The Warrior by Ty Patterson

So, it's still a day to go before the end of Black History month and here's another fantastic African American novelist. Enjoy... 

Ty Patterson is a writer who has literally just come on the scene. This is his first book and he says it was inspired and challenged by his wife and son. I'm going to be a 'famzer' (Nigerian speak for brownnoser) and call him my friend because it was clear when we struck up a conversation on twitter, that for a fella who's been compared with the likes of David Baldacci, James Patterson and Lee Child, he is remarkably humble and easy going.

I found that inspiring but not surprising. Anyone who has sold tea, dug trenches, sold leather goods and lived in more than one continent gains such an understanding of life and people that begets humility. Follow him on twitter @pattersonty67

Genre; Fiction. Published; Dec. 10, 2012. 

Plot/Synopsis

Zeb Carter is a private military contractor who is hired to find things and people gone missing or kidnapped. 

“We want you to go to the DRC, find out who those guys are, and what the fuck they’re up to. No action. Just investigate and report.”

He is sent to DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) to gather intel on other mercenaries who were sent there to keep the peace and train the DRC army but have gone rogue and are now hijacking mines and selling the ore, raping the women and girls and terrorizing the villagers in the process to instill fear and cooperation. 

In Congo and under guise of a charity worker helping to build thatch huts and schools, Major Zeb gets gossip  from the villagers who are sensitive to sympathy after being brutalized by soldiers-native and foreign alike. Some villagers even identified a few of the mercenaries from the agency's photos he showed them and by now Zeb has a full dossier on the soldiers and their atrocities. He decides to go on a surveillance to a few villages in north and south Kivu to see firsthand before heading back to the United States. 

After watching a couple of villages from afar, at the third village his love for action and inability to see evil go unpunished spurs him to go into the village. The devastation he meets in the huts in the form of hundreds of raped and battered women and young girls and dead children moves him to ignore the orders he's been given to play a passive role and gather intel only. He takes out half of a team of six that he meets in the process of raping and strangling women and girls while the other three members escape.

Back in New York, he gets debriefed and sets about forgetting what he saw in DRC but not the other half of the rogue team that he caught red-handed in the village raping women and girls that night in Congo. Zeb, working with Broker, a long time friend and ex-service colleague but now an informations expert identifies the leader of the pack as Carsten Holt and the team as ex-Seal. Zeb begins a hunt for him, which soon uncovers a plot that encompasses federal agencies and high ranking political figures. 

In an arranged meeting surrounded by the Feds, Mendes, one of the men he happened upon in his last night of surveillance in Congo, makes his demand to be given the kind of immunity deal that their leader, Holt had been given by the FBI or go public with information he has on the Al-Qeada dealings in Congo. He fatally underestimates Zeb when he tries to shoot him publicly and ends up dead before he can even fully train his gun on him. 

The Balthazars

Zeb's older sister and only living family, Cassandra used to be aide to the Secretary of State but is now an academician and once he gets back from Congo, he goes to pay her a visit. He meets a family, Connor, Lauren Balthazar that are her neighbors and their young son, Rory, forms a liking to him. Over the next few weeks, he's forced to pay them more visits and develops a friendship with the family. Coincidentally, Connor is a journalist who is writing an expose on mining in Africa by western companies with special reference to Alchemy, a mining company owned by a serving senator. The senator turns out to be corrupt to his eyeballs and involved in child labor and other crimes going on in the mines. Connor's wife and son get kidnapped when he publishes the story and tries to gets a statement from the senator about his involvement with the atrocities in the Congo mines.

A rogue mercenary 

Holt, the leader of the ex-Seal team that was operating in the village the night Zeb barges in on them is back to New York city and under protection of the FBI. Zeb and Broker have been researching and digging further information on him at the same time leaving messages for Holt to smoke him out of hiding. On their return from a camping trip with the Connors, all evidence that the journalist Connor had been waiting for to complete his expose is ready and in it incriminating evidence of the Senator working with Holt aka Joop who is apparently a Mr Fix-It hired by the company and to use child labor and whatever else necessary in the mines to avoid reduced production. 

