Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Dear John Scalzi, please ink a deal with either HBO or Netflix or some other production company that can make the Old Man’s War universe a television reality.  Thank you, everybody.

“The Human Division” is the last book until the next book of the Old Man’s War universe.  It’s not really a novel as much as it is a series of short stories, most of which center on the same characters.  Taken together, they provide a timeline of events after John Perry’s exploits in “The Last Colony”.  The focus this time, however, is the Colonial Union’s State Department.  Or, to be more precise, a single crew of diplomats as they traverse the galaxy signing trade agreements and being the friendly face of the Colonial Union as they finally attempt diplomacy instead of that whole blowing everything up thing they were doing before.

The characters in this book are mostly new, except for Harry Wilson who made an appearance in “Old Man’s War” as part of the same Old Geezer Club (or something like that) as John Perry when they joined the Colonial Defense Force.  We are introduced to various memorable characters such as Ode Abumwe, the stern and stately ambassador, Hart Schmidt, the one often responsible for getting the team both in and out of trouble, and Danielle Lowen, the U.S. diplomat who all to often gets caught up in Schmidt’s and Wilson’s adventures.

As you can imagine, the diplomatic universe is rife with Scalzian wit opportunities and John Scalzi does not disappoint.  We are treated to such gems as a traditional salt-water-spitting-in-the-face ceremonial greeting and beloved dogs being swallowed by plants and Wilson fighting a member of an alien race completely naked as part of a diplomatic test of strengths between the two races.  Throughout, you have the light, friendly banter between Wilson and Schmidt and Lowen as they proceed from one adventure to another.  It’s a treat.

I can’t help but feel that serials like the ones contained in this book are what the Old Man’s War universe was meant for.  They are just the right length for Scalzi’s wit and ability to write individual scenes.  I hope for many more iterations to come.  And I also mysteriously want a churro.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

And we’re back into John Scalzi’s excellent “Old Man’s War” universe!  If I were to sum up “Zoe’s Tale” in one word it would be: cute.  I’m sure John Scalzi would be thrilled.  But I don’t mean it as an insult.  In many ways, Scalzi has succeeded where others have failed.  For starters, he successfully wrote a book from a female teenage protagonist’s point of view without coming off as a creepy guy.  I’m looking at you, Piers Anthony!  On top of that, the teenagers are actually pretty teenagey.  Another thing that’s not easy to pull off as an adult writer without teenagers.

If in reading “Zoe’s Tale” you get the feeling that you’ve been here before, it’s because you have.  If you’ve previously read “The Last Colony“, that is.  This book tells the same story as “The Last Colony”, only from Zoe’s point of view.  It also fills in gaps in the story from “The Last Colony” that people were curious about.

Zoe, if you will recall is the teenage adopted daughter of John Perry and Jane Sagan.  And she has a…complicated…history.  After all, it’s not all teenagers that have an entire race following their every word and action.  And there’s also the two Obin bodyguards, Hickory and Dickory, who record and transmit her words and actions.  Just what every teenager wants.  To say that Zoe lives an interesting life is an understatement.  Scalzi does a good job of delving into what that life would be like from a teenage perspective.  And, of course, there’s Scalzi’s wit and sarcasm which is always a pleasure to read.

If you are a fan of the “Old Man’s War” universe, “Zoe’s Tale” is worth reading.  Any extra tidbits you can get from a well written universe is always worth it as long as the story is reasonably well done.  And this one is.  The extra stuff with the werewolves, Zoe’s relationship with the Obin, and her diplomatic mission are all delicious morsels to sate your “Old Man’s War” fix.  As a stand-alone book, I would not recommend “Zoe’s Tale” at all, except maybe to teenagers who would like to read a book with a teenage protagonist.  The book does read like a stand-alone book, but there’s not much “there” there to make it worth while outside of the deeper “Old Man’s War” universe.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Now here is a classic that I understand why it has remained a classic.  Jane Eyre, the character, is ahead of her time and unforgettable.  She is foolishly courageous, headstrong, opinionated, and usually right.  Yes, this is, at its heart, a romance book, but it’s not your everyday romance book.  In this book, the characters are all interesting and the romance plays a secondary role to the adventures of Jane.  In fact, I really only recognized it as a romance book about half way through and even then you don’t really quite know how things are going to turn out.

