I don’t finish all the books I start. I used to, I used to fight my way through books till the bitter end but not any longer. This I think, reflects the changes that I have gone through as a reader since we started the blog and is a confluence of 1) being more aware of my tastes as a reader and 2) the availability of other books to replace the one I did not finish with. Both factors are undeniably connected with blogging about books.

The former because I deeply think about what I read on a daily basis and why I like or dislike a book and it is easier for me now to recognise when a book is not working for me and why to continue reading it is an exercise of futility; the latter is something more physical: I have a To Be Read mountain of books readily available for me to tap into. These are books that I both bought (and I buy a lot of books) and received for review from publishers or authors. Before starting the blog, my TBR was minimal, now it contains more than 300 books. Knowing that they are there, that there are loads of books waiting to be read makes it definitely easier for me to quit reading a book, so there is that to be taken into consideration. But that decision does not come lightly.

There are several reasons why I do not finish a book and they vary wildly: it could be because the writing is uninspiring or the characters don’t ring true. Or because the worldbuilding is not interesting or lacks inherent logic. I am not above pet peeves either, and sometimes even one little thing will make me put the book away for good. Sometimes I quit a book only after a few pages, sometimes it takes me way longer.

Above all though, the majority of books I do not finish these days are those that fall in that more middle range category of books: the ones that I hardly care about, one way or the other. Which means that sometimes I will finish a book even when I think it is REALLY bad or when it revolts me. Part of it comes from the fact that I want to be able to properly review them and I feel I can only do that if I finish reading them because I need all the ammunition that I can get.

In terms of examples, here are some recent books I could not finish and the reasons why:

The Dark Divine
EgmontUSA – December 2009

A Prodigal Son

A Dangerous Love

A Deadly Secret

Grace Divine—daughter of the local pastor—always knew something terrible happened the night Daniel Kalbi disappeared and her brother Jude came home covered in his own blood.

Now that Daniel’s returned, Grace must choose between her growing attraction to him and her loyalty to her brother.

As Grace gets closer to Daniel, she learns the truth about that mysterious night and how to save the ones she loves, but it might cost her the one thing she cherishes most: her soul.

The Dark Divine is yet another (bad) example of paranormal romance that follows in the Twilight mania and it has basically the same format: (extra super) good girl falls for bad, dark, mysterious boy who has a Secret. Full of contrived, supposedly suspenseful plot elements (at one point the heroine is given the answers to the mystery in the format of letters but she kept putting off actually reading them) with a non-descript blank page heroine who will do anything for the boy regardless of how he treats (or mistreats her) and the writing was incredibly cheesy and formulaic. I read very far into the book (255 pages out of 375) because I hoped to review it but couldn’t muster the will to keep reading: I just didn’t care enough.

The Dervish House
Pyr (US) /Gollancz (UK) – July 2010

It begins with an explosion. Another day, another bus bomb. Everyone it seems is after a piece of Turkey. But the shockwaves from this random act of 21st century pandemic terrorism will ripple further and resonate louder than just Enginsoy Square.

Welcome to the world of The Dervish House; the great, ancient, paradoxical city of Istanbul, divided like a human brain, in the great, ancient, equally paradoxical nation of Turkey. The year is 2027 and Turkey is about to celebrate the fifth anniversary of its accession to the European Union; a Europe that now runs from the Arran Islands to Ararat. Population pushing one hundred million, Istanbul swollen to fifteen million; Turkey is the largest, most populous and most diverse nation in the EU, but also one of the poorest and most socially divided. It’s a boom economy, the sweatshop of Europe, the bazaar of central Asia, the key to the immense gas wealth of Russia and Central Asia.

Gas is power. But it’s power at a price, and that price is emissions permits. This is the age of carbon consciousness: every individual in the EU has a card stipulating individual carbon allowance that must be produced at every CO2 generating transaction. For those who can master the game, who can make the trades between gas price and carbon trading permits, who can play the power factions against each other, there are fortunes to be made. The old Byzantine politics are back. They never went away.

The ancient power struggled between Sunni and Shia threatens like a storm: Ankara has watched the Middle East emerge from twenty-five years of sectarian conflict. So far it has stayed aloof. A populist Prime Minister has called a referendum on EU membership. Tensions run high. The army watches, hand on holster. And a Galatasary Champions’ League football game against Arsenal stokes passions even higher.

The Dervish House is seven days, six characters, three interconnected story strands, one central common core–the eponymous dervish house, a character in itself–that pins all these players together in a weave of intrigue, conflict, drama and a ticking clock of a thriller.

I was incredibly excited about The Dervish House because of the rave reviews it got and because it was about time for me to try one of this author’s books. I managed about 80 pages (out of 463) before putting it down. I love the premise of the book, I love the setting. Istanbul is a city that I visited and loved and I felt that the author captured its vivacity rather well. However. I found extremely difficult to suspend disbelief and get into the particulars of the scifi aspects of the book. It is merely 15 years into the future and nanotechnology is everywhere in everyday life. Not only that, but I also I felt that – from the few pages I read, and I am aware that things might have changed later on – the setting trumped characters who seemed to superficially exist to enhance and explore the former. It just didn’t seem the kind of book I would enjoy and thus I stopped reading it. I am keeping the book though and might give it a try again in the future.

Death Most Definite
Orbit – August 2010

Steven de Selby has a hangover. Bright lights, loud noise, and lots of exercise are the last thing he wants. But that’s exactly what he gets when someone starts shooting at him.

Steven is no stranger to death-Mr. D’s his boss after all-but when a dead girl saves him from sharing her fate, he finds himself on the wrong end of the barrel. His job is to guide the restless dead to the underworld but now his clients are his own colleagues, friends, and family.

Mr. D’s gone missing and with no one in charge, the dead start to rise, the living are hunted, and the whole city teeters on the brink of a regional apocalypse-unless Steven can shake his hangover, not fall for the dead girl, and find out what happened to his boss- that is, Death himself.

Trying to read Death Most Definite was a MOST frustrating experience. I absolutely loved the premise with “death” and “reaping” as a business with corporate offices and everything. I loved the set-up in which reapers in Australia are being killed and the main character is one of the few survivors and goes on the run. Whilst on the run he has to not only copy with the death of his family and friends and the pending deathapocalypse but being the only reaper around means that HE, as a reaper, is the only one to help these people to cross over to the afterlife; plus he falls in love with a ghost and he can never touch her or she will just cross over. Also: zombies. With a story like this how could this book go wrong?

First of all: insta-love. That is one of my pet peeves: when a character falls for the other instantly by merely looking at them and starts talking about love and how they “just know” . It is what happens here. Another pet peeve: endless description of what a character wears, how long it takes to get dressed, etc. It is so very distracting and it slows the pacing of a story.

But above all, when a character, who is ON THE RUN, whose entire family (parents, uncles, aunts, dog) JUST died basically in his arms, who may be the only person still alive capable of stopping CHAOS and the END of the WORLD, find himself musing about: how beautiful the girl is in the light of the morning; or how in the thick of it, he has to change clothes and starts musing how his jeans are a bit loose around the waist. When that happens, I say it is time a book and I part ways. I did try to stick around for this one and read nearly half of it but my feelings can be summed up thusly: if the main character of the book is not THAT worried about the pending apocalypse, why should I be?

So, there you have it. Some of the most recent books that for better or worse, I didn’t finish reading. I put them away and never gave them another moment’s thought (until I started thinking about this post, that is) .

What about you? Do YOU always finish the books you start? If you don’t, what makes you stop reading them? And if you have a blog, do you review them anyway?

The Countess & the King

Historical fiction isn’t often smuggled in here, so I’m overjoyed that Ana and Thea have invited me back to talk about my newest novel, released today. Besides, of all the bookbloggers I’ve “met” on-line, they’re two of the very few I’ve also had the opportunity (and the pleasure!) to meet face-to-face-to-face –– which makes me doubly happy to be here today.

The Countess & the King is my latest book to tell the story of a royal mistress, the real-life Katherine Sedley (1657-1717) and James II of England (1633-1701). This is my fourth book about a royal mistress, and by now I’ve probably heard every snarky comment that could be snarked about mistresses. Even with a book set in the past, they’re going to be hot, and they’re going to be trouble. What more is there to know?

Actually, with Katherine Sedley, there’s much, much more. Katherine didn’t have royal blood, or a family with notable talent or power. She wasn’t a great beauty, nor did she ever have the power to change history. But she was fascinating, funny, unpredictable, and always determined to go her own way – not something most 17th c. ladies would dare to do.

