Paul’s Book Reviews

Beginning with this collection of reviews, I’m including brief descriptions of each book.*

Polostan (Bomb Light #1)
by Neal Stephenson
– historical fiction –

Description: The first installment in Neal Stephenson’s three-part Bomb Light cycle, Polostan follows the early life of the enigmatic Dawn Rae Bjornberg. Born in the American West to a clan of cowboy anarchists, Dawn is raised in Leningrad after the Russian Revolution by her Russian father, a party line Leninist who re-christens her Aurora. She spends her early years in Russia but then grows up as a teenager in Montana, before being drawn into gunrunning and revolution in the streets of Washington, D.C., during the depths of the Great Depression. When a surprising revelation about her past puts her in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities, Dawn returns to Russia, where she is groomed as a spy by the organization that later becomes the KGB.

Paul’s review: To date I’ve read eleven Neal Stephenson novels, so I guess you can say he’s one of my favorite authors, although the ratings I’ve given those novels range between three and four stars. This one, Polostan, is a solid four stars, and I’m eager to read the rest of his Bomb Light cycle, of which this is the first installment, when he gets it written.

Polostan stands out as a Stephenson novel, to me, for its total lack of speculative fiction or alternate history. It focuses on real history and real events, momentous ones of the 1920s and 30s as they unfolded in America and Russia, with a beguiling character, Dawn Rae Bjornberg, at the center.

I hope other readers will enjoy Polostan as much as I did. It’s not as dense and digressive as Stephenson novels often are, but it is packed with historical detail. It helps that I came to it with some knowledge of the events Stephenson weaves into the story, particularly the Chicago World’s Fair, the Bonus Army protests and camps in Washington DC, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, the saga of the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde, the building of the Golden Gate Bridge. I knew less, but at least some, of the excitement and attraction the new Soviet state instilled in intellectuals and labor activists around the world in the 1920s, and the crushing inhumanity and mass starvation of Stalin’s rule in the 1930s so determinedly ignored and rationalized by the same intellectuals and activists, at least the fortunate ones who didn’t go to Russia to help build the future and get caught up in it. Like Dawn (or Aurora Artemyeva as she is known in Petrograd and Magnitogorsk).

One thing I knew nothing about and had zero interest in learning: polo. And yet here I am raving about Stephenson’s ability to write about it and make it interesting.

Back to Dawn, a fascinating character: tall, striking in appearance if not beautiful, independent, capable, smart, ruthless when she needs to be. You’re not likely to forget her. She sees through propaganda and people (although she’s a bit slow on the uptake with a certain nurse in Wyoming) yet remains somehow idealistic. She’s going to be one hell of a spy, but for whom? And hence my determination to read more about her.

Polostan is a fun, fascinating, engaging read. I can’t wait for more.

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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon
– historical fiction –

Description: Joe Kavalier, a young Jewish artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdini-esque escape, has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. His Brooklyn cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit America – the comic book. Drawing on their own fears and dreams, Kavalier and Clay create the Escapist, the Monitor, and Luna Moth, inspired by the beautiful Rosa Saks, who will become linked by powerful ties to both men. With exhilarating style and grace, Michael Chabon tells an unforgettable story about American romance and possibility.

Paul’s review: Inspired by a recent re-read of Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, I took another look at Kavalier & Clay, a lovingly-remembered novel. Apparently I first read K&C in my drinking years, because I recalled only that part the story took place in an Arctic ice tunnel (and even that detail I had wrong … it was Antarctica). Oh, if only I had enough time left to revisit all the books I first read in an alcoholic fog (not to mention movies seen through same). Kids, don’t take up drinking. Just don’t.

Chabon here builds an alternate history founded on the true history of the Golden Age of comic books, which ran from the late 1930s through the early 1950s, including the era’s demise with Senate hearings prompted by public hysteria over false charges brought by anti-comic book crusader, Dr. Fredrick Wertham. The fictional K&C play pivotal roles in that era, in a story that doesn’t deviate all that much from the history we know today.

