The Feast of the Goat

The Feast of the Goat

By Mario Vargas Llosa

Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of l961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own.

You can tell the book is written by an expert. Despite the heavy (and at times excruciating - the rape of a pre-teen seems mild in comparison to some of the horrors described) material you are kept rapt, pressing on to the inevitable conclusion. The book deals in turn with three storylines: Urania, a woman returning to the country after 35 years, who comes to reckon with the past and her family's involvement with the regime (wholly invented by Vargas Llosa), a collection of collaborationists, traitors and conspirators, waiting to assassinate the dictator (real people fictionalized), and the dictator himself, Trujillo, on what will become the last day of his life (also, obviously real but fictionalized). There's multiple flashbacks in each story-line and, especially in Urania's story-line, the text will switch abruptly between present and past conversations with no noticeable delineation. This is used more heavily in the later chapters, when we have a better understanding of all the players and plots, but it's still not an easy book to read.

Since it's not entirely fictional, there's a need to include certain prominent figures, even though it can complicate and confuse the reader. There's seven conspirators waiting for the car, and more who are waiting in the wings. There's multiple government officials and hangers on. All of these people are known to each other and in some cases are brothers, cousins, uncles and nephews. The sections involving Urania's story are relatively contained in comparison: her, her father, aunt, cousins, and a nurse, all of whom are made up, are the only characters in the present. Although I managed to keep most of the large cast straight, I did struggle, particularly in the last few chapters, at the culmination of the assassination, when the scope of the plan widened and the ripple effects began to be seen.

It's also interesting to note that although the beginning of the book takes each of the three story-lines in turn, around chapter 19, when we leave Urania waiting to be delivered to the belly of the beast, several chapters in a row focus more on the immediate and long term period after the assassination, and Vargas Llosa instead slots in the finale to Urania's story as the very last chapter. It's both out of order and interestingly, Urania's last chapter follows the "Balaguer chapter" which ends, somewhat optimistically, with the removal of the Trujillo family from the country and the pardoning of the living conspirators - they literally walk into Balaguer's open, welcoming arms. Balaguer's chapter is also the last chronological moment before Urania comes back to the country 35 years later, which is the start of the book. As tempting as it might have been to leave it at Balaguer, Vargas Llosa instead returns us back to the scene of one of Trujillo's final, personal, petty crimes (albeit wholly fictional one), and reminds us that no matter the events to follow, the effect of the regime cannot and should be be forgotten - and in the character of Urania, physically unable to forget, as others in the book appear to have done. 

I think Vargas Llosa does an incredible job of setting us in the time and place, and in differentiating between the various narrators, which is something that can be hard for authors to do. Here, it's immediately apparent when Urania or Trujillo is narrating, although some of the assassins are not as easily distinguishable from each other. Although we know what happens to Trujillo (he was in fact, assassinated in May 1961) you anticipate the moment as a reader with some relief of anxiety and joy. After so much detail about the degradation and horrors that Trujillo presided over, you want Trujillo to be done, you want the assassins to succeed, and you know (as someone with access to Wikipedia) that they do. I don't know whether Vargas Llosa assumes knowledge of the outcome on the reader's part. Surely, as it become more and more distant past - it's already been 23 years since the book was first published - fewer and fewer readers can be expected to be familiar with what happens next. Certainly I didn't know, and didn't "spoil" myself. This section was the hardest for me to read, perhaps because it was so immediate, perhaps because it seemed so unjust for an action which should have been celebrated (and in fact was, if only they could have lived long enough to see it).  History is written by the victors.

In the end, I am left with only two questions, both of which come from Urania's fictional story-line, and which therefore the author has even more deliberately decided not to address overtly: Who hid the memo (if, in fact it was deliberately hidden) from Trujillo about Urania's departure? One reviewer attributes the memo's disappearance to Balaguer as a nod that no action of Balaguer is ever unconsidered, and states that it is a demonstration of Vargas Llosa's appreciation for him as a politician, by showing Balaguer's compassion in that (completely fictional) moment. That's a compelling argument. I did think that Balaguer, of all the characters, was probably the hardest to write about, given his outsized importance to the country later, and the fact that, at the time the book was written, he was still living and still actively involved in politics, despite his age and health. It is hard to judge the legacy of a living person.

My second question was about the ostracization of Cabral in the first place. Was it just a loyalty test, as Trujillo seems to allude to in one chapter, or was it designed with ulterior motives in mind? I also think it's interesting that Vargas Llosa so clearly lays out the torture and consequences for those in opposition to the regime in the later chapters. It adds more layers to Cabral's decision to pimp his daughter out, in his effort to appease the Generalissimo. There are real, and not imagined, consequences for angering that type of person.  In this case, the choice was fatal not only due to Trujillo's inability to perform and further angering him, but also being ultimately pointless given his assassination weeks later. But would there be a devil on the shoulder to say that, in the absence of that foresight, Cabral's choice was unreasonable? When you live in hell, what salve to conscience can you afford? "In this country, in one way or another, everyone had been, was, or would be part of the regime. 'The worst thing that can happen to a Dominican is to be intelligent or competent,' he had once heard Agustín Cabral say ...and the words had been etched in his mind: 'Because sooner or later Trujillo will call upon him to serve the regime, or his person, and when he calls, one is not permitted to say no.' Egghead was proof of this truth....As Estrella Sadhalá always said, the Goat had taken from people the sacred attribute given to them by God: their free will."

 It is possibly the best book I never want to read again.

 

21: A Book Where A Main Character Is A Policitician

 

Queen of Nothing

Queen of Nothing

By Holly Black

 He will be the destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne

Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power.

Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan's betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her deceptive twin sister, Taryn, whose mortal life is in peril.

Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines she becomes ensnared in the conflict's bloody politics.

And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity...

I was so excited to read this I decided to get it immediately from the library instead of waiting until 2020 when it would have qualified as a "Author with Flora or Fauna in the their Name" category.  Anyway, before I get to the review, I have to say something.  I will sometimes spend a little time thinking about my review before I actually sit down to type it, and I think it took me less then ten minutes to start wondering about fairy dicks.  Okay, bear with me: they (the fairies, not the dicks) have tails and wings and are like, random different sizes, but they all have human compatible dicks?  Shouldn't this, AT THE MOST, be like a donkey-horse → mule situation? (Also, sidebar, I totally forgot what the name of the hybrid animal was just now, I remembered that JENNY is a female donkey, but not what a mule is, le sigh).  I say this not as a critique against Queen of Nothing, which certainly didn't invent human-elf fucking, but you know, I spent a lot more time thinking about the actual compatibility of penises than I thought I would going in.

Anyway, that's it! That's the review!

Haha, just kidding, I will put the dicks to bed and talk about the rest of the book.  Like, 98% of it is not about dicks.  Maybe 97%, because Taryn gets knocked up, which also involved dicks, but offscreen.  Who else (raise your hands) thought that Taryn's pregnancy was going to be relevant at some point?  Because I definitely did.  I thought that was a big old Chekhov's Baby, ready to go off at any moment.  But it went nowhere!  Again, not really a critique, just pointin' out.

This did feel like a really short book though - much shorter than books 1 or 2; and some of that may be because the story is even more straightforward now (no huge betrayals or double crosses that I can remember, although I cannot be relied on to be accurate in this regard), and we have just a few action scenes seems like, before we get to the denouement.  Honestly, that is my biggest complaint - feels too short, ends too soon, want more drama, more angst, more reunion scenes with Cardan, more everything!  This is one where I kinda hope she ends up writing maybe another series set in this world, or some short stories about Jude et al, because I enjoyed my time with her.  Except her name, which I don't love and always makes me start singing the Beatles song, and it's distracting and annoying. AND IT'S DOING IT AGAIN.  What a sapfest that song is.  Anyway.  I enjoyed this book, the series, and the resolution.  Two thumbs up.  And one dick.

Stormswift

Stormswift

By Madeleine Brent

The year is 1897. Deep in the mountain wilderness of the Hindu Kush, a seventeen year-old English girl is brought to the primitive tribal kingdom of Shul to be sold as a slave. Her ordeal endures for two long years before at last there comes the chance of escape to Lalla, as she is called, who believes herself to be Jemimah Lawley, heiress to the great house and estates of Witchwood in the county of Surrey. On the hazardous journey of escape across Afghanistan with a man who hates her, she hears for the first time a name that will later echo menacingly in her life... the name Stormswift. Once home, she faces the shock of being compelled to doubt her own identity. Is she truly Jemimah Lawley, or is she suffering from a delusion caused by her degrading ordeal as Lalla of Shul? Soon she is plunged into a new world, where she finds there are others who, like herself, are perhaps not what they seem to be. Life in England brings her strange adventures and a touching friendship, but also the heartbreak of love without hope. In these pages Madeleine Brent has woven a tale of many surprises as mystery after mystery unfolds, but strangest of all is the mystery which causes Lalla of Shul to return to the barbaric land of her captivity, there to encounter the dark shadows of death and disaster before she at last finds the happiness she believed could never be hers.

So I've written about Brent before, and I maintain that as far as rip-rollicking adventure stories with fun heroines, they are delightful.  For example, in Stormswift, we encounter Jemimah Lawley, aka "Lalla" aka "Mim" first as a captured slave in 1881 Kafiristan, what is now known as Nuristan, a province in Northeastern Afghanistan.  In short order she assists her fellow Greek slave with a birth, gets sold to a mad prince, and escapes with a peddler, Kassim, who surprise, surprise, is more than what he seems.  Specifically, an English spy who promptly gets shot up by his Russian counterpart.  After removing the bullet from Kassim and burying the dead Russian, Jemimah manages to get both their butts back to the embassy in Herat (and by the way, tracking down her route in this first part of the book was pretty fun.  So much traveling through parts of the world I rarely engage with!).

P.S. I know the description says 1897, I don't know where they came up with that - Jemimah's parents were massacred at Bala Hissar in 1879, and she was held for two years before escaping, clearly putting her the timeline of the book in the early 1880s.  

