19th Level

In the American Civil War, Confederate General Lee's Special Order 191 fell into Union hands, providing Union General McClellan with the location of the Army of Northern Virginia. This allowed for Union victory at the Battle of Antietam which provided President Lincoln with the proper conditions to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, making the Civil War a war against slavery. This prevented France and the United Kingdom from recognizing the Confederacy. This is a common point of divergence in alternate history fiction. On its own, the rebelling states did not have a chance of victory if the Union chose to fight until victory. Their only real chances was to either convince the Union that victory was not worth fighting for or to secure foreign assistance. Harry Turtledove posited in this series that if the orders did not fall into Union hands, France and the UK would recognize the Confederacy, forcing an end to the Civil War. The first novel in this series, How Few Remain ,...

This July I started a new job. Beyond the cool work, free food, and awesome headquarters, there's a ton of interesting social groups that meet physically and/or on Slack. One group I'm in is a reading group which has introduced me to fiction that is of interest to me but that I might not have otherwise read. Earlier this year we read Peter Clines' 14.  It is a book about a group of people in a very strange Las Angeles apartment building. The rent is very cheap but it's never advertised - people always hear about it via word of mouth. The apartments are weird and unique. One is always very cool - the same constant temperature, no matter what. Another has a kitchen where any light bulb is always extremely dim. Another has a layout where nothing is directly connected to a wall - power outlets are on the floor, kitchen counters are a few inches away from the walls, etc. And is is two stories tall for some reason. Our main protagonist is Nate, a data entry temp (who h...

My first encounter with H.G. Wells' classic The War of the Worlds  was as a broadcast of the 1950s film version of it - on WPIX Channel 11 in New York I believe. I later read the novel for a high school book report and greatly enjoyed. It remains a favorite of mine to this day - every few years I find myself rereading it. The novel tells of the invasion of then-modern England - the suburbs around London in the late 19th century - by Martians. It is told by an unnamed narrator, a journalist by trade, and how he and his wife dealt with the invasion. It also gives a view of the invasion in London from the perspective of the narrator's brother, a medical student. The Martians arrive in meteor-like cylinders which serve as small bases of operations for their invasion. The Martians march across the landscape on nimble tripods. These tripods carry various weapons - most notably a heat ray and "black smoke" projectors - a type of poison gas. Red weeds from Mars prolife...

Big hair from the eighties looks normal to me. My best friend from high school - she had huge hair. This is relevant as the novel Ready Player One   is part love-letter to the culture of the 1980s - especially the geek culture. A 2011 novel by Ernest Cline, I noticed some buzz about it but never got around to reading it. Having seen a number of trailers for the upcoming movie adaptation - trailers from which I couldn't quite tell if it looked awesome or dumb - I decided to give it a read on my time off from both work and grad school at the end of the year. The audiobook is read by Wil Wheaton, which read to a bit of oddness when Wil Wheaton is mentioned briefly in the novel itself... Ready Player One takes place in a dystopian 2040s. Cheap oil is a thing of the distant past, leading to the United States and the rest of the world suffering from a decades long economic disaster. The protagonist Wade Wilson, is the orphaned child of refugees. American refugees, as people ...

This is a little out of scope for my blog but I'm aware a number of my readers are the same age as me - somewhere in their forties or fifties with adolescent children. This is a review of Jay Asher's novel which is the basis for the Netflix series of the same name. Thirteen Reasons Why  is the story of Hannah Baker, a high school student who committed suicide. She left behind a set of thirteen audio tapes, explaining why she killed herself and the people who contributed to that. She claims the recipients are being watched and if they don't listen and pass them on the tapes will be released publicly. The novel follows the most recent recipient Clay Jensen, who does not understand why he is considered part of the reason she killed herself, as he cared about her though was never as close to her as he wanted to be. Hannah feels trapped and betrayed. She has the reputation of a slut, despite having only gone so far as to kiss a few boys and nothing more. She feels betraye...

“Arkham,” Atticus said. “The letter says Mom’s ancestors come from Arkham, Massachusetts.” Arkham: home of the corpse reanimator Herbert West, and of Miskatonic University, which had sponsored the fossil-hunting expedition to the mountains of madness. “It is made up, right? I mean—”   “Oh, yeah,” George said. “Lovecraft based it on Salem, I think, but it’s not a real place . . . Let me see that letter.” Atticus handed it to him and George studied it, squinting and tilting his head side to side. “It’s a ‘d,’” he said finally. Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country is an unusual novel - it is a collection of interconnected tales about Atticus Turner and his friends and family in the 1950s. Atticus is an African-American from Chicago. He is from an upper middle class family, with an uncle who owns a travel agency and publishes the Safe Negro Travel Guide , based upon the real world Negro Motorist Green Book  which provided African-American travelers advice on what businesses wou...

