Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

I Shall Wear Midnight

By Terry Pratchett.

Tiffany Aching is now 15/16-ish years old and a full blown witch of the Chalk, who's constantly busy caring for the sick and dealing with other people's problems. Including a mean father who beat the crap out of his teenage daughter and killed his grandson. (Yes, this book is pretty dark right off the bat, but it gets better.) She's also smarting a bit that Roland, the Baron's son that she was maybe a little bit romantically interested in, is now engaged to the world's wettest crier, Leticia. And Leticia's mother is a total bullying screaming horror. It's one thing to not end up with the guy once you realize you don't have that much in common, but for him to pick someone like that? Really?

Then the Baron, who Tiffany has been trying to treat the pain of (alas, she can't cure him), dies after leaving her a bunch of money, and everything goes to hell. The creepy nurse is trying to accuse Tiffany of well, everything, but especially murder. Tiffany has to fly to Ankh-Morkpork to track down Roland and tell him the news, but things get even weirder there. She makes friends with the local witch, who tells her that these are dark days for witches and people are getting really steamed at them once again.  This is due to the Cunning Man, an evil witchfinder spirit (his girlfriend was a witch and killed him when she figured out he was evil) who wakes up every so-odd years and picks a target to chase after. Tiffany's the latest one, since her smootch with Winter in Wintersmith (note: I didn't review this one here? OOPS. Must fix.)  woke him up. She gets interesting help from a long-gone-from-the-books source (surprise awesome!*) before going home and having to fight on her own turf.

This one is awesome. I will admit that I've been reluctant to read Terry Pratchett's books since he got diagnosed, in fear that they won't be as good. (Or so I've heard about Unseen Academicals.) This one, well, I sure as hell couldn't tell. It's deep stuff. It's got plenty of lively new characters (and one old one), at least one of which has a whoppingly good surprise to it.** I liked the foreshadowing and omens, and particularly enjoyed Mrs. Proust and Preston***.

Things end very well, with a bit of surprise there too. If this is, alas, the last we see of Tiffany, we know she's going to be doing very well.

Five stars.

Carnal Innocence

By Nora Roberts.

Violinist Caroline Waverly recently collapsed from exhaustion while on tour-- she also broke up with a cheating boyfriend-- and has decided to go to her grandmother's house in the small southern town of Innocence. Her nearest neighbors are the Longstreets, the richest people in town. Dwayne's a sad drunk, Josie's a cheerful slut (but she doesn't trick anyone, she's very straightforward about it), and Tucker gives off the impression of being a lazy lieabout who dates around. (Really, he's the family financial guy, but let's keep that on the down low.) The last girl he dated, Edda Lou Hatinger, was clearly on the take and wanted to marry him and his money. When Tucker figured that out, he dumped her. Etta's now decided to claim she's pregnant. Also, Etta has a thoroughly insane religious nut father, Austin, who's STILL steamed that Tucker's daddy was the one that married his mama instead of Austin.

Oh, did I mention that there's a serial killer in town that goes around killing the slutty chicks, especially ones who have dated Tucker? Naturally, the cranky-ass FBI guy that comes into town suspects him.

Caroline and Tucker get involved-- actually, the relationship is pretty cute, if it does seem to switch on a dime between "I'd never date a guy like that" to well, dating a guy like that-- and bodies keep piling up around their neck of the woods. Tucker also ends up kind of adopting Austin's youngest child, Cy, a 14-year-old who's not an ass or a doormat like the rest of his relatives and who just wants to earn some money so he can run like hell in 4 years. This gets awkward when Austin starts going around trying to kill Tucker and Caroline (note: there is one helluva memorable funeral scene...). And this being a good ol' southern boy town, naturally the lone black family in town gets blamed for it...

I don't know. It's a pleasant enough story if you can deal with Southern serial killers. Austin is a 100% creep with no ambiguity, which kind of annoyed me, but he's kept to a minimum, in a way. There is certainly a twist ending that you probably weren't expecting. The relationship between Caroline and Tucker works, and especially the scenes involving the kids. But overall, it was pleasant enough, but not exactly all that memorable to me. Three stars.

