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Synopsis:
Every night, Jonathan Hart dreams of a cracked wasteland in the setting sun. By morning the image retreats to his subconscious mind. Again, he finds himself in a city of symmetrical people, where he is anonymous in his perfection. A voice in his head tells him there is more to life than following the will of his supreme leader, Liam Mail, and that there is more to his own life than he can remember. That there are things he can’t remember about the city of symmetricals that could tear down the fabric of his world. Now, Jonathan must fight against the forces that suppress his memories before his mind is damaged beyond repair. Can Jonathan expose the twisted truth about the symmetrical elite, and in doing so restore society to its flawed asymmetrical origins? Or will his efforts explode and create a MEMORY LEAK?

Memory Leak on sale for .99 Cents

It's Black Friday and that means it's time for some shameless self-promotion! My sci/fi thriller novel, Memory Leak, is on sale for .99 cents on Kindle. Here's a link to the Kindle store:

Also, here's a couple links to some fellow bloggers who have reviewed my book. If you're a blogger who would like to review my book, message me and I'll get you a review .pdf.

Ric's Reviews

Free Book reviews

Have a synopsis:

Every night, Jonathan Hart dreams of a cracked wasteland in the setting sun. By morning the image retreats to his subconscious mind. Again, he finds himself in a city of symmetrical people, where he is anonymous in his perfection. A voice in his head tells him there is more to life than following the will of his supreme leader, Liam Mail, and that there is more to his own life than he can remember. That there are things he can't remember about the city of symmetricals that could tear down the fabric of his world. Now, Jonathan must fight against the forces that suppress his memories before his mind is damaged beyond repair. Can Jonathan expose the twisted truth about the symmetrical elite, and in doing so restore society to its flawed asymmetrical origins? Or will his efforts explode and create a MEMORY LEAK?

If you take a shot at my book, please review it on Amazon or Bn.com!

Book Review: The Anubis Gates

My cousin sent me this book a while back and I was lucky enough to heed her advice and read the damn thing. The Anubis Gates follows the exploits of a historian named Brendan Doyle who travels back in time to the 19th century and is kidnapped by a group of gypsies. He misses his window to get back to his own time and must deal with life in the 19th century. Doyle is thrust into a world of magic, murder, and intrigue as he tries to stop a plot to unleash the wrath of ancient Egyptian Gods on London, all the while trying to find a way back home.

Tim Powers writes with a voice similar to the works of Jules Verne and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, completely appropriate for a work mostly set in the 19th century. He weaves a complex plot that twists and turns creating a tapestry through time. Unlike many other works, the complexities of the plot aren't due to an overabundance of characters, rather, they are due to intricacies and subtleties in dialogue and a history that is similar to our own but riddled with minute tweaks that make this work of fiction feel plausible.

After I finished The Anubis Gates I researched Tim Powers a bit and found that he does a lot of Alternate Histories. He's got a good niche and he's better at the Alternate History game than some of the other authors I've read in the genre.

I'd recommend this book to fans of Alternate Histories, 19th Century literature (including Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and Jules Verne), and fans of Steampunk. While the Steampunk elements are subtle at times, they are woven in throughout in a way that made me smile to myself while I read.

Bookophile Rating: Ludicrous!

Book Review: A Surfeit of Mandrake

A Surfeit of Mandrake is an anthology of short fiction and poetry put together by Chaz Wood and several other authors. There are several illustrations by Chaz Wood and Frang McHardy throughout the collection as well. Chaz Wood was gracious enough to send me a review copy.

I won't go through each story here, as there are twenty-nine in all, but I'll talk about a few of them and comment on the common theme in them all. The first story, "The Toebone of St. Giles," is a take on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which I appreciated a lot. Right after the story there's a great illustration. The story "Leper Messiah" starts off as a graphic novel and then tells a short story in prose. The pictures were well-drawn and added a lot to the story. Perhaps my favorite is "Clan Clash," in which a story is told through illustrations and poetry being spewed from the mouths of barbarians.

Throughout the collection there is talk of the Mandrake. The Mandrake isn't in every story or poem, but in enough to create a common feeling when reading through. To me, the creature was elusive and appeared only when reality was bent either by drugs or some other reason.

It's hard to judge an anthology, with so many authors and styles. I liked some more than others, but each had their own quality. I felt the illustrations helped tie the stories together even more and helped make A Surfeit of Mandrake an enjoyable read. I especially liked some of the Scottish lingo and U.K. feel of the writing.