Then, she's shipped back to England, where she discovers that an imposter has taken her place after her two-year kidnapping sojourn, so she joins a Punch and Judy traveling show run by this "hilarious" guy and his Romany girlfriend.  Except then the Romany girlfriend's ex-boyfriend tracks them down and beats up Punch and Jemimah, and offers to marry his ex-girlfriend, so she leaves with him.  And we're only like, barely halfway into this and haven't even been introduced to like, the main villain!

So it turns out Punch is actually a lord, and has a nice house with a relatively nice mom, who puts them both up until Jemimah is framed for the theft of a ~mysteriously important~ locket so she goes to live with Anne/Melanie, who turns out to be married to KASSIM, who turns out to be BEST FRIENDS with PUNCH, who turns out to be in LOVE with ANNE, who turns out to be a BITCH.

AND THEN, Jemimah realizes that the guy in the locket is her old friend the Greek slave, and Anne is murdered, and they all set off for Afghanistan.

So I remembered why I wasn't as big a fan of this one, and it is for two reasons: one is that Jemimah decides she loves Lord Punch, who, let's be honest here, is a real doofus.  I mean, you have mysterious, sexy Kassim, who rescued her from Afghanistan and refuses to sleep with his awful wife, and then on the other hand, you have goofy ass "Henry", who is fucking some rando when they first meet, and hates having to be rich, so he keeps running off, but makes sure to keep his hand securely in the trust fund pocket, so he doesn't actually have to face any consequences of being poor, or actually having to, you know, "work" for a living.  But Henry is "funny" so she just decides he's the one for her even though his big life plan at the end of the book is to run off and bum around on a Mississippi Steamboat, like Mark Twain.  By the way, did you know that Mark Twain had a younger brother who he convinced to work on steamboats with him, and his brother died at age 20 when the boiler exploded and Mark Twain always felt himself responsible?  Now you do.

I mean, I know Kassim keeps getting himself shot, and that's not really the mark of a super successful spy, but seriously, I think Brent had to kill him just to prevent all his readers being like, "Hey!" Obviously Kassim is the superior choice here.  I mean, Henry is just the worst.  His only redeeming quality is that he's like, 100% on board with Jemimah actually being Jemimah (and not a fraud pretending to be Jemimah) although he had a leg up on everyone else because Kassim vouched for her to begin with.

And second, like Anne/Melanie is supposed to be this extraordinary Harpy-like person, but she's frankly just kind of a bad person.  She has affairs, she blackmails her lovers, a couple of them threaten to commit suicide, she employs a burglar.  It's all pretty tame.   For real, when I was re-reading this, I was like, "Oh, yeah, her Sanctuary, that's where she has those drug binges and orgies." But it's not!  It's just like, regular adultery, no drugs whatsoever.  And just one dude at a time.  Too much build-up, she falls really short by comparison. 

That all said, if you want a genuinely fun, fast-paced story about a young woman who overcomes massacres, rape, slavery, snipers, boat rides, false accusations, doofy young men, impersonators, gypsies, two-faced women, and the awful burden of having money, Stormswift is the book for you!

Bad Blood

Bad Blood

By John Carreyou

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work.

A riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.

I finally finally finally got back into reading again (you may have noticed that recent reviews were lackluster, if I even finished the book at all) thanks to Bad Blood.  This one was re-energizing, and you kinda spend the whole thing doing that, "What. the. fuck??" look that I always reference from Chris Rock in Nurse Betty when he sees his dad, played by Morgan Freeman, dancing with no one on the side of the Grand Canyon. Just that sense, you know, that someone very close to you has lost all of their marbles. In this case, that WTF applies to all the people who fell for the cult of Holmes.  For years!  For years they went along with this, although to be fair, it was both a very desirable and beneficial pitch, and also it wasn't immediately apparent that it was rotten to the core.  Although it seems like even a slightly more than cursory look would have taken care of that...?

In retrospect you go, how did they sucker this many people for this long? And the answer apparently is, a combination of complete intimidation of those over whom they held power, and complete ingratiation of those who could have destroyed them.  It's incredible!  When I first heard about it, I definitely gave it a brush off:  pfft, who cares about whether another start-up is toxic and also lied to consumers.  Same shit, different day.  But no!  This was an incredible and incredibly engrossing tale of malignantly bad behavior.  Props to Carreyou for his work, he takes an almost ten year long journey about medical devices and makes it captivating from beginning to end.

For all I've complained in the past, I feel like I have to praise Carreyou's organization of his book, which is both chronological (thank you for an easy to follow and logical progression!) and, because he knows you forget people who only pop in and out occasionally, heavy on the "John-who-ran-the-Edison-room" reminders about who the various people are.  Thank you, Carreyou, for recognizing that I can only retain so much at one time, and minor characters' names and identities in books is not one of them.

Like Five Days at Memorial you kinda leave the book doubting that the villains of the piece even realize that they are in fact the bad guys.  As in that case, Elizabeth and Sunny seem to have kind of doubled down on the position that they've done nothing wrong, although I suppose anyone who has the brazen confidence to do it in the first place doesn't have a lot of room for self-doubt or even second thoughts.

The one thing I wish we'd gotten in this is a bit more wrap up of where the key players stood, particularly (for me) George Shultz, who practically disowned his grandson for whistleblowing this whole house of cards to the ground.  I can't say for sure that I'd have the wherewithal to do what he and Erika did in reporting the misdeeds, but to be personally punished for doing right strikes me as so unfair.   So much collateral damage done.  And for what!  A miracle product that didn't work? Such dishonesty in professing to care about people's health while actually causing harm indiscriminately.  Not to mention poor Ian Gibbons, who carried the shame of it to his death.  It makes you mad, it gets your (forgive the pun) blood up!  And this, for god's sake, explains why regulatory bodies, while annoying, are absolutely and completely necessary. 

How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

By N.K. Jemisin

N.K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed speculative fiction authors of our time. In the first collection of her short fiction, which includes several never-before-seen stories, Jemisin equally challenges and delights with narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption.

Spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story "The City Born Great," a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis's soul.

Anyway, this book and a random comment elsewhere made me realize how much I was enjoying these short stories, and the last time I felt like this, which was when reading Connie Willis.  Short stories are tough, man!  I just put a book in the giveaway pile because I read like, four of the ten stories are didn't really get into any of them.  Obviously not all of the ones in a collection are going to be knock-outs for me, but here's some of the ones I liked best:

•  Red Dirt Witch, which combines the fae and Civil Rights Era Alabama,

• L'Alchemista, whose main character is a down-on-her-luck chef in Italy, who is given some magical ingredients,

• Cloud Dragon Skies, about the consequences of interference with nature again after we already fucked it up and then agreed to live with it,

• The Storyteller's Replacement, which uses the framed story to tell a story about a king who eats a dragon heart in order to get a massive hard-on, but karma revisits him in the form of his daughters (somewhat similar to a story by Kate Elliot, whose book of short stories I wasn't into nearly as much)

• The Brides of Heaven, about the interrogation of a woman who, in her desperation to re-seed a male population which has died off, has allowed something...wrong...into their homes

• Walking Awake, which is about a woman who works  at a body replacement facility slowly realizing that she's doing something awful and fighting back,

• Sinners, Saints, Dragon, and Haints, in the City Beneath Still Waters, which is about post-Katrina New Orleans, except with dragons (and sinners and saints and haints and the battle for the City's soul).

Not that the others aren't good - at a minimum, they all do that good sci-fi thing where they tell a story about our world using another world, i.e., The Ones Who Stay and Fight (which is a direct response to The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, by Ursala K. LeGuin, which I had to look up because I'd never read it) is a reminder that we've simply accepted how fucked up things are, but even in a world that demands cruel things, we don't have to let ourselves be cruel, or simply walk away and wash our hands of those necessary evils.

Or the Narcomancer, which I enjoyed, and which was more straight-on fantasy, but which felt also like the shorter version of a bigger world (which she says in the introduction it was).  Henosis, which is about legacy, combined with a touch of Shirley Jackson. Or The Effluent Engine, which is a steampunk New Orleans spy-action story, set around the time of the Haiti Revolution. I'm telling you, if you like sci-fi or fantasy at all, you gotta read this. Or The Evaluators, about a predator that takes on the shape of those it hunts (which, I'll be honest, only made a little bit of sense to me, but it felt cool).  There's definitely something for everyone. Also a lot of like, pregnancy horror, so I would say not to read it if you're expecting.  Pregnancy is enough horror all on it's own. 


So this was a bit of a last minute add-on because The Woman in the Window got pushed to 2020, and in the spirit of the competition, I decided I would definitely read a book being made into a movie that was actually released in 2019, but when all was said and done, I didn't really want to read The Goldfinch, since I'd already tried A Secret History and hated it, so I decided I would make Where'd You Go, Bernadette? my selection for 01, and move How Long 'Til Black Future Month? into 16.  Long story short, I am very glad I got prodded into Black Future Month, and very sad I read The Woman in the Window which turned about to be for nothing, nothing!


16: A Book With A Question In The Title

Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo

By Alexandre Dumas

Set against the turbulent years of the Napoleonic era, Alexandre Dumas's thrilling adventure story is one of the most widely read romantic novels of all time. In it the dashing young hero, Edmond Dantès, is betrayed by his enemies and thrown into a secret dungeon in the Chateau d'If — doomed to spend his life in a dank prison cell. The story of his long, intolerable years in captivity, his miraculous escape, and his carefully wrought revenge creates a dramatic tale of mystery and intrigue and paints a vision of France — a dazzling, dueling, exuberant France — that has become immortal.

This was the only book on the list that I've read before, because the prompt explicitly required it.  Although I have other, shorter, favorite books, I'd happened to have recently re-read those when the list came out, and I knew I'd have two weeks traveling that I could spend on a nice thick doorstopper.  I've read Count a few times already, and I was really looking forward to re-reading it.  Well, this time, I got five chapters in and had to put it away.  Even though I knew what was coming, and it wasn't a surprise in any way, for some reason the destruction of all of Edmond's hopes on his wedding day just really upset me.  I had to switch to Sherlock Holmes for a few days before I had the strength to continue.

