Aaaand...We're Back

So it’s been a while since I posted here.  Okay, it’s been a long while.  I got a little sidetracked finishing grad school and moving and job-hunting and all that jazz.  I stopped keeping up with reviews, but I certainly didn’t stop reading.  

I also didn’t stop looking for ways to share my thoughts about books, and to hear what others think about what they’re reading as well.  Last summer, a friend of mine took that challenge head on when she put together a long-distance book club.  Participants exchanged books, or book suggestions, via post or the Internet, and had a grand old time finding something new and fun to read.  This year, she got even more ambitious, and it became a Blind Date with a Book Club.  The idea was that recipients would have no idea who their book was coming from, or what they might be receiving.  We all submitted our reading preferences and waited with bated breath.

I chose to send my partner a copy of The KitchenHouse.  Hopefully she enjoys it!  My Blind Date came in the form of Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone.  But since we’re all reading something different, part of the idea of the Blind Date with a Book Club was that we would share our thoughts on what we read.  For me, the obvious choice was dusting off this poor, neglected blog, and doing a little reviewing.  I can’t promise that it’ll be a regular thing again, but I had forgotten how nice it is to set down one’s thoughts about a story in writing.

Want to know more about what the Blind Date with a Book Club is reading?  Check out social media for the hashtag #bookswithbenefits.  (Cute, right?)

Shadow and Bone

Title:  Shadow and Bone

Author: Leigh Bardugo

Publisher:  Square Fish (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure

Length: 356 pages

Synopsis:  Ravka is a country at war.  For the last hundred years, battles have raged at the borders, and even with the help of the Grisha, those with fantastical abilities to manipulate matter through their use of the Small Science, there seems to be no way to bring an end to the fighting.  For Mal and Alina, the war is just another fact of life.  Orphaned by the battles, they had nothing when they came to live among the other war orphans at Duke Keramsov’s estate, but they found in one another the comfort and companionship they needed to survive.  For Alina, childhood friendship has begun to grow into something deeper as the two set out to serve together in the First Army, while Mal seems more interested in the beautiful Grisha girls that attend the charismatic Darkling, leader of the Grisha Second Army.  But when a terrifying encounter in a land of perpetual darkness known as the Shadow Fold reveals powers she’d never imagined she possessed, Alina is sent away from Mal to train among the Grisha.  Alone and afraid, she soon finds herself trapped in a web of political maneuvering orchestrated by the Darkling himself.  Her powers could hold the key to bringing about the end of Ravka’s suffering, but is she willing to pay the price?

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion: There’s a lot about this book that I like.  In fact, most things about this book I enjoyed.  It’s a beautiful departure from the more typical western European underpinnings of most fantasy.  Set against a fantasticized Imperial Russia, the glittering world of the Grisha and the war-torn borders make sense together while still providing a stark juxtaposition for one another.  The world is richly imagined; Bardugo knows everything about this place, from court fashions in dress to the rationing pattern of sugar.  Occasionally, the details feel almost excessive, but usually that serves to highlight the excesses of the royal court.  The characters, on the other hand…  I felt the world Bardugo has created deserved a little better.  I didn’t want Alina to be another YA heroine sucked in by the alluring and apparently immortal tall-dark-and-handsome fellow.  I wanted Mal to be as complex and multilayered as Alina seems to believe.  There are peripheral characters that show the kind of exquisite nebulosity of which Bardugo is capable: Genya, the Queen’s pet Grisha, whose true allegiance is hard to fathom, who buries her real feelings beneath the perfect mask she’s created of her face; David, the Fabrikator who provides weapons both for and against our heroine, whose actions still make sense in the context of his world.  I wanted the main characters to have these same shades-of-grey struggles, to get a sense that there’s more to them than love triangles or conquer-the-world plots.  But the richness of the world and the other characters gives me hope.  I’m going to hunt down the next title in this trilogy, Siege and Storm, as soon as I can!

Shadow and Bone

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.