"Archangel"

Archangel (Robert Harris)

Let's take a little Warhammer 40k break to look at a suspense novel. Without giving too much away, this book follows around a broken down old English history professor on the trail of a priceless notebook left behind by a young girlfriend of Stalin, eventually following the trail to (checks title) Archangel.
And it's pretty good! Harris is adept at filling characters out quickly (even if they can be a little cliche) - this is handy given the parade of Russian names that might have become confusing in the hands of a less deft writer. As it is, they're all quite distinctive, and you can almost hear the Imperial March playing when our villains are onscreen. I guess my only complaint is that the first half can drag a little towards the end, and the book's finale cuts out about ten seconds before I would have liked, but I suppose the resolution is clear enough. All in all, this isn't an impossible to put down book, but it's pretty tough.

Grade: A-

"Rynn's World"

Rynn's World (Steve Parker)

This is another Space Marines Battles book - part of the same series as Hunt for Voldorius.  Luckily, this stacks up much better; while our heroes are still Space Marines (since it is part of a series called Space Marine Battles), they now actually have personalities. The antagonists are also more interesting, as instead of a mustache-twirling Bad Guy right from central casting, we have the Orkz (who are da best, I've heard). Despite being the closest thing to a joke that can exist in the GRIMDARK of W40k, they're used pretty effectively here as villains, coming off as credibly scary and cunning. Really, I don't have much more to say about this book; after the introduction it's basically one big action scene, and I mean that in the positive sense.

Grade: B

"My Indecision is Final"

My Indecision is Final: Rise and Fall of Goldcrest Films (Jake Eberts & Terry Ilott)

Well, I tried with this one; I made it over a hundred pages without giving up, but bowed to the inevitable put this down to read another Warhammer 40000 novel. In brief, this book suffers from the same problem as The Secret History of MI6: all the most interesting stuff is left out in favor of page after page of turgid organizational detail. In this case we get tons of ink spent going over the boardroom moves and financing deals of putting a picture together, which is interesting for a little bit, but by the time we get to the exhaustive details of setting up four separate credit pools for the company to draw on, I had checked out. It's a shame; Goldcrest was part of some great movies, but The Killing Fields gets maybe three total pages, while there's at least five pages about how the company that owns Goldcrest Films is set up as a personal trust of the so and so family. This book is practically unreadable; there's a good story in here somewhere, but it's buried deep under a layer of thick, soupy financing deals. Might be good to read when you're having trouble going to sleep.

Grade: D

"Hunt for Voldorius"

Hunt for Voldorius (Andy Hoare)

On paper, this should be a slam dunk: The White Scars and Raven Guard - two of the most ignored groups of guys in W40k - team up to take on a demon prince and his band of minions. In practice, it's a bit of a letdown; there's not really much of a Hunt for Voldorius, as he takes over an entire planet, which is kind of hard to miss. The White Scars - basically space Mongols - are forgettably generic. In fact, "forgettably generic" sums the whole book up pretty well. It all rather disappointingly boils down to: There's some Good Guys, and they don't like this Bad Guy, so they go have a big fight. The end. This leaves the book to rely on its action scenes, which are workmanlike enough but nothing special, and the result in a firmly middle of the road book I can't really recommend unless someone loans you a copy for free.

Grade: C

"The Good Earth"

The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)

I was a little worried this was going to be another Joy Luck Club (or, God forbid, another Snow Flower and the Secret Fan). Luckily, this wasn't the case - what The Good Earth has that The Joy Luck Club doesn't is a strong narrative thread and a (mostly) likable main character. This is the difference between a book that is difficult to read and one that is difficult to put down. It's not without its problems; The language is a bit archaic, and I would have liked a little bit more focus on the female lead, who slips out of the picture as the main character grows apart from her. Still, I enjoyed it, and if it doesn't quite match up to is reputation as a all time classic, it's a pretty enjoyable read.

Grade: B

"Discretion"

Discretion: A Novel (Allison Leotta)

A good, almost great legal thriller. Leotta's a former prosecutor, and it shows - all of the legal aspects of the book are plausible, with none of, say, Law & Order's occasional dips into "Well, the script says I'm going to throw this evidence out so the show is an hour long". The author is also able to create a cast of surprisingly nuanced characters; it's nice to see a book where everyone is a real person and not a cartoon good guy or bad guy.
So why it is it good and not quite great? I guess my big complaint is that I was able to figure out who the secondary villain was almost right away, and although I was fooled on who the primary villain is, I would point out that this is because we're not really given any clues to work with. This aside, if you're looking for a thriller this is easy to recommend, and because I wanted to see what happened, I polished off all 320+ pages of in two days.

Grade: B

"Lenin's tomb"

Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (David Remnick)

I've heard it said that "the plural of anecdote is not data", and this is what I kept thinking while reading this book. It's kind of a mess; Remnick's narrative history pieces aren't in order, and the 2 - 3 page anecdotes he keeps dropping in feel totally disconnected from the surrounding material. I could see this book working either as a straight narrative history or as a collection of essays, but the length of the anecdotes didn't really work for me, and between that and Remnick's jumping around, the book never really cohered into anything interesting. There's no thread or premise holding the book together, and I dumped it after fifty puzzling pages. Avoid.

Grade: D-

"Are You My Mother?"

Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama (Alison Bechdel)

This is a book where I felt the author got more out of getting it down on paper than I did reading the finished product. Instead of being about the author's mother, the book ends up being about Bechdel's struggles to write the book in the first place (both of her therapists appear on more pages than her mother does). This book was probably pretty cathartic to get finished, but unfortunately her mother becomes a supporting character in her own book, and I felt like most of the child psychology and dream analysis that replaces her as the main focus went right over my head. I wasn't ever that bored, but this is pretty tough to recommend; get it out of your local library.

Grade: C+

"The Battle for the Falklands"

The Battle for the Falklands (Max Hastings & Simon Jenkins)

A chunky little hardcover about the brief dust-up between Argentina and the UK in 1982. I liked this book quite a bit, but I should mention that the first 100 pages or so are a bit of a slog; the authors set out to give the conflict context by going into the longstanding political wrangling that lead to the attack in the first place, and while I applaud the depth to which they cover this, they also assume far more intimacy with the politics of the late 70's/early 80's UK than I possess (which is basically none, to be fair). I freely confess I was totally lost for most of these pages, and I was a little bit relieved when the shooting started and it became much easier to keep everything straight. The other minor caveat is that since Hastings was embedded with the British forces, the book's point of view has much more detail about the English side, but this is hardly surprising since military juntas of the kind Argentina had at the time usually don't release the kind of information that would be necessary to make this a more balanced look. (The authors do quote a few Argentine soldiers - as many as they could find for interviews, I suspect.) Minor quibbles aside, this is as far as I can see the definitive history of the conflict - just feel free to flip a few pages towards the beginning.

Grade: B+

"Journey to the West"

Journey to the West (Wu Cheng'en, translation by WJF Jenner) [Second look!]

Second on my hit list of the four classics of Chinese literature. Unfortunately, I couldn't really get into this the way I became absorbed in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I put this down to two factors: The first is that our hero, Sun Wukong, never really grew on me the way he apparently did with most readers. I just found him to honestly be kind of a dick and not very likable, and given that he's the star and main attraction of the story, this was a rather major impediment to my enjoyment. The second issue is that where Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a historical novel, Journey to the West is pure mythology, and a bit of a slog to someone like me who is not very familiar with Chinese religion and culture. It's tough to recommend this book for that reason; it's a classic story and a good translation, but I just couldn't make reading it feel like anything but a chore.

