Ajitabh Pandey's Soul & Syntax

Exploring systems, souls, and stories – one post at a time

Category: Book Reviews

  • The Enemy (Jack Reacher #8)

    The Enemy Book Cover Image“The Enemy” is the 8th book in the “Jack Reacher” series by Lee Child and this book is a class in itself. Unlike the previous books where Jack Reacher was shown as an X-Army MP, an ultimate loaner finding trouble where he goes, this book is a based on Reacher’s past life during his Army days from the 1990’s.

    In this book we got a chance to spend some moments spent with Reacher’s mother and brother. We get to know some historical facts about Reacher’s mother from the day’s of the world war II.

    The book starts with the death of an Armoured General in a cheap New Carolina motel under disturbing circumstances. Further in the first few pages we get to know that Reacher was transferred out of Panama to North Carolina on the new year’s eve. Then a sequence of murders start, some of which implicate Reacher himself and it was looking like he got himself in trouble with some delta force Sargent’s. Reacher saw that along with 20 other elite unit major’s, his CO, Col Garber got transferred same night and a bureaucratic Col replaces him who did not want Reacher to investigate the murders and bury them. Reacher being Reacher continues the investigation along with a young lady Lt, found the culprits and risk being court martialed but ended up loosing rank and seniority.

    A very gluing book, a must read for Reacher fans.

  • Persuader (Jack Reacher #7)

    Persuader Book Cover Image“Persuader” is the 7th book in the Jack Reacher series. Jack Reacher is an X Army MP Major and has been roaming around the US without any commitments. This makes him an ultimate loaner. However there is one serious problem, that wherever he goes, he finds a trouble and gets deep into it.

    This time too, he was having a drink and he saw a face that reminds me of a 10 year old case from his Army days, which he thought to have resolved. He pursues his investigation and is caught up in the drama involving drugs, guns and some action. There isn’t any serious bloodshed in this book and most of the book is purely a detective work wherein Reacher ends up working as a bodyguard in order to find out the person responsible for the murder of two of his MPs. As has happened in his other books (right from the first book), Reacher finds time for some non-committal love and romance with one of the DEA officers, Duffy.

    I have been liking the Reacher series and for me it have been very difficult to put down the book, once I started a book. The writing style of Lee Child is as usual very descriptive and sometimes I love the second by second description of thought and events, which often lasts couple of pages easily. Lee Child does a a lot of research for writing these books and this is evident from these descriptive passages.

    In my opinion, a good read (3 out of 5 stars) and I am seriously looking to start the next one. Perhaps today 🙂

  • The Oath of the Vayuputras (Shiva Trilogy #3)

    Oath of The Vayuputras Image
    Oath of The Vayuputras

    ‘Ooath of the Vayuputras’ was a different book from the first two parts of the trilogy. This book has less of an action but more of discussions about good and evil. The author has done quite good historical research as well to link the Jorastrians with ancient Indian culture. I must say that the one thing which disappointed me is the way the plot took the turn from part two. Till part two the author was able to bind the readers and keep the interest. The reader was curious as to what will be happening next and what is the “Ooath of the Vayuputras”, but the author has not been able to bind the readers in this book. I found mysefl skipping the discussion about Good and Evil and at several other places.

    There is a growing number of next gen Indian Authors coming up with plots based on the ancient Indian historical backgrounds mixed with latest researches, with one thing in common – they all are getting carried away in philosopy and sprituality.

    In this book, if the author would have kept this novel purely as an action novel with some battle strategies etc then it would have been great end to a wonderful start. Neverthless I am giving it three stars as this is the first work by the author and writing a trilogy in the first work is an achievement in itself. I am sure the next books will follow the continual improvement.

    All the best Amish.

  • The Visible OPS Handbook

    ITIL is a “collection of bThe Visible Ops Handbook Imageest practices codified in seven books by the Office of Government Commerce in the U.K.”

    Visible Ops is a collection of best practices organized into four incremental steps.

    Phase 1 – The primary goal is stabilizing the current infrastructure. In order to do this first the identification of the most critical IT systems is to be performed, followed by restricting the change access to these systems and ensuring that each change to these systems is viewed as potentially most impacting. This will also involve creating Change Advisory Boards and a Change Request Tracking System. The ultimate goal is to do more proactive work and reduce the Mean Time To Recover (MTTR). At the end of this phase there is a general increase in the confidence level in the IT systems.

    Phase 2 – During phase 2 the focus is on identifying the most critical IT components (s/w & h/w), interdependencies between them and then prioritizing the most critical services.

    Phase 3 – Release engineering as an essential component and a standard and quick deployment process is being looked at in this stage. Essentially the most experienced team members needs to be pulled out and their focus and attention diverted to the release engineering tasks and the relatively inexperienced people left in for firefighting.

    Phase 4 – The final phase is the Continual Improvement. Here the goals are to improve the change success rate and increase the effective rate of change followed by continuous monitoring to measure any potential slip in performance.

    If you just want a gist of ITIL, this is the book you want to go for. Based on the 4 steps provided in the book, it will become a lot easier for implementing ITIL in an organization.

  • Sidney Sheldon’s Angel of the Dark

    Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark ImageThe book started with the murder of a rich old man and the brutal rape of his young wife. The police investigations reached no where and then the young wife, one of the victims, vanished. Thus forcing LAPD to close down the case and forcing the detective to resign.

    All was seemingly set when the detective, now married and settled in france as an interpol investigator got a call about the murder.

    And then there were a series of similar murders unearthed.

    After some pages we could guess who the killers are, but still the book keeps you glued because the intention behind these murders is not yet clear. And to be honest, towards the end of the book it was feeling like the book can logically end at three or four different places, but still it continues and the real mystery unfolds in just the last two pages.

    Quite an interesting plot, a good read.

    I havn’t read my Sidney Sheldon’s books to claim if it was matching with his style, but worth the time spent.