The Hundred-Year Christmas

by David Morrell
96 pgs

I hadn't decided on a Christmas book to read this year until I learned about this old book written by David Morrell. It's a short novella, and nothing like the thrillers he usually writes, but it's heart-warming and equally appealing to adults and children. I read it to my seven-year-old son, and we both enjoyed it.

 Every hundred years, a new Santa is chosen. The old one selects his replacement during his hundredth year, and on that Christmas Eve, leaves this world by climbing and disappearing over a snowy hilltop by his home.

Every New Year's Eve, a new Father Time is born. He ages eight years every month, and on the very next New Year's Eve, he also climbs and disappears over that same snowy hilltop.

The Hundred-Year Christmas takes place during the current Santa's one hundredth year. He has a year to select his replacement before his time is up, but finding someone willing to serve in the iconic role is proving to be extremely difficult. But the search for his replacement isn't really the story Morrell is telling. The real story of the book is the relationship between the two men. One that lives his whole life in a year's time, and the other that watches those hundred lifetimes knowing the exact moment his own life will end.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Heist

by Daniel Silva
496 pgs  (Gabriel Allon series #14)

In this latest offering in Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series, Allon is called on to find the killer of an English diplomat named Jack Bradshaw. Julian Isherwood, an art dealer, and long-time associate of Allon, discovered the body of Bradshaw and is now being held as a suspect in his murder. Bradshaw, it has been learned, has been secretly trafficking priceless pieces of art stolen from museums and churches around the world for years and selling it to an unknown collector. The Italian police have threatened to accuse Isherwood of Bradshaw’s murder unless Allon is able to discover the identity of the true killer.

Allon soon discovers that Bradshaw’s murder is connected to the disappearance of Caravaggio’s famous, and long-lost masterpiece The Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence. Stolen in 1969 from the Sicilian church it had hung in for centuries, The Nativity has become one of the most famous and valuable missing pieces of art in history.   

In order for Allon to find the killer and free his friend, he must track down the masterpiece and uncover this mysterious and powerful art collector. As the story unfolds, and Allon and his team of Israeli operatives devise a plan to draw out the collector, Silva’s strengths as a storyteller are evidenced.

This is the 14^th book in the Allon series, and remarkably, Silva continues to keep the series as fresh and captivating as ever.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Revival

by Stephen King
403 pgs

Revival is the second book to be released by Stephen King this year. And while the first one, Mr. Mercedes was a departure from the type of book he's known for best, this one is a return to form. On the inside flap it says that the book has the most terrifying conclusion that King has ever written--a statement I don't agree with. But still, it's good to see that King can still write a scary story.

The book begins with young Jamie Morton, a six-year-old boy playing with his toy soldiers along the dirt path in front of his house in rural Maine. When a shadow falls over him, Jamie looks up and sees Charles Jacobs, the new minister in Jamie's town. It's the first time Jamie has ever met the new reverend, and while he has no way of knowing it at the time, it's the beginning of a fifty-year relationship that will drastically affect Jamie's life, and will end with an experience that will shake him to his core.

The reverend, who has always had a fascination with electricity, has discovered that while it can be deadly at times, it can also be used to cure people of certain ailments. The first time he uses it is on Jamie's brother, whom he's able to cure of an injury to his larynx that has left him speechless for weeks. Years later he uses it to help Jamie overcome a serious drug addiction. But Jamie soon realizes that the cure Jacobs provided him was accompanied by some unexpected and disturbing consequences. As Jamie begins looking into the lives of others who were cured by the reverend, he learns that others have been similarly affected.

Revival is nowhere near the best book King has ever written. But it's still a worthwhile read. I'm biased towards King's books, but I really think that an average book by him is better than the best books by most other authors.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Bone Clocks

by David Mitchell
624 pgs

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit this, but it's been quite awhile since I read one of David Mitchell's books. I read Ghostwritten and Number9Dream, his first two novels, over a decade ago, and then I unfortunately let him fall off of my author radar. The Bone Clocks has definitely put him back on it, and now I have some books that I missed and need to go back and read.

The Bone Clocks contains six separate stories, spanning sixty-plus years of one woman's life. The first story takes place in 1984 and introduces Holly Sykes, a fifteen-year-old who runs away from home after falling in love with an older man and infuriating her mother. Towards the end of that story Holly encounters a strange woman on the shores of a lake, whom she has a short, cryptic conversation with, and who introduces a supernatural element into the book.

As the remaining stories unfold, the supernatural aspects of the book increase, and we learn that Holly has become a part of a war that has been fought for thousands of years between two small groups of beings known as "atemporals." One group of these beings prey on children, taking over their bodies and living out that person's life until the body dies and they enter another child's body. The other faction lives forever as well, but does so through a form of reincarnation. As these stories play out, we're taken all over the world, and into a dystopian future world of 2043 as Holly's life repeatedly crosses paths with these atemporals.

Oftentimes when a book is categorized as fantasy, it automatically becomes inferior in the minds of many. They consider it a baser form of literature, not worthy of the same section in the bookstore as the books that they read. The Bone Clocks shines a light on just how ignorant that mentality is. David Mitchell has shown that some fantasy should be categorized in the same group along with the best books in any genre.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Another Man's Moccasins

by Craig Johnson
290 pgs  (Longmire series #4)

Another Man's Moccasins is the fourth book in Craig Johnson's ever-more-popular series featuring Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire. I enjoyed all three of the previous books in the series but with this one Johnson really seems to have hit his stride as an author. Its predecessors were all fun and entertaining murder mysteries, but with this one, Johnson adds another layer to his writing style.