Grade: @_@

"Deathwatch"

Deathwatch (Steve Parker)

In W40k, the Deathwatch are anti-alien specialists, the guys you call in when giant space bugs or depraved space elves come knocking. Unfortunately, the book named after them doesn't really have enough Deathwatch stuff in it; Our main character is from a chapter called the Death Specters, and they get almost as much ink as the Deathwatch itself does. The book is also split between the actual Deathwatch space marines and a set of Inquisition agents, and the agent storyline really drags; the book tries to set up a mystery about who the Deathwatch is going to be fighting, but if you know anything about W40k (and this isn't the book to start with if you don't), it's painfully obvious literally from the first page. This makes most of the Inquisitor pages rather pointless, and I can't help but feel that they would have been better spent spending more time with the (checks title) Deathwatch. The end result is not a bad book, but not really what I was hoping for, and unless you're desperate for a 40k novel, I can't recommend going too far out of your way to pick this one up.

Grade: C+

"Tampa"

Tampa (Alissa Nutting)

I have to give this book a lot of credit; it's the most gross, inappropriate, squicky, skin-crawling novel I've ever read, starting with the unpleasant furry black dust jacket.
The main character, Celeste (I almost absentmindedly typed "our heroine"; never has that been more inappropriate) is the book's strongest element, a genuinely scary psychopathic predator with a taste for young teenage boys who sums herself up in one sentence on page 41: ""Why did anyone pretend human relationships had value?"
As unsettling and cringe-inducing as the book can be (and the author does not shy away from showing in graphic detail what Celeste is doing to her victims), it's quite gripping, and - I admit this doesn't sound right - entertaining. As horrible as the main character is, the book is capably leavened by a considerable amount of very dark humor, ably assisted by the book's other unforgettable character, Janet Feinlog, a trainwreck of a fellow teacher that Celeste has as much disdain for as I had for the main character herself. It's weird to find myself recommending a novel that's full of graphic sexual abuse, but what can I say? This is a weird book, and unless you're completely disgusted from just reading about it, I'd suggest at least getting it out of your local library.

Grade: A

"A Thousand Sons" (Second Look)

A Thousand Sons (Graham McNeill) [Second Look!]

Finally! A Horus Hersey novel I really enjoyed. My biggest problem is that we already know who falls to Chaos in the present day of the WH40K universe. Watching Horus and his fellow fallen brothers turn from loyal sons of the Emperor to full blown daemon princes never held that much appeal. There's no tension for me of wondering who will fall or being surprised that the favored Warmaster betrays the Imperium because it already happened (the Horus Heresy series takes place in the past). It's like the Star Wars prequels... I just kept waiting for Anakin's fall.
All that aside, A Thousand Sons is great.It's a story of a son flying too high despite his father's warnings. Magnus' hubris is the downfall of the leigon he fought to save and the planet he called home.
A must-read for WH40K fans.

Grade: A

"Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom"

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (Stephen Platt)

I've got two books about the Taiping rebellion, and I think I should have read God's Chinese Son first; I didn't realize from the subtitle that Platt's book is all about the Western view of the Taiping rebellion. This is a very strange choice to make - Platt ends up super fast-forwarding through the entire first half and the last bit of the rebellion, instead focusing on the stretch of the war when the Western powers interfered. This makes for a searing indictment of England's misguided intervention, but as a actual "Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War", well, no, not really. I guess I could recommend this if you've already read a nice book about the conflict and are looking for another perspective on it, or if you're writing a research paper on the subject of foreign intervention in Qing China, but otherwise, take a pass. Very disappointing.

Grade: D
Bonus: Link to Amazon review that sums up my feelings pretty well.

A Quick Note About Scheduling

Here at Bite Size Book Reviews we aim to serve you, the readers - both of you - so here's a quick post about update frequency. To avoid situations like June 2012 where there's only three reviews because I'm reading a massive book, I've taken to scheduling a review to be published every five days, starting from the first of the month. This lets me stay ahead of schedule thanks to books that I don't finish and graphic novels. A few months ago, I ended up with about six months of reviews in the can, to the point where when a review was being published, I'd have almost forgotten reading the book. September and most of October, as a result, had a review every three days until the backlog was cleared - now that I've almost run out of material, it's back to a review every five days. From here on out, you can expect a review every five days, with a burst of a month or month and a half of three day reviews once or twice a year. (There may also be two reviews in a row on the 30th/1st of two new months, and there might be a six day gap if the month ends on the 31st - tomorrow's review is Tampa).

** Update **

Whoops, I forgot it was actually Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom. Well, stay tuned.

"The Banner of Battle"

The Banner of Battle: The Story of the Crimean War (Alan Palmer)

A short little hardcover about (checks title) the Crimean War. Palmer focuses more on the diplomacy surrounding the war than the battles themselves (Chapter Six: When's the Fighting Going to Begin?) - this is probably a wise choice since the actual fighting was rather limited, with most of the war being a long siege. Thinking back, I liked this book better than The Crimean War - but since that book focused more on the military aspect, and since both books are on the short side, I'd recommend just reading both (The Crimean War first, but skip the too long epilogue, then this one) - there's a little repetition of material, but you'll get a very nice view of the conflict.

Grade: B+

"The Rise and Fall of the British Empire"

The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (Lawrence James)

I'm not sure what to make of this book; On the one hand I was never bored reading it, but on the other it's tough to recommend. I think the problem really just boils down to scope. The author has set himself quite an audacious task here, and I'm sad to report that it falls a bit short, on length if nothing else - chronicling the rise and fall of the worldwide British empire is a massive undertaking, and even coming in at over 600 big pages, what you have here is mostly a very high-level overview. Subjects like the Raj that could take up entire volumes themselves are distilled down to under 200 pages. The result is a good, but unfortunately shallow; I would recommend this as a first read before seeing which parts of the history described whet your appetite, then looking for books that cover those areas in more detail.
Now, to be fair, aside from not getting enough of it, what you do get is pretty good; its brevity (well, relative brevity; it's still massive) keeps the book moving very quickly. The only other complaint I can muster is that there are a few bizarre errors in the text - numerous typos, words left out, and my personal bane, quotation marks that begin and don't end, as well as one case where there's a set of ending quotation marks without a beginning. Add this all up and you've got an interesting but not essential book. (Also works well for flatting out curved Magic cards)

Grade: B-

"Scatter, Adapt, and Remember"

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction (Annalee Newitz)

I was really looking forward to reading this, and it starts out pretty well - the first half explores the history of Earth, and later the human race, with an eye towards various disasters over the years, and how species succeeded or failed to adapt and survive. I found this quite interesting, and I guess a little bit reassuring, in that the cataclysm that destroys 90% of life on Earth has already happened and paved the way for us. It'd be easy to recommend this book based just on the first half, but unfortunately once Newitz catches up to the modern day, the second half of the book starts and it's a complete mess.
First we hear about Newitz' favorite science fiction author for no reason I could see (unless Newitz really think that tentacle aliens from another dimension are going to come to Earth, I really don't see the point of including this part); then Newitz travels around from place to place, meeting with people who are working on future technology like a living city you can grow. This is frustrating because Newitz just scratches the surface on these ideas, never digging deep into what, for example, a living city would look like, instead telling us how the scientists who are working on these concepts dress or what they drink in the break room. I would also advise taking this entire section with a grain of salt - it all looked plausible enough to me when Newitz was recounting subjects I don't know much about, but when she got to the space elevator, which I have a little knowledge of, she comes off as wildly over-optimistic about the chances of it ever being built (there's a reason that the material at the core of the space elevator is often referred to as "Unobtainium"). Even if you can overlook this issue, none of these ideas are tied together; some of them are mutually exclusive, and they aren't shaped into a coherent whole, instead reading more like a list of all the places Newitz was able to get an interview.
So all in all, you've got half a stinker and half a good (not great) book; I'd recommend getting it out of your local library, reading the first half, and then returning it.

Grade: C-

"The Mark of Calth"

The Mark of Calth (edited by Laurie Goulding)

This is a short story collection following on from Know No Fear. Where Know No Fear was a pleasant surprise, this book is more of a letdown; despite contributions from some of the better Black Library authors, it's kind of a muddle. The book is brought down by the fact that a few of the stories don't really go anywhere. The first story is interesting enough but doesn't seem to really have a point or ending, and ADB's contribution (spoiler alert) is just a dream, which renders it completely pointless. Beyond this, the book also runs with Ultramarine fanboyism (at one point they kill 600 Word Bearers without a single casualty), and lavishes more attention on THE PERPETUALS, a weird new concept in W40K about people who are immortal because (loud cough) that doesn't seem particularly interesting or well thought out. The best short story is about a magic knife and is interesting both because it spans thousands of years and uses a weirdly refreshing second-person style where the narrator is telling you, the knife, about your own life. Otherwise, I'd recommend a pass on this; it's not the worst Horus Heresy novel out there, but it's not very entertaining.

