Book Review: High Heat (A Jack Reacher Novella) by Lee Child

16 year old Reacher is on school holiday from South Korea and is passing through New York en route to visit his older brother who is a cadet at West Point Military Academy.

It's July 1977 and it's hot. Son of Sam is on the rampage and a sweaty guy is slapping a sweaty woman in the face......

Even at 16, Reacher has already established a code of honour and conduct, and a guy slapping a woman on the face falls outside of what is permitted....

Reacher prevents the guy from doing any more harm to the woman and a night of cat and mouse with a local drug lord ensues although as usual Reacher, even at 16 is not the hunted but the hunter in the blacked out streets of New York dodging fires and looting as a city wide power cut takes affect.  In between making the drug lords life unbearable, he finds time to hook up with a co-ed a and is introduced to a special first time encounter in the front seat of a sports car and then to assist a suspended FBI agent with information on Son of Sam.

These occasional diversions by Child into Reachers past are as entertaining as the 'up to date' titles. They show us the boy who became a man growing up inside the Marine Corp and being enveloped by a system of honour and do right at all times, even if that means taking extreme actions to find a solution to a problem.  As long as the solution achieves the aim of winning the contest / solving the problem, then it is the correct way to go.......

There were a couple of small issues with the editing for the Kindle with extra spaces between words, but other than that no problems.

Editing for Kindle: 4 out 5
Reading Enjoyment: 5 out of 5
Plot: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5
Chapters: none
Page length: 77

Book Review: Gabriel: Zero Point by Steve Umstead

Steve Umstead wrote three books in the Gabriel, series but has now released this shortish Novella as a prequel to the three books.

I've read the first book in the series, Gabriel's Redemption and enjoyed it, see that review here ,  and fully intend to download and read the remaining books in the trilogy, but as always the TBR pile is rather large, so they are probably some way off, but then I saw mention of this one pop up on Twitter and so as it was a novella decided to take a punt on it.

So, Evan Gabriel has joined the navy after both his parents have died and his older brother has disappeared off world leaving him alone.  He then applies to become an officer and as we know from reading the first book in the series he is one tough soldier with enhanced neuretic implants.  Zero Point tells us how he came to be selected for Special Forces and how he was turned into a super soldier with the abilities that he has.

Pulled out for a transfer that he did not request, but accepts, transported to a lab and submerged unconscious for 22 hours while nano probes enhance his body he comes to in the empty lab with a blood trail but no bodies.... still trying to orient himself to his situation he finds that he is fighting for his life, the enemy have guns, grenades and body armour, he has managed to get his socks on and ..........

Umstead is a SyFy writer who writes, or so it seems to me, with some clarity; in that his prose flows seamlessly along without the uncomfortable trap that many of his contemporaries fall into.  By that I mean that many SyFy writers out there seem to feel that there is a need, as they are writing about 'off world' existences and other planets, that they have to make up the most complicated language and names for people and technology, it is of course needed in some stories, particularly if you have created a whole new species, but still!

I don't know about others but when I am reading, the words are actually being spoken aloud in my head by my brain and while Ishbel sitting opposite me on the sofa clearly can't hear me, I can hear them, and so when reading to myself and I find that suddenly I am stumbling over another made up foreign name or word, it can be more than slightly off putting as well as irritating, Umstead doesn't do that [much] - he writes in good old fashioned English without, I suppose, feeling the need to complicate the language, which makes for a flowing narrative....

A good read and good value for the money and, I am sure,  a good addition to the first three books.


Editing for Kindle: 5 out of 5
Reading Enjoyment: 5 out of 5
Plot: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5

Book Review: Dull Knife by C.J Box (with additional comment)

If you have read my previous reviews on C J Box novels you will know that I am completely enamoured with the guy and in particular his creation Joe Pickett, and while extremely short, this was not disappointing in terms of the story and presentation.


While checking that some 'ice fishermen' have their license's Joe is informed by one of them that there appears to be a glow from underneath the ice in the distance.  Joe doesn't particularly like standing on ice with a river running underneath his feet, who does, but slides over to investigate.  As he approaches, sure enough there is a glow from under the ice, but there is something else, something sticking up through the ice.  It looks like maybe a branch, but as he looks closer he discovers that it is in fact ............

Well no point in me giving away the whole story now is there!



COMMENT

I didn't read any other reviews before buying this, I hardly ever do, as most books I read are either because I have read the free bit on the kindle review page or have been pointed towards the book by someone else who thinks I will like it.  When I went back on to the Amazon site to download the photo of the book I noticed that there were two reviews and so I pulled them up and had a look at them and both reviewers on Amazon UK,  felt very short changed and for that reason gave it a 1 star rating.  I then popped over to Amazon US  and there are 18 reviews there, but once again almost without exception everyone is on about being ripped off by both Amazon and the author, do they have a point?

Well that's the big question today isn't it, how much is an authors work worth and how much are you willing to pay for it.

As to the question in regard to this particular piece, from my own view, the answer is Yes and NO!

Sitting right on the 'Picket Fence' on this one.

On the one hand I believe that an authors work, like anything else has got a value and we as readers should pay for it, unless either the author or the seller is doing a deal on it and either giving it away free or at a reduced price as a promotion.

I also understand NOW, since reading the American reviews that this was first released in 2005 as a short story, so those people commenting that it was only a chapter and seemed unfinished need to learn the difference between a Novella/ Novelette and a book. And, as it only took them around 15 minutes to read, re -read it, slowly, and I am sure that they will find that the Novella had a beginning, a middle and an end, for goodness sake what more do you want in a written piece (apart from more words and pages).

But, to an extent I am with the gripe about not knowing how much you were getting in relation to the cost of the purchase.  C.J. Box's books don't get that much of a discount as he is a publishing house author and I have no idea how much control mainstream authors have over pricing as opposed to all of my wonderful Indie authors, so there is that argument.  But, I think it only right and proper that there should be a disclaimer at the point of purchase, and a prominent one at that, warning and advising the purchaser, that the book about to be purchased is in fact a short story and then they could make their decision to purchase, or not, based on that notice.

In the end, you cannot expect everything to be free but why some have said in their reviews that 'lost a fan' is completely off base and I have no understanding why they would say that.

The Novella was a structured read, it did, as I have already stated have a beginning a middle and an end and it was entertaining for the 25 minutes it took me to read it, so on that basis


Update

I have just checked the Amazon sites both here and the US.  Both sites do in fact print a disclaimer but not sure if they have been there for long, I certainly never noticed them before the UK one is  here and the US one is  here  and where both estimate the 'book' to be 21 pages.  It may well be that this is new, or since the complaints started, but if it was slightly larger, it may help.


my review is

Editing for Kindle: 5 out of 5
Reading Enjoyment: 5 out of 5 
Plot: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5