Book Review: The Didymus Contingency by Jeremy Robinson

The Didymus Contingency is the first book that Jeremy Robinson wrote, originally as a screenplay, which after not being optioned by Hollywood, became a self-published novel.  This review is for the Tenth Anniversary Edition (currently only available as a Hardcover or Kindle book), which contains many edits to the original book.  The plot is something that may not appeal to everyone - after discovering time travel, a man decides to travel back in time to Biblical times to prove that Jesus is a fraud, and bear witness to the fact that Jesus will not resurrect after he is crucified.

This isn't the first novel I've read which deals with the question of the divinity of Jesus - The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is probably the most famous at this point in time, and that is already thirteen years old.  There have even been novels and films with non-terrestrial assumptions of Jesus, and I've enjoyed those as well.  (There are stories out there where someone goes back in time to meet Shakespeare, so Jesus doesn't stand alone).  There are likely others out there.  But, most of the stories I've read dealt with characters speculating and/or uncovering evidence in the present day.  However, this book is something else entirely.

I'm not really a religious person, and I don't identify with Christianity or Jesus as the savior.  However, this story concept was interesting to me.  Just the thought of going back in time, even to see if a figure like Jesus was real or not, putting aside the question of his divinity, is an amazing idea.  My main concern was the religious content of the book - would it be overbearing or preachy?  After reading six other books by Robinson, I thought it safe to say it wouldn't be the central part of the story.  Also, I read a blurb by Robinson which stated something along the lines of "assuming the Bible was accurate", so I figured some key scenes would be present in the story (I don't have a great familiarity with the Bible, but these are events that are pretty well known).  After reading the book, I can say with confidence that any kind of religious message is a relatively minor part of the story.

I don't want to reveal too much of the story, but I will say that this is an adventure story of the greatest kind.  The characters are very interesting, and the interaction between Tom, the doubter, and David, who has a very strong faith in Jesus, is very well done.  It is also interesting that both men were born in Israel, and David changed faiths.  I will also say that I loved the portrayal of Jesus.  He is not a person who acts like a divine being - he is very much a regular guy who has fun with his friends.  There are several surprises that Tom and David encounter along their journey to learn the truth of Jesus - I'll leave all of this for the reader to discover on their own.  I highly recommend NOT doing any research into the title of the book before reading it, as it will spoil something that was a surprise for me.  I couldn't wait to get to the end - not to learn the outcome of the quest for the divinity of Jesus, but to see how other things came out.  As with most time travel stories, there are some interesting and strange things that happen which are then made clear later on.

After reading several of Robinson's books, I have to say that The Didymus Contingency is a monumental first effort - even with the warts the original version had that Robinson's admits to (the story is the main thing here - not typos, grammar, and other problems).  I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a fast paced, interesting story with very believable characters - completely putting the religious element aside, since this is a work of fiction.  Apparently, people of many different faiths have a great love for this book, which is a testament to the story, and it appears to be one of Robinson's most loved books.

Book Review: Pulse by Jeremy Robinson

I just discovered the works of Jeremy Robinson this year.  I was browsing on Amazon and Project Nemesis was recommended.  I saw that Island 731 was listed as book #0 in the series, so I checked it out and quickly became a fan.  Pulse is the sixth novel by Robinson that I have read this year.  It is the first book in one of his most popular series;  the Jack Sigler "Chess Team" Thrillers.  Here is the list of previous books that I've read, in order:

• Island 731 (Nemesis Saga #0)
• Project Nemesis (Nemesis Saga #1)
• Project Maigo (Nemesis Saga #2)
• Raising the Past
• Torment (written as Jeremy Bishop)

Before writing this review, I also finished The Didymus Contingency, which is Robinson's first book.  I enjoyed all of these books, and they all had a similar writing style which kept you wanting to read.  Island 731 really got my interest after about 50 pages - I didn't want to put it down.  The same with the rest of the books once I got around 30 pages into them.

