Vivid Characters, Superior Plotting, Impressive First Book

Review By Ken Korczak

Art Spevak is an anonymous nobody, alienated from society, alienated from himself, alienated from his culture. He's a man with no ambitions, no interests, and no enthusiasm. He's a loser with women, haunted about being abandoned by his birth parents, and sees no clear future for himself.

His best friend Telly Brensen is tall and handsome as a Nordic god. His spirit is fiery and bold. Women would sell a kidney for a single night with him. He's intelligent, fearless and there's no challenge in the world he can't grapple with, conquer and wrestle to the ground.

Art and Telly endure a lackluster, if not dreary middle class upbringing in the American northwest, and then get flung out into the world. They confront the brutality of war, tragedy, beautiful women, boredom, sleazy criminals, greedy and incompetent bosses, snarky coworkers, strange lands, exotic cultures and confounding philosophical dilemmas.

Does it sound like the making of the proverbial Great American Novel? It does. And this novel, HONOR AND ENTROPY comes close to just that - a Great American Novel. For me it is a no brainer to give this my top recommendation. But now let me make a few points:

The great writer and poet Randall Jarrell said: "A novel is a long piece of writing that has something wrong with it." HONOR AND ENTROPY is a superb novel, but it carries Jarrell's stigma.

Could this novel have been made better by editing out at least 200 words? That's beyond a reasonable doubt. I'd take out 300. I know, I know, it hurts! Taking a razor to prose someone sweated blood over is agony! But in the battlefield of literature, you have to accept the harsh reality that sometimes a leg must be sawed off to save the patient.

Also, this novel challenges with tricky-to-follow flash-backs, and abrupt changes in perspective of who is thinking what, when and where. Plus there are more than a dozen characters to keep track of, and this will keep even astute readers on their toes.

But look -- the best literature requires those confronting it to give something in order to receive. A book that challenges the reader is a book that delivers the most impact.

When I got into the rhythm of the flow of the narrative, the shifts and flashbacks started to feel like a finely woven pattern; I felt absorbed in the vivid world the storyline creates; I was treated to vibrant, real, believable and tragic characters I found myself caring about.

Please note that this book is not as difficult as, say, "Ulysses" by James Joyce, or maybe "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. It's even less "gonzo" than "Catch-22." All of these 1,000 pages flow along well enough, but expect a certain learning curve for the first 100 pages, or so.

What's interesting about HONOR AND ENTROPY is that it's a work of vivid American realism - yet at the same time - manages to incorporate deeper levels of allegory, while also shadowing timeless classics, especially Homer's Odyssey and Shakespeare's Hamlet. More than anything, the characters are on a hero's journey, or in the case of Art Spevak, a vision quest.

If I could grant three wishes to this book, they would be: 1. A second more aggressively edited edition is released, 2. That Hollywood comes calling to make it into a movie, and 3. It finds a gigantic audience.

Ken Korczak is the author of Bird Brain Genius BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

A Sexy International Thriller That's Boring

Review By Ken Korczak

An incredibly lovely young American woman, oozing with allure and sexuality, jets off to Europe. She parlays her irresistible sensual powers into a small fortune by sleeping with as many super-rich, handsome men she can lure into her 5-star luxury hotel mattresses - sound good?

I suppose if you are an average woman living in, say, Iowa, and you have a boring, soul-killing job working as a stock clerk at, say, Wal-Mart, it would be very pleasant indeed to enter the world of Megan Nolan, whose serial whoring has enabled her to pack away $600,000 of sex money in a Swiss bank account. Sweet! But her adventures are only beginning!

Ms. Nolan manages to get herself involved with a devilishly handsome Saudi millionaire, who is not only a soul-shattering sex partner, but also gets her entangled in the world of international politics and the war on terror!

The jam she gets herself into is so severe, her sublimely handsome, muscular father with amazing Robert-Redford-caliber hair must also flit off to France, where police detectives have some awful news for him about his bed-hopping daughter.

Fortunately, the detective assigned to his daughter's case is no snotty French gumshoe in a wrinkled trench coat, but a sizzling hot, sexy female bombshell cop who instantly volunteers to get a DNA sample from the troubled dad by getting her, er ... hands ... on some of his sperm! (I'm not making this up!)

Yes, author James LePore knows that you don't want to be bored when you read an international thriller novel. He knows you crave stories about beautiful people having a lot of sex, punctuated by violent encounters with brutal killers, thugs, low-lifes and spies!

All this, and LePore manages to write a fairly flaccid book that has about as much tension as a game of Scrabble. On the other hand, this is an okay enough read for a lazy day on a summer beach, or if you need something to read on a long plane ride, or maybe on the bus as you travel to your crummy job at Wal-Mart.

It's typical genre fiction that does not rise to the heights of the best Ludlum or Forsyth, perhaps, but it manages to eek out maybe a C-Plus from a jaded, obscure book reviewer like me.

