Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
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Genre: Paranormal Main characters: Miriam Black Time and place: present day, US (some of it is North Carolina, but there’s more) First sentence: “Car lights strobe through busted motel blinds.” Verdict: Okay but forgettable. |
Summary
Miriam Black has a strange ability: the first time her skin touches another person’s skin she sees how that person will die. At first, she tried to act on it, prevent unnecessary deaths. It didn’t work. So now she’s sort of going with it, sometimes trying to be there when people die so she could steal their money.
And then one day she met Louis. A truck driver, “sweet, sad, damaged“. She likes him, and the feeling is mutual — and then she accidentally touches him and sees that he will be brutally murdered very soon. And apparently she will be there when it happens. She cannot warn him, of course, and she knows that the future she sees cannot be changed… but she has to do something, right? If only she knew what that something was.
General impression
I picked this up from NetGalley (thank you NetGalley!) on a whim, as I thought the premise quite interesting. A quick read, I finished it in less than a day. I have no idea why I thought it YA, but it is definitely not so — it has lots of foul language and some gore. Thing is, it was quite interesting, and yet I kept feeling like it was missing something I cannot put my finger on, hence the “okay but forgettable” verdict mentioned above.
Setting
You know how sometimes I read some books and notice that all characters were kind and nice, and I like that about them? This book is the very opposite: everyone in it is “damaged goods”, having faced traumas that more often that not turns them psychotic. The language, the actions, everything is brutal, and people are getting maimed or murdered without a second thought. Everything feels… gritty, for lack of a better word. Not precisely my cup of tea, yet the book was well written enough, and the world building was good enough for me to read on.
Characters
Miriam is quite an interesting character. In her own words, she’s “a bad girl, not a bad person“, which I think it’s the perfect way of putting it. She grew up with a very religious mother, and her upbringing reminds one of Stephen King’s Carrie. One wouldn’t know this by seeing her today, as Miriam has every ‘small’ vice there is: she smokes, she drinks a lot, she curses like a sailor, she enjoys casual sex and has a violent streak (admittedly, this comes in very handy when she needs to defend herself, but there is at least one instance when she physically hurt someone for the sake of it). She steals dead people’s money for a living, taking advantage of her peculiar gift that allows her to be present at various death scenes. She doesn’t sound like a very sympathetic character so far, does she? There are some parts of her I really did not like.
And yet, despite her flaws and despite the fact that I could have done with less foul language, I ended up rooting for her. She’s been through a lot, and was damaged in the process, but underneath the outer layer she is neither mean nor evil. She could make a fortune exploiting her gift, and yet she is not fully without scruples, and I liked that about her. She has witnessed countless deaths, and yet she has not become indifferent to it, even as the people involved are total strangers. And, of course, what I liked most about her was her inner struggle regarding Louis — should she save him? Can she save him? Should she even care? After all, people die all the time, don’t they, and the future cannot be changed. But she cannot sit around and not even try to do something either, can she? And so on. It would have been so easy for her to just let go of the idea, but she doesn’t (or at least not for long), and herein lies the source of my appreciation for her, such as it is.
Which is funny in a way because I am not sure I actually liked Louis. As far as these characters go, he is definitely the sanest and the nicest of them all — and yet, it felt to me that the crazy, dark, gritty setting dirtied everything in it (ah, and the language, of course, never helped), which is why my interest in Louis never got past the idea that he has to live because Miriam wants him to. I didn’t much care for him otherwise, although he probably was nice enough to be likable if I had given him a chance.
As for the rest of the cast, they’re interesting, as the author has provided some of them with backgrounds that partly justify their current inclinations, but… let’s just say we didn’t click, take from that what you will. Perhaps “I hated all of them, and Ashley most of all” would be a better way to put it :)
A quote, showcasing both Miriam’s wry sense of humor (which I liked) and her somewhat violent approach to life (which I wasn’t a fan of) :
[Ashley comes and sits at her table and she is not pleased to see him]
“I’m just going to pretend you’re a pink elephant. You’ll kindly take this opportunity to get up and slink out of this place like a rat before I open my eyes, because if I open my eyes and still see you there, oh Figment of My Diseased Imagination, I’m going to stab you in the neck with my fork.”
I probably should write a bit about Ashley too, after having mentioned him quite a few times already. Thing is, he’s nothing but a small time crook, cocky, rotten to the core, and with no redeeming qualities at all. Meh.
Relationships
Miriam is attracted to dangerous people. And alas, I am not a fan of dangerous people, who don’t give a damn about other people’s feelings. Which means it should go without saying that I did not approve of Miriam’s relationship choices (except, of course, when she got close to Louis, whom, while I did not perceive as nice, at least had the potential to be so, which is far more than I can say of Ashley). Sort of a waste of time, this part, although I did like the way Louis grew on her despite the fact that she did not want him to.
Plot
Someone is on the run and there are killers after him and Miriam ends up caught in the middle. Louis too is unwittingly dragged into it. And that’t about it, plot wise. To be honest I didn’t care all that much about any of it (how could I, given that I couldn’t stand any of the people involved), all I cared about was seeing how things with Miriam’s vision would unfold — will she be able to change the past and save Louis? If so, how? The rest was more or less background noise.
