Cobra II, Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor

Title:		Cobra II
Authors:		Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor
Rating:

I have finally finished the long, hard slog through this book. Some of it was interesting. Some of it was appalling. Most of it was rather dull, but those parts might be really attractive to someone who loves military history. I suppose I should really concentrate on the book rather than on the politics of the war. Let me at least start there.

The book is about 600 pages long, distributed roughly this way:

• 150 pages are devoted to pre-war planning
• 300 pages cover the war itself (roughly up to the time our fearless leader pulled his famous aircraft carrier landing and announced that the mission was accomplished)
• 50 pages discuss a few of the early post-war issues
• 100 pages are appendix, index, end notes, and acknowledgments

The chapters discussing the pre-war planning are interesting. It is very clear that Rumsfeld put his stamp on this war very, very firmly. He was the one pushing to limit our troops in Iraq. He was the one who most clearly discounted previous war plans for Iraq that required three times the troops we deployed there. He even prevented the Pentagon from using its usual troop deployment computer system and went over all the deployment requests by hand, himself, to minimize the number of troops and resources we deployed to Iraq. Whether you agree with the war or not - and it is clear that Saddam was a bad guy in any case - there are all kinds of questions that can be raised about the planning for the war.

Those 300 pages in the middle were hard sledding for me. I can read a detailed description of one battle just fine. I can even read detailed descriptions of a few battles without glazing over. But this is 300 pages of "Colonel Foo took his XYZ to some-town-I've-never-heard-of and attacked from the East. While that was going on, Captain Bar of the 2772nd Marine XFN took his platoon into some-other-town-I've-never-heard-of and attacked from the West, intending to take the bridge over the river Yadda-yadda." And so on. It is full of military acronyms that I don't know, and descriptions of both carnage and heroism.

Individually - based on this book - it seems that many (and probably most) of our soldiers were trying to do the right thing. However, as a group we wound up doing some things I find just awful. I'm no military expert, however, and perhaps (viewed from a military perspective) these things were done correctly. I honestly don't know. But they do make for some awful reading at times.

Cobra II, while it was published in 2006, doesn't cover much of the post war effort in any depth. Thus there are only 50 pages or so in that section. In any event, those pages do discuss some of the issues that we encountered in the initial post-war phase, and some of the stupid things we did in the process of trying to wind things up. One of the largest problems is that we didn't have enough troops on the ground to provide security after the war.

The Bush administration has long said it doesn't value nation building, and that it sees the US efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo as failures. Their idea was to go in quickly, get rid of Saddam, and get out. The hope was that the local people - like the Iraqi army - would assist in the stabilization effort after the war was over. In addition, they planned on getting a lot of international support afterwards. Neither of those hopes ever materialized, and (in a strange twist) we actually disbanded the Iraqi army ourselves, putting something like 300,000 unemployed and armed men out on the streets.

Several earlier war plans said we'd need something like 350,000 to 450,000 troops to win the war and stabilize the country afterwards. A Rand Corp study supported those numbers, saying that the safest peacekeeping efforts the US has been involved in have been the ones where the most troops were involved. Several other advisers told the President and Rumsfeld the same basic thing, but all were ignored. Rumsfeld, Tommy Franks, and Bush decided to go with the minimal number of troops needed to win the initial conflict, which turned out to be about 150,000 in Iraq itself. (Mind you, they were planning to fight the Iraqi army and Republican Guard, not the Fedayeen. But that's another issue that they ignored altogether when things got rolling.)

Now stop for a moment and ponder the reasons we went to war in the first place. The single biggest factor was Iraq's presumed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Bush didn't want those used or (more importantly) given to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. From this book it is clear that the military believed Iraq had WMD and would use them at some point - probably as we closed in on Baghdad. Chemical and biological weapons were both possible, and even nuclear weapons weren't unexpected.

And yet, we went in with so few troops that we couldn't even secure all of the suspected WMD sites and the country's borders. In at least some cases, military units going into the initial conflict didn't even have maps telling them where suspected WMD sites were. Thus, they never bothered trying to secure (or even examine) them as they went by. And in the chaos after the war, if there had been WMD sites scattered all over the country - as the CIA thought - they'd have been looted and their contents sold to the highest bidders all over.

In other words, if our intelligence had been right, this administration's actions would have made the world a far less safe place. We'd have chemical weapon attacks going off all over the planet by now, and all because we tried to run the war on the cheap. This was, to me, the biggest surprise of all: the incompetence of our elected leaders and military planning was offset by the incompetence of our intelligence apparatus, at least as far as Iraqi WMD was concerned.

As bad as it continues to be in Iraq - and I believe it is very bad - we're lucky it isn't far, far worse for all of us, everywhere on earth.

My overall evaluation of this book is just "it's OK". If you're a military historian, it may be a fascinating read. If you're interested in the politics behind the decisions to go to war, there's not as much of that here as you'd probably like. And if you're looking for data on the post-war efforts and events, that's mostly missing from this volume as well.

Take The Cannoli, Sarah Vowell

Title:		Take The Cannoli
Author:		Sarah Vowell
Rating:

My last review indicated that I was slogging through two books and not particularly enjoying either one. That review - of Catch-22 - was one of those books. This is not the other one. In fact, Take The Cannoli is a highly enjoyable, quickly read book of essays, some of which I've heard before on NPR - usually via a show called This American Life where Sarah Vowell is a regular contributor.

Sarah's writing is generally light and fun, often concentrating on humorous episodes from her personal life, but she does tackle some larger and/or more painful subjects. Here she covers things as dark as the Trail Of Tears, but for me her writing is at its best when it is most personal. The story of her trying to understand her father the gun nut is a gem. The pieces about American history of one sort or another - where the connection between her and the story is more tenuous - are interesting, but don't grab me quite as deeply.

