Book Review: Death Plays Poker

Death Plays Poker by Robin Spano is the second in the Clare Vengel series. Clare is a Toronto cop in her early twenties who is sent undercover to infiltrate a huge poker tournament. She’s not a professional poker player, but she’s read up on the game and studied the big names who’ll be playing there. While she’s not a seasoned player, she’s got good instincts, charm, and can read people. As you follow Clare along on the investigation, you won’t be alone since a good chunk of Canada is watching the televised tournament.

In addition to learning about Clare through her actions and decisions, we learn about the other characters in the book, as each one takes control of a chapter’s POV. I’m not a poker player, but going by what I see of tournaments on TV, Spano has done a good job of making these egotistical and big-talking poker players believable. And Clare can bluff with the best of them, which is good since she has a lot of money in the pot, and it’s not her money. Bit by bit, she whittles away at the players’ alibis as well as their stake in the tournament.

I thought this was a fun and suspenseful read. I like Clare Vengel and will look for the next book in the series.

Amazon Canada

Amazon USA

Barnes and Noble

I give Death Plays Poker by Robin Spano a rating of Hel-of-a-Writer. She made her characters in this who-dunnit believable, interesting, and memorable.

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FTC Disclaimer: I was given nothing in return for this review. Well, that’s not exactly true. I was given enjoyment. But to be honest, I take enjoyment from other things. Like telephone calls from friends and my children. And Christmas cards (It’s a shame they’re going out of style these days). And my movie purse. Okay, I admit, I love movie popcorn, but movie popcorn loves my thighs, so I take a ziplock bag of grapes in my 1980s cloth purse (Yes, I was alive way back then; I was in my teens). Okay, okay, I know this is a Federal disclaimer so I shouldn’t lie. (Let’s just say I was older than 15.) And no, I don’t think I’m cheating the theatre. I buy a medium Diet Coke and my husband and son each buy a giant Coke and a giant bin of popcorn, and sometimes candy, plus we, of course, buy our tickets. I think all that stuff offsets my grapes. Wait a minute, I got off track. Where was I going? Oh yeah, I could see Clare Vengel on the big screen, solving the unusual cases. I’d watch that. I might even throw a few strawberries into the grapes in my movie purse. Call me if you’re going. I’ll bring extra.

Meet the Authors

If you’d like to know more about a particular author, you might check the Inspiration Forum. I knew nothing about this site until the creator, Fiona, emailed and asked if I would answer her questions. I’d been recommended to her by another author, Les Edgerton. I was thinking a few questions, probably for a class project.

After I turned in my answers to her 28 questions, I asked Les if she was doing a class project for him. If it’s possible to hear a chuckle in an email, it would have been then. He directed me to her site called Inspiration Forum. She had already posted my answers in the library.

You can find hundreds of authors who have taken part in this exercise of hers. Just scroll down until you see a name that interests you. I did my interview on January 20th and I’m already a couple of pages in on the list.

Book Review: The Brevity of Roses

The Brevity of Roses by Linda Cassidy Lewis is a love story. What makes it different is that it’s told primarily from the man’s POV. Jalal leaves his life in New York and heads to California to see his family and to start anew. He encounters Meredith. Jalal and Meredith both have lost loves in their past. They meet up in a restaurant and Jalal pursues her, even though she is fifty and he is much younger. Their life, their love is complicated and complex. And despite their age difference, it is deep, but not without tragedy.

It’s easy to get lost in Jalal’s story and the twists and turns his life takes. Lewis does a good job of letting us feel his emotions, whether they are love, loss, anger or fear. By the end you will have questions. Is it possible to find your one true love? If you find it once, can you find it again? What if love finds you?

Amazon
Kindle
Nook
Smashwords

I give The Brevity of Roses a rating of Hel-of-a-Love-Story.

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FTC Disclaimer: I had expected to review this book back in August 2010, but then my computer went face down in the dirt and died. I wonder if the FTC could do something about that. Then when my tech guy got me a new computer three months later, I forgot to do the review. Perhaps the FTC could do something about my memory. One thing I did not forget is that The Brevity of Roses only cost me $2.99. Woo-woo! The Brevity of Roses is worth all two hundred and ninety-nine pennies. As part of this disclaimer, I should tell you that part of the delay was stuffing all those pennies into the pay slot on the side of this new fangled laptop. I should have used the slide out money drawer on the other side, but I only have rectangular bills, not big round ones.

Is Apple Evil?

According to technology writer Ed Bott, he’s read many license agreements looking for the gotchas in the fine print. What he found in Apple’s license agreement for its new iBooks Author program caused him to call it “mind-bogglingly greedy and evil.”

The paragraph that most bothered him was this one:

Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including
without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.

He says this paragraph means that if you submit your book to Apple and they reject it, you can’t legally sell it anywhere, at least not in that form. In other words, you would have to throw away all the formatting you did in iBooks Author and re-format it. He goes so far as to say:

Outputting as PDF would preserve the formatting, but again the license would appear to prohibit you from selling that work, because it was generated by iBooks Author.

Bott says he’ll be writing more on this topic, so if you want to follow him, check out his blog, The Ed Bott Report.

