strange and random happenstance

Ah, YA. I remember when you used to be a very small section near the Children's books and then slowly rose claiming more and more shelf space in bookstores until you were victorious and practically the entire second floor of Borders. In fact some of my favorite books and indeed many of my favorite series that I currently read are YA. I can't describe how fascinating it was to have watched this development. I think it's akin to when teenagers became a word back in the late thirties. They were always there, always present, but not quite fully formed because there wasn't a brand, a label that explained exactly what they were. And then one day, they were teenagers. And then one day, there were books for teenagers. And then a little while later, there was YA. Books written just for these young adults, but really, there are a lot of adults that read them to, because books and book genres shouldn't define your reading habits or shame you. OK, so that might have gotten a little ranty, but the truth is, YA books are so well written that most authors are fighting to release books in this genre. In fact, just a two summers ago I reveled in reading YA series for that whole summer. I read books by authors I hope never to read again, but I also found authors that I love so much I'm now a convert to anything they write. Therefore when looking at this current summer I realized I couldn't skip a YA section. There are just too many YA books out there that I want to read and not enough time! So I hope you'll join me with these final four books to end Backlog Bonanza with a bang.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Backlog Bonanza, Bookstores, Borders, Cassandra Clare, Children, Leigh Bardugo, Summer, Summer Series, Teenagers, YA, Young Adult

Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal
Published by: Tor Books
Publication Date: August 16th, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 304 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Ghost Talkers: a new novel from beloved fantasy author Mary Robinette Kowal featuring the mysterious spirit corps and their heroic work in World War I.

Ginger Stuyvesant, an American heiress living in London during World War I, is engaged to Captain Benjamin Hartshorne, an intelligence officer. Ginger is a medium for the Spirit Corps, a special Spiritualist force.

Each soldier heading for the front is conditioned to report to the mediums of the Spirit Corps when they die so the Corps can pass instant information about troop movements to military intelligence.

Ginger and her fellow mediums contribute a great deal to the war efforts, so long as they pass the information through appropriate channels. While Ben is away at the front, Ginger discovers the presence of a traitor. Without the presence of her fiance to validate her findings, the top brass thinks she's just imagining things. Even worse, it is clear that the Spirit Corps is now being directly targeted by the German war effort. Left to her own devices, Ginger has to find out how the Germans are targeting the Spirit Corps and stop them. This is a difficult and dangerous task for a woman of that era, but this time both the spirit and the flesh are willing…"

I have been DYING to read this book since last year, and look it comes out three days after my birthday? Happy birthday to me!

The Edge of the Light by Elizabeth George
Published by: Viking Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: August 16th, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"The climactic final installment of New York Times bestseller Elizabeth George's award-winning saga.

Seth Darrow is a straightforward guy, and he likes life to be simple. Lately, it’s been anything but.

Since his beloved grandfather’s stroke, Seth has been focused on getting Grand home again, before his aunt can take advantage of the situation to get her hands on Grand’s valuable real estate. Seth would also like to get his relationship with Prynne on solid ground. He loves her, but can he believe she has her drug use under control?

Meanwhile, things are complicated for the other Whidbey Island friends. Derric has found Rejoice, the sister he left behind in Uganda, but no one – including Rejoice – knows she is his sister. Jenn is discovering feelings for her teammate Cynthia, feelings her born-again Christian mother would never find acceptable. And Becca, hiding under a false identity since her arrival on the island, is concealing the biggest secret of all.

In the final book of the Whidbey Island saga, events build to an astonishing climax as secrets are revealed, hearts are broken, and lives are changed forever."

Perhaps I'll finally pick up the first book... it's around here somewhere...

The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer
Published by: Gallery Books
Publication Date: August 16th, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"The Emmy Award-winning comedian, actress, writer, and star of Inside Amy Schumer and the acclaimed film Trainwreck has taken the entertainment world by storm with her winning blend of smart, satirical humor. Now, Amy Schumer has written a refreshingly candid and uproariously funny collection of (extremely) personal and observational essays.

In The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, Amy mines her past for stories about her teenage years, her family, relationships, and sex and shares the experiences that have shaped who she is—a woman with the courage to bare her soul to stand up for what she believes in, all while making us laugh.

Ranging from the raucous to the romantic, the heartfelt to the harrowing, this highly entertaining and universally appealing collection is the literary equivalent of a night out with your best friend—an unforgettable and fun adventure that you wish could last forever. Whether she’s experiencing lust-at-first-sight while in the airport security line, sharing her own views on love and marriage, admitting to being an introvert, or discovering her cross-fit instructor’s secret bad habit, Amy Schumer proves to be a bighearted, brave, and thoughtful storyteller that will leave you nodding your head in recognition, laughing out loud, and sobbing uncontrollably—but only because it’s over."

