Mike From Mesa

Simply astonishing

Revisado: 12-12-24

Every once in a while I come across a book that far exceeds my expectations, and this is one of them.

While I am not a big fan of Roman historic fiction, every once in a while I pick one up and listen. Usually I find myself bored and try to struggle through it, but then some of them are gripping, educational and interesting, all at the same time. One of those was Colleen McCullough's First Man In Rome and this is another. Interestingly both are about Gaius Marius, although The Man With Two Names main protagonist is another character.

The character development of the book is exemplary, with this book's main character, Quintus Sertorius, being fully developed and his links to both his friends and his enemies being clearly explained so we know exactly why things are happening to him. While I found the first half of the book a bit tedious with explanations of his childhood and family friends, that information is necessary to the rest of the book and the pace picked up and never diminished again. Indeed some of the later part of the book is so intense that I had to stop reading before I could continue later in the day. The story is not predictable so much of what happened was a surprise to me and the unexpected turns kept my full attention. When I finished the book my first action was to check out the next book in the series.

The narration is very good, although I thought it less than 5 stars, but well above my normal 4 star rating. The narration was always clear, although occasionally the narrator's voice dropped far enough that I had to rewind and turn up the volume to hear what was being said.

All in all I can recommend this book to those interested in the period of Roman history before the birth of the Gaius Julius Caesar with whom we are all familiar. The Gaius Julius Caesar in this book is that Caesar's father and the date of the actions at the end of the book is about 105 BC.

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Nazis and ANTIFA? Really?

Revisado: 11-30-24

I suspect this is my lack Reacher book. I read pretty much all of the original Reacher books and enjoyed all of them, but something seemed to have happened to Reacher when Andrew Child took over. Reacher is no longer the "take no prisoners" protagonist that he was and the stories seem to have dissolved into a mish-mash of political correctness. While I don't want to issue any spoilers I just gave up when I suddenly found that the bad guys were Nazis and the good guys, or at least the ani-bad buys was ANTIFA. Really? I don't need to read any more books by someone who thinks that ANTIFA is anything other than another anti-democratic mob of rioters.

Added to that is the fact that I had largely lost interest in the story early on, and it was only the thought that this has to get better that kept me going. I just don't really care for or about any of the characters and Reacher is no longer the Reacher that I came to enjoy reading about.

The narration is OK. I miss Dick Hill, but he is retired and Scott Brick is OK. But the story line is just off ...

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An oldie, but a goodie

Revisado: 11-03-24

As a young teenager I read a lot of sci-fi, including Heinlein, but had mostly stopped by the time this book was released so I never actually read it. I had seen and enjoyed the movie and mistakenly assumed that it paralleled the book so I felt no need to actually sit down and read it after seeing the movie. However when I saw an Audible release narrated by R C Bray I thought that this would be a good time to finally do that since mostly any book narrated by Bray was worth listening to.

My big surprise is that the movie is nothing like the book and indeed some of the main characters in the movie don't even exist in the book. While I don't want to include any spoilers I can say that the book is mostly about Rico's time in boot camp, his initial battles and how he moved up in positions of authority along the way. It is worth listening to, especially considering the narrator, but there is little of what most people would consider "action".

Still, most Heinlein books are worth reading or listening to if you enjoy sci-fi and I can say that I thought it was time worth spending.

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Very good, but ...

Revisado: 11-03-24

This is an outstanding book on the later Pacific Theater of World War II. As you might expect it covers the battles of Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and the Philippines, but also covers other battles normally ignored, including an extensive coverage of the Burma campaign and the Russian entry into the Pacific war and the associated battles in Manchuria. As such it rates the highest praise.

It also covers the usage of the two atomic bombs and does a good deal of soul searching concerning that along with the resulting Japanese military's opposition to surrender and the attempted coup by those opposed to any capitulation to the US.

There were two drawbacks that I found in listening to the book. The first is the author's distain for Douglas MacArthur, which shines like a beacon throughout the book, and the second is the extreme self-searching that he does over many of the decisions. He insists that Japan was completely beaten after the capture of the Mariana Islands and that the subsequent battles were just a waste of lives and treasure, but that never really squares with the attempt by some of the military to stage a coup to prevent surrender ever after the subsequent battles and the dropping of two atomic bombs, so it does not ring true that they would have surrendered without those events. Still, the book is perhaps the best I have read in making the reader aware of the thoughts of both sides with extensive quotes from the Japanese soldiers and diplomats as well as of those of the American and British.