The detail of Chabon’s alternate world is so rich it almost beggars description, and includes insights into the construction and management of the Empire State Building, the Nazi persecution of the Jews of Prague, the comic book superhero publishing business (natch), a hilarious peek at New York socialites’ embrace of Salvadore Dali and the Surrealist movement, the Roosevelt government’s shameful refusal to admit Jews fleeing Europe, America’s reluctant waking up to Hitler and eventual entry into the war, the anti-homosexual police and FBI witch hunts of the pre-Stonewall era, even a bit of U.S. Navy war-fighting strategy you probably never heard of (but which actually happened). Actually happened? Just about anything you might care to fact check online after reading K&C has a foundation in fact.

But the characters! Joe and Sammy and Rosa live, breathe, and read over your shoulder as you turn the pages. You get to know them well enough to anticipate their actions and thoughts. You come to care deeply about them. They age, realistically. The atmosphere! You can almost feel the cold clay of the Golem in its packing crate coffin, smell the gasoline- and tobacco-laden air of New York City, taste the coffee, feel the Bristol board on which Joe Kavalier draws The Escapist, hear Walter Winchell on the radio.

Marvelous writing, all 600+ pages of it. All of it, including the obviously fictional parts, ringing true. No wonder Chabon won a Pulitzer for this novel.

p.s. I don’t believe the four short stories, only a page or two each, appended to the end were there in the novel I first read 20 years ago, but that the author added them to a later edition. In any case, they help scratch the itch you’ll feel for more K&C. But like me, you’ll still want more, and we can only hope Michael Chabon, as he hints in his afterword, might carry on with his fascinating alternate history.

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Good Night, Irene
by Luis Alberto Urrea
– historical fiction –

Description: In 1943, Irene Woodward abandons an abusive fiancé in New York to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe. She makes fast friends in training with Dorothy Dunford, a towering Midwesterner with a ferocious wit. Together they are part of an elite group of women, nicknamed Donut Dollies, who command military buses called Clubmobiles at the front line, providing camaraderie and a taste of home that may be the only solace before troops head into battle. After D-Day, these two intrepid friends join the Allied soldiers streaming into France. Their time in Europe will see them embroiled in danger, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald. Through her friendship with Dorothy, and a love affair with a gallant American fighter pilot named Hans, Irene learns to trust again. Her most fervent hope, which becomes more precarious by the day, is for all three of them to survive the war intact.

Paul’s review: A friend passed this book to me, a novel by an author I know and admire from his harrowing nonfictional account of immigrant smuggling in the Mexico/US border region (The Devil’s Highway: A True Story). I started Good Night, Irene months ago, put it aside to finish books with library due dates, waited an additional week or two while my wife read it, then picked it up again last week.

Luis Urrea’s mother was a Red Cross volunteer during WWII, one of the little-known, largely forgotten women who served coffee and donuts to troops in rear areas and along the front. The fictional women of Good Night, Irene are based loosely on his mother’s recollections. We follow Irene and Dorothy through Stateside training to their first posting in England, then to the beaches of Normandy and into France, the Low Countries, and finally the heart of Germany as they move forward with General Patton’s invading Army. Along the way the two women, manning their deuce-and-a-half clubmobile, endure much of what the men they are there to serve endure, including actual combat.

Urrea no doubt takes liberties in placing the pair in the heat of historical battles and at the liberation of Buchenwald, but it makes for an exciting read. War, friendship, romance, narrow escapes, happiness and loss, it’s all here, and very well done.

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Fever House (Fever House #1)
by Keith Rosson
– horror –

Description: When leg-breaker Hutch Holtz rolls up to a rundown apartment complex in Portland, Oregon, to collect overdue drug money, a severed hand is the last thing he expects to find stashed in the client’s refrigerator. Hutch quickly realizes that the hand induces uncontrollable madness: Anyone in its proximity is overcome with a boundless compulsion for violence. Within hours, catastrophic forces are set into motion: Dark-op government agents who have been desperately hunting for the hand are on Hutch’s tail, more of the city’s residents fall under its brutal influence, and suddenly all of Portland stands at the precipice of disaster.

Paul’s review: I don’t read a lot of horror, but this was first-rate stuff and I enjoyed it. Imagine a horror story with well-developed characters! I mean, how often do you even get that?