I know this sounds incredibly snotty, but I do get new things out of it every time I re-read it.  Partly because it's so fucking long, there's probably like whole pages I've skipped and never noticed.  Last time I remember thinking that we spent a lot of time going over Benedetto's storyline, which I barely noticed this time around.  This reading had me way focused on the Count's bizarre belief that God was guiding him (because God loves REVENGE too? Actually it probably does) and this whole thing he had about people "deserving" happiness, depending on whether they had suffered a lot.  Also, my perennial gripe about how long we spend on Albert and Franz and the Rome saga, which I ALWAYS find boring and out of place, as a very long meander through a (frankly uninteresting) side character's perspective.  Come on, we have REVENGE waiting!

I also ended up re-watching the 2002 movie version, which does a yeoman's job compressing a thousand page book into a comprehensible two and a half hour movie, and ends up squashing the Haydee, Mercedes, and Albert stories, so Haydee disappears, Albert becomes the Count's biological son and Mercedes reunites with the Count, with all three sailing off into the sunset.  A dramatic departure, but on the extras the director is like, "I stand by that.  It's the only way the story even makes sense" and I kind of get where he's coming from.  As nice as it is to see the wicked punished, and as necessary as it may be for the Count to realize that the innocent by proximity, have also been punished in his mad schemes, it feels oddly unsatisfying for Mercedes (by all accounts a real stand up woman) to end her days poor and living off whatever money her son makes as a soldier (and what kind of future would the son of a now infamous traitor have in the army anyway?).  And the last scene we have with Mercedes we leave on a weird, uncertain note, basically - she won't accept help, so who knows how she'll live!

Maybe I'm softening in my old age.  Although maybe not, because I definitely forgot how Danglars' story ended and when I got to it, I was like, "This is it?! He keeps $50,000 livres and goes on his merry way?? This is bull#$%!" For real though, what the fuck.  Danglars basically engineered the whole damn thing, and he has no conscience, so appealing to one is a wasted effort.  I think the Count just ran out of steam there.  To be fair, Villefort's madness would leave a real bad taste in your mouth, but again, nothing that happened to these people was anything other than the result of their own evils, all brought home to roost. Yes, they could have lived undamaged lives if not for the Count, but simply because you are not caught being bad does not make you a good person.

 I also was paying much closer attention to the lesbian storyline this time around because last time I was kind of like, "Huh, that's kind of gay" and this time, I was like, "I'm pretty sure Dumas knew what the fuck he was doing with those two women."  If not, then, I mean, he's really good at writing lesbians accidentally.  

I read this while sailing around Greenland, which was great, because I had both plenty of time, and also (as a book I'd previously read) not so much invested in it that I wasn't able to do other things on the ship.  Honestly, I said I always get new things out of it each time I read it, but I keep re-reading it because I get the same things out of it too: entertainment, drama, REVENGE, guilt, sorrow, love, and epic-ness.  Whatever else Dumas may have been, he was a hell of a story-teller. 


07: A Re-read Of A Favorite Book

Treasure Island

Treasure  Island

By Robert Louis Stevenson

The classic adventure tale of buried treasure and pirates, young Jim Hawkins becomes involved in a search for the lost treasure of legendary pirate Captain Flint.  He sails to Treasure Island only to discover the ship's crew is planning to mutiny and kill their passengers after the treasure is found, and his life will depend not only on his own quick wits, but on the uncertain benevolence of Long John Silver, leader of the mutineers.

Despite this book being a classic in just about every sense of the word, I realized very early on that the only thing I knew about it was that the main character was a young child, and there was a bad pirate called Long John Silver who kinda, like, took the kid on an adventure??? In hindsight, I'm pretty sure most of my impressions were generated by Muppet Treasure Island (and like, Swiss Family Robinson, which also involves children and pirates) - which was somewhat problematic, since I've never even seen Muppet Treasure Island.   But I definitely got the idea this was a kids book.  I mean, it was a Disney movie! Uh, sure, like a pirate kids version of And Then There Were None.  As Jim says at end, of their fully staffed ship, only five people made it out alive.   Jim is almost murdered multiple times (although he fears the torture worse) and ends up shooting and killing another pirate.  I'm just saying, at no point did I have any idea of what to expect.

In fact, despite the popular idea that this is a kids book, perhaps because the narrator is a child, and it's short, honestly, it didn't feel very child-like.  I also struggled with the whole intro, in which we meet a variety of pirates whose relationship to each other was less important for Stevenson to describe, than the ominous signs and portents and chills which accompany their actions.  So, I guess I'm pretty sure that the pirate at the beginning was Flint's first mate (we never meet Flint, but everybody talks about him all the time) and had the treasure map, but just wanted... to retire in poverty?  It's unclear to me why he's just camped out at the hotel basically waiting for the other pirates to track him down, but you do you, as the kids say.

Then there's like, Blind Pew and his gang, who are somehow affiliated with Long John and his gang, although they never appear together in the book.  Or maybe they're competing pirate gangs?  All I know is, we meet a whole bunch of pirates in the first fifty pages that never appear again and aren't, actually, relevant to the main story.  Well, I guess they add spice.  And for some reason, Jim and his mom just give the map to the local squire? And then the squire decides Jim will be going on this trip and we never hear about his mother again (except that before they depart, Jim can spend one more night with her - like, was this childcare in the 1800s? Good lord).

And THEN! I was delighted to find out Long John Silver was hired as the cook! Amazing!  It makes the chain restaurant so much more apt!  Other things I was surprised by: the fact that Long John is both a mutineer and like, a triple agent! He actually is the only "good" pirate, even though he's the one that lead the mutiny. And they're more concerned about getting off the island alive than they are in looking for treasure (which does make sense).

Treasure Island has a lot of dialect, and also some like, 1880s sea-faring slang, which makes whole pages at times incomprehensible. In fact, I found the story better when there was less dialogue.  Its beginnings as an action serial are clear.

I will add just as a final note, that having just sailed on a masted schooner, I have no further insights on Treasure Island except to say that the experience is the opposite of restful, such that I had like, waking night terrors for four days following my sail, thinking that I was still rocking gently on the boat and also had no idea where I was.  Maybe that's just me. However, I can certainly understand the desire to mutiny, if only to claim better sleeping quarters.

I had a tough time with this prompt, since "celebrity" and "admire" don't really go hand in hand.  But in addition to the recommendation, I happened to have a very handsome set of adventure stories which I bought two years ago and never opened, so this was the perfect opportunity.

28: A Book Recommended By A Celebrity You Admire 
(Barack Obama)

The Traitor Baru Cormorant

The Traitor Baru Cormorant

By Seth Dickinson

Baru Cormorant believes any price is worth paying to liberate her people-even her soul.
When the Empire of Masks conquers her island home, overwrites her culture, criminalizes her customs, and murders one of her fathers, Baru vows to swallow her hate, join the Empire's civil service, and claw her way high enough to set her people free.

Sent as an Imperial agent to distant Aurdwynn, another conquered country, Baru discovers it's on the brink of rebellion. Drawn by the intriguing duchess Tain Hu into a circle of seditious dukes, Baru may be able to use her position to help. As she pursues a precarious balance between the rebels and a shadowy cabal within the Empire, she orchestrates a do-or-die gambit with freedom as the prize.

But the cost of winning the long game of saving her people may be far greater than Baru imagines.

I don't know what I can or should say about Traitor: I liked it well enough, but I did find it losing my attention as I tried to track names, characters, backstories, action.  There are thirteen duchies in Aurdwynn, and even despite the map at the beginning, I wasn't like, super on top of who was who.  Also, and here's the thing: in any book that revolves around betrayals (not any more a spoiler than the title, come on) there's going to be that plots-within-plots feeling that is a little bit expected and a little bit exhausting. Although it's not a surprise to the reader that Baru betrays the rebellion (or, it shouldn't be - if you've picked up on any of the hints, or read the fucking title of the book) Dickinson does a pretty good job still making you feel bad about it.

The plot felt a lot like Red Rising: child of the oppressed somehow infiltrates the ruling class and ends up in a competition/test to prove themselves while also gathering enough power to bring the ruling class down from within.   Traitor deals a lot more with the sticky political things: colonialism, and germ warfare, and economic subrogation, and religious tyranny.  It doesn't want to be an action/thriller, it wants to get at the idea of becoming the very thing you swore to destroy.  What if, in seeking to undo the crime done to you, you commit those very crimes against someone else? What good is revenge when you have already killed everything you meant to save?

The pace of the first section is pretty quick, as Baru makes it from island to school to posting to uncovering and imploding a rebel plot fairly quickly, but we spend more time in the later sections, where Baru first infiltrates the (newest) rebellion and then helps to win it, which I felt started to drag a little, if only because of the aforementioned need to remember names, backstories, action, and plots.  It's possible some of the convolution will pay off in later installments.  It can be so tricky to review firsts in a series that way.  I still remember JK Rowling promising big payoffs and answers to mysteries raised in the first couple of books that kind of fizzled out by the time she finished the seventh (i.e. why does Harry Potter have so much money in his vault, and I am so unsatisfied by the answer.  We waited ten years to find out his dad is just rich, really?).

I read the whole thing in one go, but a few days out, I'm just not feeling the need to read the sequel right now, which is a bad sign for me finishing the (forthcoming) quartet.  I think you get back to this idea of: how much time do you want to spend in a mind that is this unhappy, and in a world which is this difficult and unpleasant?  Even Baru's successes were in service to a greater tragedy, and there's a point at which it's just not that fun.  I enjoy a good revenge story - I'm very excited to be re-reading The Count of Monte Cristo for my final book - but Baru so far is unrelenting misery, and the reviews for The Monster Baru Cormorant sound like more of the same.  When are we going to get REVENGEEEEE?? Would I practice revenge in real life? No.  Do I want a revenge fantasy while Baru seems hell-bent on a realistic look at what revenge does to a person? YES.


