Category Archives: Reviews

Non-fiction, Reviews

Evening In the Palace of Reason, by James R. Gaines

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Evening In the Palace of Reason is a smart, engaging, well-written historical study that ought to be a lot better known than it is.

It centers on a fleeting moment, just a footnote to history. But what happened, and the story that leads up to it, illuminate three epochs of European history, and have relevance in our 21st Century as well.

The facts are easily summarized. On the evening of May 7, 1747, Johan Sebastian Bach and his son Carl presented themselves, by royal command, at the palace of King Frederick the Great of Prussia in Potsdam. Frederick, with his customary lack of courtesy, had required their immediate attendance following the old composer’s arrival by coach, after a three-day journey. He wasn’t given time to wash or change his clothes. Continue reading Evening In the Palace of Reason, by James R. Gaines →

Fiction, Reviews

The Identity Man, by Andrew Klavan

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I will stipulate to being a hopeless fanboy in regard to Andrew Klavan’s novels. But I insist that I came by my enthusiasm honestly. I didn’t discover Klavan after I’d learned he was a conservative and a Christian. I was a fan before he was either—decades ago, when he was still writing superior mysteries about the self-destructive newspaper reporter John Wells, under the pseudonym Keith Peterson. I recognized this Peterson fellow as an author who delivered gripping stories, made more compelling by his rare talent for crafting interesting, layered characters. It was a delight to discover that he had not disappeared, but was persevering under his true identity, going from strength to strength as a writer. His politics and Christian conversion made it perfect.

Klavan’s latest novel, The Identity Man, is less overtly Christian than his previous adult thriller, Empire of Lies. That doesn’t mean he’s hiding his light under a bushel. The Christianity is there, but implicit in the main plot, explicit in sub-plots. The theme of the story, as the title implies, is human identity. Who are we as individuals? Are we capable of choosing how we will live, or are we determined by heredity and environment and social pressure? Do we find our personal identities in our individual choices and character, or in our ethnicity? Continue reading The Identity Man, by Andrew Klavan →

Fiction, Reviews

The Truth of the Matter, by Andrew Klavan

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The Truth of the Matter

If what you’re looking for in a book is subtlety and nuance, Andrew Klavan’s Homelanders series of young adult novels is not the place to go.

If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a book to appeal to young males (the explicit target market for the books), you’ve come to the right place.

These are books for boys who like video games (at one point Charlie West, the book’s hero, even gets to use an actual weapon that works like a video game controller) and extreme sports. “Extreme” describes The Truth of the Matter well—not in the sense of extreme shock content or extreme edginess, but in the sense of action that never slackens, but constantly ratchets up the dramatic tension. Poor Charlie barely gets a chance to grab a nap or anything to eat through the whole story. Wherever he turns, he’s got enemies on his tail. The premise isn’t terribly realistic, but that’s the whole point. This roller coaster of a story isn’t intended to give you time to consider its plausibility. The only drawback is that it’s so compelling that it’s hard to stretch the reading of it longer than a day and a half or so, and you want more. On the other hand, Charlie’s earned some rest. Continue reading The Truth of the Matter, by Andrew Klavan →

Fiction, Reviews

Play Dead, by Harlan Coben

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Perhaps with a little embarrassment, author Harlan Coben prefaces this new edition of his first novel with “A Note From the Author.” He begins the note, “Okay, if this is the first book of mine you’re going to try, stop now. Return it. Grab another. It’s okay. I’ll wait.”

Words in season. I like Coben’s books very much, but Play Dead is a classic example of that deadly subgenre, the badly overwritten first novel. One of the many temptations to which unproven authors fall prey is the one to tell the reader too much, to put everything into the book. Clearly, on the evidence of his later work, Coben has learned a lot in the intervening years. But Play Dead (he says in his Note that he left it as it stands because he considers it dishonest to re-write an earlier book) is too long, too verbose, and awkward. It’s like a teenager who’s outgrown his muscles, impressive in his height, but bad in his coordination. Continue reading Play Dead, by Harlan Coben →

Fiction, Reviews

Much Obliged, Jeeves

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Bertie Wooster loves his Aunt Dahlia, even though she has an ugly habit of leveraging him into some kind of theft. It would be for a good cause, of course, but if you’ve ever read Wooster’s adventures in the world outside his London flat, you’ll know it won’t go well. In this book, however, he is spared such pressure from his beloved Aunt–who employs the best French chef in a hundred miles (no small benefit). Instead, she wants him to knock on doors for one of his old university friends who is running for the House of Commons. That doesn’t prevent him from being accused of being a theft by the Lord of Sidcup, that Baron of Black Shorts, Roderick Spode.

I have been reading the stories of Wooster and Jeeves in relatively the order of their writing, but this is the first one which referred to events I didn’t remember, despite the familiar characters. And the familiar story too. This one didn’t surprise me a few times, and while it was wonderfully fun, it didn’t have a few zany scenes like others I’ve read.

One thing I love is Wodehouse’s style of having a character comment on something that isn’t described in the text. For instance, Jeeves was telling Bertie how something surprising unfolded, then in the same paragraph without pausing for description, he says, “I wouldn’t jerk the wheel so sharply, sir. It could alarm the other drivers.”

Perhaps, you’d have to be there to get the feel of it.

Much Obliged, Jeeves is not a good place to start reading Wodehouse’s terrific stories about Wooster and Jeeves, but it is a recommended part of the series. I enjoyed it.

