An Entertaining Romp from Tom Kakonis

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Four out of five stars

In the late 1980s and early '90s, Tom Kakonis established himself as a writer who created very good plots but who was especially gifted at populating each of his books with a cast of eccentric, interesting characters and then setting them into motion with sometimes truly inspired results. Now twenty years later, he returns with Treasure Coast, a book which clearly demonstrates that he hasn't lost a step in his time away.

The book is set on Florida's Treasure Coast, basically the Palm Beach area along the Atlantic. It opens as Jim Merriman, a compulsive gambler whose luck has turned so bad that he's now barely eking out a living as a bookstore clerk, travels cross country to visit his sister who is near death. Jim and his sister have not been particularly close for years, but as she expires she makes him promise to watch after her son, Leon.

Leon is twenty-one but appears to be much younger. His mother has left him $25,000, and so Merriman figures that the kid should be in pretty good shape, at least until Leon reluctantly confesses that he owes $45,000 to a loan shark. The debt is long overdue and even as Leon outlines his problem, two particularly nasty enforcers are on their way to collect. It was Uncle Jim who taught the kid how to gamble in the first place and that, along with the promise he made to Leon's mom, persuades Jim that he can't abandon his nephew in this time of crisis.

On the brighter side, while sneaking a cigarette outside the medical center, Jim encounters the very beautiful and sexy Billie Swett. Like Jim, Billie hails from the Dakotas and has had an "interesting" past, culminating in a job where she gave manicures at a place called Get Nailed. There she fortunately met a client named Lonnie Swett. Lonnie is an older, gross, pig of a man, but he's also enormously wealthy and when he offers make Billie the fifth Mrs. Swett, she readily agrees to swap her nail files for a huge diamond wedding set. Jim and Billie are clearly attracted to each other, though, and probably no good will come of that.

Kakonis adds to the cast a "preacher" with a mail order degree who, with a young female assistant, is selling mail order tombstones and helping bereaved and gullible rubes send and receive messages to and from their loved ones in the Great Beyond. Kakonis then turns all of these people loose in pursuit of their various objectives, most of which involve a quick score of one sort or another. As all of their paths intersect, the plot becomes increasingly roiled but Kakonis has a great deal of fun with these characters, and so does the reader.

The characters are all very well defined, and, with perhaps one exception, each is sympathetic in his or her own way. The story is very engaging and often hilariously funny. As another Michigan writer, Kakonis has often been favorably compared to Elmore Leonard and, on the strength of his earlier series featuring Timothy Waverly, I thought it was a very fair comparison. With Treasure Coast, Kakonis demonstrates that he clearly deserves to be considered in the same league as Leonard, certainly in the quality of his output if not in the quantity. Set in Florida, Treasure Coast also evokes comparisons to Carl Hiaasen, and fans of either author are sure to enjoy this book very much.

Collected Genius

Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Reading Jorge Luis Borges's Collected Fictions is like being thrown into the ring with a merciless prize fighter, getting the shit kicked out of you, and loving every minute of it.

These pieces felt more like punches than short stories. Borges jabs to your head, jarring your brain with damning conversations with his future self, invented libraries of the Universe and stories that make you feel like a lost kid on your way to Algebra class but accidentally ending up in Trigonometry. Then he switches his stance and digs at your body with primal blows. Petty gangsters, simplistic machismo, knife fights, all with such savage bravado that you can taste the cheap liquor and cheaper blood.

I said at the top, "loving every minute of it" and perhaps that needs to be tempered. There were times, in certain stories, where my head spun and I wanted to drop to the canvas and not get up. It seemed to be all too much. But I knew if I stayed on my feet and in the ring for the whole 12 rounds I would be rewarded richly. I was. Get in the ring and you will be too.



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A Less Than Heavenly Hemingway

The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hemingway knows how to draw up a batshit crazy lady...but to be honest, I'm not even sure this is a genuine Ernest Hemingway novel. It might be a forgery. But we'll get to that later.

The Garden of Eden puts a newlywed couple's relationship under the microscope. David and Catherine are honeymooning in the Mediterranean. David is a writer. Catherine is a crazy bitch. David needs a security, time to write and support in his pursuits. Catherine needs occupation. She has too much time on her hands to allow her off-kilter mind to wander where it will, and it wanders down strange, dark and spiteful paths.

