Redliners - David Drake

  1997; 388 pages.  New Author? : No, but this is the first book of his I’ve read where there isn't a co-author.  Genre : Science Fiction; Military; Action-Thriller.  Overall Rating : 5*/10.

    The military has a word for them: Redliners. 

    It refers to combat troops who have witnessed such horrors, or been subject to such wartime ordeals, that psychologically they’ve been stretched to the point where they can snap any second.  They aren’t fit to be returned to combat duties in the future and placing them back in a civilian environment is just asking for a disaster.

    Major Arthur Farrell’s command, the Company of strikers known as C41, are Redliners.  They were sent into a advance-strike commando raid, suffered jaw-dropping casualties,  somehow and achieved their tactical goals, only to have higher-ups abort the overall mission and recall what was left of C41.  Their losses were in vain, and things got worse when they learned the enemy they had slaughtered consisted of civilian children.

    The conventional wisdom about what to do with Redliners is to send them on some easy and safe missions in the hopes that with time they’ll forget the horrors that caused them to redline.  The success rate of this isn’t impressive, but hey, what are the alternatives?

    Well, there is one other option, much more risky and unpopular than the conventional wisdom approach.

    Send them on a suicide mission and hope that most of them get killed, but not before they wipe out lots of the enemy.

What’s To Like...

    If you like lots of fighting, detailed tactics, and a gritty “War Is Hell” depiction of military life, then you’ll love Redliners.  The story could easily be set in Afghanistan or Iraq, but by putting it in a Science-Fiction setting David Drake can create all sorts of additional perils.  Here the plants and the ground are just as deadly as an enemy alien with a laser gun.

    The aliens here are called the Kalendru, and it is said that they ‘understand the concepts of “master” and “slave” but not of “equals”’.  It’s therefore a intergalactic fight to the death, and  sadly, conflicts such as this are a “kill or be killed” situation.  David Drake doesn’t prettify it in any way.  The good guys aren’t perfect, they can make mistakes.  The bad guys have some human qualities, but no matter what, they have to be killed.

    I liked the concept of forcing hardened soldiers and civilians to merge into a single unit, and then watching them somehow learn to coexist and cooperate with each other in order to survive.  It’s a slow, difficult process, but neither group has any choice in the matter.  There are a slew of characters from both groups for the reader to meet and greet.  Don’t get too attached to any of them; quite a few won’t be around by the end of the tale.

    The book is mostly in the 3^rd-person POV, although there’s a Prologue, Epilogue, and Interlude sections, which are in the 1^st-person.  There’s blood and gore, lots of killing, and oodles of cussing.  The action starts immediately, and never lets up.  It is a standalone novel, and not connected with any other of David Drake’s books.

    I enjoyed learning what calling a war-buddy “snake” means, and I thought the “null sacks” were neat.  It’s always a plus when Tchaikovsky’s music gets some ink.  Via Google, I learned that “Redlining” has several meanings, depending on what field it applies to.  Here, the dictionary definition that is most apt is “beyond the recommended safety limit”.

    Things build to a suitably climactic and exciting ending.  I wouldn’t call it “twisty”, but I did find it to be “bittersweet”, and that’s a plus.  I primarily think of David Drake as a Fantasy writer, but it was a interesting to see what he can do in the Military Science Fiction genre as well.

Kindle Details...

   ANAICT, Redliners is always free at Amazon.  David Drake is a prolific Sci-Fi and Fantasy author, writing both alone and with other authors.  He offers a half-dozen or so of his books for free, which is very generous of him.  The rest of his e-books are in the price range of $5.24 - $9.99, and a couple ‘bundles’  at $8.99.   Finally, it should be mentioned that he offers a 2^nd Edition of Redliners for $5.38, and with a note on the cover that it “includes all new content”.

Excerpts...

    “I didn’t understand how quick you had to be to survive,” Lock said softly.  He turned his face from Meyer.  His eyes were on the forest, but she wasn’t sure they were focusing.

    “When the savages came out of the trees I just looked at them,” Lock said to the forest.  “And one of them grabbed Alison.  And I said, I said, ‘What are you doing?’ and he cut her head off.  Like that.  And he grabbed me and you killed him.” (…)

    He began to cry.  “You were trying to keep us alive and I didn’t understand,” he said through tears.  “I’m a lawyer, Ms. Meyer.  I don’t belong here and I didn’t understand.”  (loc. 2939)

    Abbado got along better in the forest than Gabrilovitch did.  Both sergeants viewed the vegetation as an enemy, but the fact didn’t particularly bother Abbado.  To him, enemies were something a striker fought or avoided; it didn’t matter whether they had bark or pale gray skin.

    Gabe found the forest’s malevolence unnatural, even supernatural.  Imagination made Gabrilovitch a good scout, whereas Abbado’s two-valued logic – kill it or run – had struck Blohm as simple-minded during the year and a half he’d known the man.  (loc. 3480)

 Life was a series of tradeoffs.  Until you died.  (loc. 2157)

    For all its thrills and spills and realism, Redliners lacks one essential component: an overall, coherent plotline.  In theory this is a story about the colonization of a new planet by us Earthlings; in practice that never gets started because of the life-threatening dangers as soon as the ship lands.  I thought that the non-stop fighting would eventually end and the book would get on with setting up the groundwork of civilization, but that never happened.

    The ending at least brings a closure to the book-long fighting, and does a decent job of that.  But it doesn’t change the fact that there Is. No. Plot.

