BOOK REVIEW: The White Room (Christopher Cooke)

 

 

The White Room is a long tale about a relationship gone wrong, and everyone and everything that comes with that.

IMO, this book feels longer than it should because the flows aren't compacted. For example, the dragon kid is totally unnecessary and does nothing to advance the story or help familiarize readers with the important characters. Then there are times when I think it’s very clear the story is leading somewhere, yet it takes forever to get there. One of the most jarring ones is Christian’s revelation to Francis. The other one is the courtroom scene that takes away too much of the flow. Some repetitive reminders also put little faith in readers’ attention to detail. We are reminded of the hair and picture of the chain every time. I don’t blame this, because some readers are indeed very inattentive. Besides that, it feels very directed. I can’t help but feel that readers are sometimes steered in a certain direction.

It’s obvious that The Raven is created to be an omnipotent villain. A genius, menacing, hidden under the shadow, and untouchable. Unfortunately, he does little to convince me of all those. He doesn’t really make smart decisions. This probably bothers me more than it should. Characters that are described as meticulous (it appears many times) aren’t doing that. Being an old-timer, these are the things he does: he burns the victim’s car; his idea of making a vehicle disappear is an effective method to draw attention instead. He deletes local records, just around the suspicious time, he takes a trophy, and he buries ALL his victims in one place. Another character, who is an expert in ‘retrieving’ things, takes the only thing. No staged robbery, no diversion. It becomes quite a suspension of disbelief when supposedly expert characters are not as skilled as they are portrayed, yet readers are supposed to buy it.

The contradiction and incompact storytelling are the reasons why I don’t rate this book higher. They affect me throughout the reading, but it’s a matter of personal preference. The story is creative, and there are many things to unpack from start to end. The technical appendix is a great addition and shows the effort the author had put into the main device of the story. The glimpse into the Raven’s past is a great shoo-in to what I assumed is a planned sequel with the same character. The book also leaves no end unturned; there are backstories for most of the characters, and each is crafted well.

 The story has great potential, and I can see it becoming powerful if it flows better.

3 out of 5 stars

 

BOOK REVIEW: Grease Monkey (Evie Del Rey)

 

Grease Monkey is a love story novella. The main character, Itzel, is on the run, trying to escape her life. She has been tormented forever and is treated as a business trading object. However, her car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, where she meets Josh, who happens to have a workshop.

I can see this works for readers looking for a slow-burn romance. The build-up to the two characters getting to know each other is good. The story is well written and focuses heavily on how the characters feel. This is the strength of the story.

However, I have read this many times before. It feels cliché; everything is very predictable because it follows the recipe of a romance almost part-for-part. Nothing is suspenseful, and the plot doesn’t feel unique. The blurb also tells everything about the story, it’s a summary because everything is there instead of a tease.

Some things feel like merely plot devices. For example, as mentioned earlier, Itzel wants to run away, but she is fully aware that she is being tracked. She is also fully aware that she could endanger someone’s home. Julio, the villain, apparently builds an empire based on lies, but there are so many holes and weaknesses in the empire that it crumbles just because of someone he has been controlling his whole life. I would imagine he feeds the authorities and even has the power to extort them. For someone who has made a living by controlling others’ lives with extortion, blackmail, murder, and every other shady thing for decades and is so powerful, it’s hard to believe that he is so easily taken out.

The main problem that has been established since the beginning turns out to be nothing, easily settled in a few sentences, literally. The villain is just one-dimensional, the evil, bad man, while both main characters are idealistic.

The book works for those who are looking for a quick romance story. The characters have good chemistry, the novella is well-written, fast-paced, and has a feel-good, happy ending.

3 out of 5 stars

 

BOOK REVIEW: Black Hat Blues (Gene Kendall)

 

I think a Gen-Xer like me or beyond would appreciate the book more than the younger generation.

The book doesn’t start smoothly. It takes a while to understand the situation because it’s confusing in the beginning. When it becomes clearer, the story is much easier to follow. I have to admit I had a little trouble with the ending as well, especially a chapter that seems unnecessary, the #666. It would be great if this character were mentioned in a more memorable way previously, because it appears out of nowhere and puts a bit of a pause in what should be a decent ending. Maybe this is a setup for a possible sequel? Maybe this is an irresistible meta ending that always teases something more, which was quite common back then in older series, when after everything was said and done, the camera zoomed in to some unexpected (it became expected eventually) unfinished business?

Nevertheless, I think the story idea is interesting. It would be a nightmare for almost every author whose genre is not cozy, romantic, or other harmless adventure. Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Dystopian, and Post-Apocalyptic authors wouldn’t want their characters to show up at the door (cough).

I appreciate the humor. Sometimes they are very subtle, but those are the best kind. It also shades the current clown world: the protest, the debate, the way classic literature is sometimes perceived without regard to its original time. The weird world of the internet and society's fascination with popular culture are also shaded here. I appreciate the cleverness, and some parts are really funny.

I have to admit, I don’t get some of the references. Some are beyond my time, and I am also living under a rock. Sometimes it takes a while to get which character is talking, especially for the vague chapter in the end. If not for a few clunky chapters in the beginning and the end, this is a good read that can be consumed in one sitting. It is my favorite work of the author so far.

4 out of 5 stars

 

BOOK REVIEW: Who Am I (Jane C.R. Reid)

 

I finished Who Am I in one sitting on a Saturday morning. I haven’t done this for a while, thinking I would just take a brief read for one or two hours before my daily task, but what the heck, I kept turning the pages. 

