Book Description
In 1999 Tobias Jones immigrated to Italy, expecting to discover the pastoral bliss described by centuries of foreign visitors. Instead, he found a very different country: one besieged by unfathomable terrorism and deep-seated paranoia. The Dark Heart of Italy is Jones's account of his four-year voyage across the Italian peninsula.
Jones writes not just about Italy's art, climate, and cuisine but also about the much livelier and stranger sides of the Bel Paese: the language, soccer, Catholicism, cinema, television, and terrorism. Why, he wonders, does the parliament need a "slaughter commission"? Why do bombs still explode every time politics start getting serious? Why does everyone urge him to go home as soon as possible, saying that Italy is a "brothel"? Most of all, why does one man, Silvio Berlusconi-in the words of a famous song-appear to own everything from Padre Nostro (Our Father) to Cosa Nostra (the Mafia)?
The Italy that emerges from Jones's travels is a country scarred by civil wars and "illustrious corpses"; a country that is proudly visual rather than verbal, based on aesthetics rather than ethics; a country where crime is hardly ever followed by punishment; a place of incredible illusionism, where it is impossible to distinguish fantasy from reality and fact from fiction.
Customer Reviews:
An Italy that is "infuriating and endlessly irritating, but...almost impossible to leave".......2007-09-05
Tobias Jones' "The Dark Heart of Italy" is an interesting read. I'd categorize it as a combination of two of my favorite books: Peter Robb's Midnight in Sicily and Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Modern Japan. I feel like the comparison to Kerr's book is the most appropriate one: here's a foreigner who sees the country with fresh eyes and uses that perspective to make trenchant, well-presented observations about his adopted place. Both Kerr and Jones love their adopted country but are left with a feeling wonderfully expressed by Jones when he says that Italy is "infuriating and endlessly irritating, but in the end it is almost impossible to leave. It's not that everything in Italy is 'troppo bello' ('too beautiful'), or that food or conversation are so good. It's that life seems less exciting outside of Italy, the emotions seem muted."
There are good chapters on Italian television (Jones asks "why is it so bad?") and Italian politics. On the political front, he paints a complex picture of Silvio Berlusconi, calling the former Prime Minister "both fascinating and frightening."
I really enjoyed the foreword of the book, which captures the reaction to the release of the hardcover edition (for this reason, I recommend you get the paperback). Jones notes that "overnight, I was catapulted from near-anonymity in Italy to being a household name." Then he shares some truly thrilling tales of encounters with and letters from Italians who took the time to read the book. As one letter states perfectly: "I have lived in Italy all my life. I love this country. It is obvious from reading your book that you do too. I write to express my gratitude to you because you have been very courageous. You have described...precisely what is happening in Italy in these terribly turbulent times."
Long Live the Queen and the President.......2007-01-16
Tobias Jones's book highlights many important aspects of Italy, but ends up playing the same sterile game that most visiting English writers enjoy, which I will hereby describe in three steps:
1: Italy is extremely enjoyable...
2: ... but Italians are morally questionable and intrinsically fascist...
3: ... whereas we Englishmen and Americans, in spite of our occasional roughness and lack of such luscious treasures of art and good life, are ultimately right.
In the end, these books are not aimed at describing Italy, but at reinforcing the English-speaking reader's sense of righteousness and entitlement. Severgnini's "La bella figura" does exactly the same. No wonder they sell so well... Not in my name, not with my money...
Worth Knowing.......2006-02-23
The dimensions discussed are worth knowing about, or for one who has lived in Italy, worth remembering. All nations are complex. Italy being such a beautiful country one forgets that it has, like any other, a side to it that is not all milk and honey.
Illuminating!.......2006-01-25
When I saw the title of this, at first I thought, "hatchet job". But even the introduction drew me right in. I love to travel, and it's always easy to think the grass is greener elsewhere. That's why now and then I like to get a more critical view of a place. It's easy to be seduced by a place as beautiful as Italy.
This book does a beautiful job of presenting a portrait of Italian life. As an example, the byzantine process of buying a house there left me shaking my head. And the peculiar ways of the government and religious establishment are mind-boggling. Yet, he clearly loves it there, and points out the everyday beauty of life there very well.
Somebody made a fairly sarcastic comment about how Jones thinks Italy is a beautiful place as long as you eliminate the people. To me, this person got it entirely backwards. If anything, Jones is saying that the people, the language, the artisan stores, the conversations, and the amateur football are beautiful, it's the government that ruins the situation, and guess who is at the helm? The guy who owns half the country. No conflict of interest there. But Jones even admits that there are things about Berlusconi that he does like. Of course, I'm sure that many readers can't tolerate a critical view of anything that they have personal feelings for, but that's another woeful topic entirely.
I did bog down a bit in the descriptions of the many political scandals. There are so many of them that one would probably need a timeline or chart to keep them straight.
The many stories of individual Italians are delightful. The very old lady at the football game hilariously stands out.
I suppose he could have been less controversial by calling it something like The Complex Heart of Italy, but I can't blame him at all for having a bold title, and I think it's more effective. All in all, a great read!
Italian Dessert.......2005-11-02
This is a cleverly constructed book of several parts and a few recurring motifs. Jones, a Welsh Methodist, Everton FC supporter, London hack and Oxford (Arts?) graduate, goes to live in Parma, Italy where his beloved has established herself. He divides his book into nine separate chapters and tries to weave them together as well as his excellent English and his motifs will allow. The first chapter discusses nuances of the Italian language and he uses those nuances to propound that Italy is a much more nuanced country than England and that its culture is infinitely more refined. An entire chapter brings the nuances of Italian culture to bear on football and he waxes very lyrical about the local youth and whatever immigrants are around playing ball as the sun goes down. The football allows us to place Italian village life in our minds and to empathize very much with it.
The last chapter is an entire ode to Italy. It is written largely in the second person and it tells of "you" going through the village and everything there appealing to the aesthetic in "you". The English is beautiful and it achieves its purpose in making you close the book with a warm glow. Mission accomplished.
The chapter on Italy's Catholic religion and its Protestant and other minorities could have done with much improvement. Italy's Catholicism is more complicated than the Padre Pio cult and the Protestants of the north surely have their faults as well. The chapter looks like it came from several previous publications he wrote.
