The Long Walk

 

By Slavomir Rawicz

The story of several prisoners in Russian work camps during World War II who managed to escape and walk all the way from Siberia to India. They were helped by the wife of camp commander. This woman (my opinion) may have had a grudge against the ruling communist regime of the time for sending her husband run a prison camp so far from civilization. 

Despite her help and their considerable abilities to fend for themselves, not all of them survived to reach freedom though. Of course walking through Siberia in the wintertime was not easy but they were actually pretty well dressed, having pilfered furs from the stocks of the prison camp. But worse than Siberia was crossing the Gobi desert because not only did they face hunger, they also faced the lack of water sources and they failed to bring containers beyond each person's canteen to carry extra water. Plus, by the time they were in the desert, it was in the summer and daytime heat was extreme. They lost two people to kidney failure from lack of water. Then, traveling through the mountains, they lost one man to a fall. But they did eventually reach India and safety.

According to most sources, this tale is fiction. One thing that makes me think it is fiction is that the group of escapees encountered a beautiful teenage girl who was also on the run and she joined them on the trek only to die in the desert. This seemed to me to be a character added to the story to make it more appealing to a wider audience. Also, according to records from that time, Rawicz was released  from the Russian prison in 1942, he wasn't an escapee.

But whether true or fabricated, it's still an interesting story. Of course, it loses a lot of its drama if it is fiction, though. 

Our Share of Night

 

By Mariana Enriquez

Translated by Megan McDowell

This really isn't going to be a review but a reminder to myself to not ever get this book again. Fine words are spoken about it that may fool me again, just like they did this time. 

So, I didn't care for it from the very beginning. It just wasn't interesting. Plus there was too much untranslated Spanish in it. But mainly I put it down after I read the passage where the person I think is the main character, Juan, abuses his young son:

"Juan got up and said, Do as I say, go, right now, and when Gaspar refused again, sniffling with his arms crossed, Juan slapped him on the cheek with his open palm, a blow that swung Gaspar's face around, making him wobble on the stool and finally lose his balance. He fell and landed on his side with a dry thump, and the stool also toppled to the floor, barely missing him. Juan went over to him and yanked him roughly up, ignoring his cries, and saw the red mark on his cheek and his swollen lip. The pang of regret disappeared as soon as Gaspar started to cry. Stop it, he said. He grabbed his son's hair and forced him to meet his eyes, straining his neck backward. He shook the boy's head, and felt the soft, sweaty hair get tangled in his fingers. Don't be weak, nothing happened. Gaspar tried to say something: the chair, the slap; Juan raised his hand threateningly again, and the boy stopped crying. Go get changed, he repeated, and don't make me tell you again."

So when I read that, I thought, fuck you, Juan. And I decided I didn't give a shit about Juan and whatever happened to him. And I gave the book away. I didn't rate it a bad read because I didn't read it and the consensus seems to be that it is a good read.

Kirkus Reviews has a review of the novel.

A Closed and Common Orbit

 

By Becky Chambers

This is a continuation of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.

The story has two main characters, Pepper aka Jane and Lovelace aka Lovey aka Sidra. Pepper is the owner of a small shop that does repairs of tech equipment. Sidra is an artificial intelligence who used to maintain a starship. But it was reset and removed from the starship and placed in an artificial human-appearing body by Pepper.

In this story we learn about Pepper's childhood. Known as Jane 23, she was a child worker in a factory that refurbished used parts. The factory is run by robots referred by the child workers as Mothers. It's a harsh and strict life and children who don't measure up are simply eliminated. Jane escapes one night only to find herself in a huge junkyard, the source of the tech that she and the other kids worked on. Knowing that going back to the factory will mean her death, Jane wanders until she is guided to safety by a disembodied voice. The voice turns out to be the AI of a grounded spaceship. The AI, named Owl, has been stranded alone in the ship for a long time after its crew was arrested for trespassing. Owl is thrilled to have someone to interact with. It gets Jane into the ship and together they work over the years to make the ship useable again to escape the hostile inhabitants of the junkyard planet. 

