Review

Quick Review: FRAGILE CARGO by Adam Brookes (Atria Books)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , , , ,

A fascinating story of resilience and ingenuity in the face of brewing global war.

The true story of the determined museum curators who saved the priceless treasures of China’s Forbidden City in the years leading up to World War II and beyond.

Spring 1933: The silent courtyards and palaces of Peking’s Forbidden City, for centuries the home of Chinese emperors, are tense with fear and expectation. Japan’s aircrafts drone overhead, its troops and tanks are only hours away. All-out war between China and Japan is coming, and the curators of the Forbidden City are faced with an impossible question: how will they protect the vast imperial art collections in their charge? A difficult and monumental decision is made: to safeguard the treasures, they will need to be evacuated.

The magnificent collections contain a million pieces of art — objects that carry China’s deepest and most ancient memories. Among them are irreplaceable artefacts: exquisite paintings on silk, rare Ming porcelain, and the extraordinary Stone Drums of Qin, which are adorned with 2,500-year-old inscriptions of cultural significance.

For sixteen years, under the quiet leadership of museum director Ma Heng, the curators would go on to transport the imperial art collections thousands of miles across China — up rivers of white water, across mountain ranges, and through burning cities. In their search for safety the curators and their fragile, invaluable cargo journeyed through the maelstrom of violence, chaos, and starvation that was China’s Second World War.

An excellent history of China between the two World Wars. It took me a while to get around to reading this (not sure why), but I am very happy to have done so — this is an excellent, engaging, and well-written history. Continue reading →

Quick Review: LIKE THIS, BUT FUNNIER by Hallie Cantor (Simon & Schuster)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , ,

Interesting premise, but ultimately a strangely familiar story

TV writer Caroline Neumann is thirty-four and mired in professional envy and self-hatred. Even Harry, her usually supportive therapist husband, thinks it’s time for her to press pause on her career ambitions and focus on getting pregnant, despite Caroline’s serious ambivalence about having children.

When Caroline accidentally stumbles on Harry’s patient session notes and offhandedly mentions what she finds in a meeting with a producer, the momentum of Hollywood takes over. Before she knows it — and unbeknownst to Harry — Caroline finds herself pitching a TV show about the deepest, darkest secrets of her husband’s favorite patient, a woman known to Caroline only as the Teacher.

Amid the indignities of the Hollywood development process, Caroline must balance her burning desire for professional validation against her own morality and the health of her marriage. And when Caroline forms a real-life relationship with Teacher herself, the lines between art and life begin to blur further, shaking up Caroline’s understanding of what it means to be the “likeable female protagonist” of her own life.

One of my most-anticipated novels of the year (yes, I’m a big fan of Hollywood-related books), and this one had a very promising premise. It’s well-written, and the characters are believable and mostly well-composed. However, most of the commentary about and critique of Hollywood felt familiar, which made this a less-satisfying read than hoped. Continue reading →

Quick Review: TELEVISION by Lauren Rothery (Ecco)

Civilian Reader Review , , , ,

An interesting look at a Hollywood and relationships, told with an unusual premise

Some people you meet them and you imagine this movie together. The two of you make a kind of movie and then it’s over. Other people, what you imagine isn’t a movie, because it keeps going. It’s television… If you can’t see how romantic television is, you’re blind.

An aging, A-list movie star lotteries off the entirety of his mega-million blockbuster salary to a member of the general viewing public before taking up with a much younger model. His non-famous best friend (and often lover) looks on impassively, while recollecting their twenty-odd years of unlikely connection. And an aspiring filmmaker, unknown to them both, labors over a script about best friends and lovers while longing for the financial freedom to make great art.

Told in their alternating, intricately linked perspectives, Television is a funny, philosophically astute novel about phenomenal luck, whether windfall or chance encounter. Like Joan Didion’s classic Play It as It Lays, but speaking to a since irrevocably changed Hollywood, it portrays a culture in crisis and the disparities in wealth, beauty, talent, gender, and youth at the heart of contemporary American life. In this glittering but strange new world, lit up by social media and streaming services — what, if not love, can be counted in your favor?

