Miss Eliza's Book Review - Tamora Pierce's First Test

 

First Test (Protector of the Small Book 1) by Tamora Pierce
Published by: Bluefire
Publication Date: June 7th, 1999
Format: Paperback, 256 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Ten years since the proclamation that girls might attempt a page's training in the hopes of one day being a knight there has been no candidates. Then one day Keladry, known as Kel, applies. The Royal Training Master wants to reject her application, but his hand is forced because of the proclamation. Therefore he sneaks in a rider. Kel will be on probation for a year. At the end of that time, if she is up to snuff, she may stay. The boys make it anything but easy for Kel, teasing her constantly and pulling merciless pranks. Yet Kel refuses to give up. She was trained in the Yamani Islands to fight and hide her emotions. No boys can break her. She not only has the sparrows on her window ledge to brighten everyday, a special patron that sends her presents, and dresses to wear to every dinner to make sure the boys know she is one of them but not one of them. Soon Kel has her own posse of students that take out vengeance with fists against those older students who are a bit thuggish. Though, her only thought is that after a year, when the Training Master calls her name, it won't have probationary in front of it anymore.

People have been telling me to read Tamora Pierce for years, and after reading this book I don't know if it was just because I started with the wrong book or I didn't get introduced to her at a young enough age, but it was derivative and predictable. Also, I wouldn't categorize this book as YA, but strictly Y... if I read this when I was ten, maybe I would have thought it cool... maybe. Kel's journey has been written in a hundred different ways by a hundred different authors, all who did it better. There's Harry Potter in there, there's Arya's journey in Game of Thrones, and if you really want to see magical schooling done right for a far more adult audience, there is Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind. The fact that this is the first in a Quartet made the ending inevitable. Obviously she's going to get past her "first test" and go on to be a page and squire and then a "lady" knight, because obviously, the word knight needed a qualifier, much like she needed "probationary" added to her name. And this rant is just in the general since. I mean, how many badly written training sequences with staffs and quatrains can you jam into a short book? Well, a lot if there really isn't a plot to the book. Also, what does this book teach? Bullying is ok if you fight back and never tell anyone? What the hell!?!

The there's just stupid and sloppy world building. Yamani, well, let's just call it Japan, because, well, it's Japan. Do I really need a glossary for all the stupid animals and people in the world? No. You know why? Because I couldn't care who these people are. I divided them into those for Kel and those against Kel, which members of my book club didn't even bother doing, because they were that bored with the book. And how about those Immortals. Well... yeah, didn't need them. It's like Pierce had to have some villain, some enemy that was so obviously defined, that this Immortals, these, half human crazy things that eat kittens will do. And YES, the Lord of the Rings ripped off Spider people ATE KITTENS! And now that I'm on the topic of animals, what the hell is Kel's connection with animals? She supposedly doesn't have any magic, though her tendency to gather animals around her would indicate that she has wildmagic. Not that I care if she has it, it's just, if you're to introduce this concept and then have her have ALL the traits, just admit it already. I mean the freaking birds are showing her where enemies are and are alerting her to the boys pranking her when she's using the bathroom. Um, excuse me? Sparrows protect me while I urinate? Then, in the preview for the next book she gets what, a dog? Is this freaking Bremen town musicians? She's going to have a whole menagerie following her around like a butch Disney princess?

I just couldn't like this book. There was nothing redeemable, except it's brevity. I also had this weird feeling that I had read this book before, and this is aside from Pierce being a magpie off everyone else. Then it struck me, this book was totally like the bad 80s movie Troop Beverly Hills. Misfit girl(s), fighting against the establishment despite being allowed in, then big dramatic denouement in nature. And you know what? I'd rather watch Troop Beverly Hills any day then read this book again.

