Not At All Surprised I Liked It

What I like about reading a Barry Eisler novel is that he always has a good story, fun characters, and without fail I learn a new word or two.

The Last Assassin, although it has many of the same characters from the previous novels (see here), but there was one significant difference which frankly I didn't care for. My first three novels have all been written in first person POV. I liked that all of the John Rain novels were written in that same POV. Eisler is one of the few thriller writers who uses first person. In this novel I noticed that he changed.

In the last assassin Eisler switches back and forth from first person POV with Rain then third person for the two female characters, Midori and Delialah. It was off-putting to say the least. J.A. Konrath uses the same technique in his Jack Daniels series and I didn't like it when he did it. Eisler did not make me change my views on the technique.

One good thing, . . . I think the series has seen the last of Midori, and I say "Glad to see her gone." Never liked her.

As for the words I learned, there were two:

Vertiginous - characterized by or suffering from vertigo or dizziness - inclined to frequent and often pointless change : inconstant - causing or tending to cause dizziness - 
: marked by turning : rotary

Eponymous - (of a person) being the person after whom a literary work, film, etc., is named the eponymous heroine in the film of Jane Eyre - (of a literary work, film, etc.) named after its central character or creator The Stooges' eponymous debut album - giving one's name to something, as a tribe or place.

Both great to know. I hope I can remember them.


There were also some compelling passages. Not sure what it was about this line, but I found myself nodding my head agreeing with the sentiment:


She stood up and gave me a long, tight hug. I caught a hint of the perfume she wore, a scent I’ve encountered nowhere else and that I will always equate with her. There were people around, but we were suddenly kissing passionately.

It was always like this when we’d been apart for a while, and sometimes even when we hadn’t been. There was just something about the two of us that wouldn’t let us keep our hands off each other. Whatever it was, sometimes it was overpowering.

I wasn't going to highlight this passage but the last line really got me. It made me bust out in a smile.


She leaned over and straddled me and then I was inside her and I’d never felt anything so good. I thought, Fuck, not again, not without a condom, and it was the most fleeting and inconsequential thought I’ve ever had in my life.

Finally, other than the words, the great writing, the exciting story and the compelling characters I got to remember the blurb I read on Schrodinger's Cat. If you are not familiar with the experiement, it's worth knowing about.

First Line Today

I know that I said it'd be thriller's all year, but I tried to rationalize reading a western by Louis L'Amour by saying to myself that these were the progentitor of the modern thriller. Sadly, Lando might not have been the best foundation for a successful thriller. That being said here is the first line.

We Sacketts were a mountain folk who ran long on boy children and gun-shooting, but not many of us were traveled men. And that was why I envied the Tinker. 

When first I caught sight of him he was so far off I couldn’t make him out, so I taken my rifle and hunkered down behind the woodpile, all set to get in the first shot if it proved to be a Higgins. 

Soon as I realized who it was, I turned again to tightening my mill, for I was fresh out of meal and feeling hunger. 

Everybody in the mountains knew the Tinker. He was a wandering man who tinkered with everything that needed fixing. He could repair a clock, sharpen a saw, make a wagon wheel, or shoe a horse.

L'Amour, Louis - Lando (The Sacketts)

I read a lot of L'Amour books when I was a teen, but eschewed the Sackett's. I think it's an interesting range of characters that L'Amour invented, but I just never glomed onto them. I should have stayed away.

Cheaper in my Dotage

I had just about given up on Amazon. I don't know, I guess it occurred when my wife talked about how much she wanted a new book to read but didn't want to pay so much. That was the seed, the kernel, that grew and germinated until it flowered this afternoon when I finished my most recent book and went to buy another.

A sampling:

$14.99 - Tom Clancy's Threat Vector

$12.74 -  David Baldacci's The Hit

$19.99 - Ken Follett's Winter of the World

I know I've discussed this issue before, but it irks me to no end that by buying and e-book we are saving the distributor on printing, delivery etc, so I'm surprised there isn't a bigger bargain market out there. $19.99? Really?

Don't get me wrong, I know there are some diamonds in the rough out there for just $0.99, but they're hard to find. That's why I went to Smashwords and found a couple, specifically this one by Bob Mayer, Eyes of the Hammer. I was surprised there was only one book on Smashwords by Mayer and doubly surprised it only came in epub format. Then I saw this . . . his works on Amazon.

$0.99 - Eyes of the Hammer on Smashwords
$2.99 - Eyes of the Hammer on Amazon

Having published my own books on both of these sites I know why Mayer has different pricing, but it sure reinforces in me the desire to start with Smashwords and only revert to Amazon when I find nothing better.

Maybe I'm just becoming cheaper in my old age.

Today's Last Line

I just finished the Last Assassin by Barry Eisler. It was good, but I hesitate to say that it was as good as the other novels in the John Rain series. A review will be coming, but in the mean time here is the last line(s):

But why think about all that now, on my way to see Delilah? Barcelona had been an interlude before. It could be one again. 

No, that wasn’t quite right, I realized. Barcelona hadn’t been an interlude. It had been… anarmistice. 

But that was all right, too. An armistice wasn’t so bad. 

It was better than being at war. And if I could find a way to another armistice, and then another, maybe I could string them all together, and one day they’d actually add up to peace. 

One day.

Eisler, Barry - The Last Assassin

Who Knew It Did So Well

I read with a great degree of surprise in a WSJ article entitled Oh, My! That Dirty Book Has Sold 70 Million Copies by Jeffery A Trachtenberg that Fifty Shades of Grey was the fastest selling trilogy ever. That's pretty impressive. I can think of many books and series that should be up there as well, Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, among others, but wouldn't have necessarily guessed that Fifty Shades of Grey beat them all out. According to the article, the numbers are pretty stellar.

