It’s not often I have the pleasure of reviewing a book prior to release, so I’m especially honored to have the opportunity to review Born To Be A Dragon the day before it launches.

For someone who loves the children’s through young adult market, books written for a middle grade audience are some of the most fun to read. The target audience is always ready to suspend disbelief and allow their imaginations full reign and yet are looking for some more complex issues to encounter between the pages. As a child, I loved to lose myself in a book. To enter the world the author devised and play the words on the page like a movie in my head… and, I’ll admit it, I still do. For those moments, the characters are friends and foes, and their world becomes real.

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. ~ Anonymous Dragon

I love this quote — it makes me giggle every time I read it. Jacobs has the quote on the title page of the book, and it gives us the flavor for what is to come. Deglan is a ten-year-old hatchling, who has not yet taken part in the Rising Ceremony. The Rising Ceremony causes Deglan some concern because his mark, which every dragon receives at birth, has been changing…and it’s not supposed to. Deglan is afraid because Lord Edric has been searching for the dragon of legend for as long as Deglan can remember, and the dragon of legend has a mark in the shape of a dragon, instead of the more usual crescent or star. Which is exactly what Deglan’s mark has morphed into. Could he be the dragon Lord Edric has been seeking? And if Lord Edric discovers his mark at the Rising Ceremony, will his family be banished… or worse?

Meia, is a ten-year-old foster child who has been bounced from family to family, mainly because of her dreams and nightmares about dragons, until she has finally been placed with a family who take her obsession in stride. The Bensens encourage Meia to talk about her dreams, instead of thinking she is weird. Meia is a daydreamer, and has trouble focusing in class sometimes because her mind takes her on flights of fancy… on the back of a blue dragon.

Deglan and Meia both have their part to fulfill the legend centuries old. An unlikely alliance to say the least, but one that takes us on a roller-coaster ride — exciting from the morphing of the mark to the thrilling conclusion.

Born To Be A Dragon is a delightful read and has almost as many twists and turns as Meia has freckles on her nose. In her debut novel, Eisley Jacobs truly gets into the ten-year-old mindset and has written the book in alternating points of view. So you get the perspective of Deglan and Meia throughout and their different takes on the circumstances as they unfold. This makes it a great read for both boys and girls because they each have a main character to identify with. Each of the characters jump off the page, whether their part is large or small, even down to Philip the garden gnome. In addition, Jacobs has artwork starting each chapter, drawn by satisfied readers who are eagerly awaiting the next book in the series. Charming.

Born To Be A Dragon will be available for purchase July 20, 2011, or you can pre-order, by selecting the link here. A fun-filled story for dragon-lovers everywhere.

The Noble Pirates
By R. L. Jean
Copyright © 2010
220 pages
$2.99 Kindle at Amazon.com

Just as Sabrina Grainger falls off a party boat into the Caribbean in 2009, so the reader is dropped right into the action of The Noble Pirates, and R. L. Jean (a.k.a. Fiction Chick) makes the reader and her protagonist fend for themselves. Much easier for the reader who is aided by the accomplished storytelling than for poor Sabrina Grainger—a mother, wife, and attorney—whose plunge sinks her nearly three centuries into the world of pirates. None other than the infamous Edward England and his crew of sea rovers fish her out of the sea. At first she believes it all to be a hoax, that her awful smelling rescuers are actors in some kind of role-play. But she finds them as bewildered by her as she is by them.

But she’s the one who must adapt and she does, in highly entertaining fashion, for a good 200 pages or so. Only the time travel resolution at the end offers any disappointment in its incongruity to all that comes before. On its own, the ending is fine, it just lacks the energy of the rest.

And the rest is very good.

England humors her claims to be from the future and takes her to Nassau. However, the Nassau of 1718 does not view women the same way as that of 2009, and Sabrina struggles in her efforts to reverse her situation. Nothing presents itself and so, seeing no alternative, Sabrina lobbies England to let her join him on a pirating venture to Africa. She develops some affection for England but he finds her a nuisance. He hands her over to the honest Captain of a slaver ship, Howel Davis, with whom Sabrina spends most of the rest of the story and for whom she develops a stronger attraction.

