And You Thought YOU Had A Bad High School Experience

Carrie
By Stephen King; Read by Sissy Spacek
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
ISBN: 978-0743581653
6 discs – 7 hours 12 minutes [UNABRIDGED] Themes: / telekinesis / high school / religious fanaticism / Publisher summary:
The story of misfit high-school girl, Carrie White, who gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers. Repressed by a domineering, ultra-religious mother and tormented by her peers at school, her efforts to fit in lead to a dramatic confrontation during the senior prom.

To begin, I want to tell a quick story about my introduction to Stephen King. I came really late to the party when it comes to the King. I’ll not bore you with the story about my first read, but to make a long story short, I read The Stand and was not a fan right away…to say the least. For some reason, and after numerous recommendations, I started The Dark Tower series and I wasn’t even that impressed with the first book, The Gunslinger. I didn’t hate it, but it wasn’t nearly what everyone was saying. O for 2.

And yet, for some crazy reason that I still don’t really understand, I pushed along, reading book two in The Dark Tower, The Drawing of the Three. I’ve fallen for authors before and maybe it was all the prior disappointment, but I fell really hard with that book. Instant fan here…erm…after three books. 

Thereafter my collection of King books has slowly been increasing starting with The Dark Tower series (of course) and moving on to others (I think I’m at around 25 or so). I have even read a couple more since I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do with books, at least someone told me that once. Every single one has been great and that also explains my current read (rereading the one I hated and enjoying it more than most other books).

So we’re talking about Carrie here right? Right. Carrie. King’s first published book. I gotta say, this is quite an impressive book. Published when he was 26, I guess some people are just born to do certain things and King was born to write. This also makes me feel like I’ve wasted my life.

First of all, this audiobook was read by Sissy Spacek. If you’ve been living under a rock, she’s the one who played Carrie in the classic film based on this book. She’s a great actress, although I’ve not seen this film, and she’s perfect for the reading of this book.

On that note, both this book and its movie are inseparable from pop culture. Having never seen the movie or read the book until now, I still knew (or thought I knew) everything about this book. And who doesn’t know about that infamous prom scene? Just the people in that Geico commercial, just those.

I thought for sure that knowledge would ruin the book for me, but it turns out that’s not a problem. The way the book is set up, you already know about that scene almost right up front. Each chapter starts with a snippet of a news story or biography that tells of the occurrence at the high school and Carrie. This scene actually happens way earlier in the book than I thought it would and the rest of the book deals with the aftermath.

I had a hard time with this book, though, and I think it’s for a couple reasons. One of those reasons is that I don’t think the set up really worked for me. There really wasn’t much to this book, it was just the same events told in different ways and even though the book’s only around 200 pages, it still seemed long.

 High school is just a terrible place or can be. It’s one of the worst times in many a person’s life and it’s only magnified in and through Carrie. She’s the worst type of tortured teenager and all I could think was that I never wanted my daughters to grow up and go through it. Through the insecurities, the immaturity, and downright meanness of those who tend to have the most insecurities.

 Even through these agonizing moments, I was able to see King’s genius. At the end of the book, it really did seem like this was a real historical event. It was well-documented and the T.K. gene seemed almost like it could exist. The characters were also just as real as any other of King’s characters – which is as real as they come.

 While the master is there, I can’t say I loved this book. It’s a tough, sad read that just made me miserable. That in and of itself is indicative of King’s ability, but I don’t think I’ll ever be rereading this, I don’t even really have the desire to see either the new or old movie. I respect this book a lot, but it was way too depressing for me. 3 out of 5 Stars (recommended with reservations)

 Also posted at SFFaudio.com.

Iain (M.) Banks

Iain Banks' recent announcement about his cancer diagnosis and the possibility of an all-too-soon death was a shattering yet inspiring thing to read. The bravery and honesty and dignity on display! I've already liked and respected Banks for years, his novels and his politics and his fury at the injustices of the world. But that announcement moved my feelings right up into genuine love. I love Iain Banks. A beautiful human being!

