BOOK REVIEW: Heaven, My Home (Highway 59, #2) by Attica Locke

Heaven, My Home is the second in a series of police procedural books about a Black Texas Ranger written by Attica Locke (who is also well-known for her trenchant writing on television shows such as Little Fires Everywhereand Empire). The main character in the books is Darren Matthews, and the central tension of the books come from the conflicts and circumstances that arise when one of the very few Black man in a predominantly white prestigious crime-fighting organization like the Texas Rangers has to interact with rednecks in rural sections of the state.

In Bluebird, Bluebird, Darren was involved in trying to solve a pair of murders with racial overtones (the bodies of a black man and a white woman are found dumped separately in a nearby river a few days apart) in a very small town up Highway 59 from Dallas. In the sequel, Heaven, My Home, Darren is asked to drive up Highway 59 to the Southern gothic tourist destination of Jefferson to find a missing 10-year-old kid, Levi King. Levi just happens to be the son of jailed notorious white supremacist Bill King and was last seen alive by Leroy Page, an elderly Black man who happens to own most of the property near Lake Caddo in an area called Hopetown where Native Americans, African Americans and poor Whites have been squatting for years. The child’s grandmother Rosemary King is the richest person in the nearby town of Jefferson but doesn’t seem that worried about her kin’s well-being, but Rosemary does seem fixated on getting her greedy hands on the Leroy’s deed to Hopetown.

If the story in Heaven, My Home doesn’t seem complicated enough there are still several unresolved issues from the first book. Because of this, Darren is currently being blackmailed by his own ne’er-do-well mother to keep quiet that she has a piece of evidence that if it were revealed Darren knew existed and were given to authorities might not only lead to him losing his job, but potential indictment and prosecution. Additionally, while Darren’s marriage started off in an “it’s complicated” phase in the first book, it morphs into the slow-motion train wreck stage when he starts noticing oddly charged interactions between his best friend and wife and this leads him to reach out to the widow he was powerfully (and chastely) attracted to in the first book.

The writing is delightful in both books and the mysteries are compelling, if somewhat implausibly racially charged, in both cases. One would think these features would make these books resonate with he but, surprisingly, they don’t. Primarily, I just don’t sympathize (or empathize) with Darren. He makes (and made) some bad choices in this book and the previous one. He’s clearly a (barely) functional alcoholic. Of course, there’s a long history of detectives being alcoholic, addicted messes (looking at you, John Rebus!) but here the setting of backwoods Texas repels instead of propelling me.

I hope Ms. Locke writes more books in the Highway 59 series, and I think I will probably get around to reading them, although I won’t feel an urgent need to do so.

Title: Heaven, My Home.
Author: Attica Locke.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 336 pages.
Publisher: Mullholland Books.
Date Published: September 17, 2019.
Date Read: February 20, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★½☆  (3.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A-/B+ (3.5/4.0).

PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Hallelujah! U.S. Church Membership Rate Fall Below 50%

Godless Wednesday makes a rare return to the blog with the amazing news that membership in houses of worship (churches, synagogues, mosques, etc) has fallen below 50% (to 47%) for the first time ever that Gallup has been measuring it. As recently as 1999 (when The Matrix came out) the worship rate was 70%. Gallup says:

The decline in church membership is primarily a function of the increasing number of Americans who express no religious preference. Over the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998-2000 to 13% in 2008-2010 and 21% over the past three years.

As would be expected, Americans without a religious preference are highly unlikely to belong to a church, synagogue or mosque, although a small proportion -- 4% in the 2018-2020 data -- say they do. That figure is down from 10% between 1998 and 2000.

Given the nearly perfect alignment between not having a religious preference and not belonging to a church, the 13-percentage-point increase in no religious affiliation since 1998-2000 appears to account for more than half of the 20-point decline in church membership over the same time.

This is excellent news because the decrease in religiosity of Americans will hopefully lead to an increase in fact-based, evidence-based decision-making and public policies. (One can dream!)

BOOK REVIEW: Bluebird, Bluebird (Highway 59, #1) by Attica Locke

Bluebird, Bluebird is the first book by Attica Locke that I have read. It’s a police procedural, murder mystery novel based in Texas. The main character, Darren Matthews, is one of the very few Black Texas Rangers. I wasn’t aware before reading this book that the Rangers are sort of like a State-based version of the FBI. In other words they have the ability to make a “state” case out of crimes that can supersede local jurisdiction. Matthews is one of the very few Black people in a predominantly white organization and this reality and how he (and his colleagues) deal with race animates a significant portion of the book. And  this story is taking place in Texas, with an infamously racist past and unambiguously racist present.

As with most interesting protagonists of mystery novels, Matthews is a complicated character. He has problems at work and at home. His wife has basically kicked him out, because she doesn’t approve of his job as a Ranger when he just needs one more year of law school to be an upstanding attorney like she is. (Matthews left University of Chicago Law School and returned home to East Texas where he was raised by his twin uncles after the grotesque hate-infused murder of James Byrd made headlines and inspired federal hate crimes legislation.) He’s basically been suspended from his job as a Ranger due to his improperly close relationship with an elderly Black man who the police view as a suspect in the suspicious shooting of a racist redneck who before he died had been harassing the suspect’s granddaughter.

So we aren’t surprised at the beginning of Bluebird, Bluebird when Matthews agrees to do a favor for a (white) friend of his who is also a federal agent to (unofficially) and drive up Highway 59 from the Big City to take a look at the appearance of a Black male body that has recently washed up in Lark, a backwater town in East Texas, population 187. Matthews soon finds out the deceased is Michael Wright, a lawyer from Chicago but. The situation becomes even more complicated than it first appeared when soon after the first body appeared, a second body shows up, and this time it’s a white girl, a local waitress named Missy Dale known for her predilection for spending time in the company of Black men. Surely the two must be related, and there’s no way that the linked deaths of a Black man and white woman won’t be a dangerous powder keg in a hick town like Lark which is known for its long history with the Klan. Are the deaths some kind of hate crime? But the conceit of the book is that the bodies showed up in reverse order. Wouldn't you think it would be the white girl who would be killed first, and then the Black guy she cavorted with killed by the Klan afterwards?

