The Sparrow review

I barged in on the readalong for this which was held by Trish at http://www.lovelaughterinsanity.com/

We're Drood-ing this month, with Drood by Dan Simmons aka the book that is bigger than one of my cats: http://www.lovelaughterinsanity.com/2014/10/drood-readalong-beginning.html I actually ended up buying it on iBooks because holy crap. You could take out an orc with that thing.

Anyway. The Sparrow. 

In 2060, Father Emilio Sandoz has returned from a disastrous mission to the planet of Rakhat.

The planet had been discovered some 40 years before, and the Jesuits had hastily pulled together a disparate group of people - including Father Sandoz - to travel to the planet.

The mission doesn’t go how anyone envisioned it.

Forty years on, Father Sandoz is back as the only survivor of the mission, nearly broken in body, mind and spirit.

The Sparrow goes back and forth in time, from 2060 back to 2019, where it explores the background of Emilio and the other people drawn in for the mission to Rakhat.

It’s clear from the start that the mission ended in tragedy and chaos, and it’s up to Father Sandoz’s Jesuit order to try and piece together exactly what happened.

This is my second reading of The Sparrow and somehow I’d forgotten what an emotional whumpage of a book it is.

I remember loving it, but somehow forgot the bit where it tore my heart out and ate it in front of me.

It tackles some very, very big themes - the nature and existence of God, faith, love, life … all filtered through the eyes of Father Sandoz, the crew who first travel to Rakhat, and the Jesuits charged with Father Sandoz’s care after he’s brought back to earth.

It’s like. This book broke my heart and then stomped on the fragile fragments, grinding them to dust.

Here, read it.

Dogside Story review - A More Diverse Universe challenge

Dogside Story is set at the end of the last millennium, and there’s unrest in the whanau. Te Rua, a young man with a life that he likes - he’s got his own little house up in the bush, he fishes for what he needs and for what the whanau needs - comes to realise that he needs to do more. He needs to claim his daughter Kid (Kiri) in order to get her away from The Two - sisters Babs and Amaria - who have raised Kiri from a baby.

They are, however, not kind women. They’re not kind to Kiri - leaving her home alone (she’s 10) and forcing her to cook and clean for them.

When Kiri is injured, Rua realises that it’s time for him to step up, and be the parent that Kiri needs, even though it means bringing secrets to light that the whanau have kept for 10 years.

He’s been reluctant before, thinking that it should be up to the kaumatua to deal with the Two, and to get Kiri away from them. However, once Rua acknowledges what happened 10 years ago in a meaningful way, he knows it’s up to him.

But the sisters don’t want to let Kiri go. There’s something else festering in Dogside - but what is it?

I have to confess, I don’t read as much New Zealand fiction as I should. That’s doubly true for Maori literature, so A More Diverse Universe at  http://www.aartichapati.com/ meant I had no excuse.

I picked up Dogside Story when I was trying to find The Bone People in the library, but I’m honestly not disappointed. Dogside Story was such an interesting story, and along with the drama of Rua and The Two, there’s so much loving description of the landscape itself, of the marae, of the history steeped into this small Maori coastal community, and it all kind of knits together.

As a Kiwi who grew up in the 80s, a time when Maori was just being introduced back into schools (I think, that’s how I remember it anyway), Dogside Story represents a kind of immersion for me into a world that I never ever knew, because you can’t compare token school marae visits to actually living it (ugh, I’ve expressed that badly, I’m sorry), but I still felt at home in Dogside Story somehow.

It’s not my experience at all, but it feels familiar and deeply rooted in a New Zealand - or Aotearoa - landscape, that may not be mine, but I feel like I recognise it.

Rua is an interesting and sympathetic main character, and though it took me a little while to get everyone straight in my head, once I did, I was away laughing. The Two come across a little two-dimensional at first, but when Rua starts digging, and starts demanding answers of their treatment of Kiri, and also demands that the kaumatua stand up and hold them to account - more comes out about their past and I felt a grudging sympathy.

Dogside Story was so interesting, and so very readable. And I’ve rambled and not made a lot of sense, I know, but I definitely recommend it. Also yay, I actually finished the challenge this time!!!

Innocence review

Addison Goodheart lives below the city, only coming out at night. Whenever anyone sees his face, they have an immediate and visceral reaction and try to attack him.

Addison lives an ordered, considered life. He explores the city after dark, and he mourns the man he called Father, who had taken care of Addison before his own life was cruelly taken.

