Review: Desolation Mountain

Cork O’Connor and his family are back in Desolation Mountain, the newest release in the series by William Kent Kreuger. A plane carrying a senator and her family goes down in Tamarack County. Cork and son Stephen – who has had the same, recurring vision about an eagle being shot out of the sky by a young boy and an egg falling from it – end up at the crash scene. Various locals, including two tribe members who were the first to report seeing the plane go down, and Sheriff Marsha Dross and her people are at scene, but told to either go home (in the case of the locals) or back to their station (in the case of the local law enforcement). The official government entities, spooky quasi-government entities, and a private investigator known to Cork but with a hidden agenda are all present. Then the locals who were at the scene start vanishing and Cork realizes there’s more afoot than meets the eye. He, Stephen, his son-in-law Daniel, and some other men start their own investigation, racing to find the truth and the abducted locals.

I’ve noticed of late that a number of the books I’ve read seem to be written with an eye toward the big screen. I don’t know if it’s just me or that really is the case, but this seemed to be yet another one, in my eyes. A convoluted story, a bunch of characters, spooky military people: it could easily be adapted for the screen.

At stake in the book is the reopening of an iron mine in the area, with half the locals against it for the obvious environmental reasons, and the other half in favor for the obvious economic reasons. It’s clear that Very Big Interests want it opened, and that’s probably why the plane was shot down.

But none of it makes sense – except Stephen’s recurring vision, which he relates to Henry, the Ojibwe midi who is his mentor. I’m going to put the next part in spoilers.

 

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS…

 

The vision opened the book, and as soon as the plane went down, I connected the dots. It wasn’t particularly difficult to understand the egg was the flight recorder and the boy an actual boy who witnessed it. It was, as usual, nice to watch Cork & Co. run around, putting everything together, getting into run-ins with the military people, etc., but it wasn’t as an immersive experience as previous books have been.

It also strains credulity to think the media, both domestic and foreign, whouldn’t have been all over this event. But in the book, you’d think they barely existed: they weren’t crawling all over the mountains, they weren’t camped out in a situation room set up by the local SO or FBI or NTSB. Nothing. In addition, the cheesy, mean, mission-centered military guy and his equally rigid and seemingly psychopathic bitch of a second in command were just over the top.

And that bitch brings up another issue I’ve also been noticing more lately: in books like this, or Steve Hamilton’s Dead Man Running, the women are not characters in the same sense that Cork (in this instance) is: they exist to be ball-breaking parodies of their tough guy male counterparts, or victims of crimes, or to hang around and do things like cook meals or take care of people, or as a means to give information so the author doesn’t have to info dump. This book has them all. It doesn’t bother me in the sense of “I’ll never read another book by this author” way, but it does bug me. And there was no mention at all (not that I recall) of Cork’s other daughter. Not even a call after seeing the news?

I’ve been wondering when Kreuger was going to kill off Henry, and I suppose the ending of this book means that will be coming sooner rather than later. That’s too bad, as he’s become such an essential part of these stories that I’m not certain they can be as good as they are without him in them as a grounding point.

 

END OF SPOILERS…

Overall, if you’ve read to #16, you’ll read this on at #17 – it’s almost an inevitability if you’re anything like me. Perhaps you’ll like it more than I did, and I hope you do.

Moderately recommended.

Pasture day!

The meaties went out on pasture after their second week in the brooder, for a couple of reasons. First, they are eating machines, and often crowded out the layers for awhile at each refresh time. Second, by that time, they were already twice the size of the layers, who are not bred to pack on so  much weight in a short period of time. Third (and these items are in no particular order), to be frank about it, their poop really, really stinks. I suppose this is a byproduct of an animal specifically bred to gorge itself. But they are gaining size nicely, and will be ready for processing the first week of October, if we stay on track.

In any case, I moved the layers out to the chickshaw last week, and kept them locked up in the coop for a few days so they would understand this was now their home. Monday, I set up the poultry fence – kind of misnamed, really, as it’s designed to keep predators out, not chickens in, given that they can fly and sometimes even remember this fact – closing in their chickshaw and an area around it, and let them out on the grass.

