Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road

Friday, November 03, 2023

Currently Reading Cover Love: Double Z

How come we don’t have awesomely cool covers like this anymore? Thankfully, we can still find them and the awesomeness of cool covers aren’t lost in the dust bins of history.

Thursday, November 02, 2023

The Black Mountain (Nero Wolfe #24) 3Stars

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Black Mountain
Series: Nero Wolfe #24
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 176
Words: 66K

I think this was the first Nero Wolfe book that I would have been ok if I had never read it. This was very much a post-worldwar two spy novel but not quite a cold war thriller. It felt like it was the worst of both.

Wolfe’s adopted daughter does something incredibly stupid and gets killed for it. And Wolfe goes traipsing off to his homeland to find the killer, not to kill him, but to apprehend him and bring him to justice in the American court system.

First, I didn’t feel bad about the daughter dying. We’ve met her in previous books and man, was she a real witch. She also managed to manifest every single trait that I despise, so her getting killed was a cause of rejoicing for me. So Wolfe trying to get her killer brought no joy to the main occupant of Bookstoogeville, ie, me.

Second, reading about Wolfe traipsing around Europe holds as much appeal to me as drinking a quart of motor oil. I realize Stout was trying to get them out of the familiar, both in terms of setting and even storyline, but it didn’t work for me. It was like watching some actor who has spent his whole life being a failed comedian suddenly take on a role of an action star. It just doesn’t work.
Finally, Wolfe’s absolute insistence on bringing the killer to justice. The killer wasn’t American, didn’t kill an American and was allied with anti-American forces and it wasn’t logical at all what Wolfe wanted.

Even with all that, it was still excellently told and totally worthy of 3stars. Rex Stout is that good.

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia:

As Archie is about to leave the brownstone for a basketball game, Sergeant Purley Stebbins calls with news that Wolfe’s old friend Marko Vukcic has been shot and killed. After Archie identifies the body, Wolfe joins him at the morgue and insists on being taken first to the crime scene and then Rusterman’s Restaurant, owned by Marko.

Wolfe and Inspector Cramer question the employees there, and Wolfe and Archie return to the brownstone to find a surprise visitor: Wolfe’s adopted daughter Carla. She and Marko have been involved in a movement to secure Montenegro’s independence from Yugoslavia, and she is furious at Wolfe’s refusal to support the effort. Wolfe tries to question her, but she is reluctant to give any information, since she believes that he may be in league with the government of Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union.

During the three weeks following the murder, Wolfe pursues various lines of investigation and gets a second visit from Carla, enraged that the police are now looking into the movement’s background. Following this meeting, he gets three updates from Paolo Telesio, an informant in Bari, Italy. The first states that Carla has returned to Bari and crossed the Adriatic Sea into Montenegro; the second is a cryptic message on the killer’s location — “the man you seek is within sight of the mountain”; the last states that Carla has been killed. Realizing that “the mountain” must be Lovćen in Montenegro, Wolfe makes immediate plans to go there and find Marko’s killer, accompanied by Archie.

The two fly to Europe, making their way to Bari and taking temporary shelter in a house owned by one of Telesio’s friends. Telesio arranges for a guide to ferry them across the Adriatic; from there, the two hike through the foothills of Lovćen and eventually secure a ride to Rijeka Crnojevića and then Podgorica. Jubé Bilic, a college student, drives them to Podgorica and drops them off at the office of Gospo Stritar, the local police chief. Wolfe gives a fake name and passes himself off as a Montenegro native who has lived abroad for many years and is now returning to decide which side to support in the struggle over Yugoslavia’s future, and Archie as his American-born son (to explain his inability to speak Serbo-Croat).

Although Stritar is skeptical of Wolfe’s explanation, he allows the two to go about their business, but dispatches Jubé to follow them. Wolfe and Archie travel to the home of Marko’s nephew Danilo, who had passed the messages on to Telesio and who has been helping Marko and Carla smuggle weapons and supplies in from the United States. Danilo learns of Jubé’s surveillance and has him killed, then reluctantly agrees to take Wolfe and Archie into the mountains for a meeting with Josip Pasic, one member of a guerrilla team in the independence movement. From Pasic, Wolfe learns that Carla had begun to suspect that a spy had infiltrated the group; she slipped into Albania to infiltrate a Russian-controlled fort and gather information, only to be killed instead.

