David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell

   2013; 295 pages.  Full Title: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Applied Psychology; Sociology; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    David and Goliath.  Everyone has heard the tale.  It has inspired generations upon generations of readers.  Big, bad Goliath trots out and challenges the Israelites to a one-on-one battle with any champion they choose.  He’s fully armored and is carrying a huge sword.  Out steps puny little David with only a slingshot and five smooth stones.

 

    David plunks Goliath with his first shot, hitting him right in the forehead and stunning him.  David then goes over to the giant, picks up his sword and chops off the giant’s head.  From this we learn to trust in the higher powers, never get discouraged, and bravely do battle against all odds.  Malcolm Gladwell has studied the details of the David and Goliath tale, and admits that there are important lessons to be learned.

 

    But he feels the ones we’ve been taught for generations upon generations are completely wrong.

 

What’s To Like...

    Malcolm Gladwell divides David and Goliath into three parts, each containing three chapters, namely:

    Part 1 : The Advantages of Disadvantages (Chapters 1-3)

    Topics: Girls High School basketball; Classroom size; Choosing a college.

    Part 2 : The Theory of Desirable Difficulty (Chapters 4-6)

    Topics: Dyslexia; the London Blitz; the Civil Right Movement.

    Part 3 : The Limits of Power (Chapters 7-9)

    Topics: Northern Ireland; California’s ‘Three Strike Law’; Vichy France.

 

        Each chapter’s title is that of a person, none of whom I had heard of, whose life embodies the themes of that section.  Gladwell then takes their “lessons learned” and applies them to other, usually more famous, persons and historical events.  Some of those tangential topics will surprise you.  For instance, in Chapter 5, the theme of the London Blitz segues into the fight against Leukemia.

 

    There is also an Introduction, in which Gladwell meticulously examines the David/Goliath affair tale, even suggesting that the latter was afflicted with something called “Acromegaly” (say what?!), which leveled the playing field.  The book closes with an Afterword, which focuses on America’s Vietnam debacle.

 

    I was impressed by the author’s writing skills.  Let’s face it, a story centering on Girls’ High School Basketball sounds like a yawner, ditto for detailing the search for a cure to Leukemia.  But Gladwell somehow turns them into fascinating subjects.  Other interesting sidelights include Lawrence of Arabia, a cameo appearance by Julius Erving, the neuroscience of dyslexia, and the statistical importance of “inverted U-curves”.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 14,018 ratings and 3,706 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.97*/5, based on 188,881 ratings and 11,990 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Suppose you were to total up all the wars over the past two hundred years that occurred between very large and very small countries.  Let’s say that one side has to be at least ten times larger in population and armed might than the other.  How often do you think the bigger side wins?  Most of us would put that number at close to 100 percent.  A tenfold difference in a lot.  But the actual answer may surprise you.  When the political scientist Ivan Arreguin did the calculation a few years ago, what he came up with was 71.5 percent.  Just under a third of the time, the weaker country wins.  (pg. 21)

 

    Birmingham was the most racially divided city in America.  It was known as “Johannesburg of the South.”  When a busload of civil rights activists were on their way to Birmingham, the local police stood by while Klansmen forced their bus to the side of the road and set it afire.  Black people who tried to move into white neighborhoods had their homes dynamited by the city’s local Ku Klux Klansmen so often that Birmingham’s other nickname was Bombingham.  (pg. 168)

 

The smarter your peers, the dumber you feel; the dumber you feel, the more likely you are to drop out of science.  (pg. 85)

    There’s a sprinkling of profanity—I noted 21 instances in the entire of book—in David and Goliath, including four f-bombs and a half-dozen cases of the "n-word" racial epithet.  Most of those occurred in direct quotes of various newsmakers.

 

    Wikipedia mentions that the critical response to David and Goliath was mostly negative.  The criticisms generally accuse Gladwell of skewing the data to fit his arguments. However, that Wikipedia segment closes with a positive review, and also notes that David and Goliath was a bestseller, reaching #4 on a NY Times chart (“Hardcover Non-Fiction”) and #5 on a USA Today chart (“Best-Selling Books”).

