If anyone else ever comes here and wonders what's going on, here's the full story.
In 2001 I read a really crummy book called "Engines of Dawn"--the first review featured here--and decided I needed somewhere to vent. I found my way to Amazon and posted a brief customer review to let out my frustration. This was so fun that I decided to keep doing it and in time I came to see it as a critical thinking exercise to help me determine why certain books worked for me and certain ones didn't. In the process I like to think this might help me in writing my own books, though probably not. At any rate, the good ones are fun to rave about and the bad ones are fun to rant about and many others fall in between.
I have read more books than are featured here, but not every book I read gets a review written. I've left all the pertinent information about the book and review if you want to purchase the book or if you want to see the original review. I write these with the intent of a Joe Q. Public's point-of-view not any kind of literary scholar. I sometimes launch into discussions on the craft of writing, which usually I think causes people to reach for the "not helpful" button, but mostly I'm just saying why I liked the book and why I didn't without a bunch of cliches.
Legal stuff: this isn't sponsored by Amazon or represent them in any way. So on and so forth, although they do have a very nice site and I recommend checking it out for your next book purchase. I'm just shooting the breeze about books I read. Feel free to comment on the books if you've read them or tell me how much my reviews suck or whatever.
That is all.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Friday, October 12, 2012
Do You Like Movies?
If you're a film buff as well as a bibliophile, check out my blog of movie reviews cleverly titled BJ's Movie Reviews. Like this blog it's an eclectic mix of films with my unique (sometimes bordering on insane) thoughts.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
All the Discworld You Could Ever Want
For an easier way to read all my Discworld series reviews, check out my Unofficial Companion that compiles all 32 books I reviewed into one handy document. Don't leave for the Discworld without it!
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Where You Belong--One Year Later
It's been about a year since I finished writing and editing this book--and from the look of it I should have done at least one more edit. I figured that would be enough time to get a little perspective on the story since it wouldn't be so fresh in my mind. It's good to see that after a year I still like t. Maybe after five years that will be different, though I doubt it.
I set out to write something in the style of John Irving novels like The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules and generally I think I succeeded, though not as well as though books of course. If you're so inclined you can also compare it to Great Expectations, The Adventures of Augie March, or Forrest Gump.
Like those, Where You Belong is the story of a man's epic journey through life--much of it unwillingly. Frost Devereaux never had anything like a normal upbringing. His parents conceived him in a one-night stand during a blizzard and then were wed in a shotgun wedding sans an actual shotgun. Frost's mother hates the man who knocked her up enough that she forces him to live in a barn on her property, from which he is essentially a stranger to his own son. It's not much of a surprise then that when Frost's mother dies in a traffic accident and Frost's face is badly burned, his father takes off to leave him in the care of an inattentive aunt.
From there Frost might have grown up as an isolated lunatic if not for the arrival of redheaded twins from Boston: Frankie and Frank Maguire. They establish the pecking order early on where Frankie is the boss, her brother plotting behind the scenes, and Frost the loyal sidekick to them both. This pecking order remains for the next thirty years of Frost's life.
Much as Frost would like a nice, normal life, it remains tantalizingly out of reach. Or if he does find a moment of happiness it's soon pulled away. His friendship with Frankie lasts through elementary school, but the forces of puberty soon prompt Frankie to leave him behind. He turns to Frank and they head off to an elite private school in upstate New York, but Frank soon has other plans that don't involve Frost. In college, Frost finds a new friend in his roommate Peter, a Trekkie who searches the skies for signs of extraterrestrial life. This budding friendship is soon brought to an end in tragic fashion.
From there Frost ends up in an artist's colony in New Mexico before Frankie returns to his life. Again he thinks he has happiness in his grasp only for it to be snatched away. Heartbroken, Frost finds comfort with Frank only to find he's not that different from his twin.
Maybe this description makes the story sound depressing, but really it's not. Through it all Frost, like most of us, maintains a sense of optimism that someday things are going to work out. And maybe they will. You'll just have to read to find out.
What I like most about the book in reading it a year later is that Frost remains consistent throughout. Some people have described him as passive and he is, with good cause. Never having a stable existence, not to mention a facial deformity, he is an outcast. So it really makes sense--at least to me--that he takes on the sidekick role in order not to alienate those willing to be his friends. Not to mention characters like Frankie and Frank are naturally overpowering and domineering. For the most part these characters and Fate in general move Frost around like the feather in Forrest Gump. It's only near the end where he maybe starts to take control of his own destiny. Still, he remains consistent throughout the book.
