Joe Martin

The continuing adventures of Jethri Gobelyn—Liaden Trader, Terran Trader, the one man with good standing in two cultures. Jethri had loaned the Liaden Scouts a notebook he inherited from his father. It was supposed to be copied and then returned to him. It wasn't returned. Balance was required. Jethri teamed up with a Liaden Scout, to track down and recover his stolen notebook.

The notebook, of course, is a MacGuffin. It's an excuse to send Jethri and the Scout from port to port, world to world, both Liaden and Terran. It's an excuse to show Jethri operating in both of his cultures, sometimes simultaneously.

There were some interesting moments. But, mostly, I was unimpressed by the book. Jethri had a purpose to what he did but I didn't feel a connection to that purpose. The story itself wandered all over the place and didn't have a strong narrative thread.

The book constantly jumped back and forth in time. There were a lot of chapters that started out a day or more after the previous chapter ended, making it feel like you'd blacked out and missed what had been happening. Then, all of the sudden, one of the characters would either reflect on what had been happening or would relate the events to another character, filling in the details of what you'd missed. It was an irritating narrative device and quickly grew old.

I normally enjoy Liaden Universe stories. I didn't really enjoy this one and I would have been happy to have missed it.

Read this review on my blog.

Young Jethri Gobelyn is a crew member on Gobelyn's Market, a Terran trade ship. It's a family owned ship. His mother is the captain, his uncle is the Trader. He's 17 years old and studying to be a Trader himself. He was born on Gobelyn's Market and he's lived there his entire life, with his family. But all of that's about to change.

Jethri was relaxing in a dockside bar, after successfully completing a Trade deal and earning a good bit of profit for the ship. He was approached by another Trader and learned of a too-good-to-be-true deal, if only the other Trader could raise a little bit of ready cash. Normally Jethri would have rejected the deal out of hand, as a sucker's bet. But this deal was backed by the word of a Liaden and Liadens are known to never break their word.

Jethri bit on the deal. When it fell through, he went directly to the Liaden involved, only to find that it was a scam after all and the other Trader had no right to use the Liaden's name. Because of Jethri, the Liaden were able to break up a group of con artists who were trading on their reputations. Because the Liaden owed Jethri Balance, she offered to take him on as an Apprentice Trader.

It just so happened that Gobelyn's Market was looking to send Jethri out on his own and his only other choice was to join the ship of a cousin that he hated. He'd always been fascinated by Liaden culture, so he jumped at the chance to join a Liaden ship.

So begin's Jethri's journey. He has to learn to Trade on his own and to navigate the many cultural minefields that exist between Terran culture and Liaden culture. He has to learn the language, the etiquette, and the expectations. It all ties into a very well executed coming-of-age story.

I always enjoy the Liaden Universe and this book is a welcome addition to the series.

Read the review on my blog.

I've been thinking about reading this book—this series—for a couple of years now. Robert Jordan crafted one massive story, told through fourteen books. It's a singular achievement, as both a creative and commercial success. I've never read it, but I've been increasingly curious about it. Now I've read it and I am disappointed.

The story opens in the small, rural, village of the Two Rivers. Rand, along with his friends Perrin and Mat, is preparing for the spring festival of Bel Tine. That night, Rand's farm is attacked by a horde of Trollocs, led by a shadowman, a Myrddraal. Rand and his friends learn that the attack is focused on the three of them and, in order to keep their families and friends safe, they'll need to flee the Two Rivers.

The rest of the story details their flight north, through towns and cities, running from ancient evils, visiting ancient, long forgotten, dangerous places. Along the way, they learn more about the outside world than they ever dreamed, experience more, and change in ways they never would have imagined.

It's not so much that the story is bad. It's that the story felt derivative of The Lord of the Rings. The Two Rivers feels like the Shire. At the beginning of the story, everyone in the village is anticipating the arrival of a gleeman, to perform songs and stories, and a delivery of fireworks for a special performance. That felt exactly like Bilbo's birthday party, with the Shire waiting for the arrival of Gandalf.

The Trollocs looked different than orcs but fulfilled exactly the same role in the story. The fades (the shadowman or the Myddraal) evoked the same fear and played the same role as the Ringwraiths did. The race through the countryside felt the same as the race toward Rivendell and Weathertop.

When we did finally get to the climax, the boss battle was over incredibly quickly. It felt like we had a massive buildup and then, suddenly, it was over. Rand won, the enemy lost. Just like that. I felt cheated out of a dramatic ending.

