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Before Dark Intelligence, I had read precisely one story by Neal Asher: It was called "Shell Game" and was also set in Asher's "Polity" universe—and I read it 6 years ago and remember nothing about it save that I enjoyed it. Over the years I've seen the announcement of numerous new Polity books, but never got around to picking one up, so when the publisher offered a copy of DA for review I jumped at the chance to finally dig deeper into the universe. Dark Intelligence more or less follows two characters as they chase after a rogue artificial intelligence "black AI" named Penny Royal. First we meet former soldier Thorvald Spear—whose terrific name might be the best thing in the book (not even kidding)—as he awakens 100 years after his death, a feat made possible using recovered memory implants placed into cloned bodies. Spear returns dead-set on revenge against Penny Royal, whom he blames for the death of his squadmates back during the Prador Wars. But is Penny Royal truly to blame? And are Spear's memories even trustworthy? Spear's sections of the book are written in an engaging first-person, often jumping to flashbacks of his memories to give his background, and overall his POV does a good job of getting the reader up to speed with the Polity universe. So it's a surprise when, a few chapters in, we cut from Spear's first-person narrative to a more traditional third-person one. Because this isn't just Thorvald Spear's story. Enter Isobel Santomi, who turns out to be the second protagonist of the novel. She's a crime lord who once struck a deal with Penny Royal, the result of which made her a powerful figure in the underworld. But Penny Royal's gifts always come with a price, and Isobel finds herself slowly transforming into a "hooder", some kind of bizarre, carnivorous wormlike monster. Like Spear, she too desires vengeance on the black AI. Much of the story consists of Spear and Santomi bouncing around chasing Penny Royal from world to world. Thorvald and Isobel cross paths early on, and then Penny Royal hijacks Isobel's ship, with Spear just missing the black AI at each stop. (I'll confess I got a little lost at this point, trying to keep track of who was where as they all bounced around.) Eventually, all the threads converge at the planet Masada for a big finale where everything gets wrapped up nicely. First, the good stuff: This a really cool universe. Thorvald Spear is a great name, as well as a joy to follow around. Penny Royal is a terrifying baddie. Isobel's transformation is well-done body horror of the most disturbing degree. And it's nice to see all the plot threads get tied up by book's end. On the other hand, the promotional material that came with my book billed it as "an ideal entry point for new readers" into the Polity universe (which was fairly influential in my decision to accept a review copy.) But a lot of the stuff at the end of the book seemed to hinge on characters and events from earlier books—with one prominent creature having already had an entire novel dedicated to it—and if I wasn't entirely lost, I feel like I missed out on a lot of the impact the end of book could have had. And speaking of the end: Story-wise, everything came to a nice tidy conclusion, and yet this is just the first book of what I assume is a trilogy. Having said that, though everything was resolved, very little was actually explained, which is where I'm figuring (hoping) Book Two comes in. Make no mistake, though, Dark Intelligence is a good read: fun characters and great action, all set in a fascinating and highly-imaginative (and slightly horrifying) universe. I definitely need to read some more Polity stories, but I'm thinking I'll want to pick up some of the older books first. [3.5 out of 5 stars]
I'm a big fan of Peter Clines' Ex-Heroes books, so when I saw he had a new thriller out, I jumped at the chance to get my hands on a review copy. I generally like to go into a book knowing as little about it as possible, and in this case I didn't even read the back-cover synopsis, so I was practically jumping in blind—Clines' name on the cover was enough to get me excited. And my enthusiasm was amply rewarded. The Fold starts out at a slow burn. We meet our protagonist, Leland "Mike" Erikson, who has a genius-level IQ and an eidetic memory, but prefers life under the radar, teaching English at the local high school. But he gets a call from Reggie, an old friend at the Department of Defense, who persuades him to fly out and use his special skills to observe a certain government-funded project. Reggie won't tell Mike what the project is, but it works, and it's amazing—but the project team appears to be stalling for more time and funding. Mike's job is to make sure everything at the project is on the level, so Reggie can push the funding through. But of course, things at the "Albuquerque Door" project aren't entirely what they seem… The first half of the book takes its time setting things up: Mike flies out, meets the team, and gets to see the project's success first-hand. He also spends a lot of time getting to know the individual team members and poring over the project's logs and records. It reminded me a lot of a good Michael Crichton science thriller, with a lot of talking and science-y stuff, and only the occasional shock thrown out to deepen the mystery. This goes on for the first half of the book, but the pace never flags: Clines keeps the tension high and the slowly-unfolding mystery intriguing. The short chapter-length and crisp prose work wonders, too. At about the halfway point, though, the Big Reveal hits and things start to unravel (in a good way!) at an accelerated pace, with the final act (after the Bigger Reveal) just going completely off the rails. It's nuts. Maybe a little too nuts. But it's frigging compelling reading. I read the whole thing in 24 hours: the first quarter Friday night (late Friday night), the second quarter Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon, I couldn't stand it anymore, and plopped down and cranked through the second half in a single sitting. I just could not put it down. As I said previously, I'm not big on spoilers myself, and I also like to keep my reviews fairly tight-lipped when it comes to plot. But I mentioned Crichton earlier, and somewhere around a third of the way in I was very heavily reminded of his novel Timeline. If you took some of the concepts from that book and mashed them up with Patrick Lee's The Breach trilogy (read that if you haven't already, seriously) you'd get something very much like The Fold. If I had to quibble, I'd say that the main premise (cool as it is) probably doesn't hold up to much scrutiny (or if it does, there are a lot of coincidences going on) and that, despite Mike Erikson's memory and intellect, I was able to arrive at a number of correct conclusions long before he did. And the end certainly does get weird. But really this book was just so much fun that I can barely bring myself to voice the complaints themselves, let alone delve into them. It's just that good. And according to the afterword, it's also tangentially-related to an earlier Clines book called 14. Shoot, looks like I've got a book to track down… [4 out of 5 stars]
Dead Boys is a book I would have never picked up on my own. I'd never heard of it, nor its author, and a quick glance tells me it probably isn't my sort of thing. But out of the blue one day I got an email from the publisher, saying there were review copies available, so I figured I'd go ahead and take a chance. By the next day, I had it loaded up on my Kindle and dove in. I initially figured it was a book about zombies. I haven't really consumed a lot of zombie media, so I don't really know if I truly dislike it, but at the same time I have absolutely no desire to really try out the genre. But this book isn't actually about the undead. It's about the dead dead. Dead Boys is a very surreal look at the afterlife, where the dead wash up on the shores of the River Lethe having lost the memories of their prior experiences in the living world. The zombie parallels begin and end with the dead's physical forms: their bodies are in a constant state of decomposition, senses are dulled, and movement is slow and time-consuming. But the dead are always conscious, aware—essentially immortal in their new mode of existence. Squailia put in a lot of effort constructing the ground rules for the post-death life, and then spends the bulk of the book pushing that groundwork out to its logical conclusions. Our main protagonist is Jacob Campbell, ten years a corpse, who's on a quest to return to the living world. In death, Jacob is a well-regarded "preservationist". In Dead City, the sight of bone is abhorrent, and as the dead's physical forms are constantly decaying, Jacob and other specialists like him perform the services of keeping a body lifelike: filling deflated body cavities, replacing worn away flesh and skin with wood and leather, and similar cosmetic modifications. Jacob quickly picks up a handful of fellow travelers (the titular "Dead Boys") and the quest begins in earnest: they must find the Living Man, rumored to have gained entrance to the Land of the Dead without having died himself, and who (Jacob hopes) holds the key to returning to the Land of the Living. That is, of course, just the beginning of their travels. Revelations await, and before anyone can regain the life they once lost, they must first come to fully embrace their new state of existence. I definitely enjoyed Dead Boys. It's not a particularly long book, and I read it in about a week. Jacob is an enjoyable protagonist, but is upstaged by almost all of the secondary characters, which is fine. It adheres very closely to the classic quest formula (travel to Place A, meet character B, travel to place C, meet D, etc…) of which I'm not a huge fan, and the plot stalls out for a bit in the second section, but overall it moves along at a nice clip. Some of the more surreal elements (of which there are a number) felt a little goofy to me, but there was a lot of neat stuff mixed in as well. In the end, I think my expectations were a little off; I would have preferred a slightly deeper, more thoughtful or insightful novel. This book does have some good emotional beats, and obvious care was put into the characters and worldbuilding, but in the end it's a fantasy quest story with a unique and interesting setting. Certainly there are a lot of readers out there who'll fall in love with it. It's by no means brilliant, but I enjoyed it, and I'm glad I took a chance on it. [3.5 out of 5 stars]
Vampire Hunter D When I picture a half-vampire/half-human vampire hunter, I envision a brooding, sexually-irresistible Adonis with superhuman speed and strength. Kikuchi tries to do this with his protagonist, D, but massively underpowers him. I mean, the dude can only draw his sword in 1/6 of a second? Pssh. I could probably do that! And every man and woman swoons when he walks in the room; c'mon, they should literally be throwing themselves at him! Sorry, Kikuchi, but your style's just a little understated for my tastes. I'd blame the translator.
Books read in 2014, listed by month finished. Books in italics are still in progress. As always, you can follow along with my reading journal @ LibraryThing, where you can also see my complete reading list, or just my 2015 reads. January February March April May June July
Books read in 2014, listed by month finished. As always, you can follow along with my reading journal @ LibraryThing, where you can also see my complete reading list, or just my 2014 reads. January February March April May June July August SeptemberOctober November December