E.L. James's "Fifty Shades" erotic trilogy sold more than 70 million copies in print, audio and e-book editions in English, German and Spanish from March through December, according to Bertelsmann SE & Co., parent of the books' publisher Random House. 

Then this:

For a sense of scale, Random House's second biggest selling North American title last year—Gillian Flynn's thriller "Gone Girl," which has been a national best-seller for 41 weeks—sold more than two million copies in the U.S. and Canada in all formats, between June and December.

Not a direct comparison mind you, English, German and Spanish and March through December compared to U.S. and Canada and June and December, but still that's a stunning spread! What's more stunning is not the fact that I bought it and started it, but that I had to put it down after just a few paragraphs. Mayhaps I need to try.

Evershade, evershades, ever shade, ever shades

Taking a Note From Murder Lab

Based on my post yesterday, and Kristine's bullet points about teasers, . . . and as I feel I am about 60 day's shy of releasing novel number two, On the Edge, here is a teaser for the reader.

Those who have read this blog for some time might remember this banner ad from last year when I was promoting Toe the Line.

60 days hence I hope to upload this one as a banner ad to this site.

There is a bit of a theme at play here. There's one in the writing too. We'll see if this campaign is more successful than the last toe dip in the waters.

**Nota Bene, I've had to shrink the size of the ads a tad. The text will be more legible when they are placed at the top of this page. - Thanks for the concern.

Planning

There are a lot of little nuggets here at Murder Lab a blog I found through Book Blogs. Kristen Elise has written a pretty well rounded bullet list of things an aspiring author can do prior to and after release of their works. Some of the suggestions I like and plan to do:

• Read and comment on other people's blogs
• Write guest posts for other bloggers
• Participate in blog hops and giveaways
• Retweet!
• Join a book club 
• Join a critique group
• Attend conventions

There's more and I recommend that any aspiring author reading this should hit the link to Murder Lab and see it for themselves. It gave me a moment's pause and reflection. 

Yep . . . Hated It

Trite, unimaginative, predictable . . . those are the words I would use to describe Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. So sad too. The first in the series, the Hunger Games, was fun, inventive and well worth reading (see here). This one, continued the downhill slide of the series since that first one.

I don't know if I can put my finger on one specific thing, I just didn't like it. I thought it was completely and utterly predictable and that by itself seems to have been enough to kill my enthusiasm for the series. The second in the series, Catching Fire (see here), wasn't as good as the first but still offered some potential for Miss Collins to "pull it out," sadly, she failed.

Nuff said I say.

Newest First Line

I'm back to reading a Barry Eisler novel. I have loved these in the past (see here) and based on the fact that not even a quarter of the way in I've already run across the word "vertiginous" I'm willing to bet I like this one too.

That being said, this is the first line:


I’VE NEVER LIKED doing a job in a new place. You don’t know how to get in and out undetected, you don’t know what tools you’ll need to access the target, you don’t know where you’ll stick out and where you’ll be able to fade into the background or disappear in a crowd. 

Eisler, Barry - The Last Assassin (Onyx Novel)

Not a great or thrilling first line, but if you know that you're reading about an assassin it does make one think about some of that person's needs, characteristics and desires.

One Might Think

An avid reader of both this blog and the WSJ might think that I would choose to discuss and link to the articles that appeared this weekend in the Review Section, specifically this article on life after death for dictator's corpses (here), or this article about the quick and sudden, and lonely success of The Lost Weekend (here) or this one (which I've only just run across) about novels set in Napa (here) or this article that discusses the screenplay being a terrific tool for teach "show don't tell" writing (here).

With all of these wonderful articles about fascinating subjects or about writing, a savvy reader would not think I'd take on yacht building, but I have.

A Hole in the Water You Fill With Money by Patrick Cooke is really quite interesting. The article itself is intriguing and depressing all at the same time and makes the book that it is written about, Grand Ambition by G. Bruce Knect, seem like it would be more of that. Is it off-kilter that I genuinely want to read this when Mr. Cooke writes:

From the living room of his $18.5 million duplex in New York's Time Warner Center, Mr. Von Allmen and his wife alternately cajole and torment Lady Linda's patient yacht designer, Evan Marshall, with questions that may strike the reader as strictly the problems of the idle rich. Should the yacht have built into it one garage or two for storing smaller craft? (Securing speedboats and wave runners on deck is viewed by the yachting community as déclassé and a sign that the owner can't afford a garage.) How will guests in the sky lounge be able to view underwater scenes sent from video cameras mounted beneath the yacht's hull? And what is the best way to air-condition the outdoor decks during those sweltering Mediterranean cruises?

or

Mr. Knecht, without being in any way judgmental, catalogs the jaw-dropping excesses. One owner has a room onboard that makes snow. Another built a concert hall large enough to fit a 50-member orchestra. Yet another has an onboard runway where models show off the newest fashions in a room with only two seats. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's 414-foot Octopus boasts a basketball court and a commercial-quality recording studio. No one, however, goes over the top like the Russians, the "oligarch-yachtsmen," as the author calls them. Roman Abramovich, the owner of Britain's Chelsea football club, also owns the Eclipse. At 533 feet, she is nearly as long as two football fields. Stored below decks is a submarine protected by a missile-defense system.

It was the last passage that really grabbed me, when the new yacht owner tours his purchase. This just smacks of being a character in a novel.

There is a scene toward the end of "Grand Ambition" where the author accompanies Mr. Von Allmen on a tour of Lady Linda. The owner is in a rotten mood. As he glumly surveys each luxurious deck, "there was not a flicker of excitement." He looks instead like a man staring down into a hole in the water that just swallowed a fortune.

As I'm all thriller this year, I'm guessing that this will be my next Audible.com book, but I bet I will find it fun and entertaining anyway.