Beatrice and Virgil

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

I've found that Life of Pi, Martel's hugely successful earlier book, was the type of book that people either really liked, or they just despised it. I don't think I've ever heard anyone who read it describe it as "okay" or "just alright." Well, Martel has broken that single-book trend with Beatrice and Virgil.

It's the story of an author, Henry, who tries to follow-up his "hugely successful" previous book with a flip book (two books bound together, when you finish reading the first story, you flip the book over, rotate it 180 degrees, and there's a second story) containing two stories about the Holocaust. His publishers reject the idea and he becomes so disillusioned with the industry that he quits writing and moves to a new city to start a new life.

The tremendous success of his previous book has resulted in a steady stream of fan mail forwarded to him by his publisher. While going through a shipment of it, he discovers an intriguing play written about a donkey and monkey along with a note from its author asking him for his help. His interest in the play leads him to track down its author, and finds he's a taxodermist who believes that the steady decline in the world's animal population is itself, a type of holocaust.

After having really liked Life of Pi, it was disappointing just how far short of the quality of that book this one fell. The characters were shallow and flat, the dialogue was weak, and the story hinted throughout that it was going to go somewhere interesting, but then never delivered. It's redeeming quality is its originality. Because of that, I'd describe this one as either "okay" or "just alright."

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Passage

The Passage by Justin Cronin
(The Passage trilogy #1)

The Passage is reminiscent of both The Stand by Stephen King and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It begins in 2012 with the birth of a girl named Amy, the child of a teenage mother, who quickly begins to manifest unusual abilities. Meanwhile, in a remote location in Colorado, the U.S. Government is engaged in a top secret experiment called "Project Noah" in which death-row inmates are recruited and injected with a genetically engineered virus derived from bats from deep in the jungles of Bolivia. The virus has one of two effects on the subjects, either it kills them quickly or it mutates them, giving them incredible strength and regenerative capabilities along with a vampire-like thirst for blood. One of the subjects, Babcock, has the ability to influence weaker-minded individuals and uses that ability to orchestrate his escape and the subsequent escapes of the eleven other successful test subjects.

The escape of the "virals," as they become known, is the beginning of the end. They quickly decimate the population of North America, leaving the rest of the world in a state of instability and chaos. Nuclear bombs are used by the government in an unsuccessful attempt to halt the spread of the virus and to kill the virals.

The book then skips nearly 100 years into the future. The post-apocalyptic world that remains consists of a scattering of small groups of people relegated to living in make-shift fortresses in order to survive in a world now overrun by the virals. One night a girl turns up at the gates of one of the fortresses. She doesn't speak and she somehow managed to survive the virals on her own without any protection. She appears to be about 15 years old, but a microchip found just under the skin at the base of her skull indicates that her name is Amy and she was born almost a century ago.

The Passage is my kind of vampire book. The virals bear little resemblance to the sophisticated and manipulative character thought of by Brom Stoker. But best of all, they're the types of creatures that would make quick work out of any character that ever came out of the mind of Stephanie Meyer. Go team Babcock!

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Way of Kings

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
1007 pgs  (The Stormlight Archive #1)

I don't normally read long fantasy series - The Lord of the Rings is probably the longest one I've read. Epic fantasy for me has always brought to mind a series of gigantic books written over multiple decades, consisting of a phone-book-size list of characters to keep track of. It also seems to be read by a certain type of reader that stereotypically doesn't get exposed to sunlight regularly, subsists on a diet of energy drinks and hostess snack cakes, for recreation, attends conventions dressed like their favorite Star Wars/Star Trek/comic book character, and engages in things like this.

That being said, I love Brandon Sanderson's books. So far he's written two stand-alone fantasy novels and a trilogy for adults. All of them have been fantastic. He's also completing the late Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, but I haven't read any of that (for reasons already mentioned.) So when I learned that he was going to undertake to write his own epic fantasy series, I thought I'd give one a try. I'm glad I did. The Way of Kings is an excellent book. It is gigantic at just over 1,000 pages long, and according to Sanderson, it'll be the first of ten books in the series. So I feel like I've made a significant commitment that will not end until I'm somewhere in my fifties. But having read this book, I'm okay with that and I look forward to what's to come.

