[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 →