David Woodger

Has everyone read The Little Prince? Not me. Wasn't part of my school curriculum and otherwise never got around to it. But then I got this cool book for Christmas. It's not the full story, it's a graphic novel version of it and illustrated by one of my favorite illustrators, the Frenchman Joann Sfar. If you're unfamiliar with M. Sfar's work, check out Vampire Loves and the very cool children's books: Little Vampire Goes To School, and Little Vampire Does Kung Fu. But anyway, I found The Little Prince to be interesting and somewhat strange little story. Also kinda sweet. When my daughter saw me looking at it, she promptly climbed into my lap and demanded that I read it to her. Her brother came by and joined us. I read the whole thing aloud to them in two sittings. They were fascinated. This one is a keeper. Supposedly M. Sfar is most well-known to American audiences from his book, The Rabbi's Cat, though I hadn't heard of it.

This one's over 20 years old, but I finally decided to give this one a go. The story of a young royal bastard who eventually is groomed into becoming an assassin for King Shrewd, his grandfather. Pretty quickly, I discovered that Robin Hobb is an eloquent writer and she takes her time with the story. The characters are interesting which is good because there's not a lot of action per se. In fact, of the assassin's arts, young Fitz, our hero, mainly focuses on poisoning. So this sword-and-sorcery book has almost non-existent “sword.” Still, it was captivating enough to read it all the way through. Don't think I'll continue, though.

Last October I read the first book in this series, 61 Nails, and I found it to be original and endlessly interesting and imaginative. The protagonist, Niall Peterson, lives in modern day London and suddenly finds out that he has part Fey ancestry and begins to learn of the world and powers that come with it. In this second book, Niall's teenage daughter begins to exhibit Fey powers of her own. She's kidnapped and Niall is initially duped into believing she's dead. Just as he learns she's not, some other complications enter into the Fey world. Like the first book, I found this one to be endlessly imaginative and a fun story to follow. I liked the unpredictableness of the plotting. It may not be rich in characterization, but the richness of the story makes up for it. I was particularly interested in the character of Raffmir too. An interesting villain.

This is another book that I read aloud to my daughter but would not have finished otherwise. I am mystified by the plethora of good reviews for this one. The story is tired and scattershot; the so-called main character is largely missing; it's far longer than it needs to be; all the magic is of the deus ex machina variety; the writing style is by turns condescending, obtrusive, and dull; and the plot is hard to discern. Even with all that said, I've read (or attempted to read) others that were worse. My best indicator of how well it was received by my daughter is if she asks to immediately get to the next one in the series or not. She did not ask about this one (and if she did, there's no way I would've read it). This book held no surprises, moved at a snail's pace, and contained only cardboard characters. Next up will be a book of my choosing.

The first time I'd read this I was in eighth grade. I chose it for the next read-aloud book for my kids. It took a good month-and-a-half to finish it with almost nightly readings. They enjoyed it and were very curious about all the characters. I really enjoyed giving Kehaar a faux-Slavic accent, but trying to read aloud some of the names can be a tongue-twister. You say “Hyzenthlay and Thethuthinnang” and see how well you do! Of course, it's been so long since I read this story I was only familiar with some of the key plot points. One thing I'd forgotten was how much description of the landscape Adams works in to the story. He throws in names of plants and animals that I have just zero knowledge of. But this classic story is a captivating one. My kids – especially my eldest – kept asking me to read more every night when I deemed I was done for the night. They were also curious about which rabbits might be mating with which (at the end of the story). They also loved all the little scattered stories within the story about the rabbit folk hero El-Ahrairah (a.k.a. the Prince With a Thousand Enemies).

C'mon! Say it! “Hyzenthlay and Thethuthinnang!”

This book is pretty cool and twisted. A selection of characters (taken from various points in time as well) come across an odd little box. Once they start fiddling with the box, they find themselves suddenly transported to a room in a very odd house. The house defies logic, has endless corridors, and contains all manner of deadly things within. The story follows these small groups of house travelers as they A) try to stay alive, and B) try to get back home. The journey is a bit of a page-turning romp but the ending leaves some unanswered questions and loose strings. No matter. The sequel, Restoration, comes out in July and I'll be snapping it up at the first opportunity.

Now here's a story that's seemingly modeled after some of Michael Crichton's fast tales. The Trident is a large ship chartered with carrying an attractive crew being filmed for a reality TV show called SeaLife. In a remote section of the Southern Pacific Ocean they come across tiny Henders Island. Soon after a landing party manages to gain access to the island, most of them end up being eaten by beasties never before seen on Earth. Good start! And then half-way in, things pick up and the pages fly by. I think some other blurb said it first, but Fragment is like a combination of The Ruins and Jurassic Park. A fast, diverting story with really nasty fauna.

