Paperback Archives - Page 11 of 27

The Sword of the Warrior by Lian Hearn: Book Review

Tomasu is out wandering the mountains where his village is located, as he has countless times before, but this time when he comes back, a warlord has destroyed it and apparently killed all the inhabitants. Tomasu makes his escape after embarrassing the warlord and earning his eternal enmity. A kind stranger on the trail Tomasu takes out of the village helps him get away and the fates of the pair become entwined. Kaede is a hostage in another warlord's castle. She's been treated horribly but after a violent incident, she is finally allowed to live with the family rather than the servants. She is soon after told that she will marry a lord whom she has never met. She reluctantly sets out to meet him. The four stars are more for promise than actual delivery. This first "episode," as it's labeled, is really just setup. I liked Tomasu, or Takeo as he comes to be known, and Kaede. They're gathering a group of strong supporting characters around them as well. The stage is set for a lot of intrigue and action. I love the feel of this little book. It has a great cover and it's just the right size to be easily held and hauled around. I love books that are small. I'm interested to see where all of this goes. There's a magic system that is more hinted at than seen and I can't wait to see more of that. I want to see the woman Kaede becomes; I think she'll be formidable. Takeo is well on the way to his full power but I still can't wait to see more of him. The setting of not-quite-Japan is fascinating as well. My biggest complaint is that the book seriously just stopped. My copy has a "preview" of the…

Moon Women by Pamela Duncan: Book Review

4 Stars. I loved this book. I met author Pamela Duncan at a book festival a few years ago and just chattered away at her. I never do that. I'm usually all tongue-tied at author signings and rarely get out more than "Please" and "Thank you." But it just felt like she was one of my kind of people and so I rattled on while she [...]

The Inferno by Dante Alighieri: Book Review

To summarize for those who don't know, this is an epic poem, part of a greater poem called The Divine Comedy. Dante the Poet travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise at the behest of his dead true love, Beatrice. His guide for his tour of Hell is the great Roman poet, Virgil. This was tough. I rip through books quickly, but this took me a good six weeks to read. I could only read one or two cantos (about four pages) at a time. I would start to fall asleep. I'm not one of those people who reads to fall asleep. I read for enjoyment. I watch tv to fall asleep. I also read a couple of other books at the same time, so that slowed me down too. Part of what slowed me down is the translation. It was translated by Longfellow. So, here I was, reading a 14th-century Italian poet translated by a 19th-century American poet. You see the trouble? It felt like a very word-for-word translation. I know that poets are allowed to play around with English syntax, and that's fine. But everything felt sort of backwards. I don't know anything about Italian, but when I've waded through French in school and now trying to learn Spanish, a lot of their syntax is backwards to me. I assume Italian is the same way since it's also a Romantic language. So I would read a line and then mentally turn it around to a form that made sense to a modern English speaker. Wow. That really bogged me down. Another thing that really slowed me down is that in the B&N version, there were at least as many pages of endnotes as there were of actual poem. Don't get me wrong--the endnotes were mostly a huge help. Dante…

Letters From Home by Kristina McMorris: Book Review

Morgan McClain and his brother are shipping out to Europe in the last year of WWII. They spend their last night in the States at a USO dance where they meet Liz Stephens. Liz and Morgan immediately feel a connection, despite the fact that Liz is practically engaged to someone else. Complicated circumstances arise, as they do, and Morgan unwittingly finds himself dancing with Liz's friend, Betty, although he doesn't know the two women are friends. Betty promises to write him overseas. Flighty Betty asks Liz to help her write to Morgan. She intends to write one letter and be done with him. But when Morgan writes back, Liz receives the letter and can't get the author out of her head. She continues to write him as Betty throughout the war. It sounds more complicated than it is. It's a Cyrano story set in WWII. 3.5 stars. I liked it. The writing could be more polished, but I liked the characters and cared what happened to them. The snooty non-romance reader inside me would occasionally scoff at the likelihood of some of these events ever happening, but mostly I was able to shove that voice down and enjoy a charming story. We all need a dose of romance now and then, whether we admit it or not. And who am I to say this would never happen? We all agree that truth is stranger than fiction, right? I really liked Morgan. He has no pretensions of being anything other than he is--a farm boy, albeit one with above-average intelligence. His ambitions are small and homey, and his interactions with others are honest and sincere. Liz was a good match for him, but the tone of her letters was overblown. I found myself rolling my eyes at her prose sometimes. Betty…

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: Book Review

This sweeping epic portrays life during the Civil War and Reconstruction through the eyes of Scarlett O'Hara, a young Southern belle who has a stubborn streak a mile wide. She's in love with the wrong man, marries the wrong men, and is irredeemably selfish, but she's a survivor. Through it all, she steadfastly refuses the advances of reprobate blockade runner Rhett Butler. Their story is as timeless as it is turbulent. I feel like the last Southern woman to read Gone With the Wind. My excuse, such as it is: I did try to read it once before, when I was way too young. I thought Scarlett was mean, Miss Melly was a wimp, and Ashley was just useless. I put it down very early on and never wanted to pick it up again. However, as the host of The Southern Literature Reading Challenge, people were shocked that I'd never read this Southern classic, my aunt perhaps most of all. She has read it multiple times and re-watches the movie religiously. She finally told me last year when we were at the Decatur Book Festival together, "How about we do a read-a-long? It's been years since I re-read it and I would love to get your reactions as you're reading it for the first time." With her shove support, I finally got up the nerve to tackle this beast. I loved it. I have an ancient old mass market paperback with the tiniest font known to man and I still plowed through. My eyes physically hurt from the strain of reading almost 1000 pages of "ant prints" as I call fonts that small, and I still could not put it down. These characters just came to life for me. Don't ask me if I hated them or loved them because…

Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham: Book Review

All our familiar storybook characters have had to leave their homelands because an evil creature known as the Adversary has destroyed them. They have all converged on New York. In order to fit into mainstream society, there are some pretty stringent rules in effect. Snow White is effectively in control but her right-hand "man" is Bigby, otherwise know as the Big Bad Wolf. Jack the Giant Killer comes tearing into their headquarters one day with a story of finding Rose Red, his on-again off-again girlfriend and Snow's sister, missing from her apartment, which is covered in blood. Has there been a murder? Who did it? The first thing that struck me is how very much Snow White in the opening pages of this graphic novel looks like Regina/The Evil Queen from Once Upon a Time. My husband was even struck by it when I showed him. I know that doesn't have much to do with anything, I just found it amusing. Anyway, I really liked this story and the world that Willingham has built here. I am a fan of Once Upon a Time, so the idea of storybook characters living in our world is familiar to me. Still, this take is slightly different (and first--I just came to them backwards). They aren't cut off from the world in a little out-of-the-way town; most of them are living in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world. I liked seeing how their personalities allowed them to thrive or not in that setting. I was surprised by the mystery and had absolutely no idea "whodunnit." I was also amused by the characters gathering at the end for the classic "parlor scene" so familiar to fans of the cozy mystery. I liked the art a lot as well. I…

Daytripper by Fábio Moon: Book Review

5 Stars. I read the first chapter of Daytripper and was completely taken aback. I was in the mood for some graphic novels and I had just grabbed whatever looked promising at my local library. I had never heard of this book and I didn't read the synopsis too closely but it still caught my eye. When [...]

In Odd We Trust by Dean Koontz: Book Review

In the small town of Pico Mundo, an unassuming fry cook by the outlandish name of Odd Thomas has a special ability; he can see the dead. They can't speak to him but they have their own ways of communicating. After the murder of a small boy, Odd sees his spirit wandering around. It's obvious the boy wants justice. His nanny, an old friend of Odd's girlfriend Stormy, is worried that the killer might be targeting her other charge, a young girl. Odd and Stormy vow to do what they can to help protect the children of the town. Odd Thomas has come to the world of graphic novels. I like the idea but it didn't work out all that well for me. I love Odd. He's so good and earnest but he still has that unexpected sense of humor and hope despite all the things he's seen. That Odd was in these pages, I just wanted more of him. I think the format limited him. In the novels, I think my favorite parts are his internal musings and it's got to be hard to bring that through in a graphic novel. There were bits here and there, just not enough. I wasn't a huge fan of the style of the artwork either. In my ignorance, I'll say it looks like anime. Feel free to correct me nicely if there's a better word to describe it. Whatever it's called, I just don't generally care for it. The story felt kind of--well, circular. They don't really get much of anywhere. It was the same basic events a couple of times and then a big "surprise" ending that wasn't really a surprise. I will say that it was nice to see a beloved character from the first book who hasn't shown back…

Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs: Book Review

It's impossible (for me, anyway) to read a forensic mystery without comparing it to the Scarpetta novels. This one was awesome! I haven't read a forensic science mystery this good since the early Scarpettas! These novels are the basis for the TV series, Bones. I've never watched that show, so I didn't come into this with any expectations and I can't compare the book to the show. But the book by itself was really good. This is the first in a series featuring Dr. Temperance Brennan. She's a forensic anthropologist who has just relocated full-time to Montreal. The book opens with Tempe being called out to a scene to decide if bones found by city maintenance are old, archaeological-find-bones or new, current-crime-that-needs-to-be-investigated bones. To paraphrase the book, "Old bones don't smell." The science in the book was fascinating and--I'm assuming because the author is herself a forensic anthropologist--authentic. The characters, especially Tempe, are well-drawn, complex, and interesting. The plot started out a little bit slow, but once it took off, I couldn't put it down. I took it with me to an optometrist visit and didn't even notice that I spent two hours in the doctor's office! My only complaint is that some stuff seemed really obvious to me. Not everything, just some things, but they were kind of big things. I kept wondering, "Am I really supposed to have figured this out already for some reason? Or is Tempe really that clueless sometimes?" I am not a person who figures out Agatha Christie mysteries before Poirot reveals the solution. I read a mystery and I'm surprised at the end. For me to figure out something in a mystery before it's spelled out to me is very unusual. This didn't really take away from my enjoyment of the book. In…

Memory & Dream by Charles de Lint: Book Review

Or, a love letter to Charles de Lint's Newford books Izzy Copley is a college student majoring in art when she first meets world-famous artist Vincent Rushkin. She feels unworthy when he chooses to start teaching her his secrets. There's a reason that he's so secretive. He has a nasty temper and he frequently lashes out at Izzy, both verbally and physically. She's so in awe of him that she lets him get away with it. He finally teaches her the real secret to his work. Each painting is like a doorway to another world, allowing the subject of the painting to take physical shape in our world and stroll around on our streets. Izzy is breathless at the thought. She's delighted when she sees figures that previously only existed in her imagination living their lives on the streets of Newford. And then Rushkin shows her exactly how monstrous he can be. If I'm trying to be objective on this re-read, Memory & Dream is probably 4 to 4.5 stars. But for sheer nostalgia, I'm bumping it up to 5. This was not my first de Lint book but it was definitely an early one. I was working at my little local library as a high school senior, re-shelving books, when I discovered him. The covers (all three that the library owned anyway) caught my eye so I took one home. I'm pretty sure Spiritwalk was the first. I think this was the second. And I can still see why I've been in love with de Lint's work ever since. A 16-17 year relationship. We're on the record books at this point! I would consider this to be the first real Newford novel despite the fact that it's technically number five. The initial book, Dreams Underfoot, is a solid start…