ALAS, BABYLON

What’s the last book you read that you couldn’t put down? Can’t remember? Well, I got one for you! It’s a 1959 novel that is more than just a story of the consequences and outcome of a nuclear war between America and Russia. This novel gives the reader the flavor of what America was really about in the 1950's. I remember the air-raid drills in grade school when a student was instructed to dive under their desk in the event of a atomic/nuclear strike. Like that was going to save your butt! I remember President Eisenhower saying the same thing. Here was a man who saw the destructive power of Little Boy in Hiroshima and Fat Man in Nagasaki saying that the desk would save me. Oh, well. Since this novel was published just before the civil rights movement, the ugly head of racism exists in this novel. This is not a knock on the author, Pat Frank, because he was writing in accordance with the prevailing thoughts of 1959. This novel was probably born out the U.S.A.’s fear of being attacked from space after Russia successfully launched the Sputnik satellite into space in 1957. This act most likely sparked the arms race and subsequently launched nuclear war/post-apocalyptic novels like this one into popularity during the 1950's and 1960's. However, this novel gives the reader hope that a nuclear war is survivable, unlike novels such as Nevil Shute’s On the Beach , where there is no hope for survival after World War III has polluted the atmosphere with world wide nuclear fallout. Alas, Babylon truly gives the reader a taste of that 1950’s fear and the general attitude of the citizens. Well done, Pat Frank.

The story centers around the town of Fort Repose in central Florida. Our protagonist, Randy Bragg, is contacted by his brother, Mark, a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force stationed at SAC headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. Mark tells Randy that war is imminent, and he is sending his wife, Helen, and two children to live with him in Florida. The day after Helen lands, the unthinkable happens. The U.S. and Russia exchange nuclear missiles! At first the town had electricity; then, the families witnessed a stunning explosion: “The white flashed back into a red ball in the southeast. They all knew what it was. It was Orlando, or McCoy Base, or both. It was the power supply for Timucuan County. Thus the lights went out, and in that moment civilization in Fort Repose retreated a hundred years. So ended The Day.” Several days later, the bombing stops. Randy houses most of the River Road people, including his brother’s family, Randy’s girlfriend Elizabeth and her family, and the local doctor, Dan Gunn. The Western Union lady, Florence, and the local librarian, Alice, live next door. The Preacher Henry family lives close by, as does the retired Admiral, Sam Hazzard. This constitutes the main core of characters (Those living in the vicinity of Randy’s River Road abode) in this cutting-edge story. Luckily for the town, the winds keep the fallout away from them even though Florida is listed as one of the many contaminated zones. The retired Admiral finds out via his short-wave radio that the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare is now Acting Chief Executive. Randy knew that: “...The struggle was not against a human enemy, or for victory. The struggle, for those who survived "The Day", was to survive the next.”

The ensuing chapters deal with the River Road people’s efforts to obtain food; avoid typhoid; establish law and order against the many ‘highwaymen’ attacking their town; and to establish ways and means for mankind’s survival. I thought that Pat Frank’s characterization was as good as it could be based on the many characters in the book. Near the end of the book, Lt. Colonel Paul Hart says to Randy Bragg:  “'Some of our scientists think it will take a thousand years to restore a saturated [Contaminated Zone], like Florida or New Jersey, to anything close to normal.'... and Randy turned away to face the thousand-year night.” By the way, the story does end with the reader finding out who won the war! I guess you will have to read this sci-fi classic to find out.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: During this nuclear Apocalyptic phase of writing, two novels were similarly written. The first one was Red Alert by Peter George. In 1964, it was adapted by Stanley Kubrick and released by Columbia Pictures as Dr. Strangelove . In the book, a crazed USAF General launches an attack on Russia from the SAC base in Texas. To make a long story short, the planes are finally successfully called back, except for the bomber Alabama Angel. The President convinces the Soviet Premier that it’s a mistake and offers Russia Atlantic City. Luckily, Alabama Angel fails in it’s mission, and no bombings occur. In case you forgot the book and movie: U.S. President Merkin Muffley is on the hot line to Moscow with some rather embarrassing news for the Soviet premier: “Hello, Dimitri….I’m fine….Now then, you know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb….The bomb, Dimitri. The hydrogen bomb….Well, now, what happened is that, uh, one of our base commanders…he went a little funny in the head….and he went and did a silly thing….He ordered his planes to attack your country.” Is that a riot, or what? The ironic thing about this book and the second book that I’ll talk about is that Peter George sued the authors for plagiarism, nonetheless Columbia Pictures released both movies in 1964!
                                          * SPOILER ALERT *
The second book was Fail Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. In this book, SAC is alerted that a threat (unknown plane) is headed into our air space, so our bombers hustle to their fail safe positions. The threat is proved to be bogus, and the bombers are recalled. However, six Vindicator  bombers get an attack code in error and fly into Russia to their targets. One bomber gets through and destroys Moscow. To refresh your memory, the following is the conversation the U.S. President has with the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, and General Buck, who is flying a bomber over N.Y.C. ( the President’s wife is there ): U.S. Ambassador to Moscow: Mr. President! The President: Yes, Jay? U.S. Ambassador to Moscow: I can hear the sound of explosions from the northeast! The sky is very bright, all lit up (cut off by high shrill sound of the Ambassador's phone melting from the nuclear blast) The President: (on the intercom) Put me through to General Black. General Black: Yes, Mr. President? The President: Blackie...General Black: (obviously upset) Yes, Mr. President? The President: (sighing in resignation) Moscow's been destroyed. Drop your bombs according to plan. General Black: (pause) Yes, sir. Is that scary, or what? The President had to sacrifice the population of N.Y.C., and his wife! Wow! Readers, these are just a few of the exciting novels written during the 50's and 60's. Sorry I gave the ending away, but I wasn't reviewing this book.

