Player Piano - Kurt Vonnegut

1952, 320 pages. Genre : Dystopian Lit. Overall Rating : B.

   .This was Kurt Vonnegut's first pubished novel, and is set in Ilium, New York, where it follows the misadventures of Dr. Paul Proteus in a 1984-esque world. The back-cover blurb on my book calls it as "a cross between Animal Farm and Alice In Wonderland," and that's a fair description.
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What's To Like...
   This is "applied dystopia". Whereas Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984 all have essentially the same mood, books like Player Piano (satire added) and Animal Farm (um... animals added) at least give the Big Brother story a new ambiance. Also, Vonnegut sticks to a straight chronological timeline here, which is not true in quite a few of his novels. I know chrono-hopping can be confusing to you non-time-travelers out there.
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Best of all are the characters themselves. The good guys have their faults; the bad guys have their endearing traits. Proteus has few, if any, outstanding qualities. Gray is a nice change from the black-or-white characters in most stories.

.What's Not To Like...
    This is not Vonnegut's best effort. He self-rates it a "B", and I'm inclined to agree. It's a good first stab, but it lacks the polish of his later work. The most glaring weakness is the tired, well-trodden dystopian plot. I keep waiting for a book in this genre to come up with something different for a storyline. Anything different.
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When I look into my crystal ball, I see...
As with any book in this genre, it's fun to see which parts of the future the author got right, and which parts he didn't. For brevity's sake, we'll limit ourselves here to some of his hits.
.1.) The Back To Nature Movement. At one point, Proteus decides to "cleanse" himself, and purchases an old farm that doesn't even have electricity. Jaded flower children followed suit 20 years later. With an equal lack of success. Eva Gabor, where are you today?

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2.) Let's sing the company song! Thank God, I never had to do this. But it's big over in Japan, and I have a friend who used to work for Wal-Mart, and claims they started every day off by singing the Wal-Mart song. Whatever that is. Oh, and Wal-Mart used to pick a different person each morning to lead the singing. So the trick was to scrunch down behind other patsies to avoid being called upon.

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3.) The ultimate anathema. In Player Piano, the label-of-death was being called a saboteur. It didn't matter whether you actually were one or not. Today, of course, we call anyone who doesn't go along with us a terrorist.

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4.) Everyone's a doctor. Vonnegut just barely missed on this one. Everyone in the privileged category in Player Piano gets a PhD. Whether it has any use/meaning or not. Nowadays, we don't have garbage collectors; we have sanitation engineers. Secretaries aren't secretaries; they're administrative facilitators. Same sort of thing.

.Bottom line - this is a good book to read if you're already hooked on Vonnegut ( I am), but Slaughterhouse-5, The Sirens of Titan, or Breakfast of Champions are all better introductions to him.

The Thin Place - Kathryn Davis

2006, 275 pages. Genre : Fiction, American Literature. Overall Rating : A-..Kathyrn Davis' 6th novel examines a cross-section of humanity in a bevy of people (and a number of animals) in a town steeped in Americana.

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What's To Like...
    This book is hard to characterize. It's about three girls/friends coming of age; but it's not Chick-Lit. It's about one of those girls being able to bring people and animals back to life; but that's really just incidental to the story.

.It gives the hyperactive, mischievous thoughts of dogs; it has a resolute beaver that never loses hope even when caught in a trap; and there's a feline who tests the saying, "Curiosity kills the cat". But this isn't Dr. Doolittle. It has a 92-year-old lady still full of life, but this isn't On Golden Pond.
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What's Not To Like...
There's not much of a plot. It's more of a snapshot of a small New Englandesque town (although the exact location of it is never really given). With about 50 pages to go, things start to build towards a climax, but even that is ...um... anticlimactic. If you're seeking for swashbuckling action, look elsewhere.

.There are a lot people who, for some reason, expected The Thin Place to have a spiritualistic overtone - good-vs.evil; demons & angels; etc. True, there's a bit of that here, but this is more mystical than metaphysical.

.Finally, this is not an easy read. The story demands your full attention, as it swirls from one being to another in almost random fashion. Clive Cussler fans should avoid this one at all costs.
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Overall Rating : A-.  There's no middle ground. You'll either love The Thin Place, or give it up after 50 pages. It reminds me of Waiting For Godot, but instead of witty dialogue to substitute for a plot, Ms. Davis treats you to some beautiful writing. This is an excellent book for a quiet evening with New Age music playing in the background. But don't try to read it while watching TV.

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

Overall Rating : B.

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Oh, the absurdity of war! John Yossarian is a bombadier, stationed in the Mediterranean during the last half of World War 2. He spends his time bombing the northern half of Italy, falling in love with various whores in Rome, agonizing that his next mission will end in his death, and trying to figure out how to convince the military to ship him back to the states.

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There is a way out, of course. If you're found to be insane, that's an instant ticket home. Alas, by attempting to show that you're insane, you demonstrate your sanity. That's Catch-22, and that means it is impossible for Yossarian to ever get himself discharged.

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What's To Like...

Yossarian is a classic anti-hero : full of faults, scared of dying, and anti-establishment. The group he's stuck with (the "Fighting 256th") has country bumpkins, back-stabbers, buxom nurses, milquetoast chaplains, incompetent Generals (anyone remember the Peter Principle?), ambitious Colonels, capitalistic Majors, and a host of other engaging characters to become acquainted with.

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If you like paradoxes, there are a couple billion of them in this book. Then there are the Catch-22's themselves, which are similar to, yet different, from paradoxes. BTW, a "Catch-22" is entirely fictional. FWIW, Heller tried quite a few numbers as the title prior to the book being released - Catch-11; Catch-14; etc.

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I suspect if you've ever been in the service, you'll find this book hilariously close to how things really were. I'm not a vet (both the Army and me are stronger because of this), so there's a limited amount of relevancy here for me.

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What's Not To Like...

It's a slow read. As with the other Heller book I've read ("God Knows"), its way too repetitious. You could slice 150 pages out of C-22, and it would be much better. You'll find yourself skipping "text" paragraphs to get to the dialogue parts.

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There's no plot for the first 75% of the book. There's humor and wit, but no progression in the tale at all. To be fair, Heller wakes up around page 330, and things finally begin to unfold. The book gets markedly darker after that, which IMNSHO is a plus.

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Finally, the ending just plain sucks. I know this is a farce, but it was a believable farce until... well, no spoilers here.

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It's The History, Stupid...

If you judge Catch-22 solely on its literary merits. it doesn't stand the test of time very well. Joseph Heller was destined never to repeat his initial smash hit. I'd go as far to say that the success of C-22 was due more to good timing than good writing. Of course, I say that about Seinfeld too.

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But Catch-22 is a breakthrough opus. Along with authors like Kurt Vonnegut, there was finally something distinctive about American literature. Yeah, the Brits figured this out before we did, but hey, they've had more practice at this sort of thing.