Katherine was born the only child of privileged teenaged parents who weren’t much more than children themselves. In another time period, their families would have likely exerted a steadying influence, and seen that the young family followed a responsible path through life. But Katherine was born just before the grim Puritan ways of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate were replaced by the much merrier ones of Charles II, restored at last to his throne. With the king’s return, wealthy young aristocrats like the Sedleys flocked to join the free-wheeling court.

Respectability was out of fashion; exuberant excess was the new style, and young Sir Charles became a well-known libertine, famous for drunken debauchery. His young wife, however, remained at home, sinking deep into madness. Against such a background, Katherine’s upbringing reads like Hollywood tabloid-fare. Her father treated her more like an amusing pet than a daughter, taking her with him to playhouses and taverns and introducing her to his notorious friends. She was both adored and spoiled, and learned how to drink, swear, and tell off-color jokes, and was equally comfortable with actresses like Nell Gwyn and with the king himself.

Despite this childhood, Katherine’s future wasn’t entirely lost. With her father’s connections and his large fortune, she should have been primed for a splendid dynastic marriage.

Except, however, for a few sizable stumbling-blocks. First, Katherine was considered shamefully plain. In a court that prized languid, voluptuous beauties, she was pale, thin, and angular, with heavy brows and a wide mouth. She was also intelligent, her wit quick and sharp. (Her first portrait as a teenager, by Sir Peter Lely, shows how she didn’t fit the fashionable ideal.)

Most of all, she had no wish to wed and give control of her life to a husband. From her own mother to the queen herself, the court was full of neglected, lonely wives, and Katherine was far too independent for that. She had her own fortune, and was determined to choose her own loves. The first two men she gave her heart to very nearly broke it by choosing prettier women to wed instead, and another gentleman whom she rejected proved to be a fearsome enemy at court.

But finally Katherine found a man who appreciated her: James Stuart, Duke of York, and heir to the throne of England. (His portrait by Lely is here, too.)

Katherine didn’t care that James was married, or that he was much older, or that the rest of the court regarded him as a poor second in comparison to his brother the king. James found her witty and outrageously amusing and beautiful, and Katherine gleefully gave herself over to the role of a royal mistress. Her second portrait here (by Godfrey Kneller) from this time shows her unadorned elegance, her expression seemingly bemused by her good fortune.

Even as a prince’s mistress, Katherine couldn’t be conventional. She delighted in the scandal she caused, enjoying every moment of it. But the carefree days were short-lived. James had always been a polarizing figure at court, and before long his religious beliefs made him a politically dangerous one as well. Katherine was thrust into the intrigue, torn between her royal lover and England itself, and her cleverness was valuable not for amusement, but for survival. When Charles suddenly died and James became king, Katherine’s position at court grew all the more perilous. The last portrait (by the studio of Godfrey Kneller) shows her soon after James has been crowned, and after he has made her Countess of Dorchester.

Formally posed on the edge of a gilded bed, lifting aside the bed curtain in a royal mistress’s welcome, her earlier merriment has vanished. Instead she appears reserved and self-contained, as if she already knows the difficult choice before her, a choice that will determine both her fate, and that of The Countess and the King.

Many thanks to Ana and Thea for having me here, and congratulations to them for making the BBAW short-list AND being recognized by USA Network. Totally deserved!

Here’s a link to an excerpt from The Countess and the King on my website.

I hope you’ll also stop by my blog with fellow author Loretta Chase, where we discuss history, writing, and yes, even the occasional pair of great shoes: Two Nerdy History Girls

Thank you Susan, a pleasure to have you around again!

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

We have ONE copy of The Countess and the King to give away! The contest is open to EVERYONE and will run until Saturday, September 11, 11:59PM (PST). To enter, leave a comment here. We will randomly select the winner and will announce it on Sunday in our weekly Smugglers Stash. ONE entry per person please. Good luck!

Author: Charles Yu

Genre: Science Fiction

Publisher: Pantheon (US) / Corvus (UK)
Publication date: September 7, 2010/ October 1, 2010
Hardcover: 256 pages

Stand alone or series: Stand alone

With only TAMMY – a slightly tearful computer with self-esteem issues – a software boss called Phil – Microsoft Middle Manager 3.0 – and an imaginary dog called Ed for company, fixing time machines is a lonely business and Charles Yu is stuck in a rut. He’s spent the better part of a decade navel-gazing, spying on 39 different versions of himself in alternate universes (and discovered that 35 of them are total jerks). And he’s kind of fallen in love with TAMMY, which is bad because she doesn’t have a module for that. With all that’s on his mind, perhaps it’s no surprise that when he meets his future self, he shoots him in the stomach. And that’s a beginner’s mistake for a time machine repairman. Now he’s stuck in a time loop, going in circles forever. All he has, wrapped in brown paper, is the book his future self was trying to press into his hands. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. And he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could save him.

Why did I read the book I received an ARC and it looked interesting

How did I get the book ARC from Corvus

Review:

Charles Yu is a time machine repairman in science fictional Minor Universe 31. He lives in his Recreational Time Travel Device which he uses to live outside chronological order (i.e. outside of Now) . His companions are TAMMY, the female user interface and Ed, his nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, now and then stopping in the Now, to speak to his boss (a computer program who is unaware that it is a computer program) and to observe his mother living in a one hour loop of her own choice, where she relives one hour of what she perceives to be the perfect life: a life where Charles come to dinner over and again. Most of Charles’ thoughts though gravitate towards his absent father whom he spent the past 10 (non-linear) years searching for. And then the unthinkable (or is it the inevitable?) happens: one day Charles shoots his future self, landing on a time loop from where he gets to be free only if he writes How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe because as his future self tells him before dying: the book is the key.

Thus lies the crux of the novel: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is a book in which the book itself is the story. The author is Charles Yu, who is also the name of the character who must write the book (which is already written) and spends most of the novel or the story, or the manual of whatever it is that you wish to call it, reflecting on the nature of life and time.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is a hard book to pin down and that is actually part of its allure. It is difficult to ascertain whether for example Charles is truly travelling in time. On one hand, the possibility exists because the character/author is aware of quantum physics and String Theory and the possible non linearity of time and space. The author even attempts some pseudo scientific babble (but that never truly works).

On the other hand, Universe 31 is a fictional, recreational universe where people choose to live, where the word “fictional” is of great import. Not only that, the explanation for the fictional world and living perhaps lies in something much more mundane: memory and regret.

In this book, Charles’ father is the creator, the mind behind the idea of time travel and of time machine and the idea is simple yet genius. It doesn’t require physics or mechanics, it is actually a matter of language, of uses of tense (there is even something called a Tense Operator). Where Universe 31 is a fictional world:

“with its incomplete conceptual framework, regions of exposed wire-frame structure, lack of complexity in terms of story-line geometries and dearth of heroes.”

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universeto me, is Metafiction if I ever seen an example of one. It self-consciously draws attention to what it is that the author/character is doing and uses language metaphors of past or future tenses to deal with one’s life. It is there in the fact that Charles’ mother, an Asian immigrant can’t quite grasp English and its tenses which is part of what makes her irrevocably incapable of living in the world. With regards to Charles: does he really repair time machines or does he talk people out of wanting to change their pasts – a feat that is presented as impossible but which people are constantly drawn to – even Charles with all the self-awareness that he has.

Even though I am obviously fonder of the language theory, I believe that both interpretations are possible and how the reader interprets the time travelling aspect of the book is paramount to how one will eventually feel when closing it.

But putting all the meta (phor, fiction) aside, there is no disguising the fact that at its core, this is a book about a guy with daddy issues. Simple as that. Charles is stuck in a rut that he can’t (or rather, won’t) escape, thinking about the past, trying to understand his father’s failures, his own failures, trying to grasp where it all went wrong, why his father left and where did he go and how to get him back. His present relationships are all with people and animals that don’t truly exist and that points to someone who is incapable of relating to real people until he can resolve his issue. This is certainly true with regards to Charles, which is fine. I am not extremely keen on this trope which I usually find boring and unimaginative.

But when the author takes it a step further and makes Charles’ life choice less personal and more universal and tries to critically examine the world is where the book completely fails. It is there when the text says that people don’t talk to each other, that people live in boxes, everybody is a time machine, always looking at the past with regret. Not that these are not potentially true or couldn’t become true in the future but I intensely dislike the preachy, obviousness quality of those assertions.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe certainly has brilliant moments, the language metaphor for time travelling is interesting and engaging and at times the book is beautifully written and those were what definitely kept me reading with gusto . But because there is too much self-awareness both in terms of what he is doing when he is writing the book and what sort of story he is writing (and sometimes even a certain pretentiousness slips through), the story to me, lacks real heart and I was unsatisfied with the result.

