Five Star Science Fiction/Fantasy - Smoke In The Wind: The Book of Cul, A Fantasy Novel Review

Five Star Science Fiction/Fantasy - Smoke In The Wind: The Book of Cul, A Fantasy Novel
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On Sam Guest's first day as an architect in his own firm he receives a commission via mail and by the time he finishes the sketches for the building he is no long on Earth but on the planet Cul where magic works. He wakes up in the castle of the powerful wizard Aleb and his beautiful daughter Gisele. They tell him that he was touched at birth by the High Ones, has latent power he never knew about and when the time was right Aleb would train him in magic so that the wizard can retire to his own planet.
It is love at first site for Sam and Giselle but he is a man on a mission. He must learn everything he can about wizardry from Aleb and then from ancient Evenan when Aleb disappears. When he gets through his training he will be the most powerful wizard in the world. However the reptilian wizard Ervic wants to kill him before he can grow into his powers. Ervic's goal to control all of Cul and he has more wizards joining him every day. A showdown between these two is inevitable.
SMOKE IN THE WIND is a spellbinding and enchanting fantasy book. Sam makes the transition from Earth to Cul very easily because he always felt he had a different destiny that could not be accomplished on his native planet. His fairy familiar Dah and an intelligent horse adds humor to this action packed tale. Fans of THE WARLOCK IN SPITE OF HIMSELF will love Will Hanson's work. Hopefully, there will be other works that follow the adventures of Sam in Cul.
Harriet Klausner


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Architect Sam Guest is brought to the magic planet Cul by his acceptance of a commission to design a castle that he learns is to be used by a magician. Once there, he finds he is to be trained as the successor to Aleb, a great magician and the principal power struggling against the forces of evil that are trying to gain control of the planet. Sam is immediately smitten with Giselle, Aleb's beautiful daughter, who tells him he was marked at birth by the High Ones to become the most powerful magician on Cul. As he learns more about the sparsely populated, mostly unexplored planet of Cul, and his own abilities, he meets a variety of characters. But the evil forces, led by the magician Ervic, are determined to prevent Sam from realizing his destiny, and will do anything to stop him. Sam must become the most powerful magician on Cul in order to protect it from its enemies - and save the woman he loves.Wil Hanson resides in a tiny community in Southwestern New Mexico. (20021201)

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Fire Without Smoke: Memoirs of a Polish Partisan (The Library of Holocaust Testimonies) Review

Fire Without Smoke: Memoirs of a Polish Partisan (The Library of Holocaust Testimonies)
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Some readers may find the title a bit misleading, as the protagonist was a Jew, not an ethnic Pole. Moreover, this book is primarily intended to promote a remembrance of the Jewish experience, not the Polish one.
In any case, Mayevski (originally Moshe Aaron Lajbcygier and then Majewski), was born in Sulejow. During the later German occupation, he hid and then fought in the surrounding area, located approximately 55 km SE of Lodz. His grandfather admired Trotsky, and had a picture of him on the wall. (p. 10). (Did this plant a seed of latent pro-Communism in Mayevski's thinking?)
While hiding from the Nazis among Polish villagers, he indicated little fear of denunciation. In fact, he freely traveled from village to village. At one point, he had worked at 20 different farms (p. 40), and felt so safe that he went out for walks in the evenings. (p. 41).
Mayevski eventually served in the AK as an incognito Jew. (p. 116). Considering the fact that many Poles could identify even well-assimilated Jews after getting to know them, and that the AK was sensitive about the particulars of its members, Mayevski's Jewishness must have long been an open secret. In any case, there were also openly-Jewish members of the AK, including its top echelons, as noted by Polonsky. (Introduction, p. 4).
Contrary to the lurid portrayals of the AK as an anti-Semitic organization out to exterminate Jews (e. g., Yaffa Eliach, Oskar Pinkus), Mayevski doesn't describe his experiences in the AK in any such terms. The AK did shoot one fugitive Jew for robbing farmers. (p. 121). He also discusses a group of renegade AK members who deserted, turned to banditry, preyed on both Poles and Jews, and got recruited by the Germans for collaborationist activities. (pp. 101-102). His AK unit liquidated them. [Well after the start of the second Soviet occupation of Poland, bandits of all sorts still preyed on the people. The bandits included German deserters and Vlasov soldiers. (p. 146)].
This work gives invaluable details on the methodology used by the AK to identify, trail, and liquidate informers. (pp. 98-101, 108-109). It was clearly an arduous, hazardous, and time-consuming process. (This clarifies recurrent Jewish complaints of the Polish Underground "not doing enough" to liquidate denouncers of Jews. These tacitly suppose that it was a straightforward task that required minimum resources.) The Polish informers had been motivated by hefty payments (p. 100), and reprieves from being sent to concentration camps in return for collaboration. (p. 109).
One former AK member I had interviewed confirmed Polonsky's claim that the AK often regarded individual fugitive Jews as a security risk. (p. 4). When caught by Germans, having nothing to lose and owing minimal loyalty to Poland, they promptly divulged everything that they had observed, often with dire consequences.
Both Mayevski (p. 112) and Polonsky (p. 4) label the NSZ fascist. They should know better. Evidently, Mayevski's falling for this Communist propaganda, and that which accused the NSZ of being out to exterminate Poland's surviving Jews, were major factors in his decision to abandon the AK in favor of the Communist AL. (p. 112, 118).

