Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.
Think about using it yourselves!
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Eternal Sonata: A Thriller of the Near Future by Jamie Metzl
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A few dead bodies are a small price to pay in the quest for immortality.
In 2025 America, it’s hardly news when a renowned octogenarian scientist dying of cancer disappears from a local hospice, but when Kansas City Star reporter Rich Azadian begins to dig, he discovers that other elderly scientists around the world have also vanished recently—all terminally ill and receiving the same experimental treatment from a global health company. His investigation leads him to the reclusive Noam Heller, a brilliant researcher exploring new technologies to reverse-age cancer and other cells. Using revolutionary stem cell treatments and snippets of DNA from rare, immortal Arctic jellyfish, his breakthrough promises the genetic equivalent of the fountain of youth.
But when Heller is murdered and his lab destroyed, Rich and his girlfriend Antonia become targets themselves. With the local police and federal authorities failing to see the big picture, he realizes he must take matters into his own hands to survive and stop the killing. His only hope is to mobilize his network of brilliant misfits and infiltrate the vast and lethal race—among cutthroat corporations, national intelligence services, rogue scientists, and a mysterious international organization—to control the new technologies and perhaps the secret of life itself.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Plausible-enough technothriller set in 2025, only ten years after it was written. Events have, um, overtaken the planned shocking stuff...I've had multiple mRNA vaccines developed in a matter of months to help me fight off a lethal plague, so this posited accelerated medical-research stuff isn't as impressive as it would've been just a short time ago.
The thriller parts, featuring intrepid reporter Rich Azadian and his gal-pal Antonia Hewitt, are solidly paced. Alzheimer's research shading into immortality research worked well as a spine for the thrillery bits. Fast paced, Pattersonesque chapters plus dialogue and descriptions that are very focused and taut lead me to wonder why y'all haven't bought millions of 'em. The author's voice works, the plot speeds, and the stakes are convincing. Don't wait, thriller readers.
The Kindle edition is only $2.99 (non-affiliate Amazon link) and well worth the price.
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The Helpline by Katherine Collette
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: An eccentric woman who is great with numbers—but not so great with people—realizes it’s up to her to pull a community together in this charming, big-hearted debut perfect for fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and The Rosie Project.
Germaine Johnson doesn’t need friends. She has her work and her Sudoku puzzles. Until, that is, an incident at her insurance company leaves her jobless—and it turns out that there are very few openings these days for senior mathematicians with zero people skills.
Soon enough though, Germaine manages to secure a position at City Hall answering calls on the Senior Citizens Helpline. But it turns out that the mayor has something else in mind for Germaine: a secret project involving the troublemakers at the senior citizens center and their feud with the neighboring golf club—which happens to be run by the dashing yet disgraced national Sudoku champion, Don Thomas, a celebrity of the highest order to Germaine.
Don and the mayor want the senior center closed down and at first, Germaine is dedicated to helping them out—it makes sense mathematically, after all. But when Germaine actually gets to know the group of elderly rebels at the senior center, they open her eyes to a life outside of boxes and numbers and for the first time ever, Germaine realizes she may have miscalculated.
Filled with an eccentric, totally unique, and (occasionally) cranky cast of characters you can’t help but love, The Helpline is a feel-good page-turner that will make you reexamine what it means to lead a happy life—and is bound to capture your heart along the way.
I SNAGGED THIS FROM MY LOCAL LITTLE FREE LIBRARY! (then gave it back)
My Review: As a value proposition, this read was outstanding...Little Free Library finds don't get better than this. And the weekend I found it, I also found out it's got a follow-up coming out early in May 2023! The characters and the story were exactly, precisely delineated with my sense of humor in mind. The writing's got that wry, amused-that-you're-amused edge that I appreciate and approve of. If you need something to scratch Loretta Nyhan or Christopher Brookmyre itch, try this one on for size. Bonus: Australian setting, meaning the atmospherics are enough different from US stories to add another edge. (PS I disagree about the Oliphant book's comparability, since I found it unpleasant; Dear Mrs. Bird is much closer to the vibe you'll get, I think.)