Notable Quotes/Parts:

1

There is just enough space inside here for one person to live inde?nitely, or at least that’s what the operation manual says. User can survive inside the TM-31 Recreational Time Travel Device, in isola¬tion, for an inde?nite period of time.

I am not totally sure what that means. Maybe it doesn’t actually mean anything, which would be ?ne, which would be okay by me, because that’s what I’ve been doing: living in here, inde?nitely. The Tense Operator has been set to Present-Inde?nite for I don’t know how long—some time now—and although I still pick up the occasional job from Dispatch, they seem to come less frequently these days and so, when I’m not working, I like to wedge the gearshift in P-I and just sort of cruise.

My gums hurt. It’s hard to focus. There must be some kind of internal time distortion effect in here, because when I look at myself in the little mirror above my sink, what I see is my father’s face, my face turning into his. I am beginning to feel how the man looked, especially how he looked on those nights he came home so tired he couldn’t even make it through dinner without nodding off, sitting there with his bowl of soup cooling in front of him, a rich pork-and-winter-melon-saturated broth that, moment by moment, was losing—or giving up—its tiny quan¬tum of heat into the vast average temperature of the universe.

The base model TM-31 runs on state-of-the-art chronodiegetical technology: a six-cylinder grammar drive built on a quad-core physics engine, which features an applied temporalinguistics architecture allowing for free-form navigation within a ren¬dered environment, such as, for instance, a story space and, in particular, a science ?ctional universe.
Or, as Mom used to say: it’s a box. You get into it. You push some buttons. It takes you to other places, different times. Hit this switch for the past, pull up that lever for the future. You get out and hope the world has changed. Or at least maybe you have.

I don’t get out much these days. At least I have a dog, sort of. He was retconned out of some space western. It was the usual deal: hero, on his way up, has a trusty canine sidekick, then hero gets famous and important and all of that and by the time sea¬son two rolls around, hero doesn’t feel like sharing the spotlight anymore, not with a scruffy-looking mutt. So they put the little guy in a trash pod and sent him off.

I found him just as he was about to drift into a black hole. He had a face like soft clay, and haunches that were bald in spots where he’d been chewing off his own fur. I don’t think anyone has ever been as happy to see anything as this dog was to see me. He licked my face and that was that. I asked him what he wanted his name to be. He didn’t say anything so I named him Ed.

The smell of Ed is pretty powerful in here, but I’m okay with that. He’s a good dog, sleeps a lot, sometimes licks his paw to comfort himself. Doesn’t need food or water. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know that he doesn’t exist. Ed is just this weird onto¬logical entity that produces unconditional slobbery loyal affection. Super?uous. Gratuitous. He must violate some kind of conserva¬tion law. Something from nothing: all of this saliva. And, I guess, love. Love from the abandoned heart of a non-existent dog.

Rating: 6 Good, recommended with reservations

Reading next: An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire

OK. Right, where to begin?

Brouhahas on the Internets!

It’s been a while since we last saw a good, interesting brouhaha on the internets. Thea’s side of the pond has been quiet for a while but on my side of the pond? A lot of action!

It started with Nial of The Speculative Scotsman, who wrote a post entitled Inferior Fantasy where he questions the overall quality of the Fantasy writing as opposed to say, literary fiction. The post caused quite the shitstorm both on his blog (look at the comments!) and on Twitter. It sparked other great posts in response as well. Like this one from Martin Lewis (editor of Vector Reviews) over at his blog Everything is Nice, entitled Inferiority Complex in which he agrees with Nial and he says:

It just means that perhaps there is a conversation to be had about pushing the genre forward.

Another great follow-up post was one by writer Robert Jackson Bennett at the Orbit’s blog where he writes On Content, Execution and the Future of Genre where he quotes Terry Pratchett and Jeff Vandermeer. It is a very interesting post and well worth a read.

I followed everything with an avid curiosity. I think that Nial might not have worded his post that well and probably could have done with more examples but the gist of it? The POINT of his post? I didn’t see it all as putting Fantasy as a genre down but rather, examining it with a critical eye and asking a question that needs to be asked (and that goes for all genres, really): is the genre the best that it can be? This is an important question regardless of how you answer it.

On my side, I think that one of the best, thoughtful comments on Nial’s blog was that of Mike Johnstone where he says:

Niall’s discussion has a great deal of merit.

“It has merit because there are objective, concrete measures of “quality” for literary art and then for prose narratives in the form of novels. As Niall mentions, these measures are in part “technical,” or matters of craft: grammar, paragraphing; dialogue; plotting; description, exposition; point of view; consistency of characterisation and in the setting; genre conventions/tropes, and so forth. These measures are also in part “artistic” (let’s say): style, voice; metaphor, allegory, simile; rhythm and sound patterns; layered meanings, and so forth. Together, these technical and artistic measures make up a novel’s “comment on humanity,” whether that novel involves sorcerers and dragons, spaceships with FTL capability, or real places and times such as New York City or the antebellum era in the southern US.

Very Cool Things

Book Blogger Appreciation Week is approaching (September 13-17)! The week spotlights and celebrates the work of active book bloggers through guest posts, awards, giveaways, and community activities. Go to their website to learn more about the history of the event (happening since 2008) , about the events that will be taking place and how to be a part of it. Basically it is all about celebrating what it is that we do here. And yes, Awards are a part, a very small part of BBAW, and we are very proud to have been shortlisted for one of them:

Yay!

And kids, words can not describe how proud and surprised we were when we got an AWESOME mention over that USA Network’s Character Approved Blog, in their VERY COOL article: Book Bloggers: The New Literary Advisers. Go check it out!

SMUGGLED!

Did you know that we now have a Youtube channel? Yes, we do! We created it to host the video interview we did with Fantasy author Brent Weeks and decided to carry on with the idea of having videos with authors, a new feature we have called SMUGGLED! , with the authors talking about their books, and answering questions sent by us. We only just started but we have loads of ideas and your suggestions are most welcome as well.

Meanwhile, go check the interview with Brent Weeks where he talks about his new book The Black Prism, his characters, social media and….book smuggling. And the second video is now up as well: an interview with Kelly Creagh, author of new YA novel Nevermore, where she interacts with a very special guest, talks about her book and Edgar Allan Poe and….book smuggling!

They are both great fun.

This Week On The Book Smugglers:

On Monday, I review How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel by Charles Yu

Then, on Tuesday, author Susan Holloway Scott guest blogs with us talking about her new historical novel: The Countess and the King

On Wednesday, I am back with a Ponderings post on four recent books I could not finish and why. Surprisingly the batch includes the acclaimed The Dervish House by Ian McDonald:

On Thursday I review An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire , book three in one of my favourite UF series and then Thea is back! With her review of The Osiris Ritual by George Mann:

And finally on Friday, following up on my review of An Artificial Night, author Seanan McGuire will be around to answer your questions on an interactive Q&A – plus a giveaway.

And that’s it from us today!

as always, we remain:

~Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers

First up, the 25 winners of the Mockingjay iSkins. We had a record number of entries – 471 – thank you very much to all who participated with your awesome comments! The winners are:

Leann (comment#50)

Nikol Prak (comment# 171)

Chloe Thai (comment#316 ,form entry)

Eleana Shaw (comment#348, form entry)

Serena (comment#212)

Kristen (comment#181)

Alice (comment#183)

Joseph Lutz(comment#438, form entry)

Ian (comment#419, form entry)

Christy S (comment#157)

Christine Alba (comment#364, entry form)

Monna (comment#189)

Simone (comment#27)

Melody (comment#147)

Janine (comment#249)

Emma Tremblay (comment#383, entry form)

rochelle darby (comment#297, entry form)

Amanda (comment#25)

Erin (comment#80)

Dan Talvi (comment#449, entry form)

Linda Fernandez (comment#407, entry form)

Dana Newell (comment#411, entry form)

debbie sampson (comment#285, entry form)

Samantha Flicke (comment#453, entry form)

Lydia (comment#85)

And the five winners of Dust by Joan Frances Turner are:

Linz (comment#59)

SylviaSybil (comment#1)

Jessica (comment#7)

draconismoi (comment#36)

Jess (the Cozy Reader) (comment#56)

Congratulations! You know the drill. Send us an email (contact AT the book smugglers DOT com) with your snail mail address, and we’ll get your winnings out to you as soon as possible.