He is on my mind today because I had the misfortune of reading a revoltingly clueless blog post by Brendan O'Neill. The primary message of his overlong diatribe appears to be that folks who are dying need to do it privately; to do otherwise is to feed the prurient appetities of all the so-called "death watchers" in the world. O'Neill's nonsense is offensively doltish simply because it misses a central point about cancer and about dying: in many parts of American, English, and European culture, such things still carry a distinct burden of shame. It is this shame and it is the often unspoken social stigma attached to dying that forces people to die alone, quietly, don't want to burden anyone, oh no, I will shoulder this burden all on my lonesome behind closed doors, tastefully. Etc, etc, etc. O'Neill just doesn't seem to grasp that the more people are open about their diagnoses, the more they are willing to let others support them, the less there will be of this awful shame and stigma that haunts people unto death. In many ways, this association of death & dying with shame & stigma is - for lack of a better word, my apologies in advance - such a WASP-y perspective. And by "W.A.S.P." I mean of course "white anglo-saxon protestant". I hate to pigeonhole and I know that there are probably tons of folks of that persuasion who do not have such a perspective on death & dying. But the fact remains: white anglo-saxon protestant culture is often a culture where such things as death & dying, as cancer, are considered to be somehow unseemly. Best not to make such a display of oneself - right, O'Neill? Best to simply keep your embarrassing little death to yourself.

NO, NO, NO. Do not go gently into that good night!

Okay, that's it for the rant. Now for the books. Much of what is written on Banks is concerned with his fabulous Culture series. I'd like to highlight three of his non-Culture novels. All are interesting and provocative; one is a genuine classic - albeit a disturbing one.

***

THE ALGEBRAIST

a non-Culture sci-fi adventure from Banks, one whose intriguing major topic is the relativity of morality. the aliens are pretty much humans in alien form - not much attempt to convey a truly alien viewpoint. but it is all fascinating nonetheless, and many of the characters - alien and otherwise - are sympathetic or fearful creations. expansive world/universe-building, per usual. some real narrative surprises from beginning to end. the novel's Villain with a capital V is almost a parody, as if this character and his eventual purpose in the novel  were specifically designed to mess with reader expectation.

in the twists and turns of the protagonist's backstory and motivations, i was able to see the genuine sympathy that the author has for those who fight against authoritarianism. it is also interesting to compare the perspective on AIs between this novel and the Culture novels. in this universe's demonization of artificial intelligence, Banks is able to fully illustrate the horror (and stupidity) of demonizing and oppressing any community.

what i didn't enjoy were the many descriptions of an alien species' habit of enslaving, tormenting, and killing their young - but hey maybe that's just me. i understand the rationale for its frequent inclusion, but gosh it was appalling and left a sour taste. they were some pretty loveable aliens and then it all had to be ruined by those noxious activities! ugh. well, i suppose that's just Iain Banks the stridently moral moral relativist... he will never let me have my cake and eat it too. so annoying! but in such a good way.

***

COMPLICITY

Banks' sci-fi is often fabulously complex and his thrillers can feel almost ostentatiously stripped-down. this is one of the latter. the writing is solid and the narrative is often riveting. particularly intriguing is the interest in doubles and obsessions and two characters who reflect each other's passions and weaknesses. there are also some unsurprisingly sharp critiques of materialism and various other classic and modern evils... the victims are a veritable Who's Who of Assholes Deserving Slaughter... the killer, demented as he may be, is something of a robin hood, taken to the next level (down).

i particularly appreciated - SPOILER AHEAD - the flashback to the brief sexual interlude between the narrator and the killer as children. it was refreshing. sexual experimentation between kids of the same gender is common enough, of course, and does not automatically mean anything about their sexual orientation in the long run. although the flashback eventually has a larger meaning (insofar as a deep connection is established between the two characters due to what happens immediately afterwards)... i was mainly impressed by the nonchalance displayed in that short scene. a weaker novelist would have had much more to say, would have supplied much more drama and psychobabble and disturbing undercurrents when dealing with such activities. not Banks.

indeed, despite its lurid subject matter, that nonchalance and that basic acceptance of certain parts of human nature is a hallmark of the entire novel.