 

    Personally, I think the Malcolm Gladwell does a great job of presenting alternate views on various strategies to use when you’re the underdog, the misfit, or the weaker force.  His conclusions are open to debate, but hey, that’s the purpose of this book.  The fact that Gladwell suggests that David beat Goliath because of the giant having an eyesight-affecting medical condition is of course speculative.  Then again, that whole Philistine/Israelite encounter itself is unprovable.

 

    9 Stars.  My favorite chapters were #6, #7, and the Afterword, all of which focus on real life struggles in American history, some of which I lived through.  Your favorites may vary.

The Devil Wears Scrubs - Freida McFadden

   2013; 300 pages.  Book 1 (out of 2) in the “Dr. Jane McGill” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Medical Humor; On-the-Job Romance; Doctors & Hospitals.  Overall Rating: 8*/10.

 

    It’s July 1^st, and Jane McGill’s first day at work!  She’s been hired as a medical intern at County Hospital, in Manhattan, New York.  She’s very excited!

 

    Her days at medical school have ended.  Now she’ll get to put into practice all the things she learned there.  She’ll be surrounded by doctors, nurses, other interns, and all sorts of medical professionals who she can learn from.  This internship will be a life-enriching experience.

 

    True, Jane’s has a lot to learn about the way things are done at County Hospital.  But she has no doubt her boss, Alyssa Morgan will show her the ropes.  And Jane’s a quick learner.

 

    And when this day’s over, she can go back to her apartment-suite and swap stories with her roommate, whoever she is.  Jane hasn’t met her yet.  The payoff in all this is that pretty soon patients and co-workers will be calling her something new.

 

    DOCTOR Jane McGill.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Devil Wears Scrubs is humorous look at the daily grind of working at a hospital.  Freida McFadden is quite qualified to write about such a setting; she’s a practicing physician in the greater Boston area.  Stylistically, this book reminds me of Coffee, Tea or Me, which I read recently (the review is here), and which gives similar treatment to the 1960s career as an airline stewardess.  The title also alludes to movie/book, The Devil Wears Prada, but I’ve neither read nor watched that one.

 

    The story is told in the first-person POV, Jane’s.  We tag along with her as she tries to cope with back-stabbing coworkers, psycho suite-mates, and way too many patients to properly attend to their health.  Each of the 33 chapters closes with a brief summary usually formatted in terms of the time Jane gets off duty that day, the hours she’s been awake, and the percent chance she has of quitting her job.

 

    Silliness abounds, mostly in Jane’s thoughts, of the snarky quips she thinks but prudently avoids saying out loud.  Yet underneath all this, the reader gets glimpses of what it’s like to work in a busy metropolitan hospital.  Working an “on call” shift can mean being there for as long as 30 hours straight.  Some patients are very skilled at faking excruciating pain in order to con an intern into prescribing pain meds such as Percocet for them.  My wife worked in the medical field, and assures me that both the 30-hour shifts and scamming for meds are common occurrences.

 

    If, like me, you don’t work in the medical field, then you’ll find the technical details both entertaining and informative.  I could relate to be echocardiogram scene; I get those twice a year.  But learning why the hospital elevators didn’t go all the way to the top floor where the “call rooms” are was a surprise to me, and to Jane as well.

 

    The storyline stops at a logical place, although there’s not much “building to a climax” involved.  There is a sequel (see below), but there’s a 10-year gap in the storyline between the two books.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.1*/5, based on 19,920 ratings and 995 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.45*/5, based on 63,920 ratings and 5,157 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    If there’s a seat available, there exists a very clear hierarchy of who may sit.  First, the attending gets to sit.  Then if there’s another seat, the senior resident can sit.  Then if there’s another seat, someone can put their purse there.  Then if there’s another seat, a homeless drug addict who wandered into the building can sit there.  But after the attending, the resident, the purse, and the homeless guy are all settled, any available seats are all mine.  (pg. 37)

 

    “Wow you really like him.  You’re in love.”