This book was published in 2000, and we all know a few things have changed since it was printed. I hope she writes a book including the essays she's written during the Bush (43) years. She'll have some very interesting things to say.

Here are a few lines from Take The Cannoli that I thought were particularly good:

• "Being irrational can get so inexplicable." From Drive Through Please, about learning to drive at age 28.
  
  
• "Observing these random hobbyists try to keep up with [Nils] Lofgren is like watching Origin of the Species: The Musical." From Your Dream, My Nightmare, in which she goes to Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy Camp.
  
  
• "Sine coffea nihil sum. Without coffee I'm nothing." Her personal motto, from Dark Circles, about trying to find a remedy for insomnia.

Sarah Vowell definitely can turn a phrase. And while her work is better when she reads it in that second grade (her term) voice of hers, it seems to hold up better in written form than that of David Sedaris. It's still properly warm and fuzzy on the page, even though you know it would be funnier if she were there in person, reading it aloud.

A recommended read.

Oh, and for those who haven't seen it or don't know, Sarah Vowell is also the voice of Violet Parr (the oldest child) in the movie The Incredibles.

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

Title:		Catch-22
Author:		Joseph Heller
Rating:

I've been slogging through two different books lately, neither has been fun, and neither is all that interesting, but this one finished up first.

"What?" I hear you cry. "Catch-22 is famous! It's one of the top 100 books! It's a classic! It has to be good! It is good!"

Forget it. I don't care that it appears at number seven on The Modern Library's list. It's not that good. Not even remotely. I'm giving it a neutral rating for a very specific reason, rather than the negative rating I think it really deserves.

My reasons for such a harsh judgment are pretty straightforward:

1. It borders on incoherent. The story isn't told in any order the reader can fathom. Yes, perhaps, if you take detailed notes about a couple of things you might be able to track some of it, but overall, it's impossible to follow.
   
   
2. There is no - and I mean zero - character development. None. Not a single one of the characters we meet changes in any appreciable way during the book, except that a bunch of them die. At the very end you might think that the Chaplain has possibly changed, but three pages later the book is over and you never find out. Yossarian - in theory the hero of the book - also never changes. Right up until the very end he's still the same confused git that he was at the start.
   
   
3. There are no characters to care about in here. People talk about Major Major Major Major as being hysterically funny. He's a bit player, mentioned in any depth in a couple of short chapters and just a passing character after that. What about the guy who's extending his life through boredom? There's almost no actual mention of that here. Again, he's just not there. None of the characters has a role significant enough to cause me to get interested in them. I kept wondering when someone would do something interesting, and if I should even bother finishing the book if they didn't.
   
   
4. The characters have no motivations. Why is Yossarian good (or at least as good as he is)? Why does Nately's whore go off the deep end like she does? Why are Colonels Cathcart & Korn slimy bastards? We don't know. Nothing is ever explained about them. This just adds to the fact that I don't care about any of the characters in the least.
   
   
5. The writing is poor. Heller describes the appearance of characters we've met before almost every time we meet them again. Each time he blurs the few distinct impressions we have of them until they're all just faceless, pointless people. That may be deliberate on his part, but it keeps them from being memorable. Again, maybe that was part of the point, but if he's going to write about people we're supposed to forget, why bother writing about them in the first place?
   
   Oh, and every so often Heller tosses in a word or two that you need an OED to lookup. I'm good at picking meanings up from context - I do it all the time - but this was just pointless. All it did was irritate me.
   
   
6. It's not funny. Pure and simple. It's just not funny. I never even cracked a smile while reading this, let alone laughed out loud. It's so off that it doesn't even work as farce. That was my biggest frustration with the book. I'd been lead to believe that it was hilarious when it simply wasn't.

So why am I giving it a neutral rating? I suspect there is a matter of perspective here, and I grant that I may not have the right one. It is possible that - for its time - this was a ground breaking book. Maybe no one had written like this about WWII before. Perhaps no one had made fun of "The Greatest Generation" in this way. If so - and I think it is possible - then taken in that context it may be an important work. Viewed with my sensibilities, from 2007, though, it fails totally. But on the assumption that lots of people think it is either important or funny or both, I'm not going to trash it completely. I don't claim to understand those points of view, but perhaps there is something to them. I'm giving it a neutral rating for that reason only.

Lastly, I have another frustration to go with this book that I want to call out separately. For as long as I can remember I've known the expression "Catch-22" and wondered where it came from. I'd been told it came from this book, so I was hoping for a real explanation here. Not of what the expression means - that I understand - but why that phrase was picked. Is there perhaps some historical reason for it? Or does it come from some obscure legal jargon?

Nope. He made it up. From whole cloth. There's nothing in the book about it at all. Nothing except the first explanation of what it means. But if you search wikipedia for "Catch-22" you learn (as of the date this review was written anyway) that the book was originally titled Catch-18 and the publisher wanted it changed to avoid confusion with Leon Uris's Mila 18. Read the wiki page for the details.

Now let me be clear. If an author is good enough to get some new phrase stuck into the language as completely as "catch-22" has become a part of idiomatic English, I congratulate him or her for the achievement. Heller deserves full credit for that. But when I stand back and say "OK.. why that phrase?" there is no answer. If he'd done something really clever - based the phrase on something that was obscure but interesting or relevant, I'd really applaud him. But in this case he could just as easily have called it the "olgleblat rule" as "catch-22" (or "catch-18") and it wouldn't have mattered in the slightest:

"That's some rule, that ogleblat rule," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

See. No change. Nothing important differs. It's just silly. Now I do admire and appreciate silliness, but for it to work it has to be funny, and as I pointed out above, it's not.

I wish I'd enjoyed this book.