A couple of years ago, I read Patrick Lee's debut trilogy, consisting of The Breach, Ghost Country, and Deep Sky. It was a new breed of fiction for me: the structure and feel of your run-of-the-mill action/thriller novel, but wrapped around the chewy gooey center of a science-fictional premise/MacGuffin. I enjoyed the heck out of them, and when I heard that he was writing another novel (albeit one unrelated to the trilogy) I was sold, sight-unseen. Fast-forward to October 2013, and while perusing the latest offerings from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, what do I stumble across but a new novel from Patrick Lee! I was excited, but even better, I was fortunate enough to land a copy for review. The blurb was inoffensively generic, bordering on clichĂ©: Ex-military man takes in a girl on the run from bad guys trying to kill her. I wondered if this was to be a straight-up thriller this time, or if Lee would manage to work in a SF angle; I assumed the former, but held out hope for the latter. All the while figuring it would be a wild ride either way. I love it when I'm right. Sam Dryden is an ex-special forces operative who lost his wife and child in an accident a while back. Recently he's been having bouts of insomnia, and has taken up midnight jogs along the boardwalk. One fateful night, he runs into Rachel, a 12-year-old girl being hunted by a squad of armed men. Naturally, Dryden decides to help her. But Rachel is more than she seems: not only does she have the uncanny ability to read minds, but her drug-induced amnesia hides a terrifying secret. Science fiction it is, then—and Lee even throws some pseudo-scientific explanations for Rachel's telepathic powers (but then, I'm no biologist.) But beyond that, he teases out the ramifications of such an ability: if telepathy actually existed, how would the military-industrial complex seek to utilize it? Lee's answer is both horrifying and depressingly realistic. Most importantly, it's wildly entertaining. The pace Lee sets for the book is a breathless one. The action starts right on page two, and hardly lets up from there. The entire first chunk of the book is an extended chase sequence, and even when you think you can stop and take a breath, there's a massive twist or turn on the next page to keep you reading. In fact, the only criticism I have of the book is those sections where the pace actually does slow down: these sequences shift away from Dryden and Rachel to show what is essentially the "bad" guys' side of things. Much of the insight into the military's use of telepathic powers is revealed in these sections, and though they all end up tying together at the end, they don't do a lot to advance the plot at that moment. In any other book, it wouldn't bother me like it did here; but in a book this relentlessly-paced, such a noticeable slowdown is harder to forgive. But this is a minor gripe for a book that is still nigh-impossible to put down. Probably what most impressed me, though, was the emotional layer Lee was able to squeeze in. I got a hint of it in his Breach books, but here…well, here it may have seemed a bit manipulative at first (guy loses his own child, then takes in a young girl on the run? Where do you think this could be going?) but Lee totally makes it work. The ending does much of the heavy lifting in this regard: instead of wrapping everything up all happily-ever-after like you might expect, Lee goes for the truer, more realistic approach, and the whole work is the more powerful for it. The last page in particular not only made me mist up a little, but actually had me flipping back to the first page to reread how it all started. Great stuff. Runner will be out in February. Get it. Read it. And whatever Patrick Lee decides to write next, I'll be in line for that, too, no questions asked. [4 out of 5 stars]
Superheroes versus zombies. That's Ex-Heroes in a nutshell. Don't like superheroes or zombies? Well…that might not be a problem, actually. Ex-Heroes is about a group of super-powered heroes trying to protect a last enclave of humanity in a Los Angeles movie studio-turned-fortress following the zombie apocalypse. I will admit that I'm a bit of a superhero guy, but I couldn't care less about the current zombie trend. It's okay, though, because the zombie apocalypse featured in Clines' books is just the setting; the real show is the larger-than-life yet all-too-human characters: St. George, Stealth, Zzzap. Gorgon, Cerberus, Regenerator. You could draw some easy parallels between Clines' creations and the stable of popular DC and Marvel Comics heroes, but it doesn't matter because Clines makes his so engaging. I loved the structure of the book, too. The chapters alternate: two "Now" chapters set in the present day, told from your standard third-person perspective; then one "Then" chapter set in the past and told in the first-person by one of the superhero characters. The Then chapters move forward chronologically, slowly building up the history of the zombie apocalypse (including an ingenious superhero-related origin for the zombies) as well as fleshing out the backstory of the characters involved. And the way they interact with the ongoing plot of the Now chapters works brilliantly. If there are any real flaws in the book, it would be that one of the heroes seemed way too powerful, and the hasty explanations given for why he wasn't more effective didn't really satisfy me. Also, the main bad guy has huge question marks in his background that (thankfully) are mostly cleared up in the sequel, but still drove me nuts for most of this book. Those are minor nitpicks, though. This book is just too much fun. [4 out of 5 stars]
Robert Silverberg is a prolific and award-winning science fiction author, of whom I've read only a handful of short stories. They didn't leave me much impressed, but when I found out he had written an historical fiction novel that was being reprinted for the first time in thirty years, I was intrigued, and I was fortunate enough to win a copy for review. The new edition of Lord of Darkness by Nonstop Press contains a great introduction by Silverberg about how his book came to be. Long story short, it was inspired by the true story of 16th century English mariner Andrew Battell, who was captured by the Portuguese while pirating in South America and shipped to Africa as a prisoner, where he spent twenty years of his life—including some time living in the African interior with a cannibal tribe and their powerful, dangerous leader, Imbe Calandola, the titular "Lord of Darkness". The book did not do well domestically, due to the fact that bookstores shelved it alongside his science fiction works; sci-fi fans weren't interested in a historical fiction novel, and historical fiction fans (who didn't know to look for an historical novel in the SF section) never discovered it. That's a shame, because it's an absolutely amazing book. Much of the appeal comes from Battell's story, which is fascinating in itself; though obviously by the time Silverberg had expanded it to novel-length, it had become more fiction than fact, but still true to the events detailed in Battell's original account. But perhaps more than even that, what kept me engaged from the first page to the last was the narrative voice employed by Silverberg. It's a first-person account, naturally, but Silverberg attempts to present it as if it might have come from the pen of a 16th century English Protestant man, while still keeping it comprehensible to the contemporary reader. It's done masterfully, with an old-fashioned biblical cadence that is just wonderful. Here's the opening paragraph: I don't know a thing about Silverberg's own beliefs, but Battell's come through clear as day; his dialogue is full of philosophical asides on almost every conceivable subject. This is a thoughtful book. It's also not an easy one. Battell makes choices of a questionable moral nature, from working in the employ of his captors and nation's enemies, to living as a member of a cannibal tribe. This is not a book for the squeamish: there are some disturbing scenes here. At one point Battell, determined to leave nothing out of his narrative, remarks that what he is about to reveal will make the reader hate and condemn him, and certainly that's an option. Battell's awareness of his choices and actions, and his analysis of them at the time as well as after fact, add depth both to said scenes and to his character. A final word of warning: There is a lot of sex in this book, and it's fairly explicitly described, though couched in sixteenth century language as it is, it loses a little of it's, shall we say, vulgarity. If that's the kind of thing that'll turn you off a book entirely, you might want to give this one a pass. That said, part of the triumph of the novel is bringing you, the reader, to places that make you uncomfortable (sometimes extremely uncomfortable) and then bringing you through them—not entirely unchanged, but perhaps now seeing the world around you in a different light. That's one of the marks of Great Literature, and Lord of Darkness is an absolute masterwork. Kudos to Nonstop for bringing it back into print. [5 out of 5 stars]
Forge of Darkness When I hear the word "prequel", I think comfort. Give me more of the same stuff that I loved in the original series, just set a little earlier. We mostly know how it goes anyway, all you have to do is just flesh out the particulars. When Steven Erikson hears the word "prequel", he must think, "Ha-ha, screw you guys!" because this is the kind of crap he pulls: Sworn enemies are now BFFs. Total jerks are now namby-pamby goody-goodies. Titles and relationships, even the geography turn out to be different than we thought! So it's set a half a million years before the main series; who cares? There's a reason dudes say things like, "I'll never betray you in a million years!" Erikson, you're doing it all wrong.
The Prince What a bunch of garbage. This is AMERICA, we don't even have princes here! Geez lou-eez, get with the times, Nick.
Scourge of the Betrayer So I'm clipping through this enjoyable, if mysterious, military fantasy, when suddenly, out of nowhere: BLAM-O! right in the feelings! This is a macho manly-man's book, and there's nothing macho nor manly about the tears that are most definitely not welling up even now, no sir, no way. Oh, God, someone hold me.
I've picked up a number of books through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program over the years. Some have been phenomenal, and some have been pretty good, but a lot of them have been pretty mediocre, if not downright bad. So when I signed up for a chance to win a copy of Gail Z. Martin's upcoming novel, I had my fingers crossed: all I really wanted was an enjoyable, competently-written fantasy from an established author at a well-known publisher. Ice Forged delivered exactly that. The basic premise was an intriguing one: an arctic penal colony gets cut off from the rest of the world after the magical version of nuclear Armageddon. Has the post-apocalyptic scenario been done before in a fantasy world? If so, I haven't read it yet, which isn't saying a lot, other than that the idea here was new enough to me to be exciting. Anyway, the main character, a nobleman's son by the name of Blaine McFadden, gets sentenced to Velant, the aforementioned penal colony at the top of the world. There's some quick jumps in time as we see Blaine adjusting to his new life, while back on the mainland we're introduced to a secondary protagonist, a functionary of the royal court named Bevin Connor. It's through his eyes that we witness the magical strike which lays waste to the country of Donderath, while Connor himself escapes aboard a vessel headed for…Velant. Martin's an established author with a couple of published trilogies to her name, and it shows here. There's nothing flashy, her prose isn't noteworthy in the slightest, the characters aren't particularly deep, and the book doesn't make you think. But it is eminently readable; the pages and the minutes fly by in a blur. If nothing else, Martin shows herself to be a polished and professional storyteller. Having said that, I can't help but lament what Ice Forged could have been. Granted, this is just the first book in a series, so Martin's laying the groundwork for future volumes, here, but. As much as I enjoyed Bevin Connor's storyline, imagine if events on Donderath went unexplained and unwitnessed by the reader. Suddenly, the supply ships stop showing up in Velant, and Blaine McFadden's got a mystery on his hands, and the reader is just as bewildered as he is. Suddenly, the mystery of the book becomes "What happened to Donderath?" instead of—well, that would be telling. But I think it could have been pretty amazing. And while we're on the subject of Blaine McFadden, one thing with him that bugged me: during his years in Velant, he adopts the nickname "Mick" to hide his true identity. Later on, his true heritage comes back to haunt him, and he's forced to decide: is he truly "Mick" or is he "Blaine"? But it's really a false choice, because the narrative has referred to him as "Blaine" for the entirety of the novel, and the only time the reader is reminded of the "Mick" persona is when a character (very rarely) calls him such. Instead, imagine a book that begins with the exile of Blaine McFadden, before switching to The Arctic Adventures Of Mick And Friends, and only after a large portion of the book is it revealed that Mick and Blaine are in fact the same character. Perhaps this is just a side effect of having read too much* of Gene Wolfe and Steven Erikson, two authors who thrive on strategically withholding information from the reader. But sometimes it's worthwhile not to let the reader in on everything. (*I'm kidding, there's no such thing!) I haven't mentioned it yet, but one of the other conceits of Ice Forged that was new to me in the genre was its use vampires. To the best of my knowledge, vampires have traditionally been used as a fantastical element in otherwise-contemporary settings. Here, Martin deploys more-or-less traditional vampires in a fantasy setting. Apparently, this is also true of her other series(es). I found out about this beforehand via the Author Q&A in the back of the book, and went in expecting to hate them. To the contrary, the vampire characters made for one of the more intriguing aspects of the book. Although I should say, Martin may have taken too much of her readers' knowledge of vampires for granted, and not have explained them as thoroughly as she could or should have: I remember being jarred out of the story at one point when one of them was implied to be flying, and I couldn't figure how that was possible, and certainly couldn't remember it having been mentioned before. But those are minor nitpicks. When you get right down to it, the end result is that Ice Forged is a well-written, enjoyable fantasy. Sometimes, that's all you want. [3.5 out of 5 stars]