Everything changes for Addison one night when he saves a girl from a monster with a human face in the library. In the blink of an eye, both Addison and Gwyneth's lives are changed forever.

Dean Koontz can certainly get to  the dark heart of the human condition, and there's a lot of bleakness in Innocence. I keep meaning to dive into his early works, which I never have, because I understand he took a turn somewhere along the way.

Anyway. Good v evil, true love, and also dogs.

It could be worse.

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan is framed as the memoirs of the early days of famed dragon naturalist, Lady Isabelle Trent.

Lady Isabelle decides to write her own story her own way, and delves into her own early life with refreshing honesty.

I was, I have to say, expecting more dragons, but ultimately A Natural History of Dragons isn't really about dragons at all, but about Lady Isabelle forging her own path in a world that has very definite ideas about what is and is not suitable for a young lady.

Needless to say, Isabelle has her own ideas on what's appropriate, and before she knows it she's on an expedition with her new husband to a remote location to study dragons.

I enjoyed A Natural History of Dragons, but I felt like I was waiting for something to happen the whole time. There's a lot of sort of .. running about with not getting much done, and a sub-plot that reminded me of an Enid Blyton novel I read as a youngster (I can't remember the name of it - it had Mountain in the title), and then at the end there's a bit of a rush of  A LOT OF THINGS HAPPENING VERY QUICKLY and it felt a bit unbalanced.

Still.

Dragons.

A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson - review

Contrary to the title, this is actually a novel. And the second book in my TBR Challenge.

I read Confessing a Murder by Nicholas Drayson a  few years ago, and it was an odd, quirky but memorable novel

Guide is much the same.

Every Tuesday, Mr Malik takes part in a weekly bird walk, sponsored by the East African Ornithological Society. He's in love with the woman who leads the walks, which leads Mr Malik - an honourable, quiet man - into a very strange competition.

Guide reminds me a little bit of The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in its quirks and charms, which Drayson balances nicely with very human details and shading.

There are also hints of P G Wodehouse in the competition at Mr Malik's club, which is reminiscent of Wodehouse's golf stories.

It's a short novel, but it's definitely a charmer.

Killing the Shadows review

I have to be honest and say I tend to be a bit wary of modern British crime-writers. I love a good mystery, but for some reason I have the impression that there’s a lot of … what I call “Oi, Guv,” in my head in them.

You know – rebelling Against the System and Working too Hard and Having Troubles at Home because of it, and so, usually, I  don’t read them, because I’m not a big fan of personal lives in crime stories. (I’m aware of how that sounds. Hush.)

However, I picked up Killing the Shadows at the library and decided to give it a shot last weekend, and I was pleased I did. I got an intelligent thriller with a solid plotline and characters that I could invest in on a personal and professional level because they had their shit together.

Which just shows, for me, that  you don’t have to produce 500 pages of miseryguts lit to make a decent thriller.

Anyway, that’s enough of that mini-rant. On to the book itself.

Psychologist Fiona Cameron is just coming off the back of working a case with the Met, that ended up going badly and led to Fiona severing her relationship with the System.

However, she gets drawn back in when a killer begins targeting mystery writers, and her partner happens to be bestselling crime writer Kit Martin …

I’m not big on feelings in crime stories, like I say, but I liked Kit and Fiona – they’re a happy, successful couple and goshdarn, I like that.

Killing the Shadows taps along at a pretty good pace, with plenty of gruesomeness – actually, a bit more gruesomeness than I’m comfortable with, and it doesn’t normally doesn’t make me squeamish.

But it’s a good thriller with well-rounded characters and a who-dun-it that really does keep you guessing. 

www.watch by Robert Sawyer

www.watch by Robert Sawyer is book two in the 'WWW' series. Book one, www.wake is fantastic; I read it ... earlier this year? Loved it, but I was going through a phase of not reviewing anything so that's why it's not on here.

Anyway. In wake, 15-year-old Caitlin Morgan, who has been blind since birth, is given the chance of sight in one eye, through some pretty cutting-edge technology. She agrees to the procedure, but discovers that something else has woken up along the way.

That something else is Webmind, as Caitlin calls him. It's like a consciousness of the world wide web, seeing the world through Caitlin's eyes.

In www.watch, the US Government has become aware of Webmind's existence, and begins working to try and shut it down.

Caitlin and her parents, however, have very different ideas.