As it happens, I saw the movie of the same name just before starting to read the book. The movie is actually much worse than the book. Entire series of events are explained even less well in the movie. For example, I had no idea who it was that was stabbing Yossarian in the movie at all. None. I had to read the book to learn that tidbit. Of course I still didn't care, but at least the book let me know who it was. So give the movie a pass along with the book. Neither is any good.

Marley & Me, John Grogan

Title:		Marley & Me
Author:		John Grogan
Rating:

My wife was given this book for Christmas, and spent a fair bit of time howling with laughter while she read it. Then she set it down on the top of my TBR pile, so I picked it up next. The story covers the life and times of Marley, a huge, goofy, and borderline psychotic Labrador Retriever owned by John Grogan and his family. The subtitle is "Life and love with the world's worst dog" and that gives you a pretty good idea of what is coming. Marley lived a long and full life, and I can assure you that parts of it are amazingly funny. Of course, any story of this nature covers the end as well, and I spent the last two chapters bawling my eyes out as I read about Marley's failing health and eventual end.

I love my dogs. They mean more to me than almost anything, and I do my best to take them everywhere I can. Sometimes they drive me crazy, of course, but that's all part of the package deal. I won't recount their stories here - though I still need to write them up for posterity - but I will say that Nikki suffered one of the same issues that Marley did: a horrible fear of loud noises, particularly thunderstorms. If you read this book and learn what Marley was like, you've also learned about Nikki in that case, though she was a lot lighter than Marley, which reduces the damage potential somewhat.

Grogan covers more than Marley's life, though. This is basically an autobiography. He's a good writer, and the stories are good, but they are at their best when Marley is on the center stage.

Recommended reading if you're an animal lover, or want to be one.

Letter To A Christian Nation, Sam Harris

Title:		Letter To A Christian Nation
Author:		Sam Harris
Rating:

This little (91 page) book should be read by everyone. And I mean everyone. Harris clearly and concisely addresses a broad range of concerns about religion that most of us ignore or sidestep. Given he's also the author of The End Of Faith - a book I must go out and purchase - you can guess that his point of view is strongly anti-religion. I say: "more power to him."

Doug reviewed this book as well, and his comments are well thought out (it was that review, in fact, that setup my reading of the book) but I'm not sure I agree with him about the need to avoid provoking the mainstream Christians. If we don't, I don't see how anything changes for the better. Of course, there may be no way to change things for the better in any case. If it can happen, though, it's got to start here at home, in the good old US of A. Our house must be scrupulously in order before we try to lead on this (or any other) issue, and frankly, we're pretty messed up as a nation of late.

Harris is eloquent in his writing, but he holds nothing back. Here's a quote - one of many that strongly resonated with me - as I read this little gem of a book. This comes from page 73:

The truth is that no one knows how or why the universe came into being. It is not clear that we can even speak coherently about the creation of the universe, given that such an event can be conceived only with reference to time, and here we are talking about the birth of space-time itself. Any intellectually honest person will admit that he does not know why the universe exists. Scientists, of course, readily admit their ignorance on this point. Religious believers do not. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be appreciated in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while condemning scientists and other non-believers for there intellectual arrogance. There is, in fact, no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer: the creator of the universe takes an interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of the truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend eternity in hell. . . . An average Christian, in an average church, listening to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse - and there have been some extraordinarily arrogant scientists.

I wish I could write half as well.

Do yourself a favor: if you are honest about your beliefs and think that religion is correct in any sense, please read this book. You don't have to agree with it in the end, and I'm not asking you to buy it - get it from the library if you can - but please read it. It's a cry for intellectual honesty and reason from all of us. If you don't come away questioning your religious beliefs, at least you'll have spend some time thinking about them in depth, and asking questions about them that might not have occurred to you before. Hopefully you can't be hurt by that bit of introspection.

When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours, Teller

Title:		When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours
Author:		Teller
Rating:

I think I found a reference to this book on paperbackswap.com. Regardless of where I heard about it, I've always liked Penn and Teller's brand of magic, so I requested it on a whim.

Think of it as a short, light hearted biography of Joe and Irene Teller - the parents of Teller, the quiet half of Penn and Teller - by their son. It was inspired by Teller's discovery that his father had drawn cartoons at one time, hoping to be published (and make some money in the process, of course).

I found the book to be a brief but amusing diversion. The cartoons are interesting, but the center of the story is Joe Teller's life as he grew from boyhood to marriage to WWII. He spent time as a tramp, riding rail cars all over the lower 48, and some of that lifestyle is briefly documented here.

There isn't anything amazing in these pages, just anecdotes from Teller's parents as they look back on their first 40 years of life. But it is fun in its own, quiet way. I'd have liked to see more paintings by the Tellers, though. The few included show they both have significant skill with paint - far more than I will ever have.

Neuromancer, William Gibson

Title:		Neuromancer
Author:		William Gibson
Rating:

Blame this one on crystaldearest. Her review at the end of 2006 caused me to decide it was past time to reread this classic. I'd had it on my 2006 reading list but hadn't gotten around to it. Now I have.

In my opinion, Neuromancer continues to be one of the great pieces of science fiction. The plot is complex, the future real, and the characters fascinating. Some of my more recent reading has had me a bit worried. I haven't enjoyed some of the science fiction and fantasy as much as I expected I would. Perhaps, I thought, my tastes are changing. But no, Neuromancer is still every bit as good as it was back in 1984 when it was published.

For those who haven't read it, it's the story of Case (a hacker in today's lingo), Molly (a thug, but what a thug), and a few others as they commit a crime of mind bending proportions. When they are done, something new may come into existence, or they may all be dead.

