Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Title: Catching Fire
Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: WORTHY!

Note that there's an excellent trivia resource on the Hunger Games wiki.

One of my pet peeves about 1st person PoV novels is that it makes the narrator look really whiny if they complain about anything. This really turned me off in the obnoxious Sookie Harris novels (and explains why I much prefer the TV show since it’s not narrated at all and the TV Sookie is far from being a maiden in distress, especially lately!). Catching Fire begins a little bit like that, but Collins wisely has Katniss work through her issues without having to throw herself on some studly guy to help her. She's visited by president Snow, who smells of roses and blood, and he's clearly pissed at her. He tells her she doesn’t have to convince anyone that she's honestly in love with Peeta - anyone but him that is, and if she fails, the consequences will be dire.

This same strategy I think fails somewhat in the sequel, Mockingjay because it becomes too much to read. This is a serious problem with 1st person PoV novels, and one of several reasons I dislike them so much. Mockingjay was a tough sell, despite The Hunger Games being a runaway best seller. The reason for this was Collins' problem of how to tell the same story twice and get away with it. Clearly she succeeded, adding enough twists and unexpected turns to keep it fresh, but the first part of the book was not so successful IMO. It was dragging and slow, but it was necessary because the ground had to be laid for all that comes afterwards. I can't help but wonder how I would have done it had I been trying to sell it, and I doubt I would have brought it off as well as Collins did, so I can't mark her down for that!

Before Katniss has even begun to get settled back into her life (not that she ever can return to what she was, what she had) Katniss and Peeta (seriously? Peeta?) are whisked (yes indeed, whisked they are, and no other word will do) into the traditional Hunger Games winner's district tour. Their first stop is District 11, and Peeta really stirs up trouble (and quite unintentionally) when he pledges one month's victor winnings every year for his lifetime to the families of the two District 11 tributes (Thresh and Rue) who died in the recent games. Katniss feels she has to say something about Rue and Thresh's sacrifice, and this stirs the crowd even more. One old guy raises the three fingered lip touch salute which Katniss showed everyone during the games after Rue died, and soon everyone in that crowd is doing it, and whistling Rue's four-note Mockingjay tune. This act of solidarity turns quickly into a riot in the square and people die including the old guy who started it.

Let me say a quick word about Collins's use of 'Capitol' to describe the capital of Panem, because I found it unnecessarily confusing, an I have to wonder if Collins herself understands the difference between capital and capitol, since both words derive from the same Latin root, meaning 'head'. I think capitol is a very American word. I don't hear any nation use this outside of the Americas. Capitol refers strictly to a building where the state legislature meets, and perhaps the judicial branch, too (so much for separation!). It doesn't mean the same thing as 'capital', which is the principle city of a nation, the one which is typically the seat government for that nation. In order not to perpetuate the potential confusion and misinformation Collins may have launched by this lax choice of words, I intend to use 'capital' to refer to the principle city of Panem, and only use 'Capitol' when I need to, or when I'm quoting directly from her novels.

President Snow is seething with hatred for Katniss as she arrives in the Capital after this tour, even after they've staged a planned "impromptu" proposal of marriage from Peeta (Peeta? What's a 'Peeta', exactly?!) which Katniss accepts. Snow indicates his grievous displeasure to her and it immediately spills into District 12. He fires the existing head "Peacekeeper" and installs a vicious brute with the absurd name of Romulus Thread. Honestly! That's worse than Peeta which was previously my worst name in the trilogy (did you guess?).

Gale is the first victim. He's whipped almost to death when he's caught trying to sell a poached turkey to the head peacekeeper, not knowing that Thread has replaced the previous guy. Katniss's mom saves Gale's life, but Katniss now realizes two things. She's in love with Gale, and she's trapped into a course of action from which she cannot escape. She had been thinking of running, and taking her family with her, but this nastiness brings it home to her with horrific clarity that she cannot abandon the rest of District 12. She starts thinking then in terms of what she can do to foment an uprising like the one which has spontaneously begun in District 8 (which she only learns of by accident). Haymitch is dismissive of her idea, but she will not shed it.

Katniss and Peeta took part in the 74th Hunger Games, but what she has forgotten with all of her self-obsession and everything else that has distracted her is that this year is the Quarter Quell, a very special games held once every twenty-five years. This pattern was supposedly set in stone many years before, after the war. When President Snow reads the news of this year's tournament, taken from a box of numbered envelopes, the news is as outrageous and it is unprecedented. This year, the tributes are to be selected from all the remaining victors from the districts. Katniss believes this was not set in stone at all. She believes that Snow changed envelope number 75 for no other reason than just to get rid of all the victors (it's not called a quell for nothing!), who are symbols of success and perhaps focal points for rebellion.

Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch are hustled onto the train without even being given a chance to say goodbye this year. On the train journey, they watch tapes of the other games. Why tapes? Given the technology in this world, why tapes? I have no idea why Collins would take this backward step unless she was simply not thinking about what she was doing, which is hard to believe given how much planning she put into this trilogy. And how did they even get the tapes? It makes no sense that the capital, which has here instituted the most evil, vindictive, and vicious of games for this year, would offer any assistance at all to the victors, especially given that their aim is no less than the extermination of the victors, yet they have all the tapes they want, and one of them is Haymitch's 50th Quarter Quell games, where double the number of tributes competed, and Haymitch managed to win.

The death toll in the 75th Hunger Games:
1b Gloss - killed by Katniss
1g Cashmere - killed by Johanna
2b Brutus - killed by Peeta
2g Enobaria - captured by capital
3b Beetee - freed by rebels
3g Wiress - killed by Gloss
4b Finnick - freed by rebels
4g Mags - killed by fog
5b Unnamed - Killed at Cornucopia by Finnick
5g Unnamed - killed by tidal wave or muttation
6b Unnamed ("male morphling") - Killed at Cornucopia by Brutus
6g Unnamed ("female morphling") - killed by muttation
7b Blight - killed in force field collision
7g Johanna - captured by capital
8b Woof - Killed at Cornucopia
8g Cecilia - Killed at Cornucopia
9b Unnamed - Killed at Cornucopia
9g Unnamed - Killed at Cornucopia
10b Unnamed - killed by tidal wave or muttation
10g Unnamed - Killed at Cornucopia
11b Chaff - killed by Brutus
11g Seeder - Killed at Cornucopia
12b Peeta - captured by capital
12g Katniss - freed by rebels

The minute Katniss arrives at the capital there are behaviors which ought to make her suspicious, but as usual she doesn't grasp any of what's going on. She's told to make alliances and this time she tries, but what's actually going on is something much bigger than the games. While Katniss believes she has made a deal with Haymitch to protect Peeta, Peeta, Haymitch, and even some of the other tributes have made an alliance to protect Katniss - to protect the Mockingjay.

And now brief word about biology! Collins has us believe that while the Jabberjays were genetically created by the capital to spy on the rebels, they were left to go wild afterwards. It was expected that they would die out, but they did not. Instead some of them mated with mockingbirds to create the Mockingjay. This is patent bullshit! Jays are in the crow family Corvidae. The Mockingbirds are from a completely different family, the Mimidae. While both of these are Passeriformes, a huge order of birds, they are so far apart on the evolution bush that there is no way they would be likely to even physically mate, let alone have issue from the mating. Humans would have a better chance of success mating with chimpanzees (which is to say: none!) than would birds of two different families, which begs the question as to why Collins chose the jays to begin with!

If she was going for smarts, then another member of the Corvidae family might have been a better choice, although all of the Corvidae family have better than average smarts among birds. If she was going for mimicking, which is ostensibly what the capital was after, then why not select the Mimidae family to begin with? In that way at least you're trying to have members of the same bird family mate. But that's just me.

So let the games begin. This time the tributes rise to the surface surrounded by salt water, itself surrounded by a beach, with the cornucopia close by, but Katniss cannot run as she did before. Instead, she swims to the Cornucopia, and runs into Finnick Odair, who protects her. She agrees to make an alliance with him even though she doesn't trust him, because Haymitch had advised her to do so, but he had failed to give her sufficient information on which to base trust, so she simply doesn't trust him even though she allies herself with him. She ends up with a quartet, the other two being Peeta and Mags - a much older woman. Both of these tributes are from District 4, and it turns out that Mags was Finnick's mentor, so the two of them have a special bond. Finnick won the games when he was only fourteen.

The environment this time is very hot and humid. Beyond the beach lies a jungle. There is no fresh water. As the games progresses, the death toll is far higher than it was in the previous year's games. Every hour they discover that a new terror is unleashed upon them. There is a massive lightning storm beginning with a strike on a huge tree which was close by. They move on form that only to be attacked by a fog the next morning - a fog which is some sort of nerve gas. Mags is lost to the gas because Katniss cannot carry her fast enough. The next day they encounter Johanna Mason, someone who Katniss dislikes intensely, but Johanna weirdly tells Katniss that she saved Beetee and Wiress for her. Katniss has no idea what that means.

