Summoned to Tourney (Mercedes Lackey, Ellen Guon)

Rating: 3
Year: 1992
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? In another 10 years...

A Bard (Eric), an elf (Korendil or 'Kory') and their girlfriend Beth have been in San Francisco for a couple of years making rent money as street musicians. This is the perfect way to lie low and avoid the attention of the FBI, which has been looking for them in the wake of some scary stuff in Los Angeles (but that's another book).

Eris has been having nightmares of an apocalyptic series of earthquakes and demonic Nightflyers. It takes a lot of pages for his friends to convince him to talk to someone who can help him figure out what's going on--are they just bad dreams, or are they premonition?

More pages go by before the three venture to the Embarcadero to play for the lunch crowd. Beth gets nabbed by some guys in suits. They take her to their Evil Secret Facility and torture her into panic attacks.

Eric and Kory split up to go looking for Beth. Kory uses his elf-senses and such and goes right to the Evil Secret Facility, where he bluffs his way in...only to end up captured in the same cell holding Beth.

The bad guys torture him, too. Turns out the Evil Secret Facility is a government project run by an evil guy who's working on mind control using psychics and mages.

Eric is almost grabbed by the same suits who got Beth, but uses his music-magic to escape. He even gets their car's tag number. Good boy.

He gets with some friends, puts together a Plan, and they raid the Evil Secret Facility. Here's where Eric turns fucking stupid, evil and psychotic: he uses his music to summon a flock of Nightflyer demons and sends them into the facility to kill bad guys and wreck the joint. He has enough sense to tell them not to kill the three good guys he knows are there, but doesn't give a thought to having condemned everyone else (including innocent victims) in the place to horrible deaths. We're told that he is "sickened" by what he's done, but that doesn't keep him from doing it.

Rescue, rescue, action, action, hooray! and Eric sends the Nightflyers home. Well, he thinks he does. There's one that possessed the evil guy running the Evil Secret Facility. This one is like the Boss Momma Nightflyer and she's looking to make baby Nightflyers and wreck the world in a...Nightflyerpalooza? Nightocalypse? Nightstock?

Conveniently, the Evil Secret "torture the psychics" Facility is right on top of a Legit Good Science Earthquake Research Lab which is conveniently close to a Major Scientific Breakthrough That Could Help Save The World From Bad Earthquakes!

Unfortunately--and also conveniently--this Research Can Also Be Used As A Weapon!

Nightflyer's gonna trigger The Big'un, kill the hell out of people, spawn, and do Total World Domination.

Can Eric the Douchebag fix what he broke?

Bleh. The dialog (and, well, everything else) could use some cleanup and polishing. Seems clumsy/melodramatic, especially when two people are talking in Plot Points where descriptive text would have been better.

Decent concept; I'd like to see how the authors would write it now, compared to then.

Cornelius Murphy 02: Raiders of the Lost Car Park (Robert Rankin)

Rating: 4
Year: 1994
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy
Read Again? Yes

The Stuff of Legends continues right where the first book left off!

Cornelius and his half-pint friend Tuppe have a plan: they will modify an ocarina to add the special notes that will open the Forbidden Zones scattered around town. Then they'll open them one by one and liberate the loot hidden therein!

To this end, Cornelius shoplifts an ocarina and a young woman from a music shop. The trio hijacks an ice cream truck, which gains them a place to store loot and a PA system to boost the ocarina's signal.


In the meantime, one Inspectre Hovis is hoping to solve the Crime of the Century. This would involve the theft of a sizable quantity of diamonds years before which suddenly turned up scattered all over the road. His prime suspect is a cab driver who claims that he was minding his own business when a train--a TRAIN!--came barreling out of a solid wall and scattered those very diamonds all over the street. This really did happen, at the end of the first book.

In the meantime again, Team Cornelius open one of the Zones and find a wonderous car designed by The Man Himself, Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune, master of the unpaid bill, guru of gurus, reinventor of the ocarina, hater of Bud Abbott.

They soon find themselves in Rune's very presence. He has a plan to enter the Forbidden Zones and destroy them utterly, to reveal the beings who lurk within and secretly control the lives of humanity!

At the same time, there is to be an enormous rock festival headlined by Gandhi's Hairdryer, Prince Charles meets an interesting young woman, the Queen is an alien, and the very forces of the underworld whom Rune wishes to reveal are working to keep him from succeeding!

I'd have liked this book more if I hadn't taken so long--several months--to read it. I kept putting it aside and forgetting it. No fault of Rankin's, just me doing other things and ending up too tired to read.

Cornelius Murphy 01: The Book of Ultimate Truths (Robert Rankin)

Rating: 5
Year: 1993
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy
Read Again? Yes!

Young Cornelius Murphy is the Stuff of Epics. Destined for Greatness. No one is more aware of this than he.

Actually, he seems to be the only one aware of this fact: the world doesn't care.

There's a Mr. Yarrow (the youth Employment Officer) at his school who is desperate to see the young Murphy gainfully employed before his final school year is done. He's tried and failed seven times to get the wretched boy into a job.

Mechanic? "Too delicate."
Merchant Seaman?
Minicab Driver? "Too well-spoken."
Monumental Mason? "Too tall."
Motorcycle Messenger?
Marriage Counselor? "Too sophisticated."
Male Model? "Too rugged."

He tries again. Mime Artiste.

Nope. "Too well-endowed."

