As much as I want to keep reading these as soon as new sequels are released, I think I need to take a break from The Thursday Murder Club and wait untAs much as I want to keep reading these as soon as new sequels are released, I think I need to take a break from The Thursday Murder Club and wait until a few more books have come out so I don't have such a long wait between installments. Because Richard Osman loves nothing more than subverting hardcore detective novel fans' expectations, these books have to be read sequentially, and unlike traditional detective series you can't just pick a random mystery to start with and dip in and out of the series. The events of the previous book's mystery, going all the way back to the first book, directly influence what happens in all the sequels, and you can't drop in without having the necessary backstory. And unfortunately, going so long between books means a lot of the details are starting to get lost for me. I'm definitely going to have to re-read this series from Book One eventually, but it's a credit to Osman's skill and the sheer delight that is the cold-case solving club of Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim (plus a few new helpers who are de facto members of the gang now) means that I'm genuinely looking forward to this.
The Last Devil to Die features one of my favorite detective novel tropes - the shady antiques dealer - so I was onboard basically from page one. Osman's preference for Elizabeth shows once again, as this is yet another Elizabeth-heavy story. I'm still at the point where I will happily take any information I can get about this character, so I ultimately didn't mind that she was taking center stage once again, but I have to admit that I'm starting to feel a little sorry for the other three members of the club and how they never really get to shine as brightly as Elizabeth does. I mean I get it - she's stiff competition when it comes to cool backstories. But I hope Osman lets the others get their time in the spotlight soon....more
A rock-solid installment in the ongoing Aubrey/Maturin adventures! All the classics are here, including Jack/Stephen banter, some spy antics, potentiaA rock-solid installment in the ongoing Aubrey/Maturin adventures! All the classics are here, including Jack/Stephen banter, some spy antics, potential mutinies, Aubrey being a retired fuckboy, naval battles (that are of course all created pretty much verbatim from official historical accounts) and of course, one of my favorite quotes from the entire series so far:
"Jack loved [Stephen], and had not the least objection to granting him all the erudition in the world, while remaining inwardly convinced that in all practical matters other than physic and surgery Stephen should never be allowed out alone."...more
I read the first book in the Alex Stern series, Ninth House so long ago that I had completely forgotten to be on the lookout for the sequel. So it wasI read the first book in the Alex Stern series, Ninth House so long ago that I had completely forgotten to be on the lookout for the sequel. So it was a delight to see it pop up under New Releases when I was searching for ebooks to rent from the library - I got it and immediately dove in.
I then realized by around the third chapter that I had forgotten a huge chunk of the plot from Ninth House, so the sequel got shelved while I checked out the first book from the library and re-read it. Then it was Take Two.
Overall, this is a really satisfying sequel! I don't feel like it's a spoiler to let people know that yes, we do get a satisfying conclusion to the "Darlington got sucked into hell" plotline from the first book - Bardugo is so relentlessly cruel to her protagonist (in a good way!) that part of me was worried she was going to keep Darlington in a limbo state just to keep torturing Alex. (Seriously, can this girl please have one good day? It got to the point where I was comforted even by the brief scenes where she gets to sit down and actually eat a meal.) This book also has Bardugo expanding on the lore she established in the first book, and moving the scope of the story beyond the Yale campus. And this, unfortunately, is to the story's detriment.
Something started bugging me about the whole Darlington plot all the way back in Book One, and the sequel, which establishes that Darlington is not only stuck in hell but is also a demon now, really crystallized what the problem is.
It's so simple and so obvious that I can't believe none of Bardugo's editors pointed this out to her: the characters constantly repeating that Darlington's a demon doesn't land, because we haven't seen any other demons in this story before. As the readers, we have absolutely no frame of reference for what it means to be a demon in Alex Stern's universe, and therefore we have no idea what the stakes of Darlington's current state really are. Having Alex & Co face off against a different demon in the first book would have gone a long way in making readers better understand what was at stake when Darlington got dragged into hell. Forgive me for referencing Supernatural in 2025, but at least that show understood that the viewers need to see demons doing demon stuff for a few episodes before one of the main characters gets turned into one.
Bardugo also introduces some new supernatural creatures, including a vampire. Alex Stern learns that vampires exist in this universe at the same time I as the reader did, and once again, I have no frame of reference for what that means for this story! And, thanks to the vampire being a C-plot in the story while Alex is more occupied with how to get into hell, we have an extremely frustrating sequence of events where Alex meets a vampire and then doesn't tell anyone about it for days. It started to feel like Bardugo was either making stuff up as she went along with no plan, or that she has an expansive cast of supernatural creatures on deck in her brain and no idea how to introduce them organically into the story, and neither of those theories bode well for Book Three.
