Distant Cousin: Recirculation

Distant Cousin: Recirculation
by Al Past
(CreateSpace / 1-460-94624-3 / 978-1-460-94624-4 / February 2011 / 324 pages / $13.95 / Kindle $4.99)

Let me begin by saying that this is one of the most accurately proofread books I have reviewed for PODBRAM. I found exactly one extraneous word and the use of ellipses in dialog is a little overdone, but the buck stops right there. However, there are a few glitches in the formatting of the print version that I read. I cannot speak for the Kindle version, of course, and I am aware that the majority of the readers of Dr. Past's legendary Distant Cousin books read them on a Kindle, so maybe these formatting issues are somewhat irrelevant. The problems boil down to two issues. First, the front matter is all but nonexistent, and this makes the printed book appear amateurish at first glance as soon as the first page is turned. Al could spend a little time on this and the book would have a much more professional look. In contrast, the back-matter is outstanding! The final page, describing Ana Darcy's personal website, should be added to the first four books in the series. (Of course I realize this is out of the question for the print versions, but this page could easily be added to the Kindle ones.) The second formatting issue is more complicated (and more annoying). Recirculation should have been only about 200 pages, possibly lowering the price even further. The font is too large, the text is not justified, and each page begins with a new paragraph. I understand technically how this happened, but I am sure most readers would be quite confused by it. The result is that many pages containing a few large paragraphs show large expanses of white space at the bottom. Pages with many short paragraphs of dialog are less affected. Readers of a future DC6 would probably appreciate it if Al would work on some of this technical mumbo-jumbo.

I can see it coming already. Ana's half-alien, genius son will be exposed by nosy media personnel. Somebody in the editing room will see that boring footage that the gossip show left on the cutting room floor and all hell will break loose! The best thing about Recirculation is the storyline and the Spielbergian character development, as is the case with the four previous Distant Cousin books. This part of the friendly space alien saga features the teenaged twins, Julio and Clio. We learn much more detail about Julio's engineering acumen and Clio discovers healing powers she did not realize she had. There is a section of the book that takes me back to the Don Juan books of the wonderful Sixties when Clio goes to Mexico to meet with a traditional healer. Ana's flying pod takes the crew on yet another adventure, leaving the reader salivating for DC6. What more could the readers ask?

There is a lot I could say about the plot, but of course I won't. If you have gotten this far in the series, you already know what to expect. The best thing about the Distant Cousin books is that the reader can so easily visualize the movie in his or her head with very little provocation. The storyline is new, yet familiar. The essence of Spielberg's Close Encounters or E.T. remains pervasive throughout. The characters and dialog tell the story. The whole thing is show, don't tell in a manner that any reader can appreciate. The storyline flows, the characters develop comfortably, and you feel as if you are so glad that you know these people! I was particularly pleased with the pacing of this fifth in the series, the way it begins slowly and gradually accelerates to the end. Personally this is my third favorite, behind Reincarnation ( DC3) and Distant Cousin, and clearly ahead of DC2 (more action and less character development) and DC4 (emphasis on new ancillary characters rather than Ana Darcy). My final grades are: formatting C-, editing and proofreading A+, storyline A.

"Hey, Joe, come over here a minute. Have you seen this? I know most people would think that kid is just shining on his captive audience for a goof, but I've heard of that fancy thing he's talking about. It's been discussed in certain scientific papers. Some experts think it will be a real breakthrough. I'm going to make a few calls...."

See also: Distant Cousin
Distant Cousin: Repatriation
Distant Cousin: Reincarnation
Distant Cousin: Regeneration
Interview with Dr. Al Past

El Secreto Submergido

El Secreto Sumergido
by Cristian Perfumo
(Amazon Digital Services / Kindle Edition B004VS7LMC / (no date of publication) / 341 KB / $2.99)
Reviewed by Dr. Al Past for PODBRAM

Although my last class in literature in Spanish was 40 years ago, I undertook to read this El Secreto Sumergido because the subject matter interested me, and I thought it would be a good review for me. It was worth it. I like a good adventure story and I like a mystery, and I particularly like stories connected with the sea. El Secreto Sumergido was both, with the dividend that it offered a glimpse into a part of the world that I was barely aware of: Patagonian Argentina. As a bonus, the unpleasantness of the "Falklands War," as the English speaking world knows it, that is, the dispute between England and Argentina over the possession of Las Islas Malvinas, in the south Atlantic east of Argentina, also figures in, mainly in the epilog.

