The Last Oracle - James Rollins

    2008; 577 pages.  Book 5 (out of 14) in the “Sigma Force” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Suspense; Thriller; Action-Adventure; Save-the-World.  Overall Rating : 10 */10.

    Someone just tried to kill Gray Pierce, the commander of the black ops unit “Sigma Force”.  In broad daylight.  In the middle of Washington D.C.  Right outside the Sigma Force headquarters, no less.

    It was only by an extraordinary stroke of luck that Gray survived.  Some homeless guy had just wandered up to him, looking for a handout, no doubt.  The sniper’s bullet wiped him out instead of Gray.  I suppose it’s theoretically possible the vagrant was the intended target, but why would a professional hitman have any reason to take out a homeless person?

    Nah, that's not very likely.  Somehow Gray’s cover has been blown and that needs to be fixed, and fast.  Just as soon as he attends to one small detail.

    Why was the panhandler carrying around a 2,000-year-old coin?

What’s To Like...

    The action starts immediately as The Last Oracle opens with a prologue set in 398 A.D. Greece during the final days of the famed Oracle at Delphi.  It never lets up after that as various members of Sigma Force combat the bad guys on a variety of fronts: Washington D.C., India, the Ural Mountains in Russia, and Pripyat, Ukraine, the latter being the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster better known as “Chernobyl”.

    As with any Sigma Force novel, there are multiple plotlines to follow.  Here, at least at the beginning, they are:  1.) Who shot the panhandler?  2.) Why was the panhandler trying to reach Gray?  3.) What’s with the skull?  4.) What’s so special about Sasha?  5.) Where’s Monk?  6.) What are the nefarious plans (dubbed “Operation Saturn” and “Operation Uranus”) that Savina and Nicolas have concocted?

    There's lots of intrigue, plenty of shooting, chases galore, and enough wit to keep things from getting too somber.  Monk, a Sigma Force member and apparently MIA at the end of the previous novel (I’m not reading this series in order), is initially way out in the boonies, and it was fun to watch how James Rollins works him back towards reuniting with his wife and old SF buddies.  I liked also that not all the Russian characters are “pure black”, nor are all of the Americans “pure white”.  Other writers of Thrillers should take heed of this.

    The book is well-researched.  I learned about Russia’s struggles with maintaining the safety of its nuclear power program.  I’d never heard of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk (just pronounce it “jellybeans”), despite it being Russia’s 9^th-largest city, and the sad fate of the nearby Lake Karachay.  There was an autism angle as well, including something called  “Autistic Savant Syndrome” which figured prominently in the tale.

    You’ll learn one or two Russian cuss phrases, plus a few snippets of the Romani (Gypsy) tongue.  There's only a few cases of cussing in English, and there are some neat drawings that are critical to the storyline.  James Rollins keeps meticulous track of the timing of each scene (down to the exact minute) , which really helped since the action is worldwide and the plot threads are often occurring simultaneously.  The 22 chapters, plus a Prologue and an Epilogue, average out to about 24 pages each, but those chapters have lots of scene shifts, so you’re never far from a good place to stop for the night.

Excerpts...

    Elizabeth fled with Kowalski down a crooked alley.  A sewage trench lined one side, reeking and foul.

    “Do you have another gun?” she asked.

    “You shoot?”

    “Skeet.  In college.”

    “Not much difference.  Targets just scream a bit more.”  (pg. 299)

    “She might survive, but in what state?  The augment, besides heightening her savant talent, also minimizes the symptoms of her autism.  Take the augment away, and you’ll be left with a child disconnected from the world.”

    “That’s better than being in the grave,” Kat said.

    “Is it?” McBride challenged her.  “Who are you to judge?  With the augment, she has a full life, as short as that might be.  Many children are born doomed from the start, given life sentences by medical conditions.  Leukemia, AIDS, birth defects.  Shouldn’t we seek to give them the best quality of life, rather than quantity?”

    Kat scowled.  “You only want to use her.”

    “Since when is mutual benefit such a bad thing?”  (pg. 376)

“Kowalski, help her.”  “But she shot me!”  (pg. 449)

        The ending is fantastic, climactic, twisty, and bittersweet.  The good guys may prevail, but it comes at a cost.  Chapter 22 is a general epilogue for the survivors of the adventure, and it’s followed by a shorter, more-focused “Epilogue” section that’ll leave a lump in your throat.  You don't see that often in an Action-Adventure story.

    Be sure to read the “Author’s Note To Readers: Truth or Fiction” (pgs. 573-577) at the end to learn what parts of the story are true and what parts were dreamed up by James Rollins.   You will be astounded.

    There’s not really anything to quibble about in The Last Oracle.  My expectations for any James Rollins book are high, and this one fully met them.

    10 Stars.  You can double-check some of the startling claims in the Truth-or-Fiction section  by going out to Wikipedia and reading about Chelyabinsk, Lake Karachay, and Chernobyl.  Wiki’s section about the latter was particularly eye-opening for me.  Yes, Chernobyl is today a ghost town  due to the radiation levels.  But a few people still live there, and, besides two general stores for those diehards, there's even (get this!) a hotel catering to tourists.

