Joel Adamson

Disappointing. This book is terribly simplistic and poorly written in terms of sentence and paragraph construction. I'm never taking a recommendation again.

DNF. I gave it about 100 pages and this just doesn't feel like a Stephen King book, despite the subject matter.

A fun read, but the only Stephen King book that had me confused and begging for it to end.I'm giving this book three stars for two reasons: (1) it's Stephen King and I just love to read his work and (2) it is actually scary in parts. This was my Halloween book but even when reading at nine in the morning, the tension was incredible. I really don't know how Stephen King does this, and I have studied it. If you're just looking for a scary read, or for King-Kompleatness, then by all means read Cujo.BUT...It's a mess. I also recommend this book if you want to see into the mind of a truly great writer blown away by cocaine. In his memoir and craft book [b:On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft 10569 On Writing A Memoir of the Craft Stephen King https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1436735207s/10569.jpg 150292], King admits that he was completely “blasted” (or was it “wrecked?”) when he wrote Cujo, and although he thinks it's good, he can't remember writing a single word of it. I'm surprised that it fits so well into King's fictional Maine mythos, along with “The Body,” [b:It 830502 It Stephen King https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1334416842s/830502.jpg 150259], [b:Needful Things 107291 Needful Things Stephen King https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1315767817s/107291.jpg 1812101], and others, because the book itself barely holds together. Cujo reads like a long short story, with no chapters divisions and a story that progresses from moment to moment over a few days. There are subplots, but they are sort of window dressing, and I found them distracting. The primary subplot, the main character's affair, is essential in the end, but it's hard while the story's going to trace the connections. The basic story is a kid and his mom get stuck in a broken down car under siege from a rabid dog (the titular Cujo). The POV shifts are sometimes unpredictable and confusing, but my biggest gripe is that despite the passages with monsters in the kid's closet, this is not a particularly supernatural book, which is what King really does best, the major exception being “The Body,” which is brilliant as a simple literary novella. I really love when King does the over-the-top Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and his mythos is better than Lovecraft's. IT, for example, was an amazing ride that gradually works into a completely-unexpected supernatural turn. I kept waiting for the supernatural aspects of Cujo to catch up, but !SPOILER! Cujo is just a rabid dog. I might be missing something, but on first reading, it feels like King just couldn't connect the dots. The back cover copy is misleading, and the story of Frank Dodd that begins the story never catches up with Cujo himself. This is the first book of King's that was a letdown, where I just wanted to finish it to have finished it. It was still unpredictable and tense, but without that supernatural connection, I was just disappointed. YMMV.

A haunting end to an epic series, unrivalled in any genre.

I've never seen any of the Rambo movies, except bits and pieces of First Blood when it was on TV, but of course, I grew up with Rambo as part of pop culture, as much as Conan, Rocky, Terminator, Batman, and so on. So I went into this book fresh, knowing only that Rambo is a muscular Vietnam vet who kills a bunch of people and blows stuff up.

This book is a quick read, and is quite thrilling. Honestly, I was bored at first, and didn't quite see what the story was going to be (I thought Rambo must be heading to a series of towns instead of directly confronting Teasle). But then it ramps into high gear and is very hard to put down.

It's a very simple story: a guy goes on a rampage. He and the local sheriff hunt each other. But behind that, it's a very detailed character study of two men who are simply doing their best, trying to fulfill their objectives. What's amazing is how well Morrell maintains point of view through shifting voices, i.e. in third, second, and first person. It's never confusing. The other technical piece is how Morrell maintains reader interest even though his two main characters are a mass murderer and a questionable police officer.

It would be easy to get lost in cliches with both of these characters, but Morrell simply doesn't bother. He questions life and death with these characters: what is the value of life? What do we expect to get out of it? Way deeper of a character analysis than I expected from the reputation of the Rambo movies. Especially post-2020, I wouldn't trust any author handling characters like this to render them so well. They'd sink directly into characterizing Rambo as PTSD instead of a human being, and Teasle as power-mad instead of sensitive, caring, and doing his best for his town.

