Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny

In the previous book, Superintendent of the Surete Armande Gamache let a deadly new drug slip through their hands in order to catch all of the criminals behind the drug trade.  Chief Inspector Isabelle Lacoste was shot in the head and almost killed but is slowly recovering.  Cadet Amelia Choquet whom Armand had taken a special interest in entered the Acadamy with a strike against her coming from the streets a former addict but she proved herself.  Now she is caught with some of the new drugs in her room.  Enough to sell and so is kicked out of the Academy, but with Armand watching her see where she goes to see if she will lead him to the missing new drug that hasn't been released yet on the streets.  Jean-Guy Beauvoir is acting head of homicide and is getting pressure to side against the Chief who the Surete seem to be going after now over the missing drugs to fire and possibly bring charges against.

The book opens up with Armand Gamache, psychologist and bookstore owner Myrna Landers, and builder Benedict Pouliot who find themselves as liquidators, or executives to a will of an old woman named Bertha Baumgartner.  You can name anyone you like to be the liquidator of your will but they have to accept the job for it to be done.  All three decide to go ahead and be liquidators but agree to leave the farmhouse for the reading of the will because it is not safe and a snowstorm is coming.

It turns out that Bertha, a poor cleaning woman nicknamed "The Baroness", left behind millions to her three children and two houses in Europe.  The notary said she was of sound mind when she made the will.  The Baumgartners are related to the Kinderoths who are related to the Rothschilds who are one of the richest families in Europe.  There was indeed a title and a man who left his fortune to his twin sons who spent their lives fighting over who got it.  Then their descendants fought over who got it and it's still being fought over today with a decision as to who gets it the Kinderoths or the Baumgarers being handed down any day now.

Anthony, Caroline, and Hugo, Bertha's children claim to not know of any of this.  And then Anthony is found murdered in the old farmhouse that is then demolished with Benedict inside.  Benedict doesn't have a really good reason for being in the house but he also doesn't seem to have known that there was a dead body inside.  He says he couldn't wait any more to go back to his girlfriend but they find out that the two of them broke up months ago.  There's also something suspicious about this girlfriend, but what is it?  And why did he lie?  Why was he there?  Benedict is a sweet, affable, clueless, young man but is that a front?

It turns out that Anthony, an investment broker wasn't squeaky clean.  He had been caught stealing money before from his clients and blamed it on an assistant he was having an affair with which is when he came out as a homosexual to the firm.  They didn't fire him because he was so good at his job and because the blowback would cripple the firm.  So they allowed him to continue to work with clients and someone else would do the trading since his license was suspended.  But everyone at the firm thought highly of Anthony and it's possible that someone else was the thief and blamed Anthony for it and he confronted them and got killed for it.  It's also possible a client killed him for stealing their money for he stole hundreds of millions of dollars.

So was Anthony killed over the will or over his job?  And what is up with the will?  Why those three as liquadators?  Will Gamache get to the drugs in time?  Will he be able to keep his job and stay out of prison?  In the afterward Penny says that she had no intention of writing another Gamache book since her husband had died because he was her inspiration behind the series.  But she had found herself one day typing out words to a new book--this book.  Things change in this book and I wonder if she has it in her to write another one or if this is the last one.  It could honestly go either way.  Anyway, I've enjoyed the series very much and can live with any decision she makes regarding it.  This was a great book to go out on and I give it five out of five stars. 

Quote
One misstep and bad things happened. A tuned ankle. A wrist broken trying to break the fall. Or a fractured skull.  It was always what you couldn’t see that hurt you.

-Louise Penny (The Kingdom of the Blind p 20)

When a murder was committed more than one person died.

-Louise Penny (The Kingdom of the Blind p 78)

Things are strongest where they’re broken.

-Louise Penny (The Kingdom of the Blind p 80)

My mentor had this theory that our lives are like an aboriginal longhouse. Just one huge room…He said that if we thought we could compartmentalize things, we were deluding ourselves. Everyone we neet, every word we speak, every action taken or not taken lives in our longhouse. With us. Always. Never to be expelled or locked away….My mentor, my first chief inspector said to me, ‘Armond, if you don’t want your longhouse to smell like merde, you have to do two things…Be very, very careful who you let into your life. And learn to make peace with whatever happens. You can’t erase the past. It’s trapped in there with you. But you can make peace with it. If you don’t,” he said, “you’ll be at perpetual war.” …But just as I was leaving he said, “And the enemy you’ll be fighting is yourself.”

