Fiction

Review – A Game of Thrones

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A Game of Thrones: Book One of A Song of Fire and Ice

By George RR Martin

Bantam Spectra
eISBN: 978055389784-5

5 stars

A Game of Thrones has been on my radar, way out there, but it was there.  I thought about reading it a few times but never quite found the time.  Then HBO announced it would be producing a series based on the book, and yet, I still put it off.  So in December I finally got around to picking it up and what can I say other than I am completely and utter in love with this book, the world, and the characters.  Without me listing, and believe me when I say it would be a long list, let’s just say everything about it is great.  Yes, it’s that good.

Now for the dilemma — how do I describe this book?  It’s epic fantasy, it’s long (over 700 pages on my Nook), it’s also violent at times but so fantastically told that it’s almost impossible to put the book down.  I don’t want to give too much away (which is very hard for a person who loves spoilers) so my description will be short and somewhat vague.  The story takes place in a medieval world that resembles England.  Kings, queens, knights, court politics, and drama infuse the story with a richness that rivals any good bit of historical fiction.  But there’s something more.  In the world of the Seven Kingdoms, the king rules from the Iron Throne.  When King Robert calls upon Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell to act as his councilor, all hell breaks loose in the realm and no matter what Stark does, there will be no way to keep a war from starting.  The political struggle for the throne is the main story which all others revolve but there’s also a Wall that looms heavy in the background.  What lies beyond the Wall that was built to keep the realm safe is an army of the dead and while not much is offered up on what and who they are, they add a dark overtone to the story that can only be bad.  In the Seven Kingdoms, winter can last decades so when people say winter is coming it adds a foreboding to the amazing world that makes you want to dive into the next book immediately.

So, are you confused now?  Maybe a little frustrated with me for not offering more?  Please don’t be.  I’m a person who loves spoilers but I think this a book that has to be read to understand the amazing world created by Martin.  Yes, it holds true to basic fantasy (witches, spells, and dragons) but the weight added by the political drama brings the story to a new level.  Each chapter is told from the perspective of a single character which I’ll add was a little daunting in the beginning because the cast of characters and references is long and complicated, and while it may take a minute to adjust, it flows smoothly from there.  From Eddard Stark who is called to court to be the Hand of the King, to understanding the dreams and persistence of his daughters who came to court with him, to his wife Catelyn who suffers heartache over their young son’s injury, to his son Robb who must rule in his place, to the annoyances of the King, the lives of Queen’s brothers, to the brothers who protect and patrol the Wall, and the life of a forgotten ruler’s daughter who is poised to attack to regain a lost kingdom.

Yes, there’s a lot going on in this book but don’t let that deter you.  Martin manages to walk a fine line that threatens to spill into overindulgence, but it never happens.  What does happen is pure enchantment.  His world building is amazing and it doesn’t take long to get sucked into it.  It’s dark, violent, and bloody, but fits with the story and never feels overdone.  If you’re looking for a great fantasy novel, A Game of Thrones is it.

Review – Jane Eyre

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Jane Eyre

By Charlotte Bronte

Barnes & Noble Books

ISBN: 1442168528

5 stars

Jane Eyre is a book I’ve owned for many years.  My mother bought it for me as part of a boxed set of classics that included Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Well meaning that I can be sometimes, I wanted to read it, but something new always appeared on the shelf and I never got around to it.  A few weeks ago I decided that I would read it, and assuage a little guilt as well since I was starting to see it each time I looked at the shelf and realized that once again I hadn’t read it.

Jane is a young orphan being raised by an aunt who can’t stand her.  After an incident with her cousin, her aunt sends her off to Lowood School where Jane finds a life as a teacher.  Wanting a new experience, she sets out to find a governess position and unexpectedly finds a home, a life, love, and heartbreak.  In the midst of her most heartbreaking moment, she stumbles upon unknown family members, rebuilds herself but knows that in the end she must follow her heart even if it means ruin for her battered feelings.

Those few sentences were so difficult to write.  I realize many people already know the story so I didn’t want to drone on about the plot and I also didn’t want to give too much away for the few of you out there that were like me and kept putting it off.  There are so many wonderful moments in this story that in order to truly appreciate how lovely, haunting, and beautiful it is, you must read it.  Which brings me to a new dilemma — how do I talk about this book without getting all saccharine and sloppy on you?

You see, I adored this book.  I adored Jane.  She’s feisty, stubborn, generous, loving, understanding, and loyal.  As a child she hates her family, with good reason as they are abominable people, but when she arrives at Lowood School, despite a cruel headmaster, she flourishes.  She finds friends who believe in her, her kindness shines like a beacon, and she’s adventurous wanting to experience life outside of the comfortable walls of the school.  When she arrives at Thornfield to become a governess to a young French girl, she’s strict yet fun making Adele fall in love with her.  The servants at the house become a family of sorts to her and for the first time in her life Jane enjoys being at home.  The master of Thornfield, Rochester, however, is another issue.  Jane explicitly describes him in a way that makes him seem revolting but she herself is in love with him.  You see through her descriptions to the love she feels but when it ends in heartbreak, she leaves and you want to cry with her.  In her darkest moments, she still feels loyalty to those she loves and I wanted to yell at her.  She’s too smart for her own good but that’s why she is so likable.  When things are most horrid, she somehow perseveres and that staunchness is something you come to appreciate.