Two subordinates, Blain and Taylor, betray Davis and have him jailed for mutiny, leaving Sabrina on her own. When Davis is freed due to a lack of evidence, he is a bitter man and determines he’d be better off, “on the account,” and heads to Nassau to begin his notorious pirating career. Sabrina signs on with a sister ship, follows him to Nassau, and from there doggedly clings to Davis because by now she’s in love with the man. Not only that, she hopes to save his life, which she knows will end in a matter of months.

For when she fell in, Sabrina had a backpack that contained two books, a pirate romance and a history of pirates entitled, Rovers of the Sea. The latter includes biographies of England, Davis, and others she meets. It also tells the time and place of Davis’s death. Even at the risk of affecting the future, she wants to save him from that. Her persistence pays off when he incorporates her into his pillaging and plundering. She apprises him of what she knows—and he believes her story—but that still can’t stop him from captaining his ship toward his place of recorded death. They encounter Blain and Taylor again—another event foretold in the history book—but now Sabrina knows more about how she can get back to 2009. At this point she faces some difficult choices.

The first-person narrative of a modern woman in 1718 justifies the use of idioms from today’s culture, allowing for less self-conscious writing. It also minimizes the danger of anachronisms. This is a clever thing to do, from an author’s standpoint, as it subtly avoids another danger, that of the material becoming dated. More importantly, the blend pays off in both humor and clarity, as in the following:

The first-person narrative of a modern woman in 1718 justifies the use of idioms from today’s culture, allowing for less self-conscious writing. It also minimizes the danger of anachronisms. This is a clever thing to do, from an author’s standpoint, as it subtly avoids another danger, that of the material becoming dated. More importantly, the blend pays off in both humor and clarity, as in the following:England set his pipe down carefully, knitting his brow. “Because we found this floating with ye.” From beneath the table, the captain withdrew my backpack. As I gasped, he continued, “I didn’t let anyone look inside, save myself and my quartermaster, Jameson… It made him mighty wary of ye, lass, and angry with me when I protected ye.”

I took the backpack eagerly from him, bubbling with excitement. Something from my life, something from the sane world… I unzipped it – it had definitely seen better days – and immediately began fishing for my Blackberry. I pulled it out joyfully, and on a whim tried to turn it on. Nice try, Sabrina. Then I went through the other items quickly: my iPod, also shot to hell; a blister pack of Dramamine for motion sickness (it sure would have been nice to have this a little while ago); my friend Tanya’s makeup bag, most of the items inside in good condition, including three multi-colored, ribbed condoms (Christ, what had Captain England thought of that? At least they were still in their packaging); Sky’s romance, most of it water-logged and illegible (thank God); another of Sky’s books, Rovers of the Sea, still fairly legible since it was still wrapped in a Barnes & Noble bag; a couple bikinis and cover-ups; and finally, our wallets. I tore mine open, pulling out a picture of Sophie and clutching it tightly, the tears starting to well up.

Sabrina carries the narrative well, eschewing sentimentality for a gritty, realistic portrayal of the pirate era she’s landed in. I particularly liked how, soon after this passage, Sabrina casts off her friend’s pirate romance as useless, as if giving a cue to the reader saying, no, this story isn’t going to be like one of those. However, Sabrina Grainger is not just a keen observer with a captivating voice. “I did not know what those choices were, and I could not let that stop me from doing something,” she states at one point. The mantra of the quintessential protagonist.

The supporting characters are great too, capable of cheerful surprises and nasty whims. Whenever one is tempted to view Howel Davis as a Jack Sparrow, he does something cruel and un-Disney-ish. Eventually, I associated him more with Odysseus for his cunning and elaborate schemes.

What should not go unappreciated in the enjoyment of the story is the depth of research. The casual lightness of the prose could make that happen in that the products of the research are neatly woven into the story. It’s clear great effort and care has gone into making The Noble Pirates as accurate and realistic as possible. Therefore one easily forgives the plot devices and grants suspension of disbelief in exchange for sharing Sabrina Grainger’s plunge.

Well done.

