Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 32

The Captains by W.E.B. Griffin

The Captains by W.E.B. Griffin

Griffin has found his stride in this novel. The Korean War starts and his protagonists from the last book, plus an African American lieutenant who played a small role in the first novel, all find themselves in harm’s way (or, in the case of the Medal of Honor winner, trying to get into harm’s way when the army doesn’t want him there because it would be bad public relations if he got killed). In addition to Griffin’s signature “dealing with the army bureaucracy” scenes, there are tough moral decisions and a decent amount of action. We also see more of the West Point alums protecting each other and their careers at the expense of non-West Pointers and usually against America’s interests in the war. (This sort of thing comes up enough in Griffin’s novels that I sometimes wonder if he dislikes the military academies, but it is probably just his attempt to show how those who are connected take care of themselves no matter what the cost.)

 

There’s a tragedy in the middle of this novel which I think Griffin handles very well, but mostly what I like about this series is Griffin’s insights into why the military functions the way it does—the good and the bad.

 

Paper by Mark Kurlansky

Paper by Mark Kurlansky

I didn’t intend to read this whole book. I was just interested in the introduction of paper, but Kurlansky caught me up in his narrative of how the introduction of writing changed the globe, inspiring quests for new technologies to make writing easier and better, which in turn changed the globe again. And again. And again. It’s an interesting book taking the reader from clay tablets to modern printing methods.

 

Bridge of Ashes by Roger Zelazny

Bridge of Ashes by Roger Zelazny

This is a Zelazny novel I heard about in high school but somehow never found a copy of until it recently came out as an e-book. It tells the story of the world’s most powerful telepath—a young boy whose brain keeps copying the brains of those around him, keeping him from having a personality of his own. His parents (both telepaths who can shield their brains from him) keep moving further and further from civilization to no avail. Even the moon proves not to be far enough away as he begins connecting with people through time until he copies Leonardo DaVinci’s brain and well, that would be telling…

 

All of this is happening within a world that is going environmentally to hell—all according to an alien race’s plan. It seems that they are terraforming our world to meet their needs, and part of the plan is for humans to grow into an industrial society, pollute our planet, and then kill ourselves off so they can take over. Knowing Zelazny, you can see that the world’s strongest telepath and the aliens are going to have a confrontation by the end of the book.

 

If you like Zelazny’s work, you will enjoy this novel, but there’s a reason it’s been hard to find for the last few decades. It’s fun, but far from his best work.

 

The Lieutenants by W.E.B. Griffin

The Lieutenants by W.E.B. Griffin

I remember seeing the Brotherhood of War series in the bookstore back when I was in high school. I didn’t read it then, but read the whole series after I read Griffin’s The Corps some fifteen or twenty years later. I enjoyed it, but couldn’t have told you what the plots of the various books were in any detail and only a couple of scenes stood out vividly in my memory. But I just reread The Corps so I decided to give this series a second read as well, and I’m glad I did.

 

The Lieutenants begins during World War II and mostly follows three young soldiers who get commissioned as officers during the course of the stories. One of them is interested in intelligence work and is smart enough to figure out how to manipulate the system to get what he wants. One is a rich playboy who was drafted and just wants out, but discovers that he likes army life. And one is an enlisted man who wins the Congressional Medal of Honor and gets commissioned. After World War II two of the men get sent to train Greek forces to fight the communists—a very interesting circumstance that isn’t broadly known to have occurred.

 

The story is always interesting and at times is quite exciting, but there isn’t any real plot to speak of. It’s more of a look at the lives of these soldiers that will continue in the next novel.

 

Now Available--The Seduction of Malaquita (Legionnaire Volume 13)

The latest novel in my Legionnaire series, The Seduction of Malaquita, is available today from Amazon and free from Kindle Unlimited.

 

After a long and grueling fight in Angosto Pass, Marcus and his legionnaires finally catch a break. The Diamonte city of Malaquita is not only badly under garrisoned, it has no idea that the legion is on its doorstep. Yet driving out the Gota and capturing the city only creates more problems for the legion. The city is barren of supplies and could easily turn into a deathtrap if Marcus and his men remain to defend it, but if they can hold it through the coming harvests its strategic location will greatly bolster Amatista’s chances in the war. His only hope is to build an alliance with the most influential Gente in the city as he tried and failed to do in Morganita. His one tenuous asset to make this alliance happen is the cousin of the wife of his trusted friend, Senior Mago Efraín Estudioso, who married into the powerful Astrónomo family—but the Astrónomos have a terrible secret of their own that could transform them into Marcus’ vehement enemies. And now Marcus has accidentally spurned the high priest of Madre Tierra, making this one political seduction that seems destined to go very wrong!

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B...

Lost Soul by Adam Wright

Harbinger, P.I. 1 Lost Soul by Adam Wright

Lost Soul introduces Alec Harbinger, who makes his living as a private investigator of paranormal incidents. He’s also a member of a secret society who tries to keep paranormal threats contained, but the society is angry at him and has sent him from Chicago to rural Maine where he expects to find no work at all. Obviously, there would be no series if he was correct in his assessment, so Harbinger quickly discovers that rural Maine is teaming with paranormal activity.

 

The mystery kept my interest. The book moves along at a pretty good clip. Harbinger and his assistant and his friend who survived a classic “slasher movie” style problem were all good characters. The one thing I was dissatisfied with was that I don’t have a sense of Harbinger’s abilities yet. He clearly has a lot of knowledge and a lot of training. He uses magically empowered items. But it’s unclear to me if he has any magical abilities of his own. Hopefully this will become clear in future novels.

