from the sidelines of history to the Queen of Sweden

The Queen's Fortune: A Novel of Désirée, Napolean, and the Dynasty that Outlasted the Empire by Allison Pataki

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: When one thinks about Napolean Bonaparte, perhaps one thinks about conquest and exile, Josephine, and the advice never to fight a land war in Asia.  But what about the woman who loved him when he was still just Napoleone Buonaparte, an upstart military officer from Corsica?  Those who read Annemarie Selinko's book Désirée, published in 1951, know her story, but it's taken 70 years for anyone to take another look at her.  And her life is worth looking at!  Although neither Selinko nor Pataki portray Désirée as having had much agency in life, let alone in world events, she was witness to a lot of history, from the French Revolution to the beginning of the Victorian Era, seeing much of it from her perch as the Queen of Sweden.  How did a French girl from Marseille become Queen of Sweden?  Pataki (and Selinko) bring Désirée's history and France in this era to life.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

a quest through the realms

The Library of the Unwritten by A. J. Hackwith

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fantasy

Review: Did you ever think about what happens to the book that don't get written?

In A. J. Hackwith's imagination, they reside in the Library of the Unwritten, a lesser known part of Hell.  There, they are presided over, protected by, and under the care of the Librarian.  The Librarian is in charge of keeping the books quiet, and making sure none of the character escape from between the covers (except for a few Damsels, who can clearly do better in life).  When Claire Hadley, the current Librarian, gets word that, not only has the main characters of one of the books gotten loose, but is talking to its author, she heads topside to intervene and get the character back into its book where it belongs.

Unfortunately, she and her team get caught up in a dispute over the Devil's Bible, a book believed by those in both Heaven and Hell to hold great power.  In an effort to keep it out of the hands of a demon who wants to use it for his own nefarious purposes, they seek to return the book to the Library for safekeeping, but must travel through several realms, including Valhalla, on their way.  Meanwhile, the Library itself is under seige, and the team must split up.  Will they be able to win the fight on two fronts, and still remain strong enough to keep the Lirbary intact?

As with any work of fantasy, this book requires more than a little suspension of disbelief, and readers who characterize themselves as religious may have an ever harder time, given that the subject matter includes a somewhat jaundiced approach to Heaven and Hell, demons and angels.  Other readers may appreciate Hackwith's multi-cultural mythologizing, her notion of a literary duel, and her ideas about what can happen when characters become separated from their books.

For fans of The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, The Library of the Dead by T. L. Huchu, and The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H. G. Parry.

and then there were...?

The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: When Hollywood's darling, Katie Barstow, marries her childhood friend, she decides to take her 5 closest friends, including her brother and pregnant sister-in-law, along on their honeymoon safari in the Serengeti.  But when the party is kidnapped, who is the real target?  And how many of them will make it out alive?

The chapters rotate among the kidnapping victims, including one of the safari porters.  Each chapter is a small frame, beginning and ending with the current situation, bracketing a brief bit of the character's history.  The effect is to steadily ratchet up the tension, while at the same time deepening the reader's connection to the characters.

This is another excellent book from Bohjalian, complete with a twist that I maybe should have seen coming (maybe), but definitely didn't.  And for another look at the politics of Central Africa in the same time period, read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, a personal favorite of mine.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

worth fixing, or not?

The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Anders is a cub journalist for a small newspaper on the Eastern Shore of Maryland with dreams of becoming the next podcast sensation.  When he is sent to tiny Frick Island to cover their Cake Walk, he can't help but roll his eyes at the seemingly backward way of life there, where there's a single point of Internet access and no cellphone coverage.  But he is intrigued by Piper Parrish, whose husband is a recent victim of shipwreck, especially when he realizes that she's acting as though he's still alive, and the whole town seems to be going along with it.  Anders makes Piper's story the focus of his next podcast series, with the more or less good intentions of perhaps helping other people suffering from profound grief.

