"Far Edge of Darkness" by Linda Evans

 

Publisher: Baen Books

Copyright: 1996

ISBN: 0671877358

Historical time travel novels are likely one of the more difficult stories to write (at least in my opinion), as the author needs to do something called research. In "Far Edge of Darkness" Linda Evans comes through as a star in the field as her research is impeccable.

The story revolves around three main characters:

Sibyl, a PhD student in Classical Archaeology who had recently discovered a something while digging in Pompeii that shouldn't have been there. This one little thing changed her life dramatically as we next see her in ancient Rome where she is being sold as a slave. 

The second, is Charlie a Miami Vice cop who was deep under cover, and is now a slave in the house of a cruel Roman master, after spending a few years in the Circus Maximus fighting for his life.

The third is Logan a psychiatric patient on day leave who disappears in a monstrous lightning storm in Florida and reappears five years later in Alaska.

These three characters, and many secondary ones interact in a truly believable way and I believe this is mainly due to the great job the author did in setting the stage, and painting the world of ancient Rome in a detail that will delight virtually all readers.

Ms. Evans has written a number of other books as well, which I will review, but this was the first of her I read (a number of years ago), and it is well worth it. She unfortunately hasn't written much lately, but hopefully this will be corrected in the near future.

Highly recommended.

"The Simple Living Handbook: Discover the Joy of a De-cluttered Life" by Lorilee Lippincott

 

Publisher:  Skyhorse Publishing

Copyright:  2013

ISBN:  9781620876299

This was an interesting book to read, however it wasn't what I expected. This title itself is somewhat misleading, as the subtitle is more accurately describes what the book is about. I was under the impression that it was a book on living simply, but it turned out to essentially a book on how to get rid of stuff you no longer want to keep.

While the information is valuable especially to those people in the world who have a lot of stuff, I think for the most part the information presented is what I would consider common-sense. For course if you are one of those people with a lot of stuff that you don't want to get rid of etc., then this is quite likely the book you need, but I don't fit into that category.

Still even with this drawback it was well written, and I'm sure will be quite helpful to many people out there.

"Piranesi" by Susanna Clarke

 

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Copyright: 2021

ISBN: 9781635575637

This was a rather different book than I typically read. It is classified as "fantasy" however it is not like any other fantasy novel I've read, so I believe it would have been more accurate to list it as something like a psychological mystery, but that is my opinion.

"Piranesi" is the name given to a young man, who is the protagonist of the story, by the only other human he knows of, and whom he refers to as "The Other". 

Piranesi lives in what turns out to be a labyrinth, and with the exceptions of the semi-regular visits by "The Other" is by himself. He is surrounded in the hundreds of rooms that make up the labyrinth by thousands of statues of various sizes and themes that all represent at least to him scenes from the world he lives in.

Piranesi has lived in this labyrinth for many years, And has documented his life in a series of journals. The book is formatted as if you're reading his journals, and this makes it a rather unique read.

It was definitely an interesting story, but not one that I would normally have read. I cannot remember how I heard about the story, but I'm quite glad I read it.

I hope you enjoy it.

"End Times: A Brief Guide t the End of the World" by Bryan Walsh

 

Publisher: Hachete Books

Copyright: 2019

ISBN: 9780316449601

This books was an extremely interesting read, that covered a lot of territory and gives the reader a lot to think about. The author is a former correspondents, reporter and editor for Time Magazine. He reported on from over 20 countries on science and environmentally focused stories such as SARS, global warming, extinction and other topics.

The book itself takes a look at eight different scenarios that could end the world, or at least the world as we know it. The first is an asteroid collision such as what wiped out the dinosaurs, and which will happen again eventually. The second is the supereruption of a volcano such as the explosion of what is now the island of Sumatra when the mountain called Toba exploded some 74 thousand years ago and essentially turned day into night for many parts of the world. The ash of Toba was found in areas such as the Indian Ocean, China Sea, Arabian Sea, Lake Malawi in Africa.

The third potential disaster is from nuclear armaments and how some rather unstable world leaders could easily be poised to commit horrendous acts. (Looking at you Putin!) Climate change is the next topic discussed, and even though a significant number of people in the world turn a blind-eye towards the facts, it seems pretty obvious to most that it is. Disease is the next topic, and discusses world-wide epidemics. It seems rather ominous that when this book predicts an epidemic of some kind in the near future when it was written, and that the world is now recovering from one. This topic merges quite well into the next one which is biotechnology, and discusses the possibility that a disease could actually be engineered.

Chapter five deals with Artificial Intelligence and what we could experience in the future if we keep increasing our computer capacity etc. at its current rates. It speculates on what would need to happen, and what the consequences might be, even though it likely won't be anything like "The Terminator" franchise. Personally I believe a better comparison would be the 1970 movie "Colossus: The Forbin Project".

Chapter six deals with Aliens, and while it doesn't deal too much with what might happen if they were to show up, it does go into a fair amount of detail with regard to our searching for them, including the history of SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) and it's off-shoot METI (Messaging Extra Terrestrial Intelligence). 

The final chapter deals with the aftermath of a potential catastrophe and how we might recover. It too goes into a fair bit of detail with regard to how people believe things will unfold and the measures they take to prepare for them. I (and most others) have heard about the survivalist movement, but I wasn't aware there was such a thing as "Doomsday Preppers" who actively plan their lives around the end of the world.

This book, while it was somewhat depressing a couple of times, is a definite eye-opener to how fragile the existence of humans, and all other life on Earth actually is. The fact that asteroids have collided with this planet, super eruptions have occurred, that we have been close to a possible nuclear confrontation in the past and might be again if certain world leaders don't wake up. That we are going through climate change right now, and are hopefully coming close to the end of a world-wide epidemic doesn't bode too well for the survival of our species. After all this only leaves AI and Aliens, which is kind of worrisome.

This is the type of book we need to see more of. Highly recommended.

"Dracula" by Bram Stoker (1847-1912)

 

Publisher: Nelson DoubledayBook reviews
Copyright: 1982
ISBN: 9780307593856

It has been a long time since I read this novel,so I figured that it would be a good idea to read it once again. What urged me to do this was that I recently watched "Bram Storker's Dracula" by Francis Ford Coppola and wanted to see how close he got to the actual story. Surprisingly he was fairly close, but as is typical in Hollywood he made a few rather strange changes such as making Renfield a coworker of Johathan Harker, and making Mina Harker want to become a vampire, (neither of which were in the book). Mind you he didn't make anywhere near as many changes as some other directors (such as making Renfield the servant/butler to Dracula), which I commend him for. I also just found out that there was another movie made in 2021 directed by Jonny Campbell, so I'm anxious to see what he did / didn't do. While I am on the subject of movies there are three excellent versions "Love, At First Bite" starring George Hamilton & Susan St. James, "Dracula, Dead & Loving It" starring Leslie Neilson & Mel Brooks, and "Nightlife" starring Ben Cross & Maryam d'Abo. Both "Love, At First Bite" & "Nightlife" are modern retellings of the story, while "Dracula, Dead and Loving It" is a comedy in the classic Mel Brooke's style. "Love, At First Bite" is also a comedy.

I'm relatively sure that most people know the general tale of Dracula, either from the various movies, or other media so I won't review it here, but for those of you who haven't read the actual story, please do so before you watch any of the movies (if you can), so you can get the uncorrupted version of Mr. Stoker's famous novel. It is well worth the read. If you haven't read it then the format may be somewhat different from what you expect as it is written in the form of a series of diary entries from the various characters. This in no way detracts from the story, and in fact enhances it as you are brought right into the narration.

A delight to read, highly recommended.