Draper sets out to address social prejudices against those among us with disabilities, by enabling the reader to view the world through the eyes of 11-year-old Melody, a victim of cerebral palsy. Melody is confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk or even sit upright, cannot feed herself, has uncontrollable spasms of her arms and legs, and occasionally drools in public. Worst of all, however, is that she has a mind that functions at top speed, a photographic memory, a thirst for knowledge, a need […]
A sci-fi adventure on the evils of imperialism
After reading and loving the Silo trilogy by Howey, I went back to look for others of his works, and found Half-Way Home to be a fascinating and well-done novel in its own right. It is the story of a group of 15-year-olds who had been raised in artificial wombs aboard a spaceship, one of hundreds of such missions sent out from a future Earth to find and colonize viable planets. Missions landing on nonviable planets were abruptly aborted by the artificial intelligence (AI) controlling […]
Harry the Wizard is back, with a bad migraine and Winter in his soul
Dresden is not only back from the dead—having spent an entire novel as a ghost!—but he is back with more guilty angst over endangering his friends and loved ones than ever before. The Winter faerie queen Mab still has her claws in Harry, and forces him to work with his worst enemy Nicodemus to pay off her debt to the scary dude. The job entails ripping off a certain Greek god of the underworld, no small task even for Harry. And, of course, that means […]
Turow’s sequel to Presumed Innocent should be called Presumed Guilty
In this sequel to Turow’s Presumed Innocent, Judge Rusty Savich is back with his brilliant but rage-filled bipolar wife Barbara, anguished over the state of his marriage, fearful of his imminent 60th birthday and once more vulnerable to the call of the wild—this time, with his lovely young assistant Anna. In the first book, Savich’s lust-filled affair preceded the woman’s horrible rape/murder and Savich barely escaped conviction for the crime. In Innocent, Savich’s new love affair flares, but his guilt overwhelms him and he eventually […]