I'm not going to rate this book any higher, just because of the terrific ending. It's just too arduous a journey til you get there.

Bernice Summerfield is the lead character of this novel, but she's lost in the shuffle, until the brilliant ending. Then she makes perhaps the biggest decision of her life. Well, it's more of an impulsive action, really; nevertheless, Bernice--now minus the Doctor, gets to do her own version of the whole Genesis-Of-The-Daleks-Do-They-Live-Or-Do-They-Die-By-My-Hand-I'm-Refering-To-The-Entire-Species shtick (by the way, that extended-hyphenated-slightly-humourous-heading-for-some-situation is typical of the author's somewhat annoying writing style...and Dave Stone's attempts are usually better. But I regress...). The species in question are the lizard-men (and women, I think, though I'm not sure there were any women reptilians, come to think of it!) of Canopus IV, who've maintained a religion around The Spire, named as such because it's very Spire-ish as it looms above anything else (our CN Tower is a toothpick by comparison). The Spire is apparently made of "futurite", encloses a beam of energy that allows lizard-priests to get messages from the future, and was left by the Canopusis' Gods. No one knows why the Spire was built (like, telling the future isn't enough??!!).

That's the sum-up; the actual plotting is bumpy and halfhazard, further sabotaged by the author's supremely arrhythmical style. Also, it's very wordy, even for a book. Something about Bernice and co. hopping off on a dangerous interstellar to finally confront the so-called "Gods", who turn out to have a time-and-universe spanning agenda that is so weird it involves the self-destruction of Their own solar system, plus a smart-alecky talking air vent. Meanwhile a few of Bernice's archeologically-inclined colleagues hold the fort 'round the Spire, ruffling the feathers (okay, scales--but after all, lizards do eventually evolve into birds, so the "ruffled feathers image almost works) of both religious and anti-religious reptile-dudes, and besides that, not doing much of anything (Bernice's space-trip to meet the Vo'lach is the better part of this unstable, jargon-ridden book).

The ending is four-star material, blessedly. It involves Time Paradox, and I always like a good Time Paradox, especially one that threatens to be infinite while creating multi-realities. Tie the paradox into the final explanation for the Spire and you have a tiresome book redeemed...somewhat. However, there is, in reality, an infinitely better variation of the same basic plot: it's called The Dreaming Dragons, and it's by Damien Broderick, which means you should read more Australian SF, and then get to Ghost Devices if you have time.

Do you really need a review of Jane Eyre from me? You do not. There are five hundred and fifty eight reviews of Jane Eyre here ahead of me, and in fact, didn't I already write one and forgot about it? I may have. I don't have the desire to sort through all the Jane Eyre reviews and see. But, the point is, the book has been thoroughly worked over by critics, scholars, Victorian-era enthusiasts, college-girl nymphomaniac readers, feminists, Bronte fanatics, and possibly even extraterrestrials who slipped some info-disc we shot into space 20 years ago into a Martian disc-player and sampled the complete text. I'm not sure, mind you, whether Isaac Asimov, or Oprah Winfrey, ever got around to jabbering about Jane Eyre, though they both seemed (Asimov), or seem (Winfrey), to know everything--but Asimov apparently did write about everything in his lifetime, and Oprah surely has an opinion...

Me? I loved the language...some of the most captivating, superb passages ever ensconced in a dusty old fiction they say we should read. The plot? Oh, I liked Daniel Deronda better...but then Daniel does more for me than this Rochester fellow, who's fairly transparent and yakkety, compared to DD. On the other hand, Jane herself has it all over what's-her-name from the George Eliot novel--she's morally grounded, fierce in love, a survivor, and not a shilly-shally-er when it comes to decisions--and has a name that doesn't flit from the mind a few months later (it's always easier to recall a character's name, of course, when it's the title of the book, except for that Jude fellow, who's last name remains Obscure).

