Dan Murphy's Blog

Well since everyone was talking about these books, and the movie is due out in March I figured I would try and read the series.  One of the nice things is that I got it for free from the Kindle Lending Library with my Prime account so it didn’t cost me anything to read it either!  But I would have gladly paid for these books as they were all three very entertaining.  They are also a very fast read I think on average I think it took me about 2 day to read each one.

The main story here is that Katniss, a 15 year old girl, from District 12, the poorest District in the what was formally known as North America is picked to go to the Hunger Games.  These games were created by the government to show the Districts that they still need government control so each year they draw a boy and a girl from the Districts ages 12-18 to go to the Games.  The object of the game is to survive and kill everyone else.  Obviously no one really wants to be picked for the games but no one has a choice.

I really did enjoy the character development of the story, the only complaint I had is every once and while everything would change in a sentence.  Like all of a sudden she is in one place and then BAM she wakes up in a hospital.  This means it takes a few pages for you to catch up to where the story has moved to.  Other than that I have no complaints about the book and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants a very fast pace and easy to read series.

So it had been a while since I read a nice fighter jet story that I liked so when this came up through my searching I picked it right away.  The author of the story is a retired Air Force pilot with 20+ years of flying A-10′s and F-16 Vipers.  So needless to say he draws a lot of real life experience and knowledge into this book, which makes it awesome to read.

The basis of the story here is that Colin Pearce is a retired Air Force F-16 pilot who now spends his days flying charters on Gulfstream’s and has a pretty solitude life.  He is then approached by a company that is hiring retired F-16 pilots to fly for a mercenary for hire air-strike team.  At the same time he is approached by this new employer the CIA approaches him to take the job and help out the USA find out who stole 8 F-16 jets from the bone yard in AZ and is planning a big strike in the near future.  Colin takes the job and has a hell of a 30 day ride while he tries to save the world from WW-III.

This was a great book and a whole lot of fun to read.  In the last 30 percent or so of the book I couldn’t put it down and wanted to keep reading.  The author does a great job on character development and its fun to get an insight into the world of flying from someone who has actually been there.  I highly recommend this book as this is probably my favorite flying book after HAWX that I read a long time ago!

So I am still chasing after a book that was a good as Deamon and Freedom and after reading this one I am still on the search.  This book talks about our reliance on technology and our ignorance on how secure it is.  The main character lost his family in 9/11 and the kicker is that he knew about 9/11 about 2 weeks before it was going to happen but no one would listen to him.  So he leaves his government security job after that and starts his own security company and starts tracking down this new virus a few years later.  After a few planes crash, nuclear power plants fail, and some financial ruin of a few companies it looks like me might be under attack and its up to him and a long time college girl friend to figure this out and stop it before it goes crazy.  As usual you can never trust the Russians!

I read this while on vacation and it was nice and not too suspenseful so it took me a little while to get through it.  It was alright but when compared to Deamon it doesnt hold a flame as far as techno thrillers are concerned.

So after becoming a huge Castle fan on TV I thought I would try and check out the books that the show is based on.  This was my first Kindle Prime Free monthly rental so the price was right to try it.  The book is really short and to the point.  The characters are slightly different then the ones on TV and I have to say I am more of a fan of the TV version rather than the books.  The book was fairly predictable but it did make me laugh a few times.

Main story here is about a multi-billionare developer who is found dead dropped out of his penthouse apartment.  The usual suspects are lined up: the nanny, the widow, the best friend, the worst enemy and you go back and forth a while before finding the killer.  The plot is well done and I did like the little hints they dropped along the way but I am not a big mystery reader so of course I totally missed them until the end of the book where they wrap it up.

I do not think I will be reading any more of his books but it was an interesting try.

So I wanted something different to read so looking through the Sci-Fi section I ran into this series and this author.  I wanted something similar to Old Mans War with the same witty comments and jokes.  Looking at the reviews for these books people were saying they didn’t like Sci-Fi but really liked these books.   The best part about a Kindle is that you do not pick a book based on its cover, because if that was the case I wouldn’t have chosen these by a long shot.  The basis of the story here is that an alien force is trying to kill all the humans (Macros), while this attack happens the humans are helped out by another alien force to help stop them (Nanos).  After they are able to defeat the Macros the Nanos leaves them to go help the next planet.  Then the Macros come back and the humans make a deal with them that they will become their ground forces since they are obviously better fighters.  Then they go around solar system to  solar system fighting as mercenaries different worlds until they turn on the Macros.

I did like the humor that is throughout the book, but as with most Sci-Fi books you have to read them in order and read them back to back.  The next book starts off like the next chapter so you have to remember everything.  The only problem with this is that you get a little bored with the writing style and the story by the time you hit the end of the third book.  I thought they were entertaining but not the best sci-fi i have ever read and still enjoy the Old Mans war series better.

So once again not sure how this made it to my wish list in the Kindle but it did and it was there and $0.99 so I decided to read it.  This was a pretty predictable storyline, that I have to say I wasn’t that excited night to night from reading.  It moves a little too slow for my pace and didn’t have enough action for me.  The basic story line is that an insurance company decides to sell back life insurance to customers who have been termed terminal.  Well over the past few years with advancement in medical procedures and drugs people who are given a terminal diagnosis aren’t dieing fast enough for the company to actually make money based on buying out the insurance plan.  So the company decides to start killing off its customers, trying to make it look like an accident is what killed them.  One patient was run off the road in an attempt on his life and starts to put the pieces of the puzzle together to find out what the company is doing.

It was a decent last minute read if you just needed something very quickly but other than that I really wouldn’t suggest this book.

So this author was brought to my attention from one of my blogs as one of the most successful, rich, un-published authors of amazon and e-books.  This is a super fast read, as in about 6 hours to read the whole story it is really short but packs a punch.  Sometimes you can read 200 pages and nothing happens and sometimes you can read 150 pages and a ton of things happen.  With this book there is a website that grants you three wishes.  But no one decides to read the fine print which catches up to them later.  It started off funny and witty and then it kept getting a little darker and darker and by the end of the story I was positively kinda disturbed by it.  Not to say it wasn’t a good book, I just thought it would be a very different book based on the introduction.  John Locke has a ton of books out there but I don’t know if I will read them as this was a little too dark for me but an interesting new author.

So the Chess Team is back again in this third adventure in the series.  I highly recommend you read the series in order otherwise there are parts that will make no sense to you.  Jeremy Robinson does a great job yet again in this book and keeps you turning the pages only to leave you on a cliff hanger at the end with an obvious 3rd book in the works.  In this story the Chess Team is tasked with protecting a little girl from a small village that speaks a dieing language.  While they are all confused why they have been tasked with saving her they notice that other little spoken old languages are disappearing all over the planet in horrible grusome deaths.  King (Jack) has taken on full fatherhood responsibility with this girl and will stop at nothing to make sure that she is safe and everything is resolved.  We run into some old characters from previous books in this one and as I mentioned it makes it very hard to put down. With this story old things come back to life and the author takes a stab at things like Stonehenge and some bible passes and how they were misinterpreted through translations of the different languages.  A great non stop ride and holding my breath until the next one comes out