War Cry

War Cry by Brian McClellan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Teado is a shapeshifting wizard who serves on the front lines of a war that has dominated his life. His platoon specializes in ambush and sneak attacks, but they are running low on supplies. In an effort to steal the needed supplies from the enemy Teado is lost behind enemy lines and struggles to find his way back.

I'm not sure exactly what I imagined War Cry would be like. It does have the feel of a more modern war with planes, motorcycles, machine guns, and other modern technology. The world features wizards such as Fire-Spitters, Smiling Toms, and Changers. Fire-Spitters name seems self explanatory in that they can spit fire. Smiling Tom's create illusions that can be made to mask an army base. Changers seem to be werewolves that don't need the full moon to transform, but they can't pass their powers on through a bite. The world and wizards have potential.

I struggled a bit with War Cry in that I didn't truly connect with any of the characters before events really got moving. The story is told exclusively from Teado's point of view and with the exception of being loyal to his platoon, I don't feel like I knew anything about him as an individual. He's a Changer as well, but that doesn't really flesh him out. The story features some other characters who show even less personality with the exception of Bellara who just wants to use her Smiling Tom powers to make people happy rather than having to be involved in a seemingly never ending war.

The story itself also didn't really draw me in as it was a largely straightforward tale of a character lost behind enemy lines with some slight differences. I felt bad for Teado's platoon as they seemed to be largely abandoned in the war effort. I also was a bit disappointed that the author never really showed the enemy. Granted they have the same types of wizards, but outside of that they were just simple soldiers.

War Cry felt like a good idea that simply wasn't developed enough yet.

3 out of 5 stars

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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THE VENICE TRAIN BY GEORGES SIMENON

Venice Train by Georges Simenon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”Was Calmar himself happy? Not just since Venice and the ridiculous episode on the train--but before? He never asked himself the question, or hardly ever, and when he did he quickly thought about something else.”



Justan Calmar is called back from vacation a few days early by his boss. He catches the train in Venice to go back to Paris and waves goodbye to his family. These prove to be the last few minutes that Calmar is the man that everyone has grown accustomed to him being.

Stable, corpulent, not overly ambitious, but he works hard enough to earn a good living for his family. He doesn’t really think about it, but his life is constricted down to a simple maze of traveling between his home and work with few, if ever, brief forays along the way. There is nothing remarkable about him, and if he were to suddenly do something remarkable or even do something differently than he always has, it would be a stunning revelation to those who know him. They would be made uneasy.

So the interest the man on the train takes in the most intimate details of his life is decidedly odd. ”Little by little, by asking one harmless question after another, the man had obtained a quantity of information about his life, his family, and his job, which he had supplied with a docility that made him feel slightly ashamed.” Certainly, Calmar would be amazed at the most intimate details people will share about their lives on a public forum, like Twitter, Snapchat, or Facebook. The man makes him uncomfortable, but for all that, when the man suggests he run an errand for him in Lausanne, Calmar readily agrees. I have visions of Strangers on the Train running through my head at this point.

He is supposed to pick up a suitcase from a locker at the station and deliver it to a woman at a specific address. Easy enough, except for what he finds when he arrives. ”At the foot of a pale-blue couch, he saw a pair of shoes, two legs, a petticoat, and then, finally, the neck and reddish hair of a woman. She was lying full length on a carpet of a darker blue than the couch, one arm stretched out, the other folded behind her back, as though it had been twisted.”

Really Georges Simenon and Alfred Hitchcock would have gotten along superbly. Simenon wrote suspenseful novels that would have translated well to make Hitchcock type films. There is story that sounds so vintage Hitchcock I want to believe it is true. ”Alfred Hitchcock was said to have telephoned, only to be told by Simenon's secretary that he couldn't be disturbed because he had just begun a new novel. Hitchcock, knowing that Simenon was capable of writing one novel -- or two or three -- every month, replied, 'That's all right, I'll wait.'”

What Calmar finds in the case will have a profound impact on his life. It is certainly one of those situations, if I were reading this with a book club, where the morality of the situation could be discussed at length. What would you do? Calmar does not handle the stress of the situation very well. ”Some weeks were painful, agonizing, in the office and at home. Sitting at the dinner table, he would suddenly feel his forehead bathed in sweat, his nerves knotted, a sense of constriction in his chest; at moments like these, he couldn’t bear to have anyone look at him.”