Wolfe and Archie sneak into the fort, where they hear screams coming from one room. Inside, they discover Peter Zov, a man they had previously seen in Stritar’s office, being tortured by three Russians. Their leader berates Zov for going to New York and killing Marko on Stritar’s orders, hampering Russia’s goal of taking over Yugoslavia if the Tito regime is overthrown. Carla had gained the favor of the other two Russians; when they realized who she was, they killed her.

Wolfe and Archie storm the room, and Archie kills the Russians and frees Zov. The gun he used to kill Marko is found elsewhere in the fort, and Wolfe makes up his mind to take him back to New York to face justice rather than exact revenge immediately. Once the three have returned to Podgorica, Wolfe pretends to have decided to commit himself to the Tito regime and offers Stritar a large bribe in support of it. Stritar produces a letter (a fake sent by Telesio as a red herring) which states that “Nero Wolfe” will be remaining in New York and sending funds to support the independence movement. Zov is dispatched to assassinate him as an associate of Marko.

The three return to Italy, where Wolfe and Archie arrange a trans-Atlantic ship voyage under their assumed names and Zov comes aboard as a steward. Wolfe insists on having Zov brought to the brownstone so that he can reveal himself on the spot. When the ship pulls into the New York harbor, though, a news photographer spots Wolfe on the deck and calls his name. Zov draws his gun and shoots Wolfe, wounding him in the leg before being tackled by the rest of the staff. Satisfied that both murders can now be closed, Wolfe tells Archie to call Cramer.

All My “Nero Wolfe” Reviews

Wednesday, November 01, 2023

Cthulhu’s Reign (Cthulhu Anthology #13) 3.5Stars

Title: Cthulhu’s Reign
Series: Cthulhu Anthology #13
Editor: Darrell Schweitzer
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 267
Words: 102K

One of my biggest issues with the Cthulhu mythology has always been that it never actually happens. Either the elder gods are staved off by heroic human intervention (in most cases it is simply the elders not caring enough and waiting) or they do break through and that is the end of the story. I’ve always asked myself, so what is the logical conclusion to this mythology? What happens next?

This book answers that, in spades.

The story that stuck in my mind the most was “The New Pauline Corpus”. It was a Catholic priest/monk who had gone insane trying to reconcile the Bible with the events of Cthulhu’s coming. It was very weird because parts would be repeated, but subtly changed and incorporating the previous “questions” as now stated fact. The author, Matt Cardin, at least knew his doctrine enough to not make a complete fool of himself. That I can appreciate it. Didn’t actually care for the story, but that’s kind of to be expected what with me being a Christian.

“Spherical Trigonometry” was a story about an occultic rich genius who figured out that if he lived in a house with no angles, that he could survive the apocalypse. He brings his wife and the architect of the place and her husband to this new “ark”. It seems to be working. But he’s a complete jerk and nobody likes him. The husband of the architect is the narrator of the story and tells how his wife is locked out one day because the genius thinks he saw one of the monsters and won’t take a chance that it might get inside. So the architect dies, poor woman. This obviously sets the husband against the rich occult guy and the rich wife hates her husband, because he ignores her. Thus the husband and the rich wife carry on an affair. And the story ends with the eldrich forces invading the ark and eating them all because they had formed a “love triangle”. It was a terrible play on words and I laughed my head because everbody died. Which is how a good Cthulhu story should end.

The final story I want to talk specifically about is “Her Acres of Pastoral Playground” by Mike Allen. That has a man who invoked the Necronomicon to save himself, his wife and his daughter by creating a parallel dimension that they could reside in when the elder gods came. Problem is, it didn’t quite work right. His daughter is now just a disembodied voice, his wife is actually a tentacle monster who he forces to be in the form of his wife and he had to cut out all of his own memories of how he sacrificed his daughter to make it happen. He occasionally sees outside and that the elder gods are just waiting. As time has no meaning for them, his end has already come. The story ends with him finding himself infected by the tentacle monster and thus he knows his time is short. It was deliciously horrific.

