REVIEW: Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

 

"When I first proved unable to keep the tone light, Ozzie suggested that I be an unreliable narrator... 

Understand, I am not a murderer. I have done nothing evil that I am concealing from you. My unreliability as a narrator has to do largely with the tense of certain verbs.

Don't worry about it. You'll know the truth soon enough.

Anyway, I am getting ahead of my story. Little Ozzie and Terrible Chester do not enter the picture until after the cow explodes. 

This story began on a Tuesday.

For you, that is the day after Monday. For me, it is a day that, like the other six, brims with the potential for mystery, adventure, and terror.

You should not take this to mean that my life is romantic and magical. Too much mystery is mearly an annoyance. Too much adventure is exhausting. And a little terror goes a long way."

Odd Thomas sees dead people. They come to him for help, or just wave at him with their severed arm as he passes by. Odd lives a quiet life as a consummate fry cook in the small town of Pico Mundo (the dead of a large city would overwhelm him). Then, a man comes to town, surrounded by bodachs, dark spirits that feed on pain and destruction like vultures. He has a host of hundreds, hovering, waiting for tragedy. Only Odd can see them. With only this man and a ripped out calendar page (August 15th, tomorrow) as his guides, Odd must try to avert the worst catastrophe the town has ever seen.

This book blew my mind. It has such great characters! Good-hearted, troubled Odd, and his steadfast, strong girlfriend, Stormy Llewellyn. Little Ozzie, the 400 pound Oscar-Wilde-like author who is Odd's mentor, and his huge cat, Terrible Chester. The chief of police and the head of the diner who are Odd's father and mother figures. Rosalia Sanchez, Odd's landlady, who is afraid of becoming invisible. You fall in love with them. And that is part of the problem.

With the impending doom of August 15th approaching, you know you love each of these characters too much. Something will happen to them. Their is a freight train coming, and not all of them will survive.

Yet halfway through the book, you look up and the freight train is not there anymore. You hear the noise, you know it is coming, but it is not on the track you expected it to be and you have no idea where it is coming from. Everything you were certain of, all the clues you gathered, mean something else entirely.

The tension and impending doom (and deeply disturbing sequences) are both broken up an enhanced by casual conversations that happen in between crises. The event approaches, but Odd finds the time to have a picnic with Stormy in the bell tower, or casually ask about someone's family and how they are doing. They are beautiful moments of normalcy and humanity, while at the same time, you are screaming "WHAT ARE YOU DOING, EVERYONE IS ABOUT TO DIE!" By the end of the book, though, you realize how important those moments were.

The ending is beautiful and it broke my heart.  It is set up so perfectly, and still it is a surprise. You go back and look, and see that Koontz has dropped clues through the entire narrative, and it could have only lead to this. And some mysteries still remain, which makes me excited to pick up the next Odd Thomas mystery.

That is not to say that the book is perfect. There are moments that I felt should have paid off somehow, or were building to something that never quite exploded. But they are threads that kept the suspense high and me on my toes.

I will end it with a sentence from the back of the book which sums up the experience perfectly: "[Odd's] account of two shattering days when past and present, fate and destiny converge is the stuff of our worst nightmares -- and a testament by which to live: sanely if not safely, with courage, humor, and a full heart that even in darkness must persevere."

Re-Read: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein

by Mary Shelley

“I expected this reception. All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.” 

Walton is a young, passionate explorer on an expedition to the Arctic. He is consumed with his own trials and tribulations and loneliness, until one day, a bedraggled, dying man crawls aboard his ship. Thinking he has finally found a friend, Walton is horrified to hear the haunted story of the man, Victor Frankenstein, and the monster he created.

I remember absolutely loving this story in high school. It was all about how man should not play God or the consequences would be dire. We learned all about the sublime, the concept of something so beautiful and awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time. It was certainly the best monster book I read (Dracula was too weirdly sexy and Jekyll and Hyde was boring if you knew the twist at the end). Reading it again, however, I was struck by so many new things! 