The Eden aspect comes in when Catherine can't leave well-enough alone. (David even nicknames her "Devil" least the metaphor should go over your head.) Everything was fine, yet she had to tamper with the creation of man and woman, what that means, who holds what role and then reversing it.

Hemingway has been criticized for his use of repetitious dialogue, but here it works well to create an aura of crazy. Catherine repeats her insane pleas, her cloying begging, her bizarre demands, and it drives you nuts. So, well done! Hemingway has also been criticized for, well, just being boring. He writes about people doing virtually nothing. As they say, write what you know, and after a while Hemingway did nothing but write, lounge about, eat and drink. So that's what he writes about and honestly, I don't need to know what kind of drink you had, because buddy, you drink inconsequentially ALL the time.

The posthumously released The Garden of Eden reads like a repeat. He worked on it about 20 years later, but it feels so very much like The Sun Also Rises that one wonders why Hemingway would write the same novel over again and try to pass it off as something new. Well, maybe he'd run out of ideas.

Where it diverges is in the sheer nakedness with which Hemingway approaches the transgender subject. Sure, he created manly women in the past, but this is flat out ambiguous and explicit sexuality. I find it strange that he should delve into the topic considering he all but abandoned his son Gregory after he came out to him as a transgender person. The idea apparently seemed abhorrent to Ernest, so why would he write an entire novel about it? Well, maybe he'd run out of ideas. Yes, running out of ideas has become a theme here. I think it's a fair criticism. I mean, if nothing else, you know you've been at it too long if you find that yourself as a writer writing a novel about a writer writing a novel.

Gregory had aspirations to be a writer, after a fashion. In the '70s he wrote a generally well-received biography on his dad. Then this book mysteriously appeared in the '80s. Perhaps the Hemingway family estate was running a bit low on funds and thought, hey, why not refill the coffers with a "new" Hemingway novel. Fans would go gaga over a newly unearthed book by Papa.

I'm jumping to conclusions like taking a leap off a cliff, but stranger things have happened. I don't doubt that there was an unfinished Hemingway manuscript laying about (apparently there was more than one), but there are so many things about this one that lead me to believe that in the very least it was tampered with to a great degree. Here are a few of those things:


The aforementioned deep look into a subject Hemingway seemed to be repulsed by.

At one point the character talks about writing "in dad's style." It's like Gregory giving the reader a cheeky wink-wink. And, whoever the writer is, he does it more than once.

Copying Papa's style is not impossible. In fact, reviewers making fun of Hemingway do it all the time here on Goodreads.

The story David is writing deals heavily with "daddy" issues, which - from what I've read - Gregory suffered severely from.

The big game hunter in David's story is Hemingway and the hunter's son sounds just like Gregory.

He says "fuck hunting". Hemingway would never say fuck hunting! :)


Of course all this could be Hemingway just writing about his relationship with his son, so I don't put a great deal of stock into it. Remember, this is just a loose theory.

Regardless of whether this is Ernest Hemingway's book or not, the fact is, this book is not a good read. There are some good points: the character study of a young author and that of a nutter going off the deep end. But this could've been summed up in half the time. This is not a long book, but it's too long for the very little that happens. Boredom set in for this reader at about the midway point.



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Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds. Not terminal at all.

TERMINAL WORLD
Alastair Reynolds
Gollancz 2009

Reviewed by carol
4/5 stars


Terminal World is my first Alastair Reynolds, a science-fiction writer known for galaxy-spanning space operas, and has a plot and tone pretty much the opposite of space opera:

“Meroka, meet Doctor Quillon,’ Fray said. ‘He is, as you correctly surmised, the new package. I’ve just been telling him you you’re going to do such an excellent job of getting him out of Spearpoint.’
‘Hope you told him it isn’t going to be no joyride… Looking at three hard days to get you out, if all goes to plan, which mostly it won’t. Three days of dirt and worry and less sleep than you’ve ever had in your life. Then we have to find the people Fray’s lined up to take you to Fortune’s Landing, and hope they haven’t changed their minds.’
‘You can throw in danger as well,’ Fray said. ‘Cutter’s ticked off some angels. They’ve got deep penetration agents in Neon Heights, and they’ll be aiming to stop him from leaving town.’” 