Can I want a book just because I love the title so much?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Amy Schumer, Elizabeth George, Ghost Talkers, Mary Robinette Kowal, The Edge of Light, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, Tuesday Tomorrow, WWI

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
Published by: Orbit
Publication Date: August 30th, 2016
Format: Paperback, 592 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Little does Julie Mao realize that when The Scopuli was taken it would sent in motion a chain of events that will forever change the solar system. Jim Holden and his crew make their living as ice miners. Their ship, The Canterbury, receives a distress call from The Scopuli and they go to investigate it. Holden, Naomi, Amos, Alex, and Shed board The Knight to go get a closer look. The Scopuli is derelict. No signs of any life. No signs of Julie. But Holden knows something is wrong, so they head back to The Knight and that's when The Canterbury is blown out of the sky. The Canterbury, the rest of their crew, gone in an instant, by what Holden assumes is a stealth ship belonging to Mars. In his rage at such senseless waste Holden broadcasts the destruction of The Canterbury to the whole solar system, not caring if this triggers a war between Earth and Mars. Not caring about any ramifications, just hoping for justice for the friends he lost. But Holden hasn't quite connected the dots. The five of them should have died on The Canterbury because whatever they found on The Scopuli is worth killing for. He's determined to find out exactly what it all means, damn the consequences.

Detective Miller has been taken off his usual beat on Ceres. His higher ups have given him the case of a missing girl to be investigated as a favor to her wealthy Lunar family. The girl is Julie Mao. She was a decorated pinnace pilot who gave it all up. She became active in politics and moved to Ceres and joined the OPA. The Outer Planets Alliance is a thorn in the side of Detective Miller, but a thorn he can deal with. He understands their desire to not be controlled by Earth. People on Earth can't comprehend what it's like out in the belt so why should they be allowed any say? Of course they're also the ones who call the OPA terrorists. But none of that matters to Miller, he is consumed with the disappearance of Julie. He might not be the best at his job, and he might drink a little too much, but he's also like a dog with a bone, he will figure out what happened to Julie, even after his boss demands he drop the case. But it's too late for Holden, he's a man possessed by Julie. He must find Julie even at the cost of his sanity. It's not long before he learns about The Scopuli and realizes that Holden might be the only one who can answer his questions. But when they finally meet at Eros Station things are much more complicated than either of them imagined and everything is about to change.

It's rare that I pick up a straight up science fiction book. Usually there's some kind of aspect that draws me to the book, a favorite author like Douglas Adams wrote it or it's Star Wars. So out and out science fiction usually gets pushed aside for books with more paranormal elements, thus pushing them into the fantasy end of the spectrum. Leviathan Wakes was actually a book that was thrown in the hat for book club and I can honestly say that when it arrived from Amazon it's heft made me a little hesitant to dive in. Yet I was quickly sucked in, even preaching to other members of my book club that it was a surprisingly fast read that overcomes it's flaws. Because Leviathan Wakes does suffer from a typical science fiction problem, it wants to be the pinnacle of science fiction and to that extent it incorporates so much of everything that has come before it's hard to really laud it on it's own merits. Yes, it stands on it's own, but so much is borrowed or re-interpreted that it's sometimes hard to let it stand alone. You can't help thinking what else it reminds you of. Here's a little Firefly, here's a little Battlestar Galactica, here's a little Doctor Who, here's a little Red Dwarf, here's a little Bladerunner. Each and every one of these instances pulls you out of the book. I can almost forgive Fred Johnson being Yaphet Kotto from Alien, but when Kaylee literally walks onto Holden's ship, well, that's a step too far.

Yet of ALL the references crammed in the most obvious is Bladerunner. Because Detective Miller is just Rick Deckard under another name and without the whole is he, isn't he a replicant controversy. Now, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm just saying it's a thing. It's actually the Noir aspect of this book that is a little divisive, not the Bladerunner homage. And it's not among readers but among the story itself. It's hard to get a Noir story right. You have to have just the right amount of hard drinking, bitterness, and delusions, which Miller does have. But the problem is balancing Miller's plot with Holden's plot. While they do eventually connect and Holden's plot has a mystery at it's center, it is in no way Noir. And when the two storylines merge, the Noir aspect is sacrificed to the bigger storyline. So then why do it at all in the first place if you're going to eventually ditch it? I just feel that this dichotomy between the two narrators should have been thought out more in advance. Yes, it's good to have two very distinct narrators, but they shouldn't feel like they inhabit two different genres. A book needs to be some sort of cohesive whole to work and the styles of these two characters seem to be constantly fighting. In fact I wonder if perhaps this book was written more like the letter game, seeing as James S.A. Corey is actually two people. That might account for the two narrative styles being at such odds. They really needed an editor to fix this.

But then Leviathan Wakes needed an editor in general. There are long sections of the book that could have been excised and the story would have still have been successfully conveyed. This book clocks in at almost six hundred pages and probably two hundred pages could have been omitted. Two hundred pages of battles in spaceship corridors and hiding in spaceship corridors and just hanging in spaceship corridors. And the Amos/Alex thing should have been fixed, because their names are too similar. Oh, and internal monologues! Yes, I know Noir needs these, but as I've already said, the Noir was sacrificed so why not sacrifice a few of these monologues? Oh, and don't think the irony is lost on me that half of James S.A. Corey, the Ty Franck half, is the assistant to George R. R. Martin, an author known for mighty tomes that could use a little tightening up. The extra irony is that he claims he doesn't want to write like his boss... um, ok, so you've totally failed there. But where the editing could have really been used is in the space politics. Yes, I get that with the conflict between Mars and Earth politics have to be included, to an extent, but please, as I've said time and time again, don't bog down your book with politics I don't care about. Contain what needs to be contained and omit the rest. I get too much of regular politics, I don't need to add space politics to this as well. In fact this was a flaw that always grated on me with Battlestar Galactica, too much politics! There's only so much I can take and only so much needed. So bring on the editor!

