A humbling, innovative sci-fi thriller (*****)

The naysayers will do their best to rip Lincoln Child's heart out for his rather erratic treatment of the hard science in his newest sci-fi thriller, "Deep Storm". And, it certainly has its weak or inaccurate moments! But the more important truth is that "Deep Storm" is a solidly gripping, wildly entertaining, credible science fiction thriller based on a truly imaginative and utterly horrifying premise.

Peter Crane, a naval physician, is summoned to a top secret naval operation housed on Storm King, a former commercial deep sea offshore oil platform located off the shore of Greenland. Crane's short term mission - to treat and discover the causes of what appears to be an escalating epidemic of illnesses among the staff - is exceptionally difficult. The myriad symptoms he encounters range from sweats, fever and loss of attention or focus to murderous florid psychotic episodes and refuse to lend themselves to diagnosis and understanding through any common vector.

From the moment of Crane's arrival on the rig, Admiral Spartan, the military commander of the operation and Howard Asher, the senior scientist on board, steadfastly refuse Crane access to certain highly classified areas or their staff. Unable to understand the reasons why Storm King's apparent mission - the excavation of Atlantis, buried for 10,000 years under a volcanic event in the North Atlantic - would be shrouded in such secrecy, he continues to probe into the areas on the rig that have been closed off to him. Ultimately (well, what else did you expect?), the truth is discovered and - trust me on this one - it is not only a truly innovative and speculative sci-fi premise but it is monumentally humbling at the same time!

Just as he did with his writing partner, Douglas Preston, in their jointly written novels, Lincoln has peppered "Deep Storm" throughout with interesting scholarly asides on a variety of topics that inform and entertain without detracting from or slowing down the plot - epidemiology and diagnostic research techniques; the perils of living in an extended submerged and confined environment; "impossible" mathematics; forensic data recovery from catastrophically destroyed hard drives; the physical structure of the earth's mantle; the conflict between science and its potential weaponization by a right-wing military; and more.

"Deep Storm" is truly a winner - non-stop hair-raising action, interesting and informative asides, wonderful character development, respectable dialogue, exactly the right amount of romance without being sappy, a goodly number of twists and turns and red-herrings and a cliff-hanger thought provoking ending that will just blow your mind! The science itself is the only weak link (just one glaring example - since electromagnetic energy propagates at the speed of light, it is impossible to detect it on its way. If you can detect the field ... too late, it's already there!) If Child takes the time to submit his next effort to a more thorough scientific edit, he'll be unbeatable! But, in the meantime, a high-speed page turning frenzy ain't too bad anyway!

Enjoy.

Paul Weiss

Thought-provoking and deeply moving (****)

One hundred and fifty years after the wars that destroyed an over-populated earth, mankind is now living on over one hundred colony worlds and a handful of giant roaming ships that once ferried men to the stars. Mia Havero is a young girl living on one of those ships whose residents are abundantly aware of the perils of the "lack of moral discipline" of "Free-Birthers" who embrace complete freedom of reproduction, an uncontrolled birth rate and the resulting exponential growth in population. They've adopted the harsh but entirely effective social policy of subjecting their young people to the "Trial". Every young person is dropped and summarily abandoned into a thirty day survive-or-die test in the harsh and cruel environment of a frequently hostile colony planet. Those who survive return to the fold of the ship and are called "adults". Those who don't - well, they just don't!

"Rite of Passage" is written from Mia's first person perspective as she grows through childhood, enters training for her time of Trial and is dropped onto the planet Tintera with her childhood friend, Jimmy Dentremont. At only 225 pages, "Rite of Passage" is a very short novel and for over 200 of those pages seems to be a rather typical coming of age story. It's reasonably well written with any number of heart-warming passages and some seriously thought-provoking essays and interludes on philosophy, education and ethics. In fact, the story concentrates so exclusively on Mia's education, evolution and the development of her character as she comes of age from self-centred girl child to mature young adult that any reader would be forgiven for forgetting that "Rite of Passage" won a Nebula Award as a science fiction novel!!

It's Panshin's epilogue that pulls "Rite of Passage" from mere novel into the realm of "classic", an eye-opening, jaw-dropping dissertation on the results of the irresponsible or reckless exercise of power. In a manner that will remind you of the subtle, quiet, yet compelling style of Simak's best novels, Panshin touches on issues of killing, prejudice, hatred, power and responsibility. When Panshin seamlessly returns our thoughts to the context of a science fiction novel by discussing the destruction of an entire planet, he brutally reminds us that these issues are timeless and are likely to remain with humanity forever unless we make a conscious decision to grow beyond cruelty.

"Rite of Passage" is a deeply moving novel likely to remain in your thoughts long after the final page is turned!

Paul Weiss

Outdoes "The Da Vinci Code" hands down (*****)

Harvard symbologist and religious historian, Robert Langdon, is intrigued and somewhat puzzled to find himself peremptorily summoned to CERN, the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, world's foremost research establishment in ultra high energy particle physics, to assist with a secret internal investigation of the murder of one of their staff. Leonardo Vetra - a brilliant senior physicist, a still-practicing Roman Catholic priest, and the discoverer of a method of creating and safely containing anti-matter - has been found brutally murdered with the word "Illuminati" branded on his chest.

