Book Blogger Hop - March 4 to 7

Time for another Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Jennifer at Crazy for Books.

Today's question:
"Who's your all-time favorite book villain?"

Saruman, from Lord of the Rings trilogy by Tolkien.

Just like most of the characters which Tolkien wrote, Saruman had a well thought out history. We glimpse bits and pieces of it through the trilogy, and in the LotR apocrypha. The wizards in Middle Earth were basically powerful angelic beings sent to oppose evil, and were very highly regarded by both elves and men. Saruman, like another famous semi-literary figure, fell victim to his pride, and eventually a lust for power. In his brief dialogs with Gandalf it becomes evident that his ego must be fed at all times, and one who was in the high councils of the mighty found himself craving more. More recognition, more power, more knowledge. He was the expert on the Palintiri, and looked deep into the heart of Sauron, who deceived him into believing that Saruman and Sauron could rule Middle Earth together. He's such a great villain because he just feels "real", not like some cardboard cutout thug placed in the story only as a foil for our hero.

A Deeper Blue by John Ringo

A Deeper Blue is the fifth and possibly final novel in this series. Mike, Kildar, Jenkins is in a self-induced drunken stupor at the start of this novel, emotionally incapacitated by the loss of a loved one in the previous book (spoiler?). Unfortunately, islamic terrorists have teamed up with drug runners in the Caribbean to attempt to import VX nerve gas to the continental US, and perpetrate a WMD attack. When the President calls, Mike won't answer, so his second in command, Adams, and some of the intel and combat teams head to Florida to work with the CIA, FBI, ATF, and all the alphabet soup you can eat to try to stop the terrorists.

When Adams and Vanner, the Kildar's intel chief, are shot in a raid that turns into a trap, Mike must rouse himself from his caravanserai and head for the States to avenge them and continue the operation. There's lots of great action on the high seas, as the Mountain Tigers take to cigarette boats to pursue the smugglers, others fast-rope onto a freighter to interrogate the crew, and Katya "Cottontail" impersonates a Girls Gone Wild coed to infiltrate the drug lord's yacht.

True to form, no surprises here. Action-packed fun for mature audiences only.

Pale Demon by Kim Harrison

I was so excited, waiting for this book, and it got to be the first actual purchase for my Xmas Nook! The purchase and download went far too smoothly to be believed, and I was reading it within minutes. This novel in The Hollows series gives us a chance to see a little more of Harrison's world than she has revealed before.

Rachel must travel to San Francisco to attend her brother's wedding, and to attend a Coven meeting where she hopes to get the sanctions and shunning brought against her by the witches removed. Rachel has been caught one too many times performing black magic, and the situation doesn't look good, except that she has been assured of some covert support at the meeting by a couple of the witches who have seen her in action, Oliver and Vivian. You know, this whole series has just a touch of that out-of-the-frying-pan flavor that I like so well, as Rachel has mostly been caught in reactive mode to the changes around her, and as she discovers more about herself, the world she's been born into, and the elves, witches, weres and demons around her, she has used that knowledge to survive the latest round of slings and arrows, figuratively speaking, grow up, and move on.

Trent also has business on the West Coast, it transpires, and needs to hire Rachel to be his bodyguard for the trip. She still has him bound to herself as a familiar, as a consequence of the last escapade in the series, but has agreed to remove the curse from him, and break the unnatural ties that bind them. Trent is being forced into a closer association with Rachel than either of them would apparently prefer - leaving deeper, less conscious feelings out of the situation - because Ceri is about to have her baby, and his real bodyguard and manservant, Quen, refuses to leave Cincinatti at this crucial time. Trent won't disclose the nature of his business to Rachel, except to say that it is very important, and personal, and as you might well imagine, this doesn't sit well with her. She just has to keep poking and prying at things.

When agents of the Coven conspire to block Rachel from getting on a direct flight to San Francisco (why don't any of these people use their brooms in the manner they're supposed to? I mean, if those teen upstarts from Hogwarts can do it, why not?), she, Ivy, Jenks and Trent are forced to travel by land, across the country. Road trip on steroids! Or maybe hemorrhoids. They start out in Trent's HumVee and ride in style for a while, but after an couple of attacks by either the Coven's goons or Trent's former in-laws, they are forced to abandon that vehicle in Saint Louis and proceed in Rachel's mom's battlestar of a car.

