Book Reviews

So, I kept hearing about this Hunger Games phenomenon…  I decided to give it a try.  I first heard that they were teen books, and I was expecting a bit of Twilight-ness.  These books are something else, indeed.

This story is dark, my friends.  The premise is almost too much to take and within the first forty pages, I was ready to quit out of disgust.  About that moment, however, I think I got totally hooked.  I forgot to remember that I shouldn’t want to read about games where children are just political fodder and nothing more.  The storyline, the setting, and the characters are all-encompassing.  I soon buzzed my way through all three books.

If you think these books are just a teen fad, you’re just wrong.  They are so rich, and frankly, I couldn’t tell I was reading a teen novel.  The angst quotient was low and there wasn’t any staring and stammering at a lovely sparkly vampire  :)  Enjoy these – they are like candy!

The Hunger Games trilogy is simply amazing – I give it a 5 star rating.

• 1 – hated it – not even worth the dead trees
• 2 – got through it, but wouldn’t keep it in my library
• 3 – really enjoyed it, was entertained, and would read more by this author
• 4 – loved this book, need to keep it on the bookshelves and recommend to a friend
• 5 – this blew my socks off and rocked my world

I was excited to buy this book and go home and read it.  The back cover promised a wild ride of puzzles and codes reminiscent of The DaVinci Code, which I could not put down once I began the read.

I think the euphoria over what I thought might be a great book lasted through the first third, and then, unfortunately, it wore off.  This was not a great book.  The plot meanders all over the place, and it seems that deux ex machina was used to fill the holes throughout (instead of just at the end!)

I couldn’t feel for Ethan Gage, and I couldn’t hate him either.  If the plot is bad then I need a great character to carry me along and whisper sweet nothingsin my ear to make me fall in love with the book.  This did not happen.

Give Napoleon’s Pyramids a try if you like, but I’ll just give it a 2 star rating.

• 1 – hated it – not even worth the dead trees
• 2 – got through it, but wouldn’t keep it in my library
• 3 – really enjoyed it, was entertained, and would read more by this author
• 4 – loved this book, need to keep it on the bookshelves and recommend to a friend
• 5 – this blew my socks off and rocked my world

Another fantasy series, folks.  This one was recommended to me by a friend.  Harry Dresden is a wizard, a wizard in a world that is mostly not looking at supernatural events for what they are.

I find the series is growing on me.  It is certainly not boring, but I can’t say that it is exciting me either.  I find I have little to impart on this review because it’s a kind of take-it-or-leave-it series.  You won’t have wasted your time on the read, but you might feel like there’s something else out there you might have wanted to do instead.

So I give Storm Front 2.5 stars.

• 1 – hated it – not even worth the dead trees
• 2 – got through it, but wouldn’t keep it in my library
• 3 – really enjoyed it, was entertained, and would read more by this author
• 4 – loved this book, need to keep it on the bookshelves and recommend to a friend
• 5 – this blew my socks off and rocked my world

I’m not sure this book would have jumped off the shelves at me, but it caught a friend’s eye and was given to me in turn.  I tend to like opening a book without reading the back cover for the publisher’s cliff notes.  I had no idea what to expect, but I like to try books and foods at least once.

This book is riveting – period.  It centers on a 1962 Mississippi town and fully fleshes out the racial roles and tensions of the time – at least of the female gender.  The women are strong and scared, and they embark on a thrilling ride to begin to break the race barrier. Each chapter is written in the first person, but the narrators change throughout the book. The differences in the literary voices and the way the story unfolds is intoxicating.  I found I would be holding my breath as I read through the book.

If you haven’t heard of The Help, give it a try.  I give it 5 stars.  Look for it here…

• 1 – hated it – not even worth the dead trees
• 2 – got through it, but wouldn’t keep it in my library
• 3 – really enjoyed it, was entertained, and would read more by this author
• 4 – loved this book, need to keep it on the bookshelves and recommend to a friend
• 5 – this blew my socks off and rocked my world

OK, I know that this series is not Plato, Dumas, or Tolstoy, but if you can set that aside I would say this is one of the best series I have read in a long time.  First off, I love series fiction.  Everyone I know blabs at me that series fiction is some sort of lower class art form, but I don’t care.  I love getting to know a character and seeing where the road goes. I’m sad when a series is finished for good.

Now that doesn’t mean all series fiction novels are worth it.  They’re not. There are plenty of authors who get a “novel” idea for a novel and write it. It’s great, but they keep going and quickly run out of steam.  Then they continue writing the same novel idea over and over and over.  Yikes!

Well, that is exactly why I highly recommend this Kim Harrison series.  It moves and grows and flows constantly.  The tides shift, massively unexpected things happen, and you just fall in love with the world and the characters.

A little background…  Rachel Morgan is a witch.  Yes, these are fantasy books.  There are vampires, werewolves, fairies, pixies, elves, demons – you name it, it’s here.  It definitely takes reading the first book, Dead Witch Walking, to get used to this world.  These species and characters are living in a world completely different, with different rules, than most of the fantasy I’ve encountered.  Once you turn that last page of the first book, I’m certain you’ll be hooked.

I give the first book, Dead Witch Walking, 4 stars.  But I give the whole series 5 stars and cannot wait for the next one, due in Feb 2011.

• 1 – hated it – not even worth the dead trees
• 2 – got through it, but wouldn’t keep it in my library
• 3 – really enjoyed it, was entertained, and would read more by this author
• 4 – loved this book, need to keep it on the bookshelves and recommend to a friend
• 5 – this blew my socks off and rocked my world

This is what I am reading right now.  Yes it’s technically a romance novel, but it’s one of those modern romance/thriller stories.  I am enjoying it but I wouldn’t say that it is blowing me away.  It’s an easy read with a lot of lovable dogs involved (as the main character is a dog trainer).

I give The Search 3 stars.

• 1 – hated it – not even worth the dead trees
• 2 – got through it, but wouldn’t keep it in my library
• 3 – really enjoyed it, was entertained, and would read more by this author
• 4 – loved this book, need to keep it on the bookshelves and recommend to a friend
• 5 – this blew my socks off and rocked my world

I’m a day late and a dollar short!  So I realize The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has been an international sensation for quite some time.  It’s not that I didn’t want to read it; I just didn’t have it for the longest time. So I’ve just finished this book and I’m yearning to read the rest of the books in rapid succession – but I don’t have them either!

What an absolute shame that Mr. Larsson had to die after delivering only three of the books that he had mapped out in his mind.  I guess we’re lucky we got all of these three.  I loved this book for the fact that it twisted, turned, and meandered all over the place without boring me.  That’s hard to do.  And frankly, if it doesn’t meander a bit, then the reader just gets consumed with the who-dun-it nature of a thriller.  I don’t really enjoy figuring out the surprises too much before the author wants me to get it.

So I’ll give The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a very respectable 4 stars.

This is my first book review, so we can set up whatever grading system we like, right? How about books on a scale of 1-5, like this…

• 1 – hated it – not even worth the dead trees
• 2 – got through it, but wouldn’t keep it in my library
• 3 – really enjoyed it, was entertained, and would read more by this author
• 4 – loved this book, need to keep it on the bookshelves and recommend to a friend
• 5 – this blew my socks off and rocked my world