Vampires: Reloaded

The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Andrew Fukuda has returned vampires to their rightful spot at the top of the food chain.

***Plot Summary***

Boy is human (or heper, as they are called in this book). Boy doesn't want vampires to know that he is heper, or they will eat him. Boy is very good at hiding the fact that he is heper. Humans have been basically hunted to extinction, except for the few that are kept in a breeding program by the government. People are unhappy with government (good to know some things never change . . . even vamps are anti-government) so government announces that there will be a Hunt to catch and eat those last hepers. Lucky vampires want to be chosen by lottery to participate in the Hunt. Unlucky Boy gets chosen instead. Disaster ensues.

***Review***

This is a very fast read, which I consumed, like a vampire consumes a heper, in about two and a half hours. By the end of the book, I was flipping screens frantically to get to the resolution.

Pros: it's pacey. The vampires are bloodthirsty, and not even remotely emo. Yay for non-emo vamps! They also do not sparkle in any way, shape or form. There are no heper/vamp romances, mostly because the vamps are so overcome by bloodlust at the scent of a human that they simply tear into any heper they happen to find. The book is also interesting, because it really reimagines a society of vampires, who have become just as rulebound and civilized as the humans they replaced. There are some interesting twists, one of which is pretty obvious, the other one took me by surprise.

Cons: the book is somewhat predictable. There are some minor issues with the believability of the world building, especially the attitude of the MC toward the captive hepers. It also felt a little incomplete, although this leaves plenty of room for the sequels to fill in the gaps.

I really did enjoy this book, though, and look forward to the next installment in the series. The issues with the book were relatively minor and did not interfere with my enjoyment of the story. And, again, yay for non-sparkly, non-emo vamps.

View all my reviews

A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd

A Duty To The Dead by Charles Todd


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is my first Charles Todd mystery and I would rate it somewhere between 3 and 4 stars.

***Plot Summary***

Elizabeth (Bess) Crawford is a WWI nurse who is on leave because the hospital ship upon which she served, the Brittanic, hit a mine and was sunk. She was injured in the explosion, and returns to England to recover her health before being sent back to the front. While back in England, she is compelled to fulfill a promise she made to a patient prior to his death, to deliver a message to his family. Upon arrival in Kent, at the home of the Grahams, she delivers the message, and is ultimately drawn into the family's affairs as she becomes concerned that a grave injustice has occurred and that a man has been committed to an insane asylum for a murder he did not commit.

***Review***

A Duty to the Dead started out rather slowly, but picked up pace at approximately the fifty percent mark (I read it on a kindle). I really enjoyed the writing, and thought that the main character, Bess Crawford, was well-drawn and likeable. I have read Maisie Dobbs, and enjoyed those as well, and though there are similarities between the two main characters, they are very different women.

One of the things that drew me to this book was the setting. I am a sucker for a good historical mystery, and WWI England is a setting that was a bit different from the series that I have read in the past. The descriptions and other historical background about the setting was convincing.

This book focuses very closely on Bess Crawford, and did not introduce a lot of supporting characters who are likely to reappear from book to book. Her father was an interesting character, and I expect to see him again. There is absolutely no romance in this particular installment, so readers who are looking for an ongoing romantic arc may be disappointed with this book. It is possible that one will be introduced later in the series - I am hopeful that the authors will reveal a romantic interest for Bess. Finally, the ultimate resolution of the mystery made sense, but was a bit predictable. In addition, there were characters who bore responsibility for the events that occurred who emerged largely unscathed. Some remorse for their part in the events would have been nice.

The writing is solid and grammatically correct, and I did not notice typographical errors. I enjoyed this book enough that I will read additional books in the series. Duty to the Dead was an above average read - a high-three-star or low-four-star read.

Paper Towns by John Green

Paper Towns by John Green


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is my second John Green book, although it will not be my last. I already have An Abundance of Katherine's available, and I am certain that I will, at some point, read Looking for Alaska. Mr. Green is an exceptional writer who writes lyrical and compelling books about his youthful characters. I loved this book only slightly less than I adored The Fault In Our Stars.

