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Book Review: Lightning

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Lightning
by Dean Koontz

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: Science fiction thriller

Laura Shane’s life has been marked throughout by lightning events, both figurative and literal. During some of the hard times she’s experienced, a mysterious man has shown up to help her in some way—her guardian angel. As she gets older, though, her guardian slips into myth in her mind. When he appears again, it’s on the worst day of her life, and Laura’s life becomes one of fear and paranoia. Even as she begins to understand the depth to which her guardian has been involved in her life, she wonders if she’ll ever be safe again.

I never cared about Koontz when I was younger, probably thinking he was all horror, and I have never cared for horror. My husband (maybe my boyfriend at the time, I don’t recall…it was around 20 years ago) recommended this book, and I remember being pleasantly surprised. I’ve never read another Koontz since, but that just left this to keep a special place in my heart. I don’t know why it took me so long to read it again, but I’m so glad I did! The suspense is really high at certain points in the book. Laura’s guardian, Stefan, is a sympathetic hero, especially when you learn more about him and where he comes from. And though Laura herself isn’t my favorite main character, I can appreciate the way that the various difficulties in her life shape her into the person she becomes as an adult.

Time travel isn’t exactly original, but not everyone does as good a job as Koontz did here. The things that could and could not be affected, the way there are natural limitations to avoid paradoxes, it all makes sense. And what is done by characters to try to get around that can be a little mind-twisty, but it makes for a great read! I know there were a few points when I wondered if it was really necessary to see so much of Laura’s life that don’t really relate to the grander story. I think it was mostly there to build up our connection with Laura. Whatever the reason, it never made me bored. As a stand-alone sci-fi thriller, Lightning definitely worth reading! I know I’ll re-read it again in the future.

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Book Review: Fool Moon

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Fool Moon
The Dresden Files #2
by Jim Butcher
read by James Marsters

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Paranormal mystery

Harry Dresden is the only professional wizard available for hire in Chicago and is sometimes called on by the police to help solve crimes where magic is involved. So when a series of murders that happen around the full moon show other signs of involving werewolves, Harry is on the case. But will it prove to be too much for him to handle?

I was not as big a fan of this second book as I was the first in the series. I’ve read that the series gets better after you get into it (though how far into it varies widely), but while this one started off similarly enough to the first, it did not have as much of interest to me. It wasn’t so much a mystery as it was police procedural, and even after the case was basically solved, there was a lot of book left, which turned out to be mostly fighting. It doesn’t help that I usually find werewolves boring in any iteration. I did appreciate that there were various types of werewolves, but since I was listening to the audiobook and couldn’t easily go back to remind myself of which was which, it mostly confused me.

I’m finding some formula in the series that I really hope Butcher steers away from soon enough—like how Murphy keeps believing Dresden to be a bad guy (not that he helps the situation by not telling her the full truth, but she can’t manage to be understanding of how his hands are tied) or how Harry just gets beat up…so…much. Still, I enjoyed some humorous moments and lines, and there was a bit of a twist at the end involving one of the werewolves. Overall, the book just felt like it dragged on, but I’m still looking forward to continuing the series. I can’t pretend that I’d recommend this book in general, but it shouldn’t be enough to dissuade anyone from trying the series, especially if you’re a fan of mystery and detective noir novels, and enjoy or at least can tolerate the addition of supernatural elements (and the content warning below). In particular, if you like to listen to audiobooks, I recommend the narration by James Marsters.

One final note, something that was worse in this book than in the previous—there is quite a bit of sexual content. After my husband finished the audiobook, he commented on how, with the couple of female werewolves, every time they were in a scene, whether they were fully clothed or not (one of them was naked in at least 75% of her human-form page time), the narrator felt the need to remind us that they had certain female parts. And he was right…they were referenced often. I really hope this doesn’t remain at this level. There’s also some language, but not actually as much as I anticipated. And there’s certainly some violence, much more than the previous book (werewolves are beasts). My tolerance on things like these is fairly low, especially compared to the average reader, and while I do plan to continue, I really hope the level of sexual content, at least, doesn’t stay this high.

