by David Bernstein

 

Jacob is an ordinary kid with nothing more important on his mind than how well he'll play in a local baseball game, until he runs into the woods to retrieve a ball. When he doesn't return, his coach goes to search and finds disturbing evidence of a struggle that leads him to bring in the police.

 

This was a predictable story and the author digressed into individual character back stories too much in the early chapters. The writing itself was engaging and kept the story moving forward despite the sidetracks. There is some pretty gross graphic violence and disturbing themes like dealing with kidnapped and murdered children.

 

The one thing that began to make me lose interest was the mixed mythology, equating the goblin world with Satan and Hell. If you want an evil goblin king, fine. If you want to write about Satan, fine. But they come from different cultural beliefs so mixing them just dilutes the horror. Goblin mythology leaves a lot of room for imagination so why fall back on common Hell tropes?

 

The violence goes well into the gratuitous at times and by the ninth chapter the believability was developing a serious wobble. It also became repetitive with the goblin attacks following the same pattern every time. It was fairly engaging in the early chapters, but became tedious as the pages moved on. The ending was a good twist though. I hope it's left as it is and not a jump off for a sequel.

 

@GoddessFish, @DavidBernstein, #Detective, #Mystery

 

Caleb Jacobs is a man with a past. After serving on a failed dark ops assignment in Afghanistan, he leaves Marine Corps Intelligence to try to build a new life in Philadelphia as a homicide police detective.

Jacobs is happy, for a time, until he is assigned to solve the murder of Shannon Faraday. During the investigation, he is convinced the evidence points to him as the killer. He knows it is only a matter of time before other investigators see the same. He has no alibi and the clock is counting down.

Behind his partner’s back, Jacobs hires a private investigator named Lawrence Holmes. The PI is an irritation to the police, but he is unmistakably brilliant. And, many powerful people in the city owe him favors. Holmes is a bit odd. He insists on calling Jacobs Watson but claims to never have heard the name Sherlock. Jacobs can live with this kind of crazy as long as together they find the real killer.

They quickly link the murder to a series of seemingly unrelated crimes occurring throughout Philadelphia, and Jacobs becomes convinced the murder is related to the truth of what had happened during his time in Afghanistan. Old secrets have come back to haunt him.

Blockbuster Science was a neat concept. As someone who loves hard science fiction, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. It explores everything from Theory of Relativity, to String Theory, to Black Holes and everything in between. The chapters are short, kept as light-hearted as possible while still being informative, and obviously written by someone who truly loves science and science fiction.

I feel like Blockbuster Science would have been better as a coffee table book.

Yes, I think pretty pictures would have helped it out a lot.

It had very few photos, and most of what it did have were simple yet boring ones that we’ve all probably seen in some form several times before.

While I did genuinely enjoy reading several of the chapters, I found myself beset by the thought that I wasn’t really the right person for this book. Everything in Blockbuster Science was either something I’d read (lots) before, or something that went so completely over my head I could barely get a glimpse of it’s rear before it was out of sight. I picked this book up and put it back down several times before I actually got around to finishing it. It was never a bad book, it just felt unfinished/rough.

This is a science book for someone who doesn’t really want to science but like science at the same time. And while that sounds like it would be a really cool book in theory, in actuality, it just felt a bit off. Like it couldn’t quite figure out what it wanted to be. I think a pared down version, using (color) photographs and/or illustrations would have been able to hold my attention better. (Disclaimer from me: I’m the type of girl who likes to read Nat Geo and Discovery books about science for kids.)

One of the times when its easy to celebrate exactly how neat science is when you’re learning it in context of a great story. Its easy to see science as ‘the cool bits’, and much of that science is – indeed – awesome! However, to take the cool bits and talk about them in a way that keeps a casual reader (or viewer’s attention) requires a certain way with words and a charisma that few have. As it is, Blockbuster Science feels a bit text-bookish, with pop-culture references that are fun but don’t really do enough to keep the momentum of fun + educational going.

Blockbuster Science had a lot going for it, and the information contained within it is very interesting. However, it neither fails or succeeds spectacularly and left me, as a reader, vaguely frustrated because I felt like it could have been so much better than it was.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review consideration.

I absolutely blew through Bernstein's Episodes of Violence. I literally couldn't put it down. There was just something about this tale that sickened me and rocked me to my core. After taking some time between finishing it and writing this review, I believe it's simply that the story of these teenage losers going around and systematically killing for fun felt way too real. We all know kids like this. No, not necessarily first-hand knowledge that the scumbags across the street are offing random people. It's more like that you could see these kids fly under the radar because people don't necessarily notice them. They're undesirables, loners, not someone that the masses pay attention to. Bernstein uses this to his advantage and paints a picture that hits a little too close to home. A little too real. A little too believable. That's the beauty of Episodes of Violence. Be prepared to be uncomfortable when you read EoV. Be prepared to look at your neighbor kids across the street with a little more scrutiny. Are they just a bunch of misfit potheads that raise a little hell or is there more too them? You might want to make sure the doors are locked, just to be on the safe side.

 

 

5 Bashed Mailboxes out of 5

 

 

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