Whaley, John Corey (Where Things Come Back)

Oh what I like about this book is the believable main character and his kooky brother and the weird interludes with people that seem like we shouldn't care about them and then how it all comes together and leaves us sorta hanging but not quite and also there's this bird?

Heh. I had to first write this as I might have when I was a teenager. But it's not far off from how I'd write it now. For those of us now adults, it includes elements that make you think about your life as a teenager, including little "a-ha" moments. Remember how much you'd fantasize your anger or your angst or your desires or your problems into something not quite real? That is definitely my favorite part of the book - and the book titles created by our main character that sum up a chapter perfectly.

The interludes truly are bizarre since you can't for the life of you figure out how they connect with the little town of Lily, Arkansas and its inhabitants. If he does anything wrong, it's creating a specific character out of these interludes and then not giving him enough depth towards the end. If I say more, I will give things away - but I think you'll be a little disappointed not to understand him a little better in the end.

Pick this one up, though. It won the Printz award for a reason.

Scalzi, John (The Human Division)

Underwhelming. At times irritating. No depth. Ends with a cliffhanger.

I think I should start all my reviews off with partial sentences, it's way more fun. This pretty much sums it up, too. I know that Scalzi was fully aware of the cliffhanger aspect of this set of stories, and that he knows he has to finish it later. But he didn't do enough in the novel to counteract how irritating it is to be left with a cliffhanger.

Yes, he gave us new characters, and we like them. He built the world up a little bit, so that we understand more fully the problems between the Colonial Union and the Earth and the Conclave.  He gave us sparkly dialogue that made us giggle and tee-hee throughout.

What he did not do is move the story in an important direction. We already knew that there were problems between those three institutions by the end of Perry's tenure in this series. And look! Now we have, um, problems. Bigger ones. So what? I want to see more of Wilson and Schmidt, sure, but I want them to do things that matter, not things that end up barely mattering at all. Especially Schmidt - he did he not develop that character at all (and I like the episode on his home planet a great deal).

I suspect I will read the next one. Scalzi knows he has us hooked on the world he's created. Don't rest on your laurels, okay?

Russell, Karen (Swamplandia!)

I wish I could just write a 2-word review of this: "very conflicted." This review will be short regardless since there's very little I can say without giving anything away.

My conflict comes from what seems like two very brazen plot changes, one halfway through and one very near to the end. I kind of liked the idea of the first one - it changed the story significantly so that it wasn't only a story about this extremely strange family and how they were dealing with the heartbreaking loss of their mother. With this change, the story moved in an ethereally symbolic direction, and I thought of it as a breath of fresh air.

Not so much with the second plot change, and I'll tell you why. It's never ever addressed in the rest of the story! As if it never happened. I think Russell had no idea how to finish her book so took the most banal route possible and whitewashed everything else that had happened.

I loved how she described things, but maybe she should be a poet instead of a plotter.

Berendt, John (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil)

I find it hard to write this review because I did not know this was non-fiction. I hang my head in shame. I mean, I *never* knew this was non-fiction. How is that possible? It's not as if I wasn't aware of the book, or it hasn't been talked about in our book club prior to putting it on the list. Even worse, I was still confused after reading almost half the book - for some reason I thought he was just making up these characters. There's no excuse - I was just being especially thick and dopey this time around.

So because I didn't walk into this book understanding it was essentially journalism, my view of it seems tainted by whatever-color glasses I apparently was wearing. I can see how Berendt is building the story using only descriptions and conversations with the protagonists and community members themselves. I can see that he's pretty darn good at it. I can see that it's Capote-esque, but that it doesn't quite live up to his high ideal (Capote's descriptions were poetic, Berendt's serve the purpose and not much more). I was intrigued and interested in the the fate of Mr. Williams - and his denouement - it kept me going towards the end.

But I wasn't ever enthralled. It didn't suck me in. I could put this book down at a moment's notice and not pick it up until I realized that I better get going as I had 200 pages to finish in the 3 days before book club. While I thought the characters were fascinating, I couldn't agree with Berendt's supposition at the end of the book that the segregation of Savannah from the rest of the country made them a richer society. I thought it made them weirder and less intriguing as a result.

Brett, Peter V. (The Warded Man)

I need another fantasy series to follow like a need a hole in my head. And, truthfully, if Martin or Rothfuss or Sanderson published a book in any of their series, I'd go there first. (Also, truthfully, since that happens so frickin' rarely with those authors, I guess I'll have plenty of time to spend on Brett's books...) That is to say, I think this is Brett's first foray into this land, and it shows, but perhaps by the 3rd of 4th novel he'll have learned a bit more about the trade.

I'll be more specific. He has built a world with an excellent limitation-- at night, you must go inside an area that has been protected by magical wards or you have about a 99% chance of being torn apart by demons. That kind of limitation-- man oh man you can write the hell out of that, and he does. He also has written some engaging characters, ones we can try to understand and feel for, and a familiar enough landscape.

But there were two things that irritated me.
- In one section, he created a people and land so close to the Arabic peoples and lands that the similarities are too close for fantasy. Hey, it's fantasy! It's your opportunity to change things up! Never give us exactly what we have in the real world.
- He horrifies us by having one of his central characters raped. The problem is, he then has her pretty much forget that this ever happened after about 24 hours, as well as have the hots for someone a few hours after that. I think he needs to spend some time putting himself in women's shoes.

Dennis, Jerry (The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas)

Yet another example of fantastic science writing. And my second of two in a row that puts the author front and center in the drama surrounding the science.