She also seems to have gotten bored of the secret societies angle, which is weird, because that was kind of the entire selling point of the series? Ninth House had Alex overseeing multiple rituals and interacting with the societies on a regular basis; in Hell Bent, they're a barely-mentioned presence. It seems like the whole "secrete societies at Yale practice occult magic" was actually just the jumping-off point for the story Bardugo actually wanted to write, which seems to be a knockoff of the show Angel? And I'm not knocking Angel, that show was great, but Bardugo, bless her, is no Marti Noxon.
Also the very end of the book (I'm going to try to keep this spoiler-free, I swear) introduces what I can only describe as a wacky sidekick for Alex Stern's growing gang of supernatural investigators, and the whole thing felt so tonally off from the rest of the book that it almost threw me out of the story. The Alex Stern series is many things but funny is absolutely not one of them, so introducing a character who seems intended to function as comic relief was a weird choice, to say the least. I won't even be able to enjoy this character in the sequel, because the whole time I'll be waiting for Bardugo to pull the rug out from under me and reveal that nope, this isn't a fun new friend, this is another reminder from the universe that good things don't happen to Alex Stern!
Overall, a solid sequel that resolves most of the hanging threads left over from the first book while setting up new adventures for the sequel, but Bardugo is starting to lose control of the story and while I'm still going to read Book Three, I don't have a lot of faith in her ability to bring this all together at the end....more
I'm always so behind when it comes to keeping up with new releases, so many thanks to whichever one of my followers was reading this a few weeks ago, I'm always so behind when it comes to keeping up with new releases, so many thanks to whichever one of my followers was reading this a few weeks ago, because it popped up in my feed and I would never have been aware of it otherwise.
The Haunting of Hill House has a permanent spot on my list of Top Five Favorite Books, so the fact that A Haunting on the Hill isn't just a sequel to Shirley Jackson's masterpiece, but is a sequel that's been officially authorized by her estate, means this moved to the top of my to-read pile immediately.
The plot loosely follows the setup of the original, where a small group of very different people are all brought to Hill House with a specific purpose. Our protagonist is Holly, who rents Hill House with the idea of using it as a retreat to finish work on her latest play. She's accompanied by her girlfriend (who is also writing the music for the show) and two actors who have been cast in the play. Naturally, everyone is bringing their own baggage and issues with them, and Hill House is exactly the wrong place for that.
As a standalone haunted house story, this is a spectacular novel. The setpieces and imagery that Hand conjures are geniunely creepy and done so, so well. Make no mistake - this book is scary. (True story: one night I was reading this and heard a weird noise in the other room, so I got up and checked all the closets and under the bed)
But A Haunting on the Hill suffers from the inevitable comparisons to its predecessor, and ultimately, it can't measure up. The true masterstroke of The Haunting of Hill House is the way Jackson builds the tension slowly, starting out small with little things that could have a rational explanation, until you're so deep into it you don't realize how you got there. Meanwhile, in Hand's novel, Holly is on her way to view Hill House for the first time (she hasn't even gotten to the house yet!) when she sees a huge hare that smiles at her with human teeth. Bone-chilling and creepy? Yes. Subtle? No.
Credit where credit is due - Hand makes the wise decision not to rehash what happened at Hill House in the original, only having characters occasionally mention something. Hand invents a more recent tragedy about a family who stayed in Hill House in the 1980's, and most of the haunting seems to center around them. Hand also delves into the nursery at Hill House and the idea that it's the nexus of the haunting, which the original novel touched on but never explored in detail. (Hand doesn't either, but it was nice to see her hit the same beats as Jackson).
I really wonder if the ideal reader for this would be someone who's never read The Haunting of Hill House. Comparing it to the original is what killed this book for me, but on the other hand, someone reading Hand's novel who's never read Jackson's book will definitely feel like they're not getting the whole story.
Four stars as its own haunted house story, two stars as a worthy successor to The Haunting of Hill House....more
TBH I should have abandoned this the second time (yes, it happens twice) a character in this Regency-era story uses the phrase "cut to the chase." TBH I should have abandoned this the second time (yes, it happens twice) a character in this Regency-era story uses the phrase "cut to the chase." ...more
This is one of those books where the story of how I got it is better than the book itself. I bought this book in Door County, Wisconsin - specificallyThis is one of those books where the story of how I got it is better than the book itself. I bought this book in Door County, Wisconsin - specifically, Fair Isle Books on Washington Island, which is a central setting in this mystery. The shop is lovely, the island is lovely (if you're ever there, make sure you go to Nelsen's Hall and do a shot of bitters), and it's genuinely disappointing that I didn't enjoy this as much as I wanted to.
The setup is great for a mystery series debut, because Annelise Ryan doesn't mess with tradition and gives us the usual cozy mystery setup of a single woman with a dark past who owns a quirky small business. Morgan Carter has taken over the ownership of her family's occult bookstore in a small beach town in Wisconsin following the gruesome (and as yet unsolved) murder of her parents. She is also a cryptozoologist, and the fact that spellcheck doesn't recognize that as a word tells you how seriously you should take that as a profession. The book kicks off with what can either be viewed as an homage or a straight rip-off of Jaws, when a kayaker turns up dead with mysterious bite marks on his body and Morgan is called in to give her professional opinion. And cue the uneasy partnership with the local cop/obvious future love interest, and we're off to the races.
