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Summer Reading – 2010

22 Friday Oct 2010

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It’s been a busy summer of devouring books as fast as I can; so fast that I couldn’t get a review written of each of them. So, instead, here’s a rapid fire list of what rocked and what was as dull as a rock.
Books that Rocked:

Outliers: The Story Of Success – Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell is always an interesting read. His ability to find connections in places where they aren’t expected is uncanny.  In Outliers, you will learn that where and when we are born have a large influence on our future.

 

 

 

 

Time to Hunt – Stephen Hunter
I’ve read a few of the Bob Lee Swagger novels, and this one is the best so far.  Go back in time to Bob’s harrowing escapades in Vietnam, and learn why they call him “The Hammer”.

 

 

 

 

The Dresden Files

  • Blood Rites (The Dresden Files, Book 6) – Jim Butcher
  • Dead Beat (The Dresden Files, book 7) – Jim Butcher
  • Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files, Book 8 ) – Jim Butcher
  • White Night (The Dresden Files, Book 9) – Jim Butcher
  • Small Favor (The Dresden Files, Book 10) – Jim Butcher
  • Turn Coat (The Dresden Files, Book 11) – Jim Butcher

Yup, it’s been a summer of Jim Butcher. I’m not surprised. Harry Dresden is a perfect lead character. He’s filled with doubt and weaknesses, but always has enough steely resolve and powerful magic to pull himself out of the tightest places.  Each book is better than the last, and I can only hope that Butcher keeps kicking them out.

 

The Night Angel Trilogy

  • The Way of Shadows (The Night Angel Trilogy) – Brent Weeks
  • Shadow’s Edge (Night Angel Trilogy) – Brent Weeks
  • Beyond the Shadows – Brent Weeks

The Night Angel Trilogy was an interesting fantasy series. It focused on a young boy who wants to escape his danger our and hopeless life as an orphan.  He gets himself apprenticed to the greatest assassin of the land and ends up having a drastic influence on the world while defeating a great evil.  Yup, that sounds like just about every fantasy series out there.  Great characters and interesting plot twists make this a worthwhile read.

 
The First Law

  • The Blade Itself (The First Law: Book One) – Joe Abercrombie
  • Before They Are Hanged (The First Law: Book Two) – Joe Abercrombie
  • Last Argument of Kings (First Law: Book Three) – Joe Abercrombie

Other than the Butcher books, this was my favorite series of the summer.  The story was full of intrigue and plotting, but what was interesting is that for all the machinations of man, there was a handful of demi-gods running around pulling the strings that no one really believed in.  Couple that with a half dozen morally gray heroes and heroines and you’ve got a formula for a great read.  Each chapter switches to a different hero’s perspective, and Abercrombie was able to make it so you instantly know which character you are with.

 
The State of the Union – Brad Thor
An interesting thriller that explores what would happen if Russia was playing possum and only pretended to lose the Cold War.  Think Tom Clancy crossed with Dan Brown.

 

 

 

 

As interesting as rocks

Daemons are Forever (Secret Histories, Book 2) – Simon R. Green
Loved the first book for its sheer volume of fantastical creatues.  The follow up fell flat for me.

The Orc King: Transitions, Book I – R.A. Salvatore
Salvatore has dozens of great books starring the dark elf, Drizzt Do’urden.  As he has progressed, the books have taken on a morally preachy timbre. I love the action, but could do without the sermons.

Agincourt: A Novel – Bernard Cornwell
A book about my favorite historical battle?  Count me in.  I can’t remember now why this was bad or good, and I guess that’s enough to say about it. However, Cornwell typically hits the mark and I would not hesitate to recommend him.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy – Robert V. S. Redick
The whole book takes place on a boat.  There’s some interesting characters, but I didn’t really get into it.

Sharpe’s Trafalgar: Richard Sharpe & the Battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805 (Richard Sharpe’s Adventure Series #4) – Bernard Cornwell
I really enjoy the Sharpe series, and I’m going to keep reading them. This book wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t that great either.

Soldier of Rome: The Sacrovir Revolt: A Novel of the Twentieth Legion During the Rebellion of Sacrovir and Florus – James Mace
I really wanted to like this series, but it is entirely too dry for me.  I guess I’ll find a different Roman era series to read.

That’s 21 books read since March, not too shabby. Luckily, most of them have been good, including 3 series: The Night Angel Trilogy, The First Law, and The Dresden Files. Get some!

The King Beyond the Gate by David Gemmell

20 Tuesday Apr 2010

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The first book that I reviewed for this blog was Legend by David Gemmell.  I started reading more of Gemmell’s work because I really enjoyed his Troy series of books.