Soon after Matthews arrives in Lark, so does the widow of the Black man, her name is Randie and she’s trying to find out what happened to her estranged husband. The parallels with Matthews and his personal situation are obvious. The relationship between Randie and Darren is complicated. She’s not from “around here” (and Matthews is) so he takes it on himself to show her around and promises himself to try and see she gets justice by solving the mystery of her husband's killing. But, as a knight in shining armor, Darren is more than a little tarnished. He’s got a drinking problem and he’s a little too fond of telling little white lies to people in order to get his way. As a Black Ranger with a badge in a town full of meth-heads, rednecks and extreme poverty he’s got a lot going against him in order to fulfill the ill-advised promise he made to the grieving widow.

The story in Bluebird, Bluebird is interesting because of the complex connections the author, Attica Locke, weaves between the characters (and suspects) in this little town where everyone knows everyone, and secrets have and stories have festered for decades. Both bodies  washed up within walking distance of a roadside hole-in-the-wall restaurant right off Highway 59 run by an elderly Black woman named Geneva Sweet who admits to seeing both Missy and Michael within several hours of their deaths. Geneva also has a complicated history. Her husband and son, both named Joe Sweet, are dead from violence within the last ten years, about 2 years apart. That's a lot of suspicious death in a town this small. Another important character is Wallace Jefferson III, an old white guy who literally owns all the land in town, lives a stone’s throw away from Geneva’s Sweets and clearly once (and maybe still) has had an impossible attraction to Geneva, who a long time ago used to be the hired help in the Jefferson Southern Gothic mansion.

Overall, Bluebird, Bluebird is an interesting, atmospheric novel which poses thoughtful and thought-provoking questions about race, family and the ties that bind people together, both emotional and obligatory. As a mystery novel it’s less successful and I’m not sure Darren Matthews is someone I really want to spend much more time with, but I am willing to spend more time with Locke’s spare, evocative prose and look forward to reading the next entry in the series Heaven, My Home.

Title: Bluebird, Bluebird.
Author: Attica Locke.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 320 pages.
Publisher: Mullholland Books.
Date Published: September 10, 2017.
Date Read: February 20, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Real LIfe by Brandon Taylor

Real Life by Brandon Taylor seems like it is a book that was designed in a lab to appeal to me. It’s a fictional account of a Black gay graduate student who likes to play tennis and is working on getting his Ph.D. in a STEM discipline at a predominantly white institution in a small town somewhere in the northeast. 30 years ago I was a black gay graduate student who liked to watch tennis and was working on getting his Ph.D. in a STEM discipline (applied mathematics) at a predominantly white institution (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) in a small town in the northeast (Troy, NY).

However, Wallace, the protagonist of Real Life, is very different from the person I was then, and since the book is set in a contemporary context, his experience is very different from my graduate days. That said, the situations that Wallace experiences as well as the descriptions of some of the characters he interacts with seem very familiar. Wallace is a graduate student in biochemistry and has a cadre of white friends, most of whom are also graduate students (in various fields). The group contains a gay couple named Cole and Vincent, another named Lukas and Nathan, and a gay international couple named Klaus and Roman, a straight couple named Emma and Thom, two “straight” guys named Yngve and Miller and then there’s Wallace. Almost all of Real Life is told through Wallace’s eyes as he observes how his friends interact with him, as the only black guy in a group of white people. Wallace is from the South, and we learn he is the first in his family to have ever gone to graduate school, and perhaps the first to go to college. His life experience is very different from the people he hangs out with when he’s not working in the lab and he is also very different from the people he works with in the lab as well. Later we learn that he was basically abandoned by his father and that his parents apparently blamed him for the fact that a family friend molested the tween-aged Wallace. The key material of the book is sourced in the tension caused by the ways Wallace’s identity and temperament distort and disrupt his experience of everyday social interactions with those around him, especially the ways these are frequently leavened with micro-aggressions and not-so-micro aggressions. And that’s when he’s with his “friends”!

Relatively early in Real Life, Miller and Wallace hook up sexually, a somewhat surprising event initiated by the putatively heterosexual Miller. Both Miller and Wallace have some warped ideas about sexuality, to my somewhat prudish sensibilities. Suffice it to say, even though their sexual activities are consensual, afterwards one or both of them are sore or bruised. (Not exactly my idea of a good time, but “different strokes for different folks.”) Near the end of the book I wasn’t completely convinced both of them would survive its conclusion. The sexual fluidity of Wallace’s coterie of friends is an interesting feature of the books, and is another example of unspoken tension that animates some of the peculiar social dynamics in the group. For example, even though Yngve is straight, it is a commonly understood fact in the group that Yngve and Lukas are often together, hanging out publicly. Lukas' boyfriend Nathan doesn't seem to be bothered by this situation, since Yngve is "straight." However one of the other gay guy, Roman, is a troublemaker. He says something explicitly racist to Wallace, and he causes tension among the other gay couples by remarking on how happy he is that he is in an open relationship with Klaus. (Or as he puts it, "Nothing is better than f***ing someone while my boyfriend watches.") This completely sets Cole off, who is a bit strait-laced and prone to jealousy about his relationship with Vincent, who seems fascinated by the idea of something other than a monogamous relationship, while Cole seems to be a gay Republican in training. Cole is probably the gay guy Wallace is closest to. There's a very fun scene where there is a very detailed description of a tennis match the two play together which appears as if it could lead to something else, and definitely reveals the evanescent sexual tension that can arise in non-sexual interactions between gay men who are friends. In some instances Wallace deliberately chooses to exacerbate not ameliorate the conflicts that arise from these tensions. To me it seems clear that Taylor is portraying Wallace as a masochist, both sexually and emotionally. There are several examples in the book where painful things happen to Wallace and even when he could try to take action or respond to reduce the pain, he doesn’t, instead he “simply takes it,” as if he deserves (or enjoys?) being victimized.