The near light-speed, explosive pace at which Brown would have us believe the plot of "Angels and Demons" could unroll requires what, for some, will be an insurmountable suspension of credibility. But, if you can find your way over that niggling barrier, you're in for some non-stop, rollicking entertainment.

Langdon and Vittoria Vetra, the victim's beautiful daughter and similarly gifted physicist, follow the clues into the heart of the Vatican, host of an enclave of the world's cardinals convened to elect the replacement of the recently deceased pope where they must confront the current incarnation of The Illuminati, a centuries old secret brotherhood of scientists dating from the time of Galileo and the Italian Renaissance. The Illuminati carries out a high profile symbolic execution of the preferiti, the four cardinals most expected to win the papal election, and plans to use a small sample of Vetra's anti-matter to reduce Vatican City to a pile of rubble as a final close to the interminable battle between cutting edge science and Roman Catholic dogma.

Reading "Angels and Demons", I find it impossible to criticize Brown's character building skills as an author because, frankly, he didn't even try. "Angels and Demons" is plot, plot and yet more plot! But my money says it succeeds wildly and is a novel that is not only spectacularly entertaining but should avoid the visceral polarization of its readership that "The Da Vinci Code" managed to produce. I might go even further. Despite reading from the point of view of a non-practicing and disenchanted Roman Catholic, educated and believing profoundly in the value of scientific research and technology, I would nevertheless suggest that "Angels and Demons" presents a credible, balanced FICTIONAL story of a climactic confrontation between these two long-time arch-enemies. Ah, heck ... if anything, the scientists come out on the cruddy end of the stick and look more the bad guy than the church! That's OK - that provides a rather nice foil to the outlook one gets from a reading of "The Da Vinci Code"!

Enjoy!

Five stars and unconditionally recommended as a first-rate thriller!

Paul Weiss

Chalk up another winner for Patterson (****)

In "4th of July", the fourth installment of Patterson's Women's Murder Club, SFPD homicide detective Lindsay Boxer finds herself on trial for her professional life. A pull-over after a wild car chase goes entirely sour and results in Lindsay killing a female minor and seriously wounding a male minor condemning him to life as a wheelchair-confined machine-assisted quadriplegic. Boxer finds herself staring down the barrel of a lawsuit for "wrongful death, excessive use of force, and professional misconduct" filed by the parents with a potential price tag of $100 million in damages.

While Boxer's attorney, Yuki Castellano, the newest initiate to the Women's Murder Club, is outwardly poised and confident that she can clear her client, the trial's outcome is far from certain and Patterson has treated us to some truly electric courtroom drama!

Plot number two - on administrative leave to deal with the trial, Boxer has sought seclusion in the quaint town of Half Moon Bay. But the peaceful quiet of her chosen cloister is shattered as the town's residents are menaced by a series of brutal murders. Boxer twigs to an uncanny resemblance to an unsolved John Doe murder from very early in the rookie stages of her career and she reaches the decision to involve herself in the investigation. From that point, Patterson takes Boxer, the local police force, Half Moon Bay's local population and his unsuspecting readers careening down a taut, tension-filled road that's chock-a-block full of twists and turns and slams us all into a climax that nobody but nobody will see coming.

While the two plots are very loosely connected only through the literary device of Boxer's administrative leave, they are cleverly juxtaposed and the two stories become nicely crafted into a seamless whole. Story #2 is a typically well-done thriller that easily succeeds in fulfilling any expectations Patterson fans will have as a result of his long list of past best-sellers but I think Story #1 is the more interesting of the two.

Not your typical thriller brain candy, Patterson raises some serious hot-button issues related to minors and violent crime that won't leave a single reader sitting on the sidelines. As I read, there was more than one occasion on which my own opinions on the issues surfaced and I found myself getting quite warm under the collar. Well done, Patterson!

While I look forward to the next two Women's Murder Club novels, "The 5th Horseman" and "The 6th Target", it is my critical hope that Patterson will return to the original style of "1st to Die" and let the entire club figure more prominently in the novels and the solution to their plots. "4th of July" was clearly a Lindsay Boxer novel with the other members of her "club" being granted no more than token cameo walk-ons. Think of Baldacci's writing a "Camel Club" novel in which Oliver Stone battles the bad guys all by himself and ignores Caleb, Milton and Reuben! Well, it just isn't the same thing, is it? That said, "4th of July" worked well and comes recommended from this reader. Enjoy!

Paul Weiss

Grandma Mazur almost steals the show (****)

Stephanie Plum is slowly learning the bounty hunter trade but she's got a long road to haul before she'll be ready to tackle the really mean dudes.