Johnson tells two different stories, both mysteries, but separated by decades of Longmire's life in this book. In the present day, Walt is faced with investigating the death of a young Vietnamese girl whose body was dumped along the side of the highway. The prime suspect is an enormous Native American who has been living in a culvert underneath the freeway for several years. Walt discovers a picture on the young woman's body--a picture of himself as a young military inspector in Vietnam during the war. This picture forces Walt to replay in his memories a crime he investigated back in Vietnam in 1968.

As the book progresses, the story switches back and forth between the two times in Walt's life. Both investigations are captivating and the book as a whole is extremely well written, filled with moments of action and close calls. But I think the real accomplishment with this book is the added layer of humanity that Johnson is able to write into his protagonist. I'm a big fan of Johnson's creation, both in the books, and on the TV series, which hopefully will begin again soon. The character, as he's presented in this installment of the series is a major reason why he's so endearing.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Slow Regard of Silent Things

by Patrick Rothfuss
159 pgs

There are two "hands" when it comes to The Slow Regard of Silent Things, the newest offering to Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles. On the one hand, it's Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles, and I think it's safe to say that anyone who has read the first two books in the series has been salivating for this book to come out ever since he first mentioned it. I include myself in that group. On the other hand, this isn't really a book that fits into the series or that moves the story along from where The Wise Man's Fear left off. It's a novella and only has one character in it--Auri, who is only a minor side character in the other two books. Back to the first hand, it's beautifully written, and it gives you a much deeper insight into Auri and her solitary life in the tunnels of the Underthing. On the other hand, reading it was kind of like eating a fantastic appetizer, without ever being given the chance for an entrée.

In the Author's Note at the end of the book Rothfuss explains the genesis of the story, and how he really never intended for it to be published. He also talks about the fear he had when it was decided that it would be. As he's quick to admit, the book doesn't have any of the things people want to have in a book: dialogue, a plot, action, other characters, etc. And I'll admit that for the first half of the story I kept waiting for something to take place or for Kvothe to make an appearance. But when I finally figured out what it was that Rothfuss had written, even minus everything that I was hoping for when I began reading it, I gained an appreciation for what he had accomplished.

I mentioned earlier that it's beautifully written. It's clear that Rothfuss toils over his writing until he gets it exactly like he wants it. And the end result is the reason why so many of us are anxiously waiting for Kvothe's story to continue. In the meantime, this was still a fantastic appetizer.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Unlocked and Lock In

by John Scalzi
93 pgs, 334 pgs

I decided to review both Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome and Lock In by John Scalzi in the same review. The two books are inter-connected and meant to be read together, so it made sense to do so.

Unlocked is a novella that gives an account of a disease that sweeps across the globe sometime in the very near future, killing millions of people. The disease has three distinct stages that can affect people who become infected. The first stage comes with symptoms that are very similar to the flu. In fact, because it's so similar, it is able to spread rampantly when it first hits, because no one recognizes that there is anything unique about this disease, or more deadly than what they have experienced every year with the typical flu. The first stage sickens 2.75 billion people and ends up killing 400 million of them in just a matter of weeks. Some of those who survive stage one later experience stage two, and experience symptoms similar to meningitis, and of those, some progress to stage three--"Lock In."

Millions of people across the world go into "Lock In," a state of complete paralysis but fully aware, trapped in their body with no means of communicating with the rest of the world. When the First Lady goes into stage three, the disease claims its highest profile victim, and the disease gets its name. President Haden makes it the sole mission of his presidency to try to find a cure for Haden's Syndrome and to try to help those who are trapped in their useless bodies. Trillions of dollars are spent researching the brain, mapping it and trying to find a way to reconnect it to the body. They're unable to find a way for the brain to once again control the body, but they do develop an alternative--by implanting an artificial neural network into the brain, they're able to transmit the brain's impulses to artificial bodies that are able to move, talk, and get back out into the world.

Lock In begins 25 years after Haden's Syndrome forever changed the world. Millions of Haden's Syndrome sufferers have returned to the world in the form of highly-sophisticated robots referred to as "Threeps" which is a reference to C-3PO--the human-like robot from Star Wars. But Threeps are not the only new members of society. A very small group of those who contract Haden's, but then recover, experience a change to their brain that allows them "rent out" their bodies for a day to those who are Locked In and would like to once more experience those things that can only be done with a human body.

All that is just the fascinating backstory for the plot of Lock In. Narrated by Chris Shane, a brand-new FBI agent reporting to his first day on the job at the Bureau as the book begins--who just so happens to be a Haden. He and his partner, Agent Vann work for a division in the FBI that investigates crimes involving Hadens. On his very first day on the job they're called on to investigate a murder. On the surface it seems like a pretty straight forward case. But as they investigate the lives of those involved, Shane and Vann soon learn that there are powers at play behind the crime that are trying to once again change the landscape of the entire planet.

Scalzi's story is a fantastic example of what makes science fiction so much fun. It's intelligent, entertaining, thought-provoking, and in a time when Ebola is so prevalent in the news, it's more than a little bit eerie.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