The Sea of Tranquility: One of My Favorite Books of 2022 That Made Me Cheer

This might be my favorite book of fiction for 2022 and I didn’t even pick it.

I’ve been a part of a four-guy science fiction book club since 2009. Each month, one of us picks a book and we meet the first Tuesday of each month. Over the past year or so, I’ve started a new thing: on the books I don’t select, I don’t read the book description. I just download the audiobook and start listening.

I want the book to reveal itself it me without any preconceived notions. Now, typically, around the 20-25% mark, I might circle back and read the description but not always. I ended up doing that for this book because after the first section, I was genuinely curious what kind of book this was.

Think about it: when you hear the words “Sea of Tranquility,” what do you think of? The moon, right? Me, too. Well, there are scenes in this book set on the moon, but I think the title speaks to something more.

So, what is this book about? Well, it involves multiple characters over multiple times. Oh, and there’s time travel (but don’t worry: there’s not a lot of science to get in the way of a good story).

In 1912, a British scion from a prominent family is walking in the woods in British Columbia when, suddenly, he has the feeling of being somewhere else. He’s inside a great room he interprets as a train station. He hears something mechanical that he cannot identify. And he hears violin music.

In late 2019, at a party in New York, a woman is approached by a man. He asks her about her brother, a performance artist, who includes a snippet of video they shot in the forests of British Columbia when they were teenagers. On the video, the camera catches something that appears to be a hanger, and a few notes of violin music.

In 2203, a famous author is on a book tour and she’s in an airship terminal in Oklahoma City and, as the airships disembark, she sees a man playing violin and she has the sudden feeling that she's in a forest.

And in a future time (honestly I forgot what year this part takes place in), a time travel agent volunteers to research the strange anomalies that may or may not link all of these people.

Had I read the description, I would have been all in, but experiencing it the way I did—just the opening chapters set in 1912 then instantly jumping to 2019 with a reference to the upcoming pandemic—was a bit jarring. But I was hooked.

And the book didn’t let up. With each shift of characters, Mandel also shifts the point of view. Oh, and the audiobook was fantastic: with each POV change, it was a different narrator, so if you enjoy audiobooks, you’ll love this one.

I am not going to give away any more details because if I do, you might be able to infer the ending. I’m happy to say that I didn’t see it coming, but when it did, I literally cheered in my car as I drove to the office. It is a great ending to a wonderful book.

In the days since, I’ve told the story to my wife, my parents, and to a fellow saxophone player in my orchestra who went out and bought the book herself.

Of all the books I’ve read in my SF book club, if I’m measuring by emotional impact, then John Scalzi’s Redshirts still takes the prize. But The Sea of Tranquility will now be ranked as one of the best books I’ve read, both this year and of the entire and ongoing book club.

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Hilarity in Space: Space Team by Barry J. Hutchison

I haven't had this much fun with a book in a long time.

I've been a part of a science fiction/fantasy book club with the same group of folks for over a decade now. There are now six of us and each month, we take turns selecting a book. Some choose award-winning classics. Others choose new works by established authors. Sometimes we choose wild cards, new-to-us authors that somehow catch the selector's fancy. It was in the latter category that Space Team by Barry J. Hutchison landed on my to-be-read stack.

I didn't choose it, but I'm sure glad my friend did.

Space Team is the first of a 12-book series. If the cover doesn't give you a sense of the type of book it is, the tagline will: "The galaxy just called for help. Unfortunately, it dialed the wrong number."

Cal Carver is a motor-mouthed con man who is "accidentally" put in a prison cell with a notorious, cannibalistic serial killer named Eugene. Cal only has to spend one night in the cell before he (might?) is transferred, but he takes matters into his own hands and tries to take out Eugene. Surprisingly he manages to do just that, but then the bug things arrive and he is snatched away.

Bug things, you ask? Why yes. Little nanobots were sent by aliens with the sole purpose of enabling said aliens to abduct “the person in Eugene’s cell” and deliver him to the spaceship. The aliens kidnap the one person in the cell. That’s Cal. Why? Well, Eugene is needed for a very special mission. See where I'm going with this? Cal is mistaken for Eugene the Cannibal.

But that's not even the worst part. Once he is aboard his very first spaceship, he learns about the mission and the entities with whom he is supposed to carry out said mission. There is the blue-skinned female soldier who just follows orders and tries to fend off Cal’s advances. There is the werewolf female alien who barely keeps her temper in check while she puts the moves on Cal. There’s Mech, a cyborg who has a dial that can turn him either all logical or all berserker. And there’s Splurt, a shape-shifting alien described best as Silly Putty with eyes.

This band of misfits—aren’t all memorable teams misfits?—is given a mission to warp across the galaxy and deliver some crucial information to a notorious alien bad guy. In exchange, the misfits will earn immunity from the crimes they committed and will we handsomely rewarded.

So you have the type of story that works so well in just about any version of science fiction or fantasy: a newbie lead character who is teamed with veterans who get to explain all the new things the newbie encounters. Along the way, newbie is able to play to his strengths. In Cal’s case, that’s his quick-witted responses to all the stuff thrown in the team’s path.

There is a high level of frivolity in Hutchison’s book and he writes the characters quite well. With Cal the central character, he is played off each being on the team. His back-and-forth with Mech is hilarious, with Mech constantly wanting to throw Cal out the airlock for the Earthling’s incessant talking and adding the word “space” in front of every new thing he sees. Thus, the title of the book. Cal genuinely cares for Splurt and goes out of his way to include the oddball alien in the group.

The Audiobook is Fantastic

I’m an avid audiobook listener and get more than half the stories I consume in this manner. Narration is key. A good narrator can add that special sauce that heightens the story above where the author wrote.

That is the case here with Phil Thron. This is the first I’ve heard of him, but it won’t be the last. He nails the four main characters aurally so that you don’t need the ‘he said’ and ‘she said’ attributions. Cal is basically Phil’s voice. Mech goes back and forth depending on where his dial is. When he’s the emotionless, all-logical version, Thron uses a British accent. But normally, he’s like a gruff drill sergeant who’s had it up to here with Cal’s yammering. Lauren is a pretty good male-actor-reading-a-female part, not always easy to do. In fact, I haven’t heard it this good since Johnny Heller and Robert Petkoff each did the Nikki Heat books. For our werewolf lady, Thron puts just enough California valley girl into his voice to give that extra sous son of goodness.

The Accidental Discovery via the Audiobook

I listen to many audiobooks, so many that often, I’m down to a week to listen to the latest SF book from the club. If I find myself with too few days and too many hours in a book, I’ll up the narration speed on the Audible app. This does not make the narrator sound like a chipmunk. Rather, it has the effect of shortening the silences between words and sentences. For Space Team, I bumped up the playback speed to 1.4.

And it played perfectly with this book.

Remember how I said Cal was a motor mouth? Well, by playing Phil Thron’s narration at this speed, Cal’s mouth flies by and actually makes him come across like Nathan Fillion in Castle. Now, that TV show is one of my all-time favorites so I was in aural heaven.

I think you can figure out how much I enjoyed this book. I laughed out loud numerous time. And there’s a moment, late in the book, when Mech speaks a simple phrase and dang it if I didn’t literally cheer aloud. I was trimming and bundling hedge clippings so no family member looked at me askance.

How much did I love this book? I’ve already gone back and purchased books 2 and 3 (actually the first three books are available as a single unit on Audible).

Highly recommended.

