The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Pan Books - October 12, 1979
180 pages

Arthur Dent is a completely unremarkable human that is living in a completely unremarkable town on a completely unremarkable Thursday. He wakes up to find that his house is about to be demolished for a bypass. Naturally, Arthur lies down in front of the bulldozers so that they can't go anywhere. Soon his friend Ford Prefect comes and invites him for a drink, hypnotizing the man in charge of demolition to take Arthur's place. Ford then calmly explains to them that he is an alien stranded on Earth in his quest to update The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an early form of the ebook. Earth is about to be destroyed by a race called the Vogons, and just before they disintegrate, Arthur and Ford hitch a ride on the ship.

Ah, yet another short novel. At least this one comes at the beginning of a series, so it will add up to be longer in the long run. And I assure you that I will be reading the next books of the series. This cult phenomenon deserves a widespread audience. In one of my favorite parts of the novel, (spoiler alert! This is the turning point of the book, so don't read unless you really don't care!)Marvin the paranoid android, a chronically depressed robot, kills a ship by telling it about his world views. The ship kills itself in utter depression.(spoiler end) This work is wholly clever and imaginative.

Grade: A

The High-Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate

The High-Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate by Scott Nash
Candlewick - September 25, 2012
368 pages

Captain Blue Jay is the captain of the Jolly Robin and leader of a band of fearsome pirates who fly in an airship across Thrushland, pillaging. Captain Blue Jay has always had an affinity for eggs, and when he captures one that hatches into a Brantas goose, a species long believed to have magical powers and even be a god. Blue Jay can use this to his advantage when he faces off against the treacherous crow Teach and his brother Bellamy.

My chief complaint with this novel is how short it is. It's not just the 368 pages; the font is large, there is great spacing between them and frequent pictures. If this had been longer, it could have been thrilling. However, I'm going to have to label it as merely "above average". While I have to disagree with the use of crows as antagonists, I'm pleased with the choice of having a blue jay antihero, and of course I can't disagree with the use of anthro at all in any work, from short story to novel. Not to mention, as much as it shortened the page length, the pictures were stunning.

Grade: B+

Fenrir

Fenrir by M.D. Lachlan
Pyr - January 1, 2011
441 pages

Let me give you the basic setup, i.e. what the book is for the first twenty pages or so before Lachlan just rips everything established to shreds. The Vikings are in Paris and they're setting fire to everything. They say that they want the Count's sister so that they can marry her to their ruler Helgi. The Count doesn't know what to do, so he calls Jehan of St. Germain, a blind and crippled confessor, to help him. Meanwhile, his sister Aelis is running away because Munin and Hugin are after her. Then there's the Easterner Leshii, who happens to be hanging out with a man named Chakhlyk (I don't remember, it's something crazy like that). Chakhlyk also happens to be a werewolf. Then there's the Viking chieftain Ofaeti.

I'm just going to get this out of the way: Chakhlyk = Sindre. This is never explained in the book. First he's called Chakhlyk by Leshii, then Aelis calls him the wolfman, and then all of a sudden (without him telling her his name, mind you) she starts thinking that he's called Sindre. It took me a few chapters to realize he was Chakhlyk/the wolfman. That was part of the overarching problem with the book: it's trying to be mysterious and just ends up being confusing. The last chapter has LITERALLY NOTHING to do with the rest of the book. This is the second book in a trilogy and I was told that you could understand this just fine without the first book. Something tells me even with the first book I wouldn't know what was going on. The one saving grace was that it was only 441 pages instead of double that.

Grade: D

Tales from Watership Down

Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams
Hutchinson - March 1, 1996
198 pages

The author of Watership Down has penned a sequel of sorts. It is a collection of short stories in three parts: the first part are traditional stories of the rabbit trickster El-ahrairah. The second part are more stories of El-ahrairah and his faithful companion Rabscuttle, although these are on their way home from the Black Rabbit of Inle. The third and final part follows the rabbits on the Down in events after what happened in Watership Down.

