LEVIATHAN WAKES BY JAMES S. A. COREY

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”Way I see it, there’s three ways this can go,” Miller said. “One, we find your ship still in dock, get the meds we need, and maybe we live. Two, we try to get to the ship, and along the way we run into a bunch of mafia thugs. Die gloriously in a hail of bullets. Three, we sit here and leak out of our eyes and assholes.”



Well, really, the story begins when some alien species shoot a payload of virus at Earth and misses. This virus is capable of turning the human race into piles of nasty, smelly biosolids. Luckily for Earth, this contagion from space gets caught in Saturn’s rings which keeps it from ever reaching its intended destination.

Holden is the second in command of an iceberg hauler. When he sees his ship Canterbury blown into dust particles by pirates, while the ship was trying to respond to an SOS, his world is suddenly expanded and contracted. Expanded by the beginning of a conflict that will spread across the known universe, but his world has also contracted down to the confining corridors of the small ship that he and his remaining crew members are trying to keep afloat.

The universal conflict might be more than a little bit Holden’s fault. He broadcasts out to the world the existence of incriminating evidence that Mars might have had something to do with the pirates. The writers behind the name James S. A. Corey might be making a point about the misuse of disseminating wrong information on the internet. How many people believe it even when it doesn’t make sense?

This section of the universe is shared between Earth, Mars, and what are called the Belters. Belters are people born in the asteroid belt. The Belters are generally taller, fitter, and tend to bastardize language much the same way as immigrants to America bastardized English. I kind of think of Holden as Gavrilo Princip, the man that touched off WW1 by assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Holden meant well; to him information is meant to be shared so that it can be analyzed and expounded upon. People unfortunately jump to conclusions without examining the evidence too closely, especially when the potential for war has been brewing for some time. The major powers in the universe are just looking for the right catalyst to start a war. Holden, inadvertently, provided the match.

”The moral complexity of the situation had grown past his ability to process it.”

So there is some lethal goo out there trapped in the rings of Saturn. Knowing humans to be the “curious monkeys” that they are... what do you think happens next? Yeah, they just can’t help poking a stick at it.

Things go from bad to worse in a hurry.

Vomit zombies...need I say more?

Okay, maybe just a bit more because there are more stages to this thing.

”A flock of softball-sized spiderlike things crawled through the corridor, leaving a slick sheen of glowing slime behind them. It wasn’t until he paused to knock one off the cart that he recognized them as severed hands, the trailing wrist bones charred black and remade. Part of his mind was screaming, but it was a distant one and easy to ignore.”

*SHUDDER*

As a counterweight to Holden is the cop Miller. He sees the world through rose murky colored glasses. He has seen the worst of people, so he doesn’t need to speculate about what people are capable of. He is on the case of a missing rich girl, and even after he is fired from his job, he continues to hunt for her. It turns out she is connected with the OPA, a Belter resistance group, and also she is somehow mixed up with the goo from space.

Miller hooks up with Holden and his crew, but it is an uneasy alliance. Holden’s righteousness and Miller’s cynicism mix like oil and water, but actually with the universe hanging in the balance their differing views create a middle which is generally where the right answers can be found.

So pull up a bowl of fungal curds and a cup of something that tastes close to coffee and have a blast watching the crew of the Rocinante cartwheel across the universe barely surviving one disaster after another as they do everything they can to stay alive and save the world.

The SyFy Channel has just launched a new series called Expanse that is based on the universe created by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck in this series of books. I haven’t watched the episodes yet because I really wanted to read the first book before watching any part of the TV series. If I have a complaint about the book, it is that it does feel a bit bloated, but the fact that it is unapologetically calling itself a space opera I feel kind of snarky even broaching the subject. The world building is fascinating, and from what I have read, the books will continue to add pieces to this world as the book series progresses. I have plans to read at least two more.