Feed

By Mira Grant.

"Every life has a watershed moment, an instant when you realize you're about to make a choice that will define everything else you ever do, and that if you choose wrong, there may not be that many things left to choose. Sometimes the wrong choice is the only one that lets you face the end with dignity, grace, and the awareness that you're doing the right thing.
I'm not sure we can recognize those moments until they've passed us. Was mine the day I decided to become a reporter? The day my brother and I logged onto a job fair and met a girl who called herself "Buffy"? The day we decided to try for the "plum assignment" of staff bloggers to the Ryman campaign?
Or was it the day we realized this might be the last thing we ever did... and decided not to care?
My name is Georgia Mason. My brother calls me George.
Welcome to my watershed."

This is, I guess, kind of a "late" review of a book that came out this year. I had to get up the nerve to read it, I guess. I like the author (a.k.a. Seanan McGuire)'s other books, so even though I am not into zombie stuff at all, I wanted to read it. But I did hear how it ended, so to some degree I had reservations as to whether or not I wanted to go through that experience. Eventually I decided, "oh, what the hell."

Wow, this is a mind-blower. (Note: stars indicate remarks that continue below the spoiler cut.)

The set-up: in 2014, the cures for the common cold AND cancer were discovered. Unfortunately, the two combined together in a human body causes zombieism (or "viral amplification"). Now every single living being over 40 pounds left on the planet is a future zombie because they're infected with the Kellis-Amberlee virus (some more than others, such as the retinal version that George has), and anything that weighs over 40 pounds will become a zombie after death, and they're infectious as hell. Say goodbye to eating red meat, socializing, the great outdoors,  trusting the news media who didn't report correctly on what was going on in 2014, and keeping your blood to yourself; say hello to lots of bleach, constant blood tests (the sheer number of blood tests that the characters take per day is staggering, I'm thinking the next time I read this book I may just try to tally them all up), security up the wazoo, and tons of fear. Twenty-SIX years later (somehow the advertising for this book is always saying 20 years, but the book takes place in 2039-40), bloggers are the new celebrities and media darlings, George Romero is considered the savior of the human race and everyone named their kids after him, and pressing the flesh on the campaign trail is uh, somewhat different than it used to be.

Our heroes, honorary twins (adopted at the same time and around the same age) Georgia and Shaun Mason, are celebrities. Their parents got famous for having their child be the first one to die from getting Kellis-Amberlee from an animal, and ever since then they don't seem to have feelings and do everything with their kids to get ratings. 22-year-old Georgia and Shaun run their own media company, After The End Times, online with a farflung crew. Georgia is a "Newsie" and does hard news. Shaun is an "Irwin", an adventure writer who likes to poke zombies with sticks. Their third partner, Buffy, is a fiction writer and tech goddess with a million secret cameras everywhere. At the start of the novel, their team gets chosen to be in the first blogger press pool of a presidential candidate, Senator Peter Ryman (R-Wisconsin). Can I just say that the Senator surprised the hell out of me? He's a sane, rational, nice Republican, to the point where I thought, "How on earth is this guy managing to have a career?" Especially since his main rival, Governor Tate, is as awful as any candidate we've got going on in 2010. I kept wondering where the catch was.*

Anyway, the campaign trail is a tricky thing to manage when there's always zombies on the road, but after the Ryman caravan gets attacked by zombies and a security failure is detected, everyone's freaked out. And it gets worse when a deadly accident at the Ryman family horse ranch (note: any business that has large animals wigs people out these days) erupts and kills several family members and employees. Shaun, Georgia, and their new employee Rick go into the ranch and find that it wasn't an accident. And despite the badness of what they've found, Georgia feels that they need to investigate anyway. And from then on, things get very, very scary. And Georgia realizes that one way or another, a lot of her people probably are going to get killed. Is she willing to give up her life for the truth? Well... that's what this is about, and it's chilling and emotional. Like George, I'm not a crier, but the last several chapters had me crying through them. Don't read 'em in public.**

