"Marie Antoinette"

Marie Antoinette: The Journey (Antonia Fraser)

Until recently I haven't been a big biography fan; I guess I read some bad ones and was scared off by the boring parts of life even the most interesting among us have. Lately, though, I've come to enjoy them quite a bit, and this one among a few in particular. Fraser's biography (like any good one I suppose) is more than just a history of its subject; it's also a history of the times they lived through, and Fraser brings them to life in sometimes stomach-churning intimacy. (Want to read all about Marie Antoinette and her sister's periods? Here you go!!!!)
Perhaps surprisingly, Marie Antoinette herself comes off as probably the most likable person in the book; I'll admit that by page 100, I was actively rooting for most of the French court to get guillotined. (The nadir for this probably comes on page 102 where ambassadors are giving diamond necklaces to the palace's pets.) That being said, the second half of the book is just as grim as you're probably expecting, and I identified with MA enough that I was uncomfortable reading about life kicking her around. I'd recommend this book heartily, just be prepared for a good cry near the end.

(Bonus out of context quote: "The spanking pace caused much merriment among the waiting crowds of his erstwhile subjects.")

Grade: A-

"The Talon of Horus"

The Talon of Horus (Aaron Dembski-Bowden)

I'm getting real tired of reviewing ADB books; I don't know what to say anymore. Is this a great book? Yes. Should you read it? Absolutely. Is this one of the best W40K novels out there? You betcha. What more is there to talk about??
I guess I can go over the setting real quick; this book picks up just after the end of the Horus Heresy, looking at the heretofore unseen time when the defeated traitor forces are warring amongst themselves in the Eye of Terror, carving out meaningless little empires and not getting much done besides feeling sorry for themselves and blaming each other for everything going wrong. Our hero is one of the Thousand Sons who ends up taking part in the founding of the Black Legion, and if you understood that sentence you should know enough 40K to really enjoy this book. That brings me to the only caveat I can give, which is that this not for beginners; everyone else should pick it up immediately.

Grade: A+

"The Grey Knights Omnibus"

A collection of three novels about (checks title) the Grey Knights, W40's super elite anti-demon hunters, and as close as the setting comes to good guys. Contained within are three novels:

Grey Knights - This is a good start; the book kicks off with a battle where an isolated group of Grey Knights mounts a almost hopeless assault on a evil, naughty demon who's sealed for a thousand years, with the story picking up as some naughty, evil Chaos chumps attempt to summon him back into real space. The 13th Black Crusade is going on in the backround (as it is for the entire omnibus, actually), meaning that our heroes are working on as close to a shoestring budget as 8 foot tall psychic genetically modified guys in powered armor can be. Since our heroes work as the Inquisition  anti-demon branch and inquisitors need to be super suspicious, there's also a health dose of paranoia, although I'm not sure I exactly followed one character's redemption late in the book. Solid, slightly above average stuff.

Dark Adeptus - This is my favorite novel in the omnibus. It kicks off with an entire planet screaming out of the Warp, and our heroes go to investigate, saddled with suspicious allies who they don't entirely trust, and vice versa. This aspect really makes the book stand out, with our heroes fighting not just against the entire possessed world, but keeping an eye on their companions, who they suspect are there to steal some ancient, highly valuable technology. It does take a little while to get going, but once the characters make it into the more interesting parts of the planet (basically a corrupted super-server), this is the best material in the whole collection.

Hammer of Daemons - Unfortunately the omnibus goes out with a real slog; Our hero is captured in the first ten pages and spends the rest of the book trying to escape a demon planet dedicated to Khorne, the least interesting Chaos god, whose gimmick is that he's real angry and loves blood. While it's interesting seeing our hero taken out of his Grey Knight comfort zone, a lot of the book is portent-filled dreams and symbolic demon possession attempts, and this gets old real quick. I appreciate the author trying something new after the previous two novels, but it didn't quite work in this case.

All in all, this falls squarely into the large pile of good, not great, W40k fiction out there; two good and one okay novels for the price of a single paperback is hard to pass up.

"The Greenlanders"

The Greenlanders (Jane Smiley)

I feel bad not being able to get into this book; it's got excellent reviews, but when it came time to actually crack it open, I barely made it ten pages. I've read that it's supposed to be in the style of a Norse saga, but for me I just found it to be horribly dry, written in snore-inducing this happened, then that happened style. Here's a little taste (page 233):

Another thing that happened after this hunger was that Bjorn Einarsson Jorsalfari declared his intention of remaining year round at Thjodhilds Stead, which was in Kambstead Fjord, at the back of Hvalsey Fjord, instead of spending part of the year at one farm an part of the year at the other, for he hadn't enough men to make something of both farmsteads, and he preferred the location of Thjodhilds Stead, for it gave his ships easy access to the sea but also to Gardar and Brattahlid. For this reason it happened that Gunnhild Gunnardottir would be within a day's walk of her own home when she went to stay with Solveig for the summer...

Did you follow that? I didn't, because I fell asleep halfway through it. Maybe I've just read too many fast-paced novels, but it takes so long for anything to happen that I couldn't stop my attention from drifting away. I'm sure a more patient reader can find a lot to enjoy here, but for me it's going regretfully in the donation pile.

Grade: D

"The Damnation of Pythos"

The Damnation of Pythos (David Annandale)

I'll cut right to the chase here: This is not a good book. There's enough material here for a middling short story, and stretched out to novel length, it's a real slog; I only finished it out of some misplaced sense of devotion, and it was a struggle not to skip pages as nothing happened for the middle 80% of the book. Most of this is waiting for something to happen, which is exactly as thrilling as it sounds; when it does finally kick off at the end of the book, it turns into a long, sub-par action scene that just kind of fizzles out. I can't even recommend this to 40k superfans; there's much better books to spend your time and attention on.

Grade: D-

"The Dark Knight Manual"

The Dark Knight Manual: Tools, Weapons, Vehicles & Documents from the Batcave

Almost exactly what it says on the cover; this is a book about the, uh, tools, weapons, and vehicles Batman uses in the Christopher Nolan movies. The star of the show is actually the "documents" of the title, which are neat feelies (think of the letters from Griffin & Sabine, if you've ever read those); being able to flip through the police report on the Joker or Harvey Dent's hospital file is really neat.
My only caveat is that there's not a ton of material here; the MSRP of $40 is just a bit much, working out to $20 an hour if you're a slow reader (I finished the entire book in two bathroom breaks). Pick it up if you see it in the bargain bin, otherwise it's a little tough to recommend.

Grade: B

"The Adventure of English"

The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language (Melvyn Bragg)

I was a little let down about this book; I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this seems more like a book for a middle school student. I didn't really learn much; Bragg's writing keeps things moving briskly, perhaps too briskly. At times I felt like a passenger on a train going too fast past some interesting landscape I wanted to stop and check out. This is easy to recommend if you're just starting with this subject, but I had the sinking feeling that I knew more than the author about the subject through most of the book.

Grade: C+

"The Klingon Art of War"

The Klingon Art of War (Keith R.A. DeCandido)

A look into the culture and backstory of the Klingons from Star Trek, this book is presented in-universe as an ancient collections of precepts for how to live an honorable life, annotated with commentary by a modern Klingon.
And it's pretty good! I always appreciate when a group like the Klingons that can too frequently be boiled down to "angry" and "hits stuff" gets fleshed out, and they're in capable hands here; I guess it helps the book's readability that the Klingons are a culture that values conflict as a way to better themselves, so it's rare to go more than a few pages without something interesting happening. You don't need to be much of a Trek fan to enjoy this book, but if you are, you'll be rewarded with a few "I remember that!" moments from the TV shows.