Thanks to James V. Lee and Timothy J. Bruce for emailing me about this article.

Book Review: CassaStar

Before you read this review, I should warn you, I don’t read much science fiction. I read memoir, romance, commercial women’s fiction, mystery, thrillers, suspense, the list could go on, but, well, not much sci/fi. Not my thing, whatever a “thing” is. Anyway, just telling ya up front. But I know the author, Alex J. Cavanaugh, online and for a short time he was letting folks download CassaStar for free, so I did. So, since I’m being upfront with you about how I don’t read much sci/fi, I’ll be upfront about what I thought of CassaStar. I can’t say I liked it.

I can say I really liked it.

Cavanaugh creates a fully developed world with believable characters. You take our world and plop it down in the midst of a war where fighter pilots and their navigators go up against the baddest Star Trek soldiers and you got CassaStar. But it’s not all fighting. Bryon, the main character, is dealing with the loss of his former navigator and not particularly happy about having to work with someone new at a new station. But war is war and he’s one of the best pilots and one of only a very few Cosbolt pilots who can teleport.

Of course, CassaStar is not all war and fighting. There are down times where we get to see the world outside of the war. And there, too, Cavanaugh creates believable, although other-worldly, scenes.

AMAZON
AMAZON UK
AMAZON DE
BARNES AND NOBLE
BOOKS A MILLION
AMAZON’s KINDLE
NOOK

I give CassaStar by Alex J. Cavanaugh a rating of Hel-of-a-Story

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FTC Disclaimer: I saw all the Star Wars movies. That did not influence my review. I’ve seen some other sci/fi shows on TV, although not recently. Frankly, I can’t get cable out where I live and, unfortunately, regular TV seems to be all cop or lawyer shows or what might be deemed “reality” shows like American Idol or one of its fifteen copycat shows. So I think CassaStar should become either a movie or a TV series. Yeah, you heard me, bring science fiction back to television. We need a new Spock. Okay, Byron doesn’t have pointy ears but he’d be the one girls swoon over. Wait a minute, I can’t be the only one who loved Spock over Captain Kirk or Dr. McCoy, right? Come on! He could mind meld, for heaven’s sakes. Kind of like Byron can do things with his mind. Swoon.

Book Review: Chronic Fear

Chronic Fear by Scott Nicholson is a thriller, the second in his Fear series. Because I haven’t read the first book, in the beginning I felt a little lost among the characters and action, but I was able to sort them out and join in the race. Chronic Fear starts off fast and never lets up on the pace.

I won’t delve into the plot except to say it involves designer drugs that after you read the book you will hope remains only fiction. But the story is about more than the creation of these drugs. It is about the people who were used for testing of the drugs, politics, the devastation the drugs caused to human life, and the disaster the drugs could bring upon the future if they are recreated.

Chronic Fear picks up a year since the drug trials. Those who knew about the drugs are either dead or keeping quiet. But there are those in the government who want the formula so they can use it to further their political ambitions. There are also some who were the guinea pigs in the original testing who want it for their own reasons. The four main characters (two couples) who were all part of the original testing have moved on in their lives, each in different directions, each at different levels of recovery. None are whole. Some are only barely holding onto sanity. All are broken in one way or the other.

Chronic Fear is high in intensity and moves at a fast pace. Take time to know the characters. What you believe about them will be tested as the plot moves forward. By the end, I didn’t know who was better off – those who survived or those who didn’t.

Barnes & Noble
Kindle
Kindle UK
Amazon
Audible

I give Chronic Fear by Scott Nicholson a rating of Hel-of-a-Tense-Book.

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FTC Disclaimer: I have nothing to claim or disclaim except that “knowing” Nicholson via the Internet did not influence my review. That’s the claim part. The disclaim part would be that I should not have used the word “knowing” since having read two books of his and getting a mass email letting everyone know he had a new book out is not exactly “knowing” him. But in the name of full disclosure, I should let you know, Scott’s computer is haunted. He didn’t tell me that, but I just know it. Alright, I don’t know but I am claiming it and I do believe he would not disclaim my claim. If he reads this he would probably claim that I’m a nut. But I would disclaim that. Probably.

No Winner in This War

Who wins in the war between publishers, agents and readers? Probably no one. Who loses? Probably the author. Apparently in England there’s a war going on between reader/bloggers and authors and publishers. The “war” seems to have started on Goodreads and moved to Twitter.

According to The Guardian, when:

 award-winning children's writer Anthony McGowan caused a stir with his "scorching" Guardian review of Blood Red Road by Costa winner Moira Young, the Goodreads flame war flared across Twitter, sparked by writers and agents who seemed to be stamping on negative reviews.

I linked over to the review. It is rather uncomplimentary:

At its worst it is a risible collection of clichés strung together by a barely coherent plot. … Although it's undoubtedly packed with incident, too much happens that is purely for narrative convenience.

There’s more if you want to read it. About the only good thing said in the review was:

My nine-year-old daughter got hold of my review copy and was so entranced that I had to machete it into sections so we could both carry on reading it. Yes, this is the perfect apocalypse for pre-teens.

I’m on both Goodreads and Twitter -- and I totally missed the whole war. Did any of you get involved?