Book Reviews Archive - Page 73 of 79

Vampire Rising by Jason Henderson: Book Review

Alex Van Helsing has heard it thousands of times before. Yes, his last name is really Van Helsing. No, not like that Van Helsing. No, he doesn't kill monsters. To paraphrase his father, that kind of thing doesn't happen. Except when it does. What a fun, action-packed story! It begins with Alex running toward a scream in the woods and ends on a very brooding scene that feels like a pause. Which isn't to say that this book feels incomplete; for the first in the series, it stands very well on its own. I know more is coming, I have one or two questions, but I'm happy with the way things ended. Alex is the most fully fleshed-out character and I liked him. He's had some trouble in the past and he's still having trouble in the present but he's doing his best. His whole world has just shifted but he's dealing with it. The other characters were fun, but they weren't developed all that well. I am curious about Minhi, Mr. Sangster, and Sid. I hope I'll learn more about them in other books. As an older reader, I appreciated the way the classics like Dracula and the background story to Frankenstein were worked in. For younger readers who might not have been exposed to these books yet, the necessary references were explained well and the unnecessary ones were just bonuses for those in the know. There wasn't really anything new added to the vampire myth, but it was still fun. Kids who haven't read quite so much will probably love this. There were some gadgets that I even thought were very cool, and I'm not into gadgets! These vampires are not the seductive, tormented vampires that we've seen so much of lately. These guys are baddies through and…

Serena by Ron Rash: Book Review

In Depression-era North Carolina, a timber baron marries Serena and brings her to the lumber camps to live. Her ambition outmatches his and she drives him to succeed, prosper, and expand at any cost. Wow. What a character Ron Rash has created in Serena. I detested her, but she is going to stick with me the way Lady MacBeth and Medea have. I had to admire her strength and ambition, but she was ruthless and proud of it. She seemed to see those weaker than her as prey, and she saw almost everyone as being weaker than her. There's a kind of mythology that springs up around her in the camp. She thinks of ingenious solutions to problems, such as rattlesnake bites among the loggers. She really doesn't care when loggers die though. It's the Depression after all, and for every one worker that dies or is disfigured, there are innumerable men waiting to take his place. I would have liked an explanation as to why she was the way she was. She grew up in the camps, and there's a dark past that's hinted at but never explained. Was she just born heartless or did something or someone shape her to be that way? This book takes place practically in my backyard, and I had heard that these mountains were devastated back in the day. It's one thing to just kind of know that, and it's another to live it for two years inside a book. This one fictional camp ended in the clear-cutting of 34,000 acres. I can't even wrap my mind around that much land. I had to go Google some pictures. Look at these. Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississipi Photo taken by Bms4880 and found on Wikimedia Commons Mount Mitchell in 1923…

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs: Book Review

Mercy Thompson is a walker. Not that kind of walker. A "skinwalker." She can shift into coyote form easily and at will. Her sexy neighbor is the Alpha of the local werewolf pack. She's good friends with a vampire. Her life isn't exactly normal. When a new lone werewolf shows up at her garage one day looking for work, trouble follows him to Mercy's doorstep. Mercy has to figure out what's going on before her friends and family get hurt. I loved this! Mercy is a great character. She's smart, loyal, caring, funny, and sarcastic. She can hold her own against all the Alpha men in her life. And, oh those Alpha men.... There were a lot of men to choose from here. Adam is the ex-military guy who sticks his nose into Mercy's business whether she wants him to or not. There's a lot of history between Samuel and Mercy. Warren is loyal to his pack and the rules at any cost. There are actually more, if you can believe that. I don't know why I liked all these guys so much; I generally can't stand overly-dominant men in person. But these guys didn't just see themselves as powerful. With their power came responsibility to those weaker than themselves, and they took that responsibility seriously. That must be the difference for me. Briggs filled in the details of this world pretty smoothly. I never felt like I was just getting an info dump. A couple of times Mercy explained to a werewolf something like how the werewolves would defeat the vampires in a battle and I was pulled out of the story enough to think, "Honey, he knows that. Oh. That was for my benefit." And then I moved on. I know that I'm probably in the minority here,…

The Girl Who Chased The Moon by Sarah Addison Allen: Book Review

3.5 Stars. I really liked the whole story, I just felt that I wanted a little more meat to it. That's really my only criticism. I liked the way that Emily learned the value of family. Julia learns that for most people, home will always be home, no matter how hard you try to leave it behind. I loved the way that the Coffeys [...]

