Tag Archives: Book Review

BOOK REVIEW: Trespassers at the Golden Gate

Trespassers at the Golden Gate: A True Account of Love, Murder, and Madness in Gilded-Age San Francisco
Gary Krist
Crown Publishing Group
Copyright 2025 by the author

It should have been fairly straightforward. She shot him in broad daylight, in front of dozens of witnesses, and was immediately taken into custody. Laura D. Fair killed lawyer and aspiring politician A.P. Crittenden in a fit of jealousy. That much was obvious. But as the trial dragged on, it quickly became clear that Crittenden was a two-timing bastard who had strung Fair along for years, promising her that he’d divorce his wife, and marry her. The bum deserved what he got, but what would be an appropriate punishment for Fair?

Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: Sand, Snow, and Stardust

Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments
Gretchen Heefner
University of Chicago Press
Copyright 2025 by the author

The Army was caught by surprise in WWII. Not by the enemy, but by the conditions in North Africa. They were expecting a hot, dry, flat expanse of sand. That may have been the case in the east with the British, but in Algeria and Tunisia, the terrain was rough and rocky. In December, it got bitterly cold at night. And it rained, turning the dry land into a quagmire. None of the gear and equipment they had was useful.

The Army was going to have to learn – and quickly – how to function in deserts. Similar lessons about the fickleness of Nature would have to be learned in Alaska, too (though for some reason, Heefner barely mentions the military bases in the tundra there). Especially since – once the Nazis and Japs were defeated – they would quickly have to turn their attention to containing the Communist Menace, even if it meant bases in Libya and Greenland.

Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: Slither

Slither: How Nature’s Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World
Stephen S. Hall
Grand Central Books
Copyright 2025 by the author

Snakes.

Love ’em or hate ’em, there’s little in-between.

Hall, a professional science writer, would probably fall into the “love ’em” category. Here, he introduces us to some of the researchers studying them, presents in an easy-to-follow manner some of their recent findings, and comments on our strange relationship with the creatures over the millennia.

Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: Service Model

Service Model
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Tor Publishing Group
Copyright 2024 by Adrian Czajkowski

If Charles the Valet-Bot were programmed to feel boredom, he’d probably be bored out of his mind over the constant repetitiveness of his tasks. There’s never a single change in the daily routine; his misanthropic hermit of an owner is content to just sit around his estate watching TV all day.

Until one day when Charles starts finding unusual reddish stains everywhere. He slowly comes to the conclusion that his owner was murdered – and he’s the murderer. This means he must report to Central Processing to be reprogrammed, since one cannot have killer robots on the loose.

This starts “Uncharles” (as he now designates himself) on a picaresque odyssey across a post-collapse landscape, searching for another master to serve – and trying to make sense of all of this.

Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: The Great River

The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi
Boyce Upholt
W.W. Norton & Company
(c) 2024 by the author

The Mississippi River is one of the longest rivers in the world. Add its many tributaries to it – the Ohio, the Missouri, the Tennessee, the Arkansas, the Red – and you’ve got one of the greatest river systems on the planet. Upholt concentrates on the “Big Muddy” itself, giving a rough history of how people have used and tried to control it.

It’s not a perfectly linear history; like the river itself, he meanders quite a bit. A quick look at how people decided on what would be the source of the river gives way to the geological history of the river basin, which goes right in to its ‘discovery’ and exploration by Europeans. Then comes its role in the development and growth of the United States, complete with steamboats and river rafts. And then it’s back to the past as people start wondering about all those odd mounds that seem to pop up all around the river.

Continue reading →

Book Review: Cascade Failure

Cascade Failure
L.M. Sagas
Tor Publishing Group
Copyright 2024 by Morgan Stanfield

It’s almost like these Sci-Fi stories are coming from a Plot Generator:

1. A disgraced former officer
2. A down-on-their-luck small business owner
3. A ragtag crew on an equally ragtag ship

Stumbles on

1. A conspiracy to hide a mass killing
2. An alien race threatening to wipe out humanity (or at least a large portion of it in an interstellar war)
3. Some massive corruption scheme to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

Can they overcome incredible odds to defeat the baddie and save the day? And perhaps

1. Make a nice profit
2. Find love
3. Resolve whatever problems were keeping them “on the outs” in the first place

along the way?

There’s actually nothing wrong with using such a Plot Generator Device; it’s been fairly common in creative writing workshops. The trick is making a good story out of the proposed plot.

