Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand by Carrie Vaughn

I think I finally found a way to describe the way I feel about this series by Vaughn. It's like a bag of Twizzlers red licorice; if you have it readily available, you'll be forced to devour the entire thing in one sitting. This one took me about an hour and a half yesterday afternoon.

Kitty and Ben have decided that they need to formalize what their inner wolves already know, that they're mated for life. Discouraged by the complexity of planning a wedding, they decide to head to Las Vegas and get married there in one of the less tacky wedding chapels. Before they leave, the head vampire of Denver, Kitty's friend, Rick, gives her a note for the head vampire in Vegas, Dom, giving her a friendly introduction to the master of the city. Apparently, there are no werewolves in Vegas; the desert is simply too inhospitable to their wolf sides. Kitty's producer decides that this would be a great opportunity for Kitty to do her show on TV, in front of a live audience, and sets things up with his friends in Vegas to produce a show the day before her wedding.

When Kitty and Ben check into their hotel, they find out that there's a gun convention and exhibition going on. Ben, having been Cormac's partner in hunting down monsters, turns out to have a few acquaintances among the attendees, none of whom are thrilled with him associating with an "outed" werewolf, but they manage to avoid any gunfire in the early going.

Kitty meets with Dom, and tries to convince him to be a guest on her tv show, but the master vampire is uninterested in participating. The vampires in Vegas keep a low profile, preying on the many tourists passing through sin city. The vampires in his "court" appear to be a bunch of effete, vapid hedonists.

There may not be any werewolves in Vegas, but Kitty finds out that there may be some weretigers and werelions performing in an animal show there. She gets invited to come see their show by one of the weres in the show, and things start to get complicated after that.

Some of the bounty hunters from the gun show decide that going after Kitty, a famous were, would be good for their reputations, the animal show turns out to be more than a sideshow, and Dom's vampires turn out to be even less effective than they first appeared. All of this, I believe, is setting things up for stories dealing with a deeper game of vampire and were politics.

A good, fast, interesting read.

Short Takes

(2/8/09) Enjoyed Ted Nugent's book Ted, White and Blue. Interesting slant on things from the old rocker.
"Sometimes you give the world the best you got, and you get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you got anyway. Success and happiness drive the assholes berzerk. That is simply a bonus."

(2/8/09) From Charlaine Harris, A Fool and His Honey, the latest Aurora Teagarden mystery - very upsetting.

(2/19/09) Started Iaccoca's book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, threw it aside in disgust and went back to fiction for a while.

On Combat by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

My son gave me this book for Christmas, after hearing Lt. Col Grossman give a talk to some Marine Corps leadership. It's not the kind of book you just zip through, it really needs to be digested in small chunks. Grossman has had a long career working with soldiers and law enforcement personnel, preparing them for deadly situations and the aftermath. He writes in great detail about both the psychological and physiological effects of conflict. It turns out that Grossman is also a science fiction fan, and he uses quotes from books I'm familiar with here and there in On Combat.

The human body has, programmed into it, fight or flight responses that happen in the midst of conflict, when our lives are in danger. Some of these responses can be overcome or mitigated by the proper training. At normal heart beat rates from 60-80 bpm, our physiological responses are basically normal, but when adrenaline starts to raise our heart rates above 120 bpm, the first thing to go is fine motor skills. Above 145 bpm, complex motor skills also deteriorate. Above 160 bpm, our sight and hearing can be constricted, causing tunnel vision and loud noises to be distorted.

However, with the proper type of training, which may include live-fire paintball combat simulations, professional soldiers or law enforcement officers can become accustomed to heart rates this high, and push the effects of a given heart rate to a higher level. Highly trained athletes can also see the same effects in their performance, from forcing themselves to continue to compete at higher metabolic levels.

Grossman has also worked extensively with PTSD victims, and this book contains a lot of information about the causes and effects of this disorder, and advice for soldiers and law enforcement on how to deal with them constructively. I never knew that during WWI and WWII, there were actually more men disabled by psychological problems than by enemy bullets.

This was a very informative book, and I highly recommend it if you are in a profession likely to involve you in a deadly force situation, or are a family member of such a person.

Mailbox Monday

I'm going to call this series of posts Mailbox Monday, as that seems to be the meme. I will say, however, that I most often support my local bookstores, rather than ordering and receiving books by mail. I occasionally receive books by mail from authors to review, or electronically. Even when I buy a book on Tuesday of its release week, when it is available at a special price, though, I'll list it on the following Monday.


I've already read this one at the library, but Law picked it up to complete the series for the collection.





This looks like a fun new anthology. Expect it to appear in the Queue.



Might just be silliness, but you gotta love the title.



Haven't read any Jody Lynn Nye in quite some time.

Short Takes

(1/21/09) Read Rich Like Them, by Ryan D'Agostino. This is a fairly good book of morsels of wisdom from people who have made a ton of money. Lots of food for thought, and I'm savoring it bite by bite.

(1/30/09) Read Paradox, Book 1 of the Nullapeiron trilogy, by John Meaney. Pretty good stuff.

(2/6/09) Read Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs - pretty good stuff.

Milestones

Well, it's been one year since I started The Steel Bookshelf, and I'm quite frankly surprised to have made it this long. The "chore" of reading around 200 books was not at all difficult, but forcing myself to sit down and write something about each and every one of them takes far more discipline than I usually like to employ.

It has been great to hear your comments and to get to know some folks I'd never have met otherwise, and I appreciate those 50 folks who have become public Followers this year. It's a nice round number, and maybe I can make it 100 by the end of the next year.

