2012/01/30

Review: The Tiger's Wife


The Tiger's Wife
The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I'm torn between three and four stars. At the core this is not only a very good story, but some damn fine story telling. But I cound not shake the feeling that about one third of the book is padding. Dialogs and descriptions go on too long; there's an awful lot of gazing action at something that ends up having nothing to do with the story other than tell us that the character was searching, both internally and externally which the reader already knows about from the well told parts of the book. In the end, I'm being generous with the four stars because the two fables that the story is built around, The Tiger's Wife and The Deathless Man are great pieces of short fiction all on their own.



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2012/01/20

Review: Troubles


Troubles
Troubles by J.G. Farrell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Take Cold Comfort Farm, move it to 1919 Ireland, add a larger cast of characters and an author who wishes to educate at the same time he entertains and you have Troubles. The Majestic Hotel is one of the best buildings as a character I've ever read, and the family and lodgers who cross her crumbling threshold are gothic to the perfect degree. Farrell uses newspaper articles to keep the entire story from becoming farce, and those historical touchstones come at just the right frequency to remind the reader that no matter how loony the story, the Troubles were very real.



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Review: Gulliver Travels


Gulliver Travels
Gulliver Travels by Justin Luke Zirilli

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Fun and light read that can turn to dark and serious in a paragraph. There's also a balancing act going on between true life and romantic fiction that is most noticeable with the fairy godfatherlike characters of Todd, the room mate and Sebastian, the website owner. But the places are well described and most of the plot all too believable, making for an interesting if not important read.



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2012/01/13

Review: The Minstrel's Tale


The Minstrel's Tale
The Minstrel's Tale by Anna Questerly

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is a book I think I would have loved as a child, maybe up to about 8 or 9 years old. The original fairy tales told by Amos, the Minstrel, have the detail that not only keep the reader reading, but also would have held the interest of a crowd of villagers who had plenty of experience with well told tales. The actual Minstrel's tale, of taking on an apprentice with his own very interesting back story, works for a young reader looking for safe escapism. However, there's something uneven about the characters themselves, Amos and Richard, in that their life experiences and personalities seem to to weaken and strengthen depending on plot twists, that even a child might question. Also, the bookends of the tale, a young contemporary girl who discovers the manuscripts when she begrudgingly accompanies her parents on a vacation to France is totally unnecessary.



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2012/01/08

Review: The Marlowe Conspiracy


The Marlowe Conspiracy
The Marlowe Conspiracy by M. G. Scarsbrook

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



There were parts of this book I loved (the use of well researched details of theatre life and the Star Chamber courts), parts that made me cringe (yes, it's fiction, but fiction based on something as well documented as the time line of Christopher Marlowe's short life shouldn't play fast and loose with that time line). Parts of the book seemed forced (Shakespear's created involvement in the last day's of Marlowe's life came from being an extreme fanboy? ), while others made perfect sense (a man capable of writing what Marlowe wrote should have been able to figure out that he wasn't being invited for a friendly drink in Depshire. There are plot developments that are convenient at one moment and forgotten when they wouldn't be (why would a clever man like Kit risk sneaking into Scadbury again when a night watchman had caused so much trouble the first time?). But in the end, my over all feeling was that this was a fun, far better than average piece of real person fan fiction, and that averaged out to three stars.



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