Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

This is a good point.

Ratings systems and their issues.

So, for the record, this is what my star ratings mean:

5 stars = FREAKING EPIC, gigantic story, everything works well, my mind is blown that a human being thought this up.

4 stars = love this book, it's just not as humongous in scope as a 5. But it's totally awesome and everyone should read it, it's a keeper.

3 stars = mixed feelings (this is where the "I think others might like it, it's just not for me" reviews are likely to go). Not that bad, but has some issues, or it's an okay story but nothing really stands out to me as being memorable. It was a pleasant enough read for a few days, but I'll probably just end up giving the book away rather than rereading it again.

2 stars = generally pretty terrible, but not 100% so. There was at least one thing in this book that made it not totally horrible. This book isn't really recommended to all and sundry, but you might get some value out of the one thing if you try.

1 star (rarely seen here): It's a wallbanger. Nothing is redeemable about this book, it's utter crap, and I probably only finished reading it so I could do an awesome bitchrant about it and I can't justify doing that to books I didn't finish.

The More You Know!(TM)

Cloud Atlas

By David Mitchell.

You've probably already heard how this book works since the movie came out, but it's a book review, so I need to lay down the line about what's going on here in order to do that.

"Spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished...." --Robert Frobisher.

This book tells six stories in wildly different styles, narrations, and time periods, ranging from the 1800's to the way fare future. Each story except for the sixth breaks off halfway through, and it's structured like a Russian nesting doll-- you read half of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, then read the sixth in its entirety, then go back to 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Each story is tracking the same soul as it gets reincarnated, and we know who it is because they have a random comet birthmark*. Each story is heard of by the person after them in some way, in that they found someone's journal, or letters, or read the story as a fictional novel, or saw it in a movie, or saw the recording of them speaking. Whether or not they're real or fictional is vagued up in at least one person's case. The stories don't really tie together with the previous stories very much--one character exists in 2 out of the 6 stories as himself, the memory of another character is brought up a lot in a subsequent story, and one character figures out that she's the reincarnation of the previous fellow when she starts remembering things he did/knew.. And only one story (the sixth) lets you know ahead of time before the fifth story returns as to how it ends. Most other folks just refer to losing the other half of the story and then finding it later.

* Which really doesn't make any sense in the case of the tank-grown clone fabricant, though. Gotta say it. Also, two of the same reincarnated characters were probably alive at the same time, so what the fuck there?

Do these stories tie together beyond that? Eh...not really.... I will say it seems to me to be a stretch to imagine that all of these six main characters are the same soul. I can see the similarities between the male characters--especially Frobisher and Cavendish, both of whom are snarky, shifty dudes-- and the female characters are all awesomely heroic. I just don't really see that they're ALL the same person in different ways like we're told by this whole comet birthmark thing. Going from Frobisher to Rey to Cavendish to Somni in particular is rather whiplash-y for a person's soul, like they were backsliding every other life or something. I just read a quote elsewhere saying that the point of reincarnation is to improve from life to life--and I don't think this is the case here.

Anyway, beyond this point, I am just going to comment on each story separately. Heck, you could pretty much just read each section and then skip ahead to the other half of it without really missing a lot. And yes, I tried that after awhile. Especially since you'll mostly forget about the plight of Adam Ewing after so much time spent away from him. Mostly this just seems like the author's excuse to write stories in different narration styles and genres. Fun for him, but does it work overall? Does each story work by itself? Hmmm....

• "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing" is a journal written up by American Adam Ewing in the 1800's or so as he sails around islands. He makes a "friend" named "Dr. Henry Goose" who he first thinks is nuts, but unfortunately befriends him later on and they later board the same ship Adam makes another friend when a stowaway slave hides out in his room on the ship and Adam helps him out. But Adam becomes ill, and his "friend" the "doctor" starts treating him for a "parasite," except the "treatment" seems to be making him worse...yeah, you get where that's going faster than poor Adam does. In between writing about how ill he is, Adam notes the buggery and beatings going on on the ship and the racial tensions going on.
  I found this one hard to get into, especially since (a) the racial stuff isn't exactly fun to read about, (b) someone writing about being ill isn't exactly captivating stuff, and (c) essentially you're just sitting around waiting for Adam to figure out what's going on already. I liked the resolution for the most part and how Adam changed his thinking, but this wasn't my favorite.
• "Letters from Zedelghem" are the letters sent from Robert Frobisher (a young, spendthrift, scammy, bisexual British composer who's been disowned) to his lover, scientist Rufus Sixsmith, in 1931. Frobisher gets the bright idea to offer himself up as a musical amanuensis to Vyvyan Ayrs (wow, so many y's, and how do you pronounce it?!), a composer of renown who has lost the abilitiy to write down his compositions due to ill health and an especially whopping case of syphilis. Lord knows the dude needs a job and a home, and this works out for awhile.  Frobisher is very serious about his composing (see above), and he does sound like he does good work for the dude.  He also comes across Adam Ewing's journal as his bedtime reading, making a comment that "A half-read book is a half-finished love affair" when it takes him awhile to find the second half.
  But there's no doubt when you're reading the letters that Frobisher is a rotter type-- he steals expensive books from the library and sells them (hey, it's not like anyone's CHECKING...), he boinks the man's wife when she offers herself up on a platter and then denies the affair, and he's always hitting Sixsmith or someone up for cash. Plus there's the boss's daughter, who Frobisher dislikes at first and vice versa, but when she comes back from her travels acting much more friendly, he decides that he's falling for her, Mrs. Robinson-style. None of this goes well for him. (Plus I seriously wonder why he writes all this shit about other women to someone else he's romantically involved with-like, it doesn't occur to him that Rufus might mind?)
  So in general, it's clear that the guy is kind of a dick. And yet, he's snarky enough to keep you entertained even though you know he's a jerkwad. I feel sorry for everyone that ever dealt with him (and to some degree, vice versa as well), but his flippant tone of voice does keep you amused even as you think, "Geez, dude, keep your hands out of the honey pot." So at least he's more interesting, if unpleasant. I feel a little sorry for the dude, though  And I definitely feel sorry for Rufus.
• "Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery:" This one's a straight up mystery thriller, taking place in the 1970's. Intrepid young reporter Luisa Rey is investigating a power plant that is most likely very unsafe. Rufus Sixsmith, now an old scientist, meets her in an elevator during a power outage and realizes she's a person he can trust with this terrible secret, especially when she indicates she'd do anything to protect a source just like her dad used to. He tells her that the new nuclear reactor on Swannekke Island isn't as safe as it's supposed to be, so Luisa goes to investigate. Sixsmith flees for his life and is eventually killed, but he stashed his report of this...somewhere... Luisa has several near-death experiences as bad guys try to kill her repeatedly, and they do eliminate a lot of folks. Including Isaac Sachs, an engineer Luisa barely meets a few times, but he seems to have fallen in love with her at first sight. (Doesn't do him any good, though. Kinda pointless to bring it up, even!) While risking her life to investigate this, she does come across Frobisher's letters and starts to remember things about his life--and she even orders a copy of the Cloud Atlas Sextet.
  This was my second favorite of the stories--it was very nearly number one except that Somni is such a whammy. This is also what really got me into reading the book compared to the first two. Maybe I'm just more of a mystery/thriller girl, but it's a good story and Luisa is very intrepid!
• "The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish:" Tim Cavendish is a semi-shifty, kinda scammy old English publisher in our time who has a stroke of luck when a thug client of his pitches a client off a balcony. Suddenly his book is a best seller, or at least it sells enough to pay off Cavendish's debts. Alas, that gets the attention of the client's thug brothers who want a chunk of that money...which turns out to not actually exist. Cavendish goes aorund begging for funds from his brother, who is clearly tired of being hit up for cash. Instead, the brother offers him a "safe house" in Hull to hide at from the gangsters. Except Aurora House isn't a hotel--it's a nursing home/roach motel for old people. You can check in, but you can NEVER, EVER check out. And poor Cavendish gets drugged to the point where he thinks he had a stroke for awhile.... Then he starts plotting a breakout. Well, several breakouts.
  On the one hand, evil nursing homes are definitely in my top ten list of things I never, ever want to read about in my life. I've spent enough time in those hellholes and it freaks me out. On the other hand, Cavendish is pretty much an older version of Frobisher in the same style of "you know he's a jerkass, but he's entertaining about it", and he's throwing off snarky quips left and right. It's both a horror story and a silly comedy all at once. Strange tale, and freaks me out in places, but it's not bad otherwise. I was also amused when he commented about the movie that would be made of this.... Oh yeah, and as a publisher, he's reading Luisa's story as a fictional novel submitted to him. Whatever that means here, I do not know. It's getting a little weirdly meta at this point on the crossovers here. I wish the Luisa book had been nonfiction because "it's made up!" just feels like the author threw that in to fuck with you. Come on, dude.
• "An Orison of Sonmi-451" is the recorded confession of a fabricant (manufactured slave) named Sonmi-451 in 2144, as she explains to an archivist how she got to the point of being executed. Sonmi is one of the many fabricants working at a McDonald's-ish fast food restaurant in Nea So Copros (formerly known as Korea) in a world where everything revolves around consumerism. Sonmi was of limited intelligence, but wondered as she saw her coworker Yoona-939, who had interests no other fabricants had and eventually tried to make a break for it--and died, of course.
  After that, Somni starts noticing that her intelligence is going up--she's remembering more complicated words than she should be able to know--and worries about anyone noticing. Eventually she's abducted from her job and taken to a college, where she's supposedly the project/experiment of a rich slacker grad student. Left to her own devices most of the time, Somni starts reading like a fiend and educating herself way beyond her station--and eventually she's taken charge of by higher-up folks and even alllowed to attend lectures. You see, she's a science experiment--they're boosting her intelligence to prove that fabricants can be intelligent. She's recruited into a rebel movement....which is not going to end well for her, and she knows that. 
  This is the most gut-punchy story in the series. It doesn't end happily-- what would in these circumstances?-- but you'll remember this one. It's inspiriing in its own horrifying kind of way, I guess I'd say. The language is a little different--mostly the spellings (like "xactly") and reference to things like "disneys" (Cavendish's tale was turned into a movie!) --but it's comprehensible enough, thank goodness. Either way, this one was more of a mindblower than anything else to me.
• "Sloosha's Crossin' An' Ev'rythin' After:" In the far future, Zachry is a Valleysman living on Hawaii after the apocalypse came/the world ended/society collapsed/something. There's one society of Smart people remaining, the Prescients, and they periodically roll in on boats for visits. When one Prescient woman, Meronym, wants to stay with the tribe and learn their ways, Zachry is totally suspicious of her and her motives. However, they eventually become friends despite the differences in age (Zachry sounds pretty young, like teenager/20's, Meronym is 50), intelligence, upbringing, comprehension, language, etc. She even helps secretly save his sister's life with secret medicine. But when the evil Kona tribe charges in to kill or enslave everything, the two of them are stranded alone with only each other to save.
  Oh god, the language in this one is a slog to read. It's an eroded future where the language went downhill, and Zachry is barely comprehensible to read at all. The entire chapter is kind of like slogging through mud that's up to your knees, and I suspect I definitely missed plot details because they're so hard to read through the dialect. (Sample: "Oh, you was right 'bout the dammit Prescients first time, Bro Zachry! She's fuggin' your b'liefs'n'all up'n'down'n'in'n'out!" Oh god, make the apostrophe use stop.) I can't help but want to say that future or not, your readers are still living in the modern era and they are just gonna find halfassed language like this FREAKING HARD TO READ AND YOU WANT TO STOP READING IT. It is a damn slog to plow through and makes you want to quit halfway through the novel. It has to be said.
  As for the story itself, I wasn't super interested in the primitive tribesmen of the future or that cannibal slavers (it's always slavery around here!) are trashing Hawaii. Zachry is...okay as a person, I guess, but I can't say I was super delighted to have to wade through his rather childish POV and terrible speaking to get to the story. It would have been a drastically different story to tell it from Meronym's POV, I'm sure, but it's also weird that she's not the lead character/narrator if she's the comet reincarnated person (something I've heard is changed in the movie). I don't know...I guess I kind of didn't feel like there was much of a point to this one. Society's gone downhill, and there's very few Smart people left, but people are people? Um, okay. Whatever, I guess. This was probably my least favorite of the bunch.

