Reader’s Diary

S. Thomas Russell

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.

John Birmingham

“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.

Steven Saylor

Saylor uses one fictional family to tell the story of Rome from its founding through the end of the Republic.  I read it because I have an ongoing interest in Roman history, but Saylor is no Michener (he’s not even a Rutherfurd) and his exposition, consisting of long-winded speeches in which two-dimensional characters tell other characters things they would already know for the reader’s benefit is awkward.

Taylor Anderson

I was really looking forward to the continuation of this lost-in-time series.  Sadly, it was a disappointment compared to the last one:  slow moving with too much exposition and not much payoff.  I hope it’s just a stumble not an end to what up to now was a high-quality series.

John Barnes

In this near-future novel an apparently leaderless emergent terrorist movement creates organisms that destroy plastic, rubber, and petroleum products: chaos ensues.  The directive of the title refers to a 2007 presidential directive designed to insure the continuity of constitutional government  in the event of a great disaster.  Why the author devotes so much attention to presidential succession is the second biggest mystery in the book (the first being the never-told story of how the terrorist movement started and whether or not it has leaders).

Barnes started with an intriguing premise, but the book degenerates into one of those Turtledove-style SF novels that jump from character to character and from place to place without any rhyme, reason, or transitions.  With a couple of exceptions, the characters are hard to distinguish.  Ultimately the story wanders off into the weeds.  A good editor could probably have made this into a good book, but as published it reads like a first draft.

Piers Paul Read

This novel about a plan to kill the pope reminded me of “Day of the Jackal” in that character, setting, and plot are more important than frantic action.  It’s an old-school thriller, short, not terribly surprising,  but enjoyable