San Francisco Book Review - September/October 2011

September/ October 2011

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 7

NEW AND OF INTEREST

13

Tigerlily’s Orchids Murder in Lichfield House Page 4

An Interview with Tamim Ansary

25

Author of West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story Page 8

Danger Girl: Destination Danger An all new collection!

Page 12

28

Currents in Science & Nature

A clever guide to San Francisco’s buildings

58

By John King Heyday, $14.95, 110 pages

In this compact book, John King gives the reader glimpses of fifty noteworthy San Francisco buildings. This is not a catch-all Bible of the city’s architecture, nor is it meant as a stand alone tour guide. Cityscapes is an outgrowth of King’s San Francisco Chronicle feature column of the same name that began running in 2009. The newspaper columns would display two or three images and fewer than one hundred words of explanation and

the format is the same here.

Some of buildings King has selected for the book are curious and eye-catching, like the white behemoth Conservatory of Flowers on John F. Kennedy Drive, or the ten-story Heineman Building which is just twenty feet wide. Others, though, are important for more subtle reasons, like furniture-falling-out-of-windows modern art on See CITYSCAPES, cont’d on page 47

10 Ways the Earth Could End Page 19

Halloween Books Page 25

Thank You, Borders A heart-felt goodbye Page 51

166 Reviews INSIDE!

IN THIS ISSUE 1776 Productions. LLC 1215 K Street, 17th Floor Sacramento, CA 95814 Ph. 877.913.1776 info@1776productions.com EDITOR IN CHIEF Ross Rojek ross@1776productions.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Joseph Arellano George Erdosh David Marshall Kelly Furjutz Rachel Wallace D. Wayne Dworsky Sky Sanchez-Fischer Zara Raab

GRAPHIC DESIGN/LAYOUT Heidi Komlofske heidi.komlofske@1776productions.com

Mystery, Crime & Thrillers......................... 4 Interview: Tamim Ansary........................... 9 Science Fiction & Fantasy......................... 12 Viewpoints: 10 Ways Life on Earth Could End.............................................. 18 Children’s Books....................................... 22 Popular Fiction......................................... 26 (in)Audible Authors Interview With Robert Witlow.............................. 30 Cooking, Food & Wine.............................. 32 Poetry & Short Stories.............................. 35

COPY EDITORS Megan Just Lori Miller Megan Roberts Sky Sanchez-Fischer Megan Roberts Julia McMichael Mark Petruska Diane Jinson

EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Elizabeth Tropp Lisa Rodgers

Young Adult.............................................. 37 Viewpoints: Facts or Fiction......................41 Biographies & Memoirs............................ 43 Art, Architecture & Photography............. 47 Historical Fiction...................................... 48 Article: Thank You, Borders!..................... 51

MEDIA SALES sales@1776productions.com

WEBSITE SanFranciscoBookReview.com

Business & Investing................................ 53 Current Events & Politics......................... 53 Romance................................................... 54 Sequential Art.......................................... 56

The San Francisco Book Review is published bi-monthly by 1776 Productions, LLC. The opinions expressed in these pages are those of the individual writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the San Francisco Book Review or Sacramento Book Review advertisers. All images are copyrighted by their respective copyright holders. All words © 2011, 1776 Productions, LLC.

Reference.................................................. 59 Self-Help................................................... 59 Religion.................................................... 60 Books About Books................................... 60 Tweens......................................................61

FROM THE EDITOR What a long, strange three years its been.

While this is the second anniversary of the San Francisco Book Review, it’s also been three years since we first published the Sacramento Book Review.

When we started in 2008, the newspaper review sections were in crisis. The LA Times and Chicago Tribune both canceled their book review inserts, followed soon by the Washington Post. In the months leading up to our first issue, many publishers were cordial, but held off sending us any books until we actually published. Some never said they were waiting for that, others were more blunt, first letting us know we had a hoop to jump through. One even said “What idiot starts a book review in this economy?”

We’ll always be indebted to some of those early supporters. Knopf not only sent us catalogs, but a couple of ARCs as well--all of which ended up in the first issue. Taschen sent us two of their XL editions, one of which ended up on the front cover (Michelangelo), and the other on the back when we ran out of review content to publish. The Science Fiction and Fantasy publishers were also overwhelmingly supportive in the beginning, probably since we were one of the only general interest book reviews that were going to review SF/F books every issue.

We’ve had some great support from our reviewers, most of whom do their reviews in exchange for the copy of the book. Many of our earliest reviewers are still reviewing for us – Alex Telander, Holly Scudero, Amber Stott, Mark Petruska, and Chris Johnson (who’s now publishing the Portland Book Review.) We’ve made some good friends from our reviewers and expect to continue to meet new reviewers and publishers in the years to come.

We went from our first Sacramento edition, to now publishing San Francisco and having the licensed Portland Book Review. Publishing in November should be the Denver Book Review (also being licensed by one of our reviewers) and another publication (or two) that we can’t announce just yet.

So, thanks reading the paper this month.

Lots of blood, sweat, and maybe even a few tears went into getting this issue done. If you like how it looks, Heidi gets the credit. She agonizes over every issue, trying to get it just right.

--Ross Rojek, Editor-in-Chief

Joe Abercrombie The Heros With heroic help and support from his family the first volume, The Blade Itself, was completed in 2004. Following a heart-breaking trail of rejection at the hands of several of Britain’s foremost literary agencies, The First Law trilogy was snatched up by Gillian Redfearn of Gollancz in 2005 in a seven-figure deal (if you count the pence columns). A year later, The Blade Itself was unleashed on an unsuspecting public. It now has publishers in thirteen countries. The sequels, Before They are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings were published in 2007 and 2008, when Joe was a finalist for the John W. Campbell award for best new writer. Best Served Cold, a standalone book set in the same world, was published in June 2009, and a second standalone, The Heroes, came out in February 2011.

Greg Bear Hull Zero Three

Orson Scott Card Ender’s Game Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead,which are widely read by adults and younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools. Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy (Magic Street, Enchantment, Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables, Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker (beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and scripts.

Awarded two Hugos and five Nebulas for his fiction, one of two authors to win a Nebula in every category, Bear has been called the “Best working writer of hard science fiction” by “The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.” His stories have been collected into an omnibus volume by Tor Books. Bear has served on political and scientific action committees and has advised Microsoft Corporation, the U.S. Army, the CIA, Sandia National Laboratories, Callison Architecture, Inc., Homeland Security, and other groups and agencies.

Listen to the inter views at www.AudibleAuthors.net

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Book Reviews

Category

Mystery, Crime & Thrillers Tigerlily’s Orchids

By Ruth Rendell Scribner, $26.00, 272 pages Veteran crime writer Ruth Rendell creates a small world of fascinating characters. Like Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, this spice tale of intrigue, passion, and hidden lives is set in a small apartment complex in a middle class London. There’s Wally Scurlock, the secretive groundskeeper who avoids his wife, preferring to hang out in the cemetery, pretending to trim the graves. There’s Olwen, a sympathetic middle-aged matron slowly drinking herself to death.

Across the hall are three university students—Molly Flint, Noor Lateef, and Sophie Longwich––supporting characters. But supporting what? Read on! A newcomer to the scene is Stuart Font, a handsome, vain, young cad who recently came into an inheritance.

Stuart receives visits from a fashion writer named Claudia, (who is married to Freddy Livorno, an attorney with a temper and a taste for violence).

All these lives entangle in fascinating, criminal, ways. Every one will be gone by the end: a few because they move on to better things; others because they are dead. Oh, and Tigerlily? She holds a certain appeal—and a request for Stuart that catalyzes central events of the story.

Reviewed by Zara Raab

The Graduate Student

By James Polster AmazonEncore, $13.95, 224 pages Blackwell James is the oldest graduate student at Columbia so frittering away a year in the Amazon when he was supposed to be studying the culture isn’t going to help.

His mentor has one last shot for James to get PhD. after his name…a California project involving primates and robots.

James knows nothing about primates or robots but he does have a hallucinogenic vine he brought back from the Amazon. And the project director wants it. For scientific purposes, of course.

Polster introduces a slew of characters, all involved in the academic and/or film world as he carefully conceals everyone’s motives. Like James you spend your time wondering if the people James meets are friend, enemy, or some combination of the two. Each time you read a new scene you’re never sure how a character will act, which just adds to the fun. This is a rollercoaster of a book with plenty of “What?!” moments.

Polster’s characters are strongly written, each having a unique presence and a moral compass that only they (and occasionally you) understand. If you want a dose of unreality The Graduate Student is it.

Reviewed by Jodi M. Webb

We All Fall Down

By Michael T. Harvey Knopf, $24.95, 298 pages Michael Kelly is a hard-nosed former cop who has found himself in the middle of a few intense situations since he’s become a private detective, but there’s been nothing like this. A pathogen that could kill millions has been released and Kelly is in the middle of things. The mayor, the CDC, the DHS and Chicago’s finest are all posturing to take credit for everything that goes right—and looking at Kelly to be the fall guy for anything that goes wrong.

If that’s not enough, members of a ruthless gang on Chicago’s West Side seem intent on killing him. It’s up to Kelly to stay alive, find the truth, protect the innocent and save Chicago—and the entire country, before it’s too late.

If Michael Harvey’s new book /We All Fall Down/ seems to be taking on a lot, that’s because it is—possibly too much. But Harvey’s careful plotting overcomes that pitfall. Unfortunately, a cast of one-dimensional charactersweakens what otherwise is a good effort. Only Kelly and a gang banger named Marcus have any depth to them. The result is an average read that disappoints because it could have been so much more.

Reviewed by Albert Riehle Vintage Connor: The Blonde in the Lotus Elite

By Robert Baty R. J. Buckley Publishing, $19.00, 332 pages Ray Connor is a retired homicide cop. ‘Once a cop, always a cop’ and ‘everybody lies’ were the two great truths of that career. Now, he’s ‘Vintage’ Connor, because he’s parlayed his love for vintage cars into a new occupation. He chases down and finds very special automobiles for his customers.

And then, Evie, the love of his life, reappears after an absence of twenty years to ask him to investigate the death of her daughter.

She’s convinced it was murder but the police insist it was suicide.

The grit, the grim, the borderline disgusting is relentless in this debut novel

by Robert Baty. He knows the cop world, and the car world, as well as a couple of others he probably wishes he didn’t.

In spite of my love of cars, I found it very hard going at times. He does write short chapters – sixty-one of them. They allowed me to put the book down every now and

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 5

then to seek respite. On the other hand, they kept bringing me back again. I’d have been happier with more about the cars, and less about the rest. The language is way below street level. Read it at your own risk.

Reviewed by Kelly Ferjutz Myth Man

By Alex Mueck iUniverse, $28.95, 296 pages It starts with the murder of a priest.

When police detective Dominick Presto is brought in on the case, he immediately connects the priest’s death to an earlier unsolved murder. As Dominick throws his considerable weight and talents into solving the mystery, he realizes the threat facing the city: a meticulous killer, with years of planning invested and a diabolical endgame in sight, is targeting religious figures. As the legend of Myth Man grows and the bodies begin piling up, can even Dominick’s skills stop this murderous master of disguise before he strikes again?

A thriller steeped in both criminal and moral trespasses, Myth Man is something of a rarity, offering an intellectual battleground, as well as a lawful one. While the villainous Myth Man is cunning and brutal, he also makes a valid point about the dangers of organized religion, leaving any reader, no matter what religious background, with thought-provoking questions, like “how far is too far?”

While having a police detective on the outs with most of the department is nothing new to fiction, Dominick is an engaging outcast, overweight and wholly devoted to his mother, yet blessed with an ability to see connections that elude most of his comrades. Dominick is decidedly human in a genre populated by supermen, and his struggles with both the case and his fellow officers help separate Myth Man from the pack.

Near the end of the book, the twists (and untwists) come fast and furious, abandoning the slower investigative style for a more breakneck tension-driven narrative, and for the most part, the story concludes nicely.

(Personally, there was one particular twist I had trouble swallowing, but perhaps a second read will mitigate that feeling.)

Nonetheless, I hope there are more Dominick Presto cases to come.

Sponsored Review Her Dear & Loving Husband

By Meredith Allard Copperfield Press, $11.99, 262 pages To escape the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles and a bad divorce, Sarah Alexander moves to Salem, Massachusetts, known for the infamous Salem Witch Trials held in the 1600s. Within days of arriving, Sarah meets

Book Reviews

the man of her dreams, literally. Handsome English professor James Wentworth is the man she sees herself with every night in a reoccurring dream. James’ first impression of Sarah is that he has just seen his dead wife’s ghost. James is not about to tell Sarah, because his wife died hundreds of years ago during the hysteria of the witch trials.

Author Meredith Allard weaves a fascinating story in Her Dear and Loving Husband, book one of The Loving Husband Trilogy.

Readers learn early on that James is a vampire. He has lived without his beloved wife for decades and cannot seem to move on. Sarah has secrets of her own. She has always suffered from nightmares that leave her shaken when she wakes up. In Salem, they get worse and she begins to experience dreams about the witch trials filled with arrests, hangings, death, and despair.

Are Sarah and James connected? Can James dodge a snoopy reporter set on revealing what he is? The title of the book refers to a poem by a woman declaring her eternal love to her husband.

Allard combines historical fiction, romance, and paranormal fantasy. She does a nice job of setting the scene and readers feel like they are walking through the shaded streets of Salem along with the characters.

It is clear that she has done her research about Salem and the witch trials. Allard tackles themes of reincarnation, eternal love, second chances, and redemption. It is a very ambitious project and the author succeeds in tying everything together to create a unique, mysterious, memorable story.

Allard’s second book comes out in Spring 2012.

Sponsored Review Bad Intentions

By Karin Fossum Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24.00, 213 pages Bad intentions hover over this deliciously intriguing detective novel like foul air, and especially over its main characters, three young men, friends since their schooldays.

With her usual skill and sensitivity to contemporary cultural issues and conflicts, Fossum once again draws us into a corner of Norway where danger lurks. Axel Frimann, strikingly handsome, vain, cunning, and persuasive, as a good adman

Mystery, Crime & Thrillers should be, drives a luxury automobile, while his friend Philip Reilly, with his unkempt hair, drug problems, and defeated air, barely manages to hold down a menial job and follows Axel wherever Axel wants to go. The third member of this trio is Jon Moreno, who, before the novel opens, spiraled into a depression he could not shake and ended up in a psychiatric unit of a hospital. When Bad Intentions opens, Axel and Philip are taking Jon on an outing, away from the hospital, a camping excursion to a lake called Dead Water. The only trouble is Jon Moreno ends up dead. Before the story ends, Jon’s diary turns up, and Inspector Sejer, the suave detective and widower whose strong integrity and character make him ever so attractive, uncovers other bodies in other lakes as events unfold, baring bad intentions, bad judgment, and deadly ends.

Reviewed by Zara Raab Camouflage

By Bill Pronzini Forge, $24.99, 269 pages Welcome to the world of the long-running series with the 38th Nameless Detective story from Bill Pronzini (although a character did recently refer to the PI as Bill, so I guess that busts the title of the series). Anyway, Camouflage brings back the partly nameless one. Tamara Corbin is now the senior partner and Jake Runyon a full-time employee.

Alex Chavez is likely to be full-time after this book.

There are two very different mysteries to solve. The firm is paid to find an exwife in the hope she will cooperate in an annulment procedure run by the Catholic Church. When the divorced husband disappears after complaining the woman he saw was not his ex, the paying client switches to the anxious fiancée. The question, of course, is whether the first client’s disappearance is a homicide. In the second thread, Jake finds the son of his “girlfriend” is probably the victim of abuse. In due course, there’s a body to focus everyone’s attention.

There are no major twists, it being fairly obvious who’s doing what to whom and why.

But the package is put together with great skill and Camouflage makes a very good addition to the continuing series.

Reviewed by David Marshall

A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul: Inspector Singh Investigates

By Shamini Flint Minatour, $24.99, 292 pages After a suicide bombing outside the hippest club in Bali, Inspector Singh is assigned to help with anti-terrorism measures, though he has no knowledge of the subject.

But when a body with a bullet hole is found in the rubble, Singh’s expertise and reputation come into play.

Much to his dismay, he’s given a chatty Australian police officer named Bronwyn as a partner. Together they must solve one man’s murder in the aftermath of a tragedy in Shamini Flint’s new novel A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul.

The contrast between the inspector from Singapore and his Australian counterpart makes for fascinating reading. While Singh is a devote Sihk, he does not view the law with traditional eyes. For Singh, the ends justify the means. Conversely, Bronwyn strongly believes in due process and struggles with being the female second in com-

mand in a male dominated field. Flint’s characters are realistic and deserving of the reader’s time. Flint also provides an interesting critique of expatriate culture. A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul is the third Inspector Singh Investigates novel, but they can be read in any order. Up next, Singh returns to Singapore for an investigation closer to home.

Reviewed by Kathryn Franklin

A serial killer is on a killing spree of the religious in New York City, and a seasoned police detective is the only one who can stop him.

ISBN 9781450247245 San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 6

Book Reviews Dark Tangos

By Lewis Shiner Subterranean Press, $35.00, 207 pages Dark Tango by Lewis Shiner is a serious political thriller. Instead of cloning from the spy or espionage bookshelves, and giving it a veneer of political respectability, Shiner gives us some of the detail of the dirty war in Argentina. There are no gun-toting heroes here. Rob Cavenaugh is just an ordinary guy who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the brown stuff hits the fan, he proves all too vulnerable. Even when he has the chance for revenge, he can’t take the final step. He’s just a victim who struggles to hold himself together as a person when everything around him goes wrong.

There are quite graphic descriptions of torture so you may decide this is not the book for you. Shiner does not flinch from the brutal reality of the disappeared ones both in the past and today. Although I might cavil at the way in which the book balances the allocation of guilt By this is a brave book for an American author to write.

He’s reasonably honest in exploring the repression and corruption that afflicted the southern states in South America.

Reviewed by David Marshall The Snowman

By Jo Nesbø with translation by Don Bartlett Knopf, $25.95, 384 pages Jo Nesbo’s The Snowman is a riveting continuation of the Harry Hole series of suspense and mystery. Translated from Norwegian by Don Bartlett, the story is riveting and captivating as it takes place in and around Oslo and Bergen and interweaves the politics of Norway and the United States.

The wintry Nordic settings — and the chilling murders — take readers on a fast-moving ride as Hole hunts down what he believes to be a serial killer.

The gruesome slayings build to become a personal challenge to Hole, who is the only Norwegian police office with experience in dealing with serial killers. But few believe him, especially as his suspects are upstanding members of society.

Hole also struggles with a new police office, the force’s administration, and his former girlfriend, who is making plans to take her son, a boy close to Harry, and move to Africa with her new man. Throughout, Hole feels as if he is being watched in the same

Mystery, Crime & Thrillers manner as his victims. Is Hole the next victim? Nesbo packs twists and turns, which will keep readers riveted. The fourth of Nesbo’s books, The Snowman certainly will have you run out to buy more of his writings.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Humphrey I Don’t Want to Kill You

By Dan Wells Tor Books, $11.99, 320 pages John Wayne Cleaver isn’t your average teenager. He’s a diagnosed sociopath who often helps out in his mother’s mortuary business. He has a strict set of rules to prevent him from becoming a serial killer. He has killed two demons masquerading as humans, saving his town twice in the process, and now he’s challenged a third to face him.

But John Wayne Cleaver isn’t prepared for what’s coming. Can he stop another monster in its tracks... without becoming one himself?

I Don’t Want to Kill You is the third in Dan Wells’s stunningly enthralling series, after I Am Not a Serial Killer and Mr. Monster, and he ably ratchets up both the tension and the consequences for his unlikely hero. Our journey into the mind of a possible killer is as disturbing as it is engrossing, and the fact that you cannot help but root for John makes for a thoroughly unique reading experience.

While the mystery is a bit more stop-start than the previous two novels, the growth of John’s world socially and emotionally easily picks up the slack, adding further color and dimension to an already fascinating protagonist. I sincerely hope there are more stories on the way.

Reviewed by Glenn Dallas Blind Fury

By Lynda La Plante Touchstone, $15.00, 512 pages Blind Fury by Lynda La Plante is the sixth novel featuring Anna Travis and it continues the main storyline of how our heroine fits into the team of detectives, a situation complicated by the failed sexual relationship with her boss DCS Langton.

This time, we start with a body in a field and watch the development of the murder investigation. As in all good British police

procedurals, there’s a wealth of detail. For American readers, there’s also some implied social commentary of the status of Polish immigrants in Britain to provide depth.

Blind Fury is densely written but rewarding as a well-structured plot hones in on a suspect. The challenge for the detectives is then how to prove his guilt. If there’s a weakness, it’s in the decision to incorporate a Silence of the Lambs element. This is not a true Lecter and the plot element is very much a sideshow. The same results could have been achieved in a less clichéd way.

That said, once we get past some strands to the investigation that prove dead-ends, the book hits its stride as a real page-turner as we watch how Travis and Langton get the right result.

Reviewed by David Marshall

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By Zara Raab

Author Interview

in this society, and the relationship between men and women. I actually dramatized all this in The Widow’s Husband. In the novel, the village headman Ibrahim has power in the community; the sources of his power are uniquely Afghan and he has to go to the jirgah to discuss matters affecting the village. He understand importance for all members of the community of saving face, and avoiding hubris. The women in the novel are powerful, but they are behind scenes. It’s not that the women in Afghanistan are without power.

Tamim Ansary

Author of West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story

“

I recently visited with author Tamim Ansary at his home in San Francisco. His memoir, West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story, was described

by The New York Times as a “book that steadies our skittering compass. . . [It] sees things we cannot make out, and need to.” Tamim Ansary is also a novelist, as well as the author of numerous books for children. In 2011, he was awarded the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award for Community and Literature from the Northern California Book Awards for his contribution to literature in the Bay Area.”

Zara Raab: I’m glad you were able to meet with me today. You thought you might be traveling to L.A. to take care of family business.

Tamim Ansary: As I mentioned on the phone, I’m in the process of selling the house my father owned in Kabul.

ZR: What new book projects are you working on now?

TA: I’m writing a nonfiction book called Afghanistan Interrupted. In the book, I go back about a hundred and fifty years, and I tell the story of a country trying to be born, despite constant foreign interventions. It’s the bird’s view of the context in which my life story occurred. It’s supposed to be out in the fall of 2012, by the election, I hope, because I’m sure Afghanistan will be a big part of the election, with the withdrawal of American troops imminent. Afghanistan

may well be falling apart by then, so I’m sure it will be an issue in the news.

ZR: Are you doing a lot of reading for the book? Anything you’d like to recommend?

TA: I’m reading voraciously for my new book. I’m reading in Farsi the works of Khalili, Afghan’s greatest poet. His life intersected my family’s life. My grandmother was his wet nurse, and my grandfather was the physician of Khalili ‘s father. Khalili’s poems are now being translated. Yes, it’s fun to read Farsi. I can speak better after I’m been reading for a while. It’s hard work, but I enjoy it.

ZR: Your novel, The Widow’s Husband, is set in the remote village of Char Bagh, at a time when much of the region is under the rule of the British Empire.

A mysterious vagabond wanders onto a hillside, a malang, a man with the power to channel miracles; he transforms the lives of the villagers, the brooding headman Ibrahim, his djinn-haunted wife Soraya, the widowed Khadija. How did you come to write this book?

TA: There’s a sense in which The Widow’s Husband is a fictional realization of my new history. In Afghanistan Interrupted, I’ll paint a picture of the traditional way of life of ordinary Afghans, how they lived, the fabric of the culture, from the presence of nomads to the structures of power. All this needs to be understood if you’re going to talk about modern Afghan politics. In the old Afghanistan, out in the countryside, few knew who was king, there were villager leaders, that’s all. I want to show how decisions were made

The sub-theme of my new book will be the intertwining of two strands of action, the outsiders coming in and the Afghans evolving along their own lines, without foreign influence. The new book will convey a sense of the fabric of Afghan culture and history. When we go in, the Americans, the English, we say we’re going to set up a democratic government, women have to go to school, it’s part of the progressive program for reform. But the categories are not the same in Afghanistan as they are in the U.S. How can you deal with Afghan leaders, when you don’t understand what makes someone a leader in a certain culture?

Take the simple idea that Afghans are tribal. Americans have some a predetermined idea of what tribes are, a concept that probably comes from our experience with the indigenous tribes of the United State.

But people here don’t understand what it means to be tribal in the Afghan sense. They haven’t had the imagery to form a true picture. I’m trying to give them the imagery so they can understand the hopes, values, dreams, and intentions of the Afghan people, and how they are going to chose their next step, given their values.

ZR: You write about Afghanistan you knew, personally, in your wonderful memoir, West of Kabul, East of New York. It’s where you grew up in the 1950’s and 60’s. Tell us a bit about that.

TA: My family lived mostly in Kabul, where my father was a professor at the University and my mother taught English. Part of the time we also lived in Lashkargah, which was the headquarters for the Helmand Valley Authority in the 1950s, where a lot of American engineers worked. My father was Vice-President of the project. Later we moved back to Kabul. It was in the city of Lashkargah that I lived a divided life, going to school with other Afghan children, but hanging out with American kids after school.

ZR: Are you in touch with anyone from Lashkargah now?

Lashkargah is now the capital of the Taliban insurgency. I wouldn’t and couldn’t set

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 9

foot in there now. It’s an extremely dangerous place. In the last couple of years, the big battles have been right around that town.

But I’ve recently come into contact with several people from the village who are now living here. I mentioned that to sell my father’s house in Kabul, I’ve had to find people who knew me in Afghanistan. Through this process I’ve reconnected with several Lashkargah neighbors from my childhood. One, I’ve discovered, is named Tamim: he was named after me! I remember his father. He was just a little boy then, but his father was a young engineer, starting a family, just starting out in life. Like my family, his was part of this optimistic little town, Lashkargah, that was going to create a new Afghanistan. He ended up the Minister of Mines and Industries.

Then the Communists came, and he spent two years in a Communist prison, and those prisons were not nice places to be. But he got out, came to the West. So now I will meet once again my namesake Tamim in L.A. Another person I discovered was an old classmate from the Lashkargah school. I remember him, but not well. We were always competing in the academic rankings at the school. Sometimes I was ahead, sometimes he was. I had every advantage, I read at home, while he came straight from the village, and much older. He had been drafted to go to school. He was probably around twenty. That’s how it was done in Afghanistan at that time. I have no idea how he got to California. I’ll be finding that out when we meet again.

ZR: When you were still a teenager, your family moved to the United States.

You describe in your book how you and your sister and brother and your parents went to the airport, with your American passports hidden in your luggage. You definitely didn’t want the authorities to know you had decided to expatriate. Tell us what happened.

TA: It wasn’t a new thing that the Afghan government didn’t want Afghans leaving the country. This goes back to the 19th Century, when the Afghan kingdoms were hemmed in by foreign powers that had a Continud on page 10

Author Interview way of keeping Afghans IN. More recently, the government began paying to educate Afghans abroad. Quite reasonably, actually, they didn’t want those guys leaving and going to other countries; they didn’t want a “brain drain.”

ZR: You could easily leave Afghanistan because your mother was an American. Your parents had met and fallen in love when they were both students back in the States.

TA: That’s right. There was another Afghan who had married an American before my father, but when they came to Afghanistan, his wife didn’t like it. So she took him back with her to the United States. So it stands to reason, my family wasn’t allowed to leave the country. We had to pretend we were coming back.

ZR: Once you were in the States, your family unraveled, your father ended up going back to Afghanistan, your mother staying in Washington, D.C. Sadly, your parents never saw each other again.

TA: Their marriage ended over cultural incompatibility. She couldn’t continue to be part of this culture and he couldn’t take not being part of the culture.

ZR: Do you go back to Afghanistan?

TA: Yes, I’m hoping to go to Kabul in September. It’s part of the sale of my father’s house. I have a deed to the property, and this deed is in the central archives in Kabul.

Fortunately, these archives, I’m told, have survived the 35 devastating years of war.

ZR: As a teenager in the States, you joined the radical counterculture on the West Coast, living in San Francisco, sharing a house with other young people, one of whom is a young woman named Debby. You write how at first you’re friends, but secretly you were in love with her. . .

TA: Yes, I married Debby. It was a good decision—one of my best. One of our daughters is a screen writer, living in New York City. She’s in the world of movies and television. My other daughter is in college.

She’s an artist.

ZR: What is your relationship to the Afghan-American community now?

TA: I have Afghan friends mostly many dating back to a book project I did in 2008 calledSnap Shots: This Afghan-American Life, ––stories and essays by young Afghan Americans. I tried to do a workshop with them on the model of the San Francisco Writing Workshop that I’ve been running for the last fifteen years, but it didn’t work too well. I found that feedback and critiques

Tamim Ansary couldn’t be given in face-to-face situations: There was too much loss of face. But toward the end of the funded project, I acquired a project assistant, Yalda Asmatey, and thanks to her energy, three weeks after she came on board, I had two more excellent pieces of writing and three more promised.

As it turned out, with Yalda as an intermediary, I was able to reach the young people and draw out their stories. One of the most amazing experiences concerned a young Afghan woman who wrote about her dying grandmother. At first she wrote a simple, sentimental story about how her grandmother was such a nice woman. I kept after her, encouraging her to write more, and soon she brought the story back twice as long as the original, describing the rituals of mourning in the culture and how she felt they excluded her expression of grief. It was a fine piece of writing.

spent 20 years as a chef, and now I think I’ll quit and become a surgeon.” But the process of writing is looking into the world and using your instrument to extract something from it and give it to someone.

Most of the time, you’ve got something you want to say and you don’t know how to say it. It’s very hard work to push through the tangle of thoughts and feelings. It always surprises me just how confused and tangled my thoughts are when I go to put them into words. I don’t enjoy the writing process per se, but I must express myself.

Having something you want to say requires a passionate engagement with the world.

You’ve got to have something you care about out there, that’s where the passion to write comes from, that’s the driving part.

ZR: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Tamim.

I also connected with an artist, another a good friend, who has his own amazing story. When he left Afghanistan and came here with his family, his mother was a peasant who didn’t speak Farsi, she spoke Pushto. They moved to the poorest part of Philadelphia. There were seven kids. Within a day or two of arriving in this crummy flat without lights, the oldest girl delivered her mother’s seventh child in the dark. Later she had an eighth child and it was a girl. The father said, “I don’t want another girl child.

Let’s give her up for adoption.” So the family gave her up for adoption. But now, years later, my friend located his lost sister. She’d been adopted by a very religious Christian family in Ohio, and as a young woman, was about to go on an Evangelical Christian mission around the world.

ZR: So the family became multi-cultural whether they wanted to or not. I hope Snap-Shots: This Afghan-American Life gets reprinted. I’d like a copy. . .

What advice would you give young people interested in becoming a writer?

