The Saturday Morning Post (No. 41)

 

I've set myself up for an impossible task - describing, reviewing and recommending a book that I've read maybe six times over the last thirteen years, making it perhaps my favorite book of all time. The book is not Anne of Green Gables. Or anything like it. Instead, it is a strange, silly, satirical, mystery/post apocalypse novel. It's a slice of live story that only covers just four days. But a lot happens in four days. I recommend it to everyone, knowing that it's not a book for everyone. I will say, however, that I think most people who have read it on my recommendation have liked it, though not to the extent I do. So, without further ado, tallyho! 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde   A+

I think I'd best start with the writing before I get to the basic premise of the story. This book offers exactly what I value most in a book; a small story (though with big implications), a first person narrative with a focus on characters, which is written with a great deal of clever wit and humor. I'm not a lad for silly stories, as a general rule. Silly, slapstick humor doesn't have a great appeal to me. But having said that, this story has a great deal of silliness in it that is handled in a matter of fact way. It's part of the humor. What redeems it for me is that all the silliness is grounded in the premise of the society the story is set in. It is not silliness just for the humor of silliness. It only seems silly to us because we are peering into this world from our own. Everything is very real to the characters in the story. Wodehouse was a master of this; while you couldn't take his characters, and the situations they get themselves into, seriously in our "real world", they are, however, entirely believable within the make-believe world he creates; a world that is just next door to our world.  

Part of the charm of this book is that it is a mystery on several different levels. We are dropped into this world without an info-dumps. You have to just sit back and go with the flow and abandon the desire to make immediate sense of the world. Fforde builds this world step by step throughout the entire story, and slowly you get a picture of a very closed, hieratical society where stasis and stability are the goal with human characters who are not quite like us. The second mystery is what lies behind the curtains of this society. It is the mystery that our narrator, Eddie Russet, slowly discovers, or rather discovers its existence, because he is a mite too curious. 

The basic premise of the story is that the humans of this society can usually only see one or two primary natural colors, if that. What colors they can see, and how much of that color they can see, determines their place in this very regimented society; a collective ruled by an elaborate set of rules and the highest color seeing members of the collective. There are, however, synthetic colors that everyone can see. Seeing color is one of the great desires of these humans. Showing off one's predominate color using these synthetic colors is a status symbol. The story is a post-apocalyptic on set some 500 years after "Something Happened," though what happened is not known. 

Our narrator, Eddie Russet, (everyone has the last name of related to the primary color they can see) has been assigned to conduct a useless task -a chair census - for a month in a remote town in Wales as punishment for a practical joke he did. Or so he believes. His father accompanies him as a replacement swatchman. Swatchmen are the doctor to these types of humans; curing various ailments by showing a specific synthetic color to the patient. (Think of the pantone series of color samples, if you're familiar with them.) They find that the collective's own swatchman has died under mysterious circumstances, and nothing is quite as it seems. This town is on the fringe of society and the rules are rather loosely interpreted. The story covers only four day as Eddie uncovers a deadly secret with the help of Jane, a "grey" girl i.e. someone who can't see any colors, and are the manual labors of the collective, making enemies in the process.

Enough. 

Here's the opening paragraphs to give you a taste of how the book reads;

It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended up with my being eaten by a carnivorous plant. It wasn't really what I'd planned for myself  - I'd hoped to marry into the Oxbloods and join their dynastic string empire. But that was four days ago, before I met Jane, retrieved the Caravaggio and explored High Saffron. So instead of enjoying aspirations of Chromatic advancement, I was wholly immersed within the digestive soup of a yateveo tree. It was all frightfully inconvenient.

But it wasn't all bad, for the following reason: First I was lucky to have landed upside down. I would drown in under a minute, which was far, far preferable to being dissolved alive over the space of a few weeks. Second, and more important, I wasn't going to die ignorant. I had discovered something that no amount of merits can buy you: the truth. Not the whole truth, but a pretty big part of it. And that was why this was all frightfully inconvenient. I wouldn't get to do anything with it. And this truth was too big and too terrible to ignore. Still, at least I'd held in my hands for a full hour and understood what it meant.

I didn't set out to discover a truth. I was actually sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a chair census and learn some humility. But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind.

