Recent Reads in Review
I'm not sure at what point it was that actually reading books for pleasure (as opposed to technical books) became so elusive. But I've recently finished a few books that were quite good, so I thought I'd share. No telling how long it'll take before I finish any more...
First up (in order of completion) is Medicus, a murder-mystery set in the Roman empire. Written by Ruth Downie, the book is the first in a series planned around the central character of Gaius Petreius Ruso, a doctor with the XX Legion stationed in the northern part of Roman-occupied Britannia. Hadrian has just become emperor and Ruso has just become an unenthusiastic slave-owner to a local woman who ignores his every effort to talk or heal her broken arm. To make things worse, on one of his shifts the body of a woman is brought in to the hospital, and he can't quite accept the thought that her death was accidental. After another body is found, he finds himself the only person showing any concern over what links the two, why it happened, and how to keep more bodies from accumulating.
This is the debut book from this author, and it isn't too shabby. I give it 4 out of 5, mostly because I found some of the key characters to be a little too wooden. Also, while the plot-twists aren't quite telegraphed, I did figure out the ultimate culprit several chapters before the big reveal. I'm not usually a reader of mysteries, so I don't have a lot of practice at puzzling them out. If I saw it that early, more-seasoned mystery fans will likely figure out even sooner than I did. Still, the story is compelling (after a bit of a slow start), and Downie's attention to detail is fantastic. The book was a gift from a friend in Denver who knew how much I had enjoyed the HBO series "Rome". I'm looking forward to the next in the series scheduled for release this coming March.
Next up is Crooked Little Vein, the first novel from Warren Ellis. I'm a slavish fan of Ellis' comics work, so I was going to buy this and read it even if all the reviews had been brutal. Instead, the reviews were glowing. Heck, how can you argue with a back-cover blurb from Kinky Friedman that describes it as, "funny-enough to make you shit standing"? It's actually a fairly small book, both in physical size and in length. It tells the story of a burned-out private investigator named Michael McGill, who is hired by a senior staffer to the president to recover the real Constitution of the United States, the fall-back document drawn up by the founding fathers in case the "known" Constitution proved not up to the task of keeping Americans under control. With a fat expense allowance, a spur-of-the-moment sidekick and a growing sense of unease, he sets off from one U.S. city to another, trying to figure out who currently has the book.
I give this one a 5 out of 5 if I'm not being cheesy with decimal ratings. If I am, I give it more of a 4.75/5, largely because it needed a little better editing. Ellis is English, and there are a couple of places where English-isms survived the editing process, such as referring to renting a car as "hiring a car". It's clear from the context what is meant, but a American PI wouldn't say "hire" unless he meant a chauffeur. That, and there are frequent tangents of a paragraph or two, where Ellis takes a stream-of-consciousness thread and teases it out. Many of these are derived from (or just direct copies of) 50-100-word bits he's posted to different Internet forums (including
warrenelliscom). Some of these are quite entertaining, but a few seem to go on too long and don't really contribute to the story. All said, this is a fine book and one that I recommend highly. I'd only just barely finished it when I promptly loaned it to someone, so as to share the Ellis-y goodness.
Lastly for now, is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks. I picked this up on a lark; I had just gotten back from London, where I saw the musical "Wicked" on a whim. While at the Borders Books near my apartment, I saw that the original book that the musical was based on was on a table with a sign reading, "Buy One Get One Half Off". After sifting around, I settled on this book. And wow, what a book. This is hands-down the best of the three reviewed here (much as it pains me to rank it above Ellis). A solid 5 out of 5, if I were rating on a 10-point scale it would easily go to 11. I read this book in just a few days, as I could barely stand to put it down just to sleep at night.
The book is structured as a series of interviews by a journalist, as he pieces together a time-line of the spread of a mystery infection that led to a decimation of the world's population. Infected dead reanimate and pursue the uninfected with unflinching persistence. The story is divided into eight parts, starting with the first signs of infection and ending with the interview subjects reflecting on how they're adjusting to the post-war world. The writing is sharp, very smart and very engrossing. Every interview leaves you with almost as many new questions as are answered. From the Chinese doctor who finds the first (documented) cases, to a soldier who witnessed a crushing military defeat in Yonkers, and on through characters from all continents and backgrounds, tension mounts and the threats seem very real. The characters are all very well-developed, with even the shortest interview segments revealing something about the person. Putting the narration of the story as that of a journalist who, aside from a brief introduction, never directly speaks to the reader keeps the feel of the story intense and vital. I expect to be loaning this book out a lot, as it is probably the best thing I've read since Neil Gaiman's "American Gods".
