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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@Barrie Summy

The Joy of Unexpected Discovery

Y’all are going to laugh at the irony of this post.

How often do you discover something (or experience something) completely on your own?

It’s happened to my three times in the past week or so. The first was the latest book in my science fiction book club. It’s called Space Team (my review). I make it a personal policy for books my club members select that, if I don’t know the book or author, I read no reviews. I just read/listen to the book and let the story wash over me how the author wrote it. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. Other times, like with Space Team, it is fantastic.

And it all came without any preconceived notion.

The next two are music related. Like I wrote last week, I’m reading Never a Dull Moment: 1971 The Year Rock Exploded. I’m onto the February 1971 chapter and the first third of it was about Carole King’s Tapestry album. Carole King, I thought. I think I know who that is. The one King song on the author David Hepworth’s February 1971 playlist was “It’s Too Late.” I listened and instantly recognized the tune. Curious, I went out to YouTube, located King’s official site, and queued up Tapestry.

Holy. Cow. That was a remarkable album. Even though it was a fifty-year-old piece of music, it was brand new to me. Before listening, I didn’t go to allmusic.com or any other site. I just pushed play. I listened to it twice on Monday and every day since. I’m going to have to buy a copy now, maybe even on vinyl. 

The last was just yesterday. The new Foo Fighters album, Medicine at Midnight, was released. I’m a casual Foo fan, a greatest hits guy who owns none of the albums (although my wife does so, I guess, I actually do own some). The lead single, “Shame Shame” was good, but, for whatever reason, it didn’t click.

Until yesterday. 

I queued it up on YouTube and listened to the album. Three times. Having read no reviews, I didn’t know what to expect other than the style of music featured on all the other Foo songs. Boy was I surprised. Happily surprised, mind you. These songs are great and a nice departure from many of the traits associated with the Foo.

What am I getting at? How often do you open a book, push play on a record, or attend a play or movie knowing next to nothing about it? That is, how often do you experience a thing without a review ahead of time?

Look, I know what you’re thinking. Scott, you review stuff all the time. Yes, I do, and I thoroughly enjoy sharing the fun stuff I’ve discovered. It’s my hope that a few words from me might introduce to other this cool thing. And I do read reviews. But, and this is a new thing for me, if I can help it, I don’t read reviews ahead of time. I let a book cover sell me, a movie trailer convince me the film deserves my time, or that there’s a new album by a veteran act that might be the benchmark for album of 2021.

I’ll never stop reviewing things nor will I stop reading reviews (or watching Beau's). I’ve discovered plenty of awesome books, music, and movies from recommendations and reviews. It was a review, after all, that introduced me to my favorite new band, The Struts. 

But those moments when you hear or read or watch something without any preconceived ideas and the thing wows you? Those are priceless moments. 

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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@Barrie Summy

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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@Barrie Summy

Recursion by Blake Crouch: A Time Travel Book with Heart and Thrills

 

(Imagine my surprise yesterday when I finished this review and went to post it on DoSomeDamage...only to discover my fellow author, Beau Johnson, also reviewed it. No, you are not suffering from False Memory Syndrome. Perhaps that is yet another key indicator of how good this book is.)

How often do you read a book in which the last sentence is the perfect end to the story?

Well, I finished one this week, and the last line was awesome.

Recursion by Blake Crouch is a thriller with a huge scoop of science fiction, specifically time travel. It was the most recent selection for my SF book club although I wasn't the chooser. We generally keep our selections within the genre--I actually picked the Sherlock Holmes book The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz--but occasionally we get books like this one. But this is one that really leans into the thriller aspects and it kept me engrossed all the way through.

As the story opens, New York police detective Barry Sutton has lived eleven years without his teenaged daughter who was killed in a hit-and-run accident. He's meeting his now ex-wife to commemorate their daughters birth. There have been a lot of things called False Memory Syndrome, a condition where folks remember whole other lives. 

In the reality of the story, these are alternate timelines.

Soon, Barry meets Helena, a scientist with a mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s. Her goal is to invent a tool that can help map her mom's memories before they are all gone. What another character realizes is that this machine can be used to travel back in time to a specific, vivid memory. And, when a time traveler arrives at the point in time where the traveler actually left, all the other timeline's memories cascade on them...and everyone else.

And there's a race...against time. 

I really enjoyed it. Loved it, actually. As recent as this past weekend, I hadn't even started it. I started listening while doing chores...then started finding new chores to do so I could keep listening. The Houston Texans helped by sucking so I stopped watching and started listening to this book. The premise drew me in pretty quickly and just kept me going.

The alternating narrators really worked in the audio. Enjoyed both of them. 

Really liked the moments when a certain timeline caught up with a character. When I was explaining this to the wife, what came to mind (but not during the reading) was the end of the movie Frequency back in 2000. Also had lots of echoes to Replay by Ken Grimwood.

Go no further if you don't want the spoiler, so if you don't, I thoroughly enjoyed Recursion and would highly recommend it.