One of the things I've been aware of for years, reading as much as I do, is that Sturgeon's Law is never out of play. Long-time SF editor and author Theodore Sturgeon is reputed to have said "90% of anything is crap." in especial reference to the story submissions he had to read. One of my goals in posting here at the Steel Bookshelf has always been to help my friends fight the Law, by telling you exactly what I think about a book, letting you know whether it's worth reading, and for what reasons.

Quite frankly, there's not a lot of science fiction and fantasy out there today that I'd consider life-changing or thought-provoking. There is, however, a huge stock of stories that are good, solid entertainment. For the price of a movie ticket, you can pick up a paperback novel that will take you away for a few hours. The recent glut of paranormal fiction, with its werewolves and vampires, elves and wizards, is exactly that. You might occasionally get a flash of socially conscious rage against discrimination, understand someone's "daddy" issues a bit more, or be disgusted by white slavery in the Eastern Bloc, but there's generally not  a lot of depth there.

I find myself turning to non-fiction when I want real brain fodder. I tend to actually take notes, place bookmarks, and then discuss the issues raised or associations made, and the reviews generally trend quite a bit longer than fiction reviews. Unfortunately, it can take me a few weeks to work my way through the non-fiction books, so the ratio of fiction to all the rest is pretty high in the content here.

For the coming year, when I run out of some of my old material to recycle on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm either going to introduce some reviews of short stories by classic SF and Fantasy authors, or try to focus on some of their "forgotten" fiction works. Heck, I can do a couple of months on Heinlein, alone.

As Bartles and James used to say, "Thank you for your continued support." Happy Anniversary!

Skinwalker by Faith Hunter

Skinwalker is the first book in the Jane Yellowrock series by Hunter. It takes place in New Orleans, though a slightly darker New Orleans than the one we all know from Mardi Gras. There's a rogue vampire in town, and it is killing indiscriminately. The vampire council don't want the mundane authorities to start digging too deeply into vampiric affairs, and so they have hired Jane Yellowrock, a vampire hunter, to come take care of the problem for them.

One immediately thinks of Anita Blake, the Vampire Executioner, but Jane Yellowrock starts out just a little harder, a little tougher, and far less innocent than Anita. I got the nagging feeling a couple of times in the early going that there might have been some short stories or novellas written about Jane that I'd missed, as she seems to spring into being with a long and shady past. Some of that emptiness gets filled with flashbacks later on in the novel, but some of it is still left hanging. Perhaps in a sequel?

Jane Yellowrock is a skinwalker, someone who can change shape from human into whatever creature, more or less, she desires. She seems to desire, more often than not, the shape of a hunting cat, like a cougar or jaguar, but she carries with her an assortment of teeth and claws from various animals, and when she shifts she uses the "snake" of their DNA to determine her new form.

We're all probably familiar with the idea of lycanthropes having a "beast" that rises to the surface when they change into were-form, almost a second entity that lives within them. In the case of Jane Yellowrock's beast, it might quite literally be true. It appears that sometime in her past, she forcibly possessed the body of a hunting cat, and the spirit of that cat, with its simple motives of kill, eat and mate, continues to live within her even in her human form.

Jane seems to be very much of a bad-ass loner, though she has a couple of off-camera friends who are like her family. That's one of the back story things that I was left wishing I had more information on when the book concluded.

One thing that a lot of writers leave out of their lycanthrope stories is an explanation of what happens to the body mass of a shifter when it takes on a shape smaller or larger than its own. Hunter takes care of this by having Jane use boulders and rocks as a "mass sink". Just a little detail that I thought was cool.

This was definitely a good yarn, and I'm looking forward to the next book in the series, as soon as I loosen the purse strings enough to buy it.

Book Blogger Hop - February 11 to 14

It's time for the Book Blogger Hop again, hosted by Jennifer at Crazy for Books.



Question of the week:
"Tell us about one of your posts from this week and give us a link so we can read it (review or otherwise)!"

It's a little out of genre, from a book I read a while back, but it's the kind of book that makes you think about things, Start Late, Finish Rich by David Bach. I'm a bit of a personal finance geek, and I love finding little tweaks I can apply to my life.

Short Takes

(12/17/08) Reading The Last Undercover, written by a former FBI agent, Bob Hamer. Quite amusing.

(1/9/09) Reading Cherryh's latest in the Cyteen/Downbelow Station series - Regenesis - it just goes on and on interminably describing political machinations without any action whatsoever.

(1/21/09) Reading Goblin Quest, by Jim C. Hines - a fairly mindless but amusing dungeon crawling tale.

Gotcha Capitalism by Bob Sullivan

(Review written 6/6/08)
This is a pretty good book for people who don't pay a lot of attention to their bills and other financial matters to read to let them know how much money they may be losing to hidden fees by all the companies they deal with, but after five or six chapters, I haven't really found anything that surprised me, but I keep up on that sort of stuff as a hobby, anyway. I don't usually run my credit cards up over the limit, or pay any interest on them - I'm one of those consumers that cc issuers hate.

I also don't ever take money out of ATMs that aren't associated with my bank, so I don't get hit with those kinds of fees, and I haven't had to pay overdraft fees in the last thirty years, that I can recall. I just had a convo with my son about ATM fees the other day while he was home. Hope he took it to heart and starts planning his weekend outing budgets a little better, so he can quit throwing away money for nothing.

