The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Clmbed Out the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson

   2012; 388 pages.  Book 1 (out of 2) in the series “The Hundred-Year-Old Man”.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Satire; Swedish Literature & Fiction; Humorous Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Allan Karlsson turns 100 years old today.  The Old Folks’ Home where he lives has planned a party to celebrate this and it starts in an hour.

 

    Allan has lived a full and exciting life, although he rarely talks about it.  No one at the rest home would believe him anyway.

 

    Allan’s not looking forward to the party.  That bad-tempered old Director Alice most likely won’t allow him to drink any vodka.  So he decides to go on one last adventure before he dies.  He stuffs what little money he still has into his pocket, and like the title says, climbs out the window and walks away.  He’ll catch a bus at the nearby station and disappear by going as far as his cash will take him.  Which admittedly isn’t very far.

 

    Director Alice will be livid.  When she catches up to him, I’d hate to be in Allan’s shoes.  Well, in his slippers, actually.  Allan didn’t do much planning for this escape.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared was published in September 2009.  It was Jonas Jonasson’s debut novel, became a bestseller in Sweden in 2010, and by 2012 had sold three million copies worldwide.  The original language is Swedish of course, and it was translated into English in 2012 by Rod Bradbury.  The story chronicles both Allan’s current escapade, and the various adventures he'd experienced over the course of his long life.

 

    This is a “humorous satire” novel, with most of the funniness being of a “gentle” kind, despite several deaths occurring along the way.  In a nutshell, if you liked Forrest Gump, you’ll like this book.  The present-day tale begins in a small Swedish village called Malmkoping, which really exists (population: 1,977 in 2010), with Allan’s past history interspersed throughout the story as a series of flashbacks.  You’ll also spend some time in a town with the bizarre name of Yxhult, also real, and which thankfully has a phonetic pronunciation. 

 

    Allan apparently had a lifelong knack for crossing paths with world leaders.  His name-dropping list includes Mao Tse-Tung, Josef Stalin, Generalissimo Franco, Charles de Gaulle, and US presidents Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.  All these luminaries remember him fondly and will put in a good word or do him a favor if asked.  Like Forrest Gump, Allan offers some keen insights along the way on topics such as world politics, religion, U.S. foreign policy, and the Korean War.  Bear in mind that Sweden historically is a neutral country, and Allan’s viewpoints often reflect this.

 

    Allan’s did a lot of globetrotting in his life, so the reader is treated to bits and pieces of a bunch of languages.  You’ll learn to cuss in both Farsi (“Khafe sho!”) and Spanish (Vete a la mierda!”), as well as the Balinese word for frog (“kodok”), a Russian maxim about not combining smoking and football, plus several Indonesian words for ordering food in a restaurant.  You’ll even hear Stalin give a Swedish toast (“Helam gar, sjung hopp federallan lallan lej!”).

 

    On a more practical level, you’ll learn how to brew vodka from goats’ milk, and the secret recipe for making the tastiest watermelons in the world.  Trivia buffs will enjoy learning about Sonya Hedenbratt and Georgy Flyorov (both real people), the early 20^th-century practice of forced castration of those deemed “mentally infirm” (also real, even in the US!), and the mysterious World War 2 disappearance of Glenn Miller.  And spiritually, you’ll find out how to get kicked out of both Jehovah Witnesses and Pentecostal congregations.

 

    The book closes with Allan’s “past” storyline finally catching up to his “present” one.  In true Forrest-Gumpian style, all turns out well for Allan and his chums, including Buster and Sonya (who?), and except for the fox and the kitten.  Incredibly, given that Allan is a centenarian, there is a 2018 sequel to this story: The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Dab Hand (n., phrase) : a person who is an expert at a particular activity (a Britishism).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.3*/5, based on 19,198 ratings and 14,787 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.81*/5, based on 242,371 ratings and 24,749 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Allan said that he wasn’t dead, and if the Popov couple wanted to make sure he didn’t freeze to death it would be best if they immediately lead him to a restaurant where he could get some vodka and perhaps a bite to eat.

    “It really is you…” Yuri finally managed to exclaim.  “But … you speak Russian…?”

    “Yes.  I went on a five-year course in your country’s language shortly after we last met,” said Allan.  “The school was called Gulag.  What about the vodka?”  (loc. 4879)

 

    “What do you want me to help you with if I may ask?” said Allan.  “There are only two things I can do better than most people.  One of them is to make vodka from goats’ milk, and the other is to put together an atom bomb.”

   “That’s exactly what we’re interested in,” said the man.

    “The goats’ milk?”