On Ana’s Radar:

I have yet to read a Courtney Summers book (*ducks*) as I hear they are really good. I just saw (over at this new blog called: That Cover Girl) the cover of her next book and I think it looks awesome:

When Eddie Reeves’s father commits suicide her life is consumed by the nagging question of why? Why when he was a legendary photographer and a brilliant teacher? Why when he had a daughter who loved him more than anyone else in the world? When she meets Culler Evans, a former student of her father’s and a photographer himself, an instant and dangerous attraction begins. He seems to know more about her father than she does and could possibly hold the key to the mystery surrounding his death. But Eddie’s vulnerability has weakened her and Culler Evans is getting too close. Her need for the truth keeps her hanging on… but some questions should be left unanswered.

and I love the cover for Nalini Singh’s next Guild Hunter novel:

I think the next cover looks great and I think the blurb sounds interesting too:

The same questions whirl round and round in my head:

What does he want from me?
How could I have let this happen?
AM I GOING TO DIE?

17-year-old Grace wakes up in a white room, with table, pens and paper – and no clue how she got here.

As Grace’s pours her tangled life onto the page, she is forced to remember everything she’s tried to forget. There’s falling hopelessly in love with the gorgeous Nat, and the unravelling of her relationship with her best friend Sal. But there’s something missing. As hard as she’s trying to remember, is there something she just can’t see?

Grace must face the most important question of all. Why is she here?

A story of dangerous secrets, intense friendship and electrifying attraction.

Look at this striking cover!

The playing field becomes a battlefield in a highly charged debut.

There’s an extraordinary price for victory at Anooka High. It is paid on—and off—the football field. And it claims its victims without mercy—including the most innocent bystanders. An unlikely friendship between Kurt, a talented but emotionally damaged fullback, and Danny, a promising gymnast, is at the heart of an increasingly violent, steroid-infused power struggle.

When the unthinkable happens, they must look to each other for salvation in a heart-pounding, gut-wrenching story that will stay with readers long after they turn the last page.
Told in alternating voices and with unapologetic truth, Leverage illuminates the fierce loyalty, flawed justice, and hard-won optimism of two young athletes.

On Thea’s Radar:

Because I’m reading this right now and am excited for the review next week:

A steampunk mystery adventure featuring immortality, artifacts, and intrepid sleuths Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbes

Sir Maurice Newbury, Gentleman Investigator for the Crown, imagines life will be a little quieter after his dual successes solving The Affinity Bridge affair. But he hasn’t banked on his villainous predecessor, Knox, who is hell-bent on achieving immortality, not to mention a secret agent who isn’t quite what he seems….

So continues an adventure quite unlike any other, a thrilling steampunk mystery and the second in the series of Newbury & Hobbes investigations.

I cannot freakin’ WAIT for this one – I Am Not A Serial Killer totally took me by surprise (I was expecting a Dexter knockoff, but the paranormal bend completely made the book for me) – and I’ve had Mr. Monster sitting on my TBR for a while. Time to bust it out, methinks! (Also, this cover is MUCH better than the cartoony UK version)

killed a demon. I don’t know if it was really, technically a demon, but I do know that he was some kind of monster, with fangs and claws and the whole bit, and he killed a lot of people. So I killed him. I think it was the right thing to do. At least the killing stopped.

Well, it stopped for a while.

In I Am Not a Serial Killer, John Wayne Cleaver saved his town from a murderer even more appalling than the serial killers he obsessively studies.

But it turns out even demons have friends, and the disappearance of one has brought another to Clayton County. Soon there are new victims for John to work on at the mortuary and a new mystery to solve. But John has tasted death, and the dark nature he used as a weapon—the terrifying persona he calls “Mr. Monster”—might now be using him.

No one in Clayton is safe unless John can vanquish two nightmarish adversaries: the unknown demon he must hunt and the inner demon he can never escape.

In this sequel to his brilliant debut, Dan Wells ups the ante with a thriller that is just as gripping and even more intense. He apologizes in advance for the nightmares.

Really not crazy about this catalogue-looking cover, but I truly liked Impossible so I’m excited to read it:

What does it mean to be extraordinary? Phoebe finds herself drawn to Mallory, the strange and secretive new kid in school. Soon the two girls are as close as sisters . . . until Mallory’s magnetic older brother, Ryland, appears. Ryland has an immediate, exciting hold on Phoebe—but a dangerous hold, for she begins to question her feelings about her best friend and, worse, about herself.

Soon she’ll discover the shocking, fantastical truth about Ryland and Mallory, and about an age-old debt they expect Phoebe to pay. Will she be strong enough to resist? Will she be special enough to save herself?

In the vein of Nancy Werlin’s previous novel Impossible, Extraordinary is a tale of friendship, romance, and the faerie realm.

And then there’s the rerelease of Norman Patridge’s classic horror novel, with a gorgeous new cover (I will definitely be rereading for our upcoming halloween celebration):

Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol’ Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.

Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He’s willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror–and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy . . .

Winner of the Stoker Award and named one of the 100 Best Novels of 2006 by Publishers Weekly, Dark Harvest is a powerhouse thrill-ride with all the resonance of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.”

In anticipation for Dreadnought, I really, really want this book.

Maria Isabella Boyd’s success as a Confederate spy has made her too famous for further espionage work, and now her employment options are slim. Exiled, widowed, and on the brink of poverty…she reluctantly goes to work for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Chicago.

Adding insult to injury, her first big assignment is commissioned by the Union Army. In short, a federally sponsored transport dirigible is being violently pursued across the Rockies and Uncle Sam isn’t pleased. The Clementine is carrying a top secret load of military essentials—essentials which must be delivered to Louisville, Kentucky, without delay.

Intelligence suggests that the unrelenting pursuer is a runaway slave who’s been wanted by authorities on both sides of the Mason-Dixon for fifteen years. In that time, Captain Croggon Beauregard Hainey has felonied his way back and forth across the continent, leaving a trail of broken banks, stolen war machines, and illegally distributed weaponry from sea to shining sea.

And now it’s Maria’s job to go get him.

He’s dangerous quarry and she’s a dangerous woman, but when forces conspire against them both, they take a chance and form an alliance. She joins his crew, and he uses her connections. She follows his orders. He takes her advice.

And somebody, somewhere, is going to rue the day he crossed either one of them.

Another book on my TBR that I am dying to rip into:

A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space. Its destination-unknown. Its purpose-a mystery. Its history-lost.

Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home-a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms-he finds himself, wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger.

All he has are questions– Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to the woman he loved? What happened to Hull 03?

All will be answered, if he can survive. Uncover the mystery. Fix the ship. Find a way home.

HULL ZERO THREE is an edge of your seat thrill ride through the darkest reaches of space.

And that’s it from us today! What about you? Any books on your radar that we should know about?

About the book

Avery Hood is reeling from the loss of her parents–and the fact that she can’t remember what happened to them even though she was there.

She’s struggling to adjust to life without them, and to living with her grandmother, when she meets Ben, who isn’t like any guy she’s ever met before.

It turns out there’s a reason why, and Ben’s secret may hold the key to Avery finding out what happened to her parents…

But what if that secret changes everything she knows about–and feels for–Ben?

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publication Date: September 14 2010
Hardcover: 256 pages

The Book Trailer

On Inspirations and Influences

I got the idea to write Low Red Moon because I love the fairytale Little Red Riding Hood, and have always wondered–”What if????” about it. That, and growing up around a forest–I love the city, but there’s something about being in a deep, quiet forest that’s almost magical.

As far as influences–I confess, I’ve read very little paranormal fiction, or even much science fiction or fantasy–but I think there’s something about the idea of being human–but not human–that calls to all of us (even those of us well past our teen years!).

You can read more about the author and reviews of the book on her website.

Author: E. Lockhart

Genre: Contemporary / YA

Publisher: Hyperion
Publication date: March 2008
Hardcover/ Paperback 352 pages

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club.Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Laundau-Banks.
No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when her ex boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind.

This is the story of how she got that way.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone

How did I get this book: Bought

Why did I read this book: This is a well-loved, award winning book. On a more personal level, Carla from The Crooked Shelf told me I would love it. And then this review (and the comments) sealed the deal.

Review:

I want to hold this book in my hands, get on my soap box and say to all and sundry: here, this book, THIS book, it is a Great Book.