In the meantime, "Two for the Dough" opens with Stephanie looking to collar Kenny Mancuso, a bail jumper who's almost a family member, black sheep cousin to her erstwhile policeman boyfriend, Joe Morelli. When Mancuso's trail leads to Spiro Stiva's funeral parlour, Stephanie is surprised to learn that Stiva wants to hire her for his own case - finding 24 bargain basement caskets that have gone missing from a rental garage lock-up! When Stephanie discovers notes from Mancuso threatening her unless she starts to mind her own business and Stiva also wants to hire her as a $100 a day bodyguard to protect him from Mancuso as well, she knows the case runs much deeper than she first imagined.

For those that have read Stephanie Plum's debut in "One for the Money", it will come as no surprise to learn that the mystery is pretty thin gruel and the ultimate solution is easily plumbed (ouch!) by any attentive reader. The mystery, of course, is only the context in which Evanovich loving portrays the comedic antics of Stephanie Plum and Grandma Mazur, the frankly hilarious ethnic stereotypes of New York Italian family relationships, the off-the-wall one liners of Stephanie's long-suffering father, and the stumbling but burgeoning romantic relationship between Plum and Morelli.

Enjoyable lightweight reading easily dashed off in an afternoon on the beach! The thing that will probably slow you down is re-reading passages aloud to the people around you so you can explain what was making you laugh!

Paul Weiss

Some pretty "heavy" ideas here! (****)

In "Mission of Gravity", Hal Clement created Mesklin, a very odd planet indeed - so massive, so oblate and spinning so rapidly that its gravity varies from 3g at its equator to 700g at its poles! Its day is little more than 20 of our minutes long and its temperature is so low that it has liquid methane oceans. Its high eccentricity orbit causes seasons of grotesquely uneven length. Charles Lackland and his team of human space faring scientists can manage at the equator with mechanically assisted survival suits but existence under 700g at the poles is simply beyond human engineering capabilities. Recovery of a rocket with all of its instrumentation landed at one of the poles is a problem that seems insurmountable until our intrepid explorers stumble into a serendipitous encounter with Barlennan, a rather audacious native traveling merchant. Barlennan's species, best described as 15 inch caterpillars with outrageously strong pincers, has evolved under the extreme conditions at Mesklin's pole. Being on an exploratory mission themselves in Mesklin's equatorial region, they admit to feeling somewhat giddy and "light"-headed under what they describe as virtually non-existent gravity in comparison to what they are used to on their home turf!

Clement has created a delightfully simple plot that revolves around the hard science of his hypothetical planet. Lackland enlists Barlennan's aid in recovering the stranded hardware in exchange for information such as maps and weather forecasts. Along the route to the pole, Clement proposes physical problems and raises questions - What might the weather of such a planet be? How does a reconnaissance satellite achieve a low altitude geosynchronous orbit of a planet that is spinning at such an enormous speed? How might its natives appear having evolved under such dramatically different conditions? How might their psychological outlook on this world be different as a result of those physical conditions? How might engineering problems, simple on earth, be made astonishingly difficult on Mesklin and what modified approaches would be used in their solution? What surprising effects are caused by the universality of physical rules that apply regardless of the local gravity?

It should come as no surprise to a reader to learn that Clement was also a skilled high school science teacher. The development of the science in his story is lean, lucid and clear to a fault. Clement lets the plot and his characters naturally encounter the problems, puzzle through their difficulties and propose and create clear logical solutions which seem to clarify the science. Clement never bores the reader with dull narrative explanations, never over-explains and shows rather than tells.

Sadly, at less than 200 pages, "Mission of Gravity" suffers by its very brevity. Mesklin is such a vast, unique and dramatic concept that Clement barely scratched its surface. I found myself wanting much, much more science and a greater depth in the development of potential avenues to explore. The soft science was effectively ignored. For example, Barlennan's attitudes and reactions were anthropomorphized to the extent of being cartoonish (C'mon, Hal ... let your aliens be alien!). Barlennan's mastery of English came conveniently easily but communication with other races on the planet was abandoned as an unsolved problem.

"Mission of Gravity", while not a frenetic page-turner, is an enjoyable story that ends on a mild plot twist and a universally warm, optimistic note. It has earned the moniker "classic" and I certainly look forward to the sequel "Starlight". Perhaps the broadened scientific horizons that I hope for will appear there!

Paul Weiss

Great science, scary scenario, weak thriller ! (***)

Daniel Kalla's "Pandemic" is an entertaining, informative and frightening thriller that undoubtedly ought to be taken seriously as an uncomfortably plausible scenario in real-life. But, as a fictional thriller, frankly, it simply isn't innovative enough to make the cut as a first-rate thriller. Good quality, yes, but not with that dynamite rock-em, sock-em, non-stop page-flipping urgency that separates the men from the boys in the thriller section of the library!

The villain of the piece is the ARCS virus (Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome), a disease with the lethal virulence of small pox or Spanish Flu but a contagion that spreads with the speed and ease of the common cold! The one (and I would suggest only) truly innovative twist in the novel is in the opening chapter. Kalla posits an ultra-right wing fundamentalist group of Islamic terrorists that purposely infect themselves, in effect weaponizing the virus and using themselves as carriers! Biological suicide bombers, as it were! The notion of using a dastardly right-wing fundamentalist Islamic jihad confronting a right-wing militarist US government whose simplest solution might be to carpet bomb the Middle East and turn the burning sands into a glassy parking lot is getting to be a decidedly tired plot device.


