Book Description
The Celestial Jukebox is set in the invented Mississippi Delta town of Madagascar. Shearer’s rural south is dependent on the rather less attractive fruits of capitalism, including agribusiness, gambling, and the dwindling vices surrounding the retail trades. The mood feels like a very humid melancholy. And into this weather comes Boubacar, a 15-year-old boy from Africa joining friends from Mauritania already living in the area—new African blacks not especially noteworthy in a small town filled with Chinese emigrants, African Americans within memory of slavery, straggling members of the original white families of the area, and unsorted other imports. Boubacar visits The Celestial Grocery, the virtual city center presided over by a cranky second-generation Chinese proprietor and his equally cranky jukebox that often hoards its treasure of Slim Harpo, Sam Cooke, and Wanda Jackson, when stuck on the same sad Louvin Brothers song. The tie that binds all these lives is American popular music, its origins and power. The purity and beauty of the writing—like the purity of the imagined soundtrack of more than 30 songs that exists within this story—marks The Celestial Jukebox as a rare book, filled with music, struggle, and spontaneous joy.
Customer Reviews:
Life In The South -- When?.......2005-07-05
In Madagascar, there is The Celestial Grocery with a vintage jukebox of old Southern soul songs. It was the last of a constellation of Chinese-run country stores which used to exist in almost every river town between Memphis and New Orleans. The original sign was an ancient pressed-tin Coca-Cola sign with a Chinese symbol which wished "long life" to all who entered there.
There is an old boarded up Lyric Theater past its time.
I was intrigued with the title only to find it was a 1968 worn-out thing which sometimes works, not properly. On it you may find Johnny Cash, Percy Sledge, Patsy Cline's 'Crazy,' and Hank Williams' Kalayga -- American roots music. On the radio, you could hear monks in Himalayas chanting or aboriginal panpipes. This was the way life was in the outback of the South maybe a hundred years ago. This novel, however, takes place in that small town across the river from Memphis filled with a variety of different kinds of people, none high-class.
The author, originally from Massachuetts and Georgia, was curator of William Faulkner's home in Oxford, Mississippi. She chose rural Mississippi at the time of 9-11-2001 happenings and how it affected their mixed-race life. She shows the badness of the South after moving on to Texas.
LITERARY BUT WITH COMMERCIAL APPEAL.......2005-02-24
THE CELESTIAL JUKEBOX is so rich and compelling, my only complaint is that I couldn't resist reading and make it last longer. I'll be hard-put to find a next novel of equal merit. Cynthia Shearer's writing is fresh and exact--never a cliche.
The best books, it's been said, are the ones you can't figure how they were written. I don't know how Shearer did this!
Author, Janice Daugharty
A Reminder of the Rural South.......2005-01-16
The Celestial Jukebox, Cynthia Shearer's second novel, is a journey into the fictitious town of Madagascar, Mississippi. The words Shearer chooses to tell this story are as heavy and slow to the tongue as the weight of the townspeople's daily rituals and the memory of their many disappointments. Shearer, of course, does this to bring about an authenticity that might not otherwise be so well conveyed. Like its people, Madagascar falls short of the glory of independence, and relies on the vices of others for survival-with one bright exception. In the corner of a grey, little store called the Celestial Grocery sits the Celestial Jukebox-a place where people have brought their sorrows, heartaches as well as their joys and triumphs since 1938.
Boubacar, an unlikely resident of Madagascar, is a 15 year old boy from Mauritania who visits the Celestial Grocery, and meets the grocery store's owner, Angus Chien, a cantankerous old man with a southern accent that seems mismatched with his oriental skintone and slanted eyes. He is the second generation of his Chinese family and the South is all he knows. Angus offers Boubacar a job and Boubacar quickly discovers the Celestial Jukebox. Never updated and never repaired, the Jukebox plays the heavenly classics from Sam Cooke, Slim Harpo and Bob Dylan to name a few and if you want to hear them, well, Mr. Chien keeps coins on top of the Jukebox so you can. It's one of those kind, little gestures he makes that lets us know he isn't always so crabby.
Shearer takes her time introducing us to the characters that make up Madagascar. Dean Fondren a man who knows where he is going to die, and his wife Alexis who doesn't think she wants to know such things. Raine is a middle-aged woman who can't help but reminisce when she hears Bob Dylan. She struggles to find that beautiful woman she used to was before she was a mother and wife-when she was somebody.
The tone throughout is thick with rich desperation, slow climbs to celestial moments and superb description. At times I wanted it to move along a bit faster, but looking back, I'm glad Shearer stayed true to the pace that matches the pace of rural Mississippi. She brilliantly puts you smack dab in the heart of Mississippi on typical summer's evening. You might even want a cool wet rag around your neck to stave off the humidity as you read, and you share what the townspeople of Madagascar share-life in the South and The Celestial Jukebox.
