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June 23, 2019

The Decision Book (Review)

kay, so I’m facing a very tough decision. Do I retire or not? At first I was. Then I didn’t. Then they offered a buyout. Then they jacked us with it, only giving it to directors, forever-employees and dingdongs. So now I need to know: do I stay or do I go? Given that she has to live with my endless prevarications, my wife did the only thing she could – she bought me a copy of The Decision Book. This book dosn’t tell you an answer – it’s not a Magic 8-ball. It simply provides you with one page […]
October 3, 2021

The Collapsing Empire (Review)

oor Cardenia, She’s just a nobody living on Hub, the imperial world that controls a network of forty-eight planets connected by the flow, a physics anomaly that allows space ships to travel (slowly) between worlds. Everything is fine and she likes her life. But then the heir to the throne dies in a car racing accident and the current Emperox succumbs to old age. And suddenly, unprepared and maybe a bit unwilling, she it suddenly thrust into the role of the new Emperox. It is a lot to take in for her (as the ruler of an empire for which […]
January 2, 2022

The Commodore (Review)

his was one I got off the shelves at my local used bookstore, a roaring sea adventure set in the dark days of World War Two when the Japanese were pushing their ships down the “slot” and the Americans were doing everything they could to keep them from reinforcing and re-invading islands in The Solomon Islands. Into this hell-battle comes Harmon Wolf, an American Indian with his first command, a new destroyer. Wolf finds himself thinking outside the typical blue-navy box, willing to take full advantage of the new American radars to offset the threat from the Japanese Long Lance […]
May 29, 2022

The Cure (Review)

his was an interesting science fiction book I picked out of a curbside library somewhere. And the last page was interesting enough that I’m going to comment at length (and possibly with obscenities) in the next Dog Ear. Nothing against the writer, just… something. Anyway, yes, The Cure. So, the story starts in a future human society, 2400 AD or so, where every chance of emotion or love or anger has been removed. This includes sex, music, and even facial expressions (everyone wears masks day and night to hide their true faces). Calming drugs are openly given to them (in […]
June 2, 2022

The Cure (DOG EAR)

o last Sunday I reviewed The Cure, a book by Sonia Levitin that details the persecutions of the Jews in Strasbourg in 1348. In a nutshell, the Jews of that town (like in every other place across Europe at the time) were blamed for the Black Death that was sweeping through. The claims that Jews were poisoning the wells were backed by the solid evidence gained by barbaric torture. And it’s all historic fact, as Ms. Levitin outlines in her epilogue. Fine and dandy. I love, after reading a novel, to find out just what is true and what isn’t. […]
June 12, 2022

The Dark Forest (Review)

he Dark Forest is the follow-up book to Cixin Liu’s fantastic The Three Body Problem. As you’ll remember, the Trisolarian race, with intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes* and have launched an invasion fleet to destroy humanity and use Earth as their new homeworld (if you know what the three body problem means, you might better understand why this is). The good news is that the invasion fleet will take 400 years to get here. The bad news is they have launched tiny atomic spies at our Earth, spies that that alter computer data […]
December 18, 2022

The Human Division (Review)

‘ll admit that I was sorta meh about the first book of the second series of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series. After all, Zoe’s Tale told things from a slightly different perspective, true, but it really didn’t add that much to the storyline. in this, I went off and read other things so that I’d get back into that Scalzi-mood. So when I picked up Book Two, The Human Division, I wasn’t sure what I’d get. First off, the title is cute. I thought it would be about some sort of military formation of humans, right? Well, it wasn’t, […]
June 4, 2023

Destroyermen 1: Into the Storm (Review)

his book should count for two reviews. I checked it out of the local library for a recent road trip. Listened to it while the miles zipped past, smiling. Decided at the end that I liked it well enough to look into the series. Fifteen books. And Norfolk’s local bookstores could come up with ten of them. Bought those and ordered the rest. just re-read the first one. So, the Destroyermen series starts with Into the Storm  in the opening days of the Pacific War in World War 2, with the Japanese Navy devouring anything in its path. The USS […]