    “No,” said the man.  “Not the goats’ milk.”  (loc. 5362)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who … Disappeared currently sells for $9.99 at Amazon.  Its sequel, The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man, is priced at $11.99.  Jonas Jonasson has one other e-book in English: The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden, and it goes for a mere $1.99 right now.  You can also pre-order his next novel, Sweet Sweet Revenge, for $14.99, which is due to be released May 31, 2022.

 

“Father Ferguson wasn’t a man who took a no for a no.”  (loc. 2173)

    The quibbles are minor.  There’s a small amount of cussing: 17 instances in the first 20%, including one use of the f-bomb.  One wonders what those words are in the original Swedish tongue.  Also, although I wouldn’t call our protagonist a flawed character, he is capable of larceny, lying, and accidental manslaughter.

 

    The template for handling dialogue was annoyingly awkward.  No quotation marks are used; instead it starts the talking with an “em dash”, then lets you guess where it ends and where the next bit of conversation resumes.  And yes, I reformatted the conversations in the two excerpts given above into the standard style for dialogue.  It appeased my OCD.

 

    8 Stars.  I enjoyed The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who … Disappeared, which says something since I wasn’t wowed by Forrest Gump.  The translating felt smooth, the wit was my kind of humor, Allan was my kind of hero, even the baddies had some redeeming qualities, and the storyline had lots of over-the-top antics.  It kept my interest throughout and I’m looking forward to reading the sequel.

Somebody To Love? - Grace Slick

   1998; 364 pages.  Full Title: Somebody to Love? – A Rock-and-Roll Memoir.  New Author(s)? : Yes (and Yes).  Genres: Music History; Rock Music; Autobiography.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    Jefferson Airplane.  They were one of the top rock bands of the 1967 “Summer of Love”, thanks mostly to their fantastic breakout album Surrealistic Pillow, which had two songs, Somebody To Love and White Rabbit, that later made it onto Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

 

    Most people don’t realize that Surrealistic Pillow was actually the band’s second release.  Their debut album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, had been released a year earlier, and garnered almost zero excitement.

 

    There were a couple of personnel changes between the two albums: a new drummer, and a new female vocalist, with Grace Slick replacing Signe Anderson, who quit to devote time to her newborn daughter.

 

    Interestingly, Grace Slick is credited with writing White Rabbit, and her then-brother-in-law is credited with writing Somebody to Love.  The two songs on the "500 Greatest" list.  So, was Jefferson Airplane's adding Grace Slick to the band and their simultaneous meteoric rise to stardom a case of causation or correlation?

 

    Let’s read her autobiography Somebody To Love? and find out.

 

What’s To Like...

    Somebody to Love? was published in 1998, when Grace Slick (neé Grace Wing) was 59 years old and retired from the music scene.  The book includes lots of great photographs of Grace’s life, loves, career, cohorts.  It was co-written by a friend of hers, Andrea Cagan (you can see her name in the bottom right-hand corner of the cover image), and the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book gives a nice thank-you to Andrea by Grace as well as detailing how the whole writing thing worked.

 

    The first hundred pages or so chronicle Grace’s childhood, schooling (she went to a snotty “finishing school for girls” for a while), and first marriage, all of which was surprisingly interesting.  You’ll learn why her family nickname when growing up was “Grouser”, what her slang word “toodles” refers to, tag along for her “first time”, and marvel that her first songwriting effort managed to offend a bunch of “preppy boys” at a college party, causing them to ask her to leave and never come back.

 

    The next two hundred pages are pretty much an extended discourse about sex and drugs and rock-and-roll, and booze, all of which Grace embraced with passionate persistence.  Musically, these chapters cover her time with the bands The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Starship, and a short-lived solo career.

 

    Grace Slick does a lot of name-dropping here, which is a plus, not a minus.  Besides her bandmates, some of the notables include: JFK (before he was president), Jerry Garcia, Neal Cassady (a Merry Prankster), Wavy Gravy (who?), David Crosby, Mick Jagger, Frank Zappa, Abbie Hoffman, Craig Chaquico (who?), and Mickey Hart.  She credits Randy Newman, Odetta, and Lenny Bruce with each having a significant impact on her musical career.  Oh yeah, there's also a threesome involving Grace, Jim Morrison of the Doors, and a plate of strawberries.  Chapter 26 is devoted to that.

