Amy

An Outstanding Heroine and Deeply Humane Story

Revisado: 10-20-16

I had high hopes for this novel, but I was unprepared for how thoroughly it won me over. I was entranced.

As a historian, I'm very interested in the Whitechapel murders and their context in the East End of London, and the careful research in evidence in A Taste for Monsters satisfied me deeply. I've walked in the characters' footsteps at London Hospital, Spitalfields, and Whitechapel, and I delighted in the sharp detail Kirby brought to the story.

But there's so much more. So many times in historical novels -- especially YA novels -- the desire to have a plucky, gutsy heroine leads to all kinds of anachronistic behavior, dialog, etc. Not here. Evelyn is an outstanding heroine, a young woman disfigured by her work with poisonous phosphorus as a "matchstick girl" and struggling to find a means of supporting herself with dignity. Similarly, Kirby addresses Jack the Ripper in a most refreshing fashion, focusing not on following the monster who killed but instead on restoring and respecting the humanity of the women who were murdered.

This entire story is shot through not only with delicious Gothic atmosphere and genuine peril, but also with gentle, humane insight. Evelyn's work and friendship with Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, is a centerpiece of this mystery/horror/historical/coming-of-age story, and it's simply beautiful.

I can't recommend this enough!

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A Different Dystopia

Revisado: 09-05-16

There are plenty of post-apocalyptic and dystopian stories out there for younger readers, but I'm pleased to see that Children of the Different offers an alternative from the "same old same old" for its audience.

The novel falls somewhere between the middle-reader and young-adult categories, and it follows the compelling characters of thirteen year-old Arika and her twin brother Narrah, inheritors of a world ravaged by the Great Madness, as they experience their coming-of-age via the dreamlike otherworld of the Changeland. S.C. Flynn blends science fiction and fantasy, original ideas and indigenous tradition, to create an imaginative journey with high stakes and able protagonists vividly set in Western Australia.

What I appreciated most in this story is how it empowers young readers, giving them credit for courage and will and agency, and refusing to talk down to them. The final takeaway is one I definitely can get behind: technology can cause problems and it can also offer solutions. What science does, whether it is "good" or "bad" when applied, ultimately depends on the choices of the individuals who use it. Arika and Narrah wrest hope from apparent hopelessness, and the reader imagines that they will choose to heal their people and their world.

The solid narration by Stephen Briggs is helpful, because his accent and pronunciations assist listeners in feeling like they're in Western Australia.

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Haunting, Harrowing, and Fantastic

Revisado: 09-03-16

If you're within the sound of my voice -- or, more appropriately, the sight of my written words -- please take this as a given: I want to sit you down, shove this book into your hands (or the audiobook into your ears), and insist that you enjoy it. Now.

It may be easy to overlook what a stunning achievement this novel represents, but that's because Peadar Ó Guilín makes it seem so effortless as he draws the reader on from one page-turning moment to the next. It is a stunning achievement nonetheless, with its meditation on how a people's history returns to them for rectification; its all-too-relevant consideration of mass culture during its descent ("I don't care if I don't make it... I mean it. The country is done for, and we all know that's the truth. Aiofe is right. Even the survivors have nothing to look forward to except decline..."); its seamless world-building, folding real and mythic Irish history, language, and poetry into its storytelling ("Never has a generation of Irish children been so aware of its own folklore"); its related and stunning sense of place; and its utterly compelling depiction of a three-dimensional, dynamic, and partially (and permanently) disabled heroine.

I don't sell young adult dystopias short, but I also feel confident in saying that The Call transcends the labels others would place on it. Both adult and YA readers of science fiction, fantasy will find much to appreciate here.

The premise is this: Ireland is a nation cut off from the rest of the world, plagued by terrible retribution. Thousands of years after the Sidhe, the people of the mounds, the followers of the Goddess Danu, were displaced by the Irish and banished to a colorless netherworld, they have returned with a vengeance to destroy those who removed them. Every Irish child will face the three minutes of the Call during his or her adolescence. Few return alive, and most of those are twisted beyond recognition. Nessa, whose polio-twisted legs all but promise she will not outrun the Sidhe when her time comes, stubbornly prepares to meet the Call and win her survival.