-Louise Penny (The Kingdom of the Blind p 80-81)

The Chief often said that everything could be solved by walking. For himself, Beauvoir was pretty sure everything could be solved in the kitchen with a piece of cake.

-Louise Penny (The Kingdom of the Blind p 119)

Armand Gamache knew that memories weren’t just precious, they were powerful. Charged with emotions both beautiful and treacherous.

-Louise Penny (The Kingdom of the Blind p 167)

Peace is for people with a bank account.

-Louise Penny (The Kingdom of the Blind p 338)     

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Ultimate Spider-Man Vol 9: Ultimate Six by Brian Michael Bendis (Writer), Trevor Hairsine (Penciler), Mark Bagley (Penciler), Joe Quesada (Penciler), Danny Miki (Ink), Art Thibert (Ink), Dave Stewart (Colorist), Ian Hannin (Colorist), Avalon Studios (Colorist), Transparency Digital (Colorist), Richard Isanove (Colorist), Chris Eliopoulos (Letterer)

In the previous comic, a horrible accident leaves Doctor Octavius with mechanical arms permanently attached to his body and his short term memory erased.  He wants revenge and goes after Justin Hammer the man whom he was spying on Norman Osbourne for and who was working on his own set of genetic oddities.  He calls a press conference to reveal what Hammer has done and Spider-Man shows up to take down Doc Octopus or Doc Ock, which he does.  But he's not alone.  Sharon Carter of S.H.I.E.L.D. also shows up and decides to investigate the lab where the genetic abnormalities exist.

Carter makes the mistake of letting Flint Marco out of his cell thinking she was freeing a prisoner and instead the Sandman escapes. Spider-Man helps with taking him down but the scientists have a gun that shoots a dart that takes him out for ten minutes that they use to put him in lockdown.  But he's only the second after Doc Ock that they'll get.

In the basement of one of Wilson Fisk's buildings, they find a man there with no fingerprints who has electrical abilities. He tries to escape but Iron Man, Captain America, and Sharon Carter stop him.  Now he's put down in the containment center with Doc Ock, Sandman, and Norman Osbourne who are receiving therapy from Dr. Henry Pym.

Then Kraven the Hunter comes to town wanting to hunt down Spider-Man but this time he's genetically altered himself.  He's brought along his camera crew again.  Then Captain America, Thor, and Sharon Carter capture him and send him to the containment center.  Nick Fury has plans for them that Dr. Henry Pym thinks is possible with rehabilitation.  If anything they can be brought forth to legally sane enough to stand trial.

But something goes wrong and the bad guys take over the containment center and kill nearly everyone who works there and they get out with the intent of making Nick Fury pay.  Fury puts people on Aunt Mae and Mary Jane to keep them safe but no one is keeping Spider-Man safe from them and they kidnap him and tell him they have Aunt Mae and if he doesn't help them they'll harm her.  So he goes to do what they say.

This is a great comic, though Spider-Man isn't in it as much as you would like.  Though he isn't he's replaced by some pretty high hitting characters such as Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Nick Fury, and Sharon Carter so you don't mind not seeing him so much.  The artwork has either gotten better or I've gotten used to it but I think it doesn't bother me as much anymore.  It's not half bad, actually.  I really enjoyed this book and I give it five stars out of five stars. 

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Redshirts by John Scalzi

This book is based on the premise of the Star Trek shows that the Red Shirted guys always get killed on away missions.  In this book, you meet Andy Dahl, a guy who recently left an alien religious order to join Universal Union as a Xenobiologist and a linguist.  While waiting for his friend Jimmy, whose father is the third richest man in the Universe and decided to join Universal Union himself, he runs into Maia Duvall, a former Army grunt who is looking to explore the skies.  They run into Finn and Hester two guys who are being held to make sure they get on the ship without buying more drugs.  Finn is an alternative drug dealer in that he peddles in biologicals that are not illegal but can still get you high.  Hester is someone who is no ones' friend but is Finn's patsy in that he hides the drugs in Hester's footlocker.

