Vampires, chocolate bunnies, OCD, pretentious anti-consumerists, and a whole lotta Bloody Jack!

57. The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin (Sometime in July)

Pick:
I've been curious about Robert Rankin for a while; I noticed him at Powell's, mainly because of the titles. This one was a good price, and how could I pass this title up, I ask you? Since it's humor, it seemed a good idea after getting stuck on bad Russian history.

Thoughts:
It wasn't bad, but it wasn't everything I wanted it to be. The basic concept was great: a young man travels to the big city to seek his fortune (with a bizarre and wacky stop in the first chapter, to establish the mood of the book), and when he gets there, he discovers that it is, in fact, Toy City, which is full of -- yup, living toys; and second, that things are not right in Toy City: the human inhabitants -- Little Boy Blue, Miss Muffett, Peter Piper, and so on -- who are all rich and famous due to the royalties from their nursery rhymes, are being gruesomely murdered, one by one, starting with Humpty Dumpty.

After being robbed, he falls in with a teddy bear who used to be the assistant to Toy City's resident private investigator, who is looking into the murders but needs someone to drive the car. The boy (whose name is Jack, of course) agrees to help, and they begin working the case. The culprit turns out to be someone completely unexpected, with a plan that is even more unexpected, with an interesting twist at the end. Unfortunately, that twist at the end was a bit too much, coming on top of the other revelations about the villain and the victims and everything, and it made me dislike the book a bit. Which was too bad, because apart from being a little too long and a little too slow, it really was pretty good.

I was honestly disappointed that the chocolate bunnies were nothing more than props. Especially once we've established that we're in a fantasy world with talking toys. Teasing me with hollow chocolate bunnies of the apocalypse was just mean.

So in the end, Robert Rankin lines up with Tom Holt and most of the other humorous novelists I've encountered: pretty good, but just not as funny as Douglas Adams. Clearly the man was a true genius.


**Unfinished: The Vampire Diaries, Book Two by L.J. Smith

I actually liked the first book. Not a whole lot, and for once I liked the TV version more than the book, but it wasn't bad. This one got bad. The drama between the characters is just annoying, as are the clunky attempts to add tension and surprises to a humdrum story that's basically a jumped-up Sweet Valley High: Elena is the queen of the school, though really she's a sweet and troubled girl inside. And she's in love with two boys! But if she chooses either one, it could cost her her status as queen! What is Elena to do? Oh, the trials and tribulations of being a teenager in love!

Whatever. We let that one go pretty quickly.


58. Bullet by Laurel K. Hamilton (Still July)

Pick:
Read crappy vampires, so I wanted to read good vampires.

Thoughts:
It wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. Hamilton is definitely going the wrong way with these books: she's digging the rut deeper instead of pulling out of it. I thought we were making progress in the last book when MOAD got whacked -- but no! She's not dead! She's inside the Council, and she starts the book by trying to take control of Anita. Just like every one of the last -- what, five books? Six? I don't know any more, and I'm starting not to care. And just like every one, the only defense is to touch people, everyone she can reach, because that calms down the animal that is walking up the long jungle road inside her and clawing her apart from the inside. Just like every other time this happens. And again, just like every other time this happens, they conclude with an orgy. And then the rest of the book, which sadly does not cover very much action or progress, is them trying to deal with the aftermath of the opening assault by shoring up their defenses. And dealing with their unbelievably twisted and convoluted web of relationships.

I'm also at the point where I'm just getting tired of certain phrases that keep popping up: this time it's the use of the term "puppy pile," which Anita uses every single time she refers to lycanthrope sleeping arrangements, and this book pissed me off when Anita uses it in the middle of the crisis as a direction -- sort of a general's tactical command: "Puppy pile! Do it now, soldier!" which irritates me way more than it deserves -- which tells me these books are losing my interest.

Too bad. We will definitely try the next one, and hope very much that something happens to change the storyline. Hamilton's got a good start with this one, because Jean-Claude is planning to build an American Council, with himself at head, to stop the European Council under MOAD, and that could be really good. But if all it is is the heads of other cities coming to St. Louis, falling under Anita's spell and fucking everyone, while the MOAD pops up in her head smelling of jasmine and bringing the sparkly puce tiger up the jungle path inside her, I'm done with these.


