Showing posts with label Adult. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adult. Show all posts

Friday, October 25, 2013

The Ghost Bride

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The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

"One evening, my father asked me if I would like to become a ghost bride..."

Though ruled by British overlords, the Chinese of colonial Malaya still cling to ancient customs. And in the sleepy port town of Malacca, ghosts and superstitions abound.

Li Lan, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family, has few prospects. But fate intervenes when she receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy and powerful Lim family. They want her to become a ghost bride for the family's only son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, a traditional ghost marriage is used to placate a restless spirit. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at a terrible price.

After an ominous visit to the opulent Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also by her desire for the Lim's handsome new heir, Tian Bai. Night after night, she is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, with its ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, vengeful spirits and monstrous bureaucracy—including the mysterious Er Lang, a charming but unpredictable guardian spirit. Li Lan must uncover the Lim family's darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family—before she is trapped in this ghostly world forever. -Plot summary borrowed from Goodreads

 Title? Sold. Cover? Double sold. Summary, setting, premise? I needed this book two days before I'd even heard of it. I was immediately hooked, and once I got my grabby little hands on it, I tore through it in two days. 

 Almost everything about this book worked for me. Choo offers so many cultural and historical details that were entirely new to me, and most of them fit seamlessly into an engaging plot. I loved learning more about the historical dress, diet, and history of late 19th century Malaya (Malaysia), and that was before I got to the rich superstitions and folklore. This was all to the good because although the plot is engaging, it is not quick. You really have to want to wander the streets of this port city with Li Lan and her Amah, to visit with the fortune teller, explore the market place, get lost in the afterlife, and be haunted by a variety of spirits. Luckily that's pretty much all I wanted to do, so, no problems there. 

 Besides, the pace does pick up in certain parts, especially as Li Lan unravels more of the mysteries facing her and uncovers more of her family's past, while racing to reclaim what is rightfully hers. Fans of Spirited Away or historical/magic realist novels should be excited about this one, and while most libraries will probably have it shelved with adult fiction, its young protagonist, supernatural elements, and romance will appeal to many readers of YA. 

 (To get especially nerdy for a moment, I would trade a small, non-essential organ to have this adapted into a video game by Vanillaware, the company that brought us Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade. The combination of mythology, spirits, exploring underworlds, fighting otherworldly perils, helpful companions, and taking time out for noodles and other traditional foods makes me long for an RPG adaptation in the WORST way)

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Somewhere Beneath Those Waves

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Somewhere Beneath Those Waves by Sarah Monette

The first non-themed collection of critically acclaimed author Sarah Monette''s best short fiction. To paraphrase Hugo-award winner Elizabeth Bear's introduction: '"onette's prose is lapidary, her ideas are fantastical and chilling. She has studied the craft of fantastic fiction from the pens of masters and mistresses of the genre. She is a poet of the awkward and the uncertain, exalter of the outcast, the outre, and the downright weird. There is nothing else quite like Sarah Monette's fiction." -Plot summary borrowed from Goodreads

Ok, so this isn't YA. I was getting desperate for another post, and I know there are people who may read this blog occasionally who would love this one. Before this one I had read The Bone Key, her collection of short stories about Kyle Murchison Booth, a sort of supernatural detective. She really captured the feel of Lovecraft's horror in some of those stories, without getting bogged down in the prose or offering faceless narrators. She also has the detective story thing down, and I'd love to see a Mystery! production of Booth's stories, in the same vein as Miss Marple or Poirot. 

Both these points, while true, don't do any justice to Monette's own voice as an author, which is distinct, memorable, and masterful. These stories will creep up on you- the language is evocative and conjures up images that will stick with you. The other thing that sets Monette apart, and that many other reviewers have commented on, is the feeling of Otherness embodied by most of her narrators. Her protagonists are, for the most part, outsiders, people who find themselves treading boundaries. To call them quirky would be an insult- they aren't stock characters with a twist, or exploding with irritating eccentricities. They are three-dimensional people, drawn believably but with surprisingly few strokes. Some, like the cops in "A Night in Electric Squidland" and "Impostors," and the aforementioned Booth, are recurring characters. Others, like the courtesan/spy from "Amante Doree" or the heartbroken musician from "Katabasis: Seraphic Trains" (possibly my favorite story), you'll only see for a few brief pages but are unlikely to forget. 

I'd recommend this, and The Bone Key, for fans of Neil Gaiman, Margo Lanagan, Charles DeLint, Catherynne M. Valente (the Seraphic Trains story really reminded me of Palimpsest), Lovecraft, Hellboy, Supernatural (not only are there paranormal cop buddies, there's a naive but tetchy angel), urban fantasy, horror, and magic realism. 