One of the things I didn't like about Wonder Woman when it came out was this scene where they're trying to hold a war council and talking about sacrificing a town, and Diana's like, "How can you not try to save absolutely everyone?" which is such an unrealistic attitude to have in war.  Contrast that with The Imitation Game, which I just watched yesterday, when they realize they have to lie about cracking Enigma in order to prevent the Germans from changing their cipher, thereby sacrificing loads of people they could have saved for the greater good.  I appreciated that as being both a more realistic and a harder (and therefore more heartfelt) choice.  It's easy to just indiscriminately help people, it's harder when you have to decide who you will let die.  Here, Baru takes the stance that everyone is worth sacrificing, which I think tips the spectrum too far in the other direction - too easy when you only have one thing you want to save, you know it will always win. Baru is sort of like the anti-Wonder Woman in that respect.

We'll see how I go - I might end up waiting until the whole series is published and trying again then.

25: A Debut Novel

Ten Second Reviews

The Best Lies

By Sarah Lyu

Remy's life changes when she meets Elise.  Charismatic Elise, who is determined to right the wrongs of the world, and bring Remy along with her on her quest for justice.  But Elise's history is darker than Remy realizes - and when Remy tries to get away from Elise's plans, the night ends with Elise killing Remy's boyfriend Jack.  But is Elise the aggressor or the victim, or both? This one had some promise.  I thought it was going to be like a real Basic Instinct or Single White Female (note that I haven't actually seen either of these movies, but in today's cultural world, do you even have to, to know what they're about?) but it turned out to just be sad, a tragedy about an abused child who winds up lashing out and then taking a really wild left turn into murder.  Even though the book leads with the shooting, it didn't feel earned by the end.  As ominous and weird as Elise was, the fact that she was actually being beaten bloody by her father meant that whatever else she was, she wasn't a liar, and she wasn't ridiculous for wanting justice/revenge. So the finale where she kills Jack because he threatened to tell people she set a house on fire if she didn't let Remy detach, just feels really out of character.  Not to mention that I cannot for the life of me figure out what any of these people see in Remy.  At several points, I thought the reveal was going to be that Remy was actually the killer, because she was so frigging obsessed with whatever person happened to be cool in her direction most recently. 

Carry On

By Rainbow Rowell

So sue me, I ended up being curious enough from Fangirl to read Rowell's take on Harry Potter fanfic.  In some ways, it's a lot like In Other Lands, another post-HP take on the idea of a child being indoctrinated into a magical school and growing up and making friends (and making out, which is also very important).  Carry On did not thrill me? I mean, you kind of know where everything is going, and who the "Big Bad" is and frankly, things don't happen at all until Baz appears, 150 pages in to a 500 page book.  Because we're meant to think this is the last of a series, there's a lot of describing previous years' adventures, however, because this isn't in fact the last of a series, none of the adventures can be significant at all to this years' adventure, so they're a little bit pointless.  As is the character of Agatha.  I think I sort of get what Rowell was going for, a reversal of the idea that the Chosen One has a Chosen Girlfriend, but Agatha's role seemed limited to being the Debbie Downer of the group - just real unhappy, and ironically enough, existing only to be moved around by the other characters and her life threatened.

In the end, I felt oddly let down by the ending - leaving your magical protagonist powerless and with wings and a devil's tail which have to be made invisible every twelve hours, and permanent magical deadzones seems kind of a downer to me. I don't know if the forthcoming sequel would solve any of those problems, but after reading Carry On, I have little interest in finding out.  It's just not my bag.

Behind the Throne

Behind the Throne

By K.B. Wagers

Hail Bristol has made a name for herself as one of the most fearsome gunrunners in the galaxy. But she can't escape her past forever: twenty years ago, she was a runaway princess of the Indranan Empire. Now, her mother's people have finally come to bring her home.

But when Hail is dragged back to her Indrana to take her rightful place as the only remaining heir, she finds that trading her ship for a palace is her most dangerous move yet.

I.e. Hail is summoned to come back home as the prodigal heir after her sisters have been killed and her mother has space madness.  Once she gets back though, it's very clear that whoever killed her sisters wants to kill her too. Blah blah blah, evil cousin who has been "helping out" in Hail's absence set all this up to take control.  One aborted coup later, Hail is crowned empress.

This was somewhat less "in space" than originally anticipated - although it feels very much like a space sci-fi book, our main character, Hail, spends all but the first few chapters on her home planet. It started out interesting enough, a good hook of former-outlaw-turned-missing-princess, set in an Indian subcontinent-inspired world, but the follow through is lacking. 

First: there is a confusing number of players and names thrown at you, most of them appearing, or discussed, only briefly, so remembering and keeping track of the various people (and even whether they are loyal or disloyal) was difficult.  We spend the most time with two sarcastic but incredibly skilled "Trackers" cum bodyguards named Emmory and Zin, who are also indistinguishable from each other.  

Second: the plot, such as it is, is pretty much the obvious person, and everyone seems to acknowledge this fairly early on, yet the plotters still manage to stage a (short lived) coup.  I mean, Hail hates Ganda (with no explanation aside from, essentially, what an asshole she was twenty years ago) and it turns out Ganda is definitely plotting for the throne, and no one is even watching her! Let's think about, I don't know, keeping tabs on the people you know are scheming behind your back.  And also, Emmory/Zin's decision not to tell Hail that another bodyguard, Nal is almost definitely a traitor too, until Hail gets mad and fires her for some other reason? Like, maybe Hail knowing who she can or cannot trust (and who might be used to plant misinformation for the other side) would be a pretty useful and important thing to know.  But instead we get Hail conjuring up the leader of the resistance (who is conveniently not trying to kill her) in a matter of minutes and having a heart to heart about how she's coping with her sister's death.  Is this how the Indranan government is normally run?  If so, I'm somewhat sympathetic to Ganda.  This seems both unskilled and incredibly messy. 

Third: I just did not care very much about any of the characters or what happened to them.  Hail's sisters and niece are murdered before the book begins, and we come back to find her mother being poisoned, and honestly, I assume (and Hail tells us) that she loved her family, but there's very little connection that we get to see as readers: no flashbacks, no mementos, just a distance that, frankly, twenty years of never contacting your family would realistically give you.  But it creates a problem because that sense of defending a home isn't there: all these people are barely acquaintances, we don't revisit any childhood spots, Hail could have been running a long con and had the same emotional attachment to the outcome. 

I don't think it's bad, per se, I just struggled to stay interested and finish it.  It took me weeks to finish and I had to renew my loan twice.  I hope the next one is good - I have two more to finish before I can get to another light read, and I'm cranky about it.

20: A Book Set In Space

Montague Island Mysteries and Other Logic Puzzles

Montague Island Mysteries and Other Logic Puzzles

By R. Wayne Schmittberger

Solve logic puzzles AND play sleuth at the same time! This thoroughly unique book—written by the former editor of Games magazine—offers the immersive pleasure of a novel as it follows a group of friends who meet regularly to play murder-mystery games at the island home of a wealthy couple. As you go about completing the puzzles, you’ll learn more about the guests, the house, and the island . . . and uncover a secret about the mansion itself. Maps of the island throughout enhance the atmosphere and draw solvers deeper into the story.

So although I was somewhat incorrect in my original understanding of what this was, I still had a really good time solving the puzzles.  I originally though that this was a story-based book with puzzles to solve, which would require the solving of an earlier puzzle in order to arrive at the correct solution for later puzzles, and this isn't set up that way at all.  It does have a loose "story" (seven guests are invited to the island and solve puzzles, but every so often there's an allusion to some secret reason the guests were invited, which is resolved in the final puzzle) but none of the puzzles require information or answers from any of the other puzzles.

What I appreciated about this book was the variety of logic puzzles (some had maps, some were based on tournaments, some were very traditional, and I just skipped the ones that asked about card hands, since I don't have time for that) and the care the author took to keep the puzzles as little confusing as possible.  What I mean by that is, names weren't similar and didn't start with the same letter, clues and important categories weren't overly long or unnecessarily numerical or anything like that.  For example, there weren't any puzzles that required you to figure out if events took place in 1912, 1931, 1971, 1928 or 1952.  Maybe it's small news, but the online logic problem site I've been going to (puzzle baron, if you're curious) seems way too invested in small puzzles which are incredibly confusing for keeping the categories straight.

I liked that we followed the same group of people the whole way, although it took me a bit to get used to the "one of these people is lying" puzzles.  I would do a few puzzles a week, and with some pauses, it took me about two months to finish.  It felt substantial.   I also really appreciated the solution key in the back, along with the explanations, they helped me when I couldn't figure out what some of the early puzzles were.  I checked it sort of religiously, although I suppose that wasn't quite necessary, since the correct answers didn't impact any later puzzles.  In fact, if there would be one change for the next book, I'd love if one or more of the puzzles had hints which relied on previous puzzles.

It's not a normal book, and I'm not at all sure that I was really following the prompt, since this is more like a book of crosswords than it is a typical book, but it's one of my most enjoyed of this project, and I am already anxiously waiting on the sequel!

39: A Book Revolving Around A Puzzle Or A Game

The Woman Who Smashed Codes

The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies

By Jason Fagone

In 1916, a young Quaker schoolteacher and poetry scholar named Elizebeth Smith was hired by an eccentric tycoon to find the secret message he believed were embedded in Shakespeare's plays.  She moved to the tycoon's lavish estate outside of Chicago expecting to spend her days poring through old books.  But the rich man's close ties to the U.S. government, and the urgencies of war, quickly transformed Elizebeth's mission. She soon learned to apply her skills to an exciting new venture: codebreaking - the solving of secret message without knowledge of the key.  Working alongside her on the estate was William Friedman, a Jewish scientist who would become her husband and lifelong codebreaking partner.  Elizebeth and William were in many ways the Adam and Eve of the National Security Agency, the U.S. institution that monitors and intercepts foreign communications to glean intelligence.

