Wesley Britton's Blog, page 37

Book Review: Mark Twain & The River of Timeless Temptation by John Kerr

Mark Twain & The River of Timeless Temptation
John Kerr
Publisher: Old Man River Press (March 15, 2017)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B06XF37J6H
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XF37J6H


Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton

As if the life and work of the historical Mark Twain doesn’t provide enough fodder for countless literary and film adaptations, Samuel Clemens has been used by a seemingly endless parade of authors, artists, and filmmakers who send him to more and more fantastic places where he has more than improbable adventures. In comics, Twain was teamed with Nikola Tesla to defeat the evil plans of Thomas Edison, and in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Twain took on the crew of the time-travelling crew of the Enterprise. In the stop-action claymation Adventures of Mark Twain (1985), along with a number of his characters, Twain, split into two parts, captained a fantastic airship to travel to Halley’s Comet. In 1971, Philip Jose Farmer transported Twain to Riverworld in The Fabulous Riverboat where Twain battled, among other formerly dead souls, England’s King John. There are many novels in which Twain lives in alternate realities as when Sesh Heri sent Twain, Harry Houdini, and Nikola Tesla on a journey to Mars in 1893. And that’s just a short list of Twain’s appearances in sci fi projects. Just last month, he figured prominently in The Grandfather Paradox: A Time Travel Story by Steven Burgauer.

Now, John Kerr joins this Twain/sci fi/fantasy mash-up procession by having Twain in the watchful gaze of young Satan, the nephew of Lucifer. The devil’s nephew, calling himself Mr. Brown, is the narrator of the story as he takes “Sammy” around space in time in the quest to get Clemens to sign on the dotted line and give the demonic family his soul. Brown claims to be the one giving Clemens inspirations and story ideas, beginning with the author’s breakthrough short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. The demon has few compliments for Clemens, noting the writer’s many annoying personal complaints and shifting perspectives on moral issues and philosophical ideas. It’s interesting Brown would be so focused on Twain as Lucifer’s minions are constantly busy manipulating the world, especially geopolitical concerns.

In the opening chapters, for example, Twain has been transported to Central America before the Civil War where several actual historic figures, William Walker and Cornelius Vanderbilt, vie for power in Nicaragua. While still on the San Juan river in that country, Brown takes Twain further back in time where they are captured by a young Captain Horatio Nelson, then pirate Henry Morgan, and then Christopher Columbus. Along the way, Brown is constantly worried about violating his uncle’s Prime Directive, that of not altering the existing timeline. It’s often Twain who complicates this matter because of his confusing comments and anachronistic observations uttered in front of figures from the past, unintentionally suggesting actions that Brown knows these personages must not take.

Then, the book abruptly shifts gears and presents Twain’s original account of his actual Nicaragua trip which he described in a series of letters to the Alta California newspaper in 1867. These letters came out in book form in 1940 titled Travels with Mr. Brown, the inspiration for Kerr’s fantasy. The original Mr. Brown is largely considered an imaginary character who Twain described as a boring, irritating travel companion. Beside the time travel passages, much of Kerr’s material is lifted directly from Twain, merely given a different narrative slant. Notably, Kerr’s Mr. Brown is obviously speaking from a contemporary point-of-view, mentioning the internet, K-Marts, Walmart, and Woodstock. Still, while Kerr admits “any plagiarism is entirely intentional,” one wonders if he has the permission to publish so much of Twain’s original work.

The first half of Timeless Temptation is clever and quirky, even if readers are left hanging in terms of what Mark Twain’s future with Mr. Brown and Satan will be. For Twainians and those interested in forgotten chapters of American literature, the book might prompt curiosity about a part of the Twain canon that’s rarely discussed or read. In short, this odd book is for a niche market willing to accept some unorthodox spins on the biography of Mark Twain.

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on March 8, 2017 at:
goo.gl/kvMxGm

No new posts coming for a while

It’s likely going to be a while before I post any new reviews or anything else at this blog.