For a list of all the other books in this month’s book club, click the icon.

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Book Review: The Way We All Became The Brady Bunch by Kimberly Potts

Perhaps the most surprising turn of events sparked by the Covid pandemic and the subsequent order to work from home was my rediscovery of The Brady Bunch.

I'm an avid watcher of MeTV, especially the westerns on Saturday and the science fiction shows later that night. More often than not, the cable box remains on that channel into Sunday morning. Earlier this year after I watched my church's broadcast on YouTube, I reverted back to broadcast TV and caught the opening of what the channel calls The Brady Brunch: a two-hour block on Sunday mornings of episodes of the Brady Bunch. Back in the spring, MeTV was running the series in order and it was the episode when the family flew out to Cincinnati and had an adventure at the King's Island theme park.

I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed this episode and I watched that group of four. Then I did it again the next Sunday. And the next. After reaching the end of the run, MeTV started doing themes: all Marcia, all Bobby, etc.

My interest in the show piqued, it was serendipity when podcaster Ken Mills interviewed Kimberly Potts on his POP podcast. Turned out Potts was there to talk about her new book: The Way We All Became the Brady Bunch: How the Canceled Sitcom Became the Beloved Pop Culture Icon We Are Still Talking About Today. (Yes, it's a long title.)

Perfect! I got the book on my Kindle and, in between two digital covers, had nearly all my Brady Bunch questions answered.

Of all places to start, Potts began the book with The X-Files. The penultimate episode recreated the famous interior of the Brady house. That a science fiction show in 2002 would choose to craft a story around a cancelled family sitcom is one proof of how endearing the Brady Bunch remains.

The book is chronological, starting with the seed of an idea in the mind of creator Sherwood Schwartz and going all the way up to 2019 when the Brady kids--now, middle aged--participated in the HGTV renovation of the actual Brady house and literally everything in between. A few facts that fascinated me.

Schwartz conceived of the idea in 1966, but the network wasn't ready for a show with a mixed family. It wasn't until the 1968 film Yours, Mine and Ours starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda premiered that ABC gave the show a shot.

I didn't really know how bad Robert Reed was on set about the scripts and how Schwartz was running the show. While the actor never feuded in front of the child actors, he was a pain, so much so that he boycotted the fifth season finale...which turned out to be the series finale. That the episode dealt with Greg's high school graduation is a pretty crappy hill on which to die. Still, Reed returned for every single reunion show for the rest of his life. Yet, through it all, he loved his six TV kids, even taking them on a vacation and giving them all small home movie cameras, the footage of which became a TV special.

Speaking of specials, Potts discusses all the various spin-offs and specials along the way, including a forgotten-by-me thing called The Brady Bunch Variety Hour. Yes, it really happened, and there's proof on YouTube. I kept a list and I plan on seeking out as many as I can. Did you know Reed and Florence Henderson guest-starred on the Love Boat in character? I have got to find that one.

I enjoyed Potts's description of the sheer volume of tributes throughout the years, from sitcom to dramatic show, that paid tribute to The Brady Bunch. Much like Star Trek, The Brady Bunch never truly went away. It just morphing and changing with the times.

And it’s the simple love for this show, the loving parents, the six kids, and Alice (!) that had propelled this show into the 21st Century. Kimberly Potts’s book is essential reading if you want to learn all there is to know about this sitcom.

Why has it endured? It all comes down to Sherwood Schwartz’s vision for the show, a lesson we all can learn:

The Brady Bunch was going to be another example of what he believed was one of the most important ideas in life: that any group of people, no matter how different, no matter how little they might seem to have in common, could learn to live together. He wanted the show to be groundbreaking and modern, to reflect this new and significant sociological change with he prevalence of blended families, and it did. He couldn’t have planned for the decades-long impact his slice of Americana would have on television and every other avenue of pop culture, but it did indeed achieve that, too.

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Orphan X Review - Not Your Typical Thriller Hero

For a few years now, the Orphan X series by Gregg Hurwitz, has been circling my radar. I'd download a sample onto my Kindle, but never get around to it. I'd see the second, third, and fourth books in the series be published, but still I didn't move off high center.

Until late last month.

In that timeless week between Christmas and New Year's Day, I was at the paperback racks at a Barnes and Noble in far west Houston and saw OUT OF THE DARK, the fourth volume in the series. My new standard for reading books is to read the book that captured my attention, no matter what number it is in the series. But when I realized it was an Orphan X novel, I was reminded that this series is one I should try.

From the beginning.

Evan Smoak - Not Your Typical Action Hero

If you read ten thrillers, how many of them open with the main character--or a side character--running? Seven? Eight? It's a perfectly acceptable trope for the genre, but I was happily surprised ORPHAN X didn't begin that way. True, Evan is bleeding from a knife wound and he's trying to get back to his apartment in Los Angeles, but there are no bad guys chasing him. Instead, we get a domestic scene with Evan trying not to show fellow tenants of his high-rise apartment he's bleeding. Not the nosy old lady nor the single mom who lives a few floors below. But her son suspects the truth. The entire tension of chapter one is whether or not Evan can make it up to his apartment without anyone noticing he's bleeding.

That is how ORPHAN X starts, and it makes all the difference.

It tells you that you're in for a different type of thriller, one I couldn't put my finger on until I saw Gregg Hurwitz at Houston's Murder by the Book on Monday.

A Normal Situation

Another thing Hurwitz does well is showing you what Evan's typical life is like. As an orphan, he was taken out of foster care and trained to be an off-the-books assassin. The kind with complete deniability. The only contact he has is his father-figure/trainer/teacher Jack Johns. For years, Jack trained Evan until--as we learn in the middle of the book--an even takes place that causes Evan to leave that life and disappear.

Now, he's the Nowhere Man, a man hiding in plain sight. Like the A-Team, if there's a person who needs help, all they have to do is call the special number: 1-855-2NOWHERE. Evan will help you. The only payment: pass his number--once--to another person who needs help.

Thus, the opening section of the book, we get an example of this "normal" life Evan has made for himself. You see him plan how he's going to help teenaged Morena, the terrible situation in which she and her younger sister find themselves, and how he goes about solving her problem. Intricate detail that reads fast and swift, never losing tension and anticipation.

It's when the next person calls--presumably Morena's pay-it-forward charge--that things really kick into a higher gear.

The Layers Unravel

Interspersed throughout the novel are flashbacks to Evan's training days and his early assignments. You get a deeper sense of what kind of man he is, what kind of person Jack Johns is, and how the two ultimately bring out nuances in each other both probably didn't expect.

I never saw the twists coming, which made for an even more entertaining read. It's no surprise--it's on the dust jacket--that some of the people after Evan are fellow Orphans, so he's not going up against run-of-the-mill thugs, but highly trained adversaries. Hurwitz, I learned on Monday night when I attended his author event, has done his research. But I already knew that. The details not only of the fighting but the weapons and accouterments are rich and descriptive.

Why is This Book So Good?

I knew going into the book the action would be good and thrilling. What surprised me, however, were the character moments. The time in the elevator I just mentioned. The times when he's having to worry about the bad guys and some busybody confronts him about not attending the HOA meeting. In addition, seeing Evan at home, in his apartment, what he did, what he drank, how he ate, all of that is there. I gravitated toward those moments just as much, if not more, than the action.

Why?

Well, on Monday night, Hurwitz commented that part of the genesis of Evan Smoak was the idea that you never saw James Bond go home.* You never saw Jason Bourne have an awkward conversation with regular folks.

