Book Reviews Archive - Page 66 of 79

The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes: Book Review

The Somnambulist features Edward Moon, a conjurer most easily compared to Sherlock Holmes, but with a freakish twist. His Watson is an 8-foot-tall mute man named--can you guess?--The Somnambulist. The pair are asked to investigate a bizarre murder in the seamier part of London at the beginning of the novel. Within pages, they have solved the murder. Or have they? This was a quick, enjoyable read. The characters may have seemed a little like stock characters at first, but they almost always turned out to be something other than they appeared. The plot was well-paced and, for me anyway, the mystery was pretty unpredictable. But, be warned. I picked this up thinking that it might be like The Alienist but set in London with a few sideshow freaks. It starts out that way, but by the end, the book wanders into solid fantasy. That wasn't a problem for me because I am a huge fan of fantasy, but I know that's not the case for a lot of mystery fans. But it did go a little over the top for me, which is part of why it's 3.5 stars instead of 4.5. Also, I was left with a lot of unanswered questions. I like to have everything pretty tidily resolved at the end. I can't even figure out why the book is titled The Somnambulist instead of The Conjurer except that it sounds cooler. If nothing else, read the first chapter of this book. It's only about a page long. Read it while you're browsing the bookstore or the library. This was the best first chapter I've read in a long time. Here's the first paragraph: "Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever. It is a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in…

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: Book Review

Everyone who knows pleasant Dr. Jekyll is surprised that he has taken the brutish Mr. Hyde under his wing. Hyde is a horrible person, and everyone who meets him claims to be immediately repulsed by him. It's obvious that there's more to the relationship than meets the eye, but no one guesses exactly how twisted this relationship is. Okay, you probably know the basic story. I think that takes a lot away from the book. I can imagine that this novella was shocking and horrifying when it was first published, but I just felt a little "meh" about it. I understand that there's a message about pride and ambition and man's dual nature and all that, but I'm usually looking for a good story. I'm not saying that this is a bad story, or that it shouldn't be a classic or anything like that, I just found it a little disappointing. If you're interested, pick it up. If you somehow don't know what's going on with these two men, go ahead and give it a try too. It's a pretty easy read for a classic, it's short, and it would be creepy if you didn't know what was going on. I read this as part of Dueling Monsters, hosted by Jill at Fizzy Thoughts and Heather at Age 30+...A Lifetime of Books. They pitted The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson against each other. I read Dorian Gray a couple of years ago (my review), and I have to say that he wins out as the worse monster in this match-up. It might help that I didn't know much of his story before I read the book, but he primarily wins for me because he…

Dracula by Bram Stoker: Book Review

I have somehow never seen "Bram Stoker's Dracula" or any of the other movie incarnations of this book. In fact, I was surprised to read the back cover of this book and find out that the book is about Dracula moving to Enland to set up shop. So, I had no expectations going into it. Overall, I enjoyed the book. It's written in a journal/letter style, which I (mostly) liked and found interesting. I liked seeing what was going on with the main characters as we went along. The voices of the narrators kind of all blended together though. Mina was different, but Jonathan and Dr. Seward were pretty interchangeable for me. If there wasn't a clue in the content, I very often had to flip back to see which one was supposed to be writing this section. And I thought Van Helsing's "accent" was terrible! This intelligent physician/lawyer makes some horrible grammar and syntax mistakes that didn't come across as real to me. Granted, I'm not an expert at that kind of thing, but there's my opinon. Speaking of characters--the characters in this book were all (with the obvious exception of the vampires) too noble and good for words. A typical, paraphrased conversation between characters (I think spoiler free): "If I should show signs of becoming a vampire, give me your oath that you will do the honorable thing and destroy me in the appropriate way." "I would lay down my very life to prevent such a thing from happening, but if it should, I would gladly fulfill such a duty to you, in order that you might go to your eternal reward in Heaven." Is this for real? Okay, the book's over a hundred years old, but still... Now for my big pet peeve: the way Mina is…

Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld: Book Review

POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR LEVIATHAN Now that Great Britain has officially entered World War I, Deryn and Alek find themselves official enemies. Alek knows that he has to escape the Leviathan before his secret is out and he becomes an ultra-important prisoner of war, and Deryn knows that she has to let him go. The two find themselves in Constantinople (or is that Istanbul?), where the Germans are making trouble for the Brits, and developing a weapon that could be devastating for the Leviathan. Can Alek prevent a war, and can Deryn save her beloved ship? I am still loving this series. Deryn is such a feisty character. She's super-intelligent, practical, and not afraid to do the right thing. She's also finding it harder and harder to keep her identity a secret from Alek. Her solutions to problems are always ingenious and she just leaps off the page for me. I don't have quite as much to say about Alek. I like him, but compared to Deryn, he's kind of boring. A new character, Lilit, is introduced in this book, and I loved her too. She's a lot like Deryn, but she's able to live as a girl and still show the boys a thing or two about driving Clanker machines. She's fantastic and I hope we see more of her. The action just didn't let up, and I was always interested to see how things were going to work out. The ending was a bit weak because I thought it just stopped. I actually flipped forward and backward a few times on my nook to make sure I hadn't missed anything. As far as I can tell, I didn't. It just ended. Not exactly on a cliffhanger, but just in an odd place. I received an e-galley from the publisher,…

The Fairy Folk and She by Mary-Anne Grosse Ivie: Book Review

The old woman who lives in a shoe is overwhelmed. Her children are hungry. She decides to pay a visit to Razzlewitch and ask for help. Razzlewitch agrees to help in exchange for the old woman's oldest daughter, Lisa. If Lisa will come cook and clean for Razzlewitch, the other children will be fed and clothed. Lisa agrees but wonders what she's gotten into when she finds herself in a strange new world. This was a lovely little fairy tale. It starts with the old woman who lived in a shoe, but then it becomes its own story. Like all good fairy tale heroines, Lisa grows and comes into her own throughout the book. She has surprising talents that she must learn to use. She must also learn to trust herself. She meets a whole host of magical beings who, for the most part, end up being gentle teachers for her. There's an element of darkness too. Lisa, and her new neighbors, learn that appearances aren't everything. They must work together to overcome the threat of darkness in their fairy tale land. There's a very sweet love story at the heart of the book also. I just loved how this played out. I recommend this for those who are fond of their happily ever afters and who are in search of a gentle, lovely read. Thanks to the author for sending me a copy for review.

Nightshade by Andrea Cremer: Book Review

Calla Tor is the alpha of her teen Guardian (werewolf) pack. She knows the rules and she enforces them. So why does she break them multiple times in one day by saving a normal teenage boy and letting him see her shift? And why are her masters, the Keepers, so interested in this same guy? Oh, I'm torn on rating this one! On the one hand, I tore through it, eagerly waiting to see what was going to happen with Calla, Shay, and Ren. On the other hand, I'm tired of teenage love triangles, and I'm really, really sick of cliffhangers. I liked Calla as a protagonist, but I can't say that I bought her as an alpha personality. We're told that she's an alpha, but we only see her at a time when she's starting to question everything she knows about her life. That leaves her a little insecure. Maybe I'm just thinking that alpha=bitch (Hee hee! It should in a werewolf!), but she doesn't seem to have a whole lot of control over her pack. She's pretty clueless about what they get up to. Her younger brother knows more about their lives than she does. That's not the sign of a great leader. Shay and Ren were great, but they were almost interchangeable to me. Calla lusted after them both, they both lusted after her, they both constantly challenged her, but I didn't see her offering a whole lot of challenge in return. They were both able to convince her to do what they wanted pretty easily. I liked them both, so I can't come out as Team Ren or Team Shay. I'm kind of left thinking that if she feels so similarly about both of them, neither of them should be the guy for her. I got…

Juliet by Anne Fortier: Book Review

Julie Jacobs is stunned the day she finds out that her great-aunt Rose, who raised her and her twin sister Janice, has died. She's even more surprised when she finds out at the funeral that her real name is Giulietta Tolomei and Rose wanted her to go back to Siena, where she was born, and find a treasure that her mother left for her in a safety deposit box. Of course things are never that easy in real life or in fiction. Julie is soon in the middle of a treasure hunt, being pursued by ruthless treasure hunters, and wrapped up in the long ago story of Romeo and Juliet. Overall, I just loved this. It was full of excitement and suspense and romance and Italian scenery and Siena and gelato, and just so much Italian life. What's not to love? There are two different storylines, that of Julie in the present and Romeo and Juliet in 1340. Shakespeare got the bare bones right, but the details are quite a bit different, let me tell you. The biggest change is that their story takes place in Siena rather than Verona. I loved the descriptions of the city, and I especially loved that the author worked in il palio, a famous, highly-competitive horse race Romeo rides in. Just so much excitement! He's a hero to win any girl's heart! Julie in her own past was very irritating. Her sole purpose in life was to be the exact opposite of her twin, even if she managed to hurt herself in the process. She comes into her own in Italy though, and starts to finally get over it. There, I mostly liked her. She's developing a spine and she's not too guilty of being the stupid girl who does everything wrong. I was…