The politics chapters build on the hypothesis that the fascist and proto communist factions are still at war with each other and that politicians like Berlusconi exploit this for their own nefarious ends. He does a good job of tying the warring World War Two factions in with the protagonists and antagonists of later squabbles. He does not like Berlusconi and his polished prose does not quite hide this fact.
My opinion of this book is that Jones sat down with his material and tied it all together into a very passable but rather superficial book which is nevertheless well worth the money being charged.
Book Description
From the first moment of his papacy Karol Wojtyla sought political influence and a role on the world stage. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, he was a leader to millions of Catholics at a time of tremendous change. Promising a renewed church, he was the first media Pope and travelled around the world to preach his message. It is said that he was central in the fall of Soviet Eastern Europe, in particular his own homeland of Poland. Now, one year after his death, there are already calls for his sainthood.
But is this the whole truth?
David Yallop explores the myths and half truths of John Paul II's long reign and asks some difficult questions ranging from the role of the Vatican in the momentous events in 1989, and the continued mismanagement of Vatican finance which allowed Calvi and others to continue to use the Vatican banks for money laundering to the failure to address the child sexual abuse crisis and the rise of the Opus Dei.
Including explosive revelations from the CIA, the KGB, and the Vatican itself, it is a bold and unflinching look at a man who soon stands to become a saint.
Customer Reviews:
An accurate portrayal.......2007-10-06
It's a very sad day when the Vatican teaches the world more about the ways of the world than about the Faith. That day is here and this book tells a part of the story. Should be required reading for all Catholics.
Put up your guns, girls: this book is pro-Wojtyla, anti-Vatican.......2007-09-02
and so it should please no one.
But first a stylistic note.
The most regrettable loss to our publishing industry in this post-literate age is the almighty, omniscient, self-effacing copy-editor. Without a wise copy-editor much of our 20th century great American novels would not be great (many weren't but seemed so at the time). Even Papa Hemingway blessed his stars for a good copy-editor. It's like our modern super-models blaming their enormous success on their make-up artist, but moreso.
And a good proof-reader. There are several spelling errors and typos and uses of words correctly spelled but incorrect within the context, including a sudden jarring switch to Western Union while discussing Frankel's acquisition of the Western United Insurance Company. Good copy-editors and proof-readers worth their blue pencil catch these things, or once did in the golden past of publishing.
Unfortunately this present work enjoys neither, and grows stylistically tedious.
Much of it reads as if it were copied verbatim from a journalist's notebook, or a student's cribsheet, barren, an avalanche of straight names with little connecting ligature. Often it reads as if edited not by the legendary copy-editor, but an MTV music video editor, blasting through time and space without warning, even within one paragraph, leaving the reader wondering if the writer skipped a page of his crib notes. Readers should not have to work this hard, and the sudden cuts across decades are superfluous, unnecessary and damaging to the flow of the narrative, and pose a further distracting threat to credibility in such an unsourced text.
Other mortal stylistic errors fall from the author's essence as a Britisher. Thus we find modes of speech which are not universal to world-class English, but drawn from a particular level used in London, and thus needlessly incomprehensible.
A fact checker would not have hurt, but they too are as rare as hen's teeth in the publishing world nowadays. For instance the author continually refers to religious habits and other clerical garb as "uniforms." THe first time I thought he was making a snide joke, but then he continue dto use this term for religious habits, and the suspicion crept in under the door that he thought they really are called uniforms, just as Reagan called military uniforms costumes. The irony is he was speaking at one point of Mexico, where it is against the law for priests to wear their collar in public passageways, a law more honored in the breach than in the enforcement, as with so many laws, a vestige of the intense persecution there fifty years or more ago.
Another interesting error while still in Mexico, in recounting the Pope's first trip to Mexico the author writes of green and white papal flags lining the streets. The papal flag is yellow and white. Such things might appear small and insignificant details, until you realize this author relies not on stated and verifiable sources for his writing, but upon the sure voice of his own authority, which erodes which each small error.
The British perspective also colors the narrative, which quickly smells of racism, full of stereotypical French, Italians, Mexicans, Native Americans, American Americans, Spanish, Poles and most offendingly Irish. This author would have us believe what occured to Bobby Sands and the Blanket Boys was not serious and their own fault in every way. We never learn of Judge Dropik, the Rev. Ian Paisley and his Orangemen. Instead we read the Catholic Archbishop and other clergy directed terrorist bombings of civilian targets in Northern Ireland.
This is the epitome of the author's insularly Britisher perspective: he is anti-Catholic to the core, and xenophobic to boot.
But he does greatly support Wojtyla, giving possibly the most glowing and expansive if short-handed account of his life. Look again at the title. It does not read the Dark Heart of John Paul II. Yallop portrays that heart in a much brighter light. Rather he entitles his work the Dark Heart of the Vatican.
Another serious stylistic concern is the lack of footnotes and slim endnotes. In fact his few brief endnotes might have been slipped without distraction into the narrative itself.
Perhaps I have grown used to reading theologians like Father Schillebeeckx and Father Boff who conscientiously and completely footnote every phrase, like anxious postgraduate students defending a thesis, providing endnotes as long as the text, and often more enjoyable and informative. Here Yallop provides strong statements in the text but few backing endnotes.
He does provide a rather complete bibliography of sources unrelated to specific statements within the text, and he tries to explain that so many sources were punished and silenced for providing information in his earlier work In God's Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I that he dare not mention them now, but that does not leave us any indication at all how Yallop can with confidence report private conversations, for instance, between Villot and Wojtyla. We have only his word for it, and that is the worst of sources, as we cannot tell if his word is good. Pseudo-authority is the fallacious of argumentation, and so his thesis sinks.
ANoter evidence of the amateur is the propensity to quote entire paragraphs and to italicize tyhe entire paragraph and then to mention in parenthesis italicized emphasis added by author. This is professionally or scholastically done to one or two words within a citation, not the entire selection.
