Mirroring Its Subject, Story Builds Slowly Then Explodes
590060
On the cusp of 1900 while doctors Minor and Murray were working across the pond on the Oxford English Dictionary, in the recently completed novel Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, a tropical hurricane of  immense proportions was hurtling unannounced toward Galveston, TX and its  meteorologist, Isaac Cline. I've had great luck so far with turn of the  century historical non-fiction, this is my second novel after The P&tM.  Like all great disaster epics the reader is introduced to a variety of  people whose lives this will alter, and even snuff out.  The beginning  exposition moves slowly, describing the events of the day, as well as  Isaac's childhood, eventual rise through the ranks of the nescient weather  bureau, and ongoing rivalry with his brother. Interspersed with the  background of the major players are pages detailing the birth, development,  and murderous progress of the storm, humanizing it in a way that reminded  me of Peter Benchley's malevolent sharks and squids. Erik Larson does a  commendable job unraveling the politics which lead to the blatant disregard  of the storm warnings in Cuba. Without this information relayed ahead, the  hurricane slams into Galveston full force killing 8000+ citizens.  The  novel really takes off at this point, moving at a speed to match the  flowing current, as the reader bounces back and forth between characters.  Families are decimated, houses collapse, parents see their children slip  away into the sea, refugees struggle through 12+ foot flow. Through all the  devastation and terror the author keeps a menacingly placid tone, he does  not sensationalize.. and it is this almost dispassionate view which lends a  chilling aspect to the death that abounds; it is so frank and curt that it  desensitizes. Once again man pays for his hubris with tragedy. Recommended.
4237012
A young professor struggles to survive the intrigues of a devious and powerful group while he seeks the legendary secret of heaven, a hidden truth that could change the world irrevocably.

Aiden Leonardo, a Professor of Biblical Studies and Folklore at the University of Illinois-Chicago, wakes up in a hospital with a head injury sustained during the murder of his friend, Lazzaro de Medici, that left him with temporary amnesia. He is being held under protective custody as a murder suspect when his girlfriend breaks him out. Aiden and Miriams flight sets off a series of chases, investigations, and encounters with the feds, many who are corrupt, that results in an underwhelming conclusion. The authors use of third-person omniscient is jarring, often switching perspectives within a dozen lines or less. Clichs abound, with impeccably dressed villains (some who later join the good side), shadowy foreigners and mysterious strangers, characters who conveniently display their advanced martial arts skills when assaulted by baddies, angels/demons/gods running amok, and a plot that hinges around a lost, ancient relic with upsetting implications. Names such as the magistrate and The Group are unoriginal and, paired with inconsistent characterization and a recurrent shift in tenses, suggest lax creative and editorial effort on the part of the author. Heavy-handed criticism of media, social technology, and politics and power structures lend the novel a didactic tone that the narrative struggles to overcome. Add in a plentiful helping of soul-searching for all, and the reader may as well be listening to a sermon, and not a very skillful one at that. Rampant, superfluous commentary and narrative exposition destroy the pacing, while predictable character actions and plot devices subvert whatever narrative momentum the story has left. Mr. Alexander has clearly done extensive research, and his knowledge of Christian doctrine, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, as well as textual history, is appreciated, but its not enough to buoy the novel, which reads more like a draft than a finished product.

The mystery surrounding the Lost Bible, despite being a tired trope, is intriguing enough to keep the reader engaged until the end, barely.
2754047
The Golden Tup is god-fearing rural town story told from a bystanders point of view; that is to saysomeone who is not directly tied to the situation but is still a good friend of the couple in question. This is the most important point because the entire narrative is presented as hindsight by the town expert on this matter.

Theres a large mix of religion connotations, small town gossip, and yarn spinning. The plot is just real enough to make a stomach sink and wonder what if?

 Mild spoilers ahead, a city couple moves out then buys a rundown farm, they fix it up and notice a few odd thingsnamely a spooky tree, rams head carved into an old barn, and area of the property that even chickens won't go to. As they buy their first sheep and consider chopping down the large creepy treea man they instinctually call Gabriel arrives to offer advice. Of course, our story tellera friend of the familygets all this explained to him by the spouse.

Now as many small-town stories go, this one leaves a lot of questions unanswered but instead relies heavily on implied truth. This reminded of my own life in a smaller town; people often commented about gossip but left the obvious implications unsaid.  Its worth notingrepeatedly because the narration style can be disconnectingthat all these events are covered in hindsight by a story teller. Readers are told how it ends in the first few lines.

