Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 76

Forever After by Gilbert M. Stack

Christmas is only a week away so it’s time to line up your holiday reading and wouldn’t it be nice to choose one where Christmas plays an important role in the action. You know, a novel like my book, Forever After.

 

Middle class, average-Joe, Paul Steele dies minutes after a terrible argument with his wife—dies, but doesn’t quite depart for the hereafter. Instead he wakes in the body of billionaire energy-magnate, Griffon Knight, and no one—not even his wife, Char—will believe he’s come back from the dead to be with her again. Trying to convince her he’s still Paul only succeeds in making her think Griffon is crazy. Yet Paul is not the kind of man who gives up easily and he’s not going to quit until he wins his wife back and convinces her to marry him again.

 

If you’re looking for a story in which love truly can conquer all, you should try Forever After.

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Forever-After-...

 

Review: Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi

The Dispatcher 2 Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi

John Scalzi’s Dispatcher stories read a lot like Isaac Asimov’s famous I, Robot collection. In Asimov’s tales, the robots appear to do something that violates the three laws of robotics and the trick to the story is to figure out why they didn’t violate them. In Scalzi’s tale, murders appear to violate the understanding of the new rule of death—people who are murdered wake up alive and naked in their homes 999 out of 1000 times.

 

In Murder by Other Means, Scalzi’s protagonist, Tony Valdez, is pulled into a mystery in which people with no reason to commit suicide are killing themselves. The common denominator appears to be Valdez, himself, and since the police seem to be focusing exclusively upon him as their suspect, Valdez has to solve the case to protect himself. It’s a very good story and continues to show how crazy the world has become after this mind-boggling change is introduced. I really like the story and I’m very proud of myself for figuring out very quickly how the murders were being committed. As in all well written mysteries, that didn’t dampen my enjoyment at all. There are always tons of little details to fill in and it’s the journey that gives a good mystery its reread value—something this story definitely has.

 

If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.

 

Review: Nemesis 1 Dreadnought by April Daniels

Nemesis 1 Dreadnought by April Daniels

It’s quite an impressive superhero story that manages to make the largest and most heroic battles happen not between hero and villain, but between the young heroine and her family and supposed friends. Danny Tozer is a young person with a secret. The world thinks he’s a boy, but she knows she’s really a girl stuck in the wrong body. Then she witnesses the death of the world’s greatest superhero, Dreadnought, and he passes his powers on to her and the first thing the powers do is rearrange her body to be the perfect her. In just a couple of minutes, Danny’s fondest wish comes true. She has the female body she has always wanted. Unfortunately, no one else seems happy for her.

 

A major portion of this book focus on Danny having to deal with withering rejection and hostility from her family and friends. She discovers that having superpowers didn’t change the dynamics she’s grown up with. She’s still an abused young woman who has to learn to stand up and fight for herself. It’s very sad that some of those who reject her are the supposed good guys—members of the Legion Pacifica who for a variety of reasons don’t want the powers of Dreadnought to belong to a fifteen-year-old girl. One of the most disturbing characters in the novel is one of these supposed heroes who is enraged at Danny’s physical transformation. The depths she will sink to over the course of the book are horrifying.

 

But all is not bleak. Danny begins to learn to use her powers and some of those encounters—especially the rescue of a passenger jet—were extraordinarily well written. She also makes a friend in another young hero and together they set about the task of trying to avenge the death of Dreadnought. In doing so, they uncover a terrifying threat to the entire world. As one would expect of a superhero novel—Danny must reach deep inside herself to find the hero the reader has always known her to be.

 

This is really an extraordinary novel which will touch you on multiple levels. I can’t wait to read the next book in the series.

 

If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.

 

Review: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 2 The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 2 The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton

The Cover:

This is another cheesy cover—possibly more cheesy than the terrible Guilty Pleasures cover. It does give more information than the first cover as it indicates that there will be a lot of zombies in this book—not surprising since Anita Blake is a vampire animator.