    “Oh my God, I am not in love!”  I’m really not.  “I hardly know him.  Actually, he’s kind of a jerk.”

    “No, you’re in love,” Kali insists gleefully.  “You luuurve him!  You lurve him and you want to have like a million of his babies.”

    I cringe.  “Don’t mention having babies.  Please.”

    Kali sighs, suddenly glum.  “You’ve got a cute surgeon and all I’ve got is a diabetic cat.”

    “I think I would take your cat over the surgeon,” I say.  “Really.”

    “Well,” Kali says thoughtfully.  “He is a very sweet cat.”  (pg. 186)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Devil Wears Scrubs e-book goes for $2.99 right now, as does its sequel, The Devil You Know.  Freida McFadden has a bunch of novels in the Medical and/or Psychological Thriller genres, and generally in the $3.99-$7.99 price range.

 

“You’re presenting a patient to me and you didn’t even look at his buttocks?”  (pg. 7)

    There is a moderate amount of cussing in The Devil Wears Scrubs.  I counted 21 instances in the first third of the book, none of which were f-bombs.  I presume this reflects the normal amount of cussing that goes on when working in a hospital environment.  The editing was impressive: I didn’t see any typos, which rarely happens when I read a book. 

 

    There are lots of interesting interactions between Jane and her patients/coworkers, but they don't result in much progression in the plot.  Jane seems to screw up quite often, even after a year on the job, and her relationships with Alyssa and her roommate don’t improved much over time.

 

    As mentioned above, the ending is neither exciting or twisty.  Although both the “Job Training” and “Romance” plot threads are resolved via the Epilogue, Jane’s relationships with Alyssa and Julia are left dangling.  But hey, that’s what sequels are for.

 

    Nevertheless, I enjoyed The Devil Wears Scrubs.  I loved Jane’s snarky wit when contemplating the craziness of working in a hospital, liked the variety in the patients she encounters, and was even amused by the Romance angle of the storyline.  This was my first Freida McFadden book and I gather a majority of her novels are Medical Thrillers.  I intend to make a trip to the bookstore in the near future and purchase a couple of those.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  The low Goodreads rating for this book surprised me.  It seems a lot of the reviewers were horrified at the work conditions and personal goings-on that Jane is subjected to.  And while the medical details herein seem quite accurate, I’m sure Freida McFadden “stretched” some of the character development and wacky events in Jane’s life.  Hey, let's not forget that The Devil Wears Scrubs is filed under “Fiction”.

Soul Music - Terry Pratchett

   1995; 3739 pages.  Book 16 (out of 41) in “Discworld” series.  New Author? : No.  Laurels : #151 in the “Big Read”.  Genres : Humorous Fantasy; Satire; British Humour.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    The music is magical in Ankh-Morpork.  Especially the tunes being played by a newly-formed group, “The Band With Rocks In”.  It has listeners tapping their feet, snapping their fingers, and swaying with the beat.  What’s next, people fainting in the aisles?

 

    The wizards at the Unseen University are concerned.  The magic emanating from The Band With Rocks In is not one of their incantations.  An investigation is called for.  They’ll soon get to the bottom of things.

 

    Meanwhile, the Grim Reaper himself, Death, has taken a leave of absence.  It falls upon his granddaughter, Susan, to fill in on a temporary basis, even though she has zero experience swinging the scythe.

 

    So in summary, it’s just another normal day on Discworld.  Let’s go see Band With Rocks In down at the local pub tonight.

 

What’s To Like...

    Soul Music is first and foremost Terry Pratchett’s salute to the 20^th century music business.  In a nutshell, he plops it down in Discworld, among its dwarves, trolls, wizards, gods, and magic, and postulates how similar its development would be when compared to our world.

