Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 30

The King Beyond the Gate by David Gemmell

The King Beyond the Gate by David Gemmell

Two generations after Legend and the Drenai peoples are in crisis again. They have a tyrant ruling them with an iron fist—a particularly frightening iron fist in that it is backed up by magically created combinations of man and beast called joinings. Gemmell focuses his story on a grandson of the barbarian king Ulric and the Earl of Bronze from the last book—a half breed who fits in nowhere but is a brilliant strategist and warrior. He gathers former companions in arms to kill the tyrant and ends up trying to plan a defense against the tyrant’s legion and his joinings.

 

This book does not reach the emotional heights of Legend, but it’s still a superb story with great personal battles and large-scale military action. The mystical “thirty” appear again to aid the defendants, this time facing Black Templars instead of barbarian mystics. All in all, this is another wonderful novel in which we get into the hearts and souls of men and women trying to save their world from cruel oppression. As Gemmell is still willing to kill just about everyone he puts on the page, the ending is quite painful to read. You’ll care about the people dying and worry tremendously about every character.

 

1901 by Robert Conroy

1901 by Robert Conroy

A little-known fact about the military buildup of Germany at the end of the 19th Century is that contingency plans were developed for a German invasion of the United States of America. At the time, Germany had the best army in Europe (and probably the world) and America almost didn’t have one. Germany also had a larger and more modern navy than the United States so it’s short-term prospects in a war with the U.S. looked good. In 1901, Conroy has come up with a justification for Germany actually launching the attack and then in a delightful bit of alternate military history, takes the reader through the course of the war.

 

I was a little frustrated in the beginning because I didn’t think Conroy understood how vast the resources of the U.S. in 1901 were and how implausible it was that Germany could prevent a massive buildup against their invasion, but it quickly became apparent that Conroy had respectably built these factors into his plan of war. He also effectively shows the peace faction, many of whom had staunchly opposed absorbing the former Spanish empire into the U.S., causing trouble for the president and adding tremendously to the risks if the growing U.S. army suffered a major defeat.

 

There are a lot of other things to like about this novel as well. The role of the British struck me as highly credible. The technology issues that would still be around (in our world) in 1914 were even more of a problem in 1901. There are tremendous leadership problems to be resolved (and the solution made me laugh with delight). Conroy also does some very nice work with the U.S. navy in this book and I thought his depictions of Kaiser Wilhelm II fit well with what I have read about the man, as did his characterization of Theodore Roosevelt.

 

On the other hand, there were two things about this novel that I didn’t like. The first was that President McKinley was very reluctant to declare war on Germany even after they invaded. This just isn’t plausible. Yes, McKinley was slow to declare war on Spain over actions in Cuba which he doubted justified going to war over, but that is highly different than a foreign power without provocation landing an army on Long Island. Even Woodrow Wilson would have rushed to declare war under those circumstances.

 

The second thing I disliked was how much time was devoted to the two romances in the novel. Nothing against romance, I read them occasionally, but this was a book about a war that might have happened and they were a huge distraction.

 

Overall, I was quite glad I read the book and I am adding Robert Conroy to the list of authors I’d like to read more of.

 

Legend by David Gemmell

Legend by David Gemmell

David Gemmell, may he rest in peace, was one of the great fantasy writers of our time and this is the book that launched his career. Gemmell had been diagnosed with cancer and says that he started this book to occupy his mind while he was in treatment. It’s unlike anything in the genre that I had ever read. A sixty-year-old legendary warrior comes out of a very short retirement to fight in one last helpless cause to try and save the Drenai people. Druss has been in every major battle for the past forty years, but none of the lost causes he turned around ever looked as bad as this one.

 

Gemmell gets inside the skull of his heroes, none of whom—not even Druss—are without serious flaws. This book will tap every emotion you have. There’s plenty of excitement, but there’s also outrage, and respect, and trepidation, and grief, and wonder, and horror as men and women struggle to find it in themselves to hold on one more hour so that millions of people they will never know have a chance to go on living.

 

This would be a remarkable novel for any writer to produce—but as a first novel it will just knock your socks off. And it’s only Gemmell’s first novel. He fought the cancer off long enough to give us at least a score more books and make a legend of his very own.

 

The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker

The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker

This is the first Spenser novel and as such Spenser both is and is not the detective we’re familiar with in the series. The core is there. He has an inner calm that I’ve always respected and he still dislikes authority. But Hawk and Susan are not yet in the series and they really round out and show the depths in the character.

 

In many ways this struck me as a classic Spenser plot. He starts out being hired to investigate the theft of an illuminated manuscript, but not too far into the novel he becomes very protective of a young woman who has been framed for murder. While it’s never phrased in these terms, Spenser’s personal code won’t let him stop trying to clear her and so he pushes on when others would give up.

