The Readventurer

Railsea
Author: China Miéville
Publication Date: 05/15/2012
Publisher: Random House

Blurb(GR): On board the moletrain Medes, Sham ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt: the giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one’s death and the other’s glory. But no matter how spectacular it is, Sham can't shake the sense that there is more to life than traveling the endless rails of the railsea–even if his captain can think only of the hunt for the ivory-coloured mole she’s been chasing since it took her arm all those years ago. When they come across a wrecked train, at first it's a welcome distraction. But what Sham finds in the derelict—a series of pictures hinting at something, somewhere, that should be impossible—leads to considerably more than he'd bargained for. Soon he's hunted on all sides, by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters and salvage-scrabblers. And it might not be just Sham's life that's about to change. It could be the whole of the railsea.

From China Miéville comes a novel for readers of all ages, a gripping and brilliantly imagined take on Herman Melville's Moby-Dick that confirms his status as "the most original and talented voice to appear in several years." (Science Fiction Chronicle).

Review:

Once again, China Miéville delivers one of the most unique, imaginative worlds I’ve ever spent time in. I sometimes wonder if this man is taking some sort of imagination supplements that the rest of us don’t know about (Hallucinogenic drugs perhaps?  Dreamshit?).  How does he even come up with these things?  I mean, I was pretty skeptical about giant moles as monsters, but he really sold it:

"The mole rats shook off earth.  Like hairless, wrinkled mammal newborn, swollen to dog-size, snapping dreadful incisors.  Eyes like raisins shoved in dough.  They breathed throatily.  The earth growled."

And it turns out that he’s a very talented artist as well!

He doesn’t just come up with these worlds; he paints them so vividly – reading one of his books is like being consumed (& just FYI – if you’re intrigued/confused/annoyed by all the ampersands, give him time.  It gets explained).  The world of this book is different than anything I’ve ever read.  It’s a forgotten planet - a planet of pollution, salvage, monsters, and an endless sea of rails.  
 
"Generations of thinkers have stood with notebooks open on coastlines, the endless spread of ties-&-iron before them – countless junctions, switches, possibilities in all directions - & insisted that what characterizes rails is that they have no terminus.  No schedule, no end, no direction.  This has become common sense.  This is a cliché." 

The few humans live on small islands surrounded by the railsea.  The only way to get on or off the islands is by train. Touching the earth in between the rails is not only taboo, it’s dangerous.  The earth is infested with giant moles, ants, earwigs, and earth worms, all changed irrevocably by years of exposure to environmental pollution.  

Sham Ap Soorap is a young man like so many others featured in classic high seas adventures: he's setting off on his first adventure and he's in over his head.  His well-meaning guardians have sent him aboard the moling train Medes to apprentice under the train’s doctor, a task he has no passion for.  The Medes navigates the switches and turns in search of Mocker Jack, the large off-white mole that’s become the obsession of the enigmatic Captain Naphi (yes, this is a nod to Moby Dick). When Sham uncovers a memory card within the wreckage of a train, containing a picture that should not exist – a single rail, leading in one direction out of the sea – he starts to develop an obsession of his own.  

This book is about bravery and exploration – it’s about having the courage to take those first few steps toward the edge of a flat world and risk falling off.  

“I’m not a kid anymore, Sham thought.  Shouldn’t take anything for granted.  A big bird cawed as he thought that, & Sham took it as applause.  All my life, he thought, they’ve told me about the dangers of the earth.  Maybe it’s true.  But…  He kept his eyes on the foody island across the narrow railsea strait.  But maybe it’s also useful for them if everyone believes it.  If people are too scared to just go.”

The world-building is outstanding, the characters are well-constructed and interesting, and for about 60% of the book, the story is compelling.  However, towards the end the plot lost a lot of steam and went a bit off the rails (hee hee). The ending felt odd and anticlimactic and just didn’t have the emotional impact that I was hoping for.  However, I am still in awe of this writer’s talent and I would still recommend this wholeheartedly to his fans.

