Apr 20 2007

The Eagle and the Wolves by Simon Scarrow

Simon Scarrow’s fourth book in the Eagle’s Series, The Eagle and the Wolves, is an excellent story about the Roman Army when the Roman Empire was at its strongest, 1st Century AD. Scarrow does a superb job in bringing the characters to life.

Here is a summary from the book’s cover:

In the epic fourth novel of Simon Scarrow’s series, it’s ad 44 and Vespasian and the Roman Army’s Second Legion are forging ahead in their campaign to seize the southwest. Centurion Macro and newly appointed Centurion Cato are ordered by Vespasian to provide Verica, aged ruler of the Atrebates, with an army. They must train his tribal levies into a force that can protect him, enforce his rule, and take on the increasingly ambitious raids that the enemy is launching.
But open revolt is brewing. Despite the Atrebates’ official allegiance to Rome, many are wary of the legions and want to resist the Roman invaders, and Macro and Cato must first win the loyalty of the disgruntled levies before tackling the enemy without. Can they succeed while surviving a deadly plot to destroy both them and their comrades serving with the eagles? In the midst of this highly volatile situation, Macro and Cato face the greatest test of their army careers. Theirs is a brazen tale of military adventure, political intrigue, and heroism, as only they stand between the destiny of Rome and bloody defeat.

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By Jeff Grim • Reviews • 0

Apr 18 2007

The Blue Zone by Andrew Gross

Andrew Gross has had an interesting career path. After a successful career in the apparel industry Gross decided to try his hand at writing (he majored in English in college). His novel was rejected but an editor liked his writing enough to send it on to best selling author James Patterson. Patterson saw enough promise to contact Gross and offer him a chance to collaborate on a novel. They soon had a contract and were off and running. The resulting collaboration produced five number one New York Times bestsellers.

Building on this success, Gross decided to strike out on his own and was signed by William Morrow to a three book deal. The first of which, The Blue Zone, was recently released. Not having read any of his co-authored works – nor any James Patterson for that matter – I can’t really compare this solo effort with his previous work, but The Blue Zone is a solid thriller with plenty of twists and turns. While it didn’t quite strike me as the proverbial “Can’t put it down” type, it certainly shows enough promise to think Gross will do just fine flying solo.

The story centers around Kate Rabb, a medical researcher in the Bronx. Kate has what seems like the perfect life: a successful career, a loving family, and a wonderful husband. She is excited about the future. This all changes in an instant when her father is arrested on charges of laundering money for a Columbian drug cartel. Her seemingly perfect family’s life literally explodes during a burst if gunfire in what appears to be an attempt to kill them all by the Colombians.

This danger forces them into the witness protection program – all except Kate who decides she is unwilling to put her promising life on hold. But, as you might expect in a thriller, everything is not as it seems and one by one things begin to unravel. Her close friend and co-worker is nearly killed; her dad disappears from the witness protection program; a FBI agent assigned to her family is brutally murdered; and she finds some evidence that her family’s past is a lot more complicated than she has been led to believe.

Unsure of who to trust Kate soon strikes out on her own to try and get to the bottom of her father’s deception and the events that have turned her life upside down. As the violence around her escalates, Kate must decide who she can trust or she might lose her own life in the process.

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By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 0

Apr 17 2007

The Normandy Campaign by Victor Brooks

The Normandy Campaign by Victor Brooks is an excellent short history of one of the most pivotal military campaigns in history. Brooks succinctly describes the main characters and events of this momentous event.

The book more or less goes in chronological order from the Allies’ first inklings of an invasion of mainland Europe to the eventual capture of Paris. It describes the painstaking preparations for gathering the mountains of supplies for the invasion and the efforts the Allies made in trying to deceive the Germans where the actual landing was going to occur (including creating a false Army under the command of General George Patton).

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By Jeff Grim • Reviews • 0

Apr 17 2007

In the Mail

- The Tourists by Jeff Hobbs

Publishers Weekly

An unnamed narrator details the post-Yale love triangle of three people much, much wealthier than he in Hobbs’s Gatsby-meets-McInerney debut. Unlike Nick Carraway or the persistent “You” of Bright Lights Big City, the speaker at the heart of this novel is more cipher than seer. A shiftless New York freelancer edging into his 30s, the narrator discovers that his Yalie friend—handsome, gay Ethan Hoevel, famous designer of sleek contemporary furniture—has left his boyfriend, Stanton Vaughn, to pursue a doomed relationship with their fellow alum—the married (and female) Samona Taylor (née Ashley). The narrator still carries a torch for Samona, and renews his friendship with Samona’s husband, the also-Yalie Merrill Lynch trader David Taylor, mostly out of a morbid curiosity about Samona’s philandering. Hobbs spends much of the novel recounting how everyone got where they are in the eight years following college, but the plot picks up in the last third, when Ethan’s ne’er-do-well brother precipitates a crisis, and Ethan and Samona’s affair has its reckoning. Hobbs convincingly portrays young, Ivied New Yorkers with money, but he leaves the narrator’s feelings for Samona (and much else) largely unexplored, making the proceedings feel unresolved.