Ken Korczak is the author of MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

Ghost In The Mirror: Bland, Run-of-the-Mill Spook Stories

Review By Ken Korczak

People who are hardcore fans of paranormal investigation and who have read widely on the topic will find little to whet their interest in this collection of true ghost encounter stories.

Just about every case discussed reads like a worn cliché of the genre - there are little girls who had an "imaginary friend" - but could it really have been a ghost? There's the standard, "She felt a creepy cold hand touch her foot under the bed covers!" and the hackneyed: "The area where they lived was once inhabited by Indians before white settlers drove them out, the Indians tragically died, and so now ...lah, la, lah, la, lah ..."

And let's not forget the hospital that was converted into a hotel, and thousands of people probably died in the hospital, and so now maybe the hotel rooms are infested by the confused dead. An especially egregious sin (in my mind) occurs after the hospital-to-hotel story -- there appears (by golly!)the name of the hotel, the number you can call to make a reservation, and for a kicker, the web site where travelers can get more information!

That's right! Nothing helps establish credibility like a little advertising pitch along with your chilling ghost tale.

Sure, the author interviews real people, names real names and places them in real locations, but this hardly helps because there is no real meta-analysis of each encounter, just incredibly bland speculation, as in, "is it possible a little girl died in the house and is now seeking attention ...?"

For me, every page reads like a very general paranormal fluff piece the editors of Woman's World or Parade magazines might place in between recipes and house cleaning tips in their October Halloween issues.

If you have only a casual interest in paranormal subject matter, and have not read widely in the field, this book may intrigue you. Those looking for some juicy paranormal "red meat" won't find it here.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

"Red Coat" Is a Delightful Read

Review By Ken Korczak

What do you get when you take a taste of Thomas Hardy, mix it with some Zane Grey or maybe James Fenimore Cooper, and add just a tiny dollop of Charles Dickens - you get this fine novel, Red Coat, by DAVID CROOKES

This is a page-turning romp across four continents beginning in year 1873. Our hero is Jeffrey Guest, a pure-hearted young Lieutenant who leads a British cavalry troop. He is assigned to help police a lawless diamond mind in South Africa, and finds himself under the command of a sadistic, gleefully vicious superior officer, Major Spencer Shackerly.

Of course, when pure good meets pure evil, problems are bound to develop, and so they do. To make a long story short, Lieutenant Guest interferes with an attempt by Shackerly to gun down and innocent man - Lt. Guest ends up a fugitive facing military court martial, and later a trumped up charge of murder. He flees and the chase is on. The relentlessly evil Major Shackerly is determined to hunt down Guest and have him hanged.

This is a well-crafted novel most people will find an enjoyable read - however, I withhold a full five-star rating because I think the author commits a couple of literary misdemeanors that have become all too common in too many novels these days.

The first is that Crookes relies on some mind-boggling coincidences to prop up his plot and keep the action moving. The second is a more grievous problem: Most of the time when the hero gets into a serious jam, he does nothing to save his own hide. Instead, happy circumstances always seem to conveniently swoop in to extricate him from certain doom.

One of the hallmarks of great writing is that the protagonist should rely on his own resources, his own cleverness, his own desperation to figure out a way to defeat the forces tormenting him, and do it himself - but if he is constantly having his bacon saved by pure luck, or by the metaphorical cavalry thundering over the horizon just when convenient - it takes the punch out of the story.

Basically, Lieutenant Guest's primary contribution to his own success is that he constantly runs for it. When he gets into real trouble, someone else saves him. It's just a weaker form of writing.

However, I don't want to leave anyone with any doubt about the sheer entertainment value of this novel. Red Coat is a top-notch read, even a joy to read. It's compelling and easily a cut above the average novel on the market today. One of the better novels I have read in recent months.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

Fring*ology: A Truly Marvelous, Sober Look At The Paranormal World

Review by KEN KORCZAK

Imagine a baseball player who gets four or five at-bats in an important game, and every time he steps up to the plate, he blasts a home run into the seats. Author Steve Volk pulls off the literary equivalent of such a feat, with this marvelous book, Fringe*ology.

Volk weilds his pen like a meaty baseball bat, or better yet, like a sword of illuminating light. Chapter after chapter, he hits his subject matter out of the park. Amazingly, he does so while handling some of the most controversial, contentious and thorny issues of our day involving science and philosophy, belief versus nonbelief, religion versus atheism, life and death.

Volk is one of those rare writers who can levitate his words across the page, rising above all of the often vicious rancor and back biting that characterizes the ongoing battle between hard-line atheists and the most gullible New Age airy-fairy folks.