59. Mississippi Jack by L.A. Meyer (Just starting August now)

Pick:
Gotta move forward with Jacky Faber, here. Though honestly, it's been long enough since I read these that I don't really remember what order I read these books in. But I read Mississippi Jack, and it needs to be written up, so here we are.

Thoughts:
I had a wee bit of trouble with this one -- the first one that hasn't been fantastic for me from cover to cover. Though in retrospect, I'm not totally sure why I didn't love this one as much as the others; Toni has since read it, and she did love it, and in trying to tell her why I didn't, I couldn't really come up with anything.

Part of it was that the frontier stuff didn't particularly interest me. I was marginally annoyed that Meyer used Mike Fink as a real character, but over the course of the book I really liked the way that played out. I was irritated in the beginning because Jacky stole Fink's boat, and there was no way that was going to turn out well, and that's what got her in trouble with the British and caused her so many problems over the last two books, but she just thinks she'll talk her way out of it and blink her big eyes at him and everything will be fine. That bugged me. So the first third of the book bored me a little, and was a touch hard to get through.

Then it really picked up. Once Jacky got going on the Mighty Mississip, with her crew and her show and the open water, the book started singing like they always do. I got pissed at her again when she develops a damaging crush on yet another pretty arrogant asshole, but I guess you can't fight human nature. I got pissed at Jaimy this time, too, though it was really great to read his segments, since he was actually having adventures instead of doing naval duty and pining for Jacky. Actually, that might have been part of the trouble, too; I wanted to hear a bit more about Jaimy. Though he's a jackass for the whole thing with Clementine. Stupid boys.

The ending, particularly the section in New Orleans, were outstanding, right back up to the top of my favorite Jacky books and scenes. The part with the slave hunters was one of the most disturbing things in these books, probably back to the pirate LeFievre in the first book. Makes me want to catch up with the series, so I can't be so confident that Jacky will live through these things just because I know there's another book coming out; with these books as realistic as they are, and the author as good as he is at plotting, I wouldn't be completely surprised if he really did have Jacky die at the climax of one of these scenes. Though I would be very very sad. Well, he probably won't kill her -- but anything else is possible, because the Jacky Faber that can do these things, can do anything.


60. (Amazon Vine) Unexpectedly Milo by Matthew Dicks 8/8

Pick:
I like the concept of a novel about a man with OCD; the author got rave reviews from the people who read this and the other book. I thought I should get something serious I could read and give a real review to, since my other book was JACKY FABER!

Review:
You know those annoying little habits that you have, that you don't want anyone else to know about? Your little rituals, the way you have to carry your keys in your right pocket and your phone in your left, and check them every time you walk out your door?

Do you hide those habits from others, embarrassed that they might raise an eyebrow, or roll their eyes, or even -- horror of horrors -- laugh at you?

If you do any of these things (and who doesn't?), then Milo Slade has you beat all to heck.

This is a man who has arranged his life, including his employment, his marriage, where he lives and who he spends time with, around his habits. His demanding habits. His obsessive-compulsive habits, one could say, though Milo doesn't think he has OCD. He thinks he has a German submarine captain in his head who gives him orders, and then begins tightening valves and increasing pressure inside Milo's mind until the orders are carried out. He doesn't think this is literally true, but it is how he pictures the mysterious source of these strange demands that control nearly everything he does.

Demands like: opening jars of Smuckers grape jelly, just to hear the pop! as the vacuum seal releases. Bowling a strike. Singing "99 Luftballoons," by Nena, in the original German, karaoke style. Cracking the cubes out of an ice cube tray. Letting the air out of his car tires and replacing it with fresh air. Perhaps the most difficult are the words that arise in Milo's mind -- placebo, or loquacious -- and which repeat over and over again, becoming louder and more insistent until he can think of nothing else, can do nothing else, and is overwhelmed with pain, until: he can hear somebody use the word. Of course, the use must be in natural conversation; he cannot simply ask someone to repeat the word, oh no -- the submarine captain wouldn't be satisfied with that.

Milo has built his world around these demands -- and then he has, somehow, managed to hide them completely from everyone around him. Including his wife. Doing so has not been easy, has probably ruined his marriage, as the two go through a trial separation that seems fairly permanent, and it has certainly increased the power of the demands on Milo, making them arise more often, making them more powerful. Keeping a secret is hard.