The Voynich Cypher - Russell Blake

   2012; 268 pages.  Book 2 (out of 2) in the Dr. Steven Archer Cross series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Action-Thriller ; Suspense; Conspiracies; Puzzle-Solving.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    They had one job.

    To guard an insignificant canister (about the size of a thermos) that’s in a secret room inside a sleepy, nondescript abbey in Italy.  It should've been an easy task for three heavily-armed commandos – one inside the room, one outside its door, and one on the grounds of the abbey.  It doesn't matter that they’ve never been told what the canister holds.

    The job's not new; it's been going on for four centuries now, and no one's ever tried to steal the object.  After a while, even the best-equipped protectors can let down their guard just a tad.  Take a short nap.  Listen to music on an iPod.  There's never any excitement.

    Until tonight, when someone somehow has stolen the canister.  And now the Order of the Holy Relic, who own and occupy the abbey, who hired these guards, and who have been entrusted by the Pope himself to safeguard the canister’s mysterious contents, are in a high dudgeon over the theft.

    And when you steal from the Church, there’s going to be hell to pay.

What’s To Like...

    The storyline of The Voynich Cypher is built around a real document called the Voynich Manuscript, and which can be justifiably called the "Holy Grail of Cryptography".   You can read the Wikipedia article about it here.  The story's structure is very similar to that of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code: the Roman Catholic is guarding a centuries-old secret, somehow it gets compromised, our heroes unwittingly fins themselves in possession of the secret, and they spend the rest of the book going from place to place, solving riddle after riddle, getting ever closer to uncovering the cosmos-changing secret, while also trying to stay one step ahead of bad guys and other rivals.

    For the most part, The Voynich Cypher takes place in various cities in Italy, and I was particularly impressed with the vividness with which Russell Blake portrayed that country.  Maybe he’s lived there; in any event, it certainly didn’t feel like a Wikipedia cut-&-paste job. Our two protagonists, Dr. Steven Cross and Natalie Twain, are fun to tag along with, and there are enough thrills, spills, chases, and puzzles to keep the reader turning the pages.

    The author lists  the place and time settings for the first couple chapters at their start, which was quite helpful.  I enjoyed the (obligatory) Knights Templar tie-in, and was pleasantly surprised by the brief nod to Mithraism, a long-forgotten religion.  Russell Blake blends the historical background of the Voynich Manuscript into the story in bits and pieces.  To a certain extent, this felt like an info dump, but I suppose it was necessary, since most readers will be unacquainted with it.  The author apparently doesn’t think much of tattooed Goth girls, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg, and I got a chuckle out of that.

    I’m a big fan of situational ethics, so I was intrigued by the stealing of the “secret”.  Despite the excitement which ensues, I couldn’t help thinking that ultimately the Church had every right to try to recover the property that was stolen from it.  Curiously, the storyline sides with the thieves (the secret is said to be “liberated”, not “stolen”), and at times I found myself rooting for the agents of the Church to foil our heroes.

    The ending is adequately exciting, though not overly spectacular.  It had one interesting plot twist, but I was expecting it, since the reader knows all of the bad guys have to eventually be accounted for.  Some of the baddies are dispatched with a bit too providentially.  Ultimately, nothing in the world changes, but that sort of letdown is inherent with any book in this genre, including The Da Vinci Code.

    There are 42 chapters covering the 268 pages, which works out to roughly 6 pages per chapter.  The R-rated stuff is mostly cusswords, plus a couple of adult situations.   The number of secondary characters felt “just right” to me; not too many, not too few.  The Voynich Cypher is a standalone story, as well as the second book in a series.  It was published in 2012, and Russell Blake has never since added another installment to the series.  Inquiring minds would like to know why.

Kewlest New Word ...

Dispositive (adj.) : relating to or bringing about the settlement of an issue (such as the disposition of property).  (Heh.  I thought it was a goofy way of saying “negative”.)

Others : Dongle (n.).

Excerpts...                                

    “I think it’s him.  I trailed him from the flat.  I wish we had some photos so we could be sure,” the man muttered into the mouthpiece between puffs.

    “We’re trying to get access to the motor vehicle database for a license photo, but there’s nothing else I’ve been able to find.  The man obviously isn’t much for social media.  Pity.  Facebook’s made everything easier…”  (loc. 1618)

    “Where have you been?  It’s like you’re miles away.  Hello…”

    “I’m sorry.  I’m probably still tired, as well as a little surprised by …well… by this.”

    “Are you complaining?”

    “No.  Quite the opposite.  I mean it’s-“

    “If you find my company too distracting, we can always go back to being platonic colleagues,” she offered.

    “I’m not sure that would work,” Steven countered.

    “It had better not.”  (loc. 3424)

 “That’s the price of a soul these days?  I would have sold mine a long time ago if I’d had any idea you could get that kind of money for one.”  (loc. 4533)

    There are some quibbles.  All the characters are predominantly black or white; I like gray characters.  I felt there were a couple of missed opportunities for thrills and spills, most notably the demises of a pair of the “white-hat” secondary characters.