For that matter, so do Frankie and Frank. As I said earlier, their pecking order remains in place throughout the thirty years covered by the book. Frankie remains passionate, with her heart on her sleeve while Frank remains a calculating schemer. Because love is blind, Frost never understands that the Maguire twins are more alike than he thinks and generally not good for him until it's much too late. Not to say they're bad people so much as just bad for him.
The downside of writing a book like this that goes from pre-conception to early middle age is that you have a lot of ground to cover. Unless you make the book 2000 pages long, inevitably things get skipped or glossed over. In the first draft I had trouble with dwelling too long on Frost's early years, so that things had to be sped up a little. I think not too much has been lost and so it's still an effective portrait of a man who like many of us is searching for a home.
That is all.
I set out to write something in the style of John Irving novels like The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules and generally I think I succeeded, though not as well as though books of course. If you're so inclined you can also compare it to Great Expectations, The Adventures of Augie March, or Forrest Gump.
Like those, Where You Belong is the story of a man's epic journey through life--much of it unwillingly. Frost Devereaux never had anything like a normal upbringing. His parents conceived him in a one-night stand during a blizzard and then were wed in a shotgun wedding sans an actual shotgun. Frost's mother hates the man who knocked her up enough that she forces him to live in a barn on her property, from which he is essentially a stranger to his own son. It's not much of a surprise then that when Frost's mother dies in a traffic accident and Frost's face is badly burned, his father takes off to leave him in the care of an inattentive aunt.
From there Frost might have grown up as an isolated lunatic if not for the arrival of redheaded twins from Boston: Frankie and Frank Maguire. They establish the pecking order early on where Frankie is the boss, her brother plotting behind the scenes, and Frost the loyal sidekick to them both. This pecking order remains for the next thirty years of Frost's life.
Much as Frost would like a nice, normal life, it remains tantalizingly out of reach. Or if he does find a moment of happiness it's soon pulled away. His friendship with Frankie lasts through elementary school, but the forces of puberty soon prompt Frankie to leave him behind. He turns to Frank and they head off to an elite private school in upstate New York, but Frank soon has other plans that don't involve Frost. In college, Frost finds a new friend in his roommate Peter, a Trekkie who searches the skies for signs of extraterrestrial life. This budding friendship is soon brought to an end in tragic fashion.
From there Frost ends up in an artist's colony in New Mexico before Frankie returns to his life. Again he thinks he has happiness in his grasp only for it to be snatched away. Heartbroken, Frost finds comfort with Frank only to find he's not that different from his twin.
Maybe this description makes the story sound depressing, but really it's not. Through it all Frost, like most of us, maintains a sense of optimism that someday things are going to work out. And maybe they will. You'll just have to read to find out.
What I like most about the book in reading it a year later is that Frost remains consistent throughout. Some people have described him as passive and he is, with good cause. Never having a stable existence, not to mention a facial deformity, he is an outcast. So it really makes sense--at least to me--that he takes on the sidekick role in order not to alienate those willing to be his friends. Not to mention characters like Frankie and Frank are naturally overpowering and domineering. For the most part these characters and Fate in general move Frost around like the feather in Forrest Gump. It's only near the end where he maybe starts to take control of his own destiny. Still, he remains consistent throughout the book.
For that matter, so do Frankie and Frank. As I said earlier, their pecking order remains in place throughout the thirty years covered by the book. Frankie remains passionate, with her heart on her sleeve while Frank remains a calculating schemer. Because love is blind, Frost never understands that the Maguire twins are more alike than he thinks and generally not good for him until it's much too late. Not to say they're bad people so much as just bad for him.
The downside of writing a book like this that goes from pre-conception to early middle age is that you have a lot of ground to cover. Unless you make the book 2000 pages long, inevitably things get skipped or glossed over. In the first draft I had trouble with dwelling too long on Frost's early years, so that things had to be sped up a little. I think not too much has been lost and so it's still an effective portrait of a man who like many of us is searching for a home.
That is all.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
WHERE YOU BELONG
Where You Belong
by Patrick Dilloway
(5/5 stars)
In my review of Saul Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March" I wrote:
"When I thought about it deeper and looked more closely I decided what gave this "great American novel" status is not the story itself but the underlying sense of optimism as Augie never loses hope even after the love of his life leaves him and his Merchant Marine freighter gets torpedoed. It's that same spirit that sent explorers to these shores and propelled pioneers ever westward in search of Manifest Destiny."
In a much similar fashion, "Where You Belong" by Patrick Dilloway is a Great American novel in spirit because while the protagonist of the story--a man with the unlikely name of Frost Devereaux--loses the love of his dreams, he never gives up hope of finding a better life just around the next corner.