I give this four stars because it is hard to put down and easy to read. I don't give it five stars because I still have mixed feelings about it: When We Were Vikings is the first-person story of a developmentally disabled girl named Zelda, who comes from a chaotic family. Two main things left me with “mixed feelings,” and they are only mixed because I can see how despite my cringing the author actually handled these things well.

First, am I supposed to believe that the caretakers of two physically adult but mentally disabled people would encourage and enable them to have sex? This is a big subplot of the book and it was straining credulity quite a bit. Not the inappropriate conversation by the two mentally disabled characters, but the going along with it from the parents and friends. I can see a kid like the one in the book saying “I masturbate a lot” at dinner with his parents. I can't really see his mother saying it. I can see the value of this subplot for the story, but again it was just a little hard to buy into.

The second source of mixed feelings was the language used by the narrator. In this case, I could completely buy in to using simple language and the character's black-and-white, rule-based understanding of the world (in fact, her overcoming this is the plot of the book). That doesn't make it fun to read. It just came off as unsophisticated, or mannered, overly-stylized “MFA writing” that was deliberately dumbed down. It makes me wonder if the author can write something not in this style (of course he can, but this book clearly isn't the best showcase of his skills). So, I guess it was appropriate to the character and the story, but it was just a little annoying.

Last thing, and this is not just because I'm an Anglo-Saxon hobbyist and Beowulf expert: starting in the first paragraph, Beowulf is referred to as a Viking, and the poem is referred to as a Viking story. The words and imagery from Beowulf plays a crucial role in the rest of the book, and yet (I don't know if you know this) Beowulf has nothing to do with Vikings. The way this character is portrayed, she wouldn't make that mistake, and the things she's reading about Vikings certainly wouldn't make that mistake. That means it's the author's mistake, either out of pure ignorance or thinking he could pull one over on less-informed readers. This isn't a mistake anyone should be making. It's just dumb.

Overall, though, the book is over quickly, the plot is not complicated, and it's an interesting character study. It's not a huge investment, and it's compelling enough.

This book is so stereotypical monster versus hero. I mean come on, we know from the very beginning he's going to win! How predictable can you get? And besides, it's not even in English, it's in some weird gibberish I can barely understand. TOTAL RIPOFF OF LORD OF THE RINGS and besides it's a total ripoff. Stay away.

Wow. This is a wow book.

The typical problem with reviewing the books of a series is that at least three or four stars can be attributed to the world the author has set up, and most of that is due to book 1 (in this case [b:Empire of Silence 36454667 Empire of Silence (Sun Eater, #1) Christopher Ruocchio https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1523897945l/36454667.SY75.jpg 58159105]). That's somewhat true here, but if that were the case, Demon in White would only get four stars. By book 3 some series have reached the “TV show” stage, where their characters are going on adventures that don't seem entirely related to the overall arc of the story or are just cool, fun things for them to do with new powers or technology. In that case a book could still get three stars if it's in a four-star universe.This certainly isn't the case with Demon in White. With each of [b:Howling Dark 41564599 Howling Dark (Sun Eater, #2) Christopher Ruocchio https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1554659319l/41564599.SY75.jpg 64859822] and Demon in White, Christopher Ruocchio has taken the galaxy set up in Empire of Silence to the next level, and he's done the same with the characters. I used to wonder why a story like Ben Hur or Star Wars had to be so tied to a character, why it couldn't be about how awesomely huge THE EMPIRE is. I think the reason I thought that (at the age of twelve, for crying out loud) was that the characters offered in such stories are often just an excuse to tell the story of how huge the empire is. Ruocchio solves this problem by offering us a character who is believably human, and interesting. He likes to draw, he's awkward with girls, he knows how to fight, but he tries to avoid it, and so on. He then takes that character on a crazy adventure through the galaxy, thereby showing the hugeness of it.Howling Dark takes that character to another level, and Demon in White makes him larger than life, so he matches the universe. I don't know how I could give this book less than four stars because it's finished and it doesn't suck. By that I mean it's an artistic accomplishment, and it is worth every one of its 746 pages (there's an appendix). There are no BOGSAT scenes, no filler of any kind. Just pure space opera awesome, so much that I was almost worn out by the end. This character is larger-than-life, and we get some idea of why in this book, but he is still overwhelmingly human, and that's why I'm eagerly awaiting the next book.