This is the first time, I think, that we've been given much of a glimpse at what lies outside of the big urban areas after The Turn. The badlands went really really bad. People generally try to stick to the interstates whenever possible, as you never know what sort of creatures are lurking in the shadowy byways of America these days. So, the road trip in Pale Demon isn't Kerouac, by any stretch of the imagination, but it serves as a pretty good plot...er...vehicle.

Lots of time in this book for Harrison to flesh out her major characters a bit further, and there are many lessons learned on the nature of loyalty, family, and love. Drat the wait, I want to see what happens next!

Choosers of the Slain by John Ringo

Possibly the best part of this book comes from the forward, "Any attempt to learn anything from these books is disrecommended by the author, the publisher and the author's mother who wishes to state that he was a very nice boy and she doesn't know what went wrong." Ringo cracks me up sometimes.

In the third book in the Paladin of Shadows series, Mike is pretty well settled in as the ruler, or Kildar, of his own private Idaho in Georgia (the country not the state). The training of his mountain militia is going well, and the training of his harem even better. The crops are coming in and the new brewery is almost built. What more can a man ask for?

Well, a normal man might not ask for anything much, but a senator sure will, and when Mike is called to Washington to meet with a powerful member of the President's opposition, he's not especially happy about it. It seems that one of the congressman's friends has lost his daughter in Eastern Europe somewhere, presumably kidnapped and sold into white slavery. Senator Traskel makes an offer the Kildar can't quite refuse, both because of the five million dollar reward and his nagging sense that something just doesn't smell quite right here.

So Mike takes some of his fighters and intel folks off into the hinterlands - actually, they start in the hinterlands and head to the big cities - to see what they can dig up. The problem of sexual slavery is huge in the ruins of ancient Samarkand, and Mike smells a great big rat living in the moral sewers.

Just another rapid-fire adventure, complete with the usual sex and blood and rock and roll. There is one amusing side plot going on, with the Keldaran lad Mike has designated to get the marketing started for Mountain Tiger beer booking a convention booth in Sin City. Mike and his troupe of lovelies and heavies take a break from the combat action to fly into town, wow the sales reps, and disrupt the smooth operations of a couple of governments, while they're at it.

Kildar by John Ringo

Kildar is the second book in the Paladin of Shadows series, which starts with Ghost. In this book, Mike wandering through Eastern Europe, looking for a place to lie low after foiling several terrorist plots in the last book. He's driving through a snowstorm in Georgia (the country, not the state) and gets stranded in a small town in the mountains. While getting to know the local constabulary a bit, he discovers an old caravanserai for sale for a cool million Euros, with ownership rights to a small valley with tenant farmers also thrown in, which turns out to be just what he needs.

The tenant farmers are called the Keldara, and in an amazingly convenient coincidence, all of the women turn out to be supermodel gorgeous and the men to be the descendents of ancient warriors. Mike sets out to modernize the valley and its subistence farming techniques to improve the lives of the Keldara, and hires a cadre of his old special forces pals to train up a mountain militia to defend his new digs, and incidentally to interdict Chechen terrorist movements through the area.

As one might expect from experience with Ghost, the story is filled with lots of military trivia, graphic battles, and gratuitous sex. The climax (if you'll forgive the expression) is reached when Mike's Keldaran forces defeat a light batallion of Chechen bad guys with five squads of half-trained farm boys, who catch on to soldiering like tigers in a sheep cot, and when they rescue a group of girls who were sold to the Chechens to be sex slaves and Mike diverts them to his own harem, for lack of any better ideas.

Oh, and most importantly, the women of the valley brew the best beer in the known universe.

Just a fun romp to while away the hours.

Short Takes

(12/9/09) Read an entire novel by Scalzi, The Last Colony, in one sitting. At one point in time, the main character of the novel, John Perry, gets addressed as Commodore Perry, as a joke. I wonder at this point if all three of the volumes in the series had to be back-edited to make the main character's last name Perry, or if Scalzi had the joke in mind all along.

