"Plum Island" Is A Fun Guy Fantasy, But Way Too Long

 

After 20 or so years, Nelson DeMille is coming out with a squeal to this novel, titled "The Maze" in 2022. So here's my review of his 1997 novel "Plum Island" which introduced his most famous character, John Corey

I really like Nelson Demille and his John Corey novels. John Corey is a really good character, one of those lovable old-fashioned guys who talk tough and sees women as objectable figures, but also can work with one without problem, and seems he would never commit anything more than some stupid comments towards them. However, when it comes to the bad guys, Corey has no problem going after them.

 This is the first novel featuring DeMille's signature character, and the mystery reads differently today than it did in 1997. Basically, two friends of Corey, Tom and Judy Gordon turn up dead. It's unclear why exactly  this young yuppie Long Island couple would befriend an old, right-wing guy like Corey. The explanation isn't great. He hit on the wife at a bar, and instead of walking out in disgust, the husband and wife are charmed and befriend him? Er. Sometimes DeMille's book reads a bit like an old-fashioned, conservative fantasy world, which is unrealistic, even for the mid-90s way before woke culture and the MeToo movement. However, the plot is they are murdered, and at first, there's suspicion that they were trying to sell chemicals to create a mass virus that infects America then they could become rich selling the cure to it. That's the part that reads differently today. However, there's a twist that their murder actually has to do with lost treasure buried on Long Island. Corey makes a ton of cracks and says some stupid things. His love of the death penalty, even for a right-winger, comes off more creepy than conservative un-PC humor. However, I like Corey and I like the writing of DeMille. 

He is the middle-aged guy's Nicholas Sparks, as in the total opposite of Sparks but read by middle-aged guys for the same reason women read Sparks. It's a male-centric fantasy where every attractive younger woman wants to sleep with an overweight, old-school, and much older former cop on Long Island. Also, this old-school former cop breaks a ton of rules to catch a killer, then simply walks away with a quiet deal to go on with his life. Corey is the opposite of every male character Sparks ever wrote but is read for the same reason women read about men in Sparks characters.  He's a fantasy figure in a fantasy world where everyone is having an instant-made relationship for not a ton of reasoning. 

The main problem with this book, and a lot of DeMille's books, is they really need an editor. I mean this was almost 600 pages, and this being a pretty basic mystery, THAT IS WAY TOO LONG. By the end, you do want this guy to wrap it up, and he doesn't. This isn't a Stephen King or fantasy novel or some historical novel that needs a ton of explanation or world-building. I grew up on Long Island. I get it. Even if you never been to Long Island, it's not that hard to figure out. I was torn between three and four stars, while not ever thinking five. However DeMille has a whatever, it's all great and cranky charm I like and you don't see much in thriller writers anymore. However, because his book was so weirdly long to the point it became torture by the end, it is bumped down to three stars.

“Borne” Is An Insanely Solid Work Of Weird Fiction

Weird fiction as a genre can go so many ways. It can be just plain weird, in a way you aren’t really sure what you just read, but are glad you have read something different. It can be weird in a reflective way, in a way that it lets you look at something in real life in a different way. Then it can make you feel for something so weird, you are surprised you felt emotions for it. “Borne” by Jeff VanderMeer falls into the third category. It’s a very, very solid piece of weird fiction, and I was surprised how good it was, possibly going up to number one in my end of the year wrap up of the best things I read this year.

“Borne” is about a woman named Rachel, who makes her living as a scavenger, in a dystopian city which is overlooked by a giant bear named Mord. The giant bear was by mistake created by a biotech company, now has taken over and is a constant threat to the people who live in the city. This is one of those dystopian futures, with scant details, which is more acceptable in weird science fiction then traditional science fiction. Traditional science fiction with a dystopian theme would have pages and pages of information concerning world building, giving us details, names, dates, and backstories. Weird fiction, because it’s well, weird, can skip over all that. We don’t know the name of the company. We don’t exactly know the time line of the novel’s world either. Rachel, as the narrator, dives into her back story, but most if it is a happy childhood we know will end at some point due to the world turning into a dystopian one at some point. She lives with her boyfriend, named Wick, and on her journey, finds a shape shifting furry technological mess she names Borne.