I think the main issue was that, despite Annelise Ryan's best efforts, I never for one second got even close to believing that there really is a Nessie-esque creature stalking the waters of Lake Michigan and killing kayakers. Ryan obviously has a science background, or at least did plenty of research, but no matter how many paragraphs are devoted to Morgan explaining how a giant amphibious creature could definitely, possibly be out there, I never bought into it. (Seriously, though, the best Morgan can do is "there are underwater cave systems where the creature could be hiding. Caves, Morgan? Caves?! How does this thing fit? What is it eating?)
At one point, as she's walking the reader through one of her theories, Morgan admits that "it's nearly impossible to prove that something doesn't exist", which is the whole foundation on which the scam of crpyozoology rests. Part of me wonders if the book would have been more fun if Ryan had leaned into this angle, and made Morgan less of a scientist with some slightly out-there theories, and more of a total crackpot. Like, imagine a female version of Doc Brown running around Wisconsin trying to prove the existence of an American Nessie and solve a murder - that's a fun time! But Ryan's attempt to legitimize cryptozoology as a profession sucks all the wackiness out and leaves us with a standard cozy mystery that just happens to involve lots of conversations about lake monsters.
(Do I even have time to devote to the cop love interest? I must, because I hate this trope so goddamn much and mystery authors simply will not stop using it, so I have to keep complaining about it in every review. Here's what I'll say in this guy's favor: at least he sits down with Morgan at one point and tells her in plain English that he has feelings for her and wants to pursue them, which is more than most of the assholes in these mysteries can manage. I guess if you're going to make your love interest a puppet of the fascist American police state, you can at least make him an emotionally intelligent puppet.)
The other nail in the coffin for me was the way the mystery is structured - the plot is an episode of Scooby-Doo, full stop. (view spoiler)[Seriously. Pretty much as soon as they introduced the idea that there was a monster attacking people in the lake, I thought, "oh, someone is running around in a monster suit to keep people away from a specific area while they hunt for treasure" and I was exactly right. Well, except for the monster suit. It's a submarine, which was also obvious as soon as Morgan first sees the creature and notes its "glowing yellow eyes." Cue me screaming THEY'RE LIGHTS, MORGAN. YOU ARE A SCIENTIST. (hide spoiler)]
It's a fun, low-stakes mystery with a decently competent heroine at the helm, and even though I didn't vibe with the attempts to convince me Nessie is real, I liked how methodical and driven Morgan is in her attempts to prove it's existence and also solve the case. I won't be moving forward with this series (but then again, I think Book 2 is about Bigfoot, which should be fucking hilarious) but ultimately I'm not mad that I bought this. ...more
There's a certain subgenre of history books that you can classify as Well Actually books - they involve an author taking a super fun, romanticized subThere's a certain subgenre of history books that you can classify as Well Actually books - they involve an author taking a super fun, romanticized subject and going, "well actually, the truth is much more depressing and much less fun." It's a blast and a half.
Cordingly is attempting to provide a general history of piracy, with chapters organized by different aspects of pirate life, rather than devoting each chapter to a different historical figure. The underlying goal of this book is to look at the realities of pirate life and try to figure out why they've endured as these romantic antihero figures of pop cultures, when actually the reality was much different.
With the book flitting from one subject to another and never spending a significant amount of time on one thing, readers will walk away from this book with a surface-level knowledge of a lot of different aspects of pirate life, but very little in-dept knowledge. If anything, I would say this is a good book to read if you're wondering what to read next - find out which historical figures featured here interested you the most, and then go find a different book about that specific person.
(For me, it was definitely Anne Bonny. What do you mean, she didn't get executed after her trial because she was pregnant but after that we have no idea what happened to her? How do we not know what happened?! If you know a good Anne Bonny source please let me know - what's written in Under the Black Flag CANNOT be the full story.)
This is a good introductory book for someone who wants a nice broad overview of the facts and fiction surrounding piracy, but it's very broad and remains a superficial history at best. ...more
The Queen of the Damned picks up right where The Vampire Lestat left off, with Lestat's concert getting crashed by Akasha, one of the two original vamThe Queen of the Damned picks up right where The Vampire Lestat left off, with Lestat's concert getting crashed by Akasha, one of the two original vampires (and she's not alone). The narrative goes deeper into Akasha's lore, and also introduces us to the Talamasca through one of its members. And best of all, we get the conclusion to the vampire origin story that was started in The Vampire Lestat and go alllllll the way back to the beginning to find out how vampires came into existence. And perhaps best of all, we get to revisit our pal Daniel Molloy from Interview with the Vampire and learn what he's been up to since his "novel" was published. He's, uh...been better.