the DISTANT HOURS

This is a guest review from my wonderful daughter-in-law, Jennifer Ohlarik:
 

Kate Morton spins a tale of gothic measure in her 2010 novel, The Distant Hours. Spinster twin sisters, Percy and Saffy Blythe, are living within the ever-dilapidating walls of their once vibrant castle. Since the hauntingly gruesome death of their mother and their father’s ultimate mental and physical demise, the elderly sisters are charged with the care of their intrinsically beautiful, yet wild younger sister, Juniper, who possesses the same ethereal and charming characteristics as Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’. It is set in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s in England during a time of bombings, evacuees, gas masks, and blackouts. At the heart of the story is Raymond Blythe’s published work entitled “The True History of the Mud Man”. Raymond was the trio’s father. The tale unravels a world of mystery, secrets, and sins committed within the stone and mortar walls of Milderhurst Castle.

Edie, a young publisher from London is enraptured by “The True History of the Mud Man” only later to find out that her mother, Meredith, shares a secret connection to this English Castle and it’s inhabitants. As a young girl, Meredith was sequestered to Milderhurst Castle as an evacuee. She grew close to Juniper and learned to write at the hand of Raymond Blythe. The tie between the two elderly sisters; the dominance and submissive parts played by each respective twin, woven and connected to the younger carefree spirit of the wild Juniper is intensely fascinating, as is the strong possessiveness and oppressiveness of the castle walls. Morton tells a story of forbidden love, family loyalty, family ties – or rather chains, which ultimately revolves around this mysterious monster that arises from the mud.  

This book contains wonderful surprises and revelations that are delivered with gentleness and ease. The plot is multi-layered with a strong foundation.  Page after page, Morton carefully paints a picturesque English countryside and develops characters that are real, with whom we can come to know, understand, and ultimately empathize. It’s a story of past and present, with subtle glimmers of hopeful futures. It’s nostalgically rich in it’s gothic feeling lending the reader’s mind to reminisce the Bronte sisters’ works. The novel has many references to the great writers and poets. Emerson and Poe are two of the family dogs. It’s a warm friend for any reader with strong inclinations towards the world of British classics. Intertwined with mentions of the great writers, Morton also creates humorous charm with her allusions to Alice in Wonderland.

The Distant Hours is a meticulously crafted story that that entrances the reader until the last page.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

the SNOW CHILD

Eowyn Ivey writes an intriguing novel full of symbolism born out of a old Russian fairy tale. Even Eowyn Ivey's first name (pronounced: A-o-win) conjures up a sort of mysterious glow on her somewhat mystic first novel. Actually, her first name is based on a character from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I found this novel haunting and thought-provoking, especially after I finished the novel. I asked myself: Who was the snow child? Was she real? Does she symbolize the Alaskan wilderness or the struggle between life and death? This is the kind of symbolism that classrooms could analyze and debate forever. Dan Brown’s fictional character Robert Langdon would have quite a task explaining the hidden meanings of this novel to this reviewer. Wait a minute, maybe Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot can figure out this befuddling conclusion for me. Whatever, this novel is quite a trip!

