Tag: book reviews

I’ve read a lot of Tom Clancy over the years (his actual novels, not those books where his name was just added to the cover to encourage sales), and there are probably hundreds of reasons for his popularity — well researched military hardware, believable heroes and villains, and descriptive battles are just a few I believe led to Clancy’s success in military fiction. His novels are almost unique in their style, but I’ve recently finished a new novel that had me flashing back to Clancy and his style of writing.

Sometimes, people just don’t know when to leave things well enough alone. Take Signal Fire Studios in Georgia. They just about caused the end of the world when they released ‘The Lovecraftian ABCs,’ exposing children around the globe to a number of ancient secrets and creating thousands of new acolytes bent on waking untold evils. Thankfully these plans were interrupted by a few well-timed naps and On-Demand episodes of ‘Caillou.’ (Of course, we parents are beginning to suspect that even ‘Caillou’ is a minion of some of the most foul creatures ever to swim the dark ether of outer space.)

Anyone who read last year’s surprise hit, ‘The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August,’ by Claire North has probably been eagerly awaiting her next story. Released last week, ‘Touch’ is a similar-style story in that it focuses on a special group of individuals who have a unique talent.

Here’s the setup — the ants have had enough of humans. Over thousands of years, one particular colony has grown in size and intelligence, and the Queen has finally decided to take back the Earth. I know just enough about ants to understand how they communicate and I’ve read here and there (and watched a few video snippets) about their hierarchy and how they declare war on other colonies. This Queen is very intelligent, and she has managed to gain sufficient knowledge of chemistry to grow car-sized Alphas to act as soldier. Oh, and she’s also figured out how to grant intelligence and self-awareness in most every animal type on the planet including pig, dog, bear, raccoon, and cat.