Fiction - John Grisham - The Testament (1999)

I've never really endeavored to read what I call a "beach book"--that is, a book that comes out usually around summer and is a bestseller because it is a lot of action and little thought, meant to be read on airplanes and on shores by vacationers. I haven't read Dan Brown, and I never read John Grisham until now.

Technically, this book is Bryan's. He bought it for his Modern Literature class. I guess the teacher had him underline a line in the first chapter: "The money is the root of my misery."

This has little to do with the book, but I'm going to dig into this subject anyway. Bryan's ModLit teacher was a dumbass. For one thing, this book came out in '99 and we graduated in '04. There is no fucking way that this book could be called modern literature. At the very best, it would be contemporary literature, and the use of the L word would be shaky at best. Modern is from about 1850ish to about 1950ish. Everything else after is contemporary. My ModLit teacher had a giant girl boner for the Harlem Renaissance, and we never really got much farther than that. For the next thing, Grisham is not literature. It's a beach book. Sold in airports and convenience stores in coastal towns. That sentence is not a theme for the book at all, and not just because this book doesn't have a theme, other than things always work out for everyone. It's fiction, sure. Lawyer fiction, absolutely. Action? Well, there's a plane and boat crash, so I might be able to grant you that. Literature? Fuck no.

So why did I read it? I hate the fact that there is a book in my collection that I won't read, even if I know going into it that it's not going to be the deepest of stories. And it really isn't.

Some old rich guy makes a handwritten will that cuts all of his legitimate children off and hands his billions to an illegitimate daughter in Brazil who is a missionary and couldn't care less. Then he kills himself. Enter the law firm that fixed up all his other wills. They have to uphold it, even though the legitimate children are swooping in to say that the guy was not in his right mind, he didn't know what he was doing, give me some goddamned money motherfucker. They have to find the girl, so they send someone in their firm that's yanked out of rehab for alcoholism and send him to Brazil to find her.

In On Writing by Stephen King, he mentions that many books that people read on planes or whatever are for people who don't read. They have the book because otherwise they would be reading a magazine or sleeping. But when someone makes a mention of them reading a novel, they feel shame and say, "Yeah, but I'm learning so much about Subject X from this book." Because apparently reading is shameful in today's society.

The bulk of The Testament is a foray down the rivers and swamps of southeastern Brazil, and a huge exploration of the culture, climate, and geography there. The chapters are studded with Portuguese words for things we have our own words for, and explorations into how the residents live day to day and feel about Americans and their own Indians. In any other context, I might have been interested by it, but it was clear to me that Grisham was putting it in to teach the reader something, so they could point to the book and say what they learned from it, rather than how it resonated with them. Because it doesn't.

I didn't like this, if you couldn't tell. The whole thing was one predictable development after another, and at no point does it make the reader have to accept anything hard. Nothing particularly difficult happens, and the conflict itself is asinine. Not to mention that a super rich old guy bitching about having too much money sounds like whining on the part of the author.

If you don't like your wads of cash from your mediocre books, hand it over to me. I'm sure I could make a home for it.

3.5/10

Horror - Various Authors - The Living Dead (2008)

The reason it has been over two weeks since the last post has nothing to do with the quality of this book. What it does have to do with is that I had a job interview, a trip to Seattle (for PAX, which was AMAZING), and now I'm sick. Somewhere in there I was reading through this tome, which boasts just under 500 pages of short story zombie goodness.

I've mentioned before how I feel about zombie literature in my review of World War Z, but this book has 34 short stories in it, by both people I know of and love, those I know of and am okay with, and those I didn't know about before. With such a wide selection, there is ample opportunity for slips of "ugh" and "WTF", but overall the experience was positive, and made flying 2.5 hours and fighting a head cold more pleasant than it could have been.

Please note that Blogger won't let me tag every author involved. I'll include the author names and the associated story on each brief rundown.

"This Year's Class Picture" by Dan Simmons is, thankfully, one of the few "zombies are coming OMG" stories in this bad boy, and features a former teacher who wrangles together some of her former students who are now zombies to teach them, as if nothing happened. The automation of the ending is what solidified it for me. Also having a moat around the school made of gasoline was so awesome.

"Some Zombie Contingency Plans" by Kelly Link roots itself deeply into WTF Terrace. Here, the zombies are not walking around and eating human flesh. They are among a myriad of other worries a guy has. I can't even tell you what goes on in this story. Some guy who stole some art went to jail, but then got out, and now is at some party, and he's also talking to himself about stuff, and then he kidnaps the hostess's little brother? What?

"Death and Suffrage" by Dale Bailey started off fucking great, but then kind of devolved into some bullshit having to do with accidental shootings of kids. Why the fuck should I care about that when there are zombies coming up from the dead and all voting for the guy against guns?

"Ghost Dance" by Sherman Alexie is another one in WTF Nation. A detective guy goes into a fugue state and sees all this shit happen, and it has something to do with the Battle of Little Big Horn. Though this story did teach me about Lysol sandwiches.

"Blossom" by David J. Schow was the very first story that I wanted to share. Zombie sex. Naked woman eating flowers. A man's penis bit off by a rigor mortis vagina. What's not to love?

"The Third Dead Body" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman was the first, I think, to reference voodoo curses in the anthology. In this, a woman is killed by a serial killer and buried in his favorite spot. But because her grandmother put a curse on her for snitching on her pedophile grandfather, she wakes up with a raging girl boner for the guy who killed her, and is able to bring him to justice.

"The Dead" by Michael Swansick probably would have worked better if it had been placed in the book before "Blossom". It's just not shocking to see a woman fucking a corpse after a dead vagina has ripped a penis off.

"The Dead Kid" by Darrell Schweitzer is another one of those zombie stories that doesn't paint them to be shambling monsters, which I like. Instead, it's more like a hurt animal some bully kids find and then torture because they are cruel. Also, they piss on him.

"Malthusian's Zombie" by Jeffrey Ford is very Lovecraftian, to me, or maybe even Shelley-like. A family lives next to this weird little man who tells the guy about this experiment he conducted on something he called a zombie. Then the little man dies, and things get weird.

"Beautiful Stuff" by Susan Palwick is amazing. Simply amazing. A perfect show of how we don't appreciate what we have. Buy this fucking book, if only for this one short story.

"Sex, Death and Starshine" by Clive Barker is actually pretty terrible. It's based entirely around a Shakespearean play being put on starring a subpar soap opera actress. And then there are zombie guys and attacks. I've never read Clive Barker before, but this was a terrible introduction. It just took too long to get anywhere where I am supposed to care. Everyone is just a fucknut.

"Stockholm Syndrome" by David Tallerman is another good one. Surprising, since it's the hungry horde flavor of undead. But there is a guy that has shut himself up in a house, and watches a smart zombie break into the house across the street without doing anything, knowing full well a family is holed up there.

"Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead" by Joe Hill has no real zombies. It's a love story that takes place on the set of Dawn of the Dead between a couple of extras dolled up like zombies, and the girl's son with her husband. It's sweet, from someone who doesn't really like romance.

"Those Who Seek Forgiveness" by Laurell K. Hamilton is the Anita Blake story I know you saw in the tags and was wondering about. According to the description, this short story was the first thing Hamilton wrote having to do with Anita Blake at all, and let me tell you, this was the first of her Anita Blake stuff I've read. If the rest of the series is anything like this story, which granted, had a lot of plot holes, but was entertaining, I might consider getting into it.

"In Beauty, Like the Night" by Norman Patridge is one that, I am ashamed to say, I don't quite remember. I know that it's about a guy like Hugh Hefner retreating to his private island with his favorite models, only the models die in an accident and stalk him on his paradise. Don't remember much else.

"Prairie" by Brian Evenson I only remember because it was riddled with words I didn't know. Like fumid. Also, it's super short.

"Everything Is Better With Zombies" by Hannah Wolf Bowen is more of a coming-of-age story than a zombie one. It's a little ambiguous if zombies are even existent in the world of the story, but it mostly surrounds two youths that recently graduated.

"Home Delivery" by Stephen King. I know you saw that name on the cover up there. It reads like traditional King fare, with a large thing happening with many people, and it affecting someone in a more scaled-down way. In this case, a pregnant woman having to give birth during the zombie uprising where all the men are out defending their town from the creatures.

"Less Than Zombie" by Douglas E. Winter is about some crazy kids and their late night antics. These aren't nice antics, though. They are dark, gritty antics. That results in them killing one of their friends for laughs. Don't do drugs, kids.

"Sparks Fly Upward" by Lisa Morton could have been SO much better. Your story is about abortion and it's in a zombie anthology? Sign me the fuck up for aborted fetus zombies. Oh, that's your proof that they aren't really human? Oh. That's, uh... less entertaining. Sigh.