    David Drake is a Vietnam vet, and I read somewhere that writing Redliners was a catharsis for him in dealing with that experience.  I haven’t verified this, but it would give cause to the prolonged fighting, and the many casualties.  In any case, David Drake is a skilled writer, and I found myself turning the pages despite wondering where the heck the plotline was.

    Hey, if it helped him come to grips with the Vietnam struggle, more power to him and this book.  The fact that this is an always-free book, and that the cover of the second edition promises that it “includes all new content”  indicates to me that Mr. Drake is aware that this book might not resonate with everyone.

    5 Stars.  Add 3 stars if you read Military Science-Fiction stories for the Military more than the Science-Fiction.  You’ll have a blast reading this book.  Literally.

Four To Score - Janet Evanovich

   1998; 313 pages.  Book 4 (out of 24, soon to be 25) of the Stephanie Plum series.   New Author? : No.  Genre : Crime-Humor; Beach Novel.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Stephanie Plum’s going to get rich this month.  She’s double-dipping on her present bounty hunter case.

    First, there’s the commission she’ll earn by hunting down and bringing in Maxine Nowicki, an FTA (“Failure To Appear” at a court hearing) as an authorized agent for her cousin Vinnie’s Bail Bond business.  Maxine reportedly had a tiff with her then-boyfriend, Eddie Kuntz, and took it out on him by stealing his car.  Eddie retaliated by calling the cops on her, who arrested her, but Maxine didn’t show for her trial.

    Eddie understandably cooperates with Stephanie in her efforts to track down Maxine, and has now given her an added incentive.  He’ll pay her a thousand bucks if she retrieves some love letters he wrote to Maxine in fits of passion.  He says there’s embarrassing stuff in them.

    Eddie is not exactly a lady’s man, so it’s hard to imagine what he’d deem “embarrassing” in those letters.  But hey, for a thousand dollar bonus, Stephanie is more than willing to try to recover them when she successfully brings Maxine in.

    But don’t spend all that money just yet, Steph.  For starters, your cousin Vinnie has hired a second agent to track down Maxine, so you’ve got competition for the commission.  To boot, someone is dead set on scaring, or even killing, people who might know where Maxine is.

    And I don’t think they’d have any qualms about adding you to their list of intended victims.

What’s To Like...

    The action in Four To Score starts immediately, with someone bursting in on Cousin Vinnie and threatening to shoot him.  But since the assailant is Stephanie, we know that’s not the storyline.  I was happy to see Grandma Mazur and Lula both getting some major time in this book; they’re two of my favorite characters in the series.  Morelli and Ranger are back, and there are new people to meet and greet as well, the most notable of which are Sally and Joyce.  I’m hoping they're both developed into recurring roles.

    I counted five plotlines to follow:

    a.)  Stephanie chasing down the FTA, Maxine.

    b.)  Morelli working on a secret case for the government.

    c.)  The body-part chopper-offer.

    d.)  The ardent arsonist.

    e.)  Retrieving Eddie’s love letters.

    You might think that means things get confusing, but they don't.

    As usual, the story is told in the first-person POV, Stephanie’s.  The chapters are moderate in length, 16 of them covering 313 pages.  The pacing is quick, despite the requisite “running around in circles” for a while.  As always, the book’s title has nothing to do with the story.

    I liked the phrase “erotica non grata”; I’ll have to work that into a review somewhere down the line.  Ditto for Lula’s favorite phrase “Damn skippy!”  The musical nods to Savage Garden and Metallica were neat.   For me, the real fun in any Stephanie Plum novel is the witty banter and snarky observations, and in that respect, Four To Score did not disappoint.  This was a fun, fast, easy read.

    There’s a bunch of cussing, and one torrid roll in the hay.  If such things offend you, this isn’t your kind of series.  We also should mention the 7-foot transvestite.  I’m reading this series in order, but frankly, I don’t think that’s necessary.  Stephanie and Joe Morelli still have relationship issues, and I'm guessing that will go on for quite a few more books.  Four To Score is a standalone story, as well as part of a series.

Excerpts...

    She blinked.  “I lost a finger.  Well, I didn’t actually lose it.  It was on the kitchen counter.  I took it to the hospital and got it sewed back on.”

    I had an instant vision of her finger lying on the kitchen counter.  Little black dots danced in front of my eyes, and I felt sweat pop out on my upper lip.  “I’m sorry!”

    “It was an accident,” she said.  “An accident.”

     “Which finger was it?”

    “The middle finger.”

    “Oh man, that’s my favorite finger.”  (pg. 24 )

    The rain stopped halfway home, and Trenton showed no sign of relief from the heat.  The hydrocarbon level was high enough to etch glass, and the highways hummed with road rage.  Air conditioners were failing, dogs had diarrhea, laundry mildewed in hampers, and sinus cavities filled with cement.  If the barometric pressure dropped any lower everyone’s guts would be sucked through the soles of their feet into the bowels of the earth.  (pg. 200)

 Why deal with unpleasantness today when you could get hit by a bus tomorrow?   (pg. 137)

    The quibbles are minor.  Maxine-the-FTA chooses to tease her ex-boyfriend Eddie by sending him a series of coded messages about the stuff he wants returned.  Neither Eddie nor Stephanie are any good at puzzle-solving so they enlist the aid of others.  It would’ve been fun if the reader could try to decipher those messages as well, but we’re never shown any of the codes.  I was mildly bummed.

    The ending is a mixed bag.  On one hand, the five plotlines all get tied up nicely, and all parties receive their just desserts.  On the other hand, everything gets resolved in one chapter, and that felt a bit rushed to me.

