Star Wars: Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn

This heist/caper story is highly reminiscent of the movie ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ with Han Solo & Lando Calrissian in roles similar to those played by George Clooney & Brad Pitt. (And it’s funny because both the positive and negative reviews on Goodreads claim the similarity to that particular movie as the main reason for why readers did or did not like it.) But, this novel is also just a great Star Wars story in its own right, taking place just after the events of Episode IV: A New Hope, when Han Solo helped defeat the Empire and blow up the Death Star to save the Galaxy. Scoundrels mixes familiar and unfamiliar characters in a job involving stealing a hefty sum from one of the richest and most powerful crime lords on the planet Wukkar.

There is plenty of the action that Star Wars fans are used to with droids, aliens, landspeeders and blasters and more that make it easy to visualize the story as if it were a movie. Scoundrels is also sprinkled with some very humorous moments throughout the story. We get some background on Han & Lando’s rocky friendship and even learn what is very likely the reason that Lando ends up betraying his friends in Cloud City in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. There are a few other references that true geeks will appreciate, incuding one to the Han vs. Greedo showdown in the Mos Eisley cantina.

If you’ll pardon a small *spoiler* I just can’t help myself from mentioning one of my favorite scenes in the novel (which I also couldn’t help gushing about to my wife, who is not exactly a Star Wars geek). While the heist is going down, Zahn throws in a reference to ‘Indiana Jones’ – also created by George Lucas – when Han Solo (played by Harrison Ford, of course) is fleeing in front of a runaway giant ball that is crushing everything in its path.

The book contains a twist ending with another familiar Star Wars character making an appearance at the very end, but I won’t spoil that surprise. This is only the third Star Wars novel I’ve read, and my first by Timothy Zahn, who is a wonderful storyteller that has been writing in the Star Wars universe for a very long time. I’m definitely planning on reading more; in fact, I recently forked over two bucks to get his e-book novella about Lando and a few of the other crew from this novel in an earlier adventure: Star Wars: Winner Lose All.

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Peter and Max: a Fables Novel by Bill Willingham

Do you enjoy fairy tales? How about when classic tales are given a new twist? Are you a fan of the ABC TV show Once Upon a Time? If you said yes, then you’ll want to check out Peter & Max. This novel is based on Bill Willingham’s award-winning Fables series of graphic novels (featured on our blog twice before). But, you don’t have to have read any of the graphic novels to enjoy the story of Peter & Max. Much like in Once Upon a Time there are fairy tale characters now living in our mundane world. They have fled to our world as the invading goblin army of the Adversary has slowly swallowed up their homelands, and they now live in hiding in New York City and on a farm upstate. Also like the TV show Once, the story of Peter & Max alternates between the current day in our world and what happened long ago in their homelands.

The story begins in modern times on a farm, where Peter Piper and his wife Bo live on an isolated parcel.  Rose Red comes to see them and deliver some bad news to Peter. It seems that his brother Max is in our world. Why is this bad news? Well, those old sibling rivalries can turn very ugly when allowed to fester for a few centuries, especially when one brother travels the path of dark magic and destruction. Peter soon sets out to confront his brother and knows that one way or another it will be their final encounter and that one of them will die.

Long, long ago, back in his home world, Peter and his family of traveling musicians went to the annual fair and stopped to visit their friends the Peeps. During their stay with the Peeps, Peter’s father bestows a magical flute called Frost on him. Max is instantly jealous because he is the oldest son and accuses Peter of stealing it. Meanwhile, the Adversary’s army has just invaded and conquered, causing the Pipers and Peeps to flee into the Black Forest. While in the woods the group is savagely attacked and they must split up in hopes of making it to safety. While Peter escapes to Hamelin Town, Max spends years in the vast forest, slowly growing more evil-minded until he is found by a powerful witch who gives Max his own magic flute, which responds to his powers of dark magic.

The alternating chapters move the separate stories forward filling us in on what else happened to Peter, Max, and Bo that led them to where they are today. The conclusion is a powerful showdown that fully lived up to my expectations and even surprised me! This is a very fast-paced book with plenty of action to keep the reader turning pages. The novel is also illustrated throughout by the talented Steve Leialoha (who worked on the Fables comics). I highly recommend Peter & Max – an original prose novel by a guy who’s won awards for writing comic books.

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Cell 8 by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom

Does one get a chance to live two lives…..maybe and maybe not. John Meyer Frey is on death row in Marcusville, Ohio waiting to be executed for the murder of his 16 year old girlfriend, Elizabeth Finnegan. For almost a decade Edward Finnegan has waited for some closure for the murder of his daughter. And so starts the latest thriller from Swedish award winning authors Anders Roslund & Borge Hellstrom.