However, I found Pulse to be a somewhat different.  For some reason, I found the writing style to be less engaging, which is interesting, since this book was written after The Didymus Contingency and Raising the Past, and before the rest of the books on my list.  For lack of a better word, Pulse had a different "voice".  Perhaps the style and tone of this book is consistent with the rest of the "Chess Team" thrillers.  I don't know, since I haven't read any others - yet.  I'm not sure if I will read the rest of the series .  I'm on the fence as to whether I will enjoy them as much as the other books on the list above.  At some point, I may check out book #2, Instinct, but that will likely be after I read several of his other books, which currently include (at a minimum):

• Project 731 (Nemesis Saga #3)
• Project Hyperion (Nemesis Saga #4)
• Beneath
• Unity (first in a new series)
• Apocalypse Machine

Overall, Pulse was a good story, and I did find it entertaining, and I liked the characters - but I just didn't find it as easy to read or enjoy it as much as the previous books that I read.  I'm not really sure why.  I enjoyed The Doomsday Key by James Rollins, which also focuses on the escapades of an elite military unit - so it isn't the content of the story.  For some reason, I just didn't find it as engaging.  I think that this book also had a slower pace for a longer period than the other stories - the pace does eventually pick up, at which point I was able to get through the material more quickly.  If I recall correctly, this was somewhere around the halfway point.

It is a good thriller, and it does cover a lot of material.  In short, the Chess Team takes on a powerful organization planning to create invincible, regenerating soldiers using the DNA of a creature from Greek Mythology.  There is an excellent mystery in the story, and I was pretty satisfied with Robinson's very original viewpoint to the mythological aspect.  That's about all I want to say about it - I don't want to spoil anything for future readers.

I will say that the characters are consistent with Robinson's other books.  They are all interesting, some of them have interesting pasts, and some of them need to deal with some very interesting personal problems.  This contributes greatly to the story, as they seem like real people.  They aren't super heroes, and they make mistakes - the good guys don't always win in this story.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys thrillers, especially those that involve a military team fighting to save the world from disaster.  After finishing the other books on my second list, we'll see if I turn my sights to book #2 in the series.

Book Review: Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines

This is the first book in a series of five about a world that suffers a zombie-apocalypse, but which also had some interesting super-heroes around at the time that it happened.  About 3 years ago I came across the second book in the series, Ex-Patriots.  The concept sounded interesting, and it had a blurb from Ernest Cline raving about it, so I checked it out.  Only after reading it did I realize that there was a previous book - but there was not really an indication that this was the second in a series.  Now I've finally gotten around to reading where everything started.

The book is just as good as Ex-Patriots, and has flashbacks to the origin of several of the heroes, as well as to a few things that have a bearing on the story occurring in the present.  The flashbacks also deal with the start of the outbreak, and how disbelief largely contributes to it getting out of control.  Similar to Ex-Patriots, the story starts a little slowly and then builds to the point where you don't want to put it down.

I have to say, this story has a very interesting catalyst for the zombie outbreak.  In fact, one of the most original that I have seen in any zombie story, and it ties in with the rest of the story structure incredibly well.  It was a very big surprise for me when it was revealed.  Very well implemented.  Bravo!  Encore!  Encore!  Oh wait - this is followed by Ex-Patriots, which I've already read.  But, that is followed by Ex-Communication, Ex-Purgatory, and this year Ex-Isle was released.  So, there are plenty more zombies in my future.  Well, in this series they are referred to as "exes" (as in ex-humans), and they are caused by the "Ex" virus.

The heroes are interesting and their powers are fairly original - at least to me.  St. George, or The Mighty Dragon, is pretty much invulnerable, can breath fire, and has somewhat limited flight ability.  Zzzap is a man who can transform into an energy form, capable of very fast flight, and a few other things.  Gorgon has a vampire-like ability to drain the life out of people.  Regenerator has the ability to heal himself and others, but in the present his ability is all but gone.  Stealth has the ability to move quickly and silently, like a Ninja, and she has fierce fighting ability.  Cerberus isn't really a hero - it is a woman inside a military exo-suit of her own creation.  But, it is resistant to zombies and really packs a punch.

Things start off with the characters on a mission to scrounge food and medical supplies from the city outside the Mount, which is an old movie studio in Hollywood that has been fortified to isolate the population being protected by the superheroes.  Pretty much an expected problem in any zombie story which is about survival - the world is radically different.  Things quickly get complicated when they run into a rival group called The Seventeens, which was a former gang in the area before the outbreak of the Ex-virus.  They are a competitor for the limited resources of the city, and they constantly cause problems for the survivors in the Mount.  The survivors quickly learn that things have recently become much worse, and they are facing a very alarming and unexpected threat.

The portrayal of the Seventeens very much reminded me of the Humungus and his group of bandits in the film Max Max 2:  The Road Warrior - they essentially want to be the number one group and annihilate anyone else who gets in the way or doesn't get in the way for that matter.  When the depth of the threat is realized, and the "normal" people start to realize what they are up against, they have the typical expected reaction:  they have a strong desire to get the heck out of dodge!  Of course, the heroes succeed in showing them that they are only motivated by fear - there is nowhere they can go without being destroyed by the zombie horde, and staying at the Mount and fighting is the best choice.  This is all very believable.  The final battle is filled with action, desperation, and a few surprises.

