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 Words cannot describe Arissa Illahi’s grief when her husband dies in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. The videotape sitting on her dresser doesn’t cease to remind her that they were due to have their baby’s first ultrasound, and she never imagined raising her child alone. Arissa also finds her husband’s unfinished novel, a project that powered her husband through his life and now must help propel Arissa through her grief.
Saffron Dreams is such a moving book. Arissa’s grief is portrayed beautifully and is extremely touching. I could almost feel how much pain she was suffering, certainly enough to hope that nothing of its like ever touches me. Married only two years and left pregnant, Arissa has to rely on her in-laws, people she didn’t really know until her husband died, but who left their own lives to help her fix her own. Her slow recognition of what matters in life is admirable and her journey constituted an emotional but worthwhile read.
Abdullah’s writing is smooth and beautiful, too:
The brush fell from my guilty hands, landing on the floor with a tired thud. I stepped back as if struck and looked at the picture in mad fixation. Staring back at me from the canvas, behind the dull last strokes that failed to hide the subject, were entwined towers engulfed in reddish blue smoke. And in the midst of the smoldering slivers was the face of a forlorn and lost child. – p. 6
So much of the book is conveyed right there. We know what Arissa is feeling and what she’s trying to tell us.
I also found the book pinpointed many important and significant issues that followed the attacks. Arissa is a Muslim, but she can’t understand why other Muslims would do such a thing, when it’s not really a part of her faith; she hates that news reporters lump them in together and ask her how she feels about being betrayed by one of her own kind; she experiences religious hatred when she wears her headscarf after the attacks and finally removes it to give her son a better chance at a normal life. She not only has to adjust to her changing life but a changing world and fit in a place for herself when she’s faced with so much discrimination. I felt that the author here built a strong and understandable character, flawed and human but someone the reader can still root for, with a journey to self-discovery that was still compelling and touching.
I really enjoyed Saffron Dreams. In its pages I found a character to care about, a story to enjoy, and issues to think about. Highly recommended.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the author for review.
 On the West Coast of this alternate United States, vampires reign supreme, but Marius Dumont has a problem. He’s in love with Jillian Cooper and always has been, but he must marry Tatiana Asprey, a New York werewolf, in order to maintain peace between their races against the humans. He’s determined to put his love aside for politics until a deadly virus hits the vampire population, and he and Jillian must team up to discover a cause and a cure before it’s too late. Interspersed with their gripping story is the Victorian tale of Edward Vaughan and Charlotte Paxton, an uneven match that proves the basis for everything Jillian and Marius deal with in the present day.
Even though Crimson & Steam is apparently the eighth novel set in this universe, I had no trouble at all quickly picking up on the story and surprisingly falling in love with it. It will shock no one that the Victorian sections were my favorite part. When it comes to romance, generally the only kind I like is historical, and Edward and Charlotte have a very sweet story that is totally relevant to the modern day part.
What is surprising is how much I liked that modern day part. Jillian and Marius don’t really have a romance exactly; they are soul mates and Marius is capable of hearing Jillian’s thoughts and sensing her emotions no matter where she is. It’s established that they’ve had this connection for a good long while. At first, I had Jill pegged as a very weak and whiny heroine, incapable of facing the world without a man she’d come to rely on. She got stronger in the end, but ultimately I still preferred Charlotte, the Victorian heroine. Marius could have been annoying himself, given his clear love for Jillian yet insistence on marrying someone else, but I thought the political situation was well played out and I understood his motives.
I liked it all so much, I think, because there was a clever plot behind it and the focus was on that, rather than what was happening between Marius and Jillian. The side characters of Tatiana and Hayden, Jillian’s ex-boyfriend with some back story issues of his own, really livened up the story. There is just the right amount of suspense and because it doesn’t feel much like a romance novel, I wasn’t sure the happy ending was guaranteed in either of the storylines. I found I was much more engaged and interested as a result. Plus, I loved the steampunk world and reading about it in the present day and then back to its Victorian origins was a lot of fun.
