The Archived

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The Archived
Victoria Schwab

Goodreads Blurb:

Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.

Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.

Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was, a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often-violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.

Being a Keeper isn’t just dangerous—it’s a constant reminder of those Mac has lost. Da’s death was hard enough, but now her little brother is gone too. Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself might crumble and fall.

In this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit, unbearable loss and hard-won redemption.

It’s rare that as a writer, I’m left breathlessly wordless, but I’ve been waiting to write this review for a few days now because I couldn’t quite figure out how to describe how much I loved it.  Here’s what I’ve come up with:  after reading this book, I will forever be classifying Schwab with Neil Gaiman in my mind.  They both manage to create these dark, haunting worlds that somehow manage to capture hope and love in ways that are truer that one can usually see in real life.  They embrace the creepiness of a dark hallway and the echoes of humming and yet the way each of the characters clings to the importance of life, it adds that tiny flicker of light that makes the story enthralling.  In some ways this book reminds me a little of The Graveyard Book, in that she took this place that can be really quite scary and made it into a place where people live at least part of their lives.

Now, to the reason for why exactly this book is so thoroughly compelling:  Schwab has this uncanny ability to write protagonist who are heart-wrenchingly endearing.  She writes them so well that it won’t matter if you can relate to them on a meta level, whether you’ve lost a sibling, because you’ll be able to feel what they’re feeling.  It’s not hard to imagine the compulsion to keep things that were important to the brother you lost.  I’d prefer not to because it’s far too painful to imagine my life without my goof of a brother in it, but Schwab made it so that I didn’t have to.  She wrote it so that the pain was there on the page so that I didn’t have to look inside myself to figure out what the character was experiencing.  Oddly, the icing on the cake, the one thing that made wish she was real, was the fact that she can read the history of any place, so she, of course, would read the history of her room.  That one moment of curiosity made her into a real human being for me.   If you could see all the people who had lived where you live, wouldn’t you?  I know I would.

Chiaroscuro by Caravaggio. From here.

Schwab, of course, wrote this book in the same way as The Near Witch, by which I mean that it’s vibrant and evocative.  She really does use words as if they’re paint.  I compared The Near Witch to a Caravaggio painting, but after reading The Archived, I realize that this is the book that more aptly resembles the master.  You see, Caravaggio was the first to use chiaroscuro, which is the use of light and dark to create high contrasts.  In The Archived, Schwab does this to sublime effect.  Whether it’s in the Narrows, where the only light comes from the cracks around the doors or when her mom’s cleaning the floor and you get the contrast of the brilliantly clean and sparkling inlaid rose against the dust clogged marble surrounding it, Schwab has no problem using contrast to bring an her work to life.  These images all stand out in my mind still, a week later because they’re so incredibly easy to see.  Schwab creates this vibrant tapestry on which her characters play and it feels more like watching a movie than it does reading a book because I’m not reading everything and imagining it.  No, I’m watching it happen and it’s amazing.

This book will be coming out on January 22, 2013 and you really should pick it up.  It’s entirely worth it.

4.5 ink bottles.
Character Believability:  5 Buffys
Character Investibility:  5 Doctors
Pacing/Urgency/Tension:  4.5 Dresdens
Worldbilding: 5 Snyders
Language: 5 Feegles
Mystery:  4 Sherlocks

Book Links:  Goodreads

Breaking Dawn

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Breaking Dawn (Twilight Saga, Book 4)
Stephanie Meyer

Publisher’s Blurb:

The astonishing conclusion to the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn, illuminates the secrets and mysteries of this spellbinding romantic epic that has entranced millions. Now that Bella has made her decision to join the dark but seductive world of immortals, a startling chain of unprecedented events is about to unfold with potentially devastating, and unfathomable, consequences. Just when the frayed strands of Bella’s life-first discovered in Twilight, then scattered and torn in New Moon and Eclipse-seem ready to heal and knit together, could they be destroyed.

I wish I could say that I was pleasantly surprised by this book.  I wish I could say that I enjoyed it far more than…say New Moon or Eclipse, but I can’t.  Allow me to explain why:

Item the first: I found Bella’s miraculous skipping of the whole inconvenient new vampire emotions to be hard to believe at best.  We won’t go into what it is at worst.  Here’s the thing:  it’s never really explained.  You’re just handed this bizarre platter of oh-it’s-okay-she-has-more-emotions-than-just-raw-unrepentent-hunger.  It’s made out like it’s some secret power she has, but then Meyer never really goes into what that would mean as a power.  Also, if a vampire’s power comes from latent skills they had prior to changing (which I know because it’s been said throughout the series over and over and over…) the one thing that Bella has not been noted for has been her self-restraint.  If anything, I would imagine that she would be the most out of control new vampire given her rather consistent need to made crappy life decisions.