The novel crescendoes when Zeb assisted by Broker goes on a rescue mission to Holt's house for Connor's wife and kid that were being held there. Zeb doesn't make it out alive but the mission was successful in that they kill Holt and rescue Lauren and Rory. At his funeral, lots of people who he has helped over the years turn up to bid him farewell and it is quite a moving scene when they find out the tough unsmiling investigator they knew was once married and had a child. His sister explains to them that his wife and child were captured and killed in front of him by terrorists a long time ago. 

Review

First off, the negative for me is that I don't get how this is the first in a series when the lead character dies at the end of the novel. Other than that, this was a great read.

Ty Patterson writes in easy style and carries his readers from Africa to New York with so much fluidity that one does not jump at the change. I liked that the main character had a depth to him and Patterson's use of music by having the lead character play such an exotic instrument was unusual yet interestingly entertaining..

Characterization always grabs my attention and the characters of this book were totally to my liking. Strong and well defined, military characters, several well spaced action scenes, and recurring humane qualities are some of my favorite things in a book. I read The Warrior in two days (yes, could've been less as it's not a big book but my 5-month old baby demands my attention at all times of the day :-) ). Ty Patterson has written a book that I can put amongst my Top Ten Thrillers. . 

The plot was realistic enough although the end left me yearning (I wanted to see that miraculously, Zeb didn't die, yeah yeah I know, cliche! cliche!) However, Broker and Bwana finishing off the last member of the rogue team was very satisfactory. I know I won't be forgetting Major Zeb anytime soon (he's the kind of character that sticks in your memory) and I can't wait to read the sequel.

Rating: 4 stars

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat

Danticat is the author of several books, amongst which are Krik?Krak!, Farming of Bones, Butterfly's Way: Voices From the Haitian Diaspora in The United States. Breath, Eyes, Memory is her first novel and is an essay of her early years in Haiti and relocation to New York.

She lives in the Unites States with her husband and daughters.

Published; April 1994, Genre; Realistic Fiction, pages; 234.

Plot/Synopsis
Set in two cities, Haiti and New York, Breath, Eyes, Memory is the  moving story of a young Haitian girl named Sophia, who was left as a baby with her aunt in Haiti by her mother who found her way to New York to make what she believes is a better life for herself and flee from the tortuous memories of her past that make her suffer constant nightmares and low self esteem from being raped and impregnated as a young girl of 16.

History however repeat itself in the life of her daughter, Sophie, when she goes to join her mother in New York at age 12. Although, her mother tries to make sure she focuses on her education and not men, Sophie goes ahead and  falls in love with their neighbor, Joseph who is a musician and when she gets caught by her mom one night, her mother out of fear that she was about to go down the same path she did, begins to test her periodically to check that she's still a virgin and her virtue is intact. Sophie in depression and anger decides to use her mother's pestle on herself so she will fail the virginity test. She fails the test the next time her mother tests her and she is sent out of the house. She runs off with Joseph and they get married.

Although she is now married and is expected to have sex with her husband, Sophie from the mental scars inflicted by her mother's constant testing of her vagina, finds sex repulsive and develops a phobia for it, and is unable to make love to her husband except she pretends she really isn't there. Her relationship with her mother also deteriorates from the  period of the testing when she lived with her.  Her marriage to Joseph suffers as she begins to feel frustration and confusion and decides to go back to Haiti away from Joseph. She runs away to Haiti with her baby and  soon after her mother also comes to Haiti. Not since the night she threw her out for failing the virginity test had they seen or spoken and Sophie has a lot of anger and bitterness at her for inflicting those tests on her. In time, however, they reconcile and move back to New York together but their union is short lived as her mother kills herself when she discovers she's pregnant for Sophie's fiancé.


Review 
It is quite an easy read, written in first person narrative by Sophie Caco and is filled with lots of Haitian thoughts and mentality conveyed in the grandmother's  songs and stories. The 3 generations of women and the bonds-both broken and strong-between them is conveyed very simply by Danticat in a clear and easy prose.

I've found that most family history has a way of repeating itself in children and grandchildren and this inheritance of experiences often leads to frustrations and depression in many young people. It is a constant battle which many, such as our heroine, Sophie try to fight daily and grow into insecure adults that in turn, make up a fractured society.

