Book Review: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

Author: Douglas Adams
Title: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
Narrator: Douglas Adams
Publication Info: Simon & Schuster Audio, 1987
Summary/Review:
Douglas Adams spins a tale of a detective’s case that involves aliens, ghosts, electronic monks, time travel, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  It’s also very funny. The story originated with a plot Adams wrote for Doctor Who as well as his own experiences at Cambridge but evolved into something that defies expectation.  I enjoyed this book very much but I think I’m going to have to read it again to pick up on all the details.

Recommended books:

• The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
• Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers by Grant Naylor
• Making History by Stephen Fry
• Falling Sideways by Tom Holt

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis

Author: Connie Willis
Title: The Road to Roswell
Narrator: Jesse Vilinsky
Publication Info: Del Rey (2023)
Other Books I’ve Read by the Same Author:

Lincoln’s Dreams
Doomsday Book
Bellwether
To Say Nothing of the Dog
Passage
Inside Job
All Clear
Blackout

Summary/Review:

Francie travels to Roswell, New Mexico to be maid of honor in her best friend’s wedding to a UFO obsessive, hoping she can actually stop the wedding.  But before she can do that, she is abducted and forced to drive through the desert. Her captor, an alien being with numerous tentacles resembling a tumbleweed.  As they travel, the beings sticky tentacles pick up some other people including Wade, a hitchhiker with plans to con UFO aficionados; Lyle, an actual alien conspiracy theorist; Eula Mae, an elderly woman who goes on bus tours to casinos; and Joseph, a fan of classic Western movies touring filming locations.

Along the way Francie learns that the alien, whom they dub Indy, has good intentions and begins to learn how to communicate with him.  She also learns that all of her human companions are harboring secrets about themselves.  From this, Willis creates a comical narrative that combines elements of science fiction, romance, and road trip stories.  I’d say the book goes a little bit too long past where it naturally should’ve concluded, but it’s a minor quibble because I enjoyed spending time with these characters and their madcap adventures.

Recommended books:

• Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Author: Terry Pratchett
Title: The Wee Free Men
Narrator: Stephen Briggs
Publication Info: Clarion Books/Harper Audio, 2004
Other Books I’ve Read by the Same Author:

• Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman)
• Monstrous Regiment
• The Carpet People
• The Discworld Graphic Novels: The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic
• Terry Pratchett: The BBC Radio Drama Collection

Summary/Review:

Tiffany Aching is a 9-year-old from a shepherding family who “sees different” and likely has the talents to become a skilled witch. Among the things she sees are tiny, blue, Scots-speaking men known as Nac Mac Feegles.  When her little brother is kidnapped by the Queen of the Fairies, Tiffany enlists the aid of these wee free men to enter Fairyland.  Here, Tiffany must use her First Sight and Second Thoughts to avoid being trapped in hyper-realistic dreams.  It’s a fun and imaginative adventure story.

This is the first of a series of Pratchett’s Discworld stories featuring Tiffany Aching, and I surely will be reading the rest.

Recommended books:

• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
• Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

Rating: ****

Book Review: Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach

Author: Mary Roach
Title: Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law 
Publication Info: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021
Books I’ve Read By the Same Author:

• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
• Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
• Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
• Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
• Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

Summary/Review:

Mary Roach has built a career on writing humorous science books that seem to come from the point of view of the 12-year-old who thinks gross things are cool.  In this book, Roach examines the conflicts between humans and wild animals.  As humans occupy more and more of the territory of wild animals, more of the critters are being seen as “pests” and a hard to deal with regardless of whether people take a human approach or attempt to cruelly exterminate them.

Roach investigates animal killers, bears raiding homes in Aspens, elephants, leopards, and macaques in India, gulls and rats in Vatican City, and various strategies for capturing, frightening, or biologically altering wild animals.  I didn’t find this book as engaging as Roach’s other books.  I also found it a little sad which doesn’t jibe with Roach’s jokes.

Favorite Passages:

“The upside, if it can be said there is one, is that natural selection favors the Fat Alberts. Aggressive bears are likely to be put down before they have much opportunity to pass on their genes. With a growing percentage of Fat Alberts, will coexistence eventually become a possibility? Or even a policy? Could we live with bears in the backyard the way we live with raccoons and skunks?”

In the words of an American rancher I met last year who is also, improbably, a mountain lion activist, “When you have livestock, there’s going to be some deadstock.”

Naturalists were the original biologists, and hunters and trappers were the original naturalists. No one knew more about a species—the wheres, whens, and whys of its movements through the land and the seasons, its relationships with prey and rivals and mates—than a person whose livelihood depended on that knowledge.

