The Last Odyssey by James Rollins

Into the breach once more swims the Sigma team.  Rollins brings in mythology for this one as well as fantastic beasts and constructs and secret societies.   The story starts in Greenland ends up in Africa.

You can depend on Rollins to provide good solid entertainment with a leavening of Ripley’s.   Believe it or not, I find myself Googling things from his books to see whether they are even remotely true.    There is something about repetitive characters that makes you feel like you are meeting old friends and in this time of quarantine it is nice to see old friends.

I enjoyed the book and recommend the series.

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.

A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer

 Every time I read one of Archer’s books I wonder why I have not read them all.  He is a master of character development.  Few authors can breathe life into a paper soul the way Archer can.   This is a story of desperation, despair, perfidy, redemption, revenge and justice.

Danny and Nick come from different worlds but discover empathetic souls.   Archer successfully creates a plot where honor, loyalty and friendship are shown as the stalwart values that they are and mis-justice reaps its own rewards.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, enough that I bumped it to the top of my enormous TBR pile and suspended reading the other three books I happened to be reading.

Worth every minute of reading!!!

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.

Spotlight on the Last Sword Maker by Brian Nelson

This is a timely story that will make you shudder into the night. 

In the high mountains of Tibet, rumors are spreading. People whisper of an outbreak, of thousands of dead, of bodies pushed into mass graves. It is some strange new disease … a disease, they say, that can kill in minutes. The Chinese government says the rumors aren’t true, but no one is allowed in or out of Tibet.

At the Pentagon, Admiral James Curtiss is called to an emergency meeting. Satellite images prove that a massive genocide is underway, and an American spy has made a startling discovery. This is no disease. It’s a weapons test. Chinese scientists have developed a way to kill based on a person’s genetic traits. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. The success of their new weapon proves that the Chinese are nearing “Replication”—a revolutionary breakthrough that will tip the global balance of power and change the way wars are waged.

Now the US must scramble to catch up before it is too late. Admiral Curtiss gathers the nation’s top scientists, including a promising young graduate student named Eric Hill who just might hold the missing piece to the replication puzzle. Soon Hill and his colleague Jane Hunter are caught up in a deadly game of sabotage as the two nations strive to be the first to reach the coveted goal. But in their headlong race, they create something unexpected … something the world has never seen and something more powerful than they had ever imagined.

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.

Molly Miranda:Thief for Hire by Jillianne Hamilton

Molly Miranda is a thief.  This is her story on how and why she is the person she has become.

Molly falls afoul of a fellow thief and roommate.   She finds  herself in stressful situations and has a “boss” she hates and envies.

It is an amusing and very light read. 

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.

Copy Boy by Shelley Blanton-Stroud

This is a dust bowl book.  Set in the depression the future of a woman, let alone a penniless, uneducated woman is dim at best.   Jane takes her life in her own ends and wrings a future out of it.

This book perplexes me.   There parts and revelations that I really enjoyed.   In other parts I was not sure if it was a diary of a schizophrenic.   A solid point I got from the book is that, in some ways, we all are costuming our way through life.   I have no idea if that was the author’s point but it was what I got.   Much like my arguing with my college lit prof about interpretation of Robert Frost and the Road Not Taken.  I don’t know if I got what Frost wanted me to get and I know I didn’t get what my professor wanted me to get but I got something, my own something.

This is a choppy read and somewhat disjointed but provided some in-depth insight to some of the characters.

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.