Throughout the novel, she starts to care deeply for Borne, despite Wick wanting to destroy him. She starts to consider herself a single mother. She becomes emotionally attached, and ironically, Borne is lovable in his simplicity. I found myself feeling some deeper emotions for these characters than I have for some of the more traditional and human characters I have read recently. Jeff VanderMeer also writes a believable female voice in Rachel, so bravo for that, because a lot of male writers stink at writing women, much more in their own narrative voices. I felt a lot of compassion for everyone in this novel. Despite a lot of vagueness on purpose, I didn’t find this novel overly hard to follow, either. Sometimes it’s hard to follow weird fiction as a story, but this novel didn’t have that problem.

“Borne” is brilliant, bizarre and mesmerizing. It’s well worth the read.  Jeff VanderMeer is a very, very solid writer and this is a very, very solid piece of weird fiction.

John Grisham Returns To Camino Island In "Camino Winds" Because...I Don't Know?

I actually reviewed the first book in this series, "Camino Island" in 2017. When I gave it a read back in that year, it wasn't a bad read, as it's always great to see John Grisham get away from his legal thriller genre and write something else. One of the biggest surprises in the last 15 years of books, has been that John Grisham, known for most of his career as the king of the airport novel, had started to show he can write more than his genre. He can write actual stories about people who weren't lawyers or in a crisis that required a lawyer. He started to show range with his sports novels, like "Playing For Pizza" in 2007 and "Calico Joe" in 2012. In 2009, he published a well received short story collection called "Ford Country". "Camino Island" in 2017 was another non-legal thriller, this time about a shy young woman named Mercer who, while going back to the island to pack up her grandmother's things, gets hired by an insurance firm to track down a rare manuscript stealer named Bruce. She gets wrapped up in his pretentious group of author friends. The book was alright. Not one of his stronger books, but a decent read. So, I was surprised to see he wrote a 2020 follow up called "Camino Winds". 

This one involves Bruce again, along with his group of writer friends, all hanging out on the Florida island, drinking wine, talking books, and spending time in Bruce's bookshop. While there, one of the writers, Nelson, is murdered after a massive storm takes place. At first, cops assume he died because he decided to stay behind and brave the storm, but another writer in the group suspects he was murdered by a woman he had a fling with. Bruce and his friends decide to solve the case themselves, because...well, I call the cops, but these are writers unlike me, so they will give solving the case a try. Basically, they dig deeper and deeper, leading to a conspiracy involving nursing homes, and an unpublished manuscript by Nelson. There's also a long chapter which feels like it fits right in a run of the mill Grisham book, but feels out of place for this one.

Mercer makes a couple quick cameos in the book, as she is now a bestselling author herself. She became successful but I'm not sure her personality would have changed from a shy young woman to a successful as heck author dating an attractive college boy, and who is now part of Bruce's group. It seemed like too radical a change. 

Either way, it's hard not to finish a Grisham novel. For better or worse, Grisham is always a very, very solid writer. His narratives never become messes, and his prose is always witty and clean. If you see it in the library, it won't be a bad idea to pick it up, but it will likely be next to better books by him.

Revisiting Noam Chomsky’s “9/11” 20 Years Later

Looking through the reviews I’ve written for Goodreads, one of them was Noam Chomsky’s book “9/11”, which surprised me because I read that book so long ago. I read this book back in high school, when I was really into journalism and writing for my school paper. While I didn’t become a journalist, I still remember many of the types of left wing rhetoric books I’ve read back then and the effects they have on my current thinking, from Seymore Hersh’s critical account of the Bush years, “Chain of Command” to Noam Chomsky’s famous left wing books, which are almost text books in how to criticize America’s weaker pointers both in America and their policies abroad. As well as more mainstream left wing books, including the only liberal bestseller at the time, Michael Moore’s humorous left wing screed “Stupid White Men and Other Sorry Excuses For The State of The Nation.” Though I would like to revisit all these books, I think the first one to revisit is Chomsky’s “9/11.”

