36 Righteous Men

36 Righteous Men- Steven Pressfield
W. W. Norton & Co.
Release Date: November 5, 2019

Rating:
📚📚

Warning: Possible Spoilers Ahead!

Synopsis: When James Manning and Covina “Dewey” Duwai are called in to investigate a string of murders, their investigations take them from the headquarters of the Russian mafia in Brighton Beach to a sweltering maze of shops in Little Hong Kong, with scant leads on the killer. But when Manning and Dewey apprehend a woman—a disgraced but brilliant rabbinical scholar—fleeing one of the crime scenes, they’re brought face-to-face with the shocking truth: the Jewish legend of the hidden Righteous Men, the 36 who protect the world from destruction, is no legend at all. They are real, and they are being murdered.

As the bodies pile up and the world tilts further into chaos, Manning and Dewey must protect the last of the Righteous Men from a ruthless killer able to beguile his victims and command them against their will. Plunged into a deadly game of cat and mouse, the detectives find their arsenal of bullets and blades of little use against a foe who knows their every move.

Joining forces with the rabbinical scholar and a renowned anthropologist, Manning and Dewey set off on a perilous quest from New York to Gehenna in Israel to confront a murderer who won’t stop until he’s killed every one.

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It's the year 2034.  Sea levels have risen and environmental refugees crowd the still dry portions of the world.  Massive superstorms, cyclones, sandstorms, and rises in temperature mean that 120 F in April in New York City is the new norm. Detectives James Manning and Covina "Dewey" Duwai are part of a special investigation division of the NYPD working a series of murders that could be connected to ecological terrorism, Russian mafia, or something else entirely.  Rebuffed by their NYPD colleagues, Manning and Dewey join forces with a renowned anthropologist/ecologist and his sister, a disgraced rabbinical scholar who just happens to have been present at each murder scene, to try and stop a serial killer who is determined to finish his mission and end the world.

Most everyone knows the basics of the Noah's Ark story: God decides humans are wicked and plans to wipe them all out and start over with those saved on Noah's ark.  Most everyone probably does not know the story of the 36 Righteous Men.  In Jewish legend, the 36 Righteous Men are God's promise to prevent another apocalypse.  As long as there are 36 righteous men alive, humanity is safe.  If those 36 should die, all bets are off.  Detectives Manning and Dewey are led to clues that suggest the serial murders they are investigating could be the work of someone killing the 36 in order to hurry along armageddon.  

Is 36 Righteous Men a moral story warning that humans have choices in life that lead to unseen, and perhaps catastrophic, consequences?  Is it a suspense/thriller of a police procedural and the hunt for a serial killer?  Is it a thinly veiled screenplay waiting to be turned into a movie with lots of special effects and no character development? The answer to me seems to be: yes to all of the above.  Pressfield makes it clear that humans are doing their best to bring in armageddon without any help and the further into the book you go the less delineation there is between natural disasters and possible divine intervention. Not only do you think by the end that it's probably the same thing, you also know that it doesn't matter.  The police procedural part was thin and mostly focused on Manning being the grizzled veteran following the facts while others run around chasing Russian mafia for no obvious reason.  Dewey, as the narrator, is the young green detective trying to learn from a legend.  Men is best when it focuses on the legend of the 36 and explaining it and surrounding Jewish beliefs to the two gentile detectives- something it manages to do in a natural, non-preachy way.   

Fans of Steven Pressfield's traditional historical fiction (Gates of Fire, Tides of War, Last of the Amazons) will be surprised by Pressfield's latest work.  Instead of historical fiction, Pressfield enters a sci-fi futuristic version of the world as it could be in 2034.  Instead of a 'traditional' style of writing, Pressfield experiments with a first-person narrative told through memos and one of the characters points of view in an odd combination of prose and screenplay-style dialogue.  The writing style was distracting to me and greatly hampered any character development, though it did finally work for the ending.  Or maybe by then I was used to it?  The climactic scenes at the end managed to be fast-paced and clunky at the same time.  The very ending, without giving everything away, managed to be both shocking, stunning, and simultaneously probably exactly what I should have seen coming.  

36 Righteous Men gets a bonus star for Pressfield's unique world building of the almost-apocalyptic world of the near future, but loses a lot of points for me for the ending.  I hate books(or movies) where I get to the last page and am left wondering: then what was the point? 

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Girl In Red

The Girl in Red- Christina Henry
Berkley Publishing
Release Date: June 18, 2019

Rating:
📚📚📚📚

Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead!

Synopsis: It's not safe for anyone alone in the woods. There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn't look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.

There are worse threats in the woods than the things that stalk their prey at night. Sometimes, there are men. Men with dark desires, weak wills, and evil intents. Men in uniform with classified information, deadly secrets, and unforgiving orders. And sometimes, just sometimes, there's something worse than all of the horrible people and vicious beasts combined. 

Red doesn't like to think of herself as a killer, but she isn't about to let herself get eaten up just because she is a woman alone in the woods....

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If you're a fan of horror movies or post-apocalyptic novels, you know the rules. Stay together. Keep your gear on you at all times. Never deviate from the plan. Follow the rules and you live. Don't and Something Bad Will Happen. But what happens when you aren't the hero of the horror movie, but just trying to get to grandma's? 

Red is a twenty year old college student who is addicted to horror movies when the Cough starts. A virus that infects at random, within months the world has changed. Millions are dead, the electricity is out, communications are down.  The military is sending people to quarantine camps for their own good. But Red doesn't believe that.  A naturally suspicious and paranoid individual, she convinces her family they need to hike hundreds of miles through the woods to her grandmother's house, where they would be safe. But even though millions are dead, others are still alive.  And what Red has forgotten about the movies is: it isn't the apocalypse that's the problem.  It's what happens after.