Overall, I felt that each story stuck to the theme of “what comes next” very well. Nobody wandered off the reservation and told a story about their “pet cause”, as I’ve seen happen in other Cthulhu anthologies. I’m going to say that Darrell Schweitzer, the editor, kept a tight hand on the helm of this book and it really shows. I’m impressed. And as you all know, impressing The Bookstooge is what all editors and authors live for.

★★★✬☆

Table of Contents:

Introduction by Darrell Schweitzer
“The Walker in the Cemetery,” by Ian Watson
“Sanctuary,” by Don Webb
“Her Acres of Pastoral Playground,” by Mike Allen
“Spherical Trigonometry,” by Ken Asamatsu.
“What Brings the Void,” by Will Murray
“The New Pauline Corpus,” by Matt Cardin
“Ghost Dancing,” by Darrell Schweitzer
“This is How the World Ends,” by John R. Fultz
“The Shallows,” by John Langan
“Such Bright and Risen Madness in Our Names,” by Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
“The Seals of New R’lyeh,” by Gregory Frost
“The Holocaust of Ecstasy,” by Brian Stableford
“Vastation,” by Laird Barron
“Nothing Personal,” by Richard A. Lupoff
“Remnants,” by Fred Chappell

All of My “Cthulhu Anthology” Reviews

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

October '23 Roundup & Ramblings

Raw Data:

Novels – 12 ⭤

Short Stories – 0 ↓

Manga/Graphic Novels – 0 ↓

Comics – 1 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.23 ↑

Pages – 3576 ↓

Words – 1125K ↓

The Bad:

Misfit Soldier – 1Star dnf for the usual reasons

Antonina – 2stars of boring boringness

The Good:

The Insulted and Humiliated – 4.5stars of Russian’y Russian’ess

Foundation – 5stars of remembering why this book is an SF Classic

Movie:

The Wolverine trilogy got worser and worser and I hated the experience overall. Definitely put me off re-watching any other superhero movies for quite some time, even ones I know are good, like Spiderman or Captain America.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

I had planned to scale back on blogging for October and lo and behold, it actually happened. Now, you as a reader might not have noticed the difference between 25 posts and 31 posts, but as the poor schlub slaving away behind the scenes, unappreciated, underpaid and not getting my fair share of everything that is totally owed me, I appreciated the break. Despite what I may say sometimes about that bloke Bookstooge, he’s alright in my books. In fact, he’s so nice you should probably say something nice to him too, just to let him know you appreciate him letting me take a break.

The Pumpkin Festival was a great kickoff to the month. Temperatures definitely moved into Fall territory and I found myself wearing my hoodie to work in the mornings. Worked zipped along and there’s no new guy in sight, so I’m stuck with the guy I have been since August. Time to suck it up and just accept the fact.

I did a lot of work on my blog. Got the Author Index done through the B’s, so I am currently working on the “A”s now. I started this project about a year ago, so it is going pretty good. Once I get the A’s done, then it will be going through each letter to add authors that I missed while working on the Index. After that, it will just be a monthly maintenance kind of thing. I can easily do that 😀

Relieved some stress with the rant post but like those things always are, the relief was simply temporary. The man who invents a permanent stress reliever that has no negative side effects will be a rich man indeed. I’d buy one in a heart beat.

I went up and down emotionally all month long. It was exhausting and I am seriously hoping that the rest of the year evens out a bit. Little and big things, it didn’t seem to matter, it sent the pendulum swinging and I just had to hang on and ride it out.