(12/16/09) Still reading through all the Scalzi the library holds. Agent to the Stars was pretty cute, and The Android's Dream is fair to middlin' but finishes with a big deus ex)

(12/24/09) Finished Crossover, by Shepherd. A fairly good new author. Reading his second book in the series, Breakaway.

Ghost by John Ringo

Ghost is the first book in Ringo's Paladin of Shadows series. I had a review of the fourth book, Unto the Breach, already written and posted it here in June, so since I've got them handy both in paperback and Nook form, I'll probably do some catchup and give you some info on the earlier books, too.
Ghost is written as a series of three interlinked stories, which would work as novellas, or which might have been serialized in the SF mags at first. In the first little vignette, Mike Harmon, a retired Navy Seal who is trying to settle in to life as a college student after leaving the teams, witnesses a co-ed getting snatched by what are obviously professionals, and decides quickly to do something about it.

He follows the kidnappers, and discovers that they are terrorists who intend to ship the girls they've captured -50 in all - to an undisclosed location in the Middle East, and broadcast their torture and murder on worldwide TV to force the U.S. to remove its forces from the area. Mike, whose nickname in the teams was "Ghost" for his ability to move and kill silently, stows away on the plane the terrorists are using and hitchhikes all the way to Syria to their hidden base. There, he foils the plot and rescues the girls, of course. The U.S. government at its highest levels is grateful for his exploits and rewards him with lots of cash and sort of puts him on retainer to help them deal with other issues that may come up.

The second story takes place in the Caribbean, where Mike is enjoying some R&R on the fishing boat he bought with some of the loot from the first story. He's partying with some beach bunnies when the call comes in that terrorists have a nuclear weapon that they're smuggling through the area to plant somewhere in Florida and detonate. Mike drops his fun and games and picks up his weapons and heads out to foil the plot.

The third story shifts to Eastern Europe, where Mike is hanging out, now that things have gotten a little hot for him in the Caribbean. He's actually on the prowl in the brothels there when he runs across a hooker with a heart of plutonium...well, actually she just tries to sell him a nuke. Intrigued, he has her lead him to the sellers, but it's too late; the bomb has already been sold to some Chechens. He lets his friends in Washington know what's going on, then follows his nose as the trail leads all over Europe to find out who has the bomb now and what their target is. As you might imagine, it all ends mostly well for Mike, not so well for the terrorists.

Graphic violence, graphic sex, and a smart-ass hero. What's not to love?

Short Takes

(11/28/09) Reading John Christopher's Bad Dream, which is not very engrossing. I think he peaked with his young adult novels back in the 60s. Ah well.

(11/29/09) Finished the Christopher this morning - I still have no idea what it was all about, could it have been the middle novel in a trilogy?

(11/30/09) Scalzi's Old Man's War was remiscent of Heinlein and Haldeman. Put some more of his stuff on reserve at the library.

(12/2/09) Finished Blindman's Bluff by Kellerman. It was an ok read, but not riveting

Kitty Goes to War by Carrie Vaughn

With this, the latest in the series to date, Kitty's story gets back into the bi-or-trifurcated plot lines we're more familiar with. Cormac gets out of prison on parole and begins a new life. Kitty gets a call from Dr. Schumacher from the Center for the Study of Preternatural Biology asking her to help out with a group of werewolf soldiers returning from Afghanistan with PTSD. Kitty gets sued for libel by the CEO of Speedy Mart, who may or may not be a weather wizard using his franchises for nefarious purposes.

Cormac has definitely been changed by his prison experience. He can no longer work as a bounty hunter, since parole boards frown on parolees who carry weapons. Kitty started sending him books to read while he was confined, and he seems to have taken the reading and studying to an addictive level - not a bad thing IMHO. Kitty and Ben decide to hire him to do a little detective work on her other problem with the lawsuit, and turn him loose.

The werewolf soldiers take up a lot of Kitty's time in this novel. The pack leader was killed by an explosion in country, and the pack dominance struggles that ensued left only three of the men alive by the time they returned to the States. Neither Dr. Schumacher or the military leadership know whether they can be successfully integrated back into society, or if they'll remain hopelessly violent and uncontrollable. Kitty, bless her heart, seems to believe that no one is beyond redemption, and meets with the group where they are being held at first, then tries to integrate the least violent two men of the trio into her pack activities. The last member is definitely guilty of murder, and will probably never be released from the special military prison with silver bars and other security measures.

