Red Rising Series Shines In Golden Son

The Red Rising Trilogy by newcomer Pierce Brown shows no sign of slowing down in its second installment. Golden Son: Book II of the Red Rising Trilogy is everything the immersive debut was and then some as the theater expands beyond the academy and spreads across the solar system.

The trilogy is the story of a miner who is part of a space faring civilization built upon a color-coded caste system that is dominated by genetically enhanced and augmented leaders called Golds. Miners, in contrast, are considered the lowest of the lowest caste of the civilization or Reds. They work as slaves beneath the surface of Mars, believing they are among the planet's first settlers when, in fact, the entire planet was terraformed several generations ago.

The tragic protagonist, Darrow, learns the truth shortly after suffering a great personal loss in the first book Red Rising and an underground insurgence called the Sons of Ares recruits him for an impossible assignment. The Sons persuade Darrow to be biologically retooled and mentally trained to blend in as the Golds he has come to loathe so he may infiltrate their ranks as part of a bigger plan.

An unpredictable thriller where loyalties are made, bought, and broken.  

Two years after successfully infiltrating the elite academy and earning his place among the Golds, Darrow is still playing war games with the various families and factions that rule the solar system. This time the games take place in space as maturing Golds aim to prove themselves as fleet commanders capable of increasing the prestige of their family.

Although Darrow is a brilliant academy commander, a single misstep causes his patron to withdraw their support and eventually strip him of his affiliation For Darrow, it is a double loss in that he not only loses his hard-won post as a peerless commander, but also his growing influence that he planned to one day wield as a weapon against the cruel, brutal and decadent society that reigns over mankind.

But just as all seems to be lost for Darrow, two major houses begin a feud that quickly erupts into a civil war, providing him an opportunity to once again earn his place as an indispensable commander. But even as he does, Darrow is forced to confront other challenges as different Golds set new agendas in motion, the Sons of Ares splinters, and Darrow forces those closest to him to pass the ultimate test of loyalty by asking them to accept and guard his greatest secret.

In a story that sometimes mirrors the unexpected alliances and betrayals that occurred during the collapse of the Roman Empire, Golden Son navigates wars being waged between families, within families, and the internal struggles people face in choosing friend or foe, kindred spirit or nemesis. Even Darrow, though steadfast in his convictions, is continually tested to choose between his head and his heart — the interests of the those who put him there or those who now surround him.

A few more graphs about Pierce Brown and his inventive world. 

From a brief stint as an NBC page to his work as an aide on a U.S. Senate campaign, Pierce Brown had just the right life experience and determination to bring his trilogy to life. The self-described science fiction nerd who used to fantasize about ruling kingdoms as he and his friends built forts and set traps as part of their own war games leaves few details untouched to create an immersive world.

The caste system in Red Rising includes fourteen different castes that were originally created to improve labor efficiencies but then were reinforced through genetic and surgical manipulation. The result was a color-coded society ranging from unskilled laborers, slaves, servants, and soldiers to the ruling class alongside businessmen, bureaucrats, and ritualistic leaders. In addition to the caste system, Golds have different houses and hierarchies, each with its own characteristics.

Golden Son By Pierce Brown Crosses 9.2 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale. 

While many people will no doubt look fondly on the first book, Brown has come into his own with the second book by doubling down on Darrow as a dramatically flawed hero who is just as capable of making immeasurably costly blunders as well as achieving seemingly impossible feats. And yet, it is his most pronounced flaw — an insatiable need to trust those who are untrustworthy — that also makes him an endearing character.

Golden Son: Book II of The Red Rising Trilogy by Pierce Brown is on Amazon. You can also find Golden Son and other Brown books on Alibis. The novel is also available for iBooks and as an audiobook for iTunes. Tim Gerard Reynolds continues to narrate the book, giving Darrow a consistent flavor with which listeners can identify.

Vicki Croke Recalls Elephant Company

The subtitle, The Inspiring Story Of An Unlikely Hero And The Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives In World War II, places a military spin on the story of Billy Williams and his elephants. But that story, which comes much later in the narrative, is only a sliver of this fascinating account.

Elephant Company is the historical narrative of J.H. "Billy" Williams and what would become his purpose in life. This is a story of friendship, loyalty, and the occasional betrayal of a man who could easily be considered an elephant whisperer (or elephant-wallah as they are called) as someone who understood these noble creatures like no one before him.

Elephant Company is a grand colonial adventure because it's true. 

Fresh from his service in the World War I, Williams did what many war veterans did during the colonial period of the British Empire. He took an adventurous job in Burma as a "forest man" for a British teak company. 

The work was impossibly hard, the environment naturally unfriendly and infectious, and the weather incredibly unforgiving. But amidst all these hardships in the early 1900s, Williams also found something else. He became mesmerized by the intelligence, character, and humor of elephants. 

Almost immediately upon taking charge of his new assignment, Williams noted the working conditions, illnesses, and injuries of the elephants used in the clearing and production of teak. And as he learned more and began to understand them, he became a champion for their humane treatment. 

This meant establishing a specialized school and hospital for elephants, whereby they would be trained with praise and rewards as opposed to the crueler methods that had been embraced by the native population. His methods proved to be a breakthrough by convincing his employer that healthier and happier elephants produce more work while creating a safer work environment. 

