Two Space Operas In Different Universes

The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible, by Jack Campbell. I'm enjoying Campbell's long string of military science fiction, following a war hero forced back into active service after a century in frozen sleep. The writing is fairly stilted, but I like the sincerity and think that it matches the earnest, boy-scoutish demeanor of the main character. I'm also enjoying the blend of gender-neutral society -- this space navy doesn't blink at having women in combat, in command, and in the marines -- and a traditional gender confusion between Black Jack and his wife or any other important female character. In true Heinlein fashion, the women usually know more but are careful of the men about it.

I got a tickle out of the cover, which shows a heroic captain with a big gun and shiny space armor, especially in light of the conversation between Jack and his wife, where she tells him that if he dies she'll carry on by writing a best-selling memoir about her life with him, complete with a cover showing him doing something improbably heroic, "maybe in battle armor. With a gun." Hey, maybe it will turn out that she was writing this whole series!

Killbox, Ann Aguire. I'm also enjoying Aguire's very different space opera story, with the characters leading the rebellion that cracked open society. At this point they are trying to patch things together again, an effort made complicated by the enormous alien invasion heading their way.

The contrasts are delicious -- Jax and her friends are more mercenaries than professional soldiers, and even when they are fighting for the government they don't really understand the military as a society. Jax and her lover decide to break up while they serve together, since they can't work together professionally. But they do it with angst and drama, each worrying that the other is secretly relieved to be alone again. The character's emotions often feel much more honest and realistic -- closer to how people really feel rather than how they should feel in the best of all possible worlds.

I'm enjoying both series, although they tickle very different parts of my brain.

Space Wars: Wanderlust & Grimspace

I found a space opera that I'm enjoying enough to keep reading on my NOOK; although not earth shattering literature (either in beauty or amazing plot fireworks) it has good page turning (sliding? do e-pages turn) and a fun bunch of characters. Ann Aguirre's Sirantha Jax series has proven my favorite of all her work that I've encountered.

I read the first one, Grimspace, for Felicia Day's Vaginal Fantasy book club. It was the back up selection, and I read it while visiting my Dad because I wasn't enjoying the main pick at all. I liked the snarky bits, and how long it took her to figure out that Marsh could hear her when she thought about him (and she mostly thought threats and insults). I liked how they killed off the alien baby, because I didn't think Aguirre'd dare do that, and I liked how Marsh got all jealous when he thought she was going to sleep with the wrong pirate (that would be the one who was not him). These were all excellent things to have in an airplane book.

I didn't like how people would drag her about, not tell her things, and then blame her when she did something wrong. Hey, if you kidnap someone, don't yell at her for spilling blood in an escape attempt because you forgot to mention the native creatures that attack when that happens. Maybe avoid kidnapping strangers is a better lesson to learn there? 

Since the first book went down so easy, and the library has them all waiting for ebook checkout, I ordered up the next book, Wanderlust.

Bad: Protagonist Jax now seems very passive. She repeatedly says she'll have to lead because her crew mates somehow look to her for direction, but actually she mainly reacts instead of taking initiative. Part of it is because of her wasting illness and part of it is the bizarre and active plots of all about her, but the result is that she rarely makes plans or acts on them.

Good: She doesn't sit about whinging but deals with her situation. She has a new and strong sense of self and refuses to hand that over to her mother or her boyfriend. When she hesitates to commit to March because of her possibly terminal illness, she also refuses to take his man pain on herself -- she doesn't want to be dependent on someone else, even if he would like to be essential to him. And she won't change her mind just because this makes him sad. Yet she allows herself to love him and to let him make his own decisions. I loved it that he stayed behind to fight a soul-destroying war and promised to try to catch her up later, and that she agreed and left anyway -- it's such a refreshing twist in a romance -- two adults respecting each other as people even when they disagree or have different goals.