Continue reading →

Book Review: In Our Stars

In Our Stars: The Doomed Earth (Part 1)
Jack Campbell
Ace Books
Copyright 2024 by John G. Henry

The Earth Guard is tasked with protecting the space lanes in the inner Solar System. Intercepting ne’er-do-wells, clearing debris that might interfere with travel, and generally convincing people that it’s safe to travel between the planets. But the Guard is corrupt. Not in the way that everyone’s on the take (though that certainly happens at the highest levels); they are corrupt in that, at the command level, they are lazy. Anything that significantly disrupts the normal routine is A Problem. Anything that makes extra work is A Problem. And Problems are to be dealt with as quickly and easily as possible, before they become even bigger Problems.

So when the Vigilant, on a very routine patrol, comes across a HUGE hunk of debris from a spacecraft of unknown design, that’s A Problem. And when Lt. Kayl Owen, leading the team checking it out finds a survivor, that’s also A Problem. When the survivor says she’s Lt. Selene Genji of the Unified Fleet and claims to come from forty years in the future, well, that’s a Much Bigger Problem. And when she says she knows about the aliens who have just arrived in the Solar System, partly because she’s got some of their genetic material in her, well, that’s A Serious Problem that calls for a Solution with Extreme Prejudice. And if that troublemaker Kayl Owen, who believes her story and has take a liking to her, can be dealt with at the same time, well….

Continue reading →

Book Review: Book and Dagger

Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II
Elyse Graham
Ecco Books
Copyright 2024 by the author

You could, if you want, blame Secretary of State Henry Stimson. In 1929, he’s alleged to have stuck his nose in the air and said “Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail”, and then shut down most of the United States’ foreign intelligence apparatus. So we were caught flat-footed when the Japanese attacked twelve years later.

Now it was up to William Donovan, the newly appointed head of the OSS, to put together his agency from scratch. The “Research and Development” side would be easy – just get a bunch of technical people to design and build all the secret devices of spycraft. But for the “Research and Analysis” department, which would collect and study the mountains of data needed by the US Military, you needed people with highly specialized training.

So that’s why a Yale English professor found himself at a “secure location”, learning how to silently kill someone with a knife, and how to deal with being interrogated by the enemy. Oh, by the way, you’d only need to hold up under capture and interrogation for 48 hours. Not because by that time they’d be done with you, or that you could expect to be rescued by then, but because that’s how long it should take for your contacts to forget they ever knew you and “vanish”….

Continue reading →

Book Review: Every Living Thing

Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
Jason Roberts
Random House
Copyright 2024 by the author

The Scientific Revolution kept rolling on. The Copernican Revolution changed how we look at the universe. Isaac Newton crystallized several lines of inquiry into modern physics. Now it was time to tackle the life sciences.

Two geniuses would set things in motion by taking on the huge task of organizing and classifying living things. In Sweden, Carl Linnaeus was set on becoming a doctor, but he found the field of botany more fascinating. In France, Georges-Louis Leclerc, the self-styled Comte de Buffon, used a lucky inheritance to indulge his passion for “natural history”. A brief work in statistics (“Buffon’s Needle”) got him noticed, and soon he was picked to be the “superintendent” of the Royal Garden* in Paris, where he was given the task of cataloging the massive collections.

Roberts treats these two contemporaries with a dual biography, showing how they approached the matter of the abundance and variety of life from two different directions.

Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: FTL, Y’All!

FTL, Y’All!: Tales From the Age of the $200 Warp Drive
Edited by C. Spike Trotman and Amanda Lafrenais
Iron Circus Comics
Copyright 2018 by Iron Circus Comics

As an “Old Fogey”, I remember when comic books were something you found in the checkout lines at the supermarket, or perhaps in a bookstore or newsstand. They were just “there”; I never had the inclination (or money, or time) to care about them. And that was pretty much what most people thought of them. Sure, we all knew about Superman and Batman (and Archie), but that was thanks to TV. No one ever took them seriously.

Then Art Spiegelman published Maus, and showed quite convincingly that the format could indeed produce works of real merit. Rather suddenly, all the comic geeks demanded to be heard, because there really was some good stuff being done in the medium. Though I have to differ with the term “graphic novel”; most of the works aren’t long enough to be called a novel – “illustrated short story” is better.

I still didn’t get into them, though. Same reasons – didn’t care to. Then a chance pickup of a little sample flyer from Iron Circus Comics piqued my interest, so I thought I’d give their website a look.

FTL, Y’All! is an anthology of stories based on a simple premise. In the near future, plans for a faster-than-light drive appear online. And the parts are all readily available for the cost of around $200, and can be easily assembled without any special skill.

What happens then, when pretty much everyone who wants to can build their own starship?

Continue reading →