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson: Book Review

In the interest of avoiding spoilers for the second book, I'll just say that this picks up immediately after that awful cliffhanger of an ending in The Girl Who Played With Fire. So much has been said that I don't feel like I have a whole lot more to contribute. I (mostly) raced through the book, frantic to find out how big this conspiracy was, how far they would go, whether or not they would finally get caught, and how it would all go down. Salander wasn't quite as large a figure in this one, for obvious reasons if you've been reading the trilogy, so I missed her. She was still the same old inscrutable, fascinating Salander in the parts she was in. She's growing though. I wish Larsson had been able to write more books about her so we could see how she ultimately turns out. Three things bothered me. One was the setup of Salander's initial location. Vague enough? That would never happen here in the US. Not where I work anyway. Can you say armed guards (at the least) and different floors? So I'm left wondering if Larsson took an easy way out to steer the book where he wanted it to go or if Sweden is that different. Surely not. At the very beginning, there's a whole lot of telling and not much showing. We're told what Blomqvist and the police got up to in the few hours immediately after the end of the second book. Why not just write that part as actual scenes happening in real time? It probably wouldn't have taken up much more space and there was certainly enough happening to have kept my attention. I have had a problem with the amount of detail Larsson includes throughout the entire series. This…

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly: Book Review

Andi has pretty much hit rock bottom and kept falling. She's a gifted musician and student, but her younger brother's death has sent her into a destructive downward spiral. When her mostly-absent father finds out that she's in danger of flunking out of school, he hauls her off to Paris with him for winter break, in order to monitor her progress on her all-important senior thesis. When Andi finds Alexandrine's diary, she feels an instant connection to this young woman from another time. Alexandrine was a born player, or actress, living during the French Revolution. Will Alexandrine's diary help Andi with her own problems or will they make them worse? The biggest thing that stands out to me is the one drawback I found in the novel. The set-up showing exactly how bad Andi's life has gotten lasted about twice as long as I had the patience for. That's an entirely personal thing, so don't let me dissuade you from reading this book based on that alone. I have a low tolerance for "the earth is a black pit of despair" attitudes and that's where Andi is at the beginning and periodically throughout the book. I won't deny that she had ample reason to feel that way, I'll even admit that I would probably feel the same, but as a reader, it just went on too long for me. On to the good stuff. I just love Donnelly's writing. I read A Northern Light last summer and it immediately became one of my favorite books. There's just an unnameable beauty or grace to it that shines through, even when she's describing this dark, dark period of Andi's life. There's a lot going on in this story. There's guilt, grief, family problems, mental illness, following your dreams and not selling out,…

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz: Book Review

Oscar Wao is a loser. There's really no kind way to put it. But it might not be entirely his fault. His family is from the Dominican Republic, where the evil dictator Trujillo held sway for an unbelievable amount of time. Oscar's family fell into Trujillo's bad graces way back in the day and they haven't really been happy since. Everyone believes Trujillo laid a fukú, or curse, on the family forever. Everybody knows at least one Oscar. You know the type. The geek/nerd who loves all things sci-fi/fantasy. The one who's desperate to fit in. The one who doesn't understand why he doesn't fit in. The one who breaks your heart as you watch him trying to fit in by doing all those things that keep him from fitting in in the first place. Yeah, you know exactly who I'm talking about. How many faces just flashed through your mind? Oscar was a heart-breaker when he was seven but he lost his mojo. Now he breaks the reader's heart. I wanted so badly for just one thing to go Oscar's way. Everybody deserves a break, right? Well, this is the real world, and sometimes it just doesn't happen. But Oscar does learn some things on his brief, wondrous journey, and while I might not applaud his choices, I can understand them. The story was a little hard to get through. We dip into Oscar's life, his sister's life, his mother's life, and his grandfather's life. The parts in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo were pretty brutal, but necessary to understand where this family was coming from. The narrator is Oscar's college roommate. He's a fast-talking, wise-cracking, womanizing smartass. I loved him. It read like he was telling me the story instead of having me read it. He's funny, he's…