As I said about Cirsova, I am a big fan of actual pulp fiction and so I'm excited about the pulp revival and magazines like Broadswords and Blasters. Sadly as I also said about Cirsova the stories in this magazine were just not good. The best one was the final story, featured on the cover, but honestly it wasn't good enough for me to remember the author or title. Some of these stories weren't even stories, and some of them were so plain and boring I couldn't figure out how they got published. I would really like to see some well-written stories that strive for entertainment, but I didn't find them here.

I really like Jason Segel, and I really wanted to like this book. It has its good points, including really important story situations: kids dealing with divorce, death in the family, mental illness, and so on. My 10 year-old son really loves it. The material was appropriate for kids that age. Get it from your library if these are good enough reasons to read it.

Unfortunately this book was hard to read due to numerous stylistic errors, things like alliteration and unintended rhyming within sentences. Two of the characters have very similar names and I kept mixing them up as I read the book aloud. On top of that, the story was rather formulaic and predictable. Even the magical premise behind the book, a portal between waking and dreaming, is something that I've seen better done elsewhere.

But hey, it's a first novel. Perhaps the sequel will be better.

This book follows the Conan formula enough to be familiar, but as much as I love Robert Jordan, this book has several problems. I'm wondering if Jordan was getting tired of writing Conan and wanted to write something with a more feminine perspective (like The Eye of the World, perhaps) and something with more political intrigue than Robert E. Howard's Conan. In much of the book the writing is clumsy and the figures of speech are far more exaggerated than anywhere in Howard's work. In the end Conan doesn't succeed by his smart strategy as he does in the Howard novels, and the end is fairly predictable. The expectations for Conan must have changed a lot between Howard's death and the 1970s, as Conan spends most of this novel sleeping with various women or trying to, instead of seeking glory.

The preface to the book makes it clear of the author's perspective: there is more to the history of women than a history of oppression, i.e. women are interesting and a good source of historical knowledge. Fell's book paints a very clear picture of how women in Anglo-Saxon England actually lived their lives, and this means you get a cross-section of daily life for people at all levels of social status, far beyond typical histories which are mainly concerned with politics and the church. If you want to know what people were wearing, eating, and doing most of the time pre-1066, this is an excellent book. It also makes clear many of the law codes, including the property rights of women and men, and how transactions such as inheritance took place. There is a really funny chapter derived from riddles and jokes that (again) shows you a lot about daily life. Furthermore, if you're interested in a period in history when women had a lot of rights and responsibilities, this will be an important source.

Jeez, don't read it because it has George R.R. Martin on the cover; Frances and Joseph Gies were known to be most excellent medieval historians long before anyone had heard of George.

More than just a touching romance, this is a deep exploration of an on-the-verge-of-interesting person. Maybe not someone I would want to get to know, but insofar as the book goes, useful enough. This is the first of these mid-century lesbian romances I've read, so I don't know if this is typical of the genre, but this is not over-the-top erotica. The sex scenes are erotic, certainly, but they serve more as a bridge to exploration of the character than as pure titillation.

It's hard to believe this was written in a matter of days. Lawrence Block is a GOOD WRITER. I can't wait to read more of him and Jill Emerson.

