Tuesday, February 10, 2009


Star Wars(r) Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor by Matthew Stover


Search for title: HCL RCL MPL SPPL MnLINK

Synopsis

Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader are dead. The Empire has been toppled by the triumphant Rebel Alliance, and the New Republic is ascendant. But the struggle against the dark side and the Sith Order is not over. Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, and their faithful comrades have had little time to savor victory before being called on to defend the newly liberated galaxy.

Powerful remnants of the vanquished Empire, hungry for retaliation, are still at large, committing acts of piracy, terrorism, and wholesale slaughter against the worlds of the fledgling New Republic. The most deadly of these, a ruthless legion of black-armored Stormtroopers, do the brutal bidding of the newly risen warlord Shadowspawn. Striking from a strategically advantageous base on the planet Mindor, they are waging a campaign of plunder and destruction, demolishing order and security across the galaxy–and breeding fears of an Imperial resurgence. Another reign of darkness beneath the boot-heel of Sith despotism is something General Luke Skywalker cannot, and will not, risk....
Okay, yes, another Star Wars book. This one was fun - not part of some massive multi-book chain, it pretty much told one story, but one that felt like another Star Wars movie, say a fourth episode of the original trilogy. Lots of action, back and forth between multiple scenes. And I felt the dialog (especially between Han and Leia) harked back to the best of the original movies.


Dante's Equation by Jane Jensen


Search for title: HCL RCL MPL SPPL MnLINK


Synopsis

Rabbi Aharon Handalman's expertise with Torah code - rearranging words and letters in the Bible - has uncovered a man's name. Who is Yosef Kobinski, and why did God hide his name in His sacred text? To find the answers, Aharon begins an investigation, and discovers that Kobinski, a Polish rabbi, was not only a mystic but also a brilliant physicist who authored what may be the most important lost work in human history.

In Seattle, Jill Talcott's work with energy wave equations is being linked to Yosef Kobinski, now deceased, who claimed nearly fifty years ago that he discovered an actual physical law of good and evil. But when Jill's lab explodes, she is forced to flee for her life, realizing that her cutting-edge research is far more dangerous than she ever has imagined. And that powerful people have a stake in what she may have uncovered.

Now Jill, her research partner, and a writer fascinated by Kobinski are about to meet Handalman in Poland - all four desperate to solve the astonishing riddle. Searching through the past, they trace Kobinski to a clearing in the woods near Auschwitz. And in that clearing they come face-to-face with the inexplicable: that Kobinski, drawing on his own alchemy of science and the Kabbalah, made himself vanish from the death camp in a blaze of fire. Now, with intelligence agents hot on their trail, the investigators have no choice. They must follow Kobinski - to wherever he may have gone.

This was a lot of fun - and at times quite harrowing.