A note: I really don't think this is YA, but it's not adult either.  The blurb says "for readers of all ages" but I think that's just a catch-all.  This book is extremely hard to place in any category.  The vocabulary is advanced (as always with this author) but the plot is young enough for middle grade readers. 

Perfect Musical Pairing
David Bowie – 5:15 (The Angels Have Gone)

The opening beats of this song are steady and repetitive, like the rhythm of a train. 

"All of my life
Angels have gone
I'm changing trains
Angels like them
Thin on the ground" 

I think this song is about searching for something that you’re missing – that constant search.  Also, the second title “The Angels Have Gone” totally works as a reference to this book but I’m not giving anything away.  Let me just say that the “angels” were one of my favorite parts of this world.

4/5 Stars

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an advanced copy for review purposes. Please check all quotations against the final version.

The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver (Ruby Oliver, #1)
Author: E. Lockhart
Narrator: Mandy Siegfried
An Excerpt
Publication Date: 2005
Publisher: Listening Library

Blurb(GR): Ruby Oliver is 15 and has a shrink. She knows it's unusual, but give her a break—she's had a rough 10 days. In the past 10 days she:

* lost her boyfriend (#13 on the list)
* lost her best friend (Kim)
* lost all her other friends (Nora, Cricket)
* did something suspicious with a boy (#10)
* did something advanced with a boy (#15)
* had an argument with a boy (#14)
* drank her first beer (someone handed it to her)
* got caught by her mom (ag!)
* had a panic attack (scary)
* lost a lacrosse game (she's the goalie)
* failed a math test (she'll make it up)
* hurt Meghan's feelings (even though they aren't really friends)
* became a social outcast (no one to sit with at lunch)
* and had graffiti written about her in the girls' bathroom (who knows what was in the boys'!?!).

But don't worry—Ruby lives to tell the tale. And make more lists.

Review:

I like this book so much for being a fun, frothy, escape about gossip and boys.  But I LOVE this book for transcending all of those things.  When I first read the title: The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver, I expected that this book would contain a few swoon-worthy boys and that our heroine Ruby would experience some drama-fueled teenage angst trying to decide which one to date.  I even jokingly proclaimed myself “Team Noel” within minutes of the starting the book – fully expecting that I would spend the next day or so regressing into teenage girl-hood and gossiping about these characters.  Now I feel like a shallow jerk for expecting so little from E. Lockhart, the brilliant woman who brought us Frankie Landau-Banks!

So often, girls are encouraged to “be nice” and get along – to not make waves, to make do with whatever life throws our way, to never give voice to our negative feelings. 

”My problem is I can think whatever I think – girl power, solidarity, Gloria Steinem rah rah rah – but I still feel the way I feel.  Which is jealous.  And pissy about little things.”

Even mild discontent is often viewed as “bitchy” or “whiny.”  These expectations are so pervasive and ingrained - we often place them on ourselves.  I know I’ve been guilty of it – of quashing my anger, jealousy, and hurt beneath a pleasant mask, even as it all multiplies and festers inside. Because that’s what happens when you don’t acknowledge a negative feeling, in my experience: it grows exponentially until it comes out one way or another.

In Ruby’s case, she starts manifesting those feelings in a very physical way: panic attacks.  Her parents, who are both clueless and over-involved, sign her up immediately for therapy.  The novel itself is a written account of Ruby’s thoughts about a list that her therapist asks her to create: of all the boys that she’s ever been involved with.  But the boys aren’t the real story - it turns out that Ruby’s best friends have stopped speaking to her and she’s become a “leper” at school. The story unfolds organically from one flashback to another with the list and the scenes in the present providing a really nice anchoring framework.  It feels fluid but logical at the same time.

I am just so impressed at how much depth this fluffy little story had to offer.  Ruby’s struggle to acknowledge and justify her own feelings and to eventually give voice to them is a subtle one.  But as someone who has fought that battle, I really felt the weight of it.  I’ve been there – so afraid of my own feelings that I couldn’t even acknowledge that they existed.  When I was in that place, it felt like voicing those things – giving them a name - would only make them more horrible, more real.

