Rift Zone

Rating:
Summary: When 's The Sequel Out?
Review: Being a thriller novel reader, I aways compare books with Clancy's novel; how they pull you in and hold your attention. Well this book did all that and more for me. Not only did it engage me in the story immediately but it held my attention like Clancy. However noted differences dirverge here. Hillhouse provides a genuine suprise chuckle scattered throughout; sometimes at the most inauspicious moment. Whereas most thriller novels, involving obfuscatory Russian names, are difficult to resume and keep everyone straight, given the inevitable family diruptions, Hillhouse has a way of presenting that I found eased me back into the story and characters without having to regroup and glance back to keep eveyone identified. This was a totally unexpected storyline. A female heroine. Just the right amount of everything here, except.......when's the sequel out?

Rating:
Summary: Finally, someone experienced it
Review: Hillhouse is an expert about the dreaded Stasi, how deeply their tendrils were sunk into every family in East Germany, and the usage of people by any intelligence service. Usage, without conscience as long as it bore results.

I am not even dreaming that our CIA is as white as the proverbial driven snow, but only the Bulgarians were more rotten than the Soviets, closely followed by the Prussian ideology of serving The State at any cost. The State, not necessarily the country. A twisted way of thinking that led to families where the husband betrayed his own wife and children to the Stasi out of a need to place The State ahead of all other entities. How sad for the woman who found out that she had been betrayed by her own husband; it actually happened - she is now a member of the German parliament.

There are a few smallish things that slightly grate on the mind of the purist: The German Reichsbahn ceased to exist on 8 May 1945; ever since then it has been the German Bundesbahn. there are a few others, too; but none of these mistakes are material.

Ah, yes! That wonderful tasting Kümmelkäse the Soviet KGB lesbian brings back to Moscow. I can still taste it in my dreams...

As I said, Hillhouse knows what she is writing about. Buy the book, it is worth the price. I just hope she will write more.

Rating:
Summary: Very good but derivative
Review: I had a strange feeling when I started this book that I had read it before--an almost unheard of novel ("Tripping the Ballerina") published a few years ago plumbs roughly the same genre and time period but (in my humble opinion) with a better plot. Hillhouse is good at setting up the sexual attraction between the two women but her story ultimately seems implausible: a westerner would have had to do a lot worse than her heroine, Faith Whitney, does to get the attention of the Stasi. By contrast, Tripping the Ballerina is set in the early eighties in the Soviet Union and the hero is a Russian--much more expendable and likely to be blackmailed by the Secret Police. The dialogue in "Rift Zone" also seems very much twenty-first century instead of in the period. Despite that I enjoyed the book. My advice: buy both and compare.

Rating:
Summary: The World is About to Discover Raelynn Hillhouse
Review: I have never written a review for a book (or anything else for that matter). But, having read Raelynn Hillhouse's "Rift Zone," I feel compelled to do so to let the world know how wonderful it is. It is my understanding that this is Raelynn Hillhouse's first book. So, to the public, she is an undiscovered (but soon-to-be discovered) talent. I could not put this book down. It is as good as, if not better than, anything ever written by Nelson DeMille, Dan Brown, Clive Cussler, Ken Follett, or even J.K. Rowling. If you like these authors, you will love "Rift Zone" and its fast-moving, cold war plot. The only thing wrong with this book is that we have to wait for Raelynn Hillhouse's next one. Personally, I can't wait.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Writing -- Engaging Story!
Review: I'm a big fan of thriller and suspense books. However, quite often I find myself bored by the writing style or standard plotlines found in many. I was surprised and thoroughly enjoyed reading Rift Zone. The author delivered a suspensful and detailed plot with engaging characters and placed them in a believable setting. I especially enjoyed the descriptive feel of the book. As a reader I actually felt like I was in Berlin. It is clear that the author had actually been to Berlin as opposed to many writers who seem to only pull location info from the web.

If you are looking for something more fulfilling than the standard setting of special forces guy taking out terrorist and disarming a WMD then Rift Zone certainly delivers!

Rating:
Summary: Complex, fascinating, first- rate plot
Review: Part of the problem with writing a work of historical fiction is that, in most cases, the reader, before even cracking the binding of the work, is going to have a pretty good idea of how things will turn out. When Frederick Forsyth wrote THE DAY OF THE JACKAL, everyone knew up front that the Jackal wasn't going to succeed with his planned assassination of Charles de Gaulle. Reading historical fiction is a bit like going on a cruise whose ports of call are all backwater Third World countries; it's not the destination but the journey that's important.