One of the best things about this series is that all of the characters, even the heroes, are very human.  They are just as flawed and imperfect as the rest of us, and in some cases just as unsure, and they make mistakes.  This puts the reader on the same playing field as the heroes - they could be someone that you know.

In typical classic hero form, Stealth and the other heroes have the lofty goal of not only keeping their own people at the Mount safe - they want to save as many people as they can.  This really seems like an insurmountable task given that the majority of the population is made up of zombies.

This is a great start to the series, and I'm looking forward to reading the remaining three books.

Book Review: The Day Remo Died, by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

This book is a sort of prequel to Created, The Destroyer, which is the first book in The Destroyer series.  This is a novella was published in 1985, several years after the first book.  It takes place during a window that surrounds the material in the first book, and it is told from Chiun's perspective.  The characters in this book are quite different than the characters in the first two books in the series, and are apparently consistent with the characters in book 3 onward.

I read this immediately on the heels of Created, The Destroyer, and found Chiun's side of the story very interesting.  There is much more detail about various aspects of Remo's training, as well as why he is apparently so easily trained by Chiun, who believes that an inferior white man could not possibly master the art of Sinanju, which should really only be taught to those of Korean descent.  That being said, the novella is only 85 pages long.  Anyway, Remo surprises Chiun at every turn, and ultimately the story takes a somewhat mystical turn which is not seen in the Remo Williams film at all (though, since they planned a series of films, it is quite possible it may have been explored at some point had the film series continued).

By having characters which are more consistent both with the film, and with books 3 onward, this book has interested me in reading at least through book 3 before deciding on whether to continue with the series (the whole series is 150+ books, so it is a considerable investment).  In fact, I believe some of Chiun's dialogue in this book is fairly close to some of that in the film, although I still remember many lines from the film which have not yet appeared in my reading.

I highly recommend this to anyone who has read the first book, as it does make the series more interesting.  Chiun has motivations that no other character in the series is aware of at this point, and I wonder if it will all come out at some point.

Book Review: Created, The Destroyer, by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

I saw the film Remo Williams:  The Adventure Begins in 1986 on a VHS tape that I rented from a video store several months after the movie came out at the theater. I enjoyed it very much, and was surprised that it didn't do better at the box office.  The character Chiun had many funny lines, and his evaluation of American soap operas was interesting (I won't reveal in case you haven't seen the movie).

About 4 or 5 years later, the film came up in a discussion at work.  It was at this point that I learned that the film was based on a series of books called The Destroyer (IMDB didn't exist back then).  I sought out these books at bookstores, but was never able to find any.  At some point over the next several years, I did come across one, and I believe it was in the early 100's - far to late to start reading the series.  So, I gave up and have not seen any books in the series since.

I just happened to come across the first book on Amazon, and noticed it was available not only in a Kindle edition, but was also re-issued in a paperback (it also appears that all of the books through #151 are available as Kindle editions).  I immediately downloaded the Kindle version and started reading.

This is a good origin story, and it definitely fits the time period when it was written, which is 1971.  What I found most interesting is how different this is from the film.  Aside from the character names and a few other details, the two stories are extremely different.  A few of the major differences are:

• In the book, Remo Williams is the characters real name.  In the film, this is his new name given to him by his employers at CURE.  How they gave him the name is amusing in the film.
• The method of his faked death is different.  In the film, it was an accident.  In the book, it was a faked execution after he was framed for killing someone.
• In the film, Joel Grey is amazing as Chiun, and he has many funny lines.  In the book, not quite as many.  I think the best stuff was in the movie.

Aside from a few similarities in the above, the are no others between the film and book.  I suppose it is possible that the film was like the Doc Savage movie by George Pal, which was an amalgam of a handful of the original 181 stories (though I have not read anything to this effect anywhere on the internet).  This was a big surprise to me.  However, when I read the novella The Day Remo Died (a kind of prequel seen from Chiun's viewpoint) I learned that Remo and Chiun are very different characters in the first two books of the series.  By book 3, they become consistent for the rest of the series, and match their portrayal in The Day Remo Died (which wasn't written until 1985), which I found to be more consistent with the characters in the film.

I really liked how the book started off with a foreword by Chiun, calling the story "lies".

Something of interest, at least to me, is that Warren Murphy was a writer on Clint Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction film, and on Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon 2, which are both good endorsements of his writing.