I can see why high school me was so in love with it. It is the perfect book for a high schooler. Everything is so dramatic! Victor is the center of his own universe. Everything lives to serve him. Everything that happens to him is either the best thing in the world, or the worst thing of all time. Granted he is dealing with a bit more than high school politics, but it is a very high school state of mind. Very melodramatic and full of big, juicy ideas of fate and death. 

During this re-read I was shocked to realize that the book was about something completely different than what everyone told me. It was not about how a scientist tried to play God and was punished for it. Victor succeeded in playing God. It worked. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Even though the creation is a newborn, and is unable to articulate or comprehend on an adult level, he grows quickly in mental and emotional capacity, so that within a year of being born, he can express himself better than I can! He is fully human. He is thought of as sublime, like the mountains or a thunderstorm, all naturally occurring things. The only downside is that he is ugly (rather than the angelic, noble visage Frankenstein intended), and those seeing him for the first time run in fear or hurt him. The resurrection process works. Frankenstein is not punished for trying to create life, for creating an unnatural aberration. He is punished for not taking responsibility for it. 

Victor spends a lot of this book avoiding things. When he first see's the monster, he faints, and then goes and takes a nap. And then is sick for a long time. He never thinks to ask where the monster went, he is just glad he is gone. In fact, he spends a lot of this book unconscious or on vacation in beautiful places, trying not to think about the monster. If I was the monster, I would get frustrated with him too!

It is assumed that the monster is responsible for the deaths of everyone in the book. And that is technically true. He does kill all but one of them. However, in each case, Victor could have prevented the death by taking responsibility for his actions. William's death is the result of Victor not taking responsibility for the care of the monster immediately upon creation. Justine's death is because Victor would not stand up before the court and say "I created a monster, and I saw him in the mountains where William was killed," because he thought people would think he was crazy. So Justine died for the murder of William because Victor did not speak up, even to say "I saw a scary man on the heath." His reputation was more important than Justine's life. 

Victor refused to make a bride for the lonely monster. He makes excuses, saying that the monster is evil, and so she will be evil, and they will have thousands of evil children (can they reproduce?), or they might not even like each other. Much flawed logic there. The monster is lonely and cruel because he has been treated with cruelty his whole life. He is not inherently evil. If anything. he is inherently good, and has learned cruelty from never having been treated with love. He has the most human-like war of love and hate within himself. He has as much of a chance as any other human has to be good and happy, perhaps more so, as he is so much more self-aware than many humans I have met. While I understand that it would suck to be the bride of the monster and wake up to a husband you hated, I say, give the crazy kids a chance? The monster takes full responsibility for the situation, and all Victor has to do is make her, and the monster will stop killing his friends and move to South America. But Victor throws a hissyfit and destroys the bride, and so Clerval dies. And then Frankenstein's own bride, Elizabeth (the epitome of all things good and angelic and flat) dies as well. 

As you can see, the monster has convinced me. While he does some horrible things, I know exactly why. He explains himself clearly, calmly, and logically, appealing to emotions as well as reason. He states, "If you would only accept me, I would be amazing and good and love you and everyone! I would frolic in the fields and pick daisies and put the star on the top of the Christmas tree" (not a direct quote). But Victor flails and blames fate and calls the monster names, and does not address any of the monster's concerns. Honestly, the monster makes a better argument. 

I am not saying that he should have killed everyone. I am saying that Victor needed to grow some balls and stop avoiding his responsibilities as creator. 

I was also rather surprised to realize that Victor creates the monster in an apartment in the city, not in a castle. There is no mention of electricity (aside from the fact that he is inspired by lightning striking a tree); he flatly refuses to tell us any details of how he did it. There is no Igor. The monster is afraid of fire when it burns him, but then he learns to make it, and it is all fine. He is initially inarticulate, but then learns to speak and read. There are no angry villagers, or pitch forks of any kind. No one even knows the monster exists. It is just Frankenstein vs. the monster pursuing each other until death. A tale in two strong voices wrestling with each other for all time.

