Book Reviews Archive - Page 49 of 79

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: Book Review

“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.” Two rival magicians agree to bind their students to a challenge. Hector will teach his daughter, Celia, and Alexander will teach a student of his own choosing. When the students are older, they will face each other in a challenge. The rules are never quite clear. When the venue for the challenge is finally chosen, it turns out to be The Night Circus, a new circus done entirely in black and white and where only the best performers and spectacles in the world are to be found. I think that maybe audio was not quite the right medium for me to approach this story. Don't get me wrong; I could listen to Jim Dale narrate all day, and he did a fantastic job with this. I think most of the appeal of the book is in the luscious descriptive language, and I personally can't appreciate that kind of thing quite as much in an audiobook. My favorite parts were the introductions to each section, when a new tent is described. Those were very visual and very well done. I could see them in my imagination as I was driving along January-gray roads, and I was transported to a magical circus where anything is possible. And while I enjoyed the plot, it just didn't feel like a whole lot actually happened. There was a lot of description and what action there was consisted of people muddling around trying to figure out what's going with the circus, when I as the reader already knew. That's not entirely fair, but that's how I started to feel. There are two stories alternating between different times, and I just couldn't figure out how they fit together. It's…

Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb: Book Review

This is a story told from many points of view. First is Zebulon Vance, the real life Civil War governor of North Carolina. We follow him from his days as a hotel porter fresh off the farm until his rise to governor. Next is Malinda Blalock, a tough mountain woman who follows her husband to war and beyond. Then there's Rattler, a modern day man with a touch of the second sight who realizes that the Civil War re-enactors of the mountains are calling up uneasy spirits who are best left alone. I enjoyed reading about my region's role in the Civil War. I'd heard somewhere that we were exceptionally torn apart during that conflict because we weren't wealthy landowners and so had no clear-cut reason to join either side. This book showed that. The voices of the different narrators were done very well. They were each very distinct. The only negative I have to say about it is that Malinda's voice didn't ring entirely true. The author gave it a good try, but she didn't quite get the accent and the language right. Lee Smith does a much better job with our Appalachian dialect. There was one other narrator in the book, but he had a very minor role. In fact, I'm not entirely sure why his parts were even included. He only had a few chapters, but I felt like they could have been cut out completely without really hurting the story. I'll be a little devilish here and say that I also enjoyed the way McCrumb wrote about our transplants from Florida. They were sort of caricatures, and we don't really think they're all like that, but we do feel like some newcomers think us locals are barbarians who should just leave and let them enjoy their…

The Sweet Potato Queens’ First Big-Ass Novel by Jill Conner Browne: Book Review

Jill Conner Browne writes a fictional account of how the Sweet Potato Queens came into being and how they truly became queens through some terrible decisions and heartbreak. I absolutely loved the first section of this book. It was sheer perfection I tell you. It starts when the queens are in high school and haven't really figured out that they're queens yet. They are always being looked down upon by the high school beauty queen, a bitch if ever there was one. I was shrieking with laughter and doing a corny little fist pump all alone in my car by the time this section ended. "You tell her, Queens!" I was repeating the last few sentences of that chapter to anyone who would listen for days, complete with my best Southern drawl. That was by far my favorite part. The Queens seem determined to make every mistake it is possible to make when it comes to love. There were still definitely some funny parts, but I had gotten so attached to these characters in that first chapter that I just wanted everything to go right for them. But I think Browne's ultimate message is that we are all Queens, no matter what horrendously bad decision we have made in our lives. We just need to pick ourselves back up, dust off our crowns, and start singing "Tiny Bubbles" again. I am torn between recommending the print or audio versions. I listened to the audio, read by Browne herself, and had a blast listening to her. I am definitely a Southern girl, but up here in the Southern Appalachians, we have more of a twang, and Browne definitely has a drawl. I could listen to her talk all day, I swear. No matter the slight differences in accents, I think that…

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…

Elliot and the Goblin War by Jennifer A. Nielsen: Book Review

Elliot somehow finds himself appointed King of the Brownies (not the kind you eat--the kind that likes to clean your house as you sleep. I'd be happy with either of them in my house). He first came to the Brownies' attention after he saved one of them from some evil Goblins on Halloween night. That night, Elliot also started a war between the Brownies and the Goblins, so I guess it's only fair that he has to lead the Brownies. The problem is that the Brownies have no concept of how war should work. They just go about their business as usual, expecting to be eaten or scared to death by a Goblin at any minute. Well, Elliot might be young, but he knows that something has to change. This was cute. It really was. My biggest problem was the frequent breaks for "Now, Reader, if you don't like to read about people being scared to death, you might want to stop reading right here. For serious. You've been warned. The last person who continued reading was eaten by a platypus." (Not an actual quote) It was kind of funny the first time or two, but it seemed like there was one of these in every chapter. Kids might like it, but I thought it got tedious. Other than that, it was a fun little story. Elliott and the Brownies (sounds like a pop group from the '50's) got themselves into some tight spots, but it was amusing to see how the Goblins mostly managed to defeat themselves. I have to own up to a very juvenile sense of humor when it comes to smelly feet jokes and the like, so I actually thought it was pretty funny in parts. I really liked that hidden inside this fun little story…

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…

Rise of the Evening Star by Brandon Mull: Book Review

Kendra and Seth are nearing the end of the school year when a new guy joins Kendra's class. The other girls talk about how cute he is, but all Kendra sees is a disgusting goblin who plays cruel tricks on people. A mysterious stranger offers to help them get rid of the goblin (or kobold, as they find out the creature is truly called). All they have to do is steal an object that will get rid of the creature. Things are never that easy for Kendra and Seth, so eventually they wind up back at Fablehaven, where they find out the Society of the Evening Star is intent on infiltrating the preserve and finding a powerful artifact. Seth has calmed down a lot since the first book, thank goodness. He's still crazy, foolhardy, courageous Seth, but he's a little more aware that his actions have consequences. Since Seth has changed for the better, I actually enjoyed this a little more than the first book in the series. I like what's going on with Kendra. Her brush with the Fairy Queen in Fablehaven has left her with some unusual abilities, and I have a feeling that we haven't even seen the beginning of what she can do. I like her a lot as a character, so this story arc has me intrigued. The ending--! I had a sneaking suspicion something like that might be coming, but I have a feeling that younger readers might be a little blindsided by the sudden twist. The characters suffer a lot of bad injuries, and that surprised me a little in a book that I personally would consider to be aimed at 9-12 year olds. I didn't find it to be anything over the top, but parents might want to keep that in mind…

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…