Book Reviews

Summary: More bodies keep piling up around the 34th in line to the throne.  And she needs to find some answers in order to stop an international incident.

The first book in the series, Her Royal Spyness seemed to play clear homage to Dorothy Sayer’s Peter Wimsey series of mysteries.  So I thought about reading the next Peter Wimsey book before reading this second book.  But I changed my mind, because I needed another audiobook. I have listened to both of these books on audio and I think the excellent narrator (Katherine Kellgren) has really made these books shine.

As I have said before, I listen to audiobooks while I am processing data for my work or doing housework or caring for my daughter.  Audiobooks keep me entertained while working and make the time pass quickly.  But a good narrator really makes or breaks the audiobook.

In this case, Katherine Kellgren has done a great job with the light humor that sets this these two books (and presumably the whole series) apart from a lot of other cozy mysteries.

This second books feels less like Dorothy Sayers.  Georgie, the 34th in line for the throne, has established herself in London.  She is living out from under the influence of her brother and his wife, but also without any financial support.  So in spite of her title and position, she is broke.  In the last book she started a house cleaning service to make money while trying to discover her place in London society (she grew up in a Scottish Castle) and keep her work a secret from the Queen.

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Summary: The character continue to get deeper into the mythology and danger.

This is essentially the 9th fully book (with a couple more short story collections) of the Percy Jackson series.  This second series Rick Riordan has expanded his available mythology so that both Greek and Roman mythologies are available.  I am far outside my own depth and knowledge at this point.  That is not a problem because Riordan does not expect the reader to know everything.  But there are more and more minor figures involved in every book.

At the end of the last book, Percy and Annabeth were sucked into Tartarus (the deepest place of the underworld where the Titans and other monsters get banished).  The rest of the crew has to try to get to the door to the House of Hades to both let Percy and Annabeth out and to seal the door to keep the monsters from over running the world and to stop Gaia from waking up.

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Empire of Bones is the third and final book in the Ashtown Burials series, and it’s best one. Wilson does a superb job of sourcing his villains and protagonists from classic literature and poetry, ancient history and mythology. It lends an immediacy and real-world feel the novel, like it all could be true and we common folk simply haven’t had visibility to the supernatural undercurrents swirling through our world history.

Teenager Cyrus Smith is an Explorer and card-carrying member of the ancient Order of Brendan. The Order is under threat from various forces (contemporary traitors and ancient evil powers alike), and the centuries-old battle threatens to spill over decisively into the broader geopolitical theater. With book 3, a lot of questions are finally answered and plot lines resolved, making it the fastest-paced and most emotionally satisfying of the series.

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Summary: Good, but not quite up to par with the rest of Sanderson’s impressive body of work.

It’s the near future. The United States is fractured into mini city-states run by competing Epics–people who 10 years ago mysteriously gained super-human powers (in the vein of the X-Men comics). Nobody knows how or why this happened. The Epics have taken control over modern civilization and dominate the rest of the population. Steelheart is one of the most powerful Epics in the world, and he rules Newcago (Chicago) with an iron fist. He is seemingly invincible to all attacks, but every Epic has a weakness. Naturally they guard their secrets very closely.

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Takeaway: The Psalms are an important part of historic worship and the modern church needs to work to keep them apart of our current worship.

Five years ago, if you had asked me what my least favorite part of the bible is, I would have probably said the Psalms.  I might have said the lists genealogies or Numbers, but most likely I would have said Psalms.

However, The Case for the Psalms is the third book on the Psalms I have read this year and I am moving toward a greater appreciation of the role of the Psalms, not only as illustrations of the range of biblical expression but as important centers for Christian worship and theology.

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The mainstream narrative of evolutionary science is that man developed slowly, progressively, linearly””over hundreds of thousands of years, ever advancing in health, intelligence, life expectancy, etc. Thus, compared to the advanced modern specimens, Neanderthal man had a shorter life span, a more primitive mind and body, and a lower capacity for culture and civilization. He was altogether inferior to modern man.

In the late 70s and 80s, Dr. Jack Cuozzo was granted unprecedented access to the world-famous Neanderthal skulls in a few European museums, where he took comprehensive scans using new x-ray technology developed by a fellow scientist. With the eye of an experienced dentist, Cuozzo began analyzing the physical evidence for ancient man. As a creationist and a Christian, Cuozzo was not committed to the ideological biases and philosophical blind spots that plague most of modern science. He began to notice indicators in the scientific record that appeared to conflict with the evolutionary paradigm. Many anthropologists and dental experts simply ignored pieces of evidence that contradicted mainstream thought””and in some cases, Cuozzo charges, they actually falsified data and bone layouts.

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