David Woodger
It's two years later and Tavi is now 21 and has filled out considerably. He's still captain of the First Aleran legion and under the alias Rufus Scipio. But now the scheming senator Arnos is taking command of the First Aleran and he takes an immediate dislike to Tavi. He's a dangerous enemy with even more dangerous friends. Meanwhile there are many unfriendly Cane warriors to deal with as well. And Gaius drafts Amara and Bernard on a mission deep into Kalare territory. He has plans for ending the rebellion. This outing in the Codex Alera is well-plotted, exciting and fun. I love this series. Only have two left now.
I was in the mood for a light SF adventure and this fit the bill. It has some fun characters, some weird ones, strange tech, and two different kinds of aliens. It was amusing that one prominent alien race is know as the Liars because of their penchant for giving wildly implausible explanations for things large and small. Moved quickly enough, but the denouement maybe wasn't as exciting as hoped for. 3 stars.
Pretty sure I came across this title in the New York Times Book Review. I've been getting more interested in graphic novels lately and this one piqued my interest. It's been described as a cross between Nancy Drew and David Lynch, but I'd say it's more of a cross between a non-goofy Scooby Doo gang and Twin Peaks. Four high school friends are joined by a fifth also their age, named Sam Finch. Sam's looking for his missing father in a town called Hobtown in Nova Scotia. There's other missing people in Hobtown, and this gang who are members of a school-sanctioned Detective Club investigate. And it gets weirder and weirder (which I love). It's set in 1996 (so no smart phones) but it also has that innocent quality mixed with the weird that David Lynch is well known for. And at 300 pages, it's a decent length. Enjoyed this very much.
I probably first caught wind of this book via the New York Times Book Review and then bought it for my daughter. Then it was languishing unread on her own bookshelf mostly because of “ooh look, the internet!” But then I wanted a change of pace and plucked it from her shelf. Yeah, whatever, Dad. I quickly got sucked in. The writing has that effortless feel and the characters were very engaging. I really enjoyed getting to know out protagonist, Alice and her school friend, Ellery Finch. But it seems that Alice has been having an exceeding odd life and has been constantly on the move with her mother. Her grandmother, Althea, is a reclusive author of a book of strange dark fairy tales, Tales From the Hinterland. It's out of print and very hard to find. But then strange characters that could be from this Hinterland start popping up. Then Alice's mom goes missing. So Alice and Finch decide to try to find this Hinterland. It's cool and dark and weird and I zipped through this book. It even made me ignore my phone more. That's a good thing.
Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson's first foray into kid-lit borrows Peter Pan and creates this story that happened before the events of James Barrie's classic. Here, Peter and some other orphans find themselves aboard the ship Never Land along with some mysterious cargo and a girl named Molly. In hot pursuit is the notorious pirate Black Stache. I read this aloud over many weeks to my kids. They were all ears and Luke (age 7) especially enjoyed it. There's a bit of humor sprinkled throughout and many thrilling adventures. The action is fairly tame although sometimes too intense for Kajsa (age 4). This book was popular enough to spawn three sequels to date. We'll see if there's interest in reading the next. But the next read-aloud book may be something different.
Couldn't resist this one since the hero discovers he can teleport at will, my superpower of choice. I enjoyed the movie version as well but I've enjoyed some of this author's other novels better than this one. The sequel, Reflex, was also better.
A horror/pop-culture website owner gathers four horror writers for an extended interview. The twist is that it's held inside a haunted house with a history somehere in Kansas. Sam McGarver is one of the horror writers and the main character of the tale. Story moves quickly and the house and its history are indeed spooky. While I enjoyed it overall, it wasn't as propulsive and as creepy as I'd hoped for. Very nice twist ending though.
This compendium of factoids is a fun read but probably not something you'd read all at once. It's kind of like a bathroom reader (not that I'm doing that). And in fact, I did read this in several chunks over a span of months. Topics include art, history, science (biology, chemistry, physics, etc), pop culture, religion, economics, philosophy, and so forth. And it's written in a cheeky manner with all sorts of fun sidebars. I learned a lot! I remember some! Here's one thing sort of apropos from the religion section I picked up: Did you know there was a legend about a Persian god named Mithra that predates Jesus by centuries. Well, legend has it that Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25 and was visited by sheperds and magi. He had 12 disciples, healed the sick, and cast out devils. He rose again around the vernal equinox (March 21) and ascended into heaven. Sounds somewhat familiar, no?
