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From a Whisper to a Scream by Charles de Lint: Book Review

A serial killer has been viciously murdering women in the Combat Zone, a seedy area of Newford. He makes a mistake when he kills a wealthy man's daughter, apparently mistaking her for one of the prostitutes he normally targets. There's a witness to this one too. He swears the killer stepped out of the side of a building and disappeared the same way. Detective Thomas Morningstar has mostly left his Kickaha traditions behind on the rez. But something about these killers doesn't feel right, so he seeks help in the most unexpected of places. And then there's Chelsea, a teen who's already experienced a lifetime of hurt. She's been told that her abusive father is dead, but she can still feel him out there. Searching for her. And she knows this time he won't stop until she's dead. This is a re-read, and I wrote in my initial one-sentence summary, "This is too dark for me." I'm re-reading the Newford books in order, and it was time for this one. It's still too dark for me. I do like horror, but this is a little too real. The so-called "horror" element doesn't feel real, but the abuse is the true horror. It's nothing gratuitous, but it is more graphic than I would like. Being inside the mind of a pedophile left me feeling dirty and more than a little disturbed. It's hard for me to read that kind of thing at any time, but especially when it involves children. I miss that none of the Newford regulars showed up in this book. Part of what I love about the Newford books is spotting some of my favorite characters and finding out how they're doing. I know that sounds crazy, but after multiple re-reads of my favorites across 20+ books and…

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson: Book Review

Chicago wins a bid to be the host of the World's Fair in 1892, the 400th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America. The city's top architects immediately swing into gear to make this a fair to remember. Paris had hosted a world's fair a few years earlier and everyone said that it couldn't be beaten. So of course Chicago feels like they have to "out-Eiffel Eiffel." At the same time, charming psychopath Dr. H.H. Holmes sets up a pharmacy/hotel/restaurant in the city. Women and children who enter his sphere are never heard from again. The Devil in the White City weaves these stories together. I'm not a non-fiction reader, but I liked this book. It was interesting to see what Burnham, the lead architect for the fair, went through to get everything together on time. I also enjoyed reading about the odd bits of trivia associated with the fair. For example, did you know that the Pledge of Allegiance was written for the dedication of the fair? It was also fun to see how everyone who was anyone knew each other in a much smaller America back then. The book is full of names that I recognize and I'm not a history buff. There were some things that I wasn't crazy about though. The serial killer stuff could have been better. It was never suspenseful. It was just, "Well, he made this girl fall in love with him, and then she disappeared, but they think they found her footprint on the inside of his crematorium." I know it's non-fiction and the author was trying to stick to facts, but I kind of like some sensationalism. It could have been played up more for my taste. The very end of the World's Fair started dragging for me. We had lost the…

Empire Falls by Richard Russo: Book Review

Miles Roby is the manager of The Empire Grill in the heart of Empire Falls, Maine--or what's left of it, anyway. This once-thriving industrial town is dying now that the factories have all closed. Empire Falls still has a tightly-knit, optimistic community though. There are constantly rumors about new buyers for the factories. Miles feels as if he's the only skeptic, watching from behind his counter as his town is slowly sinking. I'm finding this to be a really hard review to write. That's because as I read the book, I didn't really feel like I was reading fiction. It seems like a new factory closes somewhere in my area weekly (not really, but it's not been great) and these characters felt like neighbors. None of them are perfect, and they're all struggling with things that we can relate to. I feel like I'm trying to write a review of small-town, blue-collar American life, and that's not something that I review, that's just something that we live. And I guess that I couldn't really give Russo a higher compliment than that. Sure, there are things that I didn't necessarily enjoy, but when a book is so spot-on that you feel like you're reading about the next town over, there's not much else to say. There were times when I laughed (Father Tom and Max Roby were always good for that), there were times when I was a little heart-broken, there were times when I felt victorious, and there were times when I was beyond horrified. I really did not see the stuff at the end coming. It was one of those things that always happens "somewhere else," so when I had lost myself enough to feel that I was a part of Empire Falls, it was shocking that it happened…