This isn’t a triumphant feel-good story, but a quiet one about one girl’s first small steps toward emotional honesty, with other people but mostly with herself.  And E. Lockhart gives us so much more than just Ruby: there’s Kim, who holds her feelings inside until they erupt in vicious outbursts; there are Ruby’s parents, who are engaged in a constant power struggle that they never discuss openly; and there’s even Nora at the end, who seems to want to forget that anything happened.

I’ve already downloaded the next three books and I simply cannot wait to continue.  I know from experience that once you’ve given voice to your feelings – once you’ve felt that relief and that realization that the world is in fact not going to end – it’s almost impossible to go back to holding them in.  I can’t wait to see more of Ruby’s journey in these books.

Perfect Musical Pairing
Cyndi Lauper - When You Were Mine

Woohoo!  I get to match one of my songs so soon!  This is one of my absolute favorites (I've got it on right now and my girls are having a dance party).  It was written by Prince and Cyndi Lauper covered it but kept the male/female designations the same.  This is my song for Ruby and Kim - because I know that Kim was awful and malicious, but I kind of hope they make it up by the end of the series - after a few cathartic talks, of course.

5/5 Stars

Life Is But a Dream
Author: Brian James
Publication Date: 3/27/12
Publisher: Feiwel and Friends

Blurb(GR): Sabrina, an artist, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, and her parents check her into the Wellness Center. There she meets Alec, who is convinced it's the world that's crazy, not the two of them. They are meant to be together; they are special. But when Alec starts to convince Sabrina that her treatment will wipe out everything that makes her creative, she worries that she'll lose hold of her dreams and herself. Should she listen to her doctor? her decision may have fatal consequences. 

Review:
One of the many things that fascinate me about mental disorders is the thought that some of these symptoms that we’ve labeled and classified as illnesses might not be illnesses at all.  For most of the twentieth century, homosexuality was classified as a mental illness.  “Schizophrenia” appears in cultures around the globe, but its manifestations tend to differ from one culture to another – as do the cultural attitudes surrounding it.  Our “normal” perception of the world is really just a hallucination created by the brain in response to environmental stimulae, so is it really so strange when someone’s perception is slightly different than the norm?  Pondering all of these things was what kept me the most engaged with this book.  

Sabrina’s point of view is a very ambitious one to take on – that of a schizophrenic girl.  I am in no way qualified to tell you whether this is a realistic portrayal, but I was really impressed.  The writing is beautifully descriptive without feeling gratuitous and further than that I think that for a man, the author did an amazing job of writing a realistic teenage girl.  I was especially moved by Sabrina’s attitude toward her illness.  She’s experienced some form of hallucination since early childhood, so it feels comforting and normal to her.  She doesn’t feel right without her hallucinations.  And my heart broke a little bit when her parents – who used to be so encouraging of her imaginative games – began to disapprove.

As you can probably tell from that passage, there are a few interesting quirks to the writing.  There are no quotation marks: all dialogue is shown in italics and separated by dashes.  Also, the narrative skips back and forth abruptly in time with almost nothing to indicate that it’s happening.  Flashbacks and the main story are told in present tense.  All of that may seem annoying, but I have to say that while I was reading this, none of it bothered me.  I think that the abrupt shifts in time are confusing and unsettling, but they illustrate Sabrina’s mental state perfectly.

So here's the source of my disappointment: all pondering aside, I guess in the end I do believe that schizophrenia is a mental illness, and that hallucinating your way through the world is quite a bit more dangerous than it is beautiful.  I thought that the author and I were on the same page about that for most of this book.  When the love interest Alec was introduced – so full of angry convictions – I was fascinated by the idea that Sabrina’s view of him was incorrect.  She's so wrapped up in her visions of his glowing eyes and familiar shape and the future that she imagines they've already had together.  When you read just his words – his plain words – without any of her extra perceptions, he seems antagonistic and foolish – maybe even a little dangerous.  She seems to miss out on who he really is – a confused, violent young man.  Or so I assumed, and that assumption fueled a lot of my interest in this book. 