One of the things I really love about this series is Caitlin herself. She's sixteen in book two, and in a  lot of ways she's a fairly typical teenager. She worries about boys, and her friends, and school ... but Caitlin is also ridiculously smart, and like her father, a maths genius. She is both no ordinary teenager, and at the same time the most ordinary teenager.

I also like the fact that she knows when she's in over her head with Webmind and when it's time to call in the heavy artillery - in this case, mum and dad.

As the government struggles with Webmind, and as Webmind himself is subjected to identity crises, Caitlin and her parents try to come to terms with this brave, scary new world.

Boy Meets Boy short review

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

Paul is a pretty average teenager. He goes out with his friends, he goes to school, he takes part in extracurricular activities.

He has problems of course, like any teenager. His – closeted - friend Tony can only go out if his extremely religious parents think he’s going out with a girl. Paul’s best friend Joni keeps going out with the wrong guys and his ex-boyfriend Kyle has issues.

Then, of course, there’s Infinite Darlene, homecoming queen and star quarterback.

And then, Paul meets Noah. The Boy. And everything changes.

I sped through Boy Meets Boy yesterday. At 185 pages it’s a quick read, and Levithan has a nice writing style.

Paul is engaging as a character, moving through his somewhat charmed life pretty easily, and his somewhat rocky relationship with Noah is sweet.

I did have a couple of issues with it – Jodi’s boyfriend Chuck through most of the book is basically a caveman, and she does a terrible thing to Paul that I don’t think was properly dealt with, but perhaps I should be philosophical and say something like, well, not all loose ends get tied up.

Anyway.

A few weeks ago, I read Every Day by Levithan, which I recommend to everybody – it’s original and heartbreaking and all of the best things.

Boy Meets Boy – as far as it goes – is a sweet, somewhat tender coming of age love story, if a little problematic in some of the finer details.

The Silent Land review

Jake and Zoe are celebrating their 10-year marriage with a skiing holiday in the Pyrenees.

They're out on the slopes when an avalanche strikes, burying them both in the snow.

They dig out, and head back to their hotel in the village, only to find it completely abandoned. They're freaked out at first, naturally, especially because they don't seem to be able to leave the village. Every time they try, they end up back at the hotel.

Jake and Zoe come to the same revelation at different times _ that they died in the avalanche, and are in some kind of afterlife.

I love Graham Joyce. I possibly mentioned this last year when I read Memoirs of a Master Forger, but I love  him. He writes these amazing, short novels that are just. Incredible reads. He packs so much in and nothing is wasted.

The Silent Land is no exception. Jake and Zoe's initial puzzlement over their situation, and their inevitable acceptance of the inevitable unfolds in such a way that you feel like you're right there along with them. The pacing is perfect and the revelations, while not surprising for readers I don't think, evolve naturally for Jake and Zoe. Joyce doesn't assume he's springing any surprises on us, but at the same time, when Jake and Zoe reach the same conclusions, you feel deeply for them.

They're deeply flawed, deeply human, and very much in love.

Jake and Zoe find themselves reflecting on the nature of love and of loss, as they both recall the loss of their respective fathers, and how very different the afterlife is.

S
P
O
I
L
E
R



However, and perhaps most heartbreakingly, it turns out that only one of them is actually dead ...

City of Fallen Angels review

Have you noticed that no one writes trilogies any more? Every single series seems to be at least four or five books. Back in my day ... wait, never mind. Just get off my lawn.

Anyway. The Mortal Instruments series started out as a trilogy, and things were wrapped up fairly neatly _ I thought _ at the end of book three.

However, that hasn't stopped Cassandra Clare from starting a prequel series to The Mortal Instruments, and adding to the series itself with City of Fallen Angels.

I digress.

City of Fallen Angels is pretty good. I had some issues with the original trilogy but writing-wise Clare seems to have hit her stride a bit, and it's very readable. It took me a day or so, and it was partly because it was easier to just keep reading than to put it down, but part of it was definitely I wanted to know what happened next.

Clary is training to be  a Shadowhunter, she believes she has the most awesome boyfriend ever in Jace and all the things seem to be going well. Until Jace seems to withdraw from Clary, and Shadowhunters start turning up dead.

Well, you can't have everything, now, can you?

So there's fighting, and more worldbuilding, and a fair amount of explaining. (I read this a few weeks ago so forgive the sketchy review), and everything SEEMS to be all right in the end ... stay tuned.

7/10 Someone else cooks dinner – yay

Tigana review

NB: This re-read was inspired by Memory's readalong at http://xicanti.livejournal.com/ Er ... I didn't really partcipate in the readalong. But I DID read the book :-)

Erm, possibly spoilers?

