A Crack in the Line (Withern Rise) Review

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A Crack in the Line (Withern Rise) ReviewAlaric is a sixteen-year-old boy who lives with his father in a crumbling old Victorian mansion that has been in his family for years. His mother died two years earlier in a horrific train crash, and his life has been going downhill since then. One snowy day, while alone, Alaric becomes reacquainted with the mansion he knows as his home. Once in a room that he has not sat in forever, he reaches for a familiar object. In a spilt second he is met with searing pain and the walls around him seem to come down. He opens his eyes to find himself lying in what appears to be the room he was just in, only it is cleaner and there is an unfamiliar girl standing before him.
Sixteen-year-old Naia and her parents live in a mansion that was named Withern Rise by one of her ancestors. Naia's mother faced a near-death experience two years ago, but Naia has tried her best to forget about it. It is certainly the farthest thought from her mind one snowy day when she finds a strange boy sitting on her living room floor. She can't figure out why he is there, why he is claiming it is really his house, or why he looks almost identical to her.
Can it be that two different realities exist at the same time --- one where Alaric lives with his father in Withern Rise and another where Naia is the only child to Alaric's father and the mother he lost two years ago? Alaric and Naia's discovery of each other brings about many startling events and realizations. Will Alaric and Naia be able to use each other to find out the truth about their own lives?
Michael Lawrence has written a suspenseful and engaging tale of two teenagers living the same life. There is even an alternate ending that gives another outlook to the story's conclusion, along with a surprising twist. This gripping novel --- which is the first volume of a trilogy --- cannot be put down until the very end.
--- Reviewed by Sara ColeA Crack in the Line (Withern Rise) Overview

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The Undead: Flesh Feast (Zombie Anthology , vol. 3) Review

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The Undead: Flesh Feast (Zombie Anthology , vol. 3) ReviewI was a big fan of the first book, and felt the sequel was a huge drop in overall quality. To be sure, it had a lot of good. But the good was always mixed evenly with equally lackluster stories. The third time proves to be the charm, as the stories in flesh feast have an overall quality very near that of the first.The Undead: Flesh Feast (Zombie Anthology , vol. 3) OverviewSatisfy your hunger for the living dead in the third installment of the popular Undead series, THE UNDEAD: FLESH FEAST. A new recruit must face the grotesque realities behind the zombie war. An ancient, tentacled horror commands the walking dead. A green mold creeps across an uncharted island, driving its mysterious inhabitants insane. A lone survivor of the zombie apocalypse wants only one thing... to be bitten. The Grim Reaper struggles to claim the souls of the deceased that won't stay dead. And in the featured novella, "The Legend of Black Betty," a small town in the Old West rots with a plague wreaked by an evil prostitute.

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Songs of Earth And Power Review

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Songs of Earth And Power ReviewThis work combines 2 previous LONG books. I have read the 2 separately, and am combining the reviews here. This book has got to be huge. My detailed rating for Infinity Concerto separately is 4.1, and The Serpent Mage is 4.5. The essential story of Infinity Concerto is very simple. The main character (Michael) is forcibly drafted by the Elves (Sidhe) to learn magic. It's a traumatic experience. But that's not the strength of the book. Bear generally writes fairly hard SF. The magic here has some interesting physics to it! But the best thing is the history. Bear provides a detailed history starting at the beginning of time. Not exactly with quarks either. This extremely complex history of the 5+ sentient races on Earth drives the whole story, and you learn that history a piece at a time through the two books. Why is Michael drafted by the elves? You find out by the middle of the second book. In The Serpent Mage, Michael has completed his magical training, and now he has to use it. There is lots more of a story to this book compared to the first. What with meeting a nice girl, training an apprentice Sidhe, trying to force a peace between Sidhe and humans, and trying to save the world, Michael has much to do. The main problem in the book is that the Realm, created by Tonn as a home for the Sidhe, is literally falling apart. So everyone there needs to find a new home, quick! And considering the history of this universe, there will obviously be cosmic problems with that. The book also includes a lot of film/film score/classical music scholarship. It doesn't interfere TOO much with the story. The book DOES answer some questions -- what IS the Loch Ness monster? But at the end I still have a few. What happened to Michael's horse? Why did saving Tonn's wife fall to Michael, not the Crane Women, or the Ban? In any case, this pair of books is quite satisfying when you reach the end.Songs of Earth And Power Overview