He does nevertheless give us a surprisingly favorable view of Wojtyla, jumping on the pre-hagiographic bandwagon also rejoined, for instance, by the GOP's Peggy Noonan. Although he claims here to serve the traditional role in the canonization process, recently done away with by Wojtyla, of "devil's advocate", he does so very weakly, and without resources, and only serves to show Wojtyla as a shining white knight from the north come to rescue our church after what Yallop considers the mafioso murder of the first John Paul for daring to propose to alter the corrupt administration of the Vatican Bank, deeply discussed in his earlier book In God's Name. In fact in many ways this book simply serves as a sequel to his earlier work, both of which were weak trailing shadows of the great Penny Lernoux's In Banks We Trust.
So save your money and buy Lernoux instead. She covers this same material with much greater foundation and sources, and with much more professional and objective style. This present work is surprisingly weak in every way, disappointing and will please no one. It is Lernoux warmed over, a sort of where-are-they-now twenty years later, and most mortal sin of all, poorly written, perhaps purposefully. THere are those who hold to the Dan Rather Syndrome, that DAn from the single bullet theory onwards was always working underground for the GOP, and that he killed the very substantial concerns about W's military career (or lack thereof) by presenting mistyped documents about it, which when indicated as mistyped, easily dismissed the entire issue. Perhaps this writer wishes to dismiss doubts about Wojtyla in the same way, by writing so badly as to associate any objective voice with sloppiness.
The basic thesis remains: That WOjtyla failed to go after the needed reforms, the hard reforms, the reforms that borught about the murder of a Pope, his predecessor, and instead hit the weak and the vulnerable, the academics and those who stood with the poor and the oppressed and the impoverished, instead of the corrupt bankers who oppress them.
Buy Lernoux instead.
The Author Makes an Excellent Devil's Advocate .......2007-08-22
I notice that, in all the reviews of this book preceding this one, it's either been given five stars or one--no in-between opinions, it seems. Then again, I suppose that any biography of a Pope, or any other well-known and controversial religious figure, is bound to elicit responses of this sort. After having read this book, I can easily see why it could be classified as a polemical work with negative criticisms going somewhat to extremes; but then again, it wasn't David Yallop who abolished the position of "Devil's Advocate" in the Roman Catholic Church's process of beatification and elevation to sainthood, it was John Paul II himself. Popular pressure no doubt will influence some later Pope, whether Benedict XVI or a subsequent one, to canonize John Paul II, but it is still necessary to remember that Karol Wojtyla was human and, like the rest of us, a slave to some aspects of his upbringing. The facts that he was guilty of an autocratic management style and was inconsistent in his policies towards repressive governments, depending on their location and the ideologies of the tyrants in power over them, were well known before Yallop articulated them--as was the Church's inexcusable sheltering of Cardinal Law in the wake of the sexual-abuse scandal.
I gave this work four stars rather than five because of a few instances of typographical errors and slapdash copyediting. Without the presence of those, I would have given it five stars. Love the book, hate it, but let it stand as the Devil's Advocate that no one now in the Church will ever permit to question John Paul II's eligibility for sainthood.
Brilliant study of an overrated celebrity.......2007-07-20
In this extraordinary book, investigative journalist David Yallop examines the record of Pope John Paul II.
Yallop details the many scandals of John Paul's rule, especially the cover-up of widespread sexual abuse by paedophile priests across the world, including 1,200 in the USA. In Britain, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor connived at the criminal offence of abusing children by helping priests to evade justice so that they could continue to abuse. He appointed a known paedophile as Chaplain to Gatwick Airport, where he could prey on new arrivals to Britain. Cardinal Basil Hume covered up the widespread sexual abuse at Ampleforth College, a Catholic private school.
Cardinal Ratzinger, John Paul's close colleague, now Pope Benedict, recently reminded every bishop of the penalties that his Church imposes on those who make allegations of sexual abuse to the civil authorities. The Church puts itself above the law to protect itself, not its victims. They tell us all how to lead our lives, on pain of eternal damnation, while they hide abusing priests and attack those who expose the crimes. What hypocrisy!
John Paul said, "The Roman Catholic Church is not a democracy. Dissent from the Magisterium is incompatible with being a Catholic." The Church is an autocracy and loves other autocracies. John Paul granted a `personal prelature' to Opus Dei, making this openly fascist body answerable to no one but himself.
Yallop depicts John Paul's hatred of Liberation Theology and his consistent support for brutal right-wing tyrannies in Latin America. He shows John Paul's links with the CIA: John Paul and CIA head William Casey had both supported Franco in the 1930s war in Spain. As Pope, John Paul beatified 471 Franco supporters, but not one Republican.
Ratzinger volunteered to join the Hitler Youth and served in the Wehrmacht. It is no coincidence that there is a German Pope, when Germany is trying to foist a Bismarckian Constitution on the European Union.
The Roman Catholic Church operated the infamous ratlines for 30,000 Nazi, Italian and Croat war criminals after World War Two, with the connivance of the US and British governments. (No wonder Blair is so keen to join the Church.) In the 1980s, Germany and the Vatican backed the destruction of Yugoslavia, to `free' Catholic Croatia.
Mussolini's deal with the Papacy is still in force: the Italian state gives half a billion pounds annually to the Church. Yallop shows how John Paul defended the corrupt Vatican Bank, the Mafia's bank, which launders round $50 billion a year. As a member of the Vatican Secretariat said of the absurd `visions of the Virgin Mary' at Medjugorje in Yugoslavia, "Of course it's a fraud but the money is genuine."
What did John Paul achieve? By trying to hide the Church's vice and corruption, he brought it lasting shame. So less than half the world's Catholics even attend Mass and numbers are falling rapidly. 72% of the Spanish people think that the state should stop its £100 million annual handout to the Church. Like other reactionaries, all his scheming resulted only in the failure of his cause.
TRUTH CREATES FREEDOM.......2007-07-14
This book is one of the finest in recent years to excite a discussion on two related areas: A. Who forms the church, and B. What is the role of the Pope and the Holy See in salvation history? The author does not focus on these issues as he shares his well-studied and documented version of recent history. As with any superior writer he invites discussion from readership after finishing the book.
I was pleased as a enquirer while reading the book because it was so focused. Moreso, I was pleased because the style was so engaging. With a certain detachment Yallop presented history and biography as he understood these events and persons. This is what a writer is supposed to do. He makes claims that are different from (the Vatican) spin, explains his position, and provides the documentation and experience which allow him to make his assertions.