The book only lost its momentum at the very end, when Akasha reveals her entire Evil Plot, because it's, in a word, stupid. To Anne Rice's credit, other characters point out how laughable bad her ideas are, and I'm pretty sure that the plan is supposed to be bonkers because Akasha has been in an atrophied state for centuries and her brain is toast. But it was still annoying having to read her I'm-going-to-take-over-the-world-and-here's-how monologues. Frankly I think she didn't even have a ton of faith in what she was saying.
(God, I cannot WAIT for the AMC show to tackle all the story lines in this book. It's going to get WEIRD and I need them to announce the Akasha casting yesterday)
Based on some other reviews I've read of the Vampire Chronicles series, the quality starts to dip after the third book, but honestly I think I'm going to continue with the series and see how far it takes me because I'm having so much fun....more
This is one of the Discworld installments where you can tell that Sir Terry sat down at his computer and said, "Let's have some fun with it!"
He's gettThis is one of the Discworld installments where you can tell that Sir Terry sat down at his computer and said, "Let's have some fun with it!"
He's getting a little loose with this one, in other words, and having fun with some good old Pratchett-style parody. Considering that this is a Death installment, and so far those have proved to be the Discworld books most likely to wreck me, it's kind of a relief that this one is so light. Plus, this functions as a kind-of sequel to Mort, and we get to meet Death's granddaughter! Her name is Susan.
Plus, all the music industry in-jokes are worth the price of admission alone, even if Pratchett's view on rock music does veer pretty hard into Get Off My Lawn territory. How can you say no to a book that features a band called We're Certainly Dwarfs?
(aka They Might Be Giants. Shut up, Pratchett's a genius.)...more
The 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa is one of the most enduring mysteries in the art world, purely because unlike, say, the Isabella Stewart Gardner heistThe 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa is one of the most enduring mysteries in the art world, purely because unlike, say, the Isabella Stewart Gardner heist, this one was solved - a little over two years after disappeared, the painting was returned and the thief went to prison. But the simple fact that the painting did get recovered, and by the thief turning it in to authorities himself, has raised a million more questions, but at the top of everyone's list is the most simple one: did the thief return the real Mona Lisa, or did he swap it for a fake? Jonathan Santofler tries to give us an answer to this mystery by centering a story about the thief's direct descendant and his search to find the truth about his great-grandfather and the famous painting he stole.
It's such a cool setup, and what wrecks it almost immediately is how easy and obvious the entire investigation is. Our hero is Luke Perrone, whose family changed their last name from Peruggia to avoid association with the infamous Vincent Peruggia, and he's on his way to Italy because someone found his great-grandfather's prison journal, and Luke is going to read it and find out The Truth.
It's really just that simple. One of the most famous criminals of his time kept a prison journal which apparently no one else knew about? And luckily for Luke, the journal goes through the crime step by step, sparing no detail and naming all the names. Luke's "research" into his family history just means going to the research library and reading the journal. Luke, and it cannot be overstated, is dogshit at research. He doesn't look up a single other primary source about the theft, or indeed do any other reading about it at all aside from a handful of newspaper articles. He's Vincent Peruggia's great grandson, yet at no point does it occur to him to call up some family members and ask them for more information about the man. 1911 was not that long ago!
Oh, he also goes to the Louvre to view the Mona Lisa. This is another confounding element of Luke's character, because despite being merely an associate professor of art history, can apparently cold-call the fuckin' Louvre and get immediately connected to their curator of Renaissance art, and then schedule a private viewing of the Mona Lisa without so much as a professional reference.
Say what you will about Dan Brown, at least he took the time to establish that Robert Langdon is a world-famous symbologist. Luke Perrone is just a guy, and the level of access he's granted with no effort whatsoever is astounding and also so, so lazy on Santofler's part.
The whole book is lazy. There's almost no suspense whatsoever, and aside from a feeble bait-and-switch with the villain in the third act, all the characters basically step onstage and tell the reader, "Hello, I'm so-and-so and I'll be playing the villain tonight" or "Hello, I'm the love interest." The love interest is especially frustrating, first because her Secret Motivations are obvious pretty much from the jump, and also she acts like a character in a badly written thriller, always making vague statements about how she couldn't return Luke's calls because she was...away. Doing...something. Something he mustn't ask her about! Also, Luke frankly had a ton more chemistry with [redacted], and if Santofler had any guts he would have given those two a forbidden romance. (I mean, why on earth would you write a scene where Character A finds Character B wounded and takes them back to their apartment to bandage their wounds and NOT give that scene to the female love interest?!)
All in all, an incredibly frustrating dud of an adventure novel. I kept hoping until the very end that there would be some twist to redeem it, that it would turn out that Santofler was playing me like a fiddle the whole time and nothing was ever as obvious as he made it seem.
