Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, what have you.

Book Review: The Oxygen Farmer

The Oxygen Farmer
Colin Holmes
CamCat Books
Copyright 2023 by James Colin Holmes

“Mil” Harrison is a stubborn old man. In his seventies, he’s been living on the Moon for half of those years. His job? “Farming” oxygen (getting it out of the lunar regolith) to be used for life support and fuel. He’s got the knowledge that comes with his years to be able to fix most of the physical problems he deals with, the experience to know which rules can be “bypassed” when necessary, and the general respect and collection of favors to be given some slack when he does choose to “bypass” a rule.

While trekking across the lunar surface to collect a part he needs for a repair, he takes a shortcut across an “exclusion zone”. Normally, these are Thou Shalt Not Enter Under The Severest Of Penalties areas. He’s not worried; no one seems to know just why this particular area was given that designation. Then he quite literally stumbles over something that isn’t supposed to be there….. And when he investigates the site – because he can – he finds something really interesting and REALLY dangerous.

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet (1969)

I know you’re asking (and if you’re not, you should be) “Why is this guy reviewing an old soft-core porn flick?” Well, one of my guiding principles here is that any movie worth talking about should have something in it to justify the conversation – even if the movie is an example of what not to do.

I also maintain that there is a difference between pornography and erotica: if you remove all the sex from something and what’s left still has some value and interest, then it’s erotica, not porn.

With that in mind, let’s NOT look at the nudity and simulated sex, and see if there’s anything left that’s worth a discussion. This will require winding up the figurative time machine and program in stops in three different eras.

First, let’s go back to the late 1950s to see what was going on in the movie industry. Continue reading →

MOVIE REVIEW: Lady Death (2004)

Things keep getting worse for Hope, a teenager in 15th century Sweden. Her dad’s a right proper bastard of a nobleman, and he’s forbidding her to leave his castle grounds, much less see her boyfriend. The locals are generally OK with him, as long as he keeps winning battles against whatever heathens are in the area.

Well, Dad goes a bit too far with his “recruiting techniques”, and soon enough, there’s an uprising. Dad pulls an ace out of his sleeve – he’s actually Lucifer himself! He makes his escape – but then the mob turns on Hope. She has to be an accomplice, and must be burned at the stake for her witchcraft!

Before she can die, two flying “things” come and take her away, bringing her to Hell. Dad / Lucifer will let her live, but she must worship him. Well, Hope isn’t having that – especially since Dad has the souls of her boyfriend and mother as prisoners. She winds up being banished to the farthest reaches of Hell (apparently, Dad can’t bring himself to kill her / let her die) – where she sets about plotting her revenge. Continue reading →

Book Review: If it Sounds Like a Quack

If It Sounds Like A Quack: A Journey to the Fringes of American Medicine
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
Public Affairs Books
Copyright 2023 by the author

It starts out innocently enough. Maybe you see the rare occasion when an old “folk remedy” actually works. Or the lifestyle changes you promote (usually diet and exercise) along with your treatment help the patient heal themselves while your treatment does nothing. Or maybe it’s just the placebo effect. In any case, the end result is the one you hoped for. So you become convinced that you have the One True Cure that can fix all the things that ail people. You go into business promoting and selling it, and an understaffed FDA (and other government agencies) can’t get out of the way of its own bureaucracy fast enough to stop you.

Word spreads, and people dissatisfied with the current health care industry (which often seems more concerned about profits than patient care) buy your One True Cure. What can go wrong, especially now that the money is coming in?

Multiply this by the Internet which gives everyone both a platform to hawk their wares and a way to find out about these “treatments”, health care “deserts” in rural and poor regions that push people to seek out cheaper alternative treatments, and a political party that encourages “individual freedom” over the needs of the society as a whole, and you’ve got a story that, in the hands of Hongoltz-Hetling, is both funny and infuriating.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Everyone in the Newton household in Santa Rosa is delighted that “Uncle Charlie” (Joseph Cotton), the younger brother of matriarch Emma Newton (Patricia Collinge), is coming over to stay a while. Especially Charlotte “Charlie” Newton (Teresa Wright), the oldest child in the family, who seems about to die of boredom in the small town. Uncle Charlie has apparently been living a well-traveled life, filled with experiences of all sorts, and can always be counted on to shower the family with presents.

But what they don’t know while we do (because we’ve seen the “prologue”), is that Uncle Charlie is some sort of ne’er-do-well. He’s living in a rooming house where he has wads of loose cash scattered about, and is dodging two men who have “staked out” the place. And he’s heading to Santa Rosa not because he wants to see his family, but because he needs to get out of town post-haste.

Will anyone in the household figure out what Uncle Charlie’s really been up to before it’s too late?

