Arena by Holly Jennings

Arena by Holly Jennings

Posted by Anonymous

Reviewed by: Andrew Zollman

What I Read: Arena by Holly Jennings

Find It @YCLD: Here!

What It's About: The year is 2054, and virtual gaming (eSports) has overtaken traditional sporting events worldwide. Millions of viewers tune in worldwide to get a glimpse of arena death matches featuring gamer turned athletes. Team Defiance is one such team, led by Kali Ling, who are fighting in the RAGE Tournaments to be this year’s champions. Gamers live every day dying and coming back to life like gods to appease viewers and sponsors alike. Every player is a modern digital gladiator wielding weapons and wearing armor.

The pain is real and the brutality extreme, and has made the public numb to outrageous acts of violence. Kali Ling is an exceptional fighter. Coined ‘The Warrior’, she is the first female captain to lead a team in the RAGE tournament. Is the task before her to difficult? Can she deal with the realities of the sport? When a tragic event happens during the tournament, can Kali find herself again in time to get herself and her team back into competitive form? Virtual gaming is much more than it appears, the truth is being hidden and not everything is as it seems for those not involved with the fighting.

What I Thought: This is Holly Jennings's debut novel as a writer. Both the concept and subject reflect current trends popping up in our society and changes affecting our culture as we move on from the age of millennial gamers into the 21st century. Virtual Reality gaming has just hit the markets and a story about its use is well planned for a writer. As a new writer, Jennings is just getting into the industry and has some lacking elements in her work as she explores her possible future in the story. The evolution of her characters and their interactions are well established and you can relate to their shortcomings and personalities when describing an avid gamer or athlete. She does a great job of blending the two together for the purpose of the story.

The action on the other hand is lacking. Jennings touches on the combat and brutality of the sport but never goes into full detail of the situation. When someone cuts into someone else, is there sensation, is there a change in personality, what else can happen to those involved? In Arena the characters in a sense become numb to the violence. There is little difference or variation between one gamer and another as they compete. I would have liked to see her delve deeper into what happens because of sport and the violence. Even with what is expected of gamers for sponsors and the fans, the addition of drinking and drug use just blurs the differences between reality and the virtual world. I would have also liked her to go a little bit more into the aspect of the combat, the styles, tactics, and uses of each. Combat in the tournament matches was extremely fast and was overshadowed by the challenges of Kali and the team. So much so that at times it was forgotten and I had to go back and read them again to remember what happened.

A bright spot in the story was Kali’s interactions with her team and the challenge that is the sport and the image she is being forced to play by her boss and sponsors. The conflict hits close to home and some of the more controversial aspects of professional sports we see today in Boxing and MMA when fighters interact with media and the spotlight.

This is one of my first science fiction titles that I have read with a focus on sports and virtual reality. The conflict is there but more background and research into the effects of gaming and violent sports would have made the story more convincing. I liked the concept and the approach, but I think it needed more detailed information for the reader to push them closer to the problem and message. The romance was light and has teenage tones of relationship which was good. I don’t like romance in books to overshadow the conflict that the main character is facing and the focus of the book.

Recommend for older teens and adult readers who actively read science fiction. Once again this story has a strong female character which the story revolves around and I think it help move and shape events. Enjoy!

Readalikes: This is Not a Game by Williams, Walter Jon

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The Legends Club by John Feinstein

The Legends Club by John Feinstein

Posted by Anonymous

Reviewed by: Jim Patrick

What I Read: The Legends Club: Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Valvano, and an Epic College Basketball Rivalry by John Feinstein

Find It @YCLD: Here!

What It's About: Although John Feinstein’s career began with a classic basketball book, A Season on the Brink, these days the Golf Channel contributor more frequently writes about golf.  In The Legends Club, Feinstein returns to his roots with a nostalgic, bittersweet look back at the glory days of Atlantic Coast Conference basketball in the 1980s and beyond.

When Jim Valvano and “Coach K” took their head coaching positions at North Carolina State and Duke in 1980, Dean Smith had already established the North Carolina program as a perennial NCAA powerhouse.  Valvano and Krzyzewski had the ability and audacity to take on Dean Smith, but their early experiences were not very successful.  In fact, Coach K came very close to getting fired in his second year with the Blue Devils.  Today he’s still at Duke as the winningest coach in Division One history.

In addition to retracing Coach K’s journey to that pinnacle of coaching achievement, The Legends Club also includes many exciting game and tournament accounts, as well as fascinating stories about the sometimes contentious interactions among the three coaches.  John Feinstein is a Duke graduate and a personal friend of Mike Krzyzewski.  He openly admits a Duke “bias,” but he also writes movingly of Coach Valvano’s 1983 national championship, as well as his brave, public battle with cancer ten years later.  And he writes admiringly of Coach Smith’s brilliant basketball innovations and his unwavering loyalty to his players.