Overall, Real Life is a quick, compelling and insightful read. The writing sometimes tends to the florid, and there's not much of a plot. (The central question is, "(How long) Can Wallace survive interacting with these people?") Wallace is in a bad situation, made worse by the cluelessness and casual racism of his “friends” as well as the precarious and disempowered nature of graduate education. I was hoping for a happy ending, but this is really not that kind of book. I’m somewhat surprised at the level of acclaim Real Life has received (such as being shortlisted for the Booker Prize) but I would definitely recommend the book to people, especially well-meaning white people who think the reason for underrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities and women in STEM academic circles is a “pipeline” problem. Taylor provides real insight that rings true for me about what it’s like being “the only one” in certain academic settings as well as the complicated nature of gay male friendships. Since this is his debut novel, I look forward to reading future books by him.

Title: Real Life.
Author: Brandon Taylor.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 335 pages.
Publisher: Mullholland Books.
Date Published: February 18, 2020.
Date Read: March 3, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A-/B+ (3.5/4.0).

PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Doors of Eden is the third book by Adrian Tchaikovsky I have read. The first two books are Children of Time and Children of Ruin and these are some of my favorite books of all time. Tchaikovsky is impressively prolific, but generally I have only taken notice of and consumed his works of hard science fiction. Both Children of Time and Children of Ruin, in addition to being critically acclaimed works of startling imagination, cover somewhat similar conceptual territory. This involves following the discovery and development of alien intelligences that happen to be related to creatures familiar to us on Earth. These kinds of books are sometimes referred to as “uplift” after the now-famous books by David Brin in the Uplift Saga. Evolution and a keen and sympathetic outlook on creatures that most people find “icky” is a common feature of Tchaikovsky’s books (at least the ones I have read so far). He often depicts a surprising developments caused by quirks of evolution and eons of time.

Something similar animates a good portion of The Doors of Eden, but this time the central characters are all decidedly human. In fact, one of the most surprising elements of the book is the author’s choice to center his book around a lesbian romance and the depiction of a trans woman as the ostensible hero who is tasked with saving Life As We Know It. (I'm not complaining, of course, I'm just remarking at how unusual this is for a mainstream science fiction novel.)

The main characters in The Doors of Eden are Lee and Mal, who are two girlfriends with very different backgrounds and views of the world. Lee and Mal have known each other since childhood, and have common (rather odd) interests, that involve seeking out and attempting to document paranormal activity. While on a trip together to Bodmin Moor, Mal disappears after what appears to be actual paranormal activity. Then suddenly four years later, Mal contacts Lee again, but she seems very different. In addition to Lee and Mal, we are introduced to Kay Amal Khan, a mathematical physicist who is working on a theoretical extradimensional model of the universe that the Government seems extremely interested in. Two of the intelligence agents who are tracking Kay Amal Khan are Julian Sabreur and Allison Mitchell, who are colleagues and friends who might want to be more than friends but they are married to other people and their job commitments.

The structure of the book is that it alternates chapters moving forward the plot with relatively short chapters that purport to be excerpts from "An Essay on Speculative Evolution" by Dr. Ruth Emerson that goes into numerous other possible ways intelligent life cold have evolved on Earth. It becomes clear that the "theoretical" extradimensional model of Dr. Khan is actually our reality, and in these other dimensions Earth life evolved in very different ways. Now, for some reason, the separations between the dimensions are getting less rigid and creatures from other realities are entering our reality, trying to address a threat to all existing realities that only someone like Dr. Khan can understand.

Lots of other reviewers were not enamored of the central story and said that they actually enjoyed the intervening excerpts more. My experience was exactly the opposite; I found the evolution passages tiresome and regularly skipped them, to get back to the plot. But this was primarily because I wanted to know how the story ended. I agree with other reviewers that I was not overly enamored with any of the main characters in the book, but I was definitely interested in the overall story.

Overall, I would say that The Doors of Eden should not be the first book you read by Adrian Tchaikovsky. (If you haven't read Children of Time, stop reading this review and immediately obtain a copy of that book and read it--you'll thank me later!) It's a book I appreciate more than I admire. I am glad that the characters are diverse and I'm glad that I read it, but I find it hard to imagine a scenario where I would recommend it to go to the top of anyone's TBR (to be read) pile.

Title: The Doors of Eden.
Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Paperback: 445 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: August 20, 2020.
Date Read: January 29, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★½☆  (3.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A-/B+ (3.5/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: B+.

BOOK REVIEW: Remain Silent (DI Manon Bradshaw, #3) by Susie Steiner

Remain Silent by Susie Steiner is the third book in the DI Manon Bradshaw series. It is what appears on the surface to be a pretty traditional British police procedural series except with the notable difference that the author and protagonist are both female. The first two books in the series, Missing, Presumed and Persons Unknown were interesting, quirky crime fiction novels I quite enjoyed a few years ago, so when I saw the third one had been released in 2020 I decided to give it a go. It turns out that I have somewhat recently read the first three books in multiple crime fiction series: Cork O’Connor by William Kent Krueger, Ruth Galloway by Elly Griffiths, Roy Grace by Peter James, Ben Cooper & Deborah Fry by Stephen Cooper and Joe Pickett by C.J. Box. I would probably say my favorites in this bunch are the last 3 (I intend to read every book in each of these series, and happily each of these series are  at least 12 books long). My point of showing this list in this review is to put the DI Manon Bradshaw series in the context of others I have recently read and to alert readers of this review to some other (longer) series they may want to check out, if you like the Manon Bradshaw books as much as I do, perhaps you’ll like these others as well.