Item the second:  telling me that everything’s hunky dory now that Bella’s a vampire is one dimensional.  Saying that she was clearly made to be a vampire multiple times is ham-handed (surprising, I know.)  Sure, it’s nice that she has all kinds of crazy awesome skills and that she’s no longer klutzy, but painting her as this bizarre super-vampire who’s somehow more powerful and slightly smarter than everyone is not believable.  I’ll admit that a girl who reads a lot that learns that her boyfriend is a vampire and doesn’t immediately put a stake through his heart is extraordinary, but not necessarily in a good way.  It seemed weird for a person who spends oh… let’s say 80% of the series in immediate danger whether from herself or from the supernatural beings she chooses to surround herself with.  This is the girl who was destined to be a vampire.  Sure, and I’m the Pope.  Oh, and literally spelling out the exact fraction of the second it took her to respond to anything is a few steps beyond ham-handed.  I get that Meyer was trying to really show me just how fast that is, but unfortunately my measly human mind reads 1/64^th of a second and immediately rounds up to just really fast.  The fact that it happened early and often didn’t help me stay in the book.

Item the third:  this is a small point, admittedly, but it was galling to the extreme.  Now, keep in mind that I’ve read books wherein there are so many characters that it gets confusing.  This is not one of those books.  Why?  Because there aren’t two Georges who are absurdly similar in mentality.  That’s why.  In fact, Meyer seemed to go out of her way to select intentionally odd and distinctive names for her secondary characters.  There’s really no mistaking Garret with Benjamin.  Oddly, she wrote them too well.  This is why when I read a sentence about Jacob grumbling, saying that there were so many people in the house that someone should give him a list, I willingly followed the footnote to the bottom of the page.  I looked down to see a different page reference, with no context as to what I might find when I flipped forward.  Yeah, shockingly, I flipped forward into the exact list that Jacob had just requested.  While I understand that Meyer is writing for a younger demographic, even they aren’t stupid enough to need a freaking index.  In fact, let’s make a rule, we’ll call it the Jacob Index rule.  It is:  if you feel compelled to compile a listing of your characters anywhere other than where that traditionally goes, then you probably haven’t written your characters well enough.  Go back and fill in the gaps without an index.  Trust me, readers know a shortcut when they see them.

Now, if you’ve read the other three books, you might as well finish out the series with this book.  It’s entertaining, but only to the eleven year old in me.  The adult is standing behind that eleven year old shaking her head in disappointment the entire time.

2 ink bottles.
Character Believability: 1.5 Buffys
Character Investibility: 2 Doctors
Pacing/Urgency/Tension: 1.5 Dresdens
Worldbuilding:  3 Snyders
Language: 2 Feegles
Mystery: 1.5 Sherlocks

Book Links:  Goodreads, Publisher

Eclipse

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Eclipse (Twilight Saga, Book 3)
Stephenie Meyer

Publisher’s Blurb:

Readers captivated by Twilight and New Moon will eagerly devour the paperback edition Eclipse, the third book in Stephenie Meyer’s riveting vampire love saga. As Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between her love for Edward and her friendship with Jacob — knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the ageless struggle between vampire and werewolf.

Here’s the thing with this book, I would have been just as happy with it if it had only consisted of the last 300 pages.  I found the first half to be entirely too tedious and angsty.  I understand that it’s easy to use a love triangle to amplify tension in a book, but that’s why it’s boring.  The fact that the apparent subplot doesn’t really coalesce into something compelling until well into the second half of the book was galling to say the least.  That was by far the most interesting part of the story.  The entire first half of the book wherein people were stubborn teenagers who waffled about how they really felt and bullshit like that made me want to hurl the book across the room.  (In re-reading that sentence it occurs to me that there were several times in reading this book when I just flat out wanted to hurl as well, but that had more to do with the syrupy platitudes that anything else.)

I really wish I could say that the characters had any redeeming qualities in this book, but this really did seem to be the one book wherein every single character becomes unlikeable, which makes it a bit of a slog.  The only person who is even remotely likeable is Edward and that’s not even all of the time, though it is for much longer than anyone else.  I get that we’re talking about kids that are in their late teens, but I spent most of the book wanting to smack one of them with the accompanying message of “stop making stupid decisions.”

