Stray

Stray by Andrea K. Höst

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Alert: Spoilers Below!!!

I need to say up front that I received this book for free from BookRooster.com.

Cassandra is an Australian girl who walks through a sort of wormhole on her way home from school, and ends up on a completely different planet. She manages to make her way through the forests she initially stepped into, and winds up in what appears to be an abandoned city, encountering various animals and plants that resemble some on Earth along the way. She is finally "rescued" by a people from a nearby planet, who tell her she's a "stray" -- a person who wanders from their own planet/space-time and into another. When it is discovered that Cass has the ability to enhance the psychic powers of the people on this new planet, she takes on a special role with them.

I very much enjoyed this book. It was well-written and well-edited, which have been problems with recent ebooks I've read. The story is told completely from Cass' point of view, via her journal. She is very resourceful, managing to stay alive on an unknown planet completely by herself -- but still falls into funks on occasion, especially when she's feeling particularly like a lab rat.

As another reviewer on Goodreads pointed out, this is quite unlike other popular YA fiction in that there's no love triangle. In fact, there's no romance at all, other than Cass' crush on one of the people she's working with. While part of me was rooting for her to break through Ruuel's tough exterior, for the most part I was happy that wasn't a focus of the story; it really couldn't be for the story to remain true to the plot.

I was intrigued by the concept of the Ena, near-space, far-space, and the Ionoth. It seemed like the Setari spent most of their time battling bad memories. Quite a metaphor, that. I wondered a number of times throughout the book at the ethics of the Taren's fight against the Ionoth, especially during the mission in which they were attacked by the "white-gray hairy" Ionoth. Were the Setari really protecting themselves and others, or were they invading another world and killing the inhabitants. Although the Setari said their scan indicated that the hairy humanoids were from another area, it seems like those Ionoth may have been acting simply to defend themselves. Perhaps that question will be answered in the next book.

Sigh. Next book. Perhaps I'm getting old and jaded, but I remember a time when a book was just a book, not part of a trilogy, and the whole story was told in one shot. Yes, this is the first of a trilogy. I should have confirmed that before I started, but I chose to be blissfully ignorant. I will probably read the next two books, at some point, to hopefully clear up some of my questions, but I can't help but feel a little like a sucker for getting, well, sucked in by another series. Does everything really have to be a series these days? Can't authors try to pare themselves down to one book? I'm getting skeptical enough to believe that this is done solely for money-making purposes, rather than a real need for a story to take up more than one volume. Feel free to argue with me about that.



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Book Club Selections

A month or so ago I requested input on books for my work book club to read. After compiling lots of suggestions and putting it to vote, here is the list for 2012-2013. If you'd like to read along, and comment here on my blog, that would be possibly the coolest thing ever.

2012

• January 25, 2012: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• February 22, 2012: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• March 28, 2012: Room by Emma Donoghue
• April 25, 2012: The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
• May 23, 2012: Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar
• June 27, 2012: City of Thieves by David Benioff
• July 25, 2012: A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
• August 22, 2012: The Fortune Quilt by Lani Diane Rich
• September 26, 2012: Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason
• October 24, 2012: The Strictest School in the World: Being the Tale of a Clever Girl, a Rubber Boy and a Collection of Flying Machines, Mostly Broken by Howard Whitehouse
• November 28, 2012: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson
• December 19, 2012: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #1) by Alexander McCall Smith

2013

• January 23, 2013: The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
• February 27, 2013: Bossypants by Tina Fey
• March 27, 2013: The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
• April 24, 2013: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
• May 22, 2013: The Professor's Daughter by Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert
• June 26, 2013: Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet by Deepak Chopra
• July 24, 2013: Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell
• August 21, 2013: Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs
• September 25, 2013: The Garden of Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani
• October 23, 2013: The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga
• November 20, 2013:Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
• December 18, 2013: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I didn't realize until I reached the end that I listened to the abridged version of this audiobook. Despite that, I thought it was a terrific story, and I'm sure that the main plot points were covered.

The woman who read the book was fantastic. Her accent is lovely. I also appreciated getting her pronunciation of people and place names. "Miriam" and "Laila" sound like music with her accent. And the way she said "Afghanistan" was very interesting.

Now, to the story itself. Heart-wrenching and hopeful at the same time. It was such a stark examination of life for women in Afghanistan. The differences between their lives and my own, and those of women I know in the Western world, was startling. Where we'd say "Leave the bastard" or "Just say no to your father," such things were impossible for Miriam and Laila. That's the heart-wrenching part. The hopeful was that they kept going. These women made lives for themselves, in spite of the way they were treated.





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Win ARCs of Lola, Crossed, and Shatter Me

This is your chance to win ARCs of three highly anticipated YA novels: Lola and the Boy Next Door, Crossed, and Shatter Me. See Tahereh Mafi's blog for instructions. And good luck!

Divine Justice by Cheryl Kaye Tardiff

First of all, I must say that I got this book for free from BookRooster.com.

The main part of this story takes place in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, where a prominent politician has been found murdered, and another comes up missing. Three members of the CFBI's PSI department -- agents with psychic abilities -- are on the case.

This murder case, dubbed "The Parliament Murders," is bracketed by the story of one of the agents being in a coma in the hospital some time after the main events of the book. The story of the Parliament Murders is being told through her dreaming/reliving during her coma. (There is no way of knowing how her subconscious could know things that happened when she wasn't present. Just one of many plot weaknesses.)

About a quarter of the way through the book I thought "This sounds like The Manchurian Candidate. I bet these guys are being brainwashed." Around the half-way mark I figured out who the bad guy was. I was really hoping I was wrong, but, no. I was absolutely correct. Disappointing.

I didn't buy the "story within a story" construct in this book. The coma and events immediately after the main character wakes up seemed completely superfluous. The main story could have easily, and less confusingly, been told on its own. As this was the second book in a series, perhaps the first book sets up this premise in a more believable way.

This book also suffered from simplistic, obvious, and repetitive dialogue. "We have to keep looking for connections between [the victims]." They were closing in on the link between the two men. They just had to figure it out before the second was killed. Yes, yes, we got that already, we understand. Write better dialogue or stop talking. I hope that real (C)FBI agents don't state the obvious so often and with such conviction.

There were editing problems, both with spelling (lose vs. loose), and with continuity. For example, one of the characters notices twice that there are no cars in the parking lot; two characters power off their phones, then one uses her (now powered) phone to unlock a door. First someone was shot in the head, then the bullet wound is in his arm.

Finally, I had to wonder if this heroine is the most stupid cop on the planet. She decided to confront the suspect with no backup and without telling anyone where she's going, and didn't realize her mistake until she was confined with him on a yacht headed to open water? And then she willingly drank a beverage he gave her, when his victims had all been drugged with Rohypnol? The conversation between her and the culprit was laughable and, again, repetitive.

I wanted to like this book. I didn't. If I hadn't committed to finishing it in order to write the review for BookRooster.com, I would have stopped reading half way through.

As a side note, the formatting was completely messed up, making it difficult to follow the flow of dialog, especially, as statements by a given character would often be split by line breaks that shouldn't have been there.