The first thing they notice as odd is that the Commander Q'eeng insists on away missions and how they all hear about the other Ensigns that died on away missions in bizarre ways, like by ice sharks, death by falling rock, death by the toxic atmosphere, and death by pulse gun vaporization.  These were all new guys.  And now they're the new guys and low man on the totem pole and therefore expendable. And suddenly when the Captain and the Commander come to Dahl with a ridiculous situation saying that a planet had the plague and they needed a counter-bacterial to fix it and more importantly Lieutenant Kerensky who was down there taking samples and got infected and is dying. He has six hours to come up with a solution.  This is when his colleagues in Xenobiology come out and help him by telling him about the magic box that he needs to put the sample in and that in five and a half hours it will be ready and that when it is to look at the data and find some line of code to show Commander Q'eeng on the bridge that he doesn't get that it's the protein coat or something and the Commander will give an answer and you will say what a wonderful idea that is and get off the bridge as quickly as possible.

He meets the elusive Jenkins who is working on something mysterious and who tells him to stay out of the "Narrative" and off the bridge. He also goes on his first away mission and Kerensky is there hale and hearty less than a week from when he was nearly dead from the plague.  The guy he is with insists on staying with Kerensky because the person Kerensky was with is now dead which was the sacrifice and now it is safe to be with him and you can live.  On this mission, he runs into his friends and finds out that Hester is a pilot. They all end up in a shuttle together and Hester wants to take off, but Dahl won't let him and it's a good thing because Kerensky hasn't left yet and needs a shuttle and is injured. So Kerensky is put into their shuttle and the other shuttle takes the other guy with Kerensky and when they take off their shuttle survives but the other shuttles are taken over by battle bots.

They decide to find Jenkins and get some answers and the answers they get are pretty crazy.  They are told that five years ago their timeline was taken over by a television show that airs sometime between 1948 and 2105. And worse the television show isn't a particularly good one.  To stay safe you need to keep close on away missions to the four of the five main characters who always make it back.  The fifth one, the engineer, is a walking disaster and kills everyone near him.  There are certainly other things to look for too such as decks six through twelve are the ones that are always getting damaged because those are the ones they have sets for.  The bridge is fine to stand on forever until suddenly at a dramatic moment it isn't. And the bridge console is always getting damaged.  Kerensky always gets hurt but revives in time for the next mission.  Things will suddenly start coming out of your mouth and information you didn't know you had will suddenly become apparent to you when it is critical to the show.  Then there are the commercial breaks where suddenly you are yourself again and no one really knows what to do or say for a short while.

Jenkins figures out that the show takes place in 2010 so they go decide to go back in time using the methods that the ship did in one of the episodes. However, they will only have six days and cannot bring anyone back with them or their atoms will dissolve.  So they go back in time to convince the makers of a television show to stop making it and leave them be so they can continue on with their lives in peace.

This is a hilarious book, that won the Hugo Award for best novel, for those who are fans of Star Trek and even for those who have just heard of it.  The characters are funny and surreal and over-the-top.  Because this is a John Scalzi novel you know he's going to take this just a little bit further and he does. He goes all the way and then some.  I really loved this book and every sci-fi geek should read it.  I give it five out of five stars.   

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Final Shadows: A Bishops Files Novel by Kay Hooper

This book just might be the last book in the Bishop Files series.  You don't have to have read the other two The First Prophet and A Deadly Web but they do really help.  I will say it's been so long since she's written a Bishop's Files book that I had forgotten a lot of the other books and I was fine reading this one without that knowledge, though I now want to go back and skim the other two to see what I missed.

It opens with a woman named Siebring forcing psychics to do tasks to their breaking point even when they aren't trained and have never used their abilities before.  One of them is a psychic and is trying to help Henry a non-psychic to hang in there.  They're all hoping that Bishop will come and find them and save them since they know him and know he would help them if he could.

Bishop and Miranda, meanwhile are answering a call that facility for pregnant psychic women is in danger but get there too late and it is burned to the ground with everyone inside.  The unborn babies were powerful psychics and reached out to the United States and every person with special abilities.   This galvanizes the movement into action against those who have been acting against psychics and been taking them and getting them pregnant, which turns them into Stepford Mommies because of the method they use to impregnate the women.  Or they experiment on them to death.  Someone went rogue and burnt up this facility or their plans have changed for pregnant women.

