Star Wars: Cloak of Deception by James Luceno

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book is set just prior to events in The Phantom Menace. A colleague loaned it to me after I mentioned how I wished there was more Qui Gon Jinn in the Star Wars universe, since Qui Gon is really the hero of this book--the the extent it has one.

I thought the book was better written (in terms of Standard English conventions) than many Star Wars and Star Trek books. In terms of plot and character development, however, it was not very good. Too much plot for too little book. It's really a political thriller, and those require more words and development to be really successful. This book, in fact, is about average length for this genre, and as such, really didn't have the required pages to do the job.

But, it does make The Phantom Menace make a bit more sense. I'll take that, and call it enough.



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A Time for War, A Time for Peace by Keith R.A. DeCandido

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This is the final book in the series that covers the gap between the films Insurrection and Nemesis.

I was, overall, disappointed in the book. While it effectively ties up all the loose ends from the six previous books, it is a bit too pat, and the story line itself is not very engaging. The one "action" plot line, which involved lots of Klingons, I might add, was...dull. (How, I wonder, can scenes that involve Klingons using weapons be dull? Yet, here it has been achieved. Impressive.) The Federation presidential election line was...politics as usual. And the Starfleet suspense line (with the gratuitous presence of Adm. Montgomery Scott) was...*yawn.* Even the Klingon politics, and the appearances by Martok, failed to engage. I can almost hear my mental warp engine gearing up to power, and then winding down pathetically.

Oh, well. Perhaps my problem is that it is too much character and talking, and not enough phasers and bat'leths.





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Heat Wave by Richard Castle

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Fortunately, my expectations for this book were not high, so I suffered no sting of disappointed expectations.

It is a book "by" the character played by Nate Fillon on the TV show Castle. I enjoy Fillon, I enjoy the show, so I thought it would be a pleasant diversion to read the tie-in.

The problem is that in the TV show Rick Castle is presented as not only a successful, but a good writer of the genre, and his heroine, Nikki Heat, as being sexy, strong, and compelling. Alas, the book is average at best, bordering on mediocre, and Nikki is self-indulgent, and condescending, bordering on mean.

Next time I'm tempted to pick up a Nikki Heat book, I think I'll just pop in a Castle DVD. I don't like the heroine any better, but I like the surrounding characters MUCH more.



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Murder On Monday by Ann Purser

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I wanted to like this book.

I love the "cozy" style of mystery, and if the setting is English, so much the better. In those respects, this book was exactly what I expected. And I liked the notion that the amateur sleuth was a young working class mother with a working class husband.

There was nothing wrong with the mystery itself. And the author even managed some brief shifts of point of view (letting us into the minds of many of the suspects and some of the other villagers) deftly. The writing was unobjectionable--not stellar, but I didn't find myself editing the grammar and language as I went along, and for a thin little paperback that is what I require.

No, the problem is I don't like the amateur sleuth at the heart of the story. For all she's got some great kids, a supportive mom, and a not-perfect, but hard-working, loving husband, she's self-absorbed, quick to take offense, judgmental.... These, of course, are perfectly human attributes, and she's basically a decent human being, but I find I really don't want to spend time with her, her daughter, nor really even husband Derek. I certainly don't want to spend time with the coppers who use her to dig up information by snooping on her clients.

So, that was an interesting experience, but not one I think I'll repeat with any of the successive novels. Purser's books are published by the same house that does the Susan Wittig Albert China Bayles series. I think I'll stick to those.



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Oath of Fealty by Elizabeth Moon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I had forgotten just how much I love the world Paksenarrion lives in.

A few months ago Elizabeth Moon (reminder--she's a veteran) said something that got her in hot water with some of the fantasy/science fiction community. It was an honest comment, that read in full I didn't find that objectionable, but in sound bite was...not very PC. She got disinvited to WisCon (where she was originally slated as Guest of Honor), and the blogosphere went rather rabid for a bit. So I started reading her blog. Often it's about singing in her church choir. And cooking. And her, and her husband's health. And writing. This past year her new book, Kings of the North came out, and she was understandably enthusiastic. The more she wrote I realized that it was the second in a new set of books set in Paks's world. I had completely missed that she'd returned there, and frankly, after Surrender None, I'd sort of lost my taste for the series. This book, Oath of Fealty, is the first. So I got it as soon as I could devote the time to reading it.