 

The Arms of Kali by Warren Murphy

Destroyer 59 The Arms of Kali by Warren Murphy

This could have been one of the great Destroyer novels. It introduces the goddess Kali and depicts her connection to the Glorious House of Sinanju. If you expect this to be a good connection (you know, ancient house of assassins and a goddess of death and murder) than you couldn’t be more wrong. For Kali once “seduced” (not literally) Master Lu and his loss of control to become her unwilling servant makes him the worst master of Sinanju to ever live. Lu escaped Kali in the end, but her curse lingers on the house and now it’s coming for Remo.

 

A new cult of Kali is murdering airline passengers and CURE has to track down the culprits. Unfortunately, when Remo gets close, he begins to fall under Kali’s influence and risks becoming the new Master Lu. Frankly, it should have been a great book, but Remo didn’t feel like Remo ever in this novel and the account of Kali and Remo and Chiun’s struggles with her bored me terribly. I wonder if perhaps a ghost writer actually penned the novel. It just didn’t feel like a Destroyer book. The only saving graces are 1) it introduces Kali whom, if memory serves, will return to trouble Remo and Chiun again; and 2) it introduces Master Lu.

 

The Triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Erhman

The Triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Erhman

This book offers a great set of lectures describing how Christianity grew from a small group of illiterate day laborers to the dominant religion in the Roman Empire in just 400 years. Despite the title, this is not a parade of examples of how wonderful Christianity is—“triumph” is literal, not a qualitative judgment. Christianity did defeat its competitor religions even if most of them didn’t realize they were in competition with it.

 

There are a lot of highlights that really made this course stand out among the various Great Courses texts. For one thing, the author teaches students the majority of whom are evangelicals and he sprinkles his lectures with insights into how they view early Christianity. For example, they have a modern understanding of the term messiah, not the original Jewish understanding. (More on that later.) And like many religious adherents, they assume that their faith started in the same form it is in today. These points of understanding were useful starting places in shaking off the modern world to gain insight into how the ancients thought and reacted.

 

One of the strengths of the book is Erhman’s understanding of what it meant to be a pagan polytheist. They recognized many gods and did not seek to exclude the worship of other gods. This was a stark difference from the early Christians who actively sought to convert and get the converts to abandon all the other gods out there. This is, ultimately, why Christianity triumphed. Erhman quite clearly demonstrates how a very few number of converts each generation became millions over the early centuries. Because the pagans weren’t converting back, every conversion strengthened early Christianity and weakened the pagans.

 

He also explains why the Jewish people were not convinced by Christian arguments. It all comes down to the term “messiah”. The messiah was expected to be a worldly leader who would triumph over the enemies of the Jewish people and give them their independence again. Jesus was the opposite of a successful worldly leader. He had been executed by the Romans. Calling him the messiah made no sense.

 

But these are just a couple of examples as Erhman marches through the early centuries of the growing faith and explains convincingly how it rose to a position of dominance. The one topic I would have liked to see that he did not address was Christianity’s similarities to the mystery religions of the period, but while I expected him to discuss the issue, the lectures are so well structured that I didn’t notice he had skipped it until after I had finished the book.

 

Understanding Economics: Game Theory by Jay R. Corrigan

Understanding Economics: Game Theory by Jay R. Corrigan

Game Theory is something I hear about a lot, but don’t really understand. This set of Great Courses lectures was a great introduction to the topic. The first lectures take you through different game scenarios and teach you about human behavior when humans understand the consequences of their choices. The easiest was the classic “prisoners’ dilemma” in which the police catch two alleged criminals, take them into separate rooms, and interrogate them. If neither talks, they both go free. But if one talks and the other doesn’t, the talker gets a light prison sentence and the one who stayed quiet goes away for a long time. Corrigan shows why it is always in the prisoner’s interest to make the deal and “confess” (even if he or she is innocent).

 

These sorts of thought problems are fascinating and as they get more and more complex, Corrigan begins to apply them to the real world showing how to use game theory to make decisions. It gets very complicated very fast. If there is one weakness in what he described, it would seem to be that all sides have to know what is best for them or their actions will not be correctly anticipated, but the theory probably provides for that as well.

 

And Be a Villain by Rex Stout

And Be a Villain by Rex Stout

In the previous book in this series, Rex Stout hit the bottom of his barrel. In this novel, he’s back at the top of his game, pulling me into the story immediately and never relinquishing his hold on my interest. It’s time to pay the IRS and Nero Wolfe needs cash to foot the bill. So he goes looking for work, focusing on a popular radio program in which a guest died from poison on the air. Right from the initial bargaining over whether or not it was in the show’s interest to pay him to find the killer, through many exciting twists and turns, Stout provides a nailbiter. Who murdered the guest? Why did they do so? And how is that connected to the other people dying around the show. The solution surprised me, but it made total sense and frankly my suspect list should have included the murderer.

 

The only thing I didn’t like about this novel was the inclusion of master criminal, Zeck. I am not found of Zeck, and therefore was unhappy that he played a small but important role in the case. It didn’t really hurt the book, but since I don’t like the character it added a slight negative taste for me.

 

On the positive side, this is Wolfe at his best, manipulating the police into working for him and acting on sheer bravado to bring a killer to justice even though he can’t find any evidence to prove his case.