Course Corrections

Course Corrections: 
One Man's Unlikely Journey 
by Larry J. Nevels
(iUniverse / 1-462-01636-7 / 978-1462016365 / July 2011 / 316 pages / $18.95 paperback / $28.95 hardcover / $7.69 Kindle / $8.49 Nook)

Reviewed by Dr. Al Past for PODBRAM

Course Corrections is the late-in-life memoir of Larry J. Nevels, 1945-2011. Commander Nevels died last year, a retired, carrier-qualified Naval aviator, among other achievements, after a most humble and unlikely beginning. On one level the book he put together is a classic American rags to riches story ("riches" being defined in terms of personal reward rather than mere pelf). That is, it is a testament to gumption, persistence, several doses of luck, and the out-of-the-blue generosity of people who must have sensed his innate drive and decency. On another level, it is simply a terrific read. CDR Nevels had a great memory and a practiced story-teller's eye for detail and timing.

He was born into a broken, dysfunctional family who scorned those who went to college as effete snobs. His "home life" was hardly that, since he lived in a number of foster homes and occasionally struck out on his own when he was barely a teenager. Buoyed inexplicably by great faith, endurance, and optimism, he survived into high school, where he was given timely nurture (and a home) by a legendary teacher and life lessons from a tough, caring football coach. Their support led him to a football scholarship at a good college, and that, with several more strokes of luck, led him to Navy flight school and a long, successful career as a Naval aviator.

Whether one reads for inspiration or entertainment, Course Corrections is a fine book. I shook my head many times, laughed out loud a few times, and admittedly got misty eyed more than once. Few people know more great stories than old Navy veterans, and few Navy veterans know more great stories than old Naval aviators. I'll relate an example from the second category if I may. It's a sea story of the PG-13 variety, and concerns one of the crewmen on his plane rather than CDR Nevels himself.

Naval aviators must endure long deployments away from home, many of which are extended unexpectedly and bring considerable strain to family life. One of CDR Nevels' crewmen once telephoned his wife that he was finally returning home. Come meet the plane, he told her, "with a mattress strapped to your back." Her response: "Don't you worry about me. Just make sure you're the first one off the plane!"

For my part, as a long-time indie author, I have to say that the copy editing of the book leaves something to be desired. The book was rushed into print: only four months after it was published, CDR Nevels succumbed to a protracted battle with cancer. Still, potential readers should know that these problems are small and do not in any way detract from the impact of the prose. The book is great entertainment, documents the life of a remarkable person, and stands as an inspiration to those who read it.

I would never have discovered this book if my wife had not been a high school classmate of CDR Nevels. He visited our town, the town where he graduated from high school, in later years, and I came to know him as a calm, well-adjusted person, with nothing unusual about him except perhaps his life in the Navy. (I had been a non-career surface officer in the Navy myself, so we shared a certain bond.) My wife and I once stayed at the bed and breakfast he and his wife maintained in Fredericksburg, Texas, where we admired his renovation of a period pioneer Texas home and enjoyed his hospitality. Neither she nor I had any inkling of his extraordinary path to the present until we learned of his book.

Course Corrections is a sterling example of the value of independent publishing. I can't imagine any of the literary-industrial complex big four (or is it big three?) taking a risk with a book like this. That's their misfortune. This is a fine, fine book and it is worthy of a much wider readership. CDR Nevels said, of his career in aviation, that the number of his takeoffs equaled the number of his landings, and that is one of the best things you can say about a career as a pilot. My wife and I can only wish this extraordinary man a happy landing on his final journey.

Boys Will Be Boys

Boys Will Be Boys:
Media, Morality, and the Coverup of the Todd Palin Shailey Tripp Sex Scandal
by Shailey M. Tripp (with Vickie Bottoms)
(CreateSpace / 1-470-09102-X / 978-1-470-09102-6 / February 2012 / 280 pages / $21.50 / Amazon & B&N $19.35)

 Boys Will Be Boys is the true story about a young woman who met Todd Palin, probably not inadvertently, in late 2006, just as his wife was being elected Governor of Alaska. Shailey Tripp was working as a substitute teacher at a school in Wasilla when she one day had the honor of being the enforcer of ladylike behavior in the school cafeteria. One of Todd Palin's daughters, Shailey does not specify which daughter, was continually breaking in the cafeteria line and acting most unladylike. Due to the ages at the time, this had to have been either Bristol or Willow Palin. My bet would be preteen Willow. Shailey Tripp did her duty and sent the child home with a note for her parents and Todd did his parental duty and showed up at the school to discuss the issue. Thus began a relationship that would travel through occasional sexual dalliances until it culminated (allegedly) in an interstate prostitution ring. Somebody famous would become the pimp and a certain substitute teacher, who also worked at a massage parlor, would become the prostitute. In case you are wondering how the teacher could also work at a massage parlor, the story is that this particular massage parlor was not one of those massage parlors until Todd Palin sweet-talked his way into the massage therapist's ear.