Cornelius does finally get a job, but not via Mr. Yarrow. One Arthur Kobold hires him to travel into the wilds of Scotland to find and purchase the effects of the heroic and mystical Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune, master of the unpaid bill, guru of gurus, reinventor of the ocarina, hater of Bud Abbott.

Among these effects is a manuscript for Rune's greatest work, The Book of Ultimate Truths. Kobold wants to reprint the magnificent opus.

Cornelius travels into the vast reaches of untamed Scotland, finding himself pursued by a Campbell, who is also after the manuscript.

The simple "go to the auction, win the bid for some old junk no one wants, and bring it back" isn't as simple and uneventful as Cornelius expected it to be. He faces an enormous riot, a shootout in a monastery, and a bunch of naked Wiccans ("It's a genuine religion, you know.").

As he travels, Cornelius reads a copy of The Book, learning of the perils of C11 H17 NO3 (mescaline) in soaps, tea, and cola (Rune ran a profitable soap, tea, and cola concession off this fearmongering); the secret lives of Biro ballpoint pens (and why they vanish when you need one); and the truth of why there's always two screws left over when you reassemble a toaster or radio, and how this delayed the scheduled beginning of World War Two by three years (Rune learned this secret in India, acting as Gandhi's spiritual advisor).

Rankin's writing is rich, engaging and wickedly funny. There's no drag, aside from a mincing Gandhi in disguise as Rune's wife. Hell of a ride.

Raylan 04: Raylan (Elmore Leonard)

Rating: 5
Year: 2011
Genre: Crime
Read again? Yes.

Raylan's got a warrant for Angel Arenas, a marijuana dealer. He finds Angel in a hotel bathtub full of ice water, near death, and shy a pair of kidneys.


Once he gets Angel to talk, Raylan learns that the dealer was meeting with a couple of men. He figures the guys drugged their mark, cut him open, nipped the kidneys. But Angel refuses to ID them.

Doctors at the hospital say the job looks professional. The incisions were stapled up.

The kidney-nappers send their victim a fax: $100,000 to get his guts back. As a show of good faith they've taken the liberty of dropping the purloined  pieces at Angel's hospital, ready to reinstall.

But if he doesn't produce the cash, they'll repossess them. Angel has one week.

The plot breaks up into several threads from here: the hunt for the pair of small-timers who waylaid Angel; a young woman who's insanely good at poker and who might be part of a trio of drug addicts who rob banks; and the people running the kidney-theft ring. Harlan County is very busy.

A lot of this book has made its way into the TV series "Justified," but not quite as-written. The kidney-theft and bank robber arcs are part of the show's third season and get tweaked to fit the show's plotline. It's got me wondering whether the poker champ will show up for the 5th season.

Good book, more meaty and satisfying than "Fire in the Hole."

Raylan 03: Fire in the Hole (Elmore Leonard)

Rating: 4/5
Year: 2002
Genre: Crime
Read again? Yes

Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens has been reassigned to Harlan County, Kentucky in the wake of a shoot-out with a mobster. To be fair, Raylan did give the guy 24 hours to get out of town or get shot. Guy didn't leave.

It was simpler to just shuffle Raylan out of sight than to try to build a case against him.

This being Raylan Givens, he's not even settled in before the trouble starts. His old schoolmate Boyd Crowder has started up a white supremacist church, mostly as a criminal enterprise: bomb goes off in a Black neighborhood, cops rush to the scene, and Boyd's boys rob a bank or two elsewhere while the cops are busy.

Meanwhile, the recently-widowed Ava Crowder shows an interest in Raylan now that her abusive husband is out of the picture.

This novella is the basis for the TV show "Justified"; I haven't seen much of the show's first season, so I don't know how well they fit together. The book's a very quick read, but there are no real surprises. By the halfway point the ending is obvious, but Raylan's got so many awesome one-liners in his dealings with the bad guys that it doesn't matter. I would have liked a longer story with more of a challenge for Raylan.

Raylan 02: Riding the Rap (Elmore Leonard)

Rating: 5
Year: 1995
Genre: Crime
Read Again? Yes

Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens drives up to Ocala to nab Dale Crowe on a warrant (Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution). He puts Crowe in the driver's seat and makes him drive them back to Palm Beach County.

He's alone with the man convicted of battery on a police officer. Being a Crowe, he tries something stupid and ends up handcuffed to the steering wheel, still driving.

On the way, they pick up a pair of carjackers (dumbasses tried to jack Raylan's car), so now the Marshall has three prisoners and feels pretty damn smug.

Meanwhile, Harry Arno, the bookie-in-trouble from the first book, hires a bounty hunter to ferret out a $16,500 gambling debt owed by Warren "Chip" Ganz up in Manalpan, Florida. Harry's retiring and wants to settle his accounts.

The bounty hunter, Bobby "the Gardener" Deogracias, finds Ganz at his mother's run-down 9,000 square foot home. Ganz' mother is in a different sort of home, dying alone of Alzheimer's. Ganz himself is hardly living large, since his mother controls the house and whatever money there is.
The Gardener offers to prune Ganz' ears, one at a time, if he doesn't pay up the $18,000 he owes (finder's fee). More anatomy to follow as needed for motivation.

Chip sees an angle and proposes a business opportunity: he and The Gardener could team up, take Harry Arno hostage, and squeeze him for the money he's had to be skimming in all his time as a bookie. They'll split the take three ways, since Chip's already got another partner, man named Louis Lewis.