Polonsky has a good grasp of the modus operandi of the GL/AL: "The communist-controlled forces, which were quite weak, advocated an immediate confrontation with the Nazi occupier, both to take the pressure off the Soviet Union and in order to radicalize the situation in Poland by courting savage German reprisals." (p. 3).


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Smoke Review

Smoke
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I am familiar with a lot of William Sanders' fantasy and alternate history, but SMOKE was the first mystery of his that I read. The main character is Hosea Smoke, a Cherokee woodcarver who's selling his art work at a week-long Native American Cultural Festival at a small college in Oklahoma. Hosea finds himself in the midst of a murder investigation when he discovers one of the other exhibitors dead in his trailer. Power and influence, campus cops (one of whom is Hosea's nephew), and Cherokee customs all come into play to complicate Hosea Smoke's life.

I love the way the story unfolds as the pieces of the mystery fall into place. What was really special for me as a reader, though, was that about halfway through the book, I realized that I was matching faces and voices from my past with the characters in SMOKE and watching the action as much as I was reading the words. Sanders writes about real people in real situations. I've been in these settings, overheard these people talking, and seen them doing what they do.
I like it when a book comes alive for me like SMOKE does. It's been a good book to pull out and reread just for the sheer pleasure of it, straight through from the beginning or just going through and chuckling again at the favorite bits. My husband loved this mystery, too. Normally, our reading tastes differ, but we definitely agreed that this book's great.

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Smoke Burns Review

Smoke Burns
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This was a great book. I was even able to email the author and talk about some of his ideas and found some training opertunities. It can be ordered directly from his site and a lower cost.

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Smoke That Thunders (African Writers Series) Review

Smoke That Thunders (African Writers Series)
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how political power used to be in Zambia during colonization. The influence of the colonizer on tradition in the novel

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Holy Smoke (Bones and the Duchess Mysteries) Review

Holy Smoke (Bones and the Duchess Mysteries)
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Holy Smoke is a heartwarming tale of forgiveness that anyone, particularly children who enjoy mysteries and are between the ages of 7 and 14, can enjoy. The book also brings up some awareness of Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, which may be helpful for anyone diagnosed with the condition, or anyone who knows someone who is.

-Athalia Stoneback


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Bones and the Duchess are at it again! When a neighborhood church burns to the ground, Bones is hired by the church reverend to discover the culprit, but on one condition: he must get the help of "the duchess". The duchess is a young girl named Verity, a bright twelve year old with Asperger's Syndrome who helped him solve the mystery of two missing girls in To Oz and Back. Verity claims to know who set fire to the church, but can she convince Bones? With the help of the reverend's adopted son Danny and Verity's clever instincts, Bones and the duchess set out on another investigation full of quirky characters, coded e-mails and lots of mystery! Holy Smoke is the second exciting Bones and the Duchess Mystery by Alexandra Eden.

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Presence Smoke and Fire Review

Presence Smoke and Fire
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This third installment in Charity Becker's Presence series continues to impress. A tad shorter than the previous two books, Smoke and Fire nonetheless delievers the same punch as the others. It was nice to see the new twists and turns worked into the Presence world and Mina's own character, as they traveled unexpected pathways and continued to lay a solid groundwork for a lengthy and enjoyable series.
I eagerly await the next chapter of Mina Jewel's life.

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When the Port Orchard police come to Mina Jewel for help, she knows it should be an interesting case. But not even the promise of a preternatural mystery can keep her interest very long with all the other crap on her plate.A sudden rush of missing teens and no clues to track them with, an enemy from her past resurfacing without warning, and a life-shattering revelation bring Mina face to face with one of her worst fears. And all this before she′s even recovered from losing her baby or truly accepting her Lycanthropy.But there is no time for Mina to pick up the pieces of her broken life when innocent lives are at stake. How far will Mina push herself for the greater good. . . and at what cost?

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