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Book Review: Cross Roads by William Paul Young

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What you should know:

William Paul Young is the author of The Shack, which I’ve never written a review about.  If you are not familiar with that book you can read about it here the-shack-book-md

 

shack movie

 

 

 

 

or you can read about the movie based on the book here

 

Cross Roads is a very different book from The Shack in several ways.  Both books do have similar themes however.  Cross Roads is a novel that engages in a philosophical debate about personal beliefs, eternity, the nature of God, and the ideas of freedom, redemption, and forgiveness.  One of the similar themes between Cross Roads and The Shack is grief and the idea of being angry at God for the loss of a family member.  Cross Roads addresses this theme from a different point of view than The Shack does.

I think The Shack approaches the subject on the level of sovereignty and judgement.  While Cross Roads approaches it from the perspective of the fear of pain and suffering.  One theme that separates Cross Roads from The Shack is that the main theme of Cross Roads is death.

What I liked:

This is one of the funniest books I have read in a while.  There is humor woven throughout the entire novel.  Which might surprise you as death, divorce, and serious illness are prevalent in the story.  It has a compelling plot and several likeable characters. There are some amazing moments where someone says something really profound.  The author smoothly moves between two storylines, one where the protagonist is dealing with the events of his life and the other where he has a discussion with God about his soul.

During his discussions with God, the protagonist, Anthony Spencer, engages in very heady conversations about many important ideas and beliefs people have.  The book poses questions and offers answers without preaching.  Spencer is on a journey of sorts, one of discovery, where he finds answers which he is willing to accept without feeling forced to. This is genius, in my opinion.  And is worth reading for those parts alone.

What I didn’t like:

I thought it started too slowly.  I put it down for a while and finally picked it up again believing it would gather momentum because I found The Shack to be interesting.  Another similarity Cross Roads has to The Shack is its focus on extreme cases.  Anthony Spencer is extremely anti-Christian, while the protagonist in the Shack is extremely broken by the death of a child.  What’s wrong with that?  Well, not all of us can identify with these extreme positions.  But I guess the author would argue that we aren’t supposed to.

If Spencer is such an extreme is he realistic?  Now it could be fair for me to ask that, but I’d have to also admit that Spencer might not need to be realistic.  As long as enough of his thoughts and actions are reasonable, the fact he himself as a whole is arguably unbelievable doesn’t actually detract from the story.

Recommendation: Must Read

Cross Roads

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Picture Your Novel

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In this exercise you will indulge your imagery with a concept design for your novel cover.

Do you have talent?  Use it to create your graphic.

Otherwise you can find a photo and use magazine print cutouts to tape over your image.

Display your final product.

Having this vision cast in front of you is useful as inspiration for you to keep writing.

And always remember to enjoy the process.

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A Procreate drawing 

 

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Book Review: Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

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Book Review: Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

I read this book because I read Small Great Things & I appreciated Jodi Picoult wanting to write about racial issues in the U.S. Leaving Time is another novel where the author explores big societal issues. It tackles the issues of grief, man’s inhumanity towards man, and man’s mistreatment of wild, undomesticated animals.

What you should know.

As usual the author’s research is noteworthy. There is talent in educating yourself accurately and thoroughly and then being able to incorporate that knowledge into a story so that it is entertaining instead of lecturing. If that is important to you in your choice of reading you won’t be disappointed here. The book takes place in North America and South Africa. It has characters who narrate first person point of view in the present and also one character who narrates in the past.

What I liked.

This book has much to offer. There is a child protagonist. There is a psychic! There is good old fashioned detective work. There is a missing person. And there are unsolved mysteries with suspects at every turn.

Picoult’s focus on wild and captured elephants is very nicely handled. It’s great reading. Real, grounded storytelling at its best. I saw everything vividly, pictured the animals, their emotions, and the challenging work done by caregivers and researchers alike.

By moving seamlessly between four character POVs the pace remains fresh, only bogging down slightly on occasion when Alice, researching elephant grieving, shares insights about her experiences.

The author makes several strong statements about human behavior that should be studied. You might disagree with some of them. However, without scientific evidence to support one position or the other, who’s to say whether those hinted at by Picoult’s prose or your’s are correct? It will certainly offer up topics for discussion regardless. If only elephants conducted anthropological studies we might learn something useful!

What I didn’t like.
The two main characters are intellectual in the fact they are highly educated. The main protagonist is unabashedly selfish. It could be that this is typical human behavior, and I am perhaps ignorant. But it also could be that I am unwilling to accept such a trait in this story. It does however speak to a larger trend in the novel.

