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The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.

The Lies of Locke Lamora (The Gentleman Bastard Sequence #1) by Scott Lynch.

The Lies of Locke Lamora (The Gentleman Bastard Sequence #1) by Scott Lynch.

This book is: giving me conflicting feelings.
Other elements: fabulous con men, creative fantasy world, thieves, friendship.
Read it: if you like a good con man and you don’t mind a lot of description.
Overall rating: 7.4/10

I thought I was going to love this book. I love a good con man, especially when he’s working with other good con men to do really sneaky things. This book has a fantastic band of thieves. They’re jaunty, they’re clever, they’re resourceful, and they banter. They even have a great name – the Gentlemen Bastards. You get to witness their thief training, which is another thing that I love to read about.
Then, about 1/3 of the way in, the story takes a turn and I became unsure about how much I liked it. I actually put the book down for a whole week and only returned to it because the library due date was approaching. The story redeemed itself somewhat by the end, but I still can’t say I loved it. There’s a sequel, but I’m not sure if I’m going to track it down or not yet.
Let’s break it down by pros and cons. I’m not going to use any specific spoilers, but if you like to have no hints at all about what’s going to happen in a book you may not want to read the rest of this review.

Pros:

–          Con men! They’re resourceful and entertaining, with vaguely Robin Hood-like motivation. This gives me a crush on them.
–          Interesting, extensive, and detailed universe with creative fantastical details.
–          Really well thought out fictional society. This author knows exactly how his fictional city is laid out, who makes up which classes of people, where they all live, what their houses look like, which holidays they celebrate, which gods they believe in, and who hates who. It’s really impressive.
–          Excellent description of certain very beautiful aspects of said fictional world. Ex: glass palace, alchemical gardens, razor-sharp garden made of glass flowers.
–          Strong female characters. The lead characters are all men, but they meet with (and are occasionally thwarted by) strong, smart, and powerful women.
–          Multi-faceted and interesting main characters.
–          Really cool thief training scenes and thief-like hijinks.
–          Sharks.
Cons:
–          A little too much time spent describing said interesting, extensive, and detailed universe’s fantastical details.  This book could have been 50 pages shorter and lost nothing. (Although it is a really cool world.)
–          Excessively tragic events. I know you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet and I do hate authors who are afraid to upset their readers, but come on. Was it necessary to make things THIS bad for him?
–          Overly powerful villain. Even Voldemort has weaknesses. I spent a lot of this book thinking “wow, there really is no way around this guy, is there?”
–          Slightly deus ex machina feel to the way they do defeat said powerful bad guy. It’s sort of a “You seem to be about to defeat me…except for this FACT THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING” kind of deal.
–          The lead characters are all men. There is no female character who gets the last word or the final triumph over any of the main male characters. The women win some battles but no wars.

So there you have it. There were things about this book that I really liked and other things that I really disliked. Please read it and discuss it with me so that I can figure out how I feel.

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Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk.

Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk. An extremely well-written and creative book that I found disturbing, shocking, and discomfiting. Click through for full review. Via Diamonds in the Library.

Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk.

This book is: flabbergasting.
Other elements: sex. STDs. Porn. Revulsion. Incest. Dandruff. Suicide.
Read it: if you have absolutely no threshold for depravity.

Overall rating: 4/10

I really don’t know what to say about this one. I read Choke by Chuck Palahniuka while ago and I thought that book was pretty raunchy. This book is that book’s unwashed older cousin who bought it its first hit of ecstasy.

I don’t consider myself to be someone who is easily shocked by sexual subject matter. I ran a sex education program in college. I’ve answered some really weird questions from creative 18-year-olds and I believe I answered them rather calmly (and accurately, I hope).
This book made me want to take a shower. Not a cold shower, as in to cool me off because I was turned on, but a cleansing shower, perhaps with exfoliating soap, because my brain felt icky after reading it. This book is…viscous. It’s sticky.
Why a 4/10 and not lower? Because the writing is excellent. If the descriptions weren’t so vivid and the characters so creative and complex, this book would just be unremarkable smut. Instead, it’s luridly repellent and shockingly revolting. It takes serious skill to write something that inspires this much of a recoil response.
This book also included a lot of trivia about celebrities who suffered either severe discomfort, bodily harm, or death for the sake of their fame. Macabre, but really interesting. I don’t know if it was all true, but a few of the facts were ones I’d heard elsewhere before. The sprinkling of factual tidbits throughout a novel is classic Palahniuk and it’s a tendency of his that I always enjoy.

If this book has any other redeeming qualities, I’m not sure what they are. It tells an upsetting story in an uncomfortable, disgusting, and off-putting way. But – as always with Chuck Palahniuk– the writing is superb.

Contains sexual assault.

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We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.

 We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.

 We Need to Talk About Kevinby Lionel Shriver.

This book is: terrifying and brilliant.
Other elements: parenting, marriage, children, psychopaths, motherhood, school shootings.
Read it: if you enjoy really chillingly brilliant characters. If you’re not prone to nightmares.
Overall rating: 9.25/10

Goodreads summary:

“Eva never really wanted to be a mother – and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.”

This book is awesome. You know from the very beginning what the major event at the end of the book is going to be – Kevin’s murderous rampage – but seeing him grow up through his mother’s eyes is fascinating and terrifying.  The author also manages the impressive feat of telling you about the big event at the end of the story right from the beginning but keeping you interested and surprising you all along the way.

Shriver keeps Kevin’s story feeling relevant by weaving in details of actual fact – for example, the way Kevin disdainfully discusses the details of real school shootings like he’s a professional dissecting a colleague’s work.Kevin himself is terrifying. He’s also creative. As someone who is a really big fan of the TV show Criminal Minds, I can tell you there is such a thing as a stereotypical teenage psychopath. From his hobbies to his clothing choices, Kevin is anything but a stereotype. He also seems to be aware of the stereotypes he could fall into, and goes to some effort to avoid being cliché. I thought that was a marvelous touch.

Eva, Kevin’s mother, is really interesting. She isn’t particularly likable but she feels real. She’s snobby and fallible and makes a few really reprehensible choices. Overall, she’s human and believable. Her arc over the length of the book is stunningly well accomplished. I actually think her personal growth by the end of the novel is one of the best examples of subtle but significant character development I’ve ever encountered. Her relationship with Kevin is beyond fascinating.

My only complaint is that the book is a little bit slow getting started. The flashbacks really take their time, and I occasionally found myself wishing there was a bit less of the really early stuff – but it was worth it by the time I got to the end and I knew so much about the characters.

If you read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (or read my review of Gone Girl and were intrigued) definitely read this book. It’s the same kind of thing, but even better.

This book was made into a movie a few years ago with Tilda Swinton as the mother. I’m curious to know if it was any good. Has anyone seen it?

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