That's all the plotline you are going to get from me. Some of you may have read pieces of the story in The National Enquirer a couple of years ago. If you want to read the whole story, right from the massage therapist's hands, then this is the book for you. Here is one more little tidbit for you: Shailey Tripp also gave a massage (without a happy ending) to an unpregnant Governor Palin in March 2008. There lies the rub. (I couldn't resist!)

Here are my usual book review criticisms, of which I have become legendary at PODBRAM. There is as yet no Kindle or other e-book version of this book. Unlike all the other reviews I have written here at PODBRAM, this one derives from a PDF of the book. I did that on purpose because, if you have followed my writings on my main author blog, you know that I have been intimately involved with this subject matter for nearly four years. I knew beforehand that many police reports and other documents had been scanned into the book and that the ability to increase the font size would be beneficial to my old eyes. (Cue Sgt. Pepper: "When I'm 64".) When you read the print version, you might have to squint a bit to read the details of many official documents included in the Appendix that substantiate many of Ms. Tripp's seemingly outlandish claims. You may be a little annoyed by the full-size, rather than half-size, paragraph indents throughout the book, as well as much of the content that seems to be a little too often repeated. One segment spanning several pages appears to be literally repeated. In her favor, the number of common proofreading mistakes in a self-published book have been kept within reason. I do think it a bit strange that the subtitle is not included on the cover, though.

Boys Will Be Boys is a very important contribution to American political culture. Anyone who wishes to know the whole truth of our recent national politics should read it. Of course they should read my own Paradigm Shift, too, but that's another story... or is it?

See Also: A very different perspective at NIAFS.

This Mobius Strip of Ifs

This Möbius Strip of Ifs
by Mathias B. Freese
(Wheatmark / 1604947233 / 978-1604947236 / February 2012 / 186 pages / $10.95 / Kindle $9.99)

Reviewed by Malcolm R. Campbell for PODBRAM

Mathematician and physicist Clifford A. Pickover has called the Möbius strip “a metaphor for change, strangeness, looping and rejuvenation.” Like the surface of a Möbius strip, the thirty-six essays folded into This Möbius Strip of Ifs ultimately have no front or back or beginning or end because Mathias B. Freese views his life, his work and his world as a continuous and open-ended process of awareness without the conventional limitations of meaning or dogma.

In “Untidy Lives, I Say to Myself,” Freese writes “That awareness of the moment or the one after that is about all this old man wants at this point in his life. I am working—by not working—on being ‘spot on’—love that phrase. A pastrami sandwich and a good pickle and Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda is an epiphany for me if I am aware of it.”

Like the other eighteen essays in Part I, Knowledge is Death growing out of Freese’s experiences as a writer, teacher and psychotherapist, “Untidy Lives” explores the raw awareness and infinite potentialities open to individuals who risk true autonomy. The “risk,” as Jane Holt Freese suggests in her introduction, is that “to know who we are requires that we ‘die’ to many ideas we have about ourselves. Paradoxically, this ‘death’ quickens awareness, makes us more alive and sensitive.”

In “Teachers Have No Chance to Give Their Best” and “The Unheard Scream,” Freese—who taught for twenty-two years before becoming a therapist—decries the fact that school systems don’t provide environments conducive to learning. We have regimentation and conformity with energy being “siphoned off into empty rituals” in a system that conditions students and teachers to accept rote truths rather than to explore oneself without boundaries.

In “Jefferson,” Freese describes the profound and lasting impact of reading the words inscribed in the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial during a college-years Washington, D. C. visit: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

“I felt I was Moses before the burning bush, on hallowed ground,” writes Freese, “as those words were inscribed in flame into my mind—alas, not my heart. I etched them info myself. I have never forgotten them.”

Readers of these essays may infer that Jefferson’s words opposing a Constitutionally recognized state religion became for Freese, if not a mantra, a Möbius-strip axiom that threaded its way in loops within loops through every aspect of his life and work. Jefferson’s influence is certainly apparent when, in “Introductory Remarks on Retirement from a Therapist” and “Therapist as Artist: A Short Talk to the Stony Brook Psychological Society.” In Freese’s view (and no doubt in Jefferson’s) therapists help clients find self-truths rather than conditioning them to adapt to society’s truths because “society is essentially corrupt and corrupting.” The therapist, then, sees life as an artist sees life.