That was the key to why I enjoyed ORPHAN X so much. That's why I'll keep reading the series.



*In the novel MOONRAKER (1954)--which is nothing like the 1979 movie--Ian Fleming writes a lot about Bond in the office, in his house, and playing cards. Not exactly pulse-pounding excitement, but wonderful to read. But the point Hurwitz is probably making is that none of the films show Bond in a normal setting. Not coincidentally, it is these scenes in MOONRAKER I remember well and hardly any of the larger plot. But hardly anyone remembers the original novel. You see? Hurwitz was onto something.

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Crashing Heat by Richard Castle

Sometimes it pays to open up those emails from GoodReads.

Would We Get Any More Books?

When the TV show Castle ended--still one of my all-time favorite shows--there was one more Richard Castle book already in the pipeline. That was HEAT STORM. As much as I enjoyed the shows and the real-life books that accompanied the series, I reckoned there would be no more.

Imagine my surprise when CRASHING HEAT showed up.

The Return of Nikki Heat

The Nikki Heat books are a good blend of twisty mysteries wrapped up in a set of characters enjoyable to be around. Where other books might draw you in based on the premise of the mystery, here, the mystery serves as a framework in which Nikki Heat and her husband, Jameson Rook, can interact. And this mystery is a doozy.

Rook, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, has been invited to spend a semester at his old alma mater as a writer-in-residence. Seeing as how this school largely shaped his own world view and career, Rook eagerly accepts.

Much to Nikki's chagrin. As the captain of the Twentieth Precinct, she can't just hop around, going wherever her globe-trotting beau goes. She has to stay at home in New York, missing him and trying to convince her heart and brain there's nothing to worry about. Even if Chloe Masterton, a young lady, a senior at that very school, cannot wait to meet the veteran journalist at a charity event. Chloe is, as Nikki dubs her, "the president of the Jameson Rook fan club." Rook assures Nikki her fears stand on nothing.

Then the call comes.

The Call That Changes Everything

A few weeks after his departure, Rook, with his usual bluster evaporated, calls Nikki and lets her know he's in trouble. It seems Chloe is dead, in his house, in his bed, naked. What would you think were you in Nikki's position?

Well, the trained detective is not going to let her husband's fate rest in the hands of small town cops, so she heads upstate to help.

What follows is a pretty standard mystery, the likes of which you'd have found on any random episode of the TV show Castle, from which these characters emerge. There's not a lot of twists and turns, but enough to make this book an enjoyable and welcome read. Narrator Robert Petkoff again nails the Nathan Fillion-like quality to his voice so much so that you'd almost guess it was the actor himself reading the novel.

Again, it's the interactions between the two leads that you're reading this book. Heck, you could probably just follow them around on a typical day, seeing them play off each other, and you'd probably enjoy the experience. In all these Nikki Heat novels, I've loved seeing their interplay, how it's grown and matured--mostly. Rook is still Rook, which means he's like the character Castle from the TV show, which means he's like star Nathan Fillion. And if Rook's Fillion, then Nikki's co-star Stana Katic. There's no point in trying not to see them at their charming best when reading this new novel.

CRASHING HEAT is a welcome surprise to the books of 2019, and I hope--just as I hoped when the last Nikki Heat novel was published--that there are a few more in the future. I'll always buy them on Day One, just as I have since 2009 when HEAT WAVE hit the shelves.

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Book Review Club: Bounty on a Baron by Robert J. Randisi

(This is the March 2016 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list of other books this month, click on the icon following this review.)

A few weeks ago, I found myself at my local Half Price Books. By the way, do you have good and bad it is to have a Half Price Books location within biking distance? Anyway, the Men's Adventure section and the Westerns overlap. I check the men's adventure section looking for Bantam editions of Doc Savage. Up there on the top row were a smattering of Robert J. Randisi novels. Now, I know the name. Who doesn't? When you have written over 650 books (not a typo), you are pretty well known. But I had never read anything by Randisi. So, I picked up BOUNTY ON A BARON and took it home.

The main character is a bounty hunter named Decker. Based on the back cover, he was falsely accused of murder and had reached death's door with a hangman's noose around his neck. He was spared the death penalty, but kept the noose as a reminder of his second chance at life. In fact, the noose, casually looped around his saddle, is his calling card. Now, he rides for himself and the bounty money he earns.

The Baron is the name given to a recent Russian immigrant. A professional killer. He took the name Brand, but his reputation takes the Baron.

As you can imagine, this story is a tale of the hunter and his prey. Decker talks to an old friend who has a line on where the Baron might be holed up. Decker makes his way to Wyoming and picks up the trail--and a sub-plot involving a logging community and the recent death of their leader.

The story moves along pretty much as you'd expect for a western of this stripe. That being said, I really enjoyed this book. Decker as a character is intriguing, with just the right amount of honor and hard-edged realism. Sure, he'll shoot you, but only after he's exhausted all other possibilities. The Baron comes off as a killer, yes, but one who actually has some honor to him as well, despite his job. 

"Lean" is the term used to describe many westerns, be they Louis L'amour, Luke Short, or Robert Randisi. I appreciate story told in a straight-forward fashion with little fat. It makes for an easy read. Having said that, I wouldn't have minded just a tad more fat. For example, there's a scene where Decker asks a woman a few questions. She's never described other than "the woman." Now, as a reader, I filled in the blanks--and I'm fine with that--but it surprised me a little. Perhaps I just have to read more westerns, a task I've given myself for 2016.

You want to know how much I enjoyed BOUNTY ON A BARON? The day after I finished it, I went back to Half Price Books and picked up two more Decker novels. Turns out there are six novels total in the series. I have a feeling I'll be reading them all in short order.

P.S., since this is a western, I'll go ahead and wish y'all a happy Texas Independence Day!

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Book Review Club: February 2016

Well, I didn't get a chance to finish a book review for this month's edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club (Book Launch activies), but that doesn't others were not successful. Click on the icon and head over to Barrie's site to get the full list of reviews.
  

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Book Review Club: Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker

(This is the October 2015 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list, click on the icon following this review.)

Book Review Club: Take Off Your Pants!: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing by Libbie Hawker

by
Scott D. Parker

National Novel Writing Month is just over the horizon and that means everyone is trying to prepare for the sprint that is NaNoWriMo. I think most who read Barrie’s blog are familiar with the concept of writing a 50,000-word novel in the 30 days of November. I’ve done it--although not solely in November--more than once. Back in August, I hit 50,000 words in 21 days so I know I can do it. However, I didn’t complete the novel until mid-September. Yes, I know six weeks to write a 92,000-word book is nothing to sneeze at, but I wanted to see if there was a way to optimize my process and get a book done in 30 days.

Enter Take Off Your Pants. I don’t know about y’all, but when I hear the word ‘outline,’ I still think of the way we were taught back in high school with Roman numerals and capital letters. That may work for a five-paragraph essay in high school, but it’s not the best way to outline a novel. So how do you do it?

I’ve found the method of Lester Dent, the old pulp writer who created Doc Savage back in 1933. There’s a famous ‘formula’ for writing a 6,000-word short story. It’s pretty good and it’s scalable. But it didn’t have the true skeleton I wanted. I love seeing how other writers create their books, and Hawker’s book shows you, step-by-step, the process she uses.

