This post is mostly about Horror Novels

49. Bones of the Yopasi, Graham McNeill
This is the second book in the Dark Waters trilogy by McNeill, which are novelizations in the universe of the FFG Cthulhu games (Arkham Horror, Elder Sign, Mansions of Madness).  I picked up the first one, Ghouls of the Miskatonic, at GenCon 2011 and have been waiting pretty eagerly for volume two (released, appropriately, at GenCon 2012).  I know McNeill first from the fabulous work he does for Games Workshop - I've mentioned some of his Horus Heresy work right here on this blog (his books are, largely, my favorites).  It's slightly baffling to me that his work with FFG isn't as strong, but as people have noted, the Cthulhu mythos universe may just be more difficult to write within - it's got the time period constraints, being set in the '20s, which comes with a whole load of issues (dialogue seems to be McNeill's biggest problem, all his characters end up sounding like Casablanca cliches) but in general, the Dark Waters books serve up a heaping dose of Elder God weirdness and some fun action.  At the end of the day, that's all I want.

50. 11/22/63, Stephen King
This is the third King novel I've read this year for my challenge, and I think it's my favorite.  When I was about 13, I went through an intense Stephen King phase: I loved (and still love) horror fiction, in a way that surprises most people who know how terrified I am of horror film.  But reading something is different from watching it, and King is a master of the genre.  I read IT, The Shining (one of my top five books ever), Eyes of the Dragon, 'Salem's Lot, Four Past Midnight, almost everything I could get my hands on (I missed some cornerstones, like Carrie, which I'm going to get to before the film remake comes out next spring).  At his best, King writes brilliantly paced, incredibly eerie prose that descends into the stuff of shambling nightmares.

What is so amazing about 11/22/63 is that it is both completely recognizable as one of King's works, but also something totally unlike anything I've read of his before.  It's a time-travel novel, and while it carries some of the typical tropes you'd expect to find in one, it's also a haunted house novel akin to The Shining.  The characters, especially our would-be hero Jake, are fighting against a malevolent, intangible force...which is time itself, rather than a spirit or ghost or something else supernatural, as Jake tries to do the impossible and prevent the assassination of JFK.  It's also a brilliant example of the way that King can write complete lives for his characters that don't seem to be particularly relevant to the specific story he's telling, but are compelling in and of themselves until the moment you realize, gob-smacked, that EVERYTHING you've read matters.

I did smile a little at one particular moment, because King is also known for being self-referential, and there was a moment were I thought he was going to slot the total plot of a previous novel into this one.  He doesn't, and unless you've read IT I don't think it would have mattered, but having read IT gives a little more insight into the world of 11/22/63.  Because, like I said, everything you've read matters - even if it didn't happen in this particular book.

It's Been A Long August.

46.  State of Wonder, Anne Patchett
I really wanted to like this more than I did.  Patchett is a beautiful, lyrical writer, but the story in this...just didn't work for me.  There's medical research in the Amazon, and the main character has to go find out what happened to her colleague, and the doctors working in the rain forest are living and working with a tribe of native people who could hold the secret to post-menopausal fertility.  The characters are intriguing, especially the acidic Dr. Swenson (who is leading the research team and has been for several years), but everything breaks down in the face of a very uncomfortable notion: it feels like Patchett is relying far too much on colloquial stereotypes, rather than on any actual experience or research, and ultimately I don't see that she says anything new about the issues she raises (and the rain forest itself feels like it stepped right out of Heart of Darkness - I'm sure we can all agree we don't need another definitive "savage worlds" narrative).  I've heard her other books are better, so I'll give them a shot, but I was disappointed with this.

47. Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star, Brandon Mull
These books are so fun!  The follow-up to Mull's first Fablehaven book ups the ante accordingly, pulling in the mysterious and evil organization, offering plenty of action, and leaving you with a much crunchier cliffhanger than volume 1.  I don't often feel surprised by the twists in children's/YA lit, but this one kept me guessing a little longer than most.  Recommended if you enjoy kid lit fantasy.

48.  Desperation, Stephen King
Hnngh.  Overall, not my favorite of King's - but it DID have a whole lot of the creepy, weird, gross horror stuff which is basically my motivation for reading Stephen King.  Unlike a lot of his books, Desperation hits the ground running; you don't get the slow burn build-up of The Shining or Salem's Lot.  Instead, you are instantly dropped into the middle of the desert, on the highway, with a murderous cop pulling people over and dragging them back to his town (Desperation, Nevada) where he may or may not have killed every single living person.

