Out of the Dark by Gregg Hurwitz (Orphan X)

Release Date: January 29, 2019
Minotaur Books

Evan Smoak is the Nowhere Man. A man who moves in the shadows and helps people. He is also the former assassin Orphan X. In Out of the Dark he is back and ready for his most difficult and dangerous assignment yet. He is going to kill the President of the United States. When he was twelve years old Smoak was taken from a foster home and trained to become part of a deadly black operations force. The Orphan program produced the deadliest assassins and prepared them to serve their country. When Evan decided to leave they powers behind the program attempted to terminate him. In the previous books we learned that Evan wasn’t the only target of termination. All of the Orphans had been targeted. The man who issued the orders to terminate Orphan X was the President of the United States. All Evan knows is that the reasons are attached to his first mission. For some reason something attached to that mission is viewed as dangerous to the career of the current President. So Evan realizes that the only way to make himself safe is to kill the President before he is killed.

The Orphan X novels are enjoyable. They keep the pages turning. This newest book in the series is no exception. Gregg Hurwitz does an excellent job in each novel developing the character a little more each time. Evan Smoak is not just a two-dimensional cutout. He is a fascinating character who develops a little more each time we meet him. Smoak is flawed. His training leaves him unable to engage in normal human relationships. He doesn’t know how to navigate the world of dating. We feel Evan’s loneliness and we can’t help but hope that somehow he will end up with Mia and Peter. In some of the Orphan X novels the pacing has been slow. Not so in this novel. The pace is fast and the action is always moving. It is a great addition to the series. Definitely the best book to date. I look forward to more Orphan X books in the future.  

Odysseus Awakening by Evan Currie

Odysseus Awakening is the sixth novel in Evan Currie’s ongoing Odyssey One series. The story picks up a few months after the events in the prior novel. The Empire is now probing into the Priminae territory. Eric Weston is now the Commodore of a task force that has been assigned to monitor the actions of the Empire. 

In the meantime the Odysseus is experience some strange anomalies. There is a prankster on board causing trouble. Commodore Weston has to figure out how to deal with all of these issues while preparing to go up against the newest enemy. A chance encounter between a Priminae ship and the Imperial Fleet cascades into a space battle pits the Priminae and Terran forces against the Empire. 

That is about all there is to say about this particular book. The book is a nearly 300 page space battle. It is thrilling and fun. You keep turning the pages to see what happens next. Except for one fascinating point there really isn’t anything resembling plot or character development. Just non-stop space battle action. The book feels more like a transition between the previous book and the next one in the series. This is not uncommon for this series. It seems like the books alternate between setting up the story and an all-out battle. I have little doubt that the next book in the series will move the story along. The series is quite enjoyable and recommended.




           

2018 - A Year in Reading

Here is the completed reading list for 2018. It was a great year. 168 books 61,113 pages read.


