The Stepford Wives

The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When Johanna, Walter, and their children move to Stepford, everything seems perfect. A little too perfect, in fact. Why do all the Stepford wives live to do housework and please their husbands? Is their a conspiracy afoot or are Johanna and her friend Bobbie imagining things?

The Stepford Wives is a paranoid thriller by Ira Levin. There is also quite a bit of social satire as well. What would a community be like if all the women behaved like the stereotypical 1950's style housewife?

It's a pretty creepy book, though Levin eases you into the waters little by little so you don't notice all the dead animals around the pond until you're up to your neck in it. The feel reminded me of Jack Finney's Body Snatchers a bit. When will it be Johanna's turn to join the ranks of the sexually charged housewife drones?

On the negative side of the scale, the book is very much a product of its time. All of the male characters seem like they'd be right at home working with Don Draper. Also, the 1972 publishing date wasn't all that far removed from the book's 1950's portrayal of male and female cultural ideals. Now, over 40 years after the book was written, everything seems quaint and a little ridiculous.

3.5 out of 5 stars. I'm throwing in an extra .5 for the level of creepiness.

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Something Remains

Hassan Ghedi Santur
Dundurn Press
4 out of 5 stars
Reviewed by Nancy

Summary

Andrew Christiansen, a war photographer turned cabdriver, is having a bad year. His mother has just died; his father, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, gets arrested; and he's married to a woman he doesn't love. To make matters worse, Sarah, the gifted actress from his past, storms back into his life, bringing with her a hurricane of changes and the possibility of happiness.

Keeping Andrew sane is his beloved camera through which he captures the many Torontonians who ride in his taxi. Also keeping Andrew rational is his friendship with Zakhariye, a Somali-born magazine editor grieving the death of a son. Through Zakhariye we glimpse a world beyond Toronto, a world where civil wars rage and stark poverty delivers everyday sorrow and anguish.

Something Remains probes the various ways humans grieve when the lives they build for themselves fall apart. It speaks of the joy we find in what remains and the hope that comes with life putting itself back together in ways we never imagined.

My Review

It is often difficult for me to review a book right after I finish reading it. I need time to process it, allowing thoughts, feelings, impressions, and emotions to penetrate my consciousness. Is this a book that will stay with me for the long haul, or one I will forget just as soon as I close it?

Something Remains, a debut novel by Somali-Canadian writer Hassan Ghedi Santur falls somewhere in between. This is a gentle, moving and immersive story that takes place in Toronto and shows the perspectives of a diverse group of characters as they cope with grief, loss, unhappy marriages, and the disconnect felt by immigrants struggling to find an identity in a racially and ethnically heterogeneous city.

There is Andrew Christiansen, a former war photographer who now makes his living driving a cab and indulges his passion for photography by capturing brief glimpses of his passengers’ lives on film. Even though his wife, Rosemary, is a childhood friend and neighbor, their marriage is one of convenience rather than love. Andrew’s friend, Zakhariye, is a Somali refugee working as a magazine editor and grieving the accidental death of his only child. Andrew too is dealing with the pain and devastation in his family caused by his mother’s recent death.

I know this all sounds really sad, but this is not a story that relies on intense drama or tragic situations to manipulate the reader’s emotions. Time is taken here to develop the main characters, showing their unique perspectives on events and allowing the reader to bond and empathize with them. Besides the sadness, there is also a feeling of hope as the characters carry on with their lives despite their burdens and gradually find joy again.

While I felt the main characters, Andrew and Zakhariye, were sufficiently developed, I wish the female characters were treated with the same care. Now that several months have passed since I’ve read this book, I only remember their undesirable qualities.

There is a heart-rending scene where Andrew’s father, Gregory, after a long cry, is looking inside his dead wife Ella’s walk-in closet, fingering and smelling her garments, lost in memories:

“He scoops up the heavy, beaded cerulean dress Ella wore to Gregory’s best friend’s wedding and wraps it around his neck. Then he snatches a black jacket and the red-and-gold scarf with the frayed edges she used to love wearing with the dress. He continues to take his wife’s clothes off the hangers in this manner until most of them adorn him. These pieces of clothing are all he has left of Ella, and he isn’t about to relinquish them.”

