| 1. The Shadow Protocol - Andy McDermott - My
first book of the new decade. This was an exciting book in
the McDermott style. The story is about a super secret
government program that has figured out how to transfer
thoughts and memories from one person to another. Kinda like
what happened in the Matrix. The government used this
process to capture terrorist, transfer their thoughts and
memories into an agent Adam who is the main character in the
book. That way they could take down the terrorist
organization with the first hand knowledge they gathered.
Adam however was by design an empty shell of a person who
had no knowledge of his past. He was OK with that until a
British female scientist, Dr. Childs, was temporarily
transferred into the organization and started to ask him
questions about himself that he couldn't answer. Come to
find out his memory had been wiped before he joined the
program and they wanted to find out why and to see if he
could regain his memories. Adam then decided that finding
out about his past was more important then his job so he
stoled the disk containing his memories and transferred them
back into himself. He found out that he was accused of
giving secret information to the enemy which resulted in the
American secretary of state and his twin brother being
killed. He was effectively brain washed into thinking he was
responsible. Dr. Childs didn't buy it that he would do such
a thing so she helped him prove it was untrue. In the end a
general who was in charge of the memory project was the real
culprit and Adam and Dr. Childs had to bring him to justice
so that Adam could be cleared. The general and associates
who were also involved tried very hard to kill Adam before
he could expose them and just about did but Adam got
evidence to another general who understood that this was
treason and that Adam was not responsible. This book was a
real page turner and with reading it I think I have read all
of McDermott's books available. Hope he writes a new one
soon. |
| 2. The Tiger Warrior - David Gibbins -
Another Gibbins book that is more a history lesson than an
adventure novel. In this story Jack Howard and Costas are
all over the far east in search of the history of Roman
legionaries escaping after the fall of Roman and making it
to India via the silk road. They find Roman coins in the Red
Sea which sets them on their quest. In this story Jack
daughter Rebecca is being trained to follow in her dads
footprints so she is part of their entourage. Jack is driven
by the fact his great, great grandfather Howard is part of
the history of India and Jack wants to understand what
happened. Truthfully this story is more of a history lesson
and with not that much interest to me. |
| 3. The Devil Colony - James Rollins - Now
this was a story that had everything I am interested in
included: science, caves, hot springs, volcanoes,
Yellowstone and more. The story starts out in a cave on
Indian land that had curses associated with it. When to
young Indians decided to check out the cave anyway they
found a bunch of dead bodies and stacks of gold plates. When
they informed the authorities, archaeologists showed up to
examine the finds but when they took a gold plated skill out
of the cave there was a mysterious explosion and the ground
around the cave started to be consumed into powder. The only
explanation that made sense was that nanobots, somehow made
by the ancient Anasazi, were responsible for the
destruction. Of course the explosion and destruction came to
the attention of Sigma and they were sent to figure out what
happened. The event also caught the attention of the Guild
who also became interested in the technology behind the
explosion. The bad guy in this story is called Rafael Saint
Germaine and he was born with a birth defect which makes his
bones very brittle and kept his stature small which he makes
up for in evil. Painter Crow, the head of Sigma, niece is
involved and is captured by the Guild to force Sigma to turn
over all findings about the explosion. After numerous
attempts to kill the Sigma crew the two sides come together
to prevent the super volcano in Yellowstone from erupting.
