LION of BABYLON (Marc Royce #1) (audiobook) by Davis Bunn

Published in August of 2011 by Christian Audio
Read by Paul Boehmer
Duration: 10 hours, 40 minutes
Unabridged

Veteran writer Davis Bunn (also known as T. Davis Bunn) is known for writing Christian historical fiction and Christian thrillers. Lion of Babylon is a Christian thriller centered on an intelligence operative named Marc Royce. 

Royce is one of the best of the best but he has recently been forced to retire due to the petty whims of his boss, a well-connected adviser to presidents of both parties. But, one Sunday after church Royce is picked up and offered the chance to return to his job in order to investigate the disappearance of one of his closest friends who was on assignment in Iraq. Even though Royce knows almost nothing about the Middle East he is sent to Iraq to solve this mystery.

Once there, Royce is immersed into a world of intrigue and double-dealing. Royce discovers that his friend is involved in a lot more than anyone ever suspected and all sorts of people do not want him to be found including staff members the American embassy and the ruling elite of Iraq. 

As Royce begins to investigate he quickly develops a reputation as a straight-talking man who tells the truth, has no hidden agendas and is simply too tough to be killed. Once he finds an Iraqi Christian man named Sameh el-Jacobi with a similar reputation for telling the truth and searching for truth and justice they begin to find out what was really going on and discover a religious and political movement that no one could have predicted...

I have to rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It takes far too long to get up and running, the "precocious" and perceptive niece of el-Jacobi was far more irritating that she was endearing. The religious movement that begins to make over Iraq in this novel sounded like an incredible fairy tale when contrasted with the real-life religious atrocities (beheadings, crucifixions, mass murders to name a few) that were occurring under the banner of ISIS as I was listening to this audiobook. While I would hope that this book could be a signpost to a possible future of Iraq, realistically, I have to doubt that any of it could ever happen. Sadly, I think the way of ISIS is a much more likely future.

Paul Boehmer's reading of the book, including a good grasp of accents and the ability to differentiate a great number of characters, was solid but did little to assuage the underlying weaknesses of the book.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: LION of BABYLON (Marc Royce #1) by Davis Bunn.

Reviewed on September 12, 2014

MILDRED (short story) (kindle) by Sean Ryan O'Reilly

Published in 2014 by RSO Publications.

The short story Mildred has a tone and plot that is reminiscent of a Stephen King story. Certainly, O'Reilly could have stretched this 42 page short story (novelette) out a bit more like Stephen King would have, adding much more detail but not have really adding much to the story itself. 

Instead, O'Reilly goes for a much quicker, more minimalist approach, letting the reader try to figure out what is going on while a creepy vibe and sense of dread build.



The story begins with a family fight between an aunt who is a realtor (Denise) and her niece (Josephine). It turns out that the aunt has convinced her niece to invest in a shady business deal and Josephine has decided to cash out by just taking one of her aunt's homes. This home is crammed full of consumer products. Josephine clears out a space and sets up housekeeping.

When she discovers the diary of the former owner of the house she learns that her aunt was much more depraved than she had ever suspected. Plus, there's the odd noises and other strange things that keep on happening...

I rate this short story 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: MILDRED by Ryan Sean O'Reilly. 

Reviewed on September 3, 2014

FORCE of NATURE (Joe Pickett #12) by C.J. Box

The Series Continues in Its Winning Ways

Originally published in March of 2011

I am a giant fan of C.J. Box and have been ever since a fan of Robert Crais left a comment on one of my reviews of an Elvis Cole book that told me to check out C.J. Box's Joe Pickett series. I am now happily, but haphazardly, working my way through the series. 

Because I am bouncing around, I already knew a lot about Nate Romanowski before I read this book. I don't know if my approach to the series has caused this, but I am not a fan of the Romanowski character. I suppose it's a staple of the genre - the principled good guy has a rougher, tougher guy who has his back. Elvis Cole has Joe Pike. Spenser has Hawk. Heck, I guess you could even note that Han Solo has Chewbacca. Despite the long history of this type of character, I would just as soon read more about good but not overly tough guy Pickett than his nearly unstoppable buddy.

That being said, this is still a really good book.

The attacks on Nate Romanowski that began in Cold Wind (Joe Pickett #11) continue and ultimately come to a head in Force of Nature. Those unrelenting attacks are the focus of the book and I would consider this book to be much more of a Nate Romanowski book than a Joe Pickett book. 