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You can see the influence of Catch-22 in M*A*S*H, and maybe-just-maybe, even in Dilbert. So we'll remember its time-period, and give it a shaky B. With Heller, Vonnegut, and Hunter S. Thompson all now departed, maybe it's time for a new generation of talented American authors to emerge.

Ruled Britannia - Harry Turtledove

Overall Rating : B.

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It's 1597. England seethes under a long Spanish occupation, following the success of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Queen Elizabeth is in the Tower of London. The state religion is once again Roman Catholic. The Inquisition is rooting out all Protestant die-hards and other heretics.

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Will Shakespeare couldn't care less. All he wants to do is write and stage plays, and get paid for them. But karmic forces are in motion. The English insurgents hire him to write a nationalistic play ("Boudicca"), while the Spanish oppressors hire him to write a eulogistic drama to memorialize their dying monarch (Philip V). The tension mounts as Will reluctantly finds himself forced to play both ends against the middle, but becoming unexpectedly wealthy as he does.

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What's To Like...

Shakespearophiles will love this book. Turtledove cribs freely from various plays of the the Bard himself, as well as some bits of Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine. The result is a fine piece of drama that will appeal to even those of us who weren't thrilled about having to read one of Shakespeare's plays every cotton-pickin' year in High School.

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The author serves up a delightful cast of characters. There's the witty and punning Wil Kemp who will keep you groaning & chuckling. His counterfoil is the bombastic fellow-actor Richard Burbage. There's the Mitonesque detective Constable Strawberry, who can take a simple statement and embellish until not even the Queen herself can make out what he just said. And the lovable-but-lazy manservant Diego, employed by the womanizing Spanish soldier and wannabee-writer, Lope de Vega. And finally, at center-stage throughout, we have the but-I-never-wanted-to-be-a-hero Will Shakespeare.

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What's Not To Like...

Did I mention it's a drama? Therefore, don't expect much action. The book starts promisingly, with a pleasant public burning-at-the-stake, but that's pretty much it for blood-spilling until around page 500. (Yawn)

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Turtledove takes great pains to immerse you in 1590's England. But that includes that dreadful renaissance English that made reading The Merchant of Venice such a royal PITA. You will find yourself getting tired of being repeatedly subjected to words like fain, liefer, gramercy, certes, 'swounds, bethinks, belikes, and a whole slew of other verbs prefixed by that annoying "be-". Forsooth, it besucks.

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Finally, if you're English and Protestant, you will probably find this to be an uplifting tale. But if you're Spanish and Catholic, you may take umbrage at the stereotyping of all the occupiers as being either stupid or evil.

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To Be Free, or Not To Be Free...

Plotwise, the story ambles to a predictable conclusion. Spoiler Alert : The oppressors are ousted, the Queen is freed, and like Robert Asprin's Skeeve, Turtledove's Shakespeare somehow bumbles his way into becoming a hero.

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Yet there is a subtle undertone to the story. In the end, as Shakespeare wanders through London observing the joyous celebrations of long-awaited liberty, he also notes that the English citizenry are treating the unfortunate remaining Spanish (and anyone perceived - justly or unjustly - as being a collaborator) with just as much brutality as the Spanish had doled out for nine years. Even the likable Diego, who has never done any harm to the English, and who only wants to sleep his way through life, ends up dead-as-a-doornail, a casualty in the name of Freedom.

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But I digress. As a drama, Ruled Britannia rates an "A". As an action novel (hey, Mr. Turtledove! You at least cooda included the Armada's successful campaign against England in the story), it only rates a "C". That averages out to a "B", so that's what we'll give it.

Relic - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Overall Rating : B.

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Something is slashing and gnashing people at the New York Museum of Natural History, and eating their brains. Is it human, animal, vegetable, monstrous, demonic, or alien? Whatever it is, Margo Green better find out quick cuz the museum wants to open a new exhibition in 4 days, and the Museum Management isn't about to let a few grisly slayings get in their way.

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What's To Like...

This is a page-turner. It starts off fast; there are no slow spots; and you can finish it in a couple of days. There are a few twists to keep you on your toes.

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The heroes aren't Mary Sues. (not sure what a Mary Sue is? See here). Indeed, the mayor of New York gets cast in a favorable light. When's the last time a politician got that treatment in a novel?

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And the book actually comes to a conclusion! You don't have to read 10 sequels for everything to wrap up. Take that, Robert Jordan.

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What's Not To Like...

Despite the twists, the story is somewhat predictable. The bad guys get chomped; the good guys live. The ending, although climactic, is also a let-down. Brain-Chomper gets his just desserts, but you don't get many details about his ultimate demise, and the Feds apparently snatch up the body before the authors can give you much of a description of the corpse.

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Finally, you have to believe that life, and new exhibits, go on as always, despite employees and visitors getting mutilated and disembrained.

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Oh Cri-Fi! Thy name is Crichton!

The teaser on the cover says it all : "Alien meets Jurassic Park". But as Cri-Fi, Relic just doesn't quite measure up to JP. Oh, there are some computer-generated read-outs, but one doesn't get the feeling that the authors made a lot of technical effort to make this scientifically believable. (*)

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Still, it is a decent book, so we'll give it a B, and see if we can find its sequel, Reliquary, at the used-bookstore.

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(*) : There's one glaring loose end to this story. A plane carrying most of the Amazonian expedition crashes early in the timeline, giving rise to the theory that a "Curse" is involved. But it becomes evident later on that Brain-Chomper wasn't on that plane. So why did it crash? Inquiring nit-pickers want to know.

Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth

Overall Rating : C.

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Philip Roth's best-known work caused a sensation when it came out in 1969, for its shock value, sexually-taboo subjects, and Jewish humor. The book is essentially a 300-page monologue by the book's protagonist, Alexander Portnoy, to his shrink, one Dr. Spielvogel. Alex recounts his life, in more-or-less chronological order, focusing extensively on his four favorite sex partners - "The Monkey", "The Pilgrim", "The Lieutenant" (attempted only), and his hand. We won't mention the liver, the cored apple, the bottle, and his sister's bra.

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What's To Like...

If you like the Mel Brooks style of humor, you'll enjoy PC. One-line zingers abound, such as, "The perfect couple : she puts the id back in Yid; I put the oy back in goy."

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The book was banned in Australia when it came out, which naturally stimulated sales Down Under. It is self-deprecating, and obviously semi-autobiographical; so you'll have fun trying to figure out how much of this was drawn from Roth's life. You'll meet his domineering mother, his Willy Loman-esque father, and his plain-and-patient sister. You laugh as Alex tries to cope with his Jewish heritage and survive in a goy world.

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What's Not To Like...

