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Book Review: The Fugitive

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The Fugitive
Lorien Legacies: The Lost Files #10
by Pittacus Lore

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: YA sci-fi

Spoiler notice: The following review may contain spoilers for the main series, starting with I Am Number Four.

Upon learning the whereabouts of Sarah Hart, Mark James heads to New Mexico to mount a one-man rescue, all the while trying to stay out of the hands of the Mogadorian-allied FBI.

This quick read was not a bad way to re-visit the world of the Garde and Mogadorian threat. I didn’t care for Mark in the first book, but he grew on me when he joined the cause. He was always in the background though, so it was interesting to see him more front and center here. Of course, I never much cared for Sarah as a character; I don’t feel that the author really created her in such a way that it makes sense for both John and Mark to pine over her, but that doesn’t really affect this story. Since I have read the whole Lorien Legacies series, I already knew the outcome of this novella, so the big reveal wasn’t news to me and cliffhanger wasn’t particularly thrilling. Again, this isn’t any fault with the story itself. Overall, the story was decent but not super exciting for me. Maybe it would have been different if I’d read it at the place it occurred in the series, instead of after it was all done, but oh well. You definitely wouldn’t want to read this if you haven’t read any of the series. If you have and liked the series, you might want to read this as well.

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Book Review: The Unbreakable Code

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The Unbreakable Code
Book Scavenger #2
by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade adventure

Spoiler notice: The following review will contain spoilers for the previous book, Book Scavenger.

At a party at Hollister’s book store celebrating the release of a lost book by Edgar Allen Poe, Emily witnesses her teacher, Mr. Quisling, stealing something out of a purse. Before she can decide whether to confront him or not, he drops it, and she and James decode a message that starts them off on a new quest to learn more about something called the Unbreakable Code. But when they begin to realize that an arsonist is involved in the same quest, they’re not sure who to trust.

I loved this book almost as much as the first one. Emily and James (and Steve), and at times Matthew, still make a great team. The Book Scavenger game is a fun addition to the plot, and the Unbreakable Code angle was really intriguing. Though the code itself is fictional, the author includes a lot of real San Francisco history that I think made the story come alive. One thing I noted while reading this book is that, unlike several other series I’ve read similar in genre and age group, for the most part, these kids aren’t getting up to things that kids their age would never be able to do. I’m not saying everything is 100% realistic, but I think it was moreso than even the previous book in the series. Bertman does a great job of keeping it real.

I only had a few issues with one particular plot hole and with the fact that…well, the entire arson angle felt unnecessary to me. Fortunately, the rest of the story was so enjoyable, those things barely detracted from the rest of the book. I  highly recommend it to kids aged around 10-14 (my 14-year-old daughter loved it as well) but also for teens and even adults who enjoy books and puzzles.

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Book Review: Death in the Clouds

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Death in the Clouds
Hercule Poirot #12
by Agatha Christie
read by Hugh Fraser

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Classic mystery

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this book, partly because I’m getting behind on my reviews due to being so busy right now and partly because this wasn’t a standout installation in the series for me. It was another locked-room-type setting, albeit it an interesting one. Other aspects of the story seemed a little too similar to previous books in the series as well. I did suspect some of the solution, but like normal, I was missing a lot still by the end. There were some slight twists, but overall, I wasn’t super engaged in the story. However, since I’ve started to enjoy the series a lot more than I did early on, I’ll just consider this a bump in the road of my trip through the series. And I still appreciate the narration by Hugh Fraser.

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Book Review: Disney at Dawn

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Disney at Dawn
Kingdom Keepers #2
by Ridley Pearson

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Middle grade fantasy

Spoiler notice: The following review may contain some spoilers for the first book in the series, Disney After Dark.