Of all the characters here I have the most affection for Molly. She's always viewed from the outside - the story is told entirely from Case's perspective - so she's got a bit of mystery to her. And she really is a thug. You wouldn't want to meet her in a dark alley, regardless of whose side she (and you) are on. But she's got style, and something else - something that is hard to describe. Perhaps it's a code of ethics, though it's clear that she'll break any rules she wants. Regardless, there is something attractive about Molly, at least to me.

As I say, the story is complex and the future world presented is very real. It's dark, no doubt, but even in that setting Gibson doesn't have us give up hope. He's showing us the worst of the worst - the seedy criminal element and the ultra-rich - without spending a lot of time on the rest of the population. But they're around - called "tourists" mostly - and though the work might be called dystopian, it does have elements of hope.

Something I really appreciate about this novel is that it doesn't descend into fantasy. Gibson writes solid SF here. He doesn't violate the rules he sets up for the world. Some cyberpunk novels wind up with mysterious beings that populate the matrix and can do things outside of it. That's bugged me, but it doesn't happen here. Neuromancer is solid entertainment, very thought provoking, and non-stop action.

So thank you, crystaldearest, for causing me to reread this one. It's still an excellent book. Highly recommended.

Heris Serrano, Elizabeth Moon

Title:		Heris Serrano
Author:		Elizabeth Moon
Rating:

Malabar reviewed this book some time back. As I mentioned in a follow up to her review, it's really a combined reprint of three other novels:

• Hunting Party
• Winning Colors
• Sporting Chance

That said, these novels follow right on each other's heels, and make no allowances for those who've not read the former books. You need to read them in order to have them make total sense. Calling them a single novel isn't really out of the question as a result.

They all feature Captain Heris Serrano, who's been drummed out of the space service and has taken up employment as a captain of Lady Cecilia de Marktos's yacht. There are other major characters as well - relatives of Cecilia and friends of the same. We follow their adventures over 1041 pages.

The cover of my copy calls these books space opera. At times that title fits, but at times I wondered. Moon gets lost in the intricacies of horses and horse people a lot in these pages, and that aspect just wasn't all that interesting to me. I have a few other quibbles with these books as well.

They contain a lot of jargon relating to FTL space travel & communication, but after a while it seemed it had all been made up for convenience in telling the story, rather than trying to create a believable technological background. That got a bit annoying.

Also, there are too many coincidences here. Too many people that just happen to be present when needed, and events that are very unlikely happening at exactly the right time. It interfered with the willing suspension of disbelief in places.

However, against those issues, there are some positives. Moon does cover some interesting ground in the area of what impact extended life times (via that old SF staple, rejuvenation) would have on society. She also manages to inject the right amount of humor into the book, and the story can be very engaging at points.

In the end, I'm happy I read them, though at times in the process I wondered if I should bother. They won't be on my reread list, but they were a nice diversion. A bit fluffy, perhaps, but a diversion.

The End, Lemony Snicket

Title:		The End
Author:		Lemony Snicket
Rating:

Here I sit, trying to analyze what I think of The End by Lemony Snicket. I guess, to use a phrase that appears regularly in the book itself, it depends on how you look at it.

On one hand, the story does end, and he (Daniel Handler, the author) does resolve - to some degree - the lives of the Baudelaire orphans. That's good, and it's handled reasonably well. On the other hand, and against that initial somewhat positive note, I have to set two things:

First, there is the constant background of mystery and the general feeling that if you read between the lines closely enough you'll learn something others will miss. That may not be true, but the whole series - particularly the supplemental books - have played things up to make it appear that way. I am lousy at puzzles of almost any kind, and I find the expectation (possibly self-inflicted) that I should be reading The End and all the others with a manic intensity, trying to figure out just how Beatrice fits into everything (for example) more than a bit annoying.

Second, it must be said that many of the things behind the events in the Baudelaire orphan's lives aren't explained. I won't give specific examples - that would be spoiling things - but there are all kinds of questions that could have been answered that simply aren't. Perhaps my expectations were created by the US movie making industry that wants to create a clean, concise story with a clear ending - wrapping up all the loose ends - in about 90 minutes. I don't know. What I do know is that The End would have been more satisfying if it contained a few of the answers that I'd come to expect. That it doesn't is a bit of a problem for me. In fact, in a review I wrote of the first 11 books in the series I said: "I hope the author resolves all the various loose ends well by book 13." I guess Handler didn't do that to my satisfaction, whatever the reason.

In addition to all of that, this book suffered because it has been too long since I read the previous book and the many books before it. Not enough of the story is fresh in my head to let me recall it easily. The author does remind the reader about past events where needed, but he's sparing in that area, and I needed more than I got.

That means that I really need to read the entire thing again, top to bottom, with all the books present so I can be fresh on things as I go into each volume. It will be interesting to do so and compare first opinions with later opinions when I get around to that exercise.

The Beatrice Letters, Lemony Snicket

Title:		The Beatrice Letters
Author:		Lemony Snicket
Rating:

I wish I knew what to make of this "book". It's a small collection of letters between Beatrice Beaudelair and Lemony Snicket, billed as "supplemental material" to the 13 books of the Lemony Snicket series.

It's mildly amusing, but I wish I'd taken my own advice. Back in my review of Lemony Snicket, The Unauthorized Autobiography I said that people should steer clear and read only the actual series. I should have remembered that.

The other things I said there are also true here. If you like puzzles and have the time to try and put it all together, it may be amusing. For me, alas, it was mostly a waste of time.

Born Of Nifty, Pete Abrams

Title:		Born Of Nifty
Author:		Pete Abrams
Rating:

Do you read Sluggy Freelance? No? You mean you read my review of Dangerous Days and didn't follow my instructions then? Really?