Murphy, a higher up in the organization against them is in contact with Duran of their side who is in charge of one side of his Alien race's faction.  They came here to escape seek reinforcements for war back home and those reinforcements are psychics.  At first, they tried to make themselves psychic but didn't seem to have any success with that.  Any children the men had with the women would be girl children.  What they were really looking for were pairs.  Male and female paired psychics because they were quite powerful together, sharing their powers.  But they couldn't produce a male on their own and the males they stole and tried to mate with the females never bonded with them and the females who became Stepford Mommies never bonded with their children.  But even once they fixed the Stepford Mommy problem by not impregnating them and trying to get them to mate naturally they would choose different partners because the male would come across as a stalker.

Tasha was such a one. She had been born in one of those facilities but was believed to have no abilities so she was adopted out to a family and watched her life. She hid her abilities but they figured out she had them anyway and set her up with a crazy psychic that they had plans for political office and Murphy asked Duran to take care of him that Tasha was bonded with Brodie and he was dangerous and needed to be destroyed and he could sell it to his people that he was unnecessary as he had no one to bond with and he was taken care of.

A battle is about to take place between both sides.  Murphy knows the location of a great number of the facilities and Bishop is looking for the labs.  They intend to go on the offensive. Will Duran help them or not?  This is a great little series within a series but a first you're like aliens? That's where you're going to go with this?  But then it all starts to make sense and the story falls together in a good and interesting way.  My only question is what will this mean for her regular series going forward.  Will it impact it in any way?  With how this book ended my curiosity is piqued in how she will continue.  I love her books and this one is no exception. The characters are intriguing, I mean there's a psychic cat in this book and it absolutely works.  I give this book five out of five stars.

Listed on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Final-Shadows-Bishop-Files-Novel-ebook/dp/B079WM444Y/ref=sr_1_1?crid=SN28SS1YKFCY&keywords=final+shadows+by+kay+hooper&qid=1560778864&s=gateway&sprefix=final+shoadows%2Caps%2C179&sr=8-1

 

Wolverine Book One: Three Months to Die by Paul Cornell (Writer), Ryan Stegman (Penciler), Mark Morales (Inker), David Curiel (Colorist), VC's Cory Petit (Letterer)

A virus has wiped out Logan's immunity and healing factor and made him vulnerable to his enemies, of which he has quite a few.  He has decided to quit teaching at Jean Grey Academy and work through this by fighting through this.  He takes a job offer from a man named Offer who wants to take over Sabretooth's operation.  He becomes close with those he works with, especially Pinch and Lost Boy.  Pinch he's having a romantic relationship with and she's got a daughter she hopes to get back to and doesn't quite trust him.

The book goes back and forth in time and Wolverine is told by Offer to kill a reporter who is hidden in their midst and he does.  He also hunts down Spiderman and finds out where Sabretooth's operation is.  Someone gives him a suit of armor to wear in the field to protect him from being hurt.  But Wolverine is up to something, but what could it be?  There is a long animosity between him and Sabretooth so he could be after him to end it forever.  Or is it something else?

This comic is amazing in its complexity of character with Logan and how he's playing his cards close to his vest and turning into a villain to the world.  The artwork is incredible and very well done.  This is a great book that turns a corner for Wolverine as he feels death looking over his shoulder and perhaps an end to a long life that he thought would never end.  I give this book five out of five stars.

Listed on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Wolverine-Three-Months-Die-Book-ebook/dp/B00PSN2M4Q/ref=sr_1_3?crid=14Y57PDNEPZTX&keywords=wolverine+three+months+to+die&qid=1560422565&s=gateway&sprefix=wolverine+three%2Caps%2C176&sr=8-3

Don't Go by Lisa Scottoline

Dr. Mike Scanlan is serving his country as a podiatrist in Afghanistan performing surgeries and saving lives.  Suddenly his life is turned upside down when his wife is found in there home dead from an accidental knife wound that caused her to pass out and hit her head on the counter on the way down.  This leaves him with their one-year-old daughter to raise alone.  Of course, he has help from Claudine's sister Daphene and her husband Tom who have taken Emily into their home for now.