In some ways, it is easy to say that this is a story about how a man changed elephants. But the reverse is equally true. Williams would be the first to say that elephants, especially one tusker named Bandoola, made him a better man as they taught him the lesson of family, trust, courage, and gratitude. 

The true measure of this mutual transformation does eventually face the ultimate test as Imperial Japanese forces invade Burma in 1942. Williams would re-enlist, this time with the elite Force 136. Attached to what is known as the British dirty tricks department, Williams and his men would operate behind enemy lines to carry supplies, build bridges, and transport the sick and elderly over harsh terrain. 

Equally important to his mission, Williams would also devise a plan to smuggle elephants out of the Japanese-held territory to prevent them from doing the same under much harsher working conditions. It's this portion of the story that commands significant attention by critics and reviewers, especially as his rag tag group attempts to flee over the mountainous borders to India. 

A few graphs about author Vicki Constantine Croke.

There are times when Croke helps readers forget they are reading a historic narrative and the story begins to feel much more like a wildlife adventure than an epic war story in the last 100 pages. The only time this doesn't work is when Croke reminds readers, by citing correspondence or summarizing some events, that Elephant Company is a narrative based on research, correspondence, and books that the elephant hero had written himself. 

Still, overall, Croke demonstrates her continued talent to chronicle animal stories with tight writing and admirable prose that sticks with you long after finishing the book. In Elephant Company, Croke continues to build upon decades of experience as a writer interested not only in animals, but also in the bonds they forge with humans. 

Elephant Company By Vicki Constantine Croke Elevates 8.6 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale. 

Elephant Company is truly an extraordinary book in that Croke ultimately captures the love Williams felt for elephants. She does so, miraculously enough, by sharing her own love of these and other animals but without ever drawing any real attention to herself. Sure, there are times that the story feels a big bogged down by the details. But given that this is a real life account, most readers recognize this as real life.

You can find Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II by Vicki Croke on Amazon.  The book is also available for iBooks or as an audiobook on iTunes. The narrative is read by Simon Prebble, who capitalizes on Croke's ability to transport her readers across time and space. Elephant Company is also on Barnes & Noble. Elephant Bill by Billy Williams is a must-have too.

McHugh Measures The Weight Of Blood

Some people who disappear near the tight-knit town of Henbane are never seen again. And some people who disappear are later found murdered, their bodies put on display for all to see as warning. Few second guess why it might happen. Nobody wants to ask uncomfortable questions.

There is a different kind of justice that plays out in the Ozark Mountains. People keep to themselves and expect everyone on the outside to respect it, except Lucy Dane. She was raised in Henbane too, but most people still saw her as an outsider like her mother who disappeared almost two decades ago.

The Weight Of Blood unravels scores of small town secrets. 

When Lucy Dane finds a necklace that belonged to her disappeared friend Cheri Stoddard, she vows to find out what happened despite neighbors warning her away from digging too deep. It's obvious to them it was an outsider. Henbane had its customs.

People who disappeared were generally fed to hogs or buried in the woods or dropped in an empty well. They weren't kept hidden away somewhere for almost a year and then set out for display. Things like that just didn't happen, not even in a town as dysfunctional as their town.

It was much more common for people to simply vanish, making it easier for everyone to imagine that they had skipped town or ran off or somehow got lost in the thick and wild woods on their own. In fact, that is what most folks thought about Dane's mother.

As the story was told, Lila had wandered into a cave with a shotgun and never returned. It was absurd, of course, but the alternatives never seemed plausible until Cheri turned up. The idea that Lucy's father or someone else in town could have killed her mother outright was almost too hard to fathom.

The story smolders along like a slow burning fuse.

The idea is not too hard to fathom for anyone reading the story. Author Laura McHugh mostly alternates the telling between Lucy and Lila, giving readers some insight into what happened.

As Lucy learns how both disappearances might be connected in the present, Lila unintentionally comes between the two Dane brothers — her employer Crete Dane and his gentler brother Carl Dane — in the past. Both brothers have an interest in her, but one of them has much darker ambitions than the other. It was the reason she was hired in the first place.

A few more graphs about author Laura McHugh. 

While the town of Henbane is fictitious, much of its surroundings are authentic. A game ranch, commune, and militia camp mentioned in the novel were all real places. The general store, although now long since gone, is drawn from the author's memory too.

Even Cheri Stoddard is based on actual kidnapping case. The real-life victim survived but endured much worse. And it is this very thought — that things so sinister and terrible can happen in plain sight where you live— that catapults the story along.

Born in Iowa before moving the the Ozarks, McHugh always dreamed of being a writer before deciding to find more stable work despite her degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing from Truman State University. She worked as a software developer until she was laid off. With encouragement from her husband, she started writing again while their two daughters were at school.

The Weight Of Blood By Laura McHugh Spooks 8.1 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

While not as brutal, McHugh joins author Daniel Woodrell in painting a stark portrait of the Missouri Ozarks, where familiarity breeds its own sense of gritty civility and country justice. The people who live there place added weight on what it means to be family or part of a community. The lifestyle may be hard, but folks tend to look after their own — even when their own have crossed criminal lines.

