Edge of Eternity

Edge of Eternity – by Ken Follett

The last book of the Century Trilogy by Ken Follett is, by far, the worst of the three.  In fact, it’s really the only bad one of the bunch.  But, boy, is it bad.  The first two were magnificent, but he manages to hit rock bottom with this one.

The Century Trilogy begins around the time of World War I.  The author focuses on four different families, each one is a different nationality – German, English, Russian, and American.  This way, the author can tell a story while incorporating a lot of history within the pages.  We seem to find our main characters right in the middle of some of the most important and well known events of the past century.  The first book ends around the conclusion of the First World War – with all of the main characters having babies.  The second book focuses on World War II, with all of those babies now grown up and being promoted to center stage.  Of course, they then have babies of their own so we can then have a third book taking place around the 1960s.

So, yes, the formula is the same with this, third, book.  The problem here is that Follett has run out of ideas on how to tell a good story.  Yes, we have the characters again immersed in the times of the early sixties – the main players being The Civil Rights movement, The Berlin Wall, The Cuban Missile Crisis, and, oddly, The British Invasion music scene.  Instead of well thought out characters doing what well thought out characters do, Follett has simply relegated everyone to be backup pieces to all of the major events.  In many ways, you could argue that this book could serve as a Cliffs Notes for 1960’s world history.  As I would read about these characters being smack dab in the middle of some of the most famous events in history, I couldn’t help be reminded of Forrest Gump.  Yes, Forrest Gump was a good movie, but it wasn’t supposed to be taken seriously.  This book, unbelievably, tries to pass off as being serious.

It just became tiresome after a while.  Example: When we read a chapter that begins with a character who is working with Dr. Martin Luther King going to Memphis in April 1968, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what will happen after the next twenty pages or so.  The entire book is like this.  The author also simply tries to include too much.  The Vietnam war is actually a minor player, but Follett figures he has to tell SOMETHING about the tragedy, so he hurriedly has a character get drafted, then in the jungle, and then experiencing every horror conceivable in only one chapter.  We basically never read or hear about it again.  It’s embarrassingly contrived.

Then we come to the sleaze factor.  Sadly, this is becoming a bit of a given with Ken Follett’s recent work, so I would be an eternal optimist to expect anything to change.  It can be downright sickening.  Yes, it’s ok for characters to fall in love and make love, but Follett simply doesn’t know where to stop with all of his pornographic descriptions.  I really wish he didn’t feel the need to tell us every personal, nauseating detail of what goes on in a closed bedroom between lovers, but his descriptions are enough to make any sane person lose their lunch.  It also happens over and over and over and over again.  He could have easily trimmed about 100 pages but cutting out all of the explicit sex. 

Speaking of unnecessary sleaze and sex, we even get to read about President Kennedy’s fictitious escapades behind the scenes.  Now, history tells us that Kennedy, sadly, was a womanizer, but is it really necessary to go into such X-rated descriptions here??  Apparently one of our main characters, a young female White House staffer, is having an ongoing affair with the married President, so we have to read about it ad-nauseum.  In every nasty detail.  Including when the young woman gets pregnant and Kennedy makes her get an abortion.  Yes, the author actually includes such ridiculous offensive garbage.  This make-believe event actually happens fairly early in the book, and a part of me wishes that I had just quit reading at that point.

About half of this book is 1960-1963, and the second half goes from 1964 to present day.  He should have stuck with the first half, as he zooms too quickly through history once 1964 arrives.  You can’t really tell a good story covering four different families on multiple continents over 54 years in only 500 pages.  So instead, we basically get regurgitated history thrown at us.  To be completely honest, at this point I basically DID give up, and just skimmed the remainder of the book.

It was also hard for me to remember all the characters from the first two books, and what their significance was.  They’re only minor players here, and Follett does do an adequate job refreshing the reader with who they are and what they did, but there were just too many people to keep track of, even though I did enjoy reading about most of them in the first two books.

The author even manages to invent a fictitious story about Ronald Reagan which shows the man as truly evil and demented.  We don’t read anything at all about Reagan’s role in things such as, aiding the Berlin Wall getting torn down.  A bit odd since the Berlin Wall is a major player in this story. But, for whatever reason, I guess we’re not supposed to read about anything good the man did since his ideologies conflict with the author’s.  Oddly, I only found this episode to be mildly annoying after all of the explicit X-rated affairs of Kennedy were detailed.

It’s too bad the author didn’t stop after two books.  They were actually quite good.  Follett has written mostly good work throughout his career.  I would recommend “The Pillars of the Earth”, “The Man From St. Petersburg” and “The Eye of the Needle”.  Yes, he has written some that were less than great, but none as bad as this one.   This one was atrocious.