The narration is first class and so the 30 hours or so went quickly. Parts of the book are difficult to listen to as there are extensive descriptions of the depredations of the Japanese in the Philippines during MacArthur's recapture of the islands. A very good listen, but you may need a strong stomach for parts of it.

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Very good overview of the period

Revisado: 09-24-24

I have read a fair amount on the Civil War and thought that I was mostly knowledgeable about the period from the Missouri Compromise to the Douglas' concept of Popular Sovernty and thought that this book might fill in some information that I lacked. I was wrong both about this book and about my knowledge. Robert Merry's book taught me that I did not know nearly as much as I thought I did, and it brought to me much new information about the details of the march toward war.

All of the major individuals are here - Seward, Sumner, Garrison, Phillips, Pierce, Toombs, Yancey, Brown, Buchanan, Lincoln and the others, but the book details how each interacted both in the run up to war and with each other, and how each fared before and after the war. I first thought that the book was too detail oriented as it spent time on people I never heard of and events that did not seem important, but as the book progressed I realized just how thorough the book was and just how important some people were, even if they are not mentioned in many books. The book is about the decade preceding the war and does not touch on the war itself so people like Lee, Sherman, Grant and other military men are either not mentioned at all, or only as they related to events before the war, as with Lee being in command of the military force sent to end the Harper's Ferry raid and Scott's advice to Buchanan about fortifying Fort Sumter.

The narration was adequate, if not inspired, All in all I would recommend this book to anyone who wants more information about this period, about the caning of Charles Sumner, the background of John Brown, about "bleeding Kansas", the southern efforts to add parts of Mexico and Cuba to the US, about Buchanan's lack of actions during the period right up to Lincoln's election and other events critical to the start of the Civil War. An excellent and worthwhile look at an eventful decade.

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You're going to need a French dictionary and a map

Revisado: 06-17-24

To Lose A Battle is an examination of the 6 week German invasion of France in May 1940 and is the third book in his trilogy of the period between 1870 and 1940. It is not new, having originally been written in 1969, but it has been updated several times since then. In the book Mr Horne examines the history of the period from the end of the First World War up to the beginning of the Second World War and then examines in detail the battle from Hitler's invasion of France through the signing of the armistice.

The European Theater of World War II may be the most written about event in history, so there is no lack of other books on this subject, many of them much newer than To Lose A Battle, but I found this book to be particularly interesting, although at times a bit too detailed. My interest was in the general actions of the armies and the reasons for the French failure to put up the expected defense, but the details of individual military units was too detailed for me and I had to fall back on maps of present day France to be sure where specific cities and rivers were located. The publisher of this book would do well to include pdf downloads of the maps in the Kindle version of the book to make listening easier and more informative. Still, the book does a good job of explaining what happened and why, and was especially interesting to me in that it explained in detail the how and why of Lord Gort's decision to try to save the BEF by evacuation back to England.

John Lee is, in my opinion, one of the best of the Audible narrators and this book was no exception. His narration was clear and never monotonous, although there were a few spots when his voice dropped a bit too low and I was not able to hear what he was saying. The only real complaint I have is that there are a lot of French quotes with no translation. Had this been the Kindle version I would have just asked for a translation into English, but not knowing French meant that I could not have even spelled the French well enough to get the English translation.

If you have an interest in what happened during that 6 week period this is a good book to listen to, even if you have read other books on the topic.

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What a disappointment.

Revisado: 06-11-24

This is a very different kind of Jack Reacher book. One of the things I could always count on with the Lee Child books was that I knew how the characters of the story fit into the story and although there were likely to be surprises everything seems to make sense. In this book we have 4 sets of characters, including Reacher and the female protagonist, and I had no idea how 2 of those sets fit into the story until the end. That is not unusual in many mysteries, but not something I remember seeing in the previous Jack Reacher books that I have read.

Another annoyance was that Reacher himself seemed different somehow. Perhaps less Jack Reacher-ish as though someone decided that he needed some of those rough edges smoothed off and that he needed an injection of compassion, and so I did not really recognize him. This may be due to the narration change from Dick Hill to Scott Brick, or it may be due to the fact that this book was written by Andrew Child rather than Lee Child, or it may be due to other factors, but I found I did not much care for the character and found myself so bored with the book that I ended up having to force myself to get to the end, and that never happened with the previous Jack Reacher books. I had exactly the same feeling with the Spenser books when they were written by Ace Atkins instead of Robert B Parker.