Another novel "Where You Belong" draws comparisons to is John Irving's "The World According to Garp" and not just because the main characters in both have unusual names. Like Garp, Frost Devereaux is raised for a time by a nurse (though in this case the nurse is not his mother) and grows up to become a writer. Unlike Garp, though, Frost is never able to find and hold on to his one true love.
Through most of his life, Frost's true love is Frankie Maguire. Frankie, an energetic tomboy who dreams of becoming a Broadway star, is Frost's best friend and first crush, who abandons him in junior high to seek out older boys. This leaves Frost with a hole in his heart that is never filled until Frankie returns to him. If this were a fairy tale they would ride off and Live Happily Ever After, but this isn't a fairy tale.
Frost's search for a love that lasts leads him across the United States, from his boyhood home in an Iowa town noted for the stench of the fertilizer it produces to an all-boys school in upstate New York with a dark secret to an artist's colony in New Mexico presided over by a French-Canadian lumberjack to the Manhattan apartment of Frankie's twin brother, a powerbroker in the Gordon Gekko mold. Each step along the way Frost discovers more about the world, the people he cares about, and himself.
I really enjoyed this book because of that Great American Novel spirit I talked about and its similarities to "Garp." Like the better John Irving novels, Mr. Dilloway attempts to tackle a large social issue without losing sight of the personal story. The character of Frost Devereaux is depicted as naïve and vulnerable, especially when it comes to his feelings for the Maguire twins, which in some ways makes him a more sympathetic character than TS Garp who, let's face it, could be a real jerk by sleeping with babysitters and so forth. By contrast, Frost is the one who gets cheated on, not the one who cheats.
Still, for the seriousness of the topics covered in the novel, it never loses a dark sense of humor, putting Frost in bizarre situations and with even more bizarre characters. For that reason fans of Irving's work should love this novel. Of course it wouldn't really be fair to compare the writing of a young unknown like Mr. Dilloway to great authors like John Irving or Saul Bellow. There are few who can really compete on that level. Nevertheless, the story is solidly written and hopefully the start of more to come.
That is all.
by Patrick Dilloway
(5/5 stars)
In my review of Saul Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March" I wrote:
"When I thought about it deeper and looked more closely I decided what gave this "great American novel" status is not the story itself but the underlying sense of optimism as Augie never loses hope even after the love of his life leaves him and his Merchant Marine freighter gets torpedoed. It's that same spirit that sent explorers to these shores and propelled pioneers ever westward in search of Manifest Destiny."
In a much similar fashion, "Where You Belong" by Patrick Dilloway is a Great American novel in spirit because while the protagonist of the story--a man with the unlikely name of Frost Devereaux--loses the love of his dreams, he never gives up hope of finding a better life just around the next corner.
Another novel "Where You Belong" draws comparisons to is John Irving's "The World According to Garp" and not just because the main characters in both have unusual names. Like Garp, Frost Devereaux is raised for a time by a nurse (though in this case the nurse is not his mother) and grows up to become a writer. Unlike Garp, though, Frost is never able to find and hold on to his one true love.
Through most of his life, Frost's true love is Frankie Maguire. Frankie, an energetic tomboy who dreams of becoming a Broadway star, is Frost's best friend and first crush, who abandons him in junior high to seek out older boys. This leaves Frost with a hole in his heart that is never filled until Frankie returns to him. If this were a fairy tale they would ride off and Live Happily Ever After, but this isn't a fairy tale.
Frost's search for a love that lasts leads him across the United States, from his boyhood home in an Iowa town noted for the stench of the fertilizer it produces to an all-boys school in upstate New York with a dark secret to an artist's colony in New Mexico presided over by a French-Canadian lumberjack to the Manhattan apartment of Frankie's twin brother, a powerbroker in the Gordon Gekko mold. Each step along the way Frost discovers more about the world, the people he cares about, and himself.
I really enjoyed this book because of that Great American Novel spirit I talked about and its similarities to "Garp." Like the better John Irving novels, Mr. Dilloway attempts to tackle a large social issue without losing sight of the personal story. The character of Frost Devereaux is depicted as naïve and vulnerable, especially when it comes to his feelings for the Maguire twins, which in some ways makes him a more sympathetic character than TS Garp who, let's face it, could be a real jerk by sleeping with babysitters and so forth. By contrast, Frost is the one who gets cheated on, not the one who cheats.