For more reviews go to our website www.southernlitreview.com
Book Description
Marked for Death begins a new epic trilogy set in the world of Eberron, Wizards of the Coast's newest D&D® campaign setting. Author Keith Baker's proposal for the exciting world of Eberron was chosen from 11,000 submissions, and he is the co-author of the Eberron Campaign Setting, the RPG product that launched the setting. The Eberron world will continue to grow through new roleplaying game products, novels, miniatures, and electronic games.
Customer Reviews:
Solid introduction, strong series potential.......2007-09-04
As these things go, Marked for Death is a solid introduction to the intriguing world of Eberron and Matt Forbeck admirably maintains a tricky balance between establishing a coherent narrative while serving the marketing purposes these efforts more typically represent. The plot hinges on the appearance of a lost dragonmark, the Mark of Death, one of the thirteen powerful birthmarks which themselves represent one of the primary concepts that sets Eberron apart from Forgotten Realms and other more familiar fantasy settings. Forbeck does a good job of streamlining the many expository asides while keeping the action-oriented story moving forward at a steady pace.
The large cast of characters is an engaging bunch with plenty of grey area between the "good" and "bad" guys that gives the story an extra bit of dramatic weight. Some of the action gets a little repetitive towards the end as the bearer of the lost mark finds herself in and out and in and out and in and out of jeopardy, but Forbeck ultimately makes it work on the strength of his characters and the strong appeal of the Eberron setting itself.
Overall above average.......2007-07-25
I'm an avid forgotten realms reader, and recently started purchasing novels from the Eberron world. The concept of the world is very different from FR and I must say it's a very refreshing change. I have purchased every Eberron book published to date and am looking forward to finding the time to catch up on my reading.
Marked for Death is the first book in The Lost Mark trilogy and the premise of the story is the lost 13th dragonmark, the Mark of Death. The 2nd and 3rd books are titled The Road to Death and The Queen of Death.
I just finished reading the first book, and found that it was very attention grabbing from start to finish. This is probably in no small part due to the short chapters in the book (the book has 64 chapters with an average of about 6 pages per chapter). The chapters usually end with a cliffhanger that makes you want to continue reading the next chapter. I'm usually very busy with my job, and only have about an hour to read at night if I'm lucky, but I found that I did not want to put this book down (at the expense of my sleep).
The story itself is action packed and introduces many of the special features of Eberron without becoming overly drawn out due to excess detail placed on these features. The journey through the Mournland also gives readers who are new to Eberron some insight to that area of the world, as well as introducing the concept of the warforged. The characters are also very diverse, with some undead, knights of the Silver Flame, the changeling, shifter, warforged etc etc. We also get to see clashes of character and principles among the characters, which is nice. The action and battles are also well written, and the reader can easily follow action that is taking place in multiple locations at the same time (ie. the arena scene towards the end of the book). Another great plus point is that the main characters are actually vulnerable and a few of them actually meet their end in the course of the story, unlike certain series' where main characters dying take a number of chapters, and then other characters keep thinking of them etc etc.
On the minus side, a couple of things irritated me slightly. Firstly, as most reviews have pointed out, the repetition of the kidnapping got a bit boring after a while, but I believe the circumstances were reasonable and fairly well written. Secondly, there are quite a large number of grammatical errors/typos which takes a bit away from the enjoyment of the story, but these are few and far between when compared to those in the City of Towers (the first Eberron book published). And finally, I notice the writer refers to warforged as 'it' rather than 'he' or 'she', and while this is a perfectly reasonable classification given that the warforged are basically machines, the concept of warforged gender had been introduced in the Dreaming Dark trilogy (Pierce and the other warforged) and I feel a maniacal overlord with the name 'Ba*****' should be referred to in a particular gender rather than as an 'it'.
Frustrating at times, but overall a fun book........2007-07-20
Forbek's first attempt at the Eberron campaign setting was pleasing. The plot line is great and should lead to highly pleasing follow-up novels. The characters are very entertaining, and while they are extremely stubborn (and frustrating), you'll find yourself really getting to know them and caring about what happens to them. The fight scenes are intense and well-done, with brutal injuries being handed out left and right in realistic and gory detail. While many of the previous reviewers have complained about the repetitious nature of the plot, with Espre being captured time and again, it actually worked rather well for this novel. Warforged followers of the Lord of Blades (who we met in the Dreaming Dark trilogy) play a large part in this novel. They take on a much more human aspect, with emotions and sensitivity to pain, that they lacked in Keith Baker's trilogy.