Meyer once again came across as ham-handed with the Wuthering Heights theme, with direct quotations from the books to prove her points.  There’s a part of me that wonders if I’m just crazy from seeing these things and wanting for them to be better.  It’s not that I object to an author giving me the metaphor.  What I want is a more dexterous use of it.  Using direct quotations from the book to highlight a character’s feelings that are already egregiously heightened comes across as inexperience.  It’s entirely possible for a reader to gather information and come to conclusions without the author saying “look, look, this is exactly what’s going on in the character’s mind and it’s exactly like this other thing that you already know about.”  I get referencing something that’s already in the reader’s mind to make the story more personal, but it’s not necessary to go so over the top with it.

I know that I’m in the minority in my opinion of these books.  My problem is that they hold a fair bit of potential, but since everything is so over the top it makes it work to read it.  You’re probably questioning my intelligence at this point, but here’s what happened to me.  Every 30-50 pages, I would read something that would pull me out of the story.  Whether it was yet another description of Bella’s panic or perhaps a senseless emotional switch by Jacob/Edward, I had to put the book down for a few moments every time and give my brain a little time to move past it.  These books could have been so very compelling for me.  I could have read all 617 pages in less than a day if I didn’t have to put it down so often.

In the end, it’s entertaining again, but it’s a little on the egregious side when it comes to pretty much everything.

2 ink bottles
Character Believability: 2 Buffys
Character Investibility: 2 Doctors
Pacing/Tension/Urgency:  2.5 Dresdens
Worldbuilding: 3 Snyders
Language: 3 Feegles
Mystery: 2 Sherlocks

Book Links:  Goodreads, Publisher

New Moon

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New Moon (Twilight Saga, Book 2)
Stephenie Meyer

Publisher’s Blurb:

In New Moon, Stephenie Meyer delivers another irresistible combination of romance and suspense with a supernatural twist. The “star-crossed” lovers theme continues as Bella and Edward find themselves facing new obstacles, including a devastating separation, the mysterious appearance of dangerous wolves roaming the forest in Forks, a terrifying threat of revenge from a female vampire and a deliciously sinister encounter with Italy’s reigning royal family of vampires, the Volturi.

I’m just going to jump right into this.  There’s really no sense in sugar coating it.

The writing is still ham-handed.  There really aren’t many subtleties to the characters’ feelings or expressions.  Throughout this book it feels like Bella is either ecstatically happy, completely numb to the point of only interacting to people when they ask a direct question, writhing in pain, or in outright panic.  That’s it.  Those are the only emotions she’s allowed for 563 pages.  I remember being that age and I remember that things had a sharper edge; things were more important or more outrageous.  However, it wasn’t always the case.  Just because you’re eighteen doesn’t mean that you spend every second of every day in a high dither about this or that.  It feels to me like Meyer uses excessive emotion in her characters to falsely elevate the tension in the story, only it doesn’t do that for me.  It just wears me out.

I was warned that the Romeo and Juliet theme was over-wrought, however, in spite of that, I had assumed that it would consist of subtle references woven in over the course of the book.  What I found were direct references that were ham-handed to the point of being downright irritating.  Edward saying that he would never critique Romeo again made me want to throw the book across the room.  You’re probably thinking that I’m over-reacting, but here’s the thing, I’m not stupid.  Most readers aren’t.  We don’t need to be beaten over the head with the fact that Bella is clearly Juliet and, even though it was a self-imposed exile, Edward is obviously Romeo.  Meyer even lays out who the Paris analog is.  It was distracting to say the least.

However, Meyer’s Romeo and Juliet triangle falls short of the original.  One of the things that bothered me as I read through this series is how remarkably one dimensional Bella and Edward’s relationship is.  There’s no rational evaluation of it, no true questioning of it, just raw (mildly nauseating) need.  There’s not even the slightest hint of a sense of humor.  When you’re eighteen, I get that it’s possible that that’s all you’re capable of feeling, but Edward is nearly 100.  He’s had time to grow passed his hormones.  In fact, as a vampire, I’m reasonably sure that he doesn’t have any hormones.  He should be old enough to look at things with a more level head, but he takes part in the relationship as if the additional 70 years didn’t exist.  I’m not sure if this kind of raw love is really feasible.  In fact, the more I think about it, the more it sounds like something an extremely immature couple would say…right before they flame out.  This isn’t the kind of love that lasts forever.  This is the kind of love that lasts until they walk down the hall and the guy says something stupid leading to a spectacular breakup, which although temporarily sad, is 100% survivable.

