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Graceling (Graceling Realm #1) by Kristin Cashore.

Graceling (Graceling Realm #1) by Kristin Cashore. Via Diamonds in the Library.

This book is: A YA fantasy novel, the first in a series, about a girl with a supernatural gift for killing.
Other elements: Right vs wrong, romance, friendship.
Read it: If you like YA fantasy, if you enjoy ass-kicking women, if you liked The Hunger Games.
Overall rating: 8/10

I really like reading YA fantasy, even though I’m in my mid-20’s. (Mid-to-late 20’s? Where do you draw the line? I’m clinging to “mid” for now.) YA fantasy is comforting – usually good things happen to the good people and bad things happen to the bad people, for the most part. It’s free of things like vivid descriptions of how clothing in different lands shows different parts of breasts (ahem, Robert Jordan). It also tends to be simpler overall, unlike some epic fantasy series which can become extremely, sometimes overly, complex. Not to hate on those books, I enjoy them too, but sometimes they’re just not what you want.

I’ve read enough fantasy that I have certain pet peeves that I take as a sign that a book is going to be bad in a way only a fantasy book can be bad. This book was guilty of one of these right away and it took me quite a few pages to accept that I liked the book anyway. The sin? Weirdly-colored eyes. Bad fantasy novels love characters with weirdly colored eyes. (Even good fantasy novels use this sometimes.) In this case, I forgave it.

The characters who have weirdly colored eyes are those who have been blessed/cursed with the magical powers that exist in this book’s universe: something called a grace. A person who has a grace has an innate extraordinary skill for something. Swimming, cooking, climbing trees – it seems to be limitless in scope and can involve multiple abilities, as long as they come under the heading of the grace. I think it’s a cool idea, and not one I’ve encountered before.
The other really great thing about this book is the ass-kicking heroine. She’s a nobly-born girl – a close relative of the king – and a Graceling. Her grace is killing.  Rather than hushing it up and trying to keep her penned-in and properly feminine, the King uses his deadly niece as a one-woman goon squad, sending her to break the fingers of people who annoy him and that sort of thing. She doesn’t particularly like this, but feels unable to disobey, so she starts finding ways to use her grace to help people in secret. This leads her to make a new friend, who helps her to discover a new way to live her life and leads her into a spectacular adventure. I love YA fantasy.
My main complaint is that the writing in this book is not always the best. The plot and the characters are engaging enough that it’s still very readable, but it has moments of being rather wooden. Despite that, I still enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone who likes YA. I am already on the waiting list to check out the next in the series from my library.


The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

My review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark HaddonThis book is: A story told from the point of view of a 15-year old boy with Asperger’s or autism.

Other elements: Pets, parenting a special needs child, math.
Read it: If you’re interested in psychology, if you appreciate excellent first-person perspective.
Overall rating: 7.5/10

I started reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time once before and either it didn’t grab me or I had to return it to whoever I’d borrowed it from (I don’t remember). This time, however, I was able to read it all the way through and I was glad.

This novel is written from the first person point of view of Christopher, a 15-year-old boy who tells us he has “Behavioral Problems.” It sounds to me like he has Autism or Asperger’s, but the book never mentions a diagnosis. I don’t know much about Autism or Autism-spectrum disorders, but Christopher was an interesting character. I think Haddon’s approach of writing the book from Christopher’s perspective was what made this book remarkable. Christopher’s way of looking at the world is fascinating.

Christopher was prone to going off on long mathematical tangents, which bored me. They made sense for the character, but I really hate math. I skimmed these parts.

One of the more interesting characters in the book was Christopher’s father. I really liked how I, as the reader, witnessed the same moments with the father as Christopher did, but I could read them differently.

Not all of the peripheral characters – like Christopher’s mother or the neighbors – were anything special, but it didn’t keep me from enjoying the book. I’d call it solidly good. If it sounds interesting to you, it’s probably worth your time to read it.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLainThe Paris Wife by Paula McLain.

This book is: Historical fiction about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife.

Other elements: Women not standing up for themselves, adultery, dependence on men, emotional abuse, alcoholism, polyamorous relationships, bullfighting.

Read it: If you are fascinated by Hemingway, if you like Lifetime movies, if you don’t mind weak female characters, you’re stranded somewhere with absolutely nothing else to do and have run out of thoughts.

Overall rating: 2/10

You may have already surmised that I did not like this book. It’s not really the book’s fault. It’s not badly written. In fact, I enjoyed parts of it. But I disliked every one of the characters except for the baby, who isn’t born until halfway through the book and doesn’t learn to talk until the end.
That is, I dislike the characters when I can tell them apart. Throughout this whole book, all of the characters we encounter come up with nicknames for each other. Multiple nicknames. Let me tell you a true thing: when the characters are called by different names on every page, it’s very hard to care what’s happening.
So. The Paris Wife. Her name is Hadley (aka Tatie, Cat, Feather Cat, Hen, Hash, Hashedad, or Hasovitch). Her husband is Ernest Hemingway (aka Tatie, Stump, Hem, Wem, Bird, Nesto, or Papa).
Time for spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to hear them.
For the majority of the novel, Hadley is fine but boring, a bit of a doormat. She sacrifices her dreams for her husband’s career, lives to please him, puts up with his every whim, caters to his moods, looks the other way when he flirts with women. She’s weak and uninspiring, but also under the thumb of a depressed man who doles out healthy helpings of emotional abuse.
The title of this book is brilliant. This character is a woman who defines herself completely by the fact that she is a wife and she exists to attend to her husband. I think she’s happy for about 5 pages of the novel.
What really blew my mind was when Hadley went on an extended vacation with Hemingway and his mistress (her best friend). Hadley knew they were having an affair and professed to being torn up inside while she bantered cheerfully and went on diving excursions with them. At one point, the mistress actually gets into bed with Hemingway and Hadley and has sex with him while she’s in the bed. It’s not a threesome. They just think she won’t notice, or think she doesn’t have the stones to object. And they’re right.
Also: Hadley and Hemingway worry a lot about having the money to pay rent, etc, but they also travel extensively through Europe, drink champagne like water, and usually have hired domestic help. Reality check?
I think there would have been a way to write this character so that she appeared to be in the grips of emotional crisis, paralyzed by feeling, incapable of action at this moment, but this author did not succeed in portraying that. She portrayed a woman who just believed her husband’s feelings were more important than her own, and didn’t know how to stand up for herself. Which still could have been written in an interesting way – except that it wasn’t.
There was no tension in this book. Everything was just inevitable and hopeless, all the time.None of the characters grew, and neither did I, reading about them. This book might be someone’s cup of tea, but not mine.

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