Harry vanishes. Raylan reluctantly tries to find him, prodded by Harry's lady friend. He finds some interesting puzzle pieces: a young, attractive professional psychic; a robbery at a little Mom & Pop grocery (with strawberry Jell-O as part of the take); one of the robbers threatened one victim with pruning shears. Raylan suspects Bobby Deo, "The Gardener," but lacks all the pieces just yet.

The genius of Elmore Leonard's tale is that we're not dealing with criminal masterminds. You've got the financially embarrassed, desperate man-of-the-house (Chip Ganz) who once read a book about hostages and how they were treated. Chip wants the caper done By The Book, but the practicalities keep this from going to plan. Straw mattresses are hard to come by in Palm Beach County. Crappy food, chains, and squalid shacks are kind of hard on the jailors and the jailed, and Chip's partners refuse to go along. Harry makes do with being chained in a run-down 9,000 square foot mansion instead.

Then there's Louis, who almost immediately starts trying to undercut the other guys; and The Gardener, who's so obsessed with his gunslinger-badass self-image that he fails to think very far ahead.

Greed is the only thing keeping the trio of kidnappers together, and each of them is plotting against the other two.

Fast-paced, easy reading here. I really like that the bad guys are just regular, stupid human beings instead of evil geniuses. It really doesn't take much more than that and a little greed to drive a typical crook.

Dresden Files 14: Cold Days (Jim Butcher)

Rating: 4/5
Year: 2012
Genre: Fantasy
Read Again? Yeah.

Turns out Harry Dresden was only Mostly Dead after being taken down by a sniper in "Changes." He did a little time as a ghost in "Ghost Story." Now...he's baaaaaack!

Well, there's a hitch. He's not a freelance wizard anymore. He made a deal in "Changes" that bound him to Queen Mab, agreeing to become her Winter Knight, which makes him her enforcer, assassin, or whatever she wants.

The previous Knight was an evil, sadistic bastard. Now Harry wear the mantle. There's a constant struggle between keeping his own identity and allowing the cruel, hungry passions of Winter to take over.

Oh, and as in every previous book, he has to save the world from Armageddon. Again. This time he has a day to pull it off...and Mab wants him to kill her daughter Maeve, the Winter Lady.

Dresden has been speculating over several books about a sort of "Black Council," an evil counterpart to the White Council of wizards, shadowy hands manipulating events and people (and creatures) to trigger a new Armageddon focused on Chicago on Halloween. Turns out he's right, in a way: parasites. This angle is used to explain why nearly every previous book has a super-monster flocking to the Windy City to further their plans for Total World Domination (or at least the Utter Destruction of Everything): the baddies have been influenced by parasites. I don't like or dislike this angle just yet, since it's only now being introduced. If Butcher handles it well, it could be cooler than a "Black Council."

This book brings back Butters the Medical Examiner, Molly the former Apprentice, Murphy the ex-cop (and love interest?), Bob the talking skull, Thomas the White Vampire (and Harry's half-brother), and Mouse, Harry's humongous dog.

No one's particularly surprised Harry isn't actually dead, but now that he's the Winter Knight everyone's convinced he's a raging murderous bastard, or at least under the Winter Queen's sway.

The story moves well. No rambling. Good plot development, some revelations about the role of the Faerie Folk in keeping the evil Others at bay.

Airframe (Michael Crichton)

Rating: 4
Year: 1996
Genre: Techno-thriller
Read again? Yes

Everything's quiet aboard TransPacific flight 545 out of Hong Kong. Most of the passengers are asleep.

The plane starts to pitch violently, diving several thousand feet, then climbing sharply, then diving and climbing again.

By the time 545 makes its emergency landing at Los Angeles International, it's carrying 56 injured and 3 dead.

The captain claimed "severe turbulence" but radar shows clear weather for thousands of miles around the plane.

The flight crew leaves the country before they can be questioned. Everything seems to point to a failure in the aircraft itself.

The plane, a Norton N-22 Widebody--is shuttled to the factory for a complete inspection, but there's a catch: the team has one week. The boss wants immediate answers because Beijing is considering an $8 billion dollar purchase of 50 N-22's with an option for 30 more.

If the fault lies with the aircraft, Beijing will buy from Airbus instead.

Casey Singleton, Quality Assurance Liason and Press Spokesperson for Norton, is put in charge of the Incident Response Team. She'll be working with engineers and mechanics to either prove the N-22's soundness or condemn the company to a massive loss of business.

She's been saddled with Bob Richman, an assistant, some nephew of the Norton family who's being shuffled around the company to see where he'll fit in.

The boss is John Marder, the Chief Operating Officer, who was the program manager on the N-22.

Casey's team are a bunch of 2-dimensional off-the-shelf characters from Central Casting:
Marder is the Dark, Intense Company Man.
Doherty is the Mopy, Overweight Guy with a bad complexion.
Trung is the Industrious, Hard-Working Asian Genius.
Burne is the Angry, Truculent Red-Haired engine expert.
Smith is the Jittery, Fidgety Electrical Genius.
Wallerstein is the Efficient German Flight Simulation Operator.
Rawley is the Dashing Cowboy Test Pilot.

As soon as the investigation starts, everything hits the fan: one flight recorder is scrambled and will take some time to sort out. The strongly-unionized mechanics are angry because of a rumor that part of the big China sale includes moving wing fabrication to China, which would effectively kill U.S. production of the N-22 and thousands of jobs at the U.S. factory. Marder denies the rumors.