Life After LIfe

Life After Life – by Kate Atkinson

I enjoy playing video games.  Quite often, when I start playing a game, and am doing particularly poorly, I’ll “cheat” and quickly press the Reset button and start all over again.  I’ve often wondered what life would be like if we could do the same thing.  I know I’m not alone in having such thoughts, and author Kate Atkinson does an absolutely marvelous job of telling such a tale with this book.

Ursula Todd is born on a cold, stormy winter night in 1911.  Because of the hazardous conditions, the doctor doesn’t make it on time to deliver the baby, so the baby dies.  End of story.  Right?  Not quite.  It seems that the author has invented/imagined a universe where “do overs” are possible.  So Ursula is born again in an alternate universe, and this time she survives.  Well, this time she only survives for a few days.  So the reset button is pressed again.  And again, and again, and again.  It can get confusing because these “lives” that we are reading about aren’t necessarily linear.  One life she may live until her twenties, the next life, she lives until her teens.  Then, we’re immediately transferred to, say life #6 where she’s in her thirties.  Then, we go back to life #3 where she’s still a schoolgirl.  It can get mightily confusing.

Yet somehow Kate Atkinson makes the whole thing work quite brilliantly.  This book is quite a remarkable achievement in how we can keep going back and forth, yet still be able to somewhat keep track of Ursula and her family.  Her “family” changes a bit as well from life to life, since such events (such as death) can radically change the cosmos, so to speak.  It might be beneficial to read this book with a tally sheet and a notebook handy.

The most interesting part of this book was during the days of World War II.  In one “life”, Ursula is a civil servant working in London (all of Atkinson’s books take place in England) helping the ravaged city cope through Hitler’s 1940 persistent bombing.  In “another” life, Ursula is a German citizen during the major conflict, and is actually close friends with Eva Braun.  Talk about a stretch.  Again, though, all of this works quite well.

After living so many lives, Ursula begins to have frequent bouts of déjà vu and “second sight”.  She goes through many episodes during her lives where she feels as though she’s “been here before”.  We, of course, know that this is true, but Ursula is nervously going through her lives wondering how and why she’s able to “predict things”.  If one pays close attention, you can actually see that she’s able to clearly choose the paths of her last two lives.  By then, her déjà vu is so strong, that she knows that her decisions that she makes can alter the course of history.  I confess that I didn’t quite “get it” until I read the “questions for discussion” section at the very end.

I’ve stated in other reviews that Kate Atkinson’s books aren’t for everybody.  Her style is quite anomalous, and probably won’t appeal to those who like to read straight-forward, meat and potatoes, stories.  In fact, this was the book that made Atkinson known to the masses after someone conducted an interview with Stephen King and he stated that this book was one of his favorites.  When Stephen King plugs your book, well…….. 

Her style of writing is par for the course compared to her other books.  Believe it or not, I actually found this book to be the least depressing of her catalog (and her books can be mightily depressing.) A pretty strong statement when the main character literally keeps dying all the time, but in a strange way, it gives us some sort of hope, in a bizarre, twisted way.  I would bet that 99% of the characters in her other books would have loved to have a reset button during their lives as well.

This was definitely one of a kind – and such a book could have ended up a garbled mess, yet the author manages to create wonderful, bizarre, strange story.

Crusade

Crusade – by Rick Atkinson

If you took a sight-seeing vacation via automobile, upon your return, I would love to have heard about the great things that you saw on your vacation. I would not love it if you would have, instead, popped the hood of your automobile and showed me every component of your car’s engine.  If you videotaped your vacation, and had videotaped 120 hours of footage, I would like to see a 15-minute recap of the highlights, I would not like to have to sit through and watch all 120 hours of unedited footage.

I use these analogies because while I was reading this book, I sometimes felt like I was watching 120 hours of video of someone showing me every component of a car engine.  I felt like this book was simply too much, and was way overdone in terms of detail.

This book is about the 1991 Gulf War.  A war that lasted six weeks.  Yet this book is 500 pages long.  Think about that for a second – a 500-page book about a six-week war.  I’m not sure anyone could do a good job giving such a drawn out narrative about such a brief moment of time, so safe to say, I would have enjoyed this book a lot better had it been carved in half.  There’s just too much detail.  Too many descriptions of military movements, weapon specifics, battle positions, and detailed meetings of Norman Schwarzkopf constantly berating his generals.  I was just mainly bored.  This book actually took me longer to read the book than the actual conflict lasted.  I had to force myself to read ten pages every day just so I could get through with it.

