Charlene Harris has a talent for writing about the different and the damaged; Harper Connelly is both.
Harris' smooth writing style makes thi...moreCharlene Harris has a talent for writing about the different and the damaged; Harper Connelly is both.
Harris' smooth writing style makes this book an easy read but that is not to say that the book is without substance. Harper Connelly and her brother are both people I want to know more about: ethical, loyal, brave and broken.
Harris gives Connelly a distinctive and compelling voice. This is a woman who sees the world differently and is brave enough not to look away.
Of course, there is a plot, complex enough to be intriguing and transperent enough to let you smugly anticipate the ending, but the plot is much less important than the characterization and the back story.
Connelly can attribute her strangeness to neglectful, abusive parents and a bolt of lightening. The people she meets have no excuse for the monsterous things that they do or allow other people to do.
As she does in her Sookie Stackhouse books, Harris leaves me feeling that the taken-for-granted violence and hatred in America is far more frightening and repellent than anything supernatural.
I recommend that you buy not just this book, but the three that follow it, because I think that, like me, you will want to move from one book to the next in quick sucession.(less)
In "Made To Be Broken", the second of the Nadia Stafford series, we finally get inside the head of this hitwoman-with-principles. I found th...moreIn "Made To Be Broken", the second of the Nadia Stafford series, we finally get inside the head of this hitwoman-with-principles. I found this book much more compelling that the first, which had that Series 1 Episode 1 fell to it.
This book reads alound much better than the first, the theme has more emotional impact and the backstory gets some real depth.
I hope that there will be a third in the series soon(less)
This is a fun book from cover to cover. MY wife bought if for me for Christmas and it brought me a lot of twisted cheer.
The style and the wa...moreThis is a fun book from cover to cover. MY wife bought if for me for Christmas and it brought me a lot of twisted cheer.
The style and the way of thinking is kind of Carl Hiassen meets Tom Sharpe with a dash of Sam Raimi thrown in.
Moore manages to pull off writing a book in which we care what happens to the characters, laugh at fights with flesh-eating zombies, cheer when Santa gets what's coming to him, root for the psychotic warrior princess who is off her meds and believe in a talking fruit-bat.
The only "reality" based thing in the book is the love the people feel for each other and their irrepressible response to all the craziness around them.
That, combined with great comic timing, an imagination that refuses to accept any limits, and a love of genre fiction, is what makes this book a jox to read.(less)
This is the book that gave me the most enjoyment this year.
It seems to be in a genre of its own: violent and whimsical, fantistical and gr...moreThis is the book that gave me the most enjoyment this year.
It seems to be in a genre of its own: violent and whimsical, fantistical and grounded in reality, funny and soaked in sadness.
This is the second volume in the Kalix series and it is even better than the first. What more can you ask of a sequel?
It seems to me the title refers not just to Kalix but to all the femal werewolves. They are all cursed in one way or another.
This is a book bursting with memorable characters and with a plot that makes you want to keep turning the pages (which is just as well -it's a big book)
At the heart of this book is a deep understanding of dysfunctional families and the bonds and enemnities they harbour and a belief in the power of freely given friendship.
My personal favourite in this book is Vex, the fire elemental. At first she seems to be the airhead incarnate but it becomes clear that her optimism is a choice not a habit and that she is loyal and brave as well as being completely off the wall.
Kalix remains self-abusive and damaged but she is portrayed with an empathy and compassion that beats anything I've seen in mainstream fiction.
Do yourself a favour: buy this book and then buy a copy for your best friend - you'll need someone to talk to when you've finished this who will know what it is that you're so excited about.(less)
Don't be put off by the terrible movie that was made from this book. It and its successors in the series are worth the read. There is much that is ali...moreDon't be put off by the terrible movie that was made from this book. It and its successors in the series are worth the read. There is much that is alien and different in the fantasy story of the continuing struggle between good and evil. Most of it comes not from the world that Lukyanenko constructs but from the distinctly Russian assumptions and perspectives that he brings to the fantasy.