That’s because, this week my wife was taken to cardiac intensive care where she had three heart stoppages in one day. Since Thursday, machines are supporting what’s left of her heart and are doing the work for what her kidneys and liver are supposed to. She hasn’t been responsive and there’s been no communication with her. The best news we ever get is that she’s relatively stable but there’s not much optimism about her condition.

So I’m just not in the mood for much reading, writing, or much else. Follow my Facebook page for updates if you care to.

Adios for now—

Book Review: The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life by John le Carré

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life
John le Carré (Author, Narrator)
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Audible.com Release Date: September 8, 2016
ASIN: B016E8U2FO
https://www.amazon.com/Pigeon-Tunnel-...

I can’t think of any spy novelist who’s spent more time under critical microscopes than John Le Carre. To date, the best full-length excavation of his life an works has been Adam Sisman’s 2015 John Le Carre: The Biography which relied much on interviews with the writer and some insiders in the Le Carre circle.

For readers who want a straight-forward, linear biography of Le Carre, Sisman still remains the source to go to first. As implied by the subtitle of The Pigeon Tunnel, “Stories from My Life” is a pretty apt description of what readers will find from Le Carre himself. The book isn’t an autobiography in the traditional sense of following a subject’s life from childhood to sagehood told from a writer looking back over his years both in the public eye and in his personal life. Considering the amount of material available on the often elusive and confusing story of David Cornwell a.k.a. John Le Carre, readers should never expect a full, all secrets revealed account anyway.

Instead, Le Carre offers a literary slide show of events and people who he has known that have left an impression on him throughout his career. In a sense, we get a series of character sketches of actual personalities who don’t appear in the book in any chronological order. For example, Le Carre doesn’t delve into the importance of his unusual parents until very late in the book. We meet spies in the British intelligence services, German diplomats, Russian would-be defectors and gangsters, innocent Arab terrorist suspects, and powerful figures like Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdock. But this isn’t a book full of name dropping. Some figures get fleeting descriptions, as in “Muttsky and Jeffsky,” Le Carre’s humorous monikers for two Russian minders during one of his two visits to Moscow. Others get much more discussion, as in Yasser Arafat and Le Carre’s three brief encounters with the Palestine leader.

Along the way, we do get insights into the models Le Carre fictionalized in his work. As his own spy work was so low-level, essentially being an informant on potential Communists in British academia, the more action-oriented scenes are seen when Le Carre travels the world looking for depth and details for his novels. After he blunders with a scene in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy when he wasn’t aware of a tunnel in Hong Kong linking an island to the mainland, Le Carre didn’t want to get caught flat-footed again. So he endures battle conditions in Cambodia and Vietnam and we witness him being secretly smuggled from car to car in Beirut to meet Arafat. We get many observations on espionage, with often pithy notes like “Spies spy because they can.” Humorous moments occur when world leaders, like the president of Italy, think he has some special knowledge that might help them in ongoing operations.

I’ll admit, reading the audio version as narrated by the author has to be the way to go for Le Carre fans. This is a book that’s as readable as any Le Carre thriller because it’s colorful, insightful, revealing, descriptive, and full of a lifetime of accumulated understanding of human nature. While those who know something about the life and context of Le Carre’s output will gain most from a reading of this slideshow, I think It can be enjoyed even by those without any awareness of the backstories of the Le Carre canon.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Feb. 8, 2017
goo.gl/XU0o5s

Book Review: I Loved Her in the Movies: Memories of Hollywood's Legendary Actresses by Robert Wagner

I Loved Her in the Movies: Memories of Hollywood's Legendary Actresses
Robert Wagner
ISBN-10: 0525429115 his life in Hollywood
ISBN-13: 978-0525429111
https://www.amazon.com/Loved-Her-Movi...


For his third book delving into his life in Hollywood, actor Robert Wagner chose to focus on his feelings about many of Hollywood’s leading ladies. Some he knew casually, some he knew intimately, some he knew professionally, some he knew by reputation. In most of his tributes, he looks at major actresses as we knew them from their work, his experiences with many of them, as well as his thoughts on how they lived their lives off-screen.