First up (in order of completion) is Medicus, a murder-mystery set in the Roman empire. Written by Ruth Downie, the book is the first in a series planned around the central character of Gaius Petreius Ruso, a doctor with the XX Legion stationed in the northern part of Roman-occupied Britannia. Hadrian has just become emperor and Ruso has just become an unenthusiastic slave-owner to a local woman who ignores his every effort to talk or heal her broken arm. To make things worse, on one of his shifts the body of a woman is brought in to the hospital, and he can't quite accept the thought that her death was accidental. After another body is found, he finds himself the only person showing any concern over what links the two, why it happened, and how to keep more bodies from accumulating.
This is the debut book from this author, and it isn't too shabby. I give it 4 out of 5, mostly because I found some of the key characters to be a little too wooden. Also, while the plot-twists aren't quite telegraphed, I did figure out the ultimate culprit several chapters before the big reveal. I'm not usually a reader of mysteries, so I don't have a lot of practice at puzzling them out. If I saw it that early, more-seasoned mystery fans will likely figure out even sooner than I did. Still, the story is compelling (after a bit of a slow start), and Downie's attention to detail is fantastic. The book was a gift from a friend in Denver who knew how much I had enjoyed the HBO series "Rome". I'm looking forward to the next in the series scheduled for release this coming March.
Next up is Crooked Little Vein, the first novel from Warren Ellis. I'm a slavish fan of Ellis' comics work, so I was going to buy this and read it even if all the reviews had been brutal. Instead, the reviews were glowing. Heck, how can you argue with a back-cover blurb from Kinky Friedman that describes it as, "funny-enough to make you shit standing"? It's actually a fairly small book, both in physical size and in length. It tells the story of a burned-out private investigator named Michael McGill, who is hired by a senior staffer to the president to recover the real Constitution of the United States, the fall-back document drawn up by the founding fathers in case the "known" Constitution proved not up to the task of keeping Americans under control. With a fat expense allowance, a spur-of-the-moment sidekick and a growing sense of unease, he sets off from one U.S. city to another, trying to figure out who currently has the book.
I give this one a 5 out of 5 if I'm not being cheesy with decimal ratings. If I am, I give it more of a 4.75/5, largely because it needed a little better editing. Ellis is English, and there are a couple of places where English-isms survived the editing process, such as referring to renting a car as "hiring a car". It's clear from the context what is meant, but a American PI wouldn't say "hire" unless he meant a chauffeur. That, and there are frequent tangents of a paragraph or two, where Ellis takes a stream-of-consciousness thread and teases it out. Many of these are derived from (or just direct copies of) 50-100-word bits he's posted to different Internet forums (including
warrenelliscom). Some of these are quite entertaining, but a few seem to go on too long and don't really contribute to the story. All said, this is a fine book and one that I recommend highly. I'd only just barely finished it when I promptly loaned it to someone, so as to share the Ellis-y goodness.
Lastly for now, is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks. I picked this up on a lark; I had just gotten back from London, where I saw the musical "Wicked" on a whim. While at the Borders Books near my apartment, I saw that the original book that the musical was based on was on a table with a sign reading, "Buy One Get One Half Off". After sifting around, I settled on this book. And wow, what a book. This is hands-down the best of the three reviewed here (much as it pains me to rank it above Ellis). A solid 5 out of 5, if I were rating on a 10-point scale it would easily go to 11. I read this book in just a few days, as I could barely stand to put it down just to sleep at night.
The book is structured as a series of interviews by a journalist, as he pieces together a time-line of the spread of a mystery infection that led to a decimation of the world's population. Infected dead reanimate and pursue the uninfected with unflinching persistence. The story is divided into eight parts, starting with the first signs of infection and ending with the interview subjects reflecting on how they're adjusting to the post-war world. The writing is sharp, very smart and very engrossing. Every interview leaves you with almost as many new questions as are answered. From the Chinese doctor who finds the first (documented) cases, to a soldier who witnessed a crushing military defeat in Yonkers, and on through characters from all continents and backgrounds, tension mounts and the threats seem very real. The characters are all very well-developed, with even the shortest interview segments revealing something about the person. Putting the narration of the story as that of a journalist who, aside from a brief introduction, never directly speaks to the reader keeps the feel of the story intense and vital. I expect to be loaning this book out a lot, as it is probably the best thing I've read since Neil Gaiman's "American Gods".