Romanowski is forced to confront the man who is sending professional hit teams after him and the reader is introduced to Romanowski's childhood, some of his training and his deepest secret - the secret that threatens to consume his soul. Meanwhile, Romanowski's enemy is looking for any weaknesses, including his attachment to the family of a certain Wyoming Game Warden...

Box is able to tell this story with all of its emphasis on weapons and techniques without making it go over the reader's head. He makes the world of the special operator seem both arcane and approachable. 

Here is Romanowski talking to Joe Pickett in a nice line from the book: "You've got a beautiful wife, great daughters, and a house with a picket fence. I know it sounds trite, but there are assholes out there who think my life is hard, but it isn't. Anybody can keep to themselves and be selfish. What you do every day is hard, Joe. Staying true and loyal, man, that's not the easy path. I admire what you've got..." (p. 93)

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FORCE of NATURE (Joe Pickett #12) by C.J. Box.

AN EMPIRE on the EDGE: HOW BRITAIN CAME to FIGHT AMERICA by Nick Bunker

Published by Alfred A. Knopf in September of 2014

I have read many histories of the Revolutionary War and most only tell the story of the build-up to the war from the American side and only describe Britain's political scene as it was interpreted by the colonists. To be fair, the British political scene was often misinterpreted by the colonists.

But, in reality, there were two sides to this fight and it was not just the colonists that were misinterpreting the political signals of their brethren across the Atlantic. The British government had no idea how far their colonial governments had evolved along democratic lines (compared to a modern democracy they were all quite restrictive but when compared to Britain they were quite open). 

The Boston Tea Party, December 16, 1773. Nick Bunker picks this
moment to be the point of no return between Britain and the colonists.

In fact, it seemed that often Britain was barely aware of the colonies because it had too many other crises to deal with, including a  severe drought, a crisis in India brought on by the East India Company, a disastrous drop in the price of tea and a run on several British banks. On top of all of this, Britain's social order was changing in response to its infant Industrial Revolution.

Each of these was a major crisis that consumed the time of Lord North, the Prime Minister. North and his cabinet careened from one crisis to another and were still able to maintain their majorities and the control of the government - so in that respect they were very successive. But, as author Nick Bunker notes: "As they tried to govern their own complicated country, Lord North and his friends allowed America to slip away." (p. 71)

Bunker's text is well-written and his points are clear and often quite sympathetic to America's pre-war complaints. He clearly demonstrates that Lord North was a masterful politician that failed to deal with Britain's larger, more long-term issues. Clearly, the colonists were not in a mood to compromise, but a bold stroke (such as the briefly considered idea of turning the Continental Congress into a some sort of colonial parliament led by a governor appointed by the British) was never taken.

I was struck by the absolute lack of information Lord North and his cabinet had. The 4-8 week time span that it took to send correspondence across the Atlantic did not help with this failure of proper intelligence,  but even worse were the governors who filed reports that completely misinterpreted the mood of the colonies. Some never filed reports at all. This was no way to run an empire.

Bunker's text inspires the reader to make comparisons with modern politics - the bank failures, the investment bubbles, the foreign policy surprises, the constant political posturing and an embarrassing lack of actual intelligence about the intentions of two potential enemies (the colonies and France) and an unwillingness to look at the big picture until it was too late.

Note: I received a pre-publication galley of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I rate this book 5 out of 5 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: AN EMPIRE on the EDGE: HOW BRITAIN CAME to FIGHT AMERICA.

Reviewed on August 16, 2014.

SEE ME AFTER CLASS: ADVICE for TEACHERS by TEACHERS by Roxanna Elden

The Fundamentals.

Published in 2009 by Kaplan Publishing

Although I am going into my 25th year of teaching, I enjoyed the advice that was intended for new teachers offered in See Me After Class. It is always good to go back to the basics and make sure that you remind yourself of the fundamentals.

The strength of the book is just that - it deals in fundamentals. Tricks to get you through the first day with its ever-changing class lists, reminders that we do indeed learn from our mistakes, warning of the danger of falling behind in grading papers (including giving yourself enough time to grade big things before the report card grades are due), the danger of sending too many kids out of class, remembering that all kids do not respond to incentives or consequences the same way, advice to get those project assignments turned in, and a part that I particularly liked: an overview of some basic different types of students you are going to run into ("Low Performing Kids", "Unmotivated Kids", "Shy Kids", etc.). Each type has a little profile and little sections like "What They Need from You" and "Why Giving Them your Attention Is Still Worth It". 

