The Legend

Marie Lu has written a YA novel set in a dystopian future where the United States no longer exists but instead consists of two warring countries, The Republic (west) and The Colonies (east). The 15-year old protagonists are pitted against each other as representatives of the elite military controllers of The Republic (June) and of the controlled and abused masses (Day). June has ostensibly achieved the only perfect score ever seen on The Trial, administered to all 10-year old children in The Republic and is a  bit of a rebel as well as a prodigy. When her older brother Metias is killed, supposedly by Day, she is pulled out of training and put on his trail. While her grief and anger drive her to capture Day--an ultimate death sentence--she discovers that she and most of the population have been manipulated through fear, deception and manufactured plagues. Told alternately from June's and Day's perspective, the ending is ripe for a sequel as we leave June and Day on the run. This book received consistently stellar reviews from even the most critical of sources (e.g., Kirkus) so I felt compelled to read it in my own time. But although it was well executed, it never really grabbed me.

Real Murders

This is the first in the "Aurora Teagarden" series by Charlaine Harris (also writes the Sookie Stackhouse, Lily Bard, and Harper Connelly series). Of particular appeal since Aurora is a librarian in a very small-town-feeling suburb of Atlanta. Real Murders is the name of the club to which Aurora belongs that discusses famous old murder cases. On this particular meeting night, however, she arrives to find one of the members has been murdered in the fashion of the case the group had planned to discuss. And that's just the beginning. The bodies continue to pile up--always group members or those close to them and always copying the details of a famous old murder case. Lily and her new neighbor, a famous mystery writer, can't help but go nosing around and consequently put themselves in the direct path of the killers. But I already told you it was a series, right? BTW, I really like the Lily Bard mysteries--set in the town of Shakespeare, Arkansas. I've been listening to them mostly on CD and haven't written about them yet, but they are very good. Lily has survived a traumatic kidnapping and torture/rape in her youth and now lives and works in a small town where no one knows her past--at least initially. Start with Shakespeare's Landlord.

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.

Robopocalypse

A slight departure from my usual reading path, although I have been a fan of other sci fi with heavy robot presence (e.g., Asimov) in my youth. This one was recommended on the Powell's Daily Dose blog so I made the leap. Humankind's attempts to create artificial intelligence succeed so well that the creation, which calls itself Archos, outsmarts and escapes its makers and takes over all "smart" technology--from cars to guided missiles to talking dolls--in a concerted effort to get the upper hand. Humans, trusting blindly in their technology, are exterminated by the billions and millions more are placed in "forced labor" camps where they help to build ever-evolving weapons against humanity or are experimented upon in order to find the ideal combination of human and machine.
The book starts at the end, so we know at least some of the humans survive. From various people's viewpoints we read about the early incidents--pre "zero hour"--that alert some to the potential problems, followed by accounts of the time when all the machines turn again humans, and then the "New War," when pockets of resistance fight back. Some of Archos' enemies will turn out to be the hybrid beings he has created--still partly human but with "enhanced" functionality. Others are the original humanoid robots that become "self-aware" and don't want to be controlled by a master robot anymore than they want to be controlled by humans. Other "heroes" are scientists, soldiers, or just those who figure out how to survive and help others survive. An engrossing tale by Daniel H. Wilson, who has a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon and, therefore, delivers a believable alternative future.

The Man with the Baltic Stare

This is the 4th of the "Inspector O" series by the pseudonymous James Church and it is as enigmatic as the previous three. Some characters we thought were dead reappear and some new dyanamics are in play. O has apparently gone to live the life of a hermit on a mountain top, crafting wooden toys, when he is brought unwillingly back into play to "solve" a murder in Macau. Someone very high up in the Korean government is all but convicted of murdering a prostitute and O is told to direct attention away from him as prime suspect. It is never entirely clear who the suspect is, but it sounds like the successor to head North Korea, only he is never found. One of the men pulling the strings is a major from South Korea who believes the two countries will be reconciled or at least ruled jointly by the south. But then the Chinese also want to move in as does organized crime. I have never been able to completely follow how O comes up with the solutions to these murky messes he is handed, but I never tire of getting to know O better as he navigates the minefield that is life in North Korea.
Reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.

Among Others

Even the title is intriguing for this YA novel by Jo Walton! Morwenna and Maureen were twins who grew up among an extended family in Wales. Dad disappeared from their lives pre-memory and mom was a witch--literally--but there were grandparents and aunts and uncles. Fortunately they also had the fairies, who inhabited the ruins of mining works, to offer some guidance and also to enable their use of magic. When their mother tries to seize control of something we never truly learn about in the book, there is a confrontation which results in the death of Maureen and a crippling injury to Morwenna. Fifteen-year old "Mori," as she now calls herself, has been sent to live with her stranger of a father and his three spinster sisters in England and they in turn have sent her away to a posh boarding school where she feels like an outcast for so many reasons. In an effort to protect herself from her diminished but still dangerous mother, Mori engages in protective magic spells and also wishes for a community of belonging, which comes about in a nearly perfect way. The local librarian tells Mori about the weekly science fiction book group--Mori has always been a voracious consumer of this fare as a primary form of solace and pleasure. Now she has friends and maybe even one special, very handsome friend. The predictable re-confrontation with her mother on a visit home seems a bit short-changed, but the book is very well written in terms of character and setting and I eagerly dove in each night before going to sleep. Maybe you can learn to see fairies, too! Anyone who has ever escaped social exclusion by being a bookworm will identify with this intrepid young woman.