I don't know, maybe the ending will do it for you. It certainly didn't make it worth it for me. ...more
This is one of those Gamechanger books within the Discworld series, where Terry Pratchett moves the needle a little bit by introducing a new aspect ofThis is one of those Gamechanger books within the Discworld series, where Terry Pratchett moves the needle a little bit by introducing a new aspect of the Disc, or a new piece of lore, or in this case, new technology. One of the joys of reading Discworld in chronological order is seeing how the world of the Disc slowly moves from a classic pseudo-medieval fantasy setting into its own industrial revolution, and Men at Arms is a major one in terms of upping the stakes: in this one, guns are introduced to the Disc.
It's going to be really interesting to see how this new technology affects the rest of the series, and I'm especially excited to finally get to Monstrous Regiment, which was technically the first Discworld book I tried before realizing that I needed to go back and start with Book 1.
Also, the City Watch books are just so much fun. In additional to Corporal Carrot (we love you, Carrot!) and Captain Vimes (who is trying and failing to retire) we get some fun new additions to the watch, who are trying to recruit more men into their ranks. They get new recruits, all right, but none of them are men. Hijinks ensue....more
I'm shelving this under "detective fiction" because this is, by all definitions, a straightforward murder mystery, and plenty of page space is devotedI'm shelving this under "detective fiction" because this is, by all definitions, a straightforward murder mystery, and plenty of page space is devoted to the investigation. But those considering this book should bear in mind that this is an Elin Hilderbrand joint first and foremost, which means that our author is going to be much more comfortable in her usual wheelhouse of lavish beach houses, idyllic scenery, mouth-watering meals, and men named Tag.
To Hilderbrand's credit, this is a perfectly serviceable mystery setup: on the morning of thee wedding of the Nantucket season, a bridesmaid is found dead in the ocean outside the venue. The bride was the one to find her, and also the best man is missing.
Hilderbrand does a good job of making sure every major character has a *mostly* plausible motive for murder, and everyone's various timelines and alibis on the days leading up to the murder are convoluted enough to keep you interested. But the story suffers from two major flaws:
The first is that in order to make certain twists work, our heroine Celeste has to be staggeringly passive and sheltered, to the point where she often seems less like a modern day woman in her late twenties and more like a teenage girl raised in an 18th-century convent. Run by mice.
She's tough to root for, is what I'm saying, and I know that I was supposed to be cheering her along and hoping she gets the courage to take control of her own life - and I did, to some extent - but mostly I just kept wishing someone would shove her into a puddle.
(Here's where I admit my own bias and confess that Celeste lost me as soon as we get to her meet-cute with the groom, which happens when Celeste - the director of the Brooklyn Zoo, because that makes sense - is giving a tour of the reptile house and taps on the glass of a cobra's enclosure to get it to stand up and flare its hood out. If you've spent more than ten minutes in any decent zoo in the last ten years you know that this is super shitty behavior and a fucking zoo director would know better. Also Celeste uses the term "poisonous snakes." They're not poisonous, Celeste, they're venomous, and you should be fired.)
Hilderbrand is also handicapped by her own format, because the gimmick of the book is that the investigation takes place over a continuous 24-hour period, with breaks in the narrative for flashbacks that show all the events leading to the murder. Cool, but unfortunately real-life murder investigations take months, and Hilderbrand doesn't have that kind of time. No spoilers, but the way the cops absolutely botch the investigation is straight-up embarrassing.
Look, it's fine. The characters are fun and their various motives are appropriately bonkers, and almost nobody behaves like a normal human being. If you're a detective novel fan already, there isn't going to be anything here you haven't seen a dozen times before, but this is a fun, easy-breezy read with lots of great atmosphere and decent plotting. ...more
About a decade after first reading Interview With the Vampire, I decided to pick up the series again thanks to the AMC adaptation and wanting to get cAbout a decade after first reading Interview With the Vampire, I decided to pick up the series again thanks to the AMC adaptation and wanting to get caught up on future plot lines (guys, the show is seriously so good).
The Vampire Lestat picks up in 1984, almost a decade after Louis du Point du Lac's infamous interview and the explosive book that followed. This book is supposed to be Lestat's own memoir, written with the intention of clearing up everything that Louis got wrong.
(Well, not really - the events of Interview With the Vampire are barely touched on, so no, this is not the same story told from a different character's perspective. And honestly, thank god)
Also, in 1984 Lestat is living in disguise as a human, and is the world-famous frontman of a glam-rock band, where he "pretends" to be a vampire as part of his stage persona.
A warning to anyone considering reading this based just on that description alone: this is not a story about Rockstar Lestat. This is Lestat's origin story, going back to 18th century France when he was turned - there's very little of the "modern day" scenes, but ultimately this didn't bother me, because Lestat's story is so good. On top of that, he's also a fantastic narrator, like when he tells the reader that another character could be "gorgeous, if someone stuck her under a waterfall and held her there for half an hour." Another time, another vampire tells Lestat that Satan will strike him down for his heresy, and Lestat replies, "You keep saying that! And it keeps not happening, as we can all see!" Honestly, Whiny Louis could never.
