He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named

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16160834 by 
My Rating: 2/5 Stars

This ain’t Harry Potter. For those of you who may have such expectations looming in the back of your mind, even as you recognize that J.K. Rowling wrote it under a pseudonym, and that it’s a mystery, and that it involves a war veteran PI, and that there are no wizards or classrooms or dragons or Quidditch matches or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named…yeah, you have to set those expectations aside. Otherwise, your disappointment level will spike off the charts, and you’ll toss your Kindle or hardcover edition through an open window, never to be seen or heard from again.

Robert Galbraith certainly has chops in the mystery writing universe, even if his first effort falls a bit short. The stuttering formality turned me off from the beginning, and carried through all the way to the end, even if the stick might have been removed from the buttocks for brief periods of time, the majority of which revolved around enthusiastic sidekick Robin. Formal dialogue splattered with dashes filled the pages, and an overemphasis with the ellipsis further helped separate me from the tale, and was closely followed by characters who liked to overstate and expound upon points a little too forcefully, pounding the corpse repeatedly after the last breath had already expired from the body.

Other than Robin, formal, stilted characters seemed to plaster the pages, many of whom felt dry cleaned, instead of going through the normal rinse cycle. The plot plodded along at a slow, steady pace, and proved slow to develop despite the dashing dead body early on. The ending of THE CUCKOO’S CALLING would have been aided by the liberal use of the delete key, and like the rest of the tale, was a bit long on atmosphere and extraneous information. While the premise proved strong and inviting, the story didn’t quite live up to its enticing origins.

On a related note, it’s probably good my NetGalley request wasn’t approved for this novel, even though I could have blown the whistle on her pseudonym a full two months before the official slip. Mulholland Books is probably patting itself on the back, as they dodged that bullet and my less than favorable review, even if it was only a temporary respite.

Enthralled By The Eccentricities

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My Rating: 4/5 Stars

Seeing Douglas Preston in person (twice) and Lincoln Child via Skype (once), I can’t help but be enthralled by the eccentricities of these two individuals, and the odd dynamic that must ensue from this powerful writing duo. So it’s hard not to see how Aloysius Pendergast might have developed from these two brilliant minds fully formed and ready for action. He’s odd and eccentric and intriguing and his dark suits never manage to get wrinkle, even when he’s bounding through snow drifts up to his chin or playing Russian roulette with a loaded revolver.

More than just Pendergast, though, WHITE FIRE filled its pages with entertaining characters and a few individuals from the days of yore. With Corrie Swanson leading the charge and immersing herself in skeletal remains and mining caves and mountain passes, this novel piles on roadblocks and adventures in equal measure, and then douses the remains in cans of kerosene. With stoic individuals stepping to the forefront and the interweaving of a story within a story, this novel moves forward as much as it lingers in antiquity. Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson weave through the pages, leaving footprints in white blankets and half-eaten meals behind.

The rush of adrenaline helped me maneuver from the first page to the last, the throttle easing just enough to keep me from overexertion, the pages pounding with the precision of a jackhammer. The vibrations echoed through my hands and all the way up my forearms, as I drove my snowmobile through the ensuing avalanche. The tight plot fit about as well as a snug pair of gloves, and I leaned my back from the resultant wind current, my teeth chattering and my feet stamping in protest.

If you don’t mind Pendergast avoiding the spotlight as opposed to standing in the limelight, acting more as a mentor than the lead investigator, and you enjoy your plots more tightly woven than a pair of mittens, you’ll probably find yourself enjoying this Colorado tale.

I received this book for free through NetGalley.

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Fondling The Merchandise

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17165966Palace Of Spies by Sarah Zettel
My Rating: 3/5 Stars

Margaret “Peggy” Fitzroy led a reasonably charmed life until she was kicked out on her keister and forced to delve in the palace of intrigue, suspicion, and ne’er-do-wells, many of whom have buckets of money, or like to pretend that the dowry extends forever in one direction, even if it dried up about fifty years ago. Sebastian Sandford, relegated to a minor role, showed his hands and his petulant attitude and his preponderance for fondling the merchandise before the appointed hour, with nary a care in the world. And Uncle Pierpont showed fangs and horns and bastard tendencies with relative ease, tossing out his niece faster than a banana peel and slamming the door hard enough to rock the foundation. But had he shown more normal tendencies and familial congeniality, PALACE OF SPIES never would have reached the atmosphere, so we can thank him for his complete and utter ridiculousness.