I apologise in advance. I don’t expect this review to be coherent, or insightful.

Tigana is one of my favourite books, ever, and I don’t even try to be objective when it comes to my favourites. J

Anyway.

Tigana is that rare thing – a stand-alone fantasy novel.

It’s set in a medieval-style world, ruled by two Tyrants – invaders and occupiers of the provinces of the area known as the Palm.

There’s an uneasy sort of balance, with the Tyrants – Alberico and Brandin – having control of four each of the provinces, with one maintaining a kind of unsteady independence.

Sigh. There’s so much in Tigana that it’s going to be hard to know what to leave out.

Okay.

Focus.

The province known as Lower Corte is the meanest and poorest of all the provinces – because its being punished for a  great loss.

And that’s what Tigana is really about, for me. It’s about the extremes of loss. (Aside: You know how The Lord of the Rings references the past all the time? I'm not making a comparison, but for me, Tigana had a very similar sort of feel. It's nostalgia, but it's lanced through with incredible pain. Aside over.)

During his first invasion of the Palm, the Tyrant Brandin lost his son, Stevan. In his grief and rage, he punished the province of Tigana as harshly as he could – by removing the very memory of it from the land itself.

The only people who remember Tigana at all – or can even hear its name – are those who were born there.

Alessan – last remaining prince of Tigana – has been working for nearly 20 years, seeking those people out, waiting for the right time to strike back at Brandin and reclaim his rightful place in the world.

Tigana is one of those deep-thinking books, that you occasionally have to put down – even though you don’t want to – because you have to digest what’s going on. There are layers, and layers, and layers.

There’s the profound loss of Tigana, and the rootlessness of the people left behind. There’s the loss of Brandin – who is a Tyrant, and a cold evil bastard yes, but his grief for his son is deep and real.

There’s the many and varied losses of the people Alessan gathers to help him regain their home – even of the youngest members of the quest, Devin and Catriana, who are too young to remember Tigana, but can hear the name, because they were both born there.

The loss that breaks my heart the most is that of Dianora – a member of Brandin’s saishan (harem) who does remember Tigana, and who vows to make Brandin pay for her loss. However, Dianora reckons without her own treacherous heart.

Sigh. I’ve made it sound like one long sob-fest, and it’s really not. It’s amazing and as near to perfect as it can be without making you go blind from staring at the sun for too long.

9/10 So good, you'd take it to meet your Mum

The Fall by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

The Fall is del Toro and Hogan's second novel in The Strain trilogy. It picks up from where the first novel - er, The Strain - left off, with a small band of human survivors valiantly battling against the vampire menace that's now threatening the whole world.

Dr Ephraim Goodweather (sidenote: I love the names in this. I really, really do), formerly of the CDC and now  a rogue on the run has banded together with a small motley crew of humans to try and ward off the coming darkness.

It's a pretty bleak situation for the humans as vampires  just spread like a virus throughout New York  and, presumably, the rest of the world.

I like this series. I like it a whole lot. Because it's bleak and there really is very, very little hope, even though Eph and co keep striving against the Master (a rogue Ancient vampire who's responsible for unleashing the plague, as it were), doing their best to keep a little light shining.

del Toro's unusual  creative point-of-view is all over The Strain and The Fall, and it's backed up by a solid structure, all of which served to make me want to keep reading.

It is a little bleak and unrelenting, and there are some terribly heartbreaking elements to The Fall, which truly made me wonder whether the humans were going to prevail.

I'm still wondering, actually ...

8/10 That movie that you've watched 100 times and you never get tired of

Ash by Malinda Lo

Ash opens with a funeral. Ash's mother has just died, and she is being buried according to the ancient rites and rituals that have generally fallen out of favour.

Ash is just a young girl, and flounders without her mother. She visits her grave every night, unaware of being watched.

Ash's world is a prosaic one, but there's another, secret world overlaying that, that humans have largely separated from.

But it's that world that will prove a threat to Ash in the long run.

Sigh. That summary feels a little bit inaccurate, but there's not much more of substance I can grasp on to.

Ash is one of those books, where you read the whole thing and kind of think "but where's the story?"


It's well-written, and the premise is excellent: it's a re-telling of Cinderella, wherein Ash is Cinderella, and her handsome prince is actually the King's Huntress, which is a more than welcome twist to the tale.