Review 172: The Dead Don’t Cry by Mark Anthony Lopez
By Peter Hassebroek on November 18, 2010
The Dead Don’t Cry
By Mark Anthony Lopez
Copyright © 2010
1043 KB
$7.99 Kindle at Amazon.com

The Dead Don’t Cry. Sounds like a horror tale, perhaps set in a graveyard. The rest of the cover of Mark Anthony Lopez’s first novel proclaims it as a, “science fiction epic.” I’m not so sure about epic, but this is definitely science fiction, not horror.

The story focuses on the three members of the Lyons family: Jack, the father, a journeyman pilot with a violent military past; Lillian, the mother, who is a well-respected celebrity scientist; and Lucy, a precocious and alienated elementary student. Their home is New Earth, which is a colonized Mars after man abandoned Earth back in the middle of the 21st Century. The cause of the migration is not the usual apocalyptic suspects but rather that man’s technological requirements have outgrown Earth’s capacities.

Operation Godspear compels Jack Lyons back to Old Earth to transport a special cargo. A mix-up occurs when he takes Lucy along for a pre-check the day before. Lucy stumbles upon the cargo, a green boy / creature from Old Earth named Osgar. They become instant friends. She senses he’s a victim of some nefarious plot and vows to help him. She stows away and Jack doesn’t discover her presence until the ship is halfway to Old Earth. Then the ship crashes on Old Earth and everything goes awry. Lucy and Osgar become separated from her father and the crew. The adventures begin.

They begin for Lillian too, on New Earth. She had intended to go to Old Earth to perform scientific work, but backed out when Jack was named pilot; she couldn’t leave her daughter parent-less on New Earth. But of course Lucy is on her way to Old Earth. It takes a while before Lillian realizes her daughter is missing. Then someone tries to assassinate Lillian, thwarting her efforts to find Lucy, forcing her to take refuge in the New Earth underworld.

The ensuing plot is complex and no one knows whom to trust and everyone is operating on their own agenda. While the story seems unwieldy at times, it holds up. The suspense is natural, the resolutions believable. There are battles and stand-offs, sudden separations and reunions, conspiracies and revelations, betrayals and momentous decisions; it’s a whirlwind of action with plenty of surprises, kind of like a compressed Lord of the Rings at times. Aside from the unlikely ease with which Lucy gains entry into restricted areas, particularly how she hoodwinks a moronically programmed computer to do so, the reader rarely feels manipulated.

In all but one of the chapters each Lyons takes a turn with their own POV section, always in the same order, Lucy then Jack then Lillian then Lucy and so on. This pattern parallels the primary situation presented in The Dead Don’t Cry:  Old Earth’s uneasy transformation to New Earth. Lucy, more instinctively than consciously due to her young age, shows an affinity for the innocence and naturalness of Old Earth; while her mother, who has gained fame for an invention that enables artificial food growing, embodies New Earth and its motto, “Science is our Savior.”  Between these idealistic positions sits Jack, who is all about transformation.

A full human, he was formerly a HyKin, a meshing of man and machine that “represented the apex of man / machine hybridization.” These elite soldiers are programmed to blindly obey orders given by Over-Link, “an impenetrable network of seamless communication that allowed a unit to think and act as one.” Circumstances drive Jack to become one again, but they also demand he somehow avoid connecting to Over-Link. In other words, find a way to balance his humanity with technology. As such, Jack epitomizes the primary and recurring  theme in the novel.

The secondary characters are generally familiar to the genre but not clichéd. Curiously, the most human interactions involve the non-human characters, particularly Samhain who comes off naturally heroic. The dialogue in the human-to-human scenes often sounded forced, either too conflicting or too friendly. I found the parents warm and caring toward their daughter but, for the brief periods they were together, dispassionate toward each other. Lucy is charming but some of her scenes come off corny and sentimental while in others she acts beyond her age.

There is a tendency toward hyperbole with an overuse of adverbs to enhance effect. Clichés, such as “turn for the worse,” “man of her dreams,” “shook her to the core,” aren’t too bothersome but they are noticeable. Of greater concern are the proofing issues; odd misspellings and (presumably) incorrect word choices occur frequently. Then there’s my personal pet peeve, what I call the Pause to Explain, such as when Jack is told:

“We transmitted the coordinates along with the travel solutions when we landed. If they are not yet in your system, they should be after your ship reboots.”  The travel solutions were carefully constructed flight paths that took thousands of different scenarios into consideration and created the best possible routes for travel.

