KBergin

The number of characters

Revisado: 02-03-25

Too many characters are too alike, sometimes leading to confusion, other times creating a cast not fully developed.

The novel began very well—exciting relationships, unusual scenarios and settings—a sort of “Harry Potter turned on its head.” But the sudden dive into mass murder and alien races wasn’t adequately prepared for.

The inhuman army (the “blinds”) needed further preparation before it was sprung full force on both the story and its main characters.

Not sure if I’ll leap into volume 2 immediately.

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Eh. Ugh.

Revisado: 01-19-25

I bought it based on Scalzi’s track record, but I wish I could return this one. I couldn’t get past the first hour. What others seem to find funny, I found sophomoric, even silly. Wasted my money.

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Terrific plotting. Great handling of large cast.

Revisado: 11-02-24

The broad-ranging and truly terrifying home-grown terrorist plot was excellently handled. But I missed Three Pines and the humanity its characters always provide.

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My head speculative fiction. A marvel of a novel.

Revisado: 09-17-24

I now own over 500 Audible titles, and THE SPARROW (my seventh purchase) was one of those “try something new”;take-a-chance. . Mary Doria Russell’s breathtaking novel is still one of my favorites; I re-listen to it (and its follow-up novel at least once a year., and I bought it 13 years ago. As a still practicing English professor at that time, I had immersed myself in “literary” fiction and poetry—primarily British( (from Beowulf, Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Auden, T. S. Eliot and The Golden Notebook) and American (Anne Bradstreet’s poems to Twain, Emerson, Auden, and Hemingway). My guilty pleasure reading consisted of mystery, detective, and police procedurals between the 1930’s to the present.

But science fiction and (later) high fantasy fiction weren’t on my radar.

What separates this new-world travel trope is her choice of a Jesuit priest as her POV character. And CAN she create characters! This literary fiction isn’t exquisitely plotted and filled with plot twists—all true to characters, setting, and situation This is a novel of approachable philosophy—not a space opera (although I’ve discovered just how much fun those can be in the intervening years. Had it not been for this novel, I would have deprived myself of some of my favorite books over the last 13-15 years.

Read it or weep. Read it and weep.

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Magnificent Series

Revisado: 06-23-24

I began Sarah Maas’s other series, Court of Thorns and Roses, and couldn’t finish it. It read more like a romance, focusing more on scenes of sexual engagements than on a grand adventure.

But Throne of Glass’s seven novels is everything a lover of adventure fantasy could hope for.

Its great heroine and vast and varied panoply of heroic supporting characters fight to unite all kingdoms to resurrect a Better World.

Their powerful enemies, bent on universal domination, create and lead an uncountable horde of terrifying monsters—some infested humans, some terrifying, giant spiders—led by a king and queen from different worlds, who threaten both all that is good and, at the same time, each other.

The battle scenes are breathtaking. The intimate scenes between comrades and lovers are convincing, moving, sometimes heartbreaking.

Overall, a masterful piece of writing.

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Another stunning addition to de Leon’s series

Revisado: 05-17-24

I have enjoyed at least six of Dr Leon’s Venetian police procedurals. This may be my favorite. The large cast of characters, both central and minor, are beautifully crafted, as as are the minute steps taken to the humane solution taken by her always thoughtful and intelligent central character, Commissario Guido Brunettiti.

Set in the rarified world of high opera, the apparent murder by cyanide poisoning of the greatest living conductor of opera draws us into the life of a man whom is both worshipped by opera fans and, we gradually learn, worthy of the hatred of many who knew his darkest secrets, past and present. The list of suspects grows as we learn his hidden past—going back as far as his Nazi involvement before and during WWII, his treatment of sopranos and other females over five decades, his attitudes towards homosexuals and lesbians, and his life with his three wives and families.

Brunetti’s methods of questioning suspects and tangentially connected individuals uncovers the truth at the end and, as shocking as it is, it is also fascinating and inevitable.

Another story that reveals as much about Brunetti’s character as it does about the mystery. A true pleasure and another excellent reading by a gifted narrator. Most highly recommended.

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Terrific twisted mystery

Revisado: 04-14-24

I most liked the plot that sent DCI Lynsey in one direction to solve a double murder, while demoted DC Barbara Havers hid her activities and yet again put her job in jeopardy by performing a.completely different search for a suspect whom Linley and the other Scotland Yard knew nothing about. She was right in the end. But what about her future?

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Deftly Written and Narrated, Deeply Moving Historical Fiction

Revisado: 09-20-23

Matrix was recommended to me by my best friend (a fellow English Professor Emerita), so I had no doubt that it would be worth my time and careful attention. It’s the first Lauren Groff work that I’ve “read,” and having just finished it, I would happily buy the print version and read it again. Why?

First, it’s a wonderfully specific historical novel set in the 1200’s (the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine). Its central character, Marie (Marie de France) is “three heads” too tall, ugly by her time’s standards, and all angles. She is also a bastardess offshoot of the French royal family. What to do with this well-educated, unmarriagable female? Only one option: “bury” her in a small, unimportant nunnery, far from the royals’ seat of power, of course.