And then I got to the ending.  (I swear – I should just have that engraved on my tombstone.  It would work on so many levels!  Okay, maybe just two levels.)  The ending is just incredibly unrealistic, in my opinion.  Alec proves himself to be everything Sabrina thought he was, even appearing magically at exactly the right time – just as her hallucinations told her he would.  Sabrina achieves near perfect lucidity just in time to regret her actions, and of course they all learn a very important lesson.  Blah blah blah.   I guess I wanted the consequences to be more real, and I didn't want to see Sabrina realize so quickly and easily that she needed help. And I don’t think that schizophrenic hallucinations are likely to lead a person to her soul mate. 

However, if you love happy endings and you’d like to read a very well written book from the point of view of a schizophrenic person, I think this would be a great choice.  For this old skeptic, it was just okay.

Perfect Musical Pairing
Cate Le Bon - Greta

This is one sad, sad case where a you tube video of the song that I chose does not exist (reviewer problems).  And there's no way that I'm picking a different song, because this one is just perfection.  Luckily I found it on her myspace page - so click the link above to listen.  Cate Le Bon creates eerily beautiful, almost unsettling music.  These lyrics are so perfect:

"In the morning
The universe shines
From under her skin
The delicate pattern
Of places she's been
Her baby days
Coiled up inside her
Like ribbons all tied"

3/5 Stars

Erebos
Author: Ursula Poznanski
Publication Date: 1/19/12
Publisher: Annick Press

Blurb(GR): An intelligent computer game with a disturbing agenda.

When 16-year-old Nick receives a package containing the mysterious computer game Erebos, he wonders if it will explain the behavior of his classmates, who have been secretive lately. Players of the game must obey strict rules: always play alone, never talk about the game, and never tell anyone your nickname.

Curious, Nick joins the game and quickly becomes addicted. But Erebos knows a lot about the players and begins to manipulate their lives. When it sends Nick on a deadly assignment, he refuses and is banished from the game.

Now unable to play, Nick turns to a friend for help in finding out who controls the game. The two set off on a dangerous mission in which the border between reality and the virtual world begins to blur. This utterly convincing and suspenseful thriller originated in Germany, where it has become a runaway bestseller.

Review:

“A game you can’t buy.  A game that talks to you.  A game that watches you, that rewards you, threatens you, gives you tasks.

'Sometimes I think it’s alive…’”

To anyone who’s ever been a MMPORG addict/widow(er) I think this book will be particularly frightening. And to everyone else, who’s sitting there right now, saying…really? Could a game really consume your life like that?   I invite you to visit this website, where level 85 World of Warcraft characters are frequently sold for upwards of $1,000.  In real currency!  I also invite you to consider just how many hours you yourself have devoted to reading book reviews…twitter…random/amazing tumblrs….  I know I’ve definitely been there – sitting in front my computer at midnight thinking…I’ll just do this one more thing…and the next thing I know it’s 3:42 am.  I’ve lost so many hours of my life to the internet!  It’s all-consuming!  

And I actually felt pretty darn consumed by this book for the majority of it.  It’s a fast-paced, highly engrossing read that I couldn’t put down.  It reads quite a bit like a horror movie, which I loved.  The scenes in the game are truly creepy, all the more so because they’re one small step away from a realistic gaming addiction.  The main character Nick is a popular, good-looking (…with a ponytail…), entitled jock guy, of the sort that’s common in horror movies.  He’s that everyguy who’s realistic and sympathetic, but just arrogant and closed-minded enough that you will really enjoy anticipating his downfall.  Plus, he has a thing for the broody artist/poet girl (always a good choice) so that earns him a few more points.  

Most of the characters in this book feel realistically young; however, there are a few really incongruous elements and I think that’s where the translation may have gone awry. This book takes place in London supposedly, but just check out some of this dialogue:

“’Get lost!’ Nick bellowed after him.  He wanted to run after him, grab him by the collar, and punch his lights out.”

“Just wait – one of these days someone will thump you so hard you won’t know which way is up.”

“Shut your trap, kid.”

“Beat it, sister.”

“And how!”

“Please don’t start with the whys and what-fors.”