The bad guys however break their pledge and try to kill
everyone with any knowledge of what has happened but in the
end Rafael is consumed by nanobots. This was an exciting
story that I read very quickly. I had forgotten how exciting
Rollins' books can be but this story reminded me. |
| 4. Crash and Burn - James Rollins - This was
a short story, not novel length. Joe Kowalski and
Seichan are traveling my Sigma jet to two different
destinations. Kowalski was going on vacation and Seichan was
going on a secret Sigma mission when their jet was hit by
some kind of particle ray that burned everyone on the plane
and caused the pilot to pass out. When Seichan figured out
they were about to crash she jumped into the co-pilot's seat
and brought the plane to a sea landing on the shore of an
island in the Azores. Kowalski and Seichan dragged the pilot
out of the plane because they were afraid the plane would
explode after the crash landing. They had seen some kind of
resort being built on the island as they were going down so
they headed there only to find everyone who was supposed to
be celebrating a child's birthday were unconscious but
alive. They then figured out that these people must have
suffered the same fate as their jet so they hid until they
saw the people responsible for what happened. A scientist
was using this isolated island to test his newly developed
particle beam weapon for an middle eastern terrorist
organization. When Kowalski and Seichan saw that these
people were using these island people as guinea pigs and
that they planned to kill everyone so there would be no
witnesses they sprung into action to put an end to the bad
guys. They also determine that if the stunned people were
given an electric shock that their catatonic state could be
completely reversed. So they shocked everyone so that the
birthday party could resume. |
| 5. Tracker - James Rollins - This was another short story from Rollins. This is a story about an x military ranger, Tucker Wayne, who was setting outside a bistro in Budapest, Hungary with his dog Kane. Since being discharged from the serviceTucker had been doing odd surveillance jobs to support himself when he had to. While setting in the bistro, he noticed a young woman who looked out of place and scared so he decided to watch her. Soon some goons showed up and Tucker knew they were trailing her. After watching this unfold he decided, against his better judgment, to help the woman even though he had no idea of the situation. Come to find out her father, who was an academic, had discovered the location of a horde of Nazi treasure looted in WWII. She was being followed because this squad of bad guys wanted to use her to pressure he father to divulge the treasure's location so they could steal it instead of having it returned to its rightful owners. Tucker steps in and stops the bad guys (permanently) and reunites the woman with her father. The horde was then turned over to the proper authorities. This was an exciting read as usual for Rollins. |
| 6. Einstein Pursuit - Chris Kuzneski - This is
a new author for me and I like what I read. This is a story
of a blown up laboratory in Sweden which has Swedish and
Interpol investigators try to figure what happened. At the
same time as the explosion, a retired scientist in
Pittsburgh in almost kidnapped and he calls Payne Industries
where he used to work for help. He convinced Jonathon Payne
the CEO that he was in serious trouble so Payne and his
military partner David Jones set out to help him. Eventually
the attempted kidnapping of the scientist Sahlberg was
connected to the explosion in Sweden so many police and
Interpol officers were trying to solve the mystery. Come to
find out, the laboratory explosion was carried out by a
Italian billionaire who found out his lead scientist was
moonlighting and not spending all of his time trying to cure
the billionaire's extreme cancer. In the end all of the bad
guys except for one were eliminated and Sahlberg was finally
a free man. All in all this was a well written story so I
will pursue other books by this author. |
| 7. The Prophecy - Chris Kuzneski - The second
book from this new author. This is a story about the
prophecies of Nostradamus. While Jonathon and Jones were
attending a charity gathering they both noticed a woman in
the back who seemingly was out of place. Turns out she
possessed a letter she wanted the MANIACs to look at.
Unfortunately after discussing the letter she was killed by
a sniper. Payne and Jones then set out to find out why. They
were lead to the next door neighbor of the murdered woman as
the letter was actually meant for her. Numerous attempts
were made to kill them and the rightful owner of the letter,
Megan Moore. Enlisting help from their numerous connections
and resources, Payne and Jones started to piece together the
story. Turns out there was a secret organization which was
started my Nostradamus himself to keep his writings secret
for posterity. Ever since 1566 there had been a guardian who
was paid to keep a secret puzzle box safe and it was Megan's
turn to take on this responsibility. A notorious criminal
living is Brugge, Belgium was a collector of Nostradamus
artifacts and he was sending in wave after wave of thugs to
get the puzzle box and kill everyone in their way. In the
end Payne and Jones took care of him, permanently and Megan
was given the puzzle box now that she was safe. Inside the
box Megan found a family tree that had her as the next
guardian. Of course this whole family tree was a prediction
by Nostradamus because none of these people existed at his
death in 1566. Not a bad read as this story like the last
one was fast paced. |
| 8. The Death Relic - Chris Kuzneski - Third book from this
new author. In this story Jon and Jones are called to Mexico
by Maria, an old acquaintance and x girl friend of Jones.
She is there to take a new job when her new boss suddenly
disappears during dinner before telling her why she was
hired or what she was supposed to do. This story talks alot
about the Mayan and Incan cultures and a supposed treasure
that these cultures hid from the Spanish invaders that had
yet to be found. The story involves a lot of characters
including professional kidnappers, CIA agents,
archaeologists, academics and an array of thugs and crime
lords. Turns out Maria, Jon, Jones and others were lured to
Mexico by a CIA acquaintance who needed them to find the
missing treasure which of course they did. This story was
written in a way that you don't get to see how it is going
to end until the very last chapter. This might be my last
Kuzneski book for a while because the three books I have
read so far are all pretty similar.
|
| 9. Trinity Sight - Jennifer Givhan -
Another new author that I found in a library recommendation.
This was actually a very interesting story about people
being transported to an alternative dimension without their
knowledge and how this related to the ancient Zuni stories
of creation and life. Calliope Santiago, a mother pregnant
with twins, suddenly finds her family missing in
addition to all the people in her neighborhood except for a
young Korean girl from next door, after seeing a huge flash
in the sky. Long-dead volcanoes erupt, the ground rattles
and splits, and kochina monsters come to life. The
impossible suddenly real, Calliope is forced to reconcile
the geological record with her Native American heritage she
once denied if she wants to survive and deliver her unborn
babies into this uncertain new world. She quickly heads for
her grandmothers house near Silver City where the family
planned to meet up if they ever got separated in the hopes
that they would be there. They were not. Along the way she
finds others who are equally mystified as to what happened.
