King and Koontz (2016 review catch ups)

I am getting tired of writing reviews, so I am putting two in one here. Hope you don't mind.

The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King.

This is the second book in The Dark Tower series. I had heard so many good things about this series, from people whose opinions on books I tend to agree with. But, I am just not getting it this time. Personally, I think these are fairly poorly written. While I can excuse poorly written for a good story, I can't say I find myself compelled to read these. The first book, The Gunslinger, dragged. It had its interesting moments, but mostly it just didn't keep me entertained (and let's face it - you don't read King to be intellectually challenged, so entertained is pretty much the sole goal). This book dragged less, but still had moments where I was yawning away and thinking of something else. I find that a lot of the diction is crude. I have no objection to that if it will develop a character etc., but here it felt like King put it there just because his audience is assumed to like below the belt references.

The concept has potential, and I think that is also what is adding to my disappointment. While I am curious to see what happens to these characters, I just don't know if I can drag myself to pick up another one. Which is sad as I have a few more on my bookshelves, and they look so pretty. I gave this 2 stars.

Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz.

Odd Thomas is the first book in the (surprise!) Odd Thomas series. And Kerry scores again! (Kerry is my favourite bookseller at Bargain Books.) After a hectic year, I wanted something entertaining, not gruelling. She recommended this to me. Odd Thomas nailed that need perfectly. I was completely entertained.

Odd Thomas can see dead people. They tell him things so that he can help them rest in peace. But Odd Thomas can also see other things, like the furies that are following a man who has a filling cabinet in his house filled with information about serial killers. Disaster is set to strike the town - tomorrow!

I really enjoyed this. It was a combination of humour, suspense, intrigue and more humour. Odd Thomas is one of those books that one can read at record speed because the pages just turn themselves. Oh, and Elvis! He was a fantastic addition to the cast of characters.

I must admit that I really thought the plot was going to go in a completely different direction (but end at a similar point), so the surprise was pleasant too. I will definitely pick up another one.

In the unplanned (and unfair) King vs Koontz competition, Koontz wins!

Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton (2016 review catch ups)

I read this book with very low expectations. I enjoyed Sister by Lupton, which was why I bought this book and Quality of Silence. Both Sister and Quality of Silence don't have conclusive endings, and I was convinced that Lupton would do the same thing again. As a result, I had been putting off reading this. Also, from what I had seen on Goodreads, it seemed most people did not enjoy this at all. Yip, my expectations were really low.

So what is Afterwards about? Grace runs into the burning school to save her daughter Jenny. But that is only the beginning. Things are going to get more dangerous, and how can Grace stop it when she is in a coma in the hospital?

While my synopsis is better than the one on the back of the book, it does not quite do the story justice. Afterwards is written similarly to The Lovely Bones or Black Dog Summer, where the narrator is not quite there - at least not physically. I thought it worked really well in this story. When Grace and Jenny were wandering around the hospital, following loved ones, in their ghostly forms (not a spoiler - that happens around chapter 2), I appreciated how Lupton captures a healthy and realistic relationship between mother and daughter. No, it is not perfect. But what mother daughter relationship is? In fact, while this book does keep one on their toes, it is more a family drama than a psychological/crime thriller. I think this is the point to keep in mind when the ending, again inconclusive, arrives.

“It's not the fledgling birds that are thrown out of the nest by their parents and made to fly; it's the parents who are made to get the hell out of cozy family nest by their teenage offspring. It's we who are made to be independent of them, crash-landing if we don't manage it.”

― Rosamund Lupton, Afterwards

Continuing on with the characters, I also appreciated how Lupton depicted the husband and young son. So often in books, these types of characters are honey-ified to the point that I just get irritated. It is trying to get my sympathy for the poor perfect husband who has got to go through an ordeal; or to make me feel devastated for this poor sweet child.... Meh. No one is perfect, and that type of character just screams 'false' to me. Lupton does NOT do this. YAY! Her characters came across as realistic, with their bumps and stubble. I think their lack of perfection made me like them more. It also made me want them to get a positive conclusion.

Rosamund Lupton does what I which crime writers would do (besides write very well); she creates webs of intrigue. Characters say one thing and yet their actions do not quite match, different stories are told and no one is being completely honest. The story is a bit of a roller coaster ride; there are places even where the plot flips completely over and the reader is no longer sure which way the story is going because it is no longer heading where one thought it was. And then there are the twists and turns. It was a ride, especially as I am a reader who likes to solve the crime before the cops do.