It turns out that Claudine was secretly drinking.  Tom told him and Mike found the bottles all over the house.  While Daphne is being overprotective of Emily and won't let Mike anywhere near her that seems to be okay with Mike as he seems to be obsessed with finding out why Claudine was drinking. He only has one month left in his tour and he gets talked into uping for one more year.  But before he leaves for the month Tom, a lawyer, has him sign some forms giving them temporary legal custody of his daughter, or so he thinks.

He has an accident over there and loses part of his arm and comes home early.  He has the expected problems with the Oxycontin and becomes addicted.  He makes one half-assed attempt to connect with his daughter and is happy when it works but then they fall asleep together and she wakes up but he doesn't and she nearly falls down the stairs.  Tom and Daphne come down on him like a ton of bricks.

While away Mike gets the autopsy report back and finds out that Claudine was pregnant so he hacks into her email with the help of Daphne and finds that she had a lover Mac207. In their neighborhood, there is a Macfarland whose son is in his twenties and it seems helped her out with some stuff around the house.  So he goes off half-cocked and punches the kid without even asking whether or not the guy slept with his wife.  He was going to get confirmation from Sara her best friend but she's mysteriously mugged and murdered before he can.

Now he's obsessed with solving Sara's murder and not with spending any time with Emily and guess what? Daphne and Tom move to take Emily away from him.  Those papers he signed give them permanent custody.  Now he has to fight to get his daughter back.  None of these characters are appealing. Mike is a dolt who is obsessed with everything but his daughter who he should be obsessed with.  And Daphne and Todd come across as evil villains out to steal his child from him.  His old work buddy is a jerk who only wants to use his war record to sell stuff.  His Army buddies, except one, were keeping him from coming home.  I just really did not like this book.  I give it two and a half stars.

Listed in Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Go-Lisa-Scottoline-ebook/dp/B008BU6THE/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=don%27t+go&qid=1560339303&s=gateway&sr=8-2

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

The book opens with Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy going to see Severus Snape about Draco whom the Dark Lord has asked to do something dangerous that could get him killed.  Narcissa asks him to make the Unbreakable Vow to protect Draco with his life and to complete Draco's task if he can't complete it himself.  Snape makes the Vow which is quite binding and breaking the vow carries lethal consequences.

Draco's attitude and the way he wanted to hide his arm when he was getting dress robes and he was acting mysteriously in Borgin and Burkes demanding that something is fixed and that he held something for him.  When Hermione goes in to find out what it might be she gets nowhere.  But on the train to Hogwarts Harry uses his invisibility cloak to hide inside Draco's compartment and overhear what he has to say which is that he has no plans to go to school next year and barely sees the reason for going this year.  But Draco knows that Harry is there and freezes him while no one is on the train hoping that he will stay on the train until it reaches its final destination, but Tonks is watching for him and saves him.

Over the summer Dumbledore asked Harry to come with him to Budleigh Babberton to visit Horace Slughorn a man he hopes to convince to teach Potions at Hogwarts.  He has no interest, but Slughorn was always one to "collect" students who went on to become famous and powerful wizards and witches and Harry would be quite a "get" for his collection so he agrees to come back to Hogwarts.  On the train ride back to Hogwarts he asks certain witches and wizards to come to his compartment.  These are students who have family who is connected or in Ginny's case performed a particularly good hex.  And thus, the Slug Club is formed. Hermione will be asked to join due to her brilliance in class.  Ron, of course, is jealous of this, though Harry would rather not go at all himself and plans Quidditch practices around meetings so he doesn't have to go, as he is Team Captain this year.

Since Harry did not think he would be taking Potions this year since Snape insists on Outstanding on O.W.L.S. for his students Harry didn't buy any Potions materials or books not knowing that he would be taking the class.  Slughorn tells him and Ron, who is also taking the class now too, to take two textbooks from the secondhand supply closet.  In Harry's copy, it is written: "This is the property of the Half-Blood Prince".  Also, in the margins of the book are improvements to the potions recipes that makes his results better than even Hermione's, which means that she thinks he needs to get rid of the book and of course he doesn't want to.

