Length: 160 pages
Genre: Fantasy

Started / Finished: 10 January 2012

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? New volume in my favorite graphic novel series!

Summary: After Frau Totenkinder’s dubious success (and eventual failure) in containing Mister Dark, Pinocchio has a plan to rid the Fables of their new enemy for good. Inspired by the comics he loves, he’s assembling a team of Fables with super powers to do battle against their seemingly unstoppable foe. We also get a peek inside the (still-missing) business office, and a quick look at Sleeping Beauty’s continuing adventures.

Review: This volume wasn’t bad, and certainly had some nice moments (particularly with Bigby – and hooray, Ghost gets a mention!), but it also didn’t make much of an impression with me. Part of that might be because Pinocchio’s not my favorite character, and that was especially noticeable after a volume that focused so heavily on Frau Totenkinder, who I find much more interesting. Part of it might also be that I prefer fairy tales to super hero stories, and the blend of the two didn’t sit entirely comfortably. It also might be that the story as a whole didn’t quite have the narrative or emotional ooomph that I want (and expect) from Fables. But again, it wasn’t bad, just not quite as thrilling or moving as most of what’s come before. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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4. Chew, Vol. 4: Flambé by John Layman and Rob Guillory (2011)
Chew, Volume 4

Length: 120 pages
Genre: Science Fiction

Started / Finished: 10 January 2012

Summary: Tony Chu is a cibopath – he gets sense impressions and memories from the things (or people) he eats – which makes him one of the FDA’s top agents. Unfortunately, his boss keeps sending Tony and his half-android partner out on cases that have no obvious connection other than their extreme likelihood to get Tony killed… but somehow they all seem to come back to the giant flame-letters that have mysteriously appeared in the sky all over the world.

Review: This series has a lot of things going on, all of them are exceedingly strange, and a lot of them don’t always seem to fit together. It may be my fault for having a terrible memory and losing a lot of the details between trade paperbacks, but I’m starting to feel like the series is getting away from me, and that the weirdness is not resulting in enough satisfying payoff. It’s clever as heck, and there are some truly funny moments amid all the weirdness, but I’m at a point where I think I might be better off waiting until Layman & Guillory wrap up the series/story arc, and then starting again from the beginning… although that’s going to be a lot of strangeness to take in at once. 3 out of 5 stars.

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Read my review of book:
1. Peter and the Starcatchers
2. Peter and the Shadow Thieves
3. Peter and the Secret of Rundoon

Read By: Jim Dale
Length: 11h 32m (528 pages)

Genre: Young Adult Historical Fantasy

Started: 03 January 2012
Finished: 12 January 2012

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? I’ve enjoyed the past books in this series, and you can’t go wrong with Jim Dale.

A generation
later, and the Starcatchers
still need Peter’s help.

Summary: Molly Astor and all of the rest of the Starcatchers had thought that the dark forces of Lord Ombra were defeated forever in the desert outside of Rundoon. Molly has grown up, married George Darling, and had children of her own. But something is stirring… passengers are disappearing from the underground, and the King has been behaving strangely. Molly’s father, Lord Astor, tells Molly of a secret cache of starstuff hidden somewhere in London – the last starstuff on the planet, other than that which keeps Peter and the inhabitants of Neverland forever young. The cache was thought to be safe, reachable only by means of a sword that has been lost for generations. But it soon seems like the Others will stop at nothing to get their hands on the starstuff, and now neither London nor the island is safe from evil.

Review: What I really enjoy about the Starcatchers books is how well they function at a number of different levels. On the surface, they’re fun and exciting kids’ adventure stories, and even if that’s the only level you read them for, they succeed really well. There’s plenty of action and adventure and danger, with likeable protagonists, believable dialogue, a nicely drawn setting, and quite a bit of humor mixed throughout. The story manages to hit a nice balance of ages as well, since I think it’d be understandable and engaging for kids, but isn’t dumbed down or juvenile, and is perfectly enjoyable by adults. I did think that this book had an overly-complicated ending, with too many people showing up so that it made it a little difficult to keep track of who was where, but it also managed to integrate the London and Neverland storylines better than have previous books.

But the real reason I enjoy these books so much is the level that’s below the surface, and that’s the level that appeals to someone who has grown up with the Peter Pan story close to their heart. In the first few books, this came across mostly as identifying the various elements of the familiar story – the crocodile, Captain Hook’s hook, the name “Neverland”, etc. – and seeing how Barry & Pearson weave their origins into an original story. But as the books have progressed, the thing that has intrigued me most is seeing how Peter interacts with “normal” people, and how that changes. This story takes place right before Barrie’s original Peter Pan story – Wendy, Michael, and John are all present. But in the context of the other Starcatcher books, that means that Peter now has to deal – for the first time – with the fact that he stays a boy forever while his friends grow up and move on. I think the authors managed to get Peter and Molly, and then Peter and Wendy’s relationship note-perfect, and there’s actually a really poignant and almost heartbreaking story lurking underneath all the action and adventure. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I’ve loved Peter Pan ever since I was a kid (literally; he was my first crush), and I think that anyone else who feels the same would enjoy this series… but definitely start at the beginning; they’re not at all stand-alones.

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Other Reviews: Becky’s Book Reviews, Whimpulsive
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First Line: Charlemagne, Conqueror of Europe, knelt before the stone altar.

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Length: 292 pages
Genre: Non-Fiction; History

Started: 01 January 2012
Finished: 06 January 2012

Where did it come from? From the publishers for review.
Why do I have it? Sailing ships, age of exploration, girls dressing as boys in pursuit of science? Sign me up!
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 14 December 2011.

History that reads
like fiction: girls cross-dressing
to sneak aboard ship.

Summary: Jeane Baret was born in rural France at a time when most peasants never travelled further than 20 miles from home, yet she became the first woman in history to circumnavigate the globe. Her lover, the eminent botanist Philibert Commerson, had been selected to accompany the expedition ordered by King Louis XV, to identify plants from around the world that could be used to support the French drive for expansion and colonization. Baret, with considerable botanical knowledge of her own, disguised herself as a boy, and came aboard as Commerson’s assistant. But maintaining her disguise on a ship full of hundreds of men was a difficult proposition, with terrifying consequences if she should fail. Working from the limited available sources – Baret left behind no account of her own – Ridley works to uncover the truth about Baret’s experiences, and to bring to light an exceptional woman who has been largely forgotten by history and science both.

Review: Seeing as I am a) a woman, b) a scientist, and interested in c) the age of exploration and d) the age of sail, I can’t quite believe that I’d never before heard of Jeanne Baret. Hers is a really fascinating and inspiring story, and this book deserves a lot of credit for introducing me to such an interesting part of history that I’d missed. I stayed glued to the pages much more than I would normally expect for non-fiction or biograpy, and learned a lot – not just about Baret, but tons of other interesting trivia. (For instance: bougainvillea was named by Commerson in honor of the expedition’s captain, Bougainville, and Peter Piper was actually a Frenchman named Pierre Poivre who was in charge of increasing Mauritius’s yield of exotic commercial crops – including peppercorns.)

However, as much as I enjoyed the Baret’s story, I was less enthralled with Ridley’s way of telling it. The hand of the historian is very apparent in Ridley’s prose, much more so than in most history and biography that I’ve read. Rather than telling the story and then revealing the sources, or integrating the source material as she goes, Ridley often talked about the sources and their veracity first, then gave us her interpretation, and rarely provided enough direct quotes for the reader to draw their own conclusion. I guess this method of unveiling the story from the historian’s point of view underscores the “discovery” part of the title, but I found it somewhat distracting. It also occasionally read like Ridley was not quite sure about her interpretation but was trying very hard to convince us that it’s right. However, sometimes I was left with the feeling that she was over-interpreting complex events and emotions based on a single phrase or instance of word choice.