Still, I kept reading to uncover the why mystery and see how the plot points connected. Those uncomfortable with any hint of religion, demons, or implied rebirths of whichever fallen angel they believe in should shy away. In my case, for making my stomach drop and face pale briefly, this story gets a four.
4424840
This book starts fantastically, then treads water till the end. The beginning is amazing, a carefully constructed enigma that slowly reveals its awful horror to fantastic effect. But once the secret is out, the author has nowhere else to go with his rich premise, continually recycling the same ideas and imagery over and over again up and through a weak finale.

The plot is solid but almost embarrassingly simple, more akin to a short. It is rare to encounter a book with such a straightforward story these days, where most genre writing feels compelled to include some sort of big surprises and twists along the way and/or an epic confrontation and showdown to cap the thing off. The writers attempts to twist the narrative into some larger coming-of-age statement also fall short, as the depth and humanity of the characters never really rings so worthwhile.

This book is also extremely gory, heavily involved with disease, suffering and all levels of gruesome body horror. I can confess I normally abhor that type of story, but found the authors skillful language and plotting good enough to endure the redundant descriptions of nauseous smells and vile deformations.

This book is 5-stars for its first third, which ends in one of the most terrifying and suspenseful scenes ever. But despite its solid prose, the story falls into a limp, 3-star rut through its stale ending.
121279
Cyberstorm is about several people living on the sixth floor of an upper-class apartment building who face several challenges during and after several natural and manmade disasters culminate in a series of devastating events.
This story is told through the first person point of view of a man named Mike.  He, his wife Lauren, and their son Luke are just one of several families/couples that live on their floor of their apartment building.  At the start of the story, Mike's greatest fears are of Lauren's growing distance from him and trying to gain the approval of his in-laws.  The last thing that he expects is that catastrophe is right around the corner, despite the warnings of his best friend, fellow apartment resident, and consiracy theorist, Chuck.

The characters are introduced very quickly from the very start of the book.  Unfortunately, there were so many characters introduced so quickly, it was difficult for them to be very well developed early on.  The characters' personalities seem to contradict themselves at times during the first half of the story.  For an example, Mike very early in the book was a sarcastic skepticist about all of Chuck's little conspiracy theories, but very shortly after the first reports of cyber attacks and bird flu were being released, Mike is suddenly swept up by Chuck's theories and seems as if he has become a true believer.
The characters eventually bloom into their roles and they become well defined as their personalities and histories are better explored throughout the events of the story.  There is enough time spent developing these characters so that they aren't bland nor are they difficult to keep apart.  I find a lot of stories where supporting characters are barely focused on that they often blend together.

The story itself started out rather slow, making it a little difficult to get into.  But plugging along, events start to escalate and there is sort of a snowball effect as several catastrophies begin to pile up on each other.  In hindsight, I realize that this slow start emulates how one situation slowly grows worse as more variables get thrown into the equation.  It reflects how one incident alone may not be something to be terribly concerned about (ie: a strong snowstorm), but add to that other factors (loss of power, no cell service, extreme cold, disease) and people begin to react with more urgency, more emotion, and sometimes less rational thinking.

I felt that Mather did a very good job describing the difficult situations the characters had to go through during the story.  Issues such as staying warm, obtaining food, cleanliness, disease, lending aid to others versus reserving resources, trust, and others are explored.  This story deals with both the good and the bad that comes out of people during times of stress.  It describes people's reactions to their environment and methods for survival.

The technological bits about the book were the ones that I was most skeptical about.  Using cell phones to communicate off of one another without the use of cell towers or service, or uploading GPS and photos onto a pair of night-vision goggles are just a few examples.  I don't completely doubt that this can be done, but the fact that this was done by a young adult "Joe-Shmoe" off the street does raise questions of believeability.

Overall, the book was entertaining.  It was fairly cheap to buy on the kindle, so I feel that it was worth what I spent.  This isn't a mind-blowing suspense/thriller end-of-the-world type of story.  It isn't a story that hasn't been done already either.  But I think it does a very good job describing the human factor when people are put under extreme stress.  If you want to read something that will occupy your time for a few hours, then this is a good book to pick up.
802827
The story is very underdeveloped. As soon as an event happens that the reader wants to hear about, the author changes subjects.
2650370
The story of Afghanistan's transformation over the past several decades provides a fine backdrop to an intricate narrative with interrelated plots. The story itself is interesting, although at times formulaic and predictable. I can hardly unravel mysteries, yet I predicted some of Hosseini's key plot twists many chapters before his stupefied characters realized what was obvious. Still, the story is fast-paced and exhilarating, even as revelations fall flat.