The plot keeps me going as it flows. It’s an easy read with an entertaining plot as the readers follow the journey of a woman who has just lost her memories. Going back to a home she doesn’t remember, with a stranger as her husband, she also learns that she was not a pleasant person in her past. The circle she was in and belonged to was superficial, filled to the brim with shallow people who stroked each other's egos and over-the-top appearance. The main character, Freya, can’t even bring herself to restore her hairstyle. She recognizes nothing from her past, including herself. 

This book is entertaining. I imagine that while it would make an excellent soap opera or drama, and the plot is not unpredictable, it does a good job in portraying the horror of losing grip of reality. The realization that you don’t even like yourself would take a toll on anyone, and when trusting yourself becomes something that is questionable, too, it would be the horror beyond comprehension. The main character experiences that, plus the fact that no one else believes her. The emotional journey shows satisfying character growth.

 The supporting characters play big roles as well. There are satire and humor in how out of touch and artificial the ‘elites’ can be, and sadly, it’s very realistic, as we live in a clown world. Their actions are, unfortunately, believable, from the gossipy housewives to professionals whose service and silence can be bought. People who think money is the answer to everything, and sometimes it is indeed the motivation for many, whether they are being forced to comply or whether selling their souls is also an option.

4.5 rounded up to 5

 

 

BOOK REVIEW: Unnatural Selection: The Catastrophic Cost of Misusing AI (Pafel Dubois)

Unnatural Selection is the perfect title for this book, taking a jab at what we have known for a long time, proposed by Charles Darwin.

I am someone who is always cautious about privacy and AI. Unfortunately, I’ve been called paranoid way too many times by my own friends and family. Imho, I am not even at the paranoia border line. The things I do are basic, from covering my front cameras, clearing cache, only installing very necessary apps that don’t ask unrelated permissions, never signing up for lucky draws, and opting out of pesky unwanted services. I fact-check and question things I see or are sent to me, and that is apparently not fun. Just this morning, I had to opt out of another Gemini integration. This is not right; the option should be opt-in instead of opt-out, but the world is ridiculous right now.

This book educates the readers about this AI world, not in a preachy way, because it approaches everything logically, presenting facts and explaining what makes things happen. It gives real-life examples (and of course, I fact-checked some). I think it’s very well-written and inspiring. Everyone should read this, even the sceptics, and intellectually-challenged social media zombies who worship AI.

It feels optimistic. While I think the power of ordinary people is very limited, and without the power of the masses, there is nothing much one can do (because look at the political and social climates around the world right now, it’s very disheartening), optimism is still necessary. The challenge now is the education and awareness that can hopefully be improved by books like this.

I really recommend this book.

5 stars out of 5 

The Modern Day Problem

 

The other day, I had to travel to settle something. Everything should have been in order, but upon arrival, my data plan didn’t work.

This shouldn’t have been a problem in the past, but today, we rely too much on the phone. Sometimes it’s not because we want to, but because we have to, since the options are getting very limited. I couldn’t order public transport, and the only public transport I could flag down there was a taxi, which had become rarer than fat unicorns (rhinos).

There was no way to communicate with people to let them know I had arrived. Somehow, my balance (I was using prepaid) had mysteriously been sucked into oblivion, and it wasn’t enough to do anything. I couldn’t top it up to buy the internet because I didn’t have the internet to access the top-up function! It had become a modern-day problem that I needed to find a shop, and it had to be done manually because I couldn’t ask Google, because I didn’t have internet!

Thankfully, I finally found a small shop that refused to sell me anything unless I had the exact amount of change. Why? Beat me. I had to dig the bottom of my bag to find it, and I did. Fortunately, the problem ended there. It’s ridiculous, but that is the reality now.

This is a parallel posting from main newsletter. Subscribe to get a free short story and more of my mindless ramblings (I am not good at convincing people).

Thank you for reading. Have a great weekend! 

BOOK REVIEW: Malaria (Suede D Goldmann)

 

Malaria is a murder mystery that reads like a classic Agatha Christie novel. It’s a reunion and a celebration gone wrong.

Personally, there are many things to cherish in this book, as well as many that feel distracting to me.

There are many characters to learn. I give up memorizing when they are mentioned in the first page because it’s somehow easier to learn about them as the story unfolds, with their arrivals and interactions. This brings me to the point of too many clutters in the book: information and descriptions of things that are not important to the story or characters. They could be used as distractions, because that is one way to make the mystery richer, but imo they end up merely as clutter, since there are already enough things going on in the story.

Unfortunately, the one thing that needs more explanation, imo, that keeps me wondering from start to finish is the clarity of the Foreign Nomad Posse. They are supposed to be close (it barely feels so), but it takes them so long to get together after an incident, yet they meet for a reunion when a lot of dark things have happened among the members, and then they meet a year later, after more unfortunate events. There is barely any similarity in terms of members’ backgrounds and interests on top of it. Maybe it’s only me, but I waited for a subsequent murder because, unfortunately, most of the characters feel detached and not root-able. The kitten analogy feels very weird when professionals deal with a group of adults. How they treat witnesses and suspect are very questionable, besides other factors like the right to detain them and the short statute of limitations. Some of their interactions are clunky with unrealistic reactions. The group also feels very incestuous, and I barely keep track of who is humping whom.

I enjoyed the middle of the book the most. I like the time jumps. They are not difficult to follow with the time stamp, and it’s an interesting way to get the story going. The ending feels a bit disappointing because it feels unearned yet. We need many explanations to completely understand the story. However, I applaud the writer for the complexity of the case and the unpredictability.

3.5 out of 5 stars