The plot, meanwhile? Well, it's simple, and it follows Jane around wherever she goes, whether she's reduced to begging at doorsteps (leave it to Jane to uncover the hypocrisy of a series of Welcome Mats), or whether she appears to have finally got what she wanted from life (she even gets what she doesn't want: Money; such talent this woman has!). Or, does she? That would be telling. She's also good at hearing strange voices...whether they be creepy, maniacal voices from strange rooms in large mansions, or disembodied voices crying across the landscape ("Jane, HELP!"; she is a talent, this Jane!).

So what have I accomplished? I fear a backlash, but all I have tried to do is write the most irreverent Jane Eyre review around (though an Asimov critique may already have me beat), designed not to blend into the morass. It's a great book, okay? I can't give it five whole stars because I gave Daniel Deronda five stars, and Jane Eyre isn't as good as Daniel Deronda, so it follows that Jane Eyre gets four stars. What do you want from me, blood? And no, I am not reading The Eyre Affair next. I don't work that way. Well, okay, I am likely to read the novelization of the Brain Of Morbius before reading Warmonger, but that's Dr Who stuff.

Don't be fooled. Jennifer Government does not rank with Orwell, or the film Brazil, or any other major Dystopian fable. This is because, after luring the reader into a compelling Dystopian environment, where corporations openly rule, and the government can't compete with the even lower morality of big-business, Max Barry decides to turn the whole affair into an Elmore Leonard novel, or a Carl Hiaasen romp. This book, somewhere along the path, morphs into a clicheed, smart-mouthed crime novel, with lots of zany characters running around with guns trying to get the best of each other by hook, or by crook, or by cellphone, or by board meeting, or by missile launch, or by whatever. Characters are interesting at first, but they end up merely gliding along after they have been suitably plugged in and lit up for display, and as the book progressed, with lots of chaos flowering in all directions as we bounced back and forth between players, I felt it didn't matter who was who, or what they were like. Action and sardonic wit prevail, with Jennifer Government herself coming in a close second to Slickness, when it comes to listing the reasons to read this book. Yes, Jennifer emerges as a strong character, but then some clicheed villains decide to do the usual, go after her family, sparking a final gun-bedecked confrontation, and here we go again. Characters' final fates are nicely wrapped up in prompt, slick style as the pages dwindle, and there we have our promising Dystopian setting having done not much more than supply smart remarks and some familiar action sequences.

But, it was all kind of entertaining. The SF underpinnings struggle mightily throughout to somehow mean something; the spirit of Orwell battles nobly with the overpowering Carl Hiaasen, witty-slick-crime-escapade virus that slowly takes over the book. Orwell loses. Read it for fun and games; go elsewhere for a really disturbing, really necessary Dystopia.

This is the second thriller by Preston & Child I've read--the other being Thunderhead. (I've seen the film version of The Relic, but that doesn't really influence my remarks here.)

There's nothing really wrong with The Cabinet Of Curiosities--and there was nothing really askew with Thunderhead, come to that, which was also a three-star exercise--but it simply fails to elevate itself above the use of some rather traditional thriller routines. Preston & Child have polished up a fairly compelling style, by this time. They've done their research, and their continuous fascination with the bowels of dusty museum-type edifices--and the hints of magic and menace that could be lurking in such arcane paper-trails turned paper-traps--are addictive reading as each chapter is digested. I also feel that they handle characters quite well; how could I not love Agent Pendergast, being such a big fan of the Doctor, from Doctor Who? He seems cut from the same cloth, and I can almost imagine William Hartnell stepping into the role of Pendergast, with all his little tricks and strangenesses, were this a film. Nora Kelly, too, is a strong recurring character in these thrillers--and Smithback the wily reporter is a stock character who develops sufficiently beyond the stereotype he springs from. Then there's the mood...the sense of danger lurking; who is our methodical, elusive serial killer who turned autopsy into a form of murder back in the 1880's and seems to have returned to plague modern times, just when a forgotten charnel house full of the bones of thirty-six victims from his ancient murder-spree is unearthed. There is a splendid taste of Steampunk to all of this: the derby-hatted, umbrella-wielding slayer who roams the night, throwing a bag over the head of his next victim, and dragging them off for weird, horribly lethal, spinal surgery for some sinister purpose that stretches back a hundred years and relates to some dreadful bit of biologically-enhanced alchemy, if you will. And how are the killings linked to the prestigious museum where Nora Kelly works, and butts heads with her superiors? Is it just that somewhere in the museum archives--down deep in the dark basement--lie the notes that would explain what the murderer is doing and why he could be alive after a century? Or is the museum connection not nearly so fanciful...Could someone who works there have a reason for apeing the techniques of a long-dead psychopath?

