The Ghost Bride (Audiobook)

Title: The Ghost Bride

Author: Yangsze Choo

 

Read by: Yangsze Choo

Publisher: Harper Audio (2013)

 

Genre(s): Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Historical Fiction

Length: 12 hours and 8 minutes

Synopsis: "Would you like to be a ghost bride?"  Li Lan is shocked by her father's suggestion.  After all, though marrying off the dead is not entirely unheard of in colonial Malaya, it is rare for the bride to be a living woman who would be condemned to a life of widowhood.  Though Li Lan has no interest in becoming such a bride, she is curious about the circumstances that led to the suggestion.  Her intended, it would seem, was the heir to the Lim family, a young man she had never even met.  Now, however, all of his family is showing a keen interest in her, from the new heir Tian Bai to his dead cousin, who's begun appearing in Li Lan's dreams and is anything but charming.

My Rating: 3 Stars

My Opinion:  I did enjoy this audiobook performance, since it is somewhat rare to find a book read by its author.  Li Lan isn't exactly the most interesting protagonist, but through her explorations, we are treated to an extensive, lushly described, and sometimes fantastical view of her world, both in life and death.  The historical notes Choo includes at the conclusion of the story are nearly as interesting as the book itself.  There's a lot going on in this story, ranging from romance to a sort of supernatural version of Law & Order.  With the historical context in place, that combination makes a lot more sense, but during my first listening, I found it somewhat difficult to work out where the story was going, and why on earth that seemed like a logical option.  Though there were things about this book that puzzled me, I did enjoy the performance overall, and the concept behind it in particular.

Across the Universe

Title: Across the Universe

Author: Beth Revis

Publisher: Penguin Group (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopian Fiction

Length: 417

Synopsis: Amy is about to leave everything behind.  Her parents have signed on to help develop a colony on a far distant planet, a colony so far away that they will have to spend 300 years cryogenically frozen aboard their starship in order to survive the journey.  While they and the other "essential" personnel travel in blocks of ice, the ship is crewed by generation after generation as they hurtle through space.  But somewhere along the line, something has gone wrong.  The power structure of the waking crew has changed; now they're led by Eldest, the most senior member of the population, and his teenage successor, Elder, is being groomed to take his place.  But Elder feels that something is not quite right within the ship; Eldest is keeping secrets, and when Elder stumbles across one of the biggest, a room full of frozen people, he'll do whatever it takes to get answers, even if it means asking the girl in the block of ice.

My Rating: 4 Stars

 
My Opinion:This, put most simply, is a good book.  The opening scene was enough to leave me a bit shell-shocked, in the best possible way.  From there, the story launches into a disconcertingly dystopian society that continues to reveal hidden depths of distortion as the book progresses.  It's a quick read with an engaging plot and moderately intriguing characters, though they did seem a bit flat at times.  The story is driven not by character development or growth, but by the swiftly unraveling though delightfully tangled plot.  I did find that I was occasionally confused about the age of the characters.  There was no change in vocabulary between Eldest and his teenage protege, leaving Eldest with turns of phrase that seemed out of character, particularly in a society that's been artificially stratified by age.  Given the chance to continue in this series, however, I certainly will!

The Rook (Audiobook)

Title: The Rook

Author: Daniel O'Malley

Read by: Susan Duerden

Publisher: Dreamscape Media (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Crime Thriller, Mystery

Length: 17 hours and 51 minutes

Synopsis: When Myfanwy Thomas awakes in a park, surrounded by corpses wearing latex gloves, she has no idea who she is or how she came to be in such a situation.  Her only clues are several letters in her pocket, addressed to her by the woman who had previously inhabited her body, the personality she'd been born with and which was mysteriously erased.  This is only the beginning of Myfanwy's trip down the rabbit hole.  Soon she begins to realize that there is far, far more to her life-- or rather, the life she's inherited-- than she could ever have guessed.  Her prior self has left her a road-map in letters and documents, but when one awakens to find oneself an administrator in the government's secret supernatural department, there are bound to be some adjustments to make.