Revolutionary or gimmicky? I....think I mostly lean towards gimmicky, mostly because I don't feel like the gimmick does much for the overall story. They feel like six tales, not one super overlapping one. The plots don't really relate to each other enough for that to happen, and I would have preferred that each tale kind of REALLY pick up on some level where the last left off, rather than it being some other book a character was reading or something.There's very little continuation and it doesn't feel like the one giant story I think I am supposed to think it is.

The individual stories are food for thought in their own ways. Some I liked better than others for various reasons, but overall...well, I kept reading it, even the Zachry ov'r'ap'os'tro'ph'd chapter. And that may just be a selling point right there: I cared enough to keep going, even with the drastic changes from section to section and the long periods of time before followups.

I'm going to give it three and a half stars. It's a relatively good read, though I don't quite feel like it got what it was shooting for. But eh, what does my opinion on this one matter by now anyway?

Indexing, Episode 2: Musical Patchwork

By Seanan McGuire.

Previous chapter here.

I'm amused to find out that the name "Marchen" equals "fairy tale" in German. Hah. "So yes, my name is 'Agent Fairy Tale,' but I came by it honestly, and I assure you, this is not a prank."

This chapter is more of an introduction to the world, especially for new ATI recruit Demi Santos. Somehow despite suggesting that they hire her, Henry is surprised to have the new girl assigned to her team. Pied Pipers are neutrals, so they could go either way as long as they don't feel cheated financially. The ATI folks don't know how she'll play out.  It's a little recappy of the previous chapter as to why Demi was recruited (um, I seriously just read this, even if it was 2 weeks ago), but Jeff's surprise revelation that he, ah...figured they wouldn't have to deal with the consequences of activating her...even gave Sloane pause. Demi, being brought into this for the first time, is totally shellshocked. Especially when she finds out that her family might be at risk--note that when Sloane's story started kicking in her, her biological dad died... Well, Demi's probably luckier than most on this score.

I'm still wanting to figure out more about the stages narratives go through. "You're active, I'm in abeyance, Sloane's frozen. Accept that for right now; the distinctions don't matter."

We get to find out more about the male members of Henry's group. Jeff is a fully activated 503--"part of a tale best encapsulated by the Shoemaker and the Elves." He is primarily the archivist, though it sounds like he's also down for doing the paperwork and cleaning and shoemaking. Jeff is the only fully activated member of the team until Demi, but in his case, sending a guy who cleans and makes shoes into active fairy tales doesn't tend to improve things. Andy, on the other hand, is a perfectly normal fellow whose twin died because he was living in the same town as a Sleeping Beauty. As a budding investigative journalist, he discovered the whole thing and asked for a job.

It's interesting how everyone's various fairy tale statuses (for lack of a better word, though I'm sure the author has a better one) affects them in the field. I'm a little confused trying to keep it all straight so far, but I'm sure that clarification will come.

"I honestly couldn't imagine working a live field situation without him, even if we always had to remember that he wasn't on the spectrum, making him vulnerable to a lot of dangers that the rest of us could ignore. On the flip side, he didn't have to worry aboug glass coffins or the temptation of poisoned apples, so things balanced out, in their own way."

An interesting/terrifying development is pointed out in this chapter--the dispatch folks tell Henry that they're having a hard time identifying incursions with the right fairy tale character. Four incursions have presented with one type and then turned out to be another...and of course the other was worse. Shit, now stories are camouflaging themselves?!

I'm inclined to give this one 3 and 3/4 of a star--I have to dock a little for the recapping, which is kind of a lot for 36 pages of a continuing story. But I'm happy to see more explanations going on, and look forward to reading more. And the disgusing stories is genuinely a scary prospect!

A Game Of Thrones

By George R.R. Martin.

This is one of those series that I was trying not to read.  When I heard about people reading the series, pretty much the first things I'd hear were along the lines of "OMG SO LONG" and "WHEN WILL HE EVER FINISH" and "HE'S A SLOW WRITER AND TAKES FOREVER" and "GEORGE R.R. MARTIN IS NOT YOUR BITCH" and "Don't start reading it until he finishes....whenever that is...he might die first," etc., etc., etc. And when I wasn't hearing things like that, I was hearing about rapey it was and how every single female in it gets raped horribly because that's what happens to women. All things considered, this wasn't sounding super fucking awesome to try, eh?

Then a few years ago, the TV show came out and everyone's going on about how good it is. Again, I'm not sure if I want to watch it (though since I don't have cable, it's not an option anyway). So far the main argument for watching it was, "I love me some Peter Dinklage." So on the one hand, Peter Dinklage. On the other hand...rapey and people complaining about how it gets worse as it goes on...

Finally during my latest cat-sitting stint at my friend's house while I'm availing myself of her library, I caved in and started this book AND started in on season 1 of the show (wow, that show is pretty dang close to the book). So yeah, I caved in.

I know everyone else but me already knows how this goes, but you gotta write a summary of the plot anyway, right?

Once upon a time in Westeros, all of the kingdoms were united under Targaryen rule. However, pretty recently the last Targaryen king got killed off, and a fellow named Robert Baratheon took over the throne. Now Robert's gotten all fat and sloppy and slacker-ish and spend-happy, and various other folks want to take over the throne:

* Eddard (Ned) Stark is the ruler of Winterfell,, an area on the north end of the country. He used to be buddies with the king back in the day, and would have been his brother-in-law had the Targaryen prince not kidnapped and raped his fiancee. Robert's still very unhappy the sister died, and is in a loveless (hoo boy) marriage with Cersei Lannister instead. After his second-in-command Jon Arryn died under ah, mysterious circumstances, Robert rides to Winterfell personally to offer Ned a job he can't refuse, even if he wants to. As the Hand of the King, Ned's supposed to be Robert's top adviser...but Robert doesn't really like to listen too much any more. And Ned starts investigating the same thing that Jon Arryn was....that got him killed. When he figures it out, things go incredibly poorly. Ned is a great case of how "evil will always triumph because good is dumb." Okay, Ned's not dumb, but he's like, the only good guy in a sea of sharks and he's the only one concerned about honor....which super bites him in the ass.

* While the royal court was visiting Winterfell, Ned's middle son Bran was climbing a wall and saw something he shouldn't have seen....which led to him getting chucked out a window. After someone sends someone in with a knife to finish the job, his mom Catelyn finds out it was done with Tyrion Lannister's knife, and when she runs into him at an inn, abducts him. Too bad Tyrion's the one nice Lannister in the bunch--he even recently visited Bran to give him a design for a custom saddle. Tyrion is a dwarf from a highborn family, and while most of his family hates him (and vice versa) and he spends most of his time whoring it up, he's one of the nicest people in the book--all things considered. He tells it like it is, which is awesome. But getting taken prisoner for something he never did leads to much drama and battles and deaths, of course. Oldest-born son Robb needs to take over and grow up in a hurry.

