The Life of the World to Come - Kage Baker

   2004; 392 pages.  Book 5 (out of 10) in “The Company” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Time-Travel; Dystopian Fiction; Science Fiction.  Overall Rating : 6½*/10.

 

    Mendoza could sure use a visit from a knight in shining armor about now.  Dr. Zeus has sent her into the mother of all exiles, and it's getting to be a drag.  Place-wise, it’s not so bad: a quiet spot on the coast of California.  But timewise, it’s a different story – she’s been sent back to 150,000 BCE, give or take a couple millennia.  She’s been stuck here for the past 3,000 years, which may seem a bit far-fetched.  But Mendoza is not your normal human, she's been reworked and is now an immortal cyborg.

 

    Well saints be praised, her Prince Charming has just arrived!  In a time-machine he stole from Dr. Zeus, no less.  How’s that for karma?  His name is Alec, and although he’s not particularly handsome, Mendoza is instantly attracted to him.  After all, he looks exactly like two other lovers Mendoza had in the past.  Or will have in the future.  Before they died.  Or will die.  Whatever.

 

    As for the charm, it turns out it was something programmed into his personality.  Which is possible because Alec is also a cyborg.  And although he’s got some prior business to take care of first – he’s determined to destroy Dr. Zeus once and for all – Alec promises to return after that’s done and take Mendoza back to the present time, which is his case is the 24^th century AD.

 

    Hmm.  Dr. Zeus is the leading expert when it comes to time-travel.  He knows everything that has happened, and everything that is going to happen, at least up to July 9, 2355 (see below).  I wonder why he’s not aware of Alec’s thievery and meeting with Mendoza.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Life of the World to Come is the fifth book in Kage Baker’s Company series, a completed 10-book series (ignoring novellas and short stories using the same setting) which I’m reading in chronological order.  Here, the scenes shift among three storylines: a.) Alec Checkerfield’s life story; b.) the secret activities of three Londoners named Rutherford, Chatterji, and Ellsworth-Howard; and c.) Mendoza’s whereabouts and whenabouts.  Alec’s storyline is by far the predominant one.

 

    Almost all of the story takes place in the future, which is a switch from the earlier books in the series.  We are moving closer to the Armageddon-like year of 2355 AD, when, thanks to past/future time traveling excursions, we've learned that everything in the time-traveling world seems to come to a standstill.  I much appreciated Kage Baker including a backstory in the first few pages; it’s been four years since I read the previous book.

 

    I loved Kage Baker’s worldbuilding in the 24^th century.  There’s a new cussword (“shracking”), new slang (bishareedo, puckamenna), and new gizmos (jotbooks, bukes, agcars, agboats, etc.).  The “ag” in those last two stands for “anti-gravity”, not “agriculture”; it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out.

 

    There’s not a lot of time-travel, although we do get to zip back to 150,000 BC to for the Alec/Mendoza meeting, as well as take a quick trip to Mars to help thwart Dr. Zeus.  I picked up a new Latin phrase - “nimium ne crede colori, puere” (wiki it), and found out what “Fiddler’s Green” is.  It was fun to see how Christmas is celebrated in 2350 AD, watch young Alec do his schooling online (shades to 2020!), rejoice that Toblerone chocolate is still around (albeit, as contraband), and learn not to mess with the religious zealots called the Ephesians.

 

    The ending is good, but incomplete.  The “why-and-how” of the triple-incarnation paradox of Nicholas/Edward/Alec is at last revealed, but there are a slew of other plot threads left unresolved.  We still don’t know how Rutherford, Chatterji, and Ellsworth-Howard fit in, ditto for Alec’s enigmatic and resourceful playfriend “Captain Morgan”.  And while the story ends at a logical spot, it nevertheless teeters dangerously close to being a cliffhanger.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Oubliette (n.): a secret dungeon with access only through a trapdoor in its ceiling.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 43 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.94/5 based on 1,544 ratings and 103 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Spirits of Cause and Effect, I summon thee!  I bend thee to my will!  Spirits of Action and Reaction, I conjure thee, grant my desires!  Schrodinger’s Cat, heed my commands!  Oh, Spirit of Time, oh, thou Chronos, oh thou, er, Timex, Bulova, um, Westclox, Swatch, Rolex, Piaget!  Uh… In the name of Greenwich, in whose image all Time is made!”  (pg. 215)

 

    “I believe I mentioned that Dr. Zeus, possessing the secret of time travel, knows everything that’s ever happened in recorded history, as well as everything that ever will happen.  Beer?”