***spoilers***
Kandler's step daughter, an elf named Espre, turns out to be a very special (and highly sought-after) girl because of the appearance of the lost 'Mark of Death' on her back. The plot gets going when forces from Karrnath appear to capture her out from under the noses of Kandler and a group of knights of the silver flame (who were also out to find her). As Kandler, his shifter friend Burch, and the knights set out to rescue her, they end up trekking through the Mournland and encountering all kinds of foes. They are able to track down and overwhelm their enemies time and again only to have a sneaking shifter named Te'oma re-kidnap her every time. It is sort of funny how every time Kandler has Espre in his arms once again and you think he surely won't allow her to be captured again, something bizare happens and Te'oma is there to take advantage. Frustrating at times, but it keeps the story going at a very quick pace.
The cover art is somewhat confusing, displaying blatant inaccuracies about the characters and their roles, but that shouldn't really bother anyone.
Overall, I really liked this book and look forward to reading the next.
I couldn't finish it........2007-04-10
There are some redeeming parts, the action is fast paced and the descriptions are usually well written, but it's all down hill from there.
I made it about 100 pages into this book before putting it down in frustration. The authors tendency to have completely ridiculous and forced dialog drove me batty. I kept thinking "Now why would they say that? This makes no sense." For example, in the middle of life or death situation when asked a question a Vampire exclaims "ah straight to the point, refreshing!". What? Refreshing?! You wonder if maybe he expected small talk.
In another, after a large battle in a village where a group of vampires kidnaps a mans daughter one of the vampires waits around just to tell the heroes not to follow. As if the man isn't going to pursue his daughter? What in the hell? There is no situation I can imagine where this would be a reasonable expectation. I could almost see the villain holding up his pinky Dr. Evil style.
A Tough Read.......2007-03-28
This was a really tough read for me. The characters are flat, and the story is predictable from beginning to end. I had planned on reading the whole Lost Mark series, but after this book the fate of the Lost Mark will have to remain Lost.
Book Description
A seasoned investigative reporter takes us behind the scenes of one of the most shocking cases in California history when a greedy and seductive wife brutally murders her devoted husband.
Tavia Williams thought her new stepmother was sweet and charming. Tavia, just a few years younger than 36–year–old Elisa McNabney, was very happy for her father, 53–year–old Larry McNabney. Larry was a horse enthusiast, successful attorney, a pillar of the community, and was loved and admired by everyone he knew. For six years of marriage, Larry and Elisa spent their spare time on the country club and horse racing circuit. It was a perfect life, but it went perfectly wrong. On September 10, 2001, Larry attended a horse show. No one has seen him alive since.
Months after his disappearance, police finally put out a missing persons report. They soon found out that Elisa McNabney was not the person she had claimed to be. A fugitive on the run, Elisa was a con woman who had enlisted the help of a girlfriend to slowly poison her loving husband with horse tranquilizers, in the name of pure greed. Larry was found buried in a vineyard, after Elisa kept his corpse in her deep freezer for months. The only thing more appalling than the horrific murder was the shocking manhunt that followed and the end to this tragic story of deception, murder, and deadly seduction.
o Perfect for true crime readers.
o The details of this true crime are horrifically fascinating and unique. It is also less common for a female to be the main perpetrator in a brutal murder. This case has all of the elements of a fascinating true crime story: a pathological wife and murderer, her suspected lesbian relationship, drugs, physical abuse, greed, ex–cons, secrets, and much more.
Customer Reviews:
Not in the league of other True Crime accounts.......2006-11-06
As a real fan of true crime mysteries, I expected this account to have the flair and appeal of 'Helter Skelter' but was sorely disppointed. The book states the facts with little style and while I finished the book--wanting to see what happens to the two murderesses, its abrupt ending, lack of personality, and zero allowance for readers seeking to identify with the victim, caused me to be acutely disappointed. Don't waste your money.
Interesting Case -- Unusual Writing Style.......2005-12-19
In one night I read this book cover to cover. The case itself was interesting with a nice insight provided by the author into the mind and planned actions of the two evil female killers. What really kept me reading was how the author let me know, from the beginning of the book, the eventual outcome of the trial and the circumstances surrounding the death of one of the offenders and the sentencing of the other. In most true crime books I have read the author drags you through the crime details, the manhunt for the killer(s), capture and then the ultimate criminal sentence. The writing style of this book is different and it sets it apart from many other formula true crime books. A very good read!
I was the deputy d.a. who prosecuted the case.......2005-10-14
So far I have read only the last two chapters. They deal with the case in court. I was pleasantly surprised to find the author,Mr. Karem , understood the nuances of the case so well that his writing was not 90%,not 99% , but 100% accurate. I'm amazed because even the attorneys on such complicated cases rarely exceed an understanding of about 80% Others who were involved in the case tell me the rest of the book faithfully recounts the actions of Eliza(hanged herself in jail) and Sarah.By the way,on 9/12/05 Sarah's appeal was denied.
