SUPERMAN on TRIAL (audiobook) by Dirk Maggs

Too Short. A Lost Opportunity to Create Something Truly Amazing.

Published in 2010 by BBC Audio
Multicast Performance
Duration: 1 hour

Superman is captured and on trial. Lex Luthor is the prosecutor, Lois Lane is Superman's sole defender. A Guardian of the Universe is the judge and if Superman is found guilty, he is to be sentenced to the Phantom Zone.  The charge? Superman is not the defender of humanity - he is actually committing crimes against humanity.

Luthor's arguments go along this line - Superman is an alien and he is interfering with life on Earth. As Lois Lane makes her arguments that Superman is actually helping, Luthor blunts them with his own arguments. For example, Luthor calls Batman to the stand to testify that Batman feels the need to monitor Superman to make sure that he does not abuse his powers to enslave humanity.

The audiobook ventures into some fairly unique territory. Not only are Superman's peers questioned but the assumption is that a real-life Superman literally inspired the creators of Superman's comic books (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) to create his comic book. There is a discussion of comic book censorship controversies in the 1950s and Luthor asserts that comic books are bad for the morality of the America's youth. 

My favorite part of the book is the surreal moment when Adam West appears as himself and testifies as to the influence of TV and movies on young people. Meanwhile, the real Batman the he portrayed on TV is also waiting to testify. 

As you could probably guess, Superman is not found guilty. The credits are read in a unique manner - Luthor is screaming as he reads the names off the closing credits and tells how he is going to sue them all.

The audiobook is performed like an old-fashioned radio play with different actors playing different characters and the real-world people playing themselves. 

My problem with the audiobook is it's abrupt start (how was Superman captured? Who set up this court? Why did the judge agree to be the judge?) and its abrupt ending. In reality, the one hour length is just too short. I really enjoyed the surreal mixing of our reality and Superman's Metropolis. A world where Adam West and Batman can exchange a few words with one another and D.C. Comics writers and artists. I would have loved to have had it explored further. The possibilities are so intriguing and this short format just left me feeling intrigued and disappointed. For example, imagine Adam West and Batman going out together to look for clues to help Superman and Batman bristling every time Adam West calls him "old chum".

Truly, a lost opportunity.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Superman On Trial (Special Extended Edition) (BBC Audio).

THE SMOKE at DAWN: A NOVEL of the CIVIL WAR (Civil War in the West #3) (audiobook) by Jeff Shaara

Published by Random House Audio in June of 2014
Read by Paul Michael
Duration: 19 hours, 42 minutes
Unabridged

 Jeff Shaara is well-known by fans of military historical fiction. The Smoke at Dawn is his fifth book about the Civil War, the third about the campaign in The Western Theater. This book picks up a few months after Grant's victory at Vicksburg and focuses on Chattanooga.

The crushing defeat at Chickamauga suffered by Union General Rosecrans was a terrible blow after the Union's massive twin victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg just two months earlier. Confederate General Braxton Bragg swept Rosecrans' army from the Chickamauga battlefield and they fled back to the safety of Chattanooga. Bragg's forces occupy the mountains that surround Chattanooga and have effectively laid siege to the city. Already, the Union forces are suffering and Rosecrans seems confused about what to do next. Luckily, Bragg is worried about dissension among his own junior officers more than the Union forces so an extremely tough situation has not been turned into an impossible one.

Union General Ulysses S. Grant is called to Indianapolis for a meeting and is told that he has been promoted to the command of the entire Union army on the condition the he resolve the situation in Chattanooga. Rosecrans is removed, General George Thomas is placed in charge and Grant is smuggled into the city so that he can break the siege.

I was critical of the second book in this series (A Chain of Thunder) and I was more than a little reluctant to listen to this one. I am glad to report that this was a much better book.

The brooding, repetitive nature of the second book was replaced with a more balanced approach. There was plenty of brooding but most of it was Braxton Bragg verbally accosting everyone in his army that he could reach - privates, captains, generals and even getting a little dicey with Confederate President Jefferson Davis who personally came the outskirts of Chattanooga to help his old friend Bragg sort out his army's personality conflicts, not that it did much good.

