Dear Coca-Cola

By Terry Ravenscroft

http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Coca-Cola-ebook/dp/B0052XP1AE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319364150&sr=1-1

For the next couple weeks I’d like to review a couple of collections by Ravenscroft. This is a bit coincidental as I just uploaded a post on my other blog regarding humor. Humor is a tricky thing and each person defines what’s funny. Keep that in mind when you read further.

Plot
Former factory worker Terry Ravenscroft, who lives in Derbyshire, England, has written a number of letters to British food corporations describing various ‘complaints’ and offering suggestions for product improvement. This book is a collection of those letters and the companies’ subsequent replies. Mr. Ravenscroft starts with one of the most popular brand names, Coca-Cola, writing to see if the drink includes any type of animal matter because he has visiting friends who are vegetarians. Then he wonders whether the company actually puts cocaine (hence the soda’s name) into the drink. From there he contacts every business from soup to nuts, from tea to pasta, from chocolate to dog food. Most of the replies he receives are very professional with a few ‘standard form letters’ and even some company representatives adding their own bits of humor. Each letter seems to get more outlandish than the last.

For a person with too much time on his hands who wants to stir up a little humorous controversy, I suppose writing letters to companies is the way to go.

Characters
None, unless you count the representatives from the corporations who, for the most part, remain professional.

Dialogue
I suppose the dialogue in the letters remains consistent throughout and the dialogue in the replies vary from slightly nudge-nudge-wink-wink to blatant form letter.

Writing
While Mr. Ravenscroft is going for humor, he sometimes steps over the line of professionalism and decency. Though there are a fair number of laughs to be had, some of his replies are mildly to medium insulting and after a few of these, it is no wonder the companies contacted simply do not reply as is often stated. Similarly, and this is purely personal preference, it was not necessary to include the plethora information regarding his sexual peccadilloes, true or not. Many letters included information regarding activities that lacked common sense, such as the nanny throwing in an unopened tin of tuna into a meal because the directions suggested ‘adding a can of tuna.’ I admire the companies remaining professional, even going so far as to offer vouchers and coupons. I also give credit to the creativity of Mr. Ravenscroft but he generally came off as a pest.

My ranking:

Camouflage Belt

Night Corridor

by Joan Hall Hovey

http://www.joanhallhovey.com

Plot
It's 1973. Residents in the town of St. Simeon are in fear. A serial killer is roaming the streets. Caroline Hill, in a mental hospital for nine years is released to start her new life. With help from the hospital, she is set up in an apartment and a new job. While she rediscovers herself and tries to cope with the world, she deals with a sexist co-worker and realizes she's being watched and followed. As the weeks roll by, the body count grows and Caroline's fears mount. With the inevitable meeting with the killer she must wage a desperate fight for survival.

I like the premise, but once you get into it, you soon see how the story is 'off' in many places. For instance, weeks go by between the first suspicions of a stalker and the next incident. A subplot is included where the police suspect one guy of killing his wife and making it look like the serial killer's work, but they take a long while to get a search warrant to confront him.

Characters
Caroline Hill: 26, nine years in a mental institution. Put there by her Bible thumping father and submissive mother, both dead when story starts. Caroline had a baby out of wedlock and was forced to give it up. She's sensitive to others and wary of her new freedom.

Greta Bannister: Caroline's landlady. Talkative. Caring

Harold Bannister: Greta's 24 year old nephew. Learning disability. Works in a bakery. Develops a crush for Caroline.

Lynne Addison: Nurse in the institution. Dealing with her mother's Alzheimer's. Wants only the best for Caroline.

Thomas O'Neal: Homicide detective

Buddy: Abused as a child. Neglected by his mother and uncles including one who raped him.

Mike Handratty: Caroline's coworker at the diner. Sexist, chauvinist, harasses Caroline.

Jeffrey Denton: Piano player who lives above Caroline.

Relatively unexciting characters, even though Caroline's rediscovery of herself is an interesting study. Some of the background for a few characters is irrelevant to the story. Buddy's is a typical story.

Dialogue
Pretty basic. Some standard B-movie lines. Nothing too exciting.

Writing
This was a difficult story to read. Short chapters. Other than some of the plot problems, this book is fraught with mistakes editing should have caught. Missing quotation marks or quotes in the wrong places. Extra or missing words. Sentence structure doesn't flow in many places. There are abrupt switches in POV. Slow action. Climax is drawn out and not suspenseful. End of chapter foreshadowing seems forced and one doesn't pan out. Set in the seventies with some minor references, but not enough to matter. Title is unique, but irrelevant, unless I'm missing something.