One of the black ones that has been my pal since they were in the brooder was, of course, the first one to take those first steps down the ramp and into the great outdoors. Once they all got out, they acted just like chickens do: they roamed around  (not far from the chickshaw, though) ate some grass and whatever else was there, tried to do a little dirt bathing without a lot of success.

We’ve simply had too much rain for that, so I’m going to get them a tub for inside the chickshaw, with sand (and DE mixed in) so they’ll have somewhere for a dirt bath.

I popped out there about half a dozen times today, to make sure they were all still alive and inside the fenced off area. At one point today, I let the dogs come out, too. While Mickey, my big, goofy border collie didn’t really care all that much about them, Einstein, my other dog, did. He’s a terrier mix, and assumed the hunter pose, one leg raised, body taut, when he realized those things smaller than him were something he wanted. Although I warned him away, he stuck his nose on the energized fence and got a quick lesson that these birds were not for him.

In a few months, these girls should start laying. For now, they need to get used to being out in the day and in the coop at night, safe from the critters that roam in the darkness.

Until next time, peeps: be well.

Review: Dead Man Running

I’m going to be in the minority here, but I really did not enjoy this book.

It is a bit of a departure for Alex McKnight, heading out of Paradise, MN because a serial killer wants to talk to him – a serial killer unknown to him either by sight or name. Martin Livermore promises to lead the FBI and local authorities to proof of his crimes, but only if Alex McKnight is there. Once there, it’s clear that while Alex does not know Livermore, Livermore knows plenty about him, from his minor league baseball days to his work as a Detroit cop and the incident that caused him to leave the force and return to Paradise.

OK, that’s fine – sometimes you have to go along with the premise to get into the story. Sometimes it pays off. This time, however, it did not.

Probably spoilers ahead, so….

HERE BE SPOILERS

That investigators get in deep with criminals of all sorts is not a newsflash. But this one simply became more and more unbelievable as the book went along. There are also some of the usual cliches/tropes, which we’ll get into.

Livermore leads various law enforcement personnel (and Alex) into the desert in Arizona, and subsequently through what amounts to a small canyon. Alex has his doubts about the whole thing, but of course, the FBI guys say they have to go through with it, even if they are still suspicious that Alex knows something about Livermore when he says he doesn’t.

The team gets shredded by armaments Livermore has embedded into the wall of the small passageway/canyon thing. But not Alex. Just before everything fires, he’s taken to the ground by one of the FBI agents because Livermore stops, turns around, and looks at him. Said look apparently is enough for the suspicious FBI agent, who effectively saves his life, taking him out of the line of fire, while getting killed himself.

We then go on to hit all the usual tropes: Alex goes to the scenes of the various killings, picks up on and interprets the supersmart killer’s codes or symbols, supersmart killer playing not just the long game, but the looooong game, having picked out Alex as his ultimate target years ago because of something that happened decades ago, bringing back Alex’s ex-wife into the picture to act as bait, etc.

Speaking of the ex-wife, the whole book is devoid of women except as victims in the main story. They are either already dead, killed while the supersmart killer plants clues for Alex to follow so Alex ends up either tripping a napalm(!) trap that kills one woman or sleeping in a room below where supersmart killer has merrily drilled through the floor above Alex’s hotel room so he gets covered in the woman’s blood as supersmart killer tortures and kills her, or a current victim (the ex-wife).

From the outset, it was difficult to put aside disbelief. As each woman dies, or after Alex stumbles across another clue, it got harder and harder.

Alex is also not himself in this book, compared to all the previous ones. In this one, he’s laser -focused on tracking down the killer. That’s fine, and would be completely believable if he wasn’t such a bumbler without a lick of sense at times, which is how he is in all the previous books. He does get shot at and injured a couple of times here, so at least that is somewhat in tune with the previous books, but that isn’t enough. Here, Alex is dour, and apparently able to grasp the psyche of a serial killer he’s never met and knows nothing about, unlike the FBI, who can’t seem to figure things out if he isn’t there.