The problem of course is that he feels guilty. He feels like he has done something wrong. His shame for his actions, he is convinced, is etched on his face. His behavior becomes erratic by Calmar standards. He might even stop and have a beer on his way home from work. OMG! His wife, used to the steady Eddie she married, begins to give him the third degree about everything he does that doesn’t fit his standard pattern. He can’t hardly stand it. Lies grow upon other lies, and the question is, can Calmar find a solution to his problems before he cracks up.

This is a vintage Simenon. The plot is compelling, and the ending is superb. A Georges Simenon book or two always finds their way into my luggage when I travel. His stories make for perfect travel companions. They are concise, twisty mysteries with literary nuances that never fail to please.

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Butts... in Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!

I contributed to the Kickstarter for Butts in Space and it happened to arrive in the mail on game night so we dove right in.

The rules are easy to understand and the art is hilarious. Basically, each player assumes the role of one of the Butt characters.  It's a race against time as sets are made and various pieces of the space ship are unveiled.

Building as many sets of matching cards as possible before all seven space ship pieces are revealed makes for some tense moments, especially when people start rotating the butts. I wouldn't quite put it on the same tier as Exploding Kittens or Guillotine but Butts in Space is a fun card game that will be in our regular game night rotation.

A Rootin' Tootin' Rough and Ready Shoot 'Em Up Western

Brimstone by Robert B. Parker
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My god, the testosterone just oozes off the pages of these Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch books!

The plot of #3 gets a tad more philosophical as the story dabbles with religion more than the previous two, but that doesn't make this book anymore "deep". It's still about being macho and shooting the bejesus out of a lot of cowboys, ranch hands, and whoever else strays towards the gray side in the white vs black/good guy vs bad guy scheme of things. Get drunk and mouth off? That's a shootin'. Piss off Cole and Hitch? That's a shootin'. Shoot somebody? Oh that's definitely a shootin'!

While this one is perhaps more nuanced than others, I wasn't digging quite as much as the first two. I don't know why. Perhaps the subject matter. Parker had to paint some characters particularly annoying in order for the reader to be okay with them dying. Problem is, I already find that character trait annoying anyhow, so I got an AA dose of annoying. Having said that, Brimstone's perfectly fine and I'll move on to #4. That however will be the last of the Cole/Hitch books for me, because Parker died in media res and other author took over. I'm not interested in that nonsense, so it'll be time for me to mosey...

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A Fine Finish

Blue-Eyed Devil by Robert B. Parker
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A perfectly fine finish to Parker's portion of his Cole & Hitch western series.

This one finds the pair back in Appaloosa working as hired hands for a saloon that doesn't get the protection it needs from the local sheriff. This sheriff has aspirations well beyond this podunk town and there'll be trouble for anyone that gets in his way. Cole and Hitch get in his way.

I really wish Parker hadn't knocked off in the middle of this series or at least was around longer in order to write more. I mean, these aren't the best books ever written, but they're quick, enjoyable reads. This one included.

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301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions

Vicky Oliver
Sourcebooks
Reviewed by Nancy
3 out of 5 stars

Summary

In today's job market, how you perform in an interview can make or break your hiring possibilities. If you want to stand a head above the rest of the pack, 301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions is the definitive guide you need to the real, and sometimes quirky, questions employers are using to weed out candidates.

Do you know the best answers to:

--It looks like you were fired twice. How did that make you feel?
--Do you know who painted this work of art?
--What is the best-managed company in America?
--If you could be any product in the world, what would you choose?
--How many cigars are smoked in a year?
--Are you a better visionary or implementer? Why?

Leaning on her own years of experience and the experiences of more than 5,000 recent candidates, Vicky Oliver shows you how to finesse your way onto a company's payroll.

My Review

I have been in my current position for nearly 5 years and was hoping to stay until I retire. The pay is low and the commute is deadly, but my supervisor is undemanding, lets me work from home once a week, and the work is easy. In spite of the long drive, I do quite a bit of walking (at least 10,000 steps a day, so I can enjoy all the fabulous restaurants!). Sadly, my supervisor is going on sabbatical and no longer has a need for my position. Instead of laying me off, he is allowing me to stay and use a large chunk of my workday for job search activities. Though I’m grateful he’s doing that, I’m apprehensive about being over 50 and looking for work.

These are 301 commonly asked interview questions answered by the author. In the beginning of the book, she suggests you tailor the questions and answers to your own situation. In all my years of working experience, I have not been asked many of these questions during my interviews. Thankfully so, because I am not good at those questions that have no right or wrong answer or brainteasers:

“If you could be any product in the world, what would you choose?”
“How many cigars are smoked in a year?”