The worst part was that The Eye of the World failed the most crucial test for the first book in a series: it didn't make me feel need to read more. I keep feeling like I should read the next book, out of a sense of duty and commitment. But I don't feel like I have to read it or that I'll regret it if I don't.

This book, this series, has legions of fan. After reading it, I discovered that I'm not one of them.

I might have had a better idea of what to expect from this story, had I first been familiar with T. S. Eliot's poem “The Wasteland”.

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell

And the profit and loss.

A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool.

Gentile or Jew

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

In practice as well as theory the Culture was beyond considerations of wealth or empire. The very concept of money — regarded by the Culture as a crude, over-complicated and inefficient form of rationing — was irrelevant within the society itself, where the capacity of its means of production ubiquitously and comprehensively exceeded every reasonable (and in some cases, perhaps, unreasonable) demand its not unimaginative citizens could make. These demands were satisfied, with one exception, from within the Culture itself. Living space was provided in abundance, chiefly on matter-cheap Orbitals; raw material existed in virtually inexhaustible quantities both between the stars and within stellar systems; and energy was, if anything, even more generally available, through fusion, annihilation, the Grid itself, or from stars (taken either indirectly, as radiation absorbed in space, or directly, tapped at the stellar core). Thus the Culture had no need to colonise, exploit or enslave.

not

This is a well-written book about a sequence of events that strains credulity. If I'd seen a movie or TV show that featured the events of this book as plot points, I'd attack the effort as contrived and unrealistic. Yet it apparently all happened. It's enough to further shake my already shaken faith in democracy.

Crile goes through great effort to portray Charlie Wilson as a lone wolf, pulling the strings of power to achieve his singular aim. That makes the book more interesting but I think it obscures the fact that a great many other people were involved in this conflict and very much wanted it to succeed. Charlie took a pre-existing conflict, already tepidly supported by the Congress and the White House, and pursued it with more creativity and vigor than anyone else could seemingly muster. He pushed his Congressional authority to the limits and beyond. In that sense, it was very much “Charlie Wilson's War”. But he didn't single-handedly start or run the war.

The CIA was already involved in Afghanistan when he discovered the plight of the mujahideen. It's true that he sought extra funding for the effort and forced the CIA to step up its efforts. That extra funding, however, was voted on by the entire Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, the entire Appropriations Committee, and the entire Congress. Charlie was a likable Congressman with many friends and he was owed many legislative favors. But “his” war never would have happened if the other members of his committee, the Congress, or the White House had seriously opposed what he was doing. I think that the book errs by giving too much credit to Congressman Wilson and downplaying the support he had from others. It was otherwise engaging, horrifying, and educational.

Many people credit the downfall of the Soviet Union to its loss in Afghanistan. Many people also blame 9/11 and the rise in Islamic terrorism on America's training and equipping of the mujahideen. I'm prepared to believe that both are true. After reading this book, I'm left with many more questions than answers. Was the rise of terrorism inevitable and a necessary component of defeating the Soviet Union? Could we have prevented 9/11 by using more discretion about which tribal leaders to back? Was Charlie right or foolhardy to push for the escalation of America's involvement in Afghanistan?

Charlie Wilson's War illustrates the folly of believing that we can predict the effects of America's foreign policy moves. What seems right today may seem disastrous tomorrow. A certain humility would seem to be in order. You can read the book as a celebration of the American can-do spirit. I read it as a statement that we would be wise to pursue a foreign policy of non-intervention.

It's been about 2 years since I read One Jump Ahead, the book that introduces Jon Moore and his ship, Lobo. I liked that story because of the technology it introduced, especially Jon's ability to control the nanotech embedded in his body. Also, you just have to like a planet named “Pinkelplonker” (named by the 5-year old son of the captain that discovered the planet).

For the past two years, I've been thinking about reading more in the series. I've just never done it. I decided to do it this year, as part of my reading goals. Unfortunately, once I did read it, I was disappointed in this book.

The plot revolved around a boy that multiple people wanted, a possible survivor from Pinkelplonker. He was protected by Slanted Jack (a con-man so named because nothing he did was ever straight and on the level). Jon was brought in as Jack's one-man security force. Of course, things went south and Jon ended up trying to double-cross three different groups simultaneously.