The Weight Of Blood by Laura McHugh can be found on Amazon or downloaded for iBooks. The Weight Of Blood can also be ordered from Barnes & Noble. The audiobook is narrated by Dorothy Dillingham Blue, Shannon McManus, and Sofia Willingham. They bring life more than bleakness to the bubonic landscape beyond the arm of the law.

John Updike Still Makes Rabbit Run

Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom feels trapped in what he considers a second-rate life. His job, selling a kitchen gadget at a display table inside alternating local grocery stores, isn't going anywhere. His wife, who is pregnant with their second child, is what he describes as a mutt. His apartment is unkept, messed by a 2-year-old son whom he loves but is never picked up by a wife who is most often drunk.

It wasn't always this way for Rabbit, which is what makes his current situation so difficult to endure. He used to have a first-rate life as a star basketball player in high school. He set records.

The full weight of it hits him especially hard one day after coming home. The house is a wreck. His wife is drunk. His son has been shuffled off to grandparents. The car was inexplicably left behind. And the only person who seems to make sense is on the flickering picture of his failing television set.

"Know thyself, a wise old Greek once said. Know thyself. Now what does this mean, boys and girls?  It means, be what you are. Don't try to be Sally or Johnny or Fred next door; be yourself." — Mouseketeer Jimmy, Mickey Mouse Club

Who is Rabbit? He didn't really know anymore, but it certainly doesn't have much to do with the unbearable life he had been trapped into living. He decides to escape it and leave it all behind.

Initially, after telling his wife he wanted to get the car and pick up their son, Rabbit heads south. His impulsive idea is to find himself on a Florida beach. He gets lost instead, making it only as far as West Virginia. So he decides to turn back, but doesn't intend to go home.

He visits the one person in Mt. Judge, Pennsylvania, who believes in him. Marty Tothero is his old basketball coach and the one person Rabbit expects will see him for who he is or maybe who he was.

Rabbit also expects Tothero to be somewhat sympathetic to estranged relationships. Although he stays with his wife, Tothero is notoriously unfaithful. He is sympathetic and dotes on him like a son, but is unsure how to help. He alludes to telling Rabbit to go home but takes him out on the town.

The two of them travel into the city and meet up with two girls. One of them is Ruth Leonard, a part-time prostitute of sorts who is overweight and aging, who hits it off with Rabbit. Rabbit hits it off with her too. And after making a point-by-point comparison between her and his wife, he decides to return the car to his wife and move in with Ruth.

The close proximity of his new residence, impending birth of his daughter, and the pursuit of the local Episcopal priest Jack Eccles frequently leads many to assume that the story is about the faith, love, or marriage. While those themes exist, the story is really about the emptiness people feel inside themselves and the devices they choose to fill it.

As a result, it often paints Rabbit as an anti-hero and someone to easily hate. But John Updike is a better writer than to make it so obvious. All of the characters, much like living and breathing human beings, feel an emptiness at their cores. Rabbit seems to be the only one who seems incapable of filling it. And for that reason, more than any other, most people want to punish him just like most of the characters in the book. Updike might as well have called this classic We All Have Holes.

A couple graphs about John Updike. 

Probably best known for Rabbit, Run and the series that followed, Updike's character study and the highly distinctive prose he chose to tell it remains an extraordinary mark on American literature. Once exposed to this wry and intelligent voice, it is as difficult to forget as an echo.

Updike himself was inspired to write by his mother, who struggled to become a published writer. After graduation from high school as co-valedictorian and class president, he was fortunate enough to attend Harvard.

He graduated in 1954 and enrolled in the University of Oxford with a new ambition to become a cartoonist. When he returned to the states, he contributed to the New Yorker instead.

Rabbit, Run by John Updike Shakes A 9.9 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale. 

The novel is nearly perfect in every imaginable way as Updike manages to make an antagonistic protagonist accessible enough that readers not only feel sympathetic for the lout but also miserable for it. What is remarkable and significant about these emotions that he so adeptly conjures out of his readers it that he largely presents them as a mirror that only masquerades as someone so distant.

Rabbit, Run by John Updike is available on Amazon. The novel can also be ordered for iBooks or as an audiobook from iTunes. The latter is narrated by Arthur Morey who brilliantly fits Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom like the shirt he didn't want to wear. Rabbit, Run can also be ordered from Barnes & Noble.

Eric Nuzum Is Giving Up The Ghost

Eric Nuzum’s teen years were filled with drugs, depression, hopelessness, and a stint in an institution. He was an outcast, growing up in a normal family in a nondescript place where nothing ever happened.

In Canton, Ohio, he didn't feel connected to anyone or anything. And he relates this sad — sometimes funny and sometimes poignant — time in Giving Up the Ghost: A Story About Friendship, ‘80s Rock, A Lost Scrap of Paper, and What It Means to Be Haunted.

A reoccurring dream that literally haunted Nuzum for years.

He would dream of people sitting around a picnic table with one man wearing a wolf costume. There also a very distinctive little blond girl in a blue dress. Her hair and face were wet; her clothes were not.

As Nuzum would reach out to her in his dream, she would begin shrieking at him in gibberish or maybe a language he couldn’t understand. He would wake up terrified, believing that the girl was a "harbinger of my own self-destruction."

