What happens when an amazing story is torn apart by the author in the name of style over substance? Lavie Tidhar self-sabotages his latest novel, The Violent Century, just like that. Essentially, Tidhar is exploring an alternate reality where an unnamed catastrophic event caused hundreds of people around the world to transform into superhumans. Fogg and Oblivion, two British agents mostly used for information gathering rather than combat, control fog and dissipate matter, respectively. They are reporting their exploits in every major interntational war from […]
CBR VI # 1
I like how when you read the book, it doesn’t really feel like the future. In fact, the setting seems positively retro with the bikes and the innocence, like the 50s or something. But its not. Jonas, he of pale eyes, lives in a Community where everything is regimented. Everything and everyone has its place and time. Your path is set from the moment you are born from your birthmother until the moment you are released from old age. Jonas is in the 11th year […]
Mary Poppins is *Not* Coming Back to Me
So…while I was not super intrigued by P.L. Travers’s rendering of Mary Poppins, I did feel that I needed to “collect” the series. After reading Mary Poppins Comes Back, I don’t really feel that need anymore. Mary Poppins has gone AWOL to where the wind changes, and naturally, the Banks family is in an uproar. Everybody is moody, and neither Mr. nor Mrs. Banks can seem to manage to parent their own children. Par for the course. So, when Michael and Jane take the twins […]
Girls in this book are all named things like Dylan, Zadie and Tempest
Amelia didn’t jump. This is the text message Kate receives after her daughter Amelia allegedly jumps off the school roof. This prompts Kate to look further into Amelia’s death beyond agonizing about what more she could have done as a single parent working a bazillion hours a week as a lawyer. Amelia was a fifteen-year-old star student accused of plagiarizing an English paper, which the police attribute as the motive for suicide. As Kate investigates more, suicide becomes more and more unlikely. The story is […]
“That’s when I decide that shoveling elephant shit would be better than this.”
So the key to good fiction is that it feels real, yes? That whatever you’re reading – from some space alien wandering the galaxies afraid of the unending space, to a little boy with a purple crayon that can create his own moon if he chooses to – seems as real to as you are, sitting in your chair, or stretching out across your bed turning pages, or running for the bus, listening to the words in your headphones. That’s all I’m ever looking for, […]
Turnip Gets His Lady
Things I love in books (all books, but most especially romances): Continuing Sagas – Bring me back to revisit a couple whose journey to happily ever after I’ve already witnessed, or a family whose tree branches I have watched sprout up, and I’m yours. When minor characters become too big for their britches and force their authors to tell their stories. Luckily, The Mischief of the Mistletoe has both of these things. While I love the Pink Carnation series – with its mix of espionage […]