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Review – Fathom

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Fathom

By Cherie Priest

TOR

ISBN: 0-7653-1840-7

3.5 stars

Over the past months and probably years if I’m honest, I’ve read some good things about Cherie Priest’s books (Boneshaker and Four and Twenty Blackbirds come to mind) so when browsing the library for something new, I stumbled upon Priest’s Fathom and decided immediately it should come home with me.  I liked this book well enough but I don’t know how to classify it — it was surely fantasy, felt a little like a fairy-tale re-telling of a few mashed up stories, and then a story about sleeping gods.

Arahab waits in the water for the right moment.  Waiting for a foot to dip in or a body to be thrown overboard so she can find her next pet child to mold into the beast she needs to wake the Leviathan.  She finds her next child in Beatrice a spoiled teenager, murderer, and genuinely wicked person.  Her cousin Nia would have been a better capture for Arahab but it was Beatrice she caught.  Nia, lured into the water as a means of escaping Beatrice on a murderous rampage, runs from Arahab and believes she has escaped until she realizes she’s been turned to stone.  While the beast that made Nia waits for her to awaken, the gods begin to play their own games.

Priest created a strange little world to drop Nia and Beatrice into.  Toyed with by gods in the hope these two mortals will do their bidding, they are surprised by the strength the mere humans possess.  Nia and Beatrice defy both gods that created them in ways the gods never imagined.  The roles they played were interesting even if they were being used as a means to show how the gods have fallen.  What I really wanted though was background.  In some books I’m good with nothing — drop me in and I’ll learn as I go.  Other times, I want ropes.  This time I wanted ropes.  Not because the story was hard to follow, it wasn’t at all, but because I felt I was missing vital information that would have made me love it more.  We know no more of the gods than Nia and Beatrice which is fine and understandable, but I wanted more and that I think is my hang-up.

Would I recommend it?  Yes, to someone who is OK with being dropped in to a story.  If you are, then all good.  Read it because it’s a good book.  I was slightly disappointed with it though but still found it well done.  I’ve been seeing a lot of talk (or maybe it’s only me looking for something specific) about Four and Twenty Blackbirds.  When I get through the stack of towering books threatening to fall off my desk and dent my floor, I’ll be on a hunt for it.

Review – Rebecca

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Rebecca

By Daphne Du Maurier

Doubleday

ISBN: 0-385-04380-5

5 stars

My first foray into Daphne du Maurier’s writing was last year with The House on the Stand which I truly and utterly loved.  I heard wonderful things about Rebecca and decided that it would be my second du Maurier book.  I’m asking forgiveness up front for all the gushing that will now be hurled at you because I loved this book so very much.

Rebecca has been dead for months when Maxim de Winter meets his second wife in Monte Carlo.  She’s training as a companion to a bitter, slightly haggard, older lady with no sense of class.  When her companion comes down with the flu, she begins spending all her free time with Maxim.  After a short and rather brusque courtship, she agrees to marry him and arrives at Manderely, his ancestral home in England, as the new Mrs. De Winter and is quickly overshadowed by the dead Rebecca.  She is shy and makes constant mistakes attempting to live up to the standards of the dead Rebecca. Mrs. Danvers, a completely domineering housekeeper who is still loyal to Rebecca, scares her but only wanting to make her new husband happy, she listens to the advice of Mrs. Danvers to her own determent.  Overwhelmed by her new life and the fancy dress ball she was talked into having to celebrate her new marriage, Mrs. De Winter  dresses up as an ancestor of Maxim’s not knowing Rebecca also wore the same outfit at the last ball held at the hall before her death.  Maxim barely recovers from the shock and smiles kindly through the whole evening but avoids his wife.  Fearing she has ruined her marriage, Mrs. de Winter plays the part of happy wife until the morning when she can take no more and decides to confront her husband.  Unfortunately, her plans change when a ship smashes into the rocks offshore from Manderley, and during the rescue, Rebecca’s small boat is found with a body inside.  It is then she finds out the secret her husband has been hiding from everyone.