One thing that she seems certain of, however, is what happened when Baret’s gender was made known to the crew (namely: gang rape.) While I don’t disagree with Ridley that this is a possible – even likely – interpretation of events, I do think that it is based on a lot of inference, and little-to-no direct evidence, and I was not a fan of the way she kept bringing it up as if it were fact. She was similarly prone to describing Baret’s emotions and thoughts as if they too were documented, when she had already told the readers that Baret left behind no journal or account, and had in fact criticized previous historians of the expedition for interpreting what primary sources were available based on their own personal and cultural prejudices. Again, I didn’t often disagree with Ridley’s conclusions, but thought it a bit disingenuous the way they were presented as being truth rather than interpretation.

While I did have some issues with the means of telling, overall I did quite enjoy the book. Any story engaging enough to shine through the pages and capture my interest despite my issues with the narrative style is one worth reading. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I think this will be interesting to a lot of history readers, primarily those interested in the age of exploration or the history of women in science.

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Other Reviews: Leeswammes’ Blog, A Librarian’s Life in Books, She Treads Softly, Silly Little Mischief
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First Line: In April 1768, two French ships, the Boudeuse and the Étoile, rode at anchor off the coast of Tahiti as 330 officers and men took their first shore leave in nearly a year.

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Length: 192 & 168 pages
Genre: Science Fiction

Started / Finished: 25 December 2011 & 16 January 2012

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? A friend, who is my go-to source for comics knowledge, recommended it.

A prestigious prep
school, but they don’t say what they’re
preparing you *for*.

Summary: Morning Glory Academy (motto: For a Better Future) is one of the most prestigious – and secretive – prep schools in the country, but all there is not as it seems. Six new students, all from very different backgrounds, but all sharing the same birthday, arrive at the school, unsure of what to expect… but torture, murder, imprisonment, and giant secret laboratories were certainly not part of the brochure. Now they’re going to have to work together if they ever have a hope of figuring out what’s going on, and of escaping Morning Glory for good. Volume 1 focuses on new student Casey, and her escape plan after she learns just how far the school is willing to go. Volume 2 gives a little bit of the fallout of Casey’s plan, but also delves into the backstory of the other students, and why they’re at Morning Glory Academy in the first place.

Volume 1 Review: I finished Volume 1 feeling pretty damn lost… but I can’t tell yet whether it’s a good kind of lost, or a bad kind of lost. There’s a lot going on, with not a lot of explanation for anything, and I finished this volume in a “what the hell just happened here” kind of daze. I liked the characters; the kids are an assortment of high school cliches (snobby rich kid, bumbling nice-guy nerd, etc.), but there’s at least a hint that they’ve all got more going on under the surface. The adults were less well-defined, and I occasionally had a hard time telling if a given adult was someone we’d seen before, or just a random henchman. I also had a hard time piecing together the geography of the place, which seems to have an endless number of sinister sub-basements and dim hallways and hidden rooms, but also brightly-lit dorms and classrooms. I’m definitely interested enough in the story to keep reading, but I just hope that as the series progresses, at least some of the pieces start to fall into place. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Volume 2 Review: I actually enjoyed volume 2 a little more than I did volume 1, mostly because while it still contains plenty of twists and turns and secrets and hints, I felt like there were at least a few things being explained. (Even if most of the time, it cuts between scenes right at the point whenever something interesting is about to be revealed/explained.) I really enjoyed getting a look at the other kids’ backstories, how they play into who they are now, and the hints they reveal about why these kids are at the school, and what that means about the deeper motives of the people in charge. One thing that bugged me, though, was the copious (and obvious) number of Lost references. The series has been described by its creator as “Runaways meets Lost“, which I think is pretty apt, but even so, a very Hurley-looking dude in charge of a fried chicken fast-food restaurant, and a mysterious biblically-named man visiting all of our principles at some point during their lives before the school? For me, it read more as rip-off than as inspiration or homage, especially since the series is obviously not hurting for creative ideas in other areas. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Morning Glories is about half dystopia, half action movie, mixed with a healthy dose of boarding school story, so if that sounds appealing, and you don’t mind not getting all (or any) of the answers right away, then dive in.

Volume 1: This Review on LibraryThing | This Book on LibraryThing | This Book on Amazon
Volume 2: This Review on LibraryThing | This Book on LibraryThing | This Book on Amazon

Other Reviews: Bart’s Bookshelf (1), Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review (1) (2), Take Me Away (1)
Have you reviewed this book? Leave a comment with the link and I’ll add it in.

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Length: 530 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction

Started/Finished: 04 January 2012

Where did it come from? The library booksale.
Why do I have it? I’d seen the millions of people who loved it, of course, plus my mom insisted I go see the movie, which I really enjoyed.
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 29 October 2011.

No one wants to know
which of their dirty secrets
the maid has found out.

Summary: All of Skeeter Phelan’s friends are busily getting married and having babies, while Skeeter’s got bigger plans: she wants to be a writer. But in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, that’s easier said than done. Skeeter gets a job writing the cleaning advice column for the local paper, but she knows nothing about cleaning, so she turns to her friend’s housekeeper, Abilene. The more they talk, the more Skeeter becomes aware of the unfair practices and daily indignities of being a black housekeeper for a white woman in the Civil-Rights-era South. When an editor tells Skeeter to write about the things that bother her, but that no one else notices, she gets a dangerous idea: what about a book that describes the point of view of the help? She talks Abilene into it, but neither of them have any idea what they’re getting themselves into, and what the repercussions of their collaboration could wind up being.

Review: I was bound and determined not to be charmed by this book. I’d seen everybody love it, but I said to myself, “Self, this book is going to be all charming and emotionally manipulative and it’s going to try really hard to make you love it despite yourself, so don’t let it, okay?” And so that’s the mindset that I went into this book with, and guess what? I failed. This book charmed me right out of my stubbornness.

(Actually, in the spirit of honesty, I had this conversation with myself about the movie first. And then I was all “Self, the movie charmed you despite your best intentions, and left you all sniffly in the theater, and you know the book is going to be the same, so really, let’s resist having our heartstrings tugged this time, okay?” And then I failed at that too.)

So, yeah. This book was thoroughly charming, and my heartstrings did wind up getting tugged, but I came out of it feeling like it had earned its emotional moments (one of which happened while I was reading in public. Allergies, I swear!) Stockett is very good at creating a sense of place and of moment with her writing, and her prose flows easily and naturally. I was a little bit worried, originally, since Abilene’s sections are written in dialect, which can so easily go wrong, but Stockett uses it effectively, letting it add to Abilene’s voice without overwhelming it.

There were times throughout the book that made me feel like the whole thing was an exercise in racial apologetics: “See, not all white people are horrible racists, even in the South!” And, to her credit, in a note at the end Stockett addresses the issue of a white woman presuming to speak for generations of black women. Racial issues form the core of this book, and while they’re not something on which I feel particularly qualified to speak, I did appreciate Stockett bringing to light a side of our history and culture that I had never before considered. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Neither near-historical fiction nor Southern fiction are usually my thing, but I wound up really enjoying this book, so if it even vaguely appeals, it’s worth reading.

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First Line: Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960.

Vocab: (see the whole list)

• p. 252: “She is almost my height in her peau de soie heels.” – A soft silk fabric of satin weave having a dull finish.

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Read By: James Wilby
Length: 5h 46m (252 pages)

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Started: 29 December 2011
Finished: 31 December 2011

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? I’ve enjoyed Colfer’s other books, and I thought the premise sounded interesting.

In Meg’s case, only
the perfectly-balanced-twixt-
good-and-bad die young.

