Book Reviews Archive - Page 34 of 79

The Child Thief by Brom: Book Review

In this very, very dark telling of Peter Pan, Peter is abused and unwelcome everywhere he wanders until he stumbles onto the island of Avalon. There, he finally carves out a home for himself, although not without a certain amount of danger. As conditions on the island deteriorate, Peter recruits children from the world of men to come live on his island and help fight the battle to save Avalon and his Lady. I haven't read Peter Pan and I only have vague memories of the Disney movie, which I didn't care for. So I can't say anything about how this compares to the original source. I can say that it worked for me. Peter's mother is a human and we only get a vague hint that his father is some sort of forest spirit. He lives up to that lineage admirably. He can be serious, playful, deadly dangerous, funny, loyal, and unforgiving in the space of a few heartbeats. His temperament can only be described as mercurial. As such, I was never entirely sure whether I should be rooting for him to succeed or not. I could tell he definitely had an ulterior motive or three but I didn't know if I should sort him out to be a hero or a villain. It was nice to be kept on my toes! Honestly, I still don't know what to think of him. I guess he's more like a force of nature--he just is. The children he recruits to come to Avalon call themselves Devils. They were heart-breaking. The first chapter is very disturbing, with Peter saving a little girl from another night of being molested by her father. Holy cow. That was not what I expected from Peter Pan! But once I thought about it, those are exactly the…

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer: Book Review

4 Stars. I didn't like this quite as much as Cinder but I definitely still enjoyed it. By introducing Scarlet, Marissa Meyer managed to avoid my common complaint that the second book in a series is just filler. Had she stayed exclusively with Cinder's story, I'd probably be complaining. By shifting the focus, she fills in a lot [...]

One Child by Torey Hayden: Book Review

Torey Hayden is what I can only call a special ed teacher. At some less-politically-correct point in her career, she agreed to teach the "garbage class" (her words, not mine) that consisted of the abused, unteachable, unreachable kids. The class of eight students, a teacher's aide who lacked even a high school diploma, a high school student volunteer, and Torey made it through the first semester in decent shape. But in January, little Sheila joined them. She seemed to be more troubled and harder to reach than most and she set the class on its ears. But Torey made the effort to try to help this six-year-old child. What a heart breaker. The five stars reflect the importance of the subject rather than the quality of the writing. The story is told in a straightforward manner and is very readable in and of itself, but it's really nothing special.* But this little girl. Oh my gosh, little Sheila. What a survivor. I work in a hospital that has one floor dedicated to psychiatric patients. It has always blown my mind that we have an area in there dedicated to pediatric (as in not-a-teenager) patients. The few times I've been called to do a test there, I've left wondering how such a young child can get so broken. Is it just a bad hand, genetically? Or has someone made the effort to break them? What could break these young children? I always stop my thinking there, not really wanting to know, wanting to stay safe in my middle-class sheltered existence. But One Child showed me what can happen to these kids. It was not by any means an emotionally easy read. It's left me quite disturbed. But it's so important. We're losing too many kids this way, and they all have…

The Sleeping Beauty by Mercedes Lackey: Book Review

In the Five Hundred Kingdoms, a force called the Tradition tries to fit likely young men and women down the well-trod paths of fairy tale characters. Now it's trying to work its magic on Princess Rosamund but Godmother Lily is doing her best to thwart it. The Queen has just died and Lily sees the Tradition building, trying to force Rosmund into the role of Snow White. Lily consults with the King and they agree that Lily should secretly fulfill the role of "evil stepmother." Someone else is trying to play off the Tradition's magic though and a huntsman really does make off with Rosamund. After a rescue in which not one but two Prince/Hero types play a part, Rosa and Lily join forces to help Rosa choose her own destiny and ensure the safety of their small but wealthy kingdom once and for all. The title of this one is a little misleading. There is actually more of Snow White or Rapunzel than Sleeping Beauty here. Still, I enjoy this series for the way the traditional stories are turned upside down and this mish-mash works for me. Rosa and Lily are very likable characters. They very much set their own courses. Rosa has learned how to cook and sew, just in case she finds herself in a setting where Tradition would require those skills. She's learned diplomacy and common sense from her mother, a commoner who married the King for love. Lily is a powerful Godmother who manages a particularly difficult kingdom alone and with ingenious solutions. Her arc is secondary, but I really liked it. I definitely liked Siegfried. He's the descendant of-- let's call them Norse gods. He's become aware of the Tradition's power as well and he's doing his best to avoid an Oedipus-like fate that…