It’s as if this version of 2012 London were somehow cast with actors from a 1950’s gangster film. There are also a ton of really abrupt, almost jarring transitions between scenes.  One moment Nick is in class, and the next he’s at home with no transition at all.  And, there’s an interesting quirk with the narration: when Nick is in Erebos, the book is written in present tense, but when he’s in the real world everything shifts to past tense.  I think that was meant to give the world of Erebos more immediacy, but it didn’t really work for me.  It just felt odd, like his virtual life was happening in the moment but his real life was a memory.  I can’t count how many times I got through a passage in Erebos, only to have my brain stumble over the sudden change to past tense.  It was irritating.

This book was sitting at three or four stars until I got to about 80% of the way through. Once the mystery started to become clear…once the man behind the er…monitor… was revealed…I lost interest pretty quickly.  There were also several major plot holes (Nicks parents are annoyingly present one moment and conveniently absent the next; Nick goes from broadcasting his search for other Erebos members to a sudden and convenient concern of discovery) that probably wouldn’t have bothered me as much if I had been more engaged.

But what really killed this book for me was the unadulterated cheesiness of the ending.  That was a complete "Scooby Doo" ending if ever I've seen one.  The only thing missing was the villain shaking his fist and saying, “And I would have gotten away with it too! If it weren’t for you meddling kids!”   One of the main characters actually buys a swiss-cheese shaped mug in the final pages, which I can only assume she will use to give a toast to that ending.

Perfect Musical Pairing
Slow Runner – Strange Days

Grave Mercy (His Fair Assassin #1)
Author: Robin LaFevers
Publication Date: 4/3/12
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Blurb(GR): Why be the sheep, when you can be the
wolf?

Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.

Ismae's most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared - not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

Review:

I may have a few mixed feelings about this book, but I know exactly who to recommend this to.  Do you love historical mysteries?  Court intrigue?  Romance?  Very light fantasy?  Do you love Juliet Marillier?  Sherwood Smith?  Do you wish that The Queen’s Thief series read a lot more like a romance novel?  Then this book is absolutely for you.

Ismae is a young teenager when she’s sold in marriage to a much older man.  Her father is happy to be rid of her, but her new husband doesn’t know that she bears a large red scar on her back - a scar that marks her as one of Death’s daughters.  He is less than pleased (read: murderous with rage) when he discovers the mark, but Ismae is rescued by a hedge priest and bundled off to the convent of St. Mortain, the god of death.  Soon she is in training to be a handmaiden of death, skilled in espionage and murder.

This book reads a lot like a romance novel, but I really enjoyed that about it.  The romance between Ismae and Duval is slow-building, believable, and pretty smoldering.  I was a bit surprised when the book finally seemed to be getting to “the good stuff” and then it pulled one of these:

“Sometime later…

Boo.  Apparently this is a young adult novel!  Which is unfortunate because it reads so much like an adult romance, and I think that it would be better if it embraced that a bit more.

My only huge disappointment is that Ismae suffers from what I am now going to refer to as “Driven Snow Syndrome” (because I see this so frequently that it deserves a label):  she’s the kind of character who says, “I’m not a normal human being with a sexuality; I’m a woman.”  That is, until one special man comes along and then suddenly it’s, “What are these FEELINGS that I keep having?  Why is my heart pounding?  Why are my loins quivering?”  She startles like a little bird every time he touches her, and she’s conveniently skipped out on the “womanly wiles” classes at the convent so she has absolutely no knowledge of what sex is even about.  Ladies, isn’t it enough that men have spent centuries pretending that our sexuality doesn’t exist and over-valuing our “purity?”  Do we have to do it too?  Come on.

It’s also a bit unbelievable that Ismae would be a competent spy/assassin/seductress, and yet have no knowledge of court etiquette, social nuance, or male-female interaction.  Not to mention…she has a giant SCAR.  How is she supposed to insinuate herself at court as someone’s mistress if she can’t undress in front of anyone?

Still, Ismae completely charmed me.  I love her snap decision making and wild leaps of tangled logic.  I love her awakening and growth as a person.  I love that she’ll dangle out of a window to eavesdrop on someone.