After the events of the previous book, the DHIs are back online, and the kids they’re patterned after are part of a huge celebration at Magic Kingdom. But Maleficent wasn’t as secure as they’d thought, and now she’s made Animal Kingdoms a wilder place to be. With a new threat of being locked up if they fall asleep and cross over into their holographic forms, the five hosts have to stay awake long enough to free Jez, who has been captured by the Overtakers.

Like its predecessor, this book is not terrible but not great. Again I assume that if I was a major Disney World buff, I would enjoy this book more…or maybe I’d enjoy it less, since some reviews mention incorrect descriptions of the parks. But I have no real ties to Disney, so I wasn’t able to go along for the magical ride as intended. Instead, I had to rely on the story itself. The plot is nothing unexpected and the characters are perhaps even more static and interchangeable than they were in the first book. I have to give this series credit for being inventive in the general premise and fantastical world, but the execution continues to fall short. I will keep reading the series for now, because I can see what it’s trying to be and appreciate that idea. In the meantime, I wouldn’t really recommend this book to anyone, but if it does sound intriguing to you, certainly check out other reviews at the link below, as others have liked it more than I did.

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Book Review: The Kaiju Preservation Society

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The Kaiju Preservation Society
by John Scalzi
Read by Wil Wheaton

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Sci-fi

When Jamie Gray is fired right before COVID lockdowns, he has to resort to food delivery for the very company that fired him. (Note: Yes, Scalzi again here never assigns a pronoun to the MC, but since the narrator I listened to is male and it would be a pain to continue to refer to the MC by the MC’s name rather than use a pronoun, I am going to refer to Jamie Gray as “he” in my review.) Then a delivery to an old acquaintance lands Jamie a better job (because really, anything would be better) with an animal rights organization that turns out to be Jamie’s entrance into his very own sci-fi story.

Overall, this book is a fun, light sci-fi adventure. I did not know the backstory of the name, but I’m sure many others will be aware that kaiju is the general term of movie monsters like Godzilla and Mothra. The story here is that kaiju are from an alternate dimension and occasionally cross over to our dimension, and sightings led to the famous monster movies. The Kaiju Preservation Society is set up in that alternate dimension and basically studies the giant creatures while attempting to keep the two dimensions separate. Jamie is dropped into the middle of this situation and has to learn the ropes basically on the fly. I struggled to understand what the main conflict/plot was for a while, but by the time it really got going, I was mostly enjoying the story. Based only on that, I probably would have rated the book higher.

Unfortunately, Scalzi’s style and political/social leanings detracted heavily from the book for me. When I read Lock In, my first Scalzi, I noted that he tends to write conversations with little in the way of descriptions of what the characters are doing. In that book, it worked for me, at least partly because the main character was just a consciousness within a metal suit. In this book, the lack of descriptions and the overused, super basic dialog tags constantly back and forth (i.e. “I said.” “Kahurangi said.” “I said.” etc.) made the style a little too bland for me. (And by the way, kudos to Wil Wheaton for making it through the many odd names in this book.) Aside from those issues, I actually almost stopped listening to the book when, after the main character leaves behind his two homosexual roommates, he meets a character who is introduced with the “they” pronoun (which, by the way, confused me greatly about how many people were being introduced before I realized what the author was going for). It was a judgment call on my part to keep listening, but I feel that other Christians who read this review should be made aware of the concerns I had that almost led me to stop. There is also quite a bit of language, though I have come to expect that from books like this. I’m overall glad I read the book and tend to think that fans of Scalzi will generally enjoy this book as well. If you are new to his style, though, I don’t know that I’d recommend you start with this one.

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Book Review: The Shingle Weaver’s Picnic

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The Shingle Weaver’s Picnic
by P. C. Smith

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: Historical fiction

It’s 1941, and 7-year-old Annie Elizabeth Jordan (known as Cricket) is going to stay with her grandparents for the summer alone for the first time, since her mom is about to give birth. Amidst the uncertainty and confusion of the war that has already cost Cricket dearly, a tragedy rocks her grandparents’ small Pacific-northwest town.