Bottom line: how is it possible to make Marilyn Monroe more interesting? I don't know, but Charles Casillo has done it.Like the author, I've been a quiet fan of Marilyn Monroe since I was about eleven years old. There is no more classic beauty, no greater classic movie star (though there is some strong competition in my heart), and no more enigmatic and fascinating personality. This book, however, is not just thrilling and hard to put down because of its subject matter. By covering the chronology of Marilyn Monroe's life, her struggles, and probing the depths of her relationships, Charles Casillo has produced a biography that only heightens the mystery and charisma of Marilyn Monroe, while at the same time enlightening the reader as to what still charms us today. Most of all, this biography makes Marilyn Monroe, the ultimate other-worldly love goddess of our time, into a human being. More fascinating, still thrilling and beautiful, but human in every regard. None of the biographies I read or documentaries I watched as a kid mentioned Marilyn Monroe gardening, cooking, driving, babysitting. Casillo does, and it seals the deal, making Marilyn Monroe (of all people) into not a regular person, but an extraordinary human being. The themes of Marilyn's life are always kept in the forefront. From the very first page the author maintains a throughline of her psyche: her quest for attention, acceptance, and excellence in her craft. He doesn't shy away from the gritty details of her life, nor from her many affairs and personal problems. But those things are never the point. After the collapse of her third marriage, she had affairs with Frank Sinatra and two Kennedys (one of whom was president of the United States), but Casillo presents these juicy details not as titillation but as part of Marilyn's lifelong quest for her father. He builds a case not of Hollywood depravity, but of a woman navigating a life where she was worshipped for her beauty, tossed aside, and reviled by jealous women, costars, and movie executives. It's all part of a consistent package, all built on Casillo's extensive sourcing and his personal interviews with the important people in her life over the course of his decades of research.I have two pet peeves about nonfiction and biography that Casillo manages to dodge, and it kept the book moving at a living pace: there are no sidebars, no digressions into themes that were relevant to Marilyn Monroe's life. Casillo could have chosen to write long chapters about how business works in Hollywood, how orphans and foster children were dealt with at the time, psychoanalysis, drugs, or the Rat Pack. Instead he keeps the focus on Marilyn and everything flows from the perspective of her own quest for acceptance and achievement. Another way of putting it is that he could have just said “well she was bipolar/borderline and bipolar people do X and Y.” He doesn't bother. He writes about her as a living, breathing person with confused desires handicapped by the very things that made her successful.The second pet peeve is when authors refuse to judge or come to conclusions. Certainly, we know more about Marilyn Monroe than we know about Emma of Normandy, but one could attempt to write a biography of such a modern figure by filling it with weasel words and saying “we just don't know” over and over again. Casillo handles many of the controversial events and themes in Marilyn's life as a balanced and moral observer, i.e. he's not afraid to say when something was done wrong. When events have differing accounts, he delves into all of the available perspectives and looks for a convergence of evidence. He isn't shy about saying when the evidence points to wrongdoing, especially around Marilyn's death and her handling by various psychiatrists. It's quite refreshing to read a book and just see the author write “What this person did was wrong” instead of endless hemming and hawing. On the other hand, he doesn't do this without stating his reasons, and he doesn't rely on the reader's values for interpretation. He builds his case, and states his conclusions boldly. Remarkably though, he does this without blame or short-changing those in question, even regarding the events around her death.Marilyn Monroe is one of those enigmatic figures who straddles time periods we hear about as kids: she was born in Hollywood's silent era, grew up watching Jean Harlow movies at Grauman's Chinese Theater, lived through World War II, embodied 1950s cinema, and ended her life at the vanguard of a new kind of filmmaking. Casillo's real victory is to make these Hollywood eras come alive and to make Marilyn Monroe come alive as a whole person. He paints a picture of a woman who is known mostly (still) for her physical appearance and shows the struggles that created, how she used that to her advantage and to her own detriment. But he also shows how she was so much more than her looks, no matter how much people wanted to take advantage of them. I think what I got from this book that I haven't gotten from others is a real sense of what this struggle was like for her: it's as close as I've seen to really viewing Marilyn's struggle from the inside. After reading this book, she's so much more than a movie star. It's hard to stop thinking about her anyway, but after Casillo's brilliant treatment, it's even harder (I honestly can't stop playing “Candle in the Wind” in my head since finishing this book last night). He's just a damned good writer and knows how to hold a reader's attention. I want to go get [b:Elizabeth and Monty: The Untold Story of Their Intimate Friendship 56772231 Elizabeth and Monty The Untold Story of Their Intimate Friendship Charles Casillo https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611229199l/56772231.SY75.jpg 86434610], his book about Elizabeth Taylor, and I don't even like Elizabeth Taylor!

Wow. When I finish a book by Sheri Tepper, all I can do is open it right back up reread the beginning. Truly an underappreciated master of science fiction.

This particular book belongs in the Weird category, and is a good exponent of a particular late 80s/early 90s oeuvre that also includes Hyperion.
It's a bit confusing at times, making my head spin, but in the end it's a masterpiece. A beautiful masterpiece that could never be made into a movie. Not these days.

Soooo...I feel a little guilty giving this only three stars. I would give it 3.425 stars if I could.