The details in this world are pretty fascinating. Some folks might find it too exposition-y, but I think it's required given how much the world has changed. Some things are dirt common to our characters, like all of the blood tests, but we do need to know how people got there. I do wonder about some things (Do funeral parlors still exist? Do fictional shows and movies exist if people are afraid to leave their homes to work? Dear god, IMAGINE AIRPORT SECURITY NOW. It's shown that someone can still fly internationally, but I seriously wondered if that was even allowed any more somehow), but maybe we'll find out those things in later books. It's a chilling place to visit, but I appreciate the detail in how the author takes us there. Especially given how security is constantly encroaching on us right now, this takes it to a whole other level of rightful fear. If you have to take a blood test to (a) get into an elevator, and (b) get back OUT of an elevator, what happened to make someone decide that level of paranoia was necessary? Hoo boy.

I loved Georgia. She's smart and tough and diehard in her belief in the truth, and willing to take on the danger for it. And I really enjoyed her relationship (more of a bromance?) with her brother, who is pretty much her heterosexual life partner to the point where they don't get involved with anyone else. Those two can't live without each other, which is a terrifying thought when Shaun is a natural-born Irwin and likely to die before Georgia, leaving her with nobody but their famewhore parents. And when the danger gets even higher... hoo boy.

It's an epic book. And frankly, the only reason I'm taking off half a point from giving this a 5-star review is the villain/bad guy setup. Unfortunately, it's... easily predictable, especially if you are even remotely cynical about government. This is not to say that there aren't twists in the book, because god knows there are, but they aren't related so much to the bad guys.*** There are plenty of surprises in this book, but I can't say I felt surprised at the ultimate endgame and head player in it at all. Though while I found the villain bit kind of disappointing, I will say that after awhile I didn't care that I could pretty much guess where the Bad Things were going. The characters' fear and risks that they were taking to find out the truth got me so involved and freaked out on their behalf that while I was reading, I didn't really care that it didn't feel like a surprise to me when it surprised the hell out of them. Then again, they come from a different world than I do, and what they discovered, by their standards, is pure blasphemy.

Four and a half stars. Freaking epic. I can't wait for Deadline to come out.

Blonde Like Me: The Roots Of The Blonde Myth In Our Culture

By Natalia Ilyin.

The author is a six-foot-two dyed blonde NYC girl who's been around. This short book is both a compilation of stories from Natalia's dyed-blonde life over the years (life in NYC, attempting modeling school, being a Trophy Blonde) and poetic mythical analysis of blonde-ness. Mostly she categorizes everyone into Innocent Blondes, Sun Blondes, and Moon Blondes (i.e. evil blondes). Speaking as a "dirty blonde" or dark blonde,  I kept waiting to find myself in this book and never did, I guess I don't count. Or would be counted as "In Denial Blonde" or "Really Just A Brown Blonde" or "Needs To Dye Her Hair More Blonde."

But it's rather literary and interesting to read her various categorizations of blondehood. She asserts that nearly everyone's a dyed blonde (or at least she can't find any naturals!), so what kind of blonde do you choose to be?

I think I'm just going to quote from the book so you get a sense of what I"m talking about:
 

"Summer Wheat Blondes, Innocent Blondes, Apollo Blondes-- none of these is in charge of her own life. Summer Wheat's fortunes are bound to home and family. The Innocent has a protector. Apollo Blondes lean heavily on the constructs of society. The only omnipotent blonde we've ever had was the old Moon Goddess, the original Moon Blonde."

"Sun Blondes symbolize the life force. One way or another, they foster creation. Innocent Blondes inspire us to spiritual heights. Summer Wheat Blondes have children and make homes. Apollo Blondes master hierarchies, burn to get to the top. But the Moon Blonde is a destroyer. She symbolizes perverse desire, she symbolizes the death wish."

It's very interesting, even if you don't actually fit into these categories and don't exactly live a life where you know people like this. But as myths and identities, the categorizations are intriguing and give you something to think about in our culture.

Three and a half stars.

 

Truly Madly Manhattan

By Nora Roberts.

This is a book of two (unrelated) books, of dramatically differing quality as far as I am concerned!