I found many of the questions and answers tailored to higher-level corporate jobs. Those of us who work in public safety, service, trades, or clerical jobs would benefit by looking for help elsewhere. The information contained in the gray boxes was useful. Here you could find condensed chapter summaries, interviewing tips, how to handle personal questions or insensitive questions, etc.

Though I read it from cover to cover, and found some of the answers entertaining, they were a lot saucier than I’d feel comfortable with, and I found little that was relevant to my own situation.

Nevertheless, I got a job offer today, so it must have been helpful enough.

The First Adventure

The First Adventure by Anthea Sharp
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Jennet lives with her video game producing Dad. She's largely on her own as her Dad is often working, but he let's her beta test the games he's working on. Unbeknownst to him, Jennet has his account passwords and is able to access all the games he's working on. Including one that's more than it seems. That game is Feyland.

The First Adventure was largely an introduction to the Feyland world. Jennet stumbled in and doesn't realize Feyland is basically a digital portal into the faerie realm. Since she's a teen it's obvious she gets hooked on the game and sneaks on whenever she has the opportunity.

The story being told isn't one I found compelling. It immediately let's the reader know that Feyland is real despite the fact Jennet doesn't know. There's a lot of implications regarding the world and what's going on, but nothing is explained or explicitly said. Jennet could be any teen as she has no overly distinctive traits other than she's a girl who plays video games and looks down on her peers she seems unworthy of her time.

The First Adventure didn't do enough to make me interested in learning more about the Feyland series.


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BEL-AMI BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT

Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

”There are many women who would give way to a passing whim, a sudden violent desire or an amorous fancy if they weren’t afraid that their brief moment of happiness would end in a dreadful scandal and bitter tears.”

Georges Duroy comes from the provinces of France to Paris with the determination to make something of himself. He finds a job making a pittance, but fortunately he runs into an old friend from the army named Charles Forestier. Even though Duroy has no real writing experience, Forestier decides to get him hired on at La Vie Francaise as a journalist. He wants Duroy to write about some of his experiences in the army, but the cursed white page that plagues even the most experienced writers is consuming his words before he can even dip his pen to paper.

Forestier sends Duroy to his wife Madeleine. She will get him sorted. It doesn’t take long for Duroy to realize who in the Forestier family is doing most of the writing. As he starts to mix in the circles surrounding the newspaper, he starts to see the potential for not only continuing to better his position but also the plethora of opportunities to seduce other men’s wives.

He is a handsome rake.

”He had a fund of small talk, a pleasant voice, a caressing glance and his moustache was irresistible. Crisp and curly, it curved charmingly over his lip, fair with auburn tints, slightly paler where it bristled at the ends.”

It isn’t long before the women, and even the men, are referring to him as Bel-Ami.

As he gains confidence, he also becomes bolder. His first conquest is Madame Clotilde de Marelle.

”’I’ve never seen such pretty earrings as yours, Madame de Marelle.’

She turned to him with a smile.

‘It’s an idea I had to fasten a diamond like that, simply on the end of a wire. They look just like dew, don’t they?’

Alarmed at his temerity and terrified of saying something silly, he murmured:

‘It’s charming...but the ear must take some of the credit, too.’”

Her ample bosom first catches his eye, but of course, only a low class lout would compliment a woman’s breasts. By showing an interest in her earrings, he unknowingly hits upon something of which she is proud, her creativity. As you will see when you read this novel, Duroy frequently gets luckier than he deserves. At the same time, I can’t help rooting for him even as he takes on characteristics that are beneath a man on the rise.

Forestier is very sick with tuberculosis. The disease is wasting him away. A young man, only in his late twenties, he will not only leave a higher position open at the newspaper, but he will also leave a young, beautiful, ambitious woman a widow. Both the job and the widow are of interest to Duroy. To him, she represents the pinnacle of success, but she will only prove to be a stepping stone for a man as ambitious as he is.

The Forestier death scene is particularly poignant because of his deathbed terror of the unknown, which even envelopes Madeleine and Duroy, who are devotedly attending his last moments, despite already scheming about a life after Forestier. When Guy De Maupassant was writing this novel in the 1880s, he already knew he was living under a death sentence. Syphilis was eroding his health at an alarming rate. When he wrote Forestier’s last moments, I couldn’t help thinking that he was recording his own fears and projecting his last curtain call upon this man who was dying too young.