It's from Wiress's odd chanting of "tick tock" that Katniss realizes that the arena, smaller than previously and circular, is arranged like a clock, divided into twelve segments, each of which spawns a horror on the turn of the hour, and the horrors rotate clockwise. With this in mind, and knowing they can tap water from the trees by means of a spile. which Haymitch sent to them, they start to plan on beating the alliance arrayed against them. Beetee is carrying a spool of wire, and his plan is to hook it to the tree that gets struck when the lightning starts, and run the wire down to the ocean which will electrocute their competitors.

The plan fails when Brutus and his allies attack Johanna and Katniss. Katniss is freaked out when Johanna appears to attack her and then removes the tracking device from her arm, before turning to engage the attackers. Soon Finnick comes charging past to enter the fray. Katniss abandons the two of them and charges back up to the arena wall to find Peeta. She realizes that she can uses Beetee's wire to short-out the arena wall by attaching it to an arrow and firing the arrow into a weak spot which she had learned of during training. This done, she finds herself snatched up by a hovercraft, but the craft contains Haymitch and Plutarch (seriously?), this year's games controller who had oddly interacted with Katniss some time before, during the victor's tour of the districts.

Katniss wants them to get Peeta, but they refuse, and she passes out, only to awaken later to discover that she's being taken to District 13 - the supposedly dead district, which is alive and well. Both Peeta and Johanna have been captured by the capital, and District 12 has been bombed out of existence.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Title: Catching Fire
Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: WORTHY!

Note that there's an excellent trivia resource on the Hunger Games wiki.

The 2008 novel The Hunger Games is a phenomenon which has spawned a host of imitators from the pale (2013's The Testing) to the execrable (2011's Divergent), but it stands alone as a remarkable achievement in creating a world with motivated and believable characters and engaging (if depressing!) incidents and world-building. It brings two unlikely characters together in a relationship that is as far from the sad YA trope as you can get and it does it well. Imitators can only dream of selling as well as The Hunger Games has sold, and the imitation is sad, because Collins did not achieve her success from imitation, but by coming up with and original idea which was far off the beaten track of other popular YA fiction at the time she published it.

Yes, I know there are those who claim that Collins ripped-off Koushun Takami's Battle Royale, but I don't buy into that any more than I buy into it being a rip-off of Stephen King's The Long Walk.

I haven't read Takami's novel, but I did see the movie and it sucked. It offered nothing even close to what The Hunger Games delivers. I don't know how similar it was to the novel, but if the novel was anything like the movie it must be awful!

The death toll in the 74th Hunger Games:
1b Marvel - killed by Katniss
1g Glimmer - killed by tracker jackers
2b Cato - killed by Katniss
2g Clove - killed by Thresh
3b Unnamed - killed by Cato
3g Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
4b Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
4g Unnamed - killed by tracker jackers
5b Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
5g Unnamed ("Foxface") - nightlock consumption
6b Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
6g Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
7b Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
7g Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
8b Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
8g Unnamed - killed by Cato (Peeta?)
9b Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia by Clove
9g Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
10b Unnamed - killed by career group
10g Unnamed - killed at Cornucopia
11b Thresh - killed by Cato
11g Rue - killed by Marvel

Let me say a quick word here about Collins's use of 'Capitol' to describe the capital of Panem, because I found it unnecessarily confusing, and I have to wonder if Collins herself understands the difference between 'capital' and 'capitol', since both words derive from the same Latin root, meaning 'head'. I think capitol is a very American word. I don't hear any nation use this outside of the Americas. Capitol refers strictly to a building where the state legislature meets, and perhaps the judicial branch, too (so much for separation!). It doesn't mean the same thing as 'capital', which is the principle city of a nation, the one which is the seat government. In order not to perpetuate the potential confusion and misinformation Collins may have launched by this lax choice of words, I intend to use 'capital' to refer to the principle city of Panem, and only use 'Capitol' when I need to, or when I'm quoting directly from her novels.

One thing I missed or forgot from the first time through this novel was just how much Collins packed into her first chapter without it looking like a big fat info-dump. It’s a bit overwhelming, but it doesn’t feel that way when reading it, and there is so much in there! It's different from the movie but in this case, this is mostly because they obviously needed to shorten the novel to get it into a movie format. After that, the novel moves rapidly to the Capital action. We spend very little time in District 12. And what a good choice of district - this places Katniss last in the big events in the capital: the parade, and the TV interview, so it lets her (or rather, Cinna, her stylist) pull out the stops and have a huge impact.

So we make it through the interviews and through Katniss's anger at Peeta's revelation. This is very similar to the novel; then the start of the 74th Hunger Games gears up, and it's a bit sad as we follow Katniss up into the arena, and even sadder as the bloodbath begins. I thought this part was as well done in the movie as it was in the novel.

Katniss spends her first night in a Willow tree. She's awakened by a girl snapping twigs to start a fire not too far away, but that girl is quickly taken out by the coalition of the lower-numbered districts. None of this hunting party, which includes Peeta, sees Katniss in the tree. The next day, when she's just about dying of thirst (which seems improbable frankly, in so short a time!) she's wondering why Haymitch hasn’t sent her water and eventually figures out that it’s because he knows she's very near some. Eventually, crawling, she finds it and rehydrates, but she's flushed out of her respite by a roaring forest fire set by the game controllers.

When she starts to relax, having made good progress in escaping the fire, she's set upon by baseball-sized fireballs (which are depicted as being much larger in the movie). One of these grazes her thigh and sets her jacket on fire. She manages to salvage the jacket, but her hands and thigh are seriously burned, and the hunting party is on her trail. She painfully climbs eighty feet up into a tree to escape them. They're all too heavy to follow her up into the smaller branches, and the girl with the bow is a lousy shot. The party camps at the bottom of the tree, planning on waiting her out.

As Katniss ponders her fate, she notices Rue in a nearby tree, also hiding from the hunters. Rue points up above her head, where she espies a hornet's nest (which Lisbeth Salander has not yet kicked, evidently!). These are genetically-engineered insects called 'tracker jackers' because they will hunt down anyone who disturbs their nest. Their stings are lethal if you get more than a modest few, and they cause painful, pus-filled swellings. They were used in the war some seventy years before, but are now largely ignored. The ones around the capital have been cleaned out, but why such a fierce beastie hasn't spread until it became out of control is a mystery.

Unlike in the movie, Katniss at first saws through only a part of the branch holding the nest, and she does it that night. After she climbs back down to her own nest, she finds waiting for her the gift of salve for her burns, which she applies. The next morning, her wounds are very much on the way to healing, and she climbs back up to the hornet nest and finishes sawing it down. The hornets are subdued at night because of the smoking they got from the fire, but in the morning they're recovering. Katniss finishes sawing the branch and the nest drops, but she gets stung three times, and that's more than enough to hurt and make her woozy. Two of the girls from the hunting party die, but the rest of the party escapes with only a few stings to make them miserable.

Katniss has to go back to recover the bow and arrows which one of the dead girls had, and pries them from her stiff fingers. Now well-armed with her knife and her favorite weapon, she re-focuses on her ongoing need for food and water. I think it was a master (mistress?!) stroke on Collins's part to have the arena set up so its every variable is at the whim of the game controllers, but it does create problems in the story overall, not least of which is how the heck do they exert such control, and if they can, then why, exactly, is Panem the way it is?! More on this anon.

So, fully armed now, Katniss pretty much collapses from the stings she received, and there's a lull in the games as the participants all recover from their own painful swellings. Katniss and Rue form an alliance at this point, and share both knowledge and supplies. Katniss zeroes in on their one great strength: the two of them together are by far the best out of the whole group of tributes, at living off the land. If they can destroy the supply cache of the hunters, they will have a huge advantage. Collins obviously put a bit of thought into setting this story up, and this becomes more and more apparent as we progress through her trilogy.

Katniss, having discovered that the area around the hunter's 'supply depot' is literally littered with re-activated land mines, triggers them all by shooting open a bag of apples. This is a bit different from the movie, but the end result is the same, and all hell breaks loose. Without "Foxface"'s contribution, Katniss might have 'come a cropper' as they say, at this juncture. Foxface deserves her own novel! She sure deserved a name (as opposed to an insulting nickname) in this one.

Katniss makes her way back to link up with Rue, only to discover that Rue is trapped in a net. Before Katniss can free her, Rue is savagely struck in the stomach by a spear. This happens the other way around in the movie, with Rue being struck right after she's freed. Katniss instinctively shoots Rue's murderer. Again, this differs slightly from the movie. In the novel, she hits him him in the neck, in the movie, it's in the chest.

Rue dies, thereby conveniently removing the need for Katniss to kill her, which would have been horrible. See what a really solid job Collins has done here, piecing everything neatly together to make a truly satisfying, if gruesome whole? This novel is the work of a seasoned craftsperson, despite a few missteps. Katniss's behavior, respectfully treating Rue as she died, wins her the regard of the District 11 people, who sponsor a loaf of their own bread for her. She thanks them loudly when she figures out where it came from, thus beginning a bond which will serve her well in volume two. The novel also makes the point here of how the gifts become more and more expensive as the games progress - something which goes unmentioned in the movie.