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Book Review: The Magician’s Nephew

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The Magician’s Nephew
The Chronicles of Narnia #6 (original order)
by C.S. Lewis

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Children’s classic fantasy

While I appreciate the origins of Narnia shown in this book, it’s my least favorite of the series. I think part of that is my own fault, as I’m still watching for the theological parallels to God, and this one threw me off a lot. I wonder if I’m just not the right kind of person to read this and see it the way others do. To me, at least, as a parallel to God creating the universe, it fell flat in many ways. Maybe that’s because God did it perfectly, and anything besides that just seems like a poor comparison. Of course, from a fiction (and fantasy) standpoint, just having it done the same way as God did it would be kinda weird. But even seeing it more as an allegory than a parallel (which is probably more how it’s meant anyway), I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I did others in the series. Taking it as its own story with no connection to the Bible, it felt a little disjointed.

This series is one of those that I feel like I’m never going to enjoy like so many others do. I didn’t read them as a kid, so that might make some difference. Still, I sometimes think I just don’t have enough sense of wonder or whimsy to make these books more enjoyable. Not that I haven’t enjoyed any of the series by any means, but I don’t know that I’ll ever re-read it. On the other hand, it’s possible that reading the series again some time in the future might give me a different insight into it, and this book in particular.

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October in Review

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I read 11 books last month, 1 book higher than my monthly average this year. I’m still a little behind in progress towards my Goodreads goal for the year, due to expecting to read a lot more particularly short children’s books than I’ve gotten to this year. I’ll have to be sure to insert more of those in the next two months.

Here are the books I read in October:

I want to punch you
dresden-1
Sparks
last-chance-7
jurassic-park
tcw-10
librarians-2
captured
rp2-1
tcw-11
Narnia 6
white placeholder

I Want to Punch You in the Face But I Love Jesus by Sherri Lynn (5 / 5)
Storm Front by Jim Butcher (4 / 5)
The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau (3 / 5)
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (5 / 5)
Quest for the King’s Crown by Robert Vernon (4 / 5)
The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts by Lilian Jackson Braun (4.5 / 5)
The Librarians and the Mother Goose Chase by Greg Cox (4 / 5)
The Captured Bride by Michelle Griep (3 / 5)
Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (1 / 5)
The Cat Who Lived High by Lilian Jackson Braun (3.5 / 5)
The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis (review pending)

This list includes 1 ARC and 3 re-reads. My favorite book from October was Jurassic Park. I started 2 series, continued 4 series, and finished (or caught up on) 3 series*. My ever-changing short list of to-be-reads, as well as a flag for the book I’m currently reading and an ongoing list of those I’ve read and posted about can be found here.

*This includes a series I didn’t reach the end of, but decided not to continue reading, after being at least 2 books into the series.

I’m also keeping my Goodreads page updated with a more extensive list of to-be-reads. Despite my almost too-long TBR list, I’m always looking for more to add. Feel free to offer suggestions of your favorites or just recent reads you enjoyed.

Book Review: Ready Player Two

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Ready Player Two
Book #2
 by Ernest Cline
read by Wil Wheaton

My rating: 1 / 5
Genre: Science fiction, dystopian

Spoiler notice: The following review will contain spoilers for the previous book, Ready Player One.

As it turns out, Halliday didn’t leave just one contest behind in the Oasis when he died. He left a second one, which wouldn’t be triggered unless his heir found and decided to release a controversial, highly-advanced, game-changing technology to the world and the world then went crazy for it. And since, of course, that’s exactly what happens after the first contest is over, Oasis users are sent on another impossible quest that involves having unlikely knowledge of every single thing someone they never met loved and obsessed over. If it isn’t clear from my rating and from that synopsis I wrote, I did not like this book. To be fair, I didn’t expect to like it, and really didn’t plan to ever read it. But curiosity got the better of me.