This book is the second half of the story begun in Volume One. Not sure why it was split into two volumes, together they are about 900-odd pages of a story, on the large side, surely, but I devoured it fairly quickly. Like Volume One, Volume Two has many hair's-breadth escapes, confrontations, and other suspenseful stuff. Sometimes they get a bit too descriptive, but this story holds your interest throughout. The characters both good and bad are wonderful creations. And our three protagonists prove themselves worthy adversaries for the numerous bad guys in the sinister cabal. If the body count in Volume One is impressive, it's nothing compared to Volume Two. Our heroes (and heroine) are deadly! Guns, knives, sabres, glass shards – and that's just a partial list of the weapons they employ. And the final denouement is an extremely cinematic (and bloody) smorgasbord of good versus evil. And there is one small hanging thread that leaves room for a sequel. I understand that the recently published book, The Dark Volume continues the adventures. Sweet. This was a fantastic story in every sense. Wicked fun.
This is fast becoming my favorite story of the year and I'm only half done (I'm currently reading Volume Two). This is a Victorian adventure which combines elements of mystery, a dash of science fiction, a smattering of romance, and is smothered in suspense. Didn't take long for me to hooked into the story, either. It charges right along keeping you hungry for what happens next. There are three main protagonists who are very dissimilar yet they are all tenacious. The book is peopled with all manner of types, from lords and ladies to rogues, whores, and assassins. There are several death-defying escapes and chases. The main characters are compelling and very likable, the villains are varied, dangerous, and fleshed-out as well. The writing is top-notch. I really love this story, it's cinematic, larger-than-life and something you can really lose yourself in. Very fun.
I've read a few other books by Christopher Moore and this looked fun. So. In this story, Charlie Asher, a secondhand shop owner with a kid on the way suddenly finds that he's moonlighting as Death. Which sort of casts a pall on the evening. (Sorry, obscure Python reference there). Anyway, in Moore's typical light-hearted style, bad things may happen but quirky characters make the best of the situation – a situation that only keeps getting stranger. Quick, non-taxing, mostly fun read, nothing super great though. One plot point that the reader sees a mile off catches Charlie by surprise. I hate that. Still, this guy writes an entertaining story.
Nathaniel is an 11-year-old apprentice to a magician. When he suffers an awful humiliation at the hands of another magician, he studies incantations way beyond his years and summons the djinni Bartimaeus to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from the magician. This story is told in alternating viewpoints, firstly from the first-person viewpoint of the wise-cracking Bartimaeus, a 5000-year-old djinni, and secondly from the third-person perspective of Nathaniel.
I plucked this book from the Independent Reader shelf for a read-aloud book to Luke (my 8-year-old son). It proved a good choice. We both like Bartimaeus and the other snarky little imps who must do a magicians bidding but are always looking for a way out so they can get back at their masters. It's a clever set-up. But I must say, for a book on the Independent Reader shelf, this one includes plenty of juicy vocabulary words. This book doesn't talk down to its audience at all. Occasionally I'd explain a word here and there to Luke, and occasionally he'd huff “I know that word!” Okay, then. I liked this book so much that I've snapped up books 2 and 3.
Sam Kean is a fun science-y storyteller. This is the second book I've read by him and it was some fascinating stuff. From the earth's earliest atmospheres, to the various elements in the air we breathe, this tells a wide-ranging story of scientists, their history, and elements in the air around us. The last chapter which touches on climate change was chilling. Climate change can not be ignored.
Think Scooby-Doo kids, grown-up, in their mid-twenties, reuniting to revisit a past summer adventure that was really more than what was reported. And they know it. But this is much darker than that because there's some Lovecraftian craziness in this story. Enjoyed this one thoroughly. The characters are all well delineated and fun. There's even a dog, Tim. Also, one of the characters keeps hallucinating a dead friend who used to be part of their gang, the Blyton Summer Detective Club. Lots of humor, and when things start getting weird, lots of action and mayhem too. Wicked fun. Gotta read more by this author.
Whoa. This book appealed to the science/math geek in me. Less than 200 pages long, I found Zero to be mostly interesting. I read it quickly after all. For the most part, this book was fairly easy to understand but I may have gotten lost in a few places (like string theory and set theory for example – and I'm pretty sure I understood the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle). For the record, it's the ancient Babylonians who are credited with inventing zero, although the Mayans used it too. Sort of. This book touches on many different zero-related subjects such as: Pythagoras (a bit of a tyrant), the golden ratio, Zeno's paradox, the kabbalah, God, calculus, infinity (zero's “twin”), absolute zero, quantum mechanics, the elusive M-theory (a.k.a. the Theory of Everything), gravity potentials, black holes, worm holes, time travel, the Big Bang, and how to prove that Winston Churchill is a carrot. To name a few. Basically, as I understand it, the whole universe started with zero. (I can picture Pinto from Animal House discussing this book with a doobie in hand.) I also have a pretty good idea of how the universe will end. (I'll give you a hint: we're all either going to burn or freeze. Care to guess?)
These short stories were originally published in the 1970s but only recently became available translated in English. The art is gorgeous and the stories are surreal and dream-like. Don't look for easy narratives here. This book is both in color and black-and-white. I found it really weird and cool.
This book crossed my radar due to its popularity. I waited until my local library re-opened for business and then snagged it with greedy hands. I zipped through the story, gobbling it up ravenously, often snickering. Heh-heh-heh. Wow, this was good. I not only have to read this whole series, I now need to read more by this author. And soon!
This fantasy has the bizarre and interesting premise of a literal clockwork universe. The Earth's mainspring is winding down and young apprentice clockmaker Hethor Jacques is charged with finding the Key Perilous and winding it up again by a Brass Angel. The equator of the Earth is a giant gear that meshes with another for Earth's journey around the Lamp of the Sun. Set in an alternate 19th-century Earth where Her Imperial Majesty Queen Victoria rules over England and Her American Possessions, the story is set up in an interesting fashion with the promise of armed zeppelins to boot. But then the sluggish pacing sets in and before you're halfway through you're half convinced the protagonist is a dull-witted simp who often just gets lucky to get out of any particular scrape he's gets into. It often seems that deus ex machine is at work several times within the story. Until finally, the story completely sputters out and leaves the reader wholly unsatisfied. There wasn't even a compelling villain to hate. And also, several questions go unanswered. This was a waste of time.
To be “graced” means you've been born with a special skill and the most telling characteristic that distinguishes the graced from the un- is that the graced have one eye with a different color than the other. Our heroine, the feisty Katsa, has one blue eye and one green. Her grace seems to be superior fighting ability. In her kingdom, one among seven, the king reserves the right to use those graced as he sees fit. Katsa is his enforcer of choice. But she's starting to get ideas of her own. And after meeting a skilled (and graced) fighter from the kingdom of Leinid, Katsa's life takes a decisive turn. This was an easy read, a little too grown up for the younger teens perhaps, and the obstacles facing Katsa are handled well. But I wouldn't classify this as a blazing page-turner either. Also: it's a fairly small cast of characters for a fantasy. This is a stand-alone tale but the author has written a separate book set in the same world. I'm not putting it on my To Be Read list, though.
I enjoyed the world-building used for the setting of this story (the first of three). It's set in a small nation, usually ignored by the others around it. Our hero is a young thief from the gutters, just trying to stay alive, and wishing he had the skills of master assassin Durzo Blint. Events transpire that get him apprenticed to Durzo Blint and then political machinations start getting things progressively more interesting. There's also a cool use of magic in this story which is thankfully not overdone. Those assassins without the magical Talent are just ordinary assassins. But those with the Talent can become the much more fearsome and powerful “wetboys.” Our hero, Azoth, aspires to become a wetboy like Blint. Azoth has both friends and enemies and sometimes the distinction between the two is a bit fuzzy. Throw in an invasion from the nation just north of them and you've got the makings of a pretty fun story. I'm looking forward to the rest of it.
I thought I'd tackle this well-loved book but I'm giving up 100 pages in. Supposedly it's the story of the Buendia family in the fictional town of Macondo. There are about 37 people in this family, most of whom are either named José Arcadio, Aureliano, or Remedios. There's a family tree in the beginning but it's impossible to tell the characters apart (except for Ursula, the matriarch). After a few days of reading, I realized several things: 1) I have no idea what these characters are motivated by, 2) there doesn't seem to be a plot, 3) perhaps I'm missing something, 4) what the hell is with naming, like, seven characters the same name!? and 5) I'm bored. Also, I'm not the only one who feels this way about this book. So: wasn't enjoying it, so I quit. I can do that.
This third book in the trilogy has got plenty of coolness in it. Wraps up the story nicely and answers many questions. The two main characters, Essun and her daughter Nassun, take interesting paths to the final scene. Really enjoyed this trilogy, especially the whole strange otherness about it. Writing was faultless. I'll likely read more by this author.
I took a break from my current ginormous epic fantasy series to read this book I got for Christmas. Read this one fast. Cross an ex-hitman with a doctor to get the main character. Alternating flashback with how he got where he is with his current dire predicament makes for a bloody, fun ride. There's a fairly impressive body count and a good supply of gallows humor. Good stuff. I hope the author brings this anti-hero back for another round.