As a big fan of the TV Show, Bones, I decided I should read at least one book in the series that inspired the show. I watch the show because I like the characters so much and because of the science used to solve the crime each week. I knew there would be some differences between the show and the book but I didn't realize how many.
Let me first say that, like the show, the book was very clinical in its descriptions. Unfortunately, it takes a lot longer to muddle through a written, jargon-filled, clinical explanation than it does to watch it on TV. I found the technical explanations in the book got in the way of the action; you lose the momentum of the scene.
However, Reichs is good at the slow build necessary in a suspense novel. We meet Temperance Brennan working in Canada as a forensic anthropologist. Female bodies start coming in with enough similarities to put Brennan on the track of a potential serial killer, but the police don't believe her. In an effort to prove her hypothesis about the murders, Brennan starts investigating on her own, gets into trouble, and becomes a target for the killer herself. While some of the action is a little predictable, the book definitely got my heart racing in a few places.
It was really the characters that bothered me most and is the primary reason why I won't be delving into this series. Brennan in the show is actually a much better character than Brennan in the book. She's just too vulnerable in the book, too prone to emotional overload. I like the steadier version of the character we see on TV. Then, because the story takes place in Canada, there's no Booth. There's a Booth-esque character in that, of all the police, he's most inclined to listen to Brennan and she keeps checking out his butt so there's an attraction there too. More central in the story is Claudel - an extremely rude investigator whose prejudice against Brennan just doesn't match up to her high level of qualifications for the work she's doing. Claudel is too much of a hater.
Overall, this is a good, procedural crime suspense novel. It has all the components - murder, mystery, surprises, danger, etc. - so if you go into reading it with just a scientific interest in crime and no preconceived notions stemming from a TV show, you'll do just fine.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 1
It felt good to get back into some YA fiction, especially when it didn't involve vampires or dystopia. This is the real world as we know it today with the tiny difference being that all the Greek gods are actually real and still thriving...and still creating demigods.
Percy Jackson is just a normal "troubled" kid; severe ADHD, frequently getting kicked out of school, struggling with an unhappy home life, but strange things start to happen as he becomes a teenager. He can read ancient Greek, a monster posing as his math teacher attacks, a pen turns into a sword. All the strangeness leads up to the discovery that he's a Demigod with a serious problem: Zeus has accused him of stealing his lightning bolt. With the help of Grover, a satyr, and Annabeth, a fellow Demigod, Percy is charged with the quest of traveling to the Underworld to retrieve the bolt from Hades and prove his innocence. He's prepared for his quest at Camp Half Blood where Demigods are trained to be Greek heroes. Of course, the quest is more than Percy bargained for, but he's given the many chances to show off the heroic stuff he's made of.
There's no shortage of mythological Greeks in the story either - the part I liked the most about the story. Medusa runs a garden shop/statuary, Ares is an angry biker, Charon, the boatman across the River Styx, has a think for expensive Italian suits, etc. The mix of Greek myth with a modern adventure is so perfectly done in these characters, you real feel like that how these ancient gods and creatures would have evolved. And, I like Percy. He's confronted with these outlandish truths about himself with no time to process them and just accepts that change in his reality. He takes all the doubt that's perfectly normal to have and faces it head-on. It's obvious from that start that Percy is a real hero.
On a side note, I checked this book out from the library which I've rediscovered taking Olivia to story time each week. I forgot how much I loved the crinkle of the cellophane book cover on a library book. I found myself adjusting the book in my hands more often than I really needed in order to hear that sound. Of course, the drawback of the library is that now I have to wait for the second book to be back on the shelves.
Percy goes on four more adventures in his series and I'm looking forward to reading Book 2. It's so much fun getting caught up on Greek mythology without having to "travel" back in time to ancient Greece.
There is just a hint of Vonnegut in Shades of Grey paired with the newly popular theme of, "our future society is hiding something that happened in the past that would prove the people currently in power are evil." It's pretty great.
Let me first preface this biased review by telling you Jasper Fforde is one of my favorite authors. His stories are smart, funny, and very in-depth. His characters are witting, awkward, and treacherous. His stories are the complete package and his worlds are always fully imagined.
Shades of Grey takes place in a society pretty far into our future. Humanity has mutated so their eyes no longer dilate to see at night. They also can only see one hue of color and in varying percentages of fullness. If a person's bloodline stays relatively pure - marrying those of like color - offspring have a high percentage of visibility in their specific color. If two people who have visibility in different primary colors marry, their children will see a secondary color. If too much mixing between colors occurs offspring will eventually see no color and become a grey.
Edward Russett (a red) and Jane Grey (guess what color she sees) are our leads in a small town on the fringes of society. Russett (I love that Fforde gives all these characters last names that relate to how much of their color they can see) has come to town with his something-of-a-doctor-father who uses color samples to ignite physical reactions in people and keep them healthy. Eddie meets Jane who, after threatening to kill him a few times begins to open his eyes to the cover-ups and corruption taking place in their world. The impression this enlightenment leaves on Eddie is pretty severe due to his strict moral compass and his blossoming love for Jane. He joins the "resistance" and gears up to infiltrate The Collective.
We don't really find out much about the resistance but I can tell you honestly that society created after the "Something that Happened" has issues. When your motto is, "Apart. We are together," you know things are being covered up.
After a few deaths, plenty of secrecy, and lots of subterfuge we arrive at the end of a very exciting and unusual story that's really just the beginning of what I'll assume is going to be a great adventure.
I feel like this book falls into the trap common for second books in trilogies - it takes all the intense, fast-paced action of the first book and slows it way down while subtly hinting at the climax coming in book three. This slowing down of the story can take something that started out very exciting and dull it down a little bit. I still like the series and still enjoyed the story but the tone here was so significantly different from A Discovery of Witches, that, if not for the repeat characters, it would be hard to tell the books belong together.
Shadow of Night has our heroes - Diana the Witch and Matthew the Vampire - travel back to the 16th century to track down a magical book Diana encounters in her present. This encounter proves extremely dangerous for Diana as we see in Discovery because it is believed this book contains the origins story for all non-humans who live in the world today. Diana is somehow magically bound to the book while her relationship with Matthew also has some alchemical link to it as well. They've also traveled back to hide out from those chasing Diana giving her time to explore her magic.
Matthew was actually already a vampire by the 1590's so he and Diana resume the life he's already lived in England among such historical characters as Sir Walter Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth, Christopher Marlowe, and Shakespeare himself. In addition to these historical characters, this book is overloaded with new characters to keep track of; a lot of whom are significant in Matthew's extensive vampire family tree. It's a lot to keep up with as Matthew and Diana are married again and really begin to build their romantic relationship which had it's negatives for me as well. At times, the relationship felt a little Twilight-ish for me with too much angst and over emotion, but at least we're dealing with two adults here instead of teenage hormones.
While I didn't really care for the intricacies of their romance, it was interesting to meet the rest of Matthew's family and go deeper into the hierarchical structure of a vampire clan. The witches and their magic get a little silly for me and I felt the historian part of Diana's character all but vanishes once she goes backward in time (and I really liked that part of her character from Discovery.)
The story was still a good read and definitely an adventure but just a bit patchy when compared to Harkness' first attempt. Not much of a cliffhanger either so am definitely curious to see where the story is going to go and what's going to happen in book three. I'm also a little concerned about how much will actually be crammed into book three to make up for the slower pace of this volume.