Summary: Meg isn’t a bad person at heart, but she’s done some pretty bad things. For example, she and another kid, Belch, are breaking into an old man’s apartment (an activity about which Meg is having second thoughts) when she dies in a freak accident. But when she reaches the Other Side, there’s a problem: her soul is perfectly balanced between good & evil, and so they can’t decide whether to send her to Heaven or Hell. Meg must return to Earth as a ghost, and use her new lease on the afterlife to help someone – in her case, the same old man whose apartment she broke into – and he’s got a very specific list about the life choices he’d like to rectify. But Hell’s not going to let her soul escape their clutches without a fight…

Review: Eoin Colfer’s books are a reliable mix of zany, snarky, and sweet, and The Wish List is no exception. It’s not often that a kids’ book starts with its protagonist dying in a gas explosion, but Colfer somehow makes it work, and what could be a very serious story about sin and souls and second chances is lightened up by the constant stream of Colfer’s humor. Even though a lot of the action involves following an old man around Ireland as he (with Meg’s help) rights 50-year-old wrongs, there’s still a madcap feeling to a lot of it that reminded me of the Artemis Fowl books. It’s not the most morally complex book, and there are a few plot elements and running gags that didn’t always work for me. But even though it didn’t knock my socks off, it definitely had some nice moments, Meg & Lowrie’s bickering made me laugh, and it was short and sweet and kept me entertained. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Recommended for those who are looking for books that take a slightly skewed perspective on the afterlife, or for a fun mid-grade/YA adventure featuring ghosts.

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Other Reviews: Confessions of a Bibliovore, My Love Affair with Books, Red House Books
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First Line: Meg and Belch were doing a job.

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As part of my New Year’s 2011 in review post, I put up a bunch of stats about my last year’s reading, and a graph of my reading habits over time. If you want to make pretty graphs and calculate stats of your own, you can download my reading tracking spreadsheet. This is substantially updated from the versions I’ve done in previous years. Each year is now on its own tab, with a "yearly comparison" tab to get a look at your reading habits over time.

The basic operation is easy – you enter information about the books you finish in the columns with blue headings, plus your reading and page count goals in the blue-highlighted cells at the top. The first few columns will be familiar to anybody who has used previous versions of the sheet – you enter the title, author, date finished, page count, and/or audiobook time – and the spreadsheet will calculate your yearly totals and daily averages. The dates and page totals will light up green if you’re ahead of the pace needed to meet your goal, red if you’re behind, and black if you’re right on target. The spreadsheet will use this information to generate the reading and page number graphs. If that’s all you’re interested in, you can stop here; all of the rest of the columns are totally optional.

The next four columns are used for tracking binary information about books – things that can be answered with a yes/no, male/female, etc. I’ve got it set up to track the author’s gender, and whether or not a book was an audiobook, graphic novel, or young adult. You can use these, or you can change them to some other yes/no question you’re interested in (whether a book was read as part of a challenge, etc.).

There are also three columns that can keep track of a number of categories: genre, TBR status, and "where did it come from?". These columns use 2-3 letter codes, so that for genre, I’ve got F = fantasy, SF = science fiction, M = mystery, etc.; TBR status is T = from the TBR pile, NO = not owned, A = audiobook, and E = E-book; locations are NBS = new book store, UBS = used book store, etc. You can break these down however you want to keep track of them; whatever categories and abbreviations you choose, the spreadsheet will tally them as long as you change them at the top of the year’s sheet (rows 1-8), and in column C on the Yearly Comparison sheet. You could also change these columns to keep track of other information that comes in multiple categories (i.e. author nationality).

The rest of the columns should be fairly straightforward: year published, date you acquired a book (and consequently how long it’s been sitting on your TBR pile), price paid, and rating (which I do on a 5-point scale, but which could easily be adjustable for a 10-point one), and whether or not it’s your first time reading an author’s work. It will also calculate how many authors you’ve read in a given year, but be careful: it looks at the exact spelling of an author’s name, so it will treat J. R. R. Tolkien and JRR Tolkien as two different people.

And I think that’s it! As always, I’d love to hear if and how you’re using the spreadsheet, and if you have any problems with it, or ideas for the next version, let me know!

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Length: 400 pages
Genre: Mid-Grade Fantasy

Started: 30 December 2011
Finished: 31 December 2011

Where did it come from? Purchased from Amazon.
Why do I have it? Oh, man, I don’t even remember. I’m sure I heard about it and said “ooh, Greek mythology.”
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 19 February 2009.

Being the son of
a god comes with more perils
than useful powers.

Summary: Percy Jackson thought he was just an ordinary kid, until one day his math teacher turned into a giant bird-woman and tried to kill him. And then he finds out that his best friend Grover is actually half-goat (the lower half), and has been sent to protect Percy from all of the other monsters that also want to kill him. It turns out that while Percy’s mom is normal enough, his dad is one of the Greek gods of Olympus. Percy finds some temporary safety at a camp full of other kids like him, but nowhere is really safe for him… Zeus’s lightning bolt has been stolen, and he blames Percy’s father. Now Percy is the only one who can find the lightning bolt, and stop an all-out war between the gods.

Review: Starting out, it was up in the air whether or not this book would work for me. I love mythology blended into my fiction (particularly Greek mythology), but mid-grade fantasy adventure novels typically aren’t my favorite. Luckily, however, the mythology won me over, and I had a blast reading this book. Riordan doesn’t just include some token gods as characters, he digs really deep into the mythology, and the way he layers aspects of the myths into his story gives the world he creates a feeling of completeness and complexity. It gave me a thrill every time I recognized some aspect of a familiar myth, placed in the new and creative backdrop of Riordan’s world.

Another reason I enjoyed this book so much was that apart from Percy being only twelve, it doesn’t really read like a mid-grade novel. The number of exclamation points is kept to a minimum, as are the fart jokes, and in general the humor is snarkier than I would have typically expected for this level. There’s actually a nice mix, with both obvious punchlines and really subtle (but really funny) bits of humor that call back to the original myths. At the same time, it also succeeds as an adventure story; Percy’s hero’s quest has plenty of danger and action to go along with the laughs, and there are some decent twists and turns to the plot that keep the story moving. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Great for kids and adults who like a solid fantasy adventure with an Olympus-sized mountain-full of mythology mixed in. Riordan explains the myths behind most of his plot points pretty well, but I still think that people with a decent grounding in Greek mythology will get the most out of this book.

“In his pocket was a set of reed pipes his daddy goat had carved for him, even though he only knew two songs: Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 12 and Hilary Duff’s “So Yesterday,” both of which sounded pretty bad on reed pipes.” -pg. 150

“I’m not sure what I was expecting – Pearly Gates, or a big black portcullis, or something. But the entrance to the Underworld looked like a cross between airport security and the Jersey Turnpike.” -pg. 291

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First Line: Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.

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Length: 442 pages
Genre: Mystery

Started: 24 December 2011
Finished: 29 December 2011

Where did it come from? Purchased from Amazon.
Why do I have it? I loved Tana French’s previous two books.
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 28 June 2011.

Getting dumped by your
teen girlfriend suddenly seems
the better option.

Summary: When Frank Mackey was 19, he made plans with his girlfriend, Rosie Daly, to escape from their poor Dublin neighborhood and run away together to England. When Rosie didn’t turn up, and Frank found a note saying that she’d gone, his heart was broken, but he left without a second thought, cutting off contact with his family and leaving Faithful Place behind without a second thought. Now he’s a detective in the Dublin Undercover squad, and has his life mostly in order, but the past isn’t done with him yet. When he gets a hysterical call from his sister, saying that they’ve found a case with Rosie’s belongings, hidden inside an abandoned house, Frank must face not only his estranged family and his old neighborhood, but also the fact that the truth around which he’s built his life – that Rosie left him and is alive and well somewhere in the world – might not be so true after all.