But - make no mistake - Kalla is a skilled writer who has a marked ability to convey the science behind his plot in an informative, interesting fashion. And the logistical details of the World Health Organization and Atlanta's Centre for Disease Control's rapid and overwhelming response to the release of such a viral pathogen are quite breath-taking and humbling. Hats off to these organizations and kudos to Kalla's ability to tell us their story.


Four stars for the science and the real-world details of the response to a frightening pandemic scenario. Two stars for the thriller. We'll average it out at three stars and call it a story worth taking the time to read!

JOHN COREY ... what a piece of work (***)!

Take Michael Connelly's Detective Harry Bosch, a hard-boiled, talented, nearly burnt-out loner with lots of psychological baggage and absolutely no respect for superiors or procedure. Add the self-deprecating faux stumble-bum approach of Peter Falk's Columbo and toss in a heaping helping of smart-aleck motor mouth Rodney Dangerfield complete inability to control the flow of virulent sarcasm and wisecracks! Sounds a little much, doesn't it? But he's our hero for Nelson DeMille's "Plum Island".

John Corey, NYPD homicide detective, is on medical leave recovering from bullet wounds when his friend, chief of the Southold Police Department, enlists his aid looking into the double homicide of Tom and Judy Gordon, also friends of Corey, and employees of Plum Island, the nearby high-level bio-containment facility studying deadly animal diseases such as anthrax and simian Ebola. First terrifying appearances were that some sort of biological terrorist threat had gone sour but the old rule of "follow the money" lead to a somewhat more tolerable line of investigation. It seemed the Gordons had stolen a vaccine with the motive of peddling it to the pharmaceutical world for billions. But Corey's in-your-face persistence was uncovering clues and details that just didn't seem to mesh with that story. Simple drug-running was a possibility but even that didn't quite click. Eventually, Corey uncovers an amazingly entertaining story of greed, money, murder, mayhem and political skullduggery spanning three hundred years of history and ranging geographically from New York, to the Caribbean, to England and back again.

In a style that reminded me of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's incurable penchant for technical sidebars, DeMille has tossed off a bewildering variety of essays that entertained, informed and, at the same time, moved the story forward. The staged lecture tour of Plum Island's hazardous facility, hosted first by Security Chief Paul Stevens and followed by the facility's director Dr Zollner was worth the reading of the book all by itself. But you'll also be treated to snippets of detail on coastal marine navigation, a cornucopia of procedural information on the necessary foundation police work to solving a homicide and (are you ready for this?) a rather extensive history of Captain Kidd and his 17th century privateering exploits that ultimately ended in his execution in England!

Lots of promise to be sure and there's certainly no doubt about DeMille's skill as a writer! But, just as a little bit of someone like John Corey would go a long, long way in real life, his constant cracking wise left me cold on the printed page as well! If DeMille had seen his way to lopping 100 pages off the final draft, it would have been just right and I would have ended the story not only entertained by the police procedural but laughing at Corey's antics in the bargain. Just three stars but recommended as a quick and entertaining piece of brain candy anyway! Enjoy!

TBR Challenge - 2 down, 10 to go (****)!

Jeffrey Barlough's "Strange Cargo" was the first domino to drop. The challenge of making a list and attacking it had got under my skin so I decided to dive right into a second title on my challenge. Of course, it didn't hurt at all that Harry Harrison's "West of Eden" had been selected as the group read of the month for January. Bonus! Here's my 4-star review:

With “West of Eden”, Harry Harrison’s abundantly fertile imagination has posited a unique and intensely challenging alternate history. What if dinosaurs had avoided extinction and evolved into a sentient, intelligent, technology-savvy species vying for supremacy on an ice age earth with a less advanced homo sapiens still struggling at the hunter-gatherer stage of evolution?

As global weather patterns deteriorate and the ice age earth begins to chill precipitately, the human Tanu species find themselves pushed into contact with the reptilian Yilanè species. What starts as a lack of understanding and inability to communicate with one another escalates into armed territorial conflict and ultimately festers into intense hatred and an all-out war that can only culminate in complete extermination of one or the other species. Kerrick, a young boy and the sole survivor of a human group of hunters slaughtered by a Yilanè scouting party, is imprisoned by his enemy and grows to manhood among them. Learning their language and culture, he adapts to survive and his links to humankind fade to a distant and all but irretrievable memory. Ultimately, events force those memories to the surface and Kerrick escapes. He struggles to re-learn his true place in the world and becomes the only warrior with the knowledge and skills capable of leading the Tanu to ultimate victory over the rapacious Yilanè.

