Crash Gordon and the Revelations From Big Sur by Derek Swannson and Darren Westlund

I was asked to review this book, but the following review is my true and honest opinion.

I know I left you guys after the last Crash Gordon book with a lot of philosophy and what not, but this second book was a different story. I couldn't put it down, and while it was still very long, it read much easier than the first book.

An amnesiac convalescing in Big Sur encounters an oddly sinister envoy from the Freemasons’ Scottish Rite Psychophrenic Research Program…. A stoned surfer trespassing on Hearst Castle property gets hauled up into the sky by a massive flying black triangle…. A notorious starlet attending the wrap party for her first major Hollywood movie assassinates a Moscow journalist with a bottle of radioactive nasal spray.... In Crash Gordon and the Revelations from Big Sur, Derek Swannson combines these elements into a comic and subversive international thriller.  

OCTOBER 1988: It’s morning in America again. Ex-CIA Director George H. W. Bush is calling the shots as Vice President. Intelligence agency black budgets are on the rise. Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics has been trickling upon the American populace for nearly eight years. It’s been a non-stop champagne bash for the rich, who’ve become much richer, but for the middle class and the poor the trickling has acted like acidic piss, burning gaping holes in their social safety nets. Is the increase in suffering intentional? Gordon Swannson thinks so—and he has the metaphysics to prove it. Sort of. 

Fresh from a five-year resident scholar program at the Esalen Institute, Gordon (“Crash” to his friends) arrives in the sleepy seaside town of Cambria, California, to deliver a lecture titled “Galactic Loosh Farming and Reaganomics: How Much Longer Before the Fabric of Reality is Ripped to Shreds?” It’s the start of a bizarre chain of events that will launch Gordon’s career as an investigative journalist and entangle him with a cast of characters that includes: James Marrsden, a gleefully foul-mouthed radio DJ and Gordon’s untrustworthy childhood best friend; Kayleigh Fuller, a stoner witch who happens to be the niece of Buckminster Fuller; Skeeze Lester Huntley, a porn-addicted surfer whose alien abduction inspired him to become the Dope King of Central California; Rina Rowley, a lovely young actress with a shockingly ugly past; and looming largest of all, James’ morbidly obese and obscenely wealthy Uncle Lloyd, “super secret black-ops bagman for the medico-military-occult complex… and matchmaker.”  

Determined to uncover the truth behind Lloyd’s lurid tales of psychic killers and a mind control program known as Project MONARCH, Gordon chases down leads from Cambria to Amsterdam’s red-light district and the Brussels headquarters of an alien-inspired sex cult calling itself The OääD Institute—getting a profound education in the machinations behind the 20th century’s greatest unexplained mysteries along the way. Seeking the final piece to the puzzle, Gordon returns to his roots in the isolated, faux-Swedish town of Kingsburg, where those mysteries began. What he finds there will send him hurtling toward a climactic showdown against a naked assassin dead set on turning the Cold War into a hot mess.

Click to view on Amazon: Crash Gordon and the Revelations from Big Sur

 I was so excited to read this book because I really wanted to learn more about the psychic powers that we discovered Crash had in the last book. So I dove into this head first and I was not disappointed. I really liked this book. It was incredibly entertaining and it really inspired a lot of conversations with my loved ones about life and death. I usually have a tv show playing in the background while I do things, but with this book I kept finding myself pausing the show so that I could get more into the story.

The same characters are back and they are just as funny as ever. Gordon is hilarious, but I have to say that my new favorite character was Skeeze. He was just so out of this world, literally (!), he was abducted by aliens multiples times. And his house of rats, and Senor Pepe...  I couldn't stop laughing. James (or Jimmy) really did make me nervous though, and I am really curious to see what becomes of his character if any more books were to come out. Jimmy had always made me uncomfortable because he was so violent and rude, but he really changed in this book and turned into kind of a nasty person. I wonder if he will stay successful or if he will have to face some sort of consequences for his actions.

There was less philosophy in this book, and while it was still there, it seemed to melt more seamlessly into the story than in the first book. And this book was so fully of aliens abductions and secret government programs that I barely noticed the philosophy. There were a couple of times that I did wish that I was as widely read as the author, though, so that I could understand his references better... I guess that is something that I will have to work on!

Over all I really liked this book and it will definitely be on my reread shelf. It can be read as a stand alone too, so you don't have to read the first book to understand everything in this one, but I was happy that I had read both. I hope another one comes out so that I can see more of these characters' lives! I give it a 5 out of 5 stars!

 Really guys, go get it!

Lilith Enraptured (Divinity Warrior) by Michelle M. Pillow

         I know I said I had been reading YA and I will get back to that soon, but I read this book pretty quickly and thought I would do a review since I have been seriously slacking.

         Sorin of Firewall lives in a land forever at war. In fact, the Starian men are so busy fighting, their marriage ceremony has been reduced to a "will of the gods" event where they simply pick a woman out of a lineup and claim her as a wife. With women becoming scarce, it's necessary to trade the off world Divinity Corporation for brides. Duty-bound to attend the ceremony, Sorin has no intention of picking a bride, let alone one from another dimension. That is, until he sees Lilith, the bewitching woman sent by the gods to reward-or punish him?.