One of the distinct aspects of the story is that the actions of all the humans are described without any moral assessment of them whatsoever. Other than making an effort to help elephants, none of the humans do any good, in my opinion. Everything they do besides help elephants is either harmful to themselves or other people.

So it begs the question. What should the characters learn from the experience? What should the reader conclude from this? The only single explanation given by the author is that humans are less evolved than elephants. Are we to infer then that humans are evolutionarily bereft of the ability to identify and then perform moral acts (except one, trying to right the wrong done to elephants by other humans)?

If the message was that we are best served learning from the behavior of elephants, it was overshadowed by the fact the humans behaved so badly it left no room for debate.

Recommendation: Good Read

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Book Review: Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews

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What you should know

This is a novel about real world spying, relatively modern post-cold war espionage between nation states.  It is written by a retired intelligence professional.  I’m not sure anyone not interested in the genre would want to read it.  Just as I would guess anyone who is interested in the genre would most likely read it.  It is both violent and pro American, not as if those two characteristics go hand in hand.

What I liked

The story takes its time developing.  It isn’t in a hurry.  Which allows for readers to get to know the people as well as the places they inhabit.  The story is multilayered with several characters having to experience life and make choices about who they are, what they want to accomplish, and who they ultimately may become.

The author goes after President Putin.  Apparently, nobody wants to go after him in real life, at least it happens in this novel.

There is real suspense.  There are harrowing encounters.  The romantic aspect isn’t overdone.  Enough interest is built that you definitely want to know how it all turns out.

What I didn’t like

Jason Matthews gives one of the main characters, Dominika Egorova, a gift of sorts, the ability to sense letters as colors.  The diagnosis is that she is a synesthete, someone who perceives sounds, or letters, or numbers as colors.  Eventually she develops the ability to read emotions and even detect deception and ill will by interpreting the colors she sees around other people.  Fascinating.  Yet how would someone best take advantage of this?  To become a ballerina, apparently.  So our challenge then is whether to accept how someone with this ability would use it.  Would that Matthews had made a stronger case for why Dominika only uses it to survive internal office politics in Russia.

This is book one of a trilogy.  Book two is Palace of Treason and book three is The Kremlin’s Candidate.  While we certainly like trilogies when we can’t get enough of a story, this one left me wondering whether I’d ever read books 2 and 3.  That isn’t a good sign.

Recommendation:  Maybe Read

 

red sparrow

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Book Review: The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic book 2), By Patrick Weekes

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Book Review: The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic book 2), By Patrick Weekes

Chaos Abounds

What you should know

Read The Palace Job (Rogues of the Republic book 1) first.  It introduces all of the important players and is a better book all around.

The Prophecy Con picks up in the epilogue of The Palace Job an continues to tell stories about many of the characters introduced in book 1 and re-introduced to an extent in book 2.  To appreciate the full backstory and understand who the characters are completely, you have to read book 1.  But that’s a good thing.

In a realm where one part of the world is governed by an empire, and the other a republic, a war is building that could determine the future of both societies, and everyone in them.

What I liked

Author Patrick Weekes proved his ability to write enjoyable dialogue in book 1.  The more of that I found in The Prophecy Con the more I liked it.  The Palace Job introduced us to some very interesting, humorous, multidimensional characters, who are easy to appreciate.  Weekes writes about them and takes great care in keeping them consistent to their values, as he reveals more about them, and as they deal with growing challenges in their relationships, and their struggles to survive against difficult odds.

What I didn’t like

There just wasn’t enough down time for me.  The author seemed obsessed with frenetic action to the point where he gave no breaks between one violent conflict after another.  But that wasn’t the worst of it.  Even within each fight, he kept raising the stakes, doubling and tripling down within the combat to add doubt about the outcome and heighten the intensity.  The problem with doing that, I found, was that not only did it seem like the characters needed more than two arms, two legs, and one head to cope with all the simultaneous assaults, I needed to be two readers to keep up with what was happening.  That, I’m afraid, didn’t happen.

I want to be fair here, but book 1 didn’t fall into that trap.  I’m reading, believing that the heroes will survive each onslaught, they got through the first book didn’t they?  Yet with every line Weekes seems to try to get me to believe they have to do the impossible in order to be alive in the next chapter.  If I was one of the characters, I’d offer to sacrifice myself, just to avoid all the suffering I’ll have to endure in the remaining chapters.  Can a brother get a breather?

