Review: This book records the life and times of Enzo the dog. Enzo is part labrador, part poodle and german-shepherd, unofficially part terrier (because terriers are problem-solvers, and Enzo would like to believe that he comes from “a determined gene pool”) and wholly sagacious. Plucked as a pup from the lap of his mother by Denny Swift, Enzo becomes fast friends with his new owner. Frustrated by his lack of thumbs, lips that cannot pronounce words, and inability to sit on a toilet and flush it, Enzo works hard both to understand his master and to be understood. Surprisingly, television finally serves a useful purpose, and Enzo becomes assimilated to the urban world he inhabits through days spent watching T.V. while waiting for Denny to return home. The two share a common bond: race car driving. Denny possesses an uncanny ability behind the wheel, especially when weather conditions in the Pacific Northwest make track conditions far from ideal. The two, master and dog, share in Denny’s dream, but life gets in the way and they both must find ways to cope with the harrowing turns that are thrown at them. Read the rest of this entry »

Review: For three years Shadow has been biding his time in prison and waiting for the day when he can return home to the woman of his dreams, his wife Laura. Prison has neither broken him nor enlightened him, but it has taught him coin tricks. He has continued to maintain the same modicum of behavior: thoughtful, patient, observant. He moves through prison with minimal entropy, and although his sentence was six years, good behavior has gotten him three. But days before he gets out the warden calls him into his office, and Shadow finds out his wife was killed in a car accident. The world he knows crumbles beneath his feet. Read the rest of this entry »

City of Thieves

Review: Eggs. Why did it have to be eggs? In a Russian city under siege by German forces, food runs scarce and eggs seem to be the scarcest of all. A Russian commander plans a birthday celebration for his beautiful, ice-skating daughter, and amidst the chaos of the war, he wants the very best for his sweetest little lady. What birthday would be complete without a cake, and what cake would be complete without eggs. He finds two men, Lev and Kolya, to steal these eggs and gives them one week to do so.

Cost of eggs in Leningrad during WWII: your life.

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Review: Inside the country of India is a place called The Darkness. Here the people work in filthy conditions, live in sordid huts, and struggle for little. Rickshaw pullers wait by the road, emaciated and oppressed, waiting for the rich to buy their services. Corruption thrives like maggots in rotting flesh. Business men bribe police, landowners exact painful costs from their tenants, and teachers keep government funding for themselves. Balram, one of many poor children is one day labeled as a diamond in the rough. And, for the first time, he starts to dream of bigger things. Read the rest of this entry »

Review: There is a villain caged in the prison system with a laundry list of crimes against the world. His skin is impermeable to bullets. His movements are a blur. His mind operates at a level not seen since Einstein or Feynman. This is his twelfth incarceration and he is about to break out and try to conquer the world. Again. There was the time he hypnotized the President. The time he took over Chemical Bank. The time he imitated the Pope. The Senate was called to order but he froze them. He even held the Moon hostage. The Moon. He calls himself Doctor Impossible. The rest of the world knows him as as a supervillain.

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Review: The world has turned to gray. The sky remains the same color of leaden despair day after day. The ground smolders, powdered in ash and the charred remains of civilization. When night descends, the land is engulfed in a darkness more complete than anything one can imagine. At times there is the faint flicker of a light, solitary and weak, hopeful and hopeless. The light belongs to a boy and his father. The two travel through post-apocalyptic America on the concrete remnants of our vast highway system, pushing before them a grocery cart filled with their meager supplies. Read the rest of this entry »

Review: Mr. Norrell claims to be the only true magician left in England. His solitary life keeps him far and away from prying eyes, and he spends copious amounts of time in his personal library reading the books he’s accrued through monetary donations, bribery, threats, and other means of dubious nature. In the wee beginning of the book, he cows a sect of theoretical magicians into agreeing to give up their own innocent and uneffective research into magic. His lust for isolation matches his caution and arrogance, and he slowly begins to emerge as a force to be noted. An early act he performs to raise eyebrows involves literally giving life to a dead woman. His fame grinds to halt when he takes an apprentice: Jonathan Strange. Read the rest of this entry »

Review: The government has limited the number of children couples can have to two, but the Wiggin family has a third. Their first two children, Peter and Valentine, are geniuses, but their personalities are polar opposites. Peter harbors a sadistic soul while his sister Valentine projects benevolence and empathy. Their youngest sibling is Andrew Wiggin. Due to his status as a “third”, he is marginalized by his classmates and peers, and he serves as a constant reminder to his parents of their unorthodox situation. Meanwhile, the world is constantly vigilante against another alien attack by what are known as the “buggers”. The species, which resemble giant insects, launched devastating attacks on Earth years ago, and the government keeps the populace reminded of the potential for another assault. Read the rest of this entry »

Review: Henry DeTamble stumbles through time erratically and without control. An extremely rare disorder propels him unexpectedly in and out of time, and he struggles to deal with the chaos it creates in his life. Claire is the love of his life, a woman whose love endures while she copes with Henry’s disappearances as he flits in and out of the chronological progression she is a part of. Read the rest of this entry »