Friday, April 29, 2011

Review: Any Man of Mine


Any Man of MineAny Man of Mine by Rachel Gibson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I picked up this book due to Avon's aggressive marketing campaign. I get emails from the publisher, and they were pushing this title pretty heavily. After reading the summary, I was intrigued, and since I felt like rewarding myself with a fun romance, I bought it.



The cover copy tells the bare bones of the plot. A few years ago, Autumn and Sam had a fling in Vegas which ended badly--and she's hated him for years because of what happened. When they run into each other at a wedding, they find themselves talking and being civil, and Sam volunteers to help Autumn with a situation that brings him back into her life.



The cover copy also obscures several key facts about the story, and I'm not going to spoil them here. I think they make the story richer and complicate the relationship. What I can say is that when Sam and Autumn run into each other, neither one is looking to resume their fling. However, their increased contact leads them to remember just what drew them to each other in the first place, and as they come to know each other better, sparks begin to fly anew.



When I picked up the book, I had no idea that it was in a series, or that the series was based around a fictional Seattle hockey team. Both facts were delightful. I work in Detroit, and I come from a hockey family. Passages like this one just made me smile:



Sam stood in the tunnel of the Joe Louis Arena and waited to hit the ice. He hated playing in Detroit. Hated the stinking octopus.



He stood behind Logan Dumont and in front of Blake Conte. Captain Walker Brooks hit the ice first admist a wall of booing Red Wings fans. Sam had always found jeering crowds amusing. He fed off all that passion, and no one was more passionate about a sport than hockey fans. When it was his turn to step on the ice, he stuck his glove under one arm and skated across the ice, waving like he was a conquering hero. He looked up at the filled seats and laughed. He might hate playing at the Joe Louis, but he loved playing hockey. He'd been on the road for over a week and was exhausted and jet lagged, but the second the puck dropped, that all went away. Adrenaline pounded through his veins and rushed across his skin. He dominated behind the blue line, using his body to agitate and intimidate. He closed firing lanes and spent four minutes in the sin bin for cross-checking and hooking. The latter was complete bullshit. It wasn't his fault that Zetterberg got tangled up in Sam's stick. He should go back to Sweden and learn how to skate like a big boy.



Pansy ass.




I will add that any Red Wings fan wouldn't call the arena "the Joe Louis." We call it "the Joe" and leave it at that. But, since Sam isn't a Red Wing, I'm willing to forgive his lapse. I'm also willing to forgive his hatred of octopus. While I adore the tradition and cheer whenever I see a squid hit the ice, I'm sure it's disgusting to other teams. (Thankfully, we only throw squid, not rats like some fans!)



--back to the review--



Sam and Autumn felt real to me. They each had their reasons for behaving so recklessly in Vegas, and the wounds and regrets they carry from that meeting are lifelike. They are not always likeable, but they're also believably flawed.



The sex was fairly graphic at times, but that's also in character. Neither or these characters does anything by half--once they've mad a decision, they throw all their energy into it. Once they decide to have sex, they aren't tame about it.



Overall, I liked this novel enough to read it in one night. (I finished it after midnight, hence the two-day spread in my dates.) It was fast paced and fun, and exactly what I wanted at the time.



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Monday, April 25, 2011

Review: Shadowfever


Shadowfever (Fever, #5)Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Wow, this book was a lot better when I skimmed it!

I originally checked this book out of the library on March 28, and I started reading it almost immediately. However, I stalled out on page 53. For those of you that have read the series, you know what happened at the end of Dreamfever. Mac spent the first 50 some odd pages of this book whining about the choice she'd made at the end of the last. While I do understand the emotional trauma involved, and I would not have liked to see Mac brush off the event, Moning's treatment of it left much to be desired. It felt as if Moning want to convince her readers of Mac's trauma through sheer repetition. It was too much for me, and I had to put the book down.

