Midnight (W)rite ~ Book reviews and other curiosities

Darkly beautiful modern and medieval gothic love story Genre: Gothic horror, love story A man with a sordid lifestyle is severely burned in a car accident and gruesomely disfigured. As he recovers (miraculously) in the burn unit, he meets Marianne Engel, a woman who seems to know him who has wandered away from the psych ward and tells him stories about their shared past lives. Is she delusional, or are these stories real? How does she know the things she knows about him? Her tales become easier for him to believe as time goes by and he becomes increasingly attached to and dependent on her. This book holds so many of the keys to my interests: darkly romantic, gothic, German medieval history, monasteries, magical realism, folk and fairy tales, disturbingly deep passions, stories within a story... the author took a long time to research and write this book, and I feel like it shows in the intricacies of the layers of story. Turnoffs: the main male character's kind of a...

Coldest Girl: Holly Black's ode to the vampire genre Genre: Gothic fiction, horror, paranormal Tana lives in an alternate world where vampires are a dangerous reality. Their bite causes an infection that turns a person “Cold,” which means the person craves human blood with a violent, ugly passion. If the infected person actually ingests human blood, she becomes a vampire. If she can resist the siren call for 88 days (accomplished possibly through forced seclusion) she is cured of the bite. This doesn't happen very often. In Tana's world, the solution to the vampire problem is to send all vampires, infected humans, and vampire-loving humans to live in designated, enclosed 'coldtowns.' Coldtown is a little like Hotel California – you can check in, but you can never leave, with very few exceptions. The most powerful vampires are capitalizing on the desire of the average citizen to see what's going on inside the vampire cities by creating live video ...

A mystery wrapped in Sumerian mythology and trapped in time Genre: Science fiction / fantasy A strong novella from Tim Powers involving Sumerian myth, time travel, and a love story. Richard Blanzac, a rare books dealer, receives a new lot of books that contains a manuscript by a little-known beat poet from the late 1950s. The manuscript has some mystical properties and Richard finds the answers to the mysteries surrounding the manuscript in his current time and in 1957. Very worth the few hours it takes to read. As with many of Powers' books, this book is beautifully rendered and will likely become a rare collector's item itself. 

Blue Sargent and the Raven Boys search for Blue's missing mother and their destinies Genre: Young adult, fantasy NOTE: This is Book 3 of The Raven Cycle. Beware spoilers for books 1 and 2 in this review. Blue Sargent's home is populated with women with magical gifts. Blue is a magic amplifier—her touch (or her presence) makes other magic stronger. Blue and four young men from the local boys prep school – Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and Noah – have become a very tight-knit group, with the common goal of trying to find the underground location where an ancient king is buried. The king is in a magical slumber, waiting for someone to find him and wake him. Legend says those who wake the kind will receive a powerful favor from him. In this third book of the Raven Cycle, Blue's mother, Maura, has left behind a mysterious note and disappeared. She's been gone for a month and Blue is worried she's in danger. She decides to go find her, and Blue's friends in...

Oil spills, stunted shrimp, stolen weed, and buried treasure in Louisiana's Gulf Coast Genre: Contemporary adventure The author got a rave review from Stephen King, so he probably doesn't need my praise heaped on top, but he's getting it anyway. This is a really fantastic story. The tribulations of the Louisiana shrimpers during an industry tailspin after the BP oil spill in the Gulf, the theft of high quality weed from a couple of crazy brothers, one man's drug-addled search for a treasure no one else believes in, and many other shenanigans are taking place in Louisiana's Gulf Coast. There is a lot going on here, but the characters are so well wrought that it is not difficult to keep up. I love books, like this one, in which the setting is detailed and described with such passion it become a character in the story. I have a soft spot for well-written flawed characters and realistic, not-idealistic storylines and this book is full of them. Tom Cooper do...

Shakespearean actors travel through an apocalyptic future Michigan Genre: apocalyptic fiction An apocalyptic event takes 99 percent of the population in a very short amount of time. Station Eleven takes place for the most part about 20 years after the population diminishing event. The violence in the new world has become less but there is still very little trust between those who survive. The stories in Station Eleven radiate out from Arthur, the Shakespearean actor whose death we read of first. Kirsten, who was a child actor in Arthur's last play, is now a member of a traveling troupe of actors and musicians called The Symphony. She and the rest of the troupe travel through northern Michigan, along the lake shore, stopping in the small towns made up of survivors along the way and entertaining them with plays and music. In one town they come across the Prophet, who has turned the town into a dangerous place for anyone who doesn't follow him. The troupe leaves as qu...

Best Reads ~ 2015 I read 45 b ooks in 2015, and most of those were at least medium enjoyable, but there were about a dozen that stood out from the rest, and one of those was a real surprise to me. It came late in the year and moved right to the front of the line. That book was The Martian by Andy Weir. Hard sci-fi is not something I usually read, but this story captured me. It incorporated adventure, suspense, humor, politics, and lots and lots of science.  The list of my best reads of 2015 is below, and each book is reviewed in separate posts. Remember, these are not books that were published in 2015, simply books I read in 2015. The Martian by Andy Weir The Marauders by Tom Cooper The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater Salvage and Demolition by Tim Powers Celeste by I.N.J. Culbard America's Boy by Wade Rou...