Reviews

Television Review: Sherlock: A Study In Pink

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Although we naturally (and quite rightly) think of Sherlock Holmes as a character comfortably ensconced in Victorian London, with its hansom cabs rattling down cobblestone streets, yellow fog, and helmeted bobbies, the idea of updating the character isn’t actually a new one. The early Holmes films were always set in the year of their production, just as we today think nothing of seeing James Bond (whose stories were written in the 1950s and ’60s) using a laptop computer or carrying a cell phone. The first Holmes film actually set in period was The Hound of the Baskervilles, starring Basil Rathbone, released by Twentieth Century Fox in 1939. Then, after one more Victorian film for Fox (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), the series moved to Universal and back to the cheaper approach of updating.

I was prepared to dislike the new BBC series Sherlock, broadcast on PBS, but to my surprise I quite liked it. The new Holmes operates as a police consultant in contemporary London. The police are suspicious of him (one accuses him of being a “psychopath,” to which he replies that he’s a high-functioning sociopath). He doesn’t wear a deerstalker or Inverness cape, but those costume elements have tended to be overused (and inappropriately used) in films and TV shows anyway. The modern world doesn’t allow him to smoke, so he relies on multiple nicotine patches when he needs to think out a problem. He does take drugs. The actor who plays him (one who rejoices in the name Benedict Cumberbatch) looks too young for the part, but has the attitude exactly right. Continue reading Television Review: Sherlock: A Study In Pink →

Fiction, Reviews

The Book of the Dun Cow, by Walter Wangerin

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Despite all of the praise I heard for The Book of the Dun Cow, I still smirked through the first few chapters. It has a great setup for a terrible challenge to the earth, even the galaxy, but the characters are farm animals. How terrifying can a story get with a proud rooster for a leading man? But then if I understood myself properly in relation to the God of heaven and earth and the fatally wounded enemy who still plots our defeat, I may think of mankind in the same way–mere animals standing between the Almighty and the Lord of the Flies.

Let me briefly give you the plot. Chauntecleer, the rooster, is lord over a patch of farmland, field, and forest. He is king and cleric to the animals who live there, crowing canonical blessings throughout the day to give their lives order and spiritual purpose. Far away, another farm and another rooster have slacked off holding the order of the day, giving a profound and powerful evil an opportunity to fight for its freedom. The animals are called Wyrm’s Keepers, though I doubt they would recognize the label. By keeping their proper order, they unknowingly keep the evil Wyrm imprisoned, so when one farm has grown tired of the cares of the world, Wyrm exploits his opportunity. Gradually, you might say, all of something breaks loose.

I love most in this story the animals leaning on their daily order, their time-honored tradition. It gave their dirt-scratching, grub-hunting, cleaning, and sleeping greater meaning and consequently greater peace. From Lauds to Compline, Chauntecleer crows through the day, usually because that’s how its done, but when their world become overcast with troubling clouds, he crows to bless those creatures he cares for. In a somewhat comical way, it’s glorious.

And there’s a good bit of comedy throughout the book too. John Wesley Weasel and Mundo Cani Dog are hilarious in their own way as is the rooster’s obnoxious pride.

I have to wonder how much of this fantasy is reality. How much or what kind of grace does the Lord give us through liturgy and the mental transformation he calls us to by meditating on his precepts throughout the day? What is robbed from us when we think of our lives and world in secular terms, when we see the planet instead of creation, when we look into space instead of the heavens? Would we keep the evil imprisoned a little more if we gave ourselves and our families lauds and vespers?

Fiction, Reviews

Rough Country, by John Sandford

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Minnesota mystery author John Sandford (John Camp) has not given up his hugely popular series of “Prey” novels featuring millionaire cop Lucas Davenport, but Davenport’s getting a little domestic and long in the tooth these days. In order to continue writing books with sex appeal, Sandford has launched a new series featuring Davenport’s associate Virgil Flowers. While Davenport fulfills male fantasies by having powerful, expensive cars that he drives very fast, Flowers’ fantasy appeal is more organic. Aside from his remarkable clearance rate as a detective, Flowers is apparently walking candy to women (although the author derives a lot of comedy out of frustrating his desires in this particular story).

Readers tired of sex in novels are advised to stay away from Rough Country, the latest Virgil Flowers. Its very setting—a women-only fishing resort in northern Minnesota, frequented by a number of lesbians—guarantees a large degree of sexual tension, and a certain amount of discomfort when a male detective—even a fashionably broad-minded one like Flowers—starts investigating its affairs. Continue reading Rough Country, by John Sandford →

Non-fiction, Reviews

A Voyage Long and Strange

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I didn’t dislike Tony Horwitz’ rambling book, A Voyage Long and Strange. He’s a likeable writer. One assumes his political preferences are liberal, but he works very hard to give everybody a fair hearing, not just the contemporaries he meets on his journeys across America, but the historical figures whose footsteps he attempts to follow.

The germ of the book was conceived when he made an accidental stopover in Plymouth, Massachusetts, was unimpressed with the sight of Plymouth Rock, and began to wonder why, out of all the pre-colonial and colonial American settlements, we’ve chosen Plymouth Plantation as the birthplace of the American idea. He decided to follow the trail of the chief European explorers and settlers who predated Plymouth, to try to evaluate their relative contributions.

In this goal, I believe, he fails utterly. Still, the story is amusing and informative. Horwitz is good company, and has a charmingly self-deprecating voice. Continue reading A Voyage Long and Strange →