Shalen's Mini Book Reviews

[Spiderdancer]

I realized recently that I spend way too much time posting what are essentially book reviews in the "Current Reading List" thread, so this thread will be for those reviews.

Others are welcome to post reviews here too, but I'd like them to be something more detailed than "This is a good book!" or "This is a bad book!" to count as a book review.

I'll kick it off with

BLOOD RETRIBUTION by David and Aimee Thurlo

This is a Southwestern mystery novel starring Lee Nez, a Navajo half-vampire or "Nightwalker." This descriptive term is not the first really original (note sarcasm) idea you will see in this book. Lee also has a close relationship with a younger human woman, which I'm sure we're all very surprised to learn given that this only happens in about ninety percent of vampire books. At least in this case she's a grown up FBI agent and not a teenage girl with special powers.

Lee goes around hunting "skinwalkers," which are animal shapeshifters that resemble werewolves except for their ability to take on other shapes (bear, cougar, etc.). They are contagious by bite and for some reason unambiguously evil. It's never quite explained why being bitten by a shapeshifter makes you evil when vampire bites do not. It's also never explained in this book what makes Lee half-vampire instead of all. It's not the first book in the series, but still, a little exposition wouldn't have hurt.

Lee seems unusually copacetic with his abilities for a vampire character, taking nary a leering glance at his coworkers' neck regions. I find myself sort of hoist on my own petard here, because I often complain about the overly sexual emphasis of vampire books. That's totally absent here. Lee acts as more of a supercop, a law-abiding individual who has to act outside the law only when it concerns the never-officially-recognized shapeshifters.

I assume the title refers to the attempts of a leftover villain from a previous book attempting to take revenge on Lee, although the main plot seems to concern a jewelry smuggling ring of skinwalkers. Again, don't expect much angst. I was about as worried for Lee as I generally was for Nancy Drew back in the day.

I know I sound negative here, but the book itself isn't a bad read. The transplant in setting doesn't quite make up for the lack of general zip and zing, but it's not hard to keep turning the pages. Lee seems an easygoing, friendly guy, not defined by his condition but at home with it. The book is best when written from his point of view. The authors haven't quite got the hang of achieving different "voices" for different characters in this respect, but again, I haven't read their previous books. Maybe there's development that I'm missing.

I wouldn't mind reading some other books in this series, if they came cheap. They're pretty good workout bicycle fiction, requiring little thought and passing rapidly over the brain without leaving much impression.

Amazon.com link:
www.amazon.com/Blood-Retribution-Lee-Nez-Novel/dp/0765343681

And half.com, for those like me who never even look at Amazon any more:
product.half.ebay.com/Blood-Retribution_W0QQprZ30534668QQtgZinfo

[blinkfan]

Pet Sematary by Stephen King.

I have to admit this,IT and Christine are my favourite Stephen King books. However, I like this one the best. Why do I like it so much well 3 primary reasons: 1. The Characters. The characters in Pet Sematary are all extremley likeable and easy to identify with. So much so you don't want any of them to be hurt or killed in anyway. 2. The Plot: I know that this is basically King's interpretation of "The Monkeys Paw" which is also fantastic but I like this one more because this one makes you think about what you would do if you were in Louis Creed's position simply because the main plot is a average man who stumbles upon something that can give him the one thing he wants the most. 3. The End: Personally I think the end is quite possibly one of the most haunting things I have ever read. I am not going to elaborate on it you're just going to have to read it your self.

[StarOpal]

Death in Yellowstone (Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park) by Lee H. Whittlesey

I got this book for Christmas and in two days I've almost finished it. As you can guess by title, it's a nonfiction about the different (300) deaths that have occurred inside and immediately around Yellowstone Park. The book has two main parts: Death by Nature, which has animal attacks, poisonous plants and gases, hot springs, falls from heights, etc. Death by Man has fights, murders, suicides, horse accidents, etc.

Taking the stance of informing readers on the dangers of not following the rules or not being careful, the author handles the subject matter tastefully while not pulling any punches on the details. Not to mention he keeps it interesting. I'd recommend it for those into history, trivia, and the morbid.

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

Recently adapted into the TV show "Dexter", DDD centers around Dexter Morgan, a forensics blood splatter expert who moonlights as a serial killer.

After watching the first season of Dexter, which I really enjoyed, I wanted to read the source material for the show. Now that I have, I can't help but think that I would have enjoyed the book more if I had read it before watching the show. The book's flaws, such as weak characters (Dexter not included) and an ending that seemed more like the author not knowing how to end his book than an actual twist, stand out even more when compared to the TV show, which avoids many of the flaws of the book, making it superior.

And yet, for what it is, DDD is funny and dark, and short enough to keep the reader's interest consistent. It made me want to read the next books in the series, which says quite a bit. Recommended for those looking for a quick and easy read, as well as fans of "Dexter", although if you fall into the latter category, you might want to lower your expectations a notch before reading this book.