One reason I connected with Manon is her unique view of the world and attitude towards the police and police work itself. To put it mildly, she’s quite skeptical of the ability of the police to “make things right” and her personality doesn’t mesh well with working in a rigidly hierarchical, faux-militaristic, staunchly bureaucratic organization like the Metropolitan Police. What’s great is that Steiner makes Manon’s thoughts very clear on this and many other subjects.

In Remain Silent, Manon’s (and very likely the author’s) views on multiple aspects of contemporary life in modern Britain are made very clear. The focus of the story is on the death of a naïve, saintly teenager from Lithuania who is trafficked into England and exploited by a gang of dehumanizing, heartless thugs to do awful work (catching live chickens for slaughter with unprotected bare hands for 10-12 hours a day) that no homegrown Brits would do, especially at the slave-labor wages provided. Steiner is clearly making a point about immigration and xenophobia (and of course, Brexit, although that word never appears in the text). The depiction of how a group of able-bodied men are forced into a situation which is basically modern-day slavery, primarily caused by a language barrier and compounded by culturally inculcated fear/hatred of official authority and the law, occurs in the full view of polite society, which in most cases is literally snarling hostilely at the foreigners’ exploitation, is blood-curdling.

One of the best features of Persons Unknown was watching as Manon’s relationship with Fly, her adopted teenaged son (who is Black), develops, especially in the context of the plot, where Fly’s racial identity (and Manon’s) play extremely important factors. Sadly, Fly is almost a cipher in Remain Silent and barely appears in the text. Instead, Manon's second child, a toddler named Teddy, gets far more “ink” in this book. Happily, Mark, one of the best things to happen to Manon in Book 2, along with her co-worker Davy, continue to have substantial roles in Book 3. Davy and Manon’s professional relationship and banter while working together is one of the highlights of the series as a whole.

In addition to making her thoughts known about “the immigration question,” the author also deploys Manon’s status as a middle-aged, unmarried, white woman in a committed relationship raising two kids to make several points about marriage and middle-age and modern life. At some points, Manon’s thoughts and comments about her best friend’s philandering husband (and her success at terminating his infidelity and convincing him to return to his wife) as well as her running commentary about the nature of commitment, especially in the context of medical uncertainty overwhelm the police-procedural, crime fiction narrative that we the reader are ostensibly reading this book for. And this was absolutely fine with me, elevating it above the first two entries in the series. Remain Silent is more than a whodunnit, it’s also a “whyshouldwecare” and I liked that about it. As I’ve said multiple times, ultimately most genre books are formulaic, so to build more than a casual connection with readers requires more than just the elements that are found in all books of this type, and with the attention brought to a serious, pressing issue as well as particular insight brought to modern life, Remain Silent stands out among the pack.

Title: Remain Silent.
Author: Susie Steiner.
Format: Kindle. 
Pages: 320 pages.
Publisher: Random House.
Date Published: June 5, 2020.
Date Read: February 8, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: The Rage of Dragons (The Burning, #1) by Evan Winter

The Rage of Dragons is the debut novel by Evan Winter, one of the few African-American authors working in the epic fantasy genre. This 2019 work made quite a splash, and when I read it in February 2021 it had well over 16,000 ratings with a very impressive 4.37 average on Goodreads’ 5-point scale. I had made the decision to try and read as many Black authors as I could during Black History Month and selecting Winter’s well-regarded fantasy novel from my burgeoning Kindle TBR pile seemed like a no-brainer.

Most of my reading these days is in genre fiction, but typically I would say I spend more time reading crime fiction, then science fiction and rarely fantasy. However I was impressed very early on by Winter’s characterization of the protagonist of The Rage of Dragons, Tau Solarin. I was even more impressed by the world-building in the novel.

The story in The Rage of Dragons is set in a satisfyingly complex society which has two primary castes: Lessers and Nobles. The two are physically distinctive, although it is clear that both groups would be racialized as “Black” in our contemporary society. Almost all Nobles are taller, faster, stronger than most Lessers. Both are part of the Chosen people or Omehei. Omehei society appears to have a level of technological advancement equivalent to the Bronze Age on Earth. In addition to a society chock full of complicated moral questions Winters adds dragons and a spiritual realm that allows certain Gifted Omehei to practice powerful, specific magical effects such as Enraging (making someone physically bigger and stronger), Enervating (stripping someone of their will and ability to act on their own), Edifying (communicating information over long distances) and Entreating (taking over conscious control of another living thing’s body). Winter situates his story in a historical context where the Omehei have spent 200 “cycles” (presumably solar years) trying to keep control over land on the Xiddan Peninsula that they think they should get to keep because it’s where they landed after they were hunted and nearly exterminated in a land called Osonte located far across the sea by creatures they call The Cull. Omehei believe they were "Chosen" by the Goddess to survive the Cull and their faith in her is why some have been "gifted" with powers and why they survived the rough sea passage from Osonte and also believe they have a right to claim Xiddan as their own.  Unfortunately, it was already occupied by another group of humans, who (rightly, IMO) view the Omehei as invaders and colonizers and have been fighting for generations to expel or exterminate the Omehei. The Omehei also seem to be able to convince dragons to fight on their side fairly regularly and this behavior is viewed as further evidence the Omehei are "chosen by the Goddess."