The book’s setting is Alaska. The year is 1929. Jack and Mabel have moved to Alaska to start a new life after Mabel delivered a stillborn child. They are struggling to make a go of farming in the wilderness of Alaska. Mabel is depressed and even contemplates suicide. Then, they experience their first Alaskan snowfall and joyfully build a snow child that they dress in a blue coat, mittens, yellow grass hair, and a scarf. The next day, they discover the snow child knocked down with tracks leading to the woods, but no tracks from the woods to the destroyed snow child. Jack sees a girl wearing the snow child's attire peeking at him behind the trees in the forest. She has a red fox with her. What is going on? The neighbors, George and Esther, tell them there are no young blond girls in the valley. Esther tells Mabel “...The winters are long, and sometimes it starts to get to you. Around here, they call it cabin fever. You get down in the dumps, everything’s off kilter and sometimes your mind starts playing tricks on you.” But, Jack and Mabel know what they saw. After a period of time the girl cautiously comes to the cabin to visit them. The snow child says her name is Faina. Faina never sleeps over and always leaves for the forest after her visit, no matter how bad or cold the weather is outside. Where does she go, and how come no one else sees the girl? One day Jack tracks the girl and finds her in the mountains by a hidden abode. Apparently her father died of alcohol abuse, and Jack buries the man. Mystery solved? Not really. Why does the girl prefer to live alone in the wilderness? How come she disappears in the spring and summer and comes back in the winter?

Now that the author has wet your whistle, the book takes some unforeseen twists. The neighbor’s son, Garrett, sees the girl! He witnesses Faina killing a snared swan. Garrett is smitten and confused. That Christmas the neighbors surprise Jack and Mabel at their cabin, and finally see the snow child. What happens next? Well, you will find out after reading part two and three of this avant-garde first time novel by Eowyn Ivey. I thought Ivey’s characterization was well done, and her description of Alaskan scenery and wildlife was outstanding. Since Ivey lives in Alaska and works as a bookseller at an independent bookstore, her descriptive credentials of Alaska are a given. She states that she was almost finished with her first novel when she got the idea for this story. This leads me to believe that we will see more of her work soon. What happened to that other book? This was a enjoyable read.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: I wonder if Eowyn Ivey is part of a new genre of novels. dogeardiscs.wordpress.com says: “There’s a wonderful ongoing trend among adult novels and that is to evoke childhood and imagination by creating stories that recreate the sense of a fairytale. The Night Circus achieved this last year by creating a hypnotic and dreamlike world for readers to explore and live within. We aren’t even a week into 2012 and I have been utterly gobsmacked by what I can only call an adult fairytale of longing and love.” It’s hard to say where this trend is going, but lately I find myself reading books of unknown genres.

What does Eowyn Ivey think about this folktale genre? Well, in an interview with booksellernz, Eowyn says, ”I think subconsciously I had always been looking for a way to tell a magical story set in Alaska. This place is my inspiration as a writer, and as a reader my entire life I rarely came across books that took place in a northern landscape. The Snegurochka fairy tale was a kind of lightning bolt for me – suddenly I could see the path into the story I wanted to tell.” And, they asked Eowyn about some of the missing quotation marks, and she said...” Thank you — I’m so glad you noticed the quote marks. Some readers have wondered if they are the result of typographical errors, but it was intentional. When I first began writing Faina’s dialogue, it felt as if I had somehow dragged her to the ground and stripped away some of her magic. I am a fan of Cormac McCarthy, and I tried removing all the quote marks throughout the manuscript. But that didn’t feel right either. So as an experiment I decided to not use quote marks any time Faina is part of a conversation – I hoped it would allow her to remain slightly otherworldly, slightly removed from the everyday.” Once again Cormac’s "no rules" prose comes into play.

Finally, what is it like for real-life Alaskan settlers? “Because of its extremes Alaska is a challenging place to live, but it seems to take hold of some people. Jack London is a wonderful example – he was beaten down by his travels to the Klondike during the Gold Rush, and yet he spent the rest of his life writing about the north and its hardships. Throughout Alaska’s history, some people who have moved here can’t wait to flee. But for some, it is like Esther says to Mabel: 'I don’t know if you ever get used to it really. It just gets in your blood so that you can’t stand to be anywhere else.'”

ALL THE PRETTY HORSES

This is another classic from the gloom and doom meister, Cormac McCarthy. Although, there is not as much doom as normal since this novel is more of a study of evil. Published in 1992, it's the first volume of his famous The Border Trilogy. This was an incredible story and exciting and hard to figure out the ending and finally well written. I didn’t make a mistake with the previous sentence, it’s Polysyndeton syntax at work. Originally created by the great Ernest Hemingway, it elongates the sentence using several conjunctions in close succession without a break, thus creating a kind of urgency to continue without the reader having a chance to catch their breath and/or analyze what was just said. Not that there is going to be any quotation marks, commas, or apostrophes to help you make sense of it, somehow Cormac induces, or seduces, the reader into totally understanding what is being said, and who said it! This man can write beautiful prose, and his descriptive writing is right up there with an author, such as, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote The Scarlet Letter , and The House of Seven Gables. How is this for an example of Cormac’s descriptive writing: “She looked up at him and her face was pale and austere in the uplight and her eyes lost in their darkly shadowed hollows save only for the glint of them and he could see her throat move in the light and he saw in her face and in her figure something he'd not seen before and the name of that thing was sorrow.” As I always say (at least since I’ve come to understood him) - This man can write!
 

