24. December 2007 by Ken.

Steve Berry has become one of my “buy it when it comes out in paperback” authors. This book (ISBN 978-0-345-48576-2, 494 pages including the author’s notes and interview, $9.99–or $7.44 at your favorite international Mart starting with “W”) is one of the so-called DaVinci Code knockoffs. I use that appelation in a nice way, since I enjoyed reading it. I’m sure you have often heard the phrase, “You can’t tell the players without a scorecard.” Well, even if you kept a scorecard on the players in this novel, you would have a mess by the time the book ends. Those whom you think are the “good guys” are erased from that column, moved to the “bad guys” column, then back again so many times you have put holes in the list from constant movement from one to the other. This is a present-day novel based on events occurring millennia ago. It’s political, religious, philosophical, fast-paced, and so many other adjectives I can’t begin to list them all.

The recipe for this book might be as follows:

1. One retired US agent, now a bookseller in Denmark
2. His divorced wife and son (or is he?)
3. An international cabal of businessmen caring for nothing except profits
4. A clueless president of the US who is unknowingly a tool of his Attorney General, Vice President, and National Security Advisor
5. A secret group protecting what was thought lost ages ago
6. Lots of chases and guns
7. Israelis and Saudis teaming up for (or against?) the US interests
8. Etc., etc., etc.

I’m sure some of you will say after reading that this is a shallow novel, with no “redeeming social value” akin to cotton candy–all fluff and no substance, but I beg to differ with you on that. It exposes the reader to a lot of history (some real, some imagined–the astute reader will know which is which) and gives one of the great “what if” cases from my question to others: what if time travel were a reality and you could go into the past and change one, and only one, thing? For decades I have posited that humanity would be much better off if the person(s) who torched the Library at Alexandria could have been stopped. It’s an ongoing debate as to when this happened, and perhaps it really did occur multiple times.

If you want a quasi-mindless entertaining book to while away the winter, you could do a lot worse than this one, or others by this author.

**** of *****

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18. December 2007 by Ken.

“Horizons” by Mary Rosenblum (ISBN 978-0-7653-5515-7, $6.99, 324 pages) is the first book from this author I’ve seen, and no others by her are mentioned in or on the book. I will admit I sometimes *do* judge a book by its cover, and this one has a nice write-up on the back which intrigued me. I won’t say it’s the best sci-fi book I’ve ever read (probably something written by Asimov or Heinlein if you really press me), but it’s fairly good and kept my interest.

Civilization on Earth has advanced to the point where there are several orbiting “cities”, asteroid miners (rock jocks), and a quasi-UN organization which is made up of some small nations and some large federations, like the European Union and the North American Alliance. A faction of ecologists called Gaiists are wanting to twart independence efforts by these Platforms from the Earth, humanity has started to evolve into another species in the micro-G environment, nano-tech augementation allows empaths who can read emotions but not thoughts, and several other interesting twists provide plenty of backdrop for what appears to be both inter-family and intra-family feuding but on second glance things aren’t quite what they appear to be.

I won’t give away any of the plot but I will say two things: the butler didn’t do it, and the good guys (sans white hats) do win in the end.

This one will never sit on the classics shelf next to “The Time Machine” by H. G. Wells, but it’s a good way to occupy a cold winter’s evening or three.

*** of *****

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