Book Review: The Monk

Source: Amazon.com

The Monk, by Matthew Lewis

From the book’s cover:

Set in the sinister monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid, The Monk is a violent tale of ambition, murder, and incest. The great struggle between maintaining monastic vows and fulfilling personal ambitions leads its main character, the monk Ambrosio, to temptation and the breaking of his vows, then to sexual obsession and rape, and finally to murder in order to conceal his guilt. The only edition of this key gothic novel available, The Monk now offers a new introduction and notes that make it especially accessible to the modern reader.

Book Review: Pirate Latitudes

Source: Amazon.com

Pirate Latitudes, by Michael Crichton

From the book’s cover:

Jamaica in 1665 is a rough outpost of the English crown, a minor colony holding out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, Jamaica′s capital, a cut-throat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses, is devoid of London′s luxuries; life here can end swiftly with dysentery or a dagger in your back. But for Captain Edward Hunter it is a life that can also lead to riches, if he abides by the island′s code. In the name of His Majesty King Charles II of England, gold in Spanish hands is gold for the taking. And law in the New World is made by those who take it into their hands.

Word in port is that the Spanish treasure galleon El Trinidad, fresh from New Spain, is stalled in nearby Matanceros harbor awaiting repairs. Heavily fortified, the impregnable Spanish outpost is guarded by the blood-swiller Cazalla, a favorite commander of King Philip IV himself. With the governor′s backing, Hunter assembles a roughneck crew to infiltrate the enemy island and commandeer the galleon, along with its fortune in Spanish gold. The raid is as perilous as the bloody legends of Matanceros suggest, and Hunter will lose more than one man before he finds himself on the island′s shores, where dense jungle and the firepower of Spanish infantry are all that stand between him and the treasure.

With the help of his cunning crew, Hunter hijacks El Trinidad and escapes the deadly clutches of Cazalla, leaving plenty of carnage in his wake. But his troubles have just begun. . . .

Book Review: Stranger in a Strange Land

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

Source: Amazon.com

From the book's cover:

Valentine Michael Smith is a human being raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him, while teaching them his own fundamental beliefs in grokking, watersharing, and love. 

The review:

My first exposure to Heinlein's work, I must admit, was the movie version of Starship Troopers.  I was in living a busy but fulfilling life in Arizona when that film came out, and didn't see it, except for a minute or two glimpsed on TV after it released on home video.  In fact, I can't say as I've seen the whole film ever in my life.  Maybe I watched it once on TV, long after the fact.  I can't say.  The things I recall from my initial impression of the film was that I found Heinlein's use of Mormons as fodder for the alien bug species' wrath to be more than a little annoying (in the story, so far as I've come to understand, Mormons go off to some other planet to be weirdos, and are then attacked by the bugs aliens of the plot and nearly wiped out; the portrayal of Mormons is as askew as if an author depicted all catholics as bred, wed, and dead and the rest of the time being drunkards and dogmatics).  Also regarding Starship Troopers, I recall hearing, and perhaps later seeing for myself, that Heinlein had wrote the soldier characters who go off to fight the bugs as being very much hyper-sexualized and into a lot of "free love."