Book Review: The Last Wish

Geralt the Witcher—revered and hated—is a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters and vile fiends that ravage the land and attack the innocent.

But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good...and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.

I watched season one of the Netflix series and thought that this might be a fantasy series worth checking out. I wasn't wrong.

First off, cool looking cover! Like maybe something out of the video games (that I haven't played) inspired by this series. Alas, the scene is not depicted in this book. There are no epic battles here, although Geralt has to fight off some monsters.

Having watched season one of the Netflix series, I recognized a few of the stories that were used to draw up part of the episodes. However, there were some major alterations to what was in the book versus what was seen on the screen. The worst part of the Netflix series was knowing when things were happening. This book didn't help much as only one story, "The Voice of Reason," was current. It was broken up into seven parts with the rest of the stories existing as flashback interludes. After consulting this map and timeline, it would seem that it was a 56-year span, but I digress.

Much has been made of the re-written fairy tales that appear in this book. Suffice it to say that the reinterpretations bear little resemblance to the originals, containing only the most basic elements. While done well, what was more satisfying to me were the elements of humor that were injected into the stories.

This is a character-driven work with each story meant to provide insight into Geralt—his skills, his morals, his outlook on the world. We learn that witchers were once men who were subjected to alchemical experimentation to enable them to fight the monsters of the world. But their collective success has reduced the survivors to mercenary status, traveling from one village to the next, asking, "Hey, ya got any monsters ya need killin'?" We're also introduced to Yennefer the Sorceress and Jaskier Dandelion the Bard. Both challenge Geralt in some way. Jaskier is a foil to Geralt's dour disposition while Yennefer's strength attracts him, forcing him to deal with...feelings.

One interesting thing to note is that in all but one of the flashback stories, women are the antagonists. While a couple were actual monsters, the other times they were just strong women. That's not to say that Sapkowski was expressing misogyny. Each of the three women had been dealt a rough hand in life and had to be tougher than their circumstances just to survive. Some people resent that, prefering women to be submissive no matter the circumstances. As such, they're unfairly demonized. Sapkowski puts Geralt into a confrontation with each of them, and he must negotiate his way through these encounters to see the truth. He isn't always successful.

Worldbuilding was scarce. Sure there were plenty of references to monsters that inhabited the places Geralt was visiting, but they were just lists of names, most of which carried no weight. Places were obscure with no explanation for where they were in the world. Did it matter? No, I guess not, but the randomness of it all left me feeling rudderless.

3.5 stars

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Book Review - Die Empty

Lance is a middle-aged man stuck in a loveless marriage and a life with no meaning. His sedentary existence has packed on the weight, both physical and mental, and he envies his successful and fit neighbor who may be banging his alcoholic wife on the sly. The Grim Reaper shows up to recruit Lance into brainstorming new ways for people to die.

Kirk Jones tells the story in second person, thus forcing you to take on the role of Lance. In chapter one, Jones dumps you into Lance's life. Jones systematically tears down Lance's pitiful attempts to find meaning in a world of soulless consumerism. Lance knows that his life is pathetic, but he lacks the self-esteem—or even friends—to find a way out of it, so he trudges on, looking for something, anything, to jolt some life back into him.

Fortunately for the reader, the Grim Reaper shows up in chapter two to give Lance a way to escape what author Danger Slater perfectly describes as "suburban ennui." Seeing this as an opportunity to escape his misery, Lance accepts.

The pace picked up, and it seemed like the story was headed in a direction I was hoping it would go, but then it veered off into a different direction. While Jones does a fine job with second person storytelling, I could never connect with Lance. Jones would write that you (Lance) would do something and my reaction was always, "I wouldn't do that." All I could do was shake my head and hope that Jones would have the Grim Reaper show up because those were the best parts.

3 stars.

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Book Review - Exit Strategy

The GrayCris Corporation thinks that Dr. Mensah ordered Murderbot to investigate their shenanigans at the terraforming facility in Rogue Protocol, so they take her hostage and hold her for ransom. This is unacceptable to Murderbot.

Murderbot travels to the space station—basically the size of a small city—where Mensah is being held captive and has to figure out how to rescue her without getting her killed and it caught. Dying would be fine for Murderbot so long as Dr. Mensah gets away. Actually, dying would be preferable to getting caught.

Along the way, Murderbot is forced to confront its feelings. Those damned interminable feelings.

Exit Strategy is a fine conclusion to the story arc that spanned a quadrilogy of novellas/short novels that opens the Murderbot Diaries series (Yes, book five, a standalone novel, is already out). There's bot vs. bot action, lots of hacking, and overloading of processor memory buffers. Murderbot's biting sense of humor is in full swing, and the humans who care about Murderbot have learned how to give it space. Ultimately, the question of Murderbot's personhood status is finally resolved.

If you've made it this far into the series, you know what to expect and won't be disappointed.

4 stars

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Book Review - Hideous Absinthe

Adams has crafted a thoroughly researched tome that explores the history of absinthe use in society with emphasis on its peak use in the late nineteenth century. While it runs from ancient Egypt's medicinal uses up to today's connoisseurs on the web, the focus of the book is on its peak usage period from mid-19th century Europe to its eventual banning in the early 20th century.

I'd heard about absinthe some thirty years ago, and its purported mind-altering effects were the stuff of urban legend. When something is banned, all people have to go by are tall tales meant to keep a firm grip on the listener's attention. Adams explores that aspect. How much of absinthe's legend is true; how much is hype? He focuses on the poets and painters who were associated with absinthe. He goes into great detail about the lives of famous artists (Van Gogh, Gaugin, Verlaine, Degas, Dowson, Wilde, etc.) to determine how much of their work's success, moral shortcomings, and health failures can be attributed to "the green fairy." In fact, he goes into so much detail that I feel he got sidetracked. The book becomes less about absinthe and more a study of the Decadent Movement and its propensity for creating alcoholics.

After absinthe becomes a victim of its own hype, the narrative rushes to modern day. Contemporary accounts note that absinthe tastes like crap, and Adams barely questions why that may be. A few scientific accounts are brought up, but it seems that biochemical analysis was a bit lacking at the time of publication. We know that thujone is the active ingredient in wormwood oil that gives absinthe its claim to mind-altering fame, but there doesn't seem to be any consensus on anything other than toxicity levels. As for why its taste doesn't hold up? We're met with a shrug, which isn't a great way to end a book.

3.5 stars

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Book Review - Kaufman's Field Guide to Insects of North America

When my son was little, he developed a curiosity about bugs. He'd ask me what a particular one was, but most of the time I didn't know. We'd then try to look them up on the internet (BugGuide.net is a good source). So one Christmas, his mom got us this book.

It's a great introduction to the world of insects (and select arthropods often misidentified as "bugs"). It's broken down by class and order with color photos and relative sizes of select species that are either common or of notable interest. After a general introduction about the particular group on a page, there's often another paragraph about a sub-group followed by a sentence or two about featured species or genera, typically the pictured individuals.

And so this has fueled our continuous drive to identify every insect we observe in our yard.

Who's that butterfly that keeps landing on Alex? Red Admiral

Do I need to worry about this beetle? No, it only eats decaying wood.

Is this bee going to sting me? No, it's just a yellowjacket that smelled the sugar in your drink. Don't kill it because it eats the bugs that eat our crops.

These ladybugs have different spots. That's because they're different species.

Dragonflies, damselflies, katydids, fireflies, soldier beetles, paper wasps, weevils, stink bugs, owlet moths, robber flies, ants, butterflies, and bumble bees. On and on.

One of the most useful features of the book is learning who's a pest and who's an ally. The pest identification part is obviously important, but even more so the ally. While I knew that ladybugs were awesome, they didn't have any biting or stinging parts to worry about. And they're cute. Insects that we were taught in our childhood to fear for their nasty stingers are actually our allies (wasps, hornets), too. I even let some paper wasps build a nest under my deck one year because of what I learned here. Spoiler alert: No one got stung.

Even at just shy of 400 pages, there are limits to what this book can cover as there are nearly a hundred thousand species of insects in North America alone (11,000 moths; 16,000 flies; 24,000 beetles, and so on). As such, sometimes we were left wanting more information on either a bug we'd found or clarity on a particular type of beetle. But I guess that's where the internet comes in handy.

Definitely recommended for those wanting to get to know more about whom they share their yard with.

