Flight into Fantasy

So my former roommate used to rave about Dean Koontz. She loved False Memory and Intensity but I hadn’t ever tried a Koontz novel.

I was… well, bitterly disappointed is a phrase that comes to mind. The writing was hackneyed, the characters were caricatures, and Koontz slaps the reader upside the head with the theme of his books, which generally bothers me.

The premise is interesting. After a car accident, Hatch Harrison is successfully brought back to life after being dead for 80 minutes. But then, inexplicably, people who’ve pissed off the Harrisons start dying and Hatch starts getting random visions.

This book might have worked a lot better had it been told by someone else, someone who wasn’t so deeply in love with his characters that he is constantly extoling their virtues without actually, you know, showing us the characters being virtuous.

Would I read another Koontz novel? Maybe. But not for a seriously long time.

So I love religious satire. It makes me happy. Probably because I’m an agnostic who has read the Bible, so I actually get the jokes. Therefore, a book with the premise that God sent Her only begotten daughter to the earth should be right up my alley, right?

Well, yeah, kind of. This book was enjoyable, but it was fairly slow going in places. It was also rather grim. And for me to call a book grim, given that I generally like dark stories, that says something for how truly grim it actually was.

I think for a better example of religious satire, I’d recommend Gore Vidale’s Live from Golgotha which I reviewed here a few months ago. It’s a shorter book, and is somewhat less cluttered by random stylistic devices.

Dear published romance author who shall remain nameless:

You’re doing a bad job when the incest subtext is so thick you could cut it with a knife, and incest is not the main focus of your novel. Yes, we’re aware that you and your Mary Sue’s eleventy-two billion brothers love her, but must you have the brothers remark with creepy intensity on their sister’s radiant beauty? Whilst standing in her bedroom watching her sleep?

Sincerely,
A former fan of your work who had to put your book down after she couldn’t make it through chapter 1 because of the creepy incest.

P.S. The book was Jude Deveraux’s Eternity just in case you were looking for something new to read and are in any way influenced by my non-recommendations.

So even I, sheltered though I am, have seen this movie. I know what happens, and I imagine most people do, too. Therefore, reading the book version of this story was kind of anticlimactic. Because, though it’;s a horror classic, I saw everything coming.

Bloch does do a good job with bringing the creepiness factor, though, but I found the rest of his writing hackneyed and contrived and vaguely irritating. And there’s no way in hell I’d ever read the sequels.

So, yeah, read it if you want the classics of horror experience. Skip it if you can’t avoid rolling your eyes every fifteen minutes.

Good: The Chad Mitchell Trio. Because old hippie folk music makes me happy.
Bad: My stomach lining is still eating itself, and I can’t find anything bland anywhere in this house.
Good: I’m starting a revolution in one of the online role playing games I play in. This despite the fact that Lizbet is taking a vacation and can’t read the post, the silly wench.
Bad: I’m reading Psycho right now. the writing is so hackneyed that it’s hard for me to get through it. Also, my memory of the movie is totally hazy, but I know pretty much what is going to happen. Not because I read ahead or anything. I’m just teh smart!

Good: I think I have figured out how to rescue my character in the Werewolf: The Apocalypse game that Belinda.)

Bad: I miss Category: musings  |  Comment

Southern Discomfort is not the sort of book I typically read. Because I am a big dork and typically concentrate a lot more on SF, fantasy and horror. Well, that and romance. But this book was none of those. It is set in Montgomery, and was written by mystery writer Rita Mae Brown. It portrays the lives of the residents of Montgomery, Alabama, near the beginning of the century. Among the cast of characters are Banana Mae and Blue Rhonda, a couple of whores who have a near constant battle with the very overzealous preacher, Hercules Jinx, a prizefighter, and the affluent Bannister family. All these people have their problems and their secrets, and, basically, it’s like a giant soap opera, except without the overwrought dialogue.

I really enjoyed this book. Brown writes all of her characters well, and the drama in their lives seems real. I was able to empathize with them most of the way through the book, and it was fascinating to watch their lives go by. the book is also very dark, and there are lots of references to sex and drugs. Not all the sex is consensual, and not all of it is heterosexual either, which… I have no problem with whatsoever.

My only quibble was that I thought the book lost its momentum for about the last third, at least up until the very end, but aside from that, very highly recommended.

BTW, I’ve decided to tackle one of the romance novels I had on my request list from the library. I may see if I can find the book blurb online and post it, because I think it will bring the snark.

Apparently, the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, which gets to decide what books are made accessible for me to read, has a fairly good sized collection of fiction about people who are LGBT. (By ‘good-sized’, of course, I refer to ‘there actually is one) A lot of the books I’m seeing tend to be meant for young teenagers discovering their sexual identity, and there are some that seem to be more titilating than actually, you know, positive, but it's a start, and since these people don't publish anything remotely resembling erotica (romance novels don't count toward this goal. I'm sorry but they don't.) I am pleased. Now if they'd just get rid of all their freaking inspirational historical novels series, the ones about some family struggling in some distant past and getting right with God so now their struggles are over, I'd be a lot more pleased. (Note this is not a bash against organized religion or anything, I just find religious inspirational fiction about as interesting and compelling as sand paper.

The weasel scowls at midnight!

This is the sequel to Jane Yolen’s other novel, Sister Light, Sister Dark , which I reviewed fairly recently. The story was still good, but because it was the sequel to another book, I didn’t think it was nearly as effective. The pace felt a little slower, at least for most of the book, and Yolen employs a lot of standard issue fantasy tropes, which are great, but she could have avoided them.

I also felt the ending was too rushed, and a few important questions were glossed over in an epilogue that basically traces the ends of the characters' lives.

For all that, though, Yolen is an excellent storyteller, and her world is still intriguing despite my minor quibbles with it.

I know, I know, this will be the second review in a row where I have been complimentary and completely snark-free, but I fucking loved this book. It’s the debut novel by author Jennifer Weiner, and my sister read it and loved it. Of course, the last time my sister recommended a book to me, it was KarenMarie Moning’s highlander novels, and the first time I tried to read the first book in that series I couldn’t get past the opening chapter, so I was a little skeptical about this book. But it was excellent!

Cannie Shapiro works for a major Philadelphia newspaper. Then one day she finds out that her ex-boyfriend Bruce has written an article in a women’s magazine called Moxy. The article is called “Loving a Larger Woman” and it chronicles some of his thoughts about being with Cannie, who had never before considered herself a larger woman. That article changes her life, and Cannie embarks on a journey of self-discovery, overcoming a lot of obstacles before she can finally be happy.

Like I said, I freaking loved this book. As a lead character, Cannie is wonderful. She's smart, funny, sensitive, and a good person. She is strong and generally self-reliant. And while she does go through long periods of angst, it's all reasonable angst and I could empathize with her. None of this, “OMG my life sucks! I have a harem of hotness and I'm the uberspecial chosen one waaaaah why me?” that happens in a lot of other books. Cannie's problems feel real, and I'm totally with her through all of her trials. Her narrative voice is pleasant, and reading the book, I felt like I really got to know Cannie. She's the sort of person I could picture myself having coffee with and talking about life. And she's extremely cool, despite all the crap she goes through.

This is definitely a must-read in my opinion, especially for “larger women”.