Oath of Fealty is that rarest of books--the one where you want more detail, more dialogue, more description, even though it is richly textured, full of clear images, and conversations. It's just that when she changes scenes, you aren't ready to leave yet--you're having too good a time, you're so immersed in what's happening there, in that moment, that you don't want it to end. Who cares about moving the plot along! I want to sit around while Doran goes from village to village cleaning out the blood magic, no matter how "tedious" that might seem. I want to spend time with Kieri while he figures out the finances for Lyonya. I want to go with Jandolir when he goes to the bankers in each town, and listen to what they say, not just when it's moving the plot forward. Moon has made these people ones I want to spend time with, work with, support with word and deed. But for those who love plot, there's plenty. Ambush, and skullduggery, blood magics, and sword play. And loyalty, and growth, and people you can believe in.

When I finished the book it was with a real sense of emptiness--like leaving a beloved place. Fortunately, I have the next on order!



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The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book is nothing like the kind of thing I choose to read. It is the kind of thing found in the "New fiction" section at Barnes and Noble, or "Literature" in other places. I'm a genre fiction sort of girl, and so this isn't something I'd have ever read under normal conditions.

But, when the Vice President comes flying down the hall to give you her copy because she's sure you'd enjoy it...well.... And to be fair, we did talk about it when we were doing the Walk for the Cure in October, and our tastes do overlap considerably.

So, I figured--what the heck! I'll give it a go.

It was lovely.

The narrative voice is...witty, and acerbic, and warm (as appropriate), and just a little odd. Odd in a good way (a very original use of first person). It has three interesting sisters as the protagonists--and this is the chick-lit part that normally I don't go near--who are growing, and learning, and becoming better than they start out the book as.

There were some uncomfortable moments, like seeing some of what I like least about myself on the page; some events are near triggers given what is going on in the lives of some friends; and making me feel homesick for the family I've lost, for dreams I abandoned. But, for all that, I'm glad I read it.

But, of course, I've gone on too long, a bit incoherently. If I were the father in this novel, I'd simply have said,

"If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream..."



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An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I'm somewhat bashful to admit that I absolutely loved this book.

It is an inescapable fact that this book is reminiscent of All Creatures Great and Small in some ways, or Ballykissangel, and if you don't like those, you won't like this book. I found those pleasant enough, but not as engaging as the world Patrick Taylor has created here.

The voices of the characters are distinct, they're charming, annoying, dotty, nasty...in short, a village of people. The events are simple day to day experiences in a rural town in Northern Ireland when Jack Kennedy was newly dead, the lads from Liverpool were solidly on track, and a new band led by some kid named Jagger was starting to make noise. The second wave of The Troubles hadn't begun, and there were many who remembered the first round, and worried about a young cleric named Iain Paisley and the things he was saying. But that is all background noise to little girls with appendicitis, old men with heart trouble living in their cars, and young men desperate to "do the right thing" but unable to marry the girl unless there's enough money to support the three of them.

There are four more books in the series. I'm going to fight the urge to tear through them. They are short, and there are times when I think I'll desperately need to get away to Ballybucklebo, and Fingal O'Reilly, Barry Laverty, Kinky, Lady Macbeth, and Arthur Guinness--the Smithwicks loving retriever. Yes, I'll keep these, as they say, "in my back pocket," for when the need arises. Who'd have thought this Republic loving girl would grow so fond, so quickly, of some folk from the 6 counties.



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Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


When I was in junior high school I saw A Man for All Seasons and Anne of a Thousand Days fairly close to each other. They jumble a bit in my mind, and I often find myself remembering Burton as Henry VIII in scenes with Paul Scofield as Thomas More (no--that would have been Robert Shaw, in a masterful stroke of hideous mis-casting). Nonetheless, those two films early on formed many of my ideas about that period of British history. Then add in Keith Mitchell in The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth. Now add in all my catechism classes as a good Catholic girl. And that the chapel at my graduate school (as at many) was St. Thomas More Chapel. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

So, I came to Wolf Hall thinking that I was venturing into well-known territories. The tragedy of Henry's conflicted conscience and libido; the noble Katherine; the pitiable Mary; the horrible Anne; the venal Wolsey; the ambitious Norfolk; the wise More; and the greedy, villainous Thomas Cromwell. I was utterly unprepared for what I found instead.

