Dearly Devoted Dexter

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Jinny

Author: Jeff Lindsay
Series: Dexter #2
Published: January 2005
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
292 pages

Reading this Dexter book was different from reading the first Dexter book, for me, because the second book (and all subsequent books in the series) are not the same as the TV show at all, which is what I am firmly acquainted with. So compared to the first book, I truly had no idea what to expect.

This second installment of the series has Dexter start off with trying to track down a nasty killer pedophile’s accomplice. Alas, it is very difficult being a serial killer when your intimidating work colleague suspects you’re up to no good and has begun stalking you 24/7. Thus, Dexter finds himself spending more and more time with his “disguise” — his girlfriend, Rita, in an attempt to show Sergeant Doakes that he’s really a very normal guy.

However, Dexter finds himself on the same side as Doakes when another serial killer has made his way into town. Deborah, Dexter’s sister, insists that Dexter help find this crazed killer. However, Dexter finds it difficult to keep up his end of the bargain when he realizes Doakes is on the killer’s list … and if Doakes is gone, Dexter would be free once again.

I definitely enjoyed this novel, particularly since I had no idea what to expect from my favourite serial killer (… that sounds so wrong, I know. He’s fictional though!) Once again, Dexter’s witty and clever remarks have won me over, and I thought the new main bad guy, that other serial killer, was quite interesting as well. I don’t want to reveal the ending, but when his motivations were revealed, I was like, “Ohhhh! It all makes sense now!” Really, I should have seen it sooner, but nonetheless, it was creative and great.

I found this novel moved a little slower than the first, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Just an observation. The first book flowed quickly, while this one takes its a time a little more, though it’s by no means a slow book. I think this allowed for more time for not only Dexter’s character to develop, but others such as Deborah and Doakes as well, who were really rather minor and flat characters from the first book.

There are two things that kind of bug me however. The first is a spoiler for the first book so skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know — in the first book, in the end, Deborah finds out that Dexter is a killer. I really dislike how this second book didn’t delve into this issue at all. Deborah is clearly a very law abiding cop who is determined to throw every criminal in jail. I just feel so dissatisfied that there was absolutely no discussion about Deborah knowing about Dexter’s dark side. The only time it was ever mentioned was when Deborah asked Dexter for help and kind of threatened him with, “I know what you are.” To me, I think she’s trying to ignore the fact she learned that her brother is a killer, but still, I would have thought something would have been talked about between the two. For example, Dexter could have said something like I tried to talk to Deborah about what she saw and heard that night but she pushes me away each time, so I conclude that she doesn’t want to talk about it, wants to ignore that part about me. That’s just a crude example, but you know … something.

The other thing I dislike was the epilogue. I also didn’t like the epilogue from the first book. I found them both too short and they don’t feel like they properly wrap up the loose ends. Almost like they’re hastily tacked onto the end.

All in all, I was really into this book, as much as I was into the first and I would be, of course, reading the rest of the series. Just can’t get enough of Dexter! I love the mysteries and it’s just such a neat angle to have a serial killer chasing down a serial killer. I do hope the epilogues improve though.

My Rating:

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A Reliable Wife

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Jinny

Author: Robert Goolrick
Published: April 2009
Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
320 pages (eBook)

The April book of my bookclub :) It was one I suggested, although I didn’t really know what it was about. I had seen it a lot at bookstores and the premise sounded interesting — a man, Ralph Truitt, puts an ad in the newspaper seeking for a reliable wife.  The year is 1906. The story opens with him receiving his wife-to-be, Catherine, at the train station in a small, snowy Wisconsin town. Neither of them know what to expect from one another. Little do they know that both of them want to use one another for their own plans. The resulting story is one about secrets, about coming to terms with our pasts, and finding ways to redeem ourselves for the future.

This is most certainly a character driven story. If you are someone who enjoys action-stories or stories with a lot of twisty plots, you might not be happy with reading it about character emotions, motives, their fears, their wants, and so on. I am definitely a person who loves drama and action type plots, so this kind of story did feel a bit slow to me. However, it is nice experiencing a different type of story every now and then, and A Reliable Wife does a good job really delving into the psyches of the characters, in my opinion.

With that said, I was a little surprised that all the characters’ psyches seemed to revolve around sex! Sex and sexual passion was used very frequently to describe the characters in all sorts of ways. For example, near the end, one of the main character’s self pity was described using sex as a metaphor. I’m not in any way some sort of prude, but I think the sex stuff could have been toned down by a lot. It seemed to be the thing on everybody’s mind, regardless if it actually made sense or not. With all that said, however, I hesitate to call this book a romance, even with all the sex and, yes, love involved. It’s simply not the focus of the story, in my opinion.

