DWD's Reviews

Great Near-Future Sci-Fi Military Action! Published by The AudioComics Company in 2012. Multicast performance Duration: 1 hour, 28 minutes Unabridged. Titanium Rain  is a near future military adventure story about a group of physically enhanced American and British fighter pilots and their missions against an Imperial Chinese government over mainland China. This AudioComics production of Titanium Rain is an adaptation of the 2010 publication of volume 1 of a graphic novel series of the same name by Josh Finney. Finney adapted the graphic novel for this multicast performance done in the style of the old-time radio show, complete with multiple actors, top-notch special effects and a soundtrack especially written for this production. The listener discovers that China has suffered a military coup thanks to their Communist leader being killed by an Islamic terrorist. The general who took over China has proclaimed himself to be a new Emperor, has started a de-Westernizatio...

Too Much Plot for Just One Book Published in 2013 by Hay House Visions So, The Second Rule of Ten , the second book in the Tenzing Norbu series, is jam-packed - so jam-packed that it really should have been two books. Tenzing "Ten" Norbu is a welcome addition to the L.A. mystery genre. He is an ex-Tibetan monk and an ex-LAPD officer turned private investigator who is struggling to figure out his place in the world, looking for the right woman and dealing with a poor relationship with his father. In this mystery, Ten is trying to solve the murder of an ex-client, a Hollywood producer with a reputation for making enemies. Along the way, he discovers a much larger plot involving a Latin gang, illegal drugs and a survivor of the Holocaust. I really like the character Ten - he is an active practitioner of meditation but in no way does he have all of his problems solved by meditation - he still gets irritated in traffic jams, can't figure out how to deal with the new ...

Good advice for all people, not just older folks Published in 2012 by Hawthorne Publishing . Marie Albertson found herself an empty nester widow in Plymouth, Indiana after helping raise four children and then taking care of a husband with Parkinson's. What does she do? Go to the local Senior Center every Tuesday and sit home and watch TV? No. Albertson continues what she always has done - what no one expected. She had already earned a college degree one class at a time having to pay for it herself because her husband thought it was a waste of time for her to get one. (note: she worked at the Plymouth Library which I am familiar with, having lived in Plymouth from 1990-1993). Albertson took her degree and her library experience to Indianapolis and worked for the Indiana State Library  and make a new life for herself - at age 63! Indiana State Library Not only that, she has determined to go and do all sorts of new things - and that's what this book is all about. Her t...

Published in 2011 by Delacorte Press Conn Iggulden continues his historical fiction series about the Mongols with Conqueror: A Novel of Kublai Khan . This is the fifth book in the series, but you can easily jump in here, like I did, and not be lost so long as you have a rudimentary idea about the Mongols and their lifestyle. Iggulden comments that he was interested in writing another trilogy focusing on Kublai Khan but decided against it when he realized that while Kublai's life and reign were interesting (Marco Polo, attempted invasions of Japan, etc. ), they were not nearly as dramatic as his early life and would be rather anti-climactic in comparison. Kublai Khan (1215-1294)  as a young man Kublai is a grandson of Genghis Khan and he comes of age in a time of great political turmoil. The Mongols are undoubtedly the most dominant military force in Europe, Asia and the Middle East but they have no clear leader. Various relatives of Genghis Khan have a claim to the thron...

Multicast performance Published by Galaxy Audio Duration: 2 hours, 6 minutes First published in the magazine Five-Novels Monthly in 1939, Trouble on His Wings is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format. This audiobook features Johnny Brice and Irish Donnegan, two news cameramen who work for a company that makes those newsreels that used to run at the movie theaters. Brice and Donnegan will go anywhere and do just about anything for the big news story, including jumping out of airplanes, get shot at, braving forest fires and flying into a war zone. While on a big story, they pick up a beautiful gir...

Well-researched but ultimately fails in its goal Published by William Morrow in 2010 John Kendrick was a well-respected sailor from the Boston area during the Revolutionary War era. He was rumored to have participated in the Boston Tea Party. He captained a privateer, captured prizes and was highly regarded by political and business leaders and the men who sailed on his ships. As America struggled to revive its foreign trade after the Revolutionary War (The United States was officially cut off from English trade) tales came to Boston about the beautiful furs available along the Northern Pacific coast of North America. Investors hired Kendrick to lead an expedition of two ships to explore the trading opportunities in the Pacific. Kendrick set off in 1787 to find new markets for American goods. He ended up visiting what is now Alaska, Washington State and British Columbia, Hawaii, China and Japan. He nearly sparked a war between Spain and England, got involved in a brutal war in...

