(H. Prévost, Desert Fire, ISBN 978-1-927361-16-0)

Someone has probably said it before, but excellent young adult (YA) novels are just excellent novels where the most of the protagonists are young adults (12-18 years old).  They can be in any genre—romance, thriller, sci-fi, you name it.  Moreover, especially if they’re excellent, they can appeal to adults too.  In fact, the ages of the protagonists are often irrelevant to readers’ enjoyment or lack of it.  For example, I often wondered about Rowling’s dark writing in the later installments in her famous YA fantasy series.  With Twilight and The Hunger Games, it’s clear that young adults like to be shocked with blood and gore and titillated by sexual scenes as much as adults.

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(J. Elder, Spectra, ISBN 9781927085103)

In the old days of sci-fi, many of the subgenres were ill defined.  The two basic genres, science fiction and fantasy, could often be found in the old magazines, but cyberpunk, militaristic sci-fi, and so forth were either not invented yet or were being created.  Sci-fi was often divided into hard sci-fi and space opera.  The first referred to novels like Hoyle’s The Black Cloud—in other words, novels that didn’t stray too far from known science and technology.  The second, like Doc Smith’s Lensman series, stretched the scientific extrapolations to their limit.  As a boy, I didn’t pay much attention to the difference—all these books stretched my imagination.

Here we have a new entry into what is the next step in evolution beyond hard sci-fi and space opera.  It is both a new sci-fi subgenre and a combination of two genres, sci-fi and thrillers.  Asimov’s The Naked Sun can be called a sci-fi mystery, for example, so why not sci-fi suspense and sci-fi thrillers?  The latter simply means that the author gathers up all the elements that are employed by thriller authors (Lee Child, Barry Eisler, David Baldacci, and so forth—take your pick) and puts them in a futuristic setting.  My own novels are sci-fi thrillers—The Midas Bomb is more thriller than sci-fi and Sing a Samba Galactica is more sci-fi than thriller—but that’s the genre that classifies my work.  While I often include dystopian elements too, Ms. Elder doesn’t, unless you classify her portrayal of the Draco prison as dystopian (see below).

Spectra is both sci-fi and thriller then, and what a thrill ride it is!  Her protagonists jump over one physical or psychological hurdle after another following the best thriller tradition.  Moreover, there is enough sci-fi, both hard sci-fi and space-operatic arias, to make the avid sci-fi reader smile.  Let’s examine the thriller elements of the story first.

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(Gary Lindberg, The Shekinah Legacy, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9848565-1-0, Kindle)

To define the genre of this book, think of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code.  To determine whether you will be entertained by reading it, think better than Dan Brown’s thriller.  All hype aside, this is the book that Mr. Brown should have written.  Why?  It is as an exciting alternative religious history filled with plenty of action and interesting plot twists.  It is based on real research, at least as real as Mr. Brown’s, after all the discussion about how authentic his sources were.  Moreover, where Mr. Brown only incurred the wrath of the Vatican, Mr. Lindberg might incur the wrath of all major religions (I hope not—people, this is just fiction!).

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(William Brown, Amongst My Enemies, eBook, ASIN B006LAOIWY)

This story might be categorized as “historical fiction,” but the second word almost seems incorrect—the historical details are so well interwoven and authentic that the reader will swear Mr. Brown lived through them.  It might also be categorized as “a thriller”—there are thrills and suspenseful twists at every turn of the page.  It might even be categorized as “a romance”—the two protagonists are as right for each other as Romeo and Juliet.

Perhaps it is best to categorize this story as a “tale of intrigue, adventure, and romance.”  It reminds me of Jeffery Deaver’s Garden of Beasts and Frederic Forsythe’s The Odessa File.  It is the tale of Michael Randall, an unlucky POW at the end of WWII, and his quest for closure.  Here closure means revenge, a desire so intense that it almost takes him into a dark place where everything else, including his love for Leslie Hodge, comes in a distant second place.

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It’s a funny thing about book reviews—especially when someone is turning a critical eye to your own work. Often, you realize that other people don’t always view your characters in the same light you do. An example:

Steve Moore just wrote a nicely-crafted critique of my hard-boiled mystery Shotgun Start for Book Pleasures [note from Steve: see last Thursday’s post]. He liked the book, for which I am grateful, and gave it a generally positive review and recommended it. All good. But he had an interesting take on my protagonist, Neal Egan, a former cop who is eking out a living as a golf hustler. Steve says: “Egan is a jerk, cad and misfit.” My immediate reaction: “A cad? A jerk? Is not.” The misfit part of the equation, I’ll concede. But a cad? Steve, this isn’t a Noel Coward play. You might as well have called him a bounder.