    There were one or two showing/telling issues, although not to where it got annoying.  And the author and his editors never could decide whether it’s a “duffel bag” or a “duffle bag”.  (Hint: it’s “duffel”.)

    But I pick at nits.  Overall, The Voynich Cypher kept my interest from start to finish, and didn’t strain the limits of believability, like some Action-Thriller do.  If you're looking for something to satisfy your "Dan Brown" itch, this book will do the trick nicely.

    8 Stars.  Subtract 2 stars if you don’t like books that are knockoffs of bestsellers like, say, Jurassic Park, Sherlock Holmes, Fifty Shades of Grey, or The Da Vinci Code.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I personally like such derivative efforts, provided they are well-done.

Blue Labyrinth - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

   2014; 520 pages.  New Author? : No, and no.  Book 14 (out of 17) in the Agent Pendergast series.  Genre : Thriller; Murder-Mystery.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    Someone has delivered a message to FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast.  It's kinda like a Halloween prank; They rang his doorbell, then ran away before he answered the door.

    But instead a burning sack of poop, they left the body of Alban, Pendergast’s most lethal enemy, trussed up, and oh, so dead.

    Yet this is a bittersweet occurrence, because Alban also happens to be one of Aloysius’s sons.  And although they are estranged – Alban has promised to kill his dad  - the fact remains: this is, or was, his flesh and blood.  There’s no doubt that the message has been delivered, and in a most unmistakably stunning manner.  But there’s just one problem.

    Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast has no idea what the message is.

What’s To Like...

    Blue Labyrinth is the 14^th book in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s immensely popular “Agent Pendergast” series, and definitely a step up from the previous book in the series, White Fire, reviewed here.  Aloysius Pendergast is back in the spotlight, and two of my favorite supporting characters – Constance Greene and Margo Green - replace Corrie Swanson as the female leads. Detective Vincent D’Agosta returns as a major player too, and that’s a plus.  Also back is the New York Museum of Natural History, which was the setting for Book 1 in this series, Relic, reviewed here, and was how I first got hooked on this series.

     The book is mostly set in New York City, with a couple of side trips to the California desert, upstate New York, Brazil, and Switzerland.  There are three murders to investigate: a.) Pendergast’s son, b.) a technician at the Natural History Museum, and c.) the wife of a doctor from way back in the 1890’s.  They seem unrelated, but if you're a veteran reader of this series, you know that three threads are intertwined, and will inevitably merge down the line.

    As usual, the action starts immediately (Alban’s body appears on page 5), and the pacing is lightning-fast.  At long last, a lot more about the dark, dirty secrets of the Pendergast family tree are revealed, and about the enigmatic Constance Greene as well.  We are introduced to one of Aloysius’s forefathers, Hezekiah Pendergast, and he's  quite the character.

    There are a lot of references to earlier books in the series, including my favorite baddie, Diogenes, although if this is your first Agent Pendergast book, you won’t be lost.  I enjoyed learning some more phrases in French and Portuguese, the latter of which included, if I'm not mistaken, a couple handy cuss phrases.  I loved the quote from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, as well as the nod to Caravaggio, who’s probably my favorite painter this side of Salvador Dali.  I had my doubts about the uber-powerful “Triflic Acid”, which figures into the storyline, but Wikipedia confirmed its existence.  I’m embarrassed to say that as a chemist, I’d never heard of it.

    As always, there's a lot of violence and a fair amount of cussing in the book.  Blue Labyrinth is a standalone novel, despite being part of a series.  The chapters are Pattersonian in length, 78 of them covering 520 pages.  All the main threads are resolved, and I look forward to learning even more about the many skeletons in Aloysius’s closet.

Kewlest New Word ...

Diener (n.) : a morgue worker responsible for handling, moving, and cleaning a corpse.

Others : Wicking (a verb).

Excerpts...

    “I’ve decided I want that ticket, Goodman Lickspittle.  I am going to contest that ticket, in court.  And if I’m not mistaken, that means you will have to appear in court, as well.  And at such a time I will take the greatest pleasure in pointing out to the judge, the lawyers, and everyone else assembled what a disgraceful shadow of a man you are.  A  shadow?  Perhaps I exaggerate.  A shadow, at least, can prove to be tall – tall indeed.  But you, you’re a homunculus, a dried neat’s tongue, a carbuncle on the posterior of humanity.”  (pg. 289)

    “I’ve … been having a nightmare.  It seems never to end.”

    His voice was dry and light, like a faint breeze over dead leaves, and she had to lean in closer to catch the words.

    “You were quoting the libretto of Don Giovanni,” she said.

    “Yes.  I … fancied myself at the Commendatore.”

    “Dreaming of Mozart doesn’t sound like a nightmare to me.”

    I …”  The mouth worked silently for a moment before continuing.  “I dislike opera.”  (pg. 301)

“You just put your boot so far up his ass, he’ll have to eat his dinner with a shoehorn.”  (pg. 78)

    The quibbles are minor.  One thing that hasn’t returned for a long time is the “is it natural or supernatural?” mysteries that made the early books in the series so captivating.  Of course, there’s still the matter of Constance Greene seemingly recalling her life in the 1800’s while not looking a day over 25 years old, and I can’t see that not having a this-worldly cause.