As for the characters, what I liked about all of them was how they were all shades of gray. No one character was completely all good or completely all bad. All of them have their fair share of issues, and it was really hard deciding which character I felt more sorry for. If you’re planning to read this book, be prepared to exercise your sympathy and empathy skills! I, personally, found it quite easily to pity Ralph. Even though he grew up in a privileged household, his issues with his parents, his first wife and son were all very traumatizing on the man and he has been so full of regret for years.

To wrap this up, if you are prepared for a story that revolves around people and their thoughts and emotions, then I think you will find A Reliable Wife a pleasant read. I admit, I was not wow’d by the book, but I did find it enjoyable and would recommend it to people who like character-driven stories.

My Rating:

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Geist

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Jinny

Author: Philippa Ballantine
Series: Book of the Order #1
Published: September 2010
Publisher: ACE
294 pages (paperback)

So, I bought this book on a whim, totally based off of the cover. It’s gorgeous! Okay, it wasn’t 100% off a whim. I did look up some reviews and they were generally pretty favorable towards it. But admittedly, I gravitated to this book mainly because of the cover … heh.

The story takes place in a world where geists frequently attack, popping over from a mysterious placed called the Otherside (which I imagined was a sort of hellish place of death and grimness). An organization called the Order trains and utilizes Deacons to banish geists and other shadowy monsters when they appear, in order to protect the populous. Our main character, Sorcha Faris, is one of the top Deacons, and is sent to a small village called Ulrich in order to investigate some strange geist activity. To her annoyance, she is paired with rookie Deacon Merrick Chambers (though they eventually develop a strong Bond).

At Ulrich, they encounter Raed Rossin, the Pretender to the Throne. At first they are not friendly with one another, but later find they need to cooperate in order to save Ulrich, and defeat a dark conspiracy, one that shakes the very foundation of the Order.

I usually find it a bit difficult to really get into a new fantasy world. I think it’s the genre as a whole — they usually throw around terminology and jargon without really explaining what it means, and the reader has to figure it out themselves. With that said, Geist is no different in that respect and I had a little trouble understanding the beginning of the story. It was supposed to be a very exciting beginning, I could tell, but I didn’t understand or know a lot of the magical spells and terms being used so the effect was a little lost on me.

However, the story shapes itself up to be quite interesting as it chugs along. It felt like a very solid fantasy novel, almost like a fantasy RPG video game (I love RPG video games) with “boss battles” and things like that (hehehe). There is also a well thought out magic system, so the magic in this world is quite structured. The story is obviously meant to be an adventure story, and I think Geist was successful in that regard. I certainly want to continue pursuing the series, and I already have book two on my shelf!

The characters were pretty good, but a bit hit or miss. I don’t think they’re particularly deep or anything, but I didn’t get the impression that this was a character-driven book anyway. Sorcha is definitely a very independent, almost arrogant, Deacon. She’s strong willed and doesn’t let anyone boss her around. At first I thought she was too cold and, well, bitchy, for my liking, but she grew on me a little and by the end of the novel, I was okay with her. Merrick’s personality never felt fully developed to me but in general he was likeable as well. Raed was often flirtatious and cocky, but at the same time, very troubled, which is kind of an odd combination of traits, and it struck me as kind of weird. Nynnia (er, I forgot her name, but if you read the book, you’d know who I mean) was really one dimensional and flat. Completely uninterested in her, even at the end of the story when you find out who she is, it’s like, “So what?”

Another thing that bothered me was Sorcha and Raed’s relationship. There is a romance component in this novel, and it was really typical and unsurprising. They start off not liking each other too much, then experience a life or death moment together, fall in love but experience moral conflicts since Sorcha is married and Raed is kind of royalty, even if not officially. Kind of a clunky romance, like it was moving from one stage to the next. It didn’t flow smoothly in my opinion, and like I said, predictable since it was obvious to me from the start that they’re meant to be the couple of the story. However, since the romance is not a huge part of the novel or anything, I was not too bothered.

To sum it all up, the story was really good with a strong magic system. The characters are a small drawback, but since it’s more of an action and plot orientated story, I could overlook it. If you’re looking for a short, solid fantasy book, give Geist a try.