Meanwhile, he is spending time with Dumbledore in the pensive, looking at memories he has managed to procure concerning Tom Riddle, aka Lord Voldemort.  They visit a memory of a Ministry of Magic employee and his interaction with Tom Riddle's mother, uncle, and grandfather.  His grandfather had a ring and his mother had a necklace that had belonged to Salazar Slytherin.  In the next memory, Dumbledore is coming to the orphanage to where Tom Riddle ended up after his mother died and his father left his mother after the love enchantment was lifted.  There he finds a kid who has discovered that he can hurt people and therefore convince them to do what he wants them to do.

The memory that is really disturbing Dumbledore is Slughorn's memory of Tom Riddle where Tom asks him about Horcruxes and Slughorn refuses to tell him anything, but the memory has been tampered with.  Dumbledore believes that Slughorn answered his questions and he needs Harry to get the memory from Slughorn. Harry, however, is obsessed with following around Malfoy, especially after Katie Bell is hit with the Imperius Curse and given a cursed necklace that she accidentally touches before giving it to who she was supposed to which was Dumbledore.  Katie is injured greatly but lives.

Hermione and Ron circle each other as though they like each other and Hermione is about to ask Ron to the Slug Club Christmas party until Ron acts like a jerk. Then Ron does well at the first Quidditch match against Slytherin and suddenly Lavender Brown is interested in him and the two start kissing all over the place, much to Hermione's heartbreak.  But she's not the only one experiencing heartbreak.  Harry has finally noticed Ginny and she's dating Dean Thomas. Not to mention the fact that she's his best friend's sister and Ron might not like him dating her.  He certainly hasn't liked any of the guys dating her so far. 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Malfoy is trying to kill Dumbledore.  Harry even suspects that he's behind the necklace attack somehow.  In this book, Harry becomes so obsessed with what Malfoy is up to he ignores what Dumbledore has asked him to do which is to get the Horcrux memory which Dumbledore says is very important.  Instead, he's chasing after Malfoy on the Maurader's Map and having no success there because he is disappearing off of the map for periods of time.  Where is he going? What is he doing?

This book is excellent in that you wonder who the Half-Blood Prince is because you know it has to be something important.  Also, you wonder if Malfoy will succeed in killing Dumbledore and if he doesn't what that means for Snape.  This is an important book in that Harry is being asked to do something difficult from Dumbledore.  Also, he is trusting a book that he knows nothing about that can be quite dangerous.  And while his obsession with Malfoy would be well founded, it interfered with something important that Dumbledore needed from him and that could have proved detrimental.  This was an exciting book that really kept you turning the pages.  Harry grows a lot in this book. By the end, he becomes the young man who needs to face what he needs to face.  Ron also grows up a great deal.  Hermione is as ever grown up and the adult of the three.  But then girls mature faster than boys. Ginny's matured herself into quite the wise young woman.  I really loved this book and give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

I enjoyed the meetings too. It was like having friends.

-J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince p 138)

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Suicide Squad Vol 5: Walled In by Matt Kindt (Writer), Jim Zub (Writer), Sean Ryan (Writer), Patrick Zircher (Artist), Andre Coelho (Artist), Rafa Sandoval (Artist), Jason Masters (Artist), Carlos Rodriguez (Artist), Jim Fern (Artist), Scott Hanna (Artist), Jordi Tarragona (Artist), Roger Robinson (Artist), Wayne Faucher (Artist), Jason Keith (Colorist), Brett Smith (Colorist), Andrew Dalhouse (Colorist), Matt Milla (Colorist), Blond Hifi (Colorist), Jared K Fletcher (Letterer), and Carlos M. Mangual (Letterer)

Belle Reive has been taken over by the inmates and Waller is trying to take it back because The Thinker who is behind it and he has an evil plan to let them all go and take over the world.  The Thinker is working with the Crime Syndicate who has promised him a body to put his great mind in seeing as he has used his mind to such a degree that it has deteriorated his body.  Waller hides out in the control room and hopes for help from the Suicide Squad.

Meanwhile, The Thinker has been busy sending Waller's hologram to superheroes around the world calling for their aid and gets Power Girl, Warrant, Steel, and unknown Soldier to go and get OMAC suit. At the same time, he has sent the Suicide Squad consisting of Boomerang, Deadshot, and Harley Quinn to do the same thing, hoping that one group will bring him the suit.