The Lost Kings - Amy Licence
Dodge City - Tom Clavin
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain
Babbit - Sinclair Lewis
Last Stand at Saber River - Elmore Leonard
Matagorda - Louis L'Amour
Appaloosa - Robert B. Parker
Kingdom of Speech - Tom Wolfe
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
Fools and Mortals - Bernard Cornwell
Resolution - Robert B. Parker
Oedipus Plays - Sophocles
U. S. Marshals - Mike Earp
Hillbilly Elegy - J. D. Vance
A Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare
Brimstone - Robert B. Parker
Sins of the Father - Lawrence Block
Time To Murder and Create - Lawrence Block
The Last Gunfight - Jeff Guinn
The Late Show - Michael Connelly
In The Midst of Death - Lawrence Block
The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
Blue-Eyed Devil - Robert B. Parker
Iron Horse - Robert Knott
Bull River - Robert Knott
The Force - Don Winslow
The 39 Steps - John Buchan
Midnight at the Bright Idea Bookstore - Matthew J. Sullivan
12 Rules for Life - Jordan Peterson
Rooster Bar - John Grisham
Crisis of Responsibility - David Bahnsen
Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman
IQ - Joe Ide
Trigger Warning - Neil Gaiman
Righteous - Joe Ide
A View From The Cheap Seats - Neil Gaiman
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John LeCarre
All The Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
An Unlikely Trust - Gerard Helferich
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
The Great Debate - Yuval Levin
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
My Antonia - Willa Cather
The Innocent - David Baldacci
The Hit - David Baldacci
Dynamite Road - Andrew Klavan
The Pirate Coast - Richard Zacks
Nowhere Man - Gregg Hurwitz
Shotgun Alley - Andrew Klavan
The Bloody Spur - Mickey Spillane
The Target - David Baldacci
Dangerous Women - Otto Penzler, ed.
Princess and the Goblin - George MacDonald
Camino Island - John Grisham
Black Echo - Michael Connelly
The Second World Wars - Victor Davis Hanson
Coolidge - Amity Shlaes
The Throne of Caesar - Steven Saylor
The Guilty - David Baldacci
Death of Caesar - Barry Strauss
Beautiful Ruins - Jess Walker
Memory Man - David Baldacci
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy O'Toole
March Violets - Philip Kerr
Black Ice - Michael Connelly
A Separate Peace - John Knowles
The Last Mile - David Baldacci
Unsub - Meg Gardiner
The Fix - David Baldacci
New York Dead - Stuart Woods
Hellfire Club - Jake Tapper
Concrete Blonde - Michael Connelly
Last Coyote - Michael Connelly
The Hunter - Richard Stark
The Escape Artist - Brad Meltzer
The Man With The Getaway Face - Richard Stark
Hellbent - Gregg Hurwitz
Dirt - Stuart Woods
Trunk Music - Michael Connelly
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
End Game - David Baldacci
Angels Flight - Michael Connelly
Dead In The Water - Stuart Woods
Discrimination and Disparities - Thomas Sowell
The Whistler - John Grisham
Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsythe
Swimming to Catalina - Stuart Woods
Macbeth - Jo Nesbo
Emma - Jane Austen
Dead Lock - Damien Boyd
Cuckoo’s Calling - Robert Galbraith
Ivanhoe - Walter Scott
Silkworm - Robert Galbraith
The Fallen - David Baldacci
Citizen Soldiers - Stephen Ambrose
Split Second - David Baldacci
Ayesha - H. Rider Haggard
Tevye The Dairyman - Sholem Aleichem
Career of Evil - Robert Galbraith
Hour Game - David Baldacci
A Darkness More Than Night - Michael Connelly
City of Bones - Michael Connelly
The Thief - Fuminori Nakamura
Lost Light - Michael Connelly
The Narrows - Michael Connelly
Spymaster - Brad Thor
The Lincoln Lawyer - Michael Connelly
The Closers - Michael Connelly
Simple Genius - David Baldacci
First Family - David Baldacci
Echo Park - Michael Connelly
Overlook - Michael Connelly
The Sixth Man - David Baldacci
Brass Verdict - Michael Connelly
King and Maxwell - David Baldacci
9 Dragons - Michael Connelly
The Reversal - Michael Connelly
The Drop - Michael Connelly
The Fifth Witness - Michael Connelly
The Black Box - Michael Connelly
Sex Matters - Mona Charen
Gods of Guilt - Michael Connelly
The Burning Room - Michael Connelly
The Crossing - Michael Connelly
The Wrong Side of Goodbye - Michael Connelly
Two Kinds of Truth - Michael Connelly
The Wrecking Crew - Kent Hartman
Suicide of the West - Jonah Goldberg
Price of Greatness - Jay Cost
All The King’s Men - Robert Penn Warren
The Other Woman - Daniel Silva
The Collected Stories - Eudora Welty
Depth of Winter - Craig Johnson
How In the Hell Did This Happen? - P. J. O'Rourke
There’s Something I Want You To Do - Charles Baxter
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
1984 - George Orwell
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
The Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkien
The Two Towers - JRR Tolkien
The Return of the King - JRR Tolkien
The Silmarillion - JRR Tolkien
Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
The Devil In The White City - Erik Larson
Melting Pot or Civil War - Reihan Salam
Circe - Madeline Miller
Wrecked - Joe Ide
Mortal Republic - Edward Watts
Abraham Lincoln: The Prarie Years and the War Years - Carl Sandburg
Redeeming The Great Emancipator - Allen C. Guelzo
Lethal White - Robert Galbraith
The Ways of the World - Robert Goddard
The Corners of the Globe - Robert Goddard
The Ends of the Earth - Robert Goddard
Dark Sacred Night - Michael Connelly
Witch Elm - Tana French
Reconstruction - Allen C. Guelzo
The Outfit - Richard Stark
The Mourner - Richard Stark
Long Road To Mercy - David Baldacci
The Score - Richard Stark
The Jugger - Richard Stark
The Seventh - Richard Stark
Winter in Paradise - Elin Hilderbrand
The Reckoning - John Grisham
The Blood of Alexander - Tom Wilde
Odysseyus Awakening - Evan Currie
Odysseyus Ascendent - Evan Currie

Upcoming Reviews

Here is a look at the reviews that are coming up in the next few weeks:

John Marshall by Richard Brookhiser

The Reckoning by John Grisham

Odysseus Awakening by Evan Currie

Unexampled Courage by Richard Gergel

The Point of it All by Charles Krauthamemer

History of Russia and Eastern Europe

Out of the Dark by Gregg Hurwitz

Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly

Havana Game by John Lutz

There is a little of everything here. Some history, some mystery, some thrillers, and some science fiction. I can't wait to share it all with you.

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year everyone! It is a new year and a new start. After a few years absence and a few false starts I am relaunching this blog. I hope to have a lot of great books to share with you this year. I am already queuing up some reviews. I plan to spend a little time also talking about the general love of reading. My interests are many and varied and this site will reflect those interests. So jump on in and join me. I hope sometime this year to start a podcast on the love of good books. We will see if it happens.