Flicker Reads

3.5 stars.
I did not enjoy Interview with a Vampire, but a good deal of that blame lays with the insipid main character Louis and his insufferable hand wringing. I didn't care for the narrative style of the book, which kept the characters at arm's length with its romantic stiltedness.

Good news is that The Vampire Lestat is an improvement in many ways. Lestat was always more full blooded than Louis, though with Lestat's origin story given here in full, we see that there was a lot of Louising going on in Lestat's early thinking, darn it all. The story begins well with descriptions of Lestat's childhood and vampiric conversion. Things take an ugly turn for the reader when Armand enters the picture in the novel's middle. He brings out the worst in Lestat, and suddenly the reader is drowning in sentimental syrup. I felt like I was being pelted with small refrigerator magnets, each carrying a tired gothic cliche:

Come now, the flames await...
I do not wish to suffer...
the master had been wise...
hard, sweet kisses...
the blood was the blood...
don’t weep for thy master...
melted into this ecstasy...
join the children of darkness...
hooded figures in mendicant black...
a great melancholy shape...
all will was extinguished in him...

I think about the time I read this last phrase, all will was extinguished in me, too, and I put on the audiobook version double speed with the irritating Simon Vance, who can’t seem to help giving any vampire a Transylvanian accent, regardless of the fact that he’s a born and bred Frenchman.

Fortunately for all involved, the character of Marius and his origin take up the final third of the book, and here things get downright intriguing once again. The ending is a veritable romp, and makes one wonder how nice the books would be if everyone would just relax and embrace the nocturnal adventure. Cliffhanger ending leads right in to book 3.

The book is a bit of a hot mess, but worth a look. Recommend 2x audiobook if you begin to feel queasy from the drivel.

O the magnanimity! Even after disliking Interview for its romantic blather, here I am giving good old Anne Rice a second go. It was her very first novel, after all, so this one has to be so much better <crosses fingers>.  Different narrative style, perhaps? Please?

Well, here we go, back on the Reacher train. I kept hoping that this one would take place in a post-9/11 world, but apparently Child had this one in the can before that fateful day. There is no fictional character more ready to swing into action in the war against terror than Jack Reacher, and that backdrop promises to reenergize the entire series.

Although it has nothing to do with those events, Persuader was the best Reacher story since book 2. Much less with the stupid plotting, the stupid women, and the grumpy butthole Reacher - much more of all the right things that made the first books interesting.

Even Dick Hill's narration was better. Hill is a pro, but he does a few things with accents that bother my ear. This time, everything was perfect. Except that the college kid sounded 10 years old, but hey - that's completely forgivable. College kids often behave that way anyway.

I enjoyed the story - good series! I'm looking forward to a more earth-oriented continuation, if Mr. Kloos continues after this installment. I miss the political and economic backdrop of the first book. Space opera is nice, but there was something intriguing about the series beginning.

I'm just becoming familiar with the work of Koontz, having read two of his many novels, and here I've happened on something in the dregs. Very derivative, much like the film Fallen, if you've seen that one. The problem lies deeper here, though; there is a stilted distance to the narration, with sentences far too pleased with their own preciousness to serve the narrative flow. Way too much telling rather than showing, especially in the early going. Characters feel more like sketches and cliches than true human beings. In short, seek elsewhere for your next read.

When I read at home, I normally do so on my couch with my cat Ralph parked on my lap. Ralph is an unusually close, affectionate cat who really enjoys human companionship. I've always had a good relationship with cats and dogs, so it was interesting to read Jackson Galaxy's Cat Daddy, which relates the autobiographical story of how the author became a cat behaviorist. Apparently the man has his own television show, but I've never seen it. Galaxy is an interesting fellow, and his story of caretaking needy cats is linked with his battles with addiction. He is unusually candid about his blindspots and mistakes along the way, and his penchant for romantic phrasing betray his rock & roll lyricism. Galaxy is an actor and a musician, so there was a lot of vanity and self-absorption to overcome. At one point he says, "if you've never rubbed shoulders with insanity, he is a sweaty, foul-breathed cab driver who locks the door and takes you wherever he wants." In all, enjoyable and educational.

Yes!

A rare DNF from me. Something like a bad comic book. No overall story arc, no character development - just not my tea.