The end: let’s talk about that. I know people get obsessed by things or people. But getting obsessed with a person you met, once, decades ago, barely spoke to? That’s the connection between Livermore and Alex: he’s pissed off because Alex married Jeannie, claiming Alex “stole” her because she wasn’t immediately enamored by Livermore when he spoke a few words to her when they were thirteen and she was sitting on the dock at her grandparent’s house. That’s is – that’s the “twist”, such as it is.

Livermore abducts Jeannie, ties her up n an elaborate fashion. Alex shows up, and instead of taking appropriate precautions, knowing what he’s dealing with, just walks right into the Livermore house. He gets knocked out and then handcuffed to a sink via the plumbing under it. Livermore, of course, plans all sorts of tortuous things for Jeannine when she doesn’t act the way he wants. Conveniently, he leaves Alex handcuffed to the sink and takes her down to the basement, where he stores the bodies and bones of his victims.

Naturally, Alex manages to get loose, stumbles down to the basement, and thanks to help from Jeannie, who manages, somehow, to stab Livermore in the back just as he’s about to kill Alex, strangles Livermore with the handcuff chain as he turns to Jeannine, the knife sticking out of his back.

END SPOILERS

And that’s it. That’s the end. Alex goes back to Paradise, fields a call or two from Jeannie. I suppose this means she’ll be popping up in another book. If she does, her fate will probably not be a good one.

This book had none of the humor of the previous books in this series. It started dark and got darker, and the usual characters only make an appearance in the beginning and at the end. We’re left with a completely different Alex hauling himself around chasing a serial killer who is, of course, smarter than anyone else, ever, and leaves no forensics except those he intends to leave.

Not recommended, unless you always read every book in a series.

Calling the season

It’s official: I’m calling it a season in the gardens.

For the fourth year in a row.

This does not make me happy. On the other hand, in previous years I was going through yet another bout of pneumonia. This year, it was just a sinus infection – but recovering from it took a month and a half. That month and a half is arguably the most important time for the gardens, as it took over May-June. If you get behind right there at the beginning of the real season, it’s likely you will never catch up, and indeed I did not. The plants I’d managed to transplant suffered, the plants I had yet to set out remained in their flats far too long, and the weeds absolutely strangled everything.

So as I looked at the gardens as I mowed today, despite that little voice telling me that yes, I could in fact get that next round of tomatoes planted and have them bear fruit as the calendar season closed out, I realized it simply was not going to happen.

Instead, what I’m going to do is just put the rest of the plants out of their misery and pull them for the compost heap (which, I might add, has a very thick layer of pine shavings and chicken poop on it now). And then: pull the weeds. Go to battle once more with the wisteria, which is well on its way to taking over the entirety of the east to northeastern corner of the front gardens. Take the metal sides off the rows and just have them as regular raised beds. Scoop all the rubber mulch out of the walkways in the gardens (and figure out what the hell to do with it all afterward). Lay down the commercial weedbarrier in the walkways, the same weedbarrier that covers the frames as they are right now, which is effective, although inevitably there will be weeds wherever there are holes in it, like where holes have been cut to do plantings or where the landscape staples puncture it. Get the cover crop seed in place so it can establish before we go into “winter” (I have half a row already germinated and really thick; the buckwheat came up first and has delightful little flowers on its tops.) Check all the grow light fixtures and toss the dead ones, order new ones.

There is more, of course. There is always more. There are still chickens to take care of (and one set to butcher around the first week of October) and bees to maintain. But when the list looks a bit overwhelming, I just take a deep breath and think: one step, then another. It can be done.

Until next time, peeps: be well.

Review: Bad Blood

I’ve been a user of GoodReads in a half-assed kind of way of the last several years. I read – a LOT – and sometimes it just felt like a bother to put the books in so they could be rated.