This story is told as a flashback with Mrs. de Winter looking back on, and almost bemoaning her short but very vivid life at Manderley.  Mrs. de Winter and her husband are obviously living abroad and no longer at Manderly but her reminiscing makes it clear she misses the place and feels some remorse for not only her actions, and inactions as well, but also for the happiness she feels she and her husband could have had there.  In many ways it’s sad: the missing of a home, of a life missed, of a life not lived, of a life wished for and cruelly taken away.  Mrs. de Winter was not born to the life she married into.  She had no money and no hopes for a life better than the odd one she seemed destined to live as a companion to older women.  Becoming the wife of a powerful man is almost more than she can handle.  With no experience with servants, money, or appearances she worries about embarrassing her husband, saying the wrong thing, and having him leave her.  Their relationship is strange and strained.  Maxim is standoffish and you are left wondering if he really does love his new wife or if he married simply to escape loneliness which is hinted at by Mrs. Danvers and feeds on the fears of the new Mrs. de Winter.  When he finally opens up to her about his marriage to Rebecca you feel as though you understand what has made him they way he is.  Unfortunately, his secret is not one most would live with and their relationship takes one more step into the almost absurd.

I loved delving into the marriage of these two strangers and their life.  I was fascinated by the way du Maurier pulled me deeper and deeper into the psyche of Mrs. de Winter.  For as a humble and shy as she was, she could also be strong (steadfast is probably better).  She grows up suddenly in a span of 12 hours realizing the mistakes she made were out of fear and nothing more.  Using that fear, she finds her voice only to be taken aback knowing she understands so little about the man she calls her husband.

Characters are my thing.  (As a side note, the pacing is slow but the language is phenomenal and worth the build up. When all finally happens, you’ll be breathless.  This is a psychological story rather than an action one.)  The creation of Mrs. Danvers is a piece of art.  Cruel, loyal, and belittling, she is a person not to mess with and you hate her and are just as scared of her as Mrs. de Winter.  She appears out of nowhere, creeps down hallways, always dressed in black like a specter moving through Manderley.  Amazing.  I won’t say more; I don’t want to ruin her.

There is, I’m certain, much more to this book and in many ways when I read books such as this that are loved and well-known, I feel at odds.  I can’t imagine I’ve added anything of interest to a topic I have come to late so I will end with this — if you can, read this book.  You will be rewarded.

 

Review – A Conspiracy of Kings

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A Conspiracy of Kings

By Megan Whalen Turner

Greenwillow Books

ISBN: 9780061870934

4 stars

A Conspiracy of Kings in the fourth book in The Thief series.  I don’t know that I loved this one, which is supposedly the final book in the series, as much as the previous three, but I did enjoy it.

Sophos of Sounis is more concerned with complaining about his tutor than with the fact that he may one day be the King of Sounis.  When his father’s villa is attacked, he gets the chance to figure out whether or not he has what it takes to be King of Sounis.

I missed Sophos in the last two books.  He’s a likable character in The Thief but here, well, I wanted to slap him and yell at him to grow up.  He’s going to be King, let’s face it, you know he is, and his land is at war and all he can think to do is whine about the tutor he can’t stand because he thinks he’s smarter than him.  And while that might be true, it just shows you how childish he is.  When he finds himself a slave in one of his father’s Barons’ household, he thinks about staying there because it’s easier to let someone else make decisions which made me wonder why I liked him in the first place.  But then he finds out there’s more to him than even he thought and the rest flowed, although I did miss Gen, the King of Attolia and the former Thief of Eddis, in this book.  Gen was a whiner too but there was something still so likable about him because you knew he was doing it to hide something.  Sophos just whined.  This one is all about Sophos and while he’s good, he’s no Gen.

I’m slightly annoyed though.  It did end on a good wrap-up note but I feel there is still more and I don’t know if another book is planned — must Google!  Otherwise, it has been a satisfying series and I recommend it.

Today’s Book – To Say Nothing of the Dog

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It’s been a few years since I’ve read science fiction and I don’t know why that is since it’s something I enjoy.  Historical fiction has become a large part of my reading the last few years and, sadly, it got pushed out.  This year I’m trying to read more of it and if the books are half as good as Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing of the Dog, it’s going to be a good science fiction reading year.  It’s funny, the time travel element has consequences, and the story is just all around entertaining.  Taking place in Victorian England with the main characters running back to the future to make sure their actions haven’t caused any major catastrophes makes for an amusing and silly book that I’m falling for.   I’ve heard good things about Willis, and this book in particular, and I can say it’s living up to those starred reviews.

