Nine
entries this quarter, finally getting back into my reading habit...
Red
Rising by Pierce Brown – the
first book of a trilogy that takes place on Mars. Humans have
successfully spread to the solar system's other planets and moons,
terraforming them to sustain human life and creating a complex
society via a strict caste system coded by color. Reds are the
lowest of the low spending their whole lives living beneath the
surface of Mars mining the Helium3 that fuels the terraforming and
the spaceships, believing the propaganda that they are sacrificing
their lives so that humanity can escape the miserable ruined planet
earth, and unaware that there is a thriving planet and society on the
surface above them. They are, in essence, slaves unaware of their
slavery while they fuel humanity. They marry young, they die young.
Golds, cold blooded power hungry killers, are the ruling class. Vain
and arrogant they consider the other colors as less than human.
Certainly less than them. They are bred for power, physical and
intellectual. Darrow, a 16 year old Red 'helldiver', the most
dangerous job of mining, and his wife are arrested when she stumbles
on a tunnel that takes her to an enclosed forest and they see the sky
for the first time. He is whipped, she is hanged, he is hanged but
rescued and recruited by the Sons of Ares, the underground resistance
group. His mission, to rise up high enough in the Gold hierarchy to
have enough power to break the system but in order for him to do that
he must first be made into a Gold, something that requires remaking
his body from the inside out. That accomplished, he passes the
entrance test to gain admittance to the Institute, a school for only
the best and the brightest of Gold children. Now he must not only
survive the year long Institute, but finish high enough to win the
powerful and connected sponsorship necessary to rise in the system.
It's a good story, fast paced, told in the first person present. It
captured my attention and I've been spending a lot more time reading.
The rain has been helpful in that respect. I finished it, put it
down, and went immediately to the library to get the second book.
Golden
Son by Pierce Brown – Darrow,
now known as the Reaper, after winning the Institute and another year
at the Academy is poised to win the final battle there when he is
lured into a trap and he and his crew barely escape with their lives.
His sponsor, the ArchGovernor of Mars, Augustus, is sorely
disappointed and Darrow loses favor since he failed to kill the son
of the family with which he has a blood feud that killed Augustus's
favored son. Political intrigue also had a hand in the Reaper's
sidelining until he comes up with a daring plan to usurp the power of
the Sovereign who rules all the planets and moons. Darrow/Reaper's
plan is to bring it all down to create a new more egalitarian society
for all the colors but only a very few Golds and the Sons of Ares are
in on the ultimate goal. All seems going to plan and victory is in
sight until he is betrayed and the Golds and all the other colors
find out he is really a lowly Red.
Morning
Star by Pierce Brown – With
many of Darrow's supporters murdered and Darrow himself imprisoned in
a box and the rest of the worlds thinking he is dead because of his
supposed execution, all seems lost while the Society's Armada
continues to fight the uprising, which without the Reaper and Ares,
also murdered, is floundering. In the meantime, Darrow's right hand
man and best friend, Sevro, a Gold, now Ares himself, does not
believe he is dead and is carrying on the fight, taking control of
the resistance. It takes a year but Sevro finally discovers Darrow's
fate and they rescue him from his captor, the new ArchGovernor of
Mars, and desperate plans are laid to continue the fight and gain
more supporters, most particularly the Moon Lords of Jupiter and the
Obsidians of Mars. They are given unexpected aid when they hatch a
plan to kidnap a very rich and influential Silver who turns out to be
one of the original founders of the Sons of Ares. After a battle
with the Society's Sword Armada, which they defeat and capture those
ships that were not destroyed, Darrow, Sevro, and Mustang hatch a
daring plan to infiltrate the inner sanctum of the Sovereign on Luna
and put an end to the war and create a society that allows a person's
talents to determine their fate rather than their color caste.
There
is so much in these books I didn't tell, for instance who Mustang is,
who the Obsidians are, but I was trying to keep it all fairly short.
It's a good story, moves quickly, and I finished all three books in
the time it has taken me lately to read just one.
The
Bear and the Nightingale by
Katherine Arden - a supernatural tale written as if it were a Russian
Fairy Tale, or rather, the basis for a Russian Fairy Tale except the
tale is one of many told at the ovenside of an outlying boyar's house
at the edge of the wilderness in 16th century Rus'. Vasya was born
to a beloved wife, herself the daughter of the mysterious girl who
rode into Moscow on a horse and charmed the grand prince into
marriage, who died soon after childbirth. Vasya is a wild spirit and
when she is 7, her father decides to remarry in an effort to tame
Vasya and groom her for a woman's life as a wife. Pyotr is
manipulated into taking the current grand prince of Moscow's mad
sister to wife in return for a high born marriage for his other
daughter. Soon after Anna, a devout Christian, arrives the old
priest in the village dies and a young charismatic priest is sent to
take his place. Vasya and the village still honor the old spirits
and the village is prosperous until the new priest arrives and
instills fear in the villagers and they turn away from the nature
spirits and things start going bad. Vasya's wildness and power are
unsettling to the villagers and the priest is determined to bring her
to God. With the villagers turning away from the protective nature
spirits, an evil spirit that has been bound for ages is about to get
free and it is up to Vasya with help from the Winter King, also known
as Death, to save everyone. It's a good story and I really enjoyed
this one.
