
The Homeland Connection
By Lior Samson
This is a paperback collection of four novels published by Gesher Press. I will start with an overview of the set, then review each book separately and average the scores.
What it’s about: This is an ambitious collection, I estimate it at near half a million words, and is about a tech consultant lost in a high-stakes world of espionage and intrigue. It spans the globe, particularly the Middle East, Europe, Japan, and the United States, and deals with the ever-volatile regions around Israel.
Look/design: The cover has a dawn-lit picture of Haifa, Israel wrapped around it, displaying the peach color of the morning across the hazy mountains and city. It’s a peaceful image, but dark and moody at the same time. The title, author, and the four separate book names are listed on the front in their own fonts, and the back cover has a blurb for each one. Even looking for something to criticize, I could not find fault, but there was nothing dynamic about it either. Rating: 19/20
Editing/formatting: Very professional. The pages were perfectly laid out – framed exactly with space for the spine, and with right margins justified (I wish everyone did this). Each book has its own heading at the top of the page, and a black and white picture of the individual covers at the beginning of each book. Editing was crisp and clean with a minimum of typos or other mistakes. The only thing I found lacking was a bio of the author. With the storyline covering technical aspects as well as international political issues, I wondered what sort of credentials and experience Mr. Samson had in order to create such believable tales. For that oversight, I’m deducting a point: 19/20
Story/Content:
Bashert started quickly and very academically – exaggeratedly so. The first fifty pages contained so many two-dollar words that I had to conclude this portion had been over-worked to impress potential publishers. After that, the dialogue of the intellectuals degraded to your Everyday Joe’s speech patterns, and a few typos and grammatical errors crept in after that imaginary line. While I completely understand the need to impress, it sucked some of the life out of the story for me. I deducted five points for this, plus another point for the inconsistency.
The story itself was well-researched and very intriguing, keeping me turning pages to the end. But the ending seemed a little weak to me. With so much detail and build-up in the beginning, it just didn’t quite live up to the punch it had promised – ending too quickly and easily. I hacked off another two points for that.
Overall, it was a very entertaining and intelligent read. The few problems I had were with the story jumping around, which caused some confusion for me. One more point deducted: 51/60
The Dome: In keeping with the first novel of the collection, this story was fast-paced and intriguing. It was not dragged down by OSS (Overwhelming Synonym Syndrome), but also was not as tightly edited – missing words and typos tripled, dialog was more difficult to follow, and the story jerked around too much for my taste. I found myself repeatedly going back to make sense of the narrative or to figure out where or when a particular passage was taking place. At one point, what I thought had been two women and a man, turned out to be two men and a woman. Five points deleted.
The story itself (the most important part to me) was much better. It was very well crafted and thought-out, with no let-down in the climax. The detours and backstory were not a distraction to the closing. I enjoyed the electronic cat-and-mouse as well as the political and religious arguments. It didn’t get too technical and not as detailed as I would have liked in that area – probably better for the average reader, but I wanted more. I hacked a point off for that deficit.
This book was a great melding of technology, politics, and religion. I liked it so much that I’m adding a point back. It was intriguing and thought-provoking on every level. Rating: 55/60
Web Games took off from the first page and sucked me right in. I may be a bit biased because I love this type of story, and this one didn’t disappoint at all. This third novel in the series showed an even faster pace and a constant, addictive drive toward the resolution. I found myself wrapped up in the plot as the different factions grabbed at power – or justice – whatever their vision of either was. It was much more streamlined than the first two books, and added a lot more intrigue, just when that seemed impossible. I found a happy mix of everything in this book, from computer hacking to espionage to political and environmental activism to good old-fashioned corporate greed.
Of course I found some problems (as is my duty), but none distracted from the story. There were still some scenes that hopped around and caused a bit of double-checking, but fewer than the previous books. Only once did I find myself totally perplexed when an apparent superhero teleported from his office into the middle of nowhere to save a damsel in distress, and then warped back to his office seconds later. This magic act caused three points to disappear.
Web Games was right up my alley and a thoroughly enjoyable read. I highly recommend it and am anxious to see if the fourth book continues the trend of raising the bar with each book. Great job: 57/60
Chipset was an excellent conclusion to the series. I can’t say enough about the intrigue and suspense he pulled off in this final book. This time Karl had a lot more help in the end, but managed to uncover yet another mystery where most would have seen none. It was fast-paced to the end and did indeed succeed in raising the bar.
Inside Chipset we really see the harsh real world of computer-controlled devices run amok. As technologically-oriented as I am, I’ve always held the belief that technology, used to extremes, would be bad. Samson plays that out so well in this series, especially the final saga, and I loved it for that. After living all my life engrossed in the computer world, I cringe at the thought of ‘smart’ cars, planes, appliances, phones, applications, girlfriends, etc. Okay, I must admit a smart girlfriend would be nice.
This book contained a lot more errors, but the story was so much more crisp. The detailed story of Karl’s background was interesting, and probably worthy of its own book, but to be honest, it seemed to be used as filler in this book and actually took away from the story a bit. I took off a point for that, and another for the loose editing (words got through that any spellchecker should have caught).
This installment was one of the best indie books I’ve read to date, and would have scored a little higher if the editing had been better. This one earned 58/60
Summary: As I mentioned at the beginning, this was a very ambitious series and hard to accomplish without a wide range of knowledge and experience. Lior Samson apparently has an abundance of both. Cheers for pulling off an in-depth and diverse series rivaling or surpassing the attempts of best-selling authors. With a score of 19/20 for the cover, 19/20 for editing/formatting, and an average of 55.25/60, this set earned a total score of 93.25/100
By Lior Samson
This is a paperback collection of four novels published by Gesher Press. I will start with an overview of the set, then review each book separately and average the scores.