She mentions a few times certain light bulb moments went off for her as she read other books on the craft. Well, I had one reading her book. You see, up until this helpful ebook, I have attempted to create outlines for my novels and stories, but what I started doing is crafting a plot. I started with an opening scene, the hook, and went from there. Scene after scene, event after event, I put my characters through the paces.

I always ran into a road block somewhere in the middle. I rarely fretted because I’d always re-brainstorm when I got stuck in the middle. I didn’t particularly like that, but it allowed the vicissitudes of the writing to meander along the general direction of the ending.

Hawker’s methodology is different. Sure, she gets to the scene-by-scene stuff, but she starts with character. Okay, well, I did that. I got a character and he had to go through stuff. Nope. Hawker suggests starting with character and then his flaw. What the heck? Why would you start there? Well, let me tell you a little something. I'm planning my NaNoWriMo book now (the second Gordon Gardner novel)...and merely by focusing on Gardner's flaw, nearly half of the outline emerged almost fully formed. Yeah, I couldn't believe it either. Here's my light bulb moment: by focusing on the flaw and the character as the through-line of the tale, the plot pieces are all but written. Sure, there are details, but half of my novel is, arguably, already planned out.

And I've not even started writing in the individual scene beats. The overall arc is there, the map. That was my light bulp moment.

Take Off Your Pants has numerous little nuggets like this. She has a set structure she uses. She introduces the structure, explains it, and then uses one of her own books as examples. She takes you, step by step, from zero outline to a completed one. Something that helped me was actually doing my own outline while reading and highlighting the book. By the time I finished the book, I had the overall arc all but complete. And it was only the 12th of October. And, best of all, that process only took me a few hours (of reading and writing). I got very excited when I realized how straightforward this process actually is.

Now, I can't wait for November to get here!

If you're in the planning stages for NaNoWriMo or have struggled to complete a novel, trying to Take Off Your Pants. You might be surprised at how fluidly your story flows out of you and onto paper. It has for me...so far.

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Book Review Club: CANARY by Duane Swierczynski

(This is the April 2015 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list, click the icon at the bottom of this essay.)

With a bright yellow cover with a title like that, I wasn't sure what to make of the book CANARY by Duane Swierczynski. Before I read this book, the word conjured exactly two things in my head: a bird in a cage and the bird in a mineshaft. I had no idea what the word meant in the crime fiction context. Now I do, and I really like it.

Canary in crime fiction is a confidential informant. I guess because they sing like a bird to the law and spill all the dirt on the bad guys. The book CANARY focuses on a young college student, Sarie Holland. She attends school in Philadelphia--Swierczynski’s town--and, as the book opens, she’s nursing a beer at a party the night before she has to pick up her Dad at the airport. The mom’s dead and Sarie and her little brother live at home. It’s the night before Thanksgiving and she and her pals are studying for exams...at a party. Right. There’s a cute guy Sarie calls D. and she kinda likes him so she’s pretty surprised when he asks her if she could give him a life to a friend’s house. D. doesn’t drive and, after checking her watch and doing the mental math, Sarie agrees. At the destination, D. tells her to park in the special spot his friend has reserved.

No big deal, right? Wrong. Narcotics cop Ben Wildey is there, staking out the house of a mid-level dealer in the area--the very same house D. just entered. Unbeknownst to Sarie, Wildey’s spotted her and busts her. All he wants is D’s name. He is the one wearing the red pants, after all, you know, “your boyfriend.” Sarie doesn’t cave so Wildey has little choice but to bust her. Faced with the crisis that could ruin her life, Sarie opens Door #2: she decides/is forced to become a confidential informant. A canary.

Now, in the hands of some writers, this story starts to become a sermon on the dangers of drugs, the evils it can do, how the justice system is all out of whack. Well, rest assured, this is not that kind of book. With Swierczynski as the wheelman (wink wink), you are in for one heck of a good ride.

You see, Sarie takes her role as a canary pretty seriously. In fact, she’s convinced that as soon as she gives Wildey a name, he’ll be off her back for good. Being the good college student, she does research and starts to learn about the criminal world. And then she starts to deliver information to Wildey who just happens to be angling for a huge score back at the station. So is his captain. Then words gets around the criminal ranks that there’s a new snitch, and, well, drug dealers don’t like snitches.

The book is written in an interesting fashion. When it’s Sarie, Swierczynski writes in first person. Anyone else is in third person. This has the great advantage of literally getting inside Sarie’s head, the head of straight-arrow, middle-class college girl, as she learns and acts on what she learns. I listened to the book and Sarie’s narration was handled very well by Casey Holloway. She gives Sarie snark, fear, anger, determination, and humor all in the voice. George Bryant handles everything else and his nuances among the different characters, good guys as well as bad, are wonderful. On the page, Sarie’s words are in a different font so it’s a nice visual cue to let the reader know the a change in point of view is taking place.

I didn’t expect many of the twists and turns CANARY took but I enjoyed them all. There was a moment of coincidence that gave me a slight pause, but, by then, I was so into the book, I didn’t care. And then there’s the ending. Completely satisfying.

I’ve read many of Swierczynski’s books and enjoyed them all. I can, with good confidence, recommend CANARY, preferably the audio. It’s fantastic.

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Book Review Club: Icerigger by Alan Dean Foster

(This is the February 2015 edition of Barrie Summy’s Book Review Club. For the complete list of fellow reviewers, click the link at the end of this review.)

If you’re looking forward to Star Wars: Episode VII later this year, then you can thank Alan Dean Foster for writing Icerigger.

Icerigger, published 1974, was the third book a young Alan Dean Foster published after The Tar-Aiym Krang (1972) and Bloodhype (1973). The story features two human heroes: Ethan Fortune, a salesman in his twenties, who is on the way to the remote ice world of Tran-Ky-Ky. Skua September is a hulk of a man with a shock of white hair and has seen his share of the wonders the Humanx Commonwealth has to offer. These two men, who don’t know each other, are, like all great heroes throughout literature, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

While on the space liner orbiting Tran-Ky-Ky, Ethan stumbles into a kidnapping-gone-wrong of financier Hellespont du Kane and his daughter, Colette. The trio, along with another pair of humans, are shuttled into a lifepod...where a very drunk Skua is sleeping off a drunk. He fouls things up for the kidnappers and then things go really bad. They crash on Tran-Ky-Ky thousands of miles away from Brass Monkey, the one town the Thranx Commonwealth had established, the one town where the kidnappers were going to ransom du Kane.

Very soon thereafter, Skua appoints a reluctant Ethan as leader. Together, including one of the kidnappers--Skua took out the other one--they have to figure out a way to get to Brass Monkey, the only Humanx settlement on Tran Ky-Ky. They befriend a group of the native species, Tran, a humanoid-cat hybrid with fur all over their bodies and claws on their feet that have adapted to their environment (think the middle two claws having curled under the feet to basically make skates).

What follows is a traditional adventure tale that might have taken place here on earth except that the planet’s oceans are all frozen. It’s a clever twist on the old swashbuckling adventure yarns where the characters may face traditional hazards--a warring tribe attacks the Tran group helping Ethan and Skua--but with the ice, Foster gets to turn a siege battle on its ear. You don’t get a whole lot about the larger Humanx Commonwealth that you do from his most famous series about Pip and Flinx, but it is referenced. It's more like a peek into a larger world that you can explore elsewhere.