In addition to Jefferson, the truths of Jiddu Krishnamurti, Nikos Kazantzakis and Albert Camus weave the essays in This Möbius Strip together into a unified whole. Freese is the Freese he is not only because of his parents’ lack of parenting and the personal suffering following the loss of a daughter and a wife, but because of his formless evaluation and appreciation of the work of these men. Their spirits remain close at hand in the Freese’s essays about education, therapy, writing and book reviewing and the Holocaust in Part I, Knowledge is Death as well as in the film essays in Part II, Metaphorical Noodles and the family recollections in Part III, The Seawall.

Freese’s Metaphorical Noodles celebrate the work of passionate actors and filmmakers who fought for artistic freedom in a movie business that pushed conformity with the same fervor as school systems and preachers: Buster Keaton, Peter Lorre, Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, and Clint Eastwood. Freese’s The Seawall celebrates family, from his daughter Caryn, who committed suicide in 1998, after a long battle with Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) to his wife Rochelle, who died in an automobile accident in 1999, to his “wayfarer” Grandma Fanny and World War II veteran Uncle Seymour.

In the final essay, “Reflections on Rummaging,” Freese summarizes everything else in this astute and profoundly engaging collection of essays while sitting in his garage with several boxes containing the collected records and mementos of a lifetime when he thinks that the riches and adventures of the world can’t give him what he needs most: “To enter into a moment of awareness—I’m not greedy—in which I can feel and experience congruity with myself.”

Somewhat cautionary, occasionally prescriptive, and always uncompromising and unapologetic, This Möbius Strip of Ifs offers readers the observations of one man’s lifetime of bucking the system and seeking a harmonious environment for the ever-awakening psyche within.

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of four novels, including the contemporary fantasy “Sarabande.”

See Also: The i Tetralogy

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

Divine Right

Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie
by Jacqueline S. Homan
(Elf Books / 0-981-56794-0 / 978-0-981-56794-5 / September 2009 / November 2009 / 456 pages / 422 pages / Hardcover $27.95 / Amazon & B&N $25.15 / Kindle $5.99)

Jacqueline S. Homan is one of those special authors that I discovered because of PODBRAM. If I had not begun PODBRAM just over four years ago, Jacqueline never would have found me, and therefore I would never have heard of her or her books. Out of the many new authors who have submitted multiple books to us for review over the past four years, Jacqueline is the most improved. Her writing and book production have gone from somewhat crude, repetitive, and only adequately proofread to outstandingly researched and detailed and proofed at a professional level. Her chosen nonfiction subject matter has reflected Ms. Homan as a compassionate muckraker in four separate areas of American culture, and Divine Right is arguably the most important of these to America’s future as a nation of honorable leadership.

Divine Right is a detailed exposure of the deep history of religion in America. If the book has a fault, it is that the author expends a considerable amount of print space on too much detail from the B.C. period and the early days of A.D. time. For example, I could not care less about the birth and death dates of early rulers. The second, much lesser, negative issue with the book is that there are no front matter pages including the technical publication elements and such. I got the ISBN from a sticker on the back and the November publication date from the printer’s notation on the last page. The reason I mention this is that both Amazon and B&N list the book as being published in September 2009 with 34 more pages than are in my copy. I wonder if the front matter has been accidentally deleted from my copy? Regardless, I have no complaints about the 422-page edition I received. I want to mention one final little negative: if you are of the modern, rabid Christian Evangelical bent, I cannot be held responsible if this book gives you a heart attack!

Although Divine Right is not a comedy in any sense, Ms. Homan made me laugh out loud numerous times with her phrasing. Her carefully composed, brief statements of scathing poignancy describing certain taboo religious issues are what pushed this book over the top for me. She is obviously a feminist of the deepest sort, and she knows how to pointedly describe the misogynistic destruction of freedom in America! What is the book about? This is it, the bottom line, and Jacqueline tells the story from the bottom up. Christianity has been a male dominated subculture from its earliest beginnings to the modern takeover of America by Tim LaHaye’s Council for National Policy. Ms. Homan minces no words when she tells us what she thinks of these ideas!

But seriously, folks, Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie is a hell of a book (pardon the apropos expression). I did not find it as singularly engrossing or riveting as her Eyes of a Monster, but the overall significance and comprehensive, professional presentation of Divine Right make it Jacqueline Homan’s best book. Considering that Monster is about the first gay hate crime prosecution in America, but Divine Right is a subject that has been affecting the lives of millions for centuries, I think you get my point. If you are a feminist, have a deep mistrust of what has become of Christianity in modern America, or just want to read a well researched tome on the subject chocked full of irreverence, rather than holier than thou arrogance, then you will love Jacqueline Homan’s Divine Right.