The Speedy Mart CEO turns out to definitely be up to something, and Kitty, Cormac and Ben must figure out what it is before he can hurt Kitty, her pack, or perhaps even the city of Denver.

In this book, we see some more growing up for Kitty, a whole new direction for Cormac, and creep forward a bit in the creepy vampire political scene.

Short Takes

(11/7/09) Dug into Applied Economics, by Thomas Sowell. I gotta say, Sowell is a great conservative columnist, but as a writer of anything longer than a couple of pages, the man can bog me down way too fast. Lots of interesting little tidbits, but I'm fading fast on this one. 

(11/14/09) Finished reading Santa Olivia, by Jacqueline Carey. It has a feel like it was something she wrote before she did her Kushiel's stuff, but never got published, and now that she's a published author, they printed it. Not her best work, for sure.

Kitty's House of Horrors by Carrie Vaughn

Unlike most of this series, in this book Kitty only has one major conflict plot line for a change. The only side plot of note is that Cormac the bounty hunter has a possibility of making parole, which gives Ben something to do while Kitty is off foiling evil plots on her own. Some TV reality show producers convince Kitty to join a group of other supernatural beings and psychics, a magician and a skeptic in a remote location for a pilot production.

Joining Kitty at a remote hunting lodge in Montana we have her old friend the psychic, Tina, her erstwhile ally the magician ,Odysseus Grant, another werewolf and pro wrestler, Jerome, a wereseal named Lee, two vampires, Gemma and Anastasia and their human blood donor Dorian, a professional debunker, Conrad, and a second psychic, Jeffrey, and another supernatural talk show host, Ariel. The producers' stated purpose is to let people know what the supernatural community is really all about, and to show their interactions in a close quarters situation, but there's a more serious game afoot.

This one eventually turns into something like Murder on the Orient Express, as first all of the production assistants are found murdered and the producers missing, and all communications with the outside world are cut. As Kitty and her friends try to figure out whodunnit and why, and try to escape the hunting lodge, they begin to be picked off one by one, by predators that know exactly how to kill them. If you're paying attention, you'll figure out who the red shirts (for you Trekkies) are pretty quickly and know who will leave Montana alive, in the end.

Good build of tension and release, some character development on Kitty's part, and things move forward in the Long Game, as well.

Short Takes

(9/29/09) I've been reading Robert Novak's autobio, Prince of Darkness, and it is LONG. Interesting stuff about all of the politicians that were around when I was growing up, before I began paying attention to those sorts of things. I'm up to the Nixon administration right now, getting close to Watergate.

(11/4/09) Finished reading the latest Reacher novel, Gone Tomorrow, by Lee Child. Gripping, as always.

(11/4/09) So, I recently finished reading Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazi. One of my favorite PF bloggers was doing a review on it, and I picked it up basically because of the title, as I nearly always eat alone. Figured it might shake up my routine, or something.

Ferrazzi has a lot of good tactics in this book for increasing the size and effectiveness of your personal network. If I was a young man again, starting off in my career, I think I'd take a bunch of this to heart and implement it in my life. As it is, it gave me a few ideas about how to improve some of the relationships in my existing network, and stimulated my thinking about how I see my friends and acquaintances.

A good read, all in all.

A Path Out of the Desert by Kenneth M. Pollack

I may not understand the situation in the Middle East any better than I did before I read this book. In fact, I'm not sure any Westerner can really understand the cultural assumptions. However, I feel that I am much more comprehensively apprised of the historic causes and forces than I was before I started.

This was a difficult book to get through; not because it was uninteresting, but because it was so detailed. I'd read one of Pollack's earlier books about Iraq, written just before the 2003 invasion, and thought he was quite insightful, and he definitely knows his stuff when it comes to Middle East policy, having served as director of Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council twice, and seven years as a CIA Persian Gulf military analyst.

Some of the statistics about the Arab world may (or may not) shock you. The number of newspapers per thousand people in the Arab states is just 53, compared to 285 per thousand in the West. There are 1/5 the number of telephone lines, and around 1/6 the computers, with only 1.6% of the Arab population having Internet access. Only about 330 books are translated into Arabic each year, with a grand total of about 10,000 books (FEWER THAN IN MY PERSONAL LIBRARY!) having been translated into Arabic since 819 AD. Glad I don't live over there.

