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C. Blanc's Profile
Customer Reviews: 170
New Reviewer Rank: 7,102,044
Classic Reviewer Rank: 7,597
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Reviews Written by
C. Blanc "Chris Blanc" (Houston, TX)
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Not quite a Star Wars clone, but too close, and loses direction, September 27, 2008
Star Wars took the world by storm, and sci-fi was really hot for a few years around 1979, where experienced writer Alan Dean Foster -- who has had more than his share of books adapted into Hollywood blockbusters -- did his best. To his credit, he's an intelligent, insightful writer. Problem: this book has a basically good premise, but can't go farther than that, so ends up with the depth of an episode of "The A-Team": brave scientists including beautiful woman scientist go far from their comfort zones to confront evil mad genius, then stuff goes wrong, then suddenly we're into a 1970s LSD-inspired hippie scene. It's about that bad. The first third of this book is compelling, the second third is without any real activity and so is dull as mud, and the final third is a really bad Star Trek episode colliding with a stoner movie, and making about as much sense. I don't know why I ended up reading to the end, but I did, and I'm writing this review to save you from the same fate.
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Congo
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by Ron Fontes
Edition: Mass Market Paperback |
| Availability: Currently unavailable |
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Scared the heck out of me and made me think, September 27, 2008
I have to admit: I'm now a full-on Michael Crichton junkie, since he and Robin Cook have really nailed the one type of book that I think scares adults consistently, which is the techno-thriller. There's something out there we don't understand... our technology has failed... we're going to have to understand the science before we can destroy it and life can resume as normal. It's a little bit too serious for some, but Crichton makes it palatable. You will need read for depth of characters, as these characters are like animated cutouts motivated entirely by the synopsis of their characters presented at the start of their first appearance in the book, but the scenarios are terrifying and the writing gripping because it is sparse, to the point, and scientifically informed. In this case, the book not only handles mystery well, but makes some pointed investigations into where humans and apes are the same, and where we differ. This may be my favorite Crichton since "The Andromeda Strain."
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Extinct
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by Charles Wilson
Edition: Mass Market Paperback |
| Availability: Out of Print--Limited Availability |
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Great idea, loses momentum, September 27, 2008
It's Peter Benchley in Jurassic Park, inventing a long-extinct giant shark that comes back to munch on the unwary. The idea is great; the book starts out immensely well, and then falls back into the water, having exhausted its momentum on the five or so scenes that would make an awesome trailer. If the giant monster you're trying to kill can be killed with regular methods if just a little discipline gets applied, don't you think the authorities will finish it off first? Yes, well... awkward silence... the characters are somewhat one-dimensional, and there are several arduous scenes of splashing around hoping the giant shark won't come back that put me into a coma. I wish he'd rewrite the whole book in the style of the first two chapters, with a similar amount of action or at least real terror.
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Straw Men
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by Michael Marshall
Edition: Paperback |
| Price: $7.99 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Lee Childs and Steven King create a psychological thriller, September 25, 2008
I really liked the idea of this book, and it is much better written than the average, so much that I think it leans more toward Stephen King than Lee Childs. However, like a Jack Reacher novel from Lee Childs, it's a mild mystery with a lot of action and exploration of interesting circumstances. The plot itself becomes apparent after the first third of the book, at which point it detours from X-Files/Stephen King supernatural scariness into the more literal fiction of Lee Childs, where a social phenomena is made into a tangible, shadowy, micro-conspiracy that then needs destruction by brave heroes. Like many books, the last third is where the author loses his nerve and gets too linear in his writing and also too vague, as he tries to massage together loose ends. I really enjoyed the first half of this book, but found the conspiracy of an overdone archetype, and finished reading without any real sense of mystery.
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Defcon One
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by Joe Weber
Edition: Paperback |
| Availability: Currently unavailable |
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Entertaining adventure in the Clancy style, pulls punch, September 25, 2008
This book, like many mid-to-late 1980s works, addresses a big concern of the time: would the US and USSR come to conflict, especially nuclear war? The Russian regime was already looking unstable, and the Americans suspected they'd prevail unless something went wrong and the world found itself entrenched in a war far more destructive than anything it had seen before. Written by an ex-military man, Defcon One describes a scenario where an insane and ailing Russian premiere attempts to provoke the US into attacking, with a wrinkle that I can't reveal because no one likes a spoiler. While the book is competent, and a really fun read, it eventually pulls its own punch and does not, like Clancy, get far enough into the horror for us to really feel the weight.