The Rage of Dragons is an intricate, multi-layered story with several fascinating creations combined together to produce a compelling setting for what is at its heart a fairly traditional plot ("Local boy makes good"). These layers include class (there’s a very explicit and strongly enforced caste system among the Omehei AND a Royal sovereign!); race (almost all the Omehei are described as having skins of various hues ranging from tan to pitch-black); religion (belief in a spiritual world called Isihogo, the realm of demons, as well as an omnipotent, omnipresent, invisible "Goddess."); magic (the previously mentioned Gifted abilities); and war (the Omehei are in a generations-long battle with the original inhabitants of the Xiddan peninsula whom they call “hedeni” who they think are over abundant, light-skinned heathens and savages).

The main character Tau is an 18-year-old Lesser whose best friend Jabari is a Petty Noble and Winter does an excellent job of depicting the unequal opportunities and futures Lessers and Nobles have in Omehei society. Through an unfortunate interaction with a less open-minded Noble than Jabari, Tau’s father is killed early in the book in order to assuage a Noble ego and Tau vows revenge on three specific Noblemen who he sees as ultimately responsible for his father’s thoughtless murder.

The primary animating force of Tau's actions in The Rage of Dragons is revenge against his “betters” and he sets off to prove that he will literally do whatever it takes, no matter how painful or difficult, in order to have an opportunity to strike back at the men who destroyed his family. This makes Tau a sympathetic but also problematic figure. There’s an entire arc of the story which is about how Tau becomes a great warrior, not through some innate or genetic or magical ability but through intense, obsessive hard work, day-in and day-out. This is a nice choice by the author, because although Winter is duplicating a common trope of epic fantasies (the downtrodden orphan who grows up to become more powerful than anyone or he could ever have dreamed) he also subverts the trope by making it clear Tau is NOT the biggest, smartest or “most special” character in the book. Tau makes mistakes and wrong choices, more than once, but these humanize him and greatly strengthened my interest and connection with the character.

I only have a few quibbles with The Rage of Dragons (obviously, since I gave it the highest possible rating of five out of five stars on Goodreads). First of these quibbles are the too-frequent, detailed descriptions of hand-to-hand combat and fight scenes. In some sense it follows because Tau is in military training for more than half the book, but I think the number of paragraphs describing precisely how, who and with what Tau is fighting could have been reduced by half (or more!) with very little reduction in my enjoyment of the book. My second quibble is with the ending and the author’s penchant of raising the stakes by literally killing off multiple major characters in the last 5% of the book; some of the characters killed had been around since the first 5% of the book. This is incredibly gutsy, I guess, and I understand the dilemma the author is in. If he puts all of the characters in peril (or at the very least the vast majority of the ones we care about) and never kills off any, then the peril isn’t real, and the reader may feel cheated. But if he kills off major characters that we have known for the vast majority of the book in a shocking denouement towards its conclusion then it feels overwhelming and the reader feels somewhat cheated for investing in certain relationships that had built up as the story progressed. Winter made the latter choice in The Rage of Dragons and it definitely increased the emotional wallop the book delivers, so maybe he made the "right" choice in this case. I’m not sure there really exists an optimal choice for an author here.

Overall, The Rage of Dragons is an incredibly well-written and powerful debut novel. As I said at the beginning, epic fantasy is not particularly one of my favorite genres but I was thoroughly entertained and entranced by this book and look forward to reading The Fires of Vengeance as soon as the price for the Kindle edition goes on sale!

Title: The Rage of Dragons (The Burning, #1).
Author: Evan Winter.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 544 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: July 16, 2019.
Date Read: February 16, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★ (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: The Bone Readers (DC Digger, #1) by Jacob Ross

The Bone Readers by Jacob Ross is an excellent book in the police-procedural, murder-mystery genre with a great hook: it’s set on a small (fictional) island adjacent to Trinidad and Barbados called Camaho.

The author was born and raised in Grenada (which is an actual island adjacent to Trinidad and Barbados), and so was I! Ross uses his familiarity and comfort with the culture, geography, and language of the West Indies to infuse this story with the verisimilitude of Island life. You can almost taste the mangoes, smell the spicy curry and feel the bumps when driving on the badly paved roads!

The main character in The Bone Readers is Michael “Digger” Digson. In the great tradition of the crime fiction protagonists, Digger has a troubled past and a complex personality. Early on in the book we discover that he’s an “outside child” (illegitimate son) of an important man on the island, the Commissioner of Police. This is a curious coincidence because it is only through some unusual circumstances that Digger became a police officer himself. Basically, he was bullied into doing it by DC Chilman, an apparently alcoholic detective very near retirement with an eye for rudderless youths with the potential and talent to become excellent police officers. Digger lives by himself, in the house left to him by his grandmother, who has raised him since the awful day a little over a decade ago when Digger was a little boy that his mom kissed him and said “Don’t worry, Sweetman, I home a lil later” and never came home again. In fact, her body was never even found but it’s pretty clear she was killed as part of a public protest in 1999 that was violently settled by the police at the time. Part of the reason why Digger agreed to become a cop was so that he could research his mother’s death and disappearance and discover the details of the role his father may have played in her death. 

If you think Digger has a complex personality, Ross is just getting started. Many of the other players in the novel, such as DC Chilman, Miss Stanislaus and Malan Greaves are also fascinating characters. They all have complicated relationships with each other and oftentimes with Digger. As I have said in reviewing other books, a key factor in the assessment of the quality of a genre book is the multifaceted nature of how the secondary characters are depicted. Since most police procedurals are very similar what makes the reader continue to enjoy them and read volume after volume in a long-running genre series are the changes and developments that happen to characters that readers can identify with and/or care about. From this perspective, The Bone Readers is very high-quality first entry in what I hope becomes an extended series of books.