It’s a love story of sorts. What, from Cormac? Well, I said sort of...with some violent twists. The year is 1949, and the place is San Angelo, Texas. The story begins with our hero, John Grady Cole, leaving his deceased grandfather’s ranch for Mexico. On the way, he picks up his buddy, Lacey Rawlins, and together they head south on horseback. Once in Mexico, they believe they are being followed. They semi-ambush a young man that appears to be about thirteen years old riding a beautiful bay horse. When Grady and Rawlins ask him why he is following them, he says, “I aint done nothin.” “What’s your name?”, said John Grady. “Jimmy Blevins.” “Bullshit”, said Rawlins.”Jimmy Blevins is on the radio.”That’s another Jimmy Blevins.” “Who’s followin you?” “Nobody.” How do you know?” “Cause there aint.” Reluctantly, they let the strange young man travel with them. Instinctively, Rawlins knows this kid is trouble. And is he ever right! Later in their travels, Blevins loses his horse and Colt pistol while hiding from a thunderstorm. He persuades Grady and Rawlins to help him find his bay horse and pistol. They find and “steal’ back Blevins horse from a Mexican stable. They are pursued by the town but get away after they split up. Blevins goes one way, and Grady and Rawlins another where they wind up working as vaqueros on a 11,000 hectares ranch owned by Don Hector Rocha y Villareal. He has a beautiful daughter named Alejandra. Grady falls in love. Can you sense a problem coming into play? Oh, yeah! Because of Grady’s horse breaking abilities, the father promotes him and then Grady has a secret affair with his beautiful seventeen year old daughter, Alejandra. Now the story turns dark! Knowing Cormac McCarthy, I’ve been waiting for this. You, the reader, have hundreds of exciting and twisting pages ahead of you. I have only given you a taste of what’s ahead. I highly recommend this classic western.

Not only did I enjoy this novel, but I learned a lot of Spanish. Cormac had the ability to tell the story with lots of Spanish conversations, and you, as the reader, somehow understand. How did he do that? I now know what a cuchillero, papazote, hacendado, caballero, and a gerente are. I like to look for symbolism in Cormac’s novels. I know who represented evil, guilt and remorse, but who were the three men that showed up on page 281 and confronted Grady with "Cuales de los caballos son suyos? (Which of the horses are yours?) Todo son mios. (All are mine.) Donde esta su serape?(Where is your blanket?) No tengo (I do not have one.) Quienes son ustedes? (Who are you?) Hombres del pais. (Men of the country.)" Men of country? What does that mean? I know that John Grady Cole shows up again in the third book of this series, Cities of the Plain , and then maybe I will get my answer.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Are you surprised that Cormac can write about romance? I was. Read this excerpt involving Grady and Alejandra: “The following night she came to his bed and she came every night for nine nights running, pushing the door shut and latching it and turning in the slatted light at God knew what hour and stepping out of her clothes and sliding cool and naked against him in the narrow bunk all softness and perfume and the lushness of her black hair falling over him and no caution to her at all. Saying I dont care I dont care. Drawing blood with her teeth where he held the heel of his hand against her mouth that she not cry out.” I’m convinced, but did you see all the ‘ands’ in the paragraph? Did you see any apostrophes? Of course not.

And lastly, Cormac proves that his characters possess feelings, when Grady is at a gravesite, Cormac writes: “He stood hat in hand over the unmarked earth. This woman who had worked for his family fifty years. She had cared for his mother as a baby and she had worked for his family long before his mother was born and she had known and cared for the wild Grady boys who were his mother's uncles and who had all died so long ago and he stood holding his hat and he called her his abuela and he said goodbye to her in Spanish and then turned and put on his hat and turned his wet face to the wind and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead.” Not for nothing, Cormac McCarthy has proved to this reviewer that he can write a book of a different color.

THE AGE OF MIRACLES

Earth’s rotation is really slowing down! Don’t get alarmed, because it slows down 1.7 milliseconds every 100 years, or so. But in Karen Thompson Walker’s debut novel, the day grew 56 minutes before the scientists even noticed, and when they did a scientist said on TV  “To a certain extent, we can adapt, but if the earth’s rotation continues to slow-and this is just speculation-I’d say we can expect radical changes in the weather.” Adapt to what? This is a novel that proposes a unique event, while at the same time follows the life of our narrator, Julia, through her adolescent years known as the age of miracles. Somehow the author succeeds in uniting these two subjects into a peculiar and unparalleled story. The story did stall about midway, but thankfully it then took off to a interesting, but somewhat heavy-hearted and pessimistic conclusion. Walker’s character development was a little weak, except for Julia and her want-to-be paramour, Seth Moreno. In this reviewer’s mind, these two flaws keep this unusual novel from five stars.