***

THE WASP FACTORY

a gentle coming-of-age tale set in rustic scotland, depicting the charming misadventures of a precocious lad and his idiosyncratic older brother as they struggle to understand themselves and each other.

this is some hard stuff, and by "hard" i mean Hard Like the Marquis de Sade Is Hard. do not read this if you cannot stomach graphic depictions of animal torture. do not read this if you cannot stomach the murder of children. this one was hard for me to read at times, and i read some pretty terrible things.

but this is actually not a bleak book. perhaps because of the narrator: young Frank is a sadistic creature but his perspective is often self-deprecatingly wry or amusingly pedantic. he may be an affectless sociopath who channels his monstrous emotions into bizarre rituals and vicious traps, but hey - he is also a sensitively-wrought kid with many problems. what makes the book such a unique affair is the tension between the horrors illustrated and the traditional vehicle in which they are expressed: it is in many ways a kind of Young Adult novel, albeit one chock-full of grotesquerie. one in which the protagonist struggles to move beyond his outsider status, to connect with others, to understand his distant father and his, er, 'problematic' older brother. Frank's cruelties exist side-by-side with a cold-blooded version of typical teenage angst, angst that is built around familial relations, gender, and simply finding a place in the world. the ending resolves some truly dreadful plotlines in a truly dreadful manner, but also parallels the typically transformative Young Adult ending in which the hero comes to understand himself and so is able to move forward with his life.

clever, Banks, so very clever!

the narrative is designed as a chinese box of layered (and revolting) mysteries, but it is also designed as a more subtle trap for the unsuspecting reader: look at you, you just found some sympathy for a remorseless little psycho! the personal problems that he has to struggle with ARE pretty heavy for a kid to deal with, right? and you felt a bit of happiness at his eventual self-discovery, didn't you? well, you should be ashamed, sicko!

the writing is clean, clear, precise and the tone is surprisingly upbeat. the protagonist's thoughts have a quiet yearning and naiveté to them that makes even his most horrific plans and rationalizations seem almost understated, almost innocent. the deadpan humor also relieves some of the viciousness of the very dark activities portrayed. the dissection of gender was fascinating! and the use of the wasp factory itself moves beyond that of a torture maze, becoming a metaphor and a parallel for the fates of each of the characters. overall, a disturbing but very enriching experience.

If You Have a Cow Creamer, Guard it with Your Life!

The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse

Dan's rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher: Overlook Press
Price: 19.95
Available: Now

Aunt Dahlia dispatches Bertie to Totleigh Towers to purlorn a silver cow creamer coveted by his uncle Tom from Sir Watkyn Basset. Unfortunately, Bertie has his work cut out for him in the form of Stiffy Byng and Madeline Basset. Can Bertie escape with the cow creamer without winding up married to either woman?

This is my second reading of Code of the Woosters and I can definitely say there is a reason I've been recommending it to people for the better part of a decade. P.G. Wodehouse was in mid-season form when he chiseled this masterpiece out of a block of stone. The Code of the Woosters should be handed out in writing classes as a prime example of how to orchestrate a plot. The twists are perfectly timed so the jaw-droppingest moments happen at the end of chapters.

The writing is superb and Wodehouse moves his characters through the scenery like a master puppeteer. Gussie Fink-Nottle, that "ghastly gob of gorgonzola," makes his return, still bethrothed(ish) to Madeline Basset and is just as quirky. Who else would think to put newts in the bathtub after breaking an aquariam? La Basset is the same as she was in the previous volume. I'm not sure if Stiffy Byng or Stinker Pinker make appearances in other volumes but they are quite memorable here. Roderick Spode is by far the best supporting character of the book, though, a facist who cowers whenever someone mentions "Eulalie," the meaning of which is not clear until the end. As always, the narrative is a minefield of hilarious similes.

The plot meanders all over Totleigh Towers. Like most Jeeves stories, Bertie gets himself deeper and deeper into the soup, the plot encircling such props as the aforementioned cow creamer, a notebook, and a policeman's helmet. As I mentioned before, the reversals of fortune are impecably timed.

I could go on and on about this book. Suffice to say, it's an easy five and my go-to recommendation for people who want to give P.G. Wodehouse a shot. They didn't make an episode of the phenomenal BBC Jeeves and Woosters series starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie out of it for nothing!