This is a lovely book, and even though many details are now fuzzy, I still remember how I felt while reading this on a long drive. I enjoyed spending time with these characters and visiting a city I hope to see in real life one of these days.

City of Blades

City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Five years after the Battle of Bulikov, retired General Turyin Mulaghesh is called on once more to serve Saypur. Prime Minister Shara Komayd has an off the books mission for her, find a missing ministry official and investigate a miraculous substance. The worst part of all is Mulaghesh has to travel to Voortyashtan otherwise known as The City of Blades. Voortyashtan was the land of the divinity of war and death Voortya and despite being a ruin since the blink, it's still a dangerous place.

The City of Blades was surprising in many ways. The biggest surprise was that the author decided to make a sequel to City of Stairs. It was surprising, not because City of Stairs was a bad book, but because the events that unfolded were so monumental that it seemed unlikely a sequel could be as good as the original. Unfortunately I don't believe the sequel was as good as the first book. The main reason for that is it was just too similar to the original. The events in City of Stairs should have been a one time event, not something that could happen again...ever. Yet that's what happens in many ways.

The next large surprise was using City of Stairs support character Turyin Mulaghesh as the main protagonist. I know many people loved Mulaghesh, but all I remembered about her was that she was a foul mouthed woman who was in charge in Bulikov. I didn't dislike her, but I certainly didn't feel she should be the main protagonist. I'll admit I did grow to appreciate her as the story went along, but I still would have preferred Shara Komayd and Sigrud running the show.

Not only is Shara Komayd not the main protagonist, but she is relegated to a similar role that Vinya Komayd played in City of Stairs. She's calling the shots, but unlike Vinya, Shara has lost the support of seemingly everyone and she's certain she'll be out of office soon. I really missed Shara's presence.

In the end I have to say, City of Blades was just not as good as City of Stairs.

3 out of 5 stars

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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The World of Ice and Fire

The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The World of Ice and Fire is quite the interesting book that tells the history of Westeros as well as other parts of the world. Since the book is listed as on going history rather than a novel I'll list out what I think was the good and the bad.

The Good

- The first and foremost thing that is good about this book is the artwork. The artists did a truly phenomenal job.




- Aegon's Conquest. Aegon's Conquest is told in the same styling as the novella The Princess and The Queen which gets into some interesting details although it's still mainly summarized.

- Tywin Lannister. I don't know if anyone else ever wondered exactly how and why Tywin decided to exterminate the Reynes and the Tarbecks, but that information is in the book. Also we get to see that Tywin was basically always a competent, determined, and if need be a violent man.


- The history of the Kings. I liked the history of the kings because it went through what could easily have been novels and novels of information rather quickly and succinctly. Although I do prefer the styling of Aegon's Conquest to the other summaries in the book.

- The book is supposed to be a compilation that was to be presented to King Robert by Maester Yandel (which are Martin's co-authors made into a maester). Unfortunately Robert and Joffrey died before the book could be finished so the book was instead passed to King Tommen. I thought it was an easy yet nice touch to tie the book into the main storyline.

The Bad

- George R.R. Martin's choice to have co-authors who summarized his summaries. It took away from the richer details by Maester Gyldayn (Martin's maester persona) by continually editing down his information to generally not much more than the facts. Martin seems determined to capitalize on this editing by eventually releasing his full summaries of the lives of the Targaryen kings in a book I believe he intends to title Fire and Blood. Unfortunately we don't get that in this book.

- One silly thing I couldn't overlook was that fact that two Lord's of Riverrun were named Elmo and Kermit. They are father and son so it's impossible to ignore the likelihood the names were chosen from Muppet counterparts.

- After the lives of the various Targaryen Kings we go into history of each of the 7 Kingdoms which starts to feel a bit tedious particularly in the Kingdoms we know well from the main story line.

- The histories of the other countries are so fact based with little story telling that it gets more than a bit dull at moments. I would've preferred stories told in major events as was done with Aegon's Conquest.

The Intriguing

- While this likely doesn't mean anything to anyone else, I noticed that the only currently living characters who happen to have artwork in the book are Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow. This may not mean anything or perhaps it's a further hint to the believed incredible importance of Dany and Jon in the remainder of the series.

In the End

- I enjoyed The World of Ice and Fire and although I doubt I'll ever read the entire book again, I'm certain I'll go back to it from time to time because some of the histories are astonishing.