I would love to see a faithful adaptation of the book, not a faithful adaptation of the original movies that were only based on the book in so much as there was a guy named Frankenstein who made a monster. The ideas of fate and responsibility are so juicy that it doesn't need to be "improved upon" by completely disregarding the stuff already there for new made up stuff. Anyway, that is a rant for my Dark Forest blog when I talk about Frankenstein in Once Upon a Time. 

REVIEW: An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 by Jim Murphy

An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793

by Jim Murphy

I absolutely loved this book. I was shocked that it was for kids! It was so gory and psychologically scary, and utterly compelling and informative. I definitely recommend it for people who love zombie plague stories. Or the 1700s. Or both!

This book tells the story of the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. It starts out slow, listing one death, then several in a boarding house. Then, it spreads down the street and to other portions of the neighborhood until the entire city is infected. It chronicles the panic, how people left the city in droves, and abandoned family members. It describes in detail the horrifying symptoms (complete with illustrations), including vomiting black blood and bile. And it tells of the heroic efforts of those who stayed in the city to help, which to me was the most interesting part of the book: the survival efforts, what happens when government breaks down, the unlikely heroes. It concludes with the sociological aftermath, those who wished to forget the plague, those who pointed fingers, those who had to defend their actions. As an afterward, it tells of the discovery of the causes of yellow fever a century later, and a vaccine in the mid 20th century. It ends with a warning that there has been no recent vaccine for yellow fever, and if it reemerges, we would be almost powerless to stop it. Upbeat ending for a children’s book, huh?

And that is exactly why I loved it. I enjoy kids books that don’t pull punches. They tell it like it is. I feel that what kids fear most is the fear of the unknown. The things parents are whispering about, but won’t tell them straight up. The monster in the dark that you can’t see. I feel that adults are this way too. Once you know what something is, once you can name it, once you know how to fight it, it loses some of it’s power.

This book is not only compelling, but it is highly informative. Jim Murphy did extensive research into primary sources, including letters, diaries and personal accounts of those who were there. Because of this, he was able to build a very intimate and highly descriptive narrative without embellishing with fiction. It does what the best nonfiction does: place you there in the dirty, quiet street, watching another cart full of dead bodies creak by. You feel you know the historical figures personally.

I would recommend this book to my adult friends too! Nowhere in this book did I think for a moment that it was “dumbed down” for children. I think it is comparable to John Adams by David McCollough (though a lot shorter) or Devil and the White City by Erik Larson (but with less speculation)!

If you want a quick, informative, highly disturbing glimpse into a moment of real life in the 1700s, this is the book for you!

I recommend this book if you liked:
Devil and the White City by Erik Larson
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

REVIEW: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairy Land in a Ship of her Own Making by Catherynne M. Vanente

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making

by Catherynne M. Valente

“There must be blood, the girl thought. There must always be blood. The Green Wind said that, so it must be true. It will be all hard and bloody, but there will be wonders, too, or else why bring me here at all? And it's the wonders I'm after, even if I have to bleed for them.”

September is a heartless girl, bored of her life, fed up with her mom who works in a factory all the time, and with her dad who left for war. So, when the Green Wind comes to abduct her to Fairyland, she doesn't even say goodbye, or leave a note. She must do favors for witches, befriend a wyverary (a wyvern whose father was a library), outwit the evil Marquess, and, as the title implies, circumnavigate fairy land after she looses her shadow and her heart.

This was an exceptional book, even more exceptional that it was juvenile fiction. It did not pull punches, either emotionally, complex-ily (if that is a word... meaning that it did not paint the world in black and white), and vocabularically.

It reads as a modern day Alice in Wonderland. September is just as curious, just as impertinent, and just as heartless as Alice, and she meets strange and fantastic things, like the herds of bicycles that roam the land, or the half-people who can only speak in complete sentences when joined together, discarded furniture that takes on a life of its own when it is 100 years old, or the land of Autumn.

While Alice simply wanders and has things happen to her, however, September struggles with morality in a morally grey world (does she aquiess to the evil queen to save her friends? Is the evil queen very different from herself?). There is a wonderful theme of what it is to be chosen and what it is to make a choice.

