Book Review

‘A Firehose of Falsehood’ is a must read!

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By Ande Jacobson

A brilliant new book entitled A Firehose of Falsehood: The Story of Disinformation written by Teri Kanefield and illustrated by Pat Dorian is finally available to all (as of 13 February 2024). You can buy your copy at your favorite brick and mortar bookseller, order it online, or borrow it from your local library. In August 2023, I had the opportunity to review a pre-publication copy of this stunning work, and it packed a punch. I more recently received a pre-publication hardcover copy of the book which I was eager to see. Although it was the same material as the digital version I previously reviewed, it was even more gripping in hardcover. This is a must-read book for everyone. A Firehose of Falsehood is a graphic novel, and as such, the illustrations are an integral and powerful part of the story. Kanefield wrote the informative and entertaining prose, and Dorian’s breathtaking four-color illustrations make this book also a work of art. Continue reading →

The dangers behind the walls

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By Ande Jacobson

Keeping on her yearly schedule, Tess Gerritsen’s third book in the Rizzoli & Isles series, The Sinner, first appeared in August 2003. Gerritsen goes in a new direction this time digging deeper in the personal lives of Detective Jane Rizzoli and Dr. Maura Isles. Maura’s ex-husband, Victor Banks, is also a doctor though not a medical examiner. Victor features prominently in this story, and their complicated history intrudes on Maura’s work this time. Of course there are murders to solve, the first one of a nun killed in Graystones Abbey, the home of a sequestered order. Two nuns were attacked, one died at the scene, the other was taken to the hospital, but the story doesn’t end there. There are some other seemingly disconnected murders across a surprisingly wide region. The story has tentacles that reach across states and across the world in surprising ways. Gerritsen is masterful in her storytelling, interweaving the professional and personal lives of her characters, and as always the details matter. Continue reading →

Warren Hoyt’s story continues …

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By Ande Jacobson

One year after the first book in the series was released, Tess Gerritsen’s second work in the Rizzoli & Isles series dropped in August 2002. The Apprentice picks up where The Surgeon left off with the same heart-stopping action and mind-bending puzzles that Gerritsen’s mystery/thrillers are known for. Gerritsen introduced Warren Hoyt, a skilled and pathological serial killer, in the first book. He’s in prison, but a new series of crimes that reek of his signature come to light. Detective Rizzoli and her team are immediately engaged, and so is Detective Vince Korsak in Newton, a Boston suburb and a different jurisdiction than Rizzoli’s territory. FBI Agent Gabriel Dean also appears for some unknown reason. Other parts of the federal government also kibitz later in the story causing additional confusion and misdirection. In this second book in the series, Medical Examiner Maura Isles is introduced, and she and Rizzoli begin their long-admired professional collaboration in crime fighting though their relationship doesn’t cross the boundary into level of personal friendship that they do in the television adaptation of the books. Dean and Korsak both have different prominence in the books than they did in the television series as well. Korsak is integral to the case in The Apprentice, although this is the only time he works professionally with Rizzoli and company despite his being a regular on TV. Continue reading →

Doctors make the scariest villains

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By Ande Jacobson

First released in hardback in August 2001, The Surgeon is the first book in Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles series even though Medical Examiner Maura Isles isn’t introduced until the second book. Making full use of her background as a practicing physician before retiring to write mysteries full time, in The Surgeon, Gerritsen creates a riveting mystery that draws the reader in and doesn’t let them go even when they get to the last page because they know there will be more. In another book. Even so, The Surgeon is at turns gripping and terrifying, and the resolution to this first book in the series is satisfying with a whiff of “happily ever after” for some of the characters. Continue reading →

Can old spies ever truly retire?

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By Ande Jacobson

Released in November 2023, The Spy Coast is the first book in Tess Gerritsen’s The Martini Club series about a group of retired spies living in the (fictional) small coastal Maine village of Purity. The trouble is that even though they were trying to leave their former lives behind them, events often have far-reaching consequences they hadn’t considered. The main story begins in the present in the quaint Maine village and careens around the world to Thailand, the UK, Italy, Istanbul, Malta, and points in between bouncing between the past when a mission went horribly wrong triggering events in what was supposed to be a comfortable and incognito retirement. Continue reading →