 

    This includes such things as forming a band and recording its music so that you can listen to it anytime, anyplace.  A number of our-world music idols received subtle nods from Pratchett.  For instance, one character is named “Satchelmouth”, which I eventually realized could be condensed to “Satchmo”, jazz favorite Louis Armstrong’s sobriquet.  Similarly, Imp, a bard whose guitar-playing is magical, is referred to as looking a bit “elvish”.  Well, he is short in stature, but there is a second way to interpret that “elvish” comparison.

 

    It is also fascinating to watch the coming-of-age of Susan.  She starts out as a student at a girl’s boarding school, and has a unique talent – she can turn invisible whenever she’s bored.  What a great way to skip boring classes!  But being the step-grandchild of Death forces her to come to grips with the Facts of Death (as opposed to the Facts of Life), and learn to pick up the Scythe, ride grandfather's horse Binky, team up with a rodent called "Death of Rats", and carry her family duties.

 

    Most of the tale takes place in Ankh-Morpork, so a lot of familiar characters show up, including C.M.O.T. Dibbler, the Librarian (ook!), Lord Vetineri, and Corporal Nobbs and Sergeant Colon of the City Watch.  Being a chemist, I also enjoyed the several times that Chemistry is resorted to, including using the compounds Calcium Carbonate, Ammonium Chloride, and an rare chemical that my company used to manufacture, Ammonium Sulfide.  Wowza!

 

    As with any Discworld novel, the two main storylines rapidly split into a bunch of secondary ones, which keeps the pacing brisk.  As (almost) always, Terry Pratchett eschews the use of chapters , but that just means you can stop for the night at any paragraph break you encounter.  The ending is more heartwarming than exciting, and ties up all the plot threads tidily.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 6,236 ratings and 432 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.06/5 based on 84,620 ratings and 2,875 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Plangent (adj.) : loud, reverberating, and often melancholy.

 

Excerpts...

    The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly.  Had they bothered to learn to read and acquire some history books they’d have learned about the uncertain merits of things like scythes and pitchforks when used in a battle against crossbows and broadswords.  (pg. 39)

 

    “He says to tell you,” said Albert wearily, “that a chit of a girl means a small girl.  He thinks you may have misheard me.”

    Susan hunched up in the chair.  Albert pulled up another one and sat down.

    “How old are you?”

    “Sixteen.”

    “Oh my.”  Albert rolled his eyes.  “How long have you been sixteen?”

    “Since I was fifteen, of course.  Are you stupid?”  (pg. 76)

 

“Never give a monkey the key to the banana plantation.”  (pg. 218)

    As is normal for a Discworld novel, there’s only a smidgen of mild cussing in Soul Music.  I counted just six instances in the first third of the book, all of which were eschatological ones, and there are no adult situations to shield juvenile eyes from.

 

    There were two punctuation typos: The/Then and Fit’s/Fits.  I thought there was a spelling typo (surelly/surely), but it turns out that Imp’s accent results in prolonged emphasis on any “L sound” in his speaking.  My only other quibble is that two of my favorite City Watch characters—Sam Vimes and Carrot—didn’t make it into the tale.

 

    That’s all I can nitpick about.  I always have high expectations when starting to read a Discworld book, and once again, Terry Pratchett did not disappoint me.  Only two books from the series remain for me to read (I’m not reading them in order), and it will be a bittersweet day whenever I finish the entire series.

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  There may be no chapter divisions, but Terry Pratchett’s trademark Footnotes are still plentiful here.  Also, if you’re new to the Discworld series, there’s a handy Glossary in the back of the book, which closes with a Discworld Trivia Quiz.  Fantastic!

Eye of Cat - Roger Zelazny

   1982; 235 pages.  New Author? : Mostly.  Genres : Native American Mythology; Science Fiction; Navajo Culture.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    The master galactic beast hunter, Billy Blackhorse Singer, has just been offered a job: stop an Stragean assassin who’s on her way to Earth to kill the UN Secretary General.

 

    It sounds easy enough, but this extraterrestrial has some enhancements that will help her in her mission.  Most importantly, she’s a shapeshifter.