In order to stir things up - as if Katniss hasn't already done so (more like shaken, not stirred!) with her 'funeral ritual' - the game master announces that (apparently for the first time) two tributes can jointly win if they're both from the same district. This means that if Katniss can find Peeta (Peeta, honestly?) then she can team-up with him, revive their 'love thing', and both of them can get home safely. It also means that two of the deadliest remaining tributes can also win, fostering a fierce new competition, which is no doubt what the game controllers desired.

Katniss is forced to wait out the night, but she finds Peeta the next day, half-buried in the mud by a creek, and sick and weak from the wound he sustained at Cato's hands (when Peeta urged Katniss to flee after the tracker-jacker incident, thereby saving her life). She finds Peeta after quite a search, using her smarts and logic as to where he would go, and she takes charge of him, washing the muddy disguise from him, treating his wounds with the remains of her burn salve, and with the plant leaves which Rue had shown her (to suck the poison from the stings). The leg wound is serious, and Katniss realizes that she will need some very expensive capital medicine to fix that for him, but the medication is extraordinarily expensive even under normal circumstances (not that we are given any idea why it's so expensive!). This late in the game, she doubts that anyone could afford to sponsor such a gift.

I have to say a quick word here about capital technology. If they're so very advanced, and they clearly are, then why are they so dependent upon the districts for supplies? And if they're not so dependent, then why do they even bother with the districts? Why not simply ignore them and leave them to fester and rot on their own? I know that Collins based this on ancient Rome, and the decadence and brutality is merely a consequence of that choice, but it really doesn't make a lot of sense if you analyze it. This is why we have to choose not to analyze it too closely if we want to sit back and enjoy it! So while this doesn't affect so very much in volume one of this trilogy, this overwhelming technological advantage becomes increasingly untenable in volumes two and three (particularly in three), given that the capital was able to smash District 12 into a pulp so easily. It begs an explanation as to how the other districts even had a chance, much less find themselves in a position to be putting up such a strong showing of resistance.

Anyway, Haymitch sends Katniss and Peeta some broth (there's no comment along the lines of "Call that a kiss?" to which we were most amusingly treated in the movie). Peeta improves a bit, but he has blood-poisoning. In another bit of inspired writing, Collins tweaks the intrigue yet again. The game controller seizes this opportunity to corral all of the remaining contestants in a confined area again by announcing that there will be a free gift of something each of the tributes needs, but this isn’t strictly true, since there are six people remaining in the arena, and only four gifts - one for each of the Districts represented by those remaining six tributes. Peeta forbids her to go, vowing that he will follow her if she does, but Katniss receives a gift of a knock-out potion from Haymitch, and tricks Peeta into drinking it, so he cannot stop her.

Katniss arrives early and secretes herself in the same hide which Rue had used to spy on the Cornucopia while the tributes were all recovering from their stings. She's not the first there, however, as she discovers when she sees the fox-faced girl (arguably the smartest contestant there) launch herself out of the Cornucopia, where she had been hiding, grab her gift, and hare off safely into the forest. As she gets away successfully, Katniss is annoyed that she didn’t think of that scheme herself, but she also suddenly realizes that she has to go get her gift now, or someone else will take it and she'll be stuck chasing them for it. She reasons that if she takes only her gift and runs, it’s unlikely anyone else will come after her because they will need to get their gift, and with her speed, she believes she can escape, but her logic is flawed. Since there are six contestants and only four gifts, the other district pair can split-up, one chasing her while the other grabs their gift.

As she hauls up her little backpack with the medicine for Peeta in it, she's slammed by Clove, Cato's District partner. Clove laughs as she describes how "they" killed Rue and now Katniss will die, too. Katniss spits blood in her face, but she's pinned helplessly. As Clove is about to cut off Katniss's lips - darkly remarking on her kissing Peeta (Peeta, really?) - Thresh, Rue's District partner, slams into Clove and hammers her in the head in revenge for Rue's death. Clove dies. My question here is how did Clove know that Peeta and Katniss kissed? None in the arena is party to the TV transmissions which everyone outside the arena sees. Again a small weakness in the story, but one which we can let go this time.

Katniss fears that Thresh will kill her next, and she asks only that it be quick, but he tells Katniss that for Rue's sake, he will let her go this one time, then they're even. This seems highly unlikely to me given his personality. He cannot have had any idea what Katniss did for Rue, and he knows that Rue is dead, yet he behaves as though he not only knows exactly what she did, but also as though he's sentimental about it! This was weak (but dramatic!).

So Katniss flees, and later administers the hypo shot to Peeta, who rapidly recovers. The two of them continue to play up to the 'lovers' angle, hoping for more gifts and favorable opinions, but they both seem to realize that it’s not all play; some of their interaction at least, is real. This is followed by a two-day thunderstorm. What’s the point of the rain if it prevents tributes from getting together? I didn’t really understand this bit at all, because it stops the action dead from the perspective of the viewers and controllers (and the reader!). You can argue that this provides time for the controllers to 'grow' the 'muttations' for the finale, but that's not sufficient time to grow a full-sized animal, and if they can generate one that quickly, then they didn’t need the two days anyway. This also goes back to the advanced technology argument I was making above. It does give Peeta (Peeta, really?!) and Katniss a moment together, but that was a bit flat for me. One thing which does happen during the two-day blow is Thresh's death, presumably at the hands of Cato. And then there were four.

Finally we reach the finale! Katniss and Peeta, very refreshed (but with Peeta still weak from his wound) head out to hunt, and this is where "Foxface" meets her demise. She steals berries from their supply, not realizing that Peeta had collected them in ignorance of their lethality. She'd assumed that if Katniss was collecting them, they must be good, and she died for it. Katniss assigns this death to Peeta! This possession of the poisoned berries is important for the ending because they hang onto them, thinking they might induce Cato to poison himself just as "Foxface" did. This is why this section was written, and why Foxface wasn't killed by Cato as Thresh was, "off camera" so to speak. The District Twelve representatives now realize that it’s just them and Cato at the same time as they grasp that they have to confront him. He isn't going to come to them and risk being picked-off at long-range by one of Katniss's arrows. He's going to wait to draw them out, until they step into the open, and then he'll rely on his superior strength to kill them.

The twist here is that, unlike in the movie, it’s not Katniss who's chased by the "muttations", but Cato. She and Peeta are standing around out in the open, near the Cornucopia when Cato hurtles by and scales the structure. He's been chased at length by the mutts (which begs the question as to where he was), and he's the perfect victim at this point, lying helpless on top of the Cornucopia, retching over the side from his exertions, but Katniss fails to kill him, and Peeta fails likewise. Instead, she wastes arrows defending all three of them from the mutts! She didn't even have to kill him directly: she could have simply heaved him over the side! But no. Unlike the movie, this finale is drawn-out a bit too much. Cato recovers and tries to strangle Peeta, but Katniss shoots his hand, and Cato ends up falling over the side. Again, unlike the movie, this is way too drawn out. Cato is wearing some sort of chain mail, and the mutts can't finish him off. This is another weak spot since Cato's head isn't covered: why are the mutts not biting his head off?

We all know how this ends and how it sets the stage for he epic battle between President Snow and resident Katniss in the next two volumes. The boundaries have already been drawn for the next arena - the arena of real life where Katniss and Peeta have defied the game makers and President Snow is pissed off with her, her especially, and determined to destroy her one way or another. This novel is really great entertainment! I rate it worthy!

Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson

Title: Scarlett Fever
Author: Maureen Johnson
Publisher: Point
Rating: WORTHY!

I'm not sure quite how to share this with you so I'll just come right out and say it: I'm in Love with Maureen Johnson. It just happened. I didn't plan it. It crept up on me. I read both her 'Scarlett' novels back to back and they stunned me into it. Even when I was thinking "I don't like this a bit", I couldn't shed myself of my overpowering loyalty to her cause. I love these two novels and you should read them right now. I'll be checking on you to make sure that you do.

Now about these new covers.... Gone is the goofy-looking girl on the cover of book one. I guess when the publisher discovered that Johnson had more than one volume in her on this character, they decided to start a series theme cover. Sucks to be them. The original cover of volume one had much more character. Literally! Fortunately the actual novel starts out by being every bit as entertaining as the other one was. Shame it's so let down by the trashy cover. This is one very good reason why I normally treat covers as utterly irrelevant.

In this novel, the summer is winding down, the hotel production of Hamlet is over, the hotel is still largely empty (how do they manage, financially, to keep a five-storey hotel running with no guests?!), and Scarlett is still an appendage of Amy. The good news is that lame YA trope Eric is out of the picture, but the sad news is that he's far from out of Scarlett's mind.

This part I didn't really get. I get that a fifteen-year-old girl who has never had a boyfriend might fall for someone she sees as exotic and new, but I honestly felt her attachment to him in volume one was a betrayal of who Scarlett was supposed to be. In this volume it seems to me to be a further betrayal of who she is that she's so helplessly and hopelessly pining for him when their relationship had nothing going for it, and especially given that it was so short term and so sparsely furnished, and even more especially given that he betrayed her. If they'd been dating and "in love" for a couple of years, then I would have expected even Scarlett to behave the way she does in this novel, but when we're told who she is and what kind of character she is, and she behaves this way after such a reed-thin relationship, it takes a bit more believing than I have available to offer! That was one of those 'I don't like this a bit' bits I mentioned in the overture.