[kylerexpop]

stargirl by jerry spinelli

i'm a sucker for stories of youthful love and confusion (if you can handle comic books, 'spider-man loves mary jane' is absolutely AWESOME), so i had heard enough about spinelli's 'stargirl' to pick it up and see what the fuss is all about.

and it's really delightful! i enjoy that it deals with conformity and a desire to be at least tolerated, if not outright popular, in high school, while never getting too heavy-handed or preachy.

i have to think that, as 'outsider status' seems to get twisted and more and more confusing in our modern society, there will be more and more real-life stargirls in the world for us to interact with and wonder about.

ah, actual review stuff: i appreciated that, as stargirl was not the narrator, we (like all the other characters) had to judge her on her actions and words, and wonder at what was driving her. there were mysteries and there were answers, but were the answers comprehensive or are there simply some things we can never truly understand about another person?

i recognize that you may consider yourself above such a book as stargirl. but, despite being set in a high school with students as the main characters, it really is a story about what it is to be human and to be confronted by someone that throws everything you think you know about being a "normal" member of "society" out the window.

i guess since life honestly does seem like a much larger, slightly more complex version of 'high school' (or maybe that's only true here in california?), 'stargirl' seems like an essential tome for successful modern life.

although if you need something more "adult" and "mature," james michener's 'the drifters' will serve your purposes quite nicely. review of that to come soon!

[sarahbot]

I liked stargirl too, but I have to say Maniac Magee's my favourite book by Jerry Spinelli. I was obsessed with books about runaways when I was younger (see also "The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler").

[StarOpal]

I'll step out on a limb on this one...

The Vampire Files, by P. N. Elrod

"The car was doing at least forty when the right front fender smashed against my left hip and sent me spinning off the road to flop bonelessly into a mass of thick, windblown grass."

While I've never been the biggest fan of vampire fiction (which is weird since I love vampire movies like cinematic candy), I do enjoy private eye style mystery novels. This volume has three stories of the series: Bloodlist, Lifeblood, and Bloodcircle. I'm only halfway through the second one, but I already know I'll be picking up volume two.

Set in the '30s, these tell the story of Jack Fleming, former living investigative journalist turned vampire, turning private eye. In the first story he tracks down his killers (shades of DOA? I like). The second has him tracking down the woman who "turned" him and being tracked by vampire hunters.

It's fun mystery reading, and a vampire universe with its own rules.

[Spiderdancer]

I started out liking them, but it went away. I love private eye books with new concepts attached to them - in fact, I have read the first couple plus The Dark Sleep - but there got to be a little too much emphasis on the erotic aspects. To me, the connection between vampires and sex is most interesting when it remains subliminal rather than, say, looking in the mirror at your girlfriend's butt while you're invisible.

I've also always hated the whole vampire mind control thing, and the emphasis on that seemed to increase as the books went on as well.

For those who enjoyed these, or who disliked the same things I did, I can recommend Simon R. Green's Nightside books. The protagonist isn't a vampire, nor is the mythos focused solely on that; Green's monsters are frequently a great deal more original while still being very Gothic.

[StarOpal]

Really? That's a shame, because those are the sort of reasons I got bored with the vampire fiction I tried in general.

I was in it for the detective story with a twist. But what I've read so far is still pretty good, and since it's a title I just sort of took a chance on I didn't have any expectations (I've been making an effort to expand my reading outside my usual tastes lately). So I'd still recommend the first volume of stories.

I'll check out the Nightside books though. Thanks!

[TheLuckyOne]

staropal said:

Set in the '30s, these tell the story of Jack Fleming, former living investigative journalist turned vampire, turning private eye. In the first story he tracks down his killers (shades of DOA? I like). The second has him tracking down the woman who "turned" him and being tracked by vampire hunters.

Interesting... sounds kind of like Hannibal King, Marvel's vampire detective from the 70s. Wonder if the author was influenced by that.

Hannibal King

So much vampire fiction is such crap, though; I guess it must sell because they're still making it, but working in a bookstore taught me just how freakin' MANY vampire books there are these days. Endless.

-D

[Spiderdancer]

Yes! This thread rises again to taste the sweet live brains of the living. Send more paramedics.

Our subject today is:

Lord Foul's Bane

by Stephen R. Donaldson

I picked this book up at a Goodwill for 69 cents and had no expectations whatsoever for it. I was just looking for something to read on a really long car ride and didn't have much cash. You can run into some great books this way, and if they turn out to be stinkers instead, you're only out 69 cents. In this case I struck it lucky.

This book follows Stephen Covenant, a leper who has so far lost two fingers on one hand, his wife and children, and any capacity for hope or human affection. He gets randomly transported to another world by a god or a demon, it's never quite clear which, and is tasked by the evil being Lord Foul with taking a message to The Land's Council of Lords. Things go on from there with the people and creatures he meets on his way to deliver the message and his shared quest to retrieve the Staff of Law. His ordinary white gold wedding ring also turns out to be a special artifact in the Land, where white gold is the symbol of the neutral wild magic that hovers between good and evil.

From these names I'm dropping it sounds like an incredibly boring and pedestrian Tolkien-only-lame kind of story, and from the plot and setup it could have turned into just that.

But it didn't.