Average customer rating:
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Marked for Death (Feng Shui)
Bruce A Baugh
Manufacturer: Daedelus Enterntainment
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
 Feng Shui | Stress | Personal Health | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1888335017 |
Average customer rating:
- Frank Miller's early Daredevil issues are collected here.
- Classic Daredevil
- Frank Miller would've made this awesome if he wrote it
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Daredevil in Marked for Death (Stan Lee Presents)
Roger McKenzie
Manufacturer: Marvel Entertainment Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General | Instructional & How-To | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
General | Drawing | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
General | Graphic Novels | Comics & Graphic Novels | Subjects | Books
Marvel | Publishers | Comics & Graphic Novels | Subjects | Books
McKenzie, Roger | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
Miller, Frank | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
General | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0871356341 |
Customer Reviews:
Frank Miller's early Daredevil issues are collected here........2002-08-06
Daredevil: Marked For Death reprints some of Frank Miller's earliest Daredevil stories. Published in 1990, this trade paperback collects Daredevil (first series) issue #'s 159, 160, 161, 163, and 164 (Miller had started with issue #158; Miller did not draw issue #162). These early stories that Miller worked on were not written by him. Roger McKenzie was the writer. Miller would become the regular writer and artist of Daredevil a short time later, and would, of course, revive the character's history with his acclaimed run on the book.
The stories collected here still made for enjoyable reading. I liked them, and found them to be very well told. Some highlights include the villain Bullseye kidnapping the heroine Black Widow, with Daredevil coming to her rescue. Another highlight is a spectacular showdown between Daredevil and the Hulk. The last story is a retelling of Daredevil's origin, as Daredevil, while recovering in a hospital from his battle against the Hulk, tells Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich (who by his own conclusions, discovers that Matt Murdock and Daredevil are the same person) why he became a crimefighter.
I would say that this book is worthy to add to anyone's library. If you want to collect Frank Miller's entire Daredevil run, then pick up the trade paperbacks Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volumes 1, 2 and 3 instead.
Classic Daredevil.......2000-04-12
This volume collects the first several issues of Frank Miller's run on Daredevil. But be warned: he wasn't writing yet. These issues feature Roger McKenzie as the writer. Is he as good as Miller? Maybe not, but very few people are. He is, however, a wonderful writer, and these stories build the character of Daredevil well before Miller took over. Miller himself said that McKenzie was the best writer he ever worked with. These stories are a must have for any Daredevil fan.
Frank Miller would've made this awesome if he wrote it.......1998-08-30
It is obvious from the first ten pages that you are left with the feeling that, if Frank Miller had written it, it would've rocked but instead it flopped. The poor writing is a complete turn-off and the ending is horrible. The only story in the book that I actually liked was the Daredevil vs. Hulk one. It was awesome and, although I am not a big fan of Frank Miller art, it was appropriate for the story but other than this, the book was not worth buying. I recommend Dardevil:Gang War which was written by Frank Miller as well as illustrated by him and that was plain awesome!!!
Average customer rating:
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A Marked Destiny: In God's Eternal Glory
Bruce R. Gililland
Manufacturer: iUniverse, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General | Reference | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
General | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Near-Death Experiences | Occult | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
General | Bible & Other Sacred Texts | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0595320333 |
Book Description
Have you heard the most recent near death experience? This book makes it clear that our final destiny is not a story of hope or doubt, but can be clearly understood and known. This assurance is so strong that doubt is completely erased with an earnest down payment for our mansion over the last hilltop of life. New age thinking says that there are many ways to gain this assurance, but this book tells the certain pathway to take for an eternal existence destined for the family of supreme royalty. Learn how to gain a position in the champion family of love.
Average customer rating:
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Marked for Death
Donald Plantz
Manufacturer: Monarch Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000TZ50AQ |
Average customer rating:
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Marked for Death (Linford Western Library (Large Print))
Ben Bridges
Manufacturer: Ulverscroft Large Print
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General | Westerns | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Large Print | Formats | Books | Biographies & Memoirs | Children's Books | Health, Mind & Body | History | Literature & Fiction | Mystery & Thrillers | Nonfiction | Philosophy | Poetry & Short Stories | Reference | Religion & Spirituality | Romance | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Alternative Reading Formats
ASIN: 070897581X |
Average customer rating:
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Antiretroviral therapy during tuberculosis treatment and marked reduction in death rate of HIV-infected patients, Thailand (1).: An article from: Emerging Infectious Diseases
Somsak Akksilp ,
Opart Karnkawinpong ,
Wanpen Wattanaamornkiat ,
Daranee Viriyakitja ,
Patama Monkongdee ,
Walya Sitti ,
Dhanida Rienthong ,
Taweesap Siraprapasiri ,
Charles D. Wells ,
Jordan W. Tappero , and
Jay K. Varma
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000UC28O4
Release Date: 2007-07-25 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Emerging Infectious Diseases, published by Thomson Gale on July 1, 2007. The length of the article is 5879 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Antiretroviral therapy during tuberculosis treatment and marked reduction in death rate of HIV-infected patients, Thailand (1).