* Ned made the mistake of bringing his daughters to court. Sansa, who's engaged to Prince Joffrey, is all about the romance and swooning and drama and being a queen someday and wearing those rose-colored goggles. Poor Sansa, that isn't gonna go well for her. Her little sister Arya, who's taken up swordfighting, will probably do better in life since she's tough for a little kid. You go,  Arya.  Ned has one bastard son, Jon Snow, who he raised at home even though his wife hated the kid. Jon joins the Night Watch, which guards The Wall against the weird evil magical creatures that lived outside it. There haven't really been any creatures seen for years, but it looks like they're coming back. Jon is disappointed in some aspects of the Watch, but eventually learns to fit it and make friends.

* The last of the Targaryens, Visnerys and Daenerys, are hiding out on the continent next door. Visnerys is a snot-nosed arsehole determined to take back the throne, and his idea of doing that is to get an army. There's roaming packs of Dothraki warriors---kind of the "noble savages" of the area, I guess-- and he arranged to marry off his 13-year-old sister to the ruler. While this is...rather disturbing considering she's 13 and has to have sex with a guy that she can't even have a conversation with--I was surprised at how Kkal Drogo actually tried to take some pains to make it not so bad for her. And their relationship actually...goes well, and Daenerys really gets into being the khaleesi (queen) of the Dothraki, and gets pregnant. Meanwhile, her brother keeps being a dick and finally gets what he deserves about it. However, things end....not so well for Daenerys, but she manages to do something nobody's done in a long-ass time.

I think that mostly covers it....anyway, long story short, the royal family blows the hell up (metaphorically) and everyone's suddenly scrambling to find out who rules who and how much power they can wield. Not to mention who they can't trust and who's going to bite them in the ass...or just get them killed.

Look, I know it's all going to end in tears. This is probably Whedon level of deaths here. I can't help but expect that under the circumstances of the bitching I've heard for however many years, I will eventually dislike this series. But so far it hasn't been that rapey (other than the Dothraki....sigh, yeah...), and the characters are pretty fascinating, and the ones you get to know are good to hang out with, even if you don't necessarily think they are doing the right thing or that they are kind of acting blindly about things. Yeah, Sansa's rose-colored glasses naivete will get to you, but you understand why it's happening. And I enjoyed seeing Daenerys flourish despite being thrown into circumstances she wouldn't have chosen. There's a fair chunk of people coming into their own, which is always good. In short, it's medieval-ish fantasy-ish soap opera and I am happily down with that shit. On to book two! And the rest of season one on DVD!

Four stars.

Singer From The Sea

By Sheri S. Tepper.

 

Every time I have read a book by this author, I keep thinking, "I shouldn't read books by her, they are just....hard to take on some level." And yet, here I am, forgetting about this and reading it while cat-sitting. Because some of it's good, but....it's also hard to take.

 

Here's the overall story: Earth has been used up and abandoned, people have moved on to other planets. However, each planet has its own overall world-soul sort of thing, and once you do something stupid like, say, kill off all of your wildlife, the soul of the planet dies/up and leaves. After that, your planet and its remaining residents are gonna be slowly circling the drain. This is already happening on a few settled planets, such as Ares, which is dominated by jocks who like to "do" and killed off ALL of their native wildlife a mere 700 years into settlement. Now people are just like, losing the will to live and kind of fading away there.

 

Our story takes place on Haven, a mostly oceanic world that's nearing destruction on its own. It consists of two islands, Haven and Mahahm. Island-Haven has a society based on nobility and titles and Women Being In Their Proper Place. On Haven, the common women can do as they like, but those to the manor born have to live by covenantal standards of womenhood. They basically are supposed to be brainless and pretty until they're married off. The one notable thing is that noble women are allowed to "enjoy their youth" and not get married until they're around 30....because very soon after that, they're gonna be dead. Because SOMEHOW young nursing mothers (note that nursing babies is part of those covenantal rules, so no skipping that one) tend to die young. Of "batfly fever," frequently, whatever that is. They have a drug called P'naki that you can take to prevent batfly bites...but of COURSE you can't give it to nursing mothers!

 

Not at all coincidentally, the population of Haven is declining, especially in the "fertile young women" area. Also, there are tons and tons of old men that are old enough that people can't remember how damn old they are--and when you sneak around doing research, some of them are 100+ years old while still appearing to be in their 60's. These guys tend to go through wives like toilet paper. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Naturally, this seems kinda...fishy.

 

Our heroine is a young woman named Genevieve, who had a little different (i.e. secret) upbringing from her mother before her mother finally died. She knows some weird secrets, that some things run in her illustrious genealogy, and she's a bit psychic and has visions of things. When Haven's prince gets interested in her, her jerkass military bigwig father sends for her to leave school and to join him at the palace, in hopes of an alliance. Genevieve is rightfully creeped out by Yugh Delanor--hm, how many dead wives does he have again?-- and also falls in love with her father's equerry, Aufors Leys. This is not a whoppingly sketched in romance, but you get the drift and he seems like a genuinely nice and deserving fellow.

After the prince indicates that he's going to propose--and when he officially does, Genevieve will NOT be allowed to say no or not marry him--she runs for it with the help of Duchess Alicia, a lovely older woman and a rarity on Haven. Alicia is in the know about how all the young women die here--she eloped with a commoner to avoid that fate, but her kids haven't been so lucky. Genevieve helped Alicia's daughter to get away, and Aufors ends up being enlisted in helping both women. But then Genevieve gets a message that she has to go with the prince--that someone of her lineage is the only one who can solve this planetary problem. Genevieve gets a little ba-donk-a-donk on with Aufors before returning to the prince....which of course gets her pregnant. But somehow the prince isn't terribly bothered--as long as Aufors and Genevieve accompany him to the other island, Mahahm, for a trip to get more P'naki. And then....things get even weirder, and I should probably leave it at "below the spoiler cut" talk there. Though in this case, I don't really feel like talking about major spoiling (shocker, eh?).

There's things both good and disturbing about this novel. On the good side, Genevieve is a good egg, and I loved Duchess Alicia. Aufors is a decent fellow, as are three other men who help out with The Big Problem along the way. And much as I would normally be irritated by a guy who speaks in rhymes--one character took up doing this when he was really bored but drops it as the plot goes on-- it didn't bother me too much and he was one of the few good guys in the end. I was fascinated enough to keep on reading this book, despite the overall feelings of annoyance and being creeped out and incredibly dark outlook on men. Eventually things improve, thank gawd. The explanations as to why this stuff is happening are pretty good, especially the more scientific stuff (eventually). While Genevieve's special powers are a little odd, they work in the plot and eventually pay off to stop the madness.

On the...problematic side.... there's a long list.

(a) Boy, is this novel disturbing as fuck. Except for the four men I mentioned and Genevieve's baby boy, every other character with a penis in the book seems to be a complete and utter vile asshole. All of the evil old nobles are creeps, and Genevieve's dad the Marshal is an even bigger irritant. The man has zero fondness for her, and at one point yells at her that she shouldn't be concerned about his safety or hers. He can't wait to sell her to the nearest bidder. He's also a bull in a china shop about everything that's not on a battlefield, and many a bad man is flabbergasted at his cluelessness/loose lips sink ships kind of remarks. Good god, what a waste of space. Nobody gives a shit that they are slaughtering off pretty much every female they can get their hands on or thinks this is a problem--heck, even babies are frequently expendable if there's already a male heir or two. Nobody cares about what'll happen if they go extinct from lack of women or anything, at all.

And it's even WORSE once we get to the other island continent, where there's a caste system and all women are considered bad/evil/dirty to the point where women are literally not allowed to speak to men at all or in the same language. WHAT THE FUCK?! (Not to mention, how are babies being born and surviving and being raised to adulthood if women are such dirty whores that you can't even speak to them?) And then there's the Aresians, who also don't give a fuck. It is truly a creepy, dark, godawful worldview when 95% of the men in the world just want all women to die die die. I think I have a dark and cynical worldview of things and how a good chunk of men inexplicably hate women, but this goes....really, really far with that. It's utterly creepy. Even I am like, geez, I don't think almost every dude on the planet would be willing to murder every young woman he can for extra life. I know the point of setting up this horrible world is so that Genevieve and others can thwart it, but...it's really hard to take reading about, especially after they all arrive on Mahahm. I was hoping that the world of Haven would just die already, or that we could just ship all women off the planet, because YIKES. I don't care about saving this POS world.  I gather Sheri S. Tepper does this kind of thing a lot:

I wasn't real thrilled with Genevieve getting rescued by this random bad guy, who then ties her up and acts all creepy, either. Coulda been just fine without that scene, thanks. At least that wasn't longer than a chapter-ish or so.

(b) And the whole "open secret" of the young women of Haven dying in hordes thing...well, it's SUCH an open secret. Like, to the point where you know damn well early on and for a long time all but the exact details of how it's happening. You really just want the author to SPIT IT THE HELL OUT already in the story, but she drags out that revelation for about as long as she possibly can. To be fair, how it came about is interesting/ties in with the plot, but this is such an open secret that it's kind of ridiculous to take so long to explain.