To write about John Paul II is no easy task, especially since high emotion surrounds his memory. The author of this tome warns us, however, to look beyond emotion and regard the facts of history. Far from hating the church he writes in a way that we can understand the church more fully in both its human and divine dimensions. He challenges the reader to look at his or her beliefs about the papacy and the Holy See, and to wonder in what ways John Paul became "the Great" when compared with other papal leaders of the past century and a half. With intelligent reflection it is difficult to claim that John Paul was especially great or holy. Compared to Sarto, Ratti, Pacelli or Roncalli, he seems rather ordinary as the one steering the "bark of Peter." His great difference was that he cultivated the media and created local circus. If one believes he was a great leader and reformer of the the Catholic church, ask an ordinary friend about one of his encyclicals. Ask an ordinary Catholic to explain the difference between the Code of Canon Law of 1917 and the revised Code of the 1980s in terms of theology. Ask the youth who so favorably recall this leader because he paid attention to them, to tell of the great things he did for humanity and the Church. Then, compare these answers to the historical findings presented in this trustworthy book. Something is skewed!
My hope is that intelligent and concerned Catholics and others will take time to seriously read this book and discuss its major points. We are only a few years from this papacy, far too few to really be analytical, but we have a guide in this tome as to how to read and review as we seek the truth. After all, we come from a Gospel which claims that "you shall know the Truth; and the Truth will make you free."
Average customer rating:
- Good conspiracy Book
- Only Koontz....
- Good book
- Koontz's Most Political Book is Not for Everybody
- Deeply disturbing, just the way I like it.
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Dark Rivers of the Heart
Dean Koontz
Manufacturer: Bantam
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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ASIN: 0553582895
Release Date: 2000-08-01 |
Book Description
Do you dare step through the red door?
Spencer Grant had no idea what drew him to the bar with the red door. He thought he would just sit down, have a slow beer or two, and talk to a stranger. He couldn't know that it would lead to a narrow escape from a bungalow targeted by a SWAT team. Or that it would leave him a wanted man. Now he is on the run from mysterious and ruthless men. He is in love with a woman he knows next to nothing about. And he is hiding from a past he can't fully remember. On his trail is a shadowy security agency that answers to no one--including the U.S. government—and a man who considers himself a compassionate Angel of Death. But worst of all, Spencer Grant is on a collision course with inner demons he thought he'd buried years ago—inner demons that could destroy him if his enemies don't first.
Customer Reviews:
Good conspiracy Book.......2007-10-11
I must say I particularly liked the government conspiracy/abuse of authority theme & information about the Forfeiture laws. The villainous lovers, Roy & Eve were absolutely perfect & maybe my favorite villains created by Koontz. Eve Jammer on her rubber sheets doing her thing was particularly delightful. However, the development of characters overall seemed to lack & I would have liked Koontz to go more into some of the characters (The Lee's for example). The romantic coupling of the main characters seemed weak, lame, thrown together, & unrealistic. The whole circumstances of Valerie's reaction to Spencer following/stalking seemed very unrealistic. I just can't see a woman falling for this guy who basically was stalking her after meeting her once.
What REALLY drove me mad though, was the never ending car chase - it goes on for almost 30 pages! I thought it would never end! Did the editor not notice or am I the only person??? Then the part about using "GODZILLA" or govt. defense weapons from Star wars program was just too over the top IMO. I thought the ending was lame, however I liked how things ended for Roy & Eve.
I hate to give Koontz 3 stars & if this would have been a 300-400 page bk. I might rate it higher, however this bk. dragged & in the case, I think less mighta been more.
My advice: Don't let this be your 1st Koontz bk. unless you are into govt. conspiracy themes.
Only Koontz...........2007-04-10
Only Koontz can take an otherwise mundane, overused "Conspiracy by a secret government agency" plot and make it quite possibly one of the best books of modern times. This thriller keeps the reader on the edge of the seat as we follow Spencer Grant through secrets as dark as the depths of Koontz's soul!
Positively masterful!
Good book.......2007-04-02
Another Dean Koontz classic. What can I say? If you're a fan of him, you're a fan of this book.
Koontz's Most Political Book is Not for Everybody.......2007-01-29
I'm a major league fan of Dean Koontz, and have read all of his books that are currently in print. Some hardcore fans consider DARK RIVERS OF THE HEART to be one of Koontz's top books, perhaps even his best novel of all time. But I have mixed feelings about it.
Dean Koontz's politics have always leaned libertarian, and many of his books express the concern that the US government is too large and invasive. DARK RIVERS OF THE HEART deals with a "shadow" government in the United States that trumps civil liberties and property rights to achieve societal goals.
This is an interesting concept, but I think Koontz is a little too heavy handed in demonizing the government in this book. The representatives of the shadow government are almost ridiculously evil and perverted. Roy Miro, the main villain in this novel, is an over-the-top sociopath, and he is only one of several psychopaths that the reader encounters in the story. Koontz has some interesting and original ideas in this novel, but he fails to make his points with any subtlety whatsoever.
Another flaw with DARK RIVERS OF THE HEART is that the characterization is paper-thin. The hero and heroine are decent but bland, and the romance between them instantaneously happens in a completely unbelievable manner. There is also a subplot involving an unjustly framed police officer, but Koontz spends almost no time on developing this character at all -- he has almost no personality. In short, the characters in this novel are just pawns that Koontz moves around to make his political points.
I also found the pace of this novel pretty slow and drawn out in the middle (there is a car chase through the desert that seems to go on forever). Koontz has an unfortunate tendency to be verbose, and I wish this book had been more aggressively edited. I found myself skipping over some of the excessive description and exposition.
Still, I can't deny that this book is highly original and deals with a lot of provocative ideas. This is a novel that will make you think, much like Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World or some of Ayn Rand's work. If you're interested in that brand of political fiction, this novel has a lot to offer if you're patient, especially if your politics are of a libertarian nature. I don't regret reading it.
But if you're new to Koontz, my advice is to try one of his more conventional novels, such as PHANTOMS, WATCHERS, LIGHTNING, INTENSITY, or ODD THOMAS. Those novels are straightforward suspense novels without the heavy-handed political content, and will make you into a fan.