The public sector employees in the Arab world are even more of a drain on the economy than they are here in the U.S. In a country that's been in the news lately, Egypt had 350,000 civil servants in 1952, which grew to over 4 million by 1992, and to roughly 7 million by 2007. Public sector employment accounts for 20% of the Saudi labor force, 28% in Egypt, 25% in Algeria, 34% in Jordan, 40%-70% in Bahrain, Oman and the UAE. The Kuwaiti government employs over 90% of its national workforce.

Interesting tidbit, "state ownership of banks has been a serious inhibiting factor in investment and entrepreneurship...Banks often give loans based on political directives, cronyism and graft rather than economic viability..." Makes me think about the recent real estate crash and mortgage crisis here in the U.S. The only thing different is the extent of the cronyism, in my opinion. "In Arab countries...profits are derived from access to power rather than through economic efficiency and performance" Can you say Jeffrey Imelt, anyone?

Iranian media outlets are closely connected to key regime figures, says Pollack. Journalists who publish views the regime figures don't like are routinely beaten, threatened, imprisoned, or assassinated. Arab regimes like to direct their subjects anger towards external threats, such as the United States or Israel, though Arabic conspiracy theories vary as to whether the U.S. uses Israel as it's "cats-paw" in the area or Israel uses the U.S.

In the Arab world legal system, the average person usually needs a fixer to take care of the bribes necessary to grease the wheels of justice. They often pay to get a favorable result even when the law is on their side, but just as often when the law is not, are able to obtain a result in their favor if the proper palms are greased. Due to corruption and inefficiency, the cost of starting a business in the Muslim Middle East is higher than anywhere else in the world.

Huge numbers of people in the Middle East, if they don't have government sinecures, are unable to get enough money to take care of basic needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter. The Islamist groups in the area recognized the need, and both Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hisbullah in Lebanon established large and efficient social services which provide these things to the poor, gaining their sympathies.

One thing I hadn't really considered before was that the roots of political instability (leading to revolution) are always economic in nature. Pollack mentions the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland which principally aggravated not by religious differences, per se, but by the economic disparities between Catholics and Protestants. An economic study of civil wars showed that low educational levels, per capita income, and population growth rate were the primary factors in determining the likelihood of internal violence in a country.

"Academic studies have consistently found that employment may be the most important determinant of overall happiness..." Go, Puritan work ethic!

Pollack says that most of the countries of the Middle East are right now in a prerevolutionary state. Conditions are ripe for the overthrow of many of the regimes there. Presciently, this book was written in 2007, and as I'm reading it today, Egypt has ousted Mubarak, Libya has ousted Gadaffi, and the people are marching in the streets in several other Middle Eastern countries. The guy was right on.

Just a little correction of a popular belief. It has been said the the 9/11 hijackers were all well educated middle class men, but in fact only six of them were, the others were poor, rural and not well educated, according to Mr. Pollack.

This book had a flurry of post-it notes in it long before I finished, and it would be a very long post if I attempted to mention all of the bits I found interesting.

After great exposition, Pollack believes that it is in the best interests of the United States (and the rest of the West) to encourage the gradual political reform of the Middle East, for a number of reasons, including decreasing the danger from extremist Islamic terrorists, keeping the oil flowing so we don't cripple the world economy, and from the moral standpoint that it is not only the pragmatic thing to do, but the right thing to do. He encourages people not to get hung up on the fact that the Bush 43 administration proposed doing so - it's a good idea even if you don't like the source.

I've heard from friends, even good liberal friends, that the people in Arab countries aren't capable of handling democracy, or that they don't deserve it. Pollack mentions that at various times, scholars and experts maintained that the Germans and Japanese were incapable of democracy, or that the Catholic and Confucian worlds were incompatible with it. Why should the Muslim Middle East be denied the opportunity to rule themselves for a change? Pollack holds up Lebanon as at least a partial success in the region, until Syria's intervention messed things up.