What I liked most
There’s something else out there. After having her vision of Louis’ death, Miriam starts being haunted by his ghost (despite the fact that he is still very much alive). At first she thinks he’s nothing but a figment of her imagination, but sometimes it turns out he knows things she doesn’t. Whatever he is, I liked both the mystery (the fact that I get to theorize about what he may or may not be :) ) and the way the relationship between ghost Louis and Miriam evolves — sure, he’s very creepy-looking, but since he always showed up in times of crisis I think that Miriam actually welcomed his company near the end; when times are tough any company being better than no company at all and all that. Also, another reason why I think she grew quite comfortable with him (notwithstanding the way he looked) is that he is able to know what she’s thinking, so around him she never needed to pretend she was anything else. Sounds like a comfortable dynamic, and I enjoyed discovering this one more than I did the one between Miriam and the real, live Louis.
What I liked least
The nitty-gritty of the way Miriam’s power works is revealed to us via her answers to an interview, of all things. Try as I might I cannot imagine why someone with her strange power and not-quite-pleasant personal history would want to see any of these revealed to the world. Sure, nothing is printed in the end, but all I could think of while reading was what a bad, bad, bad idea this was, for all sorts of reasons.
Also, this is of course a personal preference and YMMV, but I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the imagery in the book. Okay, I get the reason for the foul language, as someone as damaged as Miriam and the rest of the cast would probably talk like that, if not worse. However, some of the things that the author chooses to conjure via the said language were a bit too aggressive for me — like saying that a car “gallops forward like someone’s trying to stick a riding crop up its a**“, or that the traffic was “locked up tighter than a handful of tampons crammed up a nun’s a**hole“. Eeek.
Thoughts on the title
I actually loved the title :)
“Blackbirds [...] are cool birds. Symbols of death in most mythology. They say that blackbirds are psychopomps. Like sparrows, they’re birds that supposedly help shuttle souls from the world of the living to the world of the dead.”
Although I am not quite sure why the plural form was preferred, since as far as we know now Miriam is the only person with these abilities. Or perhaps the term should be expanded to include all killers?
Thoughts on the ending
Somewhat far fetched and a tad overdone. Reminded me of the movie The Ring, in a way.
Recommend it to?
The book’s current Goodreads rating is 4.20, so despite the fact that I felt it lacked something to make it truly memorable, I encourage anyone who is not put off by foul language and/or some physical violence to give it a try.
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The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.
- Admittedly, this is only a theory of mine, that can turn out to be disproven in the next books. Until then however… [↩]
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
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Genre: Non-fiction Time and place: the fateful night of April 14, 1912 First sentence: “High in the crow’s nest of the New White Star Liner Titanic, Lookout Frederick Fleet peered into a dazzling night.” Verdict: A very interesting little book. |
Summary
A riveting account of Titanic’s last moments, as seen through the eyes of the people on it. The book was written in the 50s, at a time when many of the survivors were still alive, which means that the author had access to first hand information, the way we no longer can have today. Sure, some people’s memories have blurred in the intervening years, as there a few discrepancies between some accounts of the events and the others, but it is still probably the most comprehensive description of that particular night.
General impression
Since this is always mentioned as being the go-to book in all matters Titanic, and as the Titanic centennial was a short while ago, I figured that now would be a good time to read this. Although it is non-fiction it is written in a very easy to read manner, and it was quite a fast read. I don’t think I’ll manage to keep all the characters straight (even now, merely two weeks after I read it, I cannot remember most people’s names), but I do believe I have learned quite a bit about the event, and I am happy it is so.
Steven Biel has described this book as “an imaginative approach to time and space in which hours and minutes prove extremely malleable, [where] the ship itself seems almost infinitely complex, and the disaster assumes order and unity from far away“, and this is, I think, the best way to describe it. The last few hours are chronicled from more than one point of view, as we get to see what each of the people interviewed were doing; it is like being able to see everywhere at once, and it was quite an interesting approach.
The narrative also covers what happened on the two ships nearby, the Californian (the one who could have saved everyone but did not realize anything was amiss), and Carpathia, the rescuer. A bunch of people on board of the latter have been interviewed — usually they and their reactions to the tragedy go overlooked, but it was interesting to find out a bit about how the passengers of Carpathia received the news: how they saw preparations being made and they worried that something was wrong with their own ship, especially as they could not believe their ears when the crew told them the Titanic sunk, and they thought it was just a story to fob them off.
The author then goes on to address the reasons why the sinking of the Titanic was/is considered such an important event: in many ways it was, as they say, the end of an era. The first world war had followed soon after; the class differences began to blur. Soon
Overriding everything else, the Titanic also marked the end of a general feeling of confidence. Until then men felt they had found the answer to a steady, orderly, civilized life. For 100 years the Western world had been at peace. For 100 years technology had steadily improved. For 100 years the benefits of peace and industry seemed to be filtering satisfactorily through society. In retrospect, there may seem less grounds for confidence, but at the time most articulate people felt life was all right. The Titanic woke them up. Never again would they be quite so sure of themselves. In technology especially, the disaster was a terrible blow. Here was the “unsinkable ship” — perhaps man’s greatest engineering achievement—going down the first time it sailed. But it went beyond that. If this supreme achievement was so terribly fragile, what about everything else? If wealth meant so little on this cold April night, did it mean so much the rest of the year?
It was also interesting to see how the maritime regulations have changed after the disaster. Some of the changes were rather obvious ones, such as keeping the radio communications supervised by an operator around the clock, so no distress signals could go unheard; the mandatory number of lifeboats was raised; the most interesting change however I thought was this one:
After the Titanic sank, the American and British governments established the International Ice Patrol, and today Coast Guard cutters shepherd errant icebergs that drift toward the steamer lanes. The winter lane itself was shifted further south, as an extra precaution.