Miss Eliza's Book Review - Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers

 

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: August 30th, 2011
Format: Paperback, 355 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

The Rapture has happened. Or at least an event that looks so much like the rapture that it makes no difference, except to those who are offended by the choices made as to those taken. How could they take the idolaters and not the true believers? Yet one thing is certain, with so many people now gone, everyones life has changed. Kevin Garvey's wife has left him to go and be a part of the new cult The Guilty Remnant, where she keeps silent and smokes all day while accusing her fellow citizens with her mere presence. Their daughter Jill has sunk into sex and drugs with her sexy new friend Aimee who walks around the Garvey house in almost nothing. Their son has joined another cult, the Healing Hug Movement, that seems to put a lot of stock into their holy leader, Wayne. Yet Nora Durst is the one suffering most, as she lost her husband and her children. While the town gathers to mourn those who have left, each of these people will continue on their own painful journey while the world seems to be in limbo, allowing grief to rule the day years later. Yet their journeys will cross, and in those brief moments, maybe they can try to move on.

The concept of this book is genius, the execution is another thing. Instead of finding the humor in his topic, Perrotta seems to have thought the book was an excuse to wallow in a midlife crisis and dwell overly long on grief. Add to that characters that are so shallow they verge on being less then one dimensional, especially the women, whose only way to deal with grief or their emotional traumas is to do something to their hair. Because obviously, all women are superficial and only skin deep. Whereas the male lead, Kevin Garvey, is living, in my opinion, Perrotta's dream life. His family has all deserted him, he has his daughter's hot friend living in the house, obviously every woman wants him because he has power as the mayor, and therefore his life is good. If Perrotta had been skewering this perception of male wish fulfilment, that might have been something, but it appears to be in earnest.

That's the whole problem in the book. It's earnest. Instead of lampooning weird end of days cults and the new mentality of the human race, we get people who have been given an excuse to wallow in their grief. Hundreds of pages of shallow wallowing. Because nothing is ever analysed, it just is. Nora Durst lost her family, so here's a hundred pages of her riding a bike and not thinking about the tragedy. Jill ditches school and does some tame drugs, oh, now that's a totally revolutionary way for a teenager to revolt now isn't it? This book is so shallow that if I were to throw it into the deep end of a pool it would come out without even moisture on it.

The Guilty Remnant and Holy Wayne with his Healing Hug Movement seemed to have potential, but instead it's basically Jim Jones and his "Kool-Aid" at work. Though there is no analysis of the parallels, no plugging into the zeitgeist that makes such organizations form. Everything is just surface. If you actually want humor and Jim Jones, go read Armistead Maupin's third Tales of the City book, Further Tales of the City. In fact, thinking of Maupin has now made me sadder, because there is a true comedic American writer and I'm sure given the same basic plot of this book he could have written a satire that pierced the American way of life while also tackling grief.

Needless to say this will be the first and last book by Perrotta that I ever read. He is mostly known for the book the classic Reese Witherspoon movie Election is based on, a fact that he himself is mighty proud of in his Q&A at the end of the book. Well Mr. Perrotta, you shouldn't be that full of yourself. You wrote a superficial little novel that reads as a pathetic roman a clef of yourself. I've seen into you and you are a trifling writer of meagre and bland talents and you have wasted my time with a book that was unable to deliver on it's premise. Also, just as a final note, if you only "rapture" up a small number of the population of the earth, there really can't be that many people missing from one small town in New Jersey now can there? Just saying, basic math!

Miss Eliza's Book Review - John Scalzi's Redshirts

 

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi
Published by: Tor
Publication Date: June 5th, 2012
Format: Paperback, 320 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Five disparate young officers have been assigned to the Universal Union's Capital Ship Intrepid. Very quickly they realize this ship isn't like other ships. Everyone seems really busy all the time and capable of the most amazing disappearing feats whenever certain of the officers appear. Also, everyone is really jumpy about "away missions." Looking into it, the newbies erstwhile ringleader, Ensign Andrew Dahl, soon discovers that the "away missions" seem to have a very high mortality rate. Someone ALWAYS dies. Depending on which officer is with them, it might be quite a few someones. In the last five years the death rate has grown staggeringly high on the Intrepid versus other ships in the Dub U. The deaths though aren't the only weird thing. During moments of drama or high action, people's personalities change and they do some of the stupidest things, therefore ending up dead. Convinced that there is some reason for this, Dahl and his gang stumble upon something that could explain everything... but you also have to be batshit crazy to think it plausible.

