Customer Comments

Very enjoyable action scifi read. When the pace is moving, it is great and it hides the book's problems. The characters are thin and idealized and the book has the typical fate of the universe hinging on the actions of a tiny few. Still, the book is a lot of fun and had me reading despite my qualms.

Although it pains the genre defender in me, I think this is the best Hynes novel for people to try. Unlike his prior books, this one is straight litfic. It tells the story of a day in the life of a dissatisfied American man. Unhappy with his lack of career and his love life, he flees Ann Arbor to take a job interview in Austin. He arrives early so he gets lost in town. The story concludes in less than a day, but as the main character reviews his life, it becomes a much broader story. It ends in dramatic fashion with many of his questions resolved, but many will find that resolution unsettling. Its an amazing piece of writing though

This is one of the most appealing crime novels I have read in quite some time. Amazingly for a debut novel, the whodunnit plot is well constructed with great framing, a tense climax and a plethora of unpleasant suspects. If that is all Lupton achieved, it would be a laudable, if eventually forgettable read. What elevates the book is the strong emotional payoff. Her main character, who has neglected her relationships with her mother and sister, while becoming engaged with the wrong person undergoes a remarkable, real transformation as she tries to uncover what happened to her missing sister. As things become more clear, the story she tells becomes increasingly tragic and resonant.

This is great book, but be warned. It is written by a comic book nerd for other comic book nerds. If you are one, say Huzzah! and proceed. If not, look elsewhere. The book tells the story of a group of heroes not unlike the Avengers or the JLA as they face off against a recently escaped supervillain. If it was just that it could be little different from a comic book. Thankfully it is much more. For one, it is a fun send-up of the genre. There are references, jokes and allusions aplenty. Grossman also does a nice job poking fun at comic book standards, like the ritualized banter between hero and villain. There is also a real exploration of the emotional character of the main villain and a new cyborg member of the hero team. We see the villain as the revenge seeking outcast nerd he is and the vulnerabilities of a 400 pound part human machine that can't really find a place in normal society. It's worth noting that Austin Grossman's twin brother is Lev Grossman author of the similarly genre tweaking The Magicians. Lev's book is more provocative, meaning it might hit you harder than this book, or it could drive you crazy. Soon I Will Be Invincible is closer to its source material, escapist pleasure, but of a high order.

This scifi novel scratches so many of my itches. First there is the world building, set some centuries hence where oil has run out, the seas have risen, many states have collapsed and the most powerful and wicked forces are the calorie companies. These controllers of food and flavor break governments, use diseases as a tool or corporate power and act like general bastards. The book is set in Thailand, one of the worlds few independent states, but one where the Ministry of Trade, disposed to working with outsiders, and the Ministry of the Environment, given to doing ANYTHING to protect the country, are constantly at odds, even killing one another in order to meet their mission. I also like that Bacigalupi is sparing in his detail. We know that terrible things have befallen much of the world, but we get only slight details. Backstories pertinent to the plot, like the Malayan massacre of the ethnic Chinese are slowly revealed by characters. The slow telling makes the story in many ways sadder as you digest it over time. I appreciate that Bacigalupi forces us to imagine so much of the detail. I hope he never tells us. It will end up as lame as the Clone Wars or the Butlerian Jihad most likely. These skills would be great, but unimportant if it wasn't a good story. This one is quite the story. The many main characters experience frequent ups and downs and it is never clear who, if any of them, are going to prevail, or at the very least get what they seek. There is one Macguffiny character that feels underutilized or perhaps is there to tee off a possible sequel. I didn't love that element, but it was a minor complaint. This is my favorite scifi novel in quite some time.

ohn Mosier's books follow a basic formula. What you thought you knew about conflict X is wrong, what really happened is Y. Here he aims to say that the prevailing idea that the Red Army defeated the Wehrmacht thereby winning World War 2 is wrong, instead Stalin used propaganda to build up the story of the great Red Army which is false. The premise is surprising in that for much of popular culture, World War 2 = D-Day. In any case, I found the book an strange exercise overall, even though it is always interesting to read revisionist histories. One of the authors claims is that the German Army kept on beating the Russian Army and so the Russian Army never really defeated the German Army. This is strange in many ways. It is true that the Western Allied invasions of Italy and France also defeated large German formations and that the bombing campaign, whatever the moral issues, drew much more German resources than is commonly known. It is also true that the majority of the German Army fought on the Eastern front from 1941 til the end of the war. Mosier refers to total numbers when he wants to argue that the Soviets were closer to the breaking point than is commonly understood. This was interesting and I wish he spent more time on it. As the war progresses and the Soviets begin to expel the Germans from the East, he begins to talk about a handful of super divisions the Germans used for offensive purposes in the East. The Allied invasions drew these divisions back to the West and hence took away the German ability to conduct offensive or counter offensive operations in the East. This is strange as the Eastern front had well over 100 divisions on the German side alone. Whatever their strength, it is a bit much to argue that the German war effort hinged on such a small proportion of the Army. Mosier does concede that the Soviets won the battle that destroyed Army Group Center in 1944, but thinks of it more as a one off. He basically views the Soviets as ineffective cannon fodder. He tends to focus on casualties in battle, noting that the Germans inflicted an far more casualties per German death than they did when facing the Western Allies. This focus feels like the body count mentality in Vietnam. In the end what matters was, where the Germans going to stay in Russia, the Ukraine and the rest. In his desire to denigrate the Russians, Mosier avoids the discussion that could help explore the relative contribution of American, British and Russian forces to Germany's defeat.

Egan keeps on getting better with each book. The book is experimental without being pretentious. While it may seem like a postmodern exercise, Egan remains focused on telling a story, rather than showing off. It reminds me a bit of Cloud Atlas in this way. Comparisons aside, this one is entertaining and thoughtful.

Beat the Reaper is written by Josh Bazell, one of those hyper-capable people that might irritate you if they didn't do things so well. While he was in medical school, he came up with an idea for a comic novel about a doctor who is also an anti-healer, a hitman. I guess it helps that he was an English major in college. Anyway, the book is great fun. We see former hitman Pietro Brnwa, now Dr Peter Brown in the witness protection program, go through his day as an intern in a run down Manhattan hospital. His days are rough enough, but get worse when one of his former colleagues from the Life surfaces and lets his enemies know where he is. Now he has to dodge assassination while saving lives in the hospital. The book alternates between Peter's life in the hospital and Pietro's life as a hitman. At first, I thought we had some of the dread Killer with a Heart of Gold* here, and to be honest, it is still hard to believe that someone who takes money for murder is going to turn out to be a peachy guy who risks his life to prevent an unnecessary amputation. I accepted it here, because the writing is flashy and hilarious and because there is a life changing event for Pietro that arises from his life of crime. There is so much to enjoy here, including all sorts of little nuggets about medicine. At the end Bazell puts in a disclaimer that the whole book is fiction, but I like to think there are some fun facts to be enjoyed. *An example of a book that is killed by the Killer with a Heart of Gold is the Electric Church. Here again we have a supposedly hardened killer, who keeps claiming life is too hard to go easy on people, but who constantly finds reasons to do the ethical thing. Sorry, don't buy it.

This is a fluffless book in which the author lucidly argues that the United States has lost its way. The country has become infatuated with military power (while ignoring declines in economic power) while becoming separating overall society from military society. American policy swiftly moves to using military power at the expense of other less expensive and often more effective tools. This was cost free (for Americans) in the 90s, but has become disastrous for the world in Iraq.