    The ending, while certainly action-packed and filled with tension, felt over-the-top to me.  I like unexpected turns as much as the next reader, but really now, a pair of civilians taking out a whole squad of highly-trained mercenary goons?  Good help is apparently hard to find these days, especially “bad good help”.

   It was too easy to figure out who would live and who would die, even among the minor characters.  If you're rotten to the core, don’t like Aloysius or Vinnie or Margo, or are just plain naturally obnoxious, you’re unlikely to be breathing by the end of the book. 

     Finally, and sinking even deeper into the depths of nitpicking, I have no idea what the book’s title refers to.  I don’t recall any labyrinth, blue or otherwise.

    8½ Stars.  Pay no attention to my quibbles.  Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are a top-notch writing team, and my expectations for their Agent Pendergast books are sky high.  I found Blue Labyrinth to be a page-turner, and the next book in the series, Crimson Shore, is already loaded and waiting on my Kindle.

The Lives Of Tao - Wesley Chu

   2013; 464 pages.  Book #1 (out of 3, plus a couple of spinoffs) in the Tao series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Fantasy; Humorous; Action-Intrigue.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

    Ah yes, those pesky voices in your head.  Roen’s got them.  Well, technically, there’s only a single voice in him, at least that’s what the voice tells him.

    He’s got a name, too – "Tao".  And he says he’s an extraterrestrial, and he’s sorry he jumped into Roen’s head, but now he’s stuck there, so there you go.  And Tao says he and Roen are a team now, and they’ve got to save the world from other people with aliens in their heads, or something like that.

    Roen’s pretty sure he’s just going crazy.  But don’t crazy people just blindly do whatever those voices in their heads tell them to?  Roen isn’t having any of that, so he must not be crazy, right?  On the other hand, if he’s not crazy, then that means there really is an alien camped out in his cranium.  It’s all so confusing.

    But when other people start calling him Tao, while in the process of trying to kill him, Roen has to admit – Tao’s story is beginning to sound a lot more plausible.

What’s To Like...

    The Lives of Tao is the start of a fresh new (for me at least)  Action series, with a touch of Fantasy thrown in for fun.  The story is equal parts character-driven and plotline-driven, and I liked this balance.  Our protagonist, Roen, starts out as overweight, out-of-shape nerd, and it’s fun to watch Tao, and some of the other spirit-ET’s, mold him into a secret agent that just might eventually survive encounters with the bad guys.  Heck, he might even get a date with an earth girl, something that never happens in real life to nerds.

    The best part of The Lives of Tao, as other reviewers have noted, is the witty dialogue  and alien/human interaction that goes on between Tao and Roen.  This could get awkward to read, especially when there’s a third entity taking part in the conversation, but Wesley Chu handles it quite deftly.  Tao’s thoughts are in italics, and the humans’ words are in quotation marks.

    For the most part, the book is set in Chicago; presumably the author hails from there.  There are 39 chapters covering the 464 pages, which makes them of moderate length.  Starting with Chapter 9, each chapter opens with a sort of ‘prologue’, giving details of Tao’s various previous lives.  He’s been inhabiting humans for several millennia, and has an impressive résumé.  There is some cussing in the dialogue, but it's few and far between and fits in nicely.

    It is obvious that Wesley Chu is a history buff, and I very much enjoyed that.  One of my history heroes, Vercingetorix, gets some ink here, as does playing chess with a chess clock. Both of those were nerdy treats for me.  One gets the feeling that perhaps the author is a bit of a nerd himself, and I mean that as a compliment.

    The overarching plotline concerns the ongoing war between the two extraterrestrial forces – the Prophus (the good guys, including Tao), and the Genjix (the baddies).  At the moment, the baddies are kicking butt, and presumably the trilogy is all about the Prophus making a comeback, with Tao/Roen leading the charge.  It’s fun to watch Roen get used to being a Prophus agent, especially trying to come to grips with the fact that his new line of work be necessity involves killing people.

    Everything builds to an action-packed, tension-filled ending.  There are, of course, a number of threads still to be resolved.  But hey, that’s why Books 2 and 3 exist.  The Lives of Tao is a standalone novel, and its sequel, The Deaths of Tao, resides on my TBR shelf.

Excerpts...

    “Oh, this makes perfect sense now.  Million year-old geriatric aliens.  How do you stay alive for so long?  What’s your secret?”

    “Technically we self-reproduce, similar to how amoebas on your planet reproduce.  Over the course of time, we continually regenerate, sustaining ourselves from the nutrients of our hosts.”

    “So you’re a parasite?”

    “We like to think of it as symbiotic, but we can discuss biology another time.”  (loc. 815)

    Roen leaned back onto the couch and picked up his cat.  The poor creature had been feeling neglected for months now and hissed, trying to escape.  Roen held on to the tabby as he squirmed and dug his claws into his arm.  “Now, now, pussycat,” he murmured.

    “Have you decided on giving him a real name yet?”

    “Nah … Meow Meow’s a fine name.”

    “No, it is not.  That is like calling a dog Bark Bark.”