    “Yes, please.”  (…)

    “Everything that ever will happen, I say - up to the year 2355.  You understand this is a matter of intense speculation for everyone concerned with the Company.  But the fact is, beyond July 9, 2355, there’s just – silence.”  (…)  “Not one word from our future selves on the other side of that moment in time.  I have heard that the last message, badly distorted, says simply ‘We still don’t know -“  (pg. 305)

 

“Meminerunt omnia amantes.” (“Lovers remember everything.”)  (pg. 31 )

    There’s some cussing and a fair amount of rolling-in-the-hay in The Life of the World to Come, but I hesitate call this an R-rated book.  My big issue with it is that we see very little of Mendoza, apart when Alec comes calling, and for some reason we get to experience that twice.  My second-favorite character in the series, Joseph, is entirely MIA, and even the Ultimate Evil, Labienus, makes only a token appearance.

 

    I get the feeling that this book is really just a giant backstory Kage Baker wrote to get all her ducks in a row before plunging the series into an exciting conclusion that will be 3-5 books in length.  I appreciated the clarifications, but yearned for a bit more action.

 

    But be of good cheer: if you can make it through 300 pages of Alec’s biography, you'll be treated to 100 pages of an exciting, fascinating, twist-filled ending.  We are perilously close to the D-Day of July 9, 2355, and I for one want to find out how it all turns out.

 

    6½ Stars.  In looking forward, Book Eight, The Sons of Heaven, was originally marketed in 2007 as the closing volume in the series, but then in 2009 and 2010, Books 9 and 10 were added.  I have no idea why.  I've bought Book Six, The Children of the Company, but have yet to find any of the final four books at my local used-book stores.  The present pandemic limits my browsing opportunities, and none of my local libraries carry volumes 7-10.  The next book may be as far as I get.

The Drop - Michael Connelly

   2011; 481 pages.  Book 15 (out of 20) in the “Harry Bosch Novel” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Police Procedural; Hard-boiled Crime Fiction; Serial Killer Thriller.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    It's a good day for Detective Harry Bosch and his partner David Chu: they've just been assigned a cold case from the LAPD archives and they're always happy when that happens.  After all, that’s what their department, the  "Open-Unsolved Unit" of the Los Angeles Police Department ("OU" for short) exists for.

 

    Lieutenant Duvall has asked them to reexamine the files of an old murder/sexual assault case because recent (and improved) DNA testing on a blood sample found at the scene of the crime has come up with a match.  That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve found the killer; it could be a “false positive” by the crime lab due to accidental contamination of the retested sample.  But the DNA match is of a guy who’s a registered sex offender, so that makes it a promising lead.

 

    But there are a couple of problems.  First of all, it turns out the sex offender was only eight years old when the crime was committed.  It’s hard to imagine him raping and killing at that age.

 

    Secondly, the Lieutenant has just assigned an additional case to Harry and David.  That means they'll have to split their time between two separate investigations.  And this new one is a doozy: George Irving, the son of a prominent city councilman, has fallen to his death from a seventh-floor hotel balcony.  Was it suicide, murder, or an accident?  The councilman has specifically requested that Harry be put in charge of finding out.

 

    That's rather surprising, because Councilman Irving is an ex-cop who feels the LAPD unfairly set him up as a scapegoat years ago, and he's been making their lives miserable ever since.

 

    And he blames Harry Bosch in particular for his dismissal from their ranks.

 

What’s To Like...

    Talk about a bargain: the reader gets two Harry Bosch stories for the price of one in The Drop.  You might expect the author to somehow contrive to merge the two plotlines at some point in the book, but that doesn’t happen here.  Harry has to find time to investigate and solve them both, while meanwhile raising a teenage daughter, trying his best not to botch a potential romantic interest, and squabbling with most of his LAPD coworkers, including his partner.

 

    This is a typical Harry Bosch novel.  It is set entirely in the greater Los Angeles area, and even one of my old stomping grounds, Newhall, gets a brief mention.  This is a “police procedural”, meaning the emphasis is on savvy police sleuthing, not on over-the-top thrills, chases, and spills.  The pressure is on the author to keep things interesting and Michael Connelly, as always, is up to the task.

 

    There are 42 chapters covering 481 pages, so there's always have a convenient place to stop for the night.  I learned a new Spanish phrase, “muy sabroso”, which I had to google, and had to wiki the music reference to Frank Morgan as well.

 

    Both investigations have lots of plot twists along the way to trip up Harry and the reader.  Harry counters by not always doing things “by the book”, which is also usual for him, and I was left wondering just how often things such as “jumping the warrant” and the “LAPD choke hold”, both of which occur here, happen in the real world.

