CLYDE WISHAM

Miles Vorkosigan's adventures continue in this the sixth book* in the series. Miles and Ivan have been dispatched to the capital of Cetaganda to represent Barrayar at the funeral of the Cetagandan empress. Things start to go very strange as soon as they arrive. A priceless relic goes missing, and there is something odd about an apparent suicide. The young envoys are soon caught up in a Cetanandan internal power struggle. A series of puzzling and dangerous incidents cause Miles to suspect that he is being set up as a scapegoat. Plunged into a strange and intricate society and with nobody to trust, he must rely on his wits and find new allies. There are crimes to be solved and a mystery to unravel, but any misstep could be his last.

This book doesn't have quite the pace of the previous *The Vor Game*, but I think it is better plotted. I quite enjoyed it. 5 stars (4+ stars updated to 5 stars by Grover Gardner's narration).

* In internal chronological order.

TVG provides another romping Miles Vorkosigan adventure. It is the sixth book in publication order but the fifth novel in internal chronological order. I think the series is best enjoyed in chronological order (YMMV).

This story starts with Miles graduating from the Barrayar military academy and being assigned to a freezing arctic station as a meteorological officer. He is informed that this assignment will give him a chance to deal with his issue of not treating authority with the proper respect. That of course doesn't work out. 😯

In this book the hyper Miles's ability to get into trouble surpasses even the level in The Warrior's Apprentice. However, I think he is a more complex, thoughtful, and believable character in this story. Also, this story further develops some important secondary characters -- most especially Emperor Gregor. After a bit of a slow start the action becomes fast and furious as Miles goes from crisis to crisis.

The ending, as I have come to expect from Bujold, is quite satisfying.

I am quite enjoying the audio versions of the Vorkosigan saga. Mostly rereads but it seems I somehow missed this one back in the day.

Solid 4 stars.

This is quite a good duel timeline historical mystery with a nice twist near the end.

The early timeline is based on the real murder of a good-time girl in Fairbanks in 1915 -- somewhat altered to make it fit this Kate Shugak story.

The later timeline (set early this century) picks up a Kate who, though still hurt, is much recovered from the events of Hunter's Moon. She is hired as security for a political candidate who has been receiving death threats. Of course things go bad and bodies start showing up.

As in most books in this series, Alaska itself is a major character. Also, Kate has some wonky personal problems involving her heart, a runaway teen, and a nutso mom.

The publishers intro text gives a good idea of the overall setup. You might want to read that first.

Solid 4 stars.

Tireless, brave, highly skilled, and incredibly lucky, Virginia Hall was one of the most effective allied agents operating in France during WW2. A Woman of No Importance tells her story in great detail.

She was an exceptional woman who never got the credit she deserved. In addition to fighting alongside the French Resistance, she set up and controlled intelligence networks that fed back vital information on German dispositions and plans -- first for the British SOE and then for the US OSS.

Working undercover, setting up cells, recruiting active agents, suborning enemy operatives, establishing escape routes, sometimes bluffing, sometimes just escaping with her life -- her activities were myriad. There is enough material in this book for many Hollywood movies.

The only drawback, IMO, is that it is a bit dry at points, but overall this is a very good narrative. 4+ stars.

When two high school boys disappear, Navajo tribal police officer Joe Leaphorn is faced with a difficult sleuthing job. As he starts his investigation, it soon becomes apparent that things are getting deadly. And he also finds that nothing is straight forward -- there seem to be multiple mysteries. Why are the FBI and DEA on the scene? Are the disappearances related to upcoming native religious ceremonies? And, what is going on at a nearby archeological dig and in an odd-ball hippy commune?

Pretty good neo-western crime fiction from back in the 1970's. I'll check out more Joe Leaphorn stories.

With The Bezzle Cory Doctorow gives us another good book about the adventures of forensic accountant Martin Hench. This one centers on Hench's interactions with sociopaths who think it is great grins to run scams on and cheat those who are most vulnerable.

While not as tightly written and edge-of-the-seat suspenseful as the previous Red Team Blues, this is still a very good read. More please!

I listened to the audio version which is very professionally narrated by Wil Wheaton. (I got it from Libro.fm. It is not available at Audible because Doctorow refuses to have DRM on his works.)

In this story set in the final years of the Soviet Union, Martin Cruz Smith brought back Arkady Renko, the hero of Gorky Park. Arkady is no longer a top investigator. Having angered powerful people he has fallen about as far as possible and now works on the slime line of a Soviet factory ship. But when a young woman turns up dead, what is an investigator to do? Like a blood hound on the sent, he cannot help but unravel the mystery.

Good crime fiction in a very odd setting. Solid 4 stars.