Early in the journey, she is given the choice to loose her way, lose her mind, or loose her heart. Since she was heartless, she chose to loose her heart. She managed quite well until she grew to deeply care for the friends she made. When she looses them, all hell breaks loose, and you can see what a twelve-year-old girl is really capable of.

This is not pretty Narnia adventure hardship. September must make a raft using her clothes and her hair so she stands naked and shorn against the elements. She bludgeons a fish to death out of desperation, and nearly die horribly several times to get where she needs to go, and even then, she has not faced the worst.

She is the embodiment of badass heroine who does what needs to be done and sacrifices what she has to to save the ones she loves.

It also make an incredible statement about regulation. The marquess has started to bring over rules and regulations to Fairyland to make it "safe" for children who cross over. But that is not the point of Fairyland. It must be dangerous and hard, so the children can emerge strong and confidant and brave. Same thing could be said with a lot of things in our world, including regulation of books and education.

I recommend this to everyone!


There are so many good quotes, I have to add this one at the bottom:

“When you are born,” the golem said softly, “your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk, and crusty things, and dirt, and fear, and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you’re half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it’s so grunged up with living. So every once in awhile, you have to scrub it up and get the works going, or else you’ll never be brave again.” 

REVIEW: A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

A Dirty Job

by Christopher Moore

"It was watching Madeline Alby eat cheese with every ounce of her being, like it was the first and best time, that made him realize he had never really tasted cheese, or crackers, or life. And he didn't want his daughter to live that way ... He wanted her to experience all the glorious cheese of life."

Charlie Asher is a Beta Male, with all the wonderful neuroses that implies. He is happily married to the clever, funny, steadying Rachel who balances out his panicked fidgeting with a calm, wry presence. That is... until she dies, and Charlie is shanghaied into becoming a Death Merchant, effectively a reaper, who collects the souls of the dead which are stored in objects, and helping them move to their next life. Oh, and he is now a single dad.

This is my favorite of all the Christopher Moore books I have read (Lamb and Fool). While along with Lamb, it has spiritual truth mixed in with its sharp, naughty humor, A Dirty Job also has heart, deep compassion, and a rich, full-bodied flavor... if that makes any sense. Lamb and Fool were based on established characters, whereas A Dirty Job is all Moore. He lets his devilish creativity out to play, and the love he puts in to every one of the people (and animals) of this book is palpable.

The first chapter is one of the most perfect pieces of writing I have ever read. If is heart-warming, witty, irreverent, shocking, and primal-screamingly tragic at the same time, and it sets the tone for the rest of the book. Moore makes you fall in love with Charlie and Rachel, and then smashes that relationship away from you in the blink of an eye.

The rest of the book is devoted to Charlie mourning his wife, discovering he is "a Death," and coming into his own as a snazzy-suit-wearing, sword-cane-wielding purveyor of ensouled objects, all while trying to raise a daughter (Sophie), fight rising evil, and placate the whirlwind of zany characters that inundate his life. While some of the characters are comically, and occasionally uncomfortably stereotypical (Ms. Ling and Ms. Korjev, Charlie's neighbors who look after Sophie and are referred to as the "great powers of Asia"), there are also characters like Inspector Rivera, a cop who has seen a lot of weird stuff, so takes things like Charlie throwing firecrackers in the sewer drains or trying to kill old ladies with cement blocks in stride, or the Emperor of San Fransisco, the homeless wanderer with the weight of the city on his shoulders, or Minty Fresh, the mint green suit wearing African American giant, or Lily, the goth chick who works in Charlie's second hand store. Or Sophie's hellhound babysitters. Or the triumvirate of spirit women called the Morrigan who live in the sewers and are trying to royally fuck with, and possibly eviscerate Charlie and all his friends.

This book is not perfect. It starts out with one kind of pacing, and then suddenly newborn Sophie has dialogue and she is five. The book spans a lot more time than expected. The story seems to be structured like a beaded necklace, with awesome bits strung together with "and then some stuff happened for a few years." Its not really a huge problem, just jarring at times.