Bob Richman seems squirrelly. Casey starts giving him busy work and does some behind-the-scenes investigating into him. She finds that he did a lot of off-the-table flying when he was in Marketing. What's his deal?

The media gets involved: a tabloid TV show producer who fancies herself a Hard-Hitting Investigative Journalist. Shortly after the N-22 story breaks, an unrelated incident with a different airline makes her think she smells blood. She packs her hatchet and heads out to LA to get "the real story" about the N-22 DEATHTRAP!! She's already framed out the entire story, not caring about the facts, just the sensationalism and ratings, ratings, RATINGS!

Crichton frequently adds paragraphs or pages worth of technical or industrial information to explain things his principal characters should already know, such as the problem of counterfeit aircraft parts or how the government and industry actually interact versus how we would prefer it to be. Bob Richman is our surrogate. A lawyer, not an engineer or industry insider, he's someone for Casey to explain the technical stuff to.

Thick but not too hefty, and a page-turner. Crichton stays out of his own way, feeding you technical stuff as needed without straying from the trail. There's a lot going on--corporate intrigue, media hype, Casey's ex-husband who is convinced she's just breaking his balls, juggling all the engineers and mechanics without pissing them all off, trying to quell rumors about the wing sale to China. There's a Crowning Moment of Awesome when Casey puts the stupid, arrogant media woman solidly in her place during the Big Test Flight at the book's end.

The only real disappointment is the low-budget supporting cast, but that's only a momentary distraction near the beginning of things.

Jaws (Benchley, Peter)

Rating: 5/5
Year: 1974
Genre: Horror
Read again? Yes.

Summer is only days away; Amity's 1,000 permanent residents will soon be joined by 9,000 summer visitors.

When Christine Watkins' mangled remains wash up on the beach where tourists might see, Amity's politicians step up and bravely order police chief Martin Brody to keep his mouth shut. The beaches will stay open, the paper will stay silent.

There were no witnesses.

A few quiet days pass, and within hours of each other a 6-year-old boy and a 65-year-old man are killed.

This time, there are witnesses.

Brody gets the beaches closed, but now (as he expected) he looks like the bad guy. Those politicians wouldn't dirty their hands with responsibility.

A shark expert from Woods Hole--Matt Hooper--thinks the killer is a Great White shark.

Now July 4th--the big weekend that could make or break Amity--is less than two weeks away. People are canceling their leases or just walking away from them. The Mayor's freaking out (he's one of the major real estate owners in town) more over the financial losses than over the killings.

Brody's wife Ellen has a shagfest with Hooper; we're treated to all of her rationalizations for this (lonely, bored, unhappy, etc.), but I wasn't sympathetic to her plight. Perhaps it's mostly there to heighten tension between Chief Brody and the shark expert later in the book, but it really made me dislike her.

Otherwise, Benchley tells a good story and moves it along. Characterization is reasonably good and there's only the amount of exposition that the reader needs.

Buckaroo Banzai (Rauch, Earl Mac)

Rating: 4/5
Year: 1984
Genre: Sci-Fi/Adventure
Read again? In another 10 years

Adventurer, neurosurgeon, rock star, physicist, engineer, and all-around genius Buckaroo Banzai races his Jet Car through a mile-wide mountain and into the 8th Dimension!

But first, Buckaroo had to attend to a bit of tricky neurosurgery.

Meanwhile, Emilio Lazardo, aka John Whorfin, a Red Lectroid from Planet Ten!--plans his escape from a mental institution and schemes to steal Buckaroo's Oscillation Overthruster, the amazing device that allowed Buckaroo to cross the Dimensional barrier--and which will let Whorfin return home to Planet 10!

John Whorfin has a sort-of team of people--all Red Lectroids in disguise: John Bigboote and John O'Connor are running Yoyodyne, an aerospace company front that's suposed to be building their way back to Planet 10. But Bigboote and O'Connor seem to enjoy the human life too much.

Buckaroo Banzai has a team of people--a small army, actually, but his inner circle and rock band are known as the Hong Kong Cavaliers. It's up to all of them to save the world.

But first, they'll celebrate breaking the Dimensional barrier by playing a gig.

Save the world? Yes. Those Red Lectroids are bad guys banished from Planet 10. The good guys, who call themselves Adders, have threatened to blow up the Earth if Buckaroo can't stop the Lectroids.

The book is narrated by Reno, one of the Honk Kong Cavaliers and Buckaroo's official chronicler. Reno's got an entertaining heroic/cowboyish style that could be distracting or annoying if it weren't so tongue-in-cheek. There's a real-world feel to the narrative, thanks to Reno's footnotes and references to a backlog of Buckaroo Banzai adventures. Maybe a little long-winded. The book does drag in places, just enough that I zapped a point.

Bard's Tale 2--The Chaos Gate (Sherman, Josepha)

Rating: 4/5
Year: 1994
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Maybe

It's been four years since the end of Castle of Deception. The boy-hero of that book, Kevin, is a Count and a full Bard, now. Has his own castle and everything.

But he's bored. There's no adventure in the day-to-day affairs of running a castle and tending to the needs of his people and the Kingdom.

Then his friend the Dark Elf Naitachal--now a full Bard himself--comes to visit. When an envoy from a neighboring Count brings a portrait of his daughter and a marriage offer, Kevin makes a snap decision to sneak out to see her for himself, disguised as a lowly minstrel. Naitachal tags along in hopes of amusement.