The plot still seems rather convoluted; I have no idea why the people hoping the mission succeeds picked her as ambassador since she has no qualifications or even any demonstrated ability (see war raging on.  I'm not even sure why the people hoping for Jax to fail bother interfering, since she seems so unlikely to complete any diplomatic move; she's more likely to accidentally cause a mortal insult while looking for a bathroom. For a while I thought I had those groups confused (pro-mission people were the ones kidnapping/assassinating her, anti-mission people protected her), but that was wrong. Maybe this will become clearer in the next book. And I do want to read the next book, and my library is happy to oblige me.

Growing Up: A Wizard of Mars

Nina and Kit have worked together for years before Diane Duane's A Wizard of Mars starts off. No longer the youngest, hottest wizards, they are moving up in their hierarchy while also worrying about grades in their more difficult high school classes. Nina's dad expects her to keep track of her younger sister, whose grief over their mother's death manifests itself in losing herself on another planet far far away studying star maintenance.

Kit wrangles with his sisters, the one at home shameless borrowing all wizardly perks to help her shop, and the one coming back from college still unsure whether his powers stem from Satanic bonds or not. But he's distracted by the lure of Mars, a research project that calls to him more and more directly. When Mars tests him with a series of projections based on Earth fantasies about the Red Planet, I was very glad that my recent viewing of John Carter helped me keep up. (I had a great time and I recommend the movie if you can still find it somewhere.)

Most of all, both kids are growing up. Everyone has been teasing them about being boyfriend and girlfriend for so long, but would it be so bad? Both approach this delicate question from their own perspective, and Kit gets a bit distracted when a gorgeous Martian princess decides he's her long lost lover. Oh, and also the Earth almost gets destroyed, but that's really just par for the course for these two.

Duane's Young Wizard books (this is the ninth) are fundamentally about real kids who just happen to have their own connection to the magic of the universe. The magic parts seem fuzzy; the books always manage to have the spell to do what needs to be done, but the kid parts are solid, so that the problems they face in the real world help keep their wizardly dilemmas important as well.

Religion in May: Neither kid draws on religious beliefs for strength, although magic involves a good One and the evil Deceiver. Kit's family attends church as a matter of course. So it's not about religion, but it's there positively in the background.

Swords and Magic: Magic Slays

The Kate Daniels series of urban fantasy by Ilona Andrews features a ferociously competent woman with her special werewolf boyfriend, but it's a fun and deft version of that rather overworked genre. OK, he's a were-lion, and he's king of all the Beasts. She's extra-special in her own way, and she spends most books defending the weak and trouncing the wicked, sometimes solving a mystery along the way.

Magic Slays, the fifth book, delivers the usual action with some bonus character growth. Kate has always relaxed into her back story, and this time the authors shine more light into that and stir things up. It's a book about the secrets and truths that bind family together. Behind the story it's about strengthening an existing marriage, as Kate and Curran figure out what it means that they are together.  She faces the truth instead of her myths about her mother and foster father's relationship, confronts fears about her ability to protect and parent her ward, and lets a little subplot about an attempted rebellion inside the were-camp lead her to truths about her agency in her past with Curran. All with lots of sword play and nifty magic and a big bomb and an over-confident youth, so fun and games with a tasty thematic filling.  I give it a perfect Spring Break score, especially as I read it on my NOOK.

New York Mystery: The Inquisitor's Apprentice

My library provided another Cybils finalist for my NOOK, this one in the Middle Grade Fantasy category. Chris Moriarty's The Inquisitor's Apprentice is a fantasy alternate history, placed in a New York City around the turn of the century where immigrants pile into tenements and Gilded Age tycoons make sweeping grabs for power, while magic is both banned and widely practiced.

Sacha is a Jewish boy from the wrong side of the tracks, embarrassed about his poverty and his family's origins in front of the other apprentice, who is embarrassed about her mother's social pretentions. For some reason no one wants to tell Sacha what he is actually supposed to be doing, so he spends a lot of time trying to bluff his way through various situations. He's even more  protective of his family than he is of his reputation, keeping secrets from them for their own good even as he tries to hide their foreignness from his co-workers at the Inquisitor's office.  He's a rather improbable blend of extreme naivete and street-smarts, but I liked Lily Astral, his high society fellow apprentice enough to forgive him many things. It's handy for a bluffer to have a foil who is a know-it-all, although Sacha rarely notices how much Lily is helping him.