TA: Build a body of work, there’s nothing else that’s important. And I would say, if you know who your influences are, you’re going about it wrong, because that’s imitation. The true influences on your work are invisible to you. Your only intention must be to write your work, but not someone else’s work. You have to have a reason to write. There has to be something you believe that you want other people to see or believe or feel. And you have to build your instrument, your ability to construct sentences and paragraphs and to have at your command the vocabulary to do it well. Writing good sentences is not all there is to writing. It’s true, you need a sharp knife to do woodworking, but sharpening a knife is not woodworking. Writing is different from other things. Dude, you can’t just quit your job as a landscaper and become a writer. Just like you wouldn’t think, “I’ve San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 10

About the Interviewer Zara Raab’s Book of Gretel draws on her experiences in remote parts of rural California. Her poems appear in West Branch, Arts & Letters, Nimrod, and Spoon River Poetry Review, her reviews in Poetry Flash, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Colorado Review. Her first full-length collection, Swimming the Eel, is due out this fall.

SAVING THE EARTH IS BLOODY BUSINESS.

In the Bering Sea, a whaling trawler explodes, killing the Russian crew. In the Rocky Mountains, a group of miners die when their operation is sabotaged with dynamite.

What do these crimes have in common? They are the work of Earth Fights Back, a radical eco-terrorist group that has been wreaking havoc out west for years. Their attacks have grown more brazen, and the body count is rising. The FBI is getting nowhere, but when an Oregon newspaper reporter looking for her big break takes an interest in the story, things heat up. Soon she finds herself locked in a deadly, winnertakes-all game of cat and mouse with the group’s leader. Unless she figures out a way to stop him, a cherished national monument will be destroyed, and the lives of her loved ones – and other countless innocent victims – are at risk.

One man wants to save the earth.

One woman wants to save her family.

There can be only one winner… available in paperback and e-book formats at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, booklocker.com, chapters.indigo.ca and other online retailers

m ar kpetr usk a. co m

Heaven’s Shadow

By David S. Goyer and Michael Cassutt Ace, $25.95, 398 pages In this launch to a new trilogy, a taut space adventure dissolves into science fiction, as two groups of astronauts race to be the first to land on an asteroid-like object moving toward Earth.

Once landed, the astronauts confront a landscape that appears to be purposebuilt for their arrival; their reception and their reaction drive an entertainingly thrilling tale.

Heaven’s Shadow reportedly already has a film deal, and the transition should be smooth for a novel already somewhat cinematically paced. Authors David S. Goyer and Michael Cassutt have between them a sci-fi résumé spanning multiple mediums; Goyer has screenwriting and story credits on the recent Batman films, while Cassutt wrote for the 1985 Twilight Zone revival, as well has having published a number of short stories and two novels.

A propulsive page-turner, Heaven’s Shadow is driven by plot rather than characters or ideas, and seems mostly disinterested in the metaphors and moral issues that make the best science fiction so provocative and rich. But while it lacks depth, it delivers thrills.

Heaven’s Shadow is best viewed as a light but gripping tale of adventure and survival.

Reviewed by Ariel Berg

“

Well, it looks as though we’ve been watching life evolve,’ Zach said, ‘only a few billion times faster than we’d expect.”

Book Reviews

Category

Science Fiction & Fantasy Danger Girl: Destination Danger

By J. Scott Campbell, Andy Hartnell, Tommy Yune, Arthur Adams IDW Publishing, $19.99, 186 pages The series Danger Girl is a semi-popular series amongst comic book fans. It is full of action, adventure, and attractive young ladies who go around the world getting into James Bond-type settings. They work for a man called Deuce, who is the leader of this group for hire.

They are led by Abbey Chase, the blond bombshell. Backing up Abbey is Sydney, who knows her way around guns. They are joined Johnny Barracuda, and their assistant Silicon Valerie. In this collection, entitled Destination Danger, the girls are transported around the world taking on criminals of all shapes and sizes.

Unlike other collections that collect the comic series in sequential order, this book instead presents the readers with a standalone collection of stories, with a variety of different artists, each artist bringing their take to the world of Danger Girl. If you are not familiar with the world of Danger Girl, this would not be a good place to start at, since you would need an understanding of the characters to get what is going on. The changing artists are interesting, but the lack of a continuous story line gets distracting after awhile. Fans of Danger Girl will like this collection.

Reviewed by Kevin WInter

Overbite

By Meg Cabot William Morrow, $22.99, 278 pages Meena is now employed by the Palatine in Manhattan and her ability to predict when someone will die is a great weapon for this secret Vatican military unit. In Meg Cabot’s follow-up to Insatiable the Palatine guards still have a lot of demons to fight, and when it’s discovered that a bunch of tourists are missing, Meena’s partner, Alaric Wulf, is determined to learn more.

In the meantime, Meena is struggling to come to terms with some baggage leftover by her exes (the son of Dracula can be so charming) and trying to convince her employers that the current demon-fighting plan might not be the best one. Work assignments become even more complicated when a young, ambitious priest is assigned to New York City.

Cabot keeps the pace moving right along and seems to realize that the point of the book is breezy fun rather than taking itself too seriously. If readers can get past the info-dumping tendencies of the dialogue and the clumsy romantic finale, this title should serve well as a light summer read for fans of the paranormal.

Reviewed by Rachel Wallace

Into the Hinterlands

By David Drake, John Lambshead Baen, $25.00, 384 pages Humanity is in the midst of its Fourth Civilization, spreading to the stars. People have adopted a colonial society, in terms of class structure and attitudes. Travel between the stars and planets is commonplace, achieved through, what could be termed, bicycle portal hoppers. This is the setting of David Drake and John Lambshead’s Into the Hinterlands, which is the first book in a new series and the author team’s first collaboration. The novel centers on Allen Allenson, a young man from a fairly notable family, whose rise to prominence is told as he takes a job trying to drive out the Terrans, inhabitants from star into which the civilization is spreading.

Further complicating matters are the Riders, not-quite-human beings who ride living crystals as their powerful mounts. The Riders proved the most interesting aspect of the novel and while the authors premise itself is intriguing, the technology postulated thought-provoking, and some of the themes resonant, the execution was lacking. The dialogue came across as very wooden and unnatural. The characters were plausible, if not entirely likeable or empathetic with a protagonist whose alliterative name was an irritating stumbling block. I wanted to like this book, but ultimately cannot recommend it.

Reviewed by Rob H. Bedford Witches of East End

By Melissa de la Cruz Hyperion, $23.99, 273 pages In the Long Island town of North Hampton, things are not what they seem.

The Beauchamp women, Joanna her daughters Freya and Ingrid, have secrets to hide. They are immortal witches and have lived for centuries under an order that prohibits them from practicing magic. But when members of the town need change and happiness in their lives, what harm could a love potion or a fertility charm really do? When dark forces challenge the women, they must band together and fight magic with magic.

Fantasy fans will likely know Melissa de la Cruz as the author of the Young Adult Blue Bloods series. Her new adult series begins with Witches of East End. Readers looking for a light introduction to the fantasy genre won’t feel too overwhelmed with the new series. Each chapter is narrated by one of the Beauchamp

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 13

women; their individual personalities and voices shine through. De la Cruz wraps the reader into the narrative by slowly revealing details. For example, a magical restriction is mentioned in the beginning, but only when the characters are ready to confront the issue, does the reader learn the details. It’s a thrilling way for the story to unfold.

Reviewed by Kathryn Franklin Deadly Dreams

By Andre Norton Baen, $7.99, 582 pages Deadly Dreams is a re-release of two Andre Norton novels first published in the 1970s. The first novel, Perilous Dreams, is divided into four parts and, excepting the thread of professional Dreamers, reads as much like short stories as like one novel.

In the second novel, Knave of Dreams, one cohesive story is told that explores the consequences of tampering with the access dreams give to alternate dimensions.

Both novels seamlessly incorporate classical elements of science fiction and fantasy due to the location of Dreamers and the destinations of those induced to Dream. The first novel focuses more on events as a result of Dreams while the second novel focuses more on how people might respond to the disruption caused by Dream tampering. In Knave of Dreams, a man from a world much like present day is forced to take over another man’s life in an alternate dimension. Norton does a wonderful job of investing readers in the survival of Ramsay Kimble. Kimble is an easy character to root for as he is firmly against allowing circumstances to dictate his life. Science fiction and fantasy fans alike will find much to enjoy in this pair of novels.

Reviewed by Rachel Wallace Starbase: The Rockets

By J.T. Starr JTstarrbooks.com, $9.99, 531 pages You know you’re off to a rip-roaring start when the third paragraph of a novel contains the following line of dialogue: “Suzie, you’ll be glad you came along when we get to Star Base - and you have your pick of all those horny, lovestarved men.” This is exactly the sort of messaging NASA needs to secure its funding for the next century. Quantum physics or origins of the galaxy? - much too dull. Hot sex with a murder investigation thrown in? - here’s the checkbook Mr. President.

I’m going to take a guess and say that author J.T. Starr had her tongue about as far in his cheek as it would go while writing

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Starbase: The Rockets. I know there are occasional security lapses at the best of times, but for a pot-smoking rock band to sneak aboard a spaceship bound for a secret Starbase using secrets gleaned from Roswell... well you know, NASA really needs to tighten up hiring procedures.

If you don’t mind checking your brain at the door, Starbase is loopy fun. The writing style is Tom Swift by way of Henry Miller, so if that’s your bag you’ll have a good time here.

Sponsored Review Rebirth

By Sophie Littlefield Luna, $14.95, 384 pages Rebirth is the follow-up novel to Aftertime, Sophie Littlefield’s post-apocalyptic series. Its story is easily accessible to new readers but will probably be most interesting to those who are already fans of Littlefield or of Aftertime.

Cass and her daughter have settled into some semblance of routine in a facility organized specifically to help survivors avoid the horrors to be found in a decimated California. A virus has laid waste to the population and many of the survivors are as violent as the infected zombies. Cass has struggled to create a home but when her lover is compelled to leave she has to decide on which path she and her daughter will be safest.

Littlefield does an excellent job of building a world that can be believed. Her painting of this backdrop is woven seamlessly into the story and the virulent zombies, not to mention the aggressive groups of survivors, make for some pretty scary scenes.

Unfortunately, the dialogue and characterization are a bit clumsy limiting the appeal of this title to those interested in dystopian scenarios.

Reviewed by Rachel Wallace 42: Douglas Adams’ Amazingly Accurate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything

By Peter Gill Beautiful Books, $13.95, 341 pages It’s the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, but why? For decades, devotees of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the other books in Douglas Adams’s brilliantly off-kilter sci-fi series have tried to deduce the question that “42” answers. Theories abound, but none really seem to satisfy the imagination.

Science Fiction & Fantasy Thankfully, Peter Gill is here to shed some light on the matter with 42, his tome dedicated to the world’s favorite two-digit number, as well as the man who elevated it to stardom.

Collecting numerous factoids and bits of trivia featuring the number 42 in prominent and subtle ways, Gill assembles a curious patchwork look at a world unified by that simple number. Glimpses into Adams’s life and works are peppered throughout, highlighting the first book’s publication and the creation of the iconic Hitchhiker’s Guide radio shows. All the while, Gill is hunting for some scrap or clue that will make one theory stand out above the rest.

While it’s diverting, it’s also a bit disappointing--some of the facts are dubiously connected to 42--but nonetheless, triviahounds and Adams fans alike will find a few choice tidbits to squirrel away.

Reviewed by Glenn Dallas Insatiable

By Meg Cabot William Morrow Paperbacks, $14.99, 320 pages Meena Harper is as tired of the vampire hype as about half of the population. Unfortunately, it seems she can’t escape it when the soap opera she writes for decides to take on a vampire storyline to keep up ratings.

Things get even more complicated when Meena unknowingly starts falling for a vampire and is pulled into the world that she has loathed for so long.

Insatiable has a very intriguing premise that seems promising, as well as having an author with a wonderful reputation. However, this book falls a little flat for me.

Full of entirely too much description and not enough action, I found myself putting this book down on several occasions. The plot kept me coming back, though sometimes Meena was a little too much for me to handle -- and I don’t mean that in a good way. Her decisions were always rash and her emotions were so bi-polar that I couldn’t relate to her because I never knew how she was going to feel from one minute

to the next. I love the world Cabot set up; I just wish I saw more action and had less description.

I’m sure Meg Cabot fans will love this book, and I’d also recommend it to the vampire fans out there, just be prepared for a whole lot of description.

Reviewed by Missy Wadkins Dominion

By Daryl Chestney Daryl Chestney, $14.95, 277 pages A golden glistening city is not the usual backdrop for an adventure story. Mainly, you think about dirt-covered trails with weeds poking out like fine fingers trying to unsnarl travelers. But in Dominion, we find ourselves in the honorable, and unlikely, city of Grimpkin, filled with both religious and bourgeois overtones. This debut novel, from the pen of Daryl Chestney, is a classical epic fantasy about the quest for power and knowledge. The story focuses on Lakif, an Acaanan, who is obsessed with requiring the fabled Rare Earth Stone. Lakif, due to the fact that she is classified as an Inhuman, is an outcast in the city. She hires another Inhuman, a half-man Istani named Torkoth, as a paladin. The two, with only a mysterious deviation to guide them, hunt for the stone in the gargantuan town.

I especially enjoyed how the plot and the main characters were not stereotypical. Unlike the typical oppressor hero and arrow-loving elf, we get two flawed, personality rich characters. I also enjoyed how much of the action was really inside the head of Lakif as she struggles with the tasks before her. Her insecurities are only matched by her resolve to achieve. The fact that both heroes were seen as outcasts also makes it easy to relate to the story, because feeling misplaced is a universal experience.

The book succeeds in showcasing Chestney’s talent for detail and brilliant similes. Each sentence is adorned with clever poses and beautifully written lines that belong more in a gallery than a book. Chestney is also brash about his influences, which range from Shakespeare to the Bible. I do wish there was more of a cohesive ending, but because this will be an ongoing series, I can overlook that. With hopes of another book on the way, and heaps of literary talent, this is one writer to keep your eye on.

Sponsored Review

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 14

Surviving Xcarion

By R.G. Chandler Amazon Digital Services, $2.99, 357 pages There is a massive risk faced by a writer who attempts to mix genres. It is the equivalent of water skiing while juggling chain saws—impressive if successful, a bloody mess if not. Thankfully for readers and author alike, R. G. Chandler managed to ski the course scarred, but mostly unscathed.

Surviving Xcarion is a mix of a moody, under-class thriller with a sci-fi alien invasion. Blues music played with ray guns.

Chandler’s novel starts with the moody thriller as Rheannon, a back-street young woman with an addiction to needles and blues guitar, has her world fill with unknown threats while she herself is being pursued for ...what? Rheannon doesn’t know, we don’t know, and the chase is on.

When the sci-fi element is first introduced, my first reaction was a distinct, ‘Uh oh.’ I worried that I had run across another book where a writer had tried to jam two ideas into one novel. But the result is quite good, saved by two crucial factors. One, Chandler can write—there is a strong hint of Raymond Chandler to R.G. Chandler; and second, the author manages to keep the focus on the characters rather than the shiny things that go beep. In sum, a trip from alleys to planets that is well worth taking.

Sponsored Review Oliver Caine’s In Trouble Again

By William Kondylis CreateSpace, $15.28, 306 pages When twelve-year-old Oliver Caine sets out on an adventure, there’s no stopping him, not even a warning from the ghoulish Harry Moler, caretaker of Oliver’s school and a grisly version of Hogwart’s Hagrid.

Oliver convinces his best friend, the chubby, cautious Peter Higgins, to spend the night at Stone Ridge, and the ghosts begin to stir in Norwood Bay in—where else?—Tasmania, an island off the coast of Australia, where whispering voices can again be heard in the walls of the abandoned house.

Joined by Oliver’s half-sister, the boys open the book of Eternal Quest, and find themselves in a desert where time seems to come to a standstill.

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They struggle across scorching sands to reach a city, only to be chased by a race of lizard people called the Kamul. Excitement builds in this well-paced story, as the trio is led to safety deep underground by boy guide, Nabo, to a hidden city of diamonds where more strange creatures await them.

Here, the Elders read from the book of Eternal Quest and tell them what they must do if they are ever to return home. The tasks set for them are arduous, but with Peter’s newfound courage and Oliver’s growing mastery, they find their way. The book’s spell is not entirely broken, even when at last they succeed in carrying out the mission set for them by the Quest.

Australian writer William Kondylis deftly weaves his plot with clearly defined, sympathetic characters. He uses simple, clear language, and lively imagery and dialogue—a treat for any youngster in the tender pre-teen and early teen years. It’s an age-old story, both well-told and fresh, if not quite so inventively and lushly told as J.K. Rowling’s tales. Adult readers may notice similarities with the Harry Potter stories, right down to the mean science teacher, but this won’t bother young readers, who will find much to enjoy and love in Oliver Caine’s in Trouble Again.

Sponsored Review The Measure of the Magic: Legends of Shannara

By Terry Brooks Del Rey, $27.00, 400 pages The Measure of the Magic, Terry Brooks’ conclusion to the Legends of Shannara series, is atypical of the final chapters as we’ve come to expect them from this master in the fantasy genre. Unlike so many before it, this finale seems a bit stale and empty, and frankly, isn’t one of Brooks’ finer tales.

We pick up at various cliffhangers from the first book in this series, The Bearers of the Black Staff. The valley where refugees from the apocalypse have taken shelter is no longer protected by magic and is now vulnerable to attack from the world left behind.

The few who accept the reality of this danger try to fight it.

This book offers a great villain — one of Brooks’ best in some time — and contains some scenes that are extraordinary and will have fans standing and applauding. But in the end, it was a bit empty. The conclusion was purely fortuitous. The journey of the characters had nothing to do with the outcome. And aside from the cool charac-

Science Fiction & Fantasy ters and great scenes, I was left wondering what the point of this series was. The action moved forward very little for a two-year, two-book commitment. It’s worth the read, but far from Terry Brooks’ finest.

Reviewed by Albert Riehle Home Improvement: Undead Edition

By Charlaine Harris, Toni L. P. Kelner Ace, $26.95, 352 pages Home is definitely where the heart is, even if it isn’t yours. Home Improvement: Undead Edition is an anthology of fourteen stories about the dangers of home improvement when zombies, vampires, and rampant fae are added to the mix of homeowners just trying to fix things up. The Sookie Stackhouse story is no doubt going to draw readers, but that a number of stories are stronger will no doubt make this a fan favorite.

The authors do a fine job of exploring the danger of the DIY movement. The tone ranges from silly (“It’s All In The Rendering”) to classic horror (“The Mansion of Imperatives”). Although the stories that mix horror and DIY stubbornness are the best of the lot, there is no lack of imagination in this collection, as demons, vampires, and ghosts all compete for the best home and no one is wiling to even consider letting go. Sometimes a home owner’s association isn’t the worst problem for new homeowners, and some of these beings definitely find some interesting ways of dealing with nosy neighbors. This is definitely one of the most fun books you will read this summer.

Reviewed by Jamais Jochim Star Wars: Choices of One

By Timothy Zahn LucasBooks, $27.00, 416 pages On the run from the Empire and in dire need of a stable base of operations, the Rebellion investigates a curious offer from an Imperial governor near the edge of the Unknown Regions. The Emperor’s chosen assassin is assigned to eliminate the governor for treason, and recruits a rogue squad of stormtroopers called The Hand of Judgment for backup. And as disparate threads weave tighter together, a threat to the Empire and the Rebellion alike emerges, ready to destroy everyone and everything in its path.

An impressive sequel to the somewhat underwhelming Allegiance, Choices of One gathers Luke, Han, Leia, and many of the classic Star Wars characters and tosses them into the maelstrom with some of

Zahn’s favorite creations, both new and old.

And unlike his previous effort, the story flows beautifully. None of the myriad plotlines feels coincidental or forced, and the constantly escalating buildup between them is effectively cinematic.

Zahn has not been this good since the original Thrawn trilogy; Choices of One is that rarest of Star Wars novels, one that deepens the mythology of both the characters and the universe without feeling overengineered or gimmicky. It’s a great Star Wars book, pure and simple.

Reviewed by Glenn Dallas

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 15

The Goblin Corps

By Ari Marmell Pyr, $16.00, 554 pages Great villains make great heroes. If it wasn’t for Vader, Luke is just a whinny protagonist and if it weren’t for goblins, every quest would be dull. The Goblin Corps takes the villains and cast them into the main spot light. The story follows a quirky cast of characters that stumble around a mystical world. The idea is that the main bad guy of this world, the Charnel King, has found himself in a pickle.

He decides to uses the Goblin Corps for his own biding to defeat his enemies. But will the Goblin Corps do

Book Reviews

as they are told or will they break the rules like always?

I found the overall pace of the book was slow, and that is because there is a great deal of set up and so much exposition. The plot is not very engaging, and is hindered by both being stereotypical and the muddled goals from the characters. Later, the characters are sharp and distinguishable from one another. The Goblin Corps is like a dysfunctional family, bickering and cursing at one each other. While the characters are colorful and somewhat loveable, it’s not worth it to get tied down to such a repetitive plot.

Reviewed by Kevin Brown Angel of Europa

By Allen Steele Subterranean, $35.00, 96 pages Subterranean Press is one of the best in the small press world. At novella length, however, there’s real pressure on the editor to “get it right”. After all, customers are asked to spend $35 on a deluxe hardback edition for small content. Sadly, I’m not convinced Angel of Europa by Allen Steele is worth that price.

Now, don’t get me wrong. If you found this story in an anthology or collection, you would think it good. The plot concerns a potential murder of two scientists on an expedition to explore the moons of Jupiter. The resolution of the mystery is intellectually satisfying. Unfortunately, the execution is uninspiring. Most of the characters are mere ciphers, leaving it to the more rounded “detective” to decide whether a crime has been committed. The text is littered with mention of major technological advances, but there’s no exploration of how they work. Even the social engineering to preserve group dynamics with some female members of the crew taking drugs to suppress their libido, gets only one line. More characterization would have been better at this length. This edition is for the dedicated Allen Steele collector or those who speculate in limited editions.

Reviewed by David Marshall Jim and the Flims

By Rudy Rucker Night Shade Books, $24.99, 256 pages Let’s say you come up with a complex plot involving an invasion of Earth by parasites that, like wasps, inject their eggs into human hosts, mix in the possibility of Egyp-

Science Fiction & Fantasy tian mummies teaching modern humans the route to reincarnation, and put the responsibility of averting disaster into the hands of a depressed mailman. How do you tell the story? Do you go all Lovecraftian and start cataloguing the body count in gory detail as a doorway opens into another dimension?

Or do you tell it in a quirky, faintly humorous style? Well, if you’re Rudy Rucker, you write Jim and the Flims in a whimsical tone and undermine whatever sense of threat might otherwise have been present.

This is a waste of a good plot idea. The wheels-within-wheels cause and effect is nicely constructed and, it may have come out as an engaging weird or supernatural thriller. Sadly, I grew increasingly annoyed by the attempted levity. What could have been doom-laden becomes wishy-washy with faint overtones of the absurd and surreal. So, unless you’re a die-hard Rudy Rucker fan, this is not for you.

Reviewed by David Marshall 7 Scorpions: Rebellion

By Mike Saxton Eloquent Books, $17.50, 443 pages Sometime a little cheese in the diet is not a bad thing. In the postapocalyptic world of 7 Scorpions: Rebellion, Zodiac has destroyed all of the major cities around the world and is well on his way to wiping out the rest of humanity. Vincent Black, suicidal vigilante turned supersoldier, is humanity’s last hope.

He must not only rally humanity around him, but find a way to deal with the fear-causing auras of the lobotomized soldiers and the mind-warping telepathy of Zodiac himself.

Throw in engines of destruction like the BFT-5000 Apocalypse Dozer, and it could be a very bad year for of humanity.

As a piece of literature, this book is not Joyce, and this is not a bad thing. The heroes and heroines are reasonably realistic; Black has a number of virtually super-human physical enhancements as well as a helpful sixth sense, and yet he comes off as someone who is doing all that he can to stop Zodiac. He is “what happens when the government screws with

things it shouldn’t,” as he started his career off as a vigilante racing cancer to the finish.

He becomes a leader, someone others rally around, but he does it by being likable, not by forcing others to follow him. He becomes a fun character, even though he needs a new line. The story is a balls-to-walls rollercoaster with a few weird twists thrown in for good measure.

This a book for those who like their science fiction to be fun, and not too serious.

If your science fiction tends to the Independence Day-Mad Max part of the spectrum, this is going to be a fun trip. The next two books should be a great read.

Sponsored Review Tattoo

By Kirsten Imani Kasai Del Rey, $15.00, 364 pages Sorykah has killed Matuk Morigi, the depraved patriarch of the Morigi clan and president of Tirai Industries, but her trials are far from over. Farouj believes that she’s the physical beacon that can lead his people to revolt and reclaim their desert homeland. Queen Sidra is more interested in Soryk, the male essence that shares Sorykah’s physical body and manifests himself at the most inopportune times. And Chen Morigi has an unhealthy interest as well in Sorykah’s ability to change between male and female forms. Sorykah just wants to be left in peace, but it looks like that is becoming less and less of an option.

Tattoo is the second book in Sorykah’s ongoing saga and while the storyline has a good premise and the characters and environment are interesting and well-developed, the biggest issue I have with this book is that while Sorykah is definitely positioned as the main character, her storyline is not put at the same level. The ending is anticlimactic and there is a feeling akin to watching a random fifteen minutes of a two-hour movie.

My suggestion is to wait for the series to be completed before investing in it.

Reviewed by Heather Ortiz Troika

By Alastair Reynolds Subterranean Press, $35.00, 120 pages The mark of a great novella is that the author manages to stuff an amazing amount into a small space and still make it compul-

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 16

sively readable. This is a difficult art to master, but in Troika, Alastair Reynolds makes it look effortless.

Here’s a story of taut excitement. A Russian cosmonaut escapes from a mental hospital to talk with one of his country’s astronomers. She’s been reviled for publishing controversial opinions about an alien artifact called Matryoshka. Our spaceman was in the third expedition to explore it but, on his return, the authorities suppressed all information about what was found. He wants to tell her she is right.

Just stating the plot in such bald terms fails to do justice to the intelligence and complexity of the story. As an escapee from a mental institution, the cosmonaut is a classic unreliable narrator. Can we believe anything he says about his experiences inside the Matryoshka? And then, when we get to the end, there’s a further element revealed that might just change everything.

I rate Troika as one of the best novellas of the year so far. Buy before stocks run out or regret missing it.

Reviewed by David Marshall Mortality Bridge

By Steven Boyett Subterranean Press, $40.00, 422 pages Niko, a former musician junkie, signs a blood contract and inherits the bona fide life of a music legend. When he discovers his girlfriend, Jem, has fallen prey to a mysterious illness, he sets out on a treacherous descent into Hell to renegotiate the original agreement. He travels through the streets of Los Angeles all the way down to a gruesomely detailed Hell filled with angels, demons, and armored men. The opening chapter, where Niko wakes on the beach after drinking from the mythical river Lethe, sets the tone for the rest of the novel; his upcoming journey will unfold like Dante’s descent into the circles of Hell.

Carefully retelling the myth of Orpheus with Faustian elements, music references and, folklore, Boyett’s story is well crafted, elaborately detailed, and faithfully loyal to the pleasures of updating mythological settings. Although Boyett’s narrative has a strong foundation with literary sensibilities, it felt strained from overwriting. Much of Niko’s descent is told with ample extensive details to hold back the novel’s narrative pace therefore muting the suggestive qualities that appeal to our imagination.

Reviewed by Wendy Iraheta

Book Reviews

The Girl in the Garden

By Kamala Nair Grand Central Publishing, $24.99, 305 pages “I have done a terrible thing,” writes protagonist Rakhee Singh in a letter she leaves at her fiancé’s bedside before departing abruptly to India. The Girl in the Garden is a confession of such, an account of the summer eleven-year-old Rakhee accompanied her enchanting, moody mother to their family home in a remote Indian village, leaving her aloof father behind in their Minnesotan home.

Inspired by The Secret Garden, and in the English Gothic tradition, first-time novelist Kamala Nair frames The Girl in the Garden as a escalating tawdry conflict between desire and honor, and the ramifications it has on the innocent. It is also a coming-of-age tale, and thus a narrative of the departure of that innocence.

Enclosed in a house full of bitter relatives whispering family secrets, Rakhee confronts troubling truths about her mother, and puzzles over the meaning of a beautiful garden she finds enclosed in the jungle.

As the mystery unravels, interest does too.

Nair is unwilling to give Rakhee enough complexity to make her “confession” mean much, and she remains a passive spectator to the ensuing drama. The drama is fun, but without Rakhee’s growth as an individual, it feels empty.

Reviewed by Ariel Berg A New Birth of Freedom: The Visitor

By Robert G. Pielke Altered Dimensions, $14.95, 226 pages The battle of Gettysburg was one of the bloodiest battles in the history of American warfare, and the most critical turning point in the Civil War. New deadly weaponry and inadequate medical treatments lead to the death of more than 50,000 American soldiers. According to Edwin Blair, that is nothing compared to the plague the Pest will bring. In the first part of this trilogy, A New Birth of Freedom: The Visitor Blair comes to the past to unite Lincoln and Lee into

Science Fiction & Fantasy fighting an alien force that could threaten both the past, present, and future of mankind. Blair, chosen for this mission due to the fact that this time period is his strong suit, devises a plan that changes the course of history but could possibly be endangering his own life. This alternate historical book is a wonderful read that captures both the imagination and style of the Civil War and delivers it in a entertaining manner.

Robert G. Pielke has created a book that is comprehensively well organized, with every line and action focused mainly on the story. The real draw is the mystery and excitement that pulls the reader into the story. Pielke’s writing style is clean, precise, and perfectly well paced. I really enjoyed the character development within the book and the relationship between Blair, Lincoln, and Lincoln’s cabinet. Blair tries his best to fit in with this crowd, but he can help but to “geek out” over all the historical events happening around him. It is that real emotion of Blair that grounds the book and makes Blair so relatable and loveable. I would love to see a little bit more depth to Lincoln’s and Lee’s personalities. Both men are intimidating, but seem to be shoved into the background.

Hopefully, they will play a bigger part in the upcoming stories. But, out of everything, I am looking forward to the conclusion of Blair’s story and how it will shape the world as we know it.

Sponsored Review Hellbent (Cheshire Red Reports, Book 2)

By Cherie Priest Spectra, $15.00, 352 pages Vampire and master thief, Raylene Pendle, is an expert at acquiring unusual items.

When her best customer asks her to obtain some supernatural remains, she’s wary, but soon becomes swayed by the number of zeroes on her forthcoming commission.