DC Chilman, we discover, has an outside child himself and a surprisingly durable relationship with the Minister of Justice (the most important law enforcement official in the island country.) Malan Greaves is Digger’s boss; he takes over supervision of the Camaho police station after Chilman retires. Malan has his own foibles. He’s married but he’s constantly flirting (and more) with women and is all too eager to engage in violence himself to “keep the peace.” This behavior is forced to change with the arrival of Miss Stanislaus on the force, who wants nothing to do with Malan but notes everything he does. Miss Stanislaus is brilliant, with Sherlockian powers of observation and deduction. But she also has a troubled past, and although her professional and personal disdain for Malan is quite clear, her attitude towards Digger is quite different. They make an intriguing couple, and an effective team.

The pace of the story is somewhat languorous, like the pace of island life, but this doesn’t make The Bone Readers any less compelling. The central mysteries are all “cold cases’ of varying degree. There’s the case of who killed Digger’s mom, which he is obsessed with, for obvious reasons. There’s also the case of a missing young man named Nathan that Chilman is obsessed with and makes Digger (and Malan) promise to focus on after their mentor retires. In their investigation of Nathan’s disappearance, Miss Stanislaus and Digger find out about someone else who has disappeared, a teenaged girl named Alice, and Miss Stanislaus notices that something is very peculiar about the church that Nathan and Alice attended. The Old Hope Spiritual Baptist Church is run by a charismatic (and corpulent) preacher named Deacon Bello who happens to be a spiritual advisor to several very important men on the island, including, it turns out, the Minister of Justice. Miss Stanislaus joins the church and starts living at their compound with several other women and young children, any of whom appear to be curiously similar. However things get hectic when Deacon Bello ends up dead at the hands of Miss Stanislaus using an official police weapon she had never been officially issued.

Overall, reading The Bone Readers, especially for someone who was born (and partially raised) in the Caribbean, is a rare treat and joyful experience. The book shimmies and shimmers with the sounds and sights of the islands. The dialogue has the rhythms and cadences of island patois, and the descriptions reflect the unique look and feel of "home." There are so many familiar (and unfamiliar) little details that produce feelings of nostalgia and pride (“Yes! This is how we/they do!”) which is a very unusual experience for me to have while reading crime fiction, but a welcome one. I think even for people without a familial connection to the islands, the novelty of the setting and the richness of the story will be attractive and compelling. I hope to spend A LOT more time with Miss Stanislaus and DC Digger solving mysteries on Camaho, so I hope Mr. Ross writes more books, and soon!

Title: The Bone Readers.
Author: Jacob Ross.
Kindle: 273 pages.
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press.
Date Published: November 8, 2016.
Date Read: February 3, 2021

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A/A+ (4.17/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A+.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Emperox (The Interdependency, #3) by John Scalzi

The Last Emperox is the final entry in a space opera from John Scalzi, best known for his Hugo-award winning novel Redshirts and his excellent debut novel, Old Man's War as well as his large social media footprint and record-breaking, multi-million-dollar publishing contract. The Last Emperox completes the story began in The Collapsing Empire and continued in The Consuming Fire. 

A reviewer at Locus magazine mentioned that they noticed that the The Last Emperox is dedicated "to the women who are done with other people’s shit" and that this is apparent in the centrality of its three primary main characters who are all strong, decisive women. First among these is the last emperox herself, Cardenia Wu-Patrick ak.a. Emperox Grayland II. Cardenia has been pretty much the most central character in the first two books and this doesn't change in this final entry in the series. However, two other female characters, Nadashe Nohamapetan and Kiva Lagos are also central to the story.

To remind you The Interdependency is set in a Universe where interstellar travel occurs via something called The Flow. In the first book some dude, i.e. Lord Marce Claremont, discovered that The Flow was becoming unstable and was likely to stop "flowing" in the not-too-distant future, which would result in entire planets being cut off from the rest of humanity, and likely falling into chaos and starvation. The Interdepenency depends upon extensive trade between planets, using The Flow as a means to transport goods and services between the participating planet. This economic system depends on a near-feudal political system where Houses control various monopolies on certain commodities and supplies, and the most important monopoly is the one run by House Wu (which is the house the Emperox has always come from, for centuries). Thisis the monopoly for ships.

Basically, the entire series is a metaphor for our current world which is facing a cataclysmic future (due to climate change) and currently has economic-political system which is dominated by soulless, corrupt elites. However, being Scalzi, he takes these serious underpinnings and overlays it with profane humor and ridiculous situations. Oftentimes, this style doesn't work for me, but in each of the three books in The Interdependency I found that it was quite effective. The middle book was probably the most appealing of the three to me, but he does do a good job of wrapping up many of the primary conflicts and the plot takes some very surprising turns (including the death of one of the major characters I have mentioned earlier).

Overall, I would say that I enjoyed The Last Emperox more than the average Scalzi book I have read. And acknowledging the degree of difficulty of combining social commentary, space opera and readability, I believe the book (and the series as a whole) has to be considered a success.

Title: The Last Emperox (The Interdependency, #3)
Author: John Scalzi .
Pages: 308 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: April 14, 2020.
Date Read: August 27, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: B+/A- (3.5/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: The Saints of Salvation (Salvage Sequence, #3) by Peter F. Hamilton