Basically, a high school student in the (real) town of Deseado learns of a (real) British shipwreck 200 years earlier on the rocks of the mouth of the river where his town is located. As a new but enthusiastic SCUBA diver, he decides to investigate, and perhaps locate the wreck. When the retired seaman who provides him with early documentation of the wreck is mysteriously murdered, that sets off a train of events that the young man and his friends pursue to their violent end. It is a rollicking tale.

Keeping in mind that my skills in Spanish are a bit rusty, I will say that I found the book well and cleanly written. As a former non-SCUBA diving officer in the American surface navy, I'll add that the details of diving in the cold tidal waters of the mouth of a river, and of the hazards of undersea salvage, struck me as accurate.

The English-dominant reader who is intrigued by the book and who has some skill in Spanish and a decent desk dictionary should enjoy El Secreto Sumergido as much as I did.

Dr. Al Past is the author of the five Distant Cousin novels, a popular adventure/romance/sci-fi series, the photographic collaborator for Barry Yelton's On Wings of Gentle Power, the author of a book of treble clef duets from Charles Colin, a reviewer for PODBRAM, and a member of the Independent Authors Guild. He lives on a ranch in south Texas.

Uncle Denny

Uncle Denny
by Don Meyer

(Two Peas Publishing / 0-984-07739-1 / 978-0-984-07739-7 / June 2011 / 318 pages / $14.95 paperback / $11.66 Amazon / $7.99 Kindle / $14.36 B&N / $7.99 Nook)

Uncle Denny is Don Meyer's completion of the Sheriff Tom Monason Trilogy, a series of crime thrillers set in an unnamed ski town high in the mountains of California. The sheriff is an experienced cop from the big city, now nearing semi-retirement age and running a tiny, informal police department in what should be a sleepy town, but rarely is, sort of like Paradise MA or Cabot Cove ME. As you may have already guessed, most of the charm of Don's trilogy comes from his quiet town of amiable characters. The main distinction from those similar settings of novels and television is that blizzards and heavy snow often play key parts in the crimes solved by Sheriff Monason, and the plot of Uncle Denny is no exception.

Key storyline elements from Winter Ghost and McKenzie Affair have been woven into this third book, but the story pretty much stands alone for any reader who has not read the earlier books. You can read my reviews of these earlier two by clicking the links, and I highly encourage you to do so, since I am not repeating much of that material here.

I personally enjoyed McKenzie Affair the most of the three, and Uncle Denny the least. This is the direct result of so much of this newest storyline surrounding two groups of feuding mobsters in Chicago. Mr. Meyer explains this concept in closing remarks at the end of the book. The author describes how he spent most of his life in Chicago and that he wanted at least one part of the trilogy to evolve from this experience. That is fine if you like mobsters, but these sorts of characters have little appeal to my tastes. Maybe yours are different. I have memorized all the Andy Griffith reruns, but I have never watched The Sopranos. Enough said?

The title derives from a mispronunciation of a lead character's name, that of a Russian mobster. An FBI agent phones Sheriff Monason to explain that several criminals from Chicago are headed to Monason’s town. Because of a severe blizzard in the area, FBI personnel cannot reach the scene quickly enough, so the sheriff and his few deputies need to head off the mobsters at the pass, as they used to say in old westerns. The reader is introduced to the malicious modus operandi of Uncle Denny early in the story, and then the plot begins to unroll.

Don Meyer writes in a very direct, concise manner, telling his story mostly through incisive dialogue with little extraneous descriptive detail. Uncle Denny is a somewhat satisfying read, but proper editing and punctuation are sorely lacking. There are way too many repeated phrases. A few examples are that cell phones are always pinched closed and Sheriff Monason’s desk chair always squeaks; however, I was most annoyed that Uncle Denny always drives a big black SUV. It is never a sport utility vehicle, a Cadillac, an Escalade, a truck, a snow-covered vehicle, or even a black SUV or a big SUV. An editor should mention these to you. Do you get my snowdrift, Don? I really like your settings, plotlines, and most of all, your folksy characters, and I think most readers will, too.