To start with, I’ll state that I didn’t love Ready Player One. It was okay, but since I wasn’t won over by all of the 80s nostalgia, I was left with just the plot and characters, which were mediocre overall. So when the sequel was even more 80s trivia and even less plot and characters, it was destined to fail to thrill me. I think the nostalgia has to be the only reason that anyone really likes this book, since it’s otherwise poorly done. Though to be honest, I don’t even know how the pop culture references could be all that enjoyable for anyone, since they’re so shallow. I thought the same when reading RP1, but it seemed even moreso this time. It feels like Cline just really wants to showcase his pop culture knowledge in these books, except half of what we get is something that anyone with an internet connection could easily include in a story.

As for the story itself, there’s a ridiculous amount of exposition, usually dumped in huge piles, and often right when something exciting is about to happen. Seriously, when we’re told the first item for the contest has (finally) been found, we stop for a whole bunch of explanation before actually moving on to the item. And worse yet, sometimes the exposition is repeated. Cline wants so badly for us to know how certain aspects of this make-believe world within a make-believe world work that he tells us twice!

Wade, the MC, is a terrible human being masquerading as a compassionate guy who just doesn’t know how to deal with people. We went through a depressing time with him in the first book, when he pushed all of his friends away and became depressed, but at least we got a good ending out of it. But we have almost a repeat of that in this book, and it’s even more clear now that he’s simply a terrible person. I just can’t bring myself to root for him anymore. I didn’t care if he and Samantha got back together or not, and I really didn’t care about their conflicting views of how to best “save” humanity.

And then there’s the ending…I could not believe what I was hearing when I got to the last chapter. It’s astounding to me that anyone can truly think that the decisions that are made by this group of characters are a good idea. That they’re even remotely okay. That they solve anything! I guess it’s supposed to be a happy ending, but it sounds terrifying and depressing to me. I need to stop now, before the review gets any longer, but suffice it to say that I do not recommend this book to anyone, fans of 80s culture or not. If you really like John Hughes movies or Prince, you might be in heaven for 3-4 chapters of this book. For anyone else…read at your own risk.

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Book Review: The Captured Bride

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The Captured Bride
The Daughters of the Mayflower #3
by Michelle Griep

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Historical Christian romance

Mercy Lytton’s keen eyesight makes her a great scout for the British during the French and Indian War. When she’s tasked with pretending to be the wife of a Frenchman who has been condemned by the British as a traitor on a perilous journey to deliver a load of stolen gold to a British stronghold, the nearby, antagonistic Wyandot warriors may threaten Mercy’s life, but the condemned Elias Dubois will threaten her heart.

I’m finding it difficult to rate and review this book. It’s been a few weeks since I finished it, and I wish I hadn’t waited so long to review it, because now I’m struggling to remember much of it. That is probably an accurate enough reflection of the book. Overall, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. I spent the first few chapters really confused about a lot of things, like whose loyalties lay where and how certain people were related or connected to each other. Some of it gets answered by the end of the book, but I think certain aspects would have been much better off explained earlier on, so that I didn’t spend the first third of the story so confused. I re-read the first few pages after getting into it a little, thinking I might just have missed something, but it didn’t help.

I think this is yet another book in this series that suffers from having too much going on, and not all of it ends up being explained in the end. There was a lot of action, and it was done pretty well. A lot of side characters popped in and out, not necessarily adding enough to the story to make them worth taking the space they did. And something that really detracted from the story, for me, were the physical aspects of the building romance. Though there is clearly mutual respect between the two leads, and the relationship does build in a somewhat organic way, the author still puts more of an emphasis on physical attraction and nearness than I like to see in this type of story (though I have read worse in Christian fiction). Again, the book isn’t terrible, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have preferred. I think this will be the last book in the series that I read.