It's been a long time since I read Stephen King's The Dead Zone. I believe I received it as a Christmas gift in a boxed set back around 1987. First published in 1979, The Dead Zone isn't really a horror novel - it is more a crossover of a political thriller and a tale of a man gifted/cursed with psychic powers. What I found striking was how the book both worked as a period piece and how it is relevant today. It tells the story of John Smith - yes, that's his real name. Ever since an accident he had as very young boy (one he has no memory of) he's had the occasional psychic flash. This is illustrated in the beginning of the novel, set in October of 1970, where he and his girlfriend Sarah, both first-year teachers, are at a carnival and he has a wild streak of luck at the wheel of fortune. However, his luck soon turns ill as he gets in a car accident which puts him in a coma with nearly no chance of recovery. We follow Sarah as she meets Johnny's parent...

I first read Lev Grossman's The Magicians  when it first came out. I've been on a bit of an urban fantasy kick lately and have begun watching the Syfy series based upon it. I just finished a reread. Looking at sites like Goodreads and Amazon one discovers opinions on The Magicians are extremely varied. I'm definitely one of the people who greatly enjoyed it but definitely be aware there are people who hate it just as much... The Magicians  takes us through several years of Quentin Coldwater's life. We are introduced to him as a 17-year old high school senior in Brooklyn. He is a super-genius, heading for a likely Ivy League education. He's never particularly happy for long - the television series has him formally diagnosed with depression and having seen enough of it in my life I would agree with that diagnosis. He is a great fan of the "Fillory" series of novels - 1930s novels about a group of British children who find their way into the magical re...

He touches his wife’s smooth back as she sleeps her warm sleep and dreams her own dreams; he thinks that it is good to be a child, but it is also good to be grownup and able to consider the mystery of childhood . . . its beliefs and desires.   - Stephen King, It It defeated me the first time I attempted to read it. I was introduced to Stephen King by a classmate in, if I recall correctly, in my junior year of high school. I borrowed a number of her copies and acquired my own from the local Waldenbooks. For whatever reason, I was never quite able to finish It . I made it through many of his books ( The Gunslinger and The Stand  were my favorites at the time) but It was a bit too much. Fast forward to 2011 and I finally got around to completing It , reading it in audiobook form. What's really odd is what a gap was. My recollection is I tried reading It in 1989 or so, so it was about 22 years later. It itself takes place in two time periods, 1958 and 1985, with the 11-ye...

Stanley Kubrik's film version of The Shining  casts a rather long shadow over King's original novel. Jack Nicholson did a masterful job portraying Jack Torrance, caretaker of the Overlook Hotel as he goes insane. However, the Jack Torrance of the film is rather different from that of the novel. To paraphrase Stephen King, of course he goes crazy. He's played by Jack Nicholson. So let's take a look at the novel on its own. Set in the then-contemporary mid to late-1970s, it tells the tale of the Torrance family. Jack Torrance, the father, is a moderately successful writer who was fired from his teaching position for beating up a student who had slashed his car's tires. Jack is a recovering alcoholic who did not stop drinking because he broke his preschool son's arm but because he and his wealthy friend, Al, after a night of drinking, struck a seemingly abandoned bicycle on the road. What was it doing there? Did they hit someone? Jack as a child adored his ow...

With the Dresden Files Accelerated RPG in preview release, I decided to take a break from the rather lengthy Alexander Hamilton audiobook to re-listen to Storm Front , the first novel of Jim Butcher's urban fantasy Dresden Files . I've heard people suggest that the series really picks up in the third and fourth novel, with some people outright disliking Storm Front . I'll agree that the series greatly improves with time but to be honest, I really enjoyed the first book. In audiobook form the entire series is narrated by James Marsters, best known as Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer . He does a splendid job as the first person narrator.  I'm not a major urban fantasy reader - I enjoy the genre but most of my reading is in other genres. In the 1990s I was a big fan of Charles de Lint's Newford  series and I tend to enjoy most of Tim Powers' works (such as Declare , Last Call). So with all that out of the way, what can you expect from Storm Fron...

I recently finished Journey to the Center of the Earth , written by Jules Verne and translated by Frederick Paul Walter. This translation can be found in the omnibus Amazing Journeys .  When reading Verne outside of the French he wrote his works in, it is vital to have a good translation. One of my most commonly hit posts (and one of my earliest), Jules Verne Translations That Don't Stink , provides a good overview of what is available in Verne translations. It could probably use a refresh - many of the books I listed as being available as print-only are now available in e-book form and there is some new material available. It is still what I would consider a good resource. The novel is about the narrator, Axel, and his uncle,  Professor Otto Lidenbrock, a scholar of geology, on, well, a journey to the center of the Earth. Lidenbrock finds a manuscript which leads him to believe there is a tunnel from an Icelandic volcano that provides a rapid path to the center o...

The town knew about darkness. It knew about the darkness that comes on the land when roatation hides the land from the sun, and about the darkness of the human soul. - 'Salem's Lot  by Stephen King, Chapter Ten There's a point of view that one should only read a book once. After that, why read it again, you know what happened. Truthfully, for some books, most even, that's definitely the case. But for me, there's certain books I read over and over again over the years. Not to find out what happened, but to experience the book again. And to take away something new from it. The best books don't give up all they have of value on the first read. I mentioned a few posts back 1984 is a book I tend to read once a year or so. 'Salem's Lot  is another book that finds its way to me multiple times. Set in the then-contemporary early 1970's, 'Salem's Lot is the story of a vampire infestation of a small Maine town. But it's more than...