What I Thought:  Although John Feinstein’s The Legends Club is a very enjoyable sports book, readers should not expect an expose of big-time college basketball.  Feinstein points out personal quirks and foibles of the three coaches, but he is clearly an admirer of all three men, as well as being a fan of ACC basketball.  The book does drag a bit after Valvano and Smith exit the story—due to Valvano’s death and to Smith’s retirement and later death from Alzheimer’s complications.  The final few chapters recount recent Duke basketball history in a fairly perfunctory narrative that lacks the drama of the earlier chapters.  Overall, however, Feinstein gives the reader fine portrayals of these three legendary coaches and the high-stakes environment in which they competed so successfully.

Readalikes: Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four by John Feinstein;  Glory Road: My Story of the 1966 NCAA Basketball Championship by Don Haskins.

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Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen

Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen

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Reviewed by: Jim Patrick

What I Read: Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen

Find It @YCLD: Here!

What It's About:  Ty Cobb, who played from 1905 to 1928, was inducted into the inaugural class of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936.  His contemporaries considered him the greatest player of his era due to his unrivaled hitting prowess and baserunning ability.  He won 12 batting championships and stole 892 bases in his career.  History has not been kind to Cobb, however.  His many detractors counter his accomplishments with his perceived character flaws.  He has been portrayed as being mean, physically violent, and racist—a nasty ballplayer and a wretched human being.  Several Cobb stories have been repeated ad nauseam in baseball books:  Cobb filing the spikes of his baseball shoes to create baserunning weapons of intimidation; Cobb running into the stands to attack a “crippled” heckler; and Cobb dying as a lonely and friendless recluse.  Leerhsen provides ample documentation for his rebuttals of these stories, and he also challenges numerous accusations and statements from previous biographies written by Charles Alexander and Al Stump.  Leerhsen’s Cobb is indeed highly competitive, overly sensitive, and capable of lashing out in anger and violence.  However, his Cobb is also a devoted family man, an intellectually curious man who loved to read, a financially savvy man who died a millionaire, and a generally well-liked man who dined (and golfed) with celebrities and politicians.  And, although a southerner, he was an early advocate of racial integration in baseball.  These unknown sides of Cobb have been rescued by Charles Leerhsen’s research.

What I Thought:  After getting over my initial shock at the author’s contemporary writing style and frequent pop culture references—Charlie Sheen and Donald Trump are both listed in the index—I found myself greatly enjoying this unique look at Ty Cobb’s life and career.  It is unique because Leerhsen presents Ty Cobb as a multi-dimensional human being, not the caricatured demon of previous Cobb biographies.  As someone who has read dozens of baseball biographies, I can attest that many are plagued by an overabundance of trite sports clichés or by a stuffy and overly reverential tone.  Fortunately, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, suffers from neither of these failings.  It is well-researched and smartly written, and for a 400+ page biography, it was a fast and entertaining read. 

Readalikes: Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball by Norman Macht

Baseball: An Illustrated History by Geoffrey C. Ward

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The Game Must Go On by John Klima

The Game Must Go On by John Klima

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Reviewed by: Jim Patrick

What I Read: The Game Must Go On: Hank Greenberg, Pete Gray, and the Great Days of Baseball on the Home Front in WWII by John Klima

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What It's About: The Game Must Go On tells the story of baseball during World War II.  Author John Klima focuses on three individuals who represent very different aspects of wartime baseball.  Hank Greenberg was a superstar with the Detroit Tigers who lost four prime years of his career to the war.  He was the first major league player to enlist in the war effort, and he was also the most prominent Jewish-American athlete of his era.  Pete Gray was a gifted, but one-armed, outfielder signed by the St. Louis Browns.  He was popular with fans and with soldiers, but he was resented by his teammates who saw him as a publicity gimmick.  Billy Southworth, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, was father of a minor league player who later lost his life while flying a B-17.  The success of the elder Southworth’s Cardinals teams was overshadowed by his personal grief.  Throughout these three very compelling personal stories, Klima skillfully weaves anecdotes about other players, along with pertinent details about the business of wartime baseball and the progress of the war itself. 
 
What I Thought: When I finished this book, I knew a great deal more about baseball during World War II than I had previously known.  The biographical sketches of the various ballplayers were fascinating, as were the logistical details of keeping baseball afloat during the war.  The tone of the writing was at times almost over the top with baseball (and military) clichés, but the information was very well chosen and organized.  Other reviewers praised the “breezy” and “engaging” nature of the writing, so perhaps I am in the minority on this objection.  The book reads quickly since the reader is pulled along by the drama of individual baseball seasons within the larger drama of the war.  This is an ambitious book that requires an author with expertise not only in baseball history, but also in political and military history.  Overall, this is an excellent book on an often over-simplified chapter in the history of baseball.

Readalikes: The Corporal Was a Pitcher: The Courage of Lou Brissie by Ira Berkow, The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam

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