greg hickey

Review: Parabellum by Greg Hickey

by Stefani

Parabellum by Greg Hickey

Published: October 20, 2020 by Greg Hickey

Buy this book at: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / AbeBooks

Synopsis:

A shooting at a Chicago beach leaves several dead and dozens injured. In the year before the attack, four individuals emerge as possible suspects.

An apathetic computer programmer.
An ex-college athlete with a history of head injuries.
An Army veteran turned Chicago cop.
A despondent high school student.

One of them is the shooter. Discover who and why.

Rating:

Review: ***Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Greg Hickey! My apologies that it took me so long.***

When I started reading this book, I looked up the title to see what it meant. Parabellum. I found a few interesting things. One definition of the word is a semiautomatic pistol, which in the context of the subject of the book seemed apt. But even more apt but that I found the term “Para bellum”. It’s a Latin phrase that means “prepare for war”, it is often included in a longer quote of “If you want peace, prepare for war.” This is also surprisingly topical for this book.

At the beginning of the book, I thought I had a pretty good idea who the shooter was. I initially suspected the programmer. He seemed the most likely suspect. Apathetic in general but with a hint of sociopathy. He seemed to view other humans as an experiment, something interesting to watch but ultimately non-consequential. Along the way, as we learn more about each of these characters, it honestly could have been any of them. The high school student who is hypercritical of himself, never feels good enough, and is largely ostracized by his peers. The former athlete who’s repeated head traumas have caused her to be experiencing a lack of control over her anger and fueling resentment at the world. And the veteran turned cop who is struggling with PTSD and having a difficult time finding meaning in his life now that the war is over. By the middle of the book, even though I thought the programmer was still the most likely, all of them were viable.

I really enjoyed learning about these characters, interspersed with passages that seemed to be from the killer’s manifesto. I found great sympathy for all of them. All of them had justifiable anger at the world and their community. My only complaint about this book was that the ending chapters were a bit confusing. I had to go back a few times a read over one of the pages because I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. And, when the killer is revealed, I didn’t think it was the best choice. It seemed to me that this person was the person that the author intended to be the shooter before writing the book. But as the story went on and the characters evolved, I didn’t feel like they were the best choice any longer. So, the ending fell a bit flat as a result. Overall, I enjoy the way the author writes and I love his ideas.

Progress Updates – May 10, 2024

by Stefani

Parabellum by Greg Hickey

Pages: 197 out of 354

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Thoughts so far:

I am about halfway through this book now and I am entranced by it. Greg Hickey uses words quite intentionally. All the words he writes have meaning and importance, there isn’t a millimeter of page that is wasted. I admire an author that can do that. Being quite verbose, I appreciate someone who can be so tightly succinct but also so beautiful. We are delving ever deeper into the psyche of these characters and I care about them in different ways. We are exploring the ex-athlete’s attempts at a relationship even though she fears good things happening to her because she might forget them due to her head injuries, but she also fears that she might end up doing bad things too. The veteran who is struggling with feeling purposeless, he finds no meaning in life since he left the war. The student who is deeply depressed but wants to be memorable to the world, he just isn’t sure how. The programmer who is thoroughly disgusted with humanity and wants no part of it, but finds observing it much like observing an ant farm. So far we have traveled with these characters through their personal struggles, as they each made their first socially unacceptable display of anger and/or violence. Any one of them could be the shooter, but personally I have my bets on one in particular.

Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling

Published: March 30, 2023 by Atria Books

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis: In the far north of Canada sits Camp Zero, an American building project hiding many secrets.

Desperate to help her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother, Rose agrees to travel to Camp Zero and spy on its architect in exchange for housing. She arrives at the same time as another newcomer, a college professor named Grant who is determined to flee his wealthy family’s dark legacy. Gradually, they realize that there is more to the architect than previously thought, and a disturbing mystery lurks beneath the surface of the camp. At the same time, rumors abound of an elite group of women soldiers living and working at a nearby Cold War-era climate research station. What are they doing there? And who is leading them?