It's a monologue. A very lonnnnnggggg monologue. Try imagining having to listen to a Mel Brooksian rant for, say, 12 hours straight. It may be funny at first, but it grates on one's nerves before very long.

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There's no plot. There's little progression, other than Alex grows older. And if you're looking for Alex to impart to you some grains of experiential enlightenment, forgetaboutit!

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So. Now vee may perhaps to begin, Yes?

I think the book's chief value lies in its ground-breaking impact when it came out. Up till then, American literature was pretty tame. And boring. No cuss words, nothing to offend the WASP and the Jewish communities, and above all, nothing about S-E-X. Portnoy's Complaint burst through all that phony Puritanical bullsh*t, and made people laugh while doing so. And the rabbis and Jewish leaders couldn't call it anti-Semitic, cuz Philip Roth is Jewish.

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Nevertheless, the book didn't age well. The shock-threshold has long been exceeded, and without that, the limitations of a chapterless, 300-page monologue are exposed. As you tire of the same themes and the same humor, you'll find it difficult to keep reading the book. I did complete it, and I'm happy about that, but it'll be a long time before I read another Philip Roth book.

Absolute Fear - Lisa Jackson

Overall Rating : C.

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A serial killer roams Louisiana, killing men, women, and a few old nuns in ritualistic fashion. Eve Renner gets stalked and shot, and has to deal with the possibility that her jealous beau could be the shooter/stalker.

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What's To Like...

The story starts out fast, and continues for 500 pages that way. There's lots of mysterious clues to reason out, and someone gets offed every hundred pages or so to keep you from getting too relaxed. I guarantee you won't figure out who's the Ultimate Evil until the end.

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What's Not To Like...

The heroine obviously has a death-wish. There's a psychopathic killer stalking her, and she just can't think of enough reasons to go off to places by herself.

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Everyone is amazingly dense here. The killer tattoos 3-digit numbers onto his victims, and no one can figure out what they mean. Hey, it took me two pages to deduce that one.

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Finally, there's a slew of unresolved loose-ends left lying about at the end, and one doesn't get the feeling they're there in order to carry over into the sequel. For instance, once our intrepid heroes figure out what the 3-digit numbers stand for, you're still left with a giant "so what?". Are these clever MacGuffins, or just sloppy writing?

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And if you don't know what a MacGuffin is, click here.

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Wait! It's not Murder-Thriller! It's...

Think about where you found this book. Were there Nora Roberts and Danielle Steele books on either side? Maybe that should be telling you something.

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Yes, folks. There may be blood, gore, moral outrage, death, and nunocide in this book, but at its core - it's Chick Fic. True love oozes from page to page, and threatens to overshadow the murder-mystery. I guess that's okay if you happen to be a chick, but male readers are hereby forewarned.

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To sum up, Absolute Fear is overall an average novel. The unforeseen twists and action-packed chapters are offset by the IQ-challenged characters and the loose ends and McGuffins. We'll give it a C, keeping in mind that if you like Romantic Thrillers, you might rate this a lot higher.

A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean

Overall Rating : C-.

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73-year old Norman Maclean's debut novella was an instant hit. A semi-autobiographical (I love that term. It means, "I'm gonna write about my life, but I get to lie at times.") story about the family relationships, primarily between Norman, his dad and his younger brother. The setting is ...erm... fly-fishing. Pure and simple.

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Being only 104 pages long, ARRTI is bundled with two other Maclean stories - one about a summer he spent in a logging camp; the other about a year he worked for the US Forest Service.

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What's To Like...

Maclean has a nice, poetic style. If you like your storylines heavy on the drama and light on the action, you'll love ARRTI. I don't think anyone before Maclean ever thought to use fly-fishing as a metaphor for life.

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Personally, I liked the two "add on" stories better. They have a bit more plot, a bit more action, and best of all, give a glimpse into what being a logger and a ranger was like 90 years ago. Daily life was a lot different then, and it's enlightening to get insight into it. In that respect, it reminded me a lot of Isaac's Storm, which was reviewed here.

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What's Not To Like...

Did I mention it's light on action?

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In truth, ARRTI is devoid of action.Plot-wise (PWP), little brother is self-destructive, and the 30-something author can't figure out how to help him. He asks his Dad, he of zero parenting skills, who also has nothing to offer. A lazy bum of a brother-in-law shows up, who at least puts the "fun" back into "dysfunctional" by boinking the town whore and drinking everybody's beer. The Maclean women's sole activity is nagging the Maclean men.

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All-in-all, pretty uninspiring stuff. Alternatively, those who loved ARRTI call the book "dark". Oh, the book was made into a movie, starring Robert Redford, and my carpool partner (who has excellent movie tastes) says it's a yawner too.

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Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it...

Judging from other reviews, I am in the minority when it comes to ARRTI. They gush about the poetry, the philosophy, the metaphysics, and the key to life, the universe, and everything else. Here's one example :

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(ARRTI is) "detailed descriptions of fly-fishing and nature to engage with a number of profound metaphysical questions". Whoa! Way deep, huh?

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El toro poo-poo. Maclean wrote about fly-fishing cuz it's one of the few things he knew something about. Anything can be hyped into being a metaphor for life. For instance, here's a quote from yesterday at MSNBC.com, coinciding with the advent of the baseball season :

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"Bart Giamatti, the former commisioner of baseball, wrote eloquently about that journey that begins with the batter standing at home, trying first to leave it and then to get back - to be safe once again at home. For him, it was a grand metaphor of life, this circuituous journey that could be fraught with danger and obstacles, that could demand daring and bravery to complete."

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Wow! More way deep stuff, eh? IMHO, they're both ridiculous, unless you happen to be a baseball or fly-fishing fanatic.

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But I digress. For me ARRTI was a ploddingly slow read, lacking any plot and action, and saved only by the two add-on tales. I must admit it's well-written; now if Maclean could only have thought of some sort of storyline to drape his flowery philosophy around. If you want to see this sort of genre done much better, try The Thin Place, by Kathryn Davis, which we'll review in the near future.

The Ides of March - Thornton Wilder

Overall Rating : C+.

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Thornton Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He won Pulitzer Prizes for The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) and Our Town (1938).

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TIoM is one of his later works, and frankly was not a big seller. It deals with the 6 months or so leading up to Julius Caesar's assassination ("Et tu, Brute", and all that). At 191 pages, it was an opportunity to read something "high brow" for a change, without too much of an investment in time.

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This is not a historical novel - Wilder makes that clear from the beginning. He 'borrows' a number of things that actually occurred 5-15 years earlier, and time-shifts them to 45-44 B.C. for the sake of his book.

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What's To Like...

The style is wonderfully unique. There's a high-falutin' word for it : epistolary. Basically, the story here is written as a series of letters from/to the various characters - Caesar, his wife, a lady named Clodia, Cicero, Cleopatra, etc. You can read more about this style here. It works. I'd enjoy trying to write a story in this mode.