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Fever Crumb Review

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Fever Crumb ReviewFever Crumb is a prequel of sorts to Philip Reeve's fantastic Hungry Cities/Mortal Engines series. I say "of sorts" in that it's set in the pre-history of the Hungry Cities world but far back enough in time that Fever Crumb doesn't act as a direct lead-in to the larger series, but rather sets up the major concepts and incipient events of that series rather than give us more of the same characters. Though it's set earlier, I'd still recommend beginning with the later books because while I enjoyed Fever, the Mortal Engines books have a much stronger impact (think starting the Narnia series with The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe vs. The Magician's Nephew)
In the later series, cities are large, mobile monstrosities that war with one another in order to gain needed resources, one city devouring another. It's an annex or be-annexed world. In Fever Crumb, though, London is still geographically bound to one place, though smaller localities have taken up the nomadic life and one such alliance from the North--The Movement--appears on the horizon seemingly ready to invade. People are clearly on edge, especially as it wasn't all that long ago that there had been a violent uprising in London against the Scriven, the long-lived and seemingly inhuman tyrannical overlords who had ruled over London for centuries. All the Scriven were killed or driven out, but the memory of death and violence is still fresh, as is resentment toward anything remotely "other."
Fever is a young woman, a foundling brought up by Doctor Crumb in the uber-rational guild of Engineers who consider emotions silly and hindrances to logical living (they live, fittingly enough, in a giant head). The book mostly begins when Fever is sent out to work on an archaeological dig with Kit Solent, who is looking into secrets possibly buried beneath the home of the last Scriven overlord.
Clearly Reeve is going to be working several plots here. One is the simple suspense of the encroaching Movement--what do they want? Is it an invasion or something different? Will London fight or not? Another is the suspense regarding the dig--what, if anything, will they uncover? Will uncovering it be a good or bad thing? Yet a third is Fever's slow discovery of the truth of her lost background. Still focused on Fever, Reeve also explores her growing conflict between the rational, emotion-free approach she's spent near her whole life with and her newly-awakened sense of the emotional life. There are side-plots and mysteries as well surrounding several other characters: Doctor Crumb, Kit Solent, the old man who killed the last Scriven overlord and who remains ever vigilant, the old man's young apprentice in Scriven-hunting (called "skinning" for reasons you might imagine), and an ambitious tavern owner seeking to use the unrest to his own ends.
The characters are all pretty complex, even those that don't get a lot of page time. It'd be tough to accuse any of them save one or two of being "stock" types and those that are play a pretty minimal role. But from Fever to Kit to the old man and his apprentice, Reeve has created complicated, human, fully fleshed out characters.
The story does sometimes (not often and not for long) lag here and there--I would have argued for a stronger edit of Fever's back-story for instance--, but while I wouldn't call it "gripping" it mostly it pulls you along quickly and smoothly as you're eager to learn what happens. You'll also enjoy many of the mangled bits and pieces of our time that get sprinkled into the language of Fever's era, though a few times these felt a little forced. And there are just some wonderful bits of creative imagery here that I won't spoil, though it's tempting to rave about one in particular.
While not quite as strong as the Mortal Engines books, Fever Crumb stands well enough on its own and is certainly worth a read, even for those unfamiliar with the series. But as mentioned, while I recommend reading Fever, I strongly recommend doing so after picking up the series, not so much for plot as for a stronger introduction to Reeve's writing. If for some reason you don't and find you're not enamored with Fever, don't let it prevent you from trying the series.Fever Crumb Overview

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The Handmaid's Tale (Everyman's Library) Review

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The Handmaid's Tale (Everyman's Library) ReviewI have read "The Handmaid's Tale" a number of times, both in English original and in Croatian translation (a pretty good one). First time I read it, it was because I have found it in a library of a Women's Study Centre in Zagreb, Croatia, so I expected it to be "feminist literature", and was therefore a bit cautious about it, thinking it would be some kind of pamphlet for women's liberation. Of course, I did not know anything about Margaret Atwood back then. First thing this book taught me is that M. Atwood is, above all, a great author, and that "The Handmaid's Tale" is a piece of plain good literature.
The somewhat circular narrative centres around and is being told from the perspective of Offred, a woman living in Republic of Gilead, the dystopian, future theocracy established on the teritory of today's United States of America. Gilead's government is organized by a group of very specific religious fanatics, basing their theology on a couple of chapters from the Old Testament, specifically the story about Sarah, Abraham's wife, who could not bear children, and therefore had given Abraham her handmaid, Hagar, to concieve children with her. Also written in that chapter is God's command to Hagar to completely submit to her mistress, and Abraham's observation that Sarah is to do whatever she pleases with her handmaid.
That is the point from which the treatment of handmaids is derived in the Republic of Gilead. As the increasingly polluted land caused infertility withing majority of women, the fertile ones, especially those who have been either married to divorced men (theocracy of Gilead does not recognize divorce), or single, but not virgins, are taken as "handmaids" to be awarded to high ranking families without children.
Offred has been given to the family of The Commander, one of the highest ranking officials of Gilead, married to Serena Joy, a bitter and slightly desillusioned fanatic. Her narrative focuses on describing daily routines in their household, her experiences and her memories of a past, normal life, with a husband and a daughter.
Apart from political description of Gilead's ideology (which is given masterfully, without unneccessary and boring descriptions, yet with frightening details), the main value of this book lies in Offred's introspection. She is a person completely determined by her biological function as a woman and a child-bearer, completely deprived of any other individual merrits or rights. The way Offred deals with that is beautifully portrayed; sometimes in a flow that resembles free-association ("It's strange now, to think about having a job. Job. It's a funny word. It's a job for a man. Do a jobbie, they'd say to children, when they were being toilet-trained. Or of dogs: he did a job on the carpet...The Book of Job."), sometimes completely ripped-off of any emotions, yet almost physically hurtful with recognition and fear of it possibly coming true.
Granted, Margaret Atwood did write about a woman deprived of her rights in a male-dominated world here, but I don't believe it is a feminist pamphlet. It's a book about human condition, as any other good book; talking about what people are capable of doing, good or bad.
Another note. This, of course, is a speculative fiction, a dystopian one, like Huxley's "Brave New World" or Orwell's "1984". However, I have heard many people say that this one is the least probable one in terms of ever becoming a reality, and therefore fruitless in its message. To these people, I would recommend reading some news from Afghanistan, since Talibans took over.The Handmaid's Tale (Everyman's Library) Overview

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