This is the conclusion to my favorite fantasy series of the last few years, and it has almost everything that makes the other books, especially the first two of the series, absolutely brilliant. Sharakhai and the Shangazi (I'll say it before and I'll say it again!) is a setting that belongs in the fantasy pantheon right alongside Middle Earth, Hogwart's, and whatever you call where the Wheel of Time takes place. And the characters...Çeda is a character that I think about all the time. She is a brilliantly-rendered, not just believable, but REAL character who is brave, smart, and frustrating in her decisions. But she's consistent, and always well-written.

That's where I think this book just falls a little bit short for me. As often happens in series, the number of characters goes up by necessity, and the faves just don't get as many pages. I read these books for Çeda, and there is just too much of the other characters that, although they are just as well-done, just aren't Çeda.

The other problem was just that this book felt too short. It was suspenseful, it was exciting, but it was very fast-paced and it just seemed like it was over too fast. I have to admit I had a particular ending in mind, and it just didn't happen. It's pretty rare that I care that much, but I guess I went into it with too many expectations.

NEVERTHELESS, this is a good ending to an excellent series. I will definitely be re-reading at least two of the books. They are that good.

A fine and well-written book for what it is. What is it? It's Middle Earth fan fiction (no, I am not kidding), written in a very convincing Tolkien style. Let me be clear: unlike the early eighties work of Stephen R. Donaldson, Terry Brooks, and David Eddings that merely borrows races, artifacts, or whole plots from Tolkien, this book is written as if it were Tolkien. Donaldson, Brooks, and Eddings wrote in a far more modern style than Tolkien (and so did Robert E. Howard), but McKiernan successfully imitated Tolkien to the point where I couldn't believe this was written around the same time as anything by David Gemmell. But it was.

While I'm impressed with McKiernan's ability to imitate Tolkien's style, and even to create his own interesting characters, I don't find this style particularly enjoyable. I honestly don't even enjoy it from Tolkien. It's just too far from the character's point of view to make the characters real. As interesting as some of the characters are, they aren't particularly human. While I imagine other readers especially in 1984 were reading just to hear about elves, ghuls, high-speaking superhuman “Men” and various kinds of short people, I read to get in touch with real (fake) human characters. If you want the best of both, Brooks and Donaldson are the way to go.

Just as good as you'd expect, with more twists, turns, and connections than the movie, and obviously more depth in Agent Starling's character. Worth the read.

I didn't finish reading all the stories in this anthology, but I just can't keep it on my Currently Reading shelf anymore. This is usually an excellent anthology, a good way of finding new authors, and I've read some of my favorite short stories in previous volumes, as well as the winning stories of some of my favorite authors and a few colleagues. Writers of the Future was edited by David Farland and always includes material by luminaries of science fiction and fantasy, and has a nice, pulpy feel that keeps it grounded in the past while looking to the future.

Unfortunately, the stories in this volume are not very good. That's an example of “litotes.” I won't go into specifics to avoid burning bridges that haven't been built yet, but I was honestly shocked by how juvenile and poorly written they were. One of the original stories was really good, and there was a nice little (I mean a page and a half) essay of advice from Frank Herbert. Thankfully this volume wasn't too expensive, but even fifteen bucks doesn't seem worth it for one good short story and 1.5 pages of wisdom from Frank Herbert. Skip this one. That's not to say other volumes of this series aren't excellent. I'd find out which ones have stories by your favorite authors and seek out those volumes. I'll be giving Volume 39 (upcoming) a try, but if it sucks as bad as this one, I'll only be going back to older volumes.

I've been waiting to read this since I first became a Robert Jordan fan, having loved the movie since I was a kid (yes, I like the movie). This book does a great job of bringing movie/comic book Conan a lot closer to Howard's Conan, even though Jordan's Conan is much more of a nice guy with feelings and everything. Also, Jordan does pan to the fire, but this book has the R-rated bits that were taken out of the movie script (or edited to get the PG rating), and also includes a lot more background and plot devices.

Jordan's style is a bit lofty in places, e.g. some sentences beginning with “did they,” but for the most part it is as straight forward as Conan himself. Having read a couple other Jordan Conan pastiches, I would recommend this one above those: it just seems better prepared and better edited than Conan the Triumphant.