James Gordon Jr. is working on the inside trying to help Waller in any way he can and King Shark is helping The Thinker who has promised him to get back at Waller.  Waller, on the other hand, has promised King Shark the identity of his father if he helps her.  Harley doublecrosses everyone and decides to do what The Thinker wants as long as its fun and causes mayhem.

The heroes and the villains decided to work together to go up against The Thinker, though the heroes have their doubts about the goodness in Waller.  But Waller has made many promises to both sides to get them to help her including letting loose the dangerous Kane who is a god and King Shark's father to go after The Thinker who now has the suit. The only problem is the suit's original designer, Kevin Cho is supposedly still inside alive and well and wants a chance to win the suit back over before Waller destroys it and him with it.

This comic also comes with a story at the beginning of the book about Waller transferring an important scientist whose creation is wanting payback.  I really loved this book and its mini background stories on some of the players like unknown Soldier, Steel, Boomerang, and Deadshot.  It's the characters that really make this comic work and the addition of the heroes was an interesting touch.  Overall this was a great book and I give it five out of five stars. 

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Star Wars Vol 6: Out Among the Stars by Jason Aaron (Writer), Dash Aaron (Writer), Jason Latour (Writer), Salvador Larroca (Artist), Andrea Sorrentino (Artist), Michael Walsh (Artist), Edgar Delgado (Colorist), Lee Loughridge (Colorist), VC's Joe Caramagna (Letterer), and VC's Clayton Cowles (Letterer)

This comic contains six stories of various lengths and one annual.  In one story Luke and Leia find themselves stranded on a mostly water planet with no way to signal to the Rebels where they are.  They must return to the basics for survival when the Imperials show up making things difficult for them.

When Sana comes to Lando with an offer he can't refuse what does he ask for in return? He may never get it if they get caught reselling the Imperial weapons that Sana doesn't have but one crate of that she sells to the Krawg pirates promising more.  She double-crosses them to the Imperials and sells that information to them then goes to who really has the rest of the weapons hoping to make a deal and make another swindle.

Han Solo gets talked into taking Grakkus Hutt into custody and escorting him to the new prison across the galaxy.  The Rebels have just liberated him from the Imperials and they hope to get ahold of his cache of weapons and are taking him to the prison for enhanced interrogation to get the information out of him about where those weapons are.  The trip is anything but uneventful.

The Scar Squadron kidnapped C3PO and R2D2 is determined to go and rescue him all on his own piloting a plane by himself and wreaking havoc on an Imperial starship in order to save him from being thrown in the trash heap for knowing nothing, though that's not how C3PO sees it.

There is also the story of the Scar Squadron going out and a story of the Sand People.  Also, the Annual is about how Leia and Han are using a smuggler's hideout to hide from the Empire and find themselves up against an old enemy of Han's.  Nothing really connects these stories except that they occur throughout the galaxy "Among the Stars".  While they are very interesting stories I think there were too many when you can't even really come up with a story for two of them (The Scar Squadron and the Sand People) so I'm taking off a little for that.  Though what is there is interesting and shows the promise of a good story.  The others are really good character studies and I love the art except for what was done on the annual.  It was a bit too blotchy for my tastes.  Overall it was a great book and I give it four and a half stars out of five.

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D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II by Sarah Rose

In 1940 France was split into two halves with one half (the part with Paris) occupied by German forces and the other half run by a puppet government headed by Petain, a war hero from World War I who wanted to return the country to its Catholic roots and get rid of the Jews.  Their laws were stricter than the Reich's Nerenberg's Laws.  Petain promised a judenfrei "free zone" (which is what the unoccupied zone was called) and said he'd get Hitler 10,000 Jews.

General Charles de Gaule was not a leader of a government in exile as much as he would like to have been.  There were resistance fighters, but not many in the occupied portion of France.  Two of these were Andree Borrel and her boyfriend Maurice Dufour ran a successful operation in the south of France in the Free Zone getting pilots out of the country and to England. They were betrayed and were forced to use their underground railroad to get out themselves.  When they got to England they were questioned by de Gaulle who wanted to know all the names on their network and their drop zones and other secrets.  They refused to give him the information because the fewer people who know the safer the people are.  Andree was sent to the Brits who had an interest in her and Maurice was brutally tortured by de Gaulle's men but he never gave up any information.