Deeply disturbing, just the way I like it........2007-01-08
I've been a fan of Dean Koontz's work for about fourteen years, ever since a coworker of my mom's introduced me to Dragon Tears when I was thirteen. It wasn't until a good few years later that I picked up Dark Rivers of the Heart, and that first time I was so busy with school that i didn't actually have time to finish it. But now that i have, I decided to review it.
The story begins with Spenser Grant, a thirtyish man who stops in at a shabby bar to spend time with a woman who, though he's only known her a single night, has captured his heart. When she fails to show up at work, he drives to the bungalo where she lives, only to discover an FBI Swat team moving in on the place, and Valerie gone. Narrowly avoiding capture by the feds, Spenser finds himself the target of an adversary with weapons far beyond the norm, and a serial killer with a philosophy so disturbing that its like has rarely been seen in the real world.
Determined to find Valerie even at the cost of his own life, Spenser and his game but fearful companion, a Labrador mix named Rocky, set off in Spenser's truck in a desperate attempt to find the woman before her enemies do. Chased into the Nevada desert by his would-be captors, Spenser finds himself in a deadly situation when his truck becomes caught in a flash flood and subsequently hung up on a cliff far above the desert floor, while rainfall and rushing water work to unseat him from his precarious position. Rescued at the last moment by the very woman he's been seeking, Spenser leads his enemies on a daring chase that ends in the very place of Spenser's darkest dreams, with a revelation so unspeakable that he suppressed the memory of it for sixteen years.
An excellent book, one of Koontz's best in my opinion. I particularly like the audio version. Anthony Heald's portrayal of the novels many characters is absolutely flawless, from Spenser himself to his relentless adversary. If you haven't read it yet, you should pick it up at your local library. It's definitely a thought-provoking read.
Average customer rating:
- An OK Dragonlance novel
- Good, if you ignore some contradictions
- A book you should read
- Not the best, not the worst....
- A PERFECT FIVE!
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Dark Heart (Dragonlance: The Meetings Sextet, Vol. 3)
Tina Daniell
Manufacturer: Wizards of the Coast
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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Kindred Spirits (Dragonlance: The Meetings Sextet, Vol. 1)
ASIN: 1560761164
Release Date: 1992-01-01 |
Book Description
Obsession
At long last, the story of the beautiful dark-hearted Kitiara Uth Matar. This compelling novel tells the story of the birth of her twin brothers, the warrior Caramon and the frail mage Raistlin, and Kit's admirable role in their upbringing.
But her youthful mercenary deeds and increasing fascination with evil throw her into the company of a roguish stranger and band of adventurers whose fates are intermingled with her own. Haunted by the memory of her Solamnic father, she hunts him ceaselessly.
Tina Daniell's first novel brings to life this remarkable warrior-woman, whose credo of "the sword is truth" becomes her triumph and downfall.
Customer Reviews:
An OK Dragonlance novel.......2007-07-02
This book was ok, but I wasn't expecting much with Kit as a main character. I found out that I hated her character just as much as I did in all the other books I read with her. It's rather hard to enjoy a book, when you can't get past your dislike for the protagonist. Other than that, the novel was written ok, but the plot was a little slow and disjointed.
Good, if you ignore some contradictions.......2005-06-24
This was a well written book that worked well from beginning to end. I think that Tina Daniell was able to capture the essence of Kitiara. She is out to help herself and can cut ties with the past, but there are some ties she can't break - like thinking about her brothers and looking our for them.
There were some inconsistences with this book and some others, like Soulforge. However, you have to cut the author a break - look at the publication dates for the two books. Also, these inconsistences only happen when dealing with Caramon and Rastlin's childhood, which is only a tangent of this book.
If you want to get a better feel for Kitiara, read this book.
A book you should read.......2004-09-14
A good Dragonlance: The Meetings Sextet books. If you like the Dragonlance series than you should diffently read it.
Not the best, not the worst...........2003-03-30
Any story about Kitiara Uth Matar is bound to be filled with intrigue and shadiness. This story tells about her childhood as well as those of her brothers Raistlin and Caramon Majere. Kit will possibly surprise you with how non-evil she could be before she sold out to Takhisis. As she grows up she wanders around after the ghost of her father, a Solamnic Knight, and ends up joining a band of thieves. I enjoyed reading Dark Heart because it explained a lot about how Raistlin got into magic at such a young age. The parts about Raistlin make this book a 3 instead of a 2.
A PERFECT FIVE!.......2002-10-13
... This by far is the best book of Dragonlance I have read yet! ... I hate giving out fives but this book is perfect! I love the story of Kitiara's and her two brothers beginnings. Also, her travels are very interesting and she meets some unique characters. It's so hard to believe that this is Tina Daniell's first book! Wow! A must read! Now! This book will fill you with anticipation with what will happen next. I wish all Dragonlance books could be this great! I had to finish it in one day! Fantistic character development and you see Kit develop over the years into a warrior, along with her brothers in their own right. I don't think I can find anything wrong with this book except that it ended. BRAVO TINA DANIELL!
Average customer rating:
|
The Frozen Leopard: Hunting My Dark Heart in Africa (Destinations)
Aaron Latham
Manufacturer: Touchstone Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Physical | Anthropology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
True Crime | True Accounts | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Africa | Travel | Subjects | Books
Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books
General | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0671792784 |
Customer Reviews:
Superb.......1999-01-25
The Kirkus review is unfair and off-the-mark.
This is the autobiographical story of writer Aaron Latham in the depths of grief for his sister's death, and depression, who feels the answer lies in Africa. So he packs up himself, his daughter, and his wife (CBS's Lesley Stahl) and heads off to safari in Africa.
He gives a vivid and insightful description of his own internal and external journeys. Along the way he meets some of the giants of research in Africa (Craig Sholley's work with gorillas, Cynthia Moss with elephants, Richard Leakey with early man), and reports their insights into their work and the significance of Africa to each of us.
This out-of-stock book is well worth searching out at your library or book dealer.
Superb.......1999-01-25
This is the autobiographical story of a writer in the depths of grief for his sister's death, and depression, who feels the answer lies in Africa. So he packs up himself, his daughter, and his wife (CBS's Lesley Stahl) and heads off to safari in Africa.
He gives a vivid and insightful description of his own internal and external journeys. Along the way he meets some of the giants of research in Africa (Craig Sholley's work with gorillas, Cynthia Moss with elephants, Richard Leakey with early man), and reports their insights into their work and the significance of Africa to each of us.
