Category: Fiction

Book Review: Clash of Eagles by Smale (3.5 stars)

Clash of Eagles

by Alan Smale

3.5 to 4 stars

Good but not great.

As other reviewer(s) have noted, this ends up being a one-man show almost exclusively – Marcellinus, the Praetor of the XXXIII Legion, marching west across the Appallacians towards the mighty Mississippi years before Horace Greeley penned the phrase “Go West, young man.”  The Romans, and their Norse scouts, encounter various Native Americans with startlingly advanced technology for a stone-age culture lacking even the wheel*.

Marcellinus is the only truly fleshed out character.  All others – Romans, Norsemen, Native Americans – are barely cardboard cutouts in comparison.  Some of the Cahokians, in the latter half of the book, get more interesting, but not by much.

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The Current Economics of E-Books « L.E. Modesitt, Jr. – The Official Website

http://www.lemodesittjr.com/2015/01/16/the-current-economics-of-e-books/

For my aspiring and published author friends: observations on the ebook market by Modesitt

Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon

Syfy’s Ascension Jumps The Shark In Its Very First Episode

http://io9.com/syfys-ascension-jumps-the-shark-in-its-very-first-episo-1671860541

Meh.  I don’t need another police procedural in a fish bowl. Ugh.

I began to suspect something was extremely fishy within the first couple of minutes.

If it was really early 1960s, then the examining doctor would not be wearing blue latex gloves.

Once we the audience ‘knew’ Ascension was a spaceship, my first thought was the microgravity problem. No spinning section yet people are walking around and using elevators like it’s a skyscraper.

And when a prisoner is locked in a cell it included a very modern shiny stainless steel sink and toilet combo.

The ‘Big Reveal’ arrived in the last minute, and sealed my dislike for this show.

Where are the explorers and scientists?

Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon

Update Mid-Afternoon:  And this show gets negative marks for the role of women in this ‘society.’  I find it extremely hard to believe that a society would be so locked in time (early to mid 60s) and not change little if any in fifty years.  For better or worse, some change would occur.  And there would be considerable wear and tear on the physical media: books, magnetic tape, film, vinyl, etc.  Most spaceship environments are also quite damp, which would have caused mold and mildew issues.  I wonder home many cathode ray tubes had to be provisioned as well as vacuum tubes.

BigRead: Veteran Panel Discussion Video

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BwkpP9RW-I?rel=0]

 

I had the pleasure of attending the Big Read Veteran Panel Discussion this past Tuesday at City Hall in Lansing, Kansas, a signature event for the Lansing Community Library‘s “The Things They Carried” Big Read.   Continue reading “BigRead: Veteran Panel Discussion Video”

Happy Birthday Aunt Jan and C.S. Lewis!

“Happy Birthday” to my Aunt Jan in Ohio.  She’s shown between her two older brothers in the photo below taken a couple of years ago at my dad’s 70th birthday bash:

Dan, Jan and Ron (Nov 2012)
Dan, Jan and Ron (Nov 2012)

Incidentally, all of the above are born in the same month — November — as is my husband and my daughter-in-law.  I’ve blogged about this before.  Here’s a photo from their early days (circa 1953):

Dan, Jan and Ron (circa 1953)
Dan, Jan and Ron (circa 1953)

I have many fond memories of my Aunt Jan.  I remembering spending a summer or part of a summer with my grandparents (her mother and father) in St. Paul, Minnesota, when I was about six (circa 1970) and Jan was still in college (she was probably about 20). 
Continue reading “Happy Birthday Aunt Jan and C.S. Lewis!”

Big Read Discussion #1 ~ Opening Remarks by Professor Prasch

I attended the first book discussion (a second one is scheduled in January) on the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien this past Wednesday night.  Please see my previous post about the kick off of the Big Read earlier this month.  As is my wont when I attend discussions like this, I record the proceedings so I can concentrate on the lecture and discussion fully.  I used to scribble notes constantly, but besides giving me a cramp, it also prevented me from participating and enjoying the experience.  I contacted both Terri and Professor Prasch to gain their permission to include the recording and my transcription of the first third of the evening.

A bit about the transcription process:  Earlier in my life (say a couple of decades ago), I spent years as a legal secretary.  Because I typed so fast, I inherited the most prolific attorneys in whatever office I happened to be employed at.  I got to a point where I could literally type faster than most people could talk and I actually increased the speed of my transcription equipment to save time.  Those days are long gone, but I still maintain a modicum of my once magical ability to race through a tape.  This transcription is mostly verbatim, but I have taken the liberty to clean up some of the structure of the professor’s remarks.  Professors and attorneys are very articulate when they speak, so please rest assured I only glossed over the occasional ‘um’ or ‘you know’ or ‘right? ‘ and other such phrases that all of us fall into when we are thinking and talking extemporaneously.  For completeness sake, I will include the original audio files if you prefer to listen rather than peruse the transcribed content.

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Book Review: Sword of Michael by Wynne (2.5 Stars)

The Sword of Michael by Marcus Wynne

2 to 2.5 out of 5 stars

Publisher’s Synopsis:

Marius Winter doesn’t walk the road of the shaman-warrior alone. He has powerful allies in the Other Realms and in ordinary reality. His spirit guides are a Lakota war-chief and medicine man, First In Front; Tigre, a powerful feminine spirit who appears as a white tiger; and Burt, a spirit raven who channels an old Jewish bookie from the Bronx.

Now Marius is targeted by a powerful sorcerer. In the battle for the souls of his friends and lover, he must storm the gates of the underworld and fight through the Seven Demi-Demons of Hell to the deepest dungeons to confront Belial himself.

My Thoughts:

I found myself skimming and skipping most of this book.  The first two-thirds seemed your standard urban fantasy with a supernatural flare, demons and angels, the old Holy War, tied into or growing out of the Fall of Atlantis.  The dialogue was forced and re-used one-liner clichés poorly.  After about the sixth time I’d read a ‘one-liner’ I just about gave up.  I forged on, but the ‘pay off’ didn’t pay as much as just felt off.

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