Then there’s the fact that most of this book focuses on the “here and now” and not enough on the causes of the war, and the backgrounds of the countries involved in the conflict.  Some of this is here, but not enough.  Had the author given us more background of the Middle East, and the turbulent histories, it would have made a much better book.  Instead, it seems were transplanted immediately to the battlefield and we immediately start following all the tactical moves in precise detail without really knowing much about the “why”.  This would have helped tremendously since most U.S. citizens had never even heard of Saddam Hussein until Kuwait was invaded.

Then, this book was written very shortly after the conclusion of the war, so there really isn’t any opportunity to reflect back on the conflict, and see where and why things happened the way that they did, and what many of the post war effects actually were.  This probably would have been a better book had it been written five or six years after the conclusion of the war.

The author does give us some insights, however.  He does talk in detail about the “goal” of the war – which was never to destroy Saddam Hussein and his evil regime, but to simply get them to withdraw from Kuwait.  George Bush was very careful about minimizing U.S. casualties, and figured that ousting Hussein would be too costly, and wouldn’t be worth the battle.  Plus, he earnestly believed that, after the war, Iraq would then dispose of their leader via a coup, and that would free the U.S. and its allies from having to do much of the bloody work.  Of course, hindsight now tells us that such judgements were mistaken, but we don’t get to read too much of this here though because, again, this book was written so closely after the war ended.

This book will tell you just about everything that happened during the war on the battlefield, so if that’s your thing, this book gives a great synopsis.  I just wanted “more” of some things, and definitely “less” of others – such as all the meticulous detail.

The Great Movies

The Great Movies – by Roger Ebert

I confess that I’m not a big fan of movies or other forms of visual art.  It’s not that I really have anything against the medium, it just seems that my time is so limited, that I rarely want to devote several hours of my frugal day to sit still and stare at a moving picture.  I only mention this in my review because if someone such as myself can really enjoy this type of book, I would think that those who actually love going to the movies would find such a companion essential.

Roger Ebert first became a household name when he teamed up with fellow Chicago film critic Gene Siskel, and the two hosted the weekly syndicated show “Siskel and Ebert”.  On the show, they would review three or four movies per week and gave each movie a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”.  The show was so successful that there were many copycat shows that surfaced during the 80s and 90s, but Siskel and Ebert were the originals, and the best.  Nothing was better advertising for a new movie that could bolster the moniker “Two Thumbs Up!” as part of its advertising.

As time went on, the astute learned that being a film critic wasn’t necessary a job that “anyone could do”.  In the late 80s, Roger Ebert started releasing annual books of his reviews, and one learned that the man was very insightful when it came to distinguishing great works of art from cookie-cutter exploitation.  Then, the internet came along, and one could basically read every Roger Ebert review ever printed by going to his website.  His insights and commentary were indispensable to all and he quickly became the most well-known film critic.  I was one who, every time I would watch a movie, jump on to his website and read about what he had to say about the film that I had just watched.  Most of the time I agreed with him, and he always had the ability to look much deeper and find things and see things that I could not.

That seems to be what prompted him to do his “Great Movies” series.  Unlike what many people might think, this book (and the two others that followed) aren’t actually <I>reviews</I> of these movies, but rather essays where Ebert goes a bit further and explains in more depth why these movies are, in fact, great.  It should be pointed out that when Ebert actually reviewed a movie, he tried very hard not to include spoilers.  When he writes these essays, however, he assumes that his audience has already viewed the films, or if they haven’t, would rather <I>study</I> such works and not really care that he often, gives away much of the plot.

This book of movies covers a lot of ground, and I’m sure Ebert had to be a bit selective when choosing what films to feature.  Most of the obvious ones are here (Star Wars, Citizen Cane, Gone with the Wind), but he also includes some very bizarre choices that 99% of movie goers not only haven’t seen, not only haven’t heard of, but probably couldn’t view such a film because of its limited availability.  A lot of old, silent, foreign, and/or documentaries are featured here as well the more familiar. Again, though, this really isn’t a drawback.  I imagine someone who seriously loves films would take a significant amount of time to attempt to track down all of the works that are featured here and purchase them to study for themselves.  Fortunately, things such as the internet makes such an arduous task a bit more manageable.

I really can’t think of anyone better than Roger Ebert to produce such a work as this, yet I must confess that the man’s devotion to the cinema could be rather frightening at times.  As I read this book, I often thought “Did this man ever do anything in his life <I>other</I> than watch movies?”  He would state things such as “I manage to go back and watch this film a couple of times per year”, or “I often study this movie with a film class, and we do a shot by shot analysis.”  Sheesh.  I really can’t imagine anyone devoting that much time to <I>anything</I>, let alone watching movies, but this was what made the man so respected in the industry.