It begins with a written confession of pranks orchestrated by 16-year- old Frankie Landau-Banks when attending her sophomore year at the very exclusive Alabaster Preparatory Academy, an academy for privileged kids who one day hope to attend Ivy League colleges and go on to rule the world.

It proceeds to tell us the disreputable history of Frankie and how she got to that point, alternating between an omniscient narrative who not only tells us facts about Frankie’s past but also examines some of her thoughts and actions and a third person narration from Frankie’s point of view as the story moves along. It is an interesting choice of narrative and one that I think, completely works within the confines of this book.

How does a person become the person she is? What are the factors in her culture, her childhood, her education, her religion, her economic stature, her sexual orientation, her race, her everyday interactions–what stimuli lead her to make choices other people will despise her for?

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks chronicles Frankie’s journey from being a quiet, clever, geeky girl, her father’s “bunny rabbit” to someone who starts to think and to fully, completely interact with the world she lives in by observing and analysing, criticising and daring to ask questions mostly about the sometimes unspoken rules and roles that society allows or doesn’t allow her to play, as a girl.

Upon starting her sophomore year, Frankie is no longer who she was the year before, both physically speaking with her new attractive figure and intellectually speaking with her keen eye. Almost from the get go, she lands a popular boyfriend, an older boy called Matthew who is handsome and rich and also a member of the school’s exclusive all-male infamous secret society. The Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds is a secret that everybody knows about but only a few get to be a part of it. Frankie knows of it, because her father used to be a member and to this date still preens when thinking about the memorable pranks they used to pull.

Unlike what the title of the book or its blurb might suggest, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is not a light, funny, breezy read. It is actually a rather difficult, painful read for many reasons although not without its humorous moments. And it is difficult and painful because difficult and painful is the path that Frankie chooses to take. Her frustration at times is nearly palpable and completely relatable.

We are talking about how Frankie knows that Matthew is a member of the Bassets but how he will not tell her that, keeping a secret that requires him to lie to her. How doesn’t see any other way to be a part, than to infiltrate the Bassets and orchestrate new pranks – pranks, I might add, that are clever and also ”creative acts of civil disobedience” .

How she loves to be a part of his group of friends, including another boy called Alpha for his leadership of the group but how she knows that her acceptance by the group is not because of HER: it in the direct relation to the fact that she is Matthew’s girlfriend and as long as she doesn’t break away from her “place”. The book is full of moments that are made of so much hurt that is almost unbearable. For example when Frankie realises that once she does something that she is not “supposed” to, like say, sitting at the senior’s table during lunch on her own, there will be repercussions and Matthew will act differently:

“When I act the way I acted, Matthew doesn’t like me as much as he does when I fall off my bicycle”.

It is painful because Frankie is an extremely complex character who both loves to be a part of that exclusive, sexist group, but who also knows that it is exclusive and sexist. She is aware that there are double standards (punishment for her acts for example are more lenient because she is a girl) and that the boys have everything cut out for them and being a part of the Bassets is about solidifying their position. She wants doors to be open for her and wants to walk through them just like they would and I can’t begin to express how awesome of a character Frankie is: she wants to fall in love and not lose herself, she is passionate, driven, unapologetic ambitious and intelligent and aware that all of those also make her a privileged girl – even though it doesn’t make it any easier when trying to break through those closed doors, doors that have no need to be closed at all.

Ana from Things Mean a Lot, in her completely awesome review of the book (which I highly recommend you to read) says it best:

Why were there no books like this around when I was fifteen? A book like The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks would have helped me immensely – it would have enabled me detect the pattern and to connect the dots much sooner than I did; and therefore, to quote the narrator, it would have helped me stop feeling crazy because the whole world kept telling me I wasn’t supposed to want the things I wanted—which include truly equal opportunities as well as a world in which my gender is not the first defining characteristic people think of when trying to make sense of (or explain away) who I am. But for the sake of all the fifteen-year-olds in the world (and not just), I’m SO glad this book exists now. It’s accessible and yet intelligent; it’s direct rather than subtle, but that’s okay because it completely works. It’s unapologetic and complex; it’s funny and heartbreaking, and it’s an absolute pleasure to read. And as I said, it’s also realistically painful: it doesn’t make light of the price that people who burst through invisible doors have to pay, but it makes you consider that it might be worth it all the same.

This is a story that resonated with me in the most basic level. I get Frankie. Every time someone would tell her that she is “harmless”, or to tell her that she is “oversensitive” or that “she is thinking too much” when she questioned something, I understood her reactions completely. It is a powerful, thought provoking book.

At the beginning of the review I mentioned that the Alabaster Preparatory Academy was a school for people who would go on to rule the world. The main difference between Frankie and the majority of those kids is thus: she is not going to go on to rule the world; she will go on to change it. I finished the book with my heart broken – just like Frankie’s – but in the best possible way and you can only understand what I mean when you go and read for yourself.

Notable Quotes/ Parts: I get goosebumps every time I read this quote.

Frankie Landau-Banks is an off-roader.

She might, in fact, go crazy, as has happened to a lot of people who break rules. Not the people who play at rebellion but really only solidify their already dominant position in society – as did Matthew and most of the other Bassets – but those who take some larger action that disrupts the social order. Who try to push through the doors that are usually closed to them. They do sometimes go crazy, these peope, because the world is telling them not to want the things they want. it can seem saner to give up – but then one goes insane from giving up.

On the brighter side, Frankie has life easier than a lot of people with similar drivers, similar minds, similar ambitions. She is nice-looking and will be well-educated. Her family has a good amount of money, though not as much as some. Many doors will be open to her easily, and it may be that she can open the ones she wants to without too much pain or strife.

And so, another possibility – the possibility I hold for – is that Frankie Landau-Banks will open the doors she is trying to get through.

And she will grow up to change the world.

Additional Thoughts:

If you liked this book and would like to read more from awesome women who rock my real-life world the way that Frankie rocked my fictional world I highly recommend you to check these blogs:

Manifesta
Book Gazing
Read React Review
Things Mean a Lot
Asking the Wrong Questions
Renay
Bookshop

And if you have any of your own to recommend please do tell!

Verdict: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is a brave, thought provoking book about what feels like to be a budding feminist. It is a book that matters, with a story that matters and that does not mean that is a didactic on “how to” – there is an interesting plot, a cool story. It has above all an awesome, flawed, complex female protagonist. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Rating: 9 Damn Near Perfection

Reading Next: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel by Charles Yu

Author: Joan Frances Turner

Genre: Horror, Zombies, Post-Apocalyptic, Speculative Fiction

Publisher: Ace
Publication date: September 7 2010
Hardcover: 384 pages

Nine years ago, Jessie had a family. Now, she has a gang.

Nine years ago, Jessie was a vegetarian. Now, she eats very fresh meat.

Nine years ago, Jessie was in a car crash and died. Nine years ago, Jessie was human.

Now, she’s not.

After she was buried, Jessie awoke and tore through the earth to arise, reborn, as a zombie. Jessie’s gang is the Fly-by-Nights. She loves the ancient, skeletal Florian and his memories of time gone by. She’s in love with Joe, a maggot-infested corpse. They fight, hunt, dance together as one—something humans can never understand. There are dark places humans have learned to avoid, lest they run into the zombie gangs.

But now, Jessie and the Fly-by-Nights have seen new creatures in the woods—things not human and not zombie. A strange new illness has flamed up out of nowhere, causing the undeads to become more alive and the living to exist on the brink of death. As bits and pieces of the truth fall around Jessie, like the flesh off her bones, she’ll have to choose between looking away or staring down the madness—and hanging onto everything she has come to know as life.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone

How did we get this book: Review copies from the publisher

Why did we read this book: Thea loves zombies and Ana has a new found appreciation for the creatures. When we first heard about the book, we both went: WANT.

Review:

First Impressions:

Thea: According to the marketing promo behind Dust, the novel promises to be…different than the average zombie novel. It promises to tell the story of life after death, from the walking dead’s perspective. It promises to make readers question what they know about life and death, through the eyes of a not-so-young heroine, named Jessie. These are a whole lotta promises for a debut novel to deliver, but deliver Dust certainly does. It’s a haunting, elegiac portrait of life after death, of relationships and emotions from the perspective of a character that is no longer human, but not a monster either. Dust is one of those books that gets better the more that I reflect upon it. I loved it. (And, I think that you should listen to me and not Ana, because she is wrong and I am right, and that is all there is to it.)

