ALL THIS LIFE by Joshua Mohr ****

Not a mystery or murder novel, more like the movie "Crash" where all these people end up at the same spot at the same time at the end.

There are mostly computer users who think most of their life is glued to the internet but realize at the end it's not true. There is a story about an alcoholic mom and the story of her son and past girlfriend, then one about a kid who's sister commits suicide and thinks the internet is life, there's a madman of course, and parents, siblings etc.

Each story in itself is sort of interesting and as a novel it's okay for me, I didn't hate it but it's not my genre really. It holds interest but often you get confused which person's life we'r'e on that's the most distracting part of the novel. Otherwise library or buy it. Not all bad, mostly showing and no telling so it's more of a correctly written novel than most I read. This has a beginning, middle and end.

HOST by Robin Cook *****

Never one to ignore a Cook book (intended) I picked up this one which is new. As usual it involves doctors, hospitals and drugs. A med student, Lynn, has a boyfriend Carl, who needs minor knee surgery but something goes terribly wrong and he ends up in the next door building for non brain functioning coma patients. Wonder why parents aren't asked if he'd like to be moved anywhere else?

The Shapiro building is mostly a  mystery and you learn more about it the more you read. Carl was forced into a coma to end up next door comatose. Lynn and her BFF Michael are on the search to figure out what happened to Carl, why he was in a coma following simple routine knee surgery and they had a lot of ground to cover to get to the end and learn the truth.

At one point Carl makes friends with an IT guy from Shapiro, a Russian, and Michael abuses the friendship offered by the Russian by stealing his fingerprint and his passwords to the Shapiro computers, which can only be accessed from inside the building. I imagine no one really GAS about the Russian friend but I thought it wasn't very friendly of Michael but I guess he had no other alternatives to get into the building.

All in all it had a sort of ending, both Michael and Lynn graduating from their med rotations or education and onto residency someplace. There are still 2 Russians after them but they don't have any immediate plans to go after them.

Fast paced, hard to put down and YAY an ending of sorts. Something about Cook doesn't like finality or happy endings..get used to it!

SATURN RUN by John Sandford & Ctein ****

This is almost 500 pages, so of course being who I am I think I can cut 100 pages out of this sucker so it's not as sleep inducing as it was.

USA and China have a space ship (year 2068 or so) going to space because it appeared from earth that aliens were moving back and forth to a moon of Saturn. There's your RUN, they are racing to get there first. The US gets there first on (of all things in hell) a ship named the Richard R. Nixon. which almost made me toss the library book into the trash. Pushing that absurdity aside I read it all and SPOILER ALERT there are no aliens to meet, only robotic crap that aliens created. There are no questions worth asking those useless pieces of crap.

 I won't give much else away except to say that traveling for 3 yrs to another planet can be tres boring. There is a bet going onboard the US ship on the date the ship's captain and some guy will screw so they hold off till it's a million then fuck and split it. Meantime back at the Chinese ship they are scurrying along slowly with mostly militia on board vs the US having mostly scientists aboard with very few weapons altho they have lots of technology even printers that can reproduce printers etc. So the inevitable happens at around page 400 on the way home to Earth when the Chinese are having so much trouble with their ship they come aboard the US ship and try to take it over with some bitch killing people every time she blinks even after all Chinese being throughly searched by the US teams. They did a crappy ass job. The new travelers used aerosolized LSD. Must have been a fun time for all.

I folded some pages where I think "she' was used instead of "he' or it was ambiguous for pages until they finally mentioned she was with a she, as in gay. For awhile I couldn't tell if Sandy was male or female. In one scenario the Chinese were on a trip to Mars for some reason, saw the Saturn business and were perfectly equipped to change course in their cargo ship with enough crap on board of food and water for 6 years? I wasn't convinced. Meantime how and why did a US ship guy become a Chinese spy? I mean the Chinese didn't even know the US was going to Saturn so how'd they plant someone on the ship? Reality sets in.

I'd like to know at what time in the world laws were written stating what piracy in the sky was, or what international laws were dreamed up for space travel? Ok, so I'm not gonna be around for 2068 but still, I'm clueless, so how long has space travel been going on? Sometimes Zhang is male and sometimes I think it's a she, I'm very confused, it's a large book and I just can't familiarize myself quickly to so many people, sexes and countries. There are very few VERY WELL drawn characters the rest are filler robots. I hate books with too many people and this has too many pages, too many people, too many scenarios of b.s. to get thru without encountering ONE lousy alien. I mean COME ON!! I read 500 pages and no alien??? Disappointed. Hence the only 4 stars.

The BAZAAR of BAD DREAMS by Stephen King *****

Oh yeah these could keep you up at night if you read in bed, not recommended! Scary short stories that were craftily devised by the master of creep himself. The warning he gives is "Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth.."

So I would buy or get in library either way you can read the stories more than once but don't read in bed if the hard cover version drops on your head you'll sleep a long time. Very good reading, characters are full of life ... or death if that's called for. Go ahead and get it....creeeppppyyyyy!

NORMAL by Graeme Cameron **

I forgot to read the back flap and as I began reading about muntjac hooves, cellular repeater and all that English crap and more I realized I picked up another crappy Brit book.

A guy is supposed to be a killer. Problems with that 1) why? What is his motive? He doesn't have sex with them, he doesn't use them for anything. He keeps no trinkets as ALL serial killers do 2) He keeps a girl trapped in a cage in his basement forgetting she's there and she ends up protecting him from cops at the end and acting more of a killer than he was. 3) WTF is the falling in love shit? 4) Either a killer has emotional disturbances or not, this author waffles back and forth one minute the killer is sane the next he acts off the wall.

