CBR V Review #25-26: Just This Once & Just Good Friends by Rosalind James

I started reading the Escape to New Zealand series on a whim.  I finished my previous book and wanted something free from the Kindle lending library, something preferably silly and easy.  Romance novels set in New Zealand?  That was just what the doctor ordered!  I didn't even realize this was a series when I started the first one, but I can promise you I'll be reading the other two volumes before long.

The series revolves around the All Blacks, an institution in the world of rugby.  Each volume involves the life and romance of a player on the team, and I have no problem at all picturing each one of these very attractive gentlemen.  Just This Once is about Hannah and Drew.  Hannah is an overworked employee at a women's sportwear company.  She finally takes a much needed vacation - three weeks in New Zealand.  It's here that she meets Drew Callahan, rugby captain and superstar.  She has no idea who he is till much later, but she's smitten much sooner than she cares to admit.  Drew sees they have a good thing, and fights to keep her at his side.  Once Hannah heads home to her life, she has to decide if it's really worth living if all she has to come home to is more work.

Just Good Friends has a darker edge to it, telling the story of Kate and Koti.  Kate escapes to New Zealand with the help of Hannah to hide from her abusive stalker ex-boyfriend.  Gunshy about men in general, she doesn't know what to do about Koti, the playboy of the rugby team who has taken an interest in her.  The two spat every time they are together, but that kind of fire fuels them rather than detracts from their attraction.  Kate doesn't believe Koti can possibly be friends with a woman, and thus a bet is born - if Koti can be Kate's friend for six weeks without making a move on her, she owes him a big kiss in front of the rugby team's staff (Kate works in their accounting department); if Kate wins, Koti has to trade in his usual black wardrobe and wear a bright pink sweatshirt into the same office.  Both Kate and Koti have trouble keeping this bet as they grow closer.

I love these books.  James wrote them after travelling to New Zealand, and her research into the culture is obvious.  In addition to the appendixes at the back with all sorts of local terms and the like, the book is written so well in dialect that I could hear the New Zealand accents throughout.  I've always wanted to visit En Zed, so this was like taking a trip out there without the expense.  I definitely plan to read the other two, and any more she comes up with.

A must read for people who love romance novels and/or New Zealand!

CBR V Review #24: Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon

“You are my courage, as I am your conscience," he whispered. "You are my heart---and I your compassion. We are neither of us whole, alone. Do ye not know that, Sassenach?” 

I continue to love this series, even if we've left the beauty of Scotland mostly behind.  This is the fourth book in the Outlander series, and if you've read the rest, you know what you are in for here.

Diana really understands her characters, inside and out, and I appreciate that she keeps them consistent.  Jamie and Claire grow in a way I feel is completely natural, and their devotion to each other always feels hard won and worked at.  We spend time with J&C this time around setting up a new home in colonial America.  It's a subject more familiar to Gabaldon's American readers than the previous installments (or it is if you took a whole lot of US History, like I did) and she keeps her portrayal as accurate as I think she can.

This particular volume spends a lot of time with another generation - Jamie and Claire's daughter, Brianna, and her "friend" Roger (who himself is a descendant of characters from previous books).  Brianna and Roger discover something about Jamie and Claire that makes them risk a trip through the stones to reach them.  Suffice it to say that the younger generation is less prepared to handle the hardships of the time they jump back to.

Mostly, this book focuses on family, and what it means to be one, whether blood ties you together or not. I loved it, much like I loved the previous installments.  I'm interested to see how things develop as the Revolutionary War approaches, and to see how Jamie and Claire end up involved in it all.

If you loved the first three, you'll continue your love with this one.

CBR V Review #23: The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck

“Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old...

Ugh, I don't even want to write this review, which explains why it's taken me more than two months after finishing the book to put this together.  It's hard for me because I ADORED the last Pearl S Buck book I read.  Imperial Woman was absolutely fantastic.  Hell, I went around China quoting facts from it when I was privileged enough to go.  But this just left me so...well...bored.

This audio book (which was narrated well enough by Anthony Heald) bored the crap out of me. The Good Earth follows the life journey of Wang Lung,  a young man living in rural, pre-revolutionary China.  It maps the whole of his life from his wedding day to his death.  And I'm not gonna lie to you, I hated most of it.  The book is very much intended to be a study of the life of this time period and place, and usually I'm down with that.  But I just couldn't make myself care about anyone in this, and I'm a character driven reader.  Wang irritated the crap out of me, despite the fact that he behaved appropriately for the setting.  The only character I liked, Wang's first wife, gets so roundly mistreated that I was constantly yelling in my car.  And Wang's children are awful.

I love Chinese culture, and learning new facets to it tends to really fascinate me.  There was just very little about this book that grabbed my interest and held it, and I think that's sad.

If you want to read a really accurate study of a man's life in China during this time period, go for it.  But it is a slog.  A very, VERY long slog.

CBR V Review #22: Insurgent by Veronica Roth

“Like a wild animal, the truth is too powerful to remain caged.” 

Man, it kills me that I didn't write my reviews of this and it's prequel right after reading them, because now I remember so little.  And I adored them both, so that blows.

