Review: A Brewing Storm

A Brewing Storm by Richard Castle

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



First, let's start with the fact that I gave this book 3 stars. That is not an indictment of the book itself, it's just that the book was not one of my favorites. I liked it, but I didn't "really like" it (which would be 4 stars) or "love" it (which would have been 5 stars). I liked it. It was a solid read.

Spy fiction is not my thing. Private Detective's are. This was a little of both.

Short Fiction is also not my thing. This was a novella, which made it just long enough for my taste.

The book was solidly written by a ghost writer. It is not fine literature, but it was a fun read. I applaud that. I'm a fan of fun. I think that if all of the books in the world were fine literature, the world would be a beautiful but boring place.

Most of the negative reviews of this book were complaints that the book was "part of a book" or "unfinished" or "a trick to get you to buy the next book." But those things don't worry me. I'll address each of them in kind.

First, the book is not "part of a book". It is a stand-alone novella in a novella trilogy. That means that the book should have some resolution at the end, while still leaving enough loose ends for it to run into the next book.

I'm going to use one of my favorite trilogies as an example* (and, mind you, this trilogy is no LOTR): In "Lord of the Rings", Frodo does not reach Mordor at the end of the first book (because one does not simply walk into Mordor). There is resolution in the first book on some of the smaller plot points, but the final objective carries forward into the next book. I don't think that anyone would complain that "The Fellowship of the Rings" is not a complete work of fiction. But it is part of a trilogy, and was designed as such, so therefore the most central plot point carries further into the following books.

So it is with "A Brewing Storm". The first book's mystery is solved (what happened to the money and why). But the overlapping myth arc is not solved (who is the source of the "conspiracy", if it should actually BE a conspiracy.

The novel is designed to be a stand-alone novella in a larger trilogy, and is successful in doing so.

The novella is NOT unfinished. See my points above. It RESOLVES the current mystery, while giving a hook for the overall arc.

And finally, the book is NOT A TRICK to get you to buy the next book. It's DESIGNED to be part of a trilogy. Just like a TV series is designed to be a series. So, when you watch a series, it not resolving EVERYTHING in EVERY episode is NOT A TRICK, it's the nature of writing for a series. It's WHY you make it as a series, and not as a stand-alone film. My example for this is "The X-Files"*. In this series, each episode (or couple if they are two-parters) resolved the current case, but we still don't know who is behind the conspiracy. We still don't know what the Cigarette-Smoking-Man is up to or all about. That doesn't make it "A TRICK", it makes it writing for a series.

That is what this book does.

The book is a fun read, if you take it for what it is supposed to be: Light Fiction and a part of a series (specifically a trilogy). If you like spy-craft (of which there is a little) and detective fiction, you will likely like this novella. Be prepared to read all three, if you want to know the final answers.

*I realize that comparing this book to LOTR or The X-Files is near-sacrilege in some circles. I fully recognize this. PLEASE DON'T REVOKE MY NERD-CARD.



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Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I realize that the trend is always towards a series of books. And this is a trend that I fully support. This book is part of a larger series, which was obviously intended at the time of its writing. I have no issue with any of that.

This book is a complete story, that is strong enough to stand all on its own. It is clever and well-written. I find the dialogue, both in the present and in the past, both in America and in Britain, to ring true. I find this to be quite a feat. It is often difficult for an adult writer to accomplish believable teen dialogue. The fact that this writer was able to do so over two centuries and two continents is really impressive.

The only issue that I have with the novel (and it is what keeps it at 4-stars instead of 5) is that it feels, throughout to be expository. Throughout the reading, I kept thinking, well, now, if the story doesn't start soon, we'll have no book in this book.

And, yet, the book IS there. The story DOES progress. It does have rising action, it does have a climax, it does have brief falling action, and even more brief denouement. All of the elements are there, and in the proper order. All are well-written and entertaining.

Yet, for some reason, I continued to feel that this book was the mere exposition for a much longer book. I recognize that the first book in any series is heavy on expository data for the rest of the series, but this one just felt, although it is fully a stand-alone novel, like it was not part of a series, but part of a larger book.

I can't explain this feeling. And I can't describe in any way how the author could have avoided this issue or altered the book to correct the issue. It's just a feeling I had during reading, and it is a feeling that I can't pin down.

Also, I felt that the photographs were formatted well for Kindle.  I was able to view them easily on my Kindle Paperwhite.