As I sit typing this review I am wearing a Star Trek V: The Final Frontier T-Shirt, vintage from 1989, not a silly reprint. To my left is a Doctor Who poster, David Tennant if you please, as well as a Buffy the Vampire Slayer clock, which I made myself, and a wall display of Harry Potter wands, Dumbledore's Army, if you must know. Sitting over my left speaker and glaring at me, oddly in a non menacing manner, is Mr. Flibble. To my right there is geekery galore, framed Firefly comics signed by Alan Tudyk and John Cassiday, Daleks and Cylon raiders, a teeny tiny Starbug, Buffy maquettes and even a mini Sheldon Cooper. Why am I telling you all this? Well, in case you didn't know, this would very clearly demonstrate that I am a geek. Not the casual kind either, the going to conventions, waiting hours in line, spending way too much money on memorabilia kind. So, now that I have secured your knowledge of my geekiness... let's talk Redshirts...

This book was written with me in mind. Unless you are familiar with the idea of what a redshirt is, there is little chance you would pick up this book. A redshirt was always the newbie, the character you never knew who beamed down to the planet on Star Trek with Kirk and all the rest and very quickly died in order to show the gravity or danger of the situation. This word has become so ubiquitous in geek culture that in the card game Munchkin, you can have a redshirt minion who will sacrifice themselves so that you will survive a battle. It's a joke my kind get, and it's funny. Redshirts and death are one. The most memorable scene in any movie, in my mind, perfectly encapsulating the fate of a redshirt is Sam Rockwell's breakdown in Galaxy Quest.



What I think my problem with the book was, with movies like Galaxy Quest and shows like Red Dwarf and Hyperdrive and all the rest, if you are likely to pick up Redshirts you are likely to have seen all these other shows and movies based on the same joke. Because, while this book starts out promising, and quickly starts handling the meta issues of the fact that somehow the Intrepid is either a tv show or a tv show is imposing itself on their timeline forcing untold carnage and dramatic scenes before cutting away to a commercial break, it very quickly gets to the point where I was thinking of all the other people who had done this better. Because this is parody sci-fi.

The gold standard in my mind of parody sci-fi is Red Dwarf. This show was not only consistently funny (I'm ignoring the existence of season eight) but, with it's return in 2009 with "Back to Earth," it willingly embraced the meta of comedy shows today, the strongest contender in this category being Community, which started the same year. Yet the meta in Redshirts was written in such a way as to not tax your brain and almost seemed dumbed down. In other words, you could pound out this book in a few hours and it will probably leave no lasting impression. The main turning point for me was when our little gang of rebels with targets on their backs headed back to "modern day" Earth... at this point it's basically "Back to Earth" but without any connection to the characters. It's as if Scalzi  jumped off a cliff and just started ripping everyone off. For the audience this book is targeting, we have watched all the same shows, we know meta, and this book became insufferable and infuriating.

Though, while at this point I didn't think I could want to smack Scalzi more for his lack of originality, he succeeded with the codas to a whole new level of annoyance. Three codas, three POVs, three styles of writing... gaw, how pretentious are you to actually write the second coda in a very unsuccessful attempt at second person narration? Also the first coda, I'm guessing that's you thinly veiled as the "shows" author who comes across as a pretentious prick, and then with the third coda, you rip out my heart and gleefully dance on it. Guess what Scalzi? I'm going to tell everyone I know to just skip this book and watch Red Dwarf... same thing really, only one's actually well written, and it's not by you.