See also: Jacqueline S. Homan's Blog
Nothing You can Possess
Classism for Dimwits

Noah's Wife

Noah’s Wife: 5500 BCE
by T. K. Thorne
(Chalet Publishers / 0-984-08364-2 / 978-0-984-08364-0 / October 2009 / 366 pages / $16.95 / $15.25 Amazon / $4.99 Kindle)

Reviewed by Celia Hayes for PODBRAM

The title is a little deceptive, in that this is not a Bible-based retelling of the story of Noah, his family, their animals and an ark that enables them all to survive a flood. It is rather an attempt to recreate a very particular world, that world of Neolithic humans, over 7,000 years ago, living along the shores of a freshwater lake in what is now Anatolia, a world just beginning the transition from hunting and gathering to herding and farming, where tribal peoples are beginning to settle into established towns. It is a new world, torn between worship of an earth-mother-goddess and a sky-father-god, where time is measured by seasons and the phases of the moon, and where a human is old at forty. There is no such thing as a written language; knowledge, traditions, and skills must be passed verbally and by demonstration, and the people living in the villages across the mountains are foreigners. This world is realized very thoroughly and skillfully; the author conveys very well the feeling that this is truly the dawn of civilization, the seed time from which all the rest of human history sprouted. This material was the dimmest of cultural memories to the various writers of the Old Testament books of the Bible – as well as scribes recording in other traditions. A scattering of these traditions and names are worked into the story: Tubal-Cain, Vashti, a garden in Eden. Accounts of a horrific, world-ravaging flood is common currency in folklore; a race-memory which argued such a shattering event had really occurred – and if not extended world-wide, at least happened in a place where humans lived, and survived the experience, passing down the stories to their descendants.

While many historians had placed the source of the Noachian flood tale in pre-historic Mesopotamia, in the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates, T.K. Thorne moves it to the shores of the present Black Sea. Recent explorations have pretty well proven that the lake was once much smaller, and river-fed, rather than a salt-water body, open to the Mediterranean, although it is still a matter of conjecture as to whether it filled gradually, or in one catastrophic rush of salt-water. The author builds her plot around the catastrophic-rush scenario; but takes the time and the most of the book to relate the lives of Na’amah, the wife of Noah, her family and her friends, and the circumstances which lead to them and their herds and working animals, all taking refuge in a house built like a boat. Besides being a wife, Na’amah is also shepherdess, seer and priestess – and afflicted with Ausberger’s syndrome, a relatively mild form of autism. Na’amah sees and notices much, being almost inhumanly observant and hypersensitive to certain stimuli. She relates very well to animals, obsessively well, but less well to people. Being a story written in the first person has its limitations, in that we hardly ever see the character telling the story from the outside, but in this case, it makes for a tightly focused tale, and a singularly unforgettable character.

See also: The BNN Review
Theresa Thorne's Website

The Brimstone Papers

The Brimstone Papers
by David Chacko & Alexander Kulcsar
(Foremost Press / 1-936-15440-4 / 978-1-936-15440-1 / June 2010 / 244 pages / Amazon $13.47 / Kindle $5.99)

Reviewed by Dr. Al Past for PODBRAM

The Brimstone Papers is a worthy successor, or perhaps more accurately, a worthy predecessor (though published later) to Gone Over, reviewed by me for PODBRAM on September 16, 2009. Taken together, the two books amount to a fictional narrative of the adult life of a real historical character of note during the American Revolution, Israel Potter. The Brimstone Papers deals with Potter's life as a young man as the Revolution lurches into motion. Gone Over opens with Potter as a captive of the British and his recruitment by them to spy on his countrymen. It is an extraordinary life, and Mssrs. Chacko and Kulcsar have rendered it in a highly readable and absorbing fashion.Recapping the Wikipedia entry, "Israel Potter (1744-1826) was... born in Cranston, Rhode Island. He had been a veteran of the Battle of Bunker Hill, a sailor in the Revolutionary navy, a prisoner of the British, an escapee in England, a secret agent and courier in France, and a 45-year exile from his native land as a laborer, pauper, and peddler in London." Such a man is clearly a fine subject for fictional treatment, all the more so because most details of his life are largely unknown.

The two books flesh out Potter's life in most convincing and stylish manner. Perhaps their finest accomplishment is conveying the sense of the times – grand times, we think today: revolution was in the air. Great deeds were being done, by our worship-worthy forefathers. But few people would have thought that at the time. The colonists would have felt terribly over-matched against the mighty British Empire, sandwiched between British Canada and the (mostly) British Caribbean, threatened by large, well-equipped armies (including German) conquering American cities at will. Spies and loyalists were everywhere. Everything was in doubt, living was hard, and fear and anxiety would have been the order of the day. Chacko and Kulcsar convey this ambience well, much better than conventional histories— but then ambience is one of the strengths of good historical fiction, or it should be.