"Meathouse Man" by George R.R. Martin is perfect. Fucking amazing. I know, you may think that I'm just gushing because it's GRRM, but this is so deliciously sci-fi and emotional and YES. So great. Don't buy this book for "Beautiful Stuff". Buy it for "Meathouse Man". Please. PLEASE.

"Deadman's Road" by Joe R. Lansdale is why I didn't finish reading this until today. I had been reading this before to avoid packing for PAX. Upon starting to read this, however, I didn't want to any more. It may be a personal thing, but the dialect in this western zombie story (and now you know why I hate it) was so spot-on (which may be considered a good thing to others) that I started speaking in my southern accent again, against my will. And I worked hard to get rid of that shit. That, and the story isn't very compelling. So poop.

"The Skull-Faced Boy" by David Barr Kirtley I read on the plane. Maybe it was the experience of being on a plane for two and a half hours, but the idea of selling out the girl you like to a zombie general does not seem like a great way to get to see her again.

"The Age of Sorrow" by Nancy Kilpatrick is a much better depiction, I think, of how a middle-aged woman would survive being the "last man" in the zombie apocalypse than that of "This Year's Class Picture". It made me feel good as a woman, even though I know full well I couldn't do the same.

"Bitter Grounds" by Neil Gaiman is the most WTF story in this whole book. A guy abandons his life, tries to be a Good Samaritan, gets lost, and then assumes the other guy's identity. Also Haitian coffee girl zombies. What? Huh? Gaiman, I love you and all, but what the fucking shit?

"She's Taking Her Tits to the Grave" by Catherine Cheek has the best title ever, forever. But if you've seen Death Becomes Her, you know all you need to know about this story.

"Dead Like Me" by Adam-Troy Castro is another good one. Not "Meathouse Man" good, but still good. Remember in World War Z how they talked about people who would act like the undead in order to go undetected by them? This story is about two people who do the same, and don't even know each others' names.

"Zora and the Zombie" by Andy Duncan is a weird one. Not "Bitter Grounds" weird. Not by a long shot. But it's always weird when a real person is a character in a fictional story. In this case, it is Zora Neale Hurston. But there is a voodoo witch doctor or whatever they like to be called. So it harks back to the origin of zombies.

"Calcutta, Lord of Nerves" by Poppy Z. Brite is another odd one, but because it takes so much from Indian culture, which I am less than versed in. Is Poppy Z. Brite heavy on the mythology in her other stuff? This is the first I've ever read.

"Followed" by Will McIntosh is another good one, but this is one that I would love to see expanded into a full novel. There just isn't enough meat here. The idea is that when a zombie is raised, it is drawn to someone who either caused or had a hand in its death, I think. It's not clearly laid out. But this guy is like a nice guy all around. He can't figure out why this Southeast Asian girl zombie is following him, and he can't convince anyone anymore that he doesn't deserve it. It's good, but needs more.

"The Song the Zombie Sang" by Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg is one I tried reading yesterday, while sick, and fell asleep during. I don't know if that really has something to say about the quality. It does seem to sink into Metaphor Marsh without much care for the quality of the story itself. I personally think it was trying too hard.

"Passion Play" by Nancy Holder is interesting, if only for the truth melded into it about the play about Jesus. Also, the aspect of how old religion would be able to stand during the zombie apocalypse is interesting as well.

"Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man" by Scott Edelman is blech. I know that it's meant to sound disjointed because it's about a writer trying to make sense of living through the undead rising, but does it have to be steeped in cliche? I didn't like it at all.

"How the Day Runs Down" by John Langan is unique to this book, and though it is built like a play, it does such a great job of segmenting the zombie apocalypse into slices of life, as well as that story about the mom and her kids... It's great. The twist at the end is interesting, but not unexpected. I still like it, though.

Again, buy this book, if only for "Meathouse Man". You will find several other jewels here.

9.0/10

Urban Fantasy - Cat Adams - Blood Song (2010)

The short version of this review is that I really didn't like this.

You're staying for the long version? That's a lot of mettle.

Let us begin with the author. There is no person named Cat Adams that wrote this book. The name is an amalgamation of the two authors' names, C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp. Now, I understand collaborations. I understand using pen names. I understand simplifying it to one name. What I don't understand is why you would have a pen name when you just use your real names and your separate identities in your acknowledgements and author's note? I'm not talking about the copyright page. That's fine. But making it extremely clear that two of you wrote it without putting it on the cover of your book? Go to jail.

Next up, let's discuss the main character. Her name is Celia Graves. Graves. As in, where your coffin goes. And this is an urban fantasy involving a person being turned into a half-vampire abomination (that's even the technical term they use). Also, and I've only ever seen Charles de Lint avoid this trap, why are all urban fantasy heroines gun-toting, sarcastic, and slutty? It's like if the girl isn't feisty and has an arsenal under her coat, she's not interesting. In this case, the main character is a bodyguard against paranormal beings like vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and demons. Big fucking surprise. And she's haunted, a fact she doesn't mention until between a third and a half way in. I'll get back to this bitch.

The reason I didn't like it had nothing to do with vampires, okay? It's no secret that I loathe Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight series. But that doesn't mean that all vampires suck (see what I did there?). Fat White Vampire Blues was great. But far too often does it fall into this trap of vampires are evil, vampires are sexy, vampires are awesome. And this book is no exception.

My main problem with the book is that it felt like it was written by two people, and that new ideas were added in haphazardly without a thought to changing the prior writing. This process is otherwise known as rewriting. The whole thing read like a first draft. Every time a new character or setting was introduced, the story would come to a full stop so that the main character could describe it in excruciating detail. I don't have a problem with description. This was badly handled. Intersperse your details in the action, and broad brush your initial description sections. Don't say a character has blue eyes. Say that they narrowed their blue eyes.

During the first half of the book, Celia is supposed to be chasing down her vampire "sire", and destroy him before he comes back to finish the job with her. At halfway through, the problem just goes away deus ex machina style, when a background character produces the guy's head in a bag. Then, it became this thing with another vampire completely, and it's still not mentioned why anyone should care.

After the climax of the book, Celia's grandmother pulls her aside and tell her that she is one-fourth siren, a creature that, up until now, we had no idea existed in this world. During the resolution, they are having a funeral for Celia's best friend. Some bitch comes in during eulogies and interrupts the whole thing by singing. When Celia calls her on it, she proclaims that she's some kind of siren princess, and that Celia was the one being rude.

So much effort is put into making Celia some kind of victim too. Sure, she's a bodyguard and all, but her sister is dead! She was kidnapped when she was little! She was half-turned into a vampire! She can't eat solid food! She upset some supernatural royalty and now has to have a fight to the death with her! It sounds more like these two authors were trying to shoehorn every idea they ever had into one book, and it just looks schizophrenic.

This would have all been solved if they had just done a little world-building. Holy symbols, water, and ground are harmful to most of these predatory creatures, but somehow not a lot of people go to church? Why not? And if the existence of these creatures is well known, why aren't more precautions beyond "hire a guy" taken?

All in all, it was terrible. Would not suggest you buy it, let alone read it.

2.0/10

Franchise Fiction - James Wyatt - Dragon Forge (2009)

I did say that I had started reading the next book in this series already. I finished it yesterday, but since I've recently posted here about the book before this one, there isn't too much to be said. Much of what I said before is still true.

That being said, there was a few more parts I didn't like and a few more parts that I did. For one thing, it turns out that the changeling is a member of the Royal Eyes. That makes him a lot less interesting now, because the Royal Eyes commonly use changelings as spies. But the fact that he didn't spend as much time doing spy work made up for it. Instead, he befriended a bunch of misfit warriors and traveled into the Demon Wastes, which I though was cool. The Labyrinth stuff was awesome, and Vor was the greatest character they had in the stable. An orc paladin that used to guard the Wastes and who let a pregnant human go because she was carrying his child? More of that, please! And of course he had to kill him off. Because nobody can really be interesting.

Something I didn't like was the whole marital issues between Gaven and Rienne. I am not reading your parts about going to Argonnessen because I want to hear about how Rienne thinks Gaven is self-absorbed. I don't give two fucks. Get to the being slaughtered by dragons, please. And this book in particular tries to hard to make Gaven special. Sure, he's the Storm Dragon, but I don't see what that had to do with their abomination machine.

Though, to be fair, I didn't understand how their abomination machine was supposed to work. In attempts to keep the whole thing cloaked in mysticism, Wyatt leaves the reader in the dark about the thing the damn book was named after. I still couldn't tell you what it was supposed to do.

I do appreciate, for reals though, the budding romance between Cart and Ashara. A warforged and a member of the house that built the warforged? That's the kind of shit that I crave. But watch, the next book will start with Ashara contracting a fast-acting disease called spear-to-the-face, just like everyone else with any interesting qualities.