The only drawback to this book is that it's hard to find: I had to get it off eBay. Never seen it in a used bookstore, and it's not part of the Tor omnibus editions.

Short review: a good book with a complex plot, gritty and grim, but confusing in spots, especially in characterization.

I picked up a free copy of Elisha Barber at The World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans, 2022, just before I said hi to E.C. Ambrose. I read almost two thirds of this book in one sitting (that is, sitting in the airport and on the plane back to Denver). This book starts off really fast with no introductions whatsoever, though a reader can quickly figure out this is a slightly fictionalized version of London in 1347. The main character is a barber-surgeon, a really interesting choice for a main character. Tragedy strikes right away, and then he is whisked away to attend to wounded soldiers at a castle under siege. While there he encounters a secret network of magi, all with varying powers and strengths, and the plot thickens from there.

The plot and the choices for the characters were really the strength of this book. It's very fast-paced, sometimes confusing in its complex plot, but it's all well-intentioned. I liked the grim edge to everything; this is an author not afraid to write about disturbing and downright gross stuff, and I always admire that. However, sometimes the main character comes off as kind of a coward, which is really unappealing. I wasn't sure if he was supposed to be a 2010s sensitive guy or if there was some justification for it. If there is justification for this aspect of his character, it doesn't really come through. There are plenty of great characters, although the author doesn't dwell on characterizing them through discussion or backstory.

I vacillated between enjoying this book (though not loving it) and just being confused and not caring all that much. More importantly though, I often forgot about the author, or when I put the book down I thought “Is this really written by the person I know?” That's impressive.

Bottom line: I might have picked up this book from the library, and I was lucky to find a copy for free, but it was a struggle to read in spots. I'd definitely like to read more of her work.