Also on Goodreads

Zombie Noir!

City of the Lost by Stephen Blackmoore

Dan's rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher: DAW
Price: 15.00
Available: Now

A job to steal a precious stone goes wrong and a thug named Joe Sunday is murdered. Now Joe's a zombie with a craving for human flesh and everyone in town is after the stone. Is there anyone Joe can trust and can he find the stone before a centuries-old madman uses it to become immortal?

Right out of the box, I have to say that this book is pure fun. While I'm giving it the same rating as Winter's Bone, it in no way is as well written or powerful. That being said, here we go!

City of the Lost is an entertaining noir tale that just happens to star a zombie. The dialogue is hard boiled and in the present tense. It has moments of hilarity and not the lame attempts at humor other urban fantasy noir tales that shall remain nameless use. It also has a lot less misogyny than the tales about a certain unfunny wizard from Chicago normally display.

Joe Sunday wasn't a nice guy before being made a zombie and dying didn't help his manners. He kills and bludgeons his way through this tale, all in pursuit of a stone that may or may not be able to turn him back into a human and Giavetti, the man who covets it. The supporting cast are an interesting bunch: a Nazi sorcerer named Neumann, and his henchmen Archie and Jughead. Jughead's a little person with the teeth and demeanor of a pitbull. There's Samantha, the woman with a connection to the villain, the Bruja, an urban witch, and Frank Tanaka, a detective who's also investigating Giavetti.

There's a lot of dark humor in this book and I caught myself snickering a few times, from Joe using a dog to bludgeon someone, speculating on the ethics of eating hookers to keep from rotting, to Joe sneering and saying "I didn't want any part of that guy in my mouth." Funny stuff.

Any complaints? Not really. There were a lot of twists and only about half of them were predictable. I have a feeling it's meant to be the first book in the series but it was quite a satisfying read on it's own. For a fun zombie book, it's an easy four.



Also on Goodreads

Drinking & Detecting

George Pelecanos created the character of Nick Stefanos at the beginning of a writing career that includes multiple crime novels as well as work on TV’s The Wire and Treme. In a A Firing Offense, Nick’s Trip and Down By The River Where the Dead Men Go we learned that  Nick was born in Greece but shipped to the US as a baby and raised by his grandfather in Washington DC.  He spent his teens and twenties working for a retail electronics store and eventually became their advertising director but a busted marriage and job dissatisfaction led to him quitting to become a private investigator with a knack for finding himself in violent situations.  However, Nick ends up spending most of his time working at a dive bar which enables his increasing alcoholism.

Shelf Inflicted staffers Anthony, Kemper and Dan recently read the trilogy and cracked open a bottle of Old Grand-Dad as they discussed Nick Stefanos.  General spoiler about Nick's adventures in drinking and detecting follow:

Alan Banks Is After a Very Bad Boy...

Posted by James L. Thane
Rating: Three out of five possible stars


[Please note: This review contains some minor spoilers, but nothing beyond what is described in the tease on the back of the book.]

Bad Boy is a book that, had it been set in the U.S. instead of in the U.K. would have ended on page three.

A woman comes into the Eastvale police station, looking for DCI Alan Banks who was once her neighbor. The woman's daughter has come home for a visit and while cleaning the daughter's room, the woman discovers a hand gun hidden away. Being a good citizen, she races to the police station to report it, apparently hoping that Banks can safely get the gun out of the house and minimize the legal trouble her daughter will be in for having it in the first place.

In the U.S., of course, the desk sergeant would doubtless just tell the woman to go home and to stop trampling all over her daughter's Second Amendment rights. In the U.K., they take this sort of thing more seriously and, although the woman doesn't know it, her daughter could be facing five years in the slammer for possessing the gun.

Unfortunately for the woman, her old friend Banks is on holiday in America and so the woman is referred to Banks' colleague, Annie Cabbot. Following protocol, the police send a SWAT team to the house to remove the weapon, but things go badly wrong and a tragedy ensues.

