Alyssa Gardner, the narrator, is descended from Alice Liddell, of Alice in Wonderland fame, and as one can imagine this has led to a certain amount of teasing in school. However, Alyssa has also inherited the family madness that led to her grandmother’s death, and her mother’s placement in an asylum. Like the other women in her family, Alyssa can hear bugs and flowers speaking to her. It actually serves as the inspiration for her art, as she makes mosaics of dead bugs to keep […]
War Stories – OIF style
Having said that, I thought the collection was rather well done, and rang true even if I couldn’t relate to many of the details or the specifics. I think that’s another reason I am not that drawn to military books. I never feel like they tell my story, and to be honest, a book about my deployments would be rather boring. I was in a PLS company and did convoys on one, and during the other I had a staff job – I had long […]
Harmless, Forgettable Novel with Some Letters
Anyway, I was a bit disappointed when I realized how much of the novel was actually prose, telling the story of the two protagonists through third person limited rather than through letters they write each other. Eve Petworth, a reclusive Englishwoman, writes a fan letter to Jackson Cooper, an American thriller author, and they communicate back and forth. While the novel does trace the influence they have on each other and mention some of their exchanges, the novel mainly tells the story of them as […]
Yay! I Have a New Series to Catch Up On
Since I’m all caught up on The Dresden Files, and finished Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series (loved!), I was in need of another urban fantasy series that wouldn’t end up derailing (I’ve heard all about Anita Blake’s drop in quality). I feel like I’ve been seeing this series a lot lately, and Malin assured me they were worth the time. I really liked this novel as the first of the series, though I will say that the tone in the first few chapters […]
Wait, This Was a Mystery? The Case of the Overloaded Historical Fiction Novel
I don’t remember where I first saw this mentioned, but I’m pretty sure it was a book blog, and I liked the cover as well as the premise so I thought it would work well to fill my historical mystery fix. While the novel was entertaining enough, the mystery was rather beside the point (it isn’t until page 250 of a 400 page novel that someone even thinks a body looks a bit odd, even though there are journal entries from the killer throughout so […]
A Tragic Time in History Used as the Backdrop for a Bad Love Story
Oddly enough, this is the second novel I’ve read this year about Cambodia, and neither one were recent purchases. Unfortunately, I didn’t find either one completely satisfying, and think I might need to move on to some non-fiction to get a better picture. Having said that, In the Shadow of the Banyan was the better of the two novels, but I think sometimes it used art too much to escape. I can see that as a valid coping method, but it is also kept me […]
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