Off to the “isle of mud,” l’Angleterre (England), she goes with one trunk carrying some coin, a few pieces of her dead mother’s jewelry and clothes that a nun wouldn’t be caught dead in. She lands where her lady’s education—speaking, reading and writing French and Latin, court manners, a slight familiarity but no real interest in ecclesiastical rules and roles—doesn’t include English. She’d rather follow Eleanor, her life’s idol and great love, by wearing armor, mounting a horse, and heading off for the next Crusade. Instead, at seventeen, she’s a prisoner in one of the smallest, poorest nunneries of the period.

The story reveals her external and internal life from her arrival at the nunnery at age seventeen to her death as the nunnery’s longtime Abbess in her late seventies.

Marie, by prior arrangement, likely $$, between her family and the religious order, will hold the position of Prioress, the number two position at the nunnery once she completes novice training and takes the veil. This arrangement assures that she will inherit the Abbess position and live out the very long remainder of her life at this highly regulated outpost where the inhabitants are almost starving and certainly freezing. One of the humorous moments near the beginning of the novel is when she’s told that she must bathe before putting on her new garments. She assures them that she doesn’t need a bath because she bathed just four months earlier. The nun tells her that all novices and nuns must bathe monthly, and all staff must bathe every two months. She’s stunned. This won’t be her last surprise.

But, mostly, she will surprise and shock her new world. Physically ugly, a giantess “three heads too tall to be a woman,” amazingly strong and fleet, facile in mind, rebellious in spirit, and not the least interested in a religious vocation, Marie begins her abbey life as a resentful novice and ends it as a mystic and transformative religious force.

This gloriously written biography of her impact, both on the abbey and the secular inhabitants who live in the island’s towns that are served by and must support that abbey, is a small-scale reflection of the century’s larger religious events—successive (though inevitably failing) crusades to retake Jerusalem as a symbolic remaking of the holy vision of Christendom—but with a difference: Marie’s methods work. She succeeds.

The tiny, dirty, and painfully starving abbey she was forced to join becomes a large, beautiful and modern religious center filled with industry, ripe fields and large pastures of sheep and cattle. It’s transformation is even more amazing, but I’ll not spoil your enjoyment by revealing all of the changes introduced by forward-thinking members of her community. Nor will I describe Marie’s holy visions and her methods of interpreting them to the everyday benefit of her abbey.

I will, however, urge you to enjoy this marvelous novel, which was short-listed for the National Book Award.

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Recommend

Revisado: 09-20-23

I almost always admire Picoult’s talent of taking a serious social issue like spousal abuse and deftly weaving it into a bestselling novel. <I>Picture Perfect </I> is another successful example of Picoult’s special talent.

The three main characters—the concussed, violently abused (UCLA Dr. and Professor of Physical Anthropology) wife found stumbling out of a Los Angeles Catholic graveyard with no idea of who she is; the abuser, her silver-eyed, movie star husband, beloved by audiences worldwide; and the man who finds her, a half Sioux/half White newcomer to town, who will start his job as an LA policeman the next day.

All three characters have childhood backgrounds that shaped their adult personalities and make them slide together like pieces of a tragic puzzle. These backstories, which Picoult gracefully reveals as the novel proceeds, help the reader understand their sometimes
heartbreaking adult reactions to one another.

The story is well-paced, well-narrated, and populated with interesting sub-characters (especially those related to the policeman’s backstory in the South Dakota reservation that he had run from and which becomes the “safe place” where the main character, Cassie, hides for eight months).

If only the final chapters of the novel (Cassie’s actions, her husband’s decisions) had been less abruptly handled, I would have rated the story higher. The novel needed to continue the pace that it had set throughout. Instead, it seemed as though Picoult simply decided to hurriedly finish the characters’ stories rather than complete their arcs at the same pace she had set so far.

However, I recommend the novel for its theme and its well-developed storyline and developed characters

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Recommend

Revisado: 09-20-23

I almost always admire Picoult’s talent of taking a serious social issue like spousal abuse and deftly weaving it into a bestselling novel. <I>Picture Perfect </I> is another successful example of Picoult’s special talent.

The three main characters—the concussed, violently abused (UCLA Dr. and Professor of Physical Anthropology) wife found stumbling out of a Los Angeles Catholic graveyard with no idea of who she is; the abuser, her silver-eyed, movie star husband, beloved by audiences worldwide; and the man who finds her, a half Sioux/half White newcomer to town, who will start his job as an LA policeman the next day.

All three characters have childhood backgrounds that shaped their adult personalities and make them slide together like pieces of a tragic puzzle. These backstories, which Picoult gracefully reveals as the novel proceeds, help the reader understand their sometimes
heartbreaking adult reactions to one another.

The story is well-paced, well-narrated, and populated with interesting sub-characters (especially those related to the policeman’s backstory in the South Dakota reservation that he had run from and which becomes the “safe place” where the main character, Cassie, hides for eight months).

If only the final chapters of the novel (Cassie’s actions, her husband’s decisions) had been less abruptly handled, I would have rated the story higher. The novel needed to continue the pace that it had set throughout. Instead, it seemed as though Picoult simply decided to hurriedly finish the characters’ stories rather than complete their arcs at the same pace she had set so far.

However, I recommend the novel for its theme and its well-developed storyline and developed characters.

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