Thursday, July 26, 2012

Forty-Five is Such an Even Number

44.  Ranger's Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan, John Flanagan
I read this on a lark, because I run into the Ranger's Apprentice books a lot when I'm shelving at the library.  The first one was fun, a fairly standard fantasy kingdom-type tale about a couple of adolescents learning how to be heroes.  The Rangers are the covert operation in the kingdom, and Will, our main character, gets personally selected to train under one of the more notorious Rangers in the kingdom.  I appreciated that his story, about stealth and subtlety and learning how to be effective with cunning rather than strength, is intercut with that of Horace, a boy who goes to Battleschool to learn how to be a knight.  Both boys end up being preternaturally skilled at their assigned tasks (surprise), but they do still have to work at it - there are no shortcuts or easy solutions in this book. 

45.  Messy, Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
The long awaited follow-up to the effervescently clever Spoiled did not disappoint.  Heather and Jessica bring the same biting wit to their dialogue that they deploy on their website gofugyourself.com, and it hits just the right notes coming out of the mouths of sarcastic oddball Max and her nemesis-turned-business-partner, the beautiful and savvy Brooke Berlin.  Even when elements of the plot feel predictable, the Fug Ladies bring a refreshing perspective to their critique of the Hollywood Machine through blog entries ghost written by Max (as Brooke, providing the main conflict later in the book).  Plus, they managed to work in a turban AND a reference to the episode of One Tree Hill where a dog eats a guy's heart.  Perfection.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Almost done and it's only July

40.  Lockdown, Alexander Gordon-Smith
A friend of mine is reading the Monstrumologist books by Rick Yancey, which I've already read (and adored), and hearing him talk about them made me crave something dark, gritty, scary and weird.  So I looked up some title read-alikes on Novellist and pulled this title out of a pile.  It was ok - definitely not lacking in the dark and weird arena.  The story is about Alex, a teen who has the misfortune to be a small-time criminal growing up in the aftermath of the so-called Summer of Slaughter (an event in the book's history where teen gangs killed huge numbers of people).  When he gets framed for the murder of his friend, the judge locks him away for life in the juvenile detention center Furnace.  Furnace is basically hell with more nutritious food, complete with Nazi-esque body horror, some super creepy dogs that habitually tear inmates to pieces, and a geographic location a mile or so under the earth.  It turns into a pretty standard escape-from-prison story, but I appreciated the horror dressings Gordon-Smith applied in abundance.



41.  Fablehaven, Brandon Mull

I've been supervising junior volunteers at the library this summer, and they've been plying me with reading recommendations.  Fablehaven was one of these, and it turned out to be super fun.  It's young-young-adult fantasy, about a sister and brother who get sent to stay with their grandparents over summer break and find out that they're basically gamekeepers for a forest preserve full of fantastical creatures.  The fairies in Fablehaven are definitely the new breed, more inclined to harm and mischief than just being pretty, and the excitement ramps up after a pretty spooky midsummer night scene when the grandfather gets kidnapped.  I just got the second book in the series and I'm looking forward to reading more.

42.  Full Dark, No Stars, Stephen King
King's short stories are kind of hit-or-miss for me - for every Langoliers there's a Trucks, often in the same collection.  I thought that the first and the last stories in Full Dark, No Stars were pretty excellent; the middle two, not so much.  I had some trouble with one - it deals with the graphic rape and abuse of a young woman, and reeks a bit of appropriation; the other one I didn't care for was just too...boring.

43.  Age of Darkness, ed. Christian Dunn
Moar Horus Heresy.  This was fun, even the piece by Gav Thorpe (which was at least short fiction rather than a whole novel).  The big surprise for me was that the stand-out piece wasn't by Dan Abnett, Graham McNeill, or Aaron Dembski-Bowden (easily the strongest writers in Games Workshop's bull pen), but by some guy I'd never heard of named Rob Sanders.  His piece, "The Iron Within," wrecked me in a way I'm only used to from McNeill.  Good stuff.

Friday, July 6, 2012

I just really like Moby-Dick, ok

37.  Railsea, China Mieville
I like Mieville, I really do, and this was a fascinating examination of Moby-Dick through a western/dieselpunk lens.  But there are times when I feel like Mieville might be being too clever with his language.  He has some partial chapters that exist only to tell you he's not going to talk about something right at that moment.  But the story is good, and extremely interesting because while it's only superficially an adaptation of Melville's original, it explores many of the same themes and ideas.  Plus the world Mieville has imagined is utterly fascinating to me: the railsea of the title is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, in lieu of the ocean there are thousands of miles of looping, endless railroad over earth that's full of gigantic desert creatures (like the ivory-colored mole that our captain is chasing).  Interesting stuff.

38.  The Fault in Our Stars, John Green
Ugh, my heart.  Describing this one to other people is a little rough, because at its heart it's about teenagers dying from cancer.  But it's also a coming-of-age story, and a love story, and sort of an adventure story?  It's a lot of things that Green does really well, and it's tragic and heartbreaking and I think I really loved it.  Here, if Green's teenagers sound a little too clever for their age, well, I bet terminally sick children have to grow up a little faster and more sharply than other people.  Hazel, his heroine, will charm you and probably make you cry.

As a side note, I REALLY have to stop reading books like this on public transportation.  I mean REALLY.

39.  Aliens Omnibus volume 1, Various
Fun fun fun.  This is a compilation of three sequential comics, written as part of the Alien expanded universe, and they take place (I believe) between Aliens and Alien 3.  It's a cold, cynical look at how Earth would react to knowing about the existence of the xenomorphs, and we get the government, private corporations, civilians, religious groups...all over the map.  It's creepy and it's scary and it's violent, and basically everything I wanted from a comic about acid-blooded, homicidal aliens.