The alternate history idea works well, with the magic serving as a window into the corruption and biases of the times while keeping things on a friendly plane. Everyone's magic stems from common stereotypes and tropes of their ethnicity, which helps keep people distinct without forcing them to actually live up to those archetypes.

Dragons!: Echoes of Betrayal

Curse you, Elizabeth Moon! and King County Library! You foiled me one week short of my TBR Double Dare, when Elizabeth Moon's book Echoes of Betrayal came out and the library inexplicably had an e-copy available instantly for my NOOK.

Anyway, I was going just to save it for April 1st, but then I read the first chapter and before I knew it I had finished it. Oops. And now I have to decide whether to buy it for my NOOK or match my other hard copies.

I found this installment more focused -- the previous book had opened many story lines to an extent that the word "sprawling" came to mind several times after I put it down. In Echoes of Betrayal we start to see the connections between events and why we need to worry about the people on the various stages of the board. It's a hard balance to take between having characters we care about and want to follow, but needing them to drive the history of the entire continent. These books are about the entire land, unlike the earlier Paks trilogy which was about the development of a person from youth to paladin.

She treats her religion very seriously -- these gods don't shy away from interfering, and the question isn't whether to believe but whether (and whom) to worship. We see Gird hounding would be skeptics around until they drag themselves into a better grace. I like the treatment of ethics; good and evil aren't there because of what the gods say -- they are choices people make, and the gods made choices as well.

And there are dragons! Which is always a good thing. I think I'll put some of Moon's books on my "I think the kids will like it" shelf.

Princess to Queen: Girl of Fire and Thorns

Somehow I have four Cybils Fantasy & Science Fiction (YA) finalists out from the library at the same time (and a fifth that I own also in waiting).  So I'd better start concentrating on them, starting with the one on my NOOK, Rae Carson's The Girl of Fire and Thorns.  (I do love my library's ebooks.)

Carson does a great job of portraying religion, even a religion possibly linked to technology (there are hints that the people arrived on their planet, like on Pern).  Some aspects are tangible; Elisa really does have a Godstone in her navel, and it responds to her surroundings and her prayers.  But various groups have vastly different interpretations of what God wants; different versions of the sacred texts are passionately defended.  Several times the point is made that many people seem to have very firm ideas on what God wants or dislikes, while Elisa herself with her living link can't fathom what her purpose or goals should be. I should do a list of SF that handles religion well; this book, Sharon Shinn's Samaria books, Peter Dickinson's Blue Hawk, any others?

Elisa also grows and changes throughout the book; at the start she despises herself for her lack of ambition and assertiveness, but slowly she learns to act in accordance with her values.  She saves the life of her prince, she searches for the information others try to hide, and she refuses to show fear before her enemies.  Maybe I'll now try to get the hard copy for X to read; I bet he'd love it but the book disappears from my NOOK tomorrow.

Speaking of my NOOK, I went shopping at B&N last weekend and drooled over the forbidden fruit (see TBR Dare on the challenges link). I went so far as to offer to buy X a NOOK for himself just because I had a really good coupon.  X, annoyed that I was talking to him when he was trying to read a book, told me it was unnecessary.  Well, guess who just discovered that the library has Dresden Chronicle ebooks available immediately (unlike the paper versions, which have long hold lists)? Guess who has STOLEN MY NOOK to read them.  Humph.  Now guess who's coupon expired yesterday?  Guess who will have to wait for his birthday now?

Snooty Manikin: The Friendship Doll

One pleasure of the Cybils Middle Grade Finalists this year is their variety.  I've only read three so far, but I've gone from a boy-centered middle school peer group to a ghetto community of cowboys and now I've followed an exquisite Japanese Doll from its introduction to New York society in the early 20th century through the depression and into modern times. Kirby Larson's The Friendship Doll provides a mostly cosy series of strong girls dealing with problems small and large, helped by the inspiration of a doll they only occasionally view.

