LIQUID COOL: THE CYBERPUNK DETECTIVE SERIES (Liquid Cool Book 1) by Austin Dragon

Originally published in 2016.

Audiobook published by Well-Tailored books in 2024.

Read by Shamaan Casey

Duration: 11 hours, 54 minutes.

Unabridged.

Synopsis: 

Set in a future megalopolis called Metropolis, Liquid Cool is the story of Cruz, a young hustler that wants to become a private detective.

Cruz is mostly known for restoring vintage flying cars, his fedora hat, and his super attractive girlfriend that thinks he can be more than just a street hustler.

Cruz really wants to be a private detective, but obtaining a license from the city's convoluted bureaucracy is shockingly expensive. When a local boy turned millionaire offers Cruz the chance to do some detective work on the side, Cruz jumps at the opportunity. He picks up a how-to book from a famous private detective and starts to teach himself how to do the job.

After a few of these detective side gigs, an unknown benefactor offers Cruz an office and a secretary just like the ones that all of the film noir detectives have and he opens "Liquid Cool" - a detective service that cannot legally call itself a detective service because Cruz cannot afford the license.

And that's when the trouble really starts...

My Review:

This book was simply not very good. It has the basis of a good story, but it needs to be thoroughly edited. I listened to this as an audiobook and literally hours could be cut out of it. 

I know that Dragon is world building in Book 1 of what has become an eleven book series, but he introduces what feels like hundreds of characters in what seems to be an effort to have Cruz visit every corner of Metropolis just to show the reader this vision of the future. It is clear that this book was written to have sequels follow - save some of the world building for those books.

But, I had so many questions that were never answered.

For example, why is it literally always raining in Metropolis. ALWAYS. Even cities famous for their rain like London and Seattle have sunny days, but Metropolis never does. Was it due to environmental catastrophe, a nuclear war, a weather control system that was broken? Who knows.

Also, why is it such a big deal that some people own their apartments due to inheritance? This is mentioned multiple times as if it were vitally important and I never figured out why? It was part of some historically earlier troubles that led to the government structure that Metropolis has, but it is just left at that. No description of the troubles, no explanation of the apartment ownership thing. A good editor would make a note of this and it could be edited out or actually explained.

I Mentioned that I listened to this as an audiobook. It's pretty hard to make notes of egregiously bad writing when you are driving around, but I did catch these two gems that are within two minutes of one another:

"The events not only happened in close proximity, but they happened on top of each other."

"I was burning through money like a billion sheet roll of toilet paper in the center of the sun."

The audiobook was read by Shamaan Casey, an audiobook reader with quite a few projects under his belt. He did a good job with the voices and the narration.

The author did a good thing by finding a good narrator. Now, he needs to find a good editor to help this book shine.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It gets 2 stars and not 1 star because I did care about how the mystery resolved itself.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: LIQUID COOL: THE CYBERPUNK DETECTIVE SERIES (Liquid Cool Book 1) by Austin Dragon.

Note: I was sent an digital copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

BREAKFAST of CHAMPIONS or GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Originally published in 1973.

Breakfast of Champions, to me, is the second most well-known Vonnegut novel after Slaughterhouse-Five. 

The plot of this story is deceptively simple and the writing style is not complicated - but this story has a lot going on.

There are three main characters. One is Dwayne Hoover, a very successful owner of a Pontiac car dealership from Midland, Ohio and numerous other small businesses. He is by far the most successful man in town. He helps bankroll a fine arts festival that the town helps will make them known as a cultural center. He is also going crazy.

The fine arts festival has invited Kilgore Trout, a recurring character from other Vonnegut novels, to be the star of the arts festival. Trout is a prolific, but unsuccessful author. He is published, but only by publishers of porn novels. They use his books as a way to make their books seem more legit, kind of like Playboy used "the articles" to make the magazine seem classier. Trout iis so unsuccessful as an author that he literally has to hitchhike from New York City to Midland. 

The third character is the narrator. The narrator is the author of the book and, I presume, the narrator is Vonnegut himself. The narrator has filled the book with his line drawings. Sometimes, the narrator uses the pictures to move the plot along, sometimes he uses it to avoid describing something, and sometimes he just throws in an illustration for the heck of it. 