Grade: B

"Fordlandia"

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Jungle City (Greg Grandin)

This is a bit of an odd duck. The author uses the history of the titular Fordlandia plantation in Brazil to explore more general thoughts on the unfulfilled promise of Ford's hope that industrialization would lead to a economically friendly, quasi-socalist, peaceful future. This is interesting stuff, but it doesn't quite mesh with a history of the Fordlandia plantation; I also found it a little brief (years are skipped outright towards the end). This is an interesting little book, but not really that easy to recommend; approach it as a curiosity and I think you'll do fine.

Grade: B-

"The Boxer Rebellion"

The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 (Diana Preston)

I'm a little torn on this book; it's well written (major bonus points for not throwing out untranslated French like many history books do), but the book has a major problem the author herself brings up on page 335: "... most of the available diaries and accounts were written by Westerners." I don't think the author quotes a single non-Western source; it's great to have Western primary sources, of course, but having all the primary sources be Western diaries tilts the book, possibly fatally. If you want the Western view of the rebellion, this is an easy recommend; otherwise, keep looking.

Grade: B-

"Cartoons of World War 2"

Cartoons of World War 2 (Tony Husband)

I don't have much to say about this book; this is one of the ones you can judge from the cover. I liked it well enough, and I got my fill for the $8 I paid, but the book could stand to be a little bit bigger; it's more of a sampler than a thorough exploration of the material. Fun to flip through if someone leaves it out in the bathroom, but that's about as glowing as my recommendation gets.

Grade: B

"Star Trek: Destiny"

Star Trek: Destiny (David Mack)
Review by N. Web

As I said in my review of The Good that Men Do, one of my biggest
problems with the Star Trek literary universe is that its status as
canon is questionable at best.  Perhaps this is either good or bad,
because having a bad, ridiculous story as part of official canon can
lead to serious problems.  But, at the same time it can also lead to
authors not taking much of a risk for fear of disrupting established TV
and movie canon.  Which, as "These are the Voyages..." shows, sometimes
probably deserves to be disrupted.  Star Trek Destiny is a huge risk, as
far as I'm concerned.  But one that ultimately succeeds.

Star Trek Destiny also tackles one of the biggest problems in the
established canon, that being the Borg.  Much has been made over the
years of the "nerf"-ing of the Borg in Star Trek.  It seems as though
the Borg were always meant to have been seen as indestructible, and
indeed in "The Best of Both Worlds", they were only defeated through a
fluke.  Over the years in canon, the Borg seemed to lose their
unbeatable quality and in Star Trek Voyager pretty much became relegated
to Monster of the Week status.  Even the crew of the NX-01 Enterprise
had a turn at the tee.  So, how does an author manage to make the Borg
seem threatening again?  This radical of a solution doesn't seem like it
could possibly work, but in the end I was ultimately left more satisfied
than I have been with any Borg story since at least "Endgame" (the
against-all-odds inexplicably good series finale to Voyager), and maybe
even since "The Best of Both Worlds."   Massive spoilers to follow,
perhaps you don't want to read before finishing the book.

Verdict:  Highly recommended.




*** spoiler space ***


For David Mack, it seems the solution to the problem of the Borg was to
ultimately get rid of them.  But, it does make sense.  In order to
prevent the perpetual nerfing of the Borg or the perpetual power creep
that the Federation would have to go through in order to constantly
defeat them; perhaps the best solution really is to just eliminate them
entirely to prevent not only over-use of the Borg, but further
degradation of the "canon."  David Mack takes a gamble, and ultimately
wins, as far as I'm concerned.  The send-off they get is equal parts
relieving and moving.

Mack manages to tie together all four post TOS Star Trek series and a
large amount of established literary universe into three novels that not
only give the Borg an origin story, but an end story that manages to be
quite thought-provoking and moving.  Of course, the main stars are the
TNG cast, with almost everyone other than Ezri Dax relegated to small
parts and cameos, and the Enterprise crew is entirely off camera even
during the parts that take place during the 22nd century.  Captain
Hernandez ultimately becomes quite interesting, and ended up once again
making me wish that Enterprise had continued past Season 4.

I found myself less interested in the characters that were created in
the literary universe, but as the story went on I grew more familiar
with them.  The story is very evocative, and I found Mack manages to use
the prose to generate genuine dread, fear, creepiness and ultimately
relief throughout the tale.  It's to his credit that when I was done I
immediately began looking into more Star Trek literary universe ebooks
on Amazon.  David Mack's new series seems to be a three parter about
Geordi attempting to rebuild Data, and I'm already thinking of
purchasing it.


Stray observations:

This seems to be sticking with the "Bashir and Dax broke up post DS9"
book canon.  Also very weird that Bashir, O'Brien, and Nog are not
appearing in this film at all.  At least Garak shows up.

Speaking of, it would have been nice to see more of the Federation's
allies involved other than the brief cameos Garak and Martok and a lot
of generic ambassadors have.

Geordi doesn't have a lot to do, though a short romance is shoehorned in
for him, which I feel like he deserves at this point.

I like the idea of Worf as Picard's first officer, but isn't he supposed
to be the Ambassador to the Klingon Empire?  Worf also gets a short
romance shoehorned in.

I had one small gripe in that Picard seems to have dropped back into his
jerk mode he was in for most of Star Trek First Contact.  Which, I
thought the point of the movie is he gives up on the White Whale.  Maybe
I missed some kind of a relapse he had in the literary universe, but I
couldn't get over his inability to function for 2.9 books because of the
Borg.

"Blood Angels Omnibus"

The Blood Angels Omnibus (James Swallow)

This omnibus collects two novels and a short story. Normally I'd review the novels separately, but they're basically two halves of the same tale, and if I had read the first novel by itself, I probably would have been pissed at the cliffhanger ending. (I also don't know that I have much to say without giving away the first book's story.)
Collected as a omnibus, the two novels work great; I have yet to read a bad James Swallow book, and the streak holds here. Swallow's villains are always more interesting than his heroes, and this omnibus stars a particularly loathsome piece of filth pitted against our (somewhat forgettable) heroes. I don't want to say much more except that this falls into solid good-not-great territory; it's a easy recommend for W40k fans, but if you're not familiar with the setting, I'd recommend Swallow's excellent Fear to Tread first, which covers the same chapter of Space Marines and serves as a very nice introduction.

Grade: B+

"The Cuckoo's Egg"

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage (Cliff Stoll)

This is a real-life detective story that I had a really hard time putting down. The book kicks off when the author notices a seventy-five cent billing discrepancy in his mainframe system (this is back in the 80's when people were paying for computer time), and a little digging ends up turning up, well, I'm not really sure I should say.
I can say that I really liked this book; it's mostly about computer crime, but I wouldn't worry about it being too esoteric (I mostly find it charming - the mainframes these guys are chasing each other through have a faction of the power of your phone.) I would recommend skipping the back cover, which gives away the mystery, but otherwise I have nothing but good things to say.

