Review: Monsoon Rains and Icicle Drops by Libby Southwell

Monsoon Rains and Icicle Drops is a memoir written by a founder of AdoptSriLanka, a charity which aims to help people reestablish their livelihoods after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. Partial proceeds from the book go to AdoptSriLanka, so I feel a little bad that I loaned it from the library instead of buying it. Libby starts the book in a Mongolian ger, saying it’s about as far away from home as you can get. She’s cold, miserable and missing the love of her life. You can tell this is not your average adventure. The next few chapters go into Libby’s life before she travels – her early working life, getting engaged to her boyfriend Justin and his tragic death in a climbing accident and then the deaths of several close friends. Desperate to get away, Libby takes a high stress job in Sri Lanka, but soon finds she needs to get away again and in finding some of the most obscure parts of Asia, find herself.

Libby travels through Asia for the next year, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends or new associates. She travels through Sri Lanka and India, into Nepal and Tibet and the southern parts of China. She heads up to Mongolia to spend time with migrating herders in the desert. I don’t want to go into the minutia of her travels, I want you to read the book for yourself. While it describes the sights and sounds (and smells) of mainland Asia, this book is so much more than a travel narrative. Libby opens her very soul and pours out the heartache and sorrow she feels about the loss of her beloved Jus. And somehow, wandering ancient pilgrim paths and living emerged in the cultures she is visiting, Libby comes through her grief and emerges stronger.

It sounds like a coming of age memoir for grown ups, doesn’t it? And it is, but not in an overbearing way. And Libby really threw herself whole-heartedly into the places she visited – the book is an anthro students dream travelogue and I read the entire thing in a night and wanted more once I was done. Forget Eat Pray Love and read this instead (or if you enjoyed it, try this as well).

Review: the Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards

The Lake of Dreams is Kim Edwards second novel. Her first, The Memory Keepers Daughter, was from all acounts excellant. I haven’t read it because when my mum got me a copy for my 24th birthday, I accidentally left it in the sun room and my dog ate it.

Come my 27th birthday and I got my mum a copy of Tobsha Learner’s ‘Yearn’ (yes, our birthday’s are on the same day) and she wrinkled her nose up, said Eww and told me she only had Toshba’s earlier book because my Dad had purchased it. I read ‘Quiver’ when i was 14 and loved it – next year I’ll get mum a voucher. She got me a copy of The lake of Dreams – hopefully next year she’ll get me a voucher too.

Despite my misgivings, I actually enjoyed the book and read it in 2 days while I was home sick from work. It’s about a woman called Lucy who has a terrible habit of running away from her own life. Unemployed and with her current reationship at a standstill, she returns to her mother’s house in a small town called the Lake of dreams. Lucy soon discovers the town – and the people in it – are not exactly what she remembers. feeling like an outsider in her own hometown, Lucy becomes enraptured with the story of a long lost relative – the tragic Rose and her beloved daughter Iris.

 But tracing the history of Rose and the mysterious and beautiful glass windows she is somehow connected to, forces Lucy to look closely at her own family and how the past and the future are crashing together for the Jarrett clan. With her partner Yoshi far away, and uncertain of their future together, Lucy finds her heart stirring for an old flame.

 The story weaves together history, family discord, beautiful scenery and heartbreak and presents it to you in an easy, flowing package. Lucy is believable as a character and if i personally didn’t like the choices she makes throughout the book, well that just makes her more realistic to me. A complex and well researched narrative, the Lake of Dreams has made me think perhaps getting a non-chewed copy of the Memory Keeper’s Daughter wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.

Review: Naamah’s Curse by Jaqueline Carey

I waited for this book for what seemed like years (it was about 3 months) and read it the whole way through in bed last night. And then I was cross with myself because the next book will probably be quite a while in coming. I just love Carey’s books. Kushiel’s Dart caught me and captivated me and her writing has only gotten better since then. Naamah’s Curse is the second in Carey’s latest trilogy (maybe a quad? We can hope), which is set a few generations after Sidonie and Imriel’s reign in Terra d’Ange and features a new main character, Moirin. You can read my review of the first book, Naamah’s Kiss here.

