"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