Unfortunately, an unhinged witch has cataclysmic plans for the item in question. With a threat arising against her fellow bloodsucker, Ian, and a looming crisis among feuding vampire houses, Raylene will have to be more efficient, more creative, and more ruthless than ever. Good thing she’s got a Navy SEAL-turned drag queen to back her up.

The terrific follow-up to Priest’s unexpected gem Bloodshot, Hellbent deftly deepens the mythology of Raylene’s world while advancing the plot forward and keeping the reader

engaged. Moving at a breakneck pace, the reader is easily swept along the multiple plotlines by the book’s energy and humor, despite the often-dark undertones.

By exploring the vagaries of vampire clan customs and rivalries, Priest not only makes an already complex world richer, but reinforces fundamental traits of her protagonist. While I was surprised at some of the convenient resolutions at book’s end, I have total faith that such easy answers mean greater complications later on. I can’t wait.

Reviewed by Glenn Dallas

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 17

uC rrents in

Science & Nature

By D. Wayne Dworsky

Viewpoints Article

Ten Ways Life on Earth

Could End Blurb: Scary new evidence suggested by the most elite scientific community leaders seem to point to an inevitable calamity.

For centuries, prophets have been heralding the end of the world. Many saw catastrophic floods, others conjured up images of fire from the heavens and still others predicted utter chaos in the midst of our crumbling civilizations.

Nostradamus, one of the great prophets of the middle ages, had prophesized destruction and chaos between the years 2009-2012. Even the Mayans’ calendar ends Dec 21, 2012. Is that how the world will end, in utter chaos? It has only come to the attention of scientists in the last few decades that certain activities of the cosmos could actually end life on earth.

All the experts tout the cliché, “It’s not if the event will occur, but when it will occur.”

Here are ten ways life on earth can end.

Super Massive Volcanoes. While geologists were looking for evidence of a calamity from the fossil record, where a mass extinction had occurred, they found a curious layer below the dead zone. They noticed that large deposits of ash had preceded extinction episodes in recent times. One of the periods that concerned investigators most was the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago, where an unusually large ash build-up occurred. This period is important because the dinosaurs disappeared right afterwards.

When geologists studied this phenomenon, they realized that only a super massive volcano could have produced such extensive deposits. Could a super massive volcano have killed the dinosaurs?

They found the smoking gun in the Yellowstone Caldera. It seemed that a super massive pocket of magma beneath Yellowstone National Park is just waiting for the

right moment to erupt, and according to recent geologic studies, it’s growing. Christopher C. Sanders of the Yellowstone website advised state officials as recently as January 1, 2009 that a potential state of emergency exists in Yellowstone. (Sanders, 2009) When it finally erupts, a large amount of the animal population within a substantial radius of the event center would not survive.

When Yellowstone grumbles, it is a likely reminder that nature is giving us a warning. (Krajick, 2004) It is likely to spread an extensive blanket of ash around the planet, blocking out the sun for extensive periods of time, creating a global winter for years, destroying the food supply world-wide. One of these occurred just prior to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Could it happen again? Of course!

Eruptions in the Yellowstone Caldera occur like clockwork every 600,000 years or so. (Brill, 2009) The last one was 640,000 years ago, which means that we are overdue. Geologists estimate that it would be 2,500 times as powerful as the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980. (Tyson, 2008) Yellowstone is not the only super volcano.

Sumatra in Malaysia (India Daily, 2007), has also shown a cyclical nature similar to Yellowstone, only its cycle is 75,000, and is ironically due in 2012. Some say, (McCaffrey, 2001) its power is even more destructive than Yellowstone, some ten thousand times bigger.

Meteor or Asteroid Strikes. Unfortunately, investigators disagree. Many think that another possible reason could explain the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. It seems that also during this period, a strange form of quartz, known as shocked quartz occurs in the deposition. Since this kind of quartz is only produced from a massive meteor strike investigation is justifiable. Could a giant meteor striking the earth 65 million years ago have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs?

The evidence around the Yucatan Peninsula in a crater called Chicxulub in the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 180 kilometers in

diameter, (Kumo, 1995) suggests that such a massive impact may have also spread a blanket of hot debris over the globe. One reason why the crater was not discovered earlier stems from the fact that it can only be seen from the air. Could a massive meteor or asteroid end life on earth today? Meteors, asteroids and comets often exceed speeds of 50,000 mph. At that rate, we would only have a few seconds warning. We would see a bright flash in the sky, followed by a massive shock wave seconds later, which would rip us apart and raise the land temperature to thousands of degrees, hot enough to melt steel and even rock, turning it into lava. We would not stand a chance. Then, hot debris would rain down, further heating the atmosphere. This might continue for months, blocking out the sun. The result of this is a nuclear winter. So, whatever the impact missed the nuclear winter will take care of.

We would not survive. Scientists say, “Why not?”

Global Warming. Another calamity, global warming weighs in the background.

Its unassuming role in the earth’s systems fails to capture our attention until it grows into a monster. The obvious greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, which we can readily see develop from our automobiles’ emissions and emissions from industry. But a much more insidious greenhouse gas is waiting to spring forth in an overwhelmingly profuse manner. Deep beneath the ocean lie massive deposits of methane hydrate, a frozen form of methane. It is only stable because of the cold ocean currents. But as global warming continues, these deposits will begin to free themselves from the depths and contribute to the global warming issue, exacerbating the problem. Aside from the obvious effect of changing climate and warming waters, which will spurn intensive storms, the ice sheets will melt. This is by far the gravest issue since most of the world’s population occupies coastal areas. A rise of only a few feet will have a dire impact. Researchers see a rise of as much as 100 feet. This condition will also decrease the living space by as much as 25%, which the world population would find intolerable.

Snowball earth. Evidence suggests that it happened before and can happen again.

But global warming is episodic and can and has been reversed by nature. Solar activities change from time to time, which would have an independent effect on climate. There have been extensive periods on earth during which all tendencies to warm the planet fail, plummeting the earth into mini-ice ages. One is documented during the middle ages, from 1500 to 1850, with a peak around 1800, (Behringer, 1999) causing much havoc on summer crops in Europe.

If a number of facts that contribute to cooling occur at the same time, the climate of earth could reach a point of no return and propel the system into freezing more ex-

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 19

tensively than in the past. Logically, more snow and ice would tend to repel the sun’s rays inhibiting the earth’s ability to retain heat. Snowball earth can become inevitable under such circumstances, scientists say.

Magnetic Polarity Change. We are protected by our magnetosphere. Magnetic currents deflect solar flares and cosmic rays, protecting our fragile atmosphere. A shift in magnetic polarity would devastate many of the earth’s systems, throwing off the rhythm of nature. Studies have shown that change is a natural phenomenon. (Hoffman, 1995). Magnetic polarity change is already underway. Certain parts of the southern hemisphere have already begun to show weakened magnetic fields. (Twietmeyer, 2009).

Solar Flares. Solar flares are common, some have caused minor problems by disrupting magnetic fields on earth. These are temporary and localized. What if a major solar flare arrived? We would have little warning. Occasionally, however, massive flares jet out of the sun, whisking all kinds of dangerous particles along with it at near light speed velocities. Scientists calculate, (Whitfield, 2003) that occasionally massive flares jet out thousands of miles above the sun’s atmosphere. When these occur they create all kinds of havoc on our electrical systems and magnetic fields, disrupting power and navigation on both ships and aircraft.

The Magnetosphere. The magnetosphere protects us with a veil of magnetic energy, which deflects certain kinds of particles from entering earth’s atmosphere.

Just a glimpse of celestial bodies that are not protected by a magnetosphere reveal how vulnerable they are in space. The Moon and Mars are just two examples. The potmarked surface also tells us how vulnerable we are. Even the small meteorites that are normally deflected by the intense magnetic fields on earth would hammer the thin atmosphere on Mars and grind the Moon’s fine material on its surface to powder. Cosmic radiation is another problem that a lack of magnetosphere creates. Can the collapse of the magnetosphere on earth have a similar devastating effect? You bet!

Quasars. The most destructive force in the universe is what is known as a quasar. They occur when a super massive star, usually a neutron star implodes creating a massive black hole. At the event horizon, so much energy is created by the dynamic particle movement that gamma rays are blasted away from and perpendicular to the event horizon at the speed of light. These are known as gamma ray bursts. This is where Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc2, takes on significant meaning. Here, matter is transformed into energy at a rate far exceeding the production of any star. Sci-

Viewpoints Article

entists claim that the amount of energy is equivalent to all the energy produced by a galaxy. See Jochen Greiner’s research.

(Greiner, 2009) Imagine if this energy were focused at a target like earth. In 2001, such a gamma ray burst was located in the sky.

It was visible to the naked eye. The most astonishing aspect of its occurrence was that it originated halfway across the universe! If we could see how spectacular this event was from so far away, imagine what a quasar could do from our own back yard, within our own galaxy! Some scientists say that even if it were as close as a star in Ursa Major, say, Polaris is (430 light years away), it could have a damaging effect on the surface of the earth, most likely scorching it, destroying all life. Could it happen? It may already have hundreds of years ago, but the fallout has not reached us yet.

Ten Ways Life on Earth Could End One of the paramount and possible results of galaxy collision is the potential for two black holes to attract each other. If that were to happen, they would first orbit each other until finally absorbing each other, forming one giant black hole. In the process of doing that, their movement and forces on gravity would create gravity waves or ripples of gravity through the star clusters within the colliding matter, creating further chaos.

Anything caught up in this colossal gravity distortion would surely be met with weird expressions of the laws of physics assuming they would follow those laws at all. Perhaps, during such an event, all the laws of physics break down.

Black Holes. Black holes lurk menacingly in the dark of space. Some are brightly lit, like quasars. We know where they are by their feeding habits. Matter orbits it at the accretion disc at nearly the speed of light. This much movement drives out large amounts of energy, producing intense light, which can be seen across the galaxy. But black holes that stop feeding are still moving through space and time. Could one happen to stray through our part of the galaxy and threaten our blue marble? You bet!

While Nostradamus made it very clear in his writings that one calamity can lead to the next in a series, like dominos, and imbalances in world systems can affect each other in negative ways, it was his lost book, the book of symbols that completes the prophecy. Although the work seems controversial, some scholars even doubt his authorship. Irrespective of this debate, the authenticity of the symbolism cannot be denied. Even though it may have been a copy of the original Nostradamus book, some people have gone through a lot of trouble to keep the writings alive. It would have been very risky for someone like Nostradamus to maintain ideas that opposed the church.

Galaxy Collisions. The most dynamic and cataclysmic event in the universe occurs where two titanic galaxies collide. There might be a way to throw a meteor or asteroid off course. There may be a way to escape the worst of a super volcano. We can prevent global warming by conservation. We can even avoid a black hole by moving the path of the earth at least theoretically. A galaxy collision is so broad and so encompassing that there is just no way that humble man could erect a barrier to stop a crash two hundred thousand light years across.

What is Galactic Alignment? Very powerful symbols tend to indicate, according to certain experts (Jenkins, 2009) that a cataclysmic calamity waits to show itself on a cosmic scale. It seems that the sun is moving into the final position of its 26,000year cycle, to line up directly between the earth and the center of the galaxy. No one knows the perils that will manifest at that moment. But one thing is known: it will occur in 2012. We can also say how it can affect us. 1) The line up may affect gravity, which in turn would affect ocean tides.

2) Line up could affect the magnetosphere by weakening it or even reversing its polarity. 3) The production of solar flares is another concern that could grow out of excessive gravity wells.

We humans have only been on the earth for a very short time relative to the long life of the earth. The catastrophic geologic activities won’t cease just because humans have appeared on the scene. While these possibilities paint a gloomy picture for the future of the earth, they occur infrequently and over vast amounts of time and should not disrupt our day-to-day activities. In any event, we are relatively helpless to stop them. However, science and technology are advancing at astonishing rates, opening up new possibilities. Perhaps we can escape our demise by colonization of other planets or by developing new and powerful methods of cosmic manipulation. In any case, we must keep an optimistic attitude if we plan to survive as a species.

-----------------------------This article was previously published February 5, 2009 by American Chronicle.

D. Wayne Dworsky addresses the importance of being informed of Currents in Science & Nature by participating in science and nature book reviews, writing feature articles, aviation and preparing students for State examinations in mathematics and language arts. He’s been reviewing science and nature titles for San Francisco Book Review for the last two years. In addition to his own literary career, he hosts a radio talk show on Blog Talk Radio’s Alpha Centauri & Beyond.

And he writes a blog at his website, Alpha Centauri & Beyond.com. He remains active as an airman and writes articles for American Chronicle.

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 20

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Find hundreds (yes, hundreds) of reviews in 30+ categories sanfranciscobookreview.com

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Tad Williams Shadowmarch Tad Williams has held more jobs than any sane person should admit to—singing in a band, selling shoes, managing a financial institution, throwing newspapers, and designing military manuals, to name just a few. He also hosted a syndicated radio show for ten years, worked in theater and television production, taught both grade-school and college classes, and worked in multimedia for a major computer firm. He is cofounder of an interactive television company, and is currently writing comic books and film and television scripts as well as novels. Shadowmarch begins Tad Williams’ first epic fantasy trilogy since his best-selling Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. Rich with detail and exotic culture, and filled with a cast of characters both diverse and threedimensional, Shadowmarch is a true fantasy achievement, an epic of storytelling by a master of the genre.

Felix Gilman The Half-Made World

Jeff Kinney Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series Greg Heffley has always been in a hurry to grow up. But is getting older really all it’s cracked up to be? Greg suddenly finds himself dealing with the pressures of boy-girl parties, increased responsibilities, and even the awkward changes that come with getting older—all without his best friend, Rowley, at his side.

Can Greg make it through on his own? Or will he have to face the “ugly truth”? Jeff Kinney is an online game developer and designer, and a #1 New York Times bestselling author. In 2009, Jeff was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. He spent his childhood in the Washington, D.C., area and moved to New England in 1995. Jeff lives in southern Massachusetts with his wife and their two sons.

Felix Gilman is a writer of fantasy and weird fiction. His 2007 novel Thunderer (published by Bantam Spectra) was nominated for the 2009 Locus Award for Best First Novel and earned him a nomination for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in both 2009 and 2010. Gilman lives in New York City, where he practices law.

Chuck Fischer & Bruce Foster Dicken’s A Christmas Carol

Taro Arai Abundance Abundance is the story of one man’s quest for a life of freedom and self-expression. Taro Arai was born on a tiny island in Japan to a family of limited means. Today, he is a renowned master sushi chef and the owner of eight award-winning Japanese restaurants in the United States. In this book, he shares both his journey and some of his favorite recipes. Filled with inspiration and a healthy dose of humor, it is a look into the evolution of sushi and the progression of an individual who never lost sight of his vision. Chef Taro shares the story of his early years in Japan, his pursuit of the American dream, and his adventures as a restaurateur. In addition to telling the inside story about the creation of his Mikuni restaurants, he reveals special recipes that have remained secrets until now. You’ll learn about the origins of sushi and the traditions embraced by the Japanese culture-and maybe even learn a phrase or two in Taro’s native language. Follow his lead as he takes you on a senses-stimulating excursion into a world of extraordinary flavors, compelling textures, and visual enchantment. The foreword to the book was written by renowned author Nicholas Sparks, a longtime friend of chef Taro and a frequent guest at the first Mikuni restaurant.

Chuck Fischer, author, artist, designer – and now, interactive App creator!

Chuck’s work has been featured at the Smithsonian Institution and is part of the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, The National Design Museum. His signature collections of china and crystal for LENOX, are available at Amazon.com and fine department stores in the US and Canada. Chuck Fischer is the best selling author of six pop-up books, including Angels: A Pop-Up Book, Christmas Around the World, and Christmas in New York. 2010 marks the fourth year Fischer has been honored with the commis sion to create the annual holiday card for The White House Historical Association.

Bruce Foster, has designed nearly 40 pop-up books for publishers, museums and companies. His clients include Simon and Schuster, Random House; Little, Brown and Company; Melcher Media; becker&mayer!; Disney-Hyperion Books for Children; Candlewick Press; Sports Illustrated Kids; Up With Paper; Disney Productions; the Museum of Modern Art; Insight Editions and many more. Perhaps his biggest audience to date ironically has not come through books, but his work in films: Bruce designed the pop-ups for Disney’s “Enchanted” seen in the opening scenes and throughout the movie. Bruce lives in Houston, Texas with his lovely wife, Lori, two beautiful daughters, Nicole and Lydia, along with 1 dog, Ginger, and 4 cats.

Listen to the inter views at www.AudibleAuthors.net

Book Reviews

Category

Children’s Books Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want To Survive The School Bus

By John Grandits Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99, 32 pages

Ten Rules You Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the School Bus has one flaw, as you can probably tell, the title is too long. Otherwise, it’s a phenomenal little children’s book parents will enjoy too. This humorous book subtly teaches many lessons. The writing is clever yet clear, way above the norm.

The art is so far above the norm it’s in orbit. Kyle’s older brother gives him the ten rules he’s not supposed to break on the bus … I don’t want to say much more about it, spoiling the story for the adults except to say Kyle discovers rule eleven on his own. John Grandits, the author, explained when questioned about Ten Rules: “I wanted to write something about bravery, that’s what started the book. It’s incredibly difficult for a first grader to understand the first day. Thrust into a situation where they don’t know the rules, there are bad guys and good guys, there are new routines to learn, and for the first time in life, they have to make moral decisions that effect their standing in the community for years.” Buy this book, for your children or grandchildren, but enjoy it yourself first.

Reviewed by David Broughton

Little Lucy (Step into Reading)

By Ilene Cooper, John Kanzler Random House Books for Young Readers, $3.99, 45 pages The five steps of the Step into Readingseries encourage young children learning to read. Step one: get ready to read; step two: read with help; step three: read on their own; step four: progress to reading paragraphs, with step five: get ready for chapter books with longer paragraphs supported by colorful pictures. The individual child’s own comfort level supports movement along the steps.

Children first reading on their own will enjoy Lucy, Bobby Quinn’s beagle, and their family trip from the city to the country. Children like little animals, and will relate to Lucy’s fear of the wetness of the lake as just too much newness for her to handle.

The plot of the story develops naturally, as Lucy’s fear of the water leads to her separation from the family and the bigger fear of being lost. When back with the family, Lucy finds the lake is no longer so frightening; she has learned to like it.

This cute story of a little dog loved by its owner encourages learning new things that first frighten. It reinforces how the support of those we love can help overcome our fears.

Reviewed by Angie Mangino

Pinkalicious: Pinkie Promise

By Victoria Kann HarperCollins, $3.99, 32 pages Pinkalicious borrows paint from her friend, Alison and promises not to use up all the pink. Well, she just can’t help herself and not only uses up all the pink, but all the red and white by mixing it up to make more pink. Alison is angry.

She takes her paint set back and won’t sit with Pinkalicious at lunch. Now Pinkalicious is blue! They have been such good friends. Pinkalicious is so sad. Can she find a way to make things up to Alison? Can they repair their friendship? Pinkalicious thinks she has found a way.

Little girls have been fans of Pinkalicious books for quite some time, and now they are beginning to read on their own. This level 1 beginning reading book is the perfect way to encourage young readers.There are some words in the book that will be a struggle for truly beginning readers, especially madeup words such as bluetiful, but the story is engaging and one children can relate to and will enjoy. The illustrations are sweet and cute and familiar to the legions of Pinkalicious fans.

Reviewed by Rosi Hollinbeck Too Many Frogs!

By Ann Hassett, John Hassett Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, $16.99, 32 pages Frogs here, frogs there, frogs everywhere in Nana Quimby’s kitchen. While putting a cake together from scratch, Nana is troubled by a puddle in the basement which generates ten bouncy frogs. Quickly she puts them in a goldfish bowl and continues mixing the recipe. Then suddenly twenty frogs emerge and after these are contained in cups, thirty more amphibians appear. The frogs continue to increase ten-fold, each time they are captured and housed in pots, the sink, the washing machine, the bath-tub.

Then suddenly the frog invasion reaches one million, golly...where can Nana house one million of these feisty, frisky, hopping, water-loving creatures? You’ll have to read the book to find the solution, but rest assured that despite the amphibian deluge, Nana produces a delectably frosted cake. Children will be tickled by the silly situation with the play on numbers, and they will feel flattered to be asked to find a solution to contain and maintain these endearing marauders. The il-

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 23

lustrations invite young fingers to trace the figures whimsically portrayed in warm pastel colors. This is a delightful book that will engage youngsters and provoke all round laughter.

Reviewed by Aron Row If Rocks Could Sing: A Discovered Alphabet

By Leslie McGuirk Tricycle Press, $15.99, 32 pages On the Florida beaches Leslie McGuirk discovered stones that looked like letters of the alphabet. Over the course of ten years she gathered all twenty-six letters, the last one being the letter K. Along the way, she also began collecting stones that represented objects of the letters, like a stoneshaped seahorse and a piece of toast. She’s now turned those stones into a delightful alphabet book for nature-loving children.

R e a d e r s will find happy scenes for each letter. The letter J, for Joy, is represented by big and small fish-shaped stones, each with an eye and a smile, representing a mama fish and her little one. For the letter G, she features a whole page of scary ghosts. Readers will find a touching scene for the letter B of a stone bird sitting in a nest waiting to hatch her stone “egg”. Each scene is playful and a few are downright humorous. Parents will love letter C’s perfect “couch potato”. Curiosity will keep the pages turning, anticipating what the next letter will look like.

After discovering nature’s fun shapes in the book, children will want to be outdoors looking for their own familiar shapes in stones, wood, or even clouds.

Reviewed by Susan Roberts Dream Something Big

By Dianna Hutts Aston, Susan L. Roth Dial Books for Young Readers, $17.99, 30 pages Marguerite, Simon Rodia’s neighbor for thirty-four years, didn’t call him Simon. To her, he was always Uncle Sam. Many in the Watts, California neighborhood thought Simon Rodia, an Italian American immigrant, foolish while they watched him collecting bits of tiles, broken teapots, plates, and bottles from the garbage. The little girl, Marguerite, however, would earn a penny for candy for collecting sacks with him along the railroad tracks.

Marguerite grows up to bring her own children to watch this man create his masterpiece.

Book Reviews

One initial chip of tile gave Uncle Sam his inspiration. He saw in it the something big he wanted to do. From this bit of garbage, he would go on, over the course of thirtyfour years, to build the Watts Towers, which were to become a national landmark.

This book’s beautiful collages give children a real sense of the project step- by- step along its way to completion. An activity to create one’s own Watts Tower offers interaction with the story that gives children not only the history of the Watts Towers, but, more importantly, the sharing of the finding of inspiration, and of the perseverance to follow one’s dream, despite the initial opinions of others.

Reviewed by Angie Mangino Butterflies

By Seymour Simon Collins, $17.99, 32 pages Author, Seymour Simon, called by the “New Yorker”, “the dean of children’s science writers,” has lived up to this description through his book, Butterflies.

The brilliantly colored detailed photographs pull children, and this reviewer, into this book. The photographs were so magnificent that my five-year old grandson, although definitely too young to understand all the science shared, asked me to read this book to him. He gazed, full of wonder, at the photographs. While I am sure much went over his head, when his parents came to pick him up, the first thing he asked them was, “Did you know that butterflies taste with their feet?”

It is specific interesting scientific details like that which makes this book not only a compelling learning tool for children aged five through nine, but a fun book, too, which will delight them as they discover the world of butterflies. Instructions for making a butterfly garden give children an additional opportunity for hands-on experience to personalize their knowledge and enjoyment of butterflies.

Whether adults read this book to a young child, or older children devour it, reading on their own, it is definitely a book for every child’s library.

Reviewed by Angie Mangino

Children’s Books

Dixie (I Can Read Book 1)

By Grace Gilman and Sarah Mcconnell HarperCollins, $3.99, 32 pages Emma is excited about her school play, The Wizard of Oz, and she hopes to get the lead role of Dorothy. She practices every day, but her mischievous puppy, Dixie, does not understand why Emma would rather practice than play.

Emma gets the role, and Dixie becomes Toto in the play, so now they can both practice and play together.

Dixie is an I Can Read book level one, and it is the perfect beginning reader book, as it has simple sentences with a great story line about the friendship between a girl and her dog. Emma is a likable character, and the reader is sure to fall in love with Dixie, a sweet and playful puppy. The story has a great message of working hard to reach your goals, and it is a simple message that young readers easily can understand.

The illustrations are cozy as well as inviting, and the love between Emma and Dixie is apparent both in the text and in the illustrations of this light-hearted and warm easy reader book.

Reviewed by J Rodney The Next Door Bear

By Eugene Yelchin, Mary Kuryla HarperCollins, $16.99, 29 pages In this book for ages four to eight, Mary Kuryla & Eugene Yelchin bring children from the real world to the world of imagination in dealing with the very real feelings of being the new child in the neighborhood.

Emma just moved to a new apartment in a new city, knowing none of the children in the apartment building’s play area outside. She stands alone as they run through the sprinklers, watching and waiting for them to invite her to join in. When that doesn’t happen, she feels ignored and not welcomed, further upset by a bee buzzing around her. Retreating back into the building’s elevator, Emma finds the bee with her and she scolds him to find a flower. When he does leave the elevator, Emma smells flowers and follows the bee into a garden. Here she finds a growling bear dripping with honey, and runs quickly back to the elevator, only to have the bear, now dressed in a suit, carrying an umbrella,

join her on the elevator.

Emma’s real world feeling of being unwanted in her new setting is resolved through the fanciful encounter with the bear that guides her in her new setting.

Reviewed by Angie Mangino Along A Long Road

By Frank Viva Little Brown for Young Readers, $16.99, 32 pages An award wining graphic artist and avid cyclist who’s cycled the roads of India, Morocco, France, Italy, and New York, Frank Viva captures the lure and fascination of cycling with his simple text and stylized illustrations.

Using a limited palette of muted colors, with an occasional splash of red, we follow young Frank on his journey as he follows his vivid gold-yellow road winding by the sea, clipping through the woods, streaming up hills, shooting through a tunnel, fleeting across a bridge and flying through a city. Like any avid cyclist, he hits the occasional bump and stops by the side of the road. After a short rest, he waves good bye to a young boy and his mother and he sets off again. This time he picks up speed, riding faster and faster until he completes his journey and starts the loop all over again.

Reading this mellow book, readers can practically feel the wind kiss their face, see the sights fly by, and feel their heart beat as they imagine becoming one with the bike, the road and the sky. Viva has captured perfectly the lure and beauty of cycling.

Reviewed by Susan Roberts The Bedtime Book for Dogs

By Bruce Littlefield Grand Central Publishing, $15.99, 32 pages When I received The Bedtime Book for Dogs I considered it a beautiful children’s book, kept simple for the beginning reader.

When I asked the author Bruce Littlefield about it, I was a bit surprised that he meant it to be read to dogs. “My dog Westminster gave me the idea for the book. One day as I was working on another book, he tapped me on the leg with his paw. When I asked the typical questions: ‘Outside? Toy? Treat?’ there was no response, but when I asked, ‘You want me to write you a book?’ he wagged his tail enthusiastically. It was

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 24

an aha! moment.” I found what he had to say amazing, “I crafted the story to entertain your dog. Seriously. I thought through every aspect of the book--from dog’s favorite words to the colors used in the illustrations. I incorporated lots of green and blue, as dogs see most vividly in those colors.

The added bonus is that kids love reading it and guess what? A University of CaliforniaDavis study has proven that kids who read to dogs improve their reading skills 30% over kids who read to their peers or just to themselves. That’s a win-win. There are 77.5 million dogs in America. I hope a few of them like to read.” As you can tell, Bruce is quite the cut up. If you have dogs or children get this book, it’s a great way to spend time with both.

Reviewed by David Broughton Slightly Invisible

By Lauren Child Candlewick Press, $16.99, 40 pages Charlie’s little sister, Lola, isn’t so bad, even though she always wants to know what Charlie is doing and tags along on his adventures. She generally stays out of the way. But when Charlie wants to spend time alone with his best friend, Marv, Lola doesn’t take kindly to the slight. She repeatedly gets in their way as they search out strange and tricky creatures. When Charlie and Marv concoct a grand invisibility potion, Charlie orders Lola to stop her bothering and interrupting once and for all. When the boys aren’t looking, however, Lola and her imaginary friend, Soren Lorensen, drink the invisibility potion—and Lola devises a daring plan to catch the strangest and trickiest creature of all.

Illustrated in mixed-media collage, with text that winds and sweeps across the page, Slightly Invisible deftly captures the wild flights of imagination that fill the days of Charlie, Lola, and Marv as well as the often competing priorities of little girls and their older brothers. Readers may cheer pesky Lola or frown in irritation—but will surely ask to read this charming and funny book again and again.

Reviewed by Margo Orlando Littell

Book Reviews

Children’s Books

HALLOWEEN BOOK S

The Sleepless Little Vampire

By Richard Egielski Arthur A. Levine Books, $16.99, 32 pages Forget needing a drink of water, a beloved toy, or a trip to the bathroom: the reasons this little vampire can’t sleep are much more serious, and much more alarming. Among the troubling distractions are a spider, a bat, a werewolf, skeletons, a witch, and ghosts, all doing their Halloween-y best to keep the little vampire awake with their howling, crawling, clacking, and cackling. As the vampire’s crypt fills with these creatures of the night—and when the crypt itself begins to dance—the vampire, clutching his clearly well-loved Frankenstein doll, wonders which of the ghouls is most responsible for his sleeplessness. But a sudden revelation solves the sleepless mystery and sends the nighttime visitors on their way.

Though the creatures and critters swarming around the vampire might seem scary, Egielski manages to make them personable, even somewhat cute. The bats wear small smiles, for example, and the skeletons perform a synchronized dance.

Their fearsomeness, surely, is not the problem, and young readers will find the vampire’s eventual renunciation of bedtime all too familiar.

Reviewed by Margo Orlando Littell Substitute Creacher

By Chris Gall Little Brown for Young Readers, $16.99, 40 pages Ms. Jenkins has had it! Her class is out of control. She has troublemakers at every desk and just can’t take it anymore. This calls for action and she calls for a very special substitute teacher. Mr. Creacher, who happens to be a green, Cyclopean, eight-tentacled creature, has some important lessons to teach.

He has had quite a few mischievous students in his fifty years of being a substitute teacher. He relates all that bad behavior and the consequences of those acts to Ms. Jenkins’ students, all in fairly metrical rhyme.

But there’s more to it than that. The biggest lesson he learned came from his own bad behavior, and he saves this best bit for last.

Chris Gall’s cautionary tale is just the sort of nonsense kids from kindergarten to

second grade will love. It’s silly and fun, but the illustrations really carry this book. They are clever and bright and masterfully drawn in a comic book style, with lots of wonderful detail to keep kids reading it again and again. It’s perfect for the Halloween season, but not so specific that kids won’t enjoy it all year long.