Finally, these people don't know what dragonborn and eladrin are? What? Have they never been to Q'barra? What about hearing about the feyspires? These are kind of a big deal. If you know what a tiefling is, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't recognize a dragonborn or eladrin when you see them, you guys. I thought you were all well-traveled and shit. :P

4.5/10

Franchise Fiction - James Wyatt - Storm Dragon (2007)

I mentioned in the last post that I was ass-deep in D&D stuff. While I did not purchase this book then, I did start reading it in that time period. We've just started playing last night, and I actually finished reading this a couple days ago. I started it a while ago. I wasn't keeping super on top of anything, let alone my reading regimen, so again, I apologize.

I honestly don't read a lot of franchise fiction. We do have a few though; that teen novel from the last post, the City of Heroes novels, and the first two books of this series. I don't usually read franchise fiction because I don't believe that a story should depend on an existing IP to sell. I bought this and the second book because of that little word in the top right corner of the cover: Eberron.

When I bought this book, I was still working on my first adventure and devouring lore for Eberron, our campaign setting of choice. I liked that it wasn't high fantasy, good-versus-evil gameplay, so I wanted to dig in. In particular, I wanted to figure out the feel of the world beyond steampunk, technology-runs-on-magic fantasy. And in the end, I'm still more inclined to point my own campaign towards my preconceptions than that of the story provided.

If it was standing alone as a story, I probably would be giving it a lower score than I am. The story itself is fairly basic: there is a prophecy detailing the events leading to the rise of the Storm Dragon, and there are a group of fugitives orchestrating these events. The main character is a member of the dragonmarked House of Storm, and knows all of the prophecy regarding the Storm Dragon. Is it any surprise, then, when (Spoiler!) he becomes the Storm Dragon in question?

The story itself is rather high fantasy. However, the only thing I can compare it to is the story of Final Fantasy 12. They go and collect people and artifacts to make certain things happen, even if the characters themselves are at odds with each other. In this book, those items are information and artifacts from various places in the world, and collecting them all to one spot to force an event to take place, one that was supposed to send one of the more unsavory characters to godhood.

Again, as a story, it was subpar. The main character quickly and easily forgives and changes his mind about people and events. He feels little to no remorse, taking an "ends justify the means" attitude. And since he does end up being the legendary Storm Dragon, he becoming even more of an unbelievable character. If he was too naive or kind to appreciate the destructive power he has been gifted with, or even if he descended even more into the delicious madness the beginning of the book hinted at, then I would have been enthralled. Instead, he just comes off as a douchebag.

The fact that his biggest conflict is that he wants to choose his own destiny also just makes me want to gag.

However, the fact of the matter is, for all of this book's flaws, it actually gave me ideas and techniques to use in my future adventures. I know now how I'm going to end the campaign. I know how to work with some of the more contradictory dragonmarked houses now. And I know how to use the Draconic Prophecy in my campaign, which was the primary reason I wanted to read these books in the first place. It had been so confusing to me before. Now I get it, and I may even employ some of it.

The best thing I got out of it though is the use of changelings. One of the side characters that grows into a main character is a changeling. At first I just though it was cool that Wyatt was including that side of Eberron in his story. But the use of the changeling was so polished. That character felt like a real guy with a stable of faces and personalities in his head. And the way he molded himself based on personality and name was just awesome. If I got nothing else out of this, I got that, and that was good enough for me to start reading the second book already.

4.0/10

Franchise Fiction - Laura O'Neill - No More "Little Miss Perfect" (1992)

I'm sorry I haven't posted much. I also haven't been reading much, so there you go. Honestly, I was really getting deeply into D&D stuff: I wrote my adventure, I recruited players, I helped them make characters, I was researching tips and tricks and lore... I was really into D&D for like, a month.

I even read this book the same day the last post was new, and didn't have the desire to write a post for it until I was able to surface from the D&D water I was submerged in. In other words, today. So I apologize again, this time for the fact that this may not be the most comprehensive review ever. I mean, I did read it a month ago.

An aside: I never watched this show. Ever. I barely remember it being on. But it ran from 1991 to 1993, according to Wikipedia. I was five to seven then. Why should I care about a teen drama, even if it was on the channel I watched the most? So I don't know anything about the characters and their relations to each other. I don't even really know what they look like.

The premise of this book is that Courtney has a diary that she hides in her school locker to keep it safe. What an idiot. And then, a bitch named Brooke finds it and discovers all these parts about Courtney's best friend Ashley being too nice and too studious. She then shows these parts to Ashley, who gets mad at Courtney, doesn't tell her why, and briefly becomes a biker chick.

Why should I care? I don't see the draw.

The whole thing reads like it should just be an episode of a teen drama, which may have been the goal, but it left zero room for any human reactions. Why didn't Ashley say something to Courtney about what she wrote, or about Brooke violating her privacy? The whole thing is just one misunderstanding after another, and then at the end, everything is status quo. Yuck.

2.0/10

Mystery - Hakan Nesser - Mind's Eye (1993)

Ah, Sweden. So many great things come out of you. Minecraft, Swedish Chef, Stieg Larsson (full disclosure: I've never read one of his books, but I hear they're popular?), Pirate Bay... uh, Minecraft... Listen, there's a lot about Sweden I don't know. But does that mean I can't read a mystery translated from Swedish?

Apparently.

Don't get me wrong. I get that this is supposed to be really good. But because my formative reading years were spent steeped in the lore of R.L. Stine, I can't help but prefer mysteries that I can try to figure out on my own, not waiting for the author to reveal it all with some information he withheld.

And listen, I know that maybe they do mysteries differently abroad. But for about seven-eighths of the book, I had no goddamn idea who the bad guy was supposed to be, and the last eighth was spent explaining how this guy was the bad guy.

Let me paint the picture for you: A guy wakes up super hungover and having blacked out a lot of what happened the night before. He discovers his wife dead in the bathtub. The trial follows and he is convicted of having killed her, primarily because it doesn't seem like anyone else could have. Then he winds up dead in his room at the mental institution, where he had been sent because he couldn't remember whether he had killed her or not.

There were a few things that could have made this better, and I'm taking it on faith that it wasn't just lost in translation. (For the record, this isn't the first translated novel I've ever read. That would be Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. So I do have an idea of what a good translation can do.)

The first thing that would have been nice is if the main character, Inspector Van Veeteren, had been sure all throughout the trial that Janek Mitter had killed his wife. Then, when he turns up dead later, we could have had some development in the form of questioning his resolution and being unsure of his ability to do his job. It would have been nice, at least.

The second thing? Some goddamn proper nouns. For fuck's sake. A lot of chapters, a lot of chapters, begin by talking about "he". Who the fuck is he? You have an almost exclusively male cast. Who the fuck is he?! I had to frequently skim ahead a couple paragraphs and even pages in order to get a single idea of who was being talked about here and there. If Nesser didn't specify in the original text, I would not have been grumpy if the translator had slipped a couple proper nouns at the beginning of those chapters so we as readers wouldn't be sitting there shouting "Huh?".

The third thing I mentioned already. I prefer mysteries that, if I really sat and thought about, I could maybe figure it out. And if I couldn't, it being clear enough that I can go "Ohhh" and complete understand where the author was going. In this case, the author divulges a bunch of unknown information at the end that made no sense in relation to the rest of the book. Incestual affairs? Since when? And it's some character we haven't even had mentioned yet in the story? Go to jail.

It's obviously not the worst book in the world, but I didn't find it super great. I was also irritated with how preoccupied with badminton Inspector Van Veeteren was while trying to do his job. Listen. I don't give a shit. Solve the mystery, dammit.

3.0/10

Fantasy - A. Lee Martinez - Divine Misfortune (2010)

I have a confession. You know that saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover"? I totally do. What do you expect from me? The cover is on the outside. Sure, I judge a book after it's in my hands on the synopsis on the back, or maybe even the first page, but it's the cover that gets it into my hand. I'm not proud of this. But it's worked well for me over the years. And with this one, a giant fist descending from heaven to crush a tiny man, I had to pick it up.

In case you can't tell from the title and cover, this book is not for the religious types. Not ones who can't laugh at the whole establishment, anyway. And certainly not ones who can't read science texts if they don't preach your church's version of the creation of everything, or consume any media if it doesn't reaffirm your particular sect of religion to be the right one.

However, this book is just right for me, an atheist. Hearts!

The premise of this tale is that society is driven by a partnership between humans and the immortal gods they worship. People pay tribute in various forms to their god: blood, sacrifice, money, services, lodgings, food; and then the gods work within their own realm to favor their follower. The main characters, Phil and Teri, are in the market for a god, so of course they turn to a god-follower matchmaking website on the internet. They sign up for the services of Luka, a raccoon luck god, who shows up on their doorstep with a suitcase. Hilarity ensues. Also, there is a primordial god of oblivion and chaos who hates him and a goddess of heartbreak torturing some hapless girl.

