Book Review of Immigrant Problems Asks, Where is the Community

The Secret Side of Empty Reviewed By Tom Pope of Bookpleasures.com

Author: Maria E. Andreu ISBN: 978-0-7624-5192-0 E-book ISBN: 978-0-7624-5205-7 Where is the young person’s community when the mainstream society says you’re White, but you’re Argentinian family pulls you into another direction. Maria E. Andreu’s coming of age character MT walks by her mother without looking at her. The mother cleans MT’s high school and MT’s White mainstream friends might be embarrassed at thinking the female cleaner is connected to MT. MT wants to fit in. She shortens her name from Monserrat Thalia to MT to avoid explaining her past. That becomes the vice of emptiness — a state of alienation, depression. A void. Or separation. A sense many Latinos feel, especially those who don’t have legal documents. Emptiness could also be invisible. Where is the Latino when White Mexicans shun Diego and Frida’s art? Where are they in the image of the Guatemalan flag when that Quetzal was killed by the Spanish conquistador Alvarado? MT is invisible as The Secret Side of Empty explores the ways people become invisible to others. MT’s senior year in high school draws her more into an empty world. Her skin is more White than other Latinas. But she feels more American than Argentinian where she fled with her family. But MT is invisible. She can’t share her full spirit with Nate, a sensitive yet upper class boyfriend with a family that seems to thrive on shopping in the mall. MT can’t share her hopes with a father who dreams of returning to the European-focused streets of Argentina. And she can’t even tell her fears to Chelsea, a childhood friend from kindergarden. A major difference between nonfiction and fiction’s effect on readers is the way the reader obtains information. The distance seen between the person and the viewer of the alienated state in nonfiction makes the topic an item for cocktail conversations. But MT’s emptiness in a novel brings the viewer to the shoes of the character. Andreu takes you though the daily life obstacles and private sensations of MT. Readers probably know something about the struggle immigrants face, but Andreu’s hand grabs the reader to whirl beyond the tip of the hearsay. She whisks you through the daily life where a trembling glance at a policeman makes you fear deportation. She dashes your hopes by contrasting the future. MT yearns to further her energy as an honor student who excels in English. But she drowns with the knowledge that college is another borderline — no papers, no college. MT wraps emptiness around her like the drain of hope. When hope leaves, people can’t just constantly strive. No light shines at the end of a tunnel. Her day becomes filled with looking over her shoulder to avoid an authority figure tapping into a database to find her status. She rides a bike because a driver’s license requires papers. She avoids going home at times to see a mother who cowers under the macho power of father. Can she find ways to reverse her slide? How does MT remain truthful to a love that could thrive in the future? Nate strikes readers as the ideal of a sharing partner. But he still lives beyond MT’s zone of trust. Fears about telling him why she can’t go to college make her silent. His world of KNICK prime-box seating holds friends who could view her as an alien. How does MT plan to grow past her itinerant father? Her father distrusts books or anything in the country. Her love of language that leads her to a tutoring job seems miles away from her possibilities. Her visit to a college where a feisty teacher demands questioning norms could inspire many. But MT reels with the believe that these teasers burn the soul — like the tortured lament from Dulcina in Don Quixote. And how does her fear of the unknown coming from deportation mix with the fear of a beating from father when she shows some knowledge of learning? Such is the vacuum that draws MT into that spiral of hopeless paralysis. Yet, this is the same MT that reached out to tutor students when she needed money. The same MT who spent time with Nate’s other world. And the same MT who avoids some of her father’s violence. Could she turn her strengths up a higher level to overcome her obstacles?

The following review appears at Bookpleasures.com and focuses on how costs affect superheros.

Author Peter Darrach



ISBN-978-1470101824

Second Skin — What Cost for Superheros?

In Peter Darrach’s SF novel, Team Commander Max Cody could lead readers to ask about the cost of being a superhero. When he asked “What is going on with me?”, his flashback saw a bright whiteness and his voice heard an apology. That questioning of an accident to the Astroid Recovery Service (ARSI) commander whisks the reader beyond the usual story line of a conflict between the economic interests of a mining consortium or a protagonist who sides with an indigenous group.



Cody faced becoming a superhero in a world rooted to more real happenings than could be found in The Avengers. But those situations usually demand a cost for the power. When the Greens played God in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy by terraforming the planet, the cost became the loss of support by the Red movement and the planet’s uniqueness.



In Second Skin, Cody’s accident allows the conflict to include how a space accident might reframe human evolution, and how a high technological experiment might strike across the parsecs without planning.



Yet blended within those issues, Cody falls in love with his navigator Elaine, deals with a surging Martian independence drive and fights an ice pirate who could be tied to a political figure in the Martian government.



Those various conflicts whet the appetite of an audience who constantly sees a fast paced, multi-tasking world zoom past them.



Other stories have dealt with part of this scope like, Ben Bova’s Astroid War Series, or the classic movie Avatar. The exploration of the economic downturn of the home planet Earth leads into speculation about how the economic and political systems will follow the characters beyond and into the stars.



However, author Darrach could take readers deeper with Second Skin into the exploration of the wide canvas he paints. What could be the cost to Cody or society for the new abilities Cody displays? What costs exist to society if a new evolution has started? What are the costs to human interaction if Cody has tied into a special accident that changes how people can travel or control resources?