First I should give some background to my experience as a reader at that time. After September 11^th, growing up in New York, and being in the New York metro area as a middle school student right after the attacks happened, uncritical patriotism was reparent and understandably so. However, there were still left wing facets in America, but unlike other times, where being left wing or right wing is hotly debated in the country, being left wing at that time was absolutely a crime against humanity. The country was firmly behind President Bush, things like the Patriot Act where being enacted and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where just starting to take shape. Simply put, it wasn’t popular to question any of this. Comedian Bill Maher lost his ABC show for bringing up American abuses that could of embolden terrorists and filmmaker Michael Moore was booed off a typically left wing Oscar stage for calling the reasoning for a Iraq war a pack of lies. However, in smaller corners, academic liberalism was still going, and one of the most influential leftists in American history is author and professor Noam Chomsky.

One of the unique things about Chomsky is he is a professor of linguistics, not political science, yet his writings on politics and his activisms are more famous then the text books he’s written on languages. Reading “9/11” by Noam Chomsky, published by Seven Stories Press, a New York City based publisher known for less mainstream books, covers the many reasons America wasn’t totally free of the implications that led up to 9/11. People where asking at the time, why do they hate us? This book would provide a clear answer. Chomsky talks about America’s abusive foreign policies throughout the years in other countries. He brings up America’s poor policies in Latin America, something Chomsky has brought up multiple times before in other publications and appearances. He also brings up the many dictatorships America has helped prop up in the Middle East, leading to resentment among the people towards America.

Chomsky points out the many times America had been condemned by the World Court in the Hague for foreign policy actions, as well as asking if the United States should follow the World Court or shouldn’t they? He thinks they should, despite having a spotty record following up. 9/11 is a fast read at only 140 pages, but it’s packed with much information about abuses by America that fuelled resentment towards countries who wanted to see the United States pay, and thus helped lead to the 9/11 attack. Chomsky’s writing, is as usual, dry, as he writes in the same way he wrote his text books on language, but the information and views he shares are some of the most influence in American left wing literature.

The only right wing figure I remember commenting on Noam Chomsky’s books after 9/11 was right wing radio show host Sean Hannity, who in his book “Deliver Us From Evil”, criticized a speech Chomsky gave after 9/11 where he criticized what he called “propagandist military leading” as “bizarre”. Chomsky and co-author Edward Herrman, another professor, wrote a book together in 1988 where they criticized American media’s ability to lead people down the wrong road as “manufactured consent”, also titling the book itself that term. The themes in Chomsky’s book would be used in a more mainstream platform through Michael Moore’s Oscar winning film “Bowling For Columbine” in his infamous “Wonderful World” segment, which set footage of abuses by American policy that helped lead to 9/11 to Louis Armstrong’s recording of “It’s A Wonderful World”, considered one of the most famously powerful montages in the history of documentary making. After this week where America’s involvement in Afghanistan finally ended, 20 years after the fact, a reconsideration of leftist views should be brought up in reasonable ways so we aren’t led down the same road, and  re-reading Chomsky’s book “9/11” and other texts by him would be helpful.

"The Sundown Motel" Is One Of The Best Novels I Read This Year

The 2020 thriller “The Sun Down Motel” does a lot of things right.  In brings in creepy elements that are closer to a supernatural horror, but without them overwhelming the whole overall narrative to the point it feels out of place. The author Simone St James also heavily uses the 1^st/3^rd person narration technique. Her chapters are long enough to make me feel attached to both narration styles, which sometimes can be a problem with that writing technique. The 1^st/3^rd person narration pick is just a personal presence of mine as a reader but I understand it’s use in the thriller genre.