In other news, Scarlett's friends, we're told, have returned from their exciting and exotic summers, but we get only the briefest of glances at them. This seems to be a further false note in this novel, especially given how much we've had it blasted into us that they are so close and such good friends of Scarlett's. That was another of those 'I don't like this a bit' bits previously mentioned.

Having got the bitching and whining out of the way, let's look at what Johnson offers that's new. Here, there's plenty of fresh produce to enjoy on her stall. Amy Amberson has moved out of the hotel and found an apartment. She's opened her own acting agency, and taken on Spencer of course, as her first client. Now she's hunting down more, and one prospect, named Chelsea, who conveniently happens to be Scarlett's age, is in her sights. It's because of this new client that Scarlett ends up meeting Max, Chelsea's older bother, who is something of a social misfit. It seems obvious that something is going to blossom there, but Max is just far enough divorced from trope that he's actually an interesting and welcome character.

After the first third of the novel, Scarlett returns to school, so there was a chance to see that aspect of her character, which I was really looking forward to. Frankly, the hotel scenario was becoming decidedly claustrophobic! So Lola comes out with a huge surprise for the family. Good for her! Marlene is a delight. Spencer is charming and brings more surprises. But the real joy of this novel (apart from the perfect ending), is Scarlett's relationship with Max, and her comments. She's smart, funny, brilliant, inventive, not shy of working, and really moves this novel all over the place. I loved it, even the bits I didn't like, and as I said, the ending left me wanting a volume three, so anyone who can, pester Johnson mercilessly so that she has no choice but to turn this dilogy into a trilogy - or maybe she has?

Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson

Title: Suite Scarlett
Author: Maureen Johnson
Publisher: Point
Rating: WORTHY!

This novel is adorable, which likely as not means I'll end up hating it by the last page, but until then, I can dream! Suite Scarlett was not only not on my radar, it wasn't even in my universe until happenstance led me to it sitting innocently upon a shelf at the library. On a point of order, I think it’s important to clarify that I wasn't sitting on a shelf at the library, and if I were, I can guarantee you that it would certainly not be with any pretense of innocence. I'm not that good of an actor! (Is this a sly comment on the content of this novel or what?). No, it was the book which sat upon the shelf, as books are wont to do, whether they want to or not; it won’t make a difference….

Ebooks have an amazing number of advantages over traditional format books, but browsing along the shelf until you happen upon a book which jumps out at you for whatever reason, is something you'll never be able to do with an ebook. Nor will you ever be able to buy an ebook at a used book store (unless some entrepreneur out there figures out a method, in which case, said entrepreneur will undoubtedly become a millionaire!). The less well-off amongst us view the ominous oncoming demise of cut-price hard-backs with a depressing degree of barely-disguised panic.

Sooooo, the Martin family live in the hotel which they own - an hotel which at one time was the place to stay, but which is now long past its best: slightly shabby and falling into obsolescence. The family has had to slowly let all of their staff go, which means the young children are press-ganged into servitude in their place. Thus was born the tradition which is child labor disguised as a birthday present, whereby on their fifteenth birthday, each Martin child is 'given' a room of which they must, from that point on, take charge. They have to clean and maintain it and take personal charge of any guest who might stay there. From that perspective alone, it's fortunate that guests are rare.

Spencer is the oldest child and the only boy. He wants to be an actor. His parents want him to go to culinary school so he can sell his life down the river in their service as the hotel cook rather than living it for himself. Lola is the next in line in age, and she seems to have no ties to the hotel. She recently started seriously dating Chip, a kid who isn't bad per se, but in the smarts department, he's a voting block short of a takeover and he's supposed to eventually assume the helm of his father's business empire! Lola seems to be spoiled rotten and I had little respect for her to begin with; however, this was tempered by the fact that she loves her siblings, particularly the youngest girl in the family. OTOH, Lola is seriously trying to get her own life on the rails, and I can’t blame her for that! Her story does turn around in this novel, and it was a real heart-warmer to see how it unfolded. Lola is arguably more intriguing than the title character, but I often fall into that trap!

The youngest child is Marlene, also spoiled rotten and a brat. She has the excuse of being a cancer survivor and gets to do all kinds of things with a group of fellow survivors called 'Powerkids' which, when you look at it, is really just another way of saying that if you're a kid and you don’t have cancer, you’re not going to get a decent shake, and you should probably go screw yourself. I don’t really see how a cancer survivor (or any other type of survivor, for that matter), is a child any more deserving of love and attention than is, for example, a street survivor, but we rarely hear of telethons for those children, do we? I wonder why?

Scarlett is fifteen and the main character in this story which mercifully isn't told from the first person PoV. She's very retiring and easily induced to do things which she might rail against doing were she more assertive. Thus she ends up having to stand in for Lola in taking a very resentful Marlene to a Powerkids event (a morning TV cooking show). She later finds herself with a guest in the room she just inherited with her birthday: the lavishly titled 'Empire Suite' which is a bit too down-at-the-heel to quite merit the name, but the engaging Amy ("Mrs Amberson"), a retired actress, doesn’t seem to mind, and moreover seems to really take to Scarlett almost to the point of adopting her. And this is only the start of the magnificent Amberson's calculated intrusion into the lives of the Martin family. She hands Scarlett five hundred dollars without even asking for a receipt, and tells her to hang onto it, because Scarlett will be required to run errands and will need the money. To her credit, Scarlett handles this maturely and doesn't abuse the 'contract'. Amy deserves her own novel, as does Lola, and probably Spencer, too.

The first thing I didn’t like about his novel was when Eric came into the picture. He's an acting acquaintance of Spencer's and is such a trope YA male that it almost made me vomit to read how "muscular" he is and well well his T-shirts fit him. Here's a description of his eyes: "...misty shifting blue marbled with gray, like smoke rising through an early morning sky." Seriously? Why is it that we’re teaching young women than anything less than a Greek god is totally unacceptable as a partner? Why is it that we’re teaching young girls to look no further than the shallow and the physical?

As if that's not bad enough, this is an unfair and unwarranted assault on young men, to boot (with the emphasis on boot and groin). It’s a detestable trend that needs to stop. Having registered my protest, I'm going to let that slide for the sake of reading the rest of the story which, apart from the disgusting trope, really is well written and very entertaining. However, if Johnson insists on endless repetitions of how perfect Eric is in every way, I will have to start calling him Eric Poppins and puke on the pages of this novel to permanently imprint both the stain and the smell. Try doing that with an ebook...!

So anyway, let's pretend I never said that. Ahem! Scarlett spends more and more time with Amy and almost no time with Eric, so that's all right then isn't it? Amy almost gets her arrested for shoplifting when she deposits three cans of tuna into Scarlett's bag without her noticing, but Amy talks their way out of it and thinks it was great fun as they ride home. Scarlett isn't so sure and demands to be let out of the cab before they get back to the hotel, so she can walk and do some thinking. The next thing Scarlett knows, Amy wants the two of them to write Amberson's biography! Of course, this is just a flash in the pan, because Amy next comes up with an idea which engrosses her far more effectively than a biography could ever hope to do, and this is where the novel gets really interesting. I'm not kidding. It takes off and flies at this point and it's quite stunning to see. In order not to spoil this any more, I shall refrain from divulging further details. Mwahh-ha-ha!

In conclusion, this book is excellent! It's very entertaining, extraordinarily well-written, populated with interesting and diverse characters who behave very much like real people. I recommend it and I'm immediately proceeding on to volume two in this series, or duet, or trilogy or whatever it is! You know there is no equivalent of 'trilogy' for two novels? The Greek word for two is dio, but it's pronounced thee-oh, so to use that would create 'theology', which would be really confusing. I'm going to coin dilogy, so there!

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

Title: The Girl Who Played With Fire
Author: Stieg Larsson
Publisher: Books On Tape
Rating: WORTHY!

For a review of the Swedish movie based on this novel, Flickan som lekte med elden, see here

Review of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Review of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

TGWPWF begins with Lisbeth on an extended vacation in the Florida Keys and the Caribbean, Blomkvist at home wondering what the heck happened to her, since she left without a word and refuses to have anything to do with him, and Bjurman, technically her legal guardian, plotting her demise! Staying in Grenada, Lisbeth seduces a teen-aged boy who lives in a shack on the beach, and in between sessions of reading a massive tome on the history of mathematics, which is fascinating to her, ponders what to do, if anything, about an abusive doctor who is staying in her hotel, accompanied by his abused wife. Meanwhile there's a hurricane on the way. How great a start to a novel is that?!

This epic premise is a bit let-down by the execution, unfortunately! The hurricane (if that's what it was) comes and goes. Lisbeth rescues another woman from abuse in the middle of it: the doctor's wife. The doctor is found dead, blown 600 yards down the beach. We follow her back to Stockholm where she goes shopping for an apartment and furniture. This is the most mind-numbingly tedious episode in the entire trilogy so far. It was like reading Charlaine Harris - that's how god-awfully bad it was. I have no idea what Larsson was thinking of when he wrote this section. And actually, I don't really think I want to know!