Wagner’s personal memories begin with a brief encounter in 1938 with Norma Shearer who happened to be the mother of one of Wagner’s childhood friends. So his introduction to famous actresses began seeing one of them at home and not up on the silver screen. Then he offers his analysis of films of the 1930s with quick hit-and run overviews of actresses like Shirley Temple with more in-depth discussions of figures like Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford, and Irene Dunn. Wagner was surprised to learn Dunn was Cary Grant’s personal pick as his favorite co-star in comedies.

Then Wagner moves on to the films of the 1940s and his memories of Claudette Colbert, Myrna Loy, and Katherine Hepbern. In the case of Colbert, Wagner remains grateful the veteran actress was kind to him when they worked together on 1951’s Let’s Make It Legal when she was a long-time movie veteran and he was a rookie continually flubbing his lines. As he has said before, much of the style of his TV series Hart to Hart was meant to imitate the relationship Loy and William Powell shared in The Thin Man detective films.

But to attempt to review Wagner’s roll call of Hollywood’s most significant actresses just isn’t possible in a short book review. Yes, he discusses the most famous of them, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day, and Debbie Reynolds among them. Some were figures well-known in past decades and largely forgotten now like June Allison and Dorothy Lamour. Of course, he touches on the ladies he knew most intimately of all, his wives Natalie Wood and Jill St. John.

Along the way, Wagner uses nearly every complimentary adjective possible as he found much to admire in the character and professionalism of the actresses he profiles. He also describes much of the context in which the stars operated, including a long section on the Studio Club, essentially a large private dormitory for poor, aspiring actresses bunking in a supportive sanctuary. Successful actresses, Wagner claims, had to be independent, determined, and blessed with luck and timing especially in the era of the big studios. He praises those who were professional with a strong work ethic, supportive of their peers, were simply good people to be around, and likeable both on and off-screen. Very, very few names get negative profiles, notably the often late to work Raquel Welch and the disruptive Shelley Winters.

In the main, Wagner’s profiles nearly glow with positive appreciation of a gender Wagner feels has a more difficult time in their craft than their male counterparts. He notes much has changed and women now have much more personal clout than they once did. He points out, for women, reaching 40 is often the death knell for their careers as moviegoers prefer younger faces and less so mature women. There was a time when the actresses had the names that sold tickets; starting with the ‘60s, that changed dramatically with male stars taking over as the principal draws.

I’ll add, the warmth of Wagner is even more present listening to the audiobook edition as the author reads his own book for us. This isn’t a book to read for fresh revelations but rather an opportunity to explore the behind-the-scenes stories of strong women from an insider’s perspective. Perhaps you’ll gain a deeper appreciation for the figures you also love and now have even more reason to do so.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Feb. 6, 2017
goo.gl/Gi3EKi

Mark Twain and Robots

For robot fans, here’s an article on a “Silver Swan” robot that impressed Mark Twain back in the mid-19th Century:
http://tinyurl.com/zben5pn

Book Review: Learning the Hard Way 1 by H.P. Caledon

Learning the Hard Way 1
H.P. Caledon
Publisher: Devine Destinies (January 27, 2017)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B01N9ULKFM
https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Hard-...


Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton

Judging from the countless dystopian stories pouring out in literature and on film, it seems obvious that most sci fi writers see humanity’s future in very dark and bleak terms.

It’s difficult to get much more dark and bleak than to open a novel set in a prison where the guards are rarely visible and the inmates are left to create their own rules. That’s where former soldier and mercenary Mike Marshall is sent. There, he quickly learns he’s going to be somebody’s property. He’s won in a brutal fight by Keelan who is an assassin under the thumb of the biggest dog of the prison gangs.

Mike indeed learns much the hard way in brutal confrontations with inmates who see him as mere meat in their twisted power games. The only salvation Mike has is to trade inside information about mercenary tactics with Keelan in return for protection from the most ruthless of prisoners. To both their surprises, Mike and Keelan find themselves in an uneasy alliance.

The second half of the book moves outside the prison where we encounter authorities at war with slavers on a distant planet. At least, it must be distant. We’re not really told much about it. Instead, we get an espionage plot that takes Mike down urban alleys and inside military barracks.

