Archives - August 2009 archives -- index by author -- index by category -- favorite books -- links

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• Drew Hayden Taylor, The Night Wanderer: Tiffany Hunter has a lot of typical teenager problems: her dad hates her white boyfriend and thinks Tiffany should study more, her boyfriend's friends seem uncomfortable with her because she's Native, and her mom took off with another guy. She longs to be older and to be able to leave boring Otter Lake Reserve for the exciting outside world. And now just to make things more complicated, her dad has taken in a boarder, a mysterious European named Pierre L'Errant who doesn't eat with them and only goes out at night.
  
  I thought this was a really neat and original take on vampires. (This isn't a spoiler because it's quite clear to the reader from the outset what Pierre really is.) Instead of being sexy and beguiling, Pierre is old and knowledgeable, ready to come back to his ancestral home after wandering Europe for centuries. Taylor shows bits and pieces of the Ojibwa culture of Pierre's youth, along with the culture clashes of today, between Tiffany and her family and her boyfriend. I thought the teenage voice faltered occasionally in Tiffany's parts of the narrative, but not enough to throw me out of the book. And I really liked the ending, which is full of tension yet not at all a showdown between vampire and human.
  
  
• Malinda Lo, Ash: Ash's mother died when she was young, and Ash has never accepted her death, even after her father remarries a woman with two daughters of her own. After Ash's father dies as well, her stepmother forces her to become a servant in order to save money to pay off her father's debts. Her only solace comes from visiting her mother's grave and from brief encounters with the faerie world, where the mysterious Sidhean is both protector and threat. When Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, she is strongly drawn to her and must escape her servitude in order to meet with her. But the help she needs from Sidhean comes with a price that might separate Ash from Kaisa forever.
  
  Lo starts out with an excellent conceptual twist on the Cinderella story, with a female love interest and a Faerie godfather, but the execution doesn't quite live up to the concept. I felt that I got to know Ash herself reasonably well, but none of the other characters were very well fleshed out. I would particularly like to have seen more of Kaisa, Sidhean, and Clara (Ash's younger stepsister). Similarly, the plot was set up fairly well, but the happy ending was too easily achieved. Still, I thought the writing was very good, sensual and descriptive, and the flaws in execution were very much first-novel flaws. I'll be very interested to see what Lo writes next.
  
  
• Mary E. Pearson, The Miles Between: Destiny Faraday can't get attached to her classmates at Hedgebrook Academy, because she knows that inevitably, she'll have to move along to another school. She sticks to her routine, staying quiet and observant, until one particular day, she meets a stranger who asks her what she wants most. Destiny tells him that she wants just one single fair day, "one day where the good guys win," and suddenly, she's embarking on a road trip with three of her classmates, where they'll find out what secrets and adventures their one fair day will hold.
  
  I loved this. It's subtly magical, quietly emotional, and utterly compelling. The characters are wonderfully drawn, especially withdrawn, observant Destiny, and Pearson unfolds Destiny's history deftly. I did guess certain elements of her story before they were revealed, but that really didn't matter; the point was the journey and Destiny coming to terms with her own past and her future. It's been a couple of weeks since I finished The Miles Between, but I feel that I could happily sit down and read it again right now (if only it weren't for that enormous pile of unread books looming at me).
  
  
• Justine Larbalestier, Liar: Micah is a compulsive liar; she admits it. She lies to her parents, to her classmates, to her teachers, to everyone. Even her boyfriend Zach doesn't know the whole truth about Micah and her family secrets, and her relationship with Zach is itself a secret from their classmates and Micah's parents. But then Zach dies, brutally murdered. The school is shocked, the police investigate, and Micah's web of lies starts to disintegrate. And that's as far as I'm willing to go with a description of the plot, partly to avoid spoilers, and partly because a great deal of the interest of reading the book is in trying to figure what's true and what's not.
  
  I was enthralled by the unfolding layers of Micah's tale, with the device of the unreliable narrator taken to an extreme, and the unfolding complexity of her character. For me, at least, Larbalestier succeeds in making Micah a character I cared about, in spite of her untrustworthiness, because it's very clear how her past history and her upbringing have caused her to become a liar. Although I found the first half of the book too slow, the second half has excellent pacing as the tension increases. Even at the end, there's no way to tell how much of what Micah has said is true, and although normally I prefer more resolution, I felt that it was very appropriate to have Liar end on a note of uncertainty. Larbalestier always seems to come up with great book concepts; this one is especially successful in its execution and my favorite of her books so far.

• children's and young adult:
  • Anne Ursu, The Immortal Fire: the concluding volume of an excellently fun YA series (on the young end of YA, I think), with Greek mythology and an entertainingly snarky tone.
• fantasy and science fiction:
  • C.J. Cherryh, Downbelow Station (reread), Merchanter's Luck: It took me a bit to get into the complexity of Downbelow Station, but it's still a great book. Merchanter's Luck is slighter in comparison, but fast-paced and engaging.
  • Tanya Huff, The Enchantment Emporium: the first Huff I've read, and lots of fun.
  • Sherwood Smith, Inda, The Fox, King's Shield (rereads), Treason's Shore: This has become one of my favorite fantasy series of all time, and I was utterly satisfied by the final volume and its resolution of the myriad plot and character arcs. I really can't say enough good things about these books and their fantastic worldbuilding, vivid characters, and complex plots. If you like fantasy and you haven't tried these, you really should.
  • Jane Yolen, White Jenna, Sister Light, Sister Dark: I liked the first one a lot and was less entranced by the second book.
• general fiction:
  • Louisa May Alcott, A Modern Mephistopheles: Drug use! Seduction! Other things you won't find in Little Women! She does succumb to slight soppiness at the end, but the character interplay is fascinating.
  • E.M. Delafield, Tension: rather thin plot, but excellent character studies.
  • Barbara Pym, Excellent Women, Less Than Angels: And this is why one should perhaps try authors more than once, because I know I read Excellent Women years ago and didn't like it nearly as much I did this time.
  • P.G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins (reread), Money in the Bank: top-notch Wodehouse, especially style-wise.
• mystery:
  • Ruth Rendell, The Lake of Darkness: not her best -- I liked practically nobody and found the mystery rather predictable.
• romance:
  • Jo Beverley, An Arranged Marriage: After liking a couple of the other books in this series (the Rogues), I barely got through this one: bad writing, poorly contrived plot, terrible ending.
  • Loretta Chase, Don't Tempt Me: OMG, worst plot ever! I rather liked Zoe, but Lucien was a fairly stock rake-with-emotional-scars. Also, minus points for using the white slavery/harem wife trope, solely as background, without including any characters of color. I couldn't even get through her last book and am fearing that she's jumped the shark.
• non-fiction:
  • Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books: meh; liked some sections, bored by others. I feel that people who proclaim that they love Austen should get characters' names right, but maybe that's just me.
  • Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Invented Architecture
  • Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years
• rereads:
  • Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy: I have gotten to the point that I just skip the bit with the anti-Semitic portrayal of the moneylender and otherwise find this still one of my favorite Heyers.
  • Nina Kiriki Hoffman, A Fistful of Sky: still love this with an unreasonable love.
  • Robert Jordan, Winter's Heart: *sigh* As with all the later books in the series, practically nothing happens. It's slightly less annoying when reading them all in a row, but still annoying. Thank goodness for the Mat sections.

Total books read this month: 29
Total books read this year: 266

Last updated 15 December 2009. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.