Review: I am not a huge reader of contemporary mysteries, but I will absolutely make an exception for Tana French’s novels. I think that’s in large part due to the fact that while they’re detective mysteries, they’re also something more – there’s a layer of story to them that focuses on the people and their relationships, not just on the dead body. However, while that was certainly true in Faithful Place, I felt like the balance was off, tipped a bit too far the other way. Frank’s relationship with his family takes up a lot of the story, but while the mystery is certainly never ignored, it also didn’t feel as well-developed and intricate as In the Woods or The Likeness. It was one of those cases where I figured out what was going on fairly early on – there are a few unsubtle clues that let the rest of the mystery unravel pretty quickly. Luckily, what was going on in the rest of the story (Frank’s reaction to the investigation, and his relationships with his family) was interesting enough to keep me absorbed in the story… but I did wish the mystery had been just a little bit meatier.

Another thing that astonishes me about Tana French’s writing is how effortlessly she seems to be able to slip in and out of her characters, providing a completely distinct yet still lyrical voice for each of her narrators. (I’m sure it’s actually very hard work, but it’s amazing how effortless it seems.) It’s immediately apparent that this is Frank’s book, and Frank’s voice is as different from Cassie’s and Rob’s voices as they were from each other. But in every case, French manages to capture not only the atmosphere but also the mindset and rhythms of speech of her characters just perfectly.

Faithful Place is my least favorite of French’s books so far, but that’s still high praise, given how absolutely brilliant I thought In the Woods and The Likeness were. I found it completely engrossing and extremely well-written, but the mystery didn’t have quite the same punch, and the story didn’t have quite the same emotional impact as the others. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: French’s books are related to each other via recurring characters, but they’re only a series in the very loosest sense; Faithful Place, in particular, stands perfectly well on its own. All three, though, are recommended for anyone who likes mysteries, particularly those with heart-wrenching characters and elegant writing.

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First Line: In all your life, only a few moments matter.

Vocab: (see the whole list)

• p. 52: “It had worked out well for her, in the end: she had the same knock-your-eye-out figure as Rosie, getting soft around the edges but still va-va-voom, the kind of figure you don’t see any more now that girls starve themselves into size zero and permanent narkiness.” – Irritated, in a bad mood; disparaging.
  .
• p. 75: ““She won’t ring anyone, not till she’s called round to Mrs. Daly and got all the sca.”” – An Irish term for News. It’s abbreviated from scandal.
  .
• p. 84: “The tech made weaselly noises about search warrants, till I informed him that any possible suspect would have been an intruder on the premises and therefore could have had no expectation of privacy, and – when he kept whining – that in any case the house had been in public use for at least thirty years and therefore counted as a de facto public place by right of seisin, no warrant needed.” – feudal possession of an estate in land
  .
• p. 172: “Someone had thrown my da a nixer of his own that week: four days’ plastering work, no need to tell the dole.” – a spare-time job
  .
• p. 213: “I flipped out a half-full naggin of vodka, took a swig and offered it to Jackie.” – A small bottle of alcoholic spirits. Usually 200ml.
  .
• p. 295: ““The little gurriers were calling things after her on the street, all the aul’ ones were waiting for her to turn up in trouble, half her friends weren’t allowed speak to her in case she turned them into hoors as well; Father Hanratty gave a homily about loose women weakening the country, and that wasn’t what the men died for in 1916.”” -
  Irish synonym for corner-boy or hooligan. Usually applies to teenagers and younger kids.
  .
• p. 400: ““If this dinner burns on me I swear I’ll malavogue the pair of yous!”” – to treat or punish severely
  .

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165. The Dead Boy Detectives by Ed Brubaker, Bryan Talbot, Steve Leialoha (2008)
The Sandman Presents

Length: 104 pages
Genre: Mystery, Fantasy

Started / Finished: 26 December 2011

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? I think – think – this is the last of the Sandman-related books I haven’t read yet. Or at least, it’s the last one that my library has in its collection.

Summary: Schoolboys Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland want nothing more than to spend their days solving crimes, just like in their favorite novels, but they’ve got two problems. One, they don’t have any customers, and two, they’re not, strictly speaking, alive. But when they stumble upon a string of murders in which the victims appear to be drained of all of their life force, they must use every bit of their ghostly abilities to track down a killer who has been plaguing London for centuries.

Review: This was not my favorite of the Sandman spin-offs. Although several Sandman characters other than Edwin and Charles (namely, Mad Hetty and Hob Gadling) do make an appearance, there’s little to no connection to the main work. Since I didn’t have much invested in these minor characters, there wasn’t a lot of emotional oomph to the story. And, while I enjoyed watching the ways in which being a ghost both helped and hindered detective work, I thought the actual mystery was pretty straightforward, and I found it frustrating that none of the characters seemed to pick up on the really obvious hints about the murderer’s identity. Overall, it was a fun-enough diversion, but not something that blew me away. 3 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: For Sandman completists, it’s not a bad way to spend an hour, but it’s also not something I’d be heartbroken about missing out on, either.

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169. My Dead Girlfriend, Vol. 1: A Tryst of Fate by Eric Wight (2007)
My Dead Girlfriend, Vol. 1

Length: 192 pages
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Started / Finished: 31 December 2011

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? The title caught my eye as I was browsing the shelves.

Summary: Finney Bleak has a family history that’s going to be hard to live up to – all of his ancestors have died in improbable ways, and then stuck around for family game night. High school’s no better, full as it is of Aberzombies, potion-pushing witches, and (literal) Deadbeats. Even the girl that Finney met at a carnival never called him again. But in Finney’s world, even death isn’t a barrier to the power of a teenage crush…

Review: This was cute, and a fun enough read, but ultimately I was left unimpressed. I think most of my problem was that not enough happened; 5/6th of the book is introduction and set-up, a substantial worldbuilding infodump, and the titular dead girlfriend doesn’t show up until near the end. I get that it’s a first volume in the series, but even so, it didn’t have much of a plot arc (other than “Finney mopes around about how hard life is until the ghost of a girl he had one date with shows up”). There were definitely some funny bits, and I like the idea of the world Wight’s created, but I don’t know if I’ll continue with the series (especially since there is no Vol. 2 out yet, or even on the horizon) – not enough happened in this volume to really get me interested in where the story’s going next. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: It’s a neat concept, but the story barely takes off before the book ends, so unless more installments are published, I’d give this one a miss.

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Read By: Kim Mai Guest
Length: 432 pages

Genre: Historical Fantasy

Started: 08 December 2011
Finished: 29 December 2011

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? Corinne’s fault.

Five sisters learn that
life is not a fairy tale,
and no gifts come free.

Summary: Jena and her sisters have always been warned to stay out of the woods surrounding their home: dangerous creatures live there, and their cousin Costi drowned in a pond during a childish game. However, the five girls have a secret – on the full moon, they’re able to open a portal into the faerie woods, for a night of dancing and celebration with the folk of the forest. When Jena is 15, though, their father becomes ill and is taken to the coast for the winter to recover his health. Jena tries to keep things in order, but her sister has fallen for a mysterious and potentially dangerous man she met at one of the full-moon dances; her cousin Cezar seems intent on taking over not only the household, but also the lives of the girls; fear among the neighbors, drummed up by Cezar, is threatening the future of the Wildwood; and the only friend Jena has to turn to is her pet frog, Gogu. How can she manage to save not only herself and her sisters, but also the entirety of the faerie realm?

Review: This book had a lot of things going for it – most prominently the way it wove together a number of fairy tales into one historical Eastern European backdrop – and there wasn’t anything really wrong with it. However, I felt like it always was missing some spark that would make truly unputdownable, and as a result, while I enjoyed it, I felt like it could have been more than it was.

The characterizations were well-done; Jena was a independent but not infallible narrator, her sisters all had distinct (if somewhat two-dimentional) personalities, and Cezar was a realistically drawn but still incredibly menacing villain. (Not that he starts out as a bad guy – Cezar’s motivations and decisions, and the path on which they lead him, form one of the most complex and fascinating aspects of the book.) The relationships among the characters felt real, with a good eye for some of the more subtle nuances that could easily have been ignored. The fairy realm was also well done, with a clear sense of magic and wonder, but also a distinct undercurrent of danger and darkness, where bargains must be carefully worded, and every gift has its price.