Of course, Milo's secret is not all that bad compared to the secret he hears when he discovers a stranger's video diary, and begins watching it, partly out of curiosity, and partly out of a desire to discover the owner's identity. Because Freckles, the girl on the videotape, has killed her best friend.

And only Milo can help.

Just as soon as he watches Star Wars: Episode III (Revenge of the Sith) one more time. Just in case the ending has changed since the last time he watched it.

This book is wonderfully written, fantastic characters, great interactions, really fascinating exploration of Milo's condition. It gets a bit tiresome in the beginning, watching Milo flail around trying to juggle his work life, his marriage, and his demands, and not doing very well; but that's the point: if it gets tiring to read about it, just imagine what it's like to live with it. But the book really picks up when Milo begins his quest, and the ending was fantastic, and nicely unexpected. Definitely recommended.

61. Angel: After the Fall, Volume I by Brian Lynch and Franco Urru 8/8

Pick:
If we're buying Buffy comics, we have to buy Angel comics. I grabbed this because I had to spend a long time reading the last one, and I'm expecting Jacky Faber in the mail. Plus I have to know who survives the big fight at the end of the show!

Thoughts:
This one was pretty good, though I didn't enjoy it as much as the Buffy book. This one wasn't actually written by Joss Whedon (Or David Greenwalt or the regular writers or anyone from Angel), so it wasn't quite as good or as true to the characters and their established personalities. It did have some great surprises, and I really like the setup: after the big ending of the show, all of Los Angeles was sucked into Hell. Now it is divided up into fiefdoms ruled by various demons, and Angel is fighting against them, fighting to help the poor human refugees that are trapped in Hell through no fault of their own.

I definitely want to keep reading -- though first I want to read Spike's individual comic, which the author's bio on this one said actually comes first, chronologically. I'd love to get some definite answers out of that one that would help me understand this one. I did like it a lot, though. Pretty much love these characters.


62. The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson 8/9

Pick:
LBS book. Looked cute. I thought it would be quick, since the Jacky books haven't arrived yet -- but they will soon!

Thoughts:
The only problem I had with this was that I knew the surprise ending from the very beginning. And not because I'm brilliant (though I am, of course): because the author totally gave it away.

Okay: the plot here is this is the story of Avalon, the magical island where all the Fae live now that they have been driven out of England by muggles, etc. Their secret kingdom. The only way between Avalon and England is a magical tunnel which opens once every nine years, on Platform 13 in King's Cross Railway Station (Though it was confusing because the author makes much of Avalon's ability to hide itself in mist, and so remain undiscovered by planes and ships moving across the Atlantic -- but doesn't that mean you could sail there if you knew where it was? And you could easily sail away if you were just looking to get to the regular world from Avalon?). At the beginning of the book, the infant prince of Avalon is brought through the tunnel by his nurses, who grew up as normal folk and find themselves longing for the fish and chips they used to eat in their youth. While they are over here, a particularly horrible woman, a rich society lady who wants to have a child but hasn't gotten pregnant yet and is getting impatient, decides to steal the prince, and does so -- which the nurses don't discover until they are back in Avalon and the tunnel has closed. So they can't go get him for nine years. (Because you can't sail a ship out of the mist . . .?)

Anyway, when the tunnel opens a group of Avalon volunteers goes to get the prince back. They arrive at the horrible woman's house, and they encounter a young man, handsome, polite and hardworking. He looks vaguely familiar, and he instantly warms to them despite their strangeness (One of them is an ogre, who is invisible, all except for his eye, which appears to float about ten feet off the ground), and we also hear that he is able to see and speak to ghosts. But wait! (Big shock coming. . .) that's not the prince. The prince is the grossly fat, horribly spoiled boy screeching in the upstairs bedroom; this fine young lad is just Ben, the kitchen boy. The prince, who strangely looks just like the horrible woman who kidnapped him, is a royal pain in the ass.

Is there anyone in the world who doesn't realize already that Ben is the real prince, and the fat boy is actually the bad woman's son? Yeah, didn't think so. So over the course of the book, which is spent almost entirely on trying to convince the fat yutz that he should go to Avalon even though he doesn't appreciate any of the magic and wonder they have to offer and only wants food and money and television and not to go to school, it got terribly annoying, especially with each subsequent hint that Ben was the real deal, and every moment that ticked closer to the end of the window, when the tunnel to Avalon would close once more and they would be unable to get back there (Because you can't sail a boat into the mist . . . ?), just got on my nerves. They didn't do the reveal until the last few pages, of course, and then the wrapup chapter was also kind of annoying for its own reasons.

