Book Reviews Archive - Page 54 of 79

The Color Purple by Alice Walker: Book Review

Celie is only a young teen when her stepfather marries her off to their widowed acquaintance, Albert. Celie is little more than a slave to the family. Albert has several spoiled children who terrorize her and he regularly beats her himself. Celie just puts her head down, writes letters to God, and tries to go unnoticed. As time goes by, Celie loses contact with her beloved sister, Nettie. She starts writing letters to Nettie as well, but she never hears back. Then Albert moves his ailing lover, blues singer Shug Avery, into the house and expects Celie to take care of her. Far from feeling jealous of Shug, Celie is relieved that someone is there to deflect Albert's attention from her. The women become friends and Celie realizes how much more there is to life than what she's getting out of it. I read this in order to have a review ready for Banned Books Week. I'm not sure what on earth possessed me to buy it at a library book sale. I've always been a little afraid of it, ever since hearing my grandmother talk about the movie years ago: "Oprah wasn't going to let that man beat on her." Wife abuse. Not exactly my cup of tea. I was surprised to find myself loving the book. I was taken aback in the very first pages, I'll admit. Rape and beatings and killing babies, and all of this happening to a 14-year-old girl. I didn't know if I was going to be able to finish it. I'm so glad I stuck with it. You see, Celie is not obviously a strong person. She is a survivor, but she doesn't really thrive. She just gets by. Watching her come into her own and become a woman to be reckoned with…

Heir to the Shadows by Anne Bishop: Book Review

Definite spoilers for Daughter of the Blood. At the end of the first book, Jaenelle is broken and Daemon isn't in much better shape. Jaenelle has to heal in this book and come to terms with what she is. Luckily, she's surrounded by caring friends who are willing to protect her and push her as needed. I truly wanted to give this one 5 stars. Again, it grabbed me and just did not let go. But there were a few more things that I couldn't overlook. To start with, I was a little more aware in this book that the writing could have been more polished. I can't think of an example, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Also, this one felt more like a young adult book. The focus of the first book was mostly Daemon, a grown man. The focus of this one is a teenage Jaenelle, so the tone has gone backwards a little bit. As happens sometimes in trilogies, this second book felt like filler. The author wrapped up a few threads from the first book and set up the conflict for the third book, but there wasn't a whole lot of actual new, necessary stuff going on in this book. The big thing was that the book felt very episodic. There wasn't a great flow. I would finish one chapter/story, and in the next chapter, two years had passed and another little story was being told. It would take me a page or two to figure out when the story was happening. That was the bad stuff, but there was still lots of good things going on. I love these main characters. Daemon wasn't seen as much in this one, but we did get to see more of Lucivar. I do…

Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs: Book Review

**Possible spoilers for Moon Called** Mercedes Thompson is a mechanic who just happens to walk in two worlds. There's the mundane world where she spends her time fixing VWs, and there's the supernatural world that she was born into. See, Mercy is a walker. She can shift into coyote form at will. She's not as physically strong as a werewolf, but she has other strengths to make up for it. So when local vampire Stefan needs some unobtrusive help in sniffing out a new vampire in town who is poaching on his seethe's turf, he asks Mercy to shift and go with him. They both get more than they bargained for. This vampire is unknown, and so must be fairly young, but his strength is unimaginable. He is wreaking havoc in the Tri-cities, and it's going to take more than one vampire and a shifter to bring him down. I like Mercy a lot. (And I loathe these covers. Loathe them, I tell you.) It would be very, very easy to fall in with the local werewolf pack and start to lose her independence. She has fought hard to gain that independence and she fights hard to keep it. It's just so hard to keep fighting when the werewolves are so damn sexy. I would purr if that were appropriate when talking about werewolves. Adam is hot and a great alpha. He doesn't just throw his weight around and beat on those who are submissive to him. He cares for them and tries to be is a true leader. Samuel is a little outside the local pack, for some very complicated reasons, but he is every bit as dominant as Adam is. And he's Mercy's roommate. And they have a history. *Arching of the eyebrow here.* *Shakes head* Anyway. Enough…

Out from Boneville by Jeff Smith: Book Review

Three Bones, Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone, are run out of Boneville after Phoney Bone tries to pull a scam on the townspeople. They get separated in a desert. Fone Bone, the most honest of the bunch, eventually finds marooned in a beautiful valley. All is not as peaceful as it appears, however. There are rat creatures trying to eat Fone Bone and an enigmatic dragon who keeps saving his skin. This has potential, but it didn't really get anywhere in this first installment. I had more questions when I finished it than I did when I started it. I can't think of one question that got answered. That's the biggest reason I rated this three stars. I did like the artwork. It reminded me of the cartoons I watched as a child. I don't really have anything else to say. I don't feel like I know enough about what's going on to add anything else. Readers more patient than I am will probably like this more than I did. I just want to have something explained. Find author Jeff Smith on his blog and Facebook. Buy Bone: Out from Boneville at Malaprop’s | Better World Books I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in 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.

