The Making of a Duchess by Shana Galen

This book is pretty silly.  It's not the worst thing I've ever read, but seeing as how it doesn't have much in the way of originality, storytelling, or romance, I'm not sure why a person would want to spend their time reading it.

Sarah Smith is an orphan and a governess for the famous war hero, Sir Northrop.  What she doesn't know is that Sir Northrop is still involved in the defense of England, and after one of his spies is incapacitated, he orders her to take the woman's place as the Duc de Valère's presumed fiancée, Serafina Artois.  Her mission, whether she chooses to accept it or not, is to find evidence indicating the duc (as the author insists on spelling it) is a traitor.  But since Sarah has no idea how to be a spy, that's pretty hopeless cause, n'est-ce pas?  Oh, and the duc and Sarah are inexplicably attracted to each other.

Just so you know from the outset, I feel kind of tricked by this book.  I was expecting a story about spies, but neither of the main characters is a spy.  The style of the dress on the cover and the synopsis led me believe that it would be set during Revolutionary France, not Regency England.  And the term "game of cat and mouse" indicated to me this would be a thriller of some sort, not a comedy of errors.

So needless to say I had a lot of problems with this book.  As far as telling the story in the best way possible, the novel needs help.  The first chapter was clearly a prologue, so I skipped it.  The second chapter wasn't exactly gripping, either.  All the "plot twists" were not only predictable--which would be bad enough--but completely obvious in the first fifty pages.  I am not exaggerating, it blew me away how the author just gave everything away like it was Christmas morning and she was a shopaholic.  Not to mention there were a lot of plot holes--for example, why would a French duke who has had nearly his entire family murdered by Revolutionaries spy for Napoleon?  No one even raises this question.  There's never any doubt in the reader's mind that Julien--aka monsieur le duc--is neither a spy nor a traitor (although the whole traitor thing is a little confusing, since one doesn't know if he's become and English citizen or not), so there is absolutely no dramatic tension coming from that storyline; and his search for his brother is relegated mainly to the very end of the book, so that doesn't play a huge role in the plot, either.

As for the characters, there's not much to say about them.  They're all pretty boring and they seem to behave either by rote or without motivation.

This book isn't terrible--the writing style is good, it's a quick read, and there are some funny and sweet moments.  Plus Julien and Sarah eventually make it to Paris, which made me go, Yay!  Overall, though, this book is pretty typical.  Another Regency set in London, another brooding aristocratic hero, another virginal heroine, yawn yawn yawn.  I know it sounds jaded, but I've seen it done, and I've seen it done a lot better than this.  The underlying nail in the coffin for me was that I didn't sense any chemistry between the hero and heroine, and their attraction felt manufactured--I would have forgiven the book everything else but that.

I do have to thank Sourcebooks for providing me with an ARC of this novel--I'm sorry I didn't enjoy it more.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

I am so proud of myself for finishing this book.  Hooray! 

My friend Vicki bought this book for me.  Wasn't that nice of her?  It's supposed to be an "adult" version of Harry Potter--and if you interpret adult to mean "hang on to your granny panties, because this is going to take a loooooooong time," (rather than, "HP:  the Skinemax version") you'd be right.  This book is almost 800 pages long.  And it's small type.  And it's not 800 pages of action-packed suspense, either.  Which brings me to the point of this mini-rant:  I object to the term "Harry Potter for adults."  Like I have so much more time now that I'm an adult to read really, really long books.  Right.  Now that I have things like a job, and bills, and responsibilities, I find myself thinking, "Hey, you know what I need?  A book so thick and dense with plotlines that I will completely lose track of what the main plot is in the middle, or even wonder what the original plot was."

But in the end, I did finish it.  So it can be done!

The central idea of the book is what if--what if the Napoleonic Wars were won, not purely by military finese on the part of the English, but by magic?  The book takes place during the Late Georgian/Regency eras, and centers around two magicians who were prophecied by the Raven King (the greatest magician in English history) to bring magic back to England.  The first is Mr. Norrell, an older gentleman who sets out to help win the war against Napoleon using magic.  The second is Jonathan Strange, a younger man that Norrell takes on as his pupil.