The story begins with a perspective bait and switch as we follow two employees of a morgue wagon waiting for their 9 to 5 to be over. En route home, they are diverted to pick up a body on a nearby ledge. Surprisingly, it is not just an ordinary body–it is the body of an angel, an advanced human from a more elevated and technologically superior zone. There’s a certain morgue coroner who pays a little extra for unusual specimens, so the two attendants deliver the body to Dr. Quillon. It turns out the angel is just barely alive, having made the one-way journey to warn Quillon the angels are coming for him. Quillon heads to his friend and underworld contact, Fray, a former policeman. Fray’s been expecting trouble ever since Quillon revealed who he is and strongly encourages Quillon to leave the city quickly.  Fray provides an escort, Meroka, to lead Quillon out of Spearpoint. She’s a fierce fighter with a tendency to shoot second, cuss first, and has a chip on her shoulder when it comes to anything angelic. The two leap from frying pan to fire as they try to escape Spearpoint. The only possible refuge is the Swarm, the only other large colony of people on the planet. Before they reach Swarm, they’ll have to cross a wasteland, avoiding roving bands of Skullboys and the carnivorous cyborgs, the Vorg. And from there, it gets stranger.


The setting for Terminal World is a fascinating concept. It takes the idea of microecosystems as applied to mountains and does something quite similar with technology. In ecosystems, a different biome corresponds with shifts in elevation, small ecosystems adapted to changes in atmosphere and precipitation. Lower levels in the Sierra Nevadas, you might see mixed grasslands and woodlands, mid-levels are varieties of pine forests, and at the highest alpine elevations, there will be no trees at all.  

So it is with Spearpoint, a needle-like tower extending into the upper atmosphere of the planet–only instead of environmental zones, there are technological zones.  The highest up, the closer you are to ‘angels,’ flight, and nanotechnology. Next level down, electricity and computers. Further down, the industrial age. Go further, and you descend into Horsetown, where mechanical items barely function. To complicate travel, as life crosses ‘zones,’ it is subject to ‘zone sickness’ (the world’s version of altitude sickness), particularly if the shift from one zone to the next has a steep technology curve. I was impressed with the world-building and thought zones were an extremely creative idea. While they aren’t well explained at first, the journey and careful reading elaborates on many details–except how they originated. The ending has some explanation, but I rather thought there were more fantastical overtones than science ones.


Characterization was my sticking point, the reason I was able to set it down for a week or two and pursue shinier books. It was hard to find emotional resonance with any of the characters. Given the length of the book, I didn’t have the feeling that I knew very much about the major players, even by the end. Although the narrative is largely from Quillon’s head, I found him the least interesting. Inconsistent in ideals and action, he acted more as a mouthpiece for philosophical/moral issues than a person with his own drive. Although his concerns often served to move the plot forward, I did a flashback to the old days of literary fiction and sci-fi when the story was a treatise about human nature as much as plotting. I appreciated two of the female characters, and found they interested me more than Quillon. Meroka, Quillon’s guide out of Spearpoint, is the loner guide, cynical and practical. Curtana is an airship captain, almost loyal to a fault and devoted to her ship. I enjoyed their characters and their determination. I was less enamored of a mother-daughter duo who were essentially defined in terms of their relationship.


Plot is sweeping in scope. While it initially has a feel of detective noir, a dark and dangerous night, it quickly segues into a fugitive chase, ricocheting from hazard to hazard. When Quillon and Meroka meet the airship-borne Swarm city, the prior defenders of the Spearpoint, the story shifts again. It becomes more about city politics, ethics, exploration and a potential rescue mission. The result is an amazing variety of ideas and events crammed into one book; while I found each discrete segment told well, it doesn’t quite gestalt at the end.

The ending was the really most disappointing aspect of the story. Not because there was one (I really only have so much endurance for extreme length), but because it went into a slightly mystical scenario that turned out to have little resolution. 