Grade: C-

"For Want of a Nail"

For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga (Robert Sobel)

Most (in fact, all the ones I can think of off the top of my head) alternate history books are novels; This book instead reads like a history textbook, complete with copious fake footnotes. I found this approach to be quite refreshing. (It helps that Sobel is very committed to this format, going so far as to include a very critical essay from a fake historian at the end and pages and pages of made-up books in the bibliography.)

The departure point is (checks title) if Burgyone had won at Saratoga, which is plausible; for me, the factor that really seemed like it must be from another earth is the reasonableness and practicality of the British government in the immediate aftermath. Once over that hump, Sobel spins a very interesting if somewhat dry tale, and my only complaint here is that the book would have really benefited from a few maps; I was never quite sure where Southern Vandalia and Jefferson were located. Probably for history nerds only, but a easy recommendation if the concept piques your interest.

Grade: B+

"How Can Man Die Better"

How Can Man Die Better: The Secrets of Isandlwana Revealed (Mike Snook)

This is, unsurprisingly, a history of the infamous battle of Isandlwana. It's quite readable and very well-written, but I was left wanting more; this is straight up military history, and without larger context for the battle, I felt distressingly disconnected. This book begs to be a chapter in a comprehensive history of the larger conflict, and I can only recommend it if you're already familiar with the setting and players. I don't want to be too harsh on the book since it delivers exactly what it promises, and makes a plausible case (to my ignorant eye) to re-write parts of the accepted history of the battle; just be aware that you're getting a excellent if very limited view.

Grade: :|

"The Pillars of the Earth"

The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)

This is a massive novel set in England in the 1100s. I wouldn't describe this necessarily as a historical novel - there's none of the obsessive accuracy of, say, the Masters of Rome series. I'd describe this as more maybe historically-flavored. In either case, I believe it can also be described as a real page-turner; Follett juggles multiple story arcs and sets of characters in the 40+ years the novel covers, mostly centered around the town of Kingsbridge and its attempts to build a cathedral. It's all very entertaining, and Follett is great at juggling a big tale with multiple story threads. At first, even the small-scale ones are quite gripping - very early on in the book we're following a family that's cold and hungry in the woods who gets their pig stolen, and it was very difficult not to flip pages because I was so worried about them getting that pig back so they don't starve to death.
It'd be easy to slap an A+ on this book if it was all this good, but unfortunately the second half begins to drag and at times become quite tedious; at one point the focus leaves the more interesting storylines to focus on two young lovers, and I had to stifle some annoyed yawns after one of them was like "I love you so much that I'm never going to speak to you again," which kicks off a truly irritating batch of pages that doesn't really go anywhere or tie in to the rest of the story. The book does pick up again after that (although at this point Follett starts recapping earlier developments for some reason), before coming to a somewhat abrupt and bizzare conclusion, so you're probably looking at about 800 great pages and maybe 200 that you should feel free to skip. I'm looking forward to reading some more Follett books; even with the occasional stumble in this novel, I devoured over a thousand pages of it in five days because I didn't want to put it down.

Grade: A- 

"The Three Orders"

The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined (Georges Duby, translation by Arthur Goldhammer)

I have to give Barnes and Noble some credit here; As much as I complain about their history section being nothing but Hitler and annoying gimmicks (ex. Salt), they've launched a line of books called "Barnes & Noble Rediscovers" that re-prints old, interesting books like this. I then have to remove almost all said credit because they felt the need to stick not one, but TWO of those horrible price stickers on the dust jacket, the kind that refuse to come off and leave a big smear of old glue and sad paper that you can't remove even with water and a paper towel.
So what was I talking about? Right, this book. I'm glad this book was "rediscovered", because it's probably the most readable book out there about the schema of medieval French society being made up of the titular three orders, those who pray, those who fight, and those who work the land, and oh man does that ever sound tedious now that I'm typing it out. I know it sounds bad, but I found this book to be pretty interesting and surprisingly readable. My only caveat is that you really have to pay attention, because if you let your mind wander away from the text you can skip down half a page without realizing it and become totally lost. I suppose saying it's the best concentration-demanding 400 page tome on the organization of medieval society isn't much of a compliment, but if you've made it this far without being scared off, I'd recommend at least checking it out of your local library.

Grade: B?

"Blankets"

Blankets (Craig Thompson)

I was a little tough on the first Thompson book I read, a graphic novel called Habibi that reached for greatness and couldn't quite grasp it. Weirdly enough, his previous work - this book -  is everything I could have asked for and more. I don't want to gush too much, but this book is beautifully written and drawn, at turns hilarious and heartbreaking (mostly heartbreaking) as it follows our hero Craig and his struggles growing up.
I guess if I'm looking for some criticism, the art in Blankets isn't as breathtaking as it is in Habibi, both because this is earlier in Thompson's career and because the setting is more stark and less fantastical - and come to think of it, that's more of an observation; the stark art in Blankets perfectly fits the tone of frozen Midwestern lost despair. Huh. Well, I guess for once I can't think of a single thing to complain about. Um, highly recommended.

Grade: A+

"Dragon Age: Asunder"

Dragon Age: Asunder (David Gaider)

This is one of the most dreaded works out there: A video game tie in (bum bum bummmm). The three Mass Effect novels were alright (I'm not sure in retrospect they quite reached that A- I gave out), but this novel is a cut above those, and the only thing that holds it back from being an easy recommend is that it's absolutely steeped in Dragon Age lore. If you haven't played both games you'll probably be pretty lost, and even someone like me who's not just played but also read most of the optional material in those games had no idea who someone from one of the previous Dragon Age novels was when she showed up.
If you can surmount that formidable barrier to entry, though, there's a great story in here packed full of the kind of interesting, fleshed-out characters that you probably wouldn't expect from a video game tie-in novel. My only nitpick is that the villain comes off as a bit of a mustache-twirling cartoon bad guy - the author does attempt to give him some depth and motivation for his actions, but this comes as too little, too late to make him into a believable person at cross-purposes with our hero instead of a naughty antagonist for our heroes to look good fighting. This is the only thing I can complain about, though, and if you know enough about the setting to consider buying this, I highly recommend it.

Grade: A-

"The Space Wolf Omnibus"

Space Wolf Omnibus: Space Wolf / Ragnar's Claw / Grey Hunter (William King)

Three novels about, umm, space wolves. I'm going to review all three novels in one post; never let it be said you don't get value here!

Space Wolf: This entire novel is a flashback showing how our hero, Ragnar (I kept thinking of the guy from Dragon Quest IV) became a Space Wolf, opening with him as a normal dude and ending as he's completed his initiation and is ready to head out into the galaxy to fight. I was going to complain about the fact that we know that he doesn't die because this is the first novel in the omnibus, but the novel itself spoils this by having him get whacked on the head and flash back, so you know he's gonna be okay. Plus, I guess, the novel is titled Space Wolf, not Guy Who Tried To Become a Space Wolf But Died. No, the real issue I have is that the writing is what could charitably be called workmanlike and perhaps more accurately be called pedestrian; this is a interesting book because of the novel-sized depth given to becoming a Space Marine, not necessarily because it's well-written. I'd probably only recommend this to people on the ends of the 40k fan spectrum: It's a good place to get started or an interesting read if you're really into the setting.