What I appreciate most -- and that's saying a lot, considering how much I love about this novel -- is the nuanced, insightful way The Call handles the question of, and challenges readers about, conquest and conflict. What are the causes and costs of war? How we determine who is responsible? What does it mean to be guilty/innocent or winning/losing?

Take for instance this passage:

"'Listen,' he says, 'we don't need the Sidhe to teach us evil. We were the ones who put them in the Grey Land, remember? And not just for a day or however long it is the Call lasts. We Irish... we trapped an entire race of people in hell for all eternity just so we could take their homes for ourselves. You can read it in The Book of Conquests. I mean, look at it from their point of view.... There they were, a few thousand years ago, living in a place they loved so much that they called it the Many-Colored Land. Then this other group arrives, pretty much the same as them, speaking the same language even, except this new lot -- our ancestors -- were the first in the world to have iron weapons. They thought it gave them the right to take everything! Everything!'"

And this one:

"'How long must I wait?' she asks the mirror in Sidhe.
"As a survivor, she doesn't need to speak the language anymore. But many like her are more comfortable in it than English, and since they have no choice but to marry each other, the primary schools of the country are filling with tiny tots whose innocent mouths spout the long-dead language of their distant ancestors, which also happen to be the living, never-changing tongue of the enemy. Some day, she thinks, we will be them, a greater victory for the Sidhe than if they kill us all."

Like all great speculative fiction, The Call provides us metaphors by which we can question our condition and examine current issues in our world today. It also provides a window into history, art, and our common humanity. And it does so while providing a chilling and fascinating ride.

Amy Shiels' beautiful narration helps ground the text in its Irish context and bring the characters to life.

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Sensitive Portrait of the Life of a Ripper Victim

Revisado: 12-03-15

This elegant and moving little novel takes its inspiration from the personal effects found on the body of Catherine Eddowes after her murder during the Autumn of Terror in 1888. Eddowes apparently carried all that she owned in the world with her, and Alan M. Clark extrapolates a life story from these items. The result is a powerful and well-researched meditation on the conditions faced by women in the East End of London during the late Victorian period.

This is not a novel about Jack the Ripper or about Eddowes's death (which is covered in a few brief paragraphs); it is a tragic and compelling tale about a woman's life. Its sensitive story puts a human face on both the so-called People of the Abyss and a victim of the Whitechapel murders.

Alicia Rose's narration fits the feel of the novel very well.

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What if the Salem accused really were witches?

Revisado: 08-05-14

During her oral exams for Ph.D. candidacy at Harvard, Connie's advisor asks her the following about her understanding of the colonial American witch trials: "Have you not considered the distinct possibility that the accused were simply guilty of witchcraft?" Here lies the major premise of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane.

No, Connie hadn't considered this possibility, and she doesn't take it seriously when Professor Chilton raises it. After passing her orals, Connie divides her summer between clearing out her grandmother's decrepit home in preparation for selling the place and trying to find an avenue of research for her dissertation proposal. Both endeavors meet when she realizes she may have a lead on a previously unmined primary source: a "recipe" book owned by one of the forgotten prosecuted "witches" from the Salem witch trials. Most of the novel follows Connie's search in 1991, but this narrative is broken up and complemented by extended interludes set during the colonial witch trials.

Howe's strength rests in description. Her portraits of colonial and contemporary Massachusetts bring the settings to life and make them central characters in her story. The fact that Howe herself is the descendant of Elizabeth Proctor (who survived the Salem witch trials) and Elizabeth Howe (who did not) also adds depth and texture to this intergenerational tale.

As a Ph.D. in history myself, I found much of Connie's experience as a graduate student to be familiar. The time frame for her research is wildly condensed from "real life," but Howe offers an explanation for Connie's advisor's crazed expectations. More than a few times I thought that writing this novel must have offered cathartic moments in exorcising Howe's own graduate school experience.

That said, Connie seems a naive, clueless, and inexperienced in her chosen field of study and even basic research methods, and I wasn't quite sure how she'd made it to candidacy at all. A third of the way into the novel I guessed exactly how the rest of the story would unfold, and I ended up being right on every count. This book therefore fails as a procedural story or a mystery. Its enjoyment lies in its sense of mood and atmosphere, as well as the strong connections it underscores between the past and the present, place and memory, history and identity.