Andree was picked by Captain Selwyn Jepson who was seeking women to send into France to build up a resistance network that would help when they invaded France in 1943.  This was 1941 and he chose her to be a parachuter.  Major Maurice Buckmaster and Squadron Officer Vera Atkins (who was not only a Romanian immigrant but also Jewish, something she kept hidden from everyone and she was the inspiration for Moneypenny in the Bond novels), ran the spy training school for women called Beaulieu that was training agents for F Section, also known as The Firm (whose motto was "Merde, alors!", or "Well, shit!").  General de Gaulle was recruiting his own men and women for resistance work called RF Section.  These women working for F Section had to have lived in France but be Britsh citizens.

Odette Sampson had married an Englishman, a pilot who had stayed with her family during World War I that she had thought she was in love with.  They had three daughters together but the marriage was on the rocks.  She worked as a courier for Captain Peter Churchill in the Riveria because that is where her boat landed and she was unable to get passage to the occupied zone where her station was supposed to be.  She and Peter would fall in love while building up a rather large resistance force in the south of France, though it would take time as the locals were not interested in going against Germany at first because all the Germans had done to them so far is taken their food.  It was worse in the occupied zone where arrests were made over nothing. 

Yvonne Rudellat was the first member of the Corps feminins to be sent over.  She was in her forties and had an adult daughter but no husband.  She was given a cover as a married couple with a locally recruited agent named Pierre Culioli.  Her age was a perfect cover and it didn't stop people from listening to her.  She had a commanding presence.  She was stationed in the occupied zone and taught others how to build bombs and put together guns.  She set off bombs or Bangs, blowing up certain strategic sights and recruited many to the resistance over time.

Lise de Baissac was the second woman ever to parachute into a war zone with Andree being the first.  Lise set up a room two doors down from the Gestapo in the small town of Poitiers in the free zone.  She knew she wouldn't have success recruiting so she stuck with getting agents out through the underground network and helping her brother Claude who was setting up a cell not far away.

Things began to go wrong when one of the members of CARTE, an organization that was on the ground in France working as a resistance group but a poorly run one, is caught and flips putting Odette and Peter in jeopardy and their cell as well.  Others would be caught causing England to call back those in the field and meaning that D-Day for France would have to wait another year as they would have to reset up everything all over again.  But the French at this point was finally motivated and also finally trusting and less antagonistic toward the English agents that were being sent over.

One of the female agents who went through the training was ultimately washed out even though she did everything right because she was Jewish, Helene Aron was sent to Scotland where those who screw up but know too much information go. There had been talk of sending her back to Vichy France and leaving her there where there was a chance she could have been sent to a camp.  But she knew too much about D-Day.

This is a fascinating look at women who risked everything including their lives for something bigger than themselves.  It was by no easy feat to get those women over there, to begin with.  While Churchill himself had authorized women to roles in combat that didn't mean that the men in charge of sending them over there would want to do so.  But in the end they did and it was a good thing they did because the French people responded better to the women agents and were won over by them.  These brave women whose deeds were kept secret until 2003 when it was deemed to be no longer top secret.  Now their stories can be told and this book does an excellent job of doing so and making them very real to you. I give it five out of five stars.   

Quotes

  It was in General Foch’s private railway car that the kaiser’s forces surrendered, for the cessation of hostilities that was schdulted to begin at 11:00 a.m., on November 11, 1918. General Foch disparaged the Treaty of Versailles for it lenience toward the conquered Krauts. “This is not a peace. It is an armistice of twenty years,” he blustered when it was ratified, on June 28, 1919. Hitler’s war in Europe started almost exactly twenty years later, on September 1,1939. Foch was off by a mere sixty-five days.

-Sarah Rose (D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II p 73)

When the Corps feminins went to war, they broke barriers, smashed taboos, and altered the course of history.  Among their many firsts, they were the first women in organized combat, the first women in active-duty special forces, the first women paratroopers infiltrated into a war zone, the first female commando raiders, the first female signals officers behind enemy lines they were first to write women into the history of war.

-Sarah Rose (D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II p 280)

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