Grade: B+

"Honour Imperialis"

Honour Imperialis (Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Rob Sanders, Steve Lyons)

A W0K omnibus about the good ol' Imperial Guard. I'm going to review all of the novels one by one.

Dead Men Walking (ADB) - This is probably the worst ADB novel I've read yet, meaning it's just good and not great. Honestly, by the time I got to the end of the omnibus, I'd forgotten almost everything that happened in this novel; I do remember there were some great action scenes, and I was also kind of gobsmacked that the book contained literally zero female characters. (The Imperial Guard's omnisex - unlike the setting's popular stars, the Space Marines - so there's really no excuse.) That said, I don't want to be too tough on the book; it's exactly the kind of above-average but not spectacular book that fits perfectly in a omnibus like this.

Grade: C+

Cadian Blood (Rob Sanders) - This author wrote one of my all time favorite W40K novels in Atlas Infernal, and he's written probably the best novel in this omnibus. My big issue with Cadian Blood is the same problem I had with Atlas Infernal : The author keeps jumping around the chronology of the story, cutting between our heroes being interrogated in prison and earlier scenes running around fighting Orks. This is annoyingly confusing, all the more so as some characters are introduced in the flash-forwards before we meet them in the earlier parts, which make up the bulk of the book. Still, this is pretty good - it's not quite as bonkers as Atlas Infernal, but this novel is the star of the omnibus.

Grade: B

Redemption Corps (Steve Lyons) - Remember when I said that Cadian Blood was bonkers? This book has Imperial Guard guys charging Necrons on horses. I couldn't imagine this without laughing.
That's pretty much the high point. This is a good-not-great book, unfortunately weighed down by making the focal point of the beginning of the book a frankly boring romance between two goofs I was hard-pressed to care about. After this problem is disposed of, the novel falls into the W40k trap of having too many POV characters, although in fairness it's not nearly as bad as some other books (cough, cough). I'd recommend just skipping all the parts with the two lovers, at least until the second half of the book - once the Necrons warp in the book gets a lot more interesting.

Grade: B-

After the main attraction there's four short stories - one really good ADB one, one not so great Steve Lyons one, and two pretty good ones by (cough cough) and (mumble mumble). All in all, this is one of the stronger W40K omnibusses out there; there's not a single miss here, and while none of the novels themselves are superstars, all three of them for $9 is a great deal.

Total Grade: B+

"A Natural History of Dragons"

A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent (Marie Brennan)

This book stumped both Hams to come up with a clever and witty opening, so I'll just recommend it from the both of us.

Oh, you wanted to know what it's about? FINE. This one you can judge from the cover; it's a natural history of dragons, written as part memoir, part natural history. Dragons are presented as being very real animals in a fictitious world that bears a strong resemblance to Victorian-era Earth with the names switched around. Here there are no talking dragons or majestic rideable dragons; these dragons are presented in a realistic fashion, and you'll probably find yourself both fearing them as they attack the main characters and fearing for them as in turn they're hunted by poachers and have their habitats invaded by smugglers.
This book is the first in a series, covering the main character's first interest in dragons up though the end of her first adventure (complete with sequel hook). Writing her memoir - the book in your hands - allows the author to drop in asides that both flesh out the setting and the main character herself, who is now a crotchety old woman who doesn't give a fig. Given the faux-Victorian setting, there is some anachronisms about women having a place in the home; beyond this I'm not sharing any more plot details (it's only $12 on Amazon or free at your local library).

Grade: B+

Cat Person

Cat Person
by Seo Kim

I like to wander bookstores, looking for that title or cover that speaks to me from the shelf.  Some of my favorite books were books I didn't know I wanted to read.  Cat Person was one of those siren books, catching my eye on the overstuffed graphic novel shelf.

Seo Kim is a storyboarder for Adventure Time, one of my all-time favorite shows.  Yes, it's really up there with Deep Space Nine and Xena: Warrior Princess.  You can spot the similarities between some of her art and that of the Adventure Time style.

Okay, so what is the book?  It's a collection of comics she drew, mostly about herself.  She eats too much (like me!), loves her cat (like me!), and is kind of lazy (like me!).  I found a kindred spirit in Seo Kim.  I'd last felt this kinship with Julia Wertz (formerly of the awesomely named Fart Party comic but now she's just Julia) as we're both short weirdos with lupus but...I was always uncomfortable with her drinking, even before she received help. Gosh, this review is getting dark! Sorry!  Back to Cat Person--it's a short read and I did lolz for real.  Pick it up if you see it.

Grade: B

"The Good that Men Do"

Star Trek Enterprise: The Good that Men Do (Andy Mangels & Michael A Martin)

(Guest post by N. Web)

As I'll probably explain in my upcoming review of Star Trek: Destiny, one of

my main problems with Star Trek literature is its inherent questionable canon

status, to the point where the series can tend to look like elevated

fanfiction. And where I felt that Star Trek: Destiny was a great (statuesque)

example of proving that the literary Star Trek universe is worth looking into,

I was sadly kind of disappointed with this story, even though I had good

expectations for it. Granted, those expectations were along the lines of

"Well, they couldn't have done a worse job than 'These Are the Voyages...'"

(the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise) did, but that's not a high bar to

clear if we're being real here.

A brief summary of background: Star Trek: Enterprise was the last Star Trek series on television, and it's four-year run was the only since the original series to end in cancellation. The series is well-known rather derisively amongst fans of the series as kind of a bad one, and largely one that went unwatched by much of the fandom. I personally felt the same way for much of the series' original run on UPN (or was it the CW by that point? Does anyone care?) However, by seasons 3 and 4 of the series, the tone shifted from one of "silly situation of the week" drama along the lines of Voyager to one more of "long-form interconnected story" that Deep Space Nine rather perfected during its run. By the time Enterprise hit Season 4, it had a new showrunner, had ditched the "Temporal Cold War" storyline that never made any sense to begin with (the previous showrunners have stated that the sinister Future Guy was supposed to have been Captain Archer's future self, if that makes any damn sense); and it finally felt like the series was running on all cylinders, leading into what surely would have been an awesome multi-season conflict with the Romulans preceding the founding of the United Federation of Planets.

Except the show was confirmed to not be renewed just before the season ended, giving them enough time to hastily put together a finale which has proven to be the last hour of Star Trek on television in what is going on ten years now. They brought back Rick Berman and Brannon Braga for the finale, writing a ridiculous framing device wherein Commander Riker, during his The Next Generation days (I'll save a comment about how much he should not have aged since then), is visiting the holodeck to witness Enterprise's last mission before the founding of the United Federation of Planets (which itself is a time-jump to 5 years after the previous episode of Enterprise.) The disservice this does to the cast and story of Enterprise notwithstanding, this episode is also notable because in a ridiculous contrivance, Enterprise's chief engineer and one of the three primary characters on the show, Charles "Trip" Tucker is killed protecting series recurring character Andorian Commander Shran's daughter from pirate kidnappers. It makes no sense and seems to only serve to further dilute fans' final memories of the franchise with ridiculous forced drama, reportedly the character was killed off "to get people talking." Suffice to say, the episode is not well-remembered by fans.

Telling statements from Memory Alpha:

"This is the only series finale in the Star Trek franchise where the actual

ensemble crew of the series do not appear, but rather, their holographic

copies."

"The only exterior shot of the NX-01 Enterprise in this episode appears in the

closing montage."

"Rick Berman described this episode as a "valentine to the fans"."