Plans for Next Month:

1: I plan to start reviewing the Jane Austen novels, starting with Sense & Sensibility.
2: I plan to watch and review four different versions of S&S, ranging in dates from 1971 to 2008.
3: Magic and Artwork will continue as normal.
4: Groo will continue, for the foreseeable future, to be the only regular comic/visual medium I read.
5: I plan to start closing the gap between my reading and reviewing. Right now I have over 3 weeks buildup between and I’d like to draw that down to 1 week by year’s end. I’ll either read less or review more, no idea which right now 🙂 You won’t notice a difference but it is something going on in the background.
6: REAL Thanksgiving is coming and I need to do a Thankful Post.
7: Finish up the Buddyread of Farsight with Dave and Markus by the 25th.

Monday, October 30, 2023

Crumble - MTG 4E

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Charmed Life (Chrestomanci #1) 3.5Stars

Title: Charmed Life
Series: Chrestomanci #1
Author: Diana Jones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Middlegrade Fantasy
Pages: 195
Words: 70K

While I thoroughly enjoyed this, I can see why it didn’t take off like a certain young wizard with a scar on his forehead. Cat doesn’t start off as the main character and even when he’s pushed to the forefront by circumstances, he is a very passive guy and just lets things happen to him. I thought his older sister was going to be the main character, but she turns out to be a main villain and is so bad that she’s willing to sacrifice her brother for her own ends. That’s some bad family dynamics right there.

Chrestomanci is a magician of great power with a wonderful wife and two children Cat’s age and he’s the obligatory powerful good adult in the stories. While The World of Howl books are still middle grade, they are ostensibly about the adults. Here, the children are the main characters. That changes the dynamics of the story. Part of that is that Jones allows her children characters to BE children, to think and act like children, which means they do some really stupid things even when they are trying to do the right thing. At times it was very frustrating for me, as an adult, to watch Cat do exactly the wrong thing but it fit so I just gritted my teeth and held on. And it all turned out ok in the end, as good middlegrade fantasy should.

When I posted the Currently Reading & Quote post last month, the humor hit me just right. The Howl books were semi-humorous and I enjoyed them, but I wasn’t sure if it would work in another series. While not exactly a laughathon, the humor displayed in the CR&Q post was indicative of what the story contained as a whole and it really worked for me. I didn’t give this the “humor” tag because everything wasn’t funny (like say, the Discworld books were meant to be) but there was humor interwoven so nothing was too drear and dark.

On a final note, the synopsis behind the details code is almost 1600 words. Read at your own risk. I know I wouldn’t!

★★★✬☆

From Dianawynnejones.fandom.com/wiki

While on a summer outing with their parents, Cat and Gwendolen Chant are orphaned when the ferry their family is riding crashes. The two siblings are among the few survivors; Cat believes this is because Gwendolen is a witch, so she can’t drown, and Cat himself clung to Gwendolen. The town sets up a trust fund for them, and they are taken in by Mrs. Sharp, a kindly older woman who lived downstairs from them. Mrs. Sharp is an Certified Witch, and she senses Gwendolen’s innate talent. They go through the siblings’ parents’ belongings and find three letters from Chrestomanci, which Mrs. Sharp barters to Mr. Nostrum, the necromancer next door, for magic lessons for Gwendolen.

Gwendolen excels in her studies and becomes the darling of the neighborhood, who dote on her and give her presents. Cat takes violin lessons to balance Gwendolen’s magic lessons, but his playing is horrible and Gwendolen turns his violin into a cat the neighborhood adopts and calls Fiddle. A Fortune-Teller reads Gwendolen her fortune and predicts she’ll rule the world someday if she goes about it the right way. Miss Larkins, the neighborhood favorite before Gwendolen, tries to predict Cat’s fortune out of jealousy. She goes into a trance, and a man’s voice tells Cat how glad he is to have found him, but that he must be more careful: four are gone already, and he’s in danger from at least two directions. That evening, Gwendolen writes to Chrestomanci.

Soon after, Chrestomanci himself comes in person and expresses a wish to have Gwendolen and Cat come live with him in his castle. Gwendolen is exultant, believing she’s off to rule the world; Cat, who loves his home in Wolvercote, is morose. They set off a week later by train in grand style and travel to the far countryside, where they’re greeted by a man named Michael Saunders, who introduces himself as their tutor. Michael drives them from the platform to Chrestomanci Castle, where he brings them through a side door and hands them off to the housekeeper, Miss Bessemer. That evening they dine with the Family and meet Chrestomanci’s wife, Millie, and their children, Roger and Julia.