There is one Lee Child Reacher book that I have not yet listened to (Die Trying) and I guess I am done with the character after I listen to that. It has been fun, but I guess it is done.

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Not Dick Hill, but not bad.

Revisado: 03-09-24

For a long time I avoided listening to any of the Jack Reacher books that were not narrated by Dick Hill. Hill had become the voice that I associated with Jack Reacher and I did not think I would enjoy listening to any other narrator, but having listened to all of Dick Hill's Reacher books, and not particularly liking Scott Brick's narration I finally broke down and ordered Running Blind. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by Jonathan McClain's narration and found the book as interesting as almost any of the other Reacher books.

This book is different from many of the other Reacher books in that the villain is not known by the reader and much of the suspense of the book stems from the facts that we don't understand why the victims behave as they do and we don't know who is doing the killing. There are plenty of clues, especially if one listens attentively, but Lee Child does a good job of obscuring the meaning of the clues so the ending may be a surprise.

As for the narration, Jonathan McClain is not DIck Hill, but he is not too shabby either and after about an hour I forgot that I was not listening to Dick Hill. I will buy the other McClain narrated Jack Reacher books and can recommend that others who, like me, avoided these books because they were not Dick Hill, might want to rethink their decisions.

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Two big take-aways

Revisado: 01-27-24

I first read this book, in Kindle form, several years ago and decided to give it another go, this time in Audible format. The book is reasonably interesting, although there is not much new here other than some diary entries that I don't remember seeing in other books. The format is to look at the actions of Churchill, Hitler, Roosevelt and Stalin as their actions related to the Second World War, and give the reader a chance to compare how they acted and what the results were. One of the things that makes this book different from the hundreds, if not thousands, of other books about the leaders during WW II is that this book compares their actions at the same points in time, thus giving us a view of how each reacted to specific events.

There are two big take-aways from this book. The first is how shabbily Roosevelt treated Churchill. Churchill, perhaps the greatest statesman of the period, given his understanding and often unique opposition to Nazi Germany and his leadership in preventing Great Britain from coming to a peace accord with Hitler, was lied to, connived against and led on by Roosevelt not only on the lead-up to US entry to the war, but also during the war. The second is how naive Roosevelt was regarding Stalin and how ignorant that view is, given what we know now about Stalin and his actions. Roosevelt came to begin to understand his mistake, but it took years longer than it took anyone else to realize that giving Stalin all he wanted was not any way to create a stable and peaceful era after the end of World War II. Roosevelt, a man who was supposed to have had an insightful understanding of others, failed completely when it came to Stalin and would not listen to those who did understand what was involved. In general this book is not kind to Roosevelt.

Tha narration is very well done, the material is interesting, even if mostly known to those who have read about the war and the only thing I can find to criticize about the book (written and Audible formats) is that there are no breaks between sections that cover material that would normally be separated by spacing on a page to indicate the change in subject. Because the written book does not have these breaks, neither does the Audible version.

Still, an interesting and informative book, both for those who want an overview of the period and for those knowledgeable about the war who want to learn something about the thoughts and motivations of those leading their respective nations.

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Rina Lazarus must be a saint!

Revisado: 01-14-24

I originally read the first 3 books in the series and recently reread them along with this volume. The series has always interested me because of both the personal relationship between Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus, and also because I found the mysteries interesting and compelling. While some of the characters in the books seem best described as "disturbing" I was interested enough to want to go through the volumes again and become reacquainted.

But two things bothered me about this volume. First, Peter Decker acts like a crazy man, not just being bossy with his new wife, but also taking steps that might have brought the marriage to an end with any woman other than Rina Lazarus and, second, the main antagonist seems truly evil, and disturbed in a really sick way, and that made it difficult for me to get through sections of the book. Potential readers should be warned that this book is not for the squeamish. Some of Decker's actions, which I will not describe as I have no wish to add spoilers to this review, do not seem reasonable and ended up getting him in serious trouble, but as the character has developed it is not clear that he will learn from his mistakes. As interested in the character and story development as I am I am also not sure that I want to continue with the next book in the series.

The narration is, as in the previous books, very good and if you have a strong stomach this is a decent addition to the previous novels. Just be warned.

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