The combination of believable, relatable characters and oh-my-god-what’s-gonna-happen-next kept me turning pages, and I want more.

Maybe what impressed me most, if you’re not tired of me mentioning well-developed characters, was seeing how these characters, most if not all of them wrapped up in their own lives, occupations, and problems, none of them particularly religious, spiritual, or superstitious, deal with the undeniable presence of supernatural evil that’s thrust upon them. Great question! How would everyday normal people deal with a sudden, nightmarish zombie outbreak? Probably a lot like the characters in Fever House. Ditto the government’s reaction and response … I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Keith Rosson’s nailed that too, supposing I’m not one of the first casualties and survive long enough to see it.

Keith Rosson really thought this story through. I’m almost afraid to read the next novel in the series, lest it be even slightly less good than this one.

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Black Cake
by Charmaine Wilkerson
– historical fiction –

Description: In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Paul’s review: Black Cake is my book club’s selection for Feb 2025.

Another reviewer mentions Charmaine Wilkerson’s “light touch” in relating the injustices and inequalities dark-skinned people experience in white societies, here and abroad, historically and in the present day, but the only real anger she allows her characters to feel and express, the kind of anger that causes them to behave badly and make stupid choices, come from family squabbles and disagreements, which are elevated into central themes and dramatically resolved in a series of reveals.

Dramatically … and easily. Every loose end is tied up. Well, not every single one … I’m thinking of the family of Little Man and whether they ever realize the person they think killed their father is still alive … but otherwise by the end of the novel every mystery has been resolved. That seems unrealistic to me, and so is this: in real life, in my own experience, have I ever, even once, seen a total stranger on TV and instantly perceived, by their apprearance or the sound of their voice, that this person is the son or daughter of someone I knew decades ago? No, I have not, and there’s a lot of that in this novel.

I personally would not categorize Black Cake as historical fiction. As with almost any novel, part of it unfolds in the past and part in the present, but the past is not that distant, nor do we learn anything about it we didn’t already know. I would instead categorize Black Cake as a romance novel with strong, mostly female, characters.

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Absolution (Southern Reach #4)
by Jeff VanderMeer
– science fiction –

Description: When the Southern Reach Trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestsellers list; awards were won; the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover; the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature. And yet for all this, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast—before Area X was called Area X—had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem?

Paul’s review: Absolution is a prequel to VanderMeer’s brilliant Southern Reach trilogy of a few years back. I started reading it in early December, put it aside to read a Harry Bosch novel, picked it up again only to find myself up against a difficult-to-read final section, forced myself to continue, and finally finished it before Christmas.

From my original review of Annihilation, the first Southern Reach novel: “I’ve always felt that if we ever encounter something truly alien we won’t be able to understand what we’re seeing; our minds will instinctively reject it and we might not even be able to look directly at it. Such is the case with whatever is growing inside Area X.”

The Lovecraftian mysteries of what is happening on the Forgotten Coast, a portion of which, in this novel, will become Area X, are as fascinating (though incomprehensible) as ever, and pulled me along. My problem was with the final section, when we enter the drug-addled mind of Lowry, a male member of the first expedition to penetrate Area X after the border comes down, an unstable individual to begin with, almost as alien to me as whatever the hell is killing off other members of the expedition. We’re not meant to like him, and I surely didn’t, which made for a difficult read. The Harry Bosch novel was a welcome break!

Looking back over my reviews of the first three Southern Reach novels, I see I commented on the dragginess of certain sections. Such was the case with Control’s interior monologues in the second novel, Authority. Such is the case here with those of Old Jim, who, as far as I can tell, may have been Control in the earlier novel. Lowry’s stream of consciousness narration of the final section drags with a capital D … although I must admit that through his senses we get the clearest view yet of the unknowable, unseeable alien presence inside Area X.

Tell you what, though … VanderMeer has carved out a unique niche in the science fiction/fantasy/alternate reality genre, and should he decide to crank out additional novels about Area X, I’ll read them.

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* Book descriptions are not my own: they’re copied from Goodreads.