DWD's Reviews

Published in 2014 by Dutton Adult (Penguin Group) Have you heard the stories of the engineer that invented the engine that gets 200 miles per gallon and the oil companies put a stop to it? Or, of the Japanese inventor that created the car that burns hydrogen from water but he suddenly disappeared? Or, the story that cold fusion really was invented but the energy companies nixed it? Well, that is the premise behind Influx by Daniel Suarez. The Bureau of Technology Control (BTC) is a secret government agency that was established to identify and isolate "disruptive" technologies - technologies that would seriously de-stabilize the world economy and/or the current social order. The inventors are imprisoned or, if they are willing to cooperate, allowed to develop their technologies for the good of the BTC. Now, imagine if the BTC's lead on technology kept on growing and the BTC started to disdain the government that it was supposed to report to (think about our own n...

Published as a Kindle e-book in 2012 by Pretur Estimated length: 28 pages The story starts with two friends in the modern world trying to move a washing machine from a basement. Suddenly, they are sucked into another world (no explanation) where they discover a typical medieval fantasy village after they rescue a captive princess. Turns out she was to be a sacrifice to a dragon and the dragon is no mood to be denied. One of the travelers from our world is a former U.S. Marine and somehow this enables him to be proficient with a sword and a bow and arrow. Actually, he is not just proficient - he is a master, as described in the title. I was not aware that the Marines trained in those weapons, but I have never been a Marine, what do I know? So, the young men do battle not once, but twice with unfamiliar weapons against the shocking might of a dragon while hampered with almost no character development, a story with the thinnest of plots and an absurd willingness on the part of e...

Originally published in 2012. Audiobook version published in 2013 by Post Hypnotic Press Read by Cameron MacDonald Duration: 9 hours, 45 minutes. Time travel science fiction can be tricky. Do you play it straight and have time traveler affecting the time line like   Blackout/All Clear   by Connie Willis? Or, do you play fast and loose with time travel and timelines like the Dr. Who series does? Personally, I like the stricter interpretation of time travel. I think the loose interpretation is like Robert Frost's famed comparison of free verse poetry to rhyming/metered poetry to "playing tennis without a net." I guess it comes from to many years of playing Role Playing Games as a kid - I tend to put myself in complicated plots and think about how I would get out. Unfortunately (for me at least), this book plays by a set of fast, loose and rather arbitrary rules about time travel and leaves its own plot open to its own internal inconsistencies - the entire story ...

Originally Published in 2010. Post Hypnotic Press audio version published in 2013. Read by Daniel Mate Duration: 1 hour, 34 minutes Canadian author Gail Bowen takes a break from her Joanne Kilbourn series to bring us Love You to Death , featuring Charlie D, a talk radio personality who works the late night shift. This is part of the Rapid Reads series by Orca Books. This is designed to be a set of exciting, short mysteries. On paper this book clocks in at 128 pages. Charlie D is working the night show on Valentine's Day. His guest is the boss's wife. The boss is an ancient man who has married the young, very elegant and very expensive prostitute he used to frequent. She is now very pregnant and being interviewed about her thoughts on love and relationships.  Meanwhile, the neighborhood around the station is now awash in threatening newsletters and posters that advocate getting rid of the local prostitutes in any way possible. These vigilantes are inspired by the right ...

This Thriller Does Not Have Much Sizzle Originally published in Germany in 2002. Re-published by Amazon Crossing in 2013. Translated from German to English by the author (Christoph Spielberg) and Christina Henry de Tessan Amazon.com's publishing house Amazon Crossing is designed to bring popular authors who do not write in English to an English-speaking audience. Award-winning German author Christoph Spielberg has brought his Dr. Hoffman series to this program. This series is quite popular in Germany, even spawning a series of made for TV movies. Dr. Hoffman is a wise-cracking doctor in a down and out hospital. He has just got done with a very long shift and was planning to head home after one more consultation in the Intensive Care Unit when a blind gunman with a bunch of explosive charges comes in with a seeing eye dog and takes the room hostage, along with two doctors, two nurses and several patients. While this would certainly seem to be an exciting premise for a...

Originally published in 2001. Published HighBridge Audio in 2013. Read by Simon Prebble Duration: 10 hours, 32 minute s Mark Billingham's Sleepyhead  is set in London and features a serial killer with a twist. Rather than actually trying to kill his victims, the attacker is trying to paralyze them by pinching a spot in their neck for nearly two minutes in an attempt to cause a stroke in the victim's brain stem. The result, if done right, is a person who cannot do anything more than blink even though their brain is entirely functional. This is difficult and the result has been a slew of dead young women and one "successful" victim who is forced to breathe on a ventilator in a hospital. Thanks to the inspired work of a coroner, the local police know what the attacker is trying to do - but they have no idea how to stop him. The star of the investigation is Detective Inspector Tom Thorne, a troubled middle-aged cop with his own demons. Due to a past failure, Tho...

Published in 2013 by Harper Audio Read by the author, Simon Winchester Duration: 13 hours, 33 minutes Simon Winchester's sprawling book, The Men Who United the States , tells a history of the United States organized around five themes: Wood, Earth, Water, Fire and Metal. To be honest, I largely ignored the themes and just enjoyed listening to this magnificent, chaotic, rambling history. Starting roughly with Lewis and Clark (Winchester backtracks a lot), the story of America is told through the tales of the people that made America a more perfect union through their explorations or their inventions. The reader (or listener if you are enjoying the audiobook) is told about Lewis and Clark and the Pony Express and the invention of the telegraph, the first transcontinental rail line, the exploration of the Grand Canyon, the role of New Harmony (Indiana) in the study of American geography,  a con game involving jewels, how George Washington toured the Frontier before he became pr...