Miss Kanagawa arrives from Japan as a Friendship Ambassador, and through the course of her career becomes more and more shabby while interacting with various children and inspiring them towards their better selves.  Meanwhile the children themselves teach her about love and humanity, although she never gets to be real.  It's a fun little story that reminded me of Miss Hitty and some other "dolls through the generations" stories, but I felt the lack of connection between the children pushed it more towards an episodic feel than a continuous arc.  Miss Kanagawa's growth wasn't really enough to glue the sections together.

Chrysalis Jock: Stupid Fast

I'm having fun reading some of the Cybils finalist on my NOOK; I'm glad to have a library that's hip with all this technology stuff.  The YA books especially lend themselves to this much lighter medium; my NOOK can carry around five or six library books without straining the seams of my book-bag.  I'm glad they had Geoff Herbach's Stupid Fast, a Young Adult Fiction finalist, in ebook form.

Puberty is traditionally a time of great change, but Felton's life embraces the metaphor with frightening intensity.  Just as his body emerges hulk-like from childhood with rapidly emerging muscles and unceasing energy, his family life twists out of recognition. Having always cast himself as the ineffectual member of the family, Felton resists taking any initiative or action, leaving his younger brother to whirl in increasingly desperate circles while their mother barricades herself in her room.  This all sounds depressing, but Felton's essentially sweet voice keeps things light enough to let the humor shine through; there are a lot of laughs in this summer of changes.

In the meantime, Felton finds himself suddenly inside the forbidden circle of jocks, unsure whether his welcome includes anything but his new muscles. His first girlfriend also pushes him to move past the insecurities of childhood, but no one sees all the different stressors pushing on him until he finally stands up and asks for help.

The ending works very well, with the same themes echoing through the football season, the connection with his best friend, and the long distance talks with his girlfriend.  I'm not as sold with the insomnia flashback chapters that lace through the book, but it does give a good metronome for the pacing of the book.

WAIT -- late breaking news.  Stupid Fast has won its category!  Congratulations.  I shall now forget this so I can read the rest of the finalists with an open mind, and then come back to compare our reactions with the judges'.

Wee, we, oui: Anna and the French Kiss

My amazing library has the first few Cybils YA fiction finalists available in the ebook side, so I've started with Anna and the French Kiss, by Stephanie Perkins.  It's a story of a girl sent away to boarding school for her senior year by her mean dad, whose meanness is a bit undercut by the location of the school -- Paris!  Poor Anna is dragged kicking and screaming from her Georgian life to an exclusive American school in the heart of gay Paree.  Actually, I did have sympathy -- the last year of high school is a hard time to switch schools, especially if the kid is given no choice or even a preference in the matter.

Some nice folks befriend her, and she settles in various ruts for her senior year, only to find herself ruthlessly tipped out of them in the second semester.  Communication is hard, and slamming up against secrets causes much amusing teen aged angst -- throwing a temper tantrum at a bowling alley when your maybe-boyfriend brags from the stage about his sexual antics with your best friend, who somehow forgot to mention this new development.  Or having a crush on a perfect boy who is sadly already taken, and missing connections with him through a variety of Magi Gift types of misunderstandings.

In general the beats of teenage romance felt absolutely true, although Etienne is perhaps a bit too wonderful.  Anna makes plausible mistakes but handles the stress of a completely unexpected year with incredible aplomb.  Since she tells the story in first person, we can see reasons for the missteps, and sympathize with the blunders that slow the path to true love.  At the end the two hearts beat as one, which admittedly left my stodgy old heart a bit concerned with how seriously these two rather emotionally immature teens are taking their romance.  I mean, even Bella Swan knew better than to get married right out of high school.