Books read in 2013, listed by month finished. Books in italics are still in progress. As always, you can follow along with my reading journal @ LibraryThing, where you can also see my complete reading list, or just my 2013 reads. January February March April May June July August September October November December
I was quite pleased with how last year's Salty Awards turned out, so let's do it again! Again, this is stuff that I read for the first time last year, even if it was published earlier (and usually it was.) Here's a link to my 2012 reading list for reference.
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Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:53 |
I'll come right out and say it: Vale of Stars is a frustrating book. It's not well-written. It's heavy-handed. It tries to do to much. The characters are obnoxious. The science is laughable.
And yet.
In a nutshell, the story follows four generations of women, with each woman being the protagonist of her quarter of the book. It begins aboard a generation ship as it approaches its destination world, skips ahead in time to the planetbound colonies, and then expands out from there to the wider world beyond the colony domes.
From the very beginning, the characters drove me crazy. The bad guy(s) are bad guys just to be bad guys; sure, we get more insight to their motivations as the book progresses, but it turns out to be nothing more sophisticated than "I hate these people, so I'm going to be evil." The good guys (or gals, as it were) are just as unsubtle, always interpreting every action or opinion taken by the bad guys as this totally evil thing—not because it would make any sense to do so, but simply because these are the good guys, those are the bad guys, and this is the thing that needs to happen for the plot to go, and also because the author has his points that he needs to hit you over the head with as unsubtly as possible.
There is so much in this book that doesn't make any sense, beyond the non-existent character motivations. At one point, there's a biological transformation that's completely ridiculous. A little girl gets banished to the planet's surface, where she somehow founds a complete society including technology and infrastructure.
But buried inside all of the ridiculousness are some genuinely-interesting sci-fi novel concepts, including a halfway-decent first contact story, and the exploration of the worship of more advanced beings as divinities. And that's the most frustrating thing about this book: it takes three-quarters of the novel to get to the truly interesting stuff, but those ideas feel like distractions simply because of the way they're shoehorned into the rest of the story.
I would love to see some of these concepts expanded into their own proper novel (or novels) but I can't actually recommend this one. [2 out of 5 stars]
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Mon, 24 Sep 2012 13:23 |
A Game of Thrones
George R. R. Martin
This is a book about terrible things happening to good people. It's a book where decency is punished, and the bad guys win. It's depressing and horrible…and I loved every minute of it. And now I hate myself.
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Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:04 |
The concluding volume of Patrick Lee's "Travis Chase" sci-fi thriller trilogy literally made my brain explode. Yes, I said literally. Now I'm dead, and can only blog from beyond the grave. And you know what's hard? Typing out these posts with ghost fingers, that's what's hard. Thanks for nothing, Patrick Lee.
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Mon, 28 May 2012 11:00 |
The Book of the New Sun
Gene Wolfe
So I'm starting in on this one, and it seems very much like your standard sword-and-sorcery fantasy. And then weird stuff starts bleeding in… Is—is that a raygun? Are those…aliens? Waitaminute, is the Matachin Tower actually a grounded rocketship? No no no no, science fiction and fantasy are two distinct genres for a reason! Gene Wolfe, you got chocolate in my peanut butter! You got peanut butter in my chocolate!
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Thu, 24 May 2012 10:56 |
Caine Black Knife
Matthew Stover
Matthew Stover is a f***ing fantastic writer, and his Acts of Caine are awesomely, brutally violent. But Mr. Stover has a fatal f***ing flaw, and it is this: he doesn't use the word "f***" f***ing often enough. Is it too f***ing much to ask that every f***ing paragraph be seasoned with no fewer than 10 "f***"s? F*** no, it isn't! Stover tries his best, but f*** if I still can't help but hold this f***ing failure against him.
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Mon, 21 May 2012 12:12 |
The Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn
This is a brooding, atmospheric novel full of mystery and suspense. It's beautiful and it's captivating. But it's also all about the love of books and stories. F*** that s***. What's the name of this blog, anyway?
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Thu, 17 May 2012 10:53 |
A Princess of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
So this book is basically a rip-off every sci-fi action flick you can think of. It might as well be called "Star Wars on Mars Starring Superman." Perhaps the most ridiculous part is the weapons the characters use to fight: swords. And not even lightsabers or laser swords or anything cool, just plain old metal blades. No rayguns or anything! This is supposed to be "classic" science fiction? Please.
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Wed, 16 May 2012 22:36 |
I've received, read, and reviewed review copies of books before, either won via random internet giveaways, or through dedicated early reviewer programs. But Scourge of the Betrayer marks the first time an author has personally reached out to me and said, "Hey, would you like a copy of my new book to review?" Normally, I'd be flattered, but also a little wary, having been burned more than a couple of times doing advance reviews of fantasy debuts. In this case, however, by the time Jeff Salyards had emailed me, I had already seen a handful of glowing reviews for the first book in the Bloodsounder's Arc series, and so in this instance I was flattered and immediately said, "Yes, please!"
And I'm glad I did.
The first thing that jumped out at me when I removed the dust jacket (as I do before reading) was that Night Shade Books went all-out in making this a gorgeous-looking book. The silver inlay on the blue hardcover looks fantastic, and in addition to printing the author name and title on the spine, as per usual, they're also printed on the front cover, along with the swipe from the dust jacket and a splatter of silver blood in the corner; a second splatter adorns the back cover. It just looks fantastic and immediately makes you think you're holding something special in your hands.
The story inside is related in the first-person by Arkamondos ("Arki"), an archivist who's been hired by the Syldoon captain Braylar Killcoin to chronicle the exploits of his mercenary company. The novel starts off with the bookish Arki first meeting Braylar and his crew, and assumes a leisurely pace as the gang gears up for their mission while Arki gets a handle on the company and his place in it. Some might say "slow" instead of "leisurely"—very little happens for the first half or so of the book; it's mostly downtime at inns or travel across a wide sea of grasslands—but it's never sluggish; Salyards spends this time developing his handful of characters and the world they inhabit, most of which is just as foreign to Arki as it is to the reader. There are some moments of action, certainly, but the far more numerous and quieter moments are just as compelling. It's a wise choice by Salyards, I think: by the time the real plot kicks in with all the action and excitement you could hope for, you've become invested in these characters and the mysteries of their world. And when death comes—and this being the type of book that it is, death will come—I was surprised by just how hard it hits. That kind of emotional connection in a book that runs a scant 250 pages is a rare thing; kudos to Salyards for making each of those pages count.
I've seen a number of comparisons to Glen Cook's Black Company books, and…I dunno, getting compared to Cook is kind of the default thing when you're talking about first-person military fantasy. Salyards' book is gritty and bloody and grunt-level and narrated by an archivist, yes, but it has a very different feel for a few reasons. First is Arki's perspective as an outsider to the Syldoon group: he's out of his depth in this new world of soldiery and intrigue right alongside the reader. Secondly, although this is very much a fantasy novel, the fantastical elements play little to no role in this book (though presumably they'll be far more important later in the series.) There are no mages wielding powerful magic in battle here—it's just swords and crossbows and shields, prowess and guts and determination, and luck. The action is decidedly mundane, and feels that much more visceral and real for it. Finally, though the Black Company is ground-level in scope, there's still an epic war going on in the background; Scourge of the Betrayer is much more intimate, and though there are, in fact, long-range machinations going on behind the scenes, they feel far more subtle and less immediate.
As mentioned, this is a pretty short book. A lot happens, but not a whole lot happens, if you get my meaning. This is very much just the first act in what should end up at least a trilogy. The book itself doesn't come to much of a resolution, and the ending is less a cliffhanger than it is "To be continued…" Had this been a 600-page doorstopper, I'd take issue with that; but you know what? I'm perfectly willing to accept it from a tautly-written, shorter book. Two or three more volumes like Scourge should make for a highly-satisyfing series, and should have people saying Salyards' name like they do Abercrombie's now. Sign me on for Book Two, because I can't wait to see where he takes this story. [3.5 out of 5 stars]
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Mon, 14 May 2012 10:57 |
The Crippled God
Steven Erikson
Steven Erikson has got a gift: if you want bleak, depressing fantasy, he's got you covered. Killing off characters you've become attached to? Check. Utterly destroying your faith in humanity? Check. Thinking your life and your actions have any special significance in the scope of history? He can fix that for you. It's fantastic! And then comes the concluding volume of his 10-book Malazan Book of the Fallen, and…what's this? I better get my eyes checked, because this looks suspiciously like a happy ending. Steven Erikson, why have you forsaken me?
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Mon, 07 May 2012 11:01 |
China Miéville