I gave this 4 stars. I really enjoyed it. Lupton is a 5 star author, if only she would give me a damned ending - you know, a proper, solid, no more questions, ending. (Ok, so this one did feel more conclusive in some ways, but there are SO many things I want to know still.)

Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie (2016 review catch ups)

The synopsis of this book sounded intriguing. A man wakes up after being drugged in an airport, to find his passport stolen. He meets a woman who begs him to save her life. On returning home, he encounters two attempts on his life. Just that alone had me eager to pick this up. Oh... how disappointment can creep up on one.

Passenger to Frankfurt was not my favourite book of the year by a long shot. I think one problem was that it did not stand up to the test of time. There were parts where I was rolling my eyes, and I think that the majority of the problems were that modern technology and medical and scientific developments (and the fact that my brother is a clinical psychologist and that I work with counselling psychologists) just made huge chunks of this unbelievable.

Then there was the point where the plot was lost. The first third or so of the book was interesting. We followed the man from the airport as he hunted for this woman, only for the story to head off on a tangent where the two of them hardly feature. And that tangent is the rest of the book.

I can't think of anyone who I dislike enough to make read this, just as I can't think of a person who would want to read this. Folks who want to say they have read all of Christie?

The Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen (2016 review catch ups)

The Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen is the second book in The Queen of the Tearling series.

I am not going to say much about this one, as it is the second in a series. As a whole though, I found it a bit disappointing. I liked that Kelsea had a brain in the first book, but in this one, common sense seemed to abandon her, along with tact. Maybe I have got this wrong though. I see many reviewers on Goodreads think Kelsea was awesome in this book.

Again, this book suffered from 2nd book syndrome. Not much happened until the end. For an invasion, as the title suggests, it was more of a slow subtle event than a full scale war.

The alternate story was the most interesting part of this. Initially I found it distracting from the story I wanted to read, but by the end, I was quite impressed with the outcome. I am curious to see how this plays out in the final book.

I will read the last book of the series when it becomes available at a reduced price. For now, I am not jumping hoops to get my hands on it. The Invasion of the Tearling only earned 2 stars from me.

Black Dog Summer by Miranda Sherry (2016 review catch ups)

I must confess that I picked this book up more than once in the bookshop over a couple of months. I was curious, but... I was not really optimistic. I was expecting brutality, gut-wrenching sadness and I don't know what else. And superficially, the butt-ugly cover didn't help much either.

Set in modern South Africa, Black Dog Summer follows a mother who was brutally murdered in a farm massacre. If that doesn't make sense, think of The Lovely Bones by Ann Sebold. From her place in the ether, she watches over her daughter, her sister and her niece, as they come to terms with guilt, loss and the expectation to continue living.

Black Dog Summer does a very good job of showing South Africa as it is today. The integration (yay! things are improving!), and the horrific acts of violence and the effects it has (but some shit never changes). For that alone it was really interesting. One of my concerns when picking this up, was that the violence would be explicit. It wasn't. Well, at least not in the way that I feared it might.

"'Fear is an instinct that is there to protect you,' Lesedi says. 'But, like all of us, you need to ask yourself if you're fearing the correct thing, or ignoring the truth because you think you already know how the world works. It's so easy to decide that a familiar thing is harmless and a strange new thing is bad, but...'"

- Miranda Sherry, Black Dog Summer

There was one passage where I absolutely adored the language, when Gigi went to school on the her first day, and compared all the girls to impalas. I really thought it was a beautiful metaphor, and showed not only the way the girls flicked their hair and carried themselves, but also showed a deep love of animals. In some way, I felt it really captured South Africa.Wait, let me find it for you:

"The girls look like a herd of impalas, ... , all brown coats and slender ankles with long hair to flick instead of tails. They know that I am not one of the herd and look at me with little sideways movements of their eyes like my coat is not quite the right brown, or my ponytail is tied up wrong. Maybe they think I am a jackal in disguise or something. Up close, they stink of ten different kinds of deodorant and shampoo and sweat all mixed into a horrible stew."