In fact, it’s hard to see how this novel can be classified as science fiction. Yes, the setting is clearly in the future, but nothing is futuristic except for spaceships in the final sections. We hear fleeting mentions of alien species, but we never get any descriptions or see any interactions with them. Yes, the settings are given as being on different planets, but again we get no descriptions of them or how humanity settled on them. What happens could plausibly happen on earth and not all that far into our future.

In fact, everything is extremely terrestrial and there’s really no need for the sci fi veneer. The heart of the story is the education of Mike Marshall and how he is forced to adapt to constantly shifting circumstances. That includes what happened in his life before prison, what happens inside, and what happens thereafter. It’s his internal torments, especially his self-disgust for his betrayal of his cell-mate that makes him a psychologically damaged human, covered with scars on his body, heart, and soul.

So it doesn’t really matter where Mike experiences his learning the hard way, but rather watching him move from simple survival to being able to make his own decisions to, well, that would be telling.

Learning the Hard Way is for readers who like harsh, brutal stories where the main protagonist can’t be considered a hero but instead a man capable of being more than a pawn in the clutches of remorseless criminals from horrible pasts with equally horrible futures in front of them. It’s the sort of sci fi for readers who don’t like most sci fi. Perhaps we’ll learn more about the galaxy they inhabit in the inevitable sequel.


This review first appeared Feb. 1, 2017 at BookPleasures.com:
goo.gl/aTyhOs



Learning the Hard Way 1
H.P. Caledon
Publisher: Devine Destinies (January 27, 2017)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B01N9ULKFM
https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Hard-...


Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton

Judging from the countless dystopian stories pouring out in literature and on film, it seems obvious that most sci fi writers see humanity’s future in very dark and bleak terms.

It’s difficult to get much more dark and bleak than to open a novel set in a prison where the guards are rarely visible and the inmates are left to create their own rules. That’s where former soldier and mercenary Mike Marshall is sent. There, he quickly learns he’s going to be somebody’s property. He’s won in a brutal fight by Keelan who is an assassin under the thumb of the biggest dog of the prison gangs.

Mike indeed learns much the hard way in brutal confrontations with inmates who see him as mere meat in their twisted power games. The only salvation Mike has is to trade inside information about mercenary tactics with Keelan in return for protection from the most ruthless of prisoners. To both their surprises, Mike and Keelan find themselves in an uneasy alliance.

The second half of the book moves outside the prison where we encounter authorities at war with slavers on a distant planet. At least, it must be distant. We’re not really told much about it. Instead, we get an espionage plot that takes Mike down urban alleys and inside military barracks.

In fact, it’s hard to see how this novel can be classified as science fiction. Yes, the setting is clearly in the future, but nothing is futuristic except for spaceships in the final sections. We hear fleeting mentions of alien species, but we never get any descriptions or see any interactions with them. Yes, the settings are given as being on different planets, but again we get no descriptions of them or how humanity settled on them. What happens could plausibly happen on earth and not all that far into our future.

In fact, everything is extremely terrestrial and there’s really no need for the sci fi veneer. The heart of the story is the education of Mike Marshall and how he is forced to adapt to constantly shifting circumstances. That includes what happened in his life before prison, what happens inside, and what happens thereafter. It’s his internal torments, especially his self-disgust for his betrayal of his cell-mate that makes him a psychologically damaged human, covered with scars on his body, heart, and soul.

So it doesn’t really matter where Mike experiences his learning the hard way, but rather watching him move from simple survival to being able to make his own decisions to, well, that would be telling.

Learning the Hard Way is for readers who like harsh, brutal stories where the main protagonist can’t be considered a hero but instead a man capable of being more than a pawn in the clutches of remorseless criminals from horrible pasts with equally horrible futures in front of them. It’s the sort of sci fi for readers who don’t like most sci fi. Perhaps we’ll learn more about the galaxy they inhabit in the inevitable sequel.