I couldn’t find a confirmation, but I think this means no other ships were sunk by icebergs ever again (well, in that part of the world at least). While it would have been great if those measures have been implemented before the Titanic sunk, the fact that they were implemented at all makes me feel like in a way there was a purpose to the tragedy, you know? Like all those people have not died in vain because their deaths were a trigger for these regulations to be introduced, regulations that presumably have saved countless other lives in return. Although, of course, we will never know for sure.
Recommend it to?
Everyone interested in finding out more about the sinking of the Titanic.
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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
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Genre: Mystery (of sorts) Main characters: John Gabriel Utterson; it is through him that we get to know Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde Time and place: 19th century London First sentence: “Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable.” Verdict: Wow. Loved it, despite the fact that is started out rather slow and I already knew what the big twist at the end was going to be. |
Summary
Mr. Utterson just knows there is something wrong with his friend Jekyll. Not only he’s been acting withdrawn lately, but he also changed his will with an unusually worded one. The new version states that were something to happen to Jekyll, were he to suddenly disappear, a certain Mr. Hyde is to inherit all of his fortune. Now, Utterson has only a passing acquaintance with this Hyde, but he agrees with everyone else who’s ever met him: there’s something about him that sends shivers down people’s spines; he feels… evil. Utterson suspects that the man is somehow forcing Jekyll’s hand, perhaps even scheming to kill him, to get his hands on his fortune; he feels compelled to solve the mystery of the man, and rescue his friend from his clutches.
“If he be Mr. Hyde,” he had thought, “I shall be Mr. Seek.”
But then a murder happens; Hyde kills someone in cold blood, and there has been a witness. Wanted by the police, Hyde disappears. In his absence, Jekyll flourishes again, becoming the man he once was.
But then…
General impression
First of all, I was surprised to see that this is a very short book. Until now my sole acquaintance to the story has been via the musical, and the plot there has a bunch of characters, including not one but two romantic interests. As such, discovering that the book has little to no plot at all, and very few characters was… quite unexpected, to say the least. It is obvious while reading that the author intended it to be a novella centered around a mystery, no more.
We’re first introduced to Hyde, via a secondary character. The peculiar way he makes people around him feel does not go unnoticed. A connection between him and Jekyll is mentioned in passing — he has a check with the latter’s name on it — and it is the first time their association makes Mr. Utterson uncomfortable. He has some suspicions, and it is obvious that the reader is supposed to share them, and is supposed to wonder, together with him, about this Mr. Hyde — who might he be, what does he have on Jekyll for the latter to act so strangely whenever the former is mentioned? A web of misdirection is woven around the reader, and I was sorry that I already knew the key to the mystery, because otherwise I am certain I would have found the big reveal simply stunning.
THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FROM HERE ON
(although since there’s an expression that has entered the vernacular you too probably know who Hyde was and how he related to Jekyll; however, in case you don’t, you definitely want to stop reading here)
Since nothing much other than the big reveal happens in the book, and the said big reveal was anything but a mystery to me, my expectations rapidly lowered towards the ending. For a while the book seemed flat and I didn’t expect to enjoy the remaining pages — and I was surprised to see I did. I thought the ending was handled very, very well: I knew who Hyde was, of course, but I didn’t know how he came to be, or how he came to stay, and I loved the missing pieces I have only now discovered. For example, I loved the theory Jekyll had about man’s dual’s nature:
I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.
I loved how Hyde was at first a smaller man, as Jekyll mostly led a noble life until then, a life that did not allow the evil side of him the chance to grow:
The evil side of my nature, to which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust and less developed than the good which I had just deposed. Again, in the course of my life, which had been, after all, nine-tenths a life of effort, virtue, and control, it had been much less exercised and much less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller, slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyll.
It’s interesting to notice that in time, as Hyde got to satisfy his every pleasure, this is reflected in his physical appearance too: his size actually increases. And then, I loved how the discovery of the drug that alternately let Hyde free and imprisoned him back in Jekyll’s skin was nothing but a fluke — Jekyll seems to have bought a certain medicine that was (unbeknownst to him) impure, one way or another; when his initial supply is depleted there is nothing he can do to recreate his potion again. I also loved the description of Jekyll’s feelings in his first moments as Hyde:
There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill-race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.
A thing that I did not love as much was the ending: show spoiler
Although of course I do realize this is the only way things could have been satisfactorily ending. Ah, but still.
Nitpick: something that has somewhat disappointed me in the story is that the initial theory was that Jekyll was searching for a way to separate the evil side of a person from his good side. And he did manage to isolate the evil in him, in the person of Hyde. Thing is, he explains at one point that this is the way the drug works:
The drug had no discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the prison-house of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde.
(this very idea is another one of the things I loved about the book)
Thing is, by this description I would have expected him to be alternately good and evil — under the incarnation of Hyde I figure that the good, angelic side of Jekyll is the one that’s imprisoned (since all evil was Hyde, only the good parts remained). Which makes me think that taking the drug again should have imprisoned Hyde (and all the evil with him) and set free everything that was good in Jekyll (probably in the guise of a third character). Yet this is not how it happens — the evil side is alternately set free (Hyde), or mixed back in with the good (Jekyll), a thing that I think directly contradicts the aforementioned quote.
Not that I am complaining all that much. But still, my nitpicky nature felt the need to comment on it :)
Recommend it to?
I expect everyone and their mother has read this (teensy, tiny) book by now. However, I heartily recommend it, as long as you know not to expect anything sensational: it’s a simple, straightforward story, that hinges on one big twist at the end. Of course, the contemporary reader knows what the twist is, but I thought the book enjoyable nonetheless.
