Book Review: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Book #86 of 2017:

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

The Historian is a fascinating book that manages to be both a haunting vampire story and an ode to the alternating joys and terrors of scholarly research. Dracula exists in this novel not only as a character, but also as a metaphor for any such beguiling research topic that beckons us out into the darkness, off the known map, and into a world where we must fumble our own way towards knowledge in the absence of explicit guideposts. This is, essentially, a vampire story about graduate school.

(It’s also an epistolary novel with multiple nesting narratives spanning half a century, and I quite recommend the unabridged audiobook, whose talented readers always made it quite clear through their delivery which storyline we were following at which moment – something that other reviewers have indicated can be difficult in the written text.)

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Ever by Gail Carson Levine

Book #85 of 2017:

Ever by Gail Carson Levine

I’ve liked Gail Carson Levine’s other works, but Ever was a bit of a misfire for me. The ancient Mesopotamian setting felt very surface-level, as though Levine had only a cursory understanding of the area and its culture when she decided to use it for her story. The characters also felt a little flat, and I probably would have given up on the book altogether if it hadn’t been so short.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Book #84 of 2017:

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

This thriller from Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn lives up to its title, spinning a dark story of a woman trying to piece together the night from her childhood when someone murdered her mother and sisters just outside her bedroom door. It’s a well-told mystery populated by characters with their own fair share of darkness, and Flynn artfully employs a flashback structure to dole out clues but still keep readers guessing up until the end. I did think the ending sort of came out of nowhere, but I also admit to falling for a few red herrings along the way. The author has a real gift for writing flawed protagonists, and even if the story wasn’t quite as tight, trauma survivor Libby Day is infinitely more likable than Nick or Amy from Gone Girl.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt

Book #83 of 2017:

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt

A raw and unflinching look at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer who organized the mass transportation of Jews into concentration camps and gas chambers. Hannah Arendt was a Jewish author who sat in on his 1961 trial, and her reporting is chilling without ever becoming sensationalized. She conveys the simple facts about Eichmann’s actions, coining the phrase “the banality of evil” to express how his role in the murder of millions was motivated not by any great passion against the Jewish people but simply by small-minded focus on his own career advancement and an unwillingness to question his country’s laws or the orders of his superiors.

The writer concludes with a thoughtful consideration of whether Israel truly had the right to seize Eichmann and put him on trial, a question that I’m sure was more burning 50 years ago. But her picture of the man and the atrocities he helped perpetrate is as shockingly relevant now as ever.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Wolf-Speaker by Tamora Pierce

Book #82 of 2017:

Wolf-Speaker by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #2)

An okay follow-up to Tamora Pierce’s earlier novel Wild Magic. I liked that Pierce went out of her way to emphasize that not all creatures who look like monsters are evil, but this was kind of a weird message in a novel where the human villains lack any kind of shading to their characters – they’re rude to Daine, they’re destroying animal habitats with their industry, and they’re plotting a rebellion against the king (for no deeper reason than that they want to be on the throne instead). I also wasn’t thrilled with the expansion of Daine’s magic, which apparently lets her instantly befriend any animal, enter into its mind to control its body, AND shapeshift her own body to resemble it. Hopefully the further books in this series do something to scale that back, because in this adventure she’s simply too overpowered for anything to ever seem like a credible obstacle.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Games Wizards Play by Diane Duane

Book #81 of 2017:

Games Wizards Play by Diane Duane (Young Wizards #10)

This tenth book in the Young Wizards series is also by far its longest, which gives the characters a little bit more time to breathe before the usual crisis hits. The main plot revolves around a wizarding competition, and author Diane Duane makes a lot of smart choices to forestall the inevitable Triwizard comparisons. For one thing, her characters Nita, Dairine, and Kit are cast as mentors for younger wizards instead of competitors themselves, further emphasizing how they’ve grown and developed over the course of the series. But also, the competition is more science fair than tournament, with the magic of the series revealed to be even more technical than we had seen before. There’s some great representation here, and while some of it does feel a bit like Duane was just ticking off boxes, it’s still nice to see that she’s listening to her fans who have expressed a desire for more diversity in the Young Adult genre. And although Games Wizards Play resolves some lingering plot threads from earlier in the series, there’s no indication that this is the end for these characters. 33 years since the first book came out, their story is still going strong.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North

Book #80 of 2017:

The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North

Another wildly inventive thriller from author Claire North, this one about a woman who fades from people’s memory as soon as she’s out of their sight. That concept leans a bit close to North’s earlier novel Touch, since the characters who forget their encounters with Hope end up losing time similarly to those who are possessed by the body thief Kepler in Touch. Still, Hope’s powers allow for different exploits than Kepler’s, and North considers at great length the isolation that a person like Hope would feel when unable to form any lasting human bonds. That feeling of total exile runs sharply throughout The Sudden Appearance of Hope, so it’s only fitting that the central conflict revolves around a data-mining lifestyle app promising happiness and perfection through conformity. Come for the jewel thief narrator and her unique superpower; stay for the smart questions about community and individuality that a talented writer uses that character to explore.

★★★★★

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Book Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

Book #79 of 2017:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

I mostly enjoyed this sprawling look at three generations of a Dominican family possibly suffering under an inherited curse. I just didn’t have much patience for the title character, who regularly develops crushes on girls, gets close to them as friends, and is then upset when they won’t break up with their boyfriends to sleep with him. Luckily the parts about the rest of his family were much more engaging, particularly in detailing life under the dictator Rafael Trujillo. I also liked that the narrator was a huge nerd who kept referencing things like The Lord of the Rings and Stephen King’s The Stand (although since these references are never explained in much detail, I could see this being a drawback to a reader who wasn’t familiar with those properties). But it’s hard to shake the feeling that this would have been a better story without Oscar in it.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris

Book #78 of 2017:

The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris (Loki #1)

A great rendition of Norse mythology from the perspective of its trickster god Loki. Sometimes these tales are in line with their traditional versions and just punctuated by Loki’s droll observations, and sometimes the trickster asserts an entirely alternate course of events from what he calls Odin’s official histories. A base familiarity with the myths in question would probably benefit readers – I recommend Neil Gaiman’s recent book on the subject – but Chocolat author Joanne M. Harris has crafted a compelling picture of Loki and his fellow gods even if this is your first real exposure to them.

★★★★☆

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Movie Review: Suicide Squad (2016)

Movie #3 of 2017:

Suicide Squad (2016)

A complete mess, squandering some pretty good actors who make the most of the bad material they’re given. I’m not particularly invested in the DC Extended Universe in the first place, but this movie gave me absolutely no reason to rethink that decision.

★☆☆☆☆

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