Miss Eliza's Book Review - Jonathan Lethem's Fear of Music

 

Fear of Musicby Jonathan Letham
Published by: Continuum
Publication Date: March 24th, 2011
Format: Paperback, 160 Pages
Rating: ★
Don't Buy

I find it ironic that the most solipsistic book I have EVER read uses the word so many times. I would hate to know Jonathan Lethem, a man who is such a self centered pretentious ass that a book about the Talking Heads became a book about himself... though if I ever meet him, he's paying me back for buying this book, which deserves no stars and no reviews written because it would waste even more of my time.

Miss Eliza's Book Review - Sarah Waters' Fingersmith

 

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Published by: Riverhead
Publication Date: October 1st, 2002
Format: Paperback, 548 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Sue Trinder has grown up in Lant Street. She has never left the slummy Borough of London, and has never wanted to. She has lived her entire life in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, who makes her living farming babies. Sue was the only baby that ever mattered to Mrs. Sucksby. They live with Mr. Ibbs, who makes his living in the roundabout manner or taking in dubious goods through the back door and sending it out the front in a slightly different form. The rest of the household is made up of Mr. Ibbs' invalid sister and John Vroom, a man with a love for dog skins, and his simple girl Dainty. This is Sue's world entire.

One day an acquaintance, known to all as Gentleman, arrives with a plan, to make their fortune using Sue. Mrs. Sucksby has always told Sue that she would be the making of them all and now she has her chance. Gentleman has been posing as an artist, Mr. Rivers, for a Mr. Lilly, who lives out west in the Thames Valley. Mr. Lilly has a niece, Maud. Maud is where their fortune will be found. Gentleman has been seducing the isolated girl but has hit a brick wall. Maud's maid, who was the chaperon, has taken ill and now Maud isn't allowed in the presence of Gentleman. Gentleman has decided to fix that. By installing not only a new chaperon, but one that will help him pursue his interests with the Maud, it is a win win situation.

They will compromise Maud, throw her in an insane asylum, and split her vast fortune and live like toffs. What could possibly go wrong? In a world where there are plots within plots, games within games and you don't know who's playing who, there are a lot of ways this could play out... and perhaps it won't be to everyone's liking.

This was an amazing book, if you only read the first part. Divided into three parts, each subsequent section downgraded it a full star, and some might say downgrading only one star per section is generous, seeing as after the first section Waters has shown us she is capable of so much more. But for some reason I think being overly long and taking the narrative straight into "I don't care land" is a staple of true Victorian writing, or Victorian-esque in this case. Like Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, which Fingersmith strongly emulates, it overstays it's welcome. Looking back onto the other Waters book I've read, The Little Stranger, I realize now that that book really did have the perfect ending. You weren't sure what happened and it ended a bit mysterious. If Waters had done that with this book, ending on a cliffhanger and being all mysterious, I would have been blown away and ranked it up there with some of the finest short fiction with the likes of Shirley Jackson.

Waters does an amazing job of capturing the seamy side of Victorian London. Sometimes you're reading about other times and think, now that would be a nice place to visit. Not here, not this world. And I think that's what makes the world of the book so real. You feel as if this is probably the most accurate description you've ever read of this time period. It's filth and dirt, it's creaking corset stays on a large woman who never washes herself and the secrets she hides within her bodice. Maud's penchant for gloves, though not of her own doing, at least is some kind of barrier to the grotesques that are discussed. But even they are tainted. Yet it's the unrelenting depravity and filth combined with characters who you don't just dislike, but who have nothing good or nice ever happen to them that wears you down in the end. Sure a little history of Victorian pornography is well and good, but after awhile, you say enough is enough. This book grinds you down, and in the end, you are relieved that it is done.