I get that Miéville's trying to write a book about communication and language here, but why does there have to be so much talking? The only languages I care about in my science fiction are foul language, and the language of violence. Actions speak louder than words, right? So gimme some friggin' action. I even punched the book a few times to try and make up for Miéville's lack, and though marginally therapeutic, it wasn't nearly as effective as I'd have liked.
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Mon, 07 May 2012 11:01 |
The Princess Bride
William Goldman
Mr. Goldman is a fantastic storyteller, and his classic tale about tracking down forgotten books, working in the publishing world, writing for Hollywood, hanging out with Stephen King and Andre the Giant, and stealing stuff from museums is by turns both charming and compelling. BUT. I just don't understand his decision to have this ridiculous fairy-tale story keep intruding on his narrative. This is supposed to be the "good parts" version, after all!
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Thu, 03 May 2012 11:14 |
John Dies at the End
David Wong
This book scared the s*** out of me. No, literally: I made such a mess, my wife kicked me out of the bedroom. Now I get to spend my nights on the downstairs couch alone with a pair of Depends. F*** you, Dave Wong.
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Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:00 |
Star Wars: Darth Plagueis
James Luceno
Okay, so I know the book is titled "Darth Plagueis", so of course I get that it's gonna mostly be about that guy. But I sure would have liked to see more of this Palpatine character. Maybe he could get his own "Darth Sidious" book down the line or something. Also, I felt the pacing of the book was off; if Luceno's editor had pushed him to cut even half of the extraneous action scenes, it would have worked much better. I don't read Star Wars for the action; gimme more of that engaging political intrigue.
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Sat, 07 Apr 2012 14:26 |
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Wed, 04 Apr 2012 21:53 |
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Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:25 |
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Sun, 25 Mar 2012 13:02 |
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Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:53 |
I don't usually write about movies. Which mostly has to do with the fact that I don't see a lot of movies. Even the ones I see, my thoughts can usually be summed up in a Twitter post and don't warrant a blog entry.
This past weekend, though, I went and saw John Carter. I loved it. It was great. Not perfect by any means, but perfectly enjoyable despite its flaws, and a lot of fun. I want to see it again, a rare feat.
When it opened, though, the critics quickly went in for the kill, and now Disney has declared the movie a flop that it lost $200 million on. The film cost $250 million to make, but apparently they also ran a marketing campaign that cost around $100 million. The surprising bit is that they spent so much on advertising, when the overwhelming opinion seems to be that Disney did the worst possible marketing job that they possibly could have.
I mean, here you have the first big-screen production of Edgar Rice Burroughs' precisely-100-year-old science fiction saga that inspired an entire century of sci-fi and fantasy. Not once did Disney go to the historical and literary importance of the source material. Imagine a trailer that starts out with the following text:
Before STAR WARS
Before THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Before CONAN THE BARBARIAN
There was
From the creator of TARZAN
And the director of WALL-E and FINDING NEMO
Come on, right? But no, nobody could possibly want to know about any of that stuff. And then Disney adds insult to injury by giving it the blandest, let's-convey-the-least-information-possible title they could come up with. It was originally "John Carter of Mars" (the title card actually shows up as such at the end of the film) but because apparently movies with "Mars" in the title have historically done so poorly, they decided to leave that part off, even though the entire point of the movie is John Carter's adventures on Mars! Heck, just use the instory native name of "Barsoom". Something—anything—else! When the Super Bowl trailer aired, my friend Tara asked, perhaps only half-jokingly, "Why are they making a movie about Noah Wyle's ER character?" (She would be amused to find out, as I later did, that ER's creator, Michael Crichton, was a big Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, and named the TV character after ERB's hero.) The point is, the average modern moviegoer had no knowledge of John Carter or his pedigree, and Disney spent $100 million doing their best to not tell them. Is it any wonder it failed so miserably?
But it doesn't deserve to. It's maybe a little overlong, and unevenly paced, but it's compellingly enjoyable. It's complicated and sometimes less than easy to follow, but it doesn't dumb anything down; it respects its audience enough to expect them to keep up and piece things together, and by and large, by the end, you will. It takes large and numerous deviations from the original text, but is somehow still unfailingly faithful to the spirit of the source material; how often does that happen? It's gorgeous to look at, it has heart, and it's just plain fun.
So I say: Screw the critics. Screw Disney declaring it a flop. If you like having any fun at the movies, you need to go see this movie while it's still in theaters.
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Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:57 |
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Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:18 |
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Sat, 17 Mar 2012 22:59 |
One of my favorite authors, Matthew Stover, wrote this story, but it's sadly not available in print. I wanted my "own" copy, so I formatted it into an eBook for my Kindle. But it needed a cover, and so I made this.
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Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:48 |
I'm not overly familiar with Magic: The Gathering. I know that it's a fantasy card game in which players battle each other using custom-constructed decks. And it was a big deal back in high school. It originated the term to "tap", or rotate, a card in play. And it was a huge influence on one of my favorite card games. That's the extent of my knowledge.
I am, however, very much familiar with Matthew Stover. He happens to be one of my all-time favorite authors, and is the sole reason I picked up Test of Metal.
Now, tie-in fiction is a tricky animal: most of it just isn't that good. I read a lot of Star Wars novels, but I enjoy them because they're Star Wars, not because they're necessarily well-written—and if I'm being honest, most of them really aren't. So I read tie-in fiction primarily because I'm a fan of the larger shared universe it's set in. But what about when I'm not? Can a favorite author make me care about a franchise I know nothing about?
Well, yes. And no.
From the (minimal) research I did after reading this book, I know that Test of Metal follows up directly on events in Agents of Artifice by Ari Marmell, another book in the Planeswalkers subseries. At the end of that book, the planeswalker (basically a type of wizard who can hop between different dimensions) Jace Beleren killed fellow planeswalker Tezzeret, ostensibly the "bad guy" of that novel. In Test of Metal, Tezzeret is not only resurrected, but is made the main viewpoint character. This is his story.
We start in media res with Tezzeret on an island made entirely of the magical metal, etherium. He is soon confronted by the powerful dragon Nicol Bolas, who, as it turns out, was responsible for recreating Tezzeret and sending him on a quest, of which this metal island is the end. Bolas then proceeds to trawl Tezzeret's memories; subsequent chapters are the result of this mind-link, where the bulk of the novel's story plays out in flashback, with Tezzeret as narrator.
Stover has loved playing with viewpoint and linearity in his Acts of Caine novels, and Test of Metal is no different. In addition to most of the chapters being flashbacks and narrated in the first-person by Tezzeret, we get additional first-person perspectives (one chapter each) from the other featured planeswalkers, Jace Beleren and Baltrice. And interspersed between those are the "present" goings-on at the metal island, related in standard third-person, from the POVs of both Tezzeret and Bolas. Alternating between the third- and first-persons is something Stover does extremely well, and its use suits the story perfectly. What I enjoyed perhaps the most, though, was how the book effectively begins at the end of the story. In fact, before I read the final chapter, I flipped back and reread the first chapter and had a couple of those great "Aha!" moments where the puzzle pieces start fitting together. But beyond just the structure of the novel, the story itself makes use of a limited amount of time travel in the form of a type of magic called "clockworking"; there's a very nonlinear feel to entire book that's simultaneously refreshing and bewildering, but Stover's successful in keeping it all tightly under control.
If I had a main complaint, it would be that the story mostly boils down to a fairly-straightforward MacGuffin quest with powerful wizards throwing a bunch of magic at each other. And some of the dialogue is laughably juvenile—though as it more often that not also made me laugh in the good sense, I can overlook any quibbles there. In the end, it's Stover's handling of Tezzeret's character and the internal journey he undertakes that elevate the book above the level of "mere" tie-in fiction. We get a bit of Tezzeret's backstory, we come to understand his motivations, and watch as he undergoes both physical and internal transformations. He's a fascinating character: highly intelligent, but not physically or magically overpowering, so he has to rely on his wits to get by. Plus, he's also a bit of a smartass. Very much in Stover's wheelhouse.
In fact, I enjoyed reading about Tezzeret so much that I really want to pick up Agents of Artifice just to get the first half (as it were) of the story. But I don't think I really care enough about the Magic universe to bother doing so. Rather, I think I'll just savor Stover's contribution to it.
It's not great literature, but it's still better than most tie-in genre fiction deserves to be. It makes you use your brain. And it's got all the classic Stover touches (warning: violence and strong language), plus plenty of twists and turns and double-, triple-, and quadruple-crosses. It's great fun, and I'd recommend it to any fan of fantasy. [3.5 out of 5 stars]
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Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:50 |
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Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:03 |
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Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:20 |
Welcome to the first annual Salty Awards! I liked how last year's "Best of 2010″ post turned out, so that'll pretty much be the template for these awards. The main difference being, I've got a shiny new trophy now! Like last year's Best Ofs, this is stuff that wasn't necessarily published in 2011, just what I read the past year. And first reads only; re-reads don't count. (Here's a link to my 2011 reading list for reference.)
First off, let's start with some numbers, because who doesn't love numbers?
Total books read: 51
Re-reads: 7
Non-series reads: 14
Nonfiction reads: 1
Novels by female authors: 3
Short story collections: 9
Reads that were also acquired in 2011: 21
Borrowed (unowned): 10
Interesting stuff, maybe, but not the real reason you're here. Without further ado:
5. Side Jobs by Jim Butcher
In the first half of 2010, I tore through the entirety of Jim Butcher's fantastic Dresden Files series. I had to wait until fall of 2011 for the next installment, and decided to check out this short story collection (that I had skipped out on previously) in the meantime, particularly since it contained a story that took place between the previous book and the upcoming one. I'm glad I did, because Dresden shines in the short story format, and it was fun to read about the "side jobs" that take place before and between the books of the series. "The Warrior" might be my favorite Dresden story of all time.
4. Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds
The Revelation Space universe is an amazing place, and a large part of what gives it its charm is the sense of history with which Reynolds has imbued his books. This collection is a bit of an eye-opener in when you get to see just what the scope of his created fictional history is. Copious references to characters and events from his series make these stories mesh perfectly with those books, and perhaps the most impressive part is that main of them were written before the books. Beyond that, though, this is still a solid collection of awesome sci-fi stories.
2. (tie) Storeys from the Old Hotel and Strange Travelers by Gene Wolfe
I chickened out and put both these books in a tie for second place. You know I love me some Gene Wolfe, and ranking two superb collections by a favorite author is always hard, but beyond that, each collection showcases a different form: Travelers features a number of Wolfe's longer-form stories, 15 in all, while Storeys tackles the shorter form, with over 30 inclusions. They're two totally different animals, but at the same time, they're both totally Gene Wolfe. It's like picking your favorite child (and sure, you might actually have one, but you'll never tell!)
1. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
I adore Gene Wolfe (see above) and one of his largest influences is the Argentinian author Borges. Allusions to Borges' work abound in Wolfe's, and I had recently read The Shadow of the Wind which had its own share of Borgesian elements, so I knew I had to eventually get around to reading the original. Holy wow. It's easy to see the parallels between Wolfe and Borges; Borges is what you might get if you took Wolfe and removed all the sci-fi and fantastical elements, stripped it down to the raw, crystallized ideas. And concentrated it. Mind-blowing stuff, is what it is. "The Garden of Forking Paths" is one of my favorite stories ever.
3. Last Stand of the Wreckers by Nick Roche & James Roberts
This series had been hyped beyond all belief by the Transformers fanbase, so I was excited to finally lay my hands on a cheap copy of the trade paperback. It did not disappoint. This is the kind of book that shows just how great this franchise can be when put in the hands of people who really care about and understand it. It takes place in IDW's current series continuity, but besides a couple of scenes, it's entirely self-contained, and it draws heavily on obscure characters from all throughout franchise history, meaning you don't have to be familiar with them to enjoy this book. If you're a hardcore fan, or just interested in seeing how good TF storytelling can get, you need to pick up this book. Besides the original 5-issue series, the trade paperback also collects a related prose story by Roberts titled "Bullets" that's just icing on the cake.
2. Welcome to the Jungle by Jim Butcher & Ardian Syaf
In the introduction to the graphic novel edition, Butcher explains that when writing the Dresden Files novels, he always pictured them in his mind as comic books. Which goes a long way toward explaining why this 4-issue original prequel series feels just like reading one of the novels. It's pure unadulterated Dresden goodness, with all the trademark wit, magic, and monsters you've come to expect. And Ardian Syaf's artwork is perfect: comic booky without being overly cartoony, and his characters—especially Harry Dresden himself—are spot-on.
1. Echo by Terry Moore
I have Tor.com and Stephen Aryan to thank for this one. After his write-up of this series, I just had to check it out, and was able to find 4 of the 6 available collections for cheap on eBay. Later I sold them and sprung for the Complete Edition containing all 30 issues, and let me tell you that is a beast of a book. And it's amazing. Moore's black-and-white artwork is gorgeous, his characters—their personalities and expressions and interactions—all fully realized, and he still manages to throw a bunch of slam-bang action into the mix. Almost impossible to put down.
5. The Crippled God by Steven Erikson
This was the big one, the final volume in the 10-book Malazan Book of the Fallen, perhaps the most ambitious fantasy series ever attempted, and the series responsible for my participation in various book cataloging sites and online forums, and thus also for my reading habits for the past half-decade. In those 5 years I'd read all of the previous books, re-read most of them, and discussed them all ad nauseum, and this capped it all off. It was exhilarating and bittersweet at the same time, bringing the decalogy full circle and tying (most) things up eventfully, emotionally, and thematically. It wasn't perfect, but then, that's fitting, too.
4. Old Man's War by John Scalzi
This was on my "I really need to read books by this guy" list, and I finally picked it up over Christmas of 2009. I haven't read any Heinlein—outside the fairly crappy The Cat Who Walks Through Walls but people compare this book to Heinlein's work a lot. It reminded me a lot of Card's Ender's Game, but mostly in a "sci-fi you'd recommend to a friend whose never read sci-fi before" way. The first-person narrative is fabulous, hilarious, and moving, and the action is gritty and frantic and very very real. All around, a very enjoyable, very human book.
3. Peace by Gene Wolfe
Yes, I love Gene Wolfe. Shut up. It feels weird to write a book review that basically goes, "I don't understand this book, but I love it." So it is with this one. A book of Midwestern memoirs doesn't seem like it would be my thing, but Wolfe's writing is so gorgeous, so eminently readable, but also quite haunting; and the sinister undercurrents that never quite reveal their true nature (at least on a first read) make this an absolutely fascinating book.
2. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Scott recommended this one to me as his favorite book, and I trust his judgement, and hey, I found it for $2, too. It's worth the cover price, though; this is one lush and luscious novel full of romance and mystery (and a tinge of horror) and absolutely dripping with atmosphere. It's a book for book lovers, and for lovers of fine storytelling in general.
1. Embassytown by China Miéville
Like Scalzi, I had never read any of Miéville's work before, but that changed when I won a review copy of his upcoming Embassytown. Talk about being blown away; this book was amazing. All of my favorite sci-fi elements were present: well-developed, alien aliens, cultural clashes, intrigue, mystery, unconventional narrative structure, jaw-dropping revelations, and plenty of Big Ideas and musings on the nature of language and thought. I read a lot of reviews that basically gave it a thumbs-down, and I it's like I can't even decipher the words being written; it makes no sense at all to me. This was easily the best book of 2011, and one of the best books I've had the pleasure of reading, period.
Honorable mentions: Dissolution by C. J. Sansom, The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, The Breach by Patrick Lee, Reamde by Neal Stephenson
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Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:21 |
In the next week or so, I'll be writing up the first annual Salty Awards, looking back at my favorite reads of 2011, but right now I want to take a second to look forward to 2012.
My plans for 2011 didn't entirely pan out, but that won't stop me from making plans for the coming year! I'm scaling back considerably, with only four planned projects to tackle, but they're not necessarily unambitious:
Since 2008, I've spent every December reading Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, and this year is no different. I'm currently halfway through book #2, The Claw of the Conciliator, but I don't plan on stopping with the BotNS this year; rather, I'll also be reading the related Book of the Long Sun (4 volumes that I've read once before) and Book of the Short Sun (3 volumes that I've yet to read) as well as various related short stories. The full list (in my planned order, the order of shorter works subject to change) goes like this:
I've read The Hobbit and the The Lord of the Rings twice; the last time was about 10-12 years ago, and the first was about 10-12 years before that (I figure I was 10-12 at the time) so a reread this years seems in order. But I'll be also be throwing in some of the ancillary material that I've never read before. I'm actually pretty excited about this one:
I've slowly been accumulating George R. R. Martin's infamous series from used bookstores over the years, and have really wanted to get into them, but I also refused to start in until the most recent volume had been published. It will (presumably) be out in mass market paperback later this year, which will be the perfect time to dive in.
My wife has been on my case to read Brandon Sanderson's acclaimed trilogy for a while, now. I keep telling her I'll get to it next year. Now it's in writing! I may as well stick the standalone sequel on as well.
Well, what do you think? Have I once more bitten off more than I can chew?
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Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:29 |
Books read in 2012, listed by month finished. As always, you can follow along with my reading journal @ LibraryThing, where you can also see my complete reading list, or just my 2012 reads.
The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe
Deep Sky by Patrick Lee
The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe
The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson
Magic: The Gathering: Test of Metal by Matthew Stover
The Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe
Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson
When She's Gone by Steven Erikson
The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Endangered Species by Gene Wolfe
The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Caine Black Knife by Matthew Stover
Caine's Law by Matthew Stover
Star Wars: Darth Plagueis by James Luceno
The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany
John Dies at the End by David Wong
Scourge of the Betrayer by Jeff Salyards
Star Wars: Cloak of Deception by James Luceno
The Children of HĂşrin by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien
Tales from Super-Science Fiction ed. by Robert Silverberg
The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson
Orb Sceptre Throne by Ian C. Esslemont
Crack'd Pot Trail by Steven Erikson
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
Transformers Legends ed. by David Cian
Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
The Keep by F. Paul Wilson
A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
Ghost Ocean by S. M. Peters
Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson
The Tainted City by Courtney Schafer
Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson
A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin
This Book is Full of Spiders by David Wong
A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin
Vale of Stars by Sean O'Brien
The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock
The Sundered Worlds by Michael Moorcock
Phoenix in Obsidian by Michael Moorcock
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Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:32 |
The giveaway gods were smiling on me again when I won a copy of Courtney Schafer's fantasy debut from the Staffer's Musings blog. I hadn't previously read any of the reviews in detail, but I got the sense that it had been favorably received overall—plus, I really wanted to find out just what was going on in that cover—so I threw my name in the proverbial hat, and viola! free book! Following some friendly correspondence with Ms. Schafer, a copy of The Whitefire Crossing showed up in my mailbox, complete with an encouraging personalized message in the front. Very lovely. Thanks, Courtney!
I had told her I wasn't sure I'd get to reading it before year's end; I was in the middle of Brent Weeks' massive Night Angel trilogy, and having already let too much time pass between reading the first two books (you know how it is sometimes) I wanted to finish the whole thing in one go. Well, Thanksgiving rolls along, and the end of the second book is within sight, but man I really didn't want to lug that massive omnibus edition up to my grandparents' house, and The Whitefire Crossing had been sitting on my nightstand this whole time, with me (rather unexpectedly) itching to read it…