This review first appeared Feb. 1, 2017 at BookPleasures.com:
goo.gl/aTyhOs

Book Review: Your Song Changed My Life: From Jimmy Page to St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson to Hozier, Thirty-Five Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music That Inspired It by Bob Boilen

Your Song Changed My Life: From Jimmy Page to St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson to Hozier, Thirty-Five Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music That Inspired It
Bob Boilen
Publisher: William Morrow (April 12, 2016)
ISBN-10:0062344447
ISBN-13:978-0062344441
https://www.amazon.com/Your-Song-Chan...


Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton

The creator and host of NPR's All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts, Bob Boilen is also a musician, formerly of the band Tiny Desk Unit and most recently with Danger Painters. Both of these careers have much to do with Your Song Changed My Life as each of the 35 essays in the book are based on interviews Boilen conducted with songwriters for All Songs Considered. His conversations and analysis are also informed by his personal experience with musical composition and performance.

The title suggests all of the essays might focus on one song that awakened an artist’s creative juices, and that’s certainly part of each essay. But there’s always more, including the musician’s biography and the cultural contexts in which the songwriter developed. For example, Boilen often notes the importance of a geographic region’s cultural impact on the artists in question. There’s also Boilen’s always appreciative critique of each artist’s work.

There are few names immediately recognizable to Baby Boomers who look back to the ‘60s as our touchstones for music appreciation. Jimmy Page was not the only U.K. youngster to be inspired by Lonnie Donegan’s 1954 “Rock Island Line,” for many the unquestioned starting point for the British Invasion. Smokey Robinson liked Jackie Wilson’s 1958 signature song, “Lonely Teardrops.” Cat Stevens was struck with the song, “Somewhere” from West Side Story as well as The Beatles’ version of “Twist and Shout.” For Jackson Browne, the song that inspired him was Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice.”

Most of the other musicians came to prominence in later decades, although it’s clear many of them were inspired by classic blues, folk, or country performers as well as ‘60s hits. For example, James Blake liked Sam Cooke’s somewhat obscure “Trouble Blues.”
When Boilen has trouble getting an artist to nail down a specific choice, he picks one the musician talked about extensively as when David Byrne praised the structure of James Brown’s “Cold Sweat.” Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) had two top contenders, The Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn, “ and The Monkees’ “Daydream Believer.” For others, it wasn’t a record the artist cited but rather a performance. For Dave Grohl, for example, it was a concert by the band, Naked Raygun, that he said changed his life. Likewise, Chan Marshall (Catpower) was struck watching TV seeing Areatha Franklin singing “Amazing Grace” on the day the shuttlecraft Challenger exploded in 1986.

There are no shortages of surprises. Classical composer Philip Glass cited zany Spike Jones version of “The William Tell Overture” as played on pots and pans. I didn’t know Jackson Browne and the Velvet Underground’s Nico not only had a relationship but some of Browne’s earlier compositions appeared on her records. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. admitted considerable affection for ‘60s bubblegum by The Archies and the Banana Splits long before Patti Smith’s “Birdland” ignited his creative soul.

Odds are, few readers are going to recognize all the musicians profiled in this book. I, for example, never heard of the Icelandic or Israeli performers or jazz violinist Regina Carter or newly breaking musicians like Courtney Barnett or Kate Tempest. But that’s part of the education of the book—introducing us to musicians Boilen admires and that’s an eclectic brew. From start to finish, it’s obvious Boilen is passionate and knowledgeable about all his subjects who, in turn, are passionate about their music. It’s clear all these musicians share a creative drive that’s emotional, powerful, and honest. Each was inspired to join the continuity of musical history while breaking new individual ground. If you’re a music lover, especially with a taste for artists of more contemporary vintages, Your Song Changed My Life is likely to engage you and perhaps be an inspiration itself.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com at:
goo.gl/O8yVcF

Book Review: The Grandfather Paradox: A Time Travel Story

The Grandfather Paradox: A Time Travel Story
Steven Burgauer
Publisher: Battleground Press
Published: January 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1542454476
ASIN: B01MR40744
https://www.amazon.com/Grandfather-Pa...

Reviewer: Dr. Wesley Britton

In 2016, I had the pleasure of reviewing two of Steven Burgauer’s novels, the World War II set Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou and the story of a Neanderthal family in Night of the Eleventh Sun. Both books were very different in both style and substance. And neither is really comparable to the achievement of The Grandfather Paradox.