The Ice Limit by Douglas Preston: Book Review

It's only been about a week since I read this book, but I'm already hazy on the details, so this will be vague. Basically, this super-rich guy hires an engineering firm with a perfect record of doing the "impossible" to extract a meteorite from the ground of a Chilean island off of Cape Horn. In the wintertime. Without Chile's government officials finding out about it. Of course things go wrong. This was an odd mixture of a book that I couldn't put down and a book that felt like it was creeping along. I could have done without a lot of the day-to-day engineering feats they pulled off. They didn't all add to the story's plot. I was pretty conflicted about who the bad guys and good guys were. This isn't a very black-and-white book. I saw where it was going. Overall, I think anyone who reads the back cover has a good idea what's going to happen. But there's a sudden twist in the very last sentence, and I even saw that coming from a little way out. Maybe because I've read both Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and Dan Brown's Deception Point recently. In fairness, without those, I would have been clueless and maybe a little more weirded out. And that brings up the fact that I couldn't help comparing this book with Deception Point. The plots weren't all that similar, but they do both involve unique meteorites. I would recommend Deception Point instead of this one. I read it much more quickly, heavy foreshadowing and all, and just overall enjoyed it more. This book wasn't bad, it just wasn't great. I've only read one other Preston/Child book, Thunderhead, and I would recommend it instead of this one too. I enjoyed it. I will keep…

The Thorn and the Blossom by Theodora Goss: Book Review

I have to start with this actual physical book. If you read my blog, you might be aware that I don't accept books for review. Reading on a schedule was starting to feel like work, so I decided to just say no to free books and read what I want when I want. It works better for me. I still get the occasional pitch and I will glance through them but I ultimately move on. The pitch I got for The Thorn and the Blossom was different. "As for the unique format, The Thorn and the Blossom intertwines Evelyn’s and Brendan’s stories in an accordion-fold binding so that readers can choose whose perspective to read first, his or hers. Either way, the other will bring a surprise." I couldn't picture it. Luckily, a link to the book trailer was included for me. I was curious; I had to watch. Then I knew I had to have this book. Go ahead. Watch it. I'll wait. I got it in the mail, ripped it open, and fell in love. It is just a gorgeous book. There are a few illustrations and I loved those. The covers (Evelyn's, Brendan's, and the box that holds the book together) are well-matched and elegant. It's a smaller "hardcover" and I am drawn to those. I like the way they fit in my hands. When I started reading, it did take a little while for me to get used to the format. I am a one-handed reader, and I tend to read while eating or drinking, or just keeping one hand warm under the blankets. That was a bit of a problem. This is definitely more of a two-handed book. When I forgot and held it at the middle with one hand, I could feel one side…

Second Hand Heart by Catherine Ryan Hyde: Book Review

Vida is 19 years old and dying. She's been dying her entire life. Not in the vague way that we are all destined to die, but in a way that has led her through multiple heart surgeries in her short life. This time, it's for real. Her doctors are talking weeks if she's lucky. She's been bumped to the top of the waiting list for heart transplants. And then she gets a new heart and she's able to start living. On the flip side, Richard has everything. A job and a wife that he loves. Until he loses Lorrie in a tragic car accident. He chooses to donate her organs and Vida gets her heart. Vida's and Richard's lives are forever entwined after that. The first time Richard walks into her hospital room after the transplant, Vida tells him that she loves him. She's never met him before, but she feels a deep, romantic love for him. At my old job, I was the tiniest of tiny cogs in the transplant process. I did electrocardiograms on the donors so that doctors could make sure the heart was in good working order from an "electrical" standpoint. I was glad that the families had chosen to donate their loved ones' organs, but I hated that part of the job. I never saw the recipients (the actual transplant happened in larger hospitals), so I only saw the donors, and I knew that this beautiful child, wife, father, loved one would not be going home to his or her family. They were all beautiful and they were all young. I didn't do it often, but I was never able to detach myself from the sadness on that end. It was hard for me, to say the least. It was nice to read a book…

Dreams Made Flesh by Anne Bishop: Book Review

Dreams Made Flesh is a collection of four short stories/novellas centered around Jaenelle and her court. One of the events takes place immediately after the third in the Black Jewels series, so anyone reading this should keep that in mind. It definitely has spoilers for the previous books. My favorite story by far, was "The Prince of Ebon Rih." How I grinned as I read it! I've always liked Lucivar, but he really is cast as the older brother in the series. There is definitely more to him than that, so it was great to see him as a powerful ruler in his own right and a sexy-as-hell man. Watching him deal with that bitch Roxie was a pleasure. Seeing his insecurity in dealing with Marian was delightful. He didn't know what hit him. Absolutely loved it. My sister, who shoved this book into my hands saying only, "Read. This. Now." loves "Zuulaman." This is an event from Saetan's younger years that made him a legend. I liked it, but somehow couldn't help comparing it to Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana. You probably have to be inside my head to see how that happened. I loved Tigana and this story suffered for the comparison. And probably from my sister's buildup. Still, it was a very cool showcase of Saetan's raw power. "Kaeleer's Heart" would have been good, but it was a little too much like "The Prince of Ebon Rih." It was nice to see Daemon and Jaenelle together, but I felt like I had pretty much read the story already, just a few pages earlier. It is sexy to see the lengths that Daemon is willing to go to in order to protect Jaenelle though. "Weaver of Dreams" was just a confusing little legend and that's all I have to…