On death row, one is known by his cell number and there is nothing to do but to count the seconds, minutes and hours until you are put to death. Frey makes only one friend in prison, the man in the next cell , a 65 year old African-American who will die before Frey. The only other person having any compassion for Frey is senior prison  guard, Vernon  Eriksen. And then a strange thing occurs……Frey collapses and dies before he is executed.

Six years later, while entertaining on a tourist ferry,  John Schwarz, a singer for the band has an altercation with a patron on the boat. A drunken tourist is harassing a  young  woman and John intercedes by violently kicking the man in the face. The injuries are severe enough so that Schwarz is taken into custody and held in jail in Stockholm. As the Swedish police try to identify the singer, who has a Canadian passport, a strange thing comes to the surface.  John Schwarz does not exist; the fingerprints and passport are for someone else.

Now the case is thrown into the lap of irascible Detective Superintendent, Ewert  Grens and his two able assistants, Mariana Hermansson and Sven Sundkvist.  Readers of their first best seller, Three Seconds, will well remember the team. (See the blog entry for Three Seconds here.)  From then on it is a race to put the pieces of the puzzle together because we know – or think we know – that John Meyer Frey died back in Ohio. And is it possible that Frey is really  innocent ?? Roslund and Hellstrom will capture your attention as they did in Three Seconds and you won’t put this down until you complete this terrific book.

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One Jump Ahead by Mark L. Van Name

As I mentioned yesterday, getting to meet authors can be a very interesting and gratifying experience for readers.  I first met local author Mark Van Name several years ago while he was appearing on an author panel at my local Barnes & Noble and as I listened to him speaking (including a somewhat disturbing story from his youth spent in a para-military youth group) I thought that this is a guy I would like to hang out with.  He’s extremely laid back (or so he seems), he’s very friendly and loves to talk about Sci-Fi, so what’s not to like?  I bought his first novel (One Jump Ahead) and had it signed.  As he signed it I let him know that I work for the library and that he had been featured in one of our quarterly book newsletters, and that I would be interested in hosting a Science Fiction author panel at the library.  He seemed pleased that we had featured him in one of our book newsletters and genuinely open to the possibility of coming to speak at the library.  Well, as these things go, it took me several years to get the author panel together, but true to his word, Mark was glad to be a part of it and even helped me recruit David Drake, as well.  Thanks Mark!

Prior to publishing his first novel in 2007, Van Name has run a technology assessment company, based here in the RTP area and had published over a thousand computer related articles.  He’d also had several short stories published in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including The Year’s Best Science Fiction.  The year following its publication, One Jump Ahead won the Compton Crook Award for best new Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror novel at Balticon, the Baltimore Science Fiction Convention.  It’s the first in the Jon & Lobo series and is the story of Jon Moore, a retired warrior enhanced with nano-technology within his body, and his partner, Lobo, an artificially intelligent ship complete with a personality that more than occasionally irks Jon. The two seek some R&R on the lush and pristine planet Macken, but Jon is tricked into kidnapping a girl thinking that he’s returning her to her father.  This is just the latest event in a plot involving two mega-corporations battling for control of the planet’s “jump-gate.”  (The jump-gates are what allow humanity to travel quickly between the stars – entering a jump gate in one area and ending up somewhere else in the galaxy entirely.  No one is sure if they are a natural phenomena or artifacts from an  alien race.)  Jon naturally must set right the wrong he accidentally committed, enlisting the help of some of his former comrades in arms. Throughout this action packed story we learn a bit about Jon’s background and the sorry life of a mercenary as he shows that it takes brains even more than brawn to prevail.  I also loved the fact that it was Jon who came up with the brilliant plan to defeat the bad guys, and not the super-intelligent sentient ship, Lobo – proving that man can surprise even machines, at times.

The other books in the series include Slanted Jack (which provides more background information about Jon), Overthrowing Heaven (in which we learn more about Lobo), and the brand new Children No More, for which Mark is donating all of his proceeds from the hardcover to the charity Falling Whistles, -  which helps real child soldiers in the Congo region of Africa.

Mark also has a blog that is really quite cool and worth checking out – it covers a wide variety of topics – from his writing, his life and family, to movie reviews, from all kinds of food, to the UFC, the State Fair and much, much more.  He even blogged about his two appearances at our library (the Sci-Fi author panel and the Cary Library’s 50th Birthday).

Find and reserve One Jump Ahead in the library catalog.

Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past fifteen years, it’s this:  that murder is really no big deal.”  As the narrator of Gentlemen and Players describes childhood in bleak detail, the reader learns that the unfortunate target of this homicidal mindset is not a neglectful parent or disloyal lover.  It is a school— specifically, an exclusive, all-male English grammar school called St. Oswald’s.  As the child of the school’s custodian, the narrator longingly wanted to join the upper classes and classrooms of St. Oswald’s, and is now intent on sabotaging the school from the inside.  One by one, various incidents disturb the campus and threaten the faculty, until it seems the school will have to close.

The sections of the novel are named for chess pieces and moves (“Pawn,” “King,” “En Passant”), and only one teacher at St. Oswald’s has a chance of putting the murderer in check.  Roy Straitley, a veteran classics master contemplating retirement, serves as the novel’s second narrator.  When Straitley isn’t reflecting on staff room politics or grousing about encroaching technology, he picks up clues to the sabateur’s identity.

As a fan of books set in schools– and a bit of an Anglophile as well– this novel instantly became one of my favorites. Or should I say “favourites”?  If you enjoyed Joanne Harris’s smash-hit Chocolat, that’s all the more reason to give this one a try.  Let the chess game begin.

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Moby Dick by Herman Melville

I’m not going to bore you with a review of a classic with which you are already familiar. Instead, I’m devoting this post to those books which have been raised to prominence in the personal canon each of us creates over a lifetime of reading. For me, Moby Dick occupies the number one spot. I won’t bother trying to persuade you that it ought to be your favorite as well. Like many grand artisitic and philosophical achievements, you either get it or you don’t. Very likely, you have your own shrines devoted to works that call you back again and again. Works that either have, or will depending on your age, provide a lifetime’s education as they speak to the different people you become throughout the stages of your life. Maybe the books (they need not be novels) take on a sacred aura that transport them, in your mind, somewhere closer to the realms of religion. Perhaps you have a particlar poem that you recite to yourself in difficult times, or in good times. Are you a political thinker whose personal philosophy is deeply rooted in Hobbes or Locke? Whatever voices call to your spirit, you will find that they have their origin in some book. I invite you to comment on your favorite. I’ll start us off with mine.

I’m not a spring-chicken anymore, but I’m not old. I’ll be 37 soon, and the soreness from the accumulated sprains, breaks and exhaustion of daily routine is telegraphing to me that my physical prime is drawing to a close. I claim no wisdom of age, but I’m old enough to look backwards at the highs and lows of childhood, marriages, deaths and births. Neither do I claim great insight, but, like everyone else, my experience has shown me a world that, good or bad, must be confronted somehow. The question of “how” is, I believe, the central concern that we face in our lives.

Moby Dick is not a moral compass intended to provide a model for living. Instead, it presents a hostile world as seen through the influence of Captain Ahab who may, or may not be, insane. Is he a crazed egomaniac whose vision consumes the lives of his crew? Is he the creator of the monster he pursues, and is he rebelling against his own vision when he takes up arms against an evil universe? Or is he truly a hero who dares us to the heights of bravery though sinking our harpoon into the hide of the demon means being dragged down into oblivion ? Our other candidate is Ishmael who alone escapes the whirlpool and lives “to tell the tale.” You will simply have to choose who the hero is.

There’s an ocean of content in the book, and there exists a great deal of commentary written about it should you be interested. It’s one of those things that seems impossible for a human being to have created. In fact, I will brook no criticism. That’s why I resist choosing it as a selection for the classics book club I run. I don’t want to hear another comment about how boring it is. So, I’m interested: What books do you hold sacred? What gets you worked up?

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Tijuana Straits: A Novel by Kem Nunn

Kem Nunn is the progenitor of a unique style of fiction loosely referred to as “surf noir.”  He hit the literary scene in the early ’80s with his first surf-stunner, Tapping the Source, which has become a beloved work of cult fiction regardless of its limited availability.

If you ask ANY surfer why he or she surfs, chances are they will all give you a similar answer; that there is a zen-like peace that comes from the intensity of surfing; the perfect union of body, mind, spirit, and nature.  Nunn certainly captures this glory in his novels, but he doesn’t shy away from the occasional dark side of surf culture, particularly in his native Southern California and all of the misbegotten beach ghettos between San Diego and the Mexican border.  This stretch of land may boast some of the best surf on the planet, but it is also home to vicious gang members, junkies, rapists, and down-and-out surf pros who have lost their way and succombed to lives of quiet, drug-addled desperation.  This is the California of Nunn’s novels, and these are the characters that bring his powerful stories to life, reminding us that the grass is not always greener, and that even in one’s darkest hour, there is always a chance for redemption and peace.