See Also: Winter Ghost at Amazon
McKenzie Affair at Amazon
The Protected Will Never Know
Don Meyer's website

Living With Evolution or Dying Without It

Living With Evolution or Dying Without It: A Guide to Understanding Humanity’s Past, Present, and Future
by K. D. Koratsky
(Sunscape Books / 0-982-65460-X / 978-0-982-65460-6 / June 2010 / 618 pages / $49.95 hardcover / $37.30 Amazon / $14.99 Kindle)

Reviewed by Lloyd Lofthouse for PODBRAM

Koratsky's book is a heavily researched, scholarly work that gathers what science has discovered since Darwin's discoveries and fills in the gaps explaining why evolution has something to teach us if humanity is to survive. The other choice is humanity going the way of the dinosaurs into extinction.

I started reading in early 2010 and took months to finish the 580 pages. The Flesch-Kincaid Readability level would probably show this book to be at a university graduate level leaving at last 90% of the population lost as to the importance of its message. For months, it bothered me that so many in the United States do not have the literacy skills to understand an important work such as this. (The average reader in the U.S. reads at fifth grade level and millions are illiterate). This is certainly not a good foundation to learn how precarious life is if you do not understand how brutal the earth's environment and evolution has been for billions of years. As I finished reading Living With Evolution or Dying Without It, I realized that it would only take a few key people in positions of power to understand the warnings offered by Koratsky and bring about the needed changes in one or more countries so humanity would survive somewhere on the planet when the next great challenge to life arises.

On Page One, Koratsky starts 13.7 billion years ago with the big bang then in a few pages, ten billion years later, he introduces the reader to how certain bacteria discovered a new way to access the energy required to sustain an existence. By the time we reach humanity's first religion on Page 157, we have discovered what caused so many species to die out and gained a better understanding of what survival of the fittest means. To survive means adapting to environmental challenges no matter if they are delivered by the impact of a monster asteroid to the earth's surface, global warming (no matter what the reason) or by competition with other cultures or animals competing for the earth's resources. In fact, competition is vital to the survival of a species for it is only through competition that a species will adapt to survive.

The book is divided into two parts. The first 349 pages deals with where we have been and what we have learned, and the two hundred and eleven pages in Part Two deals with current ideas and policies from an evolutionary perspective.

I suspect that most devout Christians and Muslims would dismiss the warnings in this book out-of-hand since these people have invested their beliefs and the survival of humanity in books written millennia ago when humanity knew little to nothing about the laws of evolution and how important competition is to survival. Koratsky is optimistic that the United States will eventually turn away from the political agenda of "Cultural Relativism" that has guided America since the 1960s toward total failure as a culture. The popular term for "Cultural Relativism" in the US would be "Political Correctness", which has spawned movements such as race-based quotas and entitlement programs that reward failure and punish success. Even America's self-esteem movement is an example of "Cultural Relativism", which encourages children to have fun and praises poor performance until it is impossible to recognize real success. The current debate started by Amy Chua's essay in The Wall Street Journal is another example of "Cultural Relativism" at work.After reading Living with Evolution or Dying Without It, it is clear that Amy Chua's Tiger Mother Methods of parenting are correct while the soft approach practiced by the average U.S. parent is wrong and will lead to more failure than success.

Koratsky shows us that the key to survival for America is to severely curtail and eventually end most U.S. entitlement programs. While "Cultural Relativism" is ending, competition that rewards merit at all levels of the culture (private and government) must be reinstituted. He points out near the end of the book that this has been happening in China and is the reason for that country's amazing growth and success the last thirty years. In the 1980s, merit was reinstituted at the bottom and most who prosper in China today earned the right to be rewarded for success by being more competitive and adapting. Even China's state-owned industries were required to become profitable or perish.

The earth's environment does not care about equality or the relativists' belief that everyone has a right to happiness even if society must rob from the rich and give to the poor. This book covers the evolution of the universe, the planet, all life on the planet including the reasons why most life that lived on the earth for hundreds of millions of years before humanity is now gone; the beginnings of the human species; religion in all of its costumes; the growth of civilizations and the competitions that led to the destruction and collapse of so many such as the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty two millennia ago. The environment and evolution says that all life on the planet is not equal and no one is born with a guaranteed right to success, happiness and fun. To survive means earning the right through competition and adaption. If you don't believe Koratsky's warning, go talk to the dinosaurs and ask them why they are gone.

See also: K. D. Koratsky's Website

Submissions Are Closed

Review submissions are closed at PODBRAM until further notice. Thank you for your support.

Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex

Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex
by Alice Turing & Francis Blake, Illustrator
(Chutzpah Publishing / 0-956-65660-9 / 978-0-956-65660-5 / September 2010 / 420 pages / Amazon UK 20 Pounds Sterling)
Reviewed by Dianne Salerni for PODBRAM

We easily believe what we ardently desire to be true.