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11/22/63 by Stephen King
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Genre: Thriller Main characters: Jake Epping/George Amberson Time and place: 2011/1958-1963, US (a small part of the book takes place in Derry, Maine) First sentence: “I have never been what you’d call a crying man.” Verdict: Loved it :) |
Summary
Meet Jake Epping, 35. An English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, and recently divorced. He leads quite an ordinary, uneventful existence, until one day a phone call turns his life upside down.
“When you go down the steps, it’s always 11:58 A.M. on the morning of September ninth, 1958.”
Turns out time travel is in fact possible. Sure, it’s always in the same time and the same place, but it is quite a huge discovery nonetheless. It’s also a chance for Jake to put right things that once went wrong, starting with the day a demented father killed his wife and children, and ending with (why not) one of the biggest events in recent history, the JFK assassination.
However, the past does not easily accept to be changed. Each step away from the original timeline is a struggle — would Jake be able to win?
General impression
Oh, how I have waited for this book! Ever since I first read there was going to be a Stephen King book involving time travel and wanting to change history for the better I was totally hooked. And now that I have read it I can only say that it was every bit as good as I imagined it to be :)
Setting
Getting to see the life in 50s/60s-small-town-America through the eyes of a contemporary was quite a treat for me. I loved how, particularly at first, Jake kept comparing the old ways with his present-day ones, and usually it was the present that kept falling short. Life seems to have been a lot more peaceful half a century ago, complete with people that are (were) nicer and a lot more trusting. Some of the official IDs (the driving licence, if I remember correctly) didn’t even have photos!
One of my favorite scenes regarding past/present differences was when Jake went to a bank to make a deposit, and noticed how everything was done on paper. A thing that was only to be expected, since the PCs were still a long way off, and yet the mere idea struck me as novel in an it’s-so-obvious-why-didn’t-I-think-about-it-before kind of way. For some reason I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around a computerless bank (which only goes to show how used I got with having computers everywhere around me, since I cannot quite imagine a world without them).
Another notable difference between the then and now was that smoking seems to have been everyone’s favorite pastime back then. A thing that’s only natural, I guess, since no connection with cancer had yet been made, and all the papers were filled with ads portraying smoking as the coolest thing ever — and yet I, like Jake, found somewhat strange a world more often surrounded by blue smoke clouds than not, simply because it was so very different from the way things are now. I love books that make me think of things I have never thought of before, so this book was to me a winner from this point of view at the very least.
Characters
To be honest, Jake felt a bit Mary Sue-ish to me (or whatever the male counterpart of a Mary Sue is). He is supposed to be this ordinary teacher, but as the book unfolds it turns out there is nothing he cannot do, be it lindy hopping, killing people in cold blood, directing a successful play or writing what was quite likely to be a best-selling novel. His drive to do (what he considers) the right thing never falters, despite the fact that he knows the past will not allow to be changed without putting up a brutal fight. And, Mary Sue or not, I very much admired him for that. As I liked the way he always ended up teaching English, because this chance to help young minds expand was what he considered his vocation. I really do not have anything to reproach him, other than his being a tad too close to perfection :)
As a character, Lee Harvey Oswald was sort of a weaselly young man. There was no way in the world for the author to pull off making him sympathetic, and so he didn’t even try. The first time we ever meet Oswald is during an argument with his wife, Marina, whom he treats like dirt, and it all goes mostly downhill from there. And, of course, adding to that we have the fact that we only get to see him through Jake’s eyes, and Jake is not exactly an objective party (I am quite certain that Oswald would have been despicable enough even if he had the benefit of a not-so-subjective narrator, though). This however makes him feel more like a caricature (having some traits exaggerated while others are ignored) than a real human being — not that I am complaining in any way, the book is long enough as it is, plus the author didn’t have that much creative freedom in this case, as Oswald’s character has been documented over and over again. And yet, wouldn’t it have been even more interesting if the line drawn between good and bad had been at least a little blurry?
I should now say something about Sadie too. However, for most of the book I didn’t have that much interest in her. Sure, I loved to see the relationship between her and Jake develop (mostly because I liked him and so I wanted him to be happy), but other than that there was always something that felt to me a bit off about her, although try as I might I cannot quite put my finger on it. Perhaps she seemed to me overly-fragile and likely to break — I say that because somewhere in the last bunch of pages she starts acting sort of badass (she even threatens someone with a knife), and I actually liked her then, despite the fact that the said change did not seem all that plausible to me. Or who knows, perhaps I have just read her wrong, or did not pay her enough attention or something. Either way, we just did not click.
Relationships
Jake however totally clicked with her :)
By now I have read quite a bunch of reviews, and mostly they all agree that the relationship between Jake and Sadie was one of the best things in the book. Ah, and it is indeed a nice relationship (particularly if we consider I enjoyed reading about it despite my less-than-lukewarm feelings for Sadie), but was I as impressed by it as some of the rest of the world? The answer is no, but this may well be my fault; after all, I started this book in order to read about time travel and affecting timelines and the likes, while a love story I could very well take or leave :)
Plot
I was very happy to discover that this is a very tame book, horror-wise, as there is almost no gore at all (at least by Mr. King’s standards), and there’s only a slight hint of evil lurking nearby — just enough of it to be deliciously creepy, no more. The vast majority of the plot revolves around Jake’s attempts to create a better future. At times this can turn out to be somewhat boring, as in order to take action Jake needs to stake out his ‘targets’ for a while, however for me there always was present an underlying sense of excitement: “will he be able to pull it off?” and “how will he be able to pull it off?”