In counterpoint, we do see Bjurman get really steamed (in a bad way!) about Lisbeth and he starts plotting how he can murder her. He begins by digging into her affairs because he can, being her guardian, and he starts to get a faint whiff of the fire she started - on her dad who was abusing her mother! We also learn that Lisbeth has a twin sister. Two Salanders are quite obviously better than one. Evidently they were separated from their mother when she proved incompetent to take care of them, but they were also separated from each other. This kinda made up for the Ikea shopping list!

We also learn of the affair between Harriet Vanger and Mikael Blomkvist (as does Erica!), but this goes nowhere, and Vanger disappears from the novel at that point, never to reappear. Lisbeth rekindles her relationship with lesbian lover Mimmi, and offers Mimmi her empty apartment to move into, since she has now moved herself considerably upscale. This happens right after Bjurman, in complete ignorance of Lisbeth's newly-won billionaire status and consequent change of address, has indirectly hired a huge blond German who is built like a brick outhouse and can feel no pain (Larsson evidently ripped this off from The World Is Not Enough. The German is supposed to kidnap Lisbeth from the very address Mimmi just moved into! Lisbeth's sixth sense is onto Bjurman even though she doesn't know exactly what he's doing. Oh, and Mimmi studies martial arts, so while this promised to be explosive, it actually wasn't quite written that way, but this definitely helps to clear out the dead wood from the wooden tour of the Ikea store with which Larsson earlier bored (or should it be board?!) us....

The novel picks up pace even more when the person tasked by Nils Bjurman to deal with Lisbeth Salander kills Bjurman and two friends of Mikael's who are working on exposing the Swedish sex-trade. Why Larsson didn't start his novel here is a really interesting question, because this is where the intrigue and the real story begins. Larsson leads us on an intricate and engrossing tour through the life of Lisbeth Salander. It's as disturbing as it is endearing, and as angering as it is heartening. If you started reading this novel at Chapter 7 you really wouldn't miss anything of significance or relevance. If a new author had written this - without having had the success of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor) under their belt, an editor would doubtlessly have told the author to seriously edit this novel. It just goes to show how indulged a successful author is, whereas a new author is abused cruelly on this score. All hail self-publishing!

Salander is now hosed with three murders (her prints are on the murder weapon), and a nationwide police hunt for her begins. But the findings make no sense at all to the police. No matter how they try to piece this jigsaw together, there are problems: the pieces seem to fit, but when you come right down to it, something is noticeably off. The pieces don't fit properly. Something is missing.

Meanwhile Lisbeth has dropped from sight, and she begins her own investigation, as does Blomkvist, as does Armansky! All the time, the puzzle pieces fall into place, one-by-one, but not always where you expect them to appear, and the picture which is emerging is one of unexpected weirdness. In the end, Lisbeth is shot in the head and buried. And that's all you're going to get from me! Ain't I evil?

It's hard to believe that I've read - or at least started on - ten novels since I first started listening to this on audio disk, but finally I finished it in paperback form this morning, and once again we have a worthy read. Yes, it got really boring during that one spell, but it picked up wonderfully after that, especially in the last hundred or so pages. Highly recommended (just skip over the Ikea obsession portion!).

Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl By David Barnett

Title: Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl
Author: David Barnett
Publisher: Tor
Rating: worthy

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is less detailed so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more in-depth than you'll typically find elsewhere!

Erratum in galley ebook
P23 "glitterving" should be "glittering"

The male protagonist of this steam-punk novel is Gideon Smith, a 24-year-old who lives with his father in a small fishing village near Whitby, Yorkshire. Both of my parents hailed from Yorkshire, and I've actually been to Whitby, a seaside town which is featured in Bram Stoker's Dracula, so it’s no surprise that Barnett has Gideon meet Bram Stoker there.

I have to say up front that I'm not a fan of Victorian dramas which seem obligated to drag historical people unnecessarily into the fiction. I find that boring and uninventive, and all-too-often patronizing of, and insulting to the persons so press-ganged. In fact, I made the mistake of reading the prologue to this novel and I found that even more boring and uninventive since it parades out the discredited story that Eddy, the son of Queen Victoria's son Edward (the Edward who gave his name to the Edwardian period of English history) was somehow entangled with the Jack the Ripper murders. This myth was the basis of the Johnny Depp movie From Hell and is patent nonsense. Having said that, Barnett has added a twist to this one which makes his "crime" forgivable, in my book at least!

So, it was not an auspicious start to this novel, but I have to say that Barnett started to win me over with chapter one, where Gideon enters the picture. His father is a struggling trawler captain, and Gideon often helps him on his fishing trips, but the one morning when his father decides to let Gideon sleep in, is the day that the entire crew of the trawler disappears without explanation, and Gideon is left alone in the world, his mother and two brothers having already died some time before.

Well there is an explanation, of course, but that's for you to read, and at that point in the story it was more of a mystery than an explanation (but it clarifies nicely as the novel progresses)! The local fishing community just accepts these disappearances as the sea's dividend for allowing humans to sample its bounty. Gideon is a big fan of Captain Lucian Trigger, a story-book hero who, if not completely fictional, is, I guessed, not remotely like his fictional portrayal. Gideon doesn't quite grasp this, and so he endeavors to contact the man in hopes that he can help with another local mystery that has hold of Gideon's imagination.

It’s in process of pursuing this plan that he encounters Bram Stoker, right before a Russian sailboat runs aground with the all the crew save one, missing. The captain is discovered lashed to the wheel and drained of blood, and a large black dog runs ashore and disappears. The only cargo on the ship is three coffins with soil from Transylvania. Anyone who has read Stoker's Dracula will know where that's headed (but don't be too confident: Barnett has added a twist!). The original Dracula novel is excellently reproduced on film in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 epic, a movie I highly recommend.

Back to this novel! I do like that Barnett has divorced himself from trope with Gideon. He doesn’t have Gideon go haring off into the heart of the mystery like an idiot. He portrays Gideon as a thoughtful, courageous, and smart young man who realizes that he's going to need help to figure out if smugglers might be connected to his father's disappearance and are operating near his village, but when he talks to a friend of his father's, and also to the village constable, he's dismissed and not taken at all seriously. That's when he resorts to calling Captain Trigger and ends up in the company of Bram Stoker. Stoker learned of vampires from his fellow Irish friend Sheridan le Fanu, but he cannot get Gideon interested. Instead, Gideon resolves to set off for London to personally seek Captain Trigger's assistance. That's when he meets the mechanical girl called Maria who. I guessed. is actually modeled after a real person.

But she isn’t just any old clockwork toy. Nope. She has a body made to look as realistic as possible, and although she's clockwork inside her body, inside her head is a different story. Her creator is Hermann Einstein (which coincidentally happens to be the name of Albert Einstein's father...), but he's gone missing. He fitted her empty head with something that he discovered in a most unlikely location. Her head is no longer empty. Far from it.

Gideon learns how abused Maria is by her keeper, a grungy old man with disgusting tastes, who is in charge of the house in Einstein's absence. Gideon invites her to travel to London with him to find her maker, and she agrees, so they take some spare cash which Maria has access to, and borrow another invention of Einstein's: a motorized bike. This prepared, they set off again for London town, home of Queen Victoria.

Meanwhile Bram is poking around Whitby in pursuit of a vampire, and he discovers one of the very last people he might have expected to find - and she is the very antithesis of what he expected a vampire to be! Little does he know that his investigations will bring him right back into contact with Gideon.

And that's all the detail you get for this one! The story continues apace, and continues to be engrossing, as Gideon and his growing ensemble of acquired friends begin pursing seemingly disparate threads that I felt, even before I knew one way or the other, would all lead back to the same source. There are airships (one piloted by a very adventurous woman), there is a trip to a ancient and exotic location where trouble is stirring big time, there's air piracy, there's a threat to the empire over which the sun never sets, and there are truly evil creatures (and that's just those working for the government!). All the threads lead to a fine yarn, and a taut fabric, and though I was less than thrilled with the ending (the novel is evidently the start of a series), the quality of the writing and the plotting merits this story as a worthy read. I recommend it.

Red Glove by Holly Black

Title: Red Glove
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: Margaret K McElderry
Rating: WORTHY!

Well we're back with Curse Workers #2, and with Cassel, and Cassel is back in school. And so is Lila, which is a shock to him. He's supposed to be staying away from her because she was emotionally compromised into falling in love with him by Cassel's mother, who is one of the seven varieties of curse worker. Cassel refuses to take advantage of Lila, even though she's pretty much begging for him to take advantage of her; he's resolved to stay distant from her until the curse wears off. He's not doing a very good job of it, and neither is she. But then she doesn’t want to!

That's when the FBI shows up and reveals to Cassel that his brother Phillip has been assassinated. They want him to help them bring down the assassin - someone wearing red gloves, who appears to be female. Here's my wild guess: it’s either Cassel's ex-girlfriend Audrey or it isn’t a female. Now you know for a fact that it’s not Audrey, but it is a female, given my history of appallingly wrong guesses! Unfortunately, Cassel is already feeling wretched about the murders he was forced to commit (and then forget) by his brothers, Phillip and Barron. This entire family consists of men with two consonants in the middle of their name, and the reason Phillip was killed was because he has one too many letters in his name. There. Solved!