Passage to Jarpara, Final Thoughts and A Map

 

I've talked a length about Passage to Jarpara in several previous posts, so there isn't all that much more to say about the book. I rather rushed my volunteer beta readers to get this book out on the 21st of March. In part because this book, with all its fits and starts, has been in the works for some 18 months, and I just wanted to be done with it and have it out the door. The other factor is that I ain't as young as I used to be. I don't think I have one foot in the grave just yet. But at 74, I could drop dead tomorrow and no one would raise an eyebrow. Like Captain Hook with the crocodile that swallowed a clock, and had eaten his hand and found it tasty, one hear the faintly ticking of the clock at a this age. So there is no time like the present. For every writer, one of their books is going to be their last one, and if they die in harness, one left unfinished. I'd spent too much time and liked these characters too much to run the slightest risk it being that unfinished one. Hopefully it'll not the last.

As for the story itself. As I've said several times already, I've never been into writing epics. I enjoy reading small scale stories that somehow make everyday life interesting, either with pleasant characters, an interesting time and/or locale, and/or a quiet, but engaging plot. And that's what I enjoy writing as well. In this story I pretty much doubled down on that. The only overarching plot element is the journey to Jarpara and its University in the hope of finding employment. Every other element of the story is incidental. And almost, but not quite all, are everyday events, at least in the islands and on seas of the Tropic Sea. The story then depends on its pleasant characters, and interesting places with a travelogue motif. Hopefully that works for my readers.

This book is different from my other ones in that the romance element is subdued. The chase is over and Taef and Lessie are married. I had hopes of being able to write some witty dialog between them, a sort of Nick and Nora type of relationship, but I don't think I succeeded. In part I may've beyond the limits of my talent. But I will also blame the characters. Writers will sometime talk about their characters taking the story in ways they never envisioned, as if they had an agency of their own. I can see how that happens, though in this case it wasn't so much as taking the story where I wasn't expecting, rather it was the fact that Lessie never had all that much to say in either of the proceeding stories - she is a quiet character, especially in the company of her sister Sella, and I was unable, and/or unwilling to reinvent her for this one. I would've hoped to have made their relationship a little more complex than I was able to. But, as I said, that probably isn't in my wheelhouse as a writer.

I did enjoy the opportunity to bring back a lot of the minor characters from the previous books. I may've stretch coincidences a little to do so, but I used the opportunity to bring them back, even if only for a little walk-on part. It gave me the opportunity to explore Taef's beliefs and attitudes. I also had fun writing several new characters, one in particular that had been lurking off the page in the first two books. I won't say who, but that character was always going to be part of this story. 

A number of my beta readers expressed a desire to have more stories with these characters and setting, suggesting possible story lines. There are certainly plenty of story lines to pick up and run with, but I'm not planning to do so, at least not until I'm 84. As I've said when introducing this book, writing sequels of less than a bestselling series is for chumps. Stand alone books, "singletons", with open endings are the way to go until lightning strikes and you have a bestseller on your hands. Then you can write sequels until the cows come home or readers don't. Of course, if you look at my back catalog, I don't follow my own advice. However, I intend to going forward. No more sequels - except maybe, someday, a novella sequel to The Lost Star's Sea just to get Litang and Cin back together again at the ending. But, mind you, I'm not promising that, it is just something I'd like to do, just as I wanted to give Taef a job.

Well, I guess I've rambled on long enough to fill this post without saying much about Passage to Jarpara. But I hate spoilers, and hate spoiling my books more, so this is the last post for now on that book. 

Below is the official map for Passage to Jarpara. I don't include it in the ebook, as using maps in ebooks is a pain. 

The Saturday Morning Post (40)

 

"What's this?" you say. "Another mystery story? I thought you weren't a fan of mysteries, and here you are, two in a row."

Well, as I mentioned in my last Saturday Morning Post that I'm out of books to read. I've read all the recommended books I had on my list, so I'm on my own for reading material. My wife had just read this library book on her Kindle, and thought I might like it, as it had a first person narration, and none of the things I dislike, like contemporary settings, flashbacks, and multiple points of view. So I decided to give it a try before she returned it.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Duty to the Dead  by Charles Todd  C+

This is not a bad book. It reads well, has an engaging narrator, and is set in a historical period that sounded right to me. Unlike that Victorian era historical mystery I read some time back, the authors (a son and mother team) did not try to impress the reader with their research with mini-lectures drawn from Wikipedia. By chance it is the first book of a (currently) 13 book series whose stories take place during and immediately after World War l.