Of course things don't go well; Kevin's would-be lady-love is sharp-tongued and argumentative and clearly uninterested in marriage. When he reveals his true identity, all hell breaks loose!

Naitachal is very amused.

Meanwhile, at the enclave of evil Dark Elves, the Boss Elf is stewing and scheming, evilly wanting revenge against Naitachal for turning away from the Dark Side. His evil consort hatches a spell designed to ensnare Naitachal....

A bit too melodramatic and long-winded. Pacing could have been tightened up quite a bit. Characterization could have been better; the Dark Elves are oh-so evil and two-dimensionally bland.

Raylan 01: Pronto (Leonard, Elmore)

Rating: 4/5
Year: 1993
Genre: Crime
Read again? Yes

This is the first of several stories about Deputy US Marshall Raylan Givens; they cover the events that led to Givens being "exiled" to Kentucky in the TV series "Justified."

Raylan is assigned to protect Harry Arno, a Miami bookie and witness against small-time Mobster Jimmy Cap. Harry finds out he's been screwed by the Feds: they faked a call from an angry bettor who hasn't been paid off, making it look as though Harry skimmed several thousand bucks.

As it turns out, Harry's been skimming, all right--a few million bucks over four decades. The Feds' screwing blows things up just as he's about to "retire" and run off to Italy.

He gives Raylan the slip, but the Marshall has dealt with Harry before and easily finds the Bookie in a little town.

The Mob doesn't have much trouble tracking Harry, either....

Leonard doesn't waste the reader's time in extra syllables or meandering prose, but "Pronto" doesn't move as quickly as "Maximum Bob," the only other Elmore I've read. It still has the "ordinary people" feel of "Bob" and of "Justified," but I still felt the need to take a point for the pacing.

Maximum Bob (Leonard, Elmore)

Rating: 5/5
Year: 1991
Genre: Crime
Read again? Yes

Kathy Baker is a parole officer. One of her "projects" is a kid named Dale Crowe, 2 days out of prison for hitting a cop. He broke parole in a drunken bar fight.

Maximum Bob Gibbs is the Palm Beach County judge presiding over Dale Crowe's fighting case. Bob ignores the underage drinking and the fight altogether, focusing on the kid's prior cop-hitting instead.

He's not called "Maximum" Bob for nothing. He likes making examples of people--and since the Crowe family are a bunch of habitual offenders, he decides to send the kid back to prison on a longer sentence.

Bob's also a lecherous 57-year-old. He quickly notices Kathy Baker and starts trying to put some moves on her. Of course he's married, but his wife's a crystal-gazing, aura-reading New Ager who's gained a little extra weight. She's also slightly crazy: she believes she can channel the spirit of a long-dead 12-year-old black girl.

Bob's tired of married life and really wants the house clear so he can lure that attractive young parole officer. He pays a man to drop a dead gator in the back yard, hoping to scare her away.

Gator's not quite dead. Eats her dog. The cops get involved, and they're thinking someone's trying to kill old Bob.

Meanwhile, Dale Crowe's uncle has been offered $10,000 to kill Maximum Bob.


Leonard's writing is tight! He metes out bits of exposition as needed, but keeps it on the fly. He doesn't pause to hold your hand or tell in-depth back stories.

Each character carries a piece of the puzzle. They all stand out and they're all interesting and believable. It's clear that we're not following heroic, important people here, just regulars--some on the take, some on the make, some just wanting the work day to end, thinking of that cold beer at home. We know their motivations: lust in the old judge, revenge in the ex-con, the parole officer who's afraid to say "no" to the judge who could easily wreck her career, the cops who know something hinky is going on.

Leonard's style is clean, free of wasted words or wasted time. He takes you from A to B, gives hints about C along the way, builds things a little more, and you're expected to keep up. He won't hold your hand.

This is how writing ought to be! Make every word count. After reading a couple of really bad Star Wars books and one Lackey book, this was an unexpected pleasure.

Dresden Files 13: Ghost Story (Butcher, Jim)

Rating: 5/5
Year: 2011
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Yes

I haven't eagerly anticipated a new book this way since the early '90s, when Roger Zelazny was writing new "Amber" books. It's been about 15 months since I finished the 12th Dresden book (note: that'd be in May of 2010, then late September 2011 for "Ghost Story"--posting the reviews hasn't been on my radar for a few months, unfortunately).

Harry Dresden is dead.

He was taken out by a sniper at the end of "Changes." How the hell do you follow that?

Dresden finds himself in a ghostly shadow of Chicago. He's escorted to the police station, where the ghost of Karrin Murphy's father outlines a mission: Dresden has to figure out who killed him or three of his closest friends will be next.

At first, he can't use magic or interact with the real world, but he quickly learns that his friends have been busy in the 6 months since his death. Things have worsened in the city: just his presence and the threat he represented to the Bad Guys was enough to keep most of them in check. With the effective destruction of the Red Court vampires at the end of "Changes," other ghosts, goblins, ghouls, and gangs have moved in to take over. The White Council of wizards is swamped, so they can't spare a Warden for Chicago.

Murphy, Butters, Bob the Skull, and other friends of Harry's have strengthened the ParaNet, and that's doing some good.

There's one threat on the streets that has all of Dresden's friends terrified, though. His apprentice went insane when he died. She's gone off on her own to fight evil things alone.


There has to be a point where Dresden meets his friends; they've dealt with his death to varying degrees, but Murphy isn't convinced he's dead. The scene where she's faced with his ghost is powerful.