But the writing wasn't bad, and the ideas for the magical people and their personalities were fantastic. It makes me want to try another one of this author's books, and hope the next one doesn't have such a predictable twist. I bet kids would like it, though.


63. My Bonny Light Horseman by L.A. Meyer 8/11

Pick:
Do I even have to explain? This is fast becoming my new favoritest series since Harry Dresden. It's moving up there with WoT and Harry Potter -- and this one's still going! I still have two books after this one, and the guy's still writing! Woot!

Thoughts:
Well, if I thought the last one was a tad boring, I sure as hell didn't think that about this one. This is the one when the doom we have been dreading for three books -- when Jacky gets caught by the British -- actually happens. Though it isn't as simple as all that, of course; first she has to deal with Bliffil, the bully midshipman from the first book; and then she has to be captured by the French, and run into Jaimy while in prison.

Then she gets to become an agent for British Intelligence, spying on Napoleon and trying to disrupt the Grand Armee's conquest of all the known world. And that story is fantastic: how Jacky deals with her assignment, which completely misuses her talents (though she is talented enough to make it work anyway) and reveals how completely the government misjudges her, and even better, how Jacky reinterprets the assignment to fit her better, and how successful she is after that -- though maybe not in the way we expected. The historical aspects were fascinating, and yet again, the author managed to find another aspect of world history around 1800 to throw Jacky into -- this time into Napoleon's army, which she joins and marches with to battle. The characters she meets were cool, though they did feel a little bit cookie-cutter, a little too similar to others Jacky has met; but since she's the star anyway, it wasn't a problem. And not all of the characters were that way -- Napoleon, for one, was totally cool. And a great ending, with some actual hope that the next book will see our hero happy at last in the arms of her love.

Eh, who am I kidding? I'm betting the Kraken comes up and sinks the ship, and Jacky goes to live with mermaids and Aquaman and Davy Jones.

And I can't wait to read about it.


64. Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine 8/17

Pick:
I got this from Powell's a few trips ago, looking in the Non-Fiction/Pop Culture section for Chuck Klosterman and whatever else I could find. I liked the idea of fighting the consumer culture, and it was cheaper than the other interesting-looking book. So I got it. I read it now because I wanted to take care of some of the non-fiction that I sometimes pile up and then never read.

Thoughts:
It was definitely interesting, but it lost a lot of the attraction once I realized how very different the author was from me. The concept is simple: during the Christmas shopping season of 2003, Judith Levine was having a horrible time walking the streets of New York and shopping for all of her friends and relatives, and she realized: is this really what I should be doing with my time? Maybe there's a better way to live, without all this stress and bother, all this debt and accumulation of essentially useless things which then take over our lives, and force us to buy bigger homes, with more storage, and then finally buy extra storage at rental facilities -- in order to have a place for all of our stuff. So she and her husband decided to spend 2004 without buying anything at all, except for necessities -- things they needed for work, particularly internet access since both work freelance from home, and food, toiletries, gas, and medicine for their diabetic cat.

So they do it. And they immediately discover some pretty interesting things. Like the fact that buying is wrapped up in the social fabric of our culture: to have friends, you really need to be able to spend money, shopping and eating out and exchanging gifts and paying for movies and concert tickets and the like. By refusing to spend money on these things, they isolate themselves pretty well. The author also suffered because she felt cut off from the cutting edge of the artistic side of our culture, unable to buy the newest books or see the newest movies, and so unable to take part in the conversations that everyone else was having. They discovered that they suddenly had copious free time, along with extra money; they found that the few times they allowed themselves to shop were suddenly euphoric, rather than trying.