Next morning, Cat and Gwendolen begin lessons with Roger and Julia. Gwendolen and Julia get into a small magic duel over breakfast, after which lessons commence. Cat, who is left-handed, does as usual and pretends to be right-handed when Michael isn’t looking, and Gwendolen shows she knows next to nothing about anything that isn’t magic. Michael loses his temper when he discovers Cat writing with his right hand, and dismisses them both from the schoolroom before lunch so Roger and Julia can have their magic lesson: Chrestomanci, he says, has forbidden them both from learning magic for the time being.

Gwendolen, feeling she’s not begin given the attention she deserves, grows steadily more and more furious and determines to make Chrestomanci notice her. On Wednesday, when they get their pocket money and a free afternoon to go down to the village, Gwendolen visits a seedy magic provisions supplier named Mr. Baslam to buy magic ingredients and some illegal dragon’s blood. During dinner, she summons ghouls to loom at the windows, but Chrestomanci merely asks the butler to close the curtains.

Gwendolen declares magical war on Chrestomanci and casts one problematic spell after another as the days pass, but still no one acknowledges even that. She receives a letter from Mr. Nostrum, only to find that Chrestomanci already opened and read it, to her further fury. Her feud with Julia turns into a second war when she turns Julia’s skirt to snakes during supper. On Sunday, when the go to church, Gwendolen bespells the figures and saints in the stained glass windows to run from pane to pane, causing mischief and raising a disturbance among the congregation. Chrestomanci still pays her no mind, but Millie is furious.

That Wednesday, Gwendolen’s dragon’s blood arrives in time for Chrestomanci’s dinner party. The children eat dinner separately and are told to stay in their rooms. Gwendolen obliges and returns to her room, where she uses her dragon’s blood to grow insects to monstrous sizes, summon skeletons, and conjure the same ghouls from before, and send them all to interrupt the party. Chrestomanci and Michael force their way into her room before she finishes; Chrestomanci boxes Cat’s ears for not interfering, and Michael spanks Gwendolen and strips her of her magic.

Next morning, Cat wakes up and goes to Gwendolen’s room, only to find that Gwendolen has disappeared and left an exact look-alike in her place. This strange girl, Janet, comes from a parallel world that has no magic and is much more modern. Terrified of what Chrestomanci will do or say when he discovers what Gwendolen has done, Cat and Janet agree to keep the switch a secret. Janet relies on Cat as struggles to pretend to be Gwendolen, and they both must deal with the messes Gwendolen has left behind: a spell turning the maid Euphemia into a toad, twenty pounds owed to Mr. Baslam for illegal dragon’s blood, an outstanding feud with Julia, and a secret plan of the Nostrums in which Gwendolen and Cat are both involved.

Janet and Cat resolve to run away to Janet’s world, where Janet promises Cat he can live with her and her parents as her brother. As they make their plans, Janet discovers a matchbook tucked among Cat and Gwendolen’s parents’ belongings and deduces the nine matches held inside are Cat’s nine lives. Cat, in disbelief, attempts to prove her wrong by striking one of the matches. Before Janet can stop him, Cat erupts into flames, and Janet does the only thing she can think to do: call for Chrestomanci. He arrives immediately and douses the fire, then explains to Cat that he did, in fact, have nine lives, but now he only has three. Cat realizes it was Chrestomanci’s voice he heard Miss Larkins speaking with back in Wolvercote.

The next day, Sunday–two weeks after Gwendolen and Cat arrived at the Castle–Cat and Janet stay home while the rest of the Castle Family and staff go to church. They take the opportunity to filch a bit of dragon’s blood from Michael Saunders’s workshop, then sneak into Chrestomanci’s garden, which serves as a gateway to other worlds. At the center there is an arch, and when they sprinkle a bit of dragon’s blood before it, its middle become window-like, displaying an image of Gwendolen as queen in another world. She notices them, but before Cat and Janet can escape to Janet’s world, the Nostrums appear in the garden using Cat’s signature from one of his school essays to teleport to his exact location. They are followed by more witches and warlocks, many of whom Cat recognizes from Wolvercote, and once they’re all arrived, the Nostrums summon Chrestomanci.