    But enough nitpicking.  Four To Score was a light and delightful read for me, which was exactly what I was looking for.  Books 5 and 6 are on my TBR shelf, waiting their turns.

    8 Stars.  Wikipedia adds a pair of droll statistics to their posts on the early Stephanie Plum books: the number of FTA’s in each story, and the number of vehicles Stephanie manages to ruin each time.  They stop doing so somewhere up in the teens of the book numbers, but here the stats were: 3 FTA’s, 2 Car-Deaths.  I'm thinking of starting to include those in these reviews.

Babbitt - Sinclair Lewis

   1922; 370 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Laurels : None listed, but Wikipedia notes that the controversy that Babbitt sparked was influential in the decision to award the 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature to Sinclair Lewis.  Genre : Satire; Highbrow Lit; Americana.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    Any way you look at it, George F. Babbitt is living the good life.  He’s got a loving wife and three darling kids: two daughters, Verona and Tinka; and a son, the eldest, Ted, in high school, and who George plans to send to Law School when he graduates, something that wasn’t an option for him when he was growing up.

    George does all the correct things he’s supposed to do as a fine, upstanding citizen of the Midwest city of Zenith.  He’s a diehard Republican and very much anti-union.  He’s a dues-paying member of the Elks, the Boosters Club, the Zenith Athletic Club, and the Chamber of Commerce.  He attends the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church, pastored by the Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew, who enlightens George as to what he should think about things like disarmament, tariffs, and Germany.

    He plays golf, albeit not very well.  He hobnobs only with other fine, upstanding men, and scratches their backs, if you know what I’m saying, in exchange for them scratching his.  His best friend is Paul Riesling, an old college chum, whom George admires very much.

    If George F. Babbitt isn’t the richest or most influential man in Zenith, it’s not from a lack of effort.  He’s comfortably middle-class, and he’s sure all the rich, upstanding men in Zenith hold him in high regard.

    But every once in a while lately, a vague feeling of discontent tries to nudge its way into George’s thoughts.  He dreams about getting away from it all by going camping with his friend Paul up in the rustic woods of Maine.  Just to escape for a bit from the stress and hubbub of making money and raising a family in Zenith.

    Thank goodness such rebellious thoughts never stay long.  Failure to strictly abide by the set-in-stone middle-class standards could impact his fine, upstanding status in the community.

What’s To Like...

    Babbitt was published in 1922.  The Great War was over, so was the post-war recession, and optimism ran rampant in the United States, particularly if you were a white middle-class businessman.   The story is set in the fictional city of Zenith, somewhere in the Midwest.

    I was impressed with Sinclair Lewis’s depiction of life in the early 1920’s.  Prohibition was in full-swing, but home-brewed beer and alcohol was easy to come by if you had connections.  Air-conditioning was non-existent, so a lot of houses had a “sleeping porch” (I slept in one once!) to cope with the summer heat.  There are milk trucks, paper-carriers, and a furnace man.  The trolley was the main way to get around the city, and you took the train to go to another city or state.  Cars were certainly common, but you had to “crank the Ford” to get it started.

    Paradoxically, I was amazed at how much society back then resembles today’s social/political climate.  George is vexed because his kids don’t seem to listen to him.  The churches feel it’s their place to influence elections, and evangelists are mostly interested in making money.  Cocaine-use is a problem and business executives perpetrate shady deals.  Anti-immigrant sentiment runs high and “fake news” is cited when one doesn’t like what’s written in the newspapers (see the second excerpt below).  Science is viewed as being in opposition to religion, and leftist “long-hairs” are leading kids astray.  Despite Prohibition, morals are loosening, probably due to fads such as Feminism and New Ageism leading people astray.

    The main theme of Babbitt concerns the consequences of “going against the flow”, in terms of marital fidelity, politics, and religion.  The Status Quo may be corrupt, but it’s also extremely powerful.  The “rebels” of Society might offer tempting alternatives, but in the end, they’re just as shallow and phony as The Establishment.  You step out of line at your own risk.

    There were a fair number of typos in the book, which is not uncommon for a “Public Domain” edition.  Most of them were word splits: motor-cycle, basket-ball, high lights, week-end, to-night, etc.  and they might be just scanning inaccuracies.  It’s also possible that English grammar was slightly different a century ago.  Languages evolve.

    I liked the “lingo” that Sinclair Lewis uses - slangy idioms like “snoway talkcher father”, “pleasmeech”, “Jever”, and “frinstance”.  It sets the down-home tone of the novel quite effectively.  I enjoyed the séance, and chuckled at the mention of Theosophy and Pentecostals.  I learned a new Latin phrase, “hinc illae lacrimae”, which roughly means “that is what those tears were for”, and I felt that comparing the Babbitts/McKelveys dinner date with that of the Babbitts/Overbrooks encapsulates the whole message of the book.

    There is a small amount of cussing, mostly in the dialogue, and about what you’d expect from fine, upstanding middle-aged men.  There’s one roll in the hay, and it’s done off-screen.  The pacing is somewhat slow, but that’s the norm for a typical highbrow book, and it’s balanced by Sinclair Lewis's excellent writing.  The ending is both hopeful and cynical.  Giving more details about that would entail spoilers.

Kewlest New Word ...

Zob (n., slang) : a good-for-nothing; a fool.  (a Yankeeism).

Others: En brosse (adj.; phrase); Picaresque (adj.); Supercilious (adj.); Credulous (adj.).