Reviewed by Rosi Hollinbeck Pumpkin Cat

By Anne Mortimer Katherine Tegen Books, $14.99, 24 pages In late spring, Cat approaches Mouse with a question: “How do pumpkins grow?”

Mouse, a savvy gardener, decides to show Cat rather than tell her, and he sets out to demonstrate the amazing journey of a pumpkin from seed to plant. Cat watches curiously as Mouse puts soil into a pot, plants the seeds, waters them, and transplants the new seedlings outside. As the summer progresses, the seedlings become unruly plants with bright yellow flowers; eventually, the first small green pumpkins appear. When hungry crows threaten the pumpkins, Mouse and Cat build a scarecrow. Once fall arrives, Mouse picks a beautiful pumpkin—and gives Cat the best surprise of all.

Anne Mortimer’s gorgeous illustrations give Cat and Mouse a lifelike softness and infuse them with personality, from Cat’s avid gaze to Mouse’s competent gestures. The slowly changing seasons are reflected smoothly, the potted flowers of May giving way to yellow-tinged leaves and bushels of apples. Children eager to grown pumpkins of their own will find basic instructions at the end of the book.

Reviewed by Margo Orlando Littell Halloween Howlers: Frightfully Funny Knock-Knock Jokes

By Michael Teitelbaum, Jannie Ho HarperFestival, $6.99, 16 pages Halloween Howlers, Frightfully Funny Knock-Knock Jokes will fill your youngster with enough silly jokes to be the hilarious howler this Halloween. With humorous, Halloweenthemed lift-the-flaps throughout, the book will be a huge success.

This fit-in-the-hands-

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sized book is targeted for children ages five through eight.

The knock-knock jokes actually tell a story of a brother and sister preparing for the big night. It opens in a store where they search the aisles for the perfect “spooktacular” costume. All dressed up, they walk the neighborhood streets greeting friends and neighbors. Friends invite them to a party where ghoulish green punch and ice “scream” are served. Together, the party goers venture out to the neighborhood graveyard that comes alive with ghouls, bats, and goblins. Deep in the cemetery, they discover and enter a haunted mansion where frightening spiders, creaky skeletons and noise-filled caskets send them home. But all is well in their safe home as they count up their goodies and dream of doing it all over again next year.

Reviewed by Susan Roberts

The 13 Nights of Halloween

By Guy Vasilovich HarperCollins, $16.99, 40 pages The ratty, fraying mummy in 13 Nights might not seem like your typical true love, but the gifts he gives a little pigtailed girl each night leading up to Halloween are intended to prove his truest affection. A skeleton key kicks off the cascade of presents, and this is quickly followed by a two-headed snake, bats, eyeballs, skulls, corpses, and a host of other creepy, decaying, menacing, or otherwise Halloweeny surprises. The little girl takes it all in stride—and winds up with a rollicking barn-party that anyone brave enough would want to attend.

There is great humor in Vasilovich’s animation-inspired illustrations and text, especially in the playful verbiage with which he describes some of the ghouls, like “witches witching” and “ghosts a-ghosting.” And though some of the creatures do at first appear scary, any true fearsomeness is offset by funny visual details—like werewolves who seem to be wearing tartan plaid. This witty take on the classic Christmas carol will be a great read for any child gearing up for this year’s trick-or-treating fun.

Reviewed by Margo Orlando Littell

Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of the National Book Award finalist American Salvage, Women & Other Animals, and the novels Q Road and Once Upon a River. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize, the AWP Award for Short Fiction, and Southern Review’s 2008 Eudora Welty Prize for “The Inventor, 1972,” which is included in this collection. Her work has appeared in Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and Ontario Review. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she studies kobudo, the art of Okinawan weapons, and hangs out with her two donkeys, Jack and Don Quixote.

Book Reviews

Category

Popular Fiction Once Upon A River

By Bonnie Jo Campbell Norton, $25.95, 348 pages At first, when reading Once Upon a River, a person might think they are reading a book set in the 1800s. The residents of the town of Murrayville live on the banks of the Stark River in a remote part of Michigan and their lives revolve around hunting, jobs at the local mill, and family feuds. It comes as an intriguing surprise to learn that the book is actually set in the 1970s.

Of all her cousins, it is sixteen-yearold Margo who is especially drawn to nature, preferring to spend her days swimming in the river and becoming an expert markswoman.

After Margo’s uncle rapes her, a series of events are set in motion that eventually lead to the death of Margo’s father. Having no other kin, she escapes upriver in her beloved teak rowboat. From there, her life alternates between survival on the river and taking refuge with a series of men as she awaits word from her long-lost mother.

This is a moving book that portrays an uneducated but “street-smart” young woman who is not afraid of her sexuality or living a hard life reminiscent of a bygone era. The wild Michigan setting is tangible throughout the book, as is Margo’s love for it.

Reviewed by Megan Just

The Cheetah and the Lion

By Bruce C Fisher Old Line Publishing, $11.95, 138 pages Twelve year old Pino lives with his frail grandmother in a gang-infested neighborhood. Pino is a target of two rivaling gangs who threaten him everyday on his way to school. One morning, a man enshrouded in a blue light helps Pino escape from injury. Wary the man may do him harm, Pino is cautious. The man returns when the Red Cap gang threatens Pino, momentarily paralyzes the gang leader, and calmly invites Pino to leave the scene.

The man in the blue light builds Pino’s trust and teaches him other ways to see himself, other than being afraid.

The action escalates when Pino’s grandmother dies. Neighbor friends take the young boy in. Pino’s father appears at the funeral; a father Pino didn’t know existed.

His father shows his son how to stand up and outsmart the gang members.

In The Cheetah and the Lion, Pino is introduced to a spiritual life where he learns to have confidence in himself. Written simply and clearly, it can be a perfect book for the struggling reader or anyone who lives amidst gang warfare, in poverty, or encounters death at a young age.

Reviewed by Susan Roberts

Brideshead Abbreviated: The Digested Read of the Twentieth Century

By John Crace Random House UK, $23.95, 355 pages This is truly a book for people who love books. John Crace has been writing the Digested Reads column for The Guardian in the UK for the past eleven years. In roughly 1,000 words, Crace both digests and parodies popular books. This is not easy work, for the satirist needs to reasonably mimic the voice and tone of the original author, hit the salient points of the source fiction or non-fiction work, and then make it all funny. Drafting new constitutions for emerging nations sounds easier in comparison.

Brideshead Abbreviated has a wonderful concept. Crace has taken ten books to present from each decade of the 20th Century. No author is repeated and, given a choice, he chooses the more popular work of a given writer. Thus James Joyce is included for Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but not for Ulysses.

The result gives the reader an interesting overview of literary developments over the hundred-year span. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas both involved a certain amount of monsters and fantasy, but the latter certainly could never have been published at the time of the former.

And, let’s face it, we all like to play smarty-pants at cocktail parties. With Brideshead Abbreviated, you will be armed for banter, if not for battle.

Reviewed by Hubert O’Hearn Stone Arabia

By Dana Spiotta Scribner, $24.00, 242 pages Nik Worth, nearing fifty, has achieved the fizzy dream of rock stardom and will, surely, live on as a pivotal player in the development of rock itself. With charttopping albums, several industrychanging bands, and legions of adoring fans, as related in the Chronicles, an intricate, mind-blowingly detailed personal history that Nik has been creating—alone, in his cluttered studio—for years. Though germs of his story are true, the bulk of his created history is patently fiction, the product of a creative soul searching for an outlet. When Nik disappears, his sister, Denise, delves into the Chronicles as a way of understanding her

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 27

brother. While in the process of creating her own personal chronicle, Denise plumbs the depths of her own complicated history and begins to piece together a possible path toward happiness.

The cryptically titled Stone Arabia--explained only at the end of the book—is a stunning, and startling, mixture of points of view, time periods, and structures, including letters from Nik’s Chronicles and Denise’s attempts at writing her own story.

Spiotta is a smart, witty writer; but here her skill shines most impressively in the emotional power she wrests from these wayward, archly self-conscious characters.

Reviewed by Margo Orlando Littell But This Is Different

By Mary Walker Baron Steel Cut Press, $14.95, 279 pages No one wants to leave their home, especially when that home is a beautiful hidden island paradise where you have been living on for the last 40 years. But for Mere, Star of the Sea, must force herself to leave, and go on an adventure of pain and love. But This is Different is an emotional stroll with an unusual protagonist. Mere, an eighty-year-old woman, receives a letter written by Pilapan, the Mother Chief, asking Mere to come back to New York. Mere leaves and finds herself in the modern reality, the world of 1978.

Mere has to cope with this new world while also balancing her feelings toward her lover.

I cannot go into more detail on the plot, because I do not want to spoil this marvelous book.

The strongest feature of this book is the plot. The mystery and intrigue of Mere is addicting, as each clue is like a getting a piece to a larger puzzle. The book is not only rich in plot, but it is also lavishly detailed and driven by high emotion. You care about the characters, and you feel the pain they feel. The detail makes the places and the people in the book feel real. Each character has a spark of life that blooms into a profound pillar that carries Mere to her final destination. Even characters that have miniscule roles have a real depth to them.

I enjoyed the subtle pro-environment message of the book. Mere is spiritually connected to nature and even in the city, the plants and trees are her greatest supporters. The book also has an emotional and physical ending that satisfies. I would be surprised if you do not have a tear in your eye by the end of the book. But This is Different is truly a different kind of book, with a touching story will hook you until the end.

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Book Reviews

Sisters of the Sari

By Brenda L. Baker NAL, $14.00, 327 pages Kiria Langdon, a wealthy CEO, plans to spend her vacation in India sightseeing. Instead, she finds herself lost in the middle of Chennai with no money after her wallet is stolen. She is surrounded by people who don’t speak her language and is “rescued” by Santoshi, a poor woman who speaks a spattering of English. Kiria soon finds herself drawn to the plight of Santoshi and other disadvantaged women living in the shelters of India. She wants to help these women by opening a hostel to house them, but she can’t do it alone. Can Kiria and Santoshi create new opportunities for India’s poor?

Brenda Baker’s debut novel, Sisters of the Sari, is an uplifting tale of how a friendship based on respect can lead to change in a society driven by tradition. Kiria’s tale has just enough backstory woven in to make her dreams seem realistic for her character, while Santoshi’s history is compelling and ultimately heart-warming. Readers won’t find anything particularly deep or profound in this book, but they will find a full-bodied story that is truly enjoyable. Pick up this one for a good summer read.

Reviewed by Holly Scudero A Pug’s Tale

By Alison Pace Berkley, $15.00, 304 pages Hope, an art restorer at The Met and pug owner, discovers an art theft. Unconfident in the mystery-solving abilities of her coworkers — and unsure that they weren’t actually in on the heist — Hope sets out to unravel who could have taken the painting and why. Her pug, Max, serves as her Watson, accompanying her all over town searching for clues and happily listening to

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theories. Although A Pug’s Tale is the sequel to Pug Hill, knowledge of the first book is unimportant.

This book would be a worthwhile read just for the hysterical, jumping right off the page descriptions of pugs and their antics.

Even if you are only a borderline “dog person” you will instantly recognize Hope and Max’s relationship.

Author Alison Pace gives Max a touch of human characteristics without making it annoying and she firmly keeps him canine.

Like a pug set loose in a park, readers of A Pug’s Tale will smell enough suspects to keep them busy all day. This is a fun book full of secret clues, disappearing suspects, and a final, fun twist. Mystery lovers, dog lovers, and chick-lit fans — in other words just about everyone -- will enjoy it.

Reviewed by Jodi Webb Best Staged Plans

By Claire Cook Voice, $23.99, 238 pages You can stage a home by hiding its imperfections. Can you stage a life? Claire Cook sets out to answer this conundrum in Best Staged Plans.

Sandy Sullivan has worked to reinvent other people’s homes, adding a pop of color here and a splash of creative repurposing there. Now, she wants to stage her family home in Boston, so she and husband Greg can move.

Greg doesn’t understand the hurry.

Frustrated, Sandy takes off for Atlanta, staging a boutique hotel which her BFF’s boyfriend recently purchased. She also hopes to spend time with daughter, Shannon, who resides in Atlanta. As soon as Sandy arrives, Shannon’s taking off for Boston for work, stranding the HGTV-wannabe with her southernfried son-in-law.

Things don’t go smoothly at the hotel, either. Sandy suspects her new boss, Josh, is fooling around on her best friend, Denise.

Can Sandy get through this stage and get her life back in order?

Claire Cook introduces readers to relatable characters who maneuver through everyday problems and situations. There’s something intriguing about the relationships that keep me reading and feeling em-

pathy for this colorful group of characters. . I also like how Cook introduces timeand money-saving tips throughout the text.

Reviewed by LuAnn Schindler We the Animals: A novel

By Justin Torres Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $18.00, 128 pages In this debut novel, Justin Torres describes the lives of three brothers in a series of vignettes spanning their childhood.

Torres tells the story of a family filled with conflict, yet always connected by their deep love for one another. Born to teenaged parents, the boys grow up wild and hungry for life. Their parents encourage them to dance, sing, and explore their world, yet their parents also leave the boys to fend for themselves when it comes to food, schoolwork, and social graces.

Their mother works nights, and their father is often absent and out of work, but they attempt to create a loving home for their children even when they are not sure how to do so. While the boys are rough around the edges, getting into fights and using bad language, they struggle to be “proper,” to fit in, and to behave like men. Filled with rich detail, tableau-like scenes, and true-to-life little boy adventures, We the Animals is a must-read novel.

Torres’ evocative language grips the reader, each scene bringing the boys to life, reminding us of our own childhoods and our struggles to grow into strong men and women.

Reviewed by Kerry Lindgren Machine Man

By Max Barry Vintage, $14.95, 274 pages Before the accident, Charlie Neumann was a geeky, socially-inept engineer, working for a scientific research facility. Now Charlie Neumann is a geeky, socially-inept engineer … with just one leg. The engineer in Charlie is disgusted by his inefficient prosthesis options and he realizes he doesn’t want a fake leg that works like his old one.

He wants a fake leg that works better than his old one. The next limb Charlie loses is no accident. Neither is the next. But only Lola Shanks, a prosthesis expert, understands his need to build a better Charlie. Now his company is pres-

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 28

suring him to field test a mix of upgraded body parts for a big government contract and Charlie finds himself in a battle for — and against — his own body.

Machine Man is a “tequila read” because it goes down so easy that you don’t realize how hard it’s hit you until suddenly it’s the next morning, your eyes are blurry and you’re stiff from sitting in the same position all night. Barry does a sly job of morphing the concepts of body part replacement and body part upgrading, all with a deceptively dry sense of humor and a fascinating character line-up. I guarantee you’ll love this book!

Reviewed by Heather Ortiz Timothy

By Robert Lance Blevins Pirate Bay Press, $15.00, 153 pages What happens when a boy who only wants to learn falls through the cracks of the school system? Author Robert Blevins sets out to tell the story of one such boy in his novel Timothy. At a young age, Timothy Wellington is branded with the title of “Special Ed.” For an already shy and awkward child, this label only adds to the social stigma he faces on a daily basis; Timothy faces taunts, extortion, threats, and a dreadfully lonely existence, but he is determined to beat the system and succeed despite having the odds against him.

For a fictional tale, this book reads surprisingly similar to an elaborately fabricated memoir. Many sections are vague at best; the author glosses over entire years in mere paragraphs or pages. This novel is almost absurdly short, considering the span of time covered in its pages. Other sections are laden with facts so concise as to seem conspicuous: precise descriptions of events, names of teachers, the exact brand of cereal eaten for breakfast on a given day.

The author seems to favor the use of many adjectives, but this does not make up for the lack of substance in many parts of the book.

As a main character, Timothy is underdeveloped in some ways, but also very well rounded in others; his intelligence and determination shine throughout the book. The story is undeniably compelling, and anyone who has ever witnessed the darker side of the public school system will find vindication within these pages. Everyone loves an underdog, and many will find it refreshing to see the main character come into his own as the years progress. The rather abrupt ending will leave readers wondering what comes next for Timothy; hopefully the sequel will be forthcoming.

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Book Reviews

Lime Creek

By Joe Henry Random House, $20.00, 144 pages For lovers of Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain and Wyoming Stories, Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, or Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, Lime Creek is a gem of a debut novel.

Brothers Luke and Whitney Davis grow up in a world where summer is elusive and feeding cattle off horse-drawn wagons in the middle of snow storms is reality. Alongside their war-haunted father Spencer, who tries his best to infuse his sons with a strong work ethic, respect, and hard-won ranch wisdom, the boys grow from youngsters who throw tomatoes at clean laundry to young men. Their first loves and horses define them in this vivid, understated, and well-crafted narrative.

Lime Creek is an insightful and unflinching excursion into the emotional lives of men by renowned lyricist Joe Henry. His keen ear for music sets his rural settings and ranchers off with a quiet and seductive realism that is hypnotizing. The death of a beloved and aged mare in fiction was never so touching or genuine. The author writes with the true sparing precision of a rancher with a rugged prose that doesn’t talk down or apologize to country or city folk, but explains in plain but beautiful language this family’s love for and experiences on the family ranch.

Reviewed by Axie Barclay American Inferno

By Bret Lowery CreateSpace, $19.99, 339 pages Dr. Durant Allegheny is on a quest. He thought he was trying to clear his mind and escape his past by hiking the Appalachian Trail with his ever-stoic companion Virgil, but it seems others have a higher purpose in mind for him. Allegheny, guided by the mysterious Padma, finds himself confronting the deadly sins of a modern age, from unbridled lust to the self-serving and unconcerned wealthy beneficiaries of the financial meltdown, to Allegheny’s own immeasurable pride. As he struggles to come to terms with what his life has become, will he open his eyes and take control of his future?

Some are already

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saying Bret Lowery’s American Inferno is destined to become a cult classic for a new generation, and they might not be too far off. Lowery’s wordy writing style is a little difficult to get into at first, but once you wrap your mind around his extensive love of adjectives, alliteration, and cultural and classical references, you’ll find yourself flying through the pages. Lowery writes like a man after my own heart; I gave myself a mental high-five every time I picked up on one of the more seemingly-obscure references, and his skilled use of language is a refreshing change from so much of the drivel that passes as modern literature today.

The characters are not fully developed and many details about them seem to be absent, but that is part of the novel’s charm: readers are left to fill in some of the blanks on their own, creating greater opportunities to identify with the characters on a more personal level. At times you can’t be sure if Allegheny is on a drug-induced trip or lost in a state of personal psychosis, but regardless of how you interpret his reality, you can’t deny that American Inferno makes for compelling reading.

Sponsored Review Zombiestop Parade

By Richard Buzzell CreateSpace, $13.99, 169 pages When two friends create a Web site called Zombiestop, they hope to encourage constructive anarchists like themselves to discuss how to undermine authority in order to defend the process of discourse.

They never intend to encourage extreme outcomes or violence. But in a society where many have been economically destroyed, that might very well be the inevitable result.

Richard Buzzell’s book, Zombiestop Parade, is filled with personal, political, and economic drama. The book’s narrator and his friend Corky learn that The Jackal, an unknown militant computer hacker, has broken into confidential bank records and has leaked information regarding illegal money laundering and offshore tax schemes to the public. The Jackal posts his findings on Zombiestop where the narrator serves as a media relations representative and the face of the Web site. Now he is recording a diary of the events.

The Jackal is urging the site’s readers to hack into financial institutions on their own. As media attention grows, a procorporate rights commentator’s mansion is anonymously fire-bombed. Is The Jackal

responsible? Is it a Zombiestop supporter?

The FBI becomes interested in the violence as a potential act of political terrorism and questions the Zombiestop creators.

The diary format is readable, but some of the entries feel like individual diatribes or rants on specific points that have little or no flow to the next entry. This is not an easy read if you are not familiar with business or economic terms (i.e., corporatist versus marketist mythology). Although personal details about the characters are included, it is still a bit dry. Readers who spend time online and understand cyber business tactics will better appreciate the plot. This would be a good text for college students who are looking for a book with a unique style and a lot to say about the corporate world.

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every corner, but as she discards the trappings of a never-quite-right life and emerges into a more promising path (can you say shopping spree and world travel?!!) Woolpy does a superb job of capturing that metamorphosis.

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Available Now at Amazon. com

Releasing Gillian’s Wolves

By Tara Woolpy Bats in the Boathouse Press, $15.00, 280 pages Gillian Sach is the very model of a Congressman’s wife; she gardens, cooks, dabbles in sketching…and ignores her husband’s infidelities. Gillian’s friends and family have begged her to leave but she can’t bring herself to put her family through the media sensation that divorcing a prominent politician would cause. When she comes face-toface with Jack’s latest dalliance something inside Gillian breaks loose – the girl is younger than their own daughter. With the support of her children, her close friends and her family, Gillian emerges from her husband’s shadow, ready to find happiness on her own terms.

I thoroughly enjoyed the journey I took with Woolpy’s characters. Her character’s conversations were organic and full of the cadences and patterns of real people. The one discordant note stemmed from the lack of conflict that the main character experiences. Gillian may not have an obstacle at

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 29

Author Interview

By Hubert O’Hearn

D

on’t you just LOVE technology? Of course you do. It’s been around for all our lives...expanding, encroaching, gripping us around the throat with its talon-like talons. From that Christmas present toy when Daddy taught you all those interesting new uses of the English language, through that first microwave you couldn’t program, the first VHS you couldn’t program, the first computer that crashed like a dropped box of china, or that first cell phone that became useless and voided its warranty when a bee flew over it and dropped the teeniest speck of dew off its wings - yes indeed, technology has always been Our Special Friend.

You have Special Friends too, don’t you?

Of course you do. I’ll bet you have Special Friends like mine: the ones who ask to borrow money, lawnmowers, chainsaws, your girlfriend...the ones who ask you to watch their pet without mentioning that Sparky is an anaconda...the ones that ask you to move furniture on your day off, and ask YOU to pick up the beer and chip in for the pizza with anchovies that you hate but your Special Friend loves. Heh heh, oh you just have to love your Special Friends. Why? Because there is no penalty for love, whereas murder WILL see you doing time.

So, technology is a Special Friend. MY Special Friend technology for today is called Skype Recorder. Such a mischievous little scamp of an app! It worked just marvelously when I was talking with my dear fiancee Kimberly. Yes indeed, every syllable and

word recorded like a charm even though heh heh heh - I didn’t press the Record button. And THEN - you know what happened, kids? Heh heh heh. Your ol’ Uncle Hubie had a very IMPORTANT interview with a very nice author named Robert Whitlow.

He wrote an interesting novel, a Christian legal thriller called Water’s Edge that I really liked. Mr. Whitlow was a very nice man and our Skype worked just fine. I did wonder why he was wearing sunglasses while sitting in his law office, but maybe he’s just a big fan of Ray Charles or Jack Nicholson - maybe both!

We talked about lots of interesting things: his book, his career, his family, how he got started in writing, and Mr. Whitlow was kind and patient and interesting. I was SO glad I remembered to press that Record button. So so glad...my my my...and then I opened up the Files in Skype Recorder.

Sound of breaking glass.

Sorry. Uncle Hubie just threw something at the wall. Well, we’ll just clean that up later. You know what was in the Skype Recorder File folder? There was that call to Auntie Kimberly and...that was all.

Sound of breaking wood.

That’s okay. It was an old chair anyway and it’ll burn just GREAT on the bonfire we’ll have tonight! You know what DOESN’T burn? Computer applications. If they could - heh heh heh, - oh my I must tell you the story of Joan of Arc sometime.

Well, you’d probably like to know what that nice Mr. Whitlow said to me. It’s a good thing your Uncle Hubie’s been a practicing journalist for 15 years, because that means I know how to make stuff up and have it look like it’s really true. So these quotes below are really, really close to reality, but just like reality television, they’re not QUITE real.

Robert Whitlow started writing in 1996 when all of a sudden he had an idea for a book. ‘I’d been practicing law for fifteen years and then one day I had an idea and I said to my wife, “You know, this would make a pretty good book.” I’d never wanted to be a writer before, so i had no idea how to go about it. Well, about five or six months later I went to a Writers’ Conference in Atlanta.

That was a terrible place to go: “You’ll never get published, you’ll never make any money out of writing”. But they had a book table there and I picked up a book called Self-Editing for Writers. Now that showed me to go about organizing a novel and creating characters, writing dialogue and so forth.’

(Hmmm...this is actually going better than I thought. I’d reasonably say that the above has an accurate rate of 96%, which is better than the accuracy of my typing.)

I wondered how he balances being a partner in a North Carolina law firm with writing books, Water’s Edge being his eleventh.

‘Well, I’m a contingency lawyer. I do hearings and not jury work, mostly in Disability cases, so I’m not tied to the office. But writing’s a hobby for me. I write in the evenings mostly, when I get home. But I do keep a pad and paper with me in case I’m waiting at an airport mostly, and I get an idea.’

(I think I’d actually testify to that one. So nice to see that being a university student in the 1970s didn’t do the lasting damage to memory everyone said it would.)

What about style? Tell us about that Mr. Whitworth. ‘I don’t like to over-explain everything. I like to keep the reader involved that way. Television’s a big influence on dialogue. You know, it seems like dialogue keeps getting shorter and shorter on TV and that’s what readers’ - he might have said audience, but you know, close enough - ‘that’s what they expect these days.’

(We’re almost done! Go memory! Go memory! It’s your birthday!)

Finally I asked him where did he idea of the Christian Legal Thriller came from? ‘Well, in writing, you should write about what you know. I’ve been a practicing attorney for thirty-one years, so that’s an area of expertise for me.

And faith and spirituality have always played an important part in my life. You know, I’d say that

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 30

one out of every three people have had an important spiritual experience in their lives that changed their life. But I work awfully hard in the books to make the spirituality happen organically; have my characters have a problem, that they need some help with. Like the old uncle in Water’s Edge’ - a great character by the way - ‘There are people just like him everywhere you go. “You have a problem? Well, maybe just read this and see if it helps.”’

Yes! We did it! The mind triumphs over Our Special Friend technology! Heh heh heh and HA! Thank you for coming along on this journey with your ol’ Uncle Hubie, who is now going to do some temporary liver damage. Heh heh heh.

Be seeing you.

we know...

We’ve got Issues.

M a y 1 1

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 6

F R E E

Nov 2010

NEW AND OF INTEREST

6

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 3

F R E E

An Interview With Writer and Publisher Thomas Farber Page 4

Zombie is the New Undead

13 23

Pages 13-19

Betcha Can …

Men Can Write Believable Female Characters Page 20

More than just a big party

By Steven T. Jones CCC Publishing, $17.95, 312 pages

28

NEW AND OF INTEREST

Page 11

Children’s Book Week Expanded Section

Burning Man, the xeric bacchanal held annually in Nevada, turned 25 last year.

Improbably surviving its early years, the counter-cultural art festival and social experiment overcame the legal and logistical challenges of its tumultuous teens and has finally matured into relative tranquility.

But, like any modern twenty-something might ask in an introspective moment – I’ve arrived, but so what?

Steven Jones tackles this question is his book, The Tribes of Burning Man. Jones doesn’t hide his belief – and hope – that the

event is changing the American counterculture. Don’t worry if you’ve never been; Jones gives a thorough description of daily life on the playa. The meat of the book, however, is a year-by-year look at the event from 2004 through 2010. He chronicles the familiar (La Contessa, Paul Addis, Borg2, and of course the obligatory quotes from Larry Harvey), but comes into his own relating lesser-known stories, such as the role of a large-scale sound camps, or the stresses of conceiving and executing big art projects.

See TRIBES, cont’d on page 7

Undisputed: How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps

2

Fab: The Life of Paul McCartney

Once a Beatle, always a Beatle Page 5

Fresh From the Market: Seasonal Cooking with Laurent Tourondel

5

Delicious on the table Page 9

Page 25

Festivus for the Restivus Page 29

146 Reviews INSIDE!

Expanded Cooking Section

18

Booze Cakes: Confections Spiked With Spirits, Wine, and Beer

By Krystina Castella and Terry Lee Stone Quirk Books, $16.95, 144 pages

21

Love decadent desserts? Booze Cakes: Confections Spiked with Spirits, Wine, and Beer dishes up a slice of alcohol-laced cakes guaranteed to tempt even the strictest teetotaler. Authors Krystina Castella and Terry Lee Stone promise that these appealing desserts are simple: just mix, bake, and buzz.

“Baking is magic. Baking with booze is even more magic.”

The cookbook’s introduction simplifies the baking process, breaks down the differences between beer, liquor, wine, and li-

queur, and explains how baking time affects alcohol content. Both authors stress baking should be a fun, relaxed activity, that instead of an experiment of perfection.

More than 108 booze cake recipes and 32 cake shot recipes are included. Recipes include variations, tips, cocktail recipes and a booze meter that measures a cake’s alcohol content and labels it as lightweight, feeling it, or totally tipsy. These tipsy confections are divided into four types of cakes. Classic See BOOZE, page 14

Click here for our publication library

Page 12

THE BACK PAGE

Does Publishing a Book Make You a Writer?

By Susan Henderson, author of Up from the Blue Page 22

Philip Roth: Novels 1993-1995 Roth wrestles Page 25

91Reviews INSIDE!

“

I understand and love all the shore food from the ‘Atlantic Rim,’ and I want to share what I have learned about it with you in this book.”

--Jasper White

Book Reviews

Sinfully Vegan: More than 160 Decadent Desserts to Satisfy Every Sweet Tooth

By Lois Dieterly Da Capo Lifelong Books, $18.00, 306 pages

Category

Cooking, Food & Wine The Summer Shack Cookbook: The Complete Guide to Shore Food

By Jasper White W. W. Norton & Company, $25.00, 380 pages If you already own the original 2007 hardback copy, you can stop reading.

This plainly produced paperback edition is a reprinting, illustrated with sketches and three sets of eight full-page boundin photos. The author is the owner/chef of the Summer Shack restaurant in Maine. He presents both the restaurant’s and his home recipes. The recipes are simple but good, well written and easy to follow. Most of them feature seafood found along the coast from Nova Scotia to Florida, and are geared for cooks for whom these are easily available. If you live anywhere else, you may have problems finding the ingredients, and substitutes are not given.

Tips to purchase, gather, dig or pick the seafood are very good but useless if your home is in Salt Lake City. This cookbook is meant for the locals. Excellent tables show varieties of all seafood but nothing gives the equally important amounts to purchase per person.

Besides seafood, the author also provides basic grilled recipes for meat and poultry as well as simple desserts and beverages. Good tables for steaming times of seafood are useful, also sketches on how to prepare. Index is excellent and well cross referenced.

Reviewed by George Erdosh

Eat to Defeat Menopause: The Essential Nutrition Guide for a Healthy Midlife-with Over 130 Recipes

By Karen Giblin, Mache Seibel MD Da Capo Lifelong Books, $19.00, 237 pages A woman who knows little about the importance of nutrition and exercise will benefit most from this health guide/cookbook, which for the most part, goes over information that has been presented many times before.

