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By Samantha Warburton, on September 8th, 2011 Author: Kimberly Freeman
2011, Touchstone
Filed Under: Romance, Historical.
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
3 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
3 |
The experience of reading Wildflower Hill was similar to watching a Lifetime movie: it has a weak plot and bland characters, but I found myself staying up late to finish it anyway. The novel tells the story of three generations of a Scottish family, the Blaxland-Hunters, as related through alternating narratives by both the matriarchal grandmother, Beattie, and her granddaughter, Emma. There’s plenty of romance (and with it heartbreak), ballet, fashion design–but it does manage to dodge being either your typical romance novel or, worse, chick lit. …
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By Mike Beeman, on August 12th, 2011 [This fine adventure story is a C4 Great Read. Find it and other C4 favorites on our Great Reads shelf at Powell's.]
Author: Carol Birch
2011, Doubleday
Filed Under: Literary, Historical.
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
9 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
I read a review of this last Wednesday and, thanks to the magic and compulsive buying ease that comes with owning a nookColor, had finished by Sunday night. I’m ready to jump on the top of the pig-pile of glowing reviews. This book was a blast. How can you not like a novel that begins like this:
I was born twice. First in a wooden room that jutted out over the black water of the Thames, and then again eight years later in the Highway, when the tiger took me in his mouth and everything truly began.
As far as plot goes, this book is almost a mash-up. It has three distinct parts, each of which reminded me of an old favorite. The first section is solid Dickens: it follows Jaffy Brown, a London street urchin in the true Dickensian sense. (The son of a young “fallen” mother, we meet him happily walking the sewers, searching for coins in the muck with his bare feet.) A chance encounter with an escaped tiger leads Jaff to the title character, the eccentric Charles Jamrach, an overblown menagerie owner and importer of exotic animals who quickly takes the youth under his wing, where the innate animal magnetism that led Jaff into a tiger’s mouth quickly leads him to success. …
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By Sean Clark, on July 27th, 2011 Author: Bernard du Boucheron, translated from the French by Hester Velmans
2008, Overlook Duckworth
Filed Under: Literary, Historical.
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
3 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
For a debut novel by a 76 year-old man, this is a pretty ambitious book. It’s not long (a slim 120 or so pages), but it is fairly dense. The Voyage of the Short Serpent tells the tale of a medieval Scandinavian bishop sent to the Greenlandic colonies to restore order. The church believes the colonies have fallen into abject hedonism (accompanied by incest and cannibalism) and need salvation. That political mission becomes a lifelong adventure, however, as traversing the arctic in a tiny wooden boat is no simple task. A grueling adventure follows, and from it springs a story of surprising depth. …
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By Sean Clark, on July 21st, 2011 [This time-travel-focused genre buster is a C4 Great Read. Find it and other C4 favorites on our Great Reads shelf at Powell's.]
 Author: Félix. J. Palma
2011, Atria Books
Filed Under: Literary, Historical, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Romance.
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
9 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
There’s very little I can say about this book without spoiling something. So I’m going to try something a little different to start. Let’s do word association. Take a look at this list and see how many things you think could help make for a good story:
Victorian romance. Parasols. Hoodwinks. Murder. Historical figures in fictional situations. Meticulous plotting. Vengeance. Paradoxes. Bawdiness. Secret societies. Blackmail. The Terminator. Drunk British whores. Jack the Ripper slaughtering drunk British whores. Minority Report. Tribal magic. The time machine in H.G. Wells’s attic. Street brawls. Apocalyptic robot battles. Dimensional rifts. Time travel. Henry James and Bram Stoker having a sleepover. Time Cop. Lava guns. Immortal dogs. Naive girls easily coerced into sex. Parallel universes. Steam powered automatons. Fourth dimensional dragon-like beasts. Sword fights.
Pretty good odds for an entertaining book right? Right. In any case, if that piqued your interest sufficiently, go ahead and skip the rest of the review, pick up this book, and enjoy. Read on and I’ll try and explain a little more substantively, but be aware that while I’ll try to limit them, there will be spoilers after the break. If you already think you want to read the book, do so, then return to my review in the future (oooooh).
Last chance to avoid SPOILERS. Okay, you’ve been warned. …
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By Sean Clark, on June 14th, 2011 [This unique novel is a C4 Great Read. Find it and other C4 favorites on our Great Reads shelf at Powell's.]
Author: Umberto Eco , translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock
2005, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Filed Under: Literary, Historical.
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
9 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
10 |
| Visuals... |
9 |
When I reviewed Emma Donoghue’s Room, I noted that its most standout feature was the narrator who had to create his own context for the world around him, as he lacked the social upbringing most of us take for granted. I wish I had read The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana before then, as Eco does something quite similar, and he’s much more successful at it.