The story begins in California at the home of Julia, her mom Helen, her dad Joel, and their two cats. I don’t remember the author ever saying what the family’s last name was, not that it matters. Anyway the TV news broadcast said that the earth’s rotation was slowing down. Helen is very upset; Joel, a baby Doctor, seems unperturbed; and Julia sees it as a way of getting out of soccer practice. In two days, the length of a day is ninety minutes longer. People start getting gravity sickness, because the slowing had altered the gravity and everything was a little more susceptible to the pull of the ground. Julia still has to deal with problems any eleven year old would have, regardless of the earth’s slowing rotation. There is the bully at the bus stop; the on and off friendship with her various girlfriends; and the unrequited love of Seth. Her eighty plus year old grandpa seems to have flipped out, birds start dying off, and bugs start multiplying at a furious pace. And now the day is forty two hours long! People start to hoard food, and grass and plants begin the dying process. The government states on TV that the 24 hour clock has to be observed regardless of the days length. Some people object. They become “the real timers”, who are instantly hated, because “The real-timers made the rest of us uncomfortable. They too often slept while the rest of us worked. They went out when everyone else was asleep.” The day is now forty eight hours long!

The slowing syndrome affected only certain people, Julia’s mom among them. The symptoms could be dizziness, nausea, insomnia, fatigue, fainting, and bleeding of the gums. The day is now fifty six hours long, and growing. Kansas has a first ever earthquake, thousands of whales wash ashore, and California’s famous eucalyptus trees begin to fall. The day is now sixty hours long. Is this just the start of the end, or is it the new beginning? I’m going to have to stop here and you will have to read your own copy of this credible story to find out how it is resolved. I read somewhere that Walker had a astrophysicist read the book before publication to make sure her story was plausible. Her impeccable prose is probably due to her previous work as a book editor for Simon & Schuster . Folks, this is one of 2012’s best, I highly recommend readers of all genres to get behind this novel.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars.

Comment: I know my review sounds like this novel is another apocalyptic tale of grief, but it is not. I’m not sure what genre this novel falls under. Is it sci-fi? Is it fantasy? Or is it just plain good old American fiction. I think it’s the latter. What does Karen Thompson Walker say about that? “A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself.” So there you go, it’s just a story! But a pretty good one.

Remember how I said the novel seemed mistake free? Well, Karen says “I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.” Are you listening, Cormac McCarthy? Just kidding. The wonderful thing about literature is the wide variety of writers and styles available to the reader.

Recently, Karen explained to Scotsman.com how the novel got it’s start...”The Age of Miracles began as a short story inspired by the 2004 earthquake in Indonesia. It was so powerful that it knocked the earth’s axis, and shortened the length of a day by a tiny, tiny fraction.

It seemed haunting and creepy, that something we think is so fixed – the sun rises and the sun sets, every day – could change. I didn’t know that could happen. I wanted the cause to be unknown. The fact that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan happened [afterwards] was just a weird coincidence.” She wanted her novel to feel immediate and a little mysterious. The year is unspecified, enhancing the sensation that “this will happen tomorrow, [in] the very near future.” Walker’s goal was a novel that felt logical and plausible, but didn’t distract with technology. So there you go, now you know.

Although I’ve read my fill of apocalyptic novels, I have a few that I still want to read. Both of these books portray events after a nuclear war ( what else? ). Pat Frank’s  Alas, Babylon , published in 1959, is considered a classic; as is, 1961’s Hugo award winner A Canticle for Leibowitz written by Walter M. Miller, Jr. My favorite that I have read is still Larry Niven’s classic story of a wayward comet, Lucifer's Hammer .

Goblin Night Fever

The author sent me a copy of this novel to review:

According to folklore, goblins are evil spirits that cause mischief and harm. Indigo Lane proves that theory erroneous in this amusing and bewitching self proclaimed children's story. Wait, did Indigo call this a children’s story? Well, I say this novel is way too scary for a topsider child, it maybe okay for a baby trogg, or murkan. Here is what I would do... I would ditch the cartoon cover, and reclassify this book as young adult literature ( 12-18 years old ). In my opinion YA fiction is the hottest genre in literature today. Come on Indigo, you say this is “the first of three planned books in the Underkingdom series”, so lets make this first book a sort of prequel to the ensuing Underkingdom tales. Didn’t J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit just come to the movies as a prequel after The Lord of the Rings ran it’s course? And what about a Mountain Orc look-alike on the book’s cover, instead of a cartoon. Okay, enough advise, I’m just a reviewer. I did enjoy this first effort by Indigo Lane even though my child years are far behind me. There were some flaws; such as, too many supplementary characters with names to remember, and not enough pages to get warm and fuzzy with most of the characters. But was this a valiant effort? Absolutely!