Was she trying to warn him about something? Maybe.

Nuzum always heard thumping sounds in his parents’ attic, which he attributed to the same ghostly girl. He was convinced she was there, waiting on the other side of the door for him. It was only later on that he realized the ghost symbolized much deeper issues.

In his late teens, Nuzum avoided thinking about going to college and focused instead on just existing. He worked as a janitor for TJ Maxx, which suited him just fine because it involved minimal interaction with people. And while he did have friends only one really mattered, a mysterious girl named Laura.

They would hang out regularly, but she never talked about her life, her family, and what she did when they weren’t together. Nuzum recounts how he acquired and began carrying around a vial filled with enough sleeping pills to end his life. Each time he’d reach into his pocket and think about taking them, he’d remember that he and Laura had plans to get together (maybe a concert or driving around).

He’d postpone taking the pills because he looked forward to seeing her. But eventually it doesn't work for him anymore. He goes over the edge (but doesn’t take pills). He wrecks his car instead.

His family encouraged him to check into a mental hospital.

It’s perhaps his description of his stint in the hospital and the strange people he encounters there that comprises the funniest part of the book. Nuzum knows he’s messed up, but can clearly see that others are far more messed up in comparison.

While in the hospital, Laura sticks by him, never giving up hope that he will turn things around. He eventually does, just in time for her to drop a bombshell. She’s going away to college.

The news nearly sends Nuzum spinning into a new depression, but this time he fights back and makes out-of-town college plans of his own. He wants to prove to Laura that he can do it.

Before she leaves, he returns a book she’d loaned to him and he tucks a letter inside. The letter tells, for the first time, just how much he loves her. But in a very tragically ironic twist, Laura becomes a ghost.

Nuzum never learned whether she read his letter or not. And while the ghost of the little girl rarely haunts him any longer, he sets out to rid himself of his fear of ghosts, visiting the most haunted places in the United States to do it. Eventually, he discovers that the “ghosts” he fears so were within himself, perhaps.

Today Nuzum is a vice president of programming at NPR in Washington, DC. He has also written The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula and Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America. He is happily married with children, but still can’t stand to have inside doors closed.

Giving Up The Ghost By Eric Nuzum Hits A 6.8 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

Nuzum does a nice job tackling an intensely personal time in his life with honesty, candor, and humor. It’s clear that he doesn’t take himself too seriously and that’s what makes the book so enjoyable. He could look at portions of his life in any other way, but he doesn't. You'll be glad to find him.

Giving Up The Ghost: A Story About Friendship, 80s Rock, A Lost Scrap Of Paper, And What It Means to Be Haunted by Eric Nuzum is available from Amazon. Barnes & Noble also carries the book. You can find Giving Up The Ghost on iBooks.

Alan Furst Takes A Mission To Paris

The slow creep that led up to the outbreak of World War II is often looked back on as unfathomable. Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, annexed Austria, pressed claims in Czechoslovakia, and positioned itself for an invasion of Poland. All the while, the world watched and mostly acquiesced.

After World War I, few countries had an appetite to return to the trenches. Economies were still struggling from their misguided decisions to abandon the gold standard leading up to World War I and could not sustain the temporary post-war economic boost. Add in the 1929 stock market crash and its impact on the global economy that relied on accessible loans from America, and everything slowed to a crawl.

By the late summer of 1938, the stage was already set for another world war. But despite increasing diplomatic tensions, the film industry was entering a golden era with dozens of up-and-coming stars. One of them, Fredric Stahl, is on his way to Paris for a major motion picture, a war film with an anti-war bent and backed by Harry Warner, who spent large sums of money to get his family and employees out of Germany.

Stahl is reluctantly drawn into the theater of European espionage and propaganda.

With a high profile American in Paris, one who was originally born in Austria, the Nazi party is all too anxious to bring Stahl into the fold as an influential player in French politics and foreign affairs. By securing his sympathy for the plight of Germany's peaceful ascension and his desire for world peace, they believe him to be the perfect pawn to further their goals.

Except, there is one problem. Stahl is not so sympathetic to Germany or the Nazi party. And as a secret bureau within the Reich Foreign Ministry begins to introduce him to the the players of Parisian high society, Stahl turns to the only people he hopes he can trust — the American embassy in Paris.

In 1938, more than 90 percent of Americans still favored isolationism but President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw growing tensions as a cause for intervention. In his efforts to prod the United States toward war, he pressed for policies and supported informal clandestine operations to prove a necessity to act while promising voters that America would not be drawn into any foreign war.

One of those spies would become Stahl, not because he sought out the non-existent post but because he needed protection from increasing pressure by German operatives and their French allies. Although horrified by the Nazi war on Jews and intellectuals, he saw himself as merely an actor and not suited for foreign affairs.

Given that the Nazi propaganda machine was already well entrenched in France, using bribery, intimidation, and corrupt journalists to weaken French morale, Stahl had little choice. Although the exchange was nuanced, Stahl was unofficially recruited to leverage Nazi interest in him.

And that is where the book begins to slowly take off, unfolding at a pace as nuanced as Rosemary's Baby. Stahl would be thrust deeper into the dangers he wanted to avoid as German socialite spies, Russian film actress spies, and other foreign diplomat spies all make sport of his attention.