My Rating: 3 Stars

My Opinion:  This book started well, but lost momentum before long.  I've read other reviews comparing The Rook with the film The Bourne Identity, but I really think it's really much closer to Ghostbusters.  It may have been Duerden's performance, but instead of playing as an actual thriller, this audiobook came across as a parody of one.  In truth, I can't tell which was the actual intent.  Duerden has Myfanwy sounding like a little girl rather than the competent administrator she is (repeatedly) purported to be, and the voices she adopted for some of her other characters crossed the border into ridiculous.  O'Malley has an interesting concept here, and some really unique ideas, but I did not enjoy this audiobook as much as I had hoped.

The Farm

Title: The Farm

Author: Emily McKay

Publisher: Berkley Books (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopian Fiction

Length: 420

Synopsis: Lily can still remember the Before.  Not so long ago, there were no raging, bloodthirsty creatures that used to be human, until a virus turned them into the Ticks.  Teens weren't kept on Farms to serve as blood donors, keeping the Ticks fed and pacified.  And Mel, her autistic twin sister, wasn't communicating only in cryptic phrases of nursery rhymes.  But that was all Before, and now, Lily can only think about how she can get herself and her sister off the Farm and across the desolate United States to the safety of Canada.  The night she plans to escape, however, she runs into Carter, a classmate from the Before who seems to have all the answers.  With so much at stake, can she really afford to trust him?  Or, perhaps more importantly, can she really afford not to?

My Rating: 3 Stars

 
My Opinion: I just don't know what to make of this one.  It seems to be good conceptually, but there were a few wrenches in the works that made it less than a favorite.  I love the idea of the Ticks, and the Farms are suitably grim and dystopian, but there are a couple fantastical twists thrown into the plot that I had a hard time swallowing in McKay's scientifically based world.  I liked the struggle Lily faced in trying to care for her sister in a whole new world, but I found most of the other characters one-dimensional and hard to believe.  There's a lot of dystopian lit for young adults hitting the market right now, particularly with the popularity of books like The Hunger Games and Divergent trilogies.  Some of it is good, and others not so much.  I would recommend many other books over this one.

The Kitchen House (Audiobook)

Title: The Kitchen House (Audiobook)

Author: Kathleen Grissom

Read by: Orlagh Cassidy, Bahni Turpin

Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks (2010)

Genre(s): Fiction, Historical Fiction, Realistic Fiction

Length: 12 hours and 11 minutes

Synopsis: Lavinia was only seven when her family left Ireland aboard a small ship bound for America, a voyage that left her parents dead and Lavinia too sick and weak to protest when she is taken into indentured servitude in payment for her family's passage.  She is taken to the vast plantation house of Captain Pyke and left in the care of Belle, a kitchen slave and Pyke's own illegitimate daughter.  Belle and the other domestic slaves accept Lavinia as a member of their own family, and Lavinia grows to love them, standing with them even as the fortunes of the family in the plantation house begin to fail.

My Rating: 4 Stars

 
My Opinion: This is a beautifully researched, well written, and delightfully performed book.  The characters are brought to life by performers who make them distinctive without drawing them as them caricatures.  In her youth, the story follows Lavinia closely and gives  the reader a delightfully innocent view of plantation politics, but the narrative grows grimmer as Lavinia grows up and leaves behind the trivialities of childhood.  The detail in this historical imagining is fantastic.  From fashion and food to architecture and politics, Grissom has clearly done her homework.  My only complaint is that there really seems to be too much story for a single book.  Lavinia's life is divided into multiple parts as she grows older and her circumstances change, which of course is perfectly reasonable.  However, there is not a consistent driving arc of plot throughout the book, which makes sense since the lives of normal people seldom follow satisfyingly dramatic plot lines.  Though the forward momentum provided by tensions between characters is generally enough to keep the story moving, sometimes this falters and leaves the story somewhat stagnant.  Nonetheless, it's a good performance of a good text, making for an engaging overall experience.

Gold

Title: Gold 

Author: Chris Cleave

Publisher: Simon and Schuster (2012)

Genre(s): Realistic Fiction, Sport, Fiction

Length: 324 pages

Synopsis:  Zoe and Kate have been rivals and competitors, bitter enemies and the best of friends throughout their entire careers.  They're Olympic level cyclists who've spent their lives training with the goal of gold always on the horizon.  But now, with her daughter Sophie fighting cancer and her final shot at an Olympic medal coming up, Kate has to make a decision about where her priorities really lie.  Zoe is forced to acknowledge that the effort she's poured into her training since childhood will no longer matter after the next Olympic games.  Facing pivotal points in their lives, will they find themselves once again fierce rivals or the friend that each so desperately needs?