Bookophile Rating: Good

Book Review: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

So far, this had to be my favorite of Philip K. Dick's novels. It's about a genetically engineered celebrity that, through extenuating circumstances, becomes an unknown overnight. One day everyone knows who he is, the next day he is a nobody. He investigates the cause of this enigma and is chased by police and led into a dark underground of reality-bending drug trips.

The story is short, about 200 pages, but remarkably complex. Dick is a master of playing with our perceptions of what is real and what is our imagination. The descriptions were wrought with phantasmagorical language that transcended many layers of the text.

In 2009 The Halcyon Company, known for owning the rights to the terminator franchise and making Terminator Salvation, acquired the rights to produce a film for Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. Here's to hoping it comes out soon!

I'd recommend this book to fans of Philip K. Dick and anyone who likes books dealing with reality and drugs.

Bookophile Rating: Ludicrous!

Book Review: Storm Front

Storm Front, Book 1 of the Dresden Files, centers around Harry Dresden, a professional wizard you can look up in the phone book. He's basically a supernatural private detective. It's fitting then that the writing style hearkens back to a sort of Raymond Chandler feel of hard-boiled detective narration. It's certainly not a style I had seen before this series, which makes it that much more unique.

The plot of the first novel centers around a missing persons case that turns into a supernatural clash between two kinds of magic. The general plot outline was in step with detective novels of the past and I wouldn't expect it to have been more complicated than it was. There were enough twists and turns to keep my mind active. Dresden's back story barely scratches the surface in the first book, but interests me enough to want to read further installments to find out what has happened and will happen to him.

The novel was concise like an old detective story, but rich enough in detail to maintain a diverse audience. I would recommend this to both mystery fans and scifi geeks.

Bookophile Rating: Excellent

Book Review: Shutter Island

Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island is a gothic mystery/suspense novel that takes place on an island near Boston. The story starts with Teddy Daniels and his partner on a boat nearing the island. They are detectives looking for a woman who has disappeared. There are numerous twists which kept me guessing and a cast of characters ranging from those in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's hard to say anything more about the plot without giving anything away, so I'll leave it at that.

Dennis Lehane's writing ability is on another level from his peers. Despite the nature of the novel, he writes with eloquence and grace, creating vivid images and setting scenes that translate perfectly to the big screen. The pace of the novel is like a runaway train. It starts fast and only gets faster as Teddy Daniels gets closer to the strange truth behind Shutter Island.

I put this on my book shelf as a definite reread. I'd recommend it to any lover of mystery or suspense who wants some real writing for a change instead of the hacks who fill up most mystery sections these days. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Bookophile Rating: Ludicrous!

Book Review: Starship Troopers

Robert Heinlein's controversial book was not what I had expected after watching the 1997 movie. The premise is that Johnnie Rico lives in a future where citizenship is gained by serving in the military, and you must be a citizen if you want to vote and have some other privileges. Through extenuating circumstances, Johnnie joins the military, right before Earth gets in a war with a race of bugs.

A cool aspect of this novel is the powered armor the soldiers wear (which never appeared in the first Starship Troopers movie but appeared in sequels, presumably to follow the book more closely). Now I know where Blizzard got their design for Starcraft. Heinlein makes the advanced technology accessible for the non-savvy, but also to the tech-whiz-reader.

Throughout the novel there are strong meritocratic themes and entire sections taken place in a classroom explaining various political philosophies. They seem to be setting themselves up on the far side of the spectrum from Karl Marx. They say that individuals should sacrifice for the benefit of the collective. The difference between the two philosophies is choice. A Marxist would not give the individual a choice.

Part Political Essay, part Novel, Heinlein's most controversial work will remain on my bookshelf so I can reread it again someday. I recommend to any right-wingers out there and anyone who needs to get their head screwed on straight.

Bookophile Rating: Excellent

Book Review: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Perhaps Philip K Dick's best known novel is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It was the basis for the 1982 film Blade Runner. It takes place in the year 2021, in a U.S. that has been devastated by war and mass extinctions. People have begun to covet every living creature (owning real pets has become an extreme luxury). There are people who make electric animals for those who can't afford real ones, though there is stigma attached. They can also make humans. The novel follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who job is to find and destroy (retire) rogue androids, known as replicants.