Grade: C+

Ragnar's Claw: Goofily enough, this is another novel-length flashback, this time with a older Ragnar flashing back to his first deployment. The plot's a bare-bones GET THE MCGUFFIN, and honestly it's not as interesting as the fact that this novel is where things start getting weird. King seems to be working off some old, no longer in canon idea of what a Space Marine is, as Ragnar meets a Inquisitor who is "almost as tall as [Ragnar] is" - no small feat considering Space Marines are usually 8 - 10 feet tall without shoes. (This gets even sillier when they meet a guy who is taller than a Space Marine who is "tall even for a Space Marine", which by my estimate would make this guy a normal human who is over ten feet tall.) More than that, these guys don't really act a lot like Space Marines, as I found myself incredulously reading about them farting and then teasing each other for who produced the most impressive gas.
In a way, this is interesting in itself, but it runs against one of the more interesting themes in W40k, which is how the Space Marines' super-humanity sets them apart from the average human (for a more nuanced take on this subject, I recommend, of all things, A Thousand Sons). The heroes of this book are just guys who can smell well and don't get tired, and this combined with the nothing special plot results in a novel that isn't bad, but doesn't really have much to recommend.

Grade: C-

Grey Hunter: Unbelievably, the omnibus goes three for three with flashbacks, as this novel too opens with a page of Ragnar in the present day and then the rest of the book is a huge flashback. I'm not really sure I have much to say about this novel; free of the first novel's unusual focus on the making of a space marine and the second novel's weird obsession with farting, this is just a straight up average old W40k novel. The basic plot is that some Chaos guys stole a MacGuffin that the Space Wolves want back, so they go and shoot and stab a bunch of people. It's perfectly serviceable and there's nothing wrong with it, but a few days after reading it I'm struggling to remember anything interesting about it at all.

Grade: C

In sum, I think this entire omnibus is like the first novel it contains - it can only really be recommended to someone looking to dip an exploratory toe in the W40K setting, or for superfans for whom $10 for 3 full-sized average-quality novels is irresistible. There's nothing really wrong with this collection, but even at such a cheap price for so much, there's some really excellent W40K material out there that this omnibus just can't stack up against.

Grade: C

"Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths"

Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths (Shigeru Mizuki)

This is a "90% autobiographical" retelling of the author's WW2 experience. As you can probably guess from the title, it's quite grim - early on our group of heroes is detailed to go on a suicide charge, but commit the crime of coming back alive after news of their noble deaths has already been spread to the rest of the army as a morale-booster, and it only gets worse from there.
Despite the sheer hopelessness of the material presented within, the author's style is so gripping that it's almost impossible to put down. Mizuki combines very realistic backgrounds (and tanks, planes, and ships) with cartoon-styled people, and this technique gives each person a lot of personality; it's impossible not to feel for these guys getting slapped around, not getting enough to eat, and worrying about getting eaten by alligators. The grimness of the material is the only caveat I'd apply, and I would hasten to add that while you'll feel horrible after finishing the book, this is a story that deserves to be told.
(Discussion question: Is it tasteless to apply the "didn't like the end" tag to the ending of a book titled Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths?)

Grade: A

"The Cleanest Race"

The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters (B.R. Myers)

This book takes a very unusual approach - because the information coming out of North Korea is so limited, the author has constructed a view of contemporary North Korean society and attitudes based on both internal and external propaganda (in particular the contrast between the bombastic external material and the explicitly racist, nationalist internal text). I feel like I really learned a lot from this book - CNN and Wikipedia weren't getting the job done - and it's surprisingly hard to put down. You don't really need to know anything about North Korea to get a lot out of this book, and in fact, I only have one complaint, and brace yourself, it's a little weird. My issue is that for some reason, this book has gigantic margins. I mean, look at this:

Hey, the margin should be almost half as wide as the main text, right? Right? Uh oh.

Occasionally there will be a footnote or postage-sized black and white photo in these big margins, but 90% of it is white space, and it kind of makes it feel like you're reading a very informative but terribly laid out webpage from the 90s.
That's really the only bad thing I can say, though; If you've ever had even a passing interest in North Korea, don't miss this.

Grade: A-

"Lord of the Night"

Lord of the Night (Simon Spurrier)

This is the non-ADB Night Lords novel. For some reason, I didn't think I was going to enjoy this book; maybe it was the hyperbolic caption that "The master of terror now has something to fear" (after finishing the book I still have no idea what this means), or maybe it's the fact that the cover has a evil Space Marine hefting a chainsword seemingly peering at the viewer from a big glowing vagina (although I'm not sure how that could be anything but awesome now that I'm thinking about it).
In any case, I of course shouldn't have judged the book by the cover, as it's quite good. It's about a Chaos Space Marine who's just woken up after being trapped in the Warp for 10,000 years and his search for the Corona Nox - all you really need to know is that it's the mcguffin - with his actives falling under the investigation of an Inquisitor who is the other POV character. And it's very good; for once I can't even really think of any little details to complain about. The author makes POV switches easy to follow by just printing the character's name at the start of a chapter - why more authors don't do this I have no idea - and both of our main characters are wonderfully fleshed out, to the point where I felt conflicted not knowing which one of them to root for when they came into conflict. On top of that, Spurrier has an excellent grasp of the Night Lords and the W40k setting in general, and I really enjoyed how he showed a single Chaos Space Marine being able to stir up an incredible amount of conflict and strife in the hive city that he comes to call home as he pursues his goal. It's too bad Spurrier only wrote one more 40k novel that I can find; he knocked this one out of the park.

Grade: A

"Boring Postcards USA"

Boring Postcards USA (Martin Parr)

Unsurprisingly, this is the American version of the one and only Boring Postcards. At first, I thought the author had lost it, as the first couple pages feature postcards that are, if not exactly thrill a minute, at least sport some mildly pleasent greenery; This does not last as the helicopter shots of planned expressways quickly give way to thrilling highway onramps, nondescript car washes, and pictures of Krispy Kreme donut boxes. Boring Postcards USA proceeds to deliver exactly what it promises, with no text except what I assume are captions from the postcards themselves - I certainly don't know of anyone who would describe the soulless recktangle that is Atlanta's new terminal building as "magnificent". The result is bizzarely fascinating; I had to stop myself from just reading the entire book in one sitting as I kept wanting to turn the page and see how Parr would top the images I was currently looking at. Highly recommended.
Grade: A

"The Cat's Table"

The Cat's Table (Michael Ondaatje)

I knew this book wasn't going to be for me if the back was anything to go by. Take a gander at this:

In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. [...] As the ship crosses the Indian Ocean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: they are first exposed to the magical worlds of jazz, women, and literature by their eccentric fellow travelers, and together they spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever. By turns poignant and electrifying, The Cat’s Table is a spellbinding story about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood, and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage.

Doesn't that sound like the most horrible shit you can imagine? Luckily, it's not as bad as it sounds. In fact, the first 100 pages or so sometimes almost raise to the level of entertaining, although it's quite meandering and full of characters who stop just short of turning to the camera and exclaiming "Did you notice how eccentric I am?!". The book really starts getting terrible at the point where the hero and his two buddies go on shore and come back with a small yappy dog who runs into the room of the richest guy on the ship and murders him by ripping this throat out. (Readers are directed to drop the record-scratching sound effect here)
After this bizarre scene, the book goes downhill quickly, flashing forward to a bunch of scenes that try and fail spectacularly to interest the reader in our hero's relationship with the sister of one of his friends (and, in an amazingly tonally deaf turn, one of his 30 year old friends apparently having romantic feelings for the 14 year old he's tutoring). Here the book goes from mildly boring pap to downright painful GUYS THIS IS MEANINGFUL pretentious crap. The 150 pages of text remaining in the book at this point I believe may qualify as a crime against humanity, or at least literature.

Grade: D-

"Ball Four"

Ball Four (Jim Bouton)

Nham's Guide to Driving Your Wife Crazy Using "Ball Four"

(Warning: Neither N. Ham nor this blog are liable for any bodily injury that my result from using this guide, including, but not limited to, bodily harm up to, and including, tickling, being told that you are no longer allowed to do something you enjoy for a tenuous reason related to following this guide, and any other myriad ways your wife has of expressing her displeasure. If your wife tells you that what you are doing is "fine", immediately discontinue use of this guide. Women who are pregnant or are about to become pregnant should not handle this guide. Consult a local advice columnist immediately if you notice any of these side effects.)