SPOILERS for the end

Lastly, it is very rare that a last line of a book is this awesome, but this one is. Again, this is where listening to an audio version really brought it home. I was standing in line at the DPS on Tuesday. Outside, morning sun, looking at all the other folks doing what I'm doing. Crouch is talking from Barry's POV and building it up to talk to Helena. This is after he's killed the bad to prevent the whole thing from even starting. And he has realized that life has pain and that, as humans, we just have to deal with it. 

And then the last line! "And he says...."  I barked out a "HA!" as the credits rolled, grinning big time. Loved it! Crouch let the reader finish the story, creating our own, unique timelines.

The Lawyer Lifeguard by James Patterson and Doug Allyn

Last year, after I read THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING by James Patterson and Bill Clinton, I wanted to read another Patterson book. There are a lot to choose from, so when I was at the grocery store a week ago, I made the choice of MURDER IN PARADISE. It’s a print collection of three of Patterson’s BookShots stories, quick reads that cost less than five dollars. The three stories in the collection all appeared in ebook first, so this was the first time in print. Of the three co-authors Patterson used, the only name I knew was Duane Swierczynski, which more than enough reason to buy the book. But Doug Allyn’s story, THE LAWYER LIFEGUARD, came first in the paperback and I read it.

Part of modern book description writing is to pose a question of the potential reader. For THE LAWYER LIFEGUARD, the title itself was the first intriguing piece. How do those two words go together? It’s almost a riff off of Michael Connelly’s THE LINCOLN LAWYER. Anyway, the initial question presented in the description was this: Are you the lawyer who got blown up with his girlfriend?  If I had seen the original standalone ebook, I would easily keep reading the description, but I’ll admit the rest of the description is all but mediocre. But what wasn’t mediocre was page one. It describes a seemingly idyllic scene on Lake Huron’s beach. The lawyer/survivor in question is there, taking in the scenes. And he’s holding a pistol, because he blames himself for his fiancée’s death. (By the way, the word ‘fiancée’ should have been used in the description versus ‘girlfriend.’) He’s wondering if the beach is the best place to kill himself when he notices a dog in the water. The poor thing has a ball in its mouth and its drowning. Instinct kicks in, and Brian Lord saves the dog. The various cell phones capture the moment and it goes viral.

And then Lord’s life really takes a nose dive.

The police question him about the car bomb that killed his fiancée. The main partner in his law firm shows up in the hospital to fire him in person. One of his client’s has a stalker ex-husband who just happens to be a state trooper who knows all the ins and outs of working the system. Things go from bad to worse as the story moves on at a rapid-fire pace.

One of Patterson’s initiatives with BookShots is to have a compelling story boiled down to its essence. And that’s pretty much the case here. Little pieces of description almost act as short hand. The reader fills in the gaps of how certain characters look. Short chapters propel the story forward. I finished the 152-page story in two sittings. That in itself is rather nifty, and likely what Patterson is after with things like BookShots. With so many choices available to folks—movies, TV, video games, internet—having a large book might seem too daunting. But few people should shy away from a 152-page book.

THE LAWYER LIFEGUARD has some pretty good twists and turns and, most important of all, I was entertained. I was happy to turn away from the TV for those two reading sessions. Granted, I’m a reader so I’m an easy mark, but this is the kind of book that might get a non-reader to open a book and read. And that’s a great thing.

Replay by Ken Grimwood

(With a certain famous movie out recently dealing with time travel, I thought I'd post a review of a book that takes a different look at what it would really be like to go back.)

What if your life had a reset button, just like the old Nintendo game consoles? Would you push that button?

First published in 1986, Ken Grimwood’s REPLAY asks that very question and provides one answer. Jeff Winston is a 43-year-old man, a journalist by trade, with a marriage that has meandered off course. One day, sitting in his office, Jeff dies of a heart attack. The next moment, he wakes up in his college dorm room. It’s May 1963 at Emory University in Atlanta. As bewildered as he is, he slowly comes to the conclusion that—somehow, someway—he is living his life over again, but with one huge caveat: He remembers everything from Life Prime, or Life 1.

Seeing this as an opportunity to “get things right,” Jeff decides he’s going to get rich, quick. He bets on a horse race, one in which the outcome nobody saw coming, and makes a substantial amount of money. Next, he convinces a friend—one who committed suicide in Life 1—to journey with him to Las Vegas where he wins even more cash. He also finds a pretty young lady, one you wouldn’t necessarily want to take home to the parents on Thanksgiving, but one who wants nothing more than to quench the lust of the young and spend a lot of money. Isn’t that what every 18-year-old wants? For Jeff, the answer is yes.

Until he wonders if he can change the course of history. It’s summer 1963. Later that fall, President Kennedy will be assassinated, but only Jeff knows where and when. So he does what any Baby Boomer would do: try and stop it. He concocts a fake letter as if from Lee Harvey Oswald and sends it to the White House. Naturally, the Secret Service arrest Oswald days before the 22nd of November. And, yet, Kennedy still dies. The shooter now has a different name.