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Being a series of letters, there's always a convenient place to stop if you're a late night reader like I am. Overall, Wilder divides TIoM into 4 "books". They are not chronological; instead, they deal with different themes. Book 1 introduces the characters; Book 2 deals with Love; Book 3 focuses on Religion; and Book 4 details the events that lead up to Caesar being perforated 23 times.

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The book provides some delightful glimpses into the daily thoughts and activities of people living at the height of the Roman Empire. Okay, actually it's all just Wilder's opinions as to what these would have been, just like Shakespeare did in his play. But it's still quite interesting.

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The central theme of the book is the "human-ness" of us all. Slave or emperor; ancient Roman or modern reader; we all put our pants on one leg at a time. Inspiring? No. But can you relate? Absolutely.

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What's Not To Like...

PWP? For the acronymically-challenged, click here. If you're looking for an action-packed storyline, you're better off with Gene Wilder than with Thornton. Ditto for hoping for any humor and/or surprising plot twists. This book can drag at times, especially if you have to plod through a verbose diatribe by Cicero or some flowery prose by Catullus.

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What Makes Thronton Wilder Worthy of a Pulitzer Prize...

I've read The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and will comment on it at some other time. And I've had to sit through Our Town at least once a long time ago, as it used to be the default choice for every High School Drama Club director who found himself with a limited budget and a dearth of talent.

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There are recurring themes in Wilder's works. First and foremost is the focus on our humanity. We may aspire to have the world revolve around us, but the truth is, God makes the rain fall on every man.

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Speaking of the Deity/Deities; Wilder doesn't seem to have a high regard for theism of any sort. At its best, the concept of God(s) serves to give us inner comfort and inspiration; at its worst, Religion exists to be manipulated for self-serving purposes.

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So what is important to Thornton Wilder? Love. Pure and simple; and in all of its aspects. We live; we die; and in a couple generations, no one remembers us. But to love, and be loved, makes it all worthwhile.

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Ah, but I digress. The Ides of March is a decent book, if you're in the mood for something philosophical, rather than a thrill-a-minute tale. We'll give it a C+ and snort condescendingly to indicate we've read something high-brow. We'll recommend it to others, but I don't think this will motivate me to pick up anything by Nathaniel Hawthorne or Elizabeth Browning.

Next - Michael Crichton

Overall Rating : C+.

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The latest offering from the author of Jurassic Park, Next is typical Crichton - exploring the potential, the perils, and the pitfalls of genetic engineering. From transgenic creatures to cures for diseases; from gene-snatching kidnappers to corporate in-fighting; there's a whole gamut of themes in the book.

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What's To Like...

The transgenic critters will most likely be your favorite threads in the book. There's an Sumatran orangutan that enjoys cussing in French and Dutch; a talking parrot that can do math in his head and carry on intelligent conversations with humans; and Dave the half-chimp/half-human who has trouble "fitting in" as a schoolboy.

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Despite its length, this is a quick read. Apparently Crichton has developed "James Patterson Symdrome" as there are 528 pages, divided into 95 chapters. So when you're ready to stop reading at night, you'll always be a page or two from the end of a chapter.

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The book has a reasonably good ending, with some of the storylines being skillfully (albeit, somewhat incredibly) brought together.

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What's Not To Like...

There are too many storyines, the majority of which you are going to have only a minimal interest in following. So there are some slow spots in the book. Indeed, one gets the feeling that Crichton had trouble deciding which of about two dozen plotlines to put into the book, so he included them all.

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Worse, as compared to Jurassic Park (and that comparison is inevitable), there's too much 'preaching' and technical warning, and not enough story-telling. Let's face it, while Crichton enlightens us as to the problems with cloning in JP, what we're really interested in is whether the velociraptors are going eat the good guys for lunch.

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Of course, in JP, you had only 3 or 4 plots to follow; here you have more than a dozen. If you do the math (528 pages; 25% 'preaching'; and let's say 12 plots, just to be on the conservative side), each storyline here is going to get about 35 pages to come to full resolution. That's a whole bunch a shallow tales.

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Life Is Like A Crash On The Freeway...

There was a forgettable movie a couple decades ago. IIRC, it had Robert "Wild Wild West" Conrad as a California motorcycle cop; it had Betty White (I think) as a middle-aged wife dying of cancer, and Buddy Ebsen as her husband trying to keep her from taking her own life. There were about a dozen other storylines-&-actors, none of which I remember.

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You spent the whole movie jumping around on these disparate stories, wondering how the heck they were going to tie in with each other. Surprise, surprise; they all were involved in a mega-car-crash on an L.A. freeway. Conrad goes flying through the air; Ebsen dies, leaving Betty White to try and carry on without him. And everybody else... well... like I said, it was a forgettable movie.

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That's the way Next comes across to me. Too many plots, and not enough story-telling. It would've been better to only deal with the transgenic animals, and leave the legalistic and corporate woes to a 20-page sermon at the end of the book.

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Despite its flaws, this is still Crichton, and he is still one of the better writers around. Heck, we named a genre after him. The transgenic animals are enough to make Next sufficiently engaging to read. So we'll give it a C+ and a lukewarm recommendation; and hope that the mouthy parrot, the foul-mouthed orangutan, and the monkey-boy show up in a sequel.

On the Oceans of Eternity - S.M. Stirling

Overall Rating : B.

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On The Oceans of Eternity is the third and final part of an Alternate History trilogy known informally as the Republic of Nantucket ("RoN") series. In RoN, the modern-day island of Nantucket is time-warped back to about 1250 B.C. and its inhabitants have to learn to survive. The first two books in this series have been reviewed here-(1) and here-(2) .

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OTOOE is primarily concerned with the marshaling of the forces of Nantucket and its allies (Babylon, Troy, England) as they try to out-flank and out-diplomacy the bad guys, who essentially control the entire Mediterranean Sea. There are a couple of side-plots (a 'Lewis & Clark' expedition to the Pacific by the good guys, and the courting and allying of Egypt by the bad guys); but those storylines are by-and-large peripheral.

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What's To Like...

As usual, there's lots of action; both diplomatic and warfare. Once again, the bad guys aren't Ultimate Evil personified - they're innovative, calculating, Machiavelian, and ambitious. That's still a nice change from the simplistic "white hats / black hats" dualism present in most sci-fi stories.

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OTOOE is a page-turner, and even comes to a dramatic conclusion; albeit enough 'loose strings' remain to where Stirling could've written a Volume 4 had he so desired.

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What's Not To Like...

The usual minor irritations mentioned previously (voiding, weapons sounds, and "Ayup") remain. In addition, the final resolution of the build-up between the two equally-powerful forces left many readers dissatisfied. There are charges of plagiarism (from the Michael Caine movie "Zulu"), which I frankly find to be much ado about nothing.