As I mentioned, if one is a bit lazy, one doesn’t really need to purchase this book, as he includes his “great movies” series on his internet site.  Since many people can now access the internet via a tablet or a Kindle, one could definitely take such an advantage.  It was sort of nice, however, to have all of these narratives in one place, which was why I chose to purchase it (and the fact that Amazon was having a sale).

I’m sure I’ll not be the first person that will say this as I conclude this review, and it does sound a bit hokey, but here it goes: This book is a definite Thumbs Up.  Thumbs way Up.

The Sleeping Doll

The Sleeping Doll – by Jeffery Deaver

Kathryn Dance was a character that we were first introduced to in the last Jeffery Deaver book, The Cold Moon.  That was one of Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme books, and the character of Dance was brought in to help Rhyme and company solve a case.  Dance, it seems, is a private investigator from the West Coast, who is also a “Kinesics Expert”.  What this means, essentially, is that she has the unique ability to read a person’s body language and Para verbal behavior, and tell whether or not a person is lying.  Sort of a human polygraph machine.  Her appearance in that story was welcome, as it helped keep the Rhyme series somewhat “fresh”, and since Deaver does an immense amount of research for his books, we learned a lot about the art of people lying.

It was great, then, when Deaver decide to promote Ms. Dance and make her the main protagonist for many of his future books.  This one was the first, and it’s very good.  The formula, though, really isn’t that much different from a Lincoln Rhyme adventure.  We meet Kathryn Dance, learn things about her personal life (such as she is a widow and has two children), meet some of her colleagues (that we know will probably remain as supporting actors in future books), and learn an awful lot about kinesics.

For this story, she’s sent to question Daniel Pell – a man behind bars, to see if he can assist with knowledge of a current crime.  Pell is dubbed the “Son of Manson” as his history and crimes resemble the infamous lunatic Charles Manson.  Like Manson, Pell is pretty smart, so the interrogation, in a strange way, turns out to be a battle of wits.  On a somewhat tangent point, Pell manages to escape during a prison transfer, so our main focus now is for Dance and her team to put their smarts to the test and find him.

Here is where the distinction between a Rhyme story and a Dance story can get a bit blurred.  Whereas Rhyme would find every minute piece of evidence and micro analyze it help him solve the conundrum, Dance essentially does the same thing by talking to everyone involved, and deducing the “real” truth by her gifted abilities. So, had Deaver modified this story slightly, it could have easily passed for a Lincoln Rhyme book (he and partner Amelia Sachs actually make a cameo).

We’re also allowed inside the mind of creepy Daniel Pell.  He’s able to obtain help from the outside by a gullible young woman who has fallen in love with him via correspondence, and we see how Pell utilizes his gift of controlling other human beings.  Creepy, yes, and those who followed the Charles Manson story can probably learn how such individuals are able to obtain a large amount of zealous votaries.

Throw in several plot twists, several characters who aren’t what they seem, and you have the recipe for a great Jeffery Deaver book.  I thoroughly enjoyed this story, even though I felt that I’ve read such a story many times before by the same author – even with a new protagonist.

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones (Book 1) – George R.R. Martin

I should first state that I am not a fan of the Fantasy and/or the Science Fiction genre (I only group them together because I’ve noticed that most who really love one, tend to also love the other).  The only reason I read this book was, well, the same reason a lot of people read this book, and that was because they’re a fan of the HBO series.  I actually never even started watching the show until after season five was over.  Like most, I was incredibly impressed with the series.

Watching the show, however, contained a lot of frustrating elements if you’re not a big fan of “Fantasy”.  Where does this world exist?  What is its history?  Why do the “seasons” seem to last several years instead of only a few months?  Where do the creepy White Walkers come from?  Well, these are things that you really shouldn’t try too hard to understand.  Doing such a thing takes away much of the joy, and one should just relax and be entertained.  One shouldn’t worry about, when watching “Star Wars” for example, why “The Force” can tell you when a planet is being blown up a bazillion miles away, yet it can’t tell you when you’re kissing your own sister.

The biggest frustration when watching the show is the multitude of major and minor characters that parade in and out of the scenes.  There’s so many people to keep track of, and they all have lengthy histories before the story ever even starts.  So we have to assimilate all of the different kingdoms, the different players (all with “Fantasy” names – no Doug, Skip, or Mary), all of the arranged marriages, all the incestuous relationships, all the children born out of wedlock, etc.etc.   If you’re new to the show, I would recommend watching with the Closed Caption feature turned on – it’s really helpful to keep all of the players in order when you can read all of the names as well as hear them as the dialogue is being spoken. 