His five-pronged strategy:
1. Washington should encourage economic liberalization to create greater economic opportunity.
2. The United states should provide assistance only to Islamist groups that meet the criteria (reject violence, accept pluralistic political systems, accept the rule of law, accept a secular public education system, accept alternate forms of law other than Sharia, accept religious freedom and gender equality) for moderation.
3. The United States should help build up and professionalize major institutions like the government bureaucracy and armed forces
4. The US should make clear that its friendship, economic relations, and aid are all contingent upon the political parties' abiding by the rules of the system (like the Democratic senators in Wisconsin right now?)
5. The US should see democratization as a process that should develop gradually.

He lists some concrete steps that could be taken by the West right away:

• Set up an aid program to help the Middle Eastern countries build an effective social safety net to help marginalized and underprivileged groups. Are we successfully doing this here?
• Establish more small and micro-loan programs
• Make aid and other forms of assistance dependent on the condition that all of the people working in programs funded by that aid be local nationals. Any success in our southern border states in this area?
• Bring pressure on governments that imprison human rights and democracy advocates
• Establish programs to train Middle Eastern bureaucrats to manage comprehensive reform programs more effectively. Bureaucrats...reform?...effective? I'm sorry.
• Extend loan guarantees, investment guarantees, tax incentives, and favorable credit directly to Middle Eastern enterprises or foreign firms willing to invest in the Middle East. How does this not end up going to cronies and relatives of the powerful?

I'd like to keep a copy of this book around just to browse the references for further reading material, but it's due at the library tonite. I'll have to see if I can find another book by this author soon. Recommend this highly for background reading on the Middle East, but it's suddenly looking quite dated, unfortunately.

Short Takes

(7/10/09) Reading The Sheriff of Ramadi by Dick Couch, which is alternately interesting and dry, sorta like combat in the desert, I guess.

(8/30/09) Right now, I'm in the fourth book of the Prydain series, Taran Wanderer, by Lloyd Alexander. It's written for young adults, and is filled with all sorts of little life lessons, which are not all that inappropriate for adults, either.

One of my favorite bits in the storyline has always been the interlude with Llonio, son of Llonwen. I just started reading that section last night around bedtime, and was struck by a passage that rings a familiar chord. The main protagonist of the tale, Taran, has inherited a flock of sheep from a man he stayed with for a while who claimed to be his father, but who was later proven to be lying about that, and who passed away in an unfortunate climbing accident. Taran shows up with the sheep at the holding of Llonio, and, seeing an empty sheep pen, offers Llonio the sheep, saying something on the order of, "I hope there's room for these sheep and your own flock in the pen."

Llonio replies that he has no flock. Taran wonders why, then, he built a sheep pen. Llonio says that he knew that eventually, a flock would happen by, and that he wanted to be prepared. Llonio is a character in the series who always seems to have the blessing of "good luck." This little portion of the tale relates the fact that fortune favors those who have prepared for it. In the real world, it's often difficult for people to take advantage of "good luck" or God's blessings when they're unprepared. Get those sheep pens built, folks!

"Life's a forge!" cried the smith, as Taran, his brow streaming, beat at the strip of metal. "Yes, and hammer and anvil, too.! You'll be roasted, smelted, and pounded, and you'll scarce know what's happening to you. But stand boldly to it! Metal's worthless till it's shaped and tempered."

Great stuff.

(9/1/09) Reading The Lost History of Christianity, by Philip Jenkins, which is about the churches that were established throughout Asia in the dim mists of time. Quite interesting stuff, but a little dry. Early christian missionaries actually went all the way through India, Mongolia and China, and there were thriving christian communities that we westerners never really got to hear about.

Doc Sidhe by Aaron Allston

I found this one in the Baen Free Library CD and had it on my Nook. Having never read anything by Mr. Allston before, it seemed like a great opportunity to check him out. I am sorry to report I couldn't finish this one; didn't get more than about 75 pages into it. It's an alternate universe story with the Sidhe living on the other side. Hapless fool falls into the alternate universe by mistake, where bad guys want to kidnap and either make use of or kill his girlfriend or her doppleganger on the other side. Couldn't get into either the story or the characters, and there was nothing new or exciting here to hold my interest. Maybe Allston's later work gets better.

Short Takes

(6/25/09) Only amazing thing about my day is that I'm about 200 pages into the latest Anita Blake novel, Skin Trade, and she hasn't had sex with anyone yet. I'm stunned.

