Category Archives: Reviews

Another cool MS white paper, this one is an overview of site resilience solutions. The paper discusses inter-site replication, stretched clusters, and some other goodies, citing their pros and cons. (It also links to Microsoft’s guidelines for deploying inter-site replication— well worth reading too.)

Kyle Mills is usually an unorthodox writer. His books are usually thought-provoking– for example, Smoke Screen posed the question of what might happen if a major tobacco company said “to heck with it” and shut its doors. However, Fade is a straightforward action novel, and IMHO not a particularly good one. The main character is a former Navy SEAL who is forced to retire after being wounded. He’s bitter, understandably enough, because there’s a bullet lodged near his spine that will inevitably paralyze him, and the government refused to help him get surgery while the problem was still fixable. Now the Department of Homeland Security is trying to recruit Fade to come back, and he doesn’t want to. What follows is a pretty stock tale, uplifted by Mills’ gift for witty dialogue. In the second half of the book, the characters suddenly develop; that’s a weird way to put it, but it’s almost like seeing a flat 2-D drawing morph into a fully rendered 3-D representation. That’s not enough to save the book, though. The ending is predictable, and this just isn’t up to Mills’ usual standards.

Fun time-travel romp. The best part: Varley doesn’t even try to explain how the time machine works, which saves a lot of tedious handwaving. Instead, we get extended descriptions of how a very focused (not to say monomaniacal) multi-billionaire locates a frozen mammoth that he wants to clone. He ends up with rather more than that, namely a live juvenile mammoth named Fuzzy, plus some adults. That’s where the story really takes off. Were it not for an excess of bad language, this would be a great young adult book. As it is, this is a fun, if light, read even for non-SF fans.

Sometimes when I read a book that’s part of a series, I get the feeling that I’m dropping into a long-running relationship between the author and his previous readers. For example, I don’t think many people who pick up Reynolds’ Absolution Gap will find that it’s a satisfying read absent the knowledge of what happened in the first two books in that series.
Fortunately, Chuck Logan doesn’t have that problem. In After the Rain, he continues the relationship between his two primary characters from other books. Nina Pryce is a US Army officer and a member of SFOD-Delta (that’s just “Delta” to civilians), and her sometimes-estranged husband, Phil Broker, is an undercover cop. There’s a lot of history between them, or so we understand from their interplay in this book (I haven’t read any of Logan’s earlier books). Pryce is trying to penetrate what appears to be a terrorist plot in– get ready– North Dakota, and when she uses their 7-year-old daughter as an actress, Broker comes to town to pick her up. Of course, Broker ends up involved in the plot, which is reasonably twisty and turny. In the end, the bad guys fail, although not without cost to the good guys.
Logan’s strength in this book is its characterizations. Both Nina and Phil come off as real, multi-dimensional people: parents, lovers, and sheepdogs. Both of them have strengths and flaws in about equal measure, and the tumultuous nature of their relationships makes for some interesting interplay between them. I didn’t think the primary villain was nearly as well-defined, though– he was much more a cardboard bad guy from the psycho-killer bin at Characters-R-Us. The descriptions of the weather and terrain of a North Dakota summer are quite good, too, although not quite on a par with the lyricism of James Lee Burke or the noir of Barry Eisler.
Put it this way: I’ve already reserved Logan’s earlier Nina-and-Phil books from the library. I may or may not read them all, but I’m willing to give them a try.

I’ve been fooling around with the MediaManager plugin for MoveableType. Its goal is to provide a structured system for creating and tracking entries about books, movies, CDs, and the like. For example, here’s what my current media queue looks like:

It still has a few bugs; for example, even though I’m using the sample code from the product page in my page template, I only see one book I’m reading and zero that I’ve read. I also can’t post reviews; I get a MySQL insertion error when I try. However, the overall premise is cool, and I think I’ll be happy with the finished product.

“BULLETPROOF WIRELESS SECURITY : GSM, UMTS, 802.11, and Ad Hoc Security (Communications Engineering)” (Praphul Chandra) I asked for a review copy of this book because I understood it to be a guide to implementing security. The problem is that “implementing” is a loaded term. I wanted a book on how to set up and configure security, and Chandra’s written a book about how to engineer products that implement these solutions. In that light, this is an interesting book because it covers GSM, UMTS, and 802.11 security. The writing style is clear and direct. However, there’s a problem: for a book billed as comprehensive, there’s not enough depth to actually help an implementer build an implementation of any of these protocols. For example, the first 60 pages or so explain some basic security concepts and algorithms, and the next 25 pages cover how security protocols are applied at various OSI layers. There’s a chapter dedicated to GSM and UMTS security, and one on 802.11a/b/g security that (IMHO) pulls some punches about how bad WEP is. In a book targeted at implementation engineers, it would have been helpful for Chandra to go deeper into the reasons why we got stuck with such a crappy security implementation.

