Straits of Hell = Pages of Paradise

Pages of Paradise may be a misnomer, trying to be too clever, but Straits of Hell (Destroyermen series #10) is an excellent book. Full disclosure, I received a free ebook pre-release copy for a fair and accurate review. However, by way of evidence of sincerity, I bought the audiobook from Audible.com. It's good enough to own twice, and I expect to re-read it, as I have done with previous titles from Anderson's Destroyermen series.

Matthew Reddy and his surviving Destroyermen are now stationed on different ships around the Alliance Fleets in this alternate Earth. They are battling on two different fronts with allies from indigenous peoples as well as humans from other arrivals from other time periods in Reddy's earth's history.

Enemies similarly include Japanese from World War II, where the old Asiatic Fleet destroyer USS Walker came from; sentient reptiles called Grik; and other humans from different Earths in the past, relative to World War II. The writing about these groups and their thoughts actions just grabs this reader and yanks him along. These enemy characters are complicated, not mere cardboard cutouts to provide opposition in the plot.

Obviously, at number 10 in the series, much has happened before the events of this book. All things being equal, I'd recommend that readers start the series with book 1, Into the Storm. Nevertheless, if a reader is willing to start "In medias res," this book can carry the extra weight. What are characteristics that make this a compelling and worthy read?

As mentioned before, the characters are interesting and complicated. They are put in dire situations and have to overcome being outnumbered, plans that are more clever than they expected at the time. Another facet of these books is research and re-development of technologies that existed in the World War II time frame, but were unknown in the alternate Earth that the Destroyermen arrive at. Much of the technology has been developed in previous books, but the struggle to improve and manufacture items needed for war goes on as a plot thread. Finally, showing characters working hard to create a more ideal civilization including multi-species interests and entertains.

Straits of Hell is worth your reading time and your book dollars--as is the rest of the series.

Learning 2.1!!!! I'm on it!

Just discovered the place that originated the Learning 2.0 program has moved on to Leaarning 2.1. Go The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County!

Their lessons start with Thing 24 because they originally stopped at Thing 23 for Learning 2.0. The new blog for the more amorphous continuation of learning exercises is



Whooo hoooo! I have to start doing the first 2.1 Thing yet, but I just swiped their banner and made it a link in this post!! How cool is that? I'm not sure this is the way banner links are supposed to be made, but it works. (I added a link to their blog using the ''<''a href'' thing, then in the space after the greater than and before the lesser than /a greater than I added an image link and finished with the image's own ''<''/a''>'' [remove the single quotes. You know how it should look in html.) Ummmmmm it was linking just to the image. Curses.

So, what one really does is use the "a href" bit for the url link, and then in the space where the text would be if it were a word link, one inserts ''"[img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5074868428055059554" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwhM9awXF_l1dANvBrb0HG-aKqI918Rg5IEo6qjTT66S3XGyO63tiXhDeLRtwR-diObJCcNFzce8yILynkmiC50hlrqLBiS4hyZcM7_ddELtOWsdPLyEhFpK28cpcX4didO7h3jKEJTg/s320/learning2a.jpg" border="0" /]. replace square brackets with the point ones.

This seems to work, now. (Understanding of course that the specific above stands in for the general technique of making banner links.)

I'm not listening. la-la-la-la-I'mmmmm not listening!

2893_Knights and skulls
Originally uploaded by YorickWell.

Books and a TV show, part II.

While The Higher Power of Lucky is rather material/physical (as opposed to metaphysical/mystic), the next book I'll mention is more in a magical vein.
The Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett is 3rd in the Tiffany Aching series/adventures/trilogy/thing. According to the catalog, it's number 34 in the Discworld series, but the stories of Tiffany Aching are fairly self-contained. (I've not read any of the other Discworld series.)

First of all, Tiffany Aching is an excellent character. She's not annoyingly perfect, but she is a girl, relatively strong, magically talented, and both clever and intelligent. (As Lennon and McCartney said, "And if you saw [Tiffany] You'd love her too.")

All three of her stories involve struggling against danger and tremendous odds (which is a good deal more cliched than any of the books). In The Wintersmith, Tiffany attracts the attention and infatuation of The Wintersmith himself. He is the personification of Winter. Inspite of his age (after all, winter has been around nearly forever....) he has all the experience of hitting on human girls of a early middle school boy. His power and the self-evident unsuitability of the match make much of the danger and suspense of the plot.

The Wintersmith has some similarities to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. A magical being becomes enamored of a mortal woman (girl) and causes trouble and danger for a number of people because of it. Of course, TW is a good deal shorter. And its allusions are clearly contemporary (whereas JS & MrN is pretending to be written in Victorian times about England during Napoleonic War times).

Also, Tiffany is the protagonist, not the Nac Mac Feegle, not any of the other witches wanting to help her, and not Roland, the human boy who writes to her. Thus, TW is as if one took one of the main plot points from JS & Mr N but had Mrs. Strange or Lady Pole have to save themselves. I like the variation on a theme, myself.

Read both and see what you think. Only read The Wintersmith first, because it's shorter.

Oops. out of time. have to talk about the TV show next post.