— by Wombat-socho
This week has been all about sequels, which in this particular instance is a Good Thing, because all of these sequels are pretty good stuff. We’ll start with Larry Correia’s Spellbound
Oddly similar to the Grimnoir trilogy are the sequels to James Schmitz’ classic young adult SF novel, The Witches of Karres
The reason I maintain that the Karres novels are similar to the Grimnoir trilogy is that they share a similar plot: small band of super-powered heroes goes up against mysterious and powerful enemies in a battle to save humanity. The stages are different, the characters are different, but I think if you like Schmitz’s novel you’re probably going to like Correia’s, and vice versa – though given the unsparing description of violence in the Grimnoir trilogy, you might want to give a likely young person a copy of The Witches of Karres instead.
Last on the reading list this week: Philip K. Dick’s Clans of the Alphane Moon
, an excellent recounting of the Battle of Samar, in which half a dozen escort carriers with their puny screen of destroyers and destroyer escorts managed to meet and defeat a Japanese battleship task force. Samar doesn’t get much mention among the great battles of the Pacific War, partially because explaining how it came about is terribly embarrassing to the Navy and one of its heroes, Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey, but heroism like this deserves to be remembered, and Hornfischer does an excellent job of telling the tale of Taffy 3 and its desperate struggle in October of 1944. This book won the Morison Prize, and rightly so; Hornfischer is every bit as good a storyteller as Morison, while incorporating the more modern historians’ trope of including the stories of the crewmen who served the guns, armed the planes, and died in the hundreds when the Japanese gunners finally found the range.
. Correia adds additional goodness by making his hero a stereotypical hard-boiled private eye straight out of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, but unlike the classic noir P.I.’s Heavy Jake Sullivan has an additional talent: he’s a Gravity Spiker, one of those rare people who can manipulate the pull and intensity of gravity. When we first meet Jake, he’s being strong-armed into helping the federal Bureau of Investigation, which arranged to have him released from prison in return for helping them chase down and capture other Actives. This time, they want him to take down an old girlfriend, and that’s far from the last thing to go wrong. As usual, Correia does a great job of delivering lots of action along with serious thought about how the world would be changed if 1% of the population acquired magical abilities. I am waiting for a copy of 
, I read that too – and all I can say is WOW. The stakes are huge, Jake Sullivan is surrounded by allies of questionable loyalty, and he’s going straight into Shanghai on what looks for all the world like a suicidal attack on the Chairman of the Imperium. He’s got a few tricks up his sleeve, though, to say nothing of friends in low places. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a novel this much since finishing Correia’s 
, which is saying quite a bit. Not sure if you’ll like the Grimnoir novels? Have a taste with the short story 
, and later by Kevin Costner in the Brian DePalma movie 
. Chicago is just the beginning of the Eliot Ness story, though, and Douglas Perry brings you – in true Paul Harvey style – the rest of the story. In 
, Perry continues the story through Ness’ brilliant career as Cleveland’s Director of Public Safety, in which he cleaned up an infamously corrupt city police force and broke the local mob – for which he became much better known than his exploits as a T-man working against Capone, since after all (in contrast to the movies) it was the IRS that actually nailed Capone for tax evasion; Ness and his prohibition agents were more of a sideshow and backup operation in case the tax charges couldn’t be made to stick. After Cleveland, though, the story of Eliot Ness is a less happy one, but you can read about that yourself. A good book that does an excellent job of offsetting all the Hollywood hoopla surrounding a genuine hero.
, a wild tale about hackers, feudal corporatism, an Aleutian with a nuke, and a girl and her dog. He followed that up with the even more complex and fascinating 
…and then there was 
. Cryptonomicon was an outstanding book that jumped back and forth between World War II and the present, with cryptography tying it all together, but whatever it was, it sure wasn’t science fiction, and it didn’t really fit in the technothriller genre box either. It was still popular with science fiction fans, and a lot of other folks bought it too. 
departed even further from SF, being a three-part historical novel set in the 17th and 18th centuries. Stephenson insists that it’s SF due to some mysterious events that take place and the novels’ concentration on technology, cryptology and numismatics, but he may be the only person that believes this. With the exception of the monumentally boring 
-the first piece of writing by Stephenson I had to push myself to finish, hoping he’d pull a rabbit out of the hat and make the dull, boring book exciting at last- he’s avoided the genre lately in favor of historical novels co-written with a squad of other folks (
) or mainstream novels that, like Cryptonomicon, have a lot to do with the Internet and the people that use it, whether they’re MMORPG magnates, fantasy novelists, or deranged Russian mafiosi. I am speaking, of course, of 
, which resembles its predecessor Cryptonomicon quite a bit but doesn’t have nearly as much annoying and obtrusive mathematical equations interrupting the narrative.
, which covers World War II in Western Europe from 1944-45, and in its own way is every bit as bloody and gore-spattered as Stephenson’s tales of the Mongol invasion. Being a sometime student of military history and a wargamer, I was conscious in an academic way of the staggering casualties and materiel losses involved in the reconquest of Europe and the fall of the Third Reich, but Atkinson’s book brought it all home in a way that no previous history had before. Atkinson quotes dozens, possibly hundreds of soldiers, sailors and airmen who did not survive the war, and spares nothing in his account of the grisly battles from Normandy Beach through the Hurtgen Forest and into the concentration camps. I don’t know if I’ll ever re-read it, but it was definitely worth reading once. 