Diversity Club: Half World

The second book for Rachel Manija's permanent floating YA diversity book club was Half World by Hiromi Goto, which I got from the library on my NOOK.  Unfortunately this made it hard to share with my in-house YA, since he's not keen on electronic books and anyway I was hoarding my NOOK in a frantic effort to read books from all 50 States and from each continent and with authors and titles filling in every spot in the alphabet.  December is a crazy month for the Silly Reading Challenge addict.

Anyway, once the new year started I was free to read what I wanted, so I called up Goto's story and started reading.  For some reason I thought the main character was male, and I was pleasantly surprised to find Melanie the one called to save the world.  The mythos seemed very Roman Catholic -- people live in the world of flesh, and when they die they more to Half World where they process their worst experiences (sounds like purgatory) and then they ascend to Spirit World.  The pope probably wouldn't approve of the spirits eventually getting reincarnated back to Flesh world, though.  But something severed the worlds, and Melanie is the only one who can fix things.

She's a reluctant savior, bullied and neglected, and she only goes in to save her mother, who has been fading for years and finally dragged back to Half World.  Melanie has a few gifts to aid her: a magic 8-ball and a jade rat figurine that comes to life when needed.  The creatures in the dream-like Half World are straight out of the Narnian Island of dreams -- nightmarish and terrifying.  And the destruction of Glueman struck echos of Meg Wallace defeating IT with her love, although Melanie has the harder task of avoiding anger at the evil guy and eventually even finding compassion for him.

The ending was satisfactorily messy -- Melanie doesn't get her parents back, and she does end up with a lot of extra burdens, but she did save the worlds.  So she can go on, even if it wasn't fair.  This ending probably would have annoyed my YA, and his insomnia is bad enough without some of the images in this book, so I'm not too sorry he missed this installment, but I enjoyed it.  The writing impressed me, and I saw enough of the illustrations to realize that my NOOK was not the best platform to read this on.

Alphabetically Scrambling to Finish off 2011

Things have been quiet around here as I try to finish up my last challenges while still celebrate the holidays with my family.  Now I'm holed up alone in my room chasing down the last few pages.

The A-Z challenge had a few leaves that were hard to shake from the tree, but I've finally knocked them down.  Coincidentally they also helped me round out the Global Reading Challenge, which was looking a bit anemic. During the holidays I've read the following on my NOOK, completing the A-Z challenge:

• Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey.  An Australian coming-of-age story where the narrator learns about the fronts put on by everyone around him, proving that he doesn't have to doubt himself if his own courage and self-confidence aren't always bone deep.  The twin mysteries of his parents' marriage and the murder of a school mate implicating the notorious Jasper Jones provide the lens focusing these revelations, as well as the minor bits of plot that accompany the journey of interior growth.  I also learned a lot about cricket.
• Wife of the Gods, Kwei Quartey.  Darko is a police detective in Ghana, where modern investigative techniques run parallel to rougher, simpler modes of justice, with magic and witchcraft lurking in the corners.  Darko's sense of fair place and justice stem from his own mother's disappearance, and the chance to solve a murder in his mother's home village also gives him the chance to peer into his own family's secrets.  An interesting glimpse into Ghana culture as well as a detective story.
• The Space Between Us, Thrity Umrigar.  Rich Parsis and poor Hindu workers may think that their friendship can transcend an employee-worker relationship, but the rich will betray the poor every time.  Poor and uneducated people always lose, and it's because their poverty leads them open to bad choices based on smaller understanding.
• One Man's Bible, Gao Xingjian.  Another book translated from Chinese that felt like it was written behind glass -- somehow I've never been able to connect with any I've tried.  It didn't help that women in this book were considered alien creatures there to either inspire lust or to fail miserably in that purpose.  The tricks with pronouns didn't illuminate much to me; the whole book felt false so the changing identities didn't resonate deeply.  The parts set in the past at least gave a sense of setting and reality, as opposed to the much vaguer parts in France or other western cities.  As a "fictionalized account" of the cultural revolution it worked better than as a "meditation on exile" and "the essence of writing" (from the B&N description.)

