I thought I’d give this one a try because the Kindle price was only ninety-nine cents, and the concept was so promising that I wanted it to be good.

Sadly, a good concept does not a good novel make. Good writing is also required. Some of the writing in The Ian Fleming Files: Operation Armada is good enough, but the author’s pallet is limited, and his reach exceeds his grasp.

Here’s the concept: Most of us know that Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, was himself a British agent during World War II, and much of the procedures he describes were based on his experience. Certain characters in the fictional stories are also based on real people.

Damian Stevenson makes the creative jump of presenting Fleming as the original Bond, and telling a story of one of his assignments as if he were writing a Bond script. Continue reading The Ian Fleming Files: Operation Armada, by Damian Stevenson →

Vox Day of Vox Popoli reviews Hailstone Mountain, mostly positively. (I get the impression he’s a tough critic):

Creativity: 4 of 5. Based on it is on a history with which most readers are much less familiar than they tend to think, Hailstone Mountain is considerably more creative than the average fantasy novel. I liked how Walker mimicked the way in which saga plots tend to advance and turn abruptly, without much in the way of warning. It’s a fascinating blend of old and new, and will be a pleasure for anyone tired of the formulaic plots and predictable characters that presently infest so much of modern fantasy. Jonathan Moeller has remarked how epublishing has broadened the scope of fantasy fiction, and Hailstone Mountain is an excellent example of this phenomenon.

When you follow free and discount e-book blogs, you learn to have low expectations. Generally the free or low-priced books you get are worth the price (I leave it to others to make such judgments on my own e-books). But now and then you discover a gem. Grave Passage by William Doonan is, all things considered, a breath of fresh air, a well-written, often funny story with a genuinely original and engaging hero/narrator.

Henry Grave is 84 years old, a retired archaeologist and one-time World War II prisoner of war. Somehow (it’s never quite explained) he got himself into a post-retirement career as an investigator for a cruise line. In that capacity he’s helicoptered onto the deck of the Contessa Voyager one night, to look into the death of one of the cruise lecturers, an FBI agent who recently announced he’d solved a famous murder and had promised to name the killer on this voyage.

Henry’s method of investigation is to settle into the routine of the cruise, enjoy the buffets, drink to excess, schmooze with the passengers, and generally project the image of a harmless, semi-senile old man. It’s hard to tell sometimes whether he’s actually faking all this – some of his lapses of memory seem genuine, and his frequent unplanned naps suggest he might want to talk to his doctor about a C-Pap machine. But the wheels are always turning behind his bumbling, buffoonish façade, and he has some surprises in store for the murderers – as well as for the readers.

I thoroughly enjoyed Grave Passage. Christian readers will not be comfortable with Henry’s heavy drinking or his sexual recreations (he flirts with any woman he likes, but reserves his actual Viagra tablets for a woman of appropriate age), but these elements are no more prominent here than in many other mysteries. Author Doonan writes good prose, creates believable, intriguing characters, and describes the cruising life authentically (as I can testify). Highly recommended.

I just finished reading How to Talk to Girls at Parties, by Neil Gaiman, which is available absolutely free for Kindle here. It’s actually a short story, presented along with a free preview of Gaiman’s next novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

The title obviously interested me from the git-go (though it didn’t actually help in that department), but the story in itself is a pretty clever one, combining a sensitive portrayal of teenage shyness and angst with a space alien story. I think saying anything more would spoil it. Pretty good, and hey, it’s free.

Full disclosure: Author Robert Treskillard is an internet friend of mine, and I got my review copy free.



You’d think it would be hard to do a fresh take on Merlin and the Arthur saga, but Robert Treskillard delivers a story that’s quite original in Merlin’s Blade, throwing out parts of the traditional tale, altering others, but hewing close enough to the main points to satisfy most enthusiasts, I think.

My review has to be mixed. I found the story creative and compelling, and the characters – mostly – well developed and interesting. The execution of the narrative, however showed a number of weaknesses.

We meet Treskillard’s Merlin as a young man, the son of a village blacksmith, nearly blinded in a wolf attack (wolves keep trying to kill him, for reasons only hinted at), but able to get around fairly well in his familiar environs. A strange rectangular stone, originally a meteor, is brought forth by a group of Druids, bent on reviving the old religion among the Christian Britons. Merlin finds himself, along with his friends from a nearby monastery, drawn into a political conflict, not only between Christians and heathens, but between various chieftains carrying old grudges. He falls in love with the local magistrate’s daughter and joins the high king’s court as an apprentice bard, but old secrets threaten his life, his family, and his faith itself.