The book follows Jane from her miserable adopted childhood under the protection of a begrudging aunt to her school days as both student and teacher at Lowood to her role as a governess for Mr. Rochester at Thornfield Hall to her flight from Thornfield Hall to her falling in with the Rivers family where she becomes once again a teacher for disadvantaged girls.  Throughout, Jane is portrayed as very level-headed and well ahead of her time, much to the consternation of those, but especially the men, around her.

Interspersed between what is an engaging story is also some great social commentary.  For instance, “Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.”  Beautiful.

Also this: “It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.  Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot.  Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth.  Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.  It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced for their sex.”

So yeah, I think you can fairly say that Charlotte Bronte was feminist before feminism was cool (which is scheduled to happen in 2020 the way we’re going).  And that’s just a smattering of what the book has to offer.

But enough about the social commentary portions of the book.  There is much to be said about Charlotte Bronte’s storytelling as well.  The book is absolutely mesmerizing up to the point where Jane Eyre first leaves Thornfield Hall.  It does get a bit pedestrian after that, but you’re over two-thirds through the book before that happens.  There are some legitimately sad moments that will have you near tears.  There is a lot of amazingly witty dialogue, especially between Mr. Rochester and Jane during their first interactions.  There is mystery that actually passes for mysterious.  This is a novel that does everything well.

When I first started reading “Jane Eyre”, I couldn’t help but compare Charlotte Bronte to Charles Dickens.  They both cover similar topics and Charlotte’s writing style reminded me of Charles’.  They were contemporaries so it is possible that each influenced the other somewhat even if they did not know each other.  Has there ever been a time in the history of humanity where so much good fiction was coming out of one place all at once?

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

A word of warning to those who deign to tackle this book.  Pay attention to names.  They can get confusing real fast if you’re not careful.  There are Ms’s and Mrs’s and more Mr’s than you can shake a stick at.  And all of them have one of three last names.  So you will have Ms. Earnshaw and Mrs. Earnshaw and two Mr. Lintons engaged in conversation and it can be difficult to discern which subject is being talked about/to.  I just made that example up, it is not meant to reflect any actual conversations had in the book.  Now back to our regularly scheduled book review.

I do not know what I was expecting when I started reading “Wuthering Heights”, but it was not this.  Heathcliff is perhaps the most despicable character ever to grace printed paper.  That wouldn’t be so bad, but everyone else in the book is also a fairly horrible human being.  The book is filled with spite and abuse and petty revenge.  In other words, it’s the perfect love story driven to its appropriately mad conclusion.

You may think I’m joking, but every single person is horrible to every other person in this book.  Heathcliff is just better at being horrible than anyone else.  Ok, maybe not every single person.  Edgar Linton is pretty fair to his daughter Cathy and much of his poor treatment of Cathy can be construed as mere fatherly protection.  But horrible people need to fall in love too.

Here’s the basic story.  Heathcliff, an adopted member of the Earnshaw family who is treated contemptuously by Hindly Earnshaw, who goes a bit crazy after the death of his wife, loves Catherine Earnshaw who loves him back but decides to marry Edgar Linton because he’s more upwardly mobile.  They have a child, Cathy, before Catherine dies.  Heathcliff, angry at both the Earnshaws and the Lintons, goes away and makes a fortune.  Heathcliff returns and gets the alcoholic Earnshaw to grow so indebted to him that when Earnshaw dies, Heathcliff inherits Wuthering Heights and continues to treat the entire household contemptuously.  Revenge plan one, successful.  Meanwhile, in order to get back at the Lintons, Heathcliff marries Isabella Linton who, for some ungodly reason, is infatuated with Heathcliff.  His horrible treatment of Isabella drives her away to London where she raises their son, Linton, and soon dies.  Edgar attempts to take Linton under his wing, but Heathcliff immediately takes ownership of his son.  Heathcliff then plots to marry off Linton to Cathy and is successful by kidnapping Cathy until she agrees to marry Linton.  Edgar dies.  Linton dies.  Heathcliff inherits Thrushcross Grange.  Revenge plan two, successful.  While this is going on, there is this horribly messed up flirty thing going on between Hareton, Hindly’s son who Heathcliff raises as a servant, and Cathy.  Hareton and Cathy fall in love.  Heathcliff dies.  The end.

Everything in between what was stated in the plot outline above is people behaving badly towards each other.  There is lots of madness and lots of early deaths in all the families associated with this book.  I blame inbreeding.  I wonder what Emile Bronte’s life was like where she was able to come up with a tale like this.