The troupe finally makes it to Zuni (the town) where they
try to fit in with the natives. One of Calliope's babies was
born normal and the other was born as a rock. After six
months they come to the conclusion that on Solstice the
portal between the dimensions will open again and let them
return to the prior lives. The portal is located in Room 33
in Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon. Rooted in indigenous oral-history traditions and contemporary apocalypse fiction, Trinity Sight asks readers to consider science versus faith and personal identity versus ancestral connection. Utterly original and a good read. Interestingly, Jennifer Givhan is mainly a poet. |
| 10. The
Florentine Deception - Carey Nachenberg
(Co-inventor of Norton Antivirus and adjunct professor at
UCLA). This is a new author for me. I found him by googling
for authors like Dan Brown. In this story he is not in any
way similar to Brown though this was a decent story of cyber
espionage. In this story Russians had infiltrated Microsoft
and put a back door into the Update process so that they
could send malicious code to the 40 million plus Windows
computers in the United States and Israel thereby causing
chaos and infrastructure failures at will. Alex, the main
character, is a successful computer security entrepreneur
(probably a self portrait of the author) thinks he has
stumbled upon the possibility that a large diamond called
the Florentine might be stored in a mansion he just bought.
He finds a hidden safe filled with art treasures and some
flash drives with a movie about a cave outside of Malibu.
Him and his friends are all cavers and rock climbers so they
find the cave in hopes of finding the diamond hidden there.
Iranians show up at the cave and kill his friend because
they are after the Florentine as well. It turns out the
movie about the cave has the "Florentine Controller"
embedded in it via steganography. Now that Alex and his
friends know what Florentine is and is not (a diamond) they
are plagued by both the Iranians and the Russians in an
attempt to get the controller back. The Russians want it
because they want to keep it secret so they can use it
against the US sometime in the future where as the Iranians
want to reek havoc in the US and Israel now. In the end the
Russians kill the Iranians and retrieve the Florentine
Controller but Alex and a computer science instructor at
UCLA figure out a way to stop the attack issued by the
Iranians and a way to remove the threat from all Windows
computers. All in all a decent story made more interesting
because I have thought the same thing. That is, if someone
could hack the Windows update process they would be able to
run malicious code on all Windows machines and seriously
disrupt business as usual around the world as Windows
computers run virtually everything. |
| 11. Foundation - Isaac Asimov - I thought I
would go back and read some early sci-fi that I didn't read
when I was young. I thought about the Foundation series
because there are many books in this series available. I
have to admit that I wasn't impressed with either the story
or the writing style and for that reason I don't think I
will read others in the series. This story is a long time
line into which many characters pop up and pass away as time
marches on. It is a story about a space empire that is
slowly collapsing and the outlying planets that must fend
for themselves. Trantor is a small metal deprived planet
who's sole purpose is to write an encyclopedia of all
knowledge known at the time. Scientists and researchers at
this point in time believe their jobs are to document was is
already known to science instead of expanding
knowledge. Trantor, because it is a planet of
scientists, is bound to be taken over with the collapse of
the Empire but instead they start a religion that sweeps the
galaxy and makes Trantor the center of the outer planets.
The future path of Trantor and its people is foretold by
Hari Seldon, a mathematician and psychologist, has developed
psychohistory, a field of science and psychology that
equates all possibilities in large societies to mathematics,
allowing for the prediction of future events. Seldon also
predicted the fall of the Empire that pissed off the powers
that be. Anyway to those on Trantor who followed Seldon
their task was to just hold things together until the series
of events that Seldon predicted to occur along times path
come true. In the end they all do. |
| 12. Malta Exchange - Steve Berry - It has
been a while since I read a Berry novel so I checked the
library and he has quite a few new books I haven't read yet
so I picked this one to check out. This is a story about the
Vatican and its behind the scenes intrigues. A Pope had just
died and two brothers plot to make one of the brothers the
next Pope by using damaging information about the various
cardinals participating in the conclave to get elected. The
two brothers had a plan where they acted as if they hated
each other when they were really working together.