Before I get into the actual review, I feel the need to give some warnings up front. From the synopsis and at least some early parts of the book, I got a kind of To Kill a Mockingbird feel, so I was completely caught off guard by the extreme language and sexual content. Specifically, there are multiple rapes described in varying levels of graphicness, at least one quite graphically. It’s really bizarre, in fact, considering the amount of prayer and references to God in this book. Cricket’s prayers are sweet and could make the story come across as Christian, but it’s not too hard to see that it’s shallow at best.

Now to the story itself—I have to applaud the author for the depth she put into it. The story is told in snippets of Cricket traveling to and then spending the summer with her grandparents, mixed with fairly in-depth backstories of different characters as they’re introduced. Some of these characters are seemingly minor, and at least at the time we read about their lives up until the point that we meet them, we have no idea why they’re important. It is an…interesting pacing choice. Then, as if because Smith understood the possible issues that would arise from this style, she ends a lot of chapters with a reminder that something terrible is coming to keep the suspense up. This might work for some people, but it was just a little strange to me. Especially since the official synopsis tells us what that event is going to be (though not all of the details, of course); it just takes quite a while to get there. I also feel like the title was fairly disconnected from most of the book.

There is a little bit of a twist near the end, which kept it from being as predictable as I thought it might be by the time the actual “event” happened. It was a little underwhelming though. Also, Cricket’s prayers seem childish in nature, but some of the words and things that she seems to understand are too grown-up for her age. I was also a little confused by the “present time” that the book starts with, at which point Cricket would have to be in her 80s, since she was 7-8 in 1941, yet her baby brother, who was born around 1941, says he’s in his 50s. So maybe the “present time” is actually supposed to be the 90s, yet iPods and iPhones are mentioned. It was a minor thing, but it really confused me. On the other hand, for a book that, as far as I can tell, is self-published, it contained barely any typos and mistakes, which is refreshing. In the end, though, it just wasn’t for me. I would say that enough of that was personal preference, though, so if you’re interested in the book, check out the other reviews, which are all positive so far, at the link below.

I received a copy of this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review.

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February in Review

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I read 12 books last month, pretty close to my recent monthly average. The page count was lower than average, though, due to a lot of shorter books last months. That doesn’t surprise me, because I definitely felt like I wasn’t reading as much throughout last month, for no particular reason I can pinpoint.

Here are the books I read in February:

39-9
Scottish Shore
McGee7
Eyre
Storm
Alcatraz 3
BSC2
Christy
Rendezvous
Cahills vs 5
Quiet

Storm Warning by Linda Sue Park (4 / 5)
Midnight on the Scottish Shore by Sarah Sundin (5 / 5)
Do the Bright Thing by Bill Myers (4 / 5)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (3 / 5)
Storm Warning by Elizabeth Goddard (2.5 / 5)
Al Capone Does My Homework by Gennifer Choldenko (5 / 5)
Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls by Ann M. Martin (4 / 5)
Christy by Catherine Marshall (5 / 5)
Bittersweet Rendezvous in New England by Diane Green (2 / 5)
Hounded by David Rosenfelt (5 / 5)
Trust No One by Linda Sue Park (4 / 5)
Reclaiming Quiet by Sarah Clarkson (2 / 5)

This list includes 4 ARCs and 2 re-reads. My favorite book from February was Midnight on the Scottish Shore. I started 0 series, continued 6 series, and finished 0 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.

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: Bittersweet Rendezvous in New England

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Bittersweet Rendezvous in New England
by Diane Green

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Christian historical fiction

When Becky Chalmers and her new fiancé learn about a connection between their families they didn’t know existed, she reconsiders her relationship with the man. In the wake of this decision, Becky’s brother offers to take her to Boston to hopefully allow her to re-connect with man from her past, whom she’d very nearly married once upon a time.