There were parts of the book that I found engrossing and parts that I just found tiresome.  It is an interesting study on love gone horribly wrong and delves deep into the depths of human depravity.  Which is pretty cool.  I was taken a bit aback by how suddenly and unfulfillingly the story ended.  Man, did I want Heathcliff to die a horrible death, but he actually dies happy.  Mad, but happy.  This was so disappointing.  I would have been happier if it ended with “And Heathcliff lived happily ever after.”

Jean-Paul’s rating: 5/5 stars

“The Ocean at the End of the Lane” is a children’s book in the same way that Grimm’s Fairy Tales are for children.  Ok, maybe not that bad, but Gaiman has a particular gift for seeing adult themes through the eyes of a child.  There is a matter-of-factness in children when confronted with things that stretch the boundaries of their knowledge.  There almost has to be since they are constantly assaulted with new information.  And even though there is a suicide and nudity and sex in this book, I would still consider it a children’s book just because Gaiman captured a child’s spirit so well.  That isn’t to say that what we have here is only a children’s book.  Far from it.  “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” should appeal to just about everyone.  All the characters are fully flushed out and entertaining.  The story is compelling and dreamy and thought-provoking.  Gaiman’s descriptions make it seem like you are there witnessing the goings on in the story.

What I like best about the book is that even though the protagonist is a young boy, he is helped along his journey by a triumvirate of strong women in the Hempstock family.  Even the main villain is female.  This is such an unusual occurrence in literature or any form of art that it is worth pointing out.

The story itself is best described as a fairy tale if one were to assign such designations to books.  The Hempstocks are aglessly old.  Even the youngest, Lettie, is aged beyond description despite appearing only thirteen.  One of the best lines is when the boy first realizes it.  “How old are you?”  “Thirteen.”  “How many years have you been thirteen?”  The entire book is filled with dialogue like that.

This book draws you in and doesn’t let go.  Dream and reality are combined.  Oceans fit in buckets.  The world is filled with monsters who mean well but cause havoc anyway.  It is a complete delight from start to finish and I’d highly recommend you all read it.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

The world is an exceedingly strange place.  Take the Museum of Jurassic Technology, for instance.  It is certainly a museum.  But what the heck is Jurassic Technology?  Well, keep guessing, because the museum’s curator, David Wilson, will only give you an answer that is equal parts satisfying and confusing.  The exhibits in the museum are equal parts baffling and revealing.  All are tantalizingly real, with professional audio and authoritative sounding placards.  You want to believe they’re true.  After all, they’re in a museum.  And some of them are real, but you’re never quite sure which.  Thus begins “Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology”.  Weschler describes many of the exhibits on his first visit to the museum and later tries to fact check some of them.  Down the rabbit hole we go.

David Wilson is an anachronism.  Here it is, the 20th century (the book was written in the 1990’s), and here is this beautifully maintained museum of nonsense.  Well not nonsense, but certainly not sense either.  The museum is a throw-back to when rich people collected the oddities of the world and displayed them for public consumption.  Somewhere down the line, logic and reason took over and we now have large museums of peer-reviewed exhibits instead of the hodge-podge collection like Wilson’s.  This is both a blessing and a curse.

The book is split into three parts.  The first part is quite entertaining as it describes both the museum and introduces us to the curator and his family.  I was mildly put off by Weschler’s prolific use of SAT words near the beginning, but I either got used to it or became resigned to the fact that a place as odd as the Museum of Jurassic Technology deserves triple word score words.  The second part kind of lost me.  It goes into excruciating, and often dry, detail of the history of Wunderkammer, or Wonder Cabinets, of which the Museum of Jurassic Technology is a worthy successor.  There is some interesting historical sleuthing here, but Weschler’s use of notes, which can span pages, to add more depth to topics he is discussing really threw me with having to constantly page back and forth from the story to the notes section.  Many of the notes, I was left wondering why he didn’t just include it in the main text.  Part three wraps things up satisfyingly as we travel back to the Museum of Jurassic Technology and are once again treated to the many oddities the Museum has to offer.