Tijuana Straits gives us the split perspective of two protagonists.  We have Sam (the Dove) Fahey, a meth-addicted, alcoholic worm farmer, (not to mention, former surf champion), who lives alone near the Cerro Colorado valley, (a wasteland among the smog of borderland-Mexico).  His only neighbors are random packs of feral dogs.  We also have Magdalena Rivera, a political activist from Mexico who has devoted her life to fighting environmental pollution in Mexican cities, and also to helping women in need, women who are victims of Tijuana’s ultra violence.  The novel’s antagonist comes in the form of Armando Santoya, a drug-crazed madman hellbent on revenge against Magdalena, whose activism he blames for the loss of his wife and child.  Armando’s obsession with killing her takes him across the border into California where, with the help of his hedonistic cronies, he commits many ghastly violent crimes, stopping at nothing on his hunt for Magdalena.

One morning during one of his routine drug runs, Fahey finds Magdalena on the American side of the border, badly beaten and near dead.  Although he has become accustomed to having zero human contact, Fahey still feels the need  to help Magdalena and nurse her back to health.   Magdalena, in return, helps him come to grips with the man he used to be versus the man he has become.  They must fight for their lives as Armando and his gang close in on them, but during their struggle, they open themselves to one another and to the seemingly unforgiving environment in which they live.

Every character in this wonderfully gritty novel is very organic, where even a monster like Armando is essentially a victim of a world gone awry.  Kem Nunn possesses a rare talent in using society’s castaways as a means of gaining our sympathy, while also paving their paths for redemption.  Also, you will REALLY want to hit some waves after reading one of this books.

Click here to find this book in the WCPL catalog.

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

I had read Tartt’s debut novel, The Secret History, several years ago and absolutely loved it, so every time I walked by a copy of The Little Friend, the creepy doll head on the cover beckoned me to read it. Although vastly different from her first work (and nearly ten years after the fact) Tartt is still able to pull the reader into a very specific setting; this time in a small town in 1970s Mississippi.

Harriet, a tom-boyish, stubborn, and precocious 12 year old, has grown up in the shadow of her brother’s murder. When Harriet was just a baby, Robin was found hanging from a tree in the family’s front yard. No clues were left and the killer was never apprehended. The murder destroyed the family, and Harriet has been left mostly to her own devices while her mother fights depression and her older sister withdraws more and more. Over the course of a long and hot summer, Harriet and her best friend Hely take matters into their own hands to solve the 12 year old murder and bring resolution to the family.

The book is at times funny, often dark, and beautifully written throughout. Tartt paints an unmistakable impression of the 1970s South, weaving a tale of family, revenge, pride, and heritage.

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The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

“Education: None.  Skills: None.  Merits: None.”  So reads Gully Foyle’s Merchant Marine card.  But, Gully has managed to survive for 170 days in the airless purgatory of deep space and to Escape to Terra with a murderous grudge and a secret that could change the course of history.  In this pulse-quickening novel, Bester imagines a future in which people “jaunte” a thousand miles with a single thought, where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect themselves with radioactive hit men – and where an inarticulate outcast is the most dangerous man alive.

Alfred Bester is certainly not a household name in the world of books and authors, not even in many Science Fiction circles.  As someone who was writing at the same time as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein, Bester tends to get a bit overlooked.  He was also not nearly as prolific as those more famous SF authors, but his novels are still worth reading.  In fact, Bester won the first ever Hugo Award for best novel for his book The Demolished Man.

“Stars” was originally serialized in four parts in Galaxy magazine, and later published as a full length novel in 1957.  Legend has it that the story idea came to Bester after seeing a newspaper article about a Chinese sailor who survived alone shipwrecked in a raft for 133 days – longer than anyone else on record.  Several ships spotted the sailor but were afraid to pick him up, suspecting that he might be bait to lure them within torpedo range of a hidden submarine.

I read this book years ago and it instantly became one of my all time favorites.  I don’t know why, but I just identified with Gully and found myself rooting for him as he sought his revenge.  Another indicator that this book might be for you, is that the introduction to the most recent edition was written by Neil Gaiman (more on him soon).

Fun fact: for those who have enjoyed The Eyre Affair (see previous post), Gully Foyle has a small cameo appearance in the 3rd book in the Thursday Next series, The Well of Lost Plots.  If you like this book, you may also enjoy The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, Gateway by Frederick Pohl or Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny.

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