Well, let me repeat myself:

Go, now! Drop everything for the next few hours, go here:

http://www.sluggy.com/

and get reading! Do it now. Don't wait. You're only falling farther behind with each passing day, and you don't want to do that.

Born Of Nifty is a reprint of the first three Sluggy books in one, hard bound volume, with a few add-ons thrown in. It's wonderful. Color strips are presented in color, the format is large, and the quality of the book is excellent. Add to that the ongoing, serialized adventures of Torg, Riff, Zoe (with an umlaut), Gwen, Kiki, Bun-bun, and a host of others, and you've got a great time.

Consider this a graphic novel. It's not quite that since the original presentation was in daily comic strip format, but the story lines arc over long periods of time, and the overall presentation is similar. (Abrams work gets even more like a graphic novel in more recent years, with many daily strips approaching the length of one or two full pages in a book.)

The humor here is twisted, and the characters are silly, but it all works, and works well. Reading this book - and thus rereading the first two years or so of Sluggy - was great fun. Lots of plot elements and foreshadowing that I didn't remember are here, and still affecting the story line years later. The parodies are hilarious, and the characters are wonderful.

By the time you read this it may not be possible to buy Born Of Nifty any more. It's a limited printing and available only from http://www.sluggy.com/. But you can always read the strip archives on the web site, and you should. If you like what you see there and can afford it, please buy a copy of Born Of Nifty - if you can - to help support Pete and give you a copy you can snuggle up with in a comfy chair.

Spend some time with Sluggy Freelance. You'll really enjoy it!

Broken Angels, Richard Morgan

Title:		Broken Angels
Author:		Richard Morgan
Rating:

I've been so busy I've been unable to get this review written and posted, but it's finally time to do it.

Broken Angels is Richard Morgan's follow-on to Altered Carbon. I enjoyed that first book, and with this one, Morgan has improved both his writing and his story telling.

Once again we follow Takeshi Kovacs's exploits, but this time he's not acting in the role of a detective. Instead, the plot is more like pure science fiction. Kovacs is on a planet at war and gets diverted to go after an artifact left behind by the long, long dead (or gone) Martian race. Others are going after it as well, of course, and there is always the possibility that one of his fellow team members is betraying his team.

The story is deep and complex enough to hold your attention. The writing is clear and concise, and the action keeps the entire thing moving crisply. As with the first book, there's a fair amount of violence here, and some explicit sexual content, but those are both toned down a bit from their levels in the first volume.

If I have a gripe, it's that despite the fact that we're following Kovacs through the book, there are times when he does important things off stage. That writing technique can work, but it's best to camouflage it in some way, perhaps by shifting the POV around so we're following someone else when the hero does his important work out of our sight.

In the end, though, that is a minor quibble. Broken Angels is a well written science fiction. It's fast paced, set in an interesting universe, and populated with believable, complex characters. Highly recommended.

The Man Who Fought Alone, Stephen R. Donaldson

Title:		The Man Who Fought Alone
Author:		Stephen R. Donaldson
Rating:

Life has taken some complex turns of late - in various directions - and it's been a challenge to read much of anything for nearly a month now. At last I've finished reading another novel - The Man Who Fought Alone by Stephen R. Donaldson - and it's time to write a review.

I should mention - for those who don't already know it - that I have a prejudice in this case. I almost always enjoy Donaldson's writing. I've read various things he's written - nearly all of it in fact - with the exception of his mystery series, of which this novel is a part. "Mystery series?" I hear you ask. "Isn't this the guy that wrote about Thomas Covenant?" Yes, that's him.

Back in about 1980 Donaldson began writing detective novels. He's written four so far. The first three were initially published under the pseudonym "Reed Stephens". This novel - The Man Who Fought Alone - is the fourth in the series.

"Fourth," I now hear you say. "Why did you start with number four?"

Actually, I didn't mean to. I grabbed this one out of my TBR pile and glanced at its list of other books written by Donaldson, which includes everything except any of the other "Man Who..." novels and one other (very recent) book. Based on that I assumed it was the first in the series and started in on it. Only just now - as I scan amazon.com's database for info - did I learn that it was the latest in the series. Oh well. I guess I hold the publisher who didn't list everything he should have on that page responsible for my getting things out of order. From the looks of it the series goes like this:

1. The Man Killed His Brother (1980)
2. The Man Who Risked His Partner (1986)
3. The Man Who Tried To Get Away (1990)
4. The Man Who Fought Alone (2001)

Some may wonder why Donaldson started writing mysteries when his fantasy writing was so successful. He gives you his own answer (in general terms) here:

http://www.stephenrdonaldson.com/fromtheauthor/index.php

To summarize, though, he was stretching his wings - to see how far they'd go - before tackling the really big story floating around in his head. (That really big story is The Last Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, by the way.)

So, what can I say about The Man Who Fought Alone? Well, it's a mystery novel. A murder mystery, in fact. The hero - a rough and beat up private investigator, possibly deserving of the term "hard boiled" - is Mick Axebrewder, known as "Brew" to his few friends. Like just about all of Donaldson's heroes, Brew suffers a lot through this book - both physically and psychologically - but it's not as bad as it could be. In fact, it's almost uplifting by the end. To say more - or why - would be a spoiler. Since I haven't read the first three novels in the series yet I lack all kinds of background information, but I suspect that Brew suffers much more in those earlier novels than he does here. I could be wrong, but it seems likely knowing Donaldson and seeing how Brew is treated here.

The plot is harder for me to evaluate. I've never been a big reader of mysteries - by any author - so I am not the best qualified to judge such things. I found it enjoyable and it kept me wondering who the guilty party was all along. Some of the reviews I checked on amazon.com say Donaldson gives it away about halfway through. I didn't see that, but that could easily be explained by my lack of mystery reading experience.