    “Actually, it would be more like Woof Woof, but I think Meow Meow sounds cuter.”

    “Your naming habits will get your kids beat up in the schoolyard.”  (loc. 3000)

Kindle Details...

    The Lives of Tao sells for $6.99 at Amazon.  The other two e-books in the series, The Deaths of Tao and The Rebirths of Tao, sell for the same price, as does the spinoff, The Rise of Io.  A related novella, The Days of Tao, goes for $2.99.

 What are you going to do next time a Genjix wants to kill you, beg him to death?”  (loc. 1356)

    It’s really tough to come up with any quibbles about The Lives of Tao.  The only thing I can think of is that you aren’t alerted about any scene shifts as you’re reading, and that got confusing at times.  But that’s really a very small nit to pick.

    I suppose one could carp about the storyline being somewhat less than “epic”.  We spend most of the book watching Roen go through spy training boot camp and then accompany him out on some rookie-easy surveillance jobs.  Yet somehow, Wesley Chu makes it all very interesting, and the reader is rewarded with more exciting capers as Roen gains experience.

    9 Stars.  It’s always a literary thrill to “discover” a great new author who thoroughly entertains you and who you’d never heard of before.  That was the case here.  I remember my local Half Price Books store promoting the heck out of this series a couple years ago.  Now I understand why.

The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown

   2009; 639 pages.  New Author? : No, but it’s been a while.  Since before the start of this blog, actually.  Book #3 (out of 5) in the Robert Langdon series.  Genre: Action-Thriller; Mystery; Puzzle-Solving.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    For Robert Langdon, it was great to be back in Washington DC.  Especially since it was an all-expenses-paid trip, courtesy of his lifelong mentor and friend, Peter Solomon, who's invited him to be a guest speaker for the night.  In the US Capitol building, no less.

    Of course, it was all on very short notice.  Something about the originally scheduled speaker suddenly being unable to make it.  So Langdon was kind of a back-up option.  Still, having a private jet pick him up and fly him  to DC was quite the experience.  As was a sleek Lincoln Town Car limousine waiting to whisk him from Dulles Airport to the Capitol.

    That was when things got just a little bit wonky.  Because when the limousine dropped him off, and Robert Langdon made his way to Statuary Hall, where the lecture was to be held, it was dark.  And empty.  And in checking with the Capitol officials, there was no lecture of any kind scheduled for tonight in the building.  Maybe this was somebody’s idea of a joke.

    But if so, the jokester had sunk a lot of money into pulling it off.

What’s To Like...

    The Lost Symbol is equal parts action, intrigue, and puzzle-solving, and delivers plenty of each from the get-go.  Dan Brown switches up the POV’s to keep things hopping at a crisp pace.  There aren’t a lot of characters to follow in this 600+ page book, so the ones that are here get developed nicely.  I was particularly intrigued by Inoue Sato; you could never be 100% sure exactly whose side she was on.

    There’s only one setting for the book : Washington DC.  Indeed, towards the end of the book (page 622), Robert Langdon remarks that it’s only been ten hours since he landed in DC.  So the book's entire time frame is amazingly short.

    If you’re fascinated by the Masonic Order, with their 33 hierarchy levels and their rumored metaphysical secrets, this is the book for you.  Ditto if you’re curious as to how Particle Physics might dovetail with ancient Mysticism.  And of course, there are a slew of puzzles that need solving to save the world.

    With 134 chapters to span the 639 pages, there’s always a convenient place to stop reading for the night.  I was happy to see my Gnostics get worked into the story, as well as a brief plug for blogging.  Even Aleister Crowley gets a brief mention (who?), and it was kewl to see Melancolia 1 here too.  The acronym “TLV” was new to me (it means something quite different if you work in Regulatory Affairs), and it was fun to learn the origin of the word “sincerely”.

    There’s a little bit of cussing, and of course a requisite amount of violence and killing.  This is a standalone novel, as well as part of the Robert Langdon series.

Kewlest New Word...

Suffumigation (n.) : the burning of substances (such as incense) to produce fumes as part of some magical rituals.

Others: Putti (n., plural).

Excerpts...

    One mortal man had seen Mal’akh naked, eighteen house earlier.  The man had shouted in fear.  “Good God, you’re a demon!”

    “If you perceive me as such,” Mal’akh had replied, understanding as had the ancients that angels and demons were identical – interchangeable archetypes – all a matter of polarity: the guardian angel who conquered your enemy in battle was perceived by your enemy as a demon destroyer.  (pg. 14)

    As a young girl, Katherine Solomon had often wondered if there was life after death.  Does heaven exist?  What happens when we die?  As she grew older, her studies in science quickly erased any fanciful notions of heaven, hell, or the afterlife.  The concept of “life after death,” she came to accept, was a human construct … a fairy tale designed to soften the horrifying truth that was our mortality.

    Or so I believed …  (pg. 487)

 “Death is usually an all-or-nothing thing!”  (pg. 47)

    For all the thrills and spills in The Lost Symbol, there were some weaknesses.  First of all, there are a slew of info dumps: about the Masons, New Age metaphysics, the layout of Washington DC, the mystical “eye” on the back of the $1 bill, etc., and for the most part, they’re awkwardly dropped into the storyline.