Harrison’s creations in “West of Eden” are, to say the least thought provoking. The fascinating science of the story, both hard and soft, has clearly been thought through most carefully – genetic engineering and the use of bio-technology at a time when those fields of scientific endeavour were all but embryonic in real-life; the creation of a language and syntax that is obviously (and correctly so) tied closely to Yilanè culture, custom and physiology; the plausible anthropological development of a society that is based on a matriarchal lineage with a class structure that in some respects bears a resemblance to ants or bees.

Our status as readers will be primarily human (at least I expect so)! Inevitably, most of us human readers will slot the Yilanè into the bad-guy role of the novel and our natural prejudices will find us cheering the Tanu on to victory. This almost unavoidable characterization (good guy/bad guy, Tanu/Yilanè) will probably lead many critical readers to the conclusion that Harrison was also using “West of Eden” as a platform to express his personal objections to the US participation in the Vietnam War – a belligerent, spiteful, technologically superior nation (the Yilanè US) attempting to overpower the Vietcong Tanu, a more agrarian society seeking only to maintain their more earthy way of life. The analogy comes complete with a metaphor for the US draft dodgers and conscientious objectors – see if you don’t agree as you read about “The Daughters of Death”!

A fascinating combination of conflict and high adventure, convincing science and alternate history make “West of Eden” a novel well worth the reading for any fan of quality science fiction.

Paul Weiss

A thrilling finale to a superb trilogy (*****)!

“The Book of the Dead” is everything a thriller fan could hope for – a page-turning, unputdownable, thrilling, decadently readable, thoroughly entertaining, slam bang finale to a colourful, imaginative trilogy!

The basic plot premise is simplicity itself! FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast’s younger brother Diogenes has announced his plan to execute a mysteriously undefined perfect crime. As a result of intense psychological examination, Pendergast has determined that this crime is to be Diogenes’ revenge for a childhood sin perpetrated against his younger brother, the nature of which has been completely suppressed in Pendergast’s unconscious memories! The dastardly crime must be prevented at all costs despite Pendergast not knowing even the tiniest detail of Diogenes’ actual intentions! The story gallops at breakneck speed from crisis to crisis as the life or death clash between Pendergast and his psychopathic megalomaniacal brother escalates to a thrilling climax but we are privileged to watch it being played out with masterful attention to character building, dialogue, detail, pacing and clever ratcheting or release of tension!

As we have come to expect from their previous work, Preston and Child have once again packed their tale with a dazzling myriad of mini-plots that have afforded them a number of stages from which they could also deliver a series of wildly entertaining and informative lectures – the politics and history of Egyptian archeology; the religious beliefs and burial practices of the ancient Egyptians; the nature of security in a modern maximum security prison built for incorrigible offenders; the logistical details of mounting a world class exhibit in a modern museum; the potential for neurological damage caused by intense light and high volume sound bombardment; the trivia of diamond classification, colour, cut and value; and, arcane details of forensic evidence examination such as the study of knots or cloth; to name only a few examples.

Readers who have observed Pendergast’s growing resemblance to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes in the novels which preceded “The Book of the Dead” will shiver with a frisson of delight at the tumultuous Reichenbach Falls style climax which takes place on the very flanks of Mount Stromboli in Sicily. When Pendergast announced his intentions to retire to a period of solitude and contemplation at a Tibetan monastery, I quietly sent up a short prayer to the writing gods with the fervent hope that Lincoln and Child bring Pendergast back for a 21st century version of “The Final Problem”! Quiet retirement or beekeeping would not suit Pendergast any better than it did Holmes.

And, by the way, be very, very sure that you read this novel right to the very last sentence … and what a last sentence it is!

Oh yeah … did I say that I enjoyed the novel?

Paul Weiss

Scientific brain candy, lovingly prepared!

This time it’s not the Appalachians or England.

In “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, Bill Bryson has taken his readers on an exciting, informative and always entertaining tour of both the history of science and the details of the science itself. Essays covering an eclectic diversity of scientific topics ranging from the Big Bang and quantum physics, to paleontology, geology, biology, pandemics, genetics, evolution, glaciation, plate tectonics, weather patterns, volcanism and beyond are pitched at the perfect level to be accessible to the layman without being patronizing to a reader who happens to be more informed about a particular topic. Even the most esoterically learned science-ready polymath will find at least one or two of the topics set at a level high enough to be challenging as well.

Beautiful illustrations peppered throughout the text, a dash of humour and cynicism plus a wonderful series of amusing anecdotes and side bars make “A Short History of Nearly Everything” a delicious confection of eye candy and brain candy. The multiplicity and diversity of the ideas covered means that “A Short History of Nearly Everything” can be read in bite-sized chunks with the interested reader taking a random walk through the book starting at virtually any paragraph on any page. But the intelligent organization of the topics and the chronology that Bryson follows also guarantees a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience for those that want to travel from first page to last in order!

Science-phobes take note! If you’ve been looking for a way to set your fears aside, “A Short History of Nearly Everything” just might be the ticket you’ve been looking for. Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

STRANGE CARGO (*** A Victorian Ice Age?)

