Directive 51, by John Barnes

The most interesting part about this book is that Directive 51 is real. Directive 51 states that in a catastrophic federal emergency the existing government can be suspended and replaced by “a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government, coordinated by the President.” Barnes takes this and spins a tale around a deed heinous enough to activate the directive, and then explores the aftermath, including a venal President and a civil war. The end-of-the-world scenario is original if ridiculously far-fetched—a nanotech plague that destroys electrical conductors and rubber, fusion bombs, and moon-based weapons—but the characters are largely cartoonish, falling into broad “good” or “evil” categories. An interesting story but not compelling; Stirling handles this sort of topic much better.

First Sentence:

All the days of the modern world begin at the International Date Line, in the middle of the Pacific.

Imager’s Intrigue, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

I thoroughly enjoy Modesitt’s writing. In Imager’s Intrigue, the conclusion to the Imager Portfolio trilogy, he again delivers an exciting novel. His continuing theme of examining religion, capitalism, and women’s rights are again on display, but this episode is much more plot-driven than the previous two. Politics takes the central stage here, meaning less action and more dialogue, but at the conclusion all the plot threads from the series are neatly wrapped up with the heroes predictably prevailing. A satisfying end, although I wouldn’t mind seeing more books in this universe.

First Sentence:

Unlike most people, I hated actually going to sleep and looked forward to waking up . . . in a way.

An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke

I enjoyed this book, although it was a bit odd. The narrator, Sam Pulsifer, tells the story of how he went to jail for arson and manslaughter, and his unconventional life after his release. It is an interesting tale, but Pulsifer is so passive and detached from his own life it is at times seems as if the story is written in third person instead of first. He doesn’t so much as go on an adventure as he simply lets one happen to him. His one bold move comes at the climax, a sacrifice that illustrates how the sins of the parents cause suffering for their children.

The prose is witty and makes great use of imagery, making for a very visual read. “Instead of clapping, Peter was grinding his right fist into his left palm in such a way that it made me feel very sorry for the palm.” I also liked the clever descriptions of New England throughout. “...I slipped behind another white pine, white pines being as plentiful in New Hampshire as Volvos were in Amherst.” The characters are quirky and unbelievable, but the story is entertaining enough to propel itself past this problem. Smart writing and dark humor make for a good combination here, but the passiveness of the narrator make this a tough read in some spots.

First Sentence:

I, Sam Pulsifer, am the man who accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts, and who in the process killed two people, for which I spent ten years in prison and, as letters from scholars of American literature tell me, for which I will continue to pay a high prices long into the not-so-sweet hereafter.

The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

We had to read The House of the Seven Gables in eighth grade and I remember really enjoying it, but virtually nothing else. When my family and I vacationed in New England this summer I wanted to take along a few books set in the area so I picked this up again. Over twenty five years later, though, I found it plodding and difficult to get through. I wish I could go back and ask my younger self what he liked!

The overall theme is hammered home without much subtlety: the sins of past generations are inherited by successive generations. Colonel Pyncheon arranged for a man to be wrongly accused and hanged in order to usurp his land. A massive house is built on the land, but karma finds the patriarch dead at the housewarming party. Nearly two centuries later, the once proud family has seemingly decayed right along with the mansion, never quite escaping the sins of their ancestor. Hawthorne goes on to suggest that this curse may be tied to the original act of avarice; a Pyncheon seeking excessive wealth or power seems to trigger his downfall.

The heavy-handedness with which this fable unfolds I found unappealing; the morality tale is presented much more effectively in The Scarlet Letter or The Picture of Dorian Gray. As much as I’ve enjoyed rediscovering classic literature, I was disappointed in this.

First Sentence:

Half-way down a by-street of one of our New England towns, stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst.

From Hell With Love, by Simon R. Green

A talking dragon head and the Spawn of Frankenstein are two of the stranger allies the Drood’s find here, and some good advice is, “if you see any kobolds, leave them alone!” From Hell With Love introduces the Drood’s arch-enemies, the Immortals. As Eddie explains it, “the Man from U.N.C.L.E. had to contend with the agents of THRUSH. James Bond had SPECTRE. So it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, that a family as ancient and powerful as mine might have its very own dark shadow...”

I thought the mystery here was better than in previous volumes of the series, but the shape-shifting subterfuge was a bit overused. The biggest complaint was the ending, which is one of the more blatant cliffhangers I’ve ever seen. “"I’m sorry. There’s no pulse. No heartbeat. He’s not breathing. We’ve lost him." And then—” Considering when I read this the next volume hadn’t hit the shelves yet, this was maddening!

First Sentence:

In the secret agent business, no one is necessarily who or what they say they are.

Worth Dying For, by Lee Child

Reacher has become one of my favorite characters over the past few years and Worth Dying For doesn’t disappoint. As usual, he doesn’t go looking for trouble, but it certainly finds him. When he runs into a drunk doctor in Nebraska refusing to treat what is almost certainly a case of domestic abuse, Reacher wades with both fists wailing and changes a county for the better, solving a twenty-five year old child abduction case as well. The ending is never in doubt, but the path from A to B is suspenseful and exciting.

A solid story and great characters are the hallmarks of Child’s novels, but I must admit I was a bit frustrated at the cold open. In the previous episode Reacher was caught in an explosion that he seemed unlikely to survive. Here, we find him simple wandering into a motel for a cup of coffee and cheap bed for the night with no explanation of how he escaped—much less avoiding the aftermath undetected. Didn’t hurt the story at all, but Child needs to figure out if these books are going to be isolated tales of cowboy justice or if they are truly a progression through time.

First Sentence:

Eldridge Tyler was driving a long straight two-lane road in Nebraska when his cell phone rang.

Gilligan’s Wake: A Novel, by Tom Carson

This is an amazing book, a true pop-culture smorgasbord. Seven vignettes make up this novel, one for each castaway from Gilligan’s Island. However, the characters aren’t as we remember or expect. We find Gilligan committed to the Cleaver Ward (across the hall from the Burt Ward) of a psychiatric hospital, insisting that he is Maynard G. Krebs and attended to by Dr. Kildare F. Troop. The Skipper describes his time serving in the U.S. Navy with McHale, JFK, and Nixon. Thurston Howell is a naive millionaire that gets mixed up with Alger Hiss and Communist spies; his wife Lovey a morphine-addicted lesbian paired with Daisy Buchanan. That’s when things start to get weird!

Ginger’s story (fittingly titled Hello Nurse) tells how she got into bondage porn with Bettie Page before getting thrown out of Sinatra’s house after a post-coital insult to Sammy Davis, Jr. The Professor is a narcissistic pedophile that was a part of the Manhattan Project, founded a secret society with Roy Cohn and Henry Kissinger that purposefully instigated schemes such as the Suez Canal crisis and the homeless problem, and briefly turns into Godzilla. Mary-Ann dates Jean-Luc Goddard in Paris and discovers she is not only doomed to be a perpetual virgin, but a fictional character to boot.

Subtle and not-so-subtle nods to the television series abound, such as each tale having a character or artifact named with an anagram of Gilligan, or working the word “castaway” and “minnow” into several passages. A man named John Gilbert Egan also figures into each story; at the close of the novel Mary-Ann’s imaginary roommate explains that Egan is actually the author and causes a breach in the fourth wall explaining to us, the readers, how the individual tales all knit together.

Surreal, clever, and inventive, this book was utterly fantastic.

First Sentence:

Skippertoo and get me home, I mean if you really want to hear about it.