Did I mention that this book is fucking hilarious?

During the course of the book, there were several genuine LOL moments for me. In no particular order:

• Hades losing at a ninja video game to Phil
• Horrors of hell resigning themselves to watching a baseball game
• Chaos god referring to his followers as douchebags
• Zeus in a tracksuit

Did you catch that last one? Zeus. White flowing beard, big guy, lightning bolts, wearing a yellow tracksuit. Fucking awesome.

There were two books in particular that my mind kept calling back to: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. Good Omens was more set in modern times, like this book, so it matched up more for me. But it was Small Gods that gave me pause.

I've mentioned before the Black Jewels trilogy is my favorite series of books. What I didn't mention was that Small Gods, even being part of the Discworld series, is my favorite book. I won't get into it now, just in case there is a book drought for me and I have to go through and just reread the books I've already read, but it brought up questions of where the gods' powers come from, a question that is resolved in that book, and similarly answered in this book. It's a mechanic I love, and for that reason alone, you should get both of these books.

Divine Misfortune raises its own questions, which go mostly unsolved, but let for the reader to decide for themselves: in a world populated by humans and gods, who is responsible for what events? Oh man, it's just so delicious!

There is one, and exactly one, thing keeping this book from being a ten out of ten. The ending. Pfft. What utter bullshit. Have you ever heard the song by Lemon Demon, "Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny"? Here's a link to a video if you need a reminder. The part right before Chuck Norris gets defeated by fucking everybody on the planet? That was essentially the ending. What a crap, cheap climax. It was shit.

Still, you should get it and read it. I mean, it's still getting a good score.

9.5/10

Fantasy - Gail Z. Martin - The Summoner (2007)

I got this book a while ago. I don't remember when. Within the past year, for certain. I know that I bought it primarily because my little brother Steve suggested I read it. That should have been my first hint as to how my experience with it would be. Guy loves high fantasy.

For the sake of full disclosure, I will tell you that I occasionally stopped reading this book in order to play The Witcher. Not the new one, the old, buggy-as-fuck one. And this book inspired me to buy it. Why?

Because this book is a video game. Sure, it has pages and words and goes on a bookshelf with other books and was purchased from a bookstore, but it's a video game. A role-playing game, to be exact. There are monsters traveling the wilds, several groups of human baddies to justify being in the wilderness in the first place, and scenes of such high magic followed by a blackout that it may as well have been a cutscene.

"But Tabetha," I can hear you say, "a lot of high fantasy follows that formula. Isn't that why you don't like it?" That's true, faceless and nonexistent blog reader. I do tend to dislike high fantasy on the fact that it is formulaic. But the more I think about D&D and the campaign I'm building, the less I'm beginning to mind high fantasy. It has its place. Unfortunately, that place is more often in games. And this book doesn't even get to be a book. It's a game.

The gang's all here: the exiled prince-turned-mage, a roster of interchangeable fighters, a flamboyant bard, the grumpy female healer, the chosen-one princess-paladin, even a trickster thief in the form of Berry. And their travels and adventures are straight out of any game. If this had been written as a script instead, it would have been out on Steam for everyone's enjoyment with little changes.

But you people aren't here for video games. You're here for book reviews. And honestly, with that wall of text up there about how this book is high fantasy, you shouldn't be surprised when I say that I didn't really enjoy it. The cast was too big for this author, who often had characters fade into the background so much that, when three characters left the main cast to go do something else, I didn't even notice. I thought they were just being quiet.

Two couples are made in the course of the book, and they are so predictable I wanted to choke and die. Of course the two people who fight a lot will bone. Of course the female chosen-one and male chosen-one are going to do it. Also, how many Chosen Ones are you going to have in one book? It's ridiculous.

The thing I hated the most about this book is the fact that this lady doesn't seem to know how to end chapters properly. Surely you've read a book or two in your lifetime? You know that a chapter is a length of book to mark at least one change to the story, at whatever length the author wishes. You also know that they usually end on a cliffhanger, in attempts to tempt the reader into moving on to the next chapter without stopping. That is, of course, the gold standard for writers: a reader who would rather read the whole thing in one sitting then do something else.

This lady doesn't understand that.

Many of the chapters, especially the early ones, have the climax happen in the middle of the chapter, and the resolution finding its own conclusion before the end of the chapter. Then the chapters usually end when a person goes to sleep. As a result, the reader has no stake in what happens next. Nothing is driving them to the next page. That was another reason I kept putting this down. Because, why shouldn't I? Why should I care about these cardboard cutouts?

1.5/10

Writing - Heather Sellers - Chapter after Chapter (2007)

I told you I have a lot of these. I even have a lot I haven't read. I will admit that I read about half of this one back when I bought it, but then it lost me. I read it all the way through this time.

Maybe the fact that this book is not for my situation has colored the way I feel about it. I don't really like it though. I'll get into why in a minute.

This book is the spiritual sequel to Sellers's first writing book, Page After Page, which is mostly about getting started writing as a practice and a habit. This book, however, is about writing your book. Sellers's way.

It may stem from my relationship with my parents (better, now, that I don't live with them), but I hate it when people tell me what to do and imply that it is their way or the highway. Sellers spends the last half of the book talking about how to keep on your book and how to then get it published. This includes not reading anything while actually writing the book (which can obviously take a year or more!), how to travel while in the midst of your book (make assignments for yourself every day and don't you dare enjoy your vacation), and how to not even think about any of the new ideas your musing brain may come up with while in a creative stance to write your story.

Normally, I would just remember that it's advice. This lady is not going to fly to Vegas from Michigan, beat down my door, and strangle me for not doing things her way. But she often bookends her advice about not doing things you like while writing with "if you want to be a real writer" or "if you ever want to finish" or even "if you ever want to publish".

If you're writing, you're a real writer. You can finish in your own way, at your own pace. Thousands of books get published every year. You're not going to miss out somehow just because you decide to spend your Florida vacation on the beach rather than in a darkened hotel room.

The first half of the book actually does address some of the anxieties writers have about their stories. Like how they might mess them up if they actually write them. Like wanting to write, but having to go to a child's birthday party, or celebratory dinner, or help your friends move, or whatever other obligations you may have. Like feeling like you should be writing, or doing something else, or working on one project or the other. But again, these are steeped in "this is what I do, so you should do it too, especially if you want to be a real writer". Like, do you volunteer and visit with your friends over lunch? Say goodbye to it. It's taking up too much of your time.

The part I think that I dislike the most is the part about the "Book 100". Sellers says that you should, before even starting on writing your story, read 100 books like it. List them all out, and read them all over the course of a year, taking copious notes on each one. And, if you can't easily list 100 books similar to yours, (by the way, you probably had to read them in the first place before to know this) then it's probably not a good idea.

Read that part again. If you cannot list a hundred books like yours, it's not a good idea. This is book writing on Sellers's terms.

I say, if you have a story in you right now, start it right now. Give it a shot. Don't wait until you've found and read a hundred books like it. And if you want to read while you write, have at. You may find new themes and concepts from the book you're reading that you want to incorporate into a book you're writing. Go to lunch with your friends. Have a life outside the writing room.

The reason I think that it may have gone over better with me is the fact that it is for a person in the middle of their story and floundering. I have a few started stories, but like I said in the last post, I haven't actually written in a long time. So the exercises in this quickly became irrelevant to me. I don't need something to help me finish something. I need something to get me back on the horse.

If that has colored my review somewhat, then so be it. All I know is that the last book had me excited about writing. This one made me feel cynical and like I shouldn't bother.

4.0/10

Writing - Jamie Cat Callan - The Writer's Toolbox (2007)

I think this is the first writing book I'm reviewing. You may not know this, but I have a ton of these things. Not boxes full of stuff. I only have two of those.

Except for this blog, regrettably I haven't written for a while. It was my job, and also the wedding, and also my depression and anxiety. But now I'm unemployed, married, and on Celexa, so I figured it was time to stop with the excuses.

And if you have writer's block, this is fucking amazing.

The book inside is a scant 60 pages long, but it's mostly an instruction manual for the goodies inside the box, which include Popsicle sticks, a deck of cards, a three-minute hourglass, and spinning palettes you would otherwise think are more suited to kids learning their addition or times tables.

But they aren't normal items. The Popsicle sticks have first lines on them, lines to start new scenes, and even something to spark the conflict in a story. The cards have ideas and senses on them, so you can dive into description or use one as a starting off point. The palettes have protagonists, their goals, what's standing in their way, and how they try to get around that. All in all, it's a pretty robust set of inspiration tools for any stuck writer hoping to fill a notebook with some ideas to mine through later.