"At a 2009 Star Trek convention, Jonathan Frakes simply said this episode

"stinks.""

"In 2013, eight years after the airing of this episode, Brannon Braga apologized to the entire cast of Enterprise for it and said he thought Rick Berman and himself made a "narcissistic move" in trying to make the episode a "valentine" to Star Trek. He also called it "a crappy episode.""

So, without Star Trek on TV, it's up to fans to fix it. The Good that Men Do serves largely as a fix-fic. Hilariously enough, the holodeck framing device which did a disservice to the cast of Enterprise is ultimately an easy way to ret-con Trip's death, because the program Riker was using was a lie, based on a false account of history! Weirdly, this revelation is presented to us by the framing device of old Jake Sisko and old Nog, discovering these recently unclassified files about Trip Tucker's "death." In reality, Trip faked his death so he could go undercover in the Romulan Star Empire and help the proto-Federation's efforts against Romulus.

What seems strange is that what is to me a delightful appropriation of a bad

episode to righteously upend a wrong done to the fan community ends up being

kind of unsatisfying. I read reviews of this book on Amazon before purchasing

it and all were largely positive, but one negative review stood out to me in

that it was criticizing the book because people were constantly crying. I

wasn't as upset for Archer wanting to hug T'Pol and Trip constantly as this

reviewer was, but man, I have to say, Trip, Archer, and T'Pol spend quite a

bit of time throughout this book misty-eyed. T'Pol, a damned Vulcan,

literally breaks down in tears on two separate occasions. The Denobulan

doctor Phlox, in on the conspiracy, almost cries thinking about not-dead Trip

Tucker. I know there's a lot of emotion and drama involved in faking one's

death, but c'mon.

What I liked:

During his fake death, Trip remarks at how ridiculous and unbelievable the

circumstances surrounding it are. Take that, canon!

Who's a good boy? It's Porthos! He's a good boy!

Things that bothered me, in order of annoyance:

At one point Trip is paired with another undercover human operative, who espouses the really deep observation that the universe is just so vast and amazing, that it makes you wonder if God did it. No, not just any God, the Christian one, apparently. Trip is written as conceding the very deep point that it really makes you think, don't it.

While undercover as a Romulan, Trip recognizes that another, potentially hostile Romulan is actually the same person as a Vulcan captain he met months before. Nothing comes of this. We never find out if he was a Vulcan operative undercover in the Romulan Empire or vice-versa. It just hangs out there.

Characterization. Yikes. T'Pol is all over the place, and Shran is stuck in default ANGRY until the final chapters of the book when he realizes what an idiot he's been. This mistake costs him nothing other than some internal guilt, and then he is subsequently rewarded. The most complex character is a Romulan nobody cares about.

Why doesn't Trip tell T'Pol about his fake death plans immediately? He eventually does anyway, I feel like this is just more unnecessary drama insertion, but what do I know?

Although this isn't much different than the television show, I would have hoped that Sato, Reed, and Mayweather would have gotten more time focused on them. Mayweather in particular was quite invisible. Again, just like the TV show.

Again, not to overly criticize Star Trek literature as "elevated fanfiction", but I was quite often reminded of fanfiction that loves to pepper in foreign words that the author knows just to prove their cred. Right, senpai? I can sort of understand doing this for Klingon words everybody knows (I don't expect "Q'apla" to be translated), but every tenth word out of a Romulan character was italicized, and even the Andorians were occasionally complaining about how others didn't have any ZHAVEY, which I assumed was "honor." This is even more ridiculous when Romulans were constantly counting down things, which it was obvious they were numbers, and yet during at least the third countdown in the Romulan language (nerd voice: That's RIHANNSU!) Trip is translating in his head to English for the viewers at home.

Along these same lines, the questionable fanon of the Andorians having four genders and declining population growth is brought up. Further, this book takes the bold step of declaring the Aenar extinct in the 2400s. I'm less annoyed with the fanon gender theory (even though this was not represented in the considerable time spent on the Andorians in the Enterprise TV series) than I am about suddenly declaring the Aenar extinct. (especially when they exist in Star Trek Online.)

Service interruption

I foolishly picked two huge books to read at once - the three novel Imperial Guard omnibus Honour Imperialis and the face-crushingly big The Last Lion box set, a massive biography of Sir Winston Churchill (also a Mii living in my Tomodachi Life game!). I may be able to sneak in a review for some of the cartoon books on my shelf, but neither one of these big books is going to be finished any time soon - and until they are, reviews are going to be sparse at best. Until then, please enjoy this sleepy polar bear image I stole from somewhere.

"Snow Crash"

Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)

I really hated this book; it has the William Kennedy style of writing where it sounds like an annoying person at a party you can't escape yammering nonsensically at you, with Stephenson's twist being that it sounds like you've been cornered by a 10 year old boy who can't shut up. Here's a quote from the first ten pages, talking about the hero's car, which goes, like, a billion miles an hour:

The Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a pesta.

I made it through maybe 15 pages of this crap before it was hurled into the donation pile with great malice. I don't know that I have much to add beyond that horrible quote. I guess I would say - do not buy this book; do not check out this book; do not recommend this book; do not read this book.

Grade: F-

"The Bounty Hunter Code"

The Bounty Hunter Code: From the Files of Boba Fett (Daniel Wallace, Ryder Windham & Jason Fry)

I feel silly saying that a book with a sticker price of $99.99 is only for fans of the series, but here we are; this book comes in a really cool case (you put in a fake ID card and the hard lid opens while lights go off), but the books inside are a little bit slim. The main attraction is the Bounty Hunter Code, and it's pretty entertaining, but unless you're interested in a social history of the Mandalorian clans, I don't know that there's really much here to entice you. There's also a 48 page autobiography by Cradossk, a guy so obscure I had to look him up on Wookiepedia. (Turns out he's Bossk's dad!!)
Overall, this is a fun little set of books with a cool case; but even at Amazon's half price of $50 - let alone the MSRP of $99 - this is pretty hard to recommend unless you're a Star Wars nut.

Grade: B

"The Gildar Rift" (Space Marine Battles series)

The Gildar Rift (Sarah Cawkwell)

This is a SPACE MARINE BATTLES book, and at this point I feel like the series could honestly be renamed "Pretty Good 40K Novel Light On Plot" as most of the books fit into that category. This one does too; it's pretty good, mostly action, and a little light on plot and characterization (although the loyalist chapter the book is about, the Silver Skulls, are unique enough to set them apart from generic space marines). Honestly, I mostly got this book out of curiosity at seeing a female author handling the sausage-fest that is 40K. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but what I got is one of the better Space Marines Battles novel, and one that's easy to recommend with the above caveats in place.

Grade: B

"A Centaur's Life" Volume 1

A Centaur's Life Vol 1 (Kei Murayama)

A goofy slice-of-life manga about (checks title) a centaur and her two high school buddies, a tomboy "draconid" (nothing exciting, she just has pointed ears) and a kind of personalityless "goatkind" (who has big cat ears on top of her head for some reason). The art is really nice, it's pretty funny, and I learned a lot ("A centaur's undergarments" are "big"!) , but I do have kind of a hard time recommending you run out and spend $13 on a book that takes 45 minutes to read. See if you can borrow it from a friend.