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Book Review: The Librarians and the Mother Goose Chase

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The Librarians and the Mother Goose Chase
The Librarians #2
by Greg Cox
read by Therese Plummer

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Fantasy adventure

When the Mother Goose Treaty of 1918 appears to have been broken, nursery rhymes come to life, and they’re anything but whimsical. The Librarians and their guardian are sent in different directions to investigate these nursery rhymes, while Flynn Carson is nowhere to be found.

Let me start by saying again, as I did for the previous book in the series, that I love The Librarians. I think the show is better than it has any right to be, and a large part of that is due to the great casting. The movies were good as well, but I think the show really took the overall story world to a new level. I’m glad to be able to read these books, though it’s frustrating to me that they’re so vague about where they fit in the series. This one seems to take place after season 3, but while there are plenty of references to Prospero (and a spoiler for the end of season 2) and definitely to Dulaque (from season 1), there aren’t any references to Apep from season 3. Plus, a major development for Cassandra that took place at the end of season 3 definitely doesn’t come into play in this book, so it seems it can’t have happened. Maybe it’s just supposed to be vague, but I would have preferred to be able to read it at the right time while watching the show. And while the book does attempt to give some basic understanding of the overall setting and backstory of the Library and the Librarians, I think this book is best read by someone who has seen at least the TV show. Knowledge of the movies may not be necessary.

Now to the story itself. Overall it was decent. I didn’t mind the Librarians being separated as much as others did, partly because they still each had a counterpart of sorts to work with. I thought some of the story was weak, for example the nursery rhyme connection to the man in Florida was a major stretch, and for a while, I kept expecting someone to say they were wrong about which nursery rhyme they’d associated it with. The stakes were as high as they get, and there was a bit of a twist that I only figured out a moment before Baird did. In the end, there things I liked more about it than the previous book, and things I like less about it. This book had all the campy fun of the show, and I like that the characters’ personalities come through on the page like they do on the small screen. I still don’t care for the narrator’s breathy tendencies, and if I do re-read this series in the future, I’ll probably skip the audiobooks. Still, I’m enjoying this extension of the show.

Fact check: Jenkins explains that “Mother Goose” is more of a title, passed down through generations, the bearer of which is meant to guard the spells that end up being written down and distributed as nursery rhymes. Elizabeth Goose was her generation’s Mother Goose, and a real-life person, however her maiden name was Elizabeth Foster, and she married the Goose name, so it’s weird she was coincidentally that generation’s Mother Goose (and that this isn’t brought up in the book). Also, Jenkins says that “tourists in Boston flock to what’s claimed to be the grave of the ‘real’ Mother Goose, blithely unaware that she was actually only one in a long line of Mother Gooses, carrying on an ancient tradition.” But the grave in Boston that has become a tourist attraction is actually the grave of MARY Goose, unrelated to the woman whose rhymes prompted the publishing. Mary Goose was actually the first, late wife of Elizabeth’s husband.

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Book Review: Jurassic Park

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Jurassic Park
Book #1
by Michael Crichton

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: Science fiction thriller

Up front, I will say that the movie probably influenced my reaction to the book, so if you’re looking for an unbiased opinion, you may want to go elsewhere. Jurassic Park is one of my top 3 favorite movie franchises, if not the top, even though I can certainly admit that there are some duds in there. I just don’t care; I love them anyway. I did read this book once, back in high school, most likely because of how much I already liked the first couple of movies then.

Now reading it again, I think I appreciated it even more than I did back then. Yes, the science gets a little long-winded, as do Malcolm’s speeches, so I might have skimmed a little. But that doesn’t keep me from enjoying a book. Outside of that, there is a lot of excitement, and even though Malcolm won’t shut up, I really liked his character. The race against time caused by the juvenile raptors on the boat headed for the mainland adds even higher stakes. And the book doesn’t make quite as many huge leaps about dinosaurs that paleontologists couldn’t possibly know for sure, but rather the characters have to learn about them and deduce what they can expect as they go.