The Small Hand by Susan Hill: Book Review

Adam Snow gets lost in the countryside on a drive back to London one evening and finds himself at a derelict house. He gets out of the car to look around and feels a small hand slip into his. There's no one else there. He takes the memory of the hand with him and remembers it as a comforting presence. But then he starts to have panic attacks, near misses, and inexplicable urges to harm himself. The small hand obviously does not bear him good will. Eh. This was more Gothic than horror so I feel that it was too short to really work up some good suspense. Gothic novels are such a slow burn that they almost have to be chunksters to really pull me in and get my nerves on edge. At less than 200 pages, the events of this book happen relatively quickly and feel rushed and even a little obvious. The basic premise is very solid though and I think I would have enjoyed a longer book much more than I did this one. Being so short, it is worth a try if you're interested or if you're in the mood for a little Gothic fun though. Read an excerpt. Find author Susan Hill on her website, Facebook, and Twitter. Buy The Small Hand at Malaprop’s | Better World Books I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site. My opinions are completely my own.

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King: Book Review

Life hasn't been easy for Dan Torrance since the events of The Shining. Now that he's an adult, his shining has faded a little but it's still too much for him to handle. Following in his father's footsteps, he's turned to alcohol to escape from his problems. He eventually hits his bottom and tries to turn his life around. He ends up in a small town in New Hampshire, where he senses a girl with a shining even bigger than his own. But a sinister group called The True Knot have sensed her as well and they know they would feast off the "steam" she would release if they could just get their hands on her to torture her to death. Dan and little Abra, with the help of a few friends, must find a way to defeat The True Knot and keep them from feeding off children with the shining. It's been 10+ years since I've read The Shining or watched the movie so I can't address how well Doctor Sleep compares to it. But I can tell you that I loved this book. My one complaint is that it does feel a bit as if it's meandering at times. It took a very long time to even bring Abra into the story. Eventually though, all of those little "tangents" tie into the bigger scheme of things. As the story twisted and I realized exactly how things were fitting together, I would just laugh out loud sometimes. Not because the story was funny but because I was delighted that King was taking me in directions that I did not see coming at all. That's starting to feel like a rare thing for me to find in an author. The book was much stronger for it as well. I liked…

Mountainfit by Meera Lee Sethi: Book Review

Author Meera Lee Sethi travels to Sweden one summer to volunteer at a bird observatory. Her time in the mists and mountains of Sweden led her to write a collection of contemplative essays that are collected here. What beautiful language! I was in deep like from the beginning and in love by the closing sentences of the first chapter. "We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls. What you are reading was supposed to be a book about birds but it is about this, too." Aren't you just ready to sink into Sethi's writing and follow wherever she leads? This slim book is imbued with layers of meaning. There are the surface stories about the birds and the landscape of Sweden and then there are the ways in which Sethi ties those things back into human experience. In the first chapter the migratory cuckoo becomes a metaphor for the wanderlust and yearning for other lives we all feel sometimes. In another the isolation we each occasionally feel is linked to the poor "vagrant" birds who get blown so far away from their native lands that they will never make it back. And so it goes throughout the whole book. The fjälls of Sweden are so beautifully described that I'm ready to catch a plane and visit. Not being a fan of cold weather, Sweden isn't high on my list of places to visit, so this is really saying something. I loved that there is an index at the back listing some of the birds that Sethi mentions in the book. When I'm reading I really don't stop to look up things I want to know. I always think I'll do it later but, of course, when later comes I've forgotten the names of what…