I also really enjoyed all of the elements of various fairy tales that cropped up throughout, and how Marillier managed to make the entire book fit the rhythm and feel of the old stories. However, this also worked against the novel: because the rhythm of fairy tales is so familiar, it meant that the ending of this one was pretty predictable, even from fairly early on. That meant that at times this book felt kind of slow, and parts where Jena was pondering the identity of the green-eyed man from her visions, or waffling about what to do about her sisters felt overly dragged-out, since the answer should be obvious to anyone who was ever told a bedtime story. Technically, since Jena was living at a time when such stories were still being written, I can’t really fault her for not knowing, but I still felt like there were places where I wanted the story to get to the point a little faster.

I listened to the audio version of this book, and I had somewhat of a mixed reaction. Kim Mai Guest does a nice job of differentiating the voices, and providing an appropriately-froggy-but-not-overly-silly voice for Gogu. It was also nice to hear all of the names pronounced correctly… but she also frequently carried that pronunciation over into the rest of the prose, so that many lines were read with a vaguely Eastern European accent, but some were not. It was distracting, more so than it would have been to have the whole thing read in an unaccented voice, and makes me inclined to recommend the text version rather than the audio. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: For fans of fairy tale retellings, especially those in a realistic historical setting, it’s definitely worth trying.

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First Line: I’ve heard it said that girls can’t keep secrets.

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Length: 272 pages
Genre: Mid-Grade Contemporary Fiction (although with a dose of magical realism)

Started / Finished: 23 December 2011

Where did it come from? The library booksale.
Why do I have it? I’d heard about this book, both in terms of the Newbery, and the hubbub around the 2003 movie, and wanted to see what the fuss was about.
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 15 October 2006.

Falsely charged with a
crime, Stanley’s in a “hole” lot
of trouble. Get it?

Summary: It’s Stanley Yelnats’ first time going to camp – but Camp Green Lake isn’t your ordinary kind of camp. For starters, there is no lake, nothing is green, and the only camp activity is digging holes… and each camper must dig one 5′x5′ hole, every day, in the blistering Texas sun. Stanley’s not even really supposed to be there – he’s innocent of the crime which got him sent to Camp Greenlake – but now he’ll have to find a way to survive, just like everyone else. But he pretty quickly comes to realize that there’s something more to all the digging than just punishment… but what is the warden really looking for?

Review: This book was definitely cute, and certainly put a smile on my face. I was expecting a more straightforward (and less magical-realism-filled) story than it actually was. (Which, in hindsight, was a silly expectation, given the wackiness of Sachar’s Sideways Stories from Wayside School books, which I absolutely loved back in the day.) So I was pleasantly surprised with the interweaving of Stanley’s story with the stories of his great-grandfather and a wild-west outlaw, as well as by the various bizarre-yet-fitting flourishes throughout. I was also impressed that Holes managed to bring up some pretty serious subjects, but never felt dark, or like it was being pointedly provocative. On the flip-side, though, I thought that all of the historical stories made the outcome of Stanley’s quest pretty easy to predict, although that might just be because I’m a jaded grown-up.

Overall, this was a quick, fun read, good for a light distraction, but not something that’s likely to stay with me. While I enjoyed this book, and can certainly understand why it won the awards that it did, it didn’t quite blow me away. However, I think that’s mostly due to my mismatch with the target audience – mid-grade books (that don’t have the force of nostalgia on their side) rarely manage to knock my socks off, but I can definitely see kids of both sexes (but especially boys) devouring this book. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Definitely recommended for the mid-grade readers in your life, and as a fun diversion for grown-ups as well.

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First Line: There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.

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Length: 587 pages
Genre: Fantasy

Started: 13 December 2011
Finished: 22 December 2011

Where did it come from? The library (via their ebook rentals service. It’s the first time I tried it, and man, is it slick.)
Why do I have it? I’m pretty sure I first saw it in Shelf Awareness, and I was in the mood for something absorbing but relatively fluffy.

In this long book, we
discover lots of witches,
but no real ending.

Summary: Diana Bishop is the last in long line of witches that stretches back to Rebecca Bishop of Salem. But she doesn’t use her magic in everyday life, preferring to do her research – as a historian of science – the old-fashioned way. However, during the course of her research, she stumbles across a powerfully magical alchemical manuscript, that no one has seen in centuries. Now she’s the center of attention for every supernatural creature in Oxford – witches, demons, and vampires alike – but none more so than Matthew Clermont, a geneticist/vampire. Diana does her best to resist his advances, but she finds herself strangely drawn to him. Matthew claims he wants to protect her, but can she believe him, or is he too only after the manuscript? And if she does fall for him, will she be putting herself in even greater danger?

Review: My reaction to this book is being very strongly colored by its ending, so I’m going to address that first, and then once that’s off my chest, we’ll see if I can talk about the rest of the book in a slightly less biased manner.

My problem with the ending? There isn’t one. I did not realize that this book was only the first in a trilogy until I’d turned the last page and absolutely nothing had been resolved. I suppose I should have started to get suspicious at page 500 or so, when instead of anything coming to a head (let alone being resolved), Harkness was still introducing new story elements and plot threads. If I’d known that it wasn’t a stand-alone when I started, I probably would have reacted less badly, but as it was, I finished the book intensely frustrated and annoyed.

In retrospect, the fact that it’s the first in a trilogy explains a lot about the general plotting of the story. Throughout, I had the feeling that the book couldn’t quite figure out what it wanted to be. I had thought it was going to be Oxford and library-centric, and for 200 pages it was, and then there’s a shift to France and vampire history, and then once I’d settled into that, there’s another jump to Salem and the mechanics of witchcraft. It sort of feels like the introduction to several books pasted together, rather than being a single story with a cohesive beginning, middle, and end. There are a lot of elements in play at any one time, and while individually they’re all interesting, together they leave the book feeling jumbled and not quite fully developed.

Even ignoring the weird plotting, this book had a number of issues. The characters felt a little flat to me, and I don’t think I found Matthew as charming as I was supposed to, which made it hard to get fully into the romance aspect of the story. (He spends a lot of time bossing Diana around, although at least he acknowledges this when she calls him on it.) The writing was workmanlike, nothing terrible but nothing particularly elegant either, with a tendency to be a little wordy and to engage in some pretty major infodumping.

(And let’s not get me started on the biology aspect of the book. Matthew’s research in genetics plays a fairly major role in the story, and while there were not *too* many blatant mistakes (although there were some), there were a lot of things that made it clear that it was science as written by a historian. For example, as Diana is learning about Matthew’s various career changes over his vampiric lifespan, she says “Someday you’ll have to explain to me the relationship between neuroscience, DNA research, animal behavior, and evolution. They don’t obviously fit together.” Really? My dissertation committee would be surprised to hear it.)

But, for all of my crankiness, what I wanted when I picked this book up was something that would hold my attention, keep me reading, and be a nice and relatively fluffy distraction from holiday travel and stress. And, on all three of those counts, this book succeeded; I got hooked into the story, I was interested in what would happen next, and I read it straight through several very long flights. So take all of my complaining above with a grain of salt; none of it was enough to make me stop reading, and I’ll most likely be picking up the sequels… in the hopes that they will feature a resolution to at least some of the six million different story threads introduced in this book. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: It’s kind of a jumble of story elements (vampires, witches, history, libraries and old manuscripts, secret religious orders, supernatural politics, genetics, romance, mystery, etc.), but if enough of them sound interesting, or if you’re interested in a vampire romance in which the girl can hold her own in a fight, it’s probably worth a shot. Just be aware going in that it’s not at all a stand-alone novel, and that few of the questions it raises will be answered until later in the series.

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First Line: The leather-bound volume was nothing remarkable.