Basically, the message is the standard mantra: if you want to feel good, (avoid hot flashes, insomnia and mood swings) eat a well-balanced, non-processed diet without a lot of fat and sugar, exercise regularly to achieve or maintain a healthy weight, and cut down on caffeine and alcohol. There is information that may be new to some, about the importance of Omega-3 fatty acids and phytoestrogens, and a chapter on soy products, which neglects to mention potential hazards of too much soy. The narrator’s voice is that of a “red hot mama,” and includes links to songs with funny titles that I had difficulty accessing on the web. The recipes run the gamut from basic to complex with ingredients that may be hard to find, like nettles and fiddlehead ferns. The Roasted Chicken Mediterranean was quite delicious. The Seafood Couscous Paella looks great.

Reviewed by Robin Martin

If you own the 2003 edition, don’t bother with this copy. This unillustrated volume adds some twenty more recipes that you probably won’t miss. The first twenty-two pages introduce the vegan dessert kitchen: nutritional comparisons to conventional ingredients, how to “veganize” your own recipes, what the vegan pantry should contain and where to buy them and useful kitchen equipment.

Dieterly claims that traditional vegan sweets are dry, tasteless and very expensive. The recipes she presents are better but just as expensive.

For sweetener she uses applesauce, brown rice syrup, stevia, suconat, agave nectar and maple syrup, all quite costly. Vegan egg substitutes, vegan mayo, butter and cream cheese don’t come cheap or go on sale.

The recipes are well written, easy to follow but the layout could have improved as some recipes spill over the following page to inconvenience the baker. Each recipe provides complete nutritional information per serving. The 160-some recipes cover the entire spectrum of sweets from cookies through cakes to pies and also includes donuts and ice creams, even beverages. They are good recipes but don’t expect the traditional flavor that butter, cream and sugar grant. Index is excellent and well cross referenced.

Reviewed by George Erdosh Gluten-Free in Five Minutes: 100 Rapid Recipes for Breads, Rolls, Cakes, Muffins, and More

By Roben Ryberg Da Capo Lifelong Books, $17.00, 170 pages Gluten Free in Five Minutes: 123 Rapid Recipes for Breads, Rolls, Cakes, Muffins, and More by Roben Ryberg is an easy-to-use cookbook. Mainly a black-and-white book, the middle section includes colorful photographs sure to entice even those who can eat gluten. While thorough in its scope, Gluten Free in Five Minutes readers should know that the recipes rely on the microwave for creating menu items as varied as hamburger rolls, English muffins, corn on the cob, and cakes. Addressing a gluten-free cook’s preferences and wide variety of flours now available, Ryberg introduces an item and also provides a vari-

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 33

ant. For example, two of the 123 recipes are chocolate pound cake, one made with brown rice flour and one with sorghum flour.

Ryberg’s recipes provide small yields (often cooked in 2-cup sized ramekins), for instance, the sandwich bread recipes make only two slices. Ryberg divides the book into thirteen parts, including four chapters on cakes; one on icings; one about snack cakes and cookies; breakfast foods, such as a bagel, coffee cake or Eggs Benedict; breads; quick breads and muffins; rolls; flatbreads, including tortillas and pizza crusts; sides as varied as corn pudding and potato salad; and desserts.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Humphrey All American Vegan: Veganism for the Rest of Us

By Nathan J. Winograd, Jennifer Winograd Almaden Books, $29.95, 193 pages Even though it includes ninety some recipes, this unusual book is not so much a cookbook as a volume earnestly promoting a vegan diet. At times the reader may feel that the authors (a husband and wife team) are proselytize a little too deeply, nevertheless what they state is convincing and true. For anyone who has thoughts about switching to a vegan diet this book is compulsory reading material.

Illustrated with full-color comic strip-like, very humorous drawings, and equally entertaining, sometimes hilarious text, this book is a pleasure to read.

The first twelve pages deal with animal right activists (both authors are true believers): history, politics and the vegan movement. Then one will learn about how and where a vegan can shop for supplies; how to plan menus, cook meals and what equipment one should have.

The idea of this book is not so much to give you vegan recipes (there are thousands out there) but rather how to “veganize” the food you are already accustomed to.

Surprisingly, the authors hate vegetables (“vegetables are our least favorite food”) and most recipes exclude them. In fact, to receive nutrients, they juice their vegetables daily and give four suggestions of how to take this yucky “medicine” to minimize tasting it. Many stories and interesting and useful sidebars add to this book.

Remember, that being vegan means a high food budget since ingredients are from high-priced health food stores. If you are poor, a voluntary vegan diet is not for you.

Cashew cream, for example, is a vegan replacement of dairy cream that takes time to make and costs several times that of the normal cream. You can make vegan parmesan cheese, too, from five ingredients but it takes time. Before you decide to become a vegan, make sure you have easy access to a health food store. All these tell the prospec-

Book Reviews

tive vegan that a vegan cuisine is a time consuming and costly affair.

The eight-page cartoon-like “Important Moments in Vegan History” is hilarious.

This is followed by the recipes neatly divided into Breakfast, Lunch/Dinner, Sides and Desserts while a special eight-recipe section of Vegan Thanksgiving helps you plan this most important American culinary event of the year, complete with a picture of a turkey holding up a large sign “Thank You!” The subject index is excellent with recipes and their page numbers highlighted in red.

You can learn even more from their website with updated vegan information.

Reviewed by George Erdosh Apocalypse Cakes: Recipes for the End

By Shannon O’Malley Running Press, $14.00, 128 pages The Apocalypse shall come, and it will be delicious. Apocalypse Cakes is a book mostly in jest, but also with some great recipes.

Although some of the recipes are submitted just for fun, such as the Gay Wedding Cake (which involves stealing and then redecorating a standard wedding cake), the majority of the cakes are somewhat serious, such as the BP Oil Black Bottom which is a chocolate covered cake with a rubber ducky on it covered by chocolate syrup. Combined with a few humorously presented facts, the book has some very fun ideas for dessert.

The photographs are well-presented, and jokingly present some of the recipes; the photographer definitely had some fun with the subject matter. The recipes are easy to follow, and include some interesting optional ingredients that can easily be omitted. Each recipe is sandwiched between an introduction that sets up the recipe and a factoid to explain the recipe’s set up a little bit more. This is a great book for someone looking for a humorous and ironic dessert book, and who does not mind putting in a little more effort than normal when it comes to impressing his guests.

Reviewed by Jamais Jochim Try This: Traveling the Globe Without Leaving the Table

By Danyelle Freeman Ecco, $16.99, 292 pages A more appropriate title for this book may be Memoirs of a New York Foodie. This is not a cookbook, there are no recipes, no cooking tips, and it seems the author prefers to eat out instead of cooking. “… I can eat out

Cooking, Food & Wine

six nights a week at some of the best restaurants in the country.”

In Try This, Freeman describes fourteen cuisines and restaurant visits mainly in New York City: British, Chinese, Cuban, French, Greek, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Spanish, Thai, and Vietnamese. If you are a foodie in New York City, this may be an interesting reading for you; for the rest of us, it is distant and unexciting. Though the writing is good, it is not very interesting or inspiring — each chapter is filled with food stories from the author’s and her childhood family’s life, and descriptions of her restaurant visits. The chapters end with Table Setting and Modern Manners related to that cuisine; hardly something a restaurantgoer foodie doesn’t know.

Five three- to five-page treatises include tips such as Mastering a Restaurant and Diners’ Rights. The book is unillustrated, but sidebars called Tasty Morsels provide some breaks in the text.

Reviewed by George Erdosh EatingWell Fast & Flavorful Meatless Meals: 150 Healthy Recipes Everyone Will Love

By Jessie Price, The EatingWell Test Kitchen Countryman Press, $24.95, 232 pages I have read my fair share of vegetarian cookbooks, but EatingWell Fast and Flavorful Meatless Meals is by far one of the best. It spells out the nutritional aspects of recipes while also making them fairly easy to make. The recipes aren’t overly complicated and have, for the most part, very common ingredients.

The nutritional key is my favorite part of this cookbook. It has easy to understand symbols for three health-related aspects: Healthy Weight (low calorie), High Fiber, and Healthy Heart (low saturated fats). It makes it simple if you’re looking for recipes for a particular diet. It also provides a “nutritional bonus” which provides a breakdown of the vitamins that you’ll receive from eating the prepared dish. I was completely blown away by how easy the recipes were. They were fast and easy to prepare and

I didn’t feel like I was embarking on a long journey when starting each dish. The ingredients were simple and it was easy to substitute if there was something you didn’t have immediately available. I highly recommend this cookbook to all vegetarians who are looking for fast, simple and really yummy new recipes!

Reviewed by Nicole Will

Vegan Family Meals: Real Food for Everyone

By Ann Gentry Andrews McMeel Publishing, $25.00, 258 pages Ann Gentry, owner of L.A.’s hip restaurant Real Food Daily, has been serving wholesome, delicious vegan food for more than a decade. Now, in Vegan Family Meals, she makes some of her favorite recipes public for the first time. This lovely cookbook contains a plethora of meal ideas, using primarily everyday ingredients that the aspiring vegan chef can find in their nearest grocery or health food store. Gentry’s recipes include Lasagna Rolls with Tofu Ricotta and Everyday Tomato Sauce (a vegan take on a classic comfort food), Maple Tempeh Bacon (a homemade breakfast treat), Roasted Tomato Soup (homemade always trumps canned), and even desserts like Chocolate Silk Pie with Cashew Crust. The recipes are simple to follow, and many are accompanied by mouth-watering photos. Additionally, Gentry includes various primers for those new to either vegan food or to the kitchen in general. Picture guides show readers how to mince vegetables, while the “Real Food Pantry” sections offer information on everything from culinary herbs to alternative sweeteners. This cookbook is a valuable resource for anyone interested in healthy recipes.

Reviewed by Holly Scudero

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 34

About Author Ann Gentry Ann Gentry has spent the past 25 years striving to raise the standard of vegetarian cooking in this country. Ann is the creator, founder and operating owner of Real Food Daily, the only restaurant in the Los Angeles area that serves a 100 percent vegetarian (vegan) menu using foods grown exclusively with organic farming methods. With two locations, in Santa Monica and West Hollywood, California, Real Food Daily has “developed a loyal following”, from the someday to the everyday vegetarian, celebrities, trendsetting young eaters with sophisticated palates to the mature diner seeking gourmet health supportive cuisine.

Ann was born in Tennessee and grew up in a home filled with great food and a love of entertaining. She became interested in vegetarian cuisine in New York City during the 1980’s and she became interested in the cause and effect relationship between the health of her body and the foods that she ate. Fusing the essential elements of Eastern macrobiotics with her own American culinary style, her distinct “gourmet whole food cuisine” was born.

In 1986, after relocating to Los Angeles, she became the personal chef to actor/director Danny DeVito and created the idea of a home food delivery service that served truly healthful but exciting dishes. From 1988 to 1992 Real Food Daily thrived as a home delivery service and garnered many loyal customers.

In June of 1993, Ann opened Real Food Daily, the restaurant, in Santa Monica. Antithetical to the dreary perceived notion of a vegetarian restaurant, RFD’s décor of blond wood, clean lines, cozy counter space and eclectic art perfectly complements the innovative style of Ann’s gourmet whole food. The West Hollywood location opened in 1998 and has been written about in numerous publications, praised not only for the food but also for the light and modern vibe and the recycled rich teak wood used on table tables, counter bar and throughout the dining room.

Ann has authored two cookbooks, Vegan Family Meals, Real Food for Everyone (2011) and The Real Food Daily Cookbook (2005), both are available at national and local bookstores and online. Ann lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two children.

Book Reviews

tackling a debut novel. If so, this reviewer believes that she has the potential to deliver one of general interest; although, there will be those who will continue to find her view of life a bit too harsh and gritty.

If you like reading the works of a writer who has not yet been toned down by the publishing industry, you may well enjoy the stories in To Begin Again.

Sponsored Review

Category

Poetry & Short Stories East of the West: A Country in Stories

By Miroslav Penkov Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24.00, 223 pages The short story writer bears one distinct advantage over the novelist. By writing and then collecting a series of stories based around a given locale or people, the reader gets what feels like a complete understanding of the heart of the matter. The Bulgarianborn US emigre Miroslav Petrov has nicely accomplished this with East of the West.

I’ve always been fascinated by borders-the imposed boundaries that separate one people or family with the same essential hopes and dreams from another. For that reason, Graham Greene is my favorite 20th century novelist.

Petrov shares that fascination.

If I were to ask you honestly, you probably don’t know much about the Bulgar people. I know I didn’t. But reading about a so-called “minor” culture can shine a light on a greater issue.

For instance, from East of the West, did you know that after the fall of the traditionally described Iron Curtain, the Muslim population of Bulgaria had a choice? They could emigrate to Turkey, right across the river, no questions asked. Or, should they wish to remain on the lands and fields tilled by their ancestors for hundreds of years, they not only would have to take on Christian names and faith, but also change the tombstones of their ancestors. Oh, and while changing those tombstones, also please open the coffins and remove any hint of Muslim faith.

And we wonder why “they” hate “us?” An excellent selection of stories, one that will inspire both caring and debate.

Reviewed by Hubert O’Hearn To Begin Again

By Jen Knox All Things That Matter Press, $15.99, 139 pages Jen Knox, author of the memoir Musical Chairs, has crafted a selection of short stories about life’s small and big surprises.

These tales remind us that life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.

Knox can write, “...when Wallace would glance over at his son, he saw, finally, the boy’s ability to appreciate the silence as much as he did, and he knew that the boy was learning, finally beginning to understand how important it is to be still.” And the best of the stories (“The Probability of Him”) call to mind Maile Meloy and Alethea Black. Some of the stories (“The Millers,” “Cheers”), however, go nowhere.

This is a themed compilation about life’s lessons. What seems to be missing is the overall message that the reader is supposed to take away from the experience of reading them. I felt as if I had listened to a concept record album, with a few excellent songs, many average ones, and a handful of throwaways. This raises another issue with Knox’s writing. While she has a uniquely strong voice, it’s never a singular one. If this were music, I’d say that some of the songs were too loud, some too soft, and what was missing is the pleasing mid-range tone that the human ear desires to hear.

Perhaps To Begin Again is the writing exercise that Knox needed to undertake before

desire to express oneself is made explicit and intense and “What Words”, a faithful plea to contemplate, “A better world/ Peace, love,” Fernbach offers readers a forum in which his unique play of language brings delight and stirs our emotional perceptions.

Sponsored Review Adjustment Team (The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume Two)

By Philip K. Dick Subterranean Press, $40.00, 480 pages Issues of identity, questioning what it means to be human, illustrating strange transfor mations, and painting a world where androids must pass as humans are some of Philip K. Dick’s earliest themes. This second volume of collected fiction traces the development of his writing which includes twenty six stories and novellas along with detailed story notes. Stories such as “Second Variety,” where androids are programmed to infiltrate, kill, and pass as humans, hint back to the origins of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” The opening story, “The Cookie Lady” from 1953, tells a quaint tale of a boy visiting a lonely widow who bakes cookies especially for him and unknowingly undergoes a peculiar transformation.

This collection allows readers to learn how these early stories blossomed into award-winning novels and how snippets of important themes continued to pervade his work. Readers already familiar with his prolificacy will certainly enjoy adding this volume to their collection and indulge in a fully immersive experience with one of science fiction’s most influential writers.

Reviewed by Wendy Iraheta

The Blooming Void

By Peter Fernbach BlazeVOX, $16.00, 62 pages Peter Fernbach’s first book length collection of poems, The Blooming Void, explores the facets of the human psyche and its hidden compulsions— the importance of personal and social identity, hegemony, capitalism, our search for meaning in language and our affinity for the past. In his exploration of these philosophical, political and social concerns, Fernbach’s poetic diction elicits a diverse range of thematically linked images that demand multiple readings. He weaves a patchwork of evocative, rhythmic prose composed of striking symbolism, addresses literary works like Ulysses and responds to philosophical quandaries of religion and scientific skepticism in “In Response to Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.”

Firmly addressing slavery inherent in capitalism in “The New Slavery”, “as toys under a tree/With little marks that read/ Made in China” and middle class wars, Fernbach complements these social reflections against quiet, tender moments with a lover in “Morning Light” and spiritual renewal through incantations in “The Moon”.

In “Morning Light” there are passages where the reader becomes fully immersed in an instance of personal revelation as Turn by turn, the narrator discovers solChristina Lloyd’s ace, “through the streaks of poetry is poigant morning light/ Sleeping by and clever in my side/ Soft and satisfied.”

Territories; I It’s an intensely personal acdeeply admire count of looking back over a this intense and past filled with misdirection intelligent and mistakes. The solace adcollection dressed in this poem carries over into other selections - - Leah Maines producing an overall calm and contemplative texture.

Editor, Finishing This collection is filled Line Press with a valiant effort to compress and translate the modern human condition through the full spectrum of human emotion. Bookending the collection with “These Words”, in which the

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 35

ISBN 978-1599246901

Available Now At: Amazon.com $14.00

“When I was a kid, Grandpa Portman’s fantastic stories meant it was possible to live a magical life. Even after I stopped believing them, there was still something magical about my grandfather. To have endured all the horrors he did, to have seen the worst of humanity and have your life made unrecognizable by it, to come out of all that the honorable and good and brave person I knew him to be - that was magical.�

Book Reviews

Category

Young Adult Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

By Ransom Riggs Quirk Books, $17.99, 352 pages This is front runner for Book of the Year.

Absolutely magical Miss Peregrine has a peerless combination of witty, intelligent dialogue and prose combined with an absolutely beautiful design. You will find a delicious surprise on virtually every page. Sixteen year old Jacob is close to his grandfather, who, as a child, was a Polish refugee sent to a boarding school off the coast of Wales during the early days of World War II. Years later, the grandfather entertains Jacob with photos of girls floating in mid-air, small boys lifting gigantic boulders and another who is headless.

Jacob is sure that these photos are the result of darkroom twiddling; pre-Photoshop Photo shopping as it were. Or are they? When Jacob’s grandfather dies, in truly horrible fashion, Jacob goes with his father to the same Welsh island where his Granddad had lived almost seventy years ago. There he finds the remains of the boarding school and … complications arise.

Author Ransom Riggs has written himself the ‘new HARRY POTTER’. I’d say that any child old enough to read ALICE IN WONDERLAND will have no trouble with this book - so a reasonably intelligent eleven year old would enjoy it. I never once felt I was reading juvenilia. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is the sharpest thing you’ll read this year.

Reviewed by Hubert O’Hearn

Sweet Venom

By Tera Lynn Childs Katherine Tegen Books, $17.99, 356 pages Sweet Venom is about teenage triplets who are descendants of Medusa. Their objective? To send beasties back to their homes in a different dimension.

This book was okay in the beginning, however, it picked up after I have read a third of the book. The story itself is appealing. I like the whole huntress-type of idea and sending the beasties back. The novel has three different perspectives, one for each of the girls. They all grew up differently, but reunited together to help each other to fulfill their sisterhood destiny. I also really enjoy the secondary characters that are in these girls’ lives because they also provide an interesting impact on them and you can clearly see the difference among them. Although the story itself was appealing, I felt like there was something missing to their fights with the beasties because it seems similar to each fight with different beasties. I wished there was some kind of change in each fight. The ending is similar to a TV show cliffhanger ending, and it draws you in to want to read the next book in this trilogy.

Sweet Venom is a gripping book fans of the YA paranormal genre and the idea of huntresses and mythological creatures.

Reviewed by Ivy Leung The Girl Is Murder

By Kathryn Miller Haines Roaring Brook Press, $16.99, 342 pages In World War II New York, fifteen-yearold Iris enrolls in public high school after a sheltered childhood. Her father lost his leg at Pearl Harbor and struggles to establish a private detective agency. Iris feels the change in her family fortune keenly, and she’s also dealing with the suicide of her mother a few months before.

Iris knows her father struggles with the physical aspects of his job, and she decides to help out. Her initial efforts are successful, but her father bans her from helping in the future. When the parents of one of her classmates hire her father to find their missing son Iris decides she’s on the case and her investigations take her places she’s never been before, including a dance club in Harlem.

With amusing period slang, interesting look into New York during the second World War, and believable mystery, The Girl is Murder is great for teens interested in mysteries

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 37

and historical fiction. The novel has shades of the TV show Veronica Mars but without the spirited father-daughter bond. Author Kathryn Miller Haines is an established mystery author, and this is her first young adult novel. The second novel in this series comes out in 2012.

Reviewed by Kelly Garrett Sass & Serendipity

By Jennifer Ziegler Delacorte Books for Young Readers, $15.99, 384 pages Jennifer Ziegler, author of How Not To Be Popular, has turned a classic Jane Austen novel into a modern young adult book narrated by two unlikeable characters with Sass and Serendipity.

Loosely based on Sense and Sensibility, Ziegler’s newest book does little to endear you to Daphne or Gabby, the two sisters who star in the book. One is quite selfish, and the other bossy - and neither are willing to learn and change their attitudes until much too late in this book. This causes turmoil in the heart of the reader because it’s hard to care about a character with no redeeming qualities.

The story is not an exact retelling of the classic; Ziegler puts more of an emphasis on the family than the romance, which could be a fresh look for an individual who has read many retellings.

Sass and Serendipity could be considered a good weekend or vacation read if you’re an Austen fan looking for a contemporary twist and extreme versions of the original Sensibility sisters. It’s easy to tell that Ziegler has talent as an author, but the unlikeable characteristics of the two girls will likely drive many readers away.

Reviewed by Shanyn Day Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre World of Food: Brains, Bugs, and Blood Sausage

By Andrew Zimmern Delacorte Books for Young Readers, $15.99, 191 pages If you’ve ever seen Andrew Zimmern on TV, you know that he’ll try anything once.

You name it, he’ll eat it. This approach to eating translates into his approach to life.

In his new Book Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre World of Food: Brains, Bugs, and Blood Sausage, he encourages kids to let go and embrace life’s adventures. As a food writer and critic, chef, and TV personality, Zimmern travels the globe looking for the

Book Reviews

most interesting things to do, see, and eat!

He has funny, inspiring stories to share.

Kids will especially like the chapter where he describes what some of the crazier food tastes like – lamb brains taste like mushy river rocks, giant three inch hissing cockroaches taste like Fritos, and dung beetles have a crispy, nutty flavor. Most stories have detailed descriptions of texture and smell, but are toned down for a younger audience. Zimmern’s writing style is approachable, easy-going, and humorous. Kids will appreciate that he tells it like it is. Parents and teacher will find the included historical, geographical, and cultural facts to be very rewarding. Don’t be surprised if this book inspires some adventurous eating!

Reviewed by Kathryn Franklin

Forgotten

By Cat Patrick Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, $17.99, 288 pages Every night when London goes to sleep, her mind resets and she doesn’t remember anything that has happened the day before.

All she has to go on are the notes she leaves herself each night before going to bed. To make matters worse, she begins to have disturbing nightmares of the death of someone important to her. She also falls in love with a boy that she forgets every night.

This book is absolutely amazing and will blow the reader away. The idea of a girl who loses her memory each night and yet falls in love with someone has a lot of potential to go wrong, but Cat Patrick pulls everything together beautifully. London’s combination of strength, confusion and moments of teenage angst are portrayed perfectly to make her character come to life and feel like someone the reader can really relate to. The author pulls the reader in and makes them fully invested in figuring out what the visions London sees really mean. Will she be

Young Adult

able to maintain a romantic relationship despite her condition? The romance is touching with some heart breaking moments. All elements pull together into one amazing story.

Reviewed by Debbie Suzuki Forgiven

By Janet S. Fox Speak, $8.99, 288 pages When Kula Baker’s father gets in trouble with the law, she is forced to take matters into her own hands to uncover the truth and save her father from a grueling faith.

Kula’s search for justice takes her on a mysterious journey from Montana to San Francisco, where she not only discovers the truth that perhaps will save her father, but she also unravels old family secrets, and discovers a place where she belongs.

Forgiven is a companion novel to Janet Fox’s first novel Faithful, but the two can be read independently. Forgiven is a poignant story that will take readers through a very important part of California history, while it uncovers the dark side of San Francisco.

With underlying subjects such as a desire for a higher social class, greed, and family feuds, Forgiven is full of action, adventure, and drama. There is not one dull moment in Fox’s novel, and my only regret is that there was an end to the story. Fox leaves the reader longing for more, but perhaps there is another companion story awaiting readers in the future.

Reviewed by J Rodney Haunting Violet

By Alyxandra Harvey Walker Childrens, $16.99, 344 pages Sixteen-year old Violet doesn’t believe in ghosts. She’s participated in too many fake séances, watching her mother fool widows with elaborate hoaxes and rituals, to believe in spiritualism. When Violet accompanies her mother to Lord Jasper’s estate for another fake séance, she’s only focused on not being exposed as a fraud. But when the ghost of a murdered teenager shows up, Violet’s world alters.

While her mother is a fake, Violet is a real

medium. And now the ghost thrusts her into a murder mystery, complete with a house full of potential suspects and a murderer willing to silence Violet forever.

This novel clicks a lot of boxes — murder mystery, paranormal romance, historical fiction — but at its heart, Haunting Violet is a ghost story set in Victorian times, featuring a strong female protagonist. The consistent voice makes Violet feel real and accessible, and she has believable strengths and weaknesses. Violet’s journey is multilayered as a medium just learning her powers, as a lower class girl trying to navigate the upper echelons of Victorian society, and as a sixteenyear old girl with her first kiss. The novel is well written, creating a nuanced world akin to Wilkie Collin’s The Moonstone. The subtle references to English literature throughout the novel add enjoyment without detracting from the story.

Fans of paranormal fiction with romantic overtones will enjoy this young adult novel with its quirky heroine, colorful sidekicks, and compelling story.

Reviewed by Kelly Garrett Sirenz

By Charlotte Bennardo and Natalie Zaman Flux, $9.95, 280 pages Who knew fighting over a pair of stilettos could catch the attention of Hades himself?

But that’s exactly what happens to Meg and Shar, and to top it all off, they make a deal with Hades to lure a famous designer with the newly given Siren powers to the Underworld – and if they don’t, they have to spend eternity serving Hades themselves. It seems simple enough with the time they’re given, only the girls learn that nothing is as simple as it seems – especially when you’re making deals with the Lord of the Underworld.

There are a lot of books out there that deal with mythology, but not a lot of them are represented in nice, light and fluffy reads. Sirenz changes all of that. The book has two dynamic main characters that are as different as night and day. They dress and act differently, quarrel constantly, yet they are always there for one another when it counts. Their challenges help them grow and their friendship takes on a natural maturation. I think what makes me like this book is the over-the-top action and what happens to the girls when they use their Siren powers.

Although choppy at times and a little an-

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 38

noying in others, Sirenz is a fun, paranormal comedy that will keep you engaged and might even teach you a thing or two about mythology along the way.

Reviewed by Missy Wadkins War and Watermelon

By Rich Wallace Viking Children’s Books, $15.99, 184 pages Brody Winslow is going into seventh grade. The last days of the summer of 1969 are filled with football practice, swimming at the club, watching the losing Mets hitting a hot streak, news of the war in Vietnam, and worrying about his brother, Ryan. Ryan will turn eighteen in a couple of weeks and be eligible for the draft. Brody also hangs out with Tony, his best friend, but not the brightest guy in America. And then there are girls.

Suddenly they are more interesting than before, but while Tony thinks he has all the answers, Brody’s not having an easy time figuring the girl thing out. Brody’s parents constantly fight with Ryan about applying for college, but Ryan doesn’t want to be pushed. He takes Brody along to Woodstock, and they get a taste of the anti-war movement. Summer begins to slip quickly away and both school and Ryan’s birthday approach rapidly.

Rich Wallace has painted a picture of a 1969 family in conflict that is true and honest. The characters are well-drawn and the story is both compelling and believable.

This is a book anyone ages twelve and up will enjoy and appreciate.

Reviewed by Rosi Hollinbeck After Midnight (The Youngbloods)

By Lynn Viehl Flux, $9.95, 336 pages After the death of her parents, Catlyn’s brothers have moved her from one town to another until they decide to settle down in Lost Lake. There Cat meets the handsome Jesse whom the entire town seems determined to protect against her attention. Still the two ended up falling in love before finding out they were born to be deadly enemies.

Jesse is a vampire and Cat is a descendent of

Book Reviews

Van Helsing, the famous vampire slayer.

This book was absolutely amazing and it was impossible to put down until the very end. Cat’s character was the perfect mix of spunk, naivety, and savvy and while I am not usually a fan of the “love at first sight” story line, it works well in this book as the chemistry is palpable between Cat and Jesse. Cat’s brothers are also fascinating characters and when it is revealed who they really are, what abilities they possess and what they have not revealed to Cat there is that “aha” moment when all these little things that did not make sense earlier in the book all become clear. The only down side to this book is having to wait so long to read the sequel.

Reviewed by Debbie Suzuki The Girl in the Steel Corset (Steampunk Chronicles)

By Kady Cross Harlequin, $17.99, 480 pages Finley Jayne discovers there is something dangerous in her personality and while escaping, runs into a household full of misfits who are keeping secrets as dangerous as she is. Together, they learn to trust each other and develop an uneasy alliance as a menace to London society forces them to work together to prevent something more dangerous from spreading its evil and destroying London.

I really enjoyed all of the characters in this novel. I liked the juxtaposition of the good girl/bad girl concept of Finley’s character and wished the author had used this a little more as it would have raised the complexity of the plot; the characters would have been far less trusting with each other and some really fascinating developments could have occurred. I felt there were too many coincidences in this novel. What’s wrong with the characters getting in a lot of trouble once in a while? It sometimes takes the fun and the excitement out of the reading experience. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the novel, but I didn’t find the build-up to be there for me and there was definitely no big final scene as I anticipated the outcome. Thank goodness I really enjoyed the characters as they really made the novel so interesting for me.

While I did find the plot somewhat predictable and coincidental, there were enough other things in it that made it worth the read. If this is the kind of genre that interests you, then take a look at an interesting new steampunk series.

Reviewed by Stephanie Nordkap

Young Adult

Bad Island

By Doug TenNapel Graphix, $24.99, 218 pages When Reese and Janie’s father gathers the family for a boating trip, the lack of enthusiasm is palpable. But when a monstrous storm scuttles their boat on a strange island, the family will have to come together to survive. They must overcome not just starvation or each other, but the bizarre and dangerous plants and animals that inhabit the island ... and perhaps something much darker. Can they solve the island’s mysteries and escape?