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Some feel that the character-development was shallow, but I find that rather petty. You have a choice - a fast-paced, action-packed trilology with moderate-to-minimal CD, or a 10-volume opus (a la Robert Jordan) with tons of CD. Personally, I like Stirling's choice.

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Finally, there's no action happening on the Island of Nantucket. So the pages dealing with the politics and lives on the mother island are boring.

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Do Publishers Dictate the Number of Pages in a Novel?

There's no doubt about it - the resolution of the conflict that's been growing for three books and 1800 pages is quite anti-climactic. A lot of readers feel Stirling lost interest and finished it up quickly and sloppily.

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Instead, I get a sense of haste. The plot(s) in OTOOE are proceeding along nicely, up until around page 500, when everything suddenly goes into overdrive. I'm not an author, so I wonder : do publishing companies ever (try to) dictate the length of novels? After all, every printed page is an expense for them.

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I imagine different authors would react in varying ways to such an edict. If James Patterson had to write a 400-page book, I think he'd let forth a loud moan, and divvy his book into 200 Chapters so as to have a lot of blank spaces on each chapter's first-page.

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OTOH, any attempt to limit Robert Jordan to less than 800 pages per book, would probably cause him to kill off a few characters, or else add a couple more volumes to Wheel of Time.

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So with OTOOE, I wonder if the deal was that it was to be 600 pages long, and Stirling looked up at Page 500 and freaked out. Maybe he called the publisher (ROC) and told them he couldn't possibly finish the story in the next hundred pages, so they told him, "Fine. You get 5% more pages. But not one page more." That would make 630 pages, which coincidentally is how long this is.

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But I digress. The RoN trilogy gets an overall A rating and a "highly recommended" endorsement from me. Lots of action, lots of different places to read about, and the whole thing gets wrapped up in only three books. Considering the way Eric Flint's 163x series has become bogged down, and the way Harry Turtledove has to take 12 novels to tell the "If The South Had Won The Civil War" alt-story; it's nice to only have to make only a 3-book reading investment to fully explore this alternate timeline.

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FWIW, many of the initial readers (back in 2000) felt that Stirling had left enough loose ends to write one more book in the series. But, as he hasn't done that in the last 8 years, I think in retrospect that was wishful thinking (which in a way, is a nice compliment re this storyline). Stirling did write a subsequent series ("Dies The Fire"), dealing with the changes wreaked upon the present-day world when Nantucket got zapped back to the Bronze Age. I haven't read any of those books yet, but they certainly look enticing. However, the next Stirling book on my TBR shelf is Conquistador. Stay tuned.

God Knows - Joseph Heller

Overall Rating : C.

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Joseph Heller's first work, Catch-22, brought him instant fame, but he never quite caught the magic thereafter. God Knows is his fourth novel, and is an autobiographical, Mel Brooksian look at the life of King David. Nearing his deathbed, David looks back on his life, giving his version of his encounters with Goliath, King Saul, Bathsheba, Absalom, Solomon, etc. Some have speculated that Heller is also reminiscing about his own life here, and that seems plausible to me.

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What's To Like...

If you like Mel Brooks' (who was a friend of Heller's) humor, you'll like God Knows. There is a witty humor here that will have you chuckling a number of times. And while the overall tone can only be called "irreverent", it is obvious that Heller studied the life of David comprehensively before writing this.

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There is a clever blending in of modern events into David's autobiography, and it works. All in all, this is a fresh, tongue-in-cheek way to present the life of Israel's second king.

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What's Not To Like...

There is a lot of repetition. This could easily have been pared down to a 250-page novel, and not have missed anything. Instead, the book drags in a bunch of places, and you'll find yourself skipping over the long paragraphs of commentary to get to the better, wittier dialogues.

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Along the same lines, if you are not crazy about Mel Brooks' style of humor, you may want to skip this book. Ditto, if you aren't keen on a non-linear timeline, a la Kurt Vonnegut (who also was a friend of Heller's).

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Finally, if you're a Fundie, and think things like Monty Python's The Life of Brian are blasphemous, stay away from God Knows.

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Political Correctness in Literature.

It's probable that Jews would join the Fundies in expressing outrage at this book, except that Joseph Heller is Jewish. Which makes me wonder - are there certain subjects/literary treatments that only those of a certain religious, political, national, and/or racial persuasion can write?

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What would've happened if Jospeh Heller hadn't been Jewish? Would there be cries of anti-semitism for presenting the likes of David, Yahweh, Moses, and Solomon (whom David calls "Shlomo") in such an unflattering, down-to-earth light? It's kinda like the N-word; blacks can use it, but it's taboo to everyone else.There's something just a bit discomforting about these double standards. As long as they exist; religious, political, international, and racial tensions will continue to be present, no matter how hard we try to cover them up and pretend they aren't here.

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But I digress. God Knows is an okay book, but it's plain to see why this isn't considered Joseph Heller's finest effort. It has some worthwhile moments, but you have to be ready for some dead spots in the book as well. If you can handle the latter, you will enjoy the former.

I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

Overall Rating : C.

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I Am Legend is a recent, heavily-promoted movie; so it was natural that the book be re-issued as well. The central character, Robert Neville, is the last human being left in L.A. He is beset by vampires and infected mutants at night (he has to hole up in his fortress-like house); but during the day, he is the hunter and they are his prey.

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The story chronicles his loneliness and personal loss, his crusade against the other creatures, his research into the cause of the plague, and his gradual accepting of his fate.

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What's To Like...

For a 1954 novel, this has an outside-the-box plot. None of this "I vant to bite your neck" tripe. Instead, there's a nice blend of science and sci-fi as Neville tries to figure out what anti-vampire methods work (garlic and wooden stakes do, and the Crucifix works some of the time) and don't work (mirrors don't); and more importantly why each does or doesn't.

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The book is a quick read. More on that later. Matheson's stories had a major influence on Stephen King. No less than three movies were made from this story - The Last Man On Earth; The Omega Man (with Charlton Heston), and the eponymous 2007 release.

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Finally, Matheson's treating of the characters themselves is complex. There are no "white hats" and "black hats" here. Humans, mutants, and vampires - each is someone else's bane. That's quite unusual for a McCarthyism-era atmosphere.

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What's Not To Like...

For an apocalyptic novel, there's not a lot of action. Neville has a couple close calls in getting back home before sundown, but that's about it. When he finally does meet another (Spoiler : (seemingly) human being, one expects some excitement to start as he "makes contact". However, such is not to be. The story fizzles out to a tepid, yet unpredictable, end.

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Worst - when you buy this book, you'll discover only half of it is I Am Legend. The rest of it is a collection of short sci-fi stories, presumably also by Matheson. Their quality ranges from mildly amusing to rather yawn-inducing. I don't fault Matheson for this deception, I fault Tor Books.