Author: Somsak Akksilp
Publication:
Emerging Infectious Diseases (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 13
Issue: 7
Page: 1001(7)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
A masterwork by Philip K. Dick, this is the final, expanded version of the novellla The Unteleported Man, which Dick worked on shortly before his death. In Lies, Inc., fans of the science fiction legend will immediately recognize his hallmark themes of life in a security state, conspiracy, and the blurring of reality and illusion. This publication marks its first complete appearance in the United States.
In this wry, paranoid vision of the future, overpopulation has turned cities into cramed industrial anthills. For those sick of this dystopian reality, one corporation, Trails of Hoffman, Inc., promises an alternative: Take a teleport to Whale's Mouth, a colonized planet billed as the supreme paradise. The only catch is that you can never comeback. When a neurotic man named Rachmael ben Applebaum discovers that the promotional films of happy crowds cheering their newfound existence on Whale's Mouth are faked, he decides to pilot a scapeship on the eighteen-year journey there to see if anyone wants to return.
Customer Reviews:
PHILIP K DICK IN WONDERLAND.......2005-06-15
Unlike a lot of PKD fans I really like this book. I've read the original novella (The Unteleported Man) once and the 1983 Berkeley version (also titled The Unteleported Man) with the additional 1965 chapters included, three times. I am a hard core Philip K Dick fan having read most of his novels, stories and a couple of volumes of his non fiction, as well as two biographies. He was a genuis for writing mind blowing novels that posed fundamental questions were "What is Real?" and "What is human?" The hard sciences didn't really interest him nearly as much as philosophy, theology and politics. At the same time his work blends the comic, the absurdist and the surreal in very strange and wonderful ways. For those new to PKD I would recommend starting with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Now Wait for Last Year, The Martian Time Slip, The Man in the High Castle, or Ubik. If you like those you might enjoy LIES INC. as well. Or if you want to dive right into his most bizzare and experimental work, go right ahead.
Actually the previous version, "The Unteleported Man", was one of the first I read by Dick. And I've always enjoyed the second portion (here inserted into the orginal novella instead of tacked on at the end as it was previously)which consists of an interstellar war fought with psychedelic drugs and time warping weapons, cephalopod-like alien invaders, murderous androids, diabolical nazi scientists, and multiple paraworlds. Several explanations are offered as to the reasons behind the unfolding events. All of them are contradictory and none of them difinitive.
For PKD fanatics only.......2005-05-26
Despite the claims of the afterword, this is NOT one complete novel, but rather two separate novellas - neither of which is particularly good. While Dick is capable of some truly fantastic writing, this is easily his worst and least coherent effort. Supposedly this is a story about a mysterious Eden planet to which emigration was encouraged by the government. However, teleportation to this planet is one-way only and no one ever comes back. Our hero decides to make the journey the hard way (18 years in hyperspace) in order to see if anyone wants to come back. This may have been an original meme back when Dick first wrote it, but it's nothing particularly interesting now. The story is also horribly dated by Dick's heavy-handed use of Jewish characters, neo-Nazi Germans and concentration camp imagery. Yes Phil, the emigrants are just like those Jews walking into the showers in Auschwitz - we get it already! The novella finally concludes with an unclear, off-screen and unsatisfying battle that continues to rage with WWII-esque overtones as the minor characters decide to enlist. Yawn.
This would be a big enough waste of time for all but fanatical PKD afficianados, but it's made even worse by the attempt to cram an almost completely unrelated novella into the middle of it. With no transition or explanation, the reader suddenly finds that the character's names have changed, the plot is completely different and nothing makes much sense. A combination of PKD's most incoherent stream-of-thought prose, an ill-considered plot involving multiple levels of reality and a character in the middle of an LSD trip adds up to page after page of nearly incomprehensible gibberish. If you've the intestinal fortitude to wade through all the badly-dated psychedelia, then you'll end up finding the aforementioned corny ending to the first novella. Someone badly needed to shoot the editor here. If, as claimed in the afterword, this was what PKD actually wanted the novel to look like then he must have been tripping on LSD when he rammed these novellas together. Avoid this like the plague unless you're a rabid PKD fan or unless you really enjoy head-trip psychedelic SF from the 60's.