There was one aspect that I thought was well done for what it was and that was the Edward appearances.  I liked that it was just a voice in her head and not a visual image of Edward.  I loved that it’s not really confirmed whether it was really Edward talking to her or if it was simply a manifestation of her subconscious.  I still think it’s completely ridiculous for someone to be so obsessed with someone else that they would knowingly put themselves in severe danger just to hear their voice.  If nothing else, it sets a truly crappy example to the twelve year olds who are reading this. I’m not really over the moon about telling young women that it’s totally okay to be laid out by a guy leaving them, but I understand that one doesn’t always write books with the thought of what kind of example it sets.  (Okay, the cane waving is over for now.)

Once again, I found the book to be superficially entertaining if you turn off your brain a little bit.  I certainly read it in about a day, but I firmly maintain that if the writing had been tightened up and toned down (i.e., there’s no way this needed to be 563 pages), it had the potential to be so much better.  It falls short of compelling.

2.5 ink bottles.
Character Believability:  3 Buffys
Character Investibility: 2.5 Doctors
Pacing/Tension/Urgency: 2.5 Dresdens
Worldbuilding: 3 Snyders
Language:  3 Feegles
Mystery:  2 Sherlocks

Book Links:  Goodreads, Publisher

Twilight

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Twilight (Twilight Saga, Book 1)
Stephenie Meyer

Update:  Apologies for the incorrectly spelled author’s name.  It’s been corrected.

Publisher’s Blurb:

Bella Swan’s move to Forks, a small, perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. But once she meets the mysterious and alluring Edward Cullen, Bella’s life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. Up until now, Edward has managed to keep his vampire identity a secret in the small community he lives in, but now nobody is safe, especially Bella, the person Edward holds most dear.

A short preface before I go into the review.  I know that thousands of reviews of have been written for this series and I also understand that my take is not in the majority.  I’ve been putting off reading this series for a long time because I know I’m not the ideal reader.  I went through my formative years watching Buffy beat the living daylights out of vampires who only glittered as they burst into to flames.  That having been said, if you are a diehard Twilight fan (specifically phrased that way because Twihard is not an acceptable use of the English language), you should probably go ahead and move along.  You’re not going to want to hear anything I have to say and I don’t want to have to moderate the indignant comments of the true believers.  Now, onto the meat of the review…

We’ll start with the bad and move to the good.  My primary complaint about the book is that Meyer is more than a little hamhanded when it comes to pretty much everything.  Whether it was the fifty different words for brown (sienna, umber, topaz, cinnamon, etc,) or emphasizing over and over how very much Bella should stay away from Edward, it made it impossible to stay sunk in the story.  Throughout the book, I felt like I was being beaten over the head with the Very Important Things that Meyer really wanted to make sure that I understand.  Here’s the thing, while I’ll admit that I’m not smart all the time, I’m not that stupid.  It’s pretty insulting to everyone, including Meyer’s target demographic. When an author emphasizes that the protagonist needs to stay away from the leading guy so many times, it actually serves to make me want her to stay away from him.  It’s excessive and counterproductive.  Instead of creating a compelling tale and amping up the tension, it adds fat to the story that needs desperately to be cut out.

In fact, as far as the writing goes it really vacillates between over-wrought and under-thought-out.  Here’s an example of a sentence that I had to work to get passed:  “The bouquets of brilliant anemones undulated ceaselessly in the invisible current, twisted shells scurried around the edges, obscuring the crabs within them, starfish stuck motionlessly to rocks and each other, while one black eel with black racing stripes wove through the green weeds, waiting for the sea to return.”  That is more than a little over done.  I would have expected it in something written for an English class, not a young adult fantasy novel.

The remaining complaints come in the form of character believability.  I was more than a little doubtful that a person as responsible as Bella would develop such a dangerous obsession.  She was responsible for paying her mother’s mortgage, but ZOMG cute boy.  It doesn’t sync up.  I’ll admit that every responsible kid has the periodic lapse, but this one is kind of monumental for the kind of person Bella is purported to be.  Oh, and as a klutz, I can personally tell you that if a person is as pathologically clumsy as Bella, you eventually get to be good at it, so that you aren’t slicing your fingers off every other week.  That was extremely distracting.  I understand that Meyer needed for Bella to have a handy excuse whenever something vampire-related happened, but it struck me as lazy writing.

Now, I will admit that I found Meyer’s depiction of Bella to be much more investible than the film version (which admittedly has more to do with Kristen Stewart’s depiction than the actual character).  I enjoyed that Meyer took the time to lay out how Bella read her English assignments ahead of time because she simply enjoyed reading and the way she took care of her dad.  I loved the fact that she included that Bella preferred the company of people who weren’t compelled to fill in the silence.  In short, I found the Bella in this book to be surprisingly easy to identify with in spite of her odd lapse in character.  As evidenced by the ridiculous number of books I review, it’s not hard for me to sympathize with an average looking book nerd, which probably explains why I find it so difficult to match up the responsible Bella with the head-over-heels Bella.

