Book Review – The Honest Truth

Dan Gemeinhart’s The Honest Truth is sweet, meaningful, heartbreaking, and hopeful. Feeling overwhelmed due to a return of his cancer and facing its harsh, uncertain treatment, 12 year old Mark and his dog Beau slip away on a bus to climb Mount Rainier.

The strength of this book is that Mark is easily believable and likeable. Gemeinhart makes us understand why Mark makes the choices he does, and invites us to empathize with him. We’re not sure whether to root for him to make it to the top, die on the mountain on his own terms, or be found by the searchers. We admire his strength and his carefully considered plan, as well as his resilience when the plan meets reality.

The Honest Truth is a little pat, a little hokey, and a little predictable in an afterschool special sort of way, but its earnest sweetness is enjoyable nonetheless.

Book Review – The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

3.5 stars. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is character-driven sci-fi that tries very hard to be pleasing, and mostly succeeds, but feels both a bit derivative and saccharine-sweet. Becky Chambers’ misfit crew of the Wayfarer is tasked with building a shipping lane to a planet of contentious aliens, and the story follows their year-long trip to complete their task.

What I appreciated most about this book is Chambers’ obvious imagination and care for her world. The universe is rich with aliens of various physical descriptions, cultures, and personalities. Their interactions provide the depth to the story, as well as its most uplifting and redemptive moments. Ultimately, this is a story about relationships and the stumbling, well-intentioned yet sometimes hurtful ways we seek to overcome differences and make connections.

I fear that reading this book without comparison to Firefly is next to impossible; there is too much in this book that toes the line between homage and derivation, and the story and characters are paler in every instance. Dialog lacks the snap of Joss Whedon’s touch, and characters don’t have the same life to them.

My main complaint is that the story is not terribly compelling, and the characters feel disconnected from it. The central story–the long trip to build the wormhole–is barely mentioned through large swaths of the book, and the characters seem to have no impetus to be involved other than that they were hired to do it. There is little conflict between characters–naively sweet but not anything that kept me turning pages.

This book also has a bit of a message-y tone (let’s check all the diversity checkboxes!), but fortunately it’s never preachy about it.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a decent read with an interesting cast of human and alien characters set in an intriguing world. I enjoyed it, yet wish there was a little more storytelling to go with the rich world-building.

Book Review – Girl Waits with Gun (Kopp Sisters #1)

5 stars. Amy Stewart’s Girl Waits with Gun is the fictionalized story of Constance Kopp, one of the first female law enforcement officers in the US. In 1914, a motorcar precariously driven by silk factory owner Henry Kaufman strikes the buggy of the Kopp sisters, Constance, Norma, and Fleurette. When Kaufman refuses to pay damages, responding with threats and violence, the Kopp sisters unite to defend themselves.

Sometimes a random book find proves to be exactly what I wanted. I ran across this book via Rachel’s review on Pace, Amore, Libri, and the subject matter combined with her glowing review had me quickly checking it out from my library. I was thrilled to find that this book is a rollicking, charming, and thrilling read that works so well on so many levels. As a character drama, the relationship between the three sisters is deep and heartfelt, and the way they respond to events keeps the pages turning. The story itself is a well-told tale of taking on corruption and malfeasance. As historical fiction, it’s an enjoyable capsule of society, place, and time.

What I really enjoyed about Girl Waits with Gun is Constance’s gutsy, cheeky personality. The first-person narration from her point of view shows her strength of character, and her dialog is full of sly humor–especially her repartee with her opinionated, outspoken sister Norma. Constance’s narration also allows the story to maintain a lighthearted tone, even when the events are grim and threatening. It also amplifies the emotional impact of the story by demonstrating the depth of Constance’s love for her sisters, fierce streak of independence, and innate sense of fairness.

Constance’s brave encounters with Kaufman are of the “stand up and cheer” variety; she’s a great character to root for. No less cheer-worthy are her refusals to comply with social norms of the time. Another crux of the story is the respect and compassion between Constance and Bergen County, New Jersey Sheriff Robert Heath; I suspect (and hope!) the sequels will offer a much broader look at their association.

While this is definitely a fictionalized account, primary source material is presented–newspaper articles, text of the letters, physical locations, court records, etc. The central plot of the book (the accident and the sisters’ attempts to bring Kaufman to justice) recreates what is known of the events. The afterword states that the secondary plot (Lucy’s tale) is completely fictional, though it flows well with the rest of the work and has historical basis. The author’s website contains a wealth of historical background that added to my enjoyment of the story.

Girl Waits with Gun is a satisfying read that successfully blends action, character, historical interest, and societal themes. I completely enjoyed the adventures of the Kopp sisters, and have already purchased Amy Stewart’s next volume of their tale.