Overall, there’s a little bit of kitchen sink to this story that makes it a bit indescribable. It has the length and detail of Way of Kings, the action of The Iron Jackal, but without the brisk dialogue and personal characterization to propel it into five-star territory. Certainly entertaining, but as always, your mileage may vary.


cross posted at my blog at:  http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/08/30/terminal-world-by-alastair-reynolds/

The Liar Society

The Liar Society
by Lisa Roecker

Reviewed by Sesana
Two out of five stars

Publisher summary:

Kate Lowry didn't think dead best friends could send e-mails. But when she gets an e-mail from Grace, she’s not so sure.

To: KateLowry@pemberlybrown.edu
Sent: Sun 9/14 11:59 PM
From: GraceLee@pemberlybrown.edu
Subject: (no subject)

Kate,
I'm here…
sort of.
Find Cameron.
He knows.
I shouldn't be writing.
Don't tell.
They'll hurt you.

Now Kate has no choice but to prove once and for all that Grace’s death was more than just a tragic accident. But secrets haunt the halls of her elite private school. Secrets people will do anything to protect. Even if it means getting rid of the girl trying to solve a murder...

My Review:

I liked the idea of a mystery set at an exclusive prep school. And it starts off strong, with an email from a dead friend. But it kind of stagnates after that.

The biggest stumbling block is our protagonist, Kate. Despite narrating the entire book, she never really emerges as more than a sketch of a character. Neither does anyone else, really. Worse, most of her girl detective stuff comes from being directed to specific places at specific times by the mysterious person emailing her from her dead friend's account. Which, incidentally, she never really considers might be anyone but, something I had a really hard time swallowing from a character of her age. It should have been her theory all along.

Like I said, the other characters are flat and interesting as cardboard. I only kept reading to find out what happened in the end. And I was disappointed. There's a lack of resolution that's really unsatisfying. The basic idea isn't bad, but it needed more interesting characters, a protagonist who doesn't need quite so much nudging, and a more satisfying ending.

The Cold Dish. Delicious.

THE COLD DISH
CRAIG JOHNSON
Viking 2004


reviewed by carol
4 out of 5 stars


I knew in the first four pages that I was going to enjoy this book. 

It begins with Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County, Wyoming, sitting in his office, watching the geese fly south. Ruby, dispatcher/receptionist, interrupts his musings to tell him he has a call from Bob Barnes,  who wants to report a dead body he discovered when he and his son went to collect their sheep.
“She leaned against the doorjamb and went to shorthand, ‘Bob Barnes, dead body, line one.’
I looked at the blinking red light on my desk and wondered vaguely if there was a way I could get out of this.
‘Did he sound drunk?’
‘I am not aware that I’ve ever heard him sound sober….‘
‘Hey Bob. What’s up?’
‘Hey, Walt. You ain’t gonna believe this shit…’ He didn’t sound particularly drunk, but Bob’s a professional, so you never can tell.“

He takes the report from Bob, verifies the information on the phone with Billy, Bob’s equally drunk son, and just as he’s about to hang up,
“‘Yes sir… Hey, Shuuriff?’ I waited. ‘Dad says for you to bring beer, we’re almost out.’“

Walt tells Ruby “that if anybody else called about dead bodies, we had already filled the quota for a Friday and they should call back next week,” and heads to his car. He swings by the drive-through liquor store, and on his way out of town, passes by one of his deputies who is seriously irritated with traffic detail and delegates the job to her instead.

This is no ordinary sheriff, and this is no ordinary gunslinger book. Sheriff Walt has lived a hard fifty years, most of it in the immediate area, unless you count college in California and those years in Vietnam. His best friend is another Vietnam vet, a local Cheyenne Indian, Henry Standing Bear. Walt’s voice is dry, humorous, self-depreciating, and more than a little depressed.  He’s also more than a little obsessed with the rape of a Cheyenne girl, a case that has been bothering him for the last three years. Unlike the typical detective haunted by an unsolved case, Walt caught the guilty parties, but justice wasn’t handed out for a variety of social and political reasons. When the body Bob finds turns out to be one of the lead defendants, Walt suspects someone is out for revenge, possibly even Henry. 