Which is why this book is so handy and welcome.  Reading this book allows you to revisit the story that you already know, but at a slower pace.  I actually learned a lot about the characters that, while I’m sure the show told me, were told in such a quick manner that it was quickly lost on me.  It’s easy to follow some of the main characters – Tyrion, Eddard, Cersie, and Jamie, but when you get to all the minor ones and what their exact roles are in this epic yarn, it helps to have it all written down.  I now know, for example, a lot more about the character of Theon Greyjoy, and don’t refer to him in my head only as “the guy that looks like Mick Jaggar” - which I did up until about Season 3.

Still, though, even the book is weighted down with too many characters.  Fortunately, there is a handy “who’s who” in the back of the book that aids one tremendously, but such references are quite hard to access when reading a story on an E-book, such as I did.

The plot?  Well, from what I can tell, there are seven kingdoms in this fantasy world, but the kingdom of Kings Landing is the kingdom that rules all the kingdoms.  Obviously, all of the kings think that they’re the rightful heir to this throne, so the “Game of Thrones” consists of armies and kingdoms constantly at war, negotiating, battling and marrying their offspring to form alliances.  It’s a big complicated game, all right, and not something too different from the history of our own world.  There’s also some elements not familiar to our world that appear from time to time – we have dragons, white walkers, and “stone” people that all tend to complicate things, but make for a better overall story.

The first book is essentially season one.  The show doesn’t deviate much at all from the book, which I think is a good thing in this case.  As I’m writing this review, there have been five books written, and five seasons of the show, so I’m guessing they match up pretty evenly.

Had the show not been so brilliantly done, I don’t think I ever would have bothered to pick up the book, but there’s a reason that the series is as highly regarded as it is.  The scenery in itself is incredibly beautiful and majestic, and the acting is first rate.  Of course, there’s a lot of blood, even more violence, and even more explicit sex.  But that’s HBO for you.

If you love the show and want “more”, these books (at least volume 1) will provide it.  Even though there is very little in the books that didn’t make the cut to film, having such a book that details such fantasy worlds are welcome, if anything, to aid you in your overall understanding of this make believe place.

W is for Wasted

W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton

Kinsey Milhone is back for her 23rd crime solving adventure.  If you’ve read any of these, you know the drill.  This book was very good - not one of the best, but far from the worst.  Sometimes I wonder if Sue Grafton actually gets a bit tired of Kinsey.  I know I certainly do.  When you name your books after the letters of the alphabet, however, you probably feel a bit obligated to get all the way through the letter “Z” before you write anything else.

For Grafton’s last several books, she’s slightly altered her style and told some of the story in third person - focusing on different characters other than Kinsey.  I find this incredibly refreshing since these diversions are a nice change of pace, and leads me to believe that Grafton might actually succeed even better if she took a temporary detour from the “Alphabet Mysteries”.  I’m guessing that won’t happen, however, at least until the conclusion of book number 26.

A bit odd since the word in the title represented by the corresponding letter of the alphabet really has nothing (to my knowledge) with the story itself.  I’m not sure who, or what is actually “wasted” in this story, but it is somewhat of a moot point.  Grafton delivers as she normally does, and had this book been my ninth or tenth as opposed to my twenty-third, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it significantly better than I did.

For this book, two seemingly unrelated deaths happen before our story begins.  One death is of a sleazy private investigator (Pete) and the other is a homeless man living on the beach.  Kinsey is dragged into the saga because it seems that the unknown vagrant had Kinsey’s name and phone number in his possession when he died.  So the saga begins.

Well, the main criticism of Sue Grafton’s writing is that she goes into descriptive overload.  She spends just as much time telling you the mundane goings on of Kinsey’s day to day life as she does focusing on the actual plot.  This tends to get old.  I’l admit that Sue Grafton actually does a very good job of this.  There aren’t that many authors that can spend an entire page and a half describing someone packing a lunch and keeping the reader somewhat interested.  It’s just that after 23 books…..well…it does get a bit old.  I found myself skimming/skipping the parts of the book where such events are described.

This was a bit frustrating for this book in particular since I felt that the actual story could have been told in better detail.  By the time I got to the last 20 pages, I felt like there needed to be at least 50 more, and Grafton wraps up the story in, what I felt, was a bit of a hurried fashion since we had already passed the 400 page mark.  I felt a bit cheated since I wanted more of the actual plot.

I’m sure I’ll read X,Y and Z when they come out, but I’m looking forward to some variety by this wonderful author one day in the future.