 

    The ending is what you’d expect from a police procedural.  One investigation gets wrapped up around 70%-Kindle, the other about 10%, later, the the book closes poignantly with Harry doing some much needed soul-searching.  I suspect real-life cops go through the same sort of thing from time to time.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

High Jingo (n., phrase): a situation that is highly politicized or fraught with danger

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 4,262 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.17/5 based on 56,268 ratings and 3,083 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “You said he has a job.  Doing what?”

    “He works for the Grande Mercado up near Roscoe. He works in the parking lot, collecting the shopping carts and emptying trash cans, that sort of thing.  They pay him twenty-five dollars a day.  It keeps him in cigarettes and potato chips.  He’s addicted to both.”  (loc. 779)

 

    On his way back he saw Lieutenant Duvall standing outside his cubicle.  Chu was nowhere in sight.  Bosch knew that Duvall wanted an update on the Irving case.  In the past twenty-four hours she had left him two messages and an e-mail, all of which he had failed to return.

    “Harry, have you gotten my messages?” she asked as he approached.

    “I got them, but every time I was going to call, somebody called me first and I got distracted.  Sorry, Lieutenant.”

    “Why don’t we go into my office so you won’t get any more of these distractions.”

    It wasn’t spoken as a question.  (loc. 1540)

 

Kindle Details…

    You can pick up the The Drop for $11.99 at Amazon.  The rest of the books in the series are all in the $9.99-$11.99 range, with the older ones generally having the slightly lower prices.  Michael Connelly has several other series, plus some standalone novels; those range in price from $8.99 to $14.99.  Finally, he has a few short stories that tie in to his various series; which are usually priced at $1.99.

 

“How old is your daughter?”  “Fifteen going on thirty.”  (loc. 920 )

    The quibbles about The Drop are minor.  Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books always have a gritty tone, so you have to expect a fair amount of cussing, violence, and references to things such as torture, sex, rape, and child molestation.

 

    Also, police departments apparently go crazy when it comes to using acronyms.  In addition to the few that I knew and/or could figure out, there were the following: OCP, PAB, DROP, “code three”, RHD, TOD, MPR, SID, JD, PSI’s, OPG, NBH, DSAT, BOR, EOW, RFC, and AGU.  Sometimes Michael Connelly tells you their meaning; sometimes you’re expected to suss it out for yourself.

 

    The book’s title refers to one of those acronyms listed.  “DROP” stands for “Deferred Retirement Option Plan”.  Harry is getting old, and DROP is one more thing for him to stress out about, but it has only tangential impact to the storyline.

 

    That’s about it for the quibbles, and they’re all pretty ticky-tacky.

 

    8½ Stars.  Subtract ½ Star if you like you like your cop stories to be heavy on the gunfire-&-chase scenes and light on the sleuthing.  Personally, police procedurals are favorite kind of crime novel, and The Drop was another fine effort by Michael Connelly in that genre.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks

   1985; 233 pages.  Full Title: The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Neurology; Psychology; Medical Science; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    Quick now: what does the word “neurology” mean?  The logical answer would probably be “the study of the (human) nervous system”, and that’s close, but not quite accurate.  If you want to be pedantic about it (and of course I do), it is actually “the study of disorders of the nervous system”.

 

    Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) was a noted neurologist.  Interestingly, both he and his brother suffered from a neurological disorder called “prosopagnosia” (wow, my spellchecker has no issue with this word), more commonly called “face blindness”.  He has been described as “deeply eccentric” (is that really a good thing for a neurologist to be?), and you can read his Wikipedia article (the link is here) for more details about his most peculiar life.

 

    He was also a gifted writer, penning more than 20 books, many of which focused on either his life or his work.  The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is one of the latter.  In it, Sacks recounts 24 cases involving 25 patients (there was one set of twins) who suffer from a variety of neurological disorders.  The titular case involves, guess what, prosopagnosia.

 

    It’s probably never a good thing to be unable to tell whether something’s your hat or your wife.

 

What’s To Like...

    The 24 cases in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat are divided into four sections, namely:

  a.) Losses (case 1-9).

  b.) Excesses (cases 10-14).

  c.) Transports (cases 15-20).

  d.) The World of the Simple (cases 21-24).

 

    The chapters vary in length, but generally are arranged from longest to shortest within each section.  The section titles are pretty much self-explanatory.  “Losses” means something’s mentally missing: memories, legs, half your field of vision, etc.  “Excesses” is the opposite: an overactive imagination, spasms, etc.  “Transports” send you to another reality: visions, music playing inside your head, etc.  “The World of the Simple” basically addresses the concept of Idiot-Savants.  Most of the chapters close with a “postscript”: either subsequent analysis by Oliver Sacks or feedback he received from other neurologists.