Plus, Lestat's view on modern life are worth the price of admission alone. Do you want to know what Lestat thinks of 1980's pop culture? You're in luck.
"In the amber electric twilight of a vast hotel room, I watched on the screen before me the stunningly crafted film of war called Apocalypse Now. Such a symphony of sound and color it was, and it sang of the age-old battle of the Western world against evil. 'You must make a friend of horror and mortal terror,' says the mad commander in the savage garden of Cambodia, to which the Western man answers as he has always answered: No.
No. Horror and moral terror can never be exonerated. They have no real value. Pure evil has no real place.
And that means, doesn't it, that I have no place.
Except, perhaps, in the art that repudiates evil - the vampire comics, the horror novels, the old gothic tales - or in the roaring chants of the rock stars who dramatize the battles against evil that each mortal fights within himself."
This book also has Lestat, and the reader, starting to learn about the origins of vampires themselves, and as Lestat considers the long history of his own kind, he's also facing down the prospect of living for eternity, and how to survive that. With The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice is expanding on some of the ideas she discussed in Interview With the Vampire, and making her characters really consider what it means to be immortal, and whether or not they have the mental strength to endure it.
"Do devils love each other? Do they walk arm in arm in hell saying, 'Ah, you are my friend, how I love you,' things like that to each other? It was a rather detached and intellectual question I was asking, as I did not believe in hell. But it was a matter of a concept of evil, wasn't it? All creatures in hell are supposed to hate one another, as all the saved hate the damned, without reservation.
I'd know that all my life. It had terrified me as a child, the idea that I might go to heaven and my mother might go to hell and that I should hate her. I couldn't hate her. And what if we were in hell together?
Well, now I know, whether I believed in hell or not, that vampires can love each other, that in being dedicated to evil, one does not cease to love. Or so it seemed for that brief instant. But don't start crying again. I can't abide all this crying."...more
I still can't believe that I was even in the right headspace to read this, considering that this is a novel about the collapse of society after FUCK.
I still can't believe that I was even in the right headspace to read this, considering that this is a novel about the collapse of society after a flu-like pandemic ravages the United States and wipes out enough of the population that all infrastructure falls apart. Like...I knew going into this that this was not going to be a comfort read, yet it ended up being simultaneously the most devastating and hopeful thing I've ever read.
The book opens the night before the pandemic begins in earnest: during a performance of King Lear, the actor playing Lear has a heart attack and dies on stage. Following his death, the story tracks the actions of the actor's ex-wives, his best friend, the man in the audience who tried to save him, and a little girl in the play. We see how each of these people reacted in the initial days of the pandemic, and then how they're surviving fifteen years later.
The crucial element that keeps this from being a depressing slog is that St. John Mandel doesn't spend a lot of time in the brutal, desperate year right after the pandemic hit. The majority of the action takes place fifteen years later, when things are still desperate and difficult, but overall have mellowed out just enough.
Brutality lurks at the edges of this story, making its presence known and reminding us of the stakes, but it stays outside the main narrative. There are ominous references to "ferals" living outside the established communities that have sprouted in the aftermath of ruined cities, and the adult version of the little girl from Macbeth has killed two people and doesn't remember how she got the huge scar on her face. St. John Mandel trusts her audience enough to know that we'll be able to read between the lines and understand how dangerous this world is, without needing to throw in a rape scene for shock factor.
It's not an accident that our main characters post-apocalypse are members of a traveling theater troupe. In the middle of all the death and devastation and harshness of this new world, there are still people making art, and there are communities, and people protect each other. We keep going. It'll be different, and it'll be harsh, and not everyone will have good intentions. But humanity keeps going, despite everything. ...more
"Paul consulted his memory of the vision: in it, he'd left here with the names of the traitors, but never seeing how those names were carried. The dwa"Paul consulted his memory of the vision: in it, he'd left here with the names of the traitors, but never seeing how those names were carried. The dwarf obviously moved under the protection of another oracle. It occurred to Paul then that all creatures must carry some kind of destiny stamped out by purpose of varying strengths, by the fixation of training and disposition. From the moment the Jihad had chosen him, he'd felt hemmed in by the forces of a multitude. Their fixed purpose demanded and controlled his course. Any delusions of Free Will he harbored now must be merely the prisoner rattling his cage. His curse lay in the fact that he saw the cage. He saw it!"
Oh yeah. Book 2 of the Dune series and Frank Herbert is starting to get freaky with it. Strap in.
Dune Messiah picks up fifteen years after the end of the previous book. Paul is the all-powerful emperor, with a literal cult following and unchecked power. As an added bonus, his gift of prescience is now so strong that he knows exactly what his future holds, and because he's unable to change it, goes through the motions of his life like an actor following a script.
So the scope of this novel, which covers topics like destiny and fanaticism and the lie of the Messiah myth, is also a very small-scale human drama: the core of this novel, when you really peel back the layers, is about Paul and Chani and Irulian and Alia. This is a family soap that affects the destiny of a galaxy, and the way Herbert balances the small and large scale dramas is incredible to watch.