The big reason I didn't love this one as much as others is that, while it deals with King's typical examination of evil and the relationship between good, evil, faith, and possession, it's not subtle.  David, an eleven-year-old boy, is in direct contact with God.  God sent them there.  I'm not a fan of this trope because I feel like it takes some of the tension out.  When King lets things be more subtle, when his characters are less obviously "guided by God," there's more room for uncertainty and for human error.

I do kind of love the notion that he wrote a "companion" novel, called The Regulators, under his Richard Bachman pseudonym and published the novels side-by-side (The Regulators takes place in a parallel universe, with the same characters in different positions and the same overall villain).  I'd like to check that one out, just to see the complete vision of the story.

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.

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.

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.

Needs Moar Discworld

34. I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett
I'm done with the Tiffany Aching books now, and that is a sincere tragedy.  I love Tiffany and the witches almost as much as I love Sam Vimes in the Discworld universe, and I would be very sad if Tiffany didn't manage to make her way into future Discworld adventures.  She is clever, resourceful, pragmatic; but in true Pratchett style, she's also proud, a little short-sighted, and short-tempered.  Watching her suck it up and solve the problems her own actions cause is inspiring to anyone who's ever had to fix a mess they caused with good intentions.

35. The Black Angel, John Connolly
Typically, I prefer the Connolly books with a less overt supernatural tone, but this Charlie Parker mystery was everything I want in supernatural crime noir.  I love it when books explore the deeply weird, and Black Angel is not afraid to go there - ossuaries, art crafted from human bone, and the darker side of religious belief play prominent roles.  Louis and Angels, the caustic sidekicks, are back where I think they're strongest: as Parker's squadmates, just left of the spotlight, where they shine best.    

36. Cinder, Marissa Meyer
This was a big pile of meh.  I'd heard good things, but this dystopic, pseud-cyberpunk retelling of Cinderella didn't live up to the hype for me.  It doesn't deviate enough from the original fairytale for the "big reveal" to actually be a surprise, and the villains are too shallow to be interesting.  I think I can take a pass on the future installments of this series.

Some Books, and In Memorium

32.  Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
I'm cheating JUST A LITTLE here, because I haven't technically finished this.  Not that it isn't good - it very much is!  It's an interesting perspective on Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII, in a way that manages to make him a bit more sympathetic than usual while also acknowledging that he did some terrible things.  Cromwell was one of those interesting people that managed to balance serving his king, serving his country, serving his lord (Cardinal Wolsey, while he was alive) and serving himself, and make all of those things complementary.  Unfortunately, he put serving his king above serving his country, and history shows that serving Henry VIII wasn't always about doing the right thing - often, it was about doing the thing that made him the least likely to have you imprisoned and/or executed.  The majority of the events of Wolf Hall happen around Anne Bolyen's ascension and Henry's process of separating from the Catholic Church in order to divorce Catherine, so there's a lot of political play happening in these pages.  It's all fascinating stuff.

The reason I haven't finished it yet is because it is DENSE.  And it is LONG (about 600 pages).  I'm about 50 pages from the end, but I realized that I'd basically stopped reading because finishing Wolf Hall was becoming a slog that I needed a break from.  I will finish it, just...after I've read some lighter fare.

33.  The Secret Lives of Dresses, Erin McKean
Aww, this one is super cute and full of enviable vintage fashion, even if I did occasionally want to give the main character a big old smack upside the head.  Dora is a 22-year-old adrift in a sea of possibilities - she's smart enough to do anything, so instead she does...nothing.  Her grandmother owns a vintage clothing store, acts like a sassier version of Jackie O, and is basically awesome and I want to be her when I grow up.  The book opens with the grandmother having a stroke and Dora coming home to run the store while grandma's in the hospital, and it's all very predictable and straightforward but also super fun.  Although, Dora whines about Mimi (her grandmother) putting aside vintage clothing for her when stuff comes into the shop that's her size, and it makes me want to ragequit everything.  EXCUSE ME.  I WOULD PUNCH STRANGERS FOR YOUR CLOSET.  THANKS.

As a final note, I'm sure you've all seen by now that Ray Bradbury died today at the venerable age of 91.  I want to thank you, Mr. Bradbury, for penning Fahrenheit 451 - only one among a vast, incredible collection of works - a touchstone book that taught me two things:

1.  Books can last a lifetime, and the ideas in them can transcend the occasional pettiness of human existence;
2.  Even when teachers get the lesson wrong, it can't take away the impact a book can have on someone's soul.

Rest in peace, Mr. Bradbury.  The next time I hear the sound of thunder, I'll think of dinosaurs - and of you.