Peggy had a slight aftertaste, not growing on me until a bit later in the tale, but when she did, I appreciated her and her firecracker ways. She had spunk and charm and held on to certain folks a bit too long and offered up some youthful naiveté in this historical tale. While some mysterious elements lingered, and a dead body or two appeared on scene, I’d say this was more historical with a bit of romance and some rather cryptic moments. The plot had a few dangling points and outliers that wrapped up a bit too nicely and maybe a bit too forcefully, and while research was conducted and historical accuracies appeared to be inflicted upon the story, this wasn’t a heavy read by any means. And it was easily consumable, like popcorn or Pez or candy corn.

What really popped my balloon faster than a safety pin, though, was the murderer spouting off for no other reason than pure ego. Really? While it was a bit briefer this go round than the previous iteration, it still left me with a dry mouth and a slight headache. Can we move past the egomaniacs and psychotic miscreants and move toward more common ground? I promise we’ll all be happier, and we don’t even have to hold hands.

I received this book for free through NetGalley.

Needed A Better Offense

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17436871 by
My Rating: 2/5 Stars

The voice appealed to me about as much as liverwurst and onions. The style wasn’t much better on the overall appellate scale. That’s not to say the writing was bad, though, because it wasn’t. The prose was adequate; the story proved somewhat interesting and did its best to hold my attention; the dialogue was handled without the aid of a particularly heavy hand; and the story demonstrated logic from beginning to end.

But I had a hard time supporting characters that proved about as likeable as tarantulas or pythons, especially when I could have been the mouse tossed in the cage. The list of odious characters stood higher and weighed more than the ones that practiced a bit of congeniality and common sense. Beth Bowman dangled at the top of my least favorite people list, with Maddy Hammonds and Dick Bannon and Major Sargent and Chief Elston not far behind. John Hammonds and his daughter Ashley, in a cameo role, demonstrated high likeability as the dynamic father and daughter duo. The homeless posse provided a bit of comedic relief, but it wasn’t enough to save this tale for me.

BEST DEFENSE probably needed a better offense and an expert placekicker. The goalposts loomed large at the opposite end of the field, and the crowd stood with mouths open and faces leaned precariously forward as two bodies were taken off the field. Even after play resumed, the shock remained, and the coach didn’t offer up the most appropriate pep talk.

What really knocked this novel down another notch for me, though, was the climactic killer confrontation. What I certainly don’t need, and feel like I see a bit too frequently in mysteries, is the murderer spouting off at the chest why he or she committed the crime. Please, for the love of Krispy Kreme, just shut up. I don’t care if you plan to kill our beloved, or not so beloved, hero or heroine three pages later; I don’t care if you want to therapeutically justify why you did what you did (therapists and pills can solve this particular problem); and it doesn’t matter to me if your ego can’t handle potential misconceptions. Just shove a doughnut in your mouth and shut up. You’ll thank me later.

I received this book for free through NetGalley.

Debilitating Disease

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11870085 by
My Rating: 4/5 Stars

I’d have to say I wasn’t a big fan of cancer before I started this novel (I lost my grandfather to pancreatic cancer), and I’m even less of a fan of this debilitating disease after finishing this depressing read. But I have to give John Green his due. He could have taken the concept for THE FAULT IN OUR STARS and spun it in an entirely different direction, leaving me in a constant state of despair and depression and during which time I would have needed to be slightly medicated in order to push through the pain. Instead, though, there’s a lingering sense of sadness, but it’s coupled with a sense of hope and a slightly eccentric voice that at times might sound like it has been recycled through a respirator.

Hazel Grace Lancaster was fun and exciting and more than a bit eccentric and even now, it’s hard not to picture her wheeling around an oxygen tank. But she doesn’t want your sympathy. Instead, the tank manages to put another quirk in her step and offer up a bit of wind drag. Her idiosyncratic voice and her rather humorous take on a dire situation had me cheering for her every step of the way.

Even her best friends Augustus and Isaac offered up flashlights in the impending darkness. Despite life dealing all three of them a bum hand, and then piling on the cockroaches inside the mayonnaise sandwiches, the three handed their time-stamped lives with a wisdom and strength well beyond their years.

Relationships ended and others began, as the wheels of time continued to spin; books needed to be read and video games attracted attention; new classes were discovered; and families coped with the impending loss that might hover around the next corner, or then again, it might not. And I couldn’t help my sense of enjoyment, even as I knew it might come with an expiration date.