I also really love the mythology: the god of death and all his forms…the convent of assassins, for god’s sake!  I love that I had some serious doubts about Ismae’s “calling” and she addressed every single one.  I’ll definitely be reading the companion novels as they come out!

Perfect Musical Pairing
Marvin Gaye – Sexual Healing

OMG, yes!!  I was *this close* to being able to assign this song only a few months ago, but then…the book that I was reading didn’t go the way that I expected and…I had to choose something else.  Sad.

Finally, a book that actually warrants this song (or at least, that's what I inferred was happening behind the closed curtains).  This almost makes up for the complete lack of visible sexytime.  Almost.

3.5/5 Stars

The Storyteller
Author: Antonia Michaelis (Translated by Miriam Debbage)
Publication Date: 1/1/12
Publisher: Amulet Books

Blurb(GR): Anna and Abel couldn't be more different. They are both 17 and in their last year of school, but while Anna lives in a nice old town house and comes from a well-to-do family, Abel, the school drug dealer, lives in a big, prison-like tower block at the edge of town. Anna is afraid of him until she realizes that he is caring for his six-year-old sister on his own.

Review:
I picked this up expecting a young adult coming of age/romance with a bit of magical realism and maybe a few darker themes about poverty and drug abuse.  Okay, so here’s my little confession:  I picked this up expecting Perfect Chemistry, with a side order of fairy tales and 150% more depth.  One would assume (har har) that I’d learned not to make assumptions in my thirty-some years of life, and yet here we are.  This book was so utterly different than what I was expecting.  I didn’t read any reviews prior to starting and I think that was actually a mistake.  I really should have paid a bit more attention to that cover:  just look at that pretty purple rose…wilting in the frost…with spots of blood on it.  *shudder* Upon finishing this book, I was so completely at a loss; I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  I felt like I’d just walked into what I thought was a kid’s petting zoo, only to discover that it was actually a baby animal slaughterhouse.  

And I don’t want to spoil this book for anyone…but…I think that anyone who’s going to attempt this book needs to know the following:

a)     There are people out there who grow up in horrific, abusive situations and yet they survive and learn to cope. They find help and learn to accept who they are.

This book is not about those people.

b)     There are kind, patient people who, through the setting of boundaries, can have healthy non-codependent relationships with severely damaged people and help them to get through.

This book is most definitely not about those people. 

This book is about Anna, a good girl.  A girl raised with every advantage.  A girl who feels trapped by her own inexperience.

“Who was she?  A girl inside a bubble.  The daughter of Magnus and Linda Leemann, from a nice district of Griefswald, from a house of blue air.  High school student in her last year, musician, English au pair to be.  Gitta’s squeaky-clean little lamb.  No.  She was someone who didn’t know yet who she was or would be.”

And this book is about Abel, a mystery.  He’s an older brother, a drug dealer, an abandoned kid, a self-destructive person, and a storyteller.  Anna is intrigued by him; she wants to figure him out.  She wants to know something outside her bubble of blue air, so she follows him one day.  She’s surprised when the scary-looking Abel picks up a little girl in a pink coat, and she’s even more surprised when he begins to tell her a haunting, beautiful fairy tale. Anna is captivated but she’s soon discovered eavesdropping.  Abel is thorny and protective of the little girl – his sister, Micha – but Anna is persistent.  Soon she’s becoming involved in their lives – in Abel’s desperate attempt to keep his sister by his side even though he’s a minor, in Micha’s questions about their missing mother.  Anna is determined to help, even as Abel tries to push her away.  But even as he’s pushing her away, she’s becoming a main character in his stories.

“’Your roses are already starting to wilt,’ the sea lion said to the rose girl.  'Not only where I tore them but everywhere else on your body, too.  They will wither.  And you will freeze in the cold wind.’”