The world Philip K. Dick has created is a dark and vivid one. I personally imagine it to always be raining or the streets to at least always be wet. This is probably an influence from the slow, but ultimately cult classic Blade Runner. Dick is able to create mysterious characters and set the scene faster and more effectively than any writer I know. There's something to be said about a novel written in 1968 that foresees so many things. He was certainly ahead of his time (or maybe dropped by aliens...)

The relationship developed between Rick and Pris is not sexy or really something that is lusty, it just is. There's an extra dynamic in the story, where the reader is made to be unsure of who is a replicant and who is not. It makes sense, then, that any relationship that forms in the book seems artificial in nature. Even Rick's marriage to Iran seemed contrived. It was a wonderful job by Philip K. Dick to create an atmosphere of uncertainty around each character.

I recommend this book to hard scifi fans and to fans of scifi films. There have been recent talks of sequel or prequel movies, which I'm not too sure about, but am willing to give a shot. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a classic, and if you're just getting into the science fiction or even near future genres, I would recommend this as a great start to your adventure.

Bookophile Rating: Ludicrous!

Book Review: Decision Points

Disclaimer: I won't be reviewing the politics of George W. Bush's memoir. I am reviewing only its merit as a presidential memoir and his writing ability.

George W. Bush's presidential memoir is not a chronological view of his life like many presidential memoirs before him. Instead, he breaks down his life and presidency into fourteen live-changing decisions that affected him, his family, and the nation. I thought this was an interesting way to write about one's past and presidency. I have respect for the method, as it has not been done before.

Here's a list of the decisions he talks about: Quitting Drinking, Running for Office, Choosing His Cabinet, Stem Cell Research, 9/11 Response, National Defense Policy, Afghanistan, Iraq, No Child Left Behind, Hurricane Katrina, PEPFAR (Aid to Africa for HIV/AIDS), The Surge, Enhanced Interrogation, and the Bailouts.

That's just about the most controversial list of topics I can think of...

Each decision was well thought-out and researched by old members of his administration (with references galore in the back of the book). I found each point worthy of being discussed, but descriptions of why he made his decisions were too long-winded and defensive. There were, however, interesting insights into the daily life of the President that an outsider could not hope to understand.

As it is a memoir, the voice is that of President Bush. It may have been heavily edited and fact-checked, but the writing is unmistakably his. Some of his 'decision points' are better thought out than others. It's easy to empathize with his decision to stop drinking and his 9/11 response, but decisions like the bailout don't have enough evidence to back up his reasons for doing it. I say this especially because new evidence becomes available daily about why we are in this financial crisis.

What you have to realize before reading this book is that for most of these decisions he was faced with impossible decisions where to act might mean deaths of Americans, and to not act might have meant the same. It's easy to bash him while in office for decisions you disagree with, but it's enlightening to read his memoir and know his side of the story.

Bookophile Rating: Good

Book Review: Dead Until Dark

Sookie Stackhouse is a cocktail waitress in the small LA town of Bon Temps. She lives in a time when vampires live out in the open and other supernatural beings keep coming out of the woodwork. Most of you who have seen True Blood already know this. I had actually missed the first season of the show and came in on the second so I wanted to read the first book, Dead Until Dark, which was the basis for the entire first season.

Sookie's voice in Dead Until Dark is strong and well-developed. It's in first person and I could hear her voice (or Anna Paquin's voice) flow in my head without any awkward sentences. In that sense the dialogue is quite realistic. Reading the book made me appreciate the casting job done on the show True Blood. My favorite was Sam Merlotte, who was very likable in the book and the show for me.

The main story follows Sookie beginning to date a local vampire, with murders piling up around town and all signs pointing to Sookie being next. There's an interesting dynamic in the storytelling where you almost have a 1st-person omniscient because Sookie can read minds. Therefore, the reader gets Sookie's point of view and she tells us what certain people are thinking. However, she can't read everyone's mind, which adds to the mystery.

I found Dead Until Dark quite charming with great characters and interesting storytelling. If you've only seen the TV show you're missing out. Pick up Dead Until Dark, it's just as good or even better than the show. Charlaine Harris did a really fine job.