- Ladykiller by Lawrence Light and Meredith Anthony

Book Description

In the city that never sleeps, evil is wide awake. From the bright lights of Times Square to the dark alleys of New York, the Ladykiller is at work and at prey. Four women savagely murdered on the mean streets of NYC. The Ladykiller leaves no trail, no clues. The pressure is on for NYPD detective Dave Dillon – either he solves the crime or he can kiss his job goodbye.

When Dave joins forces with Megan Morrison, a beautiful young social worker, the search for a cold-hearted killer leads to a hot romance. But a host of forces threaten to intrude. Megan’s jealous mentor would delight in derailing the romance, as would Jamie, a determined detective with her own not-so-hidden agenda. And Dave’s shadowy past is never far behind. The clock is ticking for Dave and Megan. Will they close in on the shocking truth behind the crimes, or will it close in on them? In the world of the Ladykiller, passion can turn deadly in a New York minute.

- Untold Stories by Alan Bennett

Publishers Weekly

Bennett has been known to British audiences of radio, television, stage and screen for decades. In the United States, he’s best known as the screenwriter of The Madness of King George and, perhaps, for his experiences with Miss Shepherd, an indigent woman who set up a succession of vans in his front yard for 15 years. Now he returns with a shaggy collection of autobiographical sketches, diary entries, considerations of art, architecture and other authors, as well as an account of his bout with colon cancer. Returning to the precincts of his straitlaced, working-class British background, Bennett reveals a lost world whose influence and mores have trailed him his entire life. He revisits the Leeds that he knew in the 1940s, where he was first exposed to music and theater, and where his parents, both shy and retiring people, set lack of pretension as the highest value. While he plays the old crank who is put upon by the world as it is, Bennett reveals an eye for detail and a feel for the complexity of human interactions. And though he laments at length his own late maturation—physical, sexual and intellectual—and lack of sophistication, he shows himself to have achieved a measure of happiness.

- Captain of the Sleepers by Mayra Montero

Booklist

Montero charts the chilling undercurrents of steamy Caribbean life in novels notable for their lyrical intensity and mystery, eroticism and social acumen. Here, she writes of Puerto Rico as the ill-fated nationalist movement comes undone in 1950 and the U.S. military conducts practice bombing runs in preparation for the Korean War. Montero uses a classic flashback frame as Andres, then the 12-year-old son of a hotel owner, now meets with a man he has been estranged from for 50 years, J. T., a pilot young Andres called the Captain of the Sleepers because he ferried the dead. In his eighties and ill with cancer, J. T. wants to make things right. As J. T. tells his version of past events, Montero illuminates Andres’ boy-mind at work as he tries to understand his father’s involvement with the revolutionaries, J. T.’s role in their lives, and his mother’s early death. The result is a haunting tale of a small place overrun by a superpower and a small family shattered by big dreams of liberation and love, and the mythic alignment of sex and death.

By Kevin Holtsberry • In The Mail • 0

Apr 16 2007

Freeglader by Paul Stewart

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Regular readers will recall that I am a fan of children’s or young adult fantasy series. I have been reading a number of series as new books come out. One such series is the Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. Although I haven’t really reviewed each book in the series, I have discussed the series as a whole.

In fact, in that post I outlined the series pretty well:

The first three books follow the lead character Twig from his intial adventure in the Deepwoods through his search for the magical stormphrax with his real father and his subsequent flight out into the void of open sky where the entire crew is scattered across the Edge. But the Curse of the Gloamgozer goes back in time to explore the story of Twig’s father and mother. The next three books in the series (The Last Sky Pirate, and the yet to be released in the states Vox and Freeglader) focus on the Rook Barkwater character and take place fifty years after the end of Midnight Over Sanctaphrax.

The most recent book I have read is Freeglader book seven and, as noted above, last in the Rook Barkwater stretch of books (5,6,7). This volume, like the other books, is a complicated mix of characters and story lines. Freeglader, however, connects and explains much of the series so far by relating the history of Rook’s family tree.

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By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 0

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