While I enjoyed Icerigger, but it's not without issues. For a science fiction story, there's not a whole lot of science fiction there. Sure, there's an alien world with a new alien species but the book is more like a pirate story than a true SF yarn. Actually the one story that kept coming to mind was Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars. You see, both stories derive their structure from a main human character (John Carter, Ethan in Icerigger) who find themselves on an alien world and must Do Something and encounter strange things along the way. Again, what I expected was some more science fictional because, you know, of Star Wars.

The reason I bring up Star Wars is that Icerigger was the novel that landed Alan Dean Foster on George Lucas’s radar. Back when Lucas was making the first film, he and his team read Icerigger and liked it so much that they approached Foster to gauge his interest in ghost writing the novelization of the movie and an original sequel. Foster agreed. Back in the day, when my entire young life was consumed with Star Wars, I read that novelization more than once never knowing it was Foster. I also read Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, the first original novel back in 1978. That’s when I locked in on Foster and he became my first favorite SF author. He helped secure the Star Wars legacy for me a millions of others and it all started with Icerigger.

The adventure of Ethan Fortune and Skua September continue with Mission to Moulokin (1979) and The Deluge Drivers (1987). I’m definitely jumping right into the second book now because I want to see how this adventure ends.

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Book Review Club: Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero by Larry Tye

(This is the June 2013 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For a complete list, click on the icon after this review.)

Without a doubt, the new Superman movie, Man of Steel, is the one movie I am most looking forward to this year. To help do what I always do--immerse myself in a property--I’ve been reading my old Superman comics, enjoying Superman: The Animated Series episodes, and watching the older movies. I was happily surprised to discover that there was a history of Superman just waiting to be read. Perfect timing.

Larry Tye’s Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero was published in 2012 and it tells the story of Superman from his creation by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster all the way up to the Man of Steel movie which, at the time of publication, was “the new Superman movie next year.” The story of Kal-el and his handlers is a microcosm of 20th American history in general and the comic book industry in particular.

I’ve always been fascinated why and how the 1930s produced such a wide variety of heroes. I’m convinced it’s a product of the times, when dire economic times and the worry it produced created a yearning for honest-to-goodness heroes with a firm moral code and little or no gray to their characters. You know: they guys who always wore the white hats. When you look at the all the parts of the “pulp soup” that was being mixed in this decade--Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Green Hornet, John Carter, Tarzan, and more--it’s pretty simple to think that someone like Superman would be created. In fact, it wasn’t until I started reading the Doc Savage novels that I discovered that some of the Superman tropes--his first name, the Fortress of Solitude--were lifted straight from Lester Dent’s imagination. It’s a wonder he didn’t sue. As a writer myself, it’s kind of nice to read that it took the pair six years to land a publisher. Perseverance pays off!

In this modern age of consumerism, it was eye-opening to learn just how many things Superman has sold. With tongue firmly in cheek, Tye even labels one of his chapters “Superman, Inc.” with a familiar refrain of “Ka-ching” throughout that chapter. Not sure why it surprised me, but it did. Speaking of superheroes selling things, am I the only one who misses the little one-page ads where Superman, Batman, or Spider-man would catch the crook because the evil doer was seduced by a Twinkee?

Speaking of seducing, the chapter on the 1950s crackdown on comic books was also quite interesting. From my own knowledge of the medium, I knew that it was the crime and horror comics that fed the fire of Dr. Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, the book and movement that strove to bury the comics industry by pinning all of society’s woes on the exploits of people in comics. Makes me wonder what he’d make of the internet...

As someone who grew up in the Bronze Age of comics (roughly 1970 to 1986), I have always enjoyed the zaniness of comics. Granted, some of that zaniness was gone by the mid 1970s, but it was interesting to learn how Mort Weisinger, editor at DC Comics and Superman titles in particular, actually went about consolidating the Man of Steel and all that goes with him. It was so wide and varied that the mid-1980s event, Crisis on Infinite Earths (the comic book story that shrank all the parallel Earths down to just one) was destined to happen.

There’s the legal stuff, too. Siegel and Shuster basically sold their most famous creation for $130, losing control of the thing that generated billions. Yes, it was a business and businessmen do what businessmen do, but it’s still a shame. From these two all the way up to Alan Moore in the 1980s, comic creators often found themselves on the short end of a dollar bill. Tye even goes into some detail and explains why the new movie is being released this year.

And I learned the names associated with Superman and the 75 years of his history. That’s a real benefit , so much so that, a few weekends ago at Houston’s Comicpalooza, I found a few old Superman titles in the $0.25 bin (!) and bought them based solely on the authors of the tales. I also met Kevin J. Anderson and picked up an autographed copy of Enemies and Allies, his novel in which he reimagines the first meeting of Superman and Batman in the 1950s. And, if you are still in the Superman mood, you can always read Tom DeHaven’s “It’s Superman” (my review).

Oh, and there are some comics to read, too. Seventy-five years worth of comics. Not all of them are good, but some are great. Some of my more-recent personal favorites are All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely and Superman: For All Seasons by Jeph Loeb. All-Star Superman has been made into an animated movie, but I suggest you read the books. It spends much more time in this one-off story. I love it so much that I am tempted to say that it’s the best Superman story in the last 25 years (easily) and ranks as one of the best of all time.

So, after you see Man of Steel and are curious about the history of the Last Son of Krypton, read this book. You will certainly enjoy it.

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Book Review Club: Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey

(This is the May 2013 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list, click on the icon following this review.)

Well, it’s been a month and I’ve devoured another giant book of space opera. In last month’s review, I wrote about James S. A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes. I loved it so much that I moved on to the sequel, Caliban’s War. If I have to sum up my thoughts on this second book in the series, it’s this: Corey suffered no sophomore slump.

Caliban’s War picks up a year after the events of Leviathan Wakes. Jim Holden, captain of the four-person ship, the Rocinante, and one of the two main characters from the first book, has been working for the leader of The Belt (as in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter). He’s basically a cop keeping the pirates in check. As good as the work is--what with all his repairs being paid for by Fred Johnson, the Belter Leader--Holden is missing something. Part of it is a purpose. The other part is that special thing that used to be his trademark, that part of him that made him different than the pure thug he’s kind of turned into. He’ll find that purpose on Ganymede, one of the moons of Saturn and the primary food outlet for the outer planets.

What sequels are all but required to do is introduce new characters and amp up the action. With Leviathan Wakes being a lengthy book, you get a good chance to get under Holden’s skin and into his mind, so much so that you basically know what he’s going to do in any given situation. That’s a tall order to top with Caliban’s War as Corey introduces three new characters that, as the novel unfolds hold themselves up very well.

Bobbie Draper, female Marine from Mars, is on Ganymede as the military force for Mars when a shooting war starts. The Saturnian moon is basically a little like Berlin in the Cold War, divided up between Earth, Mars, and the Belt. When the shooting starts, Bobbie and her platoon rush to aid her fellow Martians against the Earthers...until she sees what is truly happening: the Earthers are fleeing from some thing. That thing is walking, no, running on Ganemede’s surface without a suit, and ripping through her entire platoon. We readers are familiar with the creature: it’s a black-skinned human/alien hybrid made from the proto-molecule from the first book. She is the only survivor, and she is sent to Earth to give her report to the politicians who think more of their own careers than they do about human lives.