The Fallen by T. Jefferson Parker: Book Review

Homicide Detective Robbie Brownlaw was promoted a few years ago after a crazed arsonist threw him out of a sixth-floor window. He obviously survived to tell the tale, but he was left with a form of synesthesia--he sees people's words as colored shapes. He's learned to use this ability as a primitive lie detector. He's called in when a former cop is found murdered. My attention wandered a bit a lot while I was reading this, but I can't say it was necessarily the book's fault; I've got a lot going on at the moment. Even so, I wasn't particularly surprised when I found out whodunnit. I even managed to figure it out a little before it was laid out plainly. I found Robbie to be irritating. His marriage is falling apart but he just goes on and on about how special his wife is. I saw her as a spoiled brat who had a lot of growing up to do. Then I started to see him as just being a step away from a stalker. He got a little pathetic. That's not how I want to see my heroes. And the whole synesthesia thing was kind of...redundant? Came off as a crutch? Something like that. It was just an easy way for Robbie to know if someone was lying without having to do a lot of footwork to actually prove it. I did enjoy narrator David Colacci's performance, but otherwise, this audiobook was forgettable for me. I enjoyed Cold Pursuit by this author much more. Read an excerpt. Find author T. Jefferson Parker on his website and Facebook. Buy The Fallen at Malaprop’s | Better World Books I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I…

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway: Book Review

A group of friends travel to Pamplona, Spain for the annual running of the bulls and subsequent bullfights and fiesta. I didn't like it. Not one bit. We read this for my book club because one of our members remembered loving it when she read it in an English class and had been wanting to re-read it. Even she said it was not at all what she remembered and it must have been made better by an awesome English teacher. Let's hear it for awesome English teachers! Left to struggle through on my own devices, however, I found nothing redeeming in any of these characters. Which was probably the point, but still. I like to read about characters that I actually like. The best one was the narrator, so that was a plus, but he couldn't keep his friends in line and I don't think he wanted to. They were all so very cynical and had seen everything and done everything that they got a little boring. I told one of my friends who hadn't quite finished by the time our meeting rolled around, "Let me save you some time. They go out, get drunk, Brett sleeps with someone who is not her fiance, the Jew (as he was mostly known) got mad that she wasn't sleeping with him and hit somebody, they all drank some more, and started over the next day." And that's what I took away from this book. Life is short and boring, you drink and argue, then you die. I did like Hemingway's style. He's very short and to the point and without seeming to waste a lot of time on description, he manages to put you firmly in a scene. I would occasionally get confused as to who was speaking because he didn't like…

Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison: Book Review

Georgia Nicolson is fourteen and full of typical fourteen-year-old girl drama. Through her hilarious diary entries, we learn about her disastrous attempt at plucking her eyebrows, her fantasies about a guy she calls the Sex God (even though she doesn't seem very clear about what sex actually involves), her fights with friends, and her triumphs at school. Oh my gosh. I giggled all the way through this, feeling about 14 myself. Georgia just cracked me up. My poor husband couldn't get me to put it down and had to listen to me laughing and snorting to myself as I read. Oh, Georgia, you did my poor downtrodden, immediately post-Grapes of Wrath heart good. I recognized Georgia, and I think most of us will. I know some girls bypass the giggly, boy-obsessed stage completely, but I was not one of them. I was quiet about it, horrified at the idea that a boy might actually think I liked him, even if it was true, but at home I had my magazines and my walls were pretty much wallpapered with photos I'd ripped out of them and pinned up. My poor parents had no idea what happened. And that's where Georgia is in life. She comes across as pretty fearless. I was first shocked by some of the things she did but then I would giggle away again. It's all pretty harmless though. I don't know if I would like Georgia in real life (she's the type who would immediately tell a boy that you liked him), but on the page, I adored her. She is irrepressible, funny, insecure, sarcastic, and a nightmare of a teenage girl. Teens and adults who can relate and who aren't afraid of Georgia's crude sense of humor should absolutely pick this up. It was just what…