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Review of "Profile of a Killer"

I had never heard of the film or any of the members of it's cast before finding it in the Amazon Prime Instant Video library tonight.  For a film with an unknown cast (at least to me), I found this film to be surprisingly good.  The acting was quite good and the concept was, while not entirely novel, an unusual approach to the serial killer sub-genre.  While I say that the concept was entirely novel, I mean just that.  It was a novel approach, but not entirely so.  It was something that isn't done everyday, but there are elements of it that you have seen before.  Frankly, I found it a refreshing take on the subject.  (I am a bit hampered here by my desire to avoid spoilers).

The film does have some gore, although most viewers of films about serial killers will find said gore to be mild.  If you are new to the sub-genre, however, I would recommend trying another film first, especially if you are faint of heart.

I found the writing to be, for the most part, entertaining and believable.

Quite well done, and I would recommend "Profile of a Killer" to anyone who enjoys thrillers and is not squeamish.

Review: Armed and Outrageous

Armed and Outrageous by Madison Johns

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I felt that the mystery itself was well-thought out. I had few issues with grammar, punctuation, or spelling (although there were a few issues there). What I objected to was the characteristics attributed to the elderly. The author claims in her foreword that she has worked with the elderly for years and assures the reader that the elderly truly can behave this way (adding the caveat that the exaggerated some behavior because she wanted her characters to be "over the top').

I can accept that. She wants her characters to be modern and sexually active (something that many younger readers may have difficulty accepting). She wants her characters to be wild and "cool" (like pot smoking and drinking). She wants them to be badasses (with the fighting and gunplay).

I'm OK with all of that.

What bothered me was the stereotyping. The SERIOUSLY INACCURATE stereotyping. The main character keeps her teeth in a class of efferdent. She has dentures at 72, which isn't uncommon, but it isn't the norm nowadays, either. With my grandmother's generation (the generation that would have been Agnes Barton's PARENTS' generation, this was the norm. But Agnes's generation is that of the Baby Boomers. I have several people in my life of this age group. I have 9 people in my life who I know closely enough to know their medical and social history (I will call them my "sample" for the purposes of this review). My sample consists of 5 women and 4 men. Their ages range from 65-75. Four members of this sample are couples (2 of the men married to 2 of the women). Two of the remaining women are not currently married (either widowed or divorced). The remaining woman and remaining two men are married to people outside of the sample (for whom I don't know these statistics)

ALL of the members of the sample still have their own natural teeth. Only one of them has any dentures, and that's a partial plate from when she was in an accident as a teenager.

She talks about how MOST of the seniors in this retirement community want to be in bed by 9 pm every night. Of the nine people in my sample group, only 2 of them like to be in bed by this time. Those two are a married couple. The other 7 in this group go to bed at various times AFTER 9 pm.

The author portrays sex at this age as somewhat of a rarity. The main character acts like no one would ever want to have sex with her again at the age of 72. Her best friend is 80, and will basically take whatever she can get in the sex department, because it's so rare to find. Of my sample, 7 of the members are currently sexually active. The other two are abstinent by choice, as neither is currently interested in joining the dating pool.

The author portrays seniors as being bad drivers. This is spoken of specifically about one character. I can live with that part, because maybe Eleanor is just a bad driver. And Aggie blames it on her age. OK, I can handle that. But later, Agnes pulls into a parking lot, and proceeds to tell the reader that every car in the parking lot was dinged and dented because most of the drivers in this retirement are senior citizens. THIS was the part to which I took the most offence. Evidently, other readers had similar qualms. Additionally, our main character actually drunk drives home from a party.

Firstly, a study just came out this last week that showed that seniors have a much LOWER incidence of accidents than younger drivers (including the age 26-45s). Of my representative sample, two members are aggressive drivers, two are frequent dent and dingers, and THE OTHER FIVE are excellent drivers. One of them has never had a ticket, in over 50 years of driving, and has only had one accident (when a deer hit her car - I specifically say that the deer hit her car, because the damage was all to the windshield and roof, because the deer jumped on top of the car, it never contacted the bumper). 2 of these drivers had issues with driving under the influence, but it was when they were younger, and none of them has driven under the influence in over 20 years. 7 of these group members have not had an accident in over a decade. The other two are (of course) our frequent dent and dingers.

The author also portrays gatherings with these characters (like their monthly card night) as a time for comparing battle scars. Everyone is talking about their aches and pains. Bowel movements and their frequency are considered normal discussion for characters of this age (the main character actually says that they talk about this EVERY month when the get together). In my sample, the only real discussion of aches an pains that I've seen occurs when someone has recently had some sort of major illness or procedure (example: chemotherapy heart bypass). I've never heard any of them sitting around talking about bowel movements. And their discussion of medical issues seems no more or less intense than people of my age (30s & 40s). I, myself, had a major surgery about 3 years ago, and afterwards everyone constantly asked me for medical updates. After a while, it subsided. I see the seniors in my life discuss their health issues NO MORE AND NO LESS than other adults.