(c) And one more thing while we're at it: I hate it when a book begins with some Action Scene that actually takes place 3/4 of the way into the book so we can start out dramatically, then backpedals to the actual, less action-y, book start. Hate this, hate this, hate this. In this case, it flat out spoiled plot details that I think would have worked better to have been told in their good time when they actually occurred in the book chronology. This is actually even worse when the author is randomly introducing made-up words that nobody understands, like "malghaste" and "Mahahm-qum" because they haven't really been introduced in any kind of context yet. Oh, and having this happen "in a psychic dream" is no excuse either.

Overall, I'm going to give it three stars. It's not badly written, per se, and there's a few good eggs here and there. But man, this is not a world I want to visit...or care about really....and the incredibly dark view of men and humanity gave me the utter creeps. I'm a pessimist and a feminist and even I am thinking, "good god, they're not all THAT BAD."

Second Sight: An Intuitive Psychiatrist Tells Her Extraordinary Story and Shows You How To Tap Your Inner Wisdom

By Judith Orloff, M.D.

I've always liked Judith Orloff's writing, and her life story is an intriguing one. As a teenager, young Judi was a girl who didn't like school, bailed on going to college before she even started, and was clearly a hippie party girl...but with a deep dark secret: she had psychic predictions and intuitions and picked up on people's pain and other issues. However, her parents were big shot doctors and this kind of thing wasn't exactly something her relatives--especially her mother-- were comfortable acknowledging most of the time, much less being okay with. It pained the hell out of her--until a near-death experience shocked the crap out of Judi.

Her parents make her see a therapist--who Judith connects with, and he helps her to acknowledge that yes, weird psychic stuff happens. Her therapist suggests that Judith meet Dr. Thelma Moss, a psychologist/researcher at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, which studied paranormal phenomena. Judith eventually volunteers in the lab for awhile and becomes more comfortable with her abilities, especially when hanging out with other psychic types.

A few years into this, Judith wakes up from a psychic dream (she has them a lot) telling her that she needs to go to medical school and become a psychiatrist, because having the M.D. will give her credibility to continue her intuitive work. This may not sound like a shocker to you, as Judith comes from a LONG LINE of doctors...but for a girl who's spent the last few years not going to school and partying, it was a shock! But Judith takes to going back to school and makes her way through med school...which throws her off psychically big time, in between the stress of school and working in psych wards with schizophrenic people who claim to be having visions....but not the good kind. Being told that taking drugs to make the visions GO AWAY screws with her head again, and for several years Judith is all screwed up on this topic again.

Then Judith is shocked into worrying about her psychicness again when she has an intuition about a patient of hers that's about to kill herself. Judith doesn't act on the information, and the patient ends up in a coma. (She eventually recovers.) Judith then realizes that she needs to rework her intuition into her day job again so that she can help clients (and save lives) better, and starts taking up training. While she doesn't say much about the spiritual instructor she's stuck with, she does comment on a few others she met, and one terrible, terrible "shaman" who basically told her she was going to die. (She didn't, and told him off.) Oddly enough, she found Uri Geller credible, though kind of a showboat. Especially when her house key being in proximity to one of his bent cutlery items made the key bend too....

Judith is honest about how she figured out how to use her intuition in her work. She connects with people that she gets psychic feelings about, and talks a bit about how to get intuitions of your own. (Though I think she overemphasizes dreams and visions over any other kind of psychic way of getting messages--I suspect she only picks information up in that way herself, and that's her focus on it.) I liked how she pointed out that her most significant relationships had an element of deja vu to them, and any time someone told her to "give him a chance," it never freaking worked. I HEAR YA, SISTER.

Eventually Judith's mother becomes ill and finally confesses to her that psychic powers do run in the female gene pool--Judith's grandmother was big on the psychic powers, but her mother seemed to have found it all rather embarrassing and wanted to discourage it in Judith. Happily, they do resolve their differences on this topic before her mother finally dies.

I don't know if you buy into this sort of thing or not. I suspect if you haven't experienced this kind of weirdness on your own (or did but are in whopping denial about it), the answer is no and you think I'm a crackpot for even reviewing this book. Oh well, then I guess I'm a crackpot, because the weird shit has happened to me as well--though most of mine has been pretty different compared to the author's. At any rate, that's why I read it, because I like to read books on the science of such things and how they operate. I do find the author to be very credible and sensible on this topic, plus she writes well. So, four stars from me.

The Bill From My Father

By Bernard Cooper.

Months ago my friends and I saw David Sedaris live, and this was one of the books that he recommended reading (and indeed, had on sale along with his). One of my friends picked it up and now I'm finally borrowing it. I wasn't sure if it was a must-buy for me and in the end, I think I'm good with borrowing, if you get my drift. I can totally see why Sedaris loved it, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm all for the nonfiction memoirs of weird people, but sometimes, well, there's only so much you can do with the person you're writing about.

In this case, Bernard Cooper teaches writing and has a few books written already (one of them award-winning), and his publisher offered him a book contract to write about his weird dad. So he does. Bernard is the youngest (by a lot) of four sons, and the other three sons died young, along with their mom. Now it's just Bernard and his dad, Edward, left over (plus Bernard's life partner Brian and Edward's short-term second wife and later, his nurse/girlfriend Betty). It's an awkward relationship on a good day, because Edward is one of those shark-y LA lawyers. We hear a few stories about his crazy cases back in the day--such as the one involving a headless live chicken and a martial dispute involving a teen girl and her poetic husband--but at this point at the start of the story, his dad's retired and living out his days wearing the same creepy uniform lounge suit all the time out of laziness. Bernard once borrows the suit to wear to a Stepford-Wives-themed party thrown by academic lesbians, which...tells you something there.

There's no denying that Edward is a character, though a character on the bad side. He's not exactly a dad who's good at giving the love to anyone. He tells his son, oh btw, I'm getting married....but never quite tells Bernard that he got a divorce. Bernard had to read about The Incident in the newspaper...yes, there was an incident. Dad's difficult, he refuses to pay his bills, he stops talking to Bernard for long periods of time, and Bernard is just befuddledy trying to figure out how to handled the dude. His dad's one moment of heroic parentdom is flying out to New York to see his kid get an award (and to be fair, he's okay enough with his last son being gay as well). We find out later in the book that his dad actually billed Bernard $2 million dollars for his entire upkeep as a child....though it doesn't sound like he put any effort into collecting it. And after his married brothers died, Edward sued the living shit out of his daughters-in-law, trying his best for years to make them broke. Bernard actually took some steps to make sure that if he died unexpectedly too, his SO Brian wouldn't get sued, even though they weren't married. For crying out loud in a bucket, dude.

Eventually his dad dies, and leaves a final message on his tombstone: "They finally got me." Except when the tombstone is made, somehow it comes out as "You finally got me." I....don't even know.

It's a tricky thing to write about: a person who's a genuine kook, but there isn't really anything (much) loveable about the dude. He's....just kind of a jerk, and what else can you say about that? All you can do, I guess, is write down exactly what they did and laugh with horror when you're home alone later.  I think the author did the best he could with his material, if you know what I mean. It's not bad writing on his part, but he did have complicated material to deal with here, and I think he did the best he could. In the end, I'll remember the dude, but probably not feel like rereading this.

Three stars.

Shiksa Goddess (Or, How I Spent My Forties)

By Wendy Wasserstein.

I'm a fan, obviously. Here's a book of essays she wrote during guess-what-decade. There's a lot of them, so I think I'll just highlight my favorites:

• "A Place They'd Never Seen:" The Theater: Wendy takes 8 high school kids from the NYC public school system to see plays for a year. The experience is awesome for everyone.
• "How Suite It Is:" After living in a hotel for awhile before her apartment was done, Wendy kind of misses it. This one is shorter than the ones I'll highlight here, but it has a great list of things you never have to do while living in a hotel, such as "Believe your life is stuck. It's obviously in transition or you wouldn't be in a hotel" and "Dwell on the future. There isn't enough room in the suite for the future." Okay, so the latter didn't happen for me when I was living in a motel while my place was being de-flooded, but I see what she means. And mostly concur.
• "The LUMP List:" Categorizing the Last Unattached Male Persons available to you out there.
• "Diary:" A good week in the life for Wendy in 1996.
• "How to Do a Hollywood Awards Ceremony:" Wendy's trip to the Golden Globes.
• "Don't Tell Mother," a tribute to Wendy's idolized older sister Sandra.
• "My Low-Fat Dinner with Jamie Lee Curtis" is how Wendy wasn't so hot on having Jamie Lee playing Heidi Holland...but she learned that Jamie Lee wasn't just another skinny Holllywood person who can't act.
• "Jill's Adventures in Real Estate; or, I Can Get It for You at 3.2:" I'm not that into Wendy's more satrical pieces in this book--mostly, well, they come off as kind of dated at this point--but the ridiculouslness of a real estate hunt does come across well here. Especially the punchline.
• "Designing Men:" What's with all the architects in movies lately? They seem to be the Sensitive Guy Artists now.
• "The Muse that Mewed," a tribute to Wendy's cat Ginger. The ending of it made even me, a hardboiled bitch, tear up a bit in public. And that's saying something.
• "Heidi Chronicled:" Wendy watches an all-female high school production of her play.
• "Mom Says Every Day is Mother's Day:" I loved this quote: "If every day is Mother's Day, she merits a full 100 percent daily. Frankly, sometimes I would have rather gone to Saks for a nightgown."
• "The State of the Arts:" Back when Wendy grew up, theater was affordable. Not so much these days (see essay mentioned above). I was also amused at someone telling her that "Arthur Murray never needed a grant to write a play." After the dude realizes he meant Arthur Miller, Wendy points out that he had a grant--the WPA. Hah.
• "Directing 101: George Abbott on What Works:" Self-explanatory, I guess!
• "Theater Problems? Call Dr. Chekhov:" Wendy's tribute to the playwright.
• "How I Spent My Forties:" Wendy's fertility treatments and her sister's slow death. Fun forties, eh?
• " Days of Awe: The Birth of Lucy Jane:" Wendy's secret pregnancy and premature birth of her daughter.