*A caveat: some of these stories are extremely dark, and not just in the sense that they deal with supernatural beings and gothic situations ("The Séance at Chisholm End" is a fantastic period piece about spirit mediums). No, some of these stories deal openly with some heavy stuff, like the loss of an older brother to Vietnam ("Letters from a Teddy Bear on Veterans Day"), surviving conquest ("A Light in Troy") and trauma ("After the Dragon"), and the horrors of war ("No Man's Land"). Serious trigger warnings for these, especially the last.   

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Older Reads

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For any regular readers, I'm sorry if posts have been a bit scarce lately. I've been trying to branch out this year and read some adult fiction as well as children's and young adult. Sometimes I'll review those here, mostly when they're things I know I would have liked to read in high school, but other times I won't. If anyone is curious, here are some of the things I've read and loved over the past few months that would appeal to older readers (especially those who enjoy speculative fiction, which, if you've made it this far, you very likely do).


American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman's best and most ambitious novel yet, a scary, strange, and hallucinogenic road-trip story wrapped around a deep examination of the American spirit. Gaiman tackles everything from the onslaught of the information age to the meaning of death, but he doesn't sacrifice the razor-sharp plotting and narrative style he's been delivering since his Sandman days. -Borrowed from Goodreads

This I actually did read and love in high school. I mostly wanted to reread it while listening to the exhaustive (and excellent) American Gods Mix Tape by Tor. You can find nearly complete playlists of these songs on YouTube for easy listening.


In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente

A Book of Wonders for Grown-Up Readers.

Every once in a great while a book comes along that reminds us of the magic spell that stories can cast over us to dazzle, entertain, and enlighten. Welcome to the Arabian Nights for our time a lush and fantastical epic guaranteed to spirit you away from the very first page. -Borrowed from Goodreads

If you'd ever like to know what the inside of my head is like, check my Pinterest boards, listen to some Decemberists, and read something by Catherynne M. Valente. It's pretty much that. If I gush about her any more on this blog people will think I'm secretly funded by her, so I shan't.



A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I normally loathe movie/TV tie-in covers with a violent passion. But this one features Mssrs. Cumberbatch and Freeman, so I'll allow it this once. Also, if you haven't watched the very nearly perfect Sherlock yet, what in the Queen's name are you waiting for, an official summons from Mycroft?!

If convenient, watch at once.

......... If inconvenient, watch anyway.


The Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

 "You, dear reader, continue at your own risk. It is not for the faint of heart—no more so than the study of dragons itself. But such study offers rewards beyond compare: to stand in a dragon’s presence, even for the briefest of moments—even at the risk of one’s life—is a delight that, once experienced, can never be forgotten. . . ."

I bemoaned the occasionally lackluster nature of historical protagonists in a previous review, especially those with a connection to the sciences. Brennan's Lady Trent more than makes up for that complaint with a wry, subversive voice reminiscent of Dame Judi Dench.


Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente

Filled with fascinating glimpses through the fabled looking glass and a close-up look at hard living in the gritty gun-slinging West, readers will be enchanted by this story at once familiar and entirely new. -Borrowed from Goodreads

Valente. Vess illustrations. A fairytale reimagining set in the American West smack in the middle of my Deadwood phase. Can a girl ask for more? Not this one, no sir.



Have you read read anything fantastic (in any sense of the word) this year?

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Warm Bodies

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Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

R is a young man with an existential crisis--he is a zombie. He shuffles through an America destroyed by war, social collapse, and the mindless hunger of his undead comrades, but he craves something more than blood and brains. He can speak just a few grunted syllables, but his inner life is deep, full of wonder and longing. He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse. Just dreams.

After experiencing a teenage boy's memories while consuming his brain, R makes an unexpected choice that begins a tense, awkward, and strangely sweet relationship with the victim's human girlfriend. Julie is a burst of vibrant color in the otherwise dreary and gray landscape that R lives in. His decision to protect her will transform not only R, but his fellow Dead, and perhaps their whole lifeless world.

Scary, funny, and surprisingly poignant, Warm Bodies is about being alive, being dead and the blurry line in between. -Plot summary borrowed from Goodreads


You know when you find a book at exactly the right time, and things just gel? I can't remember the last time I was so pulled into a book, not just for it's likable characters or snappy dialogue, but because I cared so deeply about what was happening in the world of the book, in our world, or when I felt like I completely agreed with and understood the author's point. I love how well Marion uses zombies as a metaphor without seeming pretentious or heavy-handed- partially that's because his zombies seem original while still being familiar and often terrifying. I loved the language in this book, too:
  
“I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses.”  

“There is a chasm between me and the world outside of me. A gap so wide my feelings can't cross it. By the time my screams reach the other side, they have dwindled into groans.” 


“Of course, if I don't eat all of him, if I spare his brain, he'll rise up and follow me back to the airport, and that might make feel better. I'll introduce him to everyone, and maybe we'll stand around and groan for a while. It's hard to say what 'friends' are any more, but that might be close.” 