The protagonists in this fantasy are Angelica and Cassandra Klamp, Chen, and our two wonderful goblin’s, Plopbottle and Broodangle. Angelica is a feisty child who loves Eddie Zombie music, while her sister, Cassandra loves schoolwork. Plopbottle is a two foot tall goblin who loves disco music and the fictitious topsider, Johnny Marino. His goblin friend, Broodangle, is a con-man de jour. Angelica and her classmates at Norbury Park School in London are kidnapped by the Underkingdom and dragged into a very deep abyss underground for unknown reasons. The children are separated into three groups: the fat ones go to food heaven; the bullies go to the trogg/ murkan army; and the incorrigibles, like Angelica, are sent to squad 99 doomed to work on dangerous assignments. It seems that the king of the Underkingdom wants to attack his enemy, the Iron Tooth scum, as King Gnarblad labels them.The problem is that the Iron Tooth territory lies under Paris, France. What does the King have in mind? Why is he fattening up 23 kids? Why are the squad 99 kids chained up at night? What is this monstrous machine the children are helping to build? Once the children are underground, the book sizzles. I suggest you grab a copy of this original fantasy ( don’t be dissuaded by the cartoon cover ) and dig in.

Although I said that there were too many characters with names, there were some good sidebar plots. I thought the continuous conflict between Angelica and the Henderson twins was entertaining. The story of the Brotherhood ( Broodangle is a member ) was hilarious and very topsider-like.The Brotherhood’s oath starts off with...”Now repeat after me,I promise to be dishonest. To be crafty, devious, and cunning at all times...” Is that a riot, or what? Lastly, I liked the Dickens-like names used; such as, Hobshanks, Pinchbeak, Bogmilla De Bogg, Garnax, and Ulrik Deathbringer. Some parts of the novel display Indigo Lane as an apprentice writer, and at other times he seems to break free and show the reader his future writer’s acumen and ability. I like this author and I expect that the next Underkingdom novels will show that the author has improved his prose and has further developed this “work in progress.”

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: In my journeys through bookstores, I have noticed an increase in young adult (YA)  books. This was probably started by J.K.Rowling’s rousing success with the Harry Potter series. Rowling has been quoted as saying...” I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself.” Well she amused herself to a fortune in the YA world. Then we have another success story in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games . She has been quoted as saying...” I don’t write about adolescence. I write about war. For adolescents.” Well said, but it is still YA literature. And now we come to Rick Riordan, YA writer of The Heroes of Olympus series, and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Rick Riordan’s advise is...“I tell aspiring writers that you have to find what you MUST write. When you find it, you will know, because the subject matter won’t let you go. It’s not enough to write simply because you think it would be neat to be published. You have to be compelled to write. If you’re not, nothing else that you do matters.” This is good advice for Indigo Lane and his Underkingdom series.

I still can’t get over the fact that so many writers have to publish their own books. I have had many beginning authors send me their novels, and most of them are very good. Why is it so difficult? Llumina Press states...” We know how it feels to get a rejection letter, and how it feels to finally get that book published.  We've been through writer's block, torn our collective hair out trying to find exactly the right words, and suffered over whether to leave our finest phrases in or take them out.” Sometimes I think it’s a matter of luck whether your book gets published, or not. As a matter of fact, what does Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics , and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass have in common? “These are just a few among many famous self-published writers whose works have become Best Sellers. Their works have sold millions of copies because they refused to give up on rejection letters from major publishing houses. After self-publishing their writings their works were subsequently picked up by major publishing houses.”

LIFE of PI

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a tiger by the toe. If he hollers, let him go, Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. For some reason that children’s rhyme popped into my mind as I started to read this tale of survival. It  involves a 16 year old Indian boy, and a 3 year old, 450 pound Bengal Tiger marooned together on a lifeboat for 227 days in the Pacific Ocean. Wow, what a tale spun by the Man Booker Prize winner, Yann Martel. Oh, I forgot to mention that initially there was also a zebra, a rat, a hyena, and a orangutan on board. You can imagine how long they lasted with a furious tiger aboard. Did I like this novel? Yes, but I’m not sure it was worthy of the “Booker” award. It has the strength of an unusual story, but lacks the strong finish to knock the reader out. I did like Martel’s easy to understand prose, and I also enjoyed the font changes that let the reader know who was narrating the story. It’s a difficult novel to rate because of the long and sometimes tedious middle, and then the seemingly abrupt ending. Yet it was so entertaining. Do you see my dilemma? I must recommend this novel by virtue of it’s original and exhilarating story, even though some say that it was similar to Moacyr Scliar’s Max and the Cats .
 