Some ten years later is when Pepper (Jane 23) takes on the responsibility of helping the AI that was known as Lovelace adapt to no longer being the AI of a spaceship but instead was inhabiting a "human" body, a situation it was never meant to be in. It has a lot to learn and some programming from its past life to deal with.

The AIs in the story are sentient and the story is a look at the idea that a sentient machine is a person that has thoughts and feelings. I didn't find Lovelace/Sidra's story all that interesting. It was OK but not much happens.

The Pepper/Jane 23 story is much more interesting. Beyond their training, the children in the factory are not taught anything except obedience. So once she is free of the factory, Jane is facing a dangerous world without the common knowledge that most would take for granted. For instance, she didn't know there was an outside of the factory. She had never seen the sun, or trees, or animals and she is ignorant of how dangerous some animals can be. So Jane and Owl work together to keep Jane alive and safe and get the ship repaired by scavenging parts from the huge junkyard the ship is stuck in.

The Guardian has a review of the novel.

John Dies at the End

 

By Jason Pargin aka David Wong

David Wong was just an ordinary man with a rather nutty friend, John. But ordinary soon goes away when John and David are exposed to a magician who calls himself Robert Marley. Robert has a drug called soy sauce due to a similarity in its appearance to actual soy sauce. It gives users, including David and John, the ability to perceive the supernatural beings intruding on our world. 

Soon after this revelation, David and John have their world turned upside down. Joined by a dog, Molly, who is also on the soy sauce and Jennifer Lopez, David's high school unrequited crush (not the famous Jennifer Lopez) and later Amy Sullivan, the sister of the man who was Molly's owner, they mainly fight to stay alive while dealing with the agents of the enemy, an lunatic being from another dimension or universe with a penchant for mindless cruelty who goes by various forms of the name Korrok.

This novel is described as horror/comedy. I found it to be mainly just horror and only mildly amusing occasionally. It is very chaotic, with people being dead and alive at the same time and way too much strange and peculiar events going on all the time. I was glad when I finished it. It was just too gross and gruesome for me.

Kirkus has a review of the book.

It was made into a movie, John Dies at the End that came out in 2012 and stars Chase Williamson (who?) as David and Rob Mayes (?) as John and Paul Giamatti as a secondary character, the only actor in the movie whose name sounded familiar to me.

Version Control

 

By Dexter Palmer

Rebecca Steiner is married to a physicist, Philip, who is trying to create a device that is essentially a time machine, although he and his team hate it being called a time machine.

Philip Steiner's project is being funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), a division of the Department of  Defense. He is in charge of a team of physicists who are making the machine, the Causality Violation Device do what Steiner's theory thinks it will do. 

Rebecca and Philip had a young son, Sean, who died in a car crash caused by a glitch in the operation of Artificial Intelligence piloted vehicles. Rebecca was the ostensible driver of the vehicle, although she was extremely inebriated and relying solely on the AI to do the driving and she was not able to take control of the vehicle quickly enough to avoid the pileup caused by the glitch.

Rebecca works from home as a customer service representative for an online dating service, Lovability. She is very good at her job and is known for her ability to talk subscribers into upgrading their subscription to more costly plans that offer more services. The author has some interesting things to say about dating services. He points out that the sites are not there to match customers to the perfect person. They have to maintain a balance between making successful matches and making too few matches. Because the longer they can keep people engaged with their site, the more data they acquire which they can then sell to interested businesses. As the author says, "So the goal is not maximum efficiency in pairing mates, but optimal inefficiency. The site maximizes revenue when takes as long as possible to make matches without taking so long that its members give up and stop using it." 

One day, Rebecca comes home earlier than she was expected.  And catches Philip having sex with a woman who is one of the physicists working on the Causality Violation Device. For revenge, she goes to his lab, intending to mess with his work. Instead, she steps inside the Causality Violation Device and back out after a few seconds.

That is the start of the second half of the novel. In which we find that the boy Sean didn't die in the crash, instead Philip was driving and he died in the crash. Which probably the best revenge a jilted wife could have on an unfaithful husband. But that is not the end of the story, there is still half the book to finish reading. The second half is titled "The Shadow Brought Backward."