There were some minor writing issues in the book, a few were distracting for the reader, but most were easily overlooked. It was the ridiculous stereotyping that I had an issue with.

I was also bothered by how disrespectful anyone under the age of 30 was. It seemed like if you were under 30, you were a rude, disrespectful jerk. I have not found this to be the case in the real world either.



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Review: When Christians Get It Wrong

When Christians Get It Wrong by Adam Hamilton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I found this book to be thoughtful and insightful. I am quite inspired after reading it. I feel that Hamilton has an interesting perspective for both Christians and non-Christians alike.

While the book is obviously written from a Christian perspective (Hamilton is a Methodist minister), it is not overly preachy.



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Review: The Big Four

The Big Four by Agatha Christie

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



It's hard to explain about this book. It was far off what you come to expect from Poirot. It was more spy adventure than cozy mystery. And this was the first time that I have ever been bored by a Christie novel. Not extremely bored, but I was able to put it down rather easily. Typically, I read an Agatha Christie novel over the course of a few days. This book took me over a week. Obviously, I wasn't devoting as much time to it as I would other novels.

It was fine. It just wasn't great.



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Review: The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes (Updated)

Anyone who has run across my posts in the Kindle forums is probably already aware that I plug the book The Lodger.  Mercilessly.  I plug this book so often that one might think that I wrote it, or at least that I have a published edition of it for sale in the Kindle store.  I don’t.  With the way that I plug this book, one might also think that it is the best book that I have ever read.  It wasn’t.  What it was, was the most surprising book that I ever read.  Not the storyline, don’t worry, no spoilers here, it was just the book itself that was surprising.

You see, it was the first book that I read on my first Kindle.  I wanted to take advantage of all of the free public domain books that were available to me, and I selected one at random.  Well, not quite at random.  I searched for the keywords “Jack the Ripper”.  I don’t really know why, it was just the first thing that popped into my mind (should that worry me?).  This book came up as a public domain book, by an author of whom I’d never heard, and there was a free edition available.  So, I downloaded it.  And I read it.  And I loved it.

I have said that this was not the best book that I’d ever read, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable, five-star read.  When I downloaded it (wirelessly, for the first time to a Kindle, which was exciting enough), I expected to read this old book that would be interesting enough and not too boring.  I mean, really, it was almost a century old, and I’d never heard of the author.  Sometime during the course of my life, especially when I was working on a degree in Literature, I had at least heard of EVERY good author from that period, surely.  Right?  Wrong.

This book did not turn out to be a somewhat antiquated, only a little boring, read.  It turned out to be a page-turner.  So much so, that Dobby (my husband, for those of you who are new to my blog) started saying things like, “I’m not sure that this whole Kindle thing was a good idea” because I was giving him so little attention.  He’s learned to cope with that now.

I’ve explained about my personal experience with this book, but what you really want to know is more about the book itself.  I aim to please:

This book is set in London in the time of the Whitechapel Murders.  The main characters are a middle-aged couple who own a rooming house.  They rent out a couple of rooms to a young man whom they’ve never met prior to his becoming their lodger.  The suspense of this story comes from their suspicion that he may indeed be Jack the Ripper.  So, is he?

No, of course he isn’t.  Oh, wait, yes he is.  Not really, I’m just kidding.  Or am I?

The fact of the matter is that it isn’t relevant.  Well, I’m sure that it is to the middle-aged couple, but it’s not really relevant to the reader.  What is relevant in this book is the couple’s CONCERN that he might be.  In the end, we find out the truth one way or the other, but that is not the interesting part.  To be honest, it wouldn’t really matter to the reader whether or not we ever know.  It’s the suspense, the agony, the suspicion, and the excitement that matters.  That’s what the story is about.  “Whodunit” doesn’t matter; what matters is how the main characters feel about it.  This is what Lowndes does unbelievably well.

So, I highly recommend that you check out The Lodger for a suspenseful, pleasure read that won’t cost you a dime.

The Lodger is also available in in other formats.

Check out the Paperwhite here.  

Don’t own a Kindle, but would like to?  The latest generation of  basic Kindle is available here (I recommend the Special Offers - saves you money and is unobtrusive).

For comments, questions, and feedback, the author may be contacted at:  unkemptruminations@comcast.net