In the end, once I got past the beginning, I found the story entertaining if irritating from time to time.  The twelve year old in me who spent her Saturdays with her nose in a book was happy to sink into the superficiality of the book, but the adult in me was the one kept on putting it down in exasperation.

3 ink bottles.
Character Believability:  2 Buffys
Character Investibility:  3 Doctors
Pacing/Tension/Urgency: 3 Dresdens
Worldbuilding:  3.5 Snyders
Language:  3.5 Feegles
Mystery:  3 Sherlocks

Book Links:  Goodreads, Publisher

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

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I Am Half-Sick of Shadows (Flavia de Luce #4)
Alan Bradley

Publisher’s Blurb:

It’s Christmastime, and the precocious Flavia de Luce—an eleven-year-old sleuth with a passion for chemistry and a penchant for crime-solving—is tucked away in her laboratory, whipping up a concoction to ensnare Saint Nick. But she is soon distracted when a film crew arrives at Buckshaw, the de Luces’ decaying English estate, to shoot a movie starring the famed Phyllis Wyvern. Amid a raging blizzard, the entire village of Bishop’s Lacey gathers at Buckshaw to watch Wyvern perform, yet nobody is prepared for the evening’s shocking conclusion: a body found, past midnight, strangled to death with a length of film. But who among the assembled guests would stage such a chilling scene? As the storm worsens and the list of suspects grows, Flavia must use every ounce of sly wit at her disposal to ferret out a killer hidden in plain sight.

After the last book, I was actually a little reticent to pick this one up, which wasn’t something I ever expected to happen.  I’m very happy to report that my concerns were entirely unfounded.  This book returns to the well constructed yarns that Bradley is so well known for.  It feels like it picks up where The Weeds that Strings the Hangman’s Bag left off.  In fact, I would have considered the series complete with just Books 1, 2 and 4.  However, before I devolve into another tangent about how much of an outlier Book 3 is, the point of this little exercise is to discuss this book.  I don’t know why I didn’t guess it, but an actress with a similar interest in crime and grisly murders is exactly what Flavia needed, a sort of mother figure without the inconvenience of evil step mothering.  She seemed a perfect fit for Flavia.  Finally an adult who could commiserate with her and help her solve crimes.  However, I would have liked for Wyvern’s cruelty to Bun to be explained in some way instead of simply throwing it in there to add another suspect to the list.

In fact, when it came to the suspects in this particular book they were oddly scarce and Bradley was completely aware of that.  I’m not sure what it says about me that I prefer a book wherein there can at least be someone for me to suspect, even if the rug is ripped out from under me later on, but in this book, I found myself not even bothering to guess.  Though that could have something to do with the fact that there were so many people in the book that it was actually a little difficult to keep them all straight.  You had your main characters and even your minor characters that you recognize from the other books, but in this one, Bradley threw in an entire film crew and then literally half the village.  The village I knew, but I actually found it difficult to keep the film crew straight.  When the final reveal came, I was a little surprised at who is was and actually found it a little difficult to swallow.

However, aside from that one moment of doubt, the rest of the story is downright delightful. Flavia’s scheme to catch Father Christmas (and I do mean catch) reminded me of all the Christmas mornings when I still believed that a man of magic had delivered presents over night.  Bradley’s blizzards actually made me want to be in them because they are the kind of blizzards you survive by hunkering down under a mountain of blankets and reading books until the wind stops blowing.  I cheered when Flavia finally called her sisters on their malodorous malarkey and asked them why they hated her so much.  Bradley’s true genius lies in his ability to capture a capricious eleven year old and make me love her.  I actually mentally reprimanded her sisters when they were awful to her because I knew no one else would and it takes truly good writing to get a reader to parent imaginary characters.  I found his revelation about Aunt Felicity to be marvelous.  It took a fussy old woman and made her into a the kind of strong woman the era is known for and he did it over the course of a single conversation that she spends half of complaining about her old age.

In the end, this book is lovely and delightful in all the best ways.  Flavia is still the chemistry loving child that we have all grown to love.  I only wish that she were real and not just a character because the world could use someone like Flavia de Luce.