Pendergast is a continuously facsinating character, and adds to the Steampunk feel, since he seems to have stepped out of a bygone era of gaslamps and carriages...and then it turns out he can step right back into that era, though before calling him a time-traveler it must be said he uses the cheater's way. Still cool, though. But this fine character, and the others, are not able to distract me from a final assessment of the plot, which is, when all is weighed and balanced, fairly standard. The individual scenes that build suspense--the heroes hunting the killer, while he or she hunts them--and the blossoming into full-fledged action, are all expertly crafted. It is the overall story that is not new, that gives in and ultimately turns rather routine corners. Preston & Child, talented thriller purveyors, are working established formula pretty determinedly in this effort as they did in Thunderhead, and despite all of the fun of reading The Cabinet Of Curiosities, it is nothing original or daring. It is simply another strong thriller. Is that fine with you? If so, okay.

Some say that authors are taking the Science out of Science Fiction. Some say this is happening because Fantasy is "in", and SF is "out". They say this is happening because of Harry Potter, and The Lord Of The Rings--but also because the people of Earth were told that science and scientists promised us such a great future and that future was not delivered. Science--real laboratory-based, empirical, "let's make the world a better place for everyone on the planet" science, never happened.

So we get SF stories--lengthened into novels--like Abandon In Place, by Jerry Oltion, where a few mentions of quantum foam, and a cover-painting showing a lunar lander touching down on the moon, make the thing look like a hard-science novel. But it's not. It's perilously close to wish-fulfillment exercises like The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything, by John D. MacDonald, or Time And Again, by Jack Finney. And those are fantasy novels. The exhilirating effect of reading Oltion's hard-SF ghost-story--his just-imagine, gung-ho, dreamy look at how psychic powers might perhaps refuel humankind's desire for space exploration, with gifted individuals conjuring up moon-worthy spacecraft that can be ridden through the eternal vacuum as long as they don't fade away--is the same as a wish-fulfillment masterpiece like Grimwood's Replay.

Is there SF here, though? Well, I'll trust that the technical details regarding NASA's Apollo space program are well-researched and right. But the crux of the book--the author's passion for concocting this bizarre story--is very science-fictional. Oltion--using metaphor, if not outright mysticism, if not outright gobbledygook--is just pointing out that we will make it to the moon, again, and beyond, if we as a species want it bad enough. This concern has been blowing through SF for ages, as I see it; I flash back to Ray Bradbury's intro to Perry Rhodan #18, where he pleads with readers to remain enthusiastic about manned space flight.

As a novel--not an award-winning novella--Abandon In Place does roam in too many directions. Power-mad dictators who learn psi powers, not to dream up rockets, but to tyrannize the world; an ultra-liberal Pope who advises our main characters--Rick and Tessa, astronauts turned minor deities with vast mental powers fueled by public opinion--on matters of faith and world politics; King Arthur conjured from the aether as a new/old symbol of hope; the world's entire population learning how to tap the paranormal after the example has been set; a glimpse of the afterlife and the strange essences that inhabit it; oh, and car chases, daring escapes, and some spy games. Wow. Take a breath. It is definitely too much...but it's worth the experience.