What I can criticize - to some extent - is the setting. Brew starts out needing a job and winds up doing security work at a martial arts tournament. Donaldson then uses that setting to expound on the martial arts in depth throughout the book. A few times I thought it hung on the very edge of bogging the story down but then recovered. Let's say I was too aware of it in some way, and that perhaps it could have been limited somewhat without losing the story. Of course, Donaldson is a second degree black belt himself, so he's writing about something he knows. I actually appreciated the background in many cases, and I'm willing to cut him some slack for discussing in detail something he clearly loves.

The only other criticism I can lay out relates to Donaldson's writing style. I love the way he writes, but for certain characters it may be a liability. Brew is used to working in squalid conditions and hanging out in places most would never go. Every so often Donaldson has him think (and less often speak) in words that I really doubt he'd know or use. Here is an example. Brew is talking to his new love interest and says: "Me neither. Heaven forfend."

The context really doesn't matter much there, but the words "heaven forfend" just don't sound plausible coming out of Brew's mouth. He's a tough SOB and I just don't think he'd actually speak that way. More likely he'd say "Me neither. Hell no."

Of course, I could be mistaken. There are those previously mentioned three volumes of "introductory" material that I haven't read yet. They might explain why Brew occasionally has a vocabulary more appropriate for an English professor than a PI. I guess I'll figure that out when I read those books.

And read them I will. This book was good enough to make me want to learn more about Brew and his partner, Ginny Fistoulari. Their history sounds interesting, and even if Donaldson's writing isn't quite right for the characters in all cases, it's still a pleasure to read.

In short, a recommended work by one of my favorite authors. Not his best effort, but easily good enough to merit your time.

The United States Constitution

Title:		The United States Constitution
Authors:		George Washington et al.
Rating:

The U. S. Constitution hardly qualifies as a novel - or even a short story - but I am reviewing it here because I read it in full, and because I have a couple of things to say about it. Nothing here is profound - or even particularly important - but I get credit for the effort none-the-less.

First, though, I should address why I decided to read it. There are two reasons:

1. I heard or read somewhere in the last several months that there is a way for a sitting President to avoid elections in a time of war, thus remaining in power. This was clearly promulgated by some conspiracy theorist as part of some paranoid tract about Bush and the ongoing "war against terror". I wanted to try to find out if (or how) a President could stay in office (bypassing elections) during wartime.
2. Since becoming a fire fighter I have twice had to sign documents stating that I would uphold and defend the constitution of the United States. That was a surprise (I figured that sort of oath would fall on the military and police, but not on fire fighter) so I thought I should refresh myself on exactly what that document says as a result.

So now I've reread it. It's not that long - about 9 pages of tiny print in my almanac, including annotations. What it lacks in length, though, it makes up for in content.

I found it fascinating that the document is so short. That the major principles governing this country can be set down so simply is quite impressive, but it also leaves the infamous gaps & gray areas that have been the realm of law and court decision for well over 200 years now. Never-the-less, the document is very tightly written, and so long as a few terms are understood - some of which I did have to look up because they are no longer in common use - it does a great job of defining the high points of how the national government should function.

As to the answer to whether or not the President can avoid elections in a time of war, I didn't see that in the document. There are multiple places that deal with the election of the President and how power is handed down in the event he cannot discharge his duties, but I see nothing about avoiding an election in time of war. I did a few Google searches to try and track that down as well, but my queries ran up against the huge volume of political content on the 'net and I couldn't find anything relevant in a few minutes of trying.

In any event, I have now read the U. S. Constitution - something I haven't done since social studies class in high school, a long time ago. It was interesting and enlightening in some ways. I wish I could have definitively answered my question, but perhaps someone with more political knowledge than I have can point me in the proper direction.

As to why I rated this document only "Good" (as opposed to "Great"), it has only to do with the language. As the years go by the language gets more and more removed from current usage, making it harder to understand the original text in context. In another few hundred years it will be much harder for school kids to "get it". The concepts are amazing - particularly as the amendments come in to correct the obvious nasty issues in the original document dealing with slavery and limiting certain major rights, like voting - but the language can obscure that wonder a bit.

Breakfast Of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Title:		Breakfast Of Champions
Author:		Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rating:

Breakfast Of Champions is the third book I've read by Vonnegut, and it is much more like Timequake than it's like Cat's Cradle. In that regard it is disappointing, but the disappointment goes beyond just that similarity. Breakfast Of Champions just doesn't hold together all that well, and though it appears to be a commentary on American society at the time it was published (1973) it looks pretty lame (in my opinion) viewed from 2006.

Without including spoilers, I can say that the author is a character in this tome. That's an odd writing device but it leads to certain situations and events that are at least somewhat funny. But it is also a way of presenting a story that completely violates the willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. It's hard enough to follow any fanciful story - and become engrossed in it - in general, but it's really hard when the author himself makes several appearances as a character. Even the author "speaking out of the frame" (to borrow and probably butcher some movie terminology) is distracting, and that happens all over in this book.

Those looking for more about Kilgore Trout - Vonnegut's alter ego of a sort - will find plenty about him here. Trout is an amusing character, but still a cardboard cutout, like just about everyone else.

Of the actual plot, it's basically nothing. In fact, I delayed writing this review for about ten days while I did several other things and tried to figure out what I wanted to say. During that time, the few actual events of the plot all blurred together to the point where I cannot really tell you what the story is about anymore. Oh, I could name the major characters and hit a couple of highlights, but that wouldn't be important.

As a way of trying to explain that, let's envision a story about a couple of guys that go out for dinner, get into an argument about nothing in particular, then go home. That's it. No significant content (plot-wise) is present. It's mundane stuff that could (and probably should) be ignored. That's the kind of thing (but not specifically the actual plot of) Breakfast Of Champions is about. It just doesn't matter.