That travel solutions are flight paths, etc. would be inferable to an astute reader, I would think. Why take us out of Jack’s POV into the narrator’s / author’s to tell us? At other times, such as in the opening with Lucy at school, the reader is fed such data more creatively.

Nonetheless, The Dead Don’t Cry is a fast-paced, entertaining tale, filled with adventure, suspense, and sci-fi inventiveness.

Copyright © 2008
Lulu.com
$17.50 Paperback
132 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4116-4226-3

As I Rode with Cullen Baker opens, we are met with a scene evocative of Gone with the Wind with Tara burning in the background. Set in the South in the midst of the civil war, fifteen year old Jessica Linville watched while the Federal cavalry burned her house to the ground. When I was younger, I used to love a story set in the south during civil war times with a feisty female character at its center, so this book drew my interest immediately. Let me clear one thing up right away, despite my reference to Gone with the Wind, the character of Jessica Linville is nothing like the character of Scarlett O’Hara. Jessica is a proper young lady with manners, a sense of propriety, and has a genuine caring attitude toward her fellow man. And Scarlett had none of those qualities. However, the character of Jessica is a strong one, and she has a strong voice which carries the action of the book as seen through her eyes.

In order to escape the renegades who are taking the very last that Jessica had, Joshua, who has worked for the family Jessica’s entire life, hacks off her hair, dresses her in slave clothes, and they run off through the night. Jessica lost her mother six years previously to fever, and her father recently in battle, so she lived with the family servants, all of whom, except for Joshua, ran when the soldiers arrived. Joshua didn’t want to let down the memory of her father by running out on her, but did his best to try and get her to safety.

   With bluecoats in the wide drive, he’d forced me into the darkness, saying, “We can’t stay, Miss Jessica. These renegades would harm you.”
   Now, silhouettes of a dozen riders trampled the lawns, cheering as my home burned. I threw myself prone in the dirt in despair, and felt the thudding hooves beat like devils’ hearts in my chest.
   Joshua seemed gone a long time before I saw him returning through the neglected cane rows. Sporadic shouts broke through the diminishing roar of flames, and I prayed that none of those men would notice the hunched figure dodging flickering bands of firelight.
   He knelt beside me, gasping, “Here’s the shirt you got to put on.” Disentangling part of a bundle, he didn’t wait for my approval but began tearing at stubborn dress hooks, uncovering me to the chill air.
   He slid the correct arm into place as if I were an infant. “Step outen them clothes, shimmy an’ all. No— don’t stand up—”
   Pushing at the pale green dress material, then the white linen, I stripped to the skin and shoved first one foot, then the other, into the legs of a slave boy’s britches. They were limp with being worn, and though I was small for fifteen, tight through the hips. Joshua set a hat, rank with sweat, on my disgraced head, and I realized he was disguising me as a boy.

Unfortunately, the color of Joshua’s skin turned out to be a problem in the town where he attempted to send a wire to someone to come and pick up the boy, Jess. In one of the senseless acts that abounded during that time period, a mob of men attempted to lynch Joshua, but then shot him as Jess was trying to remove the rope from around his neck. Before the mob could turn on her, Cullen Baker rode up on his horse, scooped her up, and rode out of town. Thus began Jess’s adventure with the notorious outlaw, Cullen Baker.

Although Cully knew from the very start Jess was not a boy, he does not blow her cover, and goes to some lengths to help preserve it because he takes her to the camp of the Independent Rangers, who specialized in pursuing and capturing men who deserted the Confederate Army, but which more often than not took advantage of the fact that most of the men in the Arkansas and Texas areas were away at war, leaving mostly elderly men, women and children. This left the door open for acts of intimidation, rape, theft and violence for groups of well armed men like the Independent Rangers. Jessica’s feelings toward Cully are ambivalent. She can’t seem to reconcile the fact that he would save and protect her from a mob, but also steals. But then Cully gives the money away.