If you're a fan of Wendy, especially when she's in fun conversational mode or going deeper, you'll like this. And miss her. Four stars.

Indexing, Episode 1: Attractive Narcolepsy

By Seanan McGuire.

"We fight fairy tales for a living. We're the definition of 'people who go among mad people.'"

I miss reading The Human Division. So I am happy to announce that another favorite author of mine has her own serial coming out every 2 weeks now. If you buy it, it's a cheap buy for the ENTIRE book, and your previous Kindle story will upload with the new chapter when it's up. So, yay!

I'm going to review each episode/chapter individually in the way I did the Human Division, so folks can follow along on the fun. Yes, these reviews will be relatively spoilery FOR EACH CHAPTER, so keep that in mind when reading.

Anyway: this series features the ATI Management Bureau, whose motto is "defending happily ever after."

"Fairy tales want to have happy endings, and that's fine--for fairy tales--but they do a lot of damage to the people around them in the process, the ones whose only crime was standing in the path of an onrushing story. We call those "memetic incursions," and it's our job to stop them before they can property get started."

If your life circumstances start mirroring a fairy tale--you fall asleep for a long time, you're an orphan, you've got a stepfamily, you're super good at music...well, the world may start rearranging itself to put you into a fairy tale. And this happens enough that people are indexed into what archetype they fall into--the Aarne-Thompson Index. It sounds like many agents of the ATI are folks who somehow managed to not go down that path. But once some folks start living out the stories, there's no stopping the story on its own.

Our narrator, Henrietta Marchen, was the product of a Sleeping Beauty (#410) who was raped by her doctor. Henrietta and her twin brother, now orphans, were about to become Snow White (#709) and Rose Red before the ATI stepped in. Halfway arrested, Henry has the dead-white skin (and 200 SPF sunscreen requirement), blue eyes, red lips, flowers growing in her hallway and bluebirds killing themselves trying to get into her place....but it's at least stopped there. Her sensitivity to stories comes from being an adjunct to her mother's rather than being the star...so far.

She works with Sloane Winters, who was an averted (#511?) wicked stepsister. While Henry dresses as a MIB, Sloane goes full Goth so that she feels less like she'll slip back into her own story. Due to her circumstances, Sloane is the best at spotting a story forming, and the most uneasy about her job. Unfortunately for her, her special sensitivity to spotting memetic incursions means that Henry can't let her transfer out. There's also Andy, the guy who changes people's minds, and Jeff, who's "fully actualized into his story" (whatever that means?) and the resident archivist. I'm not sure what's up with them as yet.

In this case, a suspected 709--has the looks and fondness for woodland animals--starts feeling ill and drags herself to the hospital. But when Sloane notes there's no 511 in the area...this story turns into a 410. Only in the modern era, that boils down to a new strain of sleeping sickness combined with the H1N1 flu that's gonna start spreading. Of course there's no vaccine for this new disease and anitbiotics won't work and it spreads through the air...what do you do?

Well, once a disease is involved...."it falls under the AT Index for 'vermin,' and if the problem is vermin, we can resolve the story with another story." Time to find a 280....a piper/new recruit named Demi Santos.

Will this problem be resolved? Will Demi survive this new knowledge/sudden actualization? Will Sloane stop being angry at Henry for requiring her to activate a girl who could have ducked the narrative?

I guess we'll see.

I will admit that this was a little harder for me to get into than other books of this author's. It took me awhile to get where it was going. And Henry....well, in all honesty, she's a little scary. But with good reason, I think. Ditto Sloane. I'm not sure how I feel about these people yet, I think I'm still feeling out things. I'm going to give it three and a half stars, mostly because I think I'm just figuring out how I feel as yet. It made more sense on the reread while I was writing this review, though, and the overall concept is QUITE promising/terrifying....as fairy tales are. So yeah, I look forward to episode 2 and seeing where this is going.

Oh, updated to add that this website has a long excerpt of #1, so you can figure out if you want a taste of this or not.

Too Many Curses

By A. Lee Martinez.

Nessy is a kobold housekeeper (er, castlekeeper) for the evil wizard Margle the Horrendous. She does the cleaning, the cooking, and the feeding of the various magical creatures lurking around the castle. Margle likes to turn his enemies (or anyone who pissed him off, really) into some random weird animal/spirit/thing/god knows what, so there's tons and tons of castle residents to talk to or feed body parts to, whichever they prefer. Since a good chunk of them aren't evil, that gives Nessy some folks to chat with.

Nessy is a resolutely practical woman who is weird enough to not mind--perhaps even prefer?--working for evil wizards rather than living with the other kobolds. She fakes being properly afraid of Margle when he's around, but overall isn't too fazed by him or her inevitable sudden violent death at his hands (she assumes, reasonably). Here's her feelings on her employer:

"Margle was an exceptionally generous master, meaning that he was generally too busy to bother yelling at her, and when he did, he usually threw things not dangerously hard or sharp and missed more often than not."

Anyhoo, when Margle comes home one night planning to sacrifice her to the nurgax seed he's brought home, she's mildly relieved to get her inevitable awful death over with in a quick manner. You see, nurgaxes upon hatching eat the first living creature they see, and then imprint on the second living creature it sees, for life. Margle wants himself a rare, exotic pet...However, when hero-turned-fruit bat Sir Thedius hits his limit and attacks Margle at that moment, he slips, the seed breaks, Nessy hides, and Margle is eaten....and then the nurgax loves Nessy forever instead.

I haven't mentioned yet that a nurgax is a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater (though really, he just eats the one person). THAT'S ADORABLE!

That is, of course, when things get weirder than usual. Nessy's waiting for all the other wizards to somehow magically know about Margle's death and start running in to take his shit--but the only arrival is one very strange/nigh unkillable/surprisingly smooth Tiama the Scarred, who claims to have been invited. This seems unlikely for Margle. The Door At The End Of The Hall is roaming around the castle when it shouldn't be, wanting Nessy to open it(?). A hellhound shows up in the castle, trying to eat all of the dead creatures roaming around--forcing Nessy to make a deal with the firefly demon in the Purple Room to find out how to deal with it (very good scene there). Insane skull Decapitated Dan starts making creepy prophecies. Some kind of Gorgon Mist is showing up to turn people into stone. Eventually Nessy comes to the conclusion that Margle set up spells after his death to take out the entire castle and its inhabitants--which seems kind of odd if he also set up a resurrection spell for himself...

Nessy's got a lot of allies, a little self-taught magical training out of Margle's library, and tons of practicality--and she's going to need all of that to sort this mess out.

I love uber-practical heroines, so I was down with Nessy. I'm still not sure why working for evil wizards appeals to her exactly (other than they don't seem to faze her very much--good for her in the job, but I do wonder why she got into it as an occupation), but she's got a knack for it. She has enough practicality to not super care if she gets killed, and while she'll try to save her cursed castle friends if she can, she knows that may not be possible.

I did kind of feel like there was a "cast of thousands" going on in this one, as new folks are being introduced every few chapters or so. And while a lot of them were interesting--I rather liked Olivia the owl and her boyfriend, Morton the mouse in particular--it did seem like it was hard to juggle the number of random transformed folks in the castle. There's a lot to keep track of and a lot of one scene wonders. I understand that plotwise there should be a lot of transformed folks in the castle that Nessy cares for, but I kind of felt like the "main cast" needed to be kept down a bit and to just feature a few people more prominently than trying to rotate around giving secondary characters more time.

I think the idea that Margle had a self-destruct-ish thing going on after his death is a good plot device, and overall I enjoyed Nessy's trying to figure out how to solve the problem. I'll admit that you expect something to be done about the "too many curses" in the title (uh, not so much), but hey, this author likes the unexpected. I know he doesn't do sequels, but .... I do think this book in particular would have cool sequel potential, whether or not anyone's curse gets broken for good or not.

Overall, I'm going to give it four stars. It's a fun read.

Bad Prince Charlie

By John Moore.

I was intending to give this one a better review right off the bat. I love snarky writing, I love twisted fairy tales, and this one's jokes were right up my alley. In fact, the man is ballsy enough to put footnote jokes from his own (authorial) POV snarking that since Terry Pratchett and other famous authors use footnotes, so shall he! (He ends up mostly forgetting about using footnotes, mind you, as the plot goes on.) I was pretty much laughing right off the bat. And indeed, the jokes are pretty good going in this one throughout. Except....then the plot gets kinda weird and shoddy/halfassed/confusing and then I wasn't so delighted.