My ranking:

Yellow Belt

Abyss

By David Weddle and Jeffrey Lang
http://www.amazon.com/Section-31-Abyss-Star-Space/dp/0671774832/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319274741&sr=1-1

Plot
Set in the time after the last season of DS9 ends. An agent from Starfleet’s enigmatic and shadowy Section 31 has once again approached Doctor Julian Bashir for another mission. Another genetically enhanced doctor, Locken, recruited by Section 31 has gone rogue on a planet within the infamous Badlands. Locken, a Khan wannabe, is creating an army of Jem’Hadar in a megalomaniacal plan to unite the Alpha Quadrant. Assisted by Ezri Dax, Ro Laren and DS9’s resident Jem’Hardar, Taran’atar, Julian must fight his own doubts about enhance individuals to stop Locken before the galaxy is plunged into all out war.

Not an original plot, but as a Star Trek fan, I did enjoy the Section 31 episodes and the series of Section 31 stories in books. This one didn’t deal too directly with the black ops agency, which most of them didn’t. I was disappointed because I thought the authors of these books would delve more into the workings and machinations of Section 31 rather than providing another episodic chapter in the lives of the Star Trek characters.

Characters:
Doctor Julian Bashir: Chief medic on Deep Space 9. Genetically enhanced individual.

Ezri Dax: a Trill and current love interest of Bashir’s

Ro Laren: Chief security officer on DS9

Locken: Doctor, genetically enhanced.

Taran’atar: Jem’Hadar who is observing activities on DS9. He is an altered version of his race in that he doesn’t need the required Ketracel White formula to function.

If you’re a fan of Star Trek, you know the characters. The only new ones are the race of Ingavi who come across as more monkey like than humanoid.

Dialogue
The authors do a good job of recreating the voice of each character from the series. From Bashir’s above average attitude to Ezri’s quirkiness. The conversations were typical of ST novels.

Writing
The story follows the events in a previous book, Avatar, so the station in is the midst of a major overhaul after an attack. The fusion core is being replaced. While the main story is progressing, other DS9 characters’ subplots continue which was a little distracting and unnecessary. This book is written similarly to others in that the main characters are separated and the storyline follows each group, usually every other chapter bouncing back and forth. The action is typical ST and the theme is one seen before. Despite the interruptions for stuff going on back at the station, it is still an enjoyable story.

My ranking:

Purple Belt

Engines of Destiny

by Gene DeWeese
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/d/gene-deweese/


The next two weeks, I step into the science fiction world with two reviews on Star Trek books. I usually don't take a sci-fi book unless there's something that peaks my interest. I can count on one hand the number of series I've read, including Doctor Who, the Rama series, and a couple of others. I actually started read Trek as a youth but the first book I picked up was Triangle and I didn't understand it and didn't read another Trek novel for many years. Now, I've collected nearly all of them. You might see other Trek or Who novels here in the future, if I deem them worthy.

Plot
Bored by retirement and depressed by Jim Kirk’s death, Captain Montgomery Scott is drowning his anxieties in various taverns in Scotland. One night, he meets an enigmatic woman (Guinan) and soon after embarks on the mission which would ultimately lead him to his adventure on Picard’s Enterprise in the story, Relics.

This story picks up almost immediately after Relics. Scott, wandering around the universe in a shuttlecraft, encounters aliens trying to escape their planet’s corrupt rulers. They ultimately lead Scott to a Klingon Bird of Prey. After helping the aliens to escape, he returns to the Enterprise to obtain the information on how Spock took another Bird of Prey back in time as seen in the movie Star Trek IV. Scott wants to repeat the process to ion order to prevent Kirk from dying. Followed by Picard, they all end up in an alternate universe where the Federation doesn’t exist and the Borg are dominant.

I’ve read many Trek novels throughout the years and, like any other series, some are pretty decent, and some are not. This novel deals with time travel which, in any sci-fi book can get confusing as the science behind it. This plot differs from the usual ones where the crew encounters aliens on a planet and deals with bad guys either on the planet or shooting it out in space. I like the time travel novels although the reader has to pay attention to the story or risk getting lost in the details. I also enjoy the featuring of a minor character, Guinan, in a more prominent role.

Characters
The usual cast

Captain Jean Luc Picard
Data
Commander Willam Riker
Guinan
Montgomery Scott
Captain James Kirk
Sarek

There are others who fill crew positions on the Enterprise and the alien ships in both the ‘real’ universe and the alternate one. Usually, authors of Trek books do a decent job of portraying the characters as seen on TV.