If you read the description at your favorite bookstore, I’m giving away nothing away when I say that when Life 2 Jeff Winston reaches his 43rd year, he dies again. And again he wakes up at Emory University, May 1963. Only this time, Life 3 is a little past where Life 2 began. All that he knew in Life 1 and Life 2 is still intact in his memory, yet Life 2 is erased from history. Now, Jeff has another 25-year life to live, but this time, it’ll be different. But he’s already starting to realize that on that particular day in his 43rd year, he’ll die yet again. Perhaps, however, he can do something about that. He tries certain things, but I’ll leave you to read and discover the outcome.

This book is simply marvelous. It was a selection of my science fiction/fantasy book club, an informal gathering of five guys that has gone on for seven years. I didn’t select the book, but it’s already in my Top 10. While this book might be classified as fantasy, there is no magic. For all intents and purposes, this is a standard fiction book with the one conceit. Jeff makes his choices and has to live with the consequences. What really makes this book shine is the length to which Grimwood details Life 2 and Life 3. In Life 2, Grimwood has Jeff Winston make the obvious choice many of us would make: I want a life with more money. Jeff reaches a certain conclusion, so that when he starts Life 3, he makes different choices. I’d say that Life 2 and Life 3 take up at least half the book, maybe two-thirds (I listened to the audio). That time really allows the reader to become immersed in Jeff’s world and gives the reader the opportunity to ask the big question: If you could relive your life over again, what, if anything, would you do different?

This book asks so many deep questions of the reader. One is about the nature of history and typical time travel stories. The central idea of time travel is that a person can go back into the past and change history. That’s what Marty McFly did in “Back to the Future.” (As an aside, I can’t help but wonder if the writers of Back to the Future II read REPLAY or if betting on sure winners is just standard fare in time travel stories.) But what if the flow of history is too great a force to overcome? That’s where REPLAY goes. Jeff gets Lee Harvey Oswald arrested, but someone else kills Kennedy. Thus, was Kennedy always destined to die in Dallas? In Grimwood’s version, yes.

REPLAY is one of the best books I’ve read this year. My historian self reveled in the minor details Grimwood changed. My reader self loved diving deep into a character’s mind and seeing him through many lives. I was also richly rewarded with the ending, the nature of which I’ll detail below in an “EPILOGUE.” There will be spoilers, so if you don’t want to know the ending, stop reading now.

You know I love this book. You should give it a try.

Oh, and I have my answer to the first question I posed. Do you?

The Others by Jeremy Robinson

It's not often a writer can bring something fresh to a trope, but Jeremy Robinson did.

A PI in a SF Tale

Dan Delgado is a private investigator who specializes in the usual things: cheating spouses, missing people, digging up dirt on corporations. In a former life, he was a San Francisco police detective, work he enjoys quite a bit more. He's widowed. And, as a secretary, he has Wini, a no-nonsense lady fond of tight skirts for her middle-aged body.

Then he gets a call: an illegal immigrant frantically calls and wants Delgado's help. Her daughter has gone missing. She can't go to the police or she'll be deported. Delgado and Wink go to the lady's house, but can find no trace of her or her missing daughter.

But they certainly hear the deep thwumps of helicopter blades. And there's a warning on his phone. It tells him to flee. Now.

Well-written Hero Shines

Thus begins THE OTHERS by Jeremy Robinson. It's a standalone book, unlike PROJECT: NEMESIS, another book I've read with my science fiction book club. One of the things the five of us often discuss is how so many books are always firsts in a series. Nothing wrong with that, especially from a selling perspective. But every now and then, it's good to read a standalone, a one-and-done book. That's what makes THE OTHERS so good.

Delgado is a likable protagonist. You know exactly what makes him tick, what kind of man he is, and, as the story goes on and things go from bad to worse to really messed up, you can guess his decisions even before he makes them. I say that not as a critique, but as an example of how well written Delgado is.

All of the characters get this treatment. You never leave Delgado's POV, but you know how he feels about them and it's all based on these other characters' decisions and actions. There were a couple of moments when I thought "Well, isn't that little tidbit a little to easy on the plot?" Turns out, Delgado thought the same thing, and then he learns the reality behind said action.

A Fresh Approach

As good as it is to have a one-and-done book, it's also pretty neat to have a new-to-me approach to the whole UFO and abduction phenomena. I'll say nothing more here because the discovery is well worth the wait, but in my limited knowledge of UFOology, Robinson's idea is quite reasonable and understandable.

Action With Thought and Heart

There's quite a bit of action in this story. It would make a terrific tentpole summer movie, best released the week after Independence Day when the summer's just scorching and you just want to recline in air-conditioned comfort and be shown something new. 

But that action isn't devoid of meaning. Delgado and his make-shift family ponder big ideas and big decisions not with a pithy one-liner from a movie, but genuine feeling and worry. I enjoyed him as a protagonist...but do not need a series. Just leave it be.

The narrator of the audiobook, R. C. Bray, was great, really giving Delgado's character a no BS vibe. I found myself actively finding things to do around the house just so I could plug in the earbuds and listen.