The translator has managed to keep the pace of the book without losing its exotic feel. The plot will keep you turning the pages. The assumptions and ethics of the book will have you reflecting on whether some of the things you take for granted about how the world works are true.(less)
Morgan creates a future in which large consultancies make money by sponsoring small wars. Requests for tender are literally fought out the different t...moreMorgan creates a future in which large consultancies make money by sponsoring small wars. Requests for tender are literally fought out the different teams and the road is used by an elite who use their cars as weapons to attempt to assassinate each other.
While the premise is a deliberate exaggeration, the flavour and setting of the story reflects my experience of how it feels to work in large elite consultancies.
As usual, Morgan's writing is taut, his storytelling is compelling and his action sequences are cinemagraphic.
I first encountered Lorrie Moore via her short story collection "Birds of America". I loved her use of language and her ability to make you ...moreI first encountered Lorrie Moore via her short story collection "Birds of America". I loved her use of language and her ability to make you give everything a second glance and find something new. Most of all I loved the honesty of the emotions she expressed.
I wondered whether she would be able to sustain that in a novel. It seems to me that there is a tendency in novels to have a lot of the text there simply to move things along. The text is mechanical, sometimes sleekly efficient and admirable in its own way, but not inherently beautiful.
Moore's novel is written with the same attention to language as her short stories. This is not to say that the novel lacks pace or structure but rather that the pace fueled by a strong sense of place and character and the structure has beauty etched through every strut and brace.
Here's an example:
Our narrator is a twenty year old college student, a country girl with little experience of life beyond her farm, who is interviewing for a part time job looking after children. She is meeting a prospective employer
"I'm Tassie Keltjin;" I said thrusting out my hand.
She took it and then studied my face.. "Yes," she said slowly, absently unnervingly scrutinizing each of my eyes.Her gaze made a slow , observing circle around my nose and mouth. "I'm Sarah Brink," she said finally. I was not used to being looked at close up, not used to the thing I was looking at looking back. Certainly my own mother had never done such looking, and in general my face had the sort of smooth, round stupidity that did not prompt the world's study.I had always felt as hidden as the hull in a berry, as secret and as fetal as the curled fortune in a cookie, and such hiddenness was not without its advantages, its egotisms, its grief-fed grandiosities..
Text like this I can taste. I sip at it the way I would a good wine. Recalling it makes me smile. This is how I would like to be able to write.
There is more to this book than exquisite language. Lorrie Moore let's us share a year or so in a young woman's life when she is learning about the world and her place in it and the pain and the joys that it contains.
She manages to move her story forward in a way that reflects life as we experience it: each day is a new a undefined until it slides onto the pearl-string of the past that we carry with us and understand only when we look back and not always then.
She keeps the immediacy of experience, the heat of emotion, the sense of being adrift in our own lives, of never quite knowing who we are or what we expect of ourselves until we are too late to go back and change the choices that have made us less than we wanted to be.
The book brims with ideas, small moments of joy embedded in an underlying anxiety, changes in perception that slowly acknowledge the reality of things we cannot control, escapes into music and solitude and friendships and one huge tidal wave of grief that changes everything or perhaps just reveals the true form of what was always there.
This is a book that you should give yourself up to. Experience it as directly as you can, a page at a time. As each page slides on the to the string that we have been taught to think of as a novel, your perception will change and mature.
This is one of those books that will stay with me. One that I will reach for and read small fragments of so I can refresh my memory(less)
This is a short novel, (less than 300 pages) dealing with big themes at a brisk pace that shows a discipline I wish more writers in this genre would s...moreThis is a short novel, (less than 300 pages) dealing with big themes at a brisk pace that shows a discipline I wish more writers in this genre would share.
The plot line is pure graphic novel (a plus from my point of view; I’m a long time fan of the genre): The Angel of Death is missing, the apocalypse is coming and Remy Chandler, PI and former Seraphim has to find the Angel of Death to prevent the end of the world. The downside (apart from the blood and pain needed to achieve the task) is that success will mean the death of the woman he loves.