Clearly, I am not correct in thinking that Rebecca Skloot was unique in making her personal story an important and integral part of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Because that's also what Jerry Dennis does in this volume-- in order to tell the story of the Great Lakes, he actually journeys them, describing his feelings and his crew mates' feelings about the adventure, interspersing the adventurous sections with science, history and discussions of pest control.

And in the process, you learn a lot about the Lakes while being entertained. I live smack dab between 3 (4 if you count interestingly) of the Lakes, so this was more interesting to me than perhaps for most peopled. But I'd be surprised if people around the world wouldn't be alternately thrilled, saddened and educated by this book. It's quite well written-- he has a poetic side that does him credit for a book of this scope. How do you appropriately describe waves? Dunes? Vast expanses of blue? Poetry has to be in your blood to do that.

Also, water in general? I have a far healthier respect for all aspects of it than I did before reading this.

Carey, Jacqueline (Saints Astray)

Bloody hell. I really only got how awful this was until halfway through, by which point I figured I might as well take it to its end. If only because it's a super quick read and to see the characters go back to Outpost again. Yea, sorry if I ruined that for you, but... nah. I'm not. Don't pick this up.

The first book is really pretty good- it has such an interesting premise and Carey takes it in weird directions. This follow-up is the result of Carey's agent saying "all that sexy lesbian stuff, the masses really love that and you didn't give them enough in the last one, so be sure you give it to them in EVERY FRICKIN' chapter this time, okay?" Seriously, I started counting the number of times she ended a chapter with them groping each other. So. Unbelievably. Dull. And. Boring. And not only because she can't write a sex scene to save her life.

Plus, if I hear the phrase "getting your smolder on" ever again, I might either throw up or throw something.

James, Henry (Daisy Miller)

OK, I'm going to try and write this without accessing the 30 trillion sites that offer critical analysis of the classic.

Firstly - woah, what a leap back in time. To an age where courtesy, poise and decorum were the only methods of interaction that anyone cared about, at least in polite high society. It is always strange to read the classics for these reasons. Even more interesting (and I did go look up the briefest of bios on Henry James), this is a classic written by an American who lived in both England and the U.S. throughout his life. That was exactly what I was going to guess after finishing this!

The story revolves around the exploits of one Miss Daisy Miller, the original "hippie" of the mid- to late-1800s. She is free and forthright with her opinions, her affections, and her entire modus operandi of interaction with the opposite sex. To say this is shocking for the genteel societies of Europe is to say too little. To us, in current times, it seems almost laughable because it's so hard for us to place ourselves in that time. Heck, we have a hard enough time understanding how our mothers managed the 1940s or so.

I'm going to enjoy discussing this petite volume with my American-women book-club over British high tea. It might almost feel like an oxymoron.

Walton, Jo (Among Others)

Hubby got this for his sci-fi book club and recommended I give it a try, based on raves from all circles (critics, friends, etc.). And I do think it was good, but it wasn't great.

I think the reason lots of folks think it's great is because it pushes certain buttons.
a) The sci-fi/fantasy book club button. There is much spouting-off by the protagonist of names and actions from specific sci-fi or fantasy books- mostly classics since the book takes place in the 1970s. I knew about 60% of what she was saying when this happened. I can't imagine how irritating it would be for someone who hadn't read a lot of these books. And it's okay if you haven't read them! (Some of them are quite dated.)
b) The young adult button. Much blathering on about how awful school is, parents are, the food everywhere is (are all kids picky eaters, is that it?). So it fits the entire genre of teen-whinge-fest, of which there are many individual entries. It also fits inside the genre of children who have had horrible traumatic events happen to them- making for a great base for a story, of course.
c) The yes-Virginia-magic-exists button. Us fantasy lovers really, really love it when you are fed a world that seems so darn real (in this case, we actually lived through some of what our protagonist is living through) but has the added bit of magic being alive and well in that world. In this case, it's a bit more interesting since you can't quite tell if our young girl really does do magic or is making it up because of the traumatic horrible things she went through as a younger child.

All that aside, it reads very well. Walton has a good handle on the voice of this girl and that's hard to do. I didn't much enjoy the ending- what is it lately with endings that wrap things up in a neat bow? Plus it felt ever so slightly like, well, the wrong ending. I wonder if Walton had a few and chose one at the end.

Sanderson, Brandon (The Hero of Ages)

What a truly superior trilogy. I have lots and lots to say about it.

First and foremost, the third book is, as predicted, completely different from the first two. You'll recall I said the first one was about revolution, and that the second one is about government and politics. Perhaps not surprisingly, since the third book is much more about the mystical forces at work, it is about trust and faith. I'll admit that after reading the second book, I looked up the author and read more about him. It opened my eyes to learn that he is a devout member of the Church of Latter Day Saints. This connected well with the religious musings I'd already read.

In the third book, he socks it home.

If you've ever wanted to read a novel that takes our beliefs (and not just one belief) and provides an explanation for why we have created the structures we have inside those beliefs, this is the novel for you. For instance, at several points he points out the indiscriminate destruction of humans by certain forces, and then gives us an actual reason for why that is happening. He gives a pretty darn good explanation of why our sacraments have us eating the body of Christ. And he even has a go at trying to understand the creation myth-- why are we even here on this earth?

It's masterful, as well as quite thought-provoking. I can see some people being irritated by the manipulation of his story around our own real-life human story, but I think it's pretty darn subtle. It's not like he doesn't weave a fabulous story with his interesting characters, pull out yet more mysteries (hell, I couldn't even count the number of mysteries he revealed in the third book, it felt like one every 20 pages or so), and give us a great ending.

If I have one problem with the story, it's that it is tied up in a neat bow in the end, perhaps too neat a bow. I can't give anything away here, but if you felt the same way, I'd love to hear it.