What I liked most
The time travel! I am first and foremost a time travel buff, so how was I not to like it? :)
The history part of it! Seeing as I am also a history buff, I was bound to jump for joy seeing how I had an opportunity to learn more about a couple of people (JFK/LHO) that up until now I knew rather little about.
And then there’s of course the small details, such as I found it interesting how Al could afford to have the cheapest burgers around the area because he bought his meat from the past, at ’58 prices :) Although in his case it would have been a lot wiser if he had raised the prices a bit, methinks; as things were most people avoided Al’s establishment thinking that the meat in the burgers couldn’t possibly be actual beef given how cheap it was.
What I liked least
The time for nitpicking is upon us: at one time Jake is writing both a book and his memoirs, saying about the latter something like “these are the pages you are reading now”. But. But then he is forced to make a quick escape to the present day and he leaves the pages behind1 :) (and of course they get lost in the reset when he gets back in 1958)
Other than that, the one moment I found least enjoyable was the one when Jake sees a part of Sadie’s name (“DORIS DUN”), and it was the same as a part of the name of a woman whose husband has tried to kill her — so boom, all of a sudden Jake has this crazy idea that Sadie’s husband too will do the same thing. While I did get (and enjoyed) the parts regarding the past “harmonizing” with itself, this particular moment seemed to me to be pushing it a teensy tiny bit too far.
Thoughts on the ending
Unexpected and, as such, nothing short of brilliant :)
Recommend it to?
The Goodreads rating is 4.27, so if you have at least a passing interest in either Stephen King or time travel stories, I heartily encourage you to give it a try.
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Written by the same author:
Black House (with Peter Straub)
Under the Dome
The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.
- I am actually hoping to be wrong about this one, it seems to me quite a big slip up if the author did indeed slip. [↩]
And Then He Kissed Her by Laura Lee Guhrke
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Genre: Historical Romance Main characters: Miss Emmaline Dove, Harrison Robert Marlowe Time and place: 1890s, London First sentence: “Working for a handsome man is fraught with difficulties.” Verdict: Cute but forgettable. |
Summary
“She knew the rules for nearly everything, and yet, she couldn’t help wondering if those rules had anything to do with what was right and what was wrong. Worse, she was beginning to think that despite being a mature woman of thirty years, she knew nothing at all about life.”
Growing up in a family obsessed with morals and propriety, Emma knows everything there is to know about society rules. She wants to share her knowledge to the world, and what better way to do that than write a book? Especially as Emma works as the secretary of Viscount Marlowe, the owner of the city’s leading publishing house. And yet, try as she might and edit as she might, the Viscount is adamant that what she writes about is too boring to ever see the light of print.
And then one day Emma decides she’s had enough. She resigns her job and takes her manuscript to Marlowe’s main competitor, who offers her a column in one of his papers. She’s almost an overnight success, to Marlowe’s complete and utter surprise. What’s more, he’s downright awestruck by the changes her newly found situation effected in Emma: as a secretary she was a mousy thing, “as dry as dust“, always doing her lord’s bidding and always keeping her thoughts to herself; now however she turns out to be quite the opposite, she has a temper, and behind her propriety there is a fiery passion that Marlowe would so like to explore.
And then he kissed her…
Setting
Ten years before the book opens, Harry, the Viscount Marlowe, has divorced his then wife. What started out as a serious case of love at first sight (“I knew nothing of her character, nothing of her mind, nothing of her temperament, but I didn’t care. I fell in love with her the first moment I looked into her eyes. She had the biggest, darkest, saddest eyes I’d ever seen. I’d set myself on marrying her before the introductions were even finished.“), ended up in disaster, so for Harry there was no other choice. A divorce however was considered in very bad taste at the time, so, although he had both money and a title, society shunned him. What is worse, his sisters were shunned too, and in an era when a proper marriage was important this hurt their perspectives quite a bit.
Years have passed and things are slowly coming back to a semblance of normality. Harry however still feels guilty about it, and he has sworn he will never get married again. He chose to live the life of a rake (totally unsurprising in such a book), having a string of mistresses he doesn’t really care about, nor does he ever spend more than a few months with1. And this is the state of the matters when the new, radically improved Emma enters the stage :)
Characters
At thirty, Emma considers herself firmly “on the shelf”. She’s a “girl bachelor”, “a woman, I was told, who should not indulge in self-pity because she has no husband and must earn her own living. Instead, she should be cheerful in her tiny little flat, practice strict economies and stringent moral principles, and make the best of her “unfortunate situation””2. Which is exactly the way Emma has built her life: she lives frugally in a tiny flat she shares with her cat, Mr. Pigeon, and when it comes to decisions she always makes the sensible ones. The turning point is her thirtieth birthday, when she realizes that her best years are behind her, and she has rather wasted them by never listening to her heart. So she quits her job, takes her life in her own hands, and never looks back.
Harry is described as “one of Britain’s rarest commodities: an eligible peer with money” :)
His mind revolves around his business and his strategies, because he enjoys a challenge, but also because he wants his family to lack nothing, as they are the ones who had to take the fall for his mistake all those years before. His heart is still smarting after his failed marriage, as he had dearly loved his wife and was completely unprepared for the misery each of them brought to the other. Something I really liked about him is that he is not afraid to admit his mistakes and take steps to correct them; he tries hard not to let his own opinions influence his views on cold, hard facts. Which doesn’t mean that his own biases never get in the way, it just means that he’s aware of said biases and knows when and how to scuttle around them.