Naamah’s Curse explores some new lands and re-visits others. In the beginning, Moirin is still on the trail of Bao, who holds the other half of her soul. After a long, treacherous journey across the Tatar inhabited steppes in winter, Moirin finally catches up with her lost love. But the reunion is not what she’s longed for – Bao is married to the daughter of the leader of the Tartars, the Khan, who captures Moirin and sells her to followers of Jeshua ben Josef. Seeing Moirin torn from Bao, cut off from her magic and force to convert to a harsh religion in a foreign land is gut wrenching. Even when she escapes, the taint of the cruel priest follows her back across the tartar lands and all the way down to the Himalayas. Once again in search of Bao, who is in great danger, Moirin finds her fate has become even more tangled with those she meets along the way. She must defeat the Falconer and his wife, the Spider Queen in order to free Bao and a harem of unwilling consorts, but at what cost to herself? Will her divine gifts be taken from her now, after she fought so long to not surrender them to the Yeshuite god? And will Bao and her ever be free to go home, together?

While Naamah’s Curse still has the greatly detailed and intimate sex scenes that are one of Carey’s trademarks (I suggest a cold shower midway through reading, just to keep you on track), it also examines some of the great issues that have plagued mankind since the beginning. What is belief? Is it a choice? Can faith be thrust upon someone? Can someone change so completely they are unrecognisable? And then, could they change back? While Moirin stays true to her Maghuin Dhonn and loyal to the Bright Lady, Naamah, Carey doesn’t hesitate to delve into Christian dogma and demonstrate that there are good and true and beautiful parts to that religion. What is abhorred, in the book and in real life, is the zealous methods of conversion and the harsh condemnation of those who change differently. This rang very true for me – everyone should be able to believe what they wish to believe, without being forced or threatened or harassed. Each religion has it’s beauty and it’s darkness – the beauty from the divine and the darkness from the fallibility of man who deciphers the divine message. I’ll stick with my ‘An it hurt none, do as you will’ as a creed and I’ll thank you not to even bother printing your religious views and arguments on my blog, but I did want to note that the book gives a fair accounting of a variety of religions, neither condemning nor encouraging one over the other.

Enough religion, lets talk about sex. Carey’s writing is at its best at two points. When she’s asking – through Moirin’s voice – questions about the way people treat each other and why and when she’s making people naked and beautiful. Moirin is definitely not a monogamous character. I can’t actually bring to mind any of Carey’s main characters who are, with the exception of Jocelyn. While some will hum and ha about this, instead it is a thing to be celebrated. A natural act of love, written in beautiful (and never vulgar) prose, is something to be celebrated and cherished and more writers should practise the art of writing believable and gorgeous sex scenes into their fantasy. Hell, into their every day novels! I think this is why Carey’s writing sings to me so – while it’s never boring and there is high fantasy and epic adventure on every second page, what really gets me is the beautiful attitude towards sex and love and worship that Carey gives all her main characters*, often combining all three into a single act. More people should take on this attitude.

I actually think that this series demonstrates Carey’s fulfillment as an author. She really has excelled herself by taking religion, sexuality and travel and weaving it all together into a fantastic high-fantasy adventure which people will enjoy whether or not they stop to think about the bigger issues behind fighting demons and finding your soulmate. Buy the book. Or borrow it from a library/read it on-line and save trees. And while you’re at it, buy me a kindle so I can save trees too. Now I’m off to whinge about the fact that I finished Naamah’s Curse the day I got it and now have to find something else to read this week. Any recommendations? Especially with juicy, well-written sex scenes. Let me know in the comments what you guys have read lately! xx

*Even ones who have been badly treated, like Imriel, are still able to see the divine in the act of sex.

Review: The Butterfly Mosque by G Willow Wilson

The Butterfly Mosque is a memoir. It’s not an autobiography because it doesn’t run a perfect timeline. Willow (I think the G stands for Gwendolyn, but don’t quote me) jumps back and forth quite a bit between using ‘I remember when…’ and ‘I was doing…’ which for me, made the story more engaging. It’s also a bit of a travel narrative as Willow spends a year immersed in Muslim culture in Egypt. This is not a book about Islam. It has lots of references to Islam, Islamic writers and the Quran* and the main character does convert to Islam within the first few chapters of the book, but it’s still not a book about Islam. It is a book about Willow, the faith and culture she embraces and the many, many contradictions she sees while being an American girl married to an Egyptian in a Muslim country.