However, the war with Napoleon isn't really the central plotline of the book.  Oh no.  The true heart of the tale lies in a deal Mr. Norrell makes with a fairy king, The Man With Thistle-Down Hair (I'm planning on naming my first-born son this, btw), to bring a young woman back from the dead.  He doesn't do this out of the goodness of his heart; he does it in order to gain the attention of her fiance, an MP, in the hopes that the war department will finally start taking magic seriously and allow him to help with the war effort.  And, like most deals made purely in self-interest, it turns out to be a deal with the devil.  The Man With Thistle-Down Hair uses the young woman, who quickly marries her fiance and becomes Lady Pole, as an entry point into the human world, where he wreaks all sorts of evil and mischief (as fairies are wont to do).

The first half of the book is hard to get through, or at least it was for me (I'll explain more about that later).  However, the story starts to get really interesting by page 450--in fact, right around the time when Arabella Strange, Jonathan Strange's wife, is captured by The Man With Thistle-Down Hair.  After that point, I really enjoyed the book.  Here's what I liked most about it:

John Childermass

Childermass is the sexiest thing, animate or inanimate, in this book!  All right, he's the only sexy thing in this book.  But damn, rawr.  ;)  He's smart and cunning; at first he appears to be amoral, but then acts with more honor as the book progresses; he has a checkered and mysterious past, with brief stints (that we know of so far) as a pickpocket and a sailor (which I'm going to just assume means pirate, because that makes him even sexier); he can read tarot cards, which is a very attractive feature in a man; during the course of the book he is shot and stabbed; and he is the only character who ever meets the Raven King (although he immediately forgets it).  If this was Ivanhoe, Childermass would be Brian de Bois-Guilbert.  In the romance novel version follow-up to this book, which I've already written in my head, Childermass and Lady Pole fall in love and have a torrid affair that shocks all of London society.  Poor Sir Walter Pole!  But really, how can he compete against Childermass?  Not possible.  He should just give up now.

Jonathan Strange's Pupils

Jonathan Strange takes on three pupils later in the book.  Two of them are young aristocrats and absolute boneheads.  They're freaking hilarious.  It's like watching Larry and Mo trying to do magic.

The Society of York Magicians

As I mentioned before, at the beginning of the book, there is no magic in England.  There are, however, societies of magicians who research magic, hold conferences on magic, debate magic, and write articles about magic, all without ever having tried, or having any intention of trying, to do magic.  I have to admit this seemed very reminiscent of art historians to me.

And here's what I didn't like about the book:

Mr. Norrell

Mr. Norrell is the magician who opens the book.  Unfortunately for us, he's a terrible character.  From the description on the book jacket, I expected him to be a magical version of Dr. House--i.e., entertainingly grumpy, terrifyingly intelligent, and if not a good person, a person with his own code of honor.  However, Norrell is nothing like that.  He's a cautious scaredy cat who's a terrible judge of character, and who doesn't care about anyone but himself and his books!  There are no redeeming qualities to Mr. Norrell.  Part of the reason it's so hard to get into the book is that Norrell is the main character for the first third of the story, and he's completely unlikable and unsympathetic.

The Footnotes

Yes, this book has footnotes.  A lot of footnotes.  I strongly suggest you skim over them or skip them altogether, or your head may explode.

The Ending

The ending leaves many questions unanswered.  What happens to Lascelles in Fairy?  What does the new book by the Raven King say?  If The Man With Thistle-Down Hair's dead, why is Lady Pole still alive and the darkness around Strange and Norrell still intact?  These questions are kind of annoying, because hellooooo, you've just written 780 + pages, you couldn't add a few more to wrap things up???  But the most disappointing thing about the ending was the meeting between Jonathan and Arabella.  It left me, in all honesty, clusterfucked.  I don't want to say what happened, because that would spoil the ending for people who haven't read the book yet, but let me put it like this:  imagine you're having sex.  And you've been waiting a really, reaaalllllllly long time to have it.  And you're about to go O when the other person says, "Well, it's been fun," and leaves.  Like wtf--could you at least give me some emotional closure, here?!?!?!?!  Argh.

