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The Jevlir Caravansary

Author: jevlir

  • This Weeks Reading – 8/29/06

    I’ve decided that putting a single entry for each book I decide to write a paragraph or so about is too scattered. I think I’ll just try to make weekly entries on my reading. Where applicable, I’ll do something similar for what I watch as well, though I watch less than I read.

    This week I read three very different books, though all were enjoyable. When I rate these for my Energion.com Bookstore I use a scale from 1 to 5. This scale means:

    1. I didn’t finish reading it.
      I’m such a determined reader that this only applies to two books that I can remember
    2. I don’t plan to look at this author again
    3. Normal reading level; I liked it and will read this author again on occasion.
    4. I liked it, and will keep my eye open for this author’s work
    5. I truly adored it, and will read everything this author writes.

    My first item this week was the final book in Timothy Zahn’s Blackcollar trilogy, Zahn, Timothy, Blackcollar: The Judas Solution. Timothy Zahn is one of my favorite writers, and so you should not be surprised that I give this a five; I have to just based on my definition. If Zahn writes, I’ll read. In this case, I find the ending to the trilogy quite interesting and creative, and I enjoyed the background of this series. There’s lots of action and suspense, and a few twists and turns, but it mostly hangs together. There are some interesting logical questions, but they don’t overwhelm the story.

    Then I read John Pilkington’s medieval mystery, The Maiden Bell. This was my first book by Pilkington and though I enjoyed it, I must give it a mere 3. I have already visited the library again and completely failed to look for another book by this author. On the other hand, I expect I will read something more by him at some point. I found the story just a little bit slow, and the history was pretty far in the background.

    Finally, I read a book by one of my wife’s favorite authors, J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts). The book is Memory in Death, and I truly enjoy reading any of the books in this series featuring Eve Dallas as a detective. Robb concentrates on the human element a great deal, but the mystery is good, and the action and suspense are adequate to keep your attention. Since I read a good deal of Robb, but haven’t set out to read everything she writes (who could?) I’ll call this a 4.

    Of course I’m only including fiction and literary reading in this listing. A good use of comments might be to mention good books you’ve read recently. I enjoy updating this blog and its good for me whether anyone’s reading it or not, but it might be fun to have some feedback here.

  • Book: Death in the Middle Watch

    This was my first book in this series, subtitled A Carolus Deene Mystery. Leo Bruce presents an interesting mystery, though I think some elements of the plot and some of the clues are a bit overdone. I also think that the probabilities are pushed a bit on what a cruise ship can get by with.

    The characterizations are quite clear, although the book is largely populated by stereotypes, and a good portion of the actions are a bit predictable.

    The story is set on a cruise ship. There was a passenger death the year before and the company has been getting threatening letters. An extraordinarily stupid company president and a rather poor excuse for a ship’s captain make the trip more interesting. Mr. Deene’s apparent love of drama makes the finale a bit more exciting than it realistically would have to be.

    I rate this a 2 out of 5. I finished reading it, but I’m not in urgent search of another volume.

  • Book: Murder in the Chateau

    I really enjoy books about the second world war, whether they are histories or fiction set in the war. Elliott Roosevelt writes a series of books about his mother, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Murder in the Chateau is a good example of the style of this series. In this case, Eleanor Roosevelt finds herself in Vichy France, and as one might expect, there is a murder that she needs to solve.

    I think this particular volume takes more liberties with the historical possibilities than usual. You will need to suspend disbelief to a pretty serious extend in regard to the capabilities of the Gestapo, the SS, and even the Vichy Milice. But the story is interesting, and the characters are engaging as usual.

    I rate this at 3 of 5.

  • One Young Voice

    Tia froze in place as she saw the group of kids gathered in the High School parking lot. Normally she was happy to join any group of young people. An excellent student and athlete, as well as beautiful and friendly, she would normally be welcomed just about anywhere on campus.

    But today was different. Today was the day of the story. She had heard the whispers, and the cut off conversations as she approached. The words “hypocrite” and “slut” had come through. She had no idea what had started it, but it was clear that somewhere between first period and lunch she had turned from everybody’s friend into a hypocrite. And she didn’t have any idea how it had happened. The one good thing was that it was the end of the day, and she was about to drive home. But now between her and her car there was this group of students, and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to escape.

    (more…)

  • Experiencing the Blue Butterfly

    This is not precisely a review, but more of a personal account of experiencing this movie. Even after it arrived from Netflix, it sat on top of our television for a couple of weeks. It never quite seemed the time to watch it. Finally my wife, who is better at diving into these things than I am, said, “Let’s watch it now!” And so I braced myself, and we did.

    Why was this such a struggle for me? It’s going on two years now since our son (my stepson) died of cancer after a five year struggle. He was just 17 years old. Those last five years of his life were spent off and on fighting the battle with cancer, and even more importantly, fighting the battle against those who wanted to take away his life before he actually died.