Danticat may not write in the literarily complex manner of some others (she was only 25 at the time this was published anyway) but I thoroughly enjoyed her straightforward style of writing and simple flowing lines. Yes, it was a bit choppy in places but that's to be expected in a short story such as this.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston

She is an American anthropologist and author of four novels and over fifty short stories, play and essays. Their Eyes Were Watching God was written during her fieldwork in Haiti with the Guggenheim Foundation. 

Genre; Fiction, novel. Publisher; J.B. Lippincott. Pages; 256. 

 
After hearing so much about this book and seen the film like twice already, i decided to read it and put it up under Black History Month as it is written by a African-American writer and has some interesting history to it..

It was published in September 18, 1937, a time when blacks were facing racism, being largely persecuted, lynched, faced massive unemployment and political disenfranchisement. Their Eyes Were Watching God was not originally well received but made a comeback to be amongst the pioneering books of African-American literature,and it was listed in 2005 by TIME in its 100 best English language novels. 

The book has been adapted into several plays, a film in 2005 which was executive produced by Oprah Winfrey, directed by Darnell Martin and starred Halle Berry, Michael Ealy and Terrence Howard. It was made into a radio play in 2011 for BBC World Drama. The film and cast have gotten awards and nominations in the Golden Globe and Emmy amongst several others awarding bodies.

Plot 

Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20s and inspired by some real life events e.g. the hurricane at the end of the novel, the tumultuous relationship with Tea Cake.

Excerpts

“Two things everybody’s to tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.” 

”You sho loves to tell me whut to do, but Ah can’t tell you nothin’ Ah see!”

“Dat’s ‘cause you need tellin’’ Joe rejoined hotly. “It would be pitiful if Ah didn’t. Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none theirselves.”

”Dey gointuh make ‘miration ‘cause mah love didn’t work lak they love, if dey ever had any. Then you must tell ‘em dat love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”

"The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets; the great rope of black hair swinging to her waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume; then her pugnacious breasts trying to bore holes in her shirt. They, the men, were saving with the mind what they lost with the eye.”

Synopsis
Told with wit and wisdom, it's a southern love story told by a woman who evolves from a teenager to a woman through three marriages and a difficult life. 

The lead character is a forty-something year old woman named Janie Crawford who tells her life story in a flashback that is compartmentalized by her three marriages to three men.
Janie is a product of rape; her grandma; Nanny, was a slave who was raped by her owner, and gave bith to her ma who was also raped by her school teacher. Janie's ma becomes a drinker and eventually runs away leaving Janie to be cared for by her grandma. In a bid for a better life for Janie, her grandma marries her off to an older man and farmer, Logan Kilick whom she believes will take care of her and give her a life that she can not give herself. Janie however has ideas of what a marriage should be (that of love and partnership from an early memory where she sees a bee pollinating a pear tree) and they do not correspond with Logan's who wants a helper rather than a lover. Janie's  grandma dies and very lonely and unhappy, she runs off with a smooth talking young man;Joe Starks, to Eatonville.
At Eatonville, Starks quickly recognizes the needs of a forming town and gets himself a piece of land, opens a general store and gets himself to be appointed as mayor by the people. He soon begins to treat Janie as a trophy wife/property and controls her movements and activites in order to curtail other men looking at her and her body. 

He controls and tries to mold her into what he thinks is the ideal image of a wife for his position as mayor and forbids her from engaging in certain social activities and even instructed her to cover up her hair always. Joe dies from a failing kidney but not before Janie forces herself to confront him and tell him what the town really thinks of him and who she really is that he would not see or let her be.
After Joe dies, Janie is left in charge of his wealth and the store and finds herself a target of lots of suitors all of whom she turns down. Because of her wealth and their age difference, she is hesitant to a gambler, Tea Cake, who shows her kindness and treats her nicely, but she soon falls in love with him, sells the store and they move to Jacksonville and get married. Janie soon realizes that this is the love marriage she always wanted, even though theirs is a tumultous love affair and it's not long before they start having problems in their marriage with mutual jealousy. The part of town they move to (the muck) gets hit by a hurricane and while Tea Cake is trying to save Janie from drowning and a rabid dog, he gets bit by the dog and contracts a disease. Janie shoots and kills Tea Cake who had become increasingly jealous in self defense one day with a rifle while he was trying to shoot her with his pistol and she gets charged for murder. At the trial, Janie faces an all-white jury but she is saved from being charged guilty by a group of local white women and she holds a lavish funeral for Tea Cake. Janie decides to return to Eatonville and the story ends here, with her telling her story to her friend, Phoeby.