I used some of the tools as I read through the manual. I ended up with a guy setting his family's home on fire while hallucinating that they are actually all going on a vacation together, three female roommates that secretly and not-so-secretly hate each other, and an older guy trying to reclaim his youth through sex with younger women. This, after not really writing for months.

The great thing about book itself is that it doesn't just explain the tools in the box and give crappy examples of how to use them. It describes how to use each tool to start a new story, start back into a half-finished one, and even how to combine them more than just "sticks go together, cards go together".

I mentioned earlier that I have a lot of these kinds of books. One thing that this one does, and I love, that none of the others do, is show some examples of using the tools by other authors. Short little vignettes followed by commentary by the author describing their thought process while writing. That was super cool. And the vignettes are enough to inspire you to pick up your pen and start on using the tools yourself.

Not bad for a box I picked up on a whim to use a coupon.

9.5/10

Children's Literature - Dorothy Haas - Trouble At Alcott School (1989)

Is there a reason they made these kids' books readable in twenty minutes? Did they think kids didn't have the stamina to read very much at a time? I can't believe how I took kids' books out of the library and justified it. I could have just sat there and read it!

This was another one of those books I got from some box of kids' books at a garage sale. I actually have three of this short-lived series, this, number four, being the first of those that I own.

The premise of this series is that there are two friends, Polly Butterman, called Peanut for some reason that I don't understand, and Jillian Matthews, called Jilly because it's actually a logical diminutive of her name. Apparently they weren't friends right away? This book seems to imply as such and, as I said, this is the earliest book I have of the series, so I have no way of knowing. Their personalities in this book don't have many differences, which is to say any differences at all. The only difference I can tell is that Peanut is more cynical and downtrodden then Jilly is.

There are several plots in this book, which seems to be a showcase of things that happen at their school, hence the title. The main plot is that their friend, Erin, wore her great aunt's locket to school and then lost it, and they have to find it, especially when notes start showing up implying someone stole it. There is also a scientist biography project subplot which culminates in the students fighting about whether or not inventors count as scientists, as well as a subplot involving a kid named Elvis and his homeless pet mice.

The only thing I have to say about a book that I finished in less time than a sitcom episode is that the least they could have done is made the culprit be someone less obvious. There is a character, Jennifer, who is established several times as a huge cunt. It was obvious from the second the first note showed up that it was her. It would have been so much more interesting if it was Erin's friend Emmy, who went with Erin to go look for it and was participating in trying to find out who stole it. That would have been amazing.

Not bad for what I assume is a very young reader's book.

6.5/10

Steampunk - Various Authors - Extraordinary Engines (2008)

This isn't like the last anthology I read for several reasons. One, this one features short stories only, not novellas. Two, it's steampunk, not retarded. Three, it's actually good.

You may or may not know me in real life, but know this: we had a steampunk wedding. If that doesn't tell you how much love I have for this genre, you can go get a lobotomy, because it's not going to change much. The time period of the industrial revolution encapsulating the Victorian era and the Civil War, plus the sci-fi elements of high technology based on basic invention, and especially the embrace of Tesla-style advancements over our more traditional Edison dependence is just delicious. Like decadent cake covered in addictive frosting. There is very little to go wrong.

This being an anthology of short stories, rather than an actual novel, I'm going to have to go through each story to talk about how well the book is pulled off, but remember, I actually like and wanted to like the whole thing.

"Steampunch" by James Lovegrove is the story that starts off the book, and quite easily the best one in here. Not to say that there aren't other stories I like also, but this one is great. It is my favorite and starts the anthology off very strongly. Come on. Boxing, steam-powered automatons, told in a storyteller's first-second POV? And that ending was super unexpected.

The next story dropped my enthusiasm for the book like a rock. "Static" by Marly Youmans tries to do way too much in a small space and ends up doing it all badly. It introduces an idea of a world irradiated by electricity. Okay. And how that effects daily life. Gotcha. But the police are bad, the main character is a prisoner of her great aunt, there is this guy called a Static investigating a death the main character has no sympathy for, and a climax that just takes maybe a single step down from the nonescalating buildup. Terrible. My least favorite in the whole thing.

"Speed, Speed the Cable" by Kage Baker is apparently a short story based in a universe he has already printed books for, but one that I haven't read. I don't think I have to say anything about it other than to quote the description before the tale.

Resident in California, Kage Baker is the author of the very popular Company series of time-travel novels, in which the twenty-third century Zeus Corporation quickly ransacks the pasts of its treasures using an army of immortal once-human cyborgs.

"Elementals" by Ian R. MacLeod is the first one to introduce thematic ideas, but only seemed to make me think of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I felt that it was meh.

If "Steampunch" hadn't been so great, "Machine Maid" by Margo Lanagan would be a solid contender for my favorite. A newly married couple go to their gold-mining ranch, and the wife utterly hates all sexual contact with her husband. I wasn't sure right away that a passage was referring to forced blowjobs right away, but later content confirmed it. And she has a robotic maid that happens to have more than functions relating to housecleaning. The only thing I don't like about this story was the ambiguous ending.

"Lady Witherspoon's Solution" by James Morrow is awesome. Not because of male genital mutilation, but because it uses the journal form extremely well, and introduces an idea of devolution to the Women's Suffrage battle of the time.

"Hannah" by Keith Brooke is another great one. The only problem is that it could have easily been set in more modern times without much change. Though it does raise ethical questions to the medical procedures of yesteryear.

"Petrolpunk" by Adam Roberts is similar to "Static" in that it tries to do too much. Also, I just realized with derision, it's a self-insert story. Blech. Second least favorite for sure. It started strong, but then devolves into people explaining the story in dialogue sloppily.

"American Cheetah" by Robert Reed is not that awesome either. It tastes too much of a western for my tastes. Robot Abraham Lincoln is a Minnesotan sheriff against robot bank robbers. It was at this point that I decided that if there was anything wrong with the anthology, it was the dependence of automatons to drive the story.

"Fixing Hanover" by Jeff VanderMeer is another one about a robot, this time a robot that washes ashore of a castaway settlement. The main character is interesting, but his girlfriend and the other castaways are not. Nice touch, trying to make the girl seem interesting by giving her two different colored eyes. That kind of Mary Sue move only worked for Yuna.

"The Lollygang Save the World on Accident" by Jay Lake is very strange. I'm still not a hundred percent sure what kind of world it was. It seemed like people who lived on a ship for so long that they don't remember the outside, but then again, I might be off. Certainly a weird one that doesn't explain much of what's going on.

"The Dream of Reason" by Jeffrey Ford is the bookending great story. In another world, which is clearly different, but doesn't hesitate to steal from Earth's Victorian society, particularly in the use of Debtor's Prison, there is a scientist that is convinced that stars are diamonds and matter is just slow-moving light. In order to acquire diamond dust, he decides to slow starlight down completely, using the eternal pathways of a human's mind to exhaust its speed. This is a great one because of the psychological element.

So, there are a lot of good ones, a few meh ones, and a couple terrible ones. Not bad for a short story collection. You could probably do worse, and if you're unfamiliar with steampunk, it wouldn't hurt to give it a look-see.

8.5/10

Fiction - Eric Garcia - The Repossession Mambo (2009)

I told you the next review wouldn't be fantasy. But of course that meant I had to read it, and let me tell you up front, it wasn't fun. I actually read most of it yesterday, in one sitting. Not because it was really good, but because I didn't want to be sitting on it for a long time because I didn't like it.

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

I bought the book in my last shopping trip too; I don't know why I keep reading these books that haven't been in my house for very long, but there you go. If the title sounds familiar, it might be because the movie Repo Men was based on this book (which is a lie, but I'll get to that later). I never watched Repo Men, primarily because I didn't give a shit, and also because, after Sherlock Holmes, how can Jude Law be anything but an awesome Watson?

I mentioned that it was a lie to say that that movie was based on this book. The Wikipedia page can tell you some, but the author's note at the end describes the process in more detail: he wrote a short story, then a manuscript of a novel on the idea, and then the script and movie was started before it was published. Then, once the movie was pretty far into production, he decided to publish the book with very few of the edits made to the plot for the movie.

And dear God, it reads like it.

In the author's note, one of the things that Garcia mentions he kept was "the unruly structure". His words, not mine. But they are apt; it was a pain in the ass to keep track of which section was referring to which time in his life. He flips frequently between the past and the present, focusing a lot on his military experience, the parade of wives he traipsed through, and his being on the run. It doesn't even get to the parts we care about, why he got an artificial organ and why he didn't pay for it, until the second half of the book. And it flips randomly around between these subjects. It's not like he goes into the military stuff, then the wife stuff, then the present, or anything like that. Fuck, he doesn't even talk about these things chronologically! The whole thing reads more like a stream of consciousness diary than a novel.