The story concerns a young women in upstate New York named Viv Delaney in 1982, who stops at a creepy motel , and ends up working there on the night shift. As she works there, she comes across a ton of creepy characters, including a salesman she suspects of being a serial killer of women. The other half of the novel takes place in 2017, where the niece she never met, Carly Kirk, comes to the now run down town in upstate to investigate the disappearance of the aunt she never met. While there, she meets a cute boy, meets a college girl who goes to a local school, and a bunch of older folks who knew her aunt back in the day. She too ends up working the night shift at the Sundown Motel. While the younger folks seem like your run of the mill college kids running around upstate New York, the older folks seem more like your salt of the earth people from the real upstate New York. I was happy to see upstate New York as a setting in a novel, because as someone who lived 10 or so years there, I can tell you it truly an interesting place and very different from down state. It’s the part of New York that isn’t iconic but is instead just a long high way drive up to Canada, and you see some interesting and weird places along the way. This book does nail that.

The ghost elements of the hotel are never too much, but are there, and adds to the creepy feeling of the place, as motels in general have a creepiness to them. The diners and movie theatres and strip malls on the side of the highway also adds to the overall upstate feeling. The pacing did keep me turning pages because I never really knew what exactly made the aunt disappear, nor if her niece was getting any closer to the truth. One of my favorite characters was the older upstate New York cop who knew her aunt back in the day, and wasn’t eager to give off too many details.

This was a excellent thriller, and one of the best books I read this year. I recommend reading it. This book did nail the night shift. Overall, this aunt and niece’s experience as the all night clerks at the Sundown Motel reflect the feeling I had as a all night guard in upstate New York much closer, and nails that creepy feeling of what it’s like to be in a place no one is really thinking about beyond the little corner of the universe you are in. Also the end I didn’t see coming, and it was excellent.

"Ready Player One" is Ready Player Fun as Long As You Don't Take It Too Seriously

 