Today, April 25, I picked up the book again. I wanted to know how this series ends, dammit, and the book was due back to the library today. So I decided to skim. I avoided any long passages of exposition as they uniformly seemed to be of Mac whining. Instead, I looked for scenes with conversation. I was quickly able to skim through the book, getting the jist of the plot while running from Mac's thoughts. With that method, I read this nearly 600 page book in four hours. And I liked it.

Apart from Mac's near-constant whining, the book provided a satisfying ending to the series. I liked the choices Moning made regarding the change in the world. A few of the revelations were moderately surprising, but they did not come from left field. They had been foreshadowed--as pretty much everything in this series was foreshadowed--but Mac hadn't given enough hints to truly lay bare her entire plot.

I'm glad I didn't spend money on this book. Heck, the only one that I ever owned was the first book (originally as a mass market paperback, but I gave that away in the swap when the publisher offered it as a free ebook). I do think this series is inventive and reasonably brave. Not many writers have the courage to torture a character as thoroughly as Mac was tortured. But that's also part of the reason that I don't want to return to this series. Bad things happen in this world--and bad things happen to Mac. I did not enjoy following her on her journey from Mac 1.0 to Mac 5.0. While I do think these books are good, they're not fun in the way I like my books to be fun.



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Thursday, April 21, 2011

Review: The What the Dead Know CD


The What the Dead Know CDThe What the Dead Know CD by Laura Lippman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Before I get into this review, I need to explain a few things. I don't like to read books about endangered children. Right now, I don't like to read books about missing people. They hit too close to home for me, and I cannot vicariously enjoy the tension created by these situations. My reasons are simple: these situations are too real. When I was a teenager, two girls in my hometown were killed by a serial killer. I did not know Michelle and Melissa Urbin, the sisters he kidnapped and killed from Fenton. I went to a neighboring school. The facts of their disappearance and deaths shaped my personality and reading taste, though. I do not enjoy reading books from the point of view of a rapist or killer. And the tension created by endangered children sickens me. I've only recently begun to avoid books about missing people, and I don't know how long that will last. In December, one of the professors in my department was reported missing. Her disappearance is considered a possible suicide, but without any clear evidence of her fate, the case remains open.



I didn't want to burden this review with this information in order to seek sympathy. Instead, I want you to understand that this book was so amazing that I was able to enjoy it despite the baggage I brought with me.



As the cover copy makes clear, this novel opens with a traffic accident. A woman is involved the accident and drives away; when the police find her walking down the road a few miles away, she is unable to provide identification. In an attempt to distract the police officer from her role in the accident, she tells him that she is one of the "Bethany girls," referring to an unsolved case of missing sisters from 30 years before.



The police immediately suspect that this woman is not telling the full story. She explains that she's been living under an assumed name for years and does not want to endanger her privacy, so she refuses to give them her current name. She does not want publicity. She knows facts of the girls' lives, but most of that information is available to a dedicated internet searcher. The police do not know what to believe, but they do know they have a mess on their hands. Detective Kevin Infante is assigned to investigate the woman and determine the truth--if such a thing exists.



The novel unfolds slowly, moving between multiple narrators to tell the story of the missing girls, their family, and the investigation. From memory, I would say that there may have been as many as eight narrators. The chapters move back and forth between the narrators and back and forth between the present and the past. Thankfully, Lippman is a powerful writer, and the switches between different points of view were rarely jarring. Instead, we as readers get to see the tapestry of lives woven around the missing girls. We see how their loss devastates their parents, Miriam and Frank. We see the relationship between the girls as we learn of their childhood. We see the frustration of the detectives as they seek to discover the threads that tie this unnamed woman to the Bethany girls.



This is not a novel that delights in pain. Despite the emotional pain of the girls' loss, this novel never becomes voyeuristic. This is not a book about what happens to the girls after they disappear from the mall. This is a book about what happens to everyone else. The woman who claims to be a Bethany girl forces the police to reopen the case and reevaluate their investigation. She claims that her captor was a cop, further complicating the matter.



What is the truth? Who is this woman? That's something that, for the time being at least, only the dead know for certain.



It's up to Kevin Infante and the Baltimore PD to discover if there are any answers available.