Chrestomanci appears instantly, and immediately the Nostrums seize upon him and bind him with silver, his weakness, preventing him from using magic. They immobilize Cat and tie him to the stone before the arch, revealing that their plan with Gwendolen is to kill an innocent child–Cat–before the arch, breaking Chrestomanci’s magic and opening the way to other worlds. But before they can kill Cat, Janet vanishes, and Gwendolen appears in her place. Gwendolen reveals to the Nostrums that Cat has nine lives and recounts what she did with some of them, explaining that they’ll have to kill him several times; this infuriates the Nostrums, because it means Cat is a powerful enchanter in his own right, and to kill him they’ll first need to discover his weakness. Before Gwendolen offers to leave so they can use her double, Chrestomanci tells them the cat, Fiddle, which Gwendolen had turned from a violin using one of Cat’s lives, is in the garden. All the witches and warlocks set off through the maze-like garden to search for the cat, leaving Chrestomanci and Cat alone at the center.

Cat is shocked and heartbroken by his sister’s betrayal and at how very little she cares for him. Chrestomanci galvanizes him to action, telling Cat how to use his magic to break them both free of their restraints. Cat manages to free Chrestomanci just as they’re discovered, and Chrestomanci holds the returning witches and warlocks off and begins to summon the Family and Castle staff. Cat realizes Gwendolen is using his magic against them, preventing Chrestomanci from summoning Millie. He takes his magic back and joins in the battle as Millie arrives.

The Family round up the members of the conspiracy, but Gwendolen escapes and seals herself off from the rest of the world, dragging Janet back into the garden in her place. The Family holds an impromptu picnic in the garden. Chrestomanci explains that they brought Cat there to train him as the next Chrestomanci, but they didn’t know if Cat knew of his magic or not, or whether he was just as amoral as his sister, which was why they’d kept him out of the loop. He offers to find a way to send Janet back to her world, but Janet says the double who replaced her was happier there than in her own world, and Chrestomanci admits that the rest are just as better off in their new worlds. He and Millie offer to adopt Janet and let her remain at Chrestomanci Castle as their legal ward.

– All of My “Diana Jones” Reviews

Saturday, October 28, 2023

The Innocent 3Stars

Title: The Innocent
Series: ———-
Author: Harlan Coben
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 338
Words: 105K

This wasn’t nearly as complicated as Gone for Good, and I’m very thankful for that. But at the same time, it is very obvious that Coben has a list of “include these plot points” and he just rolls a couple of dice to figure out which ones to put into the story. While not exactly recycled, there are just too many similar points for such a reader as myself. Not to brag (which usually means the person is about to brag), but I’ve read enough books, both good, bad, really good and really bad, to see this kind of thing coming from a mile away. And I wear glasses.
~buffs nails

At the same time, I’ve decided that I will start reading a series with a central main character instead of these standalone stories. They might work fine for those who read 5 books a year, but I’m sorry, I’m way out of those peoples’ league. And I need Coben to write at my level, not theirs.
~buffs nails again

Yep, letting my reading snob show here. I don’t care. I have standards. I really do my best to keep that snobbery from showing when it comes to other people, but when it is about the books “I” read on “my” blog, well, I get sick and tired of holding it in all the time. Darn this curse of good taste, it is a real burden on my shoulders.
~buffs both set of nails

Ok, I’m done now. The snobbery can go back in its box for another year or two. Maybe three if I can get on a good roll.