The plot is kinda Hamlet: "Bad" Prince Charlie is the illegitimate (and presumably only) son of the king of Damask, who has just died from having poison poured in his ear and is now haunting the castle. However, there's no wife involved in this one, as the king seems to not have bothered with doing that. Instead, it's his two younger brothers who killed him and who are now scheming to....well, get rid of the kingdom of Damask altogether and have it taken over by rival nation Noile. Instead of having a more useful person take the throne--or themselves--they ask Prince Charlie, who's currently on summer break from college and his shameful engineering major. After all, he's already got the nickname. Why not put him in as prince regent, have him piss off the populace enough to inspire a rebellion, and then have him vamoose when the neighboring realm steps in?

Charlie's totally fine with that--he doesn't like Damask at all and it seems that the entire royal family seems to find it rather useless--but his "bad" reputation apparently came from him eating a girl's dessert. So despite his new all-black wardrobe, he's not exactly the evil chancellor sort. Heck, he only agrees to do the job because his crush, the hot Lady Catherine Durace, is involved in the scheme. He throws her in jail--in the cushy tower end of the jail--and is supposed to be pretending to ravish her against her will. Charlie would rather ravish her with her consent, but...well, who knows there, she's kind of a flirt there. As part of his plan to rile up the populace, he starts chucking the usual noble scheming criminals into the hard part of the jail and annoying their blueblood sons and generally cleaning up this one-horse town and doing whatever the Faithful Family Retainer tells him not to do. I actually kind of admired him doing that level of cleanup and actually giving a shit if it rained in the country or not.

A requirement of kingdom (or prince regent-dom) is that the king has to visit the Cult of Malta, where the High (as in stoned for professional reasons) Priestess gives oracular advice. Or perhaps not. On the one hand, the current HP, Xiao, talks a really good game AND does some freaking awesome predictions involving clay ducks that somehow have pieces of paper in them saying what Charlie just said and answering his questions. On the other hand....there is some hinky shit going on. Plus Xiao seems to have a crush on Charlie--or at least she wants to marry a prince when her term is up so she won't have to get shipped back home to her imitation-land-of-China where being an HP means nothing. It's especially odd that all HP's are teenage girls starting at age 16 and are forcibly retired at 18--what's that about?

And....things get weird. Charlie finds out from his dead ghost dad that the court wizard--who's disappeared-- created a Weapon of Magical Destruction, and god only knows where that is. Catherine Durace turns out to be QUITE THE LITTLE MANIPULATOR, like damn, girl. And...things get weird. And confusing. And I felt like I was missing some plot jumps here and there.

There's also some freaking jarring moments in the book that chucked me out of the story entirely when I was all, "WTF?" Like the scene where Charlie goes up to Catherine's tower prison for the first time to visit her--he's been told she's totally in on the scheme and faking that she's being traumatized by Charlie-- but when he goes into her room and they're alone, she is seriously acting petrified for her life. Um, what?! Isn't she aware that I'm not going to rape her? Charlie asks his uncles about this and they're all, "Oh, she's just Method acting" about it, but why she acts like this in this scene--and not in scenes to come later, where she's clearly in on things and putting on a show for another audience--I still don't know.

Another awkward/creepy/weird scene  was when Charlie is getting annoyed at Xiao for not just freaking telling him straight out what's going to happen--despite knowing what's going to happen, the Cult of Malta deliberately vagues things the shit up "to give them choices"--and randomly spanks her ass. What? And then when she's finally about to answer his question about whether or not Catherine is interested in him back, he suddenly out of nowhere asks instead if it's going to rain this summer. What now? Where'd that U-turn come from? It threw me the hell out of the story--both with Charlie's jerky behavior and just the change of tone in general from a fun read--and I never quite got back.

And while things stayed relatively okay for awhile, as the story went on, things just got strange and confusing and I started wondering why the hell the story was suddenly going in this-or-that of a direction. In the end...the plot was not to my taste. It certainly has twists and turns you don't expect, yes, but I can't say that I was really into the story in the end. Which is a shame. Of course, I'm not sure if I was supposed to be into the story either or if it's just there for the jokes.

But...while I'm at it, I'll mention some of the good jokes and good moments, and leave it to you as to whether or not this kind of thing makes the book a winner for you (assuming you can find it anywhere to buy, anyway--I found it randomly in town).

• Catherine's opening scene in which she and her companion are set upon by highwaymen with colorful names, and Charlie comes along. This made me think it was going to be a better book than it was.
• Coffee shops as a plague sweeping the nations.
• I loved the story of Durk's Beer, how one fellow realized that people don't actually LIKE the taste of beer, so he waters it down and now everyone loves it. "His beer was beautiful to look at, modestly alcoholic, and virtually tasteless. Soon Durk's Beer was the number one beer in the Damask. And that was a source of unending irritation to his grandson, Tommy Durk. Tommy was a beer aficionado." Tommy keeps trying to talk people into micro craft beer...but all they want is Durk's.
• "My dear uncles, you have my admiration. Selling out your country for a mess of pottage, double-crossing your highborn friends, betraying the trust of the people--it's the kind of underhanded scheme that makes me proud to be a member of your family, however tenuously."
• The running gag about how the wizard accidentally banished chickens from Damask instead of snakes. Then by the time he figured out snakes, he had to bring them back to kill the vermin.
• The running gag about Oratorio's fratboy career at college.
• "We know what college students are like. We've all heard stories about the parties and the scandalous behavior of coeds. You're a good-looking young man of independent means. I'm sure you had your share of flings."
  "Of course not," snapped Charlie. "I was an engineering major."
  There was a long period of embarrassed silence: "I....I'm sorry, Charlie," said Gregory finally. "I shouldn't have said anything. I didn't know."
• Charlie absolutely not giving a shit about his father's murder and wanting to send his uncles a thank-you note and a bottle of wine instead of avenging.
• Charlie flat-out saying that he has no honor and will not duel, but he'll fight....
• The aforementioned predictions involving clay ducks. Great scene. "No, you won't be having lunch. Just some wine and a cheese plate."
• Divination with barbecued spareribs instead of entrails because none are around right now. (Note: after reading this book, I asked a witch of my acquaintance how the hell anyone divined anything with entrails. She said something about nodules in the body and how it was more about predicting what was happening with the land because the animal lived off the land...I don't know, really.)
• The explanation of how women's parts used to be played by boys, and how nowadays everyone just wants to see women wearing pantaloons on stage instead. "There's a new style of play being developed, in which the male leads are in drag. I'm told that women find them hilarious."
• "Martin and Marianne were young lovers from rival, feuding families. Overcoming great obstacles, they managed to marry and consummate their love in the first two acts. The rest of the play was then taken up by arguments over which set of in-laws they were going to visit for the holidays."

For humor alone, I'd give it three stars. For plot, I'd give it 2.5 stars. Overall review...I'm going to say 2.5 stars, because after awhile the "meh" plot overwhelms the funny.

13 Little Blue Envelopes

By Maureen Johnson.

I've been trying to read this book in e-book for...months now, I guess? I keep skipping out of it to go read more interesting e-books, which is saying something. I finally bit the bullet and finished this one while waiting around at the airport. It was...okay, I guess...but I think overall this is just kinda Not My Thing, but may be someone else's thing. So keep that in mind when you read the review.

Sentences ending in an asterisk (*) are referring to things that I will discuss below the spoiler cut.

The plot: 17-year-old Ginny Blackstone had a beloved Aunt Peg. Aunt Peg was a wild child artist who roamed the world and didn't settle down and just did what the heck she felt like. (She is repeatedly referred to as "your mad aunt" or "Your Runaway Aunt" throughout the book.) However, after another months-long disappearance, Aunt Peg eventually died of cancer three months ago. Ginny gets the title envelopes in the mail posthumously from her aunt, who is sending her on a quest across Europe. Her funds will be supplied (er, until she runs out of money, anyway), and she can't bring more than a backpack and NO electronics or Internet allowed. (Not that Aunt Peg can check this from beyond the grave, mind you.) Ginny is to open the envelopes at certain times and places when prompted and do what the letters say. Amazingly, Ginny's parents don't apparently object to this.

So Ginny bounces around Europe, following the instructions. The instructions are along the lines of "Give this large chunk of money to an artist you'd like to patronize" and "Go stay with this random friend of mine in Amsterdam." Unfortunately for Ginny, these things don't always go smoothly. I know Aunt Peg flew by the seat of her pants in life and yet somehow would miraculously find someone to crash with, but what with the failure to communicate travel plans from beyond the grave and all, it means that at one point Ginny is instructed to stay with someone who no longer lives there. Which leads her to have to stay in the world's skeeziest hostel (eeeeeesh!), followed by getting temporarily adopted by a super-perky set of parents.* To quote from the Amazon review: "The reason Ginny is sent to meet certain people is not always clear; sometimes she (and readers) wonder about the point of the exercise." Yeah, that's true.

The reason Ginny is sent to meet certain people is not always clear; sometimes she (and readers) wonder about the point of the exercise.There is also, of course, a boy. Because there has to be a boy. The boy in this case is Keith, the English creator of "Starbucks: The Musical" that Ginny decides to patronize (as an artist), with awkward results. I'll be honest with you, I didn't really see the charms of Keith. He wasn't terribly charming or interesting to me, AND even from the beginning he came off to me as the sort of dude who will flake out on you at any minute, even if he lived in the same country as you. Feh, I didn't really give a shit about Keith.

Eventually, there are some twists to the story. Some of which I guess made sense, but others I found frustrating. You figure out as you go on that Peg is trying to have Ginny retrace a pilgrimage(?) Peg herself made in the past--but why? There's one surprise reveal that was kind of nice, but in retrospect, I thought it was weird that this was never clarified earlier.** Another one just kind of drove me crazy and from what I've heard, sounded like it was more for sequel bait than anything else*** Maybe other people are okay with this, maybe it's considered "artsy" or meaningful, I don't know. But it was annoying to me, and I just can't say that I was into it as a writing choice.