Not a perfect book, because it is as unwieldy as it is compelling. Fascinating and frustrating. Better than some of its predecessors, like McQuay's The Nexus, but outclassed by Stranger In A Strange Land (there are numerous references to Heinlein's works, in Oltion's book). Well worth reading if you don't mind an SF experience that may not be one at all, while it addresses a fundamental concern of the genre.

Dell Shannon decides--about halfway through--that this is a suspense novel, not a mystery story. What we end up with is a race against time--will suave Lt. Luis Mendoza follow a trail of rape-murders to the killer, before that killer claims his latest victim. Little does Mendoza know that the psychopath's next target could very well be Alison, the woman he has just cast aside because his playboy nature will not allow him to settle down. Alison is crushed; too bad she unwittingly picks a murderer as her rebound date.

Mendoza--and this is my third or fourth go-round with him--is always a detective who entertains and impresses. The accoutrements that come along with him--his beloved cats, his fine cars and fancy clothes which he can afford thanks to an extravagant inheritance which sometimes make him look like a cop "on the take"--give him a unique flavour that should be savoured by more readers.

Knave Of Hearts is quite enjoyable, but a bit too linear and routine, to compete with the likes of Root Of All Evil, or Ace Of Spades.

This is simply the Doctor and Ace up against some rampaging monsters, and as such, shouldn't be worthy of stellar praise. But the tension level is supremely held right from the beginning, and then once these Krill creatures--with all the teeth and claws any genetically-engineered predator could ever hope to have--start hatching on near the human colony on the planet Coralee just when the Doctor and friend have arrived for a vacation, it's time for the reader to be afraid, be very afraid.

This is like James Cameron's Aliens, with the Doctor happening to be around to help out. But if the Doctor has a gift for diplomacy, sweet-talking, or verbal distraction...well, his honey's no good here. These Krill are mindless killing machines--unstoppable if coming by land, worse if by sea--and even Ace's combat skills seem slight in the face of an army.

The only thing the Doctor can do is try to discover who has worked from inside the human colony to resurrect the Krill, which terrible aliens have landed with the intent to harvest the Krill for their own distant war, and who has done what with the secret weapon that the Krill's own creators were forced to employ when their savage creations finally turned on them.

So there is some cloak-and-dagger stuff to compliment the barrage of scenes involving the Doctor, Ace, and various new friends trying to stay one corridor ahead of being ripped to shreds. Heck, I haven't mentioned the talking dolphins who ride around in spider-like constructs, or the killer robots, or the hurricane...

Speaking of the hurricane: Ace has some great scenes throughout the book, but in the latter stages, she sort of gets swept aside and lost, once the worst winds start blowing. I had expected her to be more of a key player at the finale. Other than that, the finale is tremendously exciting, and not since Coldheart have I enjoyed the Doctor-as-action-man. Alright, I amend that; not since Trading Futures have I enjoyed the Doctor-as-action-man. Or, wait, not since that one where--oh skip it.

It's been many long years since I dipped into a Ken Follett novel; I recall reading The Eye Of The Needle as a youngster--I may have been about twelve years old!--and it dazzled me. The plot synopsis of Jackdaws was enough to pull me back into the Follett fold, to see what he's up to these days.

In this fast-paced espionage romp, we have a small team of brave women hastily cobbled together to infiltrate and sabotage a key telephone exchange in Nazi-occupied France of 1944. These so-called "Jackdaws" are led by one-woman dynamo Flick Clairet, who may amaze and enchant you with her craftiness against all puffed-up German (or French anti-Resistance) spycatchers. In fact, if Flick shares this book with anyone, it's her chief nemesis: Dieter Franck, master torturer and interrogator. He would love to get his hands on Flick, just to pick her brain for the masses of information she knows (that's the lady's one Achille's Heel...she's done so many missions she's a veritable font of secret connections and data, and her capture, plus torture, could spell doom for many of the Allies' clandestine operations), to say nothing of discovering the Jackdaws' main mission.