 

    My favorite chapters were:

01) The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat

02) The Last Mariner

04) The Man Who Fell out of Bed

10) Witty Ticcy Ray

11) Cupid’s Disease

15) Reminiscence

20) The Visions of Hildegard

23) The Twins

 

    The book was a learning experience for me.  I came away with a much better understanding of things like Tourette’s Syndrome, Eidetic memory, and something German neurologists call “witzel-sucht” (“joking disease”).  I learned why you can’t lie to an aphasiac, and how you might quickly do amazing “calendar calculations” (What day of the week does October 4^th, 3681 AD fall on?), but had to google  the Latin phrase “vult decipi, ergo decipiatur” (“people want to be deceived, so let them be deceived”) because no translation was provided.

 

    I thought the neurological explanation for the visions of Hildegard of Bingen were fascinating; likewise the concept of “seeing numbers” (see the second excerpt, below).  FWIW, my “numbers-seeing limit” is 5, which makes the twins’ feat of seeing 111 matches simply jaw-dropping.  I chuckled at the mention of playing blindfold chess since I’ve done this in the past.  And it's always a treat to encounter the word “Proustian” in a book.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Anamnesis (n.) : 1.) a patient’s account of a medical history.  2.) the remembering of things from a supposed previous existence.

Others: Confabulatory (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 3,402 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.05/5 based on 174,719 ratings and 7,053 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    He seemed to think he had done rather well.  There was a hint of a smile on his face.  He also appeared to have decided that the examination was over and started to look around for his hat.  He reached out his hand and took hold of his wife’s head, tried to lift it off, to put it on.  He had apparently mistaken his wife for a hat!  His wife looked as if she was used to such things.

    I could make no sense of what had occurred in terms of conventional neurology (…)  How could he, on the one hand, mistake his wife for a hat and, on the other, function, as apparently he still did, as a teacher at the Music School?  (pg. 11)

 

    A box of matches on their table fell, and discharged its contents on the floor.  “111,” they both cried simultaneously; and then, in a murmur, John said “37”.  Michael repeated this, John said it a third time and stopped.  I counted the matches – it took me some time - and there were 111.

    How could you count the matches so quickly?” I asked.  “We didn’t count,” they said.  “We saw the 111.”

    Similar tales are told of Zacharias Dase, the number prodigy, who would instantly call out “183” or “79” if a pile of peas was poured out, and indicate as best he could – he was also a dullard – that he did not count the peas, but just “saw” their number, as a whole, in a flash.

    “And why did you murmur ’37,’ and repeat it three times?” I asked the twins.  They said in unison, “37, 37, 37, 111.”  (pg. 199)

 

If one asked such a patient to move his legs, he was apt to say: “Sure, Doc, as soon as I find them.”  (pg. 47)

    There’s a tiny amount of cussing in the book, mostly as direct quotes from patients.  The book is written in “English”, not “American”, but that didn’t make it a difficult read.  You just had to be ready for spellings like phantasies, chimaeras, phoney, smelt, humour, recognise, and the partitioned version of “none the less”.

 

    At 233 pages, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat is a short book, yet for me it was a somewhat slow read, mostly because it’s written in a “clinical” style.  I felt like the target audience was other neurologists, and Oliver Sacks expected to reader to be familiar with terms such as aphonia, aphemia, aphasia, alexia, apraxia, agnosia, ataxia, amnesia, athetosis, cerebral diplegia, aprosodia, akinesia, aboulia, adynamia, anergia, amusia, anosmia, and many, many more.  Neurologists apparently are nutso about naming disorders beginning and ending with the letter “a”.

 

    Despite having to decipher the technical terminology, I thoroughly enjoyed The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat.  It’s got to be a lonely life when one is grappling with a neurological disorder.  I knew someone who struggled with schizophrenia; he described one of his attacks which ended up with him being subdued by the police and thrown in jail, with him having no understanding of what was going on.

 

    One last bizarre tidbit about The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat: It was made into an opera.  I’m not kidding.  Go out to YouTube and do a search for it.  Amazing.

 

    9 Stars.  We’ll close with a teaser, taken from the first chapter, which will give you some idea of what the patient (the guy who mistook his wife for a hat) goes through because of his disorder.  He was given an everyday item and asked to identify it.  Here’s what he said:

 

    “A continuous surface,” he announced at last, “infolded on itself.  It appears to have” – he hesitated – “five outpouchings, if this is the word.” (…) “A container of some sort?”  (…) “It could be a change purse, for example, for coins of five sizes.”

 

    What was the object?  Answer in the comments section.