I do plan on reading this series at least through book 3, where there characters evolved into who they will be for the remainder of the series.  By book 3, the ratings for the rest of the books are consistently higher.  I'll make my decision on whether to continue the series based on my enjoyment of that book (though, 151 novels is a good investment of time and I do have plenty of other stuff to read).

Book Review: Torment, by Jeremy Bishop

When I saw this book, I read that it was a "controversial" novel.  I will say, even though this is a zombie story, that is in fact the case - there are definitely some disturbing elements to this story.  Let me first say that Jeremy Bishop is a pseudonym (pen name) for Jeremy Robinson, who is responsible for the Nemesis Kaiju series and the Jack Sigler Chess Team adventures (I have not read any of these yet, but Pulse is on my list to read soon, and I understand it might be made into a movie).

Now, let's get some of the story basics out of the way (you can glean some of this from the back cover).  A small number of people survive a nuclear apocalypse and then must fight for their lives in a world overrun by zombies apparently produced by the conflict.  You don't often have the words "nuclear apocalypse" and "zombie" used in the same sentence very often, and I'm not aware of any zombie stories that start with a nuclear war.  Usually it is something like a virus, or in George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, it was speculated to be radiation from Venus which was reanimating the corpses.

This book is unlike any other zombie story I've seen, in book or film.  The way the nuclear conflict starts is a frightening idea.  It reminded me of one of Tom Clancy's books where a plane is used to take out a joint session of Congress.  The start of the nuclear conflict in Torment is an equally frightening concept.

A small group that is with the President of the United States launches into space to avoid the nuclear devastation.  Upon returning to Earth, the survivors quickly learn that the devastated world is not what they expected, and from the moment they touch down they are running for their lives.

I won't reveal much more of this story, but I will say this.  The breed of zombie found in this story is immensely creative, horrifying, and unlike anything I have seen before.  The pace of the story kept me reading until the end.

I will say that I was not a huge fan of the ending, and I have to say I'm not entirely sure what happened.  Note that this is not necessarily a major strike against this book. I have read many books that I enjoyed until the very end (one that jumps immediately to mind is Stephen King's Under the Dome - the story was great up until the final resolution at the end, and I understand that I'm not alone in this assessment).

One other item that bothers me, but may not bother others, is the fact that the state of the world after the nuclear apocalypse is left as a mystery.  There is no scientific explanation for how the zombies came into being, or more specifically why fallout isn't a problem when the survivors return to Earth such a short time after the devastation.  Typically, these kinds of things are explained in novels - it is part of the story.  This isn't so much the case with movies, which have a much more restricted time period in which to entertain an audience, and there is a larger expectation that you will suspend your disbelief.

Even with these two relatively minor flaws, I still found this to be a very enjoyable read, although I would not put it at the same level as the other books I've read by Mr. Robinson.

Book review: Raising the Past, by Jeremy Robinson

As James Rollins said in the cover blurb, this is an adventure not to be missed.  This story is an interesting mix of several different themes in adventure and science fiction:  an arctic expedition (somewhat reminiscent of the film Iceman), the discovery of impossible technology found buried in the ice from 10,000 years ago, aliens, etc.  I've seen many of these things before in different guises, but this story brings them all together in a way that I haven't seen before, and it does so very well.  Mr. Robinson, as usual, manages to pack a large amount of story into a small number of pages.

The story starts off in the past, with a prologue setting the scene for what is to come in the present day.  This is a common enough mechanism used by many stories.  In the present, the Mammoth is discovered in melting ice, which should not be possible given the location and time of year.  The mystery deepens as the mammoth is freed.  The group involved in the dig involves an interesting group of people, ranging from the man who funds the dig, to the "experts", to the film crew there making a documentary.  The author does a great job of showing how each group does what is necessary to get what they want.

Ultimately, it comes down to a race against time, because there is a force working against them as they travel across the ice towards their destination.  As is typical in this type of story, not everything is as it seems, and the characters end up having a realization of a ethical dilemma of epic proportions which will test the moral compass of each of them.  As the characters reach their destination, I couldn't wait to find out what would happen, and I was fairly surprised by what the team encounters.  Things frequently aren't as simple as they appear to be.

When the story ended, I felt that while the immediate crisis is averted, things were left pretty open for a sequel, but there wasn't one in sight.  I later found out from the author that this story ties into the Project Hyperion story-line in the Nemesis series about Kaiju (Japanese for "strange beast" - most excellent series).  I'm not up to Project Hyperion yet, so I'm looking forward to it even more now, and I'm glad the story of Raising the Past isn't over.