Local Hero: The story of Mitch Dempsey, rich boy comic book writer (note: wow, does his comic sound cheesy bad, but maybe that's the point), romancing his hot single mom neighbor Hester and bonding with her comic-loving kid. Frankly, this was SO DULL it was very nearly a do not finish book. I actually gave up on it to read Dual Image (below) and then skimmed through to finish this one. The reason why it is so boring (aside from not having a lot of plot) is that the love interest, Hester, has no personality. Her entire character is Poor Self-Sacrificing Hot Single Mom and that is all she does. She has no personality quirks, no hobbies, there is nothing about the woman to make her memorable other than her child. Mitch and Radley (the kid) are both fun, quirky nerds, but Hester is so amazingly dull I do not care about the romance one bit. I'm pleased for Radley (it's more of a dad-mance to me), but otherwise, BORING. By itself: two stars.

Dual Image: Ariel Kirkwood is a soap opera actress who plays one of those everybody-loves-her characters. She'd like to give playing someone evil a go, and gets a role of evil bitch Rae in a made for TV movie. The writer of the movie, Booth, has written this extremely thinly veiled drama about how his actress ex-wife Liz was nothing but a nasty cold bitch. Naturally, Booth is feeling way burnt after that.
I will be honest with you: April is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She's fun and quirky and enjoys life (this is an actress who actually eats food in NYC--okay, that's unrealistic but I enjoyed it anyway). She's clearly coming into Booth's life to brighten it up a bit. But since this is April's book, the whole MPDG thing is far less irritating. You hear things from her point of view. She has her own interests in life like saving various animals for charities (the girl is rather hyperactive!) and trying to get custody of her nephew Scott from his grandparents, who are technically decent enough caregivers but are pretty harsh personalities and are still bitter/pissed off at Ariel's dead brother. She loves Booth, but she'll leave when he's being a jerk, and she knows to let him go at his own pace without forcing stuff on him. It's a very reasonable relationship. There's a bit of Evil Soap Opera going on (mostly when Liz is around, and there's one moment where April could have said, "He's my NEPHEW, not my kid" a little sooner), but, well, it is a soap opera book. Anyway, I'd give it four stars for a fun read and memorable main character who takes an annoying trope and makes it work.

Overall, that averages out to 3 stars. Read the second book if you buy this as a combo.

Dragons in the Waters

By Madeleine L'Engle.

This is one of those books I always meant to get around to reading... and then get around to finishing. It's a sweet story, albeit a bit odd. (Note: originally published in the late 1970's, I was a little confused on the time period of it.)

Thirteen-year-old Simon Boliver Quentin Phair Renier is the last of the line of the Phair family, who used to be a big deal in South Carolina. His ancestor Quentin Phair fought with Bolivar back in the day, and there's a family painting of Bolivar. He's pretty well worshipped by Simon and his cool old lady aunt Leonis. However, Leonis and Simon are very broke and are forced to sell the portrait. They sell it to a man named Forsyth Phair, a long-lost cousin who wants to bring the painting back to Caracas and donate it to the Bolivar museum, and somehow Simon is brought along for the freighter journey shipping the painting over. After the fact, Leonis starts to have A Bad Feeling About This and starts reading the papers of Quentin Phair, which aren't supposed to be read until six generations later (i.e. Simon should be allowed to read them when he's 21). Her mind gets fairly well blown when she finds out Quentin had a previous life with the Quiztano Indians of Dragonlake, Venezuela.

On the freighter trip, Simon makes friends with the other young teen kids on the boat, Poly and Charles O'Keefe, who are with their marine biologist dad while he goes to check out the unhealthy situation in Dragonlake. Poly saves Simon's life when an errant forklift goes after him, and they all become the best of pals. Poly and Charles, however, suspect something's all kinds of wrong with Cousin Forsyth. Simon's a sweet kid, but he lives in the past and is somewhat oblivious to such things. Charles has psychic dreams, which also lead him down the path of the mystery. Both kids are pretty sure that someone's after Simon.

Then Forsyth gets murdered, and the authorities get called in, and Simon's life ends up even more at risk, and Aunt Leonis is called in to come to Venezuela...