One last little tidbit from Miller which I found rather funny as I’m holding this 16 pound trade paperback novel in my hands: ”The OPA man, Anderson Dawes, was sitting on a cloth folding chair outside Miller’s hole, reading a book. It was a real book--onionskin pages bound in what might have been actual leather. Miller had seen pictures of them before; the idea of that much weight for a single megabyte of data struck him as decadent.”

I just blew you a raspberry Miller.

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The Incurables by Jon Bassoff

The Incurables by Jon Bassoff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

'It’s a mean old world, isn’t it?'

Beginning in 1953 The Incurables by Jon Bassoff is a character driven tale with its heart set in madness and its thoughts desperate for tranquillity amidst the Incurables of society.

Thirty-two hundred lives he’d saved, give or take, and he wasn’t done yet. The famous Dr. Walter Freeman, the pioneer of the transorbital lobotomy but when his time is deemed over, there's no going back so he kidnaps his latest patient and it’s time for pastures new.

'Without hesitation, he grasped the ice pick and jammed the point into the tear duct. He then gripped the hammer and struck the ice pick, once, twice, causing an audible crack. Back and forth, back and forth he cut. Then, with a twisting movement, he withdrew the ice pick, all the while pressing his gnarled fingers on Edgar’s eyelids, preventing hemorrhaging.'

And that is a transorbital lobotomy, Woah WTF, this apparently, effectively treats patients with a history of anxiety, depression, insomnia and bouts of homicidal mania. Dr Freeman and Edgar find themselves on the carnival circuit wanting only to help those in need. And with a sign.

'The Amazing Dr. Freeman and his Transorbital Lobotomy. Ending Mental Anguish Today.'

Durango Stanton, sixteen year old Messiah, is also on the carnival circuit with his father, usually found sat cross-legged on a homemade throne, wearing a crown of thorns while dear old Dad preaches all the truths the sinners don't want to hear. And then there's Scent, a young woman who sells her body to survive, her Mother has loads of money hidden away, waiting for her lover to return, forcing them to live in poverty. So we have one crazy Father, one crazy Mother and as if sent from heaven, the good doctor.

“It’s the town. Out here in the middle of nowhere with all them ghosts whispering from beneath the bloody dirt. A town full of incurables, a town full of sinners, a town run by the devil. And wherever the devil is, God is sure to follow.”

The Incurables sees Jon Bassoff back to his best following a slight stutter with Factory Town, Scent was easily my favourite character, seemingly a fragile young thing with a dark side desperate for reparation but will she get what's due? In a place where insanity blossoms amongst the hopeless and faith doesn't mean a thing, only death.

I received The Incurables from Darkfuse & Netgalley in exchange for an honest review and that’s what you’ve got.

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A Stranger's Grave by Craig Saunders

A Stranger's Grave by Craig Saunders
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've said before that Craig Saunders writing style fits succinctly with my inner core and A Strangers Grave is definitely one of my favourites.

Elton Burlock is out of prison after a long 26 year stretch for murder, longer than it should have been but that's something at the heart of his story, along with the reason he went to jail. You would think a murderer an evil man but Elton is far from that, he's an old man now just surviving.

The only job Elton can get is the keeper of an old graveyard in a small Norfolk market town, the first headstones were laid in 1756 but something much older came in 2007. A trio of angels carved in basalt and polished to a black sheen, the evil those angels bought was older than anything.

And when the first murder occurs, who is the obvious suspect?

'But he screamed, then, because as he came she came, the old one, and she drove splinters into his spine and tore out handfuls of his lungs until he could scream no more, snapped his neck, broke his skull, tore into his brain, her worm-ridden tongue licking and licking and eating his eyeballs from behind.'

So there's death in the graveyard, the odd ghost with evil intent, still-born children buried in a strangers grave, a grave that can never be too deep and some laughs around two fat coppers.