Unfortunately, I can’t say anything good about The King Beyond the Gate.  It’s standard fantasy fare. It was a little heavy on the moral dilemmas that the characters faced, and light on action and character development. I never felt any particular affinity for the characters, the world, or the story.

There are many books that Gemmell has set in this world, and supposedly they have been well received. I think I’ll have had to run out of books before I go out of my way to read another one.

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Angel Time by Anne Rice

19 Tuesday Jan 2010

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Anne Rice is one of the cherished authors from my formative years. The Vampire Chronicles, Servant of the Bones, and the Witching Hour. My sister has loved her works as well. When I visited New Orleans some years ago, I took a piece of sidewalk that had broken off in front of her home.

However, something has been lost in her recent books. Christ the Lord was intriguing, but ultimately dully written. As for Angel Time, that one was completely lost on me. I’m happy for Rice and her return to Christianity. I understand the parallels between the main character in Angel Time and her life. Unfortunately, it made for a dull story.

It’s a rather short story as it is, and spending the first two thirds on the protagonist, Toby, and he struggles with his career as an assassin. The second half of the book threatens to pick up the pace and become something interesting, only to end long before it should have.

This book reads like a prologue to what will most likely become a multiple book series. I would have put it down and moved on to something else, had I not been on a plane back from China with no other reading options. I was disappointed. Next time I see a new Anne Rice book, I think I’ll just pick up The Vampire Lestat and read that again.

Rating 2 out of 5 stars. (What’s this?)

The Harsh Cry of the Heron by Lian Hearn

14 Friday Aug 2009

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Sometimes I am a glutton for punishment. I didn’t enjoy much of the Otori tales trilogy before this, and yet I decided to read the epilogue. Well, I decided that long before I read the last two books of the trilogy. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a while.

This book picks up 18 years or so after the trilogy ends. Things have gone very well for the Otori clan, but cracks are beginning to form on the edges that quickly give way to disastrous effect.

I have many of the same issues with this book that I had with the previous efforts. The characters and place names continue to be hard to follow. I don’t know how that can be after three previous entries in this world. Seventy percent of the book is slogging build-up, ten percent enjoyable climax, and twenty percent lazy cleanup.

I did enjoy where the characters ended up. It was a fitting end to the series. Unfortunately, most of the book was filled with tedious build up to the trip to the Mainland to meet the Emperor. The couple of chapters with the Emperor and the battle after were well done. Then Hearn sort of hit fast forward to wrap the story up quickly.

There’s one more Otori book on my shelf. The First Tale of the Otori, which is a prequel to the trilogy. It may just have to sit there for a while.

2 out of 5. See the rating system here

Brilliance of the Moon by Lian Hearn

31 Friday Jul 2009

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With great expectations comes great responsibility. Is that how it goes? Wait, that’s what would happen if Spider Man and Charles Dickens hung out. Either way, it is how I felt about this book.

Who wouldn’t be excited about a fantasy series set in feudal era Japan. The prospect of sword fights, honor, ninjas, flying ninjas, demon ninjas, ninjas that could travel through time and space is just too good to be true, isn’t it?

Turns out it is. With so many possibilities for excitement and wonder, this book chose to go with boring and underwhelming. This is the third book in the series, and the whole thing has felt disjointed and unsure of what it wanted to be. In the end, it turned out to be a cop-out.

The most disappointing thing is that there is not the end of the series. There are two more books on my shelf, a prologue and an epilogue.

I would like to think it wasn’t that bad, but frankly there wasn’t anything memorable about it except the end. Perhaps it is the nature of Japanese fiction that everything must end in an earthquake. It did well for James Clavell, after all (see Shogun, my favorite book by far).

In the end, it was probably my own extremely high expectations that did this book in. It didn’t go nearly as far into fantasy as I would have liked, the character development was decent, but the plot really did not go very far.

Rating 2 out of 5 (see rating system)

By the Sword by Richard Cohen

26 Thursday Mar 2009

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The subtitle of this book is A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers and Olympic Champions.  In the time honored tradition of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Cohen could have said Or How I’ll use a Couple of Interesting Chapters in Order to Make You Read a History of Fencing (citing the obscure reference).

This first few chapters of this book were really excellent.  Perhaps I should say that the Prologue was outstanding, and it slowly lost its momentum from there.  Cohen expertly describes one of his fencing meets. I was drawn in and brought the book home from the store.  I soon learned a bevy of interesting facts.

We shake hands to show that we are not reaching for our swords; a gentleman offers a lady his right arm because at one time his sword was at his left hip; a man’s coat buttons left over right, so that a duelist may unbutton it with his left, unarmed hand.

The culture of the sword, its history and evolution follow for the next few chapters.  My favorite was Chapter 7, Where the Soul is the Sword.  The history of the sword in Japan was explored and has always piqued my interest. Japan took it beyond honor, justice, and chivalry and made it a religion and way of life. 