 

The Story:

Anita Blake has three significant problems at the start of The Laughing Corpse. One, a flesh-eating zombie appears to be stalking St. Louis. Two, she’s managed to tick off a woman who is quite possibly the most powerful vaudan priestess in the country. And three, a mob-connected millionaire wants to force her to raise a zombie so old that only a human sacrifice will make it possible. That means that in the second novel in the Vampire Hunter series, the zombies are coming after Anita and it promises to be a thrilling chase.

 

And that’s what makes this book such a great novel. Guilty Pleasures was all about the vampires, but The Laughing Corpse gives us a chance to understand much more intimately who Anita Blake truly is. She is filled with a power that lets her raise the dead from their graves and put them back again and now we get to see both the dangers in her vocation and what true evil can be done with the powers at her command.

 

Not that the vampires are completely missing. Jean Claude is now Master of the City and he hasn’t forgotten that Anita is his Human Servant even if she denies this and wants him to suffer a bit of amnesia. Around the edges of the story, we see Jean Claude begin to tighten the screws on Anita as he strives to assert his dominion over all the vampires of St. Louis. You see, he has tied Anita to him and he can’t afford to look weak by not forcing her to act as his servant—but Anita would quite literally prefer to die than be his slave. Not that Anita is the sort of person who lays down and dies—she makes it very clear that she’s willing to kill Jean Claude to get him back out of her life even if he is the sexiest man she’s ever met.

 

The vaudan priestess, Senora Dominga, is one of the scariest villains Hamilton has yet created. She’s human—but she could give the monsters graduate courses in how to be evil. And unlike Anita, she feels absolutely no constraints to follow the law. If she sees profit and thinks she won’t be caught, she will do anything.

 

The storyline satisfyingly ties together the disparate problems confronting Anita at the beginning of the book, and in the resolution, Anita gets the first glimpse of the power that has attracted Jean Claude to her. Anita might be one of the good guys, but if she’s a paladin, she’s one who fights in shadows not the brilliant light of day. It’s a lesson Jean Claude needs to take to heart as well. Push her hard enough and she’s capable of doing a whole lot of terrible too.

 

I went a little crazy with this series and added a continuing characters section to my review on my website. https://www.gilbertstack.com/laurell-...

Review: Operation Watchtower by Daniel Wrinn

Operation Watchtower by Daniel Wrinn

How much do you know about the Battle of Guadalcanal other than that the U.S. Marine Corps played a critical role in the fighting? After reading this short book you’ll have a deep understanding of why it was so important and why it’s the battle that turned the tide of the War in the Pacific during World War II. Afterward, Japan’s ability to threaten the U.S. and its allies was severely curtailed. But the price was incredibly high on both sides.

 

Wrinn has written a short account packed with details and crafted into a narrative that flows very rapidly from beginning to end. If you’re looking to understand a key point in the War of the Pacific and don’t want to get bogged down in a long tedious narrative, this book is a great place to begin.

 

 

Review: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 1 Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 1 Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

The Story

Guilty Pleasures is a great book from the first page to the last—a masterful way to open one of the premiere urban fantasy series—one that helped to establish the now-archetypal tough as nails female investigator/practitioner of supernatural crime. Anita Blake is both an animator—a person cursed with the ability to raise corpses from the grave—and a vampire hunter in an America in which the Supreme Court has just given civil rights to the bloodsucking undead. Now vampires are out of the closet and viewed by many as an exotic tourist attraction—dangerous, but safe—right? Because the Supreme Court wouldn’t have given them rights if they really hurt people, would they? Except that sometimes vampires still kill people and the normal legal authorities can’t handle them. So, judges issue a writ of execution and hunters are set loose to try and kill the rogue before it kills other people. Anita Blake is so successful in this trade that the vampires have nicknamed her the Executioner, but it has come at a heavy cost. Her body is a mass of scars and there is clearly psychological trauma as well.

