Jackson Coppley's Blog, page 10

The Confessions of Young Nero and The Splendor Before the Dark

I became interested in the Roman emperor Nero in researching my novel The Fire Starters and touring his buried Golden House in Rome. The emperor’s legend today is undergoing another look by several scholars. Most of my generation hold the image portrayed by Peter Ustinov in the movie Quo Vadis as a mad, cruel monster, somewhat older and fatter than the teenager who actually assumed the throne. Author Margaret George reimagines Nero more as a youth, telling his own story in his own words.

In The Confessions of Young Nero, Lucius tells us about his life, starting with uncle Caligula attempting to drown him as an infant through the time Claudius adopts him, changes his name changed to Nero, all under his mother Agrippina’s manipulation to make him ruler. The book stops before the great fire of Rome.

In The Splendor Before the Dark, Nero tells his story beginning with the great fire and follows through to his abandonment by allies and his forced suicide.

Both stories are told in the first person by Nero, with a few others in his life picking up the narrative in a chapter here and there. The self-telling of his story makes Nero a more sympathetic character, one loved by the common citizen for his audacity in chariot racing and disliked by the ruling class for his excesses. The author allows you to take Nero’s side.

However, as a first-person narrative, the story is at times dry. Although enlivened by other characters taking their turn in the story with a few chapters, there cannot be surprises for the reader.

As another approach to the story of Nero, I recommend it.

The Extinction Trials

A.G. Riddle’s Extinction Trials begins with a man inviting leading industrial leaders to a private meeting in which he poses an intriguing premise. It is not a matter of whether humankind will become extinct, but a matter of when. He asks for their help in conducting trials to find a successful means of preserving the specie.

With that we are launched into a world that appears to be in the near future where vehicles are self-driving and robots assist in tasks. This is the world in which our lead character, Owen, works as a fire fighter. He answers the call to an apartment building fire and the robots that were meant to assist are turning on him. Before he is knocked unconscious, he sees a world that appears to be on fire and collapsing.

When Owen come to, it is from a container that appears to have kept him in suspended animation for years. He is soon joined by a handful of other newly awakened survivors and the game begins. “Game” is an appropriate term, for Owen and the others must solve clues to escape and survive on a planet that has drastically changed.

When I read to this point in the story, I was puzzled as to what could have happened, was this a simulation? Had the world actually come to a cataclysmic end? Riddle reveals more, little by little as the reader turns the pages, which they are likely to do without stopping.

As I read on, I was doubting Riddle could end this story to my satisfaction. There was too much to be explained. But, I was wrong. He devised a very clever ending.

I recommend the Extinction Game as a very satisfying read.

The Family Man

You can judge a book by its cover. Not so with A Family Man. As I write this, author Anna Willett may have changed the cover from the one on the edition I reviewed. A man power-washing his truck has nothing to do with the story inside. The cover minimizes the quality of the story, which is quite good.

The setting is Willett’s native Australia where a family discovers video in the attic of the home they just bought. The police become involved since the video clearly identifies at least one person who disappeared more that ten years ago. The inspector leading the cold case is a woman who’s not encouraged by her superior to investigate the case, especially since the alleged perpetrator died ten years ago.

However, the inspector believes the perp had help and that helper is on the loose.

The twists and turns in the plot held this reader’s interest. There are a few never-saw-that-coming moments like the way in which the suspect’s wife became Mrs. Creep. It is not a long story, which makes it attractive to the reader who wants a punch without waiting around.

I recommend it.

The Madness of Crowds

The Madness of Crowds, the latest novel from Louise Penny, was my first exposure to this author’s series of Inspector Gamache mysteries, but certainly not my last. She has published sixteen in the series, and I can testify you need not know the background of the characters to enjoy the book.

The book seems to be written in three ‘acts.’

In Act One, Inspector Armand Gamache, head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, is covering security at a university lecture by Abigail Robinson, a noted statistician. The reader wonders how a statistician has generated such large crowds and why her message has become so divisive. Penny keeps the reader guessing what that message could be for several chapters. It is so controversial that someone in the crowd takes a potshot at her during her lecture. Armand saves her from being injured, so there is no murder in this murder mystery as Act One ends.

Act Two opens with an explanation of Abigail Robinson’s awful proposal. There are plenty of people who would like to cause her harm, and now, Act Two ends with a murder.

Act Three contains revelations that lead to speculations as to who murdered the victim and why. If the book has a flaw, it is in its lengthy speculations. As would be expected, there are several surprises and Gamache breaks the case in the end.

Penny has produced yet another compelling work which intertwines important moral issues to ponder while speculating about who done it. I recommend it.

New York, the Novel

New York puts history in context.

It is a family saga with roots in the earliest settlement of Manhattan Island by the Dutch, when it was known as New Amsterdam. The fictional Master family interacts with real historical figures and events. As I read, I thought how great it would have been to learn high school American history by reading this novel rather than recite event dates. Precolonial life, the American revolution, slavery, the civil war, American becoming a world power, the great depression; they are all depicted, as well as tragedies from the Triangle fire to 9/11. By living with the generations of the Master family and seeing all of this through their eyes, history is no longer dry.

