This one’s got it all: a prewar Nazi mission to Tibet, a daring aviatrix, a mysterious source of power, and present-day adventure. It’s got just enough character development to keep you interested and enough action to keep you turning the pages.

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Set – and written – in the early 19th Century, this is a long, detailed novel that tells the story of a naive poet from a rural city and his rise and fall in Paris.  Lucien Chardon has talent, though not as much as he thinks he has, and lacks the social smarts to distinguish real friends from those who mock his pretensions.  It’s the tragic tale of an ambitious young man with promise who betrays his talents by devoting his energies to finding shortcuts to success.  It could be titled “Wasted Potential”.

I read this book on my iPod and it took forever, but it was very satisfying to sink into such a richly drawn world populated by dozens of interesting characters.

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In le Carré’s latest a vacationing British couple gets involved with a Russian oligarch/gangster who wants to sell his knowledge to the British in exchange for protection from his enemies.  There’s no action but the characters are finely drawn, the writing is first rate, and every element is 100% believable. Nobody does it like le Carré.

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The Mafia, Castro, Cuban Exiles, Kennedy, the Grassy Knoll, a mobster with a brother in the FBI – you get the idea.  This novel has a great plot, but it’s marred by a wooden and repetitious writing style.  For example: three different rooms, each with “an art deco coffee table” in the space of fifty pages.  Are there no editors?

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This is a rather good cyberthriller with a plausible plot, interesting characters, and enough realistic-sounding technical detail to be convincing. A potboiler, but a good one.

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It’s really hard to find a good spy novel. Terrorists have replaced Communists and the stereotypical fictional terrorist just isn’t as interesting as the classic sterotypical Soviet spy. Happily, “The Trinity Six” is an old school spy story about a contemporary historian who stumbles on what may – or may not – be the “sixth man” of the infamous Cambridge spy ring.

I enjoyed this tightly-plotted, fast-paced novel – it’s a great example of a fading genre.

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This is a very good naval tale about three friends’ experiences in WW II in the Pacific.  The surface combat sequences are particularly good.

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Happily, Anderson recovers from the stumble of the last one and this excellent lost in time/alternate Earth series once more hits its stride.

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“For Love of Country” is a very worthy successor to “A Matter of Honor“.  It continues the story of the seafaring Cutler family and is set in the corsair-infested Mediterranean, the Barbery Coast, and revolutionary Paris.  Unlike the first book in the series, this one doesn’t cram too much plot into too small a book.  I’m looking forward to many more in the series;  number three is due in October, 2011.

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In this novel, American’s returning to the Moon discover a stranded Chinese crew.   The American astronauts, with the help of a commercial space tourism company rescue the Chinese.  The authors wrote this as an argument for resuming. manned missions to the Moon.  Ironically, all the mishaps that the fictional astronauts experience undermine the authors’ case for manned space flight: the flights accomplish nothing.   There are some interesting scenes in the book,  but it’s all pretty predictable – it’s no “Apollo 13“.

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The fact that there’s a large degree of similarity in “fighting sail” novels doesn’t keep me from reading every on I can get my hands on.  Still, it’s nice to see an author come up with a new plot device.  J.D. Davies’ trick is to set the action to the Restoration era and enlist his characters in the navy of Charles II.

The main character is Matthew Quinton, son of a loyalist family, trusted by the king, but with virtually no knowledge of seamanship, despite the fact that he’s a ship’s captain.  This wasn’t unusual at that time, but Quinton’s lack of knowledge is why he losses his ship in the first chapter.  He soon gets another one – loyal gentlemen apparently being in short supply – and the story proceeds.

The book doesn’t live up to the promise of its novel original setting.  It’s two thirds over by the time things really get going and the pieces don’t all mesh smoothly.  However, it is Davies’ first novel, so I’ll read more if the series continues in hopes that his storytelling improves.

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I love the Kydd series, but this one focuses too much on the setpiece Battle of Trafalger scenes and too little on Kydd and his friend Renzi.  Stockwin spent half  of this book not on his main characters but with a midshipman aboard Nelson’s “Victory”: I enjoyed the other half.  Still, given the excellence of its predecessors I  eagerly await the next Kydd book.

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This novel has all the faults of its predecessor plus some new ones of its own.

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A priest-spy, the Vatican, the CIA, and the Ark of the Covenant.   Competently done, but not interesting enough to make me read the first book featuring Father Fowler.

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This is the sequel to “Under Enemy Colors” and is a solid example of the fighting sail genre.  I can’t get enough of this stuff.

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“After America” is the sequel to “Without Warning“.  In it, the few remaining Americans try to recover their decimated and nearly empty country, facing internal struggles and external threats.  It’s a typical “middle of the trilogy” book, building on the first, setting up the last, but not quite able to stand on its own.  The momentum of the very good first book carried me through this one, but I hope the story picks up speed in the subsequent volumes.

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