    No one seems to perceive that Dr. Abaddon’s  name is obviously phony – it’s an old synonym for Hell or the Devil.  And you just know that when one of the characters is introduced as being “plump”, she’s going to get killed off somewhere along the line.  Why not just dress her in a Star Trek red shirt?

    Also, there is a kewl bit of situational ethics introduced at the end, when the showdown between Peter Solomon and Mal’akh takes place.  Alas, the author chickens out in resolving it, allowing an act of God to make the decision instead of the humans.

    But the main problem with The Lost Symbol is the big secret itself.  The bad guy wants it.  The Masons are willing to die to keep it a secret.  And the mighty CIA lives in mortal fear that us commoners will learn about it.  Yet when it finally is disclosed to the reader, it’s really no big deal and it’s really not that big of a secret.  Anyone who’s ever dabbled in Metaphysics 101 will already be familiar with it.

    What a royal letdown.

    7 Stars.  I remember The Lost Symbol being panned as a literary flop when it came out.  True, it had to follow Dan Brown’s mega-hit, The Da Vinci Code, an almost impossible task.  The haters are justified; it is a poorly-written book with an ending that is mediocre at best.  But the Dan Brown loyalists are justified as well.  The writing may be mediocre, but the nonstop-action storytelling itself is top-notch.

Guardian of the Red Butterfly - D.S. Cuellar

   2013; 294 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Book 1 (out of 2, so far) in the “Guardian” series.  Genre : Action-Thriller; Martial Arts.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

    The wonderful city of Portland, Oregon has not one, but two undergrounds.  There is a literal one, a labyrinth of passageways leading from various hotels and bars to the dockside on the Willamette River.  A long time ago, they were used to move cargo from ships to various establishments without having to deal with urban traffic.  Wikipedia has an article about this; you can find it here.

    Portland’s other underground is more figurative.  It refers to the clandestine and forced transport of human beings out from the city to waiting ships, to be used as slave labor.

    Sometimes the two undergrounds overlapped into one operation.  In the early days, able-bodied men were kidnapped and moved via these tunnels onto ships, and forced into grueling manual servitude.  This practice was nicknamed “shanghaiing”, hence the local name for the underground, the “Shanghai Tunnels”.

     Now a new, modern-day enterprise has sprung up.  Someone is using the Portland underground for sex trafficking, sneaking underage girls from the city to overseas destinations.  And the Shanghai Tunnels have inherited a new moniker because of this.  The perpetrators now call it “The Unheavenly City”.

    The Portland Police Department really needs to infiltrate this despicable operation and shut it down.  But how?

What’s To Like...

    The action in Guardian of the Red Butterfly starts immediately and never lets up.  I suspect D.S. Cuellar made a conscious to do this, and he succeeded nicely – simply put, there are no slow spots.  The writing style is story-driven; things are presented in a very straightforward manner, with sparse descriptions and little or no philosophical musing.  I call it the “Clive Cussler” approach.

    This is a “sex and thrills” story, so expect a lot of both, along with the concomitant cussing.  I liked the characters; even the bad guys were interesting.  There are 32 chapters covering the 294 pages, so there’s always a convenient place to stop for the night.   The formatting of the text is not justified, which bugged my OCD mind.  But it probably won’t bother most readers.

    The core idea for the novel is very good: sex trafficking and the toll it takes on its victims makes for a powerful theme.  I enjoyed learning about medieval Japanese culture – the geisha, samurai, and a pair of “companion” swords.  You’ll learn who the “guardian” is on page 75, and who the “Red Butterfly” is on page 208.  I chuckled at the cultural nicety of using two hands to present something politely to another person.  Years ago, I had to learn to do this when giving my business cards to customers on a week-long business trip in the Far East.

    Everything builds to a suitably tense climax.  There were some parts of it I had trouble visualizing, and a couple details strained my believability limits.  But I say that about Dirk Pitt novels too.  And oh yeah, I liked the cat!

    Guardian of the Red Butterfly is a standalone story, as well as part of a series.  The sequel, Guardian of  the Monarch Moon is already available, as is a D.S. Cuellar book with a separate storyline, Dead To Rights.  All three are available as e-books at Amazon, as well as paperbacks.  

Excerpts...

    “I need you to connect me to Captain Frank Morrell.”

    Steven observed a startled reaction in Karina’s body language at the mention of the name.

    Karina spoke in a hushed voice.  “Frank Morrell was one of the names I saw on my husband’s files.  Victor only kept a file on you for one of two reasons; either Frank is a sworn enemy or he is corruptible.”

    “Hello, this is Captain Morrell.”

    In a hesitant voice Steven said, “Hey, Dad, I think I need your help.”  (pg. 39)

    “What is it about this sword?”

