This week I am posting my review of Extinction Point by, Paul Anthony Jones. This is the first book in his series. I rated it four out of five stars. The third book in the series released this week. I am kind of excited to dig into it. A scary and action packed book, I enjoyed it. I look forward to finishing the series. I can’t help but wonder what will happen to the protagonist Emily. What I liked about the book: 1) The construction of the red rain-to the extinction of life on earth was very well done. It was scary, and brutally real to witness through Emily’s eyes. 2) The creatures and what she learns about the fallout from the red rain is so fascinating. I was right with Emily-terrified through every grotesque moment. 3) The authors handle of loss, shock, and not letting the protagonist “magically” find her way out New York City. Emily suffers physical pains from getting hurt, she spends a night terrified in her closet, and has to suddenly plan for daily food and water when a day ago she was eating lunch in a café. She struggles emotionally through it all, dealing with the death of her boyfriend, her parents, her neighbors, and co-workers. I felt her reactions were sincere and genuine. When the protagonist is faced with a particularly disturbing “creature” she makes it to safety and finds she wet her self. That was real-and we see Emily do her best to keep it together. I hate to say these were things I didn’t like, but more questions I think an editor should have exposed. 1) Jacob and his Alaskan friends found her how again? Social media-which kind? I really wanted to know this. Why-I don’t know call me crazy, but I think I’d be posting stuff to Facebook before I made phone calls to the White House or political parties. I think her “contact to do list” was a little backwards-but that’s just me. The White House-really? 2) Her priority of what she needs to take. I don’t know, was this just supposed to reflect or be more “true to life” of an average person’s survival competence? She’s smart enough to acquire a sweet bike, and take a small stockpile of bike extras, but looses her brain when she hits the camping store. She upgraded her bike but STILL sticks with a lame used army ruck. WHY? She was already chafed by the thing when she was at the store. I was in the Army, I carried those rucks, I know intimately how horrid those things are. I can get you a laundry list of other women who have served who will all agree with me-Those damn things were NOT made for women to carry. You couldn’t pay me money to carry one of those POS into the backcountry. Her food rations, does she like to carry more weight than necessary? Why on earth did she choose to carry heavy canned goods over lighter-and made for long shelf life backcountry food? Idiotic. Her reasoning, because she did think about it, no she’s going to resupply on the road. Only when she’s on the road she did this once. Her clothing supply, it was adequate before she hit the camping store. But once there I would have turned the camping store out. The first leg of her journey is roughly 150 miles-and she’s not going to get pants to pedal in. NO-WAY! I’ve pedaled enough to know she will be raw as all get out after 30 miles weighted down like she is. I’m sorry her jeans would be in the dumpster. I also would have turned out any house I slept in, but maybe that’s just me. She didn’t even look for sunglasses or dogfood-and she knew she needed those. I’d have scrounged up a map-stopped at a bookstore and picked up a good old Randall McNally with pages dedicated to each state. It’s not like she’s going to MapQuest her route-does she magically know all the interstates to Alaska? 3) Screw the bike-I would have taught myself to ride a motorcycle. I get how a car could be trouble with so much debris on the road, but a motorcycle/dirt bike she could have figured out. No way would I have been as calm as she was about pedaling her way to Alaska from New York.

Troy: Lord of The Silver Bow by: David Gemmell

I rate this book five out of five stars. Cover to cover I enjoyed this book. I figured I would, the Praise For David Gemmell page included a comment from Anne McCaffery who said, “He’s several rungs above the good-right into the fabulous.” I completely agree with her after reading this book. There are many things I could gush about Gemmell doing in this book-but I’ll stick with the three things I liked the most.

1) Characters, I don’t think there was a character presented I was not drawn to know more about or invested in and was cheering on. Ladi-dadi-everybody Gemmel had me meet I wanted to know more about. Even the Egyptian Eunuch who made garments for trade. Reading his chapter I was laughing to myself thinking, “I even like this guy. Gemmel you are a freaking genius!” You learn about the character you are following while also learning about the characters they are interacting with.

Gemmell divvied up chapters into scenes where you follow one of his various characters. The story moves forward, but you view it from the different character points of views. A brave risk, and thankfully taken up by an experienced author. This style of writing can loose the interest of the reader due to lack of empathy for certain characters, or the failure of the author to move the story forward. Readers will skip over scenes involving the characters they don’t like, or put the book down all together. I never once felt the urge to do either of these.

We get to view the protagonist through many character points of view and all of them have different opinions of the man and his actions. Just like in real life, I loved being able to form my own opinion of Helikaon. Born with a natural leadership talent we get to see how he was nurtured out of it, and then developed back into it. We get to see the mentors who influenced the young prince, and watch the drama of them confronting Helikaon over different actions he took in the book. These chapters offered some beautiful conversations about grief, how a monarch influences his people, and how we recover from haunting sorrows of the past.

When he introduced Andromache I was holding my breath. Can he do this, will he do this? Can he pull off a strong female without making her a non-relatable psychopath, whore, or worse someone we might believe to be strong-but never get to see in action? Oh he pulled it off-and I’d say he knocked the strong female character right out of the park. She was defiant, brave, and a woman who knew her own mind, and limitations. She also displayed heart and compassion.

I loved how Gemmell portrayed Odysseus. Brilliant-especially how he brought to life the theory that Odysseus was most likely a form of early drama and not just an example of oral history.

2. I enjoyed how Gemmell created a solid balance of non-fiction elements into the story. The Greco-Roman world came to life, but we were not subjected to pages upon pages describing buildings, clothing, furniture and food. It was relevant and aided the action and drama.

3. Gemmell knows how to write a battle scene. He’s not afraid to take on the task of writing the horrors of battle. In my opinion there are many fiction authors to chicken to try. They skim over the battles-because its hard to write them and you can easily fail trying for a laundry list of reasons. Kudos to an author who cares enough to get the details right, but not douse us in each sword stroke of every soldier on the field. The weapons were right, the use of the weapons was right, the strategies were correct-and as someone who cares about these historical realities it was blissful to read. The battles were awesome. My favorite scenes being Blue Owl Bay, and then the culminating battle at the end. “Death is coming!”
I ended the book wondering where Gemmell’s books have been all my life and looking forward to discovering his other works.