Elden recognizes that we all have our bad days and gives advice about how to recover from them. At the end of some chapters she includes a series of quotes from veteran teachers describing an absolute disaster that happened to them. The idea is that is that even though you will struggle and even outright fail, you can succeed and even thrive. She also includes advice about the teacher's lounge and how to present yourself as a professional, how to survive observations, how to talk to parents and more.





Perhaps the most important advice is sprinkled throughout the book - you have to make it work for you as a teacher. Your style, your comfort level, your idiosyncrasies. She gives lots of advice and encourages you to realistically adapt it to you and your situation. 

So, this old dog didn't really learn any tricks with this book but it encouraged me to think of the basics and even to re-consider some of what I do. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers.

Reviewed on August 1, 2014.

NOOSE (short story) by Ernie Lindsey

Published in 2013 as an e-book.

Estimated length - about 14 pages.

Finalist for the 2005 Sherwood Anderson Short Story contest.

Ernie Lindsey's short story Noose is a coming-of-age story set in the American south in September of 1916. It features a 17 year-old named Roy who works as a farm hand for a northerner who moved down south for a simpler life. Roy has a strong love for animals which makes him an excellent farm hand. Besides working on the farm Roy also dates Emily, the boss of his daughter. Roy and Emily are much more intimate than anyone suspects and Roy is quite sure that he and Emily are completely in love. 

The farm community receives word that a circus elephant named Mary is going to be killed for killing one of her handlers during a parade in a nearby town. The elephant will be executed by hanging from a railroad crane. This part of the short story is based on a true story (click here for more information). This hanging does more than kill an elephant - it changes everything for Roy. 

This short story is available on Amazon.com as a kindle e-book here: Noose by Ernie Lindsey.

I rate this short story 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on July 28, 2014. 

HAVOC (Philip Mercer #7) by Jack Du Brul

Published in 2006 by Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Read by J. Charles.
Duration: 12 hours, 43 minutes.
Unabridged audio edition.

Jack Du Brul's Havoc is a techno-thriller that races from the Hindenburg disaster to Africa to Washington, D.C to Atlantic City to Niagara Falls to Russia and back to Africa with hardly any time to take a breath. 

The book features Philip Mercer, a geologist by training that often troubleshoots for the White House. This is the seventh book featuring Mercer, a fact that was not on the audiobook label. However, Du Brul does a great job of catching the reader up on what has been going on - I assumed it was the first book in the series as I was listening to it. 

The Hindenburg disaster on May 6, 1937.

The action starts with a traveler on the infamous Hindenburg as it flies to its fate with destiny in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937. A crazed man is hiding a secret in a safe in his room and he is afraid that the Nazis know he has it and are plotting to steal it from him. As this man sits and watches his safe he devises a plan to get it safely off of the airship before it lands in New Jersey - he throws it overboard into a farm field with an attached note for Albert Einstein. The note falls off and the safe gets forgotten in the chaos of the Hindenburg disaster.

Fast forward to modern day in the Central African Republic. Mercer accidentally meets Cali Stowe, a fellow American. Mercer tells her he is here to investigate a geological hunch for someone as a favor. She says that she is there to investigate a village that has an extraordinarily elevated cancer rate. They are both telling half-truths. But, most importantly, this village is in the middle of a civil war and a dangerous warlord is on his way, burning and looting as he comes...

As the story progresses, Stowe and Mercer find that they have a mutual interest in this village and in each other. The more they find out about, the more tense the situation becomes. There are a lot of complicated threads in this book but Du Brul does tie them all together at the end

The story is full of action and adventure - some of it fun, some of it believable, some so outrageous that the story borders on silly. Mercer gets to be too much after a while - he is an expert on the Hindenburg, he knows how to fight, he's an expert with pistols, grenades, rifles, knives, swords and even with bows and arrows. He knows about mines, cave-ins, scuba diving, trains, dinosaur bones, forklifts, helicopters, speed boats and bar tending. But, his heart is in the right place and if you just go with the flow and don't think about it it just might not bother you too much. 

The audiobook was read by J. Charles. Charles did a merely okay job with the variety of accents required by this book. He has a hard time with women's voices and Cali Stowe has a lot of lines in this book. His foreign accents all fell into the category of "not an English language accent". Everyone kind of sounded the same. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Havoc (Philip Mercer #7) by Jack Du Brul.

Reviewed on July 22, 2014.