In The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman who played an integral role in our nation's history - from the Great War to the Cold War. He traces Elizebeth's developing career through World War I, Prohibition, and the struggle against fascism.  She helped catch gangsters and smugglers, exposed a Nazi ring in South America, and fought a clandestine battle of wits against Hitler's Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German operatives to conceal their communications.  And through it all, she served as muse to her husband, a master of puzzles, who astonished friends and foes alike. Inside an army vault in Washington, he worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigma - and succeeded, at terrible cost to his personal life.

This one was a gift to me from my mother, who sometimes gets me non-fiction books that I am less than wholly interested in, but this was a pleasant enough read.  It's a biography of Elizebeth Friedman, who was apparently instrumental in early American code-breaking.  I do sometimes struggle with non-fiction because in life, unlike in a story, you have to tell an interesting story from the things that actually happened - which can be sometimes very boring, and frequently changes are made of things that were pieced together through myriad small incremental details, which doesn't always make the most exciting narrative: "We're about to enter early married life - now let's describe the ten background characters who you need to know in order to understand what happened next - but they'll never be mentioned again!"  It's understandably hard to keep the balance between the actual facts and a good story in nonfiction, so I'm somewhat sympathetic when I inevitably don't feel the same "high" from a nonfiction as I do a good fiction book.  For example, I really enjoyed Show Me a Hero and Personal History, but was a little let down by Killers of the Flower Moon and The Radium Girls, both of which are boosted by built-in dramatic storylines involving death and cover-ups.  And Ben Macintyre's books, Operation Mincemeat and Double Cross, were both okay, but honestly I barely remember them.  I just don't generally find myself mulling over a good nonfiction book or wanting to re-read it afterwards, and I don't think TWWSC will defy the odds. Sidenote: it's interesting to me the similarities with A Personal History - both women quietly getting things done while their husbands suffered nervous breakdowns, although Graham's work came after and as a direct result of her husband's deterioration, while Elizebeth is just quietly getting shit done 24-7. 

So the good things: it's a well-told story, manages to keep your attention throughout, and doesn't feel too long.  If anything, it feels oddly incomplete, which is maybe not a total surprise when talking about a codebreaker whose work was highly classified until relatively recently.  But although we hear about Elizebeth's affinity for codes, only one or two types is broken down and explained to us as readers, and some of the leaps in deduction (figuring out what codephrase or book is being used for a code in another language) are so little touched on that they seem practically miraculous.  Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but I can't help but wonder if the author left it out because he thought it would be too boring or difficult to understand to the lay reader, or if he himself didn't know how she did it - after all, her materials wouldn't necessarily have a step by step manual for her thoughts.  I think it would have made a good appendix - to walk us through a (short) puzzle and see exactly how some of these mysteries were cracked.

The other problem with telling Elizebeth's story is that, frankly, although she did an important and thorough job as codebreaker during the second world war, there were no threats or danger lurking if she failed, no personal stakes, aside from the ones she sets herself.  She gets in, is very competent, and then gracefully exits when the war is done.  The decisions about when to crack down on the South American spies was made over her head and by a separate department.  I'm certainly not going to fault Fagone for not having better facts, but it is true that it is just always going to be hard to write a gripping story about someone who went to work in an office everyday and then came home, even though (or maybe especially because) their office consists of a lot of detail oriented paperwork.  It's also sort of difficult because both big "breakthrough" moments for Elizebeth and William in the war - cracking Enigma and Purple, respectively, fall flat, as Enigma was cracked simultaneously by Bletchley Park, and Purple's decoding does nothing to prevent Pearl Harbor, because of government red tape.

Fagone's style is.... definitely something.  There's a strong modern feminist bent, and a few interjections of swearing, so you do get a little more personal than most biographies, but that adds to its charm, not detracts.  Hss pu hss, h nvvk zahya mvy zvtlvul thrpun h kpcl puav jyfwahuhsfzpz!

29 - A Book With "Love" In The Title (or sub-title, I cheated a bit on this)

Ten Second Reviews

A Study in Scarlet Women

By Sherry Thomas

The tale of Sherlock Holmes, if Sherlock were actually a woman.  I don't know what list I was that I found this book on, but I really enjoyed it.  The author started as a historical romance writer, and her knowledge of the time period really shows.  The main character (although we do get viewpoints from various characters, I'll consider Charlotte the main one) has a lovely relationship with her sister(s) (one of them is disabled, so she doesn't appear much, but figures in Charlotte's plans along with Livia), and with the other supporting characters - Mrs. Watson, Lord whatshisname, the police sergeant.  Sometimes you just want to read about people who are nice to each other and respect each other, and this had that in spades.  The mystery was good, I suppose, although there was a lot of interrelatedness that I didn't quite follow - you'd think London was a village of two hundred the way everyone is involved with everyone else, and it wraps up almost abruptly when the crucial clue is given, but I've already ordered the next in the series.

A Conspiracy in Belgravia

By Sherry Thomas

The second in the "Lady Sherlock" series, I still enjoyed the writing and characters, but the plot made even less sense - so Sherlock's half-brother, Myron Finch, was an accountant who disappeared, but it turns out he worked for Moriarty and stole information and escaped, but wound up getting a job as the Holmes' carriage-man? Um, what, no one recognized him?  And Lady Ingram just pretended the whole love affair? And how long was this other guy pretending to be Myron? The critiques of the first one were magnified in this one, and the good qualities did not keep pace  - I came out of this feeling somewhat dissatisfied and unsure whether I'm going to continue.  Characters are good, relationships are good, writing is good, but plot is like, that gif of the blinking man.

Ten Second Reviews

Friday the Rabbi Slept Late

By Harry Kemelman

Rabbi Small takes over a congregation in a modern suburb of Boston which doesn't quite know what to make of the scholarly young rabbi.  When a dead woman is discovered in his car, the rabbi is caught between temple politics and a murder mystery.

This was more of a character study than a murder mystery - the solution comes out of nowhere in the last ten pages, and we spend more time with various congregants debating whether or not Rabbi Smalls'  solution with the broken down borrowed car is fair than we do going through clues.  It's kind of a cozy, where no one is threatened, and the wrong person is arrested and everyone is basically nice to each other.  Not bad if you're in the mood for it.  Also, and this is not relevant to the review, it seems like Harry is a weirdly uncommon name for an author.  I know it's a nickname, but I feel like there's lots of Jacks out there, not that many Harrys.  Food for thought!

Descendant of the Crane

By Joan He

Princess Hesina of Yan's father is murdered and she's thrust into power, suddenly the queen of an unstable kingdom. Determined to find her father's killer, Hesina enlists the aid of a soothsayer—a treasonous act, punishable by death, because in Yan, magic was outlawed centuries ago. Hesina doesn't know who to trust as she gets to the heart of the mystery surrounding her father's death, and the political machinations which are forcing Yan into war.

I actually read this before Behind the Throne but they share a lot of similarities - unhappy maternal relationships, murdered fathers and a quest for justice, a princess taking power unexpectedly, (spoiler!) family members secretly betraying them, bodyguard/detectives who keep them from getting killed and help solve the mystery, asian-inspired settings, imminent war with neighbor, you get the picture.  But both were disappointments, and I don't know if I would have liked Behind the Throne more if I'd read it first, since, in addition to the larger issues I had with it, it also felt kinda derivative.

I was into Descendant of the Crane initially, but it falls into the same trap as Behind the Throne:  too many people, too much confusion and plots, obvious villain (at least in this case, the villain was only obvious to the reader, not the main character, so her lack of action makes more sense) and by the mid-way point I just didn't care about anyone.  This did have a weird fucking subplot about magic and immortal people and her father and mother having lived for aeons (how they transitioned power without anyone noticing this was the same fucking person all the time, and also why they only just now decided to have and adopt a bunch of kids is totally unexplained, by the way) which is when I kinda felt like the whole thing jumped the shark for me.  I was enjoying the imminent war with neighboring country plot in Descendant of the Crane, but there's too much going on, and even the parts I liked didn't make up for all of the bloated parts about her weird dad and her adopted brother taking over. I'd be interested in finding out what happens, but I don't think I'm going to read any more books in the series.

Moonraker's Bride

Moonraker's Bride, by Madeleine Brent

Born in a Mission in China, Lucy Waring finds herself with fifteen small children to feed and care for. The way she tackles this task leads to her being thrown into the grim prison of Chengfu, where she meets Nicholas Sabine - a man about to die. He asks her a cryptic riddle, the mystery of which echoes through all that befalls her in the months that follow... She is brought to England and tries to make a new life with the Gresham family, but she is constantly in disgrace and is soon involved in the bitter feud between the Greshams and a neighboring family. There is danger, romance and heartache for Lucy as strange events build to a point where she begins to doubt her own senses. How could she see a man, long dead, walking in the misty darkness of the valley? And who carried her, unconscious, into the labyrinth of Chiselhurst Caves and left her to die? It is not until she returns to China that Lucy finds, amid high adventure, the answer to all that has baffled her.

Aha, so I was actually reading Shiver when this book arrived, and I picked it up and read, like, the first three pages, and decided, eff it, I'ma just read the whole thing in one go.  SO WORTH IT. I think it was that moment when Lucy is like, "I know that I could have one of my hands cut off for stealing, but there is no other way to get enough money to feed my little Chinese orphans.  But Ms. Prothero would be so upset.  WELP, JUST GONNA HAVE TO LIE TO HER, THEN, I GUESS." And then heads out like a boss to go thieving (and gets thrown in jail and has adventures)!  I have decided that I have a new (old) favorite archetype: the lady who Gets Shit Done.  Like, yes, you are in a sticky situation, and everything is going to hell, but you have to keep doing the best you can with what you got.  Lady, I salute you.