As the fact that I'm reviewing an audiobook should make clearn, I listened to the audio edition of this novel. Eerily enough, I started this book on March 29, the same day the girls disappear. Linda Emond narrated the book, and she was remarkable. Lippman's writing changed with each shift in point of view, and Emond's voice changed with it. Despite the tricky nature of the narration, I never found myself confused as to which character was the viewpoint character at any time. For those of you that enjoy audibooks, I recommend this edition highly.



Overall, I found this book compelling. I could not wait to drive to work and listen to the next installment. While I was able to anticipate some of the answers, I did not see everything coming.



Lippman is a brilliant writer, and I look forward to exploring the rest of her works.



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Review: Welcome to Temptation


Welcome to TemptationWelcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


There are some things in life that are guaranteed. The end of the semester is always a good day. (yay!) Taxes will always irritate a large portion of the population. Detroit will always have attitude (if nothing else). And I will always enjoy a Jennifer Crusie novel.

I listened to this title as an audiobook and enjoyed it immensely. It was my companion as I drove to and from the D for the last two weeks of classes, and I don't think I've ever blushed so much while driving. :-)

This is the story of Sophie Dempsey and her little sister Amy. The two sisters have come to Temptation, Ohio, to film an audition clip for their acquaintance Clea. The sisters normally film weddings, but Amy is ambitious and sees this as her opportunity to break into something better as they help Cleo restart her film career. Neither of them realize that Clea had done porn before her marriage and this audition tape is an attempt to reopen that part of her life. Their very arrival in town creates problems. As Amy films the drive into the city, Sophie gets into an accident with Stephen and Virginia Garvey--two upstanding members of the town council.

Phin Tucker is the local mayor, and he's caught in a reelection fight against that same Stephen Garvey. Phin's family has held the office for years, and he doesn't want it all that much. But he doesn't want Garvey to have it either, and when Garvey tries to use the "film people" as a wedge issue in the election, Phin realizes that he has to know what's happening at Clea's farm.

Sophie has spent her youth traveling all throughout the country; she comes from a family of confidence men (& women), and she's innately suspicious of "town boys." With is fourth generation mayoral office, Phin is the definition of a town boy. He, in turn, is wary of her. His father had warned him long ago about women he called the Devil's Candy, and Phin can recognize that Sophie is a danger to him and his way of life.

Their wariness is not enough to keep them apart, but their attraction may not be enough to keep them together, either. As the filming continues, and the election nears, the town will throw every obstacle possible in their way. They can only have a future together if they fight for it--but they're not used to fighting for themselves. Are they up to the challenge?

Oh, and who is the murderer terrorizing the town?

(OK, I admit it, that last line is not fair. But there is a murder, and it's important, and I don't want to tell you any more. So deal.)



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Sunday, April 17, 2011

Review: After the Golden Age


After the Golden AgeAfter the Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This novel was utterly amazing and fantastic. Vaughn clearly knows superhero literature, and her fondness for the genre allows her to write in it with respect while analyzing the tensions at the heart of superhero mythology.

Celia West is the famous daughter of Commerce City's two most famous superheros--Captain Olympus and Spark, the founding members of the Olympiad. They were not the city's first superheros--a masked man called Hawk fought crime before they did. Hawk had no powers, and he retired just as the Captain and Spark became proficient at their calling. Celia has very little contact with her parents. She cut all ties with them when she was a teenager. They always placed the welfare of the city before their daughter, and while she could understand their priorities, she also found it difficult to bear. Villains always assumed that Celia was a priority in her parents' lives, and she was kidnapped several times (six and counting . . .) in an attempt to control her parents. It never worked.

Part of the distance between Celia and her parents stems from the fact that she's normal. She has no powers and no common ground to share with them. This distance--as well as her relative fragility--makes it difficult for them to relate to one another.

