September 2015 books

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

4.5 Was this book better than Desperate Passage? Not sure. I think Brown gives more cultural context for the events surrounding the Donner Party, and he certainly weaves more of a narrative-like retelling of the story. But Desperate Passage was pretty dang good, too.

How lucky are we as a society to have two awesome books about the Donner Party? So lucky!

View all my reviews Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

BLERRRRRRRRRGH.

View all my reviews Death in the Floating City by Tasha Alexander
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was different than all the other Lady Emilys, and as a result, I felt like it was more like every other book out there.

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Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Great story, meh execution. Did not like.

And can writers who write about werewolves just agree to have the clothes transform as well? I promise that we readers can handle it. It's just that when the clothes land in a heap on the floor every time you transform, then the text is always fussing around about where exactly the clothes were left, and how if you want to transform back you have to worry about being naked, etc. Werewolves are already magical. Let's just have the clothes be magical, too, mmkay?

View all my reviews My Name Is Resolute by Nancy E. Turner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4 stars when I'm in a good mood. Otherwise, 3.5. I'm not usually one to clamor for a trilogy in place of a single book, but this was a case where there was simply too much going on to be told in one story. I started reading and when I realized the book starts out in 1729, I thought, "oh, I could have sworn this book was about the American Revolution. I must have been mistaken."

Nope, I was not. This book is about 1729, but it is *also* about the American Revolution. Also: the French and Indian War. Also: a revolution in Scotland. Also: molasses to rum to slaves. Also: witchcraft in New England. This book is about All The Things.

I enjoyed the first half more than the second, and I think if I were the author, I would have called it a day (or an action-packed 300+ pages!) when Resolute gets to Lexington. The rest of the story should have been saved for a second (and third) book, possibly featuring Resolute's children instead of just her.

All that said, I almost squealed like a little girl at all the parts that reminded me of Calico Captive, one of my favorite books from childhood. There were so many similarities between Resolute's story and Susanna Johnson's story, and it was a reminder to me that as awful and contrived as some of the events of this book seemed to be, stranger things have happened in real life.

View all my reviews Uprooted by Naomi Novik
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

At times darkly beautiful; at times deeply weird. I could say the same about Daughter of the Forest, for example, which this book reminded me a lot of. But DotF had an underlying richness to it, a sense that the world of that book had existed long before the story within its pages took place, and would carry on for long after. The world and mythology and magic of Uprooted seemed patchy and new and insubstantial. I didn't like how even the experts in this book didn't really know how magic worked, or what to do to defeat the enemy. It made them all bumbling idiots, in a sense, and that's no fun to read about for 400 pages. I needed a hero or heroine, or a clear goal and a clear method of achieving it. But there just wasn't one.

View all my reviews Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship by Robert Kurson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I could have loved this story if it had been a magazine article. In book form, though, it felt stretched. There is suspense, and there is stress, and this book made me feel the latter, not the former.

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