Harry figures out pretty quickly who the shooter was, but the more important question is why it happened.

Then there's the bigger issue of saving the world from an enemy he's already faced once before.


Very good story; I devoured it. I liked the "It's a Wonderful Life" aspect of it, seeing how the world changed for the worse without Dresden in it. The plot moves nicely, the main characters continue to develop, and now I have to wait several more months for the next book.

Mad Hatter has a different take (might be spoilers). Since I've only read this book once, I've yet to develop as deep a reaction to the story and characters as Hatter got.

Bard's Tale 1--Castle of Deception (Lackey, Mercedes & Sherman, Josepha)

Rating: 4/5
Year: 1992
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Maybe.

It says something about Anderson's "Darksaber" that I willingly picked up a Mercedes Lackey book back in July--for the first time in nearly 2 years. I haven't read a "Valdemar" book since October of 2009. Never did finish the series. Stopped at number 20. Staying right there.

"The Bard's Tale" series is much shorter (I've got 4) and thinner (smaller books are good) and not "Star Wars." The stories are based around 1985's Electronic Arts computer role playing game.

Kevin is apprenticed to an elderly Bard. The boy wants adventure! Nothing happens in their tiny village.

His Master sends him off on a mission. It's not much--just copying an rare old musical manuscript at Count Volmar's castle.

He quickly finds himself out of his element, a nobody among boys his age. He applies himself to his work to fill the time.

Then he meets the Count's niece, a vision with big blue eyes and golden curls, the first girl to ever pay attention to him.

Not so much. She's actually an evil fairy trying to foil Kevin's mission. When her ever-stronger advances and enchantments can't get the answers she's after, she and the Count stage a "kidnapping" of his "niece" and send Kevin off to look for her. With the boy out of the way, they can go through the library book by book until they find the one he was copying.

Too bad for them that only a Bard can see it!

Kevin's joined by a streetwise woman warrior, a wise-ass fairy, a White Elf...and a Dark Elf with the power of Death and a thirst for music.

Can they find the truth about the missing girl...and save the kingdom?

This is a safe and straightforward "quest" story once it gets rolling. A bit more melodramatic than I'd like, but still solidly done.

The characters could use some fleshing out, but they're serviceable.

There might be a few draggy points, but the story moves at a purposeful pace. I'd like to have gotten into the action a bit more quickly.

Star Wars: Darksaber (Anderson, Kevin J)

Rating: 1/5
Year: 1995
Genre: Sci-Fi / Star Wars
Read again? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...no. No.

One Word To Describe It All: Clumsy.

It's been 8 years since the Battle of Endor. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo infiltrate a group of Tusken Raiders so they can sneak out to the palace of Jabba the Hutt, hoping to find some answers.

The Hutts are up to something.

Han & Luke learn that they're trying to build a superweapon.

Luke's also on a personal mission; his girlfriend lost her Force powers.

See, Forceless Callista's soul used to be trapped in the computer core of an evil space ship, but one of Luke's students sacrificed her own life to save the galaxy (another book to buy...for someone else) and the soul took over this body and they fell in love and now Luke makes a pit-stop at Ben Kenobi's old home to see if his ghost will give some love advice and maybe help him fix his girlfriend's broken Force powers.

Her Force powers don't work anymore, see. We are reminded of this in pretty much every scene with Luke and/or Callista (she's the one who lost her Force powers).

And only by getting her her powers (she lost them, remember) can they complete each other. I mean, they can probably shag or whatever, but that's not the plot. This is a True Love Story!

Meanwhile, across the galaxy, the evil Admiral Daala is working to rebuild the Imperial fleet. She's itching to destroy the New Republic and apparently didn't learn from the last time she tried it. She whips out the Total Galactic Domination plan book and sets her sights on blowing up the Jedi School on Yavin 4.

Did I mention that Luke's girlfriend lost her Jedi powers? Gone. Poof. Well, gone except for the Dark Side.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Jedi Knight and Mass Murderer Kyp Durron thinks the Imperials are up to something and goes to check it out. Happily, he gets into a big pep rally in which the Empire's entire plan is laid out in convenient detail via loudspeaker.

Meanwhile a third time, Durga the Hutt has hired the original Death Star designer and has stolen a set of plans for it. All he wants is the superlaser, not a big moon-shaped thing. He's going to use it to extort money from everyone in the galaxy.

The designer puts together a plan: the weapon's going to be a long cylinder and the freakin' laser beam comes out of one end, just like a lightsaber--hence the name "Darksaber." Get it?

Woof: Luke and his Forceless girlfriend go on a tour of places he's been--Dagobah, Hoth--in hopes of jogging her Force ability (why not go to places she'd find significant?). While they're on Hoth, they're attacked by an army of Wampa ice creatures...and their "leader" is the same one Luke disarmed in "Empire Strikes Back." It remembers him and wants to settle the score.

Woof: there's a street scene with a vegetarian meat-alien and a meat-cooking plant-alien selling their wares side-by-side and trading dirty looks. There's your comic relief.

Woof: Admiral Ackbar was Grand Moff Tarkin's personal pilot-slave; Tarkin used to amuse himself by describing his tactics and plans for crushing the Rebellion. Ackbar was rescued and used those tactics and plans in battle. This is particularly sucky, since it takes him from being a master strategist and admiral of the Rebel fleet to being a really good listener.

Woof: a prison planet named "Despayre." Sounds like a pretentious Mercedes Lackey villain.