Excellent memoir about the bombing campaign high in the European sky in 1943. Those were dark days for bomber crews. The casualty rate was well over 100%.
The subject of this book, John “Lucky” Luckadoo, is one of the very few survivors of that campaign still with us. (He turned 100 in March 2022!) His unit, the Eighth Air Force 100th Bomb Group, became known as the “Bloody Hundredth” because of its high casualty rate. A bomber crewman averaged only ten missions.
Kevin Maurer brings his full skill as a writer to this true story.
Holter Graham's narration is very good. And, John Luckadoo himself provides an interesting afterward. (He is well-spoken and obviously still mentally acute.)
Good book. Recommended for anyone interested in Big-2.

Based on an actual university course, this is a history of the relationship of the human race to its food. It consists of 36 lectures, and I found it to be very interesting indeed. It covers much more than just food alone. It goes quite deeply into the interrelationships of food with culture, religion, morality, and even the rise and fall of nations throughout human history.
It includes a number of recipes from past ages. I plan to give some of them a try. (Fancy a lamb dish from 35 centuries ago? How about Neolithic flat bread?)
Both interesting and educational – I will probably try some of the other Great Courses.

Walter Mosley is nothing if not willing to try new things. It seems to me that this book falls squarely where historical fiction, science fiction, and fantasy intersect. It is also an odd kind of coming of age story.

The story starts out following the the life of a young slave named 47. In doing so, it gives a pretty convincing image of what life was like for plantation slaves in the pre Civil War American South. But, an SF element enters the story when 47 meets another slave that is most peculiar indeed.
Then things get interesting. It seems this other slave is on an important mission and he wants to enlist 47 in it. This new slave also seems to have magical powers. (Arthur C. Clarke style advanced tech indistinguishable from magic perhaps? It is unclear; certainly seems fantastical to me.)
As the story progresses 47 and some other slaves face a lot of trials – there is danger and there is action. And some quite frankly horrible things happen along the way. 47 has to grow up fast.

This book isn't at all like Mosley's famous Easy Rawlins crime series. But still, quite a good story.

Frank Crampton was born into a wealthy New York family. By his own account he was a bit of a scamp, even a rogue perhaps – anyway, frequently in trouble. At the age of 16 he was kicked out of his prep school. Deciding he had enough of school and social boundaries (“deep enough” in the mining vernacular he would learn), he then ran away from home and headed West. There he learned new trades in the tough mine fields, worked and played hard, and did well.
This book is the story of his adventures in the Western mining communities. He was lucky to survive some of them as he was naturally disposed to taking chances.
Damn good book; a look into a world that is now gone. Worth the price ($2 for the Kindle version) just for the photos at the end.
Solid 4 stars.

First of all, this is a pretty good historical novel. It is based on true events in the far western theater of the American Civil War. I found this quite interesting because, though I am somewhat a Civil War buff, I knew very little about the war in the far west. Specifically, the novel's protagonists were involved in the battles at Valverde Crossing (Feb, 1862) and Glorieta Pass (March, 1862) in New Mexico.
The writing is good and the mostly fictitious characters are interesting. Nagel does a pretty good job of placing the characters in their time and not giving them modern day motivations or sensibilities. There is a thread of romance running through the story which ends in a Big Reveal toward the end. (Though I figured it out quite early on.)
Good book. I will continue with the series.

In this book Al Murray doesn't attempt to give us a comprehensive study of how allied command developed in WW2. Instead he gives ten case studies of WW2 commanders of various ranks – some famous, some obscure, some successful, others not so much. Well researched and written with considerable detail and a bit of dry wit, this isn't a dull history but rather an interesting picture of men under pressure struggling with a difficult job. I found this rather short book to be quite thought provoking. Especially the chapters dealing with the Burma campaign, which I knew little about, were quite enlightening to me.
Good book. 4+ stars

Lieutenant Shelley's high tech adventures continue in this the second volume in Nagata's The Red trilogy. This story starts a few months after the end of [b:First Light 23309759 First Light (The Red, #1) Linda Nagata https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1435548329s/23309759.jpg 24561453]. Shelly and his “apocalypse squad” are confined while awaiting court-martial for their actions in the unauthorized “First Light” mission. This initially led me to think the book would be one of those tense courtroom dramas, but that part, while strong, turns out to just be a warm-up intro. There are lots of trials to be sure, but they aren't all in the courtroom. Shelly and his team are soon on new and very dangerous missions with civilization itself hanging in the balance. Additionally they find themselves to be targets in international power struggles. Things get very intense.Linda Nagata is a very good and skillful writer and she explores a lot of themes in this book. These include such varied things as PTSD and the camaraderie and brotherhood of combat soldiers as well as extrapolations of present day cutting edge technology into the near future.In summary, “The Trials” is a good sequel to [b:First Light 23309759 First Light (The Red, #1) Linda Nagata https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1435548329s/23309759.jpg 24561453]. Like the first book, it is violent and fast moving. I am quite looking forward to the final book in the trilogy, [b:Going Dark 24885594 Going Dark Linda Nagata https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1439174865s/24885594.jpg 44534204], which will be out later this year.