Overall, it's okay. The characters are mostly on the okay/bland/barely sketched in (that Knud guy? Huh?) side. Ginny is okay, but doesn't exactly stand out as a memorable personality. The plot itself is kind of weird and contrived, and like I said, has some failures here and there built into it. Possibly about the only thing that really stood out to me is Posthumous Aunt Peg, who sparkles on the page, even through a few short letters. She has more personality and spunk and creativity and daring than well, everyone else in the book--though she's clearly trying to pass that on to Ginny as best she can from beyond the grave. I guess Ginny is working on it.

Three stars.

The Human Division: all chapter reviews

By John Scalzi.

Previous books in this series are reviewed here.

Even though I read this book in chapters when they were being individually released--and I talked about them In Great Detail here already-- I am going to attempt to write up an overall review for folks who are reading the book in one go. As per my usual generally-observed-unless-that-makes-review-writing-awkward spoiler policy, I'm going to attempt to not talk about the latter half of the book's events so much because that seems spoilery.

What's the book about, overall? Well, after the events of The Last Colony, the Colonial Union is kind of up shit creek. Earth is pissed the hell off and has cut off the recruiting process. So not only are they up shit creek, they are like, "we estimate that our current system of running things means that we're all dead in 30 years. Probably shorter." Without a steady stream of new meat soldiers and colonists coming from Earth, the current system is unsustainable. The CU's game plan at this point in time boils down to: (a) woo Earth back, and (b) we need to start dealing with other races with diplomacy rather than warfare. Less soldier death, more negotiation. The ambassadors have become a lot more important under this game plan...

This leads us to the ambassador team that we'll be focusing on in The Human Division, led by Ambassador Abumwe. She's a difficult woman, which is probably why she's been kind of B-level in her assignments. But she's not all bad, and god knows her support team has some all-stars in it. The best of them all is techie genius Lt. Harry Wilson, originally shown in Old Man's War. Along with his best buddy/deputy ambassador Hart Schmidt, Harry is a freaking genius at figuring out what's gone wrong, and getting his people out of tight/deadly situations. This skill of Harry's turns out to be desperately needed, as the folks on the ship Clarke immediately become a target for someone who wants to mess up negotiations. Since the Clarke crew turns out to have a knack of dealing with bad situations, they get more and more responsibility as the book goes on.

This rapidly becomes a theme of the book: someone is trying to mess up negotiations. Specifically, some unknown party is trying to pick fights and make it look like the CU and the Conclave are attacking each other. Except...well, that's not the case. So who the hell wants them to be fighting?

Interspersed with the chapters featuring the men and women of the Clarke are some one-off chapters. Frequently the folks in those one-offs aren't going to be around one way or another for the rest of the series, but those chapters do reveal the machinations that are going on that the main characters will be finding out about the hard way.

There's a few flaws in the ointment--there's a lot of ah, convenient moments/coincidences/objects around that help folks to solve problems/save the day, kind of a lot. Enough to make you wonder if it's lazy writing or a conspiracy. I'm not the world's biggest fan of one-off "day in the limelight and then you get killed" stuff, a la the prologues of bad mystery novels, but I do admit that has its purposes here. A few chapters do kind of feel like side stories/bonus material rather than plot movers, though. And...this ends on a cliffhanger. I warn you now that there is a second book coming, so you won't flip the way that us serial readers did. You'll know a lot of how and what and where by the end of this book, but not so much on the who and why.

Overall, it's a very entertaining book. Scalzi does a great job with his kickass female and male characters alike. I love Harry Wilson and his inventive mind, but I also really loved some of the new introductees like Captain Coloma and Danielle Lowen. I unabashedly am shipping Harry and Danielle, even though they don't have too many opportunities for that sort of thing in between drinking, murder, and explosions. Plus they're from two different worlds, which becomes more awkward as things go on. The mystery is intriguing (if unfinished), and the setups of how these things are happening are done extraordinarily well. I didn't miss the Perry-Sagan crew a bit while reading this, either. So if you're a fan of this series, I'd pick this up.

Overall, the book gets a four star review. I'll be chomping at the bit for the next one to come out.

Now that you've read that... I'm putting all the chapter-by-chapter serial reviews into one link roundup. Except for the last chapter, all chapters are spoilery for the chapter within and previous chapters of the books AND WILL BE SPOILED as such without spoiler space or cuts. So be forewarned. I would recommend replicating the serial experience by only reading each chapter review after you've read the chapter itself, but if you're reading in one chunk, that's up to you.

Also included with the hardcover book is the story After The Coup, a prequel to the adventures of Harry Wilson, which I thought was great fun and shows what you're getting into with that guy. The coda chapter included in the hardcover is not reviewed here since it was not included with the serialization. I may find Some Other Way to read it and mention it later, and if so, I'll update this post. But probably not today, 'cause I'm busy and unlikely to hit the bookstore.

Updated, 5/30/13: Well, Tor has put the extras online for free after registering with their website. After finally having the webmaster wrangle it into submission for me, I have been able to access the new story and talk about it. Good for you, Tor!

The other story is called "Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today." After having many not-fun diplomatic meetings post-the-end, in which she's trying to make sympathetic expressions that humans can recognize, Halfe Sorvalh skips out for her favorite snack food with an ex-finance prick (his words) named Tony. Tony enjoys being the churro man with a simplified life. Afer sitting down to eat, a little girl walks over and asks if she's a monster. After Hafte explains that appearances can be deceiving and all that and she tries not to act like a monster, they start reviewing astronomy, such as the fact that Earth is a planet. The teacher sent to retrive young Hannah is all, "I swear we taught them this in school," which leads to Impromptu Guest Speaker Time!

At first, the questions are fun ones, along the lines of "Do you play basketball?", "How do you get into rooms?" and the inevitable "How do you poop?" Then the subject of war comes up...and the tone changes to something surprisingly sweet. She's a darned good diplomat. It's cute and sweet. So I declare it good.

1. The B-Team
2. Walk The Plank
3. We Only Need The Heads
4. A Voice in the Wilderness
5. Tales From The Clarke
6. The Back Channel
7. The Dog King
8. The Sound of Rebellion
9. The Observers
10. This Must Be The Place
11. A Problem of Proportion
12. The Gentle Art of Cracking Heads
13. Earth Below, Sky Above

 

Dragon Haven (Updated Review)

By Robin Hobb.

Here's the sad thing: I apparently read this book in 2010 AND DIDN'T REMEMBER WHATSOEVER THAT I HAD DONE IT. I have a good memory for this sort of thing, so it was kind of horrifying that when I went to go look up the previous book in this series, I found this review. And here I was all proud that I'd dragged my way through book 2...

You know what, I am just gonna write an updated review of this ANYWAY, with more details. And it's gonna spoiler the crap out of it. So it all goes below the spoiler cut.

Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls

By David Sedaris.

I liked this book, subtitled "Essays, Etc." It's on the more thoughtful side than the OMG CRAZY STUFF side--there's really only one "real life" essay that was that level of a shocker--but I enjoyed the thoughtful stuff as well. There are also some fictional monologues included in this one that he includes for teenagers to use in forensics competitions. "I believe these stories should be self-evident. They're the pieces in which I am a woman, a father, and a sixteen-year-old girl with a fake British accent." This is to say that these forensics monologues are scattered throughout the book at random, I suspect deliberately so so as to throw you off when suddenly you are reading Sedaris talking about a wife. So, that's to give you a word of warning.

(Disclaimer: I attended a reading by Sedaris previewing this book in the fall, and was very entertained. Though I am deeply, DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED that the essay he wrote about learning to shoot guns was not in this book! What the hell?!?! I want it!!!!)

Okay, on to the individual essays:

