The Green Brain

 

By Frank Herbert

What if you could get rid of all the nasty bugs and replace them with "better" bugs? That is the idea behind The Green Brain. 

So the Chinese are the first to embrace the idea and are eager to spread the effort to the rest of the world. But what they are not revealing is that their effort to rid China of "bad" bugs and replace them with modified bees has resulted in massive crop failures. 

So Brazil has been implementing the Chinese plan and wholesale extermination of insects has been undertaken. But the insects seem to be fighting back. Deep in the jungle, the insects have created a brain, a brain to guide them in their fight to survive against the poison onslaught from the human world. 

A group of investigators enter the jungle trying to track reports of giant insects and of organized attacks by insects. But it doesn't go well for them at all. Almost everyone at their camp gets killed when the insects launch an attack against the camp. Three of them manage to get to an amphibious vehicle and land it in a river they hope will get them back closer to civilization. The vehicle was seriously damaged in the insect attack and is nearly defunct. The three people have to cope with the muggy heat, the lack of food, the dangers of the river and continuing attacks by the organized insects. But all the insects want is to bring the people to the green brain so it can try to talk sense to the humans, that their wholesale insect slaughter is endangering all life on the planet.

This book dates from the 1960s. Hopefully we now know that insects are vital to the ecology of the planet and an attempt to exterminate them all is just foolishness. So the whole premise of the book is rather silly. But besides that, most of the story is concerned with the three survivors traveling down the river and that part of the story was boring. So all in all, not a great read.

Catseye

 

By Andre Norton

Troy Horan is a war refugee. His family was evacuated from their home planet to another planet and never were able to return home. Now Troy is alone, everyone else in his family died in an epidemic that swept the ghetto, called the Dipple, were they all lived. Troy is just a teenager and every day he goes to the labor center in the hopes of snagging a job as a laborer. This day he gets a job working for a pet store.

He feels lucky to get this job and tries to do his best. But something fishy is going on at the pet store and it seems to center around the five animals from Terra (Earth): two house cats, two foxes, and a kinkajou. Troy discovers that the animals are telepathic and that he can communicate mentally with them. He feels connected to the five creatures. 

One terrible night, Troy, returning to the pet shop, finds a door that should be locked isn't. Entering the premises, he also finds the door to the owner's apartment open and his boss is inside and dead. He also finds the five Terran animals on the loose. But then Troy is found with the dead man by one of the employees who jumps to the conclusion that Troy killed him. Troy flees, accompanied by the animals. They escape in a vehicle. 

But where can they go where they will be safe? Troy thinks of one place, the Wild. On this planet, much of it is preserved in its natural state where no cities or roads exist. This might give Troy and the animals a chance to survive. But instead the vehicle crashes in a forbidden zone, Ruhkarv. Ruhkarv is an ancient ruin, mostly underground with a very bad reputation. A few years before, an exploration party there went insane and killed each other and themselves. Since then, the place has been sealed off by force fields. But when Troy's stolen vehicle went down, it skipped over the force field and landed inside the boundaries of Ruhkarv. Now he and his five animal companions are stuck in a frightening and puzzling alien underground city and are being pursued by the authorities, by the local forest rangers and by the dead man's henchmen.  

I first read this book a long time ago, when I was just a kid. I remember liking it a lot them. But the only thing I really remembered about the story was the time the main character spent in the underground city. So reading decades later was almost like reading it for the first time. It was a pretty good read but I think I liked it better when I was young.

April Lady

 

By Georgette Heyer

Nell is the beatiful young wife of one of the wealthiest lords in Regency England. Giles is quite a bit older than Nell, who is still in her teens. Nell's family is not well off and she has been spending the generous allowance that Giles gives her a bit too freely. But that is not the reason why she can't pay her bills. She can't pay her bill because she has been giving a lot of money to her brother, Dysart, who, like their father, is a gambler and, like their father, not lucky. 

It's not surprising that Giles might think that Nell married him because of his wealth. How else to explain her spendthrift ways and her standoffishness? Giles knows she gives money to her improvident brother and he has laid down the law forbidding her to continue to do so. What Giles doesn't know is Nell's mother has explained to her that men of their class often take mistresses and that Nell mustn't be a clingy, emotional wife and not take offense if Giles strays. Plus Giles' little sister artlessly informed Nell that Nell was much prettier than Giles' mistress. What Giles also doesn't know is that Nell loves him very much and is distant because she believes that is what is expected of a Society wife.

So when Nell discovers a large bill she forgot she owes, she feels she cannot tell Giles about it because it will only confirm his suspicion that she married him for his money. Thus she launches on a frantic effort to raise the money on her own with the help of her gambler brother Giles and hindered by Giles' little sister, Letty, who is busy hatching plots of her own.

I first read this book decades ago and loved it from the first. I have reread it many times and enjoyed it each time. But this is the last time. It is time to pass on my copy to another reader who enjoys the novels of Georgette Heyer.

Review by She Reads Novels.

Beauvallet

 

By Georgette Heyer

Nick Beauvallet is the scrouge of Spanish shipping during the days of Queen Elizabeth I. A man of daring whose motto is Reck Not, the Spanish fear him as a witch. How else to explain Nick's extraordinary luck? 

Now Nick is going to test his luck to the utmost. He dares to sneak into Spain itself to find the woman he has fallen in love with, Dominica. A beautiful maiden, Nick captured her when he destroyed the Spanish galleon she was traveling on from the Spanish colonies in the New World to her home in Spain. 

Dominica at first resisted her attraction to Nick but, when it became clear he was a man of honor and not the brutal pirate the Spanish believed him to be, she admitted she returned his feelings. As a man of honor, Nick returned Dominica and her ailing father to Spain under cover of night and promised he would return and claim her to be his bride. But if the Spanish capture him, it will certainly mean torture and death at the stake. But Reck Not, Nick dares all.

I first read this story a long time ago. I wasn't that impressed with at the time. I suppose I was expecting something along the lines of Heyer's Regency Romances. This is not that kind of romance. But this time, I quite enjoyed this romp of a novel. Nick Beauvallet is definitely the star of this story and his love interest is third place at best, the second place is held by his charming and capable manservant, Joshua Dimmock, with his fabulous mustachios that he willingly sacrifices to help Nick escape his Spanish captors. 

Review by She Reads Books.