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Small Crooked Reviews
Nov. 21st, 2014 05:40 pmHey,
Clomped through a couple more books. Here's what I read.
First up, Small Unit Action in Vietnam Summer 1966 by Capt. Francis J. West. This was a small manual put out by the Marine Corps to help marines get a sense of what firefights in Vietnam were like. Capt. West went out on patrol with a number of marine units all over the country and gathered firsthand accounts and wrote them up.
This particular Kindle title was clearly scanned haphazardly into an ebook format. There are a number of obvious spelling/formatting errors that clearly show this. I know it's a $4 but show a little pride people. The other real issue I have with the book is that there aren't nearly enough diagrams. Only one of the larger, company-sized actions gets any real wealth of diagrams. Other chapters go by with only a few photographs.
Beyond that, the actual book is ok, but I feel like I've read a number of other first-hand accounts/after action reports that put a more interesting narrative together.
After that, I picked up This Crooked Way by James Enge. This is the sequel to Blood of Ambrose which I reviewed last time around. This book is a collection of stories loosely based around Morlock Ambrose -- Master of Makers and his quest to recover his stolen demon horse (and also to reunite his mother).
The book switches up viewpoints but Morlock attracts companions like Doctor Who so these short stories trade off narrators and slowly follow Morlock along through various adventures. On their own each story is pretty good although there are times when Morlock's original goal (get his horse back) gets quite lost in the shuffle. Eventually, the knotted ball of plot unravels and things come to an end.
Again, there's an unusual obsession with the fictional world's astronomy although it plays even less part than in the previous book. There's a whole appendix devoted to it and another that add pseduo-scholarly noise to suggest that these tales come from historical sources (and moreover might be more than fictional tales from the past). I'm not sure why the author goes to such trouble but I will say that the magic Morlock does feels magical and the things he creates have a heft to them that many magical items lack. Again, it was a good read and I'm certainly considering picking up the next book in the series.
later
Tom
Clomped through a couple more books. Here's what I read.
First up, Small Unit Action in Vietnam Summer 1966 by Capt. Francis J. West. This was a small manual put out by the Marine Corps to help marines get a sense of what firefights in Vietnam were like. Capt. West went out on patrol with a number of marine units all over the country and gathered firsthand accounts and wrote them up.
This particular Kindle title was clearly scanned haphazardly into an ebook format. There are a number of obvious spelling/formatting errors that clearly show this. I know it's a $4 but show a little pride people. The other real issue I have with the book is that there aren't nearly enough diagrams. Only one of the larger, company-sized actions gets any real wealth of diagrams. Other chapters go by with only a few photographs.
Beyond that, the actual book is ok, but I feel like I've read a number of other first-hand accounts/after action reports that put a more interesting narrative together.
After that, I picked up This Crooked Way by James Enge. This is the sequel to Blood of Ambrose which I reviewed last time around. This book is a collection of stories loosely based around Morlock Ambrose -- Master of Makers and his quest to recover his stolen demon horse (and also to reunite his mother).
The book switches up viewpoints but Morlock attracts companions like Doctor Who so these short stories trade off narrators and slowly follow Morlock along through various adventures. On their own each story is pretty good although there are times when Morlock's original goal (get his horse back) gets quite lost in the shuffle. Eventually, the knotted ball of plot unravels and things come to an end.
Again, there's an unusual obsession with the fictional world's astronomy although it plays even less part than in the previous book. There's a whole appendix devoted to it and another that add pseduo-scholarly noise to suggest that these tales come from historical sources (and moreover might be more than fictional tales from the past). I'm not sure why the author goes to such trouble but I will say that the magic Morlock does feels magical and the things he creates have a heft to them that many magical items lack. Again, it was a good read and I'm certainly considering picking up the next book in the series.
later
Tom