I guess what was supposed to matter was the social commentary, and this novel is loaded with social commentary. Just about every other paragraph is a comment about something. The problem is that all of those paragraphs are comments about different things. There is nothing that binds the paragraphs (or chapters) together, except the regular use of the n-word (for reasons that I still don't understand) and the occasional return to the nearly non-existent plot.

If Vonnegut had put together a social commentary on one or two (or even a handful of) themes, discussing them in depth and playing out what the implications of things are, it would be interesting. Here, however, he basically says: "X is bad. Blather. Y doesn't work. Yadda yadda yadda. Z is amusing but pointless. Ho hum." And so on. We learn nothing in depth about what he thinks or what points he is trying to make.

I found all of this very surprising. Breakfast Of Champions has been on my list of books to read for years. It's relatively well known and was a best seller at some point in its past. Now that I have read it, though, all I can do is wonder why it got the level of attention it did.

Given the choices I've had from Vonnegut I'd suggest skipping Breakfast Of Champions and reading Cat's Cradle instead.

A Clash Of Kings, George R. R. Martin

Title:		A Clash Of Kings
Author:		George R. R. Martin
Rating:

A Clash Of Kings is the second in the ongoing series by George R. R. Martin. It's better than the first, in my opinion, but still suffers from a nit or two.

The first thing you should know about this tome is that it is huge. My paperback copy is 969 pages long, and that doesn't include the appendices. The story revolves around the struggle for the throne between many (and I mean many) competing groups of people. At one point there are at least five men calling themselves kings of some or all of the continent.

The story is complex enough to require a thousand pages, with a lot of political intrigue and double dealing. Keeping track of who is in whose pay is nearly impossible without a score card. Just remembering the names of all the minor characters was impossible period. In the end, I simply had to trust the author to remind me of who someone was when it mattered.

Lastly, magic exists here, though its form(s) and potency are still unclear. Thus far I have found the magical element to be interesting and well designed.

As to why it is better than the first volume, I can say that my biggest issue with A Game Of Thrones was the unexpected death of a major character, one I'd come to like over hundreds of pages. That doesn't happen here, though the threat looms over all the major characters nearly all the time. Some reasonably well developed characters do die, even some we met in the first book, but they'd always been wearing red shirts, so their deaths didn't cause me to swear at the author.

It is also the case that this time around I wasn't as bothered by the changes in point of view. It didn't seem as though they were as obviously designed to conceal things from the reader, with the obvious exception of one case - a cliff hanger drawing you into the next volume. That said, some interesting action does happen off stage and we only hear about it later from someone not directly involved. That happens even when the character doing the deed - whatever it may have been in a specific case - is one that we're following directly at times.

On the downside, we still have two parallel but related stories going on that have yet to intersect in any major way, and that's after something like 1600 pages of writing. It is clear they will cross paths eventually, but how many thousands of pages we'll read before then I cannot tell.

I also still have an issue with the writing style, though I may be growing less sensitive to it. As before, I was capable of putting this book down at almost any time. Not quite mid sentence, but certainly mid paragraph. I'm not sure why that was the case, but I am starting to suspect that the huge cast of characters and the fact that any of them could die at any time is keeping me from getting wrapped up in any of them too deeply.

In addition, no one is given a the clear role of hero, victim or bad guy. Everyone is painted gray to varying degrees. While that makes it more realistic in some ways, it also makes me less willing to bond to someone. Martin doesn't pick favorites either. As far as I can tell, every side in the conflict presented thinks all other sides have it wrong, and therefore they would be right if they win out in the end. Put more succinctly, they all think "we're good, they're evil." With that presentation and the continual change in perspective, we have no idea as readers who (if anyone) we're supposed to be pulling for in this conflict. That may also be keeping me from getting lost in this book the way I have in other cases.

One final nit: why does the world here contain some things that so familiar to us, and yet is clearly fictional? Why can a ship sail far away and bring back giraffes, for example? Just how is this place related to the real world? No answers are given, but I feel like they should be. It's a small point, but it's been in the back of my head since the first volume.

Despite those issues A Clash Of Kings kept me reading. The events are interesting and the world is deeply thought out. The story is complex enough to keep me guessing what is going on, and the writing is good enough to keep me entertained.

It's still not the best fantasy I've read, but it's pretty good.

A Game Of Thrones, George R. R. Martin

Title:		A Game Of Thrones
Author:		George R. R. Martin
Rating:

This book came highly recommended, and while I'm glad I read it, I've read better fantasy. A Game Of Thrones is good, and the story is interesting, but it didn't quite rise to the "great" category for me.

The story itself follows several main characters - all of royal blood in one way or another - as they struggle through events in a kingdom in which the king's power is on the wane. Each chapter is told from the perspective of one of these characters, and the point of view jumps around between them. The plot is very complex, the cast of supporting characters is huge, the action is quick and the writing well paced.

It sounds like a perfect book, right? Alas, for me, there were a few flaws.

That huge cast of supporting characters is actually too large. It was impossible for me to keep them all straight, and even the appendix at the back didn't help much. (I tried looking up a couple of characters and couldn't find them there at all.) I toyed with the idea of taking notes to keep track of people, but this was supposed to be pleasure reading, and that seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

Martin is quite happy to kill off characters that he's spent time making you think are going to stick around. It was frustrating to watch someone you thought was important - and that you were going to get to know for a while - die. A corollary to that is that it is entirely unclear idea which characters - if any - the author thinks actually are important, and will stick around. He has little or no empathy for anyone in this story, and that comes through in the writing.

I never bought (or understood) the king's decline. None of the story is told from his point of view, and his actions seem to have no basis in reason that I can find. Something seemed off there.