Rarely has family squabbling and bickering been as believable as that of Reese’s family in Bad Island, and it confers an instant sense of familiarity and connection to the characters, despite their peculiar surroundings and the numerous weird happenings on the island. Like a truncated (and far more satisfying) Lost, Bad Island offers a thoroughly entertaining mashup of Lost in Space and Gilligan’s Island, complete with a comic sensibility all its own.

TenNapel continues his fine tradition of engaging father-and-son pairings; and a wonderful sense of synchronicity and completeness defines his latest effort. It might not be as quotable as Earthworm Jim or Sockbaby, but Bad Island is a quick and enjoyable time.

Reviewed by Glenn Dallas Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life

By James Patterson, Chris Tebbetts Little Brown for Young Readers, $15.99, 284 pages Middle School, the Worst Years of My Life

by James Patterson and Chris Tebbets is poignant here and there, but most of the time it’s laugh-outloud, hold-your-sides funny. It’s supposed to be a book for children of middle school age, but I think adults with any memory of how it was back then will find it hilariously true to life. The artwork is meant to be representational of a child of that age would usually scrawl in his notebook, but is better than that. The art enhances the book tremendously; it’s almost like two books in one. Mr. Tebbetts put it like this, “Middle School is definitely intended for young readers, but it’s been gratifying to hear that so

many adults are reading it (and relating to it) as well. I had a blast working on this project, and loved seeing the way that Laura Park’s illustrations brought another whole layer to the story, and to the experience of reading the book.” If you want to laugh and have fun with a book, get this one. I haven’t enjoyed a book this much in a very long time, if ever.

Reviewed by Dave Broughton Luminous

By Dawn Metcalf Dutton, $17.99, 304 pages Seemingly ordinary Consuela soon finds herself in a not-so-ordinary situation when she discovers that she can shed her human skin and travel to the Flow, a place full of people just like her. Soon Consuela discovers that she can craft new skins for herself out of organic materials, including fire, water, wind, and even butterflies. She uses these skins to help save the lives of those who are not intended to die yet. Now there’s a killer after those like Consuela, and she must figure it out before she’s wiped out for good.

Luminous is a beautifully written book that is both fantastic and weird, and sometimes even a little confusing. I thought Consuela was an amazing female heroine who was typical enough to be easy to relate to, yet housed non-typical abilities that made her something more. While the world of the Flow is intriguing, it was sometimes hard to follow everything that was going on. I absolutely loved the amazing detail that was given to us in this book and the storytelling definitely kept me hooked.

Quite possibly one of the most original paranormal reads I have had the chance to read this year, Luminous is a fast-paced story with unpredictable twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat. If you’re looking for a stunning read that will fascinate you from beginning to end, this would be the book for you.

Reviewed by Missy Wadkins Dragon Castle

By Joseph Bruchac Dial, $16.99, 333 pages Prince Rashko has always been the more thoughtful one in his family. Thoughts plague him while his parents and his brother, Paulek, never seem very bright. The land has been at peace for decades, and there was never any reason to provide for an army. So they are unprepared for the visit of Baron Temny, ruler of the outlying lands, and his “peaceful” party. To make matters worse,

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 39

Rashko and Paulek’s parents are away at the Fair Folk’s ball. With a little help, Rashko must come up with a plan before Baron Temny can execute his plan. Along the way, Rashko learns more about his fabled ancestor Pavol and really gets to know his family.

I enjoyed the use of the Slavic language in this book. At the beginning, the two stories that are told separately can become confusing because at times Pavol and Rashko mirror each other.

The love and respect the royal family and the servants have for each other is heartening and adds to Pavol’s family charm. The lack of greed also seems to be a redeeming quality that allows them to expand other characteristics. This would be a good book for kids who love legends and action.

Reviewed by Amanda Muir Fairy Bad Day

By Amanda Ashby Speak, $7.99, 336 pages Fairy Bad Day is a charming read about a girl named Emma Jones who has been training to become a dragon slayer – only to be assigned as a fairy killer at Burtonwood Academy. This not only dashes Emma’s dreams, but is a laughable slaying job on top of everything. Suddenly, Emma’s job isn’t such a laughing matter when a killer fairy shows up and only she can see him. And Curtis Green, who stole the dragon slaying assignment from her, is also starting to steal her heart.

Emma Jones is just one of those female leads that you will fall in love with instantly. Determined, fierce, and incredibly witty, she’s a strong character who has to embrace the destiny that was given to her – which leads to incredible character growth and hilarious dialogue along the way. Curtis Green is your typical “hottie with secrets” that will not only make you swoon over his character, but keep you guessing as to what lies behind those good looks and heart of gold. The secondary characters are also entertaining and help to build a great story.

Although a little predictable at times, this fairy read puts a new spin on a cliché that I have not seen before. Full of action, entertaining banter, and fairies (of course), Fairy Bad Day is a fun paranormal read that any young adult fan would enjoy putting on their summer reading list.

Reviewed by Missy Wadkins

The Back Page A column about the trials and tribulations of being a professional writer.

Viewpoints Article

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By Scott O’Connor, Author of Untouchable Recently, I wrapped up a book tour in support of my novel Untouchable. It was the first time I’d done anything like this (written a novel, gone on a book tour) so everything was new to me -strange and exciting and a little scary.

I quickly found that my favorite part of any reading was when a few hands would go up from the people who’d been kind enough to come listen to and talk about the book. At every stop, there were things asked that I’d never really considered, at least consciously -- questions that made me see a book I thought I knew as intimately as possible in a whole new light. And at every stop, there were a few repeat questions, nuts-and-bolts inquiries about writing, about training and process, and, most of all, research.

David Darby, one of the main characters, works as a trauma-site cleanup technician. If that’s an occupation you’re unfamiliar with, I’ll save you a potentially harrowing Google search and just say that trauma-site techs are the men and women who show up when someone has died, usually by violent means, and clean up what’s left after the body has been taken away. There wasn’t a stop on the tour where someone didn’t ask what sort of research I’d done into Dar-

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by’s job. The answer, though, is slightly more complicated than the questioner might have expected.

The answer is A Lot, and the answer is None.

I’d always thought research was a cut-and-dried operation, a search for facts to be used in the service of creating a realistic story, but my process while writing Untouchable was not at all what I’d expected. It involved a great deal of subjectivity rather than objectivity, and it involved some difficult decisions on when to choose fiction over fact.

Here’s what I learned: Research can be dangerous. I can easily spend a month of workdays lost in libraries and used bookshops gathering material, and then another few months reading and note-taking, with said notes leading to other avenues of interest and more days in libraries and bookstores, etc., etc. You can see where this is heading. My knowledge of a particularly esoteric subject may grow exponentially, but no actual novel writing is getting done. In fact, Untouchable began as a side-project while I was neck-deep in research for another novel I thought I was writing. It’s easy to get lost in a subject you’ve become interested in (or obsessed with) and even easier to find yourself so far down the research rabbit hole that it’s nearly impossible to climb out.

Make it up in a first draft. In the beginning, I knew the broad strokes of the techs’ jobs, and that was all I really needed to get going. The rest of it was intuitive. In each scene involving a cleanup, I tried to follow a logical sequence of events that would help them get the job done. Along the way, I invented procedures and techniques (or so I thought), eventually constructing an entire occupational philosophy and code of conduct that helped inform Darby’s character and the emotional struggle the book revolves around.

Then do your research. After that first draft, I delved into the research, careful to set a time limit for how long I would be away from the actual writing of the book. During those weeks, I corresponded with a terrifically helpful source, read most of the books and articles on the field available at the time, and watched hours of fascinating but thoroughly unpleasant training videos. Maybe the most remarkable thing (apart from those videos) was how close to the truth I’d been with what I’d made up in my first two drafts. I’d gotten a lot of it wrong, sure, but I’d gotten a lot of it right just by making semi-educated guesses, and that method kept me writing rather than getting lost in the world of research.

So now I had my drafts with their created details, and I had my notes with their facts. It was time for the last, and most important, step.

Choosing fact or fiction. Before I started writing the novel, I wouldn’t have thought this step existed. Facts are facts, right? Well, actually, no they aren’t, not when you’re talking about fiction. Facts can lend an air of authenticity, they can open up insights about characters, they can point you in story directions you wouldn’t have considered before. But they can also get in your way. And so when a fact contradicted a fiction I’d created, I had a choice to make. Often, I went with the fact. The real-world truth was just too interesting to ignore. But sometimes I went with the fiction. The emotional–rather than the physical–mess that’s left after death was really the subject of the book, so it was more important that the particulars of Darby’s job feel real, just like the Los Angeles neighborhoods in which the book takes place had to feel

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 41

real, though you’d be hard pressed to follow along on any map. And feeling real within the world of the book was sometimes different than actually being real in the world outside. So at these points, for reasons of character or story or mood, I made the decision to go with the fiction over the fact.

Now this approach wouldn’t work if you were writing a novel where the absolute verisimilitude of real world details is crucial to the integrity of the story. But with Untouchable, I was writing, at its heart, a book about a family fighting for its life, and David Darby’s occupation was just one part of that story. I’m sure a real-life trauma site tech could find incorrect details in any of my cleanup scenes. After all my research, I can find incorrect details in those scenes. But that would be beside the point. The world of the book is not the world of the reader or the real-life techs–not quite. It’s the world of the characters. It’s David Darby’s world, and unfortunately there’s no map to help him find his way through it. © 2011 Scott O’Connor, author of Untouchable

Author Bio Scott O’Connor, author of Untouchable, was born in Syracuse, New York.

Among Wolves, his 2004 novella, about a boy who believes his parents have been replaced by imposters, was praised by the Los Angeles Times Book Review for its “crisp, take-no-prisoners style.” Untouchable is his first novel. He lives with his family in Los Angeles.

For more information please visit www.fwcrime.com.

Book Reviews

Category

Biographies & Memoirs Professional Idiot: A Memoir

By Stephen Steve-O Glover, David Peisner Hyperion, $25.99, 336 pages The first thing you need to know about this book is that it’s as shockingly pornographic as the most sleazy out-takes of any of the three Jackass movies, MTV’s Wildboyz, or any of the Don’t Try This At Home DVD’s. More importantly to parents, this Y-Generation poster child could possibly be best qualified to reach the most out -of -control kids.

For those of you just visiting the planet earth and oblivious to the video, crazed maniac, Steve-O, has repeatedly proved he will go to any extreme on film due to a desperate need for attention. It may be a shock reading about a man who confesses to so many crimes and insanities. His stunts at first entertain, then begin to sicken as the downward spiral of alcohol and drug addiction unravel the author’s life. Written honestly and salted with expletives, in keeping with his raw reputation, Steve-O doesn’t sugar coat the ugliest facts about his own pitfalls and character flaws.

For a man who in his own words “was climbing a wall to escape from sobriety,” the bottom came when he was clean long enough to see himself and “finally saw what I’d become.”

Reviewed by Casey Corthron

The First Detective: The Life and Revolutionary Times of Vidocq: Criminal, Spy and Private Eye

By James Morton Overlook, $27.95, 266 pages He was the template for the modern detective; the cop who plays by his own rules, and the rogue-turned-hero. He inspired not only the creation of Sherlock Holmes and C. Auguste Dupin, but a modern organization dedicated to shedding new light on cold cases. He was Eugene-Francois Vidocq, one of the most polarizing and fascinating figures in the history of crime solving.

In James Morton’s The First Detective, we meet both Vidocq the man and Vidocq the legend. Morton does an admirable job wading through the many gray areas of his subject’s life in order to distinguish believable fantasies from often-unbelievable realities. An impressively exhaustive examination, The First Detective is a slow read, with a few lengthy tangents (the Lyons Mail and criminal friends chapters especially).

While the book lingers a bit too long on Vidocq’s criminal past, it more than makes up for it with rich anecdotal detail of the man’s Houdini-like prowess with escapes and his groundbreaking efforts as a detective and lawman. What could have been a simple (if comprehensive) biography instead became both an analysis of the history of police forerunners and a glimpse of where law enforcement was headed.

Reviewed by Glenn Dallas

Six Weeks in Saratoga: How Three-YearOld Filly Rachel Alexandra Beat the Boys and Became Horse of the Year

By Brendan O’Meara SUNY Press, $24.95, 267 pages If biographies of Seabiscuit and Secretariat make your reading list, or even The Black Stallion or Thoroughbred series have been featured, then Six Weeks in Saratoga: How Three-Year-Old Filly Rachel Alexandra Beat the Boys and Became Horse of the Year

by Brendan O’Meara will make your pulse pound and breath run short. The story of this amazing filly and controversial year in horse racing is a deeply informative and a fast-paced read with a journalistic, Spartan use of language that brings the smell of turf, dirt, horse sweat, and anticipation directly to the reader.

From the filly’s jockey, Calvin Borel, to Nick Zito, her gruff New York trainer, and their drive for a victory, to the New York Racing Association CEO and his odyssey to lure Rachel Alexandra to race at his track (when she could very well go elsewhere), with aging horses like Derby-winner Mine That Bird, queen mare Zenyatta, and others, all at the end of their racing career, all looking for one last victory, it comes together around the magnetism that is Rachel Alexandra, during this very special six weeks at Saratoga.

Reviewed by Axie Barclay Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers

By Jared Dillian Touchstone, $26.00, 357 pages Jared Dillian takes readers into an inside look at Lehman Brothers as the head trader from 9/11 through the firm’s bankruptcy, providing vivid portraits of the workers and the financial meltdown. The reader is shown how the author fought a personal fight with mental illness. Doctors diagnosed Dillian with a bipolar and obsessive compulsive disorder, which forced him to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Dillian, as Lehman’s head trader, was an important part of the Wall Street firm of Lehman Brothers with a responsibility of handling $1 trillion dollars in wealth. Dillian soon realized that one of the downfalls of Lehman Brothers was the foolish deals made in the real estate market. All traders with a loss must know how to assess the market, stop investing, and reinvest for a daily profit.

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 43

The basic question to be asked at the conclusion of this review is how can a trader develop obsessive-compulsive behavior without medication to be an effective trader on wall street? This memoir compares favorably with Michael Lewis’ Poker, the classic memoir of the Salomon Brothers investment bank in the l980’s.

Reviewed by Claude Ury The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars

By Paul Collins Crown, $26.00, 336 pages The grisly find of a torso was just the starting bell of the circulation race between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst’s papers in 1897. Hearst’s “Murder Squad” of reporters chased leads, bought off witnesses while both papers offered prizes for the winning theory of the case.

No move was seen as too low, even making wax figures of the players in the love triangle involved, and charging a nickel to see them. The case wasn’t tried so much in the courts as in the media. One cannot help but compare the antics to the current News of the World scandal.

The police were somewhat leery to suspect murder at first; (many pranks had been played by medical students with their donated corpses). The papers, however, were quick to realize that it wasn’t a prank and took the lead, running down the fabric that the torso was wrapped in, dredging portions of the East River, and often being first on the scene as new evidence, and more body parts, were discovered.

Often shocking, The Murder of the Century is another reminder that we didn’t start the media/tabloid circus and we haven’t evolved near as much as we think.

Reviewed by Gwen Stackler The House in France: A Memoir

By Gully Wells Knopf, $26.95, 307 pages This biography tells the story of the author’s socialite-author mother and celebrated philosopher step-father, American journalist Dee Wells and A.J. Ayer, and their intellectual and energetic community. From Provence, to London and New York, Gully Wells takes the reader inside the “lively, liberated intellectual inner circle of the 1960s.” Personages who make an appearance include Alan Bennett, Iris Murdoch, Robert Kennedy, Mike Tyson and lingerie king, Fernando Sanchez.

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But through it all seeps the smell of bouillabaisse in a farm house in France, the sense of place ever-present amidst the glitz and glamour.

Being unfamiliar with many of the historical personages mentioned in The House in France, as well as their significance during the time period and later, this reviewer feels she missed out on many of the finer points of the books, which someone with a stronger grasp of the times would grasp and be able to appreciate the anecdotes and easy flow of the story. This is a smooth, intriguingly told story, funny and manic by turns, which seems to mirror the voice of the narrator’s mother in many ways. Well-told and a vivid story of the sixties in three exciting towns.

Reviewed by Axie Barclay The 6th C.C.

By Douglas Feay Dog Ear Publishing, $10.99, 116 pages As a medical laboratory technician, Doug Feay’s Vietnam experience was different from that of a typical infantry soldier, but not any less harrowing. This memoir is a descriptive firsthand account of military service during the Vietnam war. The recurring theme of the narrative focuses on the twisted “logic” of the military bureaucracy and how best to cope with it. The book is a chronologically arranged series of stories divided into two parts: time served in country at the 6th Convalescent Center Cam Rahn Bay, and time served in San Francisco at the Letterman Army Hospital morgue.

A helpful introduction provides historical context regarding drug use by GIs in Vietnam and the inconsistent response by the military to rehabilitate addicted soldiers.

While the cover synopsis and title of the book focus on the takeover of the 6th C.C. drug compound by junkie GIs, the second half of the book deserves mention, as it is highly entertaining. Think of the TV show M.A.S.H. set in a morgue rather than a surgical unit.

As with many self-published books, the text could use a bit of proofreading and polishing. But this is a minor distraction from an engaging and entertaining read.

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Biographies & Memoirs

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading

By Nina Sankovitch Harper, $23.99, 240 pages Several years after losing her older sister to cancer, Sankovitch, at the age of forty-six, the same age as her sister when she died, decides to read a book a day for one year. Her simple requirements are that the book be one she has not read before, that the spine of the book be oneinch or less, which is approximately 250300 pages, and no repeats of any author.

Since she reads seventy pages an hour, this ensures that most books could be finished in four hours or less. She also tries to read only “good” books and follow up with a short review the next day. She enters the “sanatorium,” just as her own father entered one in the fifties, like a literate Hans Castorp, only to find, as a contemporary woman with three children, family, housework, and the “horrible urge” to “have it all,” that reading requires “only” finding the time. At 240 pages, I read it in about three hours, one sitting. Easy and friendly prose.

To more or less keep up her pace, this is approximately two months of reading each year; eleven years out of a sixty-five year life — the same as the average American watches television. I doubt she’s off books. What’s the alternative?

Reviewed by Phil Semler License to Pawn: Deals, Steals, and My Life at the Gold & Silver

By Rick Harrison with Tim Keown Hyperion, $23.99, 256 pages The Gold & Silver Pawn Shop is the most famous pawn shop in the world and a recently discovered Vegas landmark, but it’s also a family business.

Three generations of the Harrison family spend their days and nights within the shop’s walls, and in this surprisingly revealing glimpse into their lives, they pull no punches.

Rick takes the reader on a trip through his past trials with epilepsy, drug use, and delinquency, offering unflinching details on a family of hustlers and businessmen hoping for a big break. When his father moved

the family to Las Vegas and rolled the dice on opening a shop, a new world of challenges and possibilities greeted the Harrisons, and they tackled each with gusto.

Where you might expect a chuckle-inducing look into the TV show, you instead get a crash course in how pawn shops work, the pluses and minuses inherent in the business, and just how their unexpected success with Pawn Stars has changed their lives forever.

Penned with the same hard-nosed honesty and charm that makes the show so very watchable, License to Pawn is a fascinating read, but not always an easy one.

Reviewed by Glenn Dallas A Lifetime of Small Adventures

By Bill Birnbaum Douglas Mountain Publishing, $14.95, 201 pages At first blush, Birnbaum’s memoir feels like listening to a long lost uncle spin tales of his childhood with adventurous tales of where he has traveled over the past few decades.The mood shifts radically from quirky humor to something more ecclesiastical when he reflects upon the passage of time and lessons learned about savoring life’s experiences.

In the chapter entitled, “The Three Ages of Man”, Birnbaum philosophizes that, “... we each have a chronological age, a physiological age, and a psychological age.” To illustrate this point, Birnbaum relates a story of a particular climb up the North Palisades Mountain in the California Sierras with fourteen climbers of various ages. He shares his admiration, and perhaps his aspiration, when after reaching the summit, the oldest among them proves to be the most adventurous by toasting his birthday in the thin air well above the fourteen thousand foot marker.

Now a senior citizen himself, Birnbaum writes a blog called “Adventure Retirement” from his home in Sisters, Oregon where he works on another collection of life stories.

Reviewed by Casey Corthron

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 44

Drawing the Line: A Passionate Life

By Susan Gardner Red Mountain Press, $24.95, 271 pages Sometimes words paint their own pictures. Drawing The Line is the recollections of Susan Gardner, from her early childhood to last love. It covers the indifference of her mother to her married life as a diplomat’s wife to finally living life in Santa Fe. It is a life filled with a need to be herself, and finding just who that self is, from having to subvert herself into the expectations of the era she lived in to the expectations she had for herself. She always lived up to what was expected of her, and although that was an issue in the beginning, she eventually found a way to be what she expected to be.

It is a fascinating look at a woman’s life.

Each journal is a a verbal painting of what was happening at that time. A snapshot isn’t quite accurate, as even the most meticulous picture takes but a moment to capture. Here it is in brush strokes, with each word chosen for particular effect like one would with colors. It makes each event stand out, and allows each to be seen clearer in its own context. In a strange way, each entry is like a page in a comic book, able to be seen in its own context, and growing stronger from the greater context of the total experience.

Although there is no plot to speak of, that’s fine as it’s the study of a life and not a story.

Drawing The Line is a beautiful story of a woman’s struggle to be herself. For those looking for a personal exploration of the last six decades, and a peek into the formation of an artist, this is a fun read.

Sponsored Review The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter

By Mark Seal Viking, $26.95, 320 pages We want to believe that there is goodness inside everyone.

Maybe that is why we are so easily taken in by con artists and lairs. For Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a man who built a life of lies upon lies, taking advantage of people became his job. Gerhartsreiter was a serial impostor, taking

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many names and identities during his life in order to survive. In The Man in The Rockefeller Suit, journalist Mark Seal interviews more than 200 people who knew the man.

The book follows Gerhartsreiter from his early days, through his marriages, to his arrest.

Mark Seal is a wonderful journalist and his hours of research and interviews are evident in his story. It is an amazing transformation as Gerhartsreiter begins his lies and they spin out of control; he becomes one of the greatest con artists of all time.

After reading the book, I feel almost as if I almost know Gerhartsreiter personally, and that is due to the marvelous writing skills of Seal. My biggest problem is how absent Gerhartsreiter’s voice is in the book. I wanted to know more about his side of the journey.

The book is still a powerhouse of investigative journalism. It’s a real treat to those who take a look.

Reviewed by Kevin Brown In Search of Fatherhood: A Mother Lode of Wisdom from the World of Daughterhood

By Kevin Renner Inkwater Press, $19.95, 224 pages Kevin Renner, the father of two girls, woke up one day and wondered what he was teaching his daughters through his words and actions. He realized that the time he spent with them and away from them would affect the types of women they would become. He simply worked and lived without thinking of his role as a father to daughters.

In the excellent In Search of Fatherhood: A Mother Lode of Wisdom from the World of Daughterhood, Renner interviews adult women about their relationships with their fathers. Renner wants to know how these father-daughter relationships affect a girl’s development and her choices throughout her life. Renner hopes his book will help readers to learn what is good in their own relationships and what they can improve. Told in the women’s own words, these haunting and captivating interviews make this book difficult to put down.

Renner offers his readers stories of fathers who were positive influences in their daughters’ lives, fathers who were both good and bad at parenting, and fathers who were absent, abusive, or harmful. These interviews are both heartwarming and heartbreaking, and readers can easily see themselves reflected in these women’s lives, making this book valuable for both fathers and daughters.

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Biographies & Memoirs

Reagan’s Journey: Lessons From a Remarkable Career

By Margot Morrell Threshold Editions, $25.00, 320 pages Margot Morrell has masterfully written yet another glowing valentine to Ronald Reagan. She enhances this biography by drawing lessons from his life of achievement, conveniently listed at the end of each chapter. Surprisingly this book is interesting, quick reading, and inspirational. She suspends criticism as she draws rules of leadership from the stages in his life. Even for died-inthe-wool Reagan naysayers, this book provides an approach to life which is positive and affirming.

Regardless of which camp the reader aligns themselves with, one cannot argue the fact that the life of President Reagan contained great achievement in at least five separate careers over sixty years from radio announcer, to spokesperson, actor, President of the Screen Actor’s Guild, union negotiator, and politician. I would highly recommend this book to high school students who are not yet focused on goals and achievements. The end of chapter checklists of leadership traits also contains a self analysis section and workbook which is thought provoking and energizing.

This book also leads to an increasing appreciation of the single-minded studiousness of the man himself.

Reviewed by Julia McMichael Beautiful Unbroken: One Nurse’s Life

By Mary Jane Nealon Graywolf Press, $15.00, 224 pages In this captivating memoir, Mary Jane Nealon tells the story of her Irish Catholic family and how it shapes her as a nurse, a writer, and a person.

As a child, Nealon is determined to become either “a nurse or a saint.” Her close relationship with her younger brother Johnny helps her to realize that she is a born caregiver, and her experiences caring for Johnny after multiple accidents and illnesses give her insight into her patients’ needs.

We follow Nealon as she works her way through nursing school, her first job away from home, and her varied career as an oncology nurse, a travel nurse, and as a

researcher, studying AIDS in the 1990s.

Throughout her career, Nealon feels overwhelmed by guilt because she believes she abandoned her brother during his illness to pursue her career, but the lessons she learns from Johnny inspire her to be a better nurse, especially for the dying and the hopeless.

She learns to forgive herself, enabling her to grow spiritually and as a writer. In this memoir, Nealon portrays her life as a lesson for us to find comfort in our bodies and our unconventional selves.

Reviewed by Kerry Ellen Lindgren Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of the Great Explorer

By Alexander Maitland Overlook Press, $35.00, 528 pages My verdict: a beautifully written book about an intriguing man who violated contemporary attitudes with his obsessive big game hunting, his reactionary anti-this and anti-that stance, and his endless talk about the gorgeous young boys he “loved looking at” but never touched.

Wilfred Thesiger, a dyed-in-the-wool colonial born in 1910, lived among isolated tribes in Africa and the Middle East, between times serving with admirable bravery during World War II. Alexander Maitland, a personal friend for forty years, draws substantially on Thesiger’s own books and letters. Despite less than endearing personal traits, Thesiger wrote superbly, capturing the lifestyle of vanished cultures, especially in the Sudan and southern Iraq, with people not yet absorbed into their country’s mainstream.

His relatives, with their high level military, diplomatic and political connections, sound as remote today as the Danakil, the Marsh Arabs and other tribesmen with whom he shared so much of his life.

A compelling book, complemented with numerous photographs and maps, it describes a great explorer who received a knighthood, scorned the modern world, and titled his autobiography, perhaps ruefully, My Life By Choice.

Reviewed by Jane Manaster

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 45

One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir

By Binyavanga Wainaina Graywolf Press, $24.00, 272 pages Africa. One thinks of exotic, grassy savannahs with every realm of wild animal.

Or, we think of the wild tribal peoples in their grass hut villages, with their fierce ability to survive.

They somehow manage to do so without the influence of civilization’s development, technology, and modern comforts.

The scene that author Binyavanga Wainaina paints is one that doesn’t normally come to mind or is readily portrayed in documentaries and such. Life for Wainaina is challenging and hard. It’s a clash of wildness and refinement; education for those who can afford it, versus making a life without one.

This memoir follows his life through school, many transformations by his mother as she finds ways to support her children, and to make the right connection to her Creator. Throughout, there is great unrest from the political scene that has ripped families apart in this untamed yet still evolving country. Each event is written in the present tense as if we are experiencing all the difficulties, savoring the simple pleasures and truly seeing the world through Wainaina’s eyes, as he sees it.

I was captivated by his writing; vivid and broad like paint strokes on a canvas. And despite knowing that his life has been a long and hard journey to his current level of success, his is an Africa I would rather witness than any Wild Kingdom safari. Wainaina’s Africa is the real Africa, the Africa that many would rather we not see.

Reviewed by Laura Friedkin Journey to the Beginning: A True Story

By Almia de los Santos Xlibris, $15.99, 92 pages “My name is Maria Almia, a mystical child, whose name is a peculiar combination of my parent’s names-Calvin and Maxima, two people drawn to each other in the midst of the chaos of war and violence. I carry in my soul their hopes and dreams

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that transcend culture time and place…”

Thus Maria Almia introduces her memoir, which focuses on the relentless hunger for connection that fueled a tireless search for the father she had never known.

As Maria Almia tells her story, we meet her husband and her children; participate in her ordinary life, the struggles of her early marriage, pressures and delights of young children with two working parents, and the sometimes subtle, sometime blatant racism experienced by women and men of color even in 1970’s American society.

Maria Almia earned her nursing degree in the Philippines then immigrated to America. She met and married her husband, Ruben, who was a physician starting a private practice. This memoir traces their efforts to design and build a life of prosperity: nicer homes for their four children, more education, and more friendships. But this memoir is mostly about the fault line in Maria Almia’s heart that prevents her from the self acceptance and security she craved: the fault line is the fact that her father was an American soldier stationed in the Philippines during World War II: a soldier who loved her mother, conceived Maria, and then returned stateside without another word. A sense of abandonment and loss of identity haunted Maria Almia for decades and ultimately her life began to unravel. She knew she had to find her father and try to make a familial connection.

This memoir is a combination of casual and serious in presentation. Mrs. de los Santos creates drama, tension, and suspense that draw the reader into her story. She shares details of her own emotional weaknesses, fights with her husband, and painful dynamics with her growing children.

Her triumphs and failures are all included, and communicated with the tone, structure and open warmth of a kitchen table conversation. The epilogue includes family photos that ground the story in real life and provide a personal connection to the characters she invites us to know.

Maria Almia wants to share her own journey in hopes of making a larger point about social shadows, cross cultural experiences, personal tragedies and spiritual triumphs. I recommend this book particularly to individuals with similar trials who seek support for a more enriched life.

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Biographies & Memoirs

The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III: Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family

By Peter Byrne Oxford University Press, $45.00, 368 pages This biography covers the life of Hugh Everett III (1930-1982). His “many worlds” theory had a major impact on both physics and philosophy. With unpublished papers found in his son’s basement and interviews of people that knew Everett when he was alive, this book goes over not only his theories and contribution to science, but also the many ups and downs of his life, including depression and addictions, and his untimely death at a young age. His “universal wave function” says that all events are real, and that there are an infinite amount of copies of everything that exists in this universe, and that there are endless universes (many worlds) with an endless amount of possible configurations and combinations of everything in this universe.

Besides that, he revolutionized military operations, wrote the original targeting software in a nuclear hot war, pioneered artificial intelligence, and was among the first to realize what nuclear winter would mean.

Nowadays, his theory has grown among the science community as a possible reason of physical reality.

Reviewed by Ross Rojek What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years

By Ricky Riccardi Pantheon, $28.95, 369 pages Louis Armstrong appealed to audiences world-wide beginning in 1927 with fine showmanship, laughter, and quite sublime music. His recording of Hot Five and Hot Seven saw the development of jazz as a great American art form.