 

    Hmmm.  That presents a challenge for Billy.  Humans can’t shapeshift.  He needs a partner who can do that, and remembers capturing an alien creature long ago that showed some shapeshifting tendencies, but no signs of being sentient.  Still, it’s in a cage down at the ILI (Interstellar Life Institute) in nearby San Diego, so why not go check it out?

 

    It'd be great if the beast turns out to be a sentient shapeshifter, but if so, I wonder what other hidden talents it might have.  And what it would take to get it to team up with Billy.

 

What’s To Like...

    Roger Zelazny is the author of several Science Fiction series, but ANAICT Eye of Cat is a standalone tale.  It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Billy successfully recruits the caged creature, who he dubs “Cat”, and who turns out to be both a shapeshifter and a telepath.  But its price for joining up with Billy is a stunner: in addition to being freed from its present cage-in-a-zoo situation, it wants a chance for revenge.  He wants one week to chase down and attempt to kill his erstwhile captor.  Billy.

 

    The main plot thread is a prolonged chase scene: first Billy and Cat contending with the assassin; then with Cat stalking Billy.  It isn’t easy avoiding a stalker who can effortlessly read every thought in your head.  Billy gets some help from a panel of human mentalists, but frankly, they are of limited value.

 

    There is a second, more subtle plot thread which I found to be more intriguing.  Billy is a Navajo, but he has “left the Blessed Way”, meaning he lives and thinks like a white man, and has forgotten his Navajo gods and legends.  It was fascinating to watch him gradually revert to his heritage.

 

    Most of the tale is set in Dinetah, the “Land of the Navajos” located in the Four Corners area of the western US.  Roger Zelazny incorporates a bunch of Navajo words into the text, and I really enjoyed that.  The story takes place in the near future, with strange things such as “float cars”, “Porta-phones”, and “Trip Boxes”.  Yeah, I know, we have Porta-phones now (we call them cell phones), but Eye of Cat was written in 1982.  And those Trip Boxes enable users to teleport, reminding me muchly of the TARDIS in the Doctor Who series.

 

    The ending is not particularly twisty, but suitably resolves the main plot threads.  The storylines are tied up, Billy gets reacquainted with his Navajo roots, and his soul finally finds peace.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 35 ratings and 20 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.64*/5, based on 1,763 ratings and 76 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Chindi (n.) : a spirit, usually malevolent; a ghost.

Others: Yetaalii (n.).

 

Excerpts...

    He thought of the old man’s words and the things of which they reminded him—of the sky creatures and water creatures, of the beings of cloud, mist, rain, pollen and corn which had figured so prominently in his childhood imagination—here in the season when the snakes and the thunder still slept.

    It had been a long while since he had considered his problems in the old terms.  A chindi . . . Real or of the mind—what difference?  Something malicious at his back.  Yes, another way of looking at things . . .   (loc. 245)

 

    “This beast can read thoughts.”

    “So it reads that there’s someone up ahead waiting to kill it.  Doesn’t have to be a mind reader to know that.  And if it keeps following, that’s what could happen.”

    “It can change shape.”

    “It’s still got to move in order to make progress.  That makes it a target.  Billy’s armed now.  It won’t have it as easy as you seem to think.”

    “Then why’d you decide to come?”

    “I don’t like to see any outsider chasing Navajos on our land.”  (loc. 2225)

 

Kindle Details…

    I bought Eye of Cat as part of a two-book bundle of Roger Zelazny sci-fi tales.  The other book is Isle of the Dead.  It appears Amazon no longer offers this bundle in e-book format; but you can buy the paperback version for a mere $59.99.  No, that is not a typo.  Eye of Cat as an unbundled e-book is presently not available at Amazon.

 

“You have been in the minds of too many Californians.  They’re full of pop psychology.”  (loc. 1478)

    There’s just a modicum of profanity in Eye of Cat; I counted only three in the first quarter of the book, all of them variations of damn.  The cussword choices get a bit more varied later on, even including an f-bomb, but on the whole, the expletives remained sparse.

