Action, Adventure, and Planes

We had to make an emergency trip home a few weeks back. I talk about it a lot and I agonize over it a lot, but picking travel reads is an ordeal in my house. Not a painful ordeal, mind you, just an ordeal. Trying to find the best read for a trip can literally consume me.

I've come to learn that certain contingencies have to be planned for -- massive delays can mean a finished book before you even board for the plane (Clive Barker's Thief of Always kept a teenage me occupied in the New Orleans airport when our plane was delayed 8 hours!) and family visits mean almost no reading during the trip itself, so I've been trying to find the right balance and pack less.

This trip was no exception in terms of length of time spent trying to pick the right reads, but I ended up bringing just three books. That was quite a bit of progress! Course I knew that the plane would be pretty much the only reading I was doing on this trip.

And picking the wrong plane read can be disastrous. Flying is annoying, uncomfortable, and highly distracting, making it very hard for me to concentrate (sucks, I seem to have lost the ability to tune out everything and zone into my reads). Fortunately, Jeremy Robinson came to my rescue. The first in his Jack Sigler series is straight out of a video game or blockbuster action movie. No matter how many screaming kids, flight update announcements, and loud conversations flew at me, I was able to finish most of Pulse on the first set of plane rides.

In Pulse, the chess team is on leave for one week, giving Sigler time to head to Peru and help with security on a friend's archaeological dig. The discovery is a unique one that could blow the Hercules myth straight out of the water and right into the realm of reality. But the rumored resting spot of the Hydra is of interest to groups outside of academia as well. The dig is ambushed and Sigler's friend is kidnapped. Now, Sigler and his team are on the trail of a dangerous scientist whose singular goal is eternal life at any cost.

While I did think the story could have been more -- there were definitely some opportunities for Robinson to build more depth -- it was a super fun read. And, as mentioned, a great pick for a plane. So far there are two more installments to the series, Instinct and Threshold, both of which are in my TBR stack.

For more on Robinson and the Chess Team, hit the link above. There's even a trailer for the newly released Threshold.