Like many mystery investigators, Walt is emotionally wounded, carrying grief from his wife’s death three years earlier.  Henry has had enough and believes its time to encourage–or kick–Walt out of his rut, and Walt finds personal motivation when a beautiful local woman, Vonnie, flirts with him. As much as it is a story about a murder, it is also a story about Walt and his friendship with Henry, as well as small town dynamics and the complex relationships that hold people together. 

The characters feel human, and even brief appearances feel nicely developed. I enjoyed the acidic, opinionated Ruby, Walt’s two deputies, Vic and Turk, each going through their own challenges. The idiotic over-confident twins were enough to make Walt and me long to shoot them. The lingering sadness of the Cheyenne girl’s father, Lonnie, and his admittance of human frailty along with his laughable speech patterns made him one of the more moving characters. The prior sheriff, Lucian, comes out of retirement from assisted living to give Walt a hand, and while he adds some politically incorrect spice, he’s somewhat redeemed through his honesty and honor. I also appreciate that women appear in many different roles in this book, as friends, fellow professionals, love interests. It’s a nice change from the mysteries where women show up only as victim/love interest.


There’s nice moments of humor threaded through this book. Most of it comes from Walt’s dry law enforcement humor, the kind that is meant to keep the devils at bay more than mock others. He reflects at the death scene, where the dead body has been lying, examined and nibbled by a flock of sheep,


“Yea, verily, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will live forever. If I don’t, I sure as hell won’t become an unattended death in the state of Wyoming with sheep shit all over me.”  

 Then there’s Al, providing some much-needed comic relief for the reader–and for Walt–at a particularly tense moment:


“There was a halfhearted attempt at a Tiki theme with native paintings of naked women and carved wooden sculptures as decoration. The most amazing stacks of magazines and catalogs towered against the walls; National Geographic and American Rifleman made up the visible majority. It was like being in the dead letter office on Fiji.”“

Writing is pleasantly sophisticated for the genre, and nice mix of dialogue and description. While Walt and Henry may make Lone Range references, they also reference Steinbeck, Shakespeare and even throw in a little French. For those who enjoy it, there’s also a fair bit of local history mixed in, particularly relating to General Custer and the Sharps gun. Most of the violence occurs off-scene, and is not particularly gory. Thriller elements come late in the story. There’s some semi-mystical elements that I found interesting, creating a strange parallel to my most recent read, Harbinger of the Storm, about a priest and his search for killers, both corporeal and supernatural. It cemented my feeling that this case was about Walt more than Melisaa; his need for resolution, his need to move on; his need for trustworthy friends. The spiritualism added moments of moving imagery to an already emotionally complex book.

  I’m looking forward to checking out the next book and seeing where Walt is headed.


cross posted at my blog: http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/09/06/the-cold-dish-by-craig-johnson/

Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie

Jordan Sonnenblick
Scholastic Paperbacks
Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

From first-time novelist Jordan Sonnenblick, a brave and beautiful story that will make readers laugh and break their hearts at the same time.

Thirteen-year-old Steven has a totally normal life: he plays drums in the All-Star Jazz band, has a crush on the hottest girl in the school, and is constantly annoyed by his five-year-old brother, Jeffrey. But when Jeffrey is diagnosed with leukemia, Steven's world is turned upside down. He is forced to deal with his brother's illness and his parents' attempts to keep the family in one piece. Salted with humor and peppered with devastating realities, DRUMS, GIRLS, AND DANGEROUS PIE is a heartwarming journey through a year in the life of a family in crisis.

My Review

The Drums are what 13-year-old Steven plays in the marching band and jazz group in school and are the only thing that makes him feel good when his life starts to unravel.

The Girls are Renee Albert, the hot cheerleader and neighbor who Steven wishes would notice he was alive, and Annette Watson, a pianist and friend of Steven’s who occasionally watches his younger brother Jeffrey on weekends.

Dangerous Pie is

lovingly made by 5-year-old Jeffrey, using a deep pot and Steven’s special autographed drumsticks to stir the batter, which is “a zesty blend of coffee grounds, raw eggs and their smashed shells, Coke, uncooked bacon, and three Matchbox racing cars.”

