Mortaine’s Blog

You’re not missing May! I didn’t review any books in May, 2004.

This is an archive of my shorter book reviews and notes, which historically have been posted over at the 50 Book Challenge on LiveJournal, but which I’m starting to move over here. I’m posting them with altered date-stamps, but they might show up in my LiveJournal cross-post anyway. Bear with me, please.

Note: Many of these books also have full reviews available in the book review podcast (RSS).

#26:

I listened to this one on Audible.com. A really good suspense novel set at the turn of the century.

#27:

A must-read after seeing Super Size Me!, and the May book for bookamonth.

#28:

Submerged is a series of SCUBA-diving memoires by Daniel Lenihan. It’s a fascinating book for divers, and is not unlike listening to BS stories from a grizzled old-timer. From the initial chapters, I thought this would be more about rescues than wrecks, but by chapter 4, the author gets his stride and focuses more on the wrecks. I can’t say he’s great at bringing other characters to life, but he is very detailed when it comes to the wrecks and technical challenges of each expedition.

#29:

I don’t usually like military fiction, but this had me hooked. It’s fantasy– the premise is that Heaven and Hell have had the last big war and the angels have lost. Heaven is a very dangerous place to be, but there’s a prophecy that brings some hope for Heaven’s survival. Enter the heroes– 5 humans who wake up after their deaths on Earth and find themselves in the very middle of the end. I raced through the first 250 pages, then slowed way down for the last 50 pages because I didn’t want it to end. It’s been a long time since I read a book that made me want to savor the last few pages. This one was excellent– I can’t recommend it enough to fantasy and even science fiction fans (Dinniman makes the daring assumption that angels engineer stuff, too– weapons technology has not halted at the bronze age). It’s a little pricey at $19.99, but you can usually find it for $15, and it packs as much in as a paperback trilogy. What’s more, the publisher is a smaller, independent press, so you can feel good that the author’s royalty is actually fair. Dinniman (dinniman: never updates)is also a NaNoWriMo participant, though I don’t think he wrote this in a month (though if he did, he must have spent more than that editing and polishing it, because it’s very polished!)