Throughout the book, Jon spent a lot of time being despondent about his job, his past history, and his future prospects. The mood was rather bleak throughout. Either I don't remember the first book as well as I thought I did or the tone shifted substantially. My favorite part of the first book was the way Jon used his nanotech. In this book, he barely used the nanotech at all. Between the gloomy atmosphere and the absence of the most interesting tech, I didn't see a lot to really enjoy.

I'm hoping that the next book in the series is a little bit better. If not, I may not finish it.

(Reviewed together with Crystal Dragon.)

I read these two books back to back and they easily combine to form one large story. I'll review them together. These books (the “Migration Duology”) form an origin story to the entire Liaden Universe. They literally explain how the universe came into being.

The story starts in the misty depths of history when a group of humans began genetically modifying themselves. They continually modified themselves until they no longer remotely resembled humanity or considered themselves human. These “Sheriekas” then decided to cleanse the universe of every less perfect being, destroying entire star systems as they went.

Humanity fought back, though generally not very successfully. The novels focus on two characters: M Jela Granthor's Guard and Cantra Yos Phelium. They become reluctant partners and eventual lovers. Together with a sentient, telepathic Tree (possibly the best part of the story) and the dramliza (escaped creations of the Sheriekas), they fight a desperate rear guard action. They eventually succeed in creating an entirely new universe for humanity to escape to, one where the Sheriekas can't reach them.

These books were okay but I didn't feel like they really fit in with the rest of the Liaden Universe novels. I had a hard time caring about a war that occurred thousands of years before the rest of the series—and that was fought in a completely separate universe.

I kept thinking “so what?” and wondering what impact all of this really had on the rest of the series. (It seemed like a tale that would be an interesting origin myth for Clan Korval but not something that would affect ongoing events in the new universe.) Additionally, the plot events and relationships reminded me a lot of events and characters in both Conflict of Honors and Agent of Change.

The novels were fun but seemed both somewhat pointless and somewhat of a retread of earlier novels. I think they're good to read if you're really interested in the origin of some of the recurring themes of the series. I wouldn't start reading the series with these novels though.

(Reviewed together with Crystal Dragon.)

I read these two books back to back and they easily combine to form one large story. I'll review them together. These books (the “Migration Duology”) form an origin story to the entire Liaden Universe. They literally explain how the universe came into being.

The story starts in the misty depths of history when a group of humans began genetically modifying themselves. They continually modified themselves until they no longer remotely resembled humanity or considered themselves human. These “Sheriekas” then decided to cleanse the universe of every less perfect being, destroying entire star systems as they went.

Humanity fought back, though generally not very successfully. The novels focus on two characters: M Jela Granthor's Guard and Cantra Yos Phelium. They become reluctant partners and eventual lovers. Together with a sentient, telepathic Tree (possibly the best part of the story) and the dramliza (escaped creations of the Sheriekas), they fight a desperate rear guard action. They eventually succeed in creating an entirely new universe for humanity to escape to, one where the Sheriekas can't reach them.

These books were okay but I didn't feel like they really fit in with the rest of the Liaden Universe novels. I had a hard time caring about a war that occurred thousands of years before the rest of the series—and that was fought in a completely separate universe.

I kept thinking “so what?” and wondering what impact all of this really had on the rest of the series. (It seemed like a tale that would be an interesting origin myth for Clan Korval but not something that would affect ongoing events in the new universe.) Additionally, the plot events and relationships reminded me a lot of events and characters in both Conflict of Honors and Agent of Change.

The novels were fun but seemed both somewhat pointless and somewhat of a retread of earlier novels. I think they're good to read if you're really interested in the origin of some of the recurring themes of the series. I wouldn't start reading the series with these novels though.

Birnbaum and Murray — two Wall Street Journal reporters — wrote this book just after Congress passed the 1986 Tax Reform Act. The Washington Post's political reporter said it “reads like a thriller, which it is, with a remarkable cast of characters and a payoff in billions”. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, but it was interesting and informative.

Birnbaum and Murray narrate the history of the tax reform effort, starting with Senator Bill Bradley's initial doomed efforts. From there, we move to Reagan's desire to dramatically lower tax rates and (House Ways and Means Committee) Chairman Rostenkowski's desire to eliminate hundreds of tax loopholes. No one else really wanted tax reform.

How did we get tax reform? The authors walk us through it one roadblock at a time. Treasury Secretary Don Regan wanted the credit for pushing forward one of Reagan's major goals. Chief of Staff Jim Baker wanted to loyally carry out the President's requests. Chairman Packwood (of the Senate Finance Committee) wanted to win re-election and wanted to avoid being seen as an enemy of tax reform. The tax reform effort almost died three or four times during its three year incubation. Although it was the bill that no one wanted, it was also the bill that no one wanted to publicly oppose.