The story involves a British World War l nurse, Bess Crawford. She survives the sinking of the hospital ship Britannica in the Mediterranean Sea in 1916, though her arm was broken. She finds herself on medical leave in England until her arm has healed enough for her to do her job once again. She had been given a message by a dying soldier to deliver to his brother in person. Just two sentences, that told her nothing. Using her leave, she decides that the owes it to the dead soldier, who she had warm feeling for, to deliver this message. After contacting them, she is invited to the family home, and delivers her message, which opens up an ugly can of family worms. An ugly mystery, and her promise to the dying soldier, compels her to uncover the events that took place 15 years before the story opens and their repercussions, in order to uncover the truth. 

My major criticism of the story is that I found it hard to suspend my disbelief in some key aspects of the mystery. While the authors made a valiant effort to make the reader believe that these people could do what they did, and that the authorities could do what they did, I must admit that I never quite bought it. The backstory and some of the actions of the characters just seemed too contrived. Still, I read the entire book, and that says a lot when it comes to me. I don't waste my time reading books I don't like. I think fans of mysteries, especially ones set in historical settings would find this book just fine, and probably enjoy the series as well.

A New Novel and New Audiobooks

The 2024 C. Litka Novel - Passage to Jarpara

I am happy to announce that my 2024 novel, Passage to Jarpara was released on Thursday, 21 March 2024.

The story:

Taef Lang must set out on his grand quest…

… To find a job. 

Now a married man, the time has come for Taef to begin his long-delayed career as a professor of Island archaeology and/or Island history. To do so, he and Lessie, along with Sella and Carz, set sail for the Island and the University of Jarpara.

Passage to Jarpara is a travelogue of that journey. It’s an account of islands called on, old friends and acquaintances met, new ones made, as well as potential pirates, curse-beasts, haunted Tiki palaces, fire islands, and a hidden race of immortals. In short, it’s an episodic record of the everyday life of the island-studded Tropic Sea.

Passage to Jarpara is the third and final volume of Tales of the Tropic Sea from the pen of C. Litka. It draws a fitting conclusion to the adventures of Taef, Sella, and Lessie that begin with their voyage to Redoubt Island and continued with the freeing of the Prisoner of Cimlye. It blends fantasy, science fiction, adventure, and romance told in C. Litka's classic lighthearted style. Like all his novels, it features engaging characters, witty dialog, meticulous world-building, and mysteries to be solved in unexpected ways.

The ebook version is now available for FREE from these ebook retailers. 

Smashwords 

Apple

Barnes & Noble

Kobo 

Google

And several European ebook retailers, including; Thalia , Vivlio .Borrowbox, Odilo.

(It is priced at $.99 at Gardners.)

The FREE audiobook version is available from Google.

The ebook version version is available from Amazon for $3.99

The audiobook version is available from Audible for $3.99 You can add the ebook for $1.99 more

The trade paperback is available from Amazon for $11.99

NEW! C. Litka Audiobooks are now on Audible!

And my second announcement is that most of my books are now available as audiobooks on Amazon and Audible for $3.99.(The minimum price Amazon allows) These auto-narrated audiobooks from Amazon are part of a new beta program that I was offered and was more than happy to take part in. I have to say that I was very happy with the AI narration quality from Amazon. The only hitch in the program so far is that for some unknown reason, I've not been able to get The Bright Black Sea, The Lost Star's Sea, and Shadows of an Iron Kingdom working as audiobooks. Hopefully I'll get that worked out with Amazon shortly. 

I also have six audiobooks available for FREE on Apple Books, the rest are hanging fire, and have been for the better part of three months. What Google and Amazon can do in hours, Apple appears unable to do in months. Hopefully at some time in the not too distant future Apple will get around to converting the rest of my books, though a this point I'm not holding my breath. 

Writing Passage to Jarpara

 

click for a larger map

As I told my beta readers, this is a totally unnecessary story. I had left Taef and Lessie sailing for their bright future together, a more definite ending then I usually provide. So why then, does it even exist? There are several reasons.

The first is that I sort of always wanted to see Taef get the job he wanted, and I thought that there might be a story in a long trip across the Tropic Sea. A second reason is that I really like these people and the Tropic Sea, so I didn't need much of an excuse to revisit Taef, Lessie, Sella and Carz, and the Islands. Thus, there was always a motivation for one more story.