Title company fees seem to be pretty much unavoidable, and in my case, they're only likely to take place a couple of times in my entire lifetime - only time I had an issue with them was when I refinanced a home I'd already owned and paid for title insurance on a few years previously, and I'm thinking "why should I pay this again so soon?" It's a racket.

The chapter on mutual fund expense ratios, and kickbacks to HR folks and plan administrators wasn't a total surprise, but it's definitely irritating to think how much money they're scamming out of those of us who care enough to put away money for retirement. I'll need to review the mutual funds I'm in to see what their expense ratios are one of these days, and maybe make some adjustments. I'll keep y'all posted as I go along in this book. Looks like mostly good info.

Short Takes

(11/16/08) Joe Haldeman's new Marsbound seems to be his attempt at YA fiction. It's a bout a teenaged girl who emigrates to Mars with her parents and younger, pesty brother...wait a second! Can you say Podkayne? It's such a Heinlein ripoff. Haldeman's writing is always pretty good, though, so it's worth the read, but breaks no new ground.

(11/17/08) Finished the Haldeman book - pretty anticlimactic ending.

(11/23/08) Read a couple chapters of a book by Ron Paul, Revolution: A Manifesto. Interesting libertarian ideas, there.

(12/14/08) Reading the latest in the Greywalker series, Underground - slow so far.

Warp Speed by Travis Taylor

There used to be a sub-genre of science fiction called "hard" science fiction. It dealt mostly with advanced technology and its effects on human culture at large, or the people who developed it - maybe both. Warp Speed by Taylor takes us back to the realm of hard SF. In fact, this is the kind of hard SF that engineers and physics nerds dream about.

As you might imagine from that intro, the hero of this tale, Anson, is a physics professor, with perhaps a bit of an engineering bent. He and his two doctoral students, Becca and Jim, have discovered a quantum effect that they believe could have application as a faster-than-light drive for spaceships. Everything else that happens follows quite logically from there.

In order to power the drive one must have a source of power vastly greater than what is available through conventional sources, but fortunately, Becca comes up with a concept which uses nanomachinery and an odd physical principal to generate all the power needed. Also fortunately, Anson has befriended an Air Force officer, Tabitha, who is high in the councils of the black budget community within the U.S. and she is able to get them the funding they need to produce the power generators and the warp drive engines.

When they're attempting to test the engines in space for the first time, on a space shuttle flight, the bad guys (we think they're probably Chinese) sabotage the mission and steal the technology for themselves. The warp drive technology, it turns out, can also be used as a weapon far superior to the atomic bomb, and the book descends into a race against time, to see who will get control of the new technology, and the world.

If you enjoy a novel that's not all that long on plot, but filled with a ton of scientific speculations, you'll really like this one. It reminded me of early SF, like Rocket Ship Galileo by Heinlein.

Short Takes

(10/22/08) Regarding the Zelazny stuff in Manna from Heaven, there's a reason it wasn't previously published. Most of it was unfinished/unpolished/disconnected. The Amber stuff at the end seemed to be going somewhere, but he must have passed before he could finish it, which is a real pity.

(11/12/08) Finished reading the chronicle of Lavan Firestorm (Brightly Burning) last night. I really used to like Mercedes Lackey's stuff, and it's still good for some semi-amusing light reading.

(11/13/08) Started re-reading Beguilement, by Bujold. I don't like this fantasy series as well as the Chalion stuff, but it's still Bujold.

Start Late, Finish Rich by David Bach

(Review written 7/11/07)
I'm in the middle of reading Start Late, Finish Rich, by David Bach. I ran across a reference to his book in the middle of a financial article I was reading online, and the local library had a copy, so I figured, what the heck?

Bach sounds like a cross between Carlton Sheets and Robert Schuller, alternately giving real life strategies for retiring wealthy, and spouting aphorisms and slogans guaranteed to get you pumped up about your future. This, I think, would be a fantastic book for someone who's just getting started out in the working world to read (as a matter of fact, I recommended it to my daughter), as the strategies apply equally well to those starting early and those starting late. I think the best piece of advice in here is along the lines of "don't beat yourself up over your past mistakes."

I find myself fairly often saying, "if only I'd have bought that stock I was going to" or "if only I'd have bought that piece of property just outside town" or "if only I'd have gone into business for myself without that bad partner." The point that Bach makes is that even if you've fouled up, financially, in the past, that doesn't preclude you from succeeding in the future, if you just get with the program once again. This also has applications for those who haven't necessarily messed up big time, but who may have gotten temporarily sidetracked by the vagaries of fortune - like being unemployed for two years ;-).

This book hasn't dropped any astounding revelations on me; I've been doing most of it for years. I guess I should find it reassuring that a guy who travels around the country doing financial planning seminars is telling me to do what I'm already doing, for the most part.

He talks a little bit about finding your "Latte Factor." This is a term for some area in your life that you can economize by eliminating that, e.g., daily latte, excessive dining out, unnecessary luxuries (aren't luxuries by definition unnecessary?), and then using the money you free up by quitting those habits to fund your retirement. There are a couple of problems with this approach for me.

First, I've already pretty much eliminated the lattes of life from my life. I don't go to Starbucks, I pack a sack lunch daily, only going out to lunch for special occasions, with friends. I don't even eat dinner out on a weekly basis, perhaps twice a month at most, unless I'm on the road and have no choice. I don't go out to see all the new movies at the theatres, just a couple of major blockbusters a year, the rest I rent at the video store, and if we average one movie a week, I'd be surprised. So there's not a lot of fat left in my life to trim is what I'm saying.