I enjoyed Ash while I was reading it, because as I said, the writing is very good. But it felt like there was no ... point to hang the story on. Ash sort of went from one crisis to another and another, until the rather cinema-like climax at the end.

There is, I believe, a companion novel coming, and I liked Lo's writing enough to look forward to it, but now that I've finished Ash, and I'm reflecting on it, I didn't like it as much as I thought I did.

So:

7/10 Someone else cooks dinner – yay! - because the writing IS strong. I just wanted a better story, with a stronger core.

I Shall Wear Midnight

I Shall Wear Midnight is the fourth book by Mr Sir Terry Pratchett featuring young witch Tiffany Aching.

I'm still slowly but surely working my way through the Discworld novels, and before this one, I hadn't encountered Miss Aching before, but I will certainly be looking up the rest of the novels featuring the redoubtable young witch.

I Shall Wear Midnight is set on the Chalk, and Tiffany is the resident witch for the area. She deals with common ailments, illnesses - and the Wee Free Men - the Nac Mac Feegle - as best as she can. Because she's the witch.

After the death of the old Baron - which Tiffany finds herself accused of causing - she travels to Ankh-Morpork to bring back the new Baron - an old childhood friend.

Things for Tiffany are relatively straightforward on the Chalk - she's the witch, which means she has a certain position to maintain.

However, something is coming for the witches ...

Mr Sir Terry Pratchett has a very deft touch, and he weaves together elements like the sheer absurdity of the Nac Mac Feegle and the darker elements so well that there's nothing jarring in it at all. Tiffany is a wonderfully realised character, and now I need to seek out the rest of her books.

10/10 Could not be improved on, even by angel dust and a basket of kittens

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo review

I've had this one on my reading radar for a while, and the wait was totally worth it. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a thriller with a definite difference, and that's a very, very good thing.

It opens with a mystery that's years old _ in the 1960s, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a small isolated community. Nearing the end of his life, her uncle Henrik Vanger,  a Swedish industrialist, hires investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist _ recently dragged through the courts by a wearying libel case _ to find out the truth about Harriet once and for all.

He takes the case, and heads to Hederby, the same small, isolated community that Harriet Vanger disappeared from in the 1960s, with the covering story that he's ghost-writing Henrik Vanger's autobiography.

Woven among Mikael's tale, is that of Lisbeth Salander, a 24 year old hacker, private investigator, and the titular girl with the dragon tattoo. She's hired, at first, to do a background check on Blomkvist, and ends up working with him on the Vanger case, when Blomkvist finds he needs to delve deeper into the family's history than he thought.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo isn't an easy read, but it's a rewarding one. Less of an edge-of-your-seat thriller, and more of a slow burn - Blomkvist and Salander don't meet until something like two-thirds of the way through the book - it demands your attention and then holds on to it all the way to the end.

Blomkvist is a little world-weary and suitably cynical for a middle-aged investigative journalist, and a well-rounded main character for a thriller, but the really interesting character here is Salander. She's a self-protective enigma who has suffered tragedy in her past, and she deals with and controls her environment in unexpected ways.

It's a work-out for the braincells, and not necessarily just because of the twists and turns the story takes, but the way Larsson has set everything out so carefully - the structure of the novel is amazing, and I'm excited to read the second book in the trilogy.

9/10 So good, you'd take it to meet your Mum

Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert – possible spoilers

Madame Bovary was book one on my #diversityclassics reading list that I started last month. I was slightly intimidated, never having read Flaubert, but spending a few weekends at my mother's while she recovered from heart surgery, and not having access to the internet while I was there, was very conducive to reading.

I had very few distractions (apart from my mother of course) and finished the book over the course of two weekends.

Just sitting down and reading for several hours is, of course, a bit foreign to me now, so I savoured the experience, along with the book.

Madame Bovary is about the life of Emma Bovary in 19^th century rural France.

Emma is a dreamer and a romantic, finding that real life is a harsh place to be, so she hides, in her affairs and her dreams and her shopping.

All of these things, ultimately, lead to Emma's downfall.

As does, it has to be said, being a young woman in rural 19^th century France. Emma is passed with hardly a thought from her father to her husband, and instantly regrets her marriage.

She's an incurable romantic and seeks out affairs and material trappings to try and make her life seem a little less bleak.

For me, the overall tone of Madame Bovary is suffocating. Emma's life gets smaller, and smaller until the very end when she can't bear it any more, and I had to keep stopping to take little breaths as Flaubert wove a claustrophobic world around his central character.

