Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

Review by Janice Y. (jai)

There has been much love online for Laini Taylor’s Lips Touch,Three Times and I’ve been chomping at the bit to read her writing. Because of this, I made sure I grabbed a copy of Daughter of Smoke and Bone when I saw it at BEA this summer. It was one of my Must Haves based on reputation alone. This is a review of an ARC copy.

The Premise: Karou seems like your typical art student. She’s a pretty girl with bright blue hair and a vivid imagination. Every day she shows the other students at the Art Lyceum of Bohemia her sketches of extraordinary characters – Brimstone with his ram’s horns and strange shop where he sells wishes for teeth, Issa, a snake goddess who mans the door, and others with similar part-human, part-animal shapes. To the other students it looks like Karou has a colorful inner world, full of fantastical stories, but the truth is that Karou draws from real life. She was raised by the creatures in her sketches, and when she’s not going to class or working on her art in a small studio apartment in Prague, Karou has a secondary life steeped in magic and a job fetching teeth for Brimstone’s shop. Karou doesn’t really know who she is and why she was raised by Brimstone, but she is content, if not a little lonely. Then one day, handprints are found, burned onto doors around the world. At the same time, sightings of angels begin.  Karou’s life is changed forever when she meets one of these winged beings and discovers the truth.

My Thoughts: The first thing to hit me about Daughter of Smoke and Bone was its setting. It is so refreshing to have a story that’s NOT set in the usual places, and Prague is described wonderfully. I’ve never been there, but I want to see its old streets that are “a fantasia scarcely touched by the twenty-first century […] it’s medieval cobbles once trod by golems, mystics, invading armies”. Adding to its character are Karou’s beautiful school, housed in a castle with a macabre history, her acquaintances with street performers that dress up as vampires, and her local hang out, a cafe on church grounds known for its goulash and roman statues. I hugely enjoyed reading about Karou’s charming day to day life as an art student and Prague local. There’s the drama of dealing with her weasel ex-boyfriend, Kaz, the busyness of art classes, and a friendship with the understanding Zuzana, who does not ask questions. Even if Karou wishes she could trust someone with her secrets, her life is pretty full, but her association with a place she calls Elsewhere takes it one step further.

The CAT That Changed My LIFE by Bruce Eric Kaplan

Review by McGuffyAnn M. (nightprose)

This is a wonderful pet humor book written and illustrated by Bruce Eric Kaplan. He has been with The New Yorker and other major publications for many years. Mr. Kaplan is also a television writer, having worked on Seinfeld and Six Feet Under.

This very entertaining little book poses the question to cats around the country, “Who was the cat who had the most effect on their life and why?” Mr. Kaplan says that he conducted over forty thousand interviews with cats, sketching each cat as he did so.  The book consists of the fifty Mr. Kaplan felt were the most compelling. The book is full of stories told by cats, offering the “turning points” based on their relationships with other cats.

This simple yet deep question is asked of average house cats, offering revelations and some epiphanies. There are admissions and moments of honest confessions, even catharsis, all by cats. It seems that love is at the root of each story, though guilt seems to be a common thread, as well. However, the stories vary. Knickers is a young male who has a summer affair with an older female. Red attributes his insecurity to gossip by other cats. Francis ran away after going through territory marking issues, as a young cat. Upon meeting and being mentored by an older, wiser Wolfie, Francis settles down and is now a mentor to others.

The book is written in fun, with genuine humor that can be appreciated by anyone who has a cat, has had a cat, likes a cat, or even knows a cat. There have been many cats in my life and each has had an effect on me, changing me in some small way. I have also seen how they have changed each other, though they probably wouldn’t admit it.

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

Review by Susan R. (Sue-in-AZ)

Synopsis

This story focuses on two young women (Willa and Paxton) in a very small town in North Carolina.  Willa and Paxton have known each other all their lives, but up until now have avoided each other.  Their two families share a deep past that goes back for generations. The symbol of their shared past is an abandoned, haunted house.

Once owned by Willa’s family, the house has now been bought by Paxton. Paxton plans to restore the house to its former glory and re-open it as a country inn.  But as the renovations proceed, a grisly discovery is when a body is unearthed from an unmarked grave.  The police get involved to solve what appears to be a decade’s old murder – and all the evidence points right back to Willa and Paxton’s grandmothers.  Willa and Paxton form an uneasy alliance to determine what really happened all those years ago and the story that emerges is full of intrigue and magic (all of Sarah Addison Allen’s stories have at least a little magic going on).

All of the mystery surrounding the house and the old murder are merely backdrop to the two ladies’ personal  lives.  Both Willa and Paxton have resigned themselves to living out their lives alone, in the shadow of their parents.  Paxton is living in her parent’s pool house and even though she is an adult, she’s living the life of a 17 year old, reporting all her coming and going to an over-controlling mother.  Willa is living in the small house her dead father left for her.  Both women feel trapped by expectations from their parents and neither feels free to leave town (or even their parents homes) to pursue their own dreams.

Love comes unexpectedly to both women – in both cases the man of their dreams was someone they knew all along.

My Review

For a Sarah Addison Allen story, I expected more magic.  That’s the only negative I have for this story.  It’s delightful!  As an adult daughter, I can sympathize with the struggle between my family and my personal life, so I found the plight of both women to be believable.

I loved the intermixing of the mystery with the on-going saga of Willa and Paxton’s personal dramas.  By the end of the story, I had fallen in love with the characters and the town.  I hope the author writes another story set in the same town.  She did have a cameo appearance from a character from an earlier book (I won’t describe here – I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise for other Sarah Addison Allen fans!).