Though the faults of the book don't take away from the fact that in the end it was still enjoyable and I look forward to reading Caliban's War. The reason for this is that James S.A. Corey has created a believable future. Sometimes when writers imagine the future and how our future will look like in outer space it's just ludicrously wrong. They think too big, too broad, too many aliens. Instead mankind has had about two hundred years in outer space and human genetics, language, and politics are shifting, but not radically, instead at a normal pace that we can see as possible. Outer planets resent the control exerted by Earth, we still can't go beyond our own galaxy to the far reaches of the universe. Mining the other planets for ice to have enough water is big business. These little things like survival and control are big concerns. As for humans themselves, it's interesting to read about what would hypothetically happen to people born outside the confines of gravity, known here as Belters. How it would effect not just their genetic makeup but how their bones would be effected. They are taller and thinner because of this lack of gravity. Reproduction is more difficult. They've developed sign language from the necessity of spacesuits, and therefore their own linguistic mutations with the Belter patois. They are also viewed as different and therefore racial tensions erupt. But this is all believable. This could happen. This might happen. This makes me really need to start the next book.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alien, Backlog Bonanza, Belters, Bladerunner, BSG, Caliban's War, Deckard, Doctor Who, Firefly, GRRM, Holden, James S.A. Corey, Julie Mao, Kaylee, Leviathan Wakes, Miller, Noir, Outer Space, Red Dwarf, Science Fiction

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Published by: Knopf
Publication Date: September 9th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

The famous actor Arthur Leander died on the last night of the old world. He wasn't one to suffer like those in the ER on that snowy night in Toronto hailing the arrival of the Georgian Flu which would kill all but one in two hundred people. Arthur had a fatal heart attack onstage during his star performance in King Lear. He'd never know of the horrors that came after or of how he was a tenuous link between some of the survivors. He was blissfully ignorant of what was to come. Twenty years later Kirsten Raymonde is touring around what used to be Michigan with the Traveling Symphony. When she was a young girl she was in a production of King Lear with the great Arthur Leander. Now she is in a troupe that specializes in bringing Shakespeare to the various outposts of remaining civilization. The troupe tried other playwrights, but people seem to want what was best of the old world, and Shakespeare and classical music remind them of that. While Kirsten herself was too young to remember what was lost from the world before or even the first year after the collapse, she scours abandoned houses for mentions of the great actor who was kind to her and who gave her her most prized possessions, two issues of the comic Station Eleven.

To understand how lives have played out in this new world, we must go back to the previous world. The world where Arthur's first wife was working on a comic, a world where his second wife was conspiciously present at a vapid dinner party celebrating Arthur's wedding anniversary to his first wife. The birth of Arthur's son while Arthur was already moving on to wife number three. Arthur's oldest friend betraying him while his dearest friend Clark will live long past Arthur's death. Each and every step and decision plays a role in a world that Arthur could never imagine and which he will never live to see. A world where an airport is a sanctuary, where survival is insufficient, and where Shakespeare brings people hope. A world that is at one and the same time embracing the past while trying to forge a future. A world that is dangerous to live in. A world where a prophet could spell destruction and ruin for people who only wish to live as they choose. Every moment could be these people's last, yet their survived the end of the world so they must try to rebuild it. To move forward, no matter the cost.

The irony isn't lost on me that a book that touts the credo from Star Trek that "survival is insufficient" is literally only about survival, and I really hope it wasn't lost on the author. There are many ways in which Station Eleven differs from your typical post-apocalyptic story, but the lofty ideals of the book might be the biggest difference. It wants so much to be different, to show that art is needed for sanity and survival, yet in the end all the Traveling Symphony's journey boils down to is surviving to the next day, the next outpost of civilization. If it wasn't for this dichotomy between the book's ideals and what the book actually represents I think it would have worked better. Station Eleven is an intriguing mood piece that embraces different ways of storytelling, from lists to dialogue to interviews, slipping through time and the character's timelines to create a vibrant world which in no way embraces the ideals of that Star Trek quote. It just feels so shoehorned in. Like Emily St. John Mandel heard that line of dialogue and jumped off from there, forgetting that the story and this motto should actually connect. And it's not that I don't fully embrace the idea that we need more to survive, it's just that Station Eleven, boiled down to it's essence, is only about surviving, nothing more. The book might have lofty ideals, but in the end it's a post-apocalyptic story, and those are all about survival.