Book Review – The Rest of Us Just Live Here

3 stars. The concept of The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness is that Mikey and his friends are “normal” high school seniors working through the choices and uncertainty of what comes next while an epic battle against supernatural forces is waged by classmates with superpowers. The chapters start with a well-used conceit, describing the events of the supernatural world, then narrates the tale of Mikey and his crew. Knowing the brief description of the supernatural events gives reference to the unexplained things that the “normal” kids observe.

To me, this book came across as an entertaining teen drama, with complex, real-world teen issues of friendship, sexuality, and what comes after graduation. The story was interesting enough to stand on its own as the characters develop and mature.

There were also nicely-handled themes of mental illness, sexuality, homosexuality, politics, and complex parent/child relationships that are very applicable to today’s teens. Ness presents them without “messaging” and their inclusion felt natural in the storyline.

The real joy in The Rest of Us Just Live Here, in addition to seeing the characters forge their relationships amidst uncertainty, is Ness’ straight-faced skewering of pop culture. This book is worth the read just for the scene with a concert by boy band “Bolts of Fire”; his descriptions of the band members and the stages of ecstasy experienced by the squealing pre-teen girl audience is hysterically funny.

The downside of this book is that I always had a feeling that there was a much bigger story going on that we weren’t being told. Perhaps that’s part of its wit; we know important deeds transpire but the day-to-day quest for happiness is higher priority.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here is an enjoyable read for its characters, charm, and sly pop culture references.

Book Review – The World to Come

3 stars. I was intrigued by Outside Magazine’s glowing review of Jim Shepard’s new short story collection, The World to Come The expectation of greatness was amplified by the book jacket description:

“These ten stories burst with his wicked sense of humor and incomparable understanding of what it means, and has always meant, to be human. The World to Come is the work of a true virtuoso.”

I’d say that sets the bar pretty high…

The author indeed has a gift for giving his characters distinctive voices. He’s captured period diction almost perfectly, from the dry “stiff upper lip” of British explorers to the pioneer diary of an upstate New York woman to the elaborate and stylized prose of the dying days of the French aristocracy. The author’s obvious talents are on display in a second-person story of the destruction of Santorini. Shepard’s settings are clearly exquisitely researched as well, rich with details that give authenticity to a WWII submarine and a crude oil train conductor’s experiences.

For all the writing skill, The World to Come was largely “meh” for me largely because I never made an emotional connection with the characters. Two of the stories are told in a journal format, which relate events instead of developing characters. Stories such as “The Ocean of Air” overwhelmed with detail to the exclusion of personality. “Intimacy” and “Safety Tips for Living Alone” presented a wide cast of characters but spent so little time with any one that they seemed largely interchangeable. “Wall-to-Wall Counseling”, “Forcing Joy on Young People”, “Telemachus”, and “Positive Train Control” all featured detached characters who didn’t relate to those around them, and thus were never able to reach me.

My chief critique of Shepard’s writing is that there is very little dialog. This inhibits character relationships from developing. Most characters feel like the anti-Donne: every one is an island, and when the bell tolls for them, it doesn’t toll for me.

Many of the stories ended with the implied death of their subjects. This prevented me from experiencing closure and catharsis necessary to appreciate the theme of the story. The first-person narration of many of the stories limits this by nature; in others, they end with no conclusion.

I felt that my enjoyment of a particular story was largely tied in with my interest in its subject matter, which left the collection feeling uneven. The three-page “Cretan Love Song” was my favorite because it captures the raw emotions of the destruction of Santorini so poignantly. “Safety Tips for Living Alone” is an intriguing account of the Texas Tower 4 disaster; a foreboding sense of doom kept me turning the pages. “HMS Terror” is another high point. Its scholarly journal entries added to the classical tragedy feel of the lost Franklin expedition. Shepard’s masterful foreshadowing in “Positive Train Control” adds power to his scathing indictment of the lack of safety focus in the crude oil trains that feed our energy dependency. “Telemachus” reads like pulp WWII fiction with its fatalistic narrator and high-stakes deeds.

On the down side, “Wall-to-Wall Counseling” portrayal of a woman facing family and work crises ended without resolution, character development, or theme. Similarly, “Forcing Joy on Young People” meandered aimlessly here and there throughout its principal character’s life, and he was so flawed that the only conclusion I could reach is that he deserved what he got.

I do not regret reading The World to Come; nor did I feel any regret when I turned its final page.

Book Review – Tea with the Black Dragon

4.5 stars. R. A. MacAvoy’s Tea with the Black Dragon is a book that I read likely not long after its 1983 publication. Thus, I remembered little of the story or characters, yet retained a favorable impression of it. When it was a cheap Kindle buy a while back, I got it on a whim.