Unfortunately for the one brother that was groomed to be
Pope his twin brother killed him out of jealousy so that he
could take his place, in name and all. In the end the plot
was figured out by Cotton Malone and Magellan Billet and the
imposture was imprisoned in the Vatican jail along with the
acting chief of Vatican security who was assisting in the
ruse. Both were later executed in secret for the crimes they
had committed. An interesting part of the story was the intelligence agency (the Entity) and enforcement agency (Secreti) that worked behind the scenes in the Vatican to take care of its business. Supposedly the Vatican has one of the worlds best intelligence agencies in the world. Other interesting items discussed in the story was that there is no mention of heaven or hell in the Old Testament with the thought that these concepts were invented during the Council of Nicea as a way to instill fear into people so they could be controlled. As is usual for Berry he invented a secret document that the church was trying to find and destroy for hundreds of years called "Constitutum Constantini" or "Constantine's Gift" which laid how the church should act to keep people under control by controlling every aspect of their lives from birth to death. Not a bad read. |
| 13. Volcanoes - Peter Francis - This is an
actual book from our own library. It proves to me that
reading a real book is more difficult than reading on a
reader. In the process of reading this book it completely
came apart as the glue in the binding gave out and flaked
away. I had to clear out all of the glue and re-glue the
book which seems to have been successful. This book, while
not an actual geology text book, talks about all aspects of
volcanoes: how they form, where they form, different types
of eruptions, different types of lavas, commercial uses of
volcanic products and just about everything else about
volcanoes. This book was definitely written for people with
a keen interest in volcanoes, like myself, who are not
actual geologists or scientists. The author talks about
unique volcanoes all over the world and how they have
affected the local and global environments. The author also
trys to inject a little humor now and then to keep the
topics light. Anyway, this is a good book that I will always
keep on my shelf and that I will re-read from time to time
when I need another volcano fix. |
| 14. Plate Tectonics,
Earthquakes and Volcanoes - Britannica Educational
Publishing - This was a short introduction to
earth sciences written for educational purposes. It briefly
covers all of the title topics but only on a cursory level.
I didn't learn anything from this book but that is OK since
I seem to be on a volcano jag. |
| 15. Rough-Hewn Land - Keith Heyer Meldahl -
This was the best geology book I have read in a long time.
It describes the geology from the islands off of the coast
of California (which are granite instead of basalt) to the
basin and range of Nevada and Utah. This book had many
surprises for me that I had never read about before. For
example, CA was formed not only by the continents breaking
apart and moving into their current locations but that in
the process the North American continent swept up sea bed
lavas, islands and everything else in its path and pasted
them onto western CA growing the state east to west through
a series of terranes. It also described subduction of plates
which usually only dive downward (which causes volcanoes
inland) but that also float under the plate horizontally for
long periods of time and that is what is partially
responsible for the Rocky Mountains. The treatment of
geology is very detailed with the author drawing on the
works of many to put the book together. He also documents
all the places his visited during the writing of book with
GPS coordinates which would allow one to visit the exact
places he describes. Additionally, he talks about historical
figures like Darwin, Twain, the Donner party and the
knowledge they provided that supports his ideas and
theories. All in all a great book that I can recommend to
anyone with an interest in geology. |
| 16. Celtic Empire - Clive Cussler & Dirk
Cussler - Haven't read a Cussler book in a while
so grabbed this one from the library. Like most Cussler
books this one grabs you from the very beginning and rarely
lets up until the end. Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino are testing
a towed sonar array in a lake in El Salvador when the dam on
the lake mysteriously fails and the lake starts to drain
rapidly. They see an American (female) scientist just about
to be swept over the dam so they rescue her but that's when
their troubles start. Dirk Jr and his sister Summer are on a
dig in Egypt when they are attacked and almost killed . Come
to find out a group of women industrialist are trying to
change the genetics of women worldwide so that they stop
giving birth to male babies because they are fed up with
male leadership and the subjugation of women by men. They
have a company BioRem that on the surface creates biological
bacterial agents that eat petrochemicals after oil spills.