Thoughts so far: This book follows the story of three people. Rose is a woman who was hired to go to the settlement as a prostitute for the men in charge of the project. But she’s also been hired as a spy to find out what the man in charge is really up to. We also follow Grant who was hired as a teacher for a school the doesn’t seem to exist, and when he arrives finds that things aren’t what they were portrayed. But since he’s running from his family’s wealth and trying to forge his own path, he stays. The last character doesn’t seem to have a name, but it’s following the settlement of White Alice. White Alice is a climate research outpost led by all women.

So far Rose is absolutely fascinating. I enjoy her narrative the most. She is thoughtful and intense. I can’t wait to get to know her more. Grant seems a bit naive but I’ll be interested to see how he develops. I’m not sure about White Alice. The information is interesting but not sure how it relates to the rest of the story thus far

I’m listening to this on audiobook and find the narrators very good. Each perspective has its own narrator but it feels cohesive.

Progress Update Friday – May 3, 2024

by Stefani

Parabellum by Greg Hickey

Progress: Page 80 of 354

Learn more about this book at Goodreads

Synopsis:

A shooting at a Chicago beach leaves several dead and dozens injured. In the year before the attack, four individuals emerge as possible suspects.

An apathetic computer programmer.
An ex-college athlete with a history of head injuries.
An Army veteran turned Chicago cop.
A despondent high school student.

One of them is the shooter. Discover who and why.

Thoughts so far:

The characters are becoming increasingly distinct through the narrative at this point. I no longer need the author to tell me which character we are following, I can tell by their voice and the circumstances who it is. Each chapter opens with a short piece on morality, or crime or the morality of crime. I am not entirely sure yet if this piece is supposed to be a part of a “manifesto” that the killer is writing, and therefore offering clues as to who it is, or if it is just a part of the narrative. We’ll see how that turns out, I am interested to see the purpose of those fascinating pieces. I still have the same suspicion on which character the shooter is, but the author is carefully laying the pieces to where it could logically be any of them. So far I am really enjoying this book.

For this week, that is all I have. It was a crazy busy week with school coming to an end, so I didn’t get a chance to start anything else and made only marginal progress on this one. Hopefully a longer update next week.

Progress Update Fridays

by Stefani

Synopsis:

A shooting at a Chicago beach leaves several dead and dozens injured. In the year before the attack, four individuals emerge as possible suspects.

An apathetic computer programmer.
An ex-college athlete with a history of head injuries.
An Army veteran turned Chicago cop.
A despondent high school student.

One of them is the shooter. Discover who and why.

Progress: Page 49 of 354

Update: This book started off a tad confusing. The premise is that a shooting happens, that’s the opening scene of the book. Then we are introduced to several characters, and the book description tells us that one of these people is our shooter. We will discover who it is along the way. But since we haven’t named these people, just descriptions (like the student, the veteran, the ex-athlete) it was a little hard to track them at first. Now that I’m learning more of their personalities I think I have it figured it out now. They have images in my head that accompany them now, so that stumbling block should be tackled. I also have a suspect in mind, but at the same time it feels like the easy answer so I suspect it is not that person. Stay tuned, we’ll find out together.

Synopsis:

It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn’t exist. Located a mere seventy-five miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada’s desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the U.S. government-but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades.

Myths and hypotheses about Area 51 have long abounded, thanks to the intense secrecy enveloping it. Some claim it is home to aliens, underground tunnel systems, and nuclear facilities. Others believe that the lunar landing itself was filmed there. The prevalence of these rumors stems from the fact that no credible insider has ever divulged the truth about his time inside the base. Until now.

Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to nineteen men who served the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92, and unprecedented access to fifty-five additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, thirty-two of whom lived and worked there for extended periods. In Area 51, Jacobsen shows us what has really gone on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear weapons to building super-secret, supersonic jets to pursuing the War on Terror.

This is the first book based on interviews with eye witnesses to Area 51 history, which makes it the seminal work on the subject. Filled with formerly classified information that has never been accurately decoded for the public, Area 51 weaves the mysterious activities of the top-secret base into a gripping narrative, showing that facts are often more fantastic than fiction, especially when the distinction is almost impossible to make.

