Thomas A. Rado, M.D.

A fascinating ride through Facebook's history. it is, most likely, an accurate account by someone who was on the inside.

Revisado: 04-13-25

The narration by the author is quite good, and her willingness to name names as she tells her story gave this reader a sense that her account is the truth as she lived through it.

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This book is a disaster!

Revisado: 11-21-23

it is hard to believe that this book is by the same author who wrote "Ancillary Justice" and other volumes in the Radch series. it is childish in its substance, and is not helped by the narrator who sounds like a third grade teacher reading a fairytale to nine year olds.

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No one to like in this well-written book

Revisado: 10-13-22

Martin Amis writes well. He doesn’t like any of the characters he created for London Fields, and I don’t blame him: they are pretty marginal people. The men in his present-day pre-apocalyptic world are either weaklings wearing signs that say “Take advantage of me” or else they are drunken, thieving, violent Lotharios. The novel’s leading female character, on the other hand, is a cruel, amoral, con-person who hates men and uses sex (or the promise thereof) as brutally as the riot police might use billy clubs and tear gas.

In spite of these quirks, I enjoyed the book. The writing is graceful and the story keeps one’s attention. Steven Pacey’s performance is excellent.
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An excellent story… dragged out too long

Revisado: 09-25-22

The world created by Joe Abercrombie in his First Law series is, like our own, unfair, unforgiving and peopled mostly by unhappy characters. Wars and intrigue plague society and, of course, the vast majority of the populace lives in poverty. The only real difference is that magic is real in the world of the First Law. There, it can sometimes swoop in to win hopeless battles and punish disobedient underlings. The use of magic as a sort of Deus ex machina is little more than a sign of authorial weakness.

There are quite a few battles in the First Law trilogy, and all are described in endless detail. After a while, there is a great deal of similarity among battles fought with swords, spears, axes and arrows. How many times does one have to read descriptions of arms and legs being cut off with swords and heads cleaved in with axes before a certain boredom begins to manifest itself? In short, all battles after the first can be skipped without losing track of the plot.

The only other objection I have to the book is it’s terrible misogyny. The author must have labored hard to write a three volume epic without creating a single decent or affection-worthy female character.

In spite of these flaws, the First Law trilogy tells a good (if depressing) story. It would have benefited from some firm editing and liberal application of the red pencil. I think these interventions would have made it a gripping one volume novel.

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News and context from the Middle East (7000 years ago)

Revisado: 12-02-21

Paul Kriwaczek must have been a remarkable man: the sort of person whose knowledge base is vast and whose sense of humor ensures that when he tells a story his listeners will never be bored. For those of us who remember our history courses as dull exercises in memorization, Kriwaczek’s last book, “Babylon” is the perfect antidote.

Before plunging into the birth of what we would recognize as the first civilization on earth about 7000 years BCE, “Babylon” begins with a capsule history of the Gulf war (Desert Storm) and a suggestion that this conflagration may bear important similarities to early events in the part of the Middle East known as the Fertile Crescent. Only after tempting us with this intriguing hypothesis does he take us back to the distant past when nomadic people began to settle in the hospitable land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. It is here that organized religion, writing, trade and agriculture began. The book goes on to chronicle the rise of the Sumerian empire

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A remarkable admixture of horror and beauty.

Revisado: 08-14-21

With his short novella, Child of God, Cormac McCarthy again proves his writing worthy of incision in the Western Canon. Like blind Tiriseus, his vision is frighteningly clear and unsparing. He is cursed with sight free of illusions, and shows us the world with spare and exquisite prose.
Hard to take, hard to put down, and definitely not a bedtime story.

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If the absence of plot doesn’t bother you...

Revisado: 03-21-21

It saddens me a bit to review “A Town Called Discovery” because I generally try, in my reviews, to say something positive about a book before noting it’s flaws. Since there is very little in the way of plot this book fills its pages with endless repetitions. Phrases recur like advertising jingles, and if one went over the text with a synonym remover or an adjective strainer there would be very little left. I’m not sure why, but I labored through the book to its (predictable) end. In retrospect, the ordeal was not worth the effort.

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Not Faulkner's best, but still excellent

Revisado: 01-07-21

In Sanctuary Faulkner takes us back into the Mississippi heartland and weaves a story which is both a murder mystery and an intense psychological exploration of the post-Civil War south. The prose is beautiful, the ear for local speech patterns is perfect, and through it all shines the author's deep pessimism and insight into human nature.

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A delightful story... with a dark subtext

Revisado: 11-23-20

In this novel, whose action takes place somewhere between the post-WW I interbellum and the present, the author tells a gripping tale of mystery and a beautiful love story that spans generations. While he does this, he takes the reader deep into the pain surrounding the Spanish Civil War and the rise of fascism. It is beautifully narrated and (if you can stand a little bit of romanticism) beautifully crafted. Well worth your time!

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Story 0, filler 10.

Revisado: 10-24-20

This story has so little plot that the author must have been hard pressed to find enough inconsequential details, excess adjectives and noproductive anecdotes to fill the book. Terrible waste of time, but might have been a decent short story.

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