Plot
There’s not much plot to speak of :)
This is mostly a character-driven story, where the interesting part is getting to see our two characters helping each other grow. This is most noticeable with Emma, who finally manages to let go of the overly-constrictive way she was brought up to live in (for example, she firmly believed that, when it comes to eating poultry in public, a woman should only eat the wings, because there is no equivalent human body part; anything else would be indecent). This is done very nicely, in a gradual and believable manner, and it’s one of the best parts of the book. As for Harry, he’s a bit more cliché, as his change mainly involves turning from a regular rake to a reformed one, but following his journey is fun nonetheless :)
What I liked most
Emma’s thoughts on turning 30 :)
Actually, the fact that she was thirty — what a coincidence, I am 30 too :P — because one sees this quite rarely in historical romance books (while the reason for it is quite obvious, I enjoyed the variation nonetheless)
What I liked least
There is a scene where Harry and Emma are left alone in a parlour, while the landlady is shortly detained elsewhere. Harry takes advantage of the fact that Emma’s propriety would not let her make a scene and starts telling her all the things he would like to do to her if the situation permitted. Emma enjoys it, despite herself, but the same cannot be said of me, as for some reason I have found that whole (long!) scene a total bore. I am willing to bet that the same scene is considered the best one by many, but I didn’t feel it advanced the action in any way. I get that it’s supposed to awaken in Emma the awareness of her own desires, but did it really need all those pages to do that? Yawn.
Thoughts on the ending
Quite a cute HEA :)
show spoiler
Recommend it to?
People who enjoy reading romance books, of course. It’s a nice, enjoyable story, not to mention its current Goodreads score is 3.92, the folks over at Dear Author‘s gave it an A, and Emmaline was chosen Best Heroine of 2007 in AAR’s 2008 reader poll.
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The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.
- I cannot help wondering why a behaviour like that — breaking female hearts over and over again — would be considered attractive, and yet romance books abound in rakes other than normal, nice guys. Perhaps because at the time there was hard to find a middle ground, a guy could be either a rake or a total abstinent, and for some reason the former is considered better than the latter. [↩]
- quote from the author’s website [↩]
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
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Genre: Juvenile Fiction Main characters: Rebecca Rowena Randall :) Time and place: early 1900s; a small town in the US called Riverboro First sentence: “The old stage coach was rumbling along the dusty road that runs from Maplewood to Riverboro.” Verdict: Uncomplicated. |
Summary
Rebecca Rowena Randall is the second of seven brothers, living with their mother in a small house that Rebecca likes to call Sunnybrook Farm. As the book opens, she is sent to live with her two spinster aunts, in hopes that this will be “the making of [her]“. Rebecca’s sunny disposition does not fit very well with the somber house of the aunts, but, by and by, she manages to soften any heart she encounters in her path.
General impression
I took up reading this on a whim, having found out about its existence from a list of books presumably read on the Titanic. I love this type of heroine (Rebecca belongs to the same league that Anne of Green Gables and Pollyanna do), and as I was able to find it instantly both on Amazon (the Kindle version) and on Gutenberg Project I wasted no time and jumped straight into it. In the end, while I was right, and Rebecca did share the optimism an resourcefulness of both Anne and Pollyanna, her life struck me as a mere succession of events. Contemporary books have probably perverted my tastes and expectations, as I could not help finding only a very few of Rebecca’s adventures (while important for her, of course) important/interesting enough to be worth being mentioned in a book.
Setting
The setting is what I’ve come to think of as a typical small town, the kind where everyone knows everyone and no secrets can ever be kept from the nosy neighbors. There are a bunch of children too, more or less Rebecca’s age, so “Rebecky” is always surrounded by friends. Much as everyone loves gossip, there are no truly mean people in the village, and our heroine is liked by all.
Characters
Rebecca Rowena Randall is a rather extraordinary child. She has an intense personality, filled with artistic fervor and bursting at the seams with imagination. She takes great pleasure in the mere act of communicating (as one of the characters says, she’d more likely talk to herself than say nothing). She always has something interesting to say though (no small feat), which is I think one of the things that attract other people to her like moths around a flame. She’s written poetry all her life (clumsy worded at times, but correctly rhymed), she plays the piano, she is talented when it comes to drawing too — in a word, she is a very gifted young girl. All her intensity is mirrored into her large, dark eyes, the first thing that anyone noticed about her:
Rebecca’s eyes were like faith,–”the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Under her delicately etched brows they glowed like two stars, their dancing lights half hidden in lustrous darkness. Their glance was eager and full of interest, yet never satisfied; their steadfast gaze was brilliant and mysterious, and had the effect of looking directly through the obvious to something beyond, in the object, in the landscape, in you.
And then there’s Mr. Adam Ladd, a well-to-do thirty year old, who finds Rebecca fascinating, and who plays the part of a hidden benefactor for her more than once. When they first met Rebecca, not knowing his name, called him Mr. Aladdin, and she has been addressing him thusly ever since. While reading, I kept feeling that he has the potential to be a great character, to do something interesting, but, alas, he never did.
As for the aunts, I liked the way the author has chosen to draw them. The eldest is Mirandy, a stern old woman who likes being in control of everything and thinking herself too level-headed for sentimentalities. The quote that best describes her is “Miranda Sawyer had a heart, of course, but she had never used it for any other purpose than the pumping and circulating of blood“. She always tends to think the worst about people, and she is not particularly fond of Rebecca, seeing in her a beastly, disobedient child. The other sister, Jane, has a more peaceful nature, and is letting herself dominated by her elder sister. She did have a wild streak in her, though, and in her youth she ran away from home in order to be with her betrothed, wounded in war. Now however that spark is almost extinguished, as Jane is old and frail, but the very memory if it makes her far more understanding of Rebecca’s character than her sister will ever be.