Grade: B

"Lincoln at Gettysburg"

Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America (Garry Wills)

I'm surprised at how little I liked this book. Honestly, I don't know how this won the Pulitzer; it's about a fifth very technical dissection of the Gettysburg Address itself, and the rest is a wandering hodgepodge (I found myself flipping page after page of information about then-contemporary cemetery design philosophy). Some of this is interesting - the author's rundown of the two hour long preceding Gettysburg Oration went into a lot of detail about public speaking in the mid 1800s that was surprisingly interesting.
But this is the exception - most of the non-Address material is both boring and puzzling in that I'm not sure why it was included. I almost muddled through the whole book, but then I started running into this (from pages 116-117):

Psychobiographers, as we have seen, claim that this demonstrates Lincoln's oedipal compulsion to "kill" Douglas as a sibling rival.

I don't really think I need to say any more than that. Don't bother with this book.

Grade: F

"Path of the Eldar Omnibus"

Path of the Eldar Omnibus (Gav Thorpe)

Normally in an omnibus, I like to review each novel separately; I'm not going to be doing that in this case since the author has written three novels that all describe the same basic events from three point of views.
This is an interesting idea, but I unfortunately I don't think it quite works. The first book is pretty interesting, but the second and third suffer from already knowing what's going to happen. It doesn't help that the main characters of all three books are kind of obnoxious - the first book's hero is a self-obsessed creep, the second book's hero is a arrogant know it all, and the third book's hero is basically the villain of the piece, a truly loathsome dickbag I was hoping would get some kind of comeuppance for his frankly vile actions (admittedly, this reaction really kicked in once he started capturing ship crews to be used as slaves). The book isn't terrible; there is a lot of interesting Eldar background material, and for once they aren't being used as punching bags to show how cool and strong someone else is, but I can still only really recommend this to W40k nerds. (Or, if you're curious, I guess get it out of the library long enough to just read the first included novel; you won't miss much.)

Grade: C+

"An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth"

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything (Col. Chris Hadfield)

A pretty interesting book that's easy to recommend, if not quite demand that you run out and pick up now. The book is mostly a autobiography of Hadfield's life, mostly centered on his last mission to space on the International Space Station. Mixed in is almost comedically Canadian common sense advice (make sure you're doing your own job well, etc). I don't really know that I have much more to say about this; I liked reading it, and the advice isn't bad. Um, I guess this review's a small bite.

Grade: B

"Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader"

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (Bradley Martin)

I'm torn about this book; it's divided roughly into thirds, with one being very good, one being interesting but dry, and one being pretty boring and pointless. The first third is a biography of Kim Il-Sung, covering from his birth up to his son taking over most of the power in Korea, and this part's easy to recommend as the author gives a interesting and informative history of both Kim and the development of North Korea. After this the book goes into the second section, which is a large batch of interviews with defectors. This kind of primary source is pretty interesting at first, but between the sheer volume of them and the fact that the author just presents the interviews without any kind of narrative thread eventually made me start skipping pages. 

This comes to the last section of the book, which I just recommend skipping; the author speculates on the future of North Korea, and it seems like the book's editor didn't read this far as it's quite disjointed. A large part of it also deals with the question of who will succeed Kim Jong-Il, which was a good question in 2006, but has been answered pretty definitively at this point. 

All of this makes a book that's difficult to recommend. I would say get it out of the local library, read the first half, and return it.

Grade: B

"Helsreach"

Helsreach (Aaron Dembski-Bowden)

Like most of the SPACE MARINES BATTLES series, this book is basically a novel-length, ummm, space marine battle. That's not a bad thing - the best ones, which include this book, have enough character development to give the reader someone to root for before they spend 300 pages hitting Orks in the face with a crozius. This particular book lands firmly in the good-not-great pile, although I have to say it's towards the top of that particular heap; ADB manages to pull off the often-attempted but rarely successful technique of following around a bunch of different POV characters. That being said, this is still a novel-long battle; go in knowing what you're getting and I think it's a pretty solid bet you'll be happy with it.

Grade: B+

"Faith and Treason" & "God's Secret Agents" two-fer

Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot (Antonia Fraser)

Apparently I forgot to ever review God's Secret Agents; since it covers some of the same territory as as Faith and Treason, I guess I might as well talk about them both.
Not knowing anything about either one of these books, I lucked out by reading God's Secret Agents first; this book is much larger than the other, and happily it does a lot of scene-setting. It mostly covers the Elizabethan age, with James coming in at the epilogue. Faith and Treason is much smaller, and picks up about where God's Secret Agents leaves off, dispatching Elizabeth in the introduction, and is almost exclusively about James assuming power and the Gunpowder Plot itself. I recommend both books, as they really do work well together, and the story they tell is quite interesting (if incredibly grim at times). That being said, Fraser assumes enough knowledge that I'd probably feel lost without having read God's Secret Agents first. My only caveat is that both these books go into gory detail about the caught Catholics getting tortured; reading about them getting dismembered was no less wince-worthy the second time, unfortunately. Still, I recommend both books, although you might want to slip a palette cleanser in between.

Grades: A

"A Book of Jean's Own!"

The Onion Presents A Book of Jean's Own!: All New Wit, Wisdom, and Wackiness from The Onion's Beloved Humor Columnist (Jean Teasdale)

This is a book pretend-written by the Onion's intentionally bad humor columnist Jean Teasdale, and it's pretty easy to figure out if it's for you: Just take a gander at her columns (and her website!) and see if you're amused. The book is basically Jean in concentrated form, and I liked it enough to polish it off in one sitting. My only suggestions would be to flip past the recipes (the joke appears to be the insane amount of butter that goes in), and don't listen to Jean's advice that you can skip around the book; there is a narrative thread running through the fake cat journals and Rick's lists of things that annoy the shit out of him that does come to a head at the end.
All in all I liked this book pretty well, and was surprised to see that the Amazon reviews are fairly mixed. I'm tempted to put this down to price; if I'd plunked down the MSRP of $18.99 I don't know that I'd be too pleased, but at $2.31 (with free shipping!) I'm pretty happy.

Grade: B

"History's Biggest Blunders"

History's Biggest Blunders (Ian Whitelaw)

I had a bad feeling about this book as soon as I started reading it; the first "blunder" is "Humankind domesticates plants and animals," which I think most people would agree has turned out pretty well, civilization wise. I chalked this up to the book not being titled "History's Most Nuanced Looks at Societal Development" and went on to the second "blunder", which is Pharoh not letting Moses and the Jews go free, even as the author mentions multiple times that God explains to Moses that he hardened Pharoah's heart. So is that really a blunder?
Eventually I got the sense that I know more than the author about most of these blunders (Did Alexander the Great really "push too far"? He won the Battle of Hydaspes and his army made him turn back; how is that one of "History's Biggest Blunders"?). This makes it a little tough to recommend, but it is fairly entertaining, and it's divided into two to three page chapters that are the perfect length for a bathroom break. Pick it up if you see it in the bargain bin, otherwise I can't recommend it too highly.