Cohen does an admirable job of tracing the evolution of the sword.  He discusses the changes in technology, in use, in art, and in the settling of disputes through the years.  For the first two hundred pages, it is an expertly researched and written historical account of one of the oldest tools of war.  The change from historical novel to a book about fencing is subtle. As it begins to change, he draws you in to the history of sword play in movies.  For a while, it’s still interesting that it isn’t the sword we’re talking about, but rather what was being done with the sword outside of war and duels.  By the three hundred page mark, I was fully suspicious of what was going on.  I just didn’t care about the French school of fencing and how it differed from the Italians.  Or that the Hungarians became unbeatable in saber, but their top master was an Italian.  Fencing is interesting, but it should have been a chapter, not the second half of the book in my opinion.

I definitely recommend Part 1, From Egypt to Waterloo and Part 2, The Search for Perfection.  Part 3, The Duel’s High Noon and Part 4, Wounded Warriors were still pretty interesting. However, unless you are a true fencing aficionado, stop there.  Part 5, Great Powers, and Part 6, Faustian Pacts (cool name) are duds. I skipped through most of it.

Rating  2.5 out of 5 (Can I do that? I think I can, after all I made up the system.  A two star is wishing I’d given up at page 100. But I wish I had given up at page 300. I found parts of it pretty entertaining, which is close to a three….so 2.5. That just happened.)

By the way, I hope you like the new name of the blog.  Libzig may be a great site I built (shamless plug) for keeping track of your Library, but it doesn’t tell you much about the blog.  I think Judging a Book by its Cover is pretty appropriate.

Alexander, The Sands of Ammon by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

08 Sunday Mar 2009

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If ever there was a period of history ripe for a multitude of exciting and awe inspiring books and literature, it is the life and times of Alexander the Great.  And yet, time after time I come away disappointed and wanting more.    

Remember Alexander by Oliver Stone?  If you do it is only with disgust. It’s one of the few movies I’ve turned off half way through.  

I know I have a few books about Alexander in my library, but I honestly can’t remember a single one of them.  One  must be the first book in Manfredi’s trilogy about Alexander. I think I read it in 2008. Honestly though, I can’t remember much about it.  It had to have been good enough for me to grab the second and third books.  After reading this second book, though, I can’t imagine what I was thinking.

The book is originally written in Italian, so I can’t quite bring myself to bash the book. It’s possible that something was lost in translation.  Frankly, I hope that’s the case.  What is left is a book that is rather boring.  I don’t quite get that. How can a book about Alexander be boring?

The fight scenes are dull.  I did not gain a connection with any character except Memnon of Rhodes.  Unfortunately, his demise takes place off screen with no details on how it was accomplished.  Actually, that shortcoming crops up many times. An event or action is built up ahead of time only to find in the next chapter that the event has transpired, and it’s glossed over as the story continues.

There were still some interesting moments, and Manfredi does an excellent job describing the cities and sights that the Macedonians only imagined before they left their rustic backwater to conquer their world.  My only real regret is that I already have the third book on the shelf and will be forcing myself to read it.

Can anyone recommend some great Alexander historical fiction?

2 out of 4 (see the rating system)

The Ruin of the Roman Empire – By James O’Donnell

31 Saturday Jan 2009

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James O’Donnell brings us an extraordinarily well researched and detailed account of all of the problems to befall the Roman Empire from the late 400 CE onward.  His book offers insights and connections that the weekend historian would not stumble upon in the course of their normal reading.  I can say that with authority as I now consider myself a weekend historian.  

I have enjoyed many great books by Stephen Ambrose, John Keegan, and Rick Atkinson.  I’ve read ancient source material by Thucydides and Livy.  I considered myself a reasonably well-read aficionado of Roman history and culture.  After reading the majority of this book, I can see that I have a long way to go to become a serious Roman historian.

I did not finish this book. I made it through seventy five percent of it. I learned a number of interesting things about how Rome disintegrated over the course of a few hundred years.  I learned that at one point in the sixth century, Rome was not occupied for about forty days after a number of sieges devastated the ancient capital.  In the end, though, there were too many names, too many obscure connections, and too much political intrigue to keep my interest.

And when it comes down to it, I read books to be entertained.  Stephen Ambrose did a great job of presenting history and always making it interesting.  I can’t say O’Donnell has done the same here.  Let there be no doubt, he knows what he’s talking about and has obviously put an exceptional amount of time and research into this book.  Other experts on the subject will find it an insightful and useful tome.  I, however, did not.  So I shall put an end to it and move on to something more enjoyable.

2 star – see the book rating explanation here