Crimson & Steam was a great light read that I’d recommend to romance or urban fantasy fans. An intriguing world, a clever plotline, and a few great characters make this a very enjoyable book.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book from the author for free as an ebook.
 In this sequel to Inda, Sherwood Smith follows her young hero through some seaside adventures as he grows up learning to fight against pirates after his exile from his childhood home. Inda’s complex plans and capers form the basis for most of the storyline, but exciting events are also afoot in Iasca Leror, Inda’s birthplace. When his brother is killed, Inda becomes the heir to Choraed Elgar, his family’s realm, and they launch a search to find him. Treachery strikes the royal court and if Inda ever goes home, he will find a completely different place than he expects.
While I really enjoyed Inda and found it was a great fantasy to lose myself in, The Fox suffered from second book syndrome. A lot happens, but it’s spread out over the 750+ pages, and as a result the book feels fairly slow even though there is actually plenty of action. Not much at all is resolved, but progress is generally made across the plotlines as the characters that were introduced as children in the first book grow up.
I will admit freely that part of the problem I had with this book is that so much of it took place on a ship. I’m one of those strange people that really prefers fantasy books in particular settings, and aboard ship has just never been one of them. The only exception to this rule so far has been Robin Hobb. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been on a ship, but I just found it really hard to continue paying attention during the sea battles, and given that 2/3 of the book takes place there, this was a problem. I always enjoyed it when the narrative returned to Inda’s family and friends on dry land in Choraed Elgar because I vastly prefer kingdom politics to piracy politics. Luckily, this one seems to indicate that more of book three will be spent on land, so my enthusiasm for the series is not as diminished as it could have been.
Regardless of my criticisms, I really enjoyed how the characters developed and I found myself caring a lot about them. I’m interested to see where the story is going and that is really what matters here. It’s still a fairly solid continuation to a promising epic fantasy saga, and I think approached in that way would be a very enjoyable read for anyone who likes that kind of book.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 The Morland family has survived the Wars of the Roses to see the Tudors take the throne of England. French Paul, the great grandson of the founders of the dynasty, now runs the Morland properties, but struggles with jealousy of his half-siblings and dislike of his wife. Only his mistress in the city of York brings him happiness, but she also brings strife within his family. Meanwhile, Paul’s niece Nanette becomes a beloved maid to Anne Boleyn, witnessing first hand the conflict and drama inherent in the Tudor court.
This second volume in the Morland dynasty may mark my abrupt end of reading the series. This is just far too romanticized a version of history for me. Most historical fiction does it to some extent, but this goes a little too far. It’s like a story you would tell a small child, rather than an attempt to actually imagine history as it might have been, at least as far as I’m concerned. When Nanette has witnessed the many murders of Henry VIII, including that of her friend Anne Boleyn, and still manages to see these murders as something that just had to happen and doesn’t fault him at all for it, I just have to take exception to that. Yet the characters that don’t appear are purely villainized, like Henry’s next wife Jane Seymour, who is called something like the honey scorpion.
The author clearly attempts to have characters with multiple sides to them. Paul’s bastard son is one such, as the author makes him a love-starved boy that finally seeks vengeance on the father who never gave him what he needed. Despite that, everything just feels painted with a rosy brush. Of course Adrian would have been a good man if he’d been given love. Of course the council would never do anything evil, even though clearly the king would never do anything evil either. There is incest in here that made me distinctly uncomfortable, but no one seems to mind when an uncle marries his niece, even though the characters mention the difficulty they might have with it.