So I packed it and brought it up with me. Cracked it open Thanksgiving Day, and was immediately hooked.
Hooked bad.
Dev is a mountaineer and a smuggler who takes a job that's a little out of the ordinary: smuggling a man across the titular Whitefire Mountains and into the country of Alathia. Kiran is the man being smuggled. He's also a mage, on the run from an even more powerful mage. And magic is outlawed in Alathia…
The story is told in intriguing fashion: the narrative alternates between Dev's and Kiran's perspectives, but where Kiran's POV is told from a third-person perspective, Dev's is done in the first-person. It's a fantastic device, as both characters have secrets they're trying to keep from the other, and never truly getting inside Kiran's head means the mysteries surrounding him remain tantalizing. However, the imbalance also means Kiran never quite seems as "real" a character as Dev, but that's okay, because Dev makes for such a fantastic POV character. Saying he's basically Han Solo seems kind of unfair, but it's not entirely off the mark; he's very much of the smuggler-with-a-heart-of-gold archetype, though his gold is perhaps a tad tarnished. But he's got a past history and well-defined motivations; Schafer makes him a very real, very three-dimensional person. (Which is not to say Kiran doesn't have those things, as well—he does. But again, he's got that slight feeling of removal from the reader that Dev does not.)
There's plenty of magic in the book, and mages and charms and wards and everything; it's very well done, nicely consistent, and integrated into the story seamlessly and effortlessly. There's not too much else to say about it. The plot's not nearly as straightforward as my (very) brief synopsis above makes it out to be; there are some fantastic twists and turns that take the story in unexpected directions. But I don't have much else to say about the plot. This is a book about relationships. Dev and Kiran. Dev and his fellow outrider, Cara. Dev and his former mentor, Sethan. Kiran and his master, Ruslan. I'll stop there, but you get the idea.
The book is the first in a series, with The Tainted City due in late 2012. Don't let that stop you from picking it up. This first entry more or less stands on its own, and comes to an acceptable (if not entirely satisfactory) conclusion. The future of the series depends on how well the first two books do, and they deserve to do quite well indeed.
I went into this review having given the book a 3.5-star rating. 3 stars is pretty much my baseline "I enjoyed it" rating; 2.5 would be "I enjoyed it, but" and 3.5 is a favorable "I enjoyed it, and…" 4 stars is another level entirely, and much as I wanted to, I didn't feel like The Whitefire Crossing was quite at that level. But reflecting back on the book while writing and proofing this review, it's become obvious to me that it is at that level. This is a really good book. [4 out of 5 stars]
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Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:31 |
Brent Weeks is one of those authors I'd been hearing about for a while. I'm sure everyone's got a similar list of writers they plan on eventually checking out when they get around to it. I'd heard about his Night Angel trilogy, three fantasy doorstoppers published back-to-back-to-back: some people loved it, some hated it, but the overall consensus was that, hey, it's not great literature, but it's an enjoyable story, and besides which it's a completed series that you don't have to wait for the next book to be published. Well, it happens that one day I had a coupon at the Science Fiction Book Club, so I went ahead and picked up the entire trilogy in one massive 1,400-page omnibus edition for under $8. It made its way onto my 2011 SF Reading Challenge list, and whaddaya know, it was one of the few challenge books that I actually got around to reading.
The Way of Shadows is the first book of the trilogy, and it's a bit of an odd duck in that, on the one hand, it's fairly standard Cliché Fantasy 101 fare. Written in a rather straightforward and plain style, it takes place in a quasi-medieval land divided into numerous countries ruled by various lords and kings. There's prophecy, lost magical relics, and invaders from the north. The protagonist is a young boy without any magical talent who grows up to become someone extraordinary. It's the kind of story David Eddings would write, the stuff you'd enjoy the crap out of as a young fantasy fan.
On the other hand, it's more or less rated "R" for violence, language, and sex.
And on the whole, it ain't half bad.
So the story starts out following Azoth, a child in the slums of Cenaria City whose dream is to gain the attention of, and become apprentice to, the legendary "wetboy" assassin Durzo Blint. (For those who've read Orson Scott Card's Ender's Shadow, this section of the book totally reminded me of Bean growing up on the streets of Rotterdam; not a big surprise, then, that Weeks specifically mentions Card as an influence in the author interview at the back of the book.) Eventually, of course, Azoth does indeed become Durzo's apprentice, adopting the new persona of "Kylar Stern" and developing into an efficient assassin. But the difference between an assassin and a wetboy is that a wetboy employs the use of magic to do his job, and as I alluded to earlier, Azoth-now-Kylar has no magical Talent. In Fantasy Cliché land, this merely means that Kylar is a supertalented mage whose abilities don't readily manifest themselves…and of course that's what happens here as well.
What keeps the story from bogging down in predictability is, well, it's unpredictability.
Much of that comes from the way Weeks treats his characters. You've heard the expression "No one is safe" with regards to certain fantasy authors or series? Well, Brent Weeks invented that saying. (And before you ask, George R. R. Martin is another of those authors I haven't gotten around to reading yet.) Weeks does a good job staying true to his quasi-medieval world, because people die. If some rival lord decides to wipe out your family, he wipes out your family. If the monarchy gets overthrown in a bloody coup and character X (who you thought was a pretty important character up to this point) is right there when it happens, guess what, expecting him to miraculously live through it isn't terribly realistic. Which is not to say that Weeks indiscriminately kills anybody and everybody off, but shoot, if he thought that was what the story demanded, I totally believe he'd do it.
The book does have other issues. Prominent among them is Weeks' tendency to have side-plots that only crop up once every hundred pages or so; there are a couple of characters who only show up in the story this way, and every time they do I have to rack my brain for who they are and what they're doing. But for every element that lessens my enjoyment of the book, there's something that makes up for it: the Vir of the Vürdmeisters is visually very cool. Weeks' names can be pretty groan-worthy; Durzo Blint is one of the worst offenders here, but he develops into a fantastic character.
What it boils down to is that, despite the warts, Weeks writes a story that is compellingly readable. The chapters are short, and you always want to know what happens next. And often you'll be surprised. I was surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did. A solid [3.5 out of 5 stars].
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Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:48 |
Neal Stephenson's latest novel is a contradiction of a book: a taut, fast-paced thriller that spans 1,000 pages and took me a month to read.
Richard "Dodge" Forthrast is the creator of the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) T'Rain. We first meet Richard at the annual Forthrast family reunion in Iowa, and the book starts out slowly as we meet certain of Richard's family members. We're introduced to his niece, Zula, and her boyfriend Peter. We meet Richard's brothers, Jacob and John. There are stories of Richard's days as a smuggler crossing the border between Canada and Idaho. And lots and lots of information regarding the creation of T'Rain.
Stephenson takes his time kicking the plot into gear. 100 pages slowly pass before it really arrives, but it's never a chore; Stephenson has a gift for being highly readable, and is somehow able to make reading about firearms or midwestern cuisine or the creation of a geographically-plausible video game world consistently entertaining.
But then the titular, brilliantly-conceived "REAMDE" virus makes its appearance, and suddenly Zula and Peter find themselves abducted by a Russian mafioso. While they head to China to root out REAMDE's creator, back in the western hemisphere Richard is left to try and piece together what has happened to his niece. And still that's just the tip of the iceberg: when things finally throw down in China about a third of the way through the book, a bevy of new players are introduced and only then do you realize that the real story is just starting. What's left is 700 pages of straightforward globe-hopping thriller, filled with spies and terrorists, not to mention the occasional hacker and militant libertarian.
Sadly, the books started to drag a little for me around the halfway mark. If you read many thrillers, you'll know that they're not particularly long books; 300-400 pages on average, perhaps. But the thriller portion of Reamde runs a solid 700 pages, and though there's plenty of action, there's also a lot of what feels like downtime. It got to the point where I had to force myself to pick the book up every night, but the funny thing is, once I started reading, I'd get sucked right back in. The pages didn't exactly fly by, but I was absolutely riveted all the same.
Still there's an advantage to Reamde's length, and it's that events and characters feel that much more real. The story itself takes roughly three weeks, and lengthy and copious amounts of detail make it feel like three weeks. (That it took me four weeks to read probably has something to do with it as well.) And Stephenson's created a diverse cast of well-realized characters that you come to love, or come to love to hate. The day after I finished reading, I looked over and saw the book sitting on my nightstand and was actually saddened that I wouldn't be reading it anymore. I already missed Richard and Zula and Csongor and Sokolov and Olivia and Seamus and… well, you get the picture. If you had asked me at the halfway mark, I would have told you I'd consider Reamde a "read once" book; but now I'm fairly certain that, years from now, I'll be picking it up again to revisit some old friends.
If I had to come up with one real beef about the book, it would be that the title is pretty misleading. It hopefully doesn't spoil much (and if so, I've spoiled far more already!) to say that the book has very little to do with the REAMDE virus—nor with the T'Rain game, despite the numerous pages devoted to detailing its creation and inner workings. Put plainly, T'Rain exists mainly for REAMDE to exist, and REAMDE is there to kickstart the plot, and little else. You could probably drop a bare minimum of 50 pages from the novel just by trimming away the T'Rain infodumps, and lose little from the story besides some of its "Stephensonesque" quality—but then, those random asides and tangents have long been part of Stephenson's charm.
Despite being somewhat overlong (I didn't even mention the drawn-out—and by "drawn-out" I mean "Michael Bay in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen drawn-out"—final climactic showdown) Reamde still manages to be a fantastic book. In a nutshell, it's "What if Neal Stephenson wrote a thriller?" and I absolutely loved it. [4 out of 5 stars]
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Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:42 |
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text:
[ Source: txw2 ]
Package: libtxw2-java (0.1+20070624-1) [universe]
Links for libtxw2-java
Ubuntu Resources:
Download Source Package txw2:
Please consider filing a bug or asking a question via Launchpad before contacting the maintainer directly.
Original Maintainers (usually from Debian):
- Debian Java Maintainers (Mail Archive)
- James Page
It should generally not be necessary for users to contact the original maintainer.
External Resources:
- Homepage [txw.dev.java.net]
Similar packages:
Typed XML Writer for Java
Download libtxw2-java
Architecture | Package Size | Installed Size | Files |
all | 65.7 kB | 160.0 kB | [list of files] |