   The next place we stopped was a frame shack that a big wind would blow into Cass County. The rusted tin roof must have leaked considerably, and the cracks where chinking had fallen out were wide enough for a ferret to crawl through. A dirty-faced boy about ten answered the knock. He looked cold, in a thin shirt, trousers which struck his shins two inches above his ankles, and barefoot. Saving his shoes—if he had shoes— for winter, no doubt. More of the money passed to him. He beamed at Cully and threw a cheerful wave to me. I waved back.
   “Consumption,” Cully explained, settling himself in the stirrups. “Won’t last till Christmas.”
   I was sorry for the boy, especially because he had to live his short life in such poverty. At least, before the war ruined things, I’d known comfort and plenty and the love of respectable people. “Cully.”
   “What?”
   “Which do you think is worse—to have nice things and lose them, or never to have them in the first place?”
   “You tell me,” he said shortly, and then we came to a settlement of three houses together, none looking like it could withstand a hard rain. He parted with more currency at all of them.
   When we were on our way again, I couldn’t help asking, “What will we do for money?”
   “There’s ways of getting more.”
   “Stealing it!”
   “How the hell else would I get it? You see anybody around here going to give me a job and pay me a wage?”

I Rode with Cullen Baker is a fast paced read, somewhat short in length as is necessary for the target age group. While some of the story line is somewhat predictable, RLB Hartmann spins an engaging tale and keeps the reader turning the pages to find out what happens next. Hartmann uses the historical figure Cullen Baker, and weaves a story set during a time when his whereabouts were unknown, making the story potentially feasible. The Cully in the story is a much more romanticized version of the historical figure than you will find in the Wikipedia information about Cullen Baker. However, it was fun to suspend my disbelief and take a journey back to the south of the civil war times and take a ride with a wild desperado with a not often seen softer side. I think Hartmann’s target audience will love the adventure.

Preview I Rode With Cullen Baker

All of the pumpkins in Pumpkins Ville are disappearing and the pumpkin farmers are worried about not being able to support their families because unless they find the pumpkin thieves, they will have no crops for sale. Lilly overhears her father and is determined to do something to help him capture the pumpkin thieves. So, Lilly waits until her family has fallen asleep and then sneaks out of the house and goes down to the pond where the largest pumpkins are to wait for the pumpkin thieves. Her plan is to wait until they show up and then scream for her father to come and catch them.

Lilly began to feel very sleepy. Snuggling up next to the pumpkin, she had almost fallen asleep when, suddenly, the huge pumpkin began moving and shaking back and forth. Lilly looked around. No one was there, just she and the pumpkin. Shaking faster and faster, it started sinking into the ground! Lilly quickly grabbed the pumpkin stem and, as she did, the pumpkin started to fall into the earth. She held tightly; she was not going to let it go. Down they both went. Deeper and deeper into the Earth they fell. Faster and faster they both fell. Then, all of a sudden, they were slowly falling through a bright blue sky. They landed on a mound of hay, surrounded by tall grass, in a field. The sun shined above and the sky was a deep blue. Lilly looked around and saw two pumpkins that appeared to be running away from her. These pumpkins had legs, arms and faces! They were trying to get away.

Lilly had just fallen into Pumpkin Bunch Land, where the residents are pumpkins, and they live in houses that look like pumpkins, and they are the ones who are stealing Lilly’s father’s pumpkins. One of the pumpkin people, JayJay, who was trying to run away after Lilly fell through the sky, stops when Lilly asks him to and becomes her guide to Pumpkin Bunch Land. Lilly and JayJay set off to find the King of Pumpkin Bunch Land, but JayJay tells her they must hide from the Jaspers or there will be pumpkins to pay. The Jaspers turn out to be giant rats who have taken over Pumpkin Bunch Land and have enslaved the pumpkin people. If the people do not provide fresh pumpkins for the Jaspers on a daily basis, the Jaspers will eat them. When Lilly meets the King, she is hailed as Princess Lilly Pad of whom it was foretold that she would fall from the sky to save their kingdom.

The King sat in an enormous chair made of pumpkin and began to tell Lilly about how it was written that a princess would fall from the sky and save Pumpkin Bunch Land. He said to Lilly, “You must find the four-leaf clover, pluck it from the ground, and save it in your pocket. When you do this, you will have the powers of the Wizard. It is also written that you will be able to restore the kingdom back to the throne, but you cannot look the Wizard in the eyes. If you do, he will know what you are doing and take the magic from you. Lilly, you must overtake the Wizard without him knowing.”

