In a follow-up to last year’s Vignettes, Jim Curtis, who blogs at Nobody Asked Me, has come out with “The Gray Man: Payback“.  This novel picks up a few months after the end of Vignettes, with John Cronin and his family getting ready for the marriage of Jesse, his granddaughter, and Aaron.  Here’s the blurb from Amazon:

Deputy Sheriff John Cronin and his granddaughter, Jesse, are preparing for Jesse’s upcoming wedding to her Marine when the Cartel decides to murder some South Texas cops as a payback for arresting their drug smugglers. They send a hit squad to kill Cronin, Jesse, and everyone close to the family. The only problem?

They missed the old man.

Leaving his badge behind, John Cronin, Francisco and a few others head south to teach them a lesson about what old school western justice really means.

Yeah, it’s a story of revenge, and Curtis does an excellent job telling the yarn.  This book is better than the first one, and I loved the first one.  The characters of John Cronin and Fransisco are especially well done, and as the story goes on, they become more and more three-dimensional.

This book is a page turner.  Don’t be surprised if you read it in one sitting.  The story flows very well, and Curtis does an excellent job at tying up the story threads in the end.  I give this one of the highest compliments I can when I say that I would feel comfortable giving this book, which is in no way geared toward children, to my teenagers.  Curtis makes the story real and gritty without being vulgar or graphic.

If you’re looking for a good book to read while you enjoy a couple of fingers of bourbon on a cool night, try this one out.

Disclaimer:  I have known the author for several years, and consider him a friend.  I was a beta reader for this book, but I also bought the final copy that I used for this review.

The Book of Barkley:  Love and Life Through the Eyes of a Labrador Retriever, by L.B. Johnson, is a memoir that tells the tale of her experiences raising a puppy and letting it become her companion and protector.  The story Mrs. Johnson tells is at different times funny, introspective, and sad.  From the adventures of teaching a labrador puppy manners and housebreaking him, to the final trip to the vet that all pet owners dread, but know will happen someday, this book gives us a window in to the love and trust between a woman and her best friend.

Mrs. Johnson is an outstanding writer, and the amount of thought that went into this work really shows.  When she describes a scene, such as when Barkley chases a miscreant away from her yard, I could see it playing out in my mind’s eye.  Her descriptions of environments and people are excellent, and her writing evokes emotions on every page.  To be honest, I laughed out loud at a lot of this book, and I shed tears at times.  I can’t say that about most things I read.

However, while this book was not difficult to read, it is not a fast read.  Cover to cover, it took me two weeks to finish it.  This was due to a need to set it down and give myself time to ruminate over the chapter or two that I had just finished.  Like I said, the author is a master at setting a scene and transporting you to a time and place she wants to describe.  After doing that for a while, I needed to think about what she was trying to say and the message she was trying to convey.

One of the best things I can say about any book is that I plan to read it again and that I plan on giving it to my children to read.  The Book of Barkley has found a permanent home on my bookshelf, and once Girlie Bear and her brothers have found a space in their school reading lists, they are going to be encouraged to experience Mrs. Johnson’s story.

In other words, this is a book in which I think everyone will find something that will touch them.  If you’ve ever had that special pet that was your constant companion, you will connect with this story, and I heartily recommend it.

Reader Dennis the Librarian Shusher asked for the recipe for Irish Woman’s Apple-Cinnamon-Bourbon preserves, but since it’s a variation on a recipe from a book, I thought I’d just tell you about the book.

Irish Woman and I use the “Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving“, edited by Judi Kingry and Lauren Devine, for a lot of our home canning recipes.  The book has everything from basic techniques for water-bath and pressure canning, to charts for how much product you will get out of a given amount of fresh produce, to recipes for sweet, savory, and spicy foods that can be canned.  Irish Woman took their “Apple Pie in a Jar” recipe, removed the raisins, and added a bit of bourbon into the recipe*.  It’s an excellent reference if you’re an old pro, or a great way to get information on getting started.  It has several recipes for pasta sauces and salsa that I have used, as well as a ton of jam and jelly recipes that make your mouth water.  The section on pickles came in very handy last summer when I over-planted cucumbers.