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion: This book was one of those stay-up-until-two-in-the-morning  It's not really a book about sport.  Yes, cycling happens, but it's not what this book is about.  It's heart and soul and breath and body can be found in the little cast of characters that plays out their stories in these pages.  The people of Gold are vividly constructed, and their stories interwoven and poignant in their own ways.  There are no saints and sinners in this book, just people coping with what their lives have handed them in the best ways they know how.  I loved hearing Sophie's story from her own point of view, and watching the pasts and presents of each character unfurl from multiple perspectives.  There are twists and turns and unexpected revelations that would have kept me reading even with less fully realized characters, but Cleave's craft was evident in every aspect of this novel's construction.  From my previous experience with Cleave's work (The Other Hand, published in the U.S. as Little Bee), I had high expectations, and they were completely fulfilled.

Gone Girl (Audiobook)

Title: Gone Girl

Author: Gillian Flynn

Read by: Julia Whelan and Kirby Heyborne

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group Limited (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Crime Thriller, Mystery, Crime

Length: 19 hours and 11 minutes

Synopsis: On the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, Amy Dunne goes missing.  The living room of her house shows signs of a struggle, and the front door stands open when her husband, Nick Dunne, returns home.  As the investigation begins, the story unfolds from Nick's perspective, and in Amy's own words through her diary entries.  But things may not be as they seem, and halfway through the book, a whole new perspective on the events surrounding Amy's mysterious vanishing begins to emerge.  In a twisting, down-the-rabbit-hole, mystery, Gone Girl explores the complexity of human emotion and motivation, and the lengths to which we'll go for love, or hate.

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion:  I had no idea what to expect when I started this book, and as I listened, I began to realize that even partway through the book, I was still not sure what to expect.  Just as I began to think I had this story figured out, a new chapter would begin and the layers would peel back in unexpected (and occasionally horrifying) revelations.  The characters are intelligent, and aware of it, which makes them intriguing if not particularly likeable.  They're manipulative, of each other and the reader, spooling out the story in calculated doses designed to keep us guessing.  Whelan and Heyborne are delightful performers given the unenviable task of bringing these faintly distasteful characters to life, and they do a marvelous job.  More than once, while listening to this book, I found myself pausing in the midst of whatever I was doing, completely absorbed in the story.  As mysteries go, it's one of the most enjoyable I've read in a long time, and though I am generally wary of mysteries as audiobooks (I find it's easier to recall the details and nuances in print, this performance and story make it worth the extra attention.  To me, it's the equivalent of a summer blockbuster film: a popular, well-known story performed well, and while it might not get critical acclaim, it was a fun way to spend my time.  

Storm Front (Audiobook)

Title: Storm Front

Author: Jim Butcher

Read by: James Marsters

Publisher: Buzzy Multimedia (2009)

Genre(s): Fiction, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Crime

Length: 8 hours, 1 minute

Synopsis:  Harry Dresden is a wizard.  Not a magician, available for birthday parties and parlour tricks, but a wizard.  As his advertisement reads: "Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, or Other Entertainment."  But life as Chicago's only wizard is anything but straightforward.  Some consider him a charlatan, and others are terrified by the mere mention of magic.  All in all, it means that rent money is hard to come by, and Dresden often earns his keep consulting with the police department on unusual cases.  But when he's called in to solve a gruesome murder-by-magic, Dresden finds himself struggling trying to stay one step ahead of the killer.  Even worse, he's under suspicion himself!  With lives on the line, Dresden would have to risk everything to find a murderer.  How far is he willing to go?