My book club pals and I grade our books on a standard school letter grade. There was little I disliked. I give THE OTHERS an A.

Head over to Jeremy's site for a preview.

Forgotten Books: Han Solo at Stars' End by Brian Daley

Has it really been forty years?

That Special Pocket of Time in Star Wars Fandom

Travel back, if you will, to 1979. If you were a kid like me, your life probably revolved around comic books, Saturday morning cartoons, The Three Investigators books, and reading everything you could get your hands on regarding the 1977 movie Star Wars. You had the Star Wars action figures and, depending on your allowance or lawn-mowing money, you might've had some extra cash to spring for the additional nine new figures beyond the original twelve. You were already more than a year into reading the Marvel Comics Star Wars issues, and devoured Alan Dean Foster's Splinter of the Mind's Eye the year before.

Maybe you could easily imagine yourself as young farm boy, Luke Skywalker, because he was only slightly older than you were. But who you really wanted to be was Han Solo. And if you couldn't be him, then you wanted more adventures featuring him and his trusted partner, Chewbacca.

A Momentous Discovery on the Bookshelves

I"m sure how many young readers knew the name Brian Daley before April 1979, but they sure knew his name after. Commissioned to write three novels featuring Han and Chewie (although we didn't know it at the time), I think you can image the heart palpitations I experienced when I saw that blue hardcover book on the shelves of either B. Dalton Bookstore or Waldenbooks in Westwood Mall in Houston. My parents being readers, it was not a hard sell to at least go into the bookstores and browse. Naturally, I'd find something, then sidle up to one of them with the innocent question "Did you find something?" Because if they found something, I got a book, too.

They must have found something that day, or knew it would be a losing battle if I didn't walk out of the store with that glorious book with the blue cover.

I have no memory of reading through that book forty years ago and, to be honest, had zero memory of what happened. I don't think I ever re-read it, so last month, when it came time for me to select a novel to read, I had my choice. Perfect, since April 2019 marks the books fortieth anniversary. And, in light of the character's evolution over the decades both in the movies and comics, how would the book hold up?

A New Han Solo Story

In those heady days between Star Wars and its then unnamed sequel, the entire Star Wars universe was wide open. Darth Vader killed Luke's dad without "a certain point of view." Heck, Luke and Leia both faced off against the Sith Lord on the planet Mimban in Splinter of the Mind's Eye. The creatures in the cantina were just a small sampling of the vastness of the galaxy just waiting to be discovered. And, in Brian Daley's new novel, you got to see where Han Solo was before he met that old man and the kid.

He was in hot water. And, if you needed to know just how awesome and grown up Han Solo was to a ten-year-old mind, Han actually drops the "d-word" in the first sentence. Mind. Blown.

In his narrow escape from the ships of the Corporate Sector Authority--the stand-in baddies instead of the Imperial Empire--Han damages his ship, the Millennium Falcon. He even pulls out the maneuver he uses in the asteroid field in Empire Strikes Back when he flies the Falcon on its side through a narrow canyon. The dish atop the ship is knocked off (sound familiar) so he's now blind.  But he knows a guy. Of course he does.

Except after going through all the cloak-and-dagger maneuvers to locate Doc, he's gone. Taken by the Espos, the elite police force of the Corporate Sector Authority. His daughter, Jessa, is willing to make repairs to the Falcon in exchange for Han flying to Orron III and picking up some people. Needing the repairs, Han agrees.

And things go downhill from there.

A New Cast of Characters

Joining Han and Chewbacca on this mission to Orron III are a pair of droids. Well, the template had been set with both Star Wars and Splinter. Later, when the Lando Calrissian books are published, he also has a droid partner.  Bullox is a large, old labor-type droid who is not at all like the prim and proper See-Threepio. He's not exactly smart, but he's very loyal. Who is smart is Blue Max, a smaller, up-to-date droid. The only problem is Blue Max has no means of transportation. Thus, he travels around inside Bullox's chest cavity. When the situation calls for it, someone will take Blue Max out, hook him up to a larger computer, a la Artoo Detoo, and work computer magic.

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds an awful lot like Twiki and Dr. Theopolis from the Buck Rogers TV show?

A few other characters show up, but the discovery of them are more fun when you read the novel.

A Good Space Opera Adventure

But what about the book itself? The story cracked along fine with just enough jolts and twists to keep it interesting. Daley had to know he needed to write the book that would appeal not only to adult science fiction readers but early readers like my ten-year-old self. While there is some shooting and gunfights, the violence is kept to a minimum or described using words to hide the reality. For example: "Red beams of annihilation bickered back and forth." Didn't bother me in the least.

I assume Daley had access to the material on sale at the time--which wasn't much--and maybe a little backstory from creator George Lucas. But I also get the impression the author just imagined his way into a Star Wars universe. At the time, Star Wars wasn't too dissimilar to other far-flung space adventure novels, so Daley just ran with whatever idea came to mind. Orron III, for example, was a planet-sized agricultural farm. Like Dagobah is a planet-sized swamp or Coruscant is a planet-sized city. It's merely a piece of imagination.

