Fade Away by Harlan Coben (2010)

Tightly-scripted, well-crafted story with familiar, lovable characters, lots of drama, and good mystery. 5/5 Stars.  I am on a roll picking some good books recently.

Coalescent by Stephen Baxter (2003)

Well-crafted, fun story with interesting characters.  It covers a huge arc of time and develops a great theory of emergent behaviors. 5/5 Stars.

The End of Everything by Victor Davis Hanson (2024)

Interesting analysis of historical clashes of civilizations that had the most extreme and sudden (single-battle) outcomes.  Victor Davis Hanson (VDH), as a professor of classics, has chosen four examples he knows well.  He presents fantastic scholarly research to illustrate the phenomenon.  

There are dozens of other historical examples where the language, culture, and civilizations were wiped out by conquerors that were not as sudden, including the Meroitic civilization in Sudan (500K people), the Coptic civilization of Egypt (5M people), the Ge'ez language and culture in Eritrea (500K people).  Like VDH's example of Constantinople, these (and many other) African civilizations, cultures, languages were destroyed by the Muslim conquests. There are dozens in Asia, as well.  It's also interesting how genocides such as the murder of two thirds of the Jewish people by the Nazis sometimes don't destroy the language, culture, or civilization. It's a great history book and much-more approachable than most dense "phone book" accounts of names, dates, and esoteric details. 5/5 Stars.

High Value Target by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole (2024)

Another fun D&D adventure.   Close combat, manly men, warrior women, special forces one-liners, great humor and story-telling. Mindless entertainment, 5/5 Stars.

Quarantine by Greg Egan (1995)

Another amazing Egan book with fantastic speculative hard science and interesting story arcs. 4/5 Stars.

Ultima by Stephen Baxter (2016)

Good space opera and storytelling and a tidy conclusion to the big story.  Entertaining but not great. I plan to start the "Xeelee" books but I am not a fan of the characters Baxter creates. 4/5 Stars

The Best of Greg Egan by Greg Egan (2019)

Many of the stories in this collection are fantastic and others are mediocre. All of them are thought-provoking. None is bad.  I enjoy the metaphysics. 4/5 Stars.

Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge (2007)

I seem to recall reading this story online in 2006.  Since Vinge's sudden death, I decided to explore some of his books that I had not yet read.  I was a little disappointed in this one.  It does not hold up well.  I think I enjoyed it more the first time I read it. 3/5 Stars.

The Hollow of Fear by Sherry Thomas (2019)

I enjoyed this third book in the series much more than the second one.  The action, mystery, passions, and power relationships are intense, immersive, gripping. 5/5 Stars.  I look forward to the fourth book.