 

While this novel is a sort of “who dunnit”, it’s by no means a cozy mystery. Parker does not toss out a mixture of clues and red herrings and expect the reader to put them together before the detective identifies the villain in the drawing room. Instead, we learn what’s going on as Spenser does and to make certain we are keeping up with the plot, Spenser explains his progress to people at various points in the novel. So from that perspective, this is more like an adventure story than an Ellery Queen. That’s not to say that there isn’t an important mystery at the heart of the tale and that uncovering the bad guy isn’t a lot of fun.

 

2000 Years of Papal History by John O'Malley

2000 Years of Papal History by John O’Malley

This book wasn’t quite what I expected. I think I thought we would walk through the reigns of most popes, starting with what we know of Peter and moving forward. In doing so, we would watch the Roman Catholic Church, the governments it interacted with, and the people it serves evolve toward the modern day. That isn’t really what we got. Instead, we covered briefly only two of the first 31 popes, getting glimpses into what life was like in the early church. Then we took a long look at Emperor Constantine and his important contributions to establishing fourth century Catholicism. And then we started jumping forward again, taking a quick look at Charlemagne, exploring the Nadir of the papacy when popes (mostly unqualified for the office) were murdered and deposed with regularity, and continuing to leapfrog throughout history until the modern day.

 

I was disappointed in O’Malley’s coverage of the Investiture Controversy. It struck me that, despite his promises in the beginning of the book, he really couldn’t throw off his own understanding of what is proper for the church to explore this important church-state struggle. While Catholics today agree that the state should not have a role in appointing bishops, it was a traditional function of secular rulers at the time. Gregory’s attempt to exclude Henry IV from appointing his own bishops was a radical act. Instead of making this point and exploring how the understanding of the papacy and Christian society changed as a result of the Investiture Controversy, O’Malley spends a lot of time talking about Henry IV’s arrogance. While it is true that he was arrogant, it is also true that he was fighting for the traditional rights of his office. After all, his father was the one who ended the Nadir of the Papacy and started the Gregorian Reform movement by throwing a corrupt pope and antipope out of office and appointing his own pope.

 

On the other hand, his coverage of the first French pope, Clement V, shows in admirable detail how he was under the thumb of the French king, Philip the Fair, and how his corrupt policies (making five of his relatives cardinals) helped to make the Avignon Papacy last for decades. (This is something that often gets only passing reference in many overviews.)

 

So, there’s a mixture of strong and weak coverage and lots of gaps, but it’s still an informative read. If you’re interested in what happened at major church councils, matters like the papal states, the pope’s actions during the French Revolution and World War II, and in general how the office of the papacy evolved over time, O’Malley gives a pretty good overview.

 

2000 Years of Papal History by John O???Malley

2000 Years of Papal History by John O’Malley

This book wasn’t quite what I expected. I think I thought we would walk through the reigns of most popes, starting with what we know of Peter and moving forward. In doing so, we would watch the Roman Catholic Church, the governments it interacted with, and the people it serves evolve toward the modern day. That isn’t really what we got. Instead, we covered briefly only two of the first 31 popes, getting glimpses into what life was like in the early church. Then we took a long look at Emperor Constantine and his important contributions to establishing fourth century Catholicism. And then we started jumping forward again, taking a quick look at Charlemagne, exploring the Nadir of the papacy when popes (mostly unqualified for the office) were murdered and deposed with regularity, and continuing to leapfrog throughout history until the modern day.

 

I was disappointed in O’Malley’s coverage of the Investiture Controversy. It struck me that, despite his promises in the beginning of the book, he really couldn’t throw off his own understanding of what is proper for the church to explore this important church-state struggle. While Catholics today agree that the state should not have a role in appointing bishops, it was a traditional function of secular rulers at the time. Gregory’s attempt to exclude Henry IV from appointing his own bishops was a radical act. Instead of making this point and exploring how the understanding of the papacy and Christian society changed as a result of the Investiture Controversy, O’Malley spends a lot of time talking about Henry IV’s arrogance. While it is true that he was arrogant, it is also true that he was fighting for the traditional rights of his office. After all, his father was the one who ended the Nadir of the Papacy and started the Gregorian Reform movement by throwing a corrupt pope and antipope out of office and appointing his own pope.

 

On the other hand, his coverage of the first French pope, Clement V, shows in admirable detail how he was under the thumb of the French king, Philip the Fair, and how his corrupt policies (making five of his relatives cardinals) helped to make the Avignon Papacy last for decades. (This is something that often gets only passing reference in many overviews.)

 

So, there’s a mixture of strong and weak coverage and lots of gaps, but it’s still an informative read. If you’re interested in what happened at major church councils, matters like the papal states, the pope’s actions during the French Revolution and World War II, and in general how the office of the papacy evolved over time, O’Malley gives a pretty good overview.

 

Destroyer 61 Lords of the Earth by Warren Murphy

Destroyer 61 Lords of the Earth by Warren Murphy

This novel starts out pretty wobbly but slowly gains its balance as it approaches the middle of the book. The villain is a rich lunatic who is horrified by all the ways in which insects are killed on this planet and has scientists working on the perfect housefly—one that can’t be killed by any poison and whose bite transforms people into unthinking monsters with heightened strength. (It reminded me a little of a potential zombie apocalypse, but people weren’t writing about the zombie apocalypse in 1985 so the novel never actually goes in that direction.) The villain’s plan is to unleash these flies on the world so that humans and other animals can be reduced in numbers and the insects rule as they were intended to. So yes, he’s pretty crazy, and he’s not really a particularly good villain. He’s just too far off the deep end.