Lilly chooses JayJay as her consort, and they go off in search of the four-leaf clover and the wizard so they can take back the King’s wand. Lilly and JayJay have to overcome many obstacles, including being attacked by Jaspers, in order to free the kingdom of Pumpkin Bunch Land.

I enjoyed the underlying tale of Pumpkin Bunch, however, found some of the writing a little repetitive. While some repetition is good in a children’s book, it is usually better in the learn to read books, and less necessary in the read-to-me books. Peter Tucker used the illustrative talents of MikeMotz.com, who was featured previously on the LL Book Review, and the illustrations help to move the tale along in a marvelous way. I enjoyed the illustrations so much, that I went to the website and checked out the options that were available. MikeMotz.com has a wealth of information available for self-publishing children’s book authors as well as several illustrative styles to choose from. To give you an additional glimpse of the illustrations in Pumpkin Bunch, below is the illustration for the chapter, Lilly Meets the Jaspers.

Pumpkin Bunch is a fast moving read-to-me tale with lots of adventure to delight a young listener.

Trident's Fury

Trident’s Fury

Matthew Scott Baker

$6.35 Download

$25.95 Hardcover

© 2008

335 pages

At the risk of sounding like a movie review, Trident’s Fury is an enjoyable romp.  Suspend your disbelief for 335 pages and just go with the flow and you’re in for a riveting ride complete with pirates, explosions, and ancient runes to unravel.  Reading the book, you’ll think you’re at the movies, watching Harrison Ford escaping time and again from avenging Nazis, bent on world domination.  Only this time his name is Ethan Darringer.

The plot doesn’t take long to reveal itself, hundreds of years ago pirates had stashed an other-worldly stone deep beneath the New Hampshire coastline and booby-trapped the system of caves that served as an entrance.  An earthquake reveals the stone, alerting a squad of modern day Nazis and the US government.  The government calls in the Trident Squad, a secret special-forces squad headed by a man named Killian, to secure the stone and keep it from falling into Nazi hands.

A race to the finish ensues as the Nazi commander, Ademaro hunts down Ethan, his girlfriend Kathy and the Trident Squad as they try to solve the puzzle left by the mad pirate Captain.  In much of the action, you can picture yourself playing Trident’s Fury in its video game incarnation such as in this description:

The walls of the large cavern were lined with hundreds of rectangular alcoves, each about six feet in length and three feet high.  And, each contained a human skeleton. Scattered on the floor throughout the middle of the room were several skeletal remains that appeared as though they had been discarded, tossed aside like they were not important. It was not immediately clear if they were human remains or something else.

For me, the best part of the book was unraveling the puzzles using elements of a poem to decipher clues.  The puzzles are increasingly harder.  I went from being able to figure out the obvious solution in the first couple to having to let the characters puzzle them out for the last two.  This is typical of the characters as they struggle with the clues:

“Each stanza of the poem has given us clues as to how we should navigate these traps. I’m pretty sure this one is doing the same thing, however it’s a little more complex than the previous ones. Let’s start with what the poem says. ‘The hunter rules over all again.’ Now, what does that insinuate to you?”

Killian looked thoughtful.

Trident’s Fury also does Indiana Jones proud in the action scenes which are frequent and not for the faint of heart.  Our heroes are constantly captured, disarmed, at wits end, and then miraculously pulling victory from the jaws of certain defeat as in this description:

His men were all still alive, he noted with relief, and were putting up a hell of a fight against the Nazis. Jensen and Wes had somehow obtained assault rifles and had retreated back to the stairwell in the cliff wall. They had then made their way up to the windowed chamber above. The German soldiers had been forced to take cover among the boulders and rocky crags above the pier. Although Jensen and Wes were only a force of two, the strategic advantage of having the high-ground gave the American soldiers the edge they needed to stay alive and to wreak havoc among the German ranks.