The entire series has a nice dynastic feel that I like, but overall I feel like I’m reading a fairy tale that has little to do with actual history. For that reason, I’m unsure if I’ll continue. The Dark Rose was entertaining, but I think I’d rather spend my time reading something with a historical feel instead of a rosy “oh-wasn’t-the-past-great” one.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Since he is such a socially awkward person, Will is astonished when Alice spontaneously makes her interest in him clear. She’s Will’s first girlfriend, as well as beautiful and smart. He can’t stop obsessing over her and worrying what’s going to go wrong. As always happens in such situations, his obsession begins to drive Alice away, and it’s only then that Will’s passion displays its most damaging consequences.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book and I was surprised, in a pleasant way, by what I found. This book reads partly like an example of how not to conduct a relationship. The situations are occasionally as sad as they are hilarious, but it’s impossible not to laugh. The author has taken obsessive love to an extreme which is difficult to believe in, but which provides uneasy entertainment nonetheless. We know there is something sad and wrong with these people, but at the same time they are mocking themselves.
The book alternates narration, using first person only when Will has the viewpoint perspective and third person for the other character. This gives the reader an insight into his uncomfortable and obsessive mind, since otherwise we’d have no reason as to why he behaves the way he does, but at the same time contrasts his inner thoughts with his outer appearance and behavior.
The Bird Room doesn’t flinch in describing any aspect of these relationships. A lot of the novel is obsessed with sex, as young people in new relationships generally are. One of the characters is an actress using her body to get by and to erase her previous school persona, so there really is a fair amount of graphic content. The book feels edgy, using the characters’ sexuality to portray the other happenings in their lives. Helen, always lacking confidence, feels beautiful when a man wants her enough to sleep with her. Will needs Viagra to encourage him along when his obsession with Alice takes control of his life.
A darkly comic tale about the extremes of obsession, The Bird Room manages to finish with hope and provides some very provoking thoughts to consider. This little book is worth a read for those who enjoy character studies.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 Shuya Nanahara and his junior high class of fifteen-year-olds are going on a field trip. Shuya is so optimistic that he’s even brought along alcohol. But on the bus he notices something strange; everyone is falling asleep, and that new tough kid Shogo is trying to break the window. Before he can think too much, he’s asleep, and doesn’t wake up until he’s in a strange classroom, and he and all his friends have cold metal collars around their necks. They are told that they are about to kill one another on an isolated island, and to Shuya’s horror, the seriousness of this proposition is proven when his best friend is killed before his eyes. Shuya’s worst nightmare is about to come true as he tries to protect the girl his best friend loved as his classmates set about playing the game.
I have a lot of conflicted feelings on this book. My most immediate basis for comparison is The Hunger Games. Battle Royale* is set in a dystopia based in Japan, but both essentially involve isolated kids killing each other after being given random weapons. It’s a thriller and apparently both very popular and shocking in Japan. I didn’t find it to be particularly shocking, although it did read very quickly for a 600 page book.
The problems started right at the beginning. I found the writing to be very plain. It’s readable, but there is something very juvenile about the sentence structure. I kept noticing the poor writing and it constantly threw me out of the story. Some of the characters quote poetry and song lyrics, but even these never rise above to form anything I’d consider quotable. I don’t know if this is down to the fault of the author or the translator, but I definitely felt let down. I didn’t like the narrative structure, either. The main focus is Shuya, but the viewpoint switches often. Unfortunately, after a few switches, it becomes apparent that almost every time the author introduces a new student, it means they’re going to die within a few pages. Few of the students are really interesting, but the author also tends to include a flashback from each one of them, introducing background that is generally unnecessary and boring. I get that they’re supposed to be regular kids who are forced into killing each other, the background is showing their personalities and motives, and that’s meant to be shocking, but again, I’m already familiar with the horror of this premise, and so this time it didn’t work. Three to five pages was not enough to make me care.