 

    The last 70 pages show us the present-day (in 1998) Grace Slick: calm, content, and gratefully retired from the excesses of being a rock-and-roll star.  She wishes her parents were still alive, is proud as any mother can be of her daughter China, has had enough of cheating husbands, offers some thoughts about geezer-aged rock bands reuniting for a brief time (one tour, one album), and introduces us to her current flame, Buckminister Ratcliff Esquire III, whose fat, furry body Grace loves to play with.  Get your mind out of the gutter, he’s a lab rat.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 405 ratings and 175 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.74/5 based on 1,345 ratings and 113 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Girl-ask-boy dance.  Okay.  I went straight to the top by asking the school’s star quarterback to be my date.  He was older and he didn’t know who the hell I was, but he said yes.  Polite, I guess.  I bought a pink, flower-covered, wedding cake-like monstrosity of a dress and went with Mr. Hotshot to a pre-dance party thrown by a senior cheerleader.  She opened the door in a red, body-hugging floor-length number with four-inch dangling earrings, which made me look like an exploding cotton candy machine.  (pg. 49)

 

    In 1988, Paul called together all the original members of Jefferson Airplane and suggested a short (one album, one tour) reunion.  After some brief discussion about logistics, we all agreed to the adventure.

    Fantastic, I thought.  This time Airplane will be assisted by one of those professional management teams in L.A. (as opposed to well-meaning hippies from San Francisco) who really know how to put a rock-and-roll package together.  Now that we’re all old enough to prefer seamless negotiations, it’ll be a snap.

    Sure, Grace, and polar bears use toilets.  (pg. 323)

 

I was naïve enough to be sucked in by the “Wanna see my Bugatti?” routine.  (pg. 60)

    I don’t really have any great quibbles about Somebody to Love?  Yes, there was some cussing, but a lot less than what I expected – just 9 instances in the first 20% of the book.  Yes, Grace hopped into bed with all sorts of guys, especially musicians, including most (but not quite all) of her fellow members of Jefferson Airplane.  But there were no lurid details (not even about those strawberries), and hey, most readers expect a rock star’s bio to include some romantic trysts.

 

      Personally, I would’ve liked more pages devoted to the Jefferson Airplane/Starship  years but let's remember that Somebody to Love? is story about Grace Slick’s life, not about those bands.  And perhaps some negative details are omitted due to not wanting to dwell on the trials and tribulations of the daily coexistence with one’s bandmates.

 

    Finally, it would be nice to have an updated version of this book, since it’s been 23 years since Somebody to Love? was published, and Grace Slick is still alive and in her early 80s.   But if you’re dying to know what she’s been up to in the last quarter century, you can read Wikipedia’s post on her here.

 

    All in all, I enjoyed Somebody to Love?  The content is a nice balance between the flower-power lifestyle of the 1960s, the human side of being in a top-tier band, and the challenge of having a stable personal life all at the same time.  The chapters are short (54 of them covering 364 pages) which made this a quick, easy, and informative read, and since I was a teenager myself in the 1960s, the book brought back some great memories of my salad days.

 

    8½ Stars.  Here’s a few other noteworthy highlights of the book: Grace’s introduction to LSD (pg. 94); her first peyote trip (pgs. 90-91, which also brought back old memories), getting busted again and again (ch. 30), playing “butt bongo” on the Howard Stern Show (pg. 332), and her love for the music of The Gipsy Kings (pgs, 351 and 359).

The Scar - China Miéville

   2002; 578 pages.  Book Two (out of three) in the “Bas-Lag” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Steampunk Fiction; Weird Fantasy.  Laurels: 2003 British Fantasy Award (winner); 2003 Locus Award (winner); nominated for 2002 British Science Fiction Award, 2002 Phillip K. Dick Award, 2003 Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2003 Hugo Award, and 2003 World Fantasy Award.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    Bellis Coldwine is going on an extended cruise.  She boarded the ship Terpsichoria in the capital city of New Crobuzon and is headed for the distant port of Nova Esperium.

 

    The Terpsichoria is not your typical cruise ship though.  It’s primarily used to transport slaves throughout the empire although paying passengers such as Bellis are also welcomed.  But this is not a pleasure voyage for Bellis; it’s one of desperation.  Her friends and acquaintances in New Crobuzon have been “disappearing” in the middle of the night, and it's not hard to figure out that it won’t be long before whoever the abductors are, probably the New Crobuzon militia, will soon be coming for her as well.

 

    Alas, Fate has a detour in store for Bellis.  The open sea is a dangerous place, and the Terpsichoria has just been captured by pirates.  They’re freeing the slaves and press-ganging both them and passengers into becoming residents of the floating pirate metropolis of Armada.