This book is told from the point of view of Cromwell. In its pages you find a patriotic Wolsey, a fragile Henry, and all of the other characters are painted in equally unforeseen ways. Most surprising of all in the their presentations are More, and most especially Cromwell--who we see as son, father, husband, widower, master, and friend. I'm not sure I'll ever forgive Mantel for creating a Cromwell I can care about.

The writing itself is a marvel, and I fully understand why it won the Booker. While unrelentingly first person, there is a surprising lack of ego in the voice, and at times it wanders into dream, or fever, and yet there is never any sense of wrongness, just a change of perspective that throws everything before and after into a new light.

As this book ends Thomas More has just lost his head. There are more volumes to come, we are told. I'm not sure I can bear to read them, because, as history tells us, the lords pull Cromwell down, and Henry claims his head. This is a moment in history I am used to cheering. I wonder if I am strong enough, brave enough, to face a chance that I will mourn this Cromwell. Or even that I may weep.





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The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


On one level I liked this book quite a bit. Having taught A Night to Remember, and being a fan of the Belle Epoch, there's a lot about this book to love.

It takes place solidly on the line between gaslight and electricity, between the Victorian social and commercial paradigms and Womens Suffurage and the rise of Unions. It is also set in a period disturbingly like our own as America and the world suffer with catastrophic economic downturns provoked by the greed and profiteering of a few, bank mismanagement, and the excesses that come when the middle and lower classes live like grasshoppers instead of ants. The book is populated with the rich and famous of those times--Sarah Bernhardt, Buffalo Bill Cody, Annie Oakley, George Pullman, Marshall Field, and dozens of others who walk through its pages; others, like Frank Lloyd Wright and Walt Disney are directly connected to the events and characters. American consumer icons are born before our eyes--Shredded Wheat, Cracker Jacks, and a dozen others. Not to mention wonders that are born during the events of the book that brighten our nights and our imaginations to this day.

Then there are the darker, parallel threads in the book--a sociopath and a madman, each with his own narrative thread, moving beneath the bright distractions of the Columbian Exhibition of 1892 and Chicago's obsession with its "White City."

There are also important figures I'd never heard of, most conspicuously Daniel Hudson Burnham. If this book has a protagonist, it is Burnham--architect of the Columbian Exhibition as well as the Masonic Temple in Chicago, the Flatiron Building in New York, and Filene's in Boston, to name a few. He is also a major figure in the city planning movement, and was influential in the design of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. His struggles to be recognized for his talent, and then the Herculean efforts required to bring the Columbian Exhibition to life, are the heart of this book.

And, unfortunately, that is where the author loses me at times. His personal fascination with the intricacies of building skyscrapers on the unstable land that is Chicago, the minutia of pallets, and grosses, and tons of material, the obsessions of Fredrick Law Olmsted (who designed, among other things, New York's Central Park) when it came to the landscapes of the Exhibition, all become a bit numbing.

Additionally, the title of the book implies an equal balance in the content between "The Devil" (serial killer H.H. Holmes) and "The White City" (the Exhibition's "Court of Honor"), but the balance is uneven. I didn't count the words, but at the very least the writing made it feel as though far more time was spent on one than the other, so I felt a bit deceived.

It is hard for me to not be intrigued by a book that starts aboard the White Star Line's luxury liner The Olympic on April 14, 1912; and I feel I learned many things I am glad to know. Also, I'd be lying if I said I didn't find the Holmes thread compelling--after all, Criminal Minds, about the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, is one of my favorite shows--it's only a matter of time before the writers use Holmes as a template for the "unsub" (Unknown Subject) for one of the episodes. And even poor, deranged Prendergast will live in my memory. Still, I come away dissatisfied with the book as a whole. This is one of those times when the whole is less than the sum of its parts.



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Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I've read a number of books by Archer (loved First Among Equals, but this biography of George Mallory, the team-leader on the first two European attempts to ascend Everest (and possibly even the first to reach the summit) is first non-fiction I've read by him.

It was up to Archer's usual prose standard, which is fairly high. However, I did have extended periods of a little voice in the back of my head saying "he [Archer] couldn't know this." I like there to be a brighter line between "biography" and "historical fiction" than the one Archer draws. The other problem I have is that at times this biography/true life adventure comes across as more hagiography than biography.

But, that said, I felt my time was well-spent with this book. Even if Archer himself apparently leaves a lot to be desired.



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