(7/2/09) Finished reading Brad Thor's The Last Patriot - quite tasty!

(7/8/09) Finished Card's latest Ender book, Ender in Exile. Great stuff.

A Taint in the Blood by S. M. Stirling

I used to read quite a bit of S.M. Stirling's work, until he started his postapocalyptic series of "The Change", and I just found them far too depressing to enjoy, so I laid off for a while. I discovered the first book in his new Shadowspawn series at the library, and thought I'd give it a go. There's really nothing new and exciting here, I think we've seen it all before, though perhaps not lumped into one big heap before.

The Shadowspawn are a sub-species of humans who have what amounts to vampiric and shape-shifting abilities, as well as a bunch of other minor "spells" that they have used to dominate the human race for centuries. Like the Illuminati on steroids, I suppose. Nearly everything horrible that has happened on Earth in recent memory is their fault, from the rise of Hitler to ebola, either just as a result of their twisted amusements or as a way to cull out the herd a bit. Their favorite thing to do is to rape, slaughter and drink the blood of humans, though not necessarily in that order, but you get the drift.

Their High Council has decided that there are far too many humans on the planet, and that they'd like to return to a much simpler time, so they are planning to use massive EMP explosions to drive civilization back to the Stone Age and wipe out most of the pesky humans, leaving the rest easily ruled. Some of the younger, more progressive members would rather not act so drastically, enjoying the fruits of modern technology, and merely propose a genetically engineered plague to thin the human ranks a bit. So, there's some major political machinations going on in the midst of the obvious plot in this novel.

One of the Shadowspawn, Adrian Breze, has renounced the vicious ways of his people and has tried to remain uninvolved in any of their power plays and sadistic amusements. His sister, Adrienne, steals his girlfriend, who starts out unaware of his non-human nature, away from him and makes Ellen her own sexual slave and blood donor. The human servants and blood donors for the Shadowspawn are, of course, called 'renfields' and 'lucies'. The foreground plot of the book is Adrian's quest to rescue Ellen and foil his sister's plans, with any luck killing Adrienne in the bargain.

This novel contains a ton of graphic, bondage and discipline, sado-masochistic sexual scenes, as well as brutal and graphic violence. In this, it's not much different from some of Stirling's earlier works. The story is somewhat amusing, however, and it's interesting to see how he explains away all of the horrible things that have gone on in the world by attributing them to the Shadowspawn, plus the belief in gods, demons, faeries, and all other things that go bump in the night.

One of the things I found fun was how Adrienne would refer to the flavor of Ellen's blood, depending on her emotional state. Phrases like, "Two distinct layers of fear, and anger, dread, longing, resignation, courage...like a very, very good beef bourgignon garnished with sauteed pearl onions and mushrooms. The sort cooks with a really fine Burgundy and a bouquet garni from a farm stall..." Priceless.

A most definitely adult novel.

Mailbox Monday

This week, I picked up the second and third books in C.E. Murphy's series that began with Heart of Stone.

Short Takes

(5/20/09) Finished Dime Store Magic, by Armstrong, and started Industrial Magic. Just plain old entertainment, nothing special.

(5/29/09) Stayed up late to finish reading Fortune and Fate, by Shinn. She always tells such a good yarn.

(6/3/09) I picked up the first three Lemony Snickett books. Finished 1.5 of them last night; they're quite cute.

An Ocean Away by Mike Aldridge

A friend of mine sent me this book, written by a friend of hers. It's a story about a Mexican drug dealer, Jose, who has gotten himself into quite a pickle. He was raised in an orphanage, adopted out to child molesters, whom he murdered and robbed and then ran away. He ends up in a coastal fishing village, where he comes to the attention of one of the local drug lords, who puts him and his best friend to work running drugs.

All goes well until his friend is caught and "turned" by the DEA and begins feeding them information which leads to Jose getting stopped by them twice in a row on drug runs. He is able to ditch the drugs at sea before the DEA gets to his boat, but it's obvious that they're onto him, and the drug lord, Robles, tells him to take a break for a while, get out of town.

Instead of taking the time off and just enjoying his ill-gotten gains, he decides while he's in Baja to start up his own drug operation, and things just get worse from that point on.