Orb - Gary Tarulli

   2011; 338 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Hard Science Fiction; First Contact; Romance.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    It’s the dawning of a new age for humankind.  The previous spaceflight over the planet 231-P5 confirmed the presence of water, which is an understatement – the planet is almost entirely covered by it.  And where there’s water, there’s the possibility of life, and something even more exciting: sentient life.

 

    Now the seven crew members on the spaceship Desio are about to enter into orbit around 231-P5, and, pending some preliminary tests to confirm a habitable environment, land there.  Their mission: search for intelligent life and if they find asny, initiate contact.

 

    The Desio’s crew has been carefully picked: Commander Bruce Thomson, PhD in Geology and Engineering; Kelly Takara, Medical Doctor; Diana Gilmore, PhD in Marine Biology, and a Master’s in Astrobiology; Paul Bertrand, PhD in Climatology; Larry Melhaus, PhD in Physics and Mathematics, and a Master’s in Chemistry; Kyle Lorenzo, writer.

 

    Whoa!  That last guy's credentials are rather humdrum compared to those others.  But hey, his assignment is to chronicle the expedition, so it’s his output that we’ll be reading.

 

    The final member of the crew is Angie.  She doesn’t have a degree either, but she’s exceptionally bright, disciplined, well-trained, healthy, and has a sweet disposition.  Those are all admirable qualities, but it should be noted that she also has an indefatigable urge to chase and chew on squeaky toys.

 

    Angie is Kyle’s lovable, black-furred miniature poodle, and he simply refuses to leave her behind.  And who knows, she just might make some of her own special contributions to the mission.

 

What’s To Like...

    Orb is Gary Tarulli’s ambitious and clever combination of Hard Sci-Fi and First-Contact Sci-Fi genres, with a skosh of Romance mixed in for good measure.  The central theme of the book is: what if the first sentient beings we encounter in outer space do not even remotely resemble humans, Klingons, Ewoks, or Vulcans?  It's statistically unlikely that their evolutionary path will be similar to ours.  Instead, it's much more likely they’ll be something so strange we can't even imagine it.

 

    The storyline also examines the psychological toll that space travelers are subjected to when they find themselves incredible time/space distances from home.  Once, on a business trip, I found myself in Bangkok, Thailand, all by myself, half a planet removed from anyone to contact should I run into trouble.  That “all alone” stress is very real.

 

    The mission's plan calls for a one-week stay by the crew of the Desio on 231-P5, its brevity being mostly limited by the quantity of food needed to sustain seven beings.  Each of the PhD’s will run tests in their respective fields looking for signs of intelligent alien life, and report their progress at daily meetings.  This gives our space team lots of opportunities to interact with each other, for better and for worse.  Conversely, if any extraterrestrials inhabit 231-P5, they get to observe us humans, warts and all.

 

    I liked the way the “hard science fiction” aspect was laid out.  The effort to find, and make contact with, sentient life on an alien planet will probably be a painstaking process, and we get to watch the crew's efforts gradually pay dividends.  I also enjoyed learning a smattering of several "earthly" languages (Japanese, French, Arabic, Italian, and Swahili), appreciated the way the strength of classical music was acknowledged, and marveled at the science nod to Mendelbrot fractals.  It was enlightening as well to learn about the spaceship’s namesake, Ardito Desio.

 

    The ending is a mixed bag, and it’s difficult to discuss it without introducing spoilers.  Let’s just say I found the final-chapter to be both poignant and disappointing, and leave it at that.  Orb is a standalone story; there is room for a sequel, but it certainly isn’t a necessity, and I don’t think Gary Tarulli has any plans to write one.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Spatchcocked (adj.) : split open (such as a poultry of game bird) in preparation for grilling.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 132 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.78/5 based on 166 ratings and 25 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    The objects were speedily heading back out to sea, and quicker than they appeared, until completely vanishing from our view.

    “This is torture,” gasped Diana, then, in an instant of controlled madness, waved her hand oceanward and cried out, “Whatever you are, you come right back here, damn you!”

    “Calm yourself,” Thompson admonished.  “They’ll be back.”

    “And how do you arrive at that conclusion?” Diana said.

    “If they’re sentient beings, they’ll be curious about the bizarre entity yelling from shore.”  (loc. 1687)

 

    “A laser doesn’t belong on this ship, never did,” Thompson remarked.  “You and I are going to dismantle it.”

    “And when we return to Earth?  Don’t we need protection from orbiting pirates and space junk?”