In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant

Bucino is a dwarf employed by one of the most favored courtesans of Rome, Fiammetta Bianchini. When Rome is sacked by Spaniards and Lutherans in 1527, Bucino and Fiammetta barely escape with their lives and a few jewels they managed to swallow. They are forced to start over again in Fiammetta's native city of Venice. The going is slow at first, but they are both determined to rise to the top again, with the help of some unlikely accomplices. I enjoyed reading this, I liked Bucino, and I truly enjoyed reading about Venice. But towards the end I started asking myself what the point of the whole thing was. It didn't really seem to be going anywhere. When it did finally get to something like a conclusion, it was all over pretty quickly. I would have liked a little less build-up and a lot more exploration of the final conflict, for lack of a better word. As it was, I felt like the ending sort of came out of nowhere. And I don't mean that in a good way. Also, looking back at the beginning of the book to remember how to spell Fiammetta's full name, I realized that her character really wasn't very consistent. Her moods and really her overall character seemed to shift to suit whatever needed to happen next in the book. Sometimes that makes a character seem more real, but in this case, it felt like the author didn't know how to get the story where she wanted it to go without changing Fiammetta. I would recommend this book if you're going to Venice soon (I am! Lucky me!). I'm so excited to go see the places that Sarah Dunant described so well! But for a great Renaissance-era book set in Italy, I think I would…

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse: Book Review

Alice Tanner is helping out on an archaeological dig in the south of France when she finds a cave that obviously has some significance. She finds an altar, a labyrinth, and two skeletons inside. Unbeknownst to her, she has stumbled on a secret that a lot of people have been searching for, most who would do anything to find it, and she's caught right in the middle of it. Centuries earlier, Alaïs Pelletier is caught up in even bigger events. Her beloved city of Carcassonne is the object of a Crusade. The tolerance that makes her city so vibrant has drawn the wrath of the Catholic Church. A vast army from the northern part of France is marching to stamp out the heretics. Amidst all this turmoil, Alaïs finds out that her beloved father has a secret that must be kept safe at all costs. Ugh, I'm having a hard time getting my thoughts about this down. This just never grabbed me. It's supposed to be some sort of Grail-literary-thriller thing and I just kept looking for the thrills. I finally found them about 30 pages from the end. The rest of the time I was just kind of waiting on the characters to catch up to what I had already pretty much figured out. That's not even exactly right. What was going on was so obvious that I kept wondering what the point of the whole thing was. Now that I've finished I'm still kind of wondering. I did a little better with the storyline set in the past. It was moving a little too slowly for me, but at least I could see where the characters were coming from, I understood the tension, and I felt like they were reacting to it realistically. I couldn't really buy Alice's…

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

A man leaves his wife and daughter behind to go establish a new life for them in another place. He must learn the ways his of strange new home. I'm so glad Aths recommended this book. I would never have found it on my own. Without writing one word, Shaun Tan tells a detailed story about the fears and hopes of going in search of a better life. He has the mood perfectly set within two pages. His decision to illustrate the new city with unbelievable buildings, conveyances, and creatures helps the reader understand how overwhelmed The Arrival must be feeling. He shows scenes of confusion and despair, then kindness and hope. I felt that I knew what it was to be an immigrant, if only for a moment. I really like that he shows immigration to be a sort of cycle. There's the initial confusion, the kindness of strangers, the fitting-in, and then showing kindness to the next new person. This was shelved in the juvenile section at my local library. I don't know about that. There's nothing graphic or scary, I'm just not sure that a not-teen would understand what was being conveyed. If nothing else, though, it would lead to great discussions between parents and children. The illustrations are just gorgeous. Sepia-tinted like old photographs, they lend a note of authenticity to the story. It starts to look like something that really happened, despite the fantasy animals. I love the endpapers, with all the beautiful, multi-cultural faces. I highly recommend this lovely book. "Read" an excerpt. Find author/illustrator Shaun Tan on his website. Buy The Arrival at Malaprop’s | Better World Books I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small…

