Rising Tides

I was a big fan of Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory series, but grew tired of the annual releaseschedule. It took ten years for me to get the entire story and with each new book, I had to get reacquainted with the characters all over again. A better series model in my mind is to put the books out on a semi-annual or tri-annual basis. This gets the readers in and keeps them interested over the long haul. (Of course the author needs to write an engaging story) Two of my current favorite authors manage to maintain this pace - Carrie Vaughn and Taylor Anderson . Vaugh writes the Kitty Norville werewolf series which started out as an annual, but evolved into a twice-a-year schedule which makes the reading that much more enjoyable.

Taylor Anderson makes his Destroyermen series move even quicker. The first three novels came out over the space of a year and after a year's wait the fourth and fifth books were released over a six month span. Hopefully the sixth book will follow shortly.

RISING TIDES advances the grand story as well as the plots of the previous book. The cast is more spread out than ever before. There are military missions in the west, diplomatic endeavours in the east, salvage operations in the Philippines and Indonesia, and the survival efforts on Yap. Oh yeah, then there are the plans of the Grik. In a way, almost too much was going on in the book. I have faith Mr. Anderson can pull it all together and bring the reader to a suitable ending. As long as he keeps up the pace, I'll keep tuning in.

Imperial Life in the Emerald City

The problem with reading about recently transpired history is that nothing is new. Because of Chandrasekaran's reporting and others, we know all of the stupidity and inspiration that transpired behind the Iraq reconstruction.

The book is an excellent study of that time and would do well as a refresher on how not to run a reconstruction. Too bad the people involved in creating this mess did not have a tome such as this to refer to as they created a disaster.