A fast passed edge-of-your-seat thriller that keeps you turning pages and guessing until the very end. 

** spoiler alert ** Just as much fun as the preceding volume but a wee bit less carefully constructed. The main villain is absent for the first two thirds of the novel, the fish-out-of-water juxtaposition of doctor turned amateur spy that works so well in the first book strains credulity the second time around, and the allegiances of the wife/antagonist are muddied to the point of complete opacity. Regardless, all these faults can be ignored and the story enjoyed for itself. Just don't think to much.

An absolute chore to read. The contrived, broken syntax and intentionally convoluted sentence structures destroyed any potential enjoyment that this work had.

I was lead to this by a reference to one short story ("The Dog of the Marriage") and enjoyed is so much that I read the entire collection. On the whole they are powerful stories, pulling you into a well-established world in a few paragraphs, allowing you to observe for a few pages, and dropping you off again at an unexpected point; back where you started but no longer the same.

Heaping my own praise upon this Hugo award-winner would be redundant if not downright wasteful. Read now what is destined to be a new classic.

Perhaps my opinion will change in a few years, but I found this to be so topical considering our nation's political environment that it kept distracting me from the flow of the story. Not preachy, not hectoring, not snarky; just overly relevant to current events.

Military. Science Fiction. Groundhog Day.

Drugs, music, and an utter lack of institutional control or criminal prosecution corrupt a young man at an institution that lays claim to 'higher learning' in only the punniest sense of the word. Nevertheless as a psychological study of obsession, ennui and disassociation, this book will be relevant to many who get to college without a good answer to the question 'Why am I here?'.

A masterpiece of travel literature from an unexpected source: the Grand-Master of Science Fiction Robert A. Heinlein. Unpublished during his lifetime, this covers a round-the world-journey taken by Heinlein and his wife in the 1950's. Worth reading not only for the descriptions of circumstances long past but for the social and political commentary that underscores the philosophies espoused in all of his novels.

A quick primer on Houdini, his work and times with great ancillary material included both in the forward and afterward. This is an excellent introduction to the man for school-aged children.

A future-history after the fall of modern society, this book imagines a world of new-slavery and religious domination in a new, agrarian United State. The only drawbacks are a slightly jarring change in protagonists two-thirds of the way through the story and frequent use of untranslated French phrases which, while not detracting from the story, certainly distracted from it.
 

Another Cussler classic - mixing historical intrigue with fast paced modern adventure.

An interesting story that stands up to expectations, but also one that is a tad to repetitive at times. There are only so many ways that you can repeat the same phrases over and over again, and only so many straw-man conversations that you can induce before the story starts to drag.

A muddled, forgetable story that relies far to much on presumed knowledge of ongoing storylines.

A sad, moving portrait of people who are destroying not only their own lives, but that of their communities as well. Or if you want to look at it from a glass-half-full perspective, a look at people coping with tragedy and surviving, if not thriving. Or, to take a practical viewpoint, an essay on the drug problem in this country that - smartly - doesn't claim to offer answers.

One of the few times I can say that the book is inferior to the film. As a dramatization of small time crooks in the early 1970's, the book is fantastic, but its minimalist structure makes for an occasionally muddled plot (something that the screen version somehow avoided even though it doesn't deviate from the story - perhaps the visuals just help retention).

Another ridiculously fast paced, intricately plotted, epic adventure. A fitting capstone to this adventure trilogy....although the author does hint at more to come...

An extreme look at rising water levels and their effect on society. While grounded in sci-fi, the story is so inconceivable that it borders on the fantastical. An extremely long story arc and the slow pacing led to this being a difficult read, but the strength of the story kept my interest.

Another classic from Cussler. The Second book in his new Bell series takes off where the first began - with high speed action in the age of the Iron Horse. Bookended with pro- and epi- logues set two decades after the action, the story grabs on and never lets go. A must read for fans and novices alike.

Picks up right where the first left off - documenting real-world instances of unintended consequences.