Personally I didn't like the story line very much. I don't even remember the killer's name, that's how important he was in the story. He was so emasculated it was hard to tell exactly what his issues were. Why did he kill? What the fuck did he do to earn money? Supposedly his mum and dad died. I don't know if he killed them both or not, the story was ambiguous about that. It was actually ambiguous about most things. If you ask me any questions about the novel, the intent of anyone I don't have an answer for you. He keeps killing people but not like a real serial killer. He kills some hookers, he kills a guy who treated a female badly, he kills cops to stop them from discovering his murders. He keeps one alive in his basement cage even while killing a newer girl.

I  DO NOT GET IT. Stupid ass book stupidly written.  All I got out of it was CONFUSED. So I say to you do not bother.

The GAMES by Ted Kosmatka ****

Since I really liked the last book I read written by Ted I went back and ordered the 2 I didn't read from the library and finished this one today. It's pretty much your standard monster story.

The future has Olympic games with 'lab created' monsters in a pit sort of fight to the death kind of thing and the US has won several games in a row. This sort of weird guy named Evan designed a creature made from ideas he got from various employees working on the same thing but apparently Silas is the boss in charge yet he knows nothing about the creature or what it can or can't do and is shocked to see it growing wings as it develops over the year before the games. Not a very involved geneticist at all far as I can tell. Fortunately for future scientists he's not around to screw up the planet a second time.

This Evan computer genius guy has a kid growing somewhere inside a computer (don't ask me I didn't write it) and it's somehow (don't ask me I didn't write it) connected to the monster. I am clueless how this exists. Anyway it's, of course, doomed from the start. Expected ending was expected.

I will say that the first novel I read was much better than this one. I was only so so into it and wasn't a page turner FOR ME. I sort of had my suspicions about what would happen and duh...I was correct.

Didn't hate it, didn't love it. If i read this one first I wouldn't have been so eager to read more of his stuff, glad I didn't and have the next one waiting at the library hope it redeems him somewhat.

BRUSH BACK by Sara Paretsky **

Large book and it starts with something really stupid. A woman, Stella gets released from serving her sentence for killing her daughter and VI Warshawski is on the case!! What case? Well I'm glad you asked, since everything is over and done with sentence served WGAF?? I don't.

I tried so hard to read this but I just don't care enough about the case. I mean it happened over 10 yrs ago, someone confessed and did her jail time so what? What am I supposed to care about? Wrong person in jail? Then idiot shouldn't have confessed. What else? Hummmmm???? I. do. not. care.

You read it. I couldn't stand it another minute and I got halfway thru the stupid thing.

THE FLICKER MEN by Ted Kosmatka *****

Very intriguing book. It's a lot of science and quantum theory stuff so at first you feel like it's almost over your head but if you keep reading it gets more uncomplicated and the story flows. You really don't want to put it down once you're turning pages.

This scientist Eric Argus is in  a new job trying to do research but his past work couldn't be finished, he was afraid of the results and walked away from the job. He decided to work on the theory about light molecules splitting up in a box with 2 slits and discovered that some people can see the split and others cannot. No animals can. That meant some people weren't the same as others. The story continues from there. His life becomes endangered, he gets help, loses friends along the way and you get to an ambiguous ending.

Is he in a mental hospital trying to figure out his formula while "crazy" like his mom? Or did he really attempt suicide like his drunk dad? He has a lot NOT in his favor so the ending leaves you wondering what the state of his mind is. It appears he is working again as a scientist but 'where' and what happened in the story is up in the air. Pretty good reading. I would buy the book, you could easily read this more than once.

PROTOCOL by James Abel ****

Altho I got a little confused about people/names/jobs eventually it turned out to be a pretty good story. The thing I don't understand is DID someone make rabies as an aerosol? No one ever answered that. Plus it was injected with blood product. Rabies was used to kill people and the thought was it would end up in a water supply and kill a lot of people.....BUT....

Rabies only resides in the brain, it can only be caught thru saliva...PERIOD. There has never been ONE case of aerosolized rabies. I did a LOT of research on rabies (I was an animal control officer) and up to now only one maybe two people have survived it thru coma. They were bit by a rabid animal. You cannot catch rabies ANY OTHER WAY. The writer doesn't make clear HOW the rabies was transfered...by what means? It isn't going to survive in blood, nor a few days outside a living host so I don't get it. Otherwise if you ignore those facts it's not a bad story.

LIGHTLESS by C.A.Higgins **

I'm not a fan of Sci Fi apparently, altho I loved every book written by Douglas Adams, he had a wicked sense of humor. Since then I haven't found the same style of reading material in Sci Fi and this one isn't anything I'd write home about.

Some guys somehow manage to get into someone's space ship, tamper with the computer and one gets captured while the other gets away. Some uppity female is sent to question them, how TF she knows they're on the ship I do not know. That was not explained. There are only 3 people living on the ship and the bad guy escaped thru vents as if....um the occupants one of whom is a computer genius didn't know there were vents?? WTF??? How did the criminal land on a computer managed ship in the first f'kn place?

Ok I read about 50+ pages and tossed it aside. I don't GAS how many awards the author won, she sucks. If you like sci fi, this is your below average fair example of it good luck with that. Me not like.