The Abominable

by Dan Simmons
663 pgs


In 1924 the famous mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine disappeared during their third attempt to become the first men to summit the highest mountain on earth: Mt. Everest. Mallory and Irvine weren't the only men to try to summit Everest that year, and like them, others disappeared during their attempts as well. One year later, three men want to attempt to climb it and use the guise of locating the body of Percy Bromwell, the son of a wealthy widow in England who also went missing on Everest the year before, to obtain the funding and the permission to make their attempt.

As they make their climb up the mountain, they experience all of the challenges and face the extreme conditions that Everest presents and that have prevented all previous attempts up the mountain from being successful. But they also find a challenge that they weren't expecting--someone, or something, is following them and threatens not only the success of their attempt, but their lives as well.

Just as he did with Drood and The Terror Dan Simmons uses historical events as his backdrop and then uses them as he tells his highly entertaining and exciting story. Although the book takes awhile to really grab you and suck you in, once it does, the wait is well worth it. Just like with his other books, Simmons's level of research on this one is remarkable. His knowledge of climbing and mountaineering is astounding and it adds a level of detail and depth to the story that make it one of the most captivating books I've read in quite a long time.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The English Girl

by Daniel Silva
482 pgs  (Gabriel Allon series #13)

When the mistress of the British Prime Minister is abducted and a ransom of £10MM is demanded within one week or she dies and the Prime Minister's discretions are exposed, MI5 turns to its friend at Israeli Intelligence, Gabriel Allon to try to find her and bring her back quietly and alive. All they have to go off of is a sketchy description of a man she met while vacationing in Corsica shortly before her disappearance. It's a job that will require all of Allon's team's expertise and skills to accomplish. Their investigation takes them to Russia, and points them towards a former KGB agent whom they believe orchestrated her disappearance on behalf of very wealthy and powerful interests there.

I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating, Daniel Silva is one of the few authors I've read who have been able to consistently put out new stories featuring the same central character, without the stories becoming stale or repetitive. The English Girl is the thirteenth book featuring Gabriel Allon, and it, like its predecessors, is great.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The October List

by Jeffery Deaver
308pgs

The October List is Jeffery Deaver's attempt to write a mystery...in reverse. His idea was to start at the end of the story and have each successive chapter take place an hour or two earlier. An interesting idea, but a challenging one to pull off successfully, especially for an author known for misdirection and surprising twists in his books. How can you have an unexpected ending to a book that begins at the end and ends at the beginning?

At the beginning of the book (chapter 36) Gabriela McKenzie, the office manager for an investment company is waiting in her New York apartment to learn the fate of Sarah, her six-year-old daughter. Sarah was kidnapped a couple of days ago (or a few chapters later) and was being held for a ransom of $400K and an enigmatic list of her company's highest profile clients known as "The October List."

As each successive chapter unfolds, Deaver slowly reveals that things are not as straight forward as they first appear. Unfortunately his story gets bogged down by the method in which he tries to tell it. It's clever at times, but for me, the effort it took to read it in reverse chronological order, wasn't rewarded at the end...the beginning.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Words of Radiance

by Brandon Sanderson
1080 pgs  (The Stormlight Archive #2)

To give you an idea of just how far down the fantasy-geek-rabbit-hole I've descended, I decided I needed to reread The Way of Kings before starting Words of Radiance. That's saying something when each book is over 1,000 pages long. But I did it, and I'm glad I did. It had been about 3 ½ years since Sanderson wrote TWoK and with that much time having passed, I would have been spending a lot of mental energy trying to recall what happened in it while reading book 2 and I wouldn't have been able to enjoy it like I did. That being said, Sanderson has said that there won't be that much time between books going forward, which I'm going to hold him to. I will not let myself become the type of person that rereads a series from the beginning every time a new installment comes out--hopefully.

I'm not going to provide any type of summary of the book. It doesn't make sense to try to do so in my opinion. While it's a huge book, it's only a small part in a much bigger story that Sanderson is writing. Its scope is remarkable and Sanderson does a masterful job of telling it. Lots of times the downfall of large books like this is in their pacing. They take too long to get moving (Clancy) or they have repeated lulls in the story (Hugo). But Sanderson avoids those pitfalls by quickly jumping back and forth from multiple viewpoints to his story. He's also using each book to tell the backstory of a different central character. This way you don't get bogged down early in the series with the history of each of the main characters. In TWoK we learned Kaladin's story, in WoR we learn Shallan's. I'm hoping that book three will tell Szeth's--the assassin in white.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The Double

by George Pelecanos
292 pgs  (Spero Lucas series #2)

When The Double, a painting valued at over $200,000, goes missing from Grace Kinkaid's residence, she realizes that she's been the target of an elaborate hoax. She realizes that the man she recently met and fell in love with was not who he claimed to be and that all along he only had eyes for her painting. Now she wants her painting back and to exact revenge on her ex-boyfriend, and she's willing to pay thousands of dollars for both.

