Deadly Gamble-Linda Lael Miller

I was browsing the library stacks one Saturday morning looking for something different to read. Well, I say browsing, but that implies a leisurely pace. Instead I was looking quickly since my husband was out in the car and I didn’t want to leave him too long. So after a few passes in the various paperback sections, I wandered over to the hard covers and found Deadly Gamble by Linda Lael Miller. It was a paperback but a taller one, so I guess the librarians thought it would fit better with the hard covers. The premise seemed interesting enough, so what the heck, why not give it a shot? It wasn’t until I was in the parking lot until I took a closer look at it and saw that the publisher is HQN, with their tagline “We Are Romance”. Uh-oh. While I do enjoy a wide variety of books, romance novels are on the bottom of that pile. And Ms. Miller is the author of a western romance series as well. I was looking for something different, I guess I had it!

Mojo Sheepshanks is the heroine of this book. She’s a free spirit in her late twenties who possibly witnessed the death of her parents when she was five. She was also kidnapped by the woman who was her babysitter and formed a tight family bond with her. She starts having problems when the ghost of her late ex-husband and the ghost of the cat killed by her stepbrother when she was four appear in her apartment. While she’s dealing with the ghosts, she is also dealing with a crazy ex-wife of someone she dated once, a hunky cop whose ex-wife who wants him back but now while he’s a cop, a sister who wants her to find out if her husband is sleeping around, an uncle who is a state senator and is now running for governor, and her stepbrother who was convicted of her parents’ murder but is now free and apparently stalking her.

So with all of that going on, it was hard at first to figure out the main focus of the story. After a while, though, I realized the best course of action would be to sit back and let the story unfold. Some plot points are really only in the story to set up other events in the story. This was more of a detective story than a romance novel, along the lines of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series, although not quite as over-the-top.

Overall, I’m glad I found this book, and didn’t let the romance tag scare me away. It’s a good “shut your brain off and enjoy” book, and with summer coming up this would be a perfect thing to read while lying on the beach.

Saturn-Ben Bova

Saturn by Ben Bova is set in the distant future, when humans have obtained the capacity for space travel and a religious group called The New Morality has become the dominant political force. A group of universities has banded together to send an expedition to Saturn, with the intent of studying it. The governments of Earth would like to start a colony, and they see this as the perfect opportunity to get rid of “troublemakers”, or those who don’t follow The New Morality’s teachings. Those who are going see this as an opportunity to get away from the oppressive government and form a new democratic society.

There are a couple of different sets of characters that are the focus of the story. Holly Lane was cryogenically frozen while a teenager because she had an incurable disease. Years later, there is a cure for the disease and Holly is back in society. She is struggling to find a place for herself, and decides to join the colony traveling to Saturn. Her older sister has her doubts, but does everything she can to protect her sister, including sending someone to watch over her.

Malcolm Eberly is a con artist who has been serving time in prison. He is approached by The New Morality to join the colony as head of Human Resources. His true mission is to make sure the “troublemakers” aren’t a problem, and to take control of the colony and form it as The New Morality sees fit. He is assisted by other people who are sent by The New Morality and eventually realizes that they are truly in power while he is a figurehead.

There are problems with this book. The basic plot of the story doesn’t make much sense. If a government truly wanted to get rid of its undesirables, they wouldn’t ship them off to start a colony under the pretext of letting them form their own government while planning on taking control. The characters themselves are also fairly shallow. Much of the time you’re told what their motivation is, instead of being shown through writing. In the first part of the book, Holly is romantically interested in Malcolm and desperately tries to get him to notice her. This plot point abruptly ends, leaving the reader wonder why so much time was invested in this part of the story. Also, the way the book ends rings a little false. For example, one of the “bad guys” is killed when someone pushes him out of an airlock. When discussing the situation later, a couple of characters (who are authority figures) make a big deal out of calling it an execution, however, the person who committed the murder faces no consequences and in fact is in the room with them, almost laughing about it. The whole scene struck me as something out of a Monty Python skit, and I kept picturing John Cleese saying “Yes, yes, it was definitely an execution, good show, old chap!” over and over again. The writing almost seemed like it was aimed for the junior high audience instead of an adult level, and I don’t think that’s what the author intended.

Overall, this was a decent book, but it could have been a lot better. If you’re in your local library and you can’t find anything else, go ahead and give it a whirl. Otherwise, you’re not missing too much.

Into Thin Air-John Krakauer

Originally reviewed May 13, 2007

I just finished reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. This is an absolutely amazing story of his trip to Mt. Everest in May 1996. Jon was a journalist with Outisde magazine at the time of this trip, and his assignment was to write an article about the commercialization of Everest. Instead, he told the story of the death of five of his fellow climbers, including two guides.

I've caught Everest on the Discovery Channel a few times, and I was just stunned at the determination of these climbers. Often, these climbers would frostbite, sleep deprivation, and oxygen deprivation. They would also commonly pass the bodies of other climbers who didn't make it, or even worse, climbers who were still alive but with no way of rescue. Similar situations are described in this book, and there is no shortage of traumatic events on this climb.

Near the start of the story, Jon talks about the moment when he realizes just how high he is going to climb-the same altitude as the plane he is taking to reach Everest. That put the height of Everest in perspective for me, otherwise 29,028 feet is just a number. Jon also intersperses his story with a history of Everest, and this brings a lot more richness to the story. There were some knocks from Amazon reviewers who thought that the narrative was a bit scattered, but I didn't think it was hard to follow at all. In fact, it was really hard for me to put the book down. I wanted to know what drove people to climb this high, and how the disaster unfolded. It also made me wonder if I would have the drive to do something like this. I think it would be quite an adventure to go to Everest, but I don't think I'd want to go much higher than Base Camp.

Thanks, Motos, for putting this in your garage sale. It was definitely a worthwhile read.