Kacey Ezells' The World Asunder (The Psyche of War Book II)

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Dammit Kacey Ezell! I didn't want to like this chick. I mean I really, really, didn't want to like this chick. They thought she was dead in the first book. I thought she was dead in the first book. I was HAPPY about that fact. But not only did Adalina Sucherin survive in Minds of Men, she is the main character of Ezell's newest work, The World Asunder. I knew that going in and it almost made me not buy the book. Why? BECAUSE I HATED THAT BITCH! Of course, I'm a member of the CKP Facebook Group, and I mentioned this there and was reassured by none other than the factory boss himself.

Apparently, I'm even more forgiving than even I thought I was because I honestly did end up liking this chick. Of course, it helps that the only thing worse than a Nazi is a Communist and chick starts out the story being oppressed by Communists. Enemy of my enemy and all that. Oh, and she's helping to take care of a family of innocents caught in the aftermath of World War II. I guess that makes up for a lot, especially since there were a bunch of daughters. I have daughters, so I therefore have a soft spot FOR daughters.

Okay, so maybe there was more to Lina than I saw the first time around. Maybe, just possibly, she wasn't the ginormous [redacted] I thought she was. I mean, I could have missed something. Things happen and sometimes I don't reach my normal heights of absolute brilliance. I guess.

I'll say this much though: Having read her story, which starts in East Berlin during the Berlin Airlift, I am actually a big fan of one Miss Sucherin. It took her a bit to win me over, but that's not surprising. I wasn't ready to give this character the benefit of the doubt. What I'm going on about here is that Mrs, Ezell has done one hell of a job building a very flawed and believable character and making her believable. Seriously. Lord knows if she were my girlfriend I'd never allow her around a body of water bigger than a Dixie cup.

Lina is also a woman who has been through a lot. That makes sense. If anyone knows what the Soviet troops did in Berlin after they conquered it that makes sense. Any conquered city is going to suffer, but Berlin had one of the worst fates of any city in modern warfare and it's women suffered worse that its men. Russians raped every woman they could get their hands on and were perfectly happy to rape young girls if they couldn't find a woman. (Seriously, if you don't believe me, read A Woman in Berlin. )


Of course, Sucherin is not the only character in the book. This is a good thing. Characters grow a lot more when they have other characters to interact with. A lot changes for Lina throughout The World Asunder. It's actually pretty amazing how much she remains herself after all of the changes. Lina is a strong woman and that hits home for me. When my daughters were little, I used to ask them what kind of person they were. I made them tell me that they were Proud, Strong, Smart, Tough, and Brave. I wouldn't leave them alone until they did. Lina is all of the above and that makes her the kind of woman I really respect.

I want to be careful here. There is a family that Lina is staying with at the beginning of The World Asunder. They are totally believable. There are a lot of other characters too, but I don't want to go too far into them because the way this thing is laid out, I'd have to reveal the plot to show where everyone fits in. Suffice it to say that  they all make sense in context. Even when someone  did something I did't want them to do, I knew why they did it. I like characters whose actions make sense according to their own motivations. Ezell apparently gets human nature. And actually, the girls in that family have all of the traits I taught my girls to have too. Maybe that's why I liked them so much.

Speaking as a historian with a fancy sheepskin, I'd like to compliment the author on her historical research. The backdrop of this story is about as perfect as you're going to get from a work of fiction. There were many things that went on after the Second World War that the average American doesn't know much about. Many of them are things that I find regrettable. In The World Asunder, Ezell features some of them. The United States really did bring people into the country who were complicit in some of the Nazi atrocities perpetrated during the war. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't right. I happened though, because it was necessary. Ezell gives about as balanced a portrayal of these actions as I've ever read. Kudos to her.

I will, however, stress that you should not go into a novel like The World Asunder thinking you already know what's going to happen. As a matter of fact, a smart reader will keep their head on a swivel because you never know what's coming next. I'm not saying that the book takes a lot of weird jumps. It's written in a logical manner, but there are surprises aplenty if you're paying attention.

