Sandstorm

Sandstorm is the fifth book I've read by James Rollins. It's a stand-alone adventure novel although it does set up the "Sigma Force" novels featuring the recurring character Commander Gray Pierce. James Rollins writes in a page-turning style, mixing action sequences with exotic locations and cutting-edge technology. Sandstorm is no exception as we follow a good mix of characters, including Painter Crowe, the future director of Sigma Force, traveling from London to the Arabian Peninsula in search of the lost city of Ubar. Along the way we get to experience the British Museum in London and several archeological sites such as the Crypt of Nabi Imran, the Tomb of Ayoub (Job from the Bible), and the town of Shisur. We also get to learn more about anti-matter, buckyballs (having to do with ball lightning), molten glass, and one hellacious sandstorm.

I find reading James Rollins books to be the closest thing to an Indiana Jones movie I've yet to experience. In fact, he was even selected to adapt the screenplay from the last movie into book form. I found this book to be an interesting read although at over 550 pages, it did seem about 75 pages too long. The author is adept at bringing his characters to the edge of a cliff and then finding creative ways to push them off but it seemed to happen a bit too much in this one. The bad guy character, a female, was competent, which I like in a bad guy, and displayed some truly evil aspects, but somehow was not all she could be. Pretty good characterization for this kind of book, and a sort of love triangle aspect that worked nicely.

Onr other note: my copy is a limited edition mass market paperback and came with a hard "lenticular" front cover, giving it a 3D effect.  I suppose that looks nice in a book store and might well entice a customer to pick it up, but it makes for difficult reading/handling, especially in the first few chapters.  Maybe I'm old fashioned but I prefer to stick to the regular paper covers.

So, a good novel overall with just some minor annoyances. Definitely a worthwhile read and will keep me reading James Rollins in the future.

The Terminal Man

The Terminal Man is the 10th Michael Crichton novel I've read and has actually been on my self for many years.  I was hoping for a quick, technological based thriller and that's exactly what I got.  It's one of Crichton's early works, published in 1972. As in all of his earlier novels, he includes state-of-the-art technology, this time revolving around what computers can do in assisting brain-damaged patients. The technology is spot-on...for 1971. Reading about dime-sized microchips can jar today's reader right out of the story but for its day, this novel was cutting edge.

The novel itself was an interesting read, despite the tech time warp. In essence, it is a thriller, about a brain damaged patient who undergoes surgery to have electrodes implanted at key nodes to combat stimuli that would otherwise lead to violent behavior. It is interesting to note that the patient himself also suffers from a phobia of computers taking over the world. So when the electrodes fail to work properly, he feels he himself is becoming more computer-like. Crichton throws in some pop-philosophy as well, and since he has a medical background, his medical explanations sound plausible.  The ending was predictable of course; even the patient, after he escapes from the hospital, says there's only one way for this to end.

Overall, a nice quick read. If you can get past the dated technology, it's worth the time.

The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane

As always, I read a short story between each novel. This time around it's been Robert E. Howard's The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, a complete collection of all the Solomon Kane stories in one volume. Robert E. Howard, of course, is best known as the creator of Conan, but he was a prolific author during his short life, creating several other notable protagonists.

Del Rey has re-published the works of Robert E. Howard in beautiful trade paperback sets that include his complete works. They leave them un-edited, just as Mr. Howard wrote them and include unpublished story fragments, poems, etc. They are also nicely illustrated and really draw the reader back to the era in which they were first published, the era of the pulp magazines like Weird Tales.

As for Solomon Kane...“He was . . . a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan. . . . A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things. . . . Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect—he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane.” A great character from the pulp era indeed.

Dragon

I've made it back from my TDY to Washington DC and if the success of the trip was judged by reading time, then it was quite successful.  Any other standard used would equate to a waste of time.  I found time to read two and a half books in just five days though so I'm happy.  I even had to buy an extra one at the airport due to a weather divert to St Louis, giving me even more time to read.

Dragon sounds like a fantasy novel of some kind or perhaps a documentary if you're a believer like I am.  However, this one refers to the ninth book in Mr Cussler's Dirk Pitt series.  I've read about six of these books now and it seems I've discovered a pattern.  The very early ones are a bit dry and then they get more and more fun to read, even if more and more improbable.  This one's main premise is that back near the end of WWII, a third aircraft was on its way to drop another atomic bomb on Japan but crashed in the sea short of its target.  The bomb remains intact through all these years until it becomes a handy plot device for Dirk Pitt and company. 

