To borrow a line from Shrek: Ove is like an onion.
On the outside, his personality is kinda smelly and makes people cry. But, he has layers.
This story takes apart those layers.
Highly recommended to me by one of my book club members and my mother-in-law. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Bachman is a treat. I highly recommend it, now, too.
The novel has been made into a movie, which I enjoyed nearly as much as this book. That’s high praise.
The humor is my favorite part of the story. Some of it is juvenile, but most of it is incredibly funny.
“Tell us a tale, will ya, Clay? About when you did for that necromancer up in Oddsford. Or when you rescued that princess from… that place… remember?” Which one? Clay wondered. They’d rescued several princesses, in fact, and if he’d killed one necromancer he’d killed a dozen.” pg 4
The warriors are past their prime. They were glorious monster killers once, now they’ve got bad backs, tricky knees and families who depend on them.
“But life, Clay knew, didn’t work that way. It wasn’t a circle; you didn’t go round and round again. It was an arc, its course as inexorable as the sun’s trek across the sky, destined at its highest, brightest moment to begin its fall.”pg 8.
In many ways, the group in this story reminded me of my own group of gaming friends. Yes, maybe we’re all getting on in years, but oh the glorious adventures we have had and perhaps will still have… if we can just manage to get out the door.
“If there was anything scarier than a Heartwyld Horde, the wrath of a vengeful ex-wife might just be it.” pg 36
The humor in this story was only matched by the clever analogy of a “band of warriors” compared to a “band of musicians”.
“Fantastic. Clay mused. A spiteful queen and a vengeful booker to watch out for. As if heading into a monster-infested forest on our way to a hopelessly besieged city wasn’t trouble enough. Whoever wants us dead should just sit back and let us kill ourselves.” pg 129
I couldn’t help but cheer them on, every step of the way.
Highly recommended for epic fantasy fans, gamers and anyone who has shared adventures, real or imagined, with a group of friends. This book has heart and I loved it.
In Vita Maglia, the spiritual realm is just beyond the fabric of the real world.
Within this other world, spiritual entities like souls, angels, and demons are physical realities.
The story begins with a mystery on a dangerous island called Kadera where reality seems “thinned” and visitors experience a strange ability to sense other people’s emotions.
Further on in the tale, I felt that we didn’t spend enough time in Maglia. Yes, we talked about it a lot and the characters were clearly focused on getting there, but we weren’t “there.”
So, if I had any criticism for this story, that’s it.
I wanted to spend more time in this fantastic world experiencing the different creatures and environments.
Strangely enough, I had the same complaint about Jeff Vandermeer’s Authority.
Recommended for readers who long for escape from reality and fantasy fans.
Thank you to Goodreads First Reads and the publisher for a free copy of this book for review purposes.
The Last to See Me is a fascinating story set in a world where ghosts are real and if they’re hanging around, they can bring down property values.
So, if you find you have an unruly poltergeist in your closet, you call a hunter to put them into the “eternal sleep.”
The tale is told from Emma, a ghost’s, point of view.
“My hearing is so much finer than when I walked alive and with a heartbeat. It’s something I’ve had a century to ponder: how much does the beating heart of one creature drown out the heart of another?” pg 6
“At the turn of the millennium, when the hunts began, I was as scared as any ghost could be. But fear, in the end, does a body no good. If you let yourself be afraid of what can kill you, it weakens you. So you can’t let yourself be afraid.” pg 21.
Inbetween Emma’s fight to remain alive, in a manner of speaking, we get to learn about her life before her death. So, there’s a bit of historical fiction thrown in the mix.
I think M. Dressler has written a fantastic ghost story.
“But I can tell you that the reason you felt something was hiding under your bed, all those years ago, is precisely because it was. It just knew better than to show itself to you.” pg 102
A historical fiction about a French King, his mistress, his minister, his mother, an aspiring actor with a secret past and a secret society with hidden knowledge that could change the world.
“A chief minister is dying, yet people are interested only in counting the supporters and detractors of an entertainer…” pg 9, ebook.
Unfortunately, I didn’t really care for The Sun King Conspiracy.
I felt like it was trying to be a mystery like The Da Vinci Code with the complexity of an epic historical fiction. It didn’t quite reach either pinnacle.
“According to Colbert’s report, the murderers took nothing else of any worth from my apartments. From this, I deduce that their only concern was to seize those papers.” pg 36, ebook.
It was probably just me, but I kept getting the ministers and their roles confused. Also, their alliances and reasons why they hated each other never really made sense to me.
“The truth is,” said the scholar with a sad smile, “that this question of succession seems to be the only matter that interests anyone in Paris, when the real subject that ought to occupy us, the only one worthy of any interest, is entirely different: it concerns the stability of the Kingdom.” pg 142, ebook.
It felt like there were nuances to the court relationships that were never explicitly stated.
Maybe the author assumed a familiarity with the court of the Sun King that I don’t possess.
The whole secret society part of this story was just flat. I felt like I’d read the same conspiracy in half a dozen other books.