***Plot Summary***

This book is primarily character driven. The plot is quite slender, actually, set in the final few days before the main character, Quentin, is set to graduate from high school. The book begins with a flashback of an event that occurred when Quentin was younger, and still best friends with his neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman. Quentin is an ordinary young man, while Margo is quite extraordinary - one of those crucible-like characters that tends to clarify and refine the people in her orbit. Quentin has been in love with Margo from afar for years.

The book begins with a crazy night of brilliantly vindictive revenge, planned by Margo to extract vengeance from the people who, at this point, have wronged her. Margo seeks an accomplice for her adventures, and asks Quentin to accompany her. The first part of the book is consumed by their edgy, Bueller-esque adventures. After that night, Margo disappears, and Quentin and his friends spend the remainder of the book trying to discover where she has gone, and whether she wants to be found, through the clues that Margo has left behind.

***Review***

I loved this book. The first part of the book is genuinely funny - Margo is a criminal mastermind par excellence, plotting and executing her revenge with extraordinary precision and cleverness. I laughed out loud several times while I was reading it. Once that night of high-jinks and mayhem is completed, however, the book quickly becomes much more serious.

John Green has created a set of supporting characters that I will remember for a long time. Ben and Radar, Quentin's best friends, and Lacey, who was Margo's best friend and was the victim of one her crazy revenge plots, who was a much better friend to Margo than she realized. Somehow, when Margo leaves, Quentin manages to fill her power position in the school - a spot of blackmail always being useful - and Ben, Radar and Q really come into their own during the waning days of high school, in a way that anyone who has ever graduated from high school will appreciate.

Overall, this book is not as mature, perhaps, as The Fault In Our Stars, but it is the work of a writer who knows teens, who knows how to put together a sentence and tell a story. John Green has a knack, more than any other current writer, for avoiding cliches when he writes about teens. His characters are real, not merely stock representations pulled from the bank of angsty teen characters. They are flawed, interesting and complete.

If you aren't reading John Green, you should be.

Easy by Tammara Webber

Easy by Tammara Webber


My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Tammara Webber consistently writes and publishes books that are high quality. There is no need to qualify the review of this, or, frankly, any, of her self-published books with a tag along the lines of "excellent for a self-published book." I've read all four of the books that she has published. They have attractive covers, and the prose inside of them is well-written, grammatically correct and largely error free. Kudos.

So, with that introduction, there are a few things that I want to say about this book, both about the romance and then, in a moment, about her realistic and sensitive exploration of the subject of college acquaintance sexual assault.

So, first, the romance. This book has been compared to Beautiful Disaster by some of my reader friends. This comparison does a disservice to this book. Easy is better than Beautiful Disaster. So, so, so much better.

I love Jacqueline. She is strong and intelligent and exhibits more than a little bit of backbone. She has a great deal of self-confidence, but even more importantly, she treats herself as though she is a worthy person. She is saddened by the break up of a long term relationship, and is appropriately emotive, but never does she devolve into a caricature of a heroine who wallows in self-pity by collapsing into a mass of self-indulgent drama. Fiction could use a lot more Jacquelines.

The romance is sweet and unfolds naturally. Lucas is a genuinely likeable guy, who treats Jacqueline with respect as their relationship develops. He is the kind of guy that, if you are the mother of a teenaged girl, you hope your daughter will meet when she gets to college. Hardworking, intelligent, unentitled, compassionate, and strong.

This book is worth reading for the romance.

It is, however, the backstory where Ms. Webber really shines. I have no idea what her personal experience includes, but, as a sexual assault prosecutor, I felt that her treatment of college acquaintance sexual assault was beautifully done.

There are only three things required for a rape to occur. A victim, an opportunity, and a rapist. All too often, even in fiction, writers treat rape, especially acquaintance rape, as though, somehow, non-rapists sort of accidentally commit it. This book, thankfully, takes a much more realistic, appropriate, non-victim blaming approach. It is empowering to young women who may have been the victim of this crime, while acknowledging that society, often, treats rape victims in a disparaging, irresponsible, and cruel manner. It is not uncommon for the community to rally around the rapist - the Buck's of the world - while treating the victim as though she has committed some sort of a crime by reporting that she was sexually assaulted.

