Where Hadrian Goes AWOL

Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There are aspects of this book that are amazing. The author is a fantastic writer of prose. There is some great world-building. And I really wonder what will happen going forward in this unique star-traveling future.

But the story is so very slow. Frustratingly slow. And the author gives our main character almost no wins to tide us over. Just screw-ups and failures and the wrong thing said at the wrong time, over and over. It tries your patience. We get way too much of his life before anything relating to the plot happens. It feels like 17th century picaresque for most of its length instead of a modern novel.

Since I started this book, I have also started and finished about 30 other books. It took me months to read this, a 20-page chunk at a time, maybe every second or third day, more often only one chunk a week. It was too much work with too little reward.

I know some people read for prose. I'm not one of those people. But the story is, ultimately, a good one; it's just postponed and stretched out and wandered away from again and again, put on the back burner. I almost DNF'ed a dozen times. But I wanted to know what was gonna happen. In the last 40 or 50 pages, it feels like we're back on track to find out.

So--prose is a 5. Setting and world-building is a 4 or 5. Characters and character development, probably near a four. And pacing--about a 1. IMO, of course.

I won't start the second book for awhile. Maybe when I do I'll love it. Right now I'm gonna celebrate a win, because it took a lot to cross the finish line.

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Where Mitch Gets His Start

American Assassin by Vince Flynn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These are entertaining books, and I liked it, but less than others in the series. There's a straightforward reason--this one has the training story. That's my least favorite part of any series, whether it's SF, thriller, fantasy, or whatever. It's slow and boring, and most time doesn't directly connect with the actual plot. That is the case here.

This wasn't the first book, but it's the first story, and it's worth telling, so it's reasonable. The series was doing well, and they decided to go back and show how Mitch Rapp got a start and became the dangerous agent that he is in all the other books. But watching a younger version of him go through all that training is a bummer. The second drawback of that decision is that he becomes a low-level newbie without any pull. Much of the attraction of the character in the other books is that he is already highly effective, extremely capable, and imbued with more agency than almost any character that isn't meant to be a villain. That's the fun. Here, he is held back for 90% of the book, hardly more than a bystander. It gets really fun at the very end when he is finally allowed to be Mitch Rapp.

It's still better than most thrillers, IMO. I'd still recommend it. But if you start with this one, you might be thinking that it's typical, when it isn't, at least not in my limited experience.

[I'm glad for the half and quarter points. I didn't like it quite as much as some 4 star reads, but it wasn't three, you know?]

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Where Ben And Lady Jennifer Get Their Courage Up

Always Remember: Ben's Story by Mary Balogh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There aren't very many surprises in the book, but it does everything you want it too, just the same.

You know going in that illegitimate son/brother Ben is going to find some way to end up with the high-born but disabled Lady Jennifer. He doesn't fit in anywhere because of his origins; she doesn't fit well because the marriage market was cruel; but they're both great people who deserve to ignore the rules.

What I love about Mary Balogh books is the way she weaves in subplots and interesting conflicts. For Lady Jenny, there is a subplot regarding everyone who helps take care of her, especially her aunt, who is patient and giving but would kinda like to remarry, but she won't do anything to abandon her niece. And for Ben, there's the issue often brought up but never resolved about who his mother was, who her family was, and when a half-brother finds him and reaches out to him by letter, he's not sure if he wants to try to meet a whole family who may not want to actually know him. There's also his own family's feelings about who he is to them and how he should live his life, and he has a young daughter to think about. She really wants a mother, and he's prepared to choose someone he doesn't love if there is no other option.

So the romance progresses in fits and starts, with both cautious about being anything more than friendly, but his kindness changes her feelings, and her lovableness makes him start to have the courage to break society's rules. Both of their families see what is happening and urge them to be careful, but they win them over as much as they win each other over. As usual, the author has the main characters growing and changing individually as much as she has them growing together, and I find that very satisfying. And entertaining, of course.

The first half moves a little slowly (still pretty good), but it picks up the rest of the way, and the second half especially is great. IMO.

Recommended.

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Where Su Lin Gets Sidelined

The Paper Bark Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked some things about this book. I liked the main character, Su Lin, who is a mix of capable and vulnerable, who is quite kind but sort of okay with her mafioso-type family, who is well-behaved as well as fairly daring. I like the setting, which is Singapore during the years between the two world wars. I know very little about modern Singapore and nothing at all about it historically, so everything here was an education. And I support the rhetorical goals found in the themes of anti-colonialism and anti-empire, with Singapore trapped under British rule, like India, and in danger of Japanese expansion in the years to come. All good.

As a mystery, it's a snooze. What a drag. Nothing happens. The action is slow and not terribly entertaining, with most of the real action taking place offscreen. And Su Lin is not an effective investigator. She might as well have been a leaf on the wind describing what she saw for all she impacted the story (until the very last scene). I understand that in that time, given her demographics, she has little real agency--but what agency she does have she barely uses to solve this mystery. I blame the author for not giving her more interesting things to do, better clues to find, more secrets to pierce by her own efforts and her own logic. You expect a mystery novel to have a POV character who tries to solve the mystery, and yeah, she does some of that, but her sleuthing is so slight and produces so little new information she might not have bothered. Most of what she knows is stuff other people just tell her. The last 30 pages are pretty good, and there's some genuine action there, but that barely makes up for almost 300 pages of slow motion. IMO. I almost DNF'ed many times.