Characters are what make a story for me and Jane has found a place in my heart as a favorite character.  There are so many things in her path but she still finds the good in people, even ones that have hurt her, and she has incredible strength.  I admired her for her ability to calmly make decisions and stick with her convictions even when it meant living with nothing but the clothes on her back.  When Jane finds her happy ending (don’t worry the spoiler lover in me won’t say more), I also wanted to cry for her.  She had been through too much for it to be any other way.

Jane Eyre, a book that I will be reading again and probably sooner rather than later.

Today’s Book

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Have you ever felt this way — you finish a book you undeniably fell in love with and when the last page is finished, you sigh, reluctantly return it to the shelf, and then wonder what you’re going to read next knowing it isn’t going to live up to the just finished and loved book.  I think Time Travelers Never Die is suffering from this syndrome I will now term book love lag.  I picked this up after reading a book I really enjoyed and sort of felt bad for it in a way.  It was a new genre, which I thought might be helpful, but all it has me doing is wishing it were something different.

It may not sound like it but I am enjoying this book.  It’s good, it’s interesting, and it’s a book I’ve wanted to read.  Right now it’s going very slowly for me.  I know I’ll finish it because it’s fun reading and I like science fiction but I wish I had read it at a different time.  In the grand scheme, it’s not fair to Time Travelers Never Die but I guess it probably would have happened with whatever book I picked up.

Do you ever experience book love lag?

Review – The Hard Way

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The Hard Way

By Lee Child

Bantam Dell

ISBN:978-0-440-24103-4

4 stars

I’ve read a number of Lee Child’s books and there is one overriding thing I need to remind myself to do each time I start one — forget reality.  Please don’t take this to mean that I don’t like the books, because I do, it’s just that his characters, Jack Reacher in particular, always end up in the craziest situations that a person, a sane person, would have walked away from or never become involved in to begin with.  But, that is what also makes them interesting, so now I just go with the forget all reality tactic and I find enjoy the books much better.

Jack Reacher is back in New York City and spending time in a café drinking coffee, a favorite pastime of his.  One evening, he sees a man get into a car and drive away.  The next day, he’s approached about the small but rather forgettable event and ends up drawn into a kidnapping case that also involves a handful of rouge mercenaries on call for the U.S. government.  Unsure of how to walk away from the group he’s found himself oddly tied to because he can’t be certain that the kidnapped mother and daughter will be safe, he gets drawn deeper into the case and goes out of his way to help rescue two people he’s never met.

Oh, Reacher, how do you manage to rescue so many people in so short a time?  Also, how is it you manage to always be in the right place when trouble happens?  I want to be annoyed with these books because there is a huge disconnect between what happens and general reality (You know, reality for normal people.) but I can’t be.  Once I let go and fall into these books, I can’t help it, I’m stuck until I find out that Reacher has managed to save someone, stop something from blowing up, or just save the world in general.  I’m not a thriller reader either but these books put me into some sort of catatonic reading mode and I have to finish and find out that everything has worked out fine in the end.  I say that because everything always works out fine in the end.  At least that’s been the case for the books I’ve read in the Reacher series.

A co-worker of mine lends these books to me and I’ll admit there have been a few bombs along the way but for the most part, I enjoy them.  They’re one off books which can be read in one sitting and you don’t have to have read them in any sort of order to understand the plot.  By the way, the plot is pretty much always the same — something bad happens, Reacher shows up, saves the day.  These are books you pull out on a rainy or slow day and you just read.  You’ll be entertained by the end and glad that a co-worker loaned you that book.  You’ll also be tempted to write something nice about their sharing abilities so they loan you more.

Today’s Book with Extra Book Bits

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I’m about to finish The Woman in Black by Susan Hill.  It’s a ghost story and while it has it’s conventional parts, it feels more like a slow moving thriller and it works wonderfully.  She dishes out details slowly, building a lot of tension for the ending I know is coming.  The best word to describe it would be atmospheric.  It has long, lush sentences that evoke a foreboding for the horrible ending.  It reminds me a lot of Shirley Jackson whose storytelling has the same feel.  In case, you’re wondering how I know what’s coming — I read the end already.

I haven’t done a library loot in forever so here goes.

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (See above.)

Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDevitt (On my list and it fits a challenge, a twofer book.)

Savage Kingdom: The True story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America by Benjamin Woolley (I read a book last year about Jamestown and loved it so I’m trying another.  We’ll see if my interest holds up through this one.)

Also new to me but not a library loaner is A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.  I’ve been craving this one since it came through the door and it’s so my next book.  Admire that cover.  I love, love, love it.  Can’t really say why but the sapphire blue cover is working for me.