Pretty books about books

I got rather annoyed with the realtor who told us we had too many books and needed to pack some of them away (even some bookcases) before we started showing the house. So the next time we met, I auspiciously placed around the house some lovely coffee table books about decorating with and living with books. Living with Books by Alan Powers even has some plans for constructing bookcases from a variety of materials at the end. At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries (Ellis, Seebohm & Sykes) is much more personal, showing the libraries of artists and writers, titled gentry in elegant stately homes and just ordinary bibliophiles. Resources for restoration of books, furnishing libraries and finding more information on great libraries follow the main pictorially rich text. I still have a couple of similar texts at home to peruse and drool over...trust me, these people ALL have a lot more books than I do!

The Innocent

Ian McEwan receives uniformly rave reviews and this is the first book of his I have read, one written about mid-span of his career to date (1990). Set in Berlin in the depth of the Cold War (1955), the main character, 25-year old Leonard Marnham, is a British civil servant recruited to facilitate work on a joint venture between the Americans and the Brits. They are building a tunnel under the east-west Berlin border to eavesdrop on Russian communications--ostensibly a real event. Leonard is naive in almost every imaginable way.  He is awkward around both the Americans, who are somewhat stereotypically portrayed as brash, over-confident bullies, and around the German woman who picks him up in a night club and seduces him. He falls in love with and eventually becomes engaged to Maria, and their relationship eventually leads to a dramatic and deadly confrontation with her abusive and drunken ex-husband. Desperate to save himself and Maria, Leonard engages in his own personal act of espionage. In spite of being well-crafted, I didn't ever really come to care for or about any of the characters, and felt as cold about the story as the bitter winter the characters must endure.

Seventeen and Eighteen

I was a little put off by Janet Evanovich's Sizzling Sixteen, feeling it lacked some of the zany energy that her books usually have. But she seems to have regained her footing in Smokin' Seventeen and Explosive Eighteen. In Seventeen, Stephanie's mom is once again trying to set her up with a future mate since neither Morelli nor Ranger seem likely to make the commitment to marriage. While the burned out bail bonds office--temporarily replaced by Mooner's bus--is under construction, dead bodies start showing up in shallow graves on the construction site. The killer is apparently making this personal for Stephanie. Meanwhile, Morelli's grandmother puts the Vordo spell on Stephanie with wild results. Eighteen opens with Stephanie returning from a vacation in Hawaii one day ahead of both Ranger and Morelli--but no one is talking about what happened. Eventually we learn why she has a white tan line on her left hand ring finger, but it takes longer to find out why the photograph that mysteriously appeared in her purse on the flight back is bringing strangers out of the woodwork to threaten Stephanie if she doesn't return it. Except that she doesn't have it anymore. Cars and buses are destroyed, Lula takes a love potion by accident and falls in love with one of their more unsavory FTA's, and their investigations result in a lot of roosters being loosed on Trenton.

Agnes and the Hit Man

I have SO lost track of what I have been reading. I haven't posted since August and yet I am NEVER without at least 2-3 books going. I have been doing a lot of review books for Library Journal Express Reviews and for the Children's Literature Database, but I'm sure I've been doing some personal reading in there somewhere. I listen to books on CD going and coming from work and those rarely find their way into the blog. Anyway, things have been stressful at home recently with health and other issues so when I finished my last batch of books for CLCD I dove into pure escapist fare. Agnes and the Hit Man, by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, is a bit like Stephanie Plum meets Goldie Schwartz (or Janet Evanovich meets Diane Mott Davidson if you want author names).  Agnes is a bit of an entrepreneur, currently partnered with and afianced to Taylor, a man who turns out to be (a) already  married, (b) trying to steal her house and business, and (c) murdered with a meat fork. Agnes, who writes the food column "Cranky Agnes" does have some issues with anger management, but who wouldn't in her situation. Agnes was essentially an orphan growing up until she met Lisa Livia at boarding school and was unofficially adopted into her home for holidays and summers. She seems to attract lying cheating men, Taylor being just the latest. She has moved back to this somewhat idyllic spot on the Blood River in S. Carolina and bought the house of her childhood summers from Lisa Livia's mother, Brenda. Oh, but wait a minute, Brenda is the one who married Taylor and is trying to ruin her granddaughter's wedding, upon which Agnes' keeping the house depends. If you think that's complicated, it's only just the start. A pseudo-uncle, Joey, is concerned about Agnes' safety and has called his pseudo-nephew, Shane, to come back and protect Agnes. Shane kills people for a living. He works for the U.S. government. He's very good at his job, and it's a good thing, because a string of unsavory characters show up trying to kill Agnes or kidnap her bloodhound Rhett--she's not exactly sure which. Predictably, Agnes and Shane get involved. Unpredictably, we find out lots of family secrets about Shane and who he really is. This is a fun read, highly recommended for anyone wanting to get away from it all. Great characters!