The Girl in Red is one of Christina Henry's (Lost Boy) dark twists on a classic fairy tale, in this case Little Red Riding Hood.  Red is a stubborn, often obnoxiously know-it-all type who isn't less annoying for being right most of the time. She's a loner, paranoid and suspicious, but when the world changes those are some of the best survival skills to have.  She often seems younger than twenty (if I just get to Grandma's house everything will be ok), but also has the world weary wisdom of someone much older.  She doesn't need to learn the hard way that just because someone is human they aren't also a predator, or that there are things even in the post-apocalyptic world that are worse than death.  She knows, as we all do deep inside, that the darkness of humanity doesn't go out just because a Crisis Has Occurred. As emotional as the book is, Red can only function by mostly being in a state of shock or emotional numbness the wholes time.  It is the reader who mourns for the ones who die, because Red can't (which made me feel a little guilty for not especially liking her. Who would be at their best in this situation?).  

The reader also wonders more than Red about the Big Picture.  What is the virus killing people and can a cure be found? How many people are dead and how are others surviving? What really happens at the quarantine camps? What are the monsters and what can be done to stop them? Will civilization be able to rebuild in any way? Red isn't (as she admits to herself) the Chosen One who can discover the answers and solve the world's problems.  She (and the reader) learn more than others might about the monsters in the dark, but she accepts (as the reader must) that it isn't her place to find the answers.  She is the Every Person just trying to stay alive based on knowledge gleaned from genre fiction and the childish belief that getting to grandma's will make everything ok again.  And maybe, in this strange new world, that is the hope that counts the more than anything else.

I recieved an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Dracul

Dracul- Dacre Stoker & JD Barker
G.P. Punam's Sons/ Penguin Group
Release Date: October 2, 2018

Rating:
📚📚

Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead

Synopsis: It is 1868, and a twenty-one-year-old Bram Stoker waits in a desolate tower to face an indescribable evil. Armed only with crucifixes, holy water, and a rifle, he prays to survive a single night, the longest of his life. Desperate to record what he has witnessed, Bram scribbles down the events that led him here...

A sickly child, Bram spent his early days bedridden in his parents' Dublin home, tended to by his caretaker, a young woman named Ellen Crone. When a string of strange deaths occur in a nearby town, Bram and his sister Matilda detect a pattern of bizarre behavior by Ellen—a mystery that deepens chillingly until Ellen vanishes suddenly from their lives. Years later, Matilda returns from studying in Paris to tell Bram the news that she has seen Ellen—and that the nightmare they've thought long ended is only beginning.

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A young and sickly child, Bram Stoker is cared for by his sister Matilda and nurse, a young woman named Ellen Crone.  While Bram and Matilda love "Nanna Ellen" they are not blind to certain oddities about her- they never see her eat, she disappears for days at a time, and is the one who miraculously cures Bram when family doctors and modern medicine fail.  Once grown, Bram tries to forget the mysterious Ellen and the terrifying things he and Matilda saw, but when Matilda sees Ellen- looking exactly as she did twenty years ago- they know they won't be allowed to forget.  

The narrative of Dracul, like its' inspiration, Bram Stoker's Dracula, is told through multiple viewpoints. Through the journals of Bram and his brother Thornley, through Matilda's letters, we see events unfold.  These are interspersed with short "now' moments: Bram trapped in a tower, with something evil trapped on the other side of a door.  It takes until there are about 100 pages left in the book before the "past" catches up to "now" and we find out why Bram is in the tower and what is going on. 

The first two-thirds of Dracul focused on trying to building up suspense. While is shorter bursts this works, I have to admit that more than 300 pages of it seriously lowered my feelings of suspense, instead making me feel like I was being dragged through the book.  Is it Ellen who's threatening the Stoker family, or the mysterious, tall, dark stranger? What exactly are they being threatened with?  Who's on the other side of the door in Bram's tower? While the writing is clever enough to keep us guessing, I would have found the build up of suspense more satisfying if these questions had been answered earlier.  Instead it felt like an interminable build up that I was getting more bored by than anything else.  I also found the "now" writing- a present tense "he is doing this and seeing that" style- to be one I particularly detest (though that may be solely my own problem and not one that bothers other readers).

The last 100 or so pages of Dracul do make up for the crawling pace of the rest of the book.  Once we are finally in the "now" time and all the pieces are put together for us by Ellen, things start racing.  Hoping to outrace the evil Dracul, the Stokers and their convenient ally who just happens to know all about vampires travel to Germany.  Now suspense pays off and I found myself interested to know what would happen next.  By the very last page you are left with the rather creepy and confused questions of how much was fiction and how much fact in this version of Bram Stoker's life- a clever ploy by the authors to leave you thinking about Dracul long after you've finished the book.

Advertised as a prequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dracula himself plays little part in the book and no additional questions about him are answered.  This is not his origin story but more a fictionalized origin story of how Stoker came up with the idea fo the book.  With the idea that this fictional 'biography' is the true story behind Dracula, readers will see plenty of parallels between the original book and this one.  The characters themselves, despite telling the story in their own words, are flat and one-dimensional; the writing style usually a rather over done mimicking of the classic gothic style of the original.  A much more streamlined book with stronger character development would have made it much more enjoyable for me.  While the ending bit left me liking Dracul more than I expected to (considering the slowness of most of it), I didn't find it a book I could overwhelmingly recommend to any but perhaps highly obsessive Stoker fans.    

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review