The book is constantly moving to the point where all three characters meet in a hotel bar...

Vonnegut famously graded his own books in report card style. He gave Breakfast of Champions a C. 

I disagree, even though I have had a hard time coming up with a rating for this novel. This novel is too unique to be a middle of the road "C". It is often juvenile (Vonnegut spends a lot of time talking about penises, he has a drawing of his anus) but it is very Meta in the way the author is a character in his own story. Plus, the quirky illustrations add a certain charm.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Breakfast of Champions. 

BETTY WHITE: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2024 by Hourly History.

Betty White was a staple of the American entertainment scene for literal decades. She was on multiple highly-rated TV shows, was a regular on several classic game shows, guested on dozens of TV shows, and even made one of the most popular Super Bowl commercials of all time. 

This short e-book gives the outline of her nearly 70 year career. It's pretty much a "just the facts" sort of book due to the limitations of this book series. Eech history and biography published by Hourly History is designed to be read in about an hour and the sheer length of Betty White's career means that the depth of this biography is fairly limited. 

Even if it is limited, I still found this biography to be enjoyable. I rate this e-book 4 stars our of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Betty White: A Life from Beginning to End.

WELCOMING the STRANGER: JUSTICE, COMPASSION, and TRUTH in the IMMIGRATION DEBATE by Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang

Published in 2018 by IVP.

A few years ago I was determined to learn a lot about immigration in the United States. I bought Welcoming the Stranger during that time, but I put it aside because the other books I had read were, to put it simply, not good. 

So, this book went into the dreaded to-be-read pile, and it might have stayed there forever except for the reelection of President Trump. His actions to fight immigration of just about any sort prompted me to pick up this book and learn a little more about the immigration system.

Even though this book was written in 2018, just 7 years ago, some parts of it felt hopelessly out of date thanks to Trump's relentless push against so many norms, rules, and laws in 2025 when it comes to immigration. 

The basics are there, however, so the book does have value as a primer on immigration. But, the book is more than that - it is a Christian look at this issue because the authors work for World Relief, a Christian organization that works with refugees around the world and helps immigrants seeking asylum in the United States. Their budget was decimated when the DOGE cuts came after USAID funding in January of 2025.

Even though this book was written long before that, its look at what the Bible teaches about how to deal with foreign people living among God's people. The book is actually designed to be used as a small group Bible study - there are discussion questions included in the back.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion, and Truth in the Immigration Debate.

THE PRICE YOU PAY (Peter Ash #8) (audiobook) by Nick Petrie

Published in 2024 by Penguin Audio.
Read by Stephen Mendel.
Duration: 13 hours, 18 minutes,
Unabridged.

Almost every book of this series follows this model:

1) Peter Ash, a retired Marine, travels the backroads of America in an effort to deal with his PTSD from his service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Peter is more than competent in a fight and he is much smarter than the average wandering do-gooder. Despite these advantages, he eventually runs into a person that needs so much help that even Peter can't take care of it. 

2) At that point he calls his friend and business partner Lewis for backup. Lewis is also a former soldier, but his post-Army life is much more checkered. The details have always been been kept shrouded in mystery, but everyone knows that it was a criminal enterprise. 

3) Lewis shows up with a whole lot of guns and his special talents for mayhem and destruction. Peter and Lewis save the day going forth and kicking butt.

*****

It's a formula, but I like the formula. It's time-honored and has been used in plenty of other series. The main character calls in their mysterious friend to help finish the fight. Robert Parker's Spenser called Hawk for backup. Robert Crais' Elvis Cole calls Joe Pike. C.J. Box's Joe Picket calls Nate Romanowski. Peter Ash calls Lewis. 

This time it's different. This time Lewis comes to Peter Ash and asks for help in the first few minutes of this audiobook.

Peter drops everything and they head off to the frozen woods of northern Wisconsin to meet with a old member of Lewis' crew from back in the bad old days. They soon find out that someone from the bad old days is tracking down Lewis and his old crew and looking for revenge...

*****

The action is top notch, and even though some of the scenes are a bit ridiculous (the computer hacker scene, for example). That being said, I quickly plowed through this audiobook. The action is compelling, the bad guys are truly bad.