Second, the numbers he tosses around seem geared towards a really urban crowd. He talks about $17.50 for a martini, $7 for a pack of cigarettes, and so forth. Here in the rural West, $5 for a cocktail is considered exorbitant, and I don't think I've ever paid over $3 for a pack of smokes. So, it's a little tough to believe the resultant investment numbers, when the savings figures just aren't there.

However, for the vast majority of people out there, I think, this may be an eye-opener, to really take a look at how much money we all fritter away on entertainment, socializing, eating non-nutritious snack food, and so on. At the very least, one should always be aware of and question habitual expenses.

Once you've saved all this money, Bach suggests that the best place to invest it is in your employer-sponsored 401K plan. At the very least, of course, one should put enough money in the 401K at work to gain the employers matching funds - that's just FREE money. On top of that, you contribute to the plan with pre-tax dollars, so you have to work less hours to invest a given amount each month that you would if you used money Uncle Sam had already tapped. So, it ain't rocket science, but it's good solid practice. My wife and I have been doing this for years, and while there ain't millions in the accounts yet, it's surprising how much money one accumulates systematically, if you just leave it alone to grow. He doesn't say it, but I will, "NEVER EVER touch your 401K! until you're ready to retire." The IRS will get back at you, big time.

As far as what investments to pick within the umbrella of a tax-advantaged plan, he's got lots of options, but the big picture is diversification. One wants to have a little bit of everything in your portfolio. I'm not going to get into the strategies for doing that, just read the book. However, I was reassured to note that he strongly recommends being invested in one of the Asset Allocation mutual funds, which automatically balances and rebalances your money across a pre-selected range of sectors, and which in some cases can even be automatically adjusted towards a different mix the closer you get to retirement age. This just happens to be the type of funds my wife and I had recommended to us by both our financial planners a couple of years ago when we were rolling over money out of our 401K plans from previous employers to IRAs. In our 401Ks at our current employers, we like to play the market a bit, just for fun, and actually actively manage our funds, but the IRAs are on autopilot.

Which brings up something else he said that I thought was pretty cool. "Your investment strategy should be extremely boring." The exciting, flashy, type of investment that your buddy is going to tip you off to at a cocktail party isn't going to cut it for the long haul. You might pick up a good return in a short period, once, or twice, but over the long haul the best bet is to just steadily invest in a broad spectrum of stocks, bonds, etc. Dial it in and leave it alone, except to occasionally boost your contributions if you're not maxed out yet.

Where I'm not too sure if I agree with him here is in his percentages. For someone my age, he's saying I should be putting 25% of my pay in a retirement plan. I'm at around half of that right now, and I think that may be sufficient. Of course, I may have a slightly different set of priorities. I'd like to enjoy some of the fruits of success now, rather than later, and I'm more interested in putting some money in an investment account that I can tap on demand, without paying any tax penalties, at any time that I want. Trying to strike a balance between having a retirement somewhat dialed in, and having sufficient cash reserves on hand to take advantage of other investment opportunities or purchasing opportunities that arise without warning. For example, if you need to buy a new car anyway, you're better off paying cash for it than financing it, in my opinion (I think Bach would agree). And, if you have plenty of cash that's in a semi-liquid state, you can take advantage of truly good deals, someone else's desperation to sell, or whatever. If you don't have cash reserves, you pay RETAIL. But that's just my personal philosophy.

The one thing upon which he and I agree fully is that you should never carry credit card debt. Keep those cards paid off, or don't keep them at all. Credit cards can be handy tools, if used properly, and sometimes there are things you just can't do without them, like purchasing items online, booking an airline flight, or renting a car. They're also great for unexpected expenses or emergencies, giving you a bit of a grace period to free up assets that are perhaps not quite liquid.

He's got some good stuff in here, too, about generating additional income. The first way, of course, is to get a raise out of your employer, and he covers very briefly some strategies for doing just that. There's also a lot of information about starting your own business in your free time, either doing direct marketing, running an EBay store, buying a franchise, or getting into rental real estate.

Bach's got a pretty good section about buying real estate, which was interesting. The wife and I had a piece of rental property for a couple of years, and took advantage of the loophole that allows you to sell a house you've lived in for two of the last five years without paying any capital gains tax. Real estate seems to be the only place I've made any money with my investments over the years. The only thing is that I hate being in the landlord business. I might be able to get back into it if I could find a good property management company to look after things and who weren't too expensive, and who had a good track record for finding stable tenants quickly.

The final 1/3 of the book is a bit of a hodgepodge of philosophical things. One of the principals he gets into fairly deeply is the idea of being a giver, and the concept of a tithe. Now, I'm quite familiar with the concept of tithing, having been a fundamentalist type of christian for a number of years, and I fully believe that being a generous giver really unlocks the blessings that God has in store for believers.

That said, I'm not so sure that I see any scriptural basis for it to apply to unbelievers. Bach almost approaches this from the old "give to get" philosophy, and claims that it's some sort of immutable law of the universe, but I just can't justify it. Even for believers, sometimes the formula isn't all that straightforward, and we just continue to give when we don't feel all that blessed because we're commanded to do so. In my personal experience, it's always worked out well, and it even seems that the money in the budget stretches farther, the more I give back to God and his people.

In fact, I've had several conversations with my good friend Law and my wife and a few others about this subject. I get a little (the feeling is hard to describe, sort of irritated/amused/thinking "Well, duh!") bugged when people whine about being strapped for cash, and I see them throw a five dollar bill in the collection plate on Sunday, when I know their household income is probably close to six figures. I'm thinking to myself, "You'll always be strapped until you start giving freely and wholeheartedly." Oh, and "sacrificially." If it doesn't hurt a bit to give, you're not doing it right.