Aside from this quibble I liked that the narrative wasn't your typical post-apocalyptic story. Post-apocalyptic stories tend to fall into two categories, one is that the apocalypse has just happened and our hero or heroine has to survive the initial destruction of the world to help rebuild it in some nebulous future. The second is that the apocalypse happened generations ago and our hero or heroine is living under a not ideal future regime, in other words, think The Hunger Games. Here we see the initial outbreak, but then we flash forward. Not to some "Hunger Games" world but to a more pioneer world, where the old world isn't long gone, but the new world hasn't fully been formed yet. It's not just about getting from day to day, but also trying to come to terms with the life they now have while still clinging to memories of the past. This, coupled with the flashbacks to the world before the flu, makes this a more intimate and personal story. It's not so much what happened to the world but what happened to these people. What happened to these characters who were connected to Arthur and how they survived in this new world. I can't help thinking about when asked what she most missed of the old world Kirsten won't answer, because it's too personal, and that, right there is why this book works. It's about these people.

Yet by spending so much time with these people and with their pasts we don't get any sense of what the future holds. Perhaps we could say that "survival is insufficient" should be the outlook going forward. All we see is them coping, surviving day to day, year to year, without any real forward momentum. The Traveling Symphony and how they are continually stuck touring one route, year in, year out, kind of symbolizes humanity at it's current stage. They have found a comfortable routine and now don't deviate from it. Yes, their might be risk venturing off the accustomed path, but humanity is stagnating. They aren't trying to fix the world, they're just living in it. My mind kept getting stuck on questions like why don't people try to do this that or the other. Why can't they have electricity? Get some smart people together, congregate in a large community, and FIGURE IT OUT! Twenty years and they have grown lazy. Sure, the author tries to romanticize the situation a bit with the Traveling Symphony harking back to days gone by when troupes traveled the countryside bringing culture to the masses and how Shakespeare himself lived in a plague ridden time. Yes, these are interesting comparisons, but also remember people in Shakespeare's time were trying to better themselves, to move forward, not live in the past and not move on. The only flicker of hope happens in the last few pages; while personally I could have done with the hope a little earlier.

And, of course, because this is a post-apocalyptic story the Big Bad has to be a Prophet who has multiple wives and runs off anyone who doesn't play by his rules. This is Stephen King 101 people. Think of The Stand. This Prophet is the main reason this book is problematic to me. Yes, I can look beyond the lack of hope, I can look beyond the disconnect between the message and what really happens, but I can't look beyond cliched characters that bog down the narrative. This character should have been spooky, terrifying, someone to run from. Instead he's meh. It's not just that his beliefs are bog standard for any post-apocalyptic Prophet, it's that he's predictable. The least you can do with going with a cliche is embrace it. Go all out! Make him over the top, someone so big for their britches that the megalomania carries the character on a wave of crazy through his predictability. Instead I just hoped for him to have as little time on the page as possible. As for his back story... well, if you didn't figure out who he was about two seconds into his first mysterious reveal, aka what he named his dog, there might not be any hope for you. Now I'm not going to spoil this reveal for you, because that is truly cruel, but the predictability of who he is and how he got this way, well, it quite literally smacked this book down a few stars. In fact it made the whole back end of the book slide from a pretty original story into predictable meh.

But in the end what did I expect from a story where the lynchpin is a dislikable actor? Yes, we could go on one of those endless debates about how there are antiheroes and antiheroines, and that characters don't need to be likable, yeah yeah, the Vanity Fair of it all; but I'll always come to the same conclusion, sure, they don't need to be likable, but they at least have to be fascinating. For some people, aka, the people who love to watch Entertainment Tonight and read People and think TMZ is the best news out there might take glee in having an actor, even a fictitious one, be the lynchpin to a story. Because they like celebrity gossip and dishing dirt. But for me celebrity in and of itself doesn't make a character interesting. In fact all Arthur's cheating and his storytelling about his home island made me just want to smack him for his pretensions. The more I learned about him the more I disliked him. I honestly can not see the draw to him. Telling us over and over what a great actor he is doesn't make it so. Making him your lynchpin in a story without fully investing the time to make him fascinating makes your narrative weak. Station Eleven started out so strong, with memorable visuals and interesting developments, like the comic book, but it kept falling off in quality till it ended with a whimper. Much like what the dog Luli would do if reprimanded.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Apocalypse, Backlog Bonanza, Big Bad, Celebrities, Comics, Emily St. John Mandel, King Lear, Post-Apocalyptic, Prophet, Shakespeare, Star Trek, Station Eleven, Stephen King, The Hunger Games, The Stand, Vanity Fair

Monsoon Summer by Julia Gregson
Published by: Touchstone
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 464 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"By the award-winning author of East of the Sun, an epic love story moving from England to India, about the forbidden love between a young Indian doctor and an English midwife.

Oxfordshire, 1947. Kit Smallwood, hiding a painful secret and exhausted from nursing soldiers during the Second World War, escapes to Wickam Farm where her friend is setting up a charity sending midwives to the Moonstone Home in South India.

Then Kit meets Anto, an Indian doctor finishing his medical training at Oxford. But Kit’s light skinned mother is in fact Anglo-Indian with secrets of her own, and Anto is everything she does not want for her daughter.