The novel is a bit dated, having been written back in 1990 when there was some concern over Japan's financial investments in the US, especially the many real estate aquisitions.  Several Japanese bad guys have a plan to smuggle nukes in to the US and use them to blackmail the president.  Just how they do that and what they plan to accomplish is where the improbable part comes in.  Add to that the author's approach to adventure writing (through a little of everything in there) and you have a fun novel to read as long as you can tolerate the ridculous nature of what's happening.  I mean, we have an underground discovery of stolen Nazi art, a human-hunting-human scenario, an undersea science base destroyed, two undersea rescues, an army of robots, and a host of other action-oriented events, many of them not really related to the others.  Mr Cussler even inserts himself in the story in a cameo role akin to Alfred Hitchcock in a scene depicting a classic automobile race.  It's a bit like watching a combination James Bond/Indiana Jones movie...so many over-the-top impossible scenes that there is no doubt that the hero can do absolutely anything and will survive yet again.  There is quite a bit of Japan bashing in here, I must say, but it's targeted at the more extreme elements who want to keep their culture "pure", unlike the melting pot of the US.

I still have four more Dirk Pitt novels on my shelf to read, (I picked them all up at a garage sale for a quarter each so figured I couldn't go wrong).  I've been avoiding them for the past couple of years, not really sure why but now I remember their nature and so when I'm in the mood for a good ol' never-ending action-oriented adventure story, I'll pick up another.

"The Red King" is the latest short story I read, once again in Jeffrey Archer's Cat O'Nine Tales collection.  This time Mr Archer tells the tale of a thief who got arrested and tried for the wrong crime, even though he deserved the jail time just the same.  This one is a complicated story of the theft of a chess piece, the Red King, in a particularly rare chess set.  Just how the caper plays out has many twists and turns and connecting the dots of the plot requires the reader's full and careful attention.  If you can stick with it, it's worth it in the end but that very thing marks this entry down one notch as compared to the other stories so far.

In a couple of days I'll write about the second book I completed on my trip, The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks.

Nine Stories

J.D. Salinger's most famous work, undoubtedly is Catcher in the Rye.  I finally got around to reading that book, often considered among the very best of American literature, last year because, once again, my son had to read it for his high school AP literature course.  His class followed that up with a section on the short story form and used this book, Nine Stories, also by J.D Salinger, as one of their source texts.  So...in my usual fashion, I never like to have a book on my shelf that I haven't read so I decided to give these stories a try, reading them over the past couple of months.

I will say that I more or less "studied" The Catcher in the Rye as I read it, much like a student of literature would and my general feelings about it are not generally as good as most people's are.  It's not that it was a bad book and I can certainly appreciate Mr Salinger's writing skills.  It's just that I wasn't completely blown away.  Perhaps my expectations were too high going in.  So now when I approached this collection of nine short stories, I purposely set no expectations.  That wasn't difficult since I had never heard of this collection but nevertheless, I wanted to just read them as I would any other short story collection and try to enjoy each on it's own merit.

Overall, as in every other collection out there, I enjoyed some more than others.  Many are involved with the war, with soldiers who have recently returned and are trying to cope with what they saw.  Some have humerous aspects while some have downright horrific aspects.  Almost all of them had me scratching my head at some point and asking myself, "Where is he going with this?"  Ocassionally I was satisfied with the ending but more often than not the ending seemed to leave me hanging or send me scrambling back to the last page to see if I had inadvertantly skipped it.  Once again I appreciated his writing ability; he has a definite knack for letting you see a whole character with few words.  Somehow we understand a lot more about them than what is described for us.  I can see why a teacher would use this book as a tool for studying the short story form.  But having said that, I was reading for enjoyment, for entertainment, and while it was OK for that, I find myself preferring more plot-oriented stories.  The closest one of the bunch to that was the very last one, "Teddy" which was a very intriguing look at the nature of a young boy with an incredibly wise outlook on life and an eerily accurate ability to predict his own demise.

So if you like Salinger or classic short stories I would give this one a try but if you like a straight-forward beginning, middle, and end structural story you may want to skip these.

Black Rain

Another day in Colorado Springs means another 2-hour delay due to snow...at least that seems to be happening a lot lately. I'm not one to complain about a shorter work day, however and so this morning I took advantage of the extra time to complete the reading of my latest advanced reader's edition novel. Black Rain is the first published book by Graham Brown and is written as an adventure/thriller novel with elements of science fiction and horror.