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Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Jinny

Author: Jeff Lindsay
Series: Dexter #1
Published: July 2004
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
288 pages (paperback) 

Background: I’m a huge fan of the Dexter TV show. I have a large poster of Michael C. Hall portraying Dexter in my bedroom (a bloodless and not-creepy poster, which was a little difficult to find given the nature of the show). So obviously, since I love the show and I love to read, it was only a matter of time before I got my grubby little hands on the series. Which I recently did thanks to my mother, who gifted them to me as a birthday present. (Speaking of which, I really should do an IMM post soon). My point is — this review is probably a little bias, although I tried not to be.

With all that said, I did try to forget everything I know about the TV series while reading this book, although some comparisons will inevitably arise. Darkly Dreaming Dexter is about a guy named Dexter (duh). He’s a blood spatter pattern analyzer for the Miami Metro Police force on the outside … but on the inside, he’s a rather successful serial killer. But never fear, he only goes after bad guys; people who have killed other people.

Dexter’s life is going pretty okay. He’s kept up his cover as a normal human being for many years now. But there’s another serial killer in town and Dexter is, for once in his life, a bit frightened. Whoever this killer is, he’s copying Dexter’s killing style, and leaving some very strange messages for him. Friend? Or foe?

I swear I’m not intentionally being bias here, but this was a good book. It’s short, which obviously factors into the reason why I got through it in less than a day, but also, it is addictive and difficult to put down once you start.

It’s entirely in first person, so we’re inside Dexter’s head the whole time. Now, you might think it’s creepy being inside the head of a serial killer, but Dexter is a very interesting character, and for a serial killer, he really isn’t that creepy. He only kills bad people, and he recognizes that what he is doing is not socially acceptable so he isn’t psychotically trying to justify himself, which makes the reader feel a little less guilty about liking a serial killer character. And he’s very likeable. He’s got a wicked sense of black humour, and he (or the author, or both) loves alliteration. Oh, the alliteration! Dexter’s got some style there. I mean, come on, reading “very careful cold coiled creeping crackly cocked and ready …” is kind of cool. I think Dexter is what makes this book so interesting. I don’t read a lot of crime fiction (barely any) but I’ve always been under the impression characters in such books are usually the detectives chasing down the criminals. I like Dexter a lot because we’re inside the criminal’s head instead … though, being a part of the police force, he is still chasing down criminals. Criminals chasing criminals, who is going to come out on top? Love that.

Even if you’ve watched the TV show, you should try reading the book for sure. The first season was loosely based off of this first book (and subsequent seasons are not based off of any of the subsequent sequels, so this is the only one), so while there are similarities, some things are different enough that even I did not know what was going to happen, and thus, was glued to the pages. As a whole, the general plot is the same, but the TV show really expanded the book (which, like I said, is quite short) and changed a bunch of things. Some of the characters aren’t even in the same roles. I can’t really say which is better, the show or the book — I really love both of them.

Now, the ending of the book is considerably less conclusive, less well-done than the TV show. The ending is markedly different from how the first season of the TV show went, so everything that happened in the ending was a surprise to me. I liked the ending in general, but it was rather abrupt and I felt like it left way too many questions than answers. The epilogue also felt a bit rushed and too short.

I’m super excited to read the sequels though! Since they are completely different from the TV show at this point, I have no idea what to expect and I’m tremendously excited to find out ;P

My Rating:

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Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Jinny

Author: Ransom Riggs
Series: Miss Peregrine #1
Published: June 2011
Publisher: Quirk Books
352 pages

The March book of my online reading book club :)

A collection of odd vintage photographs and the mysterious and violent death of his beloved grandfather leads Jacob on a trip to a remote island by Wales, where he yearns to find out the truth behind his grandfather’s death and his cryptic last words. Everyone’s convinced Jacob’s having a mental breakdown over the death, but Jacob knows he’s not — he really did see monsters kill his grandpa. Or he thinks he did anyway … after several therapist sessions, even Jacob is starting to think maybe he’s just gone crazy. But the discovery of a broken down house and a miraculous encounter with the peculiar children of his grandfather’s story convinces Jacob that he isn’t seeing things. The monsters were real, and the peculiar children are in great danger.

The problem I had with this book was that it was boring. The plot is weak and moves at an awkward fast-slow-fast-slow pace. It was such a disappointment after the intriguing beginning. The beginning was really well written, in my opinion. I was sucked into the story immediately. It is rather unfortunate that it went steeply downhill from there.