Another problem with the plot is that one, or more, its hard to tell at times, of the characters has the apparent ability to disguise themselves while knowing what everyone else is doing.  Sort of like the fly on the wall, or having the ability to be completely undetectable.  Some not only disappear, but they disappear into other beings.  It’s a problem because these characters leave the reader guessing too much.  Who are they?  How many are they?  They were so hidden I had trouble distinguishing them from each other.  What is they’re agenda?  Whose side are they on anyway?  These secret characters wield so much control it seems like they’re outside the story.  You never get to know what rules govern these mysterious beings, certainly not the same rules that apply to the more or less human characters.  So they provide mostly frustration when I think they’re supposed to be adding suspense.

Not as much fun reading.
Questions raised in The Palace Job included what separated these two major powers, and how would the future be impacted by their differences?  The Prophecy Con addresses these to some degree.  However, the real question the book emphasized was who were the real puppet-masters?  The significant leaders in the republic and the empire did not have enough intelligence or integrity to prevent them from being manipulated by anyone with more than an adolescent level of maturity.

Recommendation: Maybe Read

The Prophecy Con

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Book Review: Camino Island by John Grisham

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What you should know:

John Grisham is in my short list of favorite authors alongside Tana French, Philip Kerr and Pierce Brown.  My two favorites are probably Runaway Jury and The Client.  I never finished Gray Mountain so that would not be a positive review if it came down to it.

Camino Island is a heist story.  It takes place in the book world.  My complements to John Grisham for writing a novel about the novel writing business.  A book about authors and their work can’t be all bad.  I’m convinced this book is Grisham’s tribute to his readers and book lovers in general.  It’s also a salute to independent bookstore owners

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What I liked:

The story takes place in the summer.  I chose it as a summer read.  It’s so appropriate to have summer novels cover the summer season!  It’s  on the beach too.  What a perfect setting for a summer read.  The only regret I have is that I didn’t take it to the beach with me.

There’s a nice vignette depicting authors talking about authors and writing.  Or not talking about writing.  Apparently, writers come in two camps, those that talk about their writing and those that don’t.  Either way this for me was the cornerstone of Camino Island.  I wish there was more, a lot more, of the group of writers.  That was a book I really could have gotten into.  There wasn’t enough of that part of the book for me.

There’s a private insurance investigation group of characters in the story.  This part also has potential.  I could see an entire series of novels based on them.  I doubt that John Grisham has the inspiration to do that though.  He’s written so much already and  I don’t think he needs the money.  Oh Well.

caminopic

What I didn’t like

None of the thieves involved in the heist were convincing.  Having spent time around people who steal things, I have an impression of what they’re like.  None of them were given much depth either.  At least if they weren’t convincing I might have tolerated them had I gotten to know them a little bit.

I got the impression that Grisham was interested in writing about one character – Bruce Cable – a book store owner.  He spends his time and energy on Cable.  Just not enough on the others, any of them, to make the book enjoyable.

He has another character, a young author named Mercer, who is struggling to write her second novel.  She is also struggling, financially and personally.  However, her story would have meant a totally different book.  I suspect Grisham didn’t find her challenges interesting enough on their own, so he folded her into this heist novel.  Mercer has writer’s block.  I am wondering if she’s a projection of the writer’s block Grisham had trying to write the novel about her, until he gave up and put her in Camino Island. All in all I expect Grisham fans will appreciate this book.  If you aren’t a fan I can’t see any reason why this one would convince you otherwise.

 

Recommendation: Maybe Read

camino-island

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Book Review: First To Die (Women’s Murder Club) by James Patterson

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What you should know.

James Patterson has sold many books and has many fans.  This book is the first of the 17 Women’s Murder Club series novels.  Book number 17 The 17th Suspect was published this year.

I prefer to read mystery genre.  I enjoy historical fiction.  I’ve found dystopian science fiction and fantasy fun too.  We all have our preferences.  How do I measure quality mystery?  Read anything by John D. MacDonald and you will know my idea of quality.  The story surrounds a female homicide detective in San Francisco and three women whom she confers with regarding an investigation.  The four women form her unofficial murder club.

What I liked

Four professional women meeting and brainstorming a difficult criminal investigation.  What’s not to like about that?  The setting is San Francisco, which I know very little about.  Either it’s not a very fascinating location, or the author has failed to capture it in a manner that has enthralled me.  I like the fact that it has potential so I’ll leave it there for now.