Kindle Details...

    The “public domain” version of Babbitt is always free at Amazon.  There are various other e-book editions available, each of them has assorted extras.  The most expensive of these was $5.38.  I went with the freebie.   

Excerpts...

    He stood before the covered saucer of raspberry jelly, and grumbling over a clammy cold boiled potato.  He was thinking.  It was coming to him that perhaps all life as he knew it and vigorously practiced it was futile; that heaven as portrayed by the Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew was neither probable nor very interesting; that he hadn’t much pleasure out of making money; that it was of doubtful worth to rear children merely that they might rear children who would rear children.  What was it all about?  What did he want?  (loc. 3489)

    He belonged to the sound, sane, right-thinking wing, and at first he agreed that the Crooked Agitators ought to be shot.  He was sorry when his friend, Seneca Doane, defended arrested strikers, and he thought of going to Doane and explaining about these agitators, but when he read a broadside alleging that even on their former wages the telephone girls had been hungry, he was troubled.  “All lies and fake figures,” he said, but in a doubtful croak.  (loc. 3958)

 “Say! I know what was the trouble!  Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze last night.”  (loc. 2281)

    I don’t have anything significant to quibble about.  There were a poopload of characters to meet and keep track of.  The book is heavy on character studies and light on action and adventure.  But those are things I expect from a highbrow novel, and let’s face it, it is unlikely that a middle-class, middle-aged white suburbanite would have many thrills and spills in his life.

    What impresses me is the immediate and significant impact that Babbitt had on the American public.  It is unsurprising that his caustic and poignant depiction of the average businessman of the time sparked heated debate between his fans and detractors, which of course resulted in it becoming an instantly bestseller.

    Indeed, because of it, “Babbitt” is now an official word in our language (Really.  It’s in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  Google it), meaning “a materialistic and complacent businessman conforming to the standards of his social set”.   Ditto for the milquetoast practice thereof, which are called “Babbittry”.

    8½ Stars.  One last tidbit about Babbitt.  J.R.R. Tolkien was so influenced by the book that he called his newly-imagined Halfling creatures “hobbits” as a tribute to it.  The Bilbo Baggins character we meet at the beginning of The Hobbit, before he gets corrupted by going on an adventure with the dwarves, is a perfect and deliberate example of a Babbitt.

    So says Wikipedia in its post on the novel.  Curiously, this is totally absent from their post on the word "Hobbit".

Mort - Terry Pratchett

    1987; 243 pages.  New Author? : Heavens, no.  Book #4 (out of 41) in the Discworld series.  Book #1 (out of 5) in the “Death” sub-series.  Genre : Humorous Fantasy; Satire.  Laurels : #65 in the 2003 British reading survey, “The Big Read”.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    Everyone needs to take some time off once in a while.  Kick off the shoes, put aside the scythe, and just forget about the stresses of the job.  This is true, even if you’re Death.

    Of course, you also need to have someone fill in for you while you’re away, especially if you’re Death.  It just won’t do to have the whole living/dying process put on hold. Time would grind to a halt, things would get crowded been should-be-dead critters, and there’s no telling what sort of Temporal Paradoxes would be spawned in the Multiverse. 

    But who can substitute for Death?  It’s not a profession that has a huge pool of practitioners, and it certainly wouldn’t do to have some amateur mucking around, screwing up the job.  It seems like there’s only one option available for Death.

    Head out to the next job fair and hire an apprentice.

What’s To Like...

    The three main story threads in Mort are a.) Mort learning on his own how to be Death’s  replacement (he gets zero on-the-job training), b.) Death’s R&R follies, and c.) the efforts to repair Mort’s first big career mistake.

    Death’s antics, as he tries to understand what it means to be a human, are especially entertaining.  He applies for a job, goes fly-fishing, gets drunk, dances, and gambles, all in order to learn the meaning of “fun”.  You’ll be amazed at what the first job he finally lands is.

    I always enjoy it when Multiverses show up in a story, and Terry Pratchett finds a unique  and imaginative way to handle the Temporal Paradox that Mort inadvertently creates here.  I chuckled at the Caroc Cards and the Ching Aling of the Hublandish, both fortune-telling devices, as well as Octarine, the magical eighth color of the spectrum.

    The wizards at the Unseen University get a lot of ink, and that’s a plus.  I don’t recall meeting any dwarves, trolls, elves, or guards from the Night Watch, but there is a gargoyle and a princess.  Plus the Librarian makes an appearance (ook!!), with Rincewind serving as his assistant.

    As with all Discworld novels, Mort is both a standalone story as well as part of a series.  There are a couple cusswords, but they’re few and far between.  You won’t miss much if you don’t read the Discworld books in their proper order.  As (almost) always, Terry Pratchett abstains from using chapter divisions, and sprinkles a fair amount of footnotes throughout the pages.  You don’t want to skip over those.  There are even “footnotes to footnotes”, which is something I don’t recall encountering before.

Kewlest New Word...

Calcareous (adj.) : chalky; containing Calcium Carbonate

Others :  Brassica (n.); Declamatory (adj.); Actinic (adj.); Bollard (n.).

Excerpts...

    Reannuals are plants that grow backwards in time.  You sow the seed this year and they grow last year.

