Michael Tice
There is a direct line that can easily be drawn from Starship Troopers, through The Forever War, on to Old Man's War, seeing how changing society, and the views of people at those times, change our overall views of war and what it means to fight.
However, of the 3, I feel that this one is the most poignant. Having been written by a Viet Nam vet, who was obviously disillusioned with his place in the wise, and trying to find his place once again in society; we see the same sorts of problems playing out in William here.
This book, more than anything I've ever read, shows us the horrors of the military industrial complex, and being caught in a society that feeds on it and needs it to survive. A path that seems all to real for the USA in modern times.
Perhaps, as we are on the eve of the final drawdown of troops in Afghanistan after 20 years there, and seeing in stark relief the absurdity of war, that the is the reason I find this particular book so very relevant.
Apparently James Cameron hates this book.
First, he ruins the ability to even think we could raise the Titanic by going to it and showing it's in multiple pieces.
Then he ruins the whole idea of some unobtainable mineral with that unobtanium bullshit in Avatar.
I get it, it's an easy book to hate, but coming out of the first two published Dirk Pitt books, this is almost a breath of fresh air with its only slightly over the top sexism. I mean, at least it doesn't have Dirk raping a woman, after slapping her, when we first meet him or have the rampant homophobia of Dirk pretending to be the most stereotypical hetero idea of what a gay man is like.
Has some good action. Dirk does stuff that could only be done through the power of plot. But I don't think I came here for the realism.
At least reading this one hasn't turned me off Dirk Pitt books for the next couple years.
I enjoy Reacher stories, even when bite sized. Just a bunch of fun little vignettes about other places and things Reacher has done. If you like Reacher books, and aren't one of those, “Ohh, they've gotten bad Reacher isn't the same why isn't it all the same?” Types then this is worth a read. Quick and fun, like trash fiction should be.
And Reacher is trash fiction, that's why we love it.
The first collaboration between Lee and Andrew, and I think that, once the torch has been fully passed, we will still have lots of the same two fisted action, as always.
This one? With no particular place to go, Reacher rolls into town, starts out helping some random guy, makes amazing leaps of deductive reasoning, and fights Russian ransomware hackers and punches literal Nazis.
Like every good hero should.
Always punch Nazis.
A fun romp, and it's nice to see that, with Andrew starting to take the reins, they are moving into more modern stories, but while Reacher remains his old Luddite self.
I've said this about them before. It's a Reacher book. You don't go into this expecting to find great literature. You go in, check your brain at the door, and expect a Reacher book.
Reacher wanders into town.
Reacher gets involved in a kerfuffle by being nice to someone but where the real picture behind the scenes is as big as Reacher himself.
Reacher does a bunch of stuff no man could ever do without the Power of Plot.
Reacher wins.
That's the formula for our modern day Knight Errant, right?
Anyone, Reacher gets involved with Eastern European mobsters. He meets a young woman. He kills a lot of people. He sets things right. Lots of action in between. The difference here? I think Lee Child honestly had something to say about how he feels about the situation in his adopted country over the past few years and the raise of actual fake news on the internet. I think Lee hates it just as much as people who haven't fallen for it do. And I think we all secretly want Reacher to roll in and kick the ever living shit out of the Russians and Ukrainians who have been causing so much havoc in this country.
Reacher. The hero we need.
Jack Reacher is a man with a Past. And it's definitely Tense. While deciding to journey across the hypotenuse of the ole US of A, he comes across the town where his father grew up and decides to do a little genealogy research. That story gets a 3. It was ok. I mean, predictable. But, then again, it's a Jack Reacher book. Aren't they all? I was happy to see a brief return of Jack listening to the music in his head. That went away after the first book, didn't it? And that always right clock. Hadn't heard that one in a few.
There Is a secondary plot about some kids from Canada and a motel and them being stranded there, and eventually Reacher's path crosses with those Canadians. It was also pretty predictable, especially considering a few movies that have come out recently with the same subject matter. Still, I give that story 4 stars.
So, a slightly better than average Reacher book. Call it 3.5 stars when you average the two together. As always, I rate Reacher novels only as compared to other Reacher novels.
Harry, How I've Missed You
Look, it's a Dresden Files book. If you've come this far, then you've read 15 other novels and a bunch of short stories, so you know what to expect. The gang's all here. I wish I had read through at least the last couple again to remember everything that happened, but as a Narrator, Harry does an alright job filling in the missing pieces.
So, does this book go anywhere different or do anything new? You know the answer to that. That's not why we read these. We read them for Harry's wisecracking and magical hijinks with the supernatural world. Peace Talks has you covered, and when you get to the end of this roller coaster, you'll see that you're actually perched at the top of another hill and will fully understand why Butcher's next Dresden Files book comes out in like 2 months.
Is it the best Reacher book? Since they're all pretty much the same book, what could even be considered “the best”? It was definitely a nice 4 day diversion into the post -Cold War world of Germany. Plausible, sure. Jack, as always, makes giant leaps of logic drawing conclusions that you could only draw if you were the author of your own story.
Still, I only rate Jack Reacher books based off other Jack Reacher books, and it was definitely a fun read.