People generally love the novel, which I don't understand, but that's cool. I liked it some, as I explain above, but not enough to read another. We clearly are looking for different things when we read mysteries. Maybe this is meant to lean literary. Anyway, not my thing. YMMV

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Where M. Jourdain Becomes a Mamamouchi

Moliere Five Plays: Moliere Five Plays: The Would-be Gentleman by Molière
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I thought this was very funny. It feels a bit like a silly high school play, but in a good way.

This is my 5th Molière play, and I only really liked one before; the other three I gave 3 stars for various reasons, but they weren't fun. The one I liked--The Misanthrope--wasn't exactly fun, either, but it was engaging and thought-provoking. Finally, I found one I unironically enjoyed.

It has the usual tropes of French plays of the age: a goofy rich man, a saucy serving girl, an angry wife, a clever servant (rather like Figaro), a number of people taking advantage of the foolish rich man, and lots of pointless arguing. Generally, the arguing and back-talking gets old, but it is managed in a funnier way this time. (How so? Hard to say. Better pacing? Broader farce? Anyway, I liked it this time.)

The "would-be gentleman" is trying to impress a woman not his wife with gifts and entertainment. A nobleman friend, Dorante, is pretending to help him, but every gift M. Jourdain sends to her with him as go-between is given to her in Dorante's name. Meanwhile, his daughter wants to marry a decent young man but her father wants her to marry someone higher on the social ladder. The humor is watching M. Jourdain trying to learn dance and music and language and all the things he believes real gentlemen are supposed to know. He's gullible and easily impressed and comes off like any super-dumb Joey Tribiani type of character off sitcoms. He's rather likable, though it's easier to laugh at him when he's rude to his family and trying so hard to cheat on his wife. The centerpiece of the play is a big trick her daughter's suitor and a servant play on him, presenting him as the Grand Turk who wants to marry his daughter. They speak gibberish and put on a spectacle that would be great fun to watch live, I think.

Happy ending. Funny story. Lots of dance and song in between scenes. I think this one's a winner.

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Where Tuppence Gets a Bit of a Scare

By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Near the beginning of the book, I wasn't sure I was gonna like this at all. But it picked up a lot, and by the end I was very entertained. Before the middle, I should say, and the rest of the way. 4 stars.

Agatha Christie is a little hit or miss for me. Some of her books are focused on the criminals and suspects--pretty much all unlikable people--barely giving us the detective, and those I don't enjoy. I really like to see the detective while he or she is doing something interesting, and when she writes that way, I like the book. This was an example of the latter. Tommy and Tuppence (my first book with them) seem like regular people, but once they get an idea that something isn't right, or when Tuppence does, they start investigating in earnest, discovering interesting and surprising things. We have strange country folk, horrible old child murders, a creepy house, suspicious people of all kinds, and a brilliant criminal mastermind evading detection who is somehow connected with the terrible murder story.

It works. It's both a puzzle, with sections that are basically a cozy mystery, mixed with chapters that are made up of genuine action and creepy danger. Tommy and Tuppence are so normal, and talk in an amusing way, making you think things will probably be just fine, while the clues--like the story of a baby behind a chimney--are chilling, making you doubt. Very clever.

Recommended.

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Where the Hero Acts Real Dumb

Chasing Midnight by Randy Wayne White
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not a great read, IMO. The author can write well, so there's something there. But I enjoyed the book very little. I finished it, so I give a 3--my personal rule--but I was feeling more like 2...

[I'm ignoring the overt conservatives good, smart/liberals bad, stupid cliche which is so frequently embedded in this genre. It's okay. The authors like to take a few jabs. The lame Michael Moore joke in the middle made me roll my eyes. But I can overlook a fair amount of that if the story rocks. Alas, the story does not rock.]

I'm on a mission to locate action/bestseller/thriller books--series, really--that I can get into. In the past, I'd found the genre not to my taste, and kind of wrote it off. But I happened on an author or two recently that I enjoyed, and thought I'd branch out, find a few more. If you find a good author with 20 or 30 titles, you've got a lot of new books to read. So I'm looking. This book was part of that mission.

It failed.

To begin with, the main character is very disappointing here. (These are all my personal opinions. Others can feel differently.) This action hero, Doc Ford, makes a lot of mistakes and doesn't do a single thing that's impressive or exciting or even very interesting. Well, he has a few moderately good moves near the end, but most of the book is him bumbling along in a role that could have been filled by any random guy without skills or knowledge. Why is he the main character? If you're awesome, be awesome. Do something.

And the plot, which had promise, is made very dull. A small Florida island is taken over by bad guys while our MC is scuba diving. There may be a bomb. Lots of people could die. Since he's free, he could do anything. It's dark, and he has night vision equipment. You expect he's gonna do some sneaking around, some behind-the-scenes action, so that he can find out who the criminals are and then isolate and neutralize them. Like Crocodile Dundee II or something. Nope. He gives up that advantage. He basically hands himself over to the terrorists, putting himself in their power, and spends the rest of the book trying to talk to them, trick them, figure them out. No evidence of expertise (except in knowledge of fish). No action to speak of. Nothing heroic except maybe a few pages at the end with a boat chase.

And the bad guys are so annoying it's a drag to have them in so many scenes. Ack. The whiny, chickenshit loser liberals are horrible characters. We had billionaire oligarchs who could have been the bad guys; they barely featured in the book. So--bummer.

I see fans of the series feel like this is a disappointing entry. In that case, I might try another. But I'm not feeling it.

Not recommended.

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