Some More Biologist Griping:

“Welcome to the history lab.” The blue light made his face look whiter, his hair blacker. “This is where we’re studying evolution. We take in physical specimens from old burial sites, excavations, fossilized remains, and living beings, and extract DNA from the samples.” Matthew opened a different drawer and pulled out a handful of files. “We’re just one laboratory among hundreds all over the world using genetics to study problems of species origin and extinction. The difference between our lab and the rest is that humans aren’t the only species we’re studying.” – pg. 155

In that last line, Matthew is using “species” to mean variety of supernatural humanoids – vampires, demons, witches – but if you read “species” to mean “species,” then this becomes laughably false. What about the hundreds if not thousands of labs that study animal and plant speciation?

“Beatrice’s nuclear DNA has fewer markers common among witches. This indicates that her ancestors, as the centuries passed, relied less and less on magic and witchcraft as they struggled to survive. Those changing needs began to force mutations in her DNA – mutations that pushed the magic aside.” – p. 160

Argh, this is teleological thinking – the idea that external conditions or some final goal can cause purposeful or directed changes. It’s a major misconception in popular descriptions of evolutionary theory, and it’s enough to put most biologists’ teeth on edge. Mutations are random – not dictated by external conditions – and then the mutations that are best suited to those external conditions are the ones that get passed down to future generations. There’s also a hint of Lamarckism in there – the idea that what one of these ancestors did during their lives determined which traits their offspring would receive – that is also just not how genetics works. At least, not human genetics. Maybe all of the magical power of witch genes make things work that way. Let’s just say a wizard did it and move on.

“Vampires mate the way lions do, or wolves,” he explained, sounding like a scientist in a television documentary. “The female selects her mate, and once the mate has agreed, that’s it. They’re mated for life, and the rest of the community acknowledges their bond.” – pg. 354

This is, charitably interpreted, vastly oversimplified, if not plain wrong. It’s more true for wolves – there’s some wiggle room on what “for life” means, and “acknowledges” is both anthropomorphic and inaccurate in its implications, but otherwise, it’s okay. But for lions, that’s not at all how it works. The Lion King gets some things wrong, but the whole bit about one male fighting another for reproductive access to a pride of females was right on target – lifelong monogamy has nothing to do with it.

Vocab: (see the whole list)

• p. 16: “I climbed the twisting treads to where the old buckram-covered books sat in neat chronological rows on wooden shelves.” – a stiff cotton fabric for interlinings, book bindings, etc.
  .
• p. 38: “We spent the remainder of the afternoon in a state of détente.” – a relaxing of tension, especially between nations, as by negotiations or agreements.
  .
• p. 234: “There were tiny incunabula and pocket-sized books in neat rows on one bookcase, spanning the history of print from the 1450s to the present.” – extant copies of books produced in the earliest stages (before 1501) of printing from movable type.
  .
• p. 411: “Tabitha hissed at me and resumed her sybaritic attention to Matthew’s lower legs.” – characterized by or loving luxury or sensuous pleasure.

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I started December with 263 unread books sitting around my house. And I ended with … *drumroll* …269! So that balances out the good work I did last month, but the bigger news is that it puts me at -1 for the year! December was crazy busy – even more so than your average December – and I feel like a lot of reading got away from me. But hopefully now I’m back in the groove!

…anyways, let’s take a look at the breakdown:

Neutral books – Read, but don’t affect the TBR pile

Audiobooks – The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman – Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier – The Wish List by Eoin Colfer (reviews coming soon)
Read but not owned – Morning Glories, Vol. 1: For a Better Future by Nick Spencer – Dead Boy Detectives by Ed Brubaker – A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness – My Dead Girlfriend, Vol. 1 by Eric Wight (reviews coming soon)

Changes to the TBR pile

Read from my TBR pile (huzzah!) – Small Gods by Terry Pratchett – Banewreaker by Jacqueline Carey – Lord John and the Hand of Devils by Diana Gabaldon – Switched by Amanda Hocking – Holes by Louis Sachar – Faithful Place by Tana French – The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (reviews coming soon)

Added to my TBR pile (all-around shame!)
- Impossible Things by Connie Willis	- The Sexual History of London: From Roman Londinium to the Swinging City–Lust, Vice, and Desire Across the Ages by Catharine Arnold
- The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe by Glynis Ridley	- Mistborn: The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson
- Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science, and Survival in the Congo by Kate Jackson	- Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
- Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison	- Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
- Planesrunner by Ian McDonald	- Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
- In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion by Scott Atran	- Welcome to Bordertown by Holly Black & Ellen Kushner
- Every Living Thing: Man’s Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys by Rob Dunn
Non-TBR Acquisitions (storage-space-related shame!)
- Mosaic Knitting by Barbara G. Walker	- FARMfood by Daniel Orr
- The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart

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Today’s post is, unsurprisingly, a look back at my 2011 in books. I’m going to start with some stats about my reading, and then get to my favorites of the year.

• I finished 185 books this year, 170 of which were new-to-me, and 15 of which were re-reads. 170 new books was my personal goal for the year, which I met mostly due to a last-minute sprint yesterday of a short audiobook and lots of NYE preparations.
• 144 of those were paper or e-books, for a total of 52,010 pages read. The remaining 41 were audiobooks, with a total of slightly over 20 full days of listening time. (Plus another 15 hours’ worth of individual short stories.)
• I read books by 125 different authors, 70 of which were new to me. I also did pretty well balancing the sex ratio: 53% percent of the books I read (excluding anthologies) were by female authors.
• Of the new books I read, about 49% came from my TBR pile. Another 5% were e-books, 19% were audiobooks, 19% were graphic novels from the library, and the remaining 7% were regular library books.
• I added 84 books to my TBR pile – the lowest yearly total since I started keeping track. I also either read or cleared 85 books from the pile, however, leaving me with a net change of -1!
• Of the books I read from my TBR pile, the average length of time between when I acquired them and when I finished them was 307 days.
• Half of the books I read were published in 2010 or later; however, the average publication date of my books was 2003.
• Unsurprisingly, my most-read genre was fantasy. I also read quite a bit of science fiction, but less historical fiction and general fiction than in previous years.

I will have a downloadable version of the spreadsheet I use to generate all these stats available soon, I swear!

I’m not going to do a formal “best of” list for 2011, since I always have a really hard time getting my picks down to 5 or even 10 “best” books. Instead, here are my picks-of-the-month for the year!

January	February	March	April
May	June	July	August
September	October	November	December

January: Songs of Love & Death by George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois

February: I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett, Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran, The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, and The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

March: Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold and The Likeness by Tana French

April: POD by Stephen Wallenfels and Poison by Sara Poole

May: Old Man’s War by John Scalzi and Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister

June: A Civil Campagin by Lois McMaster Bujold and The Map of Time by Félix J. Palma

July: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

August: The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry and A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin

September: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, with honorable mention to Discord’s Apple by Carrie Vaughn.

October: Sleight of Hand by Peter S. Beagle

November: Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi and The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson

December: Banewreaker by Jacqueline Carey

What about you, readers? Read any good books this year?

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Length: 293 pages
Genre: YA Fantasy

Started: 12 December 2011
Finished: 13 December 2011

Where did it come from? LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Why do I have it? I’d heard the buzz – Hocking’s the Cinderella story of the self-publishing world – so I wanted to see if her books lived up to the hype.
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 21 November 2011.

Not every troll
lives under a bridge; some live
with human families.

Summary: Wendy Everly’s never really felt like she belonged. But this isn’t just ordinary teenage angst; she’s got a very good reason: when she was six, her mother attacked her with a knife, claiming that Wendy wasn’t her real child, that she was a monster. She’s been raised by her aunt and older brother, but there’s always been a niggling doubt in the back of her mind: what if her mother was right? What if it turns out that she really isn’t human, but actually a changeling, a troll… and what if she doesn’t fit in with her real family any better than she did with her adoptive one?