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"Shouting his name in a paroxysm of fury"...

I Am Legend may be influential, but it doesn't stand the test of time. The lack-of-action makes the reading of this story a chore. I've heard the movie is quite different from the book, and in this case, that's gotta be for the better. So we'll give it a C, mostly for its originality, and be happy that people like Stephen King and Anne Rice came along to improve upon a good-but-could-be-better style of writing.

Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson

Overall Rating : A-.

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This book came recommended to me by my cousin (Thanks, Janet!), and is subtitled, "A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History".

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The book tells the story of the 1900 Hurricane that ravaged the city of Galveston. This was before the Weather Service started assigning names to hurricanes, so it is only known as the "Great 1900 Hurricane" and several other monikers. To this day, it holds the record for the largest number of deaths in the USA by a storm. 6,000-12,000 people lost their lives.

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What's To Like...

Larson weaves several engaging storylines together here. There is the account of the storm itself, of course. But there is also the biography of Isaac Cline, the Weather Bureau's local man in Galveston in 1900 . In addition, Larson gives the technical science involved in the making of a hurricane. Finally, there is a narrative about bureaucratic incompetence and hubris.

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Isaac's Storm also offers a pleasant glimpse into life in American at the dawn of the 20th Century. Telephones? Not yet. Automobiles? Nope. Radio? Uh-uh. But you get to see the sights, and smell the smells (even if they are often horse manure) of America in 1900. Having recently had the opportunity to see some of my Grandfather's photos from as early as 1907, Larson's descriptions here were really a treat.

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What's Not To Like...

There are no pictures!! Larson recounts using a magnifying glass to look at a number of photos showing the storm's aftermath. Hey, Erik! Next time, put those pics in the book! Sheesh. Even the Wikipedia article on this hurricane, which can be found here, has some photographs.

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Larson paints an unflattering picture of Isaac Cline. Apparently, in Galveston today, a lot of people take exception to that.

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What Have We Learned in 100 Years?

Galveston got nailed in 1900 because it had a smug feeling that it could handle anything Mother Nature threw at her (they disdained building a seawall several years earlier); because the US Weather Bureau did a crappy job of predicting the storm's path (they thought it was heading up the Atlantic coast), because the bureaucrats in the Weather Service cared more about politicking than about putting out accurate forecasts (they jealously refused to listen to the Cuban forecasters' warnings); and because Science was used for political purposes (years earlier, Cline had written that it was meteorologically impossible for an Atlantic storm to ever hit Galveston).

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100+ years later, in light of Hurricane Katrina, what has changed? The levee system in New Orleans was in gross disrepair (it failed in 53 places); the Weather Service (again) predicted the storm would move up the east coast of the US; we had a stooge heading FEMA ("Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job!"); and a large segment of the dittoheaded US population still cannot grasp what the warming of the oceans (and the Gulf of Mexico) is doing to the strength of hurricanes (because, golly gee, Dubnutz, that might make it sound like Al Gore knows what he's talking about!).

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But I digress. I enjoyed Isaac's Storm, even though I'm not a big reader of (non-alternate) History. I liked the intermingling of the various storylines (others might not). This is recommended reading for anyone living in Texas, or indeed, anyone living in a hurricane zone. We'll give it an A-, only because this book screams to have some photographs included.

Fatherland - Robert Harris

Overall Rating : B+.

.Robert Harris is a British novelist, with five published books to his credit. The first, and evidently his most famous, is Fatherland. The plot is fairly standard for Murder-Mystery. A high-ranking political official is slain, and a low-level, disillusioned police detective doggedly strives to solve the crime.

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What's To Like...What makes this book so unique is the underlying Alternate History involved. Fatherland is set in 1964, 20 years after Nazi Germany won World War 2, and on the eve of The Fuehrer's 75th birthday.

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England has been turned into a puppet state; and the US appears to be an implacable rival (in this timeline, the US still defeated Japan). The rest of western Europe (with the exception of Switzerland) is part of the greater German Empire., as is Poland and the European portion of Russia. The latter may have lost WW2 in 1943, but it still exists east of the Urals, and is engaged in a never-ending guerilla war there, supported by American arms. .
Robert Harris paints a believable picture of life as it would have been in a victorious Nazi world. It is a terrifying combination of George Orwell's 1984; and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. The hero, Xavier March, runs into increasing resistance and ill-will from the authorities as he continues an investigation into a murder that nobody in the upper echelons of the Nazi government wants solved.

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The plot is good; the ending is somewhat unexpected; and there are no dull spots in the book. What more could you ask for?

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What's Not To Like...

Some feel that the characters are stereotyped, and I think that's a valid assertion.

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Others find it unbelievable that the "secret" that Xavier March uncovers (SPOILER ALERT : that the German government exterminated the Jews), would have stayed covered up for 20+ years. Personally, my read of the secret (in this story's timeline) is that the US knew about it, and had a wink-wink relationship with Germany to not reveal this truth.

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Oh Brave New World, That Has Such People In It...

Given the immense and lasting popularity of dystopic works like Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World, Ape And Essence (my personal favorite Aldous Huxley novel), and Fahrenheit 451; why is it that no new best-sellers in this genre have been written? All of those books are from when, the 1940's and maybe early 1950's?

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Yes, we have the Alt History genre now. But the works I've read in AH (Stirling, Turtledove, and Flint) are mostly action stories set in another timeline. The Dystopia genre seems to not have any major additions to it in more than half a century. Why? I can't believe that all the good 1984-ish ideas have been used up.

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But I digress. Fatherland is a good story, with a superbly intriguing setting. The characters may be stereotypical, but your focus will be on the Alt-Hist, with all of its horrors, and you'll keep turning the pages to gain more insight into that alternate dimension

The Great War : American Front - Harry Turtledove

Overall Rating : C.

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The Great War : American Front is the second book in an 11-volume opus by Harry Turtledove; covering a timeline that initially veered off with the South's winning the Civil War. Book One, How Few Remain, deals with a second conflict in the 1880's, also won by the South, and featuring "alternate lives" for a bunch of famous people such as Samuel Clemens, Teddy Roosevelt, James Longstreet, Frederick Douglass, etc.

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TGW:AF picks up the storyline with the outbreak of World War 1. The Confederacy sides with England and France; the USA with Germany. It is the first book of a WWI Alt-Hist trilogy and goes to about the end of the summer, 1915.

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What's To Like...

This is "pure" Alt-History. No shifts in the time-space continuum (such as Flint's 1632 series); no visits from extraterrestials to alter History (which technically wouldn't be Alt-Hist anyway).