As The Brimstone Papers opens, Israel Potter is a young man who obtains some land at long odds and is beginning to work it and make a life for himself (after an unhappy episode as a sailor, not described in the book). Harshly raised by his grandfather and inclined to oppose British oppression by whatever means necessary (rendering him a lapsed Quaker), he is sent to report to a relative, a rich, domineering merchant opposed to independence in Providence, Rhode Island. The events which follow result in his joining the militia and seeing action at the battle of Bunker Hill, splendidly described and perhaps the most riveting section of the book.

Gaining a measure of responsibility from his experiences, Potter joins the crew of a hastily prepared warship, badly outfitted under a captain of dubious effectiveness, and sails into a complete disaster. This is the point at which the companion volume, Gone Over, opens. The venality of war profiteers, the incompetence of authority, and the turning of the coats of those of feeble loyalty make today's diplomatic snarls seem tame, however similar. Even Israel Potter was not immune. If he is a hero (I wouldn't call him one), he is a hero with an asterisk by his name.

Both The Brimstone Papers and Gone Over are first-rate, worthwhile reads. I would rate them with the Aubrey/Maturin series of historical novels by Patrick O'Brian, surely the touchstone of the genre.

See also: David Chacko's Echo Five
David Chacko's Devil's Feathers
David Chacko's Website

Blogging for Authors

I have been mulling over for months writing an article about blogging for the many authors who read PODBRAM, and the time is finally here. My personal history is that I bought myself a Christmas present in 1998 so I could jump onto the much ballyhooed super highway at the beginning of 1999. I had been waiting for the Windows 98 era to usher in a decent level of computer power and I was not disappointed. I spent most of 1999 learning about the internet and the new phenomenon of POD publishing; then I spent most of 2000 editing and technically preparing my first book, derived from articles that had already been published in a local newsletter during a period spanning more than a decade.

My next order of business was getting involved in the publishing of my own website. In order to learn as much as possible about the many procedures and concepts of website development, I wanted to learn each technique on my own. My first website was a very simple one built with Netscape Composer and hosted for free from my local dial-up ISP. It did not take very long to discover the many limitations of that concept, so the next thing I did was to buy a copy of FrontPage 98 and learn the intricacies of that software. I put up with many aggravations from FrontPage 98, combined with a basic pay site server at WebIntellects, until WI changed over to the later FP 2002 system. I got the '02 update, learned that system, and soldiered onward, but the whole thing was slowly becoming more unwieldy. The last straw for me was when I could not hang onto Windows 98 SE any longer and the time for this IBuyPower beastie that I use now had arrived. FrontPage had to be retired at that point.

Although I did not mention it earlier, I purchased the e-tabitha URL for ten years back in early '01, and I have been carrying my little URL from server to server and system to system during most of the past decade. By 2005 I could no longer ignore this thing called Blogger. The more I struggled with Frontpage 2002, the more I felt like an idiot when Blogger was essentially a free website server. I do not even remember what my first blog was - I have had so many. I began by setting up a blog separate from my e-tabitha website, but the more I worked with Blogger, and the more the company kept updating their software, making website management easier and easier, the more deeply I became entrenched as a serious fan of Blogger. At this point, you may be wondering if I have tried WordPress. The answer is that I have considered it, but the bottom line is that I like the KISS Principle too much. WordPress seems to offer a higher level system that caters to those who are more than a little computer literate, but whenever I have compared WP with Blogger, the direct simplicity of the latter wins every time. This is going to be a strong recommendation for Blogger. You will have to look elsewhere for information about WordPress because I know very little about it.

I have ten blogs now. Don't panic: only four of them are active. Two are just placeholders from older blogs to direct readers to their new equivalents. The remaining four are ones that I staked a claim to because I may want them later. They happen to be political subjects that someone else might suddenly claim at any time if I had not already done so. The placeholder blogs are just one of many concepts why I like Blogger so much. You can add, subtract, delete, archive, or rename your blogs at any time, and the Blogger system supports your efforts without a big cat fight. In other words, Blogger is very good at evolving and adapting to your needs, and that is one of my favorite characteristics of Blogger.