The book brims with new ideas that capture the imagination and old ideas artfully redrawn that give the book a context. The feel is as Film Noire as the characters name suggests and all the better for that.
Sniegoski handles the big issues here not by rambling discussions of ethics and philosophy but by bringing us to the basics of humanity: the overwhelming impact of being loved, the inevitability of death, the optimism it takes to keep going in the face of pain and suffering, and the acknowledgement that there are no short cuts when it comes to emotions; knowing grief is coming won’t protect you from its bite.
The linchpin of this book is Remy’s desire to put aside the angelic nature that he has become ashamed of and embrace the physically fragile but emotionally and spiritually rich existence of humans. This allows us both an insight into the inhumanity of Heaven and the things about our own lives that define us as human.
The various non-human entities here are described succinctly and with a clarity that enabled me to see the movie that this book would make.
The book truly comes to life in Remy’s relationship with his young Labrador dog, Marlowe. Anyone who has ever had a Labrador as part of their pack will recognise Marlowe. They will also be jealous of Remy’s ability actually to hear Marlowe’s voice rather than having to work out what is being said through gestures and body-language; few things are more humbling than realising that your dog is being patient with you, waiting for you finally to figure out what he has already told you three times.
The book would have been stronger in my view if there had been a little more visibility of the back-story between Remy and his wife, but this is a minor nit.
I look forward to the next in the series.
One last thing: don’t be put off by the title. It is definitely the worse thing about the book.
I suspect there’s an editor out there somewhere who should be blushing for having insisted on this title and the even worse cover art.
I imagine the editor saying: “It’s a wonderful title, honestly. We’ll maximise the appeal to the target demographic if we have the word Kiss and Apocalypse in the title and let’s make sure the dog gets on the cover, oh, and give him a sort of Harry Dresden grim-in-a-leather-duster look (yes I know it isn’t in the text – this is cover art, darling, you don’t have to be so literal) and remember to give him a big long sword, gotta love the symbolism in that.”
On the surface this is a slight tale about a man in his sixties who is trying to simplify his life. The characters are ordinary people and nothing muc...moreOn the surface this is a slight tale about a man in his sixties who is trying to simplify his life. The characters are ordinary people and nothing much happens except the everyday things that all of us live through.
But Anne Tyler's gift is to make us look again at all those things that we take for granted and see them differently. In this case, she shows us that passivity may not be a virtue, that life is what you remember and that memories are made and preserved by the people who you are connected to.
Liam Pennywell is 61 and adrift in his own life. Liam trained in philosophy, taught history, is once widowed, once divorced and has three daughters but he has somehow contrived barely to experience his own life.
He turns the loss of his job as an opportunity to downsize his life. He seems at peace with the passive path he has chosen. Then something is stolen from him: a few hours of his memory, the result of a concussion suffered in an attack he cannot recall.
Liam's efforts to retrieve his memory lead him into a situation in which he finally understands that the most important thing he has forgotten is the impact that his first wife's suicide had on. He is forced to confront that even he is connected to others and that his choices have consequencews and that he must choose how he will live.
The humanity and compassion in this most unromantic of books matches Tyler's earlier works and that alone would be enough to make this book memorable but what captured my heart was the quiet grace of Tyler's language and the subtle skill of her unobtrusive storytelling. (less)
This is competent, page-turning, detective vs serial-killer book. The writing is clean, crisp and effective. The characters have just enough depth to ...moreThis is competent, page-turning, detective vs serial-killer book. The writing is clean, crisp and effective. The characters have just enough depth to keep you interested and not so much baggage as to slow down the pace of the tail. This would make a good movie
(less)
Jodi Picoult's books are marketed as if they were Richard and Judy / Opra /Hallmark fodder - with an awful "What would you do?" line that ap...moreJodi Picoult's books are marketed as if they were Richard and Judy / Opra /Hallmark fodder - with an awful "What would you do?" line that appears on each cover. In the past I've avoided them because life is too short.