So Moonraker's Bride, despite it's terrible 1970s title and windswept cover, is actually pretty enjoyable.  Like, good enough that I did, for a brief moment go, "Would it be cheaper to just pay the library fine than buy it online?" because it is hella expensive.*  But then I would deprive other card members of the glory that is Moonraker's Bride.  But.  I was tempted, is what I'm saying (mostly because I am also hella cheap).

I will admit, Moonraker's Bride is not, like, the Decameron, okay?  Ain't no one going to be writing their thesis on it (I hope, geez).  But it is a stellar example of the romantic suspense category, I mean, you've got exotic settings, mysterious treasures, riddles, uptight English people, and an arranged jail marriage (which is not as gross as it sounds).  And I know this sounds like faint praise, but I thought the book would be super-racist (as many of those era are) and I did not find it to be so (note that more sensitive people may disagree). 

Hand to god, I liked just about everything about it, but especially Lucy - she plays a good martyr, and mostly tries not to rock the boat, but at the same time, when shit needs doin', she gets it done.  There's a scene in which a little boy is lost in a snow-storm, and Lucy is the only one who might know where he is, but her patronizing patron won't listen to her, and does she wail into some nice fellow's waistcoat until he goes out and saves the day?  No, she puts on her big girl pants (literally) and walks through a blizzard to rescue this kid.  Also, words cannot express my delight at the dinner scene wherein she believes that she was brought over to England to be a concubine. 

Brent's books (and I have to admit, I went out and immediately read two more after this one, Golden Urchin and Stormswift (not as good, sadly, but still a fun time)) follow a fairly basic pattern: accommodating, yet stalwart heroine, usually raised or living in a distant and exotic location, is brought back to civilization, i.e. England, and deals with people trying to kill her, romance, and overcomes an obstacle which only she, with her unique background, can surmount.  Also, any extraneous people in a love triangle (whether with the heroine or not) are summarily killed before the book ends, either because the author reeeeeeally dislikes loose ends, or he went through some early high-school trauma that has led him to believe that death is easier than facing rejection.  [Yes, apparently Madeleine Brent is a pseudonym for a Peter O'Donnell, but don't let that dissuade you]. 

So this particular book just hits all the right spots for me - I have a serious weak spot for Chinese orphans and lady missionaries who care for them after watching The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (I know, I'm embarrassed for me, too) and arranged marriages which basically start off as the strangest method of charitable donation ever, but turn out to be true love.  The book did drag a little in the middle (if by drag, you mean mysterious night visitors, feuding neighbor families, bonfires, cave kidnappings, secret butler fathers and snowy rescues) after Lucy tries to accustom herself to English life, but picks right up again after her presumed-dead husband comes back.  Then the book takes a CRAZY turn for the awesome when Lucy and her father-in-law go tramping through China in the midst of the Boxer Rebellion.  I would watch the shit out of the tv-movie, is what I'm saying here. 

Honestly, if you're not already convinced, I don't know what else to say to get you to go out and procure your own copy.  I mean, more for me, I guess.  But if you're looking for some enjoyable escapist literature, I don't think you can go wrong here. 



*(It would totally save me, like $20, but then they might take my card away.  Also, I feel like that behavior is particularly frowned upon when committed by a member of the library's board of trustees.  Whoops!)

Grave Mercy

Grave Mercy, by Robin LaFevers

Escaping from the brutality of an arranged marriage, seventeen year-old Ismae finds sanctuary at the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old.  Here she learns that the god of Death himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts - and a  violent destiny.  If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as handmaiden to Death.  To claim her new life, she must be willing to take the lives of others.

Ismae's most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany, where she must pose as mistress to the darkly mysterious Gavriel Duval, who has fallen under a cloud of suspicion.  Once there, she finds herself woefully underprepared - not only for the deadly games of love and intrigue, but for the impossible choices she must make.  For how can she deliver Death's vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

So Grave Mercy has gotten quite a few good reviews, and I guess I am a little hard pressed to say why. It's fine, don't get me wrong, but it's not a miracle of writing, and there are quite a few things I really didn't enjoy about it.  It begins with Ismae's very short-lived marriage (which, since I'm pretty sure she never gets divorced, means she's still married throughout the book.  Which: odd).  Soon enough, her new husband discovers that she has some serious scar/birthmark issues going on, and decides that she needs to be burned at the stake - I get that the birthmark means that the god of Death is her father, but why that is such a huge problem is not really ever explained.  So the local herbwitch smuggles her out to the convent where she can accept her destiny as La Femme Nikita, 1485-style, or marry some random guy.  Hmm, tough decision.

So in the convent she finds out that she is immune to poison, and I am already sensing that the Mary Sue is strong with this one.  It's a feeling that lasts much longer than it should, considering.  She meets some other novitiates, trains up, and goes out on her first assignment, and let me tell you, this girl thinks she is hot shit.  I don't know what kind of brainwashing they do at the convent, but there is way too much of "Kill first, ask questions later" for Ismae to be as confident as she is.  She's on her first assignment!  Which she almost screws up.  I don't care how much you train, when you go out into the real world and are expected to produce results for the first time, you get nervous.  And I think it's flaw in the character that she's not nervous - it makes her seem stupid, for not being nervous, and it makes her harder to relate to. 

The second place I got tripped up at is when she gets sent out with this Gavriel Duval guy on assignment.  Why this chick gets sent out with him is beyond me.  She has gone on a total of two (2) assignments, both of which she very narrowly avoided botching, and, as we discover later, she is both unprepared for real world scenarios, and totally susceptible to deeply wounded backstories.  It would make sense if (PLOT SPOILERS UP AHEAD) as we discover later, Crunard's master plan involves somehow using a novitiate assassin as some sort of  scape goat.  But he's not, as far as I can tell.  Why the abbess didn't insist on sending someone with a) more experience and b) more loyalty to the convent, I just don't know.  I understand that Crunard was the bad guy, and he was using the abbess as well, but it's kind of like, either she totally trusts Crunard, which, since we're told to suspect anyone else, I don't know why he would be above suspicion, or she doesn't, in which case, she needs to tell Ismae to watch out for everyone.  By not uniting against Crunard, the only thing the convent accomplished is alienating Ismae, who, although probably not their star pupil, still represents a significant amount of time and energy spent molding her into this ninja assassin. 

Do not even get me started on the poisons and the weapons.

Plus, I could not figure out if this convent is supposed to be well-known, secret, or what?  Like, I am so sure that the court of Brittany just allows these ladies to train young women as killers. VERY PLAUSIBLE.  And yet, everyone seems to know what the convent of St. Mortain means.  So, I guess, that like, no one is concerned that there's a gaggle of assassins running around? And no one thinks it would be a good idea to maybe...send them off to kill a bunch of people in France?  I guess I'm just confused about this whole target thing, which may end up being better explained in later books: if the god is picking targets, why is he so focused on like, state politics?  I understand that apparently a free Brittany = continued worship, but (1) that doesn't even sound like it's right, since the new duchess of Brittany totally says that Mortain is a saint, not a god, implying that the leader of Brittany doesn't support the old gods as is anyhow, and (2) I would think that just knowing that there's a pack of wild young ladies avenging wrongs in the name of Mortain would be enough to make people leery of not doing their best to stay on his good side. And if he's not picking targets, then why the visions and the marque and all that? It just feels very thin.

Okay, and before I try to temper this review with why the book is "fine", I want to get one more thing out of my system: lack of humor.  I mean, this book needs some levity, and it doesn't even have to be like, Ismae cracking out wicked bad puns after she kills someone, a la James Bond.  I just mean, like, banter, or something a little bit to relieve the unending tension. 

Okay: things I liked: I enjoyed the idea that there was a closeness between the three new novitiates, although honestly, it was more of a tell than a show.  Because the book necessarily skips quite a bit of training time, I feel like the scenes in which Annith, Ismae, and Sybella really bond get left by the wayside.  I mean, we see Ismae talk Sybella off the ledge (figuratively and literally) and then the next thing we know, Sybella's been off on a month's long assignment, and while I did get a sense that the three were close, I felt that part could have been stronger.  (So it's a back handed compliment, so what?) 

I also liked how the book ended - given that there are, as I said, three new novitiates, and this is a planned trilogy, I don't think I'm reaching too far to say that each book will center on one of them.  The next one is Sybella, I believe.  So Grave Mercy did a good job of wrapping up Ismae's story line and getting her to a place of, if not absolute resolution, at least temporary resting so that we can look in on the other girls and see how they're doing.  I am intrigued by the other two ladies, and while it's never a good idea to want to know more about a secondary character than the primary one, it does at least bode well for follow-up books.

So it's a fairly standard book, not offensive, but the focus on the relationship between Gavriel and Ismae to the detriment of world-building is both a strength and a weakness: strength in the sense that there are many questions and avenues for the next two books, weak in the sense that you just get a sense of absurdity  and implausibility about some of it. And in a world where fourteen year old girls get sent to assassin training school in medieval France, you need to ensure you keep as much plausibility as you can or else the whole thing is a three ring circus.

Code Name: Verity

Codename: Verity, by Elizabeth Wein 

Oct. 11th, 1943—A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun.

When “Verity” is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn’t stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she’s living a spy’s worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.

As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage and failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy? 

Happy New Year!  I've decided to celebrate a day off in the middle of the week by reading about young female spies getting tortured in World War II.  I think I've talked before about the overabundance of WWII kid's fic out there, but Codename Verity is a worthy addition to any collection.  My mother, bless her heart, read it before giving it to me with her recommendation, but I wasn't feeling it the last time I picked it up, several months ago.  It was one of those things where I'd heard too much about the book, and had gotten the impression that there was some "twist" to it, and I was taking everything with such grains of salt I couldn't concentrate on the story.

Which is: a plane with two travelers is shot and crashes, but not before one passenger parachutes out: Verity, an English (Scottish) spy, meant to join up with the French Resistance on a secret mission,  gets discovered not more than a week after she lands, captured and unable to talk her way out of it without the necessary faked papers, which were accidentally switched with that of her pilot and best friend, Maddie Brodatt. The first half of the book is the story of the two girls' (I keep saying girls, even though they're clearly old enough to have excelled at their respective dirty jobs) mutual history to the fatal crash-landing.