First things first, Madeleine changes his name. He is now Duroy de Cantel or D. de Cantel. There are reasons why actors and actresses change their names, not only to be someone else, someone larger in even their own minds when they are acting, but to also have a memorable name that will easily trip off the tongue of those who hear it. Duroy is becoming an accomplished actor in the drama of his own life.

He has come a long way from the first squalid rooms he used in Paris. ”His wallpaper, grey with a blue floral pattern, had as many stains as flowers, ancient, dubious-looking stains that could have been squashed insects or oil, greasy finger-marks from hair cream or dirty soap suds from the wash-basin. It all reeked of poverty and degradation, the poverty of Parisian furnished lodgings.”

I know it isn’t possible for everyone to experience poverty, but for me, while trying to pay for college and at times walking around with just a few slender dimes in my pocket, the prospect of missing meals certainly honed my appreciation for what being successful really means. Though being successful takes on different meanings for different people, my vision of what a successful life is has certainly changed in the last few years. ”The road to success is thus largely paved by wily mediocrity; but, fortunately, as a counterbalance and a sort of poetic justice, Maupassant takes pains to underline the basic futility of ambition.” We see this philosophy in how Duray, excuse me, D. de Cantel adjusts to his rising prosperity. He is besotted by bitter envy of the triumphs of others to the point that he can’t enjoy the vaulted position he has achieved.

Achieved may be too strong a word.

He does still recognize who he is.

”A smart, low, open carriage came by drawn at a brisk trot by two slim greys with flowing manes and tails, driven by a small blonde young woman, a well-known high-class tart, with two grooms sitting behind her. Duroy stopped and felt like waving and applauding this woman whose success had been won on her back and who was boldly flaunting her luxury by taking her drive at the same time as these aristocratic hypocrites.”

I wonder, if we looked in on Duroy twenty years in the future, if he would still see the woman as an act of defiance to be celebrated, or will he be so steeped in the conventions of his new class that he will see her as someone to be vilified for her impertinence?

The women are so well drawn in this book. I find myself admiring them more than the men. They are competent, intelligent, and in many cases, use Duroy as much as he uses them. I especially admire Madeleine Forestier, who,
through her subtle astute suggestions, guides Duroy to better opportunities, and even suggests women he should strategically get to know better. She has no illusions about how either one of them are ever going to rise to a place of comfort.

The spectre of death, the dissatisfaction with success, the unseemliness of unquenchable ambition, and the hypocrisy of the aristocracy all make for a scathing, enjoyable romp through the dark alcoves, the boudoirs, and the secluded settees of Paris, as seeking fingers grope for the flesh beneath the silk.

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The Tower of Living and Dying (Empires of Dust #2) By: Anna Smith Spark

The Tower of Living and Dying by Anna Smith Spark
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazing, amazing, and amazing. The Queen of "grimdark" returns to her throne with the next installment of the Empires of Dust trilogy. This book is a masterwork of brutality covered in a silk glove, This is a bleak, bloody place...everything is crashing together to meet the most violent of ends and yet, the story Ms Spark weaves keeps you entranced and wanting to see it through to the very end.

If you haven't read this series, DO SO NOW, Imagine if George RR Martin took lots of acid and ratcheted up the tension on his books, you would sort of get the idea what this is like.

READ IT, I don't do you wrong. 900290 stars out of 5

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Rumpole Keeps on Ticking!

Rumpole Rests His Case by John Mortimer
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Rumpole is getting up there in years (it's seems like in every Rumpole book the poor old blighter is "getting up there in years") and the overall tone of this book makes you think perhaps it's time for him to hang up his wig. But what the hey, how about a few more cases?!

Rumpole Rests His Case treads upon familiar plots and characters, so much so that I was half way through and sure I'd read this one before I realized it was just that I recognized the stories from the tv version, and yes, most of the storylines play out like most all of John Mortimer's enjoyable books about the ethical humanitarian lawyer Horace Rumpole.

The short stories that make up this volume -at least the first half of them- do not seem as cohesive as other Rumpoles I've read. The theme thread does surface by the end though.

What's most interesting about this one, to me at any rate, is that it was written later in Mortimer's writing career, so Rumpole is faced with some new technology, such as "The Internet". It's interesting, because Rumpole is an old dude -an old lovable dude- but old one nonetheless and set in his ways. I find charm in his cantankerous ways, especially his repulsion to most new things. He's a great chap who will go to the wall for a defendant wrongly accused, but he is a grump. I probably like it because it makes me feel a little less curmudgeonly than I am.

Rumpole Rests His Case does not gather together the best of Mortimer's work, imo, but it is a serviceably good read that should bring a bit of joy to fans.

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