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia.org

Matt Hunter is a seemingly ordinary man in suburban New Jersey with a pregnant wife, Olivia. But Matt’s past is not so ordinary. In his late teens, Matt tried to break up a fight involving his friend, and wound up unintentionally killing the other fighter. While his friends spent time in college, Matt was behind bars serving time for negligent manslaughter. Now nine years after being released from prison, Matt is a paralegal in his brother’s law firm and his life is looking up. However, the past won’t seem to go away. As Matt and Olivia try to buy a house in his old neighborhood, neighbors and local authorities make it clear he is not welcome. After Matt receives disturbing photos from his wife’s phone, a man who is tailing Matt ends up dead. Matt soon learns that Olivia also has a past that she’d like to forget. Unable to trust anyone, Matt and Olivia are forced to work outside the law to save themselves and their future.

All My “Harlan Coben” Reviews

Friday, October 27, 2023

Currently Reading Buddy Read: Farsight

Have started a buddy read with Dave and Markus. We’re reading Farsight by Phil Kelly, a novella about the Tau from the Warhammer 40K universe. We’re going to wrap things up by November 25th, so lots of time. If you have any interest in joining us, leave a comment and we’ll work out the details! Otherwise, shut up, sit back and be jealous of how awesome we are 😉

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Foundation (Foundation #1) 5Stars

Title: Foundation
Series: Foundation #1
Authors: Isaac Asimov
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 234
Words: 70K

Foundation is one of those books/series that I read in highschool, then again in Bibleschool and then yet again as an adult. When I read Foundation back in ‘08. I only gave it 3stars. Looking at my review, I don’t give any indication of why. I suspect I was expecting some sort of epiphany experience and when that didn’t happen, I blamed it on the book.

This time around I had more experience with a wider range of Asimov’s work. I’d seen him at the top of his form and I’d seen some of his better left forgotten stuff too. This was a collection of very dependent short stories and I loved every single second of it.

With just a few words Asimov sets the stage for 1000 years of future history. We meet Harri Seldon for all of 4, maybe 5 paragraphs and yet when his hologram appears again, he’s one of the most real characters in the stories. Trantor, the planet city, the Empire itself, are all sketched in with a very light touch and yet we are told enough that our imaginations can fill in all the gaps (well, if your imagination hasn’t atrophied in todays bookish culture).

Asimov’s strength has always been “The Idea” and he works that to the fullest here. I loved it.

★★★★★

From Wikipedia

Called forth to stand trial on Trantor for allegations of treason (for foreshadowing the decline of the Galactic Empire), Seldon explains that his science of psychohistory foresees many alternatives, all of which result in the Galactic Empire eventually falling. If humanity follows its current path, the Empire will fall and 30,000 years of turmoil will overcome humanity before a second empire arises. However, an alternative path allows for the intervening years to be only 1,000 if Seldon is allowed to collect the most intelligent minds and create a compendium of all human knowledge, entitled the Encyclopedia Galactica. The board is still wary, but allows Seldon to assemble whomever he needs, provided he and the “Encyclopedists” be exiled to a remote planet, Terminus. Seldon agrees to these terms – and also secretly establishes a second foundation of which almost nothing is known, which he says is at the “opposite end” of the galaxy.

After 50 years on Terminus, and with Seldon now dead, the inhabitants find themselves in a crisis. With four powerful planets surrounding their own, the Encyclopedists have no defenses but their own intelligence. At the same time, a vault left by Seldon is due to automatically open. The vault reveals a pre-recorded hologram of Seldon, who informs the Encyclopedists that their entire reason for being on Terminus is a fraud, insofar as Seldon did not actually care whether or not an encyclopedia was created, only that the population was placed on Terminus and the events needed by his calculations were set in motion. In reality, the recording discloses, Terminus was set up to reduce the dark ages based on his calculations. It will develop by facing intermittent and extreme “crises” – known as “Seldon Crises” – which the laws governing psychohistory show will inevitably be overcome, simply because human nature will cause events to fall in particular ways which lead to the intended goal. The recording reveals that the present events are the first such crisis, reminds them that a second foundation was also formed at the “opposite end” of the galaxy, and then falls silent.