The plot keeps you guessing, and you can guess right yet still enjoy the story.  That means the writing is fairly satisfying in it’s own right.  The protagonist, Inspector Lindsay Boxer, is a well fleshed out character.  However, as told through her first person perspective, I did not get to know enough about the other three female characters (there were actually four others).  I did like them.  They were written to be likeable.

The relationship between Lindsay and her partner John Raleigh was great.  I could get into any number of cases involving these two and appreciate how they approach challenges.  Very refreshing.

What I didn’t like

I did not accept the author’s premise for the John Raleigh character at all.  It was a terribly simplistic view of life.  It did not work at all for me.  So I can’t see any point in reading anymore books in this series.  Sorry.  Something else that really bothered me.  Why in so many police mysteries are the cops all good – like this one – or completely bad? Can’t anyone write a mystery where the cops are mostly good accept for a few exceptions?  That would be too realistic I guess.

The ending.  If there was any possibility at all that I would read another Women’s Murder Club novel, the ending guarantees that will not happen.  Too bad for me.  The idea of these four women supporting each other in their professional ambitions and their personal struggles, is such a good one.  I will miss out since I think this first one misses the mark.

 

Recommendation:  Maybe Read

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Book Review: The Palace Job, by Patrick Weekes

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Book Review: The Palace Job (Rogues of the Republic book 1), By Patrick Weekes

Nice magical adventure

What you should know

The fantasy primarily revolves around magic. A quite imaginative repertoire of charms and gifts are displayed not only to add entertainment, but also to stand in for modern earthbound technologies. So with magic, the society was advanced yet preindustrial at the same time.

In a realm where one part of the world is governed by an empire, and the other a republic, a dispossessed aristocratic ex-military vet of the republic serves as the heroine who seeks out vendettas against those whom she thinks have taken what she seeks to restore.

What I liked

From the beginning I found a steady plot development with pleasant surprises in every chapter. The level of intrigue was fairly high, with plenty of conflict between multidimensional characters. And there were multiple characters with multiple conflicts between them. Fiction writing is part gift, part skill, part craft, and part discipline. What I mean by that is I can pretty much divide fiction writers into two camps. Those that write great dialogue, and those that don’t. I appreciate quality dialogue in a novel. While tastes differ here, I found Weekes in the former group. I found chapters full of very smart dialogue. These conversations were intertwined around decent action set pieces, which were handled skillfully. As for the romantic readers, there was enough sexual tension to heighten the interest.

What I didn’t like

The passage of time and events is narrated by a plot device. The author used a puppet show as the form of official news media. During a time in a place most closely identified as medieval, where there is no written newsprint, crowds gather in the public square to hear the news told in the form of puppets on a stage.  The  players are composed of standins for the actual political rivals and are represented by a griffon, a manticore, and a dragon. While they are certainly inventive, I found myself straining to follow these vignettes. We never find out who the sources were for these pundits. Perhaps that could have helped.

Just a lot of fun reading.
It’s hard to imagine how the author could follow this effort up with something equally entertaining. Since this is book one, readers will have a chance to find out the answer to this proposition. My curiosity was perked concerning the political rift between the republic and the empire as little was explained about the structure of the republic and nothing at all about the makeup of the empire. Perhaps Book two answers a few of those questions. Let’s hope my curiosity will be satisfied by another good read

Recommendation: Good Read

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Scorecard: Jurassic World – 1 Avengers Infinity War – 0

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My shameless plug for science fiction

 

Here’s the lesson. Stick the landing. I enjoyed Jurassic World from the beginning, the middle, and the end. We moviegoers know what we want, and we know what we like. Movie makers often appreciate that, meaning us. Infinity War didn’t deliver. If you doubt that just check any source of viewer responses.

I don’t care about the setup for your sequel. You can give an audience an enjoyable ending and still setup the sequel at the same time. Infinity War is a comic, so I guess it falls into the category of fantasy. And don’t assume I have anything against fantasy. Bilbo and Frodo are all that and a bag of chips. Jurassic World is science fiction. I think that matters.