What it’s about: This is an ambitious collection, I estimate it at near half a million words, and is about a tech consultant lost in a high-stakes world of espionage and intrigue. It spans the globe, particularly the Middle East, Europe, Japan, and the United States, and deals with the ever-volatile regions around Israel.
Look/design: The cover has a dawn-lit picture of Haifa, Israel wrapped around it, displaying the peach color of the morning across the hazy mountains and city. It’s a peaceful image, but dark and moody at the same time. The title, author, and the four separate book names are listed on the front in their own fonts, and the back cover has a blurb for each one. Even looking for something to criticize, I could not find fault, but there was nothing dynamic about it either. Rating: 19/20
Editing/formatting: Very professional. The pages were perfectly laid out – framed exactly with space for the spine, and with right margins justified (I wish everyone did this). Each book has its own heading at the top of the page, and a black and white picture of the individual covers at the beginning of each book. Editing was crisp and clean with a minimum of typos or other mistakes. The only thing I found lacking was a bio of the author. With the storyline covering technical aspects as well as international political issues, I wondered what sort of credentials and experience Mr. Samson had in order to create such believable tales. For that oversight, I’m deducting a point: 19/20
Story/Content:
Bashert started quickly and very academically – exaggeratedly so. The first fifty pages contained so many two-dollar words that I had to conclude this portion had been over-worked to impress potential publishers. After that, the dialogue of the intellectuals degraded to your Everyday Joe’s speech patterns, and a few typos and grammatical errors crept in after that imaginary line. While I completely understand the need to impress, it sucked some of the life out of the story for me. I deducted five points for this, plus another point for the inconsistency.
The story itself was well-researched and very intriguing, keeping me turning pages to the end. But the ending seemed a little weak to me. With so much detail and build-up in the beginning, it just didn’t quite live up to the punch it had promised – ending too quickly and easily. I hacked off another two points for that.
Overall, it was a very entertaining and intelligent read. The few problems I had were with the story jumping around, which caused some confusion for me. One more point deducted: 51/60
The Dome: In keeping with the first novel of the collection, this story was fast-paced and intriguing. It was not dragged down by OSS (Overwhelming Synonym Syndrome), but also was not as tightly edited – missing words and typos tripled, dialog was more difficult to follow, and the story jerked around too much for my taste. I found myself repeatedly going back to make sense of the narrative or to figure out where or when a particular passage was taking place. At one point, what I thought had been two women and a man, turned out to be two men and a woman. Five points deleted.
The story itself (the most important part to me) was much better. It was very well crafted and thought-out, with no let-down in the climax. The detours and backstory were not a distraction to the closing. I enjoyed the electronic cat-and-mouse as well as the political and religious arguments. It didn’t get too technical and not as detailed as I would have liked in that area – probably better for the average reader, but I wanted more. I hacked a point off for that deficit.
This book was a great melding of technology, politics, and religion. I liked it so much that I’m adding a point back. It was intriguing and thought-provoking on every level. Rating: 55/60
Web Games took off from the first page and sucked me right in. I may be a bit biased because I love this type of story, and this one didn’t disappoint at all. This third novel in the series showed an even faster pace and a constant, addictive drive toward the resolution. I found myself wrapped up in the plot as the different factions grabbed at power – or justice – whatever their vision of either was. It was much more streamlined than the first two books, and added a lot more intrigue, just when that seemed impossible. I found a happy mix of everything in this book, from computer hacking to espionage to political and environmental activism to good old-fashioned corporate greed.
Of course I found some problems (as is my duty), but none distracted from the story. There were still some scenes that hopped around and caused a bit of double-checking, but fewer than the previous books. Only once did I find myself totally perplexed when an apparent superhero teleported from his office into the middle of nowhere to save a damsel in distress, and then warped back to his office seconds later. This magic act caused three points to disappear.
Web Games was right up my alley and a thoroughly enjoyable read. I highly recommend it and am anxious to see if the fourth book continues the trend of raising the bar with each book. Great job: 57/60
Chipset was an excellent conclusion to the series. I can’t say enough about the intrigue and suspense he pulled off in this final book. This time Karl had a lot more help in the end, but managed to uncover yet another mystery where most would have seen none. It was fast-paced to the end and did indeed succeed in raising the bar.
Inside Chipset we really see the harsh real world of computer-controlled devices run amok. As technologically-oriented as I am, I’ve always held the belief that technology, used to extremes, would be bad. Samson plays that out so well in this series, especially the final saga, and I loved it for that. After living all my life engrossed in the computer world, I cringe at the thought of ‘smart’ cars, planes, appliances, phones, applications, girlfriends, etc. Okay, I must admit a smart girlfriend would be nice.
This book contained a lot more errors, but the story was so much more crisp. The detailed story of Karl’s background was interesting, and probably worthy of its own book, but to be honest, it seemed to be used as filler in this book and actually took away from the story a bit. I took off a point for that, and another for the loose editing (words got through that any spellchecker should have caught).
This installment was one of the best indie books I’ve read to date, and would have scored a little higher if the editing had been better. This one earned 58/60
Summary: As I mentioned at the beginning, this was a very ambitious series and hard to accomplish without a wide range of knowledge and experience. Lior Samson apparently has an abundance of both. Cheers for pulling off an in-depth and diverse series rivaling or surpassing the attempts of best-selling authors. With a score of 19/20 for the cover, 19/20 for editing/formatting, and an average of 55.25/60, this set earned a total score of 93.25/100