At first I thought that this was a pretty good book, overall, but I think that was just the thrill of having actually finished it and not needing to look at it again.  Now that a few months has passed since I read this book, I've decided I hate it.  The end.  Sorry, Vicki.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Lord of the Night by Susan Wiggs

Sandro Cavalli is the Lord of the Night, the leader of a group that investigates crimes in 16th-century Venice.  One day he drops by the studio of his friend, Titian (yes, that Titian), and meets the maestro's latest model, courtesan-in-training Laura Bandello.  But Laura's true ambition isn't to be a courtesan--it's to be a famous painter like Titian.  Uptight Sandro is immediately attracted to the beautiful Laura, blah blah blah, plus there are a bunch of murders.

The first part of this book was actually pretty good, even though I was bothered by how objectified Laura was.  Sandro is literally old enough to be her father (he's 39 when the story takes place, and mentioned he was 21 or thereabouts when his wife died, so his kids have to be older than 18-year-old Laura--a fact the author glosses over), but for some reason there wasn't much of an ick factor there.  The couple does have chemistry and Wiggs definitely knows how to set up anticipation for a scene and then change it up enough to keep people reading.

However, in the second half of the book, the motivations of the characters started to fall apart.  They seemed to act suddenly and with no reason other than to create conflict and drag the book out.  Sandro's uptight personality and fear of feeling any emotion is never explained, and it really should have been--the guy is Italian, for god's sake!  Did his mom drop him on his head when he was a kid, or what?  Also, the solution to the murders was painfully obvious, and that tried my patience, especially at the end.

I still enjoyed this book, though, for the hugely redeeming factor of the setting--Venice!  I have to applaud Wigg's research into the time period, and she did a decent job of bringing the city to life. 

BUT--speaking of research, I had huge issues with the art in this book.  I do have to give the author props for lifting the first scene straight from Titian's Danae (or at least one of them), but all the descriptions of the paintings sounded like they were lifted straight from an art history textbook, which was pretty jarring.  What really made me snort in disbelief, though, were Laura's paintings--Impressionism, really?  Uhhhhhhg.  Aside from the pure ridiculousness of it, anyone who'd seen an Impressionism painting and an Old Master work side by side would know that crap would never fly in the sixteenth century, when painters were actually expected to have, you know, skills (note to my boyfriend:  I use the term crap in the most affectionate way possible, haha).  But realistically I know this would bother few people other than myself, so disregard.

For an old-skool romance novel (it was originally published in 1993), Lord of the Night holds up pretty well.  But it could have used tighter editing, especially in the second half, and I was left with the feeling that it could have been a lot better.  That being said, if you want a mini-vacation to 16th-century Venice, this book is a guaranteed ticket.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Moviepalooza

This week I'm pet-sitting, and you know what that means--moviepalooza!  I don't usually make time to just sit down and watch movies, unless I'm at someone else's house and bored out of my wits.  Here are some mini-reviews of movies I've watched so far:

Coco Before Chanel

As the title indicates, this movie is about Coco Chanel when she was still Gabrielle No Last Name.  It was okay--it was a little slow, but not as slow as some French films I've seen.  And I did think Audrey Tautou did a lot with the role.  However, the script was really lacking in the story-telling department, and the connection between Coco-the-mistress and Chanel-the-famous-designer was pretty tenuous.  I wasn't too hot for Alessandro Nivola, either, to be honest.  Yes, he was cute-ish, but I was constantly distracted by the fact that he was speaking French and had a very odd moustache.

Basically, the entire premise of the movie is what makes it meh for me.  Who cares what Chanel did or was before she became a famous designer?  I want to know about the designer, not about some greedy waif who slept with men for food and a roof over her head!  The whole thing feels more like sordid gossip than an example of a strong, modern woman.

An Education

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this movie--I remembered seeing the title somewhere and thinking it might be interesting, but had no inkling of what it was about.  If I had to describe it in a single sentence, I'd say it's kind of like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie mashed together with Catch Me If You Can. 

The setting is early 1960's Britain, and 16-year-old Jenny is a studious sort who dreams of going to Oxford.  Or are those her parents' dreams?  One day a handsome older man in a very nice car offers to give her a ride home in the rain, and the next thing Jenny knows, she's going with him to jazz clubs in London, horse races, and Paris.  Problem: this guy is totally sketchy.  But of course Jenny doesn't care because she's sixfreakingteen and wants to have fun.