I learned a lot while reading this book. I was surprised by how uninvolved President Reagan was in the details of the bill. I was surprised by how many Republicans wanted to bury the bill and how many Democrats supported it. I reconfirmed my own lack of faith in government as I saw just how many “special interests” (and Congressman and Senators) fought for the survival of their own specific tax breaks (loopholes) in defiance of the common good.

This would make a great book for any high school civics class. Students would learn far more about how our government works (or doesn't) from this one book than they would from any number of Schoolhouse Rock videos. You might be surprised at how few people are involved in writing large, complex bills. You might be surprised at how much power the White House staff exercises independent of the President himself.

This book was interesting enough to be engaging and educational enough to be a valuable resource on the way American government really works.

I've now completed my goal of reading the entire Dresden Files series (everything except the graphic novels). This is not a novel, like the other books in the series. Rather, it's all of the Dresden short stories that Jim Butcher has written.

Each story is told in the familiar first-person narrative. However, they're not the end-of-the-world apocalypses that the novels tend to be. Rather, they're the small cases that you always thought “Chicago's only professional Wizard” would have. Most of the stories have an element of simplicity and fun that can be lost in the larger events of the novels.

There's one of Harry's first cases, when he was still an apprentice P.I. There's the time he saved a bride from a vengeful faerie, the time he had a run-in with one of Grendel's descendants, or the unfortunate vampire-LARP-turned-deadly that ensued when he tried to give his brother, Thomas, a birthday gift. There's even a story told from Thomas's point of view and one from Murphy's point of view.

This wasn't a page turner the way the full-length novels have been. But it was still fun and it did make Harry more well-rounded in a way that the novels don't.

As I've grown to expect, Brandon Sanderson delivers the goods. The magic system in this novella, Forging, is innovative. Forger's can transform raw materials or existing objects into something else. But they have to know the history and character of the object first. If they don't get the soul of the object right, their Forgeries won't last. A good Forger has to have a very close, very intimate knowledge of that which they would Forge. And that's the soul of this novella: in order to Forge a new soul for the emperor, Shai will have to learn more about him than anyone else knows, even his closest friends. That developing relationship — between Shai and a brain dead ruler — is what drives this story.

This story won a Hugo award last year. I can see why. The magic system is interesting. As is usual in Brandon's stories, the limitations of the magic system are more interesting than the magic system itself. But the magic takes a back seat to the relationships and that's what makes this story good.

A short, entertaining read. Neil Gaiman captures the voice of the 11th Doctor right on. His characterization of Amy feels close, but not quite right. The story itself felt like a Doctor Who story, about the right length for a TV episode. The Kin is appropriately chilling, the Doctor is appropriately charming.

Harry Dresden discovers that being Queen Mab's Winter Knight is weirder and more confusing than he'd already expected it to be. He also has to fight a continual battle against Winter's gravitational pull towards evil. Not only that, but he's closer than ever to Mab and learning that she has her reasons for what she does and that he sometimes even agrees with her.

Cold Days completes the story arc that began in Changes. Dresden has now completely left behind his old life of Chicago's only professional wizard. He's walking in far more powerful circles, whether he likes it or not. He's assumed broad new responsibilities and he's learned more about the true dangers in the world than he ever wanted to know. At heart, he still wants to protect the ones he loves and use his strength for good. But the line between good and evil, between good motives and evil outcomes, is very blurry.

In some ways, this novel completes a story arc — a character arc — that started with the very first novel in the series. Harry gradually realized that his cases concealed much deeper machinations. He gradually learned more about the forces that were manipulating the events that he kept getting caught up in. This novel is the first time that he really starts to see the big picture and figure out who his real, ultimate, enemies are.

I'm looking forward to reading Skin Game, to see where things go next. I only wish I didn't have to wait until May to find out.

After being assassinated at the end of Changes, Dresden wakes up as a ghost. Which sounds cool. But Ghost Story is here to tell you that it's anything but fun.

Dresden quickly realizes that he's more cut off and isolated than he's ever been. He doesn't know how to “live” as a ghost. He has to be taught by the other ghosts. He can't talk to any of his friends. He can't touch any of his friends. He can't touch anything at all. He can walk around Chicago. He can see what's going on. But he's completely unable to interact with anything or affect circumstances in any way.