All that was interesting. The problem I had with these folks is, first of all, I live like that all the time; I never see the newest movies or read the hottest books, and Toni and I don't shop or eat out or exchange gifts with people, and therefore we are indeed cut off from the social networks all around us. And these guys still had two homes, for no reason other than they liked living that way, part of the year in Vermont and part of the year in New York City. Judith also went a bit mad jonesing for new clothes, and I couldn't fathom that. But my biggest problem with it was how much she missed reading a book about a woman caring for her dying mother and trying to write a contemporary film adaptation of Madame Bovary. Seriously. That's a real book, and she was excited about reading it. And then when her husband, who was chairman of the zoning commission for their town in Vermont, was in charge of a very important and divisive case about an application to build a new cellphone tower in their small rural town, and she opposed the tower, she kept pestering him about the case even though she knew he wouldn't tell her what he thought. She still kept bugging him and trying to get him to agree with her openly. What the hell is that? And then she used French phrases when there was no reason for it, like the phrase rite de passage, which so clearly means rite of passage that she didn't even need to provide translation -- so what the fuck is the point of using the French? I'll tell you: none, except you're one of those obnoxious fucking people who believe that peppering your speech with French phrases and wearing zany, clunky $300 designer eyeglasses and reading books about dying mothers and Madame Bovary scripts somehow makes you cooler and more sophisticated. And that kind of shallow mindless bullshit was not miraculously wiped away by a year spent buying nothing. Too bad: I'd like to see someone spend a year not being pretentious and see how that comes out.

I liked the concept, I didn't like the author, so the book was so-so. Made me feel real good about myself, though. I feel almost like Thoreau.


65. Rapture of the Deep by L.A. Meyer 8/20

Pick:Jacky! Woot!

Thoughts:
Excellent again, of course. I got pissed at the beginning, because Meyer takes Jacky and Jaimy to the church for their marriage, and then has the British Intelligence Service kidnap Jacky in order to force her to work for them again, and they make them swear not to have sex. Now I sort of accept the idea that they want their agent functioning in the field rather than married and pregnant, but it felt a little too contrived, like Meyer was just looking desperately for any way to maintain the status quo of this relationship, which allows Jacky to screw around with any hot guy she meets just so long as she doesn't actually have intercourse with him (It seems pretty clear she's touched all the other bases, so to speak) and yet still come off as good and faithful to her true love. I love Jacky and Jaimy and their love for each other, but at some point, I just want them to have sex. I don't see how it would change the rest of the available plot lines, since Jacky could still be separated from him and could still make out with hot guys, and still be faithful to him; I think it would make even more sense. But so it goes.

The plot was great; I liked the environment and the main storyline, which was simple and believable, and yet gave us another world to explore -- though one pretty closely tied to the third book, Under the Jolly Roger, since Jacky's back on the water, in charge of a ship, at least somewhat allied with the British government, and dealing with pirates. I didn't like the part with El Gringo Furioso at first, since I feel differently about cock fighting than Jacky does, but I loved the way that wrapped up -- absolutely loved it. That was brilliant.

The ending was great, and I hope Jacky's ploy works -- I want to move on from this Intelligence Service blackmail crap. I am very glad that the one bad guy appears to be dead, and I really hope he doesn't pop back up again; there are plenty of other bad guys who could.

Now they just need to get married.


66. Prey by Michael Crichton 8/22

Pick:
So my intention this summer was to read a lot of my shelf books, but I didn't; in fact, the shelf is more full now than when I started, largely because of buying and reading the whole Jacky series. So I had to read something that I've had sitting on the shelf for a long time, and this book goes way back -- pretty much to the first LBS, I think. Thereabouts, anyway. So I read it.

Thoughts:
You know, I believe that nanotechnology could take a giant leap forward and start to do things that we would never believe possible. I really do. But I don't believe that nanobots programmed to act as a collective camera could evolve into intelligent bodysnatching people-killing death clouds in a matter of weeks, no matter how amazing emergent programming is. The basic plotline of the book was just too far-fetched, and while Crichton obviously did a lot of research into the basic material, he couldn't make the impossible seem plausible, not this time. So without that, the book didn't work. I also didn't believe that this enormously risky and valuable operation could be run by so few people, even though that was necessary for the thriller elements; nor that so many of those people could have been the hero's former co-workers; that was just done so he could have relationships with them without having to spend pages on it. Which was only necessary because SO MUCH of the book was spent on this guy being a househusband and thinking his wife was having an affair. Which apparently she wasn't, even though the timeline really doesn't match up.

Basically, too much happens in way too short a time, and it made the book hard to believe and thus pretty annoying. This could have been a lot better.