I have seen the movie too many times to not have been constantly comparing the two as I read, and I even made some notes to help myself keep both the similarities and differences straight (some were things that were used in the 2nd movie, even though there’s also a 2nd book). But I do think the book stands on its own and should be read by fans of the movie, which is more famous than the book, but does owe its existence to the book.

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Book Review: Quest for the King’s Crown

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Quest for the King’s Crown
Last Chance Detectives #6/7*
by Robert Vernon

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Children’s Christian mystery, adventure

Mysterious strangers and very old skeletons launch the Last Chance Detectives into another case, this time searching for treasure!

This series takes place in the mid-90s, though I sometimes think the author takes some liberty with the technology available at the time. Still, this story is fun, with some twists and turns that keep it interesting. There are some things that happen that I feel are unlikely enough to lower the rating by a star, because while kids may not pick up on those issues, that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a story with a tighter plot. I also think the kids themselves and their personalities take a bit of a backseat to the grander plot, but overall, it’s a good addition to the series. I was leery of new books being written after so long, but now I’m glad to be able to read more about these young detectives from the 90s and really hope the author is planning more, especially considering the tiny crumb we’re given about Mike’s missing dad in this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tyndale House Publishers/Focus on the Family for providing me a copy of this book to review.

Find out more about Quest for the King’s Crown
Publication date: November 8, 2022
*There were 3 books in the series originally, back in the 90s, and then a prequel came out in 2004. For some reason, when the first more recent book was published in 2021, the first one was labeled as book #5 in the series, I guess making the prequel the new #1 and pushing the rest a book later. But the early ones are still labeled as 1-3 in many places, so now it’s just kind of a mess…

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Book Review: The People of Sparks

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The People of Sparks
Book of Ember #2
by Jeanne DuPrau

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Children’s dystopian

Spoiler notice: The following review will contain some spoilers for the first book in the series, The City of Ember.

After escaping from the underground city of Ember, Lina and Doon are joined by 400 of their fellow Emberites. With little food and no knowledge of life above ground, they stumble upon the city of Sparks, a town with a rocky past of their own. Though the people of Sparks are generous, the Emberites more than double the strain on their own limited resources. When tension mounts and anger begins to flare on both sides, can Lina and Doon help the people of Sparks and the people of Ember avoid war?

I think what I’m seeing in this book is that the author’s desire to insert a theme and to teach kids something she believes in made the story a lot less interesting than it could have been. Exploring the idea that these people have lived their entire lives underground, in a city that was built for them, with technology they never understood, and literally don’t even know what the sun is, much less how seasons work, did take up some of the book, but it fell by the wayside when the “War is bad” motif took over. Yes, war is bad, and yes, in the context of this story, war is what drove the Emberites’ ancestors underground. And it’s what left the people of Sparks in a primitive lifestyle, only now finally able to store excess food for an emergency. However, I’m not sure I buy that the people of Ember, who have just barely survived the death of their city and the stumbling around in a foreign land to find shelter, could produce someone who wanted power for himself and would be willing to incite others to violence to get it. It seemed like the ramping up to a conflict happened really fast.

Following Lina as she tried to understand her vision/memory/whatever about the gleaming city almost seemed like an afterthought. She took a lot of risk and a lot of the story was taken up by her adventure, just for a really minor pay-off.

I do like what ultimately transpired in the climax and the aftermath of that, and frankly, it went better than I expected it to. I anticipated a really simple, heavy-handed resolution, and though what actually happened wasn’t necessarily unique and unexpected, it was nice. And the book ended well, leaving me still interested in the next in the series. While I think this book could have been MUCH better, it’s not a bad follow-up for those who enjoyed the first in the series, and might be more enjoyable for the age group that it’s meant for than it was for me.

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