Rating: 4 stars

Black History Month

Hello guys...

So, its Black History Month (aka African-American History month) again. Its an annual celebration time for remembering notable people and events in black history.  Last year, i wrote a post about Maya Angelou's BHM Special which was a radio show dedicated to interviews with successful African American entertainers.

This year, at Bookmarker, we'll celebrate BHM with reviews of books by African-American writers. Hopefully, my almost 4-month old daughter will allow me read a couple of books and put up reviews. :-)

Stay logged in for this special time please...

Peace and Love!!

Split Second by David Baldacci

                                              

                                                 

This is my first review of a David Baldacci book so before I begin, I will give a little background of him. Baldacci is one of my favorite American novelists, he writes thrillers and has written a few children literature. His first novel Absolute Power was written in 1996 and it marked him as a front liner instantly. The book was made into a film directed by Clint Eastwood and starred nClint Eastwood and Gene Hackman. Since then he has published 27 novels all of which are international and national best sellers, with some others made into movies, tv series, and all together translated into more than 45 languages, sold in more than 80 countries and over 110million copies in print sold worldwide. He has a bachelors degree in Political Science, a law degree and has practiced law in Washington D.C. He and his wife established a Wish You Well Foundation that supports family and adult education in the United States.

Split Second was published in October 1, 2003 and is the first of a 6 part King and Maxwell series. 

Synopsis

8 years ago Special Agent John King is security aide to candidate Clyde Ritter. He gets distracted for a second at a campaign rally and the candidate gets shot. He guns down the shooter but his career in the secret service dies along with Ritter.

Now, a terrible coincidence brings two agents paths together, and a young promising female agent is about to go down the same way. Agent Maxwell is in charge of the safety of John Bruno; a presidential candidate, but she lets him out of her sight briefly and he vanishes into thin air. 

The kidnap

Disguised as the old widow of the candidate's deceased friend, is Tasha, a deadly young woman who is hired to kidnap him. Tasha, had made a call to Bruno earlier as his late friend's widow claiming she had important information about his friend that he needed to hear so he should meet her at the funeral home. Together with "Officer Simmons" an assassin who also is in disguise as the first police officer to get on the scene after Bruno is reported missing, they abduct the candidate in a well orchestrated kidnap that leaves agent Maxwell and her men baffled.

Revenge, Lies, Betrayals

8 years ago, Peter Morse was campaign manager for Clyde Ritter and in love with his friend Arnold Ramsey's wife. He sets about manipulating Arnold to shoot Ritter at a rally, in order to get him out of the way and free to marry his wife, Regina Ramsey. He thinks by having Arnold taken out of the picture this way, Regina will get to loathe him. 

Arnold gets killed by agent Sean Kings but instead of turning to him as Morse expected, Regina takes up with another man, one quite remarkably similar to her husband; Thornton Jorst, a professor who was her husband's colleague. 

In not so surprising event, Arnold Ramsey's daughter, Kate is a young woman now and wants revenge on the man who killed her father. She has been brainwashed by Morse over the years into believing her father was wrongfully killed by agent Sean kings. 

In a dramatic fashion worthy of the villain he is, Morse has spent years preparing a replay of the scene where Ritter was shot by Arnold, only this time, he intends for Arnold to be played by his daughter Kate and Ritter played by Bruno whom he had kept alive for this purpose. 

Agents Kings and Maxwell save the day, John Bruno is rescued and Kate realizes she has been misled by Morse for his own selfish reasons. Kate is killed by Morse albeit mistakenly in a death meant for Kings. 

Is it just me or did the author weave in a parallel between this and the story of King David in the bible who sent Uriah out to the forefront of battle, so he'd be killed and he, David'd have room to take his wife? Lol... 

