InQUIZitive, Volume I & II (Dhar)

InQUIZitive - The Pub and Trivia Quiz Game Book: Omnibus Volume I & II, by Sumit Dhar (2013)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

A few of these popped up, and who doesn't like trivia? (No, seriously, if you're not a trivia fan, you are way too serious.)

I'll count this as one book because there was no delineation between the two volumes. Altogether, there were 40 quizzes of five questions each. I've never attended a "pub quiz", so I do not know the format of those.

These quizzes were generally a paragraph of background information leading to a question. Sometimes the answer was obvious from hints in the text. Other times, that was only true if you'd heard of the answer in the first place. (There was a company I guessed from the translation of two words, but I never heard of the company.)

The annoying things: first, there are questions where it is not obvious that the answer is someone or something that is fictional. Second, the answers repeat the entire questions over again, often just to add three or four words. Third, there were at least five questions (which would be an entire quiz) which were repeated word for word in later quizzes. Finally, there are a couple of "India-specific" quizzes, meaning that you need to have more than just a passing knowledge of India to answer them.

Some of the quizzes I pondered a while so I could work out the answer, or at least a good guess. Others, I just breezed to the answers because I figured I'd never get it (and most of the time, it turned out that I wouldn't have gotten it had I waited, either).

Other than that, it was a quick read before falling asleep or during breakfast.

Moving on to something else, and then I'll pick up the next book in the series.

Dark Space

Dark Space: Humanity is Defeated, by Jasper T. Scott (2014)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Back in college, I might've said, "Wow, I wish I could write like this." Now that I'm much older, I read this and think, "Dame! I'm glad I don't write like this."

It's not good.

The cover says "over 200,000 copies sold". Well, I downloaded mine for free (legally), and it makes me wonder how many of those 200,000 copies were free downloads. This popped up in BookBub, or some mailing list. I've downloaded too many free ebooks that weren't very good, so I checked on the reviews. There were over 5000 ratings of them and mostly 4 and 5 star. I guess those can be purchased, or found through mailing lists. The actual reviews are less pleasant.

The book opens with Ethan in the middle of a space fight. Not much of a picture is painted, and what little information that is given is sprinkled with technobabble, but not the usual technobabble. It's brand new technobabble. Now, normally, I wouldn't repeat myself so much, but this book does, and quite often. It seriously needs an editor.

The prologue reads like Battlestar: Galactica fanfic, right down to using "frek" instead of "frak". The first paragraph should've served as a warning at how bad it would be, but before the first page ended, I was reading about the "continuous stream of pulse lasers". I know what was meant, and normally I could forgive that phrasing, but I was already on notice. And, frankly, any of another half dozen words or so wouldn't have made me bat an eye. Maybe I'm splitting hairs about "continuous stream of pulse lasers", but it's indicative of the rest of the writing.

After the prologue battle with the ISS fighters is completed, Chapter 1 starts "Two Days Earlier". Never a good sign. Worse, Ethan isn't even a fighter pilot yet. Just a cargo pilot who is an ex-con, and the lady with him isn't the Gina he was worried about in the prologue.

Okay, so how did he get from here to there in two days. Yes, I stayed with this (unlike a recent book) to see where it was going. I didn't want to give up on two out of three books at 10%.

I made to almost 50% before I was satisfied that it wasn't going anywhere that was worth the ride.

Ethan owes a loan shark money for his ship. Selling his ship won't even pay of the debt. So he decides to join the ISS where the crook can't touch him, but he gets abducted before that can happen. Next, Ethan is forced to impersonate a dead ISS soldier who the bad guy had killed, so he can carry out some hare-brained mission. He had a special holo disguise and a vocal disguise to match. But he blunders through things in ways that anyone would immediately see that something was wrong. Particularly if they touched him and pierced the holo disguise.

Was there a story there. Possibly. Not worth going through.

DO NOT BUY THE SIX BOOK SERIES. Some people think if there's six books, it must be a good series. Nope.

Out of the Silence: After the Crash (Strauch)

Out of the Silence: After the Crash, by Eduardo Strauch Urioste with Mireya Soriano, translated by Jennie Erikson (2017)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a free download from Amazon for it's World Book Day. And, yes, I chose this one to read first because it was the shortest, and I wanted something quick to read electronically. (I have a printed book I'm in the middle of, but I'd rather read it outside, if the weather would cooperate.)

The prologue is Eduardo Strauch Urioste recalling when someone had found his lost wallet and passport that he had lost many years ago, and decided it was time to open up and tell his story. The story of a plane crash he survived. As I started reading it, I suddenly thought to myself -- Wait! It's not that plane crash, is it?

Yes, it was. I remember the incident, but honestly didn't know any of the names involved. I was young at the time, and I haven't seen the movies.

It's the story of a rugby team flying from Uruguay to a match in Chile that crashed in a cordillera in the Andes, the Valley of Tears. I didn't even know what the word cordillera meant.

They weren't immediately rescued. In fact, they were up there for months, long after the food ran out. I wasn't sure that I wanted to read this, but I did. I know that they resorted to eating the bodies to stay alive. Thankfully, this was not something that was dwelt on. (I heard from others that they dwelt on it too much in the film -- and I know that South Park used it as a plot device in an early episode.)

The conditions they had to live through, and the support they gave each other, were astonishing.

The rescue comes about halfway through the book, followed by many pages of photos. After that, there's some info about life afterward, but not much. Strauch spends chapters recalling the ordeal thematically, which was a good choice. And the final portion of the book relates his return visits to site with other survivors, and other people including the man who found his jacket, with his wallet and passport. The concluding chapter is by Eduardo's wife.

The Tyranny of Shadows (Currey)

The Tyranny of Shadows, Timothy S. Currey (2017)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

If you can't say something nice, say something on your personal blog that no one will see.

This was a freebie on reddit in the freeEbooks directory, posted by the author asking for honest reviews. It came just as I was finishing Redshirts, so I thought I would give it a shot.

I lasted through 10% of the book, and only went that far because I wanted to give it a review, which I wasn't going to do after only 3%. Who knows? Maybe it got better after a bad start, but by 10%, I hadn't felt it started, and I was breezing through a lot of superfluous language while not really knowing what was going on, if anything actually was.

The main character is an assassin but he has problems approaching a nobody cook and getting him outside where he can kill him. He gets an assist from another (the woman on the cover). The two are supposed to be working together. Or something. At first, I wondered why it wasn't written first-person since the narrator is in the mind of the main character so much, but then the point of view switches to the second character. (Nothing wrong with this, but it was still too much in his head.)

For all their arguing, which doesn't really very much at all, except that they like to argue and that they both seem immature and amateurish, they use the orders from the cook they killed to gain access to the kitchen of their actual target. And then dispatch the "Prime Cook" (I'm not making that up) off-screen by oven-cooking a roast. This is pretty much mentioned in passing. Other times, it felt like I was being told about the story instead of being told the story.

I gave it to the start of the third chapter, and then I switched books on the kindle.

There might be a story in here, and a good editor might have helped to bring it out. It read like a second draft that needed a rewrite -- or at least a red pen through the excess words. I would hope that the author makes enough money to hire an editor, or a couple of English majors, to either help update this book, or help with his next one.

Howver, I see that this writer not only released a second book earlier this year, but he has a third book slated for release the day after this blog entry posts. The first two books have a total of 15 reviews. Mine is one of them.