This is the situation as After the Golden Age opens. Celia is working as a forensic accountant in a firm that consults for the DA. After her most recent kidnapping attempt, the DA asks specifically for her to be assigned to what may be the case of the century--a tax fraud prosecution of the Destructor, a notorious villain and her parents' arch nemesis. As Celia digs into the case, her complicated history resurfaces in such a way to cast doubt on her reliability. Celia cannot bear the thought of being judged for her prior acts, and she digs deeper into the Destructor case to prove her worth. She's also concerned because several new gangs are attempting to take control of Commerce City. It's clear that there's a mastermind behind the recent attacks, but it's not clear just who that might be. The Destructor is locked away, and someone new seems to have stepped up to fill the vacuum.

Alternately funny and shocking and heart-rending, After the Golden Age questions one city's reliance on its heroes as saviors. Moving between Celia's past and present, the novel explores the complicated relationship between our childhood and our adulthood as the parents we both love and despise shape us to become like them.

Vaughn is not a stylist. Her prose is clean and serviceable, establishing the points she's making with a minimum of description or purple prose. All the same, her quiet observations of characters make this novel the powerful story that it is. When I first heard about this book, I knew that I wanted to read it. Once it was available, I bought it almost immediately and read it almost all the way through in one day. This is a fast-paced story, one that gets you to care about characters and the City where they live.

I believe I said this about Carrie Vaughn's other standalone novel, Discord's Apple, and I'll repeat myself here. I do not want Vaughn to write a sequel to this book. After the Golden Age is a fantastic story from beginning to end, and I don't want to see that perfection weakened in a series.



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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Review: The School for Brides


The School for BridesThe School for Brides by Cheryl Ann Smith

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I bought this book largely because the author was in the store doing a signing while I was there. I thought the premise sounded fun, and I decided to give the book a shot. The fact that it had won a RITA for best debut novel helped, too.



Overall, this was a fun, light read. It took a while for me to get into it, as the male lead was extremely irritating as the book opened.



The story is this: Eva, the daughter of a courtesan, runs a school teaching courtesans how to properly behave so that they can be matched with husbands. The women come to her willingly, having realized that their time as a courtesan is coming to an end (basically, they've "aged out") or their experiences have been unpleasant. None of her students know her true name or her mother's history. One day, a duke shows up, furious that his Arabella had left him. He tracked her to Eva's school, and talks of the woman as if she were a possession. Eva is pleased to tell him that Arabella is out of his reach--she's married and an expectant mother. (It had taken some time for our duke to find Eva.)



Irrationally irritated, the duke decides to research Eva and punish her. He does this by buying her debt and explaining that the debts could be waived if she supplies him with another courtesan. Unwilling to pimp her students, Eva finally decides to take on the role herself.



The consent issues in the book are murky. Smith would like to play with the idea of forced consent, but she also works very hard to explain that Eva desires the duke and makes the choice of her own free will.



The setting is murky as well. There are no clear recognitions of time; the cover would indicate that the book takes place in the Regency period, but the social work with Fallen Women movement is a later Victorian attitude. In Smith's London, every well born man seems to keep a mistress--or courtesan, I should say--in addition to his wife. Few people object to the practice, and our duke is even able to talk with his mother about his missing courtesan, Arabella. Obviously, many of the wives hate the practice, and Eva's father's widow is especially vitriolic. However, it's an accepted social practice, and no men are shunned for keeping a courtesan. Women actually seem to compete for the role, which also complicates the issue.



This book is the first in a trilogy, and I'm not sure that I'll continue with it. While the sex was fun, the ahistorical nature of this historical romance bugs me. I also don't like the idea that Smith is trying to invoke the old fashioned rape fantasy without addressing its baggage. Overall, this is a fun read but not one that you'll want to think about deeply.



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Monday, April 11, 2011

Sucker Punch and SNL




My husband and I went to see Sucker Punch the weekend it debuted, and we enjoyed it greatly. However, I was disturbed by the fact that of approximately 30 people in the audience, only six of them were women (including myself).  For all that this movie was an attempt to cash in on the vision of violent women, it was not a movie that sought to show them as empowered.  Instead, it was a film about watching women and the power women hold when they are observed by others.  In this case, the "others" were clearly men.  The subtext of the movie was clearly visible even in its commercials, which would explain why so few women wanted to see it.