Step 1: Read Ball Four (spoiler alert: it's pretty good).

Step 2: Get married.

Step 3: Watch baseball around your wife so that she becomes interested in it.

Step 4: Answer all of her questions about baseball with "Well, like it says in Ball Four..."

Step 5: Have an escape route ready.

In all seriousness, this is a great book, a rare actual athlete-written autobiography instead of someone talking into a tape recorder, and its honest portrayal of players and coaches blew the lid off baseball's all-american clean-cut mom and apple pie image when it was first published. Beyond that, though, it's also very funny, and after spending a few pages with Bouton I found it very hard not to start rooting for the guy (at this point in his career he's an old junkballer whose big goal is to land a spot on the Seattle Pilots, a terrible new expansion team). It's been said that "Ball Four is a people book, not just a baseball book", and I don't know that I can really add anything to that; I don't think you need to know or even really care about baseball to have a blast reading this, although if you do the behind the scenes looks that caused such a kerfluffle when the book was originally published are probably even more interesting. In fact, about the only complaint I have is that I can't think up a good ending for this review, which is hardly the book's fault, but I need to blame somebody who isn't me.

Grade: A

"Knights of the Sea"

Knights of the Sea: The True Story of the Boxer and the Enterprise and the War of 1812 (David Hanna)

I'm gonna cut right to the chase here: This book is a mess. From the title, you'd probably guess it's about a naval battle in the War of 1812, but what it reads like is a panicked high school history paper desperately trying to meet a minimum word count; Hanna seems unable or unwilling to hold on to a narrative thread, so instead he keeps going into non sequitors, quoting big parts of poems or songs, or quoting Jane Austen or Shakespeare. The result is a bizarre, tedious frakenstein of raw, puzzling little scenes that never seem to have anything to do with each other or, heaven forbid, what the book's actually supposed to be about. Hanna needs to get his shit together and hire a tougher editor.

Grade: D-

"The Army of the Caesars"

The Army of the Caesars (Michael Grant)

This is a history book detailing the relationship between the army and the Roman state, covering in detail from Augustus up through when the military got the final upper hand after the collapse of the Tetrachy system. It also goes into detail about the armament, pay, and living conditions of the common soldiers to provide some context. I guess that probably sounds pretty tedious, but I found it quite interesting. If you're a Roman history nerd - which I assume would be the only type of person interested in this book - some of this may already be familiar to you (almost certainly the account of Augustus defeating Mark Antony), but Grant ensures that the material is never boring. The book has been out of print since the 70's and I was going to say my only caveat is that it may be tricky tracking down a copy, but there's currently like 97 used copies on Amazon (I recommend Powell's - it's a few bucks extra, but you can't beat their service), so you don't have any excuse.

Grade: A

"Straight Man"

Straight Man (Richard Russo)

I really don't know what to make of this book. I think that it's supposed to be funny, but the jokes were so feeble that I honestly couldn't even tell when the author was trying to make me laugh. Russo's picked out an area that should be full of comedic potential (our protagonist is an aging literary professor struggling with his colleagues), but does nothing with the concept; The author's other characters are paid a compliment if they are described as being barely one-dimensional stereotypes, and we just end up following our hero around on a boring, lifeless, pointless, tedious journey filled with boring, lifeless, pointless flashbacks and asides. At least this book isn't filled with the sad flop sweat of a truly painful unfunny comedy book, so it's boring instead of actively repulsive. Not much of a compliment, I know, but I'm trying to say something nice, and at the end of the day, this isn't repulsive, just a boring and forgettable lump of mediocrity.

Grade: D+

"Betrayer"

Betrayer (Aaron Dembski-Bowden)

It's finally happened: ADB has written a book that isn't an instant masterpiece. In a way, I'm relieved; I was running out of praise to heap on the guy, and it's nice to be able to present a more nuanced review.
None of this should imply that the book is bad - it's just very good instead of great. This novel is a follow up to both Know No Fear and The First Heretic, centered mostly on Angron and the World Eaters. I'm not sure why ADB isn't able to give the World Eaters a rehabilitating coat of nuance as he did with previous legions, but for whatever reason it never quite gels; for all that the World Eaters are painted as tragic figures who willingly subjected themselves to getting brain implants that mimics the one Angron has (which has reduced him to a total wreck), they still come off as rather interchangeable guys who get really angry. Angron himself is more interesting, and him and Lorgar of the Word Bearers have an fascinating, complex relationship which carries the book with an able assist by ADB's usual awesome action scenes. To sum up, this book is easy to recommend, just be aware that you're getting a B+ instead of an A. (Spoiler alert!)

Grade: B+

"Museum of the Weird"

Museum of the Weird (Amelia Gray)

This is a very bizarre short story collection. Gray has a masterful touch when it comes to making the fantastic seem realistic and perfectly normal, which makes for some very interesting (and some quite gross) stories. My three personal favorites are "Dinner" ("When the waiter brought a plate of hair to the table alongside Beth's soup, it was difficult to be polite about it"), a story entitled "A Javelina Story" in which "a clerical error of impressive proportions" results in five wild pigs being dispatched to negotiate with a criminal holding hostages, and "The Suitcase", where a man seals himself in his suitcase and won't come out. This is wonderfully dry, even when his girlfriend is stopped at the airport trying to take him through security and sent to the airport chapel where she starts conversing with the priest ("'The devil out of this luggage,' he said.") A runner up is "Snake Farm", a series of increasingly frantic directions for visiting the SNAKE FARM.
All in all, my only caveat is that some of these stories are really disgusting; just don't read it right before dinner and you're good.

Grade A-

"John Dies at the End"

John Dies at the End (David Wong)

I didn't know what to feel when reading this book, which is not a good sign. Honestly I'm not really sure what the book is going for; am I supposed to feel scared, amused, grossed-out, suspenseful, excited? The only one of those I really felt was grossed-out, which is not a terribly difficult feat. I guess that there's also supposed to be horror and humor in here, but none of this ever really landed. Mostly, I felt confused; why does throwing coffee on a demon made out of meat hurt it? Why does playing music from a boom box hurt it? (There's some guff in here about how a boom box is a modern "David's harp," and I guess I need to go back and brush up on my Bible, because I don't remember David fighting any demons, let alone destroying them with harp music.) The best books can draw a wondrous range of emotions from a reader, but this one just conjured up a slightly confused, annoyed yawn.

Grade: D-

"Know No Fear"

Know No Fear (Dan Abnett)

This is the Horus Heresy novel about the Ultramarines; That's not exactly an enticing summation given how the Ultrasmurfs are portrayed as omnipresent Gary Stus, but luckily the novel is much better than it sounds. The book takes place 43 years after The First Heretic, as the Ultramarines and Word Bearers are assigned to work together, ostensibly to heal the rift created in that book, but in actuality because the Word Bearers are here to launch a surprise attack on the Ultramarines. Abnett employs a very effective device where he has a running countdown leading up to the surprise attack springing, and it really works to build tension, making the inevitable battles and devastation all the more satisfying. I haven't always been the biggest Abnett fan, but at this point in his career, I can't deny that he knows how to write a hell of an action scene, and he does a great job of communicating the sheer scope of the Word Bearers attack as they destroy huge superorbital plates that start raining entire massive starships on the planet below.
My only complaint is that Abnett once again has too many POV characters, and while it's not as bad as in Titanicus, the book's visceral energy starts to dissipate in a second half that goes slightly off the rails. I almost spit my drink when John Grammaticus of Legion and Deliverance Lost shows up, and his plot thread going nowhere was the biggest complaint I have about the book. Still, there's a great 3/4ths of a novel in here, and if you already know enough about W40k to consider buying this book, it's definitely worth the cover price.

Grade: B+

Rent Girl

Rent Girl

If you ever want to see a sex worker or currently see sex workers, you are not going to want to read this book. While the author/main character never feels degraded by her job, she hates both her job and her clients. She is also kind of mean.