Next was opportunity. In 2022 I had written and submitted The Girl on the Kerb to a publisher during their un-agented open period, and had to wait at least 9 months to learn that they passed on it. And during that time I had, just for the experience, been querying agents while I waited on the publisher. So with that book hanging fire, it was time to start another one, even if The Girl on the Kerb looked to be my 2023 novel.

And then there was the fact that story ideas are very scarce on the ground for me these days, and quite frankly, that sort-of-story idea I had, was the only one I had. So when fall 2022 came around, and with it, the writing season, I decided to run with the one story idea I had. And that story idea was summed up in the (not serious) working title Zar Lada, Taef Lang, and the Island of the Slumbering God. I didn't care if it turned out to be a novel or a novella, I'd play that by ear.

The basic idea was that I'd have Taef, Lessie, along with Sella and her new husband, Carz sail east to Jarpara and during the voyage get talked into making a side trip to view the slumbering god, or some such mysterious thing, by a person they met aboard the ship. I wanted to see how I could write a married couple, once the romantic chase was over. I had hoped to be able to write some sort of Nick & Nora type of small talk between them. I also felt that I could use the story to bring back a some minor characters for their final bow as well. It was never going to be an epic quest. I've always been into small personal, character-focused stories, and this was going to be a very small scale, low stakes, character-focused story.

I started writing it on 14 Sept. 2022 and by 6 Nov., I had about 25K words written. I stopped work on it at that point because I had no idea what a slumbering god, or any Island mystery, could be. This has been a curse of mine recently, starting a story, with a vague middle part, and once into it, unable to come up with that middle part. 

On the 2 Jan. 2023 I once more started on the project, starting with a new beginning scene - the return to Lil Lon to introduce Lessie to Taef's parents, which was not in the plans at the end of The Prisoner of Cimlye, but seemed like a good idea. I had 38K words written before the project petered out again a few weeks later. During the following months, I returned to it in spurts - mostly editing what I had - so that by 6 June 2023 I had 44K words done. At this point the story clearly wasn't going to be a novella, and so I needed  to come ups at least 30K more words to make it a respectable novel. 30K words for which I didn't have the faintest idea where to find that slumbering god, or any other attraction could be.

I then spent the summer daydreaming up other potential stories, one a portal fantasy novella inspired by a girl I saw at a London bus stop during one of the virtual bus rides I was taking on YouTube. And a second, very mundane fantasy story, somewhat inspired by the stories I've been reading by D E Stevenson and Molly Clavering, which is to say stories that don't involve more than domestic trials and perhaps a bit of romance. I like to color outside the lines, and given how popular the epic & grimdark fantasies are, with their dragons and epic battles, I wanted to write something completely different. I spent all summer working a story out to the point were I probably could've written it, but...

But I had half a novel sitting unfinished, and I feared that I might find myself burned out on this summer story idea half way through writing it, so I decided to buckle down and finish Passage to Jarpara. To trust that I could find the slumbering god when I needed it and just start writing. So on 1 October, I once more started in on Passage to Jarpara, inserting another new chapter in what I'd already written, editing what I had written, and then writing forward. I came up with two ideas for side-trips, one minor, the other major.

The major idea I came up with for the slumbering god motif came to me while I lay awake one night. It was actually a return to an early idea I had for what Sella, Lessie and Taef would find on Redoubt Island in the first book of the series. I modified it somewhat, but the core idea for what they would've discovered in my first version of Redoubt Island will be found on Recluse Island in Passage to Jarpara. I thought it a fitting way to draw the series to a close. 

So it all worked out and  I finished the first draft of the story a few days before my self-imposed deadline of 1 Feb 2024, with a 105K novel. Now people often say that you should put the story aside for a few months before coming back to it for a second draft, but at my age, I can't take that chance. I spent February doing my second and third drafts and running it through Google Drive and Grammarly, before turning it over to my wife Sally in early March for her proofreading.

And being an old and impatient man, I decided to publish it on the first day of spring, 21 March 2024, no doubt putting my beta readers on the spot.

I will write more about the story itself after its release. Stay tuned!