Ana: I had very much the opposite reaction to the book – the more I reflect upon it, the less I like it. It starts well enough but half way through the book, it loses its steam. The marketing promo, the blurb, the cover of my ARC (a letter from the marketing department) all tell me how different the book is going to be and I think that ultimately it does not deliver on its promise. I think that story-wise it doesn’t work that well and the basic themes of life and death and being human x being a zombie, were extremely heavy-handed. I didn’t like it.

On the plot:

Thea: Dust is the story of Jessie, or Jessica Anne Porter that was, a girl that was fifteen when she was killed in a car accident only to rise days later as a zombie. Fighting her way out of her cement sealed grave under six feet of dirt, Jessie finds refuge of a kind with a gang of other undead, that call themselves the Fly-By-Nights. After taking their brutal initiation of beating, breaking her bones and causing her to retch up a dark mixture of fetid, congealed blood (“Coffin Liquor,” as the zombies call it), Jessie becomes an official member of the gang, and she finally feels at home. Roaming the forest together for deer, possum and other wild prey, Jessie is respected by her fellow gang members as a fighter – even one-armed, as the book opens with Jessie finally losing her right appendage, Jessie is perhaps the fiercest fighter of the group. But then, something strange disturbs Jessie’s comfortable routine. First, there’s the strange blonde “hoo” (zombie slang for human) that stumbles into their woods, so far from the protections of civilization. Disoriented, sweating a strange, non-human, chemical smell, the girl seems like something caught between living and dead – not quite hoo, but not quite zombie either. Then, gang leader Teresa starts acting strangely, smelling eerily like the not-hoo girl from the woods. Something frightening is happening to the undead and living alike, and not a soul will be left untouched.

Well, what can I say about Dust? It is a haunting story that lingers with you long after finishing the novel. It is deeply unsettling, unique, and beautifully written. It is a story that is, more than anything else (and contrary to what Ana will tell you about romance or whatever) about people that have lived, died, and been born again in a cold, cruel world. Yes, they are flesh-hungry, but they aren’t “monsters” – at least, not any more than humans are monsters. From a plotting perspective, Dust is a quiet novel, a loving macabre ode to sinew and blood, of decay and the maggots and blowflies that feed upon the flesh of the dead. But instead of being gratuitous or overly gory for the sake of being gory, Dust is in actuality a beautiful, melancholy book – Ms. Turner manages to make the sight of dusty, parchment-thin skin beautiful, the warm blood and entrails of a fresh kill vibrant and delectable. Dust isn’t a book that aims to shock and disgust; rather, it simply is an honest recording of the life of Jessie and her gang.

Dust also is a mystery of sorts, and a book of discovery and reconciliation. There is the question of the cause and nature of the strange new infection that sweeps the forest, a biological mystery that unfolds beautifully and gradually over the course of the novel. The cause of the apocalyptic bacteria is insignificant though, really, as the more important, underlying theme is not on the macro but micro level – personal guilt, family loyalty and perceived betrayal. Though the idea of the microbe unleashed by humanity ultimately leading to the species’ demise is nothing new, Ms. Turner handles this aspect of the novel beautifully, creating a tempered, well-paced tale that I devoured whole in essentially a few short hours.

On the more technical, zombie-fan sort of stuff, I must say that I loved Ms. Turner’s take on the life cycle of the zombie, as I did the newly imagined method that they communicate with each other, although I will say that certain aspects felt underdeveloped (the strange, literal “danse macabre” and the way they hear thoughts in terms of music – or perhaps only Jessie does this?). Still, I loved their new, superior neuron-firing capable brains, and most of all, their perceived “superiority” to the idiot, stinking hoos. They aren’t superior of course – this is the beauty of Dust, with its flawed characters, laying bare the faults of both humanity and zombie, the difference between the two not so dramatic as one might suspect. I loved that the book doesn’t feel the need to explain everything explicitly, that Ms. Turner makes some unorthodox choices towards the end of the novel, too. And, contrary to the notion that Dust is romantic or some sort of cautionary tale, I will say that, in my opinion, this misses the point of the book. In my opinion, I didn’t find this book romantic at all (certainly not in the conventional, human interpretation of the word) and it certainly is not a factor in anything that Jessie chooses to do – take, for example, Jessie’s last huge decision to walk to the sands. If this were all about true love, wouldn’t she have dragged her true love with her? No. She goes by herself. Very, very late in the book (i’m talking the last 30 pages) there is, I guess, what can be interpreted as a romantic development, but Jessie isn’t exactly a romantic person. I didn’t see this relationship as a romance so much as it is a reunion between people that thought they would never see each other again. But this is all moot, and I don’t even want to spend any more time on this because the book is really not a romance, it’s only a teeny tiny 1% of the overall book, and it’s distracting from the main point:

Dust is above all a deconstruction of the zombie myth.

Instead of using the undead as a catalyst for human ugliness, it instead approaches zombies as people…that have died and been born again. It is their story, through one of their own’s eyes. It is not a cautionary tale about the evils of humanity or the presumptions of science or whatnot; to reduce the complexity of Dust to such an interpretation does the book a grave disservice. I’d liken Dust to a novel such as Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, which plays on the same human/inhuman blurry areas (but more on that in the character section below).

I will say, however, that Dust is a book that clearly is NOT for everyone. Take the ending, for example (which I think, as a zombie fan, is an homage to a cornerstone of scifi horror) – it’s a risk and understandably, not for everyone. But for me? I loved it.

Ana: Dust has a promising start and I loved the first half of the book: with gore and violence and a wonderful look at how Jessie lives now. I especially liked how zombies are still decaying and will eventually, and very slowly, go through what all dead bodies go through: all the stages of decay but with the different that it happens to the zombies whilst they are conscious. It is in fact the living dead in all their horrifying glory.

But is Dust really that different from the average zombie novel? I don’t think so. Sure, it is from a different perspective ,ie from the living dead themselves but at its core it still deals with fear, love and what it is to be human. THAT’s what bothers me the most about the book – that it promises a world of difference, but that it doesn’t deliver.

I will agree with Thea when she says that Dust is above all a deconstruction of the zombie myth but beyond that, is where we fundamentally disagree. I think that this deconstruction is not well done at all, it is heavy – handed and yes, with an underlying message. I think that the idea that zombies “are just people who died” is hammered over and over again in a less than subtle way. In trying to show the other side’s story, I believe the author did in fact a 360 turn going right back at the starting point – by making them just like humans only with a different diet. The more the story progresses, the more Jessie and her companions sound like humans and when the virus hits they even start to look like humans. Which brings me back to the point I am trying to make: the story to me is not unique, or original; it simply deals with flawed characters who can be as good and bad, as violent or not, as humans are. Perhaps that is actually the point. In which case, it is just another story that doesn’t have anything special to it, at least not for me.

It is also very predictable: I saw the resolution coming a mile away, I saw the identity of one the characters as soon as she walked into the novel and I saw the romantic development between Jessie and another character basically from page 1 and yes, there is romance there although not – I agree with Thea here – central to the story. And although I don’t think that the book is about messages, they are undoubtedly THERE : in what humans are capable of, what science is capable of, what people would do for misguided love. It is so there that at one point Jessie muses:

“typical human and no, I refused to start thinking of myself as one too. “Speaking,” I said, as coldly and calmly as I could muster, “as someone with a little actual afterlife experience? This isn’t hell. There is no hell. It’s just what your kind always do to the world in one form of another, so pull yourself together and keep walking”.

I kept thinking about “identity” and how what really differentiates zombies and humans is simply how each chooses to consume their food: zombies like it raw, humans like it cooked. At first, it seemed to be more than that: it seemed that there was going to be MORE that identified the zombies as separate entities– perhaps their aggressive culture, perhaps their danse macabre – but the former can be put down as another thing that is actually remnants of their humanity and the latter is never truly explored. I think this makes the book less complex and more simplistic, as a matter of fact.

But beyond that: the novel has problems with pacing as well with the second half dragging itself to a conclusion full of navel gazing. With regards to the ending: count me in as one that did not like it, but then again, I am not a horror-sci fi fan and probably failed to see as the homage that it possibly is.