Despite the threat of estrangement, Kit is excited for the future, hungry for adventure, and deeply in love. She and Anto secretly marry and set off for South India—where Kit plans to run the maternity hospital she’s helped from afar.

But Kit’s life in India does not turn out as she imagined. Anto’s large, traditional family wanted him to marry an Indian bride and find it hard to accept Kit. Their relationship under immense strain, Kit’s job is also fraught with tension as they both face a newly independent India, where riots have left millions dead and there is deep-rooted suspicion of the English. In a rapidly changing world, Kit’s naiveté is to land her in a frightening and dangerous situation...

Based on true accounts of European midwives in India, Monsoon Summer is a powerful story of secrets, the nature of home, the comforts and frustrations of family, and how far we’ll go to be with those we love."

The time period, the subject matter, this book has everything going for it.

The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville
Published by: Del Rey
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 224 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"A thriller of war that never was—of survival in an impossible city—of surreal cataclysm. In The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville entwines true historical events and people with his daring, uniquely imaginative brand of fiction, reconfiguring history and art into something new.

“Beauty will be convulsive. . . .”

1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world forever.

1950. A lone Surrealist fighter, Thibaut, walks a new, hallucinogenic Paris, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city, he must join forces with Sam, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins, and make common cause with a powerful, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse.

But Sam is being hunted. And new secrets will emerge that will test all their loyalties—to each other, to Paris old and new, and to reality itself."

This sounds... odd. But I like odd, so it could work.

Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman
Published by: Faber and Faber
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016
Format: Paperback, 368 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Cold Hand in Mine was first published in the U.K. in 1975 and in the U.S. in 1977. The story 'Pages from a Young Girl's Journal' won the Aickman World Fantasy Award in 1975. It was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1973 before appearing in this collection.

Cold Hand in Mine stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full, being more ambiguous than standard ghost stories. Throughout the stories the reader is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul. There is also a nod to the conventional vampire story ('Pages from a Young Girl's Journal') but all the stories remain unconventional and inconclusive, which perhaps makes them all the more startling and intriguing."

I admit I've never heard of Robert Aickman, but the cover and the description sound like a British Shirley Jackson. So if I wasn't already sold, the fact that Reece Shearsmith wrote the into, well, now I would be. 

Three Sisters, Three Queens by Philippa Gregory
Published by: Touchstone
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 576 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author behind the upcoming Starz original series The White Princess, a gripping new Tudor story featuring King Henry VIII's sisters Mary and Margaret, along with Katherine of Aragon, vividly revealing the pivotal roles the three queens played in Henry VIII's kingdom.

As sisters they share an everlasting bond; As queens they can break each other’s hearts.

When Katherine of Aragon is brought to the Tudor court as a young bride, the oldest princess, Margaret, takes her measure. With one look, each knows the other for a rival, an ally, a pawn, destined—with Margaret’s younger sister Mary—to a sisterhood unique in all the world. The three sisters will become the queens of England, Scotland, and France.

United by family loyalties and affections, the three queens find themselves set against each other. Katherine commands an army against Margaret and kills her husband James IV of Scotland. But Margaret’s boy becomes heir to the Tudor throne when Katherine loses her son. Mary steals the widowed Margaret’s proposed husband, but when Mary is widowed it is her secret marriage for love that is the envy of the others. As they experience betrayals, dangers, loss, and passion, the three sisters find that the only constant in their perilous lives is their special bond, more powerful than any man, even a king."

I admit my love of The White Queen miniseries did reignite my love of Gregory... but now hearing about all the re-casting for The White Princess... well, not as excited as I was. So here's your obligatory Gregory for the year.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: China Mieville, Cold Hand in Mine, Julia Gregson, Monsoon Summer, Philippa Gregory, Reece Shearsmith, Robert Aickman, Shirley Jackson, The Last Days of New Paris, THe White Princess, The White Queen

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
Published by: Pocket
Publication Date: 1987
Format: Paperback, 306 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy
 
Richard MacDuff is overworked. He's a computer geek for the genius Gordon Way. He has so much work in fact that instead of doing it he spends all his time trying to figure out how his new couch got wedged in his stairwell. It's a physical impossibility. Another side affect of being overworked is forgetting to pick up his girlfriend, Susan, Gordon's sister, for their dinner engagement with Richard's old professor, Reg Chronotis. Reg's dinner is far from relaxing, seeing as there's a horse in Reg's bathroom after dinner and on his way home Richard sees the ghost of his boss, whom was killed in a freak accident just a short while earlier. Upon getting home Richard freaks out and breaks into Susan's apartment to steal her answering machine's tape which might incriminate him by scaling the outside of her building. In other words, he totally overreacts. He is caught out in this by a very odd old classmate of his, now going by the name of Dirk Gently.