Best of all, Reacher got to punch Nazis, and who doesn't love Reacher punching Nazis?
What in the misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic hell did I just finish reading?
Ok, I'm taking away 1 star for that, which means that, technically, this is a zero star review. Yes, I know, it was written in the 1970s. Yes, in the past almost 50 years, the world has changed, but it has not changed enough, yet.
So, despite all of that, this is still, at best a bad book. Not even good bad. I think, if we have learned anything, it is that (spoiler) corporations won't do anything unless there is immediate profit in whatever they are doing.
The story was weak. The reveal in the epilogue was done completely with no foreshadowing and was 100% completely and utterly pointless except for some kind of 70s shock value.
If you are reading Dirk Pitt novels, skip this one. Now, much like after finishing the Mediterranean Caper, I think I need 33 months to cleanse my palate of 1970s Dirk Pitt.
It's definitely better than I remembered, but that was over 20 years ago, so how much do I actually remember? I think my big problem is the end and that final battle. Was that really necessary? Didn't we just see the same thing at the end of the last book? Maybe it was in the prophecies, I don't know, I guess I need to dig up my copy of the Karaethon Cycle.
Where do I start with this? About 23 years ago I read the only other Dirk Pitt book I have ever read. It was Inca Gold and my 16 year old self loved it. I decided, while taking a break from reading way too many Jack Reacher novels, that I would find some other bit of flippery to occupy my reading time on airplanes while traveling for work, and went back to the well to pull out the very first Dirk Pitt novel published.
I wish I hadn't.
Perhaps I am applying a modern sense of morals to a book that came out 44 years ago and I should accept this novel for what it is based off of the time in which it was written? I think perhaps not.
We start off with our “hero “ meeting a woman who he first slaps because she is being, what he deems as, hysterical and then, because she hasn't had a man in the 9 years since her husband dies, immediately has sex with her on the beach. Was this acceptable then? I'm pretty sure Dirk just raped a woman.
The book then continues to follow a cliff hanger, how will Dirk get out of this trap, format where Dirk is naturally the only person smart enough to understand how anything works, what is going on, and how the day will be saved. He is, naturally, the smartest and the best at everything he does, because he is a man, and all men aspire to be him. The manliest of men.
Working through all these problems that only Pitt can see, and that are revealed to the reader at the end, wrapped up with a nice little bow, leaving us entirely in the dark, Pitt makes his way around the island battling the German mastermind at every turn, coming up with the most out there idea as to what is actually going on, while providing absolutely no proof until the very end of why any of this happens to be true or why anyone should understand it. Maybe I like my mystery to have a few clues along the way? I could be wrong, though. I guess it all should be in the hero's head and then just presented at the end like the “fresh” catch of the day. You either buy it or you don't.
Minor aside, when the radio operator is described as a, “your black,” with his, “low, resonant voice,” I winced. Man did I ever wince so hard.
Really, though, why did I devote the time it took me to actually finish this book? It wasn't a matter of figuring things out ahead of time, which there were a few parts where it was easy to do that, I'm looking at your Unterseeboot, but more that you couldn't figure anything out because this was really nothing more than the story of Dirk Pitt bumbling around an island, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and stitching together a bunch of unrelated nonexistent clues to form a cohesive narrative that absolutely had to be true because Dirk Pitt said so!
And the overt misogyny at the very end with the women working their typewriters in that office? That was way over the top.
One mystery about this book that I cannot solve, and there are ample clues to be found within its pages, how did it spawn so many sequels?
In the wee hours of the morning, after I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep, I finished reading “The Shadow” by “James Patterson” and Brian Sitts. Mostly Brian Sitts, of course, since Patterson doesn't really write all these books, but I digress. I knew this book was bad going in. I started reading and this book was bad then. I got to the end, and holy shit is this book an absolute train wreck. Let's start with the obvious. The book is 400 pages long. It has 101 chapters. You can do the math there. There are multiple POV characters, fine. but ONE character gets a first person POV while everyone else is third person POV, except for one, albeit 4 page, chapter where the usual first person POV character becomes a third person POV character. Who thought this was a good idea? Do you remember what The Shadow's “powers” are? He had the hypnotic power to cloud men's minds, making him essentially invisible to them. He did not turn invisible. What does THIS Shadow do? First he literally turns invisible. Then he finds he can shape change into a cat. Then he starts shooting fireballs from his hands! And in the climactic 3 page final battle with Shiwan Khan chapter, he transforms into a... Wait for it... A BRICK WALL! The Shadow and his new protege figure out what Shiwan Khan is trying to do, and with a simple sentence is able to completely thwart the plan and have the entire city rise up in rebellion and take everything over in half a chapter! Or about 1.5 pages.
Do I feel like I wasted my time reading this? Absolutely not. It was complete garbage where I am pretty sure the average sentence length is similar to the per chapter page count, but it was still fun in its stupid kind of way where you just feel angry about reading it but at the same time wondering what kind of moronic garbage is going to come out of the writer's pen next. Next up, I'm going to read the “James Patterson” and Brian Sitts first Doc Savage novel. I've heard it is worse.