As an author myself, I enjoy dropping little side notes that hint at other adventures of my characters. Daley does it here, too, but none so tantalizing to young fan than the reference to "Freedom's Sons" in the same sentence as mention of the Jedi Knights! Did Daley know something we didn't? Would Freedom's Sons get into a comic or the next movie? The possibilities were endless.

 I really enjoyed the swiftness of the story. It was a lean 183 pages in my paperback copy. There was a time, even when the property was not from a movie, where a SF author could write a book and it clocked in under 200 pages. Now, so many novels top 400 or 500 pages, if not more, that I hesitate to even start. Granted, Daley didn't need a lot of world building, but I enjoyed that which he gave, including the slang and other parts that contributed to the 'lived in' nature of Star Wars. He went on to flesh out the first Star Wars movie in his fantastic script for the Star Wars radio drama, but that is another post.

Overall, I really enjoyed revisiting this book, and I'm already moving on to the second, HAN SOLO'S REVENGE.

Best Quote of the Book

"Han made a sour face. "I happen to like to shoot first, Rekkon. As opposed to shooting second.""

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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@Barrie Summy

Project: Nemesis by Jeremy Robinson

When I asked my fellow science fiction book club friend how he came to select PROJECT: NEMESIS by Jeremy Robinson, he said he was looking for something that captured the 60s cartoon/monster movie vibe. Additionally, he heard a couple of folks saying this book was a genuine effort to do an American kaiju book. Well, that would have been enough for me, too. But a premise is only half of the equation. The book has to deliver.

Two words come to mind: Nailed it!

PROJECT: NEMESIS starts with a military operation in the far north and two soldiers stumble upon the remains of a giant monster. This story is set in a nebulous future/present where Japanese soldiers work with Americans and train together. When a high-ranking general arrives, he promptly asks the younger Japanese soldier to shoot his American partner.


The story cuts to our main hero, John Hudson, Department of Homeland Security-Paranormal Division. He’s in Maine mostly to investigate a series of reports of a Sasquatch sightings. He arrives at a cabin where he’s supposed to sleep only to find a mama bear and cubs have staked out their claim. So, in a novel about a kaiju, you first get a bear attack. And it’s pretty darn exciting. Hudson survives—but not his truck—and he throws back quite a few beers to decompress. Well, the next morning, the local law officer in the person of Sheriff Ashley Collins and, through his hangover, Hudson accompanies Collins to interview the old man who called in the complaints. What they find is unexpected: a seemingly abandoned military base from the Cold War days. But if it’s abandoned, then why is the razor wire new? And why is the wire coated with a substance meant to look like rust? And why is there a man and his hidden partners there pointing a shotgun at them?

PROJECT: NEMESIS definitely earns the name ‘thriller’ because the action rarely lets up. Robinson throws in a lot of sequences that are just flat-out fun. Plus, there’s a kaiju, the Japanese word used to describe giant monsters like Godzilla, Mothra, or King Kong. What makes this story interesting is how the kaiju was created and birthed. It may not be totally unique in the entire oeuvre of monster movies, but I liked it.

The bulk of the book is told from Hudson’s first person, present tense point of view. It gives the story a breathless immediacy.  When the POV switches, it’s all still present tense, including a few scenes featuring the kaiju itself. You actually get a ‘why’ to go with all the destruction. More importantly, you get a twist on a common story trope. Most of the time when an author introduces you to a character via their POV, you make the assumption you’ll be with that character the entire way through the book. Nope. He manages to make you care for a character and then have that character die. It was a shock, as in “Did [that character] just get killed?” Yup. It made the rest of the action higher pitched because you never knew if any of the main characters would get offed.

I listened to the audiobook and this is a perfect case for narrator giving that little extra something that comes across as greater than the whole. Hudson is basically your typical wise-cracking hero, and Jeffrey Kafer is pitch perfect. Robinson’s words and Kafer’s narration sucked me in almost immediately. Heck, I finished this nearly nine-hour book in five days. I started volunteering for household chores. Need the lawn watered? I’ll do it, just let me get my phone. Oh, we need to drive our empty glass bottles to get recycled? I’m your man.

PROJECT: NEMESIS is nothing less than a thrilling summer blockbuster in prose.

A Writer Becomes a Hero: True Fiction by Lee Goldberg

Many times, we writers invent characters to project our greatest fantasies upon. Wish you were a World War II spy? Invent one. Wish you were a dashing hero in a romance? Invent one. So it came as a fun surprise when writer Lee Goldberg created a different kind of hero: a writer.

As a huge fan of the TV show “Castle,” I’m fine with lead characters being writers. Ditto for any number of Stephen King books. What makes Ian Ludlow different (albeit slightly) is that he doesn’t suddenly become a stud. Say what you will about Castle, but he became more adept at handling situations the longer the seasons went on, despite his constant man-child behavior. Ludlow doesn’t. Granted, this is his first adventure, so who knows what’s down the road for him.