One of those politicans is Chrisjen Avasarala, a high-ranking official in the United Nations who swears like she’s a sailor. She has to deal not only with the same politicians Bobbie goes up against (but Avasarala has a much better political acumen than does the Marine) but she’s also up to her eyeballs with the UN military brass and their desire to keep the truth of what happened on Ganymede a secret. Why? That’s one of the questions Avasarala must grapple with as everything starts to go south.

Then there is Prax Meng, a biologist on Ganymede who is trying to find his missing daughter. A divorcee, he learns his daughter, May, was kidnapped right before all the stuff hit the fan. All he wants to do is find her. In the prologue, we readers are privy to her abduction, so we pretty much know that she and the other children taken are likely to be used as human experiments with the proto-molecule. He is out of money and out of resources and out of options until he recognizes one man who has come to Ganymede to find out what’s going on: Captain Jim Holden.

Just like the first novel, Corey mixes the points of view for each chapter. Knowing the template, even though all the characters start the story strewn across the solar system, you know that they are going to end up together. That they do, and the action is just as good the second time around.

But what makes these two books special for me is the quiet moments. There’s a good amount of them as they face challenges and meet them with the resources on hand. It’s the best of the Star Trek spirit, if I can make a comparison. You really get into the skins of these characters. You feel with them. You cheer with them, and then you get your blood pumping with them.

There’s an elephant in this story: Venus. The culmination at the end of Leviathan Wake involved Venus and, all through Caliban’s War, what’s happening on Venus is in the back of everyone’s mind. I have a prediction, one that I’m not going to share here in case you have a hankering to read these novels. I have really enjoyed them, and eagerly await the release of book 3, Abaddon’s Gate, in June. Highly recommended.

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Book Review Club: Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

(This is the April 2013 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list, click on the icon following this review.)

Let's get this out of the way at the start: Leviathan Wakes may be space opera, but it's not your grandfather's space opera.

Your granddad, if he were a mind, probably cut his teeth on Edgar Rice Burroughs, E. E. "Doc" Smith, Leigh Brackett, or any of the writers from the golden age of SF. Your dad probably cut his teeth on the likes of Michael Moorcock, Star Trek, Star Wars, or any of the things that have come in their wake. When you mention these authors or shows, certain things come to mind: spaceships, lasers, dreadful monsters, dashing heroes, and lots of derring do. Oh, and physics doesn't count because there's artificial gravity, warp drive, hyperspace, and all the usual stuff you associate with the genre.

Leviathan Wakes, then, is somewhat of a new animal. It's a space opera yarn for the 21st Century. It is not the only one, to be sure, but it is the first of its kind that I've read. Author James S. A. Corey (actually a pen name for the authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) has set the first of a trilogy (aren't they all?) in the near distant future and entirely in our solar system. I say "near distant" because it's a few centuries away, but not far enough that all the parts of this universe isn't too far gone to be recognizable. By setting the entire story in our own solar system ensures the reader that the tale will be on the frontier, but a believable frontier complete with all the human problems that we early 21st Century citizens can understand.

The story follows two main characters. Jim Holden, Earth-born, is the executive officer on the ice hauler, Canterbury. The 'Cant' receives a distress call from the Scopuli and, under common practice, they answer it. Holden leads a crew of three on their smaller shuttle to investigate. They find evidence of piracy and attribute the origin to Mars. On their way back to the mothership, however, the Canterbury is attacked and destroyed. Distraught with emotion, Holden sends a message across the entire solar system that all but accuses Mars of being the perpetrators. Naturally, this stirs up some animosity between Earth, Mars, and the Belt (the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter).

The other main character is Miller, a police detective born and raised in the colonized asteroid Ceres. Granted, he's your typical noir-inflected character, but he's tasked with a new, off-the-books assignment: Find Julie Mao and bring her back, by any means necessary, to her parents.

Well, as it turns out, Julie was on the Scopuli, so, naturally, you pretty much have Miller and Holden angling on a collision course both between themselves and the entire system.

This book gets a lot of things right. This is space opera on the believable level. Yes, there are lasers, but not any photon torpedoes. There is no light speed and it really does take a long time to get from place to place. The characters experience G-force pressure when accelerating, nearly to a dangerously high level. Communication is not instantaneous. A "live" conversation has scores of minutes in lag time. The space combat is brutal and not without a comparison to old-style naval combat. All told, these characteristics of the story give this tale life, a vision of the future that you don't get from Star Trek.

Each chapter is told from the POV of either Miller or Holden. For the first third or so, they are separated, enabling the authors to comment on the events from a distance. Once the heroes meet up, the authors can show and tell of the events from the different POVs. Holden is an earnest man who believes that, if everyone knew all the facts, they would choose the right course of action. Miller is the cynic, the real world man who knows that is rarely the truth. Together, these two world views clash and strive towards the conclusion of the book.

Leviathan Wakes is satisfying on a host of levels, but none more than this: I've easily transitioned to the second novel of the trilogy (Caliban's War) and eagerly await the concluding volume later this summer. If you have a taste for blockbuster space opera in book form, Leviathan Wakes is your food. Devour it and enjoy.

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Book Review Club: Bloodhype by Alan Dean Foster

(This is the March 2013 edition of Barrie Summy's book review club. For the complete list, click the icon at the bottom of this review.)

Sometimes, you're mother is really correct.

Bloodhype is Alan Dean Foster's second published novel. Published in 1973, it is part of his Humanx Commonwealth, his version of the future where humans and Thranx (insectoid aliens) have created an alliance and spread their influence across this arm of the galaxy. The enemy of the Commonwealth are the Aann, spacefaring reptiles that are not unlike the Klingons. Well, to be honest, the Thranx are not unlike the Vulcans, but there is much more to the universe than the inspirations from Star Trek.

The titular substance, bloodhype, is a drug that, according to the dust jacket, is instantly addictive. Vanished from the galaxy for years, an improbable pair is assigned the task of tracking down its reappearance on the planet Repler: a young human woman (Kitten Kai-sung) and a furry raccoon-like thing (take a look at it up on the cover). Naturally, they meet up with a captain of a shipping freighter, the latter being the one who inadvertently discovered the presence of bloodhype.

Their investigation runs alongside the sub-plot of the Vom, a creature that is like a ebony blob. In my mind's eye, I kept imagining a sentient oil slick. The Vom is stranded (imprisoned, actually) on a dead planet, and yet the Aann remove it to Repler. It doesn't take a genius to imagine that the Vom, bloodhype, the trio, and the bad guys will all mix and mingle with various results.

Another pair of characters also make an appearance: Pip and Flinx. Foster's first book, The Tar-Aiym Krang, is the debut appearance for his most famous creations, Flinx and his flying snake, Pip. I bring up this fact because Foster had originally intended to make Bloodhype a stand-alone novel set in the universe, but the publisher prompted the author to include Pip and Flinx in the novel. Foster complied, but the Pip and Flinx don't really act like the versions you see in the first book. Turns out, after Foster wrote twelve more books featuring his famous duo (fourteen total), that the events of Bloodhype occur in the eleventh position. Rather odd, if you ask me.

Bloodhype is a decent book, especially if you can wrap your head around the fact that it really isn't a Pip and Flinx Adventure, but an adventure in which the pair make an appearance. The Tar-Aiym Krang is a much better book (and is part of a trilogy along with Orphan Star and The End of the Matter).