Ah small towns, how I love you. And Stephen King loves them, too. In Under the Dome, King approaches weighty thematic subjects in a way he never dared to in previous novels, and it's these elements that lifts the material above his usual pulpy fare. Don't get me wrong - there are still the usual grisly plot points involving good guys and very, very bad guys. And the body count is massive. I haven't watched the TV series, but imagine that King and crew are having fun spinning this out into a serial. Will it end the same way? Who knows. My advice is to keep Dean Norris alive until the final scene!

Bukowski, anyone?

I am enthralled with this series. There is a level of elusive, gothic mystery so rare in the writing, a line the author catwalks between logical whodunit and utter disorientation. I feel like I've read a sci-fi mashup of Rebecca and Naked Lunch. There's nothing quite like it, and it feels really nice to be able to give that compliment.

The reader of this audiobook version was Bronson Pinchot, and he lends a nice NPR voice to the narration. He muddles the poetry of the writing from time to time, something he might remedy if he bothered to make notations before speaking, but in all, leagues ahead of Carolyn McCormick. 

Here is another great installment in D.J. Molles's Remaining series. The complicated motives and urgings of the characters is what makes this really great writing. It stands head and shoulders above other zombie series.

Word on the street is that we'll get one more from the reclusive author, which I will be eagerly waiting for.

Mama mia, What a little masterpiece of science fiction this turned out to be! I was dubious at first, but author Jeff Vandermeer draws the reader in, page by page, building tension and revealing all the complicated layers of the story's protagonist, the biologist. It's Maze Runner for adults, written 10x as skillfully.

The prose is illuminating and startling. There are really inventive choices made along the way, such as the lack of all Christian names for the various characters (which Vandermeer explains at a certain point). There are strong Lovecratian influences and a perfect Kubrickesque finale, just to toss a couple of fun adjectives out there. I love the way the book simultaneously details the biologist's expedition and her failed marriage - I'm a sucker for that interior/exterior structure - especially when it's done this skillfully. And I loved the thematic territory of humankind's place in the natural world.

2015 has been a true delight with the science fiction I've stumbled on - so much great storytelling going on! This one goes to the top of the list, and sits next to recently read gems like The Girl in the Road for sheer creative potency. 

Thank my lucky stars that the writing completely overcame Carolyn McCormick's tin-eared narration. Pleasepleaseplease, audiobook gods, please allow Carolyn McCormick to retire. Or maybe she can narrate children's books? She could do a wicked Good Night Moon, I'm sure. This is going to sound terrible, but she's just not wounded enough to narrate the painful, tense moments that inhabit adult and young adult lives. 

Audiobook commencing - head trip imminent. 

I'm daring to read another book narrated by "death reader" Carolyn McCormick, who ruined the Hunger Games audiobooks with her unbearable inflection. Like a night nurse at a hospice reading bed time stories in an uninspired lisp.

This book seems the product of a restless mind.
I was expecting (or hoping) it would be more interesting to me, but alas, it was only average. I was thinking as I read Stardust why the story didn't excite or interest me more, and I came up with several issues:
1) The format of fairy tale works against the novel form and length. Fairy tales are usually quite brief, which is a good thing. They do a very poor job of developing characters beyond the most basic stereotypes and have no issue with introducing new characters throughout the story. When you lengthen the story to 250 pages, however, this becomes a problem.
2) The narrator's voice intrudes. It felt forced to me. Too cutesy.
3) Tone. There is an odd tone of chaste innocence (inherent in the fairy tale form) married to adult levels of violence and sexuality. This is a story precocious kids might pick up because of its fairy tale format, but there are situations that young children ought not read.
4) A lackluster central love story. It's the love story that ought to tie everything together here -- the gradual change in the relationship of Tristan and Yvaine -- but there is so little emotional depth, it means virtually nothing to the reader. I get that Gaiman wants to move out of the "happily ever after" territory, but it's almost as if he is purposefully avoiding or deriding the idea of a loving couple.

5) Derivative on every level. I wrote a few reviews ago that a good book steals its ideas and does it so well and makes such clever use of them that the reader doesn't seem to mind. Well, with Stardust, the skill was lacking and theft was more obvious.

6) The addition I read had an author's intro and postscript that felt really smug and self-congratulatory. "I sat down with my fountain pen and paper and began to write." Gaiman is fantastically adept at self-promotion. He needs to work more on the written product.

A book ought to reward in proportion to its length, as readers commit those scarcest of life's resources, time and attention, to its pages. Stardust offers enough pleasure to fill a fun novella of 50-100 pages, but little more. Perhaps Gaiman and his publisher had a novel in mind in order to provide for that other resource we always seem interested in: money.