On the characters:

Thea: Dust is one of those books that gets better upon reflection, especially from a character perspective. As with any book filtered through the perspective of a single character, there is a degree of unreliability – and I think that it is important to keep in mind that our narrator, Jessie, is a flawed character that sees what she wants to see, and interprets things in the way she wants to interpret them. Again, the important thing to remember about Dust is that it is a book about the life after death – about people that have lived and died, and have been reborn. As such, Jessie and her ilk experience emotions that are very human and familiar – and yet at the same time, they are not exactly human (which makes sense – if all of our life experiences contribute to how we see things and interpret the world around us, the effect is even more dramatic on those that have been killed and reanimated). And this is the main point of contention between Ana and myself, because Ana thinks that the emotions that Jessie feels are TOO human to be zombie, to which I ask, what then makes a zombie? Must they only be mindless creatures hungering for braaaaaains? And then I would ask, why this hate against the zombie? In other books featuring vampires or fairies or werewolves or angels, they all experience “human” emotions, and those are considered successes or acceptable, but when it’s a zombie this is a failure? It seems hypocritical to me. Zombie discrimination, I tell you! Again, this is Ms. Turner’s deconstruction of the zombie, by making them something other – not human, certainly not, but not so unfamiliar either. Not living, not dead, but something in between.

As a narrator and protagonist, Jessie is a mess of sharp edges, tough attitude, and strangely, vulnerability. Jessie’s narration is by turns funny, astute, and hard. Though she was only fifteen when she died, death and revival have a way of changing a body, both physically and emotionally. Through her memories, we learn about her less-than-ideal human life, and her final ability to find a home only beyond the grave. Her relationship with her gang, especially the tangled, complicated relationship with Joe, is fodder for reflection. Yes, Jessie feels emotions – remorse, love, hate, guilt, although I would argue that her brand of emotion is twisted and if human in origin, no longer exactly human in expression – and over the course of the book she grows and changes as a character, as do the other main characters in the book. And, unlike vampires locked in eternal youth, or zombies in films locked in eternal hunger, Jessie and her crew’s desires for food do not dictate who or what they are. They are not in permanent stasis, as each zombie has a life cycle of its own. When the shit hits the fan later in the book and both zombies and humans begin to change again, mutating from undead to..sort of living again, these emotions and needs morph as well. I think it’s a pretty awesome catalyst for character development, and an original way to take a look at the connection between eating, and (non)humanity.

“How many kinds of living and dead and living dead and dead living had I been in just these few months, these few days, after the stasis of plain old human living and dying? I deserved some kind of existential medal.”

As for the other characters, I thought they were all wonderfully handled and written, in particular ‘maldie Renee (lost and friendless and discriminated against for the fact that she was embalmed), the dustie Florian with his pacifism and insightful senility, the quiet and less aggressive (yet courageous) Linc, and of course, the manipulative, screeching electric guitar that is Joe. If there’s anything that will differentiate the zombie from the human, I think it is apparent in Jessie and Joe’s relationship, in which they crush each other’s bones and fight to the point of threatening each other’s deaths as a normality, but find solace in that rage. It is what by hoo terms we would call an abusive relationship, but our interpretations don’t really apply to the walking dead. Theirs is a tangled mess of hate and trust and love, and while there are glimpses of humanity and these characters (or at least Jessie) has some semblance of right and wrong, the zombie rulebook is completely different from the human one. It is this otherness that makes the deconstruction a success, in my opinion.

I will briefly address what I know Ana will bring up (based on our emails back and forth). I just want to say that I do NOT think the author assigns any moral judgements to her characters, to Jessie’s relationships, or to any aspect of the story. Jessie does have a sense of morality, although it clearly has changed since her time as a human (from a vegan animal rights activist to an animal huntress and zombie killer as one of the most fierce of the gang’s fighters, and in the end, eating anyone and anything – human, plant, inanimate object, friend, enemy – in order to survive). The presence of Jessie’s ability to make decisions based on her own concepts of morality does not equate to a moral message or judgement for the book, however. In my opinion, this just confirms how these biological changes effect the experience and perception of each character in this book. I think that it is important to remember that Dust is a book about what are by definition non-human characters, with vestiges of humanity – they remember who they were, certain things from their lives, and they feel emotions. But it is vital to keep in mind that they are creatures that have died and been reborn, their very brains rewired and reconfigured. They do not think in the same way that we do, as much as a twenty-year old thinks and behaves in the way that an eighty-year old would, and so for that reason their motivations may sit strangely with us hoo readers – but that, I think, is the point. There is no underlying message, no judgement or subtext that says that zombies are GOOD and humans are EVIL or any such nonsense. I urge everyone to please, please, for the love of all that is good in the world of literature, to try to step outside of your comfort zone and view Jessie’s world through the eyes of someone that is neither living nor dead, but someone caught in between.

Ana: What are zombies? I don’t know. They might not be all about braaaaaaaaaiins but I think it is clear that they are not simply “humans who died” either. They are “other”. And this is indeed the greatest point of contention between Thea and me when it comes to the book: I think that the book completely fails in capturing this “otherness” of these characters and fully exploring and developing it. I think that the zombies here are utterly familiar, completely humanised and to me that include human moral judgments as well or else Jessie would not mind eating humans; or else Jessie would not know that there is “right” and “wrong” and that her abusive relationship with Joe for example falls under the latter. That is definitely this awareness here and I honestly don’t see a complete re-wire of their brains. Dust might be a book about non-human characters but still so very human that they still have very human concepts of morality and emotions.

Jessie is very much still human, (even though she will tell you that she is not and I am agreeing on the unreliability of her narrative here), wanting to be loved and accepted which is in direct contrast to what happened to her when she was alive – she was neither loved or accepted when alive. Which is why she fell into the relationship with Joe – not because as a zombie she doesn’t care anymore, or her brain has been re-wired but because of her very human characteristics of wanting to fit in, be accepted. At one point she thinks:

“Even knowing then and later that I should have collected my strength and wits, turned around and left for good, no looking back. I stayed because of him. Like I said, I was fifteen”

and then:

“I hated that look. I hated that I could never even see the sorry part of it anymore, the part that really mattered, all I could see was how it was still always me that was wrong and him that was right. Always. No matter what.”

This reads as though it could apply to anybody. I would have loved to see the “otherness” or a true Zombie 2.0 story. To me, I just read another book of a character that had family issues and carried them to grave and beyond – with a bit of mystery on the side.

Final Thoughts, Observations and Rating:

Thea: Clearly, Dust is not for everyone. At times funny, at times painful, this reimagining of the zombie resonated for me, like the strings of the electric guitar or quiet plink of piano Jessie hears in her undead brain. It’s a strange book, but a memorable one for all that. A notable, if not favorite, read of 2010 for me.

Ana: Definitely not for everyone and above all, definitely not for me. Dust left me completely cold and underwhelmed.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter 1:

My right arm fell off today. Lucky for me, I’m left-handed.

In the accident that killed me I rocketed from the back seat straight through the windshield–no seatbelt, yeah, I know–and the pavement sheared my arm to nothing below the shoulder. Not torn off, but dangling by thin, precious little bits of skin and bone and ligament. I had a closed casket, I’m sure of it, because they never wired the arm or glued it or any other pretty undertaker trick. I managed to crawl back out of the ground without its help anyway, and of course after nine perfectly uneventful years of fighting and dancing and hunting and getting by fine with the left arm, the right finally shuffles its coil right on the banks of the Great River County Park’s not-so-Great River, smack in the middle of a meat run. Joe, my boy, my backup, was not sympathetic in the least….

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: Dust has a pretty cool website, complete with extras such as the following book trailers (this one is hilarious, if not really having anything at all to do with the book):

You can see the other trailers HERE.

Rating:

Thea: 8 – Excellent

Ana: 5 – Meh

Reading Next: Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon

Giveaway Details:

Courtesy of publisher Ace, we have FIVE copies of Dust up for grabs. The contest is open to addresses in the United States only, and will run until September 4th at 11:59 pm (PST). To enter, leave a comment here telling us what your favorite zombie novel is. Only ONE entry per person, please! Multiple comments from the same I.P. address will be automatically disqualified. Good luck!

Author: Suzanne Collins

Genre: Dystopian, Speculative Fiction, Young Adult

Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: August 2010
Hardcover: 390 Pages

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she’s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she’s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what’s worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss’s family, not her friends, not the people of District 12. Powerful and haunting, this thrilling final installment of Suzanne Collins’s groundbreaking The Hunger Games trilogy promises to be one of the most talked about books of the year.