 

    Oh well.  Any port in a storm is fine by Bellis.  What’s important to her is where she’s fleeing from, not where she is, or where she’s going.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Scar is the second book in China Miéville’s “Bas-Lag” trilogy.  It’s not really a sequel, but it’s set in the same world as Book One, Perdido Street Station, which I read more than ten years ago and is reviewed here.

 

    China Miéville’s world-building in The Scar is both ambitious and masterfully done.  Most of the story takes place on the giant ocean-borne city of Armada, which has citizens dwelling both above and below the water surface.  The city itself is made up of dozens upon dozens of watercraft seized by the pirates, welded together, and converted into an urban area.  That may sound a bit contrived, but in Miéville’s hands it works perfectly.

 

    The character development is equally dazzling.  For the most part, we follow Bellis's adventures and intrigues, as she struggles to come to grips with the fact that Armada is both her new and permanent home.  We meet all sorts of sentient species that have found a haven in, under, and around Armada, including crays (half-human/half crayfish), cactacae (“cactus people”), dinichthys (“bonefish”), vampires (called “vampir”), anophelli (“mosquito people”), scabmettlers, grindylow, and the bizarre, artificially-fashioned “Remade”.  Who knows, maybe we'll even spot a creature called the godwhale, otherwise known as the "mountain-that-swims".

 

    Lots of species means lots of spoken languages, and Bellis finds herself in a key position of a translator due to her working knowledge of some of the more arcane tongues.  She may not be fluent in all of these, but for now she’s the best resource the wandering pirates have got.

 

    The storyline is complex, which is typical for China Miéville novels.  The reasons for Bellis’s fleeing New Crobuzon remain obscure for a long time, as does her determination to eventually return there.  Other press-ganged passengers from the Terpsichoria have their own reasons for wanting to contact New Crobuzon officials and some pirate leaders have their own agendas for steering Armada to uncharted waters.  It was a fun challenge to figure out who was using whom, and what ulterior motives the various main characters had.  It takes a while for the action to kick in alongside the intrigue, but once it does, you are treated to several exciting, chapter-long battle scenes.

 

    There is some magic (called “thaumaturgy”) present in the tale, including some very useful charmed artifacts, but it doesn’t overwhelm the storyline.  I liked the concept of “probability mining”, and chuckled at the fact that book-hoarding was considered a serious crime in the Garwater sector of Armada.  Miéville's choice of words is a vocabulary-lover’s delight: my favorites are given below, but there were lots more.

 

    Everything builds to a suitably exciting ending, including several twists to keep you on the edge of your seat.  In the end, Armada and its inhabitants are saved from a dire fate.  Or did they chicken out and miss a chance to gain unprecedented power?  That remains for the surviving characters, as well as the reader, to ponder.  Only China Miéville knows the answer.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Gurned (v.) : made a grotesque face (British).

Others: Disphotic (adj.); Integument (n.), Adumbrating (v.); Fatuous (adj.), Raddled (v.); Delimited (v.), Pusillanimous (adj.); Tup (v.), Detumescent (adj.); Bathetic (adj.), Benthic (adj.); Kitted (v., British), Blebbed (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 527 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.17/5 based on 29,260 ratings and 1,817 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    In New Crobuzon, what was not regulated was illicit.  In Armada, things were different.  It was, after all, a pirate city.  What did not directly threaten the city did not concern its authorities.  Bellis’ message, like other secrets, did not have to strive to be covert, as it might back home to avoid the militia.  Instead, it sped through this wrangling city with ease and speed, leaving a little trail for those who knew how to look.  (loc. 6141)

 

    “They knew how to pick at the might-have-beens and pull out the best of them, use them to shape the world.  For every action, there’s an infinity of outcomes.  Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers—and one comes true.

    “But the Ghosthead knew how to tap some of those that might have been.”  (loc. 6703)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Scar is presently priced at $11.99 at Amazon.  The other two books in the series go for $9.99 (Perdido Street Station) and $10.99 (The Iron Council).  China Miéville has another dozen or so full-length e-books for your Kindle, most of them fiction, ranging in price from $7.99 to $13.99.

 

Let’s help you come up with my plan.  (loc. 3646)

    It’s hard to find anything to quibble about in The Scar.  It took me a while to figure out what the main plotline was, but I suspect this was a deliberate on the part of Miéville, since it allows the reader to soak up the mesmerizing atmosphere of life on Armada.

 

    There’s a fair amount of cussing, with the f-bomb and variations of damn being the most popular choices, although the fabulous word "shat" also makes an appearance.  Cusswords involving deities are common too, with a majority of them invoking a local god called “Jabber”.  There are a couple rolls-in-the-hay by Bellis, one allusion to auto-eroticism, and repeated instances of "statuary-eroticism".  I'll let you muse on that last one.

