Okay, yes, it’s another World War II book by Ken Follett. That makes my third this year? This one has much more in common with Jackdaws than Winter of the World: smaller cast of characters, tighter timeline, and I read the whole thing on a two hour plane ride (as opposed to Winter of the World, which took several weeks all told). Hornet Flight takes place in 1941, primarily in Denmark. A resistance movement there has been compromised, and their leader needs desperately to get information about the radar […]
Coincidences Abound!
“Why was it, Lloyd wondered, that the people who wanted to destroy everything good about their country were the quickest to wave the national flag?” Winter of the World, the second of Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy, picks up just before the start of World War II. Our cast of characters consists mainly of the offspring of the first book’s characters: Carla and Erik von Ulrich, Woody and Chuck Dewar, Lloyd Williams (a personal favorite), Daisy Peshkov (give her a chance, she’ll grow on you), along with her illegitimate […]
A Rowling by any other name is just as fantastic
I find it hard to write about The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith without acknowledging that J.K. Rowling wrote the book under the Galbraith psuedonym. So yes, J.K. Rowling wrote this book. Thematically, The Cuckoo’s Calling shares little with the Harry Potter stories. It stars a washed up private eye and features quite a bit of sex, violence and swearing. But if you like the Harry Potter universe for Rowling’s incredible writing, her ability to plot and her attention to detail, then I bet you’ll like this, too. Cormoran Strike […]
More like the eye-roll in the dark
Wow, was this bad! The back of the book makes Ramsey Campbell (whom I’ve never even heard of) sound like some sort of British Stephen King. Maybe I just caught him on a bad day, but I thought Campbell’s writing was atrocious. That’s a double shame, really, because this could have been one hell of a story. The Grin in the Dark focuses on Simon Lester, a rather washed up film critic who has suddenly been given a miraculous opportunity to publish his film school […]