Reading High: Queen's Play

Someone may have noticed the quiet around here.  That's because I'm frantically pawing through books trying to figure out a path to finishing all my challenges before the end of the year.  I really want to finish the Cybils finalist list, but the super-depressing YA offerings really slowed me down.  I'm now on the last one, so I'm comfortable reading about 50 pages a day through the weekend, and then I'll write up a final post of all the last-minute books plus the ones I skipped reviewing somehow.

Meanwhile I've loaded my NOOK with books to finish off the Alphabet challenge, which means I can flail about to see if I can find things for the geography puzzles.  Of course, just because I'm in list crisis mode doesn't mean I stop Reading My Library or poking at my TBR list.  Oh, and a bunch of library books are coming due as well.  And I hear some holiday or other is coming up, or so the kids tell me.  I think I'm supposed to be doing something, rhymes with hopping.  Stopping?  Flopping? It'll come to me.

Anyway, I managed to finish a book!  And here's a review!

When I volunteer in the elementary school library, I hear a lot about choosing books at the correct level. The idea is to pick books that you can comfortably read, not too easy and not too hard.  Although I'm certainly willing to help kids find books in this magic range, I don't actually subscribe to the philosophy.  I think that interest and enjoyment are the main reasons to pick a book -- I certainly don't turn down a book just because it is "too easy" for me.  Hey, I still like picture books and I've really enjoyed some of the Easy Reader choices from the Cybils challenge and my kids and I rarely drop a series just because they've grown past it -- when is Cynthia Rylant going to write another Mr Putter book anyway? (I just checked -- I'm missing the latest one.  Humph.)

Of course, with all my sophistication and wit, not to mention my lazy habits, I rarely find myself reading a book that would count as "too hard."  But Dorothy Dunnett can really put me in my place.  I just finished the second book in her Lymond series, Queen's Play, and it took me several tries to get into it and I found myself trying the dictionary on my NOOK (uselessly; we seem to share the same vocabulary) or typing phrases into babelfish to try to understand the French or Latin quotes the characters toss about.  Actually, this book had more in-line translations than the first, and less German and Spanish.  But after only eighty pages or so I was having far to much fun to stop, even when I had to pause to try to figure out what the text was hinting at.  It's not just the language that's tough -- the author also expects the reader to stay on her toes and notice connections and intrigue and subtext and whatnot.  A really delicious journey, but not for the lazy-minded.  I'm very glad that my need for a "Q" title nudged me into trying this book a second time.  Although choosing 500 pages books for the frantic end-time does raise questions about that wit I claimed at the top of this paragraph.

Electric Wind: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

William Kamkwamba grew up fearing magic and ghost planes while working on his father's farm.  He planned to start working hard at school as soon as he made the secondary grades, but unfortunately this meant his grades on the selection exam were poor and he was assigned to a low rated school.  Since Malawi is a poor country that struggles to supply even the top rated classes, this meant few textbooks and crumbling facilities.  When famine struck the farmers in 2002, school fees became impossible as the family gave up eating more than once a day or the chance of growing a cash crop.

 Refusing to relinquish his dreams of an education, William turned to a local library in hopes of learning at home until he could return to classes.  Finding books on electricity, he decided to build a windmill to provide power to light his house, and eventually to bring irrigation to his family's farm.  Enduring ridicule as he picked through junk yards and trash heaps for materials (even a few feet of copper wire overpowered his minuscule budget) he slowly assembled both the windmill (never before seen in his village) and the generator to transform the wind into electricity.  Soon his household was the only one with a steady source of light, and his cell phone charger because a neighborhood attraction.  Fame and (very modest) fortune followed a TED conference appearance; the last few chapters detail the difference this has brought to his family and village and prospects.

Brian Mealer helped write The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (William barely spoke English as he taught himself physics from a British science book), but the voice sounds authentically young.  Brian's website talks about how he worked to bring William's story to life, even mentioning how he took notes and charged his laptop with the titular windmill. The story of William's Edisonian efforts to find scraps to fit the needs of his invention is inspiring and real, making look at my own slacker kids with jaded eyes.  (Good thing I can't look at myself with those eyes!)