Trident’s Fury may be self published, but it’s certainly not for lack of a compelling story to tell and quality writing.  I found myself going back and reading this book even when I didn’t really have time.  That this is Mathew Scott Baker’s third book isn’t a surprise to me, it reads like a polished and well conceptualized work.  The price ($26 with hardcover the only option) almost guarantees you will buy this book as a download ($6.25) which may explain why the cover is a little bland.  My recommendation is not to ask yourself too many questions and just let the book be what it is, part puzzle, part treasure hunt, and all action.

There are two types of dreams: those so bizarre and imaginative, and so out of reach that we think of them as nothing more but dreams.  These sleep stories can be a buffet for a writer.  Then, there are those dreams that are within our grasp, but often we are too busy to consider reaching for them.  Maybe we choose to write about them as well instead of actually attempting to achieve them.  Not Mark Callaghan.

I recall with some clarity the moment I knew that I didn’t want to sit in an office and dream up inventive ways of wasting time until 5pm any longer.

And so begins a book about one man’s longing for adventure at a time in his life when he is weeks away from saying good-bye to his twenties and realizes he’s already punched too much time on the clock for someone else.  So in 2005 while sitting on the toilet and playing video games on his cell phone, Mark has an epiphany.  In celebration of his 30th birthday, he’ll travel the world and see 30 countries – one for each year of his life.  After selling everything he can on Ebay and maxing his credit cards to fund the trip, Mark isn’t even on his first flight when he gets a call from his travel agent telling him his “around-the-world” ticket has been canceled.  He’s able to book another flight, but things aren’t looking up for him so far.  But that doesn’t stop him from grabbing Clive the backpack (Mark gives names to his inanimate belongings – there’s a cute 1/2 chapter that talks about this) and gets on a plane!

First stop – Estonia where Mark offers an in-depth look at hostel living – vying for the bottom bunk, living in communal quarters and meeting others, and “talking on the porcelain telephone” (the only toilet in the place, mind you.)  In Sooma, Mark stays in a hut-like community center swarming with unattended children (Think Children of the Corn, he says) only to find out that he is the only one staying there.  The entire place is empty.

Those bloodthirsty children have murdered all the other travelers.  Possibly.

Since he’s the only guest for the night the receptionist informs him he should take a walk through the bog to occupy his day.  It’s a 5km trail, but it is also 6km away.  The receptionist offers to drive him out to the trail, but Mark will have to find his own way back.  While on the trail, Mark remains leery of witches rumored to inhabit the bog and ends up crashing a party of croaking frogs while imitating Paul McCartney’s The Frog Chorus. He catches a ride back with a local Estonian who stops and picks him up. Not able to speak the language, Mark becomes really good at playing charades in order to communicate.

Mark’s off-the-wall commentary and quirky details are what make this type of book so much fun to read.  We’ve all sat through Gramp’s vacation slides to the Rocky’s or a coworker’s photo albums from their honeymoon cruise, but nothing beats the minute details that stick out in our minds above all else like DJ Tomas, the Lithuanian bus driver taking accordion music requests on the way to Warsaw, or Mark’s bus trip to Auschwitz with a group of frat boys.  Some of my favorites from the book were a toe nail clipping episode in a hostel in front of a scantily clad American girl, the train of terror, and some ‘massage, lady, boom-boom’ in Siem Reap.

Mark pushes you through each country quite quickly, often leaving out details when you might have wanted more of them, but he doesn’t bore you with philosophical self discoveries while out on the mountain tops.  You know Mark’s purpose for the journey right from the start, so there are no hidden meanings to life to be uncovered in his travels although I’m sure he experienced plenty.

Ireland, Cambodia, Australia, New Zealand, Buenos Aries, Chile, Italy, Peru…this book is an “off the beaten path” non-touristy paradise.  Sure, Mark saw the David statue in Florence just like everyone else, but he made it a point to experience much more than what anyone would find in their travel brochure. Unfortunately, the book does come to an abrupt ending where “normality and routine suddenly kick in.”  Mark is back at work again and earning a paycheck.  His stories of adventure are growing dust.  BUT…the answer to the question, “Is there more to life than this?,” has been answered.  Indeed there is.

And as Mark puts it, anything can happen.