Paying attention....

Hmm...

Not going to spoil anything.

It's possible that I missed something somewhere though. This is actually a good thing for the author. It's good for The World Asunder as a work of literature. I'm just saying that it might be possible that one of the surprises would have been a little bit less surprising if I hadn't had my cranium inserted into my third point of contact. Then again, since I am a member of the Facebook group, I've seen other people post vaguely, and have reason to believe that they missed the same things. It was a lot of fun once I figured it out, and someone out there is the note-taking type who is going to figure it out early, but if you're not that one percent of all nerds supernerd, it will come as a shock and it's more fun that way.


So, I enjoyed The World Asunder so much that I'm afraid I'm going to be forced to nominate it for the Dragon Award for Alternate History. I'm afraid that I have not consulted Mrs. Ezell to find out if she has room for one on her mantle, but that is quite frankly not my problem. If she doesn't have room, I guess I'll just store it for her. Or sumfin.

Seriously. Buy it. Read it. Nominate it. Thank me later.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Boiling Beakers

The World Asunder (The Psyche of War Book II)
Kacey Ezell
Theogony Books, 2019

The World Asunder (The Psyche of War Book II) is available for purchase at the following link:



Oh, and I meant it when I recommended A Woman in Berlin. You can pick up a copy of that here:

Declan Finn's City of Shadows

I'm looking at a map right now. It's a map of the Boroughs of New York. I'm searching hard. I've looked to the north, south, east and west. I even checked the back of my computer monitor. No matter how hard I look or which pair of reading glasses my old ass wears, I can't seem to find London anywhere. And since Declan Finn's latest novel is City of Shadows, Saint Tommy NYPD Book 4 I find myself confused. Uhh.. Yeah. London does not equal New York.

That's not to say that it's a bad novel. Hell, I enjoyed it. I mean it even kind of makes sense that Detective Tommy Nolan is across an ocean because he was ordered there by the Vatican. Saints are, by definition, part of the church. London makes a good backdrop, it's just not New York. Maybe I'm really seriously confused here. Maybe I'm just joshing you by pretending to be confused. I guess we'll never know what the truth is.

Either way, St. Tommy is up to his neck in trouble this time around. Things are not well in the British capital and our hero smells a rat. Or maybe something worse. What smells worse that a rat? Oh, yeah. London. London smells worse than a rat. Seriously, Tommy thinks it stinks. Oh, and without giving too much away, the title of the book fits. For the purposes of the novel, London really is a City of Shadows.

The honorable Detective Nolan once again finds himself in more trouble than anyone this side (or maybe the other side) of a Dan Brown novel. There is a lot going on here and none of it is good if you're on the side of right and decency. That's what Tommy is for though. He fixes wrong stuff with the use of powers provided by God and sometimes a bit of temporal firepower. Oh, and maybe just a smidge of good, old-fashioned asskickery, bare knuckle style. Seriously. Nobody mess with the saint. He will very kindly and with the blessing of God reduce you to a non-obstacle.

He's good at it too, and Finn does his usual awesome job of describing in painful detail exactly how it happens. When things start to happen, they really happen. The action is logical and well paced. Things happen the way they should given the fact that Tommy has the abilities that he has been granted by God. A lot of this is based on Catholic belief and abilities displayed by saints in the past, so there is some logic to it.

Interestingly, Finn also seems to get that weaponry is neither good nor evil but can be used as a tool for either. I don't want to give too much up here but there is a very important object in City of Shadows that starts out perceived as evil. It may or may not end up that way. There is a point made though. I just wish that uhh...

Never mind.

When one is backed by God, one must be opposed by Satan. That's almost like a law of nature. Finn does a good job of giving his villains a number of satanically provided powers. They don't always understand precisely what the nature of their powers is, but that makes sense as well. Satan is known as the Great Deceiver for a reason. Most of the villains believe in what they're fighting for. That makes sense as well. It's one of my favorite things to see in a novel, because we're all the hero of our own story. They think they're doing the right thing.

