Jeff Mariotte

If you've played the Mafia Trilogy then you've come to the right place for a little backstory on Lincoln Clay.

Essentially the entire book is a bird's eye view into Clay's tours in Vietnam, the beginning vestiges of his relationship with nutjob CIA rogue John Donovan, and the circumstances in the war that provoked his rage and vengeance that lead into the events of Mafia III.

Essentially if you've played Stones Unturned DLC, this is a companion piece to that in my honest opinion. Stones Unturned for the uninitiated is the backstory of John Donovan's slippery dealings taking down dirty double agents within the CIA ranks. Plain of Jars is almost a initiation companion to that from the perspective of Clay and his issues out in the field dealing with the same type of corruption from his superiors.

This book starts Clay off as a buck Private, and then explores the who what when where why and how of his time coming into the Special Forces that is talked about in the video game. He's good with a gun and getting out of sticky situations with the enemy, so he gets recruited into the Green Berets quite quickly, and that's where his trouble starts. He's young (about 19) and he's naive to the corruption in ranks. It comes knocking on his door in more ways than one as he figures out who he can trust and who can't, as well as a sidebar love story that comes to a bitter end that provokes his rage similiar to what he did in the DLC Sign Of The Times with the Blessed.

Essentially, this book will give you a backstory window into how Clay pretty much went through so much shit in the Nam that by the time he came back home to help Sammy, he'd taken all he could take.

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This particular Charmed entry has a lot going for it that makes it a very nice read for fans of the show. It begins rather darkly, almost atypically, with an atmospheric murder in the San Francisco fog which is very well written. Others are described just as atmospherically as the narrative goes along, adding a touch of depth to a series mostly read as a light and nostalgic book for entertainment purposes.

San Francisco gets more page time as the backdrop to the magical adventures of our favorite three sisters in this one than is often the case, and that’s a big plus. Also a plus is we get sections featuring Darryl, one of the nice male characters from the show that is missed by this reader. He’s involved in a task force set up to catch the “Wet Killer” but realizes early on that they may be dealing with someone more up the alley of our Charmed Ones than the San Francisco Police Department, or the FBI, who will be taking over the investigation if the killer can’t be stopped.

Another big plus is Cole has some involvement here. Another great character that’s missed, he often doesn’t get a lot of page time in the entries I’ve read so far. Leo gets some page time, of course, and that’s good as always. The other good thing is there’s a pretty good story in this one, involving some crafty deception which tests the loyalty of the sisters to one another by calling into question the newest Charmed One, Paige. Phoebe has a vision — or is it a dream? — that leads her to the attic, where she discovers an old letter from a distant Halliwell aunt, Agnes, warning of a new arrival to the power of three who will betray them. Could it be Paige?

As you can imagine, this causes suspicion and distrust between Phoebe and Paige (Paige does not know of the letter), but also friction between Piper and Leo on one side, and Cole and Phoebe on the other, as Piper dismisses the letter but Phoebe is not so sure. But why are they so quick to anger, and so unwilling to talk it out? As they try to research their distant relative, and figure it all out, Leo gets a bad vibe off one of Darryl’s crime scenes. It eventually comes to pass that what’s happening now, may have something to do with a horrific killing spree in San Francisco’s distant past. Aunt Agnes eventually stopped an imposter named Timothy dead in his tracks way back when. But wait, isn’t that guy sowing seeds of distrust between Paige and her family named Timothy?

This one feels more fleshed out than some entries, and it’s not just exclusively the sisters — though don’t worry, there’s plenty of Piper, Phoebe and Paige too. There’s a very good ending to this one, and the aftermath is a nice wrap-up. This is a very good entry, with a bit of grit to balance out the fluff. Highly recommended.… (más)

Well, it’s easy to say, you know, Kirk’s a jerk, and obviously it really is like that, since it rhymes, right. But I can sorta see Kirk in this as more the father of sons and daughters, than as a big fat turd, or whatever, you know (complex phraseology, you know: it’s advanced stuff, right). And, I don’t know, I don’t know if I expected it to be about Genesis, to be profound, I guess a lot of fun of mill literary biblical references are kinda sloppy and unconscious, just like a lot of actual Bible commentaries are pedantic and (the technical word is) stupid and pointless, you know, but, I don’t know. It is kinda that middle chilled-over reasonableness, which despite being kinda cookie cutter in more ways than one—it’s whatever people expected, I guess—still makes it more easy fun than easy mind puzzles, which is sometimes what you get from the popular thriller, right. (And I think this is a spacefaring thriller, you know.)

As to the plot, I always wondered about the Prime Directive—basically the “we don’t want to offend the Indian Hunters, so we’ll be vague” name for the Non-Colonial Directive—and what would happen if the rival spacefaring civilization didn’t honor it, which is what happens in this book, and I have to say that that’s a pretty good conflict generator, you know.

I am starting to think that Star Wars is more fun than Star Trek—not that they’re the only two speculative franchises, let alone adventure fiction out there, right—but I guess I am no longer tempted to dismiss James Tiberius Kirk with a monosyllable, right.

…. “Free people made their own choices, and sometimes those choices included hating one another.”

…. The hero is brave and the sociological comments make sense.

…. And the local secondary characters always kinda surprise me, you know.

Anyway, sometimes Star Trek is terrible, but people in general have a better memory for bad things, and you know—this was not terrible.

…. To indulge in the cliche head-to-head: it’s not as good as Star Wars, but sometimes Star Trek is almost romantic, you know.

…. I mean, it’s not a romantic adventure, properly speaking, like say “The Courtship of Princess Leia”—admittedly more feminine than most Star Wars stories, I guess—but Kirk & Company is more romantic than those sorta “Technical Specifications of the Battleship” (Technical Specification of Ships series) type “novels”; even though there’s superficial resemblance it’s far from a rigid observance, you know…. A lot of the plot-and-“science”-centric cavils about Trek plots that Trekkies and such make (I can almost hear them in my head, you know, the anti-literary set: rebel nerd, geek tyrant….) basically revolve around that not understanding what sort of a thing Star Trek is.

It flirts with detachment, in more ways than one, but it was always a little optimistic. Most people can’t really understand the point of chemistry lessons if the chemicals are all made up, you know. It’s just…. Optimism, you know. Romantic-not-romantic.… (más)