Friday, September 13, 2013

Review: The Companions


The Companions
The Companions by R.A. Salvatore

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I received a copy of this title for review from Netgalley.

This is the first book by R.A. Salvatore that I've ever read, and I can understand this popularity better now. My husband has long been a fan of his, but I've found Salvatore intimidating because there are simply so many titles in his series. Thankfully, The Companions was a good entry point into the series.

As the novel opens, several characters meet again for the first time. They have all apparently died at one time or another, and they are in what seems to be a resting place before their final destination. They are offered a choice: they can go to the reward promised to them by their god, or they can choose to be reborn. Their friend Drizzt needs them, and if they choose rebirth, they will be able to be there for him.

The four friends--the Companions of the Hall--debate whether they want to return to life or seek out that final reward. What will it mean to turn their backs on the reward? What will their new lives be like?

Without getting too spoilery, I can't share much more detail. The novel follows the new lives these characters lead. They are reborn as infants, but with full memory and personality. While they may still see themselves as their past lives, their new lives and relationships will shape this new incarnation of themselves. How much can they hold onto the past? How can they live this new life, knowing that they're simply waiting to resume the old life that had died long ago?

Parts of this book did confuse me. The novel was quite clear about when the events were occurring; Salvatore provided both year names and numbers. However, since I'm unfamiliar with the Forgotten Realms calendar, neither of them mean much to me. I'm certain that I missed allusions to places and events that would have been quite meaningful for a fan of the series.

Salvatore's writing did irritate me a little. He's overly fond of exclamation marks, but I did adapt to that eventually.

Overall, I liked this book and found it to be a surprisingly deep and entertaining story.



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Sunday, September 08, 2013

Review: All These Things I've Done


All These Things I've Done
All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was an enjoyable book, but I hesitate to say much more than that about it. While it was a fun read, I found it a little too uneven for my taste. The writing style is relatively easy to read, which would indicate a younger audience, but the content (mafioso style executions, lust) was perhaps a bit much for that audience. Further, I wasn't certain I could buy into the concept of the story.

Anya lives in a future New York--about 60 years into the future. Her grandmother would have been one of today's teens. She, her older brother, her little sister, and her dying grandmother live together in an old penthouse. Anya's father was a leader of a crime family that dealt in illegal chocolate, and he was murdered by unknown persons. Her mother was also killed in a hit--a hit which damaged Anya's older brother, Leo, leaving him mentally unable to achieve adulthood. The city is unstable, and so is Anya's family. While she wants nothing to do with the business, she gradually finds herself caught by the mere connection of sharing a name.

The New York City of this novel is driven by scarcity. Water has been drying up, to the point where many lakes are dry, and it is expensive. Paper is taxed, although there seems to be enough to print all sorts of vouchers needed to buy luxury items like ice cream. Alcohol consumption is legal for all ages, but chocolate is banned. Dealing in chocolate is a serious crime. Speakeasies serve coffee at all hours.

The problem of this book lies in its concept. For a futuristic society like this to work well, there needs to be a reason for the unreasonable. The ban on chocolate is both bizarre and unexplained. Anya explains that chocolate is addictive, but that's not a good reason to ban it. The idea that the government would suddenly ban chocolate, and that otherwise ordinary confectioners would become gangsters as a result, simply doesn't work well. Zevin's picture of high school classrooms doesn't function well, either. While I would agree that it's a mistake to measure the high school of this book against ours today, I had a very difficult time suspending my disbelief in order to accept that it was common for a school to offer three years of Forensic Science classes.

While I did like the book, and I might look into borrowing the sequel, I did not like this book well enough to wholeheartedly recommend it to others.



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Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Say Nice Things About Detroit: A Meditation

"No one moves back to Hiroshima."*
On my way to and from my classes this last week, I've listened to Scott Lasser's book, Say Nice Things About Detroit.  It often irritated me more than most of the books I've read in years. 

Let's get one thing straight: I love Detroit.  Admittedly, I don't live in the city, so I haven't had to deal with the same problems the residents of the city have had to confront.  However, I've worked here for ten years.  At any time after those first four years or so, I could have easily taken a job elsewhere.  But I haven't.  Part of the reason for that is the fact that I love Detroit.  It's an amazing city.  When I first arrived in the city in 2002, it was in the middle of an "up swing," and the city was filled with hope.  The years when Dennis Archer was mayor had been good years, and Kwame Kilpatrick had only just taken office.  He was a charismatic leader, and it really seemed possible that Detroit was turning around.  Seemed is the operative word there.  What I didn't know at the time was that Detroit feeds on those cycles of hope.  Every few years, things will look better here, but then they'll go downhill again.  If not for the cycles of hope, the city would have collapsed long ago.  Some might think that it's collapsed now.  The bankruptcy is all over the news (both nationally and internationally--my friend in Vienna learned about it on her local news).  Some are trying to say that the bankruptcy is the ultimate proof that Detroit has fallen for good.  Others are trying to spin it that this is what will restore the city.  For me, I just see it as another stage in the cycle.  This is a dark stage, yes, but I think the riots may have been darker.  Why do I love this city if I can say such things about it?  Well, simply, I love the fact that, no matter how bad things are, Detroit doesn't give up.  That cycle of hope is addictive, and I find myself always thinking that Detroit can still have a prosperous future.  It won't look like the prosperity of the past, but that's probably a good thing.

How does all this relate to that passage from the book?  Well, that passage offended me.  It's from the point of view of David, one the main characters of the novel.  He's a 45-year-old lawyer, and his father has invited him to move back to Detroit.  His first response is think that there's nothing in the city for him or for anyone else.  For him, the destruction of Detroit is similar to that of Hiroshima, the first city destroyed by a nuclear bomb.  After the bomb struck Hiroshima, thousands of people continued to die due to the radiation given off by the buildings themselves.  The city was toxic and damaged those that tried to live in it.  Except that's not the end of the story.  The city rebuilt itself.  There's a park dedicated to peace in the city near the site of Ground Zero.  It's now a vibrant city, rebuilt from the rubble of the bomb.

While looking at the comparison that way makes Detroit seem better--as if it, too, can recover like Hiroshima has--I still don't like the metaphor.  Detroit is not broken, for one thing.  It's struggling, yes.  It's dangerous, yes.  But even though much of it has been abandoned, it is not broken.  The damage to Hiroshima was sudden and stunning.  The damage to Detroit has been creeping and slow, with a sudden boost of speed during and after the riots.  If it had been fast, we might have been able to "fix" it already.

Eventually, David does decide to return to Detroit.  He falls in love with the city again, and readers are supposed to think that hope has returned to the city with him (after all, he now has a baby son and an American car).  What Lasser might not realize is that his hero was just another part of that same old cycle.  Hope, followed by despair.  Followed by hope . . .

*I listened to this an audiobook, so I don't have a page or chapter information for the quotation.

Lasser, Scott.  Say Nice Things About Detroit: A Novel.  Narr. Kevin Kenerly. Blackstone Audio, 2012.