 

    My final gripe is also the nit-pickiest: there are no maps, at least in the Kindle version of The Scar.  Given all the seafaring travel that Bellis and the pirates do, my brain was screaming for a chart showing this world.

 

    9½ Stars.  I’m of the opinion that, since the passing of Kurt Vonnegut some years back, the most skilled contemporary author is now China Miéville.  The Scar did nothing to change my viewpoint.  I have two more of his books sitting on my TBR shelf: Iron Council, which is the final book in this Bas-Lag trilogy, and October, a non-fiction historical account of the Russian revolution in October, 1917.  It’s a pleasant quandary to decide which of these I should read next.

The Fall - David L. Dawson

   2012; 310 pages.  Book 1 (out of 3) in “The God Slayers Quartet” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Post-Apocalyptic Thriller; LGBTQ+ Fiction; YA Dystopian Adventure.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Question: What should we mortals do when two gods are fighting each other?

 

    It’s a tricky conundrum.  The most logical thing is probably to reason with them and convince then to knock it off.  But gods have a habit of ignoring the advice of puny little humans, and besides, interrupting them by calling their attention to ourselves could seriously shorten our life expectancies.

 

    So maybe it’s better to just let them duke it out.  Except when a god gets knocked off his feet by a punch, he's likely to fall upon an entire village, flattening it and killing most, if not all, of the living things therein.

 

    There’s also a third, more radical option to consider: figuring out a way to kill both gods.  That seems counterintuitive though, because how does one go about killing beings who, by definition, are immortal?

 

    Even worse, what happens if they, or their followers, find out about your schemes?

 

What’s To Like...

    The Fall is the first book in a post-apocalyptic dystopian series by David L. Dawson called “The God Slayers Quartet”.  It takes place somewhere in the greater London area in the 27^th century, an its setting reminded me somewhat of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: some sort of disaster has wiped out most of civilization, with only scant details given about it.

 

    The story is told in the first-person POV, the protagonist being teenaged Ben Casper, the son of the mayor of the local village and who's just returned from his rite-of-passage allowing him into adulthood.  The book is divided into two parts: Part One, “The Glass Palace”, introduces us to the village and its inhabitants just prior to the titular event of “The Fall”, and Part Two, “Underground”, which chronicles the aftermath.

 

    The dialogue is oftentimes witty, and I liked that, and the writing is a curious blend of both “English” and “American”.  So you have lifts instead of elevators, and centres instead of centers.  But you also have meters, not metres; and specters, not spectres.  Somehow it works; I didn’t find it distracting at all.

 

    There are a couple of new creatures to meet and be wary of.  The felums are half-panther/half human and dangerously sentient.  The horned bears are just dangerously dangerous.  I enjoyed the nod to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and was happy to see that, in among all the action and excitement, you may find some Pratchettian points to ponder about religion and blind faith (see second excerpt, below).  And should those cause you any worry, fear not: repurposing will erase any theological doubts you might have.

 

    The ending is okay.  The storyline stops at a logical point, although none of the major plot threads are resolved and there aren't any twists.  That’s okay though, we’re all set for the next phase in Ben's adventure, and there’s a catchy little teaser at the close to get you ready for Book Two.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  3.9/5 based on 146 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.43/5 based on 303 ratings and 37 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Viridian (adj.) : Bluish-green in color.

 

 

Excerpts...

    “Every couple of years someone knocks at the door and it makes Father scared,” I explain hurriedly.  “Uncle Rooster and he go outside to meet whoever it is and then come back an hour later.  I want to know who it is they keep talking to, and why it makes him so nervous.”

    “It’s elder business.  We should not be … hmm, now you’ve made me curious.  Maybe they’re doing secret dealings with some shady trader?  Or what if they’re making plans to marry you off to some disease-ridden girl with three arms from another House?  That’s been known to happen.”  (loc. 903)

 

    “This is where the Order of Power comes in,” interrupts Harold.  “They’re the self-appointed church of the gods. The gods don’t care for them but they do their best to destroy any remaining information left in the world that pertains to the gods.  Any literature on the gods is burned and any person who knows anything about them is killed.  They want to gods to be revered in mystery, so the less we know about them the better."  (loc. 2219)

 

Kindle Details…

    You can get The Fall for free at Amazon, and I think that’s always true.  The other two books in the series go for $2.99 (The Sky is Falling) and $3.99 (Chasm).  David L. Dawson offers a couple of other series for your Kindle; the e-books in those range in price from free to $2.99.  He's also written several short stories and novellas, some of which tie in to The God Slayers Quartet setting, and you'll find them in the free-to-$0.99 price range .