 

There’s also a pretty bad parody of a UN office and of some environmental terrorists—not uncommon occurrences in the Destroyer series. The UN office is more interested in fine lifestyles for their diplomats than in their environmental mission of their agency and the terrorists are two adult children of wealthy Americans who spend a good portion of the book trying to get credit for terrorists acts they committed that Remo and Chiun foil. So once again, there’s nothing here to write home about.

 

However, there was one part of the story that rescued the book. Harold Smith, the cold and analytical head of CURE, accidentally makes a friend and while the reader knows that no good can come of this, it was nice to see a little emotion in Smith. The friend is emotionally damaged, but not in a nasty way, and he’s really, really, smart—smart enough to figure out a little bit of what Sinanju is all about and even Remo and Chiun gain a little respect for him. It’s just enough to save the novel.

 

Somebody Saved Me by Pete Townshend

Somebody Saved Me by Pete Townshend

I started listening to The Who back in the seventh or eighth grade because the cool older brother of one of my best friends loved their music. Decades later, I’m still listening to their music. Along the way, I saw their movies, and generally put them in the category of top bands of all time. I do not, as it turns out, know just about anything about the people who made up the band. So, when I stumbled across this short work by Pete Townshend, I was happy to give it two hours. It’s a good mixture of Townshend playing some of his songs (the best in the audiobook is his new interpretation of Eminence Front) and talking about his life—the good and the bad—roughly from the time that Keith Moon died to the time that John Entwistle died. It’s interesting for any fan of the band. Townshend had a good life that he periodically messed up but always put back together. He struck me as being quite honest about his blunders and actually fairly humble about his successes—all while pointing out that it was a lack of humility at the time that helped fuel his screwups. In the final analysis, his screwups are fairly tame by rock star standards and I suppose that makes the book less exciting, but no less interesting. If you liked the band or Pete Townshend’s solo music, you’ll enjoy this book.

 

The Hunt for Vulcan by Thomas Levenson

The Hunt for Vulcan by Thomas Levenson

This is an interesting book, telling a story about astronomy that I had never heard before. It starts with Isaac Newton’s Theory of Gravity and goes on to show how it led to the discovery of Uranus. When Uranus’ orbit didn’t perfectly accord with the expectations Newton’s theory led scientists to predict, that led to the discovery of Neptune. When a similar orbital irregularity was discovered in Mercury, it led to the hypothesis that another planet—called Vulcan—was circling the sun even closer than Mercury was. But no one could find it and eventually Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity explained the irregularity of the orbit without the need for another planet.

 

I didn’t try and follow all the heavy science. I was just interested in the outlines of the hunt. But one thing that did surprise me was how incredibly petty some of these great scientists proved to be. Great men can be very small.

 

The Secrets of Great Mystery and Suspense Fiction by David Schmid

The Secrets of Great Mystery and Suspense Fiction by David Schmid

I’ve been putting off reading this book because I thought it was going to be mainly a “how to write a mystery” guide, but it’s much better than that. In 36 lectures, Schmid takes the reader through the history and development of mystery and suspense stories—a truly herculean task which he handles masterfully. Starting with Edgar Allen Poe, he explores many (I hesitate to say “all” in such a broad field) of the most important developments in the genre, trying to explain why these developments were important and how they came to change the mystery story.

 

I suspect that the vast majority of the authors writing in this field don’t consciously pay attention to the “whys” that Schmid is so interested in. They set their stories in cities, or use a femme fatale, because it’s something they enjoy in mysteries. But that doesn’t mean that Schmid isn’t identifying the aspects these stories have in common and explaining why they work for so many readers.

 

Over the course of this book I added 16 novels to my “to read” list and 9 to my “reread” list. That in itself should convince anyone who likes this genre to read this book. If I listened to the lectures again, I have no doubt that I would find even more titles to sample. Schmid introduces scores of books and series and makes each one sound interesting. He not only looks at the big trends in England and the U.S. (the cozy, the hardboiled detective, women detectives, the criminal, the sidekick, the importance of clues, the locked room, the dime novel, etc.), he also spends several lectures looking at interesting uses of the detective novel in other parts of the world and as an opportunity to make political and social statements. I could go on and on.

 

I think, in the final analysis, I was also pleased by how many of these authors that he refers to that I had read and enjoyed. Now don’t get me wrong. I probably haven’t read a quarter of the books Schmid refers to here, but there is still something tremendously satisfying about having a scholar tell you what’s great about a book you’ve loved. Next time I listen to it, I’ll be able to compare my experience with even more books, to Schmid’s insights.

 

Oh, and if you do want to write mysteries, this book will give you a lot to think about as you craft your tale—even if that isn’t Schmid’s primary purpose in writing it.