Tea Party Patriots starts as an early history of the grassroots political movement. It then evolves into a systematic call to arms (figuratively for now) for addressing what a good many people see as fundamentally wrong with our current American system. These issues run the gamut from executive overreach to cultural rejuvenation. As a manifesto, its strength is its ability to clearly lay out possible solutions to very complex problems while maintaining the realism needed to understand that this is a process and will not be accomplished overnight. Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin both stay true to their grassroots in this work by stating that real change will come through influencing every level of government – restating the classic line that “all politics are local.” As our next political cyle looms, it will be interesting to see what impact these concepts will have on both state and national levels. Hopefully, change will occur and I am not taking of the type that President Obama endorses. If you are interested in taking back your country, this is one of the books to read.

In the past, I have often felt that historians transitioning from academic writing to fiction have difficulty in maintaining the flow of plot over details so beloved in academia. Victor Davis Hanson, previously at the University of California – Fresno and currently Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, has in my opinion suffered from this same difficulty in his inaugural novel, The End of Sparta. Displaying his wide expertise and depth in Greek historical minutia, it would seem that he has left the general layperson behind in a novel no doubt intended for a wide audience. Although my own knowledge of Greek history, literature and language have increased to maybe the level of a sophomore in Classical Studies due to reading this fictionalization of the Boeotian War, I believe that it would appeal mainly to those who have at least a superficial knowledge of such topics.

While reading it would would no doubt stir the interest of the ignorant (as I was) to further research this exciting period in the history of Western civilization, it suffers from a plot whereby at the end of the novel the fate of the main characters become, for me, seemly unimportant. The real strength of the story was at the beginning at the Battle of Leuctra. There, Hanson was able to display his capability as a wordsmith that had brought alive his previous works such as A Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Ancient Greece and A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. We can feel weight of the panoply, the mass at our backs, the dread of death or injury and the crunch of contact as two lines collide through his words. It is only in the story where he falters.

As other reviewers have noted, Hanson is not a writer laying down fiction so much as using fiction to flesh out history. He tries to lay open the mind of the Hellenes on paper, bring ancient motives out to be interpreted by modern readers. As a novel, it is marginal. As history, it is enlightening.

*spoiler alert
I just finished reading Hellhole, by Kevin Anderson and Brian Herbert. My reaction to the book: Meh. It is supposedly the start to a new space opera epic and I was quite frankly disappointed. Based on the ravaged and dangerous planet of Hallholme, nicknamed Hellhole, it describes the actions of the oh so noble General Tiber Maximilian Adolphus as he plots to overthrow the evil rule of the dowager Diadem Michella Duchenet. He had already been defeated once. These new plots are reasonably successful and Adolphus is able to craft an alliance out of the frontier planets to which he had been exiled. This story arc is slightly interrupted by the emergence of a beneficent symbiotic alien race that wants to merge with humans in order to seek the renewal of their dead race. This exceptionally intriguing plot aside, the book stalls in both setting description and characters.

In setting, the description of Hellhole seems understated as a planet ravaged by an asteroid a half millennium ago. The authors seemed to want to imply that it was a backwater dumping grounds for misfits on a severe life-threatening scale, à la Star Trek’s Nimbus III. The authors were unable to sell it for me. The characters, all decent enough folk, seem to work together for the common good. Nature, while deadly, is maintainable. Power for equipment is available, nobody seems to be starving, and the single killing that takes place shocks all who learn about it. This is not a place that shapes the human soul through suffering. From veteran writers who worked on the Dune series, I expected better. If you want a truly deadly environment, whether from nature or just killing each other, turn to Godwin’s The Survivors or Pournelle’s War World series. To be honest, a good day in Mogadishu sounds worse than Hellhole.

The characters are not much better. The leads, Adolphus and Duchenet, are extremely one dimensional. Adolphus is honorable and believes that the ends do not justify the means. This is made evident when he refuses to attack the enemy fleet, losing the battle and his own fleet, because the enemy has taken hostages from among his peoples’ families. This sucks for him as his opponent is the exact opposite in nature. She is cruel and malicious. She killed her brother who was before her in the line of succession and imprisoned her sister who witnessed it. There was no hesitation about ordering the arrest and execution of her daughter’s lover. She has ordered a great many deaths, yet she was hesitant to order the execution of Adolphus when he was captured. So, to foil the creation of a martyr, she exiles him to a really bad planet where he is expected to die but doesn’t. This one suspect act of benevolence starts the ball rolling.

The most disappointing aspect of this new series start is that it was written by two such veteran sci-fi authors. I have read several books that they have put out and have been generally impressed with their writing. The one redeeming aspect of this book is that it will set up what may be some spectacular space battles in the next two books. Or, at least I hope so if the aliens crap doesn’t piss me off too much when I read them.