The Kindle edition is $12.99 (non-affiliate Amazon link) should your library not have one.
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The Trouble with Tribbles: The Story Behind Star Trek's Most Popular Episode by David Gerrold
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: David Gerrold, the creator of "Tribbles," recalls how this popular episode of Star Trek was made, from conceptualizing the first draft to the final script, shooting on set, and explaining the techniques and disciplines of TV writing. Plus, receive 32 pages of photos, original illustrations by Tim Kirk, and much more!
My Review: Start with this excellent advice:
Taking something seriously means immersing yourself in it and treating it with respect and making it part of yourself.
–and–
Once you make a decision to do something or to be something, start preparing for it immediately.
The mix of advice and anecdote, of trivia and trivialities that absolutely make a fanboy's day, make this a perfect package of fan service with a redeeming dose of wisdom. It's a terrific gift for a young Trek fan, or someone seeking a blow-by-blow of television's peculiar ways with words.
It's only $4.99 on Kindle and frequently on sale for less. (non-affiliate Amazon link)
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Out of the Cage by Fernanda García Lao (tr. Will Vanderhyden)
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Out of the Cage opens in 1956, in Argentina, with the freakish death of Aurora Berro, and descends into a dark philosophical exploration of humanity and mortality. In the midst of her family’s celebration of a national holiday, an LP, careening through the air like a “demented boomerang,” severs her jugular. Her family—an agglomeration of perversions, deformities, and obsessions—seems at first not to notice, singing on. Aurora is left behind in a voyeuristic limbo as an omniscient first-person narrator, to observe the depravity of her family and reflect on the farce of her life and human existence.
Fernanda García Lao has been called “the strangest writer of Argentine literature,” and in Out of the Cage, she lives up to that distinction. The book is saturated in strangeness, a blend of formal experimentation, eroticism, grotesque theatricality, and dark humor that evokes the absurdist fictions of Witold Gombrowicz and the style of Silvina Ocampo. The result is a macabre and fantastic vaudeville, a tragicomedy, a kind of Dadaist opus against ideas of eternal beauty and fixed identity, against absolute concepts and universality.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Whatever you're thinking about this book from its cover and/or title, stop thinking it now. Aurora is our cicerone through a family of grotesques, a collection of tics and crotchets defined by their obsessive, angry sexual energy. They—Aurora's husband and conjoined-twin sons—are locked inside a bizarrely passionate, deeply damaged psychosexual cyst on Argentina's Body Politic...and that is the clue to what this book is on about. Noting the years in which this hideous agglomeration of sideshow freaks...brothers locked in sibling rivalry inside one body, a father who manufactures a glamourous Lana Turner sex doll to replace the wife he's simply forgotten has died...the next generation, son of a prostitute fathered by one of those men...all take place in 1956 (post-Perón), 1975 (Los Desaparecidos and the Dirty War), and 1989 (hyperinflation and Menem's economic crisis). Major turning points in the history of the country, all embodied in the person of Aurora of the truly peculiar death and even weirder substitution, Norma the pregnant prostitute with the paralyzed leg seeking one of the Berro men's support for her child, then finally Severino the child of Norma and ...?... left to make sense of the previous generations' mishegas and puerility.
It's $9.95 on Kindle, or $15.95 in trade paper form (non-affiliate Amazon link). I can't recommend it to the sexually prudish, or the easily distracted. It was ably, and intelligently, translated by Will Vanderhyden.
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A Tale of Two Omars: A Memoir of Family, Revolution, and Coming Out During the Arab Spring by Omar Sharif Jr.
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: The grandson of Hollywood royalty on his father’s side and Holocaust survivors on his mother’s, Omar Sharif Jr. learned early on how to move between worlds, from the Montreal suburbs to the glamorous orbit of his grandparents’ Cairo. His famous name always protected him wherever he went. When, in the wake of the Arab Spring, he made the difficult decision to come out in the pages of The Advocate, he knew his life would forever change. What he didn’t expect was the backlash that followed.