I also couldn’t say I liked any of the characters. They are only fifteen, but they are all in love with one another. Naturally, most of them are in love with Shuya, but we’re also treated to little dramas between all the other characters that are in love. To me, these seemed like simple crushes, and while everything is intensified in this sort of “game”, I simply got tired of the constant surprise each character exhibited upon learning that someone they barely knew loved them enough to die for them. I couldn’t imagine this happening in real life. Maybe if I was also fifteen years old, when I was convinced that a smile from a boy was everything in the world, I would have found this to be terribly tragic and romantic. As an adult, the students annoyed me without exception. I got tired of reading their irrelevant backstories and I didn’t really care much when any of them died. For some I even found myself flipping ahead to see how long before they died because I was so impatient. The book didn’t engage me at all on an emotional level.
There is also a lot of criticism against girls here which really bothered me. All the boys are convinced that the girls would never kill one another, not only because they’re all good but because a girl wouldn’t have the stomach to do such a thing. Worse, the author seems to agree; the girls are universally portrayed as weak and needing protection by the boys, none of them are intelligent enough to come up with an escape plan, and in general they do absolutely nothing of interest except act stupidly and get themselves killed. The only girl who does fight with some skill is a bully, beautiful but despised universally, who doesn’t hesitate to kill her friends. Even though her behavior is understandable to some extent given her backstory, out of so many girls is there really only one who can stand up to the boys? And does she have to use her body to do it? It just bothered me. I missed the strong, smart girls so prevalent in today’s YA literature.
Largely, this book suffered a lot from comparison with The Hunger Games. There, the concept of kids killing each other is carried out, in my opinion, to the best possible result, providing an emotional, riveting, exciting, and unpredictable read. If I’d read this first, maybe things would have been the other way around, but given what I’ve said here, I doubt it. I can’t say I really hated Battle Royale, as I certainly read it fast enough and wasn’t conscious of all its faults while I was still wading through it, but I didn’t like it very much. It brought up some interesting questions about trust and suspicion between friends, but not enough to save it from bad writing/translating, boring characters, and frustrating structure overall. It’s interesting for anyone who’d like to see what all the fuss is about, but I wouldn’t read it again.
*This link goes to a new translation which I hope will prove better than the one I read. I am an Amazon Associate and will receive a few pennies if you click these links and buy something from Amazon. I bought this book.
 From the back cover:
The Big Switch, Nicholas Carr’s best-selling look at the new computer revolution, makes a simple and profound statement: Computing is turning into a utility, and the effects of this transition will ultimately change society as completely as the advent of cheap electricity did. From the software business to the newspaper business, from job creation to community formation, from national defense to personal identity, The Big Switch provides a panoramic view of the new world being conjured from the circuits of the “World Wide Computer.”
This is a fascinating, and terrifying book. Anyone who blogs, and probably anyone who reads this blog, really should be reading it. Carr first outlines what computing as a utility really means. He explores the difference that our newest essential utility – electricity – had on our lives, and then extrapolates what happened there to computing and the internet, which has become an essential part of almost everyone’s life in the United States and in many other countries. I really enjoyed these historical sections and I felt like Carr laid everything out clearly enough to make fairly boring subjects sound really exciting and relevant. He makes it really clear that the development of electricity only seems linear in hindsight, and so we cannot really expect the development of the internet to seem the same way at the moment, or expect that all wild predictions about it will eventually come true.
Carr uses the second half of the book to explore what widespread use of the internet has done to society. He attempts to show that rather than widening our horizons, the internet narrows them as we can be more and more specific about who we associate with, what we look for, and what we contribute to. He cites an experiment which showed that even if people had only a mild preference to live around one or two people like them, they ended up with a neighborhood split between different races. He extrapolates this to the internet and it definitely had me thinking about the many splits in the blogosphere. There are definitely splits between just book bloggers, let alone the many other “types” of bloggers out there, so his analogy obviously isn’t far off. He also demonstrates how the great deal of culture happening on the internet for free is seriously degrading jobs, yet another event that has actually come to pass more so than when the book was written. People will now happily research, write articles, and make videos, among other things, and distribute their results for absolutely nothing, all taking away paid jobs. Another aspect of this was how few people are required to run businesses through the internet. There is a guy who runs a dating website in Canada all by himself, earning thousands per day. He shows how the internet is becoming essential and inevitable to our lives, and then how it’s already changing everything. He doesn’t offer any solutions to what he clearly is casting as a problem, but as he demonstrates how wrong predictions have been in the past, it would be almost hypocritical of him to suggest what should be done.