And that's not even going into the fact that the premise is suspect as well. People get artificial organs with usurious loans, and when the default, they die. Seems simple enough, I guess, until you start to think about the changes this would make to the world, and how unbelievable it gets the more you think of it.

For instance, the economic destruction that comes afterwards. These aren't just people getting artificial organs to replace the ones that fail. They are getting them with tons of unnecessary features, features that serve no real purpose other than convince people with healthy organs to get artificial ones as well. And then, when they can't pay the loan on them (and most of them go for as much as a house), repo men are sent out to reclaim the organ so that they can sell it again. They don't mention whether or not the organs cost that much to make, or if they are just overpriced. If they are overpriced, do you happen to remember the housing crisis of the past few years? The only thing saving this Credit Union from going belly-up is the fact that people are lined up around the block to try to get a loan to buy an organ.

On the same note, they mention that sometimes people just can't afford it, and fall delinquent on their loan in order to pay for food and rent. If the price of not paying is death (which it always is), why wouldn't you pay that first? The book tries to explain it away by saying that the bills run up to several thousand a month, and you pay mostly interest anyway. So the whole system is set up to fail. Awesome. How is that legal?

And why wouldn't the government get involved? It has things that each side of the aisle hates: death panels and preying on the poor. It sounds to me like there would be a lot of congressional hearings with whoever is in charge of the Credit Union, possibly every day based on what the book describes as gross negligence on the part of their repo department. Allow me to explain.

There is a described incident in which a repo man repossesses an organ from a guy while his wife is trying to convince him that they are all paid up. The repo man goes back to the office to find that oh, she was right. He just killed a guy for no reason. Where are the legal repercussions? The murder charges, the wrongful death lawsuit, the arguments on pundits' shows that these men have too much power? Nothing. Nada. They pay her some cash and that's it. Yeah, I don't think so.

There are also multiple incidents that someone's nonessential organ is repossessed, but because they do not receive any medical care whatsoever afterwards, they die, usually of blood loss. There is a character with a gall bladder. He could have lived! They even mention that there are some other organs that are repossessed with the same deadly results, such as eyes and tongues. You can live without both. Why do they die? Because nothing is done. This is why they should be paying through the nose in settlements and lawsuits.

For a book that I didn't like, it certainly gave me a lot to talk about. Mostly because the premise is okay, but horridly handled. There was a lot of opportunity for great world-building and even philosophical questions, such as if a person is mostly artificial parts, are they still human? But the author didn't even try.

There were two, and exactly two, saving graces to this novel, and that is why this book gets such a low score:

1. The opening sentence.

The first time I ever held a pancreas in my hands, I got an erection.

2.   The reason he quit his lucrative job as a repo man, even with an artificial heart.

1.5/10

Fantasy - C.S. Friedman - Feast of Souls (2007)

I wasn't lying when I said that I read a lot of fantasy. It is my preferred genre, after all, despite how much I hate high fantasy. I promise that the next review will not be another fantasy novel.

I got this book and The Adamantine Palace during my last book shopping trip. It isn't super often that I get around to reading the books I buy so soon after purchasing them, but what're you going to do? With my job being gone now, I won't be going out to buy books as often as I used to.

Man, I am getting off track easily this morning.

I went into this book expecting to like it. Not love it; if you go into a book expecting to love it, you may only be disappointed. And for the vast majority of the book, I did like it a lot. I've read C.S. Friedman before, in the form of  This Alien Shore, which still stands as one of my favorite science fiction novels. This one had an author I liked and a premise I adore: the cost of power in a land with magic. That's one of the themes I seriously love in fiction in general, the cost of power.

The cost of power here is that magic feeds off life energy, and where that energy comes from depends on what kind of magic user you are. For witches, who can be male or female, that life energy is your own. For Magisters, who can only be male, that life energy is that of another person, usually one you don't even know. The story opens up to present this idea in the form of a dying witch, but also quickly introduces the main character, Kamala, a girl who is determined to become a Magister, despite her uterus. I don't think it would be spoilery to tell you that she succeeds: if she didn't, she'd be dead before the first hundred pages are up, and that makes a shitty main character.

The writing and premise got me reading for a while without pause, even though Kamala reads like a Mary Sue, with her hair and eye coloring reiterated often, along with her tomboyishness and desire to dress like a boy. All that plus the fact that she is the first female Magister makes one groan whenever the points in her favor are pointed out again and again. But I guess it's a good price to pay for some of the other characters, who are richly developed peoples. Colivar, Gwynofar, and Siderea stand out in particular. Especially the last: her set up where she has sex with Magisters so they will do her magical dirty work is an interesting concept that I wish could be explored longer.

About a third of the way into the book, the plot turns sharply away from Kamala trying to find her way as a Magister and her consort trying to find her to what is essentially a manhunt, because she accidentally kills a Magister, which is like the only rule Magisters have. I actually stopped reading for a few days because of this. It was not what I wanted to read.

But it just as quickly swung away from that plot line to that which included monstrous Souleaters, which look like dragons with dragonfly wings. They do exactly what they say, feed off life energy, but in hoards, like locusts. They quickly become the major concern for the rest of the book and probably the rest of the series. I don't know exactly how I feel about it. I didn't really like how the plot took on an inconsistent color that maybe a little more lingering on the transitions would have helped.

It also required a more careful editor. There were some obvious typos and formatting issues that the editor could have caught. It all kind of smelt like there was a looming deadline and it was published at the wire.

That isn't to say that the book isn't worth a look. For the magic system alone, I would recommend it. And I certainly will be getting the next book in the series.

8.0/10

Fantasy - Stephen Deas - The Adamantine Palace (2009)

Did anybody else catch Game of Thrones on HBO last night? I had been looking forward to that for like a year, and it totally did not disappoint. Mostly for hardcore Song of Ice and Fire fans, though. Not a lot of names for characters for the uninitiated. But Bryan liked it, primarily because of the sheer quantity of breasts. Whatever floats his boat.

Is that even here or there? Probably not. Anyway, The Adamantine Palace.

It took me a while to get into this. Which sucked because it was the kind of fantasy that I normally prefer: society and politics, plus how the fantastic changes the world. In this case, the fantastic takes the form of dragons, but if you can't figure that out from the cover, you must be reading the Braille version.

With as many ravings all over the covers about how awesome the dragons are, I was very disappointed at the outset because they were essentially fancy horses. There are hunting types and warring types, and they get stabled and traded and have zero personality. At first I thought it would just be like in Dragonriders of Pern, where the dragon-riders perform a service or something that allows for the dragon-kings and -queens to enjoy a heightened status. No. They're just dragons. Domesticated ones. What? You want something more? Fuck you, says Deas.

Until about a third of the way through with Snow and Kailin. It turns out that the domesticated state of dragons is a balance of drugs to dragon, and if the dragon tips the scales (see what I did there?) in his favor, shit hits the fucking fan. Snow "wakes up" and is hungry to kill. Mostly indiscriminately, I mean, she's really pissed, but later she focuses almost entirely on the alchemists that create the dragon soma that make them all the fancy horses they are at the beginning. She is also focused on waking up the other dragons she encounters.

Meanwhile, there are political machinations aplenty. An asshole marries a brutal queen's daughter, and they has sex with another immature queen. There is also the fact that the Speaker, kind of like a one-man UN for the nations, is retiring and has to choose his successor from among the kings and queens that are really just a hair away from warring. That's more like it. It even makes up for the sellswords that I hate, Sollos and Kemir.

Sollos and Kemir are lame. I'm not just saying that because they swear a lot, but they sound very modern. If their dialogue was placed in, say, contemporary New York, you would think they were just a little odd. Here, it stands out like a sore thumb. It's not good.

While the reviewers of this book loved how the dragons turned into vicious slaughter machines about halfway through, I was still disappointed by it. I may be a traditionalist in this way, but I like my dragons to be treasure hoarders, have distinct personalities beyond "I'm real mad!", and just a step below gods. I never really liked Dragonriders of Pern because why should dragons be ridden by people? People should be cowering before dragons. I especially like the dragons of Elizabeth Haydon's Symphony of the Ages series, because they have that majesty and terrifying aspect, but they can also take on a human form that still betrays the draconic nature beneath the skin. Dragons should want jewels and precious things, not whole scale genocide because they were enslaved by drugs.

8.0/10

Young Adult - Richie Tankersley Cusick - Starstruck (1996)

Yeah, I know, posts two days in a row? Don't get used to it. ;)

This book was a reread, obviously, and the little "Thank You" stamp inside makes me think that I bought it at a book fair in middle school. I bought a lot of books of this type when I was that old at book fairs, so it's not outside the realm of possibility. I reread it primarily because I couldn't remember a damn thing about it.