Also, it cannot be overstated, this book is so goddamn weird. To give any more details would be giving away spoilers, but rest assured that Frank Herbert is operating on a whole other level. I can't wait to see where he takes things next. ...more
"Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experi"Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.
-from 'Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib' by the Princess Irulan"
Part of me wishes I had read this series before seeing the Villeneuve movies, because I think the way they've adapted this story for film is fascinating and so, so well done, and it would have been cool to watch the movies and have a full appreciation of how they changed the story to fit a movie format. (On the other hand - I went into the first Dune movie knowing almost nothing about the books and I never felt lost for a second, which tells you what a good job they did)
But I can also appreciate that I had a kind of primer before starting this. Paul's prophetic visions also bleed into the narrative style of the book, and you can see Herbert frequently hinting at characters or scenes that will become important much father down the line (for example - one of the early excerpts from an in-world novel is from "St. Alia of the Knife", and we don't learn who that is until much later in the book). This is a story that is just slightly unmoored in its own timeline, and having seen the movie helped keep me grounded in the narrative.
But movie adaptation aside, this is just a rock-solid fantasy epic that is also so, so fucking cool. Herbert does atmosphere like nobody's business, and his characters are so well done that I didn't even realize how much of this story is just different peoples' inner thoughts until another reviewer pointed out.
Also, the writing is...incredible? Frank Herbert has a way of turning a phrase that is just incredible to witness, and I just wish I had marked more passages to quote. I did manage to get this one, from the arena scene with Feyd-Rautha:
"'You!' the man moaned. Feyd-Rautha drew back to give death its space. The paralyzing drug in the poison had yet to take full effect, but the man's slowness told of its advance. The slave staggered forward as though drawn by a string - one dragging step at a time. Each step was the only step in his universe. He still clutched his knife, but its point wavered."
"Did Jann Wenner embody the vices or virtues of his generation? Certainly the rock-and-roll hymnbook of the 1960s had promised something else. At one "Did Jann Wenner embody the vices or virtues of his generation? Certainly the rock-and-roll hymnbook of the 1960s had promised something else. At one time, holding Rolling Stone was like holding a piece of hot shrapnel from the cultural explosion of the 1960s while it still glowed with feeling and meaning. An entire identity was coiled inside. Rick Griffin's logo, the promise of never-ending provocation, never-ending progress. The rock-and-roll story lit the way. Don't stop thinking about tomorrow. But those visions had morphed into the Me Decade, and the Me Decade had turned into Me Decades, and finally the falcon could no longer hear the falconer, not even in the pages of Rolling Stone.
Well, it was just a story. A long, fine flash. This one began with John Lennon and ended with Donald Trump."
The best biographies approach their subjects with a clear-eyed and unbiased view, and don't shy away from the more unsavory elements of the people they're covering. Sticky Fingers excels as a rock-and-roll history because it acknowledges that, while Jann Wenner had a unique and brilliant vision for his historic magazine that tapped directly into the feeling of the 1960s, he was a complicated person who ultimately couldn't keep up with the times.
One thing I appreciated the most about this biography is how Hagan never makes any attempt to convince us that Jann Wenner is some kind of brilliant music critic. He is, in fact, the exact opposite of a critic: Jann Wenner is a fanboy and a starfucker, and the creation of Rolling Stone was really just in service of his ultimate goal, which was to become friends with as many celebrities as possible. He wasn't a critic, and he definitely wasn't a writer, but he at least could recognize talent in others, and hired accordingly.
"Wenner reportedly said that he started Rolling Stone to meet John Lennon. But it was just as true that he wanted to be John Lennon - as famous, as important, as talented in his sphere. After all, the best and the brightest of the baby-boom generation (a term not yet in common use in 1967) weren't necessarily going to Harvard or Yale anymore. They were dropping out and inventing a new generational order with the Beatles as their soundtrack. This was Jann Wenner's story line."
It's wild to read this book and realized that the tastemaker of the 7o's was just some guy who wanted to meet famous people. An artist's success back in those days lived or died by what was written about them in Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone in its heyday was based almost solely on Jann Wenner's personal tastes. And he, uh, had some biases, to say the least. (In fact, I learned about Jann Wenner thanks to a now-infamous interview he gave recently, where he said that the reason Rolling Stone didn't cover more black musicians is because they just weren't as talented. Again, this was the guy who was calling the shots about what people listened to for decades).
"Rolling Stone was corrupt until it wasn't, imperfect until it was. But after 1978, it was never again an experiment in American publishing, a thing that burned strictly to the rhythms of Jann Wenner's fascinations. ...'My god, we could have ruled the world,' said Peter Gambaccini. 'But Jann wasn't into ruling the world; he was into ruling his world.'"