    Thompson scowled.  “From my conversations with other ship commanders I’d say the presence of space pirates is no more than a rumor started by certain multinational companies looking for an excuse to establish a significant space presence.  Started, and deliberately cultivated, to foster militarization of space.”  Thompson’s scowl deepened.  “Space junk?  What in hell would a laser do except create numerous smaller molten pieces, each harder to detect, each more dangerous.”  (loc. 4073)

 

Kindle Details…

    Orb currently sells for $3.99 at Amazon.  ANAICT, Gary Tarulli has only one other e-book to offer, The Symbionts of Murkor, which also goes for $3.99, and is in the Sci-Fi genre as well.

 

“The worst possible mistake we could make would be to assume a square peg won’t fit in a round hole.”  (loc. 1999 )

    Most of the complaints by Amazon and Goodreads reviewers center about the slow pacing of the plotline and the wordiness of the dialogue.  Their point is well-taken, and if you’re looking for an action-packed space opera type of novel (think "Star Wars"), you probably should give Orb a pass.

 

    The emphasis here is on the “Science” part of “Sci-Fi”, not the “Fiction”.  If you're curious about how, a couple centuries from now (or even sooner), a terrestrial space program will prepare to visit other solar systems in search for life (via wormholes, of course), this book gives you a very plausible scenario.

 

    “Hard Science Fiction” is a very challenging genre to write in, and hats off to Gary Tarulli for tackling it with his debut effort.  Sadly, it appears he has retired from his writing career.  Orb came out in 2011; The Symbionts of Murkor followed three years later; but there appears to be nothing since from this author.  More’s the pity, since good novels in the Hard Science Fiction genre are few and far between.

 

    7 Stars.  All of the characters in Orb are of course fictitious, except for one: Angie.  If you’re wondering what she looks like, and you’re a partaker of Facebook, you can do a search there for the author and see a couple of touching pictures of her.

Proven Guilty - Jim Butcher

   2006; 547 pages.  Book 8 (out of 17) in the “Dresden Files” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Urban Fantasy; Paranormal Thriller.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Harry Dresden is certainly not the most popular member of the White Council of wizards.  He the newest Warden of the group, seems to have an attitude against blindly trusting the decisions of his peers, and is positively disrespectful of the senior council.

 

    But he also happens to be a private investigator by trade, and that always comes in handy, particularly when it comes to keeping tabs on the White Council’s deadly enemies, the vampires of the Red Court.

 

    For instance, right now a sudden spike in Black Magic has been detected in Harry’s hometown of Chicago.  That’s a capital offense with the punishment, decapitation, usually carried out at the first opportunity.  The White Council thinks it would be convenient if Harry could determine who the practicing black mage is.

 

    And while he’s at it, could he also investigate why the Faeries haven’t fought back against those nasty Red Court vampires who recently trespassed into the Faerie kingdom?  Such an infraction is usually met with instant and forceful retaliation, yet for some reason the Faeries seem to be uncharacteristically forgiving.  The White Council’s war against the Red Court is going badly, and it would be nice to have the Faeries as an ally.

 

    So dust off your duster and hit the streets of Chicago, Harry.  See what you can discover.  And you'd better hope that whoever is casting all that black magic juju isn’t some acquaintance of yours.  That would likely be the straw that breaks the White Council’s back when it comes to tolerating your uppity attitude.

 

What’s To Like...

    Proven Guilty is the eighth entry in Jim Butcher’s 17-volume paranormal urban fantasy series “The Dresden Files”.  It’s action-packed and fast-paced, and includes an extended foray into the Faerie parallel realm of Nevernever, which I always enjoy.

 

    The two tasks given to Harry, and the complications that arise therefrom, are not exactly epic in scope, but that’s okay.  The focus here is more on his relationships with Michael, a devout Knight of the Cross, Michael’s wife and daughter (Chastity and Molly), and Harry’s Chicago PD best bud, Lieutenant Karrin Murphy.  It was fun to see each of these characters get fleshed out, and I suspect it’s a sign that the Carpenter family will be playing a greater part in the next few books in the series.

 

    There’s a bunch of new magical critters to meet and be scared to death by, among which are Phobophages, Janns, Scarecrows, Ogres, and Fetches.  It might come as a surprise that of that beastly bunch, the Scarecrows are the most lethal.  My favorite supporting character, Bob the Skull, is back but doesn’t get a lot of ink, but Harry’s dog, Mouse, does, and both Harry and the reader begin to get the impression that Mouse is no ordinary canine.

 

    As always, the story is told in the first-person POV (Harry’s).  The chapters are short-to-moderate in length, 47 of them encompassing 547 pages.  There’s also a quite a bit of cussing, but that's the norm for a gritty urban fantasy.

