It Devours!

by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor
347 pgs  (Welcome to Night Vale series #2)

It Devours! is the second book to take place in Night Vale, the fictionalized desert town made popular in the long-running podcast Welcome to Night Vale. It's a town that's a little reminiscent of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, but the version of it, had it been created by Stephen King instead. Ghosts, aliens, and mysterious government agents are commonplace in Night Vale, and if there's a conspiracy theory that has ever been thought of, chances are, it's true in Night Vale.

The stories that take place in Night Vale, both those told in the podcasts, and those in the two books so far, are not driven by any particular plot, most of the time. In fact, the plot is really secondary to the atmosphere and feel of the story. That's not to say there isn't a plot, there is, but the story meanders around the plot and only seems to come back around to it occasionally. Surprisingly, that's a big part of the appeal for me. Much in the same way I enjoyed The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I found myself simply enjoying the journey, and not necessarily the destination.

As far as the plot goes though, here's a small taste: There's a mysterious void that keeps "appearing" in random places in Night Vale, which swallows up whole buildings and anyone who happened to be inside of them at the time. The local religion, The Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God, and local scientists are at odds to try to explain what the void is and to understand where and when it will appear next.

I enjoyed It Devours!. It's a fun story that had me smiling often. I've only listened to a handful of the podcasts so far, and to be honest, I think the types of stories Fink and Cranor come up with for the town are better suited for that format, but the books offer an interesting and more in-depth visit to this small desert town where the possibilities are endless.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Deep Fathom

by James Rollins
454 pgs

I've been a pretty big fan of James Rollins' Sigma Force series for many years. Each book in the series (which come out every year like clockwork) is a fun, fast-paced, check-your-sense-of-realism-at-page-one thriller that offers hours of entertainment. But before he launched the series, he wrote a handful of stand-alone books--Deep Fathom is one of those.

The book begins on the day of the first solar eclipse of the new millennium. Ex-Navy SEAL, Jack Kirkland and his salvage ship "Deep Fathom" are somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, searching for an old sunken Japanese ship, which was purported to have been carrying millions of dollars' worth of gold bricks when it sank. Jack and his team are  hoping to find the ship and claim the salvage. He's able to locate the ship with the use of a small submersible, but just when he reaches the gold, an underwater earthquake triggers a large volcanic eruption and Jack has to flee to the surface before his sub can be destroyed.

The earthquake, which turns out to be only one of many deadly disasters which occurred at the same time around the Pacific, occurred right at the time of the solar eclipse, and the Deep Fathom is soon sent to search the site of an airplane crash nearby, another casualty during the eclipse. When Jack gets his ship to the site, he learns that the plane that went down was Air Force One, which crashed with the President on board.

Deep Fathom is a decent book. Rollins keeps things moving along at a pretty quick pace, and he keeps it pretty interesting throughout. But having read the many books he's written since, it's clear he was still honing his writing skills. The characters are pretty one-dimensional and the dialogue (which I think to this day he needs some more practice on) leaves a lot to be desired. Fortunately, I started reading his books with the later ones. I think if this was the first of his books I read, I might not have been interested enough to continue reading his others.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Isaac's Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

by Erik Larson
273 pgs

As you can tell from this blog, I read very little by authors who write non-fiction. But Erik Larson is one of the few whose books make it to my list, and each one has been worth my time. This one was no exception. Even though it's one of his earlier books, and the shortest one I've read so far, because it was written by Larson, it was both educational and entertaining at the same time.

Isaac's Storm is the historical account of the hurricane that hit Galveston Texas in 1900, killing somewhere between 6,000 and 12,000 people, making it the deadliest natural disaster in United States History. Isaac Cline was the chief meteorologist at the U.S. weather Bureau's Galveston office at the time, and it was his belief that the Galveston area would never lie in the path of a hurricane. He had made his belief known in newspaper articles prior to 1900, so hen reports started coming in of the storm in the Gulf of Mexico, Cline didn't raise the alarm until it was too late for people to take steps to protect themselves.

Larson does an excellent job of not only detailing the storm and its devastation, he also does an admirable job of breathing life back to many of the people who lived in Galveston at the time, whose lives either ended, or were forever changed by the storm.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Recursion

by Blake Crouch
326 pgs

For the past couple of years, anytime anyone asked me for a book recommendation, the first book I've thought about has been Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch. It's the first and only book by him I've read, and I loved it. It's a mind-bending science fiction book that's hard to describe, and to even try to, runs the risk of spoiling the experience for whomever I recommend it to. So, I simply tell them to read it. Recursion is just as mind-bending, just as enjoyable, and I'll be recommending it just as often.

Like its predecessor, Recursion is a difficult book to describe, so I won't say much. But at its core, it's about memory, and the role memory plays in time. The book begins in 2018 with a NYPD detective responding to a suicide call. The "jumper" is a woman who tells him she suffers from False Memory Syndrome--a new condition that has recently begun to afflict people, suddenly giving them a new set of memories of a life they never lived.

The book then jumps back to 2007, to a scientist named Helena Smith, who is approached by one of the wealthiest men in the world, who offers her his unlimited resources to fund her research in to memory and curing Alzheimer's. As the book continues to jump back and forth between the events of 2007 and 2018, Crouch slowly unfolds the scope and magnitude of the story he's written...and it's impressive.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Beartown

by Fredrik Backman
418 pgs  (Beartown series #1)

Beartown is a story about a small Swedish town and its love for the sport of hockey. Most of its residents seemingly live or die according to whether its local junior team, The Beartown Ice Hockey Club, wins or loses. And this year, they have a really good team, mostly due to their star player, Kevin, the son of the wealthiest family in town, who by all accounts, is destined to play in the NHL within a few years.

But Kevin's future, and that of the hockey club itself, are all put in jeopardy, when one night, during a victory party, Kevin sexually assaults Maya, the daughter of the club's general manager. Maya tells her parents what happened a week later, and it's then that the true nature of the town and its residents is exposed. Many of them are quick to blame Maya for what took place, refusing to believe their star player could be capable of what she's accused him of doing.

I found a lot to like with Beartown. It's about much more than just hockey (although I would have been fine with it if that had been all it ended up being about). Backman offers a great profile of small town mentality, and the culture of youth sports today, and he does it through a great story with strong, relatable characters.

I've enjoyed each of teh books Backman has written so far, and Beartown is a great example of why. I'm excited to read its follow-up, Us Against You, to find out what becomes of Beartown, the hockey players, and the rest of the characters Backman has created.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Wait for Signs

by Craig Johnson

183 pgs  (Longmire Series)

Every Christmas Eve, Craig Johnson writes a short story featuring Walt Longmire that he gives away for free as a Christmas gift for his readers. Wait for Signs is a collection of those stories so far.

Some of the stories are minor mysteries, just on a smaller scale than the ones Walt tackles in the full-length novels, and some of them simply offer short scenes from his past, that provide a little more of the background of his life and relationship with his deceased wife. Either way, they're fun and enjoyable, and worth reading for anyone who watched the series, or reads the books.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