The Cabin at the End of the World

by Paul Tremblay
270 pgs

Wen, who is about to turn eight years old, and her two adoptive fathers, Andre and Eric, are staying at a rented cabin near a lake in New Hampshire. It's a remote cabin, without cell reception and a mile or so from its nearest neighbor. The perfect place for an extended vacation, where they can be alone as a family.

As the book begins, Wen is out capturing grasshoppers and delicately placing them inside a mason jar with a ventilated lid, when a large and friendly man jogs up the dirt road to the cabin and introduces himself as Leonard. Wen knows she's not supposed to talk to strangers, but Leonard is so friendly--even helping her catch a few more grasshoppers for her collection--and since Andrew and Eric are just on the other side of the cabin, Wen quickly relaxes and enjoys talking to her new friend for a few minutes.

But soon, when three more people--two women and another man all carrying strange, home-made weapons and dressed oddly similar to Leonard--appear at the bottom of the road and begin walking up to the cabin, Leonard's behavior changes and he tells Wen he and his friends need to talk to her and her dads about something very important.

Wen and her two dads try to barricade themselves inside the cabin, but Leonard and his friends are soon able to break in. Once inside, in an eerily calm and reasonable manner, they explain to the family of three that the world is going to end very soon, and the only way to stop it, is for Andrew, Eric, and Wen to voluntarily make a gut-wrenching sacrifice.

The Cabin at the End of the World is the type of book that will stick to your brain long after you finish the last page. It's a psychological horror story that keeps you off balance and uncertain of what you think you, and to say much more than that only risks ruining the experience for the next person. So that will have to do. It will not be long before I pick up another of Tremblay's books. I'm guessing it'll be around this coming Halloween.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Shakespeare for Squirrels

by Christopher Moore
271 pgs  (Shakespeare series #3)

A Midsummer Night's Dream is my favorite Shakespeare play. So, I was excited when I learned that it was to be (or not to be) the next one to receive the "Christopher Moore" treatment. Moore began his homage to the Bard with Fool, in which he introduced Pocket, King Lear's diminutive and bawdy court jester, and unleashed him into the literary world. He followed it up with The Serpent of Venice, in which he sent Pocket to thirteenth-century Venice and had him deal with, among other things, a sea monster prowling the city's canals.

In Shakespeare for Squirrels, Pocket, along with his sidekick Drool and pet monkey Jeff, find themselves in Athens. Pocket hopes to become the Duke's fool, but instead manages to insult the Duke and has to flee for his life into the nearby forest, which is ruled by the fairy king Oberon, who happens to be in need of a new fool himself, since his last one, Robin Goodfellow (aka Puck) was found murdered. Oberon promises Pocket he can become his fool, and receive his protection from the Duke, if he can find out who killed Goodfellow.

The story that follows is a great example of why Christopher Moore is one of my favorite authors. First and foremost, his books are hilarious. They're crude, irreverent, and not the type I'm inclined to recommend to those with sensitive literary palates. But that's kind of why I like them so much. There's something to be said for a book that will regularly shock me into laughing out loud on occasion, and his always do. But Moore doesn't just tell a story in a fantastic way, he also tells fantastic stories, and Shakespeare for Squirrels is up there with his best.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Dark Age

by Pierce Brown
751 pgs  (Red Rising series #5)

Darrow, the former slave who led the revolution against the caste system that had enslaved him along with every other red, is back. And not just in the sense of this new installment in the Pierce Brown's series being released, but back to his merciless and vengeful ways.

It's been ten years since he led the revolution and founded the Republic. But now Darrow has been abandoned by it, even labeled a traitor and deemed an outlaw. Along with what remains of his army, Darrow, the once great Reaper, now finds himself waging a rogue war on the fields of Mercury. But he's no longer interested in the politics that restrained him in Iron Gold, and he's determined to continue what he started decades ago.

His wife Virgina still leads the fragile demokracy, their son Pax has been abducted by their enemies, and Darrow is willing to kill billions, if that's what it takes to get back what he's lost.

This is the fifth book in the series, the longest so far, and Pierce Brown appears to have found yet another gear to move forward in. The action and the pacing are relentless, which is a good thing, because that's where Brown shines the brightest. I'm enjoying the series more now than ever before, but don't know how much more I can take, You'd think this far in, some things would have been resolved by now, but that's not the case. The space opera that Brown is writing keeps getting more and more intriguing and complex.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Squirm

by Carl Hiaasen
276 pgs

Squirm is one of Carl Hiaasen's books written for younger readers (but still entertaining for adults) and it features Billy Dickens, a kid who lives in Florida with his mother and sister. His father left them when Billy was 3 years old, and since the only contact they've had from him since is the check he sends every month like clockwork, and since his mother always cuts up the envelope with the return address into tiny pieces, Billy doesn't even know where he lives, let alone what kind of a man he was, or what he does for a living.

But that hasn't stopped him from trying to learn more about his father. And when one month his mother fails to cut up the envelope into small enough pieces, Billy is able to figure out his father's current address, and using almost all of the money he's saved up from working at the supermarket, buys a plane ticket to Montana to go see him.

While in Montana, Billy meets his father's new wife and stepdaughter, who are members of the Crow Nation, but he never sees his father. It seems like even his new family doesn't know much about the man. They tell him he has some secret government job involving drones and that they don't know where he is most of the time.