From bullying, to illness, attempted suicide, becoming a victim of sex trafficking, death threats by the thousands, revolution and never being able to return to a country he once called home, Omar Sharif Jr. has overcome more challenges than one might imagine. Drawing on the lessons he learned from both sides of his family, A Tale of Two Omars charts the course of an iconoclastic life, revealing in the process the struggles and successes that attend a public journey of self-acceptance and a life dedicated in service to others.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Everyone, no matter their looks, their socioeconomic status, or their talents, has got somethin' to carry that just won't quit hurting them. In Omar Sharif Jr.'s case, it was a lot of things based on expectations he was not going to meet and things he simply couldn't see how to fix or avoid. Yes, his life was privileged compared to most lives; yes, he had a lot of advantages that he seems to shrug off as unimportant; but in the end he was a damaged gay kid who fell for traps and snares that did him harm.
The happier part of the story is the gentleman's QUILTBAG advocacy in a country very much on the bubble socially. Egypt's neighbors are not especially stable democratic societies and that has an impact on the country's ability to deal effectively with its unpopular minorities fairly and equitably. To his credit, Sharif is in the trenches swinging his ax at the offenders and working his hardest to fix his chosen corner of the world. Very clichéd writing doesn't dull the gleam of his message of hope and his call to act, to support our QUILTBAG siblings around the world.
It's $11.99 on Kindle, or $26.00 in hardcover (non-affiliate Amazon link).
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Reality Testing (Sundown, #1) by Grant Price
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Welcome to Berlin. Population: desperate. In the throes of the climate crisis the green tech pioneers are king, and if you aren't willing to be their serf then you're surplus to requirements.
Carbon credit for sleeping on the job. That's the offer a dreamtech puts to Mara Kinzig, and she jumps on it. After all, the city ain't getting any cheaper.
Then somebody changes the deal while she's dreaming in the tank.
Now Mara has a body on her hands, an extra voice in her head, and the law on her tail. Only the Vanguard, a Foreign Legion of outcasts seeking an alternative path in the dust between the city states, might be able to help her figure out what went wrong. First, though, she'll have to escape the seething streets of Berlin alive.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Another day, another dystopia. SF loves its dystopias, almost as much as YA does. The reason I rated this one three-and-a-half stars out of five is simple: I like the lesbian lead. She is a cool soul, struggling to make sense of her life while living it in a Grim New World that won't ever let her up or give her a break...and she doesn't carry that weight like it's a burden. She wants better for herself and her loved ones, like all people I've ever known. Daniel, another PoV, wasn't to my liking when I met him but he was compelling, driven by understandable needs and wants. He grows into someone I never expected him to be.
Also terrifically effective was the worldbuilding's slow-burn sensitivity to the plot. Permaybehaps the hardest adjustment was to the mixed slang spoken throughout, a heady brew of Chinese and German and so on and so forth. It's well deployed but still requires effort from the reader. We're in a climate-changed Berlin, a place not hugely resilient or possessed of reserves of natural diversity even now. Technology, that savior of all saviors, is pervasive in this climate-stressed world; I'd even say rampant. Its "blessings" are, as ever, unequally bestowed and frequently mitigated to the point of not being helpful.
A cyberpunk thriller draped over a mystery plot, it's $4.99 on Kindle or $16.95 tree book (too much IMO) {non-affiliate Amazon link} and worth the time, and the money.
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Jabberwocky: A Novella by Theodore Singer
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: A double award winner! Best Novella in both the 2016 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and the 2016 Best Indie Book Awards!