Lauren Rothery’s Television was one of my most-anticipated novels of 2025, so I was very pleased when I received a DRC — it promised (and mostly delivered) an interesting look at a long-time friendship in Hollywood, altered but not damaged by diverging paths and differing levels of success. While I enjoyed the novel, there were some strange choices made. Continue reading →

Very Quick Review: REVENGE PREY by John Sandford (G. P. Putnam’s Sons)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , ,

Lucas Davenport hunts a Russian hit squad

Leonard Summers — not his real name — is on the run. A former high-ranking Russian intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. after providing critical information about Russian spies in U.S. government service, Leonard,  his wife Martha, and son Bernard have spent the past year holed up in a CIA facility near Washington. After the CIA makes a deal with the U.S. Marshal Service’s Witness Protection Program (WPP), Leonard’s family is transported to Minneapolis. The plan is to hide them in a wooded Minneapolis suburb that resembles their former home and dacha near Moscow.

The Summers are received at their destination by Lucas Davenport and fellow marshal Shelly White. Unbeknownst to them, the WPP group has been tracked by a Russian hit team. And while nobody in the WPP has ever been attacked… Leonard might be the first victim. As shots are fired and enemies dodged, Lucas must move quickly to uncover where the leak is coming from, before the hit team can strike again.

With what appears to be a perfect premise for a Lucas Davenport novel, Revenge Prey offers much of what long-time fans of Sandford’s thrillers have come to expect. However, unlike previous novels in the series, the 36th book seems to stumble in quality. Continue reading →

Very Quick Review: DESTINY OF THE REPUBLIC by Candice Millard (Vintage)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , , , , ,

An engaging, highly-readable history of Garfield’s rise to the presidency and death.

James Abram Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, a renowned congressman, and a reluctant presidential candidate who took on the nation’s corrupt political establishment.

But four months after Garfield’s inauguration in 1881, he was shot in the back by a deranged office-seeker named Charles Guiteau. Garfield survived the attack, but became the object of bitter, behind-the-scenes struggles for power — over his administration, over the nation’s future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care.

Meticulously researched, epic in scope, and pulsating with an intimate human focus and high-velocity narrative drive, The Destiny of the Republic brings alive a forgotten chapter of U.S. history.

Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic has been on my radar for a very long time; it was first published in 2011, when I was still in college and reading through as many biographies of the US presidents as I could (for my studies, but also because I was generally interested). I never got around to reading it while at university, but with the recent Netflix adaptation — Death by Lightning — my interest in reading it was revived. So, I popped to Book City in Toronto (highly recommend this local chain), bought the book, and started reading it that same day.

Continue reading →

Quick Review: A HOLLYWOOD ENDING by Yaron Weitzman (Doubleday)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , , , , , ,

The dreams and drama of the LeBron Lakers

When LeBron James signed with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018, it looked like a match made in heaven. Here was the preeminent athlete of his generation, fresh off ending Cleveland’s 50-year title drought and in need of a new challenge to help further burnish his legacy, joining forces with one of the most iconic teams in all of sports. And here were the Lakers, in the midst of their worst stretch in franchise history and reeling from the death of the legendary owner Dr. Jerry Buss, in need of a savior. The script wrote itself.

A little over two years later, LeBron and Dr. Buss’ daughter, Jeanie, were standing shoulder to shoulder, hoisting the NBA finals trophy into the air. Having won their record-tying 17th NBA title, the Lakers had reclaimed their accustomed perch on top of the basketball world. It looked to be the birth of a new dynasty.  

But this was a new Lakers’ franchise, one beset by infighting and years removed from Kobe’s prime. And this was LeBron James, the catalyst of the “player empowerment” era, an athlete chasing things greater than Michael Jordan’s ghost. The two parties were too big to peacefully coexist under one roof. The 2020 title would represent the pinnacle of their pairing, and the beginning of a precipitous decline.

Drawing from over 250 interviews, Yaron Weitzman takes readers on a riveting, behind the scenes journey of this fraught partnership. From the Succession-like power struggle between the Buss children, to the rise of LeBron’s landscape-altering talent agency and its attempts to assert its own power within the Lakers’ walls, to the evolution of LeBron’s priorities and political voice, “A Hollywood Ending” is the definitive story of an American icon’s final years on stage, one portraying him, a fabled NBA franchise, and the world of modern professional sports in a light never seen before.

The latest book by long-time NBA journalist, and author of the excellent Tanking to the Top, is an account of “the high stakes drama” inside the Los Angeles Lakers organization as they adjust to their LeBron era. Weitzman covers everything from the initial attempts to lure the superstar to LA, to their Bubble Championship, up to last season’s blockbuster (and still incredible) trade for Luka Dončić. Engaging, often amusing, and well-written, this is a must for all NBA fans. Continue reading →

Quick Review: NASH FALLS by David Baldacci (Grand Central)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , , ,

A high-flying financier learns he’s working for crooks. Everything goes wrong. Eventually.