Rather than a boy who grew up in a rape-cave, MFQL is about an old man who has lost his episodic memory due to a stroke. Giambattista Bodoni (who goes by Yambo) awakes in a Milanese hospital lacking not only his memories but his entire sense of self. His associative abilities have been crippled. He knows what a toothbrush and paste are, but not what it feels like. He does not remember his name, or know who his wife and friends are. An extremely well-read dealer of antique books, Yambo retains all his knowledge of what he’s read. But he’s lost all attachments to them. I know, I know, amnesia stories are about clichéd as they come, but Eco is a brilliant writer, and he pulls it off as if it is the freshest of ideas. …
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By Sean Clark, on June 10th, 2011 Author: Thornton Wilder
 1927, Albert & Charles Boni
Filed Under: Literary, Historical
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
I received this book as a gibing gift after losing a game of Trivial Pursuit on a Thornton Wilder question. For most of us, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (winner of the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for literature) is one of those books that we either read for an assignment at some point during our schooling, or never even saw blip on the radar. For me it was the latter. But I’m glad I finally had the chance to read it, because it’s a good little novel. …
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By Eric Markowsky, on May 25th, 2011  Author: Jim Shepard
2011, Knopf
Filed Under: Short Stories, Historical, Horror, Literary.
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
You Think That’s Bad offers 11 stories inspired by a diverse array of subjects, from flood control and avalanche research to World War II and the Japanese film industry. Each one is thoroughly researched, tightly written, and full of compelling, hopeless characters. As a collection, though, You Think That’s Bad strikes the same emotional chord a little too often to make the whole something greater than its best parts.
One story is about a Black World operative who can’t talk to his wife. One is about a Dutch hydraulics engineer who can’t talk to his wife. There’s a particle physicist who can’t talk to his wife; there’s a Japanese special effects designer who can’t talk to his wife; there’s a Polish mountaineer who does a better job talking to his wife, but not nearly good enough to save either of them from himself. It’s tragic watching these obsessed men ruin their lives one after the other, but some things start to feel repetitive. …
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By Sean Clark, on May 19th, 2011 Author: Scott Westerfeld
2010, Simon Pulse
Filed Under: Young Adult, Historical, Sci-Fi, Fantasy
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
| Illustrations... |
8 |
My biggest gripe with Westerfeld’s Leviathan was that it was too much a set-up for a trilogy and not as satisfying a standalone story as the lead entry in a series ought to be. Seeing as Behemoth is the second entry of said planned trilogy, that problem is no longer as glaring. Still, this too acts as a build up for a larger conflict, but rather than leaving us at the precipice, it–as a good middle segment should–aligns the plot’s working pieces then sets things in motions for a hefty conflict in book three. All that aside, this novel features all the aspects that made the first book intriguing, as well as an arguably tighter story arc.
Behemoth picks up with Deryn, the girl posing as a male in order to be British midshipman, and Alek, the Hapsburg prince on the lam, aboard the great flying whale dirigible following the escape at the end of Leviathan. They head for Istanbul, where the majority of the story unfolds.
(I gave a breakdown of the basic conceits of the series in my review of Leviathan, so if you haven’t read it go check out that first–but in brief, this is a steampunk retelling of World War One, where the machinist “Clanker” Eastern Europeans are in conflict with the “Darwinist” Western Europeans’ army, which is built around giant creatures created by manipulating evolution into complex living vehicles and biological weapons. So by whale dirigible, I mean it’s literally a huge, floating, armored whale.)  …
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By Sean Clark, on May 12th, 2011 Author: Michael David Lukas
2011, Harper
Filed Under: Historical, Fantasy.
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
The Oracle of Stamboul is a competent and at times engrossing bit of historical fiction, but it’s also a case of magical realism that wants the magic to matter more than it ultimately does. For the majority of the book, the fantastical elements are not present; sadly, when they do crop up, they aren’t crucial to anything. That’s a shame, because Lukas spins a good yarn, balancing characters, plot, and tension nicely.
Almost right away, Oracle reveals itself as a somewhat picaresque late-19th century adventure story set in a particularly volatile part of the world. Eleonora Cohen is the precocious daughter of a Jewish carpet seller. When her father, Yakob, travels from their home near the Black Sea to the great city Stamboul (Istanbul) in order to sell off some textile stock, Eleonora stows away. Turns out to be a good idea, as their home town is sacked not long after the departure.
…
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By Sean Clark, on April 21st, 2011 Author: James Bradley
2008, Picador Australia
Filed Under: Historical, Literary.
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
A resurrectionist does not bring the dead to life. There are no literal resurrections in this book (and it’s questionable whether there are any figurative ones). No one cares much for the dead or attempts to restore them. Instead, they pull them from the ground and cut them up in front of an audience.
In 19th century London, anatomists were both doctors and entertainers to the intelligentsia. A gentleman surgeon could build esteem and a reputation, as well as his fortune, through exhibitions of successful autopsies and dissection lectures. But, despite the high mortality rate of the day, human corpses weren’t always easy to come by: laws forbade the dissection of any body not put to death for crime. So doctors turned to resurrectionists, men who would deliver bodies procured by untold means for coin, no questions asked.
…
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