So all around the world they cause ship collisions that
cause the spills, deploy their tanker ships carrying both
the cleanup bacteria and their secret genetic sauce that
they dump into the water while cleaning up the spills. Pitt
and company get suspicious when there are cholera like out
breaks everywhere the spills are cleaned up causing the
deaths of many young males. Pitts wife Loren gets invited to
a retreat in Scotland put on by BioRem where they attempt to
brain wash her into joining their evil cause. Because the
young Pitts and Dirt and Al are starting to put the pieces
together attempt after attempt is made on their lives but of
course they make it out OK. BioRem scientists extracted the
original agent from Egyptian mummies that suffered from a
natural outbreak in ancient times. The antidote was
discovered by an ancient priestess in a plant that had since
become extinct. Believing that the priestess was buried with
a sample of the plant Pitt and company trace her migration
from Egypt to Spain and then onto Scotland where she was
finally entombed. In the end scientist are able to
synthesize the antidote and give it to the many women on
Earth who had been infected. Of course all of the bad women
are killed in the end, bringing an end to the story. This
was a good, if mindless, read. |
| 17. Odessa Sea - Clive Cussler & Dirk Cussler - This time the Pitt crew get involved in a plot which initially looked like an attempt to start WWIII. First they find radioactive material that was being smuggled to Iran and they thwarted that effort. Then they found out that a shipment of gold was sent by the Russians to the British in WWI never arrived in England and was thought lost either in a sub or a ship that carried the gold for parts of the journey. Numerous other nefarious organizations were also after the gold and also after a Soviet atomic weapon that was lost at sea. The weapon was recovered and rebuilt and was destined for Baltimore where it was to be used to overturn anoxic waters to release the trapped hydrogen sulfide gas in amounts large enough to kill a large portion of the city. In the end Dirk Jr. and Summer track the gold to a bank on Gibraltar and return it to the British as the rightful owners. At the same time Dirk Sr. and Al foil the plot to get the atomic weapon to Baltimore and in the process, rid the world of some more bad guys. Not a bad story but rather formulaic. |
| 18. Agnes at the End of the World - Kelly
McWilliams - I heard about this book on the news
as it was about a fictional pandemic, kind of pertinent to
our current Covid19 situation. The author was deemed
prescient by the press as she wrote the book before our
pandemic began. The author also happens to be from Colorado
Springs which also piqued my interest. The book is about a
very fundamentalist society living in a place called Red
Creek where their "Prophet" taught that all things outside
of their community (the outside) were evil and sinful and
that men were to be obeyed and woman were mere slaves for
having and managing children and for chores. In this society
men could have many wives and the women could be married as
young as 14 years old. Two sisters, Agnes and Beth, are the
main characters in this story. Beth is fed up with Red Creek
and wants to see the world but Agnes is initially happy
where she is until she is pledged to an old man for
marriage. Agnes has the ability to hear the world around her
and she comes to call this power her "prayer space" that
gets stronger every time she uses it. She believes this
power comes directly from God and that God has a plan for
her. The pandemic in this story causes animals and humans to transform and to migrate to nests where they intertwine while still alive. Their bodies change with their skin hardening and turning into a red, hairy shell. They also become very aggressive and if they break someone skin that person gets infected. When the pandemic finally comes to Red Creek the Prophet makes the whole community of 300 people decend underground into a windowless pit to await the rapture. Unfortunately almost everyone is infected and left to die in their nest. Agnes comes back to Red Creek and uses her power to stop the pandemic and rescue the infected children including her brothers and sisters. The parents effectively melted with only the children surviving. In saving the world Agnes lost her prayer space and almost died but she thought it worth it because she was now a founding member of a free society that welcomed everybody. I was very impressed with McWilliams writing. The story was cleverly unveiled and very engaging. Each chapter is about Agnes or Beth which I found clever. The way she wove religious issues and scripture into the story was well done. In addition how she portrayed the fundamentalist treatment of all people but especially women was well done and was modeled after a real fundamentalist society probably somewhere in Utah. I will recommend this book to everyone and I am glad I got a chance to read it. The most interesting book I have read in a while. |
| 19. The Last Odyssey - James Rollins -Another
good Rollins book having to do with ancient Greek legends
and Homer's writings (if he actually existed). An ancient
Arab ship is found stuck in a glacier in Greenland. The ship
is found to contain a spherical astrolab (used by the
ancients for navigation) and a strange cargo of large jars
containing both a strange greenish liquid and thousands of
bronze robotic creatures that get loose and reek havoc.
These mechanical creatures have razor sharp claws and
breathe fire. The scientists investigating the ship are
attacked and the astrolab is stolen. Come to find out a
secret society that is attempting to bring an end to the
world needs the astrolab to find the gates of hell to bring
about the end. Sigma gets involved in trying to save a
female scientist who was captured during the fight over the
astrolab. Sigma chases the bad guys all over the
Mediterranean to try and rescue the scientist and end up
finding the gates of hell in the Atlas Mountains of Spain. A
fierce battle breaks out between the good and the bad people
and in the process large numbers of robotic creatures are
awakened that are trying to kill everyone who has entered
their cave. The story is engaging in that Sigma people in the story are really following the voyages of Odysseus in trying to find the gates of hell and that the mechanical creatures have some basis in fact. Rollins points out that there is some evidence that ancients did create such devices that could move on their own. Also there is one spherical astrolab that is known to exist and how it worked has only recently been deduced. All in all a page turner in the true Rollins style. |
| 20. The Lost Throne - Chris Kuzneski - Haven't
read a Kuzneski novel in a while so I picked this one up. In
the story Jon Paine and D.J Jones along with Nick Dial get
involved with: monks, Spartans, Russian assassins, Greeks
and of course a beautiful woman and hidden treasure. It all
started when Paine gets a call from a frantic woman,
Allison, who was told to call him if anything happened to
her colleague that Paine had never met. The colleague was
killed so Jon and D.J. decided to travel from St. Petersburg
Florida to Saint Petersburg Russia to rescue her. In the
meantime, a secret meeting of international monks was taking
place in a Greek monastery. It was later determined the
meeting was being held to discuss the Throne of Zeus
treasure the monks had been guarding for generations. Before
the meeting concluded the monks were murdered by a group of
modern day Spartans and their heads were removed from their
bodies and stacked in a pyramid. Unbeknown to Jon and D.J.,
Nick Dial, the head of Interpol's homicide division was
called in to investigate the brutal deaths of the monks and
all of their paths would cross later in the story on Mt.