Plot
The book is more of a series of vignettes out of Rebecca’s life growing up. To me they felt like simple preparations, paving the way for the real story, but alas, that intense, powerful moment I had expected never actually happened. Again, I have probably gotten way too used with the books written these days, fast paced and one twist following quickly on another’s footsteps. In comparison, Rebecca’s adventures feel rather subdued and quaint :)
What I liked most
My favorite adventure of Rebecca’s was the one with the pink parasol :)
At the time the book opens her most prized possession is a pink parasol that someone has brought her from Paris. She treasures it so much that she only uses it on cloudy days, taking great pains to always keep it away from the sun, as “pink fades awfully“. In Rebecca’s own words, “it’s the dearest thing in life to me, but it’s an awful care“. A few months later, Rebecca, inspired by a book she was reading, decides that she needs to punish herself for making mistakes (she often got caught in her inner world and forgot the outer one, so she always got into a scrape or another) as she saw this as a way of building character. When it came time to decide on a punishment, she chose for herself the harshest thing she could think of, giving up her cherished pink parasol:
That would do; she would fling her dearest possession into the depths of the water. Action followed quickly upon decision, as usual. She slipped down in the darkness, stole out the front door, approached the place of sacrifice, lifted the cover of the well, gave one unresigned shudder, and flung the parasol downward with all her force. At the crucial instant of renunciation she was greatly helped by the reflection that she closely resembled the heathen mothers who cast their babes to the crocodiles in the Ganges.
Alas, but then the little umbrella gets stuck somewhere inside the well and everyone wonders how come they cannot draw water anymore :)
Another quote of Rebecca’s, giving up the idea of becoming a missionary:
“Why, whatever God is, and wherever He is, He must always be there, ready and waiting. He can’t move about and miss people. It may take the heathen a little longer to find Him, but God will make allowances, of course. He knows if they live in such hot climates it must make them lazy and slow; and the parrots and tigers and snakes and bread-fruit trees distract their minds; and having no books, they can’t think as well; but they’ll find God somehow, some time.”
“What if they die first?” asked Emma Jane.
“Oh, well, they can’t be blamed for that; they don’t die on purpose,” said Rebecca, with a comfortable theology.
Last but not least, I found quite amusing that Rebecca’s father’s name was Lorenzo de Medici Randall, while his twin brother had been named Marquis de Lafayette Randall. Someone in that family must have liked history books :)
What I liked least
Other than the simplicity of the stories I have absolutely nothing to reproach it (but let us keep in mind it was written over 100 years ago, in a time where people’s lives were so much less eventful than ours today).
Thoughts on the ending
Quite a disappointment. The book ended way too soon!
show spoiler
Recommend it to?
Anyone who likes the enthusiastic-child-melts-everyone’s-hearts trope :)
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Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
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Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy Main characters: Yelena, Valek, Commander Ambrose Time and place: the Kingdom of Ixia, time not specified (fifteen years after the coup d’état that has deposed the old king) First sentence: “Locked in darkness that surrounded me like a coffin, I had nothing to distract me from my memories.” Verdict: Started out slow, but then got better. |
Summary
“Look around you, Yelena, I chided myself. The poisoned food taster who converses with ghosts.”
No one can say that Yelena’s life is boring. A found orphan, she ended up killing the son of the man who adopted her. She was imprisoned and sentenced to death, but at the very last moment she was offered an alternative: become the Commander’s food taster. This of course means that she may die at any time, as Commander’s food tasters drop dead rather often,1 but hey, it’s a reprieve. The man whose son Yelena killed is quite unhappy with her being allowed to live though, and, as he’s one of the most powerful men in the kingdom, this is bound to be a problem sooner or later. As is the fact that Yelena discovers she has magic abilities, while living in a kingdom where such a feat is punishable by death. Not that the magicians in the kingdom nearby are happy with someone untrained tapping into their power source either.
Ah, and there is more…
General impression
I started this after reading some comments of the review of Grave Mercy over at Dear Author‘s. As there was more than one person saying this book is better than Grave Mercy, and I have liked Grave Mercy quite a bit, it was only natural for me to want to read it. The first bunch of pages were however terribly disappointing, as it seemed to me the writing style was even simpler than Grave Mercy’s (and I expected better, not worse). However, as the pages sped by and I became emotionally invested in the characters the book became more and more interesting. I still like Grave Mercy better, but this one is okay enough too.
Setting
Yelena’s adventures take place in the kingdom of Ixia, in a world different from ours (there are six seasons, for example). After the current leader took over the former king, the territory “had been separated into eight Military Districts each ruled by a General” (reminding me of the districts in Hunger Games). However, this is the first time I read about a military dictatorship in a medieval setting, and I found the idea in itself quite promising. And yet to me this regime was a mixed bag — ideologically, I think dictatorship is bad, a military one even more so. At one point Velek says something along the lines of how the only changes their taking over has effected in people’s lives were providing everyone with a uniform and a job. But there is more to it than that: bureaucracy is overflowing, the borders are closed, people with magic powers are killed on sight. Take this quote for example:
Every citizen of the Territory of Ixia had a specific job. After the takeover, everyone had been appointed an occupation. A citizen was allowed to move to a different town or Military District, but proper forms were required. A completed transfer request needed approval from the supervisor, and proof that a position was being held at the new address. Without the proper documents, a civilian found in the wrong neighborhood was arrested. Visiting other districts was acceptable, but again only as long as the proper papers were obtained and shown to the soldiers on arrival.