One of my cats could probably set up a blog at Blogger, at least a blog of the more basic, default nature. All you have to do is go to Blogger and follow the simple steps. My purpose in writing this article is not to take you through the process step by step, although that might have been my plan at one time. I think by this point, most everyone who reads PODBRAM is already more than a little familiar with how blogs look and operate. They are basically designed to look like a newspaper with three vertical columns containing a center column of text called posts and side columns of basic, strategic information and links that is used to guide the reader to whatever particular information he seeks. As soon as you sign up at Blogger, you have to select a theme. Some of these themes, or formats if you will, contain only two columns instead of three. The Harbor theme I have chosen for all my blogs is one of those few containing only two columns. I particularly like this theme because I do not want my blogs to look like a newspaper layout. The newest theme-oriented addition to the Blogger system are somewhat more exotic layouts with pictures that do not scroll and center columns of text that do. There may even be one of these with only two columns, but I have not investigated this issue because I am happy with the Harbor theme I have. Anyone who is setting up a new blog should experiment with these themes and formats, as well as colors, fonts, and other details until you have found the style that suits you. As I said, one of the best things about Blogger is how easy it is to make changes as you go. As an author, of course I want all my proofreading to be perfect, and this was always a headache with FrontPage and other systems I have used. With Blogger, if you find a missing comma when and where you have least expected it, on a post you just made or one you wrote a year ago, you can fix the mistake quickly and easily.

Google owns both Blogger and Picasa, and this makes the whole system even more agreeable. Just sign up for a Google account and password and then use it at Google, Blogger, and Picasa, the photo wrangling program similar to Yahoo's Flickr. I installed Picasa directly on my computer, as well as use it to store my photos at Blogger. The online Picasa stores all the pictures that are in all my blogs on their server. All the photos in my computer are in the Picasa version that is installed inside my computer. I use the at-home Picasa almost exclusively to crop photos because the Picasa cropping system is the simplest I have found. Remember that I love The KISS Principle! All of this stuff is totally free. Remember when I said I was feeling like an idiot struggling with FrontPage?

One of the neatest things about Blogger is their Elements page. You can go to what is called Design and click on Elements to add to your blog. These include link lists, photos, slide shows, polls, archive lists, and others of somewhat lesser common interest. Whenever you write a post, the title of that post is also a link back to that post. You can build your blog navigation however you want, using link lists, archives, or whatever. My blogs are designed to all be identical in their navigation. I build an alphabetical link list of every post I write. The archives by month and year are retained further down the left column, or sidebar, as most bloggers call it. I often put a poll at the top of the page that I set to expire at the end of the month and then I usually compose a post about the results. You can set up these lists, polls, and other elements in many different ways, in alphabetical order or in the order you choose.

The biggest limitation I have found to Blogger is the insertion of photos. You can choose the photo from your files, select small, medium, or large for its size, and left, right, or center for its placement, but that is about all you can easily do. The photo can be very large if you want, and the viewer can click it and the large version will open in another window; however, without using the HTML page offered by Blogger, this is about all you can do with pictures. If you are more adept with HTML than I am, you may wish to venture into these deeper waters where you can place your pictures more specifically within your posts. As I have mentioned, though, if you are this competent with HTML, you may wish to go check out the WordPress competition. If you look at the layout of not only PODBRAM, but any of my blogs, you will quickly notice that each post has exactly one photo. There are a very few exceptions to this. You can place a pair of medium-sized photos side by side or three small ones in the same manner without too much despair, but when you look at the column widths, particularly with the three-column layouts, you will see why it generally looks better with only one photo per post. As the commercials always say, your results may vary.

The next limitation at Blogger I want to point out concerns the use of text. There is a drop down box with a few font choices for each post, and you can choose the size as well. However, I strongly recommend that you check out some of these choices in several different browsers and monitor resolution sizes before settling on your final choice. There is a lot more variation in exactly how the page displays according to the browser and resolution setting than you would expect. The next hint I am going to tell you should be in bold red text. If you compose directly into Blogger, fine, but if you compose in a Word document and then copy and paste it into Blogger, you might be heading for the biggest Blogger storm of all! When you least expect it, some bit of Word formatting will block Blogger from accepting the post. The trick is very simple: copy and paste your Word composition into WordPad and then copy and paste that into Blogger. It's works like a charm every time! You will likely lose any italics or other formatting details, but you can go through your Blogger document and easily correct these. You are likely to have a number of links in mind as you compose your post and you can add these in the final Blogger version, too.