The
Girl Before by J. P. Delaney –
a murder mystery of sorts, two stories are told simultaneously...Emma
then and Jane now...of two young women living in a house built by an
architect who specializes in austere but beautiful buildings with the
aim to change the occupants that comes with a long list of rules and
requirements. It's a story of obsessive love and control as both
women engage in an affair with the architect. Then Emma dies under
questionable circumstances in the house and now Jane tries to
discover the truth about Emma's death discovering along the way the
obsessive nature of her lover and trying to determine whether or not
she is in danger. It's a good story that kept me engaged. Either
that or I've finally gotten back into reading as this is the 5th
book in a row that it only took me a week to read.
The
Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena
- Anne and Marco, parents of a 6 month old, have an 'adults only'
dinner engagement with their neighbors with whom they share a wall
and due to a family emergency the sitter cancels at the last minute.
Anne wants to stay home but Marco convinces her to leave Cora, the
baby, at home, they will take the baby monitor with them and take
turns checking on her every half hour. They return home sometime
after 1 AM to find the front door ajar and the baby missing. Marco
was the last to check on her at 12:30 and claims she was sleeping
peacefully. The police are called and then begins the investigation
into the abduction. Anne, who is suffering from postpartum
depression, fears she has killed her baby who has been difficult,
crying and hard to soothe, when she went home for Cora's 11 o'clock
feeding because she can't remember everything that happened and has a
history of a violent episode during a blackout when she was in school
and that Marco got rid of the body to cover for her. It is gradually
revealed that Marco kidnapped Cora with the help from an accomplice
for the ransom he knew his in-laws would pay in order to rescue his business
from financial disaster. Unknown to Marco, his father-in-law, Anne's
step-father, who despises Marco, set the whole thing up in an attempt
to discredit Marco and steal $5 million from his wife and run off
with his girlfriend who happens to be the neighbor Cynthia and has
had Cora the whole time. Anne and Marco get the baby back. That's the
nuts and bolts of it though there is more to the story written in
third person present but I found the author's writing style tiresome
after a while and when I got to the last page, I was like, what?!
Ape
House by Sara Gruen – from the
author of Water For Elephants.
Isabel is a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab with her also
scientist fiance Peter. John, a reporter who has been working on a
story about language acquisition in apes, and his colleague Cat were
sent by the paper they work for to visit the language lab and while
John was allowed to interact with the bonobos, Cat was not since she
was recovering from a cold. Later that day when everyone was
supposed to be out of the facility for the night, there is a massive
explosion that nearly kills Isabel. The bonobos survive and are
promptly sold by the university that underwrote the language lab when
the president's house was vandalized and his family threatened at the
same time. As Isabel recovers she is frantic to find out what
happened to the 7 apes she considers her family. Several months
later, the bonobos, who are very sexually active and use sexual
encounters between opposite sex and same sex members to bond the
group, surface in a TV show, Ape House, by the reality porn show
king. The bonobos wake to find themselves in an empty house except
for a computer and a stool. It doesn't take long for the apes to
start ordering food, blankets, furniture, toys, etc. live streaming
24/7. John, who had his story stolen and given over to Cat by their
editor quit and the only job he could find is at a tabloid that sends
him out to the location of Ape House to report and write up
sensationalist stories. Eventually he and Isabel reconnect and try
to find a way to rescue the apes. I was almost to the end of the
book and all these balls were up in the air and I thought no way is
she going to resolve all this in the remaining pages but she did
neatly in a page or two. This is the nuts and bolts but it's a great
book/story with lots of entertaining characters and I do recommend
it. But then I really liked Water For Elephants
too.
Slade
House by David Mitchell – Down
a dark narrow hard to find alley in a working class neighborhood in
London is, sometimes, a small black iron door. Not just anyone can
find the door to Slade House and not just anyone who finds it can
open it and those who can open it get invited inside. I don't know
how much I want to say about this book as I really enjoyed it and
don't want to say too much for future readers. These are small
stories that are all linked to the iron door and build on one
another. Every 9 years, it seems, one or more people go missing on
the same day never to be seen or heard from again. Their experiences
are different and the same all at the same time until it all reaches
an unexpected conclusion with a little twist.
Cloud
Atlas by David Mitchell – I
saw the movie before I read the book and while it was very pleasing
visually, I had no idea what it was about. I just finished the book
and I'm here to tell you I still don't know what it was about. Then
I watched the trailer again...nope. The book is a series of 6
stories interrupted in the middle, sometimes mid-sentence (except for
the sixth which is as complete as any of them). The next story
starts after a jump forward in time. Small jumps and then large
jumps until we get to the sixth so far forward in the future that
mankind has fallen to it's knees and succumbing to savagery and from
the end of that story we start going backwards picking up the
previous stories in reverse order until we end with the last half of
the first story. As far as I can tell, the only thing that connects
them is a comet shaped birthmark, an occasional reference to the
title, and in some cases a character from one appears in the next.
Stories 1 – 4 do have some sort of continuity but are otherwise
completely unrelated. Then a big jump in time for 5 and another big
jump in time to the sixth. I did enjoy the book. The stories are
well told but don't ask me what the book is about.