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Marker
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by Robin Cook
Edition: Paperback |
| Price: $9.99 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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Contemporary topic, adequate plot, October 7, 2007
This book descends from the school of Michael Crichton and Tom Wolfe, who try to wrap contemporary issues in what would be luridly excessive plots in the hands of others. The theme of the book is how genetics is revealing what our future diseases will be, and how that not only stresses us as people but makes us potential victims at the hands of a profit-driven industry. Cook gives us two-dimensional characters, and a plot that is less mystery that a thriller as two investigators pursue a suspicious series of events that others won't recognize. It reminds me in many ways of Steven King horror novels, where characters take into their own hands the pursuit of an evil. In this case, the evil is mundane. We all fear and loathe our health plans to some degree, and the fear is amplified by the notion that health care providers might someday look over our DNA charts and cut us out of the system for having genes which give us a high chance of disease. Cook approaches it from an ethicist's point of view, and doesn't give us the grim counterargument, which is that disease could almost be eliminated by taking a look at our genetic markers, and someday a government may choose to do that. However, I don't see this as a failing, because he is addressing issues that are here and now in an entertaining fashion. Because this book has so much meat to it, it is more compelling than its text alone, and is one of my favorite recent reads.
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I, Me, Mine
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by George Harrison
Edition: Paperback |
| Price: $11.53 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A modern struggle for meaning, October 7, 2007
What do you do when money and career are suddenly no object, and you have everything you could have wanted, and more? You go to the end items of your internal "to do" list, and on there among other things are find out why you're here and what you care about.
Harrison like many others explored alternative religious paths, and in his devotion to Hindu eschatology found a way to understand life that explained him. I think that's why he is such a shadowy figure in his own presumably autobiographical book. He wants to talk about the ideas that sustained him and less about himself, because in many ways, he had gotten over being who he was.
In that salient detail I find the greatest humanity in this book. It is a man speaking about the ideas that propel him and the hopes he has, and it is an escape from most rock autobiographies and their incessant narcissism. Many people won't like it because reading it is more like taking a theology course than reading People magazine, but I would compare it favorably to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a walking meditation written into very familiar, conversational text.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A tour de force of pure emotion, October 7, 2007
Thomas Wolfe reminds me of the eager kid who was smarter than the rest, surging ahead for pure love of learning and life itself. This transcendental outlook pervades this meandering story which in lesser hands would become saccharine, but veers away from that precipice with carefully constructed characters who are not cut-outs used in the puppet show of stories with a "moral," but these vivid, living, breathing pieces of life that resemble others we have all known.
While the subject matter is romantic to its core in that it combines a knowledge of mortality with a sweet delight in life, between the lines there is a fine-tuned observation of America as a culture of personalities. Wolfe understands the struggles of people both average and exceptional and winds these together to show the common path they are threading as they attempt to understand themselves, so they can appreciate life.
Thomas Wolfe described himself as a "putter-inner" and in this book that might be initially viewed as a problem, since it spills from its pages even after extensive editing with gloriously rich language and a wealth of detail. After the first 100 pages however I stopped caring about this attribute, because my bias against it came from lesser authors who blurt out everything but the kitchen sink in an attempt to appear smarter than they are. Wolfe just delights in the details of life and the subplots that associate a character's journey through it.
I recommend this book most heartily for parents of confused teens. It does not fail to show the shortcomings of our world, our species, and our nation, but it awakens our inner emotional strength that forms the want to overcome those. It does not preach morality, but it shows us the value of our time and from that a moral outlook, since when we care about our time we become more discerning. It took my breath away in its audacity to do the unthinkable, and sing a song of life the imperfect beautiful, and never to back down from that vision of poignant, transient glory.
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5 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
Marketing becomes the art-product, October 7, 2007
I've liked Beam's work in the past, for its direct connection to the listener, but it seems he's started playing the music industry game. That's not the best idea at a time when the music industry sales model is collapsing. His earnest acoustic traveler's songwriting has become a sub-variant of the rock and roll dream, with an excess of studio layering instruments over what sound like unfinished song. He wrote hooks. Then he wrote interesting-sounding lyrics. Then he wrote in some flourishes. But the sum of the parts is less than it was in the past, because Beam's voice thrives in the emptiness when without fear it uses the simplicity of its message as a form of pop poetry. Now it sounds like U2 crept into the studio and started making the same insipid dreck we can buy from any number of over-done sale rack bands. The reviews for this album are good, but that is I think because most people have heard it twice, and have mistaken his throwing in everything but the kitchen sink for content. But there is little content, and all of the filler seems there to drown out the vacant lapses of this album.
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Pompeii: A Novel
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by Robert Harris
Edition: Mass Market Paperback |
| Price: $7.99 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
The best from Harris..., July 25, 2006
His other books are somewhat wooden, and by demanding of themselves circuitous plots, work themselves into a uniform level of intensity. This book is a simpler story, with fewer twists and subterfuges, and as a result, it breathes reality and human energies where Harris' other books seem almost computer-generated in contrast. Yes, all familiar themes are rehashed here; it is done well. The author's insights onto history are both hackneyed and refreshing. It's not Hemingway but it's a good read.
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(Houston, TX)