I would have enjoyed pictures to accompany each country (Mark was nice enough to send me a few to include in this review).  But overall this is a great book for anyone who ever received Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go as a graduation gift, for the would-be tourist, or simply for anyone stuck behind a desk all day and too busy dreaming about what they’d really like to do in life.  It will motivate you to take chances and enjoy the journey along the way.  One of the best, and most inspiring, books I’ve read all year!

]]> http://llbookreview.com/2008/11/review-45-30-a-sense-of-adventure-and-no-sense-of-direction-by-mark-callaghan/feed/ 0 http://llbookreview.com/2008/07/review-19-sirocco-express-by-tony-judge/ http://llbookreview.com/2008/07/review-19-sirocco-express-by-tony-judge/#comments Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:00:43 +0000 Shannon Yarbrough http://lulubookreview.wordpress.com/?p=126 Sirocco Express
by Tony Judge
Copyright: © 2008
189 Pages
$14.50 Paperback
$2.72 E-book
ISBN: 978-1-4092-0446-6

Traveling to foreign countries is not a pleasure I’ve ever experienced myself, but I have always enjoyed reading about it.  Christopher Isherwood and his writings about many trips to a war torn Germany remain at the top of the list of some of my favorite books.  I can now add author Tony Judge to that list. When I began reading Tony’s book, Sirocco Express, I was immediately captivated by the author’s use of description.  Here’s the very first line of the book:

The house lay so still and quiet that it seemed to be filled with cotton wool.

Lines like that in writing these days are very hard to come by.  We write what we know, because that’s what we’ve been told to do, and we know so little. Authors like William Faulkner and poet Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost had a true craft for writing those descriptive, yet simple, images that stay with you long after you’ve finished reading.  Judge indeed has that craft.

In the beginning, the reader is introduced to a young Nigerian boy named Adebayo who is perusing a copy of Treasure Island while waiting for the Reverend to arrive to tend to his ailing mother.  I immediately became intrigued with the story because it has a sense of mystery to it.  The young boy is dismissed from the room while the Reverend tends to his mother with prayer.  The first chapter ends with a strange feeling to it as if something odd has happened between Adebayo’s father and the Reverend after reviving his mother.  The author has done an excellent job of keeping you interested and wanting to know more.

The second chapter focuses on Adebayo being concerned about an article saying he shouldn’t read Conrad because of the way he depicts non-European characters.  Adebayo’s father tells the boys he should judge for himself what he wants to read.

His father’s advice on “free will” quickly becomes an anthem for the young boy who has fallen in love with 19th century London thanks to one author by the name of Charles Dickens.  During his first year of college, he becomes agitated with the possibility of his father losing his job and his family falling on hard times. For the dreamer in all of us, constantly pulled back into the realm of 9 to 5 jobs and a stack of bills that clog our dreams, Judge has penned some outstanding prose that is sure to inspire you to not give up:

When will you understand that you are invisible; that no one has the slightest interest in what you think, or feel or do?  You are as a grain of dust on the hide of an elephant.

I was instantly reminded of a line from a book that has stuck with me about how we lose our audience when our parents are gone, there is no one else that really truly cares about us and the things we do. It’s a wake up call for our young protagonist who is determined to see the world, that until now, he’s only read about. But the journey to his destination is not an easy one, as Adebayo  takes up traveling with people smugglers, armed only with a geography guidebook and his own journal. He is a reader, a writer-like many of us-stuck in an unforgiving reality with larger than life thoughts and dreams.  We add to our own personal world through observation of new places and things, which is just what Adebayo sets out to do.

Sirocco Express is a brilliant tale of one man’s determination to fulfill his dreams.  His journey echoes of the realization of how we let things stand in our way of achieving what we really want, even if it’s just to see a foreign place we’ve only read about.  Adebayo constantly witnesses the oppression of his country and people during his quest, but he never gives up.

At only 189 pages, Judge’s book was a quick read but is packed with extensive research into Nigerian history and folklore, religion, and vivid geographical information that you will be Googling long after finishing this read.  The author has labeled it as a “contemporary novel about migration,” but it is much more than that.  It is a wholesome and heartfelt adventure that reminds me of the imaginative worlds and trips I discovered and fell in love with the first time I ever picked up a book.

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