Pretentious Dialogue

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17571276 by
My Rating: 3/5 Stars

I’d have to say it’s rather difficult to describe my emotional state after finishing BELLMAN & BLACK: A GHOST STORY. On the one hand, this was a well-written, slowly developing story that caused me to contemplate the consequences of all my actions, not just the major, life changing experiences; on the other, it did have ghostly elements, but when I picture a ghost story, this isn’t exactly what I have in mind. It’s more of a literary ghost story where you realize the ghosts are there, but they hover above the playing field and never really step out onto the grass. It also develops this phrase in narrative form: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. Which proves an interesting expression to ponder for a novel, but I never felt like I was fully invested in this tale.

The dialogue proved a bit pretentious for me with many characters never really becoming enamored with contractions. While William Bellman was certainly an interesting and intriguing character, he never grabbed my attention the way I hoped he would. He was stiff and aloof and more than a tad bit prickly, rigid, and distant. And the pace often proved a bit too leisurely for my tastes. It was more of a meandering jaunt in a field of lilies than a race in an open field. But the writing often sung a soprano solo in the middle of December, I just found myself only half-listening.

In the end, I wanted to enjoy this story, and even though I tried a bit too hard at times to do so, ultimately I just wasn’t the right audience. Since I received THE THIRTEENTH TALE in my Bouchercon book bag, I’ll take it for a spin on the merry-go-round, but I’ll do so with a bit more careful consideration.

I received this book for free through NetGalley.

Blackout Periods

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18100353 by
My Rating: 4/5 Stars

Since this is the closest I’ll ever come to making love with a porn star, I wanted to take full advantage of the situation, having been introduced to Sasha Grey through the marketing and promotional campaign of The Girlfriend Experience—although full disclosure I never did see the movie. Thank you Steven Soderbergh. And if I can still remember her name years later…well, that probably gives you some indication of why I read so many novels a year. So continuing on in my current erotica experiment, which has grown into something resembling an expedition, and is probably on the brink of turning into a full-blown epidemic, I bring you THE JULIETTE SOCIETY for your whispering pleasure.

This novel blew my mind. Literally. With periods so intense I thought I might blackout, it’s safe to say Ms. Grey writes as well as she fucks. The lucky bastard who marries her might pass out on a nightly basis from sheer ecstasy and pure bliss, find himself in a sex-induced coma, and hooked up to an oxygen tank and sucking pineapple juice through a straw. I’d like to go into explicit detail on the sex scenes, as I convey my state of erotic involvement, but I feel like this might somehow cheapen the whole affair. And this novel wasn’t cheap for me. It was intense and weird and thoroughly entertaining.

The Fuck Factory really doesn’t need much more of an introduction. And the women. Holy. Hell. I need some Crisco. Stat. Anna—round ass, big tits, voluptuous, pale, and curvy in all the right places—was so completely in tune with her sexuality and uninhibited, I could practically feel the pages vibrating whenever she stepped between the white space. And Catherine in many ways the zin to Anna’s zang was considerably more of a minx than she first appeared. And I sucked it all up like a Slurpee.

It was raw and powerful and emotional and disjointed and invigorating and fulfilling and wonderful and sensual. As for me, I was stimulated and lubricated and aroused and satiated and turned on faster than a drilldo. And I devoured all of it greedily and lustfully, finishing it in two days’ time.

I think it’s safe to say Sasha Grey can write (even her less than enthusiastic reviewers have acknowledged as much). She writes with passion and an animalistic intensity, baring her soul with a powerful mindfuck that opened my eyes wider than a chasm. I found myself pondering questions I had never pondered before. Like where did her writing come from? And did she work on her soliloquies and monologues and diction and dialogue as she was getting pounded in the ass?

If Ms. Grey is anything like her debut novel, she’s not the most conventional individual. And that’s why this story spoke to me. With plenty of flashbacks and storytelling within the story, spending a lot of time in Catherine’s head, and more than a few cinematic references, this novel was executed with haphazard precision.

Her name sold me on the first book, but I’ll be coming back for more like some lust-induced bunny, especially if she takes another stab at the erotica genre. A professional fucker who writes about fucking. What more could you possibly ask for?

I received this book for free through NetGalley.

Funny All Of The Time

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16074109 by
My Rating: 5/5 Stars

I can state rather emphatically that this book does not suck elephant balls. In fact, you may have to hold your tallywhacker in place as you bend over at the waist from laughing so hard. Edward, my man, you are more than just pretty funny sometimes. I’d say you’re funny all of the time, even when you’re not trying to be.

I’d even go so far to say that I have what might be construed as a bromance with Edward Stanton. I don’t know if I’d call him my hero, but he’s a damn fine character, and this is one damn fine story. His preference for facts, dry sense of humor, cursing like he jammed his toe against the sofa and then smashed his head on a wooden table, repetition of choice words and phrases, photographic memory, extensive vocabulary, and his unique love for words make this son of a politician an absolute joy to behold. So much so that I just had to finish EDWARD ADRIFT in less than twenty-four hours.