The Mayor of Terminus City, Salvor Hardin, proposes to play the planets against each other. His plan is a success; the Foundation remains untouched, and he becomes its effective ruler. Meanwhile, the minds of the Foundation continue to develop newer and greater technologies which are more compact and powerful than the Empire’s equivalents. Using its scientific advantages, Terminus develops trade routes with nearby planets, eventually taking them over when its technology becomes a much-needed commodity. The interplanetary traders effectively become diplomats to other planets. One such trader, Hober Mallow, becomes powerful enough to challenge and win the office of Mayor and, by cutting off supplies to a nearby region, also succeeds in adding more planets to the Foundation’s control.

All of My Asimov Reviews

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

The Insulted and Humiliated (The Russians) 4.5Stars

Title: The Insulted and Humiliated
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Translator: Garnett
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Classic
Pages: 534
Words: 145K

This was probably the most Russian of the Russian novels I’ve read to date. A fiance dumps the guy for some rich prince, but not because he’s a prince but “because she loves him”. And the main character helps them both. He becomes the shoulder for the woman to cry on when things go hard, he listens to the princeling when he is at his stupidest (all the time), the princeling has zero will of his own and completely lives his life in the moment and by his emotions, the parents of the girl and princeling are suing each other and the main character finds and befriends a sick orphan girl, who dies in the end. The princeling marries someone else and the girl and the main character are left knowing too much has happened for them to ever return together.

Oh man, how can you NOT love something like that? It was distilled misery, like Grade AAA Maple Syrup, but Misery instead. It was glorious and I found myself, on several occasions, pumping my fist in the air and mentally exclaiming, YES, that’s a new low, how can you beat that? And Dostoyevsky must have heard me from the grave, because he kept one upping me.

The story itself is very slow and this was all about the characters interacting. If you want interesting characters, read this. Dostoyevsky knew people and what’s more, he knew how to translate that to the written word. This reminded me very much of a Dickens’ story and I daresay that Dostoyevsky is just as good as Dickens about creating characters and situations.

While I am not sure I would recommend this as an introduction to someone who wants to get into Classic Russian Literature, I would recommend it just to see if they can handle the misery. This book is like a stress test to see if someone can handle CRL in general and not necessarily a test to see if they like CLR. There’s a difference and you need to be able to differentiate between what you can handle and what you like.

★★★★✬

From Wikipedia.org

Natasha leaves her parents’ home and runs away with Alyosha (Prince Alexey), the son of Prince Valkovsky. As a result of his pain, her father, Nikolai, curses her. The only friend that remains by Natasha’s side is Ivan – her childhood friend who is deeply in love with her, and whom Natasha has rejected despite their being engaged. Prince Valkovsky tries to destroy Alyosha’s plans to marry Natasha, and wants to make him marry the rich princess Katerina. Alyosha is a naïve but lovable young man who is easily manipulated by his father. Following his father’s plan, Alyosha falls in love with Katerina, but still loves Natasha. He is constantly torn between these two women, too indecisive and infatuated with both to make a decision. Eventually, Natasha sacrifices her own feelings and withdraws in order for Alyosha to choose Katerina. Meanwhile, Ivan rescues an orphan girl, Elena (known as Nellie), from the clutches of a procuress and learns that her mother ran away from her father’s (Jeremy Smith’s) home with her sweetheart, a man who abandoned her when Nellie’s mother gave birth. It is later revealed that Prince Valkovsky is Nellie’s father. Her parents were legally married, but Prince Valkovsky persuaded his young and innocent wife to rob her father, Jeremy. After moving to Petersburg, Nellie’s mother asks her father for forgiveness, but he rejects them. Before dying, Nellie’s mother makes Nellie promise to never go to her real father, whose name is on a document she leaves her daughter. In an attempt to make Nikolai (Natasha’s father) reconcile with Natasha, Ivan persuades Nikolai and his wife to adopt Nellie. By telling them her life story, Nellie makes Nikolai’s heart soften and he forgives Natasha and removes his curse, and they are reunited. Natasha’s family plans to move from Petersburg, but just before they leave Nellie dies from a chronic heart condition; the little girl makes it clear to Ivan she does not forgive her father for his cruel treatment of her mother. She also tells him he should marry Natasha. The story ends with Nikolai and Natasha considering what a waste everything has been to that point and how they can never be togetherl.