Come for the detailed and fascinating history of music in the 1960's and 70's (including plenty of cameos from rock legends across the decades), stay for the well-researched and ruthless portrayal of a man who almost singularly defined pop culture for decades, and who couldn't maintain his grasp. ...more
This is How You Lose the Time War is less of a novel and more of a series of episodic scenes. Our main characters are Red and BlIt was fine, I guess?
This is How You Lose the Time War is less of a novel and more of a series of episodic scenes. Our main characters are Red and Blue, two people (?) on opposite sides of a war where operatives travel back and forth in time, going to different "braids" and making or unmaking events that will effect the war the final battle that's coming. In the midst of all of this, Red and Blue are making their own moves, tracing each other's movements across time and leaving letters for the other to find. And of course, they're also being traced.
The prose is fantastic, although the letters specifically get a little too flowery at times (Blue even catches herself in one of the letters, admitting that her prose is getting too purple so she should end the letter. Baby, it's been purple this whole time!). Red and Blue, despite having almost no concrete character traits or descriptions, manage to seem like fully fleshed out characters, and their voices are distinct enough that the letters don't become monotonous.
I dunno, though. I think ultimately what made this just a three-star for me was how brief it was. I'm not saying I wanted a thousand-page epic, but at about 1/3 of the way into the book I found myself thinking, okay, I get what we're doing here, they're writing letters to each other and falling in love, now something else needs to happen. Something eventually does happen, but then the book is over shortly afterwards.
This is also very clearly a short story that was stretched into a novel via clever formatting - it's double-spaced and has wiiiiiiide margins, like a college essay written at the last minute that needs to hit its page count. The book felt more like a fun writing exercise between two authors. Cool experiment, but ultimately I finished it feeling like there hadn't been enough there. ...more
Obviously, I should never have doubted Abdurraqib's incredible talent and ability to make me cry over things I never would have imagined getting emotional about. I will admit that some knowledge of NBA history definitely helps during certain sections of this book, but rest assured, this is about a lot more than basketball. Among other things, this collection of interconnected essays is a kind of love letter to Abdurraqib's home state of Ohio, and in a larger sense, a gentle rebuttal to the idea that success means leaving the place where you grew up. (Oh, to be a fly on the wall and see what happens every time someone has ever suggested to Hanif Abdurraqib that he should really move to New York or LA).
There are a dozen excerpts that I wanted to quote, but this was the first lengthy passage I marked:
"Three days after Christmas in 2002, a white pair of kicks, clean enough to still be worn, swings from the telephone lines a few blocks outside of Value City Arena in Columbus, Ohio. Jordan 7s. White and blue. The pair that had just dropped two weeks earlier. If one looks long enough, the thin wires blend into the dark sky and the shoes emerge as though they are swinging from nothing, ornaments at the mercy of the clouds. There are a greater number of older white people than usual in this neighborhood today, a cluster of them walking ahead of of me, nervously trying to make sense out of the mythology of the sneakers swinging from phone lines, rattling through rumors they'd heard from their kids or things they'd read on the corners of the still-young internet. Drugs, they decided. People sell drugs here. ...I didn't know the kid who was shot a few blocks south of here on Christmas Eve. I knew he was younger than me, and he could hoop. I'd seen him at the park in my old neighborhood once or twice. Quick first step, never passed but could get to the rim anytime he wanted. The bullet that hit him wasn't meant for him, but the bullet doesn't apologize and isn't especially discerning. The bullet only knows what is in front of it. I don't trust people who don't love a place to understand how that place remembers its dead. The living who throw an item the dead once cherished toward heaven, wrap it around the highest wire. So high that it looks like the shoes are swinging from the sky itself. Like two legs are hanging down from the edge of a cloud."...more
"Vera said: 'Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?' So I told her why: Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if"Vera said: 'Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?' So I told her why: Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it."
I won't shelve this under "memoir" because this is, technically, fiction - but as everyone knows, Heartburn is a very (very) thinly veiled story about Nora Ephron's divorce from journalist Carl Bernstein. I only know the most basic cliff notes of that scandal, and it's been probably fifteen years since I saw When Harry Met Sally (which meant I couldn't identify the lines from this novel that were recycled for the movie script), so I was able to approach this as a novel without getting bogged down in figuring out which character was a stand-in for which real person.
This is a light, brief novel about the end of a marriage, and although the subject is, by nature, extremely tragic (the Ephron stand-in, Rachel, finds out her husband is having an affair when she's seven months pregnant) Ephron's narrative voice and sharp one-liners keep the book from getting too depressing. Plus, Rachel's character is a food writer, which means the novel is sprinkled with recipes that, apparently, will actually work (even though most of them are just brief paragraphs or even a few lines that read like they were dashed off quickly before Ephron could forget them).
It also helps that Rachel as a character is, honestly, kind of a pill - although she is very much the wronged party in the divorce, she's far from perfect, and her very human flaws meant that although I sympathized with her and understood her point of view, I also recognized that nobody in this story is the hero.
Her shitty ex-husband is definitely the villain, though....more