Erin, the young woman who brought the gun to her mother's house, is the roomate of Banks' daughter, Tracy. Erin and Tracy are both attracted to a sexy Bad Boy named Jaff who owned the gun in the first place. As events unfold, Tracy realizes that Jaff could be in serious trouble and so goes to warn him. Knowing that her father is going to be out of town for the better part of a week yet, she then volunteers that the two of them could lay low in her father's vacant cottage for a while.

This is a seriously bad idea, but Tracy, who is obviously not the brightest woman on the planet, won't realize that until it's too late. By the time Banks returns, Jaff will be on the run, taking Tracy as his hostage. Lots of bad things are going to happen along the way and Banks will face one of the most difficult and most personal challenges of his long career.

This was a good read, and the story moves right along, but I did have a couple of problems with it. First of all, this is an Alan Banks story in which Alan Banks is basically AWOL for the first half of the book. By the time he arrives back in the UK, his daughter is on the run with a known criminal and yet his superiors still allow him to work the case. That stretches credulity a bit when he has such a personal stake in the situation.

Also, as a person of the male persuasion, I might find it harder than some other readers to really appreciate the attraction that some women have for dangerous "Bad Boys." I understand the concept, but Tracy's actions in the beginning of the story simply left me shaking my head. I had some difficulty feeling much sympathy for her later in the book when she had so stupidly gotten herself into this situation to begin with.

One minor note that jarred me and took me out of the story for a moment: While vacationing in San Francisco, Banks begins reading Dashiell Hammett's classic book, The Maltese Falcon, which takes place there. Later, he flies from San Francisco to the UK and on arriving notes that he continued to read the book on the flight," until his eyes got too tired" to continue.

Say, what? The Maltese Falcon is 229 pages long and a non-stop flight from San Francisco to Heathrow is ten and a half hours. Plus, he'd already started the book! Banks must be the slowest reader on the planet.

A final note: The moral of this story is, obviously, that once your kids are grown and have left home, change the locks and, NEVER, under any circumstances, give them a key to your house.

Zombi Ennui

ZONE ONE

Colson Whitehead

Doubleday

Reviewed by Carol

Pick a star, any star

Oh dear. Is it possible to make flesh-hungering zombies seem dull?

While I never thought so, AMC and Whitehead have both been giving it their all by enveloping them in navel-gazing Philosophy 101 monologues and odd series of pastoral flashbacks in the midst of life-or-death situations. Whitehead, at least, delivers his philosophy with amazing prose, while the writers at The Walking Dead (season two) rely on repetition of words like 'humanity' more times than Hobbes could shake a stick at. We get it: apocalypse stories are essentially about hope; how we create meaning in survival and and how we cope with a massive breakdown in society. While I'm optimistic for The Walking Dead, I'll take a pass on Whitehead's version of humanity--this is the Kafka version, where people are roaches--or mannequins--before transforming into zombies. Nihilism at it's most uninspiring.

As I began Zone One, I started falling in love with the language, the clear and exacting prose Whitehead uses to describe everything from technology to buildings. As I read on, it became apparent that while Whitehead can turn an apt phrase, he has no love or passion for his story; this is a chronicle of decay, both before and after the plague apocalypse.

There is little in Zone One for the fans of action and plotting, and only the barest of character development. Instead, we are given ink sketches in broad frames, all the better to hang the dirty laundry of Whitehead's social commentary. The setting is conventional plague apocalypse; 'something' starts transforming people, it spreads before awareness of infection, and society melts like a wet tissue, except for small encampments of people. The plot centers on teams sent out to cleanse New York City of the remaining dead once the Marines have swept through. The narrator is an Everyman, nameless until christened by his teammates, who relives his memories as he scours the city for zombies.

Darkness begins on the very first page when we read: "the camera was so backward that every lurching specimen his father enlisted from the passersby was able to operate it sans hassle, no matter the depth of cow-eyed vacancy in their tourist faces or local wretchedness inverting their spines." Descriptions of people before the plague strangely resemble those of people after, and it's not because of compassion for the zombies. Right there, I knew the level of disdain for the father, the mediocre, the simple, even for humanity.