    Mort’s family specialized in distilling the wine from reannual grapes.  They were very powerful and much sought after by fortune tellers, since of course they enabled them to see the future.  The only snag was  that you got the hangover the morning before, and had to drink a lot to get over it.  (pg. 2)

    The Disc’s greatest lovers were undoubtedly Mellius and Gretelina, whose pure, passionate and soul-searing affair would have scorched the pages of History if they had not, because of some unexplained quirk of fate, been born two hundred years apart on different continents.  However, the gods took pity on them and turned him into an ironing board (when you’re a god, you don’t have to have reasons) and her into a small brass bollard.  (pg. 110)

“You drunk I’m think, don’t you?”  (pg. 150)

        The overarching theme of Mort is, of course, Death.  Even the title is a nod to this, since besides being short for the protagonist’s name, Mortimer, it’s the French word  for “death”.  Terry Pratchett’s thoughts on the subject here are both heartwarming and whimsical, yet theywere also sobering to me, since he’s no longer with us.

    I thought the ending, which is primarily the resolution of the Temporal Paradox, was quite clever, although some nit-picky readers  might deem it a bit “convenient”.

    In summary, Mort is one of the top-tier Discworld novels, highly entertaining, well-focused, and as good of a place as any to start reading this series.

    8½ Stars.  It should be mentioned that Mort ranked #65 in the 2003 Great Britain reading survey called “The Big Read”.  Five Discworld books claimed spots in the Top 100 places, and fifteen in the Top 200, which is absolutely phenomenal.  You can read more about The Big Read here.

Princesses Behaving Badly - Linda Rodriguez McRobbie

   2013; 301 pages.  Full Title : Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History without the Fairy-Tale Endings.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Historical Non-Fiction; Women in History; Biographies.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

    It seems like the dream of almost every little girl nowadays is to be a princess.  With a tiara in her hair, a wand with a star on the end, a frilly, fluffy skirt, and with the dominant color being pink or purple.  Author Linda Rodriguez McRobbie blames this on the Disney marketing campaign – its movies, toys, Halloween costumes, and whatnot.   Who wouldn’t want to be Belle, Ariel, or Cinderella?

    For a historical princess, the reality was somewhat different.  Sons of a reigning king grew up to be rulers – the eldest became the next king, and the rest became dukes.  Daughters became a marketable commodity – usually to be utilized to create or strengthen a political alliance via an arranged marriage, and the gods forbid that any princess should ever dream of marrying for love, courting a commoner, or (worst of all) getting a divorce.

    After that, her sole purpose in life is to produce a male heir for the throne.  Extramarital affairs by both king and queen were tacitly permitted, provided of course, one used a bit of discretion when engaging in them.   And being a princess in a royal household was much better than being a peasant.  At least you usually got to spend daddy’s riches.

   Still, some princesses are just not cut out for a life like that.  They might prefer to lead an army, steal a throne for themselves, hatch some diabolic political plot, sleep around, party all night, or live la vida loca..

    Their royal parents might call it “marching to the beat of a different drummer” or “just a stage she’s going through”.  Linda Rodriguez McRobbie calls it Princesses Behaving Badly.

What’s To Like...

    Princesses Behaving Badly is divided into 30 short biographies of daughters born into royalty (or pretending to be) in empires all around the world and ranging in time from 1500 BC (Hatsheput) to still-living today (Gloria von Thurn und Taxis).

    Interspersed among those chapters are another 15 sections on diverse subjects such as Royal Family Incest (there were reasons for practicing it), Warrior women who weren’t quite princesses, Six Ways to Fake Princesshood (useful advice?), and various princesses about whom there just aren’t enough details to warrant a discrete biography.

    All told, there are probably about 50 women examined to various degrees here, of which I’d heard of only five: Boudicca, Anne Boleyn, Lucrezia Borgia, Princess Margaret, and one of the “Anastasia” pretenders.  As a history buff, I was in hog heaven.

    The 45 biographies and tangents are grouped into seven sections, namely:

        01.) Warriors

        02.) Usurpers

        03.) Schemers

        04.) Survivors

        05.) Partiers

        06.) Floozies

        07.) Madwomen

     Also included in each biography are portraits of each princess, a catchy title, and one-paragraph teaser intros for them.  All of those literary devices worked great.

    Some examples of the titles: “The Princess Who Slaughtered Her Way to Sainthood”, “The Princess who Kept Male Concubines in Drag”, “The Princess Who Didn’t Wash”, and “The Princess Who Caused a Bank Robbery”.  Do any of those tickle your fancy?

    As expected, there are tons of interesting trivia and historical minutiae.  One princess stalked a guy by the name of Cecil Rhodes who happens to be the namesake of both “Rhodesia” and the “Rhodes Scholarship”.  Hernando Cortés defeated the Aztecs not so much with superior armor and weaponry (which is what I was taught way back when), but by bringing along with him the smallpox plague. And, to my utter amazement, the British Secret Intelligence Service (“MI6”) once staged a bank robbery in order to recover some nudie photos of Princess Margaret that were being used to blackmail her.  At least that’s the rumor.

    Personally, I found Princesses Behaving Badly to be thoroughly entertaining and quite enlightening.  I was pleasantly surprised at the sheer number of bad-ass and outrageous princesses the author was able to come up with.

Kewlest New Word ...

Excoriated (v.) : censured or severely criticized.

Excerpts...