This out-of-stock book is well worth searching out at your library or book dealer.
Book Description
Phnom Penh is a city of beauty and degradation, tranquillity and violence, and tradition and transformation; a city of temples and brothels, music and gunfire, and festivals and coups.
But for many, it is simply an anarchic celebration of insanity and indulgence. Whether it is the $2 wooden shack brothels, the marijuana-pizza restaurants, the AK-47 fireworks displays, or the intricate brutality of Cambodian politics, Phnom Penh never ceases to amaze and amuse. For an individual coming from a modern Western society, it is a place where the immoral becomes acceptable and the insane becomes normal.
Amid this chaos lives an extraordinary group of foreign residents. Some are adventurers whose passion for life is given free rein in this unrestrained madhouse. Others are misfits who, unable to make it anywhere else, wallow in the decadent and inviting environment. This unparalleled first-hand account provides a fascinating, shocking, disturbing and often hilarious picture of contemporary Phnom Penh and the bizarre collection of expats who make it their home. As they search for love in the brothels or adventure on the firing range, Phnom Penh Journey follows them into the dark heart of guns, girls and ganja.
Customer Reviews:
decent enough.......2006-06-26
this writer seemed to whore his way through Cambodia back when that was the main reason that expats were living there. His story is interesting enough and has some anthropological value though he is not a very charming writer. He describes it all with such prosaic numbness, not for any literary effect but because he is not really a very skillful writer. Still, for fans of writing about the Asian underworld, this is a good read, just don't expect literature.
What's the point?.......2006-05-30
I'm a big reader of travelogues, and after a brief visit to Cambodia, I picked this up to try and supplement my own tame trip to Siem Reap. What I didn't realize until I started reading the prologue is that this isn't a book about Cambodia or Phnom Penh, but rather, as the author explains: "This book specifically focuses on those people in Phnom Penh that live (as judged by 'normal' Westerners) 'indecent' and extraordinary lives." As such, the book doesn't make any pretensions that it is an accurate representation of the city or its mainstream culture. So, there's ultimately little point to reading this unless you really want to learn about the worst excesses of the expat community who lived there a decade ago.
Most of the subjects of this book are so-called "English teachers" (some of whom could barely string together a grammatical sentence) whom the author met during multiple trips to Phnom Penh between 1996-98 and tended to congregate around the Majestic guest house. The exploits of these Swiss, German, Australian, English, etc. men -- most of which revolve around buying sex, often from girls aged 12-16 -- are neither shocking or particularly funny, but merely a depressing window into the worst side of human nature. Gilboa makes it very clear that he finds their activities utterly despicable -- and yet he's fascinated enough to write a book about them, and admits that he can understand the attraction of the lifestyle. The gist of this lifestyle is that on one's lunch break, instead of swinging by McDonald's for a $5 combo meal, you can swing by a brothel and have sex with a beautiful teenager for $2-$5, and then on the way home pick up a huge bag of pot for another few dollars. Whee!
The book is poorly organized and would have benefited from a strong editorial hand to arrange and shape the material. Gilboa alternates between a chronological narrative of his visits to Cambodia and thematic chapters (Lawlessness, Sex, Drugs, Work). There are brief forays into Cambodian culture, history, and contemporary politics, and one gets some sense of the dynamics between the Khmer people and their Vietnamese and Thai neighbors, but this all feels somehow cribbed and secondhand. He admits that he never gets to know any Khmers, and so the book lacks any kind of counterpoint to the small slice of expat men he writes about other than his own perfunctory tut-tutting. The writing alternates between normal narrative writing and journal entries, but the two are so similar in style that it's hard to make out what the distinction is or why its done that way. Some will also take issue with Gilboa's "participatory" style of journalism, which ranges from harmless escapades such as heading to the shooting ranges with the gang and purchasing pot from the open-air markets to the more morally ambiguous "for research purposes only" oral sex he purchases from a prostitute.
In any event, the overall effect of the book is mainly to move the reader to disgust and anger at the actions of a small portion of Westerners who use the third world as a place to setting for lifestyles that (rightly) wouldn't be tolerated in their own countries. The stories of the "outrageous" behavior aren't particularly amusing or insightful, and while I think people have every right to wreck their own lives, that doesn't mean they have the right to exploit and degrade others while doing so. Ultimately, this is a pointless book, there's little to be learned here -- only confirmations of the ugliness of human nature.
Over-heated and over-rated !.......2006-03-07
To the reader,
I'd avoid this book and either go to Phnom Penh myself or read some of the expat blogs about Cambodia.
The tone is pretty sensationalistic, talking about guns, girls and drug-ridden expats exclusively.
The author possibly wanted to be another Hunter Thompson.
He gives lip service to being impartial,saying briefly in the introduction that his descriptions of the expats and Khmers were not meant to imply that all were drug addicts/losers/pedophiles/whores/corrupt.
But after chapter after chapter of lurid descriptions what will the hapless reader remember?
Orgies of cannibus,smack and under-aged bar-girls?
Gun-toting, gun shooting, wife-beating,corrupt Cambodians?
He also does have a PC "holier-than-thou" attitude, never partaking of the bar-girl scene but doing the cannibis smoking route.
His endless trashing of men is suspect, he's either trying to gain a share of the feminist reading public which loves to hear how foul men are or feels guilty himself for being male.
In short if you are an angry feminist who needs more fuel to feed an irrational hatred of men, this is a great book for you.
If you are a rational,sane male read this book with a pound of salt.
Claw
Preachy tone ruins book.......2005-09-30
As other reviewers have mentioned, I was drawn to this book by the title and, of course, the photo on the jacket. The 'Time' quote at the bottom of the cover also helped. 'Like a gonzo rant from Hunter S. Thompson.' But believe me, this book is as far from Hunter as can be. Unfortunately for us, Amit Gilboa comes across as someone who has never seen whores, grass, or misery, and it becomes hard to believe that he is actually a journalist. I would guess that perhaps he is even still a virgin.
When he merely describes, he does have a good eye for detail. The descriptions are generally quite vivid. He has clearly done some research, and in doing that research, very obviously put himself into occasional danger. However, he often strays into judgmental diatribes about the characters he describes. Most of the ex-pat characters, in his words, are 'losers,' and much more than that. He would be better off not telling the reader what to think about these people and improve his writing skills so that we can come to that conclusion on our own.