Katherine Kellgren's narration was an obstacle to enjoying this book, especially the voice she used for Professor Chilton, which was such an outrageous caricature that it belonged in a farcical comedy. It's difficult to take a tension-filled scene of peril seriously when the narrator's reading makes you want to laugh.

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Good Starting Place or Refresher

Revisado: 08-05-14

I went to these lectures in order to brush up on my knowledge of London's history (which varies depending on the era from "rather expert" to "rather sketchy") and gain new perspectives on the "Cool Britannia" phenomenon today, and this fit the bill. Robert Bucholz offers an interdisciplinary and broad history of the city drawing from court history, literature, sociology, urban planning, economics, and other approaches. He manages to cover a great deal in a short time, complete with entertaining asides and corny humor. I especially appreciated his guided tours of the city during different stages of its life (Chaucer's time, Shakespeare's time, Samuel Pepys's time, Dickens's time, and "Millennial London"), which provided very useful comparisons and contrasts. A work this brief covering such a time span cannot be all things to all people, but for someone already familiar with the history and wanting a refresher, or someone wholly new to the history and seeking an introduction, this is an ideal resource.

The individual lectures are as follows:

1. There's No Place like London
2. The Rise and Fall of Roman Londinium
3. Medieval London's Thousand-Year Climb
4. Economic Life in Chaucer's London
5. Politics and Religion in Chaucer's London
6. London Embraces the Early Tudors
7. Elizabeth I and London as a Stage
8. Life in Shakespeare's London—East
9. Life in Shakespeare's London—West
10. London Rejects the Early Stuarts
11. Life in Samuel Pepys's 17th-Century London
12. Plague and Fire
13. London Rises Again—As an Imperial Capital
14. Johnson's London—All That Life Can Afford
15. The Underside of 18th-Century London
16. London Confronts Its Problems
17. Life in Dickens's London
18. Two Windows into Victorian London
19. Questions Postponed and the Great War
20. London's Interwar Expansion and Diversions
21. The Blitz—The Greatest Target in the World
22. Postwar London Returns to Life
23. The Varied Winds of Change
24. Millennial London—How Do You Like It?

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Paranormal Ripper-Related YA

Revisado: 08-05-14

It's hard to rate this novel, because it does many things.

For one, it's a YA fish-out-of-water tale about a small-town Louisiana girl who suddenly finds herself in a boarding school in London. As a glimpse of London life, popular culture, and history through an American lens, it's a very successful and often laugh-out-loud funny tale.

The novel is also a Jack-the-Ripper thriller about a copycat murderer who uses the original Ripper slayings as inspiration for "tribute" killings, with some clever and chilling contemporary updates to the 1888 story. This aspect of the novel, with its atmospheric descriptions and creepy depiction of the morbidly fascinated public at large does work on its own, although it's somewhat jarring next to the more upbeat schooldays story.

But wait, there's more! This book also serves up a paranormal coming-of-age and coming-into-your-powers narrative about ghosts (or shades), those who see them, and the secret police who are in charge of cases involving them. (Think of the Torchwood group dedicated to ghosts. I couldn't unsee Torchwood throughout this section of the novel.) In some ways the novel hangs together - thank heavens Maureen Johnson confined herself to the copycat killer and didn't go back to the mystery of the original Ripper - but in some ways this combination felt overly ambitious, as if everything but the kitchen sink had been thrown into the mix.

Johnson telegraphed at least three of the intended "big reveals" far in advance, so the mystery angle of the book fell flat. The less said about the teen romantic scenes, the better. In addition, I normally really enjoy Nicola Barber's narrations, but her varied attempts at a Louisiana drawl were so outrageously bad that they kept shocking me out of the story. Just dreadful.

I don't think I'll be following up on more of this series, but I'm not sorry I listened to the novel. Perhaps those who enjoy paranormal YA works will enjoy it more than I did. I listened to it for the Ripper connection primarily, and there were enough innovations there to make this worth my while.