I was thrilled to see that this was mostly stories of El-ahrairah. The few stories that were mentioned in the original were delightfully whimsical, and the stories in Tales are the same way. The first part also includes a story by Blackavar, a rabbit rescued from Efrafa, about a ghost rabbit. However, it is also ruined by a nonsensical story by the jester-type rabbit Bluebell. In the third part, I started off with a grin upon seeing that Hyzenthlay, my favorite character from the original because of the fact that she is a strong doe, becomes elevated to co-Chief Rabbit with her mate Hazel as opposed to remaining stuck in the "First Lady" type position. I was, however, less than thrilled to see that Blackberry is rarely mentioned and is only once called upon for his intelligence. This book still holds almost as much of the magic as the first. Almost.

Grade: B+

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux - October 2, 2012
304 pages

Clay Jannon worked at the technological bagel store NewBagel for a few months. Then the recession hit and NewBagel drastically changed its style and became Old Jerusalem Bagels. Now Clay is unemployed and roams the streets of San Francisco when all of a sudden he sees a "Help Wanted" sign for Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. He gets the job and works the night shift. But the store is odd. The books Penumbra carries are arbitrary, although it's nothing popular. And then there's the Waybacklist, full of books printed in a cryptic code. These books are "borrowed" by a variety of strange customers. Clay has to get to the bottom of what is happening here.

This is possibly the geekiest, most hipster-y book that I have ever read. Not that it's a bad thing. In fact, it is very much a good thing for this reviewer. Anything with smart female geeks and bookstores is off to a good start, but when you throw in Swiss typography from the 1500s and a book series within a book about singing dragons, and that excels it to further levels of glee. My one major problem with the novel was of Clay's roommates, Mat and Ashley. Mat's greatest importance is forging one of the logbooks of the bookstore, and Ashley exists for no other purpose than to act like a robot when not making out with Mat. Throw that blonde bimbo out on her head, give Mat something else to do, and this book would have been among the best.

Grade: B+

Days of Blood & Starlight

Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor
Hachette Book Group - November 6, 2012
513 pages

Warning: This is the sequel to Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. My synopsis and review may involve things that are not spoilers to people who have read the first book, but would be to people who have not. If you have not completed Daughter of Smoke and Bone, do not read the following until you have finished it.

Karou had loved the enemy and had sorely paid the price for it. Now they were dead: Brimstone, Yasri, Issa, and Twiga. Karou has gone to Thiago's army, even after what the White Wolf did to her previous self as Madrigal. In the wake of Brimstone's death, it is now Karou's job to resurrect the dead chimaera as revenants so that they may be able to defeat the seraphim for once and for all. But Akiva is waging his own war, this one for redemption.

Can I just start by saying that I absolutely detest the character of Akiva? I don't know what makes me loathe him so, but I cannot stand him at all. Karou needs Ziri, her "little Kirin shadow" from when she was Madrigal. The other characters, however, were wonderful. The dark, sarcastic senses of humor from Karou's friend Zuzana and Madrigal's friend Haxaya were outstanding. There were brief flashes to three escaped chimaera: Sveva, Sarazal, and Rath. Nothing truly important happened to them, so they had better become a large part of the third book in the trilogy, or I will wreak havoc. And nobody wants to see my havoc. The strong Karou plot was weakened by side Zuzana and Sveva/Sarazal/Rath side-plots, and the Akiva plot only built up steam about two-thirds of the way in. While the characters (especially the chimaera) are much more outstanding than its predecessor, the plots of Days of Blood and Starlight left me wanting something thicker.

Grade: B

Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
Hachette Book Group - September 27, 2011
432 pages

Karou is a seventeen-year-old Prague art student that hasn't exactly led a normal life. Blue hair sprouts from her head, no dye required, and she's sent around the world to collect teeth for a group of chimaera, or creatures with attributes of both humans and animals. She has bullets in her stomach that she doesn't remember, as well as tattoos of eyes on the palms of her hands. She speaks nearly all human languages there are to offer. One one of her missions she finds an angel named Akiva, and the two of them help her discover a past life that has been long forgotten.

There is one major problem that I have with the book: it destroys Roman Catholicism and basicially all other religions with a concept of angels and/or devils. Basically, there are chimaera (devils) and seraphs (angels) that have no ties to God or Satan or any other deity because there are no deities outside of the goddesses Nitid and Ellai. Now, I'm fine with a nice pantheon or whatnot set in another world, but this actually tears apart true religion and labels it as wrong. That being said, the pace built wonderfully and the characters were rich. There were a few awkward one-sentence chapters, though, that some may enjoy but others, such as myself, found jarring.

Grade: B