I don’t mean to paint New York as an instructional text and leave it at that. It is a fine read as well. Rutherfurd weaves an involving story around the Master family and the people who come into their lives. If there is a shortcoming, it is in that we cannot spend enough time with each member, except a few Master women who span several generations, to fully develop each character, even though the book is 800 pages long.

The book engaged me and gave me history perspective I relished. I look forward to going to other places in Rutherfurd’s books.

Noble Ultimatum - Jack Noble Book 13

Spoiler Alert: There is nothing to spoil. This installment of the Jack Noble series resolves nothing. Tune in to the next book in the series for more answers.

With that said, nobody does fast-paced action better than L.T. Ryan. Noble Ultimatum takes Jack and his buddy Bear on a chase that proves to be a page turner. If you follow the Noble series, some of your favorite characters may be eliminated in this installment. Who, I am not telling.

I have a pet peeve in not wrapping up loose ends in a book, albeit a series. That’s why I dinged the book one star. However, knowing that, it remains a fine adventure.

Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

The Boys in the Boat

A book about crew racing? You mean those ivy league guys rowing in a thin boat? Do I really want to read a book about that?

Daniel James Brown shows the answer to the last question is ‘yes.’ His Boys in the Boat, is not only a compelling story about the sport, written with impeccable literary style, it is also a story about hard-scrabble life during the depression. Like Erik Larson’s The Devil and the White City, Brown layers one story onto another occurring during the same era. In Boys in the Boat, the story of the rise of an unlikely rowing team in Washington state is set against the rise of the Nazi’s in Germany, ultimately aligning at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Much of Brown’s research in this real-life story came from interviews with Joe Rantz and his family. Rantz is the star of the story, and you may read half of the book before you learn much about his teammates. So, there is a little imbalance in the book's development. Not that Rantz’s story is not interesting. It is very much so. His father and stepmother desert the kid when Joe was twelve, and he had to make his own way. Yet, Joe was determined and worked hard to put himself through the University of Washington, where he crewed.

Brown does a fine job of crafting descriptions of the boat, the races, and the pain of each young man giving it his all, but you may want to skip ahead in places. Although well crafted, there is only so much you can say about the sport. I found the side stories, like Rantz working one summer on the Grand Coulee Dam enriching the book.

Overall, it’s a delightful story, written well. I recommend it.

The Phoenix Project

Nick Thacker serves up a fine sample of the Harvey Bennett series in The Phoenix Project. If you open this novella on Kindle, it may tell you that you have two and a half hours of reading. That’s short, but you’ll spend only half that time on the novella. Added to the book is a teaser for the upcoming The Napoleon Job and the first chapters of the first book in the Harvey Bennett series, The Enigma Strain. So, you are getting three samples of Thacker in one. As such, it’s a good place to start.

The Other Emily

The Other Emily

By Dean Koontz

Review

When one begins The Other Emily, one might wonder if Dean Koontz has produced a lyrical romance story. The writing is beautifully descriptive. It starts at the very beginning:

“Crystal confetti showered on the city, a final celebration of a winter that, on this twenty-fourth day of March, lingered past its official expiration date.”

 “The end-of-season storm lacked force. Snow spiraled through windless canyons, as gray as ashes until it fell below the hooded streetlamps and was bleached by the light.”

Later, when the principal character, David Thorne, sees Emily for the first time:

 “The swollen sun was still five minutes from immersion in the sea when he glanced toward the noisy bar and saw her. He froze with the wineglass halfway to his mouth and for a moment forgot that it remained in his hand. She was in that highest rank of beauties that inspired stupid men to commit foolish acts and made wiser men despair for their inadequacies.”

But we soon see that Koontz is laying out a mystery for us. This woman is identical to David’s lost love, Emily, who went missing ten years earlier; however, the woman is Emily of ten years ago, not having aged a day. With that conundrum established, can a Koontz sociopath be not far behind?

Of course not. That sociopath is soon to come into the picture and eventually, so is the sci-fi element on which Koontz depends to make the unexplainable plausible. Our good friend, Mr. Koontz, does not draw a straight line to solve the puzzle, and the reader will spend a good portion of their experience on red herrings.

A fan of Dean Koontz will not be disappointed. Readers who have never picked up one of his more than a hundred works will enjoy it as well.

Recommended.

Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing presents nature through finely crafted prose with a murder mystery attached. It is not surprising that nature takes center stage since the author, Delia Owens, wrote several nature books prior to producing Crawdads as her debut work of fiction.

Here is an example of the prose:

“Months passed, winter easing gently into place, as southern winters do. The sun, warm as a blanket, wrapped Kya’s shoulders, coaxing her deeper into the marsh.”

Beautiful.

The murder mystery does not stand on its own. I would not recommend the book on the merits of that story divorced from the other material. The characters of the small southern coastal town are well developed, but none would appear to be a suspect. With that said, the murder perpetrator is revealed toward the end and the author does a good job in diverting suspicion of the identify.

Bottom line: Excellent, easy reading, transporting the reader to swamps and backwaters with a reasonable mystery attached.