The primary proposition of Fringe*ology is this: There is a vast middle ground that must be considered when confronting subjects that carry what the author calls a "Paranormal Taint." Ghosts, UFOs, religious experience, an afterlife, dreaming - Volk contends that our modern debate has descended into a deplorably unconstructive situation in which each side has retreated to their respective corners, where all they do is lob stink bombs at each other, deriding and criticizing each other - when the fact is that, almost certainly, neither side has a monopoly on the truth.

That old cliché, "less Heat and more light" virtually is reborn to become fresh again is this book as the author leads us through a well-researched, varied, detailed and sensible approach to paranormal subject matter.

Easily a 5-Star read, and perhaps one of the most important books for the mainstream reader written on this topic in at least 10 years.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

Just Cosmic and Crazy Enough to be Possibly True ... But Then Again ....

Review By Ken Korczak

Well! How much fun is The Cosmic War by Dr. Joseph Farrell? A lot! How fatally flawed is the ultimate premise of the book? Let me put it this way -- this guy's theory is on life support. But wait! Let's not pull the plug just yet!

I'll be honest. After reading every page, I am almost ready to consider that some kind of cosmic war involving super advanced extraterrestrials took place in our solar system a long, long time ago.

A lot of things in this book made me sit up -- such as the picture of the ancient Babylonian god Ninurta wielding a "thunderbolt" that is a dead-solid ringer for a plasma discharge produced in modern labs by physicists. Take that, Carl Sagan!

And there's also lot of other stuff in Dr. Farrell's book that's uber-tough to explain away in terms of mainstream science -- but any thorough review would have to be half as long as this lengthy, wordy tome to cover it all, so let me get to where Farrell stumbles so badly, it makes it impossible -- beyond a reasonable doubt -- for anyone to even so much as consider his total premise to be an accurate one.

It's the time frame, my friends. Farrell suggests that two cosmic wars took place, one 65 million years ago, and another 3.2 million years ago. He then asserts that the echoes of this cosmic war are reflected in the ancient texts of the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Biblical texts, Vedic tradition and also New World mythology, from the Maya and Aztecs, to the myths of some North American tribes.

But think about it: The oldest texts from the ancient Mideast are perhaps 4,000 to 5,000 years. Vedic texts may go back as far as 5,000 or 6,000 years. And sure, purely oral traditions may push it back a few thousand more years. That's a long time, certainly-- but it's nothing compared to 3.2 million years, and ridiculous beyond belief to consider a connection between a 6,000-year-old text with events that happened 65 million years ago!

There is just no chance -- none -- that there could be an unbroken continuity of human story tradition over those millions of years. Think about all of the civilizations, high and low, that have come and gone in just the past few thousand years. The Egyptians, the Mongols, the various Chinese dynasties, the Roman Empire, the Inca, the Aztecs. The Soviet Union lasted only 75 years! Yes, traces of traditions and mythology have survived thousands of years -- but again, that's nothing!

My friends, a million years is a long, long, long time, and 3.2 million years is even longer, and 65 million years only has meaning in terms of astronomical and geological reckoning. To say that oral or written mythologies could have survived in any coherent form 3.2 million years, passed down from one human generation to another with never a break in the chain is, quite simply, impossible by any conceivable standard whatsoever. Period.

The ancient mythologies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India or any other high civilization simply could not be a record -- even metaphorical or allegorical renderings -- of events 3.2 million years ago! Accept it, people! It's impossible! (I won't even address the egregious problem of the age of the human species itself, alternative archaeology authors such as Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson not withstanding).

What's tragic is that (and I can't believe I'm saying this) Farrell may be onto something in this book. But what the author needs to do is jettison the dubious fringe theories of the (admittedly brilliant) astronomer Tom Van Flandern who posits the explosion of two former planets in our solar system 65 million and 3.2 million years ago -- and find some way to frame his cosmic war scenario in a time frame of perhaps 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.

If Farrell would only do this, so much about his overall theory would start to make a lot more sense and fall into place-- as outrageously astounding as it already is.

Despite all, I am easily comfortable granting this book a high rating, if nothing else, for the pure entertainment value delivered by Farrell's wild and audacious ideas, and the obvious zeal in which he lays out his thesis. Hey, brother, you don't have to believe to be intrigued! At the very least, this is like reading an exciting science fiction scenario with an added edge that it may contain the seed of real world plausibility -- the teeny-tiny possibility that, by gum it, there really may have been a cosmic war fought by super-advanced aliens in our solar system a long time ago in a galaxy not so far, far away -- in fact, the Milky Way galaxy we call our home.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

Forgotten Books Rediscovered: Here's a Gem For you -- "Captive Universe"

Review By KEN KORCZAK

A used book store was having a sale, offering all the paperbacks you could stuff into a plastic grocery bag for 25 cents. I loaded up my bag, plunked down a quarter, and went home to sift through my haul.