 

“I don’t like books. (…) They smell funny and you can’t eat them.”  (loc. 178)

    There are some quibbles, including the usual spellchecker errors that spring up in most books penned and self-edited by indie authors.  Typos here include things such as lightening/lightning, its/it’s, principal/principle, topierce/to pierce, and my favorite: bowls/bowels.  Also, most of the plot twists seemed predictable to me; for instance, I figured out the talking bird enigma long before Ben did.

 

    Amazon labels this a “Teen and Young Adult Science Fiction” book, and I think that’s apt.  There’s almost no cussing (a couple of “damns” is all I noted), and teenage boys are most likely already familiar with a “morning phenomenon” cited a couple times.  The surreptitious note passed to Ben seemed like a WTF to me; I can’t believe he wouldn’t have been searched later when he fell into the hands of the baddies.

 

    You should be aware that the protagonist is gay.  If this makes you squeamish, you can take comfort in the fact that there is very little romance – gay, straight, or otherwise – in this tale, although I have no idea whether this remains true in the sequels.

 

    A number of Amazon and Goodreads reviewers gave the book demerits because the protagonist is kind of a jerk.  They have a point, but I suspect he will become less of one as the series progresses.

 

    ANAICT, The Fall was David L. Dawson’s first full-length novel, coming out in January, 2012.  Overall, I thought it was a decent first-effort, albeit with the usual room for improving the writing/polishing as his career progresses.  Looking at his list of Amazon e-books, however, it appears he hasn’t published anything new since 2014, which is a bit of a bummer.

 

    6 Stars.   I never did figure out what the “Quartet” in the book's subtitle refers to, although I suspect it means this was planned to be a 4-book series.  Several reviewers who have read the the whole series so far indicate that there is no closure at the end of Book Three.  That kind of confirms that the David L. Dawson has since retired from the indie author scene.  You should take this into consideration when deciding whether to read The Fall.

Deep Space Boogie - Scott Baron

   2021; 138 pages.  Book 1 (out of 5) in the “Warp Riders” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Space Opera; Science Fiction; Space Exploration.  Overall Rating: 7½*/10.

 

    Space.  The final frontier.  It’s big.  Hugely big.

 

    Just ask Captain Sadira Perez.  She’s just volunteered to lead a mission into deep space, looking for a planet with sentient lifeforms on it, and with a less than friendly disposition.  Their space travel technology is superior to ours, judging from a recent initial encounter with them, where they came this close to destroying one of our starships, then went warping away (think Star Trek) to regions unknown.

 

    Our Artificial Intelligences (“AI”) have given Sadira the general direction to which they fled.  But who knows how far they jumped?  We humans have warp technology as well, but the AI estimates it will still take at least five years to scout that part of the galaxy, and that assumes nothing goes wrong.

 

    Alas, Murphy decided to pay a visit to Sadira (their way of citing Murphy’s Law), and right off the bat her ship’s warp drive overheated, which almost blew all aboard to smithereens.  Things were eventually brought under control, but now their AI's star charts are useless, and they have no idea where they are, how to get home, or how to get to the galactic area they’ve been assigned to scout.

 

    That five-year estimate for the mission seems rather low right now.

 

What’s To Like...

    Deep Space Boogie is the opening book in Scott Baron’s space opera “Warp Riders” series.  Amazon labels it “Book One of Six”, while at Goodreads it’s called “Book 0.5 of Four”.  Goodreads’ designation is probably more accurate, since Deep Space Boogie is of novella length (130 pages or so), and, I gather, serves as the prequel to the series.  Scott Baron also offers the first two installments bundled together, which is the way I’m reading them.

 

    The book is a fine example of Space Opera; the reader is treated to various creatures (humans, AI, cyborgs, chithiid, and other extraterrestrials), weapons (railguns plasma cannons, pulse pistols and cannons, and furry pink ferocity), and gizmos (stasis pods and warp drives).  The action begins immediately, the pacing is brisk, and I don’t recall any awkward info dumps.  The main purpose of the story appears to be to introduce the reader to the ship’s crew and explain how they all got thrown together.

 

    There’s a fair amount of wit and humor, mostly in the dialogue, but it doesn’t overshadow the main storyline.  Some of the action may be over-the-top, but this is first and foremost a space opera, not a spoof or a satire.  I thought the characters were well developed; each crewmember has his or her (and in one case, both) own individual traits.  The editing is good, which was a welcome relief from a lot of efforts by indie authors.