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EMBASSYTOWN BY CHINA MIEVILLE

Embassytown by China Miéville
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Now the Ariekei were learning to speak, and to think, and it hurt.”

I’m addicted to language; we all are.

While reading this book, I thought about language. I haven’t really thought about it from the standpoint of it not existing or that it is something to be discovered, like traces of gold in a California riverbed. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have language. The ability to express myself has served me well. Not that I haven’t said the wrong thing or said the right thing at the wrong time, but I usually have the ability to explain further and give what I say deeper meaning. I can change minds and can have my mind changed by exchanging words. Language is the foundation of who we are.

The Ariekei did not have language before the humans arrived. They were a hive of sorts, able to communicate without spoken language. The humans refer to them as The Hosts, which is exactly what they are. They allow the humans to build a city named Embassytown.

I can remember the first time I went overseas and spent nine days in Italy. I didn’t know the language but always managed to find Italian people who spoke enough English for us to communicate with each other. After having nine days of barely speaking any English, certainly a lot less than what I was used to, my arrival at San Francisco Airport was, for lack of a better term, a system overload. My mind was so starved for the English language that all the filters or barriers that I normally have for sorting language were gone. My brain was attempting to listen to and process every ongoing English conversation that was within my range of hearing.

My cat...the weather was...I bought these new shoes...Do you like this coat?...Will they serve us a meal…What did he mean by that?

I was catching just pieces, most of them jumbled together as my mind was trying to sort each conversation, but without success.

My cat was new shoes like this mean.

It was like touching the edges of insanity.

The Ambassadors who are sent to interact with The Hosts are paired. They have two minds that make one voice. They are identical and kept that way. When one gets a scar that can’t be healed, the other is given an identical scar. They are rarely apart, and when circumstances do part them, they are lost in much the same way I’d feel if my left arm and leg just detached from my body and walked into the next room. Very interesting, I would think to myself, and then I would try to finish typing this review with one hand.

Our heroine is Avice Benner Cho, who is an immerser who has just returned to Embassytown after years of deep space exploration. She cannot speak to the Ariekei, but she has become a part of their language. They call her…”There was a girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her.” As things become more unstable between The Host and the colonists, Avice wants to evolve in their language. ”’I don’t want to be a simile anymore,’ I said.’I want to be a metaphor.’”

The interesting thing about Avice is that she really isn’t a hero. She is more like a professional traveller who sits in the hip cafes, eats the unusual food, sees the sights, goes to parties, and occasionally has a brief sexual encounter with someone interesting. She has been married several times. Sometimes to women, sometimes to men. In Embassytown, she has sex with ambassadors which... since each one is actually plural... means she is a very busy girl during those encounters. Her experiences while travelling have evolved her thinking about what is strange. One of her best friends is a digital presence that can move from one droid to another. Like us all, she does struggle with seeing things that go beyond just exotic, those things that go beyond a frame of reference of what we know. For us to be comfortable, new things have to have something about them that allows us to have at least a handle of understanding.

”Once I heard a theory. It was an attempt to make sense of the fact that no matter how travelled people are, no matter how cosmopolitan, how biotically miscegenated their homes, they can’t be insouciant at the first sight of an exot (slang for exotic) race. The theory is that we’re hardwired with the Terre Biome, that every glimpse of anything not descended from that original backwater home, our bodies know we should not ever see.”

The world that China Mieville creates in this book is in some ways vague, certainly unsettling. The world building takes a backseat to exploring the concept of languages and their value. Though he does give us glimpses of what this world looks like. ”When they regrew the city the Ariekei changed it. In this rebooted version the houses segmented into smaller dwellings and were interspersed with pillars like sweating trees. Of course there were still towers, still factories and hangars for the nurturing of young and of biorigging…. But the housescape we overlooked took on a more higgledy-piggledy aspect. The streets seemed steeper than they had been, and more various: the chitin gables, the conquistador-helmet curves newly intricate.”

As the Ariekei learn language from the Ambassadors, things take a sinister turn as segments of The Host population begin to become junkies. ”Ambassadors are orators, and those to whom their oration happens are oratees. Oratees are addicts. Strung out on an Ambassador's Language.”

Where my addiction to language happened over a long arc of time, comparable to beginning with marijuana to evolving to cocaine to finally needing heroin, The Host’s addiction begins with heroin and wants the next better thing than heroin…NOW.