Right off the bat I'll say this is one very good book. It reads like an Indiana Jones adventure but in the present day and with some good solid speculative science weaved into the plot. If you are familiar with novels by James Rollins or Mathew Reilly then you'll have a good idea of the style...sort of like reading a movie. In a nutshell, the novel is about a covert government agency that is launched on a quest to find an ancient Mayan temple in the heart of the Amazon. But what they find there is a huge mystery and more action/adventure than I've read in a long time.

The scenes and characters are presented clearly, so clearly that you can "see" the movie unfolding in your mind. And the plot is heavy on the action, especially the second half. The first half builds up the mystery of just what is going on here, establishes the main characters and allows us to see what is motivating the competing groups looking for the temple. Intrigue abounds and it really keeps you turning the pages. And the second half just explodes with action. Very well done.

I was so engrossed in this novel that I've added the name Graham Brown to my "Best Little-Known Authors" list. I daresay he won't be unknown for long as my copy of the book says he is working on a sequel to Black Rain. If his work is marketed well, he could be the next "big thing" in this genre. The only problem might be the title...a search of that name brings up a lot about the Michael Douglas movie of the same name as well as the album by Ozzie Osborne. Oh well.

I also completed the next short story in Louis L'Amour's The Strong Shall Live. I thought "Duffy's Man" was fun to read but also was an example of boilerplate western fiction. I thought at first this might be a very different sort of western story because Duffy is an old, fat man...wouldn't that be a great protagonist to break the cliched mold? But no, the story is about the nameless guy who works for him and is the templated wide shouldered, narrow hipped, steely-eyed hero who stands up to the bully and whips him in the end. Not much more to it than that. Hehe, still fun to read though :)

Next up: another advanced reader's edition from Amazon that I need to get to: Veracity by Laura Bynum.

Atlantis

Last week, I had a problem, a problem that I love to have. You see I had $15 in Border's Bucks that I had to spend during the month or else they would disappear. I had earned them by doing on-line surveys (not too many actually but I feel well-rewarded). So there I was at Borders Bookstore trying to decide what to buy. Now $15 equals about two paperbacks and it's very difficult to pare down my choices to just two. Do I go with what I "should" buy like another book in a series that I haven't yet completed, or do I go with a whole new author? That can be risky but only rarely do I end up with something I don't like. So I compromised with one of each. For my new book I chose Atlantis by David Gibbons. I had never heard of him nor recall seeing his books (which was difficult for me to believe considering how often I browse bookstores). I was totally sold on the cover, not only the art work but also the words on the back where it described it as an adventure that tops them all. It would be like Indiana Jones meets The DaVinci Code.

I really loved the premise of this book. The main character is a marine archeologist and gathers a team of experts in response to a find that seems to lead toward the discovery of the lost Atlantis. And I knew if I liked the book there were at least three more by the same author and with the same protagonist. The author himself is a professor of archeology at Cambridge for crying out loud and has led numerous underwater excavations and written extensively on the topic. To top that off, my daughter is an archeology major with a keen interest in underwater archeology so I figured she could enjoy it after me. What could go wrong?

Well, this is the hazard of buying a book by its cover. If I had looked at the Amazon ratings for all four books by David Gibbons I would certainly have looked elsewhere as I have rarely seen so many negative reviews for one author. It's easy to see why. The book had such promise and fell soooo short. To begin with, Mr Gibbons may be a great professor but he hasn't a clue about what makes a quality novel. My most important criteria for a good read is characterization. Characters have to be multi-dimensional and go through changes (either positively or negatively) somehow within the course of the novel. The main three characters in this book started out perfect and ended up perfect. The first half of the book is devoted to the three of them showing off their knowledge to each other, sounding like professors in a classroom. I realize that there is a lot of information that the reader will have to know in order to make any sense of the events that come later, but Mr Gibbons goes way overboard here. Way too many facts that, while interesting on their own, were just not necessary for good story telling.

And the plot was simply not believable. In the space of about two days, the characters solved numerous archeological puzzles that have been around for eons, one discovery leading to another and among the three of them they always managed to have the expertise required to answer the puzzle before them. And then half way through the book we get the thriller part thrust upon us in the form of a sunken Russian nuclear submarine and assorted bad guys to interfere with the archeological parts of the novel. The main character gets shot and is in dire peril of losing his life but three pages later it's as if that never happened. We get to see him shooting down a helicopter with a gun (of course he happens to know the weak spots of that particular helicopter and can adjust to the 200 mile per hour winds so he knows just where to aim). Truly Mr Gibbons seems less comfortable with the action parts of the plot and it shows in it's choppy presentation. The "edge of your seat" thriller aspect of this novel was more like "why do I care what happens to these people?" As soon as he can he wraps up that portion of the story and the characters go back to their professorial discussions and one-upsmanship.