The book is a decent read.  It really makes you think.  For instance, after reading about so many truths and half-truths and lies and mischaracterizations associated with the various Wunderkammen, who’s to say that anything Weschler wrote is the truth.  Who’s to say that the Museum of Jurassic Technology actually exists.  After reading “Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder”, you’ll look at the world slightly differently than you did going in.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 Stars

I picked up “Gone Girl” because I had just finished my previous book and because it was both immediately available to download from the library and I had just seen that it was going to become a Ben Afleck movie.  I had heard of “Gone Girl” before, but it never piqued my interest until I saw about the movie, which I will still likely see despite my, as you will see, somewhat tepid review of the book.  As a general rule, I like to read the books before I see the movie.

“Gone Girl” starts out quite good.  The two main characters, Amy Dunne and Nick Dunne, are fleshed out really nicely.  The storytelling for the first half of the book is done alternating between a first person perspective through Nick’s eyes starting the day Amy disappears and a series of Amy’s diary entries retelling events from years ago when Amy and Nick first met up to the day that Amy disappears.  It is a very cool, very effective way to tell a story.  If only the story it had to tell was worth it.

My biggest problem with the story was the incessant bludgeoning of the reader with detective story cliché after cliché.  When the twist comes along, you get to understand that all the clichés are kind of the point, but by that time you already feel like you’re stuck in a crappy detective novel.

What saves the book is that the twist is pretty freaking cool.  I will not give anything away, but suffice to say, I was very pleasantly surprised at it and it fit in very nicely with everything that came before.  Unfortunately, it then proceeds into another series of clichés that again reduces it to more of a tedious than enjoyable read.

The end is a huge let-down.  It does one of those leave you hanging things where you’re left to wonder what happens to everyone.  Normally, I go for this kind of things, but the preceding events are so outside of normal human experience that it’s very difficult to come to any conclusion as to what any of the characters are thinking.  Seriously, there is some effed up psychological stuff going on here, which is again, kind of cool.

In the end, the problem with “Gone Girl” is that it doesn’t really cover any new ground.  It’s the same old ground that twists into the same old ground.  A cool twist is not enough to save a book.  So why would I ever want to see the movie, you may ask?  Because, in the right hands, I think this could make for a very good movie and I am interested in seeing how they bring the twists and ending to the big screen.  We shall see.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

“Dracula” is a book with a really good premise written by a man with no idea how to tell a compelling story.  The story is equal parts brilliance and plodding nonsense.  It is written as a series of journal entries that detail the actions of the protagonists.  It’s an interesting literary device, but it mostly falls flat because of the fact that most action happens “off camera”, so to speak, with the journal entries retelling things that happened to other people.  This makes it very difficult for the reader to establish a mood.

Despite that, there are some great parts.  Right at the beginning, the retelling of Jonathan Harker’s journey to Transylvania and his encounters with Dracula and the denizens of his castle makes for some very compelling reading.  Another bright spot is Dr. Seward’s retelling of his encounters with Renfield, who is one of only two interesting characters in the book.  Other than that, there is strewn here and there tidbits of compelling reading, but it never lasts for very long.

To show just how poor Stoker’s sense of pacing is, he goes straight from Harker in Transylvania to an overly long description of Lucy’s courtship of three suitors.  The sole purpose of this is to establish how the three of them end up joining in on the hunt for Dracula.  So we get to read page after page of courtship nonsense just so we can be introduced to Jack Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quncey Morris.  Of the three, only Dr. Jack Seward has a real reason to exist as he is the connecting tissue between all of the main characters.  The other two are blandly one-dimensional window dressing.

Interesting character number two is Wilhelmina Murray, or Mina, as she is called throughout the book.  Mina is probably as close to feminist as female characters were allowed to be in the late 1800’s.  She is strong-willed, intelligent, and comes up with almost every breakthrough in the group’s hunt for Dracula.  Of course, it’s still the late 1800’s so she is also the plot device to keep what flimsy of a storyline there is going.  Time after time, we have the men praising her for her strength only to immediately backpedal and go with the “oh, but you are a woman and thus must be protected by us manly men” trope.

The story itself relies on a series of not fully explained details, like Jonathan Harker’s escape from Castle Dracula, and poorly reasoned decision making to keep things moving.  This turns what could have been a page-turning monster hunt thriller into an eye-rolling, saw that coming a mile away, yawn fest.

Despite the book’s many flaws, I can still see why hundreds of years later the world is still enthralled by Dracula and by vampires in general.  Like many good ideas with poor follow through (I’m looking at you H.P. Lovecraft), much that has come since is superior to the source material.  It is still worth while to read where it all began if to only see how far Dracula has come.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

“Frankenstein” is not at all what I expected.  And, yes, I was well aware that the popular fiction versions of the movie were nothing like the original book.  The novel reads more like a travelogue than a story about a man who created a monster and reaped what he sowed.  It is a well written travelogue to be sure, but a good portion of the prose is spent describing the journeys from place to place.