Willow heads to Egypt after college to spend a year teaching at an English language school in Cairo. Having secretly and somewhat uncomfortably, given her atheist background and the recent events of September 11, embraced Islam, Willow arrives in Egypt with little knowledge of the culture, but ready to embrace all that it entails . She meets Omar and finds herself falling in love with a man she has never even touched. Determined to stay in Egypt with Omar, Willow officially converts to Islam and marries him. Despite being welcomed into Omar’s family and free to worship the god she has chosen, Willow finds assimilation into Egyptian culture difficult. She slowly becomes more and more accepted in her community, but there are problems when she wants to travel the Middle East and even more difficulty when she wants to return home to the States.

This book is a loving recount of a young girl’s year in Egypt. Willow speaks of her hardships and her joys in gorgeous prose and writes observations about religion, culture and humanity that are wise beyond her years. My favourites include

‘With remarkable foresight, the chancellor of BU [Boston University] kept classes in session that day, becoming one of the first to argue that if we disrupted our way of life we would be helping the terrorists.’

‘This is the heart of the clash of civilisations: not the hatred of the Other, but the self-hatred produced by the Other. This is what makes hatred so easy to propagate, and so difficult to counter even for those who question it’s authenticity.’

‘It was such a tantalizing contradiction, being a woman in the Middle East – far less free than a woman in the West, but far more appreciated. When people wonder why Arab women defend their culture, they focus on the way woman who don’t follow the rules are punished, and fail to consider the way women who do follow the rules are rewarded. When I finished an article or essay, all I got was an email from an editor saying, “thanks, got it.” When I cooked an iftar meal during Ramadan, a dozen tender voices blessed my hands.’

Doesn’t that last line just make your heart want to weep and sing at the same time? This book is challenging and engaging. It took me a long time to read and even longer to digest in order to write this review.** Read it if you are not Muslim in order to get a little bit of insight into a challenging and adoring world from the point of view of someone who is western born and educated (and therefore a little skeptical). Read it if you are Muslim for a sweet story of love and acceptance and of finding god when god was hard to find. Read it if you are atheist, change the capital g in god it a little g and you will still enjoy the story! But read it. Even if you don’t agree with everything that Willow says – I certainly didn’t, there were some very confronting parts to this book for me – you will still love the story and the writing is superb.

What have you read lately that made your heart sing? I’ve promised Richard that once I finish The Curse of the Mistwraith I’ll finally read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy***, but after that I’m wide open – give me something to read!

*There are like a bazillion ways to spell this word. Don’t bash me.

**Simple as it is.

***42 is now a running joke in our house.

Review: Shadow Prowler by Alexey Pehov

Shadow Prowler was published in Russia in 2002 and only translated this year. I wish they had translated the whole series (from what I can gather, its quite popular in Russia) in one go, because I’m rather hooked and can’t wait to see what happens next. I found this novel on the ‘new books’ shelf at the library and grabbed it – it totally satisfies my cravings for decent, original, fast-paced fantasy and my obsession with anything Russian!

The story is about Harold, a master thief, who is commissioned by the king to sneak into an ancient tomb which has been overrun by an unnamed evil in order to recast the binding spells keeping a vengeful wizard and his rampaging army out of the kingdom. In the meantime, there seems to be a new threat arising in the mysterious Master, who has spies and minions everywhere. Harold sets out with an unlikely bunch of companions – a group of soldiers, magical elves, the kings jester and a long-dead archwizard who only exists inside Harold’s head. When the elves cast a spell in order to help Harold enter the tomb, Harold finds himself reliving memories that don’t belong to him. In order to survive the journey and the task which lays at the end of the road, Harold will have to piece together the puzzles of the past and gather every skill he has ever learned and even perhaps listen to a nonsensical prophecy sung by a tiny green man wearing a jesters bell cap.