And the guy who doesn't? He is the worst villain. He freely admits that he is in the fight only for what it can gain him personally. That also makes sense. It is often said that absolute power corrupts absolutely. It does. I, however, would argue that the pursuit of absolute power is even more corrupting. Finn's ultimate villain is that guy. He's the one who chases what he wants regardless of its cost to others. He is what is truly wrong with the world and its desires. In short, he's a damn good villain.

I've review a lot of Finn's work here, probably more than anyone else's. There is a reason for that: It's because no matter how good his characters are (like St. Tommy) or how evil they are (as the one in City of Shadows) they always seem to be human. Even saints aren't perfect. Even villains think they're doing the right thing. People react the way they do because they have motivations and they react accordingly. Finn doesn't forget this.



Of course, the threats in City of Shadows are both manifold and insidious. Finn features real world problems in the work. I like that. Nothing in this world works one hundred percent the way it was intended to and Finn points out some of those errors. He does not see fit to play nice either. I approve. The British government has done several things in recent years that have been damaging to their citizens. At least on this side of the Atlantic we're free to point that out. Good for him.
I would be careful of your timing while reading City of Shadows. I was having a slow day at work one day (I'm a Lyft driver) and I was parked in a parking lot reading the book on my phone because why not when my phone went off. I got stopped at a rather suspenseful part of the novel. I'm a afraid I may have found myself more interested in completing the ride and reading the next little bit than I was in continuing on with my shift afterward. This is a threat posed by every good book, but with Finn it's a stronger compulsion than with most. Don't let that stop you though. If you're not looking to get lost in a book why would you read one anyway? This one is worth your time and money. Go get it.



Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Stolen Artifacts



City of Shadows

Declan Finn

Silver Empire, 2019

City of Shadows is available for purchase at the following link:

Star Trek, Respectable Characters and What Makes a Story Worth Reading

(Author's note: I didn't make this meme. I'd credit the appropriate party if I had any clue who they were.)

Once upon a time I was hanging out with a pretty cool female who suggested that I read Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. I mean, the premise sounded okay. There was this girl and she had a thing for this vampire and maybe a werewolf. I like vampires and werewolves. Who doesn't? I mean, I've loved Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles since I found out they existed. Granted, that wasn't until I bought Interview With the Vampire on VHS, but that's because none of my friends told me about it. Werewolves rock too, whether we're talking about Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf or the super evil archetypal werewolves in the Dungeons and Dragons. Hell, even the Worgen in World of Warcraft would be pretty cool if they weren't Alliance scum.

So, I bet her that if she read Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, I would read Twilight. She read, I believe, the first five Potter books. My copy of  Twilight went against the wall at high velocity about one hundred forty pages in. The last I heard about it, my niece was enjoying it. She was about thirteen at the time. And that's about right for that character. Stephanie Meyer got lucky that her books hit when they did. The Harry Potter Generation had just reached the age where they would be reading Young Adult books instead of children's fiction. There was a huge niche and she exploited it. That lead to literally millions of sales. Here's the thing though: Bella is not the type of character that most people would find entertaining.

The reason that Bella fails as a character outside of a narrow niche is because she's not the type of person that most people respect. Seriously. Bella is not a hardworking person doing her best to overcome a problem. She's a whiny little brat who acts like a victim and bases her self worth on what some boy thinks of her. There's just nothing here that would interest most readers, even if Meyer did manage to find a large following among a specific group.