Interspersed in between the travelogue are some fascinating psychological insights into both Victor Frankenstein and his Monster.  I’m sure massive bottles of ink have been spilled arguing back and forth on the plight of both Victor and his Monster.  If anyone can recommend a good one, I’d happily accept your recommendation.  They are both interesting characters and, while I sympathize somewhat with both, I think Victor is much more of a dick than the Monster.  The monster’s motives make sense throughout, while Victor warbles back and forth feeling both sympathy and hatred for his creation.

All that’s great stuff, but the story itself is lacking a good editor.  It inexplicably begins with a long introduction to a character, Captain Walton, who plays zero role in the book whatsoever except to accidentally meet Victor while trapped in his boat on the icy Arctic.  Again, it’s kind of cool and well written, but why is it even there?

I was also surprised at how little time was spent establishing Victor’s abhorrence for the Monster.  Man brings body parts together.  Man animates body parts.  Man can’t stand the sight of what he’s created.  Run away!

Another thing that bothered me was how much of the story was left to simple chance and willful ignorance.  There are many times when Victor could have easily created a pitchfork mob (but with guns!) and hunted down the Monster.  (And, by the way, there is not a single pitchfork mob to be had in this book.  Oh, popular culture, how far astray you have led me!)  But the biggest problem for is Victor’s complete misreading of the situation when all evidence both past and present point to a very obvious conclusion.  I guess it could be argued that Victor’s path to insanity lead him to believe what he did, but the only acceptable conclusion that I can come to is that Victor is a narcissist of the highest order.

“Frankenstein” was not an enjoyable read, but neither was it horrible.  There is a lot of literary juice to be squeezed from it for those with the propensity to do so.  It is a rare book that makes me want to read literary criticism of it and “Frankenstein” succeeded in doing that.  In the end, though, I read for enjoyment, and this book was only a moderately enjoyable one.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

“Redshirts” is one of those novels that is constantly winking at the reader.  And, given the premise, how could it not?  For those of you that don’t know, a Redshirt is a reference to the hapless extras in the Star Trek series who invariably wear red shirts and whose sole purpose is to die horribly in the presence of one or more of the main cast to give some semblance of danger without having to kill off the main cast.  In “Redshirts”, those hapless extras take center stage.

The premise of the story is brilliant in its simplicity.  A small group of Redshirts discover that they are actually Redshirts and that some mysterious and all too predictable force seems to be guiding the fates of those aboard the Universal Union ship, Intrepid.  At key moments in critical situations, they find themselves doing and saying things that they don’t seem to have complete control over.  They start to call this strange force The Narrative.  And then there’s The Box, a device that can solve any problem, but only in critical situations and only in the nick of time.  What does all of this mean?  The Redshirts band together to find out before they become the next victim of an explosion on deck 6 or a Longranian Ice Shark or Bogrovian Land Worms.

With such a wacky premise and a whole mess of base material to draw from, you can probably guess that “Redshirts” is both a comedy and contains a plethora of Easter Eggs for sci-fi geeks.  The humor in the book is pretty good, but it kind of wore thin for me after a while which is much of the reason why I gave the book three instead of four stars.  John Scalzi’s writing always contains a bit of humor and it always works in smaller quantities.  In “Redshirts” it was just a bit too much.

Following the main story, there are three Codas which follow individuals who are trying to come to terms with being affected by the people they unknowingly affected after they learned that they were affecting them.  If that sentence doesn’t make sense to you, read the book and all will be revealed.  None of the three really add much to the main storyline, but they are interesting experiments in empathy.  I’m a sucker for stuff like this.  Here’s a story.  Now look how this story felt from this point of view.  And now this point of view.  And now this point of view.  This is probably like Creative Writing 101 stuff and I don’t know it, but it seldom is found in novels these days and I appreciate it.

“Redshirts” is worth reading, especially if you are a sci-fi geek.  There is some good stuff in it for non-sci-fi geeks too and I don’t think you’ll miss out on much in the book if you aren’t a sci-fi geek.  I found it to be an enjoyable light read and would recommend it to anyone with a caveat for the humor.