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A Step in the Right Direction

Revisado: 08-05-14

It seems remarkable that there's never been a biography dedicated to Frederick Abberline, Chief Inspector for the Metropolitan Police and arguably the most famous of the professionals involved in the Autumn of Terror's search for Jack the Ripper - remarkable, that is, until one realizes just how much information we don't know about the man. I applaud M.J. Trow's attempt to put Abberline's life and work (both Ripper and non-Ripper related) into a larger context. I hope this is a starting point from which others may launch new research. I certainly learned a great deal about Abberline's other cases, and I was pleased to hear the Ripper murders put into a different perspective.

I especially appreciated how Trow used popular perceptions of Abberline and police officer George Godley, such as their portrayals by Michael Caine and Lewis Collins in Jack the Ripper (1988) and Johnny Depp and Robbie Coltrane in From Hell (2001), as framing devices for his deeper explorations into historical reality. (I only wish he had engaged with the portrayal of Abberline and Edmund Reid in the current Ripper Street from 2012-present, as well, although this book's publication date would have made that a very tight squeeze.)

This is not a flawless study, but it is both useful and interesting to those fascinated by the history of law enforcement, detection, and/or the Autumn of Terror. It has the sense of a "good starting place" about it, and I hope it will inspire more exhaustive research along these same lines. Solid narration.

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A worthy sequel to The Cuckoo's Calling!

Revisado: 07-01-14

This was a thoroughly satisfying sequel to The Cuckoo's Calling, and I'm looking forward to more in this series. As with the first novel, J.K. Rowling (as Robert Galbraith) gives readers a new perspective on a world she knows well: in this case, the publishing industry. When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in Cormoran Strike to track him down and send him home. Of course, all is not as it seems, and ultimately Strike must investigate Quine's gruesome, grisly murder -- which Quine himself apparently described in detail in his latest unpublished manuscript, a text which also cruelly attacks almost everyone he knows (and thus offers many motives for murder). The mystery itself is expertly constructed, well paced, and clever.

Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin both grow as individuals and a team. One mystery from the first novel is solved -- that is, what Strike's ex-fiancee Charlotte did that was truly unforgivable enough to break up their sixteen-year on-and-off-again relationship -- while another is introduced regarding Robin's personal history. Both characters remain compellingly three-dimensional. Strike's defense of Mrs. Quine and both characters' interactions with the Quines' developmentally disabled daughter Orlando remind readers why these flawed individuals are nonetheless the "heroes" of the tale. Cormoran's younger half-brother Al also puts Strike in a new perspective, and I hope we'll see more of him. London is very much a character in its own right, as well, and Rowling paints its portrait in beautiful detail.

This novel has none of the symptoms of second-book symptom. Rowling knows how to draw characters, plot mysteries, and evoke settings, and all three talents are well displayed here.

This is the third audiobook I've listened to narrated by Robert Glenister, and he continues to blow me away with his pitch-perfect readings. He is perfection.

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Walt Longmire follows Dante into a frozen hell

Revisado: 04-26-14

Craig Johnson manages to do something different with every new addition to his Walt Longmire series, and in the case of Hell is Empty, he's created one of his most memorable and meaningful novels yet. The majority of the novel follows Walt's one-man hunt for the convicted and escaped murderer Raynaud Shade in the icy hell of the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area at 13,000-foot elevation during a winter blizzard. This cat-and-mouse pursuit unfolds as an extended reimagining and commentary on Dante's Inferno, complete with its own Virgil -- that is, the return of Virgil White Buffalo from Another Man's Moccasins, who happens to be the grandfather of one of Shade's victims, and who may or may not be dead at the time he helps Walt on his quest.

(Needless to say, this is not the place to start the Longmire series. But if you're already a fan, this is a special treat.)

Suffering from a concussion, hypothermia, exhaustion, and the effects of high elevation, Longmire is hardly a reliable narrator, and Johnson satisfyingly offers both mystical and medical explanations for (most of) what happens in the mountains during Longmire's long night of the soul. This seventh Longmire novel transcends traditional man vs. man and man vs. wilderness conflicts to achieve an introspective, philosophical, spiritual tale worthy of Dante (seasoned with plenty of Homer for extra flavor). I completed this with breathless relish.

George Guidall was made to read these books. His narration is perfection.

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