I won't go on from there for spoilage reasons. It's an interesting tale, though I'm not sure if I necessarily buy all of it, or at least bits of it are a stretch here and there. I realize it's a little silly of me to say that in a series of books where other characters in this family have traveled through time and space, but since this book seems to lean towards more realism than other books in the Murry/O'Keefe family books, it was a little jarring to hear one particular fact (see spoiler cut)*. Particularly the ending, which I will talk about below the spoiler cut.** I also found the revelation of the murder to be a bit... hm, vague, I guess?

Three and a half stars.

Trust Me On This

By Jennifer Crusie.

Note: this book was originally published in 1997, so for those wondering "where are the cell phones," that's where.

Dennie is a wedding reporter looking for bigger and better things. When she finds out that a famous feminist author she adores has been dumped by her husband for another woman, Dennie is DETERMINED (and how) to get an interview with poor Janice Meredith, supposedly to get her take on things and make her look better. To do this, Dennie heads off to a literature conference where she can stalk track Janice down. Too bad Janice, for reasons we can all figure out, really really really doesn't want to do one. Janice sics hotel security, cops, and Dennie's boss on her, but this really doesn't stop Dennie from bugging Janice's friends about it too. To be honest, around page 112 I was all, "Geez, Dennie, LET HER GO ALREADY, GEEZ."

Alex, on the other hand, used to work jobs bringing down con artists, and this weekend he's going back to doing it again at the hotel, where a creep named Brian Bond is targeting college professors, who he seems to think are rich or something. (Um, what?)Since Brian typically works with a hot brunette (though unbeknownst to Alec, the hot brunette is kinda late to the party this weekend), Alec naturally assumes the go-getter chick running around stalking a certain college professor or two and sticking her nose into things is the brunette in question, and it takes him awhile to figure out otherwise. Dennie is a smart chick (other than being really blockheaded), so she eventually figures something is going on and wants to get in on the sting.

Dennie and Alec are a cute couple in general, and even though I found parts of the plot to be somewhat sketchy on plausibility, they're enjoyable to read about. I also rather enjoyed the ending, the likes of which we don't get to see much in a romance novel. The other couple in this book, Harry and Victoria, are also quite instantly adorable. Maybe a bit too instant, because after knowing each other for maybe 24 hours they're debating over who's going to give up their life//career of 40 years for the other one, which made me go, "Um, WTF? You people are crazy." I know the point of this is that it's a screwball comedy and takes place over a long weekend and these things happen in that sort of book, but I actually found that kind of jarring that the characters immediately went there.

Oh, and for the record: this is pretty much the one Jennifer Crusie story that doesn't have a dog, by virtue of it taking place in a hotel. The marketing department insisted on putting a dog on the cover anyway, so there's mention of a dog. *shrug* What can you say, marketing.

I'll give it three and a half stars: it's not my favorite one of her books, but it's a fun fluff read.

Cryoburn

By Lois McMaster Bujold.

Previous book here.

This is gonna be a tricky one to write.

When an author comes back to a beloved series after many years' absence, and picks up about six years later in the life of her hero, well...I'll admit, I had some desires and some expectations of what I thought I'd find in this one. I was wondering how the usual sets of characters were doing, I was looking forward to seeing some of the planets we'd seen before, I wanted to get a good catchup on things.

This is not that sort of book. It's pretty much an adventure novel from the getgo, not one where you get to see much of any old characters you'd like to check in on. Most of it's just kind of a romp, in a sense, and seems like more of a book that would have taken place earlier in the series. If you're wondering how Miles is doing as a family man, you won't find out much of that, or how anyone else is doing in that field either. And when I found out it was taking place on a planet I never heard of before, I was kind of like "oh, whoop-te-doo." If this book had come out a year or so (in both plot and real time) after the last one I wouldn't have felt so oddly pouty about it. I guess I thought after this long of a time it should be a whopper.

(I will say that upon reading the extras that come with this book--look for them here if you'd like a whopping lot of free downloads, or get the CD that comes with the hardback-- that the author thought things were a bit too peaceful on Barrayar now for much action to be going on, and thus she thought Miles needed a new planet. Okay, she might have a point.)