Still, for the seriousness of the topics covered in the novel, it never loses a dark sense of humor, putting Frost in bizarre situations and with even more bizarre characters. For that reason fans of Irving's work should love this novel. Of course it wouldn't really be fair to compare the writing of a young unknown like Mr. Dilloway to great authors like John Irving or Saul Bellow. There are few who can really compete on that level. Nevertheless, the story is solidly written and hopefully the start of more to come.
That is all.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Last Night In Twisted River
(This is going to get creepy, but bear with me. May contain spoilers. You’ve been warned.)
Dear John:
This is hard for me to say because I love you. Not as a person as we’ve never met. I love you as a writer and a reader. Your book “The Cider House Rules” made me want to be a “serious” writer. I loved the intricate plots and memorable characters; I hoped to someday do something just as well. Maybe I didn’t love the semicolon as much as you obviously did, or wrestling or Vienna or Exeter in its many forms, but part of love is overlooking faults, seeing only what we want to see.
It was in reading “Until I Find You” that I knew something was wrong. It just didn’t make me feel the same as “Cider House Rules” or “World According to Garp.” The story seemed like a jumbled mess, the plot elements borrowed from previous novels, and the characters unmemorable. When you kept describing Jack’s “little guy” it got to the point where I almost couldn’t finish. But I did in the vain hope it would get better. It didn’t. This failure left me shaken. I said in my Amazon review that it was probably time to hang it up, mostly to spare me the grief of having to go through another experience like this again, one that might taint your considerable legacy.
When I heard about “Last Night In Twisted River” I felt a mixture of hope and dread. Hope that maybe you’d exorcized your personal demons with “Until I Find You” and now the magic could return. Dread that “Until I Find You” wasn’t an aberration. I received my copy of the book in November, but I put off starting it for another two months because of this trepidation.
It didn’t take long for my fears to be validated. I nearly fell asleep trying to read the first 50 pages of jumbled background about the characters. You killed poor Angel on the very first page and yet it seemed in no time we were forced to endure the life story of the logging camp cook’s son Daniel and is father Dominic in addition to lengthy passages about the logging industry and Coos County, New Hampshire.
Maybe you could salvage it, I told myself. Sadly not because of a serious miscalculation. You have Danny accidentally kill a woman and then he and his father flee from Coos County—not before Dominic dumps the body in the house of Carl, the county’s resident cop and the woman’s lover. Then you try to cast Carl as the villain, repeatedly referring to him as “crazy,” “stupid,” and “a coward.” It never seemed to occur to you that Danny is the killer and he and Dominic the stupid cowards who try to frame the cop and then run away.
Moreover, you don’t have Dominic and Danny show much in the way of remorse for what they’ve done. They certainly don’t show any remorse about framing Carl for murder. Mostly, you indicate what an inconvenience and bother it is to noble Danny and Dominic to have to move from Boston to Iowa to Vermont to Canada. You only compound this when you have Danny allow a friend to sic a vicious dog on another dog that had bothered Danny while he was running. Certainly I didn’t expect Danny or Dominic to be saints, but these crimes are far greater than merely stealing a loaf of bread and yet you want us to believe that Danny and Dominic are the ones who are being persecuted. Did you think that Carl should have just been cool about it when Dominic dumped his girlfriend’s body in his house so Carl would think he’d killed her? Am I really supposed to believe his reaction was unjustifiable? And how stupid are Dominic and Danny that they know Carl’s history and try this stunt anyway? Didn’t they know it would only make things worse? And did you really expect me to root for the ones who framed an innocent person (at least innocent of that particular crime) for murder?
Only compounding these mistakes further is that by constantly ridiculing Carl, you negate any value he might have as a menacing figure in Danny and Dominic’s lives. He’s certainly no Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men.” You probably should have read that book or at least watched the movie to get a better sense for how this is done.
Could I overlook these huge flaws? Perhaps if there was a great story to go with it or some memorable characters. Sadly the way the elements of the story play out is like a Greatest Hits collection of your previous works—and your own life. Danny goes to Exeter like you did and Ruth did in “Widow for One Year” and Jack did in “Until I Find You” and Garp, Owen Meany, and the Berry family did in previous novels—though in thinly veiled versions of the original. Then he goes to the University of New Hampshire like you did. And he goes to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop to be a writer, like you did. He even teaches there when you did and knows the same people, like the dearly departed Kurt Vonnegut. Danny goes to Vermont like you did and then to Toronto like you did. And yet you chide reporters for asking how much of Danny’s novels are autobiographical. The sad hypocrisy of this made me laugh.