The characters were not very well developed. Jacob, the main character, is a bit of a wishy-washy narrator. He never seems to really know what he wants. He didn’t have any goals to work towards in this novel. It was just, “I’m going to this island … I have no idea what I am looking for, but maybe it will help.” And when he got to the island, he was like, “I’m here now. I have no idea what I’m doing.” Jacob’s father, the one parent that had the most stage-time in this book, had some potential — a bird enthusaist who clearly had some self-esteem issues and was worried that if he didn’t do something productive with his life soon, his wealthy wife would leave him — but the author didn’t really do much with him. Which is a real shame because his back story and his issues sound like they could make a pretty damn interesting novel. As for the other characters, the peculiar children and what not, they had interesting abilities, but not much of a personality.

The most redeeming quality of this book are the photographs, I feel. They range from mildly odd to downright eerie. I think the author must have really loved the photos and wanted to use them to make a coherent plot. The problem with this is that sometimes, in order to include a certain photo or set of photos, unnecessary details or scenes were added into the narrative. I think this contributed to the awkward pacing of the story, and also may be why I felt the plot felt rather weak; the story  was constrained by the photographs. It couldn’t deviate too far from the story the pictures told when arranged in a certain order. So this book’s strength is also its weakness … heh.

As a whole, I just didn’t dig this book. The photos were cool and I really enjoyed the writing style, but the other important components of a novel, namely plot and characters, fell way too short for my tastes.

My Rating:

Posted in Paranormal, Young Adult | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Jinny

Author: Stieg Larsson
Series: Millennium #3
Published: May 2010
Publisher: Knopf
563 pages

I read book two 2 years ago, but recently watched the Swedish films (as well as the Hollywood version of book one). I was reminded that I still haven’t read book three and that it had, in fact, been sitting on my bookshelf for a little over a year now. I figured it was about time to finish the series.

Without giving too much away, book three focuses on the more political events that occurred as a result of book two. Salander is critically injured and lies helpless in the hospital. It is up to Mikael Blomkvist (that damn journalist again, as Salander would say) and various other allies of Salander to piece together the truth of what is really happening, and in doing so, they discover a massive political conspiracy, with Salander as the most unfortunate victim. Mikael and the others must try to figure out the entire story in time for Salander’s trial, where her enemies will try to have her locked away forever in an insane asylum if they can.

When I first started this book, I was a little surprised that I was not really as into it as I was the first two. I chalk it up to a number of factors — Lisbeth Salander, my favourite character, was out of the action and laying in the hospital for a good chunk of the plot; I have no idea how the intricacies of the Swedish government (or, any government, I guess) really work; and there were a lot of new characters introduced in this one, so it became a little difficult to remember who’s who sometimes. And there was just something I can’t quite put my finger on about the first half of the book or so. It wasn’t particularly engaging, I suppose. There wasn’t very much action, and I felt it was a lot of explanation, textbook-style, rather than a novel.

However, I have to say, the book did pick up tremendously after the halfway point — coincidentally (or not so coincidentally!) this was also when Lisbeth Salander was healthy enough to once again participate in the plot. And from that point on, I was reminded why I love the Millennium series and how it was made of sheer awesomeness. We got the crazy computer hacking again, we have people stalking people, people tailing people, people having sex with people, and people pointing their guns at people … It was thrilling again and I stayed up entirely too late finishing this book last night.

One of the final scenes, Salander’s trial, was my favourite of all. I was so in the zone while reading that, I couldn’t stop. It was one of those moments when reading where you had to keep reading, you had to find out what happens next. And I know, I know, there’s going to be those little nit-picky readers (hopefully very few of them) who will be like, “A real trial would never happen like that, yadi-yada.” Whatever, guys! I still think the entire trial was clever.

At the end of the book, I felt very satisfied with how things wrapped up. This book was really good, though it did feel a little weaker than the first two. A part of me wants to rate this a 5 just because it ended off so well in my opinion, but I think I will have to settle for the 4.5, because of the slow beginning. And some of the relationships, I felt, could have been handled a little better. For example, the mini plot with Erika’s stalker seemed unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, and primarily served as an awkward way to bring Lisbeth and Erika closer, in my opinion. There was also Mikael’s new relationship with Monica which totally had lots of potential but ended up with a wishy-washy, non-commitment kind of ending where you still have no idea what’s going on between them.

I digress. Point is, if you’ve read the first two books and plan on starting book three, you won’t be disappointed but at the same time, book three may not seem as good as the first two. Still, it’s really great and certainly memorable.

My Rating:

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