That was before Amazon bought the company.

Now that they have a handle tool to connect to your Amazon account to pull in all the books you have purchased, unless you get a book via another means, rating something you’ve read via a purchase or Kindle Unlimited is much, much easier.

Not so easy was getting my Amazon account linked with the primary GR profile I had set up. Because over the years I would forget that I had set one up, I’d create another. In the end, I wound up with three GR profiles, and none of them would connect to my Amazon account.

But thanks to the efforts of Sofia C. in their support department, I was able to get my accounts merged AND get Amazon linked to the one profile I now had. Sweet!

Of course, this comes with another round of rating things, and I realized when looking at the list of purchases (or Kindle Unlimited reads), that it was going to take awhile to do the ratings, for two reasons: one, because there are just so many of them. Two, because the details of the ones I’ve read relatively long ago have faded a bit from the brain.

I’d like to do reviews, but that takes being organized enough to put my thoughts down in a coherent way that the review would be worthwhile, and there would be quite a number of them to write. I may do it, maybe not, but I figured I would go ahead and a drop a review here of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (not an affiliate link) by  John Carreyrou.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am a sucker for a well-written business book, especially if the book is about an implosion at a company. For instance, I have read many books about the collapse of Enron, and books about the failures of Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns during the housing bubble crash, and about the failure of AIG, something thought impossible.

In Bad Blood, Carreyrou, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal takes a look at Theranos, the management team of which promised to be revolutionizing the way blood tests were drawn and processed, via their proprietary system of sliding pipettes of miniscule amounts of blood – gathered from a fingertip lancet – which were then put in a cartridge and then slid into a box for processing by the machinery in that box.

Carreyrou does a terrific job of using firsthand accounts from people inside and out (mainly out) of Theranos and describes the rather toxic environment it must have been to work there: paranoia, suspicions, blatant lies from management, and probably a dash of psycopathy thrown in. Remember: these devices were supposed to work to give people information about their health. As the book makes abundantly clear, and as people who had been at Theranos make clear, the boxes didn’t work, and never had worked to do all the tests the founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, told everyone who would listen that they would. Toward the end of the book, he switches over to first person, describing how he put the pieces of the story together for his article.

It is a bit difficult at times to keep up with all the people introduced in the book, but don’t let that deter you if you’re interested in reading accounts of businesses torpedoing themselves because of their vaporware.

Overall, I would give it five out of five stars.

If you’re not interested in business-related books, I hope you are reading something.

Until next time, peeps: be well.

Homecoming

Coming home the other day, I got to see this as a storm boiled up and over us.

It would have been a good day to take a nap. But a nap eluded me, and I wound up working.

It was a terrific storm, though. I had kicked the layers out to their new home, and of course the meaties have been out in their pen for a bit now, and everyone made it through.

The meaties are starting to look like real chickens as we reach the halfway point of their short but happy lives. I’ll have to get some new pics of them to compare against their three day old selves.

Until next time, peeps: be well.

Shake a tailfeather

Guess who has feathers growing on their butts?

That’s right: the layer chicks! They’re getting larger – not as large as the Cornish meat birds, to be sure, but that’s ok. They’re not bred for meat.

In addition to getting their true tail feathers, they are also molting, which makes them look quite a bit like their dinosaur predecessors. The black one in the very center is my best pal. When I’m working on changing their water and feeder, she will fly right up and perch herself on my hand or forearm. I wonder if that will last when I evict them from their brooder and into the chickshaw?

Speaking of that sort of thing, I ordered some electrified poultry netting yesterday, and it will be here on Thursday.  After I get  a practice round of setting up the fence, then moving it, I’ll be setting these girls in the great outdoors. They’ll be in the chickshaw coop for a couple of days, to get used to that being the place they’ll go each night, and then I’ll let them out onto pasture, with the fence around  the area.  The poultry netting is not really to keep the birds in, but rather to keep other critters out. Raccoons especially seem to like chicken heads, and we lost a chicken due to a ripped off head the last time we had chickens – because chickens are not smart enough to not stick their head through a fence to look at a raccoon hanging out on the other side of it.