I read it pretty quickly in the past day or so because it was horrifically short in comparison to that thousand-page monster I had just gotten through. Only about two-hundred fifty pages. It is a YA novel after all, in the same vein as those Fear Streets I have sitting in my hallway bookshelf.

The basic plot is that Random Girl (a thin disguise for a Mary-Sue) wins a magazine contest where she gets to spend a week with her favorite celebrity, along with two other winners, vying to be the female lead in his next movie. Because that's totally how movie casting works. :p Anyway, turns out that the celebrity is being threatened by a crazy fan known as Starstruck and is causing all kinds of accidents at the celebrity's house in the whopping three days the girls stay there.

I was actually surprised with who the killer ended up being. Yes, it's a killer; a bodyguard is stabbed to death and the publicist is found dead in the hot tub after she spent the whole book being a raging bitch. I don't think you'll read it, but I still don't want to give it away. I thought throughout the whole book that it would be Jo, the nerdy magazine winner. She went out of her way to say that she didn't actually care for Byron Slater and had an elaborate alibi before something happened every time. It seemed like a really sloppy way to make you think it's not her only to find out that it is at the end. But she isn't. Huh.

Anyway, the main character, Miranda Peterson, is a Mary-Sue. No fucking doubt about it. Byron has a thing for her throughout the whole thing, and his buddy-driver Nick does too? And she's such a victim. All the bad stuff happens when she's around. Oh poor pitiful her. Fuckin' A.

Also, noticeably, there is the traditional "adults just don't understand" stuff when Miranda gets to the mansion. Do you guys remember The Dollhouse Murders? The main character there had a little sister that was just a little bit special, enough that she needed constant supervision, but her parents were always making her watch her and not let her have a social life? Remember? Of course you remember how frustrated you were with her parents for bitching at her for trying to do her own thing at the mall instead of bowing to every whim of her special sister. The same kind of thing happens with Miranda. She arrives in California late because planes get delayed, her suitcase is lost so she has no clothes, and the publicist is a total bitch to her and blames her for the airline's mistakes. And won't let up about it. All it does is serve to make Miranda seem like SUCH A VICTIM OMG.

A lot of stuff didn't make much sense either. If the tiger gets out, you don't go back to the party and let yourself get drugged. If you almost get crushed to death by a broken statue, and then almost have your car careen off a cliff, you don't then go out to have dinner and see a movie. And if a guy dies, you don't then go out shopping the very next fucking day. And of course the cops never get called about stalkers or death threats. It's "bad publicity". What about a dead guy, huh? Why do you lie to the media and say it was his heart? Yeah, it was his heart. It couldn't take a knife for some reason. The nerve of some people, huh?

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that the book is ridiculous. And not just because they constantly assume Byron is a rapist or that Miranda is trying to seduce him out of his fat stacks of cash. And also not just because the phrase "dark black" is literally written in there.

1.0/10

Alternate History - Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004)

This was the book that I stopped reading in order to devour Twilight's Dawn, but don't get me wrong. That doesn't mean that it's a bad book. I certainly wouldn't call it bad. What I would call it is hard.

I got this book for some Christmas or another from my parents. I usually end up with a book haul, because books are cheaper than video games. I didn't read it for a long time because I kept being preoccupied reading other things and with my actual life. In fact, so much time passed between getting it and reading it that I thought it was a very different book than it was. I had created its story in my head, and then was confused when it wasn't it at all.

But that's neither here nor there.

I actually started reading this a couple of times. I just didn't seem able to absorb the first chapter, mostly because a lot happened in a single chapter. I'm not super used to that. But what're you going to do? It took me a while to really get into it, and I fell out of touch with it several times, and not just because I had to look up a word.

This book is hard. I said that at the start. But it's a very high reading level, is what I mean. That isn't to say that you have to reread a sentence in order to figure out what it's saying, but it can be very time-consuming. I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say. It was difficult for me because if I missed a single word, I felt like I was going to miss something, which was an honest concern. For instance, there is a recited prophecy in Chapter 13 that, after finishing the book, I flipped back to and was surprised that it told the entirety of the climax. Vague, of course, and incomprehensible until you went through the events at the end of the novel, but a well-executed use of prophecy nonetheless.

I put the novel down several times because the language was hard, the novel was long, and the plot didn't seem to be going anywhere. None of these things make it a bad book. The language being hard actually lent an air to all of the events that a generally modern way of writing would not have been able to convey. The novel was long, but in retrospect, I realize that every chapter served a specific purpose in the story and no piece could have been removed. The only problem is the pacing, in my opinion.

The beginning section introduces you to Mr. Norrell, and then goes out of its way to color him as a horrible little old man. He performs an influential act of magic that introduces the book's main antagonist, but then that antagonist is just bugging a small circle of people for most of the rest of the book. Jonathan Strange is introduced and quickly shipped off to show how magic was used in the Napoleonic Wars. When he comes back, the antagonist sets his sights on Mrs. Strange, and that's when the book finally makes the bad guy seem like a bad guy. But not before some magical dickery from Norrell on the publication of Strange's book.

The vast majority of the book is used to describe the relationship between Norrell and Strange, when I would have appreciated more about the gentleman.

There was a distinctive chapter that led me to put the book down for a week: Chapter 52. It talks rather randomly about a mad old woman with fifty cats living in the Jewish ghetto of Venice. I obviously understand now why the chapter was there, but it seemed like such a random story in the novel at the time that I couldn't bring myself to sit down and continue. If it had had any hooks in previous chapters, I may have been okay with it and continued to read the book without taking a break.

The ending is the best part. I literally sat on the couch and read the last ten chapters enraptured. It was those last ten chapters that made me think (especially with the descriptions of Strange's mad visions) that made me want this book to be made into a movie. While reading it, I didn't understand all the reviews at the front that said that the book, my copy over a thousand pages long, felt too short. That ending was great. It felt like a cut scene in a video game, an epic showdown in a movie. It was awesome. But I wonder if it was the tromping through the rest of the book that allowed for the ending to be so good? Like, if I hadn't felt so frustrated and exhausted through the book, would I have been as engaged in the ending?

I am not denying that this book had a lot to say, the least of which had to do with magic. But the act of reading it is not like a dessert. It isn't sweet and delicious and something to look forward too. It's more like vegetables. (This is where the metaphor falls apart; I regularly prefer vegetables to dessert, but I'm an outlier.) You may or may not enjoy it at the time, but the health effects, the thinking it inspires in you afterwards, makes it seem worth it.

6.5/10

Fantasy - Anne Bishop - Twilight's Dawn (2011)

Before I begin, please understand: I love the Black Jewels series. For that reason alone, Anne Bishop is my favorite author. I don't particularly care for the Tir Alainn trilogy that much, I haven't read the Ephemera duology yet. But this is my favorite book series. So this book was a shoe-in for a ten... if it hadn't been for that last story.

I got the first Black Jewels book, Daughter of the Blood at a used bookstore. I read it in a day, and later got the rest of the trilogy and Dreams Made Flesh. After Dreams, I got every subsequent book in hardcover for my birthday, because the books would always come out in March, and my birthday's in April. In fact, it was a couple of days ago. So when I got this one, which I understand is the last one, because of that last novella, I dropped the book I was reading and read this one, in proper Black Jewels tradition, in a day. Yesterday, even. I used it as a reward for myself in cleaning the house and doing stuff. Awesome, right?

There are a lot of things I love about Black Jewels that I want to get into before I tell you about this book, mostly because then I can reference it. The series is, and has always been, unapologetically violent. That isn't to say that I need a story to be steeped in gore for me to love it, but I would much prefer truthful violence to vague squeamishness in a story. If that's what really happened, then just say it. Don't beat around the bush. And the imagery included in it... you can believe that a man's skeleton can be pulled out of him and lit ablaze while he is still alive. You can believe that a man can be magically exploded so the largest bit of him left are globules of frozen blood on the walls. It has its own beauty.

Related to that is another aspect of these books I love. They go whole-hog with their magic. I know that some people shy away from making a person powerful in their stories out of fear of people saying the person is a Mary-Sue, but why have magic if you can't really show what it does. Black Jewels isn't afraid to have an all-powerful being that is still fragile. It isn't afraid to show you what can really, really do with magic. It isn't afraid to show you illusions, storms that destroy populations, the ability to remove from existence an entire land.

But with that comes a rigid society that I love. Primarily because it doesn't pretend that the Blood are no different from everyone else. They have their own castes and have to be ruled in layers of courts and Queens. And when that society extends in Heir to the Shadows to include kindred, magic-using animals, the politics involved are just delicious.

But what I love most about the Black Jewels series is the relationships between the characters. The trust that is built, crushed, and rebuilt, the interactions that just show how much they have all become an amalgam of relations and family... Even if there were no underlying conflict like an enemy and such, if there was a book of just these characters that I love going about their lives and visiting each other, and threatening each other while declaring that they would guard that person with their life, I would read the shit out of it, and love it forever.