Maigret and the Gangsters aka Inspector Maigret and the Killers by Georges Simenon

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage) 

Georges Simenon wrote about 70 police procedural mysteries starring Inspector Maigret and set in France. Written in 1952, this installment features the excellent description of atmosphere, especially Paris and its shops, bars, restaurants, apartments, street scenes, and weather.

Inspector Lognon doesn’t work at the Quai des Orfèvres  so he’s not in Maigret’s inner circle of Janvier, Lapointe, and Lucas. Although self-pitying Lognon earns his nickname of Old Grouch, Maigret sympathizes with his situation because of Lognon’s wife, pathetic invalid and annoying complainer and decidedly unchic in “a dressing gown a hideous shade of mauve.” Lognon is also an obstinate bulldog of a cop.

On a routine stake-out, Lognon witnesses a body being dumped. Maigret bends the rules (the incident took place outside his turf) and gets on the trail of two American gangsters. The pace of this one seems quicker than in other Maigret novels, since M. and his team go from place to place, without much of a break for beer and sandwiches.

In various bars, Maigret is told that the French police are no match for American gangsters. This imputation gets Maigret’s dander up though sometimes Maigret seems unsure how to deal with American thugs, who act “like they’re at home” with impunity.

Maigret fans may recall that poor Lognon – who takes a round in this one – also got shot in Maigret and the Ghost aka Maigret and the Apparition (1964). Students of French may be interested to know that l’inspecteur Malgracieux has been translated as The Grouser, Inspector Grouch, Old Ungracious, and Inspector Grumpy.

The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

Review by Bowden P. (Trey)

This is a nice coda for the Book of the New Sun, and because of that Urth of the New Sun will be compared to it. And I’m afraid it will be found a bit wanting…

Urth of the New Sun takes Severian far beyond the Solar System to confront the aliens that have reduced Earth to the status of the The Book of the New Sun – barbaric and primitive. It even takes him beyond the scope of the universe itself.

The ship that takes Severian on his journey is a world unto itself, traveling at relativistic velocities and even faster than light itself. Gene Wolfe plays with this to good effect by having the crew made up of people from different worlds and time periods. Because after all, faster than light is time travel.

The journey itself and the trial of Severian at his destination are about two-thirds of the book and fairly satisfying in terms of ideas, characters and development. Even in Urth of the New Sun Severian still tends to treat and see women as bed mates. Because of this, Wolfe fails the Bechdel test here. Still, its not a bad book.

The last third of the book is about Severian’s return to Earth and here Wolfe makes explicit that faster than light travel, is time travel. Severian gets repeatedly tangled up in the destiny of the Commonwealth and that of the Conciliator. And for all the brain bending elements, I found this portion less satisfying than what had come before. Why? Well, Wolfe begins to make extensive use of the metaphor of the stream Severian walks for time and time travel. This makes some sense given that he (and us the reader) are not equipped with senses to properly deal with it. By using this, Wolfe is able to compress it and make it a bit less confusing. Literalist that I am, I find the approach less satisfying than others. Still, it is beautiful and well wrought, just not to my taste.

Did I like the book? Yes.

Did I like it as much as the rest of the series? No, but it was still worth the time to read.

Likes: Playing with relativity and FTL as time travel without making it the focus of the plot; Severian’s desire to save Earth – for all that I find him less than heroic, he still has a good heart and head; Severian’s fate(s).

Dislikes: Severian – all too often I find his personality and tendency to screw any human(oid) female a bit old; Heavy reliance on metaphor.

Verdict: **** (four stars)

Suggested for: Wolfe fans and fans of the Book of the New Sun series.

The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman by Nancy Marie Brown

Review by Jennifer (mywolfalways)

Having read numerous non-fiction books on Vikings and people living during the Viking age, it was refreshing to see new hypotheses being presented.  While some are believable, others lack supporting evidence to be considered.  By using Gudrid’s life in Eirik the Red’s Saga and The Saga of the Greenlanders as an outline, the author does a wonderful job explaining different aspects of the society with a particular emphasis on women.

The first chapter opens with the author’s experience of awe at first seeing a Viking ship on the water.  In speaking with replica-makers, she learns more about how the ships are made, along with their advantages and limitations.  She also explores how the Vikings were able to navigate the open seas and how they dealt with being hafvilla or “bewildered by the sea”.

Chapter two presents the reader with what happens in the two sagas, whether or not the events and people are true, and how best perhaps to interpret them.  Chapter three further explores the two sagas, specifically in regards to women’s rights and how their lives may have been.  The author compares these to that of women in Arthurian legend, which are written around the same time, to show how different the life of the Norse was in comparison to the rest of the women in Europe.

Chapters four and five concern themselves with exploration, raiding, and land-taking, perhaps what the Vikings are best remembered for by most people.  It speculates how chieftains, the average citizens, and slaves interacted, as well as how law worked as explained by examples found in the Sagas, as well as what is found in the “Grey Goose” law.

Chapters six through nine explore the many lands that Gudrid may have lived or visited during her voyages over the sea.  Many places over the years have been claimed to be the lands visited due to the descriptions given in the sagas and the author explains why some of these places are possibilities while others are not.  How housing, food, and clothing were acquired in places with such limited resources, excluding trade, is a fascinating topic and is presented in great detail.

The book closes with the spreading of Christianity, how it effected the lands, and the end of Gudrid’s life.

Brown’s writing is enjoyable and the personal excitement sprinkled throughout the book about her own experience at an archeological dig makes it easy to get caught up in the book.  At the end, I think most readers will find their curiosity satiated, while others may find themselves eager to learn more.