In a couple of months, we should be getting our first eggs from these girls. It’s going to be great!

Until next time, peeps: be well.

 

Coloring the sky

After a pretty heavy storm back in July, we got a nifty double rainbow at the ranch: sharp, full colors, courtesy of Mother Nature.

I had been doing really well both with the daily blog posts and with the writing toward the novel, but got derailed because (as usual) I shift a ton of energy to all the things that are on the todo list – which of course never ends – for the business. By the end of the day, between the chickens, bees, and work on the property/in the gardens, and the work work added on top of that, I’m usually falling asleep at my desk.

So, I have to rein in the “everything has to be checked off every day!” portion of the brain and divert that energy into writing. I’ve recruited one of my sisters to act as an accountability person for me, just to ask me if I got my writing done each day around her bedtime hour.

I keep having specific scenes for books other than the one I’m working on primarily, and ideas for other books come zipping into my brain all the time. I suppose this is a good problem to have, Focus. Focus. Focus. Get the first one done. Then you’ll know you can do it, and the next one should be easier in reducing that gut-wrenching worry about finishing something. Anything.

Remember, folks: it’s never too late.

Until next time, peeps: be well.

Judging

“The writing was superb, and for those who say no I ask you a question “Do you have a degree from a university in English? Have you written a novel? If you answered no to both question well you are not qualified as a professional to discuss writing.”

That’s an actual quote from someone to another party who didn’t like the book they were reviewing, but that the commenter liked quite a lot.

And it’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. You do not need an MFA, nor do you have to have a published novel  to review books and pass judgment on the writing in a book, just as you don’t need to have played professional football (or to have played football at all) to know that a not-so-stellar quarterback – which, alas, Jax has had over and over and over again – throwing downfield back across his body is a bad idea 99% of the time.

Let me tell you this about writing: there are no rules for the art of writing. But there are rules about the craft of writing. These are two very different realms.

The art of writing may take you to the point of creating your own universe, or only having left handed people in your book, or deciding time is a useless construct.

But the craft of writing means you need to get these things across to people in a manner they can understand, and in a manner that jibes with the world you’re in. Did you write a high fantasy novel? If so, having someone tell another person “Later!” as they’re leaving is poor craftsmanship, and a break in the mindset of the reader.  Did you decide in your literary novel that you were not going to identify any characters, ever, in dialogue, leading to confusion on the part of your readers as to who is saying what? Bad idea. Does your thriller have saidisms absolutely everywhere, with people intoning, muttering, spitting, without them every just saying something – or with people “intoning gravely” or “muttering resignedly” or “spitting angrily” versus “saying”? Not good.

What you do need to do: use grammar properly. If you think you must write in the dialect of one character, don’t do it every time the character speaks, and don’t do a wall of text from that character in dialect. When the character first speaks, sure, do the dialect thing. Then let it go, as you’ve planted it in the mind of the reader. Readers are pretty smart. They’ll get it.

Likewise, make sure your continuity is good.  Unless you are specifically writing third person omniscient, don’t go into all the characters’ heads. And even if you are, don’t head hop in a single paragraph. Don’t switch from first person to third person in the middle of a paragraph or chapter. This is confusing. Don’t change from present tense to past tense in the middle of the book unless you are moving to something that has happened in the past. If you have a character named Stan at the beginning of the book, don’t start calling him Dan somewhere in Chapter Six. If Stan has dark, shoulder-length hair, don’t make him blonde with a buzzcut three chapters later unless you show us this or at least explain it.

And don’t – DO NOT – wade into your one or two star reviews and tell someone who disliked your book that they’re stupid and obviously don’t know what’s going on in the world. That’s a one way ticket to be put on peoples’ “Never Read” list.

DO write your book. DON’T make it boring.

Until next time, peeps: be well.