Fiction

Backman's wit and humor ties in wonderfully with a tear-jerking finale. From beginning to end, I was torn between laughing and weeping. The innocence and wonder of childhood is captured perfectly, while also conveying the struggles of not being noticed. The grandmother in this story is eccentric and diligent, striving to create beauty for her granddaughter. Backman paints a masterpiece with his words, and keeps me hooked and enthralled at every turn of this book. I recommend this book heartily!

Kingdom of Wrenly: the Bard and the Beast was one of the best Kingdom of Wrenly books yet!!! I loved the beast in it.That's why you should read it too!

Review: The book, One Mile Under, is about a girl, who is a white water rafting guide living in Aspen, Colorado, who finds a body on one of her rafting trips. Throughout the book the girl, with some help from a few friends, tries to prove that the death of the man was no river accident while also trying to avoid being murdered herself. I chose this book because I though the title seemed interesting, and I had read some of the author's other books and liked them. The thing I liked most about this book is that it is a murder mystery, and it is very suspenseful throughout most of the book.
However, the book seemed to drag on a lot towards the end, and most of the answers to the mystery are revealed about two-thirds through the book which makes the book feel long. This book was surprising in the beginning, but by the end everything seemed pretty predictable. Overall, it was a really good book, and I would suggest reading it if you like suspenseful murder mysteries.

Despite The Fifth Witness leaving the door open to an interesting diversion from the same defense lawyer story we’ve come to know and love from Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller, The Gods of Guilt puts Haller back in the hot seat as the counsel protecting a digital pimp from a murder conviction. Some of the depth of the Haller character developed in previous books in this series was eliminated after his unsuccessful District Attorney run, but there was still enough humanity in him to advance his story. After all, his coping mechanisms and needs are some of what we all deal with in our own lives.

While I have come to expect a twist ending from Connelly, it was surprisingly missing from this book. For once, Haller’s client wasn’t as bad as everyone made him out to be, and that’s saying something for the digital pimp of Andre La Cosse. Perhaps that’s what made this story a little more uncomfortable than the others: the seedy underbelly of the adult entertainment industry is harder to relate to than simple foreclosures. Still, I can’t help but think that the same strawman tactics that Haller used in this case were quite similar to some of his other defense cases.

All this being said, Connelly is still a master of his craft. The pacing and advancement in the plot was excellent and the peril Haller found himself in after getting too deep into some serious side-investigations helped to make a rather standard book in the series an entertaining read, nonetheless. As was the case in The Fifth Witness, I appreciated the meta nature of this universe where the Lincoln Lawyer movie was a real part of Haller’s life.

Yet another predictable entry in the Mickey Haller series, I give The Gods of Guilt 3.0 stars out of 5.

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***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY***

William Shatner, best known for his acting in the popular sci-fi series, Star Trek, is not someone who I thought would also be a writer. Of course, after reading Zero-G, I’m still not convinced, even with the help of ghostwriter Jeff Rovin. The book had an interesting premise, but the exposition and plot were so slow and clunky that it was hard to get into it. I will say there is an appreciation of the challenges of space in this book, but it almost plays a backseat to an aged government official trying to relive his glory days (sound familiar?).

If I were to re-write this book, it would have been considerably shorter, possibly even a short story. As it is, the first third of the book is almost useless, filled with detailed explanations of the characters’ backgrounds and relationships. Even the first action sequence only emphasized that the main character is reckless and flies by his own rules. When it came to the core of the plot, I never felt a sense of urgency to take out the threat of the space-weapon, mainly because it acted “randomly” (read: whenever it might suit to move the plot along).

For a book about an FBI station in space, the mystery solved by the deputy director seemed quite a bit beneath his station. In fact, I was surprised he even handled it since the whole case appeared to be obvious right from the start. There wasn’t enough development of the lesser characters to even know who they were and why they had any motivation to perpetrate the crimes they did. Aside from the main character, most of the character focus appeared to be on the gender-switching assistant, probably to make the book “hip” and “trendy” amongst the modern and liberal-leaning readers.

An interesting concept that falls flat on its face immediately after the prologue, I give Zero-G 2.0 stars out of 5.

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Having already blasted through the rest of the Mickey Haller series, I finally arrived at a book that didn’t center around the defense lawyer. Instead, The Crossing follows Harry Bosch, Haller’s half-brother (which we learned back in The Brass Verdict). I realize that Mickey Haller is merely a spin-off series from the main Harry Bosch series, so it was interesting to finally enter the main storyline of Connelly’s longest-running character. Now I see that he writes Bosch books in third-person, as compared to Haller’s first-person, which was why I was confused when the POVs switched in one of the previous books featuring both of them.

Coming into this series at the twentieth book was a little jarring to me, but not entirely disorienting. There were plenty of references to previous books I had not read; but by the sounds of them, these predecessors were certainly exciting. What probably helped with my transition into this series was that Bosch retired from his job in the police department, thus creating a new start for the character that could be used to explore some interesting scenarios without being burdened by the bureaucracy of his job.

While Connelly’s writing is still superb and suspenseful, the one aspect I found to be a bit unbelievable was Bosch’s innate sense of what was “wrong” with the current investigation. Just based on one single, minor detail, he was able to unravel the deeper conspiracy involving other, corrupt police officers. What if he hadn’t noticed? Would he have still managed to get to the bottom of the truth? Either way, I might have to pick up the earlier books in this series, just so I can get more of the story behind the briefly referenced excitement Bosch had to go through in the past.

Proof that sometimes it’s difficult to quit a job after having done it for so long, I give The Crossing 3.5 stars out of 5.

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With the ever-increasing proliferation of “smart” technology throughout our society, the thought of a robot uprising remains fixed in the back of our minds. Since the introduction of the concept of robots decades ago, humans have feared their uprising to usurp us as the dominant sentient beings on our planet. Now, as we rely on our computers, smartphones, and connected devices to help run our lives, the threat of a full-on apocalypse resulting from their sentience seems more possible than ever.

Author Daniel H. Wilson has certainly done his research on the “what if” scenario of a robot apocalypse (or the titular Robopocalypse, if you will). He manages to build the progression of a robot-themed doomsday scenario from the machines we know and use today. Many of the machines’ decisions and strategic moves mostly make sense. That being said, I did have a few issues with the book and its structure. First off, the format of the book was remarkably similar to its zombie predecessor, World War Z. Secondly, the fact that it’s told through only a handful of characters helps to tie each piece together, but the fact that these characters are all connected to each other makes it less believable.

When it came right down to it, I had trouble connecting with these characters. In the earlier sections, it was a little easier to understand what was happening, but once the landscape of the robot war changed into one where the robots were winning; it was hard to grasp what was going on in a global sense. As it is, Robopocalypse is essentially a series of short stories with some familiar characters tying it together.

A semi-realistic look at a potential robot uprising with an already-used apocalyptic narrative format, I give Robopocalypse 3.0 stars out of 5.

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I read this book to my daughter at bedtime. It's very odd. I mean, humans give birth to a mouse and no one thinks it's strange? I know, it's part of the story, along with talking animals and the like. Also, Stuart Little takes off on his grand adventure and didn't say goodbye to his parents. As a parent, this thoughtlessness really disturbed me. They must've been so worried!

Really though, I thoroughly enjoyed this book again (I read it when I was young) and, more importantly, so did my daughter.

For many years, I was aware that the James Bond series of books did not follow the same order as their respective films. Given the action/adventure spy thriller genre these books were written in, it is possible to mix them around and still have a good understanding of what’s going on, even if some of the references made within the novels could only be understood by having read the previous books in the series. In some respects, it is disappointing that the film franchise didn’t capitalize on a continuous narrative that the books provided.

If the stories are out of order, then it ‘s hard to build up the constant battle between James Bond and the Soviet spy agency, SMERSH. Fortunately, since I had read a few of the first books in the James Bond series, I could appreciate Auric Goldfinger’s connection to the organization. That being said, I seemed to have jumped ahead a bit and missed what happened on the Moonraker mission, even if I have a loose idea/remembrance of what happened from its film version. Regardless, these minor references didn’t affect the plot of Goldfinger that much.

What I do find interesting with this book is the differences between it and the movie. There’s no laser threatening to cut Bond in half, there are more characters involved in the heist, and the actual heist itself has a slightly different objective. It is weird reading about the technology Bond uses and its references to “vacuum tubes” when the film makes all his tech seem futuristic. I do find it interesting how the author won’t outright swear (replacing the choice word with a “blank”) but includes two lesbian characters and a plethora of other, sexual inferences.

A fantastic story in the James Bond franchise, I give Goldfinger 4.0 stars out of 5.

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Having read Where’s My Jetpack? and Robopocalypse from Daniel H. Wilson, I had some high hopes for this book. Clearly, Wilson has a depth of knowledge about current and upcoming technologies that allows him to write succinctly both non-fiction and fiction. He can fuse the science with either humor or action and maintain an accurate sense of it without having the details bog down the plot. In Amped, Wilson explores a world where humans use technology to assist their bodies, either to overcome a disability or to overcome their humanity.

Unlike Robopocalypse, which was primarily a collection of intertwined vignettes, Amped follows a single individual through the effects of a fear-filled society charged by an inferiority complex. While the main thrust of the plot is about mental augmentation, there are mentions of other exciting technologies, including self-driving trucks and mechanical exoskeletons. Overwhelmingly, though, the brain-altering technology is the focus, as it hurtles the United States into two camps: ordinary people (aka “Reggies”) and “amps.” It was interesting to see how quickly discrimination came about in light of a clear delineation between humans and modified humans.

Even if the plot was a little hard to follow at times (perhaps due to me listening to it on an audiobook), the capabilities of the mental augmentation certainly felt realistic and plausible. While these embedded chips could solve many brain-related problems, the main point Wilson gets across is, “where does it end?” If we wipe out handicaps, can we also enhance ordinary people to super-human status? There’s certainly an interesting moral conundrum here, and I hope this fictionalized account will get people thinking about the answers before this reality is soon upon us.

Another great book warning about the potentials of future technology, I give Amped 4.0 stars out of 5.

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