But the single biggest failing of the book is the repetitive storytelling. By having two different narrators with Sue and Maud, we see the exact same events twice. With part two I was almost skipping pages going, ok, read this all already from Sue's point of view, let's get to the part where we left off with Sue so that I get to the forward progression of the narration. Though once we move forward, it's back to Sue, and back to the ending of part one! We have learned so much from Maud that it is painful to then have to live through Sue's excruciatingly slow journey to learn all that we now know. One step forward, two steps back. That cliffhanger to end part one... it will blow you away. Yet it is soon nullified and made pointless by all the other twists and turns and cliffhangers that come after it. The impact is lost in the dragging narrative. It got to the point where it was like watching M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, I kept not only waiting for the next not really shocking twist, but I got good at predicting what it would be, and in the end you really didn't care. So, by all means, read this book, just don't read past part one... you'll thank me.

Miss Eliza's Book Review - Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: 1979
Format: Paperback, 216 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Arthur Dent's home is about to be destroyed to make way for a new road, ironically at the exact same time the Earth is about to be destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Therefore, in the scheme of things, Arthur's house doesn't matter. Luckily for Arthur, unbeknownst to him, his best friend, Ford Prefect, is an alien and rescues Arthur by hitchhiking onto one of the ships that destroys earth. Ford is a traveling researcher for the most amazing book of all time, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Ford just happened to get stuck on earth longer than he had planned... much longer.

But now with Arthur by his side he is ready to start traveling again with his trusty towel. Of course they first must escape the Vogons, whose ship they snuck onto... and the Vogons DO NOT like Hitchhikers. Period. But improbability is on their side and they are rescued by the president of the galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, who happens to be Ford's cousin, in a new ship he has stolen with a girl Arthur met at a party once and they all get wrapped up in the question to the answer of life, the universe and everything. The answer of course being 42.

This book is one of the seminal books in fantasy and science fiction. I still remember the first time I read it the summer I graduated from high school. That year Douglas Adams and Monty Python did more to form my love of all things British and bookish than anyone or anything else. They made me who I am today, along with Red Dwarf. That being said, it's been awhile since I've read the book, in fact, I think the last time I read them all was when the movie came out (not going to get into a fight about the movie in the comments, but needless to say, I am a fan of the movie, so haters suck it), so when it became apparent that many of the members in my book club hadn't read any Douglas Adams, I felt a re-read was in order... also the fact that it was chosen as the December selection for my group.

Reading it again more than fifteen years since that summer I realized something. This is a book that you need to read in your formative years. If it isn't some of the first science fiction and comedy that is given to you to work it's way into your DNA then I don't think you'll find it that funny. When reading a book for book club, especially one that I recommended, I always try to see it from the other person's point of view... and looking at this book in that light, it wasn't that flattering. There are funny gags, bits that work, but overall there is no plot, and the characters aren't the most likable.

After you've read that last sentence you're now probably thinking I'm crazy. Why would she slam a book she loves. It's because that's how others see it. This book isn't part of them. 42 doesn't mean something special to them like it does to me. Douglas Adams is a pioneer in this field. But the thing with pioneers is that by laying the ground work, others come later and build on it and make it better and funnier. Douglas had so many amazing ideas and stories, if not for him I highly doubt Doctor Who would have evolved to where it is today, and yes, I know he wrote for them. There wouldn't have been shows like Firefly and the Apple fanbase and the Jobs worshippers have Douglas to look to as their first acolyte. Douglas Adams did so much to create the world of science fiction and fantasy that we live in today, a world that has reached so far beyond what he did, that going back to Hitchhiker's is like going back to early Apocrypha, it's a start, but nowhere near perfect.