The fact is, everything has gone to hell in a hand basket and Richard turns to the basket case Dirk to help him out. Yet Dirk doesn't investigate things in a normal manner. He's a holistic detective, meaning, he'll follow up on things that strike his interest that may seem totally unrelated to the job at hand. But Dirk is convinced that because of everything's interconnectivity, it will all work out, he's very new age is Dirk. By working with the old adage of Sherlock Holmes; "once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth," leads the duo to a time machine, ghosts of long dead aliens inhabiting people, and the answer as to how Richard's couch ended up defying the laws of physics. There might have been a temporary door where there shouldn't have been. But that's the least of their worries.

The first time I read this I was on a train. This was my first big trip from home without the family and I was going to California with my two best friends. I was in the midst of Douglas Adams worship. I had always known who he was but I was never much of a pleasure reader when in High School. That all changed once I left High School. I devoured the who Hitchhiker's Trilogy, all five books, as fast as I could. I thought, traveling away from home without the parents was a new adventure and I'd re-read the first Hitchhiker's book. It was this whole journey theme I thought was appropriate at the time. I can at least confirm that trying to bathe in a train sink does make you abundantly aware of needing to know where your towel is. Yet I never got around to re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, instead I picked up a new to me Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. From LA to Chicago, for 57 hours I just devoured the book, blind to the dusty winter landscape outside the windows.

Re-reading the book years later I realize I remembered next to nothing of the plot. Really, if someone where to ask me, before now, what happened in the book I would have said it has something to do with Dodos, I think, and Dirk doesn't show up till half-way into the book. Shameful that I could remember so little. Though there's this weird problem I seem to have that anything I read on a train I can't retain. Yes, I'm totally blaming Amtrak for my failing faculties. Yet I could have rattled on and on about the history of the book and how it was originally a Doctor Who episode that was only partially filmed and those scenes were later used in another episode but the original conceit then became this book and now there is a book about the Doctor Who episode, it is all very wibbly wobbly, timey wimey, and I'm sure Douglas would love that. Even my book, which I bought way before his death, says "The Dazzling Bestseller by the Author of The Salmon of Doubt." The Salmon of Doubt came out in 2002 and this paperback is from 1988... so could someone please explain that to me?

Anyway, out of the time vortex, the reason I picked this up again was because there is, or was, a tv show based on the books. It was awesome but, now since the idiots at Channel 4 have cancelled it, it's now past tense referenced, but isn't Channel 4 only online now anyway? So Channel 4 is kind of past tense itself. There where three episodes including the pilot. All about an hour with Steve Managan as Dirk, who most people will probably know from the Matt LeBlanc show Episodes. The show was so marvelous and loony and perfect, the pilot with the cat made me cry and cry, that, obviously, before I knew it was cancelled. Of course, in the way of the world of Douglas Adams where his work is constantly being re-interpreted we are on the cusp of an American version of Dirk produced by IDW staring the lovely Samuel Barnett. But who knows how that will turn out. Eight episode and then cancelled? The new series points to the fact that the world, and in particular me, need more Dirk immediately. Also I never did get around to reading the sequel (still haven't) and as I've said, I remembered nothing of the book,

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is everything that is wonderful about Adams, blending absurd aliens with classical poetry. Past, present, and future all commingling with an element of the supernatural while still being hilariously funny. In other words, if there was one writer whose work embodied the essence of Doctor Who it would be Douglas Adams. It wasn't just that he wrote for the show, he had a comedic understanding of the pitfalls of time travel wherein a missing cat case that Dirk was working on ends up being irrelevant because in the new timeline they've created the cat never went walkabout. I wish they hadn't cancelled the show and I wish Adams was still alive to write more about Dirk and his adventures... but at least I still have the next book to look forward too... it's time for The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Though perhaps I'll go back and re-read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency again... I seem to have a recurring problem of never quite remembering the whole plot. Could this be some wibbly wobbly, timey wimey of Adams's own making wherein I will forever be re-reading his books? I won't object if it is.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Backlog Bonanza, Dirk Gently, Doctor Who, Dodo, Douglas Adams, Episodes, Richard MacDuff, Steve Managan, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, The Salmon of Doubt, Trains

Bloodline by Claudia Gray
Published by: Del Rey
Publication Date: August 30th, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Leia Organa has had enough of government work which takes up all her time and accomplishes nothing. When the Rebellion defeated the Empire and created the New Republic she harbored hopes of all the Galactic Senate could do. Decades later as the Senate is divided between the Populists like her, who favor individual rule, and the Centrists, who long for system wide control, the only time they can come together and accomplish anything is in celebration of the old war heroes, like her adoptive father, Bail Organa. Seeing his statue erected on Hosnian Prime Leia comes to the startling decision that she will leave the Senate. She never sees Han, and as for her son Ben and her brother Luke, she doesn't even know where they are. Han likes the idea of the two of them traveling the galaxy together, but he knows Leia too well and knows that politics and action are in her blood; she just needs a challenge. That challenge arrives when a Twi'lek Senator from Ryloth comes before the Senate begging for help against a new Nikto crime cartel. The Nikto, lead by Rinnrivin Di, are filling the void left by the collapse of the Hutt's criminal empire. The Twi'lek Senator begs for the Senate to do what they promised, stop the proliferation of crime.