This book is bleak.  I’m not actually sure that I knew the definition of that word before reading this book.  Okay, that’s probably an exaggeration.  However, I must say that while I am quite often that reviewer who cries, “Too neat! Too happy!” this was probably the first time that I ever wanted to whimper, “Too dark” and then back away slowly…and huddle in a corner.  This book really, really got under my skin and not always in a good way.  It made me feel angry and hopeless.  The relationship portrayed here is twisted and sick.  It made me physically ill to read about it but I can’t deny that it’s realistic.  I hated Abel and I hated Anna, but I related to them too: Abel and his need to keep everyone at a distance, Anna and her cloak of torn love.  And I love the idea of two messed up, broken kids who can only truly connect in a fairy tale, but never in their real lives.  I love the idea that somewhere inside a hopelessly damaged person, there lies a small, untouched, sacred place – a place for fairy tales.

However, I think that in the end I loved the idea of this book more than the finished product.  Abel is a bit too much a cipher.  He never feels fully fleshed out as a character, in my opinion.  He’s proud and self-contained, but I never really felt the pain underneath all that, and I needed to.  I needed to be able to relate to him in some more tangible way.  In a few places he even feels a bit like a stereotype.  It's possible that my own preconceived notions about this book colored my thoughts about him a little too much. Perhaps Abel would come through more clearly to me on a re-read? If I could stand one.

The narration is also a little odd.  It’s third person, and hovers over Anna for about 95% of the book, but then takes occasional little detours to follow Gitta (Anna’s friend), Bertil (another friend), Abel, or Soren (a teacher).  When we’re with Anna, the narrator is intimate and free with information, but when we’re with anyone else…it becomes a vague, tight-fisted liar.  It feels a little too much like reader manipulation – like the author’s blatant attempt to keep everything a mystery until the very end. However, I just adore Antonia Michaelis’ writing.  She writes beautiful, evocative, stunning prose.  I highlighted so many passages. 

I'm not really sure how readers will react to this book.  I'm having a difficult time with my own reaction to this book.  It’s a dark, difficult (yet beautiful) read. That being said, I really want you all to read it, because I desperately need someone to have this conversation with right now:

“Could you believe that he…?”
“NO.  That was INSANE.”
“And then she…”
“OMG, don’t even get me started.”

So get to it!

Perfect Musical Pairing
We Are Augustines - Book of James

The theme of this song is a bit of a MAJOR spoiler so I’m not really going to discuss it.  But this quote (from the lyrics) makes me really emotional about this book:

“Storm clouds began to form in his head
and crisscrossed his mind like a restless angry ocean 
And the howling of hardship and heartache kneeled and grinned in his face

He stood there in his shoes unable to move
Kid I drove all night here to tell you that I love you”

3.5/5 Stars

The Book of Blood and Shadow
Author: Robin Wasserman
Publication Date: 4/10/12
Publisher: Random House Children's Books

Blurb(GR): It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up.  When the night began, Nora had two best friends and an embarrassingly storybook one true love.  When it ended, she had nothing but blood on her hands and an echoing scream that stopped only when the tranquilizers pierced her veins and left her in the merciful dark.

But the next morning, it was all still true: Chris was dead.  His girlfriend Adriane, Nora's best friend, was catatonic. And Max, Nora's sweet, smart, soft-spoken Prince Charming, was gone. He was also—according to the police, according to her parents, according to everyone—a murderer.

Desperate to prove his innocence, Nora follows the trail of blood, no matter where it leads. It ultimately brings her to the ancient streets of Prague, where she is drawn into a dark web of secret societies and shadowy conspirators, all driven by a mad desire to possess something that might not even exist. For buried in a centuries-old manuscript is the secret to ultimate knowledge and communion with the divine; it is said that he who controls the Lumen Dei controls the world. Unbeknownst to her, Nora now holds the crucial key to unlocking its secrets. Her night of blood is just one piece in a puzzle that spans continents and centuries. Solving it may be the only way she can save her own life.

Review:
I really enjoyed the beginning of this book.   It’s tense and exhilarating and I felt immediately drawn into the story.  As it opens, the main character Nora is reeling in the aftermath of the gruesome murder of her best friend Chris.   And then we are immediately thrown back into the past, where we get to see just how amazing and complicated Nora's relationship with Chris really was.  Instant grief!  Instant Intrigue!