Here’s the thing with killing as a wildlife damage control tool. It isn’t just mean. It doesn’t—barring wholesale eradication—work.

Robinson had landed on the phenomenon of compensatory reproduction. Destroy a chunk of a population, and now there’s more food for the ones who remain. Through a variety of physiological responses—shorter gestation periods, larger broods, delayed implantation—a well-fed individual produces more offspring than one that’s struggling or just getting by. With ample food, both the well-fed parents and their well-stuffed young are more likely to survive and reproduce

Recommended books:

• Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators by William Stolzenburg
• Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America by Jon Mooallem
• Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb

Rating: **1/2

Book Review: The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher by E. M. Anderson

Author: E. M. Anderson
Title: The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher
Publication Info: Hansen House (2023)
Summary/Review:

In alternate universe of the United States, magic is real and a dragon-riding sorcerer is threatening the Knights who defend the country.  The wizards must find a Chosen One and they select Edna Fisher, an 83-year-old resident of a retirement home, despite the fact that she has no magical abilities and her only weapon is her knitting needles.  She’s accompanied on her quest by Benjamin, her caretaker from the retirement home.  Along the way they are joined by Clementine, a vengeful and intemperate 16-year-old with magical and sword-fighting abilities who naturally feels she should be the Chosen One.  An elf with a secret, Kiernan, also joins the quest.

At first, I found this book too jokey in the way it so winkingly undermined fantasy tropes.  But once it hit it’s stride it became a more engaging story of war and redemption. And there’s a big twist that I’ll admit I didn’t see coming. Edna is a really good characters and I like the found family aspect of the questing party.  It’s a good novel if you like a fantasy story that breaks convention, and is fun while also being a little bit dark.

Favorite Passages:

Edna often forgot about Google. In her defense, magic had been around a lot longer than the Internet.

He focused on his magic. It reached for the magic that was in Benjamin though he’d never tried using it. Which wasn’t to say he hadn’t used it. Humans rarely realize the things they chalk up to luck or quirk or coincidence are evidence of untapped magic at work. Kiernan suspected Edna’s endless procurement of handkerchiefs was just that.

Recommended books:

• The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman
• The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde
• Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson

Rating: ***

Book Review: The Discworld Graphic Novels by Terry Pratchett

Author: Terry Pratchett
Title: The Discworld Graphic Novels: The Colour of Magic & The Light Fantastic
Publication Info: New York : Harper, c2008.
The Colour of Magic

• Originally published: Innovative, 1991
• Illustrated by Steven Ross
• Adapted by Scott Rockwell
• Lettered by Vickie Williams
• Edited by David Campiti

The Light Fantastic

• Originally published: Innovative, 1992
• Adapted by Scott Rockwell
• Illustrated by Steven Ross
• Painted by Mira Fairchild
• Lettered by Michelle Beck

Other Books Read by the Same Author:

• Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
• Monstrous Regiment
• The Carpet People
• Terry Pratchett: The BBC Radio Drama Collection

Summary/Review:

In this graphic novel introduces Terry Pratchett’s Discworld through an adaptation of the first two novels in the series.  The central character is the hapless wizard Rincewind who is charged with being the guide for Twoflower, the first tourist ever on Discworld.  The pair, along with Twoflower’s Luggage (a sentient chest that moves on tiny legs), have a series of adventures that play on the tropes of high fantasy and sword and sorcery stories.  Meanwhile the gods themselves and a powerful book of magic called Octavo have plans for them.

The adventures are ludicrous and fun and wonderfully illustrated. If there’s a flaw is that the story seems to skip around a bit making me wonder how much of the original novel’s story was abridged for space. Nevertheless, it’s serves as a delightful introduction to Discworld.

Rating: ****

Book Review: Terry Pratchett: The BBC Radio Drama Collection by Terry Pratchett

Author: Terry Pratchett
Title: Terry Pratchett: The BBC Radio Drama Collection 
Narrator: Full cast performances (see links from descriptions of each radio drama for the names of cast & crew)
Other Books Read by the Same Author:

• Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
• Monstrous Regiment
• The Carpet People

Publication Info:  BBC Books (2019)
Summary/Review:

I’ve been meaning to read more Terry Pratchett, so what better way to start than with seven of his novels dramatized by actors at the BBC.  Most of these novels are set in Pratchett’s Discworld, a flat planet on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle.  The setting is similar to the medieval fantasy and fairy tale stories with comedic and satirical factors.