Okay, so the seven deadly workings are: emotions, death, dreams, luck, memory, physical, transformation (now you know how the Transformers really arose…). Lila is a dream worker. Cassel is a transformation worker. Cassel's two friends Sam and his girlfriend Daneca are both interested in the case files which the FBI gave to Cassel, despite his never giving them permission to snoop. Cassel discovers that he both killed and hid his victims in one fell swoop by transforming them into inanimate objects. He browbeats Barron into revealing one of the objects to him, but when Cassel transforms it back to its original state, the guy appears alive for a split second and then deteriorates rapidly, confirming what Cassel already knew - you can’t transform a living person to an inanimate object and hope to get them back alive. He really did murder those people. He also knows that you can, for example, transform a young girl called Lila into a white cat and get her back safely. So could you transform someone into a pair of red gloves?

Cassel becomes ever more confused and trapped in this lifestyle that he was so hoping to escape. Zacharov comes courting him by first asking a 'favor' - to change the appearance of one of his assassins. After Cassel complies (he doesn’t feel he has much of a choice), he's treated to a luxury dinner at an exclusive members only club, and later, Cassel finds he's the recipient of a brand new luxury Mercedes, a gift he doesn’t return. So has Zacharov finally bought him? We don’t know. When he later learns what the assassin did, he feels awful that he helped him escape justice.

Meanwhile, the FBI guys are pressuring him to uncover the murderer of his brother. Cassel is reluctant to do this because he's convinced it’s his mother; then he suspects it's Lila! Finally he decides to take matters into his own hands by fingering a person he really dislikes, and who he knows for a fact has put out a contract on someone else in the past. In this way he gets the FBI off his back and metes out harsh justice to someone who he knows is a bad person. He sets this person up by planting the murder weapon from his brother's case in this victim's apartment. I am in somewhat of a state of confusion about exactly how this weapon came to be in his hands and what it means that it ended-up there. Did Cassel kill Phillip?

Yes, Cassel isn't really such a nice guy, and it’s harder to like him in this novel than in White Cat, but he is still, even given all the pressure, trying to do the right thing as he sees it, only to have things go sideways on him at the most inopportune moment. There's one intriguing event when he actually performs a transformation on himself. I had wondered whether a worker could do this, and here we learn of it not only in Cassel's case, but in another instance, too. This made me wonder if Black is slipping this in as a concept so she can use it later to much greater effect on us.

This revelation also brought into focus a question I'd entertained when reading volume one, but never got around to discussing (curse this hectic charge from one novel to another!). This is a technical question as to how, exactly, this cursing business works. I believe I read in volume one that it doesn't manifest itself until somewhere in childhood - maybe onset of puberty? - which is how child-bearing women manage to deliver the kids without being killed or transformed, for example, by the fetus touching them! I don’t recall reading how cursing actually works in practice. There exists this obsession with wearing gloves: everyone wears them, even non-curse workers, because touching is such a verboten activity in this society. Hands are always covered, like breasts and genitals, which effectively turns them into sex organs (after a fashion!).

That reminded me of an old Mad magazine I read once where this series of panels featured three young men at the beach eyeing the semi-exposed girls around them. One of the guys goes off on a riff in his mind about how, if noses were considered sex organs instead, then women with large noses might be considered to be "stacked", and those with snub noses would be considered under-endowed. Right then, this young girl strolls by with a large beak-nose with a Band-Aid on it and the guy blurts out how sexy it is. His two friends look at him in askance. The weird thing is that I actually think that noses can look sexy, or can be a turn off, yet my perspective isn't based on whether they're overly large, or particularly cute, or if they're misshapen. I guess I just like what I like; but I digress!

So anyway: this business of cursing by touch! Clearly if workers can curse themselves, then it can’t be done by nothing more than a touch of the fingers, because the death-dealers would all have inadvertently offed themselves in their sleep at a very young age! There has to be some intent behind it when the victim is touched, yet this isn’t ever really made explicitly clear. This was really brought home to me by a rather erotic scene in this novel when Lila and Cassel start to kiss this one time and their hands are bare yet they're touching each other. Nothing really happens between them, yet this really moved me in the context of this novel because it was so forbidden! The touching seemed far more sinful than any amount of naked flesh or intimate kissing, or of feeling of breasts, or of organs rubbed against each other. Curious, huh?

I think Black has subtly revealed this self-cursing ability to us (or not so subtly, since I noticed it!) because she plans on using this at some point in the novel (or in the finale when she thinks we forgot it!). I guess we'll have to wait and see. I love this series and I'm already looking forward to volume 3.

Back to Cassel! Sometimes he appears to do things way out of left field. Lila is still liking him very much, and the temptation to take advantage of her is ever-growing, so finally, he asks someone who is quite close to him, and who he has discovered unexpectedly, is an emotion worker, to zap Lila with a neutral vibe. He wants her to quit liking him so much, but not to hate him, either. He'll be just another student at her school; no one special. It hurts him to do this, and he knows it will hurt worse when it goes into effect, but he does it because he's convinced that it will be best for her. He honestly feels he can never trust her if she keeps liking him, because he'll always feel it’s the remants of the curse which his mother worked on her. This seems to be the most selfless thing he's ever done.

OTOH, Cassel is, foremost, a con man. He's always gaging all the angles even if he's not working them, so I'm not sure that he truly is doing this for purely selfless reasons, but when I considered why he was asking that this be done on Lila, and not worked on himself, which seems selfish at first glance, I could see that it would be actually less selfless that way. If he did it that way, it would result in Lila (assuming she does have any honest feeling for him) being left high and dry if he suddenly stopped caring for her, so maybe he's putting her first and taking the hit himself rather than dumping it on her, which is a very romantic act in many ways.

But if you wanna know more, then you're gonna hafta read tha novel! I recommend it.

Shylock's Daughter by Mirjam Pressler

Title: Shylock's Daughter
Author: Mirjam Pressler
Publisher: Dial
Rating: WARTY!

Mirjam Pressler is a noted German author, and this is an English translation of one of her novels. Based upon Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and set in the sixteenth century, a hundred years after Shakespeare's time, this novel takes the original story and bends it to the daughter's perspective. One thing I didn't like about this novel almost from the off was Pressler's habit of using foreign words immediately followed by their English translation. This was a big distraction, constantly reminding me that this was a story, and preventing me from becoming completely immersed in it. But that's just me!

In line with the original play, Jessica, Shylock's daughter, is in love with Lorenzo and he with her, but because he is Christian and she is Jewish, and he is rich and she merely the daughter of a money-lender, their future cannot be one they spend together - until it can be. However, Jessica has made it possible for herself to meet with Lorenzo, at least in the short-term, by visiting her friend, the doctor's daughter. Lorenzo also frequents this house, and so they can spend some time together if only in secret.

I really tried to get into this story but the problems I outlined in the first paragrpah (augmented by the insane number of tiems Pressler reminds us that the Jews had to wear a red hat when out of their ghetto!), plus the occasional first person chapter which featured a whiny whiny whiny "other daughter" (which I actually believe was the real daughter referenced in the title, not Jessica) just drove me completely away. I felt like I was reading a manifesto rather than a novel, and so I pretty much skimmed it, reading sections here and there and the last chapter and none of that made me feel like this rated anything other than a warty appellation. Life's too short to read a book which doe snothing to draw me in.

The Other Sister by ST Underdahl

Title: The Other Sister
Author: ST Underdahl
Publisher: Flux
Rating: WORTHY!

Susan Thompson Underdahl is a psychologist who has experienced the very story she relates in this novel, and relate she does. I don't know how much of it is fiction and how much is actual memory, but I do know this was a novel I read through from cover to cover in one sitting, and I enjoyed it immensely. Afterwards I found myself wondering how the Josey's real life counterpart felt when she learned that this novel was coming out.

The novel is about Audrey, an adoptee, contacting her birth mother and discovering she has a birth father married to that same mother and she has two brothers and a sister in that same family. I can;t imagine what kind of a shock or revelation that would be to a young woman. Underdahl was the 'Audrey' of this novel, but she told it from the 'Josey' perspective which is interesting, and is perhaps what I might have done if I'd been in her position. I think she was able to empathize with Josey so well because in some regards, Audrey and Josey were the same person while at the same time being quite different, having gone through very different experiences and having an outlook on life which differed in many ways.

Josette, sixteen, is the middle child, with an older brother Jake and a younger brother Julian (yeah, I know). She's a straight-A student who wants to become a psychologist. She has two best friends, Sarah and Britt, and comes home one day after studying with them to discover that her mother has some news about which she's very nervous about sharing with her daughter. Josey has never seen her mother quite like this. Why her father isn't present for this discussion I don't know. I found that slightly disturbing, but his absence at that particular time is actually a part of the story in a way; it's a harbinger of the relationship between Josey and her parents which bubbles up later in the novel.

Josey (I don't like that name, neither in its full version nor the diminutive) is hit rather harder than her brothers by this news. Why her mother chose to tell her before she told either of the sons, and especially given that one of the sons is older, is also dealt with later in the novel. I think in this case it was a wise decision, but later, the parental decisions were not so wise in these events!