For one matter, both of Burgauer’s previous stories were fairly well locked into specific places and times. Not so The Grandfather Paradox. While the book’s subtitle signals a time travel adventure, it takes some time, as it were, for this element of the story to be introduced. In fact, the book is really two books sandwiched together.

The book opens with Andu Nehrengel captaining a spaceship exploring a remote part of the galaxy. Then his crew mutinies and forces him off the ship in a small runabout which crash-lands on an alien planet. There, Andu has to survive attacks by large carnivorous alien bird-beasts before he meets three beautiful female human clones who are also marooned on the planet. Andu learns the clones are the lone survivors of a Mormon ship that had been set out to find a new home for the church. On the clones’ ship, Andu learns much more which leads him and one of the beautiful clones to leap through both space and time to, in part, find the gene that will correct a deadly virus Andu is carrying.

Along the way, readers who like hard science in their science fiction are rewarded with in-depth theoretical discussions that make cloning, time travel, and space exploration understandable and plausible. For some, perhaps the physics lessons might seem to bog down the story. For me, I felt I was being educated while going along with the fantastic and very unpredictable events. After all, the whole thing starts light years from earth before taking us to a steamboat on the Mississippi River where a young Mark Twain becomes a central character. Then Burgauer takes us to the 1862 battle of Shiloh where Andu searches for the ancestor with the untainted genetics he needs.

Part two of the book is very much centered on Henry Morgan’s—the name Andu uses in 1861—friendship with Twain as Burgauer pretty much retells the 19th century author’s early biography, lifting whole passages from Twain’s writings, especially Life on the Mississippi. While the book remains very descriptive and detailed, everything is far different from what came before. But Burgauer weaves everything together in a complex tapestry of actual history along with speculative science fiction.

The book’s title comes from a concept argued as far back as 1931 about any historical inconsistencies that might occur if someone went back in time and killed their own grandparent, ostensibly resulting in the demise of the time traveler. The entire idea of time travel has been debated logically as to what implications might arise from any changes to known chronology, and a good overview of the literature and debates on the “grandparent paradox” can be found at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfa...

Of course, Burgauer’s take isn’t to kill anyone in the past but rather to get uncorrupted DNA from an ancestor to save one of his descendants. The result is a very engaging, often philosophical epic crammed to the gills with twists and turns that span both centuries and light years. Highly recommended.

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Jan. 25, 2016 at:
goo.gl/yFgL92

Book Review: Altar of Resistance (World War II Trilogy Book 2) by Samuel Marquis

Altar of Resistance (World War II Trilogy Book 2)
Samuel Marquis
(Mount Sopris Publishing, January 24, 2017).
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B01NCWYIH1
https://www.amazon.com/Altar-Resistan...


Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton

To date, I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing two previous Samuel Marquis novels: The Coalition, a political assassination thriller, and Bodyguard of Deception: Volume One of his World War II Trilogy.

Now, I’ve read Altar of Resistance, the second book in that trilogy. Without question, Marquis has really upped his game with this one. In Bodyguard, much of the setting was in the Rocky Mountains where two escaped Nazi POW brothers with very different attitudes try to send secret information back to Germany. One is a die-hard, ruthless Nazi; the other is a loyal German whose patriotism does mean national pride but doesn’t extend to Hitler. In the mix, their Americanized mother tries to make sure law enforcement and counter-espionage entities chasing her sons capture and not kill them.

In Altar, Marquis compounds that family dynamic with a more epic sweep set during the Allied invasion of Italy, with many events occurring in the occupied, besieged city of Rome in 1943-1944. SS Colonel Wilhelm Hollmann represents the Germans trying to control the Italians while fulfilling the dictates of Adolf Hitler that include mass slaughters of Jews and the Italian resistance. He has two children. One is Major John Bridger of the American-Canadian First Special Service Force who has changed his name to distance himself from a family he feels is cursed , after his mother tried to kill his father 11 years before. His half-sister is Teresa Kruger, who becomes a partisan fighter killing Germans on Roman streets as she wishes to destroy the father she despises.