Hard Place: Split

I'm moving faster through the 2010 YA Novels Cybils finalists, since that's the largest category left for me this year.  Luckily King County has Swati Avasthi's Split for my NOOK, so I could read it conveniently.  I also tend to read my NOOK in short bursts, which helped me with this novel, which had me in turns dreading to see what main character Jace would do next, or what would happen next.

The plot follows Jace's escape from his abusing father; after Jace finally hits back and gets thrown out, his mother gives him the address of his older brother who had disappeared from Jace's life five years ago.  Then things start piling up -- Jace seems determined to sabotage himself.  I started to wonder if Avasthi was deliberately making him hard to like -- he's a thief, he's rude to his peers, he resents his brother's girlfriend, he lies to his brother.  Pieces of his past float up, memories of the abuse he watched his family suffer, and then what happened when his father included him in the violence.  And the destructive relationship with his girlfriend that ended with him hitting her, the act that really precipitated his flight.

Jace is trying really hard to not be his father, and he's terrified that he's already lost this battle.  He tries to keep all girls away from him, fearing that he'll erupt again.  And he's terrified about his mother and desperately wants her to escape with him.  Avashti depicts the relationship between Jace and his older brother Christian with harsh accuracy; Christian is both the beloved older brother from Jace's childhood and a young man still trying to deal with his own abused childhood that he's not sure he escaped.  Jace's arrival also brings forward the fears for his mother that Christian has buried deep, mainly because there is nothing he can do. The story of Jace's step forward is a very powerful one, although I don't think I'll order the print version to give my thirteen year old.

The climax of the novel happens around Thanksgiving, so I'm glad I finished this one in time for Turkey Day.  And I'm grateful for all the good reading the Cybils have brought me this year.

Depressing Choices: The Last Town on Earth

Thomas Mullen's The Last Town on Earth: A Novel is a book about people consistently making poor choices, through good intentions, through greed or anger, through grief or frustration or weakness or because of needing to justify earlier poor choices.  No one has a chance; some of the best endings come to the people dying of the flu.

The Last Town on Earth is a place founded on idealism; a well-off man hopes to build a lumber mill in cooperation with his employees rather than through exploitation and union-busting.  The town bands together in their optimism, reinforced by the suspicion that other communities have towards their socialist tendencies in the militant days of World War One.  When the flu spreads across America, the town leaders decide to isolate themselves in hopes of avoiding the disease.  Things do not go well.

Philip, the young adopted son of the mill owner, moves from a slightly insecure youth to an embattled young man who can longer trust his father or his best friend.  He leaves the book attempting to cling to some strands of optimism -- he did grow in strength through the horrible events of the book, but it's pretty clear that the next few months will break him and destroy that hope.  Graham, his friend and mentor, also faces a grim future, since even if he manages to avoid prison (very doubtful) he has lost his job, his home, his wife's trust, and his self-respect.  The town is probably doomed, and the few characters who still show hope seem more misguided than reassuring.

Lazy Reading: Born To Run

As a kid I enjoyed lounging on the couch and watching aerobics shows.  There is nothing quite as relaxing as sitting in air conditioned splendor watching other people sweat uselessly.  Even watching sports isn't as perfect; after all, it is possible that athletes are having fun.  The literary equivalent is reading books about ultramarathoners, such as Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, which I read on my NOOK so I wouldn't have to exert myself by holding an weighty tome.

The interesting parts of the story followed several of the elite athletes who do ultramarathons, where the first 26 miles are just the warm-up.  The Tamahumara Indians are the holy grail of this sport; they are a tribe in Mexico who run for days on end as a matter of course.  They rarely come out into the world after a few distasteful episodes, so for a one day race (helped along by the author of this book) many of the top runners came to them.  The book weaves about, talking about the Tamahumara, about the people who stumble into running, about how the author's injuries during his own running training and how that sparked his interest in people who broke all the rules and yet stayed healthy, and how various trainers and experts approach gear and style to help athletes protect their legs while running.  One theory is that most of the advanced technology in running shoes has never been tested; another is that running barefoot helps prevent injury because things hurt faster, making you stop.  Except it doesn't seem that any of the ultramarathoners described in this book stop just because things hurt.

