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Book reviews
Mar. 21st, 2015 01:34 pmProbably missed some, but here's what was still on my recently returned list (starts January).
Drift by Jonathan McGoran: This book starts with acknowledgements to some very "anti-chemical" foundations and leads with a heavy dose of pesticides-are-terrible commentary that sat poorly with me. Because of that, I had a hard time enjoying the book, because I was expecting the twist to be more heavy-handed scaremongering. It actually wasn't, though, and I relatively enjoyed the end of the book... pity it was such a struggle to get to.
It's sort of a thriller style, I guess, with a not terribly likeable main character who is weirdly oblivious to what's going on - crop duster flies by the house spraying, main character comments on not having athlete's foot anymore but has no idea what could have happened - with poor judgement (tented field next door & hazmat style people walking about? Let's cut into it and see what's going on!). I thought the villain's ideas were a lot more interesting than the main character, so it was a pity to spend so much time on him.
Memory of Water by Emmy Itäranta: I walked into this expecting historical Asian tea ceremony stuff and instead got post-apocalyptic Nordic water politics (and tea ceremony stuff). Actually pretty cool! Sad, though it tried to wrap up with hope on the horizon. I don't think I'd broadly recommend it, but if you liked other sad YA books like Code Name Verity you might like this one as well. They're completely unrelated, but for some reason struck me as being similarly enjoyable.
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer: Vague recollection that this one wasn't as good as the first one. Re-reading the plot summary, I think the issue was that it spent a lot of time on Scarlet and Wolf, who I didn't particularly care about... I though the series really had enough with Cinder-the-cyborg to not need a new fairy tale every book. I just wanted to know more of her story. I will keep on with the series, though.
Underground by Kat Richardson: This was one where the library didn't have the first books, so I jumped in somewhere in the middle. Urban fantasy, set in Seattle, with a main character who can see (and sometimes manipulate) the strands that hold together paranormal things like ghosts or zombies. I enjoyed it well enough, the setting of the Seattle Underground is always a fun one for familiarity's sake and the main character was pleasantly practical. Glad to have another series to go through, since I'm getting towards the end on a couple.
Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson: I found this particular Longmire book super hard to focus on because it was made into an episode that I'd already seen, so half of it was distractingly familiar. Still good, of course, though more action than mystery.
FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics [graphic novel] by Simon Oliver: Picked this up off the shelf on a whim and I was pleasantly amused. Failures in basic physics have lead to disasters and the creation of a bureau whose job it is to contain them - the artwork is good, the concept is zany, and the story was solid. Not terribly serious, but also not completely comedy.
Haunted Moon by Yasmin Galenorn: Another day, another Otherworld book. I'm up to 2013, so I probably only have... what, four or five more to go? She churns out more than one some years. Anyway, this one is about the witch, largely fighting the gross undead. It was fine, a quick read as always, but its definitely suffering from making its main characters too strong - now to be threatened, they have to literally fight gods? Seriously?
Turn Coat by Jim Butcher: This was a pretty good Dresden novel. Mostly a murder mystery with a side of tactical mage fighting (the whole island planning was amusing). A bit heavy on side-lining otherwise strong character for dramatic reasons, but generally enjoyable.
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell: Oh hey, a new series rather than just more of the same! This was a book about an ex-hitman turned medical intern at a bad hospital. What makes this book shine is the aside medical information (I liked the use of footnotes, though M thought it was a bit of a crutch for the writer) and the writing style, which had lines that actually made me laugh aloud. I wish I'd noted some of them, but here's one that someone noted on Goodreads, with the main character thinking on his students: “My medical students. Two cups of human misery in short white coats. One is male and the other one female, and they both have names. That's all I can ever remember about them.”
While I really enjoyed the writing, I wouldn't broadly recommend the book because it is crude and also incredibly violent. It also doesn't ring true at all, it's clearly an absurdist take on the concept - it reads almost more like a comic book or a movie with a self-awareness of how silly the coincidences are. I'm still going to try the next book, though, because how often does an author actually make me laugh?
Night Broken by Patricia Briggs: And back to series. This is a Mercy Thompson book, a series that I haven't read in quite a while, but it came back to me pretty quickly. It felt a bit more contrived than I remember (this one is largely about Adam's ex-wife being at their house, due to a stalker), but it didn't press unreasonably on the drama levers (she succeeded at some social manipulation, but Adam and Mercy discuss what's happening and acknowledge it every step of the way as a loving married couple). Didn't find the villain terribly compelling, though the fights were interesting.