What The? Huh? Say Again?.......2005-04-20
Ok you know the problem. It all started off just fine, people taking a one way trip to an eden like planet. Or so the commercials would have you believe no one really knows what happens because no one ever comes back to say. So how do you find out for sure?
Well I wish I could tell you. I'm not too certain myself. I read the whole thing and still don't really know. Then I tried reading it without the extra installed portion, which the book clearly points out in the end.
It helped...a little. I'm a fan of PKD so I feel kinda guilty giving him 3 stars but I'll comfort myself by putting the blame somewhere around the publishers midsection and leave it at that.
Overall the beginning is great but when the acid trip kicks in just shut the book and make up your own ending... really.
I know you can do it!
TO TELEPORT OR NOT TO TELEPORT?.......2005-02-04
LIES, INC. was thoroughly distorted by the screwy editing. Despite the declaration in the last paragraph of the AFTERWORD by Paul Williams, the insertion of 100 pages into the middle of Dick's novella, THE UNTELEPORTED MAN, couldn't be the way PKD intended. It makes no sense as published. The reader should skip from page 73 to page 173 and, thus, read one coherent story. Then, as Williams fails to suggest, read the 100 page insertion (P 73 to P 172) as a second novella. It is two books in one. Yes, there are overlapping characters in both books, but it just doesn't fly as published. Each story has a different plot.
The broken up 100 pages of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN tells the story of ben Applebaum attempting an 18 year journey to the planet, Whalesmouth, in a regular old space ship. Applebaum wants to prove that the one way teleporting is a phony, German scheme to start up a military force that could one day conquer earth. The other inserted 100 pages tells the story of the same character being teleported to Whalesmouth, then shot up with a drastic hallucinogenic. The LSD visions open up the possibility of inhabiting several gruesome paraworlds. The theme there was to fit in or die. There really is no coherent plot flow connecting the two stories. The naive attempt to combine them amounted to an unforgivable distortion of both. Someone must speak out for the deceased Dick.
fascinating story - with a small quality problem.......2004-11-22
i really don't want to give away too much in respect for all those who haven't read the book yet. just this: written between WWII and the german reunion in '89, the story confronts the reader with a very frightening and amazingly visionary view of a possible future world. i personally found it most fascinating, including its weird detour into psychedelic paraworlds.
the only negative aspect i feel i should mention here are the annoyingly numerous grammatical and spelling mistakes whenever dialogs or narrative is in german language - as a native speaker, i really got tired of stumbling over them, and i think it's a pity the editor - vintage books - didn't have a translator check the foreign language in the story for the sake of its overall quality and credibility ... given the fact that this is not the first edition of the story, and there is an existing german translation for cross-checking!
other than that, it's a great and very consuming book.
Book Description
The year is 2539. Arriving on Axista Four the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie find the colony in a state of chaos. A breakaway group of colonists -- the 'Realists' -- has abandoned Ransome's Back to Basics ideals and is creating a new high-tech settlement. The 'Loyalists' who remain are dwindling in number and face total extinction. Meanwhile, a spaceship from Earth has arrived with news that 80,000 refugees are about to descend upon the planet; the Realists are staging raids on the wreck of the colony ship, and in a secret underground bunker mysterious aliens who claim to be the planet's first colonists are beginning to awake. Who are the dog-like aliens who call themselves Tyrenians? What is the secret agenda of the sinister Federation Administrator Greene? And what really happened when the colony ship crash-landed on Axista Four 100 years ago?
Customer Reviews:
Another colony, another rebellion.......2005-06-27
Please believe me when I say I wanted to like COLONY OF LIES. I'm one of the people who thinks that Colin Brake's previous Doctor Who book, ESCAPE VELOCITY, got a lot of unfair criticism because of expectations that the book never really was going to match. Unfortunately, while I thought ESCAPE VELOCITY was a moderately entertaining adventure, I found COLONY to be a couple of notches below that in quality. I slightly enjoyed it while reading, but on reflection it's not easy to see why. There isn't much that stands out; the things that do distinguish themselves are missteps. The book's central premise is absurd and there's really no sense that this adventure is in any way important. You could probably enjoy this book (and I've certainly read reviews of those who have), but you probably couldn't do so while thinking about it too much.
Colin Brake does a decent job of bringing the regular characters (the second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe) to life. Unfortunately, he does tend to fall into a common trap for Doctor Who novelists. The regulars are quite good when interacting with each other: Zoe plays well with Jamie, and the Doctor trying to keep Zoe and Jamie in line is very evocative of their TV personas. But then Blake splits up his characters for long stretches of the novel, and when he does so they become much more generic and much less like the original characters.