Martha Macnamara travels cross-country to San Francisco at the behest of her daughter Liz, who indicates some sort of trouble. At her hotel, she meets mysterious gentleman Mayland Long, feeling the appeal of his magnetic personality. Liz appears to have vanished without a trace, and Martha enlists Mayland’s help to find her. The plot thickens as Martha herself disappears, leaving Mayland to navigate a web of computer crime and nefarious thieves in a tale that is part philosophy, part fantasy, part romance, and part techno-thriller.

Tea with the Black Dragon is a short, easy read that contains considerable depth and nuance. The prose is restrained, with an elegant sparseness; MacAvoy’s words and phrases carry purpose and intent (and occasional sly, subtle wit. The compelling strength of this tale is its strong characterization–their personalities leap off the page with vibrancy–and the thought-provoking dialog that builds their relationships.

It’s always a pleasure find that a pleasantly-remembered book has stood the test of time, and R. A. MacAvoy’s Tea with the Black Dragon most certainly has.

Book Review – Norse Mythology

4 stars.  Norse Mythology is Neil Gaiman’s retelling of the epic pantheon of Odin, Thor, and Loki.  I came to this book with a casual familiarity with Nordic myth and left with a sense of its richness, grandeur, wit, and stoicism.  Gaiman gives a very straightforward storytelling in modern language.  I suspect these stories would work very well if read aloud; the prose seems geared towards being related by a storyteller.

I particularly like the characteristic of Norse mythology that its gods are not archetypes; like humans, they are contradictions of traits and neither wholly good nor wholly bad.  Odin is brave and knowledgeable, yet conniving and selfish.  Thor is strong, yet ultimately a little simple.  And then there’s Loki, the consummate troublemaker who acts out of a sense of mischief rather than evil and winds up being both the cause of and solution to many of life’s problems.

Norse Mythology covers the gamut from creation to destruction, covering topics from the epic end-of-the-world battle of Ragnarok to the quest to borrow a three mile deep cauldron for brewing beer.  These stories are gleefully puerile on occasion, such as Loki tying his privates to a goat to elicit laughs or Odin farting out the mead that causes bad poetry.  Gaiman’s straight telling of these parts adds to the hilarity.

The strength and weakness of this volume is the same: Gaiman is very true to the surviving source material, which both makes this book valuable as a literary reference to the pantheon and restrains his creativity.  I expected it to be a little more, well, Gaiman!  Had he turned his inventiveness loose, I think I would have felt more resonance with the characters and stories than I did.

It’s testament to Gaiman’s talents that I feel that Norse Mythology is merely entertaining, educational, and enjoyable instead of mind-blowingly awesome.  (Fortunately, American Gods is out there for a taste of what the author can do with the Nordic pantheon!)

Book Review – Paradise Sky

I ran across Paradise Sky as a recommendation on my library’s eBook site, having never heard of Joe R. Lansdale and not being a huge fan of the Western genre. Then I read its opening sentences:

“Now, in the living of my life, I’ve killed deadly men and dangerous animals and made love to four Chinese women, all of them on the same night and in the same wagon bed, and one of them with a wooden leg, which made things a mite difficult from time to time. I even ate some of a dead fellow once when I was crossing the plains, though I want to rush right in here and make it clear I didn’t know him all that well, and we damn sure wasn’t kinfolks, and it all come about by a misunderstanding.”

Yeah, I was hooked, right then and there. I tore through it in a couple of days, thoroughly enjoying the tale of a black cowboy roaming the West in the days immediately following the Civil War.

Young Willie is a freed slave forced to go on the run after earning a white man’s enmity by appreciatively eyeing his wife’s hind quarters. He is taken in by kindly Tate Loving, who teaches him farming, reading, and shooting, among other things. After Tate’s death, Willie names himself Nat Love in Tate’s honor and joins the army as a buffalo soldier in west Texas. His adventures carry him throughout the West, from Deadwood to Dodge City, as he tries to escape the ghosts of his past and lead a life worth living.

While Lansdale’s story is loosely based on the real Nat Love, this story is definitely a tall tale that appears to be only hobbled to the facts regarding the Deadwood shooting contest. Everything else appears to be the author’s artistic license. As Nat’s companion Bronco Bob says, “I might try and get some newspaper work here until I can write books about you and me and our adventures. Some of them will be true.”

Two things stood out to me in Paradise Sky: Lansdale’s great prose and strong characterization. The diction of the book is colloquial and contributes nicely to the first-person narration by Nat. Lansdale favors a long, rambling sentence structure for Nat’s voice, yet this gave the text a period feel without being cumbersome. His clever use of wording also stands out, as does Nat’s optimistic tone even when discussing horrible outcomes.

