DWD's Reviews

An amazing tale, fascinating to this non-Catholic Christian (a review of the audiobook) Running time: 7 hours, 9 minutes 6 CDs Read by Kirsten Potter Let me start this review by saying three things: 1) I am not a Catholic (I am a Lutheran); 2) I have never left the faith in any meaningful way; 3) This is my first Anne Rice book - I've never even seen more than a tiny bit the Tom Cruise movie. I have never had much interest in the topic of Vampires and Vampire LeStat series was literally of no interest to me. When I noticed that Rice was writing the Christ the Lord series I had the same thought that she expressed in this book - what is she going to do to mess with Jesus? So, I ignored that as well. But, when I ran across this audiobook I suddenly grew interested and I was not disappointed. The book is broken into three general sections: her childhood in New Orleans, her college/career/atheism and her return to Catholicism. The childhood section is deeply descript

Very good despite a few little factual errors. Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) Some of these are really thought-provoking and well thought out. I especially enjoyed the one concerning Teddy Roosevelt following through with his plan to ban college football unless they did something to curb the extreme violence (23 young men died in the 1905 season). The consequences were interesting and I thought very plausible. The book is marred by a few factual errors. They really are not terribly important to the outcome of the author's alternate histories but show a sloppiness in editing. Some examples are placing the Revolutionary War fort of Kaskaskia in present-day Kentucky when it is actually in Illinois and saying that people blamed Lincoln's assassination on people who were wanting to revive the Union cause (obviously the Union cause was in great shape by the point of the war - I assume his editors did not catch it and he meant to say Confederate). Despite the errors, the b

OK thriller with a feature that irritated me to no end... A short summary: Set on the eve of the D-day invasion, the book features American Lt. Skeet Merrill and his ultra-lovely female spy partner, a Norwegian named Sigi Peterson. Their goal is to disrupt the German U-boats that are massing at a French shipyard in order to deploy against the Allied armada about to launch the invasion at Normandy. The book is full of intrigue all around - is the U-Boat captain truly a loyal German? What are Sigi's secret orders? Which members of the French Resistance can be trusted? Who will Sigi sleep with next? My review: It is a tolerable thriller with a very irritating feature about the writing - how the author treats a Dutch member of the French Resistance, Erika Vermeer. Erika is a lesbian - a fact that we are never allowed to forget since the author constantly refers to her as "the lesbian" (as in, "the lesbian crossed the room" and "the lesbian sat qui

A marked improvement in the series . This is part of a series of books about Jenny Cain and her police detective husband, Geoff. In most of the books, Cain runs a philanthropic organization. In this book, she has left the foundation and is casting about for the finances to start another foundation in order to help the people of the New England seaport city of Port Frederick. While this is happening her husband has a mysterious visit from a teenage boy who claims that Geoff is his biological father and he wants nothing to do with Geoff except that he use his position as a policeman to re-investigate the murder-suicide of his parents and come up with a different conclusion. This novel is mostly notable for the fact that its author makes a serious effort to raise the bar in this series of run-of-the-mill mysteries. What she's created here is an actual novel - full of themes and interesting trips into her character's psyches. This book has all of the necessary ingredients f

The Biographies Are A Bit Sparse. Published by Concordia Publishing House in 1996. Synopsis: Saints and Angels All Around is a series of short (2-3 pages each) biographies of 36 saints and 4 angels. The book is designed to be a daily devotional so preceding each biography there is a Bible verse and following each there is a short prayer and a suggestions for further prayer. My review: Since I did not read the book the way it was intended (one day at a time for each saint or angel) but instead plowed right through it, I found the book fairly tedious. I found a great number of the biographies to be too short and lacking some historical context (once again, the result of it being a daily devotional rather than a true written history of the saints). The exception was St. Laurence (Lawrence) who stood up to the Roman government with a great sense of humor. Laurence  (225-258 AD) was a deacon in the Church of Rome and was told to bring the Roman prefect the wealth of his chur

Non-stop action from start to finish. The Mullah's Storm is an action adventure set in Afghanistan. It features U.S. Air Force Major Michael Parson, a navigator of a C-130 Hercules transport plane and a female army interpreter named Sergeant Gold. The book starts on the run with the plane transporting a high value elderly mullah to the prison at Guantanamo Bay right before a once-in-a-lifetime snowstorm. But, on page 4 the plane gets hit by a handheld rocket and crashes. The survivors are attacked by Taliban forces who are trying to free the mullah. Gold, Parson and the reluctant Mullah flee the wreckage and the chase commences. Young has a great ability to describe action sequences so that the military layman can understand what is going on. A variety of weapons, tactics and pieces of technology are used throughout the book (including a nifty description of how airdrops are guided to the ground) and Young never made me feel lost.  The author, Thomas W. Young, who