White Heat by M.J. McGrath: Set up in Nunavut, this book was half slice-of-life and half murder mystery. I don't know what it was about it, but I had trouble reading it for long stretches - I'd pick it up, read a chapter, then put it back down. Not that I didn't like it, but that's an unusual way for me to read... it took 'til halfway through the book for me to really be able to go through it. Perhaps not coincidentally, that's when the main character sobers up again and starts really tracking down the mystery parts, so maybe that's all there is to it. I'll be looking up the others in the series, though.
Shutter by Courtney Alemeda: This is YA urban fantasy in the modern era of the world if Bram Stoker's Dracula had been real. The main characters are the youngest of the historical hunters - Helsing as the main character, a young woman who specializes in exorcism via camera lens, plus three young men who do research and destruction of more physical threats (like zombies). It was a bit too predictable and fit in the mold of a lot of other YA, other than those conceptual quirks, but it was also pretty decent. I'd recommend it as an alternative to things like City of Bones - it was much better than that.
The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver: I don't remember where this recommendation came from, but I was super confused when I started it. The blurbs made it out to be a thriller, which it sort of was, but the main character is quadriplegic. So, not exactly the usual. I had trouble getting into it at the beginning, because it does show the deaths of the first two victims of the serial killer - not from the killers POV exactly, but close enough to be really unpleasant. After that, it gets a lot more into the forensics (main character was a forensics guy before his accident and is consulting) and saving potential victims, so that was a lot more tolerable. It also spends a bunch of time on his decision to commit suicide. By the end, I liked it and was willing to look into more of the series, but it was tempered by how much I didn't like the beginning. The whole thing read a bit more like a TV show than a good mystery book.
Hidden by Benedict Jacka: I don't recall if I reviewed the book previous to this in the series, but this book continues on with the vibe of "oh shoot, I liked this series but then it went on and on about the main character's dark past and I got less interested." This one wasn't as bad, but it was still dealing with the fallout of the previous book, so... still not great. It's a pity, I remember being really pleased with the beginning of this series. It was okay, but it didn't have a lot of clever uses of his (totally interesting and awesome) probability magic, so that was a bit disappointing. It did sort of resolve the drama of the last book, so fingers crossed that the next one gets back to the joy of the original.
Drift by Jonathan McGoran: This book starts with acknowledgements to some very "anti-chemical" foundations and leads with a heavy dose of pesticides-are-terrible commentary that sat poorly with me. Because of that, I had a hard time enjoying the book, because I was expecting the twist to be more heavy-handed scaremongering. It actually wasn't, though, and I relatively enjoyed the end of the book... pity it was such a struggle to get to.
It's sort of a thriller style, I guess, with a not terribly likeable main character who is weirdly oblivious to what's going on - crop duster flies by the house spraying, main character comments on not having athlete's foot anymore but has no idea what could have happened - with poor judgement (tented field next door & hazmat style people walking about? Let's cut into it and see what's going on!). I thought the villain's ideas were a lot more interesting than the main character, so it was a pity to spend so much time on him.
Memory of Water by Emmy Itäranta: I walked into this expecting historical Asian tea ceremony stuff and instead got post-apocalyptic Nordic water politics (and tea ceremony stuff). Actually pretty cool! Sad, though it tried to wrap up with hope on the horizon. I don't think I'd broadly recommend it, but if you liked other sad YA books like Code Name Verity you might like this one as well. They're completely unrelated, but for some reason struck me as being similarly enjoyable.
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer: Vague recollection that this one wasn't as good as the first one. Re-reading the plot summary, I think the issue was that it spent a lot of time on Scarlet and Wolf, who I didn't particularly care about... I though the series really had enough with Cinder-the-cyborg to not need a new fairy tale every book. I just wanted to know more of her story. I will keep on with the series, though.
Underground by Kat Richardson: This was one where the library didn't have the first books, so I jumped in somewhere in the middle. Urban fantasy, set in Seattle, with a main character who can see (and sometimes manipulate) the strands that hold together paranormal things like ghosts or zombies. I enjoyed it well enough, the setting of the Seattle Underground is always a fun one for familiarity's sake and the main character was pleasantly practical. Glad to have another series to go through, since I'm getting towards the end on a couple.
Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson: I found this particular Longmire book super hard to focus on because it was made into an episode that I'd already seen, so half of it was distractingly familiar. Still good, of course, though more action than mystery.
FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics [graphic novel] by Simon Oliver: Picked this up off the shelf on a whim and I was pleasantly amused. Failures in basic physics have lead to disasters and the creation of a bureau whose job it is to contain them - the artwork is good, the concept is zany, and the story was solid. Not terribly serious, but also not completely comedy.