The author also seems to lose his way towards the end, uncertain as to how to get to his resolution. There is a lot of driving around to different locations, as if the author didn't know where the final stand against evil would be, and some exposition monologing just when you expected the epic throw down. However, when it comes, it is plot-twisty (though a bit obvious) and satisfying.

If you like Clive Barker's Weaveworld, any Neil Gaiman, Terry Prachett (my review of Hogfather) or of course Christopher Moore (my review of Lamb), you will love this book.

REVIEW: Hogfather by Terry Prachett

Hogfather

by Terry Pratchett


"HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM?" - Death

(A rather unfortunate caveat for this post: I saw the movie before I read the book, so my view is a bit tainted.)

I wish I had waited to read this book, and not excitedly snatched it off the library shelf right after I watched the movie. It is meant to be read on a cozy chair looking out at the falling snow and contemplating the meaning of Christmas-- I mean Hogswatch-- being jolly and surrounded by mistletoe and holly. And other things ending in olly. 

'Twas the night before Hogswatch and a lot of things are stirring: Ridcully of the Unseen University is trying to break in to an ancient bathroom to have a bath, Susan (the granddaughter of Death and governess) is beating the monster-under-the-bed with a poker before tucking her employer's children into bed, Death himself is on his nightly rounds, and the Auditors (spirits who make sure that gravity works, and that the earth turns, etc) have decided that the world is a bit to messy, and put a hit out on the Hogfather (Discworld's Santa Claus). When the Hogfather disappears, Death takes up his mantle and begins delivering toys, while Susan quests to put a stop to the hired Assassin.   

Terry Pratchett is such a strange writer. He is deceitfully fluffy and silly, and then packs a wallop of TRUTH underneath it all.  The book is a treatise on belief: why we need to believe in things that obviously aren't real,  how beliefs evolve (from winter sacrifice to merry Hogfather), what happens when you stop believing.

While the book follows several groups of characters throughout the evening's adventures, the strongest and most exciting parts of this book were those that followed Susan and Death. Susan was the reason I picked up this book in the first place. She is the adopted granddaughter of Death and has inherited some of his deathly powers along the way, but all she wants is a normal life. She took a job as a governess and takes comfort in such things as bedtime and using doorknobs. She is sensible and no-nonsense: a dark Mary Poppins, though she says herself that " if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.”


After Death tells her almost too pointedly NOT TO GET INVOLVED, she takes up her grandfather's sythe (though not literally, she takes his second favorite weapon: a sword), and goes forth to investigate the disappearance of the Hogfather. She seems to get lost in silly fluff during the middle of the book, while we read about the antics of the more ridiculous and one dimensional characters, but she is incredibly strong in the beginning (as the monster-fighting governess) and at the end as she confronts the Assassin (a grinning and psychotic Mr. Teatime).

The most delightful character in this book, however, is Death as he takes on the incongruous role of Hogfather on Hogswatch night. Though unsteady in the beginning, he practices his HO HO HOs and wears the false beard and puts a pillow up his shirt and travels down the chimneys (even though he feels it is much easier to go through the wall). He gamely travels to each house to deliver presents, and in the meantime has an existential crisis. No one usually is glad to see him as Death, and he has a soft spot for humans. He starts to change the rules, giving the children exactly what they want (a real sword: "IT'S EDUCATIONAL.""What if she cuts herself?" "THAT WILL BE A VERY GOOD LESSON"), giving life to the Little Match Girl,  and lamenting "BUT I'M THE HOGFATHER" when he is told he can't give poor people everything they want. He is a heartwarming, and heart-wrenching figure as he struggles between what he feels is right, and what is traditional. And he has the best about-to-kick-your-ass quote at the end of the book.

For me, I wished Terry Pratchett had written the book with a bit more depth and a little less fluff, but then he wouldn't be Terry Pratchett, and we couldn't have that.

If you liked this book, you might like:
Anything by Terry Prachett
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett