Malasz

Nonfiction Punishment is to go on living THE ODYSSEY OF ECHO COMPANY: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War By Doug Stanton 313 pp. Scribner Reviewed by Tom Glenn Doug Stanton knows combat. His bio makes no reference to military service, but he brings alive on the page the grisliness of the battlefield so graphically that he must have experienced it. And Stanton writes better than any other author on Vietnam that I have read. He uses the techniques of fiction to tell of the carnage, but the events he catalogues really happened. His prose is clipped, precise, and pointed; his paragraphs lean and sharp; his vocabulary incisive. Nor does he shy away from describing the unspeakable—the wounds and deaths of soldiers on both sides of the conflict, the dragging of bodies away from the battlefield, the scattered body parts. His naked realism combined with his flair for words makes for riveting reading. The prose of Odyssey locked me in from the first page with ...

Fiction The wretched empress THE IMPERIAL WIFE By Irina Reyn 276 pp. St. Martin’s Press Reviewed by Dennis Rizzo The Imperial Wife  leaves us pondering the lives of Catherine the Great, Russian Empress, and Tanya Kagan Vandermotter, Russian Arts Specialist for fictional, upscale New York auction house Worthingtons. Either way, we are immersed in a world of immeasurable wealth, hauteur, and emotional ennui. Early on, we see that the label “imperial wife” could refer alternately to Tanya or Catherine. In fact, Reyn organizes the book as a series of back-and-forth chapters; at one point talking about Tanya’s rising star and failing marriage, at another discussing Catherine’s rising fortunes and despondent regal fiancé. Tanya’s entrance to wealth and privilege may as well refer to Catherine’s entrance into the world of Czarist Russia.   Can you even imagine an immigrant girl who finds herself in a gilded auction house, a junior cataloguer trainee in a palace of glass and white wal...

When Anna takes on the role of companion to the owner of Wynthorpe Hall, on the outskirts of Wynbridge, she has no idea that her life is set to change beyond all recognition. A confirmed ‘bah humbug’ when it comes to Christmas, Anna is amazed to find herself quickly immersed in the eccentric household, and when youngest son Jamie unexpectedly arrives home it soon becomes obvious that her personal feelings are going all out to compromise her professional persona. Jamie, struggling to come to terms with life back in the Fens, makes a pact with Anna – she has to teach him to fall back in love with Wynthorpe Hall, while he helps her fall back in love with Christmas. But will it all prove too much for Anna, or can the family of Wynthorpe Hall warm her heart once and for all...? I love this time of year when all my favourite authors start releasing their festive novels and one that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this year was Sleigh Rides and Silver Bells at the Christmas Fair by He...

Fiction Fungus among us THE GENIUS PLAGUE By David Walton 384 pp. Prometheus Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Sci-fi/horror master David Walton is back with his third novel. Like his previous novels Superposition and Supersymmetry , (also reviewed on this site) it features the common theme of humanity facing a potentially catastrophic alien threat. Unlike the novels that preceded it, which deal with an alien threat spawned by experiments in quantum physics, the alien threat in The Genius Plague shares our planet with us. In fact, it’s been here for millions of years. The story begins in the jungles of the Amazon rainforest, with Paul Johns, an American mycologist, ready to return to civilization after spending nearly a week on his own collecting samples of fungi. On his way to catch a riverboat, he runs into a fellow American named Maisie – a bored rich girl in search of adventure. The two strike up a friendship as they wait with some tourists for their boat, which picks up its passen...

Fiction The mussel quotes Kerouac ONLY THE ANIMALS: Stories By Ceridwen Dovey 248 pp. Picador Reviewed by Madison Bush The premise: what can we learn about the nature of human conflict looking through the eyes of animals whose fates are intertwined with writers of the past century?   Ten posthumous animal reflections interspersed with obscure cameos by lesser-known writers give us the answer: human conflict is a tragic, foolish waste that causes animal misery via domestication, subjugation, and carelessness.   Did we need ten stories to realize that? Probably not, but after a trip through time, beginning at the end of the nineteenth century in Australia, continuing to World War I in France and Germany, World War II in Poland and Hawaii, through the Cold War, and ending with the conflicts of the past twenty years in Mozambique, Bosnia, Iraq, and Lebanon, you will walk away certain of one thing: in the end, the world would be better left to the beasts.   Anyone who thinks t...

The IRB's Celebrating 10 Years of Intelligent Reviews October 2007-October 2017 Fiction Scrape his balls with a holystone THE BLOODY BLACK FLAG A Spider John Mystery By Steve Goble 237 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Journalist turned novelist Steve Goble makes his debut with the first in a series of mysteries featuring one of the most unusual sleuths ever to grace the printed page – an 18 th century pirate. It’s October of 1722, and honorable pirate Spider John Rush is rowing off the Boston coast along with his best friend Ezra Coombs and some other men on their way to the pirate ship Plymouth Dream , where they’ve signed on to work: As they rowed, in a rhythm they’d reached without the aid of a cadence or chantey, Spider threw many a nervous glance shoreward. He sought signs of a lantern or torch, and listened for shouts or musket fire. They were well away from the Massachusetts Bay Colony coast now, and the full moon showed nothing but its own ...

The IRB's Celebrating 10 Years of Intelligent Reviews October 2007-October 2017 Fiction Family betrayals DESERT REMAINS A Gus Parker and Alex Mills Novel By Steven Cooper 400 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen A new mystery writer makes his debut with the first in a series of mysteries featuring an unusual pair of sleuths. The novel opens with Phoenix homicide detective Alex Mills at the scene of an unusual crime. A young woman named Elizabeth Spears has been brutally murdered, her body deliberately placed in a cave in the Arizona desert. Her meticulous killer left behind no murder weapon or incriminating evidence of any kind – only a bizarre calling card. Carved into the cave wall is a huge mural depicting the murder and the victim’s last agonizing moments of life. Alex Mills has never seen anything like it, nor have his fellow detectives – not even star detective Timothy Chase, who used to work as a criminal profiler for the FBI. To help solve this ghastly and baf...