Athos, a religious center for Greek Orthodox monks, in rural
Greece. Allison was in Russia working on her doctoral thesis
on
Heinrich Schliemann the crazy German archaeologist, when all
this came down. She hooks up with Paine and D.J. and they
escape Russia after terminating the assassin who had killed
the researcher. The shit hits the fan when everyone involved
travels to Mt. Athos. The good guys are there to search for
the treasure, the Spartans are there to retrieve a book they
believe slanders their warrior ancestors and Nick Dial is
there to figure out why the monks were murdered and to bring
the Spartans to justice. In the end the Spartans are
defeated and the good guys discover tons and tons of
treasure. This was a good story and I read the book quickly because I got into the plot. I think I will pick up another Kuzneski book in the near future as I am enjoying his story telling and writing style. |
| 21. Underland - Robert Macfarlane -
At the end of the "The Last Odyssey" novel, James Rollin's
always tells what is real and what is fiction and sometimes
about his sources of ideas and inspiration. There he
mentioned he used this book as a source of information about
caves and other dark places under the Earth. Luckily, our
library had an e-book that I could check out. This was a somewhat interesting and sometime depressing book about the authors adventures all over the world that had something to do with things under the ground. The author is British and is part writer and part philosopher which required me to read many passages multiple times to grasp their meanings. The adventures span natural limestone and sea caves and unnatural caves like for storage of radioactive waste or extraction of salt. He does visit a couple of underground sites that are labs looking for neutrinos and dark matter. The author is braver than I because he would squeeze into places where one could easily die. This was an interesting read but not the standout geology book I was hoping for. It would be of interest to most people who have an interest in caving. |
| 22. The Odyssey - Homer -
translation by Emily Wilson - I thought it about time
that I read this Homer classic as I don't remember having to
read it in school. It is a story of how Odysseus who went
away to fight the Spartans struggled to get back to his
island kingdom of Ithaca. During his travels he is both
assisted and hindered by various Gods. He has to face many
obstacles including cyclops, giants, etc. and even some
beautiful goddesses who want to possess him forever. When he
finally does get home after 20 years away he finds his wife
being hounded for marriage by suitors who have moved into
his palace and are depleting his resources by partying non
stop. His wife Penelope keeps putting the suitors off saying
she must finish a burial shroud for Odysseus's father before
she can remarry. When Odysseus returns he takes the form of
a beggar so he can scout out the situation at his home
before revealing himself. Once he is satisfied that Penelope
has been faithful, he and his son, Telemachus, some faithful
slaves along with the goddess Athena plot how to kill all of
the suitors as they are seriously out numbered. Once the
plot is hatched, Odysseus reveals himself and together they
kill all of the suitors and he reclaims his wife and all of
his possessions. When the village people find out he has
killed the majority of the young men on the island who were
the suitors they come after them and a brief battle occurs
where Odysseus and company slaughter many others. The gods
put an end to the battle and make the participants swear to
put their differences aside and to forget what Odysseus was
forced to do so that the island can again live in peace
under the kind rule of Odysseus. A interesting story for sure. I can definitely see where the plot of the movie "Jason and the Argonauts" came from as Jason faced the same dangers as did Odysseus in his travels. |
| 23. Columbus Day - Craig Alanson - The
first book of the Expeditionary Force series. Dennis turned
me on to this author and told me it was sci-fi with some
humor and I now understand what he meant. It is kind of a
convoluted story where, out of nowhere, the Earth is
attacked by aliens called the
Ruhar on
Columbus Day. The Ruhar destroy some of the Earth's
infrastructure but leave the people alone. Then, another
race of aliens, the Kristang drive the Ruhar away and enlist
the Earth's armed forces to help in their war effort with
the Ruhar. The troops are transported many light years away
to a Ruhar planet and are told to keep the conquered Ruhar
in check. An Army Sargent Joe Bishop, the main character,
starts to wonder about their allies and eventually decides
the Earthlings are fighting on the wrong side. He finds out
that while they have been gone the Earth is being enslaved
by the Kristang. He finds this out because people on Earth
are putting messages in fortune cookies being sent to feed
the troops. At first Joe is a hero to the Kristang because
he blew up a couple of Ruhar ships and then a traitor when
he refuses to kill innocent Ruhar civilians. He is
imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Kristang but
escapes his confinement when the Ruhar strike the Kristang
controlling their planet. Joe stumbles across an advanced AI
in the form of a beer can that he names Skippy who helps him
steal a ship, leave the Ruhar planet, capture a faster than
light troop carrier from another alien race and head back to
Earth to fight the Kristang. They accomplished their mission
to save Earth but Skippy needs to contact other members of
his ancient Elder race to find out who he is and what his
purpose is. So after being on Earth a short time, the pirate
crew again leaves Earth in their stolen space ship for
another adventure. The author does a good job with the interaction between Skippy (the AI) and Joe as they get to know and trust each other. He also fills the text with funny and irreverent quips which keeps the story fun. There are 12 books in this series and I may have to read all of them. This was a nice change from the other sci-fi books I have been reading. |
| 24. Altered Carbon - Richard K.