Peter F. Hamilton is definitely my favorite science fiction author, and since since science fiction is my favorite genre, he is probably my favorite author overall. He is on my short list of must-buy authors that also includes literary mystery writer Tana French, epic fantasy writer Brent Weeks and British speculative fiction noir aficionado Richard K. Morgan. My must-read list of authors is much longer and includes people like Louise Penny, Peter V. Brett, Alastair Reynolds and many, many mystery-thriller authors whose series I’m making my way through methodically and contentedly. Hamilton has a special place in my heart as the author of the Night’s Dawn trilogy, which is probably my favorite science fiction work. But his duology Pandora’s Star/Judas Unchained is not very far behind that classic at the very top of my list of most esteemed reads. Hamilton’s books are huge sprawling works, often thick tomes running into page lengths of 4-digits, peopled with large casts of characters and featuring mind-bending technologies and bizarre physical phenomena. Hamilton’s latest work is another trilogy, intriguingly called The Salvation Sequence. (This is intriguing because maybe this sequence of books won’t end at three? Hamilton has written many books in what is called the Commonwealth Universe but none of his prior book series using a majority of the same characters and/or same timeline has ever had more than three entries.) The third book in The Salvation Sequence is The Saints of Salvation, which follows Salvation and Salvation Lost. As I have mentioned before, there are certain themes that often reappear in Hamilton’s works and many, if not all, of these are also present in the Salvation Sequence. Some of these themes are: a futuristic/utopian society, disruptive technology (often involving novel transportation methods), culturally opaque aliens, incredibly wealthy and powerful tycoons, secret/double agents and extinction-level threats to civilization. In The Saints of Salvation, the two timelines of the plot from the previous books in the sequence (one plot line depicts the invasion of Earth by previously benevolent aliens and the other plot line is 10,000 years in the future where technologically advanced humans are planning to strike back against the aliens after the surviving human refugees escaped into the empty spaces of the galaxy) eventually intersect in a surprising way. Time, especially the manipulation of time as another feature of the physical world like gravity, becomes an increasingly important of the story in The Saints of Salvation. The animating reason behind the alien invasion of Earth is that the aliens claim to have received a message from the future from a being whom they call “The God at the End of Time” telling them to bring as many sentient creatures to him as they can. The aliens’ response to their God’s message is to seek out intelligent civilizations and place individuals in life-preserving cocoons in their ships and take them to their secret enclave until the end of time. The aliens have been doing this for literally millions of years and are often an order of magnitude more advanced than the other civilizations they meet/cull/kidnap and bring back to their enclave, whose location is their greatest secret. We learn that the aliens have the ability to slow and accelerate the passage of time, which they use to maintain the alien civilians they have collected in stasis. Humans eventually also learn how to manipulate time as well, which makes travel at relativistic speeds over vast distances possible within a human lifetime. Hamilton’s books are often peopled with huge casts of characters, many of whom don’t make it to the end. The Salvation sequence is anchored around a group of five main characters, called the Saints. One of the key plot points in the first two books when we’re experiencing the story told in two time lines set thousands of years apart is to try and figure which characters in the earlier time line become beatified as Saints by the surviving humans in the later time line. In The Saints of Salvation, we follow the Saints for a large part of the story. The other main thread in this books follows two advanced humans, named Dellian and Yirella, who lead a cadre of humans in the far future that are trying to finally get revenge on the aliens who forced humanity to abandon Earth and go into hiding millennia before. One way that The Saints of Salvation and the other books in the Salvation sequence is very different from prior Hamilton works is the depiction of gender. As an indicator of technological and sociological advancement, Hamilton has characters who are non-binary and uses specialized pronouns (like sie, hir) to describe them. This occurs in the earlier timeline (which is set in the early 23rd century), where humanity has started forming habitats with their own cultural and social standards. In addition to non-binary characters, there are also characters who cycle between more male and more female presentations. In the beginning these depictions of gender can be somewhat distracting but eventually the reality of non-binary or (literally) gender-fluid characters becomes pretty standard. None of the main characters are non-binary but several of the important/pivotal ones, especially in the last book, are. A definite gap in the diversity of Hamilton’s characters is the lack of any openly LGB characters as we would perceive them, although there is some same-sex attraction (and perhaps bisexual sexual activity?) portrayed. Interestingly, he often does go out of his way to indicate racial and ethnic diversity in his books, and this is true here as well, although white British people are (unsurprisingly) over represented. Overall, The Saints of Salvation is a fantastic final entry in another amazing, mind-bending space opera written by a science fiction grandmaster operating at the peak of his powers. If you have enjoyed his other similar, equally impressive works, such as Pandora’s Star / Judas Unchained, the Night’s Dawn trilogy, Great North Road, and A Night Without Stars / The Abyss Beyond Dreams, I am very confident you will enjoy the Salvation Sequence as well.

Title: The Saints of Salvation.
Author: Peter F. Hamilton.
Pages: 528 pages.
Publisher: Macmillan.
Date Published: October 20, 2020.
Date Read: January 17, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆  (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (4.0/4.0).

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: The Blood Road (Logan McRae, #11) by Stuart MacBride

The 11th book in the Logan McRae series written by Stuart MacBride set in Aberdeen, Scotland is one of the best. The Blood Road has all the elements we’ve come to love from a Logan McRae novel: irrepressible humor and awfully funny jokes, ghastly images of murder and mayhem, and extensive details of police procedure as they try to solve truly horrific crimes, some committed by the dregs of humanity and some by people Just Like Us.

The Logan McRae books have quickly become some of my favorites in the genre of British police-procedural, murder-mysteries. They have all the feature of other similarly labeled books but somehow MacBride is also able to successfully include humor, in multiple forms. The Logan books feature macabre jokes, awful puns, ridiculous encounters, and truly farcical situations. I’m shocked the series hasn’t been adapted for television yet like other series (which are also quite good but not nearly as amusing) Peter Robinson’s DCI Alan Banks, Val McDermid’s Tony Hill & Carol Jordan and Elisabeth George’s Inspector Lynley.

What really makes the Logan books extraordinary is while they are often hilarious they are also suspenseful thrillers and interesting mysteries. The very first book begins with Logan returning to work a few months after being stabbed repeatedly in the stomach and experiencing a near-death experience. In fact, Logan earns the nickname “Laz” (short for Lazarus) by his boss, the astonishingly horrible DI Roberta Steele. Steele is one of the great fictional comic inventions in British mysteries. She’s completely without shame or scruples; she regularly takes credit for Logan’s excellent detective work and is a walking H.R. and P.R. disaster. The interactions between Logan and Steele are the primary sources of comic relief in the books, but there are many others as well; first among these are the antics and descriptions of their eccentric police co-workers.