If you haven't already guessed, while there is plenty of humor, most of it is of the very dark variety. Don't be fooled though, this is no cynical snarkfest. There is genuine heart here, under the tasty brains that will make you relive that day you owned the discussion in English class because you "totally get what the author is saying, man."

Then again, I say all that but COMPLETELY missed the bones of a famous play that are shallowly buried here. (Hey guys, did you know The Lion King is "Hamlet"?!) I think I'm glad I did, actually, I loved it on its own and might have been distracted if I knew to look for more references.

I love R. I love Isaac Marion. I love that I get to use the phrase ZomRomCom again to describe the upcoming feature film adaptation. Who would have thought that phrase would be resurrected post-Shaun of the Dead? Speaking of the King of the Zombies, Simon Pegg contributed a blurb for this book which I think sums it up perfectly: “A mesmerizing evolution of a classic contemporary myth.”

Warm Bodies shuffles into theaters February 1st.


Thursday, January 3, 2013

Some Kind of Fairy Tale

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Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce

It is Christmas afternoon and Peter Martin gets an unexpected phone call from his parents, asking him to come round. It pulls him away from his wife and children and into a bewildering mystery.

He arrives at his parents house and discovers that they have a visitor. His sister Tara. Not so unusual you might think, this is Christmas after all, a time when families get together. But twenty years ago Tara took a walk into the woods and never came back and as the years have gone by with no word from her the family have, unspoken, assumed that she was dead. Now she's back, tired, dirty, dishevelled, but happy and full of stories about twenty years spent travelling the world, an epic odyssey taken on a whim.

But her stories don't quite hang together and once she has cleaned herself up and got some sleep it becomes apparent that the intervening years have been very kind to Tara. She really does look no different from the young woman who walked out the door twenty years ago. Peter's parents are just delighted to have their little girl back, but Peter and his best friend Richie, Tara's one time boyfriend, are not so sure. Tara seems happy enough but there is something about her. A haunted, otherworldly quality. Some would say it's as if she's off with the fairies. And as the months go by Peter begins to suspect that the woods around their homes are not finished with Tara and his family... -Plot summary borrowed from Goodreads

 How have I been missing out on Graham Joyce for so long?? He had me hooked just paragraphs into this book, and it only got better from the first chapter. I loved all the characters and thought all of their actions and reactions to be completely believable. The story is told from various points of view and all of them built upon each other perfectly while still having entirely distinctive voices.

This is not a young adult novel, but since so much time is spent in flashbacks to Peter, Richie, and Tara's teenager years, some chapters are told from the perspective of Peter's teenage son, and there's a chance that Tara herself may be as young as she looks (or is she?), it really kind of works as one. If you've ODed on supernatural fluff and are looking for something more substantial, this might be a perfect fit.

Friday, August 31, 2012

The Magicians

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The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Quentin Coldwater is brillant but miserable. He's a senior in high school, and a certifiable genius, but he's still secretly obsessed with a series of fantasy novels he read as a kid, about the adventures of five children in a magical land called Fillory. Compared to that, anything in his real life just seems gray and colorless.

Everything changes when Quentin finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the practice of modern sorcery. He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. But something is still missing. Magic doesn't bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he though it would.

Then, after graduation, he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. -Plot summary borrowed from Goodreads

 One of the most common quick and dirty summaries for this book is "Harry Potter with college kids." While this is a bland generalization, it's also damn accurate in that it does deal with students at a magical university, and, more to the point, was written for fantasy fans. However. This is a love it or hate it book, and if you go into it looking for the same familiar, comfortable, escapist tropes of many fantasy books, you're in for a rude awakening. 

When I say this is a book for fantasy fans, I mean that it is a book written about a character who is one. Quentin has fallen irrevocably in love with a Narnia-esque series, and has convinced himself that his real life is a pale imitation of what it could be. If only magic were real. If only he could break through the wardrobe, onto Platform 9 3/4, down the rabbbit hole. Then, oh, then he would be happy. 

 (If you have never had this thought, then I'm not entirely sure what you're doing reading this blog.)

 The greatness of this book is how relatable Quentin is. Even if when you want to smack him in the face for being such a self-centered whiner, it's fascinating to see someone who grew up reading about magic dealing with it. It's impossible not to wonder how you would fare at Brakebills, if you would be satisfied, or if, like Quentin, you'd have to start coping with the fact that in life, getting what you want is so often not the happy ending you were banking on. 

 The story is a little bit dark, often cynical, and will challenge how you view fantasy. The magic here is that Grossman pulls all that off while reminding you why you love fantasy in the first place. He's not taking snarky jabs at a genre he doesn't care for- he's just giving you a peek behind the curtain. 

 (One more note on the tone: Grossman has stated that he was depressed while reading this book, and that after treatment, is a much happier person. I am very interested to see how this affects the next books in the series)

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