There are also a plethora of silly little oddities that have varying degrees of annoyance. For example, near the beginning, an important character is hit somewhere on their person by a ricocheting bullet. But even after long scenes of the character recovering, the audience is never told where on her body this injury occurred. This makes it quite difficult for the reader to assess how injured the person is. We must rely on the narrative telling us, "No, she isn't recovered yet... No, still not recovered... No, maybe next scene, she'll be better... No, still in bed." For lack of any evidence at all, my brain automatically made the juvenile assumption that someone had had a butt cheek blown away, possibly making the subsequent recovery scenes less thrilling for me than possibly the author intended.
But to be serious for a moment, it's this sort of telling-but-not-showing that makes the book somewhat frustrating, because I want to work things out for myself. This is even more apparent when dealing with the book's central conflict. Thankfully, this is revealed on the back cover blurb, so I can complain about it without revealing spoilers. This planet, Axista Four, is home to a single colony (actually one colony and one tiny, breakaway faction, which is only a stone's throw away). They started with a population of a few thousand but have been slowly decreasing over time due to the unexpected hardships. The sword that now hangs over their heads is word of 80,000 new colonists who will arrive and disrupt their back-to-basics lifestyle.
These are not huge numbers of people. Is there really no room on the entire planet for two small towns? To pick an Earth example, Pennsylvania manages to easily encompass Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and an entire Amish community -- and Pennsylvania is substantially smaller than the size of a planet. If the back-to-basics people are worried about catching a glimpse of these new people and their technology, couldn't the arrivals simply build their colony -- oh, I don't know -- on the opposite side of the planet? Nothing is shown to the reader to explain why this is a problem. The only reason this exists as a story conflict is that the characters and the narrative keep insisting that it is without elaborating as to why. It wouldn't have taken much to fix this problem (and the others like it), but it simply isn't done. And it feels more like laziness or rushed work than anything else.
Also, if we're going to criticize stuff from the back cover, I'd like to wager that the aliens are "doglike" purely to give Jamie the lamest pop culture joke in the history of Doctor Who. This also manages to date the book far quicker than any hairstyle or costume choice on the TV series. Oh, and the blurb mentions the appearances of the seventh Doctor and Ace. The seventh Doctor's involvement really weakens the final conflict, and I'm not convinced that this portion of the story makes any sense at all.
I don't wish to be overly negative, and I'd like to reiterate that I did in fact find much to enjoy while doing the actual page turning. The pacing is good. The secondary characters are not thrilling, but nice. Still, even on that level, I kept bumping into little screw-ups that ripped me out of the story. Like the energy weapon that fires bullets (okay, I suppose one could technically call a gunpowder explosion a form of "energy" -- but this is a science fiction novel and the vocabulary of science fiction novels suggests that an energy weapon is a futuristic ray-gun type thing). Couldn't this sort of thing have been fixed at the editing stage?
The prose is workmanlike. Extremely workmanlike. I doubt that there's an original turn of phrase in the entire two hundred, seventy-two pages. This does make for an exceedingly quick read, but not an especially memorable one. The characters say exactly what the plot needs them to say. The words outside the dialog describe the surroundings adequately. There's little introspection and nothing particularly special. While the number of existing Doctor Who books seems to grow exponentially, there is not one thing that manages to distinguish this adventure from its peers.
Not the Old West that we know and love..........2004-08-15
The cover and the blurb of Colony of Lies are both semi-misleading, which is a shame. The cover makes it look like it's a Wild West novel, though the blurb on the back makes that a falsehood. However, the blurb on the back says that it also stars the 7th Doctor and Ace. That's true in a sense, but only in the broadest of terms. They star in the prologue and epilogue, and the 7th Doctor also does his patented "behind-the-scenes" routine to help the 2nd Doctor out once. This "help," though, pretty much solves the problem once the 2nd Doctor is able to use it, so I guess that means he's pretty important. It does lead to a nice red herring (well, it fooled me, at least), which is also good.
All in all, Colony of Lies is a pretty good book, though it tries a bit too hard to make the 2nd Doctor sound like he does on television. Usually, this is a good thing, but it does come down a little too hard on the cliché side of things to be good. Of course, as Patrick Troughton did on more than one occasion, Brake has the Doctor saying "Oh my giddy aunt!" when something goes wrong. It's not too bad, though.
Colony of Lies is a lot better than Brake's first Dr. Who book, Escape Velocity. Sure, the Old West motif doesn't work and falls apart rather quickly, seeming superfluous and wrong-headed. Yes, the idea of "sleepers" coming to life and threatening a world is as old as the hills. Brake manages to put a nice spin on the idea, though, and the revelation of what really happened when the colony was founded is actually quite interesting. I think others have given this part short shrift, concentrating on the sleepers themselves, but I rather liked it.