Darrach has laid the framework for the factors that fill Cody’s world and his world makes us think about those issues. Some of us might even simply like the adventure ride of seeing a new superhero.



Yet Darrach just touches the surface. Cody’s accident could lead the way to some exploration about how he developed some seeming supernatural powers. Yet Cody’s attention centers more on his growing love of Elaine. When he is threatened by the ice pirate from an attack on the Mars Orbital Array, the dinner on the array continues without a set of security plans to counter or discover the nature of the threat. That takes the reader completely away from the questions about evolution or accident prevention systems.



Darrach could have developed the man versus self conflict with Cody’s new powers. Cody’s adjustment to a new power must have had some play on his psyche. How did that compare with the ways in his past where he faced and overcame an obstacle?



While Darrach shows readers the new political and economic obstacles in the space age, the author could travel deeper in character development. Cody uses his new powers to thwart the obstacles that would kill most humans. Cody has to shift gears to new situations. But Cody never has to adapt to a limitation from his new powers. As a contrast, the Lady Sula, from Walter Jon Williams’ Dread Empire Falls series, had to reinvent herself throughout the story to deal with personal and Star Fleet limitations.



Darrach sets the stage with characters who represent key agendas, but does not round out those people by showing the impact of competing interests. Gilberto deals with the ice pirate despite his connection to the Martian Government. Yet what are his plans to take advantage of the resources and who would he deal with to handle those benefits? That’s a missing economic or political faction that could be part of the complexity. If the new technology would help mine the resources and place Gilberto in a position to expand his power, where are his interactions with the scientists working of the tech?



The ice pirate is a cunning operative to make the Jack Bauer script people search for counter moves. But his background is a blank slate. What turned him into a pirate and why does he think he can make a big move by helping Gilberto?



Other opportunities could include exploring the technology experts’ concern about how their experiment might lead to unforeseen problems. How does the Governor of Mars see the development of the colony without the economics of Earth? Just how does the community of the planet respond to her vision?



Darrach has opened the path to explore new issues, and it’s reasonable not to expect full closure on many of the issues. Yet once a major item like a possible new evolution or technology is introduced, the concept should have some follow up. Such a blend should not take away from the impact of a character driven story. That blend should be to show how that character deals with the cost of those concepts.

Book Review — The Shekinah Legacy

The following review appears at Bookpleasures.com and focuses on social pressures that undermine trust.


Author Gary Lindberg
ISBN-13: (Trade) 978-0-9848565-0-3
ISBN-13: (Kindle): 978-0-9848565-2-7
Ebook ISBN-13: 978-0-9848565-1-0

When Gideon, a special ops agent, meets a top Mossad chief in India, he asks, “We worked together before…can I trust you now?” That question drives Gary Lindberg’s thriller, The Shekinah Legacy. Lindberg’s novel races with the peril thrust on CCN reporter Charlotte Ansari as she discovers several shadowy groups wanting to kidnap her because of a relic she might possess.

Readers become immersed with questions of who trails Charlotte, who is protecting her, and how can they trust the answers from factions when Pakistanis work with the Mossad, and the CIA seems to counter the Vatican…or does it? And where does Gideon fit in?

Coping with trust is the major theme that wrings our hands throughout the story. Readers are cast into questioning how much their religion or government shovels propaganda to protect a power elite. And Charlotte, the protagonist, wonders how much she can trust her family.

Exploring trust rarely happened prior to the nation’s trauma from Watergate or the shock from 9/11. Since then, trust has filled the thriller genre. But even most thrillers take the reader into only doubting trust from one major faction. Our storytelling has gone way beyond the good guys-bad guys days of James Bond where 007 could rely totally on MI5. Smiley’s People made the reader expect to distrust political agendas. Even Van Lustbader’s Nicholas Linnear shows how the reader can not trust a family member or a colleague at times. But Lindberg throws the reader no life line — at any given time, any trusting is likely to hurt.

Readers are tossed into a world where the secure floor of religion falls from under them. Most Christians recognize the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Charlotte’s quest to save her mother, she runs into possible distortions of basic religious tenets. Lindberg has cleverly delved into history to trace possible questions about the early development of three major religions. And why is the Vatican hiding information?

Thrillers expect readers not to trust political agendas. But usually one major alliance helps the protagonist weave through the maze of hostile factions. Charlotte might trust the CIA, but then could be safer with Mossad…or not. Pashtuns are the enemy, but are they led by a Mossad agent? Can Charlotte trust the secret group of protectors who trail her? But they have ties to both the CIA and Mossad.

While Charlotte navigates trust issues with religion and politics, she would feel better if she could trust her family. But her long lost father cloaks a secret life. Her son has Asperger’s so she can not fully trust his input…or can she? And her husband is back in the States preoccupied with financial woes.

Thrillers are not about political espionage. Thrillers take readers into a special place to reexamine themselves. A novel’s struggle occurs on a worldwide stage, the conflict mushrooms beyond the narrow scope of the reader. Characters like Charlotte look at themselves through a new philosophical lens. That exploration helps all people see the world from another angle.