I loved Madame Bovary, although the translation I have – by Geoffrey Wall for Penguin Classics – is a little bit choppy which could pull me out of the story a little but. But Emma as a character – as sad and doomed as she was – and the story itself are so strong that it wasn't long before I was drawn back in to Emma's tragic, suffocated life.

I think the biggest tragedy, for me, is that there really isn't another life for Emma. I kept trying to think – in my 21^st century girl kind of way – that she had options, that she could have ... and that was always as far as I got.

Emma's options were truly limited. And yes, ultimately she was a victim of her own somewhat overwrought imagination, but even so it's hard not to feel sorry for her as she tries to fill her empty spaces with ridiculous affairs and purchase after purchase.

I found her husband and her lovers to be a little bit ... blurry? I couldn't quite get hold of them all that well as characters, which – if it was intentional – was very clever on Flaubert's part. It makes Emma's story and her struggles that much more painful to read, because she was so very front and centre.

The other character that did stand out was the chemist, with his strange ideas and his platitudes. He's unlikable, but certainly memorable, with his picky, pettifogging ways.

I'm not sure if I would ever re-read Madame Bovary – it's fairly draining, but I'm glad that I have read it now ... if that even makes sense.

Book two of the #diversityclassics challenge for October was supposed to be The Matriarch by Witi Ihimaera. But somehow I've let most of October slide without picking it up, so I'm moving straight on to November's book – In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

8/10 That movie that you've watched 100 times and you never get tired of

Mockingjay review - SPOILERS

So here we are; at the end of the Hunger Games. And how was it?

Well ... okay. Here's the thing. Mockingjay is good. It's readable, and it's a fairly satisfying end to the trilogy, but I had issues with the last chapter, where Collins wraps everything up so tidily and basically does away with Gale as a character all together.

I read the book a couple of weeks ago, and as always happens to me, the details are hazy at best. But I was slightly ... underwhelmed. I mean, I enjoyed it and all, and it was easy to whip through, but the last chapter, I thought, kind of undermined everything that Katniss, Peeta and Gale – who was treated very shabbily at the end in my opinion – went through.

I can't help comparing Katniss as a character to Viola from the Chaos Walking trilogy – partly because I read them in a similar time-frame and partly because .... that's how my brain works.

They're both strong, female characters in YA novels, which is always something to be celebrated, but for me, there's something a little ... Mary Sue about Katniss, whereas Viola is very human – strong, yes, but flawed, and she makes mistakes, which she acknowledges, but she just keeps going.

H'm. I didn't mean to go off on that tangent – lol.

Anyway. There's a war on – the Capitol versus the rebels, and Katniss as the Mockingjay is right in the middle of it all, as the rebels' symbol and rallying call. She's reluctant at first to take up the mantle, but does so when she sees the extent of the suffering, and it's not long before the Mockingjay is the central rallying point for the rebels.

Katniss has her own personal dilemmas going on as well, as she finds herself caught between Gale and Peeta – a very common YA novel device that is becoming, may I say, a little tired? I was surprised at who Katniss ended up with, but not invested in it enough to really care, if that makes sense.

But YA authors with the love triangle thing? Knock it off, okay? It's getting tired and cliched. Or, possibly, I'm getting old.

But I felt like that last chapter almost undermined the pretty solid work Collins had put in with the rest of the series, and with the central characters. It's almost as if she got tired of it, and handwaved not only Gale, but Katniss' mother. Which, given the loss that Katniss and her mother sustained at the end of the war with the Capitol ... it's an emotionally unsatisfying conclusion anyway, and once again, I find myself comparing it to Monsters of Men, and finding Mockingjay wanting in relation to the ending of that series.

Anyway, I do apologise that this isn't really much of a review, but these are the impressions I'm left with a couple of weeks out from finishing the book.

Happy reading! :-)

Trespass: review

I'm a bit out of practice with longer reviews, and I was tempted to tack this on to a panel of shorts, as I have two other reviews to write, but as it's long-listed for the Booker, it deserves a little bit more than that.

Trespass opens with a young girl on a school picnic making a gruesome discovery in the French countryside. It's an intriguing prologue, and the book goes back in time to trace the events that led to the discovery.

High up in the French hills sits the Mas Lunel – the family home of Aramon and Audrun. Aramon still lives in the Mas; in decrepitude and squalor; while Audrun lives in a cottage on the boundaries of the Mas' land – unwillingly bound to her brother, and to the house that she used to love.