Confederate General Braxton Bragg
(1817-1876)

 The book was not entirely about generals and politicians. It also followed Wisconsin-born "Dutchie" Bauer and his friend Captain Willis to give a view from the common man's perspective. 

The reader was Paul Michael and he did an excellent job with the wide array of voices and accents. Pretty much everyone had their own voices and there were multiple Southern accents (they vary by region, of course) and even an excellent Irish accent.

This series continues on with a fourth installment.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Smoke at Dawn: A Novel of the Civil War (the Civil War in the West)

LINES of CONTENTION: POLITICAL CARTOONS of the CIVIL WAR by J.G. Lewin and P.J. Huff

Published in 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers

The Civil War was, in many ways, the world's first modern war. The submarine was invented, the machine gun was introduced, aerial reconnaissance was used and metal warships ruled the seas. 

It was also a war that featured all aspects of the media of the day. Propaganda songs like "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" were written, speeches were given all over the country, those same speeches were re-read in newspapers. Those newspapers were openly partisan on every issue of the day. And, one of the best ways to express these partisan opinions was political cartoons.

Lines of Contention book is filled with political cartoons describing the issues that brought on the war, cartoons inspired by the people and fighting in the war and a light discussion of the end of the war. Almost all of the cartoons are excellent and they provide a jumping off point for discussion of the events as they are portrayed in chronological order. 

Below is a cartoon from the book (p. 140):

The cartoon shows the dangers of the "Copperheads" - Northerners who actively opposed the war. Some just spoke against it, some politically worked against it and a very few acted as home grown terrorists.

I am a Civil War buff and I have seen many of these cartoons in other books, but that did not stop me from from enjoying this focused look at them.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Lines of Contention.

THE ENEMY (Jack Reacher #8) by Lee Child

Originally published in 2004.

Some authors are fastidious about their books being written in the order that events happen to the character. So, the events in book 5 will follow the events in books 3 and 4 and precede the events in books 6 and 7.

Lee Child does not feel the need to do that in his Reacher series. While The Enemy is number 8 in the order of publication, it is the first chronologically which makes it a great place to start the series.

Reacher is in the Military Police and has just been re-assigned from the invasion of Panama to remove General Manuel Noriega in December of 1989 to Fort Bird in North Carolina. It is New Year's Eve and just at the stroke of midnight Reacher gets a call. A General is dead in a seedy hotel off base. It turns out he died from heart attack while he was just starting an intimate moment with a mystery partner. Reacher is not too worried about things until he notes that the General's briefcase is missing.

So, Reacher starts digging and the mystery keeps getting bigger. When he finds out that the General's wife was killed by a burglar on the same evening, Reacher knows something is definitely wrong and he is somehow in the middle of it...

This was an enjoyable, engrossing novel. I was literally surprised about who had taken the General's briefcase until it was revealed at the end even though all of the facts were clearly laid out before me. My only consolation is that Reacher was just as surprised as I was.

Good read. I am going to start seriously reading this series.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Enemy (Jack Reacher)

BORDERLINE (The Arcadia Project #1) by Mishell Baker

An intriguing mix of the old to make something new

Published in March of 2016

The best cooks can take a couple of tired old recipes and do something special to mix them together and make something that feels like it is brand new.   

Mishell Baker has taken bits of several popular movies and thrown them together with a a couple of well-known book genres and created something entirely unique in Borderline. Take a handful of Jack Nicholson's 1974 classic movie Chinatown, fold it into Will Smith's Men in Black, add to it a pinch of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis and a giant handful of Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and you have an approximation of what this book is like. It is a crazy jumbled mess that comes pretty close to being brilliant.

Millie Roper is a former film student who shattered her body when she jumped off a building in an attempted suicide. She suffers from mental illness, has two prosthetic legs and is a very difficult person to get along with. She has grown weary of the mental health facility that she has been living in so she is intrigued when a stranger approaches her and recruits her to join the Arcadia Project. The Project is not explained well and, despite the fact that her therapist at the facility warns her away, Millie is intrigued and agrees to join the Arcadia Project.