Review – The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel

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The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel

By Diana Gabaldon

Illustrated by Hoang Nguyen

Ballantine Books

ISBN: 978-0-345-50538-5

3.5 stars

The Exile is Outlander from Jamie Fraser’s point of view.  Being a graphic novel, it took me a few pages to move past and tell the voice raging in my head that while I didn’t picture Jamie Fraser this way, someone did so get over it.  Once I moved on, it was all good and the visions in my head and those on the page began, inexplicably, to merge.  As a side note, this book is beautifully illustrated so it was hard to be all that disappointed.

However, the story itself didn’t work for me and I think it’s because I know the story too well.  In graphic novel form it feels too light and that too much information is missing.  All the basics are here — Jamie’s story is pretty much the same as Claire’s so there isn’t much that differs — but it’s the little details that I loved about the first book that I missed.  And let’s face it, Gabaldon, if you’ve read any of the Outlander books, likes details.

For those not familiar with the story: Jamie Fraser is a Scotsman returning to his homeland with a price on his head.  Claire Randall is a 20th Century woman who, while visiting Scotland and touring a group of standing stones, passes into the stone circle and goes back in time to the 18th Century.  As two outsiders, Jamie and Claire are thrown together in a marriage of strange convenience but fall in love despite their circumstances.

Jamie and Claire are true to their characters, there’s still a lot of sex, and somehow Claire is much more voluptuous than I ever imagined her to be but that might just be due to the fact that I don’t add extra boobage to female characters instinctively.  Jamie remains the hot Scottish guy in a kilt too so plus for that.

There was one scene from the original book that I wish had been left out.  At one point, Claire tries to escape back to her own time and makes a run for the stone circle that brought her to the 18th Century.  She gets captured by a British Captain who is looking for Jamie.  Jamie is able to get her back before any damage is done but as punishment, he beats her.  I almost put the book down when I first read it in Outlander and hoped that the scene had been expunged from this version.  It hadn’t.  I had an even more visceral reaction to it this time around.  I tried to explain it to myself in terms of the time frame (1700s) but it will never be something I can overlook.  I’m sure many may think I’m making too much of one rather small part of the story but it just soured it for me.

If you’re a fan of Gabaldon’s Outlander series, you’ll probably, like me, want to read this one.  I wasn’t thoroughly sold but it hasn’t ruined the series for me either.  As I mentioned earlier, it’s really beautifully done and worth a look for that reason alone.

Today’s Book(s) and a Movie

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I’ve still got two Harry Potter books — The Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows — to finish for my re-read this year.  Since we’re planning to head out of town today (traffic gods please be on our side, say 3PM, if that’s good for you), I decided there’s no better time to finish up the series than during the holidays so in the suitcase they went.  I’m not sure if I’ll actually be able to finish but I’m going to give it a good try.

I did get the chance to see part 1 of the Deathly Hallows the other night, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts on that too since I’m already talking about the boy wizard.  It’s not really a review, just a few thoughts.

First, I’m not a book purist.  I consider movies and books completely different mediums and I never believe that a book, especially a large book like Deathly Hallows, should follow exactly the same lines.  It’s just not feasible and I’m good with differences — even major differences don’t bother me.  That said, here’s what I thought.

I liked it.  Honestly, I thought about leaving it at that but it seemed like cheating.  I saw it on Imax so the special effects looked great, the acting was good, and you know right from the start that you’re no longer watching a cutesy movie about a kid learning spells.  People die, but there’s still some humor to put things in perspective. There are some very sad moments (When Hermione erases her parents memory is one.) and some very funny ones (Ron’s awkward way of telling Hermione that he’s in love with her and trying horribly to apologize for leaving both her and Harry in a rage.) that left me wanting more and very glad that I decided to re-read the series even if I hadn’t yet gotten to book seven.  I said the acting was good, and in particular, Emma Watson’s performance.  She’s matured dramatically and it shows.  And of course Alan Rickman and Ralph Fiennes are phenomenally bad in a good way.  I never imagined Voldemort as creepy as Fiennes makes him and there’s something to be said for that.

While I’m not a fan of two part movies like this, they did end it in a somewhat logical spot so I can’t complain about that other than I immediately wanted to see part two.  I’m trying not to give too many things away and realize this isn’t making much sense, so in my continuing attempts to remain spoiler free, I’ll just leave you with a trailer.

Have you seen the movie?  Any thoughts?

Teaser Tuesdays

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Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.  The idea is to give everyone a look inside the book you’re reading.

Play along: Grab your current read; Open to a random page; Share two teaser sentences from that page; Share the title and author so that other participants know what you’re reading.

I started A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin last week, and thanks to a cold that won’t go away, I’m still reading it.  That, however, is not a bad thing because I am so in love with this book!

“His claim is the true one, he is known for his prowess as a battle commander, and he is utterly without mercy.  There is no creature on earth half so terrifying as a truly just man.” (589 of 787 on Nook)