    “This sword may not have any meaning to you but it is one of three swords that represent our family’s legacy.  To have the set restored as one would be a priceless treasure.”  Aiko gave Kyle a heartfelt look.  “Until you find what gives your life meaning, you too will be lost.”  (pg. 212)

“If you don’t officially exist, who’s going to miss you when you’re gone?”  (pg. 207)

    For all the positives, Guardian of the Red Butterfly also has some issues that can't be overlooked.  Most notable is the editing, which, to be blunt, is atrocious.  There are wrong words, misspelled words, paragraphs aren’t indented, and commas and semicolons are abused.  I  don't usually mention these things, since indie authors rarely have the luxury of professional editors to peruse their manuscript.  But here the frequency of these errors was distracting.

    Similarly, the book could do with a fresh round of proofreading.  Eye colors change and some of the fight scene details seemed hard to fathom.  Ditto for the never-any-fun task of polishing the manuscript: inserting info dumps into the tale smoothly, and improving the telling/showing ratio.

    All of this is fixable, and I certainly hope it is done before the next edition of Guardian of the Red Butterfly comes out.  This is a good first effort by a promising new writer; it just needs some rough edges sanded down.

    6 Stars.  Add 2 stars if-and-when an updated version of the book is developed.  I have heard rumors that it is in the works.

The Seventh Plague - James Rollins

   2016; 425 pages.  Book #12 (out of 12, but #13 is due out in December) in the Sigma Force series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Action-Thriller; Save-the-World (several times over).  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    After two years of being missing and presumed dead, Professor Harold McCabe, an archaeologist with an obsession with Moses and the ten plagues, has suddenly wandered out of the Sudanese desert and back into civilization.

    Well, “civilization” was in this case a small village on the edge of the desert, and Professor McCabe was at death’s door when the villagers found him.  They cared for him as best they could, but he died soon afterward.  His body was then shipped to Cairo and that’s when things turn strange.

    For starters, the cadaver is showing signs of partial mummification.  Even weirder is that the process appears to have been initiated by Professor McCabe himself.  Why in the world would he do such a thing?

    Then comes the final surprise.  The opening of the body is suspected of triggering some sort of outbreak of a lethal and unknown disease.  Everyone on the Egyptian forensics team who's been exposed to Professor McCabe's body is falling victim to some sort of virus, and a majority of them are dying from it.

     You could almost call it a plague.

What’s To Like...

    The Seventh Plague is your typical James Rollins “Sigma Force” tale. The action starts right away and really never lets up.  All your favorite Sigma Force peeps are here, plus some cameo appearances in one of the prologues by Mark Twain, Nikola Tesla, and Stanley, he of the famous “Dr. Livingstone, I presume": quote.  The settings are great, and run a climatic gamut: cold and wet England, cold and dry northern Canada (Ellesmere Island, and when's the last time you read a book with that setting?), hot and dry Sahara desert, and hot and wet Rwandan jungle.

    I liked the clever blend of religion with science, even if it did strain the limits of my believability at times.  And FWIW, the titular “Seventh Plague” is not of any particularly greater importance than the other nine; James Rollins attempts to explain all ten of them via naturally-occurring phenomena.  Michael Crichton would be proud.

    There are a bunch of neat drawings in the book; those were an unexpected treat and help the reader with the puzzle-solving.  The self-mummification is a nice twist, and I enjoyed the “elephant painters”.  Overall, The Seventh Plague felt more “sciency” than usual for a Sigma Force novel, and that’s a plus for me.

    The baddies aren’t exactly “gray”, but neither are any of them pitch black.  All of the main ones have a redeeming quality or two, and some of them live to fight another day.

    Everything builds to an exciting, if somewhat un-twisty, two-location ending,  I liked the accompanying double (or even triple) epilogue(s) as well.  And the “Truth or Fiction” afterword by James Rollins is way-kewl.  This is a standalone novel, as well as part of a series

Excerpts...

    “If nothing else,” she said, “I could use a tall pint.  Maybe two.  To help settle the nerves.”

    She offered him a small smile, which he matched.

    “Since it’s for medicinal purposes,” he said, “the first round’s on me.  I am a doctor after all.”

    She looked askance at him.  “Of archaeology.”

    “Of bio-archaeology,” he reminded her.  “That’s almost as good as a medical doctor.”  (pg. 46)

    “Which path do we take? Esophagus or trachea?”

    Derek shifted his beam to the damaged left tonsil.  “It looks like there was more traffic in and out of the airway.”  He pointed out the evident trampling in the trachea compared to the esophagus.  “So I say we ignore Robert Frost and take the road most traveled.”

    Gray nodded.  “Let’s move out.”

    Only Kowalski seemed disgruntled by this decision.  ”Yeah, let’s go deeper into the belly of a demon-wrestling god.  How could that possibly go wrong?”  (pg. 201)

 “Elephants didn’t build this. … I don’t care how good they are at tool use.”  (pg. 341)

    There are a couple quibbles.  Once again, the puzzles to be solved are incredible abstruse, but our Mensa-minded heroes seem to easily cut through them.  I kept rolling my eyes each time they sussed out another conundrum, but it has to be said, it’s entertaining as all get out.

    Ditto for the ending.  It’s very exciting, yet somewhat predictable.  I mean, really now, what do you expect will happen when you have a herd of wild elephants standing around, at your beck and call?