Aside from a riveting plot, the book lacks the major characteristics of a good novel with literary pretensions. Although some characters are morally complex--such as the narrator's father--others are almost stock personalities. Villains are evil; good guys are untiringly angelic. (Observe Assef and Hassan particularly. I can't elaborate because that might spoil certain plot twists.) The prose is equally simplistic. Friends of Hosseini's narrator marvel at his supposed greatness as a writer. Yet the narrator can only tell his story through clichs. At one point, in a distracting aside, the author even defends his hackneyed writing style: "I always thought clichs got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead-on." Yes, they can be dead-on. But they are also tired and formulaic, as is Hosseini's prose, which only detracts from a brilliantly plotted story.
3705147
Starts great, but toward the end goes downhill, as if it's written under pressure to end in a hurry.
3291924
The story is a classic whodunit with some clever touches and twists thrown in.  The author starts out as if he meant to write a major work of literature.  He tries very hard and, for a while, succeeds. The imaginative plot, florid language and moody atmosphere hooks the reader early.  Unfortunately, the author runs out of steam about half way through.  This is not to say that the story degenerates.  The pace continues and the book remains a good read to the very end.  But the nature of the work changes; it turns into a popular "novela" with all the expected elements: love, sex, baudy humor, violence, etc.  One even finds oneself reading faster. Each reader can decide which half s/he prefers.  I would have gladly exchanged the last 100 pages for a shorter, tighter story in the opening style of the work.  It coulda been a contender!
2984844
This story is kind of like a crock pot meal. It doesn't cook fast, and it takes a while for it to get cooking, but eventually some savory flavors begin to fill the air, and the end result is worth the wait.
  In contrast to some of Wheeler's other works, (take Goldfield for example), the plot of this book is built slowly.  Having finished the book, I feel guilty saying this, but quite frankly I wasn't spellbound the first third of the book.  Around halfway into it, I begin to appreciate both the writing and the characters a bit more, and it wasn't really until the last quarter of the book that I really found myself "into it." That being said, I was truly glad I read it and truly felt as though I caught a real life glimpse into a real life town, Virginia City. In fact, I was touched by the story and found out I was truly interested in what happened to the characters. Like Goldfield, I also found myself interested in studying more about the star of the book, Virginia City.
  The story's protagonist is Henry Stoddard, an aged man recounting his time in Virginia City from its early days to its to its eventual but unavoidable demise. It is also his personal account of his search for meaningful employment, a cure for his bachelorhood, and his own personal observations of life in a mining boom town.  I recommend this book and encourage you to stick with it, even if you find it a bit slow at the beginning.  The pacing of the plot is the only reason this is not a five star book.
4894690
THREE-AND-A-HALF STARS

Fantasy usually concerns itself with sweeping subjects. The rise and decline of ancient empires. Fell magics as old as the cosmos. The terrible tolls mighty armies extract on the field of battle. You get the idea: It's a Texas-sized genre. Small doings and personal struggles generally need not apply unless they somehow factor into the grander picture. That's why Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories (which have largely fallen out of the popular consciousness) read so differently than contemporary fantasy. Though they contain all the tropes, such as swords and spells and spectacularly strange beasties, their protagonists are petty criminals preoccupied with petty deeds. In fact, Leiber's first installment in the series, Swords and Deviltry, feels more like crime fiction than anything else.

Grown to near manhood in the Cold Waste north of the Trollstep Mountains, barbarian Fafhrd once stood to inherit a chieftain's life and the hand of a beautiful maiden. But an insatiable longing to see the civilized south bore him away from the land of his birth. In another corner of the land of Nehwon, Mouse had planned to spend his days studying gentle conjurations with a humble hedge wizard. Yet when a local lord's prejudice lead to his mentor's death, he took up the sword and a new name -- the Grey Mouser. When the two meet by chance in smoggy Lankhmar (called City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes), a meeting conducted over the unconscious bodies of professional thieves (their loot hastily divvied up by share), an impromptu agreement is sealed between the northman and the former magician's apprentice. Come peril or danger, fire or blood, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser will face it together.