Two years ago I devoured Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy. It was a gritty sword-and-sorcery yarn, full of blood and guts, a few touches of sorcery, but mostly political intrigue shot through with battles, torture, adventure and dirty deeds. Good stuff. GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire is a pretty good parallel but then again Abercrombie actually finished his tale. Then he came out with this stand-alone tale which borrows a few minor characters from the First Law and takes place in the politically fractured Styrian continent. The main character is one Monza Murcatto, the general of the mercenary force known as the Thousand Swords. After a series of victories she's betrayed by her employer, Duke Orso and left for dead on a mountainside. Then, through 880 pages, she exacts her single-minded revenge on the seven men responsible for her betrayal. Along the way, we get some backstory on the events that led to her betrayal and they shed more and more light on the proceedings yet Monza herself never really feels like a fully-fleshed character. The most colorful character in the book is Nicomo Cosca, erstwhile leader of the Thousand Swords, and one who likes the sound of his own voice. The tale is a bloody, violent betrayal-fest, brutal and dark. And, I thought, far longer than it needed to be. Part of me was enjoying the mayhem, part of me was hoping just to finish so I could move on to something else. There were no major surprises in the plot but a few eyebrow-raising small ones. I'd recommend it only for big fans of Abercrombie's First Law trilogy.

Mickey Wade, a newly unemployed journalist moves into his grandfather's apartment in a run-down Philadelphia neighborhood. One night, after quaffing some aspirin he finds himself transported back in time to the year of his birth. Back and forth he goes, and then he decides to thwart the kid who would grow up to kill his father. Some fun weirdness ensues and it's a super-fast read. I'm putting more Duane Swierczynski books in my To Read List.

Jack Durkin is the current caretaker of Lorne Field. From age 21 until his first-born son can take over at age 21, his contracted job is to “weed” the field every day. But he's not really pulling up weeds. They may look like weeds but they're Aukowies and if left alone will grow fast and in about 8 days would grow into a 9-foot-long fanged beast that would eat everything and everyone. And there's a giant field of them. The Durkin family has been doing this for 300 years but these days there are few people who believe the weeds are anything but simple weeds.

You can see where this is heading can't you? That's part of the problem. No real surprises. Another issue is that none of the characters are all that likable. Nevertheless, I zipped through the story in just a few days. Story could've really used some surprises, though.

The first of a trilogy, The Warded Man takes place in a world where the human population is dwindling. As soon as the sun sinks below the horizon the demons emerge. The humans are protected by various magical wards that repel the wood, fire, sand, swamp, and wind demons. But if a ward circle is improperly painted or hidden my mud... the legion of demons can enter and feast on the tasty humans. This story focuses on three individuals that will take the fight to the demons. The characters are very compelling and the tale is deftly told. I enjoyed this story very much and will eagerly look forward to completing this trilogy.

I was flipping through a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly and read Stephen King's column in which he was recommending books. This was his current number one choice and I'm happy I followed his advice. This was one of those rare books that are hard to put down. At first, I was annoyed by the protagonist, Adam Kindred. Although he had his reasons, he does something very stupid in the beginning that is the catalyst for this tale. But events progress from there and Adam proves to be not so stupid. To be fair, he realizes immediately afterward how stupid his initial actions were. But basically, this is the story of a character who loses everything and then takes off from there. He's a young guy in London with no money, home, or possessions. The police and a hitman are looking for him. It was very interesting to see how the story progressed.

So now Stephen King's recommendations that I've followed up on have been hits 2 out of 3 times. Battle Royale by Koushun Takami was a fun read, but Dispatch, by Bentley Little I tossed half-read. Also, I bought Ordinary Thunderstorms as a paperback while on vacation in Sweden. But here, it's only available as a hardcover. Over on Amazon.com the average customer rating for this book is only 3 stars but I've long since given up trusting the hoi polloi to be arbiters of good taste. Philistines!

This book was found as a finished manuscript after the death of the author. Like just about everything I've read by him, the narrative hums along at a fast clip and deserves to be called a page-turner. Set in 1665, this is a straightforward pirate adventure tale complete with sea battles, treachery, treasure, swordfights, and even an encounter with a kraken! Great for a quick read but not otherwise memorable.