'They both set to running as fast as two fat coppers can in a dark cemetery if they don't want a broken neck or a coronary, because of intuition, but also because both policeman knew that whatever happened next, neither one wanted to get to the screamer alone.'

From reading Craig Saunders work you can tell he doesn't waste much time on masses of research, the writing flows effortlessly from darkness to humour in the blink of an eye and I've got visions of him chuckling away in his legendary shed, maybe it's got a little bar and pool table for relaxing. But at the end of the day I really enjoyed A Strangers Grave, the protagonist carries enough baggage to make for an arresting character coupled with a disturbingly creepy setting and a quite wicked story. Craig Saunders does it again.

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King of the Bastards

King of The Bastards by Brian Keene
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With Albion in chaos, Rogan and his nephew wash up on a foreign shore. The primitive tribesman of the foreign land are being terrorized by a shaman with an alien god on his side. Can Rogan set things right and find his way back to his former kingdom?

I've made it no secret that I'm not fond of the typical Tolkien via Dungeons and Dragons style of fantasy that dominates the genre these days. When I want fantasy, I'm more into the Leiber/Howard/Moorcock style. Thankfully, King of the Bastards is just such a novel.

Rogan is an aging barbarian, like Conan if he survived to be sixty. Rogan reminds me not only of the lgendary Cimmerian but also Karl Edward Wagner's Kane and David Gemmell's Druss the Legend. In short, he's the baddest mother on the planet and not ready to go to the grave just yet.

King of Bastards is an homage to the glory days of pulp fantasy. If you're squeamish about violence and rampant sexism, this isn't the book for you. Rogan is randy for being a senior citizen and doesn't mind talking about it. He also isn't shy about dealing out violence and gore.

The plot isn't very complex but Keene and Shrewsbury get a lot of mileage of out it. It's a fun pulpy romp full of violence, gore, and funny one-liners. Rogan and his nephew encounter one breasted Amazons, natives, ape-men, giant snakes, zombies, and all sorts of other things. References are made to Keene's Labyrinth mythos and the Thirteen, and there was a Dark Tower reference as well.

Much like the fantasy of yesteryear, King of the Bastards was action packed and short enough not to overstay its welcome. If you yearn for the fantasy of yore, King of Bastards is what you're looking for. Four out of five stars.

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Beautiful Pictures of Horrible Things

Gandhara: The Memory of Afghanistan by Bérénice Geoffroy-Schneiter
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Who destroys 1400 year old gargantuan statues? The Taliban, that's who. See, this is why we can't have nice things.

The Bamiyan Buddhas, carved from the stone cliffside in the Bamiyan Valley of eastern Afghanistan, stood for fourteen centuries until a rival organized religion came along and decided it was too much of a threat. They couldn't build up their own impressive monuments. Nope, they had to dynamite someone else's, least their own grasp upon the people be impinged.



Seriously, that is such weak-sauce.

Gandhara tries to salvage something of the remains. It gives a brief, and not altogether succinct, summary of the history, surmising upon the origins of this land where Greek art met Indian Hinduism. Author Berenice Geoffroy-Schnieiter, a French archeologist and art historian, is suited to talk about the French archeologists given permission to work in the area and unearth the ruins. Perhaps something was lost in the translation or perhaps the author isn't a gifted writer (that's no knock on Berenice, I mean, how many skills can one person excel at?!) as not all of this was described in an English easily digested. Or maybe I'm ignorant of the culture and art of that part of the world. Actually, yeah, that's more likely.

On the other hand, this slim volume is two-thirds photos. There isn't a lot of room for elucidation in an 80 page book when 60 of those pages are pictures. However, the photos are gorgeous and there are summary explanations at the back giving the pertinent details of each.






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Singer of Souls

Adam Stemple
Tor Fantasy
Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

Leaving his life of petty crime and drug abuse behind, young Douglas flees from Minneapolis to Edinburgh, Scotland, to his stern but fairminded Grandma McLaren, who will take him in if he can support himself. Fortunately, few cities are friendlier than Edinburgh to a guitarist with a talent for spontaneous rhyme, and soon Douglas is making a decent living as the busker who can write a song about you on the spot.