The layout of the book is logical and easy to use, and the index is outstanding for when you need to search for a topic or recipe.  Directions are laid out in an easy-to-understand way, and they are given in a way that ‘s useful to both the neophyte and the old hand.

If you’re gardening, hitting the farmers’ market, or just noticing good sales at the grocery store, and want to try your hand at canning, give this book a shot.

*OK, more than a bit.  She put about half a cup of cooking bourbon into the mix while it was cooking, then put a dash of it in each jar before adding the jam for canning.

Peter Grant has debuted his newest book, War to the Knife.  If you enjoyed his “Maxwell Saga” books, you’ll like this even more.

This book takes place in the same universe as the Maxwell series, but centers on the small, backwater planet of Laredo.  The planet has been invaded and conquered by the Bactrians, but resistance continues.  The Bactrians are a despicable breed, and are either killing or enslaving what is left of the planet’s population to make it into a new possession.  The story centers around efforts by the resistance to hurt the Bactrians, until an opportunity to mortally wound them comes along.

This book is a page turner, and you will find it hard to put it down.  Since the setting doesn’t encompass an entire galaxy as it did in the Maxwell books, Peter was able to concentrate on describing the people and places on Laredo in detail.  The action comes early, and is frequent, but there are also a lot of places where the story is carried along with conversation.  This is not a thriller by any means, but neither is it a bunch of talking heads going on for 100 pages at a stretch.  The story is compelling and grabs you in the first few pages.  Don’t be surprised if you finish it in one sitting.

If you’re looking for  Tom Clancy techno-babble or a Star Trek “everything works really well and happens pretty quickly in space” book, then keep looking.  Grant asks that you believe that faster-than-light travel is possible, that fusion reactors and energy weapons work, and that space travel within star systems is common, and that’s about it.  He makes an attempt to stick with at least a bit of Newtonian and Einsteinian physics when it comes to space travel, in that you can’t just drop into hyperspace at the drop of a hat or get across a star system or between star systems in a few hours.  Communications between systems are handled via messages on ships, and everyone is restricted by the speed of light when it comes to space combat and communications.  It makes the story longer when you have to say “The missile will get there in six hours”, but I find it more realistic.

The principle characters in this book, both good and bad, are straight out of central casting.  The gritty, honorable resistance fighters, true to their last act, are there.   So are the despicable Bactrian security forces, who are even called the “SS”.   Some of the more interesting characters are in the Bactrian army.  Where the black-suited security guys are sadists and villains, the brown-uniformed professionals of the army seem to be honorable and fair, even if they are part of the forces repressing and destroying the Laredan population and culture.

War to the Knife can probably be enjoyed by anyone from teenagers to senior citizens.  It’s not a children’s novel, but it definitely can be enjoyed and understood by younger readers.  There is a bit of language and implied sex in it, but it’s not flagrant.  I would definitely allow Girlie Bear or Little Bear to read it.I wouldn’t suggest starting this book after dinner, because you’ll be up late finishing it.   Like I said, it’s a page turner.  Get in the hammock with a cool beverage, tell the kids to leave you be for a few hours, and enjoy.

Disclaimer – I was a beta reader for this book, and Peter gave me a gift card to Amazon to thank me for my help.  However, I used that gift card to purchase a copy of the book once it was published, and I received nothing for this review.

Holly Chism has come out with the second book in her “Pendragon” series, in which the knights of the Round Table were really dragons, magic still lives in the world, and old rivalries can become bloody.  I reviewed the first book in the series here, and Pendragon Resurgent is an excellent follow-on to the original story.

The story opens with Sara, the main character from “The Last Pendragon”, preparing to shut down her career as an educator to join Mordred, son of Arthur Pendragon, leader of the European population of dragons, and the love of her life, when someone attempts to assassinate her.  A rogue group of dragons is trying to rekindle a millenium-old war, and the European dragons are in danger of being snuffed out just as they are beginning to rebuild.  Mordred and Sara have to not only figure out how to survive this onslaught, but also how to create a new home for their family in Europe.