Every word is selected with care, conveying decay and blight. Photos are "culled" for an album. The buildings of pre-plague New York aggressively "collided, they humiliated runts through verticality and ambition, sulked in one another's shadows." When they are redeveloped, "their insides were butchered, reconfigured, rewired according to the next era's new theories of utility... sweatshop killing floor into cordoned cubicle mill." The disdain carries over into people, especially lawyers. "If you'd asked him about his plans... the answer would have come easily: lawyering. He was berefit of attractive propositions, constitutionally unaccustomed for enthusiasm, and generally malleable... Hence, law." Likewise, design firms, receptionists, number-crunching bureaucrats, fast-food friers, soldiers--none are spared from the contemptuous voyeuristic lens.

Living characters are suspiciously similar to zombies. Gary, on Mark's team has "fingernails which were seemingly constructed of grime as if he had clawed out of a coffin," and Kaitlyn, the leader, is a clear "grade grubber before the disaster... maintain(ing) a grade-grubbing continuum." Even people at the camps. "Everyone he saw walked around with a psychological limp... the all-over crumpling, as if the soul were imploding or the mind sucking the extremities into itself."

This is one of those books that destroys a rating system. Technically brilliant, structurally competent and ultimately both cynically distancing and ironic, it lacks the heart and characters that truly engage me on a deeper level. Two stars for personal enjoyment, problems with world building (which, in fairness, I believe weren't meant to be resolved as it is meant more as a metaphorical tale), four stars for deft use of language and general conception, and one star for it's dim view of human nature.

Cross posted at http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2012/1...

Debutante Detective Survives Psycho Armed with - how many Cliches? Think of a Number!

THINK OF A NUMBER

John Verdon

So John Verdon arrives on the scene with a cliche-ridden brick of a book about a genius detective whose obsessive behaviour is damaging his marriage and so he has retired from the NYPD to upstate NY where everything will be much better...if he doesn't get dragged into solving a mystery for an old college mate who is being sent freaky hand-written messages by a scary person who seems to know more about the recipient than is reasonable for anyone.

It's obvious where this is going to go and it does, but nevermind - Verdon has crafted a page-turner with vivid even if off-the-shelf characters. There's a technique he uses to show off his protagonist's skills. In group interactions he likes to set up a moron (always a bloke) and a sharply perceptive and well educated woman to compare and contrast with his hero. In fact he'll try to squash in several types of moron if he can. No wonder he was the most celebrated detective in NYPD history with all those other idiots about - in fact it's amazing any crimes get solved now he's retired - oh! They don't - he has to come back and do it for them...

There are zillions of other books out there about psychos and genius detectives but most of them are far less worthy of your time than this one.

The difference between justice and murder





Death Note

Written by Tsugumi Ohba, illustrated by Takeshi Obata

English publication by Viz Media

Reviewed by Sesana

4 out of 5 stars

I read a lot of comics, and a lot of manga. The genre conventions can get a little old after you've read, say, a few dozen magical girl series. So I find myself re-reading older books that I have an emotional attachment to (Don't ask me to be objective about Sailor Moon. It's too late for that.) or ones with unique, even thought-provoking premises. And believe it or not, Death Note is one of the latter.

The Death Note of the title is a notebook, normally the property of a shinigami (think "death god"). If your name is written in a Death Note, you die, in whatever way and at whatever time is written. A totally made up example: John Smith will be hit by a bus at 2:37 on March 24 and die two minutes later from massive internal injuries. One particularly bored shinigami, Ryuk, has dropped a death note into the human world, just to see what would happen. One could say that this makes Ryuk the single most effective troll in history. It's found by Light Yagami, a brilliant high schooler with a strong sense of justice. As soon as Light realizes the power he now has, he sets out to eliminate criminals, one by one, using the Death Note, while Ryuk sits back and enjoys the show. But criminals or not, a hundred or so inmates suddenly dropping dead is going to attract attention, and not just from the police. The rumor mill invents Kira (a Japanese attempt at pronouncing the English word "killer") to explain all the deaths, and naturally the police take notice. Murder is murder, after all, and I imagine they're concerned at the potential loss of information if all the suspects die before interrogation. And a case like this, with a seemingly total lack of leads, is also going to attract the attention of the world's greatest detective, the mysterious and never seen L. This is the central onstage conflict of the series, Light vs. L. 