[Slight divergence from my normal blogging. Feel free to move along...] In honor of Banned Book Week I decided to read a book I hadn't read that was on the list. I listened to the audiobook version of Vladimir Nabokov's  Lolita , as read by Jeremy Irons. Irons also played the protagonist, Humbert Humbert, in the 1997 film adaptation of the novel. Lolita  deals with some pretty dreadful people, none more dreadful in my opinion than it's protagonist, Humbert Humbert - a self-made pseudonym developed by the protagonist while in prison for the memoir he wrote. The fact he is in prison is revealed at the very start - I'm not giving away anything as the fact he is incarcerated is revealed at the very start. Humbert Humbert is clearly an unreliable narrator. He is certainly an interesting one, full of odd asides, observations, and even the occasional poem. The Jeremy Irons unabridged reading is phenomenal - though I've never seen the 1997 film, I've no doubt ...

“If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.” - Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell. A Game of Thrones I'd thought about doing a straight out review of A Game of Thrones  but it occurs to me that with over 8,000 reviews on Amazon I might do better to narrow my focus a bit. With that in mind, I'm going to look at the novel A Game of Thrones  from the perspective of an RPG gamer. I'm therefore assuming someone who has read this and later novels.  We'll begin by taking a look at the world. If you or I were to visit the world we'd be hard-pressed to find much in the way of magic. From an RPG perspective, it is an extremely low-magic world. A few of the characters have encounters with the supernatural, but they do occur and are far more significant for that. At the start, a trio of rangers encounter a group of Others and Wi...

They are for me. "Why?" he asked Pate. "What am I to them?" "A knight who remembered his vows," the smith said. Oddly, I've never gotten around to reviewing any of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire  saga. With season six of HBO's Game of Thrones  on the air I've been reading many things Westeros of late. The main saga is legendary for it's brutality. Main characters drop like flies. The reward for being honorable is often death.  A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms  shines a small ray of hope into the lands of Westeros. It takes place about a century before the events of A Game of Thrones . It is a collection of three short stories about the hedge knight, Dunk (Ser Duncan the Tall) and his squire, Egg.  At this point I'll pause to point out there's going to be some spoilers up ahead - not huge ones, but minor spoilers. OK still with me? Dunk was born in the slums of the capital of the Se...

"I have never been what you'd call a crying man." - Opening line of 11/22/63 Hulu recently aired a miniseries based on Stephen King's 11/22/63  and with me geeking out in a superhero game set in the late 1950s, I've recently relistened to the audiobook version of the novel. The novel tells the story of Jake Epping, an English teacher in Maine of 2011. He's recently divorced with no children, mid-30s. Jake is a patron of Al's Diner, home of the insanely low-priced FatBurger. On the last day of school Al calls Jake at his school. Jake is a bit puzzled, as while they were on good terms, they weren't friends. Al asks Jake to come to the diner. Arriving, Jake is shocked to discover Al has aged several years and is in the late stages of terminal lung cancer. When last Jake saw Al, just the day before, he was a healthy man in his late 50s. Al quickly introduces Jake to a time travel that he discovered in his diner. Rather than deal with the disb...

Capsule Review: Way too derivative of Lord of the Rings though with some interesting twists and it gets very interesting when Han Solo and Chewbacca show up. In my gaming groups in middle and high school Terry Brooks' Shannara were extremely popular. Looking back, it's a bit easier to see why. While taking much from Tolkien (especially in the first book, which I'll be discussing here) they were definitely much easier reads than Tolkien's Lord of the Rings novels, eschewing Elf songs that go on for pages. The Sword of Shannara is the tale of Shea Ohmsford, a half-elf adopted into the Ohmsford family and his adopted brother Flick. They are warned by the druid Allanon that Shea is a descendant of Jerle Shannara - the last living one - and is therefore the only person who can wield the legendary Sword of Shannara and defeat the Warlock Lord. However, the Warlock Lord and his dark servants, the Skull Bearers, having slain all the other descendants, are searching...

I wound up adding The 5th Wave on my reading list when my ten-year old daughter expressed an interest in seeing the upcoming movie adaptation after we saw a preview for it before The Force Awakens . Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave  belongs to the somewhat strange genre of post-apocalyptic young adult fiction. It takes place in the months after an alien invasion which has wiped out civilization as we knew it. The story begins following Cassie Sullivan, a 16-year old girl who is on her own and as far as she knows, possibly the last survivor of humanity. She isn't - and she realizes she probably isn't - but the fact that it is a possibility indicates how bad things have gotten. Cassie's story bounces back and forth between her present and what led her to her now-solitary existence. Given all the previews for the movie, it's not really a spoiler to explain in very broad strokes what happened - though I'll avoid telling specifically what befell her and her fa...