My wife told me "Second Glance" would be worth my time but warned me it would be sad.
Sad? This book had me weeping many times. It also had me pausing in admiration at some of the prose: wonderfully evocative descriptions of everyday strangeness and excellent dialogue. Most impressive of all was the skill with which Picoult handles the challenging themes in this story. For me, she should be in the company of John Irving or Barbara Kingsolver or Joanne Harris.
In this book, nothing is what it seems at first glance. Picoult juxtaposes the rational views of the 1930s eugenics movement and current genetic screening with the emotional richness of unique but damaged people. She acknowledges the power of inheritance and family but she weighs it against the potential for individuals to transcend their background through their love for others.
At the literal heart of this book is the idea that spirits of the dead can visit the living. This might be a stumbling block for some, pushing the book into genre fiction, but this is no more a ghost story than say, Sarah Water's "Little Stranger". This is about being haunted by loss, about being unable to find a reason to live, about seeing clearly how things are and being brave enough to do what has to be done.
I look forward to reading more of her work .
I'm grateful to my wife for getting me to give this book a second glance and encouraging me to move beyond my own preconceptions.(less)
Elton's look at the interaction between Hollywood violence and the real world is, as always, acutely observed, iconoclastic, witty and more than a lit...moreElton's look at the interaction between Hollywood violence and the real world is, as always, acutely observed, iconoclastic, witty and more than a little disturbing. An excellent read that lingers long after the book is completed(less)
This starts well; fast action, credible and interesting heroine, orginal premise. I felt it lost pace in the middle - too much focus on demonstrating ...moreThis starts well; fast action, credible and interesting heroine, orginal premise. I felt it lost pace in the middle - too much focus on demonstrating craft and not enough insight into what these kinds of folks are about. The last quarter of the book got things back on track.
I know Armstrong can write. Parts of this book show her talent well. Perhaps what marred my enjoyment was my lack of sympathy for the laconic "Jack" character. Laconic is much hard to do attractively in a book than in a movie. I found his partly completed sentences and general reticence irritating. I enjoyed Nadia and found her compelling.
I'm going to read the next in the series and see if things take off.(less)
Kelley Armstrong always tells a good story but some stories are much more compelling than others. In this tale of Otherworld, Jamie gets to take centr...moreKelley Armstrong always tells a good story but some stories are much more compelling than others. In this tale of Otherworld, Jamie gets to take centre stage. The plot works. The pace is good. Some of the scenes are quite moving but the book does not stand on its own. This book reads like an episode in a much-loved series where a charming but minor character finally gets to be the star. It fills out my understanding of Otherworld and gives some fun insights into the series as a whole but it is a finger buffer rather than a meal. Fun if you're in the mood for something light and good.(less)
There seems to be some kind of cosmic law that Harry Dresden never has a good time. As the Dresden Files progress, Harry's life becomes increasingly g...moreThere seems to be some kind of cosmic law that Harry Dresden never has a good time. As the Dresden Files progress, Harry's life becomes increasingly grim and each time he goes into action he seems to have to sacrifice a little more of himself to defend what he believes in,
There is a danger in a series like this that writer and fan base become settled in their ways and the books become formulaic and repetitive. Butcher avoids this trap. Each book tells me something new and makes me re-examine the previous books on the basis of what i know now.
In "Changes" Butcher goes the extra mile. In this book everything changes. Harry's self-destructive ride to right wrongs carries to a point of no return and beyond. Nothing will be the same again.
I'd almost given up on Stephanie Plumb. Much as I loved the first 6 or 7 books, by book 10 the formula was getting old and there didn't seem to be any...moreI'd almost given up on Stephanie Plumb. Much as I loved the first 6 or 7 books, by book 10 the formula was getting old and there didn't seem to be anywhere to go.
Book 13 won me back to the fanbase by the simple expedience of having a good plot.
Although all the Stephanie Plum novels are crime stories of sorts, most of them have been character and humour driven. We wait for Stephanie to blow up another car, burn down another building, mess up another take down with an endearing level of haplessness amateurism. The main plot element was often which of the two men in her life she will give herself to.