Woof: Luke, to Callista the Forceless, just before The Big Battle At The End Of The Book:

He smiled gently at her. "All right. I'll protect you with my Jedi powers."

Nice. Way to condescend to your girlfriend,  man. Is it because she lost her Force powers? Dick.

Dialog's melodramatic, comic-bookish, and clumsy. It sounds like something Ed Wood would have put together for a cheesy sci-fi movie.

Characterization is bland, where it isn't just awful.

The book doesn't so much drag as stagger while leading you carefully around like a toddler (remember that Luke's girlfriend lost her Force powers? Well, she lost them). Any "dragging" sensation is from being unable to take the bad dialog, silly plotting, and convenient plot points that duct-tape this book together.

There are some really weird word choices, too--"gunwale" (the upper edge of a boat's hull) in place of "gun emplacement"; "rear engines" where a ship only has engines in the rear (the fighter flew on, its rear engines blazing!!), and a scene where Luke looks into his (Forceless) girlfriend's "open eyes."

This thing reads like the sort of stories I wrote in high school creative writing class. About the only positive thing I can say (aside from being done with it) is that this is the new Worst Book I've Ever Read. I really ought to have it enclosed in a block of acrylic or something.

This is not a "Star Wars" book. This is just crappy sci-fi with "Star Wars" words.

Star Wars: I, Jedi (Stackpole, Michael A)

Rating: 2/5
Year: 1998
Genre: Sci-Fi / Star Wars
Read again? Nope.

This is the only first-person "Star Wars" book I've seen. It's told by Corran Horn, a fighter pilot with the legendary Rogue Squadron.

Horn's wife vanishes during a mission involving a notorious pirate organization--Horn feels feels her "vanishing" via the Force.

His chain of command won't tell him what they know about her mission, so he tries to go over their heads and straight to President Princess Leia by talking to the First Scoundrel, Han Solo. Solo promises to talk to her.

Horn goes to Luke Skywalker, who invites him to come along to be in the first class of his new Jedi School on Yavin 4 and learn the ways of the Force, because that might help him to find his wife.

Horn goes on a 10-week Jedi training course. His wife's gone missing, but he's apparently really cool about it now, so 10 weeks is nothing.

The ghost of an evil Dark Jedi inhabits one of the nearby temples. It possesses one student after another, killing one, putting Luke Skywalker into a coma, and sending another student off on a mission to blow up a star system or two.

Horn and the students cook up a trap...and the bad guy's suddenly gone--but we never see the trap or have a description of that part of things. We're basically told "It's done."

Apparently this is covered in one of the other books and we have to buy 'em all to find out.

That last student returns from blowing stuff up and killing billions of people and is welcomed back into the fold!

What? He's a mass-murderer? Oh, that's okay, he's gonna be a Jedi!!

Oh yeah--when President Princess Leia is notified that her twin brother has been knocked on his ass by an evil ghost and is lying in a coma, she is TOO BUSY to drop her job and come running.

Apparently there's no Family Leave Act in the New Republic.

She finally shows up after, oh, a week.


So the Jedi ghost is kacked, Luke is going to be okay, and it's been 10 freaking weeks since Horn started his training.

He gets a sudden sense of urgency, now that half the goddamn book has gone by without any real plot movement. Seriously--by this point, it felt like I'd been reading for 10 weeks.

So now Horn leaves, hitching a ride with his smuggler pop-in-law, then goes off to Corellia to see his grandfather, then goes undercover for several MORE MONTHS to infiltrate the bad guys....


This book and its protagonist aren't in a hurry; there's never much of a sense of danger, no suspense (he remembers that his wife's missing, but she'll still be missing a few months from now, so it's no big rush), and Stackpole's portrayal of Corran Horn is damn near Mary Sue material.

Wordy. Not in Mercedes Lackey's chatterbox/prissy manner or Brian Daley's raid-the-thesaurus-for-obscure-words or Alan Dean Foster's paid-by-the-syllables styles. Stackpole could easily lose a good bit of padding and tighten the book up a good bit, both in narrative and dialog. Better word choice would make a big difference.

Draggy. The story doesn't go very far very quickly. There aren't any big surprises or twists and when the plot's moving it's in a straight line.

Characterization is weak; none of the Big Name characters--Han Solo, Luke Skywalker--sound anything like themselves. Han comes across like a professor, a bit too formal even when claiming that formality's never been his strong suit. The supporting characters are cardboard cutouts, flat and uninteresting.

Dialog is very comic-bookish...and there's the Industry Standard "spacified" lexicon: Timothy Zahn's "slicer" (instead of "hacker"), "slipped your circuits" instead of "slipped your mind"; and "Nerf and Gumes" for "Pork and Beans," among others.

Stackpole's a good guy and it bugs me to bag on this book so heavily, but I've got to be honest. Give this one a miss.

Star Wars: Hand of Thrawn 02--Vision of the Future (Zahn, Timothy)

Rating: 4
Year: 1998
Genre: Sci-Fi / Star Wars
Read again? Yes

The Caamas situation boils over; the New Republic's weak central government can't keep old feuds from erupting among its members--and can't interfere if there's fighting unless asked to intercede.

Star systems begin petitioning the Empire for readmission, looking to its strength and security to protect them from their neighbors.


The principals split up into teams, each looking for the original Caamas document that would reveal the names of the Bothans who (unwittingly? wittingly?) participated in the slaughter of the planet 20 years ago.