At the beginning, I felt a lot of empathy for the MC. She had a traumatic event, was a young lesbian in a relationship with a domineering woman who seemed to care little about her while still craving the MC's affection. But then she got mean. She calls up a former client to make fun of his self-written songs among other things. I don't recall a nice thing she does for anyone as the story goes on (even the MC admits that whoring has made her mean and greedy). 

So, as I said in the beginning...don't read this book if you're considering seeing a sex worker in Vegas on your next vacation because this book will disabuse you of the notion that any sex worker might actually enjoy what they're doing. 

I did like it though. So...there's that. 

"The X-President"

The X-President (Philip Baruth)

Is there anything more frustrating than a book with a good idea that has no idea what to do with it? That's the case with this novel, based around the idea that Bill Clinton - through no fault of his own - sets in motion a chain of events that leads the world to unite against America, and his biographer is recruited to go back in time and steer him away from this path.
At least, that's what the back cover and reviews say. I got to page 80 (out of 369), and not only has our heroine not yet traveled back in time, she doesn't even know time travel is possible, having farted around for 80 pages getting nothing done. I could forgive how long this takes to get going if the writing was excellent, or if interesting things were happening, but neither of these is the case. The most egregious example, to me, is a clutch of pages wasted showing the heroine returning to her house that she's sublet and breaking up a party that her tenant's teenage daughter is throwing. What do we learn from this? That our heroine doesn't like having keg parties thrown in her house? Why should I care? Why are you showing me this? When is something exciting going to happen?
Urgh. Baruth either needs a more forceful editor, or to have more respect for his readers. This leaden brick is going right in the donation pile.

Grade: D-

"The Emperor's Gift"

The Emperor's Gift (Aaron Dembski-Bowden)

Halfway through this book, I thought I had it all figured out. All the ADB books I've read up till this point were about Chaos space marines - read irredeemable scum – who have been humanized, given real personalities and back stories to the point where I found myself often rooting for them even as they continued doing horrible things that marked them irremediably as Bad Guys. Here, ADB's writing instead about the Grey Knights, basically as good a group of guys as you'll find in the WH40k universe. And sure enough, about halfway through the book, they end up behaving less than heroically - not of their own free will, but still. 

"Oh," I thought smugly to myself. I see what he's doing here; instead of taking bad guys and humanizing them so they're real characters, he's taking good guys and making them do bad things, so they're more like real characters too. And had that been the case, this would have gone down as a good but not great book - nothing to complain about, but a step down from ADB's previous work.

As it turns out, that's not the case. ADB pulls it off, and although I can't really say what "it" is without getting into spoilers, suffice to say I was shown who is the boss (Ed. note: the boss is your wife). ADB is even nice enough to have the book's “villain” come out and sum everything up: 

"Some stories have no villain... Merely a mix of souls, each seeking to find where the answers lie." 

Grade: A

"Billy Phelan's Greatest Game"

Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (William Kennedy)

I was not impressed with the last William Kennedy book I read, but I was not prepared for how truly terrible this one is. I think this may be one of the worst-written books I have ever read, no small feat considering the compitition. I hardly even know where to start with this; within the first five pages, we are told that someone "lived with his bowling ball as if it were a third testicle". Guys, if you keep your bowling ball down your pants, you are both very strong, and probably should see a mental health worker; also, if your testicles are so big that a bowling ball would plausibly be a third one, please consult a medical professional.
Amazingly, it gets worse from here. I'll just pick out one of the passages that had me scratching my head, rolling my eyes, and sighing in annoyance:

Men like Billy Phelan, forged in the brass of Broadway, send, in the time of their splendor, telegraphic statements of mission: I, you bums, am a winner. And that message, however devoid of Christ-like other-cheekery, dooms the faint-hearted Scottys of the night, who must sludge along, never knowing how it feels to spill over with the small change of sassiness, how it feels to leave the spillover there on the floor, more where that came from, pal. Leave it for the sweeper.

What the fuck is happening in this paragraph? What is Billy leaving on the floor for the sweeper? Is he so overjoyed at being "devoid of Christ-like other-cheekery" that he's shitting his pants? Is he throwing up, like I wanted to reading this book? Was someone really paid to write "the small change of sassiness"? How did this happen? Why was this allowed to happen??
This book fucking sucks.

Grade: F-

"Absolute Promethea" (Book 3)

Absolute Promethea: Book Three (Alan Moore, J.H. Williams III & Mick Gray)

Not to be confused with Prometha: Book Three, this is actually Books Four and Five collected in one huge volume. (I know it's confusing; this is what happens when you switch formats halfway through a series!) Since Promethea only runs to five books, this collection wraps the series up. Upfront, I'll say that it's quite good, and then I'm going to get into some minor spoilers...

A big part of this book is Promethea getting ready to end the world, with the series just about wrapping up as she does so. However, her actions don't really bring around anything like the end of the world. Instead, it's more like she's giving out a revelation. There isn't any widespread distruction, and the only people who die are people who kill themselves because of what she tells them. This is certainly tragic, but not exactly the END OF THE WORLD!!! that so many of the book's other charecters were trying so hard to prevent throughout the book. Also, the revelation she gives out falls a little flat to me; maybe you had to be there.


Anyways, the spoilers are over, and that one issue aside, this is quite good. Actually, wait, there is one other thing; the last issue is Promethea talking directly to the reader, and while I would have really liked to read this, the backround of every page is a huge garish rainbow smear of color, rendering it basically unreadable. Even in this extra-large format under a strong lamp, I could feel my eyes writhing in terror at trying to make out the text.
So that's really the only negative things I can say. Since this is the Absolute edition, there's some nice extras at the end, including two mini-comics about the least-seen aspect of Promethea drawn in early 20th century style that I found quite charming. All in all, if you've come this far you owe it to yourself to finish the series, and if not, uh, I really hope you didn't read those spoilers up there.

Grade: A-

"Promethea" (Book 3)

Promethea: Book 3 (Alan Moore, J.H. Williams III & Mick Gray)

It's been a while since books one and two (the perils of poaching books off your wife's shelf). Luckily I didn't feel too lost picking up here, although it took me a minute to remember what happened at the end of Book 2 - someone was killed, if that's the right word, and this book picks up with Promethea going after her. To do this she journies into the Sephirot (the Tree of Life, not the bad guy from Final Fantasy 7), which makes up basically all of this book.
And how is it? Pretty good. The writing's what you would expect from Alan Moore, and while apparently some reviewers didn't enjoy the mysticism, I'm not sure why you'd still be reading this series if that was a turn off. (I mean, this is a series where our heroine gets her powers by writing poems about imagination.) The art is also quite nice, although there are a few hiccups (one section done entirely in black and red that I think is supposted to be scary comes off more as eye-punching). I don't really have anything negative to say about this book; if you've already started reading the series, there's no reason not to get it, but I guess you don't really need me to tell you that.

Grade: A

"The Secrets of Alchemy"

The Secrets of Alchemy (Lawrence Principe)

I feel like I'm repeating myself lately when making statements that my biggest complaint about a book is that I wanted more of it, but I can't help it. This is a slim little tome (Amazon says 296 pages, but I think the main text barely topped 200) - in this small space the author fits in both a history of alchemy and several practical experiments he conducted following the ancient instructions. This is rather fascinating, not to mention pretty educational, and as alluded to above, my only gripe was that I wanted the author to go more in-depth on the history and do more experiments with the classical recipes. On the other hand, I don't want to give the impression that the author is only skimming the surface; the history section goes so far as to include a section on the cultural impact of alchemy and chemistry, including several poems that are more fun than they have any right to be when read aloud to your wife at Applebee's. So uh, recommended.