Insurgent continues the tale of Tris and the others as the world around them starts to shift dramatically.  It's really hard to talk about the plot of this one without getting super spoilery (especially because to talk about it requires spoiling the first book).  Still, suffice it to say that this book continues the story and builds on Divergent's foundation very well.

It's fascinating to see how the relationships in this one shift, as they must.  There are some pretty serious side switchers in Tris' life, and it leaves you questioning everyone.  The relationship between Tris and Four gets still more interesting, and I do really adore the two of them, both as a unit and independently.  I think one of the things I value most about Four is that he's this incredibly strong male figure, but he is so completely, irreparably broken at the same time.  He has some pretty significant weaknesses, and I like that Roth doesn't shy away from that or try to compensate for them.  They just make up who Four is, and the flaws are as important as his more positive and strong attributes.

I love how each of these turns into me loving Four instead of talking about Tris.  I'm sure lots of other reviewers have dedicated thousands of words to Tris Prior, but I find Four to be the more interesting and compelling of the two.

I'm looking very much forward to reading the last installment in the series when it gets released!

CBR V Review #21: Divergent by Veronica Roth

“We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.” 

Divergent, yet another in the trend of post-apocalyptic YA fiction, is set in a world where we mankind exists in five factions, Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent).  We are immersed in the world alongside Beatrice "Tris" Prior, an Erudite who is approaching the annual selection day, where every 16 year old is tasked with selecting which faction they will belong to for the rest of their lives.  Each faction has an initiation period that follows, and Tris's poses a number of challenges to her.  As she moves along the path to her chosen faction, secrets start coming out that could shake the foundation of all she holds dear.

Speaking on this book too much would spoil things, so I'm going to steer clear of most of the plot.  Tris is a great character, leading a book filled with other very interesting characters.  Even the ones that just pass through you get a reasonably good sense of as three dimensional people, not just filler, which is nice.    But my favorite character isn't Tris, it's Four.  Four is a fascinating character with so very much going on inside of him.  I love his relationship with Tris and with all of the other initiates.  He's awesome.

I burned through this book and then tore through the sequel (review to come) and now am waiting with everyone else for the third book, which comes out later this year.  I have a lot of reservations about the upcoming film adaptation due to casting, but I'm still interested in seeing where it goes.  A must read for fans of the genre.

CBR V Review #20: Graceling by Kristin Cashore

“When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?” 

Graceling is set in a world where sometimes people are given specific gifts, called graces.  Some of these gifts are easy to benefit from (Grace of Cooking, for example, I would find pretty handy).  Katsa, our protagonist, is graced with killing.  Manipulated by her uncle, King Randa of the Middluns, Katsa has grown to despise her grace and the things she is forced to do for him.  Her only solace is a special group she runs behind the scenes, one that tries to combat the evils of the kingdom and offset Katsa's conscience for the things Randa makes her do.  On one mission for this group, she comes across Prince Po, graced in combat arts.  The two of them make quite a pair, investigating something big going on in the kingdoms.  Their world is full of secrets, which threaten to tear some things apart while bringing Po and Katsa closer together.

This book was a lot of fun to read, though it had an uneven tone to it on occasion.  Katsa is a very interesting character, one whom I grew to love a lot more as she learned to love herself (despite that sentence reeking of Dr. Phil, it happens to be true).  Po is a fantastic character, and the interplay between the two is wonderful.  I'd love to read more books that are The Po & Katsa Adventures, but the sequels in the series don't seem to revolve around them.

As a woman with a love of combat, I enjoyed seeing a female character who kicked a whole lot of ass.  I especially enjoyed that she started out much harder and softened as she learned more about her grace.

I'd recommend this for people who enjoy good YA Fantasy.

CBR V Review #19: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

“I think so, too. I know I felt that way. For years. It was as if I was a character in a movie and the real action was about to start at any minute. But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start.” 

Beautiful Ruins is a wonderful book, especially if you love old Hollywood, new Hollywood, or Italy.  So really, most people.  It bounces cleanly between timelines, of which there are many, and I never found myself lost.  It's a hard story to sum up, involving the lives of a number of people over a number of years.  From World War II, to the set of Cleopatra, and throughout a number years leading to the present, this book never disappoints.

This is a novel that I loved, most of all, for the lush and delightful prose.  Walter has a beautiful style of writing, such that regardless of plot turnings, I was interested in the next passage just to see how she chose to say whatever it was she wanted me to hear.  A lot of my reading enjoyment is character based (I'll get to that as regards this book in a moment), but it's nice every now and then to let that take a back seat to the writing itself.  That may sound hopelessly pretentious of me, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Walter's book is populated by characters, real and fictional, that you care about.  I think she occasionally labors a little hard to give us the most full picture of each person that she can - some of the information on backgrounds feels a little forced, regardless of how interesting it may be.  However, the characters are still interesting and sympathetic, most especially Dee and Pasquale.  Their time together in the sleepy Italian town was easily my favorite bit of the book, and made me long to see the Italian shores again.

This is a book I would definitely recommend.