Among the musty paperbacks was this book, "Captive Universe," by HARRY HARRISON. Previously the only other Harrison book I had read was his "Make Room! Make Room!" which became the movie "Soylent Green." Anyway, I was expecting that, you know, pulp fiction "B Novel" experience, but as the pages turned, I realized that here was book of more depth and intelligence, and masterfully crafted.

I can't give away a primary element of the book and thus spoil the premise, but it involves a troubled young Aztec boy, Chimal, who is aliented from his society. He has the terrible feeling something is wrong with life in the ancient Aztec world. Yes, it's ruled be despotic rulers, there are monsters and superstition, but something more insidious is amiss. Our hero attempts an escape from his valley to find answers and a better life -- and what he finds is mind boggling.

When Chimal uncovers the truth, well, what we have is just amazing science fiction fun.

I wish more of today's books were tightly written like this compact novel. My old paperback is 160 pages of tiny print. It's a 1969 copyright edition issued by Berkley Publishing. It seems that today's publishers are trying to sell books by the pound. They think that if a person is going to cough up $9 for a paperback, they want something with 700 pages, with some heft to it. But the result is a lot of egregiously overwritten books filled with dead weight print, pages that one can skim and still pick up enough of the flow to get through the book. But the penalty is flabby books that are bulky, without punch and over written.

Do youself a favor and get a copy of "Captive Universe" for a short, punchy science fiction experience like it was meant to be -- a gift from the Golden Age of science fiction. "Captive Universe" is an obscure diamond waiting for you to enjoy its sparkle.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

Despite A Few Misteps, a Credible Analysis of UFOology

Review By Ken Korczak

It's natural that any book tackling subjects as deeply controversial as UFOs, alien abduction and the interaction of humans with extraterrestrials and beings from other dimensions (ultraterrestrials) be subject to great skepticism - both fair an unfair.

But if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen, as they say.

The author of Ultraterrestrial Contact is a fine writer with terrific credentials as a long-time UFO investigator. He has proven over time that he can uncover and present credible stories of alien-human contact. In this latest book, Philip Imbrogno lays out case after fascinating case which provides credible evidence that something real is happening, and that people should take the subject of UFO and alien contact seriously.

Unfortunately -- very unfortunately -- the author stumbles badly in just a couple of the stories he includes here, which leaves him open to the charge that he is being too open minded -- open minded to a fault about what "contactees" are telling him.

The case in point I have the most problem with is the story of a young man who claims to be in contact with alien beings from a planet that is located in the Orion constellation. In his story, the young man claims to have visited the alien planet, and while on the planet, notices that there are "three suns" which he says are the stars in Orion's belt.

Anyone can take five minutes to Google the actual position of the stars in Orion's belt and see that while they look close together from our perspective on earth, they are not actually close together at all in space. They are:

Alnitak, 800 light years away
Alnilam, 1300 light years away
Mintaka, 900 light years away

So there is no way this "contactee" could have been to a planet with three suns that were the stars in Orion's belt. Also, the details of the young man's other experiences are patently ridiculous and riddled with cliché aspects of UFO lore. He even gives his alien friends goofy, wacky B-Movie names, like "Zintron." Yet, Imbrogno thinks his story is important.

My point is: While I think most of the stories presented in this book are fascinating and credible, all it takes is for one weak link in the chain to place the entire body of work into question -- and that's unfortunate. Imbrogno should have taken greater care to be more selective in the cases he chose to include here.

Still, I highly recommend this book. There are plenty of case studies that should be given serious consideration and anyone with an interest in ufology and the paranormal will find much to excite the mind.

Ken Korczak is the author of: THE FAIRY REDEMPTION OF JUBAL CRANCH

Free Kindle, Nook eBooks: Maybe the Only Jack Vance You Will Find Free Online

Ken Korczak:

This is the only free Jack Vance work I have found online as a free ebook download. Maybe it's not great literature, but on the other hand, one must keep in mind that there simply is no bad Jack Vance. This short story, Sjambak, is a run-of-the-mill sf short story of the kind that appeared in pulp magazines through the 40s, 50s and 60s. Writer's like Vance cranked out slightly interesting and amusing yarns like this by the dozen to put coin in their pocket.

But Vance is most likely the greatest sf writer of them all, though far less known than the "big guns" such as Asimov, Heinlein and Bradbury. But Vance is a far, far superior writer to all of the above, (yes, even Bradbury) and the primary reason for that is his extremely unique and elegant style.

Sjambak merely hints at the brilliant potential of Vance. Readers who have read only this story should not make a judgment on Vance until they have read his novels, such as "The Demon Princes" or the sublime "The Planet of Adventure" series. Some of Vance's shorter novels, such as The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle (the latter actually a long short story) are nothing less than literary work of art. There is no true joy like reading a Jack Vance book.

Downloand this short story free for Kindle, Nook and other formats here: SJAMBAK

THE MAN IN THE NOTHING CHAMBER: CLICK HERE