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Tropical Storm Isaias

A month ago, Tropical Storm Isaias ploughed into the northeast. Connecticut took a pounding. Eversource, the deliverer of my electricity, claimed they were ready, but judging by the number of people without power and the length of time we were out, it would seem that they weren't.

We were without power for seven days and 22 hours. I bought a new generator the next day (the old one was on the fritz), so we were able to keep the food in the fridge. I grilled a lot. We flushed the toilets with water from the rain barrel. I keep five gallons of potable water on hand at all times, but even this time we ran out and had to get more.

Here's why I was without power for eight days:


It's always here. Irma, Sandy, the October Snow Surprise. There's a rock shelf where several trees staked their roots down decades ago, but the shallow soil has left the trees that grow in this spot vulnerable to high winds. And so, they come down in the big storms.

Fortunately, my home and family were spared. But it was terrible to watch. The winds came out of the south and battered the trees like waves crashing on a beach. This grand red maple in the backyard (picture taken from my garage shortly after it happened) is the closest the damage came to my house.



A cottonwood crashed across two of my neighbors' yards.



An ash tree fell from a neighbor's backyard into mine.


Two other trees, a maple and a birch, were severely damaged. I don't have pictures at the moment, but if I take them, I'll post them later. A leader on the maple was snapped about fifteen feet off the ground, sending it into a v-notch on a nearby tree. The crown on the birch broke off about forty feet up. It's now dangling by a fragment of xylem.

And yet this is nothing. Hurricane Laura, a category four storm, just tore up Louisiana. Many of those poor souls have nothing left. So for all my griping, I am thankful things weren't worse. If a storm like Laura came through here, the damage would've been incalculble.

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Book Review: Xenozoic

A global ecological cataclysm has forced mankind underground to ride it out. Five hundred years later, they return to the surface to find it greatly altered. Now dinosaurs, Pleistocene mammals, and things never seen before are roaming the Earth. The survivors have rebuilt old cities or built new ones on top of the ruins of the old. Will they survive in this new age or repeat the mistakes of the past?

I first heard about Xenozoic from the old RPG Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, though I admit that I'd never played it. Still, it looked pretty cool. It was decades later before I found this collection, and it collected dust on my nightstand for a few more years after that. I can't offer a good reason why.

The artwork is all done in black ink. Schultz's talent improves with age, going from very good to fantastic over the course of this collection (1986 - 1996). And if you don't believe me, he won five Harvey Awards with this series, three times for Best Artist or Penciller.

There are two main characters: Jack "Cadillac" Tenrec and Hannah Dundee. Jack has chiselled good looks and a physique to match. He's a mechanic very much in love with 1950s era automobiles (preserved among other things in vaults beneath the surface) and has figured out how to run them on dinosaur guano. He lives in a large garage complex on the mainland and assists the people of the "City in the Sea" (a flooded Manhattan) when he can. But he also has a bit of Tarzan and Henry David Thoreau mixed in. He concerns himself with the balance of nature in this new world, but rather than taking a thoughtful approach, he charges into action because he thinks he knows what's best. Outside of his faithful team in the garage, he tends to alienate others (and annoy this reader).

Hannah Dundee is an ambassador from Wasson (built on the ruins of Washington D.C.). She arrives in the City in the Sea to address a matter of poachers and to foster better relations between the two cities. While she is incredibly attractive, Schultz never stoops to cartoon proportions that are often seen in works tailored for a cis-gendered male audience. She's smart, keenly interested in the scientific potential locked away in the city's library, and politically savvy. She's no damsel in distress either. She rescues Jack from peril just about as often as he rescues her. Their relationship is full of friction as they butt heads over which actions to take in this world. Of course there's also the sexual tension, and one wonders if they're ever going to hook-up.

The world building has some holes in it. For example, dinosaurs in just 500 years? Schultz tries to explain this and other oddities, but the answers don't really work for me. I'd recommend not looking too much into these conundrums and just enjoy the ride. The stories are good, but the artwork is the main attraction here.

Unfortunately, just as the overall storyline was building to confrontation, it went into hibernation. Schultz went to work on other comics and has been working on the Prince Valiant comic strip since 2004. Schultz is 65, so I'm hoping that he returns to Xenozoic someday soon, but there is the possibility that we may never know how it ends.

4 stars.

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DED