Before dying, Dresden had completely wiped out the Red Court vampires. He's been gone for 6 months. Now that he's back, Chicago looks like a city under siege. Dresden learns that there's been some nasty fallout from the destruction of the Red Court. He created a magical power vacuum and nature abhors a vacuum. Now his friends are in even more danger than before and it looks like his apprentice may have gone completely around the bend.

This was a different type of Dresden story. It moved at a slower pace and was a lot more reflective. Dresden had to grow accustomed to being a ghost. He had to think deeply about what it meant to live, what it meant to die, and what it meant to care for people when you were neither fully alive nor fully dead.

The last book had more upheaval than any other Dresden novel. This book had more contemplation and self-reflection than any other Dresden novel. I liked it. I think it may be the strongest book yet in the series.

This may be the most appropriate title of the entire series. Harry goes through more change in this one book than he has in the entire series to date. He discovers that he has a daughter. Friends die. A magical Power disappears forever. Harry changes jobs, makes peace with the Winter Court, loses his car, loses his home, and loses most of his possessions.

I enjoyed this book. That's an odd thing to say when this much pain, suffering, and change is packed into one story, but it's true. Harry faced some very tough choices and some no-win scenarios. He chose in a fashion that felt very true to the character that Butcher has created him to be. It's hard to imagine how the series itself will change after the events of this story but that too feels right, given the potentially apocalyptic scope of the Powers that Harry continually faces.

Every series needs to change to avoid becoming stale, cliched, or repetitive. Butcher has proven that he can change this series and that he can continue to make it feel like a living reality and not just a static universe for telling the same stories over and over.

The man with a vendetta against Harry Dresden, Donald Morgan, shows up at Harry's front door. He's wounded, on the run, and asking for help. Harry's pathological need to always do the right things means that he offers that help right away. That doesn't change the fact that he and Morgan both hate that Harry's offering the help and that Morgan was forced to ask Harry for help. Morgan's accused of murdering a member of the White Council's Senior Council and Harry is practically the only wizard that doesn't believe that he did it.

For the first time, we get to see the headquarters of the White Council and some of the inner political workings of the council. This is the first time in the series that the White Council has truly felt like a large, global concern rather than just a group of a few powerful wizards. (From this view we also see, quite clearly, why other magical powers keep referring to the White Council as a rotten tree that's about to fall.) By the end of this story, it's clear that the White Council has more than one active traitor and that it would be dangerous for any one to depend on the wizards for help.

This is another solid story that continues to develop both Harry Dresden and the world that he lives in.

The book opens on Harry Dresden enjoying a lighthearted snowball fight with the Carpenters. Out of nowhere, for seemingly no reason, he's attacked by creatures from the Nevernever. He later discovers that they're gruffs (as in “the billy goats gruff”), creatures of the Summer Court. Later, he's attacked by creates of the Winter Court. Then he ends up in face offs with the Denarians and the Fallen.

This book has many great moments. Harry's various battles with the gruffs are fun highlights. His continuing character development is good to see. But the overall plot felt messy. I spent most of the book wondering what was going on. That can be fine—Harry is the narrator and the audience is supposed to be confused if he's confused. (He definitely should be confused, given the powers he goes up against.) In this case, I don't think the overall actions of the various powers made a lot of sense. I felt confused because the plot itself was confusing and not all that coherent.

This story is important as a part of the overall Dresden story line but I don't think it's a great individual book.

Harry believes that a string of suicides is really a string of murders. He investigates and ends up pitted against the various factions of the White Court vampires. He gradually discovers that they're all being manipulated by an outside force. But when it comes to the White Court, that's more of an expectation than a surprise.

Harry continues to grow and develop. The theme of the novel is personal responsibility. You aren't good or evil. You're who you choose to be. This is developed through several different characters, including both Harry, his apprentice Molly, and his brother Thomas.

We continue to see an extremely dark side to Harry. It's clear that he could very easily cross over the line and start becoming someone evil. All it would take is the decision to make things right, no matter what the cost. He's definitely tempted but he's resisting and he's relying on his friends to challenge him when he steps too close to the line. This push and pull drives the story.

Highlights: Harry suddenly acting as the jilted gay lover. Marcone showing up for an emergency extraction. Harry using lust to power a spell.