 

The novel opens very effectively with a vampire, Willie McCoy, trying to hire Anita to look into the illegal murders of several vampires in St. Louis. Willie is the first person Anita knew as a human before he became a vampire. The difference between live Willie and undead Willie is the vampire scares her. Anita can’t even risk meeting his gaze lest he mesmerize her. Anita refuses to take the job and Willie sadly warns her that her answer will anger powerful vampires setting the stage for the main plot of the story.

 

The novel kicks into high gear a few chapters later when Anita is dragged to a bachelorette party for her friend, Catherine, at the vampire strip club, Guilty Pleasures. Multiple important elements of the story and the series are introduced in the next few chapters. First, and most important, Hamilton introduces Jean Claude, the sexy master vampire who will play games with Anita for the rest of the series. He is very powerful and clearly enjoys flirting with Anita. She, on the other hand, understands he is a monster but clearly is attracted to him just the same.

 

We also learn that there is a Master of the City who controls the other vampires and meet two particularly bad undead creatures of the night. Aubrey illegally ensnares Catherine as a lever to be used against Anita. Catherine is now under his complete control and can only be released by his death. Valentine is a vampire who almost killed Anita and her mentor, Edward. They thought he was dead, but he survived with disfiguring holy water scars across his face. Both Aubrey and Valentine are only waiting for Anita to finish her work for the Master of the City before coming after her to kill her. We also learn that the Master of the City is a terrifying thousand-year-old vampire who looks like she’s twelve. She needs Anita to figure out whose killing her vampires but definitely gives the impression that she plans to break Anita rather than let her go afterward. It’s a terrible situation made all the worse by something magical that Jean Claude does to Anita before the Master turns on him in a dominance struggle that he clearly loses.

 

Anita barely escapes, returning home to find her mentor, the assassin, Edward, waiting for her in her apartment. Edward is the best character in the series—a stone cold killer who started hunting vampires, lycanthropes and other supernatural creatures because mere humans weren’t a big enough challenge. Edward has accepted a contract to kill the Master of the City and wants Anita to tell her where she sleeps during the day but Anita is worried that if she gives him the information, Catherine will suffer.

 

With this, we have all the pieces in place. Anita is trying to investigate the vampire killings, but the Master is crazy and she and her vampires keep interfering with the task they are forcing Anita to pursue. It took me a while to figure out why, but the death of her vampires, many of them master vampires, has disrupted the Master of the City’s reign and she fears that all of this is a play to dethrone (i.e. kill) her. And Jean Claude’s games with Anita have created a bond between them that is preventing the Master from punishing him in her traditional fashion (locking him in a coffin and letting him go mad from his unsatisfied bloodlust). Add to that her crazed need to dominate and break everyone she meets and Anita is in terrible trouble. What the Master doesn’t understand is that Anita isn’t the sort of person who lays down and dies. When she’s terrified, she strikes back, setting up a phenomenal ending with Anita and Edward going after the Master of the City on her own turf.

 

It’s just hard to say too much good about this novel. It establishes the urban fantasy reality of the series. Gives us important information on vampires and introduces animators, lycanthropes, and ghouls to the reader. Everything fits together very nicely. And, of course, the ending begs for a sequel without actually giving us a cliffhanger.

 

Review: Great American Best Sellers by Peter Conn

Great American Best Sellers by Peter Conn

Here’s a great look at 24 books that captured widespread attention in the North American British Colonies and the United States over the past few centuries. Odds are high that you haven’t heard of—much less read—all of them, whereas others are books you are quite familiar with even if you haven’t actually read them all. It’s a great collection and I am very pleased I read the book.

 

Conn roughly divides each lecture into three parts, starting with what is happening in America historically at the time the book was written and published and then describing the action of the novel and finally talking about its influence. I enjoyed it from beginning to end, but for me the best part of the lectures was for Dashiell Hammett’s Maltese Falcon, which Conn used as an excuse to describe the development of the mystery novel from Edgar Allen Poe to Hammett. The final lecture on the modern best seller market was also very interesting. Mostly I enjoyed this book for the walkthrough of the plots and the discussion of influences and sometimes controversy. In today’s world, there are simply too many books out there to have read everything. This is a great way of familiarizing yourself with some very interesting novels you were always planning to read.