This is where I got tripped up: the idea that this Verity character would be writing the truth for the Germans was so implausible, that I was really strung out thinking - was this a lie? Was this?  In fact, I was pretty sure throughout most of that first section, that Verity was not Queenie, but Maddie herself, pretending to be the other girl for some unknown reason.  Lest you be led astray as I was, let me reassure you: Maddie is Maddie and Verity is Queenie (aka Julie).  I was also ticked off by the leniency with which Verity was (apparently) given to write her story: she goes off on a lot of tangents, most of which serve no purpose other than (as we discover later) as coded messages to the Resistance.  Given that Verity could not have reasonably expected the papers to make it back to the Resistance (at least, not with any real confidence, especially in the beginning), it seems odd that she would have (and could have) written her papers with two such disparate audiences in mind.  I suppose she was hopeful on the off chance they could get smuggled out, but then why did the Germans permit it?  Very odd.

Because I didn't see much point in anything Verity wrote, I was therefore less impressed at her repression of more relevant facts relating to the secret mission.  Since she clearly had to have known more than just what was in the record, it's hard for me to say that she did a great job not telling any of that.  Well, obviously, she was tortured.  But they kept her alive for weeks, ostensibly for the purpose of this written record of key information, and they don't even attempt to get the basis for her mission in France?  Not that it would have mattered in the long run, since she would have lied about it, but it hurts the story, I think, for the reader not to be convinced along with the Germans, of a cover story.  Most of what Verity writes is true, but useless (and the parts that aren't true I found pointless - lies about it being a Beaufort plane, not a Lysander one - eh?).  I was expecting relevant lies.

What is impressive is how well Ms. Wein manages to convey the friendship between Maddie and Verity, even though they aren't together for most of the book: they meet, train up in separate locations, then spend a few missions traveling together before their final fateful trek to France, whereupon they are immediately separated. However, they share a boundless love for each other, which comes across clearly in each narration in the book.  Maddie's final sacrifice is heart-breaking, and I will confess, I did start crying, though the book continues for so much longer that I was quite dry-eyed by the last page.  It is refreshing that this is not just another one of those teen love-triangle books, of which there are far too many (girl falls in love with boy, but they cannot be together due to: a dystopian society/sudden onset lycanthropy/he's actually 300 years older than her and that's super creepy, stop acting like it's not).

I think a reader would benefit from multiple readings: Verity's narration, in particular, contains multitudes, which I could not begin to unpick today.  It also contains quite a lot of mechanical talk about airplanes, especially at first.  It's like the whale chapters in Moby Dick - you just have to get through them, but lordy are they ever a drag.  The author is a pilot herself, and it does show.  Stylistically, I think it would also benefit from not underlining certain sentences about the Gestapo headquarters - you'll see what I mean.  It does make things jump out at you (as it's intended to), but given that we're treated to a run-down of it all later anyway, I think it would be doing more of a service to readers to make them go back to find it themselves. 

I thought it was a good book, a worthwhile book, but the feeling of being manipulated was not worth the pay-off of finding out what Verity was lying about.  Perhaps when I'm feeling less raw about it, I'll return to it.  Because that's the thing: this book does kick you in the stomach.  I'm still reeling from it.  It's not a very comfortable read, but I do sort of feel like finding an online discussion of it, sort of like joining a support group: CNV Survivors, we'll get t-shirts made. 

Bitterblue

Bitterblue, by Kristen Cashore

In a world where a small percentage of people have an extreme skill called a Grace, King Leck's Grace allowed him to tell lies that everyone believed. When Bitterblue became queen at ten years old, she thought her father's murder meant the end of his violent, sociopathic influence.

She was wrong.

Bitterblue isn't going to make much sense if you haven't read Graceling, or Fire, to a lesser degree.   It's not the book I hoped it would be after the first two, but that doesn't mean it's a terrible book.  And certainly once you've read the Graceling and Fire you will have to read this one, if only to find out how Bitterblue turns out [spoiler alert: she's a dick].

It begins with Bitterblue, age 18, deciding she needs, like Princess Jasmine in Aladdin, to see a bit more of the world and winds up, like Princess Jasmine in Aladdin, meeting with some less-than-upstanding citizens, who she befriends and romances, etc. etc.  It's the weakest of the trilogy, although my mother and I disagree as to which of the other two books we prefer more.

Both Graceling and Fire revolve more around a straightforward action-adventure plot, with character interaction taking center stage.  Bitterblue is more of a mystery book, and there are so many new characters introduced, it can be difficult to keep them all straight, especially Bitterblue's four elderly advisers, Rune, Runnemood, Darby, and Thiel. 

Overall, I just wasn't as pleased with this entry.  It does suffer from such an excellent first and second entry, and the anticipation of waiting months to read this.  I remember feeling a similar feeling when I first started reading Fire, but I was won over by the end of that, which I wasn't, quite, here.  For one thing, I think Ms. Cashore had enough material for two more books, and the way that it's all squished into Bitterblue means that she (and the reader) are juggling a few too many plot lines at once, until they all start wrapping themselves up quite suddenly.  Bitterblue starts the book with a lot of questions, mostly about why her cabinet is acting so strangely, why people are attacking her friends, why things are being stolen that were never there in the first place, and why no one will tell her the truth about anything that happened during Leck's reign.  Unfortunately, it's structured so that we're asking more and more questions, and getting no answers, until everything is unraveled at once.  It's like a balloon popping in your face, yes, it's quite exciting, but not something particularly enjoyable.  I wound up feeling exhausted after everyone's secrets were out in the open.

Tied in with that is the secondary problem that Bitterblue suffers from, which is the problem of telling, not showing.  There were several times in there where two characters would be having a conversation between themselves, and, well, like this one, where Bitterblue wants to know who knifed her new-found friend Teddy in the gut:

"Teddy, who did attack you?"

Teddy answered this with a quiet smile, then said, "What did Saf mean about you asking your third question?"

And that's it! This is one of the questions that Bitterblue writes down as one of the mysteries she totes around for the first half of the book, and we don't even get to hear the answer.  Plus, it's something that comes up again and again, since Teddy was apparently the victim of a faction out to stop people from bringing up the past, and who turn out to be the big "villains" of the book.  Why would this clue be so off-screen?  Bitterblue doesn't even acknowledge it, she doesn't bring it up again at all, not even to say, "Hmm, that name means nothing to me, but I'll keep my ear to the ground."  Come on, anything!**

 [Interjection Time!  As you may know, often I can be a little slow myself, and it's only after writing something all out that I realize I am completely wrong.  In this case, I think a bit of linguistic confusion was the cause of the problem.  Looking back on it now, it's pretty clear to me that "answered with a quiet smile" means that he didn't say anything, just smiled and moved on.  HOWEVER, I want to maintain that it could also be read as "answered with a quiet smile" meaning that he answered her question while smiling.  Obviously I took it the second way.  I would take this section out and replace it with one that actually supports my point, but I am, too lazy to care about the quality of my output. Which is why I am a reader, not a writer.  And a lover, not a fighter.  And a count, not a saint!]

That brings me to my next beef: Bitterblue is kind of (a) a jerk and (b) stupid.  I didn't want to say stupid, but she's got blinders on the size of Texas, which has the same effect.  She knows (since she was there and all) that her father basically mind-raped (and rape-raped) his constituents for decades.  She herself has nightmares about his handwriting.  And yet, she uses people's experiences during that time as like, a conversational tool, a I'm-tired-of-losing-this-argument-so-I'm-going-to-say-the-most-hurtful-thing-I-can-to-you kind of a thing.  For example, when her adviser, Thiel, is trying to get her to talk about the fact that she maybe should be thinking about marrying someone, she goes,

"There's something I'd like to discuss," she said. "Do you remember the time you came into my mother's rooms to say something to my father that made him angry and he brought you downstairs through the hidden door? What did he do to you down there?"

and then later, when he shuts down and leaves, like she wanted:

Left along, Bitterblue shuffled papers, signed things, sneezed at the dust - tried, and failed, to talk herself out of a small shame.  She'd done it on purpose.  She'd known full well that he wouldn't be able to bear her question.  In fact, almost all of the men who worked in her offices, from her advisers to her ministers and clerks to her personal guard - those who had been Leck's men - flinched away from direct reminders of the time of Leck's reign - flinched away, or fell apart.  It was the weapon she always used when one of them pushed her too far, for it was the only weapon she had that worked.  She suspected that there'd be no more marriage talk for a while.

Wow, can you be more of an asshole, Bitterblue? "Let's talk about that time you watched my father kidnap and torture hundreds of little girls and perform experiments on them and kill them so I don't have to answer questions about boys."  I'm getting ticked thinking about it again.  Plus, she keeps doing it, like, what does she hope to accomplish?  Thiel does snap, eventually, and hits her with some truth she maybe could have figured out a few hundred pages ago, so, uh, great plan? 

The fact of it is that her entire kingdom is suffering from some mass PTSD and she goes around using that as a weapon.  Even after someone has to tell her that of course, her father couldn't have accomplished all this theft and kidnapping on his own, he had to have people helping him, she still doesn't ease up on her interrogation techniques.  Even after she finds out that he appointed four doctors to be his advisers, in all likelihood so that when he cut people open, they'd be there to sew them back up and keep 'em alive, she doesn't take a moment to go, "well, gosh, maybe they're suppressing some seriously heavy shit, let's get them to a therapist, stat." Nope, it's all, "When you lie to me in an effort not to talk about that time my father mind-controlled you in raping little girls, you lose my trust." I'm not surprised that she's down to only one adviser by the end of the book, I'm surprised she has any. 