This was such an odd tale, by turns strange, chock-full of literary references, and compelling. The setting is an alternative Victorian London in which sentient lizards from a mysterious island have taken over the crown, automatons are commonplace, and the title character is a terrorist using books as bombs. The protagonist is the oddly named Orphan who loses his lover to one of the Bookman's bombs and sets off to find the elusive character. It's a strange trip filled with characters borrowed from other literary works. Moriarty is the Prime Minister, Irene Adler runs Scotland Yard, and Jules Verne, Karl Marx and others also show up. It's nearly a game to see how many references you can spot. But Orphan is not the most compelling protagonist. He is more like a focal point around which the bizarre story plays out and often seems little more than a pawn in the various plot machinations. It gets confusing at times but remains oddly compelling. The writing style is also unique (in a good way). I kept reading just to find out where the whole crazy story was leading. It's not a typical steampunk adventure, yet that is where you'd file this under. I'm very curious to see where the author goes with the next book set in this world (Camera Obscura) which has an entirely new set of characters (for the most part) and occurs three years after the events in this tale. (I'd really give this 3 1/2 stars if possible.)

This is the first book in a trilogy set in the beginnings of World War II. But in this alternate history the Germans have Dr. Von Westarp's surgically-enhanced super soldiers. These are people that have various unusual abilities like telekinesis, invisibility, precognition, pyrokinesis, and being able to become insubstantial (like moving through solid matter). Most of them are seriously flawed people, though. And, on the English side, there's a shadowy group of warlocks with the ability to control demons. Both sides pay a steep price for these advantages. In the middle of it all is English agent Raybould Marsh, he's a tough character – a little prone to hot-headedness. Fantastic premise, no? But I was a little underwhelmed by its execution. There really wasn't a character that I was enjoying all that much except for maybe the German super soldier Klaus. Also it was both interesting and off-putting to find the so-called good guys (the English) getting involved in some really reprehensible plots. They would do things that would make you root against them. You couldn't easily say, “that guy, there, he's a good guy.” I was not interested enough to continue to the next book.

One of the blurbs on this book called it a “Neverwhere for the next generation,” referring to Neil Gaiman's book. That's what caught my eye. So I gave this one a shot. The story is set in present day London. Niall Petersen suffers a heart attack while in the London Underground and when he recovers finds that his whole world has changed. The woman who helped him is called Blackbird and she's part of the hidden world of the Feyre. And now Niall is too. This story moves along quickly, never gets dull, and is always interesting. Mike Shevdon weaves in century-old history into an involving story of Fey people, ancient rituals, magic, and a hidden world. It's consistently entertaining and interesting. It's also the first of a proposed trilogy called The Courts of the Feyre. The second book, The Road to Bedlam, is currently out in paperback. I already snapped it up.

Read the first book in this compendium of 3 tales. Mmm... meh.

Update: I'm actually glad I brought this book to Sweden with me. My 10-year-old son (another voracious reader) is currently reading it and enjoying it. He's currently two-thirds done with it.

Update #2: My son just finished reading this. Thought it was great. (After I read the first book in this 3-in-1, I thought it might be suited better for a younger audience.)

This story is a real let-down. And not too much actually happens. First of all, the “mysterious howling” of the title is only mentioned in the final chapter and left mysterious (this book is the first in a series). Is it too much to ask to tell a complete story in one book? I have read several other series for children that manage to do this. But this one is one tedious set-up. In this story the main character is a 15-year-old orphan turned governess for three younger children supposedly raised by wolves. I found the vocabulary within to be much too sophisticated at times. Here are a few of the words and phrases that appear in this story:

toilette, inexorably, botanical, apropos, solvent, behavioral psychology, Baroque sensibility, alma mater, eloquence, rustic, summons, reverie, distraught, enigmatic, inscrutable

Inscrutable, indeed. And yet when I finished reading the story and asked my kids what they thought, my eldest (aged 10) replied, “Awesome” and my youngest (aged 7) wanted to know what the next book in the series was called. I'm beginning to suspect my kids just enjoy being read to, period. (It also affords my 7-year-old an opportunity to climb into my lap.) I was often quite bored by this tale and did not find it clever in the slightest. I've read the first four of the Lemony Snicket books and they don't compare at all.

The true story of a Syrian-American man, Abdulrahman Zeitoun (“zay-toon”) and his family and their experiences during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans during August/September 2003. Not really a book I would've chosen on my own to read but my wife gifted it to me and I was intrigued. I read it fairly quickly too. It was a fascinating portrait of a man and a natural disaster and the strange paths his life takes during this time. But if you look further into the turns Zeitoun's life takes after the events in the book, you'll find that things were far from a happy ending for this family.

Don't look at these links if you decide to read the book yourself. Only check them out afterward.

theAdvocate.com
nola.com
NYTimes.com