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Book Review: Pax

Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age
Tom Holland
Basic Books
Copyright 2023 by the author

We’ve long been fascinated with the Roman Empire. It’s not just that their language of Latin is one of the grandparents of English, or that a good deal of our shared culture and society can be traced back to Roman origins. There’s something about the Empire that has led it to keep reappearing in popular culture, from the epic costume dramas of the 1950s to the TV shows of more recent times. Could it be we’re obsessed with the details of Roman life – the food, drink, and clothing? Or perhaps it’s the more abstract things – the philosophy, the “ethos”, the “mindset” of what a Proper Roman Citizen aspired to?

Oh, come off it, it’s the palace intrigue, corruption, and depravity of the ruling class. It’s the rise to power of Julius Caesar and his assassination, the depravity of Caligula and Nero, and the slow, sputtering decline of the Empire that attract us.

With this third work (the previous, Rubicon and Dynasty, covered Julius Caesar and Augustus through Nero), Holland continues his chronicling of the Empire. This volume takes us from the reign of Nero through the death of Hadrian – the final ascent to the peak of the Imperial power. It’s an interesting journey; there’s the “Year of the Four Emperors”, revolts in Judea, and fighting on the frontiers from Scotland to the Danube to Persia.

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BOOK REVIEW: Stranded in the Sky

Stranded in the Sky:
The Untold Story of Pan Am Luxury Airliners Trapped on the Day of Infamy
Philip Jett
Turner Publishing Company
Copyright 2023 by the author

In the late 1930s, the epitome of luxury travel was aboard one of Pan American’s “clippers”. These huge seaplanes crossed the oceans while passengers enjoyed all the accommodations and amenities one would expect from a four star hotel. Within the space and weight requirements, of course. A single round trip ticket across the Pacific might cost you the equivalent of $40,000 today. So only celebrities, government officials, wealthy businessmen, and the occasional Pan American employee would benefit. It was still much faster than travel by sea. The airline maintained their own network of dedicated hotels on islands across the oceans to allow for refueling, maintenance, and overnight R&R for flights longer than the planes’ abilities.

“Overnight to Hawaii” – 1940 Pan American Clipper promotional film:

In the early hours of December 6/7, 1941, the Hong Kong Clipper was in Kowloon Harbor in it’s namesake territory, waiting to begin its regular shuttle flight to Manila. The Pacific Clipper had already departed Honolulu, heading for Auckland, New Zealand, via stops in Canton Island (in what is now Kiribati), Fiji, and New Calendonia. The Anzac Clipper was ready to leave San Francisco for its journey to Singapore, stopping at Honolulu, Midway Atoll, Wake Island, Guam, and Manila. The Philippine Clipper was already along that route, heading for Wake Island…. Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: Crooked

Crooked: The Roaring ‘20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal
Nathan Masters
Hachette Books}
Copyright 2023 by the author

When most people think of Warren Harding’s presidency, one of the first things that will come to mind is the “Teapot Dome” scandal, where federal oil reserves were sold off to oil companies to the benefit of people in the Harding administration. Less well-known to us today, but even more outrageous was the contemporary scandal at the Veterans’ Bureau. The Bureau was purchasing goods for far more than market price, surplus goods were sold off for much less than they should have been, and millions of dollars were flat out unaccounted for.

Senate committees were investigating all this. But the biggest scandal was, quite simply, that the US Attorney General and the Justice Department weren’t doing anything at all to help the investigations.

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BOOK REVEIW: Time Trials

Time Trials
M.A. Rothman & D.J. Butler
Baen Books
Copyright 2023 by the authors

I don’t usually care for novel series. More often than not, you have to commit to reading the complete set of novels in order to get the entire story. Or the follow-up novels are just a case of the publisher telling the author “That book did really well. Write another one, with the same characters and same universe.” It gets annoying when you can tell it’s just a cash grab on the order of the Transformers or Fast and Furious movies.

The worst ones are where they can’t be bothered to indicate anywhere on the cover that the book is part of a series. Do I need to read all the ones that came before it to figure out what’s going on? Will I have to read all the following books? Do I have to read them all in a specific order?

Fortunately, there’s a blurb from Kirkus Reviews right on the cover that lets you know what to expect with this one: “An entertaining first entry in what promises to be a fantastic time-travel series.”

 

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Book Review: The Clockwork Dynasty

The Clockwork Dynasty
by Daniel H. Wilson
Doubleday Books
Ccopyright 2017 by the author

June Stefanov is an expert in the repair and restoration of antique “clockwork” devices and automata. She got into the trade thanks to some unintentional inspiration from her Russian grandfather, who survived the Battle of Stalingrad and bequeathed to her both a tale of a mysterious soldier of superhuman ability and an unusual bit of metal he recovered from that hellscape.

Now, she’s been summoned to an old church in Oregon, where they have one of these devices in storage – and is badly in need of repair. Unfortunately for her, there are people who would rather she didn’t fix it – and she finds herself caught up in a centuries-long battle among a hidden cabal of quasi-immortal machines.

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