Anyway, Bach attempts to provide a bit of balance at the tag end of things by talking about how to live life fully and be happy and all that rainbow and unicorn stuff. That's the subject of a whole different type of book, in my opinion, but maybe he just doesn't want to be lumped in with greedy, money-grubbing, capitalist swine. As I heard from a multi-millionaire acquaintance one time, "You can be poor and happy, or rich and happy, and, having experienced both, it's far better to be rich." Probably not an original thought, but always relevant.

Short Takes

(9/10/08) I did finish reading Saturn's Children by Charles Stross and Spend to the End by Laurence J. Kotlikoff. Neither one of those books really did much for me. Started reading the new Reacher novel by Lee Child. He's always good.

(9/29/08) Did finish Greywalker by Kat Richardson (quite good).

(10/9/08) Started reading Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick, and decided I must just take it back to the library and get something decent to read.

Thorn Queen by Richelle Mead

If you haven't read the first book in the Dark Swan series, Storm Born, this review could contain spoilers regarding certain events in that novel. Thorn Queen picks up Eugenie's tale right after Storm Born. Eugenie is having an interesting time settling in as the ruler of the Thorn Land. On a tour of her land, she discovers a couple of things. First is that the people in her land, accustomed to a more lush environment when Aeson was ruler, are suffering great difficulties in surviving, now that the land has become much like her native Arizona desert. The second is that someone is kidnapping gentry girls from her land, never to be seen again. On these two problems hangs the rest of the tale.

Eugenie tries to show her people how to live in their new land, based on her understanding of how modern technology enables people to live in the Arizona desert, with irrigation techniques and by mining its mineral wealth to trade with other kingdoms for the food and other goods they need. She enlists the aid of a foppish young prince of a neighboring land, Leith, who was born with few magical powers, and so he compensates with what appears to be a natural talent for engineering. He helps her to design an irrigation system for one of her villages. Of course, Leith is hopelessly in love with Eugenie, and his mother, Katrice, has hopes off marrying him off to Eugenie and forming an alliance. Things go rapidly south when Eugenie finally gives him the "just friends" speech.

Eugenie also begins searching for the person or persons who are causing the gentry girls to disappear. The likely culprit seems to be a group of bandits operating nearby. She hunts them down, but has a nasty surprise when it turns out that they have fire demons at their command. Her magical strengths are not sufficient to fight the fire demons, so she has to enlist some help to take them down, including her half sister, Jasmine, who has inherited some of the Storm King's mastery of water magic, and can summon water demons.

A good portion of this novel is about Eugenie finally beginning to accept her heritage and her responsibilities to the gentry land she's come to rule. She fights it, but in the end must submit her own desires to accomplish the greater good for her people. I found it interesting how she learns to work new magics, blending her understanding of things like atoms and molecules with the more intuitive way of imaging the elements that the gentry use.

Once again, a strong female protagonist who is willing (in the end) to grow and change, a couple of gratuitous sex scenes, and some great political intrigue make this a pretty good read. Mead also begins to flesh out some of her supporting characters a bit more, and we begin to suspect that they might even have lives and minds of their own.

Short Takes

(8/17/08) Reading Rosenberg's Dead Heat, scary stuff.

(8/22/08) Finished reading Rolling Thunder by Varley. The whole darned thing, while a fun read, turns out to be a shaggy dog. Reader challenge - read the whole thing and tell me how many Heinlein titles you find in the text. The three in the final sentence of the novel are freebies, they don't count.

(8/22/08) Began reading a new Walter Jon Williams novel, Implied Spaces, that's mildly entertaining. Looking at the front pages, I realize I haven't kept up on his recent stuff very well. I have everything he wrote up till his last six novels. Gotta get hoppin'.

Book Blogger Hop - February 4 to 7

It's time for the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Jennifer at Crazy for Books.



Today's question:
"What are you reading now, and why are you reading it?"
As usual, I have several things going at once. I'm reading A Path Out of the Desert by Kenneth M. Pollack. It's an analysis of the political, economic, and strategic situation in the Middle East and some policy recommendations from Mr. Pollack, who was a national security team member in several previous administrations. I'm reading it because he's written some interesting stuff before, and I like to hear what the experts have to say on things every so often.
I'm also re-reading Ghost by John Ringo, on my Nook. I reviewed the fourth book in his Paladin of Shadows series on this site a while back, and thought I ought to put up some reviews of earlier books in the series. I'm a big fan of Ringo's works.
Also reading, but may not finish, Aaron Alston's Doc Sidhe, also on my Nook. I haven't read anything by him before, but it was there and I thought I'd try it. It's a product of one of my Baen free CDs.
Finally, picked up Kitty's House of Horrors by Vaughn last night just before bed and got forty or fifty pages into it. I've been reviewing this series here, and when I finish this one and one more, I'll be current with the series. Vaughn's work is consistently entertaining.
Happy Hopping!

Storm Born by Richelle Mead

I read a couple of Richelle Mead's Succubus series books when my friend, Stef, loaned them to me, but haven't really followed the series past that point. I found a couple of books in the Dark Swan series at the library bookstore, and thought they looked entertaining.