Mort (****)

Death, a recurring character in the Discworld stories, decides to take on the teenage Mort as an apprentice.  But when Mort prevents the assassination of Princess Keli he creates an alternate universe that threatens reality.  This is a really funny and clever novel.

Wyrd Sisters (**1/2)

One of the issues I had with these radio dramas is that the audio quality wasn’t always good and it was particularly hard to understand the Shakespearean stage whispers in this production.  That may have marred my enjoyment of this story about three witches and an acting troupe.  The play within a play  parodies elements of Macbeth, Hamlet, and other works of Shakespeare.

Guards! Guards! (***1/2)

This book introduces the City Watch, generally considered incompetent, but put to the test when a group of miscreants summon a dragon as part of a plot to put a new king on the throne.  Lead by Samuel Vines, and inspired by earnest newcomer Carrot, the  Watch rises to the occasion.

Eric (***)

A parody of Faust, thirteen-year-old demonologist, Eric Thursley accidentally rescues the wizard Rincewind from Dungeon Dimensions (a Discworld version of hell).  Eric is granted three wishes but they are fulfilled with “monkey’s paw” style consequences.

Small Gods (****)

The Great God Om manifests himself in the form of a tortoise to a simple religious novitiate named Brutha, who turns out to be the only human who truly believes in Om.  This book somehow works both as a skewering of religion but also shows the positive side of religious practice.

Night Watch (****)

Commander of the City Watch Samuel Vines is pursuing a dangerous criminal, Carcer, when they are both transported back in time.  Vimes must take on the identity of John Keel and mentor his younger self through the conflict that ensues.

Only You Can Save Mankind (**1/2)

The only story not set in Discworld, but instead in England during the time of the Gulf War in 1991.  12-year-old Johnny Maxwell is playing a video game about an alien attack, when the alien ScreeWee surrender to him.  In a reality-bending adventure Johnny is responsible for helping seemingly real-life aliens get back home.  This story seems to anticipate massively multiplayer online role-playing games.

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: Breadfruit by Célestine Hitiura Vaite

Around the World for a Good Book selection for French Polynesia

Author: Célestine Hitiura Vaite
Title: Breadfruit
Publication Info: Auckland, N.Z. : Vintage, 2000.
Summary/Review:

Set in Tahiti, this novel is the story of Materena, a young woman in Tahiti who lives with her somewhat shiftless boyfriend Pito and their children.  At the beginning of the book Pito drunkenly proposes to Materena and she dreams about the wedding while wondering if he really meant it.  The book is episodic linking together vignettes of everyday life in Tahiti, usually with Materena being visited by family and friends who share their adventures.  The novel is mostly light and funny, but there’s an undercurrent of the reveal poverty and effects of colonialism (which manifests in the book primarily through the French police officers).  It’s a delightful and charming book and Vaite does a great job in creating the characters and their dialogue.

Rating: ***1/2

#FridayFictioneers – The Fair Pole

It was the bottom of the 5^th in an otherwise uneventful game between the Tigers and the Royals when fans in the right field bleachers noticed something out of the ordinary. A viral TikTok post summed it up: “Holy crap! The foul pole’s become sentient!”

In an interviews with KSHB News, the pole noted “When a fly ball hits me it’s a homerun so I’m actually a fair pole.”

Seeking greater fulfillment in life than watching baseball games and with a keen sense of right and wrong, the fair pole was later appointed a judge at the Jackson County Courthouse.

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Friday Fictioneers is a weekly photo prompt flash fiction challenge on Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Addicted to Purple blog.  See additional stories by other writers here!

Book Review: Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

Author: Kira Jane Buxton
Title: Hollow Kingdom
Narrator: Robert Petkoff
Publication Info:New York ; Boston : Grand Central Publishing, 2019
Summary/Review:

This novel depicts a zombie apocalypse in the greater Seattle region of Washington as narrated by S.T., a domesticated American crow kept as a pet by a loutish man named Big Jim. When Big Jim and the other humans turn feral, S.T. must flee with his best friend, a dim but loyal hound dog named Dennis.  Thus begins a journey of discovery for S.T., raised since hatching to be human, to get in touch with his crow identity.  S.T. learns that his mission in life is to ally with wild birds to help rescue domestic animals who are at risk from both zombie humans and larger predators (including animals escaped from the zoo).

The crude humor of Hollow Kingdom reminds me a lot of the writing of Christopher Moore.  I felt the metaphor of humanity addicted to the internet and screens was heavy handed, and my interest started to lag in the last part of the book.  Nevertheless though it is a creative work of fiction with a unique perspective.

Recommended books:

• The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

Rating: ***1/2