Overall, this book is probably most useful to those who need a quick survey-level introduction to wireless security because they’re working in the wireless industry. It’s pretty much useless for system administrators or developers (particularly because there’s only vestigial coverage of code security/quality issues) except for folks who have a general interest in the topic.

“BULLETPROOF WIRELESS SECURITY : GSM, UMTS, 802.11, and Ad Hoc Security (Communications Engineering)” (Praphul Chandra) I asked for a review copy of this book because I understood it to be a guide to implementing security. The problem is that “implementing” is a loaded term. I wanted a book on how to set up and configure security, and Chandra’s written a book about how to engineer products that implement these solutions. In that light, this is an interesting book because it covers GSM, UMTS, and 802.11 security. The writing style is clear and direct. However, there’s a problem: for a book billed as comprehensive, there’s not enough depth to actually help an implementer build an implementation of any of these protocols. For example, the first 60 pages or so explain some basic security concepts and algorithms, and the next 25 pages cover how security protocols are applied at various OSI layers. There’s a chapter dedicated to GSM and UMTS security, and one on 802.11a/b/g security that (IMHO) pulls some punches about how bad WEP is. In a book targeted at implementation engineers, it would have been helpful for Chandra to go deeper into the reasons why we got stuck with such a crappy security implementation.

Overall, this book is probably most useful to those who need a quick survey-level introduction to wireless security because they’re working in the wireless industry. It’s pretty much useless for system administrators or developers (particularly because there’s only vestigial coverage of code security/quality issues) except for folks who have a general interest in the topic.

So, the obvious first: no, John Rain doesn’t get killed in this book, but not for lack of opportunities. As the book opens, Rain’s in Manila to kill a bomb-maker at the behest of Israeli intelligence. With him is Dox, Rain’s new partner. The hit misfires when Rain makes a spur-of-the-moment decision not to kill the target after seeing him with his family– the target has a son about the same age that Rain was when his own father was killed. That brief moment of hesitation buys him a butt-load of trouble; while exfiltrating, Rain and Dox kill two people who are believed to be CIA agents. The Israelis are worried that Rain’s attempt will be tracked back to them, so they put the word out: John Rain must die.

Trust is one of the central themes of this book. Rain somewhat reluctantly comes to trust Dox after the shootout that ends Rain Storm— but as that trust blossoms, Rain comes to realize how much he’s missed being able to trust people. This is certainly a common problem among contract assassins, but us ordinary Joes can get the idea. As Rain attempts to figure out whether the two dead agents were really CIA or not, and thus dissuade the Mossad from killing him, he’s forced to make some hard decisions about who to trust, and how much.

Another key theme is redemption, for want of a better word. Rain begins to wonder if he’s done any good by his long string of killings, and if perhaps his energies might be redirected to killing evil people instead of whomever he’s paid to kill. Illustrating this, he considers the difference between the Japanese words roughly translating to “sword of justice” and “sword of oppression”. Some reviewers on Amazon have dismissed this introspection as sap or fluff, but I think it adds a great deal of depth to Eisler’s portrayal of Rain. Who among us has not looked back to consider whether his life has been well spent, and whether the remainder could be better spent?

As with preceding books, Eisler moves the action along at a racetrack pace. His descriptions of place are crisp and evocative (I particularly liked his description of Rain’s trips to the rural Philippines), and there is less emphasis on the minutae of Rain’s hand-to-hand fights with his opponents (more knife- and gunplay, though). Because I’m not a judoka, this made the book way more readable for me.

I can’t say much about the denouement of the book except that it sets out very clearly what’s going to happen in the next book, and that it contains a plot twist that I certainly didn’t anticipate that sets things up neatly. I’m eagerly looking forward to the next book, but I only have to say one thing until then: jazz goes with New Orleans. Highly recommended.

Update: I found this essay by Eisler that describes the backstory behind Killing Rain. It’s pretty darn interesting.