I made these comments in a review of Barlough's earlier novel The House in the High Wood but, frankly, they bear repeating for Strange Cargo, his third novel. Barlow's very special blend of writing styles is probably unique in today's literature and gives us a novel that defies classification. One can say, I suppose, that it represents a delicious blend of Lovecraft, Collins or Poe's version of tension and horror, Brooks' ideas of a modern, dark, urban fantasy and the very best of Dickensian characterization, complex and intricately described environments with superbly comic dialogue and story-telling. But to say that is to suggest somehow that Barlough's efforts are derivative and that is selling him far too short. Barlough's style is quite clearly his own and he has mastered it completely.

Nantle, a small seacoast town and sailor's haunt in Barlough's special universe in which the Ice Age has never ended and a small Victorian population live side by side with saber tooth tigers, woolly mammoths and mastodons, plays host to two simultaneous story lines.

In the first, Miss Jane Wastefield arrives seeking Gilbert Thistlewood with whom she has corresponded. Wastefield, at her wit's end, needs his promised help in ridding herself of a malevolent mirror, a gift she received on her twenty-first birthday, which she keeps locked inside a traveling trunk. The mirror, reflecting eerie visions of a long dead society reminiscent of a fantastic Greece in which monsters and evil demi-gods hold sway, threatens Miss Wastefield's very sanity and, despite her best efforts, refuses to be parted from its owner.

In the second, the Cargo family and their solicitor, Mr Arthur Liffey, seek out Jerry Squailes, the mysteriously elusive beneficiary of a significant piece of their grandfather's estate. This particular sub-plot is more recognizable as the product of the combined influences of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. We are witness to a superbly crafted detective story involving skullduggery, fraudulent wills and, ultimately, even the appearance of a wonderfully traditional Victorian ghost.

Unfortunately, the two plot lines, while they bump into one another and occasionally interact, never conjoin and become inter-dependent. I finished the novel with the distinct feeling that Barlough had two independent ideas sufficient unto themselves for a novella length story and felt compelled to shoehorn them together in order to produce something with sufficient length to be classed as a novel. This left me with a mystifying and disturbing sense of non-completion even though both stories wound down with nothing that even the most particular reader could classify as a loose end. It somehow just didn't seem quite right!

That said, Barlough's style and his mastery of dialogue, characterization and scene setting is more than enough to justify reading his work and I'll look eagerly for that next novel in this very special world.

Paul Weiss

AM I THE ONLY ONE?

The ideals of Olympic competition , "citius, altius, fortius", the sweat, the teamwork, the glories of the medal podium, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, the camaraderie of teamwork and the chill of a stadium full of delirious fans! It's all pretty heady stuff, to be sure ... and I've always been a fan of a good game of virtually any sport well-contested.

But I can't be the only jaded ex-sports fan who has the lost the zest for sitting in the stands savoring these bygone thrills because I now believe the system is seriously confused and has lost its way!

This morning I woke to hear the news report of a 5 year contract for $250 million US dollars ... for a soccer player! Puhleeze, I don't care how skilled the man is. I don't care about his celebrity and I frankly don't give a jot for what anyone expects he might bring to the US game of soccer.

Now, I don't begrudge the man his living and I'm the first to acknowledge that his skills probably represent the pinnacle of world achievement in the sport of kicking a ball around a soccer pitch. But surely even the most drooling, rabid fan can stop a moment and come to the realization that no footballer - indeed, no sportsman at any skill level in any sport - can possibly justify that sort of compensation.

And do you know what it would take to have the team owners and the players snap to attention and return to reality instantly - one game played to a completely empty stadium and a nation of television sets left turned off. If the fans chose to convey that message even just once, it would be unmistakable and I've no doubt it would be heard and acted upon!

And what if the players and owners were still thick-headed enough to misunderstand the message? The advertisers would be walking and ultimately money will still do the talking. The whole house of cards comes tumbling down and sportsmen will perhaps return to playing the game with fundamental values that, for now at least, are hibernating!

EMPTY FAT CELLS AND EXCESS SKIN!

Help me out, ladies! Please ...

Have any of you new mothers found a natural moisturizing product that works to restore elasticity to the skin that was ultra-stretched as a result of your pregnancy? I admit that I'm thrilled at the weight loss I've achieved but I'd like to really cap it off by rejuvenating the tone in the skin that was rather badly stretched over that formerly overweight beer-belly! I'm working on the six pack but nobody's ever going to see it if I can't achieve a little more tone in the skin that's covering it!

DANCE OF DEATH - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (****)

Blindly leaping off the edge of the cliffhanger which Preston and Child left us poised upon at the end of "Brimstone", "Dance of Death" quickly moves the rivalry and hatred between FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast and his demented brother Diogenes to centre stage. Pendergast has come to the realization that Diogenes' plan is to utterly destroy his life by killing anyone near and dear to him - colleagues, mentors, friends, his fragile ward, Constance Green and, God forbid, Viola Maskelene, the lady who appears to have stolen Pendergast's heart!

