The Twelve

by Justin Cronin
568 pgs  (The Passage trilogy #2)

The Twelve is Justin Cronin's second book in his post-apocalyptic vampire trilogy that he began with The Passage. In the first book, twelve virals were created when the military, experimenting with creating a super-soldier, injected death-row inmates with a virus that enhanced both their mental and physical capabilities. Unsurprisingly, the virus had unintended consequences and the twelve men were also transformed into vampire-like creatures who subsequently escaped and brought about the end of America.

In The Twelve the story bounces back in forth in time, alternating between the present, shortly after the virals escaped and spread the virus to millions called dracs, and a hundred or so years into the future. In the present, people are trying to learn how to cope with the decimation all around them and the nightly threat of the dracs. In the future, a group of survivors is trying to hunt down the virals in order to destroy them and hopefully all their minions along with them.

I enjoyed The Twelve just as much as I did The Passage. Both books are written with a level of sophistication that is often missing in the genre. I've seen some reviewers make comparisons between these books and Stephen King's The Stand. I wouldn't go that far; in my opinion comparisons like that verge on sacrilegious, but I can see why some would try to compare the two. The scope of the story Cronin is telling here is quite large, so large in fact that at times I regretted having waited so long between reading the two books. I found it hard to keep track of who the characters were from the first book, and what they had done in it, even with the glossary of characters provided at the back of the book. I still highly recommend the series.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

To the Rescue--The Biography of Thomas S. Monson

by Heidi Swinton
588 pgs

As a member of the LDS church, and as an avid reader, I'm more than a little ashamed that I don't read more church-themed books. Even this book, which I was anxious to read when it came out three years ago, has sat on my bookshelf, or in a box, as a couple hundred other books leapfrogged ahead of it on my to-be-read list. I have no justifiable reason for it, but I'm resolved to do a better job of incorporating more of these "best books" going forward.

Part of the reason I decided to finally open this book when I did, was I wanted to come to know more about President Monson as an individual, and not just as one of the leaders of the Church. He has served as an apostle in the LDS church for more than 50 years now, which means every General Conference I've been able to listen to his messages and feel the Spirit that accompanies one with his calling. But I wanted to know more about the background and history of the man who today leads the LDS church.

President Monson truly is a remarkable man. He's a man whose love and respect for everyone is the same, regardless of whether they're members of the Church or not, heads of state, or an otherwise forgotten widow. His entire life's experiences have shaped him into the type of man he is today--the specific man chosen to lead the Lord's church on the earth today.

His biography was inspirational and motivational to read. It increased my love and respect for President Monson and all who consider him the Lord's mouthpiece on the earth today should read it.

Steelheart

by Brandon Sanderson
384 pgs  (The Reckoners series #1)

If you had superpowers, would you use them for good, or for evil?

In the first of a new series of books by Brandon Sanderson, he explores that idea, as a small minority of ordinary people one day inexplicably gain super powers.  Epics, as they become known, possess any one of a variety of these powers, but without exception, they all use them for their own selfish interests. The rest of humanity is left to live in a constant state of fear, trying to live their lives without become the next victim of an Epic's destruction.

Ten years ago David witnessed his father's death, as a particularly ruthless and seemingly invincible Epic known as Steelheart killed him along with almost everyone else who was there. David was the lone survivor of that event, and he escaped with not just his life, but with a secret as well, one that only he knows and which may change everything one day--Steelheart isn't invincible, he saw him bleed.

David dedicates the next ten years of his life to studying everything he can about Steelheart and every other Epic he can. He believes that the more he knows about the Epics, the better chance he has of discovering their weaknesses and maybe one day being able to avenge his father's death.

Normally I'm a very selfish reader, and when an author is writing a series that I really like, and then releases a book that's not part of that series, I tend to get irritated and question why they're not spending all their time writing the book I want them to write. But I think Sanderson is curing me of that attitude. While I'm anxiously awaiting the next in his Stormlight series, he's begun two additional series that quite honestly I'm almost as excited about reading.

Steelheart is a great book. It's written for a slightly younger audience, but that in no way detracts from how good a book it is. From what I can tell, the only significant difference between Sanderson's books for adults and young adults is the length of the book. The characters, action, and world building that Sanderson creates so well are all there no matter who his intended readers are. Buy the book for your teenager, but then borrow it afterwords.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Hollow City

by Dan Wells
333 pgs

The FBI are hunting a serial killer, a man known as the Redline Killer who, over the past two weeks has killed several people and removed their faces.

Michael Shipman is a twenty-year old paranoid schizophrenic who hears voices, sees faceless men, and who has a mortal fear of anything electronic. He believes that the faceless men are monitoring his thoughts and every movement through an implant in his brain that transmits his thoughts and his location through cell phones, and anything electronic.

When the story begins, Michael finds himself in a mental institution. He doesn't know how he got there nor can he remember the past two weeks of his life. He hadn't been taking his medications, and the FBI are interested in talking to him. It's a fantastic premise for a story.

Dan Wells has once again shown why he is one of the best at getting into your brain and messing around with it. He tells the story from the perspective of Michael and he masterfully uses Michael's schizophrenia to keep you guessing who and what in the book are real, and what are just the delusions of an unbalanced mind.