Grade: C-

"On Such a Full Sea"

On Such a Full Sea: A Novel (Chang-rae Lee)

I really wanted to like this book, and for the first 70 or so pages, I did; The setting of a ambiguously radiated future where Western civilization has declined seemingly more of malaise than anything else and been largely replaced by Chinese settlers is really interesting, even if our heroine doesn't have much of a personality.
The problem is that eventually I would like the scene to be set and the story to begin, and this never really happened. The author is unable (or, I suspect, just unwilling) to actually tell the story; for each page of our heroine's journey out in the wilds, you'll get a page about the city our heroine left, and while some of these are interesting, I eventually became deeply annoyed at cutting away from the main plot to meander through four pages about the weird uncle who used to live upstairs. By the time I was a third of the way through the book and realized that the plot was never going to be able to pick up any momentum this way, I bailed.
I'd recommend checking out of the library and going about 100 pages; if the author's elliptical style and refusal to get to the point aren't driving you crazy, you're set.

Grade: C-

"Empire of Liberty"

Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789 - 1815 [Oxford History of the United States] (Gordon S. Wood)

For a massive history book I really enjoyed, I'm not sure I have much to say here aside from a strong recommendation; The core of this book is a why-didn't-I-learn-this-in-school exploration of the early clash between the Federalists - trying to make America into a European-style Power complete with landed aristocracy - and the Democratic-Republicans under Jefferson, attempting to mold America into a republic full of small farmers. This might not sound that interesting, but if so I'm not doing it justice; some of the truly bizarre ideas (including an attempt to completely outlaw commerce) are really staggering, and this is an easy recommend to anyone even casually interested in American history. Don't let the size scare you off from this gem.

Grade: A

Service Advisory

Your favorite blog about W40k novels and massive history books is going to be slowing down for a week or two; I'm currently reading the gigantic Empire of Liberty, which tips the scale at 800 pages and 2.4 pounds. This is going to take a while for me to read, which means middle of April may be quieter than usual around here. Resist the urge to go outside or interact with your loved ones until regular programming resumes. Instead, here's some other fine blogs to view:

NHam's Trip Reports - http://ntripreport.blogspot.com/
Eating Thru Albany (haitus) - http://eatingthrualbany.blogspot.com/
Husband Crime blotter - http://husbandcrimeblotter.blogspot.com/

"American Savage"

American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics (Dan Savage)

I had an eerie feeling reading this book; Savage's voice comes through so strongly that I couldn't help but hear him reading the text. This is not necessarily a bad thing, although I guess it removes the need for an audiobook.
Aside from that, I liked it; Savage's positions seems pretty sensible to a liberal dupe like myself (although I was left wanting to hear more about his collection of Catholic kitsch).
My only two caveats are that I'd recommend skipping the gun control chapter, which is a real downer and doesn't look to be getting better any time soon; and this is probably a book to get out of the library (I polished it off in two sittings).

Grade: B+

"The Diary of Edward the Hamster 1990 - 1990"

The Diary of Edward the Hamster 1990 - 1990 (Miriam & Ezra Elia)

I guess I didn't get this book; it's about a sad hamster who (spoiler alert? I can't even tell, it's in the title) dies at the end. It's not funny or entertaining; it's puzzling and depressing. The whole book I was like "Is this supposed to be funny?" and then I got to the end and went "What?" and then "Was this supposed to be funny?"
Don't even bother getting this one of the library.

Grade: F

"You're Only as Good as Your Next One"

You're Only as Good as Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot (Mike Medavoy)

A pretty interesting look at Hollywood from the agent's and producer's side (Medavoy being an agent and then a producer). If you're hoping for juicy Hollywood gossip or dirt, this is a book to skip; Medavoy sticks to his own career and the changing nature of the movie buisness. I learned a lot, and I was entertained the whole time. There's better (and meaner) books about Hollywood out there, but this is worth picking up if you see at the used bookstore.
One caveat is that I'd advise keeping your bullshit detector on high alert; Medavoy claims that "The 6th Day" is a very intelligent movie, which I guess reasonable people can disagree about, but when he ventures into taking credit for the Adams Family movie because it spawned a trend of successes like the Beverly Hillbillies movie, well, that's the kind of thing I wouldn't want to unquestionably read and then start repeating in public.

Grade: B

"Architect of Fate"

Architect of Fate (Edited by Christian Dunn)

Remember when I said after the last W40K book that I was "almost out"? Well, after this one, I'm out, I promise. This is another book in the SPACE MARINES BATTLES series, and it's a short story collection. I'm just gonna run them down real fast:

Accursed Eternity: This is pretty good; it details a group of Space Marines having a Battle wherein they board a ghost ship that appears and disappears, attempting to destroy the demon within (the giant blue bird pictured on the front cover). I liked the approach the author took to the demon ship, where it starts out as a pristine, if empty, starship and only morphs into a rusted metallic blood-oozing hellscape because that's what our heroes start imagining. Very entertaining, if slightly confusing.

Sanctus: I'm not too crazy about this one, which is about a bunch of relic-hunting space marines battling Chaos space marines and cultists and a weird prophet dude who is trying to set up a stable time loop by turning the Chaos space marines into statues using a dust storm made up of loyalist prayers and meanwhile up on a ship there's an Inquisitor guy and a demon gets lose after a navigator baron's son blows up a bomb in his boot while they're trying to torture him and then the Grey Knights have to fight the demon so that the inquisitor has enough time to start bombing the planet. (deep breath) I think the author tried to pack a little too much in this one.

Endeavor of Will: I liked this one. A Iron Warriors bad guy attacks two star forts guarding the Eye of Terror, and who shows up but the main charecter from Maldorax? I didn't realize that the giant hammer he uses called the "Fist of Dorn" has the part you hit someone with actually shaped like a fist, which I guess makes sense since he's a member of the Imperial Fists, but all I could think of was a gag weapon you'd use in a jrpg.

Fateweaver: This one was better than Sanctus, but I wasn't really a big fan of it. I will give it credit for wrapping up all the loose plot threads (no easy task!) and nailing the ending, a distressingly rare feat in W40k.

I guess that was "real fast" after all. Well, let me sum up quickly: It's a little confusing, but there's a lot of good action in here, hung on a frame that all comes together in a pleasing way at the end. It's stuck firmly in good-not-great territory, but it's easily worth the $9.

"One Hundred Days"

One Hundred Days: Napoleon's Road to Waterloo (Alan Schom)

This one you can judge by its cover. I guess I'm kind of starting at the end with Napoleon here; spoiler alert. What I liked about this book is that the author didn't just cover Waterloo - in fact, the entire military campaign makes up maybe a fifth of the book. This leaves the rest to what I really wanted to see, namely
Napoleon's governance of France and to a small extent planning for the future (it's to a small extent as he doesn't seem to have thought much past battling the rest of Europe, and of course he never got the chance after that).
That would make it an easy recommend (for history nerds), but there is one warning I'd issue: Schom stops to drop in biographies of all the major players as we run across them. This is puzzling for two reasons; one, I would assume that most readers had the sense (unlike me) to read other books about Napoleon first instead of starting at the end, and would already have this information. Two, the biographies are largely pointless as most of the characters get so little screen time that their introductory biographies are longer than all the rest of the text featuring them put together. I'd say just skip 'em.
Other than this issue, and probably recommending reading this as a endcap, the bulk of the text covers an area of study that's esoteric enough that this is the only book I've seen covering it, and that makes it pretty easy to recommend.