While we see Bridger go behind enemy lines and narrowly escape torture and death before joining the Allied invasion, we also witness Teresa and her resistance compatriots trying to fight their oppressors. We see Hollman interact with a large number of German and Italian fascists engaged in savage reprisals and cruelty of every variety. We also see Pope Pius XII wrestling with what his proper role should be in protecting the Jews and his people. Perhaps it’s the story of the Pope that could be the most controversial element of the novel.

For decades, the Pope’s role during the war has been debated with no easy resolutions. Did he do enough to protect the Jews? Why didn’t he be more public in denunciations of Hitler? In Marquis’s portrayal, the Pope wanted to preserve the Vatican’s neutrality, feared there would be harsher reprisals if he said much publicly, felt he couldn’t fairly denounce Hitler without doing the same to the Russians, and seemed very concerned about his august presence being forced out of Rome. He’s described as a secret agent for the allies, supporting three assassination attempts on Hitler, and he made all Catholic institutions in and around Rome safe havens for Jews for as long as he could before German betrayal.

With such a complex tableau with many significant players, no synopsis can possibly do the book justice. It’s more than evident considerable research went into establishing the events, settings, and especially the characters. In several appendices, Marquis spells out the biographies of the actual personages that populate his novel and explains who the models were for his fictional characters. For me, it’s astonishing how much went into this book that was published so quickly after his other recent novels. The man is prolific as well as deep. I look forward to volume three of the trilogy which, no doubt will come our way sometime in 2017.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Jan. 24, 2016:
goo.gl/mZj8B5

Book Review: Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2) by Eric Michael Craig

Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2)
Eric Michael Craig
Publisher: Rivenstone Press (May 30, 2016)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B01E4UPXHQ
https://www.amazon.com/Prometheus-Dra...

In my review of Stormhaven Rising, the first volume of the “Atlas and the Winds” series, I briefly noted comparisons between that novel and the first sci fi classic about an asteroid destroying the earth, the 1933 When Worlds Collide.

I have far fewer comparisons between the first book’s sequel, After When Worlds Collide, and Prometheus and The Dragon. The 1934 sequel was pure fantasy with amazing remains of a vanished alien civilization left behind on another planet for the human survivors to inhabit. True, the various bands of humans from different countries brought with them dangerous ideological conflicts from their now dead home planet. The same is true of Prometheus, although on a far more complex scale.

From the beginning of Prometheus, the Chinese and Americans battle each other both on the moon and on earth as each think they have the real hope of throwing the coming asteroid off course. Each, due to both arrogance and technological issues, cancel out each other’s efforts. At the same time, other conflicts flare up on earth and between various lunar colonies. On earth, an alliance between the Russians and Arab states seek to destroy Israel, but this union breaks down and threatens the stability of the Russian/Arab moon colony. An insane American evangelist enflames thousands of followers to destroy all spacecraft taking potential survivors to the moon as he thinks unbelievers should simply accept the will of God and die in the coming apocalypse. The Americans don’t like the idea of the Stormhaven colony having an equal voice in the future as they feel the Stormhaven base doesn’t have legitimate international standing. In short, in the precious time left before the asteroid hit, humanity is its own worst enemy.

Author Eric Michael Craig does an excellent job providing characters who represent the multiple perspectives and widely differing agendas of a number of nations, scientists, political and military leaders, as well as religious groups. He also provides a large number of interpersonal relationships of those desperate to survive on the moon, those who try to create safe havens on earth, or those spreading terrestrial and lunar havoc based on self-defeating motives. As with volume one, Craig is especially good with his explanations of scientific advances, vivid settings, and sadly too many believable human tensions. Without giving anything away, the concluding chapters include so much emotional punch that readers may well be breathless by the time they read the bonus chapter from the next book, Shadows in the Sun.

Certainly, it’s best to read Stormhaven Rising before diving into Prometheus. If you’re like me, you’ll want to go beyond these two novels, read book three, and look forward to the rest of the series coming out in 2017. To me, Eric Michael Craig undeniably deserves to be lauded as an important new voice in science fiction.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Jan. 23, 2016—
goo.gl/3dhs3C