The Call of Earth

by Orson Scott Card
304 pgs  (Homecoming series #2)

The Call of Earth, book two in Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series, picks up right where The Memory of Earth left off. Nafai and the rest of Volemak's family, having been directed by the Oversoul through dreams to flee the city of Basilica, have begun their journey through the desert. General Moozh, using forbidden technology, has begun the systematic conquering of the surrounding cities in preparation for taking control of Basilica soon. All while many have begun having unsettling dreams. But these aren't sent by the Oversoul, these are sent by the Keeper of Earth, millions of light years away.

I enjoyed The Memory of Earth, but didn't think it was anything special, at least, not in comparison to Card's Ender series. I was pleased to find that The Call of Earth offered more promise than it did. It reinforced my decision to continue reading the series, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Midnight Sun

by Jo Nesbø
273 pgs

I get excited when an author, who writes a series I follow, comes out with a stand-alone book. It's ice to be introduced to a new character, with the understanding that everything the author is ever going to tell you about him or her is contained in this one single book. Nesbø, who has his fantastic series featuring Norwegian police detective Harry Hole, has done this a few times now.

Midnight Sun begins when Jon Hansen, who goes by "Ulf," gets off a bus in a small town near the Arctic Ocean in Norway. He's a small-time hashish dealer, who only began dealing in order to feed his own use of the drug, and he's living on the run, hiding from killers hired by a powerful drug lord known as the Fisherman he double crossed. Ulf is hoping this small town, where the sun doesn't set for six months of the year, will provide an ideal place for him to disappear.

But Ulf isn't there long before he begins to become infatuated with Lea, the daughter of the town's minister, and fond of her ten-year-old son Knut. They're devout members of the fundamentalist Lutheran sect in town, which makes for an interesting dynamic between them as their relationship grows, and it's their relationship that Nesbø places at the center of his story. Even as the action picks up and the Fisherman's men begin to close in on Ulf, his relationship with Lea and Knut remain the biggest part of Nesbø's story.

Midnight Sun is a quick, enjoyable book. Like Blood on Snow, Nesbø's last stand-alone book, it's shorter than any of the Harry Hole books, and focuses more on the relationships between characters than on the mysteries surrounding a crime. But it still showcases Nesbø's ability to tell a great story.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington

by Brad Meltzer & Josh Mensch
358 pgs

As a writer, Brad Meltzer has his strengths and his weaknesses. I'll start with the latter: his dialogue. I've never been impressed with it. In fact, I was so put off by it in The Inner Circle, that I didn't read another one of his books for seven years. If The Escape Artist hadn't been about Harry Houdini, whom I find fascinating, I probably wouldn't have picked that one up either. Where Meltzer shines, however, is in his ability to dig up interesting, and usually obscure, mysteries and conspiracies from our country's past and build an entertaining plot out of them.

So, when I heard about his latest book, a non-fiction story about a conspiracy to assassinate George Washington, I was pretty confident I was going to like it. It had what I was looking for in a Meltzer book, but, since it was non-fiction, it likely wouldn't have much dialogue written by him. Win-win.

Meltzer tells the story of the conspiracy, which was put into motion during the early months of the Revolutionary War, to kill General Washington. It involved the Governor of New York, who was one of many loyalists to Great Britain living among the colonies at the time, a group of counterfeiters, and an iron mill forman who recruited loyalists to the cause.

My initial assumptions about the book proved true. It showcases what Meltzer is bast at, with little need for what he's weak at. His account of this little-known piece of history is fascinating, and it left me wondering why I'd never heard anything about it before.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Hunger

by Alma Katsu
373 pgs

In The Hunger, Alma Katsu takes the story of the Donner Party, and adds an element of the supernatural to it. The result is an eerie, captivating story that will likely alter the way you think about that ill-fated group of pioneers going forward.

The book starts at the end of their story, when the small group of survivors is found, emaciated and near death, and then it jumps back to the start of their journey from Independence, Missouri in the late spring of 1846. It's clear Katsu tried to stay as true to the actual people in the Donner Party, and to the myriad of misfortunes they encountered, as she could, while simultaneously injecting the supernatural elements she devised into the narration. And it's the combination of both the fiction and the non-fiction that had me so entertained.

Everyone knows what the story of the Donner Party is all about, and to say anything specific about what Katsu added to it would only ruin it for others. So, I think it's best to leave it at that. It's definitely worth the read.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Snuff

by Terry Pratchett
378 pgs  (Discworld series #39)

In Terry Pratchett's 39th Discworld novel, Commander Sam Vimes is forced by his wife to take a break from the daily grind of policing Anhk-Morpork in order to take a holiday with her and their son to the countryside. Fortunately for Vimes, who an only take so much of the fresh air an crime-free days, things get interesting fairly quickly, as he starts to realize the small community hides a dark past.

Very soon after arriving, Vimes begins to notice how the locals act suspiciously anytime goblins are discussed. Vimes, who has employed goblins on the city's Nightwatch, and knowing them to be hardworking, dependable employees, has no issues with them, and considers them his equal. But it's clear the locals consider them vermin and a nuisance.

One evening, when Vimes comes across evidence that a goblin has been murdered, he knows it's up to him to investigate and get to the bottom of whatever secrets the community has been hiding for so long.

Snuff is the perfect example of what made Terry Pratchett such a fantastic writer. His humor was intelligent and witty, his story telling was fun and full of meaning, and he wasn't afraid to intertwine a side-story of Vimes's son's obsession with studying all things poo-related throughout the book.

I have two more books left in the series to read, a series I began reading about 25 years ago. Knowing it's coming to an end, and not because Terry Pratchett decided to end it, but because Alzheimer's decided to, left me feeling oddly melancholy when I finished Snuff, a feeling I'm sure will be repeated and heightened for those last two.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Saints: The Standard of Truth

586 pgs

A history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints covering 1815 - 1846.