This was a pretty good movie.  Considering the plot, it was surprising how much humor there was.  It really brought the sixties to life, and the performances were perfect.  I loved Carey Mulligan, who played Jenny, and despite a long string of obviously bad choices her character remains completely sympathetic.  I think this is because she's not stupid--she knows something's up with this guy, she knows their relationship isn't kosher.  But because he gives her everything she wants, she chooses to ignore the complete reality and only focus on the dream, and who hasn't done that?  Dominic Cooper (who you'll recognize if you've seen any historical movie set in Britain in the last few years) was also really, really good, as was Olivia Williams as Jenny's English teacher. 

I also liked the special features.  Lynn Barber (the woman off of whose memoir this film is based) makes a brief appearance, and the deleted scenes have some of the best lines in the entire movie. 

Daybreakers

I rented this movie because Colleen from Bookphilia said it supported my theory (or one of my theories) on why vampires are so popular.  Ethan Hawke plays Edward, a blood doctor about ten years in the future, where everyone is a vampire and there are very few humans left--leaving the vampire population starving.  Edward is trying to come up with a blood substitute, but a chance encounter with a small group of humans on the run derails his plans.

This is another pretty good movie.  There are several great actors in it--Hawke, Sam Neill, and Willem Defoe who is kick-ass as usual.  By far my favorite character, though, was Frankie, Edward's brother, who probably goes through the biggest evolution in the film.

Vampirism is treated as a virus--the kind of virus everyone wants.  Who wouldn't want to live forever, forever young?  As it turns out in this movie, anyone with good sense.

Overall the film was pretty gruesome, but entertaining.  It definitely goes to places you don't expect and puts a great spin on the vampire myth.



I still have more movies to watch this week, so keep a look out for the next moviepalooza post!

Powered by ScribeFire.

Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs

I am a long-time Patricia Briggs fan, ever since The Hob's Bargain.  I think she's a brilliant story-teller and really one of the best fantasy writers out there.  That being said, I haven't read her books in a long time because... I don't really like the Mercy Thompson series at all.  I know there are people out there who love it, and I'm glad Briggs is getting a lot of attention and press with it, but ever since the first book I haven't seen the appeal at all.  Maybe it's Mercy, maybe it's the genre, but I have absolutely zero interest in continuing to read it.  I'm finally admitting it!

One of the parts I did like about the first Mercy book, however, was when she visited the Marrok's pack in Aspen Creek, Montana.  So when a book about that pack, Cry Wolf, came out, I bought it--with admittedly low expectations.  And it's been sitting on my shelf for about two years since, which is stupid because I really loved it.

Cry Wolf is the continuation of a short story Briggs wrote for On the Prowl--which I haven't read.  Being thrust into the narrative without that background reading is a little disorienting, but the basic facts are quickly apparent:  Anna, an Omega werewolf, has been physically and sexually abused by her Chicago pack ever since she was turned against her will three years ago.  After finally calling the Marrok (the leader of every pack in the U.S.) for help, he sent his son and enforcer, Charles, to Chicago.  Charles killed the leaders of the pack and also mated with Anna.  Now they're off to Montana to live happily ever after.  But once in Aspen Creek, some interesting things start to happen.

One of the things I loved about this book is that I can totally picture Aspen Creek as a real town.  The sense of place and community is so convincing that I went to bed just a wee bit paranoid about any witches that might be wandering around.  I also loved that the werewolves are more human than wolf--I'm not a big fan of werewolves in fiction, but these characters are so easy to relate to because they are basically human.  Or at the very least they have human emotions and motivations. 

The most fascinating character by far is of course Bran--the Marrok.  He appears a little bit in the Mercy Thompson books, but here we learn much more about him.  He's not what one would expect from an Alpha werewolf so strong he can control all the packs on an entire continent, at least not immediately; but that only makes him more attractive as a character study.