Hey, Time Magazine! Hunter S. Thompson he is not. A quick, informative read, but on the whole, disappointing.
Insight Into Another World.......2005-09-13
The subtitle on the book wastes no time telling you what this book is about: "into the dark heart of guns, girls, and ganja". Think Detroit is bad? Wait till you hear about late 90's pre-coup Phenom Penh.
Amit Gilboa does a fantastic job describing the surroundings and the atmosphere of both his experience in the capitol of Cambodia and those of his contemporaries, between which a solid distinction can be made.
I've spent the last year of my life living in third world countries and I have yet to encounter the kind of sleaze that's described in full detail between the covers of this book. If you're reading this review, you're probably on the edge of jumping into this third world gonzo rant. Go ahead and take the dive. I wouldn't call it a classic, but I would certainly recommend it.
Book Description
Dean Koontz is one of the world's top-selling authors with total worldwide sales of his novels at 225 million copies! He achieves what few writers can: he creates books that consistently jump to the top of the bestseller lists in both hardcover and paper. His newest novel had a half-million copy first printing, and it went straight to the Number One position in its first week on The New York Times and Publishers Weekly Bestseller lists! His many fans will snap up this handsome foil-and-embossed volume, with three of his best works in one book. The perfect impulse buy or gift. The collection includes the complete and unabridged novels Dark Rivers of the Heart, Intensity, and Sole Survivor.
Book Description
The Shadow Saga Continues... As the vampires of the world prepare to do battle with humanity, and each other, the possibility of a new life for those that remain is what spurs them on in their bloody quest...
Customer Reviews:
A Sequel That Rocks!!.......2005-02-03
This is up there with The Necroscope series. Now I don't miss Brian Lumley as bad as I did.
Now he has serious competition. A must read.
Excellent Series.......2004-04-21
This is an excellent vampire series. Very different take on vampires. If this is your first Christopher Golden book in the Shadow Saga, I would highly suggest reading the series in order. (1) Of Saints and Shadows (2) Angel Souls and Devil Hearts (3) Of Masques and Martyrs and (4) The Gathering Dark. I enjoyed this series as much or even more than the anita blake and tanya huff series. Highly recommended.
Book #2 continues where book #1 ended. At the end of book 1, the world found out that vampires really do exist. The world is also very sympathetic to vampires because in book 1 a few evil members of the church tried to have them exterminated, and all of it was caught by a news crew. Vampires now have rights in the world. Counsels have been formed to help vampires and humans work and live together.
But things are not as "perfect" as they seem. Hannibal one of the vampire leaders is upset at the new life of the vampire. He liked the vampires of old, attacking the humans, killing them. He doesn't want to be their friend, he wants to hunt them. Hannibal secretly starts to build his own army of evil vampires. He has plans to attack when the time is right.
Also, as usual with this series, a variety of characters are involved in different things. In Book 1 you met Wild Bill Cody and the famous news reporter Allison. They are now a couple, and taking a vacation. While on vacation, they come across some demonic incidents and then the evil villain from Book #1 makes a return appearance. This book is about the fight between the evil versus good vampires; and the evil demons in hell.
Very good book and a GREAT series. Highly recommended.
It's good for what it is, but it isn't all that.......2000-07-30
I dig vampire novels. So when I saw the shadow saga I just had to have it. I enjoyed the second one because I thought the idea of a shadow justice system was cool. And all in all it was a good story but I think the characters were just a little too invincible. It's kind o' hard to relate to something that can't, under any circumstances, die. But like I said, it was still a cool story.
Pretty good....for a sequel.......2000-05-01
Its a sequel, come on folks, how good can a sequel be? Of course the first one was better, but this one answers a lot of questions and is a pretty good book. The initial shock of the vampires and their ways are gone, but saga continues, trying to keep the reader still entertained by what the vamps really are. All in all, It was a pretty good follow up.
The book that has changed the ways of vampires forever.......2000-03-31
im am usually one who just reads magic type books(elves wizards ect.) but these books have changed my mind about vampires forever. i loved the way that Golden used real like people that had become vampires. i am a christian and i enjoyed the way that he used jesus. it was odd but i still enjoyed it :) Golden totally changed all the boundries for vampires. from sunlight to crosses, but not only did he change them but he explained how. the way that golden wrote this made you feel every thing that the characters did. and i have totally fallen in love with Peter Octavian (would be nice to see him in another book) in short i would advise everyone who has an open mind about vampires or wants to see them catch up with the times to read these books.
Book Description
Between dusk and dark lies another world.
The playful quartet that penned the acclaimed Once Upon A Dyke are dimming the lights for journeys into worlds of breathless seduction.
Haunted castles and lost ingénues, shadows hungry for life, immortal beings of power claiming their captive souls--everything is possible when the sun goes down.
Curl up for seductive, skin-tingling novellas, perfect for bed time. Don't worry--the flutter at the window is only the curtain in the breeze...
Barbara Johnson, Karin Kallmaker, Therese Szymanski and Julia Watts join forces again for the third in their critically-acclaimed New Exploits series, creating unique stories with lesbian erotica, humor and adventure. The result is what Curve Magazine called "a true rarity."
Customer Reviews:
Disappointed.......2007-03-14
I hate to say this, because I really like the authors in this anthology and I love the vampire genre, but I was really disappointed by the stories in this collection. Maybe my expectations were too high given the above.
Castle Wrath by Karin Kallmaker started off really promising. I was chuckling out loud as the character narrated the start of her adventure and I was really enjoying the humorous writing in a style Ms. Kallmaker doesn't normally use. But I dunno, somewhere things shifted and it almost became an entirely different style of story. I think it either should have started differently to fit the later portion, or the initial tone should have been maintained throughout. In the end, aside from that, the story itself just didn't interest me at all. The idea of inheriting a castle in a vampire story had the potential to go in all sorts of wonderful directions, but the direction that Ms. Kallmaker chose wasn't where I wanted to go. By the end I just wasn't interested in what happened to the characters.