Grade: B+

"Maldorax"

Maldorax (Ben Counter)

Yes, I know I've been reading a lot of W40k lately; Don't worry, I'm almost out for the time being.
As for this particular book, it's part of the SPACE MARINES BATTLES series, which means you get a whole lot of bang pow boom splat aaagh. So far I'm kind of split on this series, and I wasn't really sure what to expect.
Luckily, this book is all right; we're dealing with solid, middle of the road W40K fare. The basic jist is that a SPACE MARINE has escaped the demon planet of Maldorax, and comes back with a bunch of his buddies to kill the Evil Bad Guy whose name I've already forgotten. There certainly are a lot of Space Marine Battles depicted within, and the author alternating chapters where our hero is back with his buddies flipped with ones where he's escaping the planet is a nice touch. If you need a 40k fix you might as well pick this up, as you could certainly do a lot worse; otherwise it's nothing special.

Grade: C+

"Dividing the Spoils"

Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great's Empire (Robin Waterfield)

I'm torn on this book; it does a very nice job of summing up the fallout from Alexander the Great dying young, stopping to touch on Greek social and political ideas in addition to who fought whom. But I also struggled with it - there's a ton of new unusual Greek names, and I never got a really solid grip on who was who as the story played out. In the end, this is probably not for the casual reader; I think I'd recommend this as a quick endcap (it's barely 200 pages) after a nice meaty Alexander the Great biography. (Speaking of which, can anybody recommend a nice meaty Alexander the Great biography?)

Grade: B-

"The Unremembered Empire"

The Unremembered Empire (Dan Abnett)

I was really worried about this book - it's currently sitting on two stars on Amazon, and reviewers were harsh on its inclusion of (ugh) THE PERPETUALS, which I have complained about before at length. In addition to that, it's a book about the Ultramarines and Rowboat Girlyman - not a good prognosis.
Maybe it was just because I was expecting a stinker, but I have to say this book wasn't that bad. In fact, if you cut out the Perpetual crap - and there's not really a whole ton of it - there's a really decent book in here somewhere. It follows up on both The Mark of Calth and (ugh) Vulkan Lives, even going so far to slightly fix some of Vulkan Lives' problems. (Don't get too excited; this basically raises it from a F- to an F.) All the non-Perpetual parts work because here the Ultramarines and Guilliman are fallible; it's amazing how readable a book about them can be when everyone isn't standing around talking about how cool, powerful, and attractive the designated Gary Stu is.
All that being said, if you haven't read at least Mark of Calth, you'll be pretty lost. If you're already reading this series, I'd say pick this one up and just skim past all the Perpetual stuff; otherwise, it's not really worth reading the previous books just to read this one.

Grade: C+

"1491"

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Charles Mann)

I feel a little deceived by this book. What I was expecting was a book all about the people native to the Americans before Columbus. There is some of this material in the book - and these parts are quite good - but more than half of the book is a history of white people's understanding of the history, not the history itself.
This is not exactly what I wanted. I understand that some material about the way that modern people think about the subject can be useful, but there's just too much for me, and it really started getting on my nerves reading page after page about it. I want to hear about the history; I don't necessarily find it so interesting to be hearing about the theory and ways of thinking about the history. (It also has the effect of once again making the story about white people.)
Ultimately, I just found that there was too much of this material in the book. What parts of it that there are about the Americas before Columbus are quite good, but there simply isn't enough of this to make this an easy recommend. Check it out of the library and just read the parts that are directly recounting the history.

Grade: B-

"Enforcer"

Enforcer: The Shira Calpurnia Omnibus (Matthew Farrer)

Yes, it's time for another w40k omnibus. This one covers a police officer named Shira Calpurnia, and it gives a nice, ground-level view of the setting with nary a Space Marine in sight. I'm going to cover the books included one by one.

Crossfire: The omnibus kicks off with our heroine arriving in the Hydraphur system and almost immediately being targeted for assassination. This book is pretty good; there are some slow-moving parts where we see more about the characters and setting that I assumed would be put to good use in future novels, and the author introduces too many characters and doesn't give them much to do, but it held my attention and I was genuinely interested to see the outcome. I'm not sure the eventual bad guy really makes a lot of sense, but this is a solid B.

Legacy: This, unfortunately, is where the book goes off the rails. Legacy is about a succession dispute, with two groups fighting over who's going to inherit an ancient and very valuable rouge trader writ. This is fine, but it reduces Shira to the role of, at best, guest star in her own book. She has nothing to do until the climax, and even then the focus is on all the other groups fighting each other. Most of the book is a slog; the author introduces too many characters and doesn't give them enough to do. The climax is exciting, but the ending that follows kind of makes the entire book pointless in my view. Skip this one.

Blind: This is better than Legacy, but only just; at least it has our heroine in it, even if she ends up not really doing much. This time the action takes place on a space station full of psychics, and the mystery is how a man in a locked room was killed. It's not very good; once again, a ton of characters are introduced and most of them are giving nothing to do, and the eventual resolution is enough of a letdown that if I still cared about this book I probably would have been annoyed.

Overall, I'm gonna have to say pass on this collection; It's tedious, and two bad books that are a chore to read adds up to a omnibus that is bad and a chore to read. I'd say pick up Crossfire, but even then, a lot of it is taken up in world and character building that never pays off - the second book has nothing to do with the setting, and the third book takes place on a space station far away from anywhere else. This is kind of a mess, and I really can't recommend it to anyone, unless you need a heavy book to hold something down.

Grade: D

"Roman Blood"

Roman Blood: A Novel of Ancient Rome (Steven Saylor)

This is a street-level detective story set in ancient Rome. If that sounds like the SPQR series, well, they're rather alike; I'm afraid this novel has spoiled me, though, mostly because it's just very well written. What leaps out the most is Saylor's talent at creating memorable, personality-filled characters (the cranky oddballness of Cicero is a particular treat), but even mundane actions like the sun rising on what promises to be a hot day stuck with me as the author describes it like a thief sneaking over his roof tiles.
So I recommend this one - not just for history nerds, although they may get slightly more out of it (the case is about the murder of Sextus Roscius, which I recognized from the Master of Rome series). I don't think that being unfamiliar with the setting would be much of an impediment, and I'd suggest at least checking it out of the library.

Grade: A

"Life in a Medieval City"

Life in a Medieval City (Joseph & Frances Gies)

Just what it says on the cover - this is a slim little book (200 or so small pages) detailing everyday life in Troyes, circa 1250, covering everything from what a housewife did all day to table manners to the economic and religious systems (although, strangely, not much about the political setup). It's quite interesting; the only time I found my attention drifting was while the authors were describing clothing styles, which was also an issue with The Time Traveler's Guide Guide to Medieval England. This book isn't nearly so weighty or in-depth as that one, but I enjoyed it almost as much. Some Amazon reviews mentioned that this book may contain terms and phrases that are a little too advanced for the beginning reader, but that didn't really bug me; I had more trouble with the untranslated French terms, and I feel confident recommending this one to everybody.

Grade: A-

"Days of Fire"

Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House (Peter Baker)

This is, so far as I'm aware, the definitive history of George W Bush's two terms - the author had access to Bush, Cheney, and a number of disgruntled staffers, which produces as inside a look as possible. Combined with the author's fairness is a book that's quite gripping despite its intimidating size (Amazon says 816 pages, but that includes copious end notes). In fact, I could have easily read more; so much happened during these eight years that I could easily see the book being another 50% longer.
What I really appreciated in the book is that it makes Dubya into a real person; I'll freely admit that after eight years of his administration I had unconsciously started thinking of him as a political cartoon midget with a huge cowboy hat. It's nice to see the moments that make him a relateable human being, even if I still think he was a terrible president. (On that note, the author and I seem to agree that Bush's presidency was defined by lost opportunities more than anything else; I thought the author went a little too far in the afterword defending Bush's presidency, but it's the kind of difference of opinion where I understand and respect the argument, but don't agree with it myself.)
If you have even the slightest interest in politics, this is an easy recommend. I'm certainly no Bush fan, but the only time I wanted to put this book down is when holding all 800 pages of it up made my arm tired.

