Some good books, others-not so much
So, I went on vacation-I drank a lot of champagne and had some wonderful meals (well, I was in San Francisco and Napa Valley, what do you expect?) and I read a lot-it was great...and some of the books were wonderful and others....weren't.
1) Harbingers by F. Paul Wilson. Wilson is not the greatest prose stylist in the world, but he is a great storyteller and this latest addition to the Repairman Jack series was very good and much better than it's predecessor. It's full of horror, fear, revenge, action and angst. If you don't like supernatural horror, this isn't the book for you (and truth to tell, I find it a little annoying that Wilson is REALLY dragging this story out, especially since he's rewriting/revisiting a story he's alread written) but it's still a heck of a story. If you haven't read the Repairman Jack series, I really recommend it-just stick with it when it heads into weirdness-and it would help if you read The Keep (a great book) first. It may not seem like it there is a connection, but trust me on this.
2) The Jaguar Hunter by Lucius Shepard. Oy. The reviews on this book were uniformly excellent and I can understand why. The writing is good, and the story plots (it's a collection of short stories) taken one by one are interesting. But as a collection...let's just say as a woman who likes science fiction and has been reading it for over 20 years now, I found it a tad ridiculous. Granted, most of the stories were written in the 80's, but still. It seemed to me that almost every story had a lone man meeting a beautiful woman who turns out to be A) A shapeshifter or B) an alien or C) a spirit that will ruin his life. Honestly, all I could think of were all those old cliches about science fiction being for geeky boys who couldn't meet girls-so they dreamed up their girls in comic books or science fiction. At this point, after reading so many books with well-rounded female characters, it seemed a bit silly.
3) River of Darkness by Rennie Airth. This is a great book. I admit that I read it because my sister recommended it and we don't always agree on books, as she will only read mysteries and my tastes are a little more varied, but she was right about this one. John Madden, who lost hise wife and infant daughter to the influenza epidemic of 1918, and then lived and fought through the horrors of WWI is now at Scotland Yard and investigating the murder of a family in the countryside. Were they targeted? Why? Is it a serial killer? Set against the backdrop of the ending of the War, this is a great book-scary, dramatic, evocative..I loved it. I'm starting to read the sequel A Blood-Dimmed Tide and I expect great things from it. It took Airth six years to get it written, so I'm hoping the next one (I've heard) won't take as long
4) Newton's Wake by Ken Mcleod. Yes, I liked this book. It's not the best written book, but it was very entertaining and fun. If you like science fiction, this story about a clan of interstellar explorers/gang that controls a main passage though space and it's main character, a member of the clan who lands on an unknown planet and inadvertantly starts a war with three other sentient races. It was not deep, but it was fun.
5) Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr. I first started reading this book about a year ago, when I read the first book in this trilogy-March Violets. It takes place in Nazi Germany, circa 1936. The 2nd book, The Pale Criminal, takes place in 1938 and the third book of the trilogy, A German Requiem, atkes place after the war, in 1947. These are three great books, depsite the fact it took me a year to get to them. Set against Nazi Germany, Benard Gunther, a private detective, tries to live his life and earn a living, while still being a decent person who hates the Nazis. Every case he gets involved in brings him straight up against those he hates the most, and each time he believes he has at least delayed the horror what is bound to happen, he finds that he has not done even that. The second book-The Pale Criminal is deeply scary in that you know if Bernie runs afoul of the person who hired him (the Nazi Heydrich), you know he'll be killed. But the criminal of the title is good friends with someone even worse...Himmler. Actually, the pale criminal could refer to a variety of people, Himmler among them-so it's anyones guess whether he's referring to the actual killer or the all the Nazis. These books follow all the traditions of noir fiction-the tough guy dialogue, the perverse physical descriptions, the first-person narrative, so you never know exactly what is going on-until the end, when you find out just how badly the main character has been kept in the dark. The Pale Criminal is a bit different in that, if you know a bit of German history, you know that no matter how hard Bernie tries he cannot prevent Kristallnacht from taking place and nor can he prevent the demonization of the Jews.