    Though she was petite – barely five feet tall – and delicate, Christina walked and talked like a man.  She strode around in flat shoes, swore like a sailor in a deep gruff voice, and tended to smack her servants around.  She slouched, preferred short skirts and trousers to overstuffed female fashions, and had no time or patience for things like embroidery and etiquette.  She was often too busy to comb her hair and none too keen on bathing (in her defense, no one really was back then).  (loc. 2182)

    Her health wasn’t the only thing fragile about Alexandra.  At age 23, the pretty, dark-haired princess was found walking slowly, carefully, bow-leggedly down the corridors of the royal palace.  When questioned by her worried parents, she claimed that as a little girl she had swallowed a full-size glass grand piano.  The princess was worried that if she bumped into something, the piano inside her would shatter and leave her in bloody shreds. (…)

    Gossips claimed that she also believed she had a sofa in her head.  (loc. 3546)

Kindle Details…

    The Kindle version of Princesses Behaving Badly currently sells for $10.99 at Amazon.  ANAICT, this is the only book offered at Amazon by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie..

 “You don’t want to behave like you’re 70 when you’re in your 20s.  And vice versa.”  (loc. 2933 )

    I have only one thing to quibble about in Princesses Behaving Badly.  I thought the decision to arrange all the princesses cited in any given section in chronological order, from oldest to most recent, worked quite well.  So I was a bit surprised that this wasn’t done with the 30 biographies as a whole.

    Instead, they’re arranged in sections, and this got to be just a tad repetitive at times.  For instance, we get five “princesses leading armies” in a row in Section 1.  After the third or fourth, the stories all seemed to sound the same.  But then we’re done with that category, and off we go to a list of a bunch of princesses who all grabbed the throne by force, and we never get to read about any other warring princesses

    I think it might be a bit more interest-holding to just present all thirty in chronological order, as was done in another anthology of biographies I read recently (reviewed here). I very much liked that arrangement.  Spreading those warrior women throughout the whole cast of noteworthy princesses keeps everything fresh.

    But I quibble.  Princesses Behaving Badly is a great book that kept my attention from start to finish, and fully deserving of a 9*/10 rating.

    9 Stars.  Interestingly, the book doesn’t fare so well at both Amazon (3.9 stars out of 5) and Goodreads (only 3.61 stars out of 5).  The main complaint seems to be that some reviewers felt that the “facts” and “sources” for a lot of the biographies were a bit "shaky".  Unfortunately, if a princess lived before the invention of the printing press, the chances of finding reliable details about her life etched in stone (literally) are slim.  To get some idea about this, go see how many rock-solid details you can find about the life of William Shakespeare.  They are few and far between (as Bill Bryson found out when he went to write a biography of The Bard), and Shakespeare lived in the relatively recent 1600’s.

The Time Ships - Stephen Baxter

   1995; 530 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Time-Travel; “Hard” Science Fiction; Speculative Science Fiction; Sequels.  Laurels : A slew of them.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    It was going to be a simple thing, really.  Easy-peasy.

    Our hero/narrator had a successful maiden voyage into the far future – to 807,201 AD to be precise, and returned home chastened, but safe and sound.  H.G. Wells found his manuscript detailing the journey, and published it to enormous acclaim back in 1895, calling it The Time Machine.

    But one regret remains, one loose thread, one piece of unfinished business.  Weena, the lovely Eloi girl that our hero became so enamored with, had to be left behind, captured by the evil Morlocks and sure to be their next meal.  Something our hero was powerless to stop, since he was fleeing for his life.

    Yet now, back in his own time, he’s reflected on this, and has come up with a remarkably simple solution: jump into the Time Machine, head out to 807,201 AD once again, land a couple hours earlier than before, and rescue Weena.  He knows where the Morlocks will lie in wait (Time Travel has some inherent advantages), and the Morlocks will never know what hit them.  It’s a well-thought-out plan.  What could possibly go wrong?

    Well, to quote the great Morlock sage, Nebogipfel, “Cause and Effect, when Time Machines are about, are rather awkward concepts.”

What’s To Like...

    To commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the publishing of The Time Machine, the H.G. Wells estate authorized Stephen Baxter to write a sequel.  The result was The Time Ships, and judging from the number of awards it won and/or was nominated for (listed below), they made a good choice.   The Time Ships is an epic Hard Science Fiction novel, and fully integrates events from The Time Machine (along with numerous nods to other H.G. Wells tales) into its storyline.

    The novel is divided into 7 “books”, plus an Epilogue, each one covering a ‘”jump” in time by our never-named protagonist and his newfound sidekick , a Morlock named Nebogipfel.  The jumps encompass the full temporal spectrum – to both the end of Time itself, and way back to before the Big Bang.

    Along the way, our heroes examine a number of serious themes, such as democracy, God, war, nuclear bombs, forced sterilization (which really occurred in the US back in the 1920’s), and evolution.  Interestingly, the Morlock viewpoint is often at odds with the Human one.  Stephen Baxter also has one huge advantage that H.G. Wells lacked – a century in the development of Quantum Physics.  So things like Multiverses, Temporal Paradoxes, Dyson Spheres, and Sentient Artificial Intelligence are also encountered.

    I was particularly impressed by the treatment of Temporal Paradoxes, such as “what happens if I go back in Time and kill my earlier self?”  A lot of Time Travel novelists take pains to skirt these situations; Stephen Baxter revels in them.

    Outside of our two chrono-hoppers, there aren’t a lot of characters to keep track of, and for all the new worlds we visit, not many new species to behold.  There are the Humans, Morlocks, and Eloi, of course; but besides that, just some post-dinosaur flora and fauna, and the epitome of Evolution – the Universal Constructors.

    The titular Time Ships don’t appear until page 447, and I learned what a Catherine Wheel is (the fireworks, not the torture device) and who Kurt Godel was.  I never did figure out what an Everett Phonograph was, nor when and where Filby fit in; but I was happy to see the nod to the town of Staines (I’ve been there!) as well as Henri Poincaré, whom I recently learned about (see the review here).