But Edinburgh has its dangers for the unwary. The annual arts festival, biggest in Europe, draws all manner of footloose sorts, and when a mysterious but alluring young girl offers him drugs, Douglas's resolve fails him.

What follows isn't what he expects. Suddenly, Douglas can see, in all their beauty and terrifying cruelty, the fey folk who invisibly share Edinburgh's ancient streets. Worse, they can see him, and they're determined to draw him into their own internecine wars--wars that are fought to the death.

My Review

Singer of Souls is a very dark fantasy about a young musician and recovering heroin addict who leaves Minneapolis to start a new life with his grandmother in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Douglas draws in the crowds by using his guitar and voice to compose personalized songs about passers-by. While living with his grandmother and making a decent living, he manages to stay clean until he meets an unusual woman who presents him with a white powder that steers him off the path to recovery.

Instead of achieving the desired high, Douglas' life takes an unpredictable turn when the powder gives him the ability to see Edinburgh's invisible fey inhabitants.

I gobbled up this short, fast-paced, magical and very dark fantasy in two sittings. I loved the characters, the setting and the ability of the music to enchant and transform its listeners. The faeries and other magical creatures are not beautiful or enchanting. This is a dark and gritty urban fantasy with a horrifying ending that makes me want to drop everything and grab the sequel.

Heir to the Empire

Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Five years after Return of the Jedi, the leaders of the rebellion have formed the New Republic and are trying to establish it as well as they possibly can. The Empire is a shell of its former self, but not everyone considers it defeated. A Grand Admiral named Thrawn has become the leader of The Empire and he intends to crush the Rebellion for good.

Heir to the Empire wasn't very interesting. I wanted to stop reading it multiple times and now that I finished I realized I should have listened to myself. The book was really slow and rather than doing any real character development it simply leaned on the work the movies did. With the vibrant characters of Star Wars I would think that would have been fine, but it really wasn't. I hoped to love this series and I expected to at least like it, so it's incredibly disappointing how uninterested I was throughout nearly the entire book.

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Traitor's Blade

Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The King is dead, his magistrates the Greatcoats have been disbanded, and the Dukes are ruining the world one injustice at a time. Even branded as traitors the Greatcoats fight for justice and in this case it's for a girl marked for death by an evil Duke.

Traitor's Blade is a fantasy in a more classic sense of the genre. The Heroes are really good and the villains are the mustache twirling tie a girl to the train tracks type. It brings about a feeling of nostalgia for the simpler days when you knew who was good and who was bad within seconds of their arrival.

One of books biggest strengths to me came from the interaction between Falcio, Kest, and Brasti. The three of them were lovable loud mouths who were prepared to fight regardless of the odds. The other main strength came from Falcio's flashbacks. The flashbacks were entirely about Falcio's life as the entire book is in his point of view and many of them revolved around his interactions with King Paelis. A lot of powerful and emotional scenes played out in the flashbacks. Unfortunately not as many played out in the remainder of novel.

Like every book Traitor's Blade had its weaknesses which primarily revolved around Falcio going solo to protect Aline. It felt as though the author derailed his book by going overboard on a side quest. After finishing the book I see a bit of the importance of the particular quest, but I'd still say it took up too much of the novel. Another weak point to me was the number of times various characters shook their head in disbelief over how dumb Falcio was behaving. My particular issue is that each character did it nearly the same way.

This book also was lacking in scenes with the Tailor. That old woman put a smile on my face whenever she opened her mouth.

Traitor's Blade is a solid debut and worth a read especially for those sick of all their characters being shades of gray.

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GHOST WARS BY STEVE COLL

Ghost Wars: The Secret History Of The CIA, Afghanistan, And Bin Laden, From The Soviet Invasion To September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Oh, okay, you want us to capture him. Right. You crazy white guys.”



