read Bright's Passage (3 stars)

Bright's Passage: A Novel by Josh Ritter

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a sad little story about a World War I veteran from West Virginia with a rough upbringing and an even rougher adult life. It's no wonder he carries on conversations with his horse, whom he addresses as 'Angel'.

After his wife dies in childbirth, Henry Bright is on the run, with his infant son, from both a raging forest fire and his vengeful father-in-law. Along the way, the author weaves in flashbacks to childhood and the war and Henry starts questioning, ever more seriously, the wisdom of the advice offered to him by his 'angel'.

The writing shows that the songwriter/author has some serious storytelling chops. Many passages exude, as one might expect, lyric-like prose. It will be interesting to read his next book. Perhaps it will be longer and more polished, while keeping the heart and song shown in this one.

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read: Robopocalypse: A Novel (3 stars)

Robopocalypse: A Novel by Daniel H. Wilson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book, but found it frustrating. While it tried for the same collected eyewitness style that Max Brooks used for World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, I didn't buy that indulgence for very long. But all of the accounts sound the same. And many use vocabulary and diction that I felt to be beyond the purported author/speaker. Many of the chapters are labeled as being assembled from video footage and communication logs from various devices. Yet these are still delivered in the same first-person voice as the other chapters. All-in-all, the framing device felt convoluted and tacked on.

On the other hand, the concept and the storytelling within the chapters was quite captivating and thought-provoking. Most of the prose was easy to read, even though it could have been easily overwhelmed by technical babble. There were even hints of character development that could have been quite compelling in the hands of a more mature fiction author.

With a different approach and more editing, this book could have easily gotten four stars. As it is, I can only give it three.

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"The Debt" [B+]

A good suspense story makes you think you know what's going on, but then wonder if you're right, and keep you guessing about what's going to happen next. "The Debt" is a good suspense story. It has an interesting structure because it actually begins at the end, twice. Then it goes back to fill in the history, and the details, and then... telling more would be a spoiler.

The writing, acting, and directing are all first rate, up to a point. That point is the ending, which doesn't quite ring true to the rest of the film. Other than that, I suspect there will be some award nominations coming for this work.

(The two beginning-at-the-ends are the 1997 framing story and the 1965 post-mission arrival of the team in Israel, both of which give away what happened to the spy team, but not what happened on the mission.)

The Debt (IMDb)

read: Killing Floor (4 stars)

Killing Floor by Lee Child

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pardon my French, but Jack Reacher is a Grade-A, Number One Badass. He has to be in order to go up against the psychotic, killer slime balls he encounters in the little town of Margrave, Georgia. He's the guy you want on your side in a fight.

The author does a good job of making him a likeable and sympathetic badass, just a guy minding his own business when things go horribly wrong and then go even more horribly wrong. Good thing, because he's the first-person narrator and you spend the entire novel with him. The body count is high when he has to fight back, first to survive, then to exact revenge. Perhaps it's a bit higher than it needs to be. But don't forget that Reacher's foes are psychotic, killer slime balls.

It's all over the top stuff. But it's well written and all seems highly plausible as the story unfolds. It's only afterward that you start thinking, waitaminute whatif...? Wouldn't...? But then you decide not to think about it too much and wonder what sort of trouble Reacher will be finding and fighting next.

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"Cowboys & Aliens" [B]

Does what it says on the tin.

I was glad to see that this actually worked. I was really hoping that Jon Favreau, who did such a good job on Iron Man (and not too bad on the sequel) would be able to pull of this high-concept mash-up. But I was also fearing that it could go horribly wrong.

Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and the other actors all bring life to their characters. The directing, as noted, is spot on. The special effects, including the creepy aliens, are up to par.

On the other hand, I was a bit disappointed in the whole bug-eyed monster approach. Sure, they're aliens, we don't really understand why or how they flew billions of miles across the galaxy to capture our kin and get our gold. But given that they did, I couldn't quite buy into the mindless kidnapper and killer vibe that they were given. It was a bit too retro. I fault the writing, which captured the Modernized Western genre just fine, but didn't do the aliens justice. It also made a muddle of the climax.

Even with its faults, I had a great time.

Cowboys & Aliens (IMDb)

read: Buried Secrets (4 stars)

Buried Secrets by Joseph Finder

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This thriller is about as fine as they get. It has a gripping plot, interesting and distinct characters, unexpected twists, and realistic action. The clock is ticking from the very first page and doesn't let up until the satisfying end.

The author makes some interesting stylistic choices here. The story is told from both the first person and third person limited points of view. But the reader is never confused about why or where they are. The setting is, for the most part, confined to a few locations in the immediate vicinity of Boston. This is unusual for a thriller these days. Most tend to range a bit wider afield. But perhaps it was done this way to emphasize the confined world of the buried girl. It works.

The prose is smooth and easy on the inner ear. The dialog is easy to follow (except for a couple of spots where the back and forth goes on slightly too long without attributions or tags). Chapters are short to emphasize the action, sometimes only a single page. Character and place descriptions are a bit old-school, taking several sentences to tell us about something that many writers are now dashing off with a couple of adjectives and a hand-wave.

This is a great summer read. How long until the next Nick Heller book?

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read: Embassytown (3 stars)

Embassytown by China Miéville

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a very ambitious novel and gets high marks for aiming high. On the other hand, it's not very reader-friendly. I mark it down for not doing its job of engaging the reader and drawing them into what seems to be a very interesting world. The reader's appreciation of this book will depend on their tolerance for befuddlement.

The first third is the most frustrating. Since a major theme of the book is language (or, in the case of the Hosts, Language with a capital L), the author dumps the user into an alien landscape using futuristic language with only a few reference points. This would not have been so bad if the reader were also given a story. Instead, we are given a memoir. Or rather, we are given a hodge podge of a bits of memoir by a narrator that we can't quite identify with.

When things finally start happening in the immediate, the book gets a bit more interesting and engaging. Yet I could never quite shake the feeling that I wasn't quite there, in the moment, in the place. Description is fleeting. Dialog is circumspect. Events happen in a jumble.

Is this a literary novel masquerading as a science fiction novel? Or vice versa? It's definitely not a light summertime read.

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