 

    There aren’t a lot of characters to keep track of, which makes sense since we’re following the crew of a single spaceship as they blindly hop around the galaxy, desperately trying to find a familiar location.  There’s a nice mix of “races” in the crew (see above), and my favorite one is the last to join.  It will be yours as well.

 

    The ending is decent with a nice little twist to it that I didn’t see coming.  The immediate plotline is tied up, but the overall one – Sadira and her team finding their way home – remains open.  I don’t view that as a negative; the book’s purpose is to get you ready for further warp-jumping adventures, and I appreciate the author not sinking to the use of a cliffhanger.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 32 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.10*/5, based on 40 ratings and 14 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Okay, listen up, everyone.  We’re going to try something.  If it works, we’ll lose gravity and life support for a few minutes, so stay calm and conserve air until we get it back up and online.”

    “And if it fails?” Goonara’s wavering voice asked.

    “It’ll be over so fast we won’t even know it.” Sadira replied.  “But think positive.”

    “Yeah,” Moose chimed in.  “And if we blow up, at least we’ll go out on a happy thought.”  (loc. 626)

 

    Sure, they’d have one another’s company on those long runs, but neither had formed any sort of affectionate bonds with anyone when they were back home, and the only love between them was the platonic variety.

    Having something to pour his love into had given her friend an outlet neither had realized he needed.  And as much as it had never even been a blip on her mental radar, it seemed her crew now had a mascot.

    And its name was Turd.  (loc. 1626)

 

Kindle Details…

    Deep Space Boogie sells for $0.99 right now at Amazon, as does its sequel, Belly of the Beast.  The other three books in the series each cost $3.99, and you have an additional option of picking up the first two books bundled together for just $0.99.  Scott Baron has several other series to offer, with the books therein costing anywhere from free to $3.99.  Various bundles, containing anything from two to six books in these series, range in price from $0.99 to $23.94.

 

“Ooh, chatty primordial ooze.  I long for the day.”  (loc. 164)

    The quibbles are minor.  There is some cussing, which is typical of most Space Operas.  But it's not excessive: I counted only eleven instances in the first quarter of the book.  There's a nice variety to the cusswords, with a slight preference for “hell”.  That's it for the R-rated stuff; I don’t recall any sex or drugs or rock-&-roll.

 

    One of the crewmembers, Holly (the ship’s AI) has gender-identity issues.  I noticed this before Sadira and her colleagues do, which makes me wonder if it started out as a plot continuity blip.  No matter, it will be interesting to see if/how this impacts any of the other stories down the line.

 

    There’s not much of a backstory given, other than a brief reference to a “Great War” being fought twelve years earlier and which was won by us humans.  However, another reviewer noted that the book is set in the same world as Scott Baron’s Clockwork Chimera series, who's protagonist, Daisy, makes a cameo appearance here.

 

    Finally, if the title had any tie-in with the story, I missed it.  I even searched the e-book version for the word “boogie” but found no hits outside of the title.

 

    7½ Stars.  Add 1 star if you’ve read the Clockwork Chimera series.  I have a feeling I missed something by not doing so.

Death by Black Hole - Neil deGrasse Tyson

   2007; 362 pages.  Full Title: Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Science; Essays; Non-Fiction; Astrophysics.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    Consider the following declarations.  The North Star is the brightest star in the nighttime sky.  The Sun is a yellow star.  What goes up must come down.  On a dark night you can see millions of stars with the unaided eye.  In space there is no gravity.  A compass points north.  Days get shorter in the winter and longer in the summer.  Total solar eclipses are rare.

    Every statement in the above paragraph is false.

    (from “Death by Black Hole”, pg. 293)

 

    Are you curious as to why the above statements are untrue?  Do you ask questions like: What would happen if you (or a star) fell into a black hole?  How can 100+ different elements get created from a single "Big Bang"?  What the heck is a supernova?  A quasar?  What’s the likelihood of a killer asteroid wiping us out like one did to the dinosaurs?  Can God and Science coexist?

 

    The answers to the above questions, why those first statements are all inaccurate, plus many more, can be found in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book Death by Black Hole.

 

    And you don’t have to be an astrophysicist to understand what he’s saying.

 

What’s To Like...

    Death by Black Hole is a series of 42 essays, plus a Prologue, by the eminent author/astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.  He divides them up into seven sections, and 362 pages, meaning the essays are relatively short: just 8+ pages on average, which my brain appreciated.