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion:  I'd been meaning to get into The Dresden Files for quite some time.  A friend in college recommended them, and I promptly filed that away for future reference in a folder in my mind which was subsequently lost.  I stumbled across it again at 4:00 am whilst paging through the books on offer at Audible.com.  Without hesitation, I downloaded Storm Front and started listening, then promptly had to stop and double check that I'd heard correctly.  Yes, I had.  In a double-dose of nerdiness, this urban fantasy gem is narrated by James Marsters, known for his role as Spike on the Joss Whedon TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Even if I'd had no idea who he was, I would have enjoyed his performance.  Butcher's story comes to life in this fast-paced narrative that blends elements of classic detective stories with a modern take on fantasy.  Urban fantasy is a particular favorite sub-genre for me, and I found this perspective interesting.  It isn't high fantasy with its vast, cosmic powers left to roam on city streets.  This feels smaller and more contained somehow.  There are rules and conventions and everything feels as if it has a solid categorization: black and white where the ethereal is so often painted in shades of grey.  In general, I prefer my fantasy to feel a little less tamed, but I enjoyed that the danger here came less from supernatural power than from the very human people wielding it.

The engineering of this audiobook is slightly different from most of the others that I've heard; it ends up sounding slightly lower in quality, as there's a slight hiss in the background, but for a story set in an analog world, I found the sound less of a distraction and more part of an appropriate ambiance.  Marsters reads quickly and personably; his is a very believable voice for Dresden, an important consideration in first-person audiobooks, I think.  All in all, I loved it.  This is an eight hour book, but I found time to finish it in under a day.  Fantasy buffs, rejoice, and be sure to check this one out.

A Game of Thrones (Audiobook)

Title: A Game of Thrones

 

Author: George R. R. Martin

 

Read by: Roy Dotrice

Publisher: Random House Audio (2003)

 

Genre(s): Fiction, Fantasy

Length: N/A

Synopsis: The Seven Kingdoms have enjoyed an uneasy peace since Robert Baratheon and his allies ousted the Targaryen line and claimed the Iron Throne.  With the last heirs of the Targaryen line exiled to the Free Cities beyond the sea, King Robert's days of war are over, and he's grown overly fond of his luxurious life in King's Landing.  Far to the north, his friend and ally Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, is glad to avoid the political maneuvering of the capital, content to watch over his lands and his family.  But not all families are content with their lot.  Queen Cirsei Lannister has deadly secrets that threaten to upend the kingdom, and, far across the sea, the heirs of House Targaryen, the Blood of the Dragon, have not forgotten their birthright.    Winter is coming, and the Seven Kingdoms stand on the brink of war on multiple fronts.  The board is set, and the game of thrones begun; who will arise the winner?

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion:  This was one of the most stunningly performed audiobooks I have ever had the pleasure of hearing.  Dotrice maintains distinctive voices for each one of the multitude of characters in this complex tale without resorting to caricature.  Without a such skilled performer narrating, the story would have been all but impossible to follow.  At 33 hours and 50 minutes long, this unabridged version still posed an occasional challenge of comprehension.  The alternating chapters and their multiple interwoven plots require a sort of mental gymnastics to keep straight without the visual signposts of text.  The characters, however, deserve nothing less.  They are fascinatingly constructed, each with flaws and strengths that lift them off the page into three dimensions.  Everyone has his or her own agenda, and the lengths to which some will go to pursue them are incredible.  The story is a rich tapestry of political intrigue and high fantasy, written in an accessible and compelling set of voices.  For those whose knowledge of this series comes exclusively from the televised version, I would recommend taking a look at the original, whether text or audiobook.  Perhaps I'm beating the point to death, but the complexity of this story is really what lies at its heart.  People are not simple, and if it takes nearly 34 hours to tell the first part of their story, so be it.

They Make It Look Easy...

I had intended this post to be related to a Huffington Post article on the state of reading in America, but after a couple weeks' hiatus and a whole lot of those weeks spent writing in other contexts, I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge how hard it is to write well. 

The revelation came to me as I sat finishing up an article for a newsletter this evening, after throwing together various eleventh hour midterm essays (ah, the joys of still being a student).  Some of my work was researched from journal articles and reports, while the article was based on recordings and notes from an interview I'd conducted.  The style was prescribed, the vocabulary and voice predefined by expectations, and yet, I still had to take this information and tell stories with it.  Not just comprehensive stories, clear-cut and well defined, but articulate stories.  And this was just for 700 word essays that, with any luck, no one will ever be forced to read. 