In a related note, Sucker Punch was referenced in a recent skit on Saturday Night Live.  You can see the skit below:



Salon wrote about the skit in an article titled "Saturday Night Live hosted by Elton John's homosexuality".  In writing about the sketch, Drew Grant claims

And then there was this sketch "The Silver Screen," the premise of which, as far as I could tell, is that it's funny when old queens give each other pet names. Every time Taran Killam and Elton kissed, the audience hooted.

This was not to say "The Silver Screen" wasn't funny. It was very funny. And there is definitely room for gay humor on TV. But not if it's being used as the only thing making a sketch funny: the concept for "Silver Screens" couldn't have been more than "Two gay men spend more time making googly eyes at each other while dressed like Christopher Guest from 'Waiting for Guffman' than paying attention to Vanessa Hudgens." (To be fair, a lot of things are better than paying attention to Vanessa Hudgens.)

As I read what Salon had to say and rewatched the skit, I can't help but think that Drew Grant missed one of the vital points of it.  He also participated in one of the things that made me truly angry about this episode of SNL: the casual sexism.

In my reading of the skit, I do see the focus as being upon the gay movie reviewers, but it is not insignificant that they're reviewing Sucker Punch.  They're pointing out to viewers a fact that should be obvious but hasn't been talked about nearly enough:  this movie has a very limited audience.  It's aimed primarily at heterosexual men and boys--especially those with an interest in s/f, steampunk, or manga.  Despite the growing influence of the geek market, that's a rather small niche.  The shocked faces of Tarran Killam and Elton John (I love the delayed shock in John's case) indicate just how appalled they are by this spectacle of women's bodies and violence.  Their disinterest in Vanessa Hudgins (which Drew Grant endorses) becomes less a dismissal of the movie--about which they have no interest--than a dismissal of modern women altogether.  The only woman they admire in the course of the skit is Claudette Colbert--about whom Killam's character says, "They don't make them like they used to," before adding that her "bangs scream sex!"  John's character, not to be outdone, adds "Now that's a muff I'd put my hand in."

SNL bothered me so much that week because this sort of humor was used throughout the night.  It was as if the writers could not imagine a gay friendly joke that was also friendly to women.  Instead, the jokes that night focused solely on Elton John's sexuality and presented women as disinteresting at best, disgusting at worst.  I know Rachel Dratch isn't on the show any more, but that night would have been a great night to bring back the infamous skit "The Woman with No Gaydar."  Dratch's character always looked silly when she'd find herself in a gay bar and think that it was a great place to find men, but the humor was never mean spirited--unlike "The Old West" skit that night, wherein Kristen Wiig, as a  old West prostitute, continually throws herself at Elton John's cowboy character, only to be repeatedly insulted as he pursued a local cowboy.

Warning:  movie spoilers ahead.

I loved Sucker Punch.  I thought it was inventive and visually stunning.  It's the story of a seemingly unnamed young woman (supposedly 22 years old).  After the death of her mother, the young woman tries to protect her younger sister from their stepfather (whether he's threatening the child with violence or with specifically sexual violence remains uncertain).  In the struggle, the younger girl dies, and the stepfather decides to have our heroine committed rather than make her available to police questioning.  This scene is quick and scored to the Eurthymic's "Sweet Dreams," in one of the better uses of the song I've ever seen.  In addition to the song, the opening sequence features voice-over narration talking about guardian angels and their ability to save you.  At the institution, the stepfather signs up our girl for a lobotomy.  The doctor will be there in five days.  In the meantime, she'll participate in the theatrical therapy endorsed by the Polish doctor in charge of the facility.