         Lilith, a data analyst for Divinity, is betrayed by the Corporation and wakes up in a primitive, uncharted dimension filled with warriors who know only war and duty. Her fear of becoming a sex slave to a big, beefy knight becomes all too real when a warrior of god-like proportions claims she's his new woman. As Lilith discovers, there are worse fates than being the focus of Sorin's skillful and earthy seduction.

Click to view the book on Amazon: Lilith Enraptured

         This story was a pretty standard "kidnap woman" story. Lilith gets kidnapped by her corporation and sent to this world that is stuck at war in the middle ages and she gets selected by this giant warrior to basically be his baby maker.  Usually the heroine would put up more of a fight,  but she gave in pretty quickly and of course there were plenty of misunderstandings before they finally had a happily ever after.

         Go read the book then come back.

         I know this post is a bit short, but I kind of felt that the plot was lacking, but I mean I guess most people don't read the book for the plot. The sex scenes were okay, but I have definitely read better. I do like the idea of the constant war, that is a cool concept, because most places are looking for an end to a war but this one didn't want to stop the war and had purposefully stayed in the middle ages so that they could have more control over what their enemy can do to hurt them.

         I also kind of liked the idea of Having the wife's room inside the husband's, I mean, one way to look at it is that she has to get past her husband to get out, but on the other hand the idea of a room within a room seems really cool to me. I know it's silly, but now I want to do that in my house.  I know this was a short review, but I feel like there wasn't much to talk about. They met disagreed about her staying, got over it and fell in love. Though, I do wish that Sorin had gone more in depth about his first wife Bianka. We know she tried to cheat then ran off to be with his enemies who then killed and ate her, but every time that Lilith brought it up he would get super pissed about it, which is understandable. I just wanted to be able to get a better picture of this first wife so that I could compare Lilith to her.

         I would give this book a three out of five stars. A quick read, but the story doesn't really grab you.

Other Systems by Elizabeth Guizzetti

     
          I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I love Scifi and I love adventure and sometimes I get pissed that I can't just go off and train to fly away in a space ship to different planets and meet all kinds of different people. This book made me long for that.

         Ten large ships race toward Earth, broadcasting in every language: "Brothers and sisters, we come in peace and in need. We have found our way home." The fear of a coming invasion begins the worldwide riots of 3062.

         Yet, not all Earthlings fear attack. The newcomers, long lost descendants of Earth, speak of a paradise ninety-four light years away. Kipos is a land of plenty where there has never been hunger, murder, or war. However, they need more healthy young immigrants for the colony to thrive.

         Many accept their offer to be tested. After assessment, Abby Boyd Lei is among the chosen. She leaves the protection of her family with dreams of higher education, a good job, and a kind-hearted spouse.

         Will Kipos be everything she imagined? Abby is about to discover the cost of utopia.

Click to view the book on Amazon:  Other Systems

         Now, I was really excited for this book because something about Scifi makes me itch with impatience (Why haven't we achieved any of this stuff yet??). For the most part it was a fulfilling adventure about a girl who grows as she is thrust is circumstances beyond her control. She has to deal with leaving her planet and knowing that everyone she knew and loved on earth would die before she ever reached the new planet. Then once at the new planet she had to deal with being separated from her only family and basically made a slave. When she finds her way to freedom with a flight crew of hybrid humans she has to deal with the time space continuum and how she will stay the same while everyone she knows planet side could age decades while she is gone.

         While there was romance in to book, it wasn't what I craved from the book, from the way it was set up I was expecting something different than what ended up happening. But thinking back on it and looking at it from a mature angle instead of a sex crazed one, I realize that the way things are is probably how they should be, Abby needs time to recover and grow into who she truly is.

         The book was well written, though at times I felt myself drifting because sometimes it just seemed dense with the description of the space things. Or I would want to see the relationships develop between characters and instead I would end up with Abby on a new planet describing plant life. So I hope there is a second one because I want to see where these characters end up. I think that I would give this book a 3 out of 5 stars, because sometimes I just couldn't focus on it, it would lose me.

        Read the book, then come back and read this part! Spoilers Ahead!

         With all the focus on Mark and Abby it seemed like the author was setting them up to be together. I understand why they didn't get together... She was traumatized from her rape and he was getting over his relationship with Pat. But that was one of the things that pissed me off. This whole weird love triangle thing. They were so good together, but then Pat shows up and Mark takes him back after Pat had ditched him for a woman. I mean if he wanted to be a dad they could have adopted, there were so many humans that needed homes. But I mean thinking like a mature adult, I get it, though I wish that they were together I get it.

         Then for a crazy moment I was thinking that she was going to get with Harden, but then he took the role of her dad, which I really liked. But ho emotionally unstable is Harden, I mean Abby cries and he thinks she is going to go commit suicide, I know that happened to his wife but how fragile is his mind that he thinks everyone is going to do that. I also was a bit confused about the breeding laws and why so many pregnancies were terminated. If the planet was having a population problem (and they were, they were going to die out) then why were they terminating so many pregnancies and sterilizing people? I mean that is just dumb.

       Then finally there is the whole individual time line thing. Like, in space time passes differently so when you return planet side everyone you have known is either super old or dead. That is just hard to think about. Not because it is hard to grasp, but because that is such a painful thing to have to face. Like, when she contacts the planet to talk to her sister and Orchid is in her 30s and has kids and has grown up and has her own life, and Abby is still a teenager.

         It was a very cool story, and I will definitely keep looking for new books by Elizabeth Guizzetti.