Hearing in the light of day

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By Ande Jacobson

Teri Kanefield is many things. She’s a lawyer who spent the bulk of her time in practice as an appellate defense attorney. She’s a teacher having taught college level English and creative writing. She’s an award winning author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her educational credentials are impeccable including both her law degree and a master’s in English with an emphasis in fiction writing, something that no doubt came in handy in weaving compelling (but true) narratives in her legal briefs. Now retired from her law practice, she volunteers her time to support our democracy. She uses her writing to reach across boundaries and continue to educate and entertain. Ever the teacher, she provides political and legal analysis for major news organizations and on her own through her blog and social media to help untangle the complex landscape that we now inhabit. Her books continue to be something special. Even in her fiction, she includes salient details that come from her broad base of experience in numerous ways. Turn On the Light So I Can Hear is a novel that reads very personally. It’s not necessarily autobiographical, but the issues and social commentary are familiar to her. Continue reading →

‘Children of Memory’ completes the journey

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By Ande Jacobson

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s series that began with Children of Time, concludes with Children of Memory, released in November 2022. Again many of the characters (or their descendants from previous books) are back. This time, an instance of the AI known as Avrana Kern is built into yet another interstellar ship. She and all of her other instances are what remain of the ancient human terraformer/scientist who jump-started the advancement of numerous species on diverse worlds, though not all intelligent life was directly the result of her intervention. The ship this time is called the Skipper, and its crew is comprised of a Human (with a capital H), a few portiids (a type of intellectually advanced jumping spider), an enhanced octopus, an interlocutor or observer who has taken Human form but is in reality a colony of intelligent entities from the planet Nod, and two new arrivals. Continue reading →

‘Children of Ruin’ continues the journey

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By Ande Jacobson

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s series that began with Children of Time, continues with Children of Ruin, originally released in May 2019. Many of the characters from the first book are back, at least in reference, and their descendants do them proud by continuing the adventure. The Humans (with a capital H) and the Portiids now have a strong working relationship on the planet known as Kern’s World, although direct communication is still a bit challenging given the differences in their thought and expressive processes. Capital H Humans are humans who have embraced a mutually beneficial relationship with the Portiids (i.e., large jumping spiders with an advanced intellect and civilization seeded and accelerated by humans of the distant past). Kern’s World from the first book is a planet that was terraformed and seeded with a virus to accelerate the intellectual development of monkeys. Alas, there were no monkeys, but a particular species of jumping spider evolved with the virus to establish a robust civilization on the planet. The planet was named Kern’s World after Avrana Kern, an ancient terraformer/scientist who over the centuries had uploaded her consciousness into an AI and enjoys a type of immortality. Initially, Kern was seen as some kind of god by the Portiids, but eventually when she made herself visible to the Portiids, she became something of an adviser. The first book is discussed in greater detail in ‘Children of Time’ expands minds.

In the second installment in the trilogy, Tchaikovsky runs a parallel storyline alternating sections between the distant past and what is now the present, along the way introducing some new life forms while evolving the existing ones. Continue reading →

‘Democracy Awakening’ puts it all in perspective

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By Ande Jacobson

Heather Cox Richardson’s newest book, Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, was released on 26 September 2023 and is a must read to understand how we got to where we are, the dangers we face, how Americans have strengthened our democracy in times of yore, and finally, how we can again counter the authoritarian threat and reclaim our democracy from those who would abolish it forever. For those who regularly read Professor Richardson’s nightly newsletter, Letters from an American, there isn’t a lot of new material in this book. What is new is how Richardson has condensed the journey and the solution into this tight volume. This isn’t a big book. In fact, it’s a collection of 30 essays of six to eight pages apiece. Bounding these essays are a Forward introducing the material and discussing how the book came about and a Conclusion at the end tying together the pieces of how we could go about recovering and strengthening our democracy going forward. Richardson is honest that she can’t say it’s a sure thing, but the vast majority of Americans want our democracy to survive. The question is whether the overwhelming majority of people will pull together to make it so. Only time will tell. Continue reading →

‘Children of Time’ expands minds

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By Ande Jacobson

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time trilogy begins with a bang. Or perhaps I should say the first book, Children of Time, originally released in June 2015 spins a mind expanding tale. The premise is one that draws deeply on Tchaikovsky’s roots as a zoologist (with a combination psychology/zoology pedigree). It is thought-provoking science fiction at its finest introducing a world where humans are not the dominant species. Although sparked by human interference, the green planet known as Kern’s World is home to a wide-ranging arachnid and insect population that has developed beyond the wildest human imagination. Marine life as well has surpassed what we know today on Earth. It wasn’t always this way, but humankind had run out of options. In the far future, humankind had finally destroyed the Earth. In their final days they sent out ark ships in hopes that the species could find a new home through advanced terraforming experiments intended to seed potential worlds with the ecosystems necessary to support human life. Alas, the best of the intentions are often usurped by unexpected events. Continue reading →