The reason I bring up my mom is this. Foster was my first favorite SF author when I discovered the genre back in the late 70s. At that time, there were only four Pip and Flinx books: the  aforementioned trilogy and Bloodhype. One day (probably at the B. Dalton in Westwood Mall in Houston), I took Bloodhype to my mom. She had to review and clear books for me if they weren't YA. She read through it, cleared it for me, but told me that I probably wouldn't enjoy it. My young self certainly would not have enjoyed it--in fact, I never read it back then. My fortysomething self am glad I've read it--being the completist I am--but I doubt I'll ever re-read it (as I have the trilogy). Moms: they really know their children, huh?

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Book Review Club: Redshirts by John Scalzi

(This is the September 2012 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list of other reviews, click the link at the end of this review.)

You need only know two things to sum up my thoughts on Redshirts by John Scalzi: while listening to the book, I laughed out loud and I cried. I don't often cry when reading books. The last time was the seventh Harry Potter book, but I expected to when I cracked that book. When I cued up the audiobook of Redshirts, I didn't even see it coming, which is, to be honest, better. So, if you want to stop reading this review right now, go ahead. If you want more details, read on.

Redshirts is John Scalzi's parody/love letter to Star Trek. After a funny yet unexpected prologue, the novel introduces Ensign Andrew Dahl, newly assigned to the starship Intrepid, the flagship of the Universal Union. (Think Enterprise) Dahl and his new group of friends start to get accustomed to their new duties and lives aboard the Intrepid but the seasoned crew members all act weird. It soon becomes apparent that the members of the Away Missions (off the ship for you non-Trekkies) always seem to face some heretofore alien presence. Said alien almost always inflicts bodily injury or death to a member of the away team, yet the senior command staff never suffer any harm. It's as if the lower staff members are jinxed to die if they go on the missions.

To put this in context of Star Trek, let me explain. In just about every single episode, Captain Kirk, First Officer Spock, Doctor McCoy, and some member of the the crew, nameless until the first commercial break, wearing a red shirt, perishes. For the rest of the episode, the lead characters emote over the death, emerge victorious by the end, and live to trek on another day. If you ever wondered what it was like to be a member of the Enterprise crew who didn't have a job on the bridge, this is your book.

Where Scalzi provides the bulk of his humor, early on, is in the myriad ways the crew employ to avoid going on an away mission. Naturally, Dahl gets himself assigned to one and, while he is injured quite badly, he survives. The other crew member does not. As a long-time fan of Trek, I was laughing at all the obvious references to actions done in a 1960s-era television show for dramatic purposes and what really might have happened were all this stuff real. Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, provides the narration with just enough snark to truly bring out the best in Scalzi's prose. He reads the boisterous captain's lines with gusto, the science officer's lines with calm precision, and the rest of Dahl's friends with skepticism that borders on incredulity.

Now, the story turns on a plot device that I loved. In fact, as a seasoned crew member gathers Dahl and his friends to explain his theory as to why all these occur on Away Missions, I had a thought: what if Scalzi did This Thing? Well, cool as it is, he did. I will not give it away here because I want you to be surprised.

The full title of the book is Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas. In short, these are three epilogues that resolve some of the more human aspects of the story and, for me, these are what gave this book its emotional depth. In the final two codas, I was listening while doing something else which is one of the best reasons to listen to audiobooks. As the second coda wound down, I paused and felt the tears sting my eyes. You know, I thought, if that coda got me this way, I knew I was in for it as soon as I learned the subject of the final coda. I had to get up and walk away from everyone as I listened to the last coda. It got me, and it got me good. It got me so good, in fact, that, later that day, I could barely get through a retelling of the story to my wife without breaking down. Not sure she's ever seen me that way over a book.

You know what? I haven't seen myself that way, either. I loved this book, both for the laughter and the tears. It moved me, and isn't that what a great story is supposed to do?

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Book Review Club: Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon

(This is the April 2012 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list, click on the icon following this review.)

For the past two months or so, I’ve been in an adventurous mood, reading-wise. Starting with the lead-up to the John Carter movie, I read (or, in some cases re-read) the first five books of the eleven-book series. As much fun as the Edgar Rice Burroughs books are, I decided to give myself a little break.

Taking a cue from one of the film’s co-writers, I segued over to Michael Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road. Known for his literary, whimsical writing style, this short novel is his homage to adventure tales and swashbuckling stories of the past. He name drops Michael Moorcock, Fritz Lieber, Alexander Dumas, and George MacDonald Fraser as inspirations. Chabon’s story follows two partners in the 10th Century Caucasus Mountain region and their exploits along their circuitous journey.

Zelikman, a physician, is a "scarecrow" whose blond locks frame his thin, sallow face. His partner, Amram, is a giant African who towers over all he surveys and wields a battle-ax with the colorful name of Mother-Defiler. They are partners, they are thieves, and they have been known to swindle folks with their charades and rouses, all as a part of their shiftless wanderings.

As the story opens, their latest charade proved profitable in coin, but not in baggage. An old, one-eyed Persian saw through the act and has made the gentlemen of the road an outrageously lucrative offer: escort Filak, a young prince of the Jewish kingdom of Khazaria, back to reclaim the throne taken by murder and expulsion. No sooner has the Persian made the offer than he is punctured by an arrow. The townspeople, now made aware of the scam perpetrated by the pair, chase Zelikman and Amram out of town. Unbeknownst to the pair, Filak has escaped with them.

Now, as charge of the young lad, the partners must make a decision: leave the stripling to his own affairs or return him to his kingdom. The choice proves challenging when they learn that the usurper, Buljan, is out to kill Filak. Knowing in their souls that they cannot abandon the young prince, Zelikman and Amram turn their faces to the treacherous task ahead: restore the young man to his throne.

Gentlemen of the Road is an interesting book, especially when placed in the bibliography of Chabon's work. A devotee of genre-based fiction growing up, Chabon grew to fame as a literary writer. With his 2001 novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which took home the Pulitzer Prize, Chabon opened reveled in his love of genre. Gentlemen of the Road, along with his alternate history/mystery, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, are part of a string of tales in which Chabon writes the stories he used to love--and still does--to read.

Chabon has gone on record as lamenting how genre stories—-what, with their focus on simple things like, you know, plot and fun—-often get ostracized when compared to the more staid, “important” field of literary fiction. One of the obvious differences is writing style. When you pick up a Chandler detective novel or an Asimov space opera, you know very quickly what you are reading. In the same manner, if you pick up a literary novel, the word choice alone will indicate the type of book. Nothing wrong with this, of course, but it is a distinct difference.

One of the joys of literary writing is being able to luxuriate in the language, the word choice, the mere structure of the paragraphs. Reading a good story is a blast. Reading a good story told well is intoxicating.

But what about those books where the lines are blurred? Gentlemen of the Road has some action, sword fights, and other fun set pieces. Were this novel written by another person, the style and manner of telling would be quite different. But Chabon is the writer and, as such, you have a man whose natural tendency towards “literary” writing is actually crafting an action tale. Does it work?

For me, yes, partially. When the characters talk, they talk in the high style typical of a Chabon work or, to be honest, like Burroughs. Not necessarily all “thees” and “thous” but speech with flourish. Chabon’s style works great for this. Some of the action scenes, however, tend not to have the immediacy of a more dedicated genre writer. Where someone like Hammett would revert to shorter sentences to punch you in the gut with the visceral action, Chabon maintains his whimsical style. The language is still pretty, but the action is a bit hazy.