Morgan - I got a recommendation for this book
from GoodReads so I had hopes of finding a new author I
would enjoy reading. Unfortunately this book was a major
disappointment for me and I won't be looking for other books
by this author. I now know that this was the authors first
book and that maybe his later books (if there are any) might
be better but I don't think I will seek them out. This was a story of a detective from another planet who is brought to Earth to find out whether a wealthy business man committed suicide or was killed. In this realm people who are killed can be brought back to life and even moved into new bodies or sleeves. The detective Kovac's gets to grope around the underbelly of Earth society to try and find the answer. The writing of this book is chaotic in that new characters pop into the story without explanation and historical event that the reader knows nothing about are used to explain a current situation. I actually returned this book to the library unfinished because I couldn't get into the story because every time I put the book down and picked it up again I was totally confused as to what was going on. I checked it out again because I thought if I focused on the story and read for long periods I might understand but alias that didn't help. I finished the book anyway just to be done with it. |
| 25. The Forbidden Tomb - Chris Kuzneski
- A story of the search for Alexander the Great's tomb. A
team of highly trained personnel (Cobb, McNutt, Sarah,
Garcia, etc.) are hired to try to find Alexander's tomb.
They start out like all other treasure seekers by going to
Alexandria, Egypt where history has proven he once laid.
They are given an ancient map which shows the evolution of
Alexandria over time: from right before Alexander's arrival
till the present and they find the location of an ancient
well surrounded by a temple that had been built over to
create large water cisterns for the city. The team finds a
passage into the cisterns and are immediately followed in by
two unknowns groups and then all hell breaks loose. The
first group is from an Egyptian mafia that want capture a
member of their team to kill him of course and the second
group is a group of Egyptian ninjas who's order has sworn to
protect the knowledge of where Alexander is buried. The
mafia group is quickly dispatched by the sword wielding
ninjas who seem to possess extreme gracefulness and
swordsmanship and show no mercy to the interlopers. The good
guys narrowly escape except for the group's historian who is
taken captive. The goal now changes from finding Alexander
to recovering their colleague. Using a lot of high tech
techniques the ninjas are tracked to a location in a remote
part of the Sahara desert. The good guys then partner with
the remaining mafia people to storm the ninjas' fortress for
revenge and hopefully to rescue their historian. The
historian and another of the good guys team are killed along
with most of the mafia and most of the ninjas. After a short
time to grieve, the search for the tomb continues and they
are successful in locating it. They realize that they are
still in danger from the remaining ninjas so they call in
favors from x military friends who protect them during their
dig. A battle soon ensues and the remaining ninjas are
killed and the treasure is found. This wasn't the most interesting Kuzneski book I've read but it was entertaining enough for me to finish it. |
| 26. Sign of the Cross - Chris Kuzneski
- In this story Jonathon Payne and David Jones (D.J.) are
brought into a man hunt (against their will) for an
archeologist Boyd, who has been accused of all kinds of
heinous crimes. It turns out he was not guilty of any of
them but it was members of the an almost royal family who
were spreading the rumors. Boyd and his assistant Maria were
given permission to dig at a site in Italy called Orvieto.