Years before the opening scene of TRUE FICTION, Ludlow and a few other writers were recruited to dream up scenarios that terrorists might deploy to inflict huge amounts of damage to the US or US assets. Ludlow’s brainstorm was a plane crashing into buildings, not in a well-populated city like Houston or Denver or Los Angeles but Waikiki, Hawaii. The definition of paradise. Ludlow thought nothing of the experiment…until a plane is hijacked and crashes into a hotel in Waikiki.

Immediately, Ludlow knows he’d likely be a target. And when the other members of his secret writing group turn up dead, it is confirmed. Margo, the grad student assigned to drive Ludlow around Seattle on his book signing, quickly gets swept up in the action and the pair must escape the attempts by the secret agency who launched the attack.

Goldberg keeps the action moving along at quite a pace as befitting a thriller. But he manages to inject some humanity into Ludlow, who, more than once, wishes he was Clint Straker, the uber-hero of his own novels. Those moments are rather humorous, especially when Margo keeps reminding him of his inadequacies. And the humor sprinkled throughout the book made me chuckle more than once.

TRUE FICTION is a fun romp of a book that’ll keep you entertained from the first word to end.

Recommended.

Forgotten Books: Return of the Rio Kid by Brett Halliday

In 2010, while vacationing in and around San Diego, I happened into a used book, as I am wont to do. I found a book called Death on Treasure Trail. It had a nice, bright yellow cover, the kind that nearly every western novel had back in the day. Erle Stanley Gardner even wrote an introduction. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the setting of the novel was in Texas’s Big Bend region.

Yet I never read the book. Cut to July 2016 and our trip out to Big Bend. I’m a fan of reading books on vacations that are set around the places I’m visiting so Death on Treasure Trail was tops on my list. But the book is pretty beat up, so I took to the internet to find an electronic copy for my Kindle. Imagine my surprise when I discovered not only Treasure Trail, but the other two Rio Kid books all available as ebooks. Well, seeing as how Treasure Trail was third of three, I went ahead and got Return of the Rio Kid, the first book in the trilogy.

The author on my physical book is listed as “Don Davis” but, in reality, the man behind the typewriter was none other than Brett Halliday, the writer who created the Michael Shayne private eye series. However, “Halliday” is merely the most famous pen name for the actual man, Davis Dresser, but that name won’t sell many ebooks, so the good folks at Open Road Media made sure Brett Halliday supersedes the title on the new covers.

When the book opens, the Rio Kid has been hiding out in Mexico after fleeing Arizona on a false murder charge three years before. Sure, the Rio Kid has killed men before, but the one that got his visage on a wanted poster was falsified. Having grown into manhood in a foreign land, the Kid wants to return to Arizona and clear his name. He chooses the Big Bend region as his crossing point, but not before trouble starts.

On the Mexican side of the border sits a small town under the thumb of ruthless hombre, Pedro. He rules the town in much the same way Gene Hackman’s character does in Unforgiven. Being a western paperback of the 1940s, the Kid gets himself in a fight when he refuses to remove his twin .45s strapped to each leg. He hightails it out of town, leaving one mess behind. He crosses the Rio Grande and finds himself in another mess, this one partly of his own making. You see, there’s a small town on the Texas side. A poker game is being played and a young man is betting when he should be folding. The Kid gets himself mixed up in the game and ends up winning the young man’s ranch. A ranch that, not coincidentally, is one of two parcels of land a ruthless (is there any other kind?) cattle rancher wants to own. Well, you can imagine what happens from here.

But you’d be partially wrong. Sure, the Kid—whose real name isn’t given—does what all flawed heroes with prices on their heads do: the right thing. Mostly. But the folks he’s trying to help and those he’s trying to stay away from, have other ideas. It makes for entertaining reading, that’s for sure. I especially liked the secret the Rio Kid uncovered and how he turned his attention to putting it to good use.

Halliday chose a curious method to get across how folks talked to each other. He spelled out the Rio Kid’s drawl phonetically. Granted, when I read the first few passages, I assumed Halliday was going to provide this kind of dialogue as an example and then revert back to standard spelling, letting the reader fill in the blanks. Nope. The Kid mutters through the entire book. Others, too. Here are a couple of examples.

“I’ll just keep my guns on, I reckon,” he drawled, “’less yo’re of uh mind tuh take’em offa me.”

And:

“Say, yo’re jes spoilin’ fer uh six-foot hole, ain’t yuh? Yuh cain’t buck Pedro, I’m tellin’ yuh.”

Yes, it leaves the reader with absolutely zero leeway in hearing the voice in the mind, but it’s a pain to type. I understand one or two words consistently spelled like they sound, but almost all of them? Aw, shucks. Who am I kiddin’? I liked ’em all.

Oh, and all that joy I experienced when I realized I was going to read a western set in Big Bend while actually being in Big Bend? That excitement held all the way until Halliday namedropped a mountain range that, upon consultation with the internet, was actually located in Arizona. No big deal. All I had to do was look out the window of my hotel and get my bearings straight.