Edward has some rather righteous curse words. Here are a few of my favorites: shitburger, whipdick, shitballs, chicken’s asshole, sort out the shithouse, and assweeds. I’d have to say it was fun to be fucking loaded and take a trip through Idaho and Wyoming and singing along to my bitchin’ iPhone playing R.E.M. songs on shuffle.

I really can’t decide whether 600 Hours Of Edward or EDWARD ADRIFT is better. It’s easy to make an argument for either one, and if you start spouting off to the wrong hothead, you may end up in fisticuffs. So choose your argument wisely and be ready to back it up with empirical data, not conjecture.

I won’t give away the ending, since I know you’ll want to read this literary masterpiece for yourself, but I will say it was the perfect ending to a perfect story. Had it ended any differently, Edward and I might not be on speaking terms right now.

I’d like to say you’re a cocksucking assweed if you don’t buy, beg, borrow, or berate your local library into carrying this novel, but I won’t. You may, however, have to hang your head in shame if you don’t hop in your Cadillac and traverse to your local bookstore to pick up your copy.

25 Days Of Enjoyment

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15994564 by
My Rating: 5/5 Stars

For the first time in my life, I actually felt like a hypochondriac. And for a day I thought I had Asperger’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder, my every movement tracked and accounted for, as my social skills dropped off a precipitous edge, only to return to normal the next day.

Edward Stanton rocked 600 HOURS OF EDWARD like Mick Jagger in his prime. His head (and mine) filled with numbers, as we tracked weather patterns, wrote letters of discontent, and consumed spaghetti and Diet Dr. Pepper with reckless abandon. And like Joe Friday all we’re after are the facts.

The voice jolted through my brain like I was driving down the interstate at 70 MPH with the windows down and R.E.M. blaring through the speakers. Possibly even “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” turned up to maximum volume as we cross the border. It was a beautiful feeling, and I’m sorry to say it ended way too soon.

But it was Edward’s relationship with his father that stood at the center of this novel, defining both he and his dad with every letter and lawyer intervention. Without it, this story would have been a shell of the novel it could have been, even if the words for both Edward and his father didn’t always come out right, or took on new meaning in the course of one social evening.

Since online dating has become the next big thing, there’re even a few amusing bits about what can go right (and then horribly wrong) in the course of one evening. Edward has his timetable that he follows to the letter, and now I have mine: to purchase Edward Adrift when it becomes available on my Kindle on April 9.

Took My Breath Away

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17970455 by
My Rating: 4/5 Stars

I went Back To The Future in this gem of a novel. Although it saddens me to think in fifty years teenagers probably won’t get many of the pop culture references, I’ve decided to live in the moment, or the recent past, as this novel clearly does. With The Simpsons, American Idol, Letterman, Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show, Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Rolling Stone, Christina Aguilera, The Fugitive, “The Way You Look Tonight,” Today, Animal House, Spin Doctors, Blues Brothers, Monty Python, Good Morning Vietnam, Mannequin, and The Exorcist, they somehow all managed to “Take My Breath Away.” But this novel has more staying power than Cool Ranch Doritos, Wonder Bread topped with butter and cinnamon sugar, and gonorrhea.

Kate and Vi Shramm both have extrasensory perceptions (ESP), along with being identical twin sisters, although each chooses a much different path. While Vi chooses to embrace her powers and attack the spotlight like she wants to ensure she receives every minute of her fifteen minutes of fame, Kate shies away from her powers like she might have caught an STD from some overzealous frat boy. Both seem sexually experienced in my limited knowledge of the world, but for entirely different reasons. Vi uses her assets, in this case ample breasts, as a weapon to manipulate unsuspecting male suitors, and in some cases, just for the hell of it, tossing around hand jobs and sexual favors like ice cream cones to six year-olds, while Kate takes a more reserved approach to sex, except when gentleness, kindness, or bouts of uncontrollable passion cause her to expose her naughty bits.

Kate was the more likeable character, except I did have a few moments of displeasure with her over the course of the novel. Vi, however, was self-absorbed, hypocritical, irrational, contradictory, only acted in her own best interests, constantly passed judgment, and sometimes experienced what might be considered sociopathic tendencies. So I didn’t mind poking around in Kate’s head for some 400 odd pages or so. Had Vi been the real star of the show, though, I might have had an entirely different opinion of SISTERLAND.

I received this book for free through NetGalley.