This was on OK read although I thought it was way too long and delved too deeply in the private life of Rebecca and Philip. It was more like one of those dysfunctional family novels with a smidge of science fiction. I would almost call it chick lit, honestly.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Everyone Worth Knowing

 

 By Lauren Weisberger

Bette Robinson is a young woman who is bored by her job working at a Manhattan banking business. Finally she reaches her breaking point and impulsively quits her job. Afterward, she kind of drifts for awhile until her Uncle Will gets her an interview with an up and coming public relations firm run by Kelly, the one who coined the title of the book: 'So how do you know all these people?'

She [Kelly] just laughed. 'I have an office full of people whose job it is to know everyone  worth knowing.'

 Kelly's business, as described by Bette's Uncle Will: "Darling, she does a lot more than just plan parties. She chitchats with club owners and trades on gossip she has about other people's clients to the columnists so they'll write good things about her own clients and sends gifts to celebrities to convince them to attend her events so the press will as well—all the while looking very pretty when she goes out every night. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I'd like to see you in event-planning."

Bette does become an event planner and finds she has a knack for the job. It's very intense and complicated, requiring massive coordinating and planning and contacts with VIPs and their clients. At first it is a bit overwhelming but Bette powers through. She becomes involved with one of the VIP celebrities, Philip Weston, but their relationship is mostly just for show. She meets another man that she finds very appealing but this man, Sammy, seems aloof and possibly already involved with another woman.

As she grows in competence, Bette finds satisfaction in her ability to handle everything her new job requires of her. But it turns out to be a 24/7 job and her social life falls apart when all her spare time is taken up by the work. She realizes that no job is more important than the people in your life. She is losing touch with friends and family because her life is being consumed by her job.

This was an interesting story, a look behind the scenes of a successful PR business.  Besides the two love interests, Bette also has to cope with misleading stories about herself showing up in the gossip pages due to her connection to Philip Weston.

The book is rather long, my copy was 367 pages which seems to be par for the course these days. Too long, in my opinion. Still overall I enjoyed the story.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Warlock Holmes : A Study in Brimstone

 

By G.S. Denning

Based on Sherlock Holmes stories, this collection contains six stories, starting with when Dr. Watson first joins Holmes in his adventures. Watson is ex-military who is still recovering from wounds received in combat. And Holmes is a strange, mystical fellow with connections to demons and other arcane beings. Watson is actually the more observant of the two but Holmes is peculiar and unpredictable.

Like the originals, these stories feature people coming to Holmes for help or people encountered who need help. Holmes also has the help of two of Britain's finest, Detective Inspector Torg Grogsson, an ogre and Inspector Vladislav Lestrade, a vampire. Also there is a  version of the Baker Street Regulars except these are the Baker Street Irregulars, a pack of rats led by a shapeshifting ratboy.

The six stories:

• A Study in Brimstone
• The Adventure of the Resident Sacrifice
• The Case of the Cardboard... Case
• The Adventure of the Yellow Bastard
• The Adventure of the _eckled  _and
• Charles Augustus Milverton: Soulbinder

Holmes in these stories in similar to the original in that they are both enigmas. Original Holmes for his intellect and uncanny powers of observation. And this Holmes for his uncanny and secret powers that he uses for his own benefit and to bring each case to a satisfactory conclusion.

I enjoyed the humor encountered in the stories. As far as whether the stories are takes on the original Sherlock Holmes stories, I don't know as I have never really read the Holmes stories. I did recognize one story that's a take on the original, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band". But only that one.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

 

By Dennis E. Taylor

Bob Johansson made quite a lot of money in the tech industry and he used part of that money to pay for a place in a cryonics business where his frozen head would be stored upon his death. Which is exactly what happened when Bob died unexpectedly soon after.

But things went downhill in the world after Bob's head was frozen. The religious fanatics took over the USA and threw out the Constitution and set up a theocracy. 

Bob woke up from his frozen sleep but instead of being a living person, he is a program on a computer. So not really alive but circumstances force him to confront his new existence. Circumstances also force him to go along with the religious nuts who now own him as he either has to do as told or be deleted. 