It's too bad. I think Mr Gibbons has potential as a writer but this one seems like yet another attempt to capitalize on the success of The DaVinci Code style of novel. Hopefully he can learn how to build suspense, hold his audience, and most importantly, create characters to which the reader can relate and come to care about. Unfortunately, given the ratings he has received on his other books, it seems he has not learned these lessons and thus will be limited to impulse buyers who are attracted to the cool covers of the books.

Fortunately, I got to follow this one up with another short story from Stephen King's Skeleton Crew collection: "Nona". This is among the best of the collection so far and involves a man in prison who relates the story of meeting the exquisitely attractive Nona and her powerful pull on him...so powerful that he commits several violent murders on her behalf. There is a very subtle horror here in addition to the violent outbursts; it really grabs you and shakes you and doesn't let you go. And I enjoyed seeing some of the characters that show up in other King works, especially Ace Merrill from Needful Things. A very impressive tale and absolutely classic King.

Next up is The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins.

Sandman Slim

I had a busy weekend at my house, mostly involving trying to hook up our new washer and dryer that we were forced to purchase due to our old washing machine going kaput. I was, however, able to get a lot of reading time in while my wife went back and forth to Lowe's and Home Depot trying to get the right parts we needed for the gas line. Yes, I have a wonderful wife who actually enjoys projects around the house leaving me time to read, play computer games, watch DvDs, and generally goof off.

So I completed Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey as part of Amazon's "Vine Voice" program. I think I am going to like this program because so far, both books I've tried are ones I probably never would have picked out at the bookstore and yet have been great reads. I admit I've never heard of Richard Kadrey but some quick research revealed he has written 4-5 other books, edited both print and on-line magazines and seems to be well plugged into the "cyberpunk" world.

Sandman Slim was a fun book to read and I found myself sneaking time to read it. That's probably because of the vivid language the author uses, both in terms of dialog as well as the descriptive passages. The novel is told from the first person point of view and is largely a revenge story told in the form of a supernatural fantasy. It begins with our anti-hero, James Stark, a "magician" (as in real magic not David Copperfield) who has just broken out of Hell by defeating one of Lucifer's main generals. After 11 years in Hell, fighting arena battles, he is out and looking for revenge against those who killed his girlfriend and sent him to Hell in the first place.

As we progress through the story it becomes evident that Stark is just a pawn in a much bigger game and he is being used by others. The author brings a lot of different facets to the story that makes this novel unique. Several times, Stark is referred to as a "monster who kills monsters." He is truly violent and has no moral rules that he lets stand in the way of getting his revenge. He kills without remorse. He has incredible powers from his stint in Hell including the ability to bounce back from terrible injury, such as a knife to his heart, and the next time he is knifed, he recuperates quicker and pretty much become invulnerable to the same type of damage. That leads him to a sort of recklessness that serves to drive the action at a rapid pace.

Despite his violent nature, Stark is oddly enduring. He may cut off an opponent's head and then keep that same head alive through his magic to further torment it but at the same time he is sympathetic to the less fortunate of the regular people he encounters. We readers actually like him in the same way the audience likes the character of "Dexter," the serial killer in the TV show of the same name. The action is almost non-stop but it is the dialog that drives the plot. Virtually everything Stark says is cynical, sarcastic, or profane. This book is not for the cozy mystery crowd nor for those who are offended by the very nature of Heaven or Hell, God, or the Devil. It often reads like a well-done comic book where the words have to paint the ink pictures.

The only concern I had about this novel is the ending where too much is revealed all at once. There are several mysteries as to what is actually happening throughout the first 300 pages and Stark figures most of them out. But the end seemed rushed and includes a scene where Stark is told everything that is really going on here. The author seems to be setting up this book as a first of a series along the lines of Kim Harrison, Charlaine Harris' "Sookie Stackhouse," or 50 or so other supernatural/vampire/witch series that are so popular these days. I will say that if, indeed, this is the first of a series, I was quite intrigued and will definitely be reading more of James Stark's adventures.

I also finished up a very nice short story in Stephen King's Skeleton Crew collection. "Word Processor of the Gods" is an awesome story, a take off on the magic lamp story with three wishes. First published in 1983, the technology is definitely dated (word processors, floppy disks). The protagonist is able to type in a fact and hit the delete key to make it as if it never happened. The only downside is the word processer only has so many actions before it overloads so he must think wisely. His choices are interesting but it does have a happy ending. Another very enjoyable read.

Next up: Warlock, by Wilbur Smith...should be good!