Things get scary

”We knew the Ariekei would breach our defences. They entered the houses that edged our zone, found their ways to rear and side doors, large windows, to holes. Some came out of the front doors into our streets and tore apart what they found. Those with remnants of memory tried to get to the Embassy. They came at night. They were like monsters in the dark, like figures from children’s books.”

A war over a need for language.

I don’t know how else to say this...the book is brilliant, simply brilliant. I’ve been a long time fan of China Mieville and will eventually read everything he has ever written. The concepts he explores in this book had me thinking about my own relationship with language, with learning, with my addiction to hearing and being heard, to writing my thoughts and to reading what others have written.

I once knew a woman in Phoenix whose grandfather walked out to get the morning paper, poured some coffee, and flipped the paper open, like he does every morning, to start reading.

He couldn’t read.

He’d had a small targeted stroke during the night that erased his ability to read. The thought still sends a shiver down my back to think that I could lose the ability to read or the ability to speak or the ability to hear.

I’m a junkie for language.

You will have to have patience with this book. Mieville circles the plane over Embassytown and just drops his readers into the city. Shortly after stowing your parachute, you are going to feel out of kelter, exposed, behind a step, and will begin to feel nervous that you won’t catch up. You will. With every chapter, you will begin to know more pieces of the puzzle until you are eventually able to assemble a shimmering vision of this city, these people, and the situation which has lit the fuse to a powderkeg.

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Burning Midnight by Will McIntosh

Burning Midnight by Will McIntosh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Yup, guess what I read another young adult title. Why?!?! Kevin?!?! are you that hard up for books?? Yes..and shut up for a second, I'll explain.

I am a fan of Mr. McIntosh, still am even though he wrote a YA title, (and I did like it, didn't LOVE it, but liked.) I also am fairly huge into collecting things/potential hoarding, which is central to the theme. I really have liked the other books I have read from this author as well. HOWEVER, my complaints about young adult titles are in full effect here, contrived romance, stiff characters, you know the rest.

So if I hate the genre, why the three stars and why the like? If you follow my reviews, I do not write reviews for books I don't like. I don't believe in talking about stories or books I didn't care for. I write to share my love of books and stories, so 3 stars is AS low a score as you will see me give.

Mr. McIntosh had a great idea, he is a good writer...he just wedged this into a typical cookie cutter story.



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I Was Told There'd Be Laughs

I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This won awards, was a best seller and was heralded by critics? I feel like the publishing world needed a darling in 2008 in the humorist category and chose Crosley for lack of a better.

Occasionally humorous, sure, but I couldn't get past the notion that this was the humor of the spoiled, the unchallenging laughs of white privilege, the shrug-it-off-and-smile of upper-middle-class woes, such as forgetting your keys, leaving your wallet behind, spending hundreds on a locksmith after locking yourself out of your Manhattan apartment, enduring an annoyed boss because you're a kid just out of an expensive college who has no real marketable skills, getting lice at summer camp...at summer camp...jaysus, even the book's title has a "let them eat cake" sense of careless entitlement.

Credit where credit's due, Sloane Crosley is a decent writer and a decent humorist. She can turn a good phrase now and then, enough to garner spot laughs through out.

The problem is a lack of material worth writing about. Come on, a whole chapter on the computer game The Oregon Trail? Admittedly, I've written about the game in a book of mine, for about a paragraph, not a whole fucking chapter! This book feels like the author is just too young, lacks any meaningful life experiences worth writing about, and is stretching the hell out of what little has happened to her.

Up in Honey's Room

Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Carl Webster comes to Detroit looking for some escaped German POWs. Will Honey, the ex-wife of a friend of the POWs, be his salvation or his downfall?

Yeah, I made the teaser way more exciting than the book. I hesitate to call any Elmore Leonard book bad but this one was definitely on the shitty side of good.

For my money, Elmore Leonard does his best work when pitting guys with various degrees of sleaze against each other in either Miami or Detroit and peppering it with slick dialogue. While this one has a Detroit setting, it's set in the 1940's which kind of removes a lot of the cool factor. Also, German POWs who barely speak English do not have the slickest dialogue in crime fiction.