, which is a fascinating book about infamous crimes, the criminals who commit them (or were convicted of them; not always the same thing) and the times in which they occurred. James first rose to public notice as a student of baseball, the coiner of the word “sabermetrics” to describe that study, and the author of several books on the subject, including the fascinating 
, but lately he’s been branching out into other matters that interest him, and he’s very much worth your time. The other book is an old favorite, Samuel Eliot Morison’s 
, a condensation of his epic fifteen-volume 
, which is without question the best-written and most enjoyable of the four official military histories published by the U.S. Armed Forces. Neither are available in Kindle format, unfortunately, but at $3.96 for a used hardback copy, 
, the second volume in the third reissue by Baen of the Raj Whitehall novels. This time the series has been republished in three two-book collections, with 
(best described as Raj Whitehall and Center vs. the Draka) added to round out the original five novels. Same books, of course, but it looks like someone at Baen went through and removed the more numerous annoying typos that infested the first two editions. Worth picking up if you don’t have either of the first two editions on hand.
, which I borrowed through the Amazon Prime Lending Library. It starts with a duel to the death between our hero, Captain Maddox of Star Watch Intelligence, and a scion of the corporate oligarchy and rapidly changes course to a desperate quest with a misfit crew (including a bonafide Mad Scientist and an alcoholic ace pilot) for an six millenia old alien dreadnaught that may be just a legend – all the while being pursued by the New Men, posthumans with superior technology as well as mental and physical advantages over regular humans. As if his job wasn’t verging on impossible already, Maddox has an additional problem: was he deliberately planted as an orphan by the New Men to infiltrate and betray humanity? Lots of adventure, derring-do, and humanity outfoxing its nominal betters. Highly recommended.
. The direct sequel to 
, it covers the disastrous invasion of Kez by Marshal Tamas, and the resulting counter-invasion by Kez which forces the Marshal’s estranged son, the celebrated hero and powder mage “Two-Shot” Taniel, into the front lines as seemingly the only man who can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat – if he can keep the generals in command from hanging him or locking him up in the stockade. Meanwhile, back in the capital city, retired inspector Adamat closes in on Lord Vetas, conspiracies and politics are everywhere, and the last mage of the old king’s cabal has some debts to pay. McClellan does an excellent job of keeping all the plot balls in the air while continuing to develop his characters, and I think he gives S.M. Stirling a good run for his money in his unstinting portrayal of the horrors of Napoleonic-style warfare, only made worse by conventional and powder magic. I found this in the library, which is good since I wasn’t about to pay $12.99 for the Kindle edition; used hardcovers are starting to come onto the market for $14, but paperback copies are still insanely expensive. Recommended, but you may want to wait for the prices to come down and/or Hachette to regain their sanity.
series*, and the most recent installment I’ve read, 
, is a worthy addition to the series. Co-written by Flint and Charles Gannon, it has much in common with 
, which immediately precedes 
), which I was reading at the time) didn’t help. Seas of Change was okay brain candy, but Commander Cantrell in the West Indies is a LOT better.
is an honest look at the life and career of the great mariner who opened America to European colonization. A shorter version (the Reader’s Digest edition, if you will) is his 
. Finally, if you want to go right to the source, there is 
, translated and edited by Morison. Columbus may not have been a stainless hero (who is?) but he deserves better than the lies peddled by Howard Zinn and other revisionist scumballs.
‘s Kindle edition is on sale for $1.99. The early chapters dealing with America’s rapid demobilization after World War 2 and unreadiness for the Korean War seem especially pertinent these days, as Fate seems intent on dragging President Obama and the rest of us back to Iraq, kicking and screaming.
. It’s the sequel to 
, in which Mike Havel’s bastard son Rudi Mackenzie (a/k/a the High King of Montival) dies at the hands of Koreans who have come all the way across the Pacific in pursuit of the Emperor of Japan. Now Rudi’s daughter, Crown Princess Orlaith, and the new Empress, Reiko, must overcome their fathers’ deaths and plunge into the heart of the Death Lands formerly known as Los Angeles in pursuit of one of Japan’s Sacred Treasures – with not only savage cannibal Eaters but, apparently, the evil that once manifested itself in Montival’s deadly enemies the Cutters. Some reviewers at Amazon complained that this book basically just sets the table for the next arc in the Change series, in which we’re acquainted with the sons and daughters of the heroes and heroines of the war against the Prophet as they set off with Orlaith, Reiko and her household guards on an adventure that sounds only slightly less deadly than Rudi’s own cross-continent quest for the Sword of the Lady.
, which reminds me somewhat of P.J. O’Rourke’s infamous 
except that Jodi Adler’s advice is more about high society (interpret that as you will) in LA and New York, and how one deals with the innumerable tedious people encountered there. Some of the advice is serious, but half the fun is guessing which of the many nuggets in this slim volume those might be. In the meantime, it’s a light and amusing read, especially recommended to those fond of snark and sarcasm.
and 
, because it’s been a few months since I had my last Sharpe fix.