Steven is a very typical 13-year-old boy. His younger brother is a little terror, his parents are annoying, he hates math, and he has a crush on the hottest girl in school. When Jeffrey has a nosebleed that doesn’t want to stop, Steven’s life is suddenly turned upside down when he learns his little brother has leukemia. Now it’s all about Jeffrey and Steven seems to have been forgotten. He must handle the situation the best way he can. Thanks to help from his teachers, his friends, and his family he copes, he changes, and his pesky little brother isn’t so annoying any more. 

I was a little hesitant about listening to this story, thinking it would be way too depressing and sentimental. It was actually the perfect story to listen to on the long drive to my mom’s house. It made me laugh and made me cry, a perfect balance of humor and drama. Joel Johnstone did an outstanding job narrating, making each of the characters’ voices distinctive and engaging. I was especially impressed with the female characters. Some male narrators seem to try too hard getting women’s voices just right, that they fail completely. Even little Jeffrey’s voice made me smile. 

The characters were all very believable and easy to relate to. While some situations were a little predictable, Steven kept me thoroughly entertained as he talked about his life in school, his friends, his brother’s illness, his parents, and the physical, emotional, and financial hardships associated with cancer. 

It’s funny and moving, and you don’t have to be a kid to enjoy it.

TAI-PAN BY JAMES CLAVELL

Tai-Pan by James Clavell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

”’Joss’ was a Chinese word that meant Luck and Fate and God and the devil combined.”


Hong Kong was just a cluster of fishing villages when the English traders arrived in 1841. The port quickly proved a safe haven to ships even impervious to Typhoons.

Dirk Lochlin Struan is a Scotsman who has spent a good part of his adult life in the orient amassing a fleet of clipper ships and a great fortune. He is called the Tai-Pan. He has made his own joss by being smarter, more ruthless, accumulating more wealth, and being stronger than his opponents. He calls his company The Noble House. The company is built along clan lines with loyalty being first among the most weighted characteristics for joining his empire, and by association, those selected, will also benefiting from his protection. Before anyone has a chance to show loyalty they have to prove something more than just competence. They have to be really good at something that is useful, something that will strengthen “the clan”. Struan is tough on people, but that comes from the struggles he experienced reaching the top of the mountain. He knows how merciless life can be and his primary goal every day is to protect what is his and the people he cares about.

He has a nemesis, Tyler Brock, who is as tough and unyielding as Struan. A man who has been equally successful, but always seems to come up second best. He simply isn’t as smart as the Tai-Pan, but he covets the honorary title. They hate and despise each other, but more than once as the plot unfolds they find themselves allied in a common cause. They are certainly nay gentlemen, but they do honor their own version of a gentlemanly code.

Dirk’s son Cullum comes out from London and is appalled to discover the man his father has become. He is rather harsh on Struan, long before he understands the circumstances that have shaped his father. Whatever rules Cullum may believe exist in England dinna necessarily translate to the rough and ready wilds of empire building.

”You used to be God to me. But in the thirty days I’ve been here I’ve come to know you for what you are. Killer. Murderer. Pirate. Opium smuggler. Adulterer. You buy and sell people. You’ve sired bastards and you’re proud of them and your name stinks in the nostrils of decent people.”

Well, Cullum, *sigh*, you have very set opinions for someone who hasn’t even walked a mile beside him yet, and certainly not a step in the very boots that built this empire . Struam is undeterred by Cullum’s assessment and plans to have him take over as the Tai-Pan when he decides to return to England to run for parliament. He will mold the lad whether the lad knows it or not.

Run for parliament you say? With a Chinese mistress and a slew of bastards in tow?

There are better options, half a dozen at least of the women/girls he knows who would help to open more doors for him, but there is just one damn problem...HE...LOVES...May-May. He will marry her and let them be damned if they dinna like it. He has never met a problem that a cascade of silver won’t fix, by God!


Joan Chen plays May-May in the 1986 film version.

May-May is breathtakingly lovely, descended from an honorable and rich family who made the decision to sell her to the Tai-Pan to have someone they trust close to the source of English power. This is 1841 and the first Opium War is in full flower. Concessions to the barbarians will have to be made (Hong Kong) and Struan, the devil man, has the ear of the English politician Longstaff or as the Chinese refer to him Odious Penis.