 

The Saturday Morning Post (No.39)

 

With the last two massive books dealt with, one way or another, I found that my TBR list was blank. I had nothing to read. So I went to the bookshelf and pulled out volume three of the Brother Cadfael series, and read the next story in that series.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Sanctuary Sparrow by Ellis Peters  B+

In this story we meet a young, traveling juggler and musician who is fleeing an angry mob of towns people who are accusing him of murder and robbery. He makes it to the Monastery and into the church, which, by law, gives him sanctuary for 40 days, or as long as he stays in the church. The person he is accused of murdering, does not, in fact, die, so only the theft charge hangs over him. Still, might be enough to hang him in this time period. Bother Cadfael is called on to dresses the wounds the juggler received from the mob, and in questioning him, believes his claim to be innocent of both crimes. But that impression must be proven and Cadfael, along with his friend, the under sheriff, set out to find the true facts in the affair.

The crime took place on the night of a wedding celebration in the house of a wealthy, and miserly goldsmith, and in the course of the story we get to know the inhabitants of that house. As customary with Ellis Peter's Cadfael stories, the person in trouble is a young man, and there is an element of (an unconvincing) romance involving him as well. 

Like always, this is an interesting tale, with a lot of time spent finely drawing the characters involved in the mystery, with some detective work mixed in here and there. Like the previous story, The Virgin in the Ice, it has a very dramatic closing scene which, I must confess, I'm not overly fond of. In some ways I think these dramatic climatic scenes are not only unnecessary, but seem out of place with the general tone of these stories, with their focus on the everyday life of the 12th century monastery, the city, and surrounding countryside, then on the extraordinary event - the mystery to be solved. And I think that's best solved in the classic murderer mystery style of some sort of review of the evidence, and the unmasking of the criminal. But as always, that's just me, though in this case I was also unconvinced that the who in the whodunit had sufficient motive to do it. Even so, it was an enjoyable read, though not quite top tier installment of this excellent series. I think that you can't go wrong with a Cadfael mystery.

Proofreading

Any long time reader of mine is well aware that the first editions of my early books had too many typos. While I was well aware that I couldn't spell English to save my soul, I didn't realize how blind I was to my typing mistakes. I read what I expect to read, whether the word(s) is(are) actually on the page or not. As a result, I often miss in both typing and reading the little words that aren't there but should be. As well as the double words that arise either out of stopping to think of the next phrase, or from moving lines about in editing, and the use of the wrong words that look similar to the right ones. 

Proofreading is a very specialized skill, and though my wife, unlike me, knows the rules of grammar, spelling, and was a high school teacher for decades, she only finds 95+% of my mistakes, so that some of my mistakes inevitably through. Thankfully, over the years, some very kind readers have taken the time to point out the errors they come across to me that I then correct. Some of these kind people have since become my beta readers, and with their generous help I've been able to slowly improve all my books over the years.

I'd like to believe that having been at this writing thing most of my life, I've gotten better at it. And while I think I have, I'm still far from perfect. I have, however, started using several programs in addition to LibreOffice to process my work. Three years ago I discovered that Google Docs has a much more robust grammar checker than LibreOffice, so I ran all my published books through it, and now upload all of my new books to proofread my stories before handing the story off to my wife. It finds many of the double words and some of the wrong and missing words. But not all. My wife still had to do her proofreading, and my beta readers still find some typos that had escaped both Google Docs and my wife.

For Passage to Jarpara, I decided to add a second layer of automated grammar checking, and ran the story through the free version of Grammarly, after running it through Google Docs. It found a number of double words and wrong words that Google Docs had missed. I had hoped that between the two programs, I'd be able to hand my wife a clean copy that all she'd need to do was read it. Alas, this was not the case.

Spelling wise, few words escaped detection. There were several missing little words, mostly "to" that were missed by both programs. Grammarly liked hyphenated words, i.e. "white-painted house" and having no opinion one way or the other, I went along with Grammarly on that. However, something like 75% of Grammarly's suggestions involved the elimination or insertion of commas. I may not know the "rules" about comma placement, but place them where I think a speaker would pause, which, given that my books are now auto-generated audiobooks, is pretty important. Still, I made the lazy decision just to go with Grammarly on commas. My wife, however, quickly complained about the lack of commas where commas ought to be. I also found them missing where I would've, and maybe did, place them, so I spent a lot of time adding commas back in. Another point was that for some crazy reason, I decided to use semi-colons instead of my usual dashes. Grammarly didn't complain about them at all, but my wife has very strong  and narrow opinions on the use of semi-colons/colons, and so I had to go back to dashes to please her. I'll never use a semi-colon again.