Finally, the way Briggs tell this story is really excellent.  At first it seems like a pretty simple plot, but then it veers in a direction I didn't expect at all.  Really the story is all about love and relationships, betrayal and trust--of others and of oneself--which are my absolute favorite themes.  Even if the book hadn't appealed to me on that level, it was such a quick, engrossing read that I would have devoured it anyway.  I easily stayed up until 5 in the morning finishing this, after working all day, and it's been a long time since a book was such a good read it made me do that.

So in case you can't tell, I loved this book and highly recommend it.  I can't wait to return to Aspen Creek and see what all the characters are up to! 

Powered by ScribeFire.

Old Books

The Book List is a meme hosted by my lovely friend Rebecca from Lost In Books.  You just take the weekly topic and make a list out of it!  This week Rebecca wants to know what three books have been on la TBR pile the longest.  But because I can't read directions and fail at memes, I kinda changed it again, to all the books that have been on my TBR shelf more than a year--which is actually the majority of them, believe it or not.

Why do books spend so much time in my TBR pile?  To be honest, I have no idea.  A lot of them are books my mom or brother have loaned me.  There are others that I bought but can't seem to work up interesting in reading any more.  Here is an annotated list, as a full list would be ginormous:

William Nicholson
Slaves of the Mastery
Firesong
(about 8 years in la TBR)

Tanith Lee
Metallic Love
Faces Under Water
(at least 5 years)

Perfume by Patrick Suskind
(pretty recent--only two years)

Sabriel by Garth Nix
(hard to say with this one--could be ten years)

A Bucket of Ashes by PB Ryan
(3 years, feels like 10)

Princess of the White by Trudi Canavan
(4 years)

The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
(2 years)

A bunch of Laurie R. King Novels
(a year-ish)

Silver Falls by Anne Stuart
(1 year, seems more like 8)

Romancing the Dead by Tate Halloway
(2 years)

The Innocent by Posie Graeme-Evans
(5 years--I hadn't realized I'd been carrying this one around so long!)

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
(8 years)

And at least a dozen other books I'm too lazy to type.

It's not that I don't want to read these books--I do.  Just not right now.  For the last 1-10 years.

So, what I would like to know is, do you think books in the TBR stack should have an expiration date?  And if so, when should I just give up and move on with my life?

Powered by ScribeFire.

Archangel's Kiss by Nalini Singh

Archangel's Kiss is the second book in the The Guild Hunter series, after Angel's Blood.  I feel mostly same way about it that I did about Angel's Blood--only opposite.  Read on as I attempt to make sense of that statement...

Elena has come to accept her relationship with the Archangel of New York, Raphael (not that she had much of a choice), and is now closeted away with him in the angels' super-secret Refuge.  But not everyone is happy that a mortal has become so important to an archangel, and threats from the rest of Cadre--the ruling body of angels, of which Raphael is a part--soon start to roll in.  Lijuan, who is so old she is become death; and Michaela, for whom the phrase "that bitch is psycho" was invented, are the most obvious threats--but there's another angel in the Refuge who seems to trying to pit members of the Cadre against one another, perhaps to start an angelic war.  Meeeeanwhile, Elena is trying to rebuild her strength after her near-death experience, and she and Raphael share their childhood traumas and fuck like flying bunny rabbits.

I did really like the first half of this book.  It's very well-written, drawing you into the story immediately.  I think even if you hadn't read the first book, you would have no trouble getting into the story and figuring out what's going on here.  I also liked the fact that we finally got to understand more about Elena's and Raphael's pasts.

That being said, it all started to get reeeeeally really repetitive.  By the time the plot finally got going, I didn't care that much anymore, and the big ball at Lijuan's felt anti-climatic.  I think this book could have benefited from some serious slash editing--100 pages less would have told the story just as well, if not better, and I wouldn't have lost all my patience with it by the end.

So, as with Angel's Blood, I'm not sure I can really say I enjoyed reading this book.  Unlike the previous book, however, with this one I enjoyed the beginning and was annoyed with the ending.  I'm not sure I'll be picking up the next book in this series, since the set-up so far seems predictable:  every single archangel with the exception of Raphael and Elijah are bat-shit insane, and apparently at least one of them has to die in every book.  How long is this going to go on?  Until Raphael rules the world?  Come on.

Powered by ScribeFire.