This short read is, unfortunately, a little confusing and not quite what I had anticipated from the synopsis. The story is mostly about Becky’s various relationships during her life, past and present, including friends who have or have had crushes on her. Even though one of these men has a distinctly separate POV (and actually starts off the entire book), he’s no bigger of a character than the other man in Becky’s life at the start of this book. It all makes for some odd pacing and plot choices. There are some other questionable things that happen in the text, and I was left scratching my head a few times.

When I read a self-published book, it is my intention not to let things that a professional editor would help with affect my view too much. I’m not saying that there is no burden of responsibility here, but it’s harder for self-published authors. So while it did not affect my rating, I will at least mention that there are several mistakes throughout the text; for example, there are quite a few missing opening or ending quotation marks. It can detract from the book for some, so let that be a warning. Overall, I think this book could benefit from an editor, both in style and substance. However, taken in the right context, this could be a book that others would enjoy. For example, it appeared to be a romance from the synopsis I was originally sent, but I wouldn’t call it that. It’s more contemplative of Becky’s life and the choices she has before her. If you’re interested in the book, please don’t let my lower rating keep you from giving it a try.

I received a copy of this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review.

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Book Review: Hounded

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Hounded
Andy Carpenter #12
by David Rosenfelt
read by Grover Gardner

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: Mystery

When one of Andy Carpenter’s few actual friends, police lieutenant Pete Stanton, is charged with murder, it’s no question whether or not Andy will defend him. At the same time, Andy and his live-in girlfriend Laurie take in the 8-year-old son of the man Pete is accused of killing, so he doesn’t end up in the system. Murder suspects Andy can handle, but a child is a whole other story.

I really enjoyed this book all the way through. I don’t know if it was just the mood I was in while listening this time, but I actually chuckled out loud while listening to it at least 3 times—I always find this series funny, but this book seemed even more so. I said in my review of the book literally before this one that I would be okay with smaller conspiracies in these books sometimes, since it seemed like they’d gotten pretty bloated in the last several installments I’d read. And then this book gave me just that. The addition of Ricky, the murdered man’s son, added a new dimension to the formula that I appreciated. Andy took some major steps in his life in this book, which I knew would happen, because I’ve read some of the later books in the series, and it was nice to see them finally happen. Overall, this was a solid addition to the series, and I recommend the book (especially the audio) for fans of mystery, crime fiction, and courtroom dramas.

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Book Review: Trust No One

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Trust No One
The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers #5
by Linda Sue Park

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Middle grade mystery, adventure

Spoiler notice: The following review may contain some spoilers for the previous books in the series, starting with The Maze of Bones.

Amy and Dan Cahill continue to jump through hoops for their enemy, Vesper One, trying to save the lives of their abducted friends and family members. Meanwhile, the in the Cahills’ inner circle will be exposed.

I kinda don’t know where to begin with this review. The story really ramps up in this penultimate book, and yet at the same time, it’s still stagnant in some ways. The fact that my synopses for these books basically always have some version of “Amy and Dan continue doing Vesper One’s bidding to try to save the lives of their hostage loved ones…” means that there’s not a whole lot of variation in the plots. And what they’re doing for the Vespers is always stealing something that’s priceless or super heavily guarded or just missing from history. I will say, though, the historical treasure involved in this book was really interesting. I was curious enough to look it up online and learn more about it.

I mentioned before that this series is a bit darker than the original, and that is especially true when you consider the body count to this point. Not that no one died in the original series, but here it seems like a Cahill or Cahill ally dies every book. I’m not a huge fan of that, especially considering who some of the characters are that are dying, some that I really like. Some of the danger elements in this book seem a little forced and unnecessary, which is the main reason for my lower star rating. There are some explanations given in this book as well as some questions left open still for the final in the series. I have my own theories as well, including a counter theory to one made by Dan near the end of this book. Then the book ends on a major cliffhanger, and I have high hopes for the last book (while also being trepidatious, since it’s written by an author brand new to this series and has quite a few loose ends to tie up).

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