Although fictional, Mission To Paris brings clarity to impending global conflict.

Alan Furst demonstrates his gift as a writer once again, creating an atmosphere of calm dread. As an espionage book, it retains more of a mystery feel as the protagonist is pushed deeper and deeper into a maze without any guarantee of an exit. As his role solidifies and the Gestapo become more anxious to to force their hands and close the trap, there are some thrilleresque moments.

Furst is unquestionably a master of the historical spy novel. Despite missed reader reviews and not his finest work, Mission To Paris will not disappoint anyone who wants to glean the real thing as opposed to a James Bond thriller. The plot in this case is based very much on fact. And even if the characters are fiction, Furst breathes enough life into each of them to convince you they're real. So do the environments where much of the story plays out — Paris, Berlin, Budapest,

Mission To Paris By Alan Furst Sneaks 5.2 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale. 

Interestingly enough, Furst didn't necessarily have an innate desire to become an author or attraction to detective stories while growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He describes his childhood as normal. If anything changed him, he said, it was his mother finding an old story that he had scrawled out when he was 12. She typed it up and Furst saw his work in print for the very first time.

Mission to Paris: A Novel by Alan Furst can be found on Amazon. The book can also be picked up at Barnes & Noble, ordered from Albris in a hardcover, or downloaded for iBooks. The audiobook on iTunes features narrator Daniel Gerroll.

The choice is both perfect and bothersome. Perfect because he is fitting enough for Stahl, bothersome in that the audiobook further diminishes the action contained in the book, retelling intense scenes as just another brisk jaunt in the park (not unlike an actor might deliver lines in vintage films).

Matthew Pearl Invents Technologists

Without the likes of Dante, Poe, and Dickens, Matthew Pearl's latest historical fiction aims to stand on its own without the benefit of more widely known personas. Instead, he centers on founders, professors, and classmates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), opened in 1865 (founded in 1861) at the dawn of the industrial revolution.

Although lesser known, many of the characters are real and notable. William Barton Rogers championed the institute. Charles Eliot was set on merging MIT with Harvard College's Lawrence Scientific School. Ellen Swallow was the first woman admitted to MIT. Her future husband, Robert Richards, was a member of the crew team and class of 1868. There are others too.

Historically, Boston was undergoing several dynamic transformations. It was already one of the largest manufacturing centers in the nation, well regarded for its garment, leather goods, and machinery industries. And it was especially suited to commerce, given its growing river and railroad networks.

Waves of Irish and Italian immigrants had ensured a continued population boom, but it created tensions between these new Catholics and a largely Unitarian upper crust. The Brahmin elite had also established a cultivated and urbane social expectation. And the looming industrial revolution of the next century wasn't unilaterally trusted as it strove to replace men with soulless machines.

The fictional mystery that intersects with Boston history. 

Pearl immediately sets a near steampunk tone to the book, with a technological disaster taking place in Boston Harbor. As a cargo ship attempts to guide itself into port, one disaster after the next begins to befall it until the captain realizes his vessel is not alone. More than a dozen other ships have lost their navigational instruments, sending some into the wharf and others into each other.

The dizzying and fiery scene won't be the first or last disaster to unfold in Boston. Not too long after the harbor incident, the business district will explode in a panic as every watch face and pane of glass buckles and melts, appearing to come alive and even encasing at least one helpless victim.

While witchcraft and technology are equally suspect, the more humorous scientific conclusion proposed by Professor Louis Agassiz is more entertaining. Rogers' scientific rival suggests that Boston is the victim of its own growth. Its burgeoning population has unbalanced the tectonic plates beneath it, causing a shift in the magnetic field and causing mysterious gas leaks.

The boys and girl of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

With newly formed MIT already drawing the ire of Boston for embracing godless science, inventing technologies that could put people out of work, and accepting average citizens to become educated gentlemen, the founders of MIT aren't willing to draw attention to themselves by solving the puzzle, at least not openly. That leaves a handful of students, who are also expected to maintain discretion, to get involved.

At the helm of the detective work is Civil War veteran and machinist Marcus Mansfield, a commoner given a scholarship to attend the school. Along with him are Robert "Bob" Richards, Edwin Hoyt, and Ellen Swallow. It's these four who become become the original Technologists, a secret society that is very different than the one they cross paths with at Harvard.

It's also with this steampunk version of the Breakfast Club that Pearl weaves a historical detective story that sometimes touches on greater literary ambitions. Throughout, minor historical plots and conflicts are used to distract from the primary mystery — ranging from university rivalries and scientific debate to open class warfare and gender inequality.

A couple graphs about author Matthew Pearl. 

Matthew Pearl does find himself somewhat at home in writing about collegiate life, even if it is from a different era. He is a graduate of both Harvard University and Yale Law School. He also taught literature and creative writing at Emerson College and Harvard University, and is still a visiting lecturer in law and literature at Harvard Law School.

Although reasonably accurate and plausible, it is anyone's guess how his alma mater might feel about the presentation of the school, professors, and students. However, Harvard did struggle under the control of secular and societal influences of the age. Ironically, it was Eliot who eliminated the favored position of Christianity from the curriculum.