Chism truly seemed to enjoy telling this story, and the characters she creates are easily visualized and filled out, at least on the good-guy side.  The bad guys, who are rogue dragons, tend to be less three-dimensional than the good guys, but they aren’t cardboard cutouts.  This may be because the story is told from the perspective of Sara, so the only time we see the antagonists is when they are interacting with her or when she is magically eavesdropping on them.  The exception to this is Morgan, Mordred’s mother.  Her character gets more time in the story than the other antagonists, and she is filled out quite nicely.

Overall, the book is a great page-turner.  It’s not a thriller, but it keeps your interest through the interactions of the characters, human, dragon, or wizard.  Chism doesn’t belabor the plot by going into excruciating detail about settings and tactics, but neither does she gloss over things.  The book is a quick read, but after reading it, I broke out my copy of the first book and re-read both stories again.

If you’re looking for a good weekend book, I’d suggest checking this one out.

Disclaimer- I was a beta reader for “Pendragon Resurgent”, but I bought a copy of the finished work.   I received nothing for doing this review.

I’ve been lucky lately in that I’ve actually had time to read for pleasure.  On recommendation from friends and family, I indulged my inner history geek and bought “Unbroken” and “With The Old Breed:  At Okinawa and Peleliu”.

Unbroken, by Lauren Hillebrand, is primarily about the life of Louis Zamperini, a reformed juvenile menace, Olympic runner, World War II bombardier, and POW.  The first part of the book deals with Zamperini’s childhood and adolescence, where he finds a way off the path to prison by becoming a track star.  He does well enough that he becomes a member of the 1936 U.S. Olympic track team, and competes in Berlin.  As it became more and more apparent that the United States would become involved in World War II, he joined the Army Air Force and became a bombardier on B-24 bombers.  During a search and rescue mission over the Pacific, his airplane crashed.  Zamperini and his pilot survive the crash and an almost 2000 mile trip drifting across the Pacific.  The Japanese capture them, and they spend the rest of the war in Japanese prison camps, much of it without being declared as captured.  After the war, Zamperini falls into depression and alcoholism, but eventually finds his way toward redemption and a good life through the love of his wife and an awakening of his relationship with God.

With The New Breed:  At Okinawa and Peleliu, a memoir by E.B. Sledge, discusses his life as a Marine  in the Pacific Theater of World War II.  Sledge gave up a safe slot in college to join the Marines, and joined the 1st Marine Division as they prepared for the invasion of Peleliu.  The book details his training and preparation for this campaign, as well as the campaign on Okinawa.  He does an excellent job describing how Marine Corps training led to the excellent esprit de corps that has marked Marines for over two centuries, and how that spirit and dedication to each other kept men alive in the hard fighting of the Pacific island campaigns.  Sledge also brings the horror, insanity, and fear that he faced in these two campaigns to vivid life as he describes both battles from the perspective of someone watching it over a gunsight.

While these two books deal with the same over-arching event, World War II in the Pacific, their over-arching messages are far apart.   Unbroken, even though it deals with how inhumanely man can treat his fellow man, is a story of hope.  Zamperini and his fellow prisoners lived through privation and abuse, but still kept up hope of deliverance.  With The Old Breed, on the other hand, deals in detail with the tension of extended battle and the despair felt by Sledge as he survived it.

Both stories are important.  Knowing the horrors of war and the impact that it has on those who carry it out, is of utmost importance.  When we forget these things, sending our young men and women off to war becomes much easier, and the shock at the cost of such decisions is much worse.  However, knowing that even in the worst of times that hope, along with a lot of hard work, can bring things to a good ending is just as important.

Both of these books are well worth your time, and I heartily suggest that you read them if you haven’t already.  They will both lead you to think about war and how it affects human beings, but in different ways.  These are definitely going on my list of books that I recommend to others and I will have them both available for my kids to read when they are ready.