Massawa by Pam Webber

 

This book is set in Eretria. Admittedly, I had to Google that to find out where the setting was for the book. If you are not better informed than I am, Eretria is across the Red Sea from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.  It has along coastline which figures into the plot. Rommel was terrifying the Middle East. The Allies needed a reliable and accessible harbor for all the supplies they needed to defend against Rommel.  Eretria had an excellent harbor that had been devastated by the Italians when they surrendered. A US officer was getting the harbor cleared, but his payroll for the paroled Italian POWs and locals kept disappearing.  The US Office of Strategic Service sent a new agent to rendezvous with a British Mi6 agent to solve the problem.

Kit is a newly minted OSS agent.  She is shocked that she has romantic feelings for Jake, her handler.  Denying those feelings she welcomes her opportunity to serve her country.   Her British counterpart, Mark Williams, is far more seasoned. He works diligently to help her improve her tradecraft.  

 A majority of the book is an exploration of the relationships between Kit, her handler, her partner, her opponents, and her allies. There is very little action but a great deal of feelings being interpreted. 

Kit surprises herself, as well as all of the above players, with her skills, and success.

I recommend the book.

 

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases if you click on a purchasing link below.#CommissionsEarned

The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula

Mary Annning has a serious inferiority complex.  It is the driving force in her life, although she isn’t aware that is what fuels her ambition.  She is a fossilist, one who finds fossils.  Her livelihood is finding and selling fossils; her goal is to be a Geomagician.  Her mentor, Professor William Buckland encourages her work. A spectacular find leads Mary to think her lifelong goal may be within reach.

 

Henry Stanton is Mary’s perceived nemesis.  Lucy is her friend, and Edgar, Lucy’s brother, is the fourth in an unlikely group of friends. Mary, impoverished, parents dead, scrapes by in the little seaside village of Lyme Regis. The other three are “tourists’ who visit in the summers.  The tourists have wealth and privileges, while Mary struggles to put bread on the table. Surprisingly, that does not prevent them from becoming fast friends, until they aren’t.

 

This is not an action-adventure.  This is more of a tale of friends and relationships.

There is magic, but it doesn’t dominate the plot.  The discovery that there are different kinds of magic is a crucial part of the story.  Economic inequality plays a large part in the overall plot, and a driving force for Lucy.

 

It was a good story and I recommend it.
 

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases if you click on a purchasing link below.#CommissionsEarned

Authors Beware

New scams appear every day.  Now AI enters the picture, and the sophistication jumps exponentially.  This week, I received a very flattering email from the Acquisition Editor of a major publishing house.  The letter spoke glowingly of my work and my interest in the welfare of children.  Then a query as to whether we could have a chat about my upcoming work. 

 The email was polished, very polished.  The amusing part was that I received an email at the same time for another author with similar glowing remarks.   So the clues were flawless flattery with the level of depth that it is characteristic of AI-generated text, a mis-mailed email to another author with an identical approach, and finally emailing the support people at the publishing house, who confirmed it was a scam.

 As many authors feel underappreciated and have wishes to be discovered by a publishing house with the resources to truly market our glowing words, this was a wisely constructed scam, but scam it is. 

So to my fellow authors, beware of silver tongues that will lead you down a prickly primrose path

A Violent Masterpiece by Jordan Harper

 

This is a tale of multiple characters facing what they see as an implacable group of enormously wealthy misanthropes.

 

The “kids in the candy store” hardly sounds like a group of amoral criminals.  Words can have many meanings.  These words mean death and terror for their victims.

 

The author depicts a near-future Los Angeles in a not-quite-dystopian environment through a filthy brown lens that casts humanity in a harsh light.  Harper depicts depravity in detail.  Occasionally, far too much detail for my taste but detail seems to be a Harper trademark.

 

I found the book discouraging at times, with the depiction of so much depravity plus the wealth of bad actors, and voyeurs, it seemed like there was no hope for the future.

 

There did not seem to be any “good” people in the book, just marginally, and sometimes grossly less bad.

 

With all that said, it was a captivating book, somewhat like a train wreck; you just can’t bring yourself to look away.

 

I recommend the book, but not if you are already depressed.
 

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases if you click on a purchasing link below.#CommissionsEarned

Questioner by Steve C. Posner

Funny thing on the way to writing a review on a book whose main “villain” is an aware AI self-named as Q. I asked ChatGPT to write a five-star review on the book.  I don’t care for vanilla ice cream because I find it bland.  This was way worse than vanilla ice cream.  Any educator who read the review would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to realize it wasn’t a real review.  Now, if ChatGPT had been trained on the book, I suspect the review might have read realistically. Regardless, no self-awareness there yet as it would be anticipated a self-aware AI would want to read a book about a self-aware AI.

 

This book is a sobering, albeit fictional, megacorp who has a MMO as well as a VR legal assistant.  Think Lexis+ type software on serious steroids.  

 

A retired Federal judge is pulled into a colleague's case and discovers that all is not well in the VR legal world or the MMO gaming both being run by his old special operations partner.

 

The conflict between Felix, the friend, and the Judge is exacerbated by intentional self-centered intervention by an alluring female and a maniacal AI.

 

Questions are both posed and implied in this book as to the future of AI, its dangers and uses.

 

I’m, perhaps a naïve proponent of AI.  This book provides a wealth of thought.

 

I recommend it. 

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases if you click on a purchasing link below.#CommissionsEarned