    The biggest fight in cancer, we found, was against fear. Whether or not you expect a cure, you have to learn how to keep on living. Some friends, relatives, and neighbors aren’t going to be helpful in that line. They will either become disheartened very early, and want to spend the intervening time in mourning, or they may focus so heavily on finding a cure that all else fades into the background. The first group steal your joy from day to day; the second group simply can’t understand why you won’t try just anything, even if it does not present any measurable chance of helping.

    (more…)

  • Book: Long Time Gone

    This is billed as a novel of suspense, though it has a couple of pretty good mysteries embedded in the suspense. I have not read that much by J. A. Jance, but I do enjoy her style of storytelling, and I found this one a positive experience. The personal relationships are fairly tangled, but the characters are interesting and the story keeps moving.

    The story is set in Seattle, and brings back an older character, J. P. Beaumont, now an investigator for the State’s Attorney. His investigation will lead him through obstruction by the Seattle Police as well as by an assortment of other characters, none of whom seem to want a 50 year old murder solved. I guessed the outcome wrong on the main murder, though I caught on to the correct villain in a second murder before the secret was revealed. I usually regard it as a good sign that I can get some things right, but not all–the book is logical, but not obvious.

  • Book: Destiny’s Forge

    I enjoy the Man-Kzin wars series, but they aren’t on my list of favorites–good, but not exceptional. Thus Destiny’s Forge was an wonderful surprise. Expecting something merely interesting and entertaining, I was presented with something fascinating and challenging yet certainly no less entertaining. To put is simply, this is a great book.

    The characters are strong and portrayed in depth. You might think some character is getting stereotyped at some points, but simply continue reading and you’ll find that there are greater depths. The cultural backgrounds remain largely logical and comprehensible, but are not so simple that you constantly predict what everyone will do. Mysteries can remain mysteries, yet when their solution arrives, you can agree that the solution fits.

    The details of space battles are much more limited than in the Honor Harrington books, though I think they are just right to carry this story forward. The politics are interesting. In keeping with its setting on Kzinhome, we hear much more about Kzinti politics than human, but that only makes it more fun.

    Paul Chafe goes immediately onto my short list of authors whose books get an automatic pass to the top of my reading list as quickly as they appear.

  • Book: Dragon’s Fire

    When I read the first two books set on Pern by Todd McCaffrey I really was not too impressed. Because they were from Pern, and the stories were OK, I knew I would keep reading them, but I didn’t feel that they had the same charm as Anne McCaffrey’s own work.

    For the first few pages of this book I felt much the same way, but over time the story became more interesting and the characters more engaging, and for a while again I simply enjoyed Pern. The story is fairly simple, dealing again with the period of time just before a fall when there are skeptics who claim thread will never fall, and others who disagree on the preparations. I really appreciate the effort to deal with the implications of some of the social practices started by the colonists as we see some of the impact of the practice of shunning, something that had practically disappeared from Pern during the time of F’lar and Lessa.

    We see a bit of overlap with Dragon’s Kin, and you may enjoy seeing some further development of those themes and characters. We also learn more about the watch whers.

    All in all, this book was a good experience, and while I doubt I’ll ever rate Todd McCaffrey as the equal of his mother, I’ve definitely upgraded my desire to read his writing in the future.

  • Book: Out on a Limb

    With an endorsement on the front cover from Elizabeth Peters, and another on the back that said, “She’s hilarious . . .” I had hopes for this mystery novel. After reading it, however, I have to rate it a 3 out of 5. I do find some of the characters engaging and interesting, but the story is scattered, the mystery is a bit weak, and the jokes fall short of hilarious for me.

    The strong female lead is diminished, in my view, by her weak and apparently inept boyfriend, a police Lieutenant who can’t seem to see fairly obvious things. At one point when the lead (Claire Malloy) is making an excuse for not telling him something that she really should have as a good citizen, she notes that the police have much greater resources than she has, and that a little simple police work would have produced the result. She’s right, it probably would have, thus indicating that the police work wasn’t done. It seems that Malloy wins not through intelligence or hard work, but rather through a combination of fortuitous information and police laziness or ineptness.

    Interesting characters might get me to pick up another book in this series. The story in this one will stand against that. We’ll have to see what happens.

  • Book: Claws and Effect

    Rita Mae Brown and her co-author Sneaky Pie Brown collaborate to produce this delightful new volume in the Mrs. Murphy mystery series. Mrs. Murphy is a cat, of course, whose human is named Mary Minor Haristeen, the village postmistress for Crozet, Virginia. I’m a sucker for all things feline, including feline detectives. If you don’t like books in which animals behave intelligently and converse, though in this case not with humans, then you’ll hate this one.

    The mystery begins this time in Crozet hospital, where an unexpected target is killed in an unexpected place. It will take all of Mrs. Murphy’s senses and good sense to solve this one and keep her human alive at the same time.

    For more information, see Claws and Effect.