Titan's Tears by Chad Lester

February 21, 2024

Titan's Tears by Chad Lester

Three characters are on a collision course in a dystopian world: Seth works for an Amazon-like corporation until he is replaced by a robot. Belle is an odd young woman living in a remote Alaskan town, until she is offered a high-paying job at Eccleston Evolution, a high-level tech company, even though she has no real job skills. Sophia is the founder of Eccleston Evolution, which develops cutting edge and sometimes controversial technology, and created the world's most advanced AI, The Augur.

Strange dystopian book about scientific and bio-ethics and the evils of science gone wrong, as well as greed, megalomania, etc. As soon as I read about the forest full of bio-engineered creatures outside the compound, I knew there would be at least one frantic escape attempt pursued by wild prehistoric animals. My biggest complaint is that the writing is sloppy - it needed a really GOOD editor. There are a lot of errors - at some points, the author forgets that one of his characters is blind. At another point, two of the characters are handcuffed but not to each other, and he has them run holding hands - how awkward is that? Super advanced robots go out in the rain and short out - seriously?? Not sure where the title came from, either, as it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the storyline. I think the author tried to cover too much ground and too many topics. If you want to read a really good futuristic book that covers many of the same subjects, read The Tomorrow File by Lawrence Sanders.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita

December 7, 2022

City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita

A group of teens living in an isolated Alaskan town find a boot with a dismembered foot on the shoreline. This is a frequent occurrence and the gruesome find is chalked up to a suicide or someone who fell off a cruise ship. But when an Anchorage detective hears about the discovery, she wonders if it is related to the disappearance of her husband and son a year earlier. She travels to the town, only to be stranded by a snowstorm and avalanche. With nothing else to do, she begins digging into the town and its residents.

This starts out as a nice "locked room" mystery with a limited number of characters who live in the same building in the same tiny town. Everyone is stranded by the snowstorm, unable to leave. There is even a moose named Denny. But about 2/3 of the way in, the author introduces a group of characters from a nearby Native American village (the "Rez Men," who she takes great pains to emphasize are NOT Native American) who are able to move about and come and go as they please. They all sound like their dialog is from a 1950s B-movie. I'm sure the author liked all of her characters and didn't want to make one of them the bad guy so she decided to pin it on someone from outside the town, but I hate it when authors do this. It's a cop-out.

Also, the two detectives are conducting a thorough investigation up until this point, but at the 2/3 mark, they suddenly get stupid. Instead of thoroughly searching the town and surrounding area for two children who go missing, including the nearby abandoned military compound (hint, hint), they decide to hop on snowmobiles and go search the Native American village that is two hours away.

The ending is just two unbelievable. The reader is supposed to believe that the murder victim in a tiny isolated town was somehow involved with the deaths of the detective's husband and son. How unbelievable is that?? Talk about a stretch.

And why does Cara, the female detective, start seeing and talking to ghosts, including her dead husband? I know she is supposed to have PTSD, but ghosts have nothing to do with the story and an editor should have cut out those parts. It pisses me off when authors portray women as weak-minded. The male detective doesn't hear or see anything supernatural.

Yamashita tried to deal with too many big issues: domestic abuse, drugs, poverty, suicide, illegal immigration, PTSD, the plight of many Native Americans. These are all important topics, but pick one (or two, at the most) and work with it.

Disappointing.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Talkeetna, Alaska, where this novel does NOT take place

How Quickly She Disappears by Raymond Fleischmann

December 13, 2019

How Quickly She Disappears by Raymond Fleischmann

Elisabeth Pfautz and her family live in a tiny town in Alaska.  Her husband works for the Office of Indian Affairs, and she spends most of her time home-schooling her daughter and waiting for the weekly mail delivery, until a stranger appears one day.  He seems to know a lot about Elisabeth’s sister Jacqueline who went missing 20 years earlier.  He offers information to Elisabeth but wants something in return.  Elisabeth is desperate to know what happened to her sister, but can she trust him?

This is a quick read and I was very interested in the time and place (rural Alaska, right before Pearl Harbor).  I also like books about cold cases and missing people.  However, the story lost its momentum and the ending just sort of fizzled out.  Did the author not know how to end the story or is he planning a sequel?  More character development would have helped, too.  It's unfair to compare this thriller to The Silence of the Lambs or The Dry, both of which are gripping thrillers, since this one isn't in the same league.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-ARC in return for a review.