But I'll admit that once I got over the sorta-pouting about the book not being what I was hoping for, it's entertaining. It starts in media res--Miles is attending a conference on cryo-revival on the planet of Kibou-dhani, where cryo-revival is the main industry that everything revolves around. Specifically, people at the conference have been drugged and kidnapped, but Miles, who's gone pretty wacky on the drugs as usual, manages to get away and find help. Namely, a young animal-loving boy named Jin who's a runaway and a mostly-orphan. His dad's permanently dead and his mother, a rabble-rousing activist, has been frozen in order to deep-six her from what she was doing. Miles gets the idea to find and thaw out Lisa Sato to find out what's really going on, and does his usual snooping around (and fishing for bribes) to find out exactly what the heck is going on on this planet. It's an issue of conquest (the LONG way around), for Miles, and for the natives, something else entirely. It's fun to see newbies interacting with Miles and having no idea what he exactly does, especially Jin who thinks he's some kind of insurance auditor.

As for the ending of this book... well. I really can't even go there. Further discussion will be below the spoiler cut. I will say, unspoilingly, that (a) it's a whammo, and (b) I kind of think it would have been better to make that an entire book of its own, except that apparently the author doesn't really want to go there in full. Kind of a shame, really, because that's where the potential in this book lies.

Overall I'm going to give it three stars. It's in the category of a fun romp (for most of it), but I think I miss the depth that the later books in the series have. She could have gone there, but chose not to. Except for the end, it wouldn't be particularly memorable.

Filled With Glee: The Unauthorized Glee Companion

By a bunch of people.

This is a book of essays on the first season of Glee. If you're a fan, I'd highly recommend this, as the essays are thoughtful and take on different ideas such as "who is Glee's Alpha Male?" and "Why Terri Is Best For Will, No, Really," and the theme of denial (that's a strong one), in praise of Sue Sylvester, and talking about the pregnancy plots.

Extras include fan letters about the show, a guide to starting your own glee club, and a snarky episode guide in the back with song listings and charts of the various threesome relationships (is Will more into Terri or Emma this week?).

Four stars.

Time And Again

By Nora Roberts.

This is a compiled book of two short novels, featuring time-traveling brothers from the 23rd century landing in 20th century Oregon and falling in love with sisters.

The first book (Time Was) features Caleb Hornblower, a pilot who somehow goes through a wormhole (shades of John Crichton) and finds that he's not only in rural Oregon instead of LA as intended... he's in a time period that he considers incredibly rustic. In his time, time travel hasn't been worked out yet and he's flabbergasted he survived. The nearest person to him when he crashed is anthropologist Liberty Stone, living out in her hippie parents' old cabin while she writes some papers and whatnot.
Libby finds out pretty fast where Caleb is from (he's not so swift on things from this era, obviously enough for her to notice), and while she helps him as best she can, they fall in love and it becomes a debate whether or not he'll go back home again. Obviously, uh... well, you can guess this one from reading the back book jacket. They're both pleasant enough folks, but their personalities don't really stand out. I read this mostly for the glimpses of the future talk more than anything else. Not terribly sizzling.

The second book (Times Change) is a bit spicier, with a spicier couple. After Caleb sent back his ship, records, reports, and instructions on where to find a time capsule, his astrophysicist brother Jacob has spent the last few years figuring out how time travel works so he can force his brother to come the hell home already. Jacob, not the most empathetic of sorts when it comes to falling in love, has a lot more sympathy for Caleb's griving parents. However, he arrives a year after Time Was, and Caleb and Libby (now married) are out of the country while she works. Her younger, smart-but-dilettante-ish sister Sunny is staying at the cabin and is the one who meets him instead. Both of them are pretty testy/tempestuous folks, so they have one of those kinds of relationships, especially when they get snowed in.
However, unlike Caleb, Jacob doesn't tell Sunny when he's from. So when Caleb and Libby return, there is some angst and drama over (a) whether or not Jacob can/will force Caleb go to home, and (b) what to do about Sunny. Again, it's a romance, so you can guess how it ends.

I'd give them both three stars overall: pleasant enough reading, but not memorable overall.