Harry Dresden, now a Warden of the White Council, gets a cryptic warning to be on the alert for black magic in Chicago. First he has to stop in at a local horror convention (SplatterCon!!!) to stop some phobophages manifesting as horror movie monsters. Then he has to plan and execute a raid deep into Winter's terrority in færie. Then, finally, he can worry about the appearance of dark magic. And, in the process, gain an apprentice of his own.

Once again, Harry is still dealing with the consequences of his past decisions and actions. He's haunted by the people he killed during the necromancer's Halloween party. He still struggles with his own personal Fallen angel. He's avoiding his friends because of his guilt and shame. In short, the series continues to feel like a real story about a real individual. These aren't just paint by numbers fantasy adventures.

This story opens pretty much where the last one left off. Harry Dresden is living with his half-brother, Thomas. He's discovering that the family he always wanted comes with a price — putting up with the family. He's still dealing with the physical, mental, and emotional aftereffects of his last magical battles. Unfortunately for Dresden, Chicago now has to deal with several recently arrived necromancers. And that means that Harry has to deal with them.

Because of the way that the last novel unfolded, I had thought that Butcher was done introducing new magical denizens. I was wrong. The necromancers were definitely new and the story revolved around their not so fun plans. It was a little bit of a different kind of story. Karrin Murphy was absent for this novel and Harry had almost no interaction with the Chicago PD. His principal sidekick, Butters, was a very minor sidekick from a previous story. These changes helped to keep the story fresh and not formulaic.

Throughout the story, Harry constantly has to deal with the effects of the decisions he made during his previous battles. Some were good, some were bad, but all still have to be dealt with and still have lingering consequences. He has his own Fallen angel to deal with, a vampire half-brother, and a puppy.

He also has to deal with his own desire to protect Chicago and has to decide how far he'll go — what powers he'll use — to do that. There's an interesting side effect to having Dresden act as the narrator for these stories. He knows he's changed, but he doesn't think he's changed that much. (Who does?) He's surprised when his friends start acting afraid of him and worrying that he's going insane. He comes to realize that his friends have valid concerns. He's much more magically powerful now than he was at the beginning of the series. And he's far more willing to dabble in grey, or even black, magics than he ever was before. He's more dangerous, but is he a worse person? His inner battle defines the story as much as his outer battles do.

This series keeps getting better and better. I love the way the stories continue to be page turners even as real character development takes place.

Butcher continues his successful series. Once again, Harry Dresden is fighting to save Chicago from something terrible. Once again, Butcher gives him a different type of big bad to fight against. He's faced wizards, werewolves, vampires, and færies. Now, he confronts the Fallen (angels), as he works to recover the stolen Shroud of Turin.

The Dresden books may be somewhat formulaic but that doesn't make them bad. Once you've hit upon a successful method, it'd be a crime to change it. The magic is still fascinating. The mythological details are vividly described. Nothing comes easy for Dresden and the result is another compelling page turner.

I like the realism of Butcher's Dresden Files novels. If these were mysteries, they'd be called hard boiled.

The Dresden Files tell the story of Harry Dresden, wizard, working in Chicago. Butcher uses all of the common mythical beings — wizards, werewolves, vampires, etc — in a way that fits into the world around us. He doesn't create a fantasy world. He places stories squarely in our world, in a way that feels completely real. You can picture all of the events happening around you, showing up in your daily newspaper.

So far, Butcher has methodically walked through various types of fantasy. The first book featured wizards. The second, werewolves. The third, vampires. And this one, the fourth in the series, focuses on færies. You'll meet Queens Mab and Titania, along with many other members of the Sidhe courts.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I liked Butcher's typically gritty portrayal of the Summer and Winter courts and the characters in each court. I liked Dresden's creative solutions to the various challenges he faced. I didn't like the ending battle.

I may have disliked it because it took place in the Nevernever (fairy land) instead of in Chicago. Or maybe because it involved a higher than normal number of fantastical beings. Whatever the reason, it felt too fantastic for the overall tone that Butcher has established for these novels. It felt out of place, like something from another author's œuvre.

Overall, it was a good story with a flawed ending.

I majored in Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. While there, I took a course called Human Information Processing. We studied how the brain works, how people perceive information, how they store information, how they remember, etc. It was fascinating and gave me many good insights into how I could help myself — and others — learn.

Brain Rules is a layman's version of my college course. Medina concisely and entertainingly walks us through things that we know — or think we know — about how the brain works. He's careful to only relay information that's been confirmed by multiple independent experiments. He clearly distinguishes between what we're pretty sure we know and what we only suspect or guess at.

