Project Daedalus - Thomas Hoover

   1991; 368 pages. New Author? : No, but it’s been a while.  Genres: Technothriller; Action-Intrigue.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    Sometimes money laundering can be in the best interest of both parties.

 

    For instance, if a sovereign nation, such as Russia, wants to finance a cutting-edge technological research project at a powerful private-enterprise industrial corporation in a different country, such as Japan, it’s best for all concerned that nobody else knows about it.

 

    One common method is to convert millions of dollars into something called debentures, loan certificates that are unsecured.  Pass them through a couple of rounds of unscrupulous bankers’ hands so they can’t be traced, then to the intended receiver, and make sure everybody keeps their mouths shut.

 

    Alas, things go haywire if those debentures disappear during one of those banking handoffs.  If those certificates aren’t found, and in a hurry, heads will roll.  Literally.  But where are we going to find someone with experience in prying into clandestine operations?

 

    How about an ex-CIA agent, Michael Vance, Jr.?

 

What’s To Like...

    There are two main storylines in Project Daedalus: our protagonist, Michael Vance, tries to figure out where the debentures went; and an aerospace corporation works at developing a plane (as shown above in the book cover) that can achieve “hypersonic” speeds of Mach 25 or so.  Eventually the two plot threads converge, setting up an exciting climax.

 

    I enjoyed the various settings.  We start out in Athens, Greece, with a visit to nearby Knossos, Crete.  We also spend time in London, where the money-laundering shenanigans are taking place; and Hokkaido, Japan, where the plane testing is underway.  And let’s not neglect to mention several goosebump-raising trips into the upper atmosphere.  All these places felt “real” to me.

 

    The book was written in 1991, and I chuckled at some of the now-obsolete items.  Messaging was done by telex, and decryption efforts were done via a cutting-edge technological device (for that era): a Lotus spreadsheet program on a 486 computer.  I also liked the mention of the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, and was wowed when a plane did a “Mach 3 Immelmann maneuver”.

 

    Everything builds to a sustained, nail-biting ending.  You might have the fastest plane ever, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be brought down by missile-shooting enemy fighter planes and/or the excessive-heat conditions of the atmosphere.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 159 ratings and 48 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.50*/5, based on 193 ratings and 11 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    To begin with, members of the intelligence services of major nations didn’t go around knocking each other off; that was an unwritten rule among spooks.  Very bad taste.  Maybe you tried to get somebody to talk with sodium pentathol [sic] or scopolamine, but guns were stupid and everybody knew it.  You could get killed with one of those things, for godsake.  (loc. 2148)

 

    He slipped off the shirt he’d been wearing in London, happy to be rid of it, and put on the first half of the uniform.  Not a bad fit.  The trousers also seemed tailor-made.  Then he slipped on the wool topper, completing the ensemble.

    “You would make a good officer, I think.”  Andrei Androv stood back and looked him over with a smile.  “But you have to act like one too.  Remember to be insulting.”  (loc. 6585)

 

Kindle Details…

    You can pick up Project Daedalus for free at Amazon right now.  In fact, the other eight e-books Thomas Hoover has tout here are also free.  I suspect this is a “for a limited time only” deal.

 

“If a man owes you a hundred dollars, you have power over him; if he owes you a million dollars, he has power over you.”  (loc. 4250)

    There’s a fair amount of cussing in Project Daedalus; I counted 18 instances in the first 10% of the book, including three f-bombs.  There are several rolls-in-the-hay to boot, since Vance crosses paths with an ex-lover along the way.

 

    There were also a fair number of typos, such as Vanced/Vance, wastin/wastin’, and numerous missing quotation marks.  One recurring error involved the name of the prototype aircraft, “Daedalus I”, which the conversion program often mistakenly rendered as “Daedalus /”.

 

    I’m always happy when words and phrases in foreign languages show up in the text.  Here, lots of Russian, Japanese, and Greek vocabulary was used, which I liked, but they are not languages I’m proficient in.  It would’ve been nice to have translations supplied via footnotes or a glossary.

 

    The main issue though, which several other reviewers also pointed out, was the abundance of technical jargon.  Yes, Project Daedalus is aptly marketed as a “technothriller”.  Yes, that implies there will be passages explaining technical stuff.  But here, those passages are so lengthy, and pop up so often that it slows down the pacing.  And let’s keep in mind, Mach 25 is an impossible speed for an aircraft in Earth’s atmosphere.  The technical details about it are all fictional.

 

    Despite that, I enjoyed Project Daedalus.  I skimmed through those technical speedbumps (what the heck is a “scramjet” anyway?), and refocused when the text got back to advancing the storyline.  There was lots of Action-&-Intrigue to keep me turning the pages, and I was impressed that the Japanese and Russian characters, of which there were many, were portrayed as three-dimensional human beings, not cookie-cutter stereotypes.