The first part of the story introduces the reader to our protagonist, Piscine (self changed to Pi, because of people mispronouncing his name as ‘pissing’) Molitor Patel. He lives with his father, mother, and brother Ravi in Pondicherry, India. The family owns a prominent zoo during the turbulent reign of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the mid 1970s. Pi is going through a confused time in his life were he is unsure if he is a Hindu, a Catholic, or a Muslim. This is one part of the book that I didn’t think was relevant to the story. Anyway, Pi’s father has had enough of India’s politics and decides to sell his wild animals to various zoo’s in America and elsewhere. He boards his family and animals on the Japanese cargo ship, Tsimtsum with the ultimate destination of Canada, and a fresh start in life. But guess what? The ship sinks several days out of port, resulting in the loss of Pi’s family and everybody else, except for Pi and a few animals treading water.

As the ship sinks, Pi has been tossed into a lifeboat by crew members. He sees the tiger ( Richard Parker ) struggling in the water. Pi throws a roped lifebuoy to the tiger and starts to haul him in, and then realizes that he is dragging a wild tiger to his boat! Pi says “ Let go of that lifebuoy, Richard Parker! Let go, I said. I don’t want you here, do you understand? Go somewhere else. Leave me alone. Get lost. Drown! Drown!” Too late, the tiger pulls himself aboard. You might wonder how a tiger got the name Richard Parker. Well, when the tiger was young, he was captured by a hunter named Richard Parker. The hunter saw the tiger drinking a lot of water, so he named him “ Thirsty “. However when they went to the ticket booth for the train ride to the zoo, confusion ran amok, and the names on the tickets got reversed, and the hunter became Thirsty, and the tiger became Richard Parker. At the zoo, Pi’s father thought it was amusing and kept the unusual name for his tiger. Most of the remaining novel is about survival at sea, or man versus beast for seven months on a 26’ by 8’ lifeboat. Who wins? Can Pi train the tiger on the boat? Will the tiger try to eat Pi? Can Pi catch enough food to keep Richard Parker happy? These are a few of the questions that will be answered, as you read this daring fantasy tale. This novel is well worth the effort, I suggest you add it to your books-to-read list.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Man versus ocean beast novels have interested all genres of reader for years, not that Richard Parker is an ocean beast. But who can forget the hunt for the white whale in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick , or the Nautilus’s battle with the giant squid in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , or Peter Benchley’s modern classic, Jaws . As in Pi’s plight, being shipwrecked has also spawned some classic novels; such as, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe , shipwrecked on a Caribbean island for 28 years, or Johann Wyss’s Swiss Family Robinson , a family trapped on a deserted island.

Yann Martel has seven published works, and has been involved in three movies. According to Wikipedia, he was influenced by... “Martel has said in a number of interviews that Dante's Divine Comedy is the single most impressive book [he has] ever read. In talking about his most memorable childhood book, he recalls Le Petit Chose  by Alphonse Daudet. He said that he read it when he was ten years old, and it was the first time he found a book so heartbreaking that it moved him to tears.”

And to ponder some notable quotes from Yann Martel: “If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.”

From Pi, in the Life of Pi: “I was giving up. I would have given up - if a voice hadn't made itself heard in my heart. The voice said "I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen everyday. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die. Amen.”

And lastly: “I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”

A HIGHER CALL

My God, what a book! Adam Makos with Larry Alexander bring us this harrowing and chivalrous story of two World War II Air Forces. This is not just a story about an incident involving a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 and a U.S. B-17 Flying Fortress. No, it’s also about both sides fighting with courage and perseverance while maintaining a healthy respect for each other. The German Air Force fighter pilots were not Nazi Party members; in fact, their attitude was a thorn in the side of the German Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering (German spelling). They fought because they had no choice: fly or die.  On page 288, the pilot's attitude is confirmed when Major Hohagen of the German Air Force tells a joke to one of the book’s protagonist, Ace Franz Stigler: “Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and all of their friends are out on a boat at sea, there’s a big storm and their boat sinks! Who’s saved?” Franz knew the joke. “Germany.” If a political officer overheard this joke, by law they both would have been executed. Herr Goering would occasionally slip a political officer into the ranks of the Air Force to get the flavor of the pilots. I extol the effort the authors made to bring the readers this compelling non-fiction Pulitzer Prize worthy story. I know that says a lot, but you haven’t read this book.