This is the simplest summary of the series I can give, because it gets very complicated, very quickly. This is a very wordy, internalized series. Most of the panels show the thoughts of the characters, mostly Light and L as they continually plot and counterplot against each other. Both Light and L are smart enough to think several steps ahead of everyone else around them. At one point, Light's plot becomes so complicated that I would need a flowchart to explain it, with L just one tiny slip away from exposing him at any moment. It's an effort to keep up, and this is not a series for people who require constant action. That's all aside from the many convoluted rules on how the Death Notes actually work, some of which never become relevant to the plot.

This is the kind of series that sparks debates. What's the difference between justice and murder? Is Light's vigilante justice morally right? Or is he just another crazy killer? Does the criminals he targets deserve death? Given that, by the end of the first volume, he's responsible for the deaths of hundreds, what does Light himself deserve? Does it make a difference that L is less concerned with justice than in solving a particularly tricky brain teaser? What would drive someone to worship Kira? Would Light's utopia really be a better place? For whom? Luckily, the manga is as neutral as possible, making both sides (and their representatives) sympathetic and flawed in roughly equal measures.

And are they ever flawed. L is the sort of character who can be fun to read about in fiction, but who would be very hard to take in real life. He's wildly eccentric, frequently rude, seems to lack empathy for people around him, and, significantly, is more interested in the case as a battle of wits than as a chance to stop a murderer. Light is much more polished on the surface, and a lot less likely to offend people around him, but there's something deeply off about him, more and more so as the series continues. Other characters are little more than background to their conflict. The character of Misa, Light's pseudo-girlfriend, has struck a nerve with a lot of readers. She is indeed pathetically subservient to Light, easily taken in by even his cheapest lies, and pretty dim and ineffective compared to him and L. But then, this is a series where almost every character is dim and ineffective when coming up against Light and L, and most characters are completely taken in by Light's surface charm. In the end, it's a game of chess, with massive stakes. Light and L are in control, and everyone else are just pawns. And both Light and L are well aware of that.

There are twelve volumes of the manga in all, and the ending is spectacular. Sure, the basic result is all but inevitable, but the details, the exact way it unfolds is often unexpected, with more than one character surprising me. For me, it was a deeply satisfying ending, true to the characters and the plot to that point. And well worth reading through a dozen volumes to get there. It's an extended battle of wits between brilliant, flawed, and strong-willed characters, and one of the most memorable manga series I've ever read. There are certainly flaws (particularly the reliance on giant walls of text), but the series as a whole is more than worth it.

Fun & Games (Charlie Hardie #1)

Swierczynski's Fun & Games

Fun & Games (Charlie Hardie #1)
Duane Swierczynski
Mulholland Books, 2011

Charlie Hardie is a former under-the-table employee of the Philly police force before an incident altered his life and forced a drastic career change. Charlie is now a house sitter who agrees to sit on your couch, down beers and watch old movies why you’re off having a life somewhere else. Hardie takes a job watching a home when upon arrival, he’s attacked by well known actress/socialite, Lane Madden.

Madden is spouting off conspiracy theories about “them”, an unknown group dubbed, “The Accident People” who eliminate higher-ups while constructing detailed alibis that make death appear accidental and plausible. The planned killing of Madden threw a wrench in their mission and now she’s on the run and inadvertently dragged Charlie into the situation. Can Charlie escape with his life or is he doomed to suffer Madden’s fate as well?

I really, really like Duane Swierczynski and he’s quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. His work is so gripping that he never fails to keep me interested throughout any of his novels.

I’m not sure what he has in store for the next two Hardie stories but I really feel like this was strong enough to stand on it’s own. Hopefully he always had a trilogy in mind and based on the release/publication dates of the remaining installments, I assume that was always the case.

While Hardie himself can seem sort of bland at times, the “Unkillable Chuck” angle that Swierczynski attaches to him creates a nice level of intrigue as well as making me want to know more about his past. Hopefully we’ll know more about him as the books move forward.

Also posted @ Every Read Thing