The Way of Kings is definitely epic in scale. It consists of multiple systems of magic that are each original and extremely well thought out. It introduces several key characters, each with a captivating story line. Sometimes when I read books with multiple key characters, I get irritated when the story line shifts from one character and goes to another one because I find some characters more interesting than others. That wasn't the case with this book. Each one of the main characters and their individual story arc was so captivating that I didn't mind leaving one to go to another.

I guess I now need to come to terms with the fact that I'm a reader of epic fantasy. Apparently I'll need to stock up on Twinkies and learn how to LARP.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Little People

Little People by Tom Holt

Michael Higgins sees elves. At the age of eight he saw his first one smoking in his family's garden. When he told his step-father about it, the reaction he received was so surprisingly abrupt and alarming that he knew what he had seen was real and that his step-father (the owner of a shoe-making factory - can you say "miniature slave labor force"?) was aware of them.

Tom Holt is a British fantasy author that I feel has way too small of a readership on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. He's written thirty-something humorous fantasy novels yet is still widely unknown here in the States. His books are inventive, smart, and oftentimes, the literary equivalent of a Monty Python sketch.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Mister Slaughter

Mister Slaughter by Robert McCammon
440 pgs  (Matthew Corbett series #3)

This is the third book in the Matthew Corbett series, a series I'm very excited about, since in my opinion, each book has been better than its predecessor. The series takes place in colonial America, seventy years before it declares independence from England. Corbett, who is still in training as an employee for the London-based Herald Agency, finds himself tasked with the job of transporting Tyranthus Slaughter, a murderer being housed at an asylum near Philadelphia, to the docks in New York. Slaughter, who brings to mind Hannibal Lecter, makes Corbett and his colleague an offer they can't refuse.

McCammon is an excellent storyteller. His characters in this series are multi-dimensional and intriguing and the plot is engrossing, suspenseful, and full of unexpected twists. He does a great job of creating the look and feel of the early 18th century in America while incorporating real and unique individuals from our country's history.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Little Women

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

It takes a real man, who is secure in his manhood, to admit to reading a book like Little Women. I am such a man. A few months ago I read Pride and Prejudice, although to be fully honest, the reason I read it was so that I'd appreciate this more. There are certain books that I feel should be read by everyone. This is one of them.  It's classic literature and has stood the test of time.

That being said, I can't say that I particularly enjoyed reading it. Was I on the edge of my seat wondering if Meg would learn how to make fresh jam or not to spend her husband's earnings on frivolous things? No. Did I cry when Beth was on death's doorstep with Scarlet Fever? Not quite. Was my heart warmed when Jo sold her hair to help with the family's finances while their dad was away at war? Please. Nevertheless, it's an excellently written book. I can see why it's considered a classic. But before I'd be able to read another book like this, say Jane Eyre or something, I'd need to read 25 or so books for pleasure.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Monster, 1959

Monster, 1959 by David Maine

David Maine made a modest name for himself with his first book: The Preservationist, a novelization of the story of Noah's ark. His next two books: Fallen and The Book of Samson were likewise novelizations of biblical stories. All three of those books were enjoyable and creative.

With Monster, 1959, Maine leaves the bible behind (although, if it was a story from the bible, it would have been my favorite one by far. Every Sunday growing up I would have been praying that the Sunday School lesson was going to be about the 40-foot monster that terrorized the wicked people of Galilee or Nineveh) and attempts to either pay homage to the B-movie monsters of the 50's or to perpetuate his own political ideologies.

The story is blatantly unoriginal - hapless thrill-seekers stumble upon an island inhabited by a monster (the result of nuclear fallout from the government's testing in the Pacific in the early '40s). The monster kidnaps a blond from the expedition, is then captured, taken back to the U.S., and displayed across the country as the headliner of a circus. Maine's own political views are inserted throughout the book, almost randomly, and by the end I was left with the impression that his real intent in writing the book was to give those views a platform to stand on and decided at the last minute that he ought to accompany them with a story. So he combined Godzilla and King Kong and thought, "It is good." It was not.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