What I Am Reading - Mockingjay

Mockingjay

Suzanne Collins

390 pages, read it in hardback

Well after months of procrastination I finally finished it.  What can I really say.  The entire series has produced a raving lunatic base and it's really the best thing for the YA crowd since Twilight.  Overall miss Collin's finishes it adequately I suppose.  It's hard for me since I became disenchanted with the series at the apex of book two, Catching Fire.  I found that I was no longer amused with Miss Everdeen and book three sees her put in even more grandiose and ridiculous situations. 

If you where hardcore into the series you will undoubtedly be happy with the third as most are.

I guess I just don't have much to say.

On a final note, this is the one that I am the most excited to see into film.  While the other two dally in a dystopian future relegated by the Capitol, Mockingjay crosses more into the realm of sci-fi in a dystopian future.  It will be interesting to see. 

What I Am Reading - The Dervish House

The Dervish House

Ian McDonald

359 pages, read it in wide paperback

Ian McDonald is a British author living in Belfast with a host of nominations and awards.  Only a matter of time until he pumps out something genre defining, in my opinion.

'The Dervish House' follows six characters over seven days and day one opens with a suicide bombing on a train in Istanbul in the year 2027, five years since Turkey joined the European Union.  The story itself follows these six characters as their stories cross in weird ways beginning with the bombing.  Each character presented is unique and interesting and are delivered with the .  Necdet, a youth with a problematic past is a witness to the grisly explosion and flees the scene to keep from being questioned.   Leyla, a freshly graduated college student hunts for a job when the explosion results in a traffic jam causing her to miss an important interview.  Can, a small boy restricted to a world of muted sound explores the world around him using a series of very high-tech bots.  Through these bots, Can witnesses the aftermath of the explosion and Necdet fleeing the scene.  Georgios, one of the few Greeks left in Istanbul and also a former activist is enjoying tea with a few other remaining Greek's when the explosion interrupts the conversation.  Adnan a commodity trader is planning something big, but first he must get through this traffic jam caused by the explosion to meet the other 'Ultralords of the Universe.'  Ayse, Adnan's wife, is a curio collector and rare arts dealer when in the aftermath of the explosion a man approaches looking for a weird artifact of myth and legend. 

 Throughout the book as the web thickens these characters become more and more entangled.  It's much like constructing  a card house which must be patiently and carefully assembled with painstaking effort.  It's a rich tale and McDonald has left little to waste over the course of the seven days.  As much effort as it take to build it, it finishes crisp and nice and fell to the ending as quickly as I would expect a house of cards to deconstruct.  I was satisfied and enjoyed the experience, so much so that I will be looking for more McDonald next year.

There are things, unflattering things, that must be said about 'The Dervish House' though.  It was a painful read for me, not by any failed prose of McDonald but because he chose the vast intricate cultural tapestry of Turkey and I am just not familiar with naming conventions or cultural nuances of the Far East, Middle East, Greece, and Russia.  If you throw in the fact that it's the year 2027 and technology has improved with it's own naming conventions as well, things get complicated quickly.  Furthermore, with six seamlessly un-connected characters in the beginning you are thrown a lot of information at the get go.  Something some readers are not prepared for.  At times it had to go back and read pages at a time to ensure I got the picture that McDonald was painting.  But have no fear, it lightens up and you get used to it with a climatic ending that I think most readers will be happy with.

Tis a wonderfully fun book indeed.

What I Am Reading - Eaters of the Dead

Eaters of the Dead

Michael Crichton

304 pages, read it in paperback

It's Michael Crichton.  He is probably best known for Dinosaur parks, raging guardian apes in Africa, odd perfectly circular objects, and an exhaustive time-trip back to Feudal France but he is also responsible for this, The 13th Warrior, er… I mean 'The Eaters of the Dead.'  This also happens to be May's selection for OLT book club, picked by none other than Sam.

The story itself follows Ahmad ibn Fadlan on his journey to meet the king of the Volga Bulgars on commission from the Caliph of Baghdad.  Along the way he runs into a group of Vikings who detain him and through a series of events he and twelve Vikings are selected to battle an ancient and horrifying threat far away and must include Ahmad ibn Fadlan as their 13th warrior, required to be triumphant. 

It's an easy read and myself and most of the club finished well ahead of expectations.  It is delivered as a sauced up eye witness account from the point of view of Ahmad ibn Fadlan from beginning to end.  Crichton goes on to explain that the majority of this work is source material from Ahmad himself and that he simply jazzed it up and switched ordering on most things, leveraging elements of Beowulf to fill in the gaps.  I would highly recommend reading Crichton's afterward at the end of the novel. 

-Potential Spoilers-

 Must be some sort of record but Lucid book club completed with a strong showing of ten people which is the highest total we have had thus far for any selection.  Our favorite characters included Herger the translator and Buliwyf the staunch expedition leader with not a single vote for Ahmad ibn Fadlan. 

Overall people where pretty neutral about favorite and least favorite moments which says a lot about the book I think.  Really just mid pack swinging straight down foul line for a double.  Not the worst not the best.  Most everyone's least favorite moments involved parts of Viking culture as its depicted in some facets while most of the memorable moments where the more action orientated portions.

I wanted to highlight this Lucid member response specifically because I felt it summed it up pretty good and echoed what Lucid book club thought right on the money "I can't remember any particular scene actually bothering me. I thought this was an OK book when I read it but pretty forgettable. Crichton was a doctor before he was a novelist, and I think he's always better when he's writing about science (Andromeda Strain), even if it's junk science (Jurassic Park, Sphere, Congo), than when he starts mucking around in historical fiction (The Great Train Robbery, Eaters of the Dead)." -ELeach

Out of ten, being the best,  our individual scores:

Dust: 6

Th3ee: 5

Andy: 5

Hylen: 5

Gee: 5

Dave: 6

SS: 5

Tom (sick): 5 - pending

ELeach: 5

HarryB: 8

For average of  5.5 out of 10.