The characters are vibrant, especially Nat’s friends Cullen and Bob. Many of the events of the book have emotional impact because we feel connected to the characters. Their progression and development is handled nicely. Again, the memoir format of Nat’s narration makes for an enjoyable experience as we get distinct voices of both who he was at the time of the events and who he was at the time of the retelling.

Warning: there are a lot of unpleasant subjects in the book, ranging from the sights and smells of the Old West to murder, rape, and torture to blatant racism. Language is spicy throughout.  This isn’t often a “feel-good” story… you’ve been warned.

I completely enjoyed all aspects of Joe Lansdale’s Paradise Sky, from the feel to the story to the characters. One of the pleasures of reading is the random discovery of a great book, and this one hit the jackpot!

Book Review – Good Intentions (Good Intentions #1)

4 stars. Elliott Kay’s Good Intentions is a true guilty pleasure read; equal parts witty dialog, rollicking plot, and serious smut. College student Alex Carlisle finds himself the object of affection of both Lorelei the succubus and guardian angel Rachel after he saves them by interrupting a dark ceremony intended to bind them to an evil sorcerer. The three become intertwined, at first fulfilling Alex’s titillating desires but then becoming something more. This upset of the natural order of things doesn’t go unnoticed, and a host of supernatural beings seek to turn Alex, Rachel, and Lorelei to their own nefarious purposes.

Central to the appeal of the story is that the main characters are all interesting and likeable. Their relationships develop throughout, and the growth of the feelings they have for each other contributes to the fun of reading the story.

The plot itself is boisterous but serious. Danger and action abound as the cast grows to include witches, vampires, demons, and werewolves. The climactic battle scene has a fun over-the-top blockbuster feel to it that delivers entertainment in spades.

Good Intentions is chock-full of explicit sex, yet never feels gratuitous. Kay has a purpose for every sex scene, and the erotica contributes to the story instead of simply being a Penthouse Forum interlude. The numerous hookups take on a “geek’s wet dream” feel that definitely add to the fun of reading.

What I enjoyed most is the sense of humor throughout. Rachel consistently steals the show with her foul-mouthed, irreverent wit; Kay makes the most of the juxtaposition of the guardian angel and her wide vocabulary. (Her recounting of the demise of a demon was worth the read on its own!) Little asides abound, such as a subtle swipe at the emo-vampire trend. I found myself chuckling every few pages.

Good Intentions is certainly not for everyone. Read the author’s warning; you’ll know if you’re the right sort for reading this book if you’re smiling after the first line.

Book Review – The Places in Between

3.5 stars. Six weeks after the fall of the Taliban, Rory Stewart embarked on a walk across Afghanistan from Herat to Kabul. The Places in Between describes his journey through harsh land and a huge mix of people, from kindly to threatening.

The author relied on the cultural value of hospitality to guests and travelers. This to me is fascinating: that a Westerner with only knowledge of local customs, a smattering of Persian language skills, and familiarity with the history and religion of the country can travel across a war-torn land, being taken care of by those who have little themselves.

I never really emotionally connected with The Places in Between. I suspect one or more of a few reasons for this. Stewart never reveals much about himself, so I don’t feel contact with him on a personal level. He tells his story with a very stoic and understated tone, so while I’m certain that his journey was both hazardous and difficult, the sense of those dangers doesn’t come through. His walk wasn’t about the land he passed through; we get some descriptions of geography and terrain but not many.

The dizzying whirlwind of people that he met gets only a capsule treatment, by nature of his very limited association. His three government-assigned travel companions early on are described in much more detail, and their portrayals are very good–perhaps the latter half of the book suffered from this lack of a personal connection.

It’s also a bit repetitive: Stewart has a long day walking, comes to a village, finds the leaders and requests hospitality, partakes of a meager and silent dinner, might have brief conversations ranging from friendly to threatening, experiences bouts of dysentery, and gets letters of introduction to the next village(s). He intersperses history, primarily of the medieval emperor Babur, and that provides some continuity to his journey.

On the other hand, this is a book that I am glad that I read. My surface understanding of Islam, Afghanistan, terrorism, and the Taliban is so limited. Stewart shows that the culture of Afghanistan is hugely diverse, and its governance must be incredibly complex. I almost feel more confused after reading this book, but I fear that is due to my narrow understanding rather than any deficiency of the author’s text. (Now I realize the full depth of my ignorance!) And yet the hopeful strength of this book is that it shows the common bonds of humanity cross barriers of religion and nationality.

The Places in Between is informative and interesting, though not as compulsively readable as I had hoped.