There is the rather odd, but refreshing character of Aristotle Quance, a man almost completely depended on the traders, mostly Struan, for his support. He is a painter, preferably of beautiful young women. He is graced with a silver tongue capable of talking them out of more clothes than they are...at first...willing to part with. He has a wife who hounds him from one whorehouse to the next as he tries to stay one step ahead of her iron grip. He might be the happiest person in this new world that is about to be carved out of the coast of China.

”And he realized he was witnessing the end of an era, he was also part of a new one. Now he had new history to eyewitness and record. New faces to draw. New ships to paint. A new city to perpetuate. And new girls to flirt with and new bottoms to pinch.”

Well if he can keep one step ahead of the wife, by God!

James Clavell explores the politics of the time. He brings to light the manipulations that occur behind locked doors over a glass or two of good port or brandy with results that benefit the few over the many. Profits are king and certainly the opium and tea trade were important to the British economy. The insistence of the Chinese in receiving only silver bullion for tea actually destabilizes the British economy as silver becomes scarce and afternoon tea became jeopardized. There have been grain riots, tax riots, draft riots, religious riots, but no one wants to see a British TEA riot, by God!

We see the rise of the Triads during this time as well, and in this story, Gordon Chen, a bastard of Struan with his head for intrigue, is the head of the movement. He is a man trapped between cultures, not fully accepted or rejected by either one. Chen is torn between his loyalty to his people and his loyalty to Struan. He plans for any contingencies and shows resilience in the face of a series of setbacks beyond his control.

This is an epic tale, with Shakespearean romance, typhoons, love and malaria, incest, discord between fathers and sons, the building of a city of trade, lust, complicated characters with tangled relationships, and an exploration of the power of possession. These larger than life figures are battling on a small and large scale for what is theirs, but also for what will be their childrens and their children’s children. I was very impressed with the depth of the plot, the deftness with which Clavell pulled me into the story, and the breadth and scope he was willing to manfully shoulder to bring these characters to life.


James Clavell based Dirk Struan on William Jardine who built the "Princely House" of Jardine, Matheson & Co of Hong Kong.

Dirk Struan peers at the world through jaded eyes, but clearly and astutely. He sometimes knows the intentions of a person before they even know it themselves. He is harsh, but capable of great tenderness. He is unpredictable, but only seemingly so, because he gauges every situation by much more than just what is before him. His projections become truths adding a mystical quality to his persona. He devours information and knows how to use it. While others sleep he studies. He fixes what is broke before it snaps. As unearthly as it seems to those who know him it is no mystery to me why he is:

the Tai-Pan.


”Man is born to die, Father. I just try to protect mysel’ and mine as best I know how and to choose the time of my dying, that’s all.”

A very interesting link that explains the history of this time period. It was so kindly supplied by Margitte. http://www.china-mike.com/china-touri...

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Cell Everlasting

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

2010

Reviewed by Diane K.M.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I am late to this book party, but let me explain.

I get twitchy about medical stuff. Earlier this year I had to abandon Rosemary Mahoney's book about the blind because it described an eye surgery. I have never been able to finish Dr. Atul Gawande's "Complications" because of its description of medical procedures. It was a small miracle that I was able to finish the first "Call the Midwife" book, because I hate childbirth scenes. 

When this Henrietta Lacks book started tearing up the bestseller lists a few years ago, I read a few reviews and thought, "Yeah, that can wait."

But I started a new library job recently, and the Lacks book was chosen as a Common Read for the campus. And guess who was volun-told to help lead upcoming book discussions? (Hint: it's me.)

So, with a deep sigh, I started reading. And then, oh happy day, my fears turned out to be unfounded because I ended up really liking the story. Rebecca Skloot wrote that she first heard about Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cells in a community college biology class. Lacks was a black woman who died in 1951 from cervical cancer. Before she died, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital took samples of her tumor and put them in a petri dish. A key part of this story is that Henrietta did not know her tissue had been taken, and doctors did not tell her family, either.

"Scientists had been trying to keep human cells alive in culture for decades, but they all eventually died. Henrietta's were different: they reproduced an entire generation every twenty-four hours, and they never stopped. They became the first immortal cells ever grown in a laboratory."

