Pete Hatcher works in a Las Vegas casino as a low-level executive. When the big bosses decide that maybe he knows something that would interest the Feds, Jane has to help him escape to a new life. But the major complication for Jane is that they hire a couple of pros to find Hatcher.
What I Liked
The book covers a lot of ground, with lots of running around the country, and even up into Glacier National Park. It’s a bit different than the urban settings of the rest of it, and you get to see lots of new issues for Jane to adapt to while teaching the people how to live a hidden life. The pros that are chasing her are really good, and it adds lots of tension.
What I Didn’t Like
I liked reading the story, and still the premise of what Jane does, but this one had some challenges for me. First, Pete has no idea what’s going on because he doesn’t know why they suddenly decided he knows too much or what’s going on. But he hasn’t done anything wrong, and unlike a lot of other people trying to disappear, he could simply go to the authorities and say “Help!”. There’s no good explanation why he doesn’t. Secondly, the two pros that are chasing them are kind of nuts, but in very cliché ways. There’s no depth to the characters so there’s no menace, just pretty superficial. Finally, one of the big tension scenes is more resolved by coincidence than the actions of the people, which was unsatisfying.
The Bottom Line
A potentially excellent book brought down to highly enjoyable.
Jane Whitefield is back and trying to guide an 8-year-old boy with an inheritance and a 30-year-old woman with stolen bank money to a safe haven.
What I Liked
The methodology for how Jane helps everyone is quite good, and reads both simple and plausible, a veneer of realism that sells the stories. The explanations for both cases are relatively clear, you understand the motives and why someone is coming after the two of them. Most of the story is a cat and mouse world, and it works well.
What I Didn’t Like
The two stories seem unconnected at the beginning but it is blindingly obvious that they will eventually connect, even if it is a connection told in reverse (i.e., if you know the connection in advance, you can write two separate stores to get there), but it seems coincidental rather than natural. There are also two really long expositions, one at the beginning for the kid’s backstory and one in the middle for hers. Finally, there is some romance that comes out of nowhere for the character, particularly as you have been in her head for some time and then it’s like, “Cue the romance scene with a guy she knows but we don’t.”.
Jane Whitefield is a Seneca woman living in NY state. She honours her ancestors and helps those who are in trouble to disappear and start a new life.
What I Liked
The premise of the main character’s “job” of helping people escape bad situations and start a new life — serving as their guide — is a fantastic premise, and the first half of the book is primarily about how she goes about doing her job. While some clients are eased into the process a bit more gradually, her latest client is all-in from day 1.
What I Didn’t Like
You know as the story unfolds that something is going to go wrong, you just don’t know what or when. Despite some initial success, some of it seems even TOO easy for her to do with a minimum of fuss. Mid-book, the type of story changes considerably, as the hunted becomes the hunter, and it isn’t as good as her other books that have a bit more mystery to them rather than action.
The Bottom Line
A great first book in the series, Whitefield is awesome.
A new trio of Jason, Piper and Leo has arrived at Camp Half-Blood and are ready to set off on a quest, but something seems off about not only them and their memories, but also about their participation in a ritual for the children of Greek Gods at all.
What I Liked
The new trio are fun, and there’s enough mystery in both who they all are and why they don’t remember to keep things interesting. Jason has a lot of power, and some knowledge but a goddess has stolen all his memories. Piper has a big secret, namely that someone is whispering in her ear and in her dreams, when all she really wants to do is be in love with Jason. Leo also has a past, too much fire, and he’s really into machines. All great powers to have, and nothing like what we had with the previous campers.
What I Didn’t Like
The amnesia thing for Jason lands a bit trite at times, as he remembers just enough to move the plot along but not enough to be totally useful. The wind gods start off interesting, as does the flying dragon, but eventually they become almost clichés. And the entire media thing is way too Neil Gaiman/American Gods for my taste.
The Bottom Line
Seven half-bloods shall answer the call but we’ll start with three for now.
Well, it has been almost two months since the technical support people at my website hosting partner accidentally nuked my site. The changes they made screwed up the site and the backups wouldn’t restore properly, leaving me with a huge reliability problem for some of the content. Pages that would work one minute and crash the next, posts that wouldn’t display properly, some pages or posts that disappeared altogether yet were still “active” on the site. Glitches that were annoying and not something I could leave in the site nor was I able to simply “fix” them.
I had all my data, but I needed to nuke the account and rebuild everything entirely. I rebuilt two sites that I host for others, and the content of those was relatively easy with a few annoying features, but it was the main PolyWogg.ca site that was the biggest challenge. 200 pages, 1600 posts, 1.6M words, 400 comments…all needing to be reloaded. And, as I noted, some glitches were embedded in several posts that required me to essentially reload things manually.
Working around the clock
But after two weeks of existential angst and six weeks of working at least 4h/day (at least 10h/day on weekends), and about 260 hours of work in total, my sites are back in business.
Because I had to rebuild the sites, and I didn’t want people getting daily update notices, I had to “force unsubscribe” anyone who was subscribed to my original feed for PolyWogg. Back on March 6, I sent them all emails to say, “Well, the site is down, and I’ll email you again when it comes back up”, while redirecting people to Facebook or Twitter to find me for now or in the future. I’m a little sad that many of them won’t resubscribe, but that’s the nature of the beast when running websites.
Today, I re-invited everyone to rejoin, we’ll see how many do. I now have two feeds though, one for each website.
PolyWogg.ca which includes my more formal “products”, such as my HR Guide, reviews, recipes, and astronomy-related posts;
and
ThePolyBlog.ca which includes my more informal blog posts, such as posts on Life (experiences, family, humour and computer-related topics like the website itself); The Little Grey Cells (more thoughtful topics like learning and ideas, writing and publishing, quotes, and health and spiritualism); goals; and my annual reading challenges.
If anyone else wants to subscribe by email, here are the two links:
Of course, people may prefer to access my posts through Facebook (PolyWogg.ca) or via my Twitter feed (@ThePolyBlog), as I try to post notices of new content to both feeds. I had to “force stop” the feeds during the rebuild process too, albeit one seemed to occasionally update anyways on Facebook for a few posts, but everything is back live again.
Of course, the work is never done
I have a few areas that will require more work still, but that isn’t entirely due to the website torching. As I rebuilt, I took the opportunity to redirect some of my efforts in a bit different direction. As a result, some of the solutions are not totally compatible with the previous structure. My trivia efforts had to be reset, my photo gallery is moved over to Flickr, and I’m taking a whole new approach to my PolyWogg Guide to Astronomy. Most of that change though is that as I did the other changes, I figured out better ways to handle those options too. That’s a longer term project though, and I’ll get to it over time. I don’t need to relaunch with those today.
On the other hand, I’ve done pretty well. Both sites (PolyWogg.ca and ThePolyBlog) are running about 45 plugins in total, and about 20 or so are new ways to handle the content (replacing older plugins that I was running before). I’ll blog about that in a bit more detail as the week goes on. More importantly to the reader, I have 604 posts / 45 pages / 570K words on PolyWogg.ca. Plus about 230 comments, most related to my HR Guide. Meanwhile, ThePolyBlog has 879 posts / 14 active pages / 981K words, plus about 220 comments. I’ve also streamlined the categories on both sites quite a bit.
As the planet starts to emerge from the COVID pandemic, one of the phrases being used is “Build Back Better”. I’m not 100% certain that it’s perfectly re-built, but it’s definitely better than it was, with more extensive branding for sub-areas, particularly the PolyWogg “products” like my HR Guide.