Technologists By Matthew Pearl Strikes 5.8 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

At its best, Technologists delivers several intense moments, handles numerous societal conflicts handily, and smartly portrays a society that saw Frankenstein not as fiction but as potential fact. At its worst, the novel sometimes becomes unbalanced from chapter to chapter, lost in its own stereotypical stuffiness, bravado, and a hefty back story. Expect it to take some time before finding its pace after the first chapter.

Technologists: A Novel by Matthew Pearl can be found on Amazon. The novel is also at Barnes & Noble and can be downloaded from iBooks. It is also available as an audiobook from iTunes. Listeners might question Stephen Hoye's narration at the front of the book, but his selection becomes apparent as he handles a large cast of characters effortlessly, giving each a unique and believable voice.

In addition to the book, Pearl has written several stories and a prequel related to Technologists. The stories focus on William Barton, Marcus Mansfield, Edwin Hoyt, and Ellen Swallow. Anyone who find themselves enjoying the book will no doubt want read a few shorts that Pearl ran out of room to include.

Hillenbrand Captures The Incredible Story Of Louis Zamperini: Unbroken

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Corps B-24 bomber crashes into the Pacific Ocean and disappears, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. It would be hours before the Army Air Corps would learn that the plane was missing. Even when it did, the chance of rescue was slim for the three men who barely survived.

The two rafts that a young lieutenant, along with two other crew members, had managed to tether together was little more than a dot the expansive blue ocean. Their whereabouts were largely unknown and the ocean was already sweeping them deeper and deeper into enemy territory.

The notion of capture, however terrifying the stories of abused, tortured, and murdered prisoners were, was preferable to the fate they anticipated. Without survival rations and barely enough water to wet their lips, they would eventually become a meal for the sharks that swam lazy loops around them.

Unbroken: A World War II Story Of Survival, Resilience, And Redemption. 
When Laura Hillenbrand opens the story, she puts readers right in the raft with the men, already weeks since they ditched their plane. It's virtually impossible not to be dragged in with them in the short span of a four-page preface, especially as the men light two of their last remaining flares to grab the attention of a plane flying far overhead, only to learn that the pilot has no intention of helping them.

As the Japanese bomber circles around, the sea around them erupts in gunfire. And the men are given a choice. Lay on the rafts as unmoving targets or jump into the water, where the sharks are still waiting.

It's with this image in their heads that what some might mistake as a historical war novel is something else entirely. Although the story mostly reads as smooth as fiction, Hillenbrand paints an inspired story that is at times as hard to fathom as real as she recounts the life of an amazing man from his perspective as well as remnants of other servicemen letters, diaries, accounts, and historical research.



The story itself starts from the earliest beginnings of a man as a young boy growing up in a small house in Torrance, California. He was the rebellious, undisciplined, and dangerous 12-year-old, accurately described in the title of the first chapter. The One-Boy Insurgency, a.k.a. Louis Silvie Zamperini, was prone to fights (which he lost), thievery (which often resulted in being caught), and incredulousness against any form of authority (even the police).

Hillenbrand painstakingly conveys just how perilous such a path for anyone to take in 1930s. It wasn't uncommon for them to be spirited off to juvenile detention or worse, either committed to an institution and perhaps indifferently exposed to tuberculosis. In fact, infractions for far less than Zamperini mustered could have resulted in the worst of punishments.

From an Olympic champion to a prisoner of war. 

Fortunately, it was his brother who helped channel all of his uncontrolled energy into track, which spared Zamperini from such a fate. And the result of this newfound direction would take him farther than anyone could have ever anticipated. It took him to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, the same one dominated by Jesse Owens.

There, although finishing eighth in the 5,000 meter run, his final lap set new records. His finish was so fast that even Adolph Hitler would ask to meet him. This meeting would only be eclipsed by Zamperini's decision to climb a flagpole and steal the personal flag of Hilter.

Zamperini's showing at the 1936 Olympics, at a distance that wasn't even his preferred race, virtually ensured him a spot on the 1940 Olympic team. He, of course, would never have the chance to race. The Olympics were to be held in Tokyo, Japan, and were cancelled at the outbreak of World War II.

Eventually, Zamperini would still make it to Tokyo, but in a way he never imagined. After surviving 47 days at sea, he and Russell Allen Phillips were eventually captured by the Japanese Navy. Both men were held in captivity and severely tortured, with Zamperini eventually transferred to Ofuna, an infamous "high-value" prisoner camp where he was tormented by Mutsuhiro Watanabe (a.k.a. The Bird). Watanabe ranked seventh on General MacArthur's 40 most wanted war criminals in Japan.

Like many men who serve in the military during times of war as well as those who become prisoners of war under the harshest and cruelest of captors, Zamperini struggled for many years after his release. Nightmares, alcoholism, and a strong desire to return to Japan for the sole purpose of murdering The Bird engulfed him. It might have killed him too, had Zamperini not rediscovered the same resilience that helped him survive.

A couple graphs about author Laura Hillenbrand. 

Hillenbrand, who suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome, became a well-known author after her first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend. She said at the time that she was compelled to tell the story because she found so many fascinating people who lived a story that was improbable. The same can be said about her second book, perhaps changing the adjective improbable to impossible.