• Dentists Without Borders: Sedaris discusses getting health care in foreign countries and how well, easy it is compared to America.
• Attaboy: This is another "My Crazy Dad" story (of which there are plenty here), talking about the time his dad scared the shit out of a kid that he thought had insulted Sedaris's mother. When he finds out he had the wrong kid, he suddenly offers him ice cream.
• Think Differenter: The first monologue in the book. It's about a jerky guy who abandons families, tries to trick a blind newspaper seller by pretending he has a Canadian accent, and his obsession with portable music.
• Memory Laps: About Sedaris's swimming lessons and competitions as a kid. His dad always plugged the hell out of a rival swimmer, but once David actually wins a race, his dad continues to be a jerk about it...thus leading him to the realization that his dad is never gonna be a "Well Done, Son" guy. "Greg Sakas would have got the same treatment eventually, as would any of the other would-be sons my father pitted me against throughout my adolescence. Once they got used to the sweet taste of his approval, he'd have no choice but to snatch it away, not because of anything he did but because it is in his nature. The guy sees a spark and just can't help but stomp it out." True dat.
• A Friend in the Ghetto: This one's about going to school in North Carolina just after the school system had been desegregated. David decides that he wants to ask out a black classmate of his, since everyone keeps asking him about getting a girlfriend. But how will this go over with his Greek grandmother?
• Loggerheads: This one's about his childhood friendship with Shaun and how they liked to catch wild animals. Also turtles. Also being proto-gay and not knowing exactly what that is, but knowing that you're different. Especially when you walk into the bathroom at the wrong time.
• If I Ruled The World: Forensics monologue #2, about a teen Jesus freak.
• Easy, Tiger: Another essay on trying to learn foreign languages, or at least by using the phrase book.
• Laugh, Kookaburra: This one takes place in Australia. While visiting with a woman named Pat, she introduces David and Hugh to the concept of a metaphorical four-burner stove. One burner is family, one is friends, one is health, and another is work. If you want to be a success, you have to shut off one burner, and if you want to REALLY be successful, you need to shut off two. Deep thoughts there. Oh yeah, and there's also a kookaburra.
• Standing Still: At age 23, David and his sister Gretchen were living together and working menial jobs. One night, Gretchen gets grabbed by a strange black man that she can't really identify to police. That doesn't stop their dad from insisting that all three of them drive around town with a baseball bat looking for the guy, though.
• Just a Quick E-mail: Forensics monologue #3, one I enjoyed. It's from the POV of a smug married bitch who stole her sister's husband and then bitches about only getting a gift certificate for pizzas for the wedding.
• A Guy Walks into a Bar Car: about the time that Sedaris met a strange guy on a train and they proceeded to get wasted. More interesting than it sounds from the description.
• Author, Author: About book tours and how Sedaris likes to hand out condoms to the kids at them. (Hey, I have never seen him do it here! And we have plenty of kids!) It's also about his ego, and not having photographs taken, and Costco.
• Obama!!!!!: This one's about the reaction of Europeans to American politics.
• Standing By: About waiting at the airport and the freaky mothafuckas you run into while you're there. There's evil amounts of snark in this one, which I enjoyed.
• I Break for Traditional Marriage: Forensics monologue #4, a twisted one in which an unhappily married man uses gay marriage as an excuse to slaughter his family. Take that as you will.
• Understanding Understanding Owls: One of my favorites in this one, it's about an in-joke between him and Hugh about a book they own called "Understanding Owls." This eventually led to Sedaris getting the idea to get Hugh a stuffed owl for Valentine's Day, whether he wants one or not. This is generally illegal in a lot of places, but not in the U.K. This leads Sedaris to discover that the taxidermist pegs him right off as the kind of guy who wants to look at pygmy skulls....Warped and fun.
• #2 to Go: I think this one is the funniest essay in the book. It's about going to China, which Sedaris did not enjoy doing because apparently people in China just expel their bodily fluids ALL OVER THE PLACE, ANYWHERE THEY WANT TO. "Last month I saw a kid shit in the produce aisle of our Chengdu Walmart." It's completely shockingly horrifying and funny with it. Also: don't eat the food.
  Two notes about this essay:
  (a) A few years ago when I heard Sedaris read this essay aloud, the people in front of me, who had paid good money to buy these tickets months in advance, walked out in a huff upon hearing it.
  (b) I have relatives who went to China pretty recently. They are obsessed with world travel and I have never heard them say anything bad about a country until I asked my uncle if this shit (har) was true about China. He said it was, and that, among many reasons, was why they didn't like it there too much. He recommends going to Vietnam or Malaysia instead, for the record.
• Health-Care Freedoms and Why I Want My Country Back: Forensics monologue #5, my favorite of the bunch. It's about a bigoted mom who has no idea her son is gay, or that he's talking her into wearing an...interesting...outfit when she goes to protest in Washington. Y'know, the Seattle, Washington. Bwahahahah!
• Now Hiring Friendly People: On a similar note to "Standing By," this one's about being annoyed at the overly chatty lady in front of him at the coffee bar.
• Rubbish: In their new home in England, Sedaris has become obsessed with picking up the trash.
• Day In, Day Out: This one's about how Sedaris took up diary-writing and has continued with it, rather obsessively, to this day.
• Mind the Gap: Forensics monologue #6, about a pretentious teenager who's so obsessed with England that he's kind of ignoring the fact that his mom died.
• A Cold Case: About the time when Sedaris had his passport stolen...with its CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT "Indefinite Leave to Remain" sticker allowing him to live in England. Without it, he can't leave the country--which hurts his line of work. And getting a replacement takes months and months....Awkward.
• The Happy Place: The infamous story about how Sedaris's dad finally talks him into getting a colonoscopy...and he loooooooooves the drugs. This is probably the other major laugh riot one in the book--and ah, especially if you hear him saying it. Comedy gold. I don't even want to hear about such things, and it's funny. Has a wickedly sadistic ending....
• Dog Days: A poem. Kinda along the lines of "88 Lines About 44 Puppies."

Overall, I was quite entertained. Four stars.

Free-Range Knitter: The Yarn Harlot Writes Again

By Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.

There's a fair chunk of books I read that I don't review on this website--which probably explains to you why a speed reader can go awhile without updating here at times.  I kind of figure that weird books I read while going down a research hole probably don't appeal to the general public doing a search on book reviews on a specific book, which is pretty much my audience. Like I just read The Black Swan, which is interesting for the parts of it I understood, but I am probably not smart enough to get the statistics of it. Reviewing stuff like this is kind of difficult. Another sort of book I don't usually review here are the "niche" sort of ones. Anything by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, who's (in her own words) "kind of a knitting philosopher" falls in that category to me. I've read a few of her books and was entertained at the time since I knit and understand most of the jokes, but I haven't actually reread any and when I lost some of them in a flood, I never got around to replacing them. The few I read were kind of fun one-offs, I guess.

This one, however, had some surprising streaks of poignancy in them that made me want to mention them here. Okay, so I figure anyone who has no interest in yarn would read this--and indeed, I'd tell you not to because you'll think all knitters are crazy. Which we are. But what the heck, I'll write a review anyway.

For those who haven't heard of "The Yarn Harlot," the author writes books on knitting, some of which are more instructional and some of which are more like musings. This copy is billed as "a sort of David Sedaris-like take on knitting" (which is why my mother got it for me as a birthday present), and...I wouldn't really argue that. Her essay books frequently discuss the following stuff, which you can find in this one as well:

• Futzing with designs, or having issues following patterns one way or another.
• How her family and friends react to her obsessive knitting.
• How complete strangers react to her obsessive knitting.
• Yarn snobbery, i.e. "pay for the GOOD yarn!"
• Socks. Dear lord, most knitters (i.e. everyone but me) are obsessed with the socks.
• Sweaters.
• Baby garments.
• How knitting doesn't get any respect from the general public.
• Things that go horribly wrong when knitting and make you crazy. Some of which are justified and some of which just are written to make the author look like she's mouth-foaming crazy, apparently. (I could have done with a little less of "Dear Designer" and the one where she harasses a yarn company for discontinuing a yarn. Hoo boy.)

In addition to those, there's a few fictional(?) (I think?) stories about people. I was amused at "Dear Nana," the story of a boy writing to say that he has "almost enough" sweaters, so could he get something else as a gift next time. There's also a story about a mom who had some traumatizing experiences in the snow as a child, ("A Knitter's Sense Of Snow") and as an adult, she tries to brave her way through riding a toboggan again. Doesn't end as you might think.

But what really stood out to me in this one was that at the start (and sometimes end) of every chapter, she writes a profile of a knitter. I really liked these, and a few of them stood out to me.

"Annabelle" is the story of a wild 4-year-old child who pretty much cannot be left alone for so long as a trip to go find Kleenex  Stephanie is babysitting this child in this essay because her oldest daughter was like this as a child--and was a perpetual stripper. "I once had three police cards show up because my novice babysitter had made the foolish mistake of going to the bathroom for a tissue. In the seventy-nine seconds it took her to blow her nose, my darling and intrepid three-year-old had dialed 911 and then hung up." In Annabelle's case, Stephanie is teaching her to knit. You'd think a small, super-active child wouldn't be into this activity, but somehow it works. Why does this work?

"It is my considered belief that the number one reason knitters knit is because they are so smart that they need knitting to make boring things interesting. Knitters are so compellingly clever that they simply can't tolerate boredom. It takes more to engage and entertain this kind of human, and they need an outlet or they get into trouble."

Words cannot express how much I totally agree with that one.

"Denny," well, I'll just quote again: "There's nothing remarkable about her--except, somehow, all of her. She was dressed as she almost always is, in an outfit that defies descripton." Stephanie met Denny in a spinning class and was weirded out by her-- "I didn't know what to do with her. She was much too much for me, and that's saying something, since I'm often accused of the same thing." Denny breaks rules right and left and does what she wants to and gets away with it, which made Stephanie resentful and uncomfortable. "I wanted to be like that, so firmly me that I didn't let anything stand in my way...."

I related. Denny sounds like fun.

"Ken" is the profile of a male knitter and how he constantly gets attention when he knits in public. Stephanie finds it rather insulting how he's treated like "a rare bird or a valuable racehorse" because he stepped out of gender roles. "They must think him as bright as bricks if they are so impressed that he's able to manage." This turns into a musing about how women have extremely low standards for men and don't even realize it. Hear, hear!

Rachel" is the story of a woman who appeared to have the perfect life, and she didn't. She became depressed, and eventually knitted her way out of that depression by making a giant damn afghan. "...I think she lost track of what it felt to move forward, to accomplish things, and to be competent, and I think that knitting two full and undeniable miles of garter stitch gave it right back to her." AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. Very inspiring.

I'm going to give it three and a half stars. This is pretty much a niche book and most folks that aren't knitters wouldn't get the jokes...but if you're into it, this is a cut above her usual work. Even if I wish she'd lay off of the essays that make her sound kinda mouth-foaming crazy at times.