Starter Villain

Okay, I admit it. I was hooked by the title...and the cover. Villain is such a melodramatic and somewhat antiquated term and why on earth was a cat wearing a collar and? This thoroughly entertaining novel  by John Scalzi, something of a mystery and something of a fantasy,  kept me engaged and rooting for the good guys (the good villains?). Made me look at our pet cats a bit differently, too. Kirkus opens their review by saying, "Some people are born supervillains, and others have supervillainy thrust upon them. Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along with his uncle." They did end the review on a bit of a sour note--"Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books."

Publishers Weekly apparently did like it: "After the funeral, to which goons show up just to make sure Jake is really dead, a bomb destroys Charlie’s house, leading him to move into his uncle’s secret island volcano lair, complete with a satellite-destroying death ray and genetically modified superintelligent cats. Danger comes in the form of the Lombardy Convocation, a coalition of fellow evil billionaires who secretly rule the world and want Charlie to join them or die. Scalzi balances all the double-crosses and assassination attempts with ethical quandaries, explorations of economic inequality, and humor, including some foul-mouthed unionizing dolphins. The result is a breezy and highly entertaining genre send-up."

Booklist also applauds Scalzi's wit and style: "Scalzi ... again examines tropes in a tale of an ordinary individual being cast into an extraordinary situation with his trademark quick pacing, clever banter, and ability to find humor in desperate situations." Library Journal offers: "Combining the sarcastic humor of Scalzi... with an origin story for James Bond...this story of snark with a heart reminds readers that the logical conclusion of "dogs have owners, cats have staff" is that cats are management and never let anyone forget it. VERDICT Readers of humorous fantasy are sure to love Scalzi's latest ... as much as those cats; it's also for those who enjoy seeing superhero stories folded, twisted, and mutilated and anyone wishing for a righteous villain lair surrounded by intelligent sharks [actually they're dolphins]." I, too, recommend it for a fun read.

The Library at Mount Char

This book by Scott Hawkins is so strange and so big in scope that I sometimes found myself dazed and confused, especially in the first half. But for some reason I persisted, hoping that clarification would eventually ensue. And it does and it was worth the wait and the effort. In this fantasy novel, we meet twelve "adopted" children whose parents all died in some unexplained catastrophe and are now the children of "Father," a nearly omniscient and omnipotent being. He has assigned each of them to master the knowledge accumulated in his library, 12 sections in all. Carolyn, our narrator, is in charge of languages--but not just all the languages ever spoken or written by humans, she must also master the languages of creatures and storms. Her "brothers" and "sisters" are charged with learning about medicine and mathematics and war and animals, etc. They all inhabit a world that is not really connected to existence as we know it, but when Father disappears, the children (now grown) seek to find him before someone or something more terrible than Father steps in to fill the void.
Margaret must look for him in the world of the dead, another sibling searches for him in the various possible futures. Carolyn is selected to search the world as we know it--America is where we meet her--since her command of the English language is the best. But Carolyn's search is only a cover for an elaborate plan of her own, we eventually learn. And when she ultimately succeeds, she will discover that the prize has some definite down sides. Hawkins' work has been compared to that of Neil Gaiman (Library Journal). Kirkus describes it as "A wholly original, engrossing, disturbing, and beautiful book." The Dallas News has a spot-on review; more from Publishers Weekly, and an interview with the author on HuffPost in which he admits he found it fun to "write it so that some of the lines have a slightly different significance when you know what’s really going on." So really, you would have to re-read the whole book to get it all, kind of like the experience I had with the movie The Sixth Sense. 

Beat the Reaper

The New York Times described this book as "completely outrageous and genuinely entertaining."

That pretty well sums up my reaction as well. This novel by Josh Bazell, who holds a degree in English literature and is an MD, is based on a protagonist, let's call him, Peter Brown, who is a first year resident in a miserable inner city hospital. The hours are terrible, the nursing staff is incompetent, and Peter relies on drugs to get through the day. But when the story opens he goes to evaluate a new patient and the man recognizes him as a hit man for the Mafia, Pietro Brnwa. Does Peter/ Pietro kill him right away to avoid having his new identity revealed to those who still seek to wipe him from the face of the earth, or does his Hippocratic oath prevent that?
The story moves back and forth in time, so we gradually learn how a good Jewish boy becomes a hit man and then becomes a target. The book is highlighted by footnotes that are designed, according to the author, first to entertain and secondly to inform. Thus we learn about medical terminology, the stages of grief, the reality of Auschwitz, and the total irrelevance of the fibula bone in your lower leg (this will turn out to be significant at a later point in the story). The details are gruesome at times, the humor is clearly very dark, and this book kept me distracted on a long flight home. I would absolutely read anything else he wrote. Additional reviews from The Washington Post, Kirkus, The Guardian, and Publishers Weekly.

Hyperbole and a Half

Based on a blog by the same name written by Allie Brosh, this was written up in our local paper and my curiosity compelled me to reserve it at the library. Funny, often painfully so as when she talks about her depression, and often uproariously so as when she talks about her dogs (Simple Dog and Helper Dog) or the attack of the stray goose. I am not sure this has converted me to being a regular consumer of the blog, but the book was well worth the time--had me occasionally laughing out loud and all of us can use a little of that! There is an interview on NPR with Allie Brosh about the book here.

The Sisters Brothers

Well the title of Patrick DeWitt's black comedy western is suggestive of the book's overall tenor. Eli and Charlie Sisters are hired guns who work for a powerful man in Oregon City known as the Commodore. Eli never really wanted to be in this line of work but has always backed up his older brother who seemed to instigate a lot of fights that ended with somebody being dead. Lately Charlie has been a tad more critical of Eli about everything and Eli is thinking he wants to go run a general store instead of killing people for not very good reasons. The bulk of this tale recounts their (mis)adventures on the trip from Oregon City to California where they are supposed to find a man the Commodore wants dead named Hermann Kermit Warm. Turns out Mr. Warm has invented a formula to make finding gold in the rivers much easier and the Commodore wants the formula before the brothers kills him. Eli just doesn't find that sporting. Along the way they encounter a weeping man, a witch, a grizzly bear, and various people who mean them harm. They get some money and Eli gives some away, usually to any woman who is kind to him. In the end, they manage to lose everything they have stolen, accumulated and saved in a series of unfortunate events, and go home to ...mother! The dialog is reminiscent of Robert Parker's Virgil Cole series (Appaloosa, Resolution, and Brimstone) or perhaps Charles Portis' True Grit, but Eli and Charlie are uniquely their own characters.