I don’t want to go into more of this book because it truly is fascinating and scary in many ways. As someone who uses the internet daily and often for hours, its relevance to my own activities was quite startling. I read this one for The Newsweek 50 Books for Our Times reading project hosted by My Friend Amy, and seriously, it is worthy of its spot on that list. This is very appropriate for our time. Of course, I suspect it will become outdated because not everything will happen as Carr implies, but The Big Switch is a thoughtful, absorbing, and somewhat terrifying read for 2009, and for 2010.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 As a young Norseman, it is Eyvind’s ultimate dream to become a Wolfskin, a warrior dedicated to Thor, his life sworn to do the warrior god’s bidding. As a strong, tall boy, with his older brother a Wolfskin, no one doubts that Eyvind’s dream will come true. One summer, Eyvind’s brother brings a boy, the younger brother of one of his friends, and asks Eyvind to make him more of a man. Reluctantly, Eyvind takes this small, strange boy under his wing, teaching him what he knows as he is startled by Somerled’s goals and questions. Eyvind is so unsettled by Somerled, and so pitying towards the friendless boy, that he even makes an oath of brotherhood to him, sworn in blood. The disastrous consequences of that oath only become clear on a journey to the Orkney islands, when Somerled’s ambition takes over and Eyvind must fight in a completely new way to save a woman he loves and her culture.
Readers of this blog will surely know that Juliet Marillier is one of my very favorite authors. This is one of her earlier works and I think lacks something of the polish that she’s acquired over the past few years, but I still loved it.
The beginning of the book was a bit slow and perhaps put me off initially racing through it like I had intended. The relationship between Eyvind and Somerled is complex and often frustrating; as a reader I wanted to hit Somerled and even Eyvind when he didn’t seem to see the truth of things. Moreover, the back cover told me that they were going to set off on a voyage, and I basically wanted them to go. Once they did, I felt the story really started, but also discovered that the slow beginning and building of Somerled’s character is really what made the rest of the book rich, understandable, and fascinating. Somerled is clearly the villain here, but he is also a multi-faceted character that reveals different aspects of himself to different people. His relationship with Eyvind is the only way to see what really goes on in his mind.
As ever with Juliet Marillier, I also fell hard for the love story. She always weaves them seamlessly into a larger plot, giving me virtually everything I want from a big fantasy novel. Eyvind doesn’t only fall in love. He also deals with the reality of his life as a warrior, betrayal by his best friend, and learns strength that he didn’t realize he had. He makes shifts in his thinking and develops as a character remarkably. Marillier has a wonderful touch with these developments and with character relations. She hasn’t let me down here. The plot feels as though it moves very quickly through the last three hundred pages, but it’s all woven up with precision and beauty. This one lacks the fairy tale feel of much of her other work, but doesn’t fail to be a great story.
Wolfskin was a lovely historical fantasy that I can definitely recommend. I’m very much looking forward to Foxmask, which picks up with the children of some of these characters some years on.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Leopard Bloom King is an awkward, ugly 18-year-old with few friends. His life has been a mess ever since his brother, Stephen, killed himself at only ten years old. After spending years in mental institutions and later caught with cocaine in his pocket, Leo’s life has been anything but normal. In the summer before his senior year of high school, he meets the people who will influence the rest of his life, forming friendships and bonds that will prove stronger than anything Leo has known previously. Years later, their friendship will remain of primary importance to Leo as he and they must endure extraordinary hardships brought on by nature, the human mind, and a terrible disease.