This is the tagline for Alice Turing’s novel, Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex, which tells the story of a book (called That Book) and a New Age movement called Psychic Dancing that takes Great Britain by storm. Leo, a mentalist by profession, knows it’s a scam. It has to be a scam, and he’s both envious and contemptuous of whoever thought it up first. Henrietta also thinks it’s a scam, because Henrietta knows all about brainwashing – and she really doesn’t want to experience that again. Yet, both Leo and Henrietta find themselves sucked into the Psychic Dancing uproar because Belle and Denzel believe it whole-heartedly. And Henrietta loves Belle. But Belle loves Leo. And Leo doesn’t want to believe he’s fallen in love with quirky Denzel, but Denzel won’t have sex with him until Leo admits he’s gay.

I was expecting a humorous romp from this book, and perhaps an exploration of belief, desire, and illusion, explored through a bizarre psychic hoax that might turn out to be real. From the description on the cover, I thought the romantic quadrangle would involve the farcical nonsense of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While it started out this way, I wasn’t sure what to make of it halfway through. The tangled love story is more raw and painful than humorous, and my growing dislike for Leo and Belle throughout the book made it hard for me to root for them ending up with fragile Henrietta and sweet but weird Denzel. There were lengthy internal monologues and scenes that didn’t move the plot forward. I know the current fashion in dialogue tags is to use only says (if anything) – but for me, it drained the life and rhythm from the dialogue scenes. This is, of course, only a personal preference.

The writing is technically without fault, and the book has a quality look and feel. The cover design may not be the final version, since I have an ARC, but it’s colorful and interesting. The editing is clean, and wide margins make the pages easy to read. There are some great lines in here – including some particular (but crude) advice from Denzel that I’ll probably never forget. The overall premise is intriguing, but the execution did not win me over.

Editor's Note: The cover shown here is the final cover. The reviewer had a pre-release copy. This book is currently available only from Amazon UK or directly from the author. See her website for details.

See also: Alice Turing's Unusual Website
Another Review of the Book

Talion

Talion by Mary Maddox

(Cantraip Press / 0-984-42810-0 / 978-0-984-42810-6 / March 2010 / 296 pages / $12.99 / Amazon $9.35 / Kindle $1.99)

Reviewed by Dianne Salerni for PODBRAM

When Lisa Duncan’s parents decide to separate their daughter from her pot-smoking friends, they send her to spend the summer at Hidden Creek Lodge in Utah, which is owned by her aunt and uncle. They have no idea that there is much greater danger to their daughter than normal teenage hijinks: Lisa has attracted the attention of a serial killer who has chosen her as his next victim and who is more than happy to follow her to a remote Utah vacation spot. In her first days at Hidden Creek, Lisa meets Lu Jakes, the abused and timid daughter of an employee at the lodge. Although Lu is below Lisa’s perceived social status (Lisa calls her Trailer Girl), the isolation of the lodge throws the two girls together, and the stalking killer decides that two victims could be better than one. Lu Jakes is particularly interesting to him because she is already dazed and downtrodden. Little does he know that Lu sees things others do not – shining ethereal creatures called Delatar, Black Claw, and Talion, who may just provide her an edge that he won’t expect.

Mary Maddox’s tightly woven thriller is a smooth read, with clear vivid narration and fully formed characters. Writing in third person narration, from multiple perspectives, Maddox has used the clever strategy of placing narration from Lu’s perspective in present tense, while everyone else’s perspective is past tense. This serves to make the text surrounding Lu just a little disjointed from the other scenes – as if she doesn’t quite share the same timeline as everyone else. The strange creatures that she sees, including the Talion for which the book is named, provide an interesting twist to the story – although Talion is not as significant in the climax as I expected. Were Talion and his fellow creatures guardian angels, demons, or the hallucinations of a mentally disturbed girl? I expected some room for interpretation here, but considering his title role, I did expect to see a lot more of Talion.

Despite the two teenage protagonists, this is not a book for YA readers. The violence is on par with adult thrillers along the lines of Thomas Harris or James Ellroy. I’m not crazy about the cover image; I’m still not certain what it is meant to portray. The supernatural element of the story might have been more thoroughly explored, but overall this is an excellent suspense thriller, smoothly written, and well edited.

See also: The Author's Website
Dianne's GoodReads Review
Read an Excerpt from Talion
Interview with Mary Maddox
Another Interview with Mary Maddox