Leia sees this as a worthy cause and it could be her legacy for when she announces her retirement. But then due to the opposition's suspicions of the Populists she is saddled with a young blood Centrist, Ransolm Casterfo, who seems to be an admirer of the very Empire Leia almost gave her life to defeat. But investigating Rinnrivin Di brings the two together and they realize that despite their differences, they actually have a lot in common and each has traits the other admires. But while they are bridging party lines and bonding their investigation is bringing to light startling discoveries. The Nikto cartel is being funded by a major player. Could it be the remnants of the old Empire? Or a group calling themselves the Amaxine Warriors who seem to be amassing large stores of weapons and troops in the far reaches of the galaxy? Or could the villain be far closer to home? With such unrest in the Senate and a terrifying new move to have a First Senator, a move Palpatine himself would have approved, whomever is moving against the New Republic has the perfect cover and it's up to Leia to unmask them.

Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zhan is THE BOOK that made me a reader. Hands down. It continued the most important story of my childhood, that of the original Star Wars trilogy. When Disney came in and basically redacted the entire Expanded Universe I was sad because I felt that between this radical move and the three prequels I was no longer invested in the Star Wars Universe. And let's face it, The Force Awakens didn't awaken anything in me, being nothing more than a predictable rehash of A New Hope, which is easily the weakest of the original trilogy, or should I say the only Star Wars films that count? I remember a time when just even logging into my Star Wars Galaxies account brought me joy, not to do missions or kill Rancors, which is a ticket to an early grave, but just to walk the worlds and be a part of that universe. When reading a review of Bloodline and how it was written to bridge the gap between the original trilogy and the current film I felt, for the first time, in a long time, a new hope kindling in me. Perhaps this book would address the issues I felt were glossed over in The Force Awakens. Perhaps THIS is what I had been looking for. Of course to put this much pressure on one book with all my expectations isn't wise, yet I still did it.

Bloodline isn't the book that I expected it to be. If you, like me, were looking for the book that would tell you what went wrong with Han and Leia's happily ever after and what exactly turned Ben to the dark side, you're not going to find it here. Han and Leia are still happy, though often apart. If the book could be said to have a glaring plot hole it would be this unexplained scattering of Han and Leia's family. It is inferred that Leia has to have her politics while Han has to have his freedom with his races so to stay happy they are often apart, while Ben is apparently off doing the Jedi thing with Luke. Nothing is ever said outright as to how their family unit reached this point after several decades. Leia just bemoans the fact that it has to be this way. But why? Why does it have to be this way? And right there is your plot hole. We are to just accept that this is the only way their lives could have played out are we? Why is Leia's alienation from her family necessary? And isn't it possible that this alienation is what drove Ben to the dark side? In fact with her staff and colleagues Leia forms a new surrogate family unit and I can't help but think she brought on Ben's defection because of her blithe abandonment of him. But again, this is all inferred from what was never said.

And while Bloodline isn't the book I expected I was won over in the end. We were treated to a rare and intriguing glimpse as to how the Resistance started and how the Empire went about rebuilding to become The First Order. At the beginning of The Force Awakens everything is already in place. Leia is running the Resistance, The First Order is about to make it's presence felt, and it was already a done deal. But it takes a lot to get from singing Ewoks to another war where the Jedi are once again shrouded in myth. A lot had to happen, and while that "lot" didn't happen to feature Ben or Leia and Han going their separate ways we still saw so much. The building of armaments, the funneling of money, the supposedly good senators going to the bad and wanting the days of the Empire back. At the close of this book I felt that despite not having much of what I wanted, it was what I needed. I saw how things fit together in the bigger Star Wars universe. And as this book drew to a close I felt that it was just the beginning. There was a sad inevitability of loss pervading the book, but that just brought us to the beginning of the next chapter, the next story, which happens to be The Force Awakens. For the first time since I saw it in theaters, I thought I just might want to watch it again.

For how much this book won me over I should be very clear that it won me over in THE END, not in the beginning or not even really in the middle. It took quite awhile for me to connect to this book. The reason is simple. Politics. Right now in the US and in fact all over the world politics are crazy. And I mean legitimately capable of being certified and locked away for many many years. Therefore to have this book start out so politics heavy with Leia's work in the Galactic Senate, well, if I really am trying to avoid real politics in order to preserve my own sanity, you can imagine how I feel about reading about non-existent politics. I was having horrible flashbacks to the prequels and all the senators and even freakin' E.T. in those weird pods. Despite having seen The Revenge of the Sith only once I can still remember the horribly written line of dialogue uttered by Padmé "so this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause." I actually groaned aloud at that trite line. So to be right back in the Galactic Senate, even in a "new" form, to be there with memories of cheesy dialogue and ineffectual politics where freakin' Jar Jar could sway the course of events, well, I wasn't pleased. Give me anything but politics and I'm a happy camper.