Dialogue
As mentioned above, it stays true to the characters. The reader can be confident, for example that Sarek isn’t going to go off half-cocked and spout wild emotional soliloquies. It’s basic Trek.

Writing
Detailed. As mentioned above, if you don’t focus, you’ll lose the flow of the story. It even begins with a little confusion until you are a few pages into it. However, as with many Trek novels, the science is relatively easy to understand, unlike many other sci-fi books dealing with time travel, quantum theories, etc. However, like many Trek novels, there is a period in the middle where everything drags along as the story moves toward the climax. This is not mean the story gets boring, but rather this reader’s mindset is attuned to the television broadcasts where a story is told in its entirety in an hour. So, one wants the novel to move along quicker. Other readers may not have this ‘problem.’

My Ranking

Blue Belt

The Vanilla Lawyer in the Mayhem Blues

By J.P. Hansen

jphansen-mysterywriter.com
kindlemystery.blogspot.com
artediting.blogspot.com
jphansenediting.com


Plot
Simon Caldwell, Twin Cities lawyer, meets an old blues musician and his granddaughter in a local bar. After talking, Caldwell decides to litigate on behalf of the musician in order to collect copyright money for the aged singer’s music. Almost immediately after getting advice from friends, trouble begins. He is warned off the case, his briefcase is stolen, and someone takes shots at him. Even after he thinks the case is complete, his residence is ransacked. The suspects are numerous: another lawyer, an aged construction worker, a major record company, a magazine writer, maybe even the granddaughter herself. The motives include racism, drugs…and a strange decades’ old death. For an attorney who just wants to keep under the radar and tend to his probates, Caldwell finds himself struggling to solve the case and to survive.

I like the story. It isn’t just a ‘normal’ case because you know it can’t be so easy. There is something behind the copyright case and you can’t wait to find out what. I wondered something, however. When Caldwell gets involved with the case he takes a leave of absence. This leave seems pretty extensive and I wondered that his firm’s coworkers didn’t balk more of the amount of time off he took.

Characters
Simon Caldwell: White, 6’2”, blue eyes, lawyer, has a collection of country blues, divorced, usually handles wills and probate, ‘vanilla’ type law, has an estranged older adopted brother, parents dead, originally wanted to be an English professor

Dot Fuller: Black, interior designer, attractive, divorced. Has a married brother. She’s wary of Caldwell’s motives

Curtis ‘Lionheart Wilson’ Fuller: Dot’s grandfather, old blues musician, has a sleeping disorder, was a grade school janitor

Frank McGhee: 50, single, lawyer, inherited firm from father, big man, six foot tall, wears a trench coat year round, deals in patent and copyright law, democrat, always wants to take Caldwell golfing

Jocelyn: Stripper, Dot’s friend, blonde, has a degree in nursing, speaks Spanish, carries a Glock

These and a few others are pretty well defined characters with appropriate background information. Except for a little philosophizing from Curtis, there is not too much in depth. I would have enjoyed seeing more involvement of a few characters other than just conversations, but maybe Hansen will use them more in the next book. I also wanted to see more emotion from Caldwell since he’s the main character. I wanted to get into his head more, to get a better feel for him.

Dialogue
Lots of conversations, some of which reminded me of television shows where one sentence quickly follows the next. A little bit of information about characters or the case is included with each conversation and it doesn’t drift off topic.

Writing
Hansen did his homework regarding blues musicians. He lays out the plot very well, keeping you moving through the story, throwing in enough teasers and tidbits to keep you interested.

First person narrative from Simon’s POV. A few editing errors (misspellings, capitalizations missed, name flubs, etc.) and slightly rough and/or simple sentence structure in places, but nothing egregious. Relatively short chapters. A quick read at only 187 pages in my pdf file, with not too much detail or description. No profanity and even the sex scene is PG13. This story is good, but I wanted more. More detail, more character development, more action, maybe more legal intricacies. Even though I must give it a lower ranking, I want to read more of Hansen’s work because I think Caldwell is a character worth following.

My ranking:

Camouflage Belt

Vampire Huntress Legend 3 - The Hunted

by L. A. Banks

Plot
Damali Richards and her team are recovering from their fight in Hell. Damali is now a full-fledged Huntress and has taken measures to eradicate Nuit’s former empire. While the team reflects on their chosen life as vampire and demon hunters, their powers diminished and gone askew, a new threat makes itself known.

Meanwhile, Carlos Rivera, potential guardian and now Master Vampire, is brought back from near death by the remaining members of the Covenant. Reluctantly, they recruit him into their ranks to help Damali and her team heal, and to atone for the sins of his past.