The heroine of our series is Eugenie Markham, a woman trained in the shamanic tradition, who owns her own business as an exorcist of sorts. When supernatural beings are bothering people in Arizona, she comes running and sends the creatures back to either the Otherworld - the land of the Gentry, or the Underworld - the land of the dead.
Eugenie is hired by a man to find his lost or kidnapped sister. He believes she has been abducted against her will by the Gentry - Faeries, if you will. Eugenie doesn't like to travel to the Otherworld, as it can be quite dangerous to mortals, but finally decides to go and rescue her.

In the early going, Eugenie becomes involved with a veterinarian named Kiyo, who is darkly attractive and who turns out, eventually, to be a kitsune, kind of like a were-fox. He is actually a half-breed, and has ties both in the Otherworld and the mortal realm. Eugenie has, in the past, bound some spirits to her service, and she ends up taking those servants with her when she journeys to the kingdoms of the Gentry to find out what has become of the girl, Jasmine. Her spies on the other side have told her that Jasmine is being held by Aeson, a king of the Alder land.

She attempts to get Dorian, king of the Oak land and enemy of Aeson's, to help her, but is unwilling to pay his price, so she and her companions try by themselves the first time. Eugenie is in for a rude awakening when she arrives at Aeson's keep. Her attempt at a surprise attack is foiled by a traitor in her group, and she also finds out that she may be the daughter of the Storm King, a gentry lord whose goal was to unite all of their kingdoms and to conquer the mortal realm, as well. When she returns home, her mother confirms that she is, indeed, the Storm King's daughter. Eugenie spends the rest of the book alternately denying her heritage, while discovering that she has the need to use her half-gentry magical talents to confront Aeson again and bring Jasmine home.

An entertaining novel, a very quick read. Has a couple of quite graphic sex scenes, which really weren't all that necessary for plot development. It seems as if Mead is unconsciously mimicking some of the elements of Laurell K. Hamilton's two series' heroines, Merry Gentry and Anita Blake. Is it absolutely necessary that there be a love triangle to make things interesting? I had thought at first that the story wasn't going to take itself very seriously, as Eugenie starts out with a job performing an exorcism on a pair of running shoes, and one of her spirit sidekicks, Nandi, sounds just like Eeyore. Things turn seriously quickly, and she kills off Nandi and her comedy relief in the first violent confrontation. Ah well.

Short Takes

(7/26/08) Finished a book by John Stossel, Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity. A pretty good take on things that are debated in America today, though the articles seemed to lack depth. Probably just a compilation of various short reports he's done in the news business, really. Only thing I disagreed with was his take on child-rearing. Reminded me once again that my views are more libertarian than republican, as far as our major political parties are concerned.

(8/10/08) Finished Jhegaala, by Brust - not his best work.

(8/11/08) Read Kushiel's Mercy for a while before dinner. Carey just gets better the more she writes...Continued reading until I forced myself to put it down around 10:30. I'd have stayed up until the wee hours if I hadn't, just to finish it.

Princess of Wands by John Ringo

(review written 10/17/07)

Soccer Mom goes Rambo? This seems to be the underlying theme of Princess of Wands, by John Ringo. As always, Ringo writes fast-paced action that entertains, but there's just a few flaws in the book that niggle at my mind.

We have Barbara Everette, a "good Christian" woman, who was raised as a military brat, and whose father instilled in her a penchant for martial arts mastery and firearms proficiency. One weekend, while on a solo "vacation" from her husband and three kids, she gets forced into a conflict with a minor demigod who has begun gathering worshipers down in the Louisiana bayou. Her strong faith in God and Christ protects her from his evil influence, and allows her to manifest some pretty strong offensive "magic" skills and take him down. She's then recruited by a secret organization that battles supernatural evil creatures.

The first thing that sorta bugs me in this story is the cardboard cutout nature of some of the supporting characters, especially her husband. He's briefly summarized as a typical sports obsessed, helpless in the kitchen (and probably in the bedroom), self-absorbed twit. When his wife tells him she's taking off for the weekend by herself, he can't even rouse himself from the playoff game he's watching on tv to ask her any questions except, "Who's going to cook for us?" Same scene replayed later when she's leaving for a week to go to a training camp for paladins.

I have a tough time believing that a heroine as strong, intelligent and capable as Barbara is ever going to settle for someone this dopey. I also have a tough time believing that husbands that shallow actually exist, except in sitcoms. Their three kids in the story are pretty much just scenery, as well.

There's a conversation about going armed whenever leaving the house where Barbara says something like, "I'm pretty sure I would have been date-raped a couple of times, if the guys I was with hadn't known I was packing (a pistol) and wasn't afraid to use it" GMAFB! Not only would she not get date-raped, she wouldn't ever get asked out a 2nd time. How in the world did she snag a husband, with that attitude?

Barbara remembers being attacked by a knife-wielding rapist when she was in college, and disabling him quickly with her martial arts skills. She's also spent a lot of time at the gun range over the years, perfecting her target shooting. Ok, both plausible, I suppose. I'm not sure how well this translates into true combat skills when she finally faces a half-dozen armed thugs attacking her through the window of her hotel room, but she's able to take them all out without taking any damage, herself. Supernatural aid?

I was sorta irritated that Ringo introduces a cop character named Kelly, gives him way more fleshing out than any other character in the book, then kills him off halfway through. Wouldn't it be nice for a supernatural crime fighter to have a friend on the police force in later installments?