Book 13 has a palot ad quite a good plot at that. All your favourite characters are still there, but now they have a purpose.(less)
The Sookie Stackhouse books just keep getting better. There is a solid and credible progression in these stories. From the first book through to this,...moreThe Sookie Stackhouse books just keep getting better. There is a solid and credible progression in these stories. From the first book through to this, the tenth, Sookie has become a dangerous person, not fully human, not afraid to kill, not really aware of the changes in herself. Out understanding of the world she lives in continues to deepen and get richer.
Don't be put off by the sexploitation light-weight HBO series, Trueblood- like the drink it's named after, it's a poor substitute for the real thing. I sat impatiently through series 2 of Trueblood and wondered why Alan Ball bought the rights to the Stackhouse books if he was going to ignore them.
At the end of the 10th book, my only regret was that the 11th is yet available for me to read (less)
This book contains 4 novellas and is a sampler for those who want to know if there are other supernatural detective series they might like to read.
...moreThis book contains 4 novellas and is a sampler for those who want to know if there are other supernatural detective series they might like to read.
I was already a Dresden fan and happy to read the novella that kicks off the book.
I've now decided that I'll definitely read a Remy Chandler novel - who could resist a haunted angel who can understand what his labrador says?
I think Harper Blaine as Grey Walker might be fun but I'm not rushing out to buy.
John Taylor didn't grab me - not my brand of humour
(less)
This is sword and sorcery for grown ups - people who can imagine what a broad sword does when it connects with a body and what it does to a man to be...moreThis is sword and sorcery for grown ups - people who can imagine what a broad sword does when it connects with a body and what it does to a man to be standing at the end of a battle, covered in the blood of your enemies, surrounded by the bodies of your friends and to ask yourself what it means that you lived -again- and they died - people who are prepared to confront the cruelty, degradation and pain of slavery with no glamorous over-lay - people who want their fiction to embrace sex that is sweat-slick, lust-driven and not in the least romantic and violence that is visceral and thrilling and ultimate leaves no outcome but more violence and death.
Those who know Morgan's work will find familiar themes here: the brutal alpha male warrior that we would not welcome into civilized society, the abuse of the weak by the powerful, the talon-like grip of religion ripping at the belly of human emotion, the betrayal of those who fight and win by those who manage the politics of peace.
They will also find a new world so fully imagined that its scent will still linger in your nostrils after you close the book and a plot that will clearly span several books.
And of course, they will find a fierce male warrior, a leader, a fighter, a man driven by rage and passion, who is openly and vigorously homosexual in a land and time when this is punishable by death through impalement.
This is a book that sets the bar for other writers and deserves to have a massive readership.
The second book in the series comes out this year. I've already ordered it.(less)
In Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett lifts the working-class football subculture that I grew up with (when players were as local as the teams, and b...moreIn Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett lifts the working-class football subculture that I grew up with (when players were as local as the teams, and being Red or Blue depended on your religion and was religion in its own right) and holds it like a diamond to the light. As always he weaves wisdom and humour and humanity and a deep understanding of honour and loyalty into an ease to read whole that both brings a smile to the lips and leave you wanting to write down statements because they so precisely define a thought.
The plot in this book is not as well brought together as say "Thud" or "Going Postal" but the characters are engaging and there is enough pace and twists and turns to keep you turning the pages eagerly.(less)
Kelley Armstrong brings another insider view of being a werewolf - in this case a pregnant werewolf - and she does it as well as she did in "Stol...moreKelley Armstrong brings another insider view of being a werewolf - in this case a pregnant werewolf - and she does it as well as she did in "Stolen" -which I think is her strongest book so far.Unfortunately, I found that the plot "Broken" wasn't as tight as "Stolen". The premise is interesting but there isn't quite enough pace to make this a thriller. I enjoyed the character development, particularly with Jamie, and I admired the actions-have-consequences-that-can't-be-magicked-away ending(less)
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