Soon after you get your blog up and running, I recommend that you go to Google Analytics and set it up for your blog. This may require a bit of copying and pasting a little HTML code into your blog, but the instructions at Google Analytics are quite simple. You also should add your blog's URL to Google's search engine while you are at it. Remember when I mentioned that e-tabitha had traveled with me through many different systems? You can also purchase your own URL and use it on your blog instead of something like elmerfudd.blogspot.com. If you stay with the default system, you can name your blog whatever you want and the dot blogspot dot com will follow it. Once you have selected your URL and turned it into Google's search engine, and set up Google Analytics to track your traffic, the next thing you should do is to add Feedjit. Go to Feedjit.com and follow the instructions. As with GA, the instructions are very easy and straightforward. You can even tell Feedjit you are with Blogger and Feedjit will know just what to do. The result of all this is that Google will have your blog's URL in its system so when a potential reader puts Elmer Fudd in Google, your blog will come up on the list. Of course it helps if you are a lot less famous with a name like Floyd M. Orr so your blog is not listed on page 5000 of the Google results. If your name is too similar to a much more famous name, you might wish to consider naming your blog something else. Google Analytics will track your traffic on a day to day, week to week, month to month, and even year to year basis. Feedjit tracks your visitors on a right now basis. When your blog is young and attracting very few readers, watching your Feedjit results will be less exciting than watching grass grow or paint dry. After it picks up speed, and this could take a lot longer than you would like, you will find Feedjit's results to be fascinating reading! Feedjit will tell you where your visitors are coming from and where they are going when they have had all they can stand of you. It will show you the cities they live in and the types of computer systems they use, and of course, it will tell you which pages they are hitting and how long they are staying there. The one flaw I have found is that when you have a link to something in the post, even a picture that blows up when you click it, the visitor might leave soon after her arrival and appear not to return. The catch is that she is probably hitting the Back Button after visiting the link you inserted, but when she returns to continue reading your post, Feedjit does not seem to respond to her use of the Back Button.

Here is the hardest question in blogging, folks. How do you attract the largest number of visitors of the type you wish to attract, and how do you keep them coming back for more? The bad news is that a huge number of people out there surfing the innertubes seem to have the interests of Wal-mart shoppers in the checkout line with the patience of four-year-olds! In other words, a lot of potential readers are going to respond only to your latest posts and the latest links to those posts from other blogs and websites. When I mentioned link lists earlier, I said they could be configured in several different ways. One of the neatest things about Blogger is that you can set up a type of link list that allows new posts from any other Blogger blog to which you link to float to the top of any link list as a new post is added to that particular blog. Of course you can set up a link list, usually in alphabetical order, of a type that is static, but everywhere your blog is listed in a floating list, this is an issue that can affect your traffic. This system is really neat in the way it brings attention to new posts for readers, but you can see how an unscrupulous blogger could easily abuse this system. Let's hope that PODBRAM readers and bloggers are of a higher caliber.

The traffic issue continues as a function of how often you choose to post. The more often you post, the more visitors will continue to come to see whatever new stuff you have added. The downside of course is that if you try to post too often, with most of your posts offering very little value to your readers, they are not going to be happy with that arrangement for very long, either. Some people, particularly established celebrity commentators and such, post at the same time once a week instead of trying to constantly keep up with The Joneses. There is usually very little need to post more often than once daily, but after a while, you will see how difficult even this repetition can get. Twice or three times a week has usually worked well for me, and when I say that, I am not referring to all four of my blogs. Most of the time at least a couple of them are being ignored for weeks or even months at a time. Assuming you are only setting up one blog, I would recommend that you shoot for regular posting no less than once a week, but rarely more than once a day. Keep in mind, too, that if you do not set up a specific link navigation system in the sidebar, as I have done with all my blogs, the regular Archive system can get really unwieldy over time, with respect to a reader seeking out a particular post or subject.

This brings us to the final issue, one that should specifically be vital to any author setting up a blog. The subject matter can vary all over the map. You can be very specific or very general in your choice of subject matter. You can cover several different subjects if you choose. You can cover all your books or only one. The big catch is that unless your name is Stephen King or Anne Rice no one gives a rat's ass about your stupid little POD book. You have to offer the readers a reason to come visit. Of course your mom will read your blog just because you are you, but attracting strangers to read your little blog of twenty ways to say buy my book because it's good can be a real challenge. When I explained to you my personal blogging history, what I was trying to show you is that you can evolve your blog as your ideas grow and develop. Some of my blogs do not appear to be as old as they actually are when you look at the dates of the posts. That is because some of the material has been shifted around and linked to other sources as the Blogger system and my knowledge of my own goals has evolved. If you have only one book or several books, all about the same subject matter, this process will be much simpler for you, but the more convoluted your subject matter or the information you wish to impart with your blog, the more complicated these traffic issues will become.

Try to envision what kind of readers you wish to attract and where they will come from to your blog. The more links you can put out there on other blogs, the more traffic you will get. Just remember, too, that the more specific these linking blogs are to the subject of your blog, the more attractive your blog will be to that potential traffic. On the other hand, the wider the span of material covered on your blog, the more blogs there are that might be appropriate to link to your blog. This system presents a particular Catch 22 for relatively unknown authors. If your material is very specific, you might attract some very voracious readers of your material, but their numbers could be very distinctly limited. On the other hand, if your material is more varied, you have more options open to you when choosing the subjects you post about, as well as the number of blogs upon which you can offer your link. Only a tiny percentage of your potential audience is going to visit your blog just to buy your book. You have to offer them whatever more than that that you can conjure up. The more diverse reasons you can offer a potential audience to visit your blog, eventually the traffic will increase and watching Feedjit scroll will become more exciting than reading ten different ways to buy my book!