1979 is certainly a dividing line in my life. It was the year that Iranians stormed the embassy in Iran and took Americans hostage. This was quickly followed by the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. I can remember thinking to myself, Why do the Iranians hate us so much and why would anyone want Afghanistan? Like most Americans, before I could actually formulate an opinion about Afghanistan, I first had to go find it on a map.

If the hostage crisis didn’t sink Jimmy Carter’s presidency, certainly the utter failure of the rescue attempt hammered in the final nail. As a nation we were not used to feeling helpless in the face of a threat. We have always been a nation who firmly believes in never leaving a man/woman behind. It was disconcerting, maddening, to see Americans held hostage, and also to come to the realization that our government was helpless. The days became months and then years. 444 days. Americans would not have any significance as hostages if we didn’t value our own citizens.




As a nation, we were all held hostage. Our faith in our government to protect us may not have been completely shattered, but it was most certainly compromised.

Steve Coll masterfully picks up the story in 1979 and brings it forward to 9/11. War, as we knew it, had changed. Even the Cold War, which was the byproduct of the dementia of two superpowers, had somehow satisfied the needs of those in power to wage war without actually, officially declaring it. As baffling as that time was, it is strange to feel so much nostalgia for it. It was an arms race, a war of brains rather than brawn. The invasion of Afghanistan changed the rules and left the Soviet Union vulnerable to fighting a lot more than a few ragged, underfed, undereducated poppy farmers.

The Players:
William J. Casey was the head of the CIA at this time. He still saw the Russian Bear as the greatest threat to America, and it was the reason he joined the organization. Ronald Reagan, as president, is a fervent anti-communist, as can be seen from many of his speeches going way back to when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild. The final piece to the puzzle that had to fall in place was one alcoholic, charismatic representative from Texas in need of a cause by the name of Charlie Wilson.



You’ve heard the term Charlie Wilson’s war? Well, he gave it to us.

America went to war with the Soviet Union. Well...not technically. They funnelled money, loads of money into Pakistan. (Carter offered President Zia of Pakistan $400 million, which he rejected. Reagan offered him $3.2 billion, which he accepted.) The region was choking on all the money. America was intent on buying an embarrassing defeat for the Soviet Union. The CIA had to get creative though, because it wasn’t like we could outfit these Afghanistan rebels with weapons stamped with MADE IN AMERICA. Somebody had the bright idea to go scoop up all those Soviet tanks and weaponry that Saddam Hussein left scattered all over the desert when he retreated from Kuwait. They refurbished them and handed them off to “our allies” in Afghanistan. I always enjoy a good recycling story.

Of course, the turning point came when we decided to let the rebels use Stinger missiles.

What this all really adds up to is a destabilized region that has become ripe for a lunatic with an endless supply of money and an ego the size of Jupiter to take over. Need more hints? He was frogmarched out of his native country of Saudi Arabia and stripped of his citizenship. The average height of a man from Saudi Arabia is 5’6”. He was almost a foot taller. He’s kind of an a$$hole.


The one and hopefully only Osama Bin Laden.

In the 1990s, America was going through a crisis of faith with the CIA. They were forcing veterans into early retirement and reducing the level of government commitment to the spy service just as Islamic terrorism was on the rise . If not for the emergence of George Tenet, the spy service might have slowly circled down the drain. He was exactly what the CIA needed, a gregarious, likeable man who knew how to talk politics.

Despite distractions from other world crises, including a near career ending domestic crisis involving a cigar and a blue dress, President Bill Clinton made several attempts to capture Bin Laden. He shot cruise missiles at him. He had the Persian Lion contacted, Ahmed Shah Massoud, possibly our best ally in Afghanistan, about a plan to take Bin Laden out. Unfortunately, American politics played a big part or most of us might never have known the name Bin Laden.