People of the Sword by Neil O’Donnell: Book Review

The powerful wizard Crarnock has decided to wipe out humanity with the combination of his magic and his goblin hordes. In order to mount a resistance, the people opposing him must put aside their prejudices, band together and work as one. My huge problem was that this needed a lot more editing. I'm not talking about just a few typos here and there, I'm talking about lots of typos, incorrect word usage that spell checker will always miss, characters saying gonna when their speech has otherwise been very formal, formatting mistakes, and more. It could also have used a general tightening up of the story line. I did read a finished copy, not an ARC. I would have had a hard time overlooking all of this even if it had been an ARC. There were about three gigantic info dumps. I will say that O'Donnell has obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this world he's created, from the history and mythology right down to the smallest details, but my eyes glazed over as I read about the religious history and shifting power between the knights and druids. One character was supposed to be telling another the history, but when that one character talks for pages and pages, I have to call it an info dump. The story itself was okay. I couldn't help but compare it to The Lord of the Rings. I don't want to go into that too much and give anything away, but I think even from my brief synopsis you can see that there's going to be a little similarity. There was a lot of similarity in the overall arc of the story, but the details were different, if that makes any sense. I honestly never managed to finish The Lord of the Rings,…

The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafón: Book Review

When Max's family moves to the beach to avoid being caught in the city during a war, they don't realize that worse trouble is going to find them. First of all, I think the name Roland should be retired from fiction forever. It is impossible for me to read it without seeing The Gunslinger. When the character is supposed to be a normal seventeen-year-old boy, you see the problem I had. Anyway, I found it hard to pinpoint the age group of this book's audience. I didn't realize it wasn't for adults until I started reading it. The writing itself is easy enough for a middle-grade book. But there are a few things that happen that pushed it up into YA territory for me. I don't have kids though, so maybe I'm just naive about what kids read. If I'm not, I'm afraid this will struggle to find the right market. Not realizing this wasn't an adult book, I was disappointed when I didn't find Ruiz Zafón's gorgeous prose inside. I just adore his writing. The story itself was suspenseful and engaging. I was curious what was going on almost from the beginning and found myself reading more and more just to try to get to the bottom of things. I think kids who aren't too afraid of things that go bump in the night will enjoy it. As an adult reader, there were a few things that happened that I just didn't buy. I don't know any seventeen-year-old boy who is going to willingly start hanging out with a thirteen-year-old. Not without seeing his sister first. :-) I don't think the kids would have been left alone like they were. And I had problems with the story line surrounding Roland. As always, hats off to Lucia Graves for an…

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank: Book Review

Any kind of synopsis feels extremely redundant, but I'll write one anyway. Anne Frank is a young Jewish girl in hiding in Amsterdam during WWII. I don't know how I made it to be 31 years old without reading The Diary of Anne Frank. I'm glad I finally got to it though. I think Anne's diary made the Holocaust real to me in a way that other books haven't because she is a typical teenage girl in a lot of ways. She's growing up, she dislikes her family and "roommates" one day and adores them the next. She's dreaming about the future, love, a career, and what she really wants out of life. She was funny, she was sad, she was introspective, she was growing, she was intelligent, she was scared, she was brave. She was a great big bundle of glorious possibilities. I wouldn't go back to my teenage years, but I remember feeling all the things she describes. SPOILERS IF YOU SOMEHOW DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS BOOK As I read, especially the older Anne got, I just kept mourning her. I thought she was a talented writer, especially for her age. She had such strong ideas about a woman's life and career and family. I really felt like, at least in a small way and maybe in a big way, the world lost something special when we lost her. I know that's the case with all the Holocaust victims, but I just felt it more with Anne since I spent so much time in her head. She had it in her to make a mark on this world. I truly believe that. I kept reading slower and slower, the closer to the end I got. I knew what was coming, but I somehow felt that if I…