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(Mike Nettleton, Shotgun Start, ISBN 978-0984652419)

A raw portrait of the best and the worst the Southwest has to offer, this tale of a down-on-his-luck PI trying to prove his ex-wife is innocent of a violent and sexually explicit murder is like straight shots of tequila taken as a cure for a hangover between the rounds of your very own ultimate boxing match.  Your adrenalin will run high if you’re a reader—as a reviewer, I could only admire the craftsmanship.  I highly recommend this book (I read the eBook version, which is a bargain compared to the trade paperback and it saves trees).

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Here’s my Amazon review of this book:  I liked it.  You will too.  Buy it.  (Sent via Twitter?)  Now, for a review with some meat on the bones—not fat.  I’ve never met Alex.  Those who know me and my Bookpleasures reviews know I won’t avoid negative criticism.  While this is not a Bookpleasures review, I apply the same standards (even more so, since I’m the editor here).  Bottom line:  Alex compares favorably with Charles Ives.  Consequently, this review is either negative or positive depending on whether you like Charles’ music.  If you’re just indifferent to Charles or don’t know who he is, Alex wins by default.  So, here goes….

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(Jim Bruno’s Tribe, Bittersweet House Press, ISBN 0983764204)

From sites in the Middle East where oil wars are fought to the public venues and secret backrooms of Washington D.C. where the puppeteers pull the strings of the men and women who fight them, this thriller provides an inside view of a future plan to control the oil reserves in the former Soviet republics around the Caspian Sea.  Both here and abroad, the violent action is punctuated by soft pastel glimpses into the lives of the families that suffer under the whims of the players of real politik.  There is no moral high ground here, not even for the flawed hero, the C.I.A. agent Harry Brennan.

Brennan is a rarity, a superman that can fight side-by-side with Arab and Afghan freedom fighters as well as against rapacious U.S. politicos and oil interests.  Black gold is the corrupting agent here, but many of the people involved are already corrupted—the oil just provides a hook to hang their corruption on.  Corruption, whether by nature or through nurture, is an equal opportunity trait in this gritty story—Afghans, Arabs and Americans are prone to the disease and Afghans, Arabs and Americans can strive to develop the antibodies needed to fight it.

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(Philip Yaffe, Science for the Concerned Citizen, eBook, ASIN B005G0JH2G)

This pleasant and educational little book is a potpourri of tidbits about science and scientists.  Mr. Yaffe’s motivation for writing it is commendable:  there are many popular misconceptions about and outright hostility to science among many laypersons.  None of this is healthy.  His reason is the same as mine, but I’ll state it more strongly:  If society’s average knowledge level is only that of a technological savage (a person that uses gizmos without understanding anything about how they work), society can only through pure damn luck find smart and ethical solutions to global warming, cloning, alternative energy, water usage, and so forth.  In other words, we have a moral imperative to learn enough science to vote wisely.  In a representative democracy, this also goes for the representatives of the people (their ignorance sometimes is frightening).

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(Carla Neggers, MIRA, Saint’s Gate, ISBN 978-0-7783-1235-2)

A convent on the rugged coast of Maine is the scene of a vicious murder in Carla Neggers’ new novel Saint’s Gate.  With this book, Ms. Neggers also introduces a new series and two new protagonists, FBI agents Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan.  It is a dark mystery, full of intrigue and suspense.  The characters are interesting, the locales spectacular, and the plot well constructed.  Relax in your recliner, pour yourself a taoscan of fine Irish whiskey (see later why this is appropriate), and enjoy.  It is fun to read.  I read it in two evenings—it displaced all my other writing and reading activities.

I had the uncanny feeling that the author has a psychic hold over me—to use modern vernacular, she knew how to jerk my chains.  First, the locales:  the California and Maine coasts are my two favorite spots in the U.S.  Except for climate, they are similar—waves pounding against steep, craggy cliffs topped with pines and other magnificent trees.  Big Sur and Mt. Desert Island hold a special place in my travel memories.  I grew up in California; my father painted its coastline.  My first trips to Ogunquit and Bar Harbor left me yearning for more.

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