- Pretties by Scott Westerfeld (YA)
- The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue
- The Silver Road by Grace Dugan
- When the King Comes Home by Caroline Stevermer
- Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison (abandoned)
- Labyrinth by Kate Mosse (abandoned)
- Second Honeymoon by Joanna Trollope
- Next of Kin by Joanna Trollope
- Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marissa Pessl
I left two books unfinished this month - I wasn't enjoying either of them, and was happy to return them to the library when they were due back. Dead Witch Walking is one of those 'witches and vampires walking the urban streets' sort of books, which, try as I might, I just can't get into. ( Kelley Armstrong's books are about the only time I've enjoyed this genre). Harrison's book was filled with so many extra details I wasn't sure that there was room for a story in there - different government agencies, magical rules, fairies, vampires, witches, blah blah blah. I was bored with the world she was creating, and I certainly wasn't interested in the characters that inhabited it. My dislike for Mosse's Labyrinth was more basic - it's poorly written and I was too bored to care about the insipid characters.
I finished Second Honeymoon, but didn't enjoy it very much. Normally I love Trollope's books, and her wonderful way of depicting relationships, but I found almost all the characters in Second Honeymoon painfully irritating and obtuse. Next of Kin, one of her earlier books, I enjoyed much more. She manages to make the most frustrating characters endearing to the reader.
Apart from the Trollopes, the only other non-fantasy book that I read last month was Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which wouldn't have been something I would have picked up if I hadn't seen it described on a couple of blogs. It is a book which is rather difficult to describe, and at first I found the style of it rather contrived and a bit of a struggle to read. I think I would rather let you read a plot description elsewhere - suffice to say, while I was drawn into the story and the narration (and completely missed the "nod to Nabokov" that reviews refer to) the ending struck me as completely ludicrous, and jolted me somewhat out of the spell of the story. I would definitely pick up Pessl's next book, though, to see where she goes after this debut.
I'm not sure whether When the King Comes Home is a story aimed at young adult or adult readers - if it is YA, then it works well for an older audience. A lovely, gentle book which does not reveal its fantastical elements until quite late in the story, when you are immersed in the world of Hail and her apprenticeship as an artist. In Hail's world, "when the King comes home," is a saying somewhat equivalent to "when pigs fly", so when Hail comes across a young man who is the exact image of the deceased King Julian, it causes her all sorts of difficulties. When the King Comes Home is lovely to read - a beautiful use of language, Hail's story struck me as almost dreamlike, despite the war which develops in its latter pages (as I imagine the brutalities of war tend to jolt one out of dreams). An excellent book.
Australia author Dugan's The Silver Road follows a slightly more predictable storyline - a hidden heir to the throne, a brutal regime, an organisation dedicated to overthrowing it. However, it is all put together with originality, and shies away from easy solutions to the problems it presents us with. I'll definitely be picking up more of Dugan's and Stevermer's books.
The last two books I read last month were very different from each other. Pretties is the second book in a futuristic YA trilogy, about a dystopian future where cosmetic surgery at age 16 to transform a person into a Pretty (with dumbing-down brain lesions to match) is compulsory. Pretties is very much a YA book, and is occasionally a bit heavy handed with its message, but has some good characters, and some awful invented slang. In comparison, The Stolen Child is very much an adult's book, taking a rather dark look at the legends of young children stolen and swapped for fairy children. Donohue certainly has an interesting take on the myth, but sometimes I felt that his story of the two Henrys (we switch between the fairy Henry who grows up in the human world, and the human Henry, living a stunted childhood in the forest) didn't quite hang together as well as I would have liked. I felt that there wasn't enough reason for the fairy Henry's existence (or in fact the fairies existence as a whole), but perhaps that was the point - these reasonless things and their effects. An interesting book, but I'm not sure I'd seek out the author again.
I finished Second Honeymoon, but didn't enjoy it very much. Normally I love Trollope's books, and her wonderful way of depicting relationships, but I found almost all the characters in Second Honeymoon painfully irritating and obtuse. Next of Kin, one of her earlier books, I enjoyed much more. She manages to make the most frustrating characters endearing to the reader.
Apart from the Trollopes, the only other non-fantasy book that I read last month was Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which wouldn't have been something I would have picked up if I hadn't seen it described on a couple of blogs. It is a book which is rather difficult to describe, and at first I found the style of it rather contrived and a bit of a struggle to read. I think I would rather let you read a plot description elsewhere - suffice to say, while I was drawn into the story and the narration (and completely missed the "nod to Nabokov" that reviews refer to) the ending struck me as completely ludicrous, and jolted me somewhat out of the spell of the story. I would definitely pick up Pessl's next book, though, to see where she goes after this debut.
I'm not sure whether When the King Comes Home is a story aimed at young adult or adult readers - if it is YA, then it works well for an older audience. A lovely, gentle book which does not reveal its fantastical elements until quite late in the story, when you are immersed in the world of Hail and her apprenticeship as an artist. In Hail's world, "when the King comes home," is a saying somewhat equivalent to "when pigs fly", so when Hail comes across a young man who is the exact image of the deceased King Julian, it causes her all sorts of difficulties. When the King Comes Home is lovely to read - a beautiful use of language, Hail's story struck me as almost dreamlike, despite the war which develops in its latter pages (as I imagine the brutalities of war tend to jolt one out of dreams). An excellent book.
Australia author Dugan's The Silver Road follows a slightly more predictable storyline - a hidden heir to the throne, a brutal regime, an organisation dedicated to overthrowing it. However, it is all put together with originality, and shies away from easy solutions to the problems it presents us with. I'll definitely be picking up more of Dugan's and Stevermer's books.
The last two books I read last month were very different from each other. Pretties is the second book in a futuristic YA trilogy, about a dystopian future where cosmetic surgery at age 16 to transform a person into a Pretty (with dumbing-down brain lesions to match) is compulsory. Pretties is very much a YA book, and is occasionally a bit heavy handed with its message, but has some good characters, and some awful invented slang. In comparison, The Stolen Child is very much an adult's book, taking a rather dark look at the legends of young children stolen and swapped for fairy children. Donohue certainly has an interesting take on the myth, but sometimes I felt that his story of the two Henrys (we switch between the fairy Henry who grows up in the human world, and the human Henry, living a stunted childhood in the forest) didn't quite hang together as well as I would have liked. I felt that there wasn't enough reason for the fairy Henry's existence (or in fact the fairies existence as a whole), but perhaps that was the point - these reasonless things and their effects. An interesting book, but I'm not sure I'd seek out the author again.
4 comments:
You make me feel like an illiterate slug. My brain, turned to mush from pregnancy hormones can only tolerate short spurts of reading and even then, I'm not retaining much. Your lists are always so ambitious.
Oh dear - I don't mean to make anyone feel slug-like TB! I imagine that these years of my life, in my early twenties, are going to be the most reading-heavy years of my life. As I get older and busier I'll become more sluggy :-)
i got realy bored by the hyper-referentialness of the Peissl book that I finally just put it aside. maybe i'll finish it one day, but now that iknow it has a ludicrous ending, i think why bother!! :) now i've been reading proust book 3 all of february and wondering when i'm going to finish...
Oh lord - Proust! Something I know I'll never try to read Carolyn, it would bore me to tears. I must admit to skimming little bits of the Peissl when it got too much, but I stopped when it managed to draw me in.
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