subset: commoncrawl


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Bianca Valentino is a Porn Star from United States. She was born in Harrisburg on March 22, 1986. She is listed on FreeOnes since 2007 and is currently ranked 42066th place. She currently has 38 gallery links in her own FreeOnes section.
Our records show that Bianca Valentino is currently retired which means she is not making movies, doing live shows and/or doing photo shoots at this time.


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Overcast ~ High: 75°F ~ Low: 54°F Monday, Mar. 27, 2017 |
The Lust for More, More, MorePosted Sunday, October 26, 2008, at 1:51 AM
We are a country of greedy fools, being manipulated by greedy fools.
When I was in fourth grade, we were told the future would be so modernized that we would have much more free time on our hands than our parents. My father, like almost everyone else in the 1950's, was working 40 hours a week, 50 weeks per year. I was relieved to learn I wouldn't have to put in that many hours when I was his age. But it never came true. A half century later, we're still stuck at 40 hours per week, with nearly 20 of those hours going to government coffers. The average American family pays more in taxes than food, clothing, shelter and transportation combined. Either we are incapable of being personally responsible for our own welfare or government has gotten vastly out of control. This is insane. Yet, politicians continually promise more jobs, more growth, more goodies for everyone. And this country of greedy fools, which is $10 trillion in debt, keeps falling for it. We keep borrowing against the future to satisfy our insatiable lust for more, more, more. Guess who benefits from our insatiable lust for more, more, more. We have created a government that lusts for more, more, more. Its objective is growth. And in order to grow it must continue to encourage people to work, work, work in order to feed itself. And it must continually gain more control over its subjects in order to be more needed by its subjects in order to grow, grow, grow. We have created a monster that is devouring us. We have enslaved ourselves by our own greed. Yet we are blind, because we want more, more, more. Guess who else benefits from our insatiable lust for more, more, more. There are powerful people in high places who manipulate global affairs, profit from global turmoil and yearn for a one-world global government to be controlled by them. These are wealthy bloodlines, international bankers and military-industrial power brokers. They have an insatiable lust for more, more, more. And there never is enough for them until they have complete control over the entire world. We are pawns in a global game of chess. Fat cats get fatter and the pawns are clueless. Wake up and smell the roses. Stop lusting for more, more, more. Slow down and enjoy your precious leisure time because that's the only freedom you're going to get. This world is about to implode before your eyes. The only way to stop it is to stop being needy and greedy. Let the rest of the world wallow in it's self-perpetuated madness. You cannot stop the momentum created by fools, but at least you don't have to be part of the problem. The truth will set you free. Life is simple. Discover what makes you happy, figure out a way to make it work and do it. Don't follow the greedy fools over the cliff. Follow your bliss. Find your purpose. Reach your potential. Experience your magnificence. _ Quote for the Day -- "The things that people do cannot, under any conditions, be more important than the world." Carlos Castaneda (Shaman) _ - - Comments Showing comments in chronological order [Show most recent comments first] Respond to this blog Posting a comment requires free registration:
Bret Burquest is a former award-winning columnist for The News (2001-2007) and author of four novels. He has lived in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, Kansas City, Memphis and the middle of the Arizona desert. After a life of blood, sweat and tears in big cities, he has finally found peace in northern Arkansas where he grows tomatoes, watches sunsets and occasionally shares the Secrets of the Universe (and beyond) with the rest of the world.
Hot topics Knights of the Golden Circle(1 ~ 12:51 PM, Mar 26)
Being Left-Handed
Width of a Horse's Rear End
Human Energy Field
Shamanism |


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Host by NetBox Version 2.8 Build 4128
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text:
SQL Monitor 4.1 monitors the host machine but now fails to monitor the database:
SQL Monitor is no longer monitoring 3 of my 7 databases, instead it only monitors the host machine. I've tried 'retrying the connection' and suspending/enabling the monitoring but nothing has worked.
If I navigate to: "Configuration > Monitored servers > 172.31.250.73\\(local)", it tells me that it is connected and there are no errors in the log.
These databases have been monitored fine for at least 6 months. Only after updating to 4.1 have I ran into this problem.


text:
Lake Monroe Lawyer, Florida
Michael R. Lowe
Michael R. Lowe, Board-Certified Health Law Attorney Firm founder Michael R. Lowe concentrates his... (more)
Richard A. Colegrove
At the Law Firm of Richard A. Colegrove, Jr., I provide assistance, advice, and representation to clients... (more)
James J. Partlow
James Justice "J.J." Partlow was born and raised in Sanford, Seminole County, Florida. As a senior in high... (more)
Robert Kenneth McIntosh
Robert Kenneth Mclntosh is an AV rated attorney who practices primarily in the area of Probate and... (more)
Sandra Kia Ambrose
Ms. Ambrose received a B.A. Degree (cum laude) from the University of South Florida in 1980 and a J.D. from... (more)
S. Kirby Moncrief
As an of-counsel attorney at the law firm of Stenstrom, Mclntosh, Colbert, Whigham & Partlow, P.A., Mr.... (more)
Lonnie N. Groot
MrMr. Groot received a B.S. degree in1973 and a J.D. in 1976 from Florida StateUniversity. He is admitted... (more)
Franklin C. Whigham
Frank Whigham attended Florida State University undergraduate school from 1967 through 1971. He then began... (more)
William L. Colbert
Mr. Colbert received a B.S. degree from the University of Florida in 1967 and a J.D. from Florida State... (more)
Erik F. Szabo
Erik was born in Dumont, New Jersey, and raised in Boca Raton, Florida. He received his Bachelor of Arts... (more)


text: 10 out of 10 seasoned teacher Scotland Good Points+ Every piece in this book is a winner as far as I can tell. There are a couple of seriously challenging pieces needing extra flute techniques which I am unfamiliar with but this only serves to intrigue me more. The pieces are contrasting and excellent for pupils/players with plenty of imagination to express alongside developing technical skills.I bought it for the Andy Scott piece which is listed in AB Grade 7 because a pupil and myself had thoroughly enjoyed his "And Everything is Still" music which is a Grade 6 choice. This compellation is suitable for Grade 6+ players and is a very welcome addition to my music library. Bad Points− Nope. Confirmed purchase: 09 March 2015 Published on: 24 March 2015


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No, I don't think so, though "relaxedly" does: Relaxed - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Student or Learner
First of all thank you for your attention.
My doubt comes from my English test, so here it goes:
We were asked to rewrite the sentences without using the underlined words, any changes could be made, as long as the original meaning prevailed.
Take a look at one of the sentences we were supposed to rewrite:
"Your days are full of excitement while also relaxing and uncomplicated".
I wrote this: "Your days are full of exciting moments while also relaxingly uncomplicated".
The teacher said "relaxingly" doesn't exist, I must admit, I was in doubt when I wrote it, but I wanted to "test" if it really existed or not (it seems it doesn't), but checking never harms. What do you guys think? Doest it exist? If it exists, did I use it correctly?
I thought relaxing was an adjective and relaxingly an adverb.
Last edited by FelipeRRM; 07-Apr-2010 at 18:07.
No, I don't think so, though "relaxedly" does: Relaxed - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary
I'm not a teacher, but I write for a living. Please don't ask me about 2nd conditionals, but I'm a safe bet for what reads well in (American) English.
up =]
- Not a teacher -
I haven't figured it out why "increasingly" is OK while "relaxingly" not.
Thanks for posting, helpful
There are 79 900 exact matches So I wouldn't say that this word doesn't exist. It might be something like, for example, "unkaputtbar" in German. Officially it doesn't exist, but everybody understands it.
Maybe in a couple of years it will be commonly used.
Thank you guys.
The teacher took me away 0.2 points because of this, otherwise it would have been 100% =D
Thanks again.


text: Mile High MessageKaty Kelleher3/01/10 11:20amFiled to: sex sellsmile high clubUncomfortable places to have sexCopyranterNew ZealandAirplanes44EditPromoteShare to KinjaToggle Conversation toolsGo to permalinkAttention passengers: the skycouch is not for forking. Air New Zealand wants you to know that their so-called "cuddle class" is not to be used for afternoon delights. But spooning is cool - just keep those prongs to yourself. [Copyranter]