There’s also a very nice romance between Nora and the quiet, nerdy Max that’s neither simple nor easy. 

“Max, on the other hand, was hard.  Convoluted and cloudy, full of things I wasn’t supposed to ask and places I knew better than to go.  With Max, I didn’t have to pretend.”

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Nora is a sympathetic, down to earth voice of reason, even as the plot of this book becomes more and more farfetched. She’s funny and dry, but she has a lot of understandably tender areas.  Her grief is dealt with beautifully and never feels superficial.

“I had a copy of the photo tacked to the wall by my bed, and I had to leave it there, because it was a piece of him.  That’s what death did – it turned trash into talismans.  A CD he’d burned, a notebook he’d doodled in, a sweatshirt he’d worn: holy relics.”

The mysteries, while creepy and compelling to begin with, soon become convoluted and silly.  The historical mystery centers on a manuscript that’s been studied and obsessed over for centuries by various scholars and fanatics, who have all failed to decipher it.  Enter Nora, with her minor fluency in Latin, and a small group of undergrads and voilà!, suddenly it’s all being solved.  Granted, there is an attempt to explain this later with a little “The Matrix”-type logic. But it’s still incredibly hard to believe.

The clues themselves are “hidden” in locations that it’s impossible to believe would remain undisturbed for centuries.  For example, the first clue has been sewn into the lining of one of the obsessed-over books.  Really?  No one ever thought to x-ray the book or examine it further?  It takes Nora about two minutes to dig it out.  They’ve all also been conveniently left behind in parts of the world left untouched by development – so mass disasters, wars, new construction, and even just every day wear and tear are not issues.  They are in code. Nora’s up-until-then completely absent Dad pops in randomly to solve the first one, and then fades back into non-existence.  The codes are something like this:

In the third hour of the third day of the third year of the new millennium, I wrote this poem. THIRD. 

I LIVE HERE IN A SPRAY TAN BOX OF ION SKIES.

Whoever solves this wins a prize!*

So, okay maybe Nora's codes are also in Latin.  But still...would something like that really stump scholars for centuries?  And there are so many other absurdities in this story.  I mean, just as a hypothetical scenario...which may or may not have anything to do with this book…

If your best friend were murdered, and it turned out that a mysterious group of fanatical killers were to blame; if they were coming after you next; if the thing they wanted most was a dangerous, powerful machine…do you think the best option would be to track down every element of said machine for them and hand it over for their use in the tiny, foolish hope that they’d leave you alone after that?  Just because it worked in Mission:Impossible doesn’t make it a good idea.

And in a related and equally hypothetical scenario…

If a boy arrived out of the blue, claiming to be the cousin of your best friend (even you admit that they look nothing alike); if that boy started showing up wherever you were – at your dorm room, at your brother’s grave, on your school trip…TO FRANCE; if you caught him in obvious lies several times; if he were conveniently fluent in several obscure languages and could beat off six armed men with a knife…would you trust this boy?  With your life?  Admittedly, he does have a “strange comfort in his voice”, so you know.

There are a few interesting questions raised by this book about faith vs. knowledge – Is it better to believe something without evidence or to demand proof?   But none of them are really explored any further than the initial asking.  The ending is confusing and frenetic, with “twists” that I saw coming a mile away and a bunch of loose ends that feel ham-fistedly tied together into sloppy knots.  I really wonder if this was initially planned as a series, and then hastily converted into a stand-alone.

Perfect Musical Pairing
Underworld – Born Slippy

This song is so mellow and gorgeous at the beginning, with a slowly building tension that evolves into a full-on techno dance fest right around 1:16.  By the end it’s almost unrecognizable (especially if you have the super long 9 minute version).  At least with this song, you can just turn out your lights, break out your glow sticks and shout LAGER LAGER LAGER while pretending you’re back in the 90’s.  I don’t want to give away too much about the ending of this book, but it’s hard to dance to melting human flesh.


*The prize is knowing that you’re a smarty pants!!

2/5 Stars