Since the real story took place twenty years before, Underdahl chooses to address the lack of Internet and email by giving Audrey an aversion to tel phone contact and having the initial correspondence take place via snail mail, although the very first contact, not with Audrey but with a social worker, comes by phone. The purpose of the call to ask Anne (Josey's mother) if she's averse to her adopted daughter contacting her. Anne gives the go-ahead and soon receives an intelligently-written letter from Audrey tentatively opening the lines of communication. There's a photograph enclosed, of Audrey and her fiance. Audrey looks very much like Josey.

This is the first of a series of crises through which Josey goes. The next is when she learns that Audrey is a psychologist. Josey now feels that she has lost her position as only daughter, and as senior daughter, as well as being 'replaced' by someone who looks like her, has usurped her career goal, and is occupying almost all of her mother's attention. It's heartening to see how Josey, so young and so struggling, steps up to the situation. I doubt that I would have handled it so well at her age.

Yet despite her rather heroic struggle, she is struggling. Her parents arrange for a meeting in Cancun - neutral ground - so that they can all meet and get to know one another. Because Anne works for an airline, she's able to get discount fares and they occupy a small villa, and spend three all-too-short days together, but Josey notices that Audrey is crying at one point, and when they part at the end of the vacation, she says something mean to her new sister and, too late, regrets it.

In the end it's all resolved and the outcome works for everyone, but there is a journey before Josey can get there, and it's a journey with some surprising revelations about her calm and confident older sister. But this is something you will have to find out for yourself. Despite the misgivings I had after reading Susan Underdahl's bio (she knew a ghost for eight years? She can sometimes breathe underwater?) which made me doubt her veracity in other regards, this novel is all I'm reviewing here, not the author, and the novel is well-done, sensitively written, inventive, entertaining, and very enjoyable. I rate it worthy!

White Cat by Holly Black

Title: White Cat
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: Margaret K McElderry
Rating: WORTHY

Volume one of the Curse Workers series, apparently; not to be confused with the case workers series. This novel only appeared on my radar two days ago and then I found it with the huddled masses in the library yearning to be free. I will have to see if I can find the companion novel to this: Black Cat by Holly White! There actually is a Holly White, but she's into photography, not so much YA fiction! Ooooookay! The second volume in this series is called Red Glove. No word on whether the third in the trilogy is called Blue Balled….

This novel centers on Cassel Sharpe, who ironically seems to be a pawn rather than a castle. If it’s as entertaining as Sharpe's Rifles then I'll be satisfied. Cassel is a high-school teen from a family of curse casters; these are people who can manipulate others in different ways (according to the specific gift that each has) by mere touch. Consequently there is much wearing of gloves. Because curse casting is illegal in the USA, these curse casters are all criminals. Cassel cannot cast anything; he's the standard YA trope: a dysfunctional kid from a dysfunctional family, who not only lacks the ability of his supposed peers, he also carries a 'disability'. Actually, he carries two.

He's attending a boarding school to avoid having to associate with his criminal family; that is, until he finds himself on the steeply-sloping slate roof of the school, with no notion of how he got there. He almost falls off, and the fire department has to come get him down. The school kicks him out (at least temporarily) because they don’t want students randomly falling from roofs. If that happened, - I guess attendance would drop off?! Cassel can return (in theory at least) when he gets a doctor to sign-off on his sleepwalking. Somehow I doubt that we'll see him back at school. This sleep-walking is his first 'disability', but it’s something he thought he'd outgrown. Unfortunately, that night it came back with a vengeance. He had dreamed that a white cat stole his tongue and he'd chased the cat up onto the roof to recover it!

So now he has to leave the school, where he's quite happy, and go stay with his older brother Phillip, where he's not happy, especially since his brother seems to be a rather shady character who is trying to foist him off on his grandfather. Cassel claims he would be even more unhappy there. One night when he's sitting up the stairs eavesdropping on his brother discussing Cassel's future with his grandfather down below, Phillip's wife Maura saunters by, sits with him, and quietly reveals to Cassel that she's going to leave her husband. Later, she completely forgets this. I wonder if she was touched by Phillip?

Cassel's whole family is less than above the law, let’s face it. His mother is in jail and his grandfather has blackened and missing fingers from the killing curses he's cast. All of Cassel's family has one such ability or another, but it comes with a price: every 'working' takes some sort of toll on the worker. Those curse casters who can manipulate memory, for example, tend to lose their own memories. Those curse casters who can kill by touch seem to lose a finger here and there. Wait a minute! What's up with that?!

I know some reviewers make a big deal out of the fact that magic carries a cost in this novel, but this isn't an original idea with Holly Black. Diane Duane, a sadly underrated writer, took that rational tack long before Black did. Anyone who is interested in a more grown-up version of Harry Potter should read her Young Wizards series. Bit I digress! Cassel would appear to be lucky in that he has no ability, since it costs him nothing, but you and I both know that he has some secret mega-ability that's been suppressed, and will be awakened during the course (curse? cure? core?!) of this novel, don't we? Cliché much, Holly? Actually I love the name Holly, but that's not going to stop me from wartifying this novel if it doesn’t please me, rest assured. Yes, that's the curse-working power I have. I can cause novels to be warty if I don’t like them!

"But what of Cassel's other disability?" I hear you asking. Yep, I do - I am tuned into your computer right now spying on you through that little cam you didn’t know was there, and soaking up your every word, rest assured, but your secret is safe with me. So anyway, Cassel's other disability is a real humdinger (yes it is, why would I lie about something like that?) Quit laughing, this is serious. Cassel killed Lila, the daughter of a powerful crime boss. So he believes. All he actually recalls of that night is standing, bloody, over her dead body feeling rather pleased with himself about something. Since then, he's felt absolutely wretched about it, and he finds himself imagining killing other girls to test himself. Each time he's grossed-out by the thought, and so he feels better that his dark passenger isn’t resurfacing. Dexter much, Cassel?!

Given how suspiciously his brother Phillip behaves, I suspect that Cassel has been rooked-up pretty badly (how many more of these chess references can I get away with?). I think he didn’t kill anyone and Phillip's involvement in the cover-up means that someone else killed Lila - or that she's still alive. I'd be willing to bet that Cassel's missing ability is tied to the killing (or non-killing) somehow, and Cassel will turn into a knight (well, one more chess reference at least!) in shining armor and capture his queen (two more!), but we'll have to see.

En passant (another chess reference!), Cassel ends up stuck in his childhood home with his grandfather, the king of assassins (another one!) cleaning up gargantuan piles of hoarded trash. Cassel's jailbird mom was evidently the mother of all pack-rats (no, that's not why she's in jail - she's incarcerated because of a con she pulled). This is at odds with his stated desire to avoid his grandfather because he and Cassel seem to get along really well, trading the occasional barbed comment and smart-mouth remark. Since Cassel is narrating this story, this might be a good reality check for us readers: maybe Cassel isn't always telling us the truth? Or doesn't he know the truth to begin with?

One day Cassel's ex girlfriend Audrey arrives from school with some suggestions which she thought might facilitate his early return to school. What that's all about I have no idea, but Black uses this visit to introduce us to the idea of protective amulets which Audrey wears. You can curse an amulet for one of the half-dozen or so possible curses, and wear it; then if someone tries to curse you, the curse is somehow sucked-up by the relevant amulet and you are spared. The amulet breaks, though, so you need to get a replacement. Amulets have to be made of stone. I know not why. Audrey wears seven, and Cassel also finds an amulet in the trash he's clearing out. He puts that one in his pocket. No doubt it will come in useful later in the story when we've all forgotten it was there. But you and I won't forget, will we now?

The other thing of note - and I consider it more than that actually - is that the house has several cats living in the barn out in the yard, one of which is white. Cassel dreams of this cat again the first night he stays at the house, and the cat speaks to him, telling him that he must undo the curse. At this point it seemed obvious to me (but as usual I'm probably grotesquely wrong in this) that Cassel has not killed Lila, but that he used his power to protect her, yet make it look like he killed her. This is why he was so pleased with himself. I also think that it's possible that the white cat actually is Lila, as bizarre as that seems. Hey, how can that be any more bizarre than a curse-by-touch story?!

In his desperate desire to get back to school and a "normal" life, Cassel lies to his grandfather that he has a doctor's appointment. He actually does go to the doctor, but he has no appointment, nor does he plan on actually seeing the doctor. In the confusion as they try to figure out why his non-existent appointment got screwed up, Cassel lifts the materials he will need to forge a letter from this doctor, which he then mails to his school, clearing him for a return to active duty as it were.

Well, to cut a long review short, Black went the way I had guessed, having Cassel start to think that the cat was indeed Lila, which immediately made me start to think I was completely wrong in my guess, and that the cat wasn't Lila after all. I'm not going to spoil this any more than Holly Black had done at this point by confirming whether I was right or wrong, but once I saw that Black was making it so obvious, then I suspected that Lila might be someone other than the cat - assuming she is indeed alive - and the white cat was a, huh, red herring! My immediate port-of-call then was Cassel's grandfather, which kinda grossed me out! But I thought, what if his grandfather was dead, or had gone far away, and people didn’t know, and Cassel had transformed Lila into him to keep her safe?! I think I would have done that very thing, had I been writing this: made everyone think it was the cat and then turned their stomachs by showing it was the grandfather! Lol! Lila as the grandfather! I love it.

