PRINCESS DIANA: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END(BIOGRAPHIES of BRITISH ROYALTY) (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2022 by Hourly History

This was a very odd choice for me to read for a couple of reasons:

1) I don't normally enjoy the gossip magazine type of stories.
2) I don't follow the modern English royal family - I find them to be annoying.
3) I don't really follow the English royal family in the history books, either.

Here's how we got here. Hourly History offers several free e-books every weekend and I picked up the book on Princess Diana for some unknown reason. And, six months later I accidentally picked the Princess Diana book with my fat thumb while using my e-reader app on my phone. I could have removed the download, but I decided to just go with it. Turns out, this was a happy accident.

I am not going to go over Diana's life story in this review. I will just say that this rather short biography (the publisher intends that its books take about an hour to read) was interesting and pleasant to read. A lot of it was information I remember just from being alive when all of this story was going on, but it was well-written.

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: PRINCESS DIANA: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END(BIOGRAPHIES of BRITISH ROYALTY) by Hourly History.

WONDER CITY (graphic novel) Written by Victor Fusté. Illustrated by Jared Cullum

Published by Insight Kids in 2022.

Synopsis:

Teenager Alex Riley and her older sister Elizabeth are very different kinds of people. They are the daughters of a adventurous married couple who turned their adventures as archaeologists into a TV action adventure cartoon. Think of them as the archaeologist versions of Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter) and his wife.

Their mother passed away a while back and their father recently died in mysterious circumstances working on a secret project in the subway tunnels under New York City. Now they are having to depend on each other.

The good guys sneaking into the network of tunnels
and sewers under New York City

When Mafia-type thugs show up to their place and try to steal notes their father had written while working on his secret project in the subway they know someone has been lying to them about their father's project...

My review:

I liked Wonder City well enough, especially at first. There are strong characters, interesting art, and There is an ongoing issue with the speech balloons. There were smushed together words, misspellings, and strangely divided words that made me wonder if they were electronically inserted and no one bothered to check on the results. 

The final climactic scene was a bit too much for me. It didn't quite make sense and there were times when the art didn't quite make it clear what was happening - kind of blurry with weird magic tossed in to make it all work out in the end even if it makes no sense. 

Final verdict:

Pretty good (if not super original) story marred by unclear art and writing at the end. The weird typos in the speech balloons made it seem like no one cared at the publishing house.

I rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5. It can be found at Amazon.com here: WONDER CITY. Written by Victor Fusté. Illustrated by Jared Cullum.

THE BREAKER (Peter Ash #6)(audiobook) by Nick Petrie

Published by Penguin Audio in 2021.
Read by Stephen Mendel.
Duration: 12 hours, 10 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis

Fugitive good guy Peter Ash is hiding out in the open in the city where his adventures began in book number one of the series - Milwaukee. In The Breaker Peter Ash has an assumed identity with very good fake papers. His girlfriend June has joined him, resuming her career as a reporter with the local Milwaukee big city paper. Of course, his friend Lewis is around as well.

In the previous books Peter Ash is dealing with untreated PTSD from his time as a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan. Too many searches in too many small confined areas has left him with severe claustrophobia.

Peter is working on the claustrophobia, though. Peter, Lewis, and June are at the Milwaukee Public Market for lunch. It is indoors, but it is very open concept with a lot of open space above. He's been eating there to get used to being inside. 

The Milwaukee Public Market

Lewis and Peter notice a figure carrying a hidden weapon entering the crowded Market. That's bad enough - but there's also a bus full of elementary school children unloading for a lunch field trip. 

Lewis and Peter leap into action and things get very complicated very quickly...

My Review

This book was the weakest in the series so far. There was plenty of action - almost non-stop action.

*****Spoilers******

June became a much less nuanced character in The Breaker. Most of her lines consist of her yelling, "Marine!" at Peter and then ranting about how much she loved him and how he needed to take care of himself and how he needed to neutralize the threats facing them without creating any fuss that would bring unwanted attention to him. That was cute at first but it got old.

It also makes zero sense for June, a woman who owns a tech research company and owns an entire mountain valley to put Peter Ash (and herself) at legal risk by letting him wander around Milwaukee all day. Hide that man away until you can figure out how to get Peter out of his predicament.

There is a police stop early on in the book for a burned out tail light that seemed needlessly petty. It was designed to introduce a grizzled old cop character who might see through Peter Ash's elaborate paperwork disguise. But, instead of giving the impression of an experienced cop who has hunches that pay off, I got the impression of a petty man who likes to push people around and make them search for electrical shorts in their tail lights by making them crawl around their vehicles in the rain and get soaking wet and dirty first thing in the morning. 

The book almost approaches sci-fi, with giant hydraulic-powered machines adapted to a wheelchair-bound man, scientifically talented orphans seeking revenge, hundreds of armed robots powered by revolutionary long-lasting batteries, and self-driving vehicles that can travel anywhere on any road.

Throw in a secret government agency and its seemingly all-knowing mysterious representative and it was just too much.

*****end spoilers*****

If this had been the first book in this series, it would have been my last. Hopefully, the next one is much, much better.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE BREAKER (Peter Ash #6) by Nick Petrie.

THE BALLOT and the BIBLE: HOW SCRIPTURE HAS BEEN USED and ABUSED in AMERICAN POLITICS and WHERE WE GO from HERE (audiobook) by Kaitlyn Schiess

Published in 2023 by ChristianAudio.com.
Read by the author, Kaitlyn Schiess.
Duration: 6 hours, 27 minutes.
Unabridged.

I first heard about Kaitlyn Schiess on one of my favorite podcasts: The Holy Post. She is one of the three regular hosts of the show and often serves as their in-house theologian. She is well-suited for this role because she offers well-considered answers and she thinks them through before she answers, rather than just shooting her mouth off - all the more impressive when one considers that she is by far the youngest member of the podcast.

I was drawn to The Ballot and the Bible because: 1) I am concerned the rise of Christian Nationalism in America and the damage it does to the Christian witness; 2) I knew that Schiess would give thoughtful answers.

The intermingling of Christianity and politics is not a new phenomenon in the United States (or in the rest of the world - but that is not the focus of this book.) Schiess looks at the intermingling of faith and politics in the Revolutionary Era, the pre-Civil War and Civil War eras and in our modern times (1970s to now.)

Schiess spends special attention on how Romans 13:1-7 has applied in these situations. Attorney General Jeff Sessions brought this verse to the forefront in June of 2018 when he defended the policy of separating children from their illegal immigrant parents.

If you remember that controversy, you realize how much bad will could be created by this book if it were written by a less talented writer. 

Worth your time.

I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE BALLOT and the BIBLE: HOW SCRIPTURE HAS BEEN USED and ABUSED in AMERICAN POLITICS and WHERE WE GO from HERE by Kaitlyn Schiess.