A good read but I'm a fan of really intense endings and found the climax rather weak but then again the book isn't much of an adrenaline pumper so I guess it was in keeping. The characters Baldacci created are strong and he's got me looking forward to them in the sequel 'Hour Game'. The prose is direct and easy but lacked a certain grip in the overall tone. It kinda made it more like a coffee table read to me. All in all, it's a really good book, well written.

Rating: 4 stars

The Lion's Game by Nelson Demille

Genre: Fiction, 850 pages

Nelson DeMille is a writer whom I've just recently discovered, but believe me when I say I wonder where he's been all my life!! The man is that good. I'm almost ashamed to say this is the first book of his that I'm reading, because he's so good and has been writing for so long that I feel I should've known about him long before now. I read The Lion's Game and I couldn't put it down till the last page, it's totally one of those kind of books-unputdownable!

A Terrorist

As a young boy, Asad Khalil witnessed his mother and sisters killed by a bomb dropped on his family house during the American air raid on Libya in 1986. On the day the bombs dropped and he became an orphan sworn to jihad, he was sixteen and had just had sex with a Muslim girl for the first time. Young Khalil is convinced that this is Allah's instant punishment on him for defiling himself. However he makes it his life's goal to find and kill every one of the U.S flight team that dropped the bomb that killed his family. 


He becomes one of the world's deadliest terrorist and is nicknamed "The Lion". 


A Detective

John Corey is a divorced, former NYPD Homicide detective now working as a contract agent for an anti-terrorist unit. 

The Game

 "Wanted - Asad Khalil, Libyan, age approximately 30, height six feet, speaks English, Arabic, some French, Italian and German. Armed and dangerous."

The book opens with a team of FBI and NYPD detectives waiting to take Asad Khalil into custody at the airport. But what happens alerts them to the fact that they are dealing with someone who is extremely intelligent, resourceful and has had years to gather necessary intelligence and plan every detail of his entrance into the U.S. The plane bringing in Khalil comes in hijacked, with everyone on board dead for hours by poisonous gas inhalation and Khalil escapes right under their noses disguised as one of the emergency response team that entered the aircraft to assess the situation.

Thus begins a deadly mind game that takes John Corey and his team on an intense journey filled with gruesome murders and Asad Khalil outsmarting them at every turn.

Rating: 3.5stars

Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey

Genre: Motivational, 232 pages

Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man is Steve Harvey's first book. It was published in March 2009 and was such a hit that it got a movie made out of it three years later. I read the book early in 2012, (believe it or not, my fiancee bought  it for me to read, great of him yeah?) and it is easily one of my favorite books because it is clearly written with so much honesty and the intent to really help people in their relationships.
Trust me, it is a wonderful book for finding your way in a relationship even when you think you've got it covered, because let's face it, we all need guidance sometimes.

While this kind of book might not appeal  to everyone, i think it's got more than a few things that everyone will agree on because really, there're so many bad relationships out there with genuine men and women struggling to find and keep the right person, while some are really just in the field to play and score as many as they can.

Some Chapters in the book; 

Chapter 1 - The Mind-Set of a Man

1 - What Drives Men
2 - Our Love isn't Like Your Love
3 - The Three Things Every Man Needs: Support, Loyalty and the Cookie
4 - "We Need to Talk," and Other Words That Men Run for Cover

Excerpt 

 

What Drives Men

There is no truer statement: men are simple. Get this into your head first, and everything you learn about us in this book will begin to fall into place. Once you get that down you'll have to understand a few essential truths: men are driven by who they are, what they do, and how much they make. No matter if a man is CEO, CON, or both, everything he does is filtered through his title (who he is), how he gets that title (what he does), and the reward he gets for the effort (how much he makes). These three things make up the basic DNA of manhood-the three accomplishments every man must achieve before he feels like he's truly fulfilled his destiny as a man. And until he's achieved his goal in those three areas, the man you're dating, committed to or married to  will be too busy to focus on you.


Ladies, it is a great book for a relationship guide, do yourself a favor and get it. Guys, there are a few tips to understanding women as well, so if you're of that special class of men (big grin) who know that no knowledge is useless, you'd read this Steve Harvey's book too.

Peace and love...