I have to be perfectly honest here and say that I didn't like this story very well. When the protagonist is as amoral as Jose, I just can't cheer him on. Throw in a DEA agent who is corrupt and evil, and there's pretty much no one left to care about.

The only redeeming thing in Jose's case was when he meets a woman, Lucy, who runs an orphanage and falls in love with her, supposedly experiencing some sort of spiritual awakening. As soon as they are separated, however, he sleeps with whores and keeps up his drug dealing - justifying it with the though that he'll give the money to the orphanage, and it will all be ok, because it's "for the children". Pretty well dashed my hopes that he'd become a worthy protagonist.

Unless you like novels like Tess of the D'Urbervilles, where nothing goes well, and everyone behaves perfectly rottenly, give this one a pass.

Short Takes

(4/28/09) Reading Personal Demon, by Kelly Armstrong caused me to put some more of Armstrong's books on hold at the library.

(4/29/09) Started reading Pournelle & Niven's Escape from Hell, but put it down after about ten pages. Why do these older authors go wacko on you at the end?

(5/15/09) Finished Turncoat, by Butcher. Quite good, as expected.

WWW: Watch by Robert J. Sawyer

Sawyer has written an awful lot of very interesting science fiction over the years. WWW: Watch is the story of a young woman, Caitlin who makes contact with a consciousness born in the internet. She was born blind due to a rare syndrome, but has been part of an experimental procedure that has given her sight for the first time at age 16. The scientist, Dr. Kuroda, who performed this miracle lives in Japan, and she is in Canada, so the feed from the "eyepod" which gives her sight has been sent across the internet, giving her a unique perspective on the web, and she is the first to become aware of the entity they call "Webmind".

The entire novel is fairly well written, exploring the probable reactions of people to the existence of the first truly artificial and independent intelligence. Most of the governments are fearful of what Webmind might do, with the power of the internet, and the U.S. Government makes the decision to attack Webmind and shut it/him down.

I think this novel is targeted a bit more at young adults than his usual works. Caitlin is struggling with the usual problems that intelligent adolescents face, like peer pressure, popularity, romantic issues. Nothing philosophically challenging or enlightening here, but a pleasant little story of what if. The ending pretty much left me hanging, wondering what really happened, though.

Short Takes

(4/5/09) Started reading Bujold's latest in the Sharing Knife series, Horizon. Had to stop myself at bedtime, or I'd have stayed up way too late finishing it.

(4/6/09) Finished Horizon, by Bujold. I suspect she's reached a bit of a stopping point in that series now. Perhaps we'll see Miles again, soon.

(4/9/09) Finished Blood Drive, by Stein, by staying up way past my bedtime. The first novel in that series wasn't that encouraging, but I think she's getting better. Starting to like the series pretty well.

(4/25/09) Read Surviving Financial Meltdown, by Ron Blue ... contained nothing I haven't seen before.

Kitty Raises Hell by Carrie Vaughn

Just another fun and fast read in this series. Kitty returns from Vegas and finds that what happened in Vegas didn't completely stay there. She is being harassed by the group of were-felines whose leader she killed at the end of the last book. They've sent some sort of entity to attack her by setting things on fire, like the bar and restaurant in which she is part-owner.

At the same time, a very powerful vampire appears in Denver, claiming he knows what is attacking her and that he can drive it off. She and the Master of Denver, Rick, meet with the vampire and decline his help, for it's obvious he has some ulterior motive in the long game of vampire politics.

At the same time, Kitty gets involved with a group of tv people who are producing a popular ghost chasers show on tv, and exchanges interviews with them, going on one of their ghost chasing expeditions with them. The fire-starting entity causes some chaos during this one, and she enlists their aid in fighting it.

As I said before, it's fun, it's fast, and Kitty and friends work their usual magic.

Short Takes

(3/24/09) Finished reading Storm from the Shadows. Weber leaves it in a very big cliffhanger, most irritating.

(4/5/09) Finished reading Matter, by Iain Banks, yesterday morning. Space Opera on steroids, but a very disappointing story, in the end. Took me a week or so to get through it.

(4/5/09) Read the novelette, Backup, by Jim Butcher, set in the Dresden Files storyline, and it was amusing.