 

    There were a number of typos, but most of these were spacing issues: Hewas, Hehad, Itis, Idropped, and theoldman.  I suspect these slip-ups arose during the e-book bundling conversion stage, and therefore I don't blame the author, who passed away in 1995. 

 

    A variety of literary tropes are sprinkled throughout the text, including flashbacks, deliberately garbled paragraphs and what I presume were newspaper headlines.  I found them to be more distracting than enlightening.  Your take may be different.  In any event, they became sparser as the book progressed.

 

    Overall, I thought Eye of Cat was an ambitious effort by Roger Zelazny that unfortunately falls a bit flat.  I enjoyed the Native American cultural aspects of the book, but the action scenes, although present, were few and far between.  Fortunately, Roger Zelazny’s writing skills do a good job of overshadowing the overly lengthy storyline.  The relatively mediocre Goodreads rating, listed above, reflects this.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  There’s a brief but heartwarming “Dedication” at the beginning of the book that simply reads “For Joe Leaphorn, Jimmy Chee, and Tony Hillerman”.  If you know who these three are, and like their tales, you’ll enjoy Eye of Cat.

Moriarty Meets His Match - Anna Castle

   2016; 290 pages.  Book 1 (out of 4) in the “Professor & Mrs. Moriarty Mystery” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Historical British Mysteries; Sherlock Holmes.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    You could call it “Professional Jealousy”.  Professor James Moriarty admits that.

 

    But he has a degree in mathematics.  And a job as an assistant patent examiner.  And he’s frankly convinced that Teaberry & Company’s new-fangled, recently patented “Compact Spherical Engine” has some serious flaws, particularly as far as fuel efficiency goes.

 

    So when it’s announced the engine will be showcased at the 1885 London International Inventions Exhibition, Moriarty sneaks in the night before and secretly “adds” a little fuel gauge to it.

 

    Unfortunately for him, the next day, when the Compact Spherical Engine is fired up, it explodes, killing its operator.  Was that due to a design flaw, or did someone sabotage it?  Unfortunately for Moriarty, Scotland Yard is bringing in a consulting specialist to investigate.

 

    Whose name is Sherlock Holmes.

 

What’s To Like...

    Moriarty Meets His Match is a reimagining of two of the main characters in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series, but this time around, top billing is given to Moriarty.  Holmes still plays a prominent role, and there are at least three others that reprise their roles here: Dr. Watson, Mrs. Hudson, and Inspector Gregson.  Both Moriarty and Holmes are still incredibly brilliant, and I liked that Anna Castle makes both of their characters a bit more “gray.”

 

    There are three main storylines.  First and foremost is the parallel investigations by the two protagonists into the exploding spherical engine.  The second involves a new character, Angelina Gould, and her efforts to find and recover some incriminating letters penned by her brother, Sebastian.  Those sound like very disparate plot threads, but the author manages to deftly make them converge.

 

    The third plotline is hinted at in the series title.  There is no “Mrs. Moriarty” at the start of the story, and it is quite entertaining to watch as the super-nerd Professor Moriarty struggles to cope with his own feelings and the delightful attentions of a attractive woman.  We won’t reveal who she is, but it doesn't take very long to figure it out.

 

    I thought the world-building was expertly done.  Like a Conan Doyle episode, I got a great “feel” for London in the 1880s.  The “musical jump-rope” was a fascinating (and presumably factual) recreation, and I had to look up who “Sheridan La Fanu” was.  I learned the correct pronunciation of “Miswell” (it rhymes with ‘drizzle’) and am still trying to figure out what a “front-sheeter” is.

 

    The ending is suitably logical, which I expected since two geniuses are investigating.  Holmes and Moriarty still don’t like each other, but at least they respect each other’s sleuthing.  A couple of dei ex machina provide key breaks, but it’s still a challenge to properly evaluate them.  Things close with a crafty impersonation plot twist.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 1,640 ratings and 211 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.95*/5, based on 1,034 ratings and 115 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Grizzled (adj.) : having or streaked with gray hair.