Both these programs tend to ignore words that make no sense, so that they usually don't try to correct my made-up words. This simplifies things greatly. However, LibreOffice will underline them. And unfortunately I will misspell my own made-up words, and since they are all underlined, I never realize that I have. I could tell the program to ignore those words as I write them, but it seems to lose those instructions as soon as I close the program, so they're all underlined again the following morning. This time around, I spent several hours working on the final proofread draft, telling the program to ignore the correctly spelled made-up words, so that I could find my misspelled ones. I found maybe 20 of them. So frustrating.

I haven't given up hope of finding a completely reliable, and free, grammar checker, or perhaps use three or four of them in succession to see if I can eliminate all the errors that one or two programs seem to miss. But that will be for the next novel. This time around, I'm hoping that my beta readers don't find too many errors, none being too much to hope for. In any event, Passage to Jarpara should be a close to perfect as a C. Litka book in this world will ever be.

The Saturday Morning Post ( No. 38)

 

This week another long book with a page count coming in at 843 pages. It is a book by one of America's favorite authors, an author I hadn't read yet. So, without further ado, let's open up this can of worms.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

11/22/63 by Stephen King  DNF (pg 131)

The eagle eyed reader will already discovered that Stephen King and his time travel story about an effort to prevent President Kennedy from being killed in Dallas on 11 Nov 1963 did not prove to be my cup of tea. King is one of the most popular authors still writing today, and he seems to be a favorite author of several of the booktubers that I look in on. I'm not a horror fan, so he never was going to be one of mine, but I thought that this might be the book to sample his work without delving into the horror genre. And well, my wife liked it, so I thought, why not give it a try? I did, and now I'm here to talk about why it wasn't for me, since I'm certain you're curious to know why. Spoilers for the first 131 pages and the premise below.

Let's start with King's writing style. This is a first person narrative, which is my favorite story style. However, right from the beginning King's style just didn't sit well with me. While I have nothing against slow starts, I use them myself, I thought the start of this book was, if not too slow, too scattered; too many things tossed about rather haphazardly in order to set the scene and character. And perhaps more importantly, he has the reader more in the head of the narrator than I like. In short, I found the narration to be too granule, with too many thoughts on too many inconsequential matter, all of which prevented me from connecting with the narrator and the story.

And then we have the pet peeve of mine. I want the author to stay hidden behind the characters of the story. One thing that, for me, brings the author out from behind the characters is when he starts sprinkling the story with all sorts of trivia, and then explains it for our education. To me this smacks of an author showing off how much research he's done, how adept he is at using Wikipedia. I'm sure this is justified in the author's mind as "world building, scene setting." but too much of it just becomes trivia. As I said last week I like learning history within well researched historical fiction, but there is a difference between setting a story within a historical context, and just sprinkling it with all sorts of trivial, which I think is what King did here. Do we need to know who's on a pre-1958 $20 bill? Or that a motel was called a motor court, or a V8 was a Y-block, or modern dimes would not work in a pay phone, or how everyone smoked and the brands they smoked, the obsolete soft drinks, the songs on the 1958 radio, the lack of air conditioning and three channels on a b&w TV? It struck me as King went out of his way to highlight all the differences between 2010 and 1958 by having the narrator notice and comment on all these trivial things, as if he had been actually hatched in 2010 and all this past was brand new to him, even though the narrator was 40 years old, so that some of these things would've been hardly new to him at all. I've complained about this before, but boy, did it bug me here, as it seemed to be a major focus of the story up to the time I gave up on it.

Next, let's talk about the story. A time travel story is always going to be a hard sell for me. They never make sense, no matter how much handwaving is employed to make it seem like it does. I was, however, willing to suspend my disbelief for this story, and since my wife liked it, I thought I'd give it a try. I had, however the idea that it would involve some sort of organization sending someone back in time to stop Oswald. This proved not to be the case. It's just a fellow who has a fissure in time, with steps, in the pantry of this silver trailer hamburger joint and who thinks the country would be in a better place if Kennedy wasn't killed. However, he as a problem; he's dying of cancer and can't stop Oswald himself, so he talks the narrator into doing it instead. I found the baseline premise rather lame with lots of little problems overlooked.