Solidly fun book if you don't overthink it. Not great science fiction nor great cyberpunk. I would call this book "nerd porn" more than anything. Basically, this book is like if Seth MacFarlane wrote a science fiction novel. Of course, this is a book review, so I'm going to overthink it. That's what you came here for. Some people have complained about the female character being treated like a trophy for the main dorky guy character but what do you expect from a novel called READY PLAYER ONE? You really expect this not to be a male fantasy to some extent? While it doesn't have to be, there's a good shot it will be. I guess the shock it is, is more annoying to me than anything. As for the writing, Ernest Cline is more a fun writer than a good one. He even uses 80s geek references on every other page to pad out the story. If this was a dystopian future, I would think 2000s culture be their old media references by then but I digress. The Easter egg part though is a pretty good goal for the characters. As much as I enjoyed the pop culture references though, it started to become a bit of a storytelling crutch. Like every time Cline needed to pad out the book, he throw in some pro longer pop culture reference to kill a few more pages. Like I don't have enough story and....OH LOOK! A DELOREAN! REMEMBER HOW GREAT "BACK TO THE FUTURE" WAS?! THE IRON GIANT! OH MY GOD! HARRY POTTER! WOW! It's true that a ton of it doesn't make a ton of sense. Wade is dorky, but not to the point he wouldn't have no life, even in the dystopian future he's in. Samantha, the girl he meets online, and falls for, has a birth mark and...that's it. Who cares? They become these good looking avatars, but the way they are described in the book doesn't sound like they are so bad in real life. Doug Walker pointed out in his review that this is even worst in the movie as the actors and actresses are all more than average looking on the attractive scale, so when Samantha calls herself ugly in the movie over a birth mark, it rings hallow. Also, the game created by James Halliday seems like a lot of RPGs online today, and the pop culture references seem like they would be from the 2000s at this point. I love "Back To The Future", but if it was 40 years ago today, it be 60+ years ago by then. I mean, Wade even brings up watching "Family Ties" on the internet, and that's way back. Pretty sure Ernest Cline has a man crush on Michael J Fox. I'm a sucker for these type of references. Just ask my favorite show "The Big Bang Theory", but "The Big Bang Theory" also had characters I grew to care about and watch develop beyond their own little world without ever completely giving it up. When the characters in "Ready Player One" finally grow beyond nerd land, it seems more tacked on then really earned. I'm going to put a spoiler warning here for those who haven't read it so be warned. Don't read beyond this line. Wade gets the girl at the end and never logs into the game again. That's fine, and I actually think it's good when you can ditch some nerdy stuff for a bit more real life, but also, it didn't really seem earned, and you don't just ditch everything you like because you got the girl finally. Contrast that with Leonard from "The Big Bang Theory", who we watch develop confidence to try to get with Penny. He's the stereotype nerd, like Wade, and most nerds really want the same thing. A girl instead of a obsession over comic books. However, Leonard tries to find ways to expand his world to meet the girl half way instead of Wade, who basically sees the girl as a trophy in a VR game. Though "The Big Bang Theory" is a sitcom over 12 seasons, the arc isn't that complicated, and I don't see why we couldn't get that more with Wade in this book. If you want a more intelligent and serious read of the same premise, check out Neal Stephenson's novel "Reamde", also published in 2011. If you want to read a faster book than "Reamde" on the same themes, "Ready Player One" is a good choice. Ready Player One" is 374 pages while "Reamde" is 1,386 pages. Even though by the end, you get a bit annoyed with Ernest Cline and want him to shut up about his geeky obsessions and wrap this up. A sequel to "Ready Player One'' called "Ready Player Two" came out this year, so there you go. However I can see why "Ready Player One" sold a ton more copies. However, "Ready Player One" is fun and quick enough read, with at least something different to it, if you don't overthink it. Three stars. Before I wrap this up though, someone should write a female character driven version of this book. Lets go reader who is inspired by me. I expect a thanks at the end of the book.

"PIERCING THE CELESTIAL OCEAN: The Saga of the Cerulean Universe Begins" Is A Solid Piece Of Science Fiction

Thank you Kip Koelsch and Goodreads for a free copy and the opportunity to review it.

"Piercing The Celestial Ocean" by Kip Koelsch is pure old fashion science fiction for the most part. It has a very "Star Trek" feel, even down to borrowing Captain Picard's catch phrase, "Make it so" with the captain in this novel. What I think was a unique angle to the story was more of an island setting than a space one and a religion vs science angle.

The book opens with a scientist on a ship coming upon a body of a human he suspects may be a humanoid of some kind coming through a wormhole, and after that brief opening chapter, we are immediately thrown back 600 years earlier.

We first went on a short religious journey which felt more fantasy than science fiction, then later on in another period of time to a crew of scientists coming upon the remains of that journey. The crew finds out there may be a scientific basis to long standing religious beliefs, and tries to set up a mission to go underwater and prove the heavenly beings this religion believes in are actually organic beings.

The two main characters on the mission are , A’zra and G’regor, with a hinted romantic relationship,  and with A'Zra taking charge and being the one to go down in the depths of the ocean.

This novel is hard science fiction, and very well imagined, but more dense than your run of the mill popular science fiction so don't expect a straight page turner, yet it is also an adventure novel so it has that going for it too. There were some times in the book I got a bit confused with the plot, and who was who, and who was dating who, when it came to the little parts with the personal lives of the crew.  I've read dense science fiction before, but can tell you, they make for very thoughtful and detailed reads  but not for page turning reads with a ton of emotional asides. This is true for this book too.

Overall, I liked the novel a lot and it was an overall solid science fiction novel that poses questions about science vs spirituality, and how far one should go for their ideals. It felt a little disjointed in parts, but overall, at the end, it ties together really well. Three stars.

Three stars