Once at the institution, the sense of reality--odd though it may have been--rapidly breaks down.  The evil orderly (who seemingly runs the place) seems to be using it as a dance hall/brothel.  The other patients--who are all attractive young women--perform on stage and in the bedroom for the local influential men.  When the doctor gets our girl--now called Babydoll--to dance for the first time, everyone around her is stunned.  They stare at her, open eyed and open mouthed, as if she was the most amazing thing they had ever seen.  The audience doesn't see the dance--instead, we see a story of Babydoll talking to a mentor and asking for the tools to achieve power and escape.  He tells her that she needs a map, fire, a knife, and a key.  Back at the dance hall, the orderly decides to give Babydoll to the High Roller--a man that will arrive in the clinic in five days.  Babydoll convinces her fellow inmates to seek the items with her in order to escape.  Each time they seek an item, they use Babydoll's dancing to distract their mark.  As with the first dance, the audience never sees what Babydoll does and instead sees a mission that becomes a metaphor for their task. 

Throughout the movie, Babydoll is seeking independence and power.  She wants to use the tools of her oppressors to set herself and the other women free.  The way she entrances her marks with her dancing is much the same way in which we viewers are stunned by the movie.  As the tagline claims, we are unprepared.  But more than that, we viewers are implicated in the crimes against women portrayed in the movie.  We are the audience being silenced and controlled by Babydoll's metaphorical dancing.  This is a movie that wants to empower women but at the same time uses them as objects of consumption.

This mixed message comes through loud and clear, and it's no wonder why women stayed away from the movie.  We've seen enough misogyny.  We don't need more fed to us as a metaphor for empowerment.  But at the same time, this film is not misogynistic.  It's confused, and that confusion hits the heart of our culture's relationship to women more accurately than any parable of hate or power.  Just like our culture, it can't decide if it's best to be a doll or a real girl.

When SNL used Sucker Punch as a passing mention in their skit, they knew exactly what they were doing.  They knew that this is not a movie for gay men--or for anyone other than a certain portion of the geek community.  They knew what they were saying when they glamorized Claudette Colbert to the detriment of living women.  Normally, I love SNL, but that week, I simply could not look beyond the misogyny. 

What does it say about me that I loved Sucker Punch?  Well, the simple facts of the matter are:
  1. I'm a geek.
  2. I like action movies.
  3. I like steampunk.
  4. I'm an academic with interests in gender studies, so the indeterminacy of the film's potential for misogyny and for empowerment gives me plenty to think about.
Basically, except for the fact that I'm female, I am part of this film's target audience and I enjoyed the complexity and layered nature of the film.

Friday, April 01, 2011

Review: This World We Live In


This World We Live In (Last Survivors, #3)This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


At long last, Miranda & Alex finally meet.



Now that a year has passed since everything changed, the world is trying to adapt. It's still a constant struggle to find food. Miranda's family is increasingly isolated in their house, only venturing out once a week for food. Remarkably, though, they have survived this year. With the coming of a wet and rainy Spring, their lives continue to change in unexpected ways.



First, they get a new family member. Miranda's brothers go to the Delaware to catch fish while the shad are running, and Matt meets Syl. They are married quickly, and the young woman upsets the balance of the household. She's been out in the world since the disaster, and while she doesn't talk about it much, her very presence forces Miranda to realize just how sheltered they've been.



Then, surprisingly, Miranda's father arrives. He and his pregnant wife, Lisa, had tried to find her family out west and failed. They've returned to be close to his older children, which is especially important to them now that Gabriel has been born. In addition to the three of them, they also bring three strangers: a large friendly man named Charlie and Alex & Julie Morales (of the dead the gone). Alex has a plan. He wants to take Julie to the convent/farm where he'd sent Brianna in the past, and after that, he wants to join a monastery.



But he didn't count on meeting Miranda and her fierce desire for life. In his desire to protect his sister, he can't see that families are reshaping themselves to include everyone beloved, not just kin.



Also, having survived a year in this new world doesn't mean that Miranda and Alex have mastered it. Surprises continue to await them, and some will be terrifying.



Pfeffer recently asked in her blog if readers would be like to read a fourth "Moon" book. I answered yes. This is a dark, dystopian world, and the characters make difficult choices. I want to know more about their survival. While I don't always like Alex & Miranda, I care about them and I want a future for them and their families. So, yes, I want a fourth Moon book!



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