Book 2 from the infamous Tom Cavanagh.  Tom is an old friend that I discovered recently is also an author, and a good one at that.  It is no surprise that I picked up this one as soon as I finished Zoe's Tale. 

Mike Garrity has a brain tumor.  He calls it Bob.  And so we meet the main character of Tom's darkly humorous crime novel set in the Central Florida that I grew up in.  Mike is asked by an old colleague from the police force to find a missing member of a up and coming boy band.  With nothing better to do than feel sorry for himself and his mortality, he takes the challenge.  Mike finds himself deep in the middle of a dangerous manhunt as well as surrounded by people who truly care for his well-being.

Head Games is better than Tom's first book, which shows that he is definitely growing as an author.  His dark humor shows in more subtle ways this time around, and again, his locals view of Orlando is very amusing to me.  I am glad that Tom is doing well, and hope that this is just the beginning, if the least reason is for my own amusement.  Great job once again, Tom!

This is a novel approach:  Take your last book, which was really quite good, and retell it from the perspective of a supporting character.  Scalzi's latest book, Zoe's Tale, does just that.  What's more, the supporting character is the sarcastic teenaged daughter of the protagonists in The Last Colony.  Of course, being Scalzi, I ordered and read it in hardcover.

This is the parallel of the last book in the John Perry storyline.  Zoe is the adopted teenaged daughter of John Perry and his ex-SpecialOps wife Jane Sagan who are asked to be the administrators of a new colony.  She must leave behind everything she has known, again, because the colony, named Roanoke, will be hidden, or lost, from everyone.  She must survive with the rest of the colony as the Conclave of Worlds comes after the colonists to destroy them for violating their non-compete edicts.  Oh, and also needs to deal with an entire race of aliens who hold her in the highest reverence for the acts of her biological father.

If you have not read The Lost Colony, do not read this book.  I could only imagine what it must seem like to a non-fan.  It does stand alone, but is not the voice of John Scalzi at his best.  It is, however, extremely entertaining to one familiar with the storyline.  Zoe is sarcastic, cynical, cruel in a teenage-girl way, and very funny.  She is a very endearing character to someone who appreciates some of those qualities.  This may be a fan-service book, but I am very happy to have it in my collection.

Ok, I broke my own cardinal rule of weblogging:  I removed content from this site.  Or rather, suppressed it.  But since it is *my* rule, and I had good reason, I can do that. 

Three weeks ago, I was laid off from my job and needed suddenly to find gainful employment.  Fortunately, I was already on the market anyway, but I wanted the FWHagen.com domain to reflect professionalism as much as possible.  The Subversion/VS.NET article I posted was great for that, however, the two entries above it were book reviews.  So I hid them.  DasBlog makes that very easy in the way that it stores content.  I merely moved the days entries and they were gone.

Today, I started my new job and I have moved the entries back.  Ironically, I have one more book to review tonight, and another this weekend, so it gets worse.  BUT, I am excited about my potentials at the new gig, and anticipate much more technical stuff later.  I am actually going to get to write Real Code!