His task, as he soon figures out, is to be the guiding artificial intelligence for a deep space probe to be shortly launched with the goal of finding livable planets as the political situation on Earth seems to be headed to global nuclear war. Bob goes along with the his new masters because being a program is better than not being at all.

Bob is, apparently, a lot smarter than the people who own him. He soon detects various traps and subroutines that are meant to come into play to control him and force him to do as ordered. He is way ahead of the game when launch day arrives and once off into space deletes all the traps and tricks set up to control him. 

Bob is not the only AI powered vessel from Earth that is tasked with looking for refuge planets for the human race. He has to deal with a fanatical Brazilian military AI that is of the Do or Die variety and is completely unwilling to compromise or listen to reason. So Bob's mission of exploration has to be constantly on guard for the Brazilian fanatic and his clones. 

Nevertheless, Bob and the clones he creates do find a few viable planets and a clone is sent back to Earth with the good news. But when it gets there it finds a world so decimated by nuclear war that it is becoming unlivable for humankind. So what remains of the human race is desperate for rescue from the trap of their own making. Which the Bob clone valiantly tries to do even though no one left on Earth really deserves rescue.

Anyways, that the is first book in the Bobiverse series, of which there are five so far. I enjoyed Bob's machinations to free himself from the control of the religious creeps who think they are his bosses. But after that, the story got rather boring with too much space battle stuff and tech talk about spaceships and other techy things. I won't be reading any more books in the series. 

Wishes

 

By Jude Deveraux

Bernie's funeral was poorly attended. Indeed, no one there really mourned her death. Married several times, each man for his money, concerned with her own comfort and pleasure, Bernie couldn't see much past the end of her own nose.

Upon coming to herself in the afterlife, unsurprisingly Bernie did not rate heaven. Instead she is in the Kitchen, a kind of halfway house for women who didn't make the grade to entry into heaven. But that's ok, because she can earn her way into heaven by helping those who are alive and are struggling. Interestingly, who the unsaved women of the Kitchen can help can be anyone in the history of humankind. 

So Bernie picks Nellie Grayson, a woman in her late twenties who lives in 1896 Chandler, Colorado. Nellie takes care of her younger sister, Terel, who is twenty and their widowed father, Charles, a businessman. Nellie is the unpaid laborer in service to her father and sister, but she loves her family and accepts her lot in life is to take care of her sister and father for as long as they need her.

When Bernie first observes her target, she is drawn more towards the young, slim sister, Terel, not Nellie who is plump and tends to stress eat. Bernie, when she was alive, was very careful to keep her weight down and exercise regularly. What Bernie misses is that Terel cares only about herself and manipulates her older sister ruthlessly. Bernie has been given the power to grant three wishes to help out Nellie. But the wishes Nellie makes are not for herself but instead are to make Terel and Charles happy. She wishes that Terel be as popular with the townsfolk as Terel wants to be. Her next wish was for their father, Charles, to be very successful in his business so he can afford to buy Terel all the pretty dresses she wants. And Nellie's third wish was to be of service to her family for as much as they wanted her to be.

These wishes were great for Terel and Charles, but Nellie was not happy. She had met a nice man who was very interested in her, but Terel and Charles interfered in that relationship. Terel because she wanted the man for herself. Charles because life was easier having his eldest daughter taking care of himself and Terel. The unfairness of it all didn't matter as long as they got what they wanted and they truly didn't care if Nellie ever had a life of her own.

Bernie eventually sees that Terel is not a sweet young girl but is a stone-cold bitch. She also sees that the Nellie is a loving, generous, kind woman who deserves better than being an unpaid servant to her selfish family. So now Bernie has to figure out how to fix the mess she accidentally got Nellie mired in.

What a soap opera this novel is! Nellie is a total doormat who fails to see the truth about her nasty little sister. She also fails to stand up for herself against the unreasonable demands of the two of them on her time. Even when the love of her life enters the story, she allows sis and dad to ruin it for her. It takes poor Nellie forever to realize the complete selfishness of Terel and Charles. In the process, she nearly drives her new man away when she refuses to believe him over the lies she is being fed by her own family. Nellie has a good heart, but wow, is she ever dense and so gullible.