 

    Everything builds to a climactic and prolonged magical battle.  Our heroes’ plight looks hopeless, but they accomplish their basic mission and flee to fight another day.  Proven Guilty is a standalone story, as well as part of a series.  I definitely recommend reading this series in order.  Harry makes a lot of references to past episodes during this tale, many of which I’d forgotten all about.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.8/5 based on 1,888 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.38/5 based on 108,848 ratings and 2,881 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “You would be wise not to anger me, wizard.  You’re hardly in a position to make demands.”

    “If you were going to kill me, you’d have done it already.”

    Crane let out a rueful laugh.  “I suppose that’s true enough.  I was going to finish you and drop you in the lake, but imagine my surprise when I made some calls and it turns out that you’re …”

    “Infamous” I suggested.  “Tough?  A good dancer?”

    Crane showed me his teeth.  “Marketable.  For an insignificant young man, you’ve managed to irritate a great many people.”  (pg. 271)

 

    “What would happen?” Charity asked quietly.

    “We’d die,” I said.  “We’d be trapped in deep Faerie, near the strongholds of all kinds of trouble, with no way to escape but to try to find our way to the portions of Faerie that are near Earth.  The locals would eat us and spit out the bones before we got anywhere close to escape.”

    Thomas rolled his eyes and said, “This isn’t exactly helping me keep my mind off my fear, man.”

    “Shut up,” I told him.  “Or I’ll move to my second initiative and start telling you knock-knock jokes.”  (pg. 377)

 

“Wizards is the kway-zee-est people.”  (pg. 204 )

    I enjoyed Proven Guilty just as much as the earlier books in this series but I have to admit to finding the ending to be both weird and a bit disquieting.

 

    First of all, it’s a stutter-step ending.  The epic battle of good-vs-evil is over, the good guys make it home safely, yet there’s still a hundred pages left in the book.  I was left wondering what details still needed resolving.  On the plus side, there’s a trial which neatly ties into the book’s opening scene.  Things look bad for Harry and his charge, but impeccable timing saves the day, and Harry ends up with an apprentice.

 

    That's when the weirdness set in.

 

    Harry and Michael engage in a long dialogue about faith versus magic.  Neither changes his view because of this, but it was strange to see Jim Butcher getting just a tad bit preachy.

 

    Then comes an underage come-on scene.  Other Amazon and Goodreads reviewers have pointed out how awkward the whole thing is.  Yes, Harry responds appropriately, but still, it was a yucky touch to an otherwise captivating tale.

 

    Finally, Harry and his former mentor discuss several loose ends that weren’t tied up in the book, including the possibility that there is an unknown “puppet master” who’s manipulating all the strife between the good guys and the baddies.  Is this a teaser for the next book or a recap of just how many details weren’t addressed in this one?

 

    Nevertheless, let’s be clear.  For the first 500 pages, Proven Guilty kept me thoroughly enamored with its tale of the paranormal.  Jim Butcher is an excellent writer and I see no hint of him “just mailing it in”.  The final fifty pages do get a little weird, but that doesn’t ruin the fascinating story he’s laid down up to that point.  I’ll no doubt be reading the next book, White Night, in the near future.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  I liked the mention of a Barnes & Noble bookstore.  Local places to buy books, both new and used, are dying out (where have you gone, Border’s Books?), which is a shame.  Along with libraries, they constitute some of my favorite places to hang out.  It’s nice to see them getting a nod.

Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene

   1958; 212 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: British Humor; Historical Thriller; Intrigue.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Jim Wormold could use some extra pesos.  He’s a single parent, trying to make ends meet while raising a sixteen-year-old daughter, Milly, who hasn’t quite grasped the concept that money doesn’t grow on trees.  She’s just bought a horse, of all things!  Well, she’s made the first payment, with no idea where to get the rest of the money, let alone how to also pay rent for a stable to house the horse in and hay to feed it.  No problem though, Daddy will surely find a way.

 

    But Daddy is a British national who lives in Havana, Cuba eking out a living in a small shop out of which he sells vacuum cleaners.  It’s the 1950’s and political tensions in Cuba are running high.  There are rebels in the hills (led by some young whippersnapper named Castro), and a bunch of very nervous policemen in the streets, including Captain Segura, aka “the Red Vulture”, who seems to have caught Milly’s eye, and vice versa.  Wormold could use a monetary miracle right now.

 

    Happily, the miracle comes in the form of the British Secret Service, who are looking for an on-the-scene agent in Havana to send them intelligence reports on the volatile local situation.  They’re willing to pay Jim a modest monthly stipend, plus cover any expenses he incurs while gathering information on their behalf.  That includes money he might spend recruiting local Cubans for their help in promoting British interests.

 

    It’s manna from heaven, and Milly gets to keep her horse!  Jim just sends in expense reports for agents who exist only in his head, along with “intelligence reports” covering whatever he can dream up.  In exchange, London sends him back money because, after all, what can they do to check up on him?  Spend lots more money to send someone over to Cuba to audit him?