The Old West routine, however, is dull, dull, dull. Not only that, it's useless. First, there's no reason for it. Ostensibly, Ransom chose this time period as the time of purity, where technology doesn't run humans' lives. There are mentions of streetlights and other more modern trappings, though. Even without that little continuity hitch, it all just seems rather pointless, more of an excuse to make some of the characters ride on horses. The cover just adds to the problem, emphasizing this bit over everything else. Couldn't they just have shied away from technology in general, rather than picking a specific time period to emulate? None of the scenes would have changed, other than in the background. And don't get me started on calling the main family on this colony "Kartryte." I almost wanted to scream.
The characterizations are pretty good in Colony of Lies, with a couple of exceptions. The Doctor, Zoe, and Jamie come to life, though there are some elements taken from the series in there. I think Brake really captured Troughton's sense of "playing it by ear," where he sometimes acted before he thought. One sequence in particular comes to mind, where he waves a white flag without even thinking if the aliens will understand what it means. Each of the regulars has a meaty role, though at times they are sidelined for no apparent reason. Zoe gets short shrift in this area, being incapacitated twice and disappearing for large sections of the middle. She does have some great scenes at the end, though her last minute rescue turns out not to be needed so I question why it needed to be in there.
As for the other characters, the colonists have some good roles, though they are a bit two-dimensional. This is only bad because some of them are a bit more important to the story than others. Billy Joe really suffers in this area, as he is a large part of the plot but yet I didn't really feel like I knew him at all. He's a disillusioned boy who wants to join the Realists, and then changes his mind after seeing how the Realists live. It didn't make any sense. The other problems in the characterization department are the Tyrenians. We have three individuals, but I didn't get much sense of them. There's a commander, a regular soldier, and a psycho (he didn't wake up correctly). There isn't much to them, however. Finally, there's Federation Administrator Greene. The back cover blurb really talks him up. The first time we see him, he makes somebody's blood run cold, creating an ominous feeling. He seems to be the most ruthless one of the bunch. However, other than badly affecting one character, he doesn't really amount to much. When I got to the end of the book, I found myself saying "So?"
Finally, a note about the structure of the book. The book is divided into six "episodes," each ending with a cliffhanger. This is a conceit straight out of the television show. This works in Colony of Lies because the other chapters do not end in cliffhangers at all, unlike a lot of books. It really makes this book feel like a television story, and it brought a warm, cozy feeling to this fan.
Colony of Lies is not a great book, but it is a very good one. It's certainly accessible to anybody who doesn't really know about Dr. Who, and it's pretty good for the fan as well. Give it a try.
David Roy
A Big Fat Lie.......2004-04-13
COLONY OF LIES is a woefully disappointing novel, not least because there are comparatively so few adventures available with the 2nd Doctor at the helm. Author Brake manages to capture some of the flavor of the Troughton era, and comes as near as he's able to portraying the characters as we knew them; the trouble lies in the feeling of an enormous amount of padding to bring this work in at novel length. The attempts to infuse the tale with a sense of the Old West fail miserably, this tack being used strictly in an effort to come up with a "'Doctor Who' western". Bleh -- "The Gunfighters" was more entertaining and (blessedly) much shorter. I wonder whether David A. McIntee and/or Mark Gatiss could be influence to take further strolls through the 2nd Doctor's era?...
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Canada and the World Backgrounder, published by Taylor Publishing Consultants Ltd. on January 1, 1996. The length of the article is 883 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Countdown to 1997: the people of Hong Kong worry about what lies in store for them as China takes over the British colony.
Publication:
Canada and the World Backgrounder (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 1996
Publisher: Taylor Publishing Consultants Ltd.
Volume: v61
Issue: n4
Page: p30(2)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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|
Doctor Who the Colony of Lies
Colin Brake
Manufacturer: Bbc Book Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Doctor Who
| Media
| Science Fiction & Fantasy
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: B000M7T3EA |
Book Description
Provocative and personal writings on mythology, culture, and modern life by our century's foremost interpreter and teacher of myth.Gathered together here for the first time are twelve eclectic,far-ranging, and brilliant essays exploring myth in all its dimensions:its history; its influence on art, literature, and culture; and its role in everyday life. Written at the height of Joseph Campbell's career -- and showcasing the lively and learned intelligence that made him thepremier writer on mythology of our times -- these essays investigatethe profound links between myth and history, the arts, and modern life.From psychology to the occult, from Thomas Mann to the Grateful Dead, from Goddess spirituality to Freud and Jung, these playful anderudite writings reveal the threads of myth woven deeply into thefabric of our culture and our lives.
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful essays finally available.......1998-04-23
It is hard to find the scarce published of Campbell's essays and this book delivers. These selections are full of Campbell's brilliance but leave you wanting more. It is a good thing it is only PART of his collected works! There is more to come!
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