Photo by Oreos

What is supposed to be a routine beginning at the Arcadia Project turns ugly as Millie discovers that a missing Hollywood movie star is also a visitor from another dimension. His home is full of mythical creatures like faeries and elves and travel back and forth is possible through a handful of portals. One of those portals is in the Los Angeles area and has long been a vital part of the Hollywood movie scene. But, a simple missing person case becomes something much more complicated and pushes her beyond her physical and emotional limits as Millie scrambles to stop an open war between our world and a world of unlimited powerful magic...

For me, the only thing that stopped this book from being a truly great book is the difficulty of its main character, Millie. Her mental illness often makes her a narcissistic, petty and childish. But, a premise of the book is that mentally ill people sometimes are able to see and understand things that others fail to notice because they don't approach things with the proper vantage point. So, Millie and her quirks are essential to make the book work but, ultimately, the book gets bogged down in them.

That being said, the book is something new and different, even it is made up of a whole lot of familiar items. If you are looking for a change of pace and you are a fan of sci-fi and fantasy this book should work nicely. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Borderline (The Arcadia Project)

BLOOD TRAIL (Joe Pickett #8) by C. J. Box

Published in 2008

Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett is still on special assignment from the Governor in Blood Trail. What this means is he has no home territory and is always on the edge of being fired But, he is kept around because he has a knack for solving big problems involving dangerous people.

Joe's strength does not come from his tracking ability (he's good but not great), or his ability as a crack shot (he's horrible with a pistol) or his abilities as an outdoorsman (he is very good but he is not a survivalist).

No - his strength comes from his own family and from a sense that the rules are important. Joe is a straight arrow who does all that he can to stay within the rules. IF he has break one of those rules, he does not rest easily.

Joe is called away from a long-needed session of household chores to a crime scene in a hunting camp. The only thing he knows is that it is a gruesome scene. The sheriff and the Warden that now covers his old territory race to the scene. When they arrive they find a hunter field dressed, having been dropped by a single shot from a rifle. Clearly, someone is trying to send an anti-hunting message.

At the same time, an anti-hunting activist shows up in town and calls attention to the murder. Soon, Joe's research uncovers earlier murders of hunters that were not so blatant but are clearly related and now the whole country knows that in Wyoming the hunters are now the hunted...

This is a gruesome but engrossing entry in this series. I figured out the mystery before the end (I am pretty sure everyone was supposed to figure it out) but I was very surprised at the methods used to flush out the murderer. Plus, there is a true (and quite gratifying) surprise at the end, almost as an epilogue. 

I rate this story 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Blood Trail (A Joe Pickett Novel)

BUNION DERBY: THE 1928 FOOTRACE ACROSS AMERICA (audiobook) by Charles B. Kastner

A Fascinating Story.

Published by University Press Audiobooks in 2015
Read by Andrew L. Barnes
Duration: 6 hours, 36 minutes
Unabridged

In 1928 a sports promoter named Charles C. Pyle had an interesting idea: a footrace across America - from Los Angeles to New York City. This race would be run in timed stages (like the Tour de France) with pre-planned stops along the way. The winner would get $10,000 and the first two-thirds of the race would highlight Route 66.

Pyle brought in legendary football player Red Grange as a celebrity promoter and made grand plans for each stop, including a travelling carnival. 

199 men paid the $100 entrance fee and started the race. 55 made it to the end. Along the way they ran, walked and even crawled through searing heat, snow, rain, dust storms, sleet and more. They also faced dog attacks, surges of crowds and the African-American runners faced racist threats in some states. A surprising number of runners were struck by cars. 

I was contacted to review Bunion Derby by the publisher in exchange for a free digital copy of the audiobook. I agreed, thinking that this book could be a real snoozer but if I were lucky it could be fairly interesting. I am glad to report that this book was more than just "interesting." I found it to be an extremely well-told story and I couldn't wait to get back to the audiobook to see what would happen next. 

The audiobook was read by Andrew L. Barnes. He has a folksy way of reading that makes the story that makes it seem less of a dry history and more of just a great tale full of interesting people that sheds a unique light on who America was in 1928. He makes it fun and, at times, poignant.

I highly recommend this audiobook.

5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Bunion Derby: The 1928 Footrace Across America.