The reason is the character of Thomas. The name is surely not accidental - he immediately dubs himself The Unbeliever, because he is convinced the Land and everything in it is a dream caused by a head injury. The whole book follows his internal struggle to stay sane as he tries to reject his destiny, convinced that becoming powerful and useful in an imaginary world will drive him insane when he has to return to being, in his own words, "outcast unclean" in the "real" one.

Thomas is not a nice person. And he's not an angsty goth person, either. He's irascible, rude, and at some points cowardly, though not as much as he himself thinks he is. He's also a rapist early on in the story, which almost had me quit reading the book - but it's a valid construct within the story, and his reaction when he realizes that what he has done is real (not a dream) later on fully redeems that aspect of the plot. It's never suggested that what he did is anything but loathsome, and it's strongly implied that his self-disgust for committing such an act impels him more toward his final acquiescence to the quest more than any real desire to save the Land.

There's some well-done internal narrative in the book, as Thomas wrestles constantly with who and what and where he is, but it's not allowed to overwhelm external events (which was what turned me off on Frank Herbert's Dune books). And the ending makes me want to find the rest of the trilogy AND the second trilogy and read them all right now.

This isn't a very recent series, so it shouldn't be hard to find, but I've seen nothing in this book that would date it. The only big difference, and it is a big one, is that leprosy (usually called Hansen's disease now) is much more treatable and less of a curse now than it was in 1977. And most people won't know that, except that I just told you. Ha ha.

I recommend this book highly.

Amazon:

www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/104-1585931-3877509?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=lord+foul%27s+bane

Half.com:

product.half.ebay.com/Lord-Fouls-Bane_W0QQprZ179889QQtgZinfo


Always be sure to check the editions and condition before buying. Mine is from the 34th printing in 1992.

[Spiderdancer]

Just finished the Illearth War, partly due to desperation b/c modding computer is still down for the count. Seems darker than the first book, in terms of both content and ending. What happens to the race of Giants is particularly grisly - though it was very effective in terms of being a horror kind of moment in a way Tolkien and Eddison weren't good at.

I have to wonder if the author doesn't have some things in common with Tolkien, and not just because he uses some of his devices (angry forest, glittering caves, special Master Race of horses). He's writing a story based on the fight against an evil being cast down to the earth by the Creator, and his main character is a skeptic named Thomas. Or he could just be drawing on the cultural mythos that's most relevant to most Westerners. He definitely does female characters much better than Tolkien did.

Normally I'd roll my eyes at the "normal person moved from our world to another one" story concept being used again, but these books just sucked me right in. It didn't take discipline to finish these two, the way it did with The Worm Ourobouros. It took discipline to put them down long enough to go to sleep.

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk:

I think the best thing can be said about Chuck Palahniuk is that he is brimming with creativity; sure enough, Rant, the story of Buster Casey, a man who, in the future, is responsible for a rabies epidemic, is no exception. The fact that the entire story is told through the testimony of Casey's friends and associates also makes this book as unique as anything Chuckie's ever written.

Not that it isn't without flaws. First and foremost is a flaw that I've found with Palahniuk's style; the man's a good writer, but he's nowhere near as good a writer as he seems to think he is. His books carry a very smug vibe with them, and when I read his trademark witticisms and plot twists, I can't help but get a mental image of Chuckie-boy sitting at a computer, wearing a "Genius at Work" t-shirt, and giggling endlessly to himself.

With regards to the book's content, after being coaxed into a very interesting vision of the not-too-distant future (where half the population lives at night and car crashing becomes a sport), it's amazing how quickly Chuck Palahniuk lost me during the last hundred-or-so pages. Not to give anything away, but let's just say that the book's inevitable plot twist had be rolling my eyes and groaning "Stupid, stupid, stupid!"; M. Night Shamylan would be proud. To be fair, though, the twist did begin to gel with the rest of the story the more I thought about it, but even so, I couldn't help but feel disappointed by the book's ending.

But despite all that, Rant is indeed far from bad. In fact, it was, as they say, good. The book is soaked with dark humour and refreshing originality (refreshing particularly because the last few books I had read were all science fiction, which was enough to drive me insane). Fans of Palahniuk's will find enough to love here, but this probably isn't the best place for a Chuck-newb to start. Anyone who hasn't read anything by Palahniuk would be better off reading Survivor first.

[StarOpal]

Hollywood Horror: From Gothic to Cosmic by Mark A. Vieira

It’s a nonfiction about American horror films. Silent movies (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Phantom of the Opera, and The Unknown) in the ‘20s to Night of the Living Dead in 1968, the book uses the lifespan of “The Code” to set its timeline.

What Vieira does, that I love, is cover all sides of the movies. How the movie was made and for how much, the cast and crew (fighting and spitting – literally), the politics, etc. Most of all he has what was going on in the U.S. at the time (wars, riots, McCarthyism, the Depression) and the effect it had on the horror genre. It also mentions the foreign films that influenced the Americans.

Visually, the book is gorgeous. It has loads of stills and portraits from the movies throughout the book. None of this pictures all stuck in the middle stuff. They’re all clear and high quality.

Great book, highly recommended.