But don’t let that dissuade you from reading this enjoyable first book in the Rio Kid Trilogy.

Catalyst: a Rogue One Novel by James Luceno

There’s a reason why the original film was not titled Star Drama. Other than an odd combination of words, it just reeks of tedium. By its very nature, the word “wars” implies action, adventure, danger. It is those very qualities that are lacking in Catalyst, the prequel novel to the movie Rogue One.

Having said that, however, the novel is not without its good qualities. A healthy does of backstory is crammed into this 11-hour audiobook narrated by Jonathan Davis, the fantastic actor who voices many of the current crop of Star Wars novels. But the listener has to understand that much of what happens in this book is, by definition, mere prelude to the events in the movie. And there’s not a lot of action. It’s like an episode of House of Cards in the Star Wars universe.

I purposefully didn’t read this book ahead of seeing the movie. I wanted as clean an experience as possible with the film. Now, having seen it twice, I dove into this book. Going in, I expected to get the backstories of all the major players in Rogue One. That’s not the case. The focus of the novel is solely on Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen in the movie), his wife, Lyra (Valene Kane ), and their mutual friend, Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn). Only late in the story does Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera show up. Oh, Grand Moff Tarkin is present, but no one else. I was hoping for some background into the other characters, specifically Donnie Yen’s Chirrut Îmwe, the mystic who is blind and one with the Force. Perhaps future books.

Perhaps the neatest thing author James Luceno accomplishes is put these characters in the context of the prequel movies, specifically Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. You saw those events from their points of view, not always knowing what we viewers know about the Jedi, the Emperor, and Darth Vader. We get a nice scene with the Ersos—Felicity Jones’s Jyn is a mere babe through most of this novel—fleeing Republic droids when Order 66 is instituted. The droids fall dead. The humans don’t know why, but they also don’t care since they’re still alive.

As a huge fan of Ben Mendelsohn, I enjoyed the many scenes with Krennic and his machinations and politics behind the scenes. I’ve just started House of Cards and I can already see a partial parallel. Mendelsohn is a terrific actor who could have been used more in the movie, so it was nice to learn more about his efforts to maintain the production of the Death Star—a term never used in the book—while trying to woo Galen into the Empire’s folds.

Another great part of the book is the discussion of the Kyber crystals. These are the minerals Jedis use to power their lightsabers. Those are small. The ones needed for the Death Star need to be quite a bit larger. Luceno’s discussions of Galen’s attempt to understand the crystals is good. Moreover, his wife, Lyra, respects the Jedis and their ways even though she isn’t a part of their order. It’s a good dip into the greater Star Wars mythology that I, before reading this book, didn’t know.

In the end, however, and boy do I hate to say this, Catalyst reads like a well-written Wookieepedia entry. The material is nice, the drama is real, but none of it amounts to a decent story, at least one that stands on its own. I know it’s not supposed to, so I’m about to embark on the audio of Rogue One itself. I’m wondering how much the two novels will tie into each other. At the very least, however, there will be action.

Book Review: Cross Kill by James Patterson

I’ve never read a James Patterson book before now. It wasn’t that I had anything against him. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I just didn’t have the time to keep up with his prodigious output. Actually, I’ve long admired Patterson in his strategies to produce as many books per year as possible and to generate new readers. That was why his Bookshots idea struck a chord with me. Patterson had the idea of writing shorter books, making them fast paced, and charging readers only $5. I liked the idea of creating smaller, faster reads for folks who may not have read a book since high school. That’s certainly not me, but I have come along for the ride.

The first book in the initiative is Cross Kill. It’s an Alex Cross story. The only thing I knew going in about Alex Cross was that both Morgan Freeman and Tyler Perry portrayed the character in movies. I’ve actually seen none of them. I’m not sure how many Cross novels Patterson has written, but I thought starting with Cross was a good idea. All the characters are new to me so, like the proverbial dude who hasn’t read anything since high school, I went in cold.

Police detective Cross and his partner, John Sampson, are working in a soup kitchen. Gunshots ring out and they investigate. When they get back into the preparation area, there’s a man waiting for them. He fires at both the police officers, striking Cross’s partner. But the really weird thing is that the shooter looks exactly like Gary Soneji, the main villain from Along Came a Spider. But Soneji is supposed to be dead a decade or so. According to Cross Kill, Alex Cross watched Soneji die in a ball of flames. But here Soneji is, seemingly back from the grave and ready to take out his vengeance on Alex Cross.

As if Cross didn’t already need a motive to investigate, Sampson is shot in the head and isn’t expected to survive. Now, Cross is even more driven to figure out who this shooter is and why he looks so much like his arch-enemy.

The story moves along at a fast clip. Even when Cross is hunting for clues or interviewing someone, the pace rarely slows. I went back and re-read some pages to figure out why. It turns out Patterson doesn’t spend a lot of time with description. He sketches a scene with a few words and leaves it up to reader to fill in the blanks. Not a bad way to write. I didn’t notice until I actually examined the prose. Besides, if it gets non-readers to read, who cares.