By developing a taste for science fiction you are enabling yourself to contemplate important issues of the day. You can engage your curiosity. You can form ethical arguments. You begin to think and act in a way that determines your future, and you can do good things for someone following in your footsteps. Science fiction perpetually compares the now with the what if. It asks this question. What would happen if we had the ability to do such and such? History has taught us that the less prepared we are for advances in technology, the more bad decisions we suffer from. Remember DDT? Shouldn’t we commit the time to consider the harm of new abilities before we make ourselves too vulnerable? Science fiction has proven to be one of the most reliable tools we have to engage in the debate.

space technology research science
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The science in Jurassic World is cloning. Genetically modified organisms, otherwise know as dinosaurs, are brought to life by combining original ‘dino’ DNA with other animals’ filling in the missing pieces. In a fairly frightening manner, the movie weighs the possible outcomes of producing genetically modified animals for profit. I’ll borrow from one of my favorite 70’s sci-fi TV shows, the Six Million Dollar Man, which introduced us to the idea of the bionically enhanced human, who’s famous line is “We have the technology. We can make you stronger, faster, better than before.” The antagonists in the film decide to do just that when they investigate the possibility of turning a dinosaur into a military weapon.

Today we are faced with a number of staggering challenges from the technology we now, or very soon will possess. What are the right answers for whether or not we should clone animals, or humans? Who should police the internet? What are the worst consequences for us of the dark web? Can there be rules and punishments for cyber warfare and cyber espionage? Where will unchecked gene research lead us? More good than harm? Will that depend on how careful we are? Who will decide? These are a few of the necessary questions. Turn to your favorite science fiction book or movie to consider the answers.

If you have never appreciated the science fiction genre before, there are many places to go for recommendations. I will offer some suggestions. Here is my Mount Rushmore of authors.

 

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

Suggested Science Fiction

Books by or films based on the writing of
Philip K. Dick
Michael Crichton
Ray Bradbury
Robert Heinlein
Isaac Asimov

Let me give an honorable mention to Neal Stephenson, whose novel Seveneves promises to offer some of the best in science fiction movies to date. Read the book now before the first movie comes out.

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Book Review: Greeks Bearing Gifts by Philip Kerr

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Author Philip Kerr died a few months ago. In honor of his passing I wanted to include a review of his latest novel, Greeks Bearing Gifts.
First, I confess I am a biased. I think the Bernie Gunther novel series will at some future time be recognized as one of the significant literary contributions of this era.

What I liked
Bernie Gunther detective prose is compelling reading. If you have never read one, I recommend you start with book one, March Violets. You can decide then if you’d like more. These are genre books and as such they will not appeal to all tastes. They are very sober subjects. The setting is Nazi Germany. That creates a convenient opportunity for some very brutal conflict, murder, mayhem, deceit, the double cross, the triple cross, and a constant reminder of what happens to a society when it sacrifices legitimate moral authority in favor of brute force.
Because of the premise of his books, Kerr was more than able to provide story arcs that placed situational ethics at the forefront. Sheer reading enjoyment is here for you if you appreciate engrossing tales with unpredictable outcomes and fascinating characters.
The hero, Bernie Gunther, is one of the most complex you’ll ever find. This is a man with the fiercest of survival instincts, who never ceases to communicate his antipathy for the Third Reich. Greeks Bearing Gifts finds him enjoying himself more than anytime in his previous travels. Which is logical, when you consider by this time, 1956, the Nazi regime and its aftermath have reached an historical conclusion for the most part.
His biggest conflict seems to be an internal one. Because he has learned to succeed numerous life threatening battles involving duplicitous and unprincipled people at every turn, he finds himself incapable of trusting anyone. You really get to explore what it would be like to try to have a normal life under such circumstances. It is a powerful study of how the environment we evolve in can make an indelible impact on our ability to appreciate life’s wonders.

clear blue sea
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

What I didn’t like
Greeks Bearing Gifts was probably my least favorite Kerr novel. Perhaps because I felt it had more of an educational bent than a provocative noir foundation. However, the plot itself should have gravitas enough for the typical reader. The pillaging of the entire wealth of an ethnic community, a targeted race, and the desperate pursuit to keep the stolen treasures by the vanquished. Add to that the mass escape of untold numbers of Nazi war criminals from the reaches of justice.
However, I was fascinated by the prospect of the next novel. Which is hinted at quite a bit. I understand this final posthumous publishing with take place next year. Because the books have reached such significant depths and spanned over three decades, the final entry has the potential payoff of a genuine master stroke. Bernie Gunther has lived a memorable life, made serious mistakes, suffered consequences few could endure, and grown in ways we ourselves often wish we could.

low angle photograph of the parthenon during daytime
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

What you should know
There is much more In the Philip Kerr novels to be appreciated than a well told tale. My apologies for not sharing them. I hope you find out for yourself firsthand.

Recommendation: Must Read

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