All of that said, Twilight's Dawn. I'm going to do my best to not give away things, but it's probably only going to be a problem when I get to the last story.

Winsol Gifts is the first, and relates the story of Daemon and Jaenelle's first real Winsol. I say real, because it's their third, but during the first, Daemon was too far gone, and the second, Jaenelle was too far gone. In this one, they have to deal with parties, planning, family, and a hectic holiday season. It is essentially all that I want, relationship-wise. It sets a great precedent for the rest of the book, because it is, as I said before, delicious.

Shades of Honor is the second, and probably my favorite. It explores Falonar's chafing in his role as Lucivar's second-in-command, and the results thereafter. Falonar is super dumb. Lucivar was placed as the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih by the Queen of Ebon Askavi. Just rallying a bunch of like-minded Eyrien's isn't going to depose him. It also allows for more resolution after the events of Tangled Webs than the actual book allowed for.

Family is the third, and takes place ten years after Shalador's Lady, but does not include any of the Terreille cast from that book. It primarily closes the book on Queen Sylvia of Halaway and her family. I'm guessing it was also an indulgence to fans, especially those of the relationship between Sylvia and Saetan.

The High Lord's Daughter is the last. And this is where my review falls apart. Up until this story, I loved it. Ten out of ten. This story explores what happens after Jaenelle dies at nearly a hundred years old. But not in any way that I was hoping. If you intend on reading this book and series, which I still highly recommend, I would suggest not reading the next paragraph. After the bold you can read again.

The last story was not very good. It felt rushed, and the way it spanned a lot of time without really acknowledging how much time between chapters was confusing. It was also confusing because they kept naming their kids after established characters. I didn't know if Titian in that story meant the Queen of the Harpies or the little Eyrien girl. And that shit with Jaenelle Satien and Twilight's Dawn? What horseshit. Trying to make her more than she could be. She's not Jaenelle reincarnated, for fuck's sake. But the primary shittery was how Daemon fell in love with Surreal. No. Wrong. It felt like an exercise to satisfy shippers, much like the epilogue to Harry Potter. Daemon waited hundreds of years for Jaenelle. He's not suddenly going to start boning other girls just so Surreal could get jealous and he's not going to love Surreal. At least it acknowledged how Daemon could never love anyone like Jaenelle. But that whole last story should have been more than an exercise for shippers. It should have explored immediately after Jaenelle passed. The scene in Queen of the Darkness when Daemon breaks down after the witch storm was the most powerful scene in a series full of powerful scenes. We could have had more of that. And what about Kaeleer without its Heart? More times should have been spent on that.

Spoilers over, sorry guys.

Don't get me wrong. I still love the characters and the series. I put it on the same mental shelf as Final Fantasy X and Watchmen. But that last story left a bad taste in my mouth, and the fact that this was what I assume the last book in the series makes me wish the last story wasn't included, for the same reason I hated the epilogue in Harry Potter.

Again, don't take my hating one story as a reason to not get it, or to not dive into the series. I still love it. I occasionally even reread it, and I've tried to lend out Daughter of the Blood many times. Buy it, read it. After all, this book is still going to score high, and I am super glad I got it, if only for Shades of Honor.

9.5/10

Paranormal Romance - Various Authors - Inked (2010)

Sorry about the long wait between posts; somewhere in there I got married, so forgive me for being a bit distracted. Sadly, this post may be kind of short, too. I finished reading this book like two weeks ago, so it'll mostly be me trying to remember how I felt about it.

 This book is actually a compendium of novellas by four authors, and, if the title of the book didn't give it away, each story includes some kind of magical tattoo that is important to the plot. The spine labels this book as paranormal romance, which I think is just what they want to call human/fantasy creature love in a post-Twilight world, but it also labels the book as urban fantasy.

Please. There is way better urban fantasy than that.

Maybe it's because I do not like what's happened to the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section of my B&N, but I felt that all of these stories blew. Only one of them isn't tied to some other book series by the author, and all of them include as a focus a crime, specifically a murder, because we all know because of TV is the only thing that happens of interest in our society. Each protagonist is an investigator of some sort, and honestly the plots just bled together in my mind because they were all so similar.

The first story, "Skin Deep" by Karen Chance, is the only one that isn't tied to a book series, but definitely reads like it is. It introduces the idea of magical wards mages use to protect themselves or attack others that appear as tattoos on the mage. But it doesn't really explain any better than that, which sucks, because the whole story is about how the protagonist uses them to track killers of a werewolf and to defeat them. What? The werewolf community is alive and well in this story, and takes on an interesting role that I wish was dwelled more upon. They're political! That's way cooler than some magical war on homeless people that you mention and then never discuss again. Also, I live in Las Vegas. I know that the author lives in Australia and probably just doesn't know, but Las Vegas Boulevard is not called Highway 93 when it's the strip. Especially not right on Tropicana. That would have been solved by a quick Google Map search.

The second story, "Armor of Roses" by Marjorie M. Liu, is tied to her Hunter Kiss series, of which I've read none of. Apparently time travel is okay, though? The protagonist has a old guy die in front of her car, but not before asking her to perform a task. So she goes back in time (?) to when her grandmother was a spy in China during World War II and Jewish kids were being enslaved with magical tattoos. WTF? Also she has pet demons that she can absorb into her skin as armor. What? Huh?

The third story, "Etched in Silver" by Yasmine Galenorn, is actually one that I enjoyed until the end. A half-human agent lives in the fae dimension and has to track down a serial rapist/killer in a secret marketplace. I couldn't help but see Hellboy 2's troll market when they were describing the whole thing. Also it describes her falling in love with a too-handsome stranger. I wanted, all the way until the end, for him to be the bad guy. He wasn't. Fuck that story. :P

The last story, "Human Nature" by Eileen Wilks, was not so bad. The problem was that it was already done in the first story. The protagonist is an FBI agent sleeping with a werewolf whose relative turns up dead. Both stories even call the werewolf community the "Were"! But I liked this one for the same reason I like Laurell K. Hamilton's Merry Gentry series: it doesn't hide magic in urban fantasy, it projects it head-on into society. There are organizations against magic users and the creatures steeped in it, support and revilement from the press, isolated communities, cults, all of that. It's not hidden from the general public, is what I mean. I did have another problem with this story. It's overuse of the word "damn" and all its relatives. There are other cuss words, Ms. Wilks. :(

Like I said, I really didn't like how the novellas all bled together and had the same plot points. They could have at least tried to use a different crime than murder. Seriously. What about arson? Then you could at least have your Mary-Sue investigators pulling children out of burning buildings safely. >:(

2/10

Children's Literature - Rebecca Caudill - Schoolroom in the Parlor (1959)

And now for something completely different. :)

After I finished Banewreaker last night, I moved on to the next book immediately. I told you, I was in need of some escapism. So I decided to reread a book I had when I was little.

As you can tell from the picture, this used to be a library book. Now, I didn't take a book out and just never return it. When I was little, my parents would buy books for me from garage sales. This one was probably purchased when we were in Iowa. By the time we had moved back to Vegas, I think I had graduated entirely to longer books in the form of Fear Streets and other young horror. Listen, I don't need your laughter. At least I liked reading as a kid, assholes. :P

There are two ways this review can go: through a child's eyes, and through an adult's eyes.

When I was a kid, I was never really into frontier books. I remember I had to read Little House on the Prairie for school in fourth grade, but I didn't care for it. My mom really likes frontier fiction, but I never really have. It's just not interesting to me. And you can see it in what I choose to read now. But since my mom liked it, I couldn't escape without having at least one.

When I was the age I think I was when I got this book, I had a couple favorite books. O'Diddy by Jocelyn Stevenson was one, about imaginary friends. There was another that I can't remember the name of and can't find on the internet, about a girl whose parents were going to divorce, but she thought she could stop with with straight As in school, and had to do an egg social experiment at school with a kid who was a jackass. I also really liked Goosebumps and Babysitter's Club books.

So, like I said, as a kid, I didn't really care for this book.

As an adult, I read this book last night in a couple hours. I had trouble keeping the two middle children, Emmy and Debby, straight. Also the book goes out of its way to teach the kid reader about life in the wilderness, which is unnecessary. You want kids to want to read. Not to be lectured at.

There was also a section that plugged Louisa May Alcott's Under the Lilacs. But it didn't just plug it. It used text from it. What the fuck? That was somehow okay? There was also some thinly-veiled racism against Native Americans, but that's true of any frontier fiction.

There was also a section that was comedy gold. Keep in mind, this is in response to seeing the Northern Lights for the first time, after reading about it in their lessons.

"Is the world coming to an end?" she whispered.
Bonnie began to cry.
"Is the world coming to an end, Father?"

Oh my god.

4/10