I was thinking the other day about my habit of posting book reviews. To the casual observer, it might seem that I like everything I read. This isn’t strictly true. I generally review books here only if they were particularly good (Barry Eisler), particularly bad (Eric Nylund), or interesting for some other reason. There are sooo many other places to read book reviews that I don’t want to waste time reviewing the mediocre (William Lashner’s The Shadow Falls) books that I often end up with. Of course, I’m fairly selective about what I’ll read in the first place, so perhaps that has something to do with it.

It’s hard to imagine a less likely subject for a novel: Vince Camden is an ex-con in the Federal Witness Protection Program, With just 8 days before the 1980 presidential election, he’s trying to decide how he should vote– meanwhile, a hired killer is stalking him, his hooker girlfriend is trying to become a real estate agent, and his job making donuts is periodically interrupted by a hot blonde who’s also stumping for a state legislature race.

Jess Waller has written one book that combines these plot threads (plus some others); it’s simultaneously a mystery novel, a character study, an exploration of the political atmosphere in 1980, and a love story. It’s impossible for me to characterize it, except to say that it’s simultaneously hilarious, moving, thought-provoking, and sad. The dialogue is outstanding, both for its snap and its reality. Mafia dons don’t talk like Oxford dons, and Waller knows that. The pacing and plotting is top-notch. Highly recommended, and now I’m going to go read Waller’s other books– there are only a few.

Here in Perrysburg, we have an ice cream stand called Mr. Freeze. I bought one of their homemade ice cream bars once. It was nearly impenetrable; I almost broke a tooth trying to bite into it, and I ended up with a sore jaw by the time I finished it– but the ice cream was good enough to make it worth the effort. That’s how I feel about Alastair Reynolds, who has written some truly outstanding hard-SF space operas. Reynolds is the author most like Scott Westerfeld, but there’s a difference: Westerfeld writes with a light, spare style that makes his books much easier to read than Reynolds. I’m reminded of Pascal’s aphorism (“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”); Westerfeld evidently put a great deal of work into streamlining his writing.

The Risen Empire opens with a hostage crisis: the sister of the Emperor has been taken hostage by the Rix, a cult that worships machine intelligence; an Imperial warship has been dispatched to effect a rescue. The sister, the Emperor, and lots of other characters in this novel are elevated– that is, they’ve been equipped with a symbiote that protects them against death. Invented by the Emperor himself 1600 years prior to the book’s opening, the technology that assures eternal life has become an extremely powerful social influence in the Eighty Worlds, but not everyone thinks it’s a good influence. The central tension in this novel, and its successor, is between “gray” (traditionalists, including the Risen dead)

and “pink” (what you might call dynamists; a faction that believes that Imperial society is dragged down by the grays’ adherence to tradition and preservation), and that’s the really interesting point on which the book turns.

Westerfeld has written some truly outstanding battle sequences, too; all of the technologies he describes are logical extensions of current ones, without any of the stupid hand-waving magic that a lesser author might have tried to pass off. Despite the fact that the characters are so far removed from us in time and space that they might come across as unsympathetic, it’s easy to identify with both Laurent Zai ( the gray captain of the Lynx) and Nara Oxham, a pink Imperial senator and Zai’s more-or-less accidental lover. (My favorite character was actually Marine private Bassiritz, who is more or less a good Southern boy who joins the Imperial Marines to see the world(s)).

The second book, The Killing of Worlds, picks up exactly where the first leaves off (modulo a bit of clumsy linkage that I suspect the publisher made Westerfeld add). An extended space battle is the centerpiece of the second book; the Lynx takes on a much larger, more powerful Rix battlecruiser in a surprising and suspenseful duel that’s extremely well executed. The love story between Oxham and Zai continues to develop, with occasional flashbacks that further illuminate their individual lives. Once the starship battle is over, the center of mass switches to a political battleground where Oxham and her allies try to stop the Emperor from a planetary genocide– and then things get really interesting.

I highly recommend these two books, but only if you read them both. Westerfeld calls these two the opening arc of the “Succession” series, and I’ll eagerly look forward to the next books in the series.

I’m making a video for an upcoming project, so I needed a couple of plugins for special effects. Man, those things are expensive! I found a good source of inexpensive plugins from c/fx, including their typewriter/computer plugin. It works well, but has one big limitation: you can’t enter multiple lines of text. This makes it useless for my needs, even though it’s otherwise quite nice (and only US$5.50!) Back to the drawing board…