It felt a bit strange to have as characters people who defended this system. :)
Characters
Valek (“the Commander’s personal security chief and leader of the vast intelligence network for the Territory of Ixia“) is a study in contrasts. There is nothing combat-related he cannot do — he’s probably the medieval equivalent for a modern-day SEAL. He is a good strategist and a cold-blooded killer; to him most people are pawns. Yet he has a sensitive, artistic side too: his suite is filled with rocks, which he sculpts into beautiful, detailed shapes — and I liked that about him, it humanized him somewhat. On the whole however I had the same problem with him as with the regime: there are things about him that I did not particularly like (some of his traits are more appropriate to a villain), yet on the whole I did get emotionally invested in his welfare.
However, Yelena and I started out on the wrong foot, as she spends the first chunk of the book being dizzy/lightheaded for various reasons2. And then she treats Valek with what I saw as insolence (she loses patience in a moment I didn’t think she should have), and afterwards I had trouble respecting her, as I found her reaction on the downright stupid side. Remember that she and Valek were basically at opposing ends of the ladder, and he had the power of life and death over her, so angering him was… way less than ideal3. Luckily for me, Yelena turns out not to be the damsel in distress type I thought her at first. She is smart and resourceful and later on she even learns how to fight. She turns into a badass character (the good kind of badass), and I ended up actually liking her.
Relationships
I thought the dynamics between Yelena and Valek were pretty well done. With a few exceptions [see footnote 3], the relationship between them took a plausible course: they start out as enemies, wary of one another. Yelena’s life does not particularly matter for Valek [which makes the footnote 3 thing even more jarring], other than his wanting to be spared the inconvenience of having to train another food taster. Yelena sees Valek as an opressor — it’s true that he had saved her from her death sentence, but he had also poisoned her more than once, and even warned her he will do so again. As time passes however their rough corners smooth, and they become friends of sorts. Bit by bit Valek discovers Yelena’s qualities, and he starts seeing her as an actual person. Yelena also grows attached to him — I thought her reaction on hearing someone gossiping about Valek caring for her was particularly cute: “Valek was deadly, moody and exasperating. But for some reason, I couldn’t get that silly grin to go away no matter how hard I tried“. Aaaaaw.
Other things I enjoyed, relationship-wise:
I was happy to see that some people did not like Yelena, as too often one meets the cliché of the heroine that is so magnificent no one can resist her. Although it’s usually women that don’t like her, so the cliché may still be there after all.
Also, it was interesting to see how some people avoided Yelena because her life was always on the line and one did not want to risk getting to care for her, only to have her die afterwards :) (although to be fair there have only been five food tasters in the last fifteen years so they may still have a few years with her :P )
Plot
Once Yelena moves past her “dizzy at everything” phase, the plot is actually interesting and quite fast paced. Not only does Yelena have to keep track of the many people who want her dead, but there’s something strange going on with the Commander, and it’s up to Valek (with Yelena’s help, of course) to untangle it. The last few chapters in particular kept me on the edge of my seat :)
What I liked most
There were lots of small details that I have enjoyed :) Such as the “edible adhesive” that Rand the cook has accidentally invented, and that was both very tasty and used to suture wounds. Or the idea that the food poisoner should be able to identify even the most lethal poisons, so that if the worst came to pass they would be able to announce the name of the poison with their dying breath.
Or the answer that Yelena offered when she was offered a chance to escape in the nearby kingdom:
I remembered my last offer, to be the food taster or to be executed. “What could you possibly offer me? I have a job, color-coordinated uniforms and a boss to die for. What more could I need?”
(her boss being “to die for” as in she was expected to literally die for him, tee hee)
Another idea I have liked is this:
“What about the knife?” I pointed to the long blade hanging on the wall. The crimson blood gleamed in the lantern light. In the three weeks I’d lived in Valek’s suite, it hadn’t dried. Valek laughed. “That was the knife I used to kill the King. He was a magician. When his magic couldn’t stop me from plunging that knife into his heart, he cursed me with his dying breath. It was rather melodramatic. He willed that I should be plagued with guilt over his murder and have his blood stain my hands forever. With my peculiar immunity to magic, the curse attached to the knife instead of me.” Valek looked at the weapons wall thoughtfully. “It was a shame to lose my favorite blade, but it does make for a nice trophy.”
What I liked least
Whenever Yelena is in need of rescuing, there Valek is. Which would have been great in theory, but some of the times his being there is less than plausible. Sure, the author did add a part where Valek’s mind was supposedly connected somehow with Yelena’s (why? how? especially given Valek’s peculiar resistance to magic), but it still felt a bit contrived.
Thoughts on the title
Love it :) Especially as the next book is titled Magic Study (in this one Yelena studies poisons, and in the next she will get to study the best way for her to use her magical abilities, see? :) ). There is a third book too but I don’t remember the title.
Thoughts on the ending
Too sudden! I could have done with a few more pages. Other than that however it was nice, every plot thread tied up properly (well, there still remains the question of what will happen to the relationship between Yelena and Valek).
show spoiler
Recommend it to?
At the moment it has a 4.21 on Goodreads, so on the whole people definitely liked it more than I did :) I would say that any YA lover in search for a badass heroine could give this a try.
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The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.
- For the life of me I don’t get why anyone would try to poison someone that has all his food tasted prior to eating it, but apparently people do do that. [↩]
- I get that she was weak after her months spent in prison, but still [↩]
- Speaking of which, I also found far fetched the parts hinging on Valek spending time and effort to protect Yelena himself — someone with his rank and responsibilities had nothing better to do than follow a former prisoner around? [↩]