In another part of France, Veronica Verey and her lover, Kitty, are working on a gardening book and living a relatively peaceful life, until Veronica's brother, Anthony comes to stay, from London.

Anthony is a once-famous antiques dealer, who has been hit hard by the recession, and he's looking for change, and purpose. He determines that he's going to buy a house in France, and one of the first ones he looks at is the Mas Lunel ...

What intrigues me about Trespass is the fact that I really didn't like any of the characters particularly. Usually when that happens I won't finish the book, because if I can't engage with the characters, then I can't engage with the story, but I had absolutely no trouble finishing Trespass at all.

It's not a particularly happy or uplifting book, and I had such a visceral reaction reading it at lunchtime at work one day, that I spent the rest of the day in an absolute funk. Trespass isn't a particularly happy book, but it is a good one. I'd find myself getting lost in it and being mildly surprised that I wasn't somewhere in the French countryside, but in the cafeteria at work.

Trespass is one of those novels that come back to you at random times – certain scenes are recalled with unexpected sharpness and I find myself randomly wondering about the characters. Which, given that I didn't feel particularly engaged with any of them, or found them relatable, is a real testament to the strength of the story and to Tremain's writing.

I'm interested to read the other books on the Booker long-list, to see how well Trespass stacks up against the competition ...

The City & The City

Jodie at http://bookgazing.blogspot.com/ and I recently read China Mieville’s The City & The City, and had a very interesting discussion via email about the book.

Our back-and-forth is here. Warning for spoilers for the book, although I don’t think they’re too bad:

J: 'The City and The City' is a book that combines the crime genre with sci-fi. Did you enjoy the mix and di you think it felt like a natural partnership?

M: Yes; I did. Although on the surface they're not genres you would expect to fuse well, I thought Mieville did an excellent job.

M: I found the book a little hard to get into in the first chapter, but was glad I persisted. How did you find it in the early going?

J: I found the opening chapters easy to get into, but struggled later on. I think because the first few chapters are about easing you into sci-fi, via what at first feels like a setting in our ordinary world. It even felt kind of familiar as a piece of sci-fi, because I've read a couple of books where bits of the crime genre mix with sci-fi.

Once we got into the depths of unseeing and what that means I had to concentrate really hard to keep up with the logic and then at the end I was totally lost for at least a chapter.

M: I could see that. I had to really focus in the early going until I got into the swing of it with the seeing/unseeing. Once I had a handle on that, I was away.

J: Q.) Did you feel an emotional connection to any of the characters?

M: Hmmm ... I'm not sure that I did. It's a very cold book in a way. I liked the main character (lol I've forgotten his name) but I'm not sure how much he engaged with me. I felt sorry for the parents of the murdered girl, coming into a world with very different rules to their own, but even then I felt a slight remove. If anything, I felt the most empathy for the member of Breach that the main character interacted with the most. I'm not sure why.

J: No I had a very similar reaction (and what was that main character's name? - Googles...) Oh right Borlu! I kept thinking Blomkvist and then Wallander (but I knew that wasn't right) - kind of think that shows that the main detective was really just your standard detective, interchangeable with many others, although he wasn't a drinker,smoker type - more a heavy thinker, emotionally unattached type. And I think you're right that his not having a family and his relationships with two women not being given much significance contributes to the emotional distance between him and the reader.

I had more of an emotional reaction to Corwi and Dhatt. I wondered how their lives would be changed by this whole event. When we started out wondering if Corwi would turn out to be evil I kept hoping she wouldn't, because she was pretty much the best character.

OKAY. SLIGHT SPOILER WARNING FOR THE NEXT PART ....

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

S

J: Ok can we address the crazy ending again (obsessed). How 'believable' did you find the solutions to the crime in terms of the world Melville had set up?

M: I was glad that Corwi didn't turn out to be a baddie, too.

In terms of the world Mieville set up - I don't know that he could have ended it any other way. Borlu had basically worked himself into a corner with the case, and with Breach. It's like that's the ending the book was working towards the whole time, but I did get confused with the sudden entrance of big business after no mention of them at all. Like there were conspiracies on top of conspiracies, and then bam! It was almost a deux ex machina. Almost, but I think Mieville handled it well.

Borlu was slightly ... unreal to me? No family to speak of; he's almost a cipher in a way.

M: What did you think of the splinter groups, or terrorist cells, or ... freedom fighters? I have to admit, I got a little confused with them as well, and it took me a chapter or two to settle into it. Hmmm ... my overriding feeling seems to be of confusion. I wonder if that was intentional on Mieville's part? You certainly have to work for the story.