It takes a few chapters to get used to how this book is written. It’s in first person but also completely in present tense. While this makes somethings a little hard to follow, it has the advantage of drawing you right into the story. The little flashbacks are put in chapters of their own, in italics, so it’s easy to see how they are separate from the main story, but get interwoven in. the characters are well drawn and the development of Harold and Kli-Kli and the relationship between them is just so rich and intricate, you feel like you have known them for a lot longer than one book. the mythology is fantastic, drawn partially from Russian mythology and partially from Pehov’s brilliant mind. I really can’t wait for the next installment to be translated. Andrew Bromfield has done a fantastic job and the prose is flowing and melodic throughout – I couldn’t even tell it was a translation. Some beautiful little pieces of prose make your heart sing and your mind forget that you’re reading fantasy, not high literature. Even people who don’t appreciate the fantasy genre (get OFF my blog!) will enjoy this tale – while it does have elves and orcs and shamanism, it also has brilliant renderings of tactical battles and gorgeous descriptions of landscapes and a heavy dose of breathtaking adventure.

Review: The Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende

I always thought I’d read quite a bit by Isabel Allende. I know i’ve read City of the Beasts, because I bought it for my mum when I was younger and I always end up reading the thing is buy her. And I’ve read Daughter of Fortune and enjoyed it. But I read the blurbs to My Invented Country and Portrait in Sepia and Zorro – books I could swear I’ve read – and nothing rings a bell. I can see I’ll have to grab them from the library in the near future, along with Aphrodite and the other auto-biographical books.

Anyway, I’m glad I picked this up. I’ve heard it described as a ’sweeping’ historical novel and I think that’s an apt description. One that I’m trying hard to explain, but apt. It’s a long book – I read it over two nights and was very, very tired for both the following days. But it doesn’t get boring, it doesn’t have any filler bulking it up – you get the feeling Allende actually CUT stuff in order to fit this many pages, the prose is perfectly streamlined and exacting – and every word is brilliant. Allende doesn’t tell a story, she weaves one. Each thread is determined, examined, introduced and then entwined. The end result is a beautiful story, full of detail.

It’s the story of Zarite, a mulatto slave on a St Domingue (now Haiti) sugar plantation. Bought to care for the master’s enfeebled wife and young son, Maurice, Zarite is repeatedly raped by Toulouse Valmorain, the owner of the plantation, and bears him two children, the second of whom she is allowed to keep. When the plantation is overwhelmed by rebel forces, Zarite and her lover save the master and his son in exchange for her freedom. When they arrive in New Orleans, Zarite begs Toulouse to let her go, but he refuses, instead keeping her on his new plantation despite the aggravation of the new mistress over the existence of Rosette, the beautiful quadroon daughter of Zarite and Toulouse, and her relationship with Maurice.

Ok, so the story is impossible to sum up in short paragraphs. Just read it. Make the effort, it’s worth it!

March Reading List

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs

Burnt Bread and Chutney by Carmit Delman

The Harem Within by Fatima Mernissi

A fortress of Grey Ice (Bk 2 of Sword of Shadows) by J V Jones

206 Bones by Kathy Reichs

Out of the Sky she came by Valerie Lawson

Review: The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell

When I told Richard that I finished this book, he asked if it was any good and the only word I could find to describe it was devastating. And then I sat at the computer for 20 minutes trying to write a review that didn’t include a spoiler. It’s still not coming easy.

This book is set in a post-apocalyptic America where zombies (the shuffling, moaning kind, not the super fast ones) attempt to feast upon the scattered living population while hillbilly mutants distill the zombies into chitin-inducing stimulants. And in the middle, a fifteen year old girl is trying to get redemption for her sins, but that redemption is following too close on her heels for her liking. And if you are not already racing off to beg, borrow or steal your own copy from that brief endorsement, then you are dead to me (with a pencil shoved into your brain via your nostril to make sure you stay that way).