Others: Moil (n.); Delimited (adj.); Spunks (n.); Frowsty (adj.).

 

Excerpts...

    “Why the deuce did you let Hainstone trick me into judging that plump baby contest, Ramsay?  Can’t abide the little buggers!  How am I to tell one from the other?”

    The secretary answered him in soothing tones.  “The name of both mother and baby are right here in this envelope, my lord.  You need only read them off.  The village doctor selects them in advance.  Part of the British Mothers Health and Wellness Program.  It’s good for you, politically, my lord.  It shows your concern for the people.”

    Nettlefield snorted.  (pg. 196)

 

    Moriarty kissed the little curl on her temple.  He worshipped that curl.  “You should marry me because without you my life can never again have a meaning.  You are more beautiful than the arrangement of binomial coefficients in Pascal’s triangle.  You mean more to me than Euclid’s postulates of plane geometry.”

    She frowned.  He loved it when she frowned.  She licked her rosy lips and said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

    “It’s the highest praise I have to offer.”   (pg. 261)

 

Kindle Details…

    Moriarty Meets His Match sells for $4.99 right now at Amazon, as do the other three books in the series.  Anna Castle’s “Francis Bacon Mystery” series has eight volumes with prices ranging from free to $4.99.

 

“A secret can only be kept by two people if one of them is dead.”  (pg. 145)

    There’s very little profanity in Moriarty Meets His Match; I noted only four instances in the first 33% of the book, and all of them were of the milder eschatological ilk.  One adult situation is mentioned later on.  I noted just one typo: entrée/entry, so kudos to whoever did the editing.

 

    Some reviewers didn’t like that Sherlock Holmes is cast in a somewhat unfavorable light, but I thought it was a refreshingly new angle.  At one point in the story, Holmes admits that Dr. Watson has a habit of portraying his detective prowess far more brilliantly that it actually is.  To boot, this is a four-book (and presumably completed) series, and I'm anticipating that Moriarty and Holmes will develop a closer professional relationship as the series progresses.

 

    I’ve read two of Anna Castle’s “Francis Bacon Mysteries” series; and liked them both.  I was curious to see how her “Professor and Mrs. Moriarty” books would measure up against Sir Francis Bacon’s endeavors, and I’m happy to report that both series are page-turners for anyone who, like me, loves to read Historical Mysteries.

 

    8½ Stars.  One last quibble.  While I loved the inclusion of several characters from the Arthur Conan Doyle series, there was one glaring omission.  There’s no Mycroft Holmes!  He's Sherlock’s brother and makes his sibling look like an observational amateur.  Here’s hoping he shows up at some point in the next three books, even if it’s just a cameo appearance.

Project Daedalus - Thomas Hoover

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

What’s To Like...

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

Excerpts...

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

 

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

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

 

Kindle Details…

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Lost Is The Night - Greg James

   2014; 174 pages.  Full Title: Lost Is The Night: A Grim Dark Fantasy Adventure.  Book 2 (out of 3) in the “Khale the Wanderer” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Dark Fantasy; Time Travel.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    Khale the Wanderer is a stranger in a strange land.  He seeks only shelter for the night, and if luck is with him, yon castle will take pity on him and let him sleep in the stable.  The castle guard that is approaching him will hopefully not try to kill him.

 

    “Master Khale, you are welcome to Castle Barneth.”  The guard somehow knows who he is?  Khale’s self-preservation reflexes go on full alert.

 

    “Come with me, if it pleases you.  The feast is begun and Lord Barneth awaits your company.”  Khale's jaw drops.  He, a lowly traveler, is on the guest list?  Surely this is a trap of some sort.  Can things get any weirder?

 

    “The feast is in your honour, and you are missed.”

 

What’s To Like...

    Lost Is The Night is the continuation of the journey of Khale, a sort of “Conan the Barbarian” protagonist.  It is the sequel to Under A Colder Sun, which I read a couple years ago, and is reviewed here.