Grade: A

Spring Moon

I started and finished Spring Moon last night. That alone should give you insight into how much I enjoyed this book. Telling the tale of Spring Moon and her family on an epic scale, the book weaves the lives of the Chang clan with China's turblent early 20th century history.
Spring Moon grows and changes throughout the bittersweet story, beginning as a precocious girl and ending as a woman very much into her old age. She tells us of herself through her own eyes but we also see her through the eyes of her favored Grand Uncle, his wife, and Spring Moon's own child. A great read for history fans looking for the human side of the story and people who enjoy love stories that aren't ridiculous affairs.

"A History of Future Cities"

A History of Future Cities (Daniel Brook)

I knew I was in trouble with this book right from page three:

Orient is both a noun and a verb - the noun means east; the verb means to place oneself in space - but its two meanings are intertwined. An individual lost in the wilderness can place herself in space (orient herself) because she knows the sun rises in the east (the Orient). The disorientation imparted by St. Petersburgh, Shanghai, Mumbai and Dubai results from their being located in the East but purposefully built to look as if they are in the West. Their occidental looks are anything but accidental.

What we have here is a misleadingly titled book comprised of four not terribly well written, hyperbolic, boring histories of "pop up" cities - the aforementioned St. Petersburgh, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai (putting aside that Shanghai is over a thousand years old and Mumbai may have been continuously inhabited since the Stone Age). I'm gonna be real here: This is a book not only without a central premise, but as I hope is demonstrated from the snippet above, soaked in nonsense. The actual histories themselves are, and I know I said this already but it bears repeating, not well written and boring. I can't recommend not reading this book enough.

Grade:
F-

"Double Down"

Double Down: Game Change 2012 (Mark Halperin & John Heilemann)

I really liked the original Game Change, and I guess it's not much of a shock that I liked this book as well - it's more of the same in the best sense, in this case covering (checks title) 2012. What really stood out to me is that the authors apparently got access to all the candidates, as we get to hear what they're thinking throughout the whole campaign. The 2012 campaign may not have been the most exciting - Obama basically had it locked up the whole time - but because of the detail they're able to include, the authors have produced a book that's very tough to put down (aside from the slow introduction dealing with Obama's political situation heading into the campaign).
That said, I do have two small issues. One is that the authors can't stop using annoying buzzwords, including "flooding the media zone", "doubling down" (groan), and looking for "game changer"s. Luckily nobody was thrown under the bus, moving forward, because it is what it is. This is also true of the original Game Change, so I can't really act surprised.
The second and I think bigger issue is that there were a few areas the authors didn't talk about. They cover a lot of ground, but I wanted to read about the meltdown of Romney's get-out-the-vote computer system, and I would have loved to have seen some more detail on why Romney's team thought they would win considering almost every poll had them losing. (As it is this just gets a fleeting mention.)
These issues aside - and wanting more of a book ends up speaking well of it, I guess - you shouldn't pass this up.

Grade: A-

"In The Shadow of the Moons"

In The Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family (Nansook Hong)

This book fits into the little subgenre of cult-escape books - most of the ones I've read have been about Scientology, but this one is about (checks title) the Moonie church, more specifically the man himself and his totally dysfunctional family. The author is married (at 15) to the eldest son of Sun Myung Moon, and escapes with her children after over a decade of abuse, verbal, mental, and physical. What really stuck with me is the author's strength; the abuse she undergoes is horrific, and I couldn't help but smile at the end of the book when she successful escapes and sets about building a real life for herself. She also seems more sad than angry about what she went through - and make no mistake, this is a downer. Even so, I recommend it. It's harrowing, but this is a story that deserves to be told.

Grade: :0

"Vulkan Lives"

Vulkan Lives (Nick Kyme)

I really hated this book. It's nominally about Vulkan, leader of the Salamanders, one of the neglected groups of characters in W40k. I thought this would be his chance to shine; Instead, the book is more about John Grammaticus, the annoying gary stu from Deliverance Lost and Legion. Like these two books, this one is a boring, annoying disappointment. I'm at the point now where when I see the name John Grammaticus I might just put the book down, because there's never anything interesting that happens when he's around. This book is no exception, and does itself no favors in being split into three narrative threads (Vulkan in captivity, John Grammaticus fucking around, and the Isstvan V dropsite massacre, which has been depicted four or five times by now). There's at least one thread left dangling where we're told that Vulkan must die to prevent him "becoming the gatekeeper" (I'm not sure where the keymaster is) that is never explained or explored at all. For bonus points, the end of the book is confusingly nonsensical and appears to conflict with what we've explicitly been told earlier in the book. Avoid at all costs.

Grade: F

"In the Balance"

In the Balance: An Alternate History of the Second World War [Worldwar, Volume 1] (Harry Turtledove)

I think I'm being trolled with this book; it's a retelling of World War II where Earth is invaded by very slow lizard aliens, and as the author kept stopping to drive home how slow the lizards move and react, all I could think about was how slow this book moved, almost as if it was written by one of the lizards and published without going through an editor. The only reason that humans have any chance against the aliens and their advanced technology is due to this slowness, which the author repeats endlessly just in case you didn't get it the first time. This does not exactly make for a gripping read.
I forgave the other Turtledove book I read for being bloated because it had a strong narrative thread, but here Turtledove follows around way too many characters, half of whom have no reason for us to waste page after page watching them (here I'm looking askance at the minor league ballplayers and the frankly racist depiction of some captured Chinese peasants). I wonder if the problem is that this is the first volume of a four volume set; The author seems to feel no need to resolve any storylines he starts, nor give them much forward momentum, instead indulging in endless noodling and the repetition mentioned above. It's a shame - this is an idea with a lot of possibility, and  I feel like there's a decent book in here, maybe if all four volumes were trimmed down to a single 500 page novel. As it stands, I can't really recommend this one to anybody, unless you're having trouble going to sleep.

Grade: D-

"Atlas Infernal"

Atlas Infernal (Rob Sanders)

I believe this may be the most bonkers W40k book I've ever read, which is no small feat. It's tough to describe the plot since it zags all over the place, but the basic jist is that there's a grumpy old Inquisitor who's stolen a living map of the Eldar Webway, pursued by mean old Ahriman of the Thousand Sons. This is just the launching point to a truly bizarre adventure that takes our heroes through the Eye of Terror. I found this quite enjoyable, and in fact my only gripe is that Sanders does the readers no favors by breaking the story up into non-linear pieces. (The book opens with the hero going to visit the Black Library, but we don't see him escape until it's almost over.) Frankly, it's already a little tricky to follow because of the endless and strange new ideas thrown at the reader, not to mention that the main antagonist can cast illusion spells that let him appear as other characters, and having things happen out of order is a little jarring.
This quibble aside - and a note that this is a really bad place to start if you don't know much about the setting - you really shouldn't pass this one up.

Grade: A