Bookophile Rating: Excellent

Book Review: Armageddon in Retrospect

Kurt Vonnegut's novels are among my favorite, which led me to question whether his essays and short stories would be as good. The 2008 publication was the first posthumous collection and has a pretty funny introduction by Kurt's son Mark Vonnegut. The book itself contains 13 stories and essays about War and Peace, two of Vonnegut's most common themes.

The stories contained a lot of autobiographical information. Each story had a character or two whose experience was more directly based on Kurt's life than the characters often found in his novels. Some of the most vivid tales were about the firebombing in Dresden, an experience Kurt drew from extensively in his writing. Few could portray the horrors of war and then make a joke about it to lighten the mood as well as Kurt Vonnegut. Every story has its gruesome parts and each made me grab my gut laughing at one point or another.

I would not only recommend this book to Kurt Vonnegut fans, but to first time Vonnegut readers. The stories in this collection might introduce new readers to his level of sarcasm so they can enjoy stories like Galapagos and Deadeye Dick.

Bookophile Rating: Excellent

Book Review: Eureka: Brain Box Blues

I'm a pretty big fan of the Eureka TV show on Syfy so I thought I'd check out Cris Ramsay's tie-in novel Brain Box Blues. The premise was promising, very similar to what one might find in a two-part episode of the TV show.

The story revolves around a device called the Brain Box which can extract the final thoughts/feelings from a corpse. Naturally, the General is involved in the project and forces Global Dynamics to use the Brain Box on a man (presumed to be a spy).

I'll start with the good. Cris Ramsay does a very good job of capturing the voice of Sheriff Carter and all of the rest of the cast. If you read it and then close your eyes you can see everything happening as though it were on your TV. That's a major plus as far as tie-in novels go. The reader wants there to be little difference between the book and the show.

Now for the bad. I knew whodunit by the time the character was introduced. The mystery was very easy to solve and Ramsay repeats clues over and over and over. I felt like there was too much rehash (the kind that would only be helpful if you put the book down for a month and came back to it having forgotten most of what you've read).

All in all I would read this book if you are a big fan of the show and need more Eureka action, but not so much for those who either have not seen or are only a casual watcher of the show. As far as the actual story goes (as a standalone novel) it is okay at best.

Bookophile Rating: Average

UPDATE: I'm told Phaedra Weldon is the author of Brain Box Blues and that Cris Ramsay is a pseudonym.

Book Review: Lone Survivor

Lone Survivor is the story of four Navy SEALs who fought against a force of as many as 150 Taliban and the one SEAL who made it out alive. Marcus Luttrell's story is gripping and terrifying. As I read I could see how the scenes could translate well to the big screen, which at the time of this post is categorized as in development by IMDB (to be released sometime in 2011).

I expected the book to be a detailed account of that one event, Operation Redwing. Actually, there is quite a bit of time spent on telling the story of how Marcus Luttrell became a Navy SEAL. For those who are already well-versed in the elite Navy Special Forces training, this section can seem to drag on in parts. However, the parts before he got to SEAL training were quite interesting. Scenes of former United States Army soldier Billy Shelton training Marcus were inspirational and brought context to the SEAL training scenes.

Once the story transitions to Afghanistan, the story really picks up speed. The mission is set up with great detail and context by sharing background information on the Afghan people, the Taliban, and tribal system. Without this information, I would have found myself lost with the Pashto language. Marcus Luttrell and contributing author Patrick Robinson did a fine job giving the reader access to language and customs unknown to someone who hasn't served overseas.

The firefight on the mountain was hard for me to visualize, so I looked up pictures of the Hindu Kush mountains. I can't imagine dealing with what Marcus Luttrell's SEAL team dealt with on that mountain. It's truly something you have to read and see for yourself to fully understand.

The writing was in the voice of Marcus Luttrell, and I assume heavily edited for information that is still classified. Since it was first person and in his voice, it contained a lot of vernacular, some stream-of-consciousness, and the occasional tangent. The story, although dragging for me in a couple spots, was overwhelmingly interesting and captivating. I can't wait to see this on the big screen.

Bookophile Rating: Good

Book Review: Wizard's First Rule

For my first post on this blog I thought I'd review Terry Goodkind's 1994 release Wizard's First Rule. I had been pussyfooting around reading it for a while (daunted by the 820 page volume), but finally decided to pick it up a couple of months ago. What really tipped me over into reading it was receiving a free copy of The Law of Nines, which is Goodkind's 2009 book that is somewhat of a spinoff to his Sword of Truth series. I know the purists will scoff as I went out of order, but I guess I'd respond that I did what Goodkind had intended: attract readers to his Sword of Truth series from the masses of fiction readers who would normally not pick up the 820 page first book. Even the Law of Nines' page count of 576 pages seemed to be weening the reader into his more longwinded series.

