All the Light We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is a World War II story from two different perspectives.

Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a young girl in Paris. Her father works at the Museum of Natural History. He is in charge of the keys - to all cabinets, rooms and safes. Marie-Laure is blind. She was not born blind, her eyesight slowly went away. Her father has helped her find her way around, including creating an exact model of the neighborhood she can explore with her fingers.

Werner Pfenning is a German orphan. He and his sister, Jutta, live in an orphanage in a coal mining town. Werner loves math and radios. He and his sister love to listen to a man speaking in French and teaching about science. Werner takes radios apart and fixes them - to the extend that people start hiring him to fix theirs. The Nazi leader of the town discovers this and has him sent to school to develop this skill.

The story is told in the current time and in flash back chapter of both characters. Both end up on the island town of Saint Malo on the coast of France near the end of the war. Marie-Laure at her uncle's house and Werner in the radio division that hunt for illegal transmitters.

Doerr has created a beautiful and heart-breaking book. After all of the novels set in WWII, this is a different approach. Both characters are wonderful and caught up in something too large to escape. Buy this book!

Doerr, Anthony. (2014). All the Light We Cannot See. New York: Scribner.

In Enemy Hands (Honor Harrington #7)

In Enemy Hands by David Weber is the seventh book in his Honor Harrington series.

Honor Harrington has been put in charge of a join Grayson and Mantacore Navy fleet of ships. They have at least a few weeks before they will have gathered all of the parts, so in the meantime, Honor is asked to take a few ships and guard a convoy of supplies and soldiers being sent to a planet that the Allies just took back from Haven's People's Navy.

As the commodore, Honor will not be in the ship that goes ahead to scout for enemies. She will be safely in a middle ship. But about half way to their final destination, Honor and a small team, transfers to the lead ship to discuss strategy with the captain.

What they don't know is that the system they are about to enter has been taken back by the Peeps. They are flying into a trap that has already destroyed a few ships.

Weber is a master of the space opera. He can juggle many storylines and characters and make the reader think she is there. Any fans of science fiction or just good storytelling should read this series.

Weber, David. (1997). In Enemy Hands. New York: BAEN.