Haunted Moon by Yasmin Galenorn: Another day, another Otherworld book. I'm up to 2013, so I probably only have... what, four or five more to go? She churns out more than one some years. Anyway, this one is about the witch, largely fighting the gross undead. It was fine, a quick read as always, but its definitely suffering from making its main characters too strong - now to be threatened, they have to literally fight gods? Seriously?
Turn Coat by Jim Butcher: This was a pretty good Dresden novel. Mostly a murder mystery with a side of tactical mage fighting (the whole island planning was amusing). A bit heavy on side-lining otherwise strong character for dramatic reasons, but generally enjoyable.
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell: Oh hey, a new series rather than just more of the same! This was a book about an ex-hitman turned medical intern at a bad hospital. What makes this book shine is the aside medical information (I liked the use of footnotes, though M thought it was a bit of a crutch for the writer) and the writing style, which had lines that actually made me laugh aloud. I wish I'd noted some of them, but here's one that someone noted on Goodreads, with the main character thinking on his students: “My medical students. Two cups of human misery in short white coats. One is male and the other one female, and they both have names. That's all I can ever remember about them.”
While I really enjoyed the writing, I wouldn't broadly recommend the book because it is crude and also incredibly violent. It also doesn't ring true at all, it's clearly an absurdist take on the concept - it reads almost more like a comic book or a movie with a self-awareness of how silly the coincidences are. I'm still going to try the next book, though, because how often does an author actually make me laugh?
Night Broken by Patricia Briggs: And back to series. This is a Mercy Thompson book, a series that I haven't read in quite a while, but it came back to me pretty quickly. It felt a bit more contrived than I remember (this one is largely about Adam's ex-wife being at their house, due to a stalker), but it didn't press unreasonably on the drama levers (she succeeded at some social manipulation, but Adam and Mercy discuss what's happening and acknowledge it every step of the way as a loving married couple). Didn't find the villain terribly compelling, though the fights were interesting.
White Heat by M.J. McGrath: Set up in Nunavut, this book was half slice-of-life and half murder mystery. I don't know what it was about it, but I had trouble reading it for long stretches - I'd pick it up, read a chapter, then put it back down. Not that I didn't like it, but that's an unusual way for me to read... it took 'til halfway through the book for me to really be able to go through it. Perhaps not coincidentally, that's when the main character sobers up again and starts really tracking down the mystery parts, so maybe that's all there is to it. I'll be looking up the others in the series, though.
Shutter by Courtney Alemeda: This is YA urban fantasy in the modern era of the world if Bram Stoker's Dracula had been real. The main characters are the youngest of the historical hunters - Helsing as the main character, a young woman who specializes in exorcism via camera lens, plus three young men who do research and destruction of more physical threats (like zombies). It was a bit too predictable and fit in the mold of a lot of other YA, other than those conceptual quirks, but it was also pretty decent. I'd recommend it as an alternative to things like City of Bones - it was much better than that.
The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver: I don't remember where this recommendation came from, but I was super confused when I started it. The blurbs made it out to be a thriller, which it sort of was, but the main character is quadriplegic. So, not exactly the usual. I had trouble getting into it at the beginning, because it does show the deaths of the first two victims of the serial killer - not from the killers POV exactly, but close enough to be really unpleasant. After that, it gets a lot more into the forensics (main character was a forensics guy before his accident and is consulting) and saving potential victims, so that was a lot more tolerable. It also spends a bunch of time on his decision to commit suicide. By the end, I liked it and was willing to look into more of the series, but it was tempered by how much I didn't like the beginning. The whole thing read a bit more like a TV show than a good mystery book.
Hidden by Benedict Jacka: I don't recall if I reviewed the book previous to this in the series, but this book continues on with the vibe of "oh shoot, I liked this series but then it went on and on about the main character's dark past and I got less interested." This one wasn't as bad, but it was still dealing with the fallout of the previous book, so... still not great. It's a pity, I remember being really pleased with the beginning of this series. It was okay, but it didn't have a lot of clever uses of his (totally interesting and awesome) probability magic, so that was a bit disappointing. It did sort of resolve the drama of the last book, so fingers crossed that the next one gets back to the joy of the original.
Courting Darkness is the 10th book in an urban fantasy (emphasis on the fantasy side, though)/romance series that I continue to read despite not exactly enjoying it. What it has going for it, as a series, is that the three sisters as main characters are generally pleasant, and it's very much a gender role reversal from other series. Certainly I read lots with main female characters, but this particular series has the men... I'm not sure how to put it... they're present, they're thought about (it is romance a lot of the time), but they're not important. Basically, they're treated how women are treated in most fantasy.
