John’s Reviews – books, movies, whatever

  • Go Shoot Somebody, Feel like Captain Kirk

    ByJohn Brown

    Imagine running and dodging for thirty minutes through dimly lit corridors as kids with guns chase you down and shoot you with glee.

    That’s what happened to me recently.

    The kids were daughters 1, 2, and 3. On my team were dead-shot Nellie and daughter number 4. The dimly lit corridors were provided by the Cache Valley Fun Park. The guns were lasers.

    This was my first time playing laser tag, and I must report that we had an absolute blast. For twenty minutes we dodged and ran and shot with wild abandon. It’s like paintball without any of the pain, unless of course you crash into someone.

    Here’s how it works. You divide up into two, three, or four teams. The attendant gives each of you a vest and scans you onto the appropriate team (your laser has a bar code and is attached to the vest with a cord). There are markings on the front and back of each vest. If someone lasers those markings, you lose points. If you shoot someone else’s vest, you earn points. It’s that simple.

    All the teams go into the half-lit battle room–cut up with walls, corridors, and windows–and the game begins. You try to kill them. They try to kill you. You try to shoot their bases, but if you linger too long the bases shoot you. It quickly turns into chaos fun. You shoot someone only to have a daughter sneak up behind you and nail you in the back. You flee, waiting to regenerate, only to find that sneaking daughter has followed you through all the twists and curves and kills you the moment you come back to life. But the next time you escape, and you’re the one that’s got them running. It’s like a video game except better.

    The system automatically keeps score for each individual and each team so you can have a player on the losing team actually be the high scorer. We could have gone on for another hour.

    Of course, me and my exceedingly svelte figure might have had to take a breather. Or not. I don’t think twenty minutes of aerobics has ever passed so quickly. And I didn’t have to follow some gal in a pink leotard to do it.

    But you’re not there for the cardio-vascular benefit. Although I can see the ads now—the Laser Tag diet! Featuring Bob, a happy nerd who played laser tag for thirty minutes each day and lost 200 pounds. He could join up with Subway’s Jared so they could be geeky together. Hey, wait a minute. . . I’m smelling moo-lah!

    The only negative is that the game isn’t bargain basement cheap–$4/person for 10 minutes of play, $10/person for 30 minutes. So we might not do that every time we take the family to Logan for some fun, but you can bet we’ll be doing it again.

    Go shoot somebody. Feel like Captain Kirk. You’ll love it.

  • Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell

    ByJohn Brown

    I’m a sucker for military stories. I wanted to be an ARMY Ranger was I was in my teens. Wanted to go commando. Still regret it to this day that I didn’t. And so when a friend told me about Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson, I had to read it.

    In June of 2005 four U.S. Navy SEALs took up a position on a godforsaken mountain in Afghanistan close to the Pakistan border. Their goal was to capture or kill a notorious Taliban/al Qaeda  leader whose small army had been ambushing and killing Marines. The problem was: three goat herders stumbled upon the SEALs not very long after they got into position.

    If the SEALs don’t kill the goat herders, they will almost assuredly alert the Taliban force. SEALs are the best. But four against two hundred doesn’t compute. If they do kill the goat herders, then they’re sure someone will find the bodies. The Taliban will claim US soldiers are killing innocent civilians.  And the US media will pick it up. The SEALs were sure they will end up being tried for murder. It wouldn’t be the first time.

    The SEALs let the goat herders go. Within hours the Taliban show up. Four SEALs. Two hundred plus Taliban armed with rifles and grenade launchers who have the high position on a mountain with plummeting slopes and very little cover.

    Lone Survivor tells the story of Marcus Luttrell, the leader of that SEAL team, his training as a SEAL and then that desperate fight in the mountains. He and the other three SEALs fought ferociously. He was the only one to survive.

    I had to force myself not to read this book in one sitting. Not only do you get a great story, but you also get insights into what makes a SEAL and their system of values. You’ll get to know a man who makes you want to stand up for God and country. And you’ll marvel at the courage of those who fight in our armed services.

    I loved this book. May God bless the men and women who risk life and limb for all the rest of us. For the rest of us, we can see what they face in this excellent first-hand account.

  • The Good Guy by Dean Koontz

    ByJohn Brown

    Good_Guy_Dean_KoontzSo let’s say you’re in a bar and a guy shows up, mistakes you for someone he was meeting, and you play along. Just for fun. You’ll let him know his mistake sooner or later. But then he slides a manila envelope to you and says, “Half of it is there. Ten thousand. You’ll get the rest when she’s gone.”

    Would you say, “Sorry, dude. I’m not your hit man”? A woman’s life is on the line.

    In Dean Koontz’s The Good Guy, Tim Carrier is too astonished to react. The man leaves. Carrier opens the envelope. There’s ten thousand in cash and a 5×7 of the woman. She’s Linda Paquette who lives in Laguna Beach.

    A few minutes later the actual killer shows up. Makes the same mistake. What do you do?

    Carrier plays along, tells the man that he’s decided not to go through with it and to take the ten thousand as a “kill fee.” The man leaves. Carrier goes to alert the woman. But very soon the killer and those who hired him realize the mistake. And now they’re after both Carrier and the original target.

    The Good Guy was a wonderful story of action and suspense. It’s also a love story. Koontz portrays a deadly and frightening killer. But he also includes lots of banter between Carrier and Paquette. Both have secrets which are interesting to learn. And then at the end of the book, when you think it’s all about a kill, Koontz twists it. Then he twists it again. I loved this story and enjoyed the characters immensely. But the book went beyond mere entertainment. It’s a book that also makes you think about how you live.  

    I should be working hard on draft 3 of Curse of a Dark God. But every now and again I need a break. I’m glad I took this one with Koontz.

  • Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

    ByJohn Brown

    MonsterHunterInternational_LarryCorreiaThere’s a joke that all horror movies would be over in two minutes if you just made the hero smart and gave him a gun.

    Well, Correia gives his likeable hero a gun, but not just any old thing. If you’re going to kill a vampire, why not use a rocket propelled grenade or a flame thrower? In fact, if there were enough monster outbreaks, you might have a government agency. You might also find that agency was willing to outsource some of the monster hunting to private contractors (ala Blackwater). And you can bet they won’t be hunting with pea shooters. They’ll be doing it right, with brains and firepower. Correia, someone who loves guns (used to own a gun shop and shoot competitively in rifle, shotgun, and pistol) and monsters, wrote a story that does just that.

    The idea of Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International might remind you a bit of X-Files or Men in Black, but it’s neither. However, it is as  good as or better than both. Correia tells the story of Owen Pitt, a big lug of an accountant, who, as he was working late one evening, gets called into the office of his boss. No big deal, right? Except the fat man is naked, transforming into a werewolf, and vows to eat Pitt’s heart. It’s not quite how you want to end your day tallying debits and credits. Pitt almost dies in the encounter, but manages to “live the American dream” and throw his incompetent jerk of a boss from the fourteenth-story window and splatter him on a double-parked Lincoln Navigator below.

    Good work for a bean counter. When Pitt finally recovers, he gets an offer he can’t refuse (mostly because of the alluring agent that comes to recruit him), and he joins Monster Hunter International (MHI), the private contractor who sends out special force teams to use any means at their disposal to kill monsters. Unlucikly for Pitt, one of the baddest monsters around is just about to ruin the world forever, and Pitt finds himself in the middle of the fight.

    Correia fills the book with enough action for any red-blooded male, a variety of bad mamba jamba monsters, and wonderful characters. There’s romance and heroism (I got a lump in my throat at one part toward the end), but his signature is his humor. I laughed again and again.

    Part of that humor stems from the fact that Correia has an ear for good lines. Part stems from his delight in taking common tropes and stereotypes and twisting them. And this is another one of the things that I enjoyed immensely about the book. For example, the team of newbie hunters that Pitt joins is not made up of square-jawed males and females with Navy SEAL backgrounds, although some in the company do have that. Nope, Correia puts together an accountant, librarian, school teacher, and stripper (all people who faced some kind of monster and are ready for payback), and he makes them believable hunters. 

    This tongue-in-cheek tweaking is everywhere. There are elves in this book unlike any you have ever seen. But he also makes it personal. Owen is not your typical accountant. Even a number of the minor characters get this treatment. For example, one of the people on the team is a Black guy with Rasta hair. But Correia doesn’t choose from what Correia calls one of the four Hollywood stereotypes. Nope, this guy plays against those types. He isn’t the comic relief, the gangsta, the sports dude, or scary male. He’s his own man, a shy virgin with a good heart. Correia also gives his characters interesting backstories. And one of the delights is discovering them.

    I encountered a few minor flaws in the presentation, but these are easily overlooked. Easily. There’s also quite a bit of profanity (and so those who wish to avoid it are forewarned). However, when I turned the last page Friday night, I looked up at Larry who was lying on his bed in our La Quinta hotel room in Denver, his concealed .45 and 9mm guns on the floor beside him, and said, “Wow. WOW.” And then I think I said, “Dude, what a marvelous read” or maybe it was “Oh, great lord of zombie destruction tales do not smite me,” but I’m not sure because I was still thinking about the perfect last line of the perfect last scene of the last chapter.

    Now, those exclamations of satisfaction and delight had nothing to do with the guns on the floor, that Larry’s a deadly shot, or that he’s a big 6’3″ Portugese. It has nothing to do with the fact that he and I were on a book tour together. I don’t read books that don’t grab me. End of story. I stopped doing that long ago. I don’t care who wrote them. And I don’t give false praise. False praise irks me to no end and does nobody any good, especially not the receiver. The truth is that Larry’s book was simply too good to put down. It pulled me in with the opening quote and kept delivering the goods until the end. And if you don’t believe me, you read the quote that both inspiried and opens the book and tell me you don’t want to turn the next page.

    “You know what the difference between me and you really is? You look out there and see a horde of evil, brain-eating zombines. I look out there and see a target-rich environment.” ~Dillis D. Freeman Jr.

    Yeah, it got ya, didn’t it. The ride is waiting folks. Just go on over to Amazon. Correia is going to be a writer to watch.

  • The Husband by Dean Koontz

    ByJohn Brown

    TheHusband_DeanKoontzYou’re name is Mitch Rafferty. You’re a gardener. You have no past as a cop, spy, or Navy SEAL–you’re just a plain old petunias and begonias guy. You’re working in someone’s yard when you get a call on your cell phone. You answer. And the guy on the other end has your wife.

    He tells you that you will get him two million dollars or you’ll never see her again.

    You’re lost. This has to be a sick prank. You’re just a gardener. You know peat moss and mulch. You don’t have two million. Heck, you have, at the most, $11,000 in the bank. You tell him this. He tells you he knows.

    Then your wife screams over the phone. The wife who you love, who makes  you whole. They let her talk. It’s not just one man. And then, just to show you that they’re serious, they kill a complete stranger who is walking a dog across the road. They shoot him in the head. You know they’re watching you. You look around and can’t see where the sniper is hiding.

    You’re a gardener. They have your wife. If you go to the cops, they kill her. If you don’t deliver, they kill her. What do you do?

    That’s the premise of Dean Koontz’s The Husband. I listened to this on audio book, read by Holter Graham, and, folks, I don’t think a book has gripped me like this in a very long time. And that despite some quirks in the reader’s presentation. I’m coming to respect Koontz as a writer more and more. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. Go get it. Read it. Do it before they make the movie.