The book opens with the story of Franz Stigler, a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter pilot, who completed 487 missions by the war’s end and focuses on his time served in North Africa and his service defending Italy and Germany from U.S. and British bombing raids. The reader meets many aces such as Hans-Joachim Marseille, The Star of Africa , and General Adolf Galland, leader of all fighter pilots. Most of the pilots we meet were awarded the Knights Cross (30 or more victories). Bear in mind that you are going to feel empathy for these men, even though they are the enemy. They fought bravely for their country, not for the Nazi Party. They fought with honor and with a knight's chivalry throughout the war. They had a code of ethics similar to the American fighters and bombers: they didn’t shoot a parachuting enemy pilot, nor mistreat them as a POW. Unfortunately, that can’t be said if the SS did the capturing. It’s sad that the typical German citizen hated the German fighter pilot at the end of the war because: ”You didn’t keep the bombs from falling.” That's a pretty sad statement since no one could stop thousands of B-17's dropping bombs every day. The Germans called our monstrous B-17 Flying Fortress "The Four Motors." Each plane rained down a payload of twelve 500 pound bombs.

The second part of the book tells the story of a twenty year old American pilot, 2nd Lt. Charlie Brown (Not of Snoopy’s Red Baron squad). He is a member of the 379th bomber group stationed in England. You are going to like his crew: Al ‘Doc’ Sadok, Robert ‘Andy’ Andrews, and Spencer ‘Pinky’ Luke, to name a few. They get into a now famous incident with Franz Stigler on Charlie’s first bombing raid as a Captain that winds up becoming the title of this book. My definition of "a higher call" is “vacating a duty for a better one" or "it’s God’s wish". I don’t know if the author had my definitions in mind, or not. You might ask, "What is the incident?" Well, I can’t tell you! You'll have to read this wonderful story yourself to find out. By the way, this book doesn’t read like the history that it is; instead, it reads like a novel such as Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts .

The third part of the book deals with Goering’s dissatisfaction with Germany’s famous fighter pilots. He would have liked them executed for treasonous statements, and he accuses them of being cowards, but they are too popular, so he makes them form the JV-44’s unit (the squadron of experts). They are responsible for defending Germany against the massive U.S. bombing raids in the last months of the war. Goering figures that they will die quickly against overwhelming odds. He forgets that these men are legends in their own time: Franz Stigler, Major Gerhard Barkhorn (301 victories!), Col. Luetzow, Oberst Steinhoff, Oberst Roedel, Major Hohagen, Oberst Trautloft, and Hauptmann "The Count" Krupinski. This part of the book was very exciting and sometimes very sad. The rest of the book deals with what happened to these men (German and American) in the ensuing years after the war. Well, like Arte Johnson on the Laugh-In show used to say: “It’s very interesting”. So is this gripping book!

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Reichsmarshall Goering was an ace fighter for Germany in World War I and joined the Nazi Party in 1922. He spent most of his time stealing art and property from the Jewish people. He was sentenced to hang by the neck at the Nuremberg Trials but took a cyanide pill the night prior to his sentence being carried out. A U.S. private is said to have given Goering the pill hidden in a fountain pen that was smuggled into the prison by a German woman.

After the war, Franz saw the ghosts in his dreams of the Holocaust, the crimes of the minority (the Nazi Party) that had spoiled every German fighting man’s honor. One German pilot spoke for the fighting forces when he wrote, "The atrocities committed under the sign of the Swastika deserve the most severe punishment. The allies ought to leave the criminals to the German fighting soldiers to bring to justice." (pages 348-349.)

Adam Makos is a journalist, historian, and editor of the military magazine Valor. In his fifteen years of work in the military field, Makos has interviewed countless veterans from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and present-day wars. In the bibliography section of the book, Adam states that "It’s important to note that Franz Stigler flew 487 combat missions during WWII, and Charlie Brown flew 29. Both men had documented the time, date, and place of every mission in their logbooks, but only Charlie’s logbook survived the war. In May 1945, American interrogators seized Franz’s logbook and it was never seen again."

And finally, I thought the part in the book about the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was a real eye-opener for this reviewer. Only 1,074 women passed the flying courses that allowed them to pick up and deliver all sorts of military planes from the factory to the bases.The character in the book was Marjorie Ketcham, who had a budding relationship with Lt. Charlie Brown until he was transferred to England. According to Wikipedia, “They flew sixty million miles of operational flights from aircraft factories to ports of embarkation and military training bases. They also towed targets for live anti-aircraft artillery practice, simulated strafing missions, and transported cargo. Women in these roles flew almost every type of aircraft flown by the USAAF during World War II. In addition, a few exceptionally qualified women were allowed to test rocket-propelled planes, to pilot jet-propelled planes, and to work with radar-controlled targets. Between September 1942 and December 1944, the WASP delivered 12,650 aircraft of 78 different types."