The way the time travel works in this book is that the restaurant owner has discovered an invisible fissure in time, with invisible steps in his pantry, which takes a person to one, and only one day in the past; Tuesday September 9th 1958. After arriving in the past you can stay there as long you want, and when you find the fissure and climb back up the steps to the pantry, you will have been gone exactly two minutes in 2010. The hamburger joint is (in)famous for the cheapness of its hamburgers, made possible by the fact that the owner simply goes back to 1958 to buy his hamburger meat at $.50 a pound.

(An example of the types of problems I had with this story: The restaurant owner needs to pay for the hamburger meat with pre-1958 currency. How hard and expensive would it be to acquire that currency in 2010 in the volume needed? So how would it pay to do so?)

The restaurant owner discovered that he could change the future while in the past, but as soon as he went back again, the future was reset to what it had been when the last time he visited. Every time he goes back, everything is almost the same as it was the first time he visited the past. I can hear you thinking; Groundhog Day. And you'd think King with his emphasis on trivia, or one of the characters in the story, would be thinking that too, but there's never a mention of the movie in the story, at least in the part that I read, even though the concept is an extension of Groundhog Day's basic premise, with the major difference being the day is not repeated like it is in the movie, time just keeps going on just as long as you stay in the past. 

In any event, if one is going to prevent Kennedy from being killed, a person would have to spend over 5 years in the past, and if he returns to 2010, he can never go back again, for that would reset the future  and erase what he did. In this story, time travel is really just magic, with steps. As you can tell, those steps really bugged me. Why would any sort of fissure in time have steps? Not to mention why are they there? And is this fissure attached to the trailer, or the place it's parked, and why has no one in the past tripped over the invisible steps and found themselves in the pantry of a hamburger joint in 2010? Who knows? My wife couldn't help me, she forgets details like that. I didn't care enough to find out.

At the point where I bailed on the story, our narrator has gone back to the past in order to prevent the gruesome murder of a mother and three children, in which one of his GED students survived, just to test if you can really change time and change it back again. To do so, he has to spend several months in the past to get to the date in 1958 when the murder happened, as well as to the city in which it happened. The story, set in Maine, which I gather is usual for King, and the city, Derry, is a dirty, gloomy, city with a Lovecraftian air about it. We learn that there has been a serial killer of children loose, and something about the sewers - so many of them, built in the depression... and then a light went on in my head. What King horror story was this describing? I think it is It. Having watched these booktube videos that mention King, I gathered that he likes to link all his stories together with references to his other stories, all of which take place in a multiverse known as the Macroverse, and this is an example of it. At this point, I was out.

As I said at the beginning, I'm not a fan of horror so this would likely be the only book I would've read of his. However for all the reasons I've talked about above, and because this story is at least tinged with horror, this story simply wasn't for me. 

Passage to Jarpara Release Date

 

The ebook and audiobook versions of Passage to Jarpara will be released on 21 March 2024 and shortly after for the audiobook. It will be priced for free on Google for both the ebook and audiobook, as well as on Apple, B & N, Kobo, Smashwords, and in various other European ebook stores. The Amazon version will be priced at $3.99. I am looking into bringing audiobooks to Amazon as well, and if that works out, it will be priced at $3.99 as well - Amazon's minimum.

Look for the paperback version of the title to be released a week or two ahead of the ebook release, as I will publish that version once I hear back from my beta readers. I'm always eager I to get my hands on the paper copies of my book so that I can send off to my beta readers. Hey, if I didn't buy them, no one would.

Speaking of Amazon's audiobooks - they have introduced a Beta program where they are offering to convert ebooks to audiobooks, I assume for free, since no price is quoted. However, to qualify, the ebook must have a table of contents, which I've not included in my ebooks. I see no useful purpose of a table of contents in an ebook of fiction as they always open where you left off, and searching back is a pain table of contents or not. I am, however, looking to add a table of contents, and this title will likely be the test bed for that. If it works, look for my audiobooks on Audible in the near future.

In the past Amazon has price match most of my free books in the US store, but starting this year, only two of my books are free on Amazon. Last year, with the release of The Girl on the Kerb, I launched it at $3.99 on Amazon and Amazon, all on its own, dropped its price to free a week after release. Amazon is a mystery box, so if you are an Amazon customer, you can wait to see what they do this time. As I have long said, I'm not publishing books to make money, but to entertain readers, so free is my preferred price.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 37)

 

We have a modern classic to talk about today. With its own old, and now new, TV miniseries. So without further ado...