The characters themselves, Zelikman and Amram, are realistic, magical, and fantastical, all at the same time. While I have not (yet) read any of the Fritz Lieber Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, I suspect that Lieber's mismatched pair of heroes was a direct inspiration for Chabon. Zelikman's melancholy and longing to return to his homeland is contrasted well with Amram's adventurous spirit that is also darkened by a tragic past. These two men are fast friends and they have a genuine care for one another.

Where my re-reading of Burroughs' Martian tales has swept up the nostalgic feelings I had when I was ten, Gentlemen of the Road satisfies another aspect of myself. It enables the adult reader to relish is a good story told well, but in a style that befits an adult reader. Kids and teenagers can enjoy this novel, but the adult, especially the adult that has seen many sunrises and moonfalls, will likely find a kindred spirit in one of these two men, what with their longing for their past as well as the keen desire to know what is over the next hill. It is my fervent hope that Chabon brings these two adventurers back for another adventure.

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Book Review Club: The John Carter of Mars Trilogy by Edgar Rice Burroughs

(This is the March 2012 entry in Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list, click the icon at the bottom of this review.)

In the run-up to the new Disney movie “John Carter,” bowing this Friday, the guys in my science fiction book club decided to read (or re-read as the case may be) the first two books in the John Carter of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912) and The Gods of Mars (1913). Me being the completest person that I am—and because the second book ended on a cliffhanger—I forged ahead and read the third book, Warlord of Mars (1913-1914). After nearly 600 pages of action and adventure, one question still puzzles me: how the heck do you have a sword and all hosts of aliens and monsters when you’re naked?

To be honest, as I re-read Burroughs’ Martian tales—A Princess of Mars was his first book, pre-dating Tarzan by a few months—I kept an eye out to see if the characters really did wear loin clothes, robes, or what. Turns out no one wears clothes. Strange Martian custom. But, then again, strange was the way our hero, John Carter, found his way onto Mars.

A Civil War vet, Carter and a friend found a gold lode in the mountains of Arizona. There’s a problem, natch: Indians. They kill Carter’s friend and come after him. He’s holed up in a cave, waiting to go down with guns blazing when a strange thing happens: he becomes paralyzed. He hears the Indians approach the cave entrance…and then turn in fear. Great, thinks Carter, whatever scared them is behind me and I can’t do anything about it. Turns out, the thing behind him is…himself. He’s some sort of phantom and, before he knows it, he ‘wakes’ up on Mars. There’s little in the way of actual scientific facts regarding how Carter “teleported” to Mars, but that’s really okay. The book isn’t about science. It’s about battles, honor, bravery, and love.

And he’s Superman. He can leap tall buildings (most of the way) in a single bound. His strength is beyond that of mere mortal Martians. Lucky for Carter the Warrior the first beings he meets, the Green Men of Mars (huge hulks (heh) that stand nearly fifteen feet tall with a set of intermediary limbs below the arms and above the legs) only speak War, Bravery, and Combat Prowess. He woos them, even though he’s ostensibly a prisoner.

A Princess of Mars is basically a travelogue of Mars. Carter learns how Martian (Barsoomian in the language of the natives) babies are born, how naval vessels fly through the air, how the thin Martian atmosphere is treated, and how water is preserved on a planet without any surface water. Along the way, he doesn’t even bat an eye that he, and everyone else, is naked. That would include Dejah Thoris, the princess of the book’s title. She is captured after a battle and Carter falls for her. Well, of course. She’s naked. The rest of the book is his attempt to return her to her land and her people usually with many valiant sword fights and battles.

The Gods of Mars picks up ten years after the events of the first book when Carter returns to Barsoom. He saved the day at the end of the first book and mysteriously returned to Earth. Upon re-materializing on Mars, he finds himself in the Valley Dor alongside the River Iss. What makes this particular location treacherous is that Dor and Iss constitute the Martian afterlife. Think about the end of the Lord of the Rings when Frodo and Bilbo sail off into the sunset. No sooner is he back on Mars that he’s doing battle with heretofore unknown plant men, his friend Tars Tarkas (natch) by his side. Through battles, more battles, captivity, escape, more battles, Carter learns more about the religion of Mars, the deception that has been going on for ages, and that his beloved wife, Dejah Thoris, believing Carter dead, has taken the pilgrimage to the valley. What would a Carter/Mars novel be without a princess that needs saving? Not much fun to read, if you ask me. Along the way, Carter assembles allies (his discovers his son in held prisoner *in the very same prison* he land in…of course!) and enemies, charging ahead when mere mortals would think twice. Finally, he reaches the side of Dejah deep underground at Barsoom’s southern polar region only to have her snatched away again in the books final pages (natch).

Warlord of Mars picks up where Gods of Mars ends. Dejah, her staunch comrade, Thuvia, and enemy, Phaidor, all are captured inside a giant temple, the only door of which opens once a year. Oh, and the last time he saw his princess, Phaidor, knife in hand, had launched herself toward Dejah. Carter manages to follow his three main arch-enemies as they secretly rescue all three women only to escape…again! The bad guys fly literally all the way to the top of Mars, with Carter and a new ally, Thuvia’s father, chasing them. More battles, more heroics, more monsters and history of Barsoom ensue.

Let’s not go too deep here. These books are pure, unadulterated fun. Burroughs’ books and stories inspired countless creators of science fiction literature and films throughout the twentieth-century. There were a couple of places where you could see directly how George Lucas was inspired. At one point, Dejah is taken before a giant, ugly monstrosity. Jabba the Hutt and Princess Leia anyone? Speaking of Leia, I think we all know what she told Darth Vader in the first Star Wars movie. Come on. Do I have to quote it exactly? “I am on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan.” Now, cut to this exchange between Dejah and her captor from the first book:

"And the nature of your expedition?" he [bad guy] continued.

"It was a purely scientific research party sent out by my father's father, the Jeddak of Helium, to rechart the air currents, and to take atmospheric density tests," replied the fair prisoner, in a low, well-modulated voice. "We were unprepared for battle," she continued, "as we were on a peaceful mission, as our banners and the colors of our craft denoted."

Of course, I see Star Trek in there, too. And Avatar. And Fern Gully. And Dances With Wolves. In fact, my biggest fear for the movie is that folks who don’t know will just think that “John Carter” ripped off Avatar, not realizing that Avatar ripped off Burroughs first.

The remnants of Victorian prejudices still color Burroughs’ characters. The Green Men of Mars basically are communists. They all live together each person owning nothing individual. One exception is Dejah herself. Like Leia and other damsels, yes, Dejah’s in distress but she holds her own, even helping out Carter a couple of times. It speaks to her character and the fact that Carter doesn’t put up a fuss makes him a better man for it.

This first three books in the eleven-book series is really a trilogy, meant to be read in order. Not all feature Carter and Dejah—I’m reading book #4 now which stars Carthoris, the son of John Carter going after *his* captured love (natch)—but Mars is the real featured player in these stories. Well, that and all our eleven-year-old imaginations that still live within us. I first read A Princess of Mars over thirty years ago and it is one of the few things in which I can literally transport myself to a younger time. In re-reading these stories, that magical time of discovering once again visited me. I’m hoping the movie will do the same.

Yes, there are flaws in these books: yes, a princess is always needing help; yes, there are coincidences that boggle the mind; yes, Carter can come across too good to be true. But logic is not why you read books like these. When you crack these covers and join John Carter on his adventures on another world, you will soar to the heavens with great abandon, losing yourself amid epic tales of heroism and courage, adventure and love. And let’s be honest: isn’t that one of the reasons you read books anyway?