When Walter Nash is recruited by the FBI to help bring down a global crime network his life is turned completely upside down…

Walter Nash is a sensitive, intelligent and kindhearted man. He has a wife and a daughter and a very high-level position at Sybaritic Investments, where his innate skills and dogged tenacity have carried him to the top of the pyramid in his business career. Despite never going on grand adventures, and always working too many hours, he has a happy and upscale life with his family.

However, following his estranged Vietnam-veteran father’s funeral, Nash is unexpectedly approached by the FBI in the middle of the night. They have an important request: become their inside man to expose an enterprise that is laundering large sums of money through Sybaritic. At the top of this illegal operation is Victoria Steers, an international criminal mastermind that the FBI has been trying to bring down for years.

Nash has little choice but to accept the FBI’s demands and try to bring Steers and her partners to justice. But when Steers discovers that Nash is working with the FBI, she turns the tables on him in a way he never could have contemplated. And that forces Nash to take the ultimate step both to survive and to take his revenge: He must become the exact opposite of who he has always been.

And even that may not be enough.

In his latest novel, David Baldacci introduces readers to another new protagonist: Walter Nash, financier extraordinaire. With an intriguing premise, I jumped in with my usual expectations for Baldacci’s work. However, it was also nowhere near the author’s best. Continue reading →

Quick Review: NOBODY’S BABY by Olivia Waite (TorDotCom)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , , ,

Detective Dorothy Gentleman investigates the surprising (impossible?) appearance of a baby on the Fairweather…

Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty’s most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.

A wild baby appears! Dorothy Gentleman, ship’s detective, is put to the test once again when an infant is mysteriously left on her nephew’s doorstep. Fertility is supposed to be on pause during the Fairweather’s journey across the stars — but humans have a way of breaking any rule you set them. Who produced this child, and why did they then abandon him? And as her nephew and his partner get more and more attached, how can Dorothy prevent her colleague and rival detective, Leloup, a stickler for law and order, from classifying the baby as a stowaway or a piece of luggage?

This is the second novella starring Dorothy Gentleman, a ship’s detective on the HMS Fairweather, an interstellar passenger liner transporting people to a new life on a new planet. Gently paced, well-written and engaging, it’s another very good read from Waite, and fans of the first are sure to enjoy this. Continue reading →

Quick Review: THE ASSET by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Crime)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , , , ,

Another solid addition to the Joe DeMarco series, involving blackmail with potentially international repercussions…

In the middle of the night, on a winding road in a suburb outside of Washington D.C., a homeless veteran is killed in a hit-and-run — a tragedy that barely catches the attention of the media and police.

Days later, John Mahoney, the former Speaker of the House, is confronted by Diane Lake, an ex-CIA agent turned political researcher with a knack for digging up unsavory intelligence on some of D.C.’s biggest players. Diane is there with a gift for Mahoney: the news that Lydia Chang, the wife of one of his biggest rivals, might be working undercover as a Chinese agent.

Knowing it’s too early to get the FBI involved, Mahoney does the only thing left to do. He calls in Joe DeMarco.

DeMarco might not have the title of political researcher, but he’s no stranger to digging up dirt either. As DeMarco starts his investigation, he soon learns there’s a lot more going on than Mahoney suspected, and instead of answers, all he finds are more questions. Who’s the mysterious man Lydia Chang has been meeting in the park? Does Diane Lake have an ulterior motive? And why does everything point back to a random hit-and-run?

The Asset is the 19th novel in Lawson’s excellent and acclaimed Joe DeMarco series. I’ve been a fan since the very beginning (2005’s The Inner Circle), and each new novel is a must-read for me. I started reading this new novel as soon as I received the review copy, and I zipped through it. I really enjoyed this. Continue reading →

Re-Posted Review: IMPERIAL TWILIGHT by Stephen R. Platt (Knopf/Atlantic)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , , , , ,

Earlier today, I received a ping-back to this review.* I hadn’t thought about the book for a while (I read it in 2019), but it’s superb, and I do still recommend it very highly. The review is, I think, also quite well-written. So, I thought I’d re-share/-post it.

* Unfortunately, it was “used” by an LLM to provide a user with an “analysis” of the book — just read it yourself!

Quick Review: IMPERIAL TWILIGHT by Stephen R. Platt (Knopf/Atlantic Books)