    There were four neat drawings interspersed throughout the book, although they might not be included in every edition.  77 chapters cover 520 pages, so you can always find a good spot when you want to stop reading for the night.  The entire book is written in the first-person POV.  I read The Time Machine as a preparation for The Time Ships, but in retrospect, I don’t think it was necessary.  The ending won’t be to everyone’s taste.  It has a “2001 – A Space Odyssey” feel to it, but I can’t picture an alternative way to end things.

Kewlest New Word ...

Rum Cove (n., phrase) : a dexterous or clever rogue (possibly a Britishism).

Others : Perforce (adv.); Lenticular (adj.); Peripatetic (adj.); Farrago (n.); Benighted (adj.).

Excerpts...

    I could see again.  I had a clear view of the world – of the green-glowing hull of the Time Ships all around me, of the earth’s bone-gleam beyond.

    I was existent once again! – and a deep panic – a horror – of that interval of Absence pumped through my system.  I have feared no Hell so much as non-existence – indeed, I had long resolved that I should welcome whatever agonies Lucifer reserves for the intelligent Non-Believer, if those pains served as proof that my consciousness still endured!  (pg. 455)

    An infinite universe!

    You might look out, through the smoky clouds of London, at the stars which mark out the sky’s cathedral roof; it is all so immense, so unchanging, that it is easy to suppose that the cosmos is an unending thing, and that it has endured forever.

    … But it cannot be so.  And one only need ask a common-sense question – why is the night sky dark? – to see why.

   If you had an infinite universe, with stars and galaxies spread out through an endless void, then whichever direction in the sky you looked, your eye must meet a ray of light coming from the surface of a star.  The night sky would glow everywhere as brightly as the sun…  (pg. 472)

“You and I – and Eloi and Morlock – are all, if you look at it on a wide enough scale, nothing but cousins within the same antique mudfish family!”  (pg. 106)

     The biggest plus to The Time Ships is how well Stephen Baxter manages to capture the writing style and storytelling of H.G. Wells.  Paradoxically, the biggest minus is also how well he captures that writing style and storytelling.

    Science Fiction has come a long way since H.G. Wells penned The Time Machine.  There’s a lot more action now, and a lot more world-building.  I still enjoy reading classic Sci-Fi stories, but I’m also thankful they’re generally less than 200 pages in length.

    Here, we have 500+ pages of century-old Sci-Fi.  The pace is slow, and while Stephen Baxter gives the reader a lot to think about, there aren’t a lot of thrills and spills.  True, this is also inherent in any Hard Science Fiction book that’s done properly.  But if you’re looking for a science fiction novel with galaxy-invading aliens and a protagonist with a liberal libido, you probably should skip this one, and do an Amazon search for “Space Opera”.

    7½ Stars.  Per Wikipedia, the laurels The Time Ships garnered are:  British Science Fiction Award – 1995 (winner); John W. Campbell Memorial Award – 1996 (winner); Philip K. Dick Award – 1996 (winner); British Fantasy Award – 1996 (nominee); Arthur C. Clarke Award – 1996 (nominee); Hugo Award – 1996 (nominee); Locus Award – 1996 (nominee); Kurd-Lasswitz Award, Foreign Fiction – 1996 (winner); Premio Gigamesh Award – 1997 (winner); Seiun Award – 1999 (winner).  Wowza!

The Kaiser Affair - Joseph Robert Lewis

   2013; 224 pages.  Book 1 of “The Drifting Isle Chronicles” trilogy.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Steampunk; Fantasy; Paranormal.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Bettina Rothschild and Arjuna Rana are two of the finest detectives in Eisenstadt.  They work super well together, which is no surprise since they also happen to be husband and wife.  Bettina supplies the beauty and the brains, and Arjuna contributes the brawn and several other useful skills, including having a photographic memory.  Both of them are deadly accurate with their coilguns.

    So it’s no wonder when the head of the Ministry of Justice, Gisele Kaiser, calls them to her private office and commissions them to take on an ultra-sensitive case.  It seems that one of the city’s foremost art-thieves has just successfully managed to brazenly escape from the maximum-security Torghast Prison.

    There are a couple of rather bizarre things about the case though.

    For starters, breaking out of Torghast is no small feat.  There are multiple guards to bribe, and gangland criminals to hire to assist in the getaway.  That takes money and connections, neither of which a mere burglar is likely to have.

    Then there’s the request by Gisele Kaiser that the investigation be handled in utmost secrecy.  Well, that’s somewhat understandable, since the art thief’s name is Ranulf Kaiser, Gisele’s brother.  If word gets out about this, the political scandal will be enormous.

    But the oddest part about the case is the timing.  Ranulf Kaiser had just about completed his prison sentence.  He was due to be released from prison in less than a month.

    What’s so important that he’d jeopardize his entire future by escaping now?

What’s To Like...

    If you’re a fan of Steampunk, you’ll love The Kaiser Affair.   World-building is a Joseph Robert Lewis forte, and he doesn’t disappoint here.  There are some neat gizmos: you can drive around in (steam-powered) autocarriages; shoot  your coilgun at criminal lowlifes, and if you’re daring enough, take a flight in the just-been-invented autogyros.  There’s a huge “drifting isle”, called Inselmond, floating  about a mile above Eisenstad, and if you listen carefully enough, you’ll find that all sorts of birds can talk, which sometimes makes them a very convenient source of information.