 

    7 Stars.  One last thing.  If you look in the Table of Contents, you’ll find there’s an entire chapter missing – Chapter 7.  Now, I know of at least one author who does such a thing; he simply eschews Chapter 13 in any of his books.  And to be fair, I don’t think the chapter is truly missing.  It’s just a counting glitch.  Still, what are the odds of this sort of oversight?

Caribbee - Thomas Hoover

    2010; 454 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Historical Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    Quick - in the 1630’s, where were the largest number of English settlers in the New World, Virginia or Massachusetts?  It’s a trick question; the answer is the various “Lesser Antilles” islands in the eastern Caribbean, most notably, Barbados.

    The first cash crop tried by the Barbadian settlers was tobacco, but it was soon evident that Virginia’s version was much better.  So the Barbadians turned to sugar cane instead. There is a lot of money to be made in the sugar business.

    But it comes at a cost.

What’s To Like...

    The historical setting is unusual, feels “real”, and is fascinating to read about.  Aye, these be swashbuckling times, matey, but pirates take a backseat here to independence, human rights, and even romance.  Some social issues, such as feminism and slavery (and even a brief wink at gay rights) are tackled.  Their resolution seemed to be a bit anachronistic, but it made for a better story.

    The main characters are well-developed, albeit somewhat stereotyped.  Indeed, it felt like the three components of the main love triangle were plucked straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean, but without the foibles and punchlines.  You can quickly figure out who will end up in whose bed, although I suppose this is true of any romance novel.  Surprisingly, my favorite character was one of the baddies, Benjamin Briggs, who starts out all black, but due to a dominant trait of self-serving ambition, turns “gray” at times.

    But it is as a piece of historical fiction that Caribbee shines.  This is the second book I’ve read this year where the Sugar Industry is shown to be both a boon and a curse.  It may create a reliable cash flow, but cultivating sugar cane is labor-intensive, and here on Barbados, it brought about a huge slavery problem.  Do you think Thomas Hoover is hyper-fictionalizing this?  Read Sarah Vowell’s excellent history, Unfamiliar Fishes, reviewed here, and see how sugar utterly destroyed the kingdom of Hawaii.

    Caribbee is sprinkled with bits and pieces of several languages – French, Spanish, Portuguese, and (what I presume to be genuine) Yoruba.  It works well here, and you don’t need to be fluent in any of these to understand what is going down.  There’s one recurring typo that should be noted.  Our hero’s ship is called the Defiance, and apparently somewhere late in the proofing, it was decided to put the name in italics.  A “global change” was done, but alas, Thomas Hoover also likes to use that word in the storytelling.  So you end up with a capitalized, italicized “Defiance” in the middle of sentences employing the word in its ordinary sense.  This can get annoyingly confusing real fast.

Excerpts...

    Katherine studied her.  “Do you believe in all those African deities yourself?”

    “Who can say what’s really true, senhora?”  Her smooth skin glistened from the heat.  She brushed the hair from her eyes in a graceful motion, as though she were in a drawing room, while her voice retreated again into formality.  “The Yoruba even believe that many different things can be true at once.  Something no European can ever understand.”  (loc. 1278)

    “You do not own slaves, senhor.  Yet you do nothing about those on this island who do.”

    “What goes on here is not my affair.  Other men can do what they like.”

     “In Ife we say, ‘He who claps hands for the fool to dance is no better than the fool.’”  He glanced back at the arsenal stored in the dark room behind him.  “If you do nothing to right a wrong, then are you not an accomplice?”    (loc. 4372)

Kindle Details...

    At present, Caribbee is a free download at Amazon.  Indeed, all of Thomas Hoover’s Kindle books are free right now.  Wowza.  Get ‘em while they’re hot, and thank the author by leaving a review on Amazon of the ones that you read.

If we do not bear suffering that will fill a basket, we will not receive kindness that will fill a cup.  (loc. 1328)

    The pacing in Caribbee is uneven.  Most of the story (80% or so) takes place on and around Barbados, but frankly, none of the main plotlines get resolved there.  Instead, the scene shifts to Jamaica for the last 20% of the book, where everything finally gets tied up.  This made for an exciting ending, but it felt rushed.

    I suspect the problem lies not with the writing skills of Thomas Hoover, but with the historical facts themselves.  In truth, the independence movement on Barbados was a noble effort, but ultimately in vain.  So the author had no choice but to switch locales to Jamaica.

   I can’t help but think that this would have made one fantastic piece of Alternate History fiction.  What if the opportunities for freedom on Barbados had not been missed?  What if the British "enforcers" had been sent packing?  How would that have affected the next 200 years of slavery in the Western Hemisphere?  What would an independent Barbados have done to the British Empire in the New World?  And in turn, what impact would that have on French, Spanish, and Dutch colonialism?

    But I'm dreaming.  Let’s be clear; Caribbee is a superior Historical Fiction novel, and an enjoyable read.  The quibbles are minor, and are mostly due to historical realities, not to any failing on the author’s part.

    8½ Stars.  Highly recommended.  Subtract ½ star if you aren’t into heroes who buckle their swashes.