No Good Like It Is

No Good Like It Is
by McKendree R. Long III
(CreateSpace / 1-450-58078-5 / 978-1-450-58078-6 / April 2010 / 332 pages / $15.00 / B&N $10.80 / Kindle $4.99)

Reviewed by Celia Hayes for PODBRAM

No Good Like It Is is one of those narratives usually described as episodic, rambling and picaresque. The plot is the journey – and the point of the journey sometimes seems like an afterthought. If it were a motion picture, it would be that kind of Western wherein a pair of oddly assorted pals wanders through adventures involving the usual genre Western characters: Indians, bad-men, renegades, an assortment of women of rather elastic virtue, drunks, crooked sheriffs and former slaves.

The story of West Point officer Thomas “Dobey” Walls and his sidekick, enlisted soldier Jimmy Melton really seems to fall into three separate parts. The first is a prologue of how they meet and become acquainted during the late 1850s, when both are in the US Army, stationed on the wilds of the far frontier. It takes about ten chapters and seventy pages to establish their friendship and their characters – and since the whole meat of their adventure is their Civil War experience as part of the fabled cavalry unit, Terry’s Texas Rangers, and their journey home from the war, those first chapters seem a little like marking time, waiting for the real adventure to begin. Conversely, the Civil War portion of the book seems also a little rushed. Surely Terry’s Rangers had a great deal more going on during 1861-65, which would have given enough scope for a full set of wartime adventures and derring-do for the two of them?

Anyway, the real adventure begins when the two of them head home again, across the war-blasted South, with the eventual goal of finding Dobey Walls’ surviving family, who may or may not be still at an isolated trading post in the present-day Panhandle. Who knows if they are still alive, for what with the war and all, he hasn’t been in touch with them for years?

The historical research regarding things like military gear and uniforms is impeccable, if sometimes a little overly detailed, and including elements like the Confederate Cherokee characters is an excellent touch. The Civil War was extremely complicated – even in Indian Territory. I would wish for a little more of a sense of place, and landscape, since the journey of Walls and Melton takes place over a wide swath of the South and West. And what seems like an irrelevant development regarding a stolen payroll is a lead-in to a sequel – so, the rambling journey will continue, for sure.

See also: Celia's BNN Review
McKendree R. Long's Website

Kidnapped

Kidnapped by Maria Hammarblad
(CreateSpace / 1-451-59470-4 / 978-1-451-59470-6 / May 2010 / 268 pages / $12.95 / B&N $11.65 / Kindle $2.99)

Reviewed by Donna Aviles for PODBRAM

Tricia Risdon is a young woman, driving home on a winter’s night, when she is suddenly and frighteningly taken aboard a spaceship after nearly colliding with a man who appeared from nowhere in the middle of the road. Confused and unaware of the dire circumstances she now finds herself in, Tricia is confronted by the only occupant of the spaceship – Alliance Commander Travis 152 – an intimidating man with a disfigured face who speaks an indecipherable language. After the Commander places a machine around Tricia’s head, she is able to comprehend his words as if translated into her own native English.

Travis soon learns that he has taken Tricia prisoner in error – that she is not working in partnership with William, the rebel who had appeared in front of her car on the lonely Colorado road. He is now faced with the dilemma of what to do with her and decides that she is not a threat to him or his ship and lets her roam freely.

Travis and Tricia find themselves attracted to one another and they soon become lovers, with Travis replacing his lifelong programmed allegiance to The Alliance with a newfound allegiance to Tricia. The remainder of Kidnapped, by Maria Hammarblad, is the adventure-packed and sometimes harrowing journey of the unlikely couple’s quest to break free from the ruthless control of The Alliance and make their way safely back to Earth.

I would have liked to have had more of a background on Tricia since the story takes place over the course of a year’s time and we never learn anything about her life or family on Earth. Additionally, there are many characters in the book that were not fully developed that would have given the story more depth. I found this to be an interesting storyline that began a bit slowly but picked up the pace as it went along. Two thirds of the way through, it became harder to put down as the action heightened. Technically, there were some spelling errors but not enough to cause serious distraction. If you’re looking for a science fiction novel with a romantic twist, Kidnapped is worth a look.

See also: Maria's Amazon Page
Maria's second book, Undercover