 

    The essays cover a wide variety of science-related topics.  Some of my favorites were:

    05 : Stick-in-the-Mud Science

        The amazing experiments you can do with just a stick, a string, and an hourglass.

    12 : Speed Limits

        Measuring the speed of light.

    25 : Living Space

        How likely is life to develop elsewhere in the Cosmos.

    26 : Life in the Universe

        How likely is intelligent life to develop elsewhere in the Cosmos.

    30 : Ends of the World

        Three possible ways it might happen.

    32 : Knock ‘em Dead

        Mass extinctions: what caused them?

 

    This is my second Neil deGrasse Tyson book (the other one is reviewed here), and once again I was in awe of his ability to simplify complex scientific concepts to where even readers with non-technical backgrounds can comprehend and enjoy them.  Tyson has a knack for blending science with modern-day culture.  Deep subjects such as Lagrange points and quasars are mentioned alongside things like Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon, naturally), Star Trek “redshirts”, and astrophysical bloopers Tyson noticed while watching several blockbuster science fiction movies.

 

    The book is a trivia nerd’s delight.  I was surprised to learn that an unopened can of Pepsi will float in water, while an unopened can of Diet Pepsi will sink.  I learned the etymology of the words algorithm, solstice, and quasar; laughed at the use of the terms spaghettification and astro-illiteracy; and smiled when the author revealed he’s had an asteroid named after him (”13123 Tyson”).  The world’s record low temperature (-129°F, in Antarctica) gave me shivers, while the world’s record high temperature (+136°F, in Libya) made me break out in a sweat.

 

    The science-oriented trivia was equally enlightening.  I enjoyed learning about Foucault’s pendulum, why the astronomer Percival Lowell honestly believed he observed canals on Venus, and how a Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes calculated the Earth’s circumference (to within 15% of the precise value) in the third century BCE.  The odds of life developing somewhere else in the Universe were much higher than I would have guessed, and I was fascinated that the element Technetium doesn’t occur naturally on Earth but has been found in the atmosphere of a couple of red giant stars in our galaxy.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.8*/5, based on 2,047 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.07*/5, based on 29,573 ratings and 1,367 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Syzygy (n.) : a conjunction or opposition, especially of the moon with the sun.

Others: Noctilucent (adj.).

 

Excerpts...

    One night a couple decades ago, while I was on winter break from graduate school and was staying at my parents’ house north of New York City, I turned on the radio to listen to classical music.  A frigid Canadian air mass was advancing on the Northeast, and the announcer, between movements of George Frideric Handel’s Water Music, continually tracked the descending outdoor temperature: “Five degrees Fahrenheit.”  “Four degrees.”  “Three degrees.”  Finally, sounding distressed, he announced, “If this keeps up, pretty soon there’ll be no temperature left!”  (pg. 180)

 

    When people believe a tale that conflicts with self-checkable evidence it tells me that people undervalue the role of evidence in formulating an internal belief system.  Why this is so is not so clear, but it enables many people to hold fast to ideas and notions based purely on supposition.  But all hope is not lost.  Occasionally, people say things that are simply true no matter what.  One of my favorites is, “Wherever you go, there you are” and its Zen corollary, “If we are all here, then we must not be all there.”  (pg. 297)

 

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort ‘em as much as you please.” (Mark Twain)  (pg. 329)

    I can’t think of anything to quibble about in Death by Black Hole, other than a single typo on page 132 referring the reader to “Section 9” for more information about the possibility of God stepping in “every now and then to set things right”.  There is no section 9.  That’s probably a printing error, since correct would be “Section 7”.

 

    A number of Amazon and Goodreads reviewers felt otherwise.  Some of their complaints:

 

    Neil deGrasse Tyson’s writing is too cute.  The book had no pictures of black holes.  The book’s cover was torn and the pages wrinkled.  Fake print.  Too hard.  Too simple (“cute beginner astronomy book”).  Too pessimistic.  Too anti-creation.  Too scary.  Not enough about black holes.

 

    Sigh.  For me, this was a great read that thoroughly met my expectations.  The essays are deep, yet not incomprehensible, unlike some other astrophysics books I’ve struggled through.  I highly recommend it to anyone seeking a greater understanding about how the Cosmos got here, where it’s going, what we know about the objects and forces that make up the Universe, and how we obtained that knowledge.

 

    9½ Stars.  One last teaser for the book.  Chapter 12 presents the history of scientists trying to determine the speed of light, starting with Galileo in the 1600s and continuing to the present day.  It thoroughly fascinated me.  The teaser is: if you wanted to do your own testing, how would you go about trying to measure the speed of light?