For a while now I have been frustrated how my Kobo only shows series information on some books, but not others. The time it appears to work seems random and unpredictable.
Tag: books
Jim Kelly has been around for a while, his first novel being published in 2003, but he is a recent find for me. I have my Amazon account set to send me their Kindle Daily Deal offers by email. Most of the time, it is not of any interest to me, but I get enough hits that it is worth receiving the email. I’m not of a mind to buy something just because it is cheap; but I like to look at it, and see if it is something I might have bought anyway. This often has me discover new (for me) authors.
First published in 2002, “The Company: A Novel of the CIA” is a work of fiction, but set against a lot of historical truth. It tells the story of the CIA from 1950, through to the mid-90’s. Some of the characters (including major ones) were real, and their activities well documented. Others are fictional or heavily disguised, and are perhaps fictional amalgamations of real people.
The book is obviously self published – the layout is poor, and the editing non-existant, typos galore. With all of this, it was very difficult to immerse myself in Cash’s tale, even though I wanted to enjoy it.
Which is probably good, as it helped me keep the multiple narratives (and frequent flashbacks) straight in my mind – a number of the characters have similar names (for good reason, as will become evident if you read it), and even reading it continuously, I had moments of confusion.
The book tells the (fictional) story of a more perilous alternative to the Apollo mission, evolved from the fear that the Russians would beat the US to the moon.
It’s a lengthy passage (a couple of pages), but I didn’t want to cut it short.
[Added 26 August]