 

    Funny thing about that, Jim.

 

What’s To Like...

    Our Man in Havana is set mostly in Cuba during the closing days of the Batista dictatorship.  When Graham Greene was writing it, the final outcome was still very much in doubt, and I was impressed with the “feel” for 1950’s Havana that the book conveys.  Revolution may be in the air, but you can still find good booze in bars and fine food in restaurants, get drenched by ocean mist when walking by the shore, and ride horses.

 

    The book delights in poking puckish fun at the British Secret Service.  Graham Greene was an English author, so the book is written in the Queen's English, not American.  There are cheques and pyjamas, things are learnt and smelt, and you manoeuvre your tyres around kerbs.  I even "learnt" a new French phrase, “coup de foudre”, which is translated below.

 

    The writing is witty, and Wormold’s spying scam quickly degenerates into absurd lies-upon-lies.  He tries in vain to keep the deception going for as long as possible, knowing that it will inevitably come crashing down at some point.  Nested in among all the tomfoolery are some keen insights from Greene about nationalism, international relations, the dark business of espionage, and, of course, coups de foudre.

 

    There aren’t a lot of characters to keep track of, and some of them exist only in Wormold’s imagination.  Our Man in Havana is an easy, fast read, with 22 chapters/interludes covering 212 pages.  I learned how to beat someone who’s a better checker-player than you (I suck at checkers), chuckled at Milly’s “invisible duenna”, and never did figure out if the lyrics quoted twice in the book (“they say the earth is round/my madness offends”) are real or just something Graham Greene made up.  I suspect the latter.

 

    The ending is a mixed bag.  On one hand, it's decently clever, and logical.  OTOH, it's not action-packed, twisty, or filled with over-the-top laughs.  More on this in a bit.  Our Man in Havana is a standalone novel.  I don’t believe Graham Greene ever used the setting and characters in any of his many other novels, but to be honest, this was my first Graham Greene book.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Coup de foudre (phrase, French) : a sudden unforeseen event, in particular an instance of love at first sight.

Others: Morocco (n.); Pissoirs (n., pl.), Doss (v.); Verger (n.), Solecism (n.); Huff (v.).

 

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 944 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.94/5 based on 27,791 ratings and 1,952 reviews

 

Things that sound dirty, but aren’t…

    What enormous bladders Cubans have, and how clean Hawthorne’s hands must be getting by this time.

 

Excerpts...

    “Why did you set fire to Earl?”

    “I was tempted by the devil,” she said.

    “Milly, please be sensible.”

    “Saints have been tempted by the devil.”

    “You are not a saint.”

    “Exactly.  That’s why I fell.”  (loc. 175)

 

    “One reason why the West hates the great Communist states is that they don’t recognize class-distinctions.  Sometimes they torture the wrong people.  So too of course did Hitler and shocked the world.  Nobody cares what goes on in our prisons, or in the prisons of Lisbon or Caracas, but Hitler was too promiscuous.  It was rather as though in your country a chauffeur had slept with a peeress.”

    “We are not shocked by that any longer.”

    “It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.”  (loc. 2350)

 

Kindle Details…

    Our Man in Havana goes for $10.99 right now at Amazon, although I picked it up when it was temporarily discounted.  Amazon has a couple dozen other Graham Greene e-books available, ranging in price anywhere from $2.99 to $12.99.

 

“Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?”  (loc. 3001 )

    There’s just a smattering of cussing (9 instances in the first 50%), a couple racial epithets (that were common in the 1950’s), and one brief reference to drug-smuggling (cocaine, opium, marijuana).  That’s about it for R-rated stuff.  If this were a mystery, I’d say it qualifies as a “cozy”.

 

    My main disappointment with Our Man in Havana was the storytelling.  I was hoping for something exciting, twisty, and absurdly over-the-top.  The storyline was none of these.

 

    This is not to say the book wasn’t enjoyable.  The humor may be light-hearted, but it’s there in abundance.  It was a pleasure to read book set in Cuba where the island’s people are portrayed as being as warm as its climate and as savvy as any foreign agent in their country.  Indeed, my favorite character, besides the protagonist, was the "heavy", Captain Segura.

 

    Oh yeah, one last thing to quibble about. the dog dies.

 

    6 Stars.  A few months after publication, the book was made into a movie and filmed on location in Cuba in early 1959, just a couple months after Fidel Castro took power.  Castro visited the filming and Wikipedia notes that he “complained that the novel did not accurately portray the brutality of the Batista regime”.  Sometimes you just can’t please everyone.