Also, Democrats have taken the House, may take take the Senate and Rumsfeld has resigned..Yay Democrats! They aren't an organized political party (like the Republicans are) but my heart will always be with them....
1) Harbingers by F. Paul Wilson. Wilson is not the greatest prose stylist in the world, but he is a great storyteller and this latest addition to the Repairman Jack series was very good and much better than it's predecessor. It's full of horror, fear, revenge, action and angst. If you don't like supernatural horror, this isn't the book for you (and truth to tell, I find it a little annoying that Wilson is REALLY dragging this story out, especially since he's rewriting/revisiting a story he's alread written) but it's still a heck of a story. If you haven't read the Repairman Jack series, I really recommend it-just stick with it when it heads into weirdness-and it would help if you read The Keep (a great book) first. It may not seem like it there is a connection, but trust me on this.
2) The Jaguar Hunter by Lucius Shepard. Oy. The reviews on this book were uniformly excellent and I can understand why. The writing is good, and the story plots (it's a collection of short stories) taken one by one are interesting. But as a collection...let's just say as a woman who likes science fiction and has been reading it for over 20 years now, I found it a tad ridiculous. Granted, most of the stories were written in the 80's, but still. It seemed to me that almost every story had a lone man meeting a beautiful woman who turns out to be A) A shapeshifter or B) an alien or C) a spirit that will ruin his life. Honestly, all I could think of were all those old cliches about science fiction being for geeky boys who couldn't meet girls-so they dreamed up their girls in comic books or science fiction. At this point, after reading so many books with well-rounded female characters, it seemed a bit silly.
3) River of Darkness by Rennie Airth. This is a great book. I admit that I read it because my sister recommended it and we don't always agree on books, as she will only read mysteries and my tastes are a little more varied, but she was right about this one. John Madden, who lost hise wife and infant daughter to the influenza epidemic of 1918, and then lived and fought through the horrors of WWI is now at Scotland Yard and investigating the murder of a family in the countryside. Were they targeted? Why? Is it a serial killer? Set against the backdrop of the ending of the War, this is a great book-scary, dramatic, evocative..I loved it. I'm starting to read the sequel A Blood-Dimmed Tide and I expect great things from it. It took Airth six years to get it written, so I'm hoping the next one (I've heard) won't take as long
4) Newton's Wake by Ken Mcleod. Yes, I liked this book. It's not the best written book, but it was very entertaining and fun. If you like science fiction, this story about a clan of interstellar explorers/gang that controls a main passage though space and it's main character, a member of the clan who lands on an unknown planet and inadvertantly starts a war with three other sentient races. It was not deep, but it was fun.
5) Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr. I first started reading this book about a year ago, when I read the first book in this trilogy-March Violets. It takes place in Nazi Germany, circa 1936. The 2nd book, The Pale Criminal, takes place in 1938 and the third book of the trilogy, A German Requiem, atkes place after the war, in 1947. These are three great books, depsite the fact it took me a year to get to them. Set against Nazi Germany, Benard Gunther, a private detective, tries to live his life and earn a living, while still being a decent person who hates the Nazis. Every case he gets involved in brings him straight up against those he hates the most, and each time he believes he has at least delayed the horror what is bound to happen, he finds that he has not done even that. The second book-The Pale Criminal is deeply scary in that you know if Bernie runs afoul of the person who hired him (the Nazi Heydrich), you know he'll be killed. But the criminal of the title is good friends with someone even worse...Himmler. Actually, the pale criminal could refer to a variety of people, Himmler among them-so it's anyones guess whether he's referring to the actual killer or the all the Nazis. These books follow all the traditions of noir fiction-the tough guy dialogue, the perverse physical descriptions, the first-person narrative, so you never know exactly what is going on-until the end, when you find out just how badly the main character has been kept in the dark. The Pale Criminal is a bit different in that, if you know a bit of German history, you know that no matter how hard Bernie tries he cannot prevent Kristallnacht from taking place and nor can he prevent the demonization of the Jews.
Also, Democrats have taken the House, may take take the Senate and Rumsfeld has resigned..Yay Democrats! They aren't an organized political party (like the Republicans are) but my heart will always be with them....
posted by SHbookworm at 8:26 AM
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