Category: Review

Review: Knockdown

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Knockdown

Dick Francis’ Knockdown is a horse racing mystery. I feel like I would have liked it a lot more if I was into horse racing. It’s a little hard to review because the basics are very good. I can see what it’s trying to do. It’s just there isn’t really a connection with me.

I guess it’d be like if I was a horse racing enthusiast and I was reading a mystery novel set in a conventional World War III. The basics are mostly good, but there just isn’t anything to grab. Which is a shame. Or maybe I just jumped into the deep end of the series too quickly. Which is still a shame.

Review: America’s Favorite Son

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GG Allin: America’s Favorite Son

The semi-autobiography (it’s a long story) of infamous “punk rocker” GG Allin , America’s Favorite Son is a look into the life and mind of someone who was legitimately not well. Going up to the “Ann Arbor Incident” which resulted in his longest of many prison sentences, the book is honestly disturbing. It does show Allin’s appeal, which was in the same category as the intentional train crashes that Scott Joplin immortalized.

Allin started off as someone who made simple, vulgar punk rock before shedding what talent he had and turning into an outright freak long before his overdose. This book does not paint a good picture of his mental state, and it’s supposed to be sympathetic. But reading it is an experience. Just like watching one of Allin’s “”””concerts””””.

Review: The Last Dive

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The Last Dive

Bernie Chowdhury’s The Last Dive is about one of those ever-evergreen true horror tragedies-a diving accident. With personal knowledge of the victims in the Rouse family, it should be good. But it’s a disappointing book. So much of it is basically an autobiography written in first person. Which is fine but isn’t really the point of the book.

So much theoretical potential amounts to just variants of “they died” (which is about as much of a surprise as The Death of Stalin ) . There’s also “other divers died in similar dives” and “Diving is dangerous.” These three sentences take up a three hundred page book. Which is a shame because the subject matter is so good that the book can’t be all bad. Just mostly bad.

Review: Military Strategy For Writers

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Military Strategy for Writers

I’d love to see a book that can concisely explain strategic concepts to non-army nerds. But Stephen Kenneth Stein’s Military Strategy for Writers is not that book.

The biggest problem is the tone. It’s less “here’s what strategy is and why it’s often overlooked” and more “The generals are idiots, the writers are idiots, but I the great Historian shall tell you why all of them are wrong”, a tone that at absolute best is unhelpful.

It doesn’t help that I see typical pop-history cliche sneers that trigger alarm bells. WRT Vietnam and Iraq, for example it,s “hurr durr greeted as liberators” (during the actual invasion, that was largely accurate) and “Hurr durr us did big conventional war in Vietnam not smart coin like the British in Malaysia ” (they did that because the north was also doing it, with large northern armies being a complication that pure guerilla wars never had).

Ironically you could use Vietnam and Iraq to show the limits of strategy. Like the best case in Vietnam was going to be a Korea-style divided country, likely without South Korea’s economic boom. As a powder keg held together solely by a dictator’s lash and with a neighbor that had the ability to stir up trouble and the reasonable fear it could be next, Iraq was always going to pose a challenge.

Anyway, it fails to balance storytelling. Like yes, you get unrealistic amounts of decisive battles in fiction, but that’s because not every work needs or wants to be a hazy grey tale and because decisive conflict works for storytelling.

Review: Alamo on the Rhine

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Alamo on the Rhine

For the first World War III review of the new year, I turn to T. K. Blackwood’s Alamo on the Rhine, a spinoff/side story of the Iron Crucible 1990s World War III. It’s about a daring strike on a vital air base at the start of the war. Told with the same effectiveness as the other entries, I greatly enjoyed it.

I couldn’t help but see the parallels to Market Garden, Kitona, and Hostomel and wonder what role those historical battles played in the crafting of this book, similar to how I wanted a “Soviet Gulf War” in All Union but not an exact one. It’s to Blackwood’s credit that the excellent story does not come across as a simple historical copy-paste.
This is a very fun book of the kind I haven’t read in a while. Nice job.

A Thousand Words: OutRun

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OutRun

Sega’s legendary car driving game OutRun was an arcade time attack game where you control a couple in a Ferrari trying to make it to the end of a series of branching paths before the clock runs out. That is the least impressive thing about it. The most impressive thing is that a game in 1986, even an arcade game, manages to still look fresh and well animated to this day, and have things like a changeable radio and diverging paths. Remember, the console stuff at this time was the likes of Mach Rider.

It took over a decade to finally be able to make an arcade-quality home port of it. Which speaks to how limit-pushing it was/is. While today its most direct legacy of giant arcade machine driving games with steering wheels and frequently even pedals is viewed as outdated kitsch, every game with vehicles owes a lot to this.

Review: The BAC Three-Eleven

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The BAC Three-Eleven: The Airbus That Should Have Been

In one of those “only someone like me would like this book” book purchases, I got Graziano Freschi’s book on the BAC Three-Eleven. The actual never-was airplane itself was an all-British two engine jumbo jet similar to the Airbus A300 only slightly larger and with both engines in the back.

Freschi both describes the plane and makes the argument that it was a mistake for the British to cancel it, as with many (if not all) their big postwar programs, they would spend large sums of money on something and then cancel it, getting the worst of both worlds. His case is weakened by Britain’s poor reputation in such regards, and he kind of hedges from “This would have been a success” to “Britain would have been in a better negotiating position when they rejoined Airbus”.

Though not perfect, it is an interesting look at an obscure plane.

Review: Atomic Steppe

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Atomic Steppe

Togzhan Kassenova’s Atomic Steppe is the story of Kazakhstan and nuclear weapons. A Kazakh whose father was an advisor and think-tank head during the crucial early 1990s period, she’s well suited to write it. The bulk of the book is about the horrific environmental legacy of nuclear tests and infrastructure on the country, told excellently.

The problem with the main theoretical part of the book, the nuclear negotiations, is that despite her sincere efforts to show its complexity, the outcome was obvious and never actually in doubt. Kazakhstan had even less chance of preserving a nuclear arsenal than Ukraine or Belarus. That said, there’s plenty of finds from the almost video-game like saga of Americans retrieving super-enriched uranium for disposal to the Russian crews of the nuclear delivery systems flying bombers away and draining the fuel of ICBMs (SS-18s are liquid fueled) to skewer any chance of Kazakhstan being able to seize them.

It’s not a drama, but it’s a good look at atomic history.

A Thousand Words: Riding Fight

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Riding Fight

Taito’s Riding Fight is a very unique video game.

It tries to match Mode Seven Style “flat but three dimension” fast movement with brawling. While it doesn’t always succeed, I give it credit for trying, and the presentation and music are excellent. The plot involves superhero-mercs-whoever on hoverboards fighting evil, from Momar Gaddafi (yes the second boss is based on him) to Japanese mystic princesses. The final section involves saving “the young mistress of an important man”, which I really hope was a mistranslation. Otherwise it would be a unique twist on the “Save the princess” (what would his wife think?)

The novelty and ambition alone makes this game worth it.

Review: The British Carrier Strike Fleet After 1945

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The British Carrier Strike Fleet After 1945

In my 5+ years running Fuldapocalypse, I think I may have found the most dull book I’ve ever reviewed. That would be a reference book with the appropriate name of The British Carrier Strike Fleet After 1945. I feel a little bad calling it that because A: It’s a reference book, and B: It actually has quite a lot of good information about British carriers.

However, even by those standards I found it a slog. To put it very mildly. And I read reference books for fun! So I’d still recommend it if you like aircraft carriers. Just be warned.