Short review: Argh.Long review: I am an Ian McEwan fan. Since I read [b:Atonement by McEwan, Ian. (Anchor,2003) Paperback 133999282 Atonement by McEwan, Ian. (Anchor,2003) Paperback Ian McEwan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1689665703l/133999282.SY75.jpg 2307233] I have been reading all his older books and reading each new one soon after it comes out. For months I have regretted not buying the hardcover of Lessons after reading the first few pages at The Tattered Cover airport shop back in November. Now I'm glad I didn't. That being said, McEwan is still an author I can reliably go to for a good book after reading a string of duds. The beginning of this book, and what appears to be its basic premise, is incredibly interesting: a man in his late thirties is troubled by the affair he had as a teenager with his piano teacher and his disconnection from his parents. His life is looking up, however, as he's finally married to a talented German writer and they're raising an infant son. He wakes up one morning, however, and finds her gone. The police are coming by to investigate.Sounds like the beginning of the kind of plot I've come to expect from McEwan, who writes in his own particularly detached and somewhat humorous style, commenting psychologically and ironically on the choices his characters make and the LESSONS they learn. But in most of McEwan's books, stuff blows up and people get murdered and investigated, and so on. I really thought myself above requiring stuff to blow up in order to enjoy a book, but I guess I'm not. Nothing would have to blow up if the main character of this book wasn't a total dud. Despite all the crap that happens to him, the main character of Lessons, Roland Baines, learns absolutely nothing. He is a weak, moderately uninteresting, and harmless character who goes through life pissed off about the things going on around him, absorbed in politics and historical events and not seeing that he's a decision-maker capable of being above all that crap.The worst part is that I can't tell if McEwan is commenting on people who get really worked up about Brexit, Trump, COVID and, in their day, Thatcher and Reagan and Gorbachev and yet do nothing but pour another glass of wine. Maybe McEwan is such a person and he is just writing about the people he knows and commenting, in some bizarre way, about himself and his family and friends. I highly doubt this second option, because this book seems, at times, to be making fun of such people. If there's any lesson in Lessons, it's that if you spend your life wrapped up in external events instead of examining yourself and making choices, you will be really really boring.And that's the problem with this book: it's boring. Now, it's not half as boring as it would be if written by half as charming and talented a writer as McEwan, but it is, in the end, just boring. The main character is a boring, dull, oversteamed broccoli. He's a normal person. I kept waiting for the weird BFG-style twist like the ones that come at the end of Atonement or [b:Sweet Tooth 16001708 Sweet Tooth Ian McEwan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347295553l/16001708.SY75.jpg 19137260], some kind of trick of narration that could atone for reading about such a boring person, but it never came. Maybe the book Roland's ex-wife writes about their marriage isthe bookyou're readingRIGHT NOW!But nope. Just in case there was this kind of narrative twist, I was in a hurry to finish the book but couldn't really bother to pick it up. Again, nope. Maybe this was the point McEwan is trying to make: we live in exciting times, we always live in exciting times despite our lives seeming really boring, or perhaps there's drama in every ordinary life. Maybe, but I don't want to read about boring people. He's played with characters like this before: Robbie in Atonement is not that interesting of a guy until something horrible happens to him; the main character in [b:Machines Like Me 42091291 Machines Like Me Ian McEwan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1548089510l/42091291.SY75.jpg 65638827] is not a particularly interesting person, but he's in a really interesting situation at the start of the book (and the title gives us the irony right away). Then again, in Atonement, Robbie's not the main character (Briony is), and in Machines Like Me the main character deals with his situation. He makes choices. Same with Solar, whose main character was a scumbag (now there's a literary experiment worth reading!). The characters of [b:On Chesil Beach by McEwan Ian (2008-06-10) Paperback 136522262 On Chesil Beach by McEwan Ian (2008-06-10) Paperback Ian McEwan https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png 1698999] are “perfectly normal,” but they are involved in an intense struggle, and they are, in their own way, very interesting people. They at least struggle through their challenges and come out the other side. It's dramatic, and the characters manage to be dramatic and interesting, despite dealing with what is, in the end, a rather commonplace problem. That's what's so interesting about it; it's a window into a struggle that plenty of people have, and it does manage to comment on its times without crushing the characters and making them into victims.Roland, the main character of Lessons, on the other hand, is just a limp noodle subject to everything that happens around him (he even says this straight out late in the book, that he's powerless). The best he can do is give people lectures about how East Germany is bad but so is Margaret Thatcher. I'm not asking him to turn into Jack Ryan and take down The Soviet Union and climate change in one chapter, but he could at least not bitch and complain like a real person. I have been thinking about this a lot lately: about why books and movies are about people getting killed and stuff blowing up or magic and dragons and spaceships and criminals who are way smarter than most actual criminals. It's because we don't want to read about actual people or our own lives, which are, thankfully (I hope) pretty boring. But we can still make choices, and we want to see what choices are made by people in trying circumstances; we want to see the smart crooks get defeated or defeat someone unjust; we want to see how the hero who just has a sword can defeat the sorcerer or the dragon who is, apparently, so much more powerful, or who cows “normal” people (like us?) into obedience. We don't want to read a 420 page book about people who sit around moaning about powerful people, whether that's politicians or our parents or our ex-wives or a woman who sexually coerced us as a teenager. That's what Lessons is.I will still pick up McEwan's next book, and read and re-read more of his old ones; they're great. And if you're a McEwan fan like me, you're going to read this book. Don't skip it, but be ready to wait for something interesting to happen. It doesn't. I think maybe that's the point. An interesting point, sure, but not an interesting one to watch unfold.

This is a quality book with beautiful printing and a very interesting subject. I had high hopes that this book would be a well-informed and analogous to Dan Jones's Wars of the Roses, but in a different time period. Emma is a very interesting subject whose life spans several cultures and a tumultuous era of European history. Unfortunately the facts are quite thin. That would be okay if the author didn't fill in the gaps with admittedly outlandish speculation that directly contradicts more well-informed books on the same subjects. It got to the point where every sentence was packed with weasel words (probably, maybe, we can guess, and so on), and then it became clear that the author was substituting modern caricatures of medieval life in place of facts. Women are depicted as powerless units of property (with enough “maybe” and “probably” to cover her), directly in contradiction to other books on the subject. Having just read a treatise by Christine Fell on women in Anglo-Saxon England, I wanted to get an idea of how things were different in the Norman world. Instead of just saying “we don't know” the author fills in a best guess that has no basis in fact. I had to stop reading.