Henrietta's cells, nicknamed HeLa, were given to scientists and researchers around the world, and they helped develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, Parkinson's disease, and they helped with innumerable other medical studies over the decades. At first, the cells were given for free, but some companies were set up to sell vials of HeLa, which became a lucrative enterprise. 

"The reason Henrietta's cells were so precious was because they allowed scientists to perform experiments that would have been impossible with a living human. They cut HeLa cells apart and exposed them to endless toxins, radiation, and infections. They bombarded them with drugs, hoping to find one that would kill malignant cells without destroying normal ones. They studied immune suppression and cancer growth by injecting HeLa cells into immune-compromise rats, which developed malignant tumors much like Henrietta's. If the cells died in the process, it didn't matter -- scientists could just go back to their eternally growing HeLa stock and start over again."

Unfortunately, the Lacks family did not know about any of this until several decades after Henrietta had died, and some relatives became very upset and felt betrayed by the doctors at Hopkins. A few threatened to sue the hospital, but never did.

There is a lot of biology and medical discussion in this book, but Skloot also tried to learn more about Henrietta's life, and she was able to interview Lacks' relatives and children. Additionally, there is some good discussion on the ethics of taking tissue samples from patients without their consent, and on the problem of racism in health care.

"I always have thought it was strange, if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can't afford to see no doctors? Don't make no sense. People got rich off my mother without us even known about them takin her cells now we don't get a dime. I used to get so mad about that to where it made me sick and I had to take pills. But I don't got it in me no more to fight. I just want to know who my mother was." -- Deborath Lacks, who was very young when her mother died

My favorite parts of the book were the stories about Henrietta and the Lacks family, and the discussions on race and ethics in health care. 

"There's no indication that Henrietta questioned [her doctor]; like most patients in the 1950s, she deferred to anything her doctors said. This was a time when 'benevolent deception' was a common practice -- doctors often withheld even the most fundamental information from their patients, sometimes not giving them any diagnosis at all. They believed it was best not to confuse or upset patients with frightening terms they might not understand, like cancer. Doctors knew best, and most patients didn't question that. Especially black patients in public wards. This was 1951 in Baltimore, segregation was law, and it was understood that black people didn't question white people's professional judgment. Many black patients were just glad to be getting treatment, since discrimination in hospitals was widespread."

Skloot worked on the book for more than a decade, paying for research trips with student loans and credit card debt. I would highly recommend the book to anyone interested in medical ethics, biology, or just some good investigative reporting. 

Favorite quote:
"Like I'm always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can't do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different." -- Deborah Lacks

King Khan

King Khan by Harry Connolly
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When a mysterious arrow bearing a message in his handwriting instructs Professor Khan to go to Hollywood, he finds that a friend of his has committed suicide and his newest invention is missing...

King Khan is the fourth book in the Spirit of the Century series by Evil Hat. It's also my least favorite book in the series. I'll cover that bit later.

Professor Khan, with rich fop Bertie Blinkersly in tow, leaves London behind for Hollywood to solve the mysteries surrounding a friend's death and winds up in a battle for his last invention, the Improbability Bow. Helping him and Bertie Wooster, I mean Bertie Blinkersly, are the inventor's daughter Sylvia, a diminutive cop named Cross, and a luchador named the Blue Hornet. Sound good?

Meh. It was okay and had some good moments but it was nothing spectacular. It may have been that the previous books in the series were just too much fun and raised the bar too high. After the two Dinocalypse books and Khan of Mars, the Hollywood setting and the threat just didn't do it for me. Hell, you'd have to do a lot to top psychic dinosaurs and Martian apes.

Don't get me wrong. King Khan isn't a bad book. There are a lot of twists and lots of pulp action. There are also hopping zombies and a fair amount of humor, much of it due to the Bertie Wooster-inspired Bertie Blinkersly. It just had some might big shoes to fill after it's predecessors.

The Blue Hornet greatly added to my enjoyment of the book. It reminded me of the crappy movies they used to make starring El Santo, Mil Mascaras, Blue Demon, and other luchadors fighting werewolves and things.

The Blue Hornet and the possessed Shirley Temple were enough to add a half star. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

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