As everybody is mystically drawn to Brazil, they discover a secret connecting all them with the Huntresses of the past and the answer may hold serious changes for both Carlos and Damali.

After the two-book opening story, I like this new adventure, because first, it comes directly on the heels of the last story, time-wise. There isn’t a long time lag needing explanation. Plus, it continues bringing up Huntress legend facts and combined with actual history, makes it a fun and intriguing plot.

Characters
Same team on Damali’s side.

The Covenant warriors, down a few members, pick up a new naïve Father.

The character of Carlos comes under heavy fire in this story. You see deep emotion tearing at him from all sides. Not only does he have to deal with his love for Damali, he fights against the growing vampire nature slowly creeping up to claim him.

Damali is also given more depth in this book. With her love for Carlos finally out in the open, running wild and deep, she has to stay focused to do her job as a Huntress.

I like the dichotomy between the two. It strikes a faint note of familiarity with the Buffy/Angel characters with each battling their own natures and responsibilities.

A new team of native were-humans enter the picture, and once again, similar to the vamps and the Covenant warriors and the Damali’s team in the first book, character definition is lacking, especially when they fall into street familiar actions like bumping fists. It just doesn’t ring true.

Dialogue
Same as usual. At least the Covenant warriors don’t slip into street. However, as the characters develop you notice slight differences in characters. Rider, for instance still stands out because he’s vocal and doesn’t hold back his feelings even when he should. The speaking mode of the attorney on the Vampire Council is a little more defined because of his objection to the situation with Carlos. Marlene is more motherly and overseer guardian even though she still slips at times into a more ‘amiga’ tone.

Writing
This time the scenes, the actions and the descriptions are drawn out. This story is over twice as long as each of the last two. There is a lot more detail, especially during the sex scene. I didn’t think that scene needed to be so lengthy because of the usage of repetitious words and phrasing, but that’s a personal opinion. However, again, you have the detail and the descriptions of many similar stories of vampire sex with humans, the bite and the pleasure.

The story seemed to fill in more gaps and didn’t hurry through important scenes. I also liked the teasing bits from the new baddie.

Because this is a more rounded story, with more explanation, more detail, and a little historical context mixed in with fiction, Banks gets advanced in rank.

My ranking:

Purple Belt

Vampire Huntress Legend 2 - The Awakening

By L.A. Banks

Plot
Carlos Rivera, now a master vampire, strikes a deal with the Vampire Council to bring his friend and desired companion, Damali Richards, a vampire huntress, to the sixth level of Hell. There, the council will use her to gain more power. He also has a deal to bring Damali to Nuit for his own egomaniacal schemes. However, Rivera’s status in ‘life’ or ‘un-death’ is unique, and his actions could forever damn him or save him.

Meanwhile, Damali Richards and her team deal with a new member in their ranks, try to locate the master vampire who is on a rampage, prepare for an upcoming concert that could harm untold thousands of innocents, and try to hold themselves together in the face of Damali’s upcoming birthday which will transform her into a full huntress.

Characters
Same characters as in Minion with an additional cast of:

The Convenant – A group of multi-ethnic warriors who desire a meeting with Damali. Again, as with the vampire council, nobody is really defined or unique.

Rivera is shown to possess much more emotion now that he’s in a quandary with his new ‘arrangement.’ It’s deeper, more personal, bringing up images of his past life.

Dialogue
Same as with book one in that everybody sounds similar when speaking.

Writing
Pretty similar to the first with quick, precise action scenes. A few more connections to characters are made and/or dealt with including the death of one baddie I thought would last longer since she was a unique and interesting character. One thing I noticed, and this relates to Character and Dialogue, is many characters use the same terminology, such as ‘cool,’ ‘It’s on,’ ‘For real, for real,’ and calling Damali ‘D.’ One character maybe works, but several, including a bunch of vampires, using the same phrasing gets distracting and doesn’t sound true.

More explanations to the Huntress legend and history are given, which are interesting even when they slide into philosophical areas. Actually, some deep issues are discussed, such as intentions, words, and deeds all originating in the mind and the spirit. I like this part because it causes one to sit back for just a moment and think. It’s doesn’t come at you like a minister preaching from the pulpit, but just enough to make you consider a few things.

The action scenes at the end are exciting, but end quickly with little detail and I could have used a bit more, just to aide my imagination. The fight at the end, in my opinion, was too short, the big baddie not lasting long enough for the power he was portrayed as having.

My ranking

Green Belt