Larry Correia and Mike Kupari have produced a sequel to their 2011 work, Dead Six, and it’s a roller coaster from start to finish.

Swords of Exodus opens a few months after the close of Dead Six.  Lorenzo, the master thief and assassin, has retired to what he hopes is comfortable obscurity, and Valentine, the soldier of fortune, is rotting in a government torture chamber after being snatched at the end of the first book.   After the events of Dead Six, the criminal world has fragmented, and an exquisitely evil man has taken over a criminal territory in the border region of Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and China, and Lorenzo and Valentine reluctantly join forces to help Exodus wipe him and his slave army out.  I won’t give things away, but the action starts early in the book and doesn’t stop until the very end.  We also get some more back story on Val and Lorenzo, which fills in the characters quite nicely.

Like I said, this is a rollercoaster ride of a good yarn.  You get a few pages of quiet, followed by 10 pages of action, followed by more quiet.  The second half of the book is pretty much action to the very end.  The book ends with two cliffhangers, which already has me convinced that I will be buying the inevitable third book.  Honestly, I had to put the book down and stop from crying out when I read the last sentence.  I just wanted the story to continue.

One distraction in the book’s writing is what I call “brand dropping”.  Rather than “I pulled out my pistol and shot him twice in the head.”, at a few points in the story you read “I pulled out my STI 9mm with the six-inch SilenceCo suppressor on it and put two  Hornady TAP bullets into his brain.”  Both read well, but the authors put such references in just often enough for me to notice, but not enough to irritate.

The first book set up the universe the story lives in, which is a “decade after this one” kind of place where the world has fractured and chaos makes live lucrative for people like Lorenzo and Valentine.    The second book fills in some of the gaps on this world, but that leaves a lot more room for character development.  The characters of Lorenzo, Valentine, and Ling fleshed out quite nicely through the course of Swords.

One thing I like about both books is that I would feel comfortable lending them to Girlie Bear.  Yes, there’s quite a bit of blood and violence in them, but it’s not gratuitous, and while there is implied sex on a couple of occasions, it’s done tastefully and the story shifts away from it before it becomes too graphic.

If you’re looking for a great book to curl up with for a couple of evenings, and you like action thrillers, I think you’ll enjoy this one.

Peter Grant, the proprietor, punmaster, and chief cook and bottle washer over at Bayou Renaissance Man, has put out another book, and this one is a thought provoker.  His other two books, “Take the Star Road” and “Ride the Rising Tide“, are space opera centered around a young Heinleinian character finding his way in the world.   This one, “Walls, Wire, Bars, and Souls” is Peter’s memoir of his time as  a prison chaplain.  It gives an outstanding insight into the workings of a federal prison, looks at the issues our society is reacting to and creating through our prison, crime, and drug policy, and adds in vignettes that show us some of the perspective of those who live behind bars.

Peter separates the book out into cycles of three chapter styles.  The first style discusses the events of one of his days as a chaplain at a federal prison in the American south.  Peter recounts how the necessity of security and control of a prison was brought into practice as he tried to minister to his flock, a flock that probably needed it more than most.  The second style of chapter delves into prison life and routine, prison gangs, and Peter’s opinions and suggestions on how our criminal justice system and prisons could be better used to truly help those who wish to reform.  The third style of chapters are recitations of the prisoner’s side of conversations with Peter, and range from people trying to con him or intimidate him, to people who truly need and want his help to find a better way in life.

Peter pulls few punches in this book, but keeps out of the nitty-gritty titillation about life in prison.  While he discusses such things as prison violence, rape, and slavery, he does an excellent job of walking the fine line between informative and indulgent.

Peter spends quite a bit of time in the second half of the book discussing his ideas for reform and improvement in the prison and criminal justice systems.  While I don’t agree with everything he proposes, I can agree with him that something needs to be changed before the system either becomes nothing more than an extended graduate course in violent crime or collapses under its own weight.  He definitely challenges the reader to take what he has to say, provides links to resources that will provide more information, and form their own opinion.

If you’re looking for an informative, and thought-provoking book that’s a good read, you ought to check this one out.  It’s quite evident that Peter viewed this as a labor of love and put maximum effort into making his points without putting the reader into a daze, as well as telling the story without delving too deeply into the gory details.

Now if we can just get Peter to write his memoirs about his life in Africa, then the circle will be complete.