Un Lun Dun - China Mieville

First - "Character development" requires more than throwing a character into a situation.

Second - Remember those 70's mystery shows where you spent 57 minutes trying to figure out who the killer was, and then they introduced a new character in the last 3 minutes and that was the bad guy?

OK - that gives you a glimpse of how I feel about this book. There is SO MUCH going on that NOTHING ever really gets explored. We keep meeting more and more and MORE characters.

There are some clever parts. I really liked the UnGun, and I smiled at the way the "quest" was shortened - clever. But, overall I was disappointed.

The Book of Lies - Brad Meltzer

That's better. As previously posted, I had an issue with Meltzer's first book - The Tenth Justice. This novel is much tighter, and the situation - well, OK, it's nuts, but I really liked it. Even though several characters are over the top and take bizarre actions (I'm thinking Naomi here), they all seem to have their own world view that they stay true to. The protagonist makes some mistakes, but they don't happen because he sacrifices his integrity, and they "work" - it's what he'd do.

This isn't "literature," but it's great fun.

The Tenth Justice - Brad Meltzer

We've been watching Meltzer's new show, Decoded, on the History Channel, so I decided to try some of his books. (Faith, my wife, has already read some and enjoyed them.)

This is Meltzer's first novel - a legal thriller. Yes - he got me - I didn't figure it out. Yes - it was fast-paced and kept my interest. Yes - I'm going to read some of his other stuff. BUT...

I really had a problem with the initial premise of the book. Granted, the protagonist had to get himself into a mess for the story, but - I mean, really? I'm a strong proponent of "own your mistakes and be up front about them." The fact that this whole thing was based on an "Oh, look what I did. We can't tell anybody - we'll be clever and hide it." just bothered me.

Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld

This alternate history is the January 2011 selection for the Prince William Public Library's Science Fiction Book Group. It moves at the pace of most YA books. The story is interesting and and easy read, but I didn't really feel "engrossed" by it. The relationships between the characters took predictable turns, and the story (part of a trilogy?) ended with exactly the cliffhangers that I expected. While the ideas of the "evolutionary science" pitted against the "mechanical science" was intriguing, the speed of development in both areas caused a loss of credibility for me, given the WWI setting of the novel.

This works as a YA book, but I don't think it makes it outside the YA category.

Side Jobs - Jim Butcher

I got lucky and found the latest Dresden book at our library. This is a collection of short stories, most of which have appeared elsewhere in print. I really enjoyed the book, and had only read one of the entries before. One tale is told from Harry's brother's POV - this was really good. The last story, Aftermath, is the new one, and takes place just after the end of the last novel. It's really well done, and basically leaves the story open to go in any direction at all.

Highly recommend this one.

mick - Chris Lynch

We gathered up books to sell several months ago, and Charlie, my 16-year-old, said this one was really good and I should read it. I didn't.

While going through the stack one last time, we again came across this, and Charlie again said it was worth the read.

This is a surprising little YA book about prejudice. It's pretty harsh in its depictions, and while I'm not sure everything is dead on, it has some disturbing moments of truth that can apply to everyone. Briefly, Mick is a young Irish-American who has to come to terms with his feelings about others.

It's a quick read, and worth the little bit of your time it'll take to go through it.

In the beginning...

So here we go. I've decided to try to post opinions on stuff I'm reading (and probably about other things that cross my mind.)

I got a Nook Color for my birthday, and downloaded a lot of free content I had from my last e-reader (Bookkeen - DON'T DO IT! The thing broke in 3 months, and they wanted $100 to replace.)

Recently, I've been re-visiting Keith Laumer's Retief! I didn't enjoy this series when I first encountered it in my teens, but I'm really liking it now. I guess with age comes the cynicism needed to appreciate this work. It's reminding me a bit of Asimov's Foundation series, what with the short vignettes and surprise (or at least twisted) endings.

Now - let's see how long before I get back to this thing....