M.E. Kinkade

The Mutual Admiration Society by Lesley Kagen

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I admire author Lesley Kagen’s devotion to a narrating character’s very fresh and original voice. She really captures the sound of a 10-year-old kid who has had a rough life in the early ’60s. The plot is cute (what kind of mysteries would a kid dream up and how would they really resolve?).

But it’s too much. You just drown in the main character’s (Tessie) mental side thoughts and lists and repetition and overall ooze of the voice. It’s exactly like listening to a chatty, imaginative kid hyped up on pixie sticks talk right in your ear…for 12 hours. Not something a lot of people would sign up for.

The mystery isn’t as big of a mystery as it seemed, but a great deal of neighborhood drama is revealed and handled instead. It was cute but overmuch. And I found the “aristocratic TV language” asides from the little sister to be way too hard to believe–even though Tessie frequently gets mixed up on phrases, her little sister periodically (when the plot desires it!) pops out with perfectly logical and grammatically correct posh phrases we’re supposed to believe she picked up from TV.

Good luck to you if you can get through this one; you might want to bring some earplugs.

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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is impossible to read this book without comparing it to the iconic movie, but both stand up well on their own as distinct art pieces. There is overlap, but they are so different it’s like chocolate chip cookie dough compared against cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream–both are pretty good!

The book makes the “electric sheep” rather literal–fake sheep, in a world where owning an animal is a statement about wealth. In fact, it’s Deckard’s driving motivation. He is desperately embarrassed about his electric sheep and longs to upgrade to a real animal. This need is both sort of amusing and deeply philosophical in line with the story. Does it matter if something is real if you have to do all the same motions to keep up status when it is fake? (Pretending to feed and groom your electric sheep, for example, so your neighbors don’t find out). This question of “what is real?” is returned to again and again.

However, this is classic sci-fi, so it comes with some problems. Apparently Dick can easily imagine androids and Mara colonization by 1991…but women can only be secretaries or housewives. And midway through the book Dick developed some kind of fascination with breasts. I laughed out loud when one description read, “she glanced at her husband, her breasts rising and falling,” as of her bosom were somehow autonomous and just moving of its own volition.

But despite that, and despite his strong preference for the word “ersatz,” this is absolutely worth the read.

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Prince of Shadows by Rachel Caine

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I would never have thought there was more to Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet, but lo and behold, not only is there more but it’s intense and magical and deeply political. R&J has become a trite school rite-of-passage; everyone has 14-year-olds asking “wherefore art thou Romeo?” and so no one gives it a passing thought.
Rachel Caine took a second glance, and her story brings to life a Verona as thick with blood in the streets as any block warred over by crips and bloods. It’s told from Benvolio’s perspective, the annoyed and no-fun cousin who just thinks everyone should stop fighting already. But why? The Prince of Shadows has an answer.
As a fan of the Baz Luhrman version of R&J, I can’t help but see that cast in this story, particularly in the maddened/drunken/high out of his mind Mercutio. But instead of the passing whimsy friend who dies for no good reason, Caine gives us a powerful backstory that pushes the whole plot–love and death and all–forward.
I was worried this book would be a rote retelling, but the actual Shakespearean language comes in only briefly, and always raises the sense of dread. (“Oh no,” you think, “that means we’re in Act Three! He’s running out of time!”) Caine has upgraded the apothecary to a herbalist/witch, to great effect. It has all the feel of the original, with modern depth and a much higher headcount.
This is a great book for a summer’s day before you hit up the Shakespeare in the Park. You’ll never look at R&J the same.

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Solid State by Jonathan Coulton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Weird, beautiful, and good. I haven’t yet heard the album for which this was written, and maybe that’s a mistake, but Matt Fraction was co-author and I had to gobble it up.
First, the easy part: the art is good. It brings depth that a novelization just couldn’t match. I like the lines and the use of color and the general absurdity, particularly with feelings communicated with thumbs-up and thumbs-downs.
The story–more complicated. In fact I think I’ll have to read it again to really grok it, but it is essentially about reality and time and privacy versus privilege. It is a flag in the ground for the net neutrality wars, a banner that sometimes there is just a too far. And yet even that acknowledges there are consequences.
It’s a bit non-linear–I think–but it’s a comic/book that will both please you and make you rock back and think.
It’s also charming, for me, to learn that one of my favorite nerd musicians (Coulton) is a fan of one of my favorite comic writers (Fraction). But of course he is. I saw throwbacks in this, too, to some of Coulton’s earlier hits, like Code Monkey. The man has his themes…and it works.

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Ash and Quill by Rachel Caine

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jess is back in the teeth of the wolf for the penultimate book in the series–this time set in the rebellious, Library-hating Americas!

The story really lets Thomas shine and deepens the relationship between Wolfe and Santi, which is touching and feels realistic. The Burners, even, are shown to be nuanced, justifiably hating the Library and yet still with kindness in them.