Even sadder is that these interludes added nothing to the story. We’re introduced to a bevy of Asian characters in Iowa as well as Lady Sky the naked parachutist, but none of them have any impact on the overall story. It’s the same everywhere else Danny and Dominic goes. They meet people and things happen to them, but none of these seem to matter. By the time the book ended, there were very few of them I could actually name and it would be harder still for me to list any purpose they served. The only interesting character in the book was Ketchum the logger and only because he reminded me of Yukon Cornelius in the old “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” special.
I saw that you described the book as a “political novel” but I failed to see anything political about it. Ketchum rants about George W Bush and Danny meets a woman who allows him to knock her up so he can avoid Vietnam but those are the only “political” elements that I could make out in all of this. Really the criticism of Bush on September 11th struck me as writing in hindsight. I’m not a Bush lover by far but there seemed nothing original or fresh about Ketchum’s rants. They didn’t add anything and they certainly didn’t open my mind to any new insights about the situation. Not the way “Cider House Rules” did.
The book jacket tries to make the case that Coos County is a microcosm of America in the last 50 years and how hate has driven us apart. Or something like that. Maybe this is supposed to be why the novel is “political.” In that case, who do Danny and Dominic represent? Who does Carl represent? I don’t really see it. Maybe at some point I will.
At any rate, now is the time to say goodbye. We’ve had some wonderful times since I first picked up “The Cider House Rules;” nothing will ever be able to take those away from us. But like all good things, this must come to an end. I’m sure you’ll land on your feet as you still have millions of loyal, adoring fans who seem far more able to overlook the flaws I’ve noted above. Given time I’m sure I’ll find another author to love, though perhaps not as much. Certainly you’ll always be my first and for that I’m grateful.
Best of luck to whatever you do next.
Sincerely,
BJ Fraser
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Cobra Bargain
Cobra Bargain
by Timothy Zahn
(4/5 stars)
Special Note: I believe this book is out of print. You can still find used copies on Amazon or at a local store, like I did when I was on vacation up in Harrison, MI.
"Cobra Bargain" is actually the third of what I guess would be the Cobra trilogy. I never read the first one (see special note) but I did read the second one, "Cobra Strike" that was fast-paced but flat. That is largely corrected with "Cobra Bargain"--and not just because it's longer. There's more character development in this story that makes it more enjoyable to read.
This is the third in the series, but each book is separated by 30 years or so and focuses on different generations of the Moreau family. The original "Cobra" focused on Jonny Moreau, who signed up to become a cyborg warrior known as a Cobra and fought aliens known as Trofts. The second book, "Cobra Strike" focuses on Jonny's children, especially Justin Moreau, who also becomes a Cobra and goes to a mysterious planet called Qasama that's populated by humans who make up for their lack of technology with paranoia about outsiders. "Cobra Bargain" then focuses on Jonny's granddaughter--Justin's daughter--Jasmine Moreau, who becomes the first female Cobra. The "bargain" in the title comes in large part because Jasmine is allowed to become a Cobra and go on a spy mission to Qasama when her uncle agrees to quit politics if Jasmine fails.
Once the mission gets underway, though, the bargain becomes secondary to survival. The scout team's shuttle is shot down, leaving Jasmine as the lone survivor far, far behind enemy lines. On the plus side, Jasmine is fluent in the Qasama language. On the negative side, Qasamans view women as only a notch better than outsiders.
Jasmine is taken in by the Shammon family, whose young son becomes her warden--and maybe a bit more than that. While she recovers and tries to come up with a way to get home, Jasmine finds out there's bad stuff afoot on Qasama that could mean very bad things for everyone back home.
For the most part this retains the fast pace of "Cobra Strike" or Mr. Zahn's other books I read. In many ways it's similar to the later "Conquerors Trilogy" that similarly focuses on a multi-generational family and delves into the culture of an alien race. (The difference here being the "aliens" are human.) But as I mentioned before, there's more character depth in this book as it focuses mostly on Jasmine and the younger Shammon family son. There could perhaps have been a little more romantic tension, but for a sci-fi action story it's pretty good.
As a fan of Mr. Zahn's work since his "Star Wars" novels, it was interesting to read some of his earlier novels. The Jasmine character could be seen as a prototype to the Mara Jade character in his "Star Wars" books in that both are strong, independent females. (The difference being that Jasmine comes equipped with all sorts of cool lasers embedded in her skeletal structure while Mara Jade has a lightsaber.) I already mentioned the Conquerors books, which again these could be seen as a forerunner to. If you like a good light sci-fi story, then this isn't a bad read. If you see it in the used bookstore, pick it up.
That is all.
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