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Growing up in New York, my mother always told me to never go down to 4th Avenue in Brooklyn because a man in a van would snatch me up. That being the case, I have a feeling that she won't like Ford's 2013 SEMA show display much. In addition to the Mustangs, Focuses, and Fusions Ford has announced that there will be 10 custom 2014 Ford Transit Connects taking over its SEMA show display.
Though 10 Transit Connect vans and wagons will be on display at the show, Ford is only teasing nine of them. Those hoping Ford will fit the Transit Connect with the Fiesta ST's 197-hp 1.6-liter turbo-4 and six-speed manual, I'll save you some trouble: none of the nine vehicles here are the Transit Connect ST. While that very well could be the last SEMA Transit Connect concept, we're not holding our breath.
Instead, most of the nine Transit Connect concepts are all slammed, shod with big wheels and tires, and loaded with electronics. Some of these vans look pretty sharp. For example, there's the Strange Motion Transit Connect Wagon. This slammed Transit Connect is designed to support a BMX team, and can haul six bikes and six people. Functional and cool.
Another functionally cool Transit Connect concept is by Blood & Grease. A clothing company, the Blood & Grease Transit Connect functions as a pop-up shop. The lowered black-graphic'd van is designed to roll up to a location and sell clothing. The inside of the Transit Connect is outfitted with a custom inventory system, in addition to the requisite upgraded sound system.
The Project SunnySide Transit Connect functions in much the same way as the Blood & Grease concept, this time dolling out cookies and cake. The Project SunnySide van is designed to be a modern ice cream delivery truck.
The custom vans are rounded out by the:
Mobsteel Ford Transit Connect: A "rolling business card" for the Detroit Steel Wheel Company.
Pentech Ford Transit Connect: A mobile video game demonstration van.
K-Daddyz Kustomz Ford Transit Connect: A mobile vehicle graphic and pinstriping studio.
eJudged Ford Transit Connect: A mobile command station for car show judging.
CGS Motorsports Ford Transit Connect: A car-modification support vehicle at the drag strip.
LGE/CTS Motorsports Ford Transit Connect: A cross-country-capable Transit Connect outfitted for "business owners and upper-middle class working families."
Which van is your favorite? Sound off below.
For all the latest news, photos, videos, and much more direct from the 2013 SEMA auto show floor, don't forget to
CLICK OVER to our 2013 SEMA show coverage page.
Source: Ford


text: 000 FPUS63 KMPX 210851 SFPMN MNZ001>098-212300- State Forecast for Minnesota National Weather Service Twin Cities/Chanhassen MN 351 AM CDT Tue Mar 21 2017 .TODAY...Sunny. Highs in the mid 20s to upper 30s. .TONIGHT...Mostly clear. Lows 5 to 20. .WEDNESDAY...Increasing clouds. Chance of rain and snow west, mainly in the afternoon. Highs in the 30s. .WEDNESDAY NIGHT...Mostly cloudy. Lows 15 to 30. .THURSDAY...Cloudy. Chance of rain statewide. Highs in the upper 30s to mid 40s. .FRIDAY...Mostly cloudy. Rain likely central and south. Lows in the upper 20s to lower 40s. Highs in the lower 40s to lower 50s. .SATURDAY...Partly cloudy. Chance of rain and snow south. Lows in the mid 20s to mid 30s. Highs in the upper 30s to mid 40s. $$


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I do have some lumpiness and when I saw my Dr. yesterday, I was told if I don't have the Dermosonic Treatments prior to 6 weeks post op, the lumps will harden and stay lumpy for good. Is this true or is is a sales pitch? How important is it to get?
I Had Liposuction of Hips and Waist 2 Weeks Ago.
Doctor Answers 2
You trusted your surgeon to operate on you after you probably met them in consultation. You should trust their recommendations now. If you don't, then you should see another surgeon in consultaiton to determine on examination if there is a concern that needs treatment. Some hematomas, which are blood collections under the dermis, can calcify and form rock-hard masses but this is not a guarantee, and more often than not, the body dissolves them after they become liquified.
Web reference: http://www.thenyac.com/liposuction/index.html
These answers are for educational purposes and should not be relied upon as a substitute for medical advice you may receive from your physician. If you have a medical emergency, please call 911. These answers do not constitute or initiate a patient/doctor relationship.


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Villandry à vélo
Trip Start
Jun 05, 2010
Trip End
Jun 26, 2010
Along the way, we passed fields of poppies, rivers and creeks, families out fishing and walking the trails, etc. It was truly the second beautiful day we've had here and we certainly made the most of it.
The girls had fun singing on the way, getting many thumbs ups and other encouragement in our cycling and singing endeavors.
Once at the castle, we locked up the bikes and toured the gardens, walking the lower Renaissance gardens, meant for admiring, and then we walked the reflecting pool and minimilast upper gardens, meant to inspire inward reflection and interior journeys.
At last, we were rewarded with flower-flavored ice cream and crepes before biking back to Tours. The way back was much easier since we knew the way, whereas the journey to Villandry, with poorly marked trails leading out of the city, was a bit of a challenge!


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Minnesota is never an easy place to play. This year, however, the Twins may be a tad easier to handle. They have had injuries galore, along with many losses in the off-season that have so far, been difficult to overcome. Sounds like a recipe for success for the Halos.
The Twins have the worst record in baseball, along with one of the worst pitching staffs, for that team, in years. But starters Scott Baker and Anthony Swarzak are doing what the two unknown A's starters did to them earlier in the week, baffle them completely. Baker and Swarzak threw a combined 15 innings, allowing just 7 hits, and no runs. Swarzak was particularly impressive, allowing only 1 hit in his 8 innings of work. Thankfully, Peter Bourjos was able to get a hit, or Swarzak would have joined quite a list of nobodies who have no hit the Halos. I'm guessing here, but didn't Eric Milton no hit the Halos at the beginning of his career?
I felt the Angels would get the Twins for the 2nd straight night. On Friday, they were down 5 nothing before tying the game in the 8th, then winning it in the 9th. It was an impressive offensive display for the Halos, coming against a beleaguered Twins bullpen. In less than one inning of work, the Angels pounded 3 Minnesota pitchers to the tune of 7 hits, 1 walk and 6 runs. Coming in to the 8th inning the Angels had 6 hits and no runs. Bad bullpens can kill a team.
The Angels have a better bullpen than the Twins, at least I think they do. It took 5 pitchers after Tyler Chatwood to put the Twins down. Minnesota even had the tying and winning runs on base in the 9th before Justin Walden was able to close the door.
You may be, but I'm not, a big fan of Hasinori Takahashi or Kevin Jepsen. Takahashi gave up a run on Friday, and the winning run on Saturday. Kevin Jepsen did get an out on Friday, but gave up 3 straight hits on Saturday to tag Takahashi with the loss. Jepsen, Takahasi and Fernando Rodney are Jekyll and Hyde pitchers.
Jered Weaver is back on the beam. He pitched just as good a game as Swarzak, but like the rookie, got a ND. Weaver is an amazing pitcher. I like to hassle about not erecting statues, and all, but to think where the Halos would be without him is scary. He has only given up 61 hits in 85+ innings. Plus, he is almost averaging almost a strike out per inning pitched. Wow!!!
Sadly, he knows his Angels career is going to end. Listening to him on the radio, he made it clear he wants to stay an Angel, but he is keenly aware that the Angels don't have a long track record of re-signing their own free agents. Vladimir Guerrero, John Lackey, Chone Figgins & Bengie Molina are a a few of the former Angels that weren't brought back. I think Weaver will be 30 when he hits the open market, and will be a huge loss for the Halos, but he'll look good in a Yankee or Red Sox uniform.
But I bet you Jeff Mathis, Jepsen and Rodney will still be twirling away in Halo red. Sorry, I just got mad at the thought of losing Weaver. Thinking about it, the Angels appeared to make the right move on Figgins and Lackey, but not on Guerrero and Molina.
Russell Branyan is still looking for his first hit as an Angel, but he has struck out 3 times in 6 at bats. I promise you, he'll soon hit a shot that'll make you jump out of your seat. I don't know when, but it's coming–right?
Angels wrap up their series in Minnesota tomorrow. Let's hope they don't get no hit–haha. Shouldn't happen, as they have faced Carl Pavano before.
Go Angels!!
About the Author
Written by Bill Mahoney
O'kay I'll talk about myself a little. I've been working in the television/radio industry for over 21 years. I started at 2 so I am just a tad over 21 (That is a joke). My career has taken me around and and even out of the United States. Right now I call Vegas home, but I just never know where life will take me next. Until 2002 my irrational love for the California/Anaheim/LAA had taken me down some very dark roads, but with Arte Moreno in charge I finally saw the a light at the end of the road. I really love most every sports and having as much fun as possible.


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continuing education
As a nursing assistant, one of your primary roles is to collect and communicate information. That information is collected by observing clients and communicated by reporting to the nurse and/or documenting in the client's chart. By being able to recognize what is abnormal, you'll be ensuring a better outcome for your client(s)! For example: your client, Mrs. Jones has a slightly reddened area on her hip that was not there last week. She tells you that the area is sensitive to the touch. You know that these symptoms are the early signs of a pressure sore. By catching and reporting these abnormal observations, Mrs. Jones has a better chance of receiving quick treatment for her developing pressure sore. To learn more about abnormal vital signs, pain, mental status, nutrition, elimination, skin, and more, check out our NEW inservice: "Recognizing and Reporting Abnormal Observations." |
Did you know that nearly 70% of hospital admissions and 23% of nursing home admissions in the U.S. are a result of non-compliance? This happens because a client has not followed their recommended plan of care and their disease or condition has worsened tremendously. So, you can see why it's so important for your clients to follow orders. However, there are many reasons why these orders may not be followed, such as: read more » |
Did you know that the average load of dirty laundry contains 100 million E. coli bacteria? And, studies have found that more than 60 percent of washing machines are contaminated with fecal matter. Do these numbers surprise you? Check out our newest inservice addition to Just for CNAs: "Infection Control in Home Care" to find out how you can keep your clients safe from harmful bacteria. This topic is filled with tips about common infection control challenges faced by home health aides... just like you. It also includes information on disinfecting surfaces, doing laundry, "sharps" disposal, household pests and food safety. You'll also find dozens of tips for keeping clients' homes as germ-free as possible. |
Seven new topics have been added to our inservice library! Click on the links below to check each one out. |


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Top Definition
Utterly lacking in atmosphere.
"What, you think a few ferns and some bad house music makes this place any less atmovac?"
by Piratehead
March 31, 2006
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