Grade: A

"Yesterday's Tomorrows"

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future (Joseph Corn and Brian Horrigan)

After finishing a book but before writing a review, I like going to Amazon and reading the reviews there to sharpen my own thoughts. Most of the time this helps me distill down what I want to write, but sometimes the Amazon authors sum it up so succiently that I'm thrown for a loop. In this case, the top rated Amazon review for this book is titled "Fun but not enough", and that really does sum the whole book up in four words. This book was written to accompany a museum exhibition, and as a result it's stuck inbetween two poles - it isn't just photographs of old visions of the future but neither is it a comprehensive history of the idea, and ultimately it fails to succeed totally on either level. It comes closer with the photographs, which are quite nice but there aren't enough of; the accompanying text gives enough information to whet the appetite but not much else. There's two other minor complaints I have, one being that the book is a little unusually shaped and hurt my arm after holding it up for two chapters (rest it on the sofa!), and the second being that the book came out in 1983, so there's one section that reads like "Will Xanadu foam houses catch on?!" (Spoiler alert: lol, no.) To be fair, neither of these are big complaints - the book's shape isn't that out of the ordinary for an art book, and being old happens to all of us eventually. Added all up, this is probably not the book you're looking for unless your collection must have every book about the retro future, in which case you don't even need to read this review, so, um.

Grade: B-

"Street Without Joy"

Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina (Bernard Fall)

I'm not sure if "enjoyed" is the right word to use with this book, given the sheer human misery it covers, but "entertained" sounds even worse, so let's go with enjoyed. From what I understand, this is a definitive work on, well, the French debacle in Indochina, and it's not hard to see why - Fall's clear, crisp writing and interspersal of his own diary from Indochina masterfully combines both a macro and micro view of the conflict, and really the only bad thing I can say about it is that it's amazing and depressing that America's political and military leadership didn't seem to learn any of the lessons presented in this book before our own debacle. I did skip the chapter on Dien Bien Phu, having read a 600+ page book on it already (and Fall has his own book about it as well), but that's just about the only even slightly negative thing I can think to bring up.

Grade: A

"Titanicus"

Titanicus (Dan Abnett)

The last time I read a Dan Abnett book, I was, uh, not exactly enthralled, so I admit I was a little scared going into this one. Luckily, this book is much improved and very entertaining, albeit marred with some pacing issues. Actually, that may be a little too kind; this book is entertaining but bloated, weighing in at 600 pages, and containing three absolutely pointless story threads (a old crazy guy watering his garden, a toymaker who, um, makes toys and nothing interesting happens to, and a dockworker who happens to be the husband of another, slightly less pointless character). There's also one story thread that really has nothing to do with anything else in the book that could probably be dropped, all the more so as it's one of two threads about desperate PDF troopers behind enemy lines. (Also, the star of this story thread is the "slightly less pointless character" alluded to above - so if you cut this thread you might as well cut his as a bonus).
So the book's too big and has too many characters, half of whom nothing interesting happens to, but it's also the really only bad thing I have to say about the book, and I guess a novel titled Titanicus being too big at least makes some kind of sense. There are other little issues - the book wraps up way too quickly, which I chalk up as a symptom of having too many characters. Considering some of the terrible endings I've seen for W40k novels, this could be much worse, as it does at least wrap up the big plot threads competently  Also, this is not a book for 40k beginners; I recommend reading Mechanicum first, or you'll be lost trying to keep straight if a Warlord or a Reaver class Titan is larger. (Spoiler: It goes Imperator, Warlord, Reaver, Warhound. I can tell you're impressed!)
To sum up, if you skip the needless storylines and you've got a great book; as it is, it's entertaining but flawed, which is still good enough to earn a solid

Grade: B

"Dragon Keeper"

Dragon Keeper (Robin Hobb)

I tried with this book, I really did. This is another free Kindle e-book, a genre which I have not exactly enjoyed in the past. In this case, I tried to make it 50 pages (this is not easy to measure with the Kindle's "location" system), and after three and a half chapters I just couldn't stand it anymore. Reading this book is like wading through hip-deep mud: It's slow, heavy, turgid, and your mind constantly wanders to something more interesting. The book opens badly, starting with a bunch of dragons cocooning themselves, but they're all weak and dazed and half of them die, and it's so ham-handedly GUYS THIS IS SAD that it becomes silly; I couldn't help but imagine these dragons drunkenly bumbling around to comical music.
Then we switch to focus on a deformed harpy girl and her dad, and nothing happens, and while reading this part I was missing the dragons stumbling around. After a bunch of pages of nothing of interest happening we switch to focus on Alise, our mary sue who LOVES DRAGONS GUYS, and while reading this I was somehow missing the earlier parts about nothing happening to a deformed harpy girl. At this point (I was reading the book in the bathroom) I would have rather just listened to the various gross sounds coming from the next stall than continue reading this book, which I guess is very mean to say, but there you have it.

Grade: F

"The Riddle of the Sands"

The Riddle of the Sands (Erskine Childers)

I have to give this book credit: It takes real confidence to apologize, around page 70 of your 250 pages, for the book being boring up to that point. This is not a good sign, and yet I still finished this book. I'm not sure if you can chalk this up to me being a glutton or punishment, or (more likely) the fact that this is a weird, interesting little historical curio. This is an "invasion" novel (and I guess a well-known one as it's mentioned on the wiki page about them), a book written in 1903 about a imaginary German plan to invade England. This genre is usually mentioned offhand in history books, and I have to admit I've always wondered about reading one. The problem with this one is that it's full of a lot of yachting stuff. This is a book either for big history nerds (cough), or yachting fans, and I don't know that either group is going to be  entirely happy with it.
As for how I liked it - well, I finished it; I can't really recommend it unless you belong to one of the above groups, as it just moves too slowly and has too much sailing in it. The most entertaining parts, I dare say, are in seeing some of the ways that language and society has changed since the book was written; The subtext between our hero and his friend with the yacht, I'm sure, was meant to be two bronzed Anglos sailing around doing ultra manly stuff, but comes off as a bit, umm, hmm. Let's just say that towards the end of the book when the narrator is re-united with his pal and is felt up in the dark with his big knobby hands, it certainly adds some subtext to the earlier scene where our hero sees his friend's "wistful face on the quay" and then "heard his grim ejaculation". To be fair, this is very juvenile, but the author isn't helping with his steady stream of what I'm sure is meant as perfectly harmless patter ( "'Mud-holes!' he replied, with a contemptuous laugh." "'Pull it out,' said Davies"). All I'm saying is these guys really love sailing.

Grade: C-

"Angel Exterminatus"

Angel Exterminatus (Graham McNeill)

I'm a little worried when starting a Graham McNeill book now; His books can be great (A Thousand Sons), mediocre and pointless (The Outcast Dead), or infuriatingly terrible (Priests of Mars). The knocks on McNeill are that he introduces too many groups of characters and that he doesn't know how to write an ending, and I admit that as I got closer and closer to the back cover of this book, I was becoming increasingly worried about how McNeill was going to wrap everything up.
Happily, McNeill pulls it off in style. There is one small cliffhanger at the ending, and one pointless group of side-characters (an insane doctor making twisted Space Marine mutants), but these are minor nitpicks in a quite enjoyable novel. The plot centers around Peturabo, from the Iron Warriors (and yes, there's a cute tie-in with the Iron Warriors Omnibus), who is taken along on a quest with Fulgrim, from the Emperor's Children. Fulgrim here is a very pleasant surprise, emerging as the book's most fleshed-out and entertaining character  and also being rehabilitated from the terrible treatment he was given in the novel named after him. (All the more puzzling since McNeill himself also wrote that book!)
As well as Fulgrim is written, Peturabo is no slouch either, and it's quite enjoyable to watch the two bounce off each other in the novel's first half. The second half is quite a lot of action, ably assisted by the first half's stage setting, and as a whole the result is one of the better Horus Heresy novels, falling in the good-but-not-quite great tier, and quite easy to recommend to W40K fans. (Non-fans will be even more lost than usual, unfortunately.) I hope this is a return to form for McNeill, and if not, at least it's another bright spot in his body of work.

