World War Z by Max Brooks

Ah, the great Zombie War. The plague that infected the entire earth...

Brooks weaves a remarkable tale of the days following the "Great Plague", when an unknown viral outbreak causes the dead to...stop being dead. Zombies, those slow-shuffling, brain-eating, nightmare creatures, overrun the world in numbers too large to control, leaving humanity to seek shelter and fight back.

The accounts span the globe, from Asia to India, the United States to Russia, Antarctica, the ocean floors...you name it, no place is safe. Monster tales like this are little better than popcorn movies at face value. Brooks, however, makes some important sociological and political examinations of our world and its flaws. What kind of government oversight led to the disease spreading so rapidly? What short-sighted bureaucracies helped fan the flames? Brooks plays deftly with the imagination, examining the depths of human depravity and the triumph of the human spirit. This isn't a typical rah-rah-America saves the day survival tale. It's about what kinds of things the people of the world must do, right or wrong, to ensure their own survival. What steps could have been avoided? What horrors were necessary? It's a gripping page turner, one that will keep you reading late into the night...and awake for hours afterwards.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

This is the harowing tale of Chris McCandless, a young man from a well-off family who hitchhiked into the Alaskan wilderness after giving up all of his worldly possessions. He was found four months later, dead, in an Alaska campground.
The accounts of McCandless's life are at once intriguing and infuriating. By Krakauer's description, he seems at times like a petulant, arrogant, whiny trust-fund baby. At other times, accounts of his life show him to be a rugged individualist, a man capable of surviving fairly extreme conditions with little supplies or equipment. Krakauer pieces together diary entries, letters to friends and family and personal accounts of those who knew McCandless to unravel the story of his final days.

Chris begins by donating his trust fund to a charity, burning the money in his wallet, and hitting the road in his car, destination unknown. He takes on the moniker Alexander Supertramp, and makes his living as a migrant worker. When not in solitude, he lives among the homeless, staying only as long as it takes to gather the resourcers to get him to his next adventure. He's able to drive across the country, to travel alone by boat down the West Coast. He's not a lunatic, and by all accounts he was friendly and giving and very personable. He loved to discuss the state of the world with anyone who'd listen. Something inside of him stopped him from making any deep, lasting connections to any people or places. There are hints of family unrest, the pressures of living up to his father's standards. But even this does not seem like cause enough to spur McCandless onto his odyssey.

Krakauer also compares and contrasts his life with those of other outdoor adventurers. He was not the first to attempt such extreme self-imposed isolation, nor is this condition caused by some kind of anti-social mania. Others have taken roads just as extreme, some lived to tell about it, others perished just like McCandless. While many are left with the conclusion that McCandless was simply too reckless and ill-prepared, I was left with the feeling that his arrogance, coupled with a few small planning errors, led to his ultimate demise. That he hung on in the remote Alaskan wilderness as long as he did with meager supplies and only the food he could hunt or forage is astounding. The larger questions loom long after the end of the book: what was he seeking in his solace? What did he know or learn about the world that could benefit us all?

Lord Vishnu's Love Handles by Will Clarke

Travis Anderson, button down boiler plate dot com Yuppie Texan, is not having a good week. His company is on the verge of collapse due to faulty bookkeeping and Travis's own alcoholism. His marriage is falling apart. His life is out of control. And then he discovers he's a psychic.
He's contacted by a secret government agency to become a remote viewer in exchange for forgiveness of his tax debt. Once he joins this little cabal, his life only becomes wors,e and he's faced with one threat after another against his life and his family's.

It's difficult to review the book without giving away spoilers, as it relies heavily on suspense and twist moments, almost to a fault. Beyond alcoholism and a seemingly stagnant upper middle class life, we don't learn much about Travis or any of the companions he makes along the way. It's all motion, point A to B to C in a way that's by no means formulaic, but somehow takes some of the wallop out of the story. Little time is spent on Travis developing his gifts. Too much time is spent on Rube Goldbergian double-crosses and convenient plot twists to move the story forward. While the ending definitely has its share of humorous scenes, the means to get there don't fully justify it. Everything feels like a thumbnail sketch and takes what could have been an amazingly great premise and turns it into merely a fun read. (strange criticism, I know).

Will Clarke is just getting started as an author, and I have no doubt that he will tell many fantastic tales in the years to come. This was a mere stumble out of the gates: entertaining to watch, but in the end, slightly disappointing.

The Dark Tower: Book VII by Stephen King

Roland and his ka-tet finally reach the end of the long road they've been traveling. Stephen King began this journey over twenty years ago, and fans have been clamoring for a conclusion to the story. All it too was one near-fatal accident to get him back in gar (and that made for a nice plot element as well).

The final book is a hefty, sprawling volume that seeks to wrap up several loose ends and move the travelers on to their final destination. It's difficult to discuss without giving away any spoilers. When the ka-tet is broken and people start leaving and/or dying (which has been hinted at since the early books) it doesn't feel momentous or earth-shattering, just...right. We're on this journey with Roland, who's already lost one ka-tet and has continued bitterly on in his quest for the Tower. King handles the death of his new friends very deftly, not sending them out with a bang or a climactic to-the-death battle (well...maybe one of them gets that glory), but rather their demise is just part of a series of events, unexpected, shocking, but "ka is a wheel" ever turning. Roland has to keep moving. The fascination comes in seeing Roland finally become human, finally feel some attachment to people and things other than his quest.

King does keep plenty of tension in the story, with Mordred Red-Heel, Roland's half-human half-son, empathic vampires, and the appearance (at last!) of The Crimson King. The Tower books have relied on magic doors between worlds, and this last tale seems to provide a revolving door for a multitude of King's works (Insomnia, The Stand, It, Eyes of the Dragon, Hearts in Atlantis, and more). The Dark Tower books stand alone as an amazing work, but become even greater with the addition of these branches and ancillary tales in King's body of work.

And the ending...well... I was at once elated, pleased, and crushed with the final turn of events. But what has happened has happened.

Black Sunday by Thomas Harris

A fantastic terrorist thriller from the seventies that feels just as prescient and fresh today (the only thing missing would be cell phones and better computers).
The story focuses on Michael Lander, a disgruntled, psychologically shattered Vietnam Vet who's looking to take out a measure of revenge on the country that he thinks turned its back on him. He's a pilot from a specialized division of the Navy, flying lighter than air craft (blimps). When the blimp program is canned, he becomes a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War, where he becomes a POW. During his time in capture, he is forced to renounce his country - when he's finally rescued, he leaves the military in disgrace. He returns home to an estranged wife, a job flying promotional blimps, and a life in shambles. When he snaps, he decides to make as big a statement as possible. He designs a huge plastic explosive device that will attach to his blimp and detonate it at the Super Bowl, killing himself, 80,000 attendees, and the President of the United States.

Israeli Special Agents Kabokov and Moshevsky, still stinging from the recent Munich terrorist plot, become entangled in Lander's scheme when he enlists the help of well known terrorists from the Black September cell. They're grasping at straws and trying to find answers with time ticking away and little help.

Thomas Harris displays the gifts for suspense and detail that he'd later use to bring Hannibal Lecter to life. Black Sunday is a fast, fun read - makes me wish Harris would give another try at non-Lecter fiction.