- Miranda Sherry, Black Dog Summer

I liked how she did the characters too. The adults and the two girls really came across as well-fleshed out characters. I felt for them, was concerned for them, or disliked them (as was intended). I could really talk a lot about these characters, but I will leave that for you to discover all on your own, without my interference. There was a lot of diversity too, and through that, aspects of the traditional cultures were also covered (along with the question of how to integrate that into a modern Africa).

I gave this 4 stars on Goodreads, and I will say that more than a month later, I still have fond memories of reading this. I would recommend this for folks interested in South Africa, readers who like contemporary novels, or those who are looking for authors who are not from the US or UK for their reading stats.

Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama (2016 review catch ups)

Who was not finding American politics interesting in 2016? By the time November arrived, I felt that I needed to learn even more. I stumbled across this at Jimmy's Secondhand Bookshop, and decided to give it a read. Maybe I would find some information right out of the horse's mouth.

Obama wrote Dreams from My Father long before he became president of the United States. The book is split into three sections: It follows his childhood (Origins), the beginning of his political interest (Chicago) and ends with him spending time with his father's family in Kenya (Kenya).

“My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn't, couldn't end there. At least that's what I would choose to believe.”

― Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father

I found this an interesting read, even though it didn't really give me the information I was wanting (Not that that is the book's fault. It was written long before Obama ran for president.). I liked the unusual childhood Obama had. He did not attend renowned schools, but instead spent a few years with his mother in Indonesia - an experience that was nothing like the regular upbringing most westerners have. (At this point in the story, I was strongly reminded of Peekay's experiences in The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay.)

His view on Kenya and his family there and the stories they shared were really interesting. Coming from Africa myself, those stories fascinated me, because it was either something I could relate to, or showing a new perspective on something I had never considered before.

“This pleased Onyango, for to him knowledge was the source of all the white man's power, and he wanted to make sure that his son was as educated as any white man.”

― Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father

I also found his experiences in America interesting too. As I don't come from the US, my general understanding of the culture is very Hollywood-ish (or what is in the news - but headlines barely give one a decent feeling). Reading his experiences and views added a different feeling, and I think I have learnt something.

“All too rarely do I hear people asking just what it is that we've done to make so many children's hearts so hard, or what collectively we might do to right their moral compass - what values we must live by.”

― Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father

I could hear Obama's voice narrating this in my head. I think that is a good compliment. It made me feel that this was a more honest account, not a pretentious attempt to impress. There was character in here too. The style matched fiction, with imagery, humour and detail. I must admit that I was nervous picking this up. I had fears that it would read something like a parliamentary speech. It didn't.

Besides the obvious target audience, I would recommend this to people who would like more exposure to racial issues.

"An Unkindness Of Ravens" and "The Vault" by Ruth Rendell (2016 review catch ups)

Ok. I am keeping these reviews really short now. If I keep putting them off (until I discover which safe place I put my reading notes when I rearranged and spring cleaned) or until I have something substantial to say (in that blasted missing note book), I am never going to move passed 2016 - EVER! And considering what 2016 brought, I would like a one way ticket out of there.

An Unkindness Of Ravens by Ruth Rendell is the 13th book in the Inspector Wexford series. Ahh... now can I remember what happened? A guy from Wexford's neighbourhood goes missing... This is a crime novel. I don't need to spell it out for you.

I see on Goodreads that I said I had enjoyed it. Which is strange. Because sitting here right now, my memory of this is 'boring'. Is it my memory that is faulty, or was I just feeling particularly generous on Goodreads? I know it had an interesting twist to the plot - but unfortunately not even that twist is all that new anymore. As I said on Goodreads,  I think the constant run of crime shows on tv has done a lot towards taking the thrill out of books like these. Because of all the exposure we constantly get, plots that could have been quite thrilling and leave one guessing to the end, now seem very obvious. I guessed who was guilty before they had found the body. Which might account for my memory of this being what it is.

The Vault is the 24th book in the Inspector Wexford series. In this installment, Wexford has now retired, but we all know that is not going to stop him from getting involved in solving the latest murder - or triple murder...

I was a lot more honest on Goodreads with this one. There is nothing wrong with how Rendell writes. In fact, for a crime novelist, she is really very good. There is quality to her prose; not just words to tell a story. But... I just can't.