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier: Book Review

Loosely based on The Twelve Dancing Princesses, among other fairy tales, Wildwood Dancing is the story of five sisters who disappear into The Other Kingdom for a fairy revel every full moon night. But when their father leaves them alone to spend the winter in another city, their cousin, Cezar, realizes something is going on and starts making their lives difficult. So maybe there's nothing deep or thought-provoking here. This was still a hugely fun book. It's pretty obvious that this is a re-telling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, but there are some other fairy tales thrown in. I enjoyed seeing how all of them fit together to make this tale. Jena is the second-oldest sister and the narrator of the book. I loved her. I have noticed in Marillier's other books that her female characters rock, and this one isn't any different. She's intelligent, capable, caring, but also maybe a little blind and naive about some things. Her sisters are a little bit of a disappointment. They don't really have huge roles to play, so they fall more into stereotypes. The pretty one. The smart one. The flirt. The baby. But for me, that just fell right into the spirit of a fairy tale. If you really think about it, aren't they generally peopled with stereotypes that prevent a lot of needless explanation? Cezar was bad enough for me to really despise him, but he didn't cross this weird line I have where I hate the bad guy too much. He was an insufferable, chauvinist prick who infuriated me, but at the same time I loved it. Go figure. Once I realized that there were so many stories being woven together to make this one, I started to worry a little that there was no good way to wrap…

Night by Elie Wiesel: Book Review

Honestly, I can't help but feel that for me to sit in judgment of a memoir of the Holocaust would be terribly presumptuous. We can't ever forget the Holocaust, and any work that reminds us of what happened is important and should be read as widely as possible. The style is a little sparse for me, but do we really need lavish descriptions of crematoriums? I didn't think so. What is important is that Wiesel laid out his thoughts and feelings for all the world to see, an act of unimaginable courage. It is amazing to me how quickly he and the other prisoners were stripped of their very humanity. It is also amazing how tiny acts of kindness stand out in his memory. But we all know those were too few and far between. Just read this. Today, April 11, 2010, is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Six million Jews were killed in WWII. Six million. How do we even begin to wrap our minds around that kind of loss? It's as if everyone in the cities of Los Angeles and Chicago were gone. No longer there. Because of violence and ignorance and prejudice. We cannot forget the loss of these people. The Jewish people are the chief mourners, but we should all mourn their loss. The victims weren't "only" Jews, they were citizens of the world. My world. Your world. Our world. Who knows how things might be different now if such a staggering loss hadn't occurred then? Read Elie Wiesel's 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Visit the US Holocaust Museum's Days of Remembrance page. Visit the US Holocaust Museum's Holocaust Encyclopedia. Here are links to other books I've read, both fiction and non-fiction, that focus on the Holocaust. Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds HistoryMaus II:…

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick: Book Review

I know a lot of you are going to disagree with me, but here goes.... Nora Grey is forced to sit next to the new guy, Patch, in biology class one day. He knows more about her than he should, and trouble starts to follow her around. I should have listened to Misty at Book Rat. I still haven't read her spoilery rant, but I will be hitting that as soon as I finish here. This was compulsively readable, I have to admit that. I read it in one shift at work. But, oh my gosh, I mostly loathed these characters. Nora is basically the girl in the horror movie who manages to run the wrong way at every turn, even if there's a door standing wide open in front of her, until she eventually gets herself caught in a dead end. You know how frustrating it is to watch that, yelling at the screen, "Don't go down to the deserted basement! Run out the freaking door!" Yeah, that was me reading about Nora. Vee, Nora's best friend, was just looking for trouble, and she definitely found it. Patch. Ugh, Patch. He pushed all kinds of the wrong buttons for me. I know a lot of girls love this bad boy, but I couldn't stand him. Bad boys should have a touch of sweet underneath everything. I never quite found that. Oh, at the very end, he comes through, but he's been such a jerk throughout everything that it was way too late for me. I didn't like the way that he was constantly teasing Nora, keeping her off balance, laughing at her, and disrespecting her boundaries. And, girls, let me just say that if a guy who says he loves you ever slams you on the bed and traps…