I enjoyed the story – indeed, I was reading compulsively by the end – but the writing got in the way too often. Author Treskillard hasn’t mastered his wordsmithing. He blends modern slang and antique diction, to sometimes jarring effect (he also doesn’t know how to use the “-eth” suffix, on the one occasion he attempts it). People do and say things now and then that don’t feel in character, but seem forced for the sake of a plot point or exposition. There are also movie tropes present which bother me, but probably won’t bother others – swords always scrape on metal when drawn (they don’t usually do that. Most sheaths were leather, and metal furniture was on the outside). Swords are worn on the back (generally impractical and anachronistic).

The best historical detail in the book involves a description of swordsmithing, something the author knows from experience and dramatizes with authority.

I think less critical readers (this book is aimed at young adults) will not pick as many nits with Merlin’s Blade as I did. Generally recommended. Very little objectionable content.

[Weather] said, “Look, whatever – I’m not talking about all of that. I’m talking about our daughter.”

“I know you are,” Lucas said. “And like I said, we’re all a little crazy, but basically, and overall, Letty’s okay.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she’s just like me,” Lucas said. “And I’m okay, mostly.”

I’ve praised John Sandford’s “Prey” novels, starring Minnesota state cop Lucas Davenport, more than once in this blog. It’s a pleasure to be able to report that Stolen Prey, the latest volume in paperback, maintains the high quality of a series that a lesser writer might reclined on.

My main complaint – though I think I understand his reasons – is that author Sandford starts the story off with a truly appalling crime – the torture and rape murders of a family of four in a suburban Minneapolis home. Gut-wrenching crimes have become an earmark of the Prey series, but I don’t think the story would have lost a lot if the kids had been left out of it. At least the family’s suffering is over by the time we arrive at the murder scene.

Having got past that, the rest of the ride is excellent. The police are convinced that this is the work of a Mexican drug gang, though they can’t figure out what the murdered father – an investment manager – could have had to do with that. The FBI and the DEA join in the investigation, along with a male/female Mexican police team. Continue reading Stolen Prey, by John Sandford →

Because I enjoyed Throne of Bones, Vox Day was kind enough to send me a copy of his new release, The Wardog’s Coin, which consists of two shorter stories set in the same universe.

I enjoyed them both, in different ways. The title story is more immediately accessible, being (so far as I can tell – I may have missed some subtext) a pretty straight war story about human mercenaries fighting an army of goblins and orcs for an elven king. It’s a rousing and tragic tale of men and war.

The second story, “Qalabi Dawn,” is more challenging but interesting on a couple of levels. It’s the story of a desert race of rational creatures who seem to be a cross between humans and big cats. A ruthless ruler conquers all the prides in order to defend his race as a whole from human aggression. Aside from offering a kind of metaphor for the place of Islam in the world, this story deals very successfully with a challenge I’ve tried to tackle myself in the past, with (I fear) debatable success – the conception and communication of a wholly alien ethos, imagining what creatures who really thought differently from us might be like.

Well done. Recommended.

Lee would have to be mad to send his divisions across that field. And Hunt was sure he would do it.

When I finished reading Ralph Peters’ Civil War novel Cain at Gettysburg, I almost checked my clothing for blood spatter.

Up until now Michael Shaara’s epic novel The Killer Angels has been considered not only the best Gettysburg novel ever written, but the best possible Gettysburg novel.

It’s been a long time since I read Shaara’s book, but I’m fairly certain that, for all its virtues, it didn’t have anything like the impact on me that Cain at Gettysburg did.

Cain at Gettysburg is a tactile book. It’s written at eye level – sometimes ground level – and leaves a powerful – occasionally sickening – impression of the actual experience of the men involved, generals and common soldiers alike. We are never far from the smells of gunpowder and dysentery and decomposing bodies. We feel the itch of the uniforms, the burning heat of the July sun, and the thirst and hunger of men who can never get sufficient clean water or food. Continue reading Cain at Gettysburg, by Ralph Peters →