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks: Book Review

Hanna Heath studies and restores rare books. She is offered the chance of a lifetime when she is contacted by the United Nations to restore a rare illuminated Haggadah at the end of the Bosnian War. Hanna manages to pull out a few clues to the book's history. As she follows up on the clues, we glide back and forth through time, visiting first Hanna, and then the story of the book's owners and saviors backwards through a long, tumultuous history. Hanna's story was almost just filler to me. I wasn't bored by any means, but I couldn't wait to see where and when the book would take me next. The characters in the book's history were fascinating and only at the end did I really get a good sense of how everything fit together. The hints were there, they were just so subtle that I didn't quite catch them. But the author wrapped everything up beautifully. None of this is a complaint, by the way. I found the whole thing intriguing. I loved the fact that there was a theme running throughout of people saving the book who weren't necessarily Jewish. Muslims and Christians living during times when everyone was fighting saw the value of the book and saved it. It just seems that so often, history and books seem to focus on the negative; it's nice to see that there are always people out there who are able to overcome prevailing prejudice and do what is right. I recommend this one to just about anyone. Reviewed January 15, 2009 Read an excerpt. Find author Geraldine Brooks on her website. Buy People of the Book at Malaprop’s | Better World Books Friday Flashback Reviews are a weekly feature here on The Introverted Reader. These are old reviews I wrote…

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: Book Review

Dr. Montague, a researcher into paranormal activity, has rented the fabled Hill House for the summer. The house has a reputation for being haunted. Very few people have managed to stay in it for more than a night. In order to sort of help the house do its worst, he invites people to stay with him who have had paranormal experiences. The only two who take him up on his offer are Theodora and Eleanor. Luke, the future heir to the house, also comes along. It does not take long for the house to show what it's made of. I think this might have been ruined for me by the narrator. The book is in third person, but is told from Eleanor's point of view. Why on earth did someone choose to have a man narrate? For the right book, he would be fine, and he did what he could with this. An older man with a deep voice is just not the right person to lead us down Eleanor's thoughts when she's so very--weak, maybe? No, uncertain is the better word. She's uncertain of her place in the world, in the house, in the group. She's also a dreamer who has a tenuous grasp on reality at best. The narrator definitely needed to be a young woman. Eleanor herself is something else. Her thoughts get to be a little disturbing. She's definitely an unreliable sort-of-narrator. I never really knew what was happening in the real world and what was only happening in her head. For that matter, I never knew what she was actually doing. Aside from that, I think I expected more of a horror angle. Sure, the house does get up to some crazy things, but nothing as bad as what I expected. I don't feel like…

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris: Book Review

I tried, but I give up. The first story, "Santa Land Diaries," was great. Sedaris's tale of working as a Macy's department store elf is hilarious! Those people who inevitably make the news every Black Friday by pepper spraying and punching their fellow shoppers? I think they all go to Macy's at Christmas. Sedaris writes about them with his usual biting wit. My favorite scene had to be when he gets fed up with this awful Santa who keeps making him sing Christmas carols with the kids. Sedaris sings "Away in a Manger" in Billie Holiday style. I have never heard anything like it in my life, but it is absolutely perfect. You have to listen to the audio for that alone! I was cracking up alone in my car! There are a few poignant moments as well, especially from one Santa who likes to remind people what Christmas is really all about. One of the local theaters does a stage production of this story every year, and my husband and I have always been curious about it. We will definitely be going to see it next year. Oh, but then. The second story, "Season's Greetings to Our Family and Friends," was horrible. Absolutely horrible. It's supposed to be a spoof of a Christmas letter gone horribly wrong. Something's gone horribly wrong alright--Sedaris's attempt at fiction. I kept listening, thinking it had to get better, but it just kept getting worse and worse. Disturbing only starts to cover it. I wish I could scrub that half-hour listen out of my brain. For real. This one was told from a woman's point of view, so it's read by David's sister, Amy Sedaris. I have to admit the tone and reading were absolutely perfect for the story, but it set my teeth…