Progress: This is a bit of a cheat, I apologize, since I haven’t actually started this book yet. But I heard a very intriguing interview with Annie Jacobsen on the Lex Friedman podcast. She was there talking about her new book, Nuclear War. Nuclear War is about what the process looks like for a nuclear bomb to be unleashed. Who makes the call? What happens then? How long does it take? What if they’re wrong? Well, I want to read Nuclear War desperately, but I don’t have a copy of it yet. So, while I wait, I am reading another of her books. Also, if you haven’t checked out the Lex Friedman podcast, I highly recommend it. He has a ton of interesting conversations with fascinating people.

Review: Our Dried Voices by Greg Hickey

by Stefani

23617219Our Dried Voices by Greg Hickey

 

Published: November 4, 2014 by Scribe Publishing Company

Buy this book at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Synopsis: In 2153, cancer was cured. In 2189, AIDS. And in 2235, the last members of the human race traveled to a far distant planet called Pearl to begin the next chapter of humanity. Several hundred years after their arrival, the remainder of humanity lives in a utopian colony in which every want is satisfied automatically, and there is no need for human labor, struggle or thought. But when the machines that regulate the colony begin to malfunction, the colonists are faced with a test for the first time in their existence. With the lives of the colonists at stake, it is left to a young man named Samuel to repair these breakdowns and save the colony. Aided by his friend Penny, Samuel rises to meet each challenge. But he soon discovers a mysterious group of people behind each of these problems, and he must somehow find and defeat these saboteurs in order to rescue his colony.

Rating: 4 star

Review: ***Disclaimer*** I received a copy of this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Greg!***

This book was a delightful little read. Based on the synopsis it sounded like it would be right within my area of enjoyment and it turned out that it was. I had a few irritations with it, and there were a few struggles but I found that I did not mind those things too much because the story kept my interest well.

The book starts with a bullet pointed list of all the major accomplishments and failures of humanity in the 300-ish years leading from our present to the beginning of the story. While I found this information interesting, I would have preferred that the information was packaged in a different manner. Bullet points are not that enthralling to read. There was a short excerpt from a “history” of the same time period that we get at the end of the book and a lot of the same information was covered. It confused me why this was at the end and not the beginning. It would have been a better introduction to the story than an ending.

I also got the impression that the author struggled with his narrator a bit, which is understandable and I think anyone would have struggled with it but overall it was handled well. I could tell at times that the author really wanted Samuel to be able to describe things better but he couldn’t because he lacked the language or awareness for it at that moment. At times this led to a bit of an inconsistent narrative but not often enough that it got on my nerves.

Warning: There may be some spoilers beyond this point.

As I read other reviews for this book, I saw a lot of people wondering how humanity could get to a point of being so lazy that we experience a regression in all cognitive functioning and lose the vast majority of our language and ability to communicate. I wondered that too for a while. But then I got on social media for a few minutes and it all made sense to me. We already are practically communicating only in pictures these days with memes, GIFs, selfies and emojis. And plenty of people are so lazy that they can’t be bothered to seek out answers for themselves and instead of spending 30 seconds on Google figuring something out will instead spend an hour asking other people to do it for them. So, to me at least, I can completely see this as a future for humanity.

I really liked the series of tests that Samuel encountered trying to help his community but I also got frustrated with him at a certain point. Clearly, his efforts were going to waste. The rest of the colonists didn’t appreciate, nor even notice, his efforts to keep them content and happy so after a point I was wondering why he was still trying. This also leads me to the ending, at first I didn’t understand it. Staying with the other colony seemed like a natural step. These were people like Samuel. He could improve his own life and be with people who valued their minds, like he did. So why didn’t he?

I thought about that a lot since I finished the book last night and I think I came to a conclusion. Just like Samuel decided that he no longer wanted to waste his labor on colonists who would never progress, he equally didn’t want to waste his labor toward an effort that was directed for someone else’s benefit. He wanted to use his ingenuity, his mind, and his labor to forge his own way not just trade one master for another. In the end, I really like that message. It was an enjoyable book that I liked more than I first expected that I would.