Book Review: Vicious

 The #ReadICT challenge is back for another year, and the first category on the list was a book with a single word for the title.  After a brief search, Vicious by VE Scwabb became the choice.  I've enjoyed Schwabb's other series, Shades of Magic.  Schwabb does a good job of world building, setting up characters that have good depth in world's that give them difficult choices to make.  In Vicious, Scwabb explores a world where people with extraordinary powers exist.  A pair of college classmates attempt to find what gives people these powers, to try to find how to make themselves extra ordinary. The results of these experiments change their paths and many around them forever.  The story is tight, clocking in at a bit under 340 pages.  It is set between several characters, mostly the main pair of Eli and Vic.  The setting mostly revolves around a few days, with a lot of flashbacks to college and the previous months for both characters and their accomplices.  Its an enjoyable look into the darker side of superheroes.  Its not nearly as dark as The Boys, but it certainly gives a grittier look than most superhero work out there.  It did feel like the resolution came abruptly, but was still fulfilling. It had snuck up on me, and left me wanting a longer look into the work. Overall this is definitely a recommended book, and hopefully the next one will be just as enjoyable.  Four stars out of five.

Book Review: The Gordian Knot

For the ReadICT book challenge this year, there was a category for Book from a Genre you don't read.  I'm not really a crime/ mystery reader, but while on vacation the ship's library had a few options so I picked up The Gordian Knot. 

The book overall is intriguing, but utterly unbelievable in the end.  The story follows Georg Polger, a German living in Southern France who has hit a rough patch in life.  His career as a translator has diminished, and the woman he moved with has left him.  However, he finds a bit of luck being hired by  a new company for a hefty salary, and soon stumbles into love with the company secretary.  His fortune only increases as he buys up another translation firm and wins a contract to translate for a big aero-defense project.  Georg however discovers this all has been a ruse, as Francoise (the secretary) has been stealing photos of the helicopter plans.  His whole bit of luck was simply a way to get the plans to him so they could be stolen.  Francoise leaves him, and he is threatened by the police because they are of course in the pocket of the forces conspiring against him.  He deduces through more luck that Francoise has left for the US, where she is really from.  He somehow manages to find her, and unravel the whole espionage mystery.  This, despite facing off against the KGB and other adversaries with decades of experience in the field. 

The story is a bit nonsensical, with many of the characters making choices that seem to only be to further the plot, and instances where Georg simply should not be able to move forward but does.  Its definitely a light read, but it is not a book I would recommend to folks to read beyond something to simply fill time. 

Book Review: Empire of the Summer Moon

One of the bigger gaps in my knowledge is inside the Old West here in the US.  I have a vague knowledge of many of the bigger events, but its superficial at best.  When on a podcast then about a month ago they had the author on of a book detailing the Comanche People's interactions in the West, I thought this was a place to start filling in.  SC Gwynne weaves an incredible amount of information into a very easy to read novel that covers much of the recorded history of the Comanche Nation in Empire of the Summer Moon: Qanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches.

The book begins with the brutal raid at a frontier homestead, a story that would play out over and over again as folks from the Eastern United States streamed West into the vast plains of Texas and Oklahoma.  There, Cynthia Ann Parker and several memebers of her family that survived were captured by the Comanches and taken for years.  Cynthia Anne would eventually integrate into Comanche life, with her son to play a larger role for the tribe in its waning years.  This story serves as a driver to the history Gwynne details thouroughly thotughout the book.  It is also I think the weakest part of the book, largely because outside a few sightings and then a chapter that describes her dreadful forced reintegration into her past culture, Cynthia Anne plays no role.

 But the history getting between her capture and eventual "release" is one of two clashing empires.  The COmanche had become the most powerful Plains tribe by virtue of the unmatched horesmanship and a penchant for fighting war's to the hilt.  Originally driven into Wyoming by other tribes, the Comanche essentially had disappeared before somehow obtaining some wayward ponies from the failing Spanish empire.  From there, they became the finest horsemen with nearly unmatched skill.  With these horses, they conquered and controlled lands from Wyoming to Mexico and as far East as Kansas and Oklahoma.  The book details how the Comanche essentially blunted the Spanish move into the US hinterland, and also kept the nation of Mexico from succeeding as well.  Their ability to travel vast distances (over 400 miles for a raid) was at the forefront of their power.  The book does an excellent job of detailing the back and forth battles that the Comanche fought with the US, and does a good job not to moralize either side.  It walks a fine line of describing a true battle of Empires, and the reasons why a peace could not be found between the adversaries.  

The later portion of the book follows Qanah Parker, Cynthia Anne's son.  He had escaped fromt he cavalry group that returned Cynthia to the US territory, and so continued his life as a COmanche.  He grew to be an esteemed war leader, and eventually after being defeated became an instrumental leader for the Tribe living on the reservation. 

Overall this is an enjoyable book with a lot of history packed in.  It paints a vivid picture of frontier life and life for the Comanche in throughout the 19th century, and all the changes that occurred.  The book can drag in a few spots, but overall it reads easily.  I woudl recommend it if you are interested at all in the frontier West.