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: Book Review

This is primarily the story of Anna Karenina's troubled affair with Alexey Vronsky. It's also the story of Konstantin Levin's search for love and truth in society. While reading this book, I kept wishing that I could just read a "good parts version" as William Goldman called The Princess Bride. I kept getting bogged down in Tolstoy's reflections, mostly through Levin's eyes, of how decadent, silly, redundant, and complicated life in the upper class of 19th-century Russian society was. There would be pages and pages of a tangent that could have been an essay called "What's Wrong With Agriculture in Russia." I didn't care. There were also pages and pages of Levin watching an election and having no idea what was going on. If he didn't get it, there's no way that this 21st-century American woman is going to. Those parts just seemed to drag on and on and on. But the story itself was beautifully written and really made me think. I'm all for women's rights, but I would catch myself thinking, "What a selfish, ungrateful woman!" And then I would think, "Well, if it weren't for women like Anna pushing the limits of acceptable behavior, you wouldn't enjoy the freedoms you do today." And then I'd go right back to thinking, "I can't stand her! She wants everything her way!" I'm not really exaggerating. I really had this internal dialog going on throughout almost every scene that featured Anna. I think part of the problem for me was that her husband was a good man, she just didn't love him. So I was torn between how Anna was hurting him and her quest for love. I was worried about reading this, not necessarily because of the size, but because I wasn't sure how difficult it would be to…

Rapunzel’s Revenge by Shannon Hale

Take Rapunzel and plunk her down smack-dab in the middle of a Louis L'Amour book and you have the gist of this fun graphic novel. The framework of Rapunzel is here. Hungry mom, eager-to-please dad, evil witch, girl with crazy-long hair in a tower. But that's about where the similarities end. See, Rapunzel doesn't want a prince to come along and rescue her. Oh, no. She wants revenge. And she's perfectly capable of serving it up all by herself, thankyouverymuch. This was a lot of fun, and I can't give a real reason for knocking it back to three stars. Maybe it just veered a little too far away from the original? Or maybe Rapunzel was unrealistically self-sufficient? The girl was locked away in a tower for years, but she can kick some ass without even thinking about it. Now that I'm thinking about it more, it jumped around a little too much. Of course Rapunzel has lots of adventures, but there was nothing in between. It just jumped from castle to tower to town to ranch with very little transition. I think that's what bothered me the most. And Rapunzel's hayseed way of talking got a little old. There was a lot that I did like though. I liked that Rapunzel was a strong young woman. Her partner-in-revenge, Jack, was a charming rake. He doesn't think too much about stealing to get by, but Rapunzel knocks some morals into his head. I mostly loved the illustrations, although I never looked at them quite the same way after my husband asked me, in all seriousness, "Why is there a string of sausages on the cover of your book?" I liked that we got an explanation for the extraordinary length of Rapunzel's hair. I liked that Rapunzel's revenge wasn't just about…

Just After Sunset by Stephen King: Book Review

Warning! This review will be incredibly long because I find it impossible to review a collection of short stories without reviewing each story. Feel free to move along. Overall, this was not a typical Stephen King short story collection. His short stories generally give me nightmares. There were a few horror stories in here, but really he was exploring the post-9/11 world, grief, loss, and the afterlife. Some of his efforts were more successful than others, but the ones that worked really worked for me. "Willa"--3 stars--A young couple on their way to San Francisco are waiting at a train depot for another train after theirs derails. This story was just sort of eerie. King is so great at setting a mood that you realize right away that something's not quite right, but mostly this story just felt like page filler. "The Gingerbread Girl"--5 stars--A young woman runs to escape her grief, and then a nightmare. This one was straight-up suspense. I found my shoulders tensed and my body hunched over as I read this one. It's amazing to me that an author can do that in so few pages. "Harvey's Dream"--3 stars--A man on the brink of retirement tells his wife about a terrible dream he had the night before. It was well-written, but I just didn't care. "Rest Stop"--4 stars--A mild mystery writer overhears a disturbing argument at a rest stop late one night and must decide what to do about it. This one left me wondering what I would do in his shoes. There's some exploration of the hidden depths we carry around inside that we hope we never tap into. A good "makes-you-think" story. "Stationary Bike"--A man creates more than he thinks when he paints himself a picture to help pass the time as he rides…