    But I pick at nits.  James Rollins writes action-thrillers, not police procedurals.  The Seventh Plague delivers exactly what one expects from Rollins, and there's no indication that he’s getting tired of researching and writing these Sigma Force novels.  That means I’ll be on the look-out for the next one in the series, The Demon Crown, due out on December 5^th.

    8½ Stars.  Subtract ½ Star if you’re the type of reader who just has to solve the puzzles in books like this before the heroes do.  You won’t.

Black Harvest - Alex Lukeman

   2012; 229 pages.  Book 4 (out of 14) of “The Project” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Action Thriller.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    Three experts on crop viruses, including one who worked for the CDC (Center for Disease Control) are murdered in a very short time.  Someone apparently thinks they knew too much about something, and it seems to concern what’s written on some cuneiform inscriptions on some ancient clay tablets.

    This all happened here in the US, and there's some evidence that the killers have ties to the CIA and the Pentagon.  So who ya gonna call?

    No, not Ghostbusters.  How about a secret group called “The Project”, a black ops intelligence unit that answers directly to the President?  Sounds like a plan.

    But this time, they may be in over their clandestine heads.  Whoever is behind these killings semms to know the Project’s every move, even before they take a step.

What’s To Like...

    Black Harvest is an action-thriller, kind of in the Jason Bourne style, but with the emphasis on the team, not the individual.  There’s also a history/mythology angle like you'd find in a Steve Berry novel, but that peters out rather quickly.  Still, it was neat to see Alexander the Great, and the Greek goddess Demeter worked into the storyline, to say nothing of the cuneiform tablets.  I had never heard of “Erinys”, the vengeful aspect of Demeter.  I also enjoyed learning the origin of the word “nightmare”.

    The action starts right away and the pacing is incredibly fast.  There are a lot of characters to keep track of, but I have a feeling that the Americans are all recurring ones.  The good guys are developed nicely, but all the Russians are portrayed as goons, even the women.

    Some of the setting are way kewl.  Greece is always a treat for me, and when’s the last time you’ve read any book that had part of the story set in Bulgaria?  The Texas panhandle setting will bore most readers, but my company had several chemical plants there, which I visited numerous times, so it was sort of nostalgic to “see” the area once again in this story.

    There’s a bunch of cussing, a bunch of sex, and one case of torture, so you probably don’t want little Suzy and Jimmy reading this.  The chapters are of “James Patterson” length, so you’ll always find a convenient place to stop reading for the night.  Indeed, the 229 pages are split into 69 chapters; so on the average, there’s a break every 3 pages or so.

    This is only a “semi-standalone” novel.  The ending was so-so, as it leaves a slew of loose major plot threads, involving things like containing the blight, Korov’s possible turning, and AEON.  Some of these, especially AEON, may be resolved in the next book in the series, but then I have to wonder why they weren’t combined into a single book.

Excerpts...

    Gelashvili had risen to power in the criminal underworld of Moscow by emulating his idol and fellow Georgian, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, otherwise known as Stalin.  If Zviad suspected treachery, someone died.  If someone failed to carry out their assigned tasks, they died.  If someone opposed him, they died.  Something could always be done to encourage motivation.  (loc. 377)

   “This sucks, Kemo Sabe.”

    “Kemo Sabe?  You going native on me?”

    “I always wanted to say that.  Tonto always said that to the Lone Ranger when the shit was about to hit the fan.  Kemo Sabe.  Has a nice ring to it.”

    “What does it mean?”

    “You don’t want to know.”  (loc. 1463)

Kindle Details...

    Black Harvest sells for $3.99 at Amazon.  Most of the other books in the series sell for $4.99, and Book 1, White Jade, and which I haven’t read, is free.  Alex Lukeman also has two non-fiction books available, about the meaning of dreams and nightmares, which both sell for $9.99.

 Not many people could recite Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon.  Not many would want to.  (loc. 158)

    There were quibbles besides the dangling plot threads.  Some of them were WTF’s, such as the Pentagon’s computers seeming to be incredibly easy to hack into.  Also, Ronnie is a Navajo, yet has no qualms about crawling around in a crypt.  Sorry, I know several Navajos.  There’s no way they’d be caught in a room full of dead people’s bones.

    More serious is the lack of focus in the storyline itself.  Our heroes start out trying to solve the mystery of the ancient tablets and fighting the evil Russkies.  But the latter gets resolved about a third of the way through, and the historical intrigue of the former just kind of evaporates into thin air.  The Russian baddies are replaced by American baddies, who are again quickly disposed of, and after that, the new evil peeps are the mysterious AEON folks.

    There is an antidote for the virus, but I don’t recall it ever being clear that the good guys acquired it.  Indeed the whole raid on the Utah facility is little more than a small side story.  And funnily enough, of the three onstage Ultimate Evils (one Russian, two American), none of them are dispatched by our intrepid heroes.

    But maybe I’m overthinking all of this.  The bottom line is: Black Harvest was an entertaining book from the first page to the last, ideal for a day at the beach or for an airplane trip.  Just remember to put the analytical lobe of your brain on hold when you go to start reading it.

    7 Stars.  Add 1 Star if you like Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series.  I overthink those stories too.