Like any good thriller, the novel entertains us in passing with some red herring sub-plots - the Dangler affair, a sad-sack perv who exposes himself to the security cameras at bank ATMs; and the rather more topical and interesting Sacred Images exhibition at the New York Museum of Natural History that highlights the ongoing conflict between modern man and aboriginal cultures and religions. But centre stage is reserved for Diogenes' evil machinations and Pendergast's efforts to thwart his plans!

With every page turned, Preston and Child's uncanny characters will move further and further into the realm of reality in the minds of a reader. In an almost eerie re-incarnation of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, invested by fans to this very day with a life well beyond Doyle's writings, Pendergast too becomes warm-hearted and human as his affection for Lieutenant D'Agosta, his very own Watson, rises to the surface. That Pendergast (like Holmes) is devastated and grief-stricken over his own failures is obvious as he drives himself to extreme personal sacrifice to protect Lady Maskelene, his own Irene Adler. One can almost imagine Pendergast, in a refined Southern drawl, referring to her as "that woman"!

Preston and Child's almost trademarked diverting sidebars into science and beyond - details of the forensic investigation into the minutiae of murder scene clues; the disturbing ethical conflicts faced by modern anthropologists and museums; the trivia of diamond classification, colours, cuts and values; the technology of modern building security; and legal requirements for the involuntary commitment of the mentally ill, for example - are not neglected ... and I, for one, enjoy these well placed sidelines of fascinating detail. But, as the three-part story picks up pace, plot and character development, driven by sparkling dialogue, grab the lion's share of the novel's pages!

The break between "Dance of Death" and "The Book of the Dead" is natural enough but - make no mistake - it is little more than a pause in the action. I turned the final page on one, took a sip from my martini and immediately cracked the cover on the next to continue the story. I'm sure you will too!

Paul Weiss

(It's an uphill battle to overtake Harriet Klausner at Amazon but maybe, just maybe, with your votes and support it might be possible ... the review is located at http://tinyurl.com/yzhq4z )

THE CHRYSALIDS - John Wyndham (*****)

At a time in some unspecified distant future after a nuclear war has left much of the world a barren, poisonous wasteland, David Strorm, Sophie Wender and Rosalind Morton live in Waknuk, a small agriculturally focused community in central Labrador. With modern technology yet to be re-invented, the strict religious fundamental beliefs of this still primitive community label the apocalypse as "Tribulation", a punishment visited by God upon the "old people" for their sins. Genetic variations and mutations, now commonplace (no doubt as a result of higher worldwide radiation levels), are seen as evil. "Deviant" crops and animals are burnt. Humans with even the most minor mutations from their highest religious ideal, a physical norm which the community calls God's "True Image", are labeled as blasphemies and are killed outright or banished to eke out their future existence in a wildly savage outlying area called "The Fringes".

When the community discovers that David and Rosalind together with a small group of other young people have developed the ability to communicate telepathically, they are forced to flee for their lives. They are re-united with their friend Sophie, earlier banished to the Fringes for the disgusting aberration of having six toes instead of the normal five. David's younger sister, Petra, able to communicate her thoughts with a power and at a distance far beyond any of the other children discovers the presence of others like them in a distant community who mount a campaign to rescue the children from their persecutors.

In "The Chrysalids", John Wyndham has mounted a vicious attack on religious fundamentalism, bigotry, intolerance and narrow-mindedness. Analytical readers will be mindful of the irony in the closing chapters as it is clear that the more advanced community is as repressive and intolerant as the community from which the children fled. Wyndham leaves us with the unresolved open question as to whether Man's evolution into a new species will perforce require the extinction of the remaining members of the previous species.

Wyndham's characters, his easy-going unforced and completely natural dialogue, his heartwarming portrayal of children at play, a mother's grief-stricken tragedy as she tries to protect her children from religious attack, and the faltering growth of love between young men and women will all remind classic science fiction fans of the pastoral easy reading style of Clifford D Simak, another giant of the genre.

If you've yet to savour "The Chrysalids", a perennial front runner in the field of soft science fiction, I can't think of a better time than right now. Highly recommended indeed.

Paul Weiss

(For those that care to express their appreciation by voting on Amazon, the review is located at http://tinyurl.com/y7rntt )

I'VE REACHED MY GOAL!

Just three months on the Bernstein diet and, frankly, I'm blown away by how successful it's been. I started at 193 pounds, size 37 pants, 16 1/2 neck and a 44 chest in a suit jacket. By the greatest of coincidences, a local charity phoned us this evening and asked if we wanted to leave a load of clothing out for pick-up and, you guessed it, my wardrobe is now officially completely useless! I was thrilled to tell the person who called to "come and get 'em!" A whole collection of men's suits that I couldn't wear to save my soul!

I dropped into the local men's shop to buy the first installment of a new wardrobe. Size 40 jackets, size 32 pants, 15 1/2 neck on the shirts and I'm down to 150 pounds even. Not too bad for a former short fat guy!

The New Year's resolution is to keep the weight off now!