But on with the review. The main character, Richard Cypher, meets a mysterious woman in the woods and is compelled to help her, which starts him on a whirlwind of a tale. The pacing was relatively fast and the characters were each examined extensively so that each had parts that were likable and each had their flaws. They were real. I'm impressed that Goodkind created a character in Kahlan that is truly powerful in her own right. From the beginning I was captivated by the mystery behind her.

There were twists that I expected and twists that I did not. Obviously, there were enough twists that I did not see coming to keep me interested and reading. It came as a bit of a shock in the last third of the book when there were graphic scenes of torture, rape, and dominatrixes. Up until that point the book would have qualified for PG-13. On the plus side, those scenes added a depth to the story and writing that made me feel for the main characters even more. On the minus, I'm not sure I can ever unread some of the Mord Sith scenes.

The ending carries several twists, none of which I will discuss here, and becomes a bit of a cliffhanger. I suppose that makes sense, given the number of books in the series now...Overall I was still satisfied with the outcome of Wizard's First Rule and look forward to reading the next installment, Stone of Tears.

Bookophile Rating: Excellent

Review List

The Master List of Bookophile Book Reviews
(Organized by Author)(Series are organized by author, then number in the series)

A

B -
Benioff, David - City of Thieves
Bush, George W. - Decision Points
Butcher, Jim - Storm Front (Dresden Files #1)
Butcher, Jim - Fool Moon (Dresden Files #2)

C -
Clare, Cassandra - City of Bones

D -
Dick, Philip K. - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dick, Philip K. - Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

E
Einstein, Albert - The Evolution of Physics

F -
Funakoshi, Gichin - The Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate

G -
Goodkind, Terry - Wizards First Rule

H -
Harris, Charlaine - Dead Until Dark
Heinlein, Robert A. - Starship Troopers

I

J

K -
Kaku, Michio - Physics of the Future

L -
Lehane, Dennis - Shutter Island
Lightman, Alan - Einstein's Dreams
Luttrell, Marcus - Lone Survivor

M

N

O

P -
Powers, Tim - The Anubis Gates

Q

R -
Ramsay, Cris - Eureka: Brain Box Blues
Ruiz Zafón, Carlos - The Shadow of the Wind

S -
Salter, James - The Hunters
Simmons, Wayne - The Natanz Directive 

T

U

V -
Vonnegut, Kurt - Armageddon In Retrospect

W -
Wood, Chaz (editor) - A Surfeit of Mandrake

X

Y

Z

Contact

You can contact our editor @
Trevor.scott.schmidt [at] gmail.com

Follow on twitter: @trevorsschmidt

Film Reviews

The Master List of Bookophile Film Reviews:

A -
A Scanner Darkly

B-
The Bourne Identity

C

D 

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P -
The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Q

R

S -
Silver Linings Playbook

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Review Policy

Now accepting submissions for review.

Guidelines:  I prefer to read literary, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, thriller, and humorous novels.  Due to heavy volume, I'm more likely to read something under 300 pages for the sake of time.

I'm certainly not opposed to reviewing self-published works and encourage authors to contact me directly at Trevor.Scott.Schmidt[at]gmail.com.  If I do review your work, I would appreciate if you promote the review to the best of your ability and link to my blog.

Payment is not necessary, but I highly encourage linking to my blog and spreading the word about Bookophile Reviews.  I post all reviews on Amazon.

About

An eclectic mix of book reviews for an audience with eclectic tastes.

Bookophile Reviews evaluates Books of most genres, the most common being SF/Fantasy, Literary, Mystery, and Thriller, with the occasional oddball thrown in. 

I'm willing to Blog Roll, Blog Tour, do author interviews, and especially guest blog. Contact me if you're interested!

I'm a member of Amazon Associates and by buying the books I review through the links at the bottom of each post, I receive a very small amount of money from Amazon (this does not affect the purchase price of the book).

I have worked as a writer, acquisitions editor, and marketing consultant and am what is often called a "voracious reader." I have a B.A. in English from Oregon State University.