My only previous experience with Pat Conroy was The Water Is Wide, a memoir that I just adored in high school, and I’ve meant to read more by him ever since. So when I opened this book, it was with a great deal of anticipation. And I enjoyed this story; the beginning feels slow and meandering, accustoming readers to the feel and the flow of South Carolina and the beginning of teenage friendships that are meant to last. The second section is more exciting and begins to encompass the troubles that these friendships have wrought even as they have brought blessings. The third section gives us another peek into the origin of the group, and the final section includes their pivotal struggle against a madman and a hurricane.
The story is indeed big and sprawling as the back cover promises, but I still wanted more. Largely, I wanted more of the origins of these friendships. I still found it hard to understand why they all coped with Chad, a member of the arrogant Southern aristocracy determined to put everyone down, or some of the other members of the group. I saw how they came together, but I suppose I didn’t understand how it lasted for all of the members of this group. Their conversations were entertaining, but rang somewhat untrue for me, and I just couldn’t believe anyone like Sheba Poe actually existed. Who stage manages their entry into a house party of close friends? The later sections were powerful, but without that essential basis, at times I couldn’t believe in the story.
And that’s a shame, because the story is quite a wild ride through almost every issue you can name. The friends go in search of a missing member of the group and have to deal with death, rape, adultery, and murder among their ranks. They even have a natural disaster pitted against them. The book resonates with the strength and feel of Charleston, a place I’ve never been to but would quite like to visit now. Conroy is an excellent writer and can make the words on the page simply come alive, even as he packs the story full with almost too much trauma.
South of Broad is a good book that, I think, has unfortunately missed being great. Still, I am encouraged to read more of Conroy’s works, as I think he is an excellent writer and is still worth my time.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review here.
 The first crusade is one of history’s most peculiar moments. Inspired by a speech that will probably never be known in its entirety, hoards of western Europeans embarked on a crusade to “save” their fellow Christians, the Greeks, from Muslims and recapture Jerusalem. Against all the odds, the crusaders succeeded in a way that was never repeated, and changed relations between religions in ways that still affect behavior to this day. Thomas Asbridge takes this familiar story and recasts it, considering again the evidence that historians have always relied upon and offering up new ideas for consideration.
I really enjoyed this detailed look at the first crusade. I’ve read a number of books on the crusades, but they largely covered the whole of the crusading movement. This narrative brought my favorite professor’s voice right back to me while still questioning some of the theories that historians have relied upon. Perhaps my favorite of these was the way Asbridge explored, in detail, the motives behind the crusade. He postulates that Pope Urban wasn’t the first to come up with the idea of a papal army and that the papacy desperately needed a way to assert their own strength in an age of weakness and poor communication. He could not have truly expected the vast response to his call for a crusade.
More interesting is the way in which Muslims actually treated Christians fairly before the crusade. There is no record of any of the cruelties Urban accused them of (according to witnesses after the crusade had already happened; the speech itself has been lost), but rather fairness and freedom of worship. The crusaders abolished this, but he goes on in later chapters to write about dealings between Christians and Muslims, making it clear that eradicating Islam was not the crusaders’ goal, even if they succeeded in earning enmity from all Muslims because of their barbaric cruelty. Asbridge doesn’t spare the details.
For a history which was clearly done with effective scholarship in mind, this book is not at all dry, and the action sequences can be quite exciting. I often found myself feeling strong emotions towards the crusaders, generally disgust and irritation at their behavior towards the Muslims. Mostly, I was amazed that this happened, and reading the history again only confirmed that for me. This is the sort of history that is almost unbelievable, but it happened, and it’s very worth reading about. Not only does it make for a fascinating story, but it even sheds light on the complex issues which Christians and Muslims still struggle with today in regards to their relations with one another. This is an essential part of the development of the world and Asbridge’s book is a wonderful place to start thinking about it.
I highly recommend The First Crusade and I’m very much looking forward to Asbridge’s overall look at the crusades, which is publishing next year. I will be reviewing that in 2010, so if this review has interested you at all, stay tuned.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book from the publisher free for review here.
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