I felt like I missed something regarding Carl Webster's past relationships with the POWs and why he was so determined to go after them. Turns out I was since that was previously detailed in Comfort to the Enemy and Other Carl Webster Stories.

While I thought Carl Webster was a cool guy, I also feel like he was Raylan Givens with a lick of paint. Actually, since Carl Webster has about as much written about him as Raylan Givens, maybe the writers of Justified drew some material for Raylan from Carl. Either way, I felt like this could have easily been a Raylan Givens story with minimal modifications.

My biggest gripe with this was that nothing happened for most of the book. I think the book suffered because the time period was a departure from Leonard's usual and the characters didn't lend themselves to his usual magic. Two stars. I refrained from giving it one star because the book didn't actually suck but it's definitely a bottom shelf Leonard.

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Off World

Jonah Bergan
Edge
4 out of 5 stars
Reviewed by Nancy

Summary

What really brought Taine to that backwater little world? Taine’s a hunter. He’s a red-skinned and black-eyed Lowman by nature, and a hunter by trade. Some hunters work in flesh, others in secrets, and some few work to set right what’s been set wrong. It’s a big galaxy and there’s always plenty of work for a hunter like Taine, so you got to wonder, what with all that at his feet, what really brought Taine to that backwater little world?

My Review

I was thrilled to get the opportunity to read this, as I love science fiction that features well-developed nonhuman species that possess significantly different physical characteristics and psychological lives than their human counterparts. Even better if they have empathic abilities!

Taine is a Lowman hunter, a red-skinned, black-eyed alien referred to by the hicks who inhabit the backwater world he is traveling in as “redder” or “devil”. The story starts off with Taine’s purchase of a young, blond slave he names Sunshine. He later picks up an apprentice named Tanner, who is roughly 5 years older than Sunshine. The three men embark on an adventurous journey fraught with hazards. Even though Taine is big and strong, they are living in a female-dominated society where men are seen as inferior and slavery (sexual and manual labor) is legal and acceptable.

This is an ambitious, compelling tale that is cleanly written and edited, with sharp dialogue that helps move the story along smoothly, and an exploration of life in a repressive society, sex discrimination, slavery, and human/alien relationships that occasionally gets mired in wordiness.

Not only does Taine have awareness of life around him, he has the ability to penetrate and manipulate thoughts, and feed on a person’s “essence”. While this may leave a human exhausted, it will not cause them any harm. It is Taine who could be harmed be feeding, not knowing what darkness, complexities, or conflicts may reside in human minds.

While the first two-thirds of this story revolves around the three men, the last third introduces the dangerous and powerful witches who invade planets and enslave men, subjecting them to harsh mind control experiments. Taine’s struggle to shield himself from the witches’ influence and domination, and efforts to save the lives of Tanner and Sunshine was riveting, but I was disappointed that interesting minor female characters were given little page time. Many unanswered questions and certain unresolved plot elements beg for a sequel.

Overall, a worthwhile read.

The Last Colony

The Last Colony by John Scalzi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After retiring from the Colonial Defense Force, John Perry and Jane Sagan started a new life on the Human colony Huckleberry. The two of them live with their adopted daughter Zoë, work local jobs, and have a farm. All of that changes when they are approached to be the leaders of a new human colony which will be colonized by people from other human colonies. There is more to this arrangement than they were told and the family finds itself once again forced to fight to survive.

John Scalzi shows another part of his universe with The Last Colony. In Old Man's War we learned about how The Colonial Union gets recruits,  makes them fighting ready, and the dangers of the universe. In Ghost Brigades we see the inner workings of the Special Forces and the increased danger they face. The Last Colony shows what life is like as a colonist and it's dangerous and boring. A whole lot of farming is involved which made the beginning drag quite a bit.

John Perry, Jane Sagan, and the colonists got thoroughly screwed in this book. It was shocking to see how even after such betrayal what people could be capable of doing. I'd like to think people would be smarter than this, but the colonists are probably similar to the majority of individuals in the world.

The story has a lot of moving parts and an air of mystery. Unfortunately for me most of it seemed quite obvious. It was good to see John Perry again, he's just as funny as a sarcastic young man as he was as an old man. I still don't like how neatly Scalzi wraps up his books and The Last Colony was no exception. I did like how he left the ending open for future tales.

The Last Colony was a solid conclusion to the Old Man's War trilogy.

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