Stand alone or series: Book 3 in the Hunger Games series

How did I get this book: Review Copy from the Publisher

Why did I read this book: This final novel in the Hunger Games series is THE most buzzed about YA book of 2010 – of COURSE I was going to read it. I enjoyed The Hunger Games (though felt it was an American, toned-down version of Battle Royale) and was more impressed with the original direction of Catching Fire, so I was hoping for big things from Mockingjay…

Review:

**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE HUNGER GAMES AND CATCHING FIRE. If you have not read the first two books in this trilogy and want to remain unspoiled, I highly suggest you look away. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.**

After the dramatic breakout from the Arena during the Quarter Quell, Katniss and a few other victor tributes were able to escape from the Capitol’s grasp, and have taken refuge in District 13. At the end of Catching Fire, Katniss, injured during the daring escape from the Arena, awakens to discover that District 12 is a smoldering ruin, that her friends, mentors and allies have been in on a larger rebellion scheme all along – and worst of all, she awakens to learn that Peeta has been captured by the Capitol, suffering a horrific fate Katniss cannot even begin to fathom. Taken to the subversive and very-much-alive District 13, Katniss gradually regains her strength and health and decides to make one of the most important decisions of her life. She agrees to become the Mockingjay; the face of the rebellion against the Capitol. But she soon discovers that being the Mockingjay is more treacherous than she could have imagined, as she’s used as a pawn in an incredibly dangerous, high-stakes power game between President Coin (of District 13) and President Snow. Though she believes in the rebellion and fighting back the capitol, Katniss begins to question Coin’s tactics – freedom, but at what cost?

Mockingjay is beyond doubt one of the most talked about, most highly anticipated YA releases of 2010 – and with that buzz comes incredibly high reader expectations. With high expectations comes, inevitably, some disappointment. For me, though? Mockingjay was everything I thought was missing from The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. It wasn’t a perfect book (especially given its tendency towards heavy-handed message-hammering), however, it was a meaningful and resonant one. I don’t think the Hunger Games trilogy could have ended any other way, heartbreaking and cruel though this book may be. I loved it.

First, I do want to take an aside to address something I’ve been seeing in reviews across the blogosphere – that is, the issue of reader expectation versus reality. I cannot grade this book according to what I expected or wished it could have been; I can only analyze what actually has been written. And, as it stands Mockingjay IS a hugely different book than its two predecessors – it is a paradigm shift of the Hunger Games trilogy. For some readers, this shift will be disappointing, but for me, it answered my single biggest problem with the series to date: that is, how The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, while enthralling and action-packed, felt sanitized of true violence, terror or tough decisions. There is “danger” in the arena in these earlier books, but there’s never any question that Katniss or Peeta will make it out of the Arena. Similarly, there was no moral quandary, no meaty ethical questioning that takes place in these two prior books – Katniss and Peeta are time and time again bailed out of actually killing friends or anyone in cold blood (imagine, for example how The Hunger Games would have turned out had Katniss been forced to make a decision to kill Rue or Peeta?). In Mockingjay, Ms. Collins discards this simplistic, lite version of violent dystopian horror and inflicts the most dramatic, traumatizing, heartbreaking stuff she could have possibly done to her characters.

People die (I’m talking MAJOR characters).

People are forced to make hard decisions (A preemptive strike? Inhumane weapons? To punish the Capitol’s children just as those of the Districts have been punished for seventy-five years?).

And I personally have to give kudos to Ms. Collins for this shattering of the picture pretty dystopia-lite facade. In books 1 & 2, Katniss has time to worry about which boy she likes. In Mockingjay? All that has to be pushed aside in order to survive a war in which both sides are equally bloodthirsty and driven to insane, destructive lengths to win. If you were looking for drawn out romantic resolution, Mockingjay will certainly not live up to that expectation. I will say that while I loved this shock of ruthless, cold reality – in which main characters are not protected by some magical author bubble that promises that they will be safe, beautiful and sane forever – I do think that the book will undoubtedly lose some fans that have come to expect the lighter incarnations of THG series (again, this is where reader expectation kicks in).

As for the characters, they go through the grinder in Mockingjay, and understandably, not a one of them comes out unscathed. Katniss, our heroine, is injured so often both physically and emotionally tested, that it’s no surprise that she breaks down in this final book. That doesn’t mean Katniss is weak or a shell of her former self – she is defiant and calculating as ever, but she also is forced to grow into a different person in Mockingjay. Finally, she sees the whole picture and understands her role as a pawn in a larger game – Katniss is a tool, a figurehead to be brandished and thrown away when she gets too dangerous, just as Peeta has been. As this shroud of cluelessness falls from Katniss’s eyes, she finally is able to take control of her life and make her own decisions, right or wrong. This transformation in Mockingjay is a dramatic and painful thing, but one I think Ms. Collins handles perfectly, solidifying Katniss’s place as one of my favorite heroines of current YA. Gale, too, blossoms into a different person, hungry for payback and destruction. But, besides Katniss’s arc, it is Peeta’s that is the most shocking and poignant of the bunch (at least, it is in my opinion). I won’t spoil what exactly happens to these characters, except to say that Peeta finally sees Katniss in a different way, forever altering their relationship. It’s an enormous shift, and one that is unexpected but welcome.

While I did love the gloves coming off, so to speak, and the sharp characterizations, I do think that Mockingjay stumbles in the writing department. Mockingjay is undeniably heavy-handed with it’s very clear Messages – the political metaphor (it’s not even a metaphor; the heinous evilness of war is hammered home into readers’ heads with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer), the reality television critique, how absolute power corrupts absolutely, etc. The writing, too, felt repetitive and needlessly explicit. For example, I loved Katniss’s haunting “Hanging Tree” song, but I hated that Ms. Collins felt the need to explain the song – in Katniss’s voice of course – stanza by stanza. Subtlety. Mockingjay could have used some.

That criticism aside, I think Mockingjay was a fitting, beautifully tragic end to a poignant series. Mockingjay isn’t a book about some girl prancing about amidst a thin veneer of danger – this is a book about brutal, murderous war, and how a girl tries to survive, living with the decisions she has made and the blood on her hands. It is powerful, dark, soul-searching stuff, that though incongruous with the first two books, ultimately is all the more admirable because of its grit and pain. I absolutely recommend Mockingjay – but be aware that this is not a book for the weak of heart. Mockingjay is resonant, powerful, and emotionally exhausting – and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter One:

I stare down at my shoes, watching as a fine layer of ash settles on the worn leather. This is where the bed I shared with my sister, Prim, stood. Over there was the kitchen table. The bricks of the chimney, which collapsed in a charred heap, provide a point of reference for the rest of the house. How else could I orient myself in this sea of gray?

Almost nothing remains of District 12. A month ago, the Capitol’s firebombs obliterated the poor coal miners’ houses in the Seam, the shops in the town, even the Justice Building. The only area that escaped incineration was the Victor’s Village. I don’t know why exactly. Perhaps so anyone forced to come here on Capitol business would have somewhere decent to stay. The odd reporter. A committee assessing the condition of the coal mines. A squad of Peacekeepers checking for returning refugees.

But no one is returning except me. And that’s only for a brief visit. The authorities in District 13 were against my coming back. They viewed it as a costly and pointless venture, given that at least a dozen invisible hovercraft are circling overhead for my protection and there’s no intelligence to be gained. I had to see it, though. So much so that I made it a condition of my cooperating with any of their plans.

Finally, Plutarch Heavensbee, the Head Gamemaker who had organized the rebels in the Capitol, threw up his hands. “Let her go. Better to waste a day than another month. Maybe a little tour of Twelve is just what she needs to convince her we’re on the same side.”

The same side. A pain stabs my left temple and I press my hand against it. Right on the spot where Johanna Mason hit me with the coil of wire. The memories swirl as I try to sort out what is true and what is false. What series of events led me to be standing in the ruins of my city? This is hard because the effects of the concussion she gave me haven’t completely subsided and my thoughts still have a tendency to jumble together. Also, the drugs they use to control my pain and mood sometimes make me see things. I guess. I’m still not entirely convinced that I was hallucinating the night the floor of my hospital room transformed into a carpet of writhing snakes.

I use a technique one of the doctors suggested. I start with the simplest things I know to be true and work toward the more complicated. The list begins to roll in my head. . . .

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Peeta was taken prisoner. He is thought to be dead. Most likely he is dead. It is probably best if he is dead. . . .

You can read the full chapter online HERE. Also, you can check out author Suzanne Collins reading chapter one aloud below:

(Is anyone a little weirded out that Katniss has a southern accent in Ms. Collins’ reading? Just me? Nevermind.)

Additional Thoughts: Our current Mockingjay 13 District Blog Tour and Giveaway is still up and running – and is ending tonight at 11:59pm (PST).

If you haven’t yet entered for your chance to win a sweet Mockingjay-embossed iSkin, hurry up before it’s too late!

Rating: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: Dust by Joan Frances Turner