The book has some quirks. Dialogue isn’t contained within quotation marks and at times it’s a little hard to tell if the main character, Temple, is talking to herself, someone else or just inside her own head. The technique adds to the ambiance of the novel however, and is worth taking the time to puzzle through. The speech patterns and dialect of the characters is also peculiar. It is how I imagine people would talk in post apocalyptic America where only the strong and ruthless survived and then spent a little too much time alone with only themselves to talk to. The only inconsistency I found was that Temple is illiterate and was raised in an orphanage and in foster care before setting out on the road, but her speech is peppered with words and ideas far above what you’d expect for her position.

The book is full of lofty ideals slightly twisted by the fact that there are zombies staggering around trying to eat people. Temple believes in God, a god “too big to need the supplication of the puny wanderers of the earth”. She believes in fate and beauty and revenge. And she tries, in her own way to live up to these beliefs, taking the mute Maury across country to find his family despite the fact that it leaves her open to danger. It’s a novel about the hope of humanity in a country fallen to ruin. And at the same time, the book is a judgment on mankind’s ability to fall back onto base instinct. The ‘slugs’ retain enough memory to hold hands, to climb aboard a still-moving carousel, to endlessly repeat actions they made while alive. They are still human, and yet not. They are driven by a hunger which pushing them forward constantly, despite threat or futility. The want to feed. The need for flesh. Mindless and craving.

The book describes my ideal apocalypse, if ever an apocalypse could be considered ideal. Slow moving zombies are only dangerous if you stay still long enough to have them mob you or if they take you by surprise. Temple has her gurkha knife, but there is no shortage of guns and ammunition left by evacuees. And she picks up 6 packs of coke in abandoned corner shops all across the country. If we must suffer a government-released zombie virus that heralds the end of the world, sign me up to be a reaper.

Review: I’m watching you by Karen Rose

I have a confession to make. I love trashy crime novels. Something about the combination of lurid sex scenes, gore and suspense just totally does it for me. Especially if it involves a sassy-yet-secretly-damaged female lead and a gorgeous-strong-and-silent-type male. Especially if there is sexual tension for half the book and constant smooching for the rest.

It’s bad fiction. It’s an anathema to literature. And I can’t get enough.

I know that Karen Rose’s books do have a reading order, but it’s fairly loose. The books of hers that I have read have linked together in a way which makes them perfect as stand alones or in sequence – this particular novel is linked to You Can’t Hide (Aidan Reagan, Abe’s Brother) and Nothing to Fear (Dana Dupinsky, Mia Mitchell’s friend) and probably others that I haven’t read. I love the idea of coming back to characters I’ve met before, while being introduced to new ones. This technique means Rose’s books are new and fresh, but with some familiar faces and stomping grounds.

I’m watching you is the story of Kirsten Mayhew, a prosecutor who feels each loss in the courtroom keenly as she pours her whole life into her job. Abe Reagan is also a man living for his work, after the murder of his wife Debra left him hollow and angry. When a serial killers starts targeting criminals who escaped justice ay Kirsten’s hands, Abe and his new partner Mia Mitchell are put on the case. Soon Kirsten and Abe fall in love despite their best intentions, but can he protect her against the growing number of criminals crying for her blood, a vindictive reporter who will stop at nothing to get her scoop and a vigilante killer who dedicates each kill to Kirsten?

Of course he can, but you already knew that. Karen Rose’s novels do have happy endings. The characters always realize that they were meant for each other. The bad guys always end up dead or in jail. And if a few bystanders get shot or maimed along the way, well then you’ll know they wont appear in the next book. It’s crime lite and while there is gore aplenty and enough suspense to make me stay up past my bedtime in order to finish, these books do focus heavily on the romance and s-e-x. Don’t worry – the sex scenes are juicy, realistic and not overly corny. No turgid members here! This attention to detail is also put to good use in character development – Rose’s novels are filled with single mums, single dads, grandparents raising children, dedicated professional types who work long hours and mobsters who just have their families best interests at heart. The main characters and their occupations are documented faithfully, their neurosis are well researched and believable and if everything wraps up a little too neatly at the end, rather than giving up on the series, I’m more inclined to sigh and think “god I wish my life was like that. Maybe I should become a lawyer..”