I'm not sure if Ringo's playing it straight or not in this book, but one of the themes that emerge is that not all Christians are the judgemental, holier-than-thou sorts that get skewered in the media. Or, at least, Barbara is not, and she claims there are others who aren't, either. We don't meet any of them in this book, though. Makes me wonder...again, a cardboard cutout view of the Christian and soccer mom life. We don't hear about any of Barbara's friends, who presumably would be that sort of Christian, and that she'd be close to. We are briefly informed that she was PTA president, and a couple other things, but still she has no close friends that appear in the story. Doesn't seem to have any commitments to worry about when she goes jaunting off on the weekend or for the whole week, like attending a bible study, teaching a sunday school class, or anything community oriented. Doesn't sound like a "good Christian woman" to me, but hey, I'm funny that way.

Ringo's got this ecumenical thing going on with the secret organization. Most of its members are not Christians, but mostly Wiccans, worshipers of Norse Gods, oriental gods, etc. There's an ongoing dialog about how all of the "good" gods are perhaps just facets of "The Light" and the christian or "White God" is another, albeit extremely powerful one. This is so totally in conflict with Christian doctrine, i.e., "I am the Way...no man comes to the Father but through Me.", that I begin to think the point of this book is more an anti-apologetic than not. He seems to be attempting to reconcile christianity with all those other "equally valid" religions out there. Very New Age.

Anyway, the story is pretty good, the concept interesting, but I know that Mr. Ringo can do a much better job of plotting, characterization, and making the details of the story consistent. If he's going to engage our brains by introducing philosophical discussions, he needs to keep the rest of the story more believable, so we're not distracted.

Short Takes

(6/14/08) Started reading the latest Richard North Patterson book, The Race, last night, but got sick and tired of the politics..no duh...it's about a presidential race.

(6/20/08) This William Gibson book, Spook Country, is really slow reading - he's a good writer, but one really has to pay attention to the details.

(6/28/08) Reading Captain's Fury, by Butcher, all the way to its conclusion. This has been a good series, and should continue for an indefinite time the way it's looking.

State of Mind by Sven Michael Davison

The author was kind enough to send me this book for review a while ago, and it was an interesting novel. The protagonist of the story is Jake Travissi, a workaholic homicide policeman in Los Angeles. He was expelled from the force prior to the beginning of the story for using excessive force while arresting a child pornographer who was also the governor's son. He has been reinstated now, because he has agreed to participate in a pilot program to implant the P-Chip in law enforcement personnel. The program is run by Homeland Security, and the story goes "spooky" pretty quickly.

The P-Chip is supposed to be the best thing since buttered bread, I guess. If you have a P-Chip installed in the back of your brain, you can use it to directly link to the web to access any kind of information you might need. The law enforcement people in the program are also able to use it to access, what else?, law enforcement databases worldwide, to help them identify and capture criminals, terrorists, and drug dealers.

One of the inventors of the P-Chip is gunned down while speaking at a conference, and Jake's team's first assignment is to find out who, besides the killer, is involved. The government has been implanting P-chips in prisoners for a while now, for testing purposes, and because it turns out that people with a P-chip can actually be controlled through the chip. So far, the chip has been successful in turning hardened criminals into law-abiding citizens again. However, the technology that allows the chip to be controlled from the outside has some potential for abuse, and it turns out that Jake's team is being controlled by a group of hackers called the God Heads. The God Heads are manipulating the investigation by planting false memories in the chipped policemen.

There are a ton of plot twists, betrayals, plots and counterplots in this novel. One of the things I thought was an odd flaw in the novel actually turned out to be part of a plot device in the end. The only problem is that as a reader, I ended up as confused about what really went on in the story as the God Head controlled P-chippers. When every action in the book could have been a planted memory, rather than a real event, the whole thing takes on a "then I woke up" aura.

It's an interesting read from the standpoint of the possible and probable use and misuse of near-future technology.

Short Takes

(5/21/08) Stayed up a bit too late finishing reading a Mary Higgins Clark mystery, All Around the Town. Not a bad read; she can go on my approved reading list.

(6/6/08) Read Gotcha Capitalism by Bob Sullivan. This is a pretty good book for people who don't pay a lot of attention to their bills and other financial matters to read to let them know how much money they may be losing to hidden fees by all the companies they deal with, but after five or six chapters, I haven't really found anything that surprised me, but I keep up on that sort of stuff as a hobby, anyway. I don't usually run my credit cards up over the limit, or pay any interest on them - I'm one of those consumers that cc issuers hate. I also don't ever take money out of ATMs that aren't associated with my bank, so I don't get hit with those kinds of fees, and I haven't had to pay overdraft fees in the last thirty years, that I can recall.

I just had a convo with my son about ATM fees the other day while he was home. Hope he took it to heart and starts planning his weekend outing budgets a little better, so he can quit throwing away money for nothing. Title company fees seem to be pretty much unavoidable, and in my case, they're only likely to take place a couple of times in my entire lifetime - only time I had an issue with them was when I refinanced a home I'd already owned and paid for title insurance on a few years previously, and I'm thinking "why should I pay this again so soon?" It's a racket.

The chapter on mutual fund expense ratios, and kickbacks to HR folks and plan administrators wasn't a total surprise, but it's definitely irritating to think how much money they're scamming out of those of us who care enough to put away money for retirement. I'll need to review the mutual funds I'm in to see what their expense ratios are one of these days, and maybe make some adjustments. I'll keep y'all posted as I go along in this book. Looks like mostly good info.

How to Profit from the Coming Devaluation by Harry Browne

(review written 9/25/08)
I can recall, over the last thirty or so years, having seen a book on my Mom's bookshelves in the living room called How to Profit from the Coming Devaluation. Forget the author's name (Harry Browne), but it was written in 1970. Not so coincidentally, Mom pulled it off the shelves and brought it along last weekend, and I found myself browsing through it a bit, just to see if it had any applications to our current "financial meltdown".