He starts out by emphasizing the importance of exercising to brain function. It persuaded me to start walking more and to look for more ways to become more active. He included a startling statistic: doing aerobic exercise just twice a week halves your risk of general dementia. It cuts your risk of Alzheimer's by 60 percent.

He also focuses on education and learning. For instance, the brain's attentional “spotlight” can only focus on one thing at a time (rule #4). We're incapable of multitasking. And we are better at seeing patterns and abstracting the meaning of an event than we are at recording detail. These facts suggest new ways for teachers to educate students.

Teachers need to make classes interesting, so that students' minds don't wander to other things, tuning out the class. And teachers need to put content into patterns that students can see, rather than just giving students a hodgepodge of facts.

I found each chapter to be interesting and thought provoking. I can definitely recommend it as a way to learn more about yourself and how to optimize your life.

I have a habit of overcomplicating my reviews. I'll try to keep this one simple. I like this book. A lot. (I would give it five stars except that I'm still annoyed about the completely gratuitous swipe at the Tea Party that King buries in the novel.)

It's a book about the Kennedy assassination but it's not really about the Kennedy assassination. It's about Jacob Epping, an English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine. In 2011, he walks through the back of the pantry in the local diner and ends up in 1958. After some reflection, he decides to stick around for the next 5 years, to stop Lee Harvey Oswald before he assassinates President Kennedy. The resulting story is focused heavily on Oswald. I learned a lot about him—his motivations, his mannerisms, and his actions prior to the assassination.

Jacob narrates the entire story, frequently using lots of foreboding foreshadowing. He calls the world of the past “the Land of Ago”. Once he really commits to his mission, he's a very driven character. The eponymous date isn't the focus of the book. Jake's journey is. King uses Jake to take a loving, sentimental look at 1950's America. Most of the story takes place in small towns in Maine, Florida, and Texas. It's almost a paean to small town America, in a time long gone.

As someone who never came close to seeing the 1950's or the 1960's, it's an interesting experience. The foods were richer and tasted better. The people trusted each other more. There was much more isolation between cities, towns, and regions. It was easy for someone to start over in an (essentially) new world, just by moving several states away. Because of the isolation, most people seemed far more ignorant of the nation as a whole.

It wasn't all good though. King describes the industrial areas as smelling much worse than they do today. There are also flashes of the ugly racism that was so prevalent during that era. Surprisingly, there was less visible racism than I expected. On reflection, I think that may reflect just how segregated the races were at the time. There isn't much opportunity for daily racism when minorities aren't even around to visibly discriminate against.

As I read the book, I was continually aware of how much was missing from the 1950's, compared to now. The entertainment options were almost painfully limited. There were just three TV channels—if you were lucky enough to live somewhere with good TV reception. The VCR hadn't been invented yet. Your choices were limited to what was on, at that exact moment. There was no way to rewatch favorite movies or TV episodes.

It was harder to communicate with people over a distance, especially when half of the neighborhood might be listening in on a party line. Research and knowledge sharing would have been painfully limited. No internet. No Google searches or Wikipedia lookups. No instant access to history, news archives, or scholarly articles. There was no ability to pull the information you needed whenever you wanted. You either found it at the local library while the library was open or you didn't find it all.

King painted a very attractive, bucolic picture of mid-century America. I don't think I could go back to live in that era. The limited options of the past would feel like a straitjacket now that I've experienced the massive connectedness and resources of our time. Thankfully, I don't have to go back to that era in order to experience a small slice of it. King provides that experience through this excellent story. You won't regret reading it. I sure don't.

This should be the exciting conclusion to Stross's Merchant Princes series. But it's not. I found myself losing interest shortly after I started the book and it took me a while to actually finish it. I kept hoping that it'd be better than it was.

The main problem was that this book seemed to contain a lot more cardboard cutout characters than the previous two did. Stross turned Vice-President Cheney into even more of a one-dimensional villain than he already had been. He also sidelined or killed the story's more interesting characters and featured the less interesting ones.

The Revolution Trade shifted the focus towards the interworld conflicts and firefights. The development economics and interworld trade that made the first two stories so interesting were sidelined. The story ended with a literal bang that completely overwhelmed my suspension of disbelief.

Because it focused on much less interesting character dynamics and much less intelligent plot points, I found the book to be a disappointing end to a series that started out well.