What makes her work in Unbroken immeasurably unforgettable is that although the story is easily classified as a biography, it doesn't read like a biography. Throughout the story, Hillenbrand manages the pace of everything that occurs by breaking away from Zamperini to flesh out a much more global view of the Pacific theater of war and, occasionally, from the eyes of other servicemen.

Unbroken By Laura Hillenbrand Breaks 9.9 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale. 

Sometimes people say that there are no more true heroes among us. And yet, by the measure of the legacy that Louie Zamperini still lives to this day, he proves that there are many who walk among us, if only we take the time to look for them.

Unbroken is the near-perfect book of an inspired life. There is no question that Zamperini is an inspiration. Had the book, like his life, been even more carefully constructed, I would have had no problem calling it a 10. However, even at 9.9, one has to forgive the writer for sometimes losing her readers in a sea of facts as well as the editors who carelessly missed pronoun inconsistencies when personal diaries were woven into it.

With the possible exception of some people having some misgivings of faith that is sometimes front and center in the life of Zamperini or perhaps the stories of what was endured by prisoners of war, this is a remarkable book that rekindles the human condition and spirit. It will leave you with more than you could ever possibly have before reading it. It is as authentic as they come.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is available at Amazon and the book can be found at Barnes & Noble. You can also download Unbroken via iBooks or listen to it as an audiobook, available though iTunes. Read by Edward Herman, the audio doesn't lose a beat, frequently adding to the fear, suspense, awe, and calm experienced by the servicemen. Herman was the perfect pick.

The Maze Runner Clunks And Shucks

With book three of the Maze Runner series by James Dashner due out in two weeks and Catherine Harwicke signed on to helm the first film in 2013, plenty of people have been tempted to pick up the first book. All that seems to be stopping them are the abundance of mixed reviews about the Maze Runner.

It's very much one of those books that readers will love or hate, but not for many of the reasons they rave or rant about. The Maze Runner is surprisingly confined and linear, not unlike the maze itself, which adds both intrigue and irritation to the story of the group of analytical boy survivalists who populate it.

From the point of view of Thomas, the protagonist.

Everything that happens in the story revolves around Thomas, a teenage boy who wakes up in a dark metal box that is slowly being hoisted, metal grinding against metal, for what feels like hours. His memory, gone.

The opening alone is a giveaway. Without the benefit of a protagonist with any memories beyond his first name, readers are not privy to any context except what unfolds around them. Amnesia, forced or otherwise, dots plenty of plot threads, and tends to be effective in helping the author keep any cards close to his chest at the expense of character.

Thomas doesn't know what makes him tick, and neither will you. Not for awhile, which is the primary driver for the story that Dashner uses to propel the story forward. It's not unlike a maze, offering up a limited field of view and never knowing what might be around the next corner.

The Glade and the Maze beyond it, a puzzle box without answers. 

There is a bigger world beyond the one where most of the story takes place. But that comes much later. Most of the Maze Runner is confined to a smallish and simple space, with Thomas being freed from the metal box by a group of other teen and preteen boys who have created their own society in a very unsettling environment called the Glade.

The Glade is an open space surrounded by tall stone walls with four massive gaps that open into a maze. It's here that the boys, who call themselves Gladers, have developed a makeshift society out of necessity with different groups assigned duties to survive, but not without a supply line.

A boy like Thomas, about once a month, isn't the only thing to arrive in box. The boys have learned they can make requests and receive either prefabricated supplies or raw materials. Their duties are straightforward. Some farm. Some herd. Some build. Some clean. And some run the maze.



During the day, the maze, with its overgrown ivy walls, isn't much of a bother beyond the possibility of getting lost and not making it back before dark. But at night, it's a different story, as bio-mechanical monsters hunt for anyone foolish enough to do so.

The story is straightforward and suspenseful as a forced fast-paced mystery. 

The Maze Runner reads like a mystery in that it keeps you wanting to look around the next corner, but the story runs at a clipped pace, as if it might all collapse behind you. This leaves very little time to understand many of the characters who suffer tragedies, trials, and tests.

And at times, Dashner shortchanges secondary characters by all but ignoring them during some chapters in the book, especially toward the rushed end. You might want to know what is happening with Alby, Newt, Minho, Chuck, or Frypan, but Thomas is too wrapped up in his own head to notice.

It can be annoying at times, almost like being locked inside only the foreground of Thomas' head. And yet, at the same time, the story is intriguing enough to overshadow these shortcomings. It's entertaining.

A few spins with James Dashner, author.  

Dashner isn't shy about his inspiration for the story, at least on the front end. He isn't shy about giving nods to Lord Of The Flies by William Golding or Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Just don't expect flashes of their greater complexities inside the Maze Runner. These boys aren't like regular boys, which is why some of their behaviors seem so out of the ordinary.

This is the third series written by Dashner, who was previously best known for The 13th Reality series, which is still progressing with Shadow Mountain. The Maze Runner, which was published by Delacorte Books, is meant to be a trilogy. He is a surprisingly down-to-earth author, still wide eyed and filled with some wonderment that people like his stories. He tells everyone that persistence is the key.