This book looks at the blend of pure jazz, pop songs, and novelty numbers, all part of Armstrong’s repertoire. He was sometimes criticized for playing the same songs each night but whether at the Newport Jazz festival or in a high school gymnasium in Hinsdale Illinois, he had a perfectly

well organized show. He recorded concerts, interviews, conversations and selections from his enormous record collection.

Armstrong’s later years might be viewed as those of a genius who went from poverty to become America’s ambassador of good will. Edward R. Morrow did a documentary on Armstrong which focused on his career in television, radio and the movies. His wonderful autobiography looked at Armstrong’s recordings with strings, big bands, small combos and such stars as Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, and the Duchess of Dixieland. It is safe to say these were the most important years of Armstrong’s life. Jazz appeared to have been diminishing during this time and Armstrong’s popularity was foremost around the world.

This is an amazing book that enables us to complete our understand- ing of a musical genius who had great influence as both an instrumentalist and a vocalist.

Reviewed by Claude Ury

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 46

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Category

Art, Architecture & Photography The World of Smurfs: A Celebration of Tiny Blue Proportions

By Matt. Murray Abrams Image, $24.95, 127 pages Promoted as the official companion to the Smurfs 3D movie that premiered July 29, 2011, The World of Smurfs by Matt Murray is that, and so much more. On many levels, it will thrill both old and new fans of the Smurfs.

Fans of the movie will find full color photographs of the Smurfs and cast, as well as information about the production of the movie.

Fans nostalgic for the days of watching the Smurfs on their unique hour long television show at a time of half hour cartoons will once again travel into the Smurf world, and will enjoy the references to the creation of the show.

History buffs and collectors will enjoy the entire book repeatedly, from the start of it all by Pierre Culliford in Belgium when he introduced a “Schtroumpf” into his comic strip in October 1958 to the current movie.

Inserted throughout the book are beautiful pull-outs that include a 1946 character study, selected pages of the Belgium comics, a poster of a Belgium musical, an animation cel of Papa Smurf, character model sheets, poster for Schtroumpf!, a sticker set, and a Smurf Village poster.

It is “a celebration of tiny blue proportions!”

Reviewed by Angie Mangino

Chinese Architecture

By Wang Qijun Tuttle, $16.95, 159 pages Throughout the life of Chinese civilization, Chinese architecture has a long and varied history; from the first dynasties that unified China, to the last dynasty to rule China before its overthrow. Particular examples come to mind, such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. In this short book Wang Qijun gives readers a brief introduction to Chinese Architecture. His book is split up chronologically, starting from the first dynasty onwards. Each chapter is short, covering the major achievements of that dynasty before moving on. Mr. Qijun quickly goes over each example, rarely spending more than a page for each monument. There are also many drawings giving us examples of what these buildings and gardens would have looked like. There are some issues with this book. Mr. Qijun mentions that Qing Dynasty did not build that many buildings, but they get the longest chapter. His writing is for beginners, he rarely goes into examples of the buildings; but when he does go into details it becomes confusing. His writing could use some decent editing; there are several glaring grammatical errors throughout the book. These errors call into question his authority.

Reviewed by Kevin Winter CITYSCAPES, cont’d from page 1 the Hugo Building, or the 1920’s details on the Palace Parking Garage. In the introduction, King notes several “obvious treasures” are missing, but that “everything here shines in its own way as distinctive pieces in a much larger puzzle.” Cityscapes is the perfect book for Bay Area locals who wish to enrich their knowledge of the city with retainable amounts of background about the buildings they pass everyday.

Reviewed by Megan Just San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 47

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Category

Historical Fiction The Girl in the Blue Beret

By Bobbie Ann Mason Random House, $26.00, 368 pages When he retires from his career as an airline pilot, Marshall Stone feels the pull of what he describes as the worst time of his life: crash landing his B-17 during World War II and spending months in hiding. Slowly, he reconnects with the people of that time, both the men from his B-17 and the people in the French resistance who helped move him to safety. But the most elusive figure is the one who has symbolized that time for him, the girl in the blue beret.

Through Stone’s search for his rescuers, author Bobbie Ann Mason tells the story of a group often overlooked; the French Resistance. The Girl in the Blue Beret shows the characters both during World War II and modern time; you can fully appreciate them not as perfect heroes but as people with faults and histories beyond the French Resistance. The book feels very real…not everyone remembers things identically, not every hero is perfect, not everyone enjoyed a “happily ever after”.

Because of the realism in Mason’s writing, I was surprised by the ending. But overall I loved the book. A must read for World War II enthusiasts.

Reviewed by Jodi M. Webb

Fission

By Tom Weston Ingram, $26.95, 327 pages The story of Austrian born physicist, Lise Meitner is a most compelling and littleknown story. Against the double whammy of gender bias and anti-Semitism, Lise Meitner not only made the important discoveries of meitnerium, but also nuclear fission.

British screenwriter, Tom Weston has written a fictionalized account in a novel which reads like a screenplay including section headings, “Fade In” and “Fade Out.” Lise Meitner was born in 1878 of wealthy Jewish parents but, like her sisters, converted to Christianity early on. Because upper level work was forbidden to girls, her parents fortunately paid for private tutoring for their clearly remarkable daughter. In 1905, she received the second doctoral degree ever awarded to a female from the University of Vienna. She became the first woman full professor in 1926. She then travelled to Berlin to study with Max Planck. Her first six years in Berlin were unpaid, because women were not allowed at university levels. She jointly discovered fission after working for thirty years with Otto Hahn in Berlin. She was forced to flee Nazi Germany and immigrate to Stockholm before the work was published, thus giving Hahn acknowledged rights and the subsequent Nobel Prize. Although Meitner was courted by the British and Americans, she refused to work on the atomic bomb.

The dialogue in Fission reads rather wooden and would have benefitted from

a deeper and more realistic science jargon.

Also, the author has a tendency to ascribe human emotions to inanimate objects such as castles that watch warily and are impotent. However, the description of the atomic bomb is quite beautifully wrought.

This novel can also be read on Facebook.

To read more about the life of Lise Meitner, a heavier account is by scientist Ruth Lewin Sime entitled Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics or six other books. Fission tells a fascinating and interesting story, and I am indebted to the author for bringing forward this story of an incredible science heroine.

Sponsored Review Before Versailles: A Novel of Louis XIV

By Karleen Koen Crown, $26.00, 458 pages Welcome to the glimmering, seductive, and dramatic court of young French King Louis XIV. Lady Louise de la Baume le Blanc enters the French court as a lady-in-waiting to Henriette, wife of Prince Philippe, at a time of great change and turmoil. King Louis XIV is beginning to define himself as a monarch.

Louise is an innocent in a court full of intrigue, infidelity, and quest for power. King Louis and his sisterin-law Henriette become entwined in a dangerous love affair which threatens the court. Henriette begs her lover to make the appearance of courting Louise. Little did she—or innocent Louise—know that Ms. Louise de la Baume le Blanc was about to become one of King Louis XIV’s great loves and mistress of many years.

Karleen Koen’s Before Versailles is a feast for the senses. Readers will be swept back to 1660’s. The atmosphere is electrifying, the liaisons are exhilarating, and the conversations and friendships are endlessly entertaining.

I was absorbed into the story on page one and couldn’t put it down. I found myself skimming ahead just to see what happened next as well as researching online to see what happened to the characters in real life!

Reviewed by Jennifer Melville Sherman’s Chaplain

By David Bellin Epigraph Publishing, $19.95, 122 pages In this historical novel, Ellis Brantley, a recent seminary graduate,joins a regiment of General Sherman’s Union army. Faced with the moral dilemma of warfare, Brantley navigates his way through the Union’s progress from Atlanta to Savannah, attempting to follow the will of God so not to compromise his integrity. In his epistles to his beloved fiancée, Elaine, Brantley describes the racism, violence, and selfishness

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 49

of those around him, while also discovering, under the surface of grim warfare, their tenderness, self-sacrifice, and love. David Bellin’s narrative captivates the reader with its insistence, moving the reader forward rapidly, due to Brantley’s constant desire to perform God’s work. The comparisons between Sherman’s relentless forces and biblical armies reveal that identifying one’s enemy is not clear cut. Also, the side of righteousness can be ambiguous.

This story encourages the reader to question the ethics of warfare and how it complicates our understanding of “Do unto others.”

A fast-paced novel, Sherman’s Chaplain is a great read for Civil War history enthusiasts, fans of historical novels, and those interested in studying the conflicts of Christian ethics during wartime.

Sponsored Review The King’s Witch

By Cecelia Holland Berkley, $15.00, 313 pages Edythe is King Richard the Lionheart’s well-kept secret. As people die from fever and starvation all around them, witch healer Edythe is King Richard’s ally. Edythe is first sent to King Richard by his mother Eleanor to spy on him. She develops a close bond with the king when she uses her medical knowledge to heal him from a terrible fever. King Richard then makes Edythe his own personal healer and brings her with him on his Crusade to Jerusalem. She becomes an indispensible member of King Richard’s camp.

Cecelia Holland’s historical novel, The King’s Witch, is a detailed and well-researched masterpiece that brings the Crusades to life in vivid detail. The streets of Acre are so vivid it feels like you’re right there among the hustle and bustle of market life. The historical details are impressive. The politics of the time are brought to life in a strong and powerful way and the battles are intense.

What stands out most about this book is that it brings to life an unsaturated period of history. There are not many historical pieces written about the Crusades, so it feels fresh and interesting. While the political details and the depth of historical data was a bit dry and deep for my tastes, this book is immaculately crafted and meticulously researched. I wish more attention had been given to Edythe’s personal development and story. Open its pages and watch

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King Richard come to life before your eyes.

Discover the delicate balances of alliances, trust, and deceit that surrounded him.

Reviewed by Jennifer Melville In the Fabled East

By Adam Lewis Schroeder Douglas & McIntyre, $16.95, 375 pages Somewhere, deep within a dangerous jungle, is the fabled spring of immortality.

For those who have lost all hope, this spring is the last chance for redemption. The book, In the Fabled East centers around two main characters, Adélie Tremier, a widower from 1909 and Pierre Lazarie searching for Adélie in 1936. Adélie, a lover of Eastern culture, or at least the ideal of it, moves from France to French Indonesia. Her son, who grows up to become an army captain, sends Pierre out to find his mother. The real kernel of the book is the beautiful descriptions that paint Southeast Asia in such a delightful light.

The plot is intriguing enough to pull readers into its deep mythical world, but some might find it bit slow. The themes of love and strife surpass both narratives and create a wonderful bridge that connects the two time lines. The characters feel real and the dialogue is presented in an interesting way. A warning to those that are political correctness activist, the book uses terms from the 20th century, so you might get offended. I believe this book has much to offer, and if you have an open mind, your journey to the fabled east will be a pleasant stay.

Reviewed by Kevin Brown The Emancipation of Giles Corey

By Michael Sortomme Singing Lake Press, $16.95, 348 pages Giles Corey, a victim of the conspiracy and mass hysteria that was the Salem Witch Trials, was pressed by large stones and then killed in 1692. For more than three centuries, the workings of the Family Confederacy, or the culprits behind the witch conspiracy and their descendants, have kept Giles’ spirit bound and trapped in this world.

The central character of this historical fiction novel, Sophie St. Cloud, sets out to free his soul with three teammates in 2007.

Historical Fiction

This task is personal for Sophie, as she is literally Giles reincarnated, and her partner Dylan is the reincarnation of Giles’s wife, Martha. Sophie uses her Shamanic knowledge and skills to communicate with spirits and interpret omens. These supernatural interactions help her to determine the steps needed to set Giles’ spirit free on the anniversary of his pressing and death.

The story of Sophie’s spiritual pilgrimage is told through descriptions of the rituals she performs, her encounters with the spirit realm, and occasional flashbacks that provide necessary information to complete the mission. Author Michael Sortomme draws on her personal expertise of Shamanic practices to create detailed descriptions of the rituals Sophie enacts. Her vivid accounts of spiritual connections put readers right in Salem’s cemeteries beside her and allow them to experience Sophie’s exhaustion after intense ordeals.

The ways in which spirits manifest themselves may seem unconventional to many, but Sortomme has anticipated this, and even built it into the novel. The tension that arises when members of Sophie’s team express doubts about the mission will be something readers can relate to, since it can apply to any group task. One does not have to be familiar with the beliefs of the novel’s main characters to appreciate Sortomme’s imaginative new approach to the familiar tale of the Salem Witch Trials.

Emancipation won the Indie Excellence for Best Historical Fiction of 2011, Honorable Mention for the Hoffer and 20 top finalists for the Montaigne Metal.

Sponsored Review Madame Bovary’s Daughter: A Novel

By Linda Urbach Bantam, $15.00, 512 pages Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, is considered one of the greatest novels ever written, but Flaubert left part of the story untold. What happened to Berthe, Emma Bovary’s daughter, after her mother’s suicide? Her mother scandalized the French countryside with her affairs and death, just how would that legacy shape Berthe?

Urbach posits her view of Berthe’s life in pretty much flawless homage to Flaubert as the beloved charac-

ter he created. It is easy to get lost in the tale and forget that you aren’t reading a book by Flaubert when learning what happens to the penniless orphan of a truly scandalous woman. The novel is like a visit with an old friend.

Berthe first goes to live with her grandmother; then when she is kicked out, goes to a textile mill and on to Paris. It wasn’t an easy time to be alone in the world, and life is not the bed of roses from the stories her mother read to her as a child. Still, she makes her way, stumble by stumble, dealing with horrors, poverty, and perversity, jumping forward at times, to ultimately overcome her mother’s shadow. I found myself sorry that it had to end.

Reviewed by Gwen Stackler The Soldier’s Wife

By Margaret Leroy Voice, $14.99, 416 pages The Soldier’s Wife is the story of Vivienne de la Mare, living on the tiny English island of Guernsey during its German Occupation during World War II. Torn between the duty to stand up to the occupying forces and the need to protect her daughters and elderly mother-in-law, Vivienne wants to pretend that life will remain the same. It quickly becomes clear that nothing will ever be the same. What new life will Vivienne choose?

Author Margaret Leroy manages to immerse the reader into foreign worlds, first the world of Guernsey and then the world of being a conquered people. This is not a book of traditional war battles; the mental battles that the characters engage in fill the book with tension and suspense. Once you begin, you’ll find you can’t stop reading. The characters are constantly facing life-changing forks in the road and readers must continue to learn what choices they make. Even when all the action seems over with only loose ends to tie up, Leroy hits you with a surprise twist that takes away your breath. If you read one book this summer, let it be The Soldier’s Wife.

Reviewed by Jodi Webb

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 50

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Viewpoints Article

Thank You, Borders!

By Alex Telander I started working for Borders in October of 2005; last October I had my fifth-year anniversary working for the company; by the beginning of October this year Borders Books, Music and More will no longer exist. It is estimated that around 10,700 people will lose their jobs when Borders closes its doors for good.

The original Borders bookstore opened in 1971 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. At its height in 2003, Borders had 1,249 stores; five years later it announced its intention to sell. Two years of doubt and uncertainty followed, mainly for the Borders employees, knowing that the end would come and it was merely a case of when.

A revolving door of CEOs and constant changes to upper management couldn’t stem or slow the tide of inevitability.

It is truly the end of an era, not just with all of us losing our jobs, but as a community venue that so many people have attended over the years. Whether it was for books, DVDs, music, coffee, Paperchase stationary items, or somewhere to enjoy a music performance or a signing on the weekend; Borders to many was a place to go and have fun. And now there will just be a series of big empty locales across the country.

Borders prided itself on carrying a wide variety of authors, especially during the better years when it wasn’t just bestsellers, but a large number of midlist authors that readers couldn’t find at Barnes and Noble, and wouldn’t be able to ever discover at Amazon.com. Independent bookstores do their best to carry many of these authors, but they don’t have the spread and range that Borders used to carry. In a recent interview with bestselling author George R. R. Martin, he indicated that a number of these authors will have a lot of trouble selling their books, what with the small publishers already owed millions by Borders, as well as not having such a large retailer to carry their titles anymore. The next few years are going to be interesting as readers, pub-

lishers, writers and booksellers look at what happens to this big hole in the book world. Will Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble automatically fill it? Will new independent bookstores begin to flourish across the country? Will eBooks fill this great void? Only the future will tell.

But Borders will not be quickly forgotten. Many of the employees in the history of Borders – as well as current ones – have had many fond memories of working for this institution. Many customers also have their own recollections of shopping at Borders, in fact at the beginning of the liquidation a customer came into the Folsom Borders asking if they could have a piece of the carpet once the store closed as it was there that she was proposed to; sadly she was not granted her wish as the carpet is needed for future tenants.

Shortly after the liquidation announcement, Sourcebooks publisher Dominique Raccah created a special Twitter hashtag, #ThankUBorders (https://twitter.com/#!/ search/%23ThankUBorders), where everyone and anyone could share their fond memories and happy times with Borders; each and every day there are many new entries under this hashtag.

I could go on for paragraphs and paragraphs, reminiscing about my job and experiences at this place called Borders that I will never forget. I know on that last day, we’re going to need a lot of tissues. For now, I invite you to read what a variety of authors and one publisher have to stay about the end of Borders . . .

“I am saddened by the demise of any book purveyor, though of course there must be a sadness hierarchy -- with the defunct independents outranking the bankrupt chains. I long ago forgave Borders for shelving Stiff under Medical Reference, because they also chose the book for their Original Voices program, and that program was a nice a leg-up for a first-time author... “ – Mary Roach is the author of the bestselling Stiff, and most recently Packing for Mars.

“Borders was a wonderful chain, with terrific stores. It’s a huge loss to all of us.

We mourn when a single bookstore closes, and rightly so -- but when 700 close, it almost defies imagination. Countless communities will have no local bookstore at all. I’m truly sorry to see them go.”

– Robert J. Sawyer is an award winning author; his most recent book is WWW: Wonder.

“Well, my thoughts aren’t particularly complicated. It’s a shame, even though we all sort of saw it coming. Fewer book stores - whether it’s a chain or an indie going bust - is bad for readers, and bad for writers. Fewer books available means fewer books sold. And for that matter, it means a number of (often) book-loving people are out of a job. Perhaps the Borders closings will open an opportunity for independent stores to rise up and fill the void - particularly in some of the markets where Borders was the only bookstore in the area. I’m not sure how viable or likely that is, but a girl can hope.” – Cherie Priest is the author of the bestselling Boneshaker.

“I can only talk about our local Borders, which was always wonderfully supportive of our books and events. I think the loss of any brick-and-mortar store is bad news. I do know that in later years I had several conversations with people in the book business who didn’t understand some of Borders’ business practices. Unnecessary expenditures, including over-production of author interview videos (when a lot of people are just using a hand-held flip camera, for example).

I don’t know what I think really. ” – Jeff VanderMeer is the author of Booklife and Finch.

“I think it sucks. Leaving aside the fact that I still enjoy browsing real live bookshelves and this cuts down on my options

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 51

for doing so, there’s the terrible economic impact this is going to have on the entire book industry. We were already facing an economic system dangerously denuded of “retailer ecodiversity” -- and now the few remaining apex predators, no longer impeded by competition, are free to ravage anyone they see as lower on the food chain: namely, book producers and book lovers. It’s already happening, and now will get worse. Still, at least there’s one hope from the liquidation: Borders might finally be able to pay back the millions of dollars in unpaid-for books it’s owed to publishers and authors for years now.” – N. K. Jemisin is the author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and The Broken Kingdoms.

“Any bookstore closing, chain or independent, is a cause for regret. We may enjoy our e-readers of all kinds, but there’s nothing quite like the feeling of walking into a bookstore and wondering what you’ll discover today, just by being among books, picking them up, sharing that space.” – Guy Gavriel Kay is the bestselling author of Tigana and Under Heaven.

“As both an author and a reader, the news of any bookstore closing is a tragedy. But when I learned about Borders closing I was particularly saddened. Borders was instrumental in making my first book, The Lost City of Z, a success. Borders employees were some of the most devoted readers, who recommended books and passed them on to customers.

I did a reading at a Borders in Westchester, New York, near where I live, and was so struck by the extraordinary staff. And so when I think about those people who worked there losing their jobs, and all the readers and authors who will lose such a great place to gather and share their love of books, I’m left without words.” – Da-

Viewpoints Article

vid Grann is the writer for the New Yorker and the author of the bestselling Lost City of Z. “First of all, my heart goes out to all the hardworking Borders salespeople and managers who have lost their jobs. The demise of Borders is a sad day for them, for us authors, for publishing houses, for the reading public -- and indeed for our country. Fewer bookstores mean fewer books sold. It’s that simple. And that impoverishes us all.” – Douglas Preston is the bestselling co-author of Cemetery Dance and Gideon’s Sword.

“This is one chapter we hoped would never be written. But today’s business climate doesn’t take a sentimental approach. There are so many forces that conspired to effect Borders’ demise, but it boils down to the fact that the business model changed. Borders didn’t. I feel bad for all my friends and terrific booksellers who are losing their jobs, and the readers who lose their neighborhood bookstore.

Borders was more than just a store…in its heyday, it was a community’s social pulse…a happening place where people gathered for book signings and musical concerts. It’ll be sorely missed.” – Alan Jacobson is the bestselling author of Crush and Inmate 1577. ““I’m crushed and shocked. The loss of Borders will have a resounding and lasting impact on the publishing market.

Worst of all, it leaves fewer outlets for readers to easily browse, purchase, and explore new books. And the effect will reverberate throughout the economy as well: from the dumping of the 400

Thank You Borders

stores’ retail spaces into an already fragile marketplace to the 11,000 employees seeking new employment during these tough times. There is not a silver lining in any of this.” – James Rollins is the bestselling author of The Doomsday Key and The Devil Colony.

“Well, it’s funny, I remember when Borders was “cool.” —Before they became intent on opening a location next to every indie in town and running them out of business. I was so sorry to see their business model change; they really became the opposite of how they started. Borders was “sex-positive,” and gayfriendly in their infancy; back when it was considered risky. They were out front with graphic novels and comics. Whereas some prominent booksellers were saying: “No title with the word SEX in it will be allowed to have a signing in our store!”— Borders would welcome me. I think I first went to one in Chicago, that was fun. I also remember very well being in their Wall Street location a few months before 9/11. They had such a jolly time inviting me to “invade” the suits and have a reading there. I wish I could remember names better, because obviously, the good times were all about the great individuals I met, who in many cases, had been booksellers for years, at every kind of store. I hope I keep seeing them in the future!” – Susie Bright is the bestselling author of Big Sex Little Death, as well as the editor for The Best American Erotica.

“For any trade publisher the loss of Borders means that print runs will drop, in some cases by quite a lot for some

categories in which Borders did well, which will then put pressure on unit costs and retail prices and profit margins. The knock-down effect would include loss of employees, fewer output, and more. And if this is the direction of chain stores, with indications that B&N will soon follow in five years, at least with attrition, as leases expire, then we could see a situation where publishers are either put out of business entirely or transitioned to ebook business models in order to save themselves. It’s a brave new world, but it’s anyone’s guess how brave and new it’s going to be.” – Sean Wallace is the editor and publisher for Prime Books.

“I think it’s a sad day when thousands of people lose their jobs and the ability of the consumer to browse through books in person becomes even more limited.”

– Amber Benson is the author of Death’s Daughter and starred as Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“The closing of Borders leaves an enormous void in the book world, not only physically but also spiritually. The professional implications to the publishing industry aside, there’s something about the experience of stepping into a book store that can’t be duplicated by browsing books on Amazon.com. If the other brick-and-mortar stores suffer the same fate as Borders, then we will have lost a fundamental piece of our culture.”

– S.G. Browne is the author of Fated and Breathers.

“I’ll miss Borders. The closest bookstore to me right now is a Borders. It’s in a local shopping center that has a movie theatre, and nearly every time I go to the

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 52

movies I go in there to shop. But that’s just the tiny little sliver of my personal regret. Thousands of people are losing their jobs. Big shopping centers will have massive empty real estate that will be hard to lease, and the cities and towns won’t be getting the taxes those businesses generate. Of course, even that is only one aspect of the loss taking place with Borders flaming out. Doubtless it will hasten the rush toward digital books as people have a harder time finding a bookstore. The long term picture--what publishing will look like a decade from now--is unclear.

Perhaps once the conversion to digital is complete, or nearly so, that will create jobs and opportunities for writers. But in the short term, we’ll have to navigate carefully as the industry continues to undergo its metamorphosis.” – Christopher Golden is the author of numerous books including The Myth Hunters and The Map of Moments with Tim Lebbon.

“Borders was the only new book store near my house when I was a kid. I spent so many hours there. Borders was the bookstore that always had the book I wanted, that always had the people who knew what I was talking about. When I started publishing my own books, Borders was the bookstore that happily invited me in to sign and read and be a part of the bookstore dream. I miss my local stores so much. I can’t believe the whole chain is going away. It’s a loss to me as a writer, to me as a reader, and to me as a little girl who just wants to walk into a bookstore and be amazed.” – Seanan McGuire is the author of Late Eclipses and Feed under Mira Grant.

Book Reviews

Category

Category

Business & Investing The Other Side of Wall Street: In Business It Pays to Be an Animal, In Life It Pays to Be Yourself

By Todd A. Harrison FT Press, $24.99, 176 pages This book moves beyond Wall Street and looks at what it means to be a good trader and a better person. It also provides an account that covers one of the most interesting market periods in history, providing an insight into the pressures and politics of the world’s financial capital and how one man balanced between success and self worth.

We are shown Wall Street through the eyes of a hedge-fund trader and writer. A brilliant memoir of life on and off Wall Street which shows what is behind the public’s perception of Wall Street. This book offers testimony to the need to find one’s soul as a means to gain the world.

Upon reading this outstanding book, one can learn what goes on in leading brokerages and hedge funds from the perspective of an insider. An excellent book that, in addition to showing the inside of Wall Street, shows people how to make money, be with their families and live life to the best of their ability. September 11th led the author to a course of positive change which included a sense of personal, professional and spiritual transformation.

Reviewed by Claude Ury

We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World

By Simon Mainwaring Palgrave Macmillan, $26.00, 256 pages While economists try to patchwork a theory of how capitalism should work, Simon Mainwaring, a brand expert, has looked at our systemic problems squarely and created a remarkable vision for fully functioning capitalism. Harmful externalities are costs that are borne by society at large although created to produce profits for a corporation, such as pollution, health costs, etc. Mainwaring’s thesis is that greater profits for the corporation can be produced by transparency about actual societal costs of their operation and mitigating or incorporating such costs into their financial structure. He gives great examples of consumers voluntarily paying more for such products.

He feels that the time is well over for a “me first” approach to profiteering and that a We First approach is good for the economy, the consumer and the overall health of the planet. He also cites examples of corporations who have taken the high road in such matters as CEO compensation, stockholder dividends and external costs and have benefited their profits and the greater society.

With the widespread use of social media, the author feels that consumers can now interface with brands to spread the word about corporate responsibility or negligence and so hold corporations accountable for their actions by marketplace activism.This book is very highly recommended reading.

Reviewed by Julia McMichael

Current Events & Politics The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World

By Jay Bahadur Pantheon, $26.95, 320 pages After a forty-five hour voyage into Somalia, Jay Bahadur describes seeing “a country out of a twisted fairy tale, an ethereal land given substance only by the stories we are told of it.” What follows is a brave investigative effort to discover the private lives of pirates: their tactics when attacking ships, how they deal with hostages, the women they marry, their drug of choice and what drew them to piracy.

He speaks to government officials, scholars, soldiers as well as conducts private interviews with Boyah, an original pirate who claimed to have hijacked more than twenty five ships.

In “The Freakonomics of Piracy” he provides a balance sheet for piracy expenses.

Chewing a kilogram of khat per day, the narcotic leaves many pirates who enjoy chewing, drained of most of their expenses, far beyond transportation, fuel, weapons and food costs. Bahadur devotes a chapter to pirate lore debunking myths about the fear of entering Somali waters, suggesting that a sailor has, “less than a 1 in 550 chance” of being taken hostage. Witnessing the development of Bahadur’s relationships and observing how he gains pirates’ trust results in a fascinating account of the shrouded world of pirates in war ravaged Somalia.

Reviewed by Wendy Iraheta How Can We Make Your Power More Comfortable?

By Norman Ball Web del Sol Association, $14.95, 231 pages Abuses of power, and the lengths to which those in power will go to maintain it, are often no laughing matter. Norman Ball invites readers to laugh, though, while making serious warnings about power in America in this collection of essays. These short writings explore who holds political

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 53

and economic power in this country, how these privileged few keep it, and who wins and loses as a result. Some of these essays take the tone of satirical news stories, such as the piece explaining Louisiana’s desire to physically separate from the continental U.S. after the Hurricane Katrina and B.P. oil spill debacles. Other attacks on incompetence and disregard for the powerless are made more bluntly in writings laced with sarcasm and wit. Ball even includes a few of his own poems to support critiques of corporate, government, and military power.?While he uses humor effectively, Ball’s arguments are well-informed, as his references to literature and recent events show. His most powerful and original argument explains that while the dominant political party often changes with election cycles, the group in power never changes. He argues convincingly that Republican and Democratic rivalries are merely distractions to make the masses think we have a voice, when the same class really maintains power all the time. Ball deserves credit for saying what is necessary, especially when he finds fault with common voters for allowing ourselves to fall for these distractions.?Although Ball confronts Republicans more often than Democrats, no one, including President Obama, is spared.

The author’s personal politics won’t limit his audience; his witty criticism is leveled at members of the power classes in all walks of life. The conversational tone of the essays will also make them more accessible than academic writing, although footnotes or a list of sources cited could lend more weight to some of the author’s claims. Nonetheless, the author’s unique approach makes for an effective wake-up call.

Sponsored Review

Book Reviews

Category

Romance The Promise of Love

By Lori Foster, Erin McCarthy, Sylvia Day, and Jamie Denton Berkley, $15.00, 320 pages This collection of short stories may well open the acquaintance between readers and authors who may not know each other, and do a good turn in the process. All proceeds from this book will be donated to the nonprofit children’s home One Way Farm.

Lori Foster leads off with Shelter From the Storm. He rescues animals; she rescues child victims – just as she once was. He rescued her and discovered he wanted more than anything to keep her. In Erin McCarthy’s Take Me Home, Travis and Sara discover that being part of a triangle can straighten out the path to true love, thanks to Amber’s down-home wisdom. Razor’s Edge by Sylvia Day is a hard-edged tale of love between two people who ought not to be in love or lust or anything else. But love wins out. Jamie Denton’s Midnight Rendezvous is a lovely, laid-back look at two wounded people – an alcoholic playwright and an accident-scarred former model. You want so much for these two to find — and keep — each other. Kate Douglas will make you laugh and cry when two opposites meet and the attraction is magnetic in Dime Store Cowboy.