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Shogun by James Clavell  C+

I never watched the old miniseries, but the impression I had about the book was that it was about a western seaman shipwrecked in Japan and becoming enmeshed in Japanese culture of the 16th century. Which is an element of it, and while it may've been the focus of the original miniseries, it is not really the focus of the book. Blackthorne, the English pilot of a Dutch ship is merely the hook to draw in western readers of this novel, and the window into 17th century Japanese culture that Clavell illuminates in the story; its culture, philosophies, and politics. The main character of the book is a historical Japanese noble, Lord Toranaga, who at this point in history has designs on becoming the ruler of all of Japan, the Shogun of the title, though he denies it. Being an almost 1,200 page novel, with an intricately plotted semi-fictional story grafted into known history, it is impossible to do the plot any justice by attempting to summarizing it. So I won't. I will say that it is a very impressive work of research and storytelling which earns it the "+" I gave for it. Ultimately however, it only earned a C grade from me for three main reasons.

First, and one I can't blame the author for, is that the story desperately needs a map of 17th century Japan to give the reader some idea of what was going on politically. I read a library copy of the mass market paperback (with tiny 6pt. type) so other editions have one. But if they don't, it's a glaring fault. Much of the meanings of the political actions that take up most of the story is lost without such a map. And while you could probably find that backstory, perhaps with maps on the internet these days, those sources would also spoil the story, since this is a historical novel, not a novel of alternate or counterfactual history. At least that is what I feared. And if you do look up sources to supply things like maps, and perhaps character background, you'll discover how the main story ends (though off screen in the book). 

By the same token, since Clavell had to fit his story within known history, without altering it, if you know anything about Japanese history, you will have a clue as to the fate of Blackthorne, who I gather is based on a real historical person, as well as Lord  Toranaga. Strangely enough, if you even know a little about Japan, Clavell spoils the ending himself simply because he can't keep himself from educating the reader on Japanese culture by introducing the invention of the role of the geisha girl in Japanese society.

The second, and more significant reason for my C grade is it's length and complexity. I found it simply too long, and too politically intricate, for me with little knowledge of Japan going into this book. That said, I generally like long books, and love learning history from a fictional book, George MacDonald Frazer's Flashman books are a perfect example of a mix of real history and fiction. And I certainly enjoyed learning about Japanese culture from this book and how it compared to the European society of the period. So much so that by the time I reached the last 200-300 pages of the story, I was quite Japanese. But more on that in a bit. However, after a week of reading it, I was feeling the fatigue of all the intricacies of Japan and period history that Cavell was spoon feeding me. It delved too deeply into the weeds with too many point of view characters, some of whom seemed to be brought in merely to introduce us to one or another aspects of either European or Japanese society or history. I also grew weary of all the endless schemes and ploys of both Blackthorn and Lord Toranaga, many of which come to naught, over and over again. In short, for me, there was too much information for the plot to carry.

And thirdly, as I said above, I had become very Japanese by the time I reached the last third of the book. How so? Well, in this period in Japan, life was cheap. The samurai class could chop up anyone, other than a samurai, on a whim. They solved a lot of problems that way; killing people, including their parents, wives, children, and when honor or a casual order from their superiors demanded it, themselves. In this story many of the characters were simply waiting for the opportunity and excuse to kill a rival in order to advance, or to kill themselves in order to escape this vale of tears. Death was an escape. And many characters escaped, like it or not, that way. But, you see, that's just karma. So by the time I was reaching the last third of this book, I no longer cared what happened to any of the characters, including Blackthorne, Whatever happens, happens, it's just karma, eh? Whatever... And well, Japanese mind-frame or not, when I'm that indifferent to the fate of the main characters in a story, an average grade is about all the story can expect to get from me.

All that said, give it a try. Don't let my objections keep you from giving this book a try if you are one of the few who haven't read it already and are interested in Japan and undaunted by its length. You may well like it, and like it a lot. Millions have. You will certainly find yourself immersed in a very strange and fascinating world, engaged in an interesting, if by the end wearisome narrative, and learn a great deal in the process. Who needs dragons and magic to live in a strange and magical world, when you have history?

There is a new miniseries just starting on I believe Hulu in the states, Disney + outside of it. I only watched the trailer and thought it looked far too dark and gloomy. I guess that's how they film things now days. I would've filmed the story in rich colors; the greens of the land, the blues of the sea, the rich colors and intricacies of the clothing and housing -- in short, a very pleasing landscape to emphasize the fact that only its characters are vile.