Miss Eliza's Book Review - Mary Roach's Spook

 

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach
Published by: W.W. Norton and Company
Publication Date: 2005
Format: Paperback, 311 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Mary Roach is taking a look into proof of an afterlife. Many numerous people have had experiences, but is there any scientific way to give these experiences the seal of approval? The idea of what happens to, for want of a better word, your soul, has captured imaginations for centuries. The hope that there is something more beyond this world we are currently living in is the basis of many belief systems. Can one prove that they have truly been reincarnated and does a cultural predisposition for this belief lead to more cases? Does the soul have a location in our body and when it leaves does the weight of the body change on an infinitesimal scale? Mediums in every form are discussed, as are the various revolting methods in which they fooled their public. Even more modern methods of telecommunicating with the dead are explored, from telegrams to computers, tape recorders to telephones. Mary Roach explores all the possibilities, and though this is a book that no answer can be found, at least not yet, there is a chance, Mary has to concede, that she believes that something exists, she's not sure what, but it's more than a denial, and that's something.

More than most people, at least I assume that spending lots of spare time reading about Spiritualism and how your soul was weighed in Ancient Egypt isn't par for the course for most people, going into this book I had a lot of foreknowledge, as well as my own personal thoughts of the afterlife. Firstly I'll state my own beliefs, in that, yes, I do believe in ghosts, because I've seen some and been scared shitless. As for the whole heaven, I think heaven is reincarnation, in that life is the most wonderful thing out there so heaven would be getting to live again. Also the fact that I have an unnatural fear of dust storms and I have no other explanation as to why they scar the shit out of me. Purgatory, yep, totally believe in it and think that it's like in Beetlejuice. I do agree with Mary's statement that your knowledge or beliefs are formed from those around you, and my Dad was a big teller of ghost stories, but being raised Catholic he had the heaven and hell dogma, whereas mine came from my own thoughts and conclusions.

So yeah, I have all my own baggage, on top of the fact that the whole Spiritualism craze is just fascinating to me and I have spent tons of time reading about Arthur Conan Doyle and Houdini and the Cottingley Fairies. Therefore, going in, I was expecting some new insight, some revelation, something more than an occasional laugh out loud moment. I will concede, there where laugh out loud moments, one in particular about a sheep, but that's just me and my love of sheep jokes. The truth might lie in the fact that I'm not a non-fiction reader and I think one of my problems is that I need some sort of narrative framework. I need this to be somehow bookended so that I don't feel like I'm reading little sound bites that only vaguely fit into the overall theme. I was hoping for, at the very least, some more background, some more depth. Roach sometimes assumes that people will know what she's talking about when there really needs to be some prior knowledge or facts given, she seems more interested in getting to the joke or the oddity or rapidly ending the chapter than shedding light. This makes the book jumpy to me. Why not some more cultural significance and history as to the search for the soul and how this played into our cultures instead of little stories about a few people she interviewed or researched. She seemed to have narrowed her focus too much so that the bigger picture was lost.

As I have said, people have always wondered about the afterlife, and she does hit the big bold headlines, past lives, Spiritualism, mediums, phone calls from the dead, yet she never seems to discuss the why. Why are people so obsessed with this. Why are we so determined to prove that there is more than this. A psychological grounding to the rise of Spiritualism should be conveyed in depth in my mind instead of a throw away line about The Great War's death toll leading to people looking for life beyond the veil. Instead she focuses on the gory details of ectoplasm, which I think might have scared me for life. There is just so much more that I was hoping to experience and instead, this was like a primer for someone who knew nothing about the various theories and research on the afterlife and just wanted to have fun facts or anecdotes for dinner parties. Perhaps I should have realized that the books popularity is because of it's accessibly versus a weightier discussion of the afterlife.

What really annoyed me though is that where Roach deigns to have a narrative, the book flows and comes together, and moves away from it's fact jumping nature that gives you names and humorous stories so fast that you don't care what is being said and you start to gloss over the names. Her discussion of actually going to Medium School was wonderful and way too short. In fact, the school itself could have acted as a framework for the other ideas and theories to flow through. All in all, it was an interesting book that just wasn't my cup of tea because I wanted something more, and also, sometimes Roach's attitude was too much for me when she showed a lack of respect. There's humor and than there's being rude and blowing someone off. I think Mary Roach didn't like Alison DuBois one little bit, and that stuck in my craw.