2007 TBR CHALLENGE

I've done it! I need another reading group like I need a hole in the head but I went ahead and joined one anyway.

The whole point of this group though is to reduce the size of Mt TBR as opposed to the other way round. The idea is to select 12 books that have been sitting around collecting cobwebs screaming at you from your library shelves for at least six months. The challenge is to actually read one of these books every month with the ultimate objective being the reduction of your pile of unread books! Great idea (in theory, LOL)!

For better or for worse, here's the list of titles I've selected plus a handful of alternates in the event that a bad mood reading demon decides to attack me and I can't bear the thought of cracking the spine on one of the titles yelling at me:

1. Strange Cargo – Jeffrey Barlough (fantasy)
2. The World is Flat – Thomas L Friedman (non-fiction, sociology)
3. Angels and Demons – Dan Brown (thriller)
4. The Angel of Darkness – Caleb Carr (historical fiction)
5. Vancouver – David Cruise and Alison Griffiths (historical fiction)
6. Dreaming the Eagle – Manda Scott (historical fiction)
7. Rite of Passage – Alexei Panshin (classic sci-fi)
8. The Man Who Mapped the Arctic – Peter Steele (history)
9. The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova (fantasy)
10. Dark Fire – CJ Sansom (historical fiction
11. Backbeat – J Frederick Arment (sci-fi)
12. The Lions of Al-Rassan – Guy Gavriel Kay (fantasy)

Alternates:

1. Colonization: Aftershocks – Harry Turtledove (sci-fi)
2. War of the Flowers – Tad Williams (fantasy)
3. Clothar the Frank – Jack Whyte (historical fiction)
4. West of Eden – Harry Harrison (sci-fi)

2006 #1 READ:

No doubt about it for me at all. Claiming honours for the top spot in my heart for 2006 (drum roll, please) ... "One Thousand White Women" by Jim Fergus.

Every once in a very long while, I am privileged to read a novel that is so compelling, so breathtaking and so utterly absorbing that I find myself holding my breath in awe as I turn the final page. "One Thousand White Women" is one of those novels!

In 1854 at a peace conference held at Fort Laramie, a prominent Cheyenne chief had the temerity (or so the white US Army negotiators thought) to request the gift of one thousand white women as brides for his warriors. Coming from the perspective of a man in a matrilineal society in which all children born belong to their mother's tribe, it seemed to be the perfect solution to the integration of white and native people, society and culture. In fact, white society of the day was appalled at the suggestion and the peace talks collapsed. This novel explores, in fiction, how events might have unfolded had the government acceded to the request and what the lives of the volunteer white brides might have been like in an aboriginal Cheyenne society that knew they were facing possible genocidal extinction in an unwelcoming modern world!

Fergus has done a positively masterful job crafting a fast-paced novel that could be read purely on the surface as a wonderful period piece in the 19th century American West! You'll find it all here - romance, knee-slapping humour, outrageous stereotypes, credible dialogue, a magnificent cast of wildly disparate characters, pathos, sex, violence, guns, battles, bravery and derring-do, political bafflegab and adventure!

But even a moment's pause will furrow more thinking readers' foreheads as they question their stance on a wide array of socially and politically charged issues that persist even to this day - racially mixed marriages; men's roles vs women's roles in both modern and nomadic hunter-gatherer societies; homosexuality; charges of pedophilia in Catholic and Christian ministry; the efficacy (or even validity) of overly zealous Christian missionaries in pagan societies; the current status of aboriginals in modern society; the perennial flouting of treaties between white and aboriginal society negotiated in good faith; the demise of aboriginal language; the forced placement of aboriginal people into reservations, white settlements and parochial schools; and so very many more.

"Must read" is a term far too loosely bandied about in this era of marketing of blockbuster best sellers but I put it to those who enjoy historical fiction that "One Thousand White Women" easily earns it! (I'm willing to lay odds that more than one reader will find themselves teary-eyed at the close of this novel).

2006 Top 10 Reads:

There were some very clear standouts for me this year so I really didn't encounter much difficulty preparing this particular list. I've allowed myself the luxury of counting three series as single representatives on the list but, that said, my top 10 reads for 2006 (in no particular order) were:

The Liveship Traders Trilogy – Robin Hobb (fantasy)

The Alienist – Caleb Carr (historical fiction)

Jarka Ruus – Terry Brooks (fantasy)

The Bartimaeus Trilogy – Jonathan Stroud (fantasy)

The Suspect – Michael Robotham (psychological thriller)

The Martian Race – Gregory Benford (contemporary sci-fi)

The Lincoln Lawyer – Michael Connelly (thriller, police procedural)

One Thousand White Women – Jim Fergus (historical fiction)

The Bleachers - John Grisham (general fiction)

Freakonomics – Steven D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner (non-fiction, economics)

Honourable mentions that came close to making the grade:

Murder in Grub Street - Bruce Alexander (historical fiction)

The Werewolf Principle - Clifford D Simak (classic sci-fi)

Longitude - Dava Sobel (non-fiction, history)