So it was interesting to see when the shift happened in me from not wanting to pick the book up to not being able to put it down. Because even if the politics bored me, every time I did pick up the book I enjoyed it. Yet it was the "human" connection that made this book work and made me want to keep reading and not needing that reminder every time that I was reading a good book. All the individual characters found places in my heart. From the complex Ransolm Casterfo, to Leia's aid, Greer Sonnel, and her mysterious illness, even to the nefarious Rinnrivin Di, they all captivated me. Once I realized that I was hypothesizing about what exactly was wrong with Greer I knew I was a goner. To care that much that you don't just want but NEED to know if a character has a legitimate health issue, then you're hooked. And right here, this connection, I think that's what I missed in The Force Awakens. I could not care less about Rey. Where she came from, who exactly she is. There's nothing there but a Keira Knightley clone with about the same level of acting skills. She doesn't interest me, and to have a principal character that you're indifferent to? It's a failure before you've even begun. Whereas to have your expectations turned on you, to not care about Ransolm Casterfo to get to a point where it pains you that he isn't around... now that is how you tell a proper story and make a memorable Star Wars story to boot.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Backlog Bonanza, Bloodline, Character, Claudia Gray, Crime, Galactic Senate, Ha Solo, Heir to the Empire, Keira Knightley, Leia, Star Wars, The Force Awakens, The Revenge of the Sith, Timothy Zhan

The Gilded Cage by Lucinda Gray
Published by: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 256 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"After growing up on a farm in Virginia, Walthingham Hall in England seems like another world to sixteen-year-old Katherine Randolph. Her new life, filled with the splendor of upper class England in the 1820s, is shattered when she discovers the corpse of her brother George in a lake on the estate-the tragic accidental drowning of a young man, the coroner reports, despite the wound to George's head.

Katherine is expected to observe the mourning customs and get on with her life, but she can't accept that her brother's death was an accident. A bitter poacher prowls the estate, and strange visitors threaten the occupants of the house. There's a rumor, too, that a wild animal stalks the woods of Walthingham.

Can Katherine retain her sanity long enough to find out the truth? Or will her brother's killer claim her life, too?"

Death, mystery, a dress on the cover unlike anything from 1820? I'm sold!

Crowned and Dangerous by Rhys Bowen
Published by: Berkley
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Nothing is simple when you’re thirty-fifth in line for the British crown, least of all marriage. But with love on their side, and plans to elope, Lady Georgiana Rannoch and her beau Darcy O’Mara hope to bypass a few royal rules...

With Darcy driving me out of London in a borrowed motor car, I soon discover that he isn’t planning to introduce me to the pleasures of sinning in secret—as I had hoped—but to make me his wife!

Of course, there are some quibbles to be dealt with, such as my needing special permission from the King to marry a Roman Catholic and the question of where we might live after the honeymoon. Though he will inherit a title, Darcy is as broke as I am. Even his family’s Irish castle has been sold to a rich American who now employes Darcy’s father as a hired hand.

Throwing these cares to the wind, nothing could deter us from our mission—except perhaps the news that my future father-in-law has just been arrested. It seems the rich American was murdered and Darcy’s father had more than enough motive to do the deed. With the elopement postponed, we head for Ireland where he insists he’s innocent, and it’s up to us to prove it—for better or worse."

Yes, yes, another new Rhys Bowen we should all rejoice, but is anyone else thinking that the castle on the cover looks like Edith's house from Downton Abbey? Just me?

The Darkness Knows by Cheryl Honigford
Published by: Sourcebooks Landmark
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016
Format: Paperback, 352 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"It's October 1938, and radio is king. Vivian Witchell is determined to be a star, and with her new role in the popular detective serial The Darkness Knows, everything she's dreamed of is finally within her grasp. Until the night she steps into the employee lounge and stumbles upon the body of the station's biggest--and most reviled--actress. Clutched in the dead woman's hand is a threatening letter that targets Vivian as the next victim. Suddenly, Viv's biggest worry isn't remembering her lines--it's staying alive."

Radio serial leading up to the start of WWII? Mmm, yes please!

The Bertie Project by Alexander McCall Smith
Published by: Polygon An Imprint of Birlinn Limited
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 224 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Once more, we catch up with the delightful goings-on in the fictitious 44 Scotland Street from Alexander McCall Smith ...Bertie's respite from his overbearing mother, Irene, is over. She has returned from the middle-east, only to discover that her son has been exposed to the worst evils of cartoons, movies and Irn Bru, and her wrath falls upon her unfortunate husband, Stuart. Meanwhile, Bruce has fallen in love with someone other than himself; Big Lou wants to adopt her beloved Finlay; Matthew and Elspeth host the Duke of Johannesburg for supper and Bertie decides he wants to move out of Scotland Street altogether and live with his grandmother, Nicola. Can Irene and Stuart's marriage survive? Will Bruce's new found love last? And will Bertie really leave Scotland Street? Find out in the next installment of this charming, beloved series."

My mom's favorite series. I find it interesting that it's often compared to a shared favorite series, that of the Flavia De Luce mysteries...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 44 Scotland Street, A, Alexander McCall Smith, Cheryl Honigford, Crowned and Dangerous, Downton Abbey, Flavia De Luce, Her Royal Spyness, Lucinda Gray, Rhys Bowen, The Darkness Knows, The Gilded Cage