Running with Stone Ponies was another story with a lot of potential, but I feel it fell really flat. This time mostly due to what came across to me as amateurish writing. Which I suppose takes a lot of gall for me to say, since my attempts at writing are quite pathetic, but there it is all the same. I felt the relationship between the two main characters developed ridiculously. More that there wasn't really any development at all, it was just suddenly there. At various points while reading I was actually cringing at parts of the plot, or specific phrasing choices. If I'm cringing at the writing, I'm not being swept away into the fantasy.
Elsewhen by Therese Syzmanski was a solid story and one that I did enjoy. But the writing at times was disjointed in a way difficult for me to describe. I felt like characters were all over the place at various points in what they were thinking or feeling, making it difficult for me to follow along as well as I should. That's not to say that characters shouldn't be muddled or confused about what they think, but it needs to be written in a way so that as a reader I'm empathetic, not irritated and taken out of the story.
We Recruit by Julia Watts was okay. I can't really think of anything negative to say about it. It just didn't really grab me either, at least not the latter part. Maybe because they wimped out as vampires. Heh. While being a vastly morally superior stance to take, drinking bottled blood just ain't sexy!
I gave the anthology 3 stars. To me that means it's average, and if you're strongly interested, probably still worth buying and reading. I didn't feel it was a total waste of my time. But I'm still left with that disappointing feeling of being disappointed by an anthology that I had been anticipating with a great deal of excitment. (For context, I own almost all the published novels and anthologies by Karin Kallmaker, Therese Syzmanski, and Julia Watts, so normally I really am a fan!)
Another Good theme collection.......2007-02-18
It's surprising that Bella After Dark has come up with three successive good collections of themed novellas using only four authors. In each of the collections, I have had a favorite story. In the first one Karin Kallmaker's re-telling of the Little Mermaid was my favorite; she also topped the list in BELL BOOK AND DYKE. In this collection, Barbara Johnson out did herself. I was afraid that the stories would be unable to find new territory to explore, but Johnson's pre and post atomic disaster tale did it for me. I hope these women can come up with yet another theme and do as well with it.
Book Description
Someone,
or something,
is ripping
the hearts from
living men.
Justinian, Lord Sterling, has lived for centuries, serving an ancient entity known only as the Dragon. Immortality is Justin's reward. But to keep it, he must keep killing.
Lt. Sandra McCormick is a dedicated cop, a loner whose job is her refuge from a twisted past. But to keep it, she must stop the killing.
Two loners, each stalking the other. Each destined to be the other's savior--and downfall. For love, unexpected, unstoppable, draws them together. And love is the one vice the Dragon will not allow . . .
Download Description
Someone,
or something,
is ripping
the hearts from
living men.
Justinian, Lord Sterling, has lived for centuries, serving an ancient entity known only as the Dragon. Immortality is Justin's reward. But to keep it, he must keep killing.
Lt. Sandra McCormick is a dedicated cop, a loner whose job is her refuge from a twisted past. But to keep it, she must stop the killing.
Two loners, each stalking the other. Each destined to be the other's savior--and downfall. For love, unexpected, unstoppable, draws them together. And love is the one vice the Dragon will not allow . . .
Customer Reviews:
I've read this thing a thousand times..........2007-01-06
This is another great book by Margaret Weis, and if you enjoy fantasy in a more modern setting, I recommend it. The characters are complex, and the story is definitely character-driven. More than that, the dialogue and descriptions flow nicely, so it's not difficult to get sucked in by the writing style and captivated to the very last word.
I have the sequel (or perhaps prequel?) to this, but for me, it was a disappointing because I'd anticipated a full-length novel. Nonetheless, if you can find the book, I recommend adding it to your collection. It's a graphic novel called Testament of the Dragon, and it has some interesting pictures to go along with the narration. It's also a quicker read than Dark Heart.
Hope I was helpful.
A Hero you can understand..........2007-01-04
Justin wants to do the right thing. He struggles to be a decent person. But his Master doesn't allow such "noble" tendencies to rule the Disciples that the Master rules!
But for the death of beloved Weis's son David, we'd have all been blessed with the sequels to (what first began as) this series.
Dark Heart was Book I...if you read it, enjoy it. But give understanding to the ending, and respect Margaret's decision not to continue, as Dragon's Disciple was her son's creation.
Perhaps someday, someone she trusts and respects will ask her permission
to try/attempt to finish what they began. Then, perhaps we'll have the sequels that should have been.
But yes, still a good read, and another Exceptional Weis corroboration.
Great book-but should have a sequel.......2004-05-30
I thought this book was really good-well written, lots of action and a good plot. But it deserves a sequel! I was very disappointed to hear that Margaret Weis is not continuing the series-I'm not sure if people will like reading this book wehn it doesn't really have an ending. She should have written at least one more book and given us some closure. It's still a great book though, in my opinion. It just doesn't have a good ending.
The second book.......2004-03-16
I asked Margaret Weis about the second book (see www.staroftheguardians.com for her addie) and she said that due to the death of her son David Baldwin, she would not continue the series, as it was more his work than hers, and it would not feel proper to use his ideas. It was his project. There is a prequil or similar called Testament of the dragon, but i think it's only available in America, as i cannot obtain it in the wonderful world of Oz here.
were's the sequil?.......2003-07-24
is there going to be a sequil to this book or what. I read it and loved it. I have waited a few years and still no sequil.
Books:
- The Disappearance of the Universe: Straight Talk About Illusions, Past Lives, Religion, Sex, Politics, and the Miracles of Forgiveness
- The Disappearance of the Universe: Straight Talk About Illusions, Past Lives, Religion, Sex, Politics, and the Miracles of Forgiveness
- The King's Daughter Workbook: Becoming a Woman of God
- The Klingon Dictionary (Star Trek (Trade/hardcover))
- The Last Brother: A Civil War Tale (Tale of Young Americans)
- The Lost King of France: How DNA Solved the Mystery of the Murdered Son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
- The Paper Bag Princess (Classic Munsch)
- The Rising Tide: A Novel of World War II
- The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003
- The Secret of the Old Clock/The Hidden Staircase/The Bungalow Mystery/The Mystery at Lilac Inn/The Secret of Shadow Ranch/The Secret of Red Gate Farm (Nancy Drew, Book 1-6)
Books Index
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The Italian Way
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A Concise History of Italy (Cambridge Concise Histories)
The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi
The Italians