The author seems to have a pretty solid take on how the government manipulates the money supply in the U.S. to create inflation/growth, and to a certain extent what the effects of the inevitable deflation/devaluation are on our economy.

The boom and bust cycles of the last few recessionary periods that I'm able to remember are perfectly described in advance in this book. The only bone I have to pick with the author is that none of what he described in the way of truly serious consequences seems to have happened, such as massive rioting, total collapse of the banking system, and so forth, so I'm having a tough time taking his recommendations all that seriously. He'd predicted that these things would happen in the next couple of years - but they didn't. What do we do with false prophets?

Just a few of the things that he said to do:
1) Move away from metropolitan areas.
I've got no beef with this. I'd much rather live in a more rural area, just from a quality of life standpoint. Also, in the case of a natural disaster, such as we've seen with Katrina and Ike lately, one's dependence on infrastructure in rural areas doesn't seem to be quite as bad. Folks out in the country tend to have some foodstuffs stored up - probably home canned - and might have some livestock they can count on for food. Often, they have backup generators and/or kerosene lanterns and heaters, a fireplace and a large woodpile...you know the scenario.
There's no reason a person can't be prepared for a disaster in a metro area, but most folks just aren't. I always figured if we lost power for any length of time, we'd be ok, as I have propane stoves and heaters, kerosene lamps and heaters, and usually a fair amount of canned goods on hand. I should make it a habit to keep some fresh potable water around, too. I used to have it on hand in the drinking water tank of the camper all the time, but since I tore that apart and got rid of it, I haven't.
2) Keep a significant chunk of cash on hand, in case the banks close.
Sounds like a good idea, if one had a safe to keep it in. I think this one is somewhat outdated, with the amount of ATMs in existence. So, if the banks actually closed down nationwide and you weren't able to take your money out, there might be problems. But would the entire electronic banking system collapse at the same time. Would your currency be worth anything in the midst of something that catastrophic?
Which brings us to point 3:
3) Buy junk silver coins or silver bullion in case of a currency collapse.
This might be a pretty good idea, too. Silver will always have some intrinsic value and be useful in barter and trade, should our whole economy collapse. There's a problem with buying junk silver at this point that probably didn't exist back when he was writing - only 8 years past the removal of real silver from our silver coinage - silver coins have gotten to be very scarce. He talks about a premium of about 10% over the face value of the coins to buy junk (circulated) silver, but today $10 in face value coins is selling for $50! That's a crappy investment if I ever saw one. If you happen to have just snagged any real silver coins that came your way over the years and stuck them in your piggy bank, you probably got them for face value, and they're a good investment, but it would be rather impractical to do today.
On the subject of silver bullion. This is a commodity with a well-documented and widely agreed upon trade price, so it makes a certain amount of sense. It generally sells (and has sold) in minimum ten ounce bars, so it's a little more unwieldy for smaller purchases than coins would be. The spot price this morning, when I checked, was $13 per ounce. It fluctuates up and down with world markets, but it's easy enough to buy and to trade with others, I suppose.
4) Don't take on debt.
Good idea. No problems with that.
5) Don't invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, money markets...etc.
Diversification is key. Don't get yourself over committed in any one category.
6) Set up a Swiss bank account - in Swiss francs.
Would the modern equivalent of this be to set up a numbered account in the Cayman Islands in Euros? I don't know. Back when he suggested this, the government probably didn't automatically assume that those types of accounts were for nefarious purposes. I think at this point you might open yourself up to some unwanted scrutiny. Maybe if you opened the account while on vacation in the Bahamas?
Do Swiss francs still exist? Or were they devoured by the EU?
And how in the heck do you get your money out of a Swiss bank when civilization collapses?
Upon reflection this morning, there's not a lot of his plan I'm all that jazzed about implementing, even in the face of Wall Street's implosion. The money I'm putting into mutual funds is in the umbrella of 401K plans, with an unfortunately long time horizon before I can start to draw on it. Unless everything collapses, it should generate a decent return in that amount of time. If everything does collapse, I don't think anyone is going to be able to retire, anyway, we'll all be busy surviving. Unless I'm willing to cash it all out, take the tax penalty hit, and go live on a compound somewhere...
If the opportunity arises to buy silver cheaply, it might not hurt to have precious metals as a part of my overall portfolio, but I'm not gonna knock myself out trying to buy some now.
The thing that makes the most sense is to take the LDS church approach of stocking up a bit on canned goods in the pantry. We're in some high inflation times for groceries right now. If you buy things that will last indefinitely on the shelf at a sale price right now, you'll definitely save money in the next couple of years, as you won't have to pay immediately inflated prices. I may stock up a bit on some canned soups and vegetables, and maybe even some canned hams and things. This is not only a good "investment", but will come in handy if we ever have a flood, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, or whatever. I should also make sure my spare propane tanks are topped off at all times, and fill up my five gallon jug of kerosene. Maybe picking up a few more kerosene lanterns at an auction or yard sale wouldn't hurt, either. And, I should pick up a few cases of bottled water to stash in the basement, or work on bottling some of my own in old milk jugs (thoroughly washed), or in my five gallon camp containers. Nothing wrong with disaster preparedness, and if it saves a little money somewhere down the line, that's good, too.

Overall, this is a good book to get you thinking about being prepared for a worst case scenario. Fortunately, the worst case scenario really hasn't come to pass since the book was written, so take it all with a grain (or maybe a 25 lb bag) of salt.