4.5 ink bottles.
Character Believability: 4 Buffys
Character Investibility:  4 Doctors
Pacing/Tension/Urgency: 4.5 Dresdens
Worldbuilding:  5 Snyders
Language: 5 Feegles
Mystery:  4 Sherlocks

Book Links:  Goodreads, Publisher

Book Trailer:

The Drowned Cities

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The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker, Book 2)
Paolo Bacigalupi

Publisher’s Blurb:

Soldier boys emerged from the darkness. Guns gleamed dully. Bullet bandoliers and scars draped their bare chests. Ugly brands scored their faces. She knew why these soldier boys had come. She knew what they sought, and she knew, too, that if they found it, her best friend would surely die.

In a dark future America where violence, terror, and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities by escaping into the jungle outskirts. But when they discover a wounded half-man–a bioengineered war beast named Tool–who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses. One is taken prisoner by merciless soldier boys, and the other is faced with an impossible decision: Risk everything to save a friend, or flee to a place where freedom might finally be possible.

I would like to preface this with the fact that I haven’t read the first book in this series yet (though that fact will be changing in the very near future).  Having said that, this is one of those rare books wherein it’s completely unnecessary to have read the first book in the series. Normally when I discover that I accidentally picked up the second book of a series, I give it about ten pages and then put it down in frustration because I’m clearly missing something huge that’s happened that’s super critical to this plot.  In this book, there’s every indication that huge things have happened, what with the whole war-torn jungle that used to be America, but it doesn’t constantly remind you that you missed Book 1.  I’m actually really looking forward to reading Book 1 now given the deft hand that was evident in this one.

Now, to the story:  it’s amazing.  It combines the horror and pain of Vietnam with Iraq and adds in a sprinkling of Afghanistan, but in a future where science has created a perfect killing machine.  The irony is that even though it’s in the future, it feels like it’s set in the Dark Ages, that period after the fall of Rome when the whole of the world was plunged into chaos and plague.  The sheer brutality of the book was both visceral and compelling.  The truly terrifying part is that about half way through the book, I realized that this is totally plausible.  First one politician accuses the other of treason, and then the other fires back.  It’s easy to see the snowball effect there.  The brilliance of Bacigalupi’s writing is that he gave me that whole history, the accusations followed by the division, followed by the taking up of arms, and then chaos, he gave me all of that over the span of maybe two sentences.  He made me see my world implode with twenty five words (give or take).

And within that world he gives you these characters of unflagging bravery and courage, even when they’re claiming to be cowards.  They live in a world where nothing is sure, but each other and themselves and he makes events turn around them and yet they still put one foot in front of the other.   It’s delightful to read.  When one thinks of the children of war, I usually look on with sympathy at the little ones who have been orphaned and are helpless in the face of wonton destruction.  Bacigalupi’s children of war are so much more than that.  Sure, they’ve been orphaned, but they aren’t helpless.  Mahlia listened to her peacekeeper father’s lessons on The Art of War and little Mouse knows where to forage for food in the jungle surrounding the Drowned Cities.  However, Bacigalupi used the brutality of the book to put his characters in danger over and over again and it made the book enthralling because he had gone to the trouble to make me care for them first.  Even Tool was never the animal that he could have been seen to be.  He was a warrior, albeit a wounded one.

I could gush about this book for ages, but there’s no need for that.  Pick up the book.  I really can’t recommend it enough.  It’s a gut wrenching tale that will grab hold of your brain stem and won’t let go.

4.5 ink bottles
Character Believability: 4.5 Buffys
Character Investibility:  4.5 Doctors
Pacing/Tension/Urgency: 5 Dresdens
Worldbuilding: 4.5 Snyders
Language: 5 Feegles
Mystery:  4 Sherlocks

Book Links:  Goodreads, Publisher

Book Trailer:

The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag

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I must have lost my mind last week.  I read these books in order, but for some reason went ahead and posted the third book before the second.  I don’t even know.  Oh well.  Without further ado, the second book in the Flavia de Luce series:

The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag (Flavia de Luce #2)
Alan Bradley

Publisher’s Blurb:

Flavia de Luce, a dangerously smart eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders, thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey are over—until beloved puppeteer Rupert Porson has his own strings sizzled in an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. But who’d do such a thing, and why? Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she’s letting on? What about Porson’s charming but erratic assistant? All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can’t solve—without Flavia’s help. But in getting so close to who’s secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head?

I wasn’t sure how Bradley would continue on with Flavia’s story, since the murder in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie was so tidily tied up, but he did it and he did it magnificently.  I was more than a little surprised when he didn’t immediately open with a dead body, but instead allowed me to get to know the victim for a little while.  That being said, I loved that I was allowed that space of time to come to my own conclusions about Rupert Porson and the people who surrounded him.  Sure he was kind of horrible in that he clearly beat his travelling companion/mother to his unborn child, but Bradley also gave you glimpses of why Nialla would have been attracted to him in the first place, his showmanship.  Having all of this context on the victim made the murder all the more intriguing.  It’s brilliantly done.