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As usual, Turtledove tells his story from a dozen or so perspectives. Each "glimpse" lasts about 2-5 pages; then he jumps to another person's story. There's a good balance in the people he chooses - Yanks, Southerners, Canadians, men, women, blacks, whites, rich folks, poor folks.

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What's Not To Like...

Unlike as in How Few Remain, Turtledove chooses "unknowns" to follow in TGW:AF. That makes it tough to follow. Was Arthur MacGregor a Yank, a Reb or a Canuck? What front and what side was Reggie Bartlett fighting on? Teddy Roosevelt and George Custer carry over from HFR, but are no longer followed in detail. Following these unknowns is not nearly as interesting.

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The action is basically a clone of what historically happened in Europe in WW1. You have trench warfare; poisonous gas attacks; the evolution of of air fighting; and there even is the repeat of the "Christmas Truce", something that took place in Europe during the first year of the war (The History Channel has an excellent episode covering that). The trouble is, that ain't Alternate History; it's just transplanting the events from one continent to another. One expects more divergence in an Alt-Hist story.

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Finally, there isn't any climax to this book. The story sashays along from page 1 to page 560. In the last couple pages, the blacks of the South are seen to rise up in a coordinated worker-socialist revolution. No details are given; this is an obvious hook to get you to buy the next book. Since this is a trilogy, one can predict that the next book won't have a dramatic climax either.

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Robert Jordan Syndrome is alive and well...

This is the first book of a trilogy; but it is also Book Two in an 11-volume opus by Turtledove that starts in 1880 (in the storyline. Book 1, HFR, came out in 1995) and goes for another full century. Book 11, "In At The Death : Settling Accounts" just came out in hardcover last July. Reportedly, it is the end of the saga, but there are enough loose ends left over for Turtledove to pen Book 12 if he wants.

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This means you better be prepared to spend a lot of hours reading a lot of pages in a lot of books about this alternate timeline. Well, I did that with Jordan's "Dragon Reborn" series, and he up and died on me before finishing the final book (#12). I don't intend to get sucked into that again; not with Turtledove's North/South narrative; not with Eric Flint's 163x series.

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One wonders where this Robert Jordan Syndrome will end. Time was when a trilogy was considered the literary limit. An intriguing beginning; a tedious middle; and a thrilling end. Hey, it worked fine for Tolkien.

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Now we have someone ghost-writing Book 12 in Jordan's Wheel Of Time; and Turtledove one novel away from tying that mark. You just know some other author will make it his goal to write a 13-book epic. It's getting to the point where Tolstoy and Dostoevsky will be relegated to the "Short Story" section of your local library. Whoodathunkit?

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But I digress. TGW:AW is a decent book, but How Few Remain was better. The characters are not sufficiently engaging to warrant me committing to reading another nine books about them. We'll give it a C rating, cuz it isn't bad, and get our next Alt-Hist fix from one of S.M. Stirling's books.

Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell

Overall Rating : B-.

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Henning Mankell is a Swedish crime fiction author. Faceless Killers is the first in a series featuring Kurt Wallander, a burnt-out detective whose life's a mess, and who needs to solve several high-profile murders before anti-immigrant hysteria grips the area.

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Faceless Killers was written in Swedish in 1991, and translated into English in 1997. The Kurt Wallander books are Mankell's most popular series, but he also writes children's stories.

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What's To Like...

It's nice to have an anti-hero for a change. Wallander is recently-divorced, drinks too much, has lousy dietary habits, and has to cope with a father and a daughter who frankly don't like him. He makes a pass at the comely (and married) prosecutor, who rebuffs him; then has to worry about her filing a complaint.

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You also get a look at the "real" Sweden. Most of us think the essence of Sweden is ABBA, Volvo, prime ministers who get assassinated while walking home from the movies, and svelte blonde ski chicks who all have silicone implants.

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The Sweden that Mankell presents is a place overrun with immigrants, where everyone drinks too much, and the only change in the long winter months is whether or not you'll have to deal with snow in addition to the ever-present harsh, windy cold.

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Finally, Mankell strews a bunch of red herrings in amongst the "Cold Case Clichés". Wallander has to sort the false leads from the real clues, and this is mostly a matter of tracking them all down and seeing which ones pan out.

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What's Not To Like...

Although FK has the feel of "true" detective work in solving the murders, not everyone is going to like the unspectacular storyline. The gruesome murders of an elderly couple on a farm takes up the first 25 pages. The rest is plodding and dogged investigation.

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This isn't the kind of story where you try to guess the "who" of the whodunit. And the ending leaves a lot of loose ends dangling out there. Is this "real" detective life, or a sloppy ending to a novel?

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WTF is a Cold Case Cliché?

Cold Case is among the better TV series on today (when the writers aren't on strike), but it's very formulaic, and once you realize this, you can solve each case in the first 10 minutes.

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It always hinges on one seemingly irrelevant sidetrack (SIS) that usually occurs early in the story. The Cold Case team will spend the next hour interviewing all sorts of people and unearthing all sorts long covered-up dirty laundry. Then at the end, they rediscover the SIS, tie it to one of the suspects, and voila!, the case gets solved.

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Example #1. A girl gets murdered a long time ago. The case is re-opened; the chief briefs the CC team on the details, then adds parenthetically, "Oh yeah. Forensics found some black powder at the murder scene way back when. They couldn't identify it then. See if yooze can get somebody to analyze it again".

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Solution #1. After 50 minutes, the lab report comes back. The mysterious powder is ID'd as a friction-minimizer used by people in wheelchairs, and of course one of the suspects is a paraplegic.

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Example #2. Two young boys get murdered. While interviewing one of the suspects, a junk peddler; one of the detectives asks if she can buy a small bling dangling on the peddler's cart. "Oh no," says he, "that's my special key to happiness".

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Solution #2. The bling of course turns out to have belonged to one of the boys, thus tying the peddler to the crime.

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This happens in every Cold Case episode. Just look for that SIS written into the script, then match it up with one of the suspects. The writers only have 60 minutes (minus lots of commercials) to present an interesting, complex case. They don't have time for irrelevancies. Anything that looks like a tangent, isn't.

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But I digress. Faceless Killers is a good book. There may be a Cold Case Cliché in there, but you have to separate it from the other half-dozen false trails. The glimpse of the real Sweden, and a detective with all sorts of character flaws are the real strong points of the book. Alas, it feels sometimes like Mankell put more thought into the setting and Kurt Wallander, than into the plot itself. We'll give it a B-, and hope that the next seven books in the series have better storylines, and aren't just rehashes of Sweden's social problems and Wallander's personal ones.

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

Overall Rating : A+.

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Slaughterhouse-5 is arguably Kurt Vonnegut's most-famous novel. It explores a variety of great themes - free will; the absurdity of war; fatalism; and one of my pastimes - time travel.