The book, then, is a prolonged cat-and-mouse game between Dieter and Flick. To my mind, the other characters swarm around these two opponents like obedient, or--on both sides respectively--disobedient satellites. Will Flick's mission be foiled by the lack of discipline that exists from the get-go within her own team of "rejects" and lost souls? And over in Dieter's camp, just how much will his reluctant reliance on thick-headed Gestapo thugs be his undoing? The incessant chaos erupting at every turn, the constant changing of plans on the fly for the Jackdaws, plus Dieter's ability to second-guess Flick's tactics (or her his) give the book a true edge of tension.

But--the emphasis on turnabout, and sudden disruption amongst the Jackdaw line-up from square-one (of course I don't want to give away who lives and who dies, or how shockingly fast), may foster the book's biggest weakness: Besides Flick and Dieter, characters seem hastily drawn and inserted for plot's-sake. The chief cat and the head mouse get so much page-time that characters who had been interesting, initially, get short-shrift as the action escalates (which it always does).

However, I was in a hurry to pick this one up again and again, to keep up with the battle of wits that percolates throughout the entire thriller. By that standard, Jackdaws is a winner.

Make no mistake, this is a heist book. This is not a legal thriller. That means that the parts which read like legal-thriller sometimes seem more like legal "filler". I mean, we have to see the star of our show, Judge Devine, as master of his courtroom, presiding over various simple or complex cases, so that we can see those facets of his personality that are not displayed when he is busy with his secret hobby: planning to rob the United States Federal Reserve of one hundred million dollars, without anyone even noticing it is gone.

Quite a challenging task for the Judge, but he is smart enough to recruit some help, in the form of a few persecuted insiders at the Reserve itself, and one old friend who, just like the Judge, appears to be a squeaky clean--even noble--citizen, but is in fact a clever criminal.

If I found my brain glazing over during some of the portions that show Judge "Paulie" dispensing justice in his honourable robes, at least the scenes did reveal, subtly, just how the Judge's mind worked while he supposedly sought to hand out fair decisions, while actually serving his own now-embittered private agenda. The Judge is a complex character at every turn, and a bit of a literary gamble, dangerously high-concept...lawman and criminal at the same time, and it works, deliciously.

The heist itself is dazzling to experience, as are the consequences for everyone who participates in it, everyone who suspects that it actually happened, and everyone who dismisses it as an absurd impossibility because it would be too embarrassing to admit as reality. The adversarial relationship that erupts between the Judge and an intrepid cop named Plymouth, who used to be a quiet ally to the Judge in his courtroom but who just won't let go of the notion that the smoke and fire at the Federal Reserve was more like smoke and mirrors, is a wonderful post-heist game that sustains the book til the end. And the end itself is wickedly satisfying.

Something different. Something I can highly recommend.

An imperfect mystery novel, to be sure, but this look at the sordid side of tinseltown is smoothly written, and features a likeable private-eye named Vic Eton, who certainly knows how to antagonize those who most want him to leave a spiky murder case alone--in this case, the cops, the Mob, an aged Hollywood icon, and even the prostitute who hires him in the first place. All these people end up trying to dissuade Eton from trying to find whoever killed and crucified (literally crucified!) an under-age call-girl with expensive clients Only.

As the mystery reveals itself, morsel by morsel, the seasoned crime reader may be ahead of the game; I confess--no, not to the murders! (a second crucified body turns up under the Hollywood sign, and this victim couldn't seem to have less connection to the first one)--I confess to sensing where the story was going, in the late innings. Also, though the book is written in highly readable style, breezing along nicely, the style is ultimately undistinguished; it gets the job done and that's all. The domestic subplots help counterbalance the ever-encroaching seediness of the main investigation--I liked the relationship between Eton and his daughter, Tracy--but when our detective finally pushes the bad guys to relatiate, we get some standard scenarios involving Vic and those around him getting threatened or worse.

I liked this book, but it's not memorable mystery-telling when all is wrapped up. Strong characters, including the seamy ones, needed something more interesting and original to do.