In The Blood Road, the Scottish police are dealing with multiple major (high-profile) crimes simultaneously: several young children have disappeared recently and the public is increasingly anxious about their whereabouts and safety. The book begins with the body of a Scottish police officer being found in a car—the problem is that same officer had been found dead and buried in an official funeral two years before after a supposed suicide. This means that not only was the officer (known by the sobriquet of “Ding-Dong”) a rotten cop, someone (likely Ding-Dong himself) must have killed someone else two years ago to produce a body that could be mistaken for him and now he’s been killed himself! As usual, Logan gets up to his eyebrows deep in solving multiple crimes (which is odd because after the events of the previous book In the Cold Dark Ground Logan now works for Professional Standards, not Major Crimes).

Overall, The Blood Road is one of the best entries in the series, reminiscent of some of the very best which cemented its appeal for me (books 4-7, in my humble opinion). It has multiple laugh out loud (LOL) moments while simultaneously being legitimately suspenseful. Logan gets put through the ringer again physically and the reader isn’t really sure he’s gonna get out of peril without permanent serious consequences (like death!) All of the best sidekicks from the previous books make appearances in this one (Steele, Tufty and of course Rennie!) and even the though the central crimes are truly appalling the book is quite engaging and enjoyable. The sad part of finishing The Blood Road is the knowledge that now there’s only one unread entry in the series remaining: Book 12’s All That’s Dead.

Title: Ancillary Justice.
Author: Stuart MacBride.
Paperback: 496 pages.
Format: Kindle.
Publisher: HarperCollins.
Date Published: June 14, 2018.
Date Read: November 25, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (4.0/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

Blood on the Tongue (Cooper & Fry, #3) by Stephen Booth

Blood on the Tongue is the third book in the police-procedural, murder-mystery series featuring Detective Sergeant Deborah Fry and Detective Constable Ben Cooper written by Stephen Booth set in the Peak District north of Nottingham in Derbyshire. In the first three books there have been three very different but compelling mysteries that Cooper and Fry have successfully solved. The central feature at the heart of these books is the relationship between two very different main characters. Cooper is an insider, while Fry is an outsider; Cooper is well-liked, Fry is not. Cooper is a DC, Fry is a DS (and Cooper’s boss). Cooper grew up in Edendale on a family farm with multiple siblings and a father who was a copper, Fry grew up in foster care in the big city of Manchester with a sister whom she has lost contact with due to addiction. 

Booth often gives us access to his protagonists’ thoughts and feelings in order to engage the reader. Fry basically despises everything that (she thinks) Cooper stands for. She views him as a daydreaming Boy Scout who doesn’t really understand the point of policing. He views her as strange and emotionally distant but an efficient cop who doesn’t understand that empathy and cultural competence can improve police outcomes. What I noticed more in Blood on the Tongue than in previous books is that Fry spends a lot more of her mental energy thinking about Cooper than Cooper does thinking about her. Their relationship is somewhat asymmetrical in that regard. Similarly, although they began the series equal in rank, Fry now outranks him, which means their professional relationship is also asymmetrical as well.

There are three main mysteries in Blood on the Tongue: 1) a dead body of an unidentified well-dressed man is found at the side of a road during a massive snow storm after a snow plough hits the corpse; 2) a dead body of a woman who they discover had given birth to a baby within the last two months is also found frozen in the snow (the whereabouts of Baby Chloe becomes the more important mystery here because it seems like the woman died by deliberately exposing herself to the wintry elements); 3) a 57-year-old cold case of the disappearance of a survivor of a World War II plane crash that killed 5 men, including one Polish soldier whose brother still lives in the area, is being actively investigated by the survivor’s attractive Canadian granddaughter trying to clear his name of the ‘deserter’ label. Of course these mysteries lead to other questions/puzzles: Who is Baby Chloe’s father? Will Ben and Allison (the Canadian granddaughter) hook up? Why did Chloe’s mom kill herself? Why do so many of the people involved with the recently discovered dead bodies also have connections to the decades-old crash?

As with all good sequential mystery series, a significant fraction of the appeal of the book is the new information provided about the protagonists Cooper and Fry. Cooper finally bites the bullet and moves out of his family’s farm into an apartment ‘in town.’ He fitfully adapts to living by himself (although he has a stray cat or two as a roommate) and after he moves in he begins to realize that maybe the reason why Fry is so dedicated to her job is the fear of coming home to a lonely, empty apartment. Fry seems to be more and more interested in Cooper, what he’s thinking and what he’s doing (and whom he’s doing it with.) At one point she says to him directly “Sometimes I can’t tell what you’re thinking, Ben.” It’s bizarre to me that as Cooper’s superior officer she thinks she has the right to know his thoughts at all times when he’s on duty! However, at the end of the book her watchful eyes over him probably saved his life after Cooper makes a selfless (and reckless) decision to try and save a suicidal suspect from self-harm. Fry, of course, does the appropriate thing by calling for back-up instead of rushing into help without a clear plan or assessment of the danger of his actions.

Overall, Blood on the Tongue is another excellent entry in what is fast becoming one of my favorites in the genre of British police-procedural murder-mysteries (which experienced readers know is quite a large and varied genre). Readers of books by Peter Robinson, Peter James, Ian Rankin, Stuart MacBride and Jane Casey will likely agree with me that the Cooper & Fry series is an enjoyable addition to these lists. And, happily, there are more than a dozen more books in the series for me to read, which I intend to do!

Title: Blood on the Tongue.
Author: Stephen Booth.
Page Length: 400 pages.
Format: Kindle.
Publisher: Witness Impulse.
Date Published: December 3, 2013 (First Published 2002).
Date Read: December 18, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.