The ending had me literally gasping, but the middle felt a bit –obvious? The pacing was predictable, and so often Jess would narrate something and it would immediately be repeated as true on the next line. “…It also made him think, They should be afraid.
Jess certainly was.”
That kind of thing, over and over and over, until I could hear the …dada dada da? Da da…pacing in the text. It got wearying.

But the characters are still vibrant and I’m still not clear how the story will end, so I’ll meet you for the final soon.

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The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

“Love is important but will only make you feel terrible so maybe you’re better off without it. Also everything is monochrome and translucent, that sucks.” — This book, basically.

Let me preface by saying any given sentence is well-written and beautifully phrased. It’s pretty, line by line.

But, for me, it just doesn’t add up to an enjoyable experience, and I only read it all because a friend recommended it. Sorry, pal.

I was really disappointed to discover that the “fairy tale” parts of the book were in there for little more than mysterious whimsy and are never explained or really essential to the plot. Also disappointing is the main character is NOT the girl with glass feet–as the title suggested–but an antisocial man with Issues and a fondness for photography. I quickly hated him. You know that thing you do in bad horror movies where you yell at the character for running upstairs instead of to the logical safe point? I did that, but more a frustrated, “just go outside, you loser!”

For a story that leans so very heavily on metaphor, you’d think he could avoid the “mystically wise child” trope, but alas, the kid predictably spouts off timely and deeply feeling advice just when Midas (the antisocial man) needs it most. All other characters, however, are expendable and flit in and out of the story at random.

I guess at the heart I’m just not into stories that aspire to tell us how much life sucks, and that was the central theme I got. Plus I was disappointed that there was no investigation into why someone would get glass feet, and only half-hearted attempts to cite it. (I guess I watch too many detective shows)

Just not for me. I like love, and color, and going outside.

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A Taint in the Blood by S.M. Stirling

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I quit. I can’t read this. The second time a rape is sketchily described and not treated as something horrible has been too much. Plus all the telepathy scenes are impossible to figure out–it just needs a clearer layout!–because telepathy is shown the same way as stream-of-consciousness thought. It’s endlessly confusing. Add distasteful on top of it and I just can’t force myself to continue. There are some interesting ideas about vampires but nope, I can’t ride it out.

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Medicine for the Dead by Arianne “Tex” Thompson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I hesitated to pick this book up because I struggled so much with the cultural and language references in the first. That was a huge mistake–I enjoyed Medicine For The Dead much much more.

For one thing, all the characters have been introduced, but now there are fewer people so there is plenty more time to settle in and really get to know folks, and this is where Tex shines. Through moments and peeks and confusion, she highlights the differences between cultures, people, and expectations, the narrative only clear to the reader but hopelessly tangled for the characters themselves.

It’s a traveling book, but it is also a book where we finally get the magical payoffs that were only hinted at in book 1. Here is a melange of powers, and each incites a different reaction.

More than anything, though, I was struck by the way things just. kept. getting. worse. Just as I found myself feeling like ok, they’re going to make it, Thompson would come out with another shocker. You certainly can’t get too at ease in this tale.

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The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow. Such incredible prose. I had no idea what I was getting into. I understood this was a war book, and about Vietnam, but I had no idea it was less of a book about war than a book about how war affects people, about the spaces between fighting, about slowly losing yourself in the darkness and the fear.
I had been afraid this was a glorification of war, but it is anything but. It is hard truth wrapped in incredible writing, and I am sorry I waited this long to discover it.

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The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the amazing things about reading is it allows us to communicate, mind to mind, regardless of time or proximity. That was how it felt to read The Sparrow—diving in and having a heartfelt conversation with the author about the future, about philosophy, about God.
I’m upset I didn’t discover this book sooner. It was a powerful and engrossing read, the kind of book that you tell everyone about even before you’re done with it.
On the face of it, it’s almost silly: a group of Jesuits are the first people to discover—and then go out to meet—a new alien sentient species. They want to “meet God’s other children.” But it’s sincere rather than farcical. The main character, Emilio Sandoz, feels called by God. And you wonder, throughout, if he is right.
The mission goes horribly wrong, and the communications sent back to Earth tell a twist on the facts that lead everyone back on Earth to revile Emilio, the only survivor. Emilio is a broken man when he returns, and it takes months to get him physically and emotionally healed enough to tell his story, for the truth in the misunderstandings to be revealed.
I won’t get into it, other than to say it is powerful.

My only complaint about the story is that it pulls back a little on the narrative just at the climactic reveal. Just when the horrible truths are being told, the narration shifts exclusively to a distant third-person telling, as Emilio dispassionately explains what happened. But the rest of the story had let it flit from character to character. It felt a little like a cheat, like even the author had trouble imagining the horrors she had dreamed up and only wanted to examine them academically. But I would have liked to have heard it from closer-up, from one of the other characters as it happened, to feel the full terror rather than an academic one.

Still, the book is brave in so many ways. I only hope we haven’t disappointed our past selves too much by being so far behind the sci-do curve.

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