The journey to the conclusion of RIFT ZONE, the debut novel of Raelynn Hillhouse, is enthralling and exotic. The premise --- a planned assassination of former General Secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev --- is an interesting one, but everyone knows that it didn't happen. So how does Hillhouse keep one reading? The short answer is by combining a complex plot with intriguing characters and injecting an erstwhile romantic triangle into the mix for good measure.

Hillhouse's biography itself reads like the stuff of fiction, and certainly Faith Whitney, her protagonist, is based on some of Hillhouse's own experiences. Whitney is ostensibly an art professor who uses her access to East Germany to smuggle antique treasures to collectors in the West in exchange for money and goods otherwise unavailable behind the Iron Curtain. Whitney's precarious high wire act comes to an end when the Stasi, the notorious East German intelligence agency, recruits her against her will to smuggle a package into Moscow. The bait for Whitney is the hint that her father --- who she has never known and who she believes to be dead --- is in fact alive.

Whitney soon learns though that the package she is to deliver is an integral part of a plot to assassinate Gorbachev, who has incurred the wrath of the Stasi with his limited reforms and halting steps away from the police state that governs the Soviet Union. Whitney is surrounded by enemies who all want to use her in order to further their own interests; the only people she can trust is her former fiancé and a KGB colonel who has romantic designs of her own upon Whitney.

The plotting here is quite complex, and the proliferation of Eastern European surnames make for occasional rough sledding for readers unfamiliar with the same; having a pen and a sheet of paper to keep an informal scorecard of the players in RIFT ZONE will enhance your enjoyment of the work and will give you an added appreciation for the plot, which is first-rate. One of the more fascinating aspects of a government's intelligence agencies is how they can find themselves internally and externally at loggerheads while ostensibly working toward the same goals. RIFT ZONE illustrates this well, while providing an interesting historical perspective of East Germany in the closing days of the Cold War.

Raelynn Hillhouse appears to have lived quite an interesting life, one that will undoubtedly provide grist for future novels.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Rating:
Summary: Don't miss this one!
Review: Rift Zone is a real treat and should be on your list of "MUST READS". Raelynn Hillhouse not only paints a realistic world of intrigue, but delicately balances a very complex, fast-moving storyline from multiple angles.

Faith is a smuggler who craves the excitement and rush of her chosen profession. Her flirtation with this dangerous life leads to her being forced into a mission. She has to figure out whom to trust, and how to stay a step ahead of everyone else. The story spirals to an exciting conclusion as the mysteries of her life are solved and the enormous scope of what she and her friends are up against is revealed. She must be willing to sacrifice not just herself, but also her loved ones in order to do what must be done.

Hillhouse is a marvelous storyteller. You won't be able to put this book down.

Rating:
Summary: Past as Prologue
Review: This is a fascinating and exciting novel from the first page to the last. The author clearly has great insight into a shadowy world where smugglers, case officers, agents, and military personnel can, and do, overlap. And lest you think that the Cold War thriller is past its prime, I urge you to reconsider and read this book. When the current President of Russia is ex-KGB (and, relevant to this novel, spent some of his career in what was then East Germany) and a murderous conflict consumes the Caucusus, what could have been 15 years ago is worth reading and thinking about today. A wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: Good but not great
Review: This is a lively cold war spy story, well paced, perhaps akin to a Robert Ludlum story though not as carefully crafted. But those who read the jacket reviews and hope for a LeCarre or Alan Furst will be disappointed. Ms. Hillhouse knows her Eastern Europe but the subtlety isn't there; lots of action but not much irony, no real surprises, never the sense that the good guys might lose in the end. If you like spy fiction you should read it; just don't have your expectations set too high.

Rating:
Summary: The Cold War isn't dead yet! Finest kind spy novel.
Review: This is an exciting spy novel set in the Soviet Union whilst Gorbachev is coming to power (with a putsch in store). It grabs the reader on page one and doesn't let go until the end yet most readers won't want the story to end. But it does of course, and, in a way that is most unusual for spy novels.

There is an insouciant voice in this book that is both entertaining and amusingly annoying. Hillhouse has done a good job in crafting her hero and ensuring she's interesting. Probably best is why said hero, Faith, hates her mother who is an evangelical christian who has been smuggling bibles and other christian lit into the Soviet Union for decades. Early on, when faith was only 5, she watched her mother butcher her beloved teddy bear with a long knife to retrived a hidden bible. And ... fron there. Quite delightful.

From the get-go, it's clear this isn't a traditional espionage tome -- it's not Eric Ambler or Jean le Carre or Len Deighton. Our hero is a semi-amateur black-market smuggler who succeeds in defeating the professional yet rigid Soviets (KBP AND GPU) and Stasi (the East German secret intelligence), etc.

Nevertheless, it's a terrific read and there's lots of fascinating detail. Give yourself 30+ pages to settle in, then you'll have a good time, I guarantee.