She's introduced to Spero Lucas, a veteran from Iraq who now puts his unique skills to use finding things for people willing to pay. His methods usually fall outside the parameters of the law and the job Grace Kinkaid offers him is right up his alley.

I'm a really big fan of Pelecanos, and I enjoyed The Cut, the book that introduced Lucas a lot. But this one was a little disappointing. The story was interesting, but it felt like Pelecanos went out of his way to show that his new central character is not your stereotypical hero. He's conflicted and at times amoral, not unusual for one of his main characters. But Lucas falls for a married woman in The Double and their repeated rendezvous quickly became a distraction from the story and they never ended up adding any value to it. I'm hopeful Pelecanos will right the ship if he brings Lucas back a third time.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Damned

by Chuck Palahniuk
427 pgs  (Madison Spencer series #1)

I don't gamble, but I can understand the allure of it to those who do. The disappointment from losing can be severe, even devastating at times. But the rewards and gratification from winning can be tremendous, enough to keep people doing it again and again, even when it's been awhile since they won. For me, picking up a Chuck Palahniuk book to read has been a lot like gambling; there have been some real disappointments recently (Pygmy and Tell-All) but it's the excitement of his earlier winners (Fight Club, Rant, Diary) that keep me coming back to the table for more. I'm hoping for that big payout again. Unfortunately, I didn't get it with Damned.

The book begins when 13-year-old Madison wakes up in hell--literally. She believes she died from a marijuana overdose and finds herself in a hell that is both horrific and humorous. A hell that could only have come from the mind of Chuck Palahniuk, full of people who don't wash their hands after using the bathroom, or who have used vulgarities more than the threshold allowed. It's where telemarketers work, calling the living during dinner time to complete surveys. She and the cellmates next to her: a jock, a rocker, a nerd, and a beauty (a kind of breakfast club group) embark on a tour of hell.

The book is written in epistolary form with each chapter beginning: "Are you there Satan? It's me Madison"--a Palahniuk-esque nod to a book for young girls by Judy Blume. In each chapter Madison describes hell as well as the life she lived before waking up there. She was the only child of mega-rich famous parents, and as such, had no chance for a normal childhood. 

Damned is a step in the right direction for Palahniuk after his last two missteps, but not a giant one. It has its moments and accomplishes what I think he set out to do when he wrote it--spotlighting some of the aspects of religion and the ideas of the afterlife that some people have. At times Palahniuk does his damnedest to try to gross you out with his vision of hell. But overall the book fell flat with me. His most recent book Doomed recently came out which is a sequel. I'll probably read it eventually. You never know, I might hit the jackpot with that one.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The King's Deception

by Steve Berry
409 pgs  (Cotton Malone series #8)

I always buy Steve Berry's books as soon as they come out, but I rarely read them right away. It's not that I don't enjoy them--I've enjoyed all of them. They're always entertaining and they involve some sort of little-known historical mystery or deception that Malone ends up getting dragged into at the risk of his life. Unfortunately, they're all fairly formulaic and so I don't find myself getting overly excited to read them. Instead, I get around to them when I feel like it.

This time around Malone finds himself enlisted by the CIA to investigate an historical mystery concerning Queen Elizabeth I. The CIA wants to blackmail the British government into stopping Scotland from releasing a Libyan terrorist who decades ago bombed a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie. The man is in the final stages of terminal cancer and is being released as a show of humanitarianism. The CIA is determined to prevent his release and only sees one way to do it--they need to prove that the reason the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty became known as "The Virgin Queen," was because she was secretly a man.

I know how it sounds. I laughed out loud when the theory was first presented in the book. But to Berry's credit, he's a master researcher, and does an excellent job of converting his readers to the idea before he finishes. I don't know that I'll ever be able to look at a portrait of her/him again without considering the idea.

In his usual fashion, Berry combines historical locales and mysteries with fairly fast-paced action and in the end produces a book that is entertaining, but expected. I'm hoping that he mixes things up a little soon. Maybe he could kill off a vital character (his son Gary?) and send Malone into a rage-induced revenge crusade or something; anything to add a little unpredictability to the series and keep me on my toes.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