Now imagine your favorite book.  There was no grading rubric there, no starting scaffold conveniently laid out by thoughtful instructors.  Imagine the wealth of information that went into that book, and how much more there must have been that spilled out of the pages and ended up in the wastepaper bin.  Imagine how complex it was for that author to sit down and string all of those pieces together.  Imagine how many times it took before that stringing and piecing resulted in something worth polishing, and imagine how many hours were spent in agonizing, tedious polishing.  Savor how much effort went into this final product that you're holding, understanding that even now there are probably still passages that give the author fits to read them over.  If you're anything like me, you read voraciously, book after article after story.  How often do we really take the time to consider how much went into the little paper packet or digital file before us?  Whether you like the book or not, you have to know that somewhere, someone cried over it, tears of frustration, or rage, or simply relief that the herculean task of creating such a thing was done. 

Today, I challenge you to do this.  Take a moment.  Thank your favorite authors, journalists, or screenwriters.  In a world of social media, it shouldn't be too hard to do.  Thank the people whose vision has helped shape the wonderful stories that fill our lives.  It's not an easy task, and, if it's done right, it's a thankless one.  See, it's never about the storyteller.  It's all about the story, in every gory, aching, exquisite, infinitesimal detail.  Writers are remarkable people doing remarkable work.  Don't they make it look easy?

The Diviners

Title: The Diviners

Author: Libba Bray

Publisher: Little Brown Books (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Young Adult Fiction, Steampunk

Length: 578 pages

Synopsis:  It's an age of jazz and glitter, movie stars and bootleg liquor. Evie O'Neill of Zenith, Ohio, is determined to make the most of it, but at seventeen, she's long outgrown Zenith's nightlife.  She craves the rush and excitement of the big city and when her parents decide to send her to New York City to stay with her uncle, Evie jumps at the chance.  Soon she's whirled into the kind of life she's always dreamed about: nights spent dancing in exclusive speakeasies, days shopping and sightseeing with friends.  But not everything is as it seems.  Everyone has a secret to keep, even Evie herself, but when a string of gruesome murders with ties to the occult rocks the city, she, and her secret, may be the only way to save them all.

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion:  Hats off to Libba Bray!  She's managed to put together a massively complex book that's clearly only the tip of her creative iceberg.    This book is a pop culture collision of everything the self-proclaimed "nerd" demographic will love (and I say that as a self-identified nerd and without an ounce of condescension): magic, monsters, ghosts, demons, cults, mutants, superpowers, con men, showgirls, even a nod at steampunk.  With the new film adaptation of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby renewing interest in the Roaring 20's, I think this book has hit the right audience at the right time.  The stars are aligned for the next big hit, but I think that something is just the slightest bit amiss.  

 For me, books seem to come most alive when they are more than the sum of their parts, rather than the sum of more parts.  True, this book has everything, but I think that everything was, in this case, a bit too much.  The main characters are often driven by the central plot, which is excellent...until the plot finishes before the book does.  Many of the characters are merely being set up for the sequel, and though I don't mind loose ends at the end of a book, I am perplexed when characters who seem important never quite interface with the aspects of the text I had thought most important.  This is particularly concerning given the plot-based drive of the book's action.  I tried re-framing the text under a character-driven lens, but it just doesn't work.  There are too many characters so focused on doing so many things that there wasn't space for their development to be the story's central anchor.  

Overall, the book works.  It's a quick read, cleverly written, well thought out, and meticulously researched, but for me, there's too much material for this one thick tome.  There's enough in Bray's imagining to have written series following each of her intriguing characters.  Of course, there's always the sequel, Lair of Dreams, which I plan to pick up as soon as it's released (supposedly spring of 2014). 

On the Collaborative Nature of Storytelling

So in addition to being an avid reader, I'm also a writer.  Obviously, right?  But in addition to blogging about books and reading, I also write fiction, some non-fiction, and poetry, which means that storytelling is something I think about a lot.  There's an art to putting words on paper that make readers feel for the characters they describe, but it goes beyond knowing what words to chose.  Stories are designed to capture the human experience; in essence, they're holding a mirror up to nature (to paraphrase the Bard).  They let us see on the page what we're too preoccupied to notice on the way to work or sitting around the dinner table. 

Do you know what I see in that mirror?  People.