America relied too heavily on their two closest allies in the Middle East. ”Instead at first out of indifference, then with misgivings, and finally in a state of frustrated inertia--the United States endorsed year after year the Afghan programs of its two sullen, complex, and sometimes vital allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.” These were two countries that had their own agendas with Afghanistan. Sometimes they helped America, and sometimes behind the scenes they were working against them.

Bin Laden wasn’t really interested in the squabbles going on in Afghanistan. He couldn’t care less about Russia or the other European powers. He wanted to go after the country that would give him the biggest bang for his buck. The United States of America. “Like bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri (current leader of Al-Qaeda) believed that it was time for jihadists to carry the war to ‘the distant enemy’ because, once provoked, the Americans would probably reply with revenge attacks and ‘personally wage the battle against the Muslims,’ which would make them ripe for a ‘clear-cut jihad against infidels.’”

Power was achieved through attention. It makes me doubt that their true intentions were as purely religiously motivated as they would like us to believe. They wanted to provoke the United States into attacking them. It wasn’t about revenge as much as it was about achieving glory through blood.

The brains at the CIA were, meanwhile, realizing a few things as well. ”A lesson of American counterterrorism efforts since the 1980s was that the threat could not be defeated, only ‘reduced, attenuated, and to some degree controlled. Terrorism was an inevitable feature of global change.”


Richard Clarke the American guru on terrorism.

As the Clinton administration was winding down, it became easier to start kicking decisions regarding terrorism and other policy issues down the road. Clinton didn’t want to make decisions that George W. Bush would have to live with. Bush, on the other hand, was almost punch drunk with a narrow presidential victory. Richard Clarke, the guru of terrorism under Clinton, had a hard time getting the attention of Bush or his National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, about the pending threats of terrorism. 2001 turned out to be a bad time to be switching administrations.

Steve Coll, step by step, takes us through the minefield of the Middle East. He shows the mistakes and why they happened. He explains the intent and why sometimes America was right and sometimes very wrong in their approach to problems. We were slow to understand the motivations of certain individuals. Sometimes we were too proud to see how vulnerable we were. Sometimes we meddled in things best left to a regional conflict. You will see each president, possibly in a different light, as Coll explains the politics and the underlying concerns behind their decisions.


The Persian Lion had a vision for his country.

This is a book that, as I was reading it, I heard the snap of so many missing blocks of information fall into place. My understanding of how and why things happened the way they happened expanded exponentially. Our relationship with the Middle East is a complex and convoluted mess with misconceived and misinterpreted intentions on both sides. This is a serious book, well written, and meticulously researched.

Two days before 9/11 a Saudi Arabian man posing as a reporter blew himself up, sending shrapnel into the chest of Ahmad Shah Massoud. Bin Laden knew that once those planes hit those towers that America would come to Massoud. It was a huge blow to Afghanistan because finally everything would line up for Massoud to eventually control the country (with US backing), and Massoud could finally put into place the country he always dreamed of. As someone said: ”What an unlucky country.”

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The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Unbelievably The Grownup is my first read from Gillian Flynn and I did quite enjoy this dark little novella.

You may have seen this quote already but I have to include it because, well it's a legend, a quote amongst quotes. Chances are it might not stand up to the test of time but I'll never forget it and it introduces the stories protagonist and vocation.

I quit because when you give 23,546 hand jobs over a three-year period , carpal tunnel syndrome is a very real thing.'

So she's in the process of moving from hand jobs to scam artist in the guise of a fortune-teller when she meets Susan Burke. And soon she is employed to rid Susan's house of evil spirits and step-son Miles is integral. Then it's exploration of the demon child phenomena and it did grip me as things swung from is he? To isn't he? All told this was a story that keeps you guessing, some delicious twists and the kid is pretty likable for a possible sociopath, definitely interesting with an ambiguous finale.

A 3.5* rating

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