However, I'm telling no more. You’re going to have to read this and try to figure it all out for yourself, because shy of a really lousy ending, I am ready to rate this one as worthy. I already have the next volume on request at the local library. Yes, I wish I could reward the authors by buying more of the really good novels I read, but I simply do not have the funds to buy so many, especially given that I prefer them in hardback and those are so expensive these days! If I ever strike it rich I will have a heck of a lot of books to buy!

I can just tease you by telling you that things really start to snowball towards the end, with revelations and events (that may or may not surprise you) rolling in faster than a San Francisco fog - thick and quick. Cassel is drawn into a scam by his brothers that can only end badly for him. He discovers that someone has been messing with things they ought not to, had they a decent bone in their body, and he has to start coming up with one con after another to stay ahead of the game.

When I finally reached the point in this novel that I'd decided I was going to give it a worthy rating, I went out on the 'net and looked up some one-star reviews to try and balance my own feelings and see if there was anything I'd missed that I ought to consider, but some of those reviews were really sad and did nothing to dissuade me from my own conclusion. Those reviews were from people who evidently read a lot, yet their spelling and grammar are sadly lacking. How can a person read so much and learn so little? Some of the reviews were apparently written by twelve- or thirteen-year-olds who seem to think that 'young adult' means twelve or thirteen. One of them was whining about the 'lust' in the novel! I'm like, "what?" That PoV makes me feel saddened, because it seems it was written by a young Christian girl who is woefully unprepared for life. But then it ought to be obvious that religion is for people who can't handle reality!

So, in conclusion, and in short (like I know short!) I recommend this novel.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Rating: WORTHY!

This story starts in December 2002, in Sverige, known to us English speakers as Sweden. The original Swedish version of this novel was titled Män som hatar kvinnor which means "Men who hate women". The second novel in this trilogy is the only one to retain its original Swedish title, and that title has appeared in two forms in English due to the fact that people have no idea where to place apostrophes! Thus we've had both "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" (for dumb North Americans) and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest" (for all actual English speakers)(reference wikipedia), each title meaning something slightly different. The third novel was titled Air Castle Blowing Up in Swedish, and the three together form the Millennium trilogy. Sadly, all of these were published after Larsson died in 2004, so he saw none of the success these novels have enjoyed.

In the novel, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, known humorously as Kalle (a name which annoys him - it would be like an American investigative journalist being called Nancy, after Nancy Drew), is judged guilty of libel, and fined as well as sentenced to three months in prison. The suit was brought by a very rich businessman called Hans-Erik Wennerström, about whom Mikael had written an exposé in his magazine, Millennium, which he co-publishes with his some time love interest Erica, who happens to be married.

Mikael is in process of contemplating and adjusting to what this significant set-back means to his life when he's contacted indirectly by Henrik Vanger, a retired CEO of the huge of Vanger Corporation. Vanger decided to hire Blomkvist based on a background check undertaken by Lisbeth Salander, a skilled hacker and investigator who has done research for him before. Salander excels at what she does, but comes with a host of baggage. She looks more like someone who would be found at a punk music concert than she does a top researcher for a detective agency; however, as we follow this story, we discover that Lisbeth is really no more screwed-up than any other character in the story when you get right down to it, and probably doing better than most, but her problems are far from over.

As Mikael travels north to visit Vanger and find out what this job offer entails, Lisbeth is tasked with investigating the case which Mikael just lost. The reason for this is that Lisbeth had remarked that she thought that there was something fishy going on there, and if she said so, there probably was. Lisbeth Salander is one of my all-time favorites up there with other great female protagonists which I've remarked upon in various places in my blog. More on this later.

Mikael ends up taking Vanger up on his job offer. His cover story is that he's writing a Vanger family history. His real job is to investigate the disappearance - the unexplained disappearance almost forty years previously - of Harriet Vanger, Henrik Vanger's brother Gottfried's daughter. No one has even come close to solving what is, in many regards, a "locked room mystery". Harriet was in the nearby town at the annual children's parade, then she came back to the island and sought to speak with her uncle, but he was busy. She disappeared, quite literally, after that, and no trace had ever been found of her.

Mikael takes up residence in a cottage across the street from Henrik Vanger's home and begins meeting with him regularly. Henrik delivers several boxes of evidence connected with Harriet's disappearance, which Mikael starts looking through. He also starts an affair with Celia Vanger, a middle-aged school principal who lives next door to Henrik. He can find nothing of interest regarding Harriet's disappearance but he makes real progress on actually writing the Vanger family history.

While he's having sweet sex on the Island, Lisbeth is raped on the mainland. Here's where there is a difference from the movie. In the movie, Lisbeth is attacked in the subway and fights off her attackers, but her laptop is broken in the process. In the novel, there is no attack in the subway. Her laptop is broken when she's securing her bike in a garage, and a car reverses over her backpack which she had temporarily laid on the ground.

I think the reason they changed it in the movie was to summarize Lisbeth's life history, which was one of intransigence on her part and abuse from others, of one form or another. But one characteristic was that she never backed down from a fight, not even from someone who would bloody her up pretty badly if she tangled with them. She was abused not only by other people, but by authority too, and part of the reason for this was that she would never cooperate with authority even when it would have actually served her best interests. She realizes this too late to change her early years, but not too late to change her future, and she refuses to see herself as a victim.

Since her old guardian died of a heart attack, and her new guardian, Bjurman, is a sadist and a control freak, she lost control of her own money, and was required to go to him to ask for the money to buy a new computer. She wants the best there is and cannot finance it from the money she has squirreled away at home. Bjurman begins fondling Lisbeth, convinced she has no power to stop him - and makes her fellate him. On her next visit, he makes her come to his home, where he handcuffs her to the bed and rapes her anally. What he did not realize was that she was recording this visit on a security camera she borrowed from her job at the Milton security agency where she works!

So the next time she sees Bjurman after that, she tases him and tattoos on his chest that he's a sadist and a rapist, applying some of his own sex toys to him in the same way he applied his self to her. Lisbeth then explains to him in detail how it's going to be: that she will never see him again unless she needs to for whatever reason. He will nonetheless file monthly reports saying she's doing great. He will turn over her finances to her own control immediately, and a year from now he will recommend that she should be given her life back, free from any guardianship. Either that or the DVD she made will go to the press and the police. She also takes his keys, informing him that she will visit him now and then, when she's sleeping, and if she ever finds a trace of another women in his home, she will publicize the DVD. Now she has control. We hear no more of Bjurman in this entire novel.

When Mikael returns from his jail sentence, it's well into spring. He gets out a month early and has an amusing visit from Erica while he's in bed with Celia, which causes Celia to quit their relationship. On the Harriet front, Mikael discovers something no one else has seen. He has dug up archive photos from the local newspaper, and in a series of these, showing the children's parade, he notices that while everyone else is looking at the parade, Harriet turns sharply and looks at something across the street, something which appears to shock or scare her. It was immediately after that, whatever it was, that she went to talk to her uncle, failed in that endeavor, and subsequently disappeared. Mikael also notices that there was a couple behind Harriet who were taking a picture at the precise time her facial expression changed. If he can only track down that couple, and if only they have that picture, he will be able to see what Harriet saw.

No doubt you know by now, but he does indeed track down the couple - one of them at least - and recovers the photograph. But he doesn't know who is in it. He returns to Hedeby Island to check on Henrik and gets chewed out by one of the family with whom he has had almost no contact, but worse than this, he gets chewed out by Celia Vanger as well, which quite startles him.

One of the most amusing parts of this novel is when Mikael discovers that his computer has been hacked, and he then learns via Henrik's lawyer that it was likely Lisbeth who did it. Lisbeth is quite flummoxed to discover Mikael outside her door one morning. This is the start of their working relationship - or should I call it a working relationship with benefits? Mikael tasks Lisbeth with finding out whether that list of names in Harriet's Bible is a list of murder victims. It is, and Lisbeth tracks down who they were along with an additional set of names which should have been on the list. The unanswered question is what does that have to do with Harriet?

I'm not going to go all the way into the solution to this mystery here. But the rest of the reading is awesome, and rest assured that not only is the main mystery solved, another is resolved along with it. Stieg Larsson knows how to write, and Lisbeth Salander is one of the most engaging and intriguing characters ever written, and I put her up there with the early Honor Harrington (not the late, boring, Honor Harrington), with Katsa, with Kitai, and with Molly Millions. I fully recommend this novel and shall now be happily moving along to the audio book version of volume two in this trilogy.

I have to warn you that the ending to this novel is very different from what was shown in the movie (that is, in Män som hatar kvinnor - I have yet to see the remade US version). I'm not sure why they chose to end the movie as they did, but the novel ends on a rather depressing and sad note. However, I fully recommend the novel, because (as I've indicated!) it is excellent, and the ending in particular is a much better read than the movie is a view. Now that I've completed this one, I'm very much looking forward to volumes two and three, which I have never read.