See, storytelling cannot be completed in a vacuum.  The very act of "telling" requires an audience to hear.  Anyone who's ever told a story, of any kind, knows that audience matters.  It isn't just a matter of who hears what, but of how your audience responds to what you say.  This leads me to the thing that I love and hate most about stories. 

The story I tell you is not the story you hear. 

What you hear is a glorious product of your own imagining.  Yes, perhaps it was my prompts that conjured them, but the visions are all your own. 

Think of it like this.  Every day, we're bombarded with stimuli: things that make us happy, angry, frustrated, indignant, elated.  Each of these little reactions bubbles up within us only to fade away, replaced by the next response.  Now along comes a storyteller.  He presents you with characters and you find yourself able to envision them.  Do they look exactly the same in your head as in the storyteller's?  No.  But there they are, just the same.  The storyteller goes on to have these characters move and breathe and live and love before your very eyes and you feel for them, because, after all, that is the point.  Now all those little gems of feeling, instead of drifting away, are strung onto a cord of words that holds them tight.  You and he have created this together.

And he never gets to see it.

Our experience of the world is what we make of it.  We all have our lenses through which we see the world.  Thusly, no story, whether written, told, or viewed, can ever be experienced in quite the same way.  Our response is uniquely our own, each and every time.  This is one of the great joys and frustrations of being a writer.  I can create something and send it out into the world, but no one will ever quite see what I do.  For some, it will be infinitely better than anything I could have written, and for others, the resonance just won't be there.  I can't make them see what I do.  Nor would I want to.  I love to talk about stories, my own and others', because I love to see how differently the same words or pictures can come across to different people.  I love to pick them apart and see what makes them tick.  It's an interesting exercise that's taught me as much about people as it has about storytelling.  But perhaps that's less of a distinction than it seems.  I try to keep that in mind when I'm surfing book review sites and see some of the cruel things people say to one another when opinions clash.  The irony of the statement "Were you even reading the same book?!?!" seems lost on them.  Of course they weren't reading the same book.  No one ever is.  Yet without the author, there would have been no place for anyone to start.  In the end, it's a deeply personal thing, relating to a story.  The funny thing is, it can never be done alone.  We're all in this together. 

The Windup Girl

Title: The Windup Girl

Author: Paolo Bacigalupi

Publisher: Night Shade Books (2009)

Genre(s): Fiction, Science Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Length: 359 pages

Synopsis:  Life is uncertain in Bangkok.  Everyone's got a secret to hide.  Anderson is working with the hated AgriGen company, out to steal the genetic biodiversity the company needs to keep its seed stocks one step ahead of mutating diseases.  Emiko is a wind-up girl, one of the New People genetically engineered for perfection and now discarded as last year's model.  Hock Seng is a refugee; once the master of a great trading empire, he was forced to the fringes of society when he fled.  As tensions in the city grow between the Environment Ministry's "white-shirts" and the powerful forces of Trade, whose secrets will be profitable?  And whose will lead to disaster?

My Rating: 3 Stars

My Opinion:  I really, truly, desperately wanted to like this book.  With a great premise and so much potential (not to mention multiple awards and rave endorsements from great authors), I was really prepared to love this book.  I didn't.  I'm not certain what it was that didn't click.  Perhaps it's the jumble of characters, all with unclear motives and mixed loyalties, or maybe the slow, steady pacing that's less of a roller-coaster and more of a stroll in the park...albeit a grim, impoverished, dangerous, gritty park.  The characters seem realistic, the world Bacigalupi's created is so plausible it's terrifying, and yet I never really felt a part of it.  It honestly pains me to say that I didn't enjoy something so well written and thought out, as this clearly is, but I could not relate to the characters and could not find a flow to the story.  It took me ages to get through as I waited for the other shoe to drop, and now here I sit with the shoe still dangling.  I don't love books that wrap all the loose ends into a nice neat bow, but here I felt that the story never really got started.  The characters appear only at the fringes of one another's lives, with a few notable exceptions.  Their narratives feel disjointed, and while they permit the reader a bird's eye view of this Bangkok of the future, I found myself wanting to be more than impartial observer.  The world of the story is so deeply envisioned that I wanted to feel it myself.  Unfortunately, I never found my way through that fourth wall into the story, and though I watched until the very end, I walked away from it unmoved.