Wexford is getting on my nerves. I wonder if that has to do with the fact that being much younger than Wexford, a man who is struggling to come to terms with things like the internet, I find his plod-along methods a bit silly. I must also admit that I find the references to younger generations a bit insulting. I also found the statement that the bitchy woman in the book learnt how to be rude to her Russian maid (who would have been very white) while she was in South Africa, naive and insulting too. Really! I thought South Africa's issue was race. I don't think that woman would have needed any external assistance in solidifying her beliefs in class divisions. I am really tired of all the movies, books etc. that portray all South African's as the worst set of people going. Like all countries, their are good people and bad, racists and non-racists. I am tired of these stereotypes and generalisations.

This will be the end of my reading Rendell. There are so many other books I would prefer to read, and life is short. Not bad. Just not my cup of tea.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier (2016 review catch ups)

I loved reading Rebecca, so when I found Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier at that whoppingly awesome book sale, I could not resist.

After Mary's mother passes away, Mary travels to Jamaica Inn to stay with her Aunt Patience and her husband. Along the way, she hears very bad things about the inn. What has this girl got herself in to? What has happened to her aunt?

Daphne du Maurier is skilled at creating atmosphere. I don't think I felt comfortable for the protagonist at any point in this story. From the weather, to subtle clues, I knew that things were going to go south - it was just a matter of how. I should also mention that the array of characters just added to the tension. All of them seemed flawed and most of them seemed dangerous. After Mary left the coach, I knew she had left safety.

“And, though there should be a world of difference between the smile of a man and the bared fangs of a wolf, with Joss Merlyn they were one and the same.”

― Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn

The sexist comments took a bit of getting used to. Thank Merlin people no longer just assume women are useless, overly-sensitive, and half-stupid. But it is probably a good thing to see how far we have come from there. Just look at this quote:

“She put the steaming mutton down in front and he smacked his lips 'they taught you something where you came from, anyway,' he said. 'I always say there's two things women ought to do by instinct, and cookin's one of 'em.”

― Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn

And while there was a lot of such commentary, I have to say that Mary was not the typical 'damsel in distress'. She wanted to work - hard labour, she was brave, and, although I am not yet sure what I make of this, she fought against conforming to the stereotypes. Put that way, it sounds a good thing. However, she would disparage at being a female, which ... I don't know. I probably would have too had I been around back then. I just don't like that thought process in the modern world.

Overall, a good read. If you like a slow burning thriller, then give this one a go. I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads. I will definitely be looking for more books by du Maurier. (In fact, I am wondering if she is popular in other parts of the world. I have never heard anyone (besides my mom) talk about her here at all.)

The Wicked Will Rise by Danielle Paige

The Wicked Will Rise by Danielle Paige is the second book in the Dorothy Must Die series. In other words, giving a synopsis is not really possible. All I will say is that it picks up exactly where the first book, Dorothy Must Die, ended.

I found this horribly disappointing. I read YA so that I can find books that will inspire the kids I teach to read. If I can barely keep my eyes open while reading something, it sure as hell won't pass for my dyslexic, Ritalin-dependant teens. In other words, very little happened. There was a lot of walking.

Once again, a book has been divided into three pieces so that readers will be forced to buy three books instead of just one. How do I know this? 

1. This isn't the size of Lord of the Rings where the size could make it a reasonable idea.
2. There is no individual story in either book - rather it is one continuation. 

I really hate feeling like I have been taken for a sucker by a publishing company. Considering the price of books in this country, I feel doubly pissed off. ZAR300! Three times (three books in the series)! That is almost ZAR1000! Which is about 10% of my salary. Is it worth it? Not a friggin chance in hell. Of course, this is not the first time I have been caught out on this. Which raises many questions. How far should a teacher go to encourage reading? It is the most important skill any person can acquire. Hunting for books for individuals should be a priority. But at that price? I just can't do it. Not with the way everything is just getting more and more expensive. But that is a rant for another place. Maybe publishers should start considering this too. It might also help eliminate the second book syndrome where ... duhduh daaaa ... nothing happens. Maybe it would save them money too. After all, I cannot be the first person who has been put off by a grotty second book.

I will not be continuing this series. And if I do, it will be because I borrowed it from someone. Two stars - and that was me being nice. (I have no idea why I was being nice.)