Flavia is still completely adorable.  Her love of chemistry continues unabated and I still maintain that it’s chemistry presented in the most fascinating way possible.  Her fascination with poisons is both understandable and completely endearing.  That being said, the fact that she can manufacture them is minorly concerning, especially knowing that she’s faced with two older sisters who frequently tell her that she was adopted and that her dead mother tried to give her back, but they wouldn’t take her back.  However, although Flavia periodically falls into mildly morose moods, she still remains the same plucky young woman that we left at the end of Sweetness.  When she covers for the fact that she was examining a dead body by slowly rising from a crouch, loudly proclaiming “Amen”, elaborately crossing herself, and then dabbing at her eyes, I laughed out loud.  She might be sneaky and underhanded, but she’s delightfully sneaky and underhanded in all of the ways that an eleven year old investigating murder should be.  I particularly enjoyed the effect she has on the detectives at the end of the novel.  I can completely understand it since I was wearing the same look on my face as I was reading it.

I really can’t recommend this book enough.  It’s brilliantly written.  For a mystery that takes place in the quiet stuffiness of the British countryside, Bradley writes them with a unique balance of humor and urgency.  They are exceedingly entertaining.

4.5 ink bottles.
Character Believability:  5 Buffys
Character Investibility:  5 Doctors
Pacing/Tension/Urgency:  4.5 Dresdens
Worldbuilding:  4.5 Snyders
Language:  5 Feegles
Mystery:  4 Sherlocks

Book Links:  Goodreads, Publisher

The Enchantress

Image via Goodreads

The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, Book 6)
Michael Scott

Publisher’s Blurb:

The two that are one must become the one that is all. One to save the world, one to destroy it.

San Francisco:

Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel have one day left to live, and one job left to do. They must defend San Francisco. The monsters gathered on Alcatraz Island have been released and are heading toward the city. If they are not stopped, they will destroy everyone and everything in their path.

But even with the help of two of the greatest warriors from history and myth, will the Sorceress and the legendary Alchemyst be able to defend the city? Or is it the beginning of the end of the human race?

Danu Talis:

Sophie and Josh Newman traveled ten thousand years into the past to Danu Talis when they followed Dr. John Dee and Virginia Dare. And it’s on this legendary island that the battle for the world begins and ends.

Scathach, Prometheus, Palamedes, Shakespeare, Saint-Germain, and Joan of Arc are also on the island. And no one is sure what—or who—the twins will be fighting for.

Today the battle for Danu Talis will be won or lost.

But will the twins of legend stand together?

Or will they stand apart—

one to save the world and one to destroy it?

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this story, given the number of parallel plotlines that we left off with in Book 5.  And while I can’t say that my socks were completely knocked off, I will unreservedly say that this is my favorite book of the entire series, hands down.  Josh isn’t whiny at all, you guys.  In fact, he’s kind of awesome, but that’s not what makes this the best book.  No, in this story, Scott uses the parallel plotlines to build tension.  Everyone in one place is about to die? Yeah, let’s jump over here to this other place where other important things are happening.  And something important is happening everywhere.  Every page of this book feels like a dead sprint.  The characters are constantly moving with every ounce of their strength and being and it makes for such a compelling tale.

However, it’s not all hair-raising action.  Scott wove in humor here and there and it ratcheted to book up from really good to great.  The redshirts reference had me grinning from ear to ear and the fifteen year old in me laughed out loud at the thought of hearing the Imperial March when parents walk into the room.  Also, you don’t often get Sci Fi references in Fantasy, but after this, I want it to happen more often because it works.  Boy howdy, does it work.

The time travel dimension to the story had a part of my brain working overtime.  I realized at one point the number of decisions Scott would have had to have made in writing this book given the complexity of having people from the present going in the past, interacting with people they had known and loved in the future.  You see, even that sentence is muddled.  I would give you an example, but I don’t want to spoil anything.  Rest assured, where my writing is failing, Scott’s came through with flying colors.  There was never a doubt of who was where and with whom.  It’s astoundingly clear and without the use of any qualifiers.

The one thing I take issue with is when an Elder says that humans are essentially good.  While I’ve always hoped for that to be true, I know it isn’t universally true.  Stalin was not essentially good.  There’s no doubt in my mind that he thought what he was doing was for the greater good, but the truth is that you cannot be “essentially good” and be responsible for the brutal deaths of millions of innocent people.  It’s a nice sentiment, to imagine that we as a race are essentially good and I still like to think that the majority of human beings are, but the reality is that there are outliers.  It’s just too big of a generalization.  It exceeds the truth.