The Maze Runner By James Dashner Clunks At 4.4 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

There is no question that Dashner is an amazing storyteller, someone you can easily delight in as he weaves straightforward stories against brilliantly imaginative environments. It's true enough that it is easy to forgive sometimes shallower characters, linear plots, and clunky writing. At the same time, his books don't pretend for a minute to be something that they are not — they're fantastical entertainment.

The Maze Runner (Maze Runner Trilogy, Book 1) is available at Amazon. You can also find the book at Barnes & Noble. The Maze Runner is also on iBooks and the audiobook is available on iTunes. Mark Deakins is perfectly cast as the narrator. He's so good, it would be difficult to hear anyone else complete the series.

Swim Back To Me Strips Loss Bare

Ann Packer has always had a knack for writing compelling stories about loss — whether it be death, divorce or dreams. More often than not, her characters are teens and adolescents, people already in some sort of emotional upheaval when loss strikes.

And in her latest book, she explores the theme to new and interesting conclusions. She doesn't do it just once because Swim Back To Me is not a novel proper. It's a collection of two novellas (connected by a single thread) and four short stories.

Walk For Mankind sets an unsettling tone for Swim Back To Me.

The first, a novella, is Walk For Mankind. Set in 1972, Richard, a shy, somewhat nerdy adolescent, meets Sasha, the oddly compelling new girl on the bus. The two strike up an unlikely friendship that finds them nearly inseparable outside of school.

Richard’s mother has recently left the family, leaving Richard’s Stanford professor father to try to balance his usually singular focus on work while raising his son. It leaves the door open for Richard to discover a whole new world in Sasha and her family.

Her dad, Dan, is also a professor who landed at Stanford after being denied tenure at Yale. He is a narcissist, but one who actually adores his children and his wife, even if sometimes he drives them crazy.

The novella takes its name from the Walk For Mankind, a 20-mile walk around Palo Alto in which Richard and Sasha are walking to raise money for the underprivileged. In gathering pledges, they run into the wrong crowd. Sasha has her head turned by drugs and a guy in his 20s.

This experience cause an irreparable rift in Sasha and Richard’s friendship. And their story unravels until Sasha and her family move back to Connecticut.

The balance swings from loss to labels.

Molten is the story of Kathryn, a mother who may never come to grips with the death of her teenage son, Ben. He had been killed by a train as he saved the life of a little boy who wandered into its path. The little boy lived, but Ben wasn’t so lucky.

Ever since, Kathryn has neglected her husband and daughter, both also grieving in their own ways. To cope with her grief, Kathryn has turned to listening to Ben’s beloved record and CD collection, hoping to find something in the music or perhaps use it as a way to connect with Ben again on some level.

Jump changes things up with 30-year-old Carolee, a woman who reluctantly accepts a ride from Alejandro, a young Latino co-worker who talks, dresses and acts like he is from an economically challenged part of town. When Alejandro stops at home, Carolee is stunned to learn that his family is very affluent and that Alejandro’s accent is nothing more than a put on. She discovers he is not who she thought he was after all.

The next short story, Dwell Time, is the most suspenseful. It's about Laura and Matt, a couple who recently marred, creating a blended family of five kids.

Matt is articulate, steady, reliable, kind, and prompt. And it is because of his unfailing promptness that Laura senses something is wrong when he doesn’t show up for dinner. He disappears. And soon after Laura realizes that she never knew Matt at all.

In the last short, Her Firstborn, Packer piles on the sadness and tension about a couple who are about to have a baby. Dean is thrilled at the prospect of being a first-time dad. Lise is happy too, but the impending birth reminds her of her firstborn, who died of SIDS at the age of five months.

It’s something Lise experienced with her first husband, and something that she cannot fully share with Dean. He is overjoyed about the new baby, but is uneasy about completely sharing his joy because of the unresolved “presence” of the baby who died.

Packer closes the book just like she opens it. Things Said Or Done takes her book full circle as Sasha and Dan (from the first novella, Walk for Mankind) attend her brother's wedding. While Richard seems long forgotten, the situation is not.

Sasha wasn't spared the anguish of a broken home after all. Her mother eventually left Dan when Sasha was still a teen. However, her mother also decides to attend Peter's wedding. While she has moved beyond Dan’s needling and need to be the center of attention, she regrets having relinquished the responsibility of Sasha taking on the role of "caregiver" to her former husband.

Ann Packer and her relentless pen for detail.

Packer has an eye for detail and that is what makes her stand out an author. She knows her characters and lets anyone who reads her work know them too. The writing here is honest and strong, perhaps her best work or at least as great as her best-selling novel, The Dive From Clausen's Pier.

Of all the stories, Walk For Mankind, Dwell Time, and Her Firstborn are by far the strongest. Things Said And Done feels too heavy in places. It might have worked better as a short story rather than a novella. But Parker still exhibits her strength as a literary drama writer shines in each story.

Swim Back To Me Glides In With A 7.4 On the Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

Known for keeping her writing close to home, Packer was born and raised in Stanford, Calif., right near Stanford University. Her parents were both professors, which makes it easier for Parker to pepper her stories with people tied to academia. Nowadays, she lives with her family in San Carlos, near San Francisco.

Swim Back to Me is available at Amazon. The collection is also listed in iBooks, and Random House has already released the audiobook, with Packer narrating. Barnes & Noble also carries the book.

This review is based on an advanced proof copy from Random House.