This is the site that the Italian Pope went to for
protection during the great schism when the Catholic church
was divided over power and who was the real Pope. At the
catacombs at Orvieto they discovered a scroll contained in a
brass cylinder that suggested that Christ was not really
crucified but that the resurrection was a ploy by the Roman
Tiberius to control the Jews who were looking for a savior
so that the Romans could profit off it. If this scroll
proved to be true it would damage and maybe destroy the
Roman Catholic church so Boyd and the scroll had to be
disposed of with great haste. When Payne and Jones hooked up
with Boyd they found he was telling the truth and helped
Boyd try to authenticate the scroll. So now the crew had the
church and the almost royal family both after them. In the
end the scroll was proven false by none other than the final
testimony of Pontius Pilate who claimed he was instructed to
fake Christ's death but that Christ really died on the cross
as he verified but later rose from the grave. This was a pretty interesting story as it had a lot of history woven it and I learned somethings I didn't know such as there might have once been a woman Pope and the story of Orvieto itself. Good story or not, I think I will read someone else going forward as two Kuzneski books in a row are enough for now. |
| 27. SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) -
Craig Alanson - Second book of the series that Dennis
turned me onto. In this story the Merry Band of Pirates
leave Earth in their stolen space ship with the goal of
finding a Elder communication device that would allow Skippy
(the beer can AI) to contact others like himself. Skippy,
though amazingly powerful, has gaps in his memory that he
hopes others of his kind can fill in. Skippy develops an
algorithm that predicts where Elder settlement might have
been that have not yet been plundered so the pirates set out
to find them. Along the way they have various encounters
with alien races whom they destroy because it cannot be
known that Earthlings have the technology for space travel
as that would pose dangers for Earth. In one encounter their
stolen ship gets so damaged that Skippy has to rebuild it
from the ground up. The crew is moved to a mostly frozen
planet that they name Newark because the ship can not
support life during the reconstruction process. The crew
then finds out that alien ships are headed towards Earth so
they hatch plans to destroy them before they can get there.
In the end after the aliens are destroyed, the crew heads
back to Earth so that their stolen space ship can be studied
for possible duplication on Earth. They still, however, have
the promise they made Skippy that they will continue to
search for the communication device he desires. |
| 28. Sword of God - Chris Kuzneski - In
this story Jonathon Payne and David Jones (D.J.) are asked
by a military leader Harrington to help investigate what
happened to another MANIAC that they trained while they were
still in the service. They are taken to a secret cave on a
Korean island where x-MANIAC Schmidt was last seen and found
it covered and dripping with blood. Analysis showed that the
blood was from Schmidt and two of his men. By the time Payne
and Jones arrived to investigate the town closest to the
cave was completely empty and had been wiped out. Everyone
except a boy and his father and the village wise man had
been murdered. Schmidt had been acting crazy since a number
of his people and their families had been killed in the
middle east by a terrorist. As the story progresses we find
out that Schmidt and his men were not killed and that they
were plotting to blow up Mecca during the hajji for revenge.
What Schmidt didn't know was that he was being financed and
controlled by an Arab who was willing to sacrifice thousands
of Muslims to start a holly war against the US by blaming
the attack on the US. Schmidt's men filled the water tanks
of a newly constructed building next to the temple with jet
fuel and had planted C-4 to blow the tanks up raining death
and destruction on the pilgrims below. Luckily with Payne
and Jones on the job the explosives were neutralized before
the attack could happen. In this story I learned at little bit about Muslims and the hajji and even some about the Koran. All in all a good story like most of Kuzneskis' others. |
| 29. Thunderhead - Preston & Child -
Haven't read a Preston & Child story in a long time so
when I saw new books by them at the library I decided to
read one. This is a story about a young archaeologist Nora
Kelly who receives a letter from her long missing Dad
telling about how he thinks he has found the legendary city
of Quivira that was thought to be a city of gold searched
for by Spanish explores. As soon as she gets the letter she
is suddenly shadowed by humans dressed in animal skins that
seem to defy reality and disappear on demand. She goes to
her employer the Santa Fe Archaeological Society and
convinces them to fund a expedition to the remote
slick rock canyon county of Utah to search for the city.
They find amazing ruins but something about the area is off.
While they are there their pack horses are killed and
mutilated and some members of their group started to get
sick and die. The mysterious being that had hunted Nora have
shown up again in their bid to protect the ruins from the
scientists. When it became clear that the ruins were toxic
and they were not safe, Nora tells the group that they are
going to leave which causes a mini mutiny as some of the
scientists want to stay in order to excavate the Sun Kiva
that they just found. Nora, Smithback and the doctor
head back out through a slot canyon when a flash flood hits
and the doctor is swept away but not after telling Nora his
theories that the Aztec's controlled Quivira and enslaved
the Anasazi people through the use of religion, force and
drugs as he determined the materials found in some of the
ancient pots they found contained corpse powder containing a
fungus that can kill if inhaled. In the end only Nora
and Smithback survive to be rescued and get to tell the
story of Quivira. This was a well written book though a little wordy as it describes a lot of historical references to the south west. The story was set up so that it grabbed your attention immediately. I think I will checkout the other new P & C book to see what it is about. |