Grade: A-

"The Sugar Barons"

The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies (Matthew Parker)

This history of the West Indies is excellent, and my only issue with it is the length - it feels a little weird saying a 464 page book is too short, but here we are. Parker covers from the initial settlements down to about the fourth generation of decedents, which is where things start really falling apart (don't feel bad for them, they all had a ton of slaves). I guess this makes sense as a stopping point, both because the West Indies' time as an important player on the world stage is coming to an end and the dynasties we've been following tumble towards the dustbin of history, but I did find myself wanting more all the same. I guess that's not really much of a complaint, really, so that should tell you how interesting I found the book. I guess I should also mention that I found some humor in the author's quotes of 400 year old written English (as when a general "very nobelly rune behind a tree"), all the more so when they're using modern-sounding swear words (some sick soldiers, we're told, are "nothing but Shiting, for thay wose in a uery sad condichon..."). So uh, recommended.

Grade: A-

"Full Body Burden"

Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats (Kristen Iversen)

You can probably tell what the book is about from the title - Iversen packs both her own autobiography and a history of the Rocky Flats nuclear facility into this book. This technique could go disastrously awry as the two aren't exactly intricately intertwined (Iversen getting a temp job at Rocky Flats near the book's end is a blase anticlimax), but it mostly works. I say mostly because at times it can be annoying when Iversen is in a groove either detailing Rocky Flats or her own life and cuts away to pick up the other narrative. Now to be fair, complaining that you're enjoying the book so much that you're annoyed that you're not immediately getting more of it isn't really much of a negative, and Iversen is wise enough to omit what must have been boring material (the stretch of her life where she goes to Germany basically boils down to "I went to Germany and came back"). In fact, I guess my only caveat is that this is another depressing book, but I suppose nobody picks up something with a title like this looking for a breezy read.

Grade: A-

"The Swerve"

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Stephen Greenblatt)

I learned a lot from this book and was also quite entertained by it, which I guess is all you need to know; maybe I should have put that sentence last. Let's try this again:

I was worried when I started reading this book - the first page has our hero riding into town and notes that "any raw-boned yokel" could kill him by hitting him over the head with a club. Luckily, Greenblatt's overheated style calms down quickly as we start following our main character around as he hunts for lost ancient works in the libraries of Europe's monasteries. Eventually, this winding path takes the reader through a tour containing a look at bookworms (the book-eating "teeth of time"), the recovery of ancient books from Pompeii, a tremendously entertaining polemic against the Catholic church, and a through examination of Epicureanism. This could be a mess, but Greenblatt's able to work all of these elements into a cohesive whole that I both (checks first sentence) learned a lot from and was quite entertained by. Easily recommended for book nerds (cough), history nerds (cough, hack) and really anybody with even a passing interest in the material.

Grade: A-

"Ruled Britannia"

Ruled Britannia (Harry Turtledove)

This is an alternate history novel where the Spanish Armada succeeded, picking up ten years after England's defeat with Elizabeth imprisoned in the Tower of London and Phillip II on his deathbed. Don't let all those links scare you off - you don't need to know much beyond the very basic jist of what the Spanish Armada was to enjoy this book, although I don't think it's a surprise to say that history nerds will get much more out of it. The other audience I'd recommend the book for is Shakespeare fans, as the man himself is the book's main character, and in fact the entire book is written in his style. This may sound annoying, but Turtledove is able to pull it off for the most part, and surprisingly I never did get tired of people taking ten words what they could say in two (a random dialouge sample from page 130 about a guy excited to have a new play to read: "Dear Geoff's prompter and book-keeper. He hath before him a new play - so new, belike the ink's still damp. What'll he do? Plunge his beak into its liver, like the vulture with Prometheus. A cannon could sound beside him without his hearing't").
As it turns out, the book's real problem is its sheer length, coming in at a bloated 450 pages, at least 150 of which it could really stand to lose. To be fair, the book's setting does suggest itself as worthy of lengthy exploration, and I would be a little bit more forgiving if these pages were all just detailing the alternate history flavor of the book, but a fair chunk of these pages are eaten up by a pointless character and two particularly dumb plot twists late in the book. (Happily for the story, they basically cancel each other out, but a barrel of ink is spent on them needlessly.) In the end, this isn't an easy book to recommend to anybody but history buffs and Shakespeare fans, but speaking as a member of one of those demographics, I enjoyed it enough to earn a solid

Grade: B

"The Founding"

The Founding (Dan Abnett)

This is a omnibus containing three Gaunt's Ghosts novels, Gaunt himself being a Commissar in the 40k universe. Collected here are First and Only, Ghostmaker, and Necropolis. Since it took me so long to read, I don't feel bad reviewing each novel one by one. Suck on it, libs!

First and Only: According to the introduction, at one point this was the best-selling book published by Black Library. I get the sense this book came out quite early in the Black Library's run. It's entertaining enough, but it's marred by some weird issues - The Guard is all male, Chaos Space Marines are killed with single shots from a Guardsman's laser rifle (!!), and there's a deformed psyker commissar (!!!!) who "atomizes" an entire city when he dies (?!)
There's also just weird careless details: Gaunt's bolt pistol becomes a laspistol becomes a lasgun becomes a boltgun. On top of that, some of the writing is, put charitably, clumsy (a character's reaction when he realizes he's just been decapitated: "Only when his headless body fell onto the deck next to him he realized that... his head... cut... bastard... no.")
So with all that, is this book worth reading? Well, it's not bad, but the above mentioned issues make it rather difficult to recommend. I'd probably only suggest this book if you either love military-style novels (which this is at heart), or are looking for a friendly introduction to the 40k universe. Otherwise, it's perfectly serviceable, but I can't really recommend going too far out of your way to track it down.

Grade: B-

Ghostmaker: This is a short story collection that meanders around giving different Ghosts some time in the spotlight. I applaud the idea - up until now they've basically been cardboard cut-outs whose personality is no more fleshed out than "medic", "scout", "heavy weapons guy". In fact, the Ghosts themselves have less personality than the Team Fortress 2 characters who are literally named Medic, Scout, and Heavy Weapons Guy. So giving them some personality is a very welcome idea, but the actual execution unfortunately sinks the entire enterprise. What do we learn from a spotlight on Mkoll, the silently-moving scout? Turns out he's a scout, and that he can move silently. The author seems either unwilling or unable to flesh out characters  If they're good, they're tough, blue-collar, gritty heroes, and if they're bad, they're either deformed chaos monsters or blue-blooded elitists sipping coffee while our heroic, blue-collar, gritty heroes get the job done. Maybe I've been spoiled by other w40k novels. I'm bumping the grade up because I appreciate Abnett's efforts to imbue the Ghosts with a personality, but it's a cringing failure, and I only got like an eighth of the way through it.

Grade: D+

Necropolis: I was hoping that these novels would improve with time as Abnett became more familiar and comfortable with the setting he's working in, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. Although the writing isn't as clumsy in this book, it's still full of distracting, careless errors. On page 669, a character is Trygg in the first paragraph and Trugg in the second. A character is hit by a lasrifle shot and bleeds out in a matter of minutes, even though the author has pointed out numerous times that lasrifle wounds are self-cauterized because of the weapon's heat. At the book's climax, Gaunt himself is shot by a bolt in the heart, but lives because he's wearing a steel rose on his shirt. This is dumb and cheesy enough as it is, but is nonsensical because a "bolt" is basically a rocket-propelled explosive. This is like surviving a hit from a RPG because you have a steel plate in your chest pocket; Gaunt would either be a mess on the floor or have had his steel rose punched straight through his body, but then I guess there couldn't be any sequels. Oh, and people also use "gak" as a swear word, and all I could think of was Nickelodeon Gak.
In short, this is not a good book. Some of the military action is exciting, but combined with Abnett's carelessness, lame characters  and annoying habit of cutting away from the actual important parts of the book to follow needless sideplots that don't go anywhere, this is a slog far more often than it is an engaging story.

Grade: C-

So in sum, I can't really recommend this at all. Even if you're looking to dip your toe in 40k, I'd suggest the much better Caiphas Cain omnibuses, which not only actually get the details right, but are actually, you know, enjoyable to read.

Grade: D-