Time magazine's Lev Grossman named the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories in a list of his favorite fantasy novels, calling their protangists "pure hard-boiled noir." This may be a bit of an overstatement, particularly in Swords and Deviltry's opening novella, "The Snow Women." Intended to explain Fafhrd's origins, it's a slow slog through cold wastes, one alternately serious and silly. Jealous womenfolk weave deadly ice magic and pelt interlopers with frozen snowballs. A village leader plummets to his death attempting to leap a gorge on skis. Flush with jealousy over a comely southern dancer, Fafhrd knocks over the tent of one of her admirers with a sleigh. Only during a climactic battle near the story's end do the kid gloves come off and the hardboiled tone asserts itself with a vengeance. ("His sword came away almost before the gushing blood, black in the moonlight, had wet it, and certainly before Hrey had lifted his great hands in a futile effort to stop the great choking flow. It all happened very easily.")

The other two tales fare better. "The Unholy Grail," which details the Gray Mouser's background, is a classic revenge story, showing how the unjust killing of mild-mannered Mouse's mentor turned him into a remorseless rogue trapped between light and darkness. A subtle, slightly ambiguous ending only adds to the intrigue. But "Ill Met In Lankhmar" is the best out of all of them, a slow-burning noir that gradually grows more and more dire, culminating in the kind of all-out martial rush that high fantasy does so well. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser's robbing from the Thieves' Guild teaches them that there are higher prices to pay than one's own life. Deviltry provides an intriguing twist on a oft-stale genre.
506607
This is an unemotional telling of the story of Edward Delaney, a New York police captain, whose wife is slowly dying from an infection that can't be cured with antibiotics. He wants to retire to focus on his wife but there's a gruesome murder and in the midst of city politics, Delaney choose to look into murder (and those that follow), using amateur contacts he has collected over the years to work through the backbreaking paperwork and narrow the suspects.

The beginning -- in which we are introduced and get to know the mindset of the murderer -- is a bit slow and long but once the first murder happens, the action picks up perceptively, only slowing down toward the end. Interesting writing by going back and forth between what Delaney thinks and does, and then a chapter on what the murder is thinking and doing.
4506800
Story is a gripper at the outset, then slides away from the focus on the "system" to focus on "born again," where it loses its punch.
4686648
The Great Inland Sea has a strong story in it--a slow coming of age and awareness, a stark childhood setting, a fiery (literally) dream girl, a dead mother who haunts the main characters thoughts and a living father who does the same, a return "home" to see if it can indeed become that.  But the novel never met its promise I thought, especially after its strong beginning when 12-yr-old Darwin observes his mother, trussed and gagged to her bed, just before her death.

  Darwin ends up running all the way from his home in the Australian desert to America, escorting a horse named Unusual to a Maryland farm where he ends up taking a job breaking horses. There he meets Callie whose outsized personality and ambition (she's known to start fires, she wants to be the first female jockey, she tours the near country running betting horseshows) immediately sucks him in, for good and bad.  Their rocky relationship continues for a while then seemingly ends, at which point Darwin heads back home and begins to explore both a new relationship with his father and his own past, especially with regards to his mother--her youth, her strange marriage to his father, her relationship with their single farmhand (long gone), and her mysterious death.  Soon though Callie invites him to a horse show in Mexico and when he returns home it will be with Callie and the long-gone farmhand as past and present collide and answers start to fall.

  As mentioned, the book starts strongly but its flat-voiced narration and tempo, which I granted him early on as in accord with Darwin's shock and grief, never altered and eventually grew wearisome, dragging the energy of the book down.  The sparseness of language has its poetic moments, there are some beautiful lines here, but the unvarying style, like the voice and tempo, also grew wearisome.  The same was true of the characters themselves, who all fit into the same type and voicing.  These stylistic decisions led to too great a distancing between the characters and myself and I found myself caring less and less what happened to them.  Though I finished the book, by the end I was hoping for someone to show up in person on the farm or as part of the many flashbacks, that would break the patterns of behavior, voice, and mood.  Someone to add a dash of color or a bit of loquaciousness or visible passion not marred as Callie's was with self-destructiveness or dark childhood secrets.