Inspired by the Lewis Carroll poem, this is a dreamlike fantasy quest through strange landscapes, where the hero gradually grows into an understanding of himself and the true nature of the quest.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: A kind of mashup of Lewis Carroll's poem of the same name, his Alice in Wonderland series, and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books. The protagonist, Astreus, sets out on a quest and discovers that all is not as he believed it to be, and that must be the basis of his decision to act or not. I don't think anyone who's read much surrealist fantasy fiction will find anything new here, but it's nicely done and entertainingly silly. Don't think too hard...go with the story-logic, ride the waves, and enjoy.
It's 99¢ on Kindle and $5.99 tree book version (non-affiliate Amazon link), so it won't break the bank and will raise a smile or two.
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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!
As she says:
People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.
So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.
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Rivers of Gold: A Novel by Adam Dunn
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: RIVERS OF GOLD is the first in the "More" series of dystopian thrillers featuring MARSOC operator Everett "Ever" More and NYPD Detective Sixto Santiago. The series is set in the Second Great Depression. The primary locale is New York City. The economy is shattered, the government is helpless, and crime and disease run rampant. An underground party circuit has developed, wherein rival cartels use a network of taxicabs to move contraband around the city. The only remaining obstacle to complete mobocracy is an experimental NYPD unit which relies on tough undercover detectives in taxicabs who try to keep the rising tide of chaos at bay. Detective Sixto Santiago is one of these cops, who is grudgingly partnered with a newcomer named Everett More, who does not seem to be aware of any rules governing police conduct. The brutal murder of a cab driver draws them into an increasingly complex investigation that eventually gives them a lead into the gang war between the party cartels. But as the case grows seedier and more dangerous, Santiago is forced to investigate his own partner, and is shocked to discover he is part of a covert CIA operation to infiltrate the NYPD. More is no cop he is something altogether more dangerous. But he is the only one Santiago can rely upon when their case leads them to the rising stars of New York's underworld, whose connections range from immigrant cab drivers to the captains of the finance industry.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY.
My Review: At 18%, Renny (our narrator) says:
The best/worst news is that Tony Quinones will be back from Cannes in time to be our stylist. Tony Q did the costumes for The Snake, a drama about a love triangle of gay sewage workers in Manila that's this year's odds-on favorite for the Palme d'Or. Tony is the kind of gay caricature who gives other gays a bad name (though he's always good for a few Specials for himself and his so-called Queue-terie.)
"Specials" are the narrator's other-career products: Drugs. My. How very edgy of the author, no?
Then, at 30%, Renny (our narrator) says:
She softly aligns her fingernails in perfect formation along my scrotal seam and arcs the tip of her tongue unerringly into my urethra.
My God, this girl.
And I realized how very much has changed since I downloaded this book in 2016; and how much MORE has changed since it was first written, and published by Bloomsbury, in 2008.
And I am so, so glad it has. I hate the homophobia; I hate the sexism (I excerpted the least condescending one I could I find); I hate the endlessly mindlessly habituated into lazy writers' heads use of New York City as dystopia-in-waiting. Use Birmingham, or Wichita, or Salt Lake City for a change.
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Truck Stop Earth by Michael A. Armstrong
Rating: 2* of five, and I feel damned magnanimous about giving it so much
The Publisher Says: Read about the mother of all alien bases! The big one, the mega-base, the center of the Alien Occupation Government: the headquarters, the brain, the nerve center, the absolute pinpoint big base, is right here on Earth, just outside Della, Alaska. Forget Roswell. Forget Machu Picchu. Forget Stonehenge and Tikal and all those alleged alien bases -- abandoned, every one of them. This is the big one, right here on Planet Earth, right now, the source of all the world's troubles, the whole solar system's troubles. Right here. Finally, the unflinching truth about aliens on Earth is exposed in Truck Stop Earth, as told by an alien abductee to award-winning reporter, Michael A. Armstrong.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: So, after this guy Jimmo cadges a ride from a couple lesbians (one of whom he's just, um, been with *nudgenudge winkwink*), he gets out of their elderly VW Bus and says:
"Thanks for the other night," she whispered. Her cute little tongue, with that little gold stud, flicked into my ear. "Take care, Jimmo."