I loved his John Wayne Cleaver books and The Hollow City is another good one that I'll be recommending to many.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Bad Monkey

by Carl Hiaasen
317 pgs

Until recently, Andrew Yancy was an officer with the Miami Sheriff's Department. But for the past few months he's been relegated down to the position of Health Inspector, visiting the local eating establishments and either shutting them down, or writing them up for violations that cause his stomach to churn and which have led to some undesired weight loss. But a severed arm in his freezer may be his ticket back on to the force.

The arm, which had been reeled in by a vacationing fisherman, and which in classic Hiaasen fashion, was landed with the middle finger extended, appears to have belonged to a wealthy man currently under investigation for Medicare fraud. Yancy doesn't buy into the theory that the arm's owner was eaten by sharks when his boat capsized at sea and he's determined to prove that his wife killed him for the insurance money. Yancy believes that if he can prove his theory correct, that he'll no longer have to work on the "roach patrol" and can get his old job back on the force.

If that were a simple or straightforward task to accomplish, then it wouldn't be a story by Carl Hiaasen. Instead, Yancy has to deal with numerous surprises and a host of outlandish characters, including the monkey from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

Bad Monkey is Carl Hiaasen at his best. It's hilarious, bawdy, and highly entertaining. If you don't like Hiaasen's books, you won't like this one. But if you do, this one could be one of your favorites.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Long War

by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
422 pgs  (The Long Earth series #2)

I have an expectation when I read a series of books, it's that the series should get better with each successive book. My rationale is that over time the author has had more time to fully fleshed out the characters, the world they've created, and the story they're telling. So with that mindset, I was very excited to read The Long War. It's the sequel to The Long Earth, which while it took awhile for Pratchett and Baxter to get to the plot, was still a very entertaining and extremely imaginative story. Unfortunately this one fell flat, and well short of my expectations.

In The Long Earth it was discovered that the earth was just one of an infinite number of earths positioned linearly through space, and in the 21st century, the technology was developed that enabled mankind to "step" from one world to the next. Immediately the human population began to disburse to the other earths and many of the problems that existed on the original earth potentially were coming to an end.

The Long War begins 10 or so years after the events of The Long Earth and unfortunately as mankind has continued to spread across the Long Earth, so have its problems. The Governments of Earth are trying to claim ownership for their respective footprints on every earth, claiming their resources and collecting taxes from their citizens. Other sentient races that have been evolving across the Long Earth for billions of years are quickly starting to resent this new race of steppers and confrontations are inevitable.

These two are the only books I've ever read by Stephen Baxter, so I don't know much about his works. But I've read almost 40 books with Terry Pratchett's name on them and so I'm fairly confident in saying that I think this series is primarily Baxter's. Unfortunately there's little, if any, of Pratchett's humor and wit. The Long Earth, and Pratchett's Discworld are polar opposites. Once again the plot didn't show up until the last 70 pages or so and the rest of the story wanders aimlessly and uninterestingly for far too long. I'm hoping this series ends up being a trilogy and I can read one more book and get some closure. If it ends up going longer, I don't think I'll be sticking with it.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Never Cry Wolf

by Farley Mowatt
247 pgs

I've mentioned this before, but I don't read a lot of nonfiction, not that I don't enjoy it when I do read it. It's just that there are so many novels out there that I want to read, that I rarely take the time to read it. So why did I choose a memoir by a Canadian naturalist who studied and observed a den of wolves for several months? It's because of my dad. My dad has a whole shelf filled with books by Mowatt, and when I was about 10 years old, he had me watch the movie Never Cry Wolf which was based on his memoir. I thought it was great, and I probably rewatched the movie a dozen or so times growing up. So I finally got around to reading it.

Half a century or so ago the number of caribou in Northern Canada was declining rapidly. The Canadian government, believing the reports they were receiving from trappers and traders in the area, that the wolves were behind the decimation of the herds, sent Mowatt to live on the frozen tundra to substantiate the reports and to determine what needed to be done. Mowatt quickly found a den of wolves to observe and spent a spring, summer, and fall watching them day and night. The results of his observations might seem obvious to readers today, but they flew in the face of the common misconceptions of his time.

The wolves, as he observed, were highly intelligent and social animals. They lived in family groups with parents mating for life and spending years raising their pups. They subsisted for most of the warmer months on a diet of mice, fish, and other small animals, eating caribou primarily in the winter months only, when easier prey was unavailable. When the caribou were available, the wolves operated in accordance with the ideas of Darwin; they sought out the weak, injured, or frail from the herd and fed only on those. Instead of killing caribou indiscriminantly and out of a sense of blood thirst, as the reports were claiming, the wolves were ultimately responsible for maintaining the health of the herd through natural selection.

Never Cry Wolf is a fun, entertaining, and thoughtful book. Mowatt is a very endearing narrator who has an enjoyable sense of humor and whose affection for the wolves he spends so much time observing is evident throughout the book. His recounting of marking off his own territory based on the wolves' practices, or of using himself as the test subject for an experiment of whether a large mammal can truly live on a diet of mice alone, or of trying to explain himself to an Inuit tribe who catch him dissecting buckets full of wolf scat while wearing a gas mask are highlights of the book and explain why it's worth the short amount of time it takes to read this book.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