It's a somewhat similar storyline to the one in the Miles Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold, specifically the first two (Shards of Honor+Barrayar=Cordelia's Honor).  That also concerns a man who was kept as the puppet of a psychopath, and forced to deal with the resulting mental anguish in the fallout. People are a lot more understanding in that book than this one.  And yes, I know Bitterblue is only 18, but she lived it as well.  She watched her mother live through it, and she's not unintelligent.  She should know better.  She should also maybe not have waited eight years to even peek through her father's old rooms or the other closed-off areas of the castle.

That's really the problem (and the difference between Bitterblue and Graceling or Fire).  In Bitterblue, when there's a problem, Bitterblue can't really go out and do something about it - she basically assigns people to collect information for her, instead.  In the other books, even when Katsa or Fire wasn't really accomplishing anything, at least there was visible progress.  This is a claustrophobic book, and I think it suffers from the main character being so restricted in her movements.  There's a lot to explore here, and it's telling that a lot of big discoveries (the river of bones, the Dells, the re-taking of the crown) take place completely off-page.  I'm sure it was a deliberate choice, but it should have been explored a little more.  What's weird is that we spend the whole book in Bitterblue's head, but I still feel like I don't know her all that well, not as well as Katsa and Fire, or even secondary characters in the earlier books. 

Besides follow-up-itis, Bitterblue also has the problem that the reader knows all about the Dells (from reading Fire), so that when Bitterblue finds out that her father's fantastical stories may have, in this case, actually been true, the reader is all, finally, instead of whu-uh?  There's a feeling of impatience instead of wonder, which makes me peevish, as I'm sure will come as a big shock to anyone reading this. 

Plus, the book kinda ends abruptly, so I'm left wondering about all these loose ends I have - like who put the red language dictionary on Death's shelf?  Was that explained, and I just missed it?  What is going on with that revolution up in Estill? What about Bitterblue's sadly depleted cabinet? I felt like the other two books had a lot more closure than this one, even though it's ostensibly the final book.

There's just such a rich story here, that I don't feel like this book does justice to it.  The idea of a mad king and the reconstruction and restoration of trust is a grand topic, and I felt like it got obscured in the frenetic introduction of new plot points and characters. Oh well, I'm off to re-read Graceling!


To sum up, I leave you with the immortal words of Martin Blank:

"A psychopath kills for no reason. I kill for money, it's a job... that didn't come out right."

Atomic Element 26! Double Header Review Day

Iron Duke, by Meljean Brook

It's been nine years since the Horde, an oppressive empire from Asia, were run out of England. However, detective inspector Lady Wilhelmina Wentworth will never be able to escape their cruelty: her mother was raped during the invasion, and Mina is half Horde. Mina crosses paths with the revered Iron Duke Rhys Trahaearn, a former pirate captain who was instrumental in fighting the Horde, when a dead body is tossed on his estate. What begins as lust sparks into full-blown romance as the two learn more about the nefarious Black Guard and catch a murderous madman. Airships, zombies, nanotechnology, outlandish secondary characters, and a complicated heroine round out the novel. - Publisher's Weekly

This week's theme is two-fold: first, the obvious metallic royalty thing going on, which I find amusing, since it sounds like they belong to a single series, but in fact have nothing in common. I would totally read The Iron Dowager Queen, too! The other theme is procrastination, i.e., I read these books so long ago, I had to return them to the library, since they do not let me renew books more than once down here in this god-forsaken wasteland, but I've been putting off writing about them, until I had other things I wanted to put off more. Don't judge me, juggling onerous tasks is how I got so spry and nimble! Also, I know that doesn't make sense and I don't care. WHAT.

The Iron Duke, which I have typed as The Iron King twice now, is a really fascinating alternate history steampunk book, and although there are a few instances where I was kinda scratching my head, for the most part Ms. Brook does a good job of absorbing you into the story, and giving you enough world-building to get you interested, but not enough to overwhelm you. In Iron Duke, nanotechnology of some sort was introduced to foodstuffs imported into England (sugar, particularly), and once all the population had sufficient intake, they were activated, so that the people were controlled by the Horde, and kept insensate, apart from the brief periods of frenzy, which were basically induced orgies, meant to control the population growth.

As a brief aside, was the Horde supposed to be Asian, like, the Golden Horde? This was never explained to my satisfaction, and I will be honest with you, at first I thought they were aliens, and this was some sort of sci-fi thing, but I kinda got the impression that they were actually humans. Plus, they're sexually compatible with the English (rrrrawr), but visually separate, since people can tell from looking at Mina that's she's a hybrid. Or a half-breed. A mule. More zippers, mule! (I said, don't judge).

[PS I was just reviewing this for editing, and I realized that blurb up there totally says that the Horde is from Asia. HAHAHAHAHA, obviously my reading comprehension leaves a little something to be desired. But it's not clear in the book, is my point, nyah.]

Anyhow, Mina is pretty awesome, like the Mina from the League of Extraordinary Gentleman, who is based on the Dracula Mina (I was about to say Batman's Mina. I should not be writing this post, for real, yo), who is, by all accounts, also pretty kickass. To sum up: naming your child Wilhelmina is still a horrible thing to do to them. She is on a police force of some sort, that part's only partially important, because we get right to the good stuff right away: a body that fell on the Duke's property, who has been dropped from such a height as to break every bone in his body, and leave him a gelatinous sack. Also, he was frozen when he was dropped! DUN DUN DUN!

I will be honest, I only partially followed the plotline, mostly because it didn't really make much sense, and because not knowing it only slightly impeded my enjoyment of the book. This ain't no War and Peace, y'all, I don't need to remember why this pirate lady went out of her way to drop a guy on the Duke's house, which seems really stupid, since the last thing I would want is some pissed off Ironman bent on revenge chasing me around on a dirigible. In a dirigible? On a dirigible. DIRIGIBLES! One thing this book has lots of is dirigibles! Or uh, airships? Either way, a method of transportation I have no desire to try out, especially after reading this book. And seriously, how could the Duke, who is, apparently, entirely iron inside his insides, not have to like, stay in one place on the ship? Wouldn't that much iron, wandering around deck, trying to make out with people, be like, super unsteady, and tip that sucker over?

I just looked it up, and answers.com (which is a very reliable source) says that cast iron weighs 450 pounds per cubic foot. So, if he's like, five cubic feet (google failed me on my "how much cubic feet per person" inquiry, which I do have to admit is probably not asked very often, and should probably be restricted to the even more esoteric, "how many cubic feet are all the bones in the human body", which makes me sound like a serial killer), then he weighs well over 2000 pounds. You know what else weighs 2000 pounds? A small car. Can you imagine trying to have sex with a car on top of you? Really? You need help. Even if he's only like, one cubic foot worth of iron, that's still like, the same as a big fucking llama. I got sidetracked, I apologize.

So the Duke sees Mina, and thinks she's a hot piece, which he is one hundred percent correct about, and decides he's going to follow her around town, trying to mack on her, and generally being about even money in the helpful:horny odds. Now, I do have to mention, the one truly not good part of the book, is where he rapes her. I KNOW. I didn't want to say it like that, but it kinda is like that, no getting around it. She says no, he continues, because, and I forget this exactly, he's like, in some sort of sex-haze, and doesn't realize no means no. And he realizes later, and prostrates himself, and she forgives him, and they fuck off into the sunset. It's bullshit, but I got through it, and liked everything else, so my experience of the book was not ruined. It's just. . . it's rape, man, and FOR NO GOOD REASON. I have no idea why that scene was written like that. It really made me dislike the Duke, whereas I had been ambivalent before, and the eventual rehabilitation of his character just doesn't seem worth the total smear job.

Like, The Iron Duke really needed not to be a romance book, because all the non-romance parts (besides the bewildering plotlines, which I accept some blame for, I have a short memory) were great, and all the romance parts kinda skeeved me out. The world that Ms. Brook created is delightful, all the nuances, and details, and stuff, even if it's got some holes. I just wanted Mina to team up with the Duke without all the angst, and then for them to go off and like, hunt krakens and bulldoze zombies and solve crimes. I don't think that's too much to ask.





The Iron King, by Julie Kagawa

Meghan Chase has a secret destiny—one she could never have imagined…

Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan's life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school…or at home.

When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she's known is about to change.

But she could never have guessed the truth—that she is the daughter of a mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she'll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a mysterious evil no faery creature dare face…and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart. - From Amazon

This book is totally not like the Iron Duke, in that this is a) a teen book, b) not steampunk, c) set in Louisiana and faery, not Europe and airships, and d) not exciting. Two things this book is sorely lacking: ass-kicking and exploding zombies.

I apologize in advance, not only am I sickish (this - a runny nose and sore throat - is usually about as sick as I ever get, so I milk it for all it's worth), and have a long day ahead of me tomorrow, I also didn't have much to say about this book even right after I read it, so I'm doubly short on words now. I was very excited about the premise, and also because I got the first two chapters on my kindle, and it was very tantalizing. But now I've read the whole thing, and I am very let down. First, the characters are kinda paper-boardy. Cardboardy. Two-dimensional. Meghan is flat, Robin is flat, and honestly, I skimmed the last half of the book. I didn't want to! It was just. . . not gripping, and kinda telegraphed, so I got bored waiting for everyone to do what I knew they'd end up doing, like, twenty pages back. Except that time Meghan gets drunk on fairy juice. Did not see that coming.

But things like that were part of my discontent with the Iron King: the events didn't really flow, they seemed more like, squares on a gameboard, like now you have a chase scene, now you have a dance scene, now you have your three main characters face-off and wow, I'm bored just trying to describe it. I feel badly, since it's not a bad book, I just sorta was expecting better, and it's so bland. It was a let-down.

Plus, you gotta compare it to that other book about going into fairyland to switch a changeling back, Heir to Sevenwaters, by Juliet Marillier, and this one just does not compare. Not that the changeling isn't frightening. That's some Omen shit right there. I've been trying to think of something else to say about this book, and it's just not coming. It really is that bland. So I am going to bed. I hope you'll all join me for the next installment, The Iron Maharaja.