But as Billy will eventually learn, even though his father wasn't involved in raising him, Billy still shares a lot in common with him. And eventually, those similarities will bring them together.

Squirm is a fun read. Hiaasen's humor is still there, even if it's bridled for younger audiences, but it's still enough to have made me smile often throughout.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

John Dies at the End

by David Wong
456 pgs

Every once in a while, I read a book that doesn't lend itself to an easy or concise description. To adequately describe it would probably take half as long as it would take to read the book itself. John Dies at the End by David Wong (pseudonym) is one of those books.

Somewhere in a small undisclosed town, somewhere in the heart of the country, a new drug has hit the streets. It's known as Soy Sauce, and it promises users an experience unlike any they've had before. John and Dave are friends who live in this undisclosed town and both are perpetual underachievers. John plays in a similarly underachieving band, and one night, at a party after a gig, John is introduced to Soy Sauce by a strange man pretending to be Jamaican. John calls Dave in the middle of the night while experiencing a "bad trip" from the drug. Dave picks up John at his apartment and the two end up at the local Denny's. While there, Dave gets another call from his friend John, whose sitting in the booth across from him eating and not calling him. John asks Dave whether he (John) has died yet, and from that point on, things only get more and more absurd.

John Dies at the End is a book with a cult following. It was originally published as an independent web series by David Wong (again, pseudonym) who was working as a a copy editor at a law firm. It became so popular that he eventually decided to turn the online chapters he had been releasing into novel and through word of mouth, the book became so popular it was turned into a movie starring Paul Giamatti.

While the book isn't fantastic, I enjoyed it enough that I'm interested in reading its sequels: This Book is Full of Spiders, and What the Hell Did I Just Read. I'm interested to see if the things I liked about this one improve in those books, and if the things I wasn't crazy about improve.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Holdout

by Graham Moore
322 pgs

Ten years ago, a jury found Bobby Nock, a 25-year-old man, not guilty of killing Jessica Silver, the 15-year-old daughter of one of the richest real estate moguls in Los Angeles. Bobby was one of Jessica's teachers and the prosecution argued that the illicit texts found on Bobby's phone from her, along with the traces of her blood, which were found both on the passenger seat of his car, as well as in the trunk of his car, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Bobby had killed her, even though her body was never found.

The trial lasted four months and was a media sensation. and Maya Seale served on the jury. Maya was the only member of the jury who believed Bobby was innocent at the time the deliberation process began. She believed there was sufficient doubt surrounding all of the evidence which the prosecution used to argue Bobby's guilt and she eventually persuaded each of the other jurors to vote "not guilty," even though some of them did so begrudgingly. The trial, and the verdict they ultimately delivered, had shaped the last ten years of each of their lives.

Now, ten years later, a true-crime docuseries is being produced, and each of the members of the jury has been invited back to the Omni hotel, the one they had been sequestered in for the four month trial, to be interviewed and filmed for it. One of the jurors, Rick Leonard, who was the strongest believer in Bobby's guilt throughout the trial, has spent the last ten years trying to prove that Maya had been wrong and that they had made a grave mistake in finding him Bobby not guilty. He has told the producers of the show he can now prove Bobby's guilt and will reveal his proof on camera. 

But Rick is found murdered that night, his body discovered in Maya's room, and Maya is the lone suspect. The only way she has any chance to prove her innocence, is to try to determine once and for all whether she and the rest of the jurors delivered the right verdict ten years ago.

The Holdout is Graham Moore's third book, and they're all fantastic. Moore is probably better known for having won the Academy Award for writing the screenplay for The Imitation Game a few years ago, but I think his novels showcase his best writing so far. I couldn't say enough good things about his last book The Last Days of Night, and fortunately for me, The Holdout is just as good.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup
516 pgs

The Chestnut Man is the debut novel by an author whose work I was already a big fan of. Søren Sveistrup is a Danish screenwriter who wrote the series that was adapted into The Killing here in the United States. The title of the book comes from the nickname given by the Copenhagen police department to the killer who leaves behind a small doll made of matchsticks and chestnuts every time he commits one of his grisly murders.

One year ago, the 12-year-old daughter of Rosa Hartung, a high-ranking government minister, went missing. The investigation into her disappearance led to the eventual conviction of a man now locked up in a high-security mental facility, but her body was never found. Now, one year later, a series of killings involving young women seems inexplicably tied to the Hartung case. At each of the sites where a body has been found, a small chestnut doll has been left, and each of the dolls bears the fingerprint of Rosa Hartung’s daughter. The two investigators on the case, Naia Thulin and Mark Hess, are faced with catching a killer who always seems to be two or three steps ahead of them.

I couldn’t put this book down. The fact that the chapters are short made it all the harder to do so. I‘d get to the end of one and think I really should stop reading and accomplish something, but then I’d flip through a couple more pages and realize I could read another chapter in a just a couple minutes more, and I’d decide to do just that—over and over again.

I’m excited by the fact that Sveistrup has tried his hand at writing a novel. The Killing was a fantastic series for the short time it ran, and all of the qualities that I enjoyed about it are found in The Chestnut Man as well. Hopefully it’s the first of many more books to come.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★