Han Solo and Lando Calrissian go to Bastion, the tightly-defended capitol of the Empire.

Talon Karrde--smuggler, scoundrel, information broker--follows rumors to his old boss, who might have a copy of the Caamas document.

Luke Skywalker finds his way to the world where Mara Jade tracked one of the mystery ships that have been sighted around the galaxy. He finds her and an outpost somehow linked to Grand Admiral Thrawn.


Good second half to the story, but there's that euphemizing of common terms yet again--more skyarches, more avians, and "push comes to shove" becomes "nudge comes to punch." Yet other common words such as ship remain untouched. Since 99% of the whatever language is "translated" for us, why do we need "avians" instead of birds? There are no computer hackers, either--they're called "slicers," which loses some of the flavor of the original word.

At least he doesn't use Brian Daley's "howlrunner"--but there weren't any Space Wolves in the book.

Star Wars: Hand of Thrawn 01--Spectre of the Past (Zahn, Timothy)

Rating: 4/5
Year: 1997
Genre: Sci-Fi / Star Wars
Read again? Yes

It's been 10 years since the events of the Thrawn trilogy, about 15 since "Return of the Jedi."

The New Republic is still mopping up from the various crises that pop up every time someone writes another "Star Wars" book. The Imperial Remnant is still causing trouble, even at vastly reduced strength and reach.

Princess Leia is President, but taking a leave of absence to spend time with the family. Acting President Space Horse has everything firmly in hoof.

Admiral Pellaeon is in charge of the Imperial Remnant's military; it's grown obvious to him that the Empire's boundaries are shrinking, its power fading, and he's making the rounds to various government leaders to discuss declaring a truce with the New Republic.

One of the men he meets with--Moff Disra--has his own agenda; he's working with a former Imperial Guardsman and a con man who impersonates the long-dead Grand Admiral Thrawn. The three of them devise a scheme intended to lure worlds back into the Empire. Before long, there are rumors--some hopeful, some fearful--spreading across the galaxy that Thrawn is very much alive and is embarking on a new mission to destroy the New Republic.

Disra is also in under-the-table business with a pirate band working as privateers, hitting Republic shipping on behalf of the Empire. There's a lot of money to be made--and business is good.

The story's Big Controversy centers on the Empire's crushing of Caamas; a document has surfaced linking a small number of Bothans to the genocide. Before long, the New Republic is brought to a near-standstill as its people break into factions, with some demanding justice for the genocide and looking to punish all Bothans for it, others taking up the Bothans' defense and insisting that the actual criminals be brought to trial. President Space Horse is hock-deep in trying to hold things together. It's up to Leia, Han Solo and Lando Calrissian to find the truth about the Caamas document.

Meanwhile, mysterious small ships have been seen in various places around the galaxy. Luke Skywalker's old ex-enemy/sometimes Jedi student Mara Jade goes off after one of them and disappears. Luke--guided by a vision from the Force--goes to find her....


Only two books in this story arc; Zahn turns in another tightly-written, well-paced book with good characterization and several plotlines to keep us wondering what'll happen next.

The only annoyance is the same one I've had with Brian Daley's "Star Wars" books, where common words aren't spacey enough. In place of bridges, we have sky-arches; birds are "avians," spies indulge in "cloak-and-blade" behavior. Bleah. Gonna take a point off for it this time, since Zahn does it more in this pair of books than in the previous trilogy.

Jungle, The (Sinclair, Upton)

Rating: 5
Year: 1906 (audiobook, 1994)
Genre: Fiction
Read Again? Yes

A masterfully-told story of a Lithuanian immigrant and his in-laws who are lured to Chicago's Packingtown.

Jurgis Rudkus starts out an optimistic man, full of the hope of the American Dream. He soon realizes that the entire system in Packingtown is arrayed against him and all the other workers. Wages are kept low, the hours are brutally long, and once you're in the system, there's no way out unless you know how to get in with the higher-ups. It's every man for himself.

Jurgis can't understand why every man he meets hates the job, hates the company, hates most of their co-workers, the bosses, the town. All he wants to do is have an honest job, and provide for his family. They pool their meager resources together and put a down-payment of $300 on a house. Their agent only tells them that they'll be paying $12 per month--and once the total of $1500 is paid off, it's theirs. They soon find that it's a trap. The agent didn't mention interest, taxes, or property improvement fees. He didn't tell them that being late on a full monthly payment plus interest will get them kicked out to the street.

We see the family ground down, near-starving in winter when the work is slack, scrabbling for pennies to put onto the next house payment, and working in horrible conditions where a small injury can put a worker on the street, his place taken up by someone fit and healthy. It's an awful, squalid world Jurgis and his family live in; Sinclair compares people to trees fighting for the tiniest amount of sunlight, only to fall like dead branches when winter comes.

It took nearly two weeks to get through this 15-hour Audiobook version; the story moved well, tightly-written by Sinclair and adequately narrated by Robert Morris. The only boring part is the last few chapters, when Jurgis stumbles into a Socialist Party meeting while just trying to keep warm. From there we're treated to Utopian preachings from various speakers. It was interesting to see it from the inside, but that's when the book really stopped being about Jurgis and started being about Sinclair's Socialism, with Jurgis as an observer.

Still, I can't take a point for that, since the story was utterly riveting. I look forward to actually reading it the next time, rather than listening to the somewhat odd narration. Robert Morris' reading reminded me of filmstrips and movies in elementary or middle school; he speaks clearly, but there's an odd rhythm in his speech.