I don't want to allow this review to digress into a public service announcement, but there is a reason that rape, and especially rape committed by an acquaintance, is an extremely underreported crime. Ms. Webber's book provides an explanation of that phenomenon in a way that is sensitive and well-done. I very much admire her for her treatment of this subject. If she makes one victim feel better - as though it isn't her fault - then she will have accomplished something truly remarkable with this story.

Overall, I'd give this book 4 1/2 stars, and would just say "thank you" to the author.

I wave the white flag of surrender

City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare


My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I've been reading the Mortal Instrument's series through somewhere in the neighborhood of 1200 pages at this point. I made it to 40% of this book before I finally had to admit it.

I simply don't care anymore.

The first three books were flawed, but reasonably entertaining. Book 4 had great promise, although the cliff-hanger ending mildly annoyed me. I should've known that the story was going nowhere when I wasn't consumed by rage at the fact that Cassandra Clare left me in Book 4 at the point that she left me.

So, this book. Yes, it's a DNF. No, I don't think I will be reading anymore of the series. I'm bored with the characters. I get it that Jace is all golden hotness. For the love of all that is holy, I understand that he glimmers, glistens, is luminescent in his goldenness. Can we move on, now, please? He's hot. Fine. And Clary, well, she has evolved from a moderately engaging mundane into one of the worse cases of wish-fulfillment I've. ever. freaking. seen. in. fiction. Can we just call her Clary-Sue and be done with it, please?

As for the secondary characters, I still love Magnus. But he's just not enough to keep me reading. Simon - yeah, I liked him too, until the author stripped him of every single interesting aspect to his character. He's a vampire? Really? He's the most boring vampire I've ever seen. He makes the vampires from Twilight look positively ferocious.

So, yeah, I didn't like this book. I'm done with the series. Because by 40% of the book, nothing has actually happened. Not one thing. Although, it gets an extra star because the cover is really pretty.

The Blade Itself by Markus Sakey

This book was chosen as a group read by a goodreads group. It is unlikely that I would've found, much less read, this book, otherwise. Having said that, I found it to be a well-written, albeit somewhat forgettable, crime drama about an anti-hero.

 

 Plot summary: The book opens with a simple burglary break-in that goes very, very bad. Danny - our anti-hero - and Evan - our antagonist - are partners from the old neighborhood who are engaged in petty thievery. Things get ugly when Evan shoots and badly injures the business owner, and Danny takes off. Evan goes off to prison, and Danny starts to rebuild his life. Seven years later is really when the book begins, with Evan's release from prison, and recontacting of Danny with a plan for Danny to right the wrongs that Evan perceives have been done him by putting together one big score.

 Things rapidly go from bad, to badder, to positively awful, for Danny. Evan has not been rehabilitated by his stint in custody. It becomes clearly early on in the book that things are going to spiral out of control, and that there is the potential for Danny to lose everything that he has built over the preceding seven years.

 Review: The positives about this book: it is well-written and held my attention. I haven't read a lot of Dennis Lehane, but this book did remind me of what I have read of his work. A glimpse into the life of the street thug was interesting. The dialogue was convincing, and the plotting was workmanlike. The supporting characters were well drawn and engaging - Karen, Danny's unlikely girlfriend, the happy-go-lucky but doomed Patrick, Danny's friend from the neighborhood, Debbie, the rough around the edges consort of Evan who named herself after Debbie Harry, the lead singer for Blondie.

 The negatives about this book: in spite of the fact that I enjoyed the book, this will probably be a longer list. I never really connected with Danny. He is an anti-hero, to be sure, and I have a difficult time rooting for the anti-hero. I think that the author attempted to set up a convincing moral choice for Danny, but I don't think he really succeeded in this endeavor. I didn't like the ending at all. It felt, again, like Danny simply escaped responsibility for his own poor choices. I wasn't at all convinced.

Overall, I enjoyed the book enough that I will seek out other books by the author. As a debut it was a good, but not great, effort.

My, how time does fly . . .

I've been ignoring my blog, ignoring reviews, although not ignoring my reading. I can see that, since I am nearly two months behind, there is no chance of catching up.  Instead, I will just jump back in - with both feet.

I'll probably post a few reviews of what I've read for the last six weeks. I've read some pretty good stuff. Lazy, lazy Mayhem.