Review: If I had read this book back when it was a $0.99 self-published bestselling e-book, I’d probably have thought “That was pretty silly, but hey, at least it was fun,” and written it off as a decent way to spend a few hours. Now that it is no longer self-published, however, but is being offered by a major publisher, I’m much less tolerant of its weak spots. I have it in my brain that one of the benefits of traditional publishing is that a book will have passed through the hands of people whose job it is to say things like “there, that part doesn’t make any sense, and this part directly contradicts what you said a few pages earlier, can you fix that?” and thereby produce a stronger, more cohesive book. But I suppose that when a self-published book is doing as well as Hocking’s have, a publisher might feel there’s no need to mess with something that’s already working. (See also: Eragon.) I understand the logic behind this, but it’s a shame, since there were a lot of points on which I felt like Switched could have really benefited from another pass of an editor’s eye.

For example, I found a lot of the worldbuilding details to be just plain silly. And not the fun, zany type of silly, but the eye-rolling, “really?” type of silly. In any changeling story, the reason why human children are being taken, and creature children put in their place is a driving force of the worldbuilding, the pivot upon which the whole system turns. And in this case, that reason is so that Trylle children can bilk their unknowing (and wealthy) human parents out of their money, so that the Trylle community can continue to live lives of indolence. And: really? I watch a number of police procedurals, so I know money’s always a motive, but in a fantasy novel, I’d like something a little bit more dramatic and compelling than trust fund fraud as a central point of the worldbuilding. Similarly, when Wendy is first having the Trylle explained to her, she’s told “We are beings closely related to humans, but more in tune with ourselves.” Innocuous enough, but from a worldbuilding perspective, what on earth does “being in tune with oneself” actually mean? (From what I was able to tell, it mostly meant that the Trylle don’t like wearing shoes.) Those are just a few examples, but there are a number of similar elements throughout, things that sound fine on a first pass, but don’t hold up against close scrutiny, and the net result is that the story doesn’t really hang together in a logical, consistent, and compelling way.

I had similar issues with the writing. Often times, it seemed as though sentences and ideas were included because they sounded good, without considering whether they actually made sense in the context of the story or were consistent with previous characterizations. In the early pages, before Wendy becomes aware of her dual identity, she spends a lot of time on the fact that she’s spent her entire life trying to be good, to disprove what her mother said about her being a monster, but there’s no real evidence that she’s actually trying at all, especially when she says things about how she’s knowingly manipulating and using her aunt and brother without really returning their love. You can’t have it both ways! Also, Hocking’s main technique for maintaining mystery and building suspense is to have every single one of her characters be pathologically unable to answer even the most direct questions. Wendy takes this in stride, with her temper flaring up at every evasion and change of subject, but then quickly settling down again to trying to adapt to her new life, but I found it (and Wendy’s tacit acceptance of it) intensely frustrating. I never got swept up in the romance angle of the story, probably because I was too frustrated with both of the characters to care.

On the plus side, the story moves along pretty quickly, there was enough action to keep me interested, and it was a nice, fluffy diversion at a time when I needed a bit of a mental break from more serious reading. Overall, I did have fun reading it, and it’s not a terrible book – it’s just not as strong as it could (and should) have been. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: If you picked up the self-published ebook copy of this but haven’t read it yet, it’s an entertaining enough read, but I don’t know that the value added by being picked up by a publisher is worth the price hike to buy it in paper form. Probably only for dedicated YA paranormal readers.

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First Line: A couple things made that day stand out more than any other: it was my sixth birthday, and my mother was wielding a knife.

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Read my review of book:
1. Lord John and the Private Matter
2. Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade

Length: 304 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction, Short Stories/Novellas

Started: 18 September 2011
Finished: 09 December 2011 (It didn’t take three months of constant reading to get through this book; I read the stories in chronological order between the novels.)

Where did it come from? Purchased from Barnes & Noble.
Why do I have it? Part of my post-Outlander Gabaldon acquisition kick.
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 04 May 2009.

Lord John’s life would go
smoother if he’d stop getting
into mysteries.

Individual Summaries and Reviews: Lord John and the Hand of Devils is a collection of short stories (really one regular length story and two longer novellas) that are interspersed between the full-length Lord John novels.

“Lord John and the Hellfire Club” is the shortest work in the bunch, and chronologically occurs before the Lord John and the Private Matter. In it, Lord John, freshly returned from Scotland, meets a young man who says that he urgently needs his help – but who is then murdered in a crowded street before he can explain himself. Lord John becomes involved with a secret society with some dark rituals before he can unravel what’s going on. I thought it was too quick to be really satisfying, and that if it had been in a longer format, the ending could have been milked for a lot more.

“Lord John and the Succubus” takes place between Lord John and the Private Matter and Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade. Quartered in Germany during the Seven Years’ War, Lord John is confronted with two soldiers, both dead by impossible means, and a persistent rumor that the town is being haunted by a succubus. I liked this one a lot, as Gabaldon had more time to develop the mystery as well as fit in some character moments, and a few nicely creepy parts. However, I don’t know much about the Seven Years’ War, and I had a difficult time keeping track of the regiments and commanders and troop movements, especially since I was lacking a map of the relevant area. Also, by this time, I was beginning to think that Gabaldon was purposefully going to keep poor Lord John from ever getting any lovin’, using more and more outlandish coincidences. (This was of course disproven in Brotherhood of the Blade, but I didn’t know it yet.

“Lord John and the Haunted Soldier” takes place shortly after the events at the end of Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, and concerns them directly. Lord John is summoned to appear before a military tribunal to be questioned about his part in the Battle of Crefield… only the tribunal appears to be more interested in the explosion of the gun Lord John was commanding than in the death of the gun’s former commander, even going so far as to implicate Lord John’s half-brother in the deliberate production of faulty powder. Lord John must then attempt to clear his family name while attempting to do what he can for the family of the soldier whose death hangs on his conscience. This was my favorite of the bunch; it had several well-developed little mini-mysteries, one military and one personal, that fit together neatly and kept me intrigued and emotionally involved right to the end.

Overall Review and Recommendation: I don’t know how essential these stories are to the understanding of the full-length Lord John books; Gabaldon occasionally introduces characters or events in the short stories that reappear in the books, but I think she does a fine job re-explaining them in the novels. I’m mostly basing that on my experience reading Lord John and the Private Matter, which contains a lot of callbacks to “Lord John and the Hellfire Club”, but was perfectly understandable, even though I read them out of order. On the flip side, I think that the stories also stand mostly independent of the books… at least the first two, although “Haunted Soldier” somewhat less. Overall, I’d say they’re not required reading, and I wouldn’t recommend starting with them, but for fans of the Lord John novels, the stories should be just as enjoyable. 4 out of 5 stars.

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First Line: Lord John Grey jerked his eyes away from the door.

Vocab: (see the whole list)

• p. 162: “Perhaps a Dutchman by his looks – a black-browed gentleman whose fiercely rubicund features radiated a jolly determination.” – red or reddish; ruddy.
  .
• p. 178: “Here lay half a Spanish culverin, the breech blown off.” – a kind of heavy cannon used in the 16th and 17th centuries.
  .
• p. 246: “He had no idea what he wrote, only wanting to find some escape in the words, and found after a time that he was recounting Mr. Lister’s visit and that gentleman’s remarks anent the profession of arms.” – in regard to; about; concerning.
  .
• p. 271: “The ribs and keelson of a large ship rose like a whale’s skeleton on one side, while on the other, a newly completed keel lay in the channel, swarms of men covering it like ants, laying deck in a racket of hammers and curses.” – any of various fore-and-aft structural members lying above or parallel to the keel in the bottom of a hull.
  .
• p. 286: “Not in uniform, but attired in an inconspicuous suit of dark blue, worn with a scarlet domino.” – a large, hooded cloak with a mask covering the eyes, worn at masquerades.
  .

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Length: 487 pages
Genre: Fantasy

Started: 20 November 2011
Finished: 06 December 2011

Where did it come from? Bookmooch.
Why do I have it? Clare’s fault.
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 18 February 2011.