 

    Despite the feast being already underway, there are priorities.  Khale is caked with dirt and foul odors from his journeying, and requests a bath, which the steward of Castle Barneth readily arranges.  The bathing amenities include Cacea, a beautiful maiden who will do the scrubbing of Khale.  We’ll let you guess whether other services are offered.

 

    The main storyline involves the subsequent adventures of both Khale and Cacea.  The book’s subtitle, “A Grim Dark Fantasy Adventure”, is quite apt.  The fantasy in this book, and indeed, this series, is not lighthearted, nor intended for kids.  Lord Barneth’s sigil is a red wheel with a crucified victim on it.  The tone of the book reflects that.

 

    I enjoyed the gradual evolution of Khale’s character.  He started out in this series a total anti-hero, but here we are seeing him learning to care about others and about the role he plays in the events unfolding around him.  Does he get to make his own decisions when Thoughtless Dark stands before him?  Or is he simply a meat-and-bones puppet on strings, being manipulated by a higher power?

 

    The ending is appropriately grim and dark, highlighted by an exciting fight scene.  None of the plot threads are resolved, but hey, that’s presumably what the next and final book, Hordes of Chaos, is for.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Goetic (adj.) : pertaining to black magic or necromancy.

Others: Xanthic (adj.); Foetor (n.); Benighted (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.1*/5, based on 52 ratings and 16 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.82*/5, based on 38 ratings and 5 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Good evening, Master Khale.  I am Bartell, his Lordship’s steward, and I will attend to your needs.”

    Khale looked him over.  Dressed in blue-green silks, he looked, for all the world, like an over-embroidered cushion.  The wrinkles in his face wept dry tears of perfumed powder.  When the man smiled falsely at him, the Wanderer saw familiar signs of a life spent eating too many sweetmeats and loqma cakes.

    Rotten on the inside, fragrant as morning on the outside.

    He could taste the sin hanging in the air around this one.  (loc. 180)

 

    Murtagh was speechless as the nightmare thing before him finished pouring the last traces of itself from the bowl where it had been in repose.  The elongated mass rushed at him, a tide of black quicksilver moving across the chamber in a single, sinuous motion that consumed the space between them.  Its lipless mouth opened and continued to open, becoming a gaping wound that muttered to itself in the language of decayed silt and haunted mires.  (loc. 1638)

 

Kindle Details…

    Lost Is The Night sells for $2.99 at Amazon right now.  The other two books in the series go for the same price.  Greg James has several other series and standalone e-books available on Amazon, ranging in price from $0.99 to $2.99.

 

“Slow and predictable,” Khale mocked.  “You fight with too much honour.”.  (loc. 608)

    Surprisingly, I only counted eight cusswords in the first 25% of Lost Is The Night, although five of those were f-bombs.  There are several rolls-in-the-hay and references to three variations of the act of intimacy.  The experience on the red wheel is left to the reader’s imagination but not the outcome.

 

    The editing was good; I espied only one typo, “bows” instead of “boughs”.  As already mentioned, this book takes place immediately after the first book, and there are numerous back-references to events therefrom, so I’d suggest reading this series in chronological order and gearing up that you’re committing to reading all three books in the series.

 

    Finally, keep in mind the books in this series are all short.  The longest book is the first, at a mere 214 pages, and they get progressively shorter as the series continues.

 

    Nonetheless, I enjoyed Lost Is The Night.  It’s a fast-paced action-adventure tale with no slow spots, and the “grim dark fantasy” phrase in the subtitle let me know what to expect as far as R-rated material goes.  I’m curious to see how Greg James manages to resolve all the plotlines in a mere 163 pages of the final book, and will try not to wait two years to read the sequel.

 

    7½ Stars.  One last thing.  You’ll notice “time-travel” is listed as a genre for Lost Is The Night.  When you come to the end of the last chapter, you may, as I did, wonder where the heck the Time Travel was.  Not to worry, you still have the Epilogue to read.