Kathy Love’s Life in the Past Lane sends two lonely people to a reunion, back in time, nicely setting up the love story for your own imagination to finish. Neat.

Note: Be prepared for language in these stories that ranges from sweet to street.

Reviewed by Kelly Ferjutz

The Devilish Montague: The Rebellious Sons

By Patricia Rice Signet, $7.99, 384 pages Patricia Rice set a high standard with the first book of this series – The Wicked Wyckerly. She may have tied or even exceeded that criterion with this one. The Devilish Montague, Blake by name, is an excellent cryptographer, but the War Office isn’t too sure they really need him, even though Wellington is on his side. He’s been invalided out of the army, and has no funds to purchase another set of colors. He needs a wealthy wife! Poor guy.

While Jocelyn Carrington inherited a small fortune, she’s not sure she needs a husband. What she does need is a stable home for herself and her younger brother Richard who probably has autism – an unknown condition in those days. Richard studies birds and puzzles with an intensely single-minded concentration; unfortunately, his favorite avians – parrots Percy and his mate, Africa – have been corrupted by someone who exposed them to excessive profanity. Blake’s father has won Jocelyn’s former home in a card-game and offers it to his son as an inducement to find a bride. Neither of the men realize it was Jocelyn’s child-hood home— the one where Richard was the most secure.

Together, Blake, Jocelyn and Richard break the code, secure the spies and restore order while establishing their new family and household. It’s exciting and heartwarming all at the same time.

Reviewed by Kelly Ferjutz

Nearly a Lady

By Alissa Johnson Berkley, $7.99, 330 pages Winnifred “Freddie” Blythe has not had an easy life. She’s lived with her lady companion on a pauper’s allowance since her father’s death and loved every moment of her simple, country existence. Her world turns upside down unexpectedly when handsome Lord Gideon Haverston waltzes into her life and promises her the money stolen from her by his stepmother over the years.

He promises to give her the London season she never had so that she can find herself a husband. While he had promised never to burden himself with the troubles of others, Lord Gideon is hopelessly drawn to the sweet girl. Freddie, however, isn’t ready to throw away her life in the country and join the high society types she has learned cannot be trusted.

Nearly a Lady is a light and witty summer read. The playful banter is amusing and the characters are instantly likable. Their budding romance and sparky attraction will keep you on the edge of your seat, as will the plot line and unforgettable resolution. Freddie isn’t a heroine you’re likely to forget any time soon and Lord Gideon is any woman’s dream.

While not Alissa Johnson’s best novel, Nearly a Lady is a fresh historical romance that is sure to brighten your afternoon.

Reviewed by Jennifer Melville

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 55

Notorious

By Nicola Cornick HQN Books, $7.99, 384 pages It’s really hard to read – and then (try to) write about – a book by a previously enjoyed author, when the newer book just doesn’t satisfy. In fact, I kept returning to the cover and any other incidental information available to be sure this Nicola Cornick really was the same author I’ve long admired.

Notorious kept me wondering if someone hijacked the real Cornick mid-stream and sent the book off in multiple, nonsensical directions. The beginning and end are entirely Cornick-like, but that middle! Geesh.

It’s as though someone said, “Let’s see how many kinds of sex scenes we can think of to spice up the middle of this book; 300 pages aren’t enough. We need 400.” So that’s what was done. Note: It didn’t help one little bit.

The premise is fabulous: why not a female heart-breaker? Lady Caroline Carew is hired by the Duke and Duchess of Alton to lure their son Fitzwilliam away from what is, in their opinion, an undesirable match with the untitled Francesca Devlin. Unfortunately, Lady Caroline’s past runs smack into her present when she is recognized at a ball by Sir James Devlin (Chessie’s brother).

With less repetition and the careful excising of a few questionable people and situations, it could have been — would have been — so much better! Oh, well. There’s always next time.

Reviewed by Kelly Ferjutz

Book Reviews

Category

Sequential Art Archie Archives Volume 1

By Various Dark Horse, $49.99, 212 pages “Archie.” What does that name mean to you? If you grew up with him, you know what I’m talking about: teenagers Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Reggie Mantle and Jughead Jones.The characters were created by publisher/editor, John L. Goldwater, written by Vic Bloom and drawn by Bob Montana. They were based in part on people met by Goldwater in the Midwest during his travels throughout the United States while looking for jobs and places to stay.

Archie’s first appearance in Pep Comics #22 on December 22, 1941, was drawn by Montana and written

by Bloom. With the creation of Archie, publisher Goldwater hoped to appeal to fans of the Andy Hardy movies starring Mickey Rooney. Archie Comics is also the title of the company’s longest-running publication, the first issue appearing with a cover date of Winter, 1942.

Starting with issue #114, the title was shortened to simply Archie.This first volume contains the comic books from 1941-1943. Archie always changed with the times, but teenagers are always doing crazy stuff. Dig what it was like in the forties.

Reviewed by Phil Semler Any Empire

By Nate Powell Top Shelf Productions, $19.95, 304 pages Just once, someone needs to defend war.

Any Empire is about three childhood friends that fall apart. During their childhood, Sarah investigated the bodies of mutilated turtles. Lee and Josh began a friendship, but it was strained because Josh was a borderline psychopathic. After so many years, Josh joined the military and the other two fall in love. They reunite when their hometown is invaded for undisclosed reasons, and Josh captures the other two when they were out getting rid of Sarah’s box of proof.

Cue peaceful scenes of turtles.

The art is done in a light, airy style, easily evoking more gentle times. The pacing, however, is glacial; what should have been done in a few panels takes pages.

Once Josh joins the Army, however, it starts actually being readable. The biggest problem is that it’s a basic anti-war diatribe, with the usual dehumanization and military doing Bad Things. It would be nice if, just once, an anti-military would suggest an option of some sort, rather than just attacking the military, which is an easy target currently. If you hate the military, this is an easy sell, but few others would be interested in it.

Reviewed by Jamais Jochim The Griff: A Graphic Novel

By Christopher Moore, Ian Corson William Morrow, $22.99, 160 pages Bestselling author Christopher Moore

got to know Ian Corson some time ago as they began working on the screenplay for his book, Coyote Blue, but the movie never happened. Years later, Moore got this idea for a story that could best be told through the medium of the graphic novel. The image he had was of attacking alien dragons from outer space. He finally got together with his friend, Ian Corson, and they wrote The Griff.

Moore and Corson don’t wait long to tell of the invasion, but before you know it, most of the world has been wiped out, as these terrifying dragons wreak havoc. There are, of course, some survivors, who are our intrepid heroes. In New York, there is Mo, a geeky Gothy gamer; Steve, a skateboard wielding dude; and Curt, who has some sort of complicated history with the military, but knows a lot of stuff.

They begin making their way south to Orlando, where there is a downed spaceship and hopefully the secret to stopping these alien vermin. In Florida, there are two other interesting characters: Oscar, who spends his days dressed as a squirrel, and Liz, a killer whale trainer from Ocean World, who have their own plan.

Once the main story is grasped, it becomes quite predictable with some obvious characters, but it is nevertheless an entertaining read with some good jokes and character banter, as well as some great artwork of alien dragons destroying our planet and killing people.

Reviewed by Alex Telander Girl Comics (Women of Marvel)

By Trina Robbins, Devin Grayson, Ann Nocenti, G. Willow Wilson Marvel, $15.99, 120 pages Girls in comics usually make for some great reading. Girl Comics combines the first three issues of the Marvel Comics into one trade.

Although a great concept, there is some good news and bad news. The bad news first: the stories are uneven, with few stand-out stories.

Some labeling of the characters would have helped considering that some of the heroines featured are pretty far down the roster. Another issue is that some of the stories feature guys; although seeing Nightcrawler is bittersweet considering his recent death, but the Punisher and four Wolverine stories were a bit unnecessary.

However, there is some good news. The sections on creators were great, especially Fab Flo Steinberg. It was nice to see some of the characters, such as Molly “Shamrock” Fitzgerald and Satanna. The Venus and

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 57

Invisible Woman stories were fun, and it was great to see them have some fun with the relationship of the Richards kids. The Power Pack and Kitty Pryde stories were also fun, especially with all of the cameos in the latter story. The filler pages were also a nice touch. This is great for a comics fan, but probably not for a more casual reader.

Reviewed by Jamais Jochim Blood Work: An Original Hollows Graphic Novel

By Kim Harrison Del Rey, $23.00, 169 pages When the streets are cluttered with vampire and werewolf scum, who you gonna call? Maybe you would call the local vampire, witch, werewolf police department, because it takes one to catch one. Blood Work, the graphic novel, is an extension of a series by Kim Harrison. Harrison’s novels are a grimy clash of the real police world with the world of magic. There was a catastrophic event that forces mystical creatures to reveal themselves to the public. The Inderland Runner Services, or IRS, is formed as a task force composed of vampires and witches to help police those same beings. Blood Work follows the lives of Ivy and Rachel as they team up for the very first time.

The art in the graphic novel is average.

Main characters’ faces seem off, and there is nothing eye-popping going on in the book to pull the reader in. The overall writing of the book is above average as the book cares more about the relationships of the characters. It does fail to explore the world created by them, so I felts like I was missing important pieces. This is defiantly a graphic novel for those that are fans of this series.

The rest of us might just want to read the novels instead.

Reviewed by Kevin Brown Grimm Fairy Tales, Volume 8

By Joe Brusha, Ralph Tedesco, and Raven Gregory Zenescope, $17.99, 264 pages Founded in 2005 by Joe Brusha and Ralph Tedesco, Zenescope Entertainment has quickly become one of the most recognized independent comic book and graphic novel publishers in the world. Their flagship title Grimm Fairy Tales is very cool with great visuals, edgy storylines, and character development. Every twist had me riveted.

These beautifully designed books for older readers re-imagine the fairy tale characters that you knew and adored as a child — but now with eroticism and tough wom-

Book Reviews

en (think cheesecake covers, skimpy outfits, and large breasts) and shocking twists that will absolutely intrigue the older reader. Volume 8 reprints the comic series Grimm Fairy Tales, issues number s 43-50, plus the short story “Pool Party at the Rock Hard Hotel,” which first appeared in Grimm Fairy Tales, Swimsuit Edition #1.

Volume 8’s frame story revolves around Sela Mathers, a doctor/professor of literature, who has been given the ability to help people by showing them fairy tales with lessons about their lives. She searches for a unicorn loose in Central Park before it can be killed by evil forces. She struggles with the fact that people ignore her advice and ruin their lives anyway, and she begins using her ability to dispense justice instead.

Sela’s nemesis is Belinda, who has the same ability as Sela but uses it for evil.

Reviewed by Phil Semler

Sequential Art

Reviewed by Phil Semler The Canterbury Tales

By Seymour Chwast Bloomsbury, $20.00, 148 pages Seymour Chwast’s graphic novel adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury

Grimm Fairy Tales Volume 9

By Joe Brusha, Eric Basaldua Zenescope, $15.99, 180 pages Founded in 2005 by Joe Brusha and Ralph Tedesco, Zenescope Entertainment

has quickly become one of the most recognized independent comic book and graphic novel publishers in the world. Their flagship title GRIMM FAIRY TALES is very cool with great visuals, edgy storylines, and character development. Every twist had me riveted.

These beautifully designed books for older readers re-imagine the fairy tale characters that you knew and adored as a child— but now with eroticism and tough women (and cheesecake covers, skimpy outfits, and large breasts) and shocking twists that will absolutely intrigue the older reader. Volume 9 reprints the comic series GRIMM FAIRY TALES, issues #51-56.

This is a fairly decent. The art change in the last chapter is easy enough to deal with, and it helps move the the tone of the comic from a gung-ho war story to a conspiracy against the humans. The characters are nothing beyond expectations, but the world is nicely realized, as the Earth becomes more unpopulated every day. It’s a fairly decent tale, as the humans strive to control their destiny. It is interesting to read a war story where the war is accepted, even though it is taken to an extreme, thus proving that there are limits in war.

Reviewed by Jamais Jochim Postwar Pop

By Donald-Brian Johnson, Leslie Pina Schiffer Publishing, $49.99, 238 pages When we think of pop art, we generally think of Andy Warhol and his Campbell’s

Tales is a hard book to review. Mr. Chwast is a talented artist and storyteller whose studio and work have won awards and influenced visual communication around the world. On the other hand, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is one of the founding documents of English poetry and while the reader will get the bare bones of the story from Mr. Chwast’s adaptation none of the magic of Chaucer’s language comes through. Without the poetry I found myself asking while I read, “what’s the point?” Despite that question I can’t deny Mr. Chwast’s ability to tell The Canterbury Tales through picture and word and his ability to condense Chaucer’s opus, hundreds of pages long, into a single slim graphic novel. Mr. Chwast’s artwork is equal to his writing. His lines are crisp and clear and his page layouts easy to follow. This version of The Canterbury Tales can be enjoyed in an hour or so, I only hope readers are entranced enough by the characters in it to pick up the original work!

Reviewed by Jonathon Howard Day of the Magicians

By Michelangelo La Neve, Marco Nizzoli Humanoids, $29.95, 268 pages Sometimes a story is great until it hits a certain point. Day of the Magicians is the

story of Drazen, a boy born of the renegade Lancaster and taken to forget his past as he learns magic. In his world, science is merely an illusion, used to mask magic which really works. As magic gets better, society reaps the rewards without knowing where the power really comes from, and this illusion is a problem for Lancaster.

The artwork is beautiful, as the world has been fully realized. The backgrounds are gorgeous, with just enough detail to root the story in reality but not enough to bring attention on themselves. The story is welldeveloped, with a plot that builds up until the very end, and the characters develop rather nicely; it becomes hard to deny the cause of Lancaster and why he does what he does. The problem is that it is one of those endings that is hard to not to be ambivalent about, as it is the only way for it to end, and yet it still feels wrong. It’s a great book, and one that atheists should really enjoy.

Reviewed by Jamais Jochim Drafted: The Essential Edition

By Mark Powers, Chris Lie, Rebekah Isaacs IDW Publishing, $24.99, 296 pages When aliens show up, ask for references.

Drafted describes the Earth when an alien fleet comes in and drafts the human race to fight its war, stressing that if humans don’t fight they are next on the list. The humans are forced to act as a labor pool for the aliens, both as soldiers and fighters, and all humans are subject to this conscription regardless of age, so children and elderly put in their time eventually as well. Although the human race shows that it can handle anything thrown at it, and dish it out as well.

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 58

Soup cans. In this book, we take a look at a different kind of pop art--pop art for the masses. The type of art you would buy for your home, from ceramic pieces to place above the fireplace, to even Mother’s Day cards, and Christmas albums. All of these are displayed in Postwar Pop, which examines the way that art changed after World War I and II; it went from a time of conserve, and save; to one of now we can spend money on new items and new things. It was a time of riotous color, and design--from patriotic songs to sing at work, to new ways of expressing yourself. It was a time of new innovations and new ways to look at the world. This era lasted through most of the 1950s, and then it slowly died to be replaced

by Modernism and Post-Modernism.

This collection, while it does a good job, has a few flaws. The price guides are never clearly explained, and the writing about each chapter gets progressively farther from its goal. It starts off strong but it ends weak.

Reviewed by Kevin Winter

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Reference Counterfeits (Two Lines World Writing in Tra)

By Luc Sante, Rosanna Warren Center for the Art of Translation, $14.95, 270 pages The Center for the Art of Translation every year comes out with an anthology of translated literature from around the world.

Some years they focus on a specific theme, other years it is a random selection of poetry and fiction. This year is no exception; the vast majority of the book is a general selection of fiction and poetry. The last part of book focuses on noir stories from around the world; though not always what we would think of as noir. The authors chosen range from the well known, to the unknown. For many authors this is the first time they have been translated into English. With its other yearly collections this one has an important place in English literature. Without this collection many of these authors would be unknown to American audiences, and many would not have their work translated. For the reader it opens a world of brand new literature, giving us access to literature from around the world. The selections are varied and vast; there should be something for everyone in this work. For the fiction it is a short selection from a larger work that is being translated into English. The short biographies at the beginning of each work are enlightening as well. Hopefully next year’s collection will be as good as this years.

Reviewed by Kevin Winter MAKING IT RIGHT Why your Car Payments are lasting longer than your FACTORY PAINT JOB: Basic Guide

By Stephen N. Gaiski Zestar Corporation, $29.95, 166 pages In the past few years, car manufacturers have outsourced the painting of their cars to companies that specialize in paint - BASF, DuPont, and PPG primarily. These outsourcing deals were supposed to provide standardized paint finishes on new cars, often from within the same automotive factories that previously handled their own painting.

What seems to have happened is a distinct lowering of standards and paint thickness quality, resulting in a growing number of paint defects showing up earlier in a car’s life. MAKING IT RIGHT Why your Car Payments are lasting longer than your FACTORY PAINT JOB is a basic guide to the problems consumers are facing when their new car or truck is beginning to show paint chipping,

flaking, rusting, and other premature paint defects.

While billed as a basic guide, MAKING IT RIGHT includes plenty of technical data, charts, and references about which manufacturers, factories, car models, and years are more likely than others to have significant paint defects (including Ford’s Kansas City Escape facility, where 99.8% of all the cars painted there under a BASF contract had insufficient primer applied to cars over a three-year period). One of the biggest, and most obvious, selling and reselling points of a car is the paint job. If your twoyear-old car has paint flaking and rust, you are less likely to get a reasonable price when selling it or trading it in. MAKING IT RIGHT can help most consumers with automotive paint problems not only discover if their car was part of the massive cost cutting by the paint subcontractors, but also get rebates or repaint credit for their cars. Just hopefully not from the same companies that messed it up in the first place. The only mentionable flaw in the book is the bibliographical citations included. Many were for web pages, and there were many urls that should have been shortened with bit.ly for easier reference.

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Self-Help Living Life from the Inside Out: Who You Are Matters

By Edward A. Dreyfus, Ph.D. CreateSpace, $14.95, 143 pages Following an outside- in mentality, we give up our freedom to choose, allowing others to define us by our possessions, jobs, or other externals. When we lose one, our self worth crashes.

Chapter one shows a balance wheel, a strong visual of the areas of our lives. These include: spirituality; community service; health and fitness; relationships; recreation; finances; career and job; and personal and intellectual growth, encircling a nucleus of values. “The eight sectors represent the areas of life, which, according to most psychological researchers, philosophers, theologians, and religious leaders, are essential for a well-balanced life. The center represents values and principles…the core self.”

Each chapter further helps us discover our core through redefined success, living consciously, integrity, forgiveness, courage, and love. We learn to improve gradually, choose our responses, and learn from disaster.

Many live a false self in order to fit in, but it serves to imprison us to the rules of others, causing stress. Living by our own rules is what leads to a life of integrity. When we live by our core values, we live from the inside out, and not only feel better about ourselves, but also make the world in which we live a little better. Before concluding with steps for change, Dreyfus presents a look at men and masculinity, followed by women and femininity, showing how the outside-in definition has given both a limiting view.

With examples, action plans, and stories throughout Living Life from the Inside Out offers a practical and important message to improve our lives. Dreyfus presents easily understood arguments supporting the premise that how we define who we are does matter. It is obvious that he has researched the subject matter well, but he does not bog down readers with jargon, giving them practical advice that is doable.

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San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 59

Learn from Yesterday, Live for Today, Hope for Tomorrow

By Barry Parker Stardust Press, $12.95, 174 pages Although Parker’s newest book hosts various subjects that range from ways to relieve stress to how to motivate yourself, you’ll find a load of helpful tips on how to sleep better, eat better, and live better.

The title originates with Einstein, and much of the contents are developed from other notables such as Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale. Parker begins with ways to seize the day by letting go of regrets. In the chapter titled “Happiness Doesn’t Just Happen: It Requires Love,” Parker underscores how young children are usually happy. However, “...we learn how to be unhappy as we grow up and grow older.” From various angles, Parker reveals ways to return to that child-like happiness, vibrancy, and optimism.

Written in simple, straightforward terms, Parker swings from the subject of happiness to ways to harness the power of enthusiasm. He gives practical suggestions in the chapters: “Wake Up in the Morning Raring to Go” and “Seven Things You Can Do That Will Make You A Better Person.”

He offers viable exercises in self-hypnosis and positive thinking to “trick” your unconscious mind into solving your most troubling dilemmas.

Parker progresses with details of how to realign your body clock. He discusses the chemical effects operating with your body while under stress, and offers helpful ways to manage it. Specifically, Parker emphasizes the chief hormone produced by stress, cortisol, and the dangerous effects it produces over extended periods. He ends that section with a list of vitamins and foods designed to counter those negative effects, and offers practical tips on relaxation.

In the final section, Parker delves into the problem of chronic fatigue, naming Addison’s disease and other illnesses that suppress the body’s immune system and upset your body’s hormone balance. In these chapters, Parker lists exercises and diets that trigger the production of serotonin within your body, what he describes as the “feel good connection.”

If you want to lose weight, quit smoking, conquer chronic depression, laugh more, and stay young at heart, this inspirational book will help.

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Religion

5 Conversations You Must Have with Your Son

By Vicki Courtney B&H Books, $14.99, 247 pages If you have a son under the age of eighteen (0r thirty!), this book is a must-read.

It’s not too late to help your boy grow into a strong, responsible, and all around good man. Do you know how to accomplish this monumental task? Stand up and give your son a future he can be proud of.

Vicki Courtney’s new book 5 Conversations You Must Have With Your Son discusses important developmental points in a young man’s journey to adulthood. Conversation 1 (chapters 1-4) is one of my favorites: “Don’t define manhood by culture’s wimpy standards. It’s OK to be a man!” You’ll learn how boys are suffering in today’s schools and what you can do help your son thrive.

Discover the “greatest threats to a boy’s budding manhood and quest for adventure” and learn whether your “helpful” parenting tactics may be doing more harm than good.

Our boys are entering manhood without many moral role models or much direction.

It’s up to us as parents to direct their trajectory.

Whether you are a Christian or not (this book is faith based), Courtney offers fantastic and modern advice. It’s a great reference.

Reviewed by Jennifer Melville

Thoughts Escape Me: Perspectives from the Pew

By Grady Walton Xulon Press, $11.55, 258 pages It is sometimes hard to realize just how egalitarian the Christian religion can be in the modern world. Thoughts Escape Me looks at the church from the point of view of someone in the pews, looking at how beliefs can change over a lifetime and yet remain the same. It is the quest of one man to look at the changing importance of faith in his life, and how he keeps returning to it. Also, it explores his changing beliefs and perspectives as he gains experience.

It is an interesting consideration of how the preacher is not the most important part of a church, but only part of a mission dependent on all those who worship in the same place. The minister is admittedly a large part of that, and he must maintain a higher bar on his behavior and provide leadership within the church if that church is to grow.

The church needs to be the center of its community, and its flock needs to find their place to be able to help the church.

It is interesting that the book stresses finding one’s place, and that “place” may not be the same as what they do outside the church. The emphasis is to follow one’s passion, as that is the true road to happiness.

By following one’s passion and discovering where one fits within the church, it is possible to not only find personal enlightenment but to make the church a true force for good in the local community. This book is a welcome change from most books that blame modern society. It illustrates how the church should grow with society, not against it.

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Books About Books

How to Get Your Book Reviewed

By Dana Lynn Smith Savvy eBook Marketer, $8.99, 109 pages There are innumerable texts on the market about getting your book published, and plenty more on marketing your product, but surprisingly, I can’t ever recall spotting a guidebook focused on getting your labor of love reviewed. Thankfully, Dana Lynn Smith is here to plug that overlooked (and fairly critical) gap with How to Get Your Book Reviewed.

A no-nonsense, richly detailed examination of what you should and shouldn’t be doing to ensure your book wends its way to the best hands available to promote your project, How to Get Your Book Reviewed is a

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 60

quick and incredibly informative read.

Studded with frequent bullet points and savvy tips galore, Smith provides a wealth of advice for first-time writers and established authors alike. (Her Case Studies are a particularly effective treat, highlighting effective execution of her ideas by other professionals and writers.)

Smith provides a treasure trove of embedded links to pursue, including an exhaustive list of websites featuring book reviews and reader communities to explore and utilize. With boundless honesty and clarity, Smith delivers on the eBook title’s promise in spades.

Reviewed by Glenn Dallas

Book Reviews

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Tweens My Weirder School #2: Mr. Harrison Is Embarrassin’!

By Dan Gutman, Jim Paillot HarperCollins, $3.99, 112 pages Mr. Harrison is Embarrassin’! is the second book in the My Weirder School series about life through the eyes of AJ, a third grader. This time a joint birthday party for namesake Ella Mentry and the school is interrupted by a power failure, the disappearance of the ninety year old birthday girl, and a rescue mission complicated by a wild squirrel.

Sometimes book two in a series is a pale shadow by comparison. Not so here! Mr. Harrison is Embarrassin’! lives up to the first book in the series Miss Child Has gone Wild!. This book retains all the student characters from book one and adds a few new adult characters, but can easily be enjoyed without reading the first book. Once again, author Dan Gutman targets a few classic kid quirks: food fights, misunderstanding words, and being a reluctant hero. I think Gutman must go undercover in a classroom to get dialogue so authentic. And he adds a great twist for adults who might be reading along: as a nod to one of the characters (possibly a Beatle incognito) the book contains the titles to forty-five Beatles songs.

This book will have young readers asking “Where’s Book 3?”

Reviewed by Jodi M. Webb My Weirder School #1: Miss Child Has Gone Wild!

By Dan Gutman, Jim Paillot HarperCollins, $3.99, 112 pages Miss Childs Has Gone Wild, is told through the voice of a third-grade boy, AJ. AJ has plenty to say. First, the new kid at school is named AJ…and is a GIRL! Second, his Zoo Buddy on the class field trip is KnowIt-All Andrea. Third, grown-ups talk a lot, and mostly about boring stuff. Of course this is all before one of his classmates falls

into the lion exhibit.

This book is hysterical! If I didn’t know better I’d say it was written by an actual third grader. From the tendency to hear everything grown-ups say as “Blah, blah, blah…”, to bathroom jokes, to love-hate relationships with, well…everyone, this book portrays the life of a third grader. This book is easy enough for new readers to handle but interesting enough (and funny enough) to grab the interest of more experienced readers. It also contains a few fun illustrations in each chapter to keep young readers wanting more. The My Weirder School series should be in every school library. It will make even the most reluctant students WANT to read.

Reviewed by Jodi M. Webb When Life Gives You O.J.

By Erica S. Perl Knopf Books for Young Readers, $15.99, 208 pages More than anything Zelly wants a dog.

When her family moved from Brooklyn to Vermont that year, she was sure she could get one. Her meshuggener grandfather, Ace, tells her she needs a practice dog and gives her an orange-juice jug and a leash. Even though Zelly is only ten, she knows this is a crazy idea. But she goes along, because she has no other plan to get her parents to let her have a dog. Her best friend is at summer camp, she misses her grandmother who died a year earlier, the bully from school is around, and she has a plastic jug for a pet.

It’s not shaping up to be a great summer.

But then Zelly meets another new kid, also Jewish, and a pretty nice guy. They become friends and fill the hours of summer playing tennis and hanging out. Things get complicated when her best friend comes home.

Zelly almost loses what is really important.

This rich, complex book will draw in readers from age eight and up and satisfy all with bright, funny writing and a delightful coming-of-age story full of believable characters, and I do mean characters!

Reviewed by Rosi Hollinbeck

Septimus Heap, Book Six: Darke

By Angie Sage Katherine Tegen Books, $17.99, 641 pages Young readers looking for a magical, enchanting series to dive into will immediately fall in love with the world author Angie Sage has created for Septimus Heap, a young wizard apprentice in the midst of battling evil and the Darke Domaine. Fans already familiar with the series will enjoy the continued Magykal adventure in Darke, the sixth Septimus book. Familiar characters are back – Alther Mella, the Heap family, Beetle, Marcia Overstrand, Spit Fyre (who will meet another dragon!), Merrin Meredith, Stanley the Message Rat, and many others. To fight the Darke, Septimus must enter the Darke with the help of famous Alchemist Marcellus Pye. Meanwhile, Princess Jenna is being targeted by the Port Witch Coven.

Illustrator Mark Zug adds unique whimsical touches and dimension with drawings at the beginning of every chapter and a detailed map at the start of the book. Parents will appreciate themes of friendship, family, loyalty, cooperation, and self-discovery that are reinforced throughout the novel.

Sage’s humor will have children and adults laughing from page to page. Fans will be eagerly waiting for the next installment. It is a charming series, best read from the beginning for full enjoyment.

Reviewed by Kathryn Franklin Buddy’s Tail

By K. Anne Russell CreateSpace, $7.99, 165 pages Who is Buddy Boutonniere? For his two best friends, MacKenzie and Javier, who have lived in the dusty city of Yucca Dunes their whole lives, this question means a lot.

Buddy is exceptional in the fact that he is perennially caring, always loyal, and is an incredibly fluffy canine. A poodle does not belong in the desert, but then again, Buddy does not quite fit in anywhere. His negligent owners have no place for him in

San Francisco Book Review • September 2011 • 61

their lives and without MacKenzie (better known as Mac) and Javier, he would have starved a long time ago. And as if things could get any worse, his owners are moving, leaving Buddy to the highest bidder. That is, until he meets the green-eyed lady who treats him with more kindness than he has ever received from a human being his whole life.

The lady cannot buy Buddy for the price his owners ask, but Buddy makes it his duty to finally rid himself of his caretakers and let himself be happy. It is a long journey, though, filled with compromises, self-discovery, and the realization that the world cannot just be seen through black and white (no pun intended). Though Buddy’s Tail is meant for children, it is a deeply textured novel with lessons that will outlast its reader demographic. Buddy’s Tail is a wonderful book that leaves readers with a sweet and poignant sigh at its closure.

Sponsored Review Victor and the Sun Orb

By Amy Nielsen iUniverse, $13.95, 158 pages In Solandia, the land of the fairies, to be a prince is of the highest rank and honor.

Nothing should go wrong for him—however, for the celebrated Victor, it does. During his baptism, a spell causing him to turn slowly human is cast. The only way for Victor to prevent himself from becoming fully mortal and eventually having to live in the human world is to retrieve a sun orb. The problem lies in the hands of a mysterious dark figure who has the sun orb in his possession and will not let its extraordinary power go.

Victor must find a way to retrieve the orb or else leave the world that he knows, forever.

Amy Nielsen fuses our contemporary world with a fantastical one with fairly few hiccups and a well-paced plot. Moral confliction, betrayal, and its stark opposite loyalty are running themes throughout the adventurous novel. Readers will enjoy the rich descriptions of Nielsen’s mythical land and its endearing characters.

She does well in the blurred battle lines of good and evil, setting a well-lit stage for a possible sequel.

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