Stephen Mendel's reading was excellent. He covered a wide variety of accents like a trooper and his female voices are quite good.

i rate this audiobook a weak 5 stars out of 5 - if it were a letter grade, it would be an A-.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Price You Pay by Nick Petrie.

THE FEARLESS BENJAMIN LAY: THE QUAKER DWARF WHO BECAME the FIRST REVOLUTIONARY ABOLITIONIST (audiobook) by Marcus Rediker

Published in 2017 by Brilliance Audio.
Read by Cornell Womack.
Duration: 7 hours, 2 minutes.
Unabridged.

As the title states, Benjamin Lay (1682-1759) was indeed a Quaker and a dwarf. He grew up in the Quaker faith in England, learned how to spin cloth and sew gloves and then took those skills to see and became a sailor. Eventually, he settled in Barbados and became a merchant. Barbados was a plantation colony and Lay got to know several of the slaves and their owners and the experience turned him into an abolitionist, a concept that was nearly unknown in a world where slavery was commonplace.

Lay moved to Philadelphia and naturally joined the local Quakers. Lay had always been an agitator back in England and was often in trouble with local church officials for questioning what they were teaching. Now, he ramped things up considerably in the hopes of convincing the Quakers that slavery was an evil that should not be tolerated in their midst.

He published an anti-slavery book that was published by Benjamin Franklin - a fact that Franklin kept secret because being anti-slavery was a radical idea. Later, Franklin himself became a public face for anti-slavery but Lay was far ahead of him.

Lay also protested physically and verbally at every Quaker meeting (service) that he attended. He called out the slave owners by name and was often punished for it.

He ended up living in a little hut on the edge of Philadelphia where he refined his beliefs ever further and became a vegan because he did not want to harm any living creature.

This bare bones outline of his life seems radical and interesting, but the presentation in the book was not. This is one of those biographies that seeks to include every detail of its subject's life and in doing so becomes his or her definitive biography. It's a worthy goal, but the first 2-3 hours of this book featured a whole lot of citations of church paperwork about whether or not Benjamin Lay was in good standing or not and what he would have to do to return to good standing. It was tedious. 

The reading by Cornell Womack was subpar. He has a distinctive voice, but he often reads mundane things (like lists) as if they are dramatic moments. It got old, especially when combined with the excessive detail.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL by Kurt Vonnegut and Ryan North.

Adapted by Ryan North.
Illustrated by Albert Monteys.

Graphic novel published in 2020 by Archaia. 
Original novel published in 1969.

This is my third review of Slaughterhouse-Five. I've reviewed the audiobook, the written novel, and now the graphic novel. 

All are different, of course. I've given 5 out of 5 stars to every version, but the graphic novel is the weakest of the three. It's a good graphic novel, but it seemed a little thin when compared to the novel. It's good for its medium.

I'm not going to review the plot of one of the most famous anti-war books of the last century - it's too well-known for that. Vonnegut can be weird, but he's always approachable. He writes in an friendly, easy to follow style, no matter if it is the audiobook, the written novel, or this graphic novel.

But, if the very idea of reading this book intimidates you, read the graphic novel. It hits the main plot points and it would certainly support you if you went ahead and read the novel at some points afterwards.

I very much enjoyed the style of the art in this graphic novel. I think Albert Monteys did an exceptionally good job of making the art clear, clean, and easy to follow. Let's face it, the story goes all over the place - the art did not need to add to the confusion. I really liked the way he drew the Tralfamadorians.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Slaughterhouse-Five: The Graphic Novel.

Note: This book has been challenged multiple times over the last 50 years for sexual content, foul language and teaching principles contrary to the Bible. Amazingly, it has stayed on "banned books" lists for more than 50 years. The graphic novel is no different. It made a banned book list in Florida and in Missouri and other places as well (Texas, Utah, and Iowa - to name a few.)

Note: This book was put on book ban lists in Tennessee in multiple counties in 2025. The article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles

To its credit, the Vonnegut Museum in Indianapolis has a history of sending free copies of Slaughterhouse-Five to students at schools where the book has been banned.