woodge blog

Low Moon ~ Jason
Hardcover: 216 pages ISBN-10: 1606991558 ISBN-13: 978-1606991558

The author, known simply as Jason, is an acclaimed graphic novelist based in Norway.  This book contains five stories and takes its name from one of them, my favorite, a chess western.  His characters are all hapless dog-faced creations grappling with desire and melancholy.  The stories are interspersed with deadpan wit and bits of slapstick humor.  It's very cool and apparently Jason has a rabid following.  Last year the title piece was serialized in the New York Times Sunday Magazine "Funny Pages" section.  Count me in as another fan.

The Reavers ~ George MacDonald Fraser
trade paperback 288 pages ISBN-10: 0307388050 ISBN-13: 978-0307388056

Fraser is best known for his series of Flashman novels.  But this one is a silly stand-alone.  In fact, the first sentence of his foreward to the book is: "This book is nonsense."  Which means that basically, he just wrote it for fun and he's not hewing closely to the facts of the time period he set it in (Elizabethan England, somewhere around 159-, Fraser is willfully vague).  The characters frequently spout anachronisms and it's really just all done for laughs.  If you're familiar with Fraser's book The Pyrates, it's close to that style.  I loved The Pyrates, and this one was diverting enough but not as easy to follow.  Fraser renders his characters' dialogue into their various accents (Scottish, Cockney, American Deep South, Spanish, etc.) and that tends to slow the reading speed doon abit.  If ya nae ken whut ahm tockin' aboot, yer in fer a bit o' a slog. Oh, also, a passing familiarity with Cockney rhyming slang also helped in a few spots.  To wit: china (plate) = mate, butcher's (hook) = look.

City of Thieves ~ David Benioff
Hardcover 272 pages ISBN-10: 0670018708 ISBN-13: 978-0670018703

This is an excellent World War II story set in and around St. Petersburg (aka Leningrad) in 1942.  Lev is arrested for looting a German corpse and Kolya is arrested for desertion.  A colonel gives them a choice: die by execution or find him a dozen eggs for his daughter's wedding in four days.  They choose the latter.  The story is funny, horrble, suspenseful, heart-breaking and exciting.  It draws you in completely and the writing has that effortless feeling.  Great characters too.  I really wouldn't want to tell you anything more.  It's best to discover this story on your own.  It's a quick read.

Prador Moon ~ Asher, Neal
trade paperback 222 pages ISBN-10: 159780052X ISBN-13: 978-1597800525

Neal Asher's brand of SF is not for the squeamish.  Prador Moon is set within his Polity universe.  The Polity is the collective group of worlds which is run by AI and policed by Earth Central Security agents.  Unlike the first Polity novel, Gridlinked (which I've read), this one does not feature ECS agent Ian Cormac.  Prador Moon is a standalone novel which details the first contact with emissaries of the Prador Second Kingdom. The alien race known as the Prador are huge crab-like beasts who give new meaning to the world hostile.  For instance they enjoy dining on humans and occasionally will eat their own young.  (I found much to admire in their parenting skills.)  This tale has two main characters: Jebel Krong and Moria Salem.  Jebel Krong becomes a revenge-driven leader of the defensive forces; Moria Salem is getting used to having a new aug implanted on her skull.  Think of an aug as like a small super-computing wi-fi connected interface to universe-spanning data bank.  That would take some getting used to.  Anyway, Prador Moon is a short book that moves quickly.  It occasionally gets lost in head-scratching technobabble but only for a paragraph here and there.  It's a nice diversion for Asher fans.  But if you're interested, I'd suggest checking out Gridlinked first.  That said, The Skinner is my favorite Asher tale and one I plan on revisiting some day.  The Skinner also features some Prador characters.  They are nasty!

Lately I've been busy writing an adventure story for my kids in my spare time.  I'm also trying to add a few illustrations.  This is the airship Zephyr which has a prominent role in the story.

Poison Study (Study, Book 1) ~ Snyder, Maria V.
trade paperback 416 pages ISBN-10: 0778324338 ISBN-13: 978-0778324331

A couple months ago I had a Borders Gift Card burning a hole in my pocket and as luck would have it, there's a big fat Borders store; a short walk from where I work.  So I was browsing again and came across this title.  I'm much better about impulse buys than I used to be so I checked out the comments on Amazon before snagging it.  Well, as of this writing it's rated 4 and a half stars out of 5 from over 200 reviews.  And sure enough, I was hooked by the second page.  The plot concerns a young woman named Yelena sentenced to be executed for murder.  But she's given an option: die by execution, or become the Commander's food taster, a life-long position (which is currently available since the last food taster died from poisoning.)  Yelena chooses not to die and then gets caught up in the political intrigue surrounding the land known as Ixia.  It's a breeze to read and the pace rarely flags although the rest of the story is not as strong as the first third.  This book can stand alone but there are two more "Study" books featuring Yelena.  They're on my list.  4 stars.

The Hidden World ~ Paul Park

mass market paperback 384 pages ISBN-10: 0765355876 ISBN-13: 978-0765355874

This is the fourth and final book in Park's Roumanian series, easily the oddest series I've read to date.  (Could be the oddest story as well but then I recalled Santa Steps Out by Robert Devereaux and for sheer oddness, that one's tough to beat.)  There are three main characters in the Roumanian series: Miranda, Andromeda, and Peter.  And their trajectory through these books is hard to summarize.  Let's just say that the tale involves: an alternate world; conjurers; magical items (including a gun housing six demons, some of which get loose); possesion; a character that changes from female to dog to male to various combinations of the aforementioned; the titular spirit world; and a war between Roumania and Turkey.  That said, I enjoyed the journey although at times I found it confusing.  I'd recommend it to anyone bored with the same old thing.  Also, lots of writerly types give this series high praise including Ursula K. LeGuin and Gene Wolfe. 

Overheard:

Kajsa: Mama, let's pretend I'm an astronaut and I landed in your house and you said, 'Who are you?'
Mama: Okay... who are you?!
Kajsa: I'm an astronaut! I came from Mexico.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ~ Stieg Larsson
Translated by Reg Keeland
Hardcover: 480 pages ISBN-10: 0307269752 ISBN-13: 978-0307269751

I first heard of this book from my Swedish step-father-in-law. I had asked him who his current favorite author was last August.  Stieg Larsson's three books are very popular in Sweden.  His second book is due to be published in U.S. this summer.  Shortly after handing in the three manuscripts for his mysteries, he died.

This was a very cool mystery about a disgraced journalist hired to investigate the disappearance of a young girl in the late sixties.  The characters are all fully-realized, interesting individuals and story takes several interesting twists and turns.  Curiously, the book's title in Sweden was Man Som Hatar Kvinnor which translates as The Man Who Hates Women.  I like the English title better.  Recommended for mystery-lovers. 

(There are a few Swedish words that are left in the text, but you'd guess their meaning from the context. Fröken is one example.  It means Miss.  And it may help to know that the suffix gatan means street.)

The 9th Annual Summer Movie Box Office Challenge is underway and this post is the place for comments about it.

see: http://tr.im/iwri