J: Yep I think you're right, not much else he could have done. He sort of worked it to its logical conclusion and nothing but a 'surprise, this is a stupid twist, but it let's me do something different' moment would have been able to change it.

So much confusion. I must have read that bit with the business involvement five times and I still don't get it totally. Maybe that was his 'surprise - nonsensical twist' moment actually, but he did mostly carry it off well (probably because the evil business goes away and the storyline switches back to a more personal, small scale evil doer). I think the book could have reached the same conclusion without the business involvement if Melville had tweaked some of the details a little bit, but I'd really like that so I could feel smart for understanding everything ;)

In the end I settled on the terrorist groups/freedom fighters being kind of satirical and a comment on our world. Like the crazy Ul Quoma nationalists who wanted to claim everything for Ul Quoma, reminded me of some racist groups. I'm not sure though, because Melville is so adamant that his cities do not symbolise split cities like Berlin, but instead exist in the same world as such cities (and are seperate places, not one split location, but that's another matter). I actually wonder if he's satirising the world he's constructed? Like the views of the more extreme groups, show how ridiculous the unseeing situation of Besz and Ul Quoma is? Thoughts?

And yes they were so hard to understand. You just get your head around unseeing and two seperate cities existing around each other, then you have to accomodate the views of people who see it all differently (the Besz group who sort of wanted breaching to be legal, because they don't believe in seperatism). Agree Melville makes you work hard for what you get. Worth it do you think? Can I just ask if you think there's more Melville in your future?

M: Yeah - I still don't understand the big business thing entirely either. I'm all for clever books that make me think, but I like to be able to understand what I'm reading - lol.

I agree - the case could have been resolved without the sudden introduction of big business into the world, which really just muddied the waters even more for me.

The nationalists were extreme, and their enterprise (that's not the right word, but I can't think of it) is basically futile. Turning it around on himself? Like ... 'yes I know this construct is ridiculous, but this is what I have to work with so I'm going to play with it a little' ... hmmm ... maybe. Or he's going 'okay, I created these worlds and now I have to make this overlapping cities/seeing/unseeing thing work, and make it believable. OKAY. PAY ATTENTION.' And then somehow he pulls it off.

I think, ultimately - ridiculous insertion of big business aside - the payoff of The City & The City was worth it. It's a smart read, and I like books that don't assume the reader is an idiot from the outset.

I've read Un Lun Dun by Mieville, which I LOVED and I always recommend to everyone, so he's definitely on my want-to-read list. I'm also very excited for Kraken - his next novel. How about you? More Mieville?

J: I have Kraken, but I'm a bit discouraged now because I've seen some really unhappy reviews from people who really like sci-fi. But it sounds like such a good premise (giant squids, awesome). Also it's huuuuuge. Maybe I'll try it in a couple of months.

I keep hearing such good things about Un Lun Dun and it plays with language right? Love that. Wonder if the library has it.

Guardian of the Dead review

You know those books, that you start reading and kind of make you a little bit flaily from the start and you hope that the rest of the book lives up to the flail and then it does?

Yeah. Guardian of the Dead is definitely one of those books.

I can't put my finger on exactly what it was about Karen Healey's debut novel, but I clicked with it right away.

Main character Ellie is awesome - brave and funny and so very, very human, as she negotiates daily life as a boarding student at Mansfield College in Christchurch - a far cry from her home in Napier, but with her parents overseas, boarding school it is.

So far, so very normal ... until Ellie accidentally touches the charm bracelet worn by mysterious student, Mark.

Then all hell breaks loose.

Guardian of the Dead is the kind of New Zealand novel that I love - it's very, very Kiwi; while at the same time, it definitely has universal appeal. It's steeped in Maori myth and legend, which is fantastic, and it just ... I don't even know how to describe it properly. The whole book just works.

Anyway. It turns out that Mark is one of the last of a very long-lived race, who are trying to become immortal - by distracting Hine-nui-te-po - goddess of the underworld - with enough death that she forgets about them.

Mark - who has a human father - is determined to stop them, and although Ellie gets drawn into events by accident, it turns out she has latent powers of her own.

I seriously cannot adequately describe my love for Guardian of the Dead, and Ellie as a heroine.

The fusion of the modern world, and the Maori myths is amazing; all of the characters are sharply realised and it's incredibly easy to read. A+. Will definitely read again.

8/10 That movie that you've watched 100 times and you never get tired of