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Jason says I can call this a classic, since Vonnegut has now passed on. That's great, since "traditional" classical American Literature is the pits. We'll discuss that at a later date, probably when I review Thornton Wilder's The Bridge At San Luis Rey.

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What's To Like...

It was an easy read. I devoured this book in three evenings. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is a likeable, ordinary bloke. The aforementioned themes are dealt with extensively, but in such a way that you don't feel like Vonnegut is preaching at you. Indeed, it's hard to say just what the author's personal viewpoint is on fatalism and free will.

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What's Not To Like...

The storyline jumps around a lot, time-wise. That's natural for a time-traveler, but it may take some getting used to if you've never read any Vonnegut before; and haven't come unstuck in time.

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Characters from previous Vonnegut novels (Kilgore Trout, Eliot Rosewater) come into the story with little or no introduction. This is one of Vonnegut's recurring literary devices, and it drove me nuts some years ago when I trudged through his book on evolution, "Galapagos".

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Listen : Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time...

It should be noted that Slaughterhouse-Five consistently makes the yearly 100 most-challenged books by the self-righteous "let's keep our kids brainwashed" crowd. Ostensibly, this is because there are some cuss words in the book, and because God is not given sufficient reverence by Vonnegut. In reality, I think they fear the anti-war (and Dresden bombing) message in S-5. Vonnegut is qualified to write on this - he was being held as a POW in Dresden on the night the Allies decided to fire-bomb the city just for the heck of it. The consequence of our nastiness (there were no military targets in Dresden) was that 20,000-100,000 innocent civilians perished.

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Of course, the book-banning fundies have never wavered in their drive to tell others what to read, watch, and think. At present, Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass (both the movie and the book) is the target of their wrath. It is claimed TGC will turn any reader/movie-goer into a Satanist. Of course, everyone who read/watched any of the Harry Potter series is already a witch. I wonder which is worse. I guess I'll find out, since I've just started to read TGC.

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But I digress. Slaughterhouse-Five is a fantastic book by a great American author. Read it today, just to tweak the book-burners. Then give it to one of your ditto-head friends as a Christmas present, and start to de-program him as well. It is worthy of an A+ rating. Poo-tee-weet!

The Bourne Identity - Robert Ludlum

Overall Rating : A-.

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Thanks to the Matt Damon movie, The Bourne Identity is undoubtedly Robert Ludlum's best-known novel. A bullet-riddled-yet-still-alive guy gets plucked out of the briny and discovers he's got a bad case of amnesia. He spends the rest of the book/movie trying to regain his memory; dodging bullets from (and then killing) a slew of professional assassins; and attempting to figure who is so all-fired anxious to kill him.

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What's To Like...

The book is radically different from the movie, so there's a totally new plot and ending. In fact, the only similarities between the two are :

.1.) Our hero has amnesia.
2.) The heroine pulls a "Patty Hearst", gradually morphing from unwilling kidnappee to active GF and confederate of Jason Bourne.
3.) There is an outfit called Treadstone.

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The plot is complex; the action is non-stop; and the book is a page-turner. There is both a good climax and a "door" left open for a sequel or two.

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What's Not To Like...

I'm still nonplussed about the amazing foresight of Jason Bourne to have the number of his Swiss bank account implanted in his hip. Sheesh, how convenient.

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The Treadstone in the book (which is very different from the movie's version) seems to be suicidally lax in security when it comes to high-level meetings.

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Lots of other people b*tched about the movie being so different from the book, and this is probably valid if you read the book first. I didn't, so this isn't an issue for me.

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Sequel, Threequel, Fourquel, Fivequel...

Ludlum of course mapped this out to be a trilogy, so one should expect some huge loose ends at the conclusion of Bourne-1. In addition to the Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum, a guy named Eric van Lustbader has penned another two books in the series (after Ludlum was so rude as to die), titled The Bourne Legacy and The Bourne Betrayal.

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So if you can't get enough of the saga, there's a couple thousands pages-worth of sequels out there. I'll take it one book at a time. Bourne-1 was a great read. We'll see if Bourne-2 can keep up the pace.

Prince of Fire - Daniel Silva

Overall Rating : D-.

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The bombing of the Israeli embassy in Rome puts Gabriel Allon, a reluctant operative for Tel Aviv, on the trail of an Arab terrorist. The path leads all over Europe and the Middle East.

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What's To Like...

It's easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys. No gray areas here. The Arabs are evil killers; the Jews are noble killers. At 376 pages, this is a fast read.

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What's Not To Like...

The plot is hopelessly disjointed. The evil Arabs blow up the Israeli embassy in Rome. Somehow this leads to a raid in Milan, where a computer disc is found. Italian intelligence can't decode it, so they decide, "what the heck, let's give it to the Israelis". The Israelis magically decode it, and discover it lists, among other things, the personnel file of Gabriel Allon. Which somehow ties into the bombing. Allon assembles a think-tank team, and somehow they decide that the Ultimate Evil is an Arab named Khaled al-Khalifa. Meanwhile, the UE kidnaps Allon's vegetative wife in England, and instead of just killing her, has her smuggled into Paris so she can be blown up at a later date.

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Confused? Don't worry. The obviousness of the plot and the simplistic black-&-white characters (Arabs = bad; Israelis = good) will put you to sleep long before you feel any urge to try to make sense of anything.

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Born Under A Bad Zion...

The only way to comprehend this travesty is to recognize that it's merely a vehicle for the author to expound his Zionist viewpoint. This is really just a political diatribe with a sloppily-crafted plot thrown over it.

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Silva seems to feel the Arabs are entirely to blame for the Middle East crisis. The millions of Palestinian refugees are to blame because they didn't take a better deal when it was offered way back in the 40's/50's. The various Arab governments are also to blame because they haven't expended vast amounts of money to assimilate these refugees into their own country.

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Ultimately, Silva's philosophy can be summed up as, "the only good Arab is a dead Arab". Which is nice if you happen to be an Israeli, but not so nice if you're a Palestinian.

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In real life, the Silva scenario is inane. If anyone is to blame for the Middle East crisis, it's Britain (who promised the same land to both the Palestinians and the Israelis), and the United Nations (who felt so guilty about the Holocaust, they mandated a new country where (unfortunately) millions of people already lived).

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Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon are hardly wealthy nations. If anyone ought to throw large sums of money at the Palestinians, it's the UN. And the Palestinians can hardly be blamed for rejecting the earlier offer, since in essence it said they could keep a portion of Palestine provided they ceded a large part of it to Jewish immigrants. Is it surprising they turned down this deal?

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But I digress. This is a wretched novel - both as a literary work and as a Arab-hating smear-job. If you're into blatant stereotyping - all Arabs are evil; all Chinese are brain-washed; all French are traitors; all Israelis are noble, etc. - then this book will appeal to you. Otherwise, don't waste your time.