“I am more aware of this than anyone else. I have paid so dearly for it that my belief in its ultimate success is perhaps the only thing that still keeps me alive…” pg 229, ebook.
A girl from Indiana goes to Hollywood and ends up taking care of Hollywood royalty in A Touch of Stardust.
The reader gets a behind the scenes look at the making of Gone With the Wind and the private, slightly dysfunctional lives of Carol Lombard and Clarke Gable.
It was fun learning about what went into the creation of Gone With the Wind. Those parts of the book sort of read like a Hollywood-fan magazine, but better written.
The dialogue in this book is snappy and smart, like a Bogie and Bacall film.
I loved the heroine and how she pulled herself up by the bootstraps to make it in Hollywood at a time when very few women did.
The Lost City of Z is a well-researched tale by journalist David Grann about Percy Fawcett, the intrepid explorer who disappeared in the Amazon jungle on his search for the city he called ‘Z’.
The part in this book that I appreciated the most was Fawcett’s struggle to learn about and appreciate the cultures of the people he discovered in the Amazon, while at the same time, juggling his own biases against any culture other than his own.
In some ways, he was a product of his time, but the fact that Fawcett at least tried to understand different cultures made him different than other explorers of his age.
It’s only a small part in a larger tale full of adventure, exploration and discovery.
Sex and sleep with a marked individual is the way to the city of Palimpsest, a mystical and deadly place that exists beyond the borders of our world.
The first time you cross over, your spirit is bound with four other travelers. For what purpose, no one knows.
“Where you go in Palimpsest, you are bound to these strangers who happened onto Orlande’s salon just when you did, and you will go nowhere, eat no capon or dormouse, drink no oversweet port that they do not also taste, and they will visit no whore that you do not also feel beneath you, and until that ink washes from your feet… you cannot breathe but that they breathe also.” pgs 4-5, ebook.
A visit to the city leaves a visible mark on your skin, a map of the location you visited. You cannot travel beyond the borders of where you have already been, unless you sleep with someone who has a different map.
“It’s like a ticket. And once you’ve bought your ticket, and been to the circus, ridden the little red train, then you can sort of see other people who’ve done it, too. They walk a certain way. Smell a certain way. Their whole body becomes like an accent.” pg 42, ebook.
Palimpsest is so beyond belief, some people who have been there can’t believe it is more than a dream, at first.
“But it’s a dream,” Oleg insists. “It was fun. We won’t even remember it in the morning.” “You don’t know anything, Oleg,” sighs Gabriel. pg 73, ebook.
But, no one has ever woken up from a dream covered in blood.
Palimpsest showcases Catherynne Valente’s mammoth imagination and descriptive powers. The pieces of the city she allows readers to glimpse draw you in and make you want to see more.
Each location is unique, has its own backstory and feel. It’s an extraordinary work of urban fantasy.
The gates of sleep are two, a gate of ivory and a gate of horn. He had been horrified as a child, picturing a great door of tangled antlers and tusks. Surely that was the gate of Palimpsest.” pg 144, ebook.
It’s disturbing to read the main characters become more and more desperate to re-enter Palimpsest.
The way they seek out sex with strangers reminded me of a drug addict’s desperate search. The cost of entering the city is too high.
It ruins peoples’ lives.
I read Palimpsest years ago and couldn’t finish it then because the narration made me feel sick.
I think the trouble was that I used to put myself into the stories I read, imagining myself as the hero, villain, every part.
I’ve ceased doing that, at the cost of some grand adventures. But, in hindsight, it also allows me to navigate my way through stories I would not have been able to touch back then.
Because of its content, I’d recommend Palimpsest only for mature readers and fans of urban fiction. It’s a strange trip, but full of wonders if you can endure the cost to get there.
He has trouble relating exactly how his guru changed his life. He also has trouble expressing his life changing spiritual insights.
This could perhaps be because of all the LSD he experimented with, but no judgement here.
I think Dass could have added another couple hundred pages to the first part and still probably not fully described his experience.
The next section of the book is block text printed on, what seems to be, brown paper bags. Monty Python-esque photos are drawn in, and sometimes behind, the text.
If you have a question about how an enlightened person lives, it’s probably included in there.
Dass elucidates how he believes you should eat, sleep, breathe, interact with others, think, meditate, raise a family, form a commune and so on.
I didn’t like it because it felt too brain-washy, cult-ish.
Dass attempts to put the reader’s mind at ease to all of the strictures. He mentions that one needn’t be concerned about family or social responsibilities because, once you reach the ultimate level, you’ll realize that none of those things are real anyway.
Looking back on my review, it seems as if I don’t like Ram Dass, but I do.
I don’t buy into the idea that life has to be lived a certain way to get certain results.
And, perhaps because I haven’t personally had the experience yet, I don’t get the whole guru relationship thing. I know it’s my western background speaking, but there you have it.
Recommended for spiritual seekers, but don’t forget to trust your own inner guidance.