I have seen the "each chapter told from a different point of view" approach work very successfully elsewhere. Here, however, it seemed to be a vehicle for obscuring important information, rather than something that assisted the telling of the story. Just when you thought you might learn something interesting the narrator's point of view would change, and some unknown amount of time would pass - possibly going back in time to tell another piece of the story that was happening in parallel.

There are actually two stories going on in this book, held together by only the most tenuous of threads. It is likely that the later volumes bring these stories together in a more direct fashion - you can sort of see it coming - but in this volume they were so disparate that it was distracting.

Finally, there was something about the writing that let me drop the book just about anywhere without hesitation. I could literally put it down mid-paragraph without thinking about it. Usually when I read, I get so wrapped up in the book that I don't stop before the end of a chapter at a minimum, and I have been known to sit up for hours reading to get to a good stopping point. That never happened here, and I don't know why.

I know others have raved about this book, but given that list of reservations, I cannot claim A Game Of Thrones is one of my favorites.

There was one other oddity here, but I cannot hold it against the author. Years ago I subscribed to Fantasy & Science Fiction and I read a novella in there that I still remember. I found that novella in here, in it's entirety. Martin had extracted the story of Dany and published it separately in the magazine. I don't think he even did much editing - just took all the chapters from Dany's perspective, put them together, and voila - a novella. In truth, I found that story more interesting in novella form, since it had no interruptions and thus better pacing. Rereading it here - split into pieces - was an interesting experience, and highlighted some of the other issues called out above.

Overall, I'd say this was a good book, and clearly the author put a lot of time and effort into its creation. I'll continue reading the series and hope for some subtle changes that might make the later volumes more appealing.

3001, Arthur C. Clarke

Title:		3001
Author:		Arthur C. Clarke
Rating:

In my last review I complained that the short SF in the volume I was reviewing wasn't impressive. The next book I picked up - 3001 by Arthur C. Clarke - wasn't that good either. It was better, but not by a lot.

In 3001 we follow the story of Frank Poole. For those who saw the movie 2001, you may remember your last vision of Frank: he was released into space by the pod commanded by Dave Bowman, clearly dead. This story picks up the tale about one thousand years later. Poole's body is found in deep space and he is returned to life. Don't ask how - Clarke doesn't say - but he's back. Of course, it's not really a surprise that Clarke doesn't expound on Poole's recovery. Clarke is a noted visionary on things related to space and space travel, but not on medicine. So the fact that he glosses over Poole's restoration is expected, but it did leave me a bit cold.

In the first third of the book - in addition to seeing Poole return - we are introduced to the world of 3001. Clarke spends a fair bit of time (and a number of pages) describing the homes and lives of those living 1000 years from now. It's mildly amusing, though not really related to the plot. Sadly, it gets substantially less interesting when he heads off into more social, political or moralistic grounds, where I'm afraid it's just not that well thought out.

As to character development, Poole gets very little, despite being a fish out of water. Oh, he says a few things to imply that he's having some trouble adjusting to all the differences between 2001 and 3001, but we never really believe it. The rest of the characters are one dimensional, almost hackneyed, and thus not particularly believable.

Finally we get to the actual plot involving the monolith. While this was more interesting than the first third of the book's exposition, it was pretty thin overall. And the resolution was disappointing to this computer programmer.

The last 15% of the novel is actually a set of end notes, mostly about the research Clarke based his predictions on. It's all about 10 years old now (in 2006) and some of it hasn't gone anywhere since it was first published. But those end notes were actually more interesting (to me) than the novel itself. Clarke's style gets more folksy, and you can tell he's writing to convey information, rather than to tell a story. It works better for him, and what he says is both interesting and touching at times.

In all I'd guess this book was better than 2061 (which I read years ago and barely remember) but not by much. 2010 was much better than either of those later books, and a much better follow on to the original movie.

Year's Best SF 9, David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer editors

Title:		Year's Best SF 9
Editors:		David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Rating:

There have been a lot of distractions lately, and they have kept me from reading as much as I usually do. As a result I picked up a collection of short science fiction stories to fill the few gaps I've had in my schedule. I wish it had been worth it.

Maybe my tastes are changing. Maybe I'm just getting older now, and I see things that I didn't previously see. Regardless, if this collection is the best short SF that 2003 produced, I really wonder about the state of that genre.

Most of the so called "hard" SF in here still had elements of the mystical in my opinion, and character development was nonexistent. The plots were uniformly uninteresting as well. In fact, having finished a 500 page paperback, I can only really remember bits from the first and last stories. The first because there was a unique concept presented, though not that well executed. The last because it was an novella - much longer than anything else here - and because it was the one I finished today.

In all, this was a disappointment, but perhaps that is my fault rather than the work itself. Maybe I am expecting too much from short fiction. Or maybe I have changed. Several years ago we let our subscriptions to both Asimov's and F&SF lapse because they just weren't all that interesting anymore. It seems nothing has changed in the years since, at least based on the contents of this volume.

Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Title:		Timequake
Author:		Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rating:

I wish I knew what to call Timequake. I definitely enjoyed it, and there is a preface that documents (accurately, I assume) the mechanism by which it came into existence. But how to categorize the writing style and content is beyond me.

Several places I've checked say the plot revolves around the life of the fictional SF author (and alter ego of Vonnegut himself) Kilgore Trout and a "timequake" - an event in which the universe does something odd, causing 10 years of history to repeat itself. That may be true, but if so it is an unusual definition of "plot" by my standards. I guess I consider this to be a semi-autobiographical novel, something like a memoir. It's not really that, though, nor is it a biography, as there are many fictional elements to it.

But it's a fun read. Vonnegut takes a lot of unexpected turns - left, right, U, and other - in the process of telling this... er... tale.

Recommended. If you read it, please tell me what you think it is.