. Konrath’s “Jack Daniels” e-books discounted at Amazon, my recommendation is to snatch it up and give him a try.

        8 Stars.  Bottom line, any J.A. Konrath book is about as low-brow is you can get, and I mean that in the most-positive way.  Fuzzy Navel was a fast, fun, and easy read.  The author has carved out his own little niche in the thriller genre, and I for one am happy he did.

Deadhouse Gates - Steven Erikson

   2000; 836 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book 2 (out of 10) in the “Malazan Book of the Fallen” series.  Genre : Epic Fantasy (Wikipedia calls it ‘High Fantasy’; same thing); Sword & Sorcery.  Laurels : Top Ten Best Fantasy Novel of 2000 (SF Site).  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    The campaign was a success; the Malazan Empire has won.  The alliance called "The Seven Cities" is now entirely in Malazan hands, their leaders deposed or worse, and all who live in those cities are now subject to the will of the Empress Laseen.  Her armies have fanned out throughout the surrounding countryside, the vast deserts of Raraku, and woe to anyone with whom they cross paths.  The price of even the slightest sign of resistance is death.

    At least for the time being.

    Because the reality is, the Malazan forces are few in number compared to the masses in the Seven Cities area, and their links to the Empress and the capital city are stretched to the point of being non-existent.  There are large masses of peasants in Raraku who seethe with subdued anger and chafe at the newly-imposed Malazan yoke.

    In the swirling deserts, shadowy warlords still lead wandering tribes that bow to no one.  And of course, there are always the fickle and squabbling gods to contend with.  It would only take a single spark to set the while region in flames, when the Hunters and the Hunted may well find their roles reversed.

    There is such a Spark and it goes by many names.  The Whirlwind.  The Uprising.  The Dryjhna.  The Rebellion.  The Spark has a face: Sha’ik, a woman, the leader of the rebellion, who is protected by her zealot bodyguards, who call themselves "the Raraku Apocalypse".  It is in the Malazan Empire’s best interest to eliminate her at all costs.

    But if they kill her, will she stay dead?

What’s To Like...

    Deadhouse Gates expands the world  introduced in Steven Erikson’s first book, Gardens of the Moon, which I read last July and is reviewed here.  The action now takes further south, as the Malazan Empire tries to cope with a huge grassroots uprising against its recent conquests.

    There are a slew of plotlines.  The main ones are: A.) Kalam and companions set out to kill the Empress Laseen. B.) Felisin (who?) sets out to kill her sister.  C.) The imperial historian Duiker and his companions seek safety by joining up with the remnants of the main Malazan army in the Seven Cities area.  D.) Kalam sets out to deliver a book to Sha’ik.  E.) Mappo and Icarium (who?) seek answers, although no one is ever quite sure what the questions are.  F.) Coltaine, the Fist of the 7^th Army, sets out on an impossible task: to relocate and safely deliver an insane number of refugees still loyal to the Empress, nicknamed the “Chain of Dogs”.  Almost all of the aims of these plotlines change as the story transpires.

    There are also a poopload of characters and Steven Erikson treats the reader like an adult.  He supplies three maps (which once again adon't show all the lands in the story) for reference sake, a four-page Cast of Characters at the front of the book, and various other peoples, places, ascendants, and assorted things in the back.  Beyond that, the reader is expected to keep things straight as he reads.  I kept extensive notes.

    The tone of the book is dark and gritty.  War is hell on everyone it touches.  Good guys can lose and die, bad guys can win and live, and noble aspirations do not increase your likelihood of surviving.  Executions are bloody and graphic; civilians are raped, children are slaughtered, and showing mercy to the enemy or civilians is unheard of.  In short, this is not a book for sensitive juvenile readers.  Yet hope persists even in the darkest of times.

    There is an abundance of wit, which helps to balance out the gore.  The characters are all various shades of gray, and I always like that.  Even the gods are complex, gray, and oftentimes vulnerable.  And although lots of characters die, that doesn't mean they won't pop up again somewhere.

    I chuckled at the cussing set-up: select a local god and add a body part.  Some examples: Fener’s Hoof!, Togg’s feet!, and Hood’s Breath!  Other, more private body parts are also frequently used to form cuss phrases.  I also liked the Tarot-esque Deck of Dragons.  In a world of gods and magic, it was droll to see some of the characters viewing fortune-telling as a con game.  There are quotes and/or prose to start each chapter, but those are one of the few things that didn’t wow me.

     The ending is okay, but not spectacular.  Things end at a logical point in the saga, but it's little more than a lull in the greater storyline, and many threads remain unresolved.  This is not a standalone novel; Steven Erikson assumes you have read Book One, or at the very least, will diligently look up new characters in the front of the book.  There are 26 chapters covering 836 pages of text, but there are lots of scene-shifts in the chapters, so there's always a convenient place to stop for the night.

Kewlest New Word ...

Refulgent (adj.) : shining brightly.

Others:  Percipience (n.).

Excerpts...

    Crokus dragged a chair to the table, dropped into it and reached for the wine.  “We’re tired of waiting,” he pronounced.  “If we have to cross this damned land, then let’s do it.  There’s a steaming pile of rubbish behind the garden wall, clogging up the sewage gutter.  Crawling with rats.  The air’s hot and so thick with flies you can barely breathe.  We’ll catch a plague if we stay here much longer.”

    “Let’s hope it’s the bluetongue, then,” Kalam said.

    “What’s that?”

    “Your tongue swells up and turns blue.”

    “What’s so good about that?”

    “You can’t talk.”  (pg. 69)

    “We’re being hunted,” Kulp snapped, wrapping his arms around himself.

    From where he sat against a wall, Heboric laughed.  He raised his invisible hands.  “Show me a mortal who is not pursued, and I’ll show you a corpse.  Every hunter is hunted, every mind that knows itself has stalkers.  We drive and are driven.  The unknown pursues the ignorant, the truth assails every scholar wise enough to know his own ignorance, for that is the meaning of unknowable truths.”

    Kulp looked up from where he sat on the low wall encircling the fountain, the lids of his eyes heavy as he studied the ex-priest.  “I was speaking literally,” he said.  “There are living shapeshifters in this city.”  (pg. 512)

“Quick Ben’s our shaved knuckle in the hole.”  “Your what in the where?”  (pg. 39)

     I was expecting Deadhouse Gates to be a sequel to Gardens of the Moon, but that isn’t the case.  A few of the characters from Book One are here – Crokus, Apsalar, Kaslam, and even Moby – but my favorites are MIA – Whiskeyjack, Quick Ben, Dujek Onearm, etc.  This book starts a tangential storyline, and I gather from the Wikipedia article that Book 3, Memories of Ice, is a continuation of the first book's tale.

    At 836 pages, this is one of the shorter books in the series.  Steven Erikson joins Brandon Sanderson and the late Robert Jordan in adopting the habit of making each volume a bit longer than the previous one.  Of the remaining eight books in this series, only one of them is less than 1,000 pages in length

    I have some serious reading yet to do in this series.

    8½ Stars.  The ending isn’t quite as climactic as in Gardens of the Moon, but Deadhouse Gates was still an entertaining read.  Like Jordan and Sanderson, Steven Erikson can spin a lengthy, complex, hard-to-follow story, eschew a wowee-zowee ending, and still leave the reader thoroughly happy he read the book.  It is a joy reading the work of a skilled writer.