  It isn't that the book was too quiet, it was too monotone in its silence.  I'd try a second book by Francis as the prose was often quite strong, but this one I can't quite recommend.
3519014
City of God is one of those rare books were the sum of its faults is outweighed by the magnificence of the narration. It is a story unique in that its central conceit is based around religion  often a component left out of most speculative works  even in science-fiction and fantasy. In a post-apocalyptic world where civilization has reverted to tribalism, the Aether is a mystical energy conduit which allows some users to draw on the power to act as healers and defenders. But theres always two sides to the coin. These users are witches to another tribe, one that just lost the ability to control its source of the Aether, and so, on a zealot march through the wilderness, they seek to reclaim the lands and the source of power in the name of their one true god.

The story follows our main character, Nathaniel Grey as he is caught in the wrong place and the wrong time. Now, suddenly on the run with two witches Grey finds himself confronting all he once held true, as he is pursued by those from the city he fled. In essence, it is the story of someone with myopic vision and unquestioning faith suddenly coming to terms with the world at large. Not everything is as black and white as he was taught. As the story closes, our normally passive hero must question his deepest beliefs and decide for himself what god he serves.
The most frustrating part of an otherwise solid novel was how much Nathaniel waffled. Every step he took forward in breaking his dogmatic chains, he took a step back. Stubborn for sure, this obstinacy, combined with Nathaniel essentially drifting along for most of the book with no agency of his own, leaves the reader slightly aggravated with our hero.

While Stadelmann comes at that narration with the same painstaking attention to detail a Renaissance artist may take at painting a church ceiling, it does serve at times to keep the pacing quite slow. For my tastes, I like books that take their time, but even so, if twenty percent of the story were to fall off the page, its doubtful many readers would notice its absence, and it may serve to keep those same readers thumbing through the pages at lightspeed.

A thinner book may also have left more time for a sturdier ending. Im unsure if the book was left unresolved in order to leave room for further stories, or if the ending was meant to be, like the religious text spoken of in the story, left open for interpretation. I was unsure if the Aether was meant to be left vague, but I still questioned how it was used as a power source and how it enabled certain technologies of some tribes, but not of others, even after the last page was turned, or even why the use of it as magic was so verboten in light of what it could do.

Despite the slow pace and drifting MC, the narration is solid. This feels and reads like a book published by a major publisher. The criticisms Ive levied at the book are similar to criticisms Ive left at the door of books that are considered mainstream. This is a solid book and I heartily recommend it to anyone who appreciates religion being brought into science fiction and fantasy. Ill be looking out for future works by this author. 3.75 stars rounded to 4.
2577953
The story opens slowly with the disjointed ramblings of an old man close to death.  As the ramblings begin to shift into focus, the narrative switches to twelve-year-old Sol, explaining the ghosts in his life.  The account focuses on one short month in Sol's life, using the memories recounted to him by others and his own logical guesses to fill in missing information.

Sol appears as a carefree farm boy near the turn of the century, and while the time and setting are important to the tale he unfolds, it is a story without time or place.  There are undercurrents around Sol over which he has no control; his destiny is largely decided by the decisions and misunderstandings of those around him.

Weems' characters are dimensional, human; they are people we meet daily.  His narrative moves like an undertow--pulling the reader relentlessly, but not overt.  The reader wants Sol to prevail over the evil in the world and is caught in his story.  The author sees most people as basically good, and he offers to each the opportunity for a happy ending.  It is a hypnotic story.  We can hope the Weems has many more.
4269180
This novel has a rather unique writing style, one that I found at times to be spot-on in capturing the way some people's minds almost surely work. What was disturbing was that it was often difficult to determine what was paraphrased dialog and what was the first-person narrator's thoughts. Also, I found the primary characters' stages of inquiry, born of the simple curiosity of the duo regarding the identity of a small group of, perhaps, terrorists or religious extremists, to be too thin for most of the story. As the narrator muses somewhere toward the end of the book, some discussions/conversations are far more tangential commentary than focused attention to the presumed topic. And so it is with this book. Characters wander in and out of the life of the narrator's character, the ensuing dialogs wandering here and there to explore some aspect of the human condition. With the infrequent presence of most characters, it was more difficult to stay straight about the nuanced differences in their personalities, their interests and their roles in the plot. (Actually, my reading is that most of the supporting characters where little more than foils for the protagonist narrator.) In some ways, this novel reminds me of _My Dinner with Andre_ with it's philosophic dialogs, although there is clearly a more complex cast and storyline in _The Names_.