War is trickier
when the good guys are bigger
jerks than the bad guys.

Summary: In ages past, the seven Shapers made the world and all of the beings who dwelt therein. Haomane, Lord of Thought, eldest of the Shapers, and creator of the Ellylon, became angry with Sartoris, who would not withdraw his gift of quickening from their sister’s children, the race of Man. In their struggles, the world was sundered, and Sartoris separated from the rest of his siblings, to dwell in exile. But while he holds Banewreaker, a blade capable of killing even a Shaper, Haomane can make no overt move against him, and so he bides in his stronghold of Darkhaven, along with his three lieutenants, men who left mortality behind when they swore to the Sunderer’s service.

However, there is a prophecy that predicts Sartoris’s downfall, a prophecy which speaks, among other things, of a wedding of a daughter of the Ellylon and a son of the lineage of mortal kings. Sartoris sends his general, Tanaros, to disrupt the wedding and kidnap the Ellylon bride, Cerelinde. Tanaros does this willingly, but he is haunted by thoughts of his mortal life, and the betrayals he has committed… but is he now keeping faith with the right side?

Review: If it’s not immediately obvious from my summary, the Sundering duology draws very, very heavily upon Tolkien. And not just in the way that a lot of modern fantasy relies upon Tolkien, but in actual point-by-point plot parallels. The prologue, that describes the Sundering, is more-or-less a direct recap of The Silmarillion, and a lot of the action of the story parallels The Lord of the Rings (right down to the fellowship of good guys that are accompanying an unsophisticated boy who carries an immensely heavy object that is the only way to defeat the bad guy). However, these parallels are clearly intentional, meant as a way of retelling the story from a different perspective, so they read as homage rather than rip-off.

And actually, I found the story a lot easier to get through once I stopped looking for direct parallels (an activity hampered by the fact that I haven’t read The Silmarillion in six years), and started enjoying the story for its own sake. Carey includes plenty of story elements that have no direct relation to Tolkien’s world, and as the story progressed, and I got more and more caught up in *this* world and *these* characters, I started enjoying the story on its own merits, as well as for the light it shines onto the more familiar works.

Retelling a story from the bad guy’s point of view isn’t exactly a new idea – Wicked is the most obvious, though far from the only, example – but I’ve never before seen it applied to epic fantasy. One of the hallmarks of a lot of epic fantasy is the ultimate battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil, and it’s always quite clear who the good guys are, and why they do what they do. What Carey’s accomplished with Banewreaker is to turn everything on its head, so that the side with all of the typical bad-guy trappings (land of eternal darkness, giant spiders, wounds weeping black ichor, etc.) are the protagonists, and their motives are completely understandable.

In the thousands of years she had lived, she had never doubted the nature of truth. Now uncertainty assailed her; doubt and insidious pity. A thing she had never before grasped had grown clear: the Sunderer believed his own lies. And in the irregular glimmer of the marrow-fire, a worm of doubt whispered a thought.
What if they were not lies? – pg. 312

Actually, what Carey’s done is made the reader (me, at least), want to root for the bad guys. Sartoris is not particularly evil, and just wants to be left alone… and honestly, for all that he’s the lord of light and thought and everything, Haomane’s kind of a dick. But there’s a clear element of tragedy to things as well, because we’ve all read epic fantasy before, which means we all know that good is ultimately going to win, even though you might actually like the bad guys more. It’s a fascinating turnabout, and makes me want to go back and re-read Tolkien with a closer eye on the ostensible bad guys, and see if they’re really so bad after all. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: It’s not a casual read – Carey’s language and tone are such that a fair bit of attention and time is required to really get into the story – but I think that most Tolkien fans (particularly those who don’t view all derivative works as sacrilege) should enjoy Carey’s perspective.

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First Line: The place was called Gorgantum.

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Merry Christmas to all of you, readers! However you’re celebrating the holidays this year, I hope that they are filled with love, joy, laughter, and good books!

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Read By: Philip Pullman
Length: 3h 29m (256 pages)

Genre: Historical Fiction / Mythology

Started: 30 November 2011
Finished: 05 December 2011

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? I don’t remember where I first heard about it, but I loved His Dark Materials, and I also really enjoy books about religion (not religious books; there’s a definite difference), so this seemed right up my alley – and somehow apposite for a pre-Christmas listen.

If Mary did give
birth to twins, would we get twice
the Christmas presents?

Summary: The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is a gospel: a retelling of the life of Jesus… and his twin brother, Christ. In Pullman’s version, Mary gives birth to not one but two boys in the stable in Bethlehem. As the boys grow up, Jesus becomes a famous preacher and radical, while Christ remains in the background, recording the things his brother says and does. But while Jesus seems unconcerned with the future, and preaches about the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven, Christ – at the urging of a mysterious stranger – has begun thinking about the long-term: the founding of a church that will carry his brother’s truths (or at least Christ’s version of them) throughout history.

Review: This short little book was fascinating, and – given what I know about Philip Pullman’s attitudes towards religion – very surprising. For a book whose basic premise is, if not blasphemous per se, at least counter-scriptural, I thought that it was actually very respectful. It’s goal is not to denigrate religion in general or even Christianity in specific, nor to excoriate the Church (which was what surprised me, given Pullman’s attitude towards the Christian-Church-analog the Magisterium in His Dark Materials), but rather to encourage thought about the power of the church, and where it comes from, and how the stories of the New Testament may have been shaped by time, and by their passage through human hands, and what lies at the heart of belief, and the reality and the truth (which may not always be the same thing) of Jesus’s life.

I think this interplay between respect for people’s belief system and the desire to think critically about that belief system is apparent in Pullman’s treatment of Jesus’s miracles. In every instance, Pullman gives a possible common-sense explanation for the miracle that does not involve invoking supernatural powers, but he almost always leaves it open, and rarely comes right out and says that it wasn’t a miracle… because the point is not whether a given act was miraculous or not, but to understand why people might prefer the one explanation over the other. Of course, this does cut both ways: Pullman never outright names the mysterious stranger who is encouraging Christ to chronicle his brother’s life, but the implication is hard to miss. Leaving the point open to interpretation, though, gives the story more subtlety and more power, no matter what the reader decides about the man’s identity.

One of the most fascinating (and most surprising) aspects of this book is that the dichotomy between Jesus and Christ is a lot more complex than what is suggested by the title. Neither one is entirely a good man nor a scoundrel, but they both embody both the good and the bad. Jesus, when preaching, comes off as kind of sanctimonious (and his admonitions about abandoning your family are a lot harsher when his twin brother is standing in the crowd), but his hour of doubt in the garden of Gethsemene, where he questions his own faith in the face of a silent God, completely turned him around for me. Meanwhile, Christ is constantly wracked with doubts of his own; doing what he does out of love for his brother, but still secretly injured by his brother’s aloofness, and his own frustrated ambition. Similarly, Pullman is not even 100% anti-Church; he recognizes the church’s power to inspire great works of art and compassion, while also questioning its adherence to dogma and the perils of having a body with such absolute philosophical and political power. It was frustrating at times (morally frustrating, not frustrating as a reader), because in their arguments, both Jesus and Christ were so often right in their points of view, and simultaneously so wrong, that it made me wonder how we still, two thousand years later, haven’t figured it out yet. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: To come clean: Although I was raised as what I call “vaguely Christian”, I’m a non-believer, so without question my enjoyment and my interpretation of this book was colored by that perspective. But I think that The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ should be accessible, and interesting, to believers as well. It’s not pushing an athiest agenda, but rather encouraging independent and critical thought. Those Christians who believe that the Bible is the infallible received word of God may want to steer clear, but those who are willing to take a “what if” look at their own beliefs should find plenty of food for thought.

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First Line: This is the story of Jesus and his brother Christ, of how they were born, of how they lived and of how one of them died.

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