 

Review: #murdertrending by Gretchen McNeil

#murdertrending by Gretchen McNeil

My high-school-aged niece recommended this novel to me and it was a fun read from beginning to end even if it was not perfectly successful. McNeil ambitiously sets out to create a Hunger-Games-style-dystopian-kill-fest in modern day America. A reality TV star becomes president and decides to make justice profitable by creating a reality TV show in which people who have been condemned to death are put on Alcatraz 2.0 to be hunted down by flamboyant serial killers in a way reminiscent of The Running Man movie. There are occasional concerns raised by people about cruel and unusual punishment (all the convicted are tortured to death in horrific ways) but apparently neither Congress nor the Supreme Court shares those concerns. So—totally unbelievable premise, but if you put that aside, you are left with a fast-paced and entertaining story about some amazingly smart young adults who act in very dumb ways whenever the plot requires it.

 

We know from moment one that Dee, our heroine, is both innocent of the charge of killing her stepsister and has been framed by someone involved in some way with the show. In fact, it quickly becomes apparent that the mysterious Postman who runs the show has a special beef with Dee, but Dee has more steel in her spine than most contestants and quite a bit of luck. She survives the first attempt to kill her and will go on to transform the game on the island.

 

Yet, that little bit of unbelievable stupidity also rears its head in that very first scene. Prince Slycer, the dully appointed murderer of Dee, is known for his many knives, yet Dee doesn’t bother to take any of the knives and arm herself. Later Dee will search frantically for weapons, and I have to assume that every single reader is annoyed she left her weapons behind. It’s not the only time this happens and it was totally unnecessary.

 

As McNeil doles out the clues to what is happening, people keep dying to thrill the television audience. I’m sorry to say that that actually felt plausible—people tuning in to see executions. It’s clear that not all people believe this is really happening, but everyone apparently watches. Dee tries to get the captives to start banding together to defend themselves and it also becomes increasingly obvious that many of the people on the island were framed for their crimes.

 

I don’t want to give away the ending. This novel is an enjoyable adventure story and there were two important twists that totally surprised me. Just don’t think too hard about things and you’ll enjoy the ride.

 

If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.

 

Review: Force Recon by Mike Adams

Book 23 Forward Recon by Mike Adams

Time has run out for the colonists as the aliens finally start the Battle for New Hope. The much needed reinforcements with modern military weaponry are just a few days from orbit, but New Hope cannot hold out that long. Indeed, the defenders might not even be able to hold out long enough to evacuate the rest of the colonists to the emergency shelters they’ve been hiding away in remote areas on two continents.

 

While the life and death of New Hope is being determined, the Jacks—fifty-high-school-students-turned-rangers and the several hundred adult-rangers they’ve rescued—are finally in a position to start turning the war around. They’ve penetrated the settlements the aliens conquered early in the war and are starting to take them back, stealing the invaders victories away from them and creating a new zone in which the reinforcements can land to throw their presumably decisive strength into the war.

 

This book has all the things that have made this series so much fun to read. The humans—nearly out of military ordinance—must use their ingenuity to continue throwing the aliens back on their heels. The question remains, will it be enough to keep the majority of the colonists alive until the cavalry arrives.

 

If you're interested in this book, you can find my reviews of the whole series at https://www.gilbertstack.com/fierce-g...

 

Legionnaire 13 Fire Storm 25% Off

You still have until Thursday to pre-order Legionnaire 13 Fire Storm for 25% off.

Marcus and his legion have knocked Morgantia and Granate out of the war, but that didn’t stop Diamonte from laying siege to his adopted home of Amatista. The invading army is simply too large to confront directly, so Marcus has determined to invade Diamonte itself to force his enemies to break their siege and come defend their own homes. There’s only one problem with the plan. Diamonte has an army of reinforcements heading through Angosto Pass toward Amatista and a second army trailing after the legion trying to catch it from behind. Can Marcus blaze his way through the opposition or will he and his brave men be trapped in a fire storm of their own making?