Review – Savage Kingdom

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Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America

By Benjamin Woolley

HarperCollins Publishers

ISBN: 978006009056-2

3 stars

Savage Kingdom is a recounting of the settlement of Jamestown, in particular, the people who led the enterprise and took on the challenge of settling a land they knew nothing about.  It follows their journey in a landscape completely alien to them with inhabitants they can’t control, and in the end, threaten to destroy.

The book is very broad in its scope.  It covers the goings on in England, John Smith’s explorations into Native American territories, the Jamestown settlement, the settlements in New England, the Spanish, Spanish America, and the monarchy’s involvement and interest in the Jamestown settlement.  Sometimes I felt it was too inclusive.  It wasn’t narrowed down and was more like a semester lecture and general overview of the world at the time instead of being sharply focused on the settlement.

I did enjoy the Native American interactions with the settlers though.  John Smith’s adventures, trading, crowing of Powhatan, fighting, etc. provided interesting insights into how and where it all failed; it’s more than just a general misunderstanding brought about by a language barrier.  Englishman with no ability to survive in the wilderness and with very meager survival skills were expecting the Native American tribes to feed them and became dumbfounded when it didn’t happen.  They were so arrogant in assuming the land was theirs for the taking and truly believed someone would care for them.

Savage Kingdom was a frustrating book for me because you see all the faults and in many ways the problems inherent in the system.  I wanted to really enjoy this book but I didn’t and I think it was due to the fact that I read another book on the subject last year and I felt I had already read some of this.  It doesn’t make it bad, just not for me.  It was well researched but I couldn’t get into it.

Teaser Tuesdays – To Say Nothing of the Dog

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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 other participants know what you’re reading.

I’m reading To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis and for a science fiction book it’s surprisingly funny.

“Yes,” he said. “I always thought it made a better shopping center than a cathedral.  Mid-Twentieth Century architecture was nearly as bad as Victorian…” (pg. 42)

Review – Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

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SpookSpook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

By Mary Roach

W.W. Norton & Company

ISBN: 0393059626

4.75 stars

While I don’t foster much belief in the afterlife, I do have a thing about ghosts.  I don’t know whether or not I actually believe in them, but I love stories about them.  This is what partly led me to read Spook, that and I love Mary Roach’s approach to non-fiction.  She doesn’t go all crazy and make you feel as if you must believe everything she’s writing about because it’s non-fiction — in some cases you even wonder if she believes it all — which is refreshing.

In Spook, she takes a look at what science has to say about the afterlife.  She starts out with reincarnation, moves on to measuring the weight of a soul, discusses debunking mediums and psychics, looks at the science of ectoplasm, tries to communicate with the dead, and wraps up with the effects of electromagnetic fields on humans.  For some of the topics, the weight of the soul and ectoplasm in particular, the science is rather thin and doesn’t leave you with a lot of hope or really any good scale for noting how much the soul would possibly weigh.  It seems very little but that doesn’t deter the author here.  She goes with it and at times even pokes fun at some of the methods used to determine such things and why someone would even be interested in finding out the information in the first place.

While I found the chapter on reincarnation interesting, what I loved was the section on debunking mediums.  I’m always fascinated by this, the debunking not crackpot mediums, and the lengths that people will go to to defraud someone, especially someone hurting from the loss of a loved one.  Communicating with the dead was another good chapter especially when she gets into describing the activities involved with talking to, or at least trying, to hear the dead.

Roach approaches her subject with a bit of humor but never lets it overcome what she’s set out to prove or disprove.  I’m not sure that I can say this book made me want to re-visit my belief system but it did provide me with some good info to talk to my sister about who also loves ghost stories.

 

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 other participants know what you’re reading.

I picked up Michelle Moran’s Madame Tussaud from the library a few days ago and even though it’s not the book I’m reading today, I wanted to share the first two lines.

“When she walks through the door of my exhibition, everything disappears: the sound of the rain against the windows, the wax models, the customers, even the children.  This is a face I have not seen in twenty-one years, and immediately I step back, wondering whether I have conjured her from my past.” (pg. 1)