"Yeah. Hey, thanks for all the rides." I looked at Margo, looked at Lilly, and somehow I knew I'd never see Margo again, which wouldn't rip me up much. Lilly I wasn't sure about, and if I did, now that would be a whole other story.
This is 1970s-level creep-you-out adolescent straight boy fantasy fan-fic stuff. I am NOT here for it. I'm out, it's deleted, and good riddance.
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Branches by Adam Peter Johnson
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A mindbending page-turner in the tradition of Dark Matter and The Midnight Library, this surprise bestseller will make you question everything you know.
SOMETIMES IT FEELS LIKE LIFE TOOK A WRONG TURN … WHAT IF IT DID?
This isn’t your life.
This isn’t your reality.
And there’s a way out.
For one man, the past few years have delivered one shock after another. The election of an authoritarian president. The sudden loss of his mother. A series of debilitating seizures. Now, as America descends into a nightmare, he’s shocked to discover the explanation for his seizures: He’s in the wrong universe.
A drug trial promises to return him to the timeline where he belongs. With his family life strained, his job gone and tanks in the streets, he jumps at the opportunity. But what will he find on the other side?
Take a reality-bending trip filled with surprises and second chances. Visit alternate timelines where life played out differently. Explore the roads not taken. Question the nature of fate. And find an answer to the biggest question of all: in a world that feels like it’s spinning out of control, what would it take for one person to make a difference?
Now an international bestseller, Branches is at once a twisty cerebral drama and a deeply personal journey through fear, grief and redemption.
First in a series.
I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME READING LIBRARY.
My Review: This one hurts. I love this idea. I suspect this is, in fact, reality and we haven't discovered it yet because there's just no way to test it scientifically.
And I bailed. Because the way the author has his PoV character handle the discovery process is...by phone: "I have more questions but the call drops. I try again, but after letting it ring for several minutes with no answer, I give up."
By phone, the calls drop, important words are obscured...in a multiverse-travel story. And we're already on Tuesday of the week we're spending in the story. I take exception to this, since it feels oh-so-conveniently deployed...and pat...and that leaves me wondering why, if I could write this for/with him, why I am spending my time.
Short answer: I'm not. And I really wanted to.
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The Killing Fog by Jeff Wheeler
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: The Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Kingfountain series conjures an epic, adventurous world of ancient myth and magic as a young woman’s battle with infinite evil begins.
Survivor of a combat school, the orphaned Bingmei belongs to a band of mercenaries employed by a local ruler. Now the nobleman, and collector of rare artifacts, has entrusted Bingmei and the skilled team with a treacherous assignment: brave the wilderness’s dangers to retrieve the treasures of a lost palace buried in a glacier valley. But upsetting its tombs has a price.
Echion, emperor of the Grave Kingdom, ruler of darkness, Dragon of Night, has long been entombed. Now Bingmei has unwittingly awakened him and is answerable to a legendary prophecy. Destroying the dark lord before he reclaims the kingdoms of the living is her inherited mission. Killing Bingmei before she fulfills it is Echion’s.
Thrust unprepared into the role of savior, urged on by a renegade prince, and possessing a magic that is her destiny, Bingmei knows what she must do. But what must she risk to honor her ancestors? Bingmei’s fateful choice is one that neither her friends nor her enemies can foretell, as Echion’s dark war for control unfolds.
I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME READING LIBRARY.
My Review: At 10%, Bingmei sees a pickpocket steal coins from a yokel she's got to help. The clunky dialogue, with her fixing a hard gaze on the yokel before dashing off leaving him in a crowd by himself so she could flex her badassery etc etc just wore me down. I flipped through the rest of the book to see if there was something not-tedious going to happen. It didn't.
I give up. There's a lot of good fantasy written by Asian women these days...why read mediocre time-sucking fantasy by an old white guy writing in an Asian woman's voice?
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