In some ways, this is a good book.  Anders, Piper, and many supporting characters are well-drawn and sympathetic.  Unfortunately, an underlying premise of the book is a logical fallacy.  Frick Island is slowly disappearing due to rising ocean levels, but it so out-of-the-way and underpopulated that the Army Corps of Engineers decided it wasn't worth it to do any beach reconstruction to try to save it.  But, someone has decided to build a cell tower on the island.  The plot of the book turns on the fact that once the tower is completed, Piper (and the rest of the island's residents) will be able to finally hear Anders's podcast, and will be deeply upset by what they will undoubtedly feel is his betrayal.  Verily, the tower is built, the podcast is listened to, and the people are upset, bringing us to the climax of the book.  But why?  Why would any company want to put a tower on an island to serve so few people, particularly when the residents themselves are at least indifferent, and at most virulently opposed to the tower?  That question is never answered.

So, read this book if you're looking for a nice small-town tale, but if you can't look past the inconsistency at the heart of the book, maybe pass on this one.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

frozen characters

Archangelsk by Elizabeth H. Bonesteel

Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: science fiction

Review: How do you take the remnants of a generation ship and keep humanity alive on a frozen, inhospitable planet?  It turns out to involve not just a fair amount of technological ingenuity, but also a healthy dose of myth-making and autocratic government (think, iron fist in velvet glove).  And then, how do you hold the society you've made together 200 years later, when your far-distant cousins from Earth show up and basically say "hey, we didn't actually destroy ourselves like you thought!"?  For the governor of Novayarkha, it turns out the answer is, not very well.

Which is all all well and good for plot purposes.  Every book has to have dramatic conflict and all that.  However, every good book also needs well-rounded characters who have realistic reactions to the conflict.  Both of those were lacking here.  Across the board, characters behaved in ways that weren't understandable based on the information given to the reader.  It's hard to relate to characters when you don't understand why they're acting the way they are.  It's a shame that this book was sunk by poor character development, because the premise was quite interesting.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

hear me roar

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Rating: 4.75 (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: Being a chemist is not an easy thing for a woman to be in the '50s and '60s, and is maybe not all that easy now, although I imagine it would be easier if there really had been a woman like Elizabeth Zott to look the world straight in the eye, ask "Why not?" and refuse to take no for an answer.  Elizabeth is a chemist, and refuses to be treated like anything other than the serious scientist she is.

However, until Elizabeth can remake the world in her vision of gender equality, she must go on doing her television cooking show so that she can support herself and her daughter.  On Supper at Six, though, the cooking is a mere byproduct of the chemistry she's really teaching, and both cooking and chemistry are ancillary to the confidence she gives to the women across the country who tune in faithfully every weekday.

If this book has a flaw, it's that Elizabeth has one too many diatribes about the unfairness, nay, illogic, of keeping women out of the sciences.  Fortunately, Garmus has given Elizabeth such an authentic voice, and made her such a sympathetic character, that this reader, at least, was more than willing to make allowances.  And it's not just Elizabeth; Elizabeth has a support network par excellence, and each one contributes their unique voice to make this book a pleasure to read.

Garmus's debut effort is truly a wonderful book, and one that I'll be recommending for a long time.  I'm excited to see what she writes next.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

ouroboros book

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: science fiction

Review:  This book is a great example of when you should read the blurb first.  It's not always the case, of course, that reading the blurb first is important, or even advisable, but for this book, the blurb gave me just enough information to understand the relevance of the first sections of the book, without giving away any major plot points.

So the blurb tells us that we're dealing with people in multiple time periods, and that someone is tasked with figuring out what links the different people together.  However, the blurb gives away nothing in terms of the intricacy of the plot, the loveliness of the writing, or the depth of the characters, even those of whom we see very little.

What makes this book even more enchanting is that it's very self-referential, and also refers to Mandel's previous book, The Glass Castle, putting the reader in mind of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.  Readers who pay close attention to the details will be rewarded with seeing those details take on extra importance and meaning in other scenes, allowing the whole picture to come together seamlessly.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.