Published in 2011 by Spoken Word, Inc. Read by Barbara Whitesides Duration: 12 hours, 40 minutes. Unabridged. If I told you that I had just listened to a thriller set in China during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 involving secret plots among the top levels of the hardline Chinese leadership, the underground protest movement, an adventurous young Chinese-American doctor who is just beginning to learn about her Chinese roots, an intricate plot to keep her trapped in China by an evil man, a budding romance, Chinese gangsters, a corrupt Korean businessman, a motorcycle chase, gunfights, daring escapes, an introduction to Taoist philosophy and a possible cure to aging you would think that this would be a real whiz-bang listen. The book revolves around Dr. Lili Quan, a Chinese-American doctor who is offered the chance to study in China. It turns out that certain members of China's corrupt leadership have brought her to China to use her as a tool to get at her grandfather...

Exposes the vulnerable state of the American (and the world) economy Published in 2012 by Regnery Publishing, Inc. When I was reading Secret Weapon I was tempted to make a sort of smart-aleck introduction about the complex nature of Kevin Freeman's warning about the dangers we face by way of economic terrorism. After all, Paul Revere just rode through the streets yelling, "The British are coming! The British are coming!" and that was enough. But, after a little thought I realized that Freeman can't just yell, "The economic terrorists are coming! The economic terrorists are coming!" It has to be explained and that explanation is long and can be full of statistics and new terminologies. I am a licensed high school economics teacher and I can honestly say that I knew just enough about finance, the real nitty-gritty of the to and fro of the markets, to say that this book is downright scary. It is the proverbial "firebell in the night" that screa...

Surprisingly well-balanced approach to a controversial theory  Zheng He (1371-1433) I fully expected this DVD to be a whole-hearted film adaptation of the book without any criticism of the central thesis. If you are not aware of the thesis, British naval officer Gavin Menzies proposes that the gigantic Chinese "Star Fleet" not only explored the Indian Ocean and the coasts of Africa, India and Arabia, but also went around South Africa, into the Atlantic and eventually landed in the Caribbean, North America and South America. Menzies asserts that they went around Tierra Del Fuego, entered the Pacific and eventually returned to China, thus being the first the circumnavigate the globe. The DVD is very sketchy about the latter half of this trip (The Pacific Ocean leg). The first hour does a strong job of explaining why you may have never heard of Zheng He or his fleet. It also tells about the voyages that historians are confident that Zheng He complet...

A thrill ride - and a joy to read Published in 1999 After having slogged my way through a couple of books lately Riding the Snake was a real pleasure. Now, don't get me wrong with the 5 star rating here - it's not a life-changing book. It's just a whole lot of fun. And it should be since it comes from famed television producer and writer Stephen J. Cannell (1941-2010). One can tell that he has plenty of experience (what kind of experience? How about working on Adam-12 and Columbo , creating the Rockford Files , Baretta , 21 Jump Street , The A-Team , The Greatest American Hero and at least a dozen more) with creating likable, interesting characters and putting them over their heads in difficult situations. In this case, a white ne'er-do-well playboy from Beverly Hills and a black female street-hardened cop from South Central team up (out of desperation) to take on the Chinese Triad criminal syndicate in Los Angeles and Hong Kong while trying to solve...

A change of pace for Larry Bond Published in 2009 by Forge Books. Don't get worried, Larry Bond is still cranking out the war thrillers, but Larry Bond's Red Dragon Rising: Shadows of War  is not the grand sweep of a worldwide battlefield that his previous books have featured. Instead, we focus in on four people swept up in the beginnings of World War III. Those four people are a climate scientist studying in northern Vietnam who happens to have video that proves that China is instigating World War III in his cell phone, a female CIA agent who is trying to rescue him, a military wargamer (and former special forces) who is helping map out America's strategy to combat China's aggression and a Chinese lieutenant in an elite commando squad who is trying to catch the climatologist. I'll admit, it starts out slow but it builds and is a rollicking adventure by the end. This is the first of a four part series and I see it as the prologue to a much more sweeping war seri...

Disappointed Published in 2008 by Bloomsbury Press. My mother in law bought me three Brian Fagan books for Christmas last year because they were on my Amazon Wish List. I read the first one T he Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 right away and enjoyed it. I gave it four stars. . I was saving this one, hoping to enjoy it just as much. Now, I am worried that I'll never muster enough interest to read the third one. The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations seems rushed - a poorly edited and a poor man's version of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed with some global warming hype thrown in for good measure. Many of the cultures covered by Fagan were actually covered in Diamond's more detailed book. Fagan looks at the time of the Medieval Warming Period, approximately from 800 AD to 1300 AD, and the effects of this slightly warmer time on numerous societies, including Western Europe, the ...