I'm not sure about a lot of the science I read, but it did make running sound like a possibly enjoyable activity.  Maybe I'll try it again.  In a desert.  Wearing tire-treads for shoes.  Or maybe I'll just read about it.

Future Me: Princess Posey and the First Grade Parade

When I reserved the next Cybils Early Chapter Book finalist, I noticed that the library had Princess Posey and the First Grade Parade in an epub version, so I grabbed that.  Instant delivery!  I wasn't sure how it would work; picture books definitely do not read well on my black and white NOOK, and illustrations are often an important part of a chapter book.  Luckily most pictures were half page, so that I could see them in full and clearly.

In this case my bias against "girl" books worked against Stephanie Greene's story; in the words of my seventh grade son it was "just too pink.  Pinky."  I didn't really start to like Posey until she poked the teasing neighbor kid with a stick.  The story painted her character fairly clearly, although I thought her connection to her baby brother annoyingly stereotypical ("I was the baby until you got here.")  But she didn't do anything to solve her problem, and no one even suggested that maybe showing courage was an option.  Although it read easily enough I feel no need to search out the next one, or even to wonder what happens to Posey next.  This is probably a flaw in me more than in the book.

Tough Guy: Circle of Enemies

Harry J Connolly's Twenty Palaces books are among the most interesting urban fantasy ideas on the market today.  The protagonist, Ray Lilly, is an ex-con forced into a world of magic and danger, working for people who despise him but who try to stop magicians from destroying the world.  Ray has slowly been learning about his employers, becoming more and more uncomfortable with their ruthlessness even as he sees the horrible dangers they battle.

In the third book, Circle of Enemies, Ray goes back to the friends he had before his life changed so drastically, before he met a magician, before he went to prison.  At the same time, he goes farther into the Twenty Palaces organization and directly confronts the policies and people that seem almost as awful as the alternative.  Almost.  Connolly presents it all through the eyes of Ray, who doesn't try to conceal things but also doesn't always like to examine himself too closely, who doesn't seem to respect himself even as he refuses to let himself give up on anything or anyone.  It's a gripping combination of characters and situation, and finishing the last book makes me want to start the series all over again.  Good work, and keep writing.

Love Makes You Stupid: A Killer's Kiss

I can't remember why I put this book on my TBR list; I went back to look at likely recommendation sources and find no mention of the author at all.  It's a legal murder thriller, a sub-genre I rarely dip into, and it seems to be the latest in a series about the lawyer Victor Carl.  William Lashner's A Killer's Kiss tells a deeply cynical story about true love (TM) that affirms the implausibility of such a bizarre ideal.

Carl pretends to be a cynic, but he follows his image of the love he had with Julia even when it's obvious to everyone including him that she never saw him as more than a tool.  Julia herself seems to have no impulses except for the True Love she feels for the miserable loser she had a crush on in high school, and all her interactions with the men in this book (most of whom also love her) turn on how she can use them to help the man who despises her.  Love is seen as a one-way street, something that you aim at someone else but that never looks at or reacts to that person.  I found this rather dull, since everyone in love with the annoying Julia spent pages and pages raving about this emotion; it was a bit of a relief to switch over the the murder and money parts where the torture and sleuthing had more of an emotional truth to them.  I could believe in the love these men had for money.  Maybe it would help to have a deeper understanding of the protagonist from previous books, but I found him shallow and unconvincing, while the women were baffling constructs lit mainly by the expectations of the men who pretended to love Julia.  The ending relied deeply on the amazing incompetence of the police (aren't most murder suspects caught evading arrest handcuffed? or at least noticed?) which just added to my general disbelief in the characters and their motives.  Not really my cup of tea.