    Legends abound about how and why the drifting isle got there, and there’s even speculation that it might be populated.  No one can tell, because all you can see from earth is the rocky bottom of it.   There’s also talk about some sort of secret society of assassins in Eisenstadt, called “The Shadows”.  But nobody’s ever seen them, so who knows if it's true or not?

    I liked the strong female leads for both the good guys and the baddies.  Ditto for the fact that Bettina, although still rather young, has to use a cane to get around.  Perhaps this is a subtle tip-of-the-hat to Robert Heinlein, who used to frequently endow his heroes with disabilities in his Sci-Fi stories was back in the 1950’s.  Education-wise, Bettina has earned a degree in Chemistry and one of the other female characters has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering.  It’s a neat world where women are just as educated as the men.

    The pacing is brisk, and there’s lots of action to keep you turning the pages.  There is an element of Fantasy also woven into the story:  some of the weaponry is magical, and you can consult astrologers (called “starcasters”) if you want, although their helpfulness is at times limited.  Along with all the thrills and spills, Joseph Robert Lewis also touches on a serious theme – racial prejudice – and I thought this was a very nice touch.  Finally, the banter between our two protagonists is often hilarious and always witty.

    There are 23 chapters, plus an epilogue, covering 224 pages, so it’s easy to find a good place to stop reading for the night.  The R-rated stuff is limited to a couple cusswords, one roll-in-the-carriage, and some implied (but never carried out) mild bondage.  The settings are limited to Eisenstadt and the Drifting Isle, but that allows the author to develop both sites in detailed fashion.   Everything builds to a suitably exciting ending, with a twist or two in it that I didn’t see coming.  The Kaiser Affair is a standalone story, with all the story threads tied up nicely.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Riparian (adj.) :  relating to or situated on the banks of a river.

Excerpts...

    “A murder of ravens, a parliament of owls, a brood of chickens, and a flight of swallows,” Bettina said.  “But a flock of birds. A flock.”

    Arjuna looked up from his waffles slathered in syrup, butter, and strawberries.  “I’m sorry, what?”

    “A flock, Arry,” Bettina sipped her tea and peered thoughtfully out through the café windows at the bright morning light on the bust street outside.  “I know what a murder is, and a parliament, and a brood.  They’re all real words.  But what is a flock?”

    He smiled and finished his coffee.  “It‘s a word, dear.  Try not to overthink it.”  (loc. 443)

    “I asked you, what is that thing in your hand?”

    The tall Dumastran turned his head and looked at the shining silver bow resting on his shoulder as though he were seeing it for the first time.  “Oh this?  Yes, well, Strauss smashed my poor little coilgun in  that miserable tomb, so I had to make do.”

    “Make do?”  Bettina cleared her throat.  “Dear, when one makes do in a miserable tomb, one usually manages with a dusty old rock or a filthy old bone.  One does not make do with an ancient recurve bow, doubtlessly forged from strange alloys using long-lost metallurgical secrets.”  (loc. 2226)

Kindle Details...

    The Kaiser Affair currently sells for $2.99 at Amazon.  The other two books in the series, Black Mercury by Charlotte E. English, and The Machine God by MeiLin Miranda, both sell for $3.99.  Joseph Robert Lewis has a slew of other Fantasy e-books to offer, ranging from free to $2.99 apiece.  I read the Aetherium series a few years ago, when it was just a trilogy and the books had different titles.  It is now a (completed) 8-book series, and you can pick up the Omnibus edition, containing all eight stories for $9.99, which is a really good deal.

 A mind like a library, the body of an angel, and the stomach of an adolescent.  Two out of three aren’t bad, I suppose.  (loc  582)

    The Kaiser Affair has fabulous world-building, lot of action and adventure, and fascinating characters.  Yet one important thing is missing: a compelling storyline.  As other reviewers noted, this really is just a 225-page chase scene.  Entertaining, yes.  Epic, no.

    At the end of the e-book, there’s an “extra” that perhaps sheds some light on this.  Titled, “A Note about The Drifting Isle Chronicles”, it gives the background of how the story came to be, which is a rather unique process.

    First, a group of writers with diverse genre focuses got together and spent weeks doing the world-building.  Once that was finished, each author took a separate piece of this new world (which essentially is just Eisenstadt and Inselmond) and wrote a novel in whatever genre they specialized in.  The result was a trilogy having three different authors.

    I can think of two other writers who have tried something similar, albeit in both cases, it was aimed at encouraging Fanzine Fiction.  John Scalzi developed one in his Old Man’s War universe, and Eric Flint did one in his 1632 alternate dimension series.  My impression is that neither one went over particularly well.

    I suspect that any “shared” setting has an inherent weakness: nothing earthshaking can happen.  For example, Joseph Robert Lewis can’t annihilate half the population of Eisenstadt with a neutron bomb, because two other authors are using the same setting and would have to accommodate such an event in their storylines.  Thus, you're limited to penning stories that don't disturb the world-building and don't kill off any of the main characters.

    Whether this had any impact on this particular collaborative world-setting I can’t say.  But I note that in the end, only three writers used the world that they (and others?) built, and ANAICT none of them ever penned a second novel set in it.

    8 Stars.  There may be nothing “epic” about the storyline in The Kaiser Affair, but I still enjoyed it from the first page to the last.  Joseph Robert Lewis can probably write a story about paint drying that will still keep a reader turning the pages.  If you can be happy with a Steampunk story that doesn’t involve saving humanity, then this book's will be a delight.