Grab-bag reviews (fiction)
Joe Hill, Heart-Shaped Box: Judas Coin, aging musician who’s outlived his band, amuses himself by sleeping with young women -- he calls them by the names of their home states - and collecting macabre souvenirs. When he buys a ghost off an internet auction site, he gets much more than he bargained for; the ghost, it quickly develops, is real, and he’s pissed. Indeed, he’s the stepfather of a girl who committed suicide after Judas sent her away. This was another audiobook, and hearing descriptions of bloody deeds was more stomach-turning than reading the same descriptions. Hill seems to be a competent writer, though some of his stylistic flourishes probably worked better on the page (one-sentence chapters, for instance, and some stuff about Southern pronunciation); the audiobook format also made it more apparent that the book peters out at the end, as if Hill wasn’t quite sure when his story ended, so he tried a few different ways. Airport reading, if you can deal with a lot of knives.
Kelley Armstrong, No Humans Involved: I’m pretty sure there are previous books in this series, but this was the only one Audible had so I started with it. I’m beginning to think that fiction is a better candidate for audiobooks overall; while I didn’t think much of this book, the strong narrative line and uncomplicated prose were a good fit for listening. Anyway, Jaime Vegas is a former child star turned professional psychic; mostly she uses the ordinary tricks of the trade to give people the answers they want, but she also has magical talent - she is a necromancer who really can speak to ghosts. When she signs on for a TV special to contact Marilyn Monroe’s ghost, she finds more than she expected, leading her to investigate a cult that’s been killing children while she tries to save her TV career and negotiate a budding romance with her werewolf friend Jeremy. Good: Jaime was not superpowered and needed to rely on wits and help to get out of lots of her troubles. Bad: A lot of description of clothes and physical appearances I wasn’t interested in - it seemed like Armstrong was setting up the next volumes that would focus on different boy-girl pairs who’d fall in love while solving their own supernatural mysteries. Uncertain: Armstrong posits a number of magical “races”; humans have no magic. But Jaime isn’t human; she can interbreed (in fact, she’s the product of interbreeding, which apparently works by the one drop rule in terms of humanity) - so when Armstrong treats “race” like some natural and obvious fact, such that someone who looks human but has magic must have some magical blood, while also having her wisest characters spout theories about magical evolution, she seems confused.
Michael Marshall, The Intruders: If he’s not writing challenging sf as Michael Marshall Smith, I’ll take what I can get. This novel seems to be set in the same world as The Straw Men, but it details a different set of conspiracies underlying the normal surface of life. There are similarities to a Harlan Coben novel: A man - Jack Whalen, a former police officer turned writer with one successful book behind him and nothing promising in front - with secrets in his past becomes involved, perhaps by coincidence, in a mystery with deep and tangled roots, and unraveling them is necessary to save his marriage but may cost him everything. There are also differences, since Marshall has a knack for a surprising turn of phrase: “In summer, kids from inland spend the weekends here, gleaming in the sun of uncomplicated youth and pumping default-value music out of baby speakers. They are almost never picked off by sharpshooters, sadly, but go on to have happy and unfulfilled lives making too much noise all over the planet.” And Marshall gives you no guarantees that solving the mystery will return the protagonist’s life to its happy medium; pretty much the other way, actually.
Kelley Armstrong, No Humans Involved: I’m pretty sure there are previous books in this series, but this was the only one Audible had so I started with it. I’m beginning to think that fiction is a better candidate for audiobooks overall; while I didn’t think much of this book, the strong narrative line and uncomplicated prose were a good fit for listening. Anyway, Jaime Vegas is a former child star turned professional psychic; mostly she uses the ordinary tricks of the trade to give people the answers they want, but she also has magical talent - she is a necromancer who really can speak to ghosts. When she signs on for a TV special to contact Marilyn Monroe’s ghost, she finds more than she expected, leading her to investigate a cult that’s been killing children while she tries to save her TV career and negotiate a budding romance with her werewolf friend Jeremy. Good: Jaime was not superpowered and needed to rely on wits and help to get out of lots of her troubles. Bad: A lot of description of clothes and physical appearances I wasn’t interested in - it seemed like Armstrong was setting up the next volumes that would focus on different boy-girl pairs who’d fall in love while solving their own supernatural mysteries. Uncertain: Armstrong posits a number of magical “races”; humans have no magic. But Jaime isn’t human; she can interbreed (in fact, she’s the product of interbreeding, which apparently works by the one drop rule in terms of humanity) - so when Armstrong treats “race” like some natural and obvious fact, such that someone who looks human but has magic must have some magical blood, while also having her wisest characters spout theories about magical evolution, she seems confused.
Michael Marshall, The Intruders: If he’s not writing challenging sf as Michael Marshall Smith, I’ll take what I can get. This novel seems to be set in the same world as The Straw Men, but it details a different set of conspiracies underlying the normal surface of life. There are similarities to a Harlan Coben novel: A man - Jack Whalen, a former police officer turned writer with one successful book behind him and nothing promising in front - with secrets in his past becomes involved, perhaps by coincidence, in a mystery with deep and tangled roots, and unraveling them is necessary to save his marriage but may cost him everything. There are also differences, since Marshall has a knack for a surprising turn of phrase: “In summer, kids from inland spend the weekends here, gleaming in the sun of uncomplicated youth and pumping default-value music out of baby speakers. They are almost never picked off by sharpshooters, sadly, but go on to have happy and unfulfilled lives making too much noise all over the planet.” And Marshall gives you no guarantees that solving the mystery will return the protagonist’s life to its happy medium; pretty much the other way, actually.