In the end, however, this story is a fast paced roller coaster ride of action, magic, and monsters.  I highly recommend it.

4.5 ink bottles.
Character Believability:  4.5 Buffys
Character Investibilty: 4.5 Doctors
Pacing/Tension/Urgency: 4.5 Dresdens
Worldbuilding: 4 Snyders
Language: 4.5 Feegles
Mystery: 5 Sherlocks

Book Links:  Goodreads, Publisher

A Red Herring without Mustard

Image via Goodreads

A Red Herring without Mustard (Flavia de Luce #3)
Alan Bradley

Publisher’s Blurb:

In the hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey, the insidiously clever and unflappable eleven-year-old sleuth Flavia de Luce had asked a Gypsy woman to tell her fortune—never expecting to later stumble across the poor soul, bludgeoned almost to death in the wee hours in her own caravan. Was this an act of retribution by those convinced that the soothsayer abducted a local child years ago? Certainly Flavia understands the bliss of settling scores; revenge is a delightful pastime when one has two odious older sisters. But how could this crime be connected to the missing baby? As the red herrings pile up, Flavia must sort through clues fishy and foul to untangle dark deeds and dangerous secrets.

This book, out of all the books in the series, really highlights the dark undertones of Flavia’s world.  In the end, I felt sorry for her.  The aunt in me wants her to have a more wholesome environment in which to live.  A place where she wouldn’t have to live in anticipation of being kidnapped, bound, and left in the cellars by her sisters.  In fact, it struck me as particularly hateful and mean spirited that this treatment came at the hands of a sister who at the age of 17 I would have thought too old for those kind of antics.  Increasingly, I really want to know what happened, aside from their mother’s death, that would have caused this absurd level of animosity.  Several times while reading this book, I stopped and wondered at Flavia’s fierce determination in the face of her sisters’ consistent efforts to disenfranchise her.  Her father’s distant mild approval of her actions seems a pittance compared to the systematic warfare of her sisters.

As to the story of this book, it’s not quite a straightforward as Book 1 and 2 of the series.  It reads more like a Dan Brown novel than Alan Bradley with shapes rising out of the amorphous fog at surprising and unexpected times and not universally to the plot’s benefit.  In mystery, one expects a certain amount of smoke and mirrors, but in this book, it really felt like it was nothing but smoke and mirrors right up until Flavia’s famous exposition at the end and even then, not all of my questions were answered.  Flavia’s actions seem more helter skelter in this book.  She rarely had a reason to go places, she just set out as if it was a high adventure and she was Alice in Wonderland.  I found her willingness to sneak Porcelain into her bedroom to be a bit strange and even further I found the family’s reaction to Porcelain’s dinner clothes to be somewhat false.  The appearance of the murdered body was quite bizarre to me in that it came out of nowhere and played second fiddle to the rest of the plot for the entire story. You’d really think discovering a body hanging from a sculpture in your backyard would leave an indelible impression on a person, but Flavia keeps on forgetting about him.  Even for an eleven year old sleuth who’s used to finding dead bodies around her house, you’d think she’d spend at least a significant portion of her time thinking about him.  It’s baffling.

However, all of that aside, this is still a Flavia de Luce story and she still shines in all of her adorableness.  From her verbal conversations with her bicycle to the fact that she has dry cleaning solution in her personal chemistry lab, she’s still the same precocious eleven year old that we’d left off with in The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag.  She still roams about, unchecked, and wiggles information out of people that the police would never have a chance at procuring.  It cracked me up when Inspector Hewitt politely asks her father to keep her at home since she keeps showing up at crime scenes and discovering important pieces of evidence that they missed.  You know he’s doing it for her protection, which is incredibly endearing, but the way she acts subsequently is nothing short of delightful.  Bradley’s portrayal of the 1950’s English countryside is both bucolic and exciting.  It’s simultaneously idealized and realistic.  You have the simplicity of village life juxtaposed with the complexity of estate law and it’s done marvelously.  Bradley has created the perfect world for Flavia to exist in and I can’t wait to read the next book.

4 ink bottles.
Character Believability:  4 Buffys
Character Investibility: 4 Doctors
Pacing/Urgency/Tension: 3.5 Dresdens
Worldbuilding: 5 Snyders
Language: 5 Feegles
Mystery: 3.5 Sherlocks

Book Links:  Goodreads, Publisher