I’m a newbie to Patterson and Alex Cross so I imagine lots of the dialogue and thoughts would mean a whole lot more to folks who have already read the books or seen those movies, but I got through it. I was rarely lost because the gaps were mostly filled in and I could deduce the rest.

Then there the ending. It’s a cliffhanger. A pretty big one at that. In many of the self-publishing podcasts and blogs I read, a good deal of discussion is given to cliffhangers, both pro and con. While I don’t usually mind a certain type of cliffhanger—say, the end of Star Wars where Luke has blown up the Death Star but Darth Vader has escaped and you know he’ll return—this one is pretty out there. Even a tad aggravating. To make matters worse, there isn’t any “Come back in September for the exciting conclusion!” so I’m not sure when this sequel will land.

Other than the end, I enjoyed the book. Actually, truth be told, the ending didn't bother me too much. I smiled at how well Patterson hooked me. And, yeah, I’ll be buying the sequel.

Job well done, Mr. Patterson.

Book Review: The Emperor's Revenge by Clive Cussler

Sometimes it pays to read to the last sentence.

Clive Cussler has the type of literary output I aim to mimic. It started with the Dirk Pitt adventures and, over the years, Cussler has expanded his series to include the Oregon Files, the NUMA files, the Fargo Adventures and the Isaac Bell series. The first four all take place in contemporary times. The Isaac Bell series, my true introduction to Cussler’s works, is by far my favorite mainly because it is set in the early 20th Century.

Now comes THE EMPEROR’S REVENGE, the latest in the Oregon Files series. It’s the 11th book in the series, but my first. This series focuses on Juan Cabrillo, the captain of a fancy ship, the Oregon. On the outside, this ship looks like a hunk of junk, a trawler that wouldn’t normally catch the eye of any bad guy. Underneath, the Oregon is the top-of-the-line military ship equipped with all the latest technology and weapons. Cabrillo commands a group of folks who work as a team called the Corporation, a secret sub-group of the CIA.

I would have eventually gotten around to the Oregon Files series, but what jumpstarted my interest was reading my first NUMA book, THE PHARAOH’S CURSE earlier this spring. In that book, those main characters—Kurt Austin and company—got into a gunfight. In the middle of all that, Juan Cabrillo and one of his men show up. Each team tells the other team the Thing each need to know and then they went on their way. How cool is that! It was basically a little marketing ploy to get interested readers to buy THE EMPEROR’S REVENGE, which was publish three months after PHARAOH’S SECRET. It worked for me.

So what is EMPEROR’S REVENGE about? As in most of Cussler’s modern-day thrillers, the story opens in the past, namely 1821 and Napoleon Bonaparte. That’ll clue you in on whom the “emperor” is. Turns out, Napoleon escaped his exile at St. Helena taking with him secret messages from handwritten notes. Cut to the present day and Juan Cabillo and his team are on a mission. At the conclusion of the mission, he receives word of the events at the Monaco Grand Prix. It seems there was a huge accident that was used to cover-up something worse: a bank heist. Not something that might land on the Corporation’s radar until the truth is revealed: all the Corporation’s money was among the cash looted from the bank.

Now the story is personal.

What follows is Juan’s investigation into the bank heist. He and his team are assisted by Gretchen, a former partner of Juan’s and his “wife” on a previous mission. Needless to say, sparks fly, and not just from the bullets ricocheting off everything during gun fights.

To say that EMPEROR’S REVENGE follows standard thriller pacing sounds like a bad thing, but it isn’t. The pacing is nice and steady. The revelation of the bad guy, who makes up his team, and what he’s after is delivered piecemeal and in nice chunks. I enjoyed the story, the build-up, and the character moments. I suspect readers who have read the ten previous books will get more inside jokes, but as a newbie to this series, this book was just fine.

Long ago, if there was a new book (like EMPEROR’S REVENGE) that caught my eye and I learned it was a series, I’d always go back to book one and plow through the series. But I’d often get burned out and actually never get to the book with the cool cover that got my attention. I’ve chunked that reading style. Now, I read the current book. If I like it, I’ll go back. It seems that there’s a new Oregon File book every year so I have a decade’s worth of material to read.

I listened to the book by the brilliant narrator Scott Brick. He reads almost every series by Cussler, especially the Isaac Bell ones. Brick has a touch of whimsy to his voice and cadence that propels the stories, like EMPEROR’S REVENGE, along in a special way. Seriously, Brick could read the LA phonebook and I’d pay to listen. He’s that good.

Oh, and read until the last sentence…

What I Learned as a Reader:

Back in my original blog, I’d always end reviews with this and I thought I’d apply it here.

In Chapter 1, all the characters are introduced. For longtime readers, this is old hat. For newbies like me, it’s perfect. Each character gets a sentence or two of backstory and a trait. The prose makes each person on the team easily identifiable. From then on, through the rest of the book, I know what these characters look like and act like. I try to do that in my own writing, but it’s great to see how longtime professional like Cussler and Boyd Morrison do it.

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: 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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