What makes a story worth reading is the relationship between the characters and the audience. Readers like to think of themselves as being admirable people. They identify with things that they see in a character that they believe about themselves. Notice that I'm not talking about race or gender because, except in the case of an extremely bigotted person, they're irrelevant. Seriously. The only thing that keeps a white person from identify with a black person, or a black person from identifying with a white one, is hatred. We're all people and, while culture may make a difference in how things are obtained and expressed, at the end of the day we all want basically the same things.  Let's talk about a few Trek characters and why they work:

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a series that I enjoyed. I always admired Benjamin Sisko, the commander of Deep Space Nine and captain of the Defiant. Sisko is a man who, in many ways, finds himself in situations that he would rather not have to deal with. He never asked to be the Emissary of a religion he doesn't even believe in. His wife was killed in combat and he never wanted that. He loses his station to the enemy at one point. Benjamin Sisko is a man who, at any given moment, could have given it all up, gotten a prescription for Fuckitol and just walked out of Starfleet. He didn't. He did his job. He got through whatever life threw at him. I'm not saying it was easy. The fact of the matter is that it wasn't. He did what he needed to do. Anyone who knows the series knows the episode, “In the Pale Moonlight”. (Granted, some don't like it but it's one of my favorites.) The actions Sisko takes in that episode, including the sabotage of a Romulan ship and all of its crew and passengers by proxy, are not exactly admirable. The fact of the matter is that they work. The Romulans join the war effort. It's not polite. It's not easy. He just does it. I've been there. Sometimes in life you have to do things that make you uncomfortable so that you can do what needs to be done. I respect that. I gained a lot of respect for Sisko because he did it, even if what he did wasn't really morally right. It was also probably illegal, but war is war and law only has limited relevance in a wartime environment.

 
The list of admirable characters in Deep Space Nine is a long one.
Worf, who lives an honorable life and refuses to abandon his heritage.
Kira, who lives a life of religious devotion and fights for what she believes no matter the cost.
Worf, who lives up to a different code as best he can and manages to employ many and entertain countless others.
Bashir, the medic who is not afraid to wield a phaser when he needs to.
Jake, who grew up surrounded by expectations and did his own thing anyway. That took guts.
Nog, who did the same thing, albeit with different expectations and outcome.
Keiko, the military spouse struggling to help her husband with his career and still progress in hers, all while taking care of the kids.

Pretty much the only one of the main cast that I didn't like was Rom because he was just a goofy dumbass. I'm sure there was some redeeming characteristic there, but I'm not sure what it was. He was used by everybody, fell for everyone and ended up as Grand Nagus. I don't get that dude at all.

Then there is Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager. She ends up on the other side of the galaxy, seventy-plus years from home. Then she buckles up her chin strap and gets it done. She ends up in charge of two trashed ships and has to combine their crews to make one that will work. She conducts diplomacy with alien races that no one has ever heard of. She maintains her interest in scientific exploration. She builds relationships with and between the members of her crew. She never gives up and she gets them all home. Catherine Janeway FTW! (Oh, and who didn't want to be successful author/holoprogram writer and all around scamp Tom Paris?)

I was a nerd growing up. I took a lot of shit from a lot of people because I was intelligent and let it show. I heard a lot from parents and other family members about not worrying about it. They all told me about how I shouldn't worry about it. I always heard about how people were jealous. You know who my earliest idol was? Do you know who I wanted to be? Spock. Why? He was smart as hell and in complete control of his emotions. He would've never felt the pain. And my God was that guy smart. I've watched a lot of shows and movies. I've read a ton of books. I have never, ever wanted to be someone so badly in my life.

I could go on but I won't. There are so many more characters: Uhura, McCoy, Sulu. Data, Picard, Riker, Troi, both Crushers (at least if you were a couple years younger than Wesley the first time through.) DS9 I've